Charlotte Eaton

“ What is it lurks so still? What secret dread
Troubles the tangled branches overhead?
An ye be foe to this good man, alas!
No art shall save you though ye walk in brass.
Swift to your heart shall the Black Death be sped.
The woods are still—for that was years ago—
And now no baleful presence haunts the glade,
No train-band rules the highway as of yore.
Romance is dead. Adventure, too, lies low.
Long in the grave is Duckworth's kingdom laid,
And the black arrow speeds its way no more.
[Pg 46]
SAINT IVES
Viscomte, your health. ”

“ To some one who asked him if he believed that dreams came true, he replied, "Certainly, they are just as real as anything else."
"Well, it's what one believes that counts, isn't it, and one can form any theory in a world where dreams are as real as other things, and is it the same with ideals?" somebody ventured.
"Ideals," said Stevenson, "are apt to stay by you when material things have taken the proverbial wings, and are assets quite as enduring as stone fences." ”

“ In her letters, written in the Marquesas to her sister in Scotland, she carries out this impression of habitual freshness of spirit, and her humor is subtle and optimistic: "Nothing gives me more pleasure or a better appetite than an obstacle overcome." She shows herself the life of "The Silver Ship," as the people of Fakarava dubbed the Casco, and never a word of criticism or complaint is penned at any inconvenience or annoyance endured by the way. ”

“ What is an old ship but a floating castle built upon the memories of the men who have helmed her? Sometimes she plies the same dull course throughout her existence. Sometimes she changes trade with surprising chances. So it was with the Casco—now a glittering pleasure yacht, whim of an old millionaire, now stripped of gaudy [Pg 36] trappings and bent to the grim will of seal hunter and opium trader.
In the opening of Robert Louis Stevenson's novel, "The Wrecker," with red ensign waving, sailing into the port of Tai-o-hae in the Marquesas, the Casco takes her place in fiction. ”

“ 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." ”

“ When one starts story telling to a good listener, little incidents dart through the brain that for long have lain dormant, and to pass the time, I told Mrs. Stevenson that on the day Mr. Eaton finished his portrait of President Garfield for the Union League Club, he asked the newly landed Celtic maid if she would wash his brushes for him (an office that he generally performed for himself) , to which she exclaimed joyfully, "To think that I have lived to see the day that I washed the brushes that painted the President of the United States!" ”

“ 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 [Pg 10] at forty, when one just begins to enter into the knowledge of one's own powers. ”

“ But Stevenson had no doubt as to my meaning. "I am always helpless," said he, "when I try to describe a woman; but then," he added, brightly, "how should I hope to understand a woman, when God, who made her, cannot?" As straws show how the wind blows, so this little joke throws light on Stevenson 's state of mind toward womankind in general. ”

“ I said at the beginning that I was not disappointed in the personality of Stevenson, but it would be nearer the mark to say that my anticipations fell far short of the reality.
It is often the case in meeting literary celebrities that one has the feeling that they are first authors, and after that men. Rodin, the French sculptor, focuses this idea by saying that "many are artists at the expense of some qualities of manhood." With Stevenson one was clearly in the presence of a man, and after that the scholar and the gentleman. ”

“ What the artist regarded as an added chore to her already full labors, was to her willing hands a pride and an honor. It may be a truism that a rose by any other name would smell as sweet, but there certainly seems to be a good deal in a view-point. ”

“ This, doubtless, is another of the precocities of the early-doomed, who feel that every moment of life they have must be lived to the full. A well-known artist, Who was suffering with tuberculosis, once said to me, in describing his working hours at the studio, "I must make every touch tell, and [Pg 24] every moment count." So to Stevenson the rounded out sympathies of maturity were more attractive than the sweet prattle of girlhood, because, like the painter, with his paint, he, with his life, had to make every moment count. ”

