Complete Works of Robert Louis Stevenson (Illustrated) (1132 page)

In the effort to keep things from being lost or improperly used she fell into the habit of storing them in her bedroom, so that in time it became a veritable junk-shop. “Among my dresses,” she writes, “hang bridle straps and horse robes. On the camphor-wood trunk which serves as my dressing-table, beside my comb and toothbrush, a collection of tools — chisels, pincers, and the like — is spread out. Leather straps and parts of harness hang from the walls, as well as a long carved spear, a pistol, strings of teeth — of fish, beasts, and human beings — necklaces of shells, and several hats. Fine mats and tapas are piled up in heaps. My little cot bed seems to have got into its place by mistake. Besides the above mentioned articles there are an easel and two cameras stowed in one corner. A strange lady’s chamber indeed.”

On March 28 there was a stiff blow, during which the little cottage rocked and groaned in the most alarming way, and with one gust of wind it swung over so far that its terrified occupants thought it was gone. All, including Mrs. Stevenson, then took refuge in the stable, which was rather more solidly constructed. The hurricane, the most violent they had yet experienced, lasted several days, during which they remained in the stable, sleeping in the stalls in wet beds, having to sweep out the water without ceasing and suffering severely from clouds of mosquitoes. When at last the storm abated and they could return to the house, they found everything wet and mildewed and the cottage leaning with a decided cant to one side. Worst of all, one of the horses had become entangled in the barbed-wire fence that had been blown down by the wind, and was dreadfully injured. Thus they discovered that life in the tropics has its drawbacks as well as its delights.

These were the primitive conditions that greeted the elder Mrs. Stevenson on her arrival, and the poor lady’s surprise and consternation were increased by the appearance of the good-hearted Paul while waiting on table — a plump little German with a bald head, clothed in a flannel shirt open at the neck, a pair of ragged trousers, particularly dilapidated in the seat and held up by a leather strap round the waist, a sheath-knife stuck in the belt, barefoot, and most likely offering the information that “the meat is tough, by God.” Having no pioneer ancestry to sustain her she was unable to endure the discomforts of the place and only remained over the stay of the Lubeck, after which she fled to Sydney, there to await the time when civilization should have been established on the plantation.

By the end of April the new house was ready for them to move in, and by July the whole family, including the Strongs, were established on the place.

The conditions of their lives were now vastly more comfortable. Mrs. Stevenson no longer had to share the evening lamp with death’s-head moths and piping tree-frogs, for gauze doors and windows had been put in to keep out the flying things. Nor did she have to take refuge in the stable when the hurricane season came around, for the new house was staunchly built and stout storm-shutters stood against the fury of the wind and rain.

Of Vailima in its finished aspect I need not speak in detail, since it has been fully and elaborately described by Graham Balfour in his Life of Robert Louis Stevenson. With its band of “house boys” and “out boys” — a fine-looking lot of fellows of whom their master was very proud — the household grew to be almost like that of a feudal chief, or Scotch laird of the old days, and Mrs. Stevenson took her place as its mistress as though “to the manner born.” The place became the centre of social life in the island and was the scene of frequent balls and parties, dinners with twenty-five or thirty guests, Christmas parties with the guests staying for three days, and tennis nearly every day with officers from the men-of-war in the harbour and ladies from the mission. Over these entertainments Mrs. Stevenson presided — a gracious and beautiful hostess. Once when her grandson, Austin Strong, came home for a holiday from school, she gave a ball in his honour. There were torches all along the road to light the way up, boys in uniform to receive and take care of the guests and their horses, and a band to play for dancing. For weeks beforehand the dressmakers of Apia had to work overtime. But it is not to be supposed that this comfortable state was brought about without great efforts on the part of the whole family. Mrs. Strong took over the housekeeping, management of supplies and training of servants, leaving her mother free to devote her energies to the outdoor work she loved best. Writing to Miss Jane Balfour, Mrs. Stevenson says: “Never were people so full of affairs. We have to start a plantation in the solid bush, manage all our complicated business, receive furniture and guests — and all the while trying madly to get the house in order and feed our family. We must have horses to ride or we can go nowhere. The land must be cleared and grass to feed horses and cows must be planted. Men have to be taught, also, how to take care of the animals and must be watched every moment. I am glad to say that the gossip among the natives is that I have eyes all around my head and am in fifty places at once, and that I am a person to be feared and obeyed.”

The fertile soil and kindly climate of the island encouraged her to experiment, not only with the plants native to the place, but also with exotics brought from other lands. In importing these foreign plants she exercised the greatest care not to introduce any pest, for she knew that when the lantana was taken to Hawaii and the sweetbrier to New Zealand these foreigners showed such a destructive fondness for their adopted homes that they came near choking out everything else. Before introducing any plant she consulted the heads of the botanical gardens at Kew and Colombo and the grass expert at Washington, D. C. She even had the soil that came around her plants burned, for fear it might bring in insects or disease. The lawn was an accomplishment in itself, for after she had had the soil sifted to a depth of eighteen inches to clear it of roots and stones, she levelled it herself by the simple means of a spirit-level and a string.

It is not to be supposed that all these things grew without immense difficulty. As an instance, after she had carefully instructed Lafaele, her gardener, how to plant a patch of vanilla, she was disgusted to find that he had planted them all upside down. After giving him a thorough scolding, she dismissed him and replanted them all herself, right side up. What were her feelings to find the next day that Lafaele, chagrined by his stupidity, had risen in the night and planted them all upside down again! This Lafaele was a huge mutton-headed Hercules, an out-islander, who spoke no English, and as Mrs. Stevenson never learned Samoan, the two had perforce to invent a sort of pidgin dialect of their own, in which they jabbered away successfully but which no one else could understand. She later found an intelligent Samoan named Leuelu who understood her pidgin Samoan perfectly and learned to carry out all her orders. He was small and not strong, but with the help of the dull but faithful Lafaele he soon had a wonderful garden.

