[Illustration]
All day long you see them stand thigh-deep in the surf, fishing.
Up on the beach each one has a large basket containing clams for
bait, extra hooks and leaders, a little can of oil for the reel,
and any particular doo-dads dear to the heart of the individual
fisherman. And an old newspaper, all ready to protect the
anticipated catch from the rays of the sun.
Some of them wear bathing suits; others rubber hip-boots, or
simply old clothes that won't mind getting wet. If they are very
full of swank they will have a leather belt with a socket to hold
the butt of the rod. Every now and then you will see them pacing
backward up the beach, reeling in the line. They will mutter
something about a big strike that time, and he got away with the
bait. With zealous care they spear some more clam on the hook,
twisting it over and over the barb so as to be firmly impaled.
Then, with careful precision, they fling the line with its heavy
pyramid sinker far out beyond the line of breakers.
There they stand. What do they think about, one wonders? But what
does any one think about when fishing? That is one of the happy
pastimes that don't require much thinking. The long ridges of
surf crumble about their knees and the sun and keen vital air
lull them into a cheerful drowse of the faculties. Do they
speculate on the never-ending fascination of the leaning walls of
water, the rhythmical melody of the rasp and hiss of the water?
Do they watch that indescribable beauty of the breaking wave, a
sight as old as humankind and yet never so described that one who
has not seen it could picture it?
The wave gathers height and speed as it moves toward the sand. It
seems to pull itself together for the last plunge. The first wave
that ever rolled up to a beach probably didn't break. It just
slid. It was only the second wave that broke--curled over in that
curious way. For our theory--which may be entirely wrong--is that
the breaking is due to the undertow of previous waves. After a
wave sprawls up on the beach, it runs swiftly back. This
receding undercurrent--you can feel it very strongly if you are
swimming just in front of a large wave about to break--digs in
beneath the advancing hill of water. It cuts away the foundations
of that hill, which naturally topples over at the crest.
The wave of water leans and hangs for a delaying instant. The
actual cascade may begin at one end and run along the length of
the ridge; it may begin at both ends and twirl inward, meeting in
the middle; it may (but very rarely) begin in the middle and work
outward. As the billow is at its height, before it combs over,
the fisherman sees the sunlight gleaming through it--an ecstasy
of perfect lucid green, with the glimmer of yellow sand behind.
Then, for a brief moment--so brief that the details can never be
memorized--he sees a clear crystal screen of water falling
forward. Another instant, and it is all a boil of snowy suds
seething about his legs. He may watch it a thousand times, a
million times; it will never be old, never wholly familiar.
Colour varies from hour to hour, from day to day. Sometimes blue
or violet, sometimes green-olive or gray. The backwash tugs at
his boots, hollowing out little channels under his feet. The sun
wraps him round like a mantle; the salt crusts and thickens in
his hair. And then, when he has forgotten everything save the
rhythm of the falling waves, there comes a sudden tug----
He reels in, and a few curious bathers stand still in the surf
to see what he has got. They are inclined to be scornful. It is
such a little fish! One would think that such a vast body of
water would be ashamed to yield only so small a prize. Never
mind. He has compensations they wot not of. Moreover--although he
would hardly admit it himself--the fishing business is only a
pretext. How else could a grown man with grizzled hair have an
excuse to stand all day paddling in the surf?
"IDOLATRY"
[Illustration]
Once in a while, when the name of R. L. S. is mentioned in
conversation, someone says to us: "Ah well, you're one of the
Stevenson idolators, aren't you?" And this is said with a curious
air of cynical superiority, as of one who has experienced all
these things and is superbly tolerant of the shallow mind that
can still admire Tusitala. His work (such people will generally
tell you) was brilliant but "artificial" ... and for the true
certificated milk of the word one must come along to such modern
giants as Dreiser and Hergesheimer and Cabell. For these artists,
each in his due place, we have only the most genial respect. But
when the passion of our youth is impugned as "idolatry" we feel
in our spirit an intense weariness. We feel the pacifism of the
wise and secretive mind that remains tacit when its most perfect
inward certainties are assailed. One does not argue, for there
are certain things not arguable. One shrugs. After all, what
human gesture more eloquent (or more satisfying to the performer)
than the shrug?
