At Saranac Stevenson carried on his music under disadvantages, and his chief solace lay in the pleasures of adaptation. “All my spare time,” he wrote, “is spent in trying to set words to music. My last attempt is the divine theme of Beethoven’s six variations faciles.
will know it; and if she does not like it — well, she knows nothing of music, or sorrow, or consolation, or religion. . . . That air has done me more good than all the churches of Christendom.”
Meanwhile, as an interpreter, he fell from the pianoforte to the more portable penny whistle. “ ‘T is true my whistle explodes with sharp noises, and has to be patched with court-plaster like a broken nose; but its notes are beginning to seem pretty sweet to the player — The Penny Piper.”
But already, in the heart of the mountains, he had been laying plans of travel, which were to lead him far and wide across the seas and to end in a continued exile of which at this time he had never dreamed. He had always nourished a passion for the sea, whether in romance or in real life; it ran in his blood, and came to him from both his father and his grandfather.1 As a boy, on Saturday afternoons, he would make a party to go down to Leith to see the ships, for in those days, as always, he loved a ship “as a man loves Burgundy or daybreak.” The sea was to him the redeeming feature of engineering, and a year or two after he had given up the profession he wrote with eager anticipation of a projected trip in the Pharos, the lighthouse steamer. Then for ten years he hardly mentioned the sea again, and even in crossing the Atlantic as an amateur emigrant, he seems to have taken more interest in his fellow-passengers than in the ocean. But his feelings were unchanged: in 1883 his idea of a fortune is to “ end 1 “ It was that old gentleman’s blood that brought me to Samoa.” — Letters, ii. 258.
with horses and yachts and all the fun of the fair”; and in some verses written at Hyeres, contrasting his wife’s aspirations with his own, he declares —
“She vows in ardour for a horse to trot, I stake my votive prayers upon a yacht.”
We have seen how he enjoyed his voyage across the Atlantic; and to this pleasure he was perpetually recurring: “I have been made a lot of here, . . . but I
could give it all up, and agree that was the author of my works, for a good seventy-ton schooner and the coins to keep her on. And to think there are parties with yachts who would make the exchange! I know a little about fame now; it is no good compared to a yacht; and anyway there is more fame in a yacht, more genuine fame.”1 And no doubt his envy had been excited at Newport by hearing of Mr. Osbourne’s experiences in learning to sail a cat-boat.2
It was therefore no unexpected development, no outbreak of any new taste, when it became a favourite diversion of the winter nights at Saranac to plan a yachting cruise. So far indeed were the discussions carried, that the place for the piano in the saloon and the number and disposition of the small-arms were already definitely settled. At first, in spite of the severity of the climate and the proverbial roughness of the weather, they had looked chiefly to the Atlantic seaboard, but in the end of March, when Mrs. Stevenson left Saranac for California on a visit to her people, she 1 Utters, ii. 68.
2 A rather broad and shallow boat, round-bottomed, with a centre board, and a single mast stepped at the extreme point of the bow. was instructed to report if she could find any craft suitable for their purpose at San Francisco.
At last, by the middle of April, Stevenson was free to return to the “cities if he chose. He made a heroic effort to deal with the arrears of his correspondence: “In three of my last days I sent away upwards of seventy letters”; and then turning his steps to New York, he there spent about a fortnight. The time to which he recurred with the greatest pleasure was an afternoon he spent on a seat in Washington Square enjoying the company and conversation of “Mark Twain.” But of the city he soon wearied; in the beginning of May he crossed the Hudson, and went to an hotel near the mouth of the Manasquan, a river in New Jersey, where with his mother and stepson he spent nearly a month. The place had been recommended to him by Mr. Low, who was able to spend some time there, and who says: “Though it was early spring and the weather was far from good, Louis (pretending that, in comparison with Scotland at least, it was fine spring weather) was unusually well, and we had many a pleasant sail on the river and some rather long walks. Louis was much interested in the ‘cat- boat,’ and, with the aid of various works on sailing- vessels, tried to master the art of sailing it with some success.
“He was here at Manasquan when a telegram arrived from his wife, who had been in San Francisco for a few weeks, announcing that the yacht Casco might be hired for a trip among the islands of the South Seas. I was there at the time, and Louis made that decision to go which exiled him from his dearest friends — though he little suspected at the time — while the messenger waited.”
The decision taken, Stevenson returned to New York on the 28th, and by the 7th of June he had reached California. Who that has read his description of crossing the mountains on his first journey to the West but remembers the phrase — ”It was like meeting one’s wifel”? And this time his wife herself was at Sacramento to meet him.
It was a busy time. The Casco was the first question — a topsail schooner, ninety-five feet in length, of seventy tons burden, built for racing in Californian waters, though she had once been taken as far as Tahiti.” She had most graceful lines, and with her lofty masts, white sails and decks, and glittering brasswork, was a lovely craft to the eye, as she sat like a bird upon the water. Her saloon was fitted most luxuriously with silk and velvet of gaudy colours, for no money had been spared in her construction; nevertheless her cockpit was none too safe, her one pump was inadequate in size and almost worthless; the sail-plan forward was meant for racing and not for cruising, and even if the masts were still in good condition, they were quite unfitted for hurricane weather.
