Vailima Letters
by Robert Louis Stevenson · English · Gutenberg #387 · 517,706 chars · public domain (US)
The Project Gutenberg eBook of Vailima Letters
This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States and
most other parts of the world at no cost and with almost no restrictions
whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms
of the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online
at www.gutenberg.org. If you are not located in the United States,
you will have to check the laws of the country where you are located
before using this eBook.
Title: Vailima Letters
Author: Robert Louis Stevenson
Release date: January 1, 1996 [eBook #387]
Most recently updated: February 19, 2013
Language: English
Other information and formats: www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/387
Credits: Transcribed from the 1908 Methuen edition by David Price
*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK VAILIMA LETTERS ***
Transcribed from the 1908 Methuen edition by David Price, email
ccx074@pglaf.org
[Picture: Portrait of Robert Louis Stevenson]
VAILIMA LETTERS
BEING CORRESPONDENCE
ADDRESSED BY
ROBERT LOUIS
STEVENSON
TO
SIDNEY COLVIN
NOVEMBER 1890 — OCTOBER 1894
* * * * *
LONDON
METHUEN AND CO.
36 ESSEX STREET
_Seventh Edition_
* * * * *
_First Published_ _November_ 1895
_Second Edition_ _December_ 1895
_Third Edition_ _February_ 1901
_Fourth Edition_ _October_ 1904
_Fifth Edition_ _March_ 1906
_Sixth Edition_ _October_ 1907
_Seventh Edition_ _December_ 1908
CONTENTS
PAGE
EDITORIAL NOTE xi
LETTER
I. November 1890 1
II. November 25—December 2, 1890 22
III. December 1890 33
IV. January 17, 1891 46
V. February 1891 51
VI. March 1891 54
VII. April 1891 65
VIII. April 29—May 19, 1891 70
IX. June 1891 77
X. September 1891 82
XI. September 28—October 13, 1891 94
XII. October 1891 102
XIII. November 25—December 7, 1891 110
XIV. December 1891—January 3, 1892 119
XV. January 31—February 1892 135
XVI. February—March 2, 1892 139
XVII. March 9—March 30, 1892 147
XVIII. May 1—May 27, 1892 158
XIX. May 29—June 1892 180
XX. July 2—July 12, 1892 202
XXI. August—September 13, 1892 205
XXII. September 15—October 8, 1892 221
XXIII. October 28—November 8, 1892 227
XXIV. December 1—December 5, 1892 236
XXV. January—January 30, 1893 239
XXVI. February 19—February 23, 1893 247
XXVII. February 1893 250
XXVIII. April—April 22, 1893 252
XXIX. April 25—May 23, 1893 260
XXX. May 29—June 15, 1893 270
XXXI. June 24—July 18, 1893 280
XXXII. August 1893 296
XXXIII. August 23—September 12, 1893 298
XXXIV. October 23—December 4, 1893 306
XXXV. December 1893 313
XXXVI. January 29, 1894 320
XXXVII. February 1894 322
XXXVIII. March 1894 324
XXXIX. May 18, 1894 330
XL. June 18, 1894 333
XLI. July 1894 336
XLII. August 7—August 13, 1894 340
XLIII. September 1894 343
XLIV. October 6, 1894 348
Epilogue 355
Appendix 360
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS
Portrait of R. L. Stevenson; etched by W. Strang _Frontispiece_
after a photograph by Falk of Sydney
Portrait of R. L. Stevenson on his Horse ‘Jack’ 119
Portrait of R. L. Stevenson with the Native Chief 320
Tui Malealiifano
EDITORIAL NOTE.
SO much of preface seems necessary to this volume as may justify its
publication and explain its origin. The writer was for many years my
closest friend. It was in the summer of 1873 that a lady, whose gracious
influence has helped to shape and encourage more than one distinguished
career, first awakened my interest in him and drew us together. He was
at that time a lad of twenty-two, with his powers not yet set nor his way
of life determined. But to know him was to recognise at once that here
was a young genius of whom great things might be expected. A slender,
boyish presence, with a graceful, somewhat fantastic bearing, and a
singular power and attraction in the eyes and smile, were the signs that
first impressed you; and the impression was quickly confirmed and
deepened by the charm of his talk, which was irresistibly sympathetic and
inspiring, and not less full of matter than of mirth. I have known no
man in whom the poet’s heart and imagination were combined with such a
brilliant strain of humour and such an unsleeping alertness and
adroitness of the critical intelligence. But it was only in conversation
that he could as yet do himself justice. His earliest efforts in
literature were of a very uneven and tentative quality. The reason
partly was that in mode of expression and choice of language, no less
than in the formation of opinion and the conduct of life, he was
impatient, even to excess, of the conventional, the accepted, and the
trite. His perceptions and emotions were acute and vivid in the extreme;
his judgments, whether founded on experience, reading, discussion, or
caprice (and a surprising amount of all these things had been crowded
into his youthful existence) were not less fresh and personal; while to
his ardent fancy the world was a theatre glowing with the lights and
bustling with the incidents of romance. To find for all he had to say
words of vital aptness and animation—to communicate as much as possible
of what he has somewhere called ‘the incommunicable thrill of things’—was
from the first his endeavour in literature, nay more, it was the main
passion of his life. The instrument that should serve his purpose could
not be forged in haste, still less could it be adopted at second hand or
ready-made; and he has himself narrated how long and toilsome was the
apprenticeship he served.
In those days, then, of Stevenson’s youth it was my good fortune to be of
use to him, partly by helping to soften parental opposition to his inborn
vocation for letters, partly by recommending him to editors (Mr.
Hamerton, Sir George Grove, and Mr. Leslie Stephen in succession), and a
little even by such technical hints as a classical training and five
years’ seniority enabled me to give. It belonged to the richness of his
nature to repay in all things much for little, _ἑκατομβοἶ ἐννεαβοιών_,
and from these early relations sprang both the affection, to me
inestimable, of which the following correspondence bears evidence, and
the habit, which it pleased him to maintain after he had become one of
the acknowledged masters of English letters, of confiding in and
consulting me about his work in progress. It was my business to find
fault; to ‘damn’ what I did not like; a duty which, as will be inferred
from the following pages, I was accustomed to discharge somewhat
unsparingly. But he was too manly a spirit to desire or to relish
flattery, and too true an artist to be content with doing less than his
best: he knew, moreover, in what rank of English writers I put him, and
for what audience, not of to-day, I would have him labour. _Tibi
Palinure_—so, in the last weeks of his life, he proposed to inscribe to
me a set of his collected works. Not Palinurus so much as Polonius may
perhaps—or so I sometimes suspect—have been really the character; but his
own amiable view of the matter has to be mentioned in order to account
for part of the tenor of the following correspondence.
As a letter-writer, Mr. Stevenson was punctilious in business matters
(herein putting some violence on his nature), indefatigable where there
was a service to be requited or a kindness done, and to strangers and
slight acquaintances ever courteous and attentive. I am not sure,
indeed, but that in this capacity it was the outer rather than the inner
circle of his correspondents who, speaking generally, had the best of
him. To his intimate friends he wrote charmingly indeed by fits, but
often, at least in early days, in a manner not a little trying and
tantalising. With these, his correspondence was apt to be a thing wholly
of moods. ‘Sordid facts,’ as he called them, were almost never
mentioned: date and place one could never infer except from the postmark.
He would exclaim over some predicament to the nature of which he gave no
clue whatever, or appeal for sympathy in circumstances impossible to
conjecture; or, starting in a key of vague poetry and sentiment, would
wind up (in a manner characteristic also of his talk) with a rhapsody of
hyperbolical slang. Or he would dilate on some new phase of his many
maladies with burlesque humour—with complaint never—but what had been the
nature of the attack you were left to wonder and guess in vain. During
the period of his Odyssey in the South Seas, from August 1888 until the
spring of 1890, the remoteness and inaccessibility of the scenes he
visited inevitably interrupted all correspondence for months together;
and when at long intervals a packet reached us, the facts and
circumstances of his wanderings were to be gathered from the admirable
letters of Mrs. Stevenson (who has this feminine accomplishment in
perfection) rather than from his own. But when later in the
last-mentioned year, 1890, he and his family were settled on their newly
bought property on the mountain behind Apia, to which he gave the name of
Vailima (five rivers), he for the first time, to my infinite
gratification, took to writing me long and regular monthly budgets as
full and particular as heart could wish; and this practice he maintained
until within a few weeks of his death.
It is these journal-letters from Samoa, covering with a few intervals the
period from November 1890 to October 1894, that are printed by themselves
in the present volume. They occupy a place, as has been indicated, quite
apart in his correspondence, and in any general selection from his
letters would fill a quite disproportionate space. Begun without a
thought of publicity, and simply to maintain our intimacy undiminished,
so far as might be, by separation, they assumed in the course of two or
three years a bulk so considerable, and contained so much of the matter
of his daily life and thoughts, that it by-and-by occurred to him, as may
be read on page 200, that ‘some kind of a book’ might be extracted out of
them after his death. It is this passage which has given me my warrant
for their publication, and at the same time has imposed on me no very
easy editorial task. In a correspondence so unreserved, the duty of
suppression and selection must needs be delicate. Belonging to the race
of Scott and Dumas, of the romantic narrators and creators, Stevenson
belonged no less to that of Montaigne and the literary egotists. The
word seems out of place, since of egotism in the sense of vanity or
selfishness he was of all men the most devoid; but he was nevertheless a
watchful and ever interested observer of the motions of his own mind. He
saw himself, as he saw everything else, (to borrow the words of Mr.
Andrew Lang) with the lucidity of genius, and loved to put himself on
terms of confidence with his readers; but of confidence kept always
within fit limits, and permitting no undue intrusion into his private
affairs and feelings. To maintain the same limits in the editing of an
intimate correspondence after his death would have been impossible. I
have tried to do my best under the circumstances; to suffer no feelings
to be hurt that could be spared, and only to lift the veil of family life
so far as under the conditions was unavoidable. Neither would it have
been possible from such a correspondence to expunge the record of those
trivialities which make up the chief part of life, even in surroundings
so romantic and unusual as Stevenson in these years had chosen for
himself. It belonged to the personal charm of the man that nothing ever
seemed commonplace or insignificant in his company; but in correspondence
this charm must needs to some extent evaporate.
Such as they remain, then, these letters will be found a varied record,
perfectly frank and familiar, of the writer’s every-day moods, thoughts,
and doings during his Samoan exile. They tell, with the zest and often
in the language of a man who remained to the last a boy in spirit, of the
pleasures and troubles of a planter founding his home in the virgin soil
of a tropical island; the pleasures of an invalid beginning after many
years to resume habits of outdoor life and exercise; the toils and
satisfactions, failures and successes, of a creative artist whose
invention was as fertile as his standards were high and his industry
unflinching. These divers characters have probably never been so united
in any man before. Something also they tell of the inward movements and
affections of one of the bravest and tenderest of human hearts. One part
of his life, it should be said, which his other letters will fully
reveal, finds little expression in these, namely the relations of cordial
and ungrudging kindness in which he stood towards the younger generation
of writers at home, including many personally unknown to him. Neither do
ordinary impressions of travel—impressions of the beauties of the tropics
and the captivating strangeness of the island people and their ways—fill
much space in them. These things were no longer new to the writer when
the correspondence began; they had been part of the element of his life
since the day, near two years before, when his yacht first anchored in
the Bay of Nukahiva, and his soul, to quote his own words, ‘went down
with these moorings whence no windlass may extract nor any diver fish it
up; and I, and some part of my ship’s company, were from that hour the
bondslaves of the isles of Vivien.’ In their stead we find, what to some
readers may be hardly so welcome, the observations of a close student of
native life, history, and manners, and some of the perplexities and
pre-occupations of an island politician.
The political allusions are seldom in the form of direct statement or
narrative. To understand them, the reader must bear in mind a few main
facts, which I shall state as briefly and plainly as possible. At the
date when Stevenson settled in Samoa, the government of the island had
lately been settled between the three powers interested, namely Germany,
England, and the United States, at the convention of Berlin. Under this
convention, Malietoa Laupepa, who had previously been deposed and
deported by the Germans in favour of a nominee of their own, was
reinstated as king, to the exclusion of his kinsman, the powerful and
popular Mataafa, whose titles might be held equally good and whose
abilities were certainly greater, but who was specially obnoxious to the
Germans owing to his resistance to them during the troubles of the
previous years. For a time the two kinsmen, Laupepa and Mataafa, lived
on amicable terms, but presently differences arose between them. Mataafa
had expected to occupy a position of influence in the government: finding
himself ignored, he withdrew to a camp a few miles outside the town of
Apia, where he lived in semi-royal state as a kind of passive rebel or
rival to the recognised king. In the meantime, in the course of the year
1891, the two white officials appointed under the Berlin Convention,
namely the Chief Justice, a Swedish gentleman named Cedarkrantz, and the
President of the Council, Baron Senfft von Pilsach, had come out to the
islands and entered on their duties. In Stevenson’s judgment these
gentlemen proved quite unequal to their task, an opinion which before
long came to be shared and acted on by the foreign offices of the three
powers under whom they were appointed. Stevenson was no abstracted
student or dreamer; the human interests and the human duties lying
immediately about him were ever the first in his eyes: and petty and
remote as these island concerns may appear to us, they were for him near
and urgent. A man of his eager nature and persuasive powers must
naturally acquire influence in any community in which he may be thrown,
and among the natives in especial, by kindness, justice, and a
sympathetic understanding of their ways and character, he soon came to
enjoy a singular degree of authority. His unauthorised intervention in
public matters may have been of a nature disconcerting to the official
mind, but his purposes were at all times those of a peacemaker. The
steady aim of his efforts was to bring about the withdrawal of the two
discredited white officials (against whom, it will be seen, he had no
personal animus whatever) and to procure a reconciliation between Laupepa
and Mataafa, so that the latter might exercise the share in the
government due to his character, titles, and following. The first part
of this policy commended itself after a time to the three powers and
their agents, and was carried out; the second not; and his friend Mataafa
was by-and-by attacked by the forces of Laupepa, beaten, and sent into
exile.
In reading the following pages it must be borne in mind that Mulinuu and
Malie, the places respectively of Laupepa’s and Mataafa’s residence, are
also used to signify their respective parties and followings. The reader
will have no difficulty in identifying the various personages composing
the family group whose names occur constantly in the correspondence,
namely the writer’s mother, his wife (‘Fanny’), his stepson, Mr. Lloyd
Osbourne (‘Lloyd’), his step-daughter and amanuensis, Mrs. Strong
(‘Belle’), and her young son (‘Austin’). Explanation of any other
matters seeming to require it is added in the footnotes.
S. C.
_August_ 1895.
CHAPTER I
_In the Mountain_, _Apia_, _Samoa_,
_Monday_, _November_ 2_nd_, 1890
MY DEAR COLVIN,—This is a hard and interesting and beautiful life that we
lead now. Our place is in a deep cleft of Vaea Mountain, some six
hundred feet above the sea, embowered in forest, which is our strangling
enemy, and which we combat with axes and dollars. I went crazy over
outdoor work, and had at last to confine myself to the house, or
literature must have gone by the board. _Nothing_ is so interesting as
weeding, clearing, and path-making; the oversight of labourers becomes a
disease; it is quite an effort not to drop into the farmer; and it does
make you feel so well. To come down covered with mud and drenched with
sweat and rain after some hours in the bush, change, rub down, and take a
chair in the verandah, is to taste a quiet conscience. And the strange
thing that I mark is this: If I go out and make sixpence, bossing my
labourers and plying the cutlass or the spade, idiot conscience applauds
me; if I sit in the house and make twenty pounds, idiot conscience wails
over my neglect and the day wasted. For near a fortnight I did not go
beyond the verandah; then I found my rush of work run out, and went down
for the night to Apia; put in Sunday afternoon with our consul, ‘a nice
young man,’ dined with my friend H. J. Moors in the evening, went to
church—no less—at the white and half-white church—I had never been
before, and was much interested; the woman I sat next _looked_ a
full-blood native, and it was in the prettiest and readiest English that
she sang the hymns; back to Moors’, where we yarned of the islands, being
both wide wanderers, till bed-time; bed, sleep, breakfast, horse saddled;
round to the mission, to get Mr. Clarke to be my interpreter; over with
him to the King’s, whom I have not called on since my return; received by
that mild old gentleman; have some interesting talk with him about Samoan
superstitions and my land—the scene of a great battle in his (Malietoa
Laupepa’s) youth—the place which we have cleared the platform of his
fort—the gulley of the stream full of dead bodies—the fight rolled off up
Vaea mountain-side; back with Clarke to the Mission; had a bit of lunch
and consulted over a queer point of missionary policy just arisen, about
our new Town Hall and the balls there—too long to go into, but a quaint
example of the intricate questions which spring up daily in the
missionary path.
Then off up the hill; Jack very fresh, the sun (close on noon) staring
hot, the breeze very strong and pleasant; the ineffable green country all
round—gorgeous little birds (I think they are humming birds, but they say
not) skirmishing in the wayside flowers. About a quarter way up I met a
native coming down with the trunk of a cocoa palm across his shoulder;
his brown breast glittering with sweat and oil: ‘Talofa’—‘Talofa,
alii—You see that white man? He speak for you.’ ‘White man he gone up
here?’—‘Ioe (Yes)’—‘Tofa, alii’—‘Tofa, soifua!’ I put on Jack up the
steep path, till he is all as white as shaving stick—Brown’s euxesis,
wish I had some—past Tanugamanono, a bush village—see into the houses as
I pass—they are open sheds scattered on a green—see the brown folk
sitting there, suckling kids, sleeping on their stiff wooden pillows—then
on through the wood path—and here I find the mysterious white man (poor
devil!) with his twenty years’ certificate of good behaviour as a
book-keeper, frozen out by the strikes in the colonies, come up here on a
chance, no work to be found, big hotel bill, no ship to leave in—and come
up to beg twenty dollars because he heard I was a Scotchman, offering to
leave his portmanteau in pledge. Settle this, and on again; and here my
house comes in view, and a war whoop fetches my wife and Henry (or
Simelé), our Samoan boy, on the front balcony; and I am home again, and
only sorry that I shall have to go down again to Apia this day week. I
could, and would, dwell here unmoved, but there are things to be attended
to.
Never say I don’t give you details and news. That is a picture of a
letter.
I have been hard at work since I came; three chapters of _The Wrecker_,
and since that, eight of the South Sea book, and, along and about and in
between, a hatful of verses. Some day I’ll send the verse to you, and
you’ll say if any of it is any good. I have got in a better vein with
the South Sea book, as I think you will see; I think these chapters will
do for the volume without much change. Those that I did in the _Janet
Nicoll_, under the most ungodly circumstances, I fear will want a lot of
suppling and lightening, but I hope to have your remarks in a month or
two upon that point. It seems a long while since I have heard from you.
I do hope you are well. I am wonderful, but tired from so much work;
’tis really immense what I have done; in the South Sea book I have fifty
pages copied fair, some of which has been four times, and all twice
written, certainly fifty pages of solid scriving inside a fortnight, but
I was at it by seven a.m. till lunch, and from two till four or five
every day; between whiles, verse and blowing on the flageolet; never
outside. If you could see this place! but I don’t want any one to see it
till my clearing is done, and my house built. It will be a home for
angels.
So far I wrote after my bit of dinner, some cold meat and bananas, on
arrival. Then out to see where Henry and some of the men were clearing
the garden; for it was plain there was to be no work to-day indoors, and
I must set in consequence to farmering. I stuck a good while on the way
up, for the path there is largely my own handiwork, and there were a lot
of sprouts and saplings and stones to be removed. Then I reached our
clearing just where the streams join in one; it had a fine autumn smell
of burning, the smoke blew in the woods, and the boys were pretty merry
and busy. Now I had a private design:—
[Picture: Map]
The Vaita’e I had explored pretty far up; not yet the other stream, the
Vaituliga (g=nasal n, as ng in sing); and up that, with my wood knife, I
set off alone. It is here quite dry; it went through endless woods;
about as broad as a Devonshire lane, here and there crossed by fallen
trees; huge trees overhead in the sun, dripping lianas and tufted with
orchids, tree ferns, ferns depending with air roots from the steep banks,
great arums—I had not skill enough to say if any of them were the edible
kind, one of our staples here!—hundreds of bananas—another staple—and
alas! I had skill enough to know all of these for the bad kind that
bears no fruit. My Henry moralised over this the other day; how hard it
was that the bad banana flourished wild, and the good must be weeded and
tended; and I had not the heart to tell him how fortunate they were here,
and how hungry were other lands by comparison. The ascent of this lovely
lane of my dry stream filled me with delight. I could not but be
reminded of old Mayne Reid, as I have been more than once since I came to
the tropics; and I thought, if Reid had been still living, I would have
written to tell him that, for, me, _it had come true_; and I thought,
forbye, that, if the great powers go on as they are going, and the Chief
Justice delays, it would come truer still; and the war-conch will sound
in the hills, and my home will be inclosed in camps, before the year is
ended. And all at once—mark you, how Mayne Reid is on the spot—a strange
thing happened. I saw a liana stretch across the bed of the brook about
breast-high, swung up my knife to sever it, and—behold, it was a wire!
