Complete Works of Robert Louis Stevenson (Illustrated)

by Robert Louis Stevenson

  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 fam
ily 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.

  “... Gilfillan, a good fellow, I think, and far from a stupid, kept up his hard Lowland Scottish talk in the boat while the sister was covering her face; but I believe he knew, and did it (partly) in embarrassment, and part perhaps in mistaken kindness. And that was one reason, too, why I made my speech to them. Partly, too, I did it because I was ashamed to do so, and remembered one of my golden rules, ‘When you are ashamed to speak, speak up at once.’ But, mind you, that rule is only golden with strangers; with your own folks, there are other considerations.”1

  His general conclusions at the time were thus expressed: — “On the whole, the spectacle of life in this marred and moribund community, with its idleness, its furnished table, its horse-riding, music, and gallantries under the shadow of death, confounds the expectations of the visitor. He cannot observe with candour, but he must see it is not only good for the world, but best for the lepers themselves to be thus set apart. The place is a huge hospital, but a hospital under extraordinary conditions; in which the disease, though both 1 Letters, ii. 154-156. ugly and incurable, is of a slow advance; in which the patients are rarely in pain, often capable of violent exertion, all bent on pleasure, and all, within the limits of the precinct, free. . . . The case of the children is by far the most sad; and yet (thanks to Damien, and that great Hawaiian lady, the kind Mrs. Bishop, and to the kind sisters) their hardship has been minimised. Even the boys in the still rude boys’ home at Kalawao appeared cheerful and youthful; they interchange diversions in the boy’s way; one week are all for football, and the next the devotees of marbles or of kites: have fiddles, drums, guitars, and penny whistles: some can touch the organ, and all combine in concerts. As for the girls in the Bishop Home, of the many beautiful things I have been privileged to see in life, they, and what has been done for them, are not the least beautiful. When I came there first, the sisters and the majority of the boarders were gone up the hill upon a weekly treat, guava-hunting; and only Mother Mary Anne and the specially sick were left at home. I was told things which I heard with tears, of which I sometimes think at night, and which I spare the reader; I was shown the sufferers then at home; one, I remember, white with pain, the tears standing in her eyes. But, thank God, pain is not the rule in this revolting malady: and the general impression of the house was one of cheerfulness, cleanliness, and comfort. The dormitories were airy, the beds neatly made; at every bed-head was a trophy of Christmas cards, pictures, and photographs, some framed with shells, and all arranged with care and taste. In many of the beds, besides, a doll lay pillowed. I was told that, in that artificial life, the eldest and the youngest were equally concerned with these infantile playthings, and the dressmaking, in particular, was found an inexhaustible resource. Plays of their own arrangement were a favourite evening pastime. They had a croquet set; and it was my single useful employment during my stay in the lazaretto to help them with that game.1 I know not if the interest in croquet survived my departure, but it was lively while I stayed; and the last time I passed there on my way to the steamer’s boat and freedom, the children crowded to the fence and hailed and summoned me with cries of welcome. 1 wonder I found the heart to refuse the invitation.”

  After leaving the confines of the leper settlement the steamer landed him upon another part of the island, where he and the captain took horse and rode a long way to the house of some Irish folk, where Stevenson slept. Next day he continued with a native guide until he reached the summit of the pass above Kalawao, down which alone the settlement could be entered by land. Here the overseer lived, and with him Stevenson stayed and had much talk.

  Of his ride across the island he wrote: — “Maui behind us towered into clouds and the shadow of clouds. The bare opposite island of Lanai — the reef far out, enclosing a dirty, shoal lagoon — a range of fishponds, large as docks, and the slope of the shady beach 1 He was advised by Mother Mary Anne to wear gloves when he played croquet with the leper children. He would not do it, however, as he thought it might remind them of their condition. After he returned to Honolulu he sent Mother Mary Anne a grand piano for her leper girls.

  on which we mostly rode, occupied the left hand. On the right hand the mountain rose in steeps of red clay and spouts of disintegrated rock, sparsely dotted with the white-flowering cow-thistle. Here and there along the foreshore stood a lone pandanus, and once a trinity of dishevelled palms. In all the first part of that journey, I recall but three houses and a single church. Plenty of horses, kine, and sullen-looking bulls were there, but not a human countenance. ‘Where are the people?’ I asked. ‘Pau Kanaka maki: done: people dead,’ replied the guide, with the singular childish giggle which the traveller soon learns to be a mark of Polynesian sensibility.

