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 MEMORIES OF VAILIMA
 
 MEMORIES OF VAILIMA 
 
 BY 
 
 ISOBEL STRONG 
 
 AND 
 
 LLOYD OSBOURNE 
 
 WITH ILLUSTRATIONS 
 FROM PHOTOGRAPHS 
 
 CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS 
 NEW YORK::::::::::::::::::1902
 
 COPYRIGHT, 1902, BY 
 CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS 
 
 Published, November, 1902 
 
 TROW DIRECTORY 
 
 PRINTING AND BOOKBINDING COMPANY 
 NEW YORK
 
 PAGE 
 
 VERSES WRITTEN IN 1872 i 
 
 By Robert Louis Stevenson. 
 
 VAILIMA TABLE-TALK 5 
 
 By Isabel Strong. 
 
 MR. STEVENSON'S HOME LIFE AT VAILIMA 105 
 
 By Lloyd Osbourne. 
 
 POLA 167 
 
 By Isabel Strong. 
 
 SAMOAN SONGS 207 
 
 By Isabel Strong.
 
 LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS 
 
 Pola would Arrive in the Morning Early 
 
 Attended by a Serving Man . Frontispiece 
 
 PAGE 
 
 Mr. Stevenson and Mrs. Strong in the Li- 
 brary at Vailima 9 
 
 Mr. Stevenson in 1893 2 3 
 
 Near the Upper Waterfall, Vaisinango 
 
 River 39 
 
 Down the Coast 55 
 
 Mitaele 59 
 
 The Large Hall at Vailima 69 
 
 A War Party 75 
 
 The Hall 83 
 
 The Road of the Loving Heart .... 93 
 Entertaining the Chiefs Who Made the 
 
 Road of the Loving Heart . . . . 101 
 
 The Inscription 104 
 
 First House at Vailima, with Vaea Moun- 
 tain in the Background 109
 
 LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS 
 
 PAGE 
 
 On the Schooner Equator 113 
 
 Mr. Stevenson and His Friend Tuimale 
 
 Aliifono 117 
 
 The House at Vailima After the Additions. 121 
 
 Talolo 125 
 
 Paying the Men on Saturday . . . . .129 
 
 On the Back Veranda . 133 
 
 A Samoan Chief 137 
 
 A Samoan Matai, or Head of a Family . 145 
 
 A Visitor 149 
 
 The Smoking Room 157 
 
 Vailima 163 
 
 Pola 175 
 
 The Walk in the Forest 179 
 
 The Village 185 
 
 The Bathing Pool 197 
 
 Visitors from Vaie'e 215 
 
 Vaea Mountain, the Burial Place of Mr. 
 
 Stevenson 221 
 
 Natives Decorating the Grave . . . .225 
 
 viii
 
 VERSES WRITTEN IN 1872
 
 VERSES WRITTEN IN 1872 
 BY ROBERT Louis STEVENSON 
 
 Though he that ever kind and true, 
 Kept stoutly step by step with you 
 Your whole long gusty lifetime through 
 
 Be gone awhile before, 
 Be now a moment gone before, 
 Yet, doubt not, soon the seasons shall 
 restore 
 
 Your friend to you.
 
 II 
 
 He has but turned a corner still 
 He pushes on with right good will, 
 Thro' mire and marsh, by heugh and hill 
 
 That self same arduous way, 
 That self same upland hopeful way, 
 That you and he through many a doubt- 
 ful day 
 
 Attempted still.
 
 Ill 
 
 He is not dead, this friend not dead, 
 But, in the path we mortals tread, 
 Got some few, trifling steps ahead 
 
 And nearer to the end, 
 So that you, too, once past the bend, 
 Shall meet again, as face to face, this friend 
 
 You fancy dead.
 
 IV 
 
 Push gayly on, strong heart ! The while 
 You travel forward mile by mile, 
 He loiters with a backward smile 
 
 Till you can overtake, 
 And strains his eyes, to search his wake, 
 Or whistling, as he sees you through the 
 brake, 
 
 Waits on a stile.
 
 VAILIMA TABLE-TALK
 
 VAILIMA TABLE-TALK 
 
 AT Vailima, in the latter part of the 
 year 1892, I began keeping a 
 journal, putting down from time 
 to time bits of Mr. Stevenson's conversa- 
 tion, characteristic sentences and stories. 
 Two large volumes were filled in time, 
 from which I publish the following ex- 
 tracts with some misgiving, for, as will be 
 seen, they are of their nature fragmentary 
 and disconnected. Much that would 
 make them more comprehensible is of 
 too intimate and personal a nature to 
 print, and it would only be possible to 
 render them more consecutive by weav- 
 ing them into some sort of biography or 
 
 7
 
 MEMORIES OF VAILIMA 
 
 narrative which it is neither my province 
 nor my desire to attempt. 
 
 " I have been writing to Louis's dicta- 
 tion the story of ' Anne de St. Ives,' * a 
 young Frenchman in the time of Napo- 
 leon. Some days we have worked from 
 eight o'clock until four, and that is not 
 counting the hours Louis writes and makes 
 notes in the early morning by lamp-light. 
 He dictates with great earnestness, and 
 when particularly interested unconscious- 
 ly acts the part of his characters. When 
 he came to the description of the supper 
 Anne has with Flora and Ronald, he 
 bowed as he dictated the hero's speeches 
 and twirled his mustache. When he de- 
 scribed the interview between the old lady 
 and the drover, he spoke in a high voice 
 
 * This story was finished, except the last three chapters, and 
 published under the name of St. Ives. 
 
 8
 
 VAILIMA TABLE-TALK 
 
 for the one, and a deep growl for the 
 other, and all in broad Scotch even to 
 ' coma ' (comma). 
 
 " When Louis was writing c Ballantrae ' 
 my mother says he once came into her 
 room to look in the glass, as he wished to 
 describe a certain haughty, disagreeable 
 expression of his hero's. He told her he 
 actually expected to see the master's clean- 
 shaven face and powdered head, and was 
 quite disconcerted at beholding only his 
 own reflection. 
 
 " I was sitting by Louis's bedside with 
 a book, this evening, when he asked me 
 to read aloud. ' Don't go back,' he said ; 
 { start in just where you are.' As it hap- 
 pened, I was reading c the Merry Men ; ' 
 he laughed a little when he recognized his 
 own words. I went on arid finished the 
 ii
 
 MEMORIES OF VAILIMA 
 
 story. * Well,' he said, ' it is not cheer- 
 ful ; it is distinctly not cheerful ! ' 
 
 " c In these stories,' I asked, c do you 
 preach a moral ? ' 
 
 " ' O not mine/ he said. f What I want 
 to give, what I try for, is God's moral ! ' 
 
 " f Could you not give f God's moral,' 
 in a pretty story ? ' I asked. 
 
 " ' It is a very difficult thing to know,' 
 he said ; f it is a thing I have often 
 thought over the problem of what to do 
 with one's talents.' He said he thought 
 his own gift lay in the grim and terrible 
 that some writers touch the heart, he 
 clutched at the throat. I said I thought 
 ' Providence and the Guitar ' a very 
 pretty story, full of sweetness and the 
 milk of human kindness. 
 
 " c But it is not so sweet as " Mark- 
 heim " is grim. There I feel myself strong.' 
 
 12
 
 VAILIMA TABLE-TALK 
 
 " ' At least,' I said, { you have no man- 
 nerisms.' 
 
 " He took the book out of my hand 
 and read c it was a wonderful clear night 
 of stars.' * Oh,' he said, c how many, 
 many times I have written " a wonderful 
 clear night of stars ! " 
 
 " But I maintained that this, in itself, 
 was a good sentence and presented a pict- 
 ure to the mind. f It is the mannerisms 
 of the author who can't say " says he " 
 and "says she" that I object to; whose 
 characters hiss, and thunder, and ejacu- 
 late and syllable ' 
 
 " ' Oh my dear,' he said, ' deal gently 
 with me I once fluted I ' 
 
 "Jan. i6th, 1893. 
 
 " Oh poor Anne ! Louis has been laid 
 up with threatenings of a hemorrhage and 
 13
 
 MEMORIES OF VAILIMA 
 
 is not allowed to speak. It is a cruel 
 blow just when we were getting on so 
 well with Anne. When I went in to his 
 bedside this morning he wrote on a slate, 
 'Allow me to introduce you to Mr. 
 Dumbley ! ' He was leaning against a 
 bed-rest to which he called my attention. 
 It was the one Sir Percy Shelley gave 
 him; my mother had taken all the uphol- 
 stery out as being too warm for this cli- 
 mate, putting in a back of woven cocoa- 
 nut sinnet, which is very neat and pretty, 
 and comfortable besides. He cannot 
 speak nor lean forward to write, for fear 
 of starting a hemorrhage, and yet he does 
 not look ill at all. He is tanned a good 
 brown, has a high color and very bright 
 eyes. In illness he is never pale ; as he 
 lies back against the rest in his blue and 
 white Japanese kimono, with a wide red 
 14
 
 VAILIMA TABLE-TALK 
 
 sash, so fresh and bright, looking at you 
 with such a pleasant smiling face, it is 
 hard to realize he is in great danger. 
 
 "He has a slate by his side and writes 
 nonsense on it. c I'm a rose-garden in- 
 valid wreathed in weak smiles.' To a 
 visitor who asked c how are you ? ' he 
 wrote : f Mr. Dumbley is no better and 
 be hanged to him ! ' 
 
 " To pass the time I showed him how 
 to make a, b, and c, on the hands, and 
 we were getting some entertainment out 
 of it when suddenly the brilliant idea 
 struck us both to dictate Anne in the 
 deaf and dumb alphabet ! It was slow 
 work, and I often made mistakes, but we 
 got on pretty well to the extent of five 
 pages. 
 
 "In the afternoon Aolele entertained 
 him by playing patience on a table drawn
 
 MEMORIES OF VAILIMA 
 
 to the bed. For his amusement she 
 learned a game from a book, and he is 
 always pleased and interested to see it 
 played, making signs when she goes 
 wrong and pointing at cards for her to 
 take up. 
 
 " We are only allowed in to him one 
 at a time, when we all try to be entertain- 
 ing and recount cheerful adventures of 
 the household. Aolele is very success- 
 ful at this, but she leaves her smile at the 
 bedroom-door; indeed we are all terribly 
 anxious." 
 
 "Jan. 1 8th. 
 
 " Louis is better to-day, and we did 
 seven pages in the deaf and dumb al- 
 phabet. The only concern he has be- 
 trayed over his illness was at the first 
 sign of improvement ; he wrote, Oh 
 
 16
 
 VAILIMA TABLE-TALK 
 
 Belle, I am so pleased ! ' and the tears 
 stood in his eyes." 
 
 "Jan. zznd. 
 
 "To-day Louis was so much better 
 that, though he had a headache, we wrote 
 twelve pages of Anne. When the lunch- 
 eon bell rang we both thought it a mis- 
 take, the morning had flown by so quick- 
 ly. He generally fills in his convales- 
 cence with poetry ; to-day he read us 
 some beautiful verses about Aolele and 
 me." 
 
 MOTHER AND DAUGHTER. 
 
 HIGH as my heart! the quip be mine 
 That draws their stature to a line, 
 My pair of fairies plump and dark, 
 The dryads of my cattle park. 
 Here by my window close I sit, 
 And watch (and my heart laughs at it) 
 17
 
 MEMORIES OF VAILIMA 
 
 How these my dragon-lilies are 
 Alike and yet dissimilar. 
 From European womankind 
 They are divided and defined 
 By the free limb and wider mind, 
 The nobler gait, the little foot, 
 The indiscreeter petticoat ; 
 And show, by each endearing cause, 
 More like what Eve in Eden was 
 Buxom and free, flowing and fine, 
 In every limb, in every line, 
 Inimitably feminine. 
 Like ripe fruit on the espaliers 
 Their sun-bepainted hue appears, 
 And the white lace (when lace they wear) 
 Shows on their golden breast more fair. 
 So far the same they seem, and yet 
 One apes the shrew, one the coquette 
 A sybil or a truant child 
 One runs with a crop halo wild ; 
 And one more sedulous to please, 
 Her long dark hair, deep as her knees, 
 And thrid with living silver, sees. 
 18
 
 VAILIMA TABLE-TALK 
 
 What need have I of wealth or fame, 
 A club, an often-printed name ? 
 It more contents my heart to know 
 Them going simply to and fro ; 
 To see the dear pair pause and pass 
 Girded, among the drenching grass, 
 In the resplendent sun, or hear, 
 When the huge moon delays to appear, 
 Their kindred voices sounding near 
 In the veranda twilight. So 
 Sound ever ; so, forever go 
 And come upon your small brown feet, 
 Twin honors to my country seat, 
 And its too happy master lent : 
 My solace and its ornament. 
 
 THE DAUGHTER, TEUILA, HER NATIVE NAME THE 
 DECORATOR. 
 
 MAN, child or woman, none from her 
 The insatiable embellisher, 
 Escapes! She leaves, where'er she goes, 
 A wreath, a ribbon, or a rose ; 
 19
 
 MEMORIES OF VAILIMA 
 
 A bow or else a button changed, 
 Two hairs coquettishly deranged, 
 Some vital trifle, takes the eye, 
 And shows the adorner has been by. 
 Is fortune more obdurate grown ? 
 And does she leave my dear alone 
 With none to adorn, none to caress ? 
 Straight on her proper loveliness 
 She broods and lingers, cuts and carves, 
 With combs and brushes, rings and scarves ; 
 The treasure of her hair she takes 
 Therewith a new presentment makes, 
 Babe, Goddess, Naiad of the grot, 
 And weeps if any like it not ! 
 Oft clustered by her bended knees 
 (Smiling himself) the gazer sees, 
 Compact as flowers in garden beds, 
 The smiling faces and shaved heads 
 Of the brown island babes : with whom 
 She exults to decorate her room, 
 To dress them, cheer them when they cry, 
 And still to pet and prettify. 
 Or see, as in a looking-glass, 
 20
 
 VAILIMA TABLE-TALK 
 
 Her graceful, dimpled person pass, 
 
 Nought great therein but eyes and hair, 
 
 On her true business here and there : 
 
 Her huge, half-naked Staff, intent, 
 
 See her review and regiment, 
 
 An ant with elephants, and how 
 
 A smiling mouth, a clouded brow, 
 
 Satire and turmoil, quips and tears, 
 
 She deals among her grenadiers ! 
 
 Her pantry and her kitchen squad, 
 
 Six-footers all, obey her nod, 
 
 Incline to her their martial chests, 
 
 With school-boy laughter hail her jests, 
 
 And do her in her kilted dress 
 
 Obsequious obeisances. 
 
 So, dear, may you be never done 
 
 Your pretty busy round to run. 
 
 And show with changing frocks and scents, 
 
 Your ever-varying lineaments : 
 
 Your saucy step, your languid grace, 
 
 Your sullen and your smiling face, 
 
 Sound sense, true valor, baby fears, 
 
 And bright unreasonable tears : 
 
 21
 
 MEMORIES OF VAILIMA 
 
 The Hebe of our aging tribe : 
 
 Matron and child, my friend and scribe. 
 
 "Feb. 25th, 1893. 
 
 " We are at sea on our way to Sydney. 
 Louis took advantage of our stop at 
 Auckland to call on Sir George Grey * to 
 ask his advice on Samoan affairs. He 
 described his visit when he came back 
 to the ship. . . . ( He received me 
 in the quietest, coolest manner, heard me 
 with the most extraordinary patience, say- 
 ing nothing. Again and again I felt 
 ashamed he still pressed me to go on. 
 He said : " Let me give you a piece of 
 advice frcm my own experience pay no 
 attention to attacks, go on doing what 
 you are doing for the good of Samoa ; 
 the time will come when it will be appre- 
 
 * The veteran Ex-Governor and Ex-Premier of New Zealand. 
 22
 
 Mr. Stevenson in
 
 VAILIMA TABLE-TALK 
 
 dated, and I am one of the few men who 
 have lived long enough to learn this." 
 Then looking at me with his curious blue 
 eyes and a kind of faint smile, " the worst 
 of my anxiety is over," he said. " I 
 thought you were an invalid. When I 
 see the fire in your eye, and your life and 
 energy, I feel no more anxiety about Sa- 
 moa." I told him it was certainly time I 
 put my hand to the plough, and nothing 
 would make me leave but deportation. 
 He nodded his head at me for quite a 
 considerable time, like a convinced man- 
 darin. "You may have thought you 
 stopped at Samoa on a whim. You may 
 think me old-fashioned, but I believe it 
 was Providence. There is something 
 over us ; and when I heard that a man 
 with the romantic imagination of a novel- 
 ist had settled down in one of those isl- 
 25
 
 MEMORIES OF VAILIMA 
 
 ands, I said to myself, these races will be 
 saved ! " At every turn of the conversa- 
 tion it was the most singular thing to hear 
 the old pro-consul allege parallel incidents 
 from all parts of the world, and from any 
 time in the last fifty years. He kept 
 another guest waiting an hour and three- 
 quarters ; when we were at last interrupted 
 he bade me wait for him, and walked 
 with me to the hotel door, arm in 
 arm, like a very ancient school-boy with 
 a younger boy, that was inexpressibly 
 attaching.' 
 