On either hand it plunged into thick bush; to-morrow I shall see where it
goes and get a guess perhaps of what it means. To-day I know no more
than—there it is. A little higher the brook began to trickle, then to
fill. At last, as I meant to do some work upon the homeward trail, it
was time to turn. I did not return by the stream; knife in hand, as long
as my endurance lasted, I was to cut a path in the congested bush.
At first it went ill with me; I got badly stung as high as the elbows by
the stinging plant; I was nearly hung in a tough liana—a rotten trunk
giving way under my feet; it was deplorable bad business. And an axe—if
I dared swing one—would have been more to the purpose than my cutlass.
Of a sudden things began to go strangely easier; I found stumps, bushing
out again; my body began to wonder, then my mind; I raised my eyes and
looked ahead; and, by George, I was no longer pioneering, I had struck an
old track overgrown, and was restoring an old path. So I laboured till I
was in such a state that Carolina Wilhelmina Skeggs could scarce have
found a name for it. Thereon desisted; returned to the stream; made my
way down that stony track to the garden, where the smoke was still
hanging and the sun was still in the high tree-tops, and so home. Here,
fondly supposing my long day was over, I rubbed down; exquisite agony;
water spreads the poison of these weeds; I got it all over my hands, on
my chest, in my eyes, and presently, while eating an orange, _à la_
Raratonga, burned my lip and eye with orange juice. Now, all day, our
three small pigs had been adrift, to the mortal peril of our corn,
lettuce, onions, etc., and as I stood smarting on the back verandah,
behold the three piglings issuing from the wood just opposite. Instantly
I got together as many boys as I could—three, and got the pigs penned
against the rampart of the sty, till the others joined; whereupon we
formed a cordon, closed, captured the deserters, and dropped them,
squeaking amain, into their strengthened barracks where, please God, they
may now stay!
Perhaps you may suppose the day now over; you are not the head of a
plantation, my juvenile friend. Politics succeeded: Henry got adrift in
his English, Bene was too cowardly to tell me what he was after: result,
I have lost seven good labourers, and had to sit down and write to you to
keep my temper. Let me sketch my lads.—Henry—Henry has gone down to town
or I could not be writing to you—this were the hour of his English lesson
else, when he learns what he calls ‘long expessions’ or ‘your chief’s
language’ for the matter of an hour and a half—Henry is a chiefling from
Savaii; I once loathed, I now like and—pending fresh discoveries—have a
kind of respect for Henry. He does good work for us; goes among the
labourers, bossing and watching; helps Fanny; is civil, kindly,
thoughtful; _O si sic semper_! But will he be ‘his sometime self
throughout the year’? Anyway, he has deserved of us, and he must
disappoint me sharply ere I give him up.—Bene—or Peni-Ben, in plain
English—is supposed to be my ganger; the Lord love him! God made a
truckling coward, there is his full history. He cannot tell me what he
wants; he dares not tell me what is wrong; he dares not transmit my
orders or translate my censures. And with all this, honest, sober,
industrious, miserably smiling over the miserable issue of his own
unmanliness.—Paul—a German—cook and steward—a glutton of work—a splendid
fellow; drawbacks, three: (1) no cook; (2) an inveterate bungler; a man
with twenty thumbs, continually falling in the dishes, throwing out the
dinner, preserving the garbage; (3) a dr—, well, don’t let us say
that—but we daren’t let him go to town, and he—poor, good soul—is afraid
to be let go.—Lafaele (Raphael), a strong, dull, deprecatory man;
splendid with an axe, if watched; the better for a rowing, when he calls
me ‘Papa’ in the most wheedling tones; desperately afraid of ghosts, so
that he dare not walk alone up in the banana patch—see map. The rest are
changing labourers; and to-night, owing to the miserable cowardice of
Peni, who did not venture to tell me what the men wanted—and which was no
more than fair—all are gone—and my weeding in the article of being
finished! Pity the sorrows of a planter.
I am, Sir, yours, and be jowned to you, The Planter,
R. L. S.
* * * * *
_Tuesday_ 3_rd_
I begin to see the whole scheme of letter-writing; you sit down every day
and pour out an equable stream of twaddle.
This morning all my fears were fled, and all the trouble had fallen to
the lot of Peni himself, who deserved it; my field was full of weeders;
and I am again able to justify the ways of God. All morning I worked at
the South Seas, and finished the chapter I had stuck upon on Saturday.
Fanny, awfully hove-to with rheumatics and injuries received upon the
field of sport and glory, chasing pigs, was unable to go up and down
stairs, so she sat upon the back verandah, and my work was chequered by
her cries. ‘Paul, you take a spade to do that—dig a hole first. If you
do that, you’ll cut your foot off! Here, you boy, what you do there?
You no get work? You go find Simelé; he give you work. Peni, you tell
this boy he go find Simelé; suppose Simelé no give him work, you tell him
go ’way. I no want him here. That boy no good.’—_Peni_ (from the
distance in reassuring tones), ‘All right, sir!’—_Fanny_ (after a long
pause), ‘Peni, you tell that boy go find Simelé! I no want him stand
here all day. I no pay that boy. I see him all day. He no do
nothing.’—Luncheon, beef, soda-scones, fried bananas, pine-apple in
claret, coffee. Try to write a poem; no go. Play the flageolet. Then
sneakingly off to farmering and pioneering. Four gangs at work on our
place; a lively scene; axes crashing and smoke blowing; all the knives
are out. But I rob the garden party of one without a stock, and you
should see my hand—cut to ribbons. Now I want to do my path up the
Vaituliga single-handed, and I want it to burst on the public complete.
Hence, with devilish ingenuity, I begin it at different places; so that
if you stumble on one section, you may not even then suspect the fulness
of my labours. Accordingly, I started in a new place, below the wire,
and hoping to work up to it. It was perhaps lucky I had so bad a
cutlass, and my smarting hand bid me stay before I had got up to the
wire, but just in season, so that I was only the better of my activity,
not dead beat as yesterday.
A strange business it was, and infinitely solitary; away above, the sun
was in the high tree-tops; the lianas noosed and sought to hang me; the
saplings struggled, and came up with that sob of death that one gets to
know so well; great, soft, sappy trees fell at a lick of the cutlass,
little tough switches laughed at and dared my best endeavour. Soon,
toiling down in that pit of verdure, I heard blows on the far side, and
then laughter. I confess a chill settled on my heart.
Being so dead alone, in a place where by rights none should be beyond me,
I was aware, upon interrogation, if those blows had drawn nearer, I
should (of course quite unaffectedly) have executed a strategic movement
to the rear; and only the other day I was lamenting my insensibility to
superstition! Am I beginning to be sucked in? Shall I become a midnight
twitterer like my neighbours? At times I thought the blows were echoes;
at times I thought the laughter was from birds. For our birds are
strangely human in their calls. Vaea mountain about sundown sometimes
rings with shrill cries, like the hails of merry, scattered children. As
a matter of fact, I believe stealthy wood-cutters from Tanugamanono were
above me in the wood and answerable for the blows; as for the laughter, a
woman and two children had come and asked Fanny’s leave to go up
shrimp-fishing in the burn; beyond doubt, it was these I heard. Just at
the right time I returned; to wash down, change, and begin this snatch of
letter before dinner was ready, and to finish it afterwards, before Henry
has yet put in an appearance for his lesson in ‘long explessions.’
Dinner: stewed beef and potatoes, baked bananas, new loaf-bread hot from
the oven, pine-apple in claret. These are great days; we have been low
in the past; but now are we as belly-gods, enjoying all things.
* * * * *
_Wednesday_. (_Hist. Vailima resumed_.)
A gorgeous evening of after-glow in the great tree-tops and behind the
mountain, and full moon over the lowlands and the sea, inaugurated a
night of horrid cold. To you effete denizens of the so-called temperate
zone, it had seemed nothing; neither of us could sleep; we were up
seeking extra coverings, I know not at what hour—it was as bright as day.
The moon right over Vaea—near due west, the birds strangely silent, and
the wood of the house tingling with cold; I believe it must have been
60°! Consequence; Fanny has a headache and is wretched, and I could do
no work. (I am trying all round for a place to hold my pen; you will
hear why later on; this to explain penmanship.) I wrote two pages, very
bad, no movement, no life or interest; then I wrote a business letter;
then took to tootling on the flageolet, till glory should call me
farmering.
I took up at the fit time Lafaele and Mauga—Mauga, accent on the first,
is a mountain, I don’t know what Maugà means—mind what I told you of the
value of g—to the garden, and set them digging, then turned my attention
to the path. I could not go into my bush path for two reasons: 1st, sore
hands; 2nd, had on my trousers and good shoes. Lucky it was. Right in
the wild lime hedge which cuts athwart us just homeward of the garden, I
found a great bed of kuikui—sensitive plant—our deadliest enemy. A fool
brought it to this island in a pot, and used to lecture and
sentimentalise over the tender thing. The tender thing has now taken
charge of this island, and men fight it, with torn hands, for bread and
life. A singular, insidious thing, shrinking and biting like a weasel;
clutching by its roots as a limpet clutches to a rock. As I fought him,
I bettered some verses in my poem, the _Woodman_; the only thought I gave
to letters. Though the kuikui was thick, there was but a small patch of
it, and when I was done I attacked the wild lime, and had a hand-to-hand
skirmish with its spines and elastic suckers. All this time, close by,
in the cleared space of the garden, Lafaele and Maugà were digging.
Suddenly quoth Lafaele, ‘Somebody he sing out.’—‘Somebody he sing out?
All right. I go.’ And I went and found they had been whistling and
‘singing out’ for long, but the fold of the hill and the uncleared bush
shuts in the garden so that no one heard, and I was late for dinner, and
Fanny’s headache was cross; and when the meal was over, we had to cut up
a pineapple which was going bad, to make jelly of; and the next time you
have a handful of broken blood-blisters, apply pine-apple juice, and you
will give me news of it, and I request a specimen of your hand of write
five minutes after—the historic moment when I tackled this history. My
day so far.
Fanny was to have rested. Blessed Paul began making a duck-house; she
let him be; the duck-house fell down, and she had to set her hand to it.
He was then to make a drinking-place for the pigs; she let him be
again—he made a stair by which the pigs will probably escape this
evening, and she was near weeping. Impossible to blame the indefatigable
fellow; energy is too rare and goodwill too noble a thing to discourage;
but it’s trying when she wants a rest. Then she had to cook the dinner;
then, of course—like a fool and a woman—must wait dinner for me, and make
a flurry of herself. Her day so far. _Cetera adhuc desunt_.
* * * * *
_Friday—I think_.
I have been too tired to add to this chronicle, which will at any rate
give you some guess of our employment. All goes well; the kuikui—(think
of this mispronunciation having actually infected me to the extent of
misspelling! tuitui is the word by rights)—the tuitui is all out of the
paddock—a fenced park between the house and boundary; Peni’s men start
to-day on the road; the garden is part burned, part dug; and Henry, at
the head of a troop of underpaid assistants, is hard at work clearing.
The part clearing you will see from the map; from the house run down to
the stream side, up the stream nearly as high as the garden; then back to
the star which I have just added to the map.
My long, silent contests in the forest have had a strange effect on me.
The unconcealed vitality of these vegetables, their exuberant number and
strength, the attempts—I can use no other word—of lianas to enwrap and
capture the intruder, the awful silence, the knowledge that all my
efforts are only like the performance of an actor, the thing of a moment,
and the wood will silently and swiftly heal them up with fresh
effervescence; the cunning sense of the tuitui, suffering itself to be
touched with wind-swayed grasses and not minding—but let the grass be
moved by a man, and it shuts up; the whole silent battle, murder, and
slow death of the contending forest; weigh upon the imagination. My poem
the _Woodman_ stands; but I have taken refuge in a new story, which just
shot through me like a bullet in one of my moments of awe, alone in that
tragic jungle:—
_The High Woods of Ulufanua_.
1. A South Sea Bridal.
2. Under the Ban.
3. Savao and Faavao.
4. Cries in the High Wood.
5. Rumour full of Tongues.
6. The Hour of Peril.
7. The Day of Vengeance.
It is very strange, very extravagant, I daresay; but it’s varied, and
picturesque, and has a pretty love affair, and ends well. Ulufanua is a
lovely Samoan word, ulu=grove; fanua=land; grove-land—‘the tops of the
high trees.’ Savao, ‘sacred to the wood,’ and Faavao, ‘wood-ways,’ are
the names of two of the characters, Ulufanua the name of the supposed
island.
I am very tired, and rest off to-day from all but letters. Fanny is
quite done up; she could not sleep last night, something it seemed like
asthma—I trust not. I suppose Lloyd will be about, so you can give him
the benefit of this long scrawl. Never say that I _can’t_ write a
letter, say that I don’t.—Yours ever, my dearest fellow,
R. L. S.
* * * * *
_Later on Friday_.
The guid wife had bread to bake, and she baked it in a pan, O! But
between whiles she was down with me weeding sensitive in the paddock.
The men have but now passed over it; I was round in that very place to
see the weeding was done thoroughly, and already the reptile springs
behind our heels. Tuitui is a truly strange beast, and gives food for
thought. I am nearly sure—I cannot yet be quite, I mean to experiment,
when I am less on the hot chase of the beast—that, even at the instant he
shrivels up his leaves, he strikes his prickles downward so as to catch
the uprooting finger; instinctive, say the gabies; but so is man’s
impulse to strike out. One thing that takes and holds me is to see the
strange variation in the propagation of alarm among these rooted beasts;
at times it spreads to a radius (I speak by the guess of the eye) of five
or six inches; at times only one individual plant appears frightened at a
time. We tried how long it took one to recover; ’tis a sanguine
creature; it is all abroad again before (I guess again) two minutes. It
is odd how difficult in this world it is to be armed. The double armour
of this plant betrays it. In a thick tuft, where the leaves disappear, I
thrust in my hand, and the bite of the thorns betrays the topmost stem.
In the open again, and when I hesitate if it be clover, a touch on the
leaves, and its fine sense and retractile action betrays its identity at
once. Yet it has one gift incomparable. Rome had virtue and knowledge;
Rome perished. The sensitive plant has indigestible seeds—so they
say—and it will flourish for ever. I give my advice thus to a young
plant—have a strong root, a weak stem, and an indigestible seed; so you
will outlast the eternal city, and your progeny will clothe mountains,
and the irascible planter will blaspheme in vain. The weak point of
tuitui is that its stem is strong.
* * * * *
_Supplementary Page_.
Here beginneth the third lesson, which is not from the planter but from a
less estimable character, the writer of books.
I want you to understand about this South Sea Book. The job is immense;
I stagger under material. I have seen the first big _tache_. It was
necessary to see the smaller ones; the letters were at my hand for the
purpose, but I was not going to lose this experience; and, instead of
writing mere letters, have poured out a lot of stuff for the book. How
this works and fits, time is to show. But I believe, in time, I shall
get the whole thing in form. Now, up to date, that is all my design, and
I beg to warn you till we have the whole (or much) of the stuff together,
you can hardly judge—and I can hardly judge. Such a mass of stuff is to
be handled, if possible without repetition—so much foreign matter to be
introduced—if possible with perspicuity—and, as much as can be, a spirit
of narrative to be preserved. You will find that come stronger as I
proceed, and get the explanations worked through. Problems of style are
(as yet) dirt under my feet; my problem is architectural, creative—to get
this stuff jointed and moving. If I can do that, I will trouble you for
style; anybody might write it, and it would be splendid; well-engineered,
the masses right, the blooming thing travelling—twig?
This I wanted you to understand, for lots of the stuff sent home is, I
imagine, rot—and slovenly rot—and some of it pompous rot; and I want you
to understand it’s a _lay-in_.
Soon, if the tide of poeshie continues, I’ll send you a whole lot to
damn. You never said thank-you for the handsome tribute addressed to you
from Apemama; such is the gratitude of the world to the God-sent poick.
Well, well:—‘Vex not thou the poick’s mind, With thy coriaceous
ingratitude, The P. will be to your faults more than a little blind, And
yours is a far from handsome attitude.’ Having thus dropped into poetry
in a spirit of friendship, I have the honour to subscribe myself, Sir,
Your obedient humble servant,
SILAS WEGG.
I suppose by this you will have seen the lad—and his feet will have been
in the Monument—and his eyes beheld the face of George. Well!
There is much eloquence in a well!
I am, Sir
Yours
The Epigrammatist
[Picture: Robert Louis Stevenson written three times to form a triangle]
FINIS—EXPLICIT
CHAPTER II
_Vailima_, _Tuesday_, _November_ 25_th_, 1890.
MY DEAR COLVIN,—I wanted to go out bright and early to go on with my
survey. You never heard of that. The world has turned, and much water
run under bridges, since I stopped my diary. I have written six more
chapters of the book, all good I potently believe, and given up, as a
deception of the devil’s, the High Woods. I have been once down to Apia,
to a huge native feast at Seumanutafa’s, the chief of Apia. There was a
vast mass of food, crowds of people, the police charging among them with
whips, the whole in high good humour on both sides; infinite noise; and a
historic event—Mr. Clarke, the missionary, and his wife, assisted at a
native dance. On my return from this function, I found work had stopped;
no more South Seas in my belly. Well, Henry had cleared a great deal of
our bush on a contract, and it ought to be measured. I set myself to the
task with a tape-line; it seemed a dreary business; then I borrowed a
prismatic compass, and tackled the task afresh. I have no books; I had
not touched an instrument nor given a thought to the business since the
year of grace 1871; you can imagine with what interest I sat down
yesterday afternoon to reduce my observations; five triangles I had
taken; all five came right, to my ineffable joy. Our dinner—the lowest
we have ever been—consisted of _one avocado pear_ between Fanny and me, a
ship’s biscuit for the guidman, white bread for the Missis, and red wine
for the twa. No salt horse, even, in all Vailima! After dinner Henry
came, and I began to teach him decimals; you wouldn’t think I knew them
myself after so long desuetude!
I could not but wonder how Henry stands his evenings here; the Polynesian
loves gaiety—I feed him with decimals, the mariner’s compass,
derivations, grammar, and the like; delecting myself, after the manner of
my race, _moult tristement_. I suck my paws; I live for my dexterities
and by my accomplishments; even my clumsinesses are my joy—my woodcuts,
my stumbling on the pipe, this surveying even—and even weeding sensitive;
anything to do with the mind, with the eye, with the hand—with a part of
_me_; diversion flows in these ways for the dreary man. But gaiety is
what these children want; to sit in a crowd, tell stories and pass jests,
to hear one another laugh and scamper with the girls. It’s good fun,
too, I believe, but not for R. L. S., _ætat._ 40. Which I am now past
forty, Custodian, and not one penny the worse that I can see; as amusable
as ever; to be on board ship is reward enough for me; give me the wages
of going on—in a schooner! Only, if ever I were gay, which I
misremember, I am gay no more. And here is poor Henry passing his
evenings on my intellectual husks, which the professors masticated;
keeping the accounts of the estate—all wrong I have no doubt—I keep no
check, beyond a very rough one; marching in with a cloudy brow, and the
day-book under his arm; tackling decimals, coming with cases of
conscience—how would an English chief behave in such a case? etc.; and, I
am bound to say, on any glimmer of a jest, lapsing into native hilarity
as a tree straightens itself after the wind is by. The other night I
remembered my old friend—I believe yours also—Scholastikos, and
administered the crow and the anchor—they were quite fresh to Samoan ears
(this implies a very early severance)—and I thought the anchor would have
made away with my Simelè altogether.
Fanny’s time, in this interval, has been largely occupied in contending
publicly with wild swine. We have a black sow; we call her Jack
Sheppard; impossible to confine her—impossible also for her to be
confined! To my sure knowledge she has been in an interesting condition
for longer than any other sow in story; else she had long died the death;
as soon as she is brought to bed, she shall count her days. I suppose
that sow has cost us in days’ labour from thirty to fifty dollars; as
many as eight boys (at a dollar a day) have been twelve hours in chase of
her. Now it is supposed that Fanny has outwitted her; she grins behind
broad planks in what was once the cook-house. She is a wild pig; far
handsomer than any tame; and when she found the cook-house was too much
for her methods of evasion, she lay down on the floor and refused food
and drink for a whole Sunday. On Monday morning she relapsed, and now
eats and drinks like a little man. I am reminded of an incident. Two
Sundays ago, the sad word was brought that the sow was out again; this
time she had carried another in her flight. Moors and I and Fanny were
strolling up to the garden, and there by the waterside we saw the black
sow, looking guilty. It seemed to me beyond words; but Fanny’s _cri du
cœur_ was delicious: ‘G-r-r!’ she cried; ‘nobody loves you!’