Nevertheless the vessel was chartered and all preparations were put in hand. The owner, Dr. Merritt, an eccentric Californian millionaire, was at first most backward about thQ whole affair, and, without having < seen him, displayed the greatest distrust of Stevenson. The latter was very unwell, and getting rapidly worse, for San Francisco disagreed with him. Matters hung fire, but at last his wife discovered that Dr. Merritt wanted to meet him. An interview took place and all difficulties vanished. “ 1 ‘II go ahead now with the yacht,” said the doctor: “I ‘d read things in the papers about Stevenson, and thought he was a kind of crank; but he’s a plain, sensible man that knows what he’s talking about just as well as I do.”
If any fears had existed in his mind about the solvency of his lessee they were unfounded. Under the terms of his father’s marriage settlement Stevenson had six months before received a sum of ^3000, and it was in the first instance upon the strength of this that he planned the voyage. As he wrote to Mr. Baxter, “If this business fails to set me up, well, £2000 is gone, and I know I can’t get better.” On the other hand, if it restored his health, he had received a most liberal offer from Messrs. M’Clure for a series of letters describing his experiences in the Pacific.
Along with the yacht, at the owner’s request, they gladly engaged his skipper, Captain Otis, who knew the Casco well, and the cook, a Chinaman, who passed himself off as a Japanese. The former choice they had no reason to regret, for the captain showed himself a bold and skilful seaman, who, beginning the voyage with a supreme contempt for his new employers, ended it as an intimate and valued friend, whose portrait for the rest may be found in the pages of The Wrecker. A crew of four deck-hands, “three Swedes and the inevitable Finn,” was engaged by the captain, and four “sea-lawyers” they proved to be; a reporter, trying to ship himself as a hand, was ejected, and a passage was with great difficulty refused to a Seventh- Day Adventist, who afterwards with a crew of his fellow-believers travelled over the whole of the South Seas.
The destination of the Casco was next to be settled. Stevenson himself was anxious to begin with a long voyage, “counting,” says his wife, “on t
he warm sea air as the strongest factor in his cure, if cure it was to be. If, on the other hand, it was to be death, he wished it to be so-far away from land that burial at sea should be certain. With this in view, the Galapagos and Marquesas were at the right distance. If he arrived alive at either of these places, then he must have recovered a certain amount of health, and would be able to go further to any place he chose. It turned out that he really knew a great deal about the islands. Before we started, he told me a lot about them all, their appearance, the names of places, habits of the natives, and other details. On visiting them I got no further general knowledge than Louis had already given me. He now preferred the Galapagos, but when he told me that we must pass through a belt of calms where we might knock about in the heat of the tropics for weeks, perhaps for months, before we could make land, and that the islands were barren of vegetation, I insisted on the Marquesas. So to the Marquesas we went.”
In the meantime they were living at the Occidental Hotel in San Francisco. Virgil Williams was now dead, but Mrs. Williams was indefatigable in their service, and other friends gathered round them, among whom Stevenson was especially drawn to Dr. George Chis- more, alike for his Scotch blood, his love of literature, and the force and tenderness of his character. But as he himself had known trouble in this city, here least of all was he likely to disregard the misfortunes of others. An Australian journalist seven years afterwards wrote to the Times: —
“Some years ago I lay ill in San Francisco, an obscure journalist, quite friendless. Stevenson, who knew me slightly, came to my bedside and said,’ I suppose you are like all of us, you don’t keep your money. Now, if a little loan, as between one man of letters and another — eh?’
“This to a lad writing rubbish for a vulgar sheet in California.”
At last, on June 26th, the party took up their quarters on the Casco, and at the dawn of the 28th she was towed outside the Golden Gate, and headed for the south across the long swell of the Pacific.
So with his household he sailed away beyond the sunset, and America, like Europe, was to see him no more.
CHAPTER XIII
SOUTH SEA CRUISES — THE EASTERN PACIFIC, JUNE, l888 — JUNE, 1889
“This climate; these voyagings; these landfalls at dawn; new Wands peeking from the morning bank; new forested harbours; new passing alarms of squalls and surf; new interests of gentle natives — the whole tale of my life b better to me than any poem.”
Letters, ii. 160.
For nearly three years to come Stevenson wandered up and down the face of the Pacific, spending most of his time in the Hawaiian Islands and the Gilberts, in Tahiti, and in Samoa, his future home; during this period he visited, however cursorily, almost every group of importance in the Eastern and Central Pacific.
