Complete Works of Robert Louis Stevenson (Illustrated) (1091 page)

At this height the beat of the surf was plainly to be heard, but soothing to the ear and far away; other noises there were none but the occasional note of a bird, a cry from the boys at work, or the crash of a falling tree. The sound of wheels or the din of machinery was hardly known in the island: about the house all went barefoot, and scarcely in the world could there be found among the dwellings of men a deeper silence than in Stevenson’s house in the forest.

The chief feature within was the large hall that occupied the whole of the ground-floor of the newer portion of the house — a room about sixty feet long and perhaps forty wide, lined and ceiled with varnished redwood from California. Here the marble bust of old Robert Stevenson twinkled with approval upon many a curiously combined company, while a couple of Burmese gilded idols guarded the two posts of the big staircase leading directly from the room to the upper floor. An old Samoan chief, being one day at his own request shown over the house, and having seen many marvels of civilisation of which he had never dreamed, showed no sign of interest, far less of amazement, but as he was departing he looked over his shoulder at the twoBuddhas and asked indifferently: “Are they alive?” In one corner was built a large safe, which, being continually replenished from Apia, rarely contained any large amount of money at a time, but was supposed by the natives to be the prison of the Bottle Imp, the source of all Stevenson’s fortune. In this room hung Mr. Sargent’s portrait of Stevenson and his wife, Sir George Reid’s portrait of Thomas Stevenson, two reputed Hogarths which the old gentleman had picked up, two or three of R. A. M. Stevenson’s best works, a picture of horses by Mr. Arthur Lemon, and — greatly to the scandal of native visitors — a plaster group by Rodin.

In front of the house lay a smooth green lawn of couch-grass, used for tennis or croquet, and bounded on two sides by a hibiscus-hedge which, within a few months of its planting, was already six feet high and a mass of scarlet double blossoms — the favourite flowers of the Samoan.

Immediately behind the mansion lay the wooden kitchen and a native house for the cook. A hundred yards to one side the original cottage in which Stevenson first lived had been re-erected, to serve upstairs as bedrooms for Mr. Osbourne and myself, downstairs for the house-boys,1 for stores, tool-house, and harness- room.

Upon the other side another native house lay, halfway towards the stream. The ground below the home fence was all used for pasture; in front, the milking- shed occupied the site of the old house; and the pigpen, impregnably fenced with barbed wire, lay a couple of hundred yards in the rear. At the back also were the old disused stables, for in later days the horses were always kept out at grass in the various paddocks, coming up for their feed of corn every morning and evening.

But even when the house itself was provided, its service was the great difficulty. Competent and willing white helpers were not to be procured, and though there were many natives employed in Apia, yet Samoa, less fortunate than India, possessed no class of natives 1 In Samoa, as in many other lands, native servants of all ages are known in English as “ boys.”

ready to minister to a white master with skill and devotion for a trifling wage.

At first Stevenson tried European and colonial servants. Two German men cooks passed through his kitchen: a Sydney lady’s-maid brought dissensions into the household: a white overseer and three white carters came and left, causing various degrees of dissatisfaction. Then Mrs. Stevenson went away for a change to Fiji; in her absence the family made a clean sweep of the establishment, and Mrs. Strong and her brother took the entire charge of the kitchen into their own hands with complete success. This was of necessity a passing expedient. One day, however, Mr. Osbourne found a Samoan lad, with a hibiscus flower behind his ear, sitting on an empty packing-case beside the cookhouse. He had come, it seemed, to collect half a dollar which the native overseer owed him, and he was quite content to wait for several hours until his debtor should return. In the meantime he was brought into the kitchen, and then and there initiated into the secrets of the white man’s cookery. He was amused, interested, fascinated, and he plunged enthusiastically into the mysteries of his future profession. Fortunately in Samoa cookery was regarded as an art worthy of men’s hands, and was practised even by high chiefs. The newcomer showed great aptitude; Mr. Osbourne persuaded him to stay, sent for his chest, and for several days would hardly let him out of his sight. So from that time forth Ta’alolowas head cook of Vailima, soon having a “boy” under him as scullion, taking only a few occasional holidays, and perfecting his art by visits to the kitchen of the French priests. In time he brought into the VAlLlMA-1891-94

household several of his relations, who were Catholics like himself, and proved the best and most trustworthy of all the boys.

A very few days after my first arrival one of these newcomers appeared in the character of assistant table- boy, a clumsy, half-developed, rather rustic youth, who of course knew no English, a sign that he was at any rate free from the tricks of the Apia-bred rascal. At the first, Sosimo seemed unlikely material, but there was a certain seriousness and resolution about him which quickly produced their effect. He soon became known as “The Butler,” and before long was promoted to be head boy in the pantry. From the beginning he attached himself to Tusitala with a whole-hearted allegiance. He waited on him hand and foot, looked scrupulously after his clothes, devoted special attention to his pony “Jack,” and made one of the most trustworthy and efficient servants I have ever known. When the end came, few if any showed as much feeling as Sosimo, and his loyalty to his master’s memory lasted to the end of his own life.