I would I could tell you the moving story of our cart and cart-horses;
the latter are dapple-grey, about sixteen hands, and of enormous
substance; the former was a kind of red and green shandry-dan with a
driving bench; plainly unfit to carry lumber or to face our road.
(Remember that the last third of my road, about a mile, is all made out
of a bridle-track by my boys—and my dollars.) It was supposed a white
man had been found—an ex-German artilleryman—to drive this last; he
proved incapable and drunken; the gallant Henry, who had never driven
before, and knew nothing about horses—except the rats and weeds that
flourish on the islands—volunteered; Moors accepted, proposing to follow
and supervise: despatched his work and started after. No cart! he
hurried on up the road—no cart. Transfer the scene to Vailima, where on
a sudden to Fanny and me, the cart appears, apparently at a hard gallop,
some two hours before it was expected; Henry radiantly ruling chaos from
the bench. It stopped: it was long before we had time to remark that the
axle was twisted like the letter L. Our first care was the horses. There
they stood, black with sweat, the sweat raining from them—literally
raining—their heads down, their feet apart—and blood running thick from
the nostrils of the mare. We got out Fanny’s under-clothes—couldn’t find
anything else but our blankets—to rub them down, and in about half an
hour we had the blessed satisfaction to see one after the other take a
bite or two of grass. But it was a toucher; a little more and these
steeds would have been foundered.
* * * * *
_Monday_, 31_st_? _November_.
Near a week elapsed, and no journal. On Monday afternoon, Moors rode up
and I rode down with him, dined, and went over in the evening to the
American Consulate; present, Consul-General Sewall, Lieut. Parker and
Mrs. Parker, Lafarge the American decorator, Adams an American historian;
we talked late, and it was arranged I was to write up for Fanny, and we
should both dine on the morrow.
On the Friday, I was all forenoon in the Mission House, lunched at the
German Consulate, went on board the _Sperber_ (German war ship) in the
afternoon, called on my lawyer on my way out to American Consulate, and
talked till dinner time with Adams, whom I am supplying with
introductions and information for Tahiti and the Marquesas. Fanny
arrived a wreck, and had to lie down. The moon rose, one day past full,
and we dined in the verandah, a good dinner on the whole; talk with
Lafarge about art and the lovely dreams of art students. Remark by
Adams, which took me briskly home to the Monument—‘I only liked one
_young_ woman—and that was Mrs. Procter.’ Henry James would like that.
Back by moonlight in the consulate boat—Fanny being too tired to walk—to
Moors’s. Saturday, I left Fanny to rest, and was off early to the
Mission, where the politics are thrilling just now. The native pastors
(to every one’s surprise) have moved of themselves in the matter of the
native dances, desiring the restrictions to be removed, or rather to be
made dependent on the character of the dance. Clarke, who had feared
censure and all kinds of trouble, is, of course, rejoicing greatly. A
characteristic feature: the argument of the pastors was handed in in the
form of a fictitious narrative of the voyage of one Mr. Pye, an English
traveller, and his conversation with a chief; there are touches of satire
in this educational romance. Mr. Pye, for instance, admits that he knows
nothing about the Bible. At the Mission I was sought out by Henry in a
devil of an agitation; he has been made the victim of a forgery—a crime
hitherto unknown in Samoa. I had to go to Folau, the chief judge here,
in the matter. Folau had never heard of the offence, and begged to know
what was the punishment; there may be lively times in forgery ahead. It
seems the sort of crime to tickle a Polynesian. After lunch—you can see
what a busy three days I am describing—we set off to ride home. My Jack
was full of the devil of corn and too much grass, and no work. I had to
ride ahead and leave Fanny behind. He is a most gallant little rascal is
my Jack, and takes the whole way as hard as the rider pleases. Single
incident: half-way up, I find my boys upon the road and stop and talk
with Henry in his character of ganger, as long as Jack will suffer me.
Fanny drones in after; we make a show of eating—or I do—she goes to bed
about half-past six! I write some verses, read Irving’s _Washington_,
and follow about half-past eight. O, one thing more I did, in a
prophetic spirit. I had made sure Fanny was not fit to be left alone,
and wrote before turning in a letter to Chalmers, telling him I could not
meet him in Auckland at this time. By eleven at night, Fanny got me
wakened—she had tried twice in vain—and I found her very bad. Thence
till three, we laboured with mustard poultices, laudanum, soda and
ginger—Heavens! wasn’t it cold; the land breeze was as cold as a river;
the moon was glorious in the paddock, and the great boughs and the black
shadows of our trees were inconceivable. But it was a poor time.
Sunday morning found Fanny, of course, a complete wreck, and myself not
very brilliant. Paul had to go to Vailele _re_ cocoa-nuts; it was
doubtful if he could be back by dinner; never mind, said I, I’ll take
dinner when you return. Off set Paul. I did an hour’s work, and then
tackled the house work. I did it beautiful: the house was a picture, it
resplended of propriety. Presently Mr. Moors’ Andrew rode up; I heard
the doctor was at the Forest House and sent a note to him; and when he
came, I heard my wife telling him she had been in bed all day, and that
was why the house was so dirty! Was it grateful? Was it politic? Was
it TRUE?—Enough! In the interval, up marched little L. S., one of my
neighbours, all in his Sunday white linens; made a fine salute, and
demanded the key of the kitchen in German and English. And he cooked
dinner for us, like a little man, and had it on the table and the coffee
ready by the hour. Paul had arranged me this surprise. Some time later,
Paul returned himself with a fresh surprise on hand; he was almost sober;
nothing but a hazy eye distinguished him from Paul of the week days:
_vivat_!
On the evening I cannot dwell. All the horses got out of the paddock,
went across, and smashed my neighbour’s garden into a big hole. How
little the amateur conceives a farmer’s troubles. I went out at once
with a lantern, staked up a gap in the hedge, was kicked at by a chestnut
mare, who straightway took to the bush; and came back. A little after,
they had found another gap, and the crowd were all abroad again. What
has happened to our own garden nobody yet knows.
Fanny had a fair night, and we are both tolerable this morning, only the
yoke of correspondence lies on me heavy. I beg you will let this go on
to my mother. I got such a good start in your letter, that I kept on at
it, and I have neither time nor energy for more.
Yours ever,
R. L. S.
* * * * *
_Something new_.
I was called from my letters by the voice of Mr. —, who had just come up
with a load of wood, roaring, ‘Henry! Henry! Bring six boys!’ I saw
there was something wrong, and ran out. The cart, half unloaded, had
upset with the mare in the shafts; she was all cramped together and all
tangled up in harness and cargo, the off shaft pushing her over, Mr. —
holding her up by main strength, and right along-side of her—where she
must fall if she went down—a deadly stick of a tree like a lance. I
could not but admire the wisdom and faith of this great brute; I never
saw the riding-horse that would not have lost its life in such a
situation; but the cart-elephant patiently waited and was saved. It was
a stirring three minutes, I can tell you.
I forgot in talking of Saturday to tell of one incident which will
particularly interest my mother. I met Dr. D. from Savaii, and had an
age-long talk about Edinburgh folk; it was very pleasant. He has been
studying in Edinburgh, along with his son; a pretty relation. He told me
he knew nobody but college people: ‘I was altogether a student,’ he said
with glee. He seems full of cheerfulness and thick-set energy. I feel
as if I could put him in a novel with effect; and ten to one, if I know
more of him, the image will be only blurred.
* * * * *
_Tuesday_, _Dec._ 2_nd_.
I should have told you yesterday that all my boys were got up for their
work in moustaches and side-whiskers of some sort of blacking—I suppose
wood-ash. It was a sight of joy to see them return at night, axe on
shoulder, feigning to march like soldiers, a choragus with a loud voice
singing out, ‘March-step! March-step!’ in imperfect recollection of some
drill.
Fanny seems much revived.
R. L. S.
CHAPTER III
_Monday_, _twenty-somethingth of_
_December_, 1890.
MY DEAR COLVIN,—I do not say my Jack is anything extraordinary; he is
only an island horse; and the profane might call him a Punch; and his
face is like a donkey’s; and natives have ridden him, and he has no mouth
in consequence, and occasionally shies. But his merits are equally
surprising; and I don’t think I should ever have known Jack’s merits if I
had not been riding up of late on moonless nights. Jack is a bit of a
dandy; he loves to misbehave in a gallant manner, above all on Apia
Street, and when I stop to speak to people, they say (Dr. Stuebel the
German consul said about three days ago), ‘O what a wild horse! it cannot
be safe to ride him.’ Such a remark is Jack’s reward, and represents his
ideal of fame. Now when I start out of Apia on a dark night, you should
see my changed horse; at a fast steady walk, with his head down, and
sometimes his nose to the ground—when he wants to do that, he asks for
his head with a little eloquent polite movement indescribable—he climbs
the long ascent and threads the darkest of the wood. The first night I
came it was starry; and it was singular to see the starlight drip down
into the crypt of the wood, and shine in the open end of the road, as
bright as moonlight at home; but the crypt itself was proof, blackness
lived in it. The next night it was raining. We left the lights of Apia
and passed into limbo. Jack finds a way for himself, but he does not
calculate for my height above the saddle; and I am directed forward, all
braced up for a crouch and holding my switch upright in front of me. It
is curiously interesting. In the forest, the dead wood is
phosphorescent; some nights the whole ground is strewn with it, so that
it seems like a grating over a pale hell; doubtless this is one of the
things that feed the night fears of the natives; and I am free to confess
that in a night of trackless darkness where all else is void, these
pallid _ignes suppositi_ have a fantastic appearance, rather bogey even.
One night, when it was very dark, a man had put out a little lantern by
the wayside to show the entrance to his ground. I saw the light, as I
thought, far ahead, and supposed it was a pedestrian coming to meet me; I
was quite taken by surprise when it struck in my face and passed behind
me. Jack saw it, and he was appalled; do you think he thought of shying?
No, sir, not in the dark; in the dark Jack knows he is on duty; and he
went past that lantern steady and swift; only, as he went, he groaned and
shuddered. For about 2500 of Jack’s steps we only pass one house—that
where the lantern was; and about 1500 of these are in the darkness of the
pit. But now the moon is on tap again, and the roads lighted.
[Picture: Map]
I have been exploring up the Vaituliga; see your map. It comes down a
wonderful fine glen; at least 200 feet of cliffs on either hand, winding
like a corkscrew, great forest trees filling it. At the top there ought
to be a fine double fall; but the stream evades it by a fault and passes
underground. Above the fall it runs (at this season) full and very gaily
in a shallow valley, some hundred yards before the head of the glen. Its
course is seen full of grasses, like a flooded meadow; that is the sink!
beyond the grave of the grasses, the bed lies dry. Near this upper part
there is a great show of ruinous pig-walls; a village must have stood
near by.
To walk from our house to Wreck Hill (when the path is buried in fallen
trees) takes one about half an hour, I think; to return, not more than
twenty minutes; I daresay fifteen. Hence I should guess it was
three-quarters of a mile. I had meant to join on my explorations passing
eastward by the sink; but, Lord! how it rains.
* * * * *
(_Later_.)
I went out this morning with a pocket compass and walked in a varying
direction, perhaps on an average S. by W., 1754 paces. Then I struck
into the bush, N.W. by N., hoping to strike the Vaituliga above the
falls. Now I have it plotted out I see I should have gone W. or even W.
by S.; but it is not easy to guess. For 600 weary paces I struggled
through the bush, and then came on the stream below the gorge, where it
was comparatively easy to get down to it. In the place where I struck
it, it made cascades about a little isle, and was running about N.E., 20
to 30 feet wide, as deep as to my knee, and piercing cold. I tried to
follow it down, and keep the run of its direction and my paces; but when
I was wading to the knees and the waist in mud, poison brush, and rotted
wood, bound hand and foot in lianas, shovelled unceremoniously off the
one shore and driven to try my luck upon the other—I saw I should have
hard enough work to get my body down, if my mind rested. It was a
damnable walk; certainly not half a mile as the crow flies, but a real
bucketer for hardship. Once I had to pass the stream where it flowed
between banks about three feet high. To get the easier down, I swung
myself by a wild-cocoanut—(so called, it bears bunches of scarlet
nutlets)—which grew upon the brink. As I so swung, I received a crack on
the head that knocked me all abroad. Impossible to guess what tree had
taken a shy at me. So many towered above, one over the other, and the
missile, whatever it was, dropped in the stream and was gone before I had
recovered my wits. (I scarce know what I write, so hideous a Niagara of
rain roars, shouts, and demonizes on the iron roof—it is pitch dark
too—the lamp lit at 5!) It was a blessed thing when I struck my own
road; and I got home, neat for lunch time, one of the most wonderful mud
statues ever witnessed. In the afternoon I tried again, going up the
other path by the garden, but was early drowned out; came home, plotted
out what I had done, and then wrote this truck to you.
Fanny has been quite ill with ear-ache. She won’t go, hating the sea at
this wild season; I don’t like to leave her; so it drones on, steamer
after steamer, and I guess it’ll end by no one going at all. She is in a
dreadful misfortune at this hour; a case of kerosene having burst in the
kitchen. A little while ago it was the carpenter’s horse that trod in a
nest of fourteen eggs, and made an omelette of our hopes. The farmer’s
lot is not a happy one. And it looks like some real uncompromising bad
weather too. I wish Fanny’s ear were well. Think of parties in
Monuments! think of me in Skerryvore, and now of this. It don’t look
like a part of the same universe to me. Work is quite laid aside; I have
worked myself right out.
* * * * *
_Christmas Eve_.
Yesterday, who could write? My wife near crazy with ear-ache; the rain
descending in white crystal rods and playing hell’s tattoo, like a
_tutti_ of battering rams, on our sheet-iron roof; the wind passing high
overhead with a strange dumb mutter, or striking us full, so that all the
huge trees in the paddock cried aloud, and wrung their hands, and
brandished their vast arms. The horses stood in the shed like things
stupid. The sea and the flagship lying on the jaws of the bay vanished
in sheer rain. All day it lasted; I locked up my papers in the iron box,
in case it was a hurricane, and the house might go. We went to bed with
mighty uncertain feelings; far more than on shipboard, where you have
only drowning ahead—whereas here you have a smash of beams, a shower of
sheet-iron, and a blind race in the dark and through a whirlwind for the
shelter of an unfinished stable—and my wife with ear-ache! Well, well,
this morning, we had word from Apia; a hurricane was looked for, the
ships were to leave the bay by 10 A.M.; it is now 3.30, and the flagship
is still a fixture, and the wind round in the blessed east, so I suppose
the danger is over. But heaven is still laden; the day dim, with
frequent rattling bucketfuls of rain; and just this moment (as I write) a
squall went overhead, scarce striking us, with that singular, solemn
noise of its passage, which is to me dreadful. I have always feared the
sound of wind beyond everything. In my hell it would always blow a gale.
I have been all day correcting proofs, and making out a new plan for our
house. The other was too dear to be built now, and it was a hard task to
make a smaller house that would suffice for the present, and not be a
mere waste of money in the future. I believe I have succeeded; I have
taken care of my study anyway.
Two favours I want to ask of you. First, I wish you to get ‘Pioneering
in New Guinea,’ by J. Chalmers. It’s a missionary book, and has less
pretensions to be literature than Spurgeon’s sermons. Yet I think even
through that, you will see some of the traits of the hero that wrote it;
a man that took me fairly by storm for the most attractive, simple,
brave, and interesting man in the whole Pacific. He is away now to go up
the Fly River; a desperate venture, it is thought; he is quite a
Livingstone card.
Second, try and keep yourself free next winter; and if my means can be
stretched so far, I’ll come to Egypt and we’ll meet at Shepheard’s Hotel,
and you’ll put me in my place, which I stand in need of badly by this
time. Lord, what bully times! I suppose I’ll come per British Asia, or
whatever you call it, and avoid all cold, and might be in Egypt about
November as ever was—eleven months from now or rather less. But do not
let us count our chickens.
Last night three piglings were stolen from one of our pig-pens. The
great Lafaele appeared to my wife uneasy, so she engaged him in
conversation on the subject, and played upon him the following engaging
trick. You advance your two forefingers towards the sitter’s eyes; he
closes them, whereupon you substitute (on his eyelids) the fore and
middle fingers of the left hand; and with your right (which he supposes
engaged) you tap him on the head and back. When you let him open his
eyes, he sees you withdrawing the two forefingers. ‘What that?’ asked
Lafaele. ‘My devil,’ says Fanny. ‘I wake um, my devil. All right now.
He go catch the man that catch my pig.’ About an hour afterwards,
Lafaele came for further particulars. ‘O, all right,’ my wife says. ‘By
and by, that man he sleep, devil go sleep same place. By and by, that
man plenty sick. I no care. What for he take my pig?’ Lafaele cares
plenty; I don’t think he is the man, though he may be; but he knows him,
and most likely will eat some of that pig to-night. He will not eat with
relish.
* * * * *
_Saturday_ 27_th_.
It cleared up suddenly after dinner, and my wife and I saddled up and off
to Apia, whence we did not return till yesterday morning. Christmas Day
I wish you could have seen our party at table. H. J. Moors at one end
with my wife, I at the other with Mrs. M., between us two native women,
Carruthers the lawyer, Moors’s two shop-boys—Walters and A. M. the
quadroon—and the guests of the evening, Shirley Baker, the defamed and
much-accused man of Tonga, and his son, with the artificial joint to his
arm—where the assassins shot him in shooting at his father. Baker’s
appearance is not unlike John Bull on a cartoon; he is highly interesting
to speak to, as I had expected; I found he and I had many common
interests, and were engaged in puzzling over many of the same
difficulties. After dinner it was quite pretty to see our Christmas
party, it was so easily pleased and prettily behaved. In the morning I
should say I had been to lunch at the German consulate, where I had as
usual a very pleasant time. I shall miss Dr. Stuebel much when he
leaves, and when Adams and Lafarge go also, it will be a great blow. I
am getting spoiled with all this good society.
On Friday morning, I had to be at my house affairs before seven; and they
kept me in Apia till past ten, disputing, and consulting about brick and
stone and native and hydraulic lime, and cement and sand, and all sorts
of otiose details about the chimney—just what I fled from in my father’s
office twenty years ago; I should have made a languid engineer. Rode up
with the carpenter. Ah, my wicked Jack! on Christmas Eve, as I was
taking the saddle bag off, he kicked at me, and fetched me too, right on
the shin. On Friday, being annoyed at the carpenter’s horse having a
longer trot, he uttered a shrill cry and tried to bite him! Alas, alas,
these are like old days; my dear Jack is a Bogue, but I cannot strangle
Jack into submission.
I have given up the big house for just now; we go ahead right away with a
small one, which should be ready in two months, and I suppose will
suffice for just now.
O I know I haven’t told you about our _aitu_, have I? It is a lady,
_Aitu fafine_: she lives on the mountain-side; her presence is heralded
by the sound of a gust of wind; a sound very common in the high woods;
when she catches you, I do not know what happens; but in practice she is
avoided, so I suppose she does more than pass the time of day. The great
_aitu Saumai-afe_ was once a living woman; and became an _aitu_, no one
understands how; she lives in a stream at the well-head, her hair is red,
she appears as a lovely young lady, her bust particularly admired, to
handsome young men; these die, her love being fatal;—as a handsome youth
she has been known to court damsels with the like result, but this is
very rare; as an old crone she goes about and asks for water, and woe to
them who are uncivil! _Saumai-afe_ means literally, ‘Come here a
thousand!’ A good name for a lady of her manners. My _aitu fafine_ does
not seem to be in the same line of business. It is unsafe to be a
handsome youth in Samoa; a young man died from her favours last month—so
we said on this side of the island; on the other, where he died, it was
not so certain. I, for one, blame it on Madam _Saumai-afe_ without
hesitation.
Example of the farmer’s sorrows. I slipped out on the balcony a moment
ago. It is a lovely morning, cloudless, smoking hot, the breeze not yet
arisen. Looking west, in front of our new house, I saw, two heads of
Indian corn wagging, and the rest and all nature stock still. As I
looked, one of the stalks subsided and disappeared. I dashed out to the
rescue; two small pigs were deep in the grass—quite hid till within a few
yards—gently but swiftly demolishing my harvest. Never be a farmer.
