Memories, Portraits, Essays and Records. Robert Louis Stevenson
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into German, French, and Danish; and the names of its two chief characters have passed into the common stock of proverbial allusion. In ‘Kidnapped’—a boys' highland story suggested by the historical incident of the Appin murder—the adventures are scarcely less exciting than those of ‘Treasure Island,’ the elements of character-drawing subtler and farther carried, while the romance of history and the sentiment of the soil are expressed as they had hardly been expressed since Scott. The success of these two tales, both with the critics and the public, established Stevenson's position at the head of the younger English writers of his day, among whom his example encouraged an increased general attention to technical qualities of style and workmanship, as well as a reaction in favour of the novel of action and romance against the more analytic and less stimulating types of fiction then prevailing.
About this time Stevenson was occupied with studies for a short book on Wellington (after Gordon his favourite hero), intended for a series edited by Mr. Andrew Lang. This was never written, and in the winter and spring 1886–7 his chief task was one of piety to a friend, viz. the writing of a life of Fleeming Jenkin from materials supplied by the widow. In the spring of 1887 he published, under the title ‘Underwoods’ (borrowed from Ben Jonson), a collection of verses, partly English and partly Scottish, selected from the chance production of a good many years. Stevenson's poetry, written chiefly when he was too tired to write anything else, expresses as a rule the charm and power of his nature with a more slippered grace, a far less studious and perfect art, than his prose. He also prepared for publication in 1887, under the title ‘Memories and Portraits,’ a collection of essays personal and other, including an effective exposition of his own theories of romance, which he had contributed to various periodicals during preceding years.
His father's death in May 1887 broke the strongest tie which bound him to this country. His own health showed no signs of improvement; and the doctors, as a last chance of recovery, recommended some complete change of climate and mode of life. His wife's connections pointing to the west, he thought of Colorado, persuaded his mother to join them, and with his whole household—mother, wife, and stepson—sailed for New York on 17 Aug. 1887. After a short stay under the hospitable care of friends at Newport, he was persuaded, instead of going farther west, to try the climate of the Adirondack mountains for the winter. At the beginning of October the family moved accordingly to a house on Saranac Lake, and remained there until April 1888. Here he wrote for ‘Scribner's Magazine’ a series of twelve essays (published January-December 1888 and partly reprinted in ‘Across the Plains’). Some of these (‘Dreams,’ ‘Lantern Bearers,’ ‘Random Memories’) contain his best work in the mixed vein of autobiography and criticism; others (‘Pulvis et Umbra,’ ‘A Christmas Sermon’) his strongest, if not his most buoyant or inspiriting, in the ethical vein. For the same publishers he also wrote the ballad of ‘Ticonderoga’ and began the romance of ‘The Master of Ballantrae,’ of which the scene is partly laid in the country of his winter sojourn. This tragic story of fraternal hate is thought by many to take the first place among its author's romances, alike by vividness of presentment and by psychologic insight. In April Stevenson came to New York, but, soon wearying of the city, went for some weeks' boating to Manasquan on the New Jersey coast. At this time (March–May 1888), by way of ‘a little judicious levity,’ he revised and partly rewrote a farcical story drafted in the winter by his stepson, Mr. Lloyd Osbourne, ‘The Wrong Box,’ which was published in the course of the year under their joint names. The fact that the farce turns on the misadventures of a corpse caused most readers to think the levity more apparent than the judgment; but the book cannot be read without laughter.
