The Life of Mrs. Robert Louis Stevenson, Nellie Van de Grift Sanchez [english novels for students txt] 📗

As an instance, certainly of rare occurrence in Parkman, he noticed a paragraph in The Conspiracy of Pontiac , in which the author refers to the shining of the moon on a certain night when a party was endeavouring to make a secret passage down the river through hostile country. He thought it unlikely that Parkman could have known that the moon shone on that particular night, though it is possible that he did him an injustice, for it sometimes happens that just such a trivial circumstance is mentioned in the documents of the early explorers.

Sometimes he read aloud to us from some French writer, translating it into English as he read for our benefit. Les Étrangleurs was one of the books that he read to us in this way, while we sat and sewed our seams. He seemed to get a good deal of rest as well as amusement from the reading of such books of mystery and adventure. His taste was always for the decent in literature, and he was much offended by the works of the writers of the materialistic school who were just then gaining a vogue. Among these was Emile Zola, and he exacted a promise from me never to read that writer--a promise that has been faithfully kept to this day.

His stay at Monterey had given him a fancy to study the Spanish language, so we obtained books and began it together. He had a theory that a language could be best acquired by plunging directly into it, but I have a suspicion that our choice of a drama of the sixteenth century, one of Lope de Vega's, I think, was scarcely a wise one for beginners. He refers to this venture of ours in a letter to Sidney Colvin as "the play which the sister and I are just beating our way through with two bad dictionaries and an insane grammar." Nevertheless, we made some headway, and I remember that he marvelled greatly at the far-fetched, high-flown similes and figures of speech indulged in by the writers of the "Golden Age" of Spain. In spite of his confessed dislike for the cold-blooded study of the grammar, we did not altogether neglect it, and a day comes to my mind when he was assisting me in the homely task of washing the dishes in the pleasant sunny kitchen where the Banksia rose hung its yellow curtain over the windows. We recited Spanish conjugations while we worked, and he held up a glass for my inspection, saying: "See how beautifully I have polished it, Nellie. There is no doubt that I have missed my vocation. I was born to be a butler." "No, Louis," I replied, "some day you are to be a famous writer, and who knows but that I shall write about you, as the humble Boswell wrote about Johnson, and tell the world how you once wiped dishes for me in this old kitchen!"

For the long evenings of winter we had a game which Louis invented expressly for our amusement. Lloyd Osbourne, then a boy of twelve, had rather more than the usual boy's fondness for stories of the sea. It will be remembered that it was to please this boy that Mr. Stevenson afterwards wrote Treasure Island . Our game was to tell a continued story, each person being limited to two minutes, taking up the tale at the point where the one before him left off. We older ones had a secret understanding that we were to keep Lloyd away from the sea, but strive as we might, even though we left the hero stranded in the middle of the Desert of Sahara, Lloyd never failed to have him sailing the bounding main again before his allotted two minutes expired.

Many and long were the arguments that we had on the merits of our respective countries, and I remember that Mr. Stevenson did not place the sentiment of patriotism at the top of the list of human virtues, for he believed that to concentrate one's affections and interest too closely upon one small section of the earth's surface, simply on account of the accident of birth, had a narrowing effect upon a man's mental outlook and his human sympathies. He was a citizen of the world in his capacity to understand the point of view of other men, of whatsoever race, colour, or creed, and it was this catholicity of spirit that made it possible for him to sit upon the benches of Portsmouth Square in San Francisco and learn something of real life from the human flotsam and jetsam cast up there by fate.

Of all the popular songs of America he liked Marching Through Georgia and Dixie best. For Home, Sweet Home he had no liking, perhaps from having heard it during some moment of poignant homesickness. He said that such a song made too brutal an assault upon a man's tenderest feelings, and believed it to be a much greater triumph for a writer to bring a smile to his readers than a tear--partly, perhaps, because it is a more difficult achievement.

