Complete Works of Robert Louis Stevenson (Illustrated) (1140 page)

At the Hyde Street house she received many distinguished people — actors, writers, singers, and even royalties. There Henry James, S. S. McClure, David Bispham, William Faversham and his wife, ex-Queen Liliuokalani and a hundred others went to pay her their respects. It was at a reception she was giving to Liliuokalani — which, by the way, she gave in the hope of arousing favourable interest in the Queen’s mission to Washington to seek justice — that she first met David Bispham, and first heard him sing, too, in a rather unusual way. Some one — I think it was Gelett Burgess — said to the Queen, “Will your Majesty please issue a royal command? We have never heard one.” Whereupon her Majesty pointed her finger at Bispham and said, “The bard is commanded to sing!”

When the Stevenson Society of San Francisco held their yearly meetings of commemoration on Louis’s birthday she was the honoured guest, and it was characteristic of her to remember to invite his old friend, Jules Simoneau of Monterey, for these occasions. When she first asked the old man to come he shrugged his shoulders and said: “What! Will you take me to see your fine friends in this old blouse? I have no other clothes.” “Your clothes are nothing,” she replied. “All that matters to me is that you were my husband’s dear friend.” So he went, and was entertained in her house with as much consideration as though he had been a prince of the blood. On the evening of the dinner given by the Society at the old restaurant which had once been frequented by Stevenson, she took Simoneau in her carriage, and when a fashionable young lady in her party objected to this arrangement she was rebuked by being sent home in a street-car.

Among other public functions to which she was invited to do her honour as the widow of Stevenson was a banquet given by the St. Andrews Society, which included nearly all the Scotchmen in San Francisco. In conversation with three of them she remarked that she had the sugar bowl from which Bobby Burns had sweetened his toddy when he went to see Robert Stevenson, and, after inviting them to call, promised to mix a toddy for them and sweeten it from the same historic sugar bowl. About a week later the three appeared, exceedingly Scotch in their long black coats and silk hats, and each carrying a formal bouquet. They had a delightful time, drinking their toddy, which was duly sweetened from the hallowed bowl, and reciting Burns’s poems to her in such broad Scotch that she could not understand a word of it. But she loved the sound of it all the same.

It was soon after her return to San Francisco that Mrs. Stevenson interested herself in the story of a half-caste Samoan girl, a sort of modern Cinderella, of whom she had heard before leaving the islands. This girl, who was an orphan, had been left a fortune in lands and money in Samoa by her American father, and when she was five years of age had been sent to San Francisco by her guardian to be educated. There, through a combination of circumstances, she disappeared, and her property in Samoa lay unclaimed, while the rents went to the benefit of others. When Mrs. Stevenson heard of this she determined to make a search for the girl, and as soon as she reached San Francisco set out to do so. After the rounds of all the private schools and seminaries had been made without success, her friend, Miss Chismore, thought of trying the charity orphan asylums, and in one of these, a Catholic convent school for orphans, she found a girl bearing a somewhat similar name to the lost one. Mrs. Stevenson, taking with her a Samoan basket and some shells, immediately went out to see her. At the school a small, dark, shy girl was brought by the sisters into the visitors’ room, and at sight of the Samoan basket she gave a joyful cry of recognition. The long-lost heiress was found, living as a pauper in a charity school! The difficulty then was to prove her claim to the property and secure it for her. In her determination to do this Mrs. Stevenson went to Washington, where, after seeing senators, priests of the Catholic Church, and other persons in authority, she finally succeeded in having the girl’s lands, with some of the back rents, restored to her. All this was like a fairy story to the kind sisters at the convent, and their joy was unbounded at seeing their little pauper pupil thus romantically transformed into the rich princess. Meanwhile Mrs. Stevenson invited the young lady to her house, gave a party in her honour, helped her buy clothing suitable to her new station, and, when the time came for her triumphant departure to claim her island possessions, went to see her off on the steamer. As long as this little Cinderella lived she never forgot the fairy godmother who had worked this wonderful change in her life.

It was during this period that the regrettable incident of Mr. Henley’s attack on the memory of Stevenson occurred — an incident that attracted a great deal more attention in England than in America, where it was forgotten almost as soon as it happened. Mrs. Stevenson herself always ascribed this strange act on the part of her husband’s old friend to his state of health, which had never been good and was rapidly growing worse; and, because she believed he had become embittered by his misfortunes, she bore no rancour. In referring to it she repeated one of her favourite sayings, “To know all is to forgive all,” and when, after Mr. Henley’s death, his widow wrote to her asking for letters to be published in his “life,” she sent them with a kind and affectionate note.

While the house in San Francisco was building, Mrs. Stevenson went away for a time, accompanied only by her maid, for a camping trip in the Santa Cruz Mountains, down among the redwoods. The delights of the place where they camped, in a shady little valley about ten miles from Gilroy, soon won her heart completely, and she decided to purchase a small ranch there for a permanent summer home. For the first season she lived there in true campers’ fashion, which she describes in a letter to her daughter: “At the ranch I have one tent with a curtain in the middle. We sleep on one side of the curtain and sit on the other. I have only the most primitive facilities for cooking, and the butcher is twelve miles away over a mountain road. He is anything but dependable, and when I send for a piece of roast beef I may get a soup bone of veal, or a small bit of liver, or a side of breakfast bacon, which I keep hung in a tree. I cannot keep flour on a tree, so am dependent on the boarding-house [a small summer resort about a quarter of a mile distant] for my bread, and if they are short I have no bread. If I find I lack something essential I have to spend a whole day driving to town through the deep dust to get it. But of course I am going to do all kinds of things by and by.” The truth was that this sort of life was exactly to her taste, and the wilder and rougher it was the better it suited her. She was always, to the end of her days, the pioneer woman, and the greensward of the woods went better to her feet than carpeted halls.

