Stevenson's Shrine Part 2

This work was a labour of love, the men who engaged in it were mostly of a high cla.s.s, and they would neither take wages nor any sort of payment in kind. How this pleased Stevenson may be gathered from the following:--"Now whether or not this impulse will last them through the road does not matter to me one hair. It is the fact that they have attempted it, that they have volunteered, and are now trying to execute, a thing that was never before heard of in Samoa. Think of it! It is road making, the most fruitful cause, after taxes, of all rebellion in Samoa, a thing to which they could not be wiled with money, nor driven by punishment. It does give me a sense of having done something in Samoa after all."[5]

Stevenson had purposed putting up a notice of the new road, with its name in large letters with a few words of thanks for the chiefs, and a board was prepared for the purpose, painted and s.p.a.ced for the lettering, when the chiefs arrived with their own inscription carefully written out. They begged so earnestly to have this printed instead that their wish was gratified. I was privileged to read the notice at the corner of the wide road leading to the gates of Vailima.[6] The inscription is in Samoan, but translated into English runs as follows: "The Road of the Loving Heart" (Ala Loto Alofa), "Remembering the great care of his Highness Tusitala, and his loving care when we were in prison and sore distressed, we have prepared him an enduring present, this road which we have dug to last for ever. It shall never be muddy, it shall endure, this road that we have dug."

On arrival at the finger-post our Chinaman was fain to be rid of us, so he announced, with a grin on his yellow face, "Horsee too muchee tired, missie walk now, missie catchee Vailima chop-chop." We had, however, been forewarned what to expect by the captain, so I merely remarked, "Savey, John no catchee Vailima, no catchee pay." And John drove on!

The Road of the Loving Heart, if very steep, has a fairly level surface.

On either side are palms, bread fruit trees and bananas. Vailima (literally, "Five Rivers") is approached by a short drive, through a gate, into a lovely garden. Mrs. Strong tells me that the present owner has painted on that gate the words--"Villa Vailima." I am happy to say, however, that neither of us observed this atrocity.

[Ill.u.s.tration: THE HOUSE AT VAILIMA

_To face page 31_]]

The house itself is well designed and has a double verandah; it is built of wood throughout, and stands on very high ground. On the left hand, as we faced the house, was the smaller villa once occupied by Mrs. Strong. On the right, towering up into the blue dome above, was Mount Veea, and on the wooded height (far beyond ken)--THE GRAVE.

Not a soul was visible, the place was bathed in sunshine and "steeped in silentness," not even a dog barked at our approach. The crotons, dracaenas, and other plants of brilliant foliage made patches of vivid colour on the well-kept lawns, and everywhere was the scent of orange blossom, gardenia, and frangipani.

Under the shadow of the broad verandah the air was cool and pleasant, and we three lingered there awhile, as on the threshold of a temple. Before us was the really magnificent hall, some sixty feet long by forty wide, the door standing open, as in the days of Tusitala, but the dark panelling within was a thing of the past, and the walls were now painted a soft cool green.

All his furniture was gone--we were prepared for that--but the window was there, the window below which he lay on the low settle and breathed his last. As I stood there the whole scene flashed across my mental vision, with its awful, and perhaps merciful, unexpectedness.

He had recorded, often enough, his desire for such an end. "I wish to die in my boots, no more Land of Counterpane for me! If only I could secure a violent end, what a fine success! To be drowned, to be shot, to be thrown from a horse, aye, to be hanged, rather than pa.s.s again through that slow dissolution."

No less has he left on record his att.i.tude towards impending death. "By all means begin your folio, even if the doctor does not give you a year, even if he hesitates about a month, make one brave push and see what can be accomplished in a week. It is not only in finished undertakings that we ought to honour useful labour. A spirit goes out of the man who means execution which outlives the most untimely end."

The hall of Vailima is (as Mr. Balfour tells us) quite the feature of the house. I have before referred to its size, it covers the whole area of the building. Facing us, as we entered, was the broad polished wooden staircase leading to the upper storey. We pa.s.sed through the hall and out of a door on the other side of it; somewhere in the back premises we unearthed a Samoan woman, attired in very scanty raiment, busily engaged in peeling potatoes. To her we addressed ourselves, first in English and then in German, but it was all to no purpose. Next we resorted to signs. Pointing to the mountain top, I said, "Tusitala." The word acted as a talisman, the brown face wreathed itself in smiles, the dark eyes kindled into comprehension. Motioning to us to remain where we were, she disappeared, and soon returned with a small brown girl, whose only garment was a ragged blue pinafore sewn up at the back.