  “We rode all the time by the side of the great fishponds, the labour (you would say) of generations. The riches and the agriculture of Molokai awoke of yore the envy of neighbouring kings. Only last century a battle was fought upon this island in which it has been computed that thousands were engaged; and he who made the computation, though he lived long after, had seen and counted, when the wind blew aside the sands, the multitude of bones and skulls. There remains the evidence of the churches, not yet old and already standing in a desert, the monuments of vanished congregations. Pau Kanaka maht. A sense of survival attended me upon my ride, and the nervous laughter of Apaka sounded in my ears not quite unpleasantly. The place of the dead is clean; there is a poetry in empty lands.

  ‘‘A greener track received us; smooth shore-side grass was shaded with groves and islets of acacias; the hills behind, from the red colour of the soil and the sin- gularity ot the formation, had the air of a bare Scottish moorland in the bleak end of autumn; and the resemblance set a higher value on the warmth of the sun and the brightness of the sea. I wakened suddenly to remember Kalaupapa and my playmates of two days before. Could I have forgotten? Was I happy again? Had the shadow, the sorrow, and the obligation faded already?”

  From this expedition he returned to complete his preparations for immediate departure. The family now possessed an unrivalled fund of information about “the Islands,” and had accumulated not only the necessary stores but also a collection of all the resources of civilisation best fitted to appeal to the native heart, ranging from magic lanterns and American hand-organs to “ cheap and bad cigars.” The only difficulty was the ship, and the Morning Star not being available, the Equator, a trading schooner of sixty-two tons register, Captain Denis Reid, was chartered. The terms agreed upon were original and entertaining; Stevenson paid a lump sum down for a four months’ cruise, with a proviso for renewal, if necessary. The ship agreed for a fixed daily extra price to land at any place in the line of its trading cruise on Stevenson’s written demand. On the other hand, when it stopped anywhere for its own business, were it only to land a sewing-machine or to take on board a ton of copra, it was bound, if the charterer so desired, to remain there three days without extra charge.

  The 24th of June arrived: Stevenson and his wife and stepson were on board with the indispensable Ah Fu, and the schooner was ready to cast off. At the last moment two fine carriages drove d
own at full speed to the wharf and there deposited King Kalakaua and a party of his native musicians. There was but a minute for good-bye and a parting glass, for Kalakaua had none of Ori’s scruples over champagne. The king returned to shore and stood there waving his hand, while from the musicians, lined up on the very edge of the wharf, came the tender strains of a farewell.

  CHAPTER XIV

  SOUTH SEA CRUISES — THE CENTRAL PACIFIC, JUNE, 1889 — APRIL, 1891

  “I will never leave the sea, I think; it is only there that a Briton lives: my poor grandfather, it is from him that 1 inherit the taste, I fancy, and he was round many islands in his day; but I, please God, shall beat him at that before the recall is sounded. . . . Life is far better fun than people dream who fall asleep among the chimney- stacks and telegraph wires.” — Letters, ii. 162.

  The object of the new cruise for Stevenson was to visit a native race of a different character from those he had already seen, living as far as was still possible under purely natural conditions. The Gilberts are a group of some sixteen low islands of no great size, densely populated, situated close to the Equator. At this time they were independent, nearly every island being governed by its own king or council of elders. Scenery in all of them is reduced to the simplest elements, a strand with cocoanut-palms and pandanus, and the sea — one island differing from another only in having or not having an accessible lagoon in its centre; in none of them is the highest point of land as much as twenty feet above sea-level. This very flatness and absence of striking features render the islands a more perfect theatre for effects of light and cloud, while the splendours of the sea are further enhanced by the contrast of the rollers breaking on the reef and the still lagoon sleeping within the barrier, of the dark depths of ocean outside and the brilliant shoal-water varying infinitely in hue with the inequalities of the shallows within.