An inland voyage, and Travels with a donkey

Preface

An Inland Voyage and Travels with a Donkey are to be enjoyed rather than studied pedantically. They are to be read for the interest of the style and for th3 charm of the author's personality. Incidentally, they fascinate through the veiled beauty with which they clothe commonplace things, and the manner in which they make the most trivial experience interesting and human. The editor has worked with this in mind.

After the student has enjoyed the excursions, he may then find it valuable to study carefully certain definite portions which have especially appealed to him. When he has mastered these somewhat, he will find it profitable to take some experience of his own, and try to write it out as Stevenson would have done. This can do no more harm than to show him what a wonderfully clever writer Stevenson really is ; and besides," it can hardly fail to make him more conscious of a number of possible ways of adding neatness to his own expression.

Full as has been the charm of these journeys in the past, they now have an added interest in that the one was taken through a part of the same country that is being fought over on the Western Front.

J. C. B.

Contents

INTRODUCTION ix

Dedication . . . . . . . . . xxxi

Author's Preface xxxiii

Introduction

I

Biographical Sketch

Robert Louis Stevenson was born in Edinburgh, Scotland, on November 13, 1850. On his father's side he was descended from a family of distinguished lighthouse engineers ; his father, his grandfather, and his greatgrandfather, were not alone builders of the best lighthouses of the North ; their inventions and improvements were equally noteworthy. From these men Stevenson inherited a great love of adventure, a vagabond joy for the sea and for the open road.

His maternal grandfather, Louis Balfour, was a Professor of Moral Philosophy and a Minister. It was in his house that Stevenson spent the greater part of his boyhood. "Now I often wonder," says Stevenson, "what I inherited from this old minister. I must suppose, indeed, that he was fond of preaching sermons, and so am I, though I never heard it maintained that either of us loved to hear them." From his forbears, then, Stevenson received a rare blend of personality.

From his mother, Stevenson inherited a diseased throat and weak lungs. These kept him almost constantly in the "land of counterpane" during the winter. His nurse,

X Introduction

the while, beguiled many tedious hours by reading from the Bible and the lives of the old Covenanters. During the summer he was encouraged to run out-of-doors, and despite his frailty, he proved himself wilder and more care-free than any of his companions.

At the age of eleven his health mended sufficiently so that his parents began to prepare him for the University of Edinburgh. They planned for him to follow the profession of his father. During this period he also read widely, and enjoyed especially, Shakespeare, Scott, Bunyan, and The Arabian Nights.

He entered the University at the age of seventeen, but soon discovered that he had neither the scientific mind nor the physical endurance to succeed as an engineer. When his father took him for a voyage, he found — instead of being interested in lighthouse construction — that his mind was teeming with wonderful romances about the coast and islands which they visited.

Although his father was firm, he finally allowed Stevenson to decide upon literature as a career, — but first he thought it wise that the son should finish a course in law, so that he might, in necessity, have a profession to fall back upon. Stevenson submitted to the decision, and finally at the age of twenty-five succeeded in passing the examinations for admission to the bar, though not until he had nearly ruined his health through work and worry. It was the father's lack of understanding that led the son to the following protest :

Say not of me that weakly I declined The labours of my sires, and fled the sea, The towers we founded and the lamps we lit, To play at home with paper like a child.

Introduction xi

The four years that followed were spent largely in travel, and in search for a hospitable climate. He made long and frequent visits at Fontainebleau, Barbizon, Grez, and Nemours, in intimate association with the colonies of artists. Here it was that he first met Mrs. Osborne, his future wife. Often he visited the galleries and theatres of Paris. During this period, too, he made many of his most intimate and lasting friends.

Among these were Sidney Colvin, his biographer and Hterary executor; W. E. Henley, his collaborator in dramatic composition ; Mrs. Sitwell, who helped him past his religious crisis ; Andrew • Lang, Edmund Gosse, and Leslie Stephen, writers and critics all. He also made the journeys which are described in ^;^ Inland Voyage and Travels with a Donkey. In addition he wrote twenty or more articles and essays which appeared in various magazines. Although it seemed to his parents that he was wasting much valuable time in idleness at Siron's Inn, he was in reality constantly studying to perfect his style of writing and broaden his knowledge of life; gradually he was emerging as a man of letters.