[Ill.u.s.tration: THE HALL OF VAILIMA

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The little maiden (she might have been ten or eleven years of age) ran up to us quite gleefully, intimated by smiles and gestures that she was prepared to act as guide, and at once possessed herself of our heavy basket of fruit. We followed her through a little wicket gate which led into a lovely grove with oranges on one side and bananas on the other, the leaves of the latter being larger and more glossy than any I have seen before or since. The play of light and shadow here was something to dream of, and often we stood still too enraptured to pursue our way. Soon we crossed a little mountain stream, clear as crystal, with but a single plank for bridge, and lingered awhile to admire the cream-breasted kingfishers and the numerous little[7] crayfish disporting themselves in and above the water. In time we left the cultivated land behind and followed a slender path into the bush, where under foot was a dense growth of sensitive plant with delicately cut foliage and little fluffy pink ball-like blossoms. Our footsteps were marked by the quivering and shrinking of the shy, tremulous leaves, but as I looked back they once more stood bravely erect. This was the plant that baffled all poor Stevenson's efforts at eradication, living, thriving, ever renewing itself in spite of him.

"A fool," says he, "brought it to this island in a pot, and used to lecture and sentimentalize 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."[8]

The trees here were simply magnificent, the fern life too was everywhere abundant, exquisite ferns, such as we grow in our hot-houses at home.

Trees, ferns, creepers, flowers were tangled together in a vast net-work of luxuriant vegetation, each individual plant fighting for its very existence, contending for its due share of light, and air, and s.p.a.ce. Here it was that Stevenson conceived his poem of "The Woodman"; every word of it came home to me with the inevitableness of absolute truth as we fought our way upward and onward.

"I saw the wood for what it was, The lost and the victorious cause, The deadly battle pitched in line, Saw silent weapons cross and shine, Silent defeat, silent a.s.sault, A battle and a burial vault."

Stevenson's att.i.tude towards nature was a very remarkable one. Like Wordsworth, he endued her with a real, living personality, but unlike Wordsworth, he never seems to enter into a direct communion with her. She does not soothe him into "a wise pa.s.siveness," she rather inspires him with a strange, fierce energy. Take this pa.s.sage, selected almost at random from one of his published letters to Sidney Colvin: "I wonder if any one ever had the same att.i.tude to nature as I hold and have held for so long. This business (of weeding) fascinates me like a tune or a pa.s.sion, yet all the while I thrill with a strong distaste. The horror of the thing, objective and subjective, is always present in my mind, the horror of creeping things, a superst.i.tious 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 finger tips, their struggles go to my heart like supplications, I feel myself blood boltered--then I look back on my cleared gra.s.s, and count myself an ally in a fair quarrel, and make stout my heart."

The living individual personality of nature is here as clearly recognised as Wordsworth himself recognised it, but the standpoint of regard is wholly different. Stevenson was aware of the spirit that clothed itself with the visible, but he was no dreamy lover enamoured of that spirit. He was rather (as he so often says) the ally in a fair quarrel, only desirous of bending Nature to his will, of pitting his strength against hers.

But I am digressing, and the mountain top and the grave are before me, and I am in the forest on my way thither. Now and again a tiny bright-coloured bird would flash across the path, now and again a huge trail of giant convolvulus, blue as the sky, would bar our progress. Over an hour had elapsed before we gained the summit, and the latter half of the ascent was by far the most difficult.

Small wonder that sixty natives were required to get the coffin up, and even so the question will always remain, How did they accomplish the feat?

One may talk of the Road of the Loving Heart, but this was a veritable Via Dolorosa, a road of Sorrow and of Pity. The path zigzagged through the forest until it ended in a slender, fern-grown, almost imperceptible bush-track. More than once it led over the face of the solid rock, but branches of creepers, by which it was easy to swing oneself up, were abundant, though still the top appeared to recede, and to become more and more unattainable.

The mosquitos made the lives of my two companions a burden; on all sides of us we heard their sinister aereal trumpeting, the heat was insupportable--stifling, the very air seemed stagnant and dead, but, quite unawares, we were gradually nearing our goal. Suddenly our little brown-skinned guide, who was travelling ever so far ahead, in spite of the burden of our heavy basket of fruit, flung herself down on a small plateau just above us, and we, toiling painfully after, knew we had attained.

