Stories of Authors, British and American Part 14

"Unbroken forest covered Vailima when first we saw it; not the forest of the temperate zone with its varied glades and open s.p.a.ces, but the thick tangle of the tropics, dense, dark, and cold in even the hottest day, where one must walk cutla.s.s in hand to slash the lianas and the red-edged stinging leaves of a certain tree that continually bar one's path. The murmur of streams and cascades fell sometimes upon our ears as we wandered in the deep shade, and mingled with the cooing of wild doves and the mysterious, haunting sound of a native woodp.e.c.k.e.r at work. Our Chinaman, who was with us on our first survey, busied himself with taking samples of the soil, and grew almost incoherent with the richness of what he called the 'dirty.' We, for our part, were no less enchanted with what we saw, and could realize, as we forced our way through the thickets and skirted the deep ravines, what a n.o.ble labor lay before our axes, what exquisite views and glorious gardens could be carved out of the broken mountain side and the sullen forest."

As Stevenson was afraid that villas might be made to intervene between him and the sea, he bought much land that his view might be forever un.o.bstructed. He entered into the work of clearing the forest with vigorous delight. For months he lived in pioneer confusion. Gangs of native workmen worked from morning to night.

"The new house was built," says Mr. Osbourne; "I arrived from England with the furniture, the library, and other effects of our old home; the phase of hard work and short commons pa.s.sed gradually away, and a form of hollow comfort dawned upon us. I say hollow comfort, for though we began to acc.u.mulate cows, horses, and the general apparatus of civilized life, the question of service became a vexing one. An expensive German cooked our meals and quarreled with the white house-maid; the white overseer said 'that manual labor was the one thing that never agreed with him,' and that it was an unwholesome thing for a man to be awakened in the early morning, 'for one ought to wake up natural-like,' he explained. The white carter 'couldn't bear with n.i.g.g.e.rs,' and though he did his work well and faithfully, he helped to demoralize the place and loosen discipline. Everything was at sixes and sevens, when, on the occasion of Mrs. Stevenson's going to Fiji for a few months' rest, my sister and I took charge of affairs. The expensive German was bidden to depart; Mr. Stevenson discharged the carter; the white overseer (who was tied to us by contract) was bought off in cold coin, to sleep out his 'natural sleep' under a kindlier star and to engage himself (presumably) in intellectual labors elsewhere. There are two sides to 'white slavery'--that cherished expression of the labor agitator--and with the departure of our tyrants we began again to raise our diminished heads. My sister and I threw ourselves into the kitchen, and took up the labor of cooking with zeal and determination; the domestic boundaries proved too narrow for our new-found energies, and we overflowed into the province of entertainment, with decorated menus, silver plate and finger-bowls! The aristocracy of Apia was pressed to lunch with us, to commend our independence and to eat our biscuits. It was a French Revolution in miniature; we danced the carmagnole in the kitchen and were prepared to conquer the Samoan social world. One morning, before the ardor and zest of it all had time to be dulled by custom, I happened to discover a young and very handsome Samoan on our back veranda. He was quite a dandified youngster, with a red flower behind his ear and his hair limed in the latest fashion. I liked his open, attractive face and his unembarra.s.sed manner, and inquired what propitious fate had brought him to sit upon our ice-chest and radiate good nature on our back porch. It seemed that Simele, the overseer, owed him two Chile dollars, and that he was here, bland, friendly, but insistent, to collect the debt in person. That Simele would not be back for hours in no way daunted him, and he seemed prepared to swing his brown legs and show his white teeth for a whole eternity.

"'Chief,' I said, a sudden thought striking me, 'you are he that I have been looking for so long. You are going to stay in Vailima and be our cook!'

"'But I don't know how to cook,' he replied.

"'That is no matter,' I said. 'Two months ago I was as you; to-day I am a splendid cook. I will teach you my skill.'

"'But I don't want to learn,' he said, and brought back the conversation to Chile dollars.

"'There is no good making excuses,' I said. 'This is a psychological moment in the history of Vailima. You are the Man of Destiny.'

"'But I haven't my box,' he expostulated.

