According to their original scheme they were to return home from Honolulu, but having come so far they were eager to see more. They had tasted the dangers and fascination of the life among the wild islands, each so different, and it had only whetted their appetites for what lay still beyond. The chances of coming so far again were slight; it seemed too good an opportunity to miss. So Stevenson wrote to the friends at home, whom he longed daily to see: “Yes — I own up — I am untrue to friendship and (what is less, but still considerable) to civilization. I am not coming home for another year.... But look here and judge me tenderly. I have had more fun and pleasure of my life these past months than ever before, and more health than any time in ten long years.... And this precious deep is filled with islands which we may still visit, and though the sea is a dreadful place, I like to be there, and like squalls (when they are over) and to draw near to a new island I can not say how much I like....
“Remember me as I was at home, and think of me sea-bathing and walking about, as jolly as a sand boy; you will own the temptation is strong; and as the scheme, bar fatal accidents, is bound to pay into the bargain, sooner or later, it seems it would be madness to come home now, with an imperfect book ... and perhaps fall sick again by autumn.
“It is a singular thing that as I was packing up old papers ere I left Skerryvore, I came on the prophecies of a drunken Highland sibyl, when I was sixteen. She said I was to be very happy, — to visit America and to be much upon the sea.... I can not say why I like the sea ... my poor grandfather it is from him I inherit the taste I fancy, and he was around many islands in his day; but I, please God, shall beat him at that before the recall is sounded.”
So the Casco was shipped back to San Francisco, Mrs. Stevenson, senior, returned to Scotland for a visit, and the trading schooner Equator was chartered for a trip among the Marshall, Gilbert, and Samoan Islands.
Just before leaving, the following letter came from Ori, which Stevenson says he would rather have received than written “Red Gauntlet” or the “Sixth Æneid.”
“I make you to know my great affection. At the hour when you left us, I was filled with tears; my wife Rui Telime, also, and all my household. When you embarked I felt great sorrow. It is for this that I went upon the road, and you looked from that ship, and I looked at you on the ship with great grief until you had raised the anchor and hoisted the sail. When the ship started I ran along the beach to see you still; and when you were in the open sea I cried out to you ‘Farewell Louis,’ and when I was coming back to my house I seemed to hear your voice crying, ‘Rui, farewell.’ Afterwards I watched the ship as long as I could until the night fell; and when it was dark I said to myself: ‘If I had wings I should fly to the ship to meet you,’... I wept then ... telling myself continually, ‘Teriitera returns to his own country and leaves his dear Rui in grief.’... I will not forget you in my memory. Here is the thought: I desire to meet you again. It is my Teriitera makes the only riches I desire in this world. It is your eyes that I desire to see again. It must be that your body and my body shall eat together at one table, there is what would make my heart content. But now we are separated. May God be with you all. May His word and His mercy go with you, so that you may be well and we also, according to the words of Paul.
“ORI A ORI, that is to say, RUI.”
“All told,” said Stevenson, “if my books have enabled or helped me to make this voyage, to know Rui, and to have received such a letter, they have ... not been writ in vain.”
CHAPTER IX
VAILIMA
“We thank Thee for this place in which we dwell; for the love that unites us; for the peace accorded us this day; for the hope with which we expect the morrow; for the health, the work, the food, and the bright skies that make our lives delightful, for the friends in all parts of the earth, and our friendly helpers in this foreign isle.... Give us courage and gaiety and the quiet mind. Spare to us our friends, soften to us our enemies. Bless us, if it may be, in all our innocent endeavors. If it may not, give us strength to encounter that which is to come, that we may be brave in peril, constant in tribulation, temperate in wrath, and in all changes of fortune, and down to the gates of death, loyal and loving one to another.” R.L.S.
— Prayer used with the household at Vailima.
On the 7th of December, when the family landed at Upolu, the chief of the Samoas or Samoan Islands, they little dreamed it was to be their home for the next four years and the last the master of the house was ever to know.
It had been frequently borne upon Stevenson, however, while cruising among the Marshall and Gilbert Islands during the past months, that a home in either England or Scotland again was a vain dream for him.
“I do not ask for health,” he said, “but I will go anywhere and live in any place where I can enjoy the existence of a human being.” He seldom complained and it is rare to find even the brave sort of cry he made against fate to a friend at this time.
“For fourteen years I have not had a day’s real health. I have wakened sick and gone to bed weary, and I have done my work unflinchingly. I have written in bed, and written out of it, written in hemorrhages, written in sickness, written torn by coughing, written when my head swam for weakness, and for so long, it seems to me I have won my wager and recovered my glove. I am better now, have been, rightly speaking, since I first came to the Pacific; and still few are the days when I am not in some physical distress. And the battle goes on — ill or well, is a trifle; so as it goes. I was made for a contest, and the Powers have so willed that my battlefield shall be this dingy inglorious one of the bed and the physics bottle.”
Here in the tropics he might hope to live and work years longer — a return to a cold climate, he now knew, would be fatal.
