Arriving at La Jolla by the sea, a most picturesque spot on the southern coast of California, they were disappointed in not finding it as warm as they had expected, so it was decided to go further south. In the course of their inquiries at San Diego they met a Western miner named George Brown, who told them stories of a lonely desert island off the coast of Lower California, where he was about to open a copper-mine for the company for which he was general manager. The more he talked of this lonesome isle and of how barren and desolate it was the more Mrs. Stevenson was fascinated with it, and when he finally invited them, in true Western fashion, to accompany him thither, she joyfully accepted. In the early part of January she took passage with her little party, consisting of herself, Mr. Field, and her maid, on the small steamer St. Denis, which was sailing from San Diego and making port at Ensenada and San Quintin on the way to Cedros Island.
At the island the Stevenson party was offered the large company house of ten rooms by Mr. Brown, but preferred to live in a little whitewashed cottage that stood on the beach. Except for the Mexican families of the mine workmen there were no women on the island besides Mrs. Stevenson and her maid. The small circle of Americans soon became intimately acquainted, for the lack of other society and interests naturally drew them close together. Besides George Brown, Clarence Beall, and Doctor Chamberlain, the company doctor, there was only a queer old character known as “Chips,” a stranded sea carpenter who was employed to build lighters on the beach.
Mrs. Stevenson had all of Kipling’s fondness for mining men, engineers — all that great class of workers, in fact, who harness the elements of earth and air and bend them to man’s will — and she was very happy on this lonely island with no society outside of her own party but that of the few employed at the mine. Between her and Mr. Beall, a young mining engineer employed on the island, a strong and lasting bond of friendship was established from the moment of their first meeting, when she saw him wet and cold from a hard day of loading ship through the surf and insisted on “mothering” him to the extent of seeing that he had dry clothing and other comforts. And, although the difference between the green tropic isle beyond the sunset which lay enshrined in her memory and this barren cactus-grown pile of volcanic rocks was immeasurable, yet the one, in its peace, its soft sweet air, and the near presence of the murmuring sea, called back the other.
When, after three pleasant, peaceful months, the time came for her departure, there was general sorrow on the island, where it may well be imagined that her presence had greatly lightened the tedium of existence for its lonely dwellers. “To this day,” writes Doctor Chamberlain, “whenever I pick up one of Mr. Stevenson’s novels, my first thoughts are always of his wife and our days at Cedros Island.”
While in Ensenada on the return trip Mrs. Stevenson heard of a ranch for sale there, and after looking at it decided to purchase it. The place, known as El Sausal, lies on the very edge of the great Pacific, and has a magnificent beach. The climate is as nearly perfect as a climate can be, and Mrs. Stevenson often said that if the world ever learned of the magic healing in that country there would be a great rush to the peninsula, so long despised as a hopeless desert.
There was only a little cottage of a very humble sort on the ranch and supplies were hard to get, but she loved it and was never better in health than when she was at Sausal. At this time she returned to San Francisco, but the following winter she went back to take possession and spent some time there. Writing to Mr. Charles Scribner, she says: “I am living in a sweet lost spot known as the Rancho El Sausal, some six miles from Ensenada in Lower California. If I had no family I should stop here forever; except for the birds, and the sea, and the wind, it is so heavenly quiet, and I so love peace.” Running through the place was a little stream, the banks of which were thick with the scarlet “Christmas berry,” so well known in the woods of Upper California; multitudes of birds — canaries, linnets, larks, mocking-birds — all sang together outside the door in an amazing chorus; and on the beach near by the sea beat its soft rhythmic measure.
They were very close to nature at Sausal, but though its situation was so isolated they had no fear, for the penalties for any sort of crime were terrific. Burglary, or even house-breaking, were punished with death, and one could hardly frown at another without going to prison for it. Sometimes they were surprised by the sudden appearance of a man, tired and dusty, dashing up on a foam-covered horse and asking for food. To such an unfortunate they always gave meat and drink, and when the rurales presently galloped up and demanded to know whether they had seen an escaped prisoner they swallowed their conscientious scruples and answered “No!” Personally they met with nothing but the most punctilious courtesy from the Mexican officials. When Mrs. Stevenson received a Christmas box from her daughter, the chivalric comandante at Ensenada, in order to make sure that she should have it in time, sent it out to Sausal magnificently conducted by three mounted policemen.
