^ ^'^ '^^V 1 ' ' « s <^ x^^^. •^oo^ ^^^ ^^ ,Vv,.. ^ ,<,o- V <. •'^^ 3 N ^^ c5> i- ,. ., n ^ i,/\*>! A'^^ "^-^■ ■\^^ '^ K^^. ^^ V ^. * .0 s .^^ ^.. k^ £•' ' '^e- -? -fi xO^. v^^ O^x. .0^ \' ./> x' ^^^ .0<:i<. ■^oo^ v^^ V ^^. ,,< 5> -^c^. aV ^^ %.# ?:^ -''>■. ^^ x^ ^^ -^^ ^-^ x^^ ^o^ ^^*. ^^^ ROBERT LOT lb i PROSE WRITINGS EDITED BY THE BIBLIOPHILE SOCIETY ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON From bas-relief by St. Gaudens. made durmg Lvenson-s il.ne... Said .o be a he,.er 1, enes, of the author than any of his po■.,■..^^, a .A^' ^■% \ Copyright. 1921. by THE BIBLIOPHILE SOCIETY ALL RIGHTS RESERVED RUG 11 '2 ©n!.A6i7915 THE STEVENSON MANUSCRIPTS At the time when the great mass of manu- scripts, books, and other personal belongings of Robert Louis Stevenson were dispersed through a New York auction room in Novem- ber 1914, and January 1915, the whole of civilization was being shaken to its very foun- dations, and the exigencies of the times were such that people were concerned with more important matters than the acquisition of manuscripts and relics. Therefore the sale, which in ordinary times would have attracted widespread attention among editors, critics, publishers and collectors, went comparatively unnoticed amid the general clamor and ap- prehension of the time. There was, however, one vigilant Stevenson collector, in the person of Mr. Francis S. Peabody, who bought a large part of the unpublished manuscripts at the sale, and has since acquired most of [ i ] the remainder which went chiefly to various dealers. Mr. Peabody has generously offered to share the enjoyment of his Stevenson treas- ures with his fellow bibliophiles, and we are indebted to him for the privilege of issuing the first printed edition of many precious items, without which no collection of Steven- soniana can ever be regarded as being com- plete. It will be remembered that the last years of Stevenson's life were spent at Samoa, which became the only permanent home of his married life, where he kept his great col- lection of manuscripts and note books, the accumulation of his twenty-odd years of work; and where, being far removed from the centers of civilization, he came very little in contact with editors or publishers who, dur- ing his lifetime or subsequently, would have been interested in ransacking his chests for new material. When his personal effects were finally packed up and shipped to the United States they were sent to the auction room and disposed of for ready cash, and thereafter it became impossible for publishers to acquire either the possession or the publication rights [ ii ] of the manuscript without great expense and inconvenience. From events that have transpired since the publication in 1916 of the two-volume Bib- liophile edition of Stevenson's unpublished poems, we are led to believe that the literary importance of the manuscripts was not appre- ciated by the Stevenson heirs. It is neither necesssary nor advisable to comment or specu- late further upon the circumstances which led to the sale of the manuscripts before being published ; whatever they may have been, they are of far less importance to the public than the established fact that the manuscripts were dispersed before being transcribed or pub- lished, and the further fact that they ulti- mately came into the possession of an owner who now permits them to be printed. If it be regrettable that the distribution of the present edition, in which there is des- tined to be a world-wide interest, is confined to the relatively limited membership of a book club, the circumstances are made inevitable by certain fundamental rules, without which no cohesive body of booklovers can long exist. And these restrictive measures are not in- [ iii ] spired by selfish motives, but purely as a matter of necessity in preserving the organ- ization. Some of the manuscripts printed in the four separate volumes now issued were not avail- able at the time when the two-volume edition was brought out by The Bibliophile Society in 1916, and it was thought best to defer their publication until such time as we could bring together the major part of the remaining in- edited material, which we believe has now been accomplished. The notes in this volume signed G. S. H. are by Mr. George S. Hellman. The remainder are by the editor. H. H. H. [ iv ] ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON There is probably not a more universally interesting figure among recent men of letters than Robert Louis Stevenson. It is certain that no classic writer of modern times has made a more direct appeal to the hearts of his readers. He was a logical thinker, an alert, wide-range observer, an extensive traveler, a sympathetic, warm-hearted friend of human- ity, a genial host, a thorough master of English composition, and a prodigious worker. [7] He wrote poetry, novels, short stories, technical and ethical essays, dramas, fables, prayers, ser- mons, tales of adventure, literary criticism, history and biography; and he was withal one of the most entertaining and self-revealing let- ter-writers of the nineteenth century. And if in any or all of these branches of literature he failed to attain the greatest heights he at least wrote with exceptional vividness and compre- hension. Indeed his collected works cover such a wide range of subject-matter that they constitute a veritable librar>^ in themselves, suited equally to man, woman or child, of whatever creed, nationality or station in life. Little wonder that within a few years from the time when he passed quietly away in his Samoan retreat his name became a household word wherever the English Imguage is known. For more than twenty years it has been one of the foremost ambitions of college freshmen to acquire a set of ^^Stevenson," and in thousands of dormitories throughout the land his works are to be found '•eposing in a little bookcase conveniently near the reading lamp. It is safe to say that in th' . way Steven- son's writings have formed the nucleus of [8] more private libraries than have the works of any other writer of modern times. Stevenson, although of spare physique, — and an invalid nearly all his days, from early childhood, — was widely famed for his mag- netic personality, with which he at once cap- tivated nearly everyone with whom he came in contact; and his wide and ever increasing circle of admirers is in large measure due to his remarkable faculty for transmitting his engaging personality to the reader through the medium of his writings. To be endowed with a nature of such singular charm and forceful- ness, in combination with a marked aptitude for instilling it into his works, as if the very blood from his veins flowed in the ink from his pen, is an attribute with which but few writers arc gifted; yet Stevenson possessed this in such an eminent degree that his readers come to know and esteem the man no less than they do hi^ works, — not because of any in- spired sympathy for his emaciated physical condition, t it because of his mental vigor, his cheerfulness, and his undauntable heroism in battling wit.i life's adversities. His body and mind were continually racked [ 9] and torn by hemorrhages, prolonged fits of coughing, internal congestions, fever, chills and ague, indigestion, influenza, insomnia, nightmares and other attendant and constantly recurrent ills, and work begun during short intermissions of convalescence or temporarily restored health was oftentimes broken oflF abruptly by another long period of physical prostration. With some one, or more, of these ailments almost constantly besetting him it is not to be wondered at, that at the age of thirty- seven he wrote that ^'old age with his stealing steps seems to have clawed me in his clutch to some tune," and that he considered himself an old man at forty. Literally dozens of times he had hung over the brink of the great abysmal beyond, with only a wavering spark of vitality connecting his soul with his bodily form. But each successive time when he struggled back he again took up his burdens and pushed cheerily on, determined to discharge his obli- gations to his Maker and to mankind. Once he wrote to a friend, — ''The good lady, the dear, kind lady, the sweet, excellent lady, Nemesis, whom alone I adore, has fixed her wooden eye upon me." And again, later in [lO] life, shortly before his death, he wrote to an- other : ^Tor fourteen years I have not had a day^s real health; I have wakened sick and gone to bed weary; and I have done my work un- flinchingly. I have written in bed, and writ- ten out of it, written in hemorrhages, written in sickness, written torn by coughing, written when my head swam for weakness ; and for so long, it seems to me I have won my wager and recovered my glove." And yet courage, hope and manly vigor form the keynote of all his writings. How, under such a constant handicap, he managed to keep up his spirits and turn out the tre- mendous amount of work that stands to his credit is a marvel that baffles human compre- hension. A whole volume might be written about his patient and uncomplaining physical martyrdom, but to prolong narrations of mis- ery and misfortune was not Stevenson's idea of entertaining his readers; it is neither con- ducive to anyone's comfort, nor consonant with the purpose of the present article. Stevenson's steadfast hope was expressed in [II] the following lines written in 1872, and never before published: Tho' day by day old hopes depart, Yet other hopes arise If still we bear the hopeful heart And forward-looking eyes. And still, flush-faced, new goals I see. New finger-posts I find. And still through rain and wind A troop of shouting hopes keep step with me. If any one quality of Stevenson's mind tran- scended all others, it was his innate tenderness and his constant thoughtfulness for the unfor- tunate. He did not parade his charitable instincts before the public, nor did he go out hunting for misery^ w^ith fife and drum ; but his eye and his mind were ever alert, and through the agency of his quiet, unobtrusive methods a vast number of afflicted souls have felt the tender hand of charity^ and mercy extended to them, as it were, from out the dark. A single incident that occurred during his student days will illustrate far better than w^ords. On a hot July day while he was strolling through the park, he came upon a poor ragged urchin [12] lying on the grass, perhaps asleep. The for- lorn appearance of the lad arrested his atten- tion, and set his mind to speculating on what he could do for him. He thought over the things that had given him the greatest joy in his boyhood, and it instantly recurred to him that scarcely anything had ever exceeded the pleasure he had experienced on finding a coin in the pocket of some old cast-off garment, or in some remote place where he had long ago hidden it with a view to surprising himself when he should come upon it unexpectedly. So stealthily approaching the boy he slipped a coin into one of his pockets, then stole quietly away, chuckling to himself over the surprise and delight that were in store for the little fellow. If it w^as excessively hot, his heart went out to those who sw^eltered in the close, stuffy quarters in the smoky, densely populated cities; if it was excessively cold he pitied those who shivered in unheated hovels, — without fuel, bread or warm clothing. We can imag- ine that it was on a bitter cold night (in 1872) that he wrote — [13] And first on Thee I call For bread, O God of might I Enough of bread for all, — That through the famished town Cold hunger may lie down With none tonight. One might go on indefinitely with similar examples. As to the biographies of Stevenson, it may be said that those who have read his writings, especially the published letters and poems, have but little need for any further biograph- ical data, for his life has been pretty clearly written into his works — especially his letters and poems, — so much so that his best biog- raphy is made up largely of extracts from his own pen. In the extant biographies his genius, his virtues, his wanderings in quest of health, his individualism, and particularly his ancestry, have all been set forth with painstak- ing perspicuity; but after reading what has been written about him we somehow feel as if we had been introduced to ^^little Bobby" all dressed for Sunday school, when we should have preferred to play with him in his more easy-fitting every-day-garments. If Stevenson [14] was anything, aside from being an accom- plished writer, he was human to the core; and perhaps we should admire him none the less for knowing that he shared with the rest of us some of the normal imperfections that gener- ally characterize human nature. We do not like to look upon those we love as being set apart from us, wholly destitute of human frailties, — as if they were in a state of pre- paredness for being wafted into the next world ; but rather would we have them share with us the qualities that unite us on a common plane. It is sufficient to say that so far as we can learn from those who knew and loved Stevenson best, he was never, in his early life at least, ostracized by his friends for his spot- less and unworldly purity. From the smoothness and spontaneity of Stevenson's style one may be led to suppose that his works fell from his pen with unla- bored ease; but this is far from being true. On the contrary, he had great difficulty in pre- paring his manuscripts, which he often revised and rewrote half a dozen times or more. The art of writing is not born full-grown, any more than a man is born into the world with his [15] mental faculties and physical strength fully developed; nor is it a transmissible gift of any god or goddess. No one, however gifted, ever learned to play the piano, or dance, or skate, or swim, or play cards, or even to make love, without actual practice. Stevenson, like every other successful artisan, first learned the rudi- mentary principles of his art, then practiced incessantly. Even as late as 1893, the year previous to his death, he wrote to a friend: "I sit here and smoke and write, and rewrite and destroy, and rage at my own impotence, from six in the morning till eight at night, with trifling, and not always agreeable, inter- vals for meals. "Be it known to this fluent generation that I, R. L. S., in the forty-third [year] of my age, and the twentieth of my professional life, wrote twenty-four pages in twenty-one days!" He was his own severest critic, and even in his latter years, when he had become widely rec- ognized as a master of his art, he continued his practice of revision, and was prone to find fault with nearly everything he wrote. One of his biographers called him a "natural born genius;" but those who are familiar with his [16] early work will doubtless agree that it would be more proper to say that he was born to become a genius. He was no more a born literary genius than a man is a born physician, or a born lawyer, or a born football player. He was born with a good brain, which he developed and used to good advantage, as a workman uses his tools in his trade. He had an abundance of good common sense; he was industrious; he had an indomitable will; and, health permitting, he would have made a good lawyer, a good preacher or a good anything that he set his mind to, — anything in which physical strength was not an important requi- site. It is undoubtedly true that certain writers, notably of the poet class, have been gifted with an innate genius that became more or less apparent in their early writings, just as others have shown early adaptability in other callings; but Stevenson was not among those singularly inspired mortals whom genius pre- ordains as her own, and over whose destinies she presides with unfaltering vigilance and solicitude. That he had genius is not to be doubted ; but it was of the tender species that required cul- [17] tivation. It emerged from its embryonic state rather reluctantly, and it eventually came into full bloom only as the reward of hard work, of fixed determination, of inexhaustible patience, and singleness of purpose. To call a man a natural born literary genius is to pay him a dubious compliment — as if great works, de- spite a total lack of endeavor, flowed from his pen with the same natural ease that water flows over a dam. We do not compliment a man by saying that he was "born rich;" but rather, that he is a "self-made" man; or if he has inherited wealth, that he uses it to benefit his friends, or perhaps humanity at large. Stevenson was not conspicuously preco- cious, and even after long years of practice and assiduous study he still found it difficult to form his compositions either to his own liking or that of editors, publishers or readers. His early determination to become a writer, the resultant controversies with his parents, — who with native tenacity adhered to their own predilections, — his perennial battle against the Grim Reaper, whose spectral shadow always hovered about him wherever he went; his school and college days, his uncongenial [i8] studies in law and in civil engineering, all are matters with which every reader of his Letters or his Life is already familiar. An outstanding feature of Stevenson's char- acter is, that whatever he undertook to do he brooked no interference with his resolve, and suffered nothing to dissuade him from his determination to do it well. The three fond- est wishes of his life, according to his own statement, were: first, good health; secondly, a small competence; and thirdly, friends. Only the latter two were ever gratified. But in accomplishing the three paramount resolu- tions of his life he was more successful. He resolved: first, to become a writer; second, to marry the woman of his choice; and third, to compel the world to recognize his hard- earned literary genius. In the first instance he found himself rigor- ously opposed by the uncompromising will of his parents. To surmount this barrier he was obliged to employ considerable finesse; for, being penniless, he felt the need of their pecuniary aid. He therefore made a feigned compliance with their wishes by undertaking the study of their chosen profession, that of [19] civil engineering; but all the while he read and practiced industriously at his self-ap- pointed calling. At length he succeeded in persuading his parents into a compromise on the legal profession, he figuring perhaps that it afforded an excellent stepping-stone to his chosen vocation. By the time he was admitted to the bar he had advanced so far in his own favorite occupation that his parents, consider- ing the state of his health, and recognizing his budding genius, capitulated entirely and per- mitted him to become the master of his own destiny, pledging their continued financial support. No sooner had he successfully carried out his first resolution, than he came face to face with the obstacles of the second, — which was to marry an American woman — an art stu- dent — he had met while traveling in France, and with whom he had promptly fallen in love — without consulting his parents. It must be admitted that the impediments here were so manifold and apparently insurmountable that they most certainly would have dampened the ardour of a less determined suitor. The woman was married, and had tw^o children, of [20] whose father she was still the lawful wife; she was a foreigner (residing in California) and entirely unknown to his family or friends; the date of her prospective legal separation from her husband was remote and uncertain. For an invalid young man bent on literary pur- suits, with no assured income, to break with his family and undertake the support of a dowerless wife and two children, would, to the average rational mind, seem little short of sheer madness. But not so to the impulsive, romantic young writer; he had made up his mind to take the plunge, and not even the trip across the Atlantic and ^^on towards the west" to California (whither his wife-to-be had preceded him) could chill the warmth of his passion. The arguments and dissuasions of all his friends fell upon deaf ears, and after managing somehow to get together the neces- sary funds for passage he packed his bag and set out for America, without even exchanging the customary adieus with either family or friends. It requires no wide range of fancy to picture what the attitude of his parents would have been toward this adventure, had he pro- posed it to them (which he did not) ; but to [21] imagine their surprise and chagrin on discov- ering that he had gone would not be so easy. Ill-health pursued him, as usual, wherever he went, and on arriving in San Francisco he wrote the exquisite and touching lines first printed in the two-volume Bibliophile edition of 1916, beginning — It's forth across the roaring foam, and on towards the west, It's many a lonely league from home, o'er many a mountain crest, From where the dogs of Scotland call the sheep around the fold To where the flags are flying beside the Gates of Gold. It's there that I was sick and sad, alone and poor and cold, In yon distressful city beside the Gates of Gold. There are some who can draw upon their own experiences as a testimony to the cheer- lessness of being bedridden in a strange land, without friends or congenial companions; and perhaps with the aid of a little imagination we might visualize the added discomforts of be- ing "poor and cold.'' But to this array of [22] discouragements add Stevenson's dishearten- ing experience of being desperately in love with a married woman (who also was ill at that time), and we shall not be surprised to know that his hitherto unfailing nerve desert- ed him for a moment, when he wrote privately to a friend, — 'Tor four days I have spoken to no one but my landlady or landlord, or to restaurant waiters. This is not a gay way to pass Christmas, is it? And I must own the guts are a little knocked out of me. If I could work, I could worry through better."