When Stevenson and Mrs. Osborne met in France in i,78j0, they loved at first sight. A few months later when she returned to her home in California, Stevenson determined to follow. Those of his friends in whom he confided advised strongly against the proposed journey. Knowing his father's temper, he sailed without even notifying his parent. He took steerage passage on the Devonian, partly to lessen the expense and partly for the novelty of the voyage.

From New York he travelled to California by emigrant train. These experiences he later gave the world m An xii Introduction

Amateur Emigrant and Across the Plains. However valuable the literary material thus secured, the hardships of such travel were too great for Stevenson's frail constitution ; he was all but a dead man when he reached Monterey. In the mountains above this town he was nursed back to life by two generous ranchers.

It was December, 1879, when he found himself sufficiently recovered to go to San Francisco. Here for several months he struggled "all alone on forty-five cents a day, and sometimes less, with quantities of hard work and many heavy thoughts," in an effort to support himself through his writing ; but before the end of the winter his health broke completely, and he found himself at death's door, with a galloping consumption.

It was then that Mrs. Osborne — now free from her husband — heroically came to Stevenson's bedside, and nursed him through the crisis. "After a while," he wrote, "my spirit got up again in divine frenzy, and has since kicked and spurred my vile body forward with great emphasis and success." When his father was made aware of the son's condition, he cabled him the financial support which he had romantically abandoned when he started for America.

In May, 1880, he was married, when, as he says, he was "a mere complication of cough and bones, much fitter for an emblem of mortality than a bridegroom." With his wife and her son, Lloyd, he went up into the hills a little way from San Francisco, and lived for a time at a deserted mining camp ; this experience he published in The Silverado Squatters. In August of the same year he sailed from New York with his family, and found his parents and his friend, Sidney Colvin, on the wharf at

Introduction xiii

Liverpool, happy to meet him. Within a few days the good wife had firmly established herself in the esteem and affection of Stevenson's parents and friends, and did much to reconcile parent and son.

For the next seven years Stevenson searched in vain for a place of residence suitable to his state of health. He spent his summers at various places in Scotland and England; for his winters, he escaped to sunny France, and dwelt at Davos Platz and the Chalet de Solitude at Hyeres, where, for a time, he enjoyed almost complete happiness. "I have so many things to make life sweet to me," he wrote, *'it seems a pity I cannot have that other one thing — health. But though you will be angry to hear it, I believe for myself, at least, that it is best. I believed it all through my worst days, and I am not ashamed to profess it now."

In spite of the blood on his handkerchief and the medicine bottle at his elbow, his indomitable, optimistic spirit upheld him, and he produced the bulk of his best work : — Treasure Island, his first widely popular book ; Kidnapped ; Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, the story which finally established his reputation among a large class of his readers; and two volumes of verse, A Child's Garden of Verses and Underwoods.

Upon the death of his father in 1887, Stevenson felt free to follow the advice of his physician to try a complete change of climate. He started with his mother and his family for Colorado ; but after landing at New York, it was decided to spend the winter at Saranac Lake, in the Adirondacks. During the intensely cold season Stevenson wrote a number of his best essays, including Pulvis et Umbra, began The Master of Ballantrae, and lightxiv Introduction

heartedly planned, for the following summer, a cruise over the South Seas. ''The proudest moments of my life," he wrote, "have been passed in the stern-sheets of a boat with that romantic garment over my shoulders."

In June, 1888, Stevenson chartered the yacht Casco, and with his family, set sail from San Francisco. The vessel " ploughed her path of snow across the empty deep, far from any hand of help." The salt sea air and the thrill of adventure healed, for the time, his wounded body; and for nearly three years he wandered up and down the ocean, visiting all the important groups of islands in the Eastern and Central Pacific, and making a number of long stops at the Hawaiian Islands, the Gilbert Islands, Tahiti, and the Samoan Islands.

Everywhere his kindly tolerance toward the traditions and customs of the half-civilized peoples removed the barriers which they generally raised against white men, and brought him into intimate contact with the various chiefs. He proved himself so entirely human that wherever he went he made friends with everybody. During this period he completed The Master of Ballantrae, composed two ballads based on the legends of the islanders, and wrote The Bottle Imp. The experiences of these years are preserved in his various letters and in The South Seas.

