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

has been added to each one of his books by her graphic story of the circumstances of its writing.

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

"My dear Mrs. Stevenson:

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

"Ever thine (I've clean forgot me nyme)."


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

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

But alas! All these pleasing hopes came to naught, for within a short time after buying the ranch sudden death cut him off in the flower of his youth and the first unfolding of his genius. This was a sad blow to Mrs. Stevenson, for she had become much attached to the brilliant and lovable young writer. Sometime afterwards she thought of putting up a memorial to him on the little ranch where he had hoped to spend many happy years. Having decided that it should take the form of a stone seat, bearing a suitable inscription, she went to work in conjunction with Gelett Burgess to make the design. The site chosen for the seat is upon a small level spot a few yards below the cabin, at the side of the winding road leading up from the Stevenson ranch. In carrying out this project she took a melancholy pleasure, as she writes in a letter to Mr. Charles Scribner, dated 1902: "I am building a memorial seat to poor Frank Norris. With the assistance of a couple of men I have gathered a lot of boulders from the bed of a stream, and from these we have fashioned a bench to hold six or eight people, and set it where the view is glorious. I have helped lay the stones, and have dabbled in mortar until I can hardly use my hands to write. This sort of work is so much more interesting than scratching with a pen. In the joy of even so poor a creation I forget the sad purpose of it, and am as happy as one hopes to be who has lived as long as I."

Before these two friends--he in the springtime of his days, she in the mellow autumn of maturity--passed away, they were persuaded to record their voices in a phonograph, but it was a useless effort, for no one who loved them has ever been able to endure to listen to their spirit voices, as it were, speaking from the other world.


CHAPTER XI

TRAVELS IN MEXICO AND EUROPE.


Eight years, divided between the house "like a fort on a cliff" in San Francisco and the sylvan solitude of the little ranch tucked away in its corner in the mountains of the Holy Cross, slipped by happily enough. Now and again the wandering mood came back, but, except for one visit to France and England, Mrs. Stevenson confined her journeyings to the American continent.

One of these excursions led her to Mexico--a country that she found more interesting than any she had ever visited in Europe. Sometimes I think this may have been because of some primitive element in her own nature that responded to the traditions of that strange land--so aged in history, so young in civilization--but, anyway, she told me that she felt a genuine thrill there such as she had never experienced in any of the historic places of the Old World. At the tomb of Napoleon she remained cold, but at the "tree of the sad night," where Cortés is said to have wept bitter tears on that dark and rainy night away back in 1520, her imagination was deeply touched. At the church of Guadalupe she looked at the pitifully crude paintings and other thank-offerings of the simple devotees with deep and sympathetic interest.

Much more interesting than the city of Mexico she found the quaint and ancient town of Cuernavaca, where Maximilian was wont to come with his Empress to enjoy the delights of the famous Borda Gardens. These gardens, though fallen from their first high estate, were still very beautiful at the time of Mrs. Stevenson's visit.

Of these pleasant days in Cuernavaca she writes in a letter to her daughter:

"I have a little plant from the garden where Carlota lived, which I think is a climbing syringa. We go round nearly every evening to the palace built by Cortés, in one room of which he strangled one of his mistresses.... I had always supposed Maximilian to be a most exemplary person, but he seems to have lived in a palace some three miles from here with a beautiful Mexican girl, while poor Carlota was left alone in town in the Borda Gardens.... Everybody goes barefoot here, though all dressed up otherwise, and everybody wears the rebozo .[71] This morning I killed a scorpion on the wall alongside the bed, and the other day I also assisted in the killing of a tremendous tarantula in the middle of the road. We stood far off and threw stones at it. None of mine hit the mark, but I threw like mad.... I hope you were not frightened by the news of the earthquake here. We got a good shake but no harm done. Just a little south of us there has been terrible damage--a whole town destroyed and people killed. Here all the people ran into the streets, and kneeling, held out their hands towards the churches that contain their miraculous images.... We have had a 'blessing of the animals' at the cathedral, where cats, dogs, eagles, doves, cocks and hens, horses, colts, donkeys, cows and bulls, dyed every color of the rainbow and wearing wreaths of artificial flowers round their necks, were brought to receive this sacrament. I wanted to take Burney [her little Scotch terrier], but feared his getting some contagion, so gave it up, and now my Burney has forever lost the chance of becoming a holy, blessed dog.... The native people here are very abject, and seem almost entirely without intellect; yet they are the only servants to be had unless one sends to California, and they make life a desperate business. The only spirit I have seen in any of them was to-day, when a native policeman tried to get up a fight between his own huge dog and my little Burney. Of course Burney the valiant was ready for the fray and would probably have disposed of the big dog had I not run up, closing and clubbing my parasol as I came. The policeman thought I was going to strike him, and for one second stood up to me fiercely, saying 'No Señorita! No Señorita!' Then his knees suddenly gave way and he and his dog and his friend who was standing by to see fair play utterly collapsed."

[Footnote 71: The rebozo is a scarf or shawl worn
wound about the head and shoulders.]

Steeped as the country was in old tradition, and far removed as it seemed from all knowledge of the outside world, the name of Robert Louis Stevenson had penetrated to its inmost recesses, and its people were pleased to bestow honour upon his widow. Writing of this she says: "I want to tell you that at every little lost place on the road I have received extra attention because of my name. In this house I have the best room, the landlord himself giving it up to me. I hope Louis knows this."

The little plant of which she spoke, the climbing syringa, which was given to her as a special favour by the man in charge of the Borda Gardens, reached San Francisco in good condition and took most kindly to its new home. Slips of it were given to friends, and its sweet flowers, reminiscent of the ill-fated queen who once breathed their perfume, now scent the air in more than one garden round San Francisco Bay.

It was not long after her return from this trip to Mexico that Mrs. Stevenson began to be troubled with a bronchial affection that increased as she advanced in years and made it necessary for her to seek a frequent change from the cool climate of San Francisco. In November of 1904 a severe cough from which she was suffering led her southward. This time she was accompanied by Salisbury Field, the son of her old friend and schoolmate of Indiana days, Sarah Hubbard Field. Mr. Field had now become a member of Mrs. Stevenson's household, and at a later date married her daughter, Isobel Osbourne Strong.

Arriving at La Jolla by the sea, a most picturesque spot on the southern coast of California, they were disappointed in not finding it as warm as they had expected, so it was decided to go further south. In the course of their inquiries at San Diego they met a Western miner named George Brown, who told them stories of a lonely desert island off the coast of Lower California, where he was about to open a copper-mine for the company for which he was general manager. The more he talked of this lonesome isle