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THE WORKS OF
ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON
SWANSTON EDITION
VOLUME XXV
_Of this SWANSTON EDITION in Twenty-five
Volumes of the Works of ROBERT LOUIS
STEVENSON Two Thousand and Sixty Copies
have been printed, of which only Two Thousand
Copies are for sale._
_This is No._ .......
[Illustration: Yours truly
Robert Louis Stevenson]
THE WORKS OF
ROBERT LOUIS
STEVENSON
VOLUME TWENTY-FIVE
LONDON: PUBLISHED BY CHATTO AND
WINDUS: IN ASSOCIATION WITH CASSELL
AND COMPANY LIMITED: WILLIAM
HEINEMANN: AND LONGMANS GREEN
AND COMPANY MDCCCCXII
_For permission to use the_ LETTERS _in the_
SWANSTON EDITION OF STEVENSON'S WORKS
_the Publishers are indebted to the kindness of_
MESSRS. METHUEN & CO., LTD.
ALL RIGHTS RESERVED
THE LETTERS OF
ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON
EDITED BY
SIDNEY COLVIN
PARTS XI--XIV
CONTENTS
XI. LIFE IN SAMOA
FIRST YEAR AT VAILIMA
PAGE
INTRODUCTORY 3
LETTERS--
To Sidney Colvin 9
To E. L. Burlingame 24
To Sidney Colvin 25
To E. L. Burlingame 32
To Sidney Colvin 34
To Henry James 43
To Rudyard Kipling 46
To Sidney Colvin 48
To Marcel Schwob 51
To Charles Baxter 53
To Sidney Colvin 54
To H. B. Baildon 56
To Sidney Colvin 58
To the Same 66
To W. Craibe Angus 69
To Edmund Gosse 71
To Miss Rawlinson 74
To Sidney Colvin 76
To Miss Adelaide Boodle 80
To Charles Baxter 82
To Sidney Colvin 83
To E. L. Burlingame 86
To W. Craibe Angus 87
To H. C. Ide 88
To Sidney Colvin 90
To the Same 94
To the Same 102
To Henry James 108
To E. L. Burlingame 110
To the Same 111
To Sidney Colvin 112
To W. Craibe Angus 118
To Miss Annie H. Ide 118
To Charles Baxter 120
To Sidney Colvin 121
To Fred Orr 127
To E. L. Burlingame 128
To Henry James 130
To Sidney Colvin 132
XII. LIFE IN SAMOA--_continued_
SECOND YEAR AT VAILIMA
INTRODUCTORY 144
LETTERS--
To E. L. Burlingame 146
To Miss Adelaide Boodle 147
To Sidney Colvin 152
To J. M. Barrie 154
To Sidney Colvin 156
To William Morris 162
To Mrs. Charles Fairchild 163
To Sidney Colvin 166
To E. L. Burlingame 174
To the Rev. S. J. Whitmee 174
To Charles Baxter 177
To Sidney Colvin 178
To the Same 193
To T. W. Dover 209
To E. L. Burlingame 210
To Sidney Colvin 211
To Charles Baxter 213
To W. E. Henley 214
To E. L. Burlingame 215
To Andrew Lang 216
To Miss Adelaide Boodle 217
To Sidney Colvin 221
To the Countess of Jersey 228
To the Same 229
To Sidney Colvin 230
To Mrs. Charles Fairchild 240
To the Children in the Cellar 243
To Sidney Colvin 249
To Gordon Browne 252
To Miss Morse 253
To Miss Taylor 254
To E. L. Burlingame 257
To Sidney Colvin 258
To J. M. Barrie 264
To E. L. Burlingame 266
To Lieutenant Eeles 267
To Charles Baxter 270
To Sidney Colvin 271
To Mrs. Fleeming Jenkin 273
To Henry James 274
To J. M. Barrie 276
To Charles Baxter 278
XIII. LIFE IN SAMOA--_continued_
THIRD YEAR AT VAILIMA
INTRODUCTORY 280
LETTERS--
To Sidney Colvin 282
To Charles Baxter 288
To Sidney Colvin 289
To the Same 291
To Charles Baxter 292
To Sidney Colvin 294
To A. Conan Doyle 299
To Sidney Colvin 299
To S. R. Crockett 305
To Augustus St. Gaudens 308
To Sidney Colvin 310
To Edmund Gosse 317
To Henry James 320
To Sidney Colvin 324
To James S. Stevenson 334
To Henry James 335
To A. Conan Doyle 336
To Charles Baxter 337
To Sidney Colvin 338
To A. Conan Doyle 339
To Augustus St. Gaudens 341
To James S. Stevenson 342
To George Meredith 343
To Charles Baxter 345
To Sidney Colvin 347
To the Same 352
To J. Horne Stevenson 357
To John P----n 358
To Russell P----n 359
To Alison Cunningham 359
To Charles Baxter 360
To J. M. Barrie 362
To R. Le Gallienne 364
To Mrs. A. Baker 366
To Henry James 367
To Sidney Colvin 367
XIV. LIFESAMOA--_concluded_
FOURTH YEAR AT VAILIMA--THE END
INTRODUCTORY 373
LETTERS--
To Charles Baxter 376
To H. B. Baildon 377
To W. H. Low 378
To Sidney Colvin 380
To H. B. Baildon 381
To Sidney Colvin 382
To J. H. Bates 384
To William Archer 384
To Sidney Colvin 386
To W. B. Yeats 390
To George Meredith 390
To Charles Baxter 392
To Mrs. Sitwell 393
To Charles Baxter 394
To Sidney Colvin 396
To R. A. M. Stevenson 398
To Sidney Colvin 404
To Henry James 406
To Marcel Schwob 409
To A. St. Gaudens 410
To Miss Adelaide Boodle 410
To Mrs. A. Baker 413
To Sidney Colvin 414
To J. M. Barrie 416
To Sidney Colvin 422
To Dr. Bakewell 424
To James Payn 425
To Miss Middleton 428
To A. Conan Doyle 429
To Sidney Colvin 430
To Charles Baxter 433
To R. A. M. Stevenson 434
To Sir Herbert Maxwell 440
To Sidney Colvin 441
To Alison Cunningham 445
To James Payn 446
To Sidney Colvin 448
To Professor Meiklejohn 450
To Lieutenant Eeles 451
To Sir Herbert Maxwell 453
To Andrew Lang 453
To Edmund Gosse 454
APPENDIX I--Account of the Death and
Burial of R. L. Stevenson, by
Lloyd Osbourne 457
APPENDIX II--Address of R. L.
Stevenson to the Chiefs on the
Opening of the Road of Gratitude,
October 1894 462
INDEX TO THE LETTERS:
VOLUMES XXIII-XXV 469
INDEX TO VOLUMES I-XXII 509
THE LETTERS
OF ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON
1890--1894
THE LETTERS
OF ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON
XI
LIFE IN SAMOA
FIRST YEAR AT VAILIMA
NOVEMBER 1890-DECEMBER 1891
Returning from Sydney at the end of October 1890, Stevenson and his wife
at once took up their abode in the wooden four-roomed cottage, or "rough
barrack," as he calls it, which had been built for them in the clearing
at Vailima during the months of their absence at Sydney and on their
cruise in the _Equator_. Mr. Lloyd Osbourne in the meantime had started
for England to wind up the family affairs at Bournemouth. During the
first few months, as will be seen by the following letters, the
conditions of life at Vailima were rough to the point of hardship. But
matters soon mended; the work of clearing and planting went on under the
eye of the master and mistress diligently and in the main successfully,
though not of course without complications and misadventures. Ways and
means of catering were found, and abundance began to reign in place of
the makeshifts and privations of the first days. By April a better
house, fit to receive the elder Mrs. Stevenson, had been built; and
later in the year plans for further extension were considered, but for
the present held over. The attempt made at first to work the
establishment by means of white servants and head-men indoors and out
proved unsatisfactory, and was gradually superseded by the formation of
an efficient native staff, which in course of time developed itself into
something like a small, devoted feudal clan.
During the earlier months of 1891 Stevenson was not in continuous
residence on his new property, but went away on two excursions, the
first to Sydney to meet his mother; the second, in company of the
American Consul Mr. Sewall, to Tutuila, a neighbouring island of the
Samoan group. Of the latter, to him very interesting, trip, the
correspondence contains only the beginning of an account abruptly broken
off: more, will be found in the extracts from his diary given in Mr.
Graham Balfour's _Life_ (ed. 1906, pp. 312 f.). During part of the
spring he was fortunate in having the company of two distinguished
Americans, the painter Lafarge and the historian Henry Adams, in
addition to that of the local planters, traders, and officials, a
singular and singularly mixed community. After some half-year's
residence he began to realise that the arrangements made for the
government of Samoa by treaty between the three powers England, Germany,
and America were not working nor promising to work well. Stevenson was
no abstracted student or dreamer; the human interests and human duties
lying immediately about him were ever the first in his eyes; and he
found himself drawn deeply into the complications of local politics, as
so active a spirit could not fail to be drawn, however little taste he
might have for the work.
He kept in the meantime at a fair level of health, and among the
multitude of new interests was faithful in the main business of his
life--that is, to literature. He did not cease to toil uphill at the
heavy task of preparing for serial publication the letters, or more
properly chapters, on the South Seas. He planned and began delightedly
his happiest tale of South Sea life, _The High Woods of Ulufanua_,
afterwards changed to _The Beach of Falesa_; conceived the scheme, which
was never carried out, of working two of his old conceptions into one
long genealogical novel or fictitious family history to be called _The
Shovels of Newton French_; and in the latter part of the year worked
hard in continuation of _The Wrecker_. Having completed this during
November, he turned at once, from a sense of duty rather than from any
literary inspiration, to the _Footnote to History_, a laboriously
prepared and minutely conscientious account of recent events in Samoa.
From his earliest days at Vailima, determined that our intimacy should
suffer no diminution by absence, Stevenson began, to my great pleasure,
the practice of writing me a monthly budget containing a full account of
his doings and interests. At first the pursuits of the enthusiastic
farmer, planter, and overseer filled these letters delightfully, to the
exclusion of almost everything else except references to his books
projected or in hand. Later these interests began to give place in his
letters to those of the local politician, immersed in affairs which
seemed to me exasperatingly petty and obscure, however grave the
potential European complications which lay behind them. At any rate,
they were hard to follow intelligently from the other side of the globe;
and it was a relief whenever his correspondence turned to matters
literary or domestic, or humours of his own mind and character. These
letters, or so much of them as seemed suitable for publication, were
originally printed separately, in the year following the writer's
death, under the title _Vailima Letters_. They are here placed, with
some additions, in chronological order among those addressed to other
friends or acquaintances. During this first year at Vailima his general
correspondence was not nearly so large as it afterwards became; Mr.
Burlingame, as representative of the house of Scribner, receiving the
lion's share next to myself.
For the love of Stevenson I will ask readers to take the small amount of
pains necessary to grasp and remember the main facts of Samoan politics
in the ten years 1889-99. At the date when he settled in Vailima the
government of the islands had lately been re-ordered between the three
powers interested--namely, Germany, England, and the United States--at
the Convention of Berlin (July 14, 1889). The rivalries and jealousies
of these three powers, complicated with the conflicting claims of
various native kings or chiefs, had for some time kept the affairs of
the islands dangerously embroiled. Under the Berlin Convention, Malietoa
Laupepa, who had previously been deposed and deported by the Germans in
favour of a nominee of their own, was reinstated as king, to the
exclusion of his kinsman, the powerful and popular Mataafa, whose titles
were equally good and abilities certainly greater, but who was
especially obnoxious to the Germans owing to his resistance to them
during the troubles of the preceding years. In the course of that
resistance a small German force had been worsted in a petty skirmish at
Fagalii, and resentment at this affront to the national pride was for
several years one of the chief obstacles to the reconciliation of
contending interests. For a time the two kinsmen, Laupepa and Mataafa,
lived on amicable terms, but presently differences arose between them.
Mataafa had expected to occupy a position of influence in the
government: finding himself ignored, he withdrew to a camp (Malie) a
few miles outside the town of Apia, where he lived in semi-royal state
as a sort of passive rebel or rival to the recognised king. In the
meantime, in the course of the year 1891, the two white officials
appointed under the Berlin Convention--namely, the Chief Justice, a
Swedish gentleman named Cedercrantz, and the President of the Council,
Baron Senfft von Pilsach--had come out to the islands and entered on
their duties. These gentlemen soon proved themselves unfitted for their
task to a degree both disastrous and grotesque. Almost the entire white
community were soon against them; with the native population they had no
influence or credit; affairs both political and municipal went from bad
to worse; and the consuls of the three powers, acting as an official
board of advisers to the king, could do very little to mend them.
To the impropriety of some of the official proceedings Stevenson felt
compelled to call attention in a series of letters to the Times, the
first of which appeared in 1891, the remainder in 1892. He had formed
the conviction that for the cure of Samoan troubles two things were
necessary: first and above all, the reconciliation of Laupepa and
Mataafa; secondly, the supersession of the unlucky Chief Justice and
President by men better qualified for their tasks. To effect the former
purpose, he made his only practical intromission in local politics, and
made it unsuccessfully. The motive of his letters to the Times was the
hope to effect the second. In this matter, after undergoing the risk,
which was at one moment serious, of deportation, he in the end saw his
wishes fulfilled. The first Chief Justice and President were replaced by
better qualified persons in the course of 1893. But meantime the muddle
had grown to a head. In the autumn of that year war broke out between
the partisans of Laupepa and Mataafa: the latter were defeated, and
Mataafa exiled to a distant island. At the close of the following year
Stevenson died. Three years later followed the death of Laupepa: then
came more confused rivalries between various claimants to the kingly
title. The Germans, having by this time come round to Stevenson's
opinion, backed the claims of Mataafa, which they had before stubbornly
disallowed, while the English and Americans stood for another candidate.
In 1899 these differences resulted in a calamitous and unjustifiable
action, the bombardment of native villages for several successive days
by English and American war-ships. As a matter of urgent necessity, to
avert worse things, new negotiations were set on foot between the three
powers, with the result that England withdrew her claims in Samoa
altogether, America was satisfied with the small island of Tutuila with
its fine harbour of Pago-pago, while the two larger islands of Upolu and
Savaii were ceded to Germany. German officials have governed them well
and peacefully ever since, having allowed the restored Mataafa, as long
as he lived, a recognised position of headship among the native chiefs.
Stevenson during his lifetime was obnoxious to the German official
world. But his name and memory are now held in honour by them, his
policy to a large extent practically followed, and he would have been
the first to acknowledge the merits of the new order had he lived to
witness it.
These remarks, following the subject down to what remains for the
present its historic conclusion, will, I hope, be enough to clear it for
the present purpose out of the reader's way and enable him to understand
as much as is necessary of the political allusions in this and the
following sections of the correspondence.
It need only be added that in reading the following pages it must be
borne in mind that Mulinuu and Malie, the places respectively of
Laupepa's and Mataafa's residence, are also used to signify their
respective parties and followings.
TO SIDNEY COLVIN
During the absence of the Stevensons at Sydney some eight acres of
the Vailima property had been cleared of jungle, a cottage roughly
built on the clearing, and something done towards making the track up
the hill from Apia into a practicable road. They occupied the cottage
at once, and the following letters narrate of the sequel.
_In the Mountain, Apia, Samoa, Monday, November 2nd, 1890._
MY DEAR COLVIN,--This is a hard and interesting and beautiful life that
we lead now. Our place is in a deep cleft of Vaea Mountain, some six
hundred feet above the sea, embowered in forest, which is our strangling
enemy, and which we combat with axes and dollars. I went crazy over
outdoor work, 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. 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 cutlass 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. For near a fortnight I did not go
beyond the verandah; then I found my rush of work run out, and went down
for the night to Apia; put in Sunday afternoon with our consul, "a nice
young man," dined with my friend H. J. Moors in the evening, went to
church--no less--at the white and half-white church--I had never been
before, and was much interested; the woman I sat next _looked_ a
full-blood native, and it was in the prettiest and readiest English that
she sang the hymns; back to Moors', where we yarned of the islands,
being both wide wanderers, till bedtime; bed, sleep, breakfast, horse
saddled; round to the mission, to get Mr. Clarke to be my interpreter;
over with him to the King's, whom I have not called on since my return;
received by that mild old gentleman; have some interesting talk with him
about Samoan superstitions and my land--the scene of a great battle in
his (Malietoa Laupepa's) youth--the place which we have cleared the
platform of his fort--the gulley of the stream full of dead bodies--the
fight rolled off up Vaea mountain-side; back with Clarke to the mission;
had a bit of lunch and consulted over a queer point of missionary policy
just arisen, about our new Town Hall and the balls there--too long to go
into, but a quaint example of the intricate questions which spring up
daily in the missionary path.[1]
Then off up the hill; Jack very fresh, the sun (close on noon) staring
hot, the breeze very strong and pleasant; the ineffable green country
all round--gorgeous little birds (I think they are humming-birds, but
they say not) skirmishing in the wayside flowers. About a quarter way up
I met a native coming down with the trunk of a cocoa palm across his
shoulder; his brown breast glittering with sweat and oil:
"Talofa"--"Talofa, alii--You see that white man? He speak for you."
"White man he gone up here?"--"Ioe" (Yes)--"Tofa, alii"--"Tofa, soifua!"
I put on Jack up the steep path, till he is all as white as shaving
stick--Brown's euxesis, wish I had some--past Tanugamanono, a bush
village--see into the houses as I pass--they are open sheds scattered on
a green--see the brown folk sitting there, suckling kids, sleeping on
their stiff wooden pillows--then on through the wood path--and here I
find the mysterious white man (poor devil!) with his twenty years'
certificate of good behaviour as a book-keeper, frozen out by the
strikes in the colonies, come up here on a chance, no work to be found,
big hotel bill, no ship to leave in--and come up to beg twenty dollars
because he heard I was a Scotchman, offering to leave his portmanteau in
pledge. Settle this, and on again; and here my house comes in view, and
a war whoop fetches my wife and Henry (or Simele), our Samoan boy, on
the front balcony; and I am home again, and only sorry that I shall have
to go down again to Apia this day week. I could, and would, dwell here
unmoved, but there are things to be attended to.
Never say I don't give you details and news. That is a picture of a
letter.
I have been hard at work since I came; three chapters of _The Wrecker_,
and since that, eight of the South Sea book, and, along and about and in
between, a hatful of verses. Some day I'll send the verse to you, and
you'll say if any of it is any good. I have got in a better vein with
the South Sea book, as I think you will see; I think these chapters will
do for the volume without much change. Those that I did in the _Janet
Nicoll_, under the most ungodly circumstances, I fear will want a lot of
suppling and lightening, but I hope to have your remarks in a month or
two upon that point. It seems a long while since I have heard from you.
I do hope you are well. I am wonderful, but tired from so much work;
'tis really immense what I have done; in the South Sea book I have fifty
pages copied fair, some of which has been four times, and all twice
written; certainly fifty pages of solid scriving inside a fortnight, but
I was at it by seven a.m. till lunch, and from two till four or five
every day; between whiles, verse and blowing on the flageolet; never
outside. If you could see this place! but I don't want any one to see it
till my clearing is done, and my house built. It will be a home for
angels.
[Illustration:
* Point referred to in text.
........ Paths.
======== Our boundary.
_a. Garden._ _b. Present house._
_c. Banana Patch._ _d. Waterfall._
_e. Large waterfall into deep gorge where the heat of the fight was._]
So far I wrote after my bit of dinner, some cold meat and bananas, on
arrival. Then out to see where Henry and some of the men were clearing
the garden; for it was plain there was to be no work to-day indoors, and
I must set in consequence to farmering. I stuck a good while on the way
up, for the path there is largely my own handiwork, and there were a lot
of sprouts and saplings and stones to be removed. Then I reached our
clearing just where the streams join in one; it had a fine autumn smell
of burning, the smoke blew in the woods, and the boys were pretty merry
and busy. Now I had a private design:--The Vaita'e I had explored
pretty far up; not yet the other stream, the Vaituliga (g=nasal n, as ng
in sing); and up that, with my wood knife, I set off alone. It is here
quite dry; it went through endless woods; about as broad as a Devonshire
lane, here and there crossed by fallen trees; huge trees overhead in the
sun, dripping lianas and tufted with orchids, tree ferns, ferns
depending with air roots from the steep banks, great arums--I had not
skill enough to say if any of them were the edible kind, one of our
staples here!--hundreds of bananas--another staple--and alas! I had
skill enough to know all of these for the bad kind that bears no fruit.
My Henry moralised over this the other day; how hard it was that the bad
banana flourished wild, and the good must be weeded and tended; and I
had not the heart to tell him how fortunate they were here, and how
hungry were other lands by comparison. The ascent of this lovely lane of
my dry stream filled me with delight. I could not but be reminded of old
Mayne Reid, as I have been more than once since I came to the tropics;
and I thought, if Reid had been still living, I would have written to
tell him that, for me, _it had come true_; and I thought, forbye, that,
if the great powers go on as they are going, and the Chief Justice
delays, it would come truer still; and the war-conch will sound in the
hills, and my home will be inclosed in camps, before the year is ended.
And all at once--mark you, how Mayne Reid is on the spot--a strange
thing happened. I saw a liana stretch across the bed of the brook about
breast-high, swung up my knife to sever it, and--behold, it was a wire!
On either hand it plunged into thick bush; to-morrow I shall see where
it goes and get a guess perhaps of what it means. To-day I know no more
than--there it is. A little higher the brook began to trickle, then to
fill. At last, as I meant to do some work upon the homeward trail, it
was time to turn. I did not return by the stream; knife in hand, as long
as my endurance lasted, I was to cut a path in the congested bush.
At first it went ill with me; I got badly stung as high as the elbows by
the stinging plant; I was nearly hung in a tough liana--a rotten trunk
giving way under my feet; it was deplorable bad business. And an axe--if
I dared swing one--would have been more to the purpose than my cutlass.