During his roving of the ocean, Stevenson became convinced that the most hospitable climate in the world for him was to be found in the South Seas. In 1890 he purchased four hundred acres of land in Upolu, one of the Samoan Islands. Here, after two futile efforts to visit Scotland, he established himself, at the cost of much labor, upon his estate, which he named Vailima (Five Rivers).

Introduction xv

His influence rapidly spread beyond his own household, and soon the natives were consulting him about everything pertaining to their lives. In time, he was naturally drawn into the local politics. He became convinced that the white officials appointed to rule over the natives were incompetent. After many futile attempts to improve matters, he finally published A Footnote to History. This was such a stinging protest against existing conditions that it resulted in the recall of two of the officials, and Stevenson had cause to fear for a time that it would lead to his being deported. When he had finally wiped his hands of the affair, he wrote a friend: "I used to think meanly of the plumber; but how he shines beside the poHtician."

In addition to building his house and clearing his land, and to helping the natives in many ways, he found time to work continually at his writing. In his enthusiasm, he felt that "there was never any man had so many irons in the fire." He wrote The Beach of Felesa, David Balfour, and Ebh Tide, as well as the Vailima Letters, during this period.

For a time during the summer of 1894 Stevenson felt depressed ; he wondered if he had not exhausted his vein and completely worked himself out. He owned that he had ''overworked bitterly." He felt more clearly, with each fresh attempt, that the best he could write was "ditch water." He even feared that he might again become a helpless invalid. Against this idea he rebelled: "I wish to die in my boots ; no more land of counterpane for me. To be drowned, to be shot, to be thrown from a horse — ay, to be hanged rather than pass again through that slow dissolution."

XVI Introduction

Then suddenly there was a return of his old buoyant energy. He had got started on Weir of Hermiston; and in his enthusiasm had forgotten everything else. "It's so good that it frightens me," he is reported to have exclaimed. He felt that this, after all, was the best work that he had ever done. He was convinced, "sick and well, I have had a splendid life of it, grudge nothing, regret very little . . . take it all over, I would hardly change with any man of my time."

Without knowing it, he was to have his wish fulfilled. During the morning of December 3, 1894, he had worked hard, as usual, on Hermiston. During the evening while he was gayly conversing with his wife in an attempt to rouse her from the presentiment that some calamity was about to fall, he was suddenly stricken, and died within a few hours without regaining consciousness. The faithful natives insisted on surrounding the body with a silent guard during the long watches of the night and on bearing their Tusitala (Teller of Tales) several miles upon their shoulders to the top of the cliff overlooking the wild, restless sea. There, far from his cherished native land, far from the graves of his fathers, they buried him in love.

n

The Charm of the Man

The marked quality of Stevenson's personality is charm. It is generally admitted that he is one of the most attractive of all literary figures. That he possesses the secret of charm is easily felt ; but, like beauty, this is almost impossible to define. Either an author has it or he does not, and that's the end of the matter for most readers. With

Introduction xvii

Stevenson, however, a number of the individual traits which contribute to the effect are easily discerned.

Stevenson is one of the most companionable of authors. His chief motive is autobiographical. With the seeming genial egotism of a child, he admits the reader to the intimacies of his soul, and relates his motives, his tastes, his opinions, his faults. He chats so pleasantly about the people he meets, the books he reads, even the methods he employs in accomplishing his effects in writing, that the reader soon feels on the inmost terms of friendship with him. And yet all without the trace of vanity. The reader is so captivated that soon he finds himself turning the pages of the travels and the essays again and again, with the feeling that these personal secrets are intended alone for him. This quality is so marked in Stevenson that many have felt as does Henley : " The man himself is so much greater than even the best of his works."