There is a little village on the skirts of the Forest of
Fontainebleau (heavenly region of springtime and romance!) where
the crystal-green eddies of the Loing slip under an old gray
bridge with sharp angled piers of stone. Near the bridge is a
quiet little inn, one of the many happy places in that country
long frequented by artists for painting and "_villegiature_."
Behind the inn is a garden beside the river-bank. The _salle a
manger_, as in so many of those inns at Barbizon, Moret, and the
other Fontainebleau villages, is panelled and frescoed with
humorous and high-spirited impromptus done by visiting painters.
In the summer of 1876 an anxious rumour passed among the artist
colonies. It was said that an American lady and her two children
had arrived at Grez, and the young bohemians who regarded this
region as their own sacred retreat were startled and alarmed.
Were their chosen haunts to be invaded by tourists--and tourists
of the disturbing sex? Among three happy irresponsibles this
humorous anxiety was particularly acute. One of the trio was sent
over to Grez as a scout, to spy out the situation and report. The
emissary went, and failed to return. A second explorer was
dispatched to study the problem. He, too, was swallowed up in
silence. The third, impatiently waiting tidings from his
faithless friends, set out to make an end of this mystery. He
reached the inn at dusk: it was a gentle summer evening; the
windows were open to the tender air; lamps were lit within, and a
merry party sat at dinner. Through the open window the suspicious
venturer saw the recreant ambassadors, gay with laughter. And
there, sitting in the lamplight, was the American lady--a
slender, thoughtful enchantress with eyes as dark and glowing as
the wine. Thus it was that Robert Louis Stevenson first saw Fanny
Osbourne.
A few days later Mrs. Osbourne's eighteen-year-old daughter
Isobel wrote in a letter: "There is a young Scotchman here, a Mr.
Stevenson. He is such a nice-looking ugly man, and I would rather
listen to him talk than read the most interesting book.... Mama
is ever so much better and is getting prettier every day."
"The Life of Mrs. Robert Louis Stevenson," written by her sister
Mrs. Sanchez (the mother of "little Louis Sanchez on the beach at
Monterey" remembered by lovers of "A Child's Garden of Verses")
is a book that none of the so-called idolaters will want to
overlook. The romantic excitements of R. L. S.'s youth were tame
indeed compared to those of Fanny Van de Grift. R. L. S. had
been thrilled enough by a few nights spent in the dark with the
docile ass of the Cevennes; but here was one, sprung from sober
Philadelphia blood, born in Indianapolis and baptized by Henry
Ward Beecher, who had pioneered across the fabled Isthmus, lived
in the roaring mining camps of Nevada, worked for a dressmaker in
Frisco, and venturously taken her young children to Belgium and
France to study art. She had been married at seventeen, had
already once thought herself to be a widow in fact by the
temporary disappearance of her first husband; and was now, after
enduring repeated infidelities, prepared to make herself a widow
in law. Daring horse woman, a good shot, a supreme cook, artist,
writer, and a very Gene Stratton Porter among flowers, fearless,
beautiful, and of unique charm--where could another woman have
been found so marvellously gifted to be the wife of a romancer?
It seems odd that Philadelphia and Edinburgh, the two most
conservatively minded cities of the Anglo-Saxon earth, should
have combined to produce this, the most radiant pair of
adventurers in our recent annals.