^ He afterwards accepted a job as a reporter on the Monterey Calif ornian at tw^o dollars a week! Mr. Balfour says that "His father, being im- perfectly informed as to his motives and plans, naturally took that dark view of his son's con- duct to which his temperament predisposed him." His parental devotion was, however, apparently unaltered, for on hearing of his 1 The first part of this letter was quoted by Balfour in his Life of Stevenson, but the last twenty-two words here were omitted, and in their stead he substituted the following, which, if it was not invented, must have been taken from some other source, for it docs not appear in the letter: "After weeks in this city I know only a few neighboring streets. I seem to be cured of all my adventurous whims, and even human curiosity." [23] son's illness he sent him money, — with the promise of an annual allowance, — though neither the welcome news nor the money reached him until after he had suffered the severest privations. In short, within nine months and some odd days from the time of leaving home he mar- ried the woman for whom he had exiled him- self from home and friends, and on the 7th of August, 1880, exactly one year from the date he sailed from England, he and his wife em- barked for home, where they found family and friends at the Liverpool dock, with eager, open arms to receive them. He had now triumphed in his second resolution, and the wisdom of his choice was exemplified in the ideal relationship that ensued benveen himself and his wife, who not only won her way instantly into the hearts of his family, but remained his constant and devoted helpmate and companion throughout the remainder of his life. But in successfully carrying out the first tw^o of his three great purposes in life Stevenson had still before him the all-important prob- lem, — how to earn a living competence (for [24] he could not expect his parents to support himself and his wife indefinitely) and still maintain the dignified position he aspired to in literature. The mere act of selecting a pro- fession is in itself no very difficult task; nor does it, as a rule, involve a heavy draft upon one's mental resources to fall in love and get married. But for a young author to win the favor of the publishers and the public is quite another and more difficult matter. Publishers are notoriously shy of aspiring young wait- ers — much more so than women are of young swains — and Stevenson soon discovered that the highway to success in literature was a lonely, sinuous path, uphill all the way, with no sign-boards to indicate the distance to the summit. At the time when he cut himself adrift from his parents and went to California, he had already been successful in getting a number of articles and essays into the magazines, and he doubtless supposed — if indeed he supposed at all while the raging love fever was upon him — that in America he could earn his own way with his pen ; but he soon discovered that the light from his flickering torch of fame [25] had not penetrated beyond the Atlantic, and the small foot-hold that he had secured at home as a magazine writer availed him noth- ing in this strange land. But far from being dism.ayed. he continued to write all the while, though he was only adding to his already ample store of unpublished, and unsalable, manuscripts. It would be interesting to know if in this period of obscurity he ever dreamed that inside of forty years a little scrap of his manuscript would find a ready market for a sum that would have kept him in comparative opulence for a whole year! Like the Prodigal Son, he was glad to return home and find his father's house (as also his purse) still open to him. It may, by way of passing comment, be ob- served that although the pursuit of literature as a pastime is supposed to be both honorable and pleasant, yet when adopted seriously as a bread-winning trade there are comparatively few vvho ever get beyond the stage of appren- ticeship. To gain any considerable success requires more talents, industry, persistence and time than most people can afford to invest in a profession, without other concurrent [26] means of support. Even the optimistic, hard- working Stevenson was supported by his father until he was thirty-three. Those who contemplate embarking in this uncertain craft would do well to read what Byron says on the subject, and to keep constantly in mind the old Biblical saying, to the effect that ''Many are called, but few are chosen." While Stevenson was at home living on his father's bounty during his student days, he probably looked upon his literary work merely as an essential part of his education, and although he stuck to it with bulldog pertinacity, it was more in the nature of a con- genial apprenticeship than an irksome task, such as he found his other studies to be. Be- fore he left on his initial trip to America his first book. An Inland Voyage^ was published, and he seems to have regarded it as a sort of joke that he should receive twenty pounds for it. In the back of the MS. notebook contain- ing the original account of the voyage — which he afterwards altered and extended — he wrote the following facetious lines, which for some reason appear never to have got into print until now: [27] Who would think, herein to look, That from these exiguous bounds, I have dug a printed book And a cheque for twenty pounds? Thus do those who trust the Lord Go rejoicing on their way And receive a great reward For having been so kind as play. Yes, I wrote the book; I own the fact; It was perhaps, sir, an unworthy act. Have you perused It, sir? — You have — indeed! Then between you and me there no debate is. I did a silly act, but I was fee'd; You did a sillier, and you did it gratis I Apparently the public also considered it a joke, for no one took it seriously (save the pub- lisher v^ho paid twenty pounds for it), and nobody in particular paid any attention to it, except that two or three sneering critics deigned to notice it. The Travels with a Donkey appeared the following year, and although a better book, it met with the same indifferent reception; its title was paraphrased by some unfeeling wag as the ^'Travels of a Donkey!" Treasure Island (in its original [28] draft), which first appeared in serial form in 1881, was perhaps more widely read, hence more widely scofiPed at. Mr. Balfour says that "it ran an obscure career in the pages of a magazine, and was openly mocked at by more than one indignant reader." This contuma- cious attitude of the public must have shaken Stevenson's faith, temporarily at least, in his ability ever to win popular favor. Once he wrote, — "At times I get terribly frightened about my work, which seems to advance too slowly." But the louder the critics railed at him the harder he worked, and the more stub- born became his determination to succeed, — not alone for the fame and emoluments that success would bring, but that he might prove to his parents that he had chosen wisely in his profession. Then, too, he may have felt a trifle piqued, that at the age of thirty-one he and his wife were still dependent upon his father, who continued to provide as liberally for them as his means would allow. Steven- son's position may be compared to that of a soldier storming the enemy's heights; if he reaches the summit, glory awaits him; if he turns back, dishonor awaits him. Having [29] entered the fray, there is no alternative but to fight it through, no matter how thick the mis- siles may fly. And so it was with Stevenson. The lives of soldiers and writers are analogous in at least one other respect, in that their fame usually begins where life leaves off. While Stevenson was struggling for recog- nition in the world of letters he wrote and rewrote, again and again, literally thousands of pages of manuscript, all under the most trying conditions, w^ith but small hope that his work would ever be printed. And it is worthy of remark that during that period he wrote much, especially in verse, that he never sur- passed in his maturer years. His manuscript of "Some Portraits by Raeburn," was thrice rejected, — by the Cornhill, the Pall Mall Gazette^ and by Blackwood's, Yet he went on rewriting, revising, and writing more. It must require a stout heart and a large measure of self-confidence to continue thus to labor over the rejected children of one's brain with the vague hope of improving their dis- torted forms. And in the performance of this melancholy task a man must often wonder if, after all, he has not missed his calling, — if he [30] had not better been a "ditcher/' as Byron said. In most professions or avocations a well- poised man is usually competent to set a fairly accurate estimate upon his talent, genius or adaptability; he may avow that he is a great financier because, having begun with nothing, he has amassed a fortune; or a great physician because he has effected miraculous cures; or a great philanthropist because he has erected hospitals and given away vast sums of money to worthy charities ; but who shall say, or even honestly feel, that he is a great writer, or a great painter, or a great actor, when his work is unequivocally damned by the verdict of the public! A certain measure of modesty being one of the usual concomitants of greatness, it is not to be doubted that the tardiness of the public in recognizing genius has driven many a talented and unrewarded craftsman to his grave with a sadly underestimated value of his life work. In the instance of Burns, Byron, Shelley, Keats and Poe, and many others, we find striking examples of this truth. While all of those named had greater confidence in the merit of their work than the contemporary critics and the public had yet manifested, they [31] could scarcely have been so sanguine as to have rated it at its present estimated worth. Even Byron, who after having been made a popular idol was practically driven into exile, could hardly have dreamed what a great poet he was to become in the estimation of those who so roundly abused both him and his work. Stevenson was more fortunate than most of his fellow-bards, in having lived to reap a rel- atively larger part of his own sowing; but in literature, alas, the ripened grain is too often harvested by hands that had no part in the planting. In 1883, at the age of thirty-three, Steven- son's long and vigorous pounding at the doors of the goddess of Fame began to attract that reluctant lady's attention and caused her to bestir herself and open the door of her ex- clusive sanctuary wide enough to give him an initial peep within. In that year his revised manuscript of Treasure Island was accepted by Cassell & Co., and he nearly went wild with delight. In his characteristic boyish enthusiasm — he was always more or less of a boy — he wrote home to his folks, — ^'There has been offered for Treasure Island — what [32] do you suppose? I believe it would be an excellent jest to keep the answer till my next letter. For two cents I would do so. Shall I? Anyway, I'll turn the page first. No — well — a hundred pounds, all alive, O! A hundred jingling, tingling, golden, minted quid! Is not this wonderful?" And, what was far more gratifying, the book when published had a wild-fire success. In a short time everybody was reading it, talk- ing about it, and praising its author. It was hailed as the best book that had appeared since Robinson Crusoe, In the same year the Cen- tury Magazine took notice of him, and Editor Gilder accepted his Silverado Squatters at a good figure. He also printed a flattering notice about the brilliant young author. At last Stevenson had gained the coveted foothold in America, which, added to his other suc- cesses of the year — netting him nearly four hundred pounds — almost prostrated him with joy. In January of the next year he wrote to his mother, — 'When I think of how last year began, after four months of sickness and idle- ness, — all my plans gone to water, myself starting alone, a kind of spectre, for Nice — [33] should I not be grateful? Come, let us sing unto the Lord!" The next three years marked a series of noteworthy successes, including A Child's Garden of Verses, Kidnapped^ and the Strange Case of Dr. Jekyl and Mr. Hyde; and their author, on his second visit to Amer- ica in 1887, was received with wide acclaim. The unheralded and unknown lovelorn immi- grant of eight years before had, as if by the intervention of magic, become the popular literary hero of the day, and from this time on editors and publishers besieged him with ap- peals for stories, essays, books or anything he had a mind to send them. One magazine paid him $3500 for twelve articles, another offered him $8000 for the serial rights of his next story, and a leading New York paper offered him $10,000 to write an article once a week for a year. He was so overcome by this sudden outburst of munificence that he com- plained to one of the editors, saying that he was being demoralized by the fabulous prices paid him in America; that he didn't want such sums — all he wanted was a moderate competency. Henceforward his fame rose [34] steadily, nor did it ever suffer the slightest diminution. And it is worthy of note that with his increasing popularity he felt a corre- spondingly augmented responsibility, which prompted him to become more and more self- exacting in the quality of his work. It is doubtful if any man ever bore his literary honors with more becoming modesty, or with a keener sense of gratitude and personal obli- gation toward those who bestowed them. He never permitted his standards to trail in the dust of commonplaceness, he never wrote him- self out, he never bartered on his reputation, and he never exalted himself above his strug- gling fellow-craftsmen. His contribution to the world was large; he wrote good wholesome, entertaining stories and essays, and his poems — many of which are in the nature of personal documents — are resonant with human feeling. In his own life, moreover, he furnished a conspicuous example of perseverance, hopefulness and manly forti- tude, worthy of study and emulation, for both young and old. He gave to the world the best fruits of his well tilled vineyard, for which he took far less in exchange; and he left to man- [35] kind a useful heritage that will outlive all the contemporary monuments in Christendom. With mournful dirge or sad refrains No page he e'er inscribed; His choicest wine the world retains, While he the dregs imbibed. Though tossed and torn by many a gale, Though scarred by many a reef, His fragile bark, with unfurled sail, Returned unto its Chief. Henry H. Harper [36] AN INLAND VOYAGE In Stevenson's earliest draft of An Inland Voyage (the first of his MSS. to appear in book form) the first five consecutive pages of the manuscript were omitted in the printed editions. Whether these initial pages (the first of which appears herein in facsimile) were included in his final draft, and struck out by publishers, or accidentally omitted by the printer, or whether they were left out by the author himself, it is impossible to say; but the reader is now given the opportunity of judging for himself as to whether or not the opening chapter did not suffer a more or less serious impairment by the excision. In addi- tion there are in the original MS. two little autobiographical touches that were excluded, — by whom, or for what reason, is left for the reader to conjecture. In his enthusiasm the youthful writer seems to have desired to give an honest account of all that occurred, but it may be that on more calm deliberation he de- cided to omit the parts relating to his embar- rassment in the men's dressing room, and later his boyish obstinacy in stoutly refusing to show his passport, because he was an English [37] subject; which fact alone he regarded as a suf- ficient mark of identification. Or it may be that the publisher, not being gifted with ade- quate prophetic endowments, was unable to foresee his young author's future importance, and therefore eliminated the two intimate passages on the ground that they would neither instruct nor amuse contemporary read- ers. In the study of a popular author and his works, the public is entitled to all the existent facts, and however much or however little these suppressed passages may be worth as lit- erature they are assuredly interesting as a sidelight upon Stevenson's first printed book. Their apparent amateurishness becomes a fea- ture of additional interest when we consider the heights to which the author of An Inland Voyage afterwards attained as a master of rhetoric. At the end of the five pages of unpublished matter in the MS. note book there appears a little pen and ink sketch, of which the accom- panying is a photographic reproduction. The grassy banks, the water, the boats and the lighthouse are all understandable; but what the author had in mind when he drew the ob- [38] I ^ n '^ \^i y^' 'KyVxAj v^vvJL()l^ WfcvJ\ f-^sN^^ Ivc^e^^ twK /J ... • u WU-^ 5 -'^cL ^^ '\vvv- £^|,\Gvtf^W^^ '^7^1^ tee >aX,^vAjr ijfAtui loTc^C? nVh Cw^^^ Vtvw-<— Wlv(0^<^ tv-v A^ctCvw ject farther up on the page — unless it was the Rajah's diamond — is left for the reader to determine for himself. On the last page of the note book Stevenson wrote the following lines, which do not ap- pear ever to have been printed, though the quatrain shown in the center of the facsimile page has been somewhere put in type: — Who would think, herein to look, That from these exiguous bounds, I have dug a printed book And a cheque for twenty pounds ? Thus do those who trust the Lord Go rejoicing on their way And receive a great reward For having been so kind as play. Yes, sir, I wrote the book; I own the fact; It was perhaps, sir, an unworthy act. Have you perused it, sir? — You have? — indeed! Then between you and me there no debate is. I did a silly act, but I was fee'd; You did a sillier, and you did it gratis ! [39] AN INLAND VOYAGE The two canoes had been baking all day long upon a stack of cotton bales, in a fine warping summer sun. It was about a quarter past one when I (the crew of the Arethusa) stole out of the Hawk with my waterproof bag on my shoulder and set myself to mount the stack. A Flemish custom officer with a long spike in his hand to assure himself there were no articles of contraband in cotton bales, and (as one thought grislily) in human stom- achs, and with as much French as was neces- sary for his own vainglory, but not for the in- struction of his neighbors, laid hold upon me and insisted on examining my bag. As it had been examined already in one of the outer un- known hours which precede eight o'clock and the dawn of civilized existence, I was dissatis- fied, and expressed my dissatisfaction so roundly that he made a feint of examination and retired into the second plane in a flourish of official cap. So soon as I was up on the top of the bale, I began to form an object in the burnt-up emp- ty quay. Several Flemish loungers came below and daintily handled the prow of the [40] V i Caa.-oAaTvaa. \,i-^vviL^ ^^pX^y^ UaA^AAv (X U'^^A A^w/He ''^ ^^^^-^ W».A/%OV '>7W5 JLa-Lc,^ \ Us (aaa^^^v-^^*-^ /VvA/Vv< ^ tV-v^cA^ \ \i^i*^Ow (a-0 Mk/o ^t~i2_6e4/d<.«.<^ i^u/*^ t^ (;?/4A'^ %7C4«L«^ «l»-t^^ ' Arethusa, which somewhat projected beyond the stack; while the mate of the Hawk and four or five seamen sate them down beside me and watched my movements with ironical gravity. Sometimes they spoke to each other in tones which it would have been impolite to overhear. Sometimes one of the more youth- ful Flemings would displace something I had already arranged, by way of lending a hand. It was the business of the crew of the Arethusa to pretend complete unconsciousness of his surroundings; the least encouragement to the youthful Flemings would be fatal; the most humiliating advances would not move the men from the Hawk to cordiality; in the midst of all these curious eyes and pointing and meddling fingers, on the top of a stack of cot- ton bales in Antwerp Docks, the crew of the Arethusa must conduct himself after the pat- tern of a solitary Hermit in the Thebaid. Hereupon arrived the crew of the Ciga- rette. He looked hot and vexed; he found the crew of the Arethusa up beside the bubbling varnish, looking hot and vexed. However, he brought good news. He had made the ac- [41] quaintancc of one who called himself a steve- dore. ''What is a Stevedore?'