 " Louis was flattered by the interview 
 and said so ; and I was amused to find 
 that not a word had been said about his 
 books. The old man took him altogether 
 as a politician, and I was glad to hear that 
 Louis had complimented the politician 
 
 on his literary success. 
 26
 
 VAILIMA TABLE-TALK 
 
 " Aolele's description of Louis. f Some- 
 times he looks like an old man of eighty 
 with a wild eye, and then, at a moment's 
 notice, he's a pretty brown boy.' Now, 
 on this trip, he's the brown boy." 
 
 " SYDNEY, March 3rd, 1893. 
 
 " Last evening we went to a dinner 
 given by Mr. and Mrs. at the Cos- 
 mopolitan Club ; as it was a f wonderful 
 clear night of stars,' we walked home. 
 We passed the Australia Hotel, just as a 
 tall, soldierly man, middle-aged, I should 
 think, and undoubtedly a gentleman, 
 came staggering out and swayed up the 
 street fearfully drunk. We stopped and 
 looked after him, Aolele and I keeping 
 the man in sight while Louis made inquir- 
 ies at the hotel about him. I confess, I 
 
 should have preferred going on our way, 
 27
 
 MEMORIES OF VAILIMA 
 
 but I could not escape, with Madam Es- 
 mond on one hand, and Don Quixote on 
 the other. Louis came out of the hotel 
 very indignant; he had found the attend- 
 ants grinning; they said, however, they 
 knew the gentleman, and were surprised 
 to see him drinking. Louis ran ahead 
 and overtook the man just as two fellows 
 were lifting him to his feet after a fall. 
 He grasped eagerly at Louis and seemed 
 much relieved in his mind. c You're a 
 gentleman,' he said, f you tell me what to 
 do, and I'll do it. I'll do anything you 
 say you're a gentleman.' The two fel- 
 lows, who had been helping him, moved 
 off, but one turned back to say, ( You 
 never know a gentleman till he's tried.' 
 The drunken man went on to offer 
 Louis fifty pounds, saying, f I'm bad, 
 
 you're good,' in a most ridiculous way. 
 28
 
 VAILIMA TABLE-TALK 
 
 ' Cabby,' said he, f do you know me ? ' 
 ' O yes, sir,' said Cabby, { you're Mr. 
 
 of .' e Will you cash a fifty 
 
 pound cheque for me ? * c Certainly, 
 sir.' c All right,' said the man, 'I'll give 
 you five pounds in the morning ! ' While 
 he was still fumbling for his cheque- 
 book, Louis motioned the cabman to 
 drive off. 
 
 "In the meantime a man came up to 
 Aolele, who was standing a little way off, 
 and stared hard at her. 'What is the 
 matter with you ? ' she asked. ' I'm 
 drunk, too,' said the man. 
 
 " Both Louis and Aolele like to read 
 trash, that is, if it is bad enough to be 
 funny. My mother was tired and sent 
 us out to buy some novels for her. As 
 we went along the street we saw Louis's 
 39
 
 MEMORIES OF VAILIMA 
 
 picture in many of the shop-windows, 
 and people turned and looked after us in 
 a way, Louis said, that made him feel very 
 self-conscious. We went into a big shop 
 and had picked out an armful of books. 
 A young clerk came up to Louis with 
 great respect and recognition in his eye. 
 
 * What have you been getting, Mr. Ste- 
 venson ? ' he asked. f We have all the 
 best authors Meredith, Barrie, Anstey 
 ' and then his countenance changed ; 
 he cast a most reproachful, disappointed 
 look at Louis as he read the titles of the 
 chosen works c The Sin of a Cbuntess,' 
 
 * Miriam, the Avenger,' * The Lady De- 
 tective/ He retired and took no further 
 interest in us. 
 
 "As we went to get into a cab, we 
 passed a strange-looking old boot-black, 
 who called out c Stevenson ! ' as we passed. 
 30
 
 VAILIMA TABLE-TALK 
 
 I looked back, but Louis hurried me into 
 the cab, when the man cried out again 
 ' Louis Stevenson ! ' and then, much loud- 
 er, ' Mr. Louis Stevenson, I've read all 
 your works.' 
 
 " Louis is very fond of jewels, as an^- 
 one may see by his writings, and he in- 
 dulges this passion as far as circumstances 
 allow. 
 
 " He has had three topaz rings made, 
 for topaz is the stone of his birth month, 
 November. Inside two of them are his 
 initials, and these he has presented, with a 
 memorial poem, to my mother and my- 
 self. On his own are engraved the first 
 letters of our names. Sapphire is the 
 stone of Lloyd's month, April ; so he has 
 bought a set of sapphire studs to take 
 back to Lloyd in Samoa."
 
 MEMORIES OF VAILIMA 
 
 These rings, O my beloved pair, 
 For me on your brown fingers wear : 
 Each, a perpetual caress, 
 To tell you of my tenderness. 
 
 Let when at morning as ye rise 
 The golden topaz takes your eyes 
 To each her emblem whisper sure 
 Love was awake an hour before. 
 
 Ah yes ! an hour before ye woke 
 Low to my heart my emblem spoke, 
 And grave, as to renew an oath, 
 // I have kissed and blessed you both. 
 SYDNEY, N. S. W., March, 1893. 
 
 " My mother was proposing one day to 
 exchange consciences with Palema, who 
 was quite ready for the bargain. Louis 
 was watching the transaction with interest 
 and suggested that the business might be 
 developed, and that a trade journal might 
 
 / 
 
 32
 
 VAILIMA TABLE-TALK 
 
 be started where consciences could be ad- 
 vertised for sale or exchange. He himself, 
 he added, might be very glad to avail him- 
 self of such facilities, and wondered what 
 his own conscience would look like in 
 print. f Oh ! ' said Palema, ' let me try.' 
 f For Sale. A conscience, half-calf, slightly 
 soiled, gilt-edged (or shall we say uncut ?), 
 scarce and curious/ 
 
 " At this there was a hearty laugh, led 
 by Louis himself." 
 
 "VAILIMA, April 12, 1893. 
 " I asked Louis why painters, who live 
 in much the same atmosphere as literary 
 men, are less interesting and more nar- 
 row-minded ; at least that had been my 
 experience. He offered an explanation 
 that sounded reasonable enough. The 
 study of painting or music does not ex- 
 
 33
 
 MEMORIES OF VAILIMA 
 
 pand the mind in any direction save one. 
 Literature, with its study of human nature, 
 events, and history, is a constant educa- 
 tion, and in that career a man cannot 
 stick at one place as the painter and musi- 
 cian almost invariably does. He studies 
 his one pin's point of a talent, enlarging 
 that, perhaps, and deepening it, but in no 
 other direction does his mind work. The 
 bank clerk, whose daily life is spent in 
 adding up figures, knows that his intel- 
 ligence is cramped and is more apt to de- 
 vote his leisure to study and improve- 
 ment ; but the painter believes his work 
 to be a culture, and thinks he needs no 
 more. 
 
 Our talk turned on Millet, to whom 
 Louis takes off his hat. He made money 
 for years doing ordinary popular work, and 
 then, in spite of starvation and a large 
 
 34
 
 VAILIMA TABLE-TALK 
 
 family, proceeded to paint what he thought 
 was true art. 
 
 " c And yet,' 1 said, c if I were one of 
 the large family, I might not think it so 
 fine. A painter might sacrifice his family 
 to his art ; would you ? Would you 
 go on writing things like " Will o' the 
 Mill " if we were all starving, and 
 " Miriam, the Avenger," would save us ? ' 
 
 " Louis gave in. ' You know well 
 enough I would save my family if it car- 
 ried me to the gallows' foot.' ' 
 
 " April igth, 1893. 
 
 " The mail has just come in and stopped 
 all work for the day. It was brought 
 up as usual on horse-back by Sosimo, in 
 a big waterproof bag, and carried to Louis's 
 room, followed by the family in great ex- 
 citement. Louis always empties the mail- 
 
 35
 
 MEMORIES OF VAILIMA 
 
 bag himself, and parcels out the letters 
 while we all sit in an expectant semicircle 
 on the floor. Woe betide the person who 
 tries to snatch a letter from the pile ! We 
 have to wait our turn as Louis throws 
 them out ; he gives Austin all the picture 
 papers to open, and as he looks over his 
 own letters he gives me those from stran- 
 gers and autograph-collectors ; I feel neg- 
 lected if I don't get ten or twelve at least. 
 " Some of these are very amusing. * Sir, 
 I think you are the greatest author living. 
 Please send me a complete set of Samoan 
 stamps.' * Mr. Stevenson, I have to 
 trouble you for your autograph and that 
 of your talented wife.' Others are beg- 
 ging letters asking Louis to pay the 
 travelling expenses of a gentleman who 
 wishes to do missionary work in Samoa 
 combined with raising chickens, or to ad- 
 36
 
 VAILIMA TABLE-TALK 
 
 vance ten pounds in commercial enter- 
 prise, for which he will receive as compen- 
 sation one Angora goat ! Many of the 
 letters, though, contain genuine expres- 
 sions of admiration and thanks for the 
 good his books have given. He always 
 answers sincere letters, especially those 
 from children or sick people. Some of 
 these which he dictated to me are so help- 
 ful, so inspiring, that I have dropped 
 tears on the paper as I wrote. 
 
 " Every mail brings him a number of 
 books from young authors asking his 
 opinion and advice. These he always 
 reads, and, if possible, encourages the 
 authors with a few words of commenda- 
 tion. If they are hopelessly bad he writes 
 nothing. 
 
 " I have a very good system with the 
 autograph hunters. On one set of cards 
 
 37
 
 MEMORIES OF VAILIMA 
 
 Louis writes his name and the date ; on 
 another set a sentiment such as 
 
 ' Smoking is a pernicious habit ;' 
 
 or an idle rhyme 
 
 ' I know not if I wish to please, 
 
 I know not if I may, 
 
 I only scribble at my ease, 
 
 To pass a rainy day.' 
 
 Or, 
 
 How jolly 'tis to sit and laugh 
 
 In gay green-wood, 
 And write the merry autograph 
 For other people's good.' 
 
 "Louis calls these 'penny plain and 
 tuppence colored.' The former I send 
 in reply to the ordinary polite request, 
 but those who take the trouble to enclose 
 an addressed envelope and a Samoan 
 stamp I reward with ' tuppence colored.' 
 38
 
 Near the Upper Waterfall, Vaisinango River.
 
 VAILIMA TABLE-TALK 
 
 Letters that come spelling his name with a 
 ph, or f Step Henson ' as he calls it, are 
 torn up in wrath. 
 
 " Mail-day unsettled Louis for work, 
 so we took a walk in the forest; we 
 wore no hats and went bare-footed under 
 the big spreading trees in the cool shade. 
 We sat on a stone by the upper water-fall 
 and talked about a story we are both 
 reading in Longman 's Magazine, called 'A 
 Gentleman of France/ Louis was so 
 pleased with the opening chapters that he 
 said he was going to write to Mr. Wey- 
 man and congratulate him on his work. " 
 
 "April zoth, 1893. 
 
 " I was pottering about my room this 
 
 morning when Louis came in with the 
 
 remark that he was a gibbering idiot. I 
 
 have seen him in this mood before, when 
 
 41
 
 MEMORIES OF VAILIMA 
 
 he pulls out hairpins, tangles up his moth- 
 er's knitting, and interferes in whatever 
 his women-kind are engaged upon. So I 
 gave him employment in tidying a drawer 
 all the morning talking the wildest non- 
 sense all the time, and he was babbling 
 on when Sosimo came in to tell us lunch 
 was ready ; his very reverential, respectful 
 manner brought the Idiot Boy to his feet 
 at once, and we all went off laughing to 
 lunch. 
 
 "This afternoon Louis was still too 
 much of an Idiot Boy to write, and he 
 walked about in such a restless way that 
 it occurred to me to teach him to sew. 
 He has done all sorts of things in these 
 moods before, modelling little clay figures, 
 making woodcuts and printing them, and 
 even knitting. He has often told me of 
 the beautiful necktie he knit with his own 
 42
 
 VAILIMA TABLE-TALK 
 
 hands, but he got it so dirty in the course 
 of construction that it was taken away from 
 him and burnt. I cut out some saddle 
 blankets and taught him to herring-bone 
 them in red worsted. He learned the 
 stitch at once and took an absorbing in- 
 terest in it, the interest he puts into 
 everything he does. He sat on the sofa 
 by the window in his long blue and white 
 Japanese kimono, his bare feet on the 
 tiger rug, looking such a strange figure 
 at his work. He made loops and then 
 pulled the worsted through as though it 
 was a rope. He suddenly remarked, c I 
 don't seem to get that neat, hurried, 
 bite-your-thread effect that women do so 
 well.' He certainly did not. c I think,' 
 he added, soberly, { that my style is sort 
 of heaveho and windlassy ! ' He walked 
 out with Aolele to look at her garden, but 
 43
 
 MEMORIES OF VAILIMA 
 
 hurried back and is now busily at work 
 sewing. 
 
 " Louis will never allow any jokes on 
 the subject of c wall-flowers ' or old maids. 
 He reduced me to tears describing a young 
 girl dressing herself in ball finery and sit- 
 ting the evening out with smiles, while her 
 breast was filled with the crushing sense 
 of failure. He says he will never forgive 
 Thackeray for the old age of Beatrix ; 
 nor W. S. Gilbert for the humiliating per- 
 sonage of Lady Jane. 
 
 "We were talking island affairs one 
 day, when Lloyd summed up the whole 
 situation thus : f Samoan politics are like 
 the mills of God they always get to 
 windward of you.' 
 
 " Louis was telling of a narrow escape 
 from being killed he once had when riding. 
 
 44
 
 VAILIMA TABLE-TALK 
 
 " c Why didn't you jump off your 
 horse ? ' asked my mother. 
 
 " * Why, woman ! I was ten miles from 
 home.' 
 
 " c Well,' said she, ' isn't it better to be 
 ten miles from home than in heaven or 
 hell ? ' " 
 
 April 30th, 1893. 
 
 " Will o the Mill made a great impres- 
 sion upon Graham Balfour in his youth, 
 and he declares that his character and life 
 are moulded upon that story. Louis re- 
 pudiated the tale altogether, and says that 
 Will's sentiments upon life are * cat's 
 meat.' 
 
 " Conversation at table : 
 
 " Palema. It is the best thing on life 
 that has been written this age. 
 
 " Louis. Rather remarkable how little 
 stock I take in it myself. 
 
 45
 
 MEMORIES OF VAILIMA 
 
 " Palema. If you had stood by your 
 words I would have gone down on my 
 knees to you. But how did you come 
 to write what you don't believe ? 
 
 " Louis. Well, I was at that age when 
 you begin to look about and wonder if 
 you should live your life 
 
 " Palema. To be or not to be ? 
 
 " Louis. Exactly. Everything is tem- 
 perament. Well, I did the other fellow's 
 temperament held a brief on the other 
 side to see how it looked. 
 
 " Palema. Mighty well you did it too. 
 
 " Louis. No doubt better than I should 
 have done my own side ! " 
 
 "May z8th, 1893. 
 
 " Mr. Daplyn, a painter, and an old 
 
 friend of Louis's, is visiting us ; we hold 
 
 fierce and animated debates on all sorts of 
 
 subjects. On Imagination in Art versus 
 
 4 6
 
 VAILIMA TABLE-TALK 
 
 Technical Skill Moral Codes, and the 
 Conduct of Life ; and this morning we 
 debated whether it was unmanly for the 
 sterner sex to weep. Palema scorned a 
 man who wept, but was forced to admit 
 that noble actions were touching that the 
 Indian Mutiny must not be spoken of, 
 and barred out suffering children. Lloyd 
 proclaimed loudly that he himself was an 
 emotional man. c And,' he added, f per- 
 haps the lightest-hearted member of this 
 family ! ' which was hailed with shouts of 
 laughter. Louis said that he had wept in 
 public and wept in private, had cried over 
 stories and people, and would continue to 
 do so to the end of the chapter. 
 