In the meantime the family had entertained the idea of a yachting excursion in the South Seas. The romance of the Pacific had attracted Stevenson from a boy. The enterprise held out hopes of relief to his health; an American publisher (Mr. S. S. McClure) provided the means of undertaking it by an offer of 2,000l. for letters in which its course should be narrated. The result was that on 26 June 1888 the whole family set out from San Francisco on board the schooner yacht Casco (Captain Otis). They first sailed to the Marquesas, where they spent six weeks; thence to the Paumotus or Dangerous Archipelago; thence to the Tahitian group, where they again rested for several weeks, and whence they sailed northward for Hawaii. Arriving at Honolulu about the new year of 1889, they made a stay of nearly six months, during which Stevenson made several excursions, including one, which profoundly impressed him, to the leper settlement at Molokai. His journey so far having proved a source of infinite interest and enjoyment, as well as greatly improved health, Stevenson determined to prolong it. He and his party started afresh from Honolulu in June 1889 on a rough trading schooner, the Equator. Their destination was the Gilberts, a remote coral group in the western Pacific. At two of its petty capitals, Apemama and Butaritari, they made stays of about six weeks each, and at Christmas 1889 found their way again into semi-civilisation at Apia in the Samoan group. After a month or two's stay in Samoa, where the beauty of the scenery and the charm of the native population delighted them, the party went on to Sydney, where Stevenson immediately fell ill, the life of the city seeming to undo the good he had got at sea. This experience set him voyaging again, and determined him to make his home in the South Seas. In April 1890 a fresh start was made, this time on a trading steamer, the Janet Nicoll. Touching first at Samoa, where he had bought a property of about four hundred acres on the mountain above Apia, to which he gave the name Vailima (five rivers), he left instructions for clearing and building operations to be begun while he continued his voyage. The course of the Janet Nicoll took him during the summer to many remote islands, from Penhryn to the Marshalls, and landed him in September in New Caledonia. Returning the same month to Samoa, he found the small house already existing at Vailima to be roughly habitable, and installed himself there to superintend the further operations of clearing, planting, and building. The family belongings from Bournemouth were sent out, and his mother, who had left him at Honolulu, rejoined him at Vailima in the spring of 1891.
During these Pacific voyages he had finished the ‘Master of Ballantrae,’ besides writing many occasional verses, and two long, not very effective, ballads on themes of Polynesian legend, the ‘Song of Rahero’ and the ‘Feast of Famine.’ He had also planned and begun at sea, in collaboration with Mr. Lloyd Osbourne, his one attempt at a long and sustained story of modern life, ‘The Wrecker.’ At Samoa he had written the first of his Pacific stories in prose, ‘The Bottle Imp.’ This little tale of morals and of magic appealed strongly to the native readers to whom (in a missionary translation) it was first addressed (published in English in ‘Black and White,’ 1891, and reprinted in ‘Island Nights' Entertainments’). At Sydney he had written in a heat of indignation, and published in pamphlet form, the striking ‘Letter to Dr. Hyde’ in vindication of the memory of Father Damien. Lastly, on board the Janet Nicoll, ‘under the most ungodly circumstances,’ he had begun the work of composing the letters relating his travels, which were due under the original contract to the Messrs. McClure. This and ‘The Wrecker’ were the two tasks unfinished on his hands when he entered (November 1890) on the four years' residence at Vailima which forms the closing period of his life.
In his new Samoan home Stevenson soon began to exercise a hospitality and an influence which increased with every year. Among the natives he was known by the name of Tusitala (teller of tales), and was supposed to be master of an inexhaustible store of wealth, perhaps even to be the holder of the magic bottle of his own tale. He gathered about him a kind of feudal clan of servants and retainers, whom he ruled in a spirit of affectionate kindness tempered with firm justice; and presently got drawn, as a man so forward in action and so impatient of injustice could not fail to do, into the entanglements of local politics and government. In health he seemed to have become a new man. Frail in comparison with the strong, he was yet able to ride and boat with little restriction, and to take part freely in local festivities, both white and native. The chief interruptions were an occasional trip to Sydney or Auckland, from which he generally came back the worse. From the middle of 1891 to the spring of 1893 his intromissions in politics embroiled him more or less seriously with most of the white officials in the island, especially the chief justice, Mr. Cedercrantz, and the president of the council, Baron Senfft von Pilsach. The proceedings of these gentlemen were exposed by him in a series of striking letters to the ‘Times,’ and the three treaty powers (Germany, Great Britain, and the United