August 19, 2025 • 23 mins
Explore the captivating life of Robert Louis Stevenson in this concise early twentieth-century biography, crafted by polymath G.K. Chesterton and acclaimed journalist J. H. Nicoll. Often referred to as ‘The Characteristics of Robert Louis Stevenson,’ this collaboration features distinct sections by each author, offering unique insights into Stevenson’s remarkable character. This recording presents the third edition, which includes structural changes and additional material not found in the first edition. Join David Wales as he brings this literary exploration to life.
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Part four of Robert Lewis Stevenson by Gilbert Keith Chesterton
and William Robertson Nicoll. This LibriVox recording is in the
public domain. Part four biographical note Robert Lewis Stevenson Robert
Lewis Stephenson by W. E. Henley, thin legged, thin chested, slight, unspeakably,
(00:23):
neat footed and weak fingered in his face, lean, large boned,
curved of beak, and touched with race, bold lipped, rich, tinted,
mutable as the sea, the brown eyes radiant with vivacity.
There shines a brilliant and romantic grace, a spirit intense
(00:44):
and rare, with trace on trace of passion and impudence
and energy. Robert Lewis Stevenson, only son of Thomas Stevenson,
civil engineer, was born on November thirteenth, eighteen fifty at
number eight Howard Place, Edinburgh. The house was one of
(01:05):
a row of unpretentious stone buildings situated just north of
the water of Leith. When Lewis reached the age of
two and a half, a removal was made to a
more commodious dwelling in Inverleith Terrace, but this proving unsuitable
to the child's delicate health. The family settled at number
(01:26):
seventeen Harriet Rowe, which continued to be their Edinburgh home
for thirty years. Two other houses were closely connected with
the pleasant memories of Stephenson's youth, Swanston Cottage, the country
residence of his parents, and Collington Mans, the abode of
his maternal grandfather. The situation and history of the former
(01:50):
he described in picturesque Notes on Edinburgh. Indeed, the cottage
and its garden have been immortalized by Stephenson, both in
prose and in verse. Upon the main slope of the Pentlands,
a bouquet of old trees stands round a white farmhouse,
and from a neighboring dell you can see smoke rising
(02:12):
and leaves rustling in the breeze. Straight above the hills
climb a thousand feet into the air. The neighborhood about
the time of lambs is clamorous with the bleating of flocks,
and you will be awakened in the gray of early
summer mornings by the barking of a dog or the
voice of a shepherd shouting to the echoes. This, with
(02:36):
a hamlet lying behind unseen, is Swanston. But it was
at Collington that Stephenson passed the happiest days of his childhood.
Out of my reminiscences of life in that dear place,
all the morbid and painful elements have disappeared, he wrote,
I can recall nothing but sunshiny weather. That was my
(02:58):
golden age at Ago in Arcadia v. V. In Memories
and Portraits he drew a vivid picture of the Manse.
It was a place at that time like no other.
The garden cut into provinces by a great hedge of beech,
and overlooked by the church and the terrace of the churchyard,
where the tombstones were thick, and after nightfall spunkies might
(03:22):
be seen to dance, at least by children, flower pods
lying warm in sunshine, laurels, and the great eyewe making
elsewhere a pleasing horror of shade. The smell of water
rising from all round, with an added tang of paper mills,
the sound of water everywhere, and the sound of mills,
(03:44):
the wheel and the dam singing their alternate strain, the
birds from every bush and from every corner of the
overhanging woods, peeling out their notes till the air throbbed
with them, and in the midst of all this the man's.
It was in the same essay that Stevenson described his grandfather,
the Reverend Lewis Balfour, Minister of Collington, as of singular
(04:09):
simplicity of nature, unemotional and hating the display of what
he felt, standing contented on the old ways, a lover
of his life and innocent habits to the end. Now,
I often wonder, he added later, what I have inherited
from this old minister. I must suppose indeed that he
(04:32):
was fond of preaching sermons, and so am I, though
I never heard it, maintained that either of us loved
to hear them. Of his father, Stephenson wrote also in
Memories and Portraits, he was a man of a somewhat
antique strain, with a blended sternness and softness that was
(04:52):
wholly Scottish and at first somewhat bewildering, with a profound
essential melancholy of disposition, and what often accompanies it, the
most humorous geniality in company, shrewd and childish, passionately attached,
passionately prejudiced, A man of many extremes, many faults of
(05:14):
temper and no very stable foothold for himself among life's troubles.