 " Mr. Daplyn, the most scornful anti- 
 weeper of the party, wound up with the 
 remark, 'but I'm easily moved to tears 
 myself! * 
 
 47
 
 MEMORIES OF VAILIMA 
 
 " This afternoon we all congregated in 
 Lloyd's study ; there are not many chairs, 
 so some of us lay at full length on the 
 bear-skins. Louis paced up and down 
 the room, and Palema drew up his six-feet- 
 two against the wall. The talk was in- 
 trospective. Everybody described himself 
 and the workings of his own inner con- 
 sciousness. Louis said : { I can behave 
 pretty well on the average, though I come 
 to grief on occasions. I love fighting, but 
 bitterly dislike people to be angry with 
 me the uncomfortable effect of fighting.' 
 He said he was forgiving, but Aolele de- 
 nied it and said, c Louis thinks he for- 
 gives, but he only lays the bundle on the 
 shelf and long after takes it down and 
 quarrels with it.' f No ! ' protested Louis, 
 ' it is on the shelf, I admit, and I would let 
 
 it stay there. But if any one else pulled it 
 4 8
 
 VAILIMA TABLE-TALK 
 
 down I would tear it with fury. In fact,' he 
 went on, ' I am made up of contradictory el- 
 ements, and have a clearing-house inside of 
 me where I dishonor cheques of bitterness.' 
 
 " Palema said of himself that he was a 
 stoical epicurean. 
 
 " f I,' cried Louis, am a cynical epi- 
 curean.' 
 
 " c I,' continued Palema, ' am made up 
 inside of water-tight compartments that 
 nowhere join ! J 
 
 " I said there was a good deal of 
 theatre in my inside, which led to a lively 
 discussion on posing before the world. 
 That to carry a brave front though your 
 heart quaked was a pose ; to live up to 
 your better nature was a pose ; and Louis 
 made us all laugh by saying, earnestly, 
 f In short, everybody who tries to do right 
 is a hypocrite ! ' 
 
 49
 
 MEMORIES OF VAILIMA 
 
 " May 3 ist, 1893. 
 
 " I asked Louis, in the course of a con- 
 versation this evening, how he defined the 
 word literature. 
 
 " { It is capable of explanation, I think,' 
 he said ; f when you see words used to the 
 best purpose no waste, going tight around 
 a subject. Also they must be true. My 
 stories are not the truth, but I try to make 
 my characters act as they would act in life. 
 No detail is too small to study for truth. 
 Lloyd and I spent five days weighing 
 money and making calculations for the 
 treasure found in " The Wrecker." 
 
 " I asked him why Charles Reade was 
 not a stylist, though his writing answered 
 to the description. 
 
 " ' You are right,' Louis said ; ( he is a 
 good writer, and I take off" my hat to him 
 with respect. And yet it was in continuity 
 50
 
 VAILIMA TABLE-TALK 
 
 that he failed. In the " Ebb Tide," that 
 is now under way, we started on a high 
 key, and oh, haven't we regretted it ! If 
 I wanted to say " he kicked his leg and he 
 winked his eye," it would be perfectly flat 
 if I wrote it so. I must pile the colors 
 on to bring it up to the key. Yet I am 
 wrong to liken literature to painting. It 
 is more like music which is time ; paint- 
 ing is space. In music you wind in and 
 out, but always keep in the key ; that is, 
 you carry the hearer to the end without 
 letting him drop by the way. It winds 
 around and keeps on. So must words 
 wind around. Organized and packed in 
 a mass, as it were, tight with words. Not 
 too short phrases rather no word to 
 spare. 
 
 " f There are two kinds of style, the 
 plastic, such as I have just described ; the 
 51
 
 MEMORIES OF VAILIMA 
 
 other, the simple placing of words together 
 for harmony. The words should come 
 off the tongue like honey. I began so as 
 a young man ; I had a pretty talent that 
 way, I must confess.' 
 
 " I asked him if he thought his present 
 full, entertaining novels, crowded with 
 people and adventure, an improvement 
 upon his earlier honey-dropping essays. 
 But he refused that. He could not, he 
 said, criticise his own work or see it well 
 enough. But in others, he had noticed 
 that the writers who began with honey- 
 sweetness often developed in later work a 
 certain brusqueness and ruggedness. 
 
 " ' Did they do it well ? ' I asked. 
 
 " f You bet they did ! ' said Louis. 
 
 4 Both Beethoven and Shakespeare are 
 
 good examples of it, in their different arts. 
 
 Shakespeare's earliest works were plain, 
 
 52
 
 VAILIMA TABLE-TALK 
 
 dull, unimpassioned verse. Next came his 
 first singing note such as Romeo and 
 Juliet; ah/ he quoted 
 
 My love is boundless as the sea." 
 
 f The words are like music. Then a strange 
 thing happened surely some evil woman 
 must have crossed his path and driven him 
 to the hideous work of Troilus and Cres- 
 sida ; and yet, but for its indecency and 
 brutality, it might have been his greatest 
 work. He took the plot from Chaucer, 
 who had told it quietly and prettily, and 
 made of it the horror it is. Then came 
 his later works, full of strength, and 
 broken with flashes so delicate he might 
 have touched them with his tongue and 
 passed on.' 
 
 " I asked him if it were good for the 
 young writer to wade in emotions. 
 
 53
 
 MEMORIES OF VAILIMA 
 
 " f Good God, no ! ' he said ; * first make 
 his words go sweet, and if he can't spend 
 an afternoon turning a single phrase he'd 
 better give up the profession of literature.' 
 
 " Louis is often charged with being se- 
 cretive. He turned one day to his mother, 
 who had been questioning him about some 
 trifling matter, and took hold of her shawl. 
 
 " ' Who gave it to you ? ' 
 
 " f I bought it.' 
 
 " f Where did you buy it ? ' 
 
 " f At Gray & Macfarlane's/ answered 
 his mother. 
 
 " c Why ? ' persisted Louis. 
 
 " ' I don't know,' said Tamaitai Matua, 
 laughing. 
 
 " ' Good Heavens, woman, why so se- 
 cretive ? Why can't you answer a simple 
 question ? Why put me off with a Gray & 
 
 54
 
 VAILIMA TABLE-TALK 
 
 Macfarlane ? ' It was all nonsense, but the 
 phrase survived, and when Louis is asked 
 where he is going he answers, c To call on 
 Gray & Macfarlane ! ' and when his mother 
 begged to know from whom an important- 
 looking letter had come, he said, in broad 
 Scotch, ' From Gray, mem, with Macfar- 
 lane's coompliments ! ' 
 
 "June 8th, 1893. 
 
 " I have just come back from a week's 
 visit at a native village down the coast. 
 Louis says I look as brown as a ham. 
 Aolele said c I hope you are not tired ; 
 you look pale a pale black, I mean.' 
 
 " When I came up to my room, after 
 being so long away, I found it all deco- 
 rated with flowers and streamers of cocoa- 
 nut fibre, the work of my Samoan boy, 
 Mitaele ; he had fastened a garland of 
 
 57
 
 MEMORIES OF VAILIMA 
 
 hibiscus flowers on my beautiful ash 
 wardrobe by means of tacks, but he 
 meant well, and I hadn't the heart to re- 
 prove him. On my writing-table a num- 
 ber of Longman's was lying open, with the 
 following verses in Louis's hand fastened 
 to the page with a hair-pin : 
 
 ' Whether you come back glad or gay, 
 Or come with streaming eyes and hair, 
 Here is the gate of the golden way, 
 Here is the cure for all your care ! 
 And be your sorrows great or small, 
 Here, breathe this quantum of romance. 
 Be sure you will forget them all 
 With this dear Gentleman of France ! ' ' 
 
 "June 30th, 1893. 
 
 " We had a fright about my mother to- 
 day. We were visiting the rebel out- 
 posts, and in going through a government 
 village Louis called out to us to ride fast. 
 58
 
 Mitaele.
 
 VAILIMA TABLE-TALK 
 
 These people all know that we sym- 
 pathize with the rebels, and it is perhaps 
 a little foolhardy to go through their 
 villages to visit our friends on the other 
 side. Every house we passed was crowd- 
 ed with men bearing rifles. I rode ahead 
 with Louis, and when we looked back for 
 Aolele, we were horrified to see her in 
 the middle of the village, surrounded by 
 armed men. Louis rode back in alarm 
 and found that her horse had balked, 
 and the amiable warriors had come to her 
 assistance. 
 
 " These Samoan fighting men look 
 very terrible in their battle array with 
 blackened faces and a long c head-knife ' 
 in their hands. But on close inspection 
 their eyes are always kind and their smile 
 sweet."
 
 MEMORIES OF VAILIMA 
 
 "Aug. 23rd, 1893. 
 
 " We had a trying but characteristic 
 morning over Anne. We were sailing 
 along on the eleventh chapter when a 
 smart Samoan man appeared with a letter. 
 
 It was from , full of politics and 
 
 fury, and Louis sent for my mother to 
 come and hear it read aloud. We dis- 
 missed with scorn equal to his own 
 
 and on to work. 
 
 " ' Chapter twelve,' dictated Louis 
 ' Buccleton ' 
 
 " ' That's cheap,' I said. 
 
 " c What's the matter with it ? Isn't 
 it good enough for you ? What do you 
 want ? ' 
 
 " < Well,' I said, c I want " The Dying 
 Uncle " or " the Nephew's Fortune." ' 
 
 " Louis jeered, but compromised on 
 ' My Uncle,' and we were off again. 
 
 62
 
 VAILIMA TABLE-TALK 
 
 Suddenly Aolele burst in. A man had 
 cut his leg with a cane-knife, and I must 
 get perchloride of iron and bandages. 
 
 " I did that all right, started Sosimo at 
 work on Palema's room with a warning 
 not to wash his tan shoes in the river; 
 saw that the calf was watered ; set the 
 girls to making wreaths for the dinner- 
 party to-night, and returned breathless to 
 Anne^ when we worked on serenely until 
 interrupted by the first bell for lunch." 
 
 "Nov. 3d, 1893. 
 
 " Louis has been writing autographs 
 for me ; this is to put in the fly-leaf of 
 4 Memories and Portraits : ' 
 
 Much of my soul is here interred, 
 My very past and mind : 
 Who listens nearly to the prbted word 
 May hear the heart behind. 
 63
 
 MEMORIES OF VAILIMA 
 
 " Louis Palema and I were walking in 
 the forest to-day and were very thirsty. 
 We looked up at some cocoanut trees 
 and Louis said: 
 
 " ' If we were natives it would be an 
 easy matter to climb that tree. It is filled 
 with young nuts full of milk.' 
 
 " f I wish I had some to drink/ I said, 
 longingly. 
 
 " f Wouldn't it be aggravating,' said 
 Louis, ' to die of thirst under a cocoanut 
 tree because you hadn't the knack of 
 climbing ! ' 
 
 " f l wouldn't die of thirst,' said Palema. 
 
 " c What would you do ?' asked Louis. 
 
 " I'd die of rage,' he said." 
 
 "Nov. zoth, 1893. 
 
 " All our Samoan c boys ' went to the 
 great missionary meeting, wearing the 
 
 64
 
 VAILIMA TABLE-TALK 
 
 Vailima uniform of white shirts, red 
 and white blazers, and the Stuart tartan 
 lava-lava. (Note. A garment worn in 
 the manner of a kilt.) According to 
 their own accounts they were much ad- 
 mired. Murmurs on all sides were heard 
 about the fine appearance and good looks 
 of c Tama o le Ona,' or, as Louis puts it, 
 'the McRichies.'" 
 
 " Dec. loth, 1893. 
 
 :< Louis's birthday is the thirteenth of 
 Nov., but he was not well, so we post- 
 poned festivities to the twenty-first. It 
 was purely native, as usual. We had six- 
 teen pigs roasted whole underground, 
 three enormous fish (small whales, Lloyd 
 called them), 400 pounds of salt beef, ditto 
 of pork, 200 heads of taro, great bunches 
 of bananas, native delicacies done up in 
 65
 
 MEMORIES OF VAILIMA 
 
 bundles of ti leaves, 800 pineapples, many 
 weighing fifteen pounds, all from Lloyd's 
 patch, oranges, tinned salmon, sugar-cane, 
 and ship's biscuit in proportion. Among 
 the presents to Tusitala, besides flowers 
 and wreaths, were fans, native baskets, rolls 
 of tapa, ava bowls, cocoanut cups beauti- 
 fully polished, and a talking-man's staff; 
 and one pretty girl from Tanugamanono 
 appeared in a fine mat (the diamonds and 
 plate of Samoa), which she wore over her 
 simple tapa kilt, and laid at Tusitala's feet 
 when she departed. Seumanu, the high 
 chief of Apia, presented Louis with the 
 title of c Au-mai-taua-i-manu-vao.' ' 
 
 " Dec. z/th. 
 
 " Christmas - eve we devoted to our 
 Samoans ; we had forty, counting the 
 children, and not one of them, old or 
 young, had ever seen a Christmas - tree 
 
 66
 
 VAILIMA TABLE-TALK 
 
 before. Lloyd distributed the gifts (they 
 had all come out from the Army and Navy 
 Stores in London), and made appropriate 
 
 speeches in Samoan." 
 
 "Feb. 6th, 1894. 
 
 " Louis and I spent a long and busy day 
 over Hermiston ; * we've been working at 
 it, already, several days. Captain Wurm- 
 brandt, an Austrian cavalry officer, and 
 Mr. Buckland, known on his own island 
 as Tin Jack (the original of Tommy Had- 
 don in c The Wrecker '), are staying with 
 us. The Captain's stories are of the camp, 
 and Tin Jack's are of love and the Islands. 
 The two are excellent company for the 
 
 rainy season." 
 
 " Feb. izth, 1894. 
 
 " I have been reading a paper by Miss 
 Dickens about her father, and found a par- 
 
 * " Weir of Hermiston," the last story on which Mr. Steven- 
 son worked, and his best. 
 
 6 7
 
 MEMORIES OF VAILIMA 
 
 ticular instance in which Louis resembles 
 him. They both love dancing, but could 
 neither of them waltz. Both were excel- 
 lent in the polka, and Louis is quite 
 capable of getting out of bed at night, 
 like Dickens, to practise a new step. But 
 my hero has gone a step beyond the illus- 
 trious novelist. He began theorizing as 
 he does about everything under the sun 
 on the subject of dance time. He could 
 never keep step to threes, he said ; it 
 was unnatural. The origin of all count- 
 ing is the beating of the heart, and how 
 could you make one two three out of 
 that? 
 
 " How about triple time in music ? ' 
 I said, c you play it all right on your 
 flageolet ! ' 
 
 " c I understand that,' he said, f it 
 counts three between every heart-beat.' 
 
 68
 
 VAILIMA TABLE-TALK 
 
 " c Then waltz to triple time,' I said, 
 and he did at once beautifully. 
 
 "The mention of Dickens reminds me of 
 a story that Louis is very fond of telling, of 
 an old Frenchman in Samoa, who, the 
 first time he saw Louis, struck an attitude, 
 and exclaimed, c Ah ! quelle ressemblance ! ' 
 Then approaching him, f How like ! How 
 like Monsieur Charles Dickens. Did no 
 one ever tell you that before ? ' And Louis 
 was compelled to confess that certainly 
 nobody ever had." 
 
 " Feb. 1 3th, 1894. 
 
 " We danced this evening after dinner 
 in the big hall. Mamma sat on the table 
 and turned the hurdy-gurdy, and Louis 
 waltzed to triple time. He can also dance 
 the Highland schottische, which he does 
 with much earnestness. We had great fun 
 teaching it to Captain Wurmbrandt, who, 
 71
 
 MEMORIES OF VAILIMA 
 
 being an Austrian, is of course a beautiful 
 dancer. Tin Jack (Tin means Mr. in 
 his island) looked handsome and thought- 
 ful as he skimmed about the room in the 
 most beautiful imitation of a waltz, but 
 without a step to bless himself with. I 
 did not realize how good Tommy H ad- 
 don was till I read it over again in ' The 
 Wrecker,' after meeting Tin Jack. He is 
 quite as handsome as Louis describes him, 
 and has a trusting, earnest look. He 
 asked, c What kind of dances do they 
 have here, round and square ? ' I an- 
 swered, in some irritation, f No, three- 
 cornered.' f Gracious ! ' he exclaimed, 
 with interest, ' what kind of a dance is 
 that?' 
 