One week her special task was to superintend the boys in putting a culvert into the new road to carry off the rain in the wet season. She also devised and carried out a scheme of water-works for the place which was a great boon and comfort to all the family, and enabled them to sprinkle their lawn in civilized fashion. A large cemented reservoir was built at a spring on the mountain and the water carried down from it in pipes and distributed through the house and grounds.

One of her few failures was trying to make beer out of bananas. The stuff, after being bottled, blew up with a great noise and a dissemination of the astonishingly offensive odour of the fermented fruit that seemed to spread for acres about. On the other hand, her attempt at making perfume from the moso’oi flower (said to be the real ylang-ylang) was a distinct success. She had to get permission from the government to import the small still she set up in a corner of the garden. The flowers were boiled and distilled, and as the oil rose to the top of the water it was removed with a medicine-dropper. It was a charming sight to see her working in her little distillery, while processions of pretty Samoan girls came with their huge baskets of flowers and scattered them in piles around her. Long afterwards when she was in New York she took a sample of the perfume to Colgates, who pronounced it the best they had ever seen.

The house at Vailima with the additions made to the first structure.

In the midst of all these labours there were a thousand other troubles to be met and conquered — servants’ quarrels in the kitchen, for Samoans are not a whit different in such respects from domestics all the world over, jealousy between the house boys and the out boys, constant alarms about devils and bewitchments, and, above all, sickness of all sorts to be sympathized with and cured. For help in all these derangements every one went to the mistress, for all had a simple faith in her ability to relieve them of all their sorrows. At one time she and her daughter nursed twenty-two men through the measles — a very serious disease among the islanders. At another time the large hall at Vailima was entirely filled with the beds of influenza patients, Mr. Stevenson being isolated upstairs. In the performance of the plantation work accidents sometimes happened to the men, and she was often called upon to bind up dreadful wounds that would have made many women faint. From her earliest youth she had always been the kind of person to whom every one instinctively turns in an emergency. When Mr. Stevenson was ill she understood what he wanted by the merest gesture, and was always calm, reassuring, and self-reliant, never breaking down until after the crisis was past. She was a most delightful nurse otherwise, too, for when her children were sick in bed she entertained them with cheerful stories to divert their minds, and when they were convalescent made tempting dishes for them to eat. One of my own dear memories is of a time when, as a little child, I lay dangerously and painfully ill, unable to move even a hand, and she lightened my sufferings immeasurably by buying a Noah’s ark and arranging the animals on a little table by my bedside where I could look at them. When her husband was having one of his speechless illnesses at Vailima she allowed only one at a time to go in to him, under orders to be entertaining and to recount amusing little adventures of the household. She herself was an adept at this, though when she came out she left her smile at the bedroom door. For his amusement she would sit by his bedside and play her famous game of solitaire, learned so long ago from Prince Kropotkin, the Russian revolutionist. He would make signs when she went wrong and point at cards for her to take up. Sometimes she read trashy novels to him, for they both liked such reading when it was bad enough to be funny.

With the childlike Samoans she found sympathy to be as necessary as medical treatment for their ails. An interesting example of this was the case of Eliga, who was afflicted with an unsightly tumour on his back. This, in a land where any sort of deformity is looked upon with horror, caused the unfortunate man great unhappiness, besides depriving him of his titles and estates. His kind master and mistress had him examined by the surgeon of an English man-of-war that was in the harbour, and the opinion was given that an operation was quite feasible. Poor Eliga, however, was stricken with terror at the thought and carefully explained that there were strings in the wen that were tied about his heart, and if they were severed he would die. Besides, he said, as his skin was different from the white man’s, his insides were probably different also. In the end, more to please them than through any faith in it, he consented to the operation, although so certain was he of a fatal ending that he had his house swept and garnished, ready for the funeral. To comfort and cheer him through the ordeal, both Mr. and Mrs. Stevenson went to his house and remained with him until all was done. The result was most happy, and the grateful man, now proudly holding up his head among his fellows, composed in honour of the event “The Song of the Wen”:

“O Tusitala, when you first came here I was ugly and poor and deformed. I was jeered at and scorned by the unthinking. I ate grass; a bunch of leaves was my sole garment, and I had nothing to hide my ugliness. But now, O Tusitala, now I am beautiful; my body is sound and handsome; I bear a great name; I am rich and powerful and unashamed, and I owe it all to you, Tusitala. I have come to tell your highness that I will not forget. Tusitala, I will work for you all my life, and my family shall work for your family, and there shall be no question of wage between us, only loving-kindness. My life is yours, and I will be your servant till I die.”

It was in Samoa that Mrs. Stevenson acquired the name of Tamaitai, by which she was known thenceforth to her family and intimate friends until the day of her death. English words do not come easily from the tongues of the natives, and so they obviate the difficulty by bestowing names of their own upon strangers who come to dwell among them. It was as Tusitala, the writer of tales, that Louis was best known, his wife was called Aolele, flying cloud, and her daughter, because of her kindness in giving ribbons and other little trinkets to the girls, was named Teuila, the decorator. Tamaitai is a general title, meaning “Madam,” and is used in reference to the lady of the house. Mr. Stevenson himself started the custom by calling his wife Tamaitai, and it was finally adopted by everybody and grew to be her name — the complete title being Tamaitai Aolele (Madam Aolele). These Samoan names were adopted partly as a convenience, to escape the embarrassment that sometimes arose from the habit among the natives of calling the different members of the family by their first names. It was felt to be rather undignified, for instance, that the mistress of the house should be called “Fanny” by her servants.