Complete Works of Robert Louis Stevenson (Illustrated) (1085 page)

It was one of the happiest periods in the exile’s life, and perhaps in consequence his “journal,” an irregularly kept notebook, was dropped, never to be resumed. And so it happens that to this passage in his life he never returned, pen in hand, and of it he has left no other record than one or two pages in his correspondence.

He “actually went sea-bathing almost every day”; he collected songs and legends, materials for the great book; he began to work once more at his novel, The Master of Ballantrae, and “almost finished” it. At Moe’s instance special exhibitions of the old songs and dances of Tahiti were given for him in the hall of assembly in Tautira. He was adopted into the clan of the Tevas, to which Ori belonged, and exchanged names with that chief, who thenceforward signed himself as “Rui,”1 Louis himself receiving also, in more formal fashion, the name of Teriitera.

He now wrote the greater part of his two Polynesian ballads, The Feast of Famine, relating to the Marquesas, and The Song of Rahtro, a genuine legend of the Tevas. In the same days, however, his music brought him to write for the old Scots tune of “Wandering Willie “ that most pathetic cry of his exile —

“Home no more home to me, whither must I wander?”

almost the only complaint, even in a dramatic form, that he ever allowed himself to make.

The repairs of the Casco took an unexpected time; the weather became bad, and a stormy sea and rivers in flood prevented any communication between Tautira and Papeete. The visitors used up all their money: Ori had taken charge of it for them and doled it out, a small piece at a time, until all was gone. Their supplies of food being exhausted, they were reduced to living on the bounty of the natives, and though Stevenson himself continued to eat sucking-pig with continual enjoyment, the others pined for a change. When time passed and no ship came, the whole country-side began to join in their anxiety. Each morning, as soon as the dawn lifted, a crowd ran to the beach, and the cry came back: “ E ita pahi! “ (No ship.)

At last Ori took a party of young men in a whale- boat, although the weather was still bad, and went to Papeete to find out the cause of the delay. “When 1 I.e. Louis: there being no L in Tahitian. Ori left,’’ says Mrs. Stevenson, “ we besought him not to go, for we knew he was risking the lives of himself and his men. Then he was gone a week overtime, which made us heart-sick. He brought back the necessary money and a store of provisions, and a letter from the captain telling us when to look for him. Amongst the food was a basket of champagne. The next day we gave a commemoration dinner to Ori, when we produced the champagne. Ori drank his glass and announced it beyond excellence, a drink for chiefs. ‘ I shall drink it continually,’ he added, pouring out a fresh glass. ‘ What is the cost of it by the bottle?’ Louis told him, whereupon Ori solemnly replaced his full glass, saying, ‘ It is not fit that even kings should drink a wine so expensive!’ It took him days to recover from the shock.”

At last the Casco was ready for sea, and on Christmas Day the party embarked for Honolulu. The farewell with Ori was heart-breaking, and all vowed never again to stay so long as two months in one place, or to form so deep and yet so brief a friendship.

They sighted the outlying Paumotus and the mail schooner, and after that their voyage was without other incident than squalls and calms. For a while they skirted hurricane weather, though nothing came, of it; but between calms and contrary winds their progress was slow, and they nearly ran out of provisions. “ We were nearly a week hanging about the Hawaiian group,” says Mr. Osbourne, “ drifting here and there with different faint slants of wind. We had little luxuries kept back for our farewell dinner — which took place at least three times with a diminishing splendour that finally struck bottom on salt horse. It was a strange experience to see the distant lights of Honolulu, and then go to bed hungry; to rise again in the morning and find ourselves, not nearer, but further off. When at last the weather altered and we got our wind, it was a snoring Trade, and we ran into the harbour like a steamboat. It was a dramatic entry for the overdue and much-talked-of Casco, flashing past the buoys and men-of-war, with the pilot in a panic of alarm. If the Casco ever did thirteen knots, she did it then.”

Arrived at Honolulu they found that their safety had been despaired of by all, including even Mrs. Stevenson’s daughter, Mrs. Strong, who was then living there with her husband and child.