A minute later and we stood in reverent silence beside a ma.s.sive sarcophagus, constructed of concrete and surrounded by a broad slab. Not an ideal structure by any manner of means, not even beautiful, and yet in its ma.s.sive ruggedness it somehow suited the man and the place. The broad slab was strewn with faded wreaths and flowers, and on one side of the sarcophagus were inscribed Stevenson's name, with the date of his birth and death, also these eight lines, familiar to all who have read his poems:

"Under the wide and starry sky, Dig the grave and let me lie, Glad did I live and gladly die, And I lay me down with a will.

This be the verse you grave for me, Here he lies where he longed to be, Home is the sailor, home from the sea, And the hunter home from the hill."

On the other side was an inscription in Samoan, which translated is "Whither thou goest I will go, and where thou lodgest I will lodge; thy people shall be my people and thy G.o.d my G.o.d; where thou diest I will die, and there will I be buried." On either side of this text was graven a thistle and a hibiscus flower.

The chiefs have tabooed the use of firearms, or other weapons, on Mount Veea, in order that the birds may live there undisturbed and unafraid, and build their nests in the trees around Tusitala's grave.

[Ill.u.s.tration: VIEW OF VAILIMA FROM STEVENSON'S GRAVE

_To face page 39_]]

We remained on the plateau for over an hour resting our weary limbs, and eating our lunch of fruit; and during that time we sat on the broad sun-warmed slab. A tiny lizard, with a golden head, a green body, and a blue tail, flickered to and fro. Overhead a huge flying fox, with outspread "batty wings" sailed majestically. We seemed alone in the world, we four human beings, and as we gazed about us we saw everywhere, far beneath us, the beautiful "sapphire-spangled marriage-ring of the land,"

and down from us to the blueness, and beyond us, to an infinitude of distance, billow upon billow of wooded heights. Sitting there, on that green and level plateau on the summit of the mountain, my thoughts turned involuntarily to the last lofty resting-place of Browning's "Grammarian."

"Well, here's the platform, here's the proper place!

Hail to your purlieus, All ye high flyers of the feathered race, Swallows and curlews!"

"Here, here's his place, where meteors shoot, clouds form, Lightnings are loosened, Stars come and go! Let joy break with the storm, Peace let the dew send!"

The wind sighed softly in the branches of the _Tavau_ trees, from out the green recesses of the _Toi_ came the plaintive coo of the wood-pigeon. In and out of the branches of the magnificent _Fau_ tree, which overhangs the grave, a kingfisher, sea-blue, iridescent, flitted to and fro, whilst a scarlet hibiscus, in full flower, showed up royally against the gray lichened cement. All around was light and life and colour, and I said to myself, "He is made one with nature"; he is now, body and soul and spirit, commingled with the loveliness around. He who longed in life to scale the height, he who attained his wish only in death, has become in himself a parable of fulfilment. No need now for that heart-sick cry:--

"Sing me a song of a lad that is gone, Say, could that lad be I."

No need now for the despairing finality of:--

"I have trod the upward and the downward slopes, I have endured and done in the days of yore, I have longed for all, and bid farewell to hope, And I have lived, and loved, and closed the door."

Death has set his seal of peace on the unequal conflict of mind and matter; the All-Mother has gathered him to herself.

In years to come, when his grave is perchance forgotten, a rugged ruin, home of the lizard and the bat, Tusitala--the story teller--"the man with a heart of gold" (as I so often heard him designated in the Islands) will live, when it may be his tales have ceased to interest, in the tender remembrance of those whose lives he beautified, and whose hearts he warmed into grat.i.tude.

[Ill.u.s.tration: THE STAIRCASE, VAILIMA

_To face page 41_]]

So we left him, "still loftier than the world suspects, living and dying,"

and once more, following the footsteps of our guide, we took up that ferny moss-grown track. It was scarcely less easy to scramble down the steep descent than it had been to toil upwards. But "time and the hour run through the roughest day," and we eventually arrived at the bottom, torn and scratched and not a little weary, but well content, only somewhat regretful that the visit to the grave was over and not still to come, comforting each other with the recollection that the house yet remained to be explored.

Vailima is not much changed since the days when Robert Louis Stevenson lived there. Where the walls had been, in the late native war, riddled with shot, they had been renewed, but so exactly on the old lines that the change was scarcely perceptible. Although the house has been added to, and in my estimation considerably improved thereby, yet the old part remains intact.