Of a sudden things began to go strangely easier; I found stumps, bushing
out again; my body began to wonder, then my mind; I raised my eyes and
looked ahead; and, by George, I was no longer pioneering, I had struck
an old track overgrown, and was restoring an old path. So I laboured
till I was in such a state that Carolina Wilhelmina Skeggs[2] could
scarce have found a name for it. Thereon desisted; returned to the
stream; made my way down that stony track to the garden, where the smoke
was still hanging and the sun was still in the high tree-tops, and so
home. Here, fondly supposing my long day was over, I rubbed down;
exquisite agony; water spreads the poison of these weeds; I got it all
over my hands, on my chest, in my eyes, and presently, while eating an
orange, _a la_ Rarotonga, burned my lip and eye with orange juice. Now
all day, our three small pigs had been adrift, to the mortal peril of
our corn, lettuce, onions, etc., and as I stood smarting on the back
verandah, behold the three piglings issuing from the wood just opposite.
Instantly I got together as many boys as I could--three, and got the
pigs penned against the rampart of the sty, till the others joined;
whereupon we formed a cordon, closed, captured the deserters, and
dropped them, squeaking amain, into their strengthened barracks where,
please God, they may now stay!
Perhaps you may suppose the day now over; you are not the head of a
plantation, my juvenile friend. Politics succeeded: Henry got adrift in
his English, Bene was too cowardly to tell me what he was after: result,
I have lost seven good labourers, and had to sit down and write to you
to keep my temper. Let me sketch my lads.--Henry--Henry has gone down to
town or I could not be writing to you--this were the hour of his English
lesson else, when he learns what he calls "long explessions" or "your
chief's language" for the matter of an hour and a half--Henry is a
chiefling from Savaii; I once loathed, I now like and--pending fresh
discoveries--have a kind of respect for Henry. He does good work for us;
goes among the labourers, bossing and watching; helps Fanny; is civil,
kindly, thoughtful; _O si sic semper!_ But will he be "his sometime self
throughout the year"? Anyway, he has deserved of us, and he must
disappoint me sharply ere I give him up.--Bene--or Peni--Ben, in plain
English--is supposed to be my ganger; the Lord love him! God made a
truckling coward, there is his full history. He cannot tell me what he
wants; he dares not tell me what is wrong; he dares not transmit my
orders or translate my censures. And with all this, honest, sober,
industrious, miserably smiling over the miserable issue of his own
unmanliness.--Paul--a German--cook and steward--a glutton of work--a
splendid fellow; drawbacks, three: (1) no cook; (2) an inveterate
bungler; a man with twenty thumbs, continually falling in the dishes,
throwing out the dinner, preserving the garbage; (3) a dr----, well,
don't let us say that--but we daren't let him go to town, and he--poor,
good soul--is afraid to be let go.--Lafaele (Raphael), a strong, dull,
deprecatory man; splendid with an axe, if watched; the better for a
rowing, when he calls me "Papa" in the most wheedling tones; desperately
afraid of ghosts, so that he dare not walk alone up in the banana
patch--see map. The rest are changing labourers; and to-night, owing to
the miserable cowardice of Peni, who did not venture to tell me what the
men wanted--and which was no more than fair--all are gone--and my
weeding in the article of being finished! Pity the sorrows of a planter.
I am, Sir, yours, and be jowned to you, The Planter,
R. L. S.
_Tuesday, 3rd._--I begin to see the whole scheme of letter-writing; you
sit down every day and pour out an equable stream of twaddle.
This morning all my fears were fled, and all the trouble had fallen to
the lot of Peni himself, who deserved it; my field was full of weeders;
and I am again able to justify the ways of God. All morning I worked at
the _South Seas_, and finished the chapter I had stuck upon on Saturday.
Fanny, awfully hove-to with rheumatics and injuries received upon the
field of sport and glory, chasing pigs, was unable to go up and down
stairs, so she sat upon the back verandah, and my work was chequered by
her cries. "Paul, you take a spade to do that--dig a hole first. If you
do that, you'll cut your foot off! Here, you boy, what you do there? You
no get work? You go find Simele; he give you work. Peni, you tell this
boy he go find Simele; suppose Simele no give him work, you tell him go
'way. I no want him here. That boy no good."--_Peni_ (from the distance
in reassuring tones), "All right, sir!"--_Fanny_ (after a long pause),
"Peni, you tell that boy go find Simele! I no want him stand here all
day. I no pay that boy. I see him all day. He no do nothing."--Luncheon,
beef, soda-scones, fried bananas, pine-apple in claret, coffee. Try to
write a poem; no go. Play the flageolet. Then sneakingly off to
farmering and pioneering. Four gangs at work on our place; a lively
scene; axes crashing and smoke blowing; all the knives are out. But I
rob the garden party of one without a stock, and you should see my
hand--cut to ribbons. Now I want to do my path up the Vaituliga
single-handed, and I want it to burst on the public complete. Hence,
with devilish ingenuity, I begin it at different places; so that if you
stumble on one section, you may not even then suspect the fulness of my
labours. Accordingly, I started in a new place, below the wire, and
hoping to work up to it. It was perhaps lucky I had so bad a cutlass,
and my smarting hand bid me stay before I had got up to the wire, but
just in season, so that I was only the better of my activity, not dead
beat as yesterday.
A strange business it was, and infinitely solitary; away above, the sun
was in the high tree-tops; the lianas noosed and sought to hang me; the
saplings struggled, and came up with that sob of death that one gets to
know so well; great, soft, sappy trees fell at a lick of the cutlass,
little tough switches laughed at and dared my best endeavour. Soon,
toiling down in that pit of verdure, I heard blows on the far side, and
then laughter. I confess a chill settled on my heart. Being so dead
alone, in a place where by rights none should be beyond me, I was aware,
upon interrogation, if those blows had drawn nearer, I should (of course
quite unaffectedly) have executed a strategic movement to the rear; and
only the other day I was lamenting my insensibility to superstition! Am
I beginning to be sucked in? Shall I become a midnight twitterer like my
neighbours? At times I thought the blows were echoes; at times I thought
the laughter was from birds. For our birds are strangely human in their
calls. Vaea mountain about sundown sometimes rings with shrill cries,
like the hails of merry, scattered children. As a matter of fact, I
believe stealthy wood-cutters from Tanugamanono were above me in the
wood and answerable for the blows; as for the laughter, a woman and two
children had come and asked Fanny's leave to go up shrimp-fishing in the
burn; beyond doubt, it was these I heard. Just at the right time I
returned; to wash down, change, and begin this snatch of letter before
dinner was ready, and to finish it afterwards, before Henry has yet put
in an appearance for his lesson in "long explessions."
Dinner: stewed beef and potatoes, baked bananas, new loaf-bread hot from
the oven, pine-apple in claret. These are great days; we have been low
in the past; but now are we as belly-gods, enjoying all things.
_Wednesday_, (_Hist. Vailima resumed._)--A gorgeous evening of
after-glow in the great tree-tops and behind the mountain, and full moon
over the lowlands and the sea, inaugurated a night of horrid cold. To
you effete denizens of the so-called temperate zone, it had seemed
nothing; neither of us could sleep; we were up seeking extra coverings,
I know not at what hour--it was as bright as day. The moon right over
Vaea--near due west, the birds strangely silent, and the wood of the
house tingling with cold; I believe it must have been 60 deg.! Consequence:
Fanny has a headache and is wretched, and I could do no work. (I am
trying all round for a place to hold my pen; you will hear why later on;
this to explain penmanship.) I wrote two pages, very bad, no movement,
no life or interest; then I wrote a business letter; then took to
tootling on the flageolet, till glory should call me farmering.
I took up at the fit time Lafaele and Mauga--Mauga, accent on the first,
is a mountain, I don't know what Mauga means--mind what I told you of
the value of g--to the garden, and set them digging, then turned my
attention to the path. I could not go into my bush path for two reasons:
1st, sore hands; 2nd, had on my trousers and good shoes. Lucky it was.
Right in the wild lime hedge which cuts athwart us just homeward of the
garden, I found a great bed of kuikui--sensitive plant--our deadliest
enemy. A fool brought it to this island in a pot, and used to lecture
and sentimentalise over the tender thing. The tender thing has now taken
charge of this island, and men fight it, with torn hands, for bread and
life. A singular, insidious thing, shrinking and biting like a weasel;
clutching by its roots as a limpet clutches to a rock. As I fought him,
I bettered some verses in my poem, _The Woodman_;[3] the only thought I
gave to letters. Though the kuikui was thick, there was but a small
patch of it, and when I was done I attacked the wild lime, and had a
hand-to-hand skirmish with its spines and elastic suckers. All this
time, close by, in the cleared space of the garden, Lafaele and Mauga
were digging. Suddenly quoth Lafaele, "Somebody he sing out."--"Somebody
he sing out? All right. I go." And I went and found they had been
whistling and "singing out" for long, but the fold of the hill and the
uncleared bush shuts in the garden so that no one heard, and I was late
for dinner, and Fanny's headache was cross; and when the meal was over,
we had to cut up a pineapple which was going bad, to make jelly of; and
the next time you have a handful of broken blood-blisters, apply
pine-apple juice, and you will give me news of it, and I request a
specimen of your hand of write five minutes after--the historic moment
when I tackled this history. My day so far.
Fanny was to have rested. Blessed Paul began making a duck-house; she
let him be; the duck-house fell down, and she had to set her hand to it.
He was then to make a drinking-place for the pigs; she let him be
again--he made a stair by which the pigs will probably escape this
evening, and she was near weeping. Impossible to blame the indefatigable
fellow; energy is too rare and goodwill too noble a thing to discourage;
but it's trying when she wants a rest. Then she had to cook the dinner;
then, of course--like a fool and a woman--must wait dinner for me, and
make a flurry of herself. Her day so far. _Cetera adhuc desunt._
_Friday_--_I think._--I have been too tired to add to this chronicle,
which will at any rate give you some guess of our employment. All goes
well; the kuikui--(think of this mispronunciation having actually
infected me to the extent of misspelling! tuitui is the word by
rights)--the tuitui is all out of the paddock--a fenced park between the
house and boundary; Peni's men start to-day on the road; the garden is
part burned, part dug; and Henry, at the head of a troop of underpaid
assistants, is hard at work clearing. The part clearing you will see
from the map; from the house run down to the stream side, up the stream
nearly as high as the garden; then back to the star which I have just
added to the map.
My long, silent contests in the forest have had a strange effect on me.
The unconcealed vitality of these vegetables, their exuberant number and
strength, the attempts--I can use no other word--of lianas to enwrap and
capture the intruder, the awful silence, the knowledge that all my
efforts are only like the performance of an actor, the thing of a
moment, and the wood will silently and swiftly heal them up with fresh
effervescence; the cunning sense of the tuitui, suffering itself to be
touched with wind-swayed grasses and not minding--but let the grass be
moved by a man, and it shuts up; the whole silent battle, murder, and
slow death of the contending forest; weigh upon the imagination. My poem
_The Woodman_ stands; but I have taken refuge in a new story, which just
shot through me like a bullet in one of my moments of awe, alone in that
tragic jungle:--
_The High Woods of Ulufanua_[4]
1. A South Sea Bridal.
2. Under the Ban.
3. Savao and Faavao.
4. Cries in the High Wood.
5. Rumour full of Tongues.
6. The Hour of Peril.
7. The Day of Vengeance.
It is very strange, very extravagant, I dare say; but it's varied, and
picturesque, and has a pretty love affair, and ends well. Ulufanua is a
lovely Samoan word, ulu = grove; fanua = land; grove-land--"the tops of
the high trees." Savao, "sacred to the wood," and Faavao, "wood-ways,"
are the names of two of the characters, Ulufanua the name of the
supposed island.
I am very tired, and rest off to-day from all but letters. Fanny is
quite done up; she could not sleep last night, something it seemed like
asthma--I trust not. I suppose Lloyd will be about, so you can give him
the benefit of this long scrawl.[5] Never say that I _can't_ write a
letter, say that I don't.--Yours ever, my dearest fellow,
R. L. S.
_Later on Friday._--The guidwife had bread to bake, and she baked it in
a pan, O! But between whiles she was down with me weeding sensitive in
the paddock. The men have but now passed over it; I was round in that
very place to see the weeding was done thoroughly, and already the
reptile springs behind our heels. Tuitui is a truly strange beast, and
gives food for thought. I am nearly sure--I cannot yet be quite, I mean
to experiment, when I am less on the hot chase of the beast--that, even
at the instant he shrivels up his leaves, he strikes his prickles
downward so as to catch the uprooting finger; instinctive, say the
gabies; but so is man's impulse to strike out. One thing that takes and
holds me is to see the strange variation in the propagation of alarm
among these rooted beasts; at times it spreads to a radius (I speak by
the guess of the eye) of five or six inches; at times only one
individual plant appears frightened at a time. We tried how long it took
one to recover; 'tis a sanguine creature; it is all abroad again before
(I guess again) two minutes. It is odd how difficult in this world it is
to be armed. The double armour of this plant betrays it. In a thick
tuft, where the leaves disappear, I thrust In my hand, and the bite of
the thorns betrays the top-most stem. In the open again, and when I
hesitate if it be clover, a touch on the leaves, and its fine sense and
retractile action betrays its identity at once. Yet it has one gift
incomparable. Rome had virtue and knowledge; Rome perished. The
sensitive plant has indigestible seeds--so they say--and it will
flourish for ever. I give my advice thus to a young plant--have a strong
root, a weak stem, and an indigestible seed; so you will outlast the
eternal city, and your progeny will clothe mountains, and the irascible
planter will blaspheme in vain. The weak point of tuitui is that its
stem is strong.
_Supplementary Page._--Here beginneth the third lesson, which is not
from the planter but from a less estimable character, the writer of
books.
I want you to understand about this South Sea Book. The job is immense;
I stagger under material. I have seen the first big _tache_. It was
necessary to see the smaller ones; the letters were at my hand for the
purpose, but I was not going to lose this experience; and, instead of
writing mere letters, have poured out a lot of stuff for the book. How
this works and fits, time is to show. But I believe, in time, I shall
get the whole thing in form. Now, up to date, that is all my design, and
I beg to warn you till we have the whole (or much) of the stuff
together, you can hardly judge--and I can hardly judge. Such a mass of
stuff is to be handled, if possible without repetition--so much foreign
matter to be introduced--if possible with perspicuity--and, as much as
can be, a spirit of narrative to be preserved. You will find that come
stronger as I proceed, and get the explanations worked through. Problems
of style are (as yet) dirt under my feet; my problem is architectural,
creative--to get this stuff jointed and moving. If I can do that, I will
trouble you for style; anybody might write it, and it would be splendid;
well-engineered, the masses right, the blooming thing travelling--twig?
This I wanted you to understand, for lots of the stuff sent home is, I
imagine, rot--and slovenly rot--and some of it pompous rot; and I want
you to understand it's a _lay-in_.
Soon, if the tide of poeshie continues, I'll send you a whole lot to
damn. You never said thank you for the handsome tribute addressed to
you from Apemama;[6] such is the gratitude of the world to the God-sent
poick. Well, well:--"Vex not thou the poick's mind, With thy coriaceous
ingratitude, The P. will be to your faults more than a little blind, And
yours is a far from handsome attitude." Having thus dropped into poetry
in a spirit of friendship, I have the honour to subscribe myself, Sir,
your obedient humble servant,
SILAS WEGG.
I suppose by this you will have seen the lad--and his feet will have
been in the Monument--and his eyes beheld the face of George.[7] Well!
There is much eloquence in a well!
I am, Sir,
Yours
The Epigrammatist
ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON
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FINIS--EXPLICIT
TO E. L. BURLINGAME
The opening sentences of the following refer of course to _The
Wrecker_, and particularly to a suggestion of mine concerning the
relation of the main narrative to the prologue:--
_Vailima, Apia, Samoa, Nov. 7, 1890._
I wish you to add to the words at the end of the prologue; they run, I
think, thus, "And this is the yarn of Loudon Dodd"; add, "not as he
told, but as he wrote it afterwards for his diversion." This becomes the
more needful, because, when all is done, I shall probably revert to
Tai-o-hae, and give final details about the characters in the way of a
conversation between Dodd and Havers. These little snippets of
information and _faits-divers_ have always a disjointed, broken-backed
appearance; yet, readers like them. In this book we have introduced so
many characters, that this kind of epilogue will be looked for; and I
rather hope, looking far ahead, that I can lighten it in dialogue.
We are well past the middle now. How does it strike you? and can you
guess my mystery? It will make a fattish volume!
I say, have you ever read the _Highland Widow_? I never had till
yesterday: I am half inclined, bar a trip or two, to think it Scott's
masterpiece; and it has the name of a failure! Strange things are
readers.
I expect proofs and revises in duplicate.
We have now got into a small barrack at our place. We see the sea six
hundred feet below filling the end of two vales of forest. On one hand
the mountain runs above us some thousand feet higher; great trees stand
round us in our clearing; there is an endless voice of birds; I have
never lived in such a heaven; just now, I have fever, which mitigates
but not destroys my gusto in my circumstances.--You may envy
ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON.
... O, I don't know if I mentioned that having seen your new tail to the
magazine, I cried off interference, at least for this trip. Did I ask
you to send me my books and papers, and all the bound volumes of the
mag.? _quorum pars_. I might add that were there a good book or
so--new--I don't believe there is--such would be welcome.
I desire--I positively begin to awake--to be remembered to Scribner,
Low, St. Gaudens, Russell Sullivan. Well, well, you fellows have the
feast of reason and the flow of soul; I have a better-looking place and
climate: you should hear the birds on the hill now! The day has just
wound up with a shower; it is still light without, though I write within
here at the cheek of a lamp; my wife and an invaluable German are
wrestling about bread on the back verandah; and how the birds and the
frogs are rattling, and piping, and hailing from the woods! Here and
there a throaty chuckle; here and there, cries like those of jolly
children who have lost their way; here and there, the ringing
sleigh-bell of the tree frog. Out and away down below me on the sea it
is still raining; it will be wet under foot on schooners, and the house
will leak; how well I know that! Here the showers only patter on the
iron roof, and sometimes roar; and within, the lamp burns steady on the
tafa-covered walls, with their dusky tartan patterns, and the
book-shelves with their thin array of books; and no squall can rout my
house or bring my heart into my mouth.--The well-pleased South Sea
Islander,
R. L. S.
TO SIDNEY COLVIN
_Vailima, Tuesday, November 25th,1890._
MY DEAR COLVIN,--I wanted to go out bright and early to go on with my
survey. You never heard of that. The world has turned, and much water
run under bridges, since I stopped my diary. I have written six more
chapters of the book, all good I potently believe, and given up, as a
deception of the devil's, the _High Woods_. I have been once down to
Apia, to a huge native feast at Seumanutafa's, the chief of Apia. There
was a vast mass of food, crowds of people, the police charging among
them with whips, the whole in high good humour on both sides; infinite
noise; and a historic event--Mr. Clarke, the missionary, and his wife,
assisted at a native dance. On my return from this function, I found
work had stopped; no more _South Seas_ in my belly. Well, Henry had
cleared a great deal of our bush on a contract, and it ought to be
measured. I set myself to the task with a tape-line; it seemed a dreary
business; then I borrowed a prismatic compass, and tackled the task
afresh. I have no books; I had not touched an instrument nor given a
thought to the business since the year of grace 1871; you can imagine
with what interest I sat down yesterday afternoon to reduce my
observations; five triangles I had taken; all five came right, to my
ineffable joy. Our dinner--the lowest we have ever been--consisted of
_one avocado pear_ between Fanny and me, a ship's biscuit for the
guidman, white bread for the Missis, and red wine for the twa. No salt
horse, even, in all Vailima! After dinner Henry came, and I began to
teach him decimals; you wouldn't think I knew them myself after so long
desuetude!
I could not but wonder how Henry stands his evenings here; the
Polynesian loves gaiety--I feed him with decimals, the mariner's
compass, derivations, grammar, and the like; delecting myself, after the
manner of my race, _moult tristement_. I suck my paws; I live for my
dexterities and by my accomplishments; even my clumsinesses are my
joy--my woodcuts, my stumbling on the pipe, this surveying even--and
even weeding sensitive; anything to do with the mind, with the eye, with
the hand--with a part of _me_; diversion flows in these ways for the
dreary man. But gaiety is what these children want; to sit in a crowd,
tell stories and pass jests, to hear one another laugh and scamper with
the girls. It's good fun, too, I believe, but not for R.L.S., _aetat._
40. Which I am now past forty, Custodian, and not one penny the worse
that I can see; as amusable as ever; to be on board ship is reward
enough for me; give me the wages of going on--in a schooner! Only, if
ever I were gay, which I misremember, I am gay no more. And here is poor
Henry passing his evenings on my intellectual husks, which the
professors masticated; keeping the accounts of the estate--all wrong I
have no doubt--I keep no check, beyond a very rough one; marching in
with a cloudy brow, and the day-book under his arm; tackling decimals,
coming with cases of conscience--how would an English chief behave in
such a case? etc.; and, I am bound to say, on any glimmer of a jest,
lapsing into native hilarity as a tree straightens itself after the wind
is by. The other night I remembered my old friend--I believe yours
also--Scholastikos, and administered the crow and the anchor--they were
quite fresh to Samoan ears (this implies a very early severance)--and I
thought the anchor would have made away with my Simele altogether.
Fanny's time, in this interval, has been largely occupied in contending
publicly with wild swine. We have a black sow; we call her Jack
Sheppard; impossible to confine her--impossible also for her to be
confined! To my sure knowledge she has been in an interesting condition
for longer than any other sow in story; else she had long died the
death; as soon as she is brought to bed, she shall count her days. I
suppose that sow has cost us in days' labour from thirty to fifty
dollars; as many as eight boys (at a dollar a day) have been twelve
hours in chase of her. Now it is supposed that Fanny has outwitted her;
she grins behind broad planks in what was once the cook-house. She is a
wild pig; far handsomer than any tame; and when she found the cook-house
was too much for her methods of evasion, she lay down on the floor and
refused food and drink for a whole Sunday. On Monday morning she
relapsed, and now eats and drinks like a little man. I am reminded of an
incident. Two Sundays ago, the sad word was brought that the sow was out
again; this time she had carried another in her flight. Moors and I and
Fanny were strolling up to the garden, and there by the waterside we saw
the black sow, looking guilty. It seemed to me beyond words; but Fanny's
_cri du coeur_ was delicious: "G-r-r!" she cried; "nobody loves you!"