* * * * *
12.30 _p.m._
I while away the moments of digestion by drawing you a faithful picture
of my morning. When I had done writing as above it was time to clean our
house. When I am working, it falls on my wife alone, but to-day we had
it between us; she did the bedroom, I the sitting-room, in fifty-seven
minutes of really most unpalatable labour. Then I changed every stitch,
for I was wet through, and sat down and played on my pipe till dinner was
ready, mighty pleased to be in a mildly habitable spot once more. The
house had been neglected for near a week, and was a hideous spot; my
wife’s ear and our visit to Apia being the causes: our Paul we prefer not
to see upon that theatre, and God knows he has plenty to do elsewhere.
I am glad to look out of my back door and see the boys smoothing the
foundations of the new house; this is all very jolly, but six months of
it has satisfied me; we have too many things for such close quarters; to
work in the midst of all the myriad misfortunes of the planter’s life,
seated in a Dyonisius’ (can’t spell him) ear, whence I catch every
complaint, mishap and contention, is besides the devil; and the hope of a
cave of my own inspires me with lust. O to be able to shut my own door
and make my own confusion! O to have the brown paper and the matches and
‘make a hell of my own’ once more!
I do not bother you with all my troubles in these outpourings; the
troubles of the farmer are inspiriting—they are like difficulties out
hunting—a fellow rages at the time and rejoices to recall and to
commemorate them. My troubles have been financial. It is hard to
arrange wisely interests so distributed. America, England, Samoa,
Sydney, everywhere I have an end of liability hanging out and some shelf
of credit hard by; and to juggle all these and build a dwelling-place
here, and check expense—a thing I am ill fitted for—you can conceive what
a nightmare it is at times. Then God knows I have not been idle. But
since _The Master_ nothing has come to raise any coins. I believe the
springs are dry at home, and now I am worked out, and can no more at all.
A holiday is required.
_Dec._ 28_th_. I have got unexpectedly to work again, and feel quite
dandy. Good-bye.
R. L. S.
CHAPTER IV
_S. S. Lübeck_, _between Apia and Sydney_,
_Jan._ 17_th_, 1891.
MY DEAR COLVIN,—The Faamasino Sili, or Chief Justice, to speak your low
language, has arrived. I had ridden down with Henry and Lafaele; the sun
was down, the night was close at hand, so we rode fast; just as I came to
the corner of the road before Apia, I heard a gun fire; and lo, there was
a great crowd at the end of the pier, and the troops out, and a chief or
two in the height of Samoa finery, and Seumanu coming in his boat (the
oarsmen all in uniform), bringing the Faamasino Sili sure enough. It was
lucky he was no longer; the natives would not have waited many weeks.
But think of it, as I sat in the saddle at the outside of the crowd
(looking, the English consul said, as if I were commanding the
manœuvres), I was nearly knocked down by a stampede of the three consuls;
they had been waiting their guest at the Matafele end, and some wretched
intrigue among the whites had brought him to Apia, and the consuls had to
run all the length of the town and come too late.
The next day was a long one; I was at a marriage of G. the banker to
Fanua, the virgin of Apia. Bride and bridesmaids were all in the old
high dress; the ladies were all native; the men, with the exception of
Seumanu, all white.
It was quite a pleasant party, and while we were writing, we had a
bird’s-eye view of the public reception of the Chief Justice. The best
part of it were some natives in war array; with blacked faces, turbans,
tapa kilts, and guns, they looked very manly and purposelike. No, the
best part was poor old drunken Joe, the Portuguese boatman, who seemed to
think himself specially charged with the reception, and ended by falling
on his knees before the Chief Justice on the end of the pier and in full
view of the whole town and bay. The natives pelted him with rotten
bananas; how the Chief Justice took it I was too far off to see; but it
was highly absurd.
I have commemorated my genial hopes for the regimen of the Faamasino Sili
in the following canine verses, which, if you at all guess how to read
them, are very pretty in movement, and (unless he be a mighty good man)
too true in sense.
We’re quarrelling, the villages, we’ve beaten the wooden drum’s,
Sa femisai o nu’u, sa taia o pate,
Is expounded there by the justice,
Ua Atuatuvale a le faamasino e,
The chief justice, the terrified justice,
Le faamasino sili, le faamasino se,
Is on the point of running away the justice,
O le a solasola le faamasino e,
The justice denied any influence, the terrified justice,
O le faamasino le ai a, le faamasino se,
O le a solasola le faamasino e.
Well, after this excursion into tongues that have never been alive—though
I assure you we have one capital book in the language, a book of fables
by an old missionary of the unpromising name of Pratt, which is simply
the best and the most literary version of the fables known to me. I
suppose I should except La Fontaine, but L. F. takes a long time; these
are brief as the books of our childhood, and full of wit and literary
colour; and O, Colvin, what a tongue it would be to write, if one only
knew it—and there were only readers. Its curse in common use is an
incredible left-handed wordiness; but in the hands of a man like Pratt it
is succinct as Latin, compact of long rolling polysyllables and little
and often pithy particles, and for beauty of sound a dream. Listen, I
quote from Pratt—this is good Samoan, not canine—
... ... ... ... ...
1 2 3 4 1
O le afa, ua taalili ai le ulu vao, ua pa mai le faititili.
1 almost _wa_, 2 the two _a’s_ just distinguished, 3 the _ai_ is
practically suffixed to the verb, 4 almost _vow_. The excursion has
prolonged itself.
I started by the _Lübeck_ to meet Lloyd and my mother; there were many
reasons for and against; the main reason against was the leaving of Fanny
alone in her blessed cabin, which has been somewhat remedied by my
carter, Mr. —, putting up in the stable and messing with her; but perhaps
desire of change decided me not well, though I do think I ought to see an
oculist, being very blind indeed, and sometimes unable to read. Anyway I
left, the only cabin passenger, four and a kid in the second cabin, and a
dear voyage it had like to have proved. Close to Fiji (choose a worse
place on the map) we broke our shaft early one morning; and when or where
we might expect to fetch land or meet with any ship, I would like you to
tell me. The Pacific is absolutely desert. I have sailed there now some
years; and scarce ever seen a ship except in port or close by; I think
twice. It was the hurricane season besides, and hurricane waters. Well,
our chief engineer got the shaft—it was the middle crank shaft—mended;
thrice it was mended, and twice broke down; but now keeps up—only we dare
not stop, for it is almost impossible to start again. The captain in the
meanwhile crowded her with sail; fifteen sails in all, every stay being
gratified with a stay-sail, a boat-boom sent aloft for a maintop-gallant
yard, and the derrick of a crane brought in service as bowsprit. All the
time we have had a fine, fair wind and a smooth sea; to-day at noon our
run was 203 miles (if you please!), and we are within some 360 miles of
Sydney. Probably there has never been a more gallant success; and I can
say honestly it was well worked for. No flurry, no high words, no long
faces; only hard work and honest thought; a pleasant, manly business to
be present at. All the chances were we might have been six weeks—ay, or
three months at sea—or never turned up at all, and now it looks as though
we should reach our destination some five days too late.
CHAPTER V
[_On Board Ship between Sydney and Apia_,
_Feb._ 1891.]
MY DEAR COLVIN,—The _Janet Nicoll_ stuff was rather worse than I had
looked for; you have picked out all that is fit to stand, bar two others
(which I don’t dislike)—the Port of Entry and the House of Temoana; that
is for a present opinion; I may condemn these also ere I have done. By
this time you should have another Marquesan letter, the worst of the lot,
I think; and seven Paumotu letters, which are not far out of the vein, as
I wish it; I am in hopes the Hawaiian stuff is better yet: time will
show, and time will make perfect. Is something of this sort practicable
for the dedication?
TERRA MARIQUE
PER PERICULA PER ARDUA
AMICAE COMITI
D.D.
AMANS VIATOR
’Tis a first shot concocted this morning in my berth: I had always before
been trying it in English, which insisted on being either insignificant
or fulsome: I cannot think of a better word than _comes_, there being not
the shadow of a Latin book on board; yet sure there is some other. Then
_viator_ (though it _sounds_ all right) is doubtful; it has too much,
perhaps, the sense of wayfarer? Last, will it mark sufficiently that I
mean my wife? And first, how about blunders? I scarce wish it longer.
Have had a swingeing sharp attack in Sydney; beating the fields for two
nights, Saturday and Sunday. Wednesday was brought on board, _tel quel_,
a wonderful wreck; and now, Wednesday week, am a good deal picked up, but
yet not quite a Samson, being still groggy afoot and vague in the head.
My chess, for instance, which is usually a pretty strong game, and defies
all rivalry aboard, is vacillating, devoid of resource and observation,
and hitherto not covered with customary laurels. As for work, it is
impossible. We shall be in the saddle before long, no doubt, and the pen
once more couched. You must not expect a letter under these
circumstances, but be very thankful for a note. Once at Samoa, I shall
try to resume my late excellent habits, and delight you with journals,
you unaccustomed, I unaccustomed; but it is never too late to mend.
It is vastly annoying that I cannot go even to Sydney without an attack;
and heaven knows my life was anodyne. I only once dined with anybody; at
the club with Wise; worked all morning—a terrible dead pull; a month only
produced the imperfect embryos of two chapters; lunched in the
boarding-house, played on my pipe; went out and did some of my messages;
dined at a French restaurant, and returned to play draughts, whist, or
Van John with my family. This makes a cheery life after Samoa; but it
isn’t what you call burning the candle at both ends, is it? (It appears
to me not one word of this letter will be legible by the time I am done
with it, this dreadful ink rubs off.) I have a strange kind of novel
under construction; it begins about 1660 and ends 1830, or perhaps I may
continue it to 1875 or so, with another life. One, two, three, four,
five, six generations, perhaps seven, figure therein; two of my old
stories, ‘Delafield’ and ‘Shovel,’ are incorporated; it is to be told in
the third person, with some of the brevity of history, some of the detail
of romance. _The Shovels of Newton French_ will be the name. The idea
is an old one; it was brought to birth by an accident; a friend in the
islands who picked up F. Jenkin, read a part, and said: ‘Do you know,
that’s a strange book? I like it; I don’t believe the public will; but I
like it.’ He thought it was a novel! ‘Very well,’ said I, ‘we’ll see
whether the public will like it or not; they shall have the chance.’
Yours ever,
R. L. S.
CHAPTER VI
_Friday_, _March_ 19_th_.
MY DEAR S. C.,—You probably expect that now I am back at Vailima I shall
resume the practice of the diary letter. A good deal is changed. We are
more; solitude does not attend me as before; the night is passed playing
Van John for shells; and, what is not less important, I have just
recovered from a severe illness, and am easily tired.
I will give you to-day. I sleep now in one of the lower rooms of the new
house, where my wife has recently joined me. We have two beds, an empty
case for a table, a chair, a tin basin, a bucket and a jug; next door in
the dining-room, the carpenters camp on the floor, which is covered with
their mosquito nets. Before the sun rises, at 5.45 or 5.50, Paul brings
me tea, bread, and a couple of eggs; and by about six I am at work. I
work in bed—my bed is of mats, no mattress, sheets, or filth—mats, a
pillow, and a blanket—and put in some three hours. It was 9.5 this
morning when I set off to the stream-side to my weeding; where I toiled,
manuring the ground with the best enricher, human sweat, till the
conch-shell was blown from our verandah at 10.30. At eleven we dine;
about half-past twelve I tried (by exception) to work again, could make
nothing on’t, and by one was on my way to the weeding, where I wrought
till three. Half-past five is our next meal, and I read Flaubert’s
Letters till the hour came round; dined, and then, Fanny having a cold,
and I being tired, came over to my den in the unfinished house, where I
now write to you, to the tune of the carpenters’ voices, and by the
light—I crave your pardon—by the twilight of three vile candles filtered
through the medium of my mosquito bar. Bad ink being of the party, I
write quite blindfold, and can only hope you may be granted to read that
which I am unable to see while writing.
I said I was tired; it is a mild phrase; my back aches like toothache;
when I shut my eyes to sleep, I know I shall see before them—a phenomenon
to which both Fanny and I are quite accustomed—endless vivid deeps of
grass and weed, each plant particular and distinct, so that I shall lie
inert in body, and transact for hours the mental part of my day business,
choosing the noxious from the useful. And in my dreams I shall be
hauling on recalcitrants, and suffering stings from nettles, stabs from
citron thorns, fiery bites from ants, sickening resistances of mud and
slime, evasions of slimy roots, dead weight of heat, sudden puffs of air,
sudden starts from bird-calls in the contiguous forest—some mimicking my
name, some laughter, some the signal of a whistle, and living over again
at large the business of my day.
Though I write so little, I pass all my hours of field-work in continual
converse and imaginary correspondence. I scarce pull up a weed, but I
invent a sentence on the matter to yourself; it does not get written;
_autant en emportent les vents_; but the intent is there, and for me (in
some sort) the companionship. To-day, for instance, we had a great talk.
I was toiling, the sweat dripping from my nose, in the hot fit after a
squall of rain: methought you asked me—frankly, was I happy. Happy (said
I); I was only happy once; that was at Hyères; it came to an end from a
variety of reasons, decline of health, change of place, increase of
money, age with his stealing steps; since then, as before then, I know
not what it means. But I know pleasure still; pleasure with a thousand
faces, and none perfect, a thousand tongues all broken, a thousand hands,
and all of them with scratching nails. High among these I place this
delight of weeding out here alone by the garrulous water, under the
silence of the high wood, broken by incongruous sounds of birds. And
take my life all through, look at it fore and back, and upside
down,—though I would very fain change myself—I would not change my
circumstances, unless it were to bring you here. And yet God knows
perhaps this intercourse of writing serves as well; and I wonder, were
you here indeed, would I commune so continually with the thought of you.
I say ‘I wonder’ for a form; I know, and I know I should not.
So far, and much further, the conversation went, while I groped in slime
after viscous roots, nursing and sparing little spears of grass, and
retreating (even with outcry) from the prod of the wild lime. I wonder
if any one had ever the same attitude to Nature as I hold, and have held
for so long? This business fascinates me like a tune or a passion; yet
all the while I thrill with a strong distaste. The horror of the thing,
objective and subjective, is always present to my mind; the horror of
creeping things, a superstitious horror of the void and the powers about
me, the horror of my own devastation and continual murders. The life of
the plants comes through my fingertips, their struggles go to my heart
like supplications. I feel myself blood-boltered; then I look back on my
cleared grass, and count myself an ally in a fair quarrel, and make stout
my heart.
It is but a little while since I lay sick in Sydney, beating the fields
about the navy and Dean Swift and Dryden’s Latin hymns; judge if I love
this reinvigorating climate, where I can already toil till my head swims
and every string in the poor jumping Jack (as he now lies in bed) aches
with a kind of yearning strain, difficult to suffer in quiescence.
As for my damned literature, God knows what a business it is, grinding
along without a scrap of inspiration or a note of style. But it has to
be ground, and the mill grinds exceeding slowly though not particularly
small. The last two chapters have taken me considerably over a month,
and they are still beneath pity. This I cannot continue, time not
sufficing; and the next will just have to be worse. All the good I can
express is just this; some day, when style revisits me, they will be
excellent matter to rewrite. Of course, my old cure of a change of work
would probably answer, but I cannot take it now. The treadmill turns;
and, with a kind of desperate cheerfulness, I mount the idle stair. I
haven’t the least anxiety about the book; unless I die, I shall find the
time to make it good; but the Lord deliver me from the thought of the
Letters! However, the Lord has other things on hand; and about six
to-morrow, I shall resume the consideration practically, and face (as
best I may) the fact of my incompetence and disaffection to the task.
Toil I do not spare; but fortune refuses me success. We can do more,
Whatever-his-name-was, we can deserve it. But my misdesert began long
since, by the acceptation of a bargain quite unsuitable to all my
methods.
To-day I have had a queer experience. My carter has from the first been
using my horses for his own ends; when I left for Sydney, I put him on
his honour to cease, and my back was scarce turned ere he was forfeit. I
have only been waiting to discharge him; and to-day an occasion arose. I
am so much _the old man virulent_, so readily stumble into anger, that I
gave a deal of consideration to my bearing, and decided at last to
imitate that of the late —. Whatever he might have to say, this
eminently effective controversialist maintained a frozen demeanour and a
jeering smile. The frozen demeanour is beyond my reach; but I could try
the jeering smile; did so, perceived its efficacy, kept in consequence my
temper, and got rid of my friend, myself composed and smiling still, he
white and shaking like an aspen. He could explain everything; I said it
did not interest me. He said he had enemies; I said nothing was more
likely. He said he was calumniated; with all my heart, said I, but there
are so many liars, that I find it safer to believe them. He said, in
justice to himself, he must explain: God forbid I should interfere with
you, said I, with the same factitious grin, but it can change nothing.
So I kept my temper, rid myself of an unfaithful servant, found a method
of conducting similar interviews in the future, and fell in my own
liking. One thing more: I learned a fresh tolerance for the dead —; he
too had learned—perhaps had invented—the trick of this manner; God knows
what weakness, what instability of feeling, lay beneath. _Ce que c’est
que de nous_! poor human nature; that at past forty I must adjust this
hateful mask for the first time, and rejoice to find it effective; that
the effort of maintaining an external smile should confuse and embitter a
man’s soul.
To-day I have not weeded; I have written instead from six till eleven,
from twelve till two; with the interruption of the interview aforesaid; a
damned letter is written for the third time; I dread to read it, for I
dare not give it a fourth chance—unless it be very bad indeed. Now I
write you from my mosquito curtain, to the song of saws and planes and
hammers, and wood clumping on the floor above; in a day of heavenly
brightness; a bird twittering near by; my eye, through the open door,
commanding green meads, two or three forest trees casting their boughs
against the sky, a forest-clad mountain-side beyond, and close in by the
door-jamb a nick of the blue Pacific. It is March in England, bleak
March, and I lie here with the great sliding doors wide open in an
undershirt and p’jama trousers, and melt in the closure of mosquito bars,
and burn to be out in the breeze. A few torn clouds—not white, the sun
has tinged them a warm pink—swim in heaven. In which blessed and fair
day, I have to make faces and speak bitter words to a man—who has
deceived me, it is true—but who is poor, and older than I, and a kind of
a gentleman too. On the whole, I prefer the massacre of weeds.
* * * * *
_Sunday_.
When I had done talking to you yesterday, I played on my pipe till the
conch sounded, then went over to the old house for dinner, and had scarce
risen from table ere I was submerged with visitors. The first of these
despatched, I spent the rest of the evening going over the Samoan
translation of my _Bottle Imp_ with Claxton the missionary; then to bed,
but being upset, I suppose, by these interruptions, and having gone all
day without my weeding, not to sleep. For hours I lay awake and heard
the rain fall, and saw faint, far-away lightning over the sea, and wrote
you long letters which I scorn to reproduce. This morning Paul was
unusually early; the dawn had scarce begun when he appeared with the tray
and lit my candle; and I had breakfasted and read (with indescribable
sinkings) the whole of yesterday’s work before the sun had risen. Then I
sat and thought, and sat and better thought. It was not good enough, nor
good; it was as slack as journalism, but not so inspired; it was
excellent stuff misused, and the defects stood gross on it like humps
upon a camel. But could I, in my present disposition, do much more with
it? in my present pressure for time, were I not better employed doing
another one about as ill, than making this some thousandth fraction
better? Yes, I thought; and tried the new one, and behold, I could do
nothing: my head swims, words do not come to me, nor phrases, and I
accepted defeat, packed up my traps, and turned to communicate the
failure to my esteemed correspondent. I think it possible I overworked
yesterday. Well, we’ll see to-morrow—perhaps try again later. It is
indeed the hope of trying later that keeps me writing to you. If I take
to my pipe, I know myself—all is over for the morning. Hurray, I’ll
correct proofs!
* * * * *
_Pago-Pago_, _Wednesday_.
After I finished on Sunday I passed a miserable day; went out weeding,
but could not find peace. I do not like to steal my dinner, unless I
have given myself a holiday in a canonical manner; and weeding after all
is only fun, the amount of its utility small, and the thing capable of
being done faster and nearly as well by a hired boy. In the evening
Sewall came up (American consul) and proposed to take me on a malaga,
which I accepted. Monday I rode down to Apia, was nearly all day
fighting about drafts and money; the silver problem does not touch you,
but it is (in a strange and I hope passing phase) making my situation
difficult in Apia. About eleven, the flags were all half-masted; it was
old Captain Hamilton (Samesoni the natives called him) who had passed
away. In the evening I walked round to the U.S. Consulate; it was a
lovely night with a full moon; and as I got round to the hot corner of
Matautu I heard hymns in front. The balcony of the dead man’s house was
full of women singing; Mary (the widow, a native) sat on a chair by the
doorstep, and I was set beside her on a bench, and next to Paul the
carpenter; as I sat down I had a glimpse of the old captain, who lay in a
sheet on his own table. After the hymn was over, a native pastor made a
speech which lasted a long while; the light poured out of the door and
windows; the girls were sitting clustered at my feet; it was choking hot.