On the other hand, there is no descriptive sketch of
Stephenson's mother from his pen, a want probably accounted for
by the fact that she survived him. In person, she
was tall and graceful, Her vivacity and brightness were most attractive,
(05:36):
and some idea of her undaunted energy and spirit may
be gathered from mister Copcornford's Robert Louis Stevenson, in which
he says of missus Thomas Stevenson, at past sixty, after
a lifetime of conventional Edinburgh, this lady broke up the
house in iliot Rowe removed herself and her belongings to Api,
(06:00):
learned to ride barebacked and to go barefooted, and to
look on the life at Vellema and the life of
Tusitale's native friends with equal gusto and intelligence. Stevenson was
fond of calling himself a tramp and a gipsy, and
that he could do so with justice was owing to
(06:20):
the fact that his mother was Margaret beaufour. Another important
factor in his early life was the devotion of his nurse,
Alison Cunningham, Cummie, as he invariably called her, whose care
during his ailing childhood did so much both to preserve
his life and foster his love of tales and poetry,
(06:43):
and of whom, until his death he thought with the
utmost constancy of affection, My dear old nurse, he wrote
to her. And you know there is nothing a man
can say nearer his heart except his mother or his wife,
My dear old nurse. God will make good to you
all the good that you have done, and mercifully forgive
(07:05):
you all the evil. In his nurse's possession, there remains
a treasured album containing a series of photographs of Robert
Louis Stevenson, dating from babyhood onwards, the first as an
infant on his mother's knee, the second at the age
of twenty months, and again at four years old, with bright,
(07:27):
dark eyes wide apart and stiff girls framing his face.
In the next, taken at the age of six, his
hair is cropped to a man like shortness. His hands
have lost their baby podginess and are nervous, long fingered.
He has a whip in his grasp which falls slightly down,
(07:47):
as if toys were not in his line, and he
looks pensively ahead. A few years later he was photographed
with his father, on whose shoulder one hand is resting,
the other being tucked boy into his pocket. Stevenson calls
himself ugly in his student days, writes mister Bugden. But
(08:07):
I think this is a term that never at any
time fitted him, certainly to him as a boy about fourteen,
with the creed which he propounded to me that at
sixteen one was a man, it would not apply. In body,
Stephenson was assuredly badly set up. His limbs were long
and lean and spidery, and his chest flat, so as
(08:31):
almost to suggest some malnutrition. Such sharp angles and corners
did his joints make under his clothes. But in his
face this was belied. His brow was oval and full
over soft brown eyes that seemed already to have drunk
the sunlight under southern vines. The whole face had a
(08:53):
tendency to an oval madonna like type. But about the mouth,
and in the mirthful, mocking light of the eyes, there
lingered ever a ready Autolichis roguery that rather suggested the
sly god ermes masquerading as immortal. The eyes were always
genial however, gaily the lights danced in them, But about
(09:17):
the mouth there was something a little tricksy and mocking,
as of a spirit that already peeped behind the scenes
of life's pageant and more than guessed its unrealities. Three
and a half years were employed by Stevenson in preparation
for the profession of civil engineer. He spent the winter
(09:38):
and sometimes the summer sessions at the University of Edinburgh.
In eighteen seventy one, however, he informed his father of
his inclination to follow literary pursuits. Engineering was given up forthwith,
and it was arranged that he should study for the
Scottish bar to which he was called in July eighteen
(09:58):
seventy five. In the a photograph on page thirteen, you
have him be wigged as Robert Lewis Stevenson Advocate, and
there is the suspicion of a playful duplicity in the
would be wisdom framed face. It was at this period
that Stevenson came in close companionship with Sir Walter Simpson,
(10:20):
the Baronet, who was also studying law. Sir Walter figured
as the cigarette to Stephenson's Arethusa in the Inland Voyage.