I would I could tell you the moving story of our cart and cart-horses;
the latter are dapple-grey, about sixteen hands, and of enormous
substance; the former was a kind of red and green shandrydan with a
driving bench; plainly unfit to carry lumber or to face our road.
(Remember that the last third of my road, about a mile, is all made out
of a bridle-track by my boys--and my dollars.) It was supposed a white
man had been found--an ex-German artilleryman--to drive this last; he
proved incapable and drunken; the gallant Henry, who had never driven
before, and knew nothing about horses--except the rats and weeds that
flourish on the islands--volunteered; Moors accepted, proposing to
follow and supervise: despatched his work and started after. No cart! he
hurried on up the road--no cart. Transfer the scene to Vailima, where on
a sudden, to Fanny and me, the cart appears, apparently at a hard
gallop, some two hours before it was expected; Henry radiantly ruling
chaos from the bench. It stopped: it was long before we had time to
remark that the axle was twisted like the letter L. Our first care was
the horses. There they stood, black with sweat, the sweat raining from
them--literally raining--their heads down, their feet apart--and blood
running thick from the nostrils of the mare. We got out Fanny's
under-clothes--couldn't find anything else but our blankets--to rub them
down, and in about half an hour we had the blessed satisfaction to see
one after the other take a bite or two of grass. But it was a toucher;
a little more and these steeds would have been foundered.
_Monday, 31st(?) November._--Near a week elapsed, and no journal. On
Monday afternoon, Moors rode up and I rode down with him, dined, and
went over in the evening to the American consulate; present,
Consul-General Sewall, Lieut. Parker and Mrs. Parker, Lafarge the
American decorator, Adams an American historian; we talked late, and it
was arranged I was to write up for Fanny, and we should both dine on the
morrow.
On the Friday, I was all forenoon in the mission house, lunched at the
German consulate, went on board the _Sperber_(German war-ship) in the
afternoon, called on my lawyer on my way out to American Consulate, and
talked till dinner time with Adams, whom I am supplying with
introductions and information for Tahiti and the Marquesas. Fanny
arrived a wreck, and had to lie down. The moon rose, one day past full,
and we dined in the verandah, a good dinner on the whole; talk with
Lafarge about art and the lovely dreams of art students.[8] Remark by
Adams, which took me briskly home to the Monument--"I only liked one
_young_ woman--and that was Mrs. Procter."[9] Henry James would like
that. Back by moonlight in the consulate boat--Fanny being too tired to
walk--to Moors's. Saturday, I left Fanny to rest, and was off early to
the Mission, where the politics are thrilling just now. The native
pastors (to every one's surprise) have moved of themselves in the
matter of the native dances, desiring the restrictions to be removed, or
rather to be made dependent on the character of the dance. Clarke, who
had feared censure and all kinds of trouble, is, of course, rejoicing
greatly. A characteristic feature: the argument of the pastors was
handed in in the form of a fictitious narrative of the voyage of one Mr.
Pye, an English traveller, and his conversation with a chief; there are
touches of satire in this educational romance. Mr. Pye, for instance,
admits that he knows nothing about the Bible. At the Mission I was
sought out by Henry in a devil of an agitation; he has been made the
victim of a forgery--a crime hitherto unknown in Samoa. I had to go to
Folau, the chief judge here, in the matter. Folau had never heard of the
offence, and begged to know what was the punishment; there may be lively
times in forgery ahead. It seems the sort of crime to tickle a
Polynesian. After lunch--you can see what a busy three days I am
describing--we set off to ride home. My Jack was full of the devil of
corn and too much grass, and no work. I had to ride ahead and leave
Fanny behind. He is a most gallant little rascal is my Jack, and takes
the whole way as hard as the rider pleases. Single incident: half-way
up, I find my boys upon the road and stop and talk with Henry in his
character of ganger, as long as Jack will suffer me. Fanny drones in
after; we make a show of eating--or I do--she goes to bed about
half-past six! I write some verses, read Irving's _Washington_, and
follow about half-past eight. O, one thing more I did, in a prophetic
spirit. I had made sure Fanny was not fit to be left alone, and wrote
before turning in a letter to Chalmers, telling him I could not meet him
in Auckland at this time. By eleven at night, Fanny got me wakened--she
had tried twice in vain--and I found her very bad. Thence till three, we
laboured with mustard poultices, laudanum, soda and ginger--Heavens!
wasn't it cold; the land breeze was as cold as a river; the moon was
glorious in the paddock, and the great boughs and the black shadows of
our trees were inconceivable. But it was a poor time.
Sunday morning found Fanny, of course, a complete wreck, and myself not
very brilliant. Paul had to go to Vailele _re_ cocoa-nuts; it was
doubtful if he could be back by dinner; never mind, said I, I'll take
dinner when you return. Off set Paul. I did an hour's work, and then
tackled the house work. I did it beautiful: the house was a picture, it
resplended of propriety. Presently Mr. Moors' Andrew rode up; I heard
the doctor was at the Forest House and sent a note to him; and when he
came, I heard my wife telling him she had been in bed all day, and that
was why the house was so dirty! Was it grateful? Was it politic? Was it
TRUE?--Enough! In the interval, up marched little L. S., one of my
neighbours, all in his Sunday white linens; made a fine salute, and
demanded the key of the kitchen in German and English. And he cooked
dinner for us, like a little man, and had it on the table and the coffee
ready by the hour. Paul had arranged me this surprise. Some time later,
Paul returned himself with a fresh surprise on hand; he was almost
sober; nothing but a hazy eye distinguished him from Paul of the week
days: _vivat!_
On the evening I cannot dwell. All the horses got out of the paddock,
went across, and smashed my neighbour's garden into a big hole. How
little the amateur conceives a farmer's troubles. I went out at once
with a lantern, staked up a gap in the hedge, was kicked at by a
chestnut mare, who straightway took to the bush; and came back. A little
after, they had found another gap, and the crowd were all abroad again.
What has happened to our own garden nobody yet knows.
Fanny had a fair night, and we are both tolerable this morning, only the
yoke of correspondence lies on me heavy. I beg you will let this go on
to my mother. I got such a good start in your letter, that I kept on at
it, and I have neither time nor energy for more.--Yours ever,
R. L. S.
_Something new_.--I was called from my letters by the voice of Mr. ----,
who had just come up with a load of wood, roaring, "Henry! Henry! Bring
six boys!" I saw there was something wrong, and ran out. The cart, half
unloaded, had upset with the mare in the shafts; she was all cramped
together and all tangled up in harness and cargo, the off shaft pushing
her over, the carter holding her up by main strength, and right
along-side of her--where she must fall if she went down--a deadly stick
of a tree like a lance. I could not but admire the wisdom and faith of
this great brute; I never saw the riding-horse that would not have lost
its life in such a situation; but the cart-elephant patiently waited and
was saved. It was a stirring three minutes, I can tell you.
I forgot in talking of Saturday to tell of one incident which will
particularly interest my mother. I met Dr. Davis from Savaii, and had an
age-long talk about Edinburgh folk; it was very pleasant. He has been
studying in Edinburgh, along with his son; a pretty relation. He told me
he knew nobody but college people: "I was altogether a student," he said
with glee. He seems full of cheerfulness and thick-set energy. I feel as
if I could put him in a novel with effect; and ten to one, if I know
more of him, the image will be only blurred.
_Tuesday, Dec. 2nd._--I should have told you yesterday that all my boys
were got up for their work in moustaches and side-whiskers of some sort
of blacking--I suppose wood-ash. It was a sight of joy to see them
return at night, axe on shoulder, feigning to march like soldiers, a
choragus with a loud voice singing out, "March--step! March--step!" in
imperfect recollection of some drill.
R. L. S.
TO E. L. BURLINGAME
The intention here announced was only carried out to the extent of
finishing one paper, _My First Book_, and beginning a few
others--_Genesis of the Master of Ballantrae, Rosa Quo Locorum_,
etc.; see Edinburgh edition, _Miscellanies_, vol. iv. The "long
experience of gambling places" is a phrase which must not be
misunderstood. Stevenson loved risk to life and limb, but hated
gambling for money, and had known the tables only as a looker-on
during holiday or invalid travels as a boy and young man. "Tamate" is
the native (Rarotongan) word for trader, used especially as a name
for the famous missionary pioneer, the Rev. James Chalmers, for whom
Stevenson had an unbounded respect.
[_Vailima, December 1890._]
MY DEAR BURLINGAME,--By some diabolical accident, I have mislaid your
last. What was in it? I know not, and here I am caught unexpectedly by
the American mail, a week earlier than by computation. The computation,
not the mail, is supposed to be in error. The vols. of Scribner's have
arrived, and present a noble appearance in my house, which is not a
noble structure at present. But by autumn we hope to be sprawling in our
verandah, twelve feet, sir, by eighty-eight in front, and seventy-two on
the flank; view of the sea and mountains, sunrise, moonrise, and the
German fleet at anchor three miles away in Apia harbour. I hope some day
to offer you a bowl of kava there, or a slice of a pine-apple, or some
lemonade from my own hedge. "I know a hedge where the lemons
grow"--_Shakespeare_. My house at this moment smells of them strong; and
the rain, which a while ago roared there, now rings in minute drops upon
the iron roof. I have no _Wrecker_ for you this mail, other things
having engaged me. I was on the whole rather relieved you did not vote
for regular papers, as I feared the traces. It is my design from time to
time to write a paper of a reminiscential (beastly word) description;
some of them I could scarce publish from different considerations; but
some of them--for instance, my long experience of gambling
places--Homburg, Wiesbaden, Baden-Baden, old Monaco, and new Monte
Carlo--would make good magazine padding, if I got the stuff handled the
right way. I never could fathom why verse was put in magazines; it has
something to do with the making-up, has it not? I am scribbling a lot
just now; if you are taken badly that way, apply to the South Seas. I
could send you some, I believe, anyway, only none of it is thoroughly
ripe. If you have kept back the volume of ballads, I'll soon make it of
a respectable size if this fit continue. By the next mail you may expect
some more _Wrecker_, or I shall be displeased. Probably no more than a
chapter, however, for it is a hard one, and I am denuded of my proofs,
my collaborator having walked away with them to England; hence some
trouble in catching the just note.
I am a mere farmer: my talk, which would scarce interest you on
Broadway, is all of fuafua and tuitui and black boys, and planting and
weeding, and axes and cutlasses; my hands are covered with blisters and
full of thorns; letters are, doubtless, a fine thing, so are beer and
skittles, but give me farmering in the tropics for real interest. Life
goes in enchantment; I come home to find I am late for dinner; and when
I go to bed at night, I could cry for the weariness of my loins and
thighs. Do not speak to me of vexation, the life brims with it, but with
living interest fairly.
Christmas I go to Auckland, to meet Tamate, the New Guinea missionary, a
man I love. The rest of my life is a prospect of much rain, much weeding
and making of paths, a little letters, and devilish little to eat.--I
am, my dear Burlingame, with messages to all whom it may concern, very
sincerely yours,
ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON.
TO SIDNEY COLVIN
_[Vailima] Monday, twenty-somethingth of December 1890._
MY DEAR COLVIN,--I do not say my Jack is anything extraordinary; he is
only an island horse; and the profane might call him a Punch; and his
face is like a donkey's; and natives have ridden him, and he has no
mouth in consequence, and occasionally shies. But his merits are equally
surprising; and I don't think I should ever have known Jack's merits if
I had not been riding up of late on moonless nights. Jack is a bit of a
dandy; he loves to misbehave in a gallant manner, above all on Apia
Street, and when I stop to speak to people, they say (Dr. Stuebel the
German consul said about three days ago), "O what a wild horse! it
cannot be safe to ride him." Such a remark is Jack's reward, and
represents his ideal of fame. Now when I start out of Apia on a dark
night, you should see my changed horse; at a fast steady walk, with his
head down, and sometimes his nose to the ground--when he wants to do
that, he asks for his head with a little eloquent polite movement
indescribable--he climbs the long ascent and threads the darkest of the
wood. The first night I came it was starry; and it was singular to see
the starlight drip down into the crypt of the wood, and shine in the
open end of the road, as bright as moonlight at home; but the crypt
itself was proof, blackness lived in it. The next night it was raining.
We left the lights of Apia and passed into limbo. Jack finds a way for
himself, but he does not calculate for my height above the saddle; and I
am directed forward, all braced up for a crouch and holding my switch
upright in front of me. It is curiously interesting. In the forest, the
dead wood is phosphorescent; some nights the whole ground is strewn with
it, so that it seems like a grating over a pale hell; doubtless this is
one of the things that feed the night fears of the natives; and I am
free to confess that in a night of trackless darkness where all else is
void, these pallid _ignes suppositi_ have a fantastic appearance, rather
bogey even. One night, when it was very dark, a man had put out a little
lantern by the wayside to show the entrance to his ground. I saw the
light, as I thought, far ahead, and supposed it was a pedestrian coming
to meet me; I was quite taken by surprise when it struck in my face and
passed behind me. Jack saw it, and he was appalled; do you think he
thought of shying? No, sir, not in the dark; in the dark Jack knows he
is on duty; and he went past that lantern steady and swift; only, as he
went, he groaned and shuddered. For about 2500 of Jack's steps we only
passed one house--that where the lantern was; and about 1500 of these
are in the darkness of the pit. But now the moon is on tap again, and
the roads lighted.
[Illustration:
1. _Three posts._ 5. _Sink of the Tuluiga._
2. _Leather Bottle._ 6. _Silent Falls._
3. _Old Walls._ 7. _Garden._
4. _Wreck Hill._]
I have been exploring up the Vaituluiga; see your map. It comes down a
wonderful fine glen; at least 200 feet of cliffs on either hand, winding
like a corkscrew, great forest trees filling it. At the top there ought
to be a fine double fall; but the stream evades it by a fault and
passes underground. Above the fall it runs (at this season) full and
very gaily in a shallow valley, some hundred yards before the head of
the glen. Its course is seen full of grasses, like a flooded meadow;
that is the sink! beyond the grave of the grasses, the bed lies dry.
Near this upper part there is a great show of ruinous pig-walls; a
village must have stood near by.
To walk from our house to Wreck Hill (when the path is buried in fallen
trees) takes one about half an hour, I think; to return, not more than
twenty minutes; I dare say fifteen. Hence I should guess it was
three-quarters of a mile. I had meant to join on my explorations passing
eastward by the sink; but, Lord! how it rains.
_Later._--I went out this morning with a pocket compass and walked in a
varying direction, perhaps on an average S. by W., 1754 paces. Then I
struck into the bush, N.W. by N., hoping to strike the Vaituluiga above
the falls. Now I have it plotted out I see I should have gone W. or even
W. by S.; but it is not easy to guess. For 600 weary paces I struggled
through the bush, and then came on the stream below the gorge, where it
was comparatively easy to get down to it. In the place where I struck
it, it made cascades about a little isle, and was running about N.E., 20
to 30 feet wide, as deep as to my knee, and piercing cold. I tried to
follow it down, and keep the run of its direction and my paces; but when
I was wading to the knees and the waist in mud, poison brush, and rotted
wood, bound hand and foot in lianas, shovelled unceremoniously off the
one shore and driven to try my luck upon the other--I saw I should have
hard enough work to get my body down, if my mind rested. It was a
damnable walk; certainly not half a mile as the crow flies, but a real
bucketer for hardship. Once I had to pass the stream where it flowed
between banks about three feet high. To get the easier down, I swung
myself by a wild-cocoanut--(so called, it bears bunches of scarlet
nutlets)--which grew upon the brink. As I so swung, I received a crack
on the head that knocked me all abroad. Impossible to guess what tree
had taken a shy at me. So many towered above, one over the other, and
the missile, whatever it was, dropped in the stream and was gone before
I had recovered my wits. (I scarce know what I write, so hideous a
Niagara of rain roars, shouts, and demonizes on the iron roof--it is
pitch dark too--the lamp lit at 5!) It was a blessed thing when I struck
my own road; and I got home, neat for lunch time, one of the most
wonderful mud statues ever witnessed. In the afternoon I tried again,
going up the other path by the garden, but was early drowned out; came
home, plotted out what I had done, and then wrote this truck to you.
Fanny has been quite ill with ear-ache. She won't go,[10] hating the sea
at this wild season; I don't like to leave her; so it drones on, steamer
after steamer, and I guess it'll end by no one going at all. She is in a
dreadful misfortune at this hour; a case of kerosene having burst in the
kitchen. A little while ago it was the carpenter's horse that trod in a
nest of fourteen eggs, and made an omelette of our hopes. The farmer's
lot is not a happy one. And it looks like some real uncompromising bad
weather too. I wish Fanny's ear were well. Think of parties in
Monuments! think of me in Skerryvore, and now of this. It don't look
like a part of the same universe to me. Work is quite laid aside; I have
worked myself right out.
_Christmas Eve._--Yesterday, who could write? My wife near crazy with
ear-ache; the rain descending in white crystal rods and playing hell's
tattoo, like a _tutti_ of battering rams, on our sheet-iron roof; the
wind passing high overhead with a strange dumb mutter, or striking us
full, so that all the huge trees in the paddock cried aloud, and wrung
their hands, and brandished their vast arms. The horses stood in the
shed like things stupid. The sea and the flagship lying on the jaws of
the bay vanished in sheer rain. All day it lasted; I locked up my papers
in the iron box, in case it was a hurricane, and the house might go. We
went to bed with mighty uncertain feelings; far more than on shipboard,
where you have only drowning ahead--whereas here you have a smash of
beams, a shower of sheet-iron, and a blind race in the dark and through
a whirlwind for the shelter of an unfinished stable--and my wife with
ear-ache! Well, well, this morning, we had word from Apia; a hurricane
was looked for, the ships were to leave the bay by 10 A.M.; it is now
3.30, and the flagship is still a fixture, and the wind round in the
blessed east, so I suppose the danger is over. But heaven is still
laden; the day dim, with frequent rattling bucketfuls of rain; and just
this moment (as I write) a squall went overhead, scarce striking us,
with that singular, solemn noise of its passage, which is to me
dreadful. I have always feared the sound of wind beyond everything. In
my hell it would always blow a gale.
I have been all day correcting proofs, and making out a new plan for our
house. The other was too dear to be built now, and it was a hard task to
make a smaller house that would suffice for the present, and not be a
mere waste of money in the future. I believe I have succeeded; I have
taken care of my study anyway.
Two favours I want to ask of you. First, I wish you to get _Pioneering
in New Guinea_, by J. Chalmers. It's a missionary book, and has less
pretensions to be literature than Spurgeon's sermons. Yet I think even
through that, you will see some of the traits of the hero that wrote it;
a man that took me fairly by storm for the most attractive, simple,
brave, and interesting man in the whole Pacific. He is away now to go up
the Fly River; a desperate venture, it is thought; he is quite a
Livingstone card.
Second, try and keep yourself free next winter; and if my means can be
stretched so far, I'll come to Egypt and we'll meet at Shepheard's
Hotel, and you'll put me in my place, which I stand in need of badly by
this time. Lord, what bully times! I suppose I'll come per British Asia,
or whatever you call it, and avoid all cold, and might be in Egypt about
November as ever was--eleven months from now or rather less. But do not
let us count our chickens.
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 substitute (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 Fanny. "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. "O, all right," my wife says. "By and by,
that man he 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.
_Saturday, 27th._--It cleared up suddenly after dinner, and my wife and
I saddled up and off to Apia, whence we did not return till yesterday
morning. Christmas Day I wish you could have seen our party at table. H.
J. Moors at one end with my wife, I at the other with Mrs. M., between
us two native women, Carruthers the lawyer, Moors's two
shop-boys--Walters and A. M. the quadroon--and the guests of the
evening, Shirley Baker, the defamed and much-accused man of Tonga, and
his son, with the artificial joint to his arm--where the assassins shot
him in shooting at his father. Baker's appearance is not unlike John
Bull on a cartoon; he is highly interesting to speak to, as I had
expected; I found he and I had many common interests, and were engaged
in puzzling over many of the same difficulties. After dinner it was
quite pretty to see our Christmas party, it was so easily pleased and
prettily behaved. In the morning I should say I had been to lunch at the
German consulate, where I had as usual a very pleasant time. I shall
miss Dr. Stuebel[11] much when he leaves, and when Adams and Lafarge go
also, it will be a great blow. I am getting spoiled with all this good
society.
On Friday morning, I had to be at my house affairs before seven; and
they kept me in Apia till past ten, disputing, and consulting about
brick and stone and native and hydraulic lime, and cement and sand, and
all sorts of otiose details about the chimney--just what I fled from in
my father's office twenty years ago; I should have made a languid
engineer. Rode up with the carpenter. Ah, my wicked Jack! on Christmas
Eve, as I was taking the saddle bag off, he kicked at me, and fetched me
too, right on the shin. On Friday, being annoyed at the carpenter's
horse having a longer trot, he uttered a shrill cry and tried to bite
him! Alas, alas, these are like old days; my dear Jack is a Bogue,[12]
but I cannot strangle Jack into submission.
I have given up the big house for just now; we go ahead right away with
a small one, which should be ready in two months, and I suppose will
suffice for just now.
O I know I haven't told you about our _aitu_, have I? It is a lady,
_aitu fafine_: she lives on the mountain-side; her presence is heralded
by the sound of a gust of wind; a sound very common in the high woods;
when she catches you, I do not know what happens; but in practice she
is avoided, so I suppose she does more than pass the time of day. The
great _aitu Saumai-afe_ was once a living woman, and became an _aitu_,
no one understands how; she lives in a stream at the well-head, her hair
is red, she appears as a lovely young lady, her bust particularly
admired, to handsome young men; these die, her love being fatal;--as a
handsome youth she has been known to court damsels with the like result,
but this is very rare; as an old crone she goes about and asks for
water, and woe to them who are uncivil! _Saumai-afe_ means literally,
"Come here a thousand!" A good name for a lady of her manners. My _aitu
fafine_ does not seem to be in the same line of business. It is unsafe
to be a handsome youth in Samoa; a young man died from her favours last
month--so we said on this side of the island; on the other, where he
died, it was not so certain. I, for one, blame it on Madam _Saumai-afe_
without hesitation.