These two men were the best, but as I write, I recall Leuelu, and Mitaele, and Iopu, and old Lafaele, and many more, not all such good servants, not all so loyal or so honest as those first named, but all with many solid merits, many pleasing traits, and a genuine personal devotion to Tusitala which pleased him as much as many more brilliant qualities.

The table was fully provided with white napery and silver and glass according to the usual English custom, as it had prevailed in the house of Stevenson’s father. The cookery was eclectic and comprised such English and American dishes as could be obtained or imitated, together with any [native food which was found palatable. Of the supplies I shall speak later: it was the contrast between table and servants that was most striking. Nothing could have been more picturesque than to sit at an ordinary modern dinner-table and be waited on skilfully by a noble barbarian with perfect dignity and grace of carriage and manners hardly to be surpassed, who yet, if the weather were warm and the occasion ordinary, had for all his clothing a sheet of calico, in which his tattooed waist and loins alone were draped.

The actual house-servants were usually about half a dozen in number, two in the kitchen, two or three for house and table service; one, Mrs. Stevenson’s special boy, for the garden and her own general service, and one more to take charge of the cows and pigs. Besides these, there was always a band of outside labourers under a native overseer supervised by Mr. Osbourne, working on the plantation, varying in number, according to the amount of clearing in hand, from half-a-dozen to twenty or thirty men. The signal for beginning and leaving off their work was always given by blowing the pu, a large conch-shell,1 that made a great booming sound that could be heard in the farthest recesses of the plantation.

The great fear of the householder in Samoa used to be the dread of war, lest he should wake one morning and find that all his servants had been ordered out on service by their respective chiefs. By Stevenson’s intervention the Vailima household staff was generally kept 1 Triton variegatus. at home, but the plantation was several times deserted and had to await the restoration of peace.

The government of the household was as far as possible on the clan system. “It is something of your own doing,” Stevenson had written to his mother from Bournemouth in 1886, “ if I take a somewhat feudal view of our relation to servants. . . . The Nemesis of the bourgeois who has chosen to shut out his servants — his ‘family’ in the old Scotch sense — from all intimacy and share in the pleasures of the house, attends us at every turn. An impossible relation is created, and brings confusion to all.”1

If this were his attitude among the artificial conditions of England, he was not likely to adopt a more modern position in Samoa, where the patriarchal stage of society still prevailed. Accordingly from the first he used all opportunities to consolidate the household as a family, in which the boys should take as much pride and feel as much common interest as possible. His ideal was to maintain the relation of a Highland chief to his clan, such as it existed before the ‘45, since this seemed to approach most nearly to the actual state of things in Samoa at the time, and best met the difficulties which beset the relations of master and servant in his own day. He adopted a tartan for the Vailima kilt, to be worn on high days and holidays; he encouraged the boys to seek his help &nd advice on all matters, and was especially delighted when they preferred to him such requests as to grant his permission to a marriage.

It must not, however, be supposed that they were allowed their own way, or indulged when they mis-

1 Cf. Letters, ii. 21. behaved themselves. On such occasions the whole household would be summoned, a sort of “ bed of justice “ would be held, and sharp reprimands and fines inflicted.

Even with all these servants, the white man was separated from the material crises of life by a somewhat thin barrier, for even the best and most responsible natives were at times brought face to face with emergencies beyond their powers, and had to fall back upon their master’s help. Such occasions of course befell Stevenson most frequently in the early days when he was living in the cottage with his wife and the white cook. Much of his time was then taken up unexpectedly in such pieces of business as may be found in the first pages of the Vailima Letters: in measuring land, rubbing down foundered cart-horses, ejecting stray horses during the night or wandering pigs during the day, or even in little household tasks which no one else was available to discharge. In later days his wife and all the family were able jealously to prevent such encroachments on his time, but during the last two years I can remember the master of the house himself helping with delight to feed a refractory calf that refused the bottle, driving out an angry bull, or doctoring stray natives suffering from acute colic or wounded feet, to say nothing of chance hours spent in planting or in weeding the cacao.

One morning’s work stands out conspicuously in my memory. A hogshead of claret had, after many misadventures, arrived from Bordeaux slightly broached, so that it had to be bottled immediately. Stevenson feared the effect of the fumes even of the light wine upon the natives, so he himself with our aid undertook the work. The boys were sent off to the stream with relays of bottles to wash while we tapped the cask, and the red wine flowed all the morning into jugs and basins beneath. It was poured away into the bottles, and they were corked and dipped into a large pot of green sealing- wax kept simmering on the kitchen fire. There seemed not to be any fumes to affect us, but the anticipation, and the pressure to get done, the novelty of the work, and, above all, Stevenson’s contagious enthusiasm, produced a great feeling of delight and exhilaration, and made a regular vintage festival of the day. Stevenson was in his glory, as he always was when he felt that he was doing a manual task, and, above all, when he was able to work in concert with others, and give his love of camaraderie full scope.