After the speech was ended, Mary carried me within; the captain’s hands
were folded on his bosom, his face and head were composed; he looked as
if he might speak at any moment; I have never seen this kind of waxwork
so express or more venerable; and when I went away, I was conscious of a
certain envy for the man who was out of the battle. All night it ran in
my head, and the next day when we sighted Tutuila, and ran into this
beautiful land-locked loch of Pago Pago (whence I write), Captain
Hamilton’s folded hands and quiet face said a great deal more to me than
the scenery.
I am living here in a trader’s house; we have a good table, Sewall doing
things in style; and I hope to benefit by the change, and possibly get
more stuff for Letters. In the meanwhile, I am seized quite
_mal-à-propos_ with desire to write a story, _The Bloody Wedding_,
founded on fact—very possibly true, being an attempt to read a murder
case—not yet months old, in this very place and house where I now write.
The indiscretion is what stops me; but if I keep on feeling as I feel
just now it will have to be written. Three Star Nettison, Kit Nettison,
Field the Sailor, these are the main characters: old Nettison, and the
captain of the man of war, the secondary. Possible scenario. Chapter I.
. . .
CHAPTER VII
_Saturday_, _April_ 18_th_.
MY DEAR COLVIN,—I got back on Monday night, after twenty-three hours in
an open boat; the keys were lost; the Consul (who had promised us a
bottle of Burgundy) nobly broke open his store-room, and we got to bed
about midnight. Next morning the blessed Consul promised us horses for
the daybreak; forgot all about it, worthy man; set us off at last in the
heat of the day, and by a short cut which caused infinite trouble, and we
were not home till dinner. I was extenuated, and have had a high fever
since, or should have been writing before. To-day for the first time, I
risk it. Tuesday I was pretty bad; Wednesday had a fever to kill a
horse; Thursday I was better, but still out of ability to do aught but
read awful trash. This is the time one misses civilisation; I wished to
send out for some police novels; Montépin would have about suited my
frozen brain. It is a bother when all one’s thought turns on one’s work
in some sense or other; could not even think yesterday; I took to
inventing dishes by way of entertainment. Yesterday, while I lay asleep
in the afternoon, a very lucky thing happened; the Chief Justice came to
call; met one of our employés on the road; and was shown what I had done
to the road.
‘Is this the road across the island?’ he asked.
‘The only one,’ said Innes.
‘And has one man done all this?’
‘Three times,’ said the trusty Innes. ‘It has had to be made three
times, and when Mr. Stevenson came, it was a track like what you see
beyond.’
‘This must be put right,’ said the Chief Justice.
* * * * *
_Sunday_.
The truth is, I broke down yesterday almost as soon as I began, and have
been surreptitiously finishing the entry to-day. For all that I was much
better, ate all the time, and had no fever. The day was otherwise
uneventful. I am reminded; I had another visitor on Friday; and Fanny
and Lloyd, as they returned from a forest raid, met in our desert,
untrodden road, first Father Didier, Keeper of the conscience of Mataafa,
the rising star; and next the Chief justice, sole stay of Laupepa, the
present and unsteady star, and remember, a few days before we were close
to the sick bed and entertained by the amateur physician of Tamasese, the
late and sunken star. ‘That is the fun of this place,’ observed Lloyd;
‘everybody you meet is so important.’ Everybody is also so gloomy. It
will come to war again, is the opinion of all the well informed—and
before that to many bankruptcies; and after that, as usual, to famine.
Here, under the microscope, we can see history at work.
* * * * *
_Wednesday_.
I have been very neglectful. A return to work, perhaps premature, but
necessary, has used up all my possible energies and made me acquainted
with the living headache. I just jot down some of the past notabilia.
Yesterday B., a carpenter, and K., my (unsuccessful) white man, were
absent all morning from their work; I was working myself, where I hear
every sound with morbid certainty, and I can testify that not a hammer
fell. Upon inquiry I found they had passed the morning making ice with
our ice machine and taking the horizon with a spirit level! I had no
sooner heard this than—a violent headache set in; I am a real employer of
labour now, and have much of the ship captain when aroused; and if I had
a headache, I believe both these gentlemen had aching hearts. I promise
you, the late—was to the front; and K., who was the most guilty, yet (in
a sense) the least blameable, having the brains and character of a
canary-bird, fared none the better for B.’s repartees. I hear them hard
at work this morning, so the menace may be blessed. It was just after my
dinner, just before theirs, that I administered my redoubtable tongue—it
is really redoubtable—to these skulkers (Paul used to triumph over Mr. J.
for weeks. ‘I am very sorry for you,’ he would say; ‘you’re going to
have a talk with Mr. Stevenson when he comes home: you don’t know what
that is!’) In fact, none of them do, till they get it. I have known K.,
for instance, for months; he has never heard me complain, or take notice,
unless it were to praise; I have used him always as my guest, and there
seems to be something in my appearance which suggests endless, ovine
long-suffering! We sat in the upper verandah all evening, and discussed
the price of iron roofing, and the state of the draught-horses, with
Innes, a new man we have taken, and who seems to promise well.
One thing embarrasses me. No one ever seems to understand my attitude
about that book; the stuff sent was never meant for other than a first
state; I never meant it to appear as a book. Knowing well that I have
never had one hour of inspiration since it was begun, and have only
beaten out my metal by brute force and patient repetition, I hoped some
day to get a ‘spate of style’ and burnish it—fine mixed metaphor. I am
now so sick that I intend, when the Letters are done and some more
written that will be wanted, simply to make a book of it by the
pruning-knife.
I cannot fight longer; I am sensible of having done worse than I hoped,
worse than I feared; all I can do now is to do the best I can for the
future, and clear the book, like a piece of bush, with axe and cutlass.
Even to produce the MS. of this will occupy me, at the most favourable
opinion, till the middle of next year; really five years were wanting,
when I could have made a book; but I have a family, and—perhaps I could
not make the book after all.
CHAPTER VIII
_April_ 29_th_, ’91.
MY DEAR COLVIN,—I begin again. I was awake this morning about half-past
four. It was still night, but I made my fire, which is always a
delightful employment, and read Lockhart’s ‘Scott’ until the day began to
peep. It was a beautiful and sober dawn, a dove-coloured dawn,
insensibly brightening to gold. I was looking at it some while over the
down-hill profile of our eastern road, when I chanced to glance
northward, and saw with extraordinary pleasure the sea lying outspread.
It seemed as smooth as glass, and yet I knew the surf was roaring all
along the reef, and indeed, if I had listened, I could have heard it—and
saw the white sweep of it outside Matautu.
I am out of condition still, and can do nothing, and toil to be at my
pen, and see some ink behind me. I have taken up again _The High Woods
of Ulufanua_. I still think the fable too fantastic and far-fetched.
But, on a re-reading, fell in love with my first chapter, and for good or
evil I must finish it. It is really good, well fed with facts, true to
the manners, and (for once in my works) rendered pleasing by the presence
of a heroine who is pretty. Miss Uma is pretty; a fact. All my other
women have been as ugly as sin, and like Falconet’s horse (I have just
been reading the anecdote in Lockhart), _mortes_ forbye.
News: Our old house is now half demolished; it is to be rebuilt on a new
site; now we look down upon and through the open posts of it like a
bird-cage, to the woods beyond. My poor Paulo has lost his father and
succeeded to thirty thousand thalers (I think); he had to go down to the
Consulate yesterday to send a legal paper; got drunk, of course, and is
still this morning in so bemused a condition that our breakfasts all went
wrong. Lafaele is absent at the deathbed of his fair spouse; fair she
was, but not in deed, acting as harlot to the wreckers at work on the
warships, to which society she probably owes her end, having fallen off a
cliff, or been thrust off it—_inter pocula_. Henry is the same, our
stand-by. In this transition stage he has been living in Apia; but the
other night he stayed up, and sat with us about the chimney in my room.
It was the first time he had seen a fire in a hearth; he could not look
at it without smiles, and was always anxious to put on another stick. We
entertained him with the fairy tales of civilisation—theatres, London,
blocks in the street, Universities, the Underground, newspapers, etc.,
and projected once more his visit to Sydney. If we can manage, it will
be next Christmas. (I see it will be impossible for me to afford a
further journey _this_ winter.) We have spent since we have been here
about £2500, which is not much if you consider we have built on that
three houses, one of them of some size, and a considerable stable, made
two miles of road some three times, cleared many acres of bush, made some
miles of path, planted quantities of food, and enclosed a horse paddock
and some acres of pig run; but ’tis a good deal of money regarded simply
as money. K. is bosh; I have no use for him; but we must do what we can
with the fellow meanwhile; he is good-humoured and honest, but
inefficient, idle himself, the cause of idleness in others, grumbling, a
self-excuser—all the faults in a bundle. He owes us thirty weeks’
service—the wretched Paul about half as much. Henry is almost the only
one of our employés who has a credit.
* * * * *
_May_ 17_th_.
Well, am I ashamed of myself? I do not think so. I have been hammering
Letters ever since, and got three ready and a fourth about half through;
all four will go by the mail, which is what I wish, for so I keep at
least my start. Days and days of unprofitable stubbing and digging, and
the result still poor as literature, left-handed, heavy, unillumined, but
I believe readable and interesting as matter. It has been no joke of a
hard time, and when my task was done, I had little taste for anything but
blowing on the pipe. A few necessary letters filled the bowl to
overflowing.
My mother has arrived, young, well, and in good spirits. By desperate
exertions, which have wholly floored Fanny, her room was ready for her,
and the dining-room fit to eat in. It was a famous victory. Lloyd never
told me of your portrait till a few days ago; fortunately, I had no
pictures hung yet; and the space over my chimney waits your counterfeit
presentment. I have not often heard anything that pleased me more; your
severe head shall frown upon me and keep me to the mark. But why has it
not come? Have you been as forgetful as Lloyd?
* * * * *
18_th_.
Miserable comforters are ye all! I read your esteemed pages this morning
by lamplight and the glimmer of the dawn, and as soon as breakfast was
over, I must turn to and tackle these despised labours! Some courage was
necessary, but not wanting. There is one thing at least by which I can
avenge myself for my drubbing, for on one point you seem impenetrably
stupid. Can I find no form of words which will at last convey to your
intelligence the fact that _these letters were never meant_, _and are not
now meant_, _to be other than a quarry of materials from which the book
may be drawn_? There seems something incommunicable in this (to me)
simple idea; I know Lloyd failed to comprehend it, I doubt if he has
grasped it now; and I despair, after all these efforts, that you should
ever be enlightened. Still, oblige me by reading that form of words once
more, and see if a light does not break. You may be sure, after the
friendly freedoms of your criticism (necessary I am sure, and wholesome I
know, but untimely to the poor labourer in his landslip) that mighty
little of it will stand.
Our Paul has come into a fortune, and wishes to go home to the Hie
Germanie. This is a tile on our head, and if a shower, which is now
falling, lets up, I must go down to Apia, and see if I can find a
substitute of any kind. This is, from any point of view, disgusting;
above all, from that of work; for, whatever the result, the mill has to
be kept turning; apparently dust, and not flour, is the proceed. Well,
there is gold in the dust, which is a fine consolation, since—well, I
can’t help it; night or morning, I do my darndest, and if I cannot charge
for merit, I must e’en charge for toil, of which I have plenty and plenty
more ahead before this cup is drained; sweat and hyssop are the
ingredients.
We are clearing from Carruthers’ Road to the pig fence, twenty-eight
powerful natives with Catholic medals about their necks, all swiping in
like Trojans; long may the sport continue!
The invoice to hand. Ere this goes out, I hope to see your expressive,
but surely not benignant countenance! Adieu, O culler of offensive
expressions—‘and a’ to be a posy to your ain dear May!’—Fanny seems a
little revived again after her spasm of work. Our books and furniture
keep slowly draining up the road, in a sad state of scatterment and
disrepair; I wish the devil had had K. by his red beard before he had
packed my library. Odd leaves and sheets and boards—a thing to make a
bibliomaniac shed tears—are fished out of odd corners. But I am no
bibliomaniac, praise Heaven, and I bear up, and rejoice when I find
anything safe.
* * * * *
19_th_.
However, I worked five hours on the brute, and finished my Letter all the
same, and couldn’t sleep last night by consequence. Haven’t had a bad
night since I don’t know when; dreamed a large, handsome man (a New
Orleans planter) had insulted my wife, and, do what I pleased, I could
not make him fight me; and woke to find it was the eleventh anniversary
of my marriage. A letter usually takes me from a week to three days; but
I’m sometimes two days on a page—I was once three—and then my friends
kick me. _C’est-y-bête_! I wish letters of that charming quality could
be so timed as to arrive when a fellow wasn’t working at the truck in
question; but, of course, that can’t be. Did not go down last night. It
showered all afternoon, and poured heavy and loud all night.
You should have seen our twenty-five popes (the Samoan phrase for a
Catholic, lay or cleric) squatting when the day’s work was done on the
ground outside the verandah, and pouring in the rays of forty-eight eyes
through the back and the front door of the dining-room, while Henry and I
and the boss pope signed the contract. The second boss (an old man) wore
a kilt (as usual) and a Balmoral bonnet with a little tartan edging and
the tails pulled off. I told him that hat belong to my country—Sekotia;
and he said, yes, that was the place that he belonged to right enough.
And then all the Papists laughed till the woods rang; he was slashing
away with a cutlass as he spoke.
The pictures have decidedly not come; they may probably arrive Sunday.
CHAPTER IX
_June_, 1891.
SIR,—To you, under your portrait, which is, in expression, your true,
breathing self, and up to now saddens me; in time, and soon, I shall be
glad to have it there; it is still only a reminder of your absence.
Fanny wept when we unpacked it, and you know how little she is given to
that mood; I was scarce Roman myself, but that does not count—I lift up
my voice so readily. These are good compliments to the artist. I write
in the midst of a wreck of books, which have just come up, and have for
once defied my labours to get straight. The whole floor is filled with
them, and (what’s worse) most of the shelves forbye; and where they are
to go to, and what is to become of the librarian, God knows. It is hot
to-night, and has been airless all day, and I am out of sorts, and my
work sticks, the devil fly away with it and me. We had an alarm of war
since last I wrote my screeds to you, and it blew over, and is to blow on
again, and the rumour goes they are to begin by killing all the whites.
I have no belief in this, and should be infinitely sorry if it came to
pass—I do not mean for _us_, that were otiose—but for the poor, deluded
schoolboys, who should hope to gain by such a step.
* * * * *
[_Letter resumed_.]
_June_ 20_th_.
No diary this time. Why? you ask. I have only sent out four Letters,
and two chapters of the _Wrecker_. Yes, but to get these I have written
132 pp., 66,000 words in thirty days; 2200 words a day; the labours of an
elephant. God knows what it’s like, and don’t ask me, but nobody shall
say I have spared pains. I thought for some time it wouldn’t come at
all. I was days and days over the first letter of the lot—days and days
writing and deleting and making no headway whatever, till I thought I
should have gone bust; but it came at last after a fashion, and the rest
went a thought more easily, though I am not so fond as to fancy any
better.
Your opinion as to the letters as a whole is so damnatory that I put them
by. But there is a ‘hell of a want of’ money this year. And these
Gilbert Island papers, being the most interesting in matter, and forming
a compact whole, and being well illustrated, I did think of as a possible
resource.
It would be called
_Six Months in Melanesia_,
_Two Island Kings_,
—_Monarchies_,
_Gilbert Island Kings_,
—_Monarchies_,
and I daresay I’ll think of a better yet—and would divide thus:—
_Butaritati_.
I. A Town asleep.
II. The Three Brothers.
III. Around our House.
IV. A Tale of a Tapu.
V. The Five Day’s Festival.
VI. Domestic Life—(which might be omitted, but not well,
better be recast).
_The King of Apemama_.
VII. The Royal Traders.
VIII. Foundation of Equator Town.
IX. The Palace of Mary Warren.
X. Equator Town and the Palace.
XI. King and Commons.
XII. The Devil Work Box.
XIII. The Three Corslets.
XIV. Tail piece; the Court upon a Journey.
I wish you to watch these closely, judging them as a whole, and treating
them as I have asked you, and favour me with your damnatory advice. I
look up at your portrait, and it frowns upon me. You seem to view me
with reproach. The expression is excellent; Fanny wept when she saw it,
and you know she is not given to the melting mood. She seems really
better; I have a touch of fever again, I fancy overwork, and to-day, when
I have overtaken my letters, I shall blow on my pipe. Tell Mrs. S. I
have been playing _Le Chant d’Amour_ lately, and have arranged it, after
awful trouble, rather prettily for two pipes; and it brought her before
me with an effect scarce short of hallucination. I could hear her voice
in every note; yet I had forgot the air entirely, and began to pipe it
from notes as something new, when I was brought up with a round turn by
this reminiscence. We are now very much installed; the dining-room is
done, and looks lovely. Soon we shall begin to photograph and send you
our circumstances. My room is still a howling wilderness. I sleep on a
platform in a window, and strike my mosquito bar and roll up my
bedclothes every morning, so that the bed becomes by day a divan. A
great part of the floor is knee-deep in books, yet nearly all the shelves
are filled, alas! It is a place to make a pig recoil, yet here are my
interminable labours begun daily by lamp-light, and sometimes not yet
done when the lamp has once more to be lighted. The effect of pictures
in this place is surprising. They give great pleasure.
* * * * *
_June_ 21_st_.
A word more. I had my breakfast this morning at 4.30! My new cook has
beaten me and (as Lloyd says) revenged all the cooks in the world. I
have been hunting them to give me breakfast early since I was twenty; and
now here comes Mr. Ratke, and I have to plead for mercy. I cannot stand
4.30; I am a mere fevered wreck; it is now half-past eight, and I can no
more, and four hours divide me from lunch, the devil take the man!
Yesterday it was about 5.30, which I can stand; day before 5, which is
bad enough; to-day, I give out. It is like a London season, and as I do
not take a siesta once in a month, and then only five minutes, I am being
worn to the bones, and look aged and anxious.
We have Rider Haggard’s brother here as a Land Commissioner; a nice kind
of a fellow; indeed, all the three Land Commissioners are very agreeable.
CHAPTER X
_Sunday_, _Sept._ 5 (?), 1891.
MY DEAR COLVIN,—Yours from Lochinver has just come. You ask me if I am
ever homesick for the Highlands and the Isles. Conceive that for the
last month I have been living there between 1786 and 1850, in my
grandfather’s diaries and letters. I _had_ to take a rest; no use
talking; so I put in a month over my _Lives of the Stevensons_ with great
pleasure and profit and some advance; one chapter and a part drafted.
The whole promises well Chapter I. Domestic Annals. Chapter II. The
Northern Lights. Chapter III. The Bell Rock. Chapter IV. A Family of
Boys. Chap. V. The Grandfather. VI. Alan Stevenson. VII. Thomas
Stevenson. My materials for my great-grandfather are almost null; for my
grandfather copious and excellent. Name, a puzzle. _A Scottish Family_,
_A Family of Engineers_, _Northern Lights_, _The Engineers of the
Northern Lights_: _A Family History_. Advise; but it will take long.
Now, imagine if I have been homesick for Barrahead and Island Glass, and
Kirkwall, and Cape Wrath, and the Wells of the Pentland Firth; I could
have wept.
Now for politics. I am much less alarmed; I believe the _malo_ (=_raj_,
government) will collapse and cease like an overlain infant, without a
shot fired. They have now been months here on their big salaries—and
Cedarcrantz, whom I specially like as a man, has done nearly nothing, and
the Baron, who is well-meaning, has done worse. They have these large
salaries, and they have all the taxes; they have made scarce a foot of
road; they have not given a single native a position—all to white men;
they have scarce laid out a penny on Apia, and scarce a penny on the
King; they have forgot they were in Samoa, or that such a thing as
Samoans existed, and had eyes and some intelligence. The Chief Justice
has refused to pay his customs! The President proposed to have an
expensive house built for himself, while the King, his master, has none!
I had stood aside, and been a loyal, and, above all, a silent subject, up
to then; but now I snap my fingers at their _malo_. It is damned, and
I’m damned glad of it. And this is not all. Last ‘_Wainiu_,’ when I
sent Fanny off to Fiji, I hear the wonderful news that the Chief Justice
is going to Fiji and the Colonies to improve his mind. I showed my way
of thought to his guest, Count Wachtmeister, whom I have sent to you with
a letter—he will tell you all the news. Well, the Chief Justice stayed,
but they said he was to leave yesterday. I had intended to go down, and
see and warn him! But the President’s house had come up in the
meanwhile, and I let them go to their doom, which I am only anxious to
see swiftly and (if it may be) bloodlessly fall.