From the days of his toy theater onwards, Robert Lewis
Stevenson had always taken an intense interest in matters theatrical,
and with another of his friends, Fleming Jenkin, he took
(10:44):
part in numerous amateur performances. The portrait and Fancy Dress
was no doubt the outcome of this favorite pursuit. On
his return with Sir Walter Simpson from the Inland Voyage,
Stevenson became acquainted with missus Osborne, who was later to
become his wife. The marriage took place in San Francisco
(11:06):
in the spring of eighteen eighty In the hope of
finding a climate suited to his health, Stevenson went abroad
at the close of eighteen eighty two and settled for
a time at Year's where by the end of March
eighteen eighty three he was established in a house of
his own, the Chalais La Solitude. This was a picturesque
(11:28):
cottage built in the Swiss manor on the slope of
the hill just above the town, and here for some
eight or nine months he enjoyed the happiest period of
his life. We halked well together and make fortunes in
the loveliest house you ever saw, with a garden like
a fairy story, and a view like a classical landscape.
He wrote little, Well, it is not large, but it
(11:52):
is Eden and Beulah, and the delectable mountains, and Eldorado
and the Hesperidian Isles and Bimini. Year after year, the
struggle against ill health was increasing, and in eighteen eighty
seven Stephenson's uncle, doctor George Balfour, insisted on a complete
change of climate, and the second voyage to America was undertaken.
(12:16):
In the following June began the South Sea cruises, which,
after three years of wandering, culminated in the period of
settled residence at Samoa. While in the South Seas, in
eighteen eighty nine, Stephenson paid a visit to Molokai, the
leper settlement in the Hawaiian Islands, which resulted in his
famous letter to doctor Hyde in defence of father Damien,
(12:41):
who died a month previous to his arrival. The place,
as regards scenery, is grand, gloomy and bleak, he wrote,
describing the settlement. Mighty mountain walls descending sheer along the
whole face of the island into a sea unusually deep.
The front of the mountain ivied and furred with clinging forests,
(13:03):
one viridescent cliff about halfway from east to west. The low,
bare stony promontory edged in between the cliff and the ocean.
The two little towns Kalawao and Kalaapapa, seated on either
side of it, as bare, almost as bathing machines upon
(13:23):
a beach, and the population gorgons and chimeras dire. About
three miles inland on the hills above Appia, the chief
town of Upulu in the Samoan group, the Stephensons made
their home in November eighteen ninety. The house itself was
erected on a clearing of some three hundred acres between
(13:46):
two streams, from the westernmost of which the steep side
of a Vera mountain covered with forests, rose to a
height of thirteen hundred feet above the sea. From this
stream and its four tributary, the estate was called vai Lima,
the Samoan name for five waters. This is a hard
(14:07):
and interesting and beautiful wife that we lead now, he wrote.
Our place is in a deep cleft of Vivia mountains,
some six hundred feet above the sea, embowered in forest,
which is our strangling enemy, and which we combat with
axes and dollars. The house was built of wood throughout,
(14:28):
painted a dark green outside with a red roof of
corrugated iron. The building was finally enlarged in compatibility with
the requirements of the family, and consisted after December eighteen
ninety two of three rooms bath, storeroom and cellars below,
(14:49):
with five bedrooms and library upstairs. On the ground floor.
A varandah twelve feet deep ran in front of the
whole house and along one side of it. The chief
feature of the interior was the large hall. My house
is a great place, he added on another occasion. We
have a hall fifty feet long, with a great redwood
(15:11):
stare ascending from it, where we dine in state. The
two posts of the big staircase were guarded by a
couple of Burmese gilded idols. Stephenson gave many glimpses of
his life at Bay Lima in his letters to mister
Sidney Colvin. The following extract seems typical. I know pleasure,
(15:31):
still pleasure, with a thousand faces and none perfect, a
thousand tongues all broken, a thousand hands, and all of
them with scratching nails. High among these, I placed the
delight of weeding out here alone by the garrulous water,
under the silence of the high wood, broken by incongruous
(15:54):
sounds of birds, and take my life all through, look
at it for and back and upside down. Though I
would very faint change myself, I would not change my circumstances.
His favorite exercise was riding, and he was an excellent horseman. Jack,
the New Zealand pony which he bought in eighteen ninety,
(16:15):
carried him well. I do not say my Jack is
anything extraordinary. He is only an island horse, and the
profane might call him a punch, and his face is
like a donkey's, and natives have ridden him, and he
has no mouth in consequence and occasionally shyes. But his
merits are equally surprising. And I don't think I should
(16:38):
ever have known Jack's merits if I had not been
riding up of late on moonless nights. It was Stevenson's
great delight to keep open house at Vailima, and especially
to organize any festivity in which the natives could share.