 " He is paying his addresses to a young 
 lady here, and Louis wrote the following 
 72
 
 VAILIMA TABLE-TALK 
 
 valentine which I illuminated in gold on 
 white satin : 
 
 " ' The isle-man to the lady I, 
 
 Whose rugged custom it has been 
 To sleep beneath a tropic sky 
 
 And bivouac in a savage scene. 
 Ah ! since at last I saw you near, 
 
 How shall I then return again ? 
 Alone in the void hemisphere 
 
 How shall my heart endure the pain ? ' " 
 
 "March loth, 1894. 
 
 " To-day is my mother's birthday, and 
 she says the best of her presents is the 
 piece of paper she found pinned on her 
 mosquito-netting in the morning. It was 
 signed R. L. S., and addressed ' To the 
 Stormy Petrel.' 
 
 " Ever perilous 
 
 And precious, like an ember from the fire 
 Or gem from a volcano, we to-day, 
 73
 
 MEMORIES OF VAILIMA 
 
 When drums of war reverberate in the land 
 And every face is for the battle blacked 
 No less the sky, that over sodden woods 
 Menaces now in the disconsolate calm 
 The hurly-burly of the hurricane 
 Do now most fitly celebrate your day. 
 
 Yet amid turmoil, keep for me, my dear, 
 The kind domestic faggot. Let the hearth 
 Shine ever as (I praise my honest gods) 
 In peace and tempest it has ever shone." 
 
 ' March 1 7th. 
 
 " Yesterday and to-day we wrote stead- 
 ily at Anne, while war news and ru- 
 mors flew thick and fast around us. The 
 Captain brought us word that the - s 
 were barricading their house with mat- 
 tresses, and many natives are taking their 
 valuable mats to the Mission for safety. 
 We are on the very outposts, and if the 
 Atuans did attack Apia they would have 
 to pass Vailima. Our woods are full of 
 
 74
 
 A War Party.
 
 VAILIMA TABLE-TALK 
 
 scouting parties, and we are occasionally 
 interrupted by the beating of drums as a 
 war-party crosses our lawn. But nothing 
 stops the cheerful flow of Anne. I put 
 in the remark, between sentences, c Louis, 
 have we a pistol or gun in the house that 
 will shoot ? ' to which he cheerfully an- 
 swers, c No, but we have friends on both 
 sides/ and on we go with the dictation." 
 
 "June 4th, 1894. 
 
 fc * This evening, as Austin and I were 
 swinging in the hammock, we heard a call 
 from Aolele : f Big guns ! ' We ran out 
 on the veranda ; over toward Atua, where 
 the rebels are, we heard the booming of 
 cannon from the men-of-war, and we 
 watched the exchange of signals with the 
 ships in port by means of rockets and 
 search-lights. There has been fighting in 
 
 77
 
 MEMORIES OF VAILIMA 
 
 Aana and a number of wounded men were 
 brought into the Mission. Dr. Hoskyn, 
 of the Curagoa, is doing noble work a- 
 mong them ; the natives simply worship 
 him. " 
 
 ' June 3Oth. 
 
 " Louis has just returned from a trip 
 on board H. M. S. Curagoa to the 
 neighboring island of Manu'a. It is 
 really a part of the Samoan group, but 
 when the Berlin treaty was made between 
 the three great Powers they forgot 
 Manu'a, and now the little island is inde- 
 pendent and at peace, reigned over by a 
 young half-cast girl of eighteen. When 
 commissioners and tax-collectors went over 
 to Manu'a, the young queen gave them to 
 understand that her island was her own, 
 and they had no business there, though 
 otherwise they were treated with Samoan 
 
 78
 
 VAILIMA TABLE-TALK 
 
 hospitality. It is a very interesting place, 
 and Louis had a great deal to tell us 
 about his trip, but I think he enjoyed the 
 man-of-war itself the most. He says he 
 has gained enough experience to write a 
 sea-story ; he has stored up technical 
 terms from the officers, and ship slang 
 from the midshipmen. He was invited 
 to afternoon tea with the warrant officers, 
 had early morning cocoa with Mr. Bur- 
 ney, one of the midshipmen, and was re- 
 proved by the captain for crossing the 
 batten on the poop which marks off the 
 post of the officer on duty. In his daily 
 tub he was so careful not to splash the 
 water that the severe orderly, a marine, 
 didn't believe he had taken a bath at all, 
 looking so suspiciously at Louis that he 
 declares he felt like apologizing. 
 
 " { Lay out a clean shirt, Abbott,' he 
 
 79
 
 MEMORIES OF VAILIMA 
 
 said one evening, as he was dressing for 
 dinner. 
 
 " * This is Saturday, Mr. Stevenson,' 
 said the orderly. 'The one you have 
 will do well enough. I will lay out a 
 clean one to-morrow ! ' 
 
 " Sosimo never smiled all the time 
 Louis was away; he was the first to sight 
 the man-of-war steaming into the harbor, 
 and was on the beach holding Jack by the 
 bridle before the Curagoa had come to 
 anchor. Louis rode home, leaving Sosimo 
 to go on board and bring up his valise. 
 
 " Long ago Louis had a topaz stud 
 that was somewhat difficult to put into his 
 shirt, so he gave it to me. I laid it away 
 in my trinket box and was dismayed, 
 when I first wanted to wear it, to find it 
 gone. Sosimo had missed the stud, dis- 
 covered it in my box, and carried it back 
 80
 
 VAILIMA TABLE-TALK 
 
 to Louis's room. I kept up the fight for 
 some time, trying to secrete it from Sosimo 
 by putting it in out-of-the-way places, but 
 it was invariably found in Louis's room, 
 no matter where I had hidden it. 
 
 " When he came up from the ship he 
 put Louis's valise down on the veranda 
 and carefully abstracted from his mouth 
 the precious stud he had carried there for 
 safety. I gave up, then, and it is now 
 Louis's own. 
 
 " We miss Louis so terribly, even for a 
 few days, that now we all rejoice to be to- 
 gether again. There are just seven of us : 
 Aunt Maggie and her son Louis, Aolele 
 and her son Lloyd, myself and my son 
 Austin, and Palema, as the natives call 
 Louis's cousin, Graham Balfour. 
 
 " Our furniture has come all the way 
 from Scotland : thirty-seven cases, some 
 
 81
 
 MEMORIES OF VAILIMA 
 
 of them fifteen feet square, weighing in all 
 seventy-two tons. The boxes were brought 
 up on the bullock-carts of the German 
 firm by scores of Solomon Island black- 
 boys, in a most exciting and noisy pro- 
 cession. 
 
 " Mr. Moore, chaplain of H. M. S. 
 Curagoa, came up in his spotless white 
 clothes to help us unpack, returning to his 
 ship in the evening the picture of a chim- 
 ney sweep or, as Louis said, * black but 
 comely.' ' 
 
 "July gth. 
 
 " We have been very gay. Lloyd, 
 Louis, and I went to the officers' ball on 
 the 3d, and on the 4th, two Curagoa 
 marines appeared on the veranda. f Me 
 and my messmates,' one of them said, 
 'invites Mr. and Mrs. Stevenson, Mrs. 
 Strong, Mr. Osbourne and Mr. Balfour 
 82
 
 VAILIMA TABLE-TALK 
 
 to a sailors' ball in the same 'all as last 
 night, not forgetting young Goskin.' We 
 accepted with pleasure, and I went, es- 
 corted by Louis and Austin. The ball 
 was a great success ; everybody was there. 
 Louis said, as he looked on at officers and 
 sailors dancing in the same set, harmony 
 and good-fellowship on all sides, ( The Cu- 
 ragoa revives my faith in human nature ! ' 
 " The next day, Louis, Lloyd, and I 
 rode in the German flower parade or 
 Blumen-Corso, as they called it ; last 
 night we had a dinner-party of twenty, 
 the first time since the boxes were opened, 
 and displayed all our silver and glass with 
 dazzling effect. The big hall lights up 
 beautifully at night, and the pictures, and 
 busts, and old furniture, change the whole 
 aspect of the room. Our guests included 
 Count and Countess Rudolf Festetics, of 
 85
 
 MEMORIES OF VAILIMA 
 
 the yacht 'Tolna, now in port, the captain 
 of the English man-of-war (the German 
 captains were asked but were away cruis- 
 ing) and President Schmidt. Louis was 
 in splendid health and spirits, and though 
 work has been neglected, nobody cares. 
 
 " An English midshipman who is spend- 
 ing a week with us, told me that though 
 he had known and liked Mr. Stevenson 
 all this time, it was only the other day, 
 when he was roaming about the library, 
 looking at the books, that it came over 
 him all of a heap f he's the josser that 
 wrote 'Treasure Island* ' 
 
 "July 2zd, 1894. 
 
 " On Sunday evening, as Austin went 
 to bed, I sat with him as usual for a little 
 talk. He told me a good deal about the 
 Mission at Monterey where he had been 
 at school and the services of the Catholic 
 
 86
 
 VAILIMA TABLE-TALK 
 
 church. ' Protestants,' he said, * don't seem 
 to care for you when you're dead, but the 
 Catholics ' and he gave a long descrip- 
 tion of the funeral ceremonies, ending up 
 with c and eight pall-berries by your coffin ! ' 
 
 " I told them all when I came down. 
 1 What a pretty funeral,' said Louis, f to 
 be decorated with pall-berries ! ' 
 
 " < That is,' said Palema, ' if it is in the 
 pall-berry season.' 
 
 " f ln the islands,' said Lloyd, 'I sup- 
 pose they would have tinned pall-berries ! * 
 
 " c Imagine ! ' said Palema, c if you were 
 too early in the season, and the pall-berries 
 were green. Unripe pall-berries ! ' 
 
 " * Or too late,' said Louis ; f fancy if 
 the pall-berries were rotten ! ' 
 
 " We were talking about some cham- 
 pagne we had drunk at a friend's house. 
 
 87
 
 MEMORIES OF VAILIMA 
 
 " Palema. And such stuff! Such 
 sticky, sweet, treacly 
 
 " Louis. After all, there are only three 
 kinds of champagne sweet, dry, and 
 gooseberry. 
 
 " Teuila. The kind we had was goose- 
 berry. 
 
 " Palema. It was worse ; it was old 
 gooseberry. 
 
 " Louis. We used to get some vile stuff 
 at 's, in London. 
 
 " Palema. Restaurant champagne ? 
 
 "Louis. Infinitely worse ! God knows 
 who could have made it the manufacture 
 must have been a secret. 
 
 " Palema. A secret that died with the 
 man who drank it ! 
 
 " I came into Louis's room to find him 
 and Sosimo very busy, clearing up and 
 
 88
 
 VAILIMA TABLE-TALK 
 
 sorting papers. c Did you tell Sosimo to 
 do this ? ' 1 asked. f No,' said Louis, 
 with his arms full of books, f he told 
 me! ' 
 
 " The other day the cook was away, and 
 Louis, who was busy writing, took his 
 meals in his room. Knowing there was 
 no one to cook his lunch, he told Sosimo 
 to bring him some bread and cheese. To 
 his surprise he was served with an excel- 
 lent meal an omelette, a good salad, and 
 perfect coffee. 
 
 " c Who cooked this ? ' asked Louis, in 
 Samoan. 
 
 " c I did,' said Sosimo. 
 
 " f Well,' said Louis, f great is your 
 wisdom.' 
 
 " Sosimo bowed and corrected him 
 { Great is my love ! ' 
 89
 
 MEMORIES OF VAILIMA 
 
 "Aug. 5th, 1894. 
 
 " Now that the Curagoa is here, Louis 
 only works in the forenoon. Later in the 
 day some one is sure to be seen toiling up 
 the road by what they call * the Curagoa 
 track,' and shortly before they reach the 
 turnstile exchange pleasantries with the 
 upper veranda, where Louis is reading, 
 playing piquet with Palema, or giving 
 Austin a French lesson. If the visitor 
 happens to be either of the two Scotch 
 midshipmen, Lord Kelburn or Mr. 
 Meiklejohn, then the greetings on both 
 sides are in a most excruciating Edinburgh 
 or Glasgow accent. The other day we 
 had a most interesting conversation with 
 the first lieutenant, Mr. Eeles, who is 
 Louis's particular chum on board, and the 
 Lieutenant of Marines, Mr. Worthington. 
 
 " Our talk turned upon the Islands ; 
 90
 
 VAILIMA TABLE-TALK 
 
 Lieutenant Eeles told us of a visit he 
 made to some far-off island of the South- 
 western Pacific ; the natives showed him a 
 place where the * turtle men ' were buried. 
 They called them that, they said, because, 
 though they were white men, their breasts 
 and backs were hard like turtles. He was 
 not much interested, having heard any 
 number of island yarns and legends. It 
 was only after he left the place, and the 
 ship was on its way to Fiji, that suddenly 
 waking from sleep, he sat up with the 
 thought, like a revelation, * the turtle men 
 were white soldiers in armor ! ' 
 
 " Lloyd told of an island a friend of ours 
 had visited that had been bombarded by a 
 man-of-war ; one bomb, left behind in the 
 sand, had not exploded. Afterwards some 
 natives found it, and began hammering it, 
 when it exploded, killing a number of 
 91
 
 MEMORIES OF VAILIMA 
 
 them. Since then the natives warn stran- 
 gers to be careful of the stones, as they 
 are dangerous and liable to blow up. 
 
 " Louis is never tired of hearing the 
 Soldier (as we call Mr. Worthington), 
 who has introduced us to Chevalier's 
 songs. So we wound up the evening 
 with f Liza ' and the Vicar's song from 
 * The Sorcerer,' Louis joining in the 
 chorus at the top of his voice." 
 
 ' Aug. 27th. 
 
 "We have worked at Anne all these 
 mornings when the guns were firing on 
 Atua, stopping once in a while to specu- 
 late on what damage they might be doing. 
 We can get no news, but will hear all 
 about it when the Curagoa comes back. 
 They hate to bombard a miserable little 
 native stronghold and kill a handful of 
 
 innocent people, but they have to obey 
 92
 
 The Road of the Loving Heart.
 
 VAILIMA TABLE-TALK 
 
 orders ; in the meantime, we plod along 
 at Anne^ while groups of natives stand 
 silently and anxiously on the veranda, 
 looking toward Lotuanuu listening to the 
 booming of the guns. 
 
 " To-day we were in the middle of the 
 chapter about the claret-colored chaise, 
 when we were interrupted by the arrival 
 of eight chiefs. They proved to be the 
 liberated political prisoners that we had 
 been interested in for so long, whose free- 
 dom from jail they owe to Louis. Louis 
 entertained them in the smoking-room ; 
 we all sat on the floor in a semicircle and 
 had ava made. Their speeches were very 
 beautiful, and full of genuine gratitude as 
 they went back over the history of every 
 kindness that Louis had done for them. 
 In proof of their gratitude they offered 
 to make a road, sixty feet wide, connecting 
 
 95
 
 MEMORIES OF VAILIMA 
 
 us with the highway across the island. 
 The offer touched and surprised Louis 
 very much, and though he tried to refuse, 
 they overruled every objection. He said 
 if they made the road he would like to 
 name it c The Road of the Grateful 
 Hearts,' but they said no, it would be 
 called f The Road of the Loving Heart,' 
 in the singular, and they asked me to copy 
 out a paper they had written with that 
 name, and all their titles attached, to be 
 painted on a board and put up at the 
 cross-roads." 
 
 " Sept. 24th, 1 894. 
 
 " Louis and I have been writing, work- 
 ing away every morning like steam-engines 
 on Hermiston. Louis got a set-back with 
 Anne, and he has put it aside for awhile. 
 He worried terribly over it, but could 
 not make it run smoothly. He read it 
 96
 
 VAILIMA TABLE-TALK 
 
 aloud one evening and Lloyd criticised 
 the love-scene, so Louis threw the whole 
 thing over for a time. Fortunately he 
 picked up Hermiston all right, and is in 
 better spirits at once. He has always 
 been wonderfully clear and sustained in 
 his dictation, but he generally made notes 
 in the early morning, which he elaborated 
 as he read them aloud. In Hermiston 
 he had hardly more than a line or two of 
 notes to keep him on the track, but he 
 never falters for a word, giving me the 
 sentences, with capital letters and all the 
 stops, as clearly and steadily as though he 
 were reading from an unseen book. He 
 walks up and down the room as I write, 
 and his voice is so beautiful and the story 
 so interesting that I forget to rest ; when 
 we are interrupted by the lunch-bell, I 
 am sometimes quite cramped, and Louis 
 
 97
 
 MEMORIES OF VAILIMA 
 
 thumps me on the back in imitation of a 
 Samoan lomi-lomi (massage) and apologizes. 
 The story is all the more thrilling as he 
 says he has taken me for young Kirsty. 
 