- asked the Arethusa. ''Head of a gang of porters, fellow;' ans- wered the Cigarette. ^'What's the derivation?'' *'0 don't bother!" answered the Cigarette, looking hotter, and then he went on. The stevedore had agreed to take the tw^o canoes down to the slip, which alas! was a good dis- tance hence; nay, here the stevedore was with a proper following. And the canoes are al- ready shouldered and the teams beginning to step out, when the customhouse officer with the spike, steps in as a Diabolus ex Machina, and orders all these proceedings to cease. "Nothing can leave the dock before two o'clock,-' he explains, and adds, with malice, that we seem very ill-informed, and that we shall certainly find we have ten or twelve per cent, to pay upon the value. Thereupon, hav- ing done his worst, the customhouse officer once more retires into the immediate distance where he prowls watchfully, steel spike in hand. I suspect the two crews, as they sat on a semi-molten tarpaulin waiting two o'clock, [42] discussed the value of their gallant ships. One of them had never been in the water be- fore, it w^as true, and was not yet paid for: — // etait un petit navire Qui n avait ja-ja — jamais navigue; and the other was not entirely venerable; but the smallest circumstance, the least adventure, such as this voyage on the Hawk just happily accomplished — nay, and even the change of hands — diminishes the values of such fragile articles so disproportionately, that half-price would be an absurdly honest return. Pardon these old tars, if you please; they were not much sophisticated; the niceties of naval ques- tions were not clear to their blunt honesty; and the gauger with the spike lurked always in the middle distance. At two o'clock, the crew of the Cigarette went in a deputation to the Custom House. Here, by his own account, he sustained a legal reputation, already of some standing, against all the Custom House Intelligence of Ant- werp. He explained it was no more just to charge for a canoe than for a portmanteau, an umbrella, or a hat; and having thus reduced the official proposition ad absurdum, he stood [43] and perspired defiantly, wnile they consulted together behind their pen and sought new arguments for extortion. Finally, he was sent before a person of more standing, who was a gentleman, and quietly pooh-poohed the whole affair. [At this point the published text of the Voyage begins.] [At page twenty-three of the MS. where Stevenson relates that he and his companion were enjoying the hospitality of the Royal Sport Nautique, he says, in an unprinted pas- sage :— ] We were led up stairs to a lavatory, water and soap were set before us, many hands help- ed to undo our bags. The Arethusa is not built like a rowing man, and it was with con- siderable delicacy and a sense of natural hu- miliation, that he stripped under the gaze of all these Belgian oarsmen. He thought he could detect a distinct lessening of interest after he had disclosed himself; and waited with impatience for the moment when the de- liberate Cigarette should retrieve the honour of Britain by displaying his biceps and vermi- forms. [44] [In Chapter IV of the MS. note book where Stevenson, assuming the character of "Arethusa," laments his luckless fate, he says that '4f he goes without his passport he is cast into noisome dungeons; if his papers are in order he is suffered to go his way, humiliat- ed by a general incredulity. He is a born British subject, yet he has never succeeded in persuading a single official of his national- ity. He flatters himself he is indifferent hon- est, yet he is rarely taken for anything better than a spy; and there is no absurd and disre- spectable means of livelihood that has not been attributed to him in some flash of official or popular suspicion." After this the follow- ing episode was omitted in the printed text:—] On the present occasion, his usual fortune followed him; and when the Cigarette, who followed as usual a little behind, arrived on the scene of action, he found his companion, put aside behind the barrier, with a spot of dirty white on each cheek bone, indicating the highest transport of unchristian feeling, [45] and protesting in strained and trembling tones that he would not exhibit his papers. ^'But, man, show them and be done with it," said the Cigarette quietly, 'Tou know they like playing at being officers and that kind of thing, but humour them." "I'll be damned if I do," answered the Arethusa. "What's the good of treaties? You have no Union Jackery about you; and mind you, it's a most fundamental part of my character — the Union Jack and ^one English- man worth a dozen French fellows,' and all that." Reason prevailed, and the Arethusa handed over his passport with a ^^Voila Monsieur, mais remarquez bien, je protest eT' The officer who was a very good looking chap, I must admit, was reduced by this protest to a con- dition nearly as abject as that of his adver- sary, and during the rest of the time they exchanged glances of contemptuous enmity and threw themselves into gracefully aggres- sive attitudes whenever their eyes met. Nay, when it was all over and the crews were seated again in the railway carriage, the officer came forth, lit a cigarette and strolled up and down [46] the platform before their window with an absurd affectation of calm. Nor was the Are- thusa any less ridiculous. Two cocks in a farmyard are not more [so]. [47] THE OPENING AND THE CLOSE OF ^'LAY MORALS" Accompanying the posthumously printed edition of Stevenson's "Lay Morals" there is a short editorial note in which it is stated that the chapters were drafted in Edinburgh in the spring of 1879; that "they were unrevised and must not be taken as representing, either as to matter or form, their author's final thoughts." In thus apologetically referring to the work as being "unrevised" the editor was doubtless not aware that there are at least three distinctly separate drafts of the MS. now in existence; for in Mr. Peabody's collection there are two, — both of which differ from the printed ver- sion to such an extent as to remove all doubt that the text was taken from still another draft, or rather a partial draft. One of Mr. Pea- body's MSS. appears to be the first tentative draft, — possibly the one Stevenson made in 1879, — while the other is much longer and seems to have been written later, — possibly in the fall of 1883, when he wrote to his father: "I have come for the moment, to a pause in my moral works, for I have many irons in the fire .... It is a most difficult work; [49] a touch of the parson will drive off those I hope to influence; a touch of overstrained laxity, besides disgusting, like a grimace, may do harm. Nothing that I have ever seen yet, speaks directly and efficaciously to young men, and I do hope I may find wit and wisdom to fill up the gap." In one of Mr. Peabody's MSS. there is a highly important introductory chapter that does not appear in the printed f ragment,which begins rather abruptly and ends more abrupt- ly. The first of the two facsimiles herein shows the beginning of this introductory chap- ter, and the second shows the unpublished ending, which proves conclusively that Stev- enson did finish the essay; whereas in the most complete edition of Stevenson's works the printed text ends incompletely with the words, "they must accept and deal with this money . . . ." and the reader is left in darkness, not knowing whether the author ever finished his work, or how, or where, he was to end it, if at all. In the later "Bio- graphical Edition" of 191 1 it is even less com- plete, — the last two sentences of the text in the previous edition having been dropped. It is [50] quite probable that at least the first chapters of the piece were written while the author's thoughts on the subject were in a state of em- bryo, for his outlook on life was based upon theory rather than experience. But this de- tracts nothing from the interest of the work as an introspective study. What he would have said had he written it late in life is no more to the point than it would be to speculate on what changes he might have made in any other work had he rewritten it in after life. What concerns us is what he actually did write; and the fact that he did not destroy the MSS., as he did many others, would indicate that he was willing to have the essay publish- ed after his death. There is nothing to war- rant an assumption that he intended to revise the essay again or make it longer than it is, except that in the opening chapter he refers to it as a book, rather than as an essay. The two top lines of manuscript in the sec- ond photographic reproduction are identical with the ending of the more complete printed text; and it will be seen that immediately fol- lowing, on the same page of manuscript there is an unprinted recapitulation, in seven short [51] paragraphs, which apparently did not appear in the draft used by the printer. What the author's "final thoughts'' were — if he contemplated any further revision — it is of course impossible to say; but it is at least certain that he devoted a great deal of thought to the subject, and it is likely that he ultimate- ly succeeded in rounding it out about as he wanted it. The fourth (which is the final) chapter is by far the most important, and seems to have bothered him more than any other, for he rewrote that part repeatedly, changing it slightly each time. In one of the short suppressed passages he says: "There is no such word as belong in Morals. However much a man may seem pressed by great he- reditary fortunes, there is nothing in life for an honest man but exchange of service. Nei- ther the existence of great hereditary fortunes in the hands of others, nor the possession of one for himself, can confuse the appreciation of an honest and thoughtful soul ; he will see a reciprocity of services, and nothing more. He is one of mankind's stewards. He but holds [his fortune] in trust for mankind, and to mankind it must return." [52] But in rewriting the manuscript Stevenson omitted this, probably because he had repeat- ed the substance of it elsewhere in the essay. There are also a few other short passages that were omitted, either for the same reason, or else because he considered them too abstruse, even for a didactical theme. The text as printed, without the introduc- tory part, fails to indicate what Stevenson par- ticularly specified, both in the opening sentence and in the letter to his father, — namely, that the essay was addressed to young men. The complete work is not given here, for the reason that the portion already printed is protected by copyright, and Mr. Peabody's MS. covering that part does not differ suffi- ciently to warrant us in printing it without infringement on the publisher's rights. It is unfortunate that so important a piece as this — to which Stevenson probably gave more serious thought than to any other essay he ever wrote — should have been given to the world as an "unrevised" and unfinished fragment, whereas the author not only revised it repeat- edly, but finished it, as shown by his summing up at the end. [S3] The possessor of one of these volumes may perhaps find some amusement in making for himself a complete copy of the essay by join- ing together the parts here printed with those already published; and against such an act no copyright injunction would hold. The following is the hitherto unpublished introductory chapter to "Lay Morals." [54] Av»v.x»-6// . /u ;. » fc)>i p»«». &*^^UL «^«** f'v^C^^ e<(A^ <»— *C /a-t..^^t„^*»~«*^C'j ^ Ul^^yV^ a-in^^^.^t^t/s^ , U^ / !^ ^^ LfUC^ i>f1^^ cx^^^l*- ifUy,^,^ ^ ^ /W V^Vr~ An^xo ^ ^.voA^^/^^ Xttu^ f-^^ A/vo^|^^~» :>^'-v^,JL^ ^u^\ayo^ ; Ujt ^-,^ un^^lici LAY MORALS The person to whom this writing is addres- sed is any young man, conscious of his youth, conscious of vague powers and qualities, and fretting at the bars of life. Like one who comes late to the doors of the theatre, he finds the crowd compact, and wanders in the open. There seems no entry for him to the business or the serious pleasures of the human world; and he is asked instead to mind dry and some- what pointless studies, to follow arbitrary rules, and to bear with patience the reproof of persons duller than himself. He is capable of the finest acts and sentiments, which some- how, in his present circumstances, seem never to be in season. In front of him, in the thick of the world, he foresees for himself a leading and romantic part; perhaps not falsely. How to behave in the great walks of life, he seems to know; but in this empty vestibule, where he still waits his turn, there seems a lack of worthy business. In this writing, nothing has been said with the design of pleasing parents and guardians. I am afraid the work will not be thought good enough to put into the hands of youth by any [55] elder friend, and if the young men, for whom it is intended, do not see and choose it for themselves, it will not improbably remain un- read. There are no guides in life, for a thousand reasons; but for this reason first, that we have all so fallen and so bemired ourselves and grown so bewildered in the paths of this rude labyrinth, that not a man among us knows clearly where he is or how he got there. Hence that something of insincerity to which the poor clergyman, forced to hold up a cut and dry ideal, is condemned. In this writing, I, having the advantage of the clergy, shall try only to be honest; a hard attempt — "We are upon an undertaking very difficult." And not only difficult, but responsible. But the responsibility of the writer discharges not a jot of the responsibility of him who reads. If you go wrong and are guilty of cruel and un- manly acts, and come, friendless and hating yourself, to the end of a detestable career, the reading of this book will be no more than a pretext for cowards to allege. "There was a nearer neighbour within, who was incessantly telling you how you should behave; but you [56] waited for the neighbour from without to tell you of some false, easier way." The name of God and such expressions as "sin" and "the soul" have been allowed to find a place in the following pages. This may be galling to the feelings of the conscientious atheist; that strange and wooden rabbi — and never so strange or so wooden as when very young. But the writer would have him to notice that, as the work goes on, each of these expressions has its sense explained; that the sense at least is eternal, being founded in ex- perience; that to invent new phrases from old thoughts, though it may be delicately flatter- ing to a school of philosophy, is not the busi- ness of a man who loves and seeks to use the purity of English speech; and lastly that as the strictest Christians read and find improve- ment in the books of pagan sages, the most delicate unbeliever may come perhaps unin- jured from the perusal of the name of God. This is perhaps said with bitterness; but what can be more bitter than to find man, in all ages, returning to the angry follies of his youth, and each fresh movement in our superficial think- ing made the signal for some renunciation of [57] the past? Being what we are, the descend- ants at least of savages, the creatures of our fathers, the inheritors of every nerve and fea- ture, the true wisdom for mankind must be ever to explain and to subsume in wider know- ledge, not to deny, the faith and experience of predecessors. It is thus that we proceed; but by a singular infirmity, we cannot return to fill our baskets from the forgotten wealth of antiquity, without casting forth and treading under foot the wisdom of some later age. So it is in art; and so in morals. Lastly, besides the presence of some good old English words, the book is inoffensive to the straitest of the modern sect. It is truly secular and temporal, costs not a glance be- yond the little, lit, tumultuous island of man's life upon the vasty darkness of eternity; and still forgetful of the great myths or more ma- jestic and mysterious verities, busies itself close at hand with the pleasures and prudence of today. There is much in common to all; upon that common ground the arguments are founded and from that common store the ex- perience deduced. To every view of morals there are two [58] sides: what is demanded by the man; what is exacted by the conditions of life. Let us be- gin with a fragment upon either, not to say what is new, but to remind ourselves of man's extraordinary attributes and situation. [Between the foregoing and the beginning of the work as printed, this unpublished sen- tence appears in Mr. Peabody's draft of the MS.: "What a man makes of this world for him- self, and what view of it he teaches to aspir- ing youth, gives the measure of what we may hope from him in thought or conduct, and constitutes what we call that man's religion." And the following resume should be read after the closing words in the printed text, "they must accept and deal with this money." Thus, with what is printed here, and what has already been published, we have the essay complete, as Stevenson intended it: — ] And now, let us look back and see what we have reached upon this practical point of money. [59] I St. — That wealth should not be the first object in life. 2nd. — That only so much money as he has earned by services to mankind, can a man hon- estly spend on his own comfort or delight. 3rd. — That of what he has earned, only so much as he can spend for his own comfort or delight, is his to spend at all; and that what- ever is spent by carelessness or through habit or for ostentation, is spent dishonestly and to the hurt of mankind. 4th. — That whatever we have in our hands which we have not earned, or which we can- not spend to profit or sincere pleasure on our- selves, we must return in principal or interest, to mankind at large; to some other persons to whom it will be profitable or sincerely pleas- ureable. And 5th. — That this may be best done by helping our own friends. Is not this a very natural, easy and plain- sailing scheme of life? Wealth should not be the first object in life; but how can it, except in arid and contented natures, or after some violence has been done to the mind externally in the misused name of Prudence? We have [60] they may be unfaithful to the trust, but you will have done your best and told them on what a solemn responsibility they must accept and deal with this money. . . . Mt this point tbe fragment breaks o/:~[Ed.] fi^co^ c^^ &j^t>x, mJxt )xc:^ x ifc:. ^^^..^J:.v,J^ , u^c^^ yv^- oe^L-^ «.tA.oi^^ Y>^|^. V)4aKa>u4A vJV a thousand instincts, and a man who begins life wisely must consider them all, and not only that which leads us to desire wealth. Is it natural to buy things we have no mind to? To eat and drink till we are sick? And is it not the natural motion of the soul to communi- cate wealth among our friends and make them all prosperous in our prosperity? [6i] THE MASTER OF BALLANTRAE ^ Under the title of "Essays and Fragments" in the most complete edition of Stevenson's works there is a four-page fragment entitled "The Genesis of The Master of Ballantrae;" but, strangely enough, like the published frag- ment of "Lay Morals," it lacks both the head and the tail — two rather important accom- paniments. In its direct bearing upon one of Stevenson's greatest novels — the only one con- ceived and mainly written in America — this piece must be credited with a highly import- ant position. The printed text begins, "I was walking one night on the verandah — " which, as will be seen by the accompanying facsimile, is far down on the first page of the MS. The unpublished opening lines are decidedly "meaty," and possess a human interest scarce- ly equalled in the printed portion. More- over, they show that the piece was really in- tended as an epilogue to the story. Then, in the printed edition the curtain is suddenly 1 At Saranac Lake in the Adirondack Mountains, in De- cember, 1887, Stevenson set enthusiastically to work upon this romance, which was not completed until the following May, when he was at Honolulu. It first appeared in print, as the "Author's Edition," in the year i888, although it was not is- sued for the public at large until 1889. [63] rung down in the middle of an act, without giving Ephraim Mackellar — one of the im- portant characters — a chance to make an ap- pearance. It is regrettable that, although Mr. Pea- body's draft of the MS. carries us considerably farther than the one used by the printer, there still seems to be another page or so wanting. The concluding part may have been lost or de- stroyed; or it may have become detached and found lodgment with some collector when Stevenson's books, manuscripts, letters and other personal effects were dispersed through the auction room several years ago. If ever it comes to light in any quarter of the earth, it is to be hoped that it will find its way back to the major portion from which it became dismembered; thus making it possible at some future day to print the epilogue in its com- pleteness. By interposing the printed frag- ment (which appears at page 431, Volume XXII, of the Thistle edition) between the two parts here following, the reader will have the work as complete as it is possible to make it, for the present at least. [64] (.