Thus I have in a way withdrawn my unrewarded loyalty. Lloyd is down
to-day with Moors to call on Mataafa; the news of the excursion made a
considerable row in Apia, and both the German and the English consuls
besought Lloyd not to go. But he stuck to his purpose, and with my
approval. It’s a poor thing if people are to give up a pleasure party
for a _malo_ that has never done anything for us but draw taxes, and is
going to go pop, and leave us at the mercy of the identical Mataafa, whom
I have not visited for more than a year, and who is probably furious.
The sense of my helplessness here has been rather bitter; I feel it
wretched to see this dance of folly and injustice and unconscious
rapacity go forward from day to day, and to be impotent. I was not
consulted—or only by one man, and that on particular points; I did not
choose to volunteer advice till some pressing occasion; I have not even a
vote, for I am not a member of the municipality.
What ails you, miserable man, to talk of saving material? I have a whole
world in my head, a whole new society to work, but I am in no hurry; you
will shortly make the acquaintance of the Island of Ulufanua, on which I
mean to lay several stories; the _Bloody Wedding_, possibly the _High
Woods_—(O, it’s so good, the High Woods, but the story is craziness;
that’s the trouble,)—a political story, the _Labour Slave_, etc.
Ulufanua is an imaginary island; the name is a beautiful Samoan word for
the _top_ of a forest; ulu—leaves or hair, fanua=land. The ground or
country of the leaves. ‘Ulufanua the isle of the sea,’ read that verse
dactylically and you get the beat; the u’s are like our double oo; did
ever you hear a prettier word?
I do not feel inclined to make a volume of Essays, but if I did, and
perhaps the idea is good—and any idea is better than South Seas—here
would be my choice of the Scribner articles: _Dreams_, _Beggars_,
_Lantern-Bearers_, _Random Memories_. There was a paper called the _Old
Pacific Capital_ in Fraser, in Tulloch’s time, which had merit; there
were two on Fontainebleau in the _Magazine of Art_ in Henley’s time. I
have no idea if they’re any good; then there’s the _Emigrant Train_.
_Pulvis et Umbra_ is in a different key, and wouldn’t hang on with the
rest.
I have just interrupted my letter and read through the chapter of the
_High Woods_ that is written, a chapter and a bit, some sixteen pages,
really very fetching, but what do you wish? the story is so wilful, so
steep, so silly—it’s a hallucination I have outlived, and yet I never did
a better piece of work, horrid, and pleasing, and extraordinarily _true_;
it’s sixteen pages of the South Seas; their essence. What am I to do?
Lose this little gem—for I’ll be bold, and that’s what I think it—or go
on with the rest, which I don’t believe in, and don’t like, and which can
never make aught but a silly yarn? Make another end to it? Ah, yes, but
that’s not the way I write; the whole tale is implied; I never use an
effect, when I can help it, unless it prepares the effects that are to
follow; that’s what a story consists in. To make another end, that is to
make the beginning all wrong. The dénouement of a long story is nothing;
it is just a ‘full close,’ which you may approach and accompany as you
please—it is a coda, not an essential member in the rhythm; but the body
and end of a short story is bone of the bone and blood of the blood of
the beginning. Well, I shall end by finishing it against my judgment;
that fragment is my Delilah. Golly, it’s good. I am not shining by
modesty; but I do just love the colour and movement of that piece so far
as it goes.
I was surprised to hear of your fishing. And you saw the ‘Pharos,’
thrice fortunate man; I wish I dared go home, I would ask the
Commissioners to take me round for old sake’s sake, and see all my family
pictures once more from the Mull of Galloway to Unst. However, all is
arranged for our meeting in Ceylon, except the date and the blooming
pounds. I have heard of an exquisite hotel in the country, airy, large
rooms, good cookery, not dear; we shall have a couple of months there, if
we can make it out, and converse or—as my grandfather always
said—‘commune.’ ‘Communings with Mr. Kennedy as to Lighthouse Repairs.’
He was a fine old fellow, but a droll.
* * * * *
_Evening_.
Lloyd has returned. Peace and war were played before his eyes at heads
or tails. A German was stopped with levelled guns; he raised his whip;
had it fallen, we might have been now in war. Excuses were made by
Mataafa himself. Doubtless the thing was done—I mean the stopping of the
German—a little to show off before Lloyd. Meanwhile—was up here, telling
how the Chief Justice was really gone for five or eight weeks, and
begging me to write to the _Times_ and denounce the state of affairs;
many strong reasons he advanced; and Lloyd and I have been since his
arrival and —’s departure, near half an hour, debating what should be
done. Cedarcrantz is gone; it is not my fault; he knows my views on that
point—alone of all points;—he leaves me with my mouth sealed. Yet this
is a nice thing that because he is guilty of a fresh offence—his
flight—the mouth of the only possible influential witness should be
closed? I do not like this argument. I look like a cad, if I do in the
man’s absence what I could have done in a more manly manner in his
presence. True; but why did he go? It is his last sin. And I, who like
the man extremely—that is the word—I love his society—he is intelligent,
pleasant, even witty, a gentleman—and you know how that attaches—I loathe
to seem to play a base part; but the poor natives—who are like other
folk, false enough, lazy enough, not heroes, not saints—ordinary men
damnably misused—are they to suffer because I like Cedarcrantz, and
Cedarcrantz has cut his lucky? This is a little tragedy, observe well—a
tragedy! I may be right, I may be wrong in my judgment, but I am in
treaty with my honour. I know not how it will seem to-morrow. Lloyd
thought the barrier of honour insurmountable, and it is an ugly obstacle.
He (Cedarcrantz) will likely meet my wife three days from now, may travel
back with her, will be charming if he does; suppose this, and suppose him
to arrive and find that I have sprung a mine—or the nearest approach to
it I could find—behind his back? My position is pretty. Yes, I am an
aristocrat. I have the old petty, personal view of honour? I should
blush till I die if I do this; yet it is on the cards that I may do it.
So much I have written you in bed, as a man writes, or talks, in a
_bittre Wahl_. Now I shall sleep, and see if I am more clear. I will
consult the missionaries at least—I place some reliance in M. also—or I
should if he were not a partisan; but a partisan he is. There’s the
pity. To sleep! A fund of wisdom in the prostrate body and the fed
brain. Kindly observe R. L. S. in the talons of politics! ’Tis
funny—’tis sad. Nobody but these cursed idiots could have so driven me;
I cannot bear idiots.
My dear Colvin, I must go to sleep; it is long past ten—a dreadful hour
for me. And here am I lingering (so I feel) in the dining-room at the
Monument, talking to you across the table, both on our feet, and only the
two stairs to mount, and get to bed, and sleep, and be waked by dear old
George—to whom I wish my kindest remembrances—next morning. I look
round, and there is my blue room, and my long lines of shelves, and the
door gaping on a moonless night, and no word of S. C. but his twa
portraits on the wall. Good-bye, my dear fellow, and goodnight. Queer
place the world!
* * * * *
_Monday_.
No clearness of mind with the morning; I have no guess what I should do.
’Tis easy to say that the public duty should brush aside these little
considerations of personal dignity; so it is that politicians begin, and
in a month you find them rat and flatter and intrigue with brows of
brass. I am rather of the old view, that a man’s first duty is to these
little laws; the big he does not, he never will, understand; I may be
wrong about the Chief Justice and the Baron and the state of Samoa; I
cannot be wrong about the vile attitude I put myself in if I blow the
gaff on Cedarcrantz behind his back.
* * * * *
_Tuesday_.
One more word about the South Seas, in answer to a question I observe I
have forgotten to answer. The Tahiti part has never turned up, because
it has never been written. As for telling you where I went or when, or
anything about Honolulu, I would rather die; that is fair and plain. How
can anybody care when or how I left Honolulu? A man of upwards of forty
cannot waste his time in communicating matter of that indifference. The
letters, it appears, are tedious; they would be more tedious still if I
wasted my time upon such infantile and sucking-bottle details. If ever I
put in any such detail, it is because it leads into something or serves
as a transition. To tell it for its own sake, never! The mistake is all
through that I have told too much; I had not sufficient confidence in the
reader, and have overfed him; and here are you anxious to learn how I—O
Colvin! Suppose it had made a book, all such information is given to one
glance of an eye by a map with a little dotted line upon it. But let us
forget this unfortunate affair.
* * * * *
_Wednesday_.
Yesterday I went down to consult Clarke, who took the view of delay. Has
he changed his mind already? I wonder: here at least is the news. Some
little while back some men of Manono—what is Manono?—a Samoan rotten
borough, a small isle of huge political importance, heaven knows why,
where a handful of chiefs make half the trouble in the country. Some men
of Manono (which is strong Mataafa) burned down the houses and destroyed
the crops of some Malietoa neighbours. The President went there the
other day and landed alone on the island, which (to give him his due) was
plucky. Moreover, he succeeded in persuading the folks to come up and be
judged on a particular day in Apia. That day they did not come; but did
come the next, and, to their vast surprise, were given six months’
imprisonment and clapped in gaol. Those who had accompanied them cried
to them on the streets as they were marched to prison, ‘Shall we rescue
you?’ The condemned, marching in the hands of thirty men with loaded
rifles, cried out ‘No’! And the trick was done. But it was ardently
believed a rescue would be attempted; the gaol was laid about with armed
men day and night; but there was some question of their loyalty, and the
commandant of the forces, a very nice young beardless Swede, became
nervous, and conceived a plan. How if he should put dynamite under the
gaol, and in case of an attempted rescue blow up prison and all? He went
to the President, who agreed; he went to the American man-of-war for the
dynamite and machine, was refused, and got it at last from the Wreckers.
The thing began to leak out, and there arose a muttering in town. People
had no fancy for amateur explosions, for one thing. For another, it did
not clearly appear that it was legal; the men had been condemned to six
months’ prison, which they were peaceably undergoing; they had not been
condemned to death. And lastly, it seemed a somewhat advanced example of
civilisation to set before barbarians. The mutter in short became a
storm, and yesterday, while I was down, a cutter was chartered, and the
prisoners were suddenly banished to the Tokelaus. Who has changed the
sentence? We are going to stir in the dynamite matter; we do not want
the natives to fancy us consenting to such an outrage.
Fanny has returned from her trip, and on the whole looks better. The
_High Woods_ are under way, and their name is now the _Beach of Falesá_,
and the yarn is cured. I have about thirty pages of it done; it will be
fifty to seventy I suppose. No supernatural trick at all; and escaped
out of it quite easily; can’t think why I was so stupid for so long.
Mighty glad to have Fanny back to this ‘Hell of the South Seas,’ as the
German Captain called it. What will Cedarcrantz think when he comes
back? To do him justice, had he been here, this Manono hash would not
have been.
Here is a pretty thing. When Fanny was in Fiji all the Samoa and Tokelau
folks were agog about our ‘flash’ house; but the whites had never heard
of it.
ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON,
Author of _The Beach of Falesá_.
CHAPTER XI
_Sept._ 28.
MY DEAR COLVIN,—Since I last laid down my pen, I have written and
rewritten _The Beach of Falesá_; something like sixty thousand words of
sterling domestic fiction (the story, you will understand, is only half
that length); and now I don’t want to write any more again for ever, or
feel so; and I’ve got to overhaul it once again to my sorrow. I was all
yesterday revising, and found a lot of slacknesses and (what is worse in
this kind of thing) some literaryisms. One of the puzzles is this: It is
a first person story—a trader telling his own adventure in an island.
When I began I allowed myself a few liberties, because I was afraid of
the end; now the end proved quite easy, and could be done in the pace; so
the beginning remains about a quarter tone out (in places); but I have
rather decided to let it stay so. The problem is always delicate; it is
the only thing that worries me in first person tales, which otherwise
(quo’ Alan) ‘set better wi’ my genius.’ There is a vast deal of fact in
the story, and some pretty good comedy. It is the first realistic South
Sea story; I mean with real South Sea character and details of life.
Everybody else who has tried, that I have seen, got carried away by the
romance, and ended in a kind of sugar-candy sham epic, and the whole
effect was lost—there was no etching, no human grin, consequently no
conviction. Now I have got the smell and look of the thing a good deal.
You will know more about the South Seas after you have read my little
tale than if you had read a library. As to whether any one else will
read it, I have no guess. I am in an off time, but there is just the
possibility it might make a hit; for the yarn is good and melodramatic,
and there is quite a love affair—for me; and Mr. Wiltshire (the narrator)
is a huge lark, though I say it. But there is always the exotic
question, and everything, the life, the place, the dialects—trader’s
talk, which is a strange conglomerate of literary expressions and English
and American slang, and Beach de Mar, or native English,—the very trades
and hopes and fears of the characters, are all novel, and may be found
unwelcome to that great, hulking, bullering whale, the public.
Since I wrote, I have been likewise drawing up a document to send it to
the President; it has been dreadfully delayed, not by me, but to-day they
swear it will be sent in. A list of questions about the dynamite report
are herein laid before him, and considerations suggested why he should
answer.
* * * * *
_October_ 5_th_.
Ever since my last snatch I have been much chivied about over the
President business; his answer has come, and is an evasion accompanied
with schoolboy insolence, and we are going to try to answer it. I drew
my answer and took it down yesterday; but one of the signatories wants
another paragraph added, which I have not yet been able to draw, and as
to the wisdom of which I am not yet convinced.
* * * * *
_Next day_, _Oct._ 7_th_, _the right day_.
We are all in rather a muddled state with our President affair. I do
loathe politics, but at the same time, I cannot stand by and have the
natives blown in the air treacherously with dynamite. They are still
quiet; how long this may continue I do not know, though of course by mere
prescription the Government is strengthened, and is probably insured till
the next taxes fall due. But the unpopularity of the whites is growing.
My native overseer, the great Henry Simelé, announced to-day that he was
‘weary of whites upon the beach. All too proud,’ said this veracious
witness. One of the proud ones had threatened yesterday to cut off his
head with a bush knife! These are ‘native outrages’; honour bright, and
setting theft aside, in which the natives are active, this is the main
stream of irritation. The natives are generally courtly, far from always
civil, but really gentle, and with a strong sense of honour of their own,
and certainly quite as much civilised as our dynamiting President.
We shall be delighted to see Kipling. I go to bed usually about
half-past eight, and my lamp is out before ten; I breakfast at six. We
may say roughly we have no soda water on the island, and just now
truthfully no whisky. I _have_ heard the chimes at midnight; now no
more, I guess. _But_—Fanny and I, as soon as we can get coins for it,
are coming to Europe, not to England: I am thinking of Royat. Bar wars.
If not, perhaps the Apennines might give us a mountain refuge for two
months or three in summer. How is that for high? But the money must be
all in hand first.
* * * * *
_October_ 13_th_.
How am I to describe my life these last few days? I have been wholly
swallowed up in politics, a wretched business, with fine elements of
farce in it too, which repay a man in passing, involving many dark and
many moonlight rides, secret counsels which are at once divulged, sealed
letters which are read aloud in confidence to the neighbours, and a mass
of fudge and fun, which would have driven me crazy ten years ago, and now
makes me smile.
On Friday, Henry came and told us he must leave and go to ‘my poor old
family in Savaii’; why? I do not quite know—but, I suspect, to be
tattooed—if so, then probably to be married, and we shall see him no
more. I told him he must do what he thought his duty; we had him to
lunch, drank his health, and he and I rode down about twelve. When I got
down, I sent my horse back to help bring down the family later. My own
afternoon was cut out for me; my last draft for the President had been
objected to by some of the signatories. I stood out, and one of our
small number accordingly refused to sign. Him I had to go and persuade,
which went off very well after the first hottish moments; you have no
idea how stolid my temper is now. By about five the thing was done; and
we sat down to dinner at the Chinaman’s—the Verrey or Doyen’s of Apia—G.
and I at each end as hosts; G.’s wife—Fanua, late maid of the village;
her (adopted) father and mother, Seumanu and Faatulia, Fanny, Belle,
Lloyd, Austin, and Henry Simelé, his last appearance. Henry was in a
kilt of gray shawl, with a blue jacket, white shirt and black necktie,
and looked like a dark genteel guest in a Highland shooting-box. Seumanu
(opposite Fanny, next G.) is chief of Apia, a rather big gun in this
place, looking like a large, fatted, military Englishman, bar the colour.
Faatulia, next me, is a bigger chief than her husband. Henry is a chief
too—his chief name, Iiga (Ee-eeng-a), he has not yet ‘taken’ because of
his youth. We were in fine society, and had a pleasant meal-time, with
lots of fun. Then to the Opera—I beg your pardon, I mean the Circus. We
occupied the first row in the reserved seats, and there in the row behind
were all our friends—Captain Foss and his Captain-Lieutenant, three of
the American officers, very nice fellows, the Dr., etc., so we made a
fine show of what an embittered correspondent of the local paper called
‘the shoddy aristocracy of Apia’; and you should have seen how we carried
on, and how I clapped, and Captain Foss hollered ‘_wunderschön_!’ and
threw himself forward in his seat, and how we all in fact enjoyed
ourselves like school-children, Austin not a shade more than his
neighbours. Then the Circus broke up, and the party went home, but I
stayed down, having business on the morrow.
Yesterday, October 12th, great news reaches me, and Lloyd and I, with the
mail just coming in, must leave all, saddle, and ride down. True enough,
the President had resigned! Sought to resign his presidency of the
council, and keep his advisership to the King; given way to the Consul’s
objections and resigned all—then fell out with them about the disposition
of the funds, and was now trying to resign from his resignation! Sad
little President, so trim to look at, and I believe so kind to his little
wife! Not only so, but I meet D. on the beach. D. calls me in
consultation, and we make with infinite difficulty a draft of a petition
to the King. . . . Then to dinner at M.’s, a very merry meal, interrupted
before it was over by the arrival of the committee. Slight sketch of
procedure agreed upon, self appointed spokesman, and the deputation sets
off. Walk all through Matafele, all along Mulinuu, come to the King’s
house; he has verbally refused to see us in answer to our letter,
swearing he is gase-gase (chief-sickness, not common man’s), and indeed
we see him inside in bed. It is a miserable low house, better houses by
the dozen in the little hamlet (Tanugamanono) of bushmen on our way to
Vailima; and the President’s house in process of erection just opposite!
We are told to return to-morrow; I refuse; and at last we are very sourly
received, sit on the mats, and I open out, through a very poor
interpreter, and sometimes hampered by unacceptable counsels from my
backers. I can speak fairly well in a plain way now. C. asked me to
write out my harangue for him this morning; I have done so, and couldn’t
get it near as good. I suppose (talking and interpreting) I was twenty
minutes or half-an-hour on the deck; then his majesty replied in the
dying whisper of a big chief; a few words of rejoinder (approving), and
the deputation withdrew, rather well satisfied.
A few days ago this intervention would have been a deportable offence;
not now, I bet; I would like them to try. A little way back along
Mulinuu, Mrs. G. met us with her husband’s horse; and he and she and
Lloyd and I rode back in a heavenly moonlight. Here ends a chapter in
the life of an island politician! Catch me at it again; ’tis easy to go
in, but it is not a pleasant trade. I have had a good team, as good as I
could get on the beach; but what trouble even so, and what fresh troubles
shaping. But I have on the whole carried all my points; I believe all
but one, and on that (which did not concern me) I had no right to
interfere. I am sure you would be amazed if you knew what a good hand I
am at keeping my temper, talking people over, and giving reasons which
are not my reasons, but calculated for the meridian of the particular
objection; so soon does falsehood await the politician in his whirling
path.
CHAPTER XII
_May_, _October_ 24_th_.
MY DEAR CARTHEW,—See what I have written, but it’s Colvin I’m after—I
have written two chapters, about thirty pages of _Wrecker_ since the mail
left, which must be my excuse, and the bother I’ve had with it is not to
be imagined, you might have seen me the day before yesterday weighing
British sov.’s and Chili dollars to arrange my treasure chest. And there
was such a calculation, not for that only, but for the ship’s position
and distances when—but I am not going to tell you the yarn—and then, as
my arithmetic is particularly lax, Lloyd had to go over all my
calculations; and then, as I had changed the amount of money, he had to
go over all _his_ as to the amount of the lay; and altogether, a bank
could be run with less effusion of figures than it took to shore up a
single chapter of a measly yarn. However, it’s done, and I have but one
more, or at the outside two, to do, and I am Free! and can do any damn
thing I like.