 "We had such an interesting time to- 
 day, looking over old fashion-books for 
 the heroine's clothes. Her dress is gray, 
 to which I suggested the addition of a 
 pink kerchief; this afternoon Louis came 
 into my room to announce that in her 
 evening walk Kirsty would wear pink silk 
 stockings to match her kerchief; he said 
 he could use the incident very artfully to 
 develop her character. f Belle,' he said, 
 ' I see it all so clearly ! The story unfolds 
 itself before me to the least detail there 
 is nothing left in doubt. I never felt so 
 before in anything I ever wrote. It will 
 be my best work ; I feel myself so sure in 
 
 every word ! ' 
 
 98
 
 VAILIMA TABLE-TALK 
 
 " Nov. 3oth. 
 
 " A few days ago three sailors of 
 H. M. S. Wallaroo came up and asked 
 for a drink of water. We gave them seats 
 on the veranda and offered them some cool 
 beer after their long, hot walk. When 
 Louis came down to talk to them he was 
 not long in discovering that they were all 
 three Scotch ; they had made for Vailima, 
 4 like homing pigeons/ on their first day 
 of leave. When they were going away I 
 gave them an opportunity to return by 
 asking for a pattern of a sailor jacket. 
 
 " Yesterday we were sitting on the little 
 front veranda by Louis's work-room, peg- 
 ging away at Hermiston like one o'clock. 
 I hardly drew breath, but flew over the 
 paper ; Louis thinks it is good himself, 
 so we were in a very cheerful humor ; 
 we heard a babble of voices at the gate 
 
 99
 
 MEMORIES OF VAILIMA 
 
 and recognized our sailors. Louis gave 
 up with the utmost good-nature, and 
 came down to talk with them. It was 
 Thanksgiving Day, and preparations were 
 going on for a dinner party, with all 
 American dishes. Aolele was experiment- 
 ing with some Samoan berries, with a view 
 to cranberry sauce ; the kitchen depart- 
 ment was in great excitement over that 
 foreign bird, the turkey. I overhauled 
 the silver, Lloyd was concocting cocktails 
 to stow away on the ice, and the village 
 girls, who scent festivities from afar, and 
 always appear smiling and ready to help, 
 were rilling the jars and vases, and dress- 
 ing the table in flowers ; all this made a 
 great confusion, but Louis kept his sailors 
 on all the afternoon. 
 
 " He took them over the house and 
 showed them the busts and statues, the 
 
 100
 
 VAILIMA TABLE-TALK 
 
 Burmah gods, the curiosities from the 
 islands, the big picture of Skerry vore light- 
 house, built by his grandfather on the coast 
 of Scotland ; the treasured bit of Gordon's 
 handwriting, from Khartoum, in Arabic 
 letters on a cigarette paper, framed, for 
 safety, between two pieces of glass ; and 
 the library, where the Scotchmen gathered 
 about an old edition of Burns, with a por- 
 trait. Louis gave a volume of Under- 
 woods , with an inscription, to Grant, the 
 one who hailed from Edinburgh, and the 
 man carried it carefully wrapped in his 
 handkerchief. As they went away, waving 
 their sailor hats and keeping step, Louis 
 leaned over the railing of the veranda and 
 said, looking after them with a smile, 
 ' How I love a blue-jacket ! What a pity 
 we can't invite them to our dinner to-night ; 
 
 they would be so entertaining ! ' 
 103
 
 The Inscription. 
 (Seepage 94.)
 
 MR. STEVENSON'S HOME 
 LIFE AT VAILIMA
 
 MR. STEVENSON'S HOME 
 LIFE AT VAILIMA 
 
 THREE miles behind Apia, on a 
 rising plateau that stands some 
 seven hundred feet above the 
 ocean level, lie the house and grounds of 
 Vailima. " I have chosen the land to be 
 my land, the people to be my people, to 
 live and die with," said Mr. Stevenson, in 
 his speech to the Samoan chiefs, and his 
 great lonely house beneath Vaea Moun- 
 tain, the fruit of so much love, thought, 
 and patient labor, will never lose the 
 world's interest, nor fail to be a spot of 
 pious pilgrimage, so long as his books 
 endure and his exile be unforgotten. For 
 Stevenson was an exile ; he knew he 
 
 107
 
 MEMORIES OF VAILIMA 
 
 would never see his native land again 
 when the Ludgate Hill carried him down 
 the Thames ; he knew he had turned his 
 back forever on the old world, which 
 had come to mean no more to him than 
 shattered health, shattered hopes, a life 
 of gray invalidism, tragic to recall. What- 
 ever the future held in store for him, he 
 knew it could be no worse than what he 
 was leaving, that living death of the sick- 
 room the horror of which he never dared 
 put to paper. I can remember the few 
 minutes allowed him each day in the open 
 air when the thin sunshine of South Eng- 
 land permitted; his despairing face, the 
 bitterness of the soul too big for words 
 when this little liberty was perforce re- 
 fused him. I recall him saying : " I do 
 not ask for health, but I will go any- 
 where, live anywhere I can enjoy the or- 
 
 108
 
 HOME LIFE AT VAILIMA 
 
 dinary existence of a human being." I 
 used to remind him of that when at 
 "mes his Samoan exile lay heavy upon 
 him, and his eyes turned longingly to 
 home and to those friends he would never 
 see again. 
 
 I will say nothing of the voyaging, of 
 the long, dim winter in the Adirondacks, 
 of the various chain of events that carried 
 him into the southern seas and a new life. 
 His health began to return at once ; at the 
 end of the second cruise in the schooner 
 Equator ', he even dared to think of return- 
 ing home, and went to the length of en- 
 gaging cabins in the mail steamer. But 
 even the mild and pleasant climate of New 
 South Wales, so like that of Italy or 
 southern California, proved too harsh for 
 his new-born strength, and a severe illness 
 overwhelmed him on the eve of his depart-
 
 MEMORIES OF VAILIMA 
 
 ure. The vessel sailed without him, and 
 he was no sooner able to walk than he re- 
 turned to the islands in the private trading 
 steamer of one of his friends. He grew 
 well immediately, and began to recognize 
 the hopelessness of quitting the only spot 
 that offered him a degree of health ; and 
 when the cruise was done and the vessel 
 paid off in Sydney, he returned to Samoa 
 in order to make it his home. 
 
 When we first saw Vailima it was 
 covered with unbroken forest; not the 
 forest of the temperate zone with varied 
 glades and open spaces, but the thick 
 tangle of the tropics, dense, dark, and 
 cool in even the hottest day. The mur- 
 mur of streams and waterfalls fell some- 
 times upon our ears as we wandered in 
 the deep shade, and mingled with the 
 cooing of wild doves and the mysterious, 
 
 112
 
 HOME LIFE AT VAILIMA 
 
 echoing sound of a native woodpecker 
 at work. Our Chinaman, who was with 
 us on this 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 delighted with what 
 we saw, and could realize, as we forced 
 our way through the thickets and skirted 
 the deep ravines, what a noble labor lay 
 before our axes, what exquisite views and 
 glorious gardens could be carved out of 
 the broken mountain-side and the sullen 
 forest. 
 
 The land was bought, a half square 
 mile of forest-clad plateau, ravine, and 
 mountain, and the blind blacksmith who 
 sold the property generously threw in a 
 herd of cattle, very precisely estimated 
 at forty in number, which from that day 
 
 "5
 
 MEMORIES OF VAILIMA 
 
 to this, has never been seen by the eye 
 of man. Years passed in health-resorts 
 and crowded cities made Mr. Steven- 
 son greedy of land-owning when the op- 
 portunity came to him ; he was determined 
 that no row of villas in the uncertain future 
 should mar his vistas of the sea nor press 
 their back gardens into his plantation. 
 In this, it must be confessed, he saw far 
 ahead, for poor, distracted, war-worn 
 Samoa has not encouraged the villa-resi- 
 dent as yet, and the primeval forest still 
 stretches from Vailima across the island to 
 the shores beyond. 
 
 A rough shanty was built, a pony 
 bought, a German in decayed circum- 
 stances engaged as cook, and Mr. Steven- 
 son took up his quarters in the first 
 clearing and began pioneer life with an 
 undaunted heart. For months he lived 
 
 116
 
 Mr. Stevenson and His Friend Tuimale Alnfono.
 
 HOME LIFE AT VAILIMA 
 
 in a most distracting fashion, and threw 
 himself with ardor into the work of felling, 
 clearing, and opening up his acres to cul- 
 tivation. Gangs of Samoans were busy 
 the whole day long, and the rough, over- 
 grown path from town flattened beneath 
 the tread of naked feet. Planks and 
 scantling lined it for upwards of a mile, 
 representing the various stages of his in- 
 dustry and the various misfortunes that 
 had overtaken the noble savage in his 
 labors. The little leisure of the planter 
 was spent in studying the language, in 
 teaching his overseer English decimals 
 and history after the harassing hours of 
 the day, and in acquainting himself first 
 hand with the amazing inconsistencies that 
 make up the Samoan character. 
 
 The new house was built ; I arrived 
 
 from England with the furniture, the 
 119
 
 MEMORIES OF VAILIMA 
 
 library, and other effects of our old home ; 
 the phase of hard work and short com- 
 mons passed gradually away, and a form 
 of hollow comfort dawned upon us. I 
 say hollow comfort, for though we began 
 to accumulate cows, horses, and the general 
 apparatus of civilized life, the question of 
 service became a vexing one. An expen- 
 sive German cooked our meals and quar- 
 relled with the white housemaid ; 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 roused in the 
 early morning, " for one ought to wake 
 up natural - like." The white carter 
 " couldn't bear with niggers," and though 
 he did his work well and faithfully, he 
 helped to demoralize the place and add 
 to our difficulties. Everything was at 
 
 120
 
 HOME LIFE AT VAILIMA 
 
 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 dis- 
 charged the carter; the white overseer 
 (who was tied to us by contract) was 
 bought off with cold coin, to sleep out his 
 " natural sleep " under a kindlier star and 
 to engage himself (presumably) in intel- 
 lectual labors elsewhere. With the de- 
 parture 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- 
 123
 
 MEMORIES OF VAILIMA 
 
 bowls ! Our friends were pressed to 
 lunch with us, to commend our inde- 
 pendence and to eat our biscuits. It 
 was a French Revolution in miniature ; 
 we danced the carmignole 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 a dandified 
 youngster, with a red flower behind his 
 ear and his hair limed in the latest fashion. 
 I liked his open face and his unembarrassed 
 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 col- 
 124
 
 lalolo.
 
 HOME LIFE AT VAILIMA 
 
 lect the debt in person. That Simele 
 would not be back for hours in no way 
 disturbed 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 go- 
 ing 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 mo- 
 127
 
 MEMORIES OF VAILIMA 
 
 ment in the history of Vailima. You are 
 the Man of Destiny." 
 
 " But I haven't my box," he expostu- 
 lated. 
 
 " 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 be- 
 side my humble bed; and in the hot 
 hours of the afternoon there is the beau- 
 tifullest pool where you can bathe and 
 wash your lovely hair. Moreover, so 
 generous are the regulations of Tusitala'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 
 128
 
 HOME LIFE AT VAILIMA 
 
 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 cutlass or 
 head-knife. He became in time not only 
 an admirable chef, but the nucleus of 
 the whole native establishment and the 
 loyalest of all our Samoan family. His 
 coming was the turning-point in the his- 
 tory of the house ; we had achieved inde- 
 pendence 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. 
 
 Samoans live in a loose, patriarchal 
 fashion. With them, as with most bar- 
 barians, the family is everything, and the 
 immediate head of it the unit of the coun- 
 try. Moreover, the easy system of adop- 
 131
 
 MEMORIES OF VAILIMA 
 
 tion that prevails throughout, and the 
 bounty of Nature that makes food-getting 
 more of a pastime than a labor, allows 
 the Samoan to pass from one family to 
 another almost at will. There is a single 
 word in the dictionary that contains a 
 world of meaning a man that works hard 
 for a short time and then grows lazy 
 "as applied to a stranger entering a 
 new family." 
 
 Naturally it came to pass in Vailima 
 that a new family was started, with Mr. 
 Stevenson for its house-chief, and the 
 tradition of devotion and service trans- 
 ferred bodily from Samoan life into our 
 own. None knew better than Mr. Ste- 
 venson how to foster and encourage this 
 innovation, and our family soon began to 
 acquire a status in the land. The Stuart 
 
 tartan kilt, our uniform on Sundays and 
 132
 
 HOME LIFE AT VAILIMA 
 
 other holidays, became a thing of pride 
 to the wearer and the badge of his high 
 connection, and the mamalu or prestige of 
 Vailima was to be supported and upheld 
 by every son of the house. Truth suf- 
 fered occasionally at the hands of the 
 more zealous, and I can trace many mis- 
 statements and exaggerations that have 
 crept into print to the misguided though 
 laudable ardor of our clansmen. A friend 
 aptly described Vailima as " an Irish cas- 
 tle of 1820 minus the dirt." It must be 
 remembered that the better class of Sa- 
 moans are gentlefolk, and are undistin- 
 guishable, so far as good manners, good 
 breeding and tact are concerned, from the 
 people we ordinarily mix with in our own 
 country. No Spaniard is more punctil- 
 ious in matters of etiquette, no German 
 prouder of his long pedigree, than these 
 135
 
 MEMORIES OF VAILIMA 
 
 handsome and stalwart barbarians ; and 
 their language is even enriched by a whole 
 vocabulary of courtesy with which every 
 chief must be familiar. In fact, the rude- 
 ness, boorishness, and pretentiousness of 
 many whites is often sharply criticised and 
 condemned. 
 
 In number the Vailima family varied 
 from thirteen to twenty-one, a picked lot 
 of young men that for physique, good 
 manners, obedience, and manliness it 
 would be hard to match in any country. 
 It must be said that Mr. Stevenson's 
 methods of discipline had much to do 
 with this favorable result. Unquestioning 
 and absolute obedience was insisted upon ; 
 an order once given was seldom altered or 
 modified, and the singular and unforeseen 
 partiality of Samoans (apparently the most 
 casual of mankind) for svstem, for an or- 
 136
 
 A Samoan Chief.
 
 HOME LIFE AT VAILIMA 
 
 dered and regulated existence, for a har- 
 ness of daily routine, was taken advantage 
 of to the fullest degree. Every man had 
 his work outlined for him in advance, and 
 several even possessed type-written lists 
 of their various duties. Little proclama- 
 tions and notices were often posted up in 
 order to correct petty irregularities, and to 
 define the responsibility and authority of 
 each member of the household. For 
 breaches of discipline, untruthfulness, ab- 
 sence without leave, etc., money fines were 
 imposed with rigorous impartiality, and 
 for more serious offences a regular court 
 martial was held. No one was ever fined 
 without his first assenting to the justice of 
 the punishment, and the culprit was always 
 given the option of receiving his money 
 in full and being dismissed the place. A 
 leaf, too, was taken with advantage from 
 139
 
 MEMORIES OF VAILIMA 
 
 the old Naval Regulations, and no man 
 was ever punished the same day of the 
 offence. The fines themselves went into 
 the coffers of the rival missionary soci- 
 eties, Protestant or Roman Catholic, ac- 
 cording to the creed of the involuntary 
 donor. A lecture often fell to the lot of 
 the wrong-doer that he relished even less 
 than the penalty of his offence, and the 
 summing up of an important suenga or 
 trial w^s always listened to in breathless 
 silence by the members of the household. 
 It ran usually to something of this sort : 
 
 " Fiaali'i, you have confessed that you 
 stole the cooked pigs, the taro, the palusa- 
 mis, the breadfruit, and fish that fell to 
 Vailima's portion at yesterday's feast. 
 Your wish to eat was greater than your 
 wish to be a gentleman. You have shown 
 
 a bad heart and your sin is a great one, 
 140
 
 HOME LIFE AT VAILIMA 
 
 not alone for the pigs which count as 
 naught, but because you have been false 
 to your family. Even a German black- 
 boy that knows not God and whom you 
 despise, would not have done what you 
 have done. It is easy to say that you are 
 sorry, that you wish you were dead : but 
 that is no answer. We have lost far more 
 than a few dozen baskets of food ; we 
 have lost our trust in you, which used to 
 be so great, our confidence in your loyalty 
 and high-chiefness. See how many bad 
 things have resulted from your sin ! First, 
 you have told many lies and have tried to 
 screen your wickedness by a trick, say- 
 ing that five baskets was all the feast ap- 
 portioned to us, thus bringing shame on 
 the gentleman who gave it. Secondly, 
 you persuaded Ti'a, Tulafono, and Satu- 
 paiala to join in your conspiracy, which 
 141
 