An example of this hospitality was the entertainment given to
(16:59):
the band of the Katunlah. On September twelfth, eighteen ninety three,
I got lead from Captain Bickford to have the band
of the Katumba come up. And they came, fourteen of them,
with drum fife, cymbals and bugles, blue jackets, white caps,
and smiling faces. The house was all decorated with scented greenery.
(17:22):
Above and below. We had not only our nine outdoor workers,
but a contract party that we took out in charity
to pay their war fine. The band. Besides, as it
came up the mountain had collected a following of children
by the way, and we had a picking of Samoan
ladies to receive them. They played to us, They danced,
(17:44):
they sang, they tumbled. Stevenson's influence with the natives was
probably as great as that of any white resident in
the islands. He was certainly respected by them as a whole,
and by many he was beloved. Indeed, his friendship with
tim Bignoka, the king of Apamama, whose character is described
(18:08):
in The South Seas, forms an important episode in that volume.
He is the Napoleon of the group. Poet Tyrant. Altogether
a man of mark. I got power is his favorite word.
It interlars his conversation. Another chief with whom Stevenson was
in great sympathy was Matifaia, the rebel king, who was
(18:30):
defeated and banished in August eighteen ninety three upon outbreak
of war in the island. Matapha he believed to be
the one man of governing capacity among the native chiefs,
and it was his desire that the power should conciliate
rather than crush him. Matapha is the nearest thing to
(18:51):
a hero in my history, and really a fine fellow,
plenty of sense, and the most dignified, quiet gentle man.
During Stevenson's four years residence in Samoa, no fewer than
eight British men of war entered the harbor, and at
the time of the bombardment of the rebels of Atua,
(19:13):
Hms Kurrasat was more often stationed at Apia than any
of the others we have in port the model worship
of Great Britain, he wrote, describing a cruise to Manua.
She is called the Corassat, a ship that I would
guarantee to go anywhere it was possible for men to go,
(19:34):
and accomplish anything it was permitted man to attempt. After
taking up his abode at Vailima, Stevenson only twice returned
to the world of populous cities. In the early part
of eighteen ninety three, he spent several weeks in Sydney,
where he visited his friend, the Honorable B. R. Wise.
In September of the same year, he made a voyage
(19:57):
to Honolulu. On his return to in November, he was
gratified by the mark of esteem and gratitude extended to
him by the native chiefs who cleared, dug and completed
the road to Vailima, till then a mere track which
could only be traversed in dry weather by wagons or
(20:18):
by a buggy, goods being taken to the house by
two New Zealand pack horses. On the estate itself, the
route lay by a lane of limes, and this was
cut off by the Ala Loto Alofa, or Road of
the Loving Heart, which the chiefs cut to commemorate Stevenson's
(20:38):
kindness to them during their imprisonment by the European powers.
Considering the great love of Tusitala in his loving care
of us in our distress in the prison. We have
therefore prepared a splendid gift. It shall never be muddy.
It shall endure forever this road that we have dug.
(20:59):
Upon its completion, a great kava drinking was held. There
was a solemn returning of thanks, and Stevenson gave an
address which was his best and most outspoken utterance to
the people of Samoa. Only two months later, on December third,
eighteen ninety four, Stevenson died. He was in his forty
(21:20):
fifth year. The union jack, which flew over the house
was hauled down and placed over the body as it
lay in the hall where he had spent some of
the most delightful hours of his life. His devoted Samoans
cut an almost perpendicular pathway to the top of the
mountain Velia, which he had designed as his last resting place. Thither,
(21:44):
with almost herculean labors, they bore him and decked his
grave with costly presence of the most valuable and highly
prized mats. There he lies, by a strange, almost ironic
fate other stars than ours, driven forth, not thank God,
by neglect, nor by any injustice of man, but by
(22:08):
the scourge of sickness and threat of death and the
unfriendliness of his native skies. Into his beautiful exile amid
tropic seas he draws, and long will draw, perhaps while
the language lasts with a strange tenderness, the hearts of
men to that far and lonely Samowan Mount. On the tombstone,
(22:32):
built of great blocks of cement, are carved the Scotch
thistle and the native ante, and between them is a
bronze plate bearing the following inscription, his own requiem under
the wide and starry sky. Dig the grave and let
me die. Glad did I live and gladly die? And
(22:52):
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. End of Part four.
