Complete Works of Robert Louis Stevenson (Illustrated) (1080 page)

It is impossible to conceive a more quixotic design. Many of the objections to it Stevenson realised himself, or was told by his friends.1 But perhaps he never suspected how little he understood the Irish, or how utterly futile his action would have proved. As a matter of fact he hardly ever came into contact with Irishmen at any time during his life, was probably misled by false inferences from the Highlanders as to Celtic peculiari-

1 Letters, ii. 27. This letter belongs, however, to 1887. ties, and in the principal Irishman whom he drew — Colonel Burke in The Master of Ballantrae — he has not carried conviction.1 But these considerations, even if they had been brought home to him, would equally have failed to move him, and it was nothing but his father’s illness which kept him for the time in this country. He abandoned the design with reluctance, and, as Mr. Colvin says, “ to the last he was never well satisfied that he had done right in giving way.”

It was driven from his mind, however, by events which touched him more nearly. In the autumn his parents had taken a house in Bournemouth for the winter, that Mr. Stevenson might have the companionship of his son. For some time after they came Louis was laid up in London, and even when he returned he was too ill to see much of his father or to have any cheering influence upon him. In February Thomas Stevenson was taken by his wife to Torquay, but came back to Bournemouth on the ist of April. By the 21 st he was so ill that it was thought better to bring him home, and he returned to Edinburgh. The accounts of him grew so alarming that Louis followed on the 6th of May, but was too late for his coming to be of any use, and on the 8th all was over.

Of the son’s affection and of his appreciation for his father enough has been said to show how great the sense of his loss must have been. The shock of having found his father no longer able to recognise him preyed upon his mind, and for some time to come he was haunted day and night with “ ugly images of sickness, 1 Mac, the Ulstennan in The IVrecker, is better, but would not have helped his creator much in Kerry.

decline, and impaired reason,” which increased yet further his sadness and the physical depression that weighed him down.

In the meantime he took cold, was not allowed to attend the funeral, and never left the house until, at the end of May, he was able to return to Bournemouth, and quitted Scotland for the last time.

CHAPTER XII

THE UNITED STATES — 1887-88

“But, indeed, I think we all belong to many countries. I am a Scotchman, touch me and you will find the thistle; 1 am a Briton, and live and move and have my being in the greatness of our national achievements; but am 1 to forget the long hospitality of that beautiful and kind country, France? Or has not America done me favours to confound my gratitude? Nay, they are all my relatives; I love them all dearly; and should they fall out among themselves (which God in his mercy forbid!), 1 believe 1 should be driven mad with their conflicting claims upon my heart.” — R. L. S., ms. of Tie Silverado Squatters.

The chief link which bound Stevenson to this country was now broken, for his mother was free to follow him and his wife to whatever climate the advice of the doctors might send him. Year after year the struggle with ill-health was becoming more painful; “an enemy who was exciting at first, but has now, by the iteration of his strokes, become merely annoying and inexpressibly irksome.” He seemed condemned to a life in the sick-room, and even there to be steadily losing ground. Under the altered circumstances, his uncle, Dr. George Balfour, peremptorily insisted on a complete change of climate for a year, suggesting a trial of either one of the Indian hill-stations or colourado; this advice was reinforced by his Bournemouth physician, Dr. Scott, and for several obvious reasons America was preferred. As soon as his mother’s promise to accompany the party was obtained, Skerryvore was let, and by the middle of July their tickets were taken for New York. Early in the same month he had written to his mother: . . I can let you have a cheque for 100 to-morrow, which is certainly a pleasant thing to be able to say. I wish it had happened while my father was still here; I should have liked to help him once — perhaps even from a mean reason: that he might see I had not been wrong in taking to letters. But all this, I daresay, he observes, or, in some other way, feels. And he, at least, is out of his warfare, as I could sometimes wish I were out of mine. The mind of the survivor is mean; it sees the loss, it does not always feel the deliverance. Yet about our loss, I feel it more than I can say — every day more — that it is a happy thing that he is now at peace.”