 MEMORIES OF VAILIMA 
 
 they did not wish to do at first, they 
 being like Eve in the garden and you the 
 serpent. You have hurt all our hearts 
 here, not because of the pigs, but because 
 we are ashamed and mortified before the 
 world. If this thing gets spoken of and 
 carried from house to house, we shall be 
 ashamed to walk along the road, for peo- 
 ple will mock at us, and the name of 
 Vailima will not be fragrant. Then if it 
 reaches the ears of the great chiefs that 
 treated us so handsomely, are we to say : 
 * Be not angry, gentlemen, four of our 
 family are thieves ; their respect and love 
 for me is great, but their wish to eat pig 
 is greater still ! ' There are great sins 
 that are easily forgiven : there are others 
 that are hard to pardon. It is better to 
 obey a strong and angry heart than to 
 obey the belly. / am not your father ; / 
 142
 
 HOME LIFE AT VAILIMA 
 
 am not your chief. The belly is your 
 chief! But God has not given all my 
 family bad hearts. Look at Leupolu. 
 He was not like Ti'a, Tulafono, and Sa- 
 tupaiala ; he was a brave man, though he 
 was only one and you so many. He 
 said you were doing a wicked thing ; he 
 would not surrender his burden of food, 
 nor did the fear of ghosts prevent him 
 coming home in the dark. For if a man 
 is brave in uprightness he is brave in all 
 other ways. But Leupolu loved his fam- 
 ily more than his belly, and when he 
 came home he did not make a great cry, 
 nor did he tell the story of your wicked- 
 ness. He went about with a sad face and 
 said nothing, for he was like myself, an- 
 gry but sorrowful. He will be rewarded 
 for his love with a new kilt and suitable 
 jacket. Ti'a, Tulafono, and Satupaiala 
 143
 
 MEMORIES OF VAILIMA 
 
 are each fined two dollars. Fiaali'i, you 
 are fined thirty dollars to be paid in week- 
 ly instalments. When the whole thirty- 
 six dollars is ready it will be handed you, 
 and you will make us a great feast here 
 in Vailima by way of atonement, and for 
 every pig stolen there shall be two pigs, 
 and for every taro, two taro, and so on 
 and more also. You shall be the host, but 
 you shall call none of your friends to the 
 feast, nor Ti'a, Tulafono, nor Satupaiala, 
 but the others shall invite their friends. 
 Then you will be forgiven and this thing 
 forgotten. We live only by the high-chief- 
 will of God, nor must we be cruel to one 
 another when the High-Chief-Son of God 
 is so good to us all. One word must 
 still be said. Let the story of this wicked 
 business be buried in your hearts, lest 
 
 strangers talk of it. Fiaali'i and the others 
 144
 
 A Samoan Matai, or Head of a Family.
 
 HOME LIFE AT VAILIMA 
 
 have been tried and punished, and their 
 penalties must not be increased by mock- 
 ery or reproaches. Think of your own 
 sins and hold your peace. This trial is 
 finished. Sosimo, Mitaele, and Pulu will 
 make 'ava for us all, and it will be called 
 on the front veranda." 
 
 But Mr. Stevenson was not only the 
 judge in the household, the meter out of 
 punishments and rewards; he was the 
 real matai or head of the family, and was 
 always ready, no matter how busy he 
 might be, or how much immersed in liter- 
 ary work, to turn a friendly ear to the 
 plaints of his people. He was consulted 
 on every imaginable subject, and all man- 
 ner of petty persecutions and petty injus- 
 tices were put right by his strong arm. 
 Government chiefs and rebels consulted 
 him with regard to policy ; political letters
 
 MEMORIES OF VAILIMA 
 
 were brought to him to read and criticise ; 
 his native following was so widely divided 
 in party that he was often kept better in- 
 formed on current events than any one 
 person in the country. Old gentlemen 
 would arrive in stately procession with 
 squealing pigs for the " chief-house of 
 wisdom," and would beg advice on the 
 capitation-tax or some such subject of the 
 hour ; an armed party would come from 
 across the island with gifts, and a request 
 that Tusitala would take charge of the 
 funds of the village and in time buy the 
 roof-iron for a proposed church. Parties 
 would come to hear the latest news of the 
 proposed disarming of the country, or to 
 arrange a private audience with one of the 
 officials ; and poor, war-worn chieftains, 
 whose only anxiety was to join the win- 
 ning side, and who wished to consult with 
 148
 
 A fistta'.
 
 HOME LIFE AT VAILIMA 
 
 Tusitala as to which that might be. Mr. 
 Stevenson would sigh sometimes as he saw 
 these stately folk crossing the lawn in 
 single file, their attendants following be- 
 hind with presents and baskets, but he 
 never failed to meet or hear them. 
 
 It has often been asked what gave Mr. 
 Stevenson his standing in Samoa ; what it 
 was that made this English man of letters 
 such a power in the land of his adoption. 
 It must be remembered that to the Sa- 
 moan mind he was inordinately rich, and 
 many of them believe in the bottom of 
 their hearts that the story of the bottle- 
 imp was no fiction, but a tangible fact. 
 Mr. Stevenson was a resident, a consider- 
 able land-owner, a man like themselves, 
 with taro-swamps, banana plantations, and 
 a Samoan ainga or family. He was no 
 official with a hired house, here to-day
 
 MEMORIES OF VAILIMA 
 
 with specious good-will on his lips, and 
 empty promises, but off to-morrow in the 
 mail steamer to that vague region called 
 " papalagi " or " the white country." He 
 knew Samoan etiquette, and was familiar 
 with the baser as well as the better side 
 of the native character ; he was cautiously 
 generous after the fashion of the country, 
 and neither excited covetousness by undue 
 prodigality nor failed to respond in a be- 
 fitting way for favors received. More- 
 over, he was a consistent partisan of 
 Mataafa, the ill-fated rebel king, a man 
 of high and noble character, who though 
 beaten and crushed by the government 
 forces was nevertheless looked up to and 
 covertly admired by all Samoa. The di- 
 vinity that doth hedge a king, even a de- 
 feated and fallen one, cast a glamour over 
 
 his close friend, Mr. Stevenson. And 
 152
 
 HOME LIFE AT VAILIMA 
 
 when the British man-of-war brought the 
 unfortunate ex-king to Apia with many 
 of his chiefs, it was Mr. Stevenson that 
 first boarded the ship with sympathy and 
 assistance ; it was Mr. Stevenson that 
 lighted the great ovens and brought down 
 his men weighted with food-baskets when 
 all were afraid and stood aloof; it was Mr. 
 Stevenson that attended to the political 
 prisoners in the noisome jail after they 
 had been flogged through the streets and 
 foully mishandled under the very guns of 
 the men-of-war ; it was Mr. Stevenson that 
 brought and paid the doctor, that had the 
 stinking prison cleansed, that fed the 
 starving wretches from his own pocket un- 
 til the officials were shamed and terrified 
 into action. These things made a deep 
 impression at the time, and will never be 
 altogether forgotten. No wonder the gov- 
 153
 
 MEMORIES OF VAILIMA 
 
 ernment chiefs said to one another : " Be- 
 hold, this is indeed a friend ; would our 
 white officials have done the same had the 
 day gone against us ? " And the expres- 
 sion, " Once Tusitala's friend, always Tu- 
 sitala's friend," went about the countryside 
 \ike a proverb. 
 
 Mr. Stevenson's relations with the mis- 
 sionary bodies, the two Protestant and the 
 Roman Catholic, were particularly happy. 
 He stood high in the esteem of all three, 
 for though a candid critic, he was in keen 
 sympathy with their work and their way 
 of doing it, and was ever outspoken in his 
 admiration of their high-mindedness, un- 
 sectarianism, and honest endeavor to im- 
 prove the people. His friendship and 
 regard was no less generously returned ; 
 and they opened their hearts to him, freely 
 and frankly, on many a delicate matter 
 154
 
 HOME LIFE AT VAILIMA 
 
 undivulged to the general world ; for to- 
 gether they stood on the common ground 
 of regard for Samoa and devotion to its 
 welfare. Would that I could say the 
 same of our officials, or characterize Mr. 
 Stevenson's relations with the most of 
 them in the same strain ; but it must be 
 confessed that to them he was the b$te 
 noir of the country, or a better simile, the 
 Samoan Jove, whose thunderbolts carried 
 consternation far and wide. In vain they 
 attempted to deport him from the island, 
 to close his mouth by regulation, to post 
 spies about his house and involve him in 
 the illicit importation of arms and fixed 
 ammunition. The natives looked on in 
 wonder, and when the officials vanished 
 and the undaunted Tusitala remained be- 
 hind, they drew their own conclusions. 
 But of the many causes that went to 
 155
 
 MEMORIES OF VAILIMA 
 
 make Mr. Stevenson a considerable figure 
 in his adopted country, his own personality 
 after all was the chiefest. If his ardent, 
 sympathetic individuality shines so con- 
 vincingly through the text of his books 
 that it makes friends of those who but 
 dimly understand his work, how much 
 more was it the case in far Samoa, where 
 no printed page intervened between the 
 man and his fellows, where his voice 
 reached first hand and swayed not liter- 
 ary coteries in the heart of civilization, but 
 war-scarred chiefs with guns in their hands 
 and wrongs to right. He would have 
 been loved and followed anywhere, but 
 how much more in poor, misgoverned, 
 distracted Samoa, so remote, so inarticu- 
 late ; for he was one of the Great-hearts 
 of this world both in pen and deed, and 
 many were those he helped. 
 156
 
 HOME LIFE AT VAILIMA 
 
 The current of life ran very placidly in 
 Vailima, in spite of the little agitations 
 and bitternesses of the tiny world at our 
 feet. The conch-shell awakened the 
 household at daybreak, and the routine of 
 existence went forward unchanged, for all 
 that the cannon might boom from the 
 men-of-war, and the mellow trumpets 
 proclaim the march of armed men. At 
 times a war-party would halt at our front 
 veranda, discuss a bowl of y ava with the 
 head of the house, and melt picturesquely 
 away again in the forest, with perhaps a 
 feu de joie in honor of their host a com- 
 pliment that he would gladly have dis- 
 pensed with. Meals were served in the 
 great hall of Vailima, a noble room over 
 fifty feet long and proportionately broad, 
 of which Mr. Stevenson was pardonably 
 proud. At half past two the clapping of 
 159
 
 MEMORIES OF VAILIMA 
 
 hands announced that 'ava was prepared 
 that peculiar beverage of the South 
 Pacific and when everyone was assembled 
 it was called and distributed in the Samoan 
 manner, Mr. Stevenson receiving the first 
 cup according to the dictates of etiquette. 
 There were usually visitors in the house, 
 and the cool of the noon often brought 
 callers from the " beach," officers from the 
 men-of-war, missionaries, officials, blue- 
 jackets, local residents, priests, Mormon 
 elders, passing tourists all the flotsam 
 and jetsam, in fact, of a petty port lying 
 on one of the great thoroughfares of the 
 world. It is hard for an outsider to real- 
 ize the life and animation there is in Samoa. 
 The American conjures up a picture of a 
 frontier post ; the Englishman harks to 
 Kipling and station life in India ; and both 
 are wrong. Samoa is very cosmopolitan 
 
 160
 
 HOME LIFE AT VAILIMA 
 
 for all its insignificance on the map and its 
 white population of four hundred souls ; 
 balls, picnics, parties, are of common oc- 
 currence ; there is a constant flow of news, 
 rumor, and island gossip ; and four steam- 
 ers a month link the group to the outside 
 world and bring an endless procession of 
 strange faces across our little stage. 
 
 Mr. Stevenson was fond of amusement 
 and hospitality, and apart from a constant 
 succession of more formal luncheon parties 
 and dinners, there was always room at his 
 table for the unexpected guests that the 
 chef had orders to bear in mind. The 
 first cotillon ever given in Samoa took 
 place at Vailima ; the first pony paper- 
 chase was got up under Mr. Stevenson's 
 direction ; he was always eager to bear his 
 part in any scheme for the public enter- 
 tainment, and his support and subscription 
 
 161
 
 MEMORIES OF VAILIMA 
 
 could always be reckoned on in advance. 
 Nor was he less backward with regard to 
 the natives, whom he often feasted in the 
 Samoan way with great pomp and a 
 rigorous regard to etiquette and custom. 
 His birthday party was a veritable gather- 
 ing of the clans, beginning at dawn and 
 continuing uninterruptedly till dusk, with 
 a huge feast and troops of dancers to enter- 
 tain the people. A Christmas-tree rejoiced 
 the household every year, and was the 
 occasion of breathless anticipation and 
 excitement; and the little fiesta was not 
 unenhanced by the good-humored raillery 
 with which the presents were distributed. 
 
 Mr. Stevenson could not be seen to 
 better advantage than at the head of his 
 faultless table, sharing and leading the 
 conversation of the guests that various 
 
 strange fates had brought together beneath 
 162

 
 HOME LIFE AT VAILIMA 
 
 his roof. He loved the contrast of even- 
 ing dress and the half-naked attendants ; 
 the rough track that led the visitor through 
 forest and jungle to this glowing house 
 under Vaea, the juxtaposition of original 
 Hogarths, Piranes's, pictures by Sargent, 
 Lemon and Will H. Low ; the sculptured 
 work of Rodin and Augustus St. Gaudens, 
 with rifle-racks, revolvers and trophies of 
 savage weapons. And the conversation 
 that was to match : English literature and 
 copra ; Paul Bourget's new book and the 
 rebel loss at Tifitifi ; European politics, 
 and the best methods of suppressing head- 
 taking ! 
 
 When he was detained in town at night, 
 or by some mischance was late of returning 
 to Vailima, it was his command that the 
 house should be lit throughout so that he 
 might see it shining through the forest on 
 165
 
 MEMORIES OF VAILIMA 
 
 his home-coming. As I must now be 
 drawing to an end, where better could I 
 stop than at this picture the tired man 
 drawing rein in " The Road of the Loving 
 Heart," and gazing up at the lights of 
 home? 
 
 166
 
 POLA
 
 POLA 
 
 " "Y" F you want a child as badly as all 
 that," my brother said, "why not 
 adopt a chief's son, someone who is 
 handsome and well-born, and will be a 
 credit to you, instead of crying your eyes 
 out over a little common brat who is an 
 ungrateful cub, and ugly into the bar- 
 gain ? " 
 
 I wasn't particularly fond of the " com- 
 mon brat," but I had grown used to tend- 
 ing him, bandaging his miserable little foot 
 and trying to make his lot easier to bear, 
 and he had been spirited away. One may 
 live long in Samoa without understanding 
 the whys and wherefores. His mother 
 
 may have been jealous of my care of the 
 169
 
 MEMORIES OF VAILIMA 
 
 child and carried him away in the night ; 
 or the clan to which he belonged may 
 have sent for him, though his reputed 
 father was our assistant cook. At any 
 rate, he had gone disappeared as com- 
 pletely and entirely as though he had 
 vanished into thin air, and I, sitting on 
 the steps of the veranda, gave way to tears. 
 
 Two days later, hastening across the 
 court-yard, I turned the corner sud- 
 denly, nearly falling over a small Samoan 
 boy, who stood erect in a gallant pose be- 
 fore the house, leaning upon a long stick 
 of sugar-cane, as though it were a spear. 
 
 " Who are you ? " I asked, in the na- 
 tive language. 
 
 " I am your son," was the surprising 
 reply. 
 
 " And what is your name ? " 
 
 " Pola," he said. " Pola, of Tanuga- 
 170
 
 I 
 
 Pola.
 
 POLA 
 
 manono, and my mother is the white chief 
 lady, Teuila of Vailima." 
 
 He was a beautiful creature, of an even 
 tint of light bronze brown ; his slender 
 body reflected the polish of scented cocoa- 
 nut oil, the tiny garment he called his 
 lava lava, fastened at the waist, was 
 coquettishly kilted above one knee. He 
 wore a necklace of scarlet berries across 
 his shoulders, and a bright red hibiscus 
 flower stuck behind his ear. On his cheek 
 a single rose-leaf hid the dimple. His 
 large black eyes looked up at me with an 
 expression of terror, overcome by pure 
 physical courage. From the top of his 
 curly head to the soles of his high-arched 
 slender foot he looked tamaalii high- 
 bred. To all my inquiries he answered in 
 purest high-chief Samoan that he was my 
 son. 
 
 173
 
 MEMORIES OF VAILIMA 
 
 My brother came to the rescue with 
 explanations. Taking pity on me, he had 
 gone to our village (as we called Tanuga- 
 manono) and adopted the chief's second 
 son in my name, and here he was come to 
 present himself in person. 
 