Before falling on politics, I shall give you my day. Awoke somewhere
about the first peep of day, came gradually to, and had a turn on the
verandah before 5.55, when ‘the child’ (an enormous Wallis Islander)
brings me an orange; at 6, breakfast; 6.10, to work; which lasts till, at
10.30, Austin comes for his history lecture; this is rather dispiriting,
but education must be gone about in faith—and charity, both of which
pretty nigh failed me to-day about (of all things) Carthage; 11,
luncheon; after luncheon in my mother’s room, I read Chapter XXIII. of
_The Wrecker_, then Belle, Lloyd, and I go up and make music furiously
till about 2 (I suppose), when I turn into work again till 4; fool from 4
to half-past, tired out and waiting for the bath hour; 4.30, bath; 4.40,
eat two heavenly mangoes on the verandah, and see the boys arrive with
the pack-horses; 5, dinner; smoke, chat on verandah, then hand of cards,
and at last at 8 come up to my room with a pint of beer and a hard
biscuit, which I am now consuming, and as soon as they are consumed I
shall turn in.
Such are the innocent days of this ancient and outworn sportsman; to-day
there was no weeding, usually there is however, edge in somewhere. My
books for the moment are a crib to Phædo, and the second book of
Montaigne; and a little while back I was reading Frederic Harrison,
‘Choice of Books,’ etc.—very good indeed, a great deal of sense and
knowledge in the volume, and some very true stuff, _contra_ Carlyle,
about the eighteenth century. A hideous idea came over me that perhaps
Harrison is now getting _old_. Perhaps you are. Perhaps I am. Oh, this
infidelity must be stared firmly down. I am about twenty-three—say
twenty-eight; you about thirty, or, by’r lady, thirty-four; and as
Harrison belongs to the same generation, there is no good bothering about
him.
Here has just been a fine alert; I gave my wife a dose of chlorodyne.
‘Something wrong,’ says she. ‘Nonsense,’ said I. ‘Embrocation,’ said
she. I smelt it, and—it smelt very funny. ‘I think it’s just gone bad,
and to-morrow will tell.’ Proved to be so.
* * * * *
_Wednesday_.
_History of Tuesday_.—Woke at usual time, very little work, for I was
tired, and had a job for the evening—to write parts for a new instrument,
a violin. Lunch, chat, and up to my place to practise; but there was no
practising for me—my flageolet was gone wrong, and I had to take it all
to pieces, clean it, and put it up again. As this is a most intricate
job—the thing dissolves into seventeen separate members, most of these
have to be fitted on their individual springs as fine as needles, and
sometimes two at once with the springs shoving different ways—it took me
till two. Then Lloyd and I rode forth on our errands; first to Motootua,
where we had a really instructive conversation on weeds and grasses.
Thence down to Apia, where we bought a fresh bottle of chlorodyne and
conversed on politics.
My visit to the King, which I thought at the time a particularly nugatory
and even schoolboy step, and only consented to because I had held the
reins so tight over my little band before, has raised a deuce of a
row—new proclamation, no one is to interview the sacred puppet without
consuls’ permission, two days’ notice, and an approved interpreter—read
(I suppose) spy. Then back; I should have said I was trying the new
horse; a tallish piebald, bought from the circus; he proved steady and
safe, but in very bad condition, and not so much the wild Arab steed of
the desert as had been supposed. The height of his back, after
commodious Jack, astonished me, and I had a great consciousness of
exercise and florid action, as I posted to his long, emphatic trot. We
had to ride back easy; even so he was hot and blown; and when we set a
boy to lead him to and fro, our last character for sanity perished. We
returned just neat for dinner; and in the evening our violinist arrived,
a young lady, no great virtuoso truly, but plucky, industrious, and a
good reader; and we played five pieces with huge amusement, and broke up
at nine. This morning I have read a splendid piece of Montaigne, written
this page of letter, and now turn to the _Wrecker_.
_Wednesday_—November 16th or 17th—and I am ashamed to say mail day. The
_Wrecker_ is finished, that is the best of my news; it goes by this mail
to Scribner’s; and I honestly think it a good yarn on the whole and of
its measly kind. The part that is genuinely good is Nares, the American
sailor; that is a genuine figure; had there been more Nares it would have
been a better book; but of course it didn’t set up to be a book, only a
long tough yarn with some pictures of the manners of to-day in the
greater world—not the shoddy sham world of cities, clubs, and colleges,
but the world where men still live a man’s life. The worst of my news is
the influenza; Apia is devastate; the shops closed, a ball put off, etc.
As yet we have not had it at Vailima, and, who knows? we may escape.
None of us go down, but of course the boys come and go.
Your letter had the most wonderful ‘I told you so’ I ever heard in the
course of my life. Why, you madman, I wouldn’t change my present
installation for any post, dignity, honour, or advantage conceivable to
me. It fills the bill; I have the loveliest time. And as for wars and
rumours of wars, you surely know enough of me to be aware that I like
that also a thousand times better than decrepit peace in Middlesex? I do
not quite like politics; I am too aristocratic, I fear, for that. God
knows I don’t care who I chum with; perhaps like sailors best; but to go
round and sue and sneak to keep a crowd together—never. My imagination,
which is not the least damped by the idea of having my head cut off in
the bush, recoils aghast from the idea of a life like Gladstone’s, and
the shadow of the newspaper chills me to the bone. Hence my late
eruption was interesting, but not what I like. All else suits me in this
(killed a mosquito) A1 abode.
About politics. A determination was come to by the President that he had
been an idiot; emissaries came to G. and me to kiss and be friends. My
man proposed I should have a personal interview; I said it was quite
useless, I had nothing to say; I had offered him the chance to inform me,
had pressed it on him, and had been very unpleasantly received, and now
‘Time was.’ Then it was decided that I was to be made a culprit against
Germany; the German Captain—a delightful fellow and our constant
visitor—wrote to say that as ‘a German officer’ he could not come even to
say farewell. We all wrote back in the most friendly spirit, telling him
(politely) that some of these days he would be sorry, and we should be
delighted to see our friend again. Since then I have seen no German
shadow.
Mataafa has been proclaimed a rebel; the President did this act, and then
resigned. By singular good fortune, Mataafa has not yet moved; no thanks
to our idiot governors. They have shot their bolt; they have made a
rebel of the only man (_to their own knowledge_, _on the report of their
own spy_) who held the rebel party in check; and having thus called on
war to fall, they can do no more, sit equally ‘expertes’ of _vis_ and
counsel, regarding their handiwork. It is always a cry with these folk
that he (Mataafa) had no ammunition. I always said it would be found;
and we know of five boat-loads that have found their way to Malie
already. Where there are traders, there will be ammunition; aphorism by
R. L. S.
Now what am I to do next?
Lives of the Stevensons? _Historia Samoae_? A History for Children?
Fiction? I have had two hard months at fiction; I want a change.
Stevensons? I am expecting some more material; perhaps better wait.
Samoa; rather tempting; might be useful to the islands—and to me; for it
will be written in admirable temper; I have never agreed with any party,
and see merits and excuses in all; should do it (if I did) very slackly
and easily, as if half in conversation. History for Children? This
flows from my lessons to Austin; no book is any good. The best I have
seen is Freeman’s _Old English History_; but his style is so rasping, and
a child can learn more, if he’s clever. I found my sketch of general
Aryan History, given in conversation, to have been practically correct—at
least what I mean is, Freeman had very much the same stuff in his early
chapters, only not so much, and I thought not so well placed; and the
child remembered some of it. Now the difficulty is to give this general
idea of main place, growth, and movement; it is needful to tack it on a
yarn. Now Scotch is the only History I know; it is the only history
reasonably represented in my library; it is a very good one for my
purpose, owing to two civilisations having been face to face
throughout—or rather Roman civilisation face to face with our ancient
barbaric life and government, down to yesterday, to 1750 anyway. But the
_Tales of a Grandfather_ stand in my way; I am teaching them to Austin
now, and they have all Scott’s defects and all Scott’s hopeless merit. I
cannot compete with that; and yet, so far as regards teaching History,
how he has missed his chances! I think I’ll try; I really have some
historic sense, I feel that in my bones. Then there’s another thing.
Scott never knew the Highlands; he was always a Borderer. He has missed
that whole, long, strange, pathetic story of our savages, and, besides,
his style is not very perspicuous to childhood. Gad, I think I’ll have a
flutter. Buridan’s Ass! Whether to go, what to attack. Must go to
other letters; shall add to this, if I have time.
CHAPTER XIII
_Nov._ 25_th_, 1891.
MY DEAR COLVIN, MY DEAR COLVIN,—I wonder how often I’m going to write it.
In spite of the loss of three days, as I have to tell, and a lot of
weeding and cacao planting, I have finished since the mail left four
chapters, forty-eight pages of my Samoa history. It is true that the
first three had been a good deal drafted two years ago, but they had all
to be written and re-written, and the fourth chapter is all new. Chapter
I. Elements of Discord-Native. II. Elements of Discord-Foreign. III.
The Success of Laupepa. IV. Brandeis. V. Will probably be called ‘The
Rise of Mataafa.’ VI. _Furor Consularis_—a devil of a long chapter.
VII. Stuebel the Pacificator. VIII. Government under the Treaty of
Berlin. IX. Practical Suggestions. Say three-sixths of it are done,
maybe more; by this mail five chapters should go, and that should be a
good half of it; say sixty pages. And if you consider that I sent by
last mail the end of the _Wrecker_, coming on for seventy or eighty
pages, and the mail before that the entire Tale of the _Beach of Falesá_,
I do not think I can be accused of idleness. This is my season; I often
work six and seven, and sometimes eight hours; and the same day I am
perhaps weeding or planting for an hour or two more—and I daresay you
know what hard work weeding is—and it all agrees with me at this time of
the year—like—like idleness, if a man of my years could be idle.
My first visit to Apia was a shock to me; every second person the ghost
of himself, and the place reeking with infection. But I have not got the
thing yet, and hope to escape. This shows how much stronger I am; think
of me flitting through a town of influenza patients seemingly unscathed.
We are all on the cacao planting.
The next day my wife and I rode over to the German plantation, Vailele,
whose manager is almost the only German left to speak to us. Seventy
labourers down with influenza! It is a lovely ride, half-way down our
mountain towards Apia, then turn to the right, ford the river, and three
miles of solitary grass and cocoa palms, to where the sea beats and the
wild wind blows unceasingly about the plantation house. On the way down
Fanny said, ‘Now what would you do if you saw Colvin coming up?’
Next day we rode down to Apia to make calls.
Yesterday the mail came, and the fat was in the fire.
* * * * *
_Nov._ 29_th_?
_Book_. All right. I must say I like your order. And the papers are
some of them up to dick, and no mistake. I agree with you the lights
seem a little turned down. The truth is, I was far through (if you
understand Scots), and came none too soon to the South Seas, where I was
to recover peace of body and mind. No man but myself knew all my
bitterness in those days. Remember that, the next time you think I
regret my exile. And however low the lights are, the stuff is true, and
I believe the more effective; after all, what I wish to fight is the best
fought by a rather cheerless presentation of the truth. The world must
return some day to the word duty, and be done with the word reward.
There are no rewards, and plenty duties. And the sooner a man sees that
and acts upon it like a gentleman or a fine old barbarian, the better for
himself.
There is my usual puzzle about publishers. Chatto ought to have it, as
he has all the other essays; these all belong to me, and Chatto publishes
on terms. Longman has forgotten the terms we are on; let him look up our
first correspondence, and he will see I reserved explicitly, as was my
habit, the right to republish as I choose. Had the same arrangement with
Henley, Magazine of Art, and with Tulloch Fraser’s.—For any necessary
note or preface, it would be a real service if you would undertake the
duty yourself. I should love a preface by you, as short or as long as
you choose, three sentences, thirty pages, the thing I should like is
your name. And the excuse of my great distance seems sufficient. I
shall return with this the sheets corrected as far as I have them; the
rest I will leave, if you will, to you entirely; let it be your book, and
disclaim what you dislike in the preface. You can say it was at my eager
prayer. I should say I am the less willing to pass Chatto over, because
he behaved the other day in a very handsome manner. He asked leave to
reprint _Damien_; I gave it to him as a present, explaining I could
receive no emolument for a personal attack. And he took out my share of
profits, and sent them in my name to the Leper Fund. I could not bear
after that to take from him any of that class of books which I have
always given him. Tell him the same terms will do. Clark to print,
uniform with the others.
I have lost all the days since this letter began re-handling Chapter IV.
of the Samoa racket. I do not go in for literature; address myself to
sensible people rather than to sensitive. And, indeed, it is a kind of
journalism, I have no right to dally; if it is to help, it must come
soon. In two months from now it shall be done, and should be published
in the course of March. I propose Cassell gets it. I am going to call
it ‘A Footnote to History: Eight Years of Trouble in Samoa,’ I believe.
I recoil from serious names; they seem so much too pretentious for a
pamphlet. It will be about the size of _Treasure Island_, I believe. Of
course, as you now know, my case of conscience cleared itself off, and I
began my intervention directly to one of the parties. The other, the
Chief Justice, I am to inform of my book the first occasion. God knows
if the book will do any good—or harm; but I judge it right to try. There
is one man’s life certainly involved; and it may be all our lives. I
must not stand and slouch, but do my best as best I can. But you may
conceive the difficulty of a history extending to the present week, at
least, and where almost all the actors upon all sides are of my personal
acquaintance. The only way is to judge slowly, and write boldly, and
leave the issue to fate. . . . I am far indeed from wishing to confine
myself to creative work; that is a loss, the other repairs; the one
chance for a man, and, above all, for one who grows elderly, ahem, is to
vary drainage and repair. That is the one thing I understand—the
cultivation of the shallow _solum_ of my brain. But I would rather, from
soon on, be released from the obligation to write. In five or six years
this plantation—suppose it and us still to exist—should pretty well
support us and pay wages; not before, and already the six years seem long
to me. If literature were but a pastime!
I have interrupted myself to write the necessary notification to the
Chief Justice.
I see in looking up Longman’s letter that it was as usual the letter of
an obliging gentleman; so do not trouble him with my reminder. I wish
all my publishers were not so nice. And I have a fourth and a fifth
baying at my heels; but for these, of course, they must go wanting.
* * * * *
_Dec._ 2_nd_.
No answer from the Chief Justice, which is like him, but surely very
wrong in such a case. The lunch bell! I have been off work, playing
patience and weeding all morning. Yesterday and the day before I drafted
eleven and revised nine pages of Chapter V., and the truth is, I was
extinct by lunch-time, and played patience sourly the rest of the day.
To-morrow or next day I hope to go in again and win. Lunch 2nd Bell.
* * * * *
_Dec._ 2_nd_, _afternoon_.
I have kept up the idleness; blew on the pipe to Belle’s piano; then had
a ride in the forest all by my nainsel; back and piped again, and now
dinner nearing. Take up this sheet with nothing to say. The weird
figure of Faauma is in the room washing my windows, in a black lavalava
(kilt) with a red handkerchief hanging from round her neck between her
breasts; not another stitch; her hair close cropped and oiled; when she
first came here she was an angelic little stripling, but she is now in
full flower—or half-flower—and grows buxom. As I write, I hear her wet
cloth moving and grunting with some industry; for I had a word this day
with her husband on the matter of work and meal-time, when she is always
late. And she has a vague reverence for Papa, as she and her enormous
husband address me when anything is wrong. Her husband is Lafaele,
sometimes called the archangel, of whom I have writ you often. Rest of
our household, Talolo, cook; Pulu, kitchen boy, good, steady, industrious
lads; Henry, back again from Savaii, where his love affair seems not to
have prospered, with what looks like a spear-wound in the back of his
head, of which Mr. Reticence says nothing; Simi, Manuele, and two other
labourers out-doors. Lafaele is provost of the live-stock, whereof now,
three milk-cows, one bull-calf, one heifer, Jack, Macfarlane, the mare,
Harold, Tifaga Jack, Donald and Edinburgh—seven horses—O, and the
stallion—eight horses; five cattle; total, if my arithmetic be correct,
thirteen head of beasts; I don’t know how the pigs stand, or the ducks,
or the chickens; but we get a good many eggs, and now and again a
duckling or a chickling for the table; the pigs are more solemn, and
appear only on birthdays and sich.
* * * * *
_Monday_, _Dec._ 7.
On Friday morning about eleven 1500 cacao seeds arrived, and we set to
and toiled from twelve that day to six, and went to bed pretty tired.
Next day I got about an hour and a half at my History, and was at it
again by 8.10, and except an hour for lunch kept at it till four P.M.
Yesterday, I did some History in the morning, and slept most of the
afternoon; and to-day, being still averse from physical labour, and the
mail drawing nigh, drew out of the squad, and finished for press the
fifth chapter of my History; fifty-nine pages in one month; which (you
will allow me to say) is a devil of a large order; it means at least 177
pages of writing; 89,000 words! and hours going to and fro among my
notes. However, this is the way it has to be done; the job must be done
fast, or it is of no use. And it is a curious yarn. Honestly, I think
people should be amused and convinced, if they could be at the pains to
look at such a damned outlandish piece of machinery, which of course they
won’t. And much I care.
When I was filling baskets all Saturday, in my dull mulish way, perhaps
the slowest worker there, surely the most particular, and the only one
that never looked up or knocked off, I could not but think I should have
been sent on exhibition as an example to young literary men. Here is how
to learn to write, might be the motto. You should have seen us; the
verandah was like an Irish bog; our hands and faces were bedaubed with
soil; and Faauma was supposed to have struck the right note when she
remarked (_à propos_ of nothing), ‘Too much _eleele_ (soil) for me!’ The
cacao (you must understand) has to be planted at first in baskets of
plaited cocoa-leaf. From four to ten natives were plaiting these in the
wood-shed. Four boys were digging up soil and bringing it by the boxful
to the verandah. Lloyd and I and Belle, and sometimes S. (who came to
bear a hand), were filling the baskets, removing stones and lumps of
clay; Austin and Faauma carried them when full to Fanny, who planted a
seed in each, and then set them, packed close, in the corners of the
verandah. From twelve on Friday till five P.M. on Saturday we planted
the first 1500, and more than 700 of a second lot. You cannot dream how
filthy we were, and we were all properly tired. They are all at it again
to-day, bar Belle and me, not required, and glad to be out of it. The
Chief Justice has not yet replied, and I have news that he received my
letter. What a man!
I have gone crazy over Bourget’s _Sensations d’Italie_; hence the
enclosed dedications, a mere cry of gratitude for the best fun I’ve had
over a new book this ever so!
[Picture: Photograph of Robert Louis Stevenson on his horse ‘Jack’]
CHAPTER XIV
_Tuesday_, _Dec._ 1891.
SIR,—I have the honour to report further explorations of the course of
the river Vaea, with accompanying sketch plan. The party under my
command consisted of one horse, and was extremely insubordinate and
mutinous, owing to not being used to go into the bush, and being
half-broken anyway—and that the wrong half. The route indicated for my
party was up the bed of the so-called river Vaea, which I accordingly
followed to a distance of perhaps two or three furlongs eastward from the
house of Vailima, where the stream being quite dry, the bush thick, and
the ground very difficult, I decided to leave the main body of the force
under my command tied to a tree, and push on myself with the point of the
advance guard, consisting of one man. The valley had become very narrow
and airless; foliage close shut above; dry bed of the stream much
excavated, so that I passed under fallen trees without stooping.
Suddenly it turned sharply to the north, at right angles to its former
direction; I heard living water, and came in view of a tall face of rock
and the stream spraying down it; it might have been climbed, but it would
have been dangerous, and I had to make my way up the steep earth banks,
where there is nowhere any footing for man, only fallen trees, which made
the rounds of my ladder. I was near the top of this climb, which was
very hot and steep, and the pulses were buzzing all over my body, when I
made sure there was one external sound in my ears, and paused to listen.
No mistake; a sound of a mill-wheel thundering, I thought, close by, yet
below me, a huge mill-wheel, yet not going steadily, but with a
_schottische_ movement, and at each fresh impetus shaking the mountain.
There, where I was, I just put down the sound to the mystery of the bush;
where no sound now surprises me—and any sound alarms; I only thought it
would give Jack a fine fright, down where he stood tied to a tree by
himself, and he was badly enough scared when I left him. The good folks
at home identified it; it was a sharp earthquake.
[Picture: Map]
At the top of the climb I made my way again to the water-course; it is
here running steady and pretty full; strange these intermittencies—and
just a little below the main stream is quite dry, and all the original
brook has gone down some lava gallery of the mountain—and just a little
further below, it begins picking up from the left hand in little boggy
tributaries, and in the inside of a hundred yards has grown a brook
again. The general course of the brook was, I guess, S.E.; the valley
still very deep and whelmed in wood. It seemed a swindle to have made so
sheer a climb and still find yourself at the bottom of a well. But
gradually the thing seemed to shallow, the trees to seem poorer and
smaller; I could see more and more of the silver sprinkles of sky among
the foliage, instead of the sombre piling up of tree behind tree. And
here I had two scares—first, away up on my right hand I heard a bull low;
I think it was a bull from the quality of the low, which was singularly
songful and beautiful; the bulls belong to me, but how did I know that
the bull was aware of that? and my advance guard not being at all
properly armed, we advanced with great precaution until I was satisfied
that I was passing eastward of the enemy. It was during this period that
a pool of the river suddenly boiled up in my face in a little fountain.