^^Yv-JU tU. CcU-*. — M (^ ^ — -^ ^ t^-TjA -ft — ». £<,^.>^ Xr^^M. ''A-^|'»^t-fc_ ^-k — ^ NOTE TO "THE MASTER OF BALLANTRAE" An account of how a story arose in the writer's mind, from and towards what points the course of invention travelled, what facts were utilized, what were easy and what hard, and how the finished work looks in the eyes of its begetter, has always seemed to me excel- lent reading for the curious. Placed in front, I should be inclined to judge it an imperti- nence; placed as a rear guard to the volume, it may serve a useful purpose on occasion. The story may be read, and it may lack yet half an hour of your accustomed bedtime; or you may have bought the volume to beguile the tedium of a journey, and have come to the last page some way short of your expected destination; at such time no one would care to embark on matter entirely new, and yet he might be ready enough to dwell a little long- er from a new standpoint on the same train of thought which he has been following so long. The magician after he has prepared his sleight of hand will sometimes afford a second, and a fresh, pleasure by explaining the method of his dexterity. As some such afterpiece, for [65] an empty moment, it is hoped this note may be regarded. [At this point the printed text begins with "I was walking one night on the verandah of a small house in which I lived, outside the hamlet of Saranac," — (this being the winter that Stevenson spent at Saranac Lake, N. Y.), and runs along substantially the same as the manuscript, except that the following import- ant passage was omitted : — ] It was the case of Marquis of Tallibardine that first struck me; the situation of a younger brother succeeding in this underhand, irregu- lar fashion, and under an implied contract of seniority, to his elder's place and future, struck me as so full of bitterness, and the men- tal relations of a family thus circumstanced so fruitful of rnisjudgment and domestic ani- mosity, it took my fancy then as a drama in a nutshell, to be solved between four persons and within four walls; with my new incident and with my new aim, I saw myself, and re- joiced to be, committed to great spaces and voyages, and a long evolution of time. But [66] in the matter of the characters involved, I de- termined to adhere to the original four actors. With four characters — two brothers, a father, and a heroine (all nameless but in a deter- mined relation) I was to carry the reader to and fro in space over a good half of the world, and sustain his interest in time through the ex- tent of a generation. [The printed fragment ends with this sen- tence: ''I know not if I have done him [the Chevalier Burke] well, though his moral dis- sertations always highly entertained me; but I own I have been surprised to find that he re- minded some critics of Barry Lyndon after all. ..." Then from this point the un- printed MS. runs on as follows: — ] Surely, beyond the worsted lace of his gen- tility, and a trick of Celtic boastfulness, my poor chevalier, eminently proud of his degra- dation, unaffectedly unconscious of his gen- uine merit, is a creature utterly distinct, in the essential part of him, from the brute whom Thackeray disinterred out of the Newgate [67] Calendar and set re-existing, for the time of the duration of the English language. The need of a confidant for Mr. Henry led to the introduction of Mackellar, for it was only to a servant that a man such as I con- ceived Mr. Henry, could unbosom; and no sooner had he begun to take on lineament, than I perceived the uses of the character, and was at once tempted to intrust to him the part of spokesman. Nothing more pleases me than for one of my puppets to display himself in his own language; in no other way than this of the dramatic monologue, are humorous and incongruous traits so persuasively presented. The narration, put in the mouth of the land steward, would supply, as if by the way and accidentally, a certain subdued element of comedy, much to be desired, and scarce other- wise, except by violence, to be introduced. Besides which, the device enabled me to view my heroine from the outside, which was doub- ly desirable. First, and generally, because I am always afraid of my women, which are not ad- mired in my home circle; second, and partic- ularly, because I should be thus enabled to pass over without realization an ugly and del- [68] icate business, — the master's courtship of his brother's wife. Accordingly, and perfectly satisfied with myself, I hastily wrote and re- wrote the first half of my story, down to the end of the duel, through the eyes and in the words of the good Ephraim. Cowardice is always punished; I had no sooner got this length, I had no sooner learned to appreciate the advantages of my method, than I was brought face to face with its defects and fell into a panic fear of the conclusion. How, with a narrator like Mackellar, should I transact the melodrama in the wilderness. How, with his style, so full of disabilities, at- tack a passage which must be either altogether seizing or altogether silly and absurd? The first half was already in type, when I made up my mind to have it thus done, and recom- mence the tale in the third person. Friends advised, one this way, one that; my publishers were afraid of the delay; indolence had doubtless a voice; I had besides a natural love for the documentary method in narration; and I ended by committing myself to the imper- sonation of Mackellar, and suffering the pub- lication to proceed. [69] I was doubtless right and wrong; the book has suffered and has gained in consequence; gained in relief and verisimilitude, suffered in fire, force and (as one of my critics has well said) in ''large dramatic rhythm." The same astute and kindly judge complains of "the dredging machine of Mr. Mackellar's mem- ory, shooting out the facts bucketful by buck- etful;" and I understand the ground of his complaint, although my sense is otherwise. The realism I love is that of method; not only that all in a story may possibly have come to pass, but that all might naturally be recorded — a realism that justifies the book itself as well as the fable it commemorates. [70] THE MERRY MEN, ETC. The following Preface, although entitled "The Merry Men," really has more to do with the volume as a whole than with the title-story, and deals particularly with the three stories, "Will o' the Mill," "Thrawn Janet," and "Markheim," printed in the collection. In view of the fact that Stevenson was more prone to find fault with his stories than to praise them, it will interest his readers to know that he "very much admired" these three. The piece certainly reads very smooth- ly and entertainingly, and it seems queer that it never got into print. It ends rather abrupt- ly, but there is nothing, so far as known, to in- dicate that Stevenson ever extended it any farther. In fact the manner of its ending — in about the middle of the page — would sig- nify that he did not. The photographic re- production of the first page of the MS. shows that he had considerable difficulty in getting it to suit him, and some entertainment may be found in deciphering the cancelled passages and following the irregular course of his ini- tial thoughts. [71] If there was any one branch of Stevenson's profession in which he delighted, above all others, it appears to have been that of writing prefaces. In this congenial occupation he was always in his happiest mood. Indeed his short, good-humored Preface to An Inland Voyage is thought by some to be one of the most enjoyable parts of that book. "A pre- face," he says, "is more than an author can re- sist, for it is the reward of his labors." [72] J^-' J'Ji^^K ^U-^(^ liW-y^ - ^^^ -&/^'^■<,V^ 7 ^o. I Vv^O-A^k fWv^v-^ C^^^, 'i'W: ! ' ftX^ ^^ 'U^Xy-v i^^T*^^^ c7Ca3rti> r^;C.?fc--tljN4>-*-4;W oiv-^ W->:/trr*rC^^r--Cv*Xt<> /J^' /^^v^, l^^ZJ (^jtX^^vl I I v^>-< — * H*^ » I J ^ ' . ] ft) / PREFACE FOR "THE MERRY MEN" I am given to understand the days of pre- faces are now quite over, and those who still care to read such things — or even write them — a despised minority. A preface then is like the top of a high mountain, seemingly a spot of much publicity, truly as private as a chamber; where a person of defective ear may stand up, in the view of several counties and sing without reproof. Or we may say again that what a man writes there is singly for him- self, like those loving legends and beloved names that we engrave on the sea-sand before the return of the flood. Nothing is more agreeable to the writer than to let his pen move ad libitum and with- out destination; careless where he shall pass by or whither, if anywhere, he shall arrive. I question if it be equally pleasing to a reader; but in a preface I am safe from their intrusion and may run on, and gratify myself — and to some extent gratify my publisher, who is be- wailing the thinness of the volume — like the singer on the mountain top, without offence. The stories here got together are somewhat [73] of a scratch lot. Three of them seem to me very good and in the absence of the public, I may even go the length of saying that I very much admire them; these three are "Will o' the Mill,'^ "Thrawn Janet,'^ and "Markheim." *Thrawn Janet" has two defects; it is true only historically, true for a hill parish in Scot- land in old days, not true for mankind and the world. Poor Mr. Soulis's faults we may equally recognize as virtues; and feel that by his conversion, he was merely coarsened; and this, although the story carries me away every time I read it, leaves a painful feeling on the mind. I hope I should admire "Will o' the Mill" and "Markheim" as much, if they had been written by someone else; but I am glad no one else wrote them. One is in a middle state; some persons of good taste finding it pizzicato and affected to the last degree; others finding in it much gen- iality and good nature. This Eileen Amos, first under that name, and more recently under its true name, Eileen Eanaid, has done me yeoman's service. First it was the backbone of "The Merry Men," then it made a tolerable figure in "Kidnap- [74] ped;" and now (its last appearance) it is to supply the present volume with a preface. The author sees in his work something very different from the reader; the two parts are incompatible; that unhappy man who has written and rewritten every word with inky fingers, and then passed through the prolong- ed disgust of proof sheets, has lost all touch with his own literature. They are presum- ably the books he would like to read, since they are those he has been pleased to write; yet he can never read them. To him they speak only of disappointment and defeat, and are the monuments of failure. I have long had a desire to read Treasure Island, which cannot be gratified; I might read the Rig Veda in the original — never Treasure Island \ and think of the sad case of Mr. Meredith who can never read Rhoda Fleming^ Mr. An- stey who can never read A Fallen Idol, or Mr. Lang who is debarred from the Letters to Dead Authorsl Yet there is an intimate pleasure, hard to describe, and quite peculiar to the writer of imaginative work. It is in some sense the ful- [75] filment of his life; old childish day-dreams here have taken shape, — poignant and vague aspirations. [76] A FRENCH LEGEND, Etc. The following piece, found among Steven- son's manuscripts, has never been printed, so far as we are able to discover. It may have been intended to go in some more extensive work, though there is no evidence to warrant such an assumption, and we therefore give it as it stands in the original. "The district where we are," was probably Fontainebleau, and the manuscript was doubtless written while Stevenson was studying in France, — perhaps in 1875. \.77'\ A FRENCH LEGEND AND THOUGHTS ON DEATH One tale, whether it be legend or sober his- tory, and although it is not connected with the district where we are, serves to enhance for the mind the grandeur of the forests of France, and secures us in the thought of our seclusion. When the young Charles Sixth hunted the stag in the great woods of Senlis, one was killed, having about its neck a collar of bronze and these words engraved upon the collar: "Caesar mihi hoc donavit." [Caesar gave me this.] It is no wonder if the imagination of the time was troubled by this occurrence, and men stood almost aghast to find themselves thus touch hands with forgotten ages. Even for us, it is scarcely with idle curiosity that we think of how many ages this stag had car- ried its free antlers up and down the wood, and how many summers and winters shone and snowed upon the imperial badge. And if the extent of solemn wood can thus safe- guard a tall stag from the horns and the swift hounds of mighty hunters, sheltered in these, for years, solemn patriarchs, — bald, dim with [78] age, bleared and faded, and overgrown with strange mosses and lichens, terrible with their dull life of centuries, indifferent while the generations were succeeding one another, and angry multitudes surging and yelling, while kingdoms change hands, — might not we also elude, for some great space of time, the clutch of the thing. White Death, who hunts us noiselessly from year to year? Might not we also play hide-and-seek in these far groves with all the pangs and trepidations of man's life, and elude the thing. White Death, who hunts us noiselessly from year to year? For this is the desire of all in this; and even of those who have prepared themselves to wel- come Death, as a child, after a long day's noisy pleasure at the fair, who had slipped away from his party and wandered, stunned and joyful, among the booths and barracks, gingerbread and shows, and beaten cymbals of the fair, darkness at last growing about him and weariness and a little fear beginning to take possession of his soul, might welcome the severe parent who comes to scold and lead him home. [79] A NOTE AT SEA— 1875 This manuscript of the year 1875, written before Stevenson had ever been on the ocean, may have been composed (as ^^the big billows" indicate) during a very rough crossing be- tween England and France; or in a reminis- cent mood, it may have been written on terra firma. It is in any event a very notable little manuscript, and most probably an attempt to- wards that style where prose takes on the move- ment of poetry. Without such an assump- tion we come to the most singular bit of writ- ing in all of Stevenson — a piece of prose that makes a perfect example of vers libre. To indicate what a poem Stevenson (whether un- consciously or not) wrote in this prose piece, the text is given in the following pages, first in its original arrangement, and then divided into lines of verse. It should be added that Stevenson had been acquainted with the work of Walt Whitman for some years, the Leaves of Grass having, as he said, ''tumbled the world upside down" for him. G. S. H. [81] A NOTE AT SEA In the hollow bowels of the ship I hear the ponderous engines pant and trample. The basin gasps and baulks like an uneasy sleep- er, and I hear the broad bows tilt with the big billows, and the hollow bosom boom against solid walls of water, and the great sprays scourge the deck. Forward I go in darkness with all this turmoil about me. And yet I know that on deck — (And the whole ship plunges and leaps and sinks wildly forward into the dark) the white moon lays her light on the black sea, and here and there along the faint primrose rim of sky faint stars and sea lights shine. All is so quiet about us; and yet here in the dark I lie besieged by ghostly and solemn noises. The engine goes with tiny trochees. The long ship makes on the billows a mad barbaric rhythm. The basin gasps when it suits it. My heart beats and toils in the dark midparts of my body; like as the en- gine in the ship, my brain toils. [82] A NOTE AT SEA In the hollow bowels of the ship, I hear the ponderous engines pant and trample. The basin gasps and baulks Like an uneasy sleeper. And I hear the broad bows tilt with the big bil- lows, And the hollow bosom boom against solid walls of water. And the great sprays scourge the deck. Forward I go in darkness with all this turmoil about me. And yet I know that on deck — (And the whole ship plunges and leaps And sinks wildly forward into the dark) — The white moon lays her light On the black sea. And here and there Along the faint primrose rim of sky Faint stars and sea lights shine. All is so quiet about us ; And yet here in the dark I lie besieged By ghostly and solemn noises. The engine goes with tiny trochees. The long ship makes on the billows a mad barbaric rhythm. The basin gasps when it suits it. [83] My heart beats and toils in the dark midparts of my body; Like as the engine in the ship, My brain toils. [84] A NIGHT IN FRANCE— 1875 There can be little question of unconscious use of metre in the following manuscript, or in the one immediately preceding, entitled "A Note at Sea;" and the identity of handwriting and of paper (French blue tinted paper, com- ing from a notebook or sketchbook such as was in vogue among the artists of France of those days for their pencil drawings) seems to establish the place of composition as Fontaine- bleau, where Stevenson in company with his cousin Robert Alan Stevenson was engaged in the study of various forms of verse in the spring of 1875. This manuscript is not in the style of Stevenson's prose, although, like so much of his writing, it is, at its close, full of his love for Scotland. It is manifestly an ex- periment in metrical prose, and the success at- tained is, some will think, far beyond that achieved by Blackmore in passages of a some- what similar nature in Lorna Doone, Here again we have an instance of vers lihre by Stevenson (long before this kind of poetry had come into exaggerated vogue), as the reader can readily determine for himself if he will [85] rearrange the piece into loosely metrical form, following the method just employed with "A Note at Sea." G. S. H. [86] A NIGHT IN FRANCE In remote thickets toward afternoon, when the wind sounds now and again in the distance, and the butterflies are sown by faint airs here and there like thistledown (sown and carried away again by the faint airs like thistle- down) — The perfect southern moonlight fills the great night; along the coast the bare peaks faint and dwindle against the intense blue sky; and far up on the glimmering mountain sides the dark woods design their big full shapes in black fantastic profile. The sea trembles with light; white hotels and villas show lit win- dows far along the curved beach, and from above envy the silent stars. The strange night sky endues itself in monstrous space over all, the large moon beams forward. The still trees stand in relief aloof, one from the other with the light all about them, naked, bare, in the moonlight. Up in the room the piano sounds and into the southern night, note follows note, chord follows chord, in quaint, sad, northland ca- dence. Do not the still trees wonder, and the [87] flat bright sea, and the lonely glimmering hill- tops far withdrawn into the purple sky? For this is no squeak of southern fife, no light melody of provencal farandole; to these airs, brown feet never tripped on the w^arm earth, nor boatman cheered his way across deep mid- land waters. Wild and shrill, ring out the reels. Dunbarton drums beat bonny. The wind sounds over the rainy moorland; Wan- dering Willie is far from home. Clear sad voices sing in the gray dawn sadly; for a coun- try made desolate, for the bold silver that shall no more clatter forth in pay, and the good King that shall come home no more. The sun sets behind Ben Ledi. Macleod's wiz- ard flag sallies from the gray castle. Faint and fair in the misty summer afternoon, reach out the purple braes, where the soft cloud shadows linger and dwindle. At home by the ingle the goodwife darns her goodman's gray b reeks. And my love up in the north is like the red red rose. O sound of the wind among my own bleak hills! the snow and the cold, and the hard thin faces of steadfast serious people. The boats go out at even, under the moon; sail by sail [88] they spread on the great uneven sea; at morn, in the rain plains, boat by boat comes back with its glittering burthen. [89] DRAFT OF A PREFACE FOR 'TRAVELS WITH A DONKEY"— 1879 The first paragraph of the following paper is its only strictly unpublished part. The sub- stance of the rest will be found, in a consider- ably altered form, in that chapter of Travels with a Donkey^ entitled '^A Night Among the Pines." The entire manuscript is here print- ed as evidence that, although the original edi- tion of 1879, and later editions of Travels with a Donkey^ were