Afterwards tents were put up for the accommodation of her family, and every spring, after the rains were over, they all moved down to take up a delightful out-of-door life such as can scarcely be enjoyed anywhere in the world except in California. Cooking was done in the open air, and meals were taken at a long table spread in a deep glen, where the trees were so thick that it was pleasantly cool even on the hottest days.

As time went on the mistress of this sylvan paradise grew more and more attached to it, and she at length decided to build more permanent quarters. First of all, she made a model of a house out of match boxes, with pebbles for the foundation wall, all glued together, painted and complete. Then she hired a country carpenter and built her house — a pleasant little dwelling, with a wide veranda extending in country fashion around two sides of it.

In building the foundation wall boulders from the stream were used, and many were found bearing bold imprints of fossil ferns, birds, and snakes. Mrs. Stevenson was delighted to have these reminders of a past age for her wall, but, alas, during her absence the stones were all cemented in place with the nice smooth sides outward and the fossils turned inward.

Although it was so different from the tropic island that had now become but a tender memory, yet there was much about this place that recalled Vailima days — the sweet seclusion, the rich greenery all about, the music of the little tinkling stream, and, above all, the morning song of the multitudes of birds. It was for this, and perhaps to make a link between her California home and that other far across the wide Pacific that she chose to call the little ranch in the Santa Cruz Mountains Vanumanutagi, vale of the singing birds.

At Vanumanutagi Mrs. Stevenson led a simple life, spending most of her time out-of-doors and occupying herself with plans for the planting and improvement of the land. The house was simply furnished, and the country people were charmed with the gay chintz and bright wall-paper, the brick fireplace, and the general appropriateness of it all. As it was not large, tents were put up for the family and guests to sleep in.

Even this peaceful spot had its excitements, for in the autumn, when the undergrowth everywhere was as dry as tinder, its quiet was sometimes disturbed by the outbreak of California’s summer terror — forest-fires. One of the worst of these happened when Mrs. Stevenson was at the ranch with only her sister Elizabeth and a maid. It came suddenly, and the first they knew of it was the sight of what they took to be sea fog, rolling and tumbling over the tops of the hills. They soon knew it for what it was when it came pouring down into the valley and they began to choke with its acrid smell. Presently horsemen came galloping by on their way to warn ranchers of the fire, and every little while a man would come out and report the progress made in checking it. It was an oppressive, hidden danger, for nothing could be seen from the valley of the actual flames through the thick suffocating curtain of smoke that hung over all. The only avenue of escape was by way of the road to Gilroy, and the fire threatened momentarily to cut this off. Not wishing to abandon the place to its fate, Mrs. Stevenson thought out a plan for saving their lives in the last emergency by wrapping up in wet blankets and crouching in a sort of hole or low place in an open field near the house. Fortunately the fire was stopped before this became necessary.

The house at Vanumanutagi ranch.

It was while she was living at the ranch that Mrs. Stevenson began to write the introductions to her husband’s works in the biographical edition brought out by Charles Scribner’s Sons. As she had but a modest opinion of her abilities, she undertook this work with the greatest reluctance, and in a letter to Mr. Scribner she remarks, “It appalls me to think of my temerity in writing these introductions.” Yet I believe that everyone who reads them will feel that a new and personal interest has been added to each one of his books by her graphic story of the circumstances of its writing.

Among the best loved of the infrequent guests who braved the long, hot, dusty drive from Gilroy to the ranch was the young California writer, Frank Norris. During his visits there Mrs. Stevenson became much attached to him, and he in turn was so charmed with the place and the life that he determined to buy a ranch in the neighbourhood. As I have already said, when an opportunity offered he bought the Douglas Sanders place, Quien Sabe Rancho, intending to spend all his summers there. Writing to Mrs. Stevenson about his plans in his gay boyish fashion, he says:

“My dear Mrs. Stevenson:

“This is to tell you that our famous round-the-world trip has been curtailed to a modest little excursion Samoa-wards and back, or mebbe we get as far as Sydney. We wont go to France, but will come to Quien Sabe in February — FEBRUARY! We find in figuring up our stubs that we have a whole lot more money than we thought, but the blame stuff has got to be transferred from our New York bank to here, which (because we went about it wrong in the first place), can’t be done for another two weeks. We will make the first payment on Quien Sabe before October 1st — $250. Will you ask Lloyd to let us know — or I mean to bear us in mind — if he hears of a horse for sale so we could buy the beast when we come up next February. Meanwhile will keep you informed as to ‘lightning change’ programme we are giving these days.

“Ever thine (I’ve clean forgot me nyme).”

The Norris cabin stands high on the mountain slope, and is reached by a steep winding road leading up from Vanumanutagi Ranch.

To this ideal spot, this secluded little lodge in the wilderness, Frank Norris hoped to bring his wife and little daughter and spend many happy and fruitful summers. Here he intended to work on the last volume of his series of the wheat trilogy — the story of the hunger of the people, which was to be called by the appropriate name of The Wolf. His joy in his new purchase was unbounded, and many improvements to the cabin and ranch were projected. In all these plans Mrs. Stevenson took a more than neighbourly interest, for she spent time and money in helping to make the place comfortable and attractive. Among other things she built a curbing around the well, using for the purpose boulders from the inexhaustible supply in the bed of the stream, and, to have all complete, even sent to Boston for a real “old oaken bucket.” At just the right intervals along the steep road to the cabin, measured off by her own indefatigable feet, she placed rustic seats, where the tired climber might rest.