 I shook hands with him, a ceremony he 
 performed very gracefully with great dig- 
 nity. Then he offered me the six feet of 
 sugar-cane, with the remark that it was a 
 small, trifling gift, unworthy of my high- 
 chief notice. I accepted it with a show 
 of great joy and appreciation, though by 
 a turn of the head one could see acres of 
 sugar-cane growing on the other side of 
 the river. 
 
 There was an element of embarrass- 
 ment in the possession of this charming 
 creature. I could not speak the Samoan 
 language very well at that time. nd saw, 
 174
 
 POLA 
 
 by his vague but polite smile, that much 
 of my conversation was incomprehensible 
 to him. His language to me was so ex- 
 tremely " high-chief" that I could not 
 understand more than three words in a 
 sentence. What made the situation still 
 more poignant was that look of repressed 
 fear glinting in the depths of his velvety 
 eyes. 
 
 I took him by the hand (that trembled 
 slightly in mine, though he walked boldly 
 along with me) and led him about the 
 house, thinking the sight of all the won- 
 ders of Vailima might divert his mind. 
 When I threw open the door of the hall, 
 with its pictures and statues, waxed floor 
 and glitter of silver on the sideboard, Pola 
 made the regulation quotation from Script- 
 ure, " And behold the half has not been 
 told me." 
 
 175
 
 MEMORIES OF VAILIMA 
 
 He went quite close to the tiger-skin, 
 with the glass eyes and big teeth. "It is 
 not living ? " he asked, and when I assured 
 him it was dead he remarked that it was a 
 large pussy, and then added, gravely, that 
 he supposed the forests of London were 
 filled with these animals. 
 
 He held my hand quite tightly going 
 up the stairs, and I realized then that he 
 could never have mounted a staircase be- 
 fore. Indeed, everything in the house, 
 even chairs and tables, books and pictures, 
 were new and strange to this little savage 
 gentleman. 
 
 I took him to my room, where I had a 
 number of letters to write. He sat on the 
 floor at my feet very obediently while I 
 went on with my work. Looking down a 
 few minutes later I saw that he had fallen 
 asleep, lying on a white rug in a childish, 
 176
 
 POLA 
 
 graceful attitude, and I realized again his 
 wild beauty and charm. 
 
 Late in the day, as it began to grow 
 dark, I asked Pola if he did not wish to 
 go home. 
 
 " No, Teuila," he answered, bravely. 
 
 " But you will be my boy just the same," 
 I explained. " Only you see Tumau (his 
 real mother) will be lonely at first. So 
 you can sleep at the village and come and 
 see me during the day." 
 
 His eyes lit up with that and the first 
 smile of the day overspread his face, show- 
 ing the whitest teeth imaginable. 
 
 It was not long before he was perfectly 
 at home in Vailima. He would arrive in 
 the morning early, attended by a serving- 
 man of his family who walked meekly in 
 the young chief's footsteps, carrying the 
 
 usual gift for me. Sometimes it was 
 177
 
 MEMORIES OF VAILIMA 
 
 sugar-cane, or a wreath woven by the 
 village girls, or a single fish wrapped in 
 a piece of banana-leaf, or a few fresh 
 water prawns, or even a bunch of way- 
 side flowers ; my little son seldom came 
 empty-handed. 
 
 It was Pola who really taught me the 
 Samoan language. Ordinarily the natives 
 cannot simplify their remarks for foreign- 
 ers, but Pola invented a sort of Samoan 
 baby-talk for me; sometimes, if I could not 
 understand, he would shake me with his 
 fierce little brown hands, crying " Stupid, 
 stupid ! " But generally he was extremely 
 patient, trying a sentence in half a dozen 
 different ways, with his bright eyes fixed 
 eagerly on my face; when the sense of 
 what he said dawned upon me and I re- 
 peated it to prove that I understood, his 
 own countenance would light up with an 
 178
 
 POLA 
 
 expression of absolute pride and triumph. 
 " Good ! " he would say, approvingly. 
 " Great is your high-chief wisdom ! " 
 
 Once we spent a happy afternoon to- 
 gether in the forest picking up queer land 
 shells, bright berries and curious flowers, 
 while Pola dug up a number of plants by 
 the roots. I asked him the next day what 
 he had done with the beautiful red flowers. 
 His reply was beyond me, so I shook my 
 head. He looked at me anxiously for a 
 moment with the worried expression that 
 so often crossed his face in conversation 
 with me, and patting the floor scraped up 
 an imaginary hole. " They sit down in 
 the dusty," he said in baby Samoan. 
 "Where?" I asked. "In front of 
 Tumau." And then I understood that 
 he had planted them in the ground before 
 his mother's house. 
 
 181
 
 MEMORIES OF VAILIMA 
 
 Another time he came up all laughter 
 and excitement to tell of an adventure. 
 
 "Your brother," he said, "the high- 
 chief Loia, he of the four eyes (eye- 
 glasses), came riding by the village as I 
 was walking up to Vailima. He offered 
 me a ride on his horse and gave me 
 his chief-hand. I put my foot on the 
 stirrup, and just as I jumped the horse 
 shied, and, as I had hold of the high- 
 chief Loia, we both fell off into the road 
 palasi." 
 
 "Yes," I said, "you both fell off. 
 That was very funny." 
 
 "Palasi! " he reiterated. 
 
 But here I looked doubtful. Pola re- 
 peated his word several times as though 
 the very sound ought to convey some idea 
 to my bemuddled brain, and then a bright 
 
 idea struck him. I heard his bare feet 
 182
 
 POLA 
 
 pattering swiftly down the stairs. He 
 came flying back, still laughing, and laid 
 the dictionary in my lap. I hastily 
 turned the leaves, Pola questing in each 
 one like an excited little dog, till I found 
 the definition of his word, " to fall squash 
 like a ripe fruit on the ground." 
 
 " Palasi ! " he cried, triumphantly, when 
 he saw I understood, making a gesture 
 downward with both hands the while 
 laughing heartily. " We both fell off 
 pa last ! " 
 
 It was through Pola that I learned all 
 the news of Tanugamanono. He would 
 curl up on the floor at my feet as I sat in 
 my room sewing, and pour forth an end- 
 less stream of village gossip. How Mata, 
 the native parson, had whipped his daugh- 
 ter for going to a picnic on Sunday and 
 drinking a glass of beer. 
 183
 
 MEMORIES OF VAILIMA 
 
 " Her father went whack ! whack ! " 
 Pola illustrated the scene with gusto, 
 " and Maua cried, ah ! ah ! But the vil- 
 lage says Mata is right, for we must not 
 let the white man's evil come near us." 
 
 " Evil ? " I said ; " what evil ? " 
 
 " Drink," said Pola, solemnly. 
 
 Then he told how " the ladies of 
 Tanugamanono " bought a pig of a 
 trader, each contributing a dollar until 
 forty dollars were collected. There was 
 to be a grand feast among the ladies on 
 account of the choosing of a maid or 
 taupOy the young girl who represents the 
 village on all state occasions. When the 
 pig came it turned out to be an old boar, 
 so tough and rank it could not be eaten. 
 The ladies were much ashamed before 
 their guests, and asked the white man for 
 another pig, but he only laughed at them. 
 184
 
 POLA 
 
 He had their money, so he did not 
 care. 
 
 " That was very, very bad of him," I 
 exclaimed, indignantly. 
 
 " It is the way of white people," said 
 Pola, philosophically. 
 
 It was through my little chief that we 
 learned of a bit of fine hospitality. It 
 seems that pigs were scarce in the village, 
 so each house-chief pledged himself to 
 refrain from killing one of them for six 
 months. Anyone breaking this rule agreed 
 to give over his house to be looted by the 
 village. 
 
 Pola came up rather late one morning, 
 and told me, hilariously, of the fun they 
 had had looting Tupuola's house. 
 
 " But Tupuola is a friend of ours," I 
 said. " I don't like to hear of all his be- 
 longings being scattered." 
 187
 
 MEMORIES OF VAILIMA 
 
 "It is all right," Pola exclaimed. " Tu- 
 puola said to the village, ( Come and loot. 
 I have broken the law and I will pay the 
 forfeit/ " 
 
 " How did he break the law ? " I asked. 
 
 "When the high-chief Loia, your 
 brother of the four eyes, .stopped the 
 night at Tanugamanono, on his way to 
 the shark fishing, he stayed with Tupuola, 
 so of course it was chiefly to kill a pig in 
 his honor." 
 
 " But it was against the law. My 
 brother would not have liked it, and Tu- 
 puola must have felt badly to know his 
 house was to be looted." 
 
 " He would have felt worse," said Pola, 
 " to have acted unchiefly to a friend." 
 
 We never would have known of the 
 famine in Tanugamanono if it had not 
 been for Pola. The hurricane had blown 
 
 188
 
 POLA 
 
 off all the young nuts from the cocoanut- 
 palms and the fruit from the breadfruit- 
 trees, while the taro was not yet ripe. We 
 passed the village daily. The chief was 
 my brother's dear friend, the girls often 
 came up to decorate the place for a dinner- 
 party, but we had no hint of any distress 
 in the village. 
 
 One morning I gave Pola two large 
 ship's biscuits from the pantry. 
 
 " Be not angry," said Pola. " But I 
 prefer to carry these home." 
 
 " Eat them," I said, " and I will give 
 you more." 
 
 Before leaving that night he came to 
 remind me of this. I was swinging in a 
 hammock reading a novel when Pola 
 came to kiss my hand and bid me good- 
 night. 
 
 "Love," I said, "Talo/a."
 
 MEMORIES OF VAILIMA 
 
 " Soifua," Pola replied, " may you 
 sleep ; " and then he added, " Be not 
 angry, but the ship's biscuits " 
 
 " Are you hungry ? " I asked. " Didn't 
 you have your dinner ? " 
 
 " Oh, yes, plenty of pea-soupo " (a gen- 
 eral name for anything in tins) ; " but you 
 said, in your high-chief kindness, that if I 
 ate the two biscuits you would give me 
 more to take home." 
 
 " And you ate them ? " 
 
 He hesitated a perceptible moment, and 
 then said : 
 
 " Yes, I ate them." 
 
 He looked so glowing and sweet, lean- 
 ing forward to beg a favor, that I sud- 
 denly pulled him to me by his bare, brown 
 shoulders for a kiss. He fell against the 
 hammock and two ship's biscuits slipped 
 
 from under his lava lava. 
 190
 
 POLA 
 
 "Oh, Pola!" I cried, reproachfully. 
 It cut me to the heart that he should lie 
 to me. 
 
 He picked them up in silence, repress- 
 ing the tears that stood in his eyes and 
 turned to go. I felt there was something 
 strange in this. 
 
 " I will give you two more biscuits," I 
 said, quietly, " if you will explain why you 
 told a wicked lie and pained the heart that 
 loved you." 
 
 " Teuila," he cried, anxiously, " I love 
 you. I would not pain your heart for all 
 the world. But they are starving in the 
 village. My father, the chief, divides the 
 food, so that each child and old person 
 and all shall share alike, and to-day there 
 was only green baked bananas, two for 
 each, and to-night when I return there 
 
 will be again a division of one for each 
 191
 
 MEMORIES OF VAILIMA 
 
 member of the village. It seems hard 
 that I should come here and eat and eat, 
 and my brother and my two little sisters, 
 and the good Tumau also, should have 
 only one banana. So I thought I would 
 say to you c behold I have eaten the two 
 biscuits ' and then you would give me two 
 more and that would be enough for one 
 each to my two sisters and Tumau and 
 my brother, who is older than I." 
 
 That night my brother went down to 
 the village and interviewed the chief. It 
 was all true, as Pola had said, only they 
 had been too proud to mention it. Mr. 
 Stevenson sent bags of rice and kegs of 
 beef to the village, and gave them per- 
 mission to dig for edible roots in our for- 
 est, so they were able to tide over until 
 the faro and yams were ripe. 
 
 Pola always spoke of Vailima as " our 
 192
 
 POLA 
 
 place," and Mr. Stevenson as " my chief." 
 I had given him a pony that exactly 
 matched his own skin. A missionary, 
 meeting him in the forest road as he was 
 galloping along like a young centaur, 
 asked, " Who are you ? " 
 
 " I," answered Pola, reining in with a 
 gallant air, " am one of the Vailima men ! " 
 
 He proved, however, that he consid- 
 ered himself a true Samoan by a conver- 
 sation we had together once when we were 
 walking down to Apia. We passed a 
 new house where a number of half-caste 
 carpenters were briskly at work. 
 
 " See how clever these men are, Pola," 
 I said, " building the white man's house. 
 When you get older perhaps I will have 
 you taught carpentering, that you may 
 build houses and make money." 
 
 " Me ? " asked Pola, surprised. 
 193
 
 MEMORIES OF VAILIMA 
 
 " Yes," I replied. " Don't you think 
 that would be a good idea ? " 
 
 " I am the son of a chief," said Pola. 
 
 " I know," I said, " that your highness 
 is a very great personage, but all the same 
 it is good to know how to make money. 
 Wouldn't you like to be a carpenter ? " 
 
 " No," said Pola, scornfully, adding, 
 with a wave of his arm that took in acres 
 of breadfruit-trees, banana groves, and taro 
 patches, " Why should I work ? All this 
 land belongs to me." 
 
 Once, when Pola had been particularly 
 adorable, I told him, in a burst of affection, 
 that he could have anything in the world 
 he wanted, only begging him to name it. 
 
 He smiled, looked thoughtful for an 
 instant, and then answered, promptly, that 
 of all things in the world he would like 
 
 ear-rings, like those the sailors wear. 
 194
 
 POLA 
 
 I bought him a pair the next time I 
 went to town. Then, armed with a cork 
 and a needleful of white silk, I called Pola, 
 and asked if he wanted the ear-rings badly 
 enough to endure the necessary operation. 
 
 He smiled and walked up to me. 
 
 " Now, this is going to hurt, Pola," I 
 said. 
 
 He stood perfectly straight when I 
 pushed the needle through his ear and cut 
 off the little piece of silk. I looked anx- 
 iously in his face as he turned his head for 
 me to pierce the other one. I was so 
 nervous that my hands trembled. 
 
 " Are you sure it does not hurt, Pola, 
 my pigeon ? " I asked, and I have never 
 forgotten his answer. 
 
 " My father is a soldier," he said. 
 
 Pola's dress was a simple garment, a 
 square of white muslin hemmed by his 
 195
 
 MEMORIES OF VAILIMA 
 
 adopted mother. Like all Samoans, he 
 was naturally very clean, going with the 
 rest of the " Vailima men " to swim in 
 the pool twice a day. He would wash 
 his hair in the juice of wild oranges, clean 
 his teeth with the inside husk of the co- 
 coanut, and, putting on a fresh lava lava, 
 would wash out the discarded one in the 
 river, laying it out in the sunshine to dry. 
 He was always decorated with flowers in 
 some way a necklace of jessamine buds, 
 pointed red peppers, or the scarlet fruit 
 of the pandanas. Little white boys look 
 naked without their clothes, but Pola in a 
 strip of muslin, with his wreath of flowers, 
 or sea-shells, some ferns twisted about 
 one ankle, perhaps, or a boar's tusk fas- 
 tened to his left arm with strands of horse- 
 hair, looked completely, even handsomely, 
 dressed. 
 
 196
 
 The Bathing Pool.
 
 POLA 
 
 He was not too proud to lend a help- 
 ing hand at any work going setting the 
 table, polishing the floor of the hall or the 
 brass handles of the old cabinet, leading 
 the horses to water, carrying pails for the 
 milkmen, helping the cook in the kitchen, 
 the butler in the pantry, or the cow-boy 
 in the fields ; holding skeins of wool for 
 Mr. Stevenson's mother, or trotting beside 
 the lady of the house, " Aolele," as they 
 all called her, carrying seeds or plants for 
 her garden. When my brother went out 
 with a number of natives laden with sur- 
 veying implements, Pola only stopped 
 long enough to beg for a cane-knife before 
 he was leading the party. If Mr. Steven- 
 son called for his horse and started to 
 town it was always Pola who flew to open 
 the gate for him waving a Manuia and 
 " good luck to the travelling ! " 
 199
 
 MEMORIES OF VAILIMA 
 
 The Samoans are not reserved, like 
 the Indians, or haughty, like the Arabs. 
 They are a cheerful, lively people, who 
 keenly enjoy a joke, laughing at the slight- 
 est provocation. Pola bubbled over with 
 fun, and his voice could be heard chatter- 
 ing and singing gayly at any hour of the 
 day. He made up little verses about me, 
 which he sang to the graceful gestures 
 of the siva or native dance, showing un- 
 affected delight when commended. He 
 cried out with joy and admiration when 
 he first heard a hand-organ, and was ex- 
 citedly happy when allowed to turn the 
 handle. I gave him a box of tin soldiers, 
 which he played with for hours in my 
 room. He would arrange them on the 
 floor, talking earnestly to himself in Sa- 
 moan. 
 
