Stevenson at Manasquan

This was at Manasquan, a village on the New Jersey coast, where he had come to make a farewell visit to his old friend Will Low, the artist. Mr. Low had taken a cottage there that summer while working on his series of Lamia drawings for Lippincott's, and Stevenson, hearing that we were on the other side of the river, sent word that he would come to see us on the morrow.

"Stevenson is coming," was announced at the breakfast-table as calmly as though it were a daily occurrence.

Stevenson coming to Manasquan!

I was in my 'teens, was an enthusiastic student of poetry and mythology, and Stevenson was my hero of romance. Was it any wonder the intelligence excited me?

My husband, the late Wyatt Eaton, and Stevenson, were friends in their student days abroad, and it was in honor of those early days that I was to clasp the hand of my favorite author.

It was in the mazes of a contradance at Barbizon, in the picturesque setting of a barn lighted by candles, that their first meeting took place, where Mr. Eaton, though still a student in the schools of Paris, had taken a studio to be near Jean François Millet, and hither Stevenson had come, with his cousin, known as "Talking Bob," to take part in the harvest festivities among the peasants.

These were the halcyon days at Barbizon, when Millet tramped the fields and the favorite haunts of Rousseau and Corot could be followed up through the Forest of Fontainebleau, before Barbizon had become a resort for holiday makers, or the term "Barbizon School" had been thought of.

Now, of all places in the world, the quaint little Sanborn Cottage on the river-bank, where we were stopping, seemed to me the spot best suited for a first meeting with Stevenson. The Sanborns were very little on the estate and the place had a neglected look. Indeed, more than that, one might easily have taken it for a haunted or abandoned place--with its garden choked with weeds, and its window-shutters flaunting old spider-webs to the breeze.

It was, of course, the fanciful, adventure-loving Stevenson that I looked forward to seeing, and I was not disappointed; and while others spoke of the flight of time with its inevitable changes, I felt sure that, to me, he would be just Stevenson who wrote the things over which I had burned the midnight oil.

He came promptly at the hour fixed, appearing on the threshold as frail and distinguished-looking as a portrait by Velasquez. He had walked across the mile-long bridge connecting Brielle and Manasquan, ahead of the others, for the bracer he always needed before joining even a small company.

Shall I ever forget the sensation of delight that thrilled me, as he entered the room--tall, emaciated, yet radiant, his straight, glossy hair so long that it lay upon the collar of his coat, throwing into bold relief his long neck and keenly sensitive face?

His hands were of the psychic order, and were of marble whiteness, save the thumb and first finger of the right hand, that were stained from constant cigarette rolling--for he was an inveterate smoker--and he had the longest fingers I have ever seen on a human being; they were, in fact, part of his general appearance of lankiness, that would have been uncanny, but for the geniality and sense of bien être that he gave off. His voice, low in tone, had an endearing quality in it, that was almost like a caress. He never made use of vernacularism and was without the slightest Scotch accent; on the contrary, he spoke his English like a world citizen, speaking a universal tongue, and always looked directly at the person spoken to.

I have since heard one who knew him (and they are becoming scarce now) call him the man of good manners, or "the mannerly Stevenson," and this is the term needed to complete my first impression, for more than the traveller, the scholar or the author, it was the mannerly Stevenson that appeared in our midst that day. He moved about the room to a ripple of repartée that was contagious, putting every one on his mettle--in fact, his presence was a challenge to a jeu d'esprit on every hand. How self-possessed he was, how spiritual! his face glowing with memories of other days.

He had just come from Saranac, Saranac-in-the-Adirondacks, that had failed to yield him the elixir of life he was seeking, where he had spent a winter of such solitude as even his courageous wife was unable to endure.

His good spirits were doubtless on the rebound after good work accomplished, for there, in "his hat-box on the hill," as he called his quarters at Baker's, were written his "Christmas Sermons," "The Lantern Bearer," and the opening chapters of "The Master of Ballantrae." In this "very decent house" he would talk old Mr. Baker to sleep on stormy nights, and the good old farmer, never suspecting that Stevenson was "anybody in particular," snored his responses to those flights in fact and fancy for which there are those who would have given hundreds of dollars to have been in the old farmer's place. But it was the very carelessness of Mr. Baker that helped along the talking spell. This is often the case with authors; they will pour out their precious knowledge into the ears of some inconsequential person, a tramp as likely as not, picked up by the way; the non-critical attitude of the illiterate seems to help the thinker in forming a sequence of ideas; this explains, too, why the artist values the lay criticism--it hits directly at any false note in a picture, thus saving the painter much unnecessary delay.