Example of the farmer's sorrows. I slipped out on the balcony a moment
ago. It is a lovely morning, cloudless, smoking hot, the breeze not yet
arisen. Looking west, in front of our new house, I saw two heads of
Indian corn wagging, and the rest and all nature stock still. As I
looked, one of the stalks subsided and disappeared. I dashed out to the
rescue; two small pigs were deep in the grass--quite hid till within a
few yards--gently but swiftly demolishing my harvest. Never be a farmer.
12.30 _p.m._--I while away the moments of digestion by drawing you a
faithful picture of my morning. When I had done writing as above it was
time to clean our house. When I am working, it falls on my wife alone,
but to-day we had it between us; she did the bedroom, I the
sitting-room, in fifty-seven minutes of really most unpalatable labour.
Then I changed every stitch, for I was wet through, and sat down and
played on my pipe till dinner was ready, mighty pleased to be in a
mildly habitable spot once more. The house had been neglected for near a
week, and was a hideous spot; my wife's ear and our visit to Apia being
the causes: our Paul we prefer not to see upon that theatre, and God
knows he has plenty to do elsewhere.
I am glad to look out of my back door and see the boys smoothing the
foundations of the new house; this is all very jolly, but six months of
it has satisfied me; we have too many things for such close quarters; to
work in the midst of all the myriad misfortunes of the planter's life,
seated in a Dyonisius' (can't spell him) ear, whence I catch every
complaint, mishap and contention, is besides the devil; and the hope of
a cave of my own inspires me with lust. O to be able to shut my own door
and make my own confusion! O to have the brown paper and the matches and
"make a hell of my own" once more!
I do not bother you with all my troubles in these outpourings; the
troubles of the farmer are inspiriting--they are like difficulties out
hunting--a fellow rages at the time and rejoices to recall and to
commemorate them. My troubles have been financial. It is hard to arrange
wisely interests so distributed. America, England, Samoa, Sydney,
everywhere I have an end of liability hanging out and some shelf of
credit hard by; and to juggle all these and build a dwelling-place here,
and check expense--a thing I am ill fitted for--you can conceive what a
nightmare it is at times. Then God knows I have not been idle. But since
_The Master_ nothing has come to raise any coins. I believe the springs
are dry at home, and now I am worked out, and can no more at all. A
holiday is required.
_Dec. 28th._--I have got unexpectedly to work again, and feel quite
dandy. Good-bye.
R. L. S.
TO HENRY JAMES
Mr. Lafarge the artist and Mr. Henry Adams the historian have been
mentioned already. The pinch in the matter of eatables only lasted
for a little while, until Mrs. Stevenson had taken her bearings and
made her arrangements in the matter of marketing, etc.
_Vailima, Apia, Samoa, December 29th, 1890._
MY DEAR HENRY JAMES,--It is terrible how little everybody writes, and
how much of that little disappears in the capacious maw of the Post
Office. Many letters, both from and to me, I now know to have been lost
in transit: my eye is on the Sydney Post Office, a large ungainly
structure with a tower, as being not a hundred miles from the scene of
disappearance; but then I have no proof. The _Tragic Muse_ you announced
to me as coming; I had already ordered it from a Sydney bookseller:
about two months ago he advised me that his copy was in the post; and I
am still tragically museless.
News, news, news. What do we know of yours? What do you care for ours?
We are in the midst of the rainy season, and dwell among alarms of
hurricanes, in a very unsafe little two-storied wooden box 650 feet
above and about three miles from the sea-beach. Behind us, till the
other slope of the island, desert forest, peaks, and loud torrents; in
front green slopes to the sea, some fifty miles of which we dominate. We
see the ships as they go out and in to the dangerous roadstead of Apia;
and if they lie far out, we can even see their topmasts while they are
at anchor. Of sounds of men, beyond those of our own labourers, there
reach us, at very long intervals, salutes from the warships in harbour,
the bell of the cathedral church, and the low of the conch-shell calling
the labour boys on the German plantations. Yesterday, which was
Sunday--the _quantieme_ is most likely erroneous; you can now correct
it--we had a visitor--Baker of Tonga. Heard you ever of him? He is a
great man here: he is accused of theft, rape, judicial murder, private
poisoning, abortion, misappropriation of public moneys--oddly enough,
not forgery, nor arson; you would be amused if you knew how thick the
accusations fly in this South Sea world. I make no doubt my own
character is something illustrious; or if not yet, there is a good time
coming.
But all our resources have not of late been Pacific. We have had
enlightened society: Lafarge the painter, and your friend Henry Adams: a
great privilege--would it might endure. I would go oftener to see them,
but the place is awkward to reach on horseback. I had to swim my horse
the last time I went to dinner; and as I have not yet returned the
clothes I had to borrow, I dare not return in the same plight: it seems
inevitable--as soon as the wash comes in, I plump straight into the
American consul's shirt or trousers! They, I believe, would come oftener
to see me but for the horrid doubt that weighs upon our commissariat
department; we have _often_ almost nothing to eat; a guest would simply
break the bank; my wife and I have dined on one avocado pear; I have
several times dined on hard bread and onions. What would you do with a
guest at such narrow seasons?--eat him? or serve up a labour boy
fricasseed?
Work? work is now arrested, but I have written, I should think, about
thirty chapters of the South Sea book; they will all want rehandling, I
dare say. Gracious, what a strain is a long book! The time it took me to
design this volume, before I could dream of putting pen to paper, was
excessive; and then think of writing a book of travels on the spot, when
I am continually extending my information, revising my opinions, and
seeing the most finely finished portions of my work come part by part in
pieces. Very soon I shall have no opinions left. And without an opinion,
how to string artistically vast accumulations of fact? Darwin said no
one could observe without a theory; I suppose he was right; 'tis a fine
point of metaphysic; but I will take my oath, no man can write without
one--at least the way he would like to, and my theories melt, melt,
melt, and as they melt the thaw-waters wash down my writing, and leave
unideal tracts--wastes instead of cultivated farms.
Kipling is by far the most promising young man who has appeared
since--ahem--I appeared. He amazes me by his precocity and various
endowment. But he alarms me by his copiousness and haste. He should
shield 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 godmothers were all tipsy at his christening: what will he do
with them?
Good-bye, my dear James; find an hour to write to us, and register your
letter.--Yours affectionately,
R. L. S.
TO RUDYARD KIPLING
In 1890, on first becoming acquainted with Mr. Kipling's _Soldiers
Three_, Stevenson had written off his congratulations red-hot. "Well
and indeed, Mr. Mulvaney," so ran the first sentences of his note,
"but it's as good as meat to meet in with you, sir. They tell me it
was a man of the name of Kipling made ye; but indeed and they can't
fool me; it was the Lord God Almighty that made you." Taking the cue
thus offered, Mr. Kipling had written back in the character of his
own Irishman, Thomas Mulvaney, addressing Stevenson's Highlander,
Alan Breck Stewart. In the following letter, which belongs to an
uncertain date in 1891, Alan Breck is made to reply. "The gentleman I
now serve with" means, of course, R. L. S. himself.
[_Vailima, 1891._]
SIR,--I cannot call to mind having written you, but I am so throng with
occupation this may have fallen aside. I never heard tell I had any
friends in Ireland, and I am led to understand you are come of no
considerable family. The gentleman I now serve with assures me, however,
you are a very pretty fellow and your letter deserves to be remarked.
It's true he is himself a man of a very low descent upon the one side;
though upon the other he counts cousinship with a gentleman, my very
good friend, the late Mr. Balfour of the Shaws, in the Lothian; which I
should be wanting in good fellowship to forget. He tells me besides you
are a man of your hands; I am not informed of your weapon; but if all be
true it sticks in my mind I would be ready to make exception in your
favour, and meet you like one gentleman with another. I suppose this'll
be your purpose in your favour, which I could very ill make out; it's
one I would be sweir to baulk you of. It seems, Mr. McIlvaine, which I
take to be your name, you are in the household of a gentleman of the
name of Coupling: for whom my friend is very much engaged. The distances
being very uncommodious, I think it will be maybe better if we leave it
to these two to settle all that's necessary to honour. I would have you
to take heed it's a very unusual condescension on my part, that bear a
King's name; and for the matter of that I think shame to be mingled with
a person of the name of Coupling, which is doubtless a very good house
but one I never heard tell of, any more than Stevenson. But your purpose
being laudable, I would be sorry (as the word goes) to cut off my nose
to spite my face.--I am, Sir, your humble servant,
A. STEWART,
_Chevalier de St. Louis_.
_To Mr. M'Ilvaine,
Gentleman Private in a foot regiment,
under cover to Mr. Coupling._
He has read me some of your Barrack Room Ballants, which are not of so
noble a strain as some of mine in the Gaelic, but I could set some of
them to the pipes if this rencounter goes as it's to be desired. Let's
first, as I understand you to move, do each other this rational
courtesy; and if either will survive, we may grow better acquaint. For
your tastes for what's martial and for poetry agree with mine.
A. S.
TO SIDNEY COLVIN
This is the first appearance in Stevenson's letters of the Swedish
Chief Justice of Samoa, Mr. Conrad Cedercrantz, of whom we shall hear
enough and more than enough in the sequel.
_S.S. Luebeck, between Apia and Sydney, Jan. 17th, 1891._
MY DEAR COLVIN,--The Faamasino Sili, or Chief Justice, to speak your low
language, has arrived. I had ridden down with Henry and Lafaele; the sun
was down, the night was close at hand, so we rode fast; just as I came
to the corner of the road before Apia, I heard a gun fire; and lo, there
was a great crowd at the end of the pier, and the troops out, and a
chief or two in the height of Samoa finery, and Seumanu coming in his
boat (the oarsmen all in uniform), bringing the Faamasino Sili sure
enough. It was lucky he was no longer; the natives would not have waited
many weeks. But think of it, as I sat in the saddle at the outside of
the crowd (looking, the English consul said, as if I were commanding the
manoeuvres), I was nearly knocked down by a stampede of the three
consuls; they had been waiting their guest at the Matafele end, and some
wretched intrigue among the whites had brought him to Apia, and the
consuls had to run all the length of the town and come too late.
The next day was a long one; I was at a marriage of Gurr the banker to
Fanua, the virgin of Apia. Bride and bridesmaids were all in the old
high dress; the ladies were all native; the men, with the exception of
Seumanu, all white.
It was quite a pleasant party, and while we were writing, we had a
bird's-eye view of the public reception of the Chief Justice. The best
part of it were some natives in war array; with blacked faces, turbans,
tapa kilts, and guns, they looked very manly and purposelike. No, the
best part was poor old drunken Joe, the Portuguese boatman, who seemed
to think himself specially charged with the reception, and ended by
falling on his knees before the Chief Justice on the end of the pier and
in full view of the whole town and bay. The natives pelted him with
rotten bananas; how the Chief Justice took it I was too far off to see;
but it was highly absurd.
I have commemorated my genial hopes for the regimen of the Faamasino
Sili in the following canine verses, which, if you at all guess how to
read them, are very pretty in movement, and (unless he be a mighty good
man) too true in sense.
We're quarrelling, the villages, we've beaten the wooden drums,
Sa femisai o nu'u, sa taia o pate,
Is confounded thereby the justice,
Ua atuatuvale a le faamasino e,
The chief justice, the terrified justice,
Le faamasino sili, le faamasino se,
Is on the point of running away the justice,
O le a solasola le faamasino e,
The justice denied any influence, the terrified justice,
O le faamasino le ai a, le faamasino se,
O le a solasola le faamasino e.
Well, after this excursion into tongues that have never been
alive--though I assure you we have one capital book in the language, a
book of fables by an old missionary of the unpromising name of Pratt,
which is simply the best and the most literary version of the fables
known to me. I suppose I should except La Fontaine, but L. F. takes a
long time; these are brief as the books of our childhood, and full of
wit and literary colour; and O, Colvin, what a tongue it would be to
write, if one only knew it--and there were only readers. Its curse in
common use is an incredible left-handed wordiness; but in the hands of a
man like Pratt it is succinct as Latin, compact of long rolling
polysyllables and little and often pithy particles, and for beauty of
sound a dream. Listen, I quote from Pratt--this is good Samoan, not
canine--
1 2 3 4 1
O le afa, ua taalili ai le ulu vao, ua pa mai le faititili.
\__ ___/ \_____ _____/ \____ ___/ \___ ___/ \_____ ____/
V V V V V
1 almost _wa_, 2 the two _a's_ just distinguished, 3 the _ai_ is
practically suffixed to the verb, 4 almost _vow_. The excursion has
prolonged itself.
I started by the _Luebeck_ to meet Lloyd and my mother; there were many
reasons for and against; the main reason against was the leaving of
Fanny alone in her blessed cabin, which has been somewhat remedied by my
carter, Mr. ----, putting up in the stable and messing with her; but
perhaps desire of change decided me not well, though I do think I ought
to see an oculist, being very blind indeed, and sometimes unable to
read. Anyway I left, the only cabin passenger, four and a kid in the
second cabin, and a dear voyage it had like to have proved. Close to
Fiji (choose a worse place on the map) we broke our shaft early one
morning; and when or where we might expect to fetch land or meet with
any ship, I would like you to tell me. The Pacific is absolutely desert.
I have sailed there now some years; and scarce ever seen a ship except
in port or close by; I think twice. It was the hurricane season besides,
and hurricane waters. Well, our chief engineer got the shaft--it was the
middle crank shaft--mended; thrice it was mended, and twice broke down;
but now keeps up--only we dare not stop, for it is almost impossible to
start again. The captain in the meanwhile crowded her with sail;
fifteen sails in all, every stay being gratified with a stay-sail, a
boat-boom sent aloft for a maintop-gallant yard, and the derrick of a
crane brought in service as bowsprit. All the time we have had a fine,
fair wind and a smooth sea; to-day at noon our run was 203 miles (if you
please!), and we are within some 360 miles of Sydney. Probably there has
never been a more gallant success; and I can say honestly it was well
worked for. No flurry, no high words, no long faces; only hard work and
honest thought; a pleasant, manly business to be present at. All the
chances were we might have been six weeks--ay, or three months at
sea--or never turned up at all, and now it looks as though we should
reach our destination some five days too late.
TO MARCEL SCHWOB
_Sydney, January 19th, 1891._
MY DEAR SIR,--_Sapristi, comme vous y allez!_ Richard III. and Dumas,
with all my heart: but not Hamlet. Hamlet is great literature; Richard
III. a big, black, gross, sprawling melodrama, writ with infinite spirit
but with no refinement or philosophy by a man who had the world,
himself, mankind, and his trade still to learn. I prefer the Vicomte de
Bragelonne to Richard III.; it is better done of its kind: I simply do
not mention the Vicomte in the same part of the building with Hamlet, or
Lear, or Othello, or any of those masterpieces that Shakespeare survived
to give us.
Also, _comme vous y allez_ in my commendation! I fear my _solide
education classique_ had best be described, like Shakespeare's, as
"little Latin and no Greek" and I was educated, let me inform you, for
an engineer. I shall tell my bookseller to send you a copy of _Memories
and Portraits_, where you will see something of my descent and
education, as it was, and hear me at length on my dear Vicomte. I give
you permission gladly to take your choice out of my works, and translate
what you shall prefer, too much honoured that so clever a young man
should think it worth the pains. My own choice would lie between
_Kidnapped_ and the _Master of Ballantrae_. Should you choose the
latter, pray do not let Mrs. Henry thrust the sword up to the hilt in
the frozen ground--one of my inconceivable blunders, an exaggeration to
stagger Hugo. Say "she sought to thrust it in the ground." In both these
works you should be prepared for Scotticisms used deliberately.
I fear my stepson will not have found time to get to Paris; he was
overwhelmed with occupation, and is already on his voyage back. We live
here in a beautiful land, amid a beautiful and interesting people. The
life is still very hard: my wife and I live in a two-roomed cottage,
about three miles and six hundred and fifty feet above the sea; we have
had to make the road to it; our supplies are very imperfect; in the wild
weather of this (the hurricane) season we have much discomfort: one
night the wind blew in our house so outrageously that we must sit in the
dark; and as the sound of the rain on the roof made speech inaudible,
you may imagine we found the evening long. All these things, however,
are pleasant to me. You say _l'artiste inconscient_ set off to travel:
you do not divide me right. 0.6 of me is artist; 0.4, adventurer. First,
I suppose, come letters; then adventure; and since I have indulged the
second part, I think the formula begins to change: 0.55 of an artist,
0.45 of the adventurer were nearer true. And if it had not been for my
small strength, I might have been a different man in all things.
Whatever you do, do not neglect to send me what you publish on Villon: I
look forward to that with lively interest. I have no photograph at hand,
but I will send one when I can. It would be kind if you would do the
like, for I do not see much chance of our meeting in the flesh: and a
name, and a handwriting, and an address, and even a style? I know about
as much of Tacitus, and more of Horace; it is not enough between
contemporaries, such as we still are. I have just remembered another of
my books, which I re-read the other day, and thought in places
good--_Prince Otto_. It is not as good as either of the others; but it
has one recommendation--it has female parts, so it might perhaps please
better in France.
I will ask Chatto to send you, then--_Prince Otto_, _Memories and
Portraits_, _Underwoods_, and _Ballads_, none of which you seem to have
seen. They will be too late for the New Year: let them be an Easter
present.
You must translate me soon; you will soon have better to do than to
transvase the work of others.--Yours very truly,
ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON,
With the worst pen in the South Pacific.
TO CHARLES BAXTER
Stevenson had been indignant with an old friend at Edinburgh, who had
received much kindness from his mother, for neglecting to call on her
after her return from her wanderings in the Pacific.
_S.S. Luebeck, at sea [on the return voyage from Sydney, February
1891]._
MY DEAR CHARLES,--Perhaps in my old days I do grow irascible; "the old
man virulent" has long been my pet name for myself. Well, the temper is
at least all gone now; time is good at lowering these distemperatures;
far better is a sharp sickness, and I am just (and scarce) afoot again
after a smoking hot little malady at Sydney. And the temper being gone,
I still think the same.... We have not our parents for ever; we are
never very good to them; when they go and we have lost our front-file
man we begin to feel all our neglects mighty sensibly. I propose a
proposal. My mother is here on board with me; to-day for once I mean to
make her as happy as I am able, and to do that which I know she likes.
You, on the other hand, go and see your father, and do ditto, and give
him a real good hour or two. We shall both be glad hereafter.--Yours
ever,
R. L. S.
TO SIDNEY COLVIN
Stevenson had been sharply ailing as usual at Sydney, and was now on
his way back. Having received proofs of some of his _South Sea_
chapters, he had begun to realise that they were not what he had
hoped to make them.
[_On Board Ship between Sydney and Apia, February 1891._]
MY DEAR COLVIN,--The _Janet Nicoll_ stuff was rather worse than I had
looked for; you have picked out all that is fit to stand, bar two others
(which I don't dislike)--the Port of Entry and the House of Temoana;
that is for a present opinion; I may condemn these also ere I have done.
By this time you should have another Marquesan letter, the worst of the
lot, I think; and seven Paumotu letters, which are not far out of the
vein, as I wish it; I am in hopes the Hawaiian stuff is better yet: time
will show, and time will make perfect. Is something of this sort
practicable for the dedication?
TERRA MARIQUE
PER PERICULA PER ARDUA
AMICAE COMITI
D.D.
AMANS VIATOR
'Tis a first shot concocted this morning in my berth: I had always
before been trying it in English, which insisted on being either
insignificant or fulsome: I cannot think of a better word than _comes_,
there being not the shadow of a Latin book on board; yet sure there is
some other. Then _viator_ (though it _sounds_ all right) is doubtful; it
has too much, perhaps, the sense of wayfarer? Last, will it mark
sufficiently that I mean my wife? And first, how about blunders? I
scarce wish it longer.
Have had a swingeing sharp attack in Sydney; beating the fields[13] for
two nights, Saturday and Sunday. Wednesday was brought on board, _tel
quel_, a wonderful wreck; and now, Wednesday week, am a good deal picked
up, but yet not quite a Samson, being still groggy afoot and vague in
the head. My chess, for instance, which is usually a pretty strong game,
and defies all rivalry aboard, is vacillating, devoid of resource and
observation, and hitherto not covered with customary laurels. As for
work, it is impossible. We shall be in the saddle before long, no doubt,
and the pen once more couched. You must not expect a letter under these
circumstances, but be very thankful for a note. Once at Samoa, I shall
try to resume my late excellent habits, and delight you with journals,
you unaccustomed, I unaccustomed; but it is never too late to mend.
It is vastly annoying that I cannot go even to Sydney without an attack;
and heaven knows my life was anodyne. I only once dined with anybody; at
the club with Wise; worked all morning--a terrible dead pull; a month
only produced the imperfect embryos of two chapters; lunched in the
boarding-house, played on my pipe; went out and did some of my messages;
dined at a French restaurant, and returned to play draughts, whist, or
Van John with my family. This makes a cheery life after Samoa; but it
isn't what you call burning the candle at both ends, is it? (It appears
to me not one word of this letter will be legible by the time I am done
with it, this dreadful ink rubs off.) I have a strange kind of novel
under construction; it begins about 1660 and ends 1830, or perhaps I may
continue it to 1875 or so, with another life. One, two, three, four,
five, six generations, perhaps seven, figure therein; two of my old
stories, "Delafield" and "Shovel," are incorporated; it is to be told in
the third person, with some of the brevity of history, some of the
detail of romance. _The Shovels of Newton French_ will be the name. The
idea is an old one; it was brought to birth by an accident; a friend in
the islands who picked up F. Jenkin,[14] read a part, and said: "Do you
know, that's a strange book? I like it; I don't believe the public will;
but I like it." He thought it was a novel! "Very well," said I, "we'll
see whether the public will like it or not; they shall have the
chance."--Yours ever,
R. L. S.
TO H. B. BAILDON
The late Mr. H. Bellyse Baildon, for some time Lecturer on English
Literature at the University of Vienna and afterwards at Dundee, had
been an old schoolmate and fellow-aspirant in literature with
Stevenson at Edinburgh. "Chalmers," of course, is the Rev. James
Chalmers of Rarotonga and New Guinea already referred to above, the
admirable missionary, explorer, and administrator, whom Stevenson
sometimes expressed a desire to survive, for the sake only of writing
his life.
_Vailima, Upolu [Spring 1891]._
MY DEAR BAILDON,--This is a real disappointment. It was so long since we
had met, I was anxious to see where time had carried and stranded us.