When she left this peaceful spot in the spring of 1906 to return to San Francisco she little thought that she was moving towards one of the most dramatic incidents in her eventful life. All went as usual on the journey until they had passed Santa Barbara on the morning of the fateful day, April 18, when vague rumours of some great disaster began to circulate in a confused way among the passengers. Soon they knew the dreadful truth, though in the swift running of the train they themselves had not felt the earthquake, and it was not long before concrete evidence confirmed the reports, for at Salinas they were halted by the broken Pajaro bridge. At that place Mrs. Stevenson slept the night on the train, and the next day she hired a team and drove by a roundabout way to Gilroy, near which, it will be remembered, her ranch, Vanumanutagi, was situated. There they learned that San Francisco was burning, and while Mr. Field made his way as best he could to the doomed city, she camped in a little hotel in Gilroy waiting for news — a prey meanwhile to the most intense fears for the safety of various members of her family, from whom she was entirely cut off.
While she waited as patiently as might be in the little country town, there were strenuous times in the burning city, but, as telegraph wires were all down and no mails were going out, she was compelled to remain in suspense until three days later, when the fire was subdued and Mr. Field was able to get back to her with the news that her family were all safe and her house unharmed. The story of the rescue of her house from the flames has been curiously contorted by persons who have attempted to write about it without knowing the facts. The real saviors of Mrs. Stevenson’s house were her nephews and Mr. Field, and even they might have lost the day had it not been for a providential wind that blew in strongly from the sea against the advancing wall of flame. For three days and nights they looked down from their high post upon the raging furnace below and anxiously watched the progress of the fire as it leaped from street to street in its mad race up the hill, and when at last the two houses and a large wooden reservoir immediately opposite went roaring up all hope seemed gone. In the end it was through a mere trifle that the tide of fortune was turned in their favour. In the garden there was a small cement pool, the home of a tiny fish answering to the name of Jack. When the water in the pool was slopped over by the earthquake poor Jack was tossed some yards away upon the grass, whence he was rescued, alive and wriggling, and restored to his own element, only to be killed later by some thoughtless refugee who washed his hands in the water with soap. The half bucket or so of water remaining in the pool helped to save the day, for the fire fighters dipped rugs and sacks in it, and, climbing to the flat roof, took turns in dashing through the scorching heat to beat the cornices when they began to smoke. Even so, the escape was so narrow that at times it seemed hopeless, and the rescuers took the precaution to dig a hole in the garden and bury the silverware, the St. Gaudens plaque, and other valuables.
When the three days’ conflagration had finally worn itself out and the tired and smoke-begrimed fighters could take account, they found the house and its contents safe, except for a h
uge hole in the roof where the earthquake had thrown down a large heavy chimney, piling up the bricks on the bed in the guest-chamber, fortunately not occupied at the time. But the outlook was ghastly, for the house stood high on its clean-swept hill like a lonely outpost in a great waste of cinders, half-fallen chimneys, and sagging walls. In two weeks’ time, while they still smoked, the ruins took on a strangely old look, and it was like standing in the midst of the excavations of an ancient city. Around the solitary house on the hill the wind howled, making a mournful moaning sound through the broken network of wires that hung everywhere in the streets.
Homeless refugees, running through the streets like wild creatures driven before a prairie fire, came pouring past, and some stopped to build their lean-to shacks of pieces of board and sacking against the sheltering wall of the house. Blankets and other things were passed out to keep them warm, and when they finally went their way the blankets went with them, but Mrs. Stevenson was glad that they should have them and said she would have done the same had she been in their case.