And throughout his life, for Stevenson to throw himself into any employment which could kindle his imagination was to see him transfigured. The little boy who told himself stories about his football1 came to weed in Samoa, and was there ever such an account of weeding since the world began? He drove stray horses to the pound, and it became a Border foray. He held an inquiry into the theft of a pig, and he bore himself as if he were the Lord President in the Inner House. But on the memorable day when we scampered through the outposts of Mataafa’s troops, and for the first time in his life Louis saw armed men actually taking the field, even his own words hardly serve to express his exhilaration and outburst of spirit: “So home a little before six, in a dashing squall of rain, to a bowl of kava 1 See vol. i. p. 66. and dinner. But the impression on our minds was extraordinary; the sight of that picket at the ford, and those ardent, happy faces, whirls in my head; the old aboriginal awoke in both of us and nickered like a stallion. . . . War is a huge entrainement; there is no other temptation to be compared to it, not one. We were all wet, we had been about five hours in the saddle, mostly riding hard; and we came home like schoolboys, with such a lightness of spirits, and I am sure such a brightness of eye, as you could have lit a candle at.”1

When any special entertainment was to be given, a dinner-party or a large luncheon, the whole family of course set to work to see that everything was properly done. Some saw to the decoration of the table or the polishing of the silver, or the blending of the preliminary “cocktail”; Stevenson loved to devote himself to the special cleaning of what he called in the Scots phrase “the crystal, “and his use of the glass-cloth on decanter and wine-glasses would have rejoiced the heart of an expert.

Nor were there wanting occasions in which prompt action or careful and skilled investigation was needed. On two successive nights the house was nearly set on fire by a defective oil lantern, and only boxes of earth saved it; and at another time the dishonest use of red lead upon the roof turned all the rain-tanks into so many poisoned wells, and disabled the whole party for several weeks.

As for the food, when there was a large household to be supplied and a daily delivery from Apia had been 1 Vailima Letters, June 28th, 1893. arranged, there was no great difficulty in catering, apart from the expense. The meat came from the butcher, and the bread from the baker, the groceries, if needed, from the grocer, and the washing from the washerwoman, as in less romantic communities. There was a large storeroom, plentifully supplied from the Colonies and from home. There were generally three or four cows in milk, and a supply of pigs and chickens being reared for the table. The herd of wild cattle sold with the estate certainly did not exist within many miles of its boundaries, though I believe that the animals were not mythical, but led a real existence in another part of the island, whither they had betaken themselves. But if there were no four-footed creatures, birds were plentiful. Large pigeons were brought in from the surrounding woods, especially at the season when they had been feeding on the wild nutmeg-trees. The only game to be obtained was an occasional mallard, a rail, or a galli- mule, unless the manume’a be reckoned, the one surviving species of dodo, a bird about the size of a small moor-hen, which has only recovered its present feeble powers of flight since cats were introduced into the island. I have found it in the woods above Vailima, but we never shot it ourselves, and its dark flesh was as rare upon the table as it was delicious. Fresh-water prawns came from the stream, and now and again some sea-fish might be sent up from the coast, where it was abundant. Vegetables were hardly to be bought, but a piece of swampy ground half a mile from the house was turned into a patch for taro, the finest of all substitutes for the potato. Bananas and breadfruit- trees were planted, and Mrs. Stevenson developed under her own supervision a garden in which all sorts of new plants were tried, and most of them successfully adopted. Cocoanuts, oranges, guavas, and mangoes grew already on the estate or in a paddock just below, which was taken on lease; and many more of the most improved kinds of these trees were planted and throve. The common hedges on the estate were composed of limes, the fruit being so abundant that it was used to scour the kitchen floors and tables, and citrons were so common that they rotted on the trees. Several acres were planted with pineapples, which, after only a little cultivation, equalled the best varieties of their kind. There was also an unrivalled plantation of kava, the shrub whose powdered root yields the Samoan national drink. Wherever the ground was cleared, the papaw or mummy-apple at once sprang up and bore its wholesome and insipid fruit. Cape gooseberries were mere weeds; soursops, sweet potatoes and avocado pears, lemons and plums, egg-plants and the large granadillas all did well in that rich volcanic soil and that marvellous climate. Nothing failed of tropical products except the ambrosial mangosteen, the capricious child of the Malay Peninsula. The cacao, of which frequent mention is made in the Vailima Letters, grew and came into bearing; but the irregular and rocky surface of the ground made it difficult to keep clean, and also caused the plantation to be very straggling and irregular.