"'I will send for it,' I returned. 'I would not lose you for twenty boxes. If you need clothes, why there stands my own chest; flowers grow in profusion and the oil-bottle rests never empty beside my humble bed; and in the hot hours of the afternoon there is the beautifulest pool where one can bathe and wash one's lovely hair.

Moreover, so generous are the regulations of Tusitala's (Stevenson's) government that his children receive weekly large sums of money, and they are allowed on Sundays to call their friends to this elegant house and entertain them with salt beef and biscuit.'

"Thus was Taalolo introduced into the Vailima kitchen, never to leave it for four years save when the war-drum called him to the front with a six-shooter and a 'death-tooth'--the Samoan war-cutla.s.s or head-knife. He became in time not only an admirable chef, but the nucleus of the whole native establishment and the loyalest of our whole Samoan family. His coming was the turning-point in the history of the house. We had achieved independence of our white masters, and their discontented white faces had disappeared one by one. Honest brown ones now took their places and we gained more than good servants by the change."

The following incident ill.u.s.trates the high regard in which Stevenson was held by the native Samoans. When Mataafa, a claimant for the throne of Upolo, was imprisoned by the European powers, Stevenson visited him in prison and gave him tobacco and other gifts to cheer the disconsolate chief. He also visited other prisoners who had sided in the affairs of Mataafa. When they were released they wished to show their grat.i.tude in some tangible way. So they built a fine wide road to the home of the famous writer, a work which they disliked but which their love for Stevenson enabled them to accomplish. They called it "The Road of the Loving-Heart." Once when his favorite body-servant, Sosimo, had antic.i.p.ated some of his master's wants and Stevenson had complimented him with, "Great is the wisdom!" "Nay," replied Sosimo with truer insight, "Great is the Love!"

Stevenson's manner of life at Vailima was somewhat like this: At six o'clock or earlier he arose and began the day's work. By dawn the rest of the household were up, and at about eight his wife's daughter began to take his dictation, working from then until noon. The afternoons were usually spent in some form of recreation--riding was a favorite pastime. He was fond of strolling through the tropical forest, and of taking part in any of the numerous outdoor sports.

However, when he was in the height of literary inspiration, he stayed at his desk all day long.

On Sunday evening the household was always called together for prayers; a chapter was read from the Samoan Bible, Samoan hymns were sung and one of Stevenson's own beautiful prayers, one usually written for the occasion, was read, concluding with the Lord's Prayer in the tongue of the natives. In the dominant note of these prayers, the call for courage and cheerfulness, one can hear the cry of the dying Stevenson's need: "The day returns and brings us the petty round of irritating concerns and duties. Help us to play the man, help us to perform them with laughter and kind faces, let cheerfulness abound with industry.... Give us health, food, bright weather, and light hearts.... As the sun lightens the world, so let our loving-kindness make bright the house of our habitation."

Stevenson died as he wished--in the midst of his work. After a day spent in writing his _Weir of Hermiston_, a day full of life and gayety, he suddenly fainted and died a short time afterwards. In the prayer offered the evening before had been this sentence,--"When the day returns, return to us our sun and comforter, and call us up with morning faces and with morning hearts, eager to be happy, if happiness shall be our portion--and if the day be marked for sorrow, strong to endure it."

On the following morning a group of powerful Samoans bore the coffin upon their shoulders to the summit of Mount Vaea, where it was the wish of Mr. Stevenson that he should rest. One of the inscriptions upon the tomb is his own n.o.ble _Requiem_:

Under the wide and starry sky Dig the grave and let me lie; Glad did I live and gladly die, And I laid 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.

XLV

KIPLING IN INDIA

In four lines of oft-quoted poetry Pope has declared that with words the same rule holds that applies to fashion,--"Alike fantastic if too new or old." Fashion changes, not only the fashions of millinery but of literature also. When the world is tired of the brilliant wit of Byron, it turns in relief to the contemplative verse of Wordsworth; when Longfellow and Tennyson have had their artistic day and a thousand imitators have produced romantic poetry, because

Most can raise the flowers now For all have got the seed,--

then this same world turns with delight to the robust poetry of Kipling. He has brought a new dish to the banquet of life, or at least a new flavor has been given to the old.