All this while her son and daughter — the son in New York and the daughter in Italy — were in a state of anguished suspense as to their mother’s fate. By a strange coincidence the daughter had herself been in some danger from the great eruption of Vesuvius, and had but just escaped from that when she heard newsboys crying in the streets of Rome, “San Francisco tutta distrutta!” Several days passed in intense anxiety before she received the telegram with the blessed words “Mother safe!”
As it was quite impossible to live in the destroyed city until some sort of order should be established, even water being unprocurable on the Hyde Street hill, Mrs. Stevenson decided to take refuge for the time at Vanumanutagi Ranch near Gilroy. Even there she found a sorry confusion, for the house chimneys were all wrecked and the stone wall around the enclosure had been thrown down and scattered. There was plenty of good water, however, and the possibility of getting provisions and living after a fashion, so she settled down to stay there until conditions should improve in the city. It was an eerie place to stay in, too, for that section lies close to the main earthquake fault, and the quivering earth was a long time settling down from its great upheaval. For as long as a year afterwards small quakes came at frequent intervals, and in the stillness of the night strange roaring sounds, like the approach of a railroad train, and sudden exploding noises, like distant cannon shot, came to add their terrors to the creaking and swaying of the little wooden house.
After some months Mrs. Stevenson went to San Francisco, but she found the discomfort still so great and the sight of the ruined city so depressing that she finally yielded to the persuasions of her son and Mr. Field to accompany them on a trip to Europe. They sailed from New York in November, 1906, on the French steamer La Provence.
After a stay of only three or four days in Paris, they took the train for the south — an all-day trip. As Mrs. Stevenson had always thought she would love Avignon, though she had never been there, it was decided to go there first. In their compartment on the train there was a French bishop, a Monseigneur Charmiton, and his sister, with whom they soon fell into conversation. The bishop and his sister seemed appalled at the idea of anyone wanting to spend a winter in Avignon. “By no means go there,” they said, “but come down where we live. It is beautiful there.” The good people had a villa, it seemed, half-way between Nice and Monte Carlo. But Mrs. Stevenson wanted to decide upon Avignon for herself, so they went on, and found it a most picturesque place, but soon discovered the truth of the old saw, “Windy Avignon, liable to plague when it has not the wind, and plagued with the wind when it has it.” This wind swept strong and cold down the Valley of the Rhone, making it so bleak and forbidding that they were forced to cut their visit short.
They left next day for Marseilles, where they found, much to their delight, not only their motor-car, which had been shipped from New York, but Monseigneur Charmiton and his sister, who were on the point of leaving for their villa at Cap Ferrat. “And how did you like Avignon?” were their first words. Although too polite to say “I told you so,” they now insisted the Riviera be given a fair trial. So, chance and friendly counsel prevailing, the Stevenson party motored east through lovely Provence, passing swiftly through Hyères of haunting memory, and on to Cannes, where they stopped the night; and so to an hotel in Beaulieu, where Monseigneur’s sister had engaged rooms for them till a villa was found to their liking. And soon a charming one at St. Jean-sur-Mer, a little village near Beaulieu, was taken for the season.
The Villa Mes Rochers stood in a walled garden, which sloped gently to a terrace on the edge of the sea — a place for tea in the afternoons when the mistral was not blowing. Here they settled down for the winter.
It was a pleasant, easy life. There were friends in Nice and Monte Carlo; there was the daily motor ride; there were books to read, letters to write, and recipes to be learned from the French and set down in the famous cook book without which Mrs. Stevenson never travelled. Here they lingered till April, and then set out in their motor for London.
Their route again lay through Provence. They stopped at Arles, famous alike for its beautiful women and its sausages. The beautiful women were absent that day, but a sausage appeared at table and was pronounced worthy of its niche in the sausage Hall of Fame. Further along, in the Cevennes, they were enchanted with Le Puy, and the lovely, lovely country where Louis had made his memorable journey with Modestine. And so they went on north, by Channel steamer to Folkstone, up through Kent, and into London by the Old Kent Road; then to lodgings in Chelsea, where old friends called and old ties were renewed.