End of Robert Louis Stevenson by Gilbert Keith Chesterton and
(23:16):
William Robertson Nicholl
Part four of Robert Lewis Stevenson by Gilbert Keith Chesterton
and William Robertson Nicoll. This LibriVox recording is in the
public domain. Part four biographical note Robert Lewis Stevenson Robert
Lewis Stephenson by W. E. Henley, thin legged, thin chested, slight, unspeakably,
(00:23):
neat footed and weak fingered in his face, lean, large boned,
curved of beak, and touched with race, bold lipped, rich, tinted,
mutable as the sea, the brown eyes radiant with vivacity.
There shines a brilliant and romantic grace, a spirit intense
(00:44):
and rare, with trace on trace of passion and impudence
and energy. Robert Lewis Stevenson, only son of Thomas Stevenson,
civil engineer, was born on November thirteenth, eighteen fifty at
number eight Howard Place, Edinburgh. The house was one of
(01:05):
a row of unpretentious stone buildings situated just north of
the water of Leith. When Lewis reached the age of
two and a half, a removal was made to a
more commodious dwelling in Inverleith Terrace, but this proving unsuitable
to the child's delicate health. The family settled at number
(01:26):
seventeen Harriet Rowe, which continued to be their Edinburgh home
for thirty years. Two other houses were closely connected with
the pleasant memories of Stephenson's youth, Swanston Cottage, the country
residence of his parents, and Collington Mans, the abode of
his maternal grandfather. The situation and history of the former
(01:50):
he described in picturesque Notes on Edinburgh. Indeed, the cottage
and its garden have been immortalized by Stephenson, both in
prose and in verse. Upon the main slope of the Pentlands,
a bouquet of old trees stands round a white farmhouse,
and from a neighboring dell you can see smoke rising
(02:12):
and leaves rustling in the breeze. Straight above the hills
climb a thousand feet into the air. The neighborhood about
the time of lambs is clamorous with the bleating of flocks,
and you will be awakened in the gray of early
summer mornings by the barking of a dog or the
voice of a shepherd shouting to the echoes. This, with
(02:36):
a hamlet lying behind unseen, is Swanston. But it was
at Collington that Stephenson passed the happiest days of his childhood.
Out of my reminiscences of life in that dear place,
all the morbid and painful elements have disappeared, he wrote,
I can recall nothing but sunshiny weather. That was my
(02:58):
golden age at Ago in Arcadia v. V. In Memories
and Portraits he drew a vivid picture of the Manse.
It was a place at that time like no other.
The garden cut into provinces by a great hedge of beech,
and overlooked by the church and the terrace of the churchyard,
where the tombstones were thick, and after nightfall spunkies might
(03:22):
be seen to dance, at least by children, flower pods
lying warm in sunshine, laurels, and the great eyewe making
elsewhere a pleasing horror of shade. The smell of water
rising from all round, with an added tang of paper mills,
the sound of water everywhere, and the sound of mills,
(03:44):
the wheel and the dam singing their alternate strain, the
birds from every bush and from every corner of the
overhanging woods, peeling out their notes till the air throbbed
with them, and in the midst of all this the man's.
It was in the same essay that Stevenson described his grandfather,
the Reverend Lewis Balfour, Minister of Collington, as of singular
(04:09):
simplicity of nature, unemotional and hating the display of what
he felt, standing contented on the old ways, a lover
of his life and innocent habits to the end. Now,
I often wonder, he added later, what I have inherited
from this old minister. I must suppose indeed that he
(04:32):
was fond of preaching sermons, and so am I, though
I never heard it, maintained that either of us loved
to hear them. Of his father, Stephenson wrote also in
Memories and Portraits, he was a man of a somewhat
antique strain, with a blended sternness and softness that was
(04:52):
wholly Scottish and at first somewhat bewildering, with a profound
essential melancholy of disposition, and what often accompanies it, the
most humorous geniality in company, shrewd and childish, passionately attached,
passionately prejudiced, A man of many extremes, many faults of
(05:14):
temper and no very stable foothold for himself among life's troubles.
