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 dare say; 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.
21 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 guidwife 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 top-most 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 22 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 23 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
To E. L. Burlingame
The opening sentences of the following refer of course to The Wrecker, and particularly to a suggestion of mine concerning the relation of the main narrative to the prologue: —
Vailima, Apia, Samoa, Nov. 7, 1890.
I wish you to add to the words at the end of the prologue; they run, I think, thus, “And this is the yarn of Loudon Dodd”; add, “not as he told, but as he wrote it afterwards for his diversion.” This becomes the more needful, because, when all is done, I shall probably revert to Tai-o-hae, and give final details about the characters in the way of a conversation between Dodd and Havers. These little snippets of information and faits-divers have always a disjointed, broken-backed appearance; yet, readers like them. In this book we have introduced so many characters, that this kind of epilogue will be looked for; and I rather hope, looking far ahead, that I can lighten it in dialogue.
We are well past the middle now. How does it strike you? and can you guess my mystery? It will make a fattish volume!
I say, have you ever read the Highland Widow? I never had till yesterday: I am half inclined, bar a trip or two, to think it Scott’s masterpiece; and it has the name of a failure! Strange things are readers.
I expect proofs and revises in duplicate.
We have now got into a small barrack at our place. We see the sea six hundred feet below filling the end of two vales of forest. On one hand the mountain runs above us some thousand feet higher; great trees stand round us in our clearing; there is an endless voice of birds; I have never lived in such a heaven; just now, I have fever, which mitigates but not destroys my gusto in my circumstances. — You may envy
Robert Louis Stevenson.
25 ... O, I don’t know if I mentioned that having seen your new tail to the magazine, I cried off interference, at least for this trip. Did I ask you to send me my books and papers, and all the bound volumes of the mag.? quorum pars. I might add that were there a good book or so — new — I don’t believe there is — such would be welcome.
I desire — I positively begin to awake — to be remembered to Scribner, Low, St. Gaudens, Russell Sullivan. Well, well, you fellows have the feast of reason and the flow of soul; I have a better-looking place and cl
imate: you should hear the birds on the hill now! The day has just wound up with a shower; it is still light without, though I write within here at the cheek of a lamp; my wife and an invaluable German are wrestling about bread on the back verandah; and how the birds and the frogs are rattling, and piping, and hailing from the woods! Here and there a throaty chuckle; here and there, cries like those of jolly children who have lost their way; here and there, the ringing sleigh-bell of the tree frog. Out and away down below me on the sea it is still raining; it will be wet under foot on schooners, and the house will leak; how well I know that! Here the showers only patter on the iron roof, and sometimes roar; and within, the lamp burns steady on the tafa-covered walls, with their dusky tartan patterns, and the book-shelves with their thin array of books; and no squall can rout my house or bring my heart into my mouth. — The well-pleased South Sea Islander,
R. L. S.
To Sidney Colvin
Vailima, Tuesday, November 25th,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, 26 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; 27 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 Simelé 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 28 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 shandrydan 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 29 take a bite or two of grass. But it was a toucher; a little more and these steeds would have been foundered.
Monday, 31st(?) 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) 30 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 31 the paddock, and the great boughs and the black shadows of our trees were inconceivable. But it was a poor time.
Complete Works of Robert Louis Stevenson (Illustrated) Page 766