Why not turn traders? Often on starry nights, drifting among the low islands, he and Lloyd and the captain of the Equator had lain out on deck and planned what a lark it would be to buy a schooner, cruise among the islands, and trade with the natives. They would write stories, too, about these strange island dwellers with their many weird superstitions and of the white men who drifted from all corners of the globe to make their home there.
Already Captain Reid had told them many such tales which Stevenson wove into stories. The “Beach of Falesá” and the “Isle of Voices” are probably the two most famous, while “the strange story of the loss of the brigantine Wandering Minstrel and what men and ships do in that wild and beautiful world beyond the American continent” formed a plot for the story called “The Wrecker,” which he and Lloyd Osbourne wrote together later on.
Samoa was a place he was eager to visit. King Kalakaua at Honolulu had already told him much of its troubled history. The group of thirteen islands lay about four thousand two hundred miles southwest of San Francisco. At that time they were under the control of England, Germany, and the United States according to a treaty entered into in 1889. These countries appointed a chief justice, a president of the municipal council, three consuls, and three land commissioners. A native king was likewise recognized on each island.
This triple control proved most unsatisfactory and for years past there had been constant friction among the officials and warlike outbreaks among the natives.
These complications interested Stevenson. His first idea had been to stop there but a short time. He now found he wanted to remain in Samoa long enough to write its history.
The Samoans are true Polynesians; a strong and handsome race whose reputation is high among all the people of the Pacific. The large majority have become Christians, but in spite of the influence of the missionaries and the foreign powers who control them, they retain many of their old customs and habits. They are naturally peace-loving in spite of their many wars. Fighting does not appeal to them for its own sake, and they enjoy a good family life, treating their women with great respect and lavishing affection upon their children.
Stevenson wanted those at home to know these people better; his sympathy, which was ever with the w
eaker side, was instantly aroused in behalf of the natives, and he wanted to tell their side of the story.
If they were to make a home anywhere in the South Seas there could be no better spot than Apia, the principal port and capital of these islands, as it had a good mail service, a most important feature to a writer. The monthly mail-steamers between San Francisco and Sydney, as well as other Australian mail-boats, stopped there.
So he purchased four hundred acres on the hills three miles from Apia and preparations were immediately made for clearing the ground and building a house. Lloyd Osbourne left for England to bring back the household treasures from Skerryvore, to make a real home, and Stevenson and his wife lived gypsy fashion meanwhile in a four-room wooden house.
The new home was named Vailima, which is Samoan for “Five Waters,” there being five streams running through the property.
The house was built of wood, painted dark green with a red roof. When finished its chief feature was the great hall within, sixty feet long, lined and ceiled with California redwood. Here among the home treasures — his own portrait, war dresses, corselets, fans, and mats presented to him by island kings — the marble bust of grandfather Stevenson smiled down with approval on many a motley gathering. Louis often wondered if they reminded the old gentleman of some of the strange people he had entertained years ago in Baxter Place.
All about was dense, tropical undergrowth, only paths led to the house, and these must continually be cut out. All carrying was done by two big New Zealand pack-horses.
A large garden was planted — Mrs. Stevenson’s special hobby. Cocoanuts, oranges, guavas, and mangoes already grew on the estate. The ground was very fertile, and kava, the root of which is used for the Samoan national drink, pineapples, sweet potatoes, and eggplants were soon flourishing among other things. Limes were so plentiful that they formed the hedge about the place; citrons were so common that they rotted on the trees.
The house at Vailima
All this ground-breaking, house-building, and gardening were new to Stevenson, and he revelled in them to the neglect of his writing.
“This is a hard and interesting and beautiful life we lead now,” he wrote to Sidney Colvin. “Our place is in a deep cleft of Væa 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 am 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 pathmaking; the oversight of laborers 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.”
Before his arrival in Apia, Stevenson’s tale of “The Bottle Imp” had been translated into Samoan by the missionaries. When the natives discovered he was its author they immediately named him Tusitala, The Teller-of-Tales. He still owned the bottle, they said; it was that gave him the wealth to cruise about in a great boat and build a fine house. The family often wondered why native visitors were curious to see the inside of the great safe in the hall at Vailima until they found that it was the belief among the islanders that the safe was the bottle’s hiding-place.
Mrs. Stevenson, senior, returned with Lloyd from England, and later Mrs. Strong and her small son, Austin, came from Honolulu to make the family complete.
The servants were all natives, “boys” as they called themselves. There were usually about half a dozen about the house, with a boy for the garden and to look after the cows and pigs, besides a band of outside laborers, varying from half a dozen to thirty, under Lloyd’s direction.
Sosimo was Stevenson’s particular boy. He waited upon him hand and foot, looked after his clothes and his pony “Jack,” and was devoted in every way. His loyalty to his master lasted to the end of his own life.
The servants were governed on something very like the clan system. A Vailima tartan was adopted for special occasions and Stevenson encouraged them to think of the household as a family, to take interest and pride in all its doings.
On Sunday evenings the entire household was assembled. A chapter of the Samoan Bible was read and Samoan hymns sung. Then a prayer in English written by Stevenson was read, concluding with the Lord’s Prayer in Samoan.