Sometimes Dr. Trudeau, also an exile of the mountains, would drop in professionally on these stormy evenings and would stay until about midnight, having entirely forgotten the nature of his visit. Stevenson had this faculty of making friends of those who served him. To the restaurant keeper of Monterey, Jules Simoneau, who trusted him when he was penniless and unknown, he presented a set of his books, leather-bound, each volume autographed, and this worthy man has since refused a thousand dollars for the set. "Well," he explained, "I do not need the money, and I value the gift for itself." I think this friend of Stevenson's must feel like Father Tabb in the library of his friend when he said:

"To see, when he is dead, The many books he read, And then again, to note The many books he wrote; How some got in, and some got out. 'Tis very strange to think about."

But to return to our story.

Stevenson's Isle-of-the-blest was calling to him, and hope lay that way, where life was elementary and where a man with but one lung to his account might live indefinitely. Not that he feared to die. Oh, no! It takes more courage sometimes to live, but it was hard to give up at forty, when one just begins to enter into the knowledge of one's own powers. A blind lady once said to me, in speaking of a mutual friend, "When Mr. B. comes, I feel as if there was a sprite in the room," and this is the way I felt about Stevenson, for during those moments of serious discussion when most people are tense, he moved actively about, and his philosophies were humanized by his warm, brown eyes and merry exclamations.

Another reason for the sprite feeling, was that he was consciously living in the past that day, and each face was like reseeing a milestone long passed, on some half-forgotten journey.

It was this sense of detachment that, more than anything else, gave us the feeling that he was already beyond our mortal ken, that he was living at once in the visible and in the invisible, one to whom the passing of time had little significance. I think this is true, more or less, of all those who are marked for a brief earthly career.

By this time the other members of the family had arrived. His mother, Lloyd Osbourne, and Mrs. Strong, his step-children; "Fanny," his wife, was in California, looking after some property interests she had there, and provisioning the yacht chartered for the voyage to the South Seas. In all his enterprises she was his major-domo, and her devotion no doubt helped to prolong his life. Their mutual agreement on all financial matters reminded me of a remark made by mine host at a country inn, who, in speaking of his wife, said, "She is my very best investment," and so was Mrs. Stevenson to her husband, Lewis, for so the family called him, and never Robert Louis. I am inclined to think that yoking of contrasts is an important part in Nature's economy of things. Ella Wheeler Wilcox said to me that she owed her success to Robert--her husband--because in all her undertakings he went before and smoothed the way; but Mr. Wilcox's version of the case is another story. "I keep an eye on Ella," said he, "to prevent her from giving away too much money."

Stevenson was now seated before the grate, the flickering light from the wood fire illuminating his pale face to transparency. Now and then he relapsed into silence, gazing into the fire with the rapt look of one who sees visions.

"Are you seeing a Salamander," I asked, "or do the sparks flying upward make you think of the golden alchemy of Lescaris?"[A]

"A Salamander," he replied, smiling. "Yes, a carnivorous fire-dweller that eats up man and his dreams forever."

"Gracious! But you are going to worse things than Salamanders, the Paua,[B] they will get you, if you don't watch out."

And then, suddenly becoming conscious of my temerity in interrupting the thread of his reflections, to cover my embarrassment, I ran upstairs for my birthday-book.

An autograph!

Of course. And he wrote it, reading out the quotation that filled in part of the space. It was one of Emerson's Kantisms, something about not going abroad, unless you can as readily stay at home (I forget the exact words). It was decidedly malapropos and called out much merriment.

"Oh, stay at home, dear heart, and rest; Home-keeping hearts are happiest."

Somebody quoted, to which another replied:

"Home-keeping youth have ever homely wits."

The autograph has long since disappeared, but how often have I thought with regret of the amused expression in Stevenson's eyes at the Salamander fancy! What tales of witchery might have been spun from those themes worthy of the magic of his pen, the fire-dwelling man-eater, or the discovery of the Greek shepherd!

Stevenson was amused over our enthusiasm, and the eagerness of some of the younger members of the company to lionize him.

"And what do you consider your brightest failure?" inquired our host.

"'Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde,'" he replied, without a moment's hesitation, adding, "that is the worst thing I ever wrote."

"Yet you owe it to your dream-expedition," some one reminded him.

"The dream-expedition?" he repeated. "Yes, that was perhaps a compensation for the bad things."

Benjamin Franklin has said that success ruins many a man. The success of "Trilby" killed Du Maurier, and many authors have had their heads turned for far less than the Jekyll and Hyde furore that swept the country at that time. But the Mannerly Stevenson carried his honors lightly. Smiling over the popularity of the "worst thing he ever wrote," he revealed that quality in his own nature that was finer than anything he had given to print, the soul whose indomitable courage could bear the brunt of adverse circumstance, and even contumely, and hold its own integrity, becoming a law unto itself.