Kipling is a man's poet, robust and virile. As a preface to one of his stories he wrote:

Go stalk the red deer o'er the heather, Ride, follow the fox, if you can!

But for pleasure and profit together Allow me the hunting of man;--

and this joy in the hunting of man is what has made Kipling so acceptable to men. Kipling has the defects of his virtues. There is a certain brutality in his point of view. His beautiful _Recessional_ is not the greater part of Kipling. His voice "is still for war." His critics charge him with "Jingoism." One of the most brilliant parodies of recent times is Watson's

Best by remembering G.o.d, say some, We keep our high imperial lot-- Fortune, I think, has mainly come When we forgot, when we forgot!

The greater influence of Kipling, both in his prose and poetry, is contrary to the humanitarian spirit of the age. Le Gallienne has said,--"As a writer Mr. Kipling is a delight; as an influence a danger."

Mr. Kipling sprang into public notice because he had genius and because he had a new world to reveal to a jaded public. Mr. E. Kay Robinson was a friend and a.s.sociate of Kipling when both were in the land of mysteries, India. Mr. Robinson went to India in 1884 and soon began to write verses over the signature of "K.R." Kipling was writing ballads under the initials "R.K." The similarity of the signatures attracted Kipling and he wrote to Robinson. They were afterwards a.s.sociated in newspaper work and became close friends. Robinson has written about Kipling in India:

"My first sight of Kipling was at an uninteresting stage, when he was a short, square, dark youth, who unfortunately wore spectacles instead of eyegla.s.ses and had an unlucky eye for color in the selection of his clothes. He had a weakness apparently for brown cloth with just that suggestion of ruddiness or purple in it which makes some browns so curiously conspicuous. The charm of his manner, however, made you forget what he looked like in half a minute....

"Among Kipling's early journalistic experiences was his involuntary a.s.sumption 'for this occasion only' of the role of the fighting editor. He was essentially a man of peace, and would always prefer making an angry man laugh to fighting with him; but one day there called at the office a very furious photographer. What the paper may have said about him or his photographs has been forgotten, but never will those who witnessed it forget the rough-and-tumble all over the floor in which he and Kipling indulged. The libel, or whatever it was, which had infuriated the photographer was not Kipling's work, but the quarrel was forced upon him, and although he was handicapped by his spectacles and smaller stature he made a very fine draw of it, and then the photographer--who, it may be remarked, was very drunk--was ejected. And Kipling wiped his gla.s.ses and b.u.t.toned his collar.

"That trick of wiping his spectacles is one which Kipling indulged more frequently than any man I have ever met, for the simple reason that he was always laughing; and when you laugh till you nearly cry your spectacles get misty. Kipling, shaking all over with laughter, and wiping his spectacles at the same time with his handkerchief, is the picture which always comes to mind as most characteristic of him in the old days."

With regard to Kipling's minute and exact knowledge of details Mr.

Robinson has this to say:

"To learn to write as soldiers think, he spent long hours loafing with the genuine article. He watched them at work and at play and at prayer from the points of view of all his confidants--the combatant officer, the doctor, the chaplain, the drill sergeant, and the private himself.

With the navy, with every branch of sport, and with natural history, he has never wearied in seeking to learn all that man may learn at first-hand, or the very best second-hand, at any rate.... But most wonderful was his insight into the strangely mixed manners of life and thought of the natives of India. He knew them all through their horizontal divisions of rank and their vertical sections of caste; their ramifications of race and blood; their antagonisms and blendings of creed; their hereditary strains of calling or handicraft. Show him a native, and he would tell you his rank, caste, race, origin, habitat, creed, and calling. He would speak to the man in his own fashion, using familiar, homely figures, which brightened the other's surprised eyes with recognition of brotherhood and opened a straight way into his confidence. In two minutes the man--perhaps a wild hawk from the Afghan hills--would be pouring out into the ear of this sahib, with heaven-sent knowledge and sympathy, the weird tale of the blood feud and litigation, the border fray, and the usurer's iniquity, which had driven him so far afield as Lah.o.r.e from Bajaur. To Kipling even the most suspected and suspicious of cla.s.ses, the religious mendicants, would open their mouths freely.