Of the capital city of the Hawaiian kingdom it is difficult to give any true impression, so curious in those days was the mixture of native life and civilisation. To any one coming from the islands it seemed a purely American city — not of the second or even of the third rank, modified only by its position in the verge of the tropics; for any one who entered these latitudes and saw a native population for the first time, it must have been picturesque and exotic beyond words.

Stevenson sent the yacht back to San Francisco, and took a house at Waikiki, some four miles from Honolulu along the coast. Here he took up his abode in a lanai — a sort of large pavilion, off which the bedrooms opened, built on native lines, and provided only with jalousied shutters; and here he settled down in earnest to finish The Master of Ball antrae — “the hardest job I ever had to do “ — already running in Scrihnefs Magazine, and to be completed within a given time. He did not end his task till May — “ The Master is finished, and I am quite a wreck and do not care for literature “ — for it went against the grain, with the result that the Canadian scenes have the effect rather of a hasty expedient than of the deliberate climax of the plot.1 So careful was Stevenson in his workmanship, and so accurate in his knowledge of Scotland, that it is curious to find him stumbling at the very outset of his tale, and giving an impossible title to his hero, for by invariable Scottish usage James Durie would have been “ Master of Durrisdeer” and not “of Ballantrae.” Stevenson was afterwards aware of the slip, but had fancied that there were instances to the contrary. However, his cousin, Sir James Balfour Paul, Lyon King-at-Arms, tells me that he can find “no exact precedent for the eldest son of a baron assuming a title as Master differing in name from that which his father bore.”2

But this was a point of mere antiquarian detail, which in no way interfered with the appreciation of his read-

1     Compare vol. ii. p. 38.

2     The only other slip in reference to Scotland which, so far as I am aware, has been found in Stevenson’s works, is the statement that Gaelic was still spoken in Fife as late as the middle of the eighteenth century (Catriona, p. 191; Letters, ii. 248). This was based on a statement of Burt to the effect that the families of Fife, when their sons went to the Lowlands as apprentices, made it a condition in the indentures of apprenticeship that they should be taught English. Sheriff /Eneas Mackay, the chief historical authority on Fife, very kindly informs me that he doubts the fact and the authority of Burt, and after adducing various evidence against the possibility of this survival, concludes: “The Ochils bordered on the Celtic line, and 1 should not like to affirm that Gaelic may not have lingered there till the sixteenth century. I don’t think it did later, or that it was habitually spoken after the twelfth or thirteenth century.” ers; and when the story was finally published in the autumn, it was at once recognised on all hands as the sternest and loftiest note of tragedy which its author had yet delivered. “I ‘m not strong enough to stand writing of that kind,” said Sir Henry Yule, on his deathbed, to Mr. Crockett, who had been reading it to him; “it’s grim as the road to Lucknow.”

In the meantime, though Stevenson was constantly unwell, even his want of health at the worst of these times was very different from his invalid life at Bournemouth. He retired with his wife to a small and less draughty cottage about a hundred yards from the lanai, and there continued his work as before.

The little colony was very comfortably settled. Valentine had left their service and departed to America, but Ah Fu had established himself in the kitchen with his pots and pans.

In spite of his worse health, Stevenson was able to go about as usual, and saw a good many people, especially in the large circle of his stepdaughter’s acquaintance. Through this connection he found from the beginning a ready entrte to the Royal Palace, where Kalakaua, the last of the Hawaiian kings, held his court ofYvetot: a large, handsome, genial, dissipated monarch, a man of real ability and iron constitution, versed beyond any of his subjects in the history and legends of his kingdom. From the very beginning of the acquaintance his relations with Stevenson were most friendly in no conventional sense. They genuinely liked one another from the start, and Kalakaua, holding out every inducement, really tried very hard to get his visitor to settle in Hawaii.

At Honolulu Stevenson already began to hear a good deal of Samoa and its troubles, for several of his new friends had formed part of the amazing embassy Kalakaua had sent to Apia in the preceding year to propose a native federation of the Polynesian Islands. It was on the information now received that he was driven to write the first of his letters to the Times.