issued w^ithout any pre- face, save the initial brief letter to Sidney Col- vin, the author probably had, as so often in other instances, a preface in mind; and then changing his intention included a portion of the preface matter in the text of his story. The MS. has the appearance of being incom- plete, but we are unable to ascertain whether Stevenson finished it, or if he did finish it, what became of the remainder. However, since it is an interesting piece, and seems to be complete as far as it goes, we give it as it ap- pears in Mr. Peabody's draft of the MS. — [91] PREFACE FOR ^TRAVELS WITH A DONKEY" The journey which this little book is to nar- rate, was very agreeable and fortunate. After a few rough experiences, my donkey led me into a country of great natural amenity. Un- usual and pleasant characters and incidents, trifling in themselves, but yet delightful to ex- perience, met me continually as I went. To those who sleep within thick walls, blindfolded with curtains, and roofed in from the influences of heaven, night is one black and uneventful gulf of sleep. But in the open world, under the stars and dews, night, like day, passes through lively vicissitudes, and the passing hours are marked by changes on the face of Nature. The forest breathes out new perfumes; stars rise and set; the company of heaven by progressive evolutions counts time's progress like a clock. And there is one cheer- ful hour towards morning, unknown to those who dwell in houses, when a wakeful influ- ence goes abroad over the sleeping hemi- sphere. It is then that the cock first crows, not this time to announce the dawn, but like [92] a cheerful watchman speeding the wane of night. Cattle awake in the meadows; sheep on the hillside take a midnight meal and lie down to sleep again in a fresh lair. And homeless men, who have lain down with the fowls, open their dim eyes and behold the beauty of the night. At what inaudible sum- mons, by what gentle touch of Nature, are all those sleepers thus recalled in the same hour to life? Do the stars rain down an influence, or do we share a thrill of mother earth below our resting bodies? But however it comes, those who sleep afield are disturbed in their slumber, "that they may the better and more sensibly relish it;" they are given a moment to look upon the stars, and they share the secret impulse with all outdoor creatures in their neighborhood. When that moment overtook me among the pines, I wakened thirsty. Even shepherds and old country folk, who are the deepest read in such arcana, have not a guess as to the means or purpose of this night- ly resurrection. Towards two in the morn- ing, they declare, the thing takes place; and know nor inquire farther. And at least it is a pleasant incident. And there is a special [93] pleasure for some minds in the reflection that we share this impulse with all outdoor crea- tures in our neighborhood, and are become, for the time being, a mere kindly animal and a sheep of Nature's flock. It is an excellent thing to speak; and yet it is good to be sometimes silent. I am often surprised that the blind are not greater think- ers, for they dwell in a natural seclusion and the current of their thought is not perpetually interrupted and diverted by the eyes. [94] PROTEST ON BEHALF OF BOER INDEPENDENCE— 1881 In 1880 war began between Great Britain and the Boers, despite the fact that Gladstone (who had regarded England's attitude to- wards the independence of the latter as mor- ally iniquitous) had in April become Prime Minister. The Proclamation of the South African Republic in December, with Kruger, Pretorious and Joubert as a triumvirate, to run the new government, was followed by nu- merous clashes. On February 26, 1881, Sir George Colley, the British High Commis- sioner of South East Africa, led the British forces up Majuba Hill, a mountain of strate- gic importance near the Transvaal border. The next day the British were routed by the Boers, commanded by Joubert, the hill was captured and Sir George Colley slain in com- bat. This defeat stung and enraged a great part of England, but to some Englishmen it brought home the determination of the Boers, and even in the hour of humiliation they pon- dered the folly of freeborn British seeking to deprive the freeborn Dutch of independence [95] in their internal affairs. On the 6th of March a truce was concluded, and a fortnight later terms of peace were arranged, allowing for entire internal self-government under British sovereignty; a status which lasted until the Second Boer War of 1899-1900. It was during the weeks intervening be- tween the British defeat and the conclusion of the terms of peace, that Stevenson, then at Davos, drafted, in a notebook that he used over a period of many years, the piece here printed. While it may have been written with some high British official in mind, the "Sir" of the second sentence is more probably the editor of the Times or some other English newspaper. Only a thorough search of press files can absolutely establish whether (per- haps using a nom-de-plume) Stevenson went further than this preliminary draft; but as no mention of such a letter appears in any work relating to Stevenson, it seems to have remain- ed unpublished until now. Its nobility of spirit is manifest, and it is probably in the final analysis, the highest expression of true patriotism in all of Stevenson's writings. G. S. H. [96] iL-N^ t-^^-'"-^,^- ' ^-^^^ -A^v ,\ — ; :^)i<*^ r,w-.x,;k.' , :, % , .ICv It*!' r- ,^^ ^V' \r-J -O^^.^y t' ^-^ ^ /^vV- ' fi.y.. ) .1 .I.V.- 1 - ^ ' Vv.^rw-^^ ->.\/ 1 ..V -Xi.^/^(^X Uj ^.. 7 V. / -^^ -^^ /'v — . Vv**M vUjl o-*^- ji^^.^ing my wet lava- lava and towel. At the far end of the beach, beyond the houses, we sat on the sand, and with the common instinct of all ages and races of man, elderly white folk, an eight-year-old Samoan boy began to dig away the sand. Mana is the boy's name; he is a rather sickly, shrewd, gentlemanly creature whose pleasant manners have engaged us heretofore. The design of a ship is nothing new to us; on the same walk we had already passed an elaborate section of a ship of war showing the screw [ 122] and the smoke stack descending to the keel. But Mana's ship is particularly intended to be ours, and his representation is recommend- ed to our notice by portraits of ourselves. Here is the judge, here is the land-surveyor and here is the Writer of Tales — and where is Mana? Mana was immediately added at the masthead — ''at w^ork" — the artist added proudly. Such pictures and such talk are common to all races at that age ; but now Mana begins to model the human figure in relief, and it was not long before the precocious youth had left us speechless, or leaves me rath- er without words to tell of what he drew and said. Not so much that he proved himself an indecent designer, is remarkable, but that he had no shame or fear before his elders. I have seen the like done by children little older in what is called God-fearing England; but I can not remember that they would have ex- hibited their works with confidence. The overhanging rock and tree, the strong smell of brine as you turn it, the louder sound not of the w^ind only, but of the sea. At morning the birds from either hand of the harbour. [123] The Tanpo Cleopatra, such was the name we gave her, as her face and bearing claimed for her, was not by rights a Tanpo, for she was married, and the leader in the village dance must be a maid. But the Tanpo elect was young, a church member and not suffered to join in the dances, so that the reason of her election seemed to me far from obvious, and Cleop. continued to officiate. A nobler wo- man it is scarce possible to conceive, being shaped like a divinity upon huge lines, and with a countenance of an Egyptian cast and with an expression of dignity and even scorn that well became her head and her strange flattened profile. For the dance, she wore on her head a sort of coronet that gave her the air of a drawing room at home, and vastly set ofif her beauty. The rest of her costume, the red necklaces, the kilt of fine mat, the little tabard of transparent net that hung back and front upon her shoulders, her great bare arms and legs, were pure Samoan, and rather con- trasted with the effect of the drawing room coronet. She sat in the midst, two girls on one side of her, three on the other; the six w^ere all trained exquisitely, their movements [124] graceful in themselves and exquisitely timid. The reaching of arms I never saw so happily significant, and the strange trick of Cleop. to sing with her eyes shut and a curious, arrogant smile upon her face added a note of mystery to the accustomed business. The house was full of Samoan spectators, children of all ages among others, who soon began to join in the singing and beat time. When the indecent part came it was singular to look about on all these shaven heads of children wagging and their little hands clapping the tattoo to such an unsuitable and ugly business. I was sorry to have Cleop. taking part in such a show, though her part was the more decent, though the principal. No sense of shame in this race is the word of the superficial, but the point of the indecent dance is to trifle with the sense of shame; and that very particularity that the chief actor should be a maid further discloses the corrupt element which has created and so much loves this diversion; for it is useless to speak, the Samoan loves the business like pie. In such an atmosphere our young companion had grown up. Thursday about nine on board the Nukuno- [125] no — the judge, Tusitala, Lloyd, Swedish cap- tain. Nova Scotian mate (with Nova Scotian stories) Chinese cook, black French cook from Bourbon, one hireling, one Tangan half caste, one Samoan half caste interpreter, one black boy. Hard work to get under way, beating to and fro under Pioa across the great cool languid gush of sea air through the harbour mouth and the vast, oily-backed swells. The surf on the east end made wonderful water- works. As we made one bound just inside it, we made a breach on Whale Rock, the head of it toppled and fell, the green sides of the har- bour echoed with the report, and the sea rose all about the rock like the sides of a bowl. When we got outside at last the blow holes along the coast were spouting high, the spray of the surf hung in air and blew up the moun- tains; the Nukunono soared up and down like a sea bird; but the breeze fell dead. Pioa and the harbour had been making a little in- tricate belt of weather for themselves; half a mile outside, stagnation ruled and deepened. The clouds blackened towards afternoon, and standing round the horizon in long cold rows of pillars, hills and statues, without motion, [126] the schooner slumbered, and kept the skipper awake by threatening to go on the other tack. Long ere we came out of the harbour the cook, the gallant, diplomatic, admired, lay prostrate like a broken doll ; and lifted his face no long- er; the interpreter collapsed in turn, not whol- ly but to a state of genteel silence and muddle- ment, in which he was useless as a gnome; the judge, — but let us respect his ermine. Night fell; Pioa and Mirtie Peak stood crowned with clouds which were lit up at times in the night like fantastic electric bowls; the moon rose late, a ragged end of a moon brown on one side like burned paper; and presently the day began to follow her, and there was Tutuila blurred with a succession of fine rain showers and the mouth of Pagopago showing like a chamber full of smoke; but the sea being un- der an unmitigated blaze of day, and sur- rounded along all the visible horizon with the same long drawn series of frozen, windless cloud peaks. There is thought to be an east- erly set; we saw little of it; steadily we drew westward, the mouth of Pagopago closed, Mirtie Peak moved past us, past us the low shores landmarked with blow holes; we are [127] tossing at last off the cliffy lee end of the isle; and it was near noon when we decided to try back for Pagopago. In the afternoon this too dwindled out of the sphere of practical politics; we tossed overboard the little ship's boat, a couple of men were put into her; by common consent the cook (for whose life we began to entertain fears) was helped after, whence he fell into the stern sheets, helpless; and they pulled away for the harbour mouth. We lay and watched the sun go down, an alleviation anxiously expected. It sank with strange pomp of color, in a world of peaked cloud. Long after it was down, arrows of blue radiated upward, faded one by one, until at last one only lingered and grew more dark- ly blue up against a heaven of deeper rose; the sea meanwhile heaved multi-colored; here flaked with fire and azure, there fallen in a blinding pallor. The sharp peaks of the isle stood out against the fading heavens; they were of a color deep as black, and rich as crimson, for which we tried vainly to find a name; above them, every here and there, tall, isolated clouds stood and had characters like Punch and Judy puppets, tall double-faced [128] Januses, dogs begging, bears with ragged per- forated minarets — a singular array, designed, it would appear, for mirth, yet, as we beheld them from our heaving ship, rather striking awe. The dusk slowly deepened; we ran a light up in the fore rigging; it was our Mau- galai [?] lantern, the schooner (true to the S. S. character) had none. Presently after, the sound of oars was heard; it was a boat go- ing sharking, and from them we had the wel- come intelligence that our moribund cook was got ashore alive; and the consular boat was even now upon the way to rescue us. It was black night, there was nothing visible but the stars and the sharp mountains, when the sound of singing sprang up in the midst of the sea. It was not very tuneful, but heralded the ap- proach of the rescue party. We were on board with our goods and had got the boat clear of the dangerous and lively neighbor- hood of the schooner; she showed for a mo- ment, looking picturesque, then vanished as by enchantment; and we [line here is unde- cipherable~\ a long way in; steering for the priest's light by west Pioa; a long while in silence, broken only by one song in which our [ 129] boatmen in the reiterative native style pro- claimed their view that it was a bad thing for whites to lie with Samoans, and vice versa. Then suddenly the voice of the island rose; a sullen clamor of surf sinking again to si- lence, rising again louder and longer, till it became permanent. This solemn greeting moved us all extremely. Yet a long while before we were fairly in the jaws of the har- bour, of a sudden the sweet, clean smell of the sea was gone; there fell upon the boat instead a flat, acrid and rather stifling odor of damp : it had been raining much of the day, the woods were all quite moist. The starlight was very bright, but it showed not far; the immediate sea beamed plain, the hills and farther waters (somewhere they drenched along the sky) being indecipherable, and the harbour itself yawned before us like the mouth of a cave. The priest's light which had van- ished for a while hid by the higher [ . . . ] in the harbour mouth now reappeared, and we began to strain our eyes and interrogate our memories. Where was the reef? We were speaking low in the dark boat when of a sud- den, not two hundred yards away, the reef [130] itself gave tongue, a wave broke, the moun- tains answered, the silence returned. It was about nine when we got ashore again from the voyage to Mannia to find the cook already much revived, to see the judge return at a bound to his customary affability and gaiety. Annuu. — The low end of the island, all village and elaborately managed plantations; two [hundred?] souls, sixteen tons of copra a year, abundance of food. The sea breaks low in front, and from the opposite side of the channel the reverberation of the surf about Tutuila comes back. To the seaward end of the isle the theatre of low hills inclines some third part of its surface; the amphitheatre has much the air of an old crater, very wide and low, the bottom occupied by fiat green marsh, and the midst by a blue mere; crowds of w^ild duck inhabit this; and the water of the lake is said to be red and to redden bathers. We reached the western summit of this basin by a low place shelved in wood; our way was still in the midst of woods, so that we had little idea of the nature of the country, only walked in airless heat among cocoanuts and great ipis dark as ivy and rugged as chestnuts. From a [131] little in front sudden crepitations of surf be- gan to strike at intervals upon our ears, then came a draught of air striking the foliage ; and the next moment the trees parted and we stepped forth into the wind and the view of the sea. In this place the circuit of the hills is broken, the marsh empties itself by a low ditch, the freshwater is spread in a shallow pool along the top of seaside walks, where the splashing of the surf makes it brackish. On either hand the broken circuit of the hills impends in cliffs. Right in front of the cove, which is full of mighty whirl and sudden sounds of the surge, looks sixty miles in the wind's eye to where Mannia lies; and on the left hand two flat stones, like great lizards couchant, lie parallel along the top of a flat rock; their mouths (to an ardent fancy) might seem open; their eyes are fixed upon the dis- tant islands. Taia told us they were watching the boats; they were left behind, they were crying aloud for that desired destination. When they found their raft was broken they said, "They would not die and get rotten; let us turn into stones here so that we may look forever at Mannia." The two ''Heads of [ 132] Families" is what they are called, and from immemorial times they had been adored with offerings of food. It is perhaps these that give its original sanctity to this bold piece of coast; why that should all be turned to love, why this should be a kind of Island Cyprus — I don't quite see. On the top of the sheer opposite cliff a stack of cocoa palms and a single tao hang imminent. If a man desired a woman he decoyed her towards this place; and here, if she were coy she would refuse to go farther. He led her to the margin of that cliff and hung her over. ''Will you go with me to the Puatannopo — the Place of Mary Puas? If you will not, over you go." Fear would triumph ; it seems she must then be true to her word, and the pair continued their jour- ney. Up the steep bowl-like flank of the cliff above the "Heads of Families," the way lay; presently again it came near to the margin; a great rampart, something [ . . . ] in height, serves here for a balustrade; it is broken here and there by wide embrasures commanding the sea and sky, a giddy stretch of falling rock and the breach of the surf. Across one of these there was a man, Vasa, who used to leap ; [ 133] none other durst attempt the feat, and Vasa has been dead these thirty years. Then there was our old friend the Songster's Leap, but the object was quite new, the leap not made to escape pursuit but to amaze and dazzle the lady who was accompanying him, perhaps with half a heart. But the time of her un- willingness was nearly over. A little beyond, on the immediate brow of the clifif, grows a mass of white plumed pua ; so soon as man and woman came here together the scent of this random garden overpowered resistance. A little farther forth the path lay among these flowers, the sea bursting close below, a long front of cliff making a giddy foreground, and far ofip across the flat sea the eastern end of Tutuila shows beyond. It is indeed a giddy piece of path. Vertigo seized upon one of our party, and he was much laughed at and told his mind ran upon Venus. (Perhaps this is the reason?) Below unseen there is somewhere the mouth of a cave full of birds, and here was the next station of this pilgrimage of love. The lover standing close on the edge utters high musical cries, and immediately from beneath float up [134] and up, and wheel awhile below, and float higher and wheel overhead, a flock of broad- winged sea-birds, black and white. The path turns direct over the top of the hill, a grove of cocoanuts grows close, and we drink of their nuts. All these bear the names of form- er visitors, two for each party, the man and the woman. Yet a little farther, skirting the inner glacis of the bowl of hills, the green marsh and the blue pool beneath, and the sea shining through the opposite brush, and the palms and the tao painted on the sky, they reach the last stage and veritable temple of the goddess. Huge old ipis stand in a grove; beneath them a ring of stones upon the ground ; once there was a house which has [been] suf- fered to fall down, but the ring of [s] tones is maintained, the ground cleaned, the sacred ipis watched and I believe the long path kept open by two old men at two dollars per men- sem. Sic itur ad. The whole practice is now much declined and thought of as disgraceful. What makes it the more strange, no excuse flows from this vain pilgrimage; the guilty couple are more blamed