"By the road thick with the dust of camels and thousands of cattle and goats, which winds from Lah.o.r.e Fort to the River Ravi, there are walled caravanserais the distant smell of which more than suffices for most of the Europeans who pa.s.s, but sitting with the travelers in the reeking inside Kipling heard weird tales and gathered much knowledge.

Under a spreading peepul tree overhanging a well by the same road squatted daily a ring of almost naked fakirs, smeared with ashes, who scowled at the European driving by; but for Kipling there was, when he wished it, an opening in the squatting circle and much to be learned from the unsavory talkers. That is how Kipling's finished word-pictures take the lifelike aspect of instantaneous photographs."

XLVI

BENJAMIN FRANKLIN RUNS AWAY

Benjamin Franklin had so many strong qualities, was eminent in so many lines of endeavor, that we do not always include him among the literary men of America. However, his _Autobiography_ is a masterpiece. In sincerity and simplicity it is unsurpa.s.sed. This is all the more remarkable because it was written at a time when ornate writing was the fashion. A man's style is the outgrowth of his nature, and it is a striking comment upon the robust quality of Franklin's mind that his style has the simplicity of the Bible, or _Pilgrim's Progress_.

The following account, taken from his _Autobiography_, begins just after he has landed in New York, a boy of seventeen who has run away from home because he felt that his brother was not treating him fairly:

My inclinations for the sea were by this time worn out, or I might now have gratified them. But, having a trade, and supposing myself a pretty good workman, I offered my service to the printer in the place, old Mr. William Bradford, who had been the first printer in Pennsylvania, but removed from thence upon the quarrel of George Keith. He could give me no employment, having little to do and help enough already; but, says he, "My son at Philadelphia has lately lost his princ.i.p.al hand, Aquilla Rose, by death; if you go thither I believe he may employ you." Philadelphia was a hundred miles farther; I set out, however, in a boat for Amboy, leaving my chest and things to follow me round by sea.

[Ill.u.s.tration: BENJAMIN FRANKLIN From a portrait by Duplessis]

In crossing the bay we met with a squall that tore our rotten sails to pieces, prevented our getting into the Kill, and drove us upon Long Island. In our way, a drunken Dutchman, who was a pa.s.senger too, fell overboard. When he was sinking, I reached through the water to his shock pate, and drew him up so that we got him in again. His ducking sobered him a little, and he went to sleep, taking first out of his pocket a book, which he desired I would dry for him. It proved to be my old favorite author, Bunyan's _Pilgrim's Progress_, in Dutch, finely printed on good paper, with copper cuts, a dress better than I had ever seen it wear in its own language. I have since found that it has been translated into most of the languages of Europe, and suppose it has been more generally than any other book, except, perhaps, the Bible. Honest John was the first that I know of who mixed narration and dialogue; a method of writing very engaging to the reader, who in the most interesting parts finds himself, as it were, brought into the company and present at the discourse. Defoe in his _Crusoe_, his _Moll Flanders_, _Religious Courtship_, _Family Instructor_, and other pieces, has imitated it with success, and Richardson has done the same in his _Pamela_, etc.

When we drew near the island we found it was at a place where there could be no landing, there being a great surf on the stony beach. So we dropped anchor, and swung round toward the sh.o.r.e. Some people came down to the water edge and hallooed to us, as we did to them; but the wind was so high and the surf so loud that we could not hear so as to understand each other. There were canoes on the sh.o.r.e, and we made signs, and hallooed that they should fetch us, but they either did not understand us or thought it impracticable, so they went away, and night coming on, we had no remedy but to wait till the wind should abate. In the meantime, the boatman and I concluded to sleep if we could, and so crowded into the scuttle with the Dutchman, who was still wet, and the spray beating over the head of our boat leaked through to us, so that we were almost as wet as he. In this manner we lay all night, with very little rest; but the wind abating the next day, we made a shift to reach Amboy before night, having been thirty hours on the water, without victuals, or any drink but a bottle of filthy rum, the water we sailed on being salt.