But the invalid was not to escape from England without another illness; worn as he was by his recent experiences, he once more broke down, and was laid up again with hemorrhage.

On the 20th August, however, he left Bournemouth for London, and spent Sunday in the city, at Armfield’s Hotel. Here those of his closest friends who at that season were within reach came to bid him farewell, a last good-bye as it proved for all, since he never saw any one of them again. “ In one way or another,” he had written, “life forces men apart and breaks up the goodly fellowships for ever,” and he himself was now to become “ no more than a name, a reminiscence, and an occasional crossed letter very laborious to read.” 1

As Mr. Colvin had been the first to welcome him on his return from America, so he was the last to take leave of him the next day, when the party of five — for 1 Virginibus Puerisque, chap. i.

Valentine Roch accompanied them — embarked on the steamship Ludgate Hill.

The beginning of their voyage was an unpleasant surprise, for their passages had been taken in ignorance that the ship was used as a cattle-boat, and it was only when the family came on board that they learned that they were going to put in at Havre for their cargo before sailing for America. But Stevenson, ill as he was, did not allow mere discomfort to affect him. His mother’s diary contains an entry highly characteristic both of herself and of her son: “We discover that it is a cattle-ship, and that we are going to Havre to take in horses. We agree to look upon it as an adventure and make the best of it. . . . It is very amusing and like a circus to see the horses come on board.” Not only was there a shipload of horses, but the vessel resembled the fleet of Ophir at least in this, that she carried a consignment of apes; of which “the big monkey, Jacko, scoured about the ship,” and took a special fancy to Stevenson. The other passengers were not unenter- taining, and the voyage itself was to him a pure delight, until they came to the Banks of Newfoundland, where he again caught cold. “ I was so happy on board that ship,” he wrote to his cousin Bob; “I could not have believed it possible. We had the beastliest weather, and many discomforts; but the mere fact of its being a tramp-ship gave us many comforts; we could cut about with the men and officers, stay in the wheel- house, discuss all manner of things, and really be a little at sea. And truly there is nothing else. I had literally forgotten what happiness was, and the full mind — full of external and physical things, not full of cares and labours and rot about a fellow’s behaviour. My heart literally sang; I truly care for nothing so much as for that.” 1

By this time his reputation had crossed the Atlantic, and, chiefly by means of Jekyll and Hyde, had spread there to an extent which he had probably not yet realised. The first indication reached him, however, before he had sighted the coast-line of the States, for, on September 6th, when the pilot came on board, it turned out that he was known on his boat as Hyde, while his better-tempered partner was called Jekyll.

The next day the Ludgate Hill arrived at New York, where Stevenson was met by a crowd of reporters, and — what was more to his taste — by his old friend, Mr. Will H. Low. He was forthwith carried off to an hotel where Mr. and Mrs. Charles Fairchild had made all arrangements for his reception, and the next day he proceeded to their house at Newport. But on the journey he caught fresh cold, and spent a fortnight there chiefly in bed.

On his return to New York he saw a few people, mostly old friends like Mr. Low and his wife, and first made the personal acquaintance of Mr. Charles Scribner and Mr. Burlingame. Mr. St. Gaudens, the eminent American sculptor, now began to make the necessary studies for the large medallion, which was not completed until five years later. It is the most satisfactory of all the portraits of Stevenson, and has been reproduced with one or two slight modifications for the memorial in St. Giles’ Cathedral. The artist was a great admirer of Stevenson’s writings, and had said that if he 1 Letters, ii. 67.

ever had the chance he would gladly go a thousand miles for the sake of a sitting. The opportunity came to his doors, and he made a sketch of the head and one hand, though it was not until the following spring that he was able to complete his drawings.

At this time the popularity of Stevenson’s work in America was attested also by its appearance on the stage; not only were there two dramatised versions of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde upon the boards, but Deacon Brodie was shortly afterwards produced in Philadelphia by an English company.