On the other hand, there is no descriptive sketch of
Stephenson's mother from his pen, a want probably accounted for
by the fact that she survived him. In person, she
was tall and graceful, Her vivacity and brightness were most attractive,
(05:36):
and some idea of her undaunted energy and spirit may
be gathered from mister Copcornford's Robert Louis Stevenson, in which
he says of missus Thomas Stevenson, at past sixty, after
a lifetime of conventional Edinburgh, this lady broke up the
house in iliot Rowe removed herself and her belongings to Api,
(06:00):
learned to ride barebacked and to go barefooted, and to
look on the life at Vellema and the life of
Tusitale's native friends with equal gusto and intelligence. Stevenson was
fond of calling himself a tramp and a gipsy, and
that he could do so with justice was owing to
(06:20):
the fact that his mother was Margaret beaufour. Another important
factor in his early life was the devotion of his nurse,
Alison Cunningham, Cummie, as he invariably called her, whose care
during his ailing childhood did so much both to preserve
his life and foster his love of tales and poetry,
(06:43):
and of whom, until his death he thought with the
utmost constancy of affection, My dear old nurse, he wrote
to her. And you know there is nothing a man
can say nearer his heart except his mother or his wife,
My dear old nurse. God will make good to you
all the good that you have done, and mercifully forgive
(07:05):
you all the evil. In his nurse's possession, there remains
a treasured album containing a series of photographs of Robert
Louis Stevenson, dating from babyhood onwards, the first as an
infant on his mother's knee, the second at the age
of twenty months, and again at four years old, with bright,
(07:27):
dark eyes wide apart and stiff girls framing his face.
In the next, taken at the age of six, his
hair is cropped to a man like shortness. His hands
have lost their baby podginess and are nervous, long fingered.
He has a whip in his grasp which falls slightly down,
(07:47):
as if toys were not in his line, and he
looks pensively ahead. A few years later he was photographed
with his father, on whose shoulder one hand is resting,
the other being tucked boy into his pocket. Stevenson calls
himself ugly in his student days, writes mister Bugden. But
(08:07):
I think this is a term that never at any
time fitted him, certainly to him as a boy about fourteen,
with the creed which he propounded to me that at
sixteen one was a man, it would not apply. In body,
Stephenson was assuredly badly set up. His limbs were long
and lean and spidery, and his chest flat, so as
(08:31):
almost to suggest some malnutrition. Such sharp angles and corners
did his joints make under his clothes. But in his
face this was belied. His brow was oval and full
over soft brown eyes that seemed already to have drunk
the sunlight under southern vines. The whole face had a
(08:53):
tendency to an oval madonna like type. But about the mouth,
and in the mirthful, mocking light of the eyes, there
lingered ever a ready Autolichis roguery that rather suggested the
sly god ermes masquerading as immortal. The eyes were always
genial however, gaily the lights danced in them, But about
(09:17):
the mouth there was something a little tricksy and mocking,
as of a spirit that already peeped behind the scenes
of life's pageant and more than guessed its unrealities. Three
and a half years were employed by Stevenson in preparation
for the profession of civil engineer. He spent the winter
(09:38):
and sometimes the summer sessions at the University of Edinburgh.
In eighteen seventy one, however, he informed his father of
his inclination to follow literary pursuits. Engineering was given up forthwith,
and it was arranged that he should study for the
Scottish bar to which he was called in July eighteen
(09:58):
seventy five. In the a photograph on page thirteen, you
have him be wigged as Robert Lewis Stevenson Advocate, and
there is the suspicion of a playful duplicity in the
would be wisdom framed face. It was at this period
that Stevenson came in close companionship with Sir Walter Simpson,
(10:20):
the Baronet, who was also studying law. Sir Walter figured
as the cigarette to Stephenson's Arethusa in the Inland Voyage.
From the days of his toy theater onwards, Robert Lewis
Stevenson had always taken an intense interest in matters theatrical,
and with another of his friends, Fleming Jenkin, he took
(10:44):
part in numerous amateur performances. The portrait and Fancy Dress
was no doubt the outcome of this favorite pursuit. On
his return with Sir Walter Simpson from the Inland Voyage,
Stevenson became acquainted with missus Osborne, who was later to
become his wife. The marriage took place in San Francisco
(11:06):
in the spring of eighteen eighty In the hope of
finding a climate suited to his health, Stevenson went abroad
at the close of eighteen eighty two and settled for
a time at Year's where by the end of March
eighteen eighty three he was established in a house of
his own, the Chalais La Solitude. This was a picturesque
(11:28):
cottage built in the Swiss manor on the slope of
the hill just above the town, and here for some
eight or nine months he enjoyed the happiest period of
his life. We halked well together and make fortunes in
the loveliest house you ever saw, with a garden like
a fairy story, and a view like a classical landscape.