After a month in London a house was taken in Chiddingfold, Surrey, to be near “the dear Favershams,” as Mrs. Stevenson always called them. Mr. and Mrs. William Faversham, whom Mrs. Stevenson held in great affection, owned The Old Manor in Chiddingfold, and they had found a place for her near them — Fairfield, a charming old house in an old-world garden, and, best of all, not five minutes’ walk from The Old Manor.
Life at Fairfield, except for constant rain, was delightful. Graham Balfour, the well-beloved, came for a visit; Austin Strong and his wife ran down from London; many an afternoon was spent at Sir James Barrie’s place near Farnham. Sir James loved Mrs. Stevenson — a dear, shy man who had so little to say to so many, so much to say to her. Then there were the Williamsons (of Lightning Conductor fame), whom she had met in Monte Carlo; they also had a house in Surrey. And there were Sir Arthur and Lady Pinero, who lived only a mile or two from Fairfield. Mrs. Stevenson considered the genial, witty, gently cynical Sir Arthur one of the most interesting men she had ever met. Lady Pinero always called her husband “Pin,” and Sir Arthur was enchanted when, after looking at him with smiling eyes, Mrs. Stevenson one day turned to Lady Pinero and remarked, “I’ve always doubted that old saying, ‘It is a sin to steal a Pin,’ but now I understand it perfectly.”
Katherine de Mattos, Stevenson’s cousin, also honoured Fairfield with a visit, and Coggie Ferrier, sister of Stevenson’s boyhood friend, and the woman perhaps above all others in England whom Mrs. Stevenson loved best, came frequently. And always there were the Favershams, who were very dear to her heart. It was a memorable summer, full of pleasant companionship — and rain. Towards the middle of August, on account of the never-ceasing rain, it was finally decided to abandon Fairfield and return to France for a long motor trip.
The first night out from Chiddingfold was spent at Tunbridge Wells, and next day a stop was made at Rye to call on Henry James. Never did travellers receive a more hearty or gracious welcome. It is a quaint, lost place, Rye — one of the old Cinque Ports; to enter it one passes under an ancient Roman arch; the nearest railroad is miles away. It is nice to think that after giving him a cup of tea in her drawing-room in San Francisco two years before, Mrs. Stevenson could see the house he lived in, admire his garden, drink tea in his drawing-room, and talk long and pleasantly with this old and valued friend she was never to see again.
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nbsp; The second motor trip in France was an unqualified success. Keeping to the west and avoiding Paris, this time their route lay through Blois, Tours, Angoulême, Libourne, Biarritz, till, finally, several miles from Pau, they had a panne, as they say in France, and their motor, which had behaved remarkably well until that moment, entered Pau ignominiously at the end of a long tow-rope. As it took ten days to make the repairs necessary, they used the interval of waiting to go by train to Lourdes. It was the particular time when pilgrims go to seek the healing waters of the miraculous fountain, and they saw many sad and depressing sights — for the lame, the halt, the blind, people afflicted with every sort of disease, and some even in the last agonies, crowded the paths in a pitiful procession. Mrs. Stevenson afterwards said that when she saw the blind come away from the sacred fount with apparently seeing eyes, and the lame throw away their crutches and walk, she was, as King Agrippa said unto Paul, “almost persuaded” to believe.
Gladly putting this picture behind them, they went on to Bagnères-de-Bigorre, a little village nestling at the base of the Pyrenees. The weather there was perfect, and the whole atmosphere of the place so sweetly simple and unsophisticated that Mrs. Stevenson loved it best of all. After six pleasant days spent there, the motor now mended, they returned by train to Pau and resumed their trip — due east to Carcassonne, that lovely, lovely city, with its mediæval ramparts and towers, and then on to Cette on the Mediterranean, where they landed in a storm.
Complete Works of Robert Louis Stevenson (Illustrated) Page 881