It was in a very dreary, marshy part among dilapidated trees that you see
through holes in the trunks of; and if any kind of beast or elf or devil
had come out of that sudden silver ebullition, I declare I do not think I
should have been surprised. It was perhaps a thing as curious—a fish,
with which these head waters of the stream are alive. They are some of
them as long as my finger, should be easily caught in these shallows, and
some day I’ll have a dish of them.
Very soon after I came to where the stream collects in another banana
swamp, with the bananas bearing well. Beyond, the course is again quite
dry; it mounts with a sharp turn a very steep face of the mountain, and
then stops abruptly at the lip of a plateau, I suppose the top of Vaea
mountain: plainly no more springs here—there was no smallest furrow of a
watercourse beyond—and my task might be said to be accomplished. But
such is the animated spirit in the service that the whole advance guard
expressed a sentiment of disappointment that an exploration, so far
successfully conducted, should come to a stop in the most promising view
of fresh successes. And though unprovided either with compass or
cutlass, it was determined to push some way along the plateau, marking
our direction by the laborious process of bending down, sitting upon, and
thus breaking the wild cocoanut trees. This was the less regretted by
all from a delightful discovery made of a huge banyan growing here in the
bush, with flying-buttressed flying buttresses, and huge arcs of trunk
hanging high overhead and trailing down new complications of root. I
climbed some way up what seemed the original beginning; it was easier to
climb than a ship’s rigging, even rattled; everywhere there was foot-hold
and hand-hold. It was judged wise to return and rally the main body, who
had now been left alone for perhaps forty minutes in the bush.
The return was effected in good order, but unhappily I only arrived (like
so many other explorers) to find my main body or rear-guard in a
condition of mutiny; the work, it is to be supposed, of terror. It is
right I should tell you the Vaea has a bad name, an _aitu fafine_—female
devil of the woods—succubus—haunting it, and doubtless Jack had heard of
her; perhaps, during my absence, saw her; lucky Jack! Anyway, he was
neither to hold nor to bind, and finally, after nearly smashing me by
accident, and from mere scare and insubordination several times,
deliberately set in to kill me; but poor Jack! the tree he selected for
that purpose was a banana! I jumped off and gave him the heavy end of my
whip over the buttocks! Then I took and talked in his ear in various
voices; you should have heard my alto—it was a dreadful, devilish note—I
_knew_ Jack _knew_ it was an _aitu_. Then I mounted him again, and he
carried me fairly steadily. He’ll learn yet. He has to learn to trust
absolutely to his rider; till he does, the risk is always great in thick
bush, where a fellow must try different passages, and put back and
forward, and pick his way by hair’s-breadths.
The expedition returned to Vailima in time to receive the visit of the R.
C. Bishop. He is a superior man, much above the average of priests.
* * * * *
_Thursday_.
Yesterday the same expedition set forth to the southward by what is known
as Carruthers’ Road. At a fallen tree which completely blocks the way,
the main body was as before left behind, and the advance guard of one now
proceeded with the exploration. At the great tree known as _Mepi Tree_,
after Maben the surveyor, the expedition struck forty yards due west till
it struck the top of a steep bank which it descended. The whole bottom
of the ravine is filled with sharp lava blocks quite unrolled and very
difficult and dangerous to walk among; no water in the course, scarce any
sign of water. And yet surely water must have made this bold cutting in
the plateau. And if so, why is the lava sharp? My science gave out; but
I could not but think it ominous and volcanic. The course of the stream
was tortuous, but with a resultant direction a little by west of north;
the sides the whole way exceeding steep, the expedition buried under
fathoms of foliage. Presently water appeared in the bottom, a good
quantity; perhaps thirty or forty cubic feet, with pools and waterfalls.
A tree that stands all along the banks here must be very fond of water;
its roots lie close-packed down the stream, like hanks of guts, so as to
make often a corrugated walk, each root ending in a blunt tuft of
filaments, plainly to drink water. Twice there came in small tributaries
from the left or western side—the whole plateau having a smartish
inclination to the east; one of the tributaries in a handsome little web
of silver hanging in the forest. Twice I was startled by birds; one that
barked like a dog; another that whistled loud ploughman’s signals, so
that I vow I was thrilled, and thought I had fallen among runaway blacks,
and regretted my cutlass which I had lost and left behind while taking
bearings. A good many fishes in the brook, and many cray-fish; one of
the last with a queer glow-worm head. Like all our brooks, the water is
pure as air, and runs over red stones like rubies. The foliage along
both banks very thick and high, the place close, the walking exceedingly
laborious. By the time the expedition reached the fork, it was felt
exceedingly questionable whether the _moral_ of the force were
sufficiently good to undertake more extended operations. A halt was
called, the men refreshed with water and a bath, and it was decided at a
drumhead council of war to continue the descent of the Embassy Water
straight for Vailima, whither the expedition returned, in rather poor
condition, and wet to the waist, about 4. P.M.
Thus in two days the two main watercourses of this country have been
pretty thoroughly explored, and I conceive my instructions fully carried
out. The main body of the second expedition was brought back by another
officer despatched for that purpose from Vailima. Casualties: one horse
wounded; one man bruised; no deaths—as yet, but the bruised man feels
to-day as if his case was mighty serious.
* * * * *
_Dec._ 25, ’91.
Your note with a very despicable bulletin of health arrived only
yesterday, the mail being a day behind. It contained also the excellent
_Times_ article, which was a sight for sore eyes. I am still _taboo_;
the blessed Germans will have none of me; and I only hope they may enjoy
the _Times_ article. ’Tis my revenge! I wish you had sent the letter
too, as I have no copy, and do not even know what I wrote the last day,
with a bad headache, and the mail going out. However, it must have been
about right, for the _Times_ article was in the spirit I wished to
arouse. I hope we can get rid of the man before it is too late. He has
set the natives to war; but the natives, by God’s blessing, do not want
to fight, and I think it will fizzle out—no thanks to the man who tried
to start it. But I did not mean to drift into these politics; rather to
tell you what I have done since I last wrote.
Well, I worked away at my History for a while, and only got one chapter
done; no doubt this spate of work is pretty low now, and will be soon
dry; but, God bless you, what a lot I have accomplished; _Wrecker_ done,
_Beach of Falesá_ done, half the _History_: _c’est étonnant_. (I hear
from Burlingame, by the way, that he likes the end of the _Wrecker_; ’tis
certainly a violent, dark yarn with interesting, plain turns of human
nature), then Lloyd and I went down to live in Haggard’s rooms, where
Fanny presently joined us. Haggard’s rooms are in a strange old
building—old for Samoa, and has the effect of the antique like some
strange monastery; I would tell you more of it, but I think I’m going to
use it in a tale. The annexe close by had its door sealed; poor Dowdney
lost at sea in a schooner. The place is haunted. The vast empty sheds,
the empty store, the airless, hot, long, low rooms, the claps of wind
that set everything flying—a strange uncanny house to spend Christmas in.
* * * * *
_Jan._ 1_st_, ’92.
For a day or two I have sat close and wrought hard at the _History_, and
two more chapters are all but done. About thirty pages should go by this
mail, which is not what should be, but all I could overtake. Will any
one ever read it? I fancy not; people don’t read history for reading,
but for education and display—and who desires education in the history of
Samoa, with no population, no past, no future, or the exploits of
Mataafa, Malietoa, and Consul Knappe? Colkitto and Galasp are a trifle
to it. Well, it can’t be helped, and it must be done, and, better or
worse, it’s capital fun. There are two to whom I have not been
kind—German Consul Becker and English Captain Hand, R.N.
On Dec. 30th I rode down with Belle to go to (if you please) the Fancy
Ball. When I got to the beach, I found the barometer was below 29°, the
wind still in the east and steady, but a huge offensive continent of
clouds and vapours forming to leeward. It might be a hurricane; I dared
not risk getting caught away from my work, and, leaving Belle, returned
at once to Vailima. Next day—yesterday—it was a tearer; we had storm
shutters up; I sat in my room and wrote by lamplight—ten pages, if you
please, seven of them draft, and some of these compiled from as many as
seven different and conflicting authorities, so that was a brave day’s
work. About two a huge tree fell within sixty paces of our house; a
little after, a second went; and we sent out boys with axes and cut down
a third, which was too near the house, and buckling like a fishing rod.
At dinner we had the front door closed and shuttered, the back door open,
the lamp lit. The boys in the cook-house were all out at the cook-house
door, where we could see them looking in and smiling. Lauilo and Faauma
waited on us with smiles. The excitement was delightful. Some very
violent squalls came as we sat there, and every one rejoiced; it was
impossible to help it; a soul of putty had to sing. All night it blew;
the roof was continually sounding under missiles; in the morning the
verandahs were half full of branches torn from the forest. There was a
last very wild squall about six; the rain, like a thick white smoke,
flying past the house in volleys, and as swift, it seemed, as rifle
balls; all with a strange, strident hiss, such as I have only heard
before at sea, and, indeed, thought to be a marine phenomenon. Since
then the wind has been falling with a few squalls, mostly rain. But our
road is impassable for horses; we hear a schooner has been wrecked and
some native houses blown down in Apia, where Belle is still and must
remain a prisoner. Lucky I returned while I could! But the great good
is this; much bread-fruit and bananas have been destroyed; if this be
general through the islands, famine will be imminent; and _whoever blows
the coals_, _there can be no war_. Do I then prefer a famine to a war?
you ask. Not always, but just now. I am sure the natives do not want a
war; I am sure a war would benefit no one but the white officials, and I
believe we can easily meet the famine—or at least that it can be met.
That would give our officials a legitimate opportunity to cover their
past errors.
* * * * *
_Jan._ 2_nd_.
I woke this morning to find the blow quite ended. The heaven was all a
mottled gray; even the east quite colourless; the downward slope of the
island veiled in wafts of vapour, blue like smoke; not a leaf stirred on
the tallest tree; only, three miles away below me on the barrier reef, I
could see the individual breakers curl and fall, and hear their conjunct
roaring rise, as it still rises at 1 P.M., like the roar of a
thoroughfare close by. I did a good morning’s work, correcting and
clarifying my draft, and have now finished for press eight chapters,
ninety-one pages, of this piece of journalism. Four more chapters, say
fifty pages, remain to be done; I should gain my wager and finish this
volume in three months, that is to say, the end should leave me per
February mail; I cannot receive it back till the mail of April. Yes, it
can be out in time; pray God that it be in time to help.
How do journalists fetch up their drivel? I aim only at clearness and
the most obvious finish, positively at no higher degree of merit, not
even at brevity—I am sure it could have been all done, with double the
time, in two-thirds of the space. And yet it has taken me two months to
write 45,500 words; and, be damned to my wicked prowess, I am proud of
the exploit! The real journalist must be a man not of brass only, but
bronze. Chapter IX. gapes for me, but I shrink on the margin, and go on
chattering to you. This last part will be much less offensive (strange
to say) to the Germans. It is Becker they will never forgive me for;
Knappe I pity and do not dislike; Becker I scorn and abominate. Here is
the tableau. I. Elements of Discord: Native. II. Elements of Discord:
Foreign. III. The Sorrows of Laupepa. IV. Brandeis. V. The Battle of
Matautu. VI. Last Exploits of Becker. VII. The Samoan Camps. VIII.
Affairs of Lautii and Fangalii. IX. ‘_Furor Consularis_.’ X. The
Hurricane. XI. Stuebel Recluse. XII. The Present Government. I
estimate the whole roughly at 70,000 words. Should anybody ever dream of
reading it, it would be found amusing. 70000/300=233 printed pages; a
respectable little five-bob volume, to bloom unread in shop windows.
After that, I’ll have a spank at fiction. And rest? I shall rest in the
grave, or when I come to Italy. If only the public will continue to
support me! I lost my chance not dying; there seems blooming little fear
of it now. I worked close on five hours this morning; the day before,
close on nine; and unless I finish myself off with this letter, I’ll have
another hour and a half, or _aiblins twa_, before dinner. Poor man, how
you must envy me, as you hear of these orgies of work, and you scarce
able for a letter. But Lord, Colvin, how lucky the situations are not
reversed, for I have no situation, nor am fit for any. Life is a steigh
brae. Here, have at Knappe, and no more clavers!
* * * * *
3_rd_.
There was never any man had so many irons in the fire, except Jim
Pinkerton. I forgot to mention I have the most gallant suggestion from
Lang, with an offer of MS. authorities, which turns my brain. It’s all
about the throne of Poland and buried treasure in the Mackay country, and
Alan Breck can figure there in glory.
Yesterday, J. and I set off to Blacklock’s (American Consul) who lives
not far from that little village I have so often mentioned as lying
between us and Apia. I had some questions to ask him for my History;
thence we must proceed to Vailele, where I had also to cross-examine the
plantation manager about the battle there. We went by a track I had
never before followed down the hill to Vaisigano, which flows here in a
deep valley, and was unusually full, so that the horses trembled in the
ford. The whole bottom of the valley is full of various streams posting
between strips of forest with a brave sound of waters. In one place we
had a glimpse of a fall some way higher up, and then sparkling in
sunlight in the midst of the green valley. Then up by a winding path
scarce accessible to a horse for steepness, to the other side, and the
open cocoanut glades of the plantation. Here we rode fast, did a mighty
satisfactory afternoon’s work at the plantation house, and still faster
back. On the return Jack fell with me, but got up again; when I felt him
recovering I gave him his head, and he shoved his foot through the rein;
I got him by the bit however, and all was well; he had mud over all his
face, but his knees were not broken. We were scarce home when the rain
began again; that was luck. It is pouring now in torrents; we are in the
height of the bad season. Lloyd leaves along with this letter on a
change to San Francisco; he had much need of it, but I think this will
brace him up. I am, as you see, a tower of strength. I can remember
riding not so far and not near so fast when I first came to Samoa, and
being shattered next day with fatigue; now I could not tell I have done
anything; have re-handled my battle of Fangalii according to yesterday’s
information—four pages rewritten; and written already some half-dozen
pages of letters.
I observe with disgust that while of yore, when I own I was guilty, you
never spared me abuse, but now, when I am so virtuous, where is the
praise? Do admit that I have become an excellent letter-writer—at least
to you, and that your ingratitude is imbecile.—Yours ever,
R. L. S.
CHAPTER XV
_Jan._ 31_st_, ’92.
MY DEAR COLVIN,—No letter at all from you, and this scratch from me!
Here is a year that opens ill. Lloyd is off to ‘the coast’ sick—_the
coast_ means California over most of the Pacific—I have been down all
month with influenza, and am just recovering—I am overlaid with proofs,
which I am just about half fit to attend to. One of my horses died this
morning, and another is now dying on the front lawn—Lloyd’s horse and
Fanny’s. Such is my quarrel with destiny. But I am mending famously,
come and go on the balcony, have perfectly good nights, and though I
still cough, have no oppression and no hemorrhage and no fever. So if I
can find time and courage to add no more, you will know my news is not
altogether of the worst; a year or two ago, and what a state I should
have been in now! Your silence, I own, rather alarms me. But I tell
myself you have just miscarried; had you been too ill to write, some one
would have written me. Understand, I send this brief scratch not because
I am unfit to write more, but because I have 58 galleys of the _Wrecker_
and 102 of the _Beach of Falesá_ to get overhauled somehow or other in
time for the mail, and for three weeks I have not touched a pen with my
finger.
* * * * *
_Feb._ 1_st_.
The second horse is still alive, but I still think dying. The first was
buried this morning. My proofs are done; it was a rough two days of it,
but done. _Consummatum est_; _na uma_. I believe the _Wrecker_ ends
well; if I know what a good yarn is, the last four chapters make a good
yarn—but pretty horrible. _The Beach of Falesá_ I still think well of,
but it seems it’s immoral and there’s a to-do, and financially it may
prove a heavy disappointment. The plaintive request sent to me, to make
the young folks married properly before ‘that night,’ I refused; you will
see what would be left of the yarn, had I consented. This is a poison
bad world for the romancer, this Anglo-Saxon world; I usually get out of
it by not having any women in it at all; but when I remember I had the
_Treasure of Franchard_ refused as unfit for a family magazine, I feel
despair weigh upon my wrists.
As I know you are always interested in novels, I must tell you that a new
one is now entirely planned. It is to be called _Sophia Scarlet_, and is
in two parts. Part I. The Vanilla Planter. Part II. The Overseers. No
chapters, I think; just two dense blocks of narrative, the first of which
is purely sentimental, but the second has some rows and quarrels, and
winds up with an explosion, if you please! I am just burning to get at
Sophia, but I _must_ do this Samoan journalism—that’s a cursed duty. The
first part of Sophia, bar the first twenty or thirty pages, writes
itself; the second is more difficult, involving a good many
characters—about ten, I think—who have to be kept all moving, and give
the effect of a society. I have three women to handle, out and
well-away! but only Sophia is in full tone. Sophia and two men,
Windermere, the Vanilla Planter, who dies at the end of Part I., and
Rainsforth, who only appears in the beginning of Part II. The fact is, I
blush to own it, but Sophia is a _regular novel_; heroine and hero, and
false accusation, and love, and marriage, and all the rest of it—all
planted in a big South Sea plantation run by ex-English officers—_à la_
Stewart’s plantation in Tahiti. There is a strong undercurrent of labour
trade, which gives it a kind of Uncle Tom flavour, _absit omen_! The
first start is hard; it is hard to avoid a little tedium here, but I
think by beginning with the arrival of the three Miss Scarlets hot from
school and society in England, I may manage to slide in the information.
The problem is exactly a Balzac one, and I wish I had his fist—for I have
already a better method—the kinetic, whereas he continually allowed
himself to be led into the static. But then he had the fist, and the
most I can hope is to get out of it with a modicum of grace and energy,
but for sure without the strong impression, the full, dark brush. Three
people have had it, the real creator’s brush: Scott, see much of _The
Antiquary_ and _The Heart of Midlothian_ (especially all round the trial,
before, during, and after)—Balzac—and Thackeray in _Vanity Fair_.
Everybody else either paints _thin_, or has to stop to paint, or paints
excitedly, so that you see the author skipping before his canvas. Here
is a long way from poor Sophia Scarlet!
This day is published
_Sophia Scarlet_
By
ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON.
CHAPTER XVI
_Feb._ 1892.
MY DEAR COLVIN,—This has been a busyish month for a sick man. First,
Faauma—the bronze candlestick, whom otherwise I called my butler—bolted
from the bed and bosom of Lafaele, the Archangel Hercules, prefect of the
cattle. There was the deuce to pay, and Hercules was inconsolable, and
immediately started out after a new wife, and has had one up on a visit,
but says she has ‘no conversation’; and I think he will take back the
erring and possibly repentant candlestick; whom we all devoutly prefer,
as she is not only highly decorative, but good-natured, and if she does
little work makes no rows. I tell this lightly, but it really was a
heavy business; many were accused of complicity, and Rafael was really
very sorry. I had to hold beds of justice—literally—seated in my bed and
surrounded by lying Samoans seated on the floor; and there were many
picturesque and still inexplicable passages. It is hard to reach the
truth in these islands.
The next incident overlapped with this. S. and Fanny found three strange
horses in the paddock: for long now the boys have been forbidden to leave
their horses here one hour because our grass is over-grazed. S. came up
with the news, and I saw I must now strike a blow. ‘To the pound with
the lot,’ said I. He proposed taking the three himself, but I thought
that too dangerous an experiment, said I should go too, and hurried into
my boots so as to show decision taken, in the necessary interviews. They
came of course—the interviews—and I explained what I was going to do at
huge length, and stuck to my guns. I am glad to say the natives, with
their usual (purely speculative) sense of justice highly approved the
step after reflection. Meanwhile off went S. and I with the three
_corpora delicti_; and a good job I went! Once, when our circus began to
kick, we thought all was up; but we got them down all sound in wind and
limb. I judged I was much fallen off from my Elliott forefathers, who
managed this class of business with neatness and despatch. Half-way down
it came on to rain tropic style, and I came back from my outing drenched
liked a drowned man—I was literally blinded as I came back among these
sheets of water; and the consequence was I was laid down with diarrhoea
and threatenings of Samoa colic for the inside of another week.
I have a confession to make. When I was sick I tried to get to work to
finish that Samoa thing, wouldn’t
Showing first 200,000 characters. Full text: gutenberg.org/ebooks/387