Last time we saw each other--it must have been all ten years ago, as we
were new to the thirties--it was only for a moment, and now we're in the
forties, and before very long we shall be in our graves. Sick and well,
I have had a splendid life of it, grudge nothing, regret very
little--and then only some little corners of misconduct for which I
deserve hanging, and must infallibly be damned--and, take it all over,
damnation and all, would hardly change with any man of my time, unless
perhaps it were Gordon or our friend Chalmers: a man I admire for his
virtues, love for his faults, and envy for the really A1 life he has,
with everything heart--my heart, I mean--could wish. It is curious to
think you will read this in the grey metropolis; go the first grey,
east-windy day into the Caledonian Station, if it looks at all as it did
of yore: I met Satan there. And then go and stand by the cross, and
remember the other one--him that went down--my brother, Robert
Fergusson. It is a pity you had not made me out, and seen me as
patriarch and planter. I shall look forward to some record of your time
with Chalmers: you can't weary me of that fellow, he is as big as a
house and far bigger than any church, where no man warms his hands. Do
you know anything of Thomson? Of A----, B----, C----, D----, E----,
F----, at all? As I write C.'s name mustard rises in my nose; I have
never forgiven that weak, amiable boy a little trick he played me when I
could ill afford it: I mean that whenever I think of it, some of the old
wrath kindles, not that I would hurt the poor soul, if I got the world
with it. And Old X----? Is he still afloat? Harmless bark! I gather you
ain't married yet, since your sister, to whom I ask to be remembered,
goes with you. Did you see a silly tale, _John Nicholson's
Predicament_,[15] or some such name, in which I made free with your home
at Murrayfield? There is precious little sense in it, but it might
amuse. Cassell's published it in a thing called _Yule-Tide_ years ago,
and nobody that ever I heard of read or has ever seen _Yule-Tide_. It is
addressed to a class we never met--readers of Cassell's series and that
class of conscientious chaff, and my tale was dull, though I don't
recall that it was conscientious. Only, there's the house at Murrayfield
and a dead body in it. Glad the _Ballads_ amused you. They failed to
entertain a coy public, at which I wondered; not that I set much
account by my verses, which are the verses of Prosator; but I do know
how to tell a yarn, and two of the yarns are great. _Rahero_ is for its
length a perfect folk-tale: savage and yet fine, full of tailforemost
morality, ancient as the granite rocks; if the historian, not to say the
politician, could get that yarn into his head, he would have learned
some of his ABC. But the average man at home cannot understand
antiquity; he is sunk over the ears in Roman civilisation; and a tale
like that of _Rahero_ falls on his ears inarticulate. The Spectator said
there was no psychology in it; that interested me much: my grandmother
(as I used to call that able paper, and an able paper it is, and a fair
one) cannot so much as observe the existence of savage psychology when
it is put before it. I am at bottom a psychologist and ashamed of it;
the tale seized me one-third because of its picturesque features,
two-thirds because of its astonishing psychology, and the Spectator says
there's none. I am going on with a lot of island work, exulting in the
knowledge of a new world, "a new created world" and new men; and I am
sure my income will DECLINE and FALL off; for the effort of
comprehension is death to the intelligent public, and sickness to the
dull.
I do not know why I pester you with all this trash, above all as you
deserve nothing. I give you my warm _talofa_ ("my love to you," Samoan
salutation). Write me again when the spirit moves you. And some day, if
I still live, make out the trip again and let us hob-a-nob with our grey
pows on my verandah.--Yours sincerely,
ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON.
TO SIDNEY COLVIN
The latter part of this letter was written in the course of an
expedition on which Stevenson had been invited by the American
Consul, Mr. Sewall, to the neighbouring island of Tutuila. Unluckily
the letter breaks off short, and the only record of this trip occurs
in the diary partly quoted in Mr. Balfour's _Life_, ch. xiv.
_Vailima, Friday, March 19th [1891]._
MY DEAR S. C.,--You probably expect that now I am back at Vailima I
shall resume the practice of the diary letter. A good deal is changed.
We are more; solitude does not attend me as before; the night is passed
playing Van John for shells; and, what is not less important, I have
just recovered from a severe illness, and am easily tired.
I will give you to-day. I sleep now in one of the lower rooms of the new
house, where my wife has recently joined me. We have two beds, an empty
case for a table, a chair, a tin basin, a bucket and a jug; next door in
the dining-room, the carpenters camp on the floor, which is covered with
their mosquito nets. Before the sun rises, at 5.45 or 5.50, Paul brings
me tea, bread, and a couple of eggs; and by about six I am at work. I
work in bed--my bed is of mats, no mattress, sheets, or filth--mats, a
pillow, and a blanket--and put in some three hours. It was 9.5 this
morning when I set off to the stream-side to my weeding; where I toiled,
manuring the ground with the best enricher, human sweat, till the
conch-shell was blown from our verandah at 10.30. At eleven we dine;
about half-past twelve I tried (by exception) to work again, could make
nothing on't, and by one was on my way to the weeding, where I wrought
till three. Half-past five is our next meal, and I read Flaubert's
Letters till the hour came round; dined, and then, Fanny having a cold,
and I being tired, came over to my den in the unfinished house, where I
now write to you, to the tune of the carpenters' voices, and by the
light--I crave your pardon--by the twilight of three vile candles
filtered through the medium of my mosquito bar. Bad ink being of the
party, I write quite blindfold, and can only hope you may be granted to
read that which I am unable to see while writing.
I said I was tired; it is a mild phrase; my back aches like toothache;
when I shut my eyes to sleep, I know I shall see before them--a
phenomenon to which both Fanny and I are quite accustomed--endless vivid
deeps of grass and weed, each plant particular and distinct, so that I
shall lie inert in body, and transact for hours the mental part of my
day business, choosing the noxious from the useful. And in my dreams I
shall be hauling on recalcitrants, and suffering stings from nettles,
stabs from citron thorns, fiery bites from ants, sickening resistances
of mud and slime, evasions of slimy roots, dead weight of heat, sudden
puffs of air, sudden starts from bird-calls in the contiguous
forest--some mimicking my name, some laughter, some the signal of a
whistle, and living over again at large the business of my day.
Though I write so little, I pass all my hours of field-work in continual
converse and imaginary correspondence. I scarce pull up a weed, but I
invent a sentence on the matter to yourself; it does not get written;
_autant en emportent les vents_; but the intent is there, and for me (in
some sort) the companionship. To-day, for instance, we had a great talk.
I was toiling, the sweat dripping from my nose, in the hot fit after a
squall of rain: methought you asked me--frankly, was I happy. Happy
(said I); I was only happy once; that was at Hyeres; it came to an end
from a variety of reasons, decline of health, change of place, increase
of money, age with his stealing steps; since then, as before then, I
know not what it means. But I know pleasure still; pleasure with a
thousand faces, and none perfect, a thousand tongues all broken, a
thousand hands, and all of them with scratching nails. High among these
I place this delight of weeding out here alone by the garrulous water,
under the silence of the high wood, broken by incongruous sounds of
birds. And take my life all through, look at it fore and back, and
upside down,--though I would very fain change myself--I would not change
my circumstances, unless it were to bring you here. And yet God knows
perhaps this intercourse of writing serves as well; and I wonder, were
you here indeed, would I commune so continually with the thought of you.
I say "I wonder" for a form; I know, and I know I should not.
So far, and much further, the conversation went, while I groped in slime
after viscous roots, nursing and sparing little spears of grass, and
retreating (even with outcry) from the prod of the wild lime. I wonder
if any one had ever the same attitude to Nature as I hold, and have held
for so long? This business fascinates me like a tune or a passion; 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 superstitious 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 grass, and count myself an ally in a fair quarrel, and make
stout my heart.
It is but a little while since I lay sick in Sydney, beating the fields
about the navy and Dean Swift and Dryden's Latin hymns; judge if I love
this reinvigorating climate, where I can already toil till my head swims
and every string in the poor jumping Jack (as he now lies in bed) aches
with a kind of yearning strain, difficult to suffer in quiescence.
As for my damned literature,[16] God knows what a business it is,
grinding along without a scrap of inspiration or a note of style. But it
has to be ground, and the mill grinds exceeding slowly though not
particularly small. The last two chapters have taken me considerably
over a month, and they are still beneath pity. This I cannot continue,
time not sufficing; and the next will just have to be worse. All the
good I can express is just this; some day, when style revisits me, they
will be excellent matter to rewrite. Of course, my old cure of a change
of work would probably answer, but I cannot take it now. The treadmill
turns; and, with a kind of desperate cheerfulness, I mount the idle
stair. I haven't the least anxiety about the book; unless I die, I shall
find the time to make it good; but the Lord deliver me from the thought
of the Letters! However, the Lord has other things on hand; and about
six to-morrow, I shall resume the consideration practically, and face
(as best I may) the fact of my incompetence and disaffection to the
task. Toil I do not spare; but fortune refuses me success. We can do
more, Whatever-his-name-was, we can deserve it. But my misdesert began
long since, by the acceptation of a bargain quite unsuitable to all my
methods.[17]
To-day I have had a queer experience. My carter has from the first been
using my horses for his own ends; when I left for Sydney, I put him on
his honour to cease, and my back was scarce turned ere he was forfeit. I
have only been waiting to discharge him; and to-day an occasion arose. I
am so much _the old man virulent_, so readily stumble into anger, that I
gave a deal of consideration to my bearing, and decided at last to
imitate that of the late ----. Whatever he might have to say, this
eminently effective controversialist maintained a frozen demeanour and a
jeering smile. The frozen demeanour is beyond my reach; but I could try
the jeering smile; did so, perceived its efficacy, kept in consequence
my temper, and got rid of my friend, myself composed and smiling still,
he white and shaking like an aspen. He could explain everything; I said
it did not interest me. He said he had enemies; I said nothing was more
likely. He said he was calumniated; with all my heart, said I, but there
are so many liars, that I find it safer to believe them. He said, in
justice to himself, he must explain: God forbid I should interfere with
you, said I, with the same factitious grin, but it can change nothing.
So I kept my temper, rid myself of an unfaithful servant, found a method
of conducting similar interviews in the future, and fell in my own
liking. One thing more: I learned a fresh tolerance for the dead ----;
he too had learned--perhaps had invented--the trick of this manner; God
knows what weakness, what instability of feeling, lay beneath. _Ce que
c'est que de nous!_ poor human nature; that at past forty I must adjust
this hateful mask for the first time, and rejoice to find it effective;
that the effort of maintaining an external smile should confuse and
embitter a man's soul.
To-day I have not weeded; I have written instead from six till eleven,
from twelve till two; with the interruption of the interview aforesaid;
a damned Letter is written for the third time; I dread to read it, for I
dare not give it a fourth chance--unless it be very bad indeed. Now I
write you from my mosquito curtain, to the song of saws and planes and
hammers, and wood clumping on the floor above; in a day of heavenly
brightness; a bird twittering near by; my eye, through the open door,
commanding green meads, two or three forest trees casting their boughs
against the sky, a forest-clad mountain-side beyond, and close in by the
door-jamb a nick of the blue Pacific. It is March in England, bleak
March, and I lie here with the great sliding doors wide open in an
undershirt and p'jama trousers, and melt in the closure of mosquito
bars, and burn to be out in the breeze. A few torn clouds--not white,
the sun has tinged them a warm pink--swim in heaven. In which blessed
and fair day, I have to make faces and speak bitter words to a man--who
has deceived me, it is true--but who is poor, and older than I, and a
kind of a gentleman too. On the whole, I prefer the massacre of weeds.
_Sunday._--When I had done talking to you yesterday, I played on my
pipe till the conch sounded, then went over to the old house for dinner,
and had scarce risen from table ere I was submerged with visitors. The
first of these despatched, I spent the rest of the evening going over
the Samoan translation of my _Bottle Imp_[18] with Claxton the
missionary; then to bed, but being upset, I suppose, by these
interruptions, and having gone all day without my weeding, not to sleep.
For hours I lay awake and heard the rain fall, and saw faint, far-away
lightning over the sea, and wrote you long letters which I scorn to
reproduce. This morning Paul was unusually early; the dawn had scarce
begun when he appeared with the tray and lit my candle; and I had
breakfasted and read (with indescribable sinkings) the whole of
yesterday's work before the sun had risen. Then I sat and thought, and
sat and better thought. It was not good enough, nor good; it was as
slack as journalism, but not so inspired; it was excellent stuff
misused, and the defects stood gross on it like humps upon a camel. But
could I, in my present disposition, do much more with it? in my present
pressure for time, were I not better employed doing another one about as
ill, than making this some thousandth fraction better? Yes, I thought;
and tried the new one, and behold, I could do nothing: my head swims,
words do not come to me, nor phrases, and I accepted defeat, packed up
my traps, and turned to communicate the failure to my esteemed
correspondent. I think it possible I overworked yesterday. Well, we'll
see to-morrow--perhaps try again later. It is indeed the hope of trying
later that keeps me writing to you. If I take to my pipe, I know
myself--all is over for the morning. Hurray, I'll correct proofs!
_Pago-Pago, Wednesday._--After I finished on Sunday I passed a miserable
day; went out weeding, but could not find peace. I do not like to steal
my dinner, unless I have given myself a holiday in a canonical manner;
and weeding after all is only fun, the amount of its utility small, and
the thing capable of being done faster and nearly as well by a hired
boy. In the evening Sewall came up (American consul) and proposed to
take me on a malaga,[19] which I accepted. Monday I rode down to Apia,
was nearly all day fighting about drafts and money; the silver problem
does not touch you, but it is (in a strange and I hope passing phase)
making my situation difficult in Apia.
About eleven, the flags were all half-masted; it was old Captain
Hamilton (Samasoni the natives called him) who had passed away. In the
evening I walked round to the U.S. consulate; it was a lovely night with
a full moon; and as I got round to the hot corner of Matautu I heard
hymns in front. The balcony of the dead man's house was full of women
singing; Mary (the widow, a native) sat on a chair by the doorstep, and
I was set beside her on a bench, and next to Paul the carpenter; as I
sat down I had a glimpse of the old captain, who lay in a sheet on his
own table. After the hymn was over, a native pastor made a speech which
lasted a long while; the light poured out of the door and windows; the
girls were sitting clustered at my feet; it was choking hot. After the
speech was ended, Mary carried me within; the captain's hands were
folded on his bosom, his face and head were composed; he looked as if he
might speak at any moment; I have never seen this kind of waxwork so
express or more venerable; and when I went away, I was conscious of a
certain envy for the man who was out of the battle. All night it ran in
my head, and the next day when we sighted Tutuila, and ran into this
beautiful landlocked loch of Pago Pago (whence I write), Captain
Hamilton's folded hands and quiet face said a great deal more to me
than the scenery.
I am living here in a trader's house; we have a good table, Sewall doing
things in style; and I hope to benefit by the change, and possibly get
more stuff for Letters. In the meanwhile, I am seized quite
_mal-a-propos_ with desire to write a story, _The Bloody Wedding_,
founded on fact--very possibly true, being an attempt to read a murder
case--not yet months old, in this very place and house where I now
write. The indiscretion is what stops me; but if I keep on feeling as I
feel just now it will have to be written. Three Star Nettison, Kit
Nettison, Field the Sailor, these are the main characters: old Nettison,
and the captain of the man of war, the secondary. Possible scenario.
Chapter I....
TO SIDNEY COLVIN
_Saturday, April 18th [1891]._
MY DEAR COLVIN,--I got back on Monday night, after twenty-three hours in
an open boat; the keys were lost; the consul (who had promised us a
bottle of Burgundy) nobly broke open his storeroom, and we got to bed
about midnight. Next morning the blessed consul promised us horses for
the daybreak; forgot all about it, worthy man; set us off at last in the
heat of the day, and by a short cut which caused infinite trouble, and
we were not home till dinner. I was extenuated, and have had a high
fever since, or should have been writing before. To-day for the first
time, I risk it. Tuesday I was pretty bad; Wednesday had a fever to kill
a horse; Thursday I was better, but still out of ability to do aught but
read awful trash. This is the time one misses civilisation; I wished to
send out for some police novels; Montepin would have about suited my
frozen brain. It is a bother when all one's thought turns on one's work
in some sense or other; I could not even think yesterday; I took to
inventing dishes by way of entertainment. Yesterday, while I lay asleep
in the afternoon, a very lucky thing happened; the Chief Justice came to
call; met one of our employes on the road; and was shown what I had done
to the road.
"Is this the road across the island?" he asked.
"The only one," said Innes.
"And has one man done all this?"
"Three times," said the trusty Innes. "It has had to be made three
times, and when Mr. Stevenson came, it was a track like what you see
beyond."
"This must be put right," said the Chief Justice.
_Sunday._--The truth is, I broke down yesterday almost as soon as I
began, and have been surreptitiously finishing the entry to-day. For all
that I was much better, ate all the time, and had no fever. The day was
otherwise uneventful. I am reminded; I had another visitor on Friday;
and Fanny and Lloyd, as they returned from a forest raid, met in our
desert, untrodden road, first Father Didier, Keeper of the conscience of
Mataafa, the rising star; and next the Chief Justice, sole stay of
Laupepa, the present and unsteady star, and remember, a few days before
we were close to the sick bed and entertained by the amateur physician
of Tamasese, the late and sunken star. "That is the fun of this place,"
observed Lloyd; "everybody you meet is so important." Everybody is also
so gloomy. It will come to war again, is the opinion of all the well
informed--and before that to many bankruptcies; and after that, as
usual, to famine. Here, under the microscope, we can see history at
work.
_Wednesday._--I have been very neglectful. A return to work, perhaps
premature, but necessary, has used up all my possible energies, and made
me acquainted with the living headache. I just jot down some of the past
notabilia. Yesterday B., a carpenter, and K., my (unsuccessful) white
man, were absent all morning from their work; I was working myself,
where I hear every sound with morbid certainty, and I can testify that
not a hammer fell. Upon inquiry I found they had passed the morning
making ice with our ice machine and taking the horizon with a spirit
level! I had no sooner heard this than--a violent headache set in; I am
a real employer of labour now, and have much of the ship captain when
aroused; and if I had a headache, I believe both these gentlemen had
aching hearts. I promise you, the late ---- was to the front; and K.,
who was the most guilty, yet (in a sense) the least blameable, having
the brains and character of a canary-bird, fared none the better for
B.'s repartees. I hear them hard at work this morning, so the menace may
be blessed. It was just after my dinner, just before theirs, that I
administered my redoubtable tongue--it is really redoubtable--to these
skulkers. (Paul used to triumph over Mr. J. for weeks. "I am very sorry
for you," he would say; "you're going to have a talk with Mr. Stevenson
when he comes home: you don't know what that is!") In fact, none of them
do, till they get it. I have known K., for instance, for months; he has
never heard me complain, or take notice, unless it were to praise; I
have used him always as my guest, and there seems to be something in my
appearance which suggests endless, ovine long-suffering! We sat in the
upper verandah all evening, and discussed the price of iron roofing, and
the state of the draught-horses, with Innes, a new man we have taken,
and who seems to promise well.
One thing embarrasses me. No one ever seems to understand my attitude
about that book; the stuff sent was never meant for other than a first
state; I never meant it to appear as a book. Knowing well that I have
never had one hour of inspiration since it was begun, and have only
beaten out my metal by brute force and patient repetition, I hoped some
day to get a "spate of style" and burnish it--fine mixed metaphor. I am
now so sick that I intend, when the Letters are done and some more
written that will be wanted, simply to make a book of it by the
pruning-knife. I cannot fight longer; I am sensible of having done worse
than I hoped, worse than I feared; all I can do now is to do the best I
can for the future, and clear the book, like a piece of bush, with axe
and cutlass. Even to produce the MS. of this will occupy me, at the most
favourable opinion, till the middle of next year; really five years were
wanting, when I could have made a book; but I have a family,
and--perhaps I could not make the book after all.
TO W. CRAIBE ANGUS
The late Mr. Craibe Angus of Glasgow was one of the chief organisers
of the Burns Exhibition in that city, and had proposed to send out to
Samoa a precious copy of the _Jolly Beggars_ to receive the autograph
of R. L. S. and be returned for the purposes of that Exhibition. The
line quoted, "But still our hearts are true," etc., should, it
appears, run, "But still the blood is strong, the heart is Highland."
The author of the _Canadian Boat Song_ which opens thus was Hugh,
twelfth Earl of Eglinton. The first quotation is of course from
Burns.
_Vailima, Samoa, April_ 1891.
DEAR MR. ANGUS,--Surely I remember you! It was W. C. Murray who made us
acquainted, and we had a pleasant crack. I see your poet is not yet
dead. I remember even our talk--or you would not think of trusting that
invaluable _Jolly Beggars_ to the treacherous posts, and the perils of
the sea, and the carelessness of authors. I love the idea, but I could
not bear the risk. However--
"Hale be your heart, hale be your fiddle--"
it was kindly thought upon.
My interest in Burns is, as you suppose, perennial. I would I could be
present at the exhibition, with the purpose of which I heartily
sympathise; but the _Nancy_ has not waited in vain for me, I have
followed my chest, the anchor is weighed long ago, I have said my last
farewell to the hills and the heather and the lynns: like Leyden, I
have gone into far lands to die, not stayed like Burns to mingle in the
end with Scottish soil. I shall not even return like Scott for the last
scene. Burns Exhibitions are all over. 'Tis a far cry to Lochow from
tropical Vailima.
"But still our hearts are true, our hearts are Highland,
And we in dreams behold the Hebrides."
When your hand is in, will you remember our poor Edinburgh Robin? Burns
alone has been just to his promise; follow Burns, he knew best, he knew
whence he drew fire--from the poor, white-faced, drunken, vicious boy
that raved himself to death in the Edinburgh madhouse. Surely there is
more to be gleaned about Fergusson, and surely it is high time the task
was set about. I may tell you (because your poet is not dead) something
of how I feel: we are three Robins who have touched the Scots lyre this
last century. Well, the one is the world's; he did it, he came off, he
is for ever; but I and the other--ah! what bonds we have--born in the
same city; both sickly, both pestered, one nearly to madness, one to the
madhouse, with a damnatory creed; both seeing the stars and the dawn,
and wearing shoe-leather on the same ancient stones, under the same
pends, down the same closes, where our common ancestors clashed in their
armour, rusty or bright. And the old Robin, who was before Burns and the
flood, died in his acute, painful youth, and left the models of the
great things that were to come; and the new, who came after, outlived
his green-sickness, and has faintly tried to parody the finished work.