The reading of this delightful book has taken us back into the
very pang and felicity of our first great passion--our idolatry,
if you will--which we are proud here and now to re-avow. When was
there ever a happier or more wholesome worship for a boy than the
Stevenson mania on which so many of this generation grew up? We
were the luckier in that our zeal was shared in all its gusto and
particularity by a lean, long-legged, sallow-faced, brown-eyed
eccentric (himself incredibly Stevensonian in appearance) with
whom we lay afield in our later teens, reading R. L. S. aloud by
the banks of a small stream which we vowed should become famous
in the world of letters. And so it has, though not by our
efforts, which was what we had designed; for at the crystal
headwater of that same creek was penned "The Amenities of Book
Collecting," that enchanting volume of bookish essays which has
swelled the correspondence of a Philadelphia business man to
insane proportions, and even brought him offers from three
newspapers to conduct a book page. It seems appropriate to the
present chronicler that in a quiet library overlooking the clear
fount and origin of dear Darby Creek there are several of the
most cherished association volumes of R. L. S.--we think
particularly of the "Child's Garden of Verses" which he gave to
Cummy, and the manuscript of little "Smoutie's" very first book,
the "History of Moses."
* * * * *
Was there ever a more joyous covenant of affection than that of
Mifflin McGill and ourself in our boyish madness for Tusitala? It
is a happy circumstance, we say, for a youth, before the
multiplying responsibilities of maturity press upon him, to pour
out his enthusiasm in an obsession such as that; and when this
passion can be shared and doubled and knitted in partnership with
an equally freakish, insane, and innocent idiot (such as our
generously mad friend Mifflin) admirable adventures are sure to
follow. The quest begun on Darby Creek took us later on an
all-summer progress among places in England and Scotland hallowed
to us by association with R. L. S. Never, in any young lives past
or to come, could there be an instant of purer excitement and
glory than when, after bicycling hotly all day with the blue
outline of Arthur's Seat apparently always receding before us, we
trundled grimly into Auld Reekie and set out for the old
Stevenson home at 17 Heriot Row, halting only to bestow our
pneumatic steeds in the nearest and humblest available hostelry.
There (for we found the house empty and "To Let") we sat on the
doorstep evening by evening, smoking in the long northern
twilight and spinning our youthful dreams. This lust for hunting
out our favourite author's footsteps even led one of the pair to
a place perhaps never visited by any other Stevensonian
pilgrim--old Cockfield Rectory, in Suffolk, where Mrs. Sitwell
and Sidney Colvin first met the bright-eyed Scotch boy in 1873.
The tracker of footprints remembers how kind were the then
occupants of the old rectory, and how, in a daze of awe, he trod
the green and tranquil lawn and hastened to visit a cottage near
by where there was an ancient rustic who had been coachman at
the rectory when R. L. S. stayed there, fabled to retain some
pithy recollection. Alas, the Suffolk ancient, eager enough to
share tobacco and speech, would only mull over his memories of a
previous rector, describing how it had fallen to him to prepare
the good man for burial; how he smiled in death and his cheeks
were as rosy as a babe's.
It would take many pages to narrate all the bypaths and happy
excursions trod by these simple youths in their quest of the
immortal Louis. The memories come bustling, and one knows not
where to stop. The supreme adventure, for one of the pair, lay in
the kindness of Sir Sidney Colvin. To this prince of gentlemen
and scholars one of these lads wrote, sending his letter (with
subtle cunning) from a village in Suffolk only a few miles from
Sir Sidney's boyhood home. He calculated that this might arouse
the interest of Sir Sidney, whom he knew to be cruelly badgered
with letters from enthusiasts; and fortune turned in his favour,
granting him numerous ecstatic visits to Sir Sidney and Lady
Colvin and much unwarranted generosity. But, since our mind has
been turned in this direction by Mrs. Sanchez's book, it might be
appropriate to add that one of the most thrilling moments in the
crusade was a season of April days spent beside the green and
stripling Loing, in the forest of Fontainebleau region, visiting
those lovely French villages where R. L. S. roamed as a young
man, crowned by an afternoon at Grez. One remembers the old gray
bridge across the eddying water, and the door of the inn where
the young pilgrim lingered, trying to visualize scenes of
thirty-five years before.
It is not mere idolatry when the hearts of the young are haunted
by such spells. There was some real divinity behind the
enchantment, some marvellous essence that made all roads Tusitala
trod the Road of Loving Hearts. In these matters we would trust
the simple Samoans to come nearer the truth than our cynic friend
in Greenwich Village. The magic of that great name abides
unimpaired.