The delight these experiences kindled for him can never be expressed, since, apart from one or two phrases in his letters, he has failed to convey any image of it himself- It is hardly too much to say that nobody else in the world would have derived such keen or such varied enjoyment from cruising through these islands, so wild, so beautiful — among their inhabitants so attractive, so remote from experience — in these waters, so fascinating and so dangerous. The very romance that hangs about the South Seas is fatal to any attempt to sustain, among the mazes of detail and necessary explanation, the charm suggested by their name. Stevenson himself set out to write an account of his wanderings and adventures among the islands it had for years been the dream of his life to see, but as soon as he essayed the task, he was overwhelmed with a mass of legend and history and anthropology. It is hard for people at their own firesides to realise the differences between the islands visited in one cruise in the same ocean. Perhaps some vague and general conception of the diversity of Stevenson’s experiences might be formed by imagining a rapid visit to the islands of Sardinia, Sicily, Majorca, and Tenerife, a fresh departure for Jersey and the lies d’Or, ending with a passing glimpse at the West indies.
The point now to be considered is not, however, the customs and character of the natives whom Stevenson encountered, but rather how he was affected and influenced by what he saw, the characteristics which were called out in him during the course of his travel, and the impressions which he himself produced. His chapters In the South Seas have now been collected and published, and from them I shall only quote one or two of the most striking passages, relying rather on his original rough journal at the time, which naturally strikes a more personal note and deals to a greater extent with his individual experience.
The first point, as we have seen, was the Marquesas, a group of high1 islands of extreme beauty, occupied by the French and but seldom visited by travellers, 1 Islands in the Pacific are usually divided into “ high “ and “ low the former being, generally speaking, islands of volcanic origin, often rising several thousand feet above the sea, densely wooded and beau
tiful in the extreme. These frequently have a barrier reef of coral, protecting what would otherwise be an ironbound coast, but their main structure is igneous rock. “Low” islands arc atolls or mere remote from any other group and out of the track of ships and steamers. For these the Casco now steered a course of three thousand miles across the open sea. Fortunately the main object of the cruise seemed likely to be gained without delay; the warmer climate and the sea air suited Stevenson at once, and he grew stronger day by day. The voyage was pleasant but without event other than the passing squalls, and is thus recorded in his diary: —
“Since on the fifth day we were left ignominiously behind by a full-rigged English ship, our quondam comrade, bound round the Horn, we have not spied a sail, nor a land bird, nor a shred of seaweed. In impudent isolation, the toy-schooner has ploughed her path of snow across the empty deep, far from all track of commerce, far from any hand of help: now to the sound of slatting sails and stamping sheet-blocks, staggering in the turmoil of that business falsely called a calm, now, in the assault of squalls, burying her lee- rail in the sea. To the limit of the north-east trades we carried some attendant pilot birds, silent, brown-suited, quakerish fellows, infinitely graceful on the wing; dropping at times in comfortable sheltered hollows of the swell; running awhile in the snowy footmarks on the water before they rise again in flight. Scarce had these dropped us, ere the Boatswains took their place, birds of an ungainly shape, but beautiful against the heavens in their white plumage. Late upon a starry banks built by the coral insect, never more than twenty feet above water, and owing any beauty they possess to the sea, the sun, and the palm-tree. The Marquesas, Tahiti, Samoa, and the Hawaiian group are high islands; the Paumotus, the Gilberts, and the Marshalls are low. night, as they fly invisible overhead, the strange voices of these co-voyagers fall about us strangely. Flying- fish, a skimming silver rain on the blue sea; a turtle fast asleep in the early morning sunshine; the Southern Cross hung thwart in the fore-rigging like the frame of a wrecked kite — the pole star and the familiar Plough dropping ever lower in the wake: these build up thus far the history of our voyage. It is singular to come so far and to see so infinitely little.”
“July igtb. — The morning was hot, the wind steady, the sky filled with such clouds as, on a pleasant English day, might promise a cool rain. One of these had been visible for some time, a continental isle of sun and shadow, moving innocuously on the skyline far to windward; when upon a sudden this harmless-looking monster, seeming to smell a quarry, paused, hung awhile as if in stays, and breaking off five points,1 fell like an armed man upon the Casco. Next moment, the inhabitants of the cabin were piled one upon another, the sea was pouring into the cockpit and spouting in fountains through forgotten deadlights, and the steersman stood spinning the wheel for his life in a halo of tropical rain.
“I chronicle this squall, first, for the singularity and apparent malignancy of its behaviour, as though it had been sent express to cruise after the Casco; and, second, because of the nonsense people write upon the climate of these seas. Every day for a week or so, in defiance of authorities,
we have had from three to four squalls; and as for this last, no one who saw it desires to see a worse. Sailing a ship, even in these so-called fine-
1 I.e. of the points of the compass, sixty-four in number. weather latitudes, may be compared to walking the tight-rope; so constant is the care required. On our heavenly nights, when we sit late on deck, the trade- wind still chariots overhead an endless company of attenuated clouds. These shine in the moonlight faintly bright, affect strange and semi-human forms like the more battered of the antique statues, blot out the smaller stars, and are themselves pierced by the radiance of the greater. ‘ Is there any wind in them?’ so goes the regular sea question. A capful at least, and even in the least substantial; but for the most part in these latitudes they fly far above man’s concerns, perhaps out of all reach, so that not even the lowest fringe of wind shall breathe upon the mainmasthead.”
Complete Works of Robert Louis Stevenson (Illustrated) Page 835