If you will collect the strays of Robin Fergusson, fish for material,
collect any last re-echoing of gossip, command me to do what you
prefer--to write the preface--to write the whole if you prefer:
anything, so that another monument (after Burns's) be set up to my
unhappy predecessor on the causey of Auld Reekie. You will never know,
nor will any man, how deep this feeling is: I believe Fergusson lives
in me. I do, but tell it not in Gath; every man has these fanciful
superstitions, coming, going, but yet enduring; only most men are so
wise (or the poet in them so dead) that they keep their follies for
themselves.--I am, yours very truly,
ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON.
TO EDMUND GOSSE
_Vailima, April 1891._
MY DEAR GOSSE,--I have to thank you and Mrs. Gosse for many mementoes,
chiefly for your _Life_ of your father. There is a very delicate task,
very delicately done. I noted one or two carelessnesses, which I meant
to point out to you for another edition; but I find I lack the time, and
you will remark them for yourself against a new edition. There were two,
or perhaps three, flabbinesses of style which (in your work) amazed me.
Am I right in thinking you were a shade bored over the last chapters? or
was it my own fault that made me think them susceptible of a more
athletic compression? (The flabbinesses were not there, I think, but in
the more admirable part, where they showed the bigger.) Take it all
together, the book struck me as if you had been hurried at the last, but
particularly hurried over the proofs, and could still spend a very
profitable fortnight in earnest revision and (towards the end) heroic
compression. The book, in design, subject, and general execution, is
well worth the extra trouble. And even if I were wrong in thinking it
specially wanted, it will not be lost; for do we not know, in Flaubert's
dread confession, that "prose is never done"? What a medium to work in,
for a man tired, perplexed among different aims and subjects, and
spurred by the immediate need of "siller"! However, it's mine for what
it's worth; and it's one of yours, the devil take it; and you know, as
well as Flaubert, and as well as me, that it is _never done_; in other
words, it is a torment of the pit, usually neglected by the bards who
(lucky beggars!) approached the Styx in measure. I speak bitterly at the
moment, having just detected in myself the last fatal symptom, three
blank verses in succession--and I believe, God help me, a hemistich at
the tail of them; hence I have deposed the labourer, come out of hell by
my private trap, and now write to you from my little place in purgatory.
But I prefer hell: would I could always dig in those red coals--or else
be at sea in a schooner, bound for isles unvisited: to be on shore and
not to work is emptiness--suicidal vacancy.
I was the more interested in your _Life_ of your father, because I
meditate one of mine, or rather of my family. I have no such materials
as you, and (our objections already made) your attack fills me with
despair; it is direct and elegant, and your style is always admirable to
me--lenity, lucidity, usually a high strain of breeding, an elegance
that has a pleasant air of the accidental. But beware of purple
passages. I wonder if you think as well of your purple passages as I do
of mine? I wonder if you think as ill of mine as I do of yours? I
wonder; I can tell you at least what is wrong with yours--they are
treated in the spirit of verse. The spirit--I don't mean the measure, I
don't mean you fall into bastard cadences; what I mean is that they seem
vacant and smoothed out, ironed, if you like. And in a style which (like
yours) aims more and more successfully at the academic, one purple word
is already much; three--a whole phrase--is inadmissible. Wed yourself to
a clean austerity: that is your force. Wear a linen ephod, splendidly
candid. Arrange its folds, but do not fasten it with any brooch. I swear
to you, in your talking robes, there should be no patch of adornment;
and where the subject forces, let it force you no further than it must;
and be ready with a twinkle of your pleasantry. Yours is a fine tool,
and I see so well how to hold it; I wonder if you see how to hold mine?
But then I am to the neck in prose, and just now in the "dark
_interstylar_ cave," all methods and effects wooing me, myself in the
midst impotent to follow any. I look for dawn presently, and a full
flowing river of expression, running whither it wills. But these useless
seasons, above all, when a man _must_ continue to spoil paper, are
infinitely weary.
We are in our house after a fashion; without furniture, 'tis true,
camping there, like the family after a sale. But the bailiff has not yet
appeared; he will probably come after. The place is beautiful beyond
dreams; some fifty miles of the Pacific spread in front; deep woods all
round; a mountain making in the sky a profile of huge trees upon our
left; about us, the little island of our clearing, studded with brave
old gentlemen (or ladies, or "the twa o' them") whom we have spared. It
is a good place to be in; night and morning, we have Theodore Rousseaus
(always a new one) hung to amuse us on the walls of the world; and the
moon--this is our good season, we have a moon just now--makes the night
a piece of heaven. It amazes me how people can live on in the dirty
north; yet if you saw our rainy season (which is really a caulker for
wind, wet, and darkness--howling showers, roaring winds, pit-blackness
at noon) you might marvel how we could endure that. And we can't. But
there's a winter everywhere; only ours is in the summer. Mark my words:
there will be a winter in heaven--and in hell. _Cela rentre dans les
procedes du bon Dieu; et vous verrez!_ There's another very good thing
about Vailima, I am away from the little bubble of the literary life. It
is not all beer and skittles, is it? By the by, my _Ballads_ seem to
have been dam bad; all the crickets sing so in their crickety papers;
and I have no ghost of an idea on the point myself: verse is always to
me the unknowable. You might tell me how it strikes a professional bard:
not that it really matters, for, of course, good or bad, I don't think I
shall get into _that_ galley any more. But I should like to know if you
join the shrill chorus of the crickets. The crickets are the devil in
all to you: 'tis a strange thing, they seem to rejoice like a strong
man in their injustice. I trust you got my letter about your Browning
book. In case it missed, I wish to say again that your publication of
Browning's kind letter, as an illustration of _his_ character, was
modest, proper, and in radiant good taste.--In Witness whereof, etc.
etc.,
ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON.
TO MISS RAWLINSON
The next is written to a young friend and visitor of Bournemouth days
(see vol. xxiv. p. 227) on the news of her engagement to Mr. Alfred
Spender.
_Vailima, Apia, Samoa, April 1891._
MY DEAR MAY,--I never think of you by any more ceremonial name, so I
will not pretend. There is not much chance that I shall forget you until
the time comes for me to forget all this little turmoil in a corner
(though indeed I have been in several corners) of an inconsiderable
planet. You remain in my mind for a good reason, having given me (in so
short a time) the most delightful pleasure. I shall remember, and you
must still be beautiful. The truth is, you must grow more so, or you
will soon be less. It is not so easy to be a flower, even when you bear
a flower's name. And if I admired you so much, and still remember you,
it is not because of your face, but because you were then worthy of it,
as you must still continue.
Will you give my heartiest congratulations to Mr. Spender? He has my
admiration; he is a brave man; when I was young, I should have run away
from the sight of you, pierced with the sense of my unfitness. He is
more wise and manly. What a good husband he will have to be! And
you--what a good wife! Carry your love tenderly. I will never forgive
him--or you--it is in both your hands--if the face that once gladdened
my heart should be changed into one sour or sorrowful.
What a person you are to give flowers! It was so I first heard of you;
and now you are giving the May flower!
Yes, Skerryvore has passed; it was, for us. But I wish you could see us
in our new home on the mountain, in the middle of great woods, and
looking far out over the Pacific. When Mr. Spender is very rich, he must
bring you round the world and let you see it, and see the old gentleman
and the old lady. I mean to live quite a long while yet, and my wife
must do the same, or else I couldn't manage it; so, you see, you will
have plenty of time; and it's a pity not to see the most beautiful
places, and the most beautiful people moving there, and the real stars
and moon overhead, instead of the tin imitations that preside over
London. I do not think my wife very well; but I am in hopes she will now
have a little rest. It has been a hard business, above all for her; we
lived four months in the hurricane season in a miserable house,
overborne with work, ill-fed, continually worried, drowned in perpetual
rain, beaten upon by wind, so that we must sit in the dark in the
evenings; and then I ran away, and she had a month of it alone. Things
go better now; the back of the work is broken; and we are still foolish
enough to look forward to a little peace. I am a very different person
from the prisoner of Skerryvore. The other day I was three-and-twenty
hours in an open boat; it made me pretty ill; but fancy its not killing
me half-way! It is like a fairy story that I should have recovered
liberty and strength, and should go round again among my fellow-men,
boating, riding, bathing, toiling hard with a wood-knife in the forest.
I can wish you nothing more delightful than my fortune in life; I wish
it you; and better, if the thing be possible.
Lloyd is tinkling below me on the typewriter; my wife has just left the
room; she asks me to say she would have written had she been well
enough, and hopes to do it still.--Accept the best wishes of your
admirer,
ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON.
TO SIDNEY COLVIN
This letter announces (1) the arrival of Mrs. Thomas Stevenson from
Sydney, to take up her abode in her son's island home now that the
conditions of life there had been made fairly comfortable; and (2)
the receipt of a letter from me expressing the disappointment felt by
Stevenson's friends at home at the impersonal and even tedious
character of some portions of the South Sea Letters that had reached
us. As a corrective of this opinion, I may perhaps mention here that
there is a certain many-voyaged master-mariner as well as
master-writer--no less a person than Mr. Joseph Conrad--who does not
at all share it, and prefers _In the South Seas_ to _Treasure
Island_.
_[Vailima] April 29th, '91._
MY DEAR COLVIN,--I begin again. I was awake this morning about half-past
four. It was still night, but I made my fire, which is always a
delightful employment, and read Lockhart's _Scott_ until the day began
to peep. It was a beautiful and sober dawn, a dove-coloured dawn,
insensibly brightening to gold. I was looking at it some while over the
down-hill profile of our eastern road when I chanced to glance
northward, and saw with extraordinary pleasure the sea lying outspread.
It seemed as smooth as glass, and yet I knew the surf was roaring all
along the reef, and indeed, if I had listened, I could have heard
it--and saw the white sweep of it outside Matautu.
I am out of condition still, and can do nothing, and toil to be at my
pen, and see some ink behind me. I have taken up again _The High Woods
of Ulufanua_. I still think the fable too fantastic and far-fetched.
But, on a re-reading, fell in love with my first chapter, and for good
or evil I must finish it. It is really good, well fed with facts, true
to the manners, and (for once in my works) rendered pleasing by the
presence of a heroine who is pretty. Miss Uma is pretty; a fact. All my
other women have been as ugly as sin, and like Falconet's horse (I have
just been reading the anecdote in Lockhart), _mortes_ forbye.
News: our old house is now half demolished; it is to be rebuilt on a new
site; now we look down upon and through the open posts of it like a
bird-cage, to the woods beyond. My poor Paulo has lost his father and
succeeded to thirty thousand thalers (I think); he had to go down to the
consulate yesterday to send a legal paper; got drunk, of course, and is
still this morning in so bemused a condition that our breakfasts all went
wrong. Lafaele is absent at the deathbed of his fair spouse; fair she
was, but not in deed, acting as harlot to the wreckers at work on the
warships, to which society she probably owes her end, having fallen off a
cliff, or been thrust off it--_inter pocula_. Henry is the same, our
stand-by. In this transition stage he has been living in Apia; but the
other night he stayed up, and sat with us about the chimney in my room.
It was the first time he had seen a fire in a hearth; he could not look
at it without smiles, and was always anxious to put on another stick. We
entertained him with the fairy tales of civilisation--theatres, London,
blocks in the street, Universities, the Underground, newspapers, etc.,
and projected once more his visit to Sydney. If we can manage, it will be
next Christmas. (I see it will be impossible for me to afford a further
journey _this_ winter.) We have spent since we have been here about
L2,500, which is not much if you consider we have built on that three
houses, one of them of some size, and a considerable stable, made two
miles of road some three times, cleared many acres of bush, made some
miles of path, planted quantities of food, and enclosed a horse paddock
and some acres of pig run; but 'tis a good deal of money regarded simply
as money. K. is bosh; I have no use for him; but we must do what we can
with the fellow meanwhile; he is good-humoured and honest, but
inefficient, idle himself, the cause of idleness in others, grumbling, a
self-excuser--all the faults in a bundle. He owes us thirty weeks'
service--the wretched Paul about half as much. Henry is almost the only
one of our employes who has a credit.
_May 17th._--Well, am I ashamed of myself? I do not think so. I have
been hammering letters ever since, and got three ready and a fourth
about half through; all four will go by the mail, which is what I wish,
for so I keep at least my start. Days and days of unprofitable stubbing
and digging, and the result still poor as literature, left-handed,
heavy, unillumined, but I believe readable and interesting as matter. It
has been no joke of a hard time, and when my task was done, I had little
taste for anything but blowing on the pipe. A few necessary letters
filled the bowl to overflowing.
My mother has arrived, young, well, and in good spirits. By desperate
exertions, which have wholly floored Fanny, her room was ready for her,
and the dining-room fit to eat in. It was a famous victory. Lloyd never
told me of your portrait till a few days ago; fortunately, I had no
pictures hung yet; and the space over my chimney waits your counterfeit
presentment. I have not often heard anything that pleased me more; your
severe head shall frown upon me and keep me to the mark. But why has it
not come? Have you been as forgetful as Lloyd?
_18th._--Miserable comforters are ye all! I read your esteemed pages
this morning by lamplight and the glimmer of the dawn, and as soon as
breakfast was over, I must turn to and tackle these despised labours!
Some courage was necessary, but not wanting. There is one thing at least
by which I can avenge myself for my drubbing, for on one point you seem
impenetrably stupid. Can I find no form of words which will at last
convey to your intelligence the fact that _these letters were never
meant, and are not now meant, to be other than a quarry of materials
from which the book may be drawn_? There seems something incommunicable
in this (to me) simple idea; I know Lloyd failed to comprehend it, I
doubt if he has grasped it now; and I despair, after all these efforts,
that you should ever be enlightened. Still, oblige me by reading that
form of words once more, and see if a light does not break. You may be
sure, after the friendly freedoms of your criticism (necessary I am
sure, and wholesome I know, but untimely to the poor labourer in his
landslip) that mighty little of it will stand.
Our Paul has come into a fortune, and wishes to go home to the Hie
Germanie. This is a tile on our head, and if a shower, which is now
falling, lets up, I must go down to Apia, and see if I can find a
substitute of any kind. This is, from any point of view, disgusting;
above all, from that of work; for, whatever the result, the mill has to
be kept turning; apparently dust, and not flour, is the proceed. Well,
there is gold in the dust, which is a fine consolation, since--well, I
can't help it; night or morning, I do my darndest, and if I cannot
charge for merit, I must e'en charge for toil, of which I have plenty
and plenty more ahead before this cup is drained; sweat and hyssop are
the ingredients.
We are clearing from Carruthers' Road to the pig fence, twenty-eight
powerful natives with Catholic medals about their necks, all swiping in
like Trojans; long may the sport continue!
The invoice to hand. Ere this goes out, I hope to see your expressive,
but surely not benignant countenance! Adieu, O culler of offensive
expressions--'and a' to be a posy to your ain dear May!'--Fanny seems a
little revived again after her spasm of work. Our books and furniture
keep slowly draining up the road, in a sad state of scatterment and
disrepair; I wish the devil had had K. by his red beard before he had
packed my library. Odd leaves and sheets and boards--a thing to make a
bibliomaniac shed tears--are fished out of odd corners. But I am no
bibliomaniac, praise Heaven, and I bear up, and rejoice when I find
anything safe.
_19th._--However, I worked five hours on the brute, and finished my
Letter all the same, and couldn't sleep last night by consequence.
Haven't had a bad night since I don't know when; dreamed a large
handsome man (a New Orleans planter) had insulted my wife, and, do what
I pleased, I could not make him fight me; and woke to find it was the
eleventh anniversary of my marriage. A letter usually takes me from a
week to three days; but I'm sometimes two days on a page--I was once
three--and then my friends kick me. _C'est-y-bete!_ I wish letters of
that charming quality could be so timed as to arrive when a fellow
wasn't working at the truck in question; but, of course, that can't be.
Did not go down last night. It showered all afternoon, and poured heavy
and loud all night.
You should have seen our twenty-five popes (the Samoan phrase for a
Catholic, lay or cleric) squatting when the day's work was done on the
ground outside the verandah, and pouring in the rays of forty-eight eyes
through the back and the front door of the dining-room, while Henry and
I and the boss pope signed the contract. The second boss (an old man)
wore a kilt (as usual) and a Balmoral bonnet with a little tartan edging
and the tails pulled off. I told him that hat belong to my
country--Sekotia; and he said, yes, that was the place that he belonged
to right enough. And then all the Papists laughed till the woods rang;
he was slashing away with a cutlass as he spoke.
The pictures[20] have decidedly not come; they may probably arrive
Sunday.
TO MISS ADELAIDE BOODLE
The reference in the first paragraph is to a previous letter
concerning private matters, in which Stevenson had remonstrated with
his correspondent on what seemed to him her mistaken reasons for a
certain course of conduct.
[_Vailima, May 1891._]
MY DEAR ADELAIDE,--I will own you just did manage to tread on my gouty
toe; and I beg to assure you with most people I should simply have
turned away and said no more. My cudgelling was therefore in the nature
of a caress or testimonial.
God forbid, I should seem to judge for you on such a point; it was what
you seemed to set forth as your reasons that fluttered my old
Presbyterian spirit--for, mind you, I am a child of the
Covenanters--whom I do not love, but they are mine after all, my
father's and my mother's--and they had their merits too, and their ugly
beauties, and grotesque heroisms, that I love them for, the while I
laugh at them; but in their name and mine do what you think right, and
let the world fall. That is the privilege and the duty of private
persons; and I shall think the more of you at the greater distance,
because you keep a promise to your fellow-man, your helper and creditor
in life, by just so much as I was tempted to think the less of you (O
not much, or I would never have been angry) when I thought you were the
swallower of a (tinfoil) formula.
I must say I was uneasy about my letter, not because it was too strong
as an expression of my unregenerate sentiments, but because I knew full
well it should be followed by something kinder. And the mischief has
been in my health. I fell sharply sick in Sydney, was put aboard the
_Luebeck_ pretty bad, got to Vailima, hung on a month there, and didn't
pick up as well as my work needed; set off on a journey, gained a great
deal, lost it again; and am back at Vailima, still no good at my
necessary work. I tell you this for my imperfect excuse that I should
not have written you again sooner to remove the bad taste of my last.
A road has been called Adelaide Road; it leads from the back of our
house to the bridge, and thence to the garden, and by a bifurcation to
the pig pen. It is thus much traversed, particularly by Fanny. An
oleander, the only one of your seeds that prospered in this climate,
grows there; and the name is now some week or ten days applied and
published. ADELAIDE ROAD leads also into the bush, to the banana patch
and by a second bifurcation over the left branch of the stream to the
plateau and the right hand of the gorges. In short, it leads to all
sorts of good, and is, besides, in itself a pretty winding path, bound
downhill among big woods to the margin of the stream.
What a strange idea, to think me a Jew-hater! Isaiah and David and Heine
are good enough for me; and I leave more unsaid. Were I of Jew blood, I
do not think I could ever forgive the Christians; the ghettos would get
in my nostrils like mustard or lit gunpowder. Just so you, as being a
child of the Presbytery, I retain--I need not dwell on that. The
ascendant hand is what I feel most strongly; I am bound in and in with
my forbears; were he one of mine, I should not be struck at all by Mr.
Moss of Bevis Marks, I should still see behind him Moses of the Mount
and the Tables and the shining face. We are all nobly born; fortunate
those who know it; blessed those who remember.
I am, my dear Adelaide, most genuinely yours,
ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON.
Write by return to say you are better, and I will try to do the same.
TO CHARLES BAXTER
The following refers again to the project of a long genealogical novel
expanded from the original idea of _Henry Shovel_.
_[Vailima] Tuesday, 19th May '91._
MY DEAR CHARLES,--I don't know what you think of me, not having written
to you at all during your illness. I find two sheets begun with your
name, but that is no excuse.... I am keeping bravely; getting about
better every day, and hope soon to be in my usual fettle. My books begin
to come; and I fell once more on the Old Bailey session papers. I have
1778, 1784, and 1786. Should you be able to lay hands on any other
volumes, above all a little later, I should be very glad you should buy
them for me. I particularly want _one_ or _two_ during the course of the
Peninsular War. Come to think, I ought rather to have communicated this
want to Bain. Would it bore you to communicate to that effect with the
great man? The sooner I have them, the better for me. 'Tis for _Henry
Shovel_. But _Henry Shovel_ has now turned into a work called _The
Shovels of Newton French: including Memoirs of Henry Shovel, a Private
in the Peninsular War_, which work is to begin in 1664 with the marriage
of Skipper, afterwards Alderman Shovel of Bristol, Henry's
great-great-grandfather, and end about 1832 with his own second marriage
to the daughter of his runaway aunt. Will the public ever stand such an
opus? Gude kens, but it tickles me. Two or three historical personages
will just appear: Judge Jeffreys, Wellington, Colquhoun, Grant, and I
think Townsend the runner. I know the public won't like it; let 'em lump
it then; I mean to make it good; it will be more like a saga.
Adieu.--Yours ever affectionately,
R. L. STEVENSON.
TO SIDNEY COLVIN
_[Vailima] June 1891._
SIR,--To you, under your portrait, which is, in expression, your true,
breathing self, and up to now saddens me; in time, and soon, I shall be
glad to have it there; it is still only a reminder of your absence.
Fanny wept when we unpacked it, and you know how little she is given to
that mood; I was scarce Roman myself, but that does not count--I lift up
my voice so readily. These are good compliments to the artist.[21] I
write in the midst of a wreck of books, which have just come up, and
have for once defied my labours to get straight. The whole floor is
filled with them, and (what's worse) most of the shelves forbye; and
where they are to go to, and what is to become of the librarian, God
knows. It is hot to-night, and has been airless all day, and I am out of
sorts, and my work sticks, the devil fly away with it and me. We had an
alarm of war since last I wrote my screeds to you, and it blew over, and
is to blow on again, and the rumour goes they are to begin by killing
all the whites. I have no belief in this, and should be infinitely sorry
if it came to pass--I do not mean for us, that were otiose--but for the
poor, deluded schoolboys, who should hope to gain by such a step.