than if they had re- mained at home, and I could receive no ex- [135] planation, — but it was a custom from of old. The Dutch low lands, ditches, dykes, fields of small taio interlaid with straw, palms, play- ing poplars, no bush anywhere, all the bowl of the hills weeded and cleaned and planted. You are out on the cove through a thicket of gray [ . . . ], unhealthy; on the rocks dragon flies, red as lacquer, flitted; in the rockside pools some active little fish kept up a perpet- ual bustle, leaping from one to another and (solemnlike) making them a ladder to and from the sea. Thursday. — Set out about 3.30 in the Fan- gatanga boat, Laila steering. All the way we passed one cove after another, where a man might have gone ashore (did the surf permit) and settled down for life. The eastern end of the island runs sharp as a wedge into the sea; you turn it and the north side is suddenly visi- ble running out in tall cliffy islets, with the back of Pioa overhead. The sun was down long ago and the dusk thickening in the bay where we were bound. I think it was still day on the high seas. Groves of cocoanut run high on the hills, stand thick along the sandy shore. In the midst of the swamp of beach, a [136] single black rock breaks the sound and partly dams the mouth of a little shallow river com- ing slantwise smooth and silent through the palms, and when the tide is low, breaking into song and making the least possible cascade about the rock. Here the hamlet lies, pre- senting the usual appearance of a ruined church, a little open space among the palms where the chief's houses are, — a few scattering bread-fruits, and about and behind the depth of mountain forest. A crew of children fol- lowed us with shouts of laughter from the beach, the Writer of Tales whom they declar- ed to be a woman and to lack the essential bones of the human frame. The house of the avatar to whom we were directed was already dark, but there was light enough to show us a plague of flies and a woman in a rosary (wreath of flowers) hastily laying out mats. The avatar Alomoa was at work in the bush, and his absence and the presence of the flies decided us (in an ill hour) to try the great house of the village. Thither we returned, still followed by the laughing children. It was lighter here, for the house stood in the midst of the open place of the village, stood [ 137] besides on a raised, round, flat frame of stones, and its pillars were extremely high. This in particular pleased us, and we began to think we were in good quarters. A woman received us, not with much alacrity, and word was sent for the chief. As we sat waiting him, the house was gradually filled and surrounded by the curious of the village, and a curious scene they were certainly destined to enjoy. The chief was seen at last to issue from a closed house some distance back, — a tall, sickly, sol- emn figure of a man, attired in green and with a rosary; slowly he approached, bid us a stiff welcome, sat down, and the palaver com- menced. He began by saying we might stay the night, and our boys who were only wait- ing for the signal set out at once for the beach to bring up our possessions. Next he asked why we had passed his house by, and gone to another. He was told we had an introduction from a friend. Then he told us he was sorry he could give us no food, as it was night. We responded that we had plenty of food of our own and a man to cook it. Thereupon (as by an interlude) we were offered Kava, which we never saw; and then he annoyed us by in- [138] quiring if we had any money, and offering to sell fowls. This was the last blow; Laila be- ing by, we consulted him if there was another village we could still reach. The village was distant, the landing dangerous, the night fall- ing, the boys longing for Kava, food and a talk with the girls; but Laila, having heard some- thing of our usage, offered to try it on. There- upon Sewall ' began; he told our host that we had traveled all over Samoa, and had nowhere had such a reception; that it was un-Samoan, and that he desired to know why we were so used. The host made some excuses, and re- peated that we had passed his house. Sewall took up the wondrous tale once more, told him what big chiefs we were, how we had come here glowing with Alofa and laden with pres- ents; how he, Sewall, had to do with war ships and the malo, and what a bad day's work the chief had done for himself. The chief once more made many excuses, vowed he had been a '^fool," in so many words, and begged us to stay. Sewall turned to me. I said I had not been received by this person as a gentleman ^This was Harold Sewall, the American Consul-General, who accompanied Stevenson on the trip. — Ed. [139] should, that I did not regard him as a gentle- man, should not treat him as a gentleman (if I stayed), but as the landlord of a dirty inn; which being the case I thought it neither for his soul's health nor mine that we should stop longer in that house, and for my part I pre- ferred to spend the night at sea. This was translated (like all the rest, in a very emascu- lated form, by the timid Charlie) ; and Sewall gave our boys the order to begin returning the goods, and the chief began once more his "[...] low apioga's." Already those in the house and around it were much stirred, but now came the cream. The great man was yet talking, when we three arose. Sewall bade him hold his tongue, I made him a scornful gesture of farewell, and we passed out. The village of Ana boiled like a kettle. Our boys with an excellent affectation of alacrity (for they approved our attitude, though they dis- liked the business) were running to the boat with all our truck, and the public place was black with the entire inhabitants, whispering and nodding to each other. The disgrace was public, and so felt. Sewall was great as he stood on the terrace of the house we had just [ 140] left, his back to the man in green, and directed his boys for the removal. In the midst up came Alomoa, now returned from the bush; up came a Hawaiian who keeps a store in the village; up came the chief, and all three offer- ed us accommodations. We decided, after some discussion, to accept the offer of Alomoa ; and to the huge joy of our boys returned to the house of flies. It was a reward for all these sorrows, when I strolled to the beach at night and looked forward over the pale river and pale sea, to where the northern sky was still pallid with the evening, or back to the pillared houses of the village, lit up from within by the red glow of the cooking fire and the brighter star of the paraffine lamp. After a long dis- cussion of the isles our boys set off to a pali tele; not long after the clapping of hands told us the Kava was ready for their entertainment, and presently the strong sound of their sing- ing ran in the night. I may say I was asleep from the moment I lay down; woke in the night but twice, and once was when a shower came and the blinds had to be lowered. The first streaks of day called me; I was awake before the village; [141] nothing stirred but multitudes of pigs, black and gray, who trotted to and fro and grunted to each other as they went; and as I bathed in the river in the thin twilight a gray sow watched me, jealously grunting. Some little fishes, no bigger than minnows, leaped the while on the surface of the water and actually struck me as they leaped. A little after, the life woke. Alomoa and his wife strummed their Rainamu and set forth from the house. On all sides people wrapped in their unfolded lavalavas, like Eastern mantles, were to be seen making their way to the beach. Four tall young men set off together, robed in white, in blue, and in blue with a pattern of white; presently they returned and sitting in a row in the open galler}- of their house, chanted a brief song. A drum was beat, like last night, — not the pati, but the war drum. Women began to go around the houses with a basket, playing scavenger. And here came Ah Sin with a cup of tea, and I must turn to my d'lRry with what appetite I might. Hard is the lot of the Tusitala. The population of Ana used to be 200; it is now ninet}'-odd. War and sickness were [142] named among the causes; and this, also, that the men took wives from Mannia, and the children went afterwards to their mothers' houses — why? Eight oarsmen, a cox, Laila, Ah Sin, Char- lie, Sewall, Llovd and me: fourteen souls in all. Wednesday. — Sailed a little before high water, and came skirting for some while along a coast of classical landscapes. cliflFy promon- tories, long sandy coves divided by semi-inde- pendent islets, and the far-withdrawing sides of the mountain, rich with everv^ shape and shade of verdure. Nothing lacked but tem- ples and galleys, and our own long whaleboat sped to the sound of singing by eight oarsmen figured a piece of antiquity better perhaps than we thought. Xo road leads along this coast. We scarce saw a house; these delectable islets lay quite deserted, inviting seizure: and there was none, like Keats' Endymion, to hear our snow light cadence. The harbour opened sud- denly like a Scots loch ; the bay of Oa, to whose rear we had now worked round, filling it at the end : and to this by a pardonable tongapiti, our boatmen sought to bend the course. The far [143] isle to which we were bound they assured us was unscalable, waterless, nutless; we but in- sisted the more, and after the usual Samoan period of opposition, the coxswain smilingly gave way, and we pursued our ascent of the coast, — not very far. Upon a sudden we be- gan to enter the bay of Oa. At the first sight, my mind was made up ; the bay of Oa was the place for me. We could not enter it, we had been assured ; and having entered we could not land: — both statements plainly fiction, both easily resolved into the fact that here was no guest house and no girls to make the Kava for our boatmen and admire their singing. A lit- tle gentle insistence once again produced a smiling acquiescence, and the eight oars began to urge us slowly into a bay of the Aeneid. Right over head a conical hill arises; its top is all sheer cliff of a rosy pallor, stained with orange and purple, bristled and ivied with in- dividual climbing trees ; lower down the woods are massed, huge individual trees standing to the neck in forest. Lower again the rock crops out in a steep buttress which divides the arc of beach. The western arc was the smaller; on the eastern, in the forepoint of the beach, I [ 144 ] spied, to my sorrow, figures moving, and a lit- tle smoke. The boat was eased in, we landed and turned this way and that, like fools, in a perplexity of pleasures; now some way into the wood toward the spire, but the woods had soon strangled the path ; in the Samoan phrase, the way was dead, and we began to flounder in impenetrable brush, still far from the foot of the ascent, although already the greater trees began to throw out arms dripping with lianas and to accept us in the margin of their shadows. Now along the beach, — it was grown up with crooked, thick-leaved trees down to the water's edge. Immediately be- hind, there had once been a clearing; it was all choked up with the mummy-apple, which in this country springs up at once at the heels of the axeman, and among this was intermingled the cocoa-palm and the banana. Our landing and the bay itself had nearly turned my head. "Here are the works of all the poets passim^^^ I said. And just then my companion stopped. "Behold an omen," said he, and pointed. It was a sight I had heard of before in the is- lands, but not seen : a little tree such as grows sometimes on infinitesimal islets on the reef, [145] almost stripped of its leaves and covered in- stead with feasting butterflies. These, as we drew near, arose and hovered in a cloud of blue and silver gray. Later on I found the scene repeated in another place; but here the butterflies were of a different species, glossy brown and black, with arabesques of white. The figures we had seen were those of an old woman, her daughter and two little boys ; they came from the village under the other side of Vamanga, and in the coals at their feet a cuttlefish was cooking. Our boys, with the two knives and the hatchet, strolled up, sat down, forgot their errand, and without any invitation that I could hear, divided among themselves the cuttlefish; they may have left an arrow; and the old lady, highly delighted, invited them over to her house that night to sleep with her daughter. Doubtless a high spirited pleasantry in the island fashion. The sun was still shining on the eastern hill, and the birds were still piping in all the bushy sides of our inlet, when I was able to sit down to my diary in the open front of our new house; the smoke of the rekindled fire drifting before me, the smell of roasting pig strong in [146] my nostrils; the boat pulled up, the crew seat- ed about smoking their banana-leaf cigarettes ; our boxes piled in disorder on the shore; and right in front of me (where our Chinaman had placed it out of the way of harm) our brass lantern glittering in a niche of a shore- side tree. As I wrote, the snails of the beach climbed upon my ink pot. As we came in, high above us in the honey- combed woods, flying-foxes and snow white gulls were flying. We ate in the front of our shed. Pig, [...], miki, and roasted taro, were native food, washed down with a historic wine, — white California from the wreck of Admiral Kim- berley's ship, the Trenton. It appeared that even in the lot of Admirals there was a crook. It was curious meanwhile, as the boys sat about on a big Futu tree before us, to see them upon their sides, eating tinned salmon from home; but how often it is so, that the common food of one race should be the delicacy of the other; and the consul's excellent tea, which Ah Sin brews for me at sunrise and which I was one day so unworldly as to praise, the traveled Chinaman identified as "poor man's tea." A [147] little while after, our boys began suddenly to sing. They sat all about the tree, some in their sheds, some on the far side by the sea; in the dusk, and by the light of the dying fire, it was just possible to see the nearest, their bare shoulders polished in the glow. One raised the song; the rest from different sides and distances joined in. It was a fine grave measure. I thought it had some European base, but the Samoans so transfuse their bor- rowed music that I had no guess it was a hymn, and applauded in the usual pause. I was still applauding when I was aware of the sustained sound of a voice from the far side of the tree; and by the subdued tones, and the recurrence of the exclusive plural, knew it was a prayer, and that I had burst with music hall applause into the midst of the evening worship. A sharp, file-firing ''Amen" from the scattered worshippers marked the conclusion of the ex- ercises. By that time it was fully night. The lantern was set before us in the front of our tent. Four of the boys sat in a row on their hams. Behind them in a turban of parti- colored towelling, the cook beat the measure on a biscuit case; the lantern threw them out [148] brightly; behind it sparkled on the fat leaves and crooked branches of the Futu, and behind again, but for some occasional glimmer of the sea, mere night enclosed us. At such an hour, by such a light, in this desert and romantic cove, I saw for the first time the male dancers of Tutuila; they gave us their songs; about voyage, with paddling and looking out from under the hand; a song of exercise and skirm- ishing with the Winchester rifle; and another of the same with the old Samoan war club. Change of tempo; huge effect; when the dances were over they lay on the ground and sang the lament for the deportation of Mann- ga; and then the concert degenerated into a long talk in which we discussed Mannga's exile, and the Malietoa and the Tanasese feuds, and the case of the dancers whom Cun- ningarne had taken to Europe, and the story of the two who had escaped from him and by the help of a kind German lady had returned to their beloved island; and we gave them ex- cellent advice and the consul chaffed them and was chafifed handsomely in return, for he who spars with Samoans must look to receive coun- ters; and then came the word of dissolution, [149] Fiamoa. It was Topa here, and Topa there. Our boys scattered to their roosting places; the nets were triced up in the shed, we took our places, and the lantern was turned out. It was like the removal of a cataract; in the twinkling of an eye the walls of darkness that contained us burst, and there was the heaven bright with stars, and there were the sea and the hillside clear in the starlight. All night the crickets sang with a clear trill of silver; all night the sea filled the hollow of the bay with varying utterance; now sounding continuous like a mill-weir; now (perhaps from farther off) with pointed swells and si- lences. In the morning I went wandering on the beach when the tide was low. I went round the tree before our boys had stirred; it was the first clear gray of the morning; and I could see them lie, each in his place, enmeshed from head to foot in his unfolded kilt. The Highlander with his belted plaid, the Samoan with his lava-lava, each sleep in their one ves- ture unfolded. One boy, who slept in the open under the trees, had made his pillow of a smouldering brand, doubtless for the conven- ience of a midnight cigarette; all night the [ISO] flame had crept nearer, and as he lay there wrapped like an Oriental woman and still plunged in sleep, the redness was within t\vo hands-breadths of his frizzled hair. I had scarce bathed, had scarce begun to enjoy the fairness and precious colors of the morning, the golden glow along the edge of the high eastern woods, the clear light on the sugar leaf of mangalai, the woven blue and emerald of the cove, the chuckle of morning bird song that filled the valley of the woods, when, upon a sudden, a draught of wind came from the leeward and the highlands of the isle, rain rattled on the tossing woods; the pride of the morning had come early and from an unlook- ed-for side. I fled for refuge in the shed; but such of our boys as were awake stirred not in the least; they sat where they were, perched on the scattered boxes of our camp, and puffed at their stubborn cigarettes, and crouched a little in the slanting shower. So good a thing it is to wear few clothes. I who was largely un- clad — a pair of serge trousers, a singlet, woolen socks, and canvas shoes — think of it! — envied them their light array. Thursday. — Snacse [?] and Laila withdrew [151] to t±ie village, which they found in the nick of the next day, an exceptionally wind-swept, cheery, and bemedalled place of dwelling. Pioa clear overhead, and a thin, hen's path across the narrow isle to go to Pagopago and return. Meanwhile I had Virgil's bay all morning to myself, and feasted on solitude and the overhanging woods, and the retiring sea. The quiet was only broken by the hoarse cooing of wild pigeons up the valley, and certain in- roads of capricious winds that find a way hence and thence down the hill-side and set the palms clattering: my enjoyment only disturbed by clouds of dull, voracious, spotted and not par- ticularly welcomed mosquitoes. When I was still I kept Buhac powder burning by me on a stone under the shed, and read Li\y, and com- pared today and tv^^o thousand years ago, and wondered in which of these epochs I was flourishing that moment: and then I would stroll out and see the rocks and the woods, and the arcs of beaches. car\"ed like a whorl in a fair woman's ear. and huge ancient trees jut- ting high overhead out of the hanging forest, great as mountains, and feel the place at least belonged to the age of fable, and awaited [152] Aeneas and his battered fleets. All day the snow white birds wheeled above and settled on our Futu ; snow white as those in Poe's hy- perbolical stor\^, the tail split like a swallow's, the courage certainly high, for I saw (far across the bay) two of these shining fowl perched in the top of our Futu, while the bus- iness, smoke and laughter of our camp rose all about them. Some time in the afternoon — two for a guess — we have no watch in our parn- and rudely compute by the rising and setting of the sun — we were aware of a bustle and the boys run- ning here and there with our effects. ''What is it? A great rain?" Xo sooner said than realized; down came the rain in a brief water- spout; the boys clustered sadly under the Futu, the roof of our shed became transpierced through joint and crevice with fine drills of cold water, and we sat dripping amid our drenched possessions. ''Evil is this house that you have built us," we cried to our boys, "Evil are the trees in this place," was the reply from the clustered herd under the Futu. But the evil was in our own neglect, for the Samoan must be watched and managed, and the night [153] before we had been too much pleased with our fine bay to mind the builders. By good luck the shower was as short as it was sharp, and we made a busy job of it to draw our books and clothes