Here the scene changes again, this time to San Francisco, the city of many hills, of drifting summer fogs, and sparkling winter sunshine, the old city that now lives only in the memories of those who knew it in the days when Stevenson climbed the steep ways of its streets. Although he had something about him of the ennui of the much-travelled man, and complained that

"There's nothing under heaven so blue,
That's fairly worth the travelling to,"

yet no attraction was lost on him, and the Far Western flavour of San Francisco, with its added tang of the Orient, and the feeling of adventure blowing in on its salt sea-breezes, was much to his liking. My especial memory here is of many walks taken with him up Telegraph Hill, where the streets were grass-grown because no horse could climb them, and the sidewalks were provided with steps or cleats for the assistance of foot-passengers. This hill, formerly called "Signal Hill," was used in earlier days, on account of its commanding outlook over the sea, as a signal-station to indicate the approach of vessels and give their class, and possibly their names as they neared the city. When we took our laborious walks up its precipitous paths it was, as now, the especial home of Italians and other Latin people. Mr. Stevenson wondered much at the happy-go-lucky confidence, or perhaps it was their simple trust in God, with which these people had built their houses in the most alarmingly insecure places, sometimes hanging on the very edge of a sheer precipice, sometimes with the several stories built on different levels, climbing the hill like steps. About them there was a pleasant air of foreign quaintness--little railed balconies across the fronts, outside stairways leading up to the second stories, and green blinds to give a look of Latin seclusion.

In stories of his San Francisco days there is much talk of the restaurants where he took his meals. The one that I particularly remember was a place kept by Frank García, familiarly known as "Frank's." This place, being moderately expensive, was probably only frequented by him on special occasions, when fortune was in one of her smiling moods. Food was good and cheap and in large variety in San Francisco in those days, and venison steak was as often served up to us at Frank's as beef, while canvasback ducks had not yet flown out of the poor man's sight; so we had many a savory meal there, generally served by a waiter named Monroe, with whom Mr. Stevenson now and then exchanged a friendly jest. I remember one day when Monroe, remarking on the depression of spirits from which Louis suffered during the temporary absence of the women of his family, said: "I had half a mind to take him in a piece of calico on a plate."

Once more the picture changes, now to the town of Calistoga--with its hybrid name made up of syllables from Saratoga and California--where we stayed for a few days at the old Springs Hotel while on our way to Mount Saint Helena, to which mountain refuge Mr. Stevenson was fleeing from the sea-fogs of the coast. The recollection of this journey seems to have melted into a general impression of winding mountain roads, of deep canyons full of tall green trees, of lovely limpid streams rippling over the stones in darkly shaded depths where the fern-brakes grew rankly, of burning summer heat, and much dust. At the Springs Hotel we lived in one of the separate palm-shaded cottages most agreeably maintained for the guests who liked privacy. On the premises were tiny sheds built over the steaming holes in the ground which constituted the Calistoga Hot Springs. It gave one a sensation like walking about on a sieve over a boiling subterranean caldron. Determined not to miss any experience, we each took a turn at a steambath in these sheds, but the sense of imminent suffocation was too strong to be altogether pleasant.

Then came the wild ride up the side of the mountain, in a six-horse stage driven at a reckless rate of speed by its indifferent driver, whirling around curves where the outer wheels had scarcely an inch to spare, while we looked fearfully down upon the tops of the tall trees in the canyon far below. If the horses slackened their pace for an instant, the driver stooped to pick up a stone from a pile that he kept at his feet and bombarded them into a fresh spurt. At the Toll House, half-way up the mountain, which still exists in much the same condition as in those days, we arrived as mere animated pillars of fine white dust, all individuality as completely lost as though we had been shrouded in masks and dominoes.

The Toll House was a place of somnolent peace and deep stillness, broken only by a pleasant dripping from the wooden flume that brought down the cold waters of some spring hidden in the thick green growth far up on the mountainside. And such water! He who has once tasted of the nectar of a California mountain spring "will not ask for wine!" At the Toll House we had liberal country meals, with venison steaks, served to us every day. Bear were still killed on the mountain, but I do not remember having any to eat. From this place we climbed, by way of a toilsome and stiflingly hot footpath running through a tangle of thick undergrowth, to the old Silverado mine bunk-house, where the Stevenson family took up their headquarters. People said there were many rattlesnakes about, and now and then we saw indubitable evidence of their presence in a long, spotted body lying in the road, where it had been killed by some passer-by, but fear of them never troubled our footsteps. In The Silverado Squatters Mr. Stevenson says, "The place abounded with rattlesnakes, and the rattles whizzed on every side like spinning-wheels," but I am inclined to think that he often mistook the buzzing noise made by locusts, or some other insect, for the rattle of the snakes.

The old bunk-house seemed to me an incredibly uncomfortable place of residence. Its situation, on top of the mine-dump piled against the precipitous mountainside, permitted no chance to take a step except upon the treacherous rolling stones of the dump; but we bore with its manifest disadvantages for the sake of its one high redeeming virtue--its entire freedom from the fog which we dreaded for the sick man. It was excessively hot there during the day, but there was