He wrote little, Well, it is not large, but it
(11:52):
is Eden and Beulah, and the delectable mountains, and Eldorado
and the Hesperidian Isles and Bimini. Year after year, the
struggle against ill health was increasing, and in eighteen eighty
seven Stephenson's uncle, doctor George Balfour, insisted on a complete
change of climate, and the second voyage to America was undertaken.
(12:16):
In the following June began the South Sea cruises, which,
after three years of wandering, culminated in the period of
settled residence at Samoa. While in the South Seas, in
eighteen eighty nine, Stephenson paid a visit to Molokai, the
leper settlement in the Hawaiian Islands, which resulted in his
famous letter to doctor Hyde in defence of father Damien,
(12:41):
who died a month previous to his arrival. The place,
as regards scenery, is grand, gloomy and bleak, he wrote,
describing the settlement. Mighty mountain walls descending sheer along the
whole face of the island into a sea unusually deep.
The front of the mountain ivied and furred with clinging forests,
(13:03):
one viridescent cliff about halfway from east to west. The low,
bare stony promontory edged in between the cliff and the ocean.
The two little towns Kalawao and Kalaapapa, seated on either
side of it, as bare, almost as bathing machines upon
(13:23):
a beach, and the population gorgons and chimeras dire. About
three miles inland on the hills above Appia, the chief
town of Upulu in the Samoan group, the Stephensons made
their home in November eighteen ninety. The house itself was
erected on a clearing of some three hundred acres between
(13:46):
two streams, from the westernmost of which the steep side
of a Vera mountain covered with forests, rose to a
height of thirteen hundred feet above the sea. From this
stream and its four tributary, the estate was called vai Lima,
the Samoan name for five waters. This is a hard
(14:07):
and interesting and beautiful wife that we lead now, he wrote.
Our place is in a deep cleft of Vivia mountains,
some six hundred feet above the sea, embowered in forest,
which is our strangling enemy, and which we combat with
axes and dollars. The house was built of wood throughout,
(14:28):
painted a dark green outside with a red roof of
corrugated iron. The building was finally enlarged in compatibility with
the requirements of the family, and consisted after December eighteen
ninety two of three rooms bath, storeroom and cellars below,
(14:49):
with five bedrooms and library upstairs. On the ground floor.
A varandah twelve feet deep ran in front of the
whole house and along one side of it. The chief
feature of the interior was the large hall. My house
is a great place, he added on another occasion. We
have a hall fifty feet long, with a great redwood
(15:11):
stare ascending from it, where we dine in state. The
two posts of the big staircase were guarded by a
couple of Burmese gilded idols. Stephenson gave many glimpses of
his life at Bay Lima in his letters to mister
Sidney Colvin. The following extract seems typical. I know pleasure,
(15:31):
still pleasure, with a thousand faces and none perfect, a
thousand tongues all broken, a thousand hands, and all of
them with scratching nails. High among these, I placed the
delight of weeding out here alone by the garrulous water,
under the silence of the high wood, broken by incongruous
(15:54):
sounds of birds, and take my life all through, look
at it for and back and upside down. Though I
would very faint change myself, I would not change my circumstances.
His favorite exercise was riding, and he was an excellent horseman. Jack,
the New Zealand pony which he bought in eighteen ninety,
(16:15):
carried him well. I do not say my Jack is
anything extraordinary. He is only an island horse, and the
profane might call him a punch, and his face is
like a donkey's, and natives have ridden him, and he
has no mouth in consequence and occasionally shyes. But his
merits are equally surprising. And I don't think I should
(16:38):
ever have known Jack's merits if I had not been
riding up of late on moonless nights. It was Stevenson's
great delight to keep open house at Vailima, and especially
to organize any festivity in which the natives could share.