and bedding on the coral gravel in the returning sun. Thursday. — The new house held water. Showers fell often in the night; some sound- ing from far off like a cataract, some striking the house ; but not a drop came in. The flow- ers of the Futu lie scattered about it, tassels of fine sprays, snow white, warming through rose to crimson, and each tipped with a golden star. This drawing-room finery looks strange- ly out of place on the rude shingle. At night a cry of a wild catlike creature in the brush. Far up on the hill, one golden tree, — they say it is a wild cocoanut. I know it is not; they must know so too; and this leaves me free to think it sprang from the gold bough of Pro- serpine. The morning was all in blue; the sea blue, — blue in shore upon the shallows, — only the blue was nameless; and the horizon clouds a blue, like a fine pale porcelain; the sky be- hind them a pale lemon faintly warmed with [154] orange. Much that one sees in the tropics is in water-colors ; but this sunrise was in water- colors by a young lady. All our camp still slept, — the cox and the interpreter in their separate shed, the crew in the three others, and the lame man in his usual chamber, the hollow of the tree. None stirred; and behold, the tide was full, the mo- ment counted. I shook up the cox, and he with a long pole beat on the green roofs of the sheds and called his crew together. It was still early when we stole out of the Bay. Pola, when we came there, was but a wall of rock, divided from the mainland by a bubbling channel of about two boats' length ; trees clus- tered on its narrow top, a few clung on its side which was in one place buttressed with a nat- ural arch. Thousands of sea birds wheeled silently above or sat close in crannies, or be- snowed the clinging trees. To look at the place was to understand the irony of our boat's crew when they smilingly consented to come there and camp. Again they proposed it. Through the gate we skirted a precipitous shore with some nut stacks, here green with climbing wood, here bursting forth in naked [155] crags striped with cinnabar, here wet with falling streams, — the devil's taro, the sea- birds following. [156] LETTERS OF STEVENSON TO HIS MOTHER — 1868-1890 It is greatly to be regretted that Stevenson^s correspondence with his parents, and especial- ly with his mother, was not published before the dispersal of the Stevenson family papers. The opportunity to issue such a volume has now gone by, and the best that can be hoped for is the addition in print from time to time to those letters that have already appeared, of such little groups as may be made available by private collectors into whose hands the manuscripts have passed. The six that here follow begin with a letter full of boyish exuberance and humor, written when Stevenson was eighteen years old. It was a period when in deference to his father's wishes, but with little enthusiasm, he was try- ing to qualify himself for entrance upon the family profession of lighthouse building, and we find him at Wick, observing the work of his father's firm. But with this work Stev- enson here concerns himself only in a few lines; interestingly, where he writes that after "two poles were put up, the levels taken, the [157] gauges up-fixed; and, with these hands I cut the paper strips!" The quotations in Latin, the reference to poets — Coleridge, Byron, Southey — the mis- spellings of words, the gossip about friends, the interjection of French words and the pass- ing reference to his supposedly real work at Wick, all form a happy-go-lucky jumble, in a letter which Stevenson intended to be "very witty, very amusing, very romantic, very en- tertaining in general." But the chief value of the youthful ef^fusion lies in the fact that it il- lustrates the geniality of Stevenson's relation- ship with the mother for whom his devotion was ever to remain so constant. The second letter, dated in his mother's au- tograph, as written at Bournemouth Decem- ber 15, 1884, belongs to a period when Stev- enson, then a married man, was in extremely ill health, but very busy with work. A week earlier he had asked his parents to bring with them on their contemplated visit his volumes of Montaigne, Milton, Shakespeare and Haz- litt, and a few other books. To some of these volumes reference is again made in the present letter, the chief point of interest in which is its [158] mention of Sargent's portrait of Stevenson, and of Gladstone's already known enthusiasm for Treasure Island. The references to his father's appearance and address are explained in a note, again in the mother's autograph, the elder Stevenson then having recently become President of the Royal Society of Edinburgh. To both mother and father the third letter, dated by Mrs. Stevenson, Bournemouth July 31 1885, is addressed. In the Spring of that year Stevenson's father had given to his daugh- ter-in-law the house at Bournemouth, origin- ally named '^Bonallie Towers," and re-named "Skerryvore," in reminiscence, as Sir Sidney Colvin has stated, "of one of the great light- house works carried out by the family firm off the Scottish coast." Stevenson and his wife are here adding to the appearance of the draw- ing room and the dining room, and the young husband seems quite cheerful despite the bank- ruptcy that he predicts as a consequence. The fourth letter was written at Honolulu in June 1889, just after Stevenson had re- turned from his visit to the leper settlement at Molokai. In the months of May and June 1889, Stevenson described to his friends, Sid- [159] ney Colvin and James Payn, some of his ex- periences among those stricken people where Father Damien labored; others of these ex- periences are set forth for the first time in the Lazaretto article printed herein, as well as in the present letter to his mother. Here, as nowhere else in Stevenson's wTitings, are some very attractive lights on Father Damien him- self, w^hose entertainments varied from the religious to the comic and who, Stevenson says, "reminds us of Colvin in many ways, which you know is a big word for us." That same month Stevenson sailed from Honolulu on the steamer Equator^ to vari- ous islands of the western Pacific, arriving at Samoa late in December. It was during this journey and on that vessel that the fifth ex- ceedingly interesting letter was written to his mother. The people and doings on shipboard come in for detailed mention, including the proceedings that celebrated Stevenson's thir- ty-ninth birthday. After some wxeks at Samoa, where Steven- son bought the mountain estate which was later to become his home and his death place, he went in February 1890 to Sydney, and from [160] that port, he embarked in April on the trading steamer Janet Nicoll for a voyage of some four months among the Gilberts, the Mar- shalls, and others of the Pacific Islands. The sixth letter was written during this voy- age, — the crew, the company and the route forming the subject matter. How pleasant were Stevenson's relations with his ship com- panions on this cruise is best shown in the dedi- cation of the "Island Nights Entertainments" to Harry Henderson, Jack Buckland, and Ben Heard, ''supercargo frae Aiberdeen." G. S. H. Pulteney Hotel, Friday, Oct. 2nd, 1868, 1 1 130 P.M. My dear Mother, — ''Ha my prophetic soul!" how true thou prophesied! or prophesiedest; but the latter is bad orthorgraphy and spoils the Alexandrine (Nota Bene: papa will again object to poet- ry). I knew you were on the broad of your back. Second withering blast of prophesy: — you have been at church] I am glad you are better. To desert these w^indy and perilous heights [161] of prophesy and grandeur, let me court the hum-drum muse of epistolary diction: you see I am still a little Poped; indeed he fairly pooped me! Miss J. — J? Where are thy thoughts? — Miss Jamie Jamiesen, to be sure! On Wednesday the Russels sent for me to come at eight. Wondering, I went. (Stay — a little gossip first. . . ^Enough — more than enough of gossip! So go on.) Forma and Latta (forma translates nicely: supposing an ellision thus: "Pulcherrima forma," which papa will translate) Miss Coxe, Adams et ego were to go a walk "per amica silentia lunae, — under the friendly silence of the moon" — ahem! Virgil! to quote Pangloss — to the Old Man of Wick, a ruinous Tower on a neck of beetling cliflF, with two roaring chasms of tarn and a wild coast of crag and cane and boulder trending away on either hand (papa here once more condemns Tatler- anean tendency and deplores same). I en- tertained Sara and the latter woman: Adams, Miss Coxe. Of course on occasions, it faded into an insipid party of five; but that was * Two lines were here erased by his Mother. [162] the usual arrangement. We sat down outside the tower and watched ''The moon-chased shadows" fly across the wide white fields of tarn. The latter, who is very romantic and likes Byron, Scott, dim moonlight and faded lovers, found her heart too full for words and retired to a far pinnacle, like Elijah the Tish- bite alone. I was so much amused at Mrs. Russell (who is a very nice body, albeit a Paget of the Pagets and the real Pagets, whence comes the tuftism) ; she was so frightened; we were to keep away from the rocks ; we were to do this ; I was to put on her shawl (which, however, I secreted in the lobby) ; we were to do that; but, above all, was she distressed over a por- tion of Sara's attire, — a garment called, I am told, a p-t-c-t. This part of her apparel had been scrupulously cleansed for Germanee! and they feared that, passing through the mire, it might become soiled. In my eager- ness to oblige, not only did I become bound to wear the shawl and become answerable for the necks and future health of the whole party, but I actually offered a guarantee for the safe return of the said portion of attire or wearing [163] apparel, or the aforesaid garment, namely the p-t-c-t: whereat, on rit. We had a very pleas- ant walk. So you left Swanston yesterday. Heu scelerata jacet sedes in Heriot Row! (How classical I have become — haven't I ?) As this substitution makes the line a foot too short, you will be pleased to proceed on the *'Mur- ray of Murrays Ha-Ha'' principle, and say ''Row-ow," which makes it correct. The line is the beginning of Ovid's description of Tar- tarus; so it's rather hard on "sweet seventeen'' after all. And left it yesterday, while I was waiting for Mr. Robieson absent foreman- joiner. Well ! well ! troubles never come sing- ly! Today the two poles were put up ; the levels taken; the gauges up-fixed; and, with these hands I cut the paper strips! Tomorrow and Monday our men take the observations. David MacD. and I pulled out in the boat to the bay's mouth when the men were done. The moon rose, red and '^rideeclous magni- fied" from the breast of the sea. It was a lovely night. A lugger, out for the night's fishing, passed close by; it looked tall, filmy [164] and unnatural in the dim light; we could only see the outline. At last, it drove "betwixt the moon and us" — ahem! Coleridge! (Pangloss again) — you would have been delighted. We pulled back, moored the boat at the outmost ladder and walked in along the staging. Sud- denly D. M. stopped; I thought he looked livid about the gills. "The dog!" he gasped. "What about the dog? The dog knows joM?" said I, a little chilled. "I don't know that though," he said; "and even when he wasn't so fierce, I seen ^ him set on a young man that came down w^ith me." Didn't I feel happy! we armed ourselves with stones and very cautiously crept down the staging, trying to whistle and look calm. After all, we did not see him. Mrs. Wemyss and her son called here to- day. I must go out either on Saturday or Monday, whichever day I can get the time. For I am to leave on Toosda and chaperone Forma and Latta down; that's rather a spec, isn't it? This here letter has been intended to be very witty, very amusing, very romantic, very en- ^ As the old cock, etc. "I^ cog chanter." [Author's note.] [165] tertaining in general. The only thing that broke down was the gossip. I had an awful vision of parental brows in awful anger bent; and parental lips saying: "Put nothing in black and white." Besides, what it seems but little malicious to say, seems perfectly diaboli- cal on paper — the mean, low hits that flour- ish in the bitter satire of the satanic Byron. But isn't it true about Southey for all that. ''Immortal Hero!" — this is — ''. . . for ever reign . . . Since startled metre fled before thy face!" I could not write to ; her name is so hard to spell. I remain, Ever your afl^'t son, R. L. Stevenson 'Tarcite, ab urbe venit, jam parcite epis- tolae, Robert." Another hexameter neatly al- tered, if papa could only scan, he would ad- mire it. When your letter came I said, ''Demme!" followin' my present classical bent. [i66] December 15, 1884. My dear Mother, — Perhaps the Milton is at Hyeres; I did not think so, but it might be. It is Lang's Myths that I want. The Henry Fourth — let 'em look in the reviews: I can't remember the name, Wiley or something; but it has been reviewed in the Athenaeum^ Saturday, and Academy of the past three weeks or month. Sargent just gone; a charming, simple, clev- er, honest young man; he has delighted us. It appears Gladstone talks all the time about Treasure Island] he would do better to attend to the imperial affairs of England. We shall tell you nothing of what we think of S's pic- ture, for the excellent reason that we prefer to hear from you. It is a lovely frosty morning. Why I have never spoken of my father's appearances^ I cannot think. I was working so very hard that I had little time to remember anything. I thought both good ; but the ref- erence to Grant admirable. I would have changed nothing. Ever vour afft. son, R. L. S. 1 As President of the Royal Society. [167] Bournemouth, July 31, 1885 My dear people, — We are having great doings. The draw- ing-room will soon be lovely, and we bank- rupt. It will be a very quaint, but a very pleasing and harmonious room, and rich too; and with the picture, a Great Spot altogether. The tricycle arrived here in delicate health, and has since boarded at the house of a per- fidious tradesman; when we shall again be- hold it, the p. t. alone can say. I am very glad you have Mr. Bremmer with you; that will be a great comfort; please remember me to him kindly. If I were my mother, I should draw it mild with the Irish Cars. I don't believe they are good for her at all; or at least in excess. Did you hear that I had given way to a convex mirror in the dining room? It is sublime; no picture can be so decorative and cheerful. My mind shows symptoms, I think, of reawakening; high time, by George! Sar- gent comes to paint me again. Bob, Louisa, Portle, Lemon and Mrs. Lemon are down at Poole, where Coggie goes today to make room for Henley for two days. I am, R. L. S. [168] Honolulu, June, 1889. My dear Mother, — Herewith goes a copy of my first letter from the leper settlement; my second, that is to say my diary,^ is too long to copy, as it runs to near forty pp. I can only tell you briefly that I was a week in the settlement, hag-ridden by horrid sights but really inspired with the sight of so much goodness in the helpless and so much courage and unconsciousness in the sick. The Bishop Home (the Sisters' place) is per- fect; I went there most days to play croquet with the poor patients — think of a game of croquet with seven little lepers, and the ther- mometer sometimes ninety in the shade! I rode there and back, and used to have a little old maid meal prepared for me alone by the sisters; and though I was often deadly tired, I was never the worse. The girls enjoyed the game a good deal, and the honor and glory of a clean Laole gentleman for playmate yet 1 See page 177 for Stevenson's account of the Lazaretto. [169] more. They were none of them badly dis- figured, but some of the bystanders were dreadful ; but indeed I have seen sights to turn any man's hair white. The croquet helped me a bit, as I felt I was not quite doing nothing; Sister Maryanne wanted me to sit down the second day, and only tell the girls; I said '^they would not enjoy that'' — ^^Ah," said she, with a smiling eye, '^you say that, but the truth is you enjoy playing yourself!" And so I did. When I came on board the Mokolii (little 40-ton steamer) to leave, I had no proper pass and was refused entrance. I saw some very re- markable fire-works, I can tell you, for I had had enough and to spare of the distressful country. But it was all made right; the cap- tain took me ashore the same evening at the north end of the island, gave me a mount, in- troduced me to an innumerable Irish family where I had supper and a bed, and gave me a horse and a mounted guide next day, with w^hom I rode twenty miles to Mr. Meyer's house. The next day, I had another ride, a mighty rough drive over a kind of road to the landing place; caught the Mokolii again, and was in Honolulu the morning after about nine, [170] very sunburnt and rudely well. How is that for activity and rustic strength? Grace is not invariable but (I may say) frequent; and when not forgotten, is (ahem!) very well said. Joe, Lloyd and I are getting up music; guitar, talopatch, flageolet and voice for the show. Le bon Damien is to give us a choice of his comic slides; he has given us al- ready a complete set of the life of Christ; we have a fine magic lantern. Foo goes with us. He is quite brightened up by the decision, which was come to in a long talk under the trees at Damien's, — D, Mrs. D, and F piping up in Chinese with remarkable lyrical effects, and I sitting by and enjoying the concert. Ah Foo is death on Damien; but indeed we all exceedingly like him ; he reminds us of Colvin in many ways, which you know is a big word for us. Joe's debts are getting thinner; Tahiti lennade [?] is square, and genteel, but lan- guid. The Comorant is gone, to our great loss; they made us a hammock ere they left, and arranged for the relieving ship, the Espiegle^ to make the others. Was at a school examin- ation yesterday (girls school) ; it is a plain-look- [171] ing race; more pretty girls in the little box at Tantira [?] than in all this big hall; but they sang, and recited, and played the piano, like any European school, and for the singing (and the recitation too) far away better. Must dry up. Much love. Ever afift. son R. L. S. [172] HISTORICAL SKETCH OF THE LAZARETTO— 1889 In an editorial note in the Thistle Edition, prefixed to the letters of Stevenson published under the title of ^'In the South Seas," mention is made of his experiences at the leper settle- ment at Molokai, and the omission of the nar- ration of these experiences is attributed to Stevenson's dissatisfaction with his paper de- scribing them. The present sketch is presum- ably only the perfected portion and perhaps the only part extant of the longer piece of writ- ing left unused by Stevenson, although the theory is tenable that this fragment, if already seen by other editorial eyes, has not found its way previously into print because under the veil of its artistry there lies a sensuous sugges- tion not fully acceptable to finicky readers. Stevenson's letters from the South Seas (originally printed serially in partial form in "Black and White," and fully in the New York Sun in 1891) record the three voyages in the vessels Casco, Equator and Janet Nichollj from June 1888, to September 1890, and cover his adventures in various islands of the eastern [173] and western Pacific. Of these experiences none was more poignant than the visit to the lepers, and the intensit}^ of his interest, both in those ill-fated people and in the friends who sought to be of aid to them, found its most fearless expression in the famous letter in de- fense of Father Damien. Yet Stevenson's sympathy could not blind him to the fact, made patent in the following pages, that among these doomed men and women the nor- mal code of morals did not obtain. The sit- uation bears resemblance to that which is said to be not unusual in a colony of consumptives. The foreknowledge of death tends in such communities to laxity, to slackening of the moral cord. And if even in western civiliza- tion this disintegration takes place, and the brief span of life is devoted to such pleasures as still are possible, how much greater may well be the absorption in sensual satisfaction among the natives of the South Seas who are by training and temperament less inclined to the repression of the elementary emotions. Stevenson approaches his theme ''in cool and reasonable blood." He does not hide his initial horror at the sight of the lepers; but he [174] is soon cheered by the "blessed conviction" that these deformed creatures had a happi- ness of their own; and from this point on he shows, in his brief paper, a very human un- derstanding of the pleasures of the lepers in their food and their "gambols." The episode of the young girl who accosted him in the be- lief that he himself was a leper is a very tell- ing one, and Stevenson takes satisfaction in the thought that "those who would be elsewhere things to frighten children, might here court admiration and awaken desire." Apart from the interest of the subject mat- ter, there is one sentence in this sketch that calls for special comment. "To many of those Vho meddle with cold iron' (in the form of pens) some design of writing affords excuse sufficient for the most gross intrusions; per- haps, less fortunate, I have never attained to this philosophy." This is Stevenson's rejec- tion of the theory of art for art's sake, in its absolute form. Not every theme, he here con- tends, is material for the writer; or at least if the phrase "less fortunate" establishes Steven- son's unwillingness to deny arguments of those who feel otherwise, his sensitive nature as well [175] as his artistic susceptibilities are revealed as reluctant to make style the excuse for every theme. G. S. H. [176] HISTORICAL SKETCH OF THE LAZARETTO From hearsay and eyesight, I wish to string together a few notes of the history of this melancholy place. When the Hawaiian gov- ernment embraced the plan of segregation, they were doubtless (as is the way of govern- ments) unprepared; and the constitution of the Lazaretto, as it now exists, w^as approached by blunder and reached by accident. It would be easy in this place to gratify the curiosity of readers, to saw on the sentimental cord, and heap up moving detail. To repro- duce my diary as it stands would perhaps best serve my interest and the public taste. But the question of the Lazaretto is one on which sentiment must be discouraged; which should be approached in cool and reasonable blood. If there are lepers, if leprosy be showing (as begins to seem admissible) renewed powers of attack, it is time other powers followed the ex- ample of Hawaii; it is time one and all made ready to war on the renovated enemy; it is time we were done with bleating and shudder- ing. I own here that I have shuddered often ; my flesh was impressionable; all my life de- [^77'] formity and living decay have haunted me like nightmares; when I saw, lying athwart the sunrise, the leper promontory and the bare town of Kalaupapa, when the first boat set out laden with patients, when it was my turn to follow in the second, seated by two sisters on the way to their becuring labours, when we drew near the landing stairs, and saw them crowded with the sick and the unsightly, I take no shame to myself, but I will not con- ceal that weakness, horror and cowardice worked in the marrow of my bones/ The coming of the new sisters had attracted an 1 Mrs. Stevenson wrote: "He talked very little to us of the tragedy of Molokai, though I could see it lay heavy upon his spirits." — "It did not occur to him it would be necessary to get a separate official permission to leave Molokai; hence he was nearly left behind when the vessel sailed out. He only saved himself by a prodigious leap which landed him on board the boat whence nothing but force could dislodge him. By the doctor's orders he took gloves to wear as a precaution- ary measure against contagion, but they were never worn. At first he avoided shaking hands, but when he played croquet with the young leper girls he would not listen to the Mother Superior's warning that he must wear gloves. He thought it might remind them of their condition One of the first things he did on his return to Honolulu was to send Mother Mary Ann, the Mother Superior, a grand piano for the use of her girls — the girls with whom he had played croquet. He also sent toys, sewing materials, small tools for the younger children, and other things that I have forgotten. After his death a letter was found among his papers, of which I have only the last few lines: 'I cannot suppose you remember me, but I won't forget you, nor God won't forget you for your kindness to the blind white leper at Molokai.' " [178] unusual attendance, in the midst of which I felt myself a stranger. To many of those ^Vho meddle with cold iron" (in the form of pens) some design of writing affords excuse sufficient for the most gross intrusions: per- haps less fortunate, I have never attained to this philosophy; and I fled from the scene of welcome, and set forth on foot for Kalawao. Belated lepers were coming up continually on horseback; others sat in their doorways; with those I exchanged salutations ; with these I occasionally stopped and fell in talk. I had not been long upon the way before there stole into my heart a blessed conviction — that these creatures, however deformed, however close on death, were happy; and before I had met Mr. Hutchinson bringing me a horse, the blackness had been quite lifted from my spirit. I will tell but the one incident; infinitely lit- tle — but which struck me particularly at the time. It was still quite early morning, as I went with my bundles up the road; the air was cool, the level sunbeams struck overhead on the foli, the birds were piping in the cliff- side woods. Along either side of the way, scattered houses stood nakedly on the green [179] down; and to the porch of one I was sum- moned by a woman. She knew English ; she was comely in face and person; of engaging manners ; and spoke with an affectionate gen- tleness. It leaked out in the course of talk that she thought I was the new white patient; and when I had corrected the mistake, she sought not to conceal her disappointment. I went on again surprised; she had thought I was a leper, doomed (like herself) to spend my few last of days in that seclusion ; and when she found she was deceived, her only thought was of regret. In view of my thoughts of leprosy, in view of the mountain outlaws, of the scene so recently inscribed upon my mem- ory on the beach at Hookena, it was hard to understand her attitude. But it is the atti- tude (so far as I was able to observe) of Kalawao. The history of all institutions is a Tale of mistakes. They are born immature; among progressive peoples, before one part be per- fected, another will begin to grow obsolete; and the radical, as we name the hunter of consummation in these fields, is apt to be a man without historic sense. Of the futility [i8o] of design, the story of the Lazaretto affords a curious instance. Nothing appears more culpable than that series of negligence by which the lepers were reduced to pauperism; perhaps nothing was more fortunate. The wildest settle down contented to this life of parasites. No work, and regular rations; these are the attractions, these the dulcia leni- minay of Kalawao. I heard two men discuss- ing an escape; one was an official. "Ah," cried he, referring to the fugitive, "he had not been long here!'' And such I believe is the fact at least with natives; if they seek to escape at all, it is while they are new caught. Still more singular is the attitude of the clean Kokuas. These, who are usually connections of the sick, allowed to accompany their wives, husbands, or children, are the working bees of the sad hive; the laborers, butchers, store- keepers, nurses and grave diggers, in that place of melancholy, and folded hands. The surroundings, the few toilers, looked upon by so many delivered from all touch of need — the frequency of death, the brevity of pros- pect, the consequent estimation of the moment, might perhaps, even on the most stalwart of [i8i] our northern races, work some influence of disenchantment. In the Kokuas, the result appears to be unmingled envy of a better state. Dr. Swift had once in his hand a lancet charg- ed with the virus of leprosy. ^'Come here," he cried, in somewhat appalling pleasantry, to one of the Kokuas. "Come here, and I will make a leper of you." The man advanced, rolling up his sleeve as he came. He was en- tirely serious; nor w^as he at all singular in this readiness. Paris valait bien une messe; and rations are worth leprosy. Within the precinct, it must be remember- ed, to be leprous is the rule. The disease no longer awakens pity, nor do its deformities move shame in the patient or disgust in the beholder. The girl at Hookena, a leper at large amongst the clean, held down her face; I w^as glad to find she would soon walk with head erect among her fellows, and perhaps be attended as a beaut}^ To the point; I was riding late one after- noon from Kalaupapa, and saw far in front of me, on the dow^nward slope that leads to Kal- awano, a group of natives returning from some junket. They wore their many colored [182] Sunday's best, bright wreathes of flowers in the Hawaiian fashion around their necks; the trade wind brought me strains of song and laughter; and I saw them gambol as they came, and the men and women chase and change places with each other by the way. It made, from a distance, an engaging picture; I had near forgot in what distressful country my road lay; a little nearer, I saw that two of them — and not the least adorned — were in- humanly defaced. The standard had fallen w^ith the circumstance; and those who would be elsewhere things to frighten children, might here court admiration and awaken de- sire. Steamer Janet NichoW^ My dear Mother, — The lively Jane as she is called by those who know her is just illustrating her skittish- ness, and my hand of write suflfers in conse- quence. We have a most agreeable ship's company; the start has stopped my lung sym- toms almost entirely, but I have had as yet no change of climate, as we are going to Auck- 1 In the margin of the letter is written, "Auckland, April 1890," in another handwriting. [183] land, and tonight it rains and blows, and the Janet Janetises; you never saw so quick a rol- ler. I am beginning this under these unto- ward circumstances to have it ready for Auck- land; and I can only hope the pencil may re- main legible. The party is the captain, a very mild German; Henderson, a very nice fellow like Chandler whom we met on the Ludgate Hill, but he may leave us at Auckland; Stod- dard, engineer, frae Glesgie; Heard, super- cargo, frae Aiberdeen; Jack Buckland, a strange Sydney T. .fite and (at the same time, or rather in alternate layers) Gilbert Island Beachcomber, admirably good-looking and really nice in his way; indeed the whole lot is first rate. On the back I am going to give you a plan of some of the ship, which of course (near 500 tons) is a mighty fine affair for the likes of us; or would be, if she could be in- duced to stop rolling and wallowing like a drunken tub. The o's are dead lights, i main cabin. 2. our stateroom. 3. Lloyd and Buckland. 4. Henderson. 5. Heard. 6. W. C. 7. Companion. The main cabin is 15 feet long, 7 ft. headroom. Above the cabin is a spar deck and above that again the bridge; [184] abaft the cabins are the galley and the en- gines. It is very pleasant to have the engines behind; but there is no use in trying to blink the fact that the Janet is a pig. I never saw such a roller. Again, last night since I began to write, I was nearly thrown out of my bunk, and so was Buckland; and eating is a toil and trial. Our route is Savage, Semaroff(?), Wauihiki, Penrhyn(?), Christmas, Danger Islands, Tokalaus, Ellias, Gilberts, Marshalls; and afterwards we are in doubt. You can look 'em up on the map. Xmas is doubtful, but possible; the others named (bar accident) certain; you see what a space we are to cover, though it's all low islands again. I shall know something of the Pacific now. I am, dear mother. Ever your afft. son, R. L. S. Schooner Equator^ at sea 240 miles from Samoa, Sunday, Dec. ist, 1889. My dear Mother, — We are drawing (we fondly hope) to the close of another voyage like that from Tahiti [185] to Hawaii; we sailed from Butaritari on the 4th November, and since then have lain be- calmed under cataracts of rain, or kicked about in purposeless squalls. We were six- teen souls in this small schooner, eleven in the cabin; our confinement and overcrowding in the wxt weather was excessive; we lost our foretopmast in a squall; the sails were contin- ually being patched (we had but the one suit) and with all attention we lost the jibtopsail almost entirely and the staysail and mainsail are far through. To com- plete the discomfort, we have carried a very mild weatherglass; a daily fall of 15- hundredths in four hours, followed by a cor- responding rise, and on one occasion accom- panied by the fall of the thermometer to 79* at noon, kept us on the qui-vive. I wonder are you already so far out of key with the South Seas, that 79° at noon will seem warm to you? You should have seen the great coats out! I myself wore two wool undershirts, a knitted waistcoat — the gift of the King of Apemama — and a flannel blazer; and I was seriously thinking of a flannel shirt, when the cold let up. My birthday was a great [186] event; Mr. Rich, the agent of the firm at Bu- taritari, who makes on this trip one of the eleven beings in the cabin, had his on the twelfth ; so we had two days festivity, — cham- pagne, music, the capture of sharks, dolphins and skipjack — mighty welcome additions to our table. Ah Fu (at my elbow in the trade- room door) begs me to add that the little land birds joined the ship and stayed some twenty hours. The log says: "13th, throughout this day dead calm with heavy rain; sometimes very light westerly airs; and very strong easterly current." Of course we had no ob- servation, but our position next day was 179* 35' E, 6° 58' N, which could not be far out, as that was a calm also. On the evening of my birthday, all hands came in the cabin to make me a compliment; the long American sailor (called The Fisherman's Child^ after a doleful ditty that he sings) was at the wheel; compared, Ta Toma, tall powerful Hawaiian, about twenty; Teu Tau, Apaiang islander, perhaps 13; Charlie Selth, San Franciscan, of Scotch origin, and very like our Agnes, 15; La, Honolulu stowaway, perhaps 13; Georgie (called George Muggery Bowyer, Esq.) Ha- [187] waiian, the ship's infant, age, perhaps 9 — his little jacket shrunk almost up to his nipples, his little breeches (once they were trousers) leaving bare his knees below and a part of his hips above; how they staid on, nobody can guess. Both marines of the after guard were at table, Fanny, Lloyd, Joe and I; Captain Denis Reid, Greenock, 25, Adolf Rick, Gal- lician, born in Prussia, 43; Paul Leonard, 28, Prussian, known as the Passenger to Waiiki — towards which island, like a will o' the wisp, he has been sailing in this Equator for nine weeks, and will sail at least half as many more, and yet he has twice sighted it, and then the wind failed, the westerly current took charge, and farewell Waiiki! Tom Thomson, but his name is Ole Somethingson, Norwegian, our mate, the tavern keeper on Waiiki, thirty. In the background, our cook and steward the great Ah Fu, Sana [?] China, and Murray Macallum, son of a Freekirk minister on the Clyde — Mr. Swan has been in his father's house — aged maybe 20. To this congrega- tion, in the small, lamplighted, tossing cabin, nine feet square, with the compass and the binnacle lantern inside on a bracket on the af- [188] ter bulkhead, and the steersman looking down at us through an eye-shaped aperture, like a narrow-loophole — add the incessant uproar of the tropic rain, the dripping leaks, the slush on the floor, and the general sense that we were nowhere in particular and drifting anywhere at large; and there is my 39th birthday! Charlie Selth was the spokesman of the crew, and made a neat little speech of a sentence, and you should have seen the row of brown faces, tailing down from Tatoma to George. Georgie comes aft every morning to get from the Captain his "Boia" — a thrashing; it is quite solemnly gone through on both sides, and I must candidly declare is the only duty the child has, or at least attends to. From this word, his family name of Bowyer has been deduced by the Heralds of the Equator] the middle name "Muggery" is (something like) a native word; and the whole thing gives very much the effect of an heir to a baronetcy. We had a fine alert once; a p. d. reef ahead — three positions indicated, our own disputed — a very heavy sea running — the boats cleared and supplied with bread and water, our little packets made (medicines, papers, and woollen [189] clothes) and the poor passenger for Waiiki trying rather ruefully to insure his little all which was on board. It was rather fine going to bed that night; though, had we struck the reef, the boat voyage of four or five hundred miles would have been no joke. Fanny has stood the hardships of this rough cruise wonderfully; but I do not think I could enforce her to another of the same. I've been first rate, though I am now done for lack of green food. Joe is, I fear, really ill; and Lloyd has bad sores in his leg. We shall send Joe on to Sydney by the first steamer; and Lloyd, Fanny and I shall stay on awhile (time quite vague) in Samoa. Write to Sydney. We shall turn up in England by May or June. Ever your afft. son, R. L. S. [190] PRAYERS AT VAILIMA— 1890-1894 In the volume of Miscellanies, published (Edinburgh Edition, Volume 4) after Stev- enson's death, fourteen of the prayers — gen- erally very brief — composed by him for his household at Vailima, testify to the decided change from the early Edinburgh days when he chafed under the religious atmosphere that hung upon him in his father's home. The two additional prayers here are in the same vein as others with which Stevensonians are familiar. The confession of weakness and the inclination toward kindness are the two notes that ring truest throughout most of Sevenson's prayers. Above the first one of the two here printed, Stevenson has written : 'Tor family prayer ;'* and the word ''family" has not simply the us- ual connotation, but includes those Samoan children — in this instance all boys — who, ac- cording to the custom of the island, were adopted by missionaries or European "chiefs," interested in educating the natives. In his ca- pacity as the temporary "father" of the chil- dren of Samoan chiefs, the head of a little clan, Stevenson realized the necessity of seek- [191] ing to be an exemplar in religious as well as domestic duties; and though at times he failed in a strict observance of the Sabbath, he was consistently a leader in those brief family prayers, the utterance of which gave all the more pleasure to him because they brought such deep satisfaction to his religiously inclin- ed mother who was then living under his roof. G. S. H. [ 192] / A/ -J-^ jj c a (? \ S.I WetJ'lN. J^^^^J-----. y^ c'' VA *4 V. Vy^t.f/ o^^-^' X , ^^, /' '•»*^ V*-s» k^'f-t^^ \ / «' L, ^ ' Vv^-^ ^v-u ' I :Vl PRAYERS AT VAILIMA I O God, who throughout life hast pursued us with thy mercies and thy judgments, and in love and anger led us daily forward, as thou hast not been weary in the past, be not weary yet awhile. Pardon our dull spirits, and whether with mercy or with judgment, call us up from slumber. For as we kneel together, in this cruel state, weak folk, with many weaker depending on our help, sinful folk, with the whole earth ministering temptations, we would desire to remember equally our need and thy power. Save us, O Lord, from ourselves. The prayer that we lifelessly repeat, hear, Lord, and make it live, and answer it in mercy. Let us not judge amiss, let us not speak with cruelty; our kindness to others, sufifer it not to weary. May we grow merciful by tribula- tions, liberal by mercies. Thou who sendest thy rain upon the just and the unjust, help us to pardon, help us to love, our fellow-sinners. [193] II O God, who hast brought us to the end of another day, of use or of uselessness, pardon, as is thy wont, the manifold sins and short- comings of our practise, the discontent and envy of our thoughts; enable us this night to enjoy the repose of slumber and waken us again tomorrow, with better thoughts and a greater courage, to resume the task of life. Bless to us the pleasures, bless to us the pains of our existence. Suffer us not to forget the bonds of our humanity; give us strength, give us the spirit of mercy, give us the power to endure. Leave us not indifferent, O God, but pierce our hearts to resolve and enable our hands to perform, as before thy face in the sight of the eternal. Watch upon our eyes, ears, thoughts, tongues and hands, that we may neither think unkindly, speak unwisely or act unrighteously. Guide us, thou who didst guide our fathers; and upon this day more especially set apart for prayer, receive our penitent and grateful thoughts; and hear us, when we pray for oth- ers and ourselves; that they may be blessed and we be helpful; and give us, beyond our [194] deserts to receive, beyond our imaginations to expect, the grace to die daily to our evil, and to live ever the more and ever the more wholly to Thee and to our fellow-sufferers. Hear us for His sake, in whose name we w^ould further say: [Here he doubtless in- tended to repeat the Lord's Prayer J\ [195] \ aV<^... .^■•^ .#^ S>o. %/■ - ^%\ %4' ■>--^' * "o^^ ^ ^*.. A>^ ■*^, '■ ^ > . x^°^. .# .,^-^ _^^ -x^'-V s^ .A ^. ^ " , v ^^0 • 0^ ^^A v^ %4 ■ .0' ^O. ' ,0 o^ y.o 'Z J = -^-v '/% '-\.< A\-^.V, ^-^.4- .^-% ' .0' ^-^ -v. ^^<0 vO -; »^ S % -i"^' .^'^^ ^•', ^' .4 .'-'•/ >c ^•a. * X' ^ « ^