For the dramatisation of his story Stevenson was of course in no way responsible, but the publicity and the advertisement of his name had naturally the effect of enabling publishers to offer better terms for his work. He had already contributed to American magazines for several years, in the first instance to the Century, and then to the new periodical of Messrs. Scribner, for which he now undertook to write a series of twelve articles during the ensuing year. For this he was to receive ^700, and this bargain was followed shortly afterwards by an offer of^i6oo from another firm for the American serial rights of his next story. The first proposal of all, from the New York World, was £2000 for an article every week for a year; but this he had refused. In February, 1883, he had written to his mother: “My six books (since 1878) have brought me in upwards of £600, about ^400 of which came from magazines.” So great was the change in four years. It must be remembered that in England also he had now reached the turning-point of his fortunes; and early in the following year he became a member of the Athenaeum Club in London under the rule permitting the committee to elect nine persons annually “as being of distinguished eminence in Science, Literature or the Arts, or for Public Services.” In this very year it had been found worth while to collect and republish with additions such of his stories, essays, and verse as had hitherto appeared only in magazines. But though the change was not solely due to the greater enterprise of American publishers, it is none the less striking.

His first need, however, for the present was to select a climate where he could best pass the winter. He had come to America in search of health, but the information he received in New York dissuaded him from colourado Springs, which, situated as it is nearly six thousand feet above the sea, would have deprived him of the company of his wife, to whom such high altitudes were no longer possible. He turned instead to a place at a lower elevation in the Adirondack Mountains, close to the Canadian border, where a sanatorium for consumptive patients had recently been established near the shores of Saranac lake.

Thither went accordingly Mrs. Louis Stevenson and her son, and there they succeeded in finding a house which would serve as winter-quarters for the family. Stevenson arrived with his mother on October 3rd, and here he remained until the middle of the following April. It was no very pleasant spot, at all events in the winter months, and formed a curious contrast to his experience in the tropics. The climate comprised every variety of unpleasantness: it rained, it snowed, it sleeted, it blew, it was thick fog; it froze — the cold was Arctic; it thawed — the discomfort was worse; and it combined these different phases in every possible way. Two things only could be advanced in its favour, the first and vital fact that Stevenson’s health did not suffer, but actually improved; and secondly, it served at times to remind him of Scotland — a Scotland “ without peat and without heather” — but that is no very hard task with the true Scot, as may be seen with Stevenson himself in the Pacific.

The place was still somewhat undeveloped; the railway was opened to Saranac itself only during the course of the winter. It was nevertheless so far accessible that visitors not unfrequently found their way there to make Stevenson’s acquaintance, and occasionally even stayed a few days, though there was in the house but one spare attic of limited capacity. In Dr. Trudeau, the physician, Stevenson found an agreeable companion, and he also enjoyed the society of some of the resident patients, though he went but little beyond the limits of his own family. They occupied a house belonging to a guide, a frame-house of the usual kind with a verandah; here, with the services of Valentine and a cook, and a boy to chop wood and draw water, they made themselves as comfortable as possible during the winter.

The younger Mrs. Stevenson began the campaign by a hasty visit to Canada to lay in a supply of furs for the family, and her foresight was well rewarded. In December the cold began, and by January the thermometer was sometimes nearly 30 degrees below zero. There was a stove in each chamber, and an open fireplace for logs in the central living-room, but these were of little avail. ‘‘ Fires do not radiate,” wrote Stevenson; “you burn your hands all the time on what seem to be cold stones.” His mother gives an illustration: “ Cold venison was crunching with ice after being an hour in the oven, and I saw a large lump of ice still unmelted in a pot where water was steaming all round it.”

Stevenson himself stood the cold better than any of his family, and, arrayed in a buffalo coat, astrakhan cap, and Indian boots, used to go out daily. He would take short walks on a hill behind the house, and skated on the lake when the ice could be kept clear. But both the ladies were ordered away for their health at different times, while in February the maid was laid up with a severe attack of influenza, the next victim being Stevenson himself.