“ In many ways it is given to the humble to minister to the needs of the great. A distinguished author once said to me: "I could never have arrived without the help of my poor friends."
As Stevenson went from reminiscence to reminiscence, we felt that from this period of his vivid obscurity might have been drawn material for some of his most stirring romances, and we were rewarded as good listeners by the discovery of that which he thought his best work, namely, the little story called "Will o' the Mill." ”

“ And on that memorable journey across the plains, seeking the woman of his choice, resolved, though penniless and unknown, to make her his wife in spite of every obstacle, the truth that the frailty of the body is no criterion for the strength of the spirit is well brought out. ”

“ 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, [Pg 9] why the artist values the lay criticism—it hits directly at any false note in a picture, thus saving the painter much unnecessary delay. ”

“ Mr. Eaton, who boasted that, in him, a good sea captain had been spoiled to make a bad painter, encouraged Stevenson to talk freely of his plans, and he dwelt at some length on the beauty and seaworthiness of the yacht Casco, that had been chartered for the voyage. This sea theme [Pg 23] led, of course, to the inevitable fish stories, and after some mythological whale had been swallowed by some non-Biblical Jonah, I remarked, in the lull that followed, "Maybe the waters of the South Seas will yield you up a heroine." ”

“ 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," [Pg 11] and so was Mrs. Stevenson to her husband, Lewis, for so the family called him, and never Robert Louis. ”

“ Stevenson wrote this in the cabin of the Casco, in the summer of '88. His always delicate health had broken completely under the San Francisco climate. Friends had urged a cruise to the South Seas, he had gladly acquiesced, and looked around for a ship. There was a subtle romantic call for the author of "Treasure Island" in a voyage on a ship of his own choosing and direction under the soft skies of the tropics. ”

“ Mrs. Sanborn possessed the reverent spirit of the pre-Raphaelites which burned modestly in its Quaker shrine or flared up like lightning as occasion required; and she delighted in the deification [Pg 21] of her little cow. And why not? Had not Tidy's worshipped ancestors nourished kings of antiquity, and given idols to their temples, and stood she not to-day as perfect a symbol of maternity?
I do not now remember whether it was referring to Samoa as Stevenson's "port o' dreams" that brought up the discussion of dreams. ”

“ Sanborn, his eyes beaming, [Pg 16] "if you live to be as old as Methuselah, with all the world's lore at your finger-ends, you could never improve on that simple little story."
We teased Stevenson a good deal on the hugeness of his royalties on "Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde," which, besides having had what the publishers call a "run," was bringing in a second goodly harvest from its dramatization, by which his voyage to the South Seas had become a reality. ”

“ For example, she never suspects that the French man-o'-war in one of the bays may account for some of the good behavior of the natives, or that their bounty in cocoanuts and bread-fruit may be tendered with an eye to the novelties to be had in exchange, but accepts all in good faith, as part of their native generosity. ”

“ In her eyes, he was still the "bonnie wee laddie" who scouted about in his make-believe worlds among the chairs and tables in the drawing-room while she entertained her friends, and we repeated bits from "A Child's Garden of Verses."
I think that if there is any clue to the character of a great man we must look to his mother. Mrs. Stevenson embodied the idea of her son's peculiar charm ”

“ The Casco had been built by an eccentric California millionaire, Dr. Merritt, for cruising along the coast, and no money had been spared in her fittings. She was a seventy-ton fore-and-aft schooner, ninety-five feet long, with graceful lines, high masts, white sails and decks, shiny brasswork, and a gaudy silk-hung saloon. She [Pg 37] was not perhaps too staunch a cruiser. "Her cockpit was none too safe, her one pump was inadequate in size and almost worthless; the sail plan forward was meant for racing and not for cruising ”

“ He was charmed by the Southern islands and began making notes and gathering data from the natives for later books. He wrote parts of "The Master of Ballantrae" and of "The Wrong Box," and spent much of his time studying the intricate personality of his skipper, whose portrait afterward appeared in the pages of "The Wrecker." ”