 " These are brave brown men," he 
 200
 
 POLA 
 
 would mutter. " They are fighting for 
 Mata'afa. Boom ! boom ! These are 
 white men. They are fighting the Sa- 
 moans. Pouf ! " And with a wave of 
 his arm he knocked down a whole battal- 
 ion, with the scornful remark, " The Sa- 
 moans win ! " 
 
 After Mr. Stevenson's death so many 
 of his Samoan friends begged for his pho- 
 tograph that we sent to Sydney for a 
 supply, which was soon exhausted. One 
 afternoon Pola came in and remarked, in 
 a very hurt and aggrieved manner, that he 
 had been neglected in the way of photo- 
 graphs. 
 
 " But your father, the chief, has a large 
 fine one." 
 
 " True," said Pola. " But that is not 
 mine. I have the box presented to me 
 by your high-chief goodness. It has a 
 
 201
 
 MEMORIES OF VAILIMA 
 
 little cover, and there 1 wish to put the 
 sun-shadow of Tusitala, the beloved chief 
 whom we all revere, but I more than the 
 others because he was the head of my 
 clan." 
 
 " To be sure," I said, and looked about 
 for a photograph. I found a picture cut 
 from a weekly paper, one I remember that 
 Mr. Stevenson himself had particularly 
 disliked. He would have been pleased 
 had he seen the scornful way Pola threw 
 the picture on the floor. 
 
 " I will not have that ! " he cried. "It 
 is pig-faced. It is not the shadow of our 
 chief." He leaned against the door and 
 wept. 
 
 " I have nothing else, Pola," I pro- 
 tested. " Truly, if I had another picture 
 of Tusitala I would give it to you." 
 
 He brightened up at once. " There is 
 
 202
 
 POLA 
 
 the one in the smoking-room," he said, 
 " where he walks back and forth. That 
 pleases me, for it looks like him." He 
 referred to an oil painting of Mr. Steven- 
 son by Sargent. I explained that I could 
 not give him that. " Then I will take 
 the round one," he said, " of tin." This 
 last was the bronze bas-relief by St. Gau- 
 dens. I must have laughed involuntarily, 
 for he went out deeply hurt. Hearing a 
 strange noise in the hall an hour or so 
 later, I opened the door, and discovered 
 Pola lying on his face, weeping bitterly. 
 
 " What are you crying about ? " I 
 asked. 
 
 " The shadow, the shadow," he sobbed. 
 " I want the sun-shadow of Tusitala." 
 
 I knocked at my mother's door across 
 the hall, and at the sight of that tear- 
 stained face her heart melted, and he 
 203
 
 MEMORIES OF VAILIMA 
 
 was given a good photograph, which he 
 wrapped in a banana-leaf, tying it carefully 
 with a ribbon of grass. 
 
 We left Samoa after Mr. Stevenson's 
 death, staying away for more than a year. 
 Pola wrote me letters by every mail in a 
 large round hand, but they were too con- 
 ventional to bear any impress of his mind. 
 He referred to our regretted separation, 
 exhorting me to stand fast in the high- 
 chief will of the Lord, and, with his love 
 to each member of the family, mentioned 
 by name and title, he prayed that I might 
 live long, sleep well, and not forget Pola, 
 my unworthy servant. 
 
 When we returned to Samoa we were 
 up at dawn, on shipboard, watching the 
 horizon for the first faint cloud that floats 
 above the island of LJpulu. Already the 
 familiar perfume came floating over the 
 204
 
 POLA 
 
 waters that sweet blending of many 
 odors, of cocoanut oil and baking bread- 
 fruit, of jessamine and gardenia. It smelt 
 of home to us', leaning over the rail and 
 watching. First a cloud, then a shadow 
 growing more and more distinct until we 
 saw the outline of the island. Then, as we 
 drew nearer, the deep purple of the distant 
 hills, the green of the rich forests, and the 
 silvery ribbons where the waterfalls reflect 
 the sunshine. 
 
 Among the fleet of boats skimming out 
 to meet us was one far ahead of the others, 
 a lone canoe propelled by a woman, with a 
 single figure standing in the prow. As 
 the steamer drew near I made out the 
 figure of Pola, dressed in wreaths and 
 flowers in honor of my return. As the 
 anchor went down in the bay of Apia and 
 
 the custom-house officer started to board, 
 205
 
 MEMORIES OF VAILIMA 
 
 I called out, begging him to let the child 
 come on first. He drew aside. The 
 canoe came alongside the ship, and Pola, 
 in his finery of fresh flowers, ran up the 
 gangway and stepped forth on the deck. 
 The passengers drew back before the 
 strange little figure, but he was too intent 
 upon finding me to notice them. 
 
 " Teuila ! " he cried, joyfully, with the 
 tears rolling down his cheeks. I went 
 forward to meet him, and, kneeling on the 
 deck, caught him in my arms. 
 
 206
 
 SAMOAN SONGS
 
 SAMOAN SONGS 
 
 IN Samoa a man's standing in the com- 
 munity can be pretty well gauged by 
 the songs that are composed and sung 
 about him. Some are humorous, some sa- 
 tirical, some complimentary, and many are 
 only rhymes to his name, like a nursery 
 jingle. The smallest incident, once put 
 into song, will live for years. There is a 
 boat-song about a very unpopular official 
 who left the islands years ago. We were 
 once travelling by water in the smooth 
 lagoon within the coral reef, and passed the 
 house where this man had lived; it was 
 pointed out to us, and instantly, with a 
 sweep of the oars to keep time, the boat- 
 man trolled out the jeering, scornful words: 
 209
 
 MEMORIES OF VAILIMA 
 
 A wise man broke through the horizon ; 
 Did he give us of his wisdom ? 
 Nay ; no wisdom came to us, 
 But all our money went to him. 
 Aue ! aue ! All our money's gone ! 
 
 Mr. Stevenson mentions in his "Foot- 
 note to History " how Mr. Weber of the 
 German firm was remembered in the 
 islands : 
 
 His name still lives in the songs of Samoa. One 
 that I have heard tells of Misi Ueba and a biscuit-box, 
 the suggesting incident being long since forgotten. 
 Another sings plaintively how all things, land and food 
 and property, pass progressively, as by a law of nature, 
 into the hands of Misi Ueba, and soon nothing will be 
 left for Samoans. This is an epitaph the man would 
 have enjoyed. 
 
 There are many songs about Tusitala 
 (" Story-writer "), as Mr. Stevenson was 
 called in the island rousing boat-songs, 
 when the paddles all beat time, and the 
 
 2IO
 
 SAMOAN SONGS 
 
 handles are clicked against the sides of 
 the canoe to the rhythm of his name. 
 The Samoans show their courtesy in re- 
 membering a man's songs, and even in 
 rowing Mr. Stevenson out to meet a 
 passenger-ship I have heard the boatmen 
 keep time to 
 
 Tusitala ma Aolele. 
 
 Much travelling is done by water in the 
 islands, and at night, to avoid the sun's 
 rays. It was very pleasant rowing by 
 moonlight in the quiet waters of the 
 lagoon near the shore, within the protect- 
 ing coral reef that surrounds each island 
 of the group and breasts the full force of 
 the ocean breakers. The roaring and 
 boiling of the surf made a pleasant ac- 
 companiment to the singing voices of the 
 brown men as they kept time to the
 
 MEMORIES OF VAILIMA 
 
 rhythm of the song with a long sweep of 
 the oars. The groves of palm-trees grow 
 in thick foliage to the water's edge, and 
 often from the shadow where a cluster 
 of native houses lay hidden, the people, 
 recognizing the passing traveller by his 
 boat -song, would call out across the 
 lagoon, " Talofa Tusitala ! " 
 
 There are dancing-songs about Mr. Ste- 
 venson, depicting life at Vailima, which 
 might be called topical, as they gener- 
 ally touched upon the small incidents of 
 plantation life. These were composed 
 by some servant or laborer on the place, 
 and saved up for a fete-day, such as Christ- 
 mas, the holidays of England and America, 
 and Mr. Stevenson's birthday, when they 
 were chanted, danced, and acted with great 
 spirit by the Samoans of our household. 
 Sometimes every member of the family 
 
 212
 
 SAMOAN SONGS 
 
 would be represented, each singing a 
 characteristic verse, while all hands came 
 in on the refrain in a full, rich harmony. 
 The central figure, the heart of the song, 
 was always Tusitala, and though they 
 made many little jokes at the expense of 
 the rest of us, his name was always treated 
 with respect. 
 
 Other songs are long chants, with innu- 
 merable verses descriptive of Tusitala's 
 wisdom, his house, his friendship for the 
 natives, and his love for Samoa. One of 
 these may be called the " Song of the 
 Roof-Iron," or " The Meeting of Tusitala 
 and the Men of Vaie'e." 
 
 The chief of Vaie'e, on the windward 
 side of the island, had saved up sixty dol- 
 lars in twelve " golden shillings," as he 
 called the five-dollar pieces. War had 
 
 broken out, and he and his men were 
 
 213
 
 MEMORIES OF VAILIMA 
 
 going off to fight. Their village might 
 be looted during their absence, so they 
 brought the bag of golden shillings to 
 Tusitala ; brought it with much ceremony 
 and many presents, including a live turtle 
 borne aloft on two poles. Mr. Stevenson 
 locked up the precious bag in his safe that 
 is built into the hall at Vailima. After 
 three months, when the warriors returned, 
 the money was given back to them. They 
 explained that it had been saved up with 
 incredible patience to buy roof-iron for 
 their new church. Mr. Stevenson good- 
 naturedly took the matter in hand, with 
 the result that the village received more 
 roof-iron for the money than had ever 
 been given to natives before. The friend- 
 ly act was commemorated in a song that 
 is really prettier than one would think 
 
 the subject warranted, and the friendship 
 214
 
 Visitors from Vale ' e.
 
 SAMOAN SONGS 
 
 begun over the matter of the roof-iron 
 has endured between the people of Vaie'e 
 and the members of Tusitala's family to 
 this day. 
 
 " The Song of the Wen " commemorates 
 an interesting event. A humble servant 
 of the family, a lively, amusing fellow 
 named Eliga, was afflicted with a large, 
 unsightly tumor on his back. In a land 
 where beauty is of the first importance, 
 this unfortunate man was made to suffer 
 doubly. Mr. Stevenson and my mother 
 had him examined by the kindly surgeon 
 of an English man-of-war, who proposed 
 an operation. But Eliga would not sub- 
 mit. He explained to Tusitala that there 
 were strings in the wen that were tied 
 about his heart, and if they were severed 
 he would die. When Mr. Stevenson 
 translated the doctor's diagnosis, Eliga 
 
 217
 
 MEMORIES OF VAILIMA 
 
 was unconvinced. His skin, he said, was 
 different on the outside from a white man's, 
 and therefore it was not unnatural to sup- 
 pose that his insides were made on a dif- 
 ferent plan. 
 
 In the end Mr. Stevenson's and my 
 mother's arguments prevailed, and he sub- 
 mitted ; but for their sakes, not his own, 
 and he begged them to remember, when 
 he was gone, that he had died for love of 
 them. On the day of the operation Eliga 
 prepared his house for death ; the fine mats 
 were spread, the rush curtains were all up, 
 the decorations removed ; the single room 
 was so exquisitely prepared that not a peb- 
 ble on the floor was out of place, and his 
 relatives were assembled. He himself was 
 of a pale-lead color and shaking with appre- 
 hension, yet he came out bravely and lifted 
 Aolele off her horse, and received Tusitala 
 218
 
 SAMOAN SONGS 
 
 and the doctor with perfect self-posses- 
 sion. 
 
 The operation was successful, and Eliga 
 recovered ; but it was not only renewed 
 health and strength that came to him, but 
 the fulfilment of his dearest ambitions. 
 Owing to his deformity he had been kept 
 out of titles and estates that were promptly 
 restored to him. In the islands no de- 
 formed or very ugly person can be a chief. 
 Indeed, if the children of a great man are 
 ill-looking it is not unusual for him to 
 adopt the handsomest boy in the village 
 to succeed him. 
 
 The change in Eliga was magical. In- 
 stead of being the cringing, almost dwarf- 
 ish creature who cut monkey-tricks to 
 make people laugh, after the pathetic 
 manner of the deformed in Samoa, he 
 carried himself erect, with a haughty mien ; 
 219
 
 MEMORIES OF VAILIMA 
 
 he dyed his hair red, and wore it in the 
 latest fashion, combed up into Grecian 
 curls and powdered with sandalwood. 
 When he came into his title he made a 
 visit to Vailima in state, accompanied by 
 his new retainers, all laden with gifts for 
 the family, and " The Song of the Wen " 
 was sung for the first time. 
 
 A semicircle of men sat upon mats laid 
 out upon the lawn in front of the house. 
 On the veranda, facing them, sat Mr. 
 Stevenson, surrounded by his family and 
 native servants, looking on with that 
 serious, respectful attention it was his cus- 
 tom to accord all native formalities, how- 
 ever trivial they may have seemed. 
 
 Eliga came forward crouchingly, with a 
 cocoanut tied by a piece of sinnet to his 
 back. To the accompaniment of clapping 
 hands and harmonious chanting, he half 
 
 220
 
 SAMOAN SONGS 
 
 recited, half acted the story before us. 
 He capered, he made silly, hideous faces, 
 he did the buffoon for the last time in his 
 life ; and then, as the string was cut, and 
 the cocoanut rolled to the ground, he 
 sprang erect, thumped his breast, and sang 
 aloud his triumph and gratitude. 
 
 " O Tusitala ! " he cried, " 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 un- 
 ashamed, and I owe it all to you, Tusi- 
 tala. I have come to tell your Highness 
 that I will not forget. Tusitala, I will 
 
 work for you all my life, and my family 
 223
 
 MEMORIES OF VAILIMA 
 
 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." 
 
 The most beautiful of the songs are 
 those that were composed in memory of 
 Mr. Stevenson, and sung at Vailima after 
 his death. One, referring to the steadfast 
 loyalty of Mr. Stevenson to the High 
 Chief Mataafa, through peace and war, 
 victory and defeat, has for its refrain : 
 Once Tusitala's friend, 
 Always Tusitala's friend. 
 
 Another describes a Samoan searching 
 among the white people for one as good 
 and kind as Tusitala. He asks of the 
 officials and the consuls and captains of 
 ships, and they all answer, " There were 
 none like him, and he has gone." 
 
 For months after his death, parties of 
 224
 
 SAMOAN SONGS 
 
 natives, headed by the chief bringing a 
 present of a costly, fine mat, would come 
 to Vailima and offer their condolences to 
 the family. They were people whom he 
 had befriended, with their followers and 
 clans : for each small, individual kindness 
 an entire village assumed the burden of 
 gratitude. There were his old friends, 
 Tuimalealiifano and his village of Fale- 
 latai ; Seumanutafa, the chief of Apia ; 
 the villages of Vaie'e and Safata, Falefa 
 and many others. There were the politi- 
 cal prisoners, chiefs of important clans 
 whom Mr. Stevenson was instrumental in 
 releasing from jail. There were the mem- 
 bers of the clan of the beloved Mataafa, 
 then an exile, all bringing presents and 
 making very touching speeches of love 
 for Tusitala, and sympathy for his family. 
 
 Each party, on leaving, handed to my 
 227
 
 MEMORIES OF VAILIMA 
 
 mother a roll of paper : it was the song of 
 that village written in memory of Mr. 
 Stevenson. 
 
 When a party of Samoans, for love of 
 him, weed the path that leads to Vaea ; 
 when they gather once a year, on the ijth 
 of November, bringing wreaths and flowers 
 to decorate his tomb ; when a party of 
 travellers cross the mountain by his grave, 
 they lift their tuneful voices in one of 
 these songs : 
 
 Groan and weep, O my heart in its sorrow ! 
 Alas for Tusitala, who rests in the forest ! 
 Aimlessly we wait, and sorrowing ; will he again return ? 
 Lament, O Vailima ! Waiting and ever waiting ! 
 Let us search and ask of the captains of ships, 
 "Be not angry, but has not Tusitala come ?" 
 
 Grieve, O my heart ! I cannot bear to look on 
 All the chiefs who are assembling. 
 Alas, Tusitala, thou art not here ! 
 I look hither and thither, in vain, for thee. 
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