An example of this hospitality was the entertainment given to
(16:59):
the band of the Katunlah. On September twelfth, eighteen ninety three,
I got lead from Captain Bickford to have the band
of the Katumba come up. And they came, fourteen of them,
with drum fife, cymbals and bugles, blue jackets, white caps,
and smiling faces. The house was all decorated with scented greenery.
(17:22):
Above and below. We had not only our nine outdoor workers,
but a contract party that we took out in charity
to pay their war fine. The band. Besides, as it
came up the mountain had collected a following of children
by the way, and we had a picking of Samoan
ladies to receive them. They played to us, They danced,
(17:44):
they sang, they tumbled. Stevenson's influence with the natives was
probably as great as that of any white resident in
the islands. He was certainly respected by them as a whole,
and by many he was beloved. Indeed, his friendship with
tim Bignoka, the king of Apamama, whose character is described
(18:08):
in The South Seas, forms an important episode in that volume.
He is the Napoleon of the group. Poet Tyrant. Altogether
a man of mark. I got power is his favorite word.
It interlars his conversation. Another chief with whom Stevenson was
in great sympathy was Matifaia, the rebel king, who was
(18:30):
defeated and banished in August eighteen ninety three upon outbreak
of war in the island. Matapha he believed to be
the one man of governing capacity among the native chiefs,
and it was his desire that the power should conciliate
rather than crush him. Matapha is the nearest thing to
(18:51):
a hero in my history, and really a fine fellow,
plenty of sense, and the most dignified, quiet gentle man.
During Stevenson's four years residence in Samoa, no fewer than
eight British men of war entered the harbor, and at
the time of the bombardment of the rebels of Atua,
(19:13):
Hms Kurrasat was more often stationed at Apia than any
of the others we have in port the model worship
of Great Britain, he wrote, describing a cruise to Manua.
She is called the Corassat, a ship that I would
guarantee to go anywhere it was possible for men to go,
(19:34):
and accomplish anything it was permitted man to attempt. After
taking up his abode at Vailima, Stevenson only twice returned
to the world of populous cities. In the early part
of eighteen ninety three, he spent several weeks in Sydney,
where he visited his friend, the Honorable B. R. Wise.
In September of the same year, he made a voyage
(19:57):
to Honolulu. On his return to in November, he was
gratified by the mark of esteem and gratitude extended to
him by the native chiefs who cleared, dug and completed
the road to Vailima, till then a mere track which
could only be traversed in dry weather by wagons or
(20:18):
by a buggy, goods being taken to the house by
two New Zealand pack horses. On the estate itself, the
route lay by a lane of limes, and this was
cut off by the Ala Loto Alofa, or Road of
the Loving Heart, which the chiefs cut to commemorate Stevenson's
(20:38):
kindness to them during their imprisonment by the European powers.
Considering the great love of Tusitala in his loving care
of us in our distress in the prison. We have
therefore prepared a splendid gift. It shall never be muddy.
It shall endure forever this road that we have dug.
(20:59):
Upon its completion, a great kava drinking was held. There
was a solemn returning of thanks, and Stevenson gave an
address which was his best and most outspoken utterance to
the people of Samoa. Only two months later, on December third,
eighteen ninety four, Stevenson died. He was in his forty
(21:20):
fifth year. The union jack, which flew over the house
was hauled down and placed over the body as it
lay in the hall where he had spent some of
the most delightful hours of his life. His devoted Samoans
cut an almost perpendicular pathway to the top of the
mountain Velia, which he had designed as his last resting place. Thither,
(21:44):
with almost herculean labors, they bore him and decked his
grave with costly presence of the most valuable and highly
prized mats. There he lies, by a strange, almost ironic
fate other stars than ours, driven forth, not thank God,
by neglect, nor by any injustice of man, but by
(22:08):
the scourge of sickness and threat of death and the
unfriendliness of his native skies. Into his beautiful exile amid
tropic seas he draws, and long will draw, perhaps while
the language lasts with a strange tenderness, the hearts of
men to that far and lonely Samowan Mount. On the tombstone,
(22:32):
built of great blocks of cement, are carved the Scotch
thistle and the native ante, and between them is a
bronze plate bearing the following inscription, his own requiem under
the wide and starry sky. Dig the grave and let
me die. Glad did I live and gladly die? And
(22:52):
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. End of Part four.
End of Robert Louis Stevenson by Gilbert Keith Chesterton and
(23:16):
William Robertson Nicholl
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