If the master had cause to be displeased with any one of them, they were all summoned and reprimanded or fined.
His stories delighted them. They were never tired of looking at the picture of Skerryvore Light and hearing about the rugged coasts of Tusitala’s native island and of his father and grandfather who built lighthouses. The latter impressed them greatly, since building of any kind in Samoa is considered a fine art. The deeds of General Gordon, the Indian Mutiny, and Lucknow were likewise favorite tales when Tusitala showed them a treasure he prized highly: a message written by General Gordon from Khartoum. It was in Arabic on a small piece of cigarette-paper which might be easily swallowed should the messenger be captured. Stevenson always believed it to be the last message sent before the great general’s death.
They came to him for everything and he was ever ready with help and advice. They were quick to appreciate his justice and kindliness, and to a man were devoted to him. “Once Tusitala’s friend, always Tusitala’s friend,” they said.
With his customary energy he threw himself heart and soul for a time into the political troubles of the island, making himself the champion of the natives’ cause. He wrote a series of letters to the papers at home stating his idea of the injustice shown the Samoans under their present government. It was a most delicate situation, and at times led to very strained relations between himself and the officials in Apia.
Those at home wondered why Stevenson tampered with island politics at all. Why did he not simply leave them to the powers in charge?
His answer was, he had made Samoa his home, the Samoans were his people, and he could not fail to resent any injustice shown them.
Lloyd Osbourne says: “He was consulted on every imaginable subject.... Government chiefs and rebels consulted him with regard to policy; political letters were brought to him to read and criticise.... Parties would come to hear the latest news of the proposed disarming of the country, or to arrange a private audience with one of the officials; and poor war-worn chieftains, whose only anxiety was to join the winning side and who wished to consult with Tusitala as to which that might be. Mr. Stevenson would sigh sometimes as he saw these stately folks crossing the lawn in single file, their attendants following behind with presents and baskets, but he never failed to meet or hear them.”
He aided one party of chieftains in prison, and to show their gratitude on regaining their freedom they cleared and dug a splendid road leading to his house. All the labor and expense they bore themselves, which amounted to no small matter. Ala Loto Alofa, they called it, the Road of the Loving Hearts.
Warlike outbreaks were not infrequent near Vailima. The woods were often full of scouting parties and the roll of drums could be heard. One day as Stevenson and Mrs. Strong were writing together they were interrupted by a war party crossing the lawn. Mrs. Strong asked: “Louis, have we a pistol or gun in the house that will shoot?” and he answered cheerfully without stopping his work: “No, but we have friends on both sides.”
With all their political differences he and the officials retained friendly feeling. He paid calls on them at Apia and attended various town gatherings, while they were often entertained at Vailima.
Always hospitable, it was a delight to him now to keep open house. Not only the chief justice, the consuls, the doctor, the missionaries, and the traders were in the habit of dropping in to Vailima, but from every ship that docked at Apia came some visitor who was anxious to meet Stevenson and his family; from the war-ships came the officers and sailors.
The bluejackets were always particularly welcome. Mrs. Strong
tells of a party who came from H.M.S. Wallaroo on one Thanksgiving Day, when “the kitchen department was in great excitement over that foreign bird the turkey” and all was confusion. “But Louis kept his sailors on all the afternoon. He took them over the house and showed them ... the curiosities from the islands, the big picture of Skerryvore lighthouse,... the treasured bit of Gordon’s handwriting from Khartoum, in Arabic letters on a cigarette paper,... and the library, where the Scotchmen gathered about an old edition of Burns, with a portrait. Louis gave a volume of Underwoods (Stevenson’s poems) with an inscription to Grant, the one who hailed from Edinburgh, and the man carried it carefully wrapped in his handkerchief. They went away waving their hats and keeping step.”
A croquet-ground and tennis-court were laid out, and Vailima was the scene of balls, dinners, and parties of all kinds. No birthday or holiday, English, American, or Samoan, was allowed to pass unnoticed, and the natives were included in these festivities whenever possible.
The first Christmas at Vailima they had a party for the children who had never before seen a Christmas tree.
Tusitala’s birthday was always a special event to his island friends. The feast was served in native style; all seated about on the floor. Rather large gatherings they must have been, to judge from Mrs. Strong’s account. “We had sixteen pigs roasted whole underground, three enormous fish (small whales, Lloyd called them), four hundred pounds of beef, ditto of pork, 200 heads of taro, great bunches of bananas, native delicacies done up in bundles of ti leaves, 800 pineapples, many weighing fifteen pounds, all from Lloyd’s patch. Among the presents for Tusitala, besides flowers and wreaths, were fans, native baskets ... and cocoanut cups beautifully polished.”
A feast of chiefs
On these occasions the hosts were often entertained with dances and songs. All the Samoans are great singers. They composed songs about everything and everybody, so that one could judge the standing a person held by the songs that were sung about him.
Complete Works of Robert Louis Stevenson (Illustrated) Page 857