The letter appeared on the 11 th March, and before the week was out there occurred the great Samoan hurricane which sunk or stranded six men-of-war in the harbour of Apia, when the Calliope alone, by virtue of her engines, steamed out of the gap in the very teeth of the gale.

Immediately afterwards, Stevenson records a curious episode at Honolulu in a letter to Mr. Baxter: —

“2jth April, 1889. — A pretty touch of seaman manners: the English and American Jacks are deadly rivals: well, after all this hammering of both sides by the Germans, and then the news of the hurricane from Samoa, a singular scene occurred here the Sunday before last. The two church parties sponte propria fell in line together, one Englishman to one American, and marched down to the harbour like one ship’s company. None were more surprised than their own officers. I have seen a hantle of the seaman on this cruise; I always liked him before; my first crew on the Casco (five sea-lawyers) near cured me; but I have returned to my first love.”

At Samoa we shall see that he had many friends in the navy; and in nothing did he take more delight than in their company and friendship. Of this there was already a beginning at Honolulu with the wardroom of H. B. M. S. Cormorant. “I had been twice to lunch on board, and H. B. M.’s seamen are making us hammocks; so we are very naval. But alas, the Cormorant is only waiting her relief, and I fear there are not two ships of that stamp in all the navies of the world.”

The hammocks were part of his preparations for a new cruise. He had arrived with the intention of crossing America during the course of the summer, and so returning to England, with ultimate views of Madeira as a winter refuge. But even Honolulu was too cold for him, and by the end of March he was full of another scheme of South Sea travel. This time his voyage was to be to the Gilbert Islands to the southwest, on board the vessel belonging to the Boston Mission or whatever other craft he could induce to take him. His mother decided to return to Scotland and visit her sister, but his wife and stepson looked eagerly forward to sharing with him this new experience.

In the end of April he paid a visit by himself to the lee-shore of the island of Hawaii, which is seen by tourists only, if at all, upon their way to the active crater of Kilauea, situated on the slopes of the lofty volcano of Mauna Loa. Even the lower crater is four thousand feet above the sea, and the climate in that region is often bleak and rainy. Accordingly Stevenson did not turn his steps in its direction, but spent a week on the coast-lands, living with a native judge, taking long rides, and seeing and learning as much of native life and characteristics as lay within his reach; the most thrilling event of the visit being the departure of some natives to be immured in the lazaretto of Molokai. n       81

A month later he visited the island of Molokai itself, and spent by special permission a week in the leper settlement. Father Damien had died on the 15th of April, so that Stevenson heard only by report of the man whose memory he did so much to vindicate.

The scene of Damien’s labours is one of the most striking places in the world. A low promontory, some three miles long, with a village upon either side of it, lies at the foot of a beetling precipice that shuts it off from the remainder of the island, to which there is no access except by a most difficult bridle-track. Hither, since 1865, have been sent all persons in the group who are found to have contracted leprosy, and here they are tended by doctor and priest, by officers and sisters and nurses, until they die. Who can do justice to such a place, to such a scene? Here Stevenson spent a week, and afterwards wrote a fragmentary and incomplete account of his visit. The best record of it is contained in the letters written at the time to his wife, and shortly afterwards to James Payn and Mr. Colvin. The description of his landing cannot be omitted.

“Our lepers were sent [from the steamer] in the first boat, about a dozen, one poor child very horrid, one white man leaving a large grown family behind him in Honolulu, and then into the second stepped the sisters and myself. I do not know how it would have been with me had the sisters not been there. My horror of the horrible is about my weakest point; but the moral loveliness at my elbow blotted all else out; and when I found that one of them was crying, poor soul, quietly under her veil, I cried a litie myself; then I felt as right as a trivet, only a little crushed to be there so uselessly. I thought it was a sin and a shame she should feel unhappy; I turned round to her, and said something like this: ‘Ladies, God himself is here to give you welcome. I’m sure it is good for me to be beside you; I hope it will be blessed to me; I thank you for myself and the good you do me.’ It seemed to cheer her up; but indeed I had scarce said it when we were at the landing-stairs, and there was a great crowd, hundreds of (God save us!) pantomime masks in poor human flesh, waiting to receive the sisters and the new patients.