_Letter resumed, June 20th._--No diary this time. Why? you ask. I have
only sent out four Letters, and two chapters of _The Wrecker_. Yes, but
to get these I have written 132 pp., 66,000 words in thirty days; 2200
words a day; the labours of an elephant. God knows what it's like, and
don't ask me, but nobody shall say I have spared pains. I thought for
some time it wouldn't come at all. I was days and days over the first
letter of the lot--days and days writing and deleting and making no
headway whatever, till I thought I should have gone bust; but it came at
last after a fashion, and the rest went a thought more easily, though I
am not so fond as to fancy any better.
Your opinion as to the Letters as a whole is so damnatory that I put
them by. But there is a "hell of a want of" money this year. And these
Gilbert Island papers, being the most interesting in matter, and forming
a compact whole, and being well illustrated, I did think of as a
possible resource.
It would be called
_Six Months in Melanesia,
Two Island Kings,
---- Monarchies,
Gilbert Island Kings,
---- Monarchies_,
and I dare say I'll think of a better yet--and would divide thus:--
_Butaritari_
I. A Town Asleep.
II. The Three Brothers.
III. Around our House.
IV. A Tale of a Tapu.
V. The Five Days' Festival.
VI. Domestic Life--(which might be omitted, but not well, better be
recast).
_The King of Apemama_
VII. The Royal Traders.
VIII. Foundation of Equator Town.
IX. The Palace of Mary Warren.
X. Equator Town and the Palace.
XI. King and Commons.
XII. The Devil Work Box.
XIII. The Three Corslets.
XIV. Tail piece; the Court upon a Journey.
I wish you to watch these closely, judging them as a whole, and treating
them as I have asked you, and favour me with your damnatory advice. I
look up at your portrait, and it frowns upon me. You seem to view me
with reproach. The expression is excellent; Fanny wept when she saw it,
and you know she is not given to the melting mood. She seems really
better; I have a touch of fever again, I fancy overwork, and to-day,
when I have overtaken my letters, I shall blow on my pipe. Tell Mrs.
Sitwell I have been playing _Le Chant d'Amour_ lately, and have arranged
it, after awful trouble, rather prettily for two pipes; and it brought
her before me with an effect scarce short of hallucination. I could hear
her voice in every note; yet I had forgot the air entirely, and began to
pipe it from notes as something new, when I was brought up with a round
turn by this reminiscence. We are now very much installed; the
dining-room is done, and looks lovely. Soon we shall begin to photograph
and send you our circumstances. My room is still a howling wilderness. I
sleep on a platform in a window, and strike my mosquito bar and roll up
my bedclothes every morning, so that the bed becomes by day a divan. A
great part of the floor is knee-deep in books, yet nearly all the
shelves are filled, alas! It is a place to make a pig recoil, yet here
are my interminable labours begun daily by lamp-light, and sometimes not
yet done when the lamp has once more to be lighted. The effect of
pictures in this place is surprising. They give great pleasure.
_June 21st._--A word more. I had my breakfast this morning at 4.30! My
new cook has beaten me and (as Lloyd says) revenged all the cooks in the
world. I have been hunting them to give me breakfast early since I was
twenty; and now here comes Mr. Ratke, and I have to plead for mercy. I
cannot stand 4.30; I am a mere fevered wreck; it is now half-past eight,
and I can no more, and four hours divide me from lunch, the devil take
the man! Yesterday it was about 5.30, which I can stand; day before 5,
which is bad enough; to-day, I give out. It is like a London season, and
as I do not take a siesta once in a month, and then only five minutes, I
am being worn to the bones, and look aged and anxious.
We have Rider Haggard's brother here as a Land Commissioner; a nice kind
of a fellow; indeed, all the three Land Commissioners are very
agreeable.
TO E. L. BURLINGAME
For the result of the suggestion made in the following, see
Scribner's Magazine, October 1893, p. 494.
_Vailima [Summer 1891]._
MY DEAR BURLINGAME,--I find among my grandfather's papers his own
reminiscences of his voyage round the north with Sir Walter, eighty
years ago, _labuntur anni!_ They are not remarkably good, but he was not
a bad observer, and several touches seem to me speaking. It has occurred
to me you might like them to appear in the Magazine. If you would,
kindly let me know, and tell me how you would like it handled. My
grandad's MS. runs to between six and seven thousand words, which I
could abbreviate of anecdotes that scarce touch Sir W. Would you like
this done? Would you like me to introduce the old gentleman? I had
something of the sort in my mind, and could fill a few columns rather _a
propos_. I give you the first offer of this, according to your request;
for though it may forestall one of the interests of my biography, the
thing seems to me particularly suited for prior appearance in a
magazine.
I see the first number of _The Wrecker_; I thought it went lively
enough; and by a singular accident, the picture is not unlike Tai-o-hae!
Thus we see the age of miracles, etc.--Yours very sincerely,
R. L. S.
Proofs for next mail.
TO W. CRAIBE ANGUS
Referring again to the Burns Exhibition and to his correspondent's
request for an autograph in a special copy of _The Jolly Beggars_.
_[Summer 1891.]_
DEAR MR. ANGUS,--You can use my letter as you will. The parcel has not
come; pray Heaven the next post bring it safe. Is it possible for me to
write a preface here? I will try if you like, if you think I must:
though surely there are Rivers in Assyria. Of course you will send me
sheets of the catalogue; I suppose it (the preface) need not be long;
perhaps it should be rather very short? Be sure you give me your views
upon these points. Also tell me what names to mention among those of
your helpers, and do remember to register everything, else it is not
safe.
The true place (in my view) for a monument to Fergusson were the
churchyard of Haddington. But as that would perhaps not carry many
votes, I should say one of the two following sites:--First, either as
near the site of the old Bedlam as we could get, or, second, beside the
Cross, the heart of his city. Upon this I would have a fluttering
butterfly, and, I suggest, the citation,
Poor butterfly, thy case I mourn.
For the case of Fergusson is not one to pretend about. A more miserable
tragedy the sun never shone upon, or (in consideration of our climate) I
should rather say refused to brighten.--Yours truly,
ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON.
Where Burns goes will not matter. He is no local poet, like your Robin
the First; he is general as the casing air. Glasgow, as the chief city
of Scottish men, would do well; but for God's sake, don't let it be like
the Glasgow memorial to Knox; I remember, when I first saw this,
laughing for an hour by Shrewsbury clock.
R. L. S.
TO H. C. IDE
The following is written to the American Land Commissioner (later
Chief Justice for a term) in Samoa, whose elder daughter, then at
home in the States, had been born on a Christmas Day, and
consequently regarded herself as defrauded of her natural rights to a
private anniversary of her own.
_[Vailima, June 19, 1891.]_
DEAR MR. IDE,--Herewith please find the DOCUMENT, which I trust will
prove sufficient in law. It seems to me very attractive in its
eclecticism; Scots, English, and Roman law phrases are all indifferently
introduced, and a quotation from the works of Haynes Bayly can hardly
fail to attract the indulgence of the Bench.--Yours very truly,
ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON.
I, Robert Louis Stevenson, Advocate of the Scots Bar, author of _The
Master of Ballantrae_ and _Moral Emblems_, stuck civil engineer, sole
owner and patentee of the Palace and Plantation known as Vailima in the
island of Upolu, Samoa, a British Subject, being in sound mind, and
pretty well, I thank you, in 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
an age when O, 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 about as white a land commissioner as I
require;
_Have transferred_, and _do hereby transfer_, to the said Annie H. Ide,
_all and whole_ my rights and privileges in the thirteenth 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;
_And I direct_ the said Annie H. Ide to add to the said name of Annie H.
Ide the name Louisa--at least in private; and I charge her to use my
said birthday with moderation and humanity, _et tamquam bona filia
familiae_, the said birthday not being so young as it once was, and
having carried me in a very satisfactory manner since I can remember;
And in case the said Annie H. Ide shall neglect or contravene either of
the above conditions, I hereby revoke the donation and transfer my
rights in the said birthday to the President of the United States of
America for the time being;
In witness whereof I have hereto set my hand and seal this nineteenth
day of June in the year of grace eighteen hundred and ninety-one.
[Illustration: SEAL]
ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON.
_Witness_, LLOYD OSBOURNE,
_Witness_, HAROLD WATTS.
TO SIDNEY COLVIN
The misgivings herein expressed about the imminence of a native war
were not realised until two years later, and the plans of defence
into which Stevenson here enters with characteristic gusto were not
put to the test.
[_Vailima, June and July 1891._]
MY DEAR COLVIN,--I am so hideously in arrears that I know not where to
begin. However, here I am a prisoner in my room, unfit for work,
incapable of reading with interest, and trying to catch up a bit. We
have a guest here: a welcome guest: my Sydney music master, whose health
broke down, and who came with his remarkable simplicity, to ask a
month's lodging. He is newly married, his wife in the family way:
beastly time to fall sick. I have found, by good luck, a job for him
here which will pay some of his way: and in the meantime he is a
pleasant guest, for he plays the flute with little sentiment but great
perfection, and endears himself by his simplicity. To me, especially; I
am so weary of finding people approach me with precaution, pick their
words, flatter, and twitter; but the muttons of the good God are not at
all afraid of the lion. They take him as he comes, and he does not
bite--at least not hard. This makes us a party of 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7,
8, at table; deftly waited on by Mary Carter, a very nice Sydney girl,
who served us at a boarding-house and has since come on--how long she
will endure this exile is another story; and gauchely waited on by
Faauma, the new left-handed wife of the famed Lafaele, a little creature
in native dress of course and as beautiful as a bronze candlestick, so
fine, clean and dainty in every limb; her arms and her little hips in
particular masterpieces. The rest of the crew may be stated briefly: the
great Henry Simele, still to the front; King, of the yellow beard,
rather a disappointment--I am inclined on this point to republican
opinions: Ratke, a German cook, good--and Germanly bad, he don't make
_my_ kitchen; Paul, now working out his debts outdoor; Emma, a strange
weird creature--I suspect (from her colour) a quarter white--widow of a
white man, ugly, capable, a really good laundress; Java--yes, that is
the name--they spell it Siava, but pronounce it, and explain it
Java--her assistant, a creature I adore from her plain, wholesome,
bread-and-butter beauty. An honest, almost ugly, bright, good-natured
face; the rest (to my sense) merely exquisite. She comes steering into
my room of a morning, like Mrs. Nickleby, with elaborate precaution;
unlike her, noiseless. If I look up from my work, she is ready with an
explosive smile. I generally don't, and wait to look at her as she
stoops for the bellows, and trips tiptoe off again, a miracle of
successful womanhood in every line. I am amused to find plain, healthy
Java pass in my fancy so far before pretty young Faauma. I observed
Lloyd the other day to say that Java must have been lovely "when she was
young"; and I thought it an odd word, of a woman in the height of
health, not yet touched with fat, though (to be just) a little slack of
bust.
Our party you know: Fanny, Lloyd, my mother, Belle, and "the babe"--as
we call him--Austin. We have now three instruments; Boehm flageolet,
flute, and Bb clarinet; and we expect in a few days our piano. This is a
great pleasure to me; the band-mastering, the playing and all. As soon
as I am done with this stage of a letter, I shall return, not being
allowed to play, to band-master, being engaged in an attempt to arrange
an air with effect for the three pipes. And I'll go now, by jabers.
[Illustration]
_July 3rd._--A long pause: occasioned, first by some days of hard work:
next by a vile quinsey--if that be the way to spell it. But to-day I
must write. For we have all kinds of larks on hand. The wars and rumours
of wars begin to take consistency, insomuch that we have landed the
weapons this morning, and inspected the premises with a view to defence.
Of course it will come to nothing; but as in all stories of massacres,
the one you don't prepare for is the one that comes off. All our natives
think ill of the business; none of the whites do. According to our
natives the demonstration threatened for to-day or to-morrow is one of
vengeance on the whites--small wonder--and if that begins--where will it
stop? Anyway I don't mean to go down for nothing, if I can help it; and
to amuse you I will tell you our plans.
There is the house, upper story. Our weak point is of course the sides
AB, AH; so we propose to place half our garrison in the space HGFD and
half in the opposite corner, BB'CD. We shall communicate through the
interior, there is a water-tank in the angle C, my mother and Austin are
to go in the loft. The holding of only these two corners and deserting
the corner C' is for economy and communication, two doors being in the
sides GF and CD; so that any one in the corner C' could only communicate
or be reinforced by exposure. Besides we are short of mattresses.
Garrison: R. L. S., Lloyd, Fanny, King, Ratke--doubtful, he may
go--Emma, Mary, Belle; weapons: eight revolvers and a shot gun, and
swords galore; but we're pretty far gone when we come to the swords. It
has been rather a lark arranging; but I find it a bore to write, and I
doubt it will be cruel stale to read about, when all's over and done, as
it will be ere this goes, I fancy: far more ere it reaches you.
_Date unknown._--Well, nothing as yet, though I don't swear by it yet.
There has been a lot of trouble, and there still is a lot of doubt as to
the future; and those who sit in the chief seats, who are all excellent,
pleasant creatures, are not, perhaps, the most wise of mankind. They
actually proposed to kidnap and deport Mataafa; a scheme which would
have loosed the avalanche at once. But some human being interfered and
choked off this pleasing scheme. You ask me in yours just received, what
will become of us if it comes to a war? Well, if it is a war of the old
sort, nothing. It will mean a little bother, and a great deal of theft,
and more amusement. But if it comes to the massacre lark, I can only
answer with the Bell of Old Bow. You are to understand that, in my
reading of the native character, every day that passes is a solid gain.
They put in the time public speaking; so wear out their energy, develop
points of difference and exacerbate internal ill-feeling. Consequently,
I feel less apprehension of difficulty now, by about a hundredfold. All
that I stick to, is that if war begins, there are ten chances to one we
shall have it bad. The natives have been scurvily used by all the white
powers without exception; and they labour under the belief, of which
they can't be cured, that they defeated Germany. This makes an awkward
complication.
I was extremely vexed to hear you were ill again. I hope you are better.
'Tis a long time we have known each other now, to be sure. Well, well!
you say you are sure to catch fever in the bush; so we do continually;
but you are to conceive Samoa fever as the least formidable malady under
heaven: implying only a day or so of slight headache and languor and ill
humour, easily reduced by quinine or antipyrine. The hot fever I had was
from over-exertion and blood poisoning, no doubt, and irritation of the
bladder; it went of its own accord and with rest. I have had since a bad
quinsey which knocked me rather useless for about a week, but I stuck to
my work, with great difficulty and small success.
_Date unknown._--But it's fast day and July, and the rude inclement
depth of winter, and the thermometer was 68 this morning and a few days
ago it was 63, and we have all been perishing with cold. All still seems
quiet. Your counterfeit presentments are all round us: the pastel over
my bed, the Dew-Smith photograph over my door, and the "celebrity" on
Fanny's table. My room is now done, and looks very gay, and chromatic
with its blue walls and my coloured lines of books.
TO SIDNEY COLVIN
This is the first letter in which Stevenson expresses the opinion
which had been forcing itself upon him, and which he felt it his duty
in the following year to express publicly in letters to the Times, of
the unwisdom of the government established under the treaty between
the Three Powers and the incompetence of the officials appointed to
carry it out.
_[Vailima] Sunday, Sept. 5(?), 1891._
MY DEAR COLVIN,--Yours from Lochinver has just come. You ask me if I am
ever homesick for the Highlands and the Isles. Conceive that for the
last month I have been living there between 1786 and 1850, in my
grandfather's diaries and letters. I _had_ to take a rest; no use
talking; so I put in a month over my _Lives of the Stevensons_ with
great pleasure and profit and some advance; one chapter and a part
drafted. The whole promises well. Chapter I. Domestic Annals. Chapter
II. The Northern Lights. Chapter III. The Bell Rock. Chapter IV. A
Family of Boys. Chap. V. The Grandfather. VI. Alan Stevenson. VII.
Thomas Stevenson. My materials for my great-grandfather are almost null;
for my grandfather copious and excellent. Name, a puzzle. _A Scottish
Family_, _A Family of Engineers_, _Northern Lights_, _The Engineers of
the Northern Lights: A Family History_. Advise; but it will take long.
Now, imagine if I have been homesick for Barrahead and Island Glass, and
Kirkwall, and Cape Wrath, and the Wells of the Pentland Firth; I could
have wept.
Now for politics. I am much less alarmed; I believe the _malo_ (= _raj_,
government) will collapse and cease like an overlain infant, without a
shot fired. They have now been months here on their big salaries--and
Cedercrantz, whom I specially like as a man, has done nearly nothing,
and the Baron, who is well-meaning, has done worse. They have these
large salaries, and they have all the taxes; they have made scarce a
foot of road; they have not given a single native a position--all to
white men; they have scarce laid out a penny on Apia, and scarce a penny
on the King; they have forgot they were in Samoa, or that such a thing
as Samoans existed, and had eyes and some intelligence. The Chief
Justice has refused to pay his customs! The President proposed to have
an expensive house built for himself, while the King, his master, has
none! I had stood aside, and been a loyal, and, above all, a silent
subject, up to then; but now I snap my fingers at their _malo_. It is
damned, and I'm damned glad of it. And this is not all. Last "_Wainiu_,"
when I sent Fanny off to Fiji, I hear the wonderful news that the Chief
Justice is going to Fiji and the Colonies to improve his mind. I showed
my way of thought to his guest, Count Wachtmeister, whom I have sent to
you with a letter--he will tell you all the news. Well, the Chief
Justice stayed, but they said he was to leave yesterday. I had intended
to go down, and see and warn him! But the President's house had come up
in the meanwhile, and I let them go to their doom, which I am only
anxious to see swiftly and (if it may be) bloodlessly fall.
Thus I have in a way withdrawn my unrewarded loyalty. Lloyd is down
to-day with Moors to call on Mataafa; the news of the excursion made a
considerable row in Apia, and both the German and the English consuls
besought Lloyd not to go. But he stuck to his purpose, and with my
approval. It's a poor thing if people are to give up a pleasure party
for a _malo_ that has never done anything for us but draw taxes, and is
going to go pop, and leave us at the mercy of the identical Mataafa,
whom I have not visited for more than a year, and who is probably
furious.
The sense of my helplessness here has been rather bitter; I feel it
wretched to see this dance of folly and injustice and unconscious
rapacity go forward from day to day, and to be impotent. I was not
consulted--or only by one man, and that on particular points; I did not
choose to volunteer advice till some pressing occasion; I have not even
a vote, for I am not a member of the municipality.
What ails you, miserable man, to talk of saving material? I have a whole
world in my head, a whole new society to work, but I am in no hurry; you
will shortly make the acquaintance of the Island of Ulufanua, on which
I mean to lay several stories; the _Bloody Wedding_, possibly the _High
Woods_--(O, it's so good, the _High Woods_, but the story is craziness;
that's the trouble)--a political story, the _Labour Slave_, etc.
Ulufanua is an imaginary island; the name is a beautiful Samoan word for
the _top_ of a forest; ulu=leaves or hair, fanua=land. The ground or
country of the leaves. "Ulufanua the isle of the sea," read that verse
dactylically and you get the beat; the u's are like our double oo; did
ever you hear a prettier word?
I do not feel inclined to make a volume of Essays,[22] but if I did, and
perhaps the idea is good--and any idea is better than the _South
Seas_--here would be my choice of the Scribner articles: _Dreams_,
_Beggars_, _Lantern-Bearers_, _Random Memories_. There was a paper
called the _Old Pacific Capital_ in Fraser, in Tulloch's time, which had
merit; there were two on Fontainebleau in the Magazine of Art in
Henley's time. I have no idea if they're any good; then there's the
_Emigrant Train_. _Pulvis et Umbra_ is in a different key, and wouldn't
hang on with the rest.
I have just interrupted my letter and read through the chapter of the
_High Woods_ that is written, a chapter and a bit, some sixteen pages,
really very fetching, but what do you wish? the story is so wilful, so
steep, so silly--it's a hallucination I have outlived, and yet I never
did a better piece of work, horrid, and pleasing, and extraordinarily
_true_; it's sixteen pages of the South Seas; their essence. What am I
to do? Lose this little gem--for I'll be bold, and that's what I think
it--or go on with the rest, which I don't believe in, and don't like,
and which can never make aught but a silly yarn? Make another end to it?
Ah, yes, but that's not the way I write; the whole tale is implied; I
never use an effect, when I can help it, unless it prepares the effects
that are to follow; that's what a story consists in. To make another
end, that is to make the beginning all wrong. The denouement of a long
story is nothing; it is just a "full close," which you may approach and
accompany as you please--it is a coda, not an essential member in the
rhythm; but the body and end of a short story is bone of the bone and
blood of the blood of the beginning. Well, I shall end by finishing it
against my judgment; that fragment is my Delilah. Golly, it's good. I am
not shining by modesty; but I do just love the colour and movement of
that piece so far as it goes.
I was surprised to hear of your fishing. And you saw the _Pharos_,[23]
thrice fortunate man; I wish I dared go home, I would ask the
Commissioners to take me round for old sake's sake, and see all my
family pictures once more from the Mull of Galloway to Unst. However,
all is arranged for our meeting in Ceylon, except the date and the
blooming pounds. I have heard of an exquisite hotel in the country,
airy, large rooms, good cookery, not dear; we shall have a couple of
months there, if we can make it out, and converse or--as my grandfather
always said--"commune." "Communings with Mr. Kennedy as to Lighthouse
Repairs." He was a fine old fellow, but a droll.
_Evening._--Lloyd has returned. Peace and war were played before his
eyes at heads or tails. A German was stopped with levelled guns; he
raised his whip; had it fallen, we might have been now in war. Excuses
were made by Mataafa himself. Doubtless the thing was done--I mean the
stopping of the German--a little to show off before Lloyd. Meanwhile
---- was up here, telling how the Chief Justice was really gone for five
or eight weeks, and begging me to write to the Times and denounce the
state of affairs; many strong reasons he advanced; and Lloyd and I have
been since his arrival and ----'s departure, near half an hour, debating
what should be done. Cedercrantz is gone; it is not my fault; he knows
my views on that point--alone of all points;--he leaves me with my mouth
sealed. Yet this is a nice thing that because he is guilty of a fresh
offence--his flight--the mouth of the only possible influential witness
should be closed? I do not like this argument. I look like a cad, if I
do in the man's absence what I could have done in a more manly manner in
his presence. True; but why did he go? It is his last sin. And I, who
like the man extremely--that is the word--I love his society--he is
intelligent, pleasant, even witty, a gentleman--and you know how that
attaches--I loathe to seem to play a base part; but the poor
natives--who are like other folk, false enough, lazy enough, not heroes,
not saints--ordinary men damnably misused--are they to suffer because I
like Cedercrantz, and Cedercrantz has cut his lucky? This is a little
tragedy, observe well--a tragedy! I may be right, I may be wrong in my
judgment, but I am in treaty with my honour. I know not how it will seem
to-morrow. Lloyd thought the barrier of honour insurmountable, and it is
an ugly obstacle. He (Cedercrantz) will likely meet my wife three days
from now, may travel back with her, will be charming if he does; suppose
this, and suppose him to arrive and find that I have sprung a mine--or
the nearest approach to it I could find--behind his back? My position is
pretty. Yes, I am an aristocrat. I have the old petty, personal view of
honour? I should blush till I die if I do this; yet it is on the cards
that I may do it. So much I have written you in bed, as a man writes or
talks, in a _bittre Wahl_. Now I shall sleep, and see if I am more
clear. I will consult the missionaries at least--I place some reliance
in M. also--or I should if he were not a partisan; but a partisan he is.
There's a pity. To sleep! A fund of wisdom in the prostrate body and the
fed brain. Kindly observe R. L. S. in the talons of politics! 'Tis
funny--'tis sad. Nobody but these cursed idiots could have so driven me;
I cannot bear idiots.
My dear Colvin, I must go to sleep; it is long past ten--a dreadful hour
for me. And here am I lingering (so I feel) in the dining-room at the
Monument, talking to you across the table, both on our feet, and only
the two stairs to mount, and get to bed, and sleep, and be waked by dear
old George--to whom I wish my kindest remembrances--next morning. I look
round, and there is my blue room, and my long lines of shelves, and the
door gaping on a moonless night, and no word of S. C. but his twa
portraits on the wall. Good-bye, my dear fellow, and good-night. Queer
place the world!
_Monday._--No clearness of mind with the morning; I have no guess what I
should do. 'Tis easy to say that the public duty should brush aside
these little considerations of personal dignity; so it is that
politicians begin, and in a month you find them rat and flatter and
intrigue with brows of brass. I am rather of the old view, that a man's
first duty is to these little laws; the big he does not, he never will,
understand; I may be wrong about the Chief Justice and the Baron and the
state of Samoa; I cannot be wrong about the vile attitude I put myself
in if I blow the gaff on Cedercrantz behind his back.
_Tuesday._--One more word about the _South Seas_, in answer to a
question I observed I have forgotten to answer. The Tahiti part has
never turned up, because it has never been written. As for telling you
where I went or when, or anything about Honolulu, I would rather die;
that is fair and plain. How can anybody care when or how I left
Honolulu? A man of upwards of forty cannot waste his time in
communicating matter of that indifference. The letters, it appears, are
tedious; they would be more tedious still if I wasted my time upon such
infantile and sucking-bottle details. If ever I put in any such detail,
it is because it leads into something or serves as a transition. To
tell it for its own sake, never! The mistake is all through that I have
told too much; I had not sufficient confidence in the reader, and have
overfed him; and here are you anxious to learn how I--O Colvin! Suppose
it had made a book, all such information is given to one glance of an
eye by a map with a little dotted line upon it. But let us forget this
unfortunate affair.
_Wednesday._--Yesterday I went down to consult Clarke, who took the view
of delay. Has he changed his mind already? I wonder: here at least is
the news. Some little while back some men of Manono--what is Manono?--a
Samoan rotten borough, a small isle of huge political importance, heaven
knows why, where a handful of chiefs make half the trouble in the
country. Some men of Manono (which is strong Mataafa) burned down the
houses and destroyed the crops of some Malietoa neighbours. The
President went there the other day and landed alone on the island, which
(to give him his due) was plucky. Moreover, he succeeded in persuading
the folks to come up and be judged on a particular day in Apia. That day
they did not come; but did come the next, and, to their vast surprise,
were given six months' imprisonment and clapped in gaol. Those who had
accompanied them cried to them on the streets as they were marched to
prison, "Shall we rescue you?" The condemned, marching in the hands of
thirty men with loaded rifles, cried out "No"! And the trick was done.
But it was ardently believed a rescue would be attempted; the gaol was
laid about with armed men day and night; but there was some question of
their loyalty, and the commandant of the forces, a very nice young
beardless Swede, became nervous, and conceived a plan. How if he should
put dynamite under the gaol, and in case of an attempted rescue blow up
prison and all? He went to the President, who agreed; he went to the
American man-of-war for the dynamite and machine, was refused, and got
it at last from the Wreckers. The thing began to leak out, and there
arose a muttering in town. People had no fancy for amateur explosions,
for one thing. For another, it did not clearly appear that it was legal;
the men had been condemned to six months' prison, which they were
peaceably undergoing; they had not been condemned to death. And lastly,
it seemed a somewhat advanced example of civilisation to set before
barbarians. The mutter in short became a storm, and yesterday, while I
was down, a cutter was chartered, and the prisoners were suddenly
banished to the Tokelaus. Who has changed the sentence? We are going to
stir in the dynamite matter; we do not want the natives to fancy us
consenting to such an outrage.
Fanny has returned from her trip, and on the whole looks better. The
_High Woods_ are under way, and their name is now the _Beach of Falesa_,
and the yarn is cured. I have about thirty pages of it done; it will be
fifty to seventy I suppose. No supernatural trick at all; and escaped
out of it quite easily; can't think why I was so stupid for so long.
Mighty glad to have Fanny back to this "Hell of the South Seas," as the
German Captain called it. What will Cedercrantz think when he comes
back? To do him justice, had he been here, this Manono hash would not
have been.
Here is a pretty thing. When Fanny was in Fiji all the Samoa and Tokelau
folks were agog about our "flash" house; but the whites had never heard
of it.
ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON,
Author of _The Beach of Falesa_.
TO SIDNEY COLVIN
_[Vailima], Sept. 28, 1891._
MY DEAR COLVIN,--Since I last laid down my pen, I have written and
rewritten _The Beach of Falesa_; something like sixty thousand words of
sterling domestic fiction (the story, you will understand, is only half
that length); and now I don't want to write any more again for ever, or
feel so; and I've got to overhaul it once again to my sorrow. I was all
yesterday revising, and found a lot of slacknesses and (what is worse in
this kind of thing) some literaryisms. One of the puzzles is this: It is
a first person story--a trader telling his own adventure in an island.
When I began I allowed myself a few liberties, because I was afraid of
the end; now the end proved quite easy, and could be done in the pace;
so the beginning remains about a quarter tone out (in places); but I
have rather decided to let it stay so. The problem is always delicate;
it is the only thing that worries me in first person tales, which
otherwise (quo' Alan) "set better wi' my genius." There is a vast deal
of fact in the story, and some pretty good comedy. It is the first
realistic South Sea story; I mean with real South Sea character and
details of life. Everybody else who has tried, that I have seen, got
carried away by the romance, and ended in a kind of sugar candy sham
epic, and the whole effect was lost--there was no etching, no human
grin, consequently no conviction. Now I have got the smell and look of
the thing a good deal. You will know more about the South Seas after you
have read my little tale than if you had read a library. As to whether
any one else will read it, I have no guess. I am in an off time, but
there is just the possibility it might make a hit; for the yarn is good
and melodramatic, and there is quite a love affair--for me; and Mr.
Wiltshire (the narrator) is a huge lark, though I say it. But there is
always the exotic question, and everything, the life, the place, the
dialects--trader's talk, which is a strange conglomerate of literary
expressions and English and American slang, and Beach de Mar, or native
English,--the very trades and hopes and fears of the characters, are all
novel, and may be found unwelcome to that great, hulking, bullering
whale, the public.
Since I wrote, I have been likewise drawing up a document to send in to
the President; it has been dreadfully delayed, not by me, but to-day
they swear it will be sent in. A list of questions about the dynamite
report are herein laid before him, and considerations suggested why he
should answer.
_October 5th._--Ever since my last snatch I have been much chivied about
over the President business; his answer has come, and is an evasion
accompanied with schoolboy insolence, and we are going to try to answer
it. I drew my answer and took it down yesterday; but one of the
signatories wants another paragraph added, which I have not yet been
able to draw, and as to the wisdom of which I am not yet convinced.
_Next day, Oct. 7th the right day._--We are all in rather a muddled
state with our President affair. I do loathe politics, but at the same
time, I cannot stand by and have the natives blown in the air
treacherously with dynamite. They are still quiet; how long this may
continue I do not know, though of course by mere prescription the
Government is strengthened, and is probably insured till the next taxes
fall due. But the unpopularity of the whites is growing. My native
overseer, the great Henry Simele, announced to-day that he was "weary of
whites upon the beach. All too proud," said this veracious witness. One
of the proud ones had threatened yesterday to cut off his head with a
bush knife! These are "native outrages"; honour bright, and setting
theft aside, in which the natives are active, this is the main stream of
irritation. The natives are generally courtly, far from always civil,
but really gentle, and with a strong sense of honour of their own, and
certainly quite as much civilised as our dynamiting President.
We shall be delighted to see Kipling.[24] I go to bed usually about
half-past eight, and my lamp is out before ten; I breakfast at six. We
may say roughly we have no soda water on the island, and just now
truthfully no whisky. I _have_ heard the chimes at midnight; now no
more, I guess. _But_--Fanny and I, as soon as we can get coins for it,
are coming to Europe, not to England: I am thinking of Royat. Bar wars.
If not, perhaps the Apennines might give us a mountain refuge for two
months or three in summer. How is that for high? But the money must be
all in hand first.
_October 13th._--How am I to describe my life these last few days? I
have been wholly swallowed up in politics, a wretched business, with
fine elements of farce in it too, which repay a man in passing,
involving many dark and many moonlight rides, secret counsels which are
at once divulged, sealed letters which are read aloud in confidence to
the neighbours, and a mass of fudge and fun, which would have driven me
crazy ten years ago, and now makes me smile.
On Friday, Henry came and told us he must leave and go to "my poor old
family in Savaii"; why? I do not quite know--but, I suspect, to be
tattooed--if so, then probably to be married, and we shall see him no
more. I told him he must do what he thought his duty; we had him to
lunch, drank his health, and he and I rode down about twelve. When I got
down, I sent my horse back to help bring down the family later. My own
afternoon was cut out for me; my last draft for the President had been
objected to by some of the signatories. I stood out, and one of our
small number accordingly refused to sign. Him I had to go and persuade,
which went off very well after the first hottish moments; you have no
idea how stolid my temper is now. By about five the thing was done; and
we sat down to dinner at the Chinaman's--the Verrey or Doyen of
Apia--Gurr and I at each end as hosts; Gurr's wife--Fanua, late maid of
the village; her (adopted) father and mother, Seumanu and Faatulia,
Fanny, Belle, Lloyd, Austin, and Henry Simele, his last appearance.
Henry was in a kilt of grey shawl, with a blue jacket, white shirt, and
black necktie, and looked like a dark genteel guest in a Highland
shooting-box. Seumanu (opposite Fanny, next G.) is chief of Apia, a
rather big gun in this place, looking like a large, fatted, military
Englishman, bar the colour. Faatulia, next me, is a bigger chief than
her husband. Henry is a chief too--his chief name, Iiga (Ee-eeng-a), he
has not yet "taken" because of his youth. We were in fine society, and
had a pleasant meal-time, with lots of fun. Then to the Opera--I beg
your pardon, I mean the Circus. We occupied the first row in the
reserved seats, and there in the row behind were all our
friends--Captain Foss and his Captain-Lieutenant, three of the American
officers, very nice fellows, the Dr., etc., so we made a fine show of
what an embittered correspondent of the local paper called "the shoddy
aristocracy of Apia"; and you should have seen how we carried on, and
how I clapped, and Captain Foss hollered "_wunderschoen!_" and threw
himself forward in his seat, and how we all in fact enjoyed ourselves
like school-children, Austin not a shade more than his neighbours. Then
the Circus broke up, and the party went home, but I stayed down, having
business on the morrow.
Yesterday, October 12th, great news reaches me, and Lloyd and I, with
the mail just coming in, must leave all, saddle, and ride down. True
enough, the President had resigned! Sought to resign his presidency of
the council, and keep his advisership to the King; given way to the
consuls' objections and resigned all--then fell out with them about the
disposition of the funds, and was now trying to resign from his
resignation! Sad little President, so trim to look at, and I believe so
kind to his little wife! Not only so, but I meet Dunnet on the beach.
Dunnet calls me in consultation, and we make with infinite difficulty a
draft of a petition to the King.... Then to dinner at Moors's, a very
merry meal, interrupted before it was over by the arrival of the
committee. Slight sketch of procedure agreed upon, self appointed
spokesman, and the deputation sets off. Walk all through Matafele, all
along Mulinuu, come to the King's house; he has verbally refused to see
us in answer to our letter, swearing he is gasegase (chief sickness, not
common man's) and indeed we see him inside in bed. It is a miserable low
house, better houses by the dozen in the little hamlet (Tanugamanono) of
bushmen on our way to Vailima; and the President's house in process of
erection just opposite! We are told to return to-morrow; I refuse; and
at last we are very sourly received, sit on the mats, and I open out,
through a very poor interpreter, and sometimes hampered by unacceptable
counsels from my backers. I can speak fairly well in a plain way now. C.
asked me to write out my harangue for him this morning; I have done so,
and couldn't get it near as good. I suppose (talking and interpreting) I
was twenty minutes or half an hour on the deck; then his majesty replied
in the dying whisper of a big chief; a few words of rejoinder
(approving), and the deputation withdrew, rather well satisfied.
A few days ago this intervention would have been a deportable offence;
not now, I bet; I would like them to try. A little way back along
Mulinuu, Mrs. Gurr met us with her husband's horse; and he and she and
Lloyd and I rode back in a heavenly moonlight. Here ends a chapter in
the life of an island politician! Catch me at it again; 'tis easy to go
in, but it is not a pleasant trade. I have had a good team, as good as I
could get on the beach; but what trouble even so, and what fresh
troubles shaping. But I have on the whole carried all my points; I
believe all but one, and on that (which did not concern me) I had no
right to interfere. I am sure you would be amazed if you knew what a
good hand I am at keeping my temper, talking people over, and giving
reasons which are not my reasons, but calculated for the meridian of
the particular objection; so soon does falsehood await the politician
in his whirling path.
TO HENRY JAMES
Stevenson had again been reading Mr. James's _Lesson of the Master_;
Adela Chart is the heroine of the second story in that collection,
called _The Marriages_.
[_Vailima, October 1891._]
MY DEAR HENRY JAMES,--From this perturbed and hunted being expect but a
line, and that line shall be but a whoop for Adela. O she's delicious,
delicious; I could live and die with Adela--die, rather the better of
the two; you never did a straighter thing, and never will.
_David Balfour_, second part of _Kidnapped_, is on the stocks at last;
and is not bad, I think. As for _The Wrecker_, it's a machine, you
know--don't expect aught else--a machine, and a police machine; but I
believe the end is one of the most genuine butcheries in literature; and
we point to our machine with a modest pride, as the only police machine
without a villain. Our criminals are a most pleasing crew, and leave the
dock with scarce a stain upon their character.
What a different line of country to be trying to draw Adela, and trying
to write the last four chapters of _The Wrecker_! Heavens, it's like two
centuries; and ours is such rude, transpontine business, aiming only at
a certain fervour of conviction and sense of energy and violence in the
men; and yours is so neat and bright and of so exquisite a surface!
Seems dreadful to send such a book to such an author; but your name is
on the list. And we do modestly ask you to consider the chapters on the
_Norah Creina_ with the study of Captain Nares, and the forementioned
last four, with their brutality of substance and the curious (and
perhaps unsound) technical manoeuvre of running the story together to
a point as we go along, the narrative becoming more succinct and the
details fining off with every page.--Sworn affidavit of
R. L. S.
_No person now alive has beaten Adela: I adore Adela and her maker. Sic
subscrib._
ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON.
A Sublime Poem to follow.
Adela, Adela, Adela Chart,
What have you done to my elderly heart?
Of all the ladies of paper and ink
I count you the paragon, call you the pink.
The word of your brother depicts you in part:
"You raving maniac!" Adela Chart;
But in all the asylums that cumber the ground,
So delightful a maniac was ne'er to be found.
I pore on you, dote on you, clasp you to heart,
I laud, love, and laugh at you, Adela Chart,
And thank my dear maker the while I admire
That I can be neither your husband nor sire.
Your husband's, your sire's were a difficult part;
You're a byway to suicide, Adela Chart;
But to read of, depicted by exquisite James,
O, sure you're the flower and quintessence of dames.
R. L. S.
_Eructavit cor meum_
My heart was inditing a goodly matter about Adela Chart.
Though oft I've been touched by the volatile dart,
To none have I grovelled but Adela Chart,
There are passable ladies, no question, in art--
But where is the marrow of Adela Chart?
I dreamed that to Tyburn I passed in the cart--
I dreamed I was married to Adela Chart:
From the first I awoke with a palpable start,
The second dumbfoundered me, Adela Chart!
Another verse bursts from me, you see; no end to the violence of the
Muse.
To E. L. BURLINGAME
_[Vailima], October 8th, 1891._
MY DEAR BURLINGAME,--All right, you shall have the _Tales of my
Grandfather_ soon, but I guess we'll try and finish off _The Wrecker_
first. _A propos_ of whom, please send some advanced sheets to
Cassell's--away ahead of you--so that they may get a dummy out.
Do you wish to illustrate _My Grandfather_? He mentions as excellent a
portrait of Scott by Basil Hall's brother. I don't think I ever saw this
engraved; would it not, if you could get track of it, prove a taking
embellishment? I suggest this for your consideration and inquiry. A new
portrait of Scott strikes me as good. There is a hard, tough,
constipated old portrait of my grandfather hanging in my aunt's house,
Mrs. Alan Stevenson, 16 St. Leonard's Terrace, Chelsea, which has never
been engraved--the better portrait, Joseph's bust, has been reproduced,
I believe, twice--and which, I am sure, my aunt would let you have a
copy of. The plate could be of use for the book when we get so far, and
thus to place it in the Magazine might be an actual saving.
I am swallowed up in politics for the first, I hope for the last, time
in my sublunary career. It is a painful, thankless trade; but one thing
that came up I could not pass in silence. Much drafting, addressing,
deputationising has eaten up all my time, and again (to my contrition)
I leave you Wreckerless. As soon as the mail leaves I tackle it
straight.--Yours very sincerely,
ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON.
TO E. L. BURLINGAME
[_Vailima, October 1891._]
MY DEAR BURLINGAME,--The time draws nigh, the mail is near due, and I
snatch a moment of collapse so that you may have at least some sort of a
scratch of note along with the
\ end
\ of
\ _The_
\ _Wrecker_. Hurray!
which I mean to go herewith. It has taken me a devil of a pull, but I
think it's going to be ready. If I did not know you were on the stretch
waiting for it and trembling for your illustrations, I would keep it for
another finish; but things being as they are, I will let it go the best
way I can get it. I am now within two pages of the end of Chapter XXV.,
which is the last chapter, the end with its gathering up of loose
threads, being the dedication to Low, and addressed to him; this is my
last and best expedient for the knotting up of these loose cards. 'Tis
possible I may not get that finished in time, in which case you'll
receive only Chapters XXII. to XXV. by this mail, which is all that can
be required for illustration.
I wish you would send me _Memoirs of Baron Marbot_ (French);
_Introduction to the Study of the History of Language_, Strong, Logeman
& Wheeler; _Principles of Psychology_, William James; Morris &
Magnusson's _Saga Library_, any volumes that are out; George Meredith's
_One of our Conquerors_; _La Bas_, by Huysmans (French); O'Connor
Morris's _Great Commanders of Modern Times_; _Life's Handicap_, by
Kipling; of Taine's _Origines de la France Contemporaine_, I have only
as far as _la Revolution_, vol. iii.; if another volume is out, please
add that. There is for a book-box.
I hope you will like the end; I think it is rather strong meat. I have
got into such a deliberate, dilatory, expansive turn, that the effort to
compress this last yarn was unwelcome; but the longest yarn has to come
to an end some time. Please look it over for carelessnesses, and tell me
if it had any effect upon your jaded editorial mind. I'll see if ever I
have time to add more.
I add to my book-box list Adams' _Historical Essays_; the Plays of A. W.
Pinero--all that have appeared, and send me the rest in course as they
do appear; _Noughts and Crosses_ by Q.; Robertson's _Scotland under her
Early Kings_.
_Sunday._--The deed is done, didst thou not hear a noise? "The end" has
been written to this endless yarn, and I am once more a free man. What
will he do with it?
TO SIDNEY COLVIN
_[Vailima] Monday, October 24th._
MY DEAR CARTHEW,[25]--See what I have written, but it's Colvin I'm
after--I have written two chapters, about thirty pages of _Wrecker_
since the mail left, which must be my excuse, and the bother I've had
with it is not to be imagined; you might have seen me the day before
yesterday weighing British sov.'s and Chili dollars to arrange my
treasure chest. And there was such a calculation, not for that only, but
for the ship's position and distances when--but I am not going to tell
you the yarn--and then, as my arithmetic is particularly lax, Lloyd had
to go over all my calculations; and then, as I had changed the amount
of money, he had to go over all _his_ as to the amount of the lay; and
altogether, a bank could be run with less effusion of figures than it
took to shore up a single chapter of a measly yarn. However, it's done,
and I have but one more, or at the outside two, to do, and I am Free!
and can do any damn thing I like.
Before falling on politics, I shall give you my day. Awoke somewhere
about the first peep of day, came gradually to, and had a turn on the
verandah before 5.55, when "the child" (an enormous Wallis Islander)
brings me an orange; at 6, breakfast; 6.10, to work; which lasts till,
at 10.30, Austin comes for his history lecture; this is rather
dispiriting, but education must be gone about in faith--and charity,
both of which pretty nigh failed me to-day about (of all things)
Carthage; 11, luncheon; after luncheon in my mother's room, I read