Stevenson was a wanderer from his birth. "I travel not to go anywhere," he says, "but to go." Remaining long in any one place "tells on my old gypsy nature ; like a violin hung up, I begin to lose what music there is in me ; and with the music, I do not know what besides, or do not know what to call it, but something radically part of life, a rhythm, perhaps, in one's old and brutally overridden nerves, or perhaps a kind of variety of blood that the heart has come to look for." This trait kept alive in Stevenson a boyish craving for adventure: "He ran to em^brace life like a lover." This it is in him which gives voice to the finest melody he uttered :

Under the wide and starry sky, Dig the grave and let me lie ; Glad did I live and gladly die, And I laid me down with a will.

xviii Introduction

This be the verse you grave for me : Here he lies where he longed to be; Home is the sailor, home from the sea, And the hunter home from the hill.

It is this ceaseless struggle for adventure, this very masculine vigor, this restless romance, which keeps his soul constantly alert and young, and which many consider in him the greatest quality of all.

In his wanderings, it is the out-of-doors — the mountains, the valleys, the rivers, the ocean — not the city — for which Stevenson hankers. ''To wash in one of God's rivers in the open air" is a tonic for soul and body. He is never so healthy as when tramping the hills or sailing the seas. Not alone is it nature that takes him afield ; it is the untrammelled, wild, natural, masculine life of the valleys and the mountains, and especially of the ocean that appeals to him. For me, he says "not the shoddy sham of cities, clubs, and colleges, but the world where men still live a man's life." And again : ''God knows I don't care who I chum with ; perhaps I like sailors best ; but to go round and sue and sneak to keep a crowd together — never." The wish expressed in his Envoy is not alone for others ; it is his desire for himself :

A living river by the door, A nightingale in the sycamore.

Stevenson never grew up ; his wonder and imagination, his buoyant simplicity and curiosity, are those of a child. He retains, in such extraordinary freshness, the memory of himself as a child that he has but to wink one eye in order to transform himself into the lad of his dreams. When he is too sick or too exhausted to work, he drags

Introduction xix

his ailing body into the unused attic, and there with Lloyd Osborne plays unfagged, for hours at a time, a boyish game of war.

To him life is ever fresh. He is never bored with the monotony of existence. Every day he jumps out of his trundle bed afresh to gaze upon the wonderful world. He has an interest in everything and in everybody. Bohemian and open-minded, with no animosity against those who oppose him, he is constantly a learner. Boy and man, he often plays the truant, and often seems wasting himself in idleness, because he is intently studying things about him. "Do you think I have an empty life?" he writes from Vailima, "or that a man jogging to his club has so much to interest and amuse him?"

There is, too, a sort of uncanny, haunting presence that surrounds him ; it is as if he has, under the magic of his wand, an invisible, winged-footed Ariel to do his bidding. This is the quality which makes many of his stories, such as Thrawn Janet and Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, haunting, unforgettable memories. Truly he is, as Barrie has said, "a spirit of boyhood tugging at the skirts of this old world of ours and compelUng it to come back and play."

In spite of constitutional weakness and chronic pain, Stevenson displayed the courage and indomitable will that has endeared him to the whole world. In this respect he is not unlike Scott. In spite of the complicated miseries that surround him, " up a high hill he heaves a huge round stone." Although often "groggy afoot and vague in the head," although incapacitated by scrivener's cramp, he despairs not. When others would have slighted their work, he toils rigorously, and ceases not until he has produced the exact effect he desires.

XX Introduction

Whatever the cost, he maintains his ideal: "Every piece of work which is not as good as you can make it, which you have palmed off, imperfect, meagrely thought, niggardly in execution, upon mankind who is your paymaster on parole and in a sense your pupil, every hasty or slovenly or untrue performance, should rise up against you in the court of your own heart and condemn you for a thief." And not only did Stevenson work, but he smiled. Instead of airing his troubles, he converses charmingly of his pleasures. He has the rare capacity of making others feel as he feels :

The world is so full of a number of things, I'm sure we should all be as happy as kings.

Stevenson is fundamentally religious : this does not mean that he holds to any narrow creed, for he does not. *'I believe in the ultimate decency of things," he says, "ay, and if I woke in hell, I should still believe it." In spirit, he never gets very far away from the Puritan influence of his childhood and youth. The voice of " Cummie," his faithful nurse, rings in his ears to the end: "We are all nobly born ; fortunate those who know it ; blessed those who remember."

This influence keeps his mind wholesome, sweet, and clean. Witness one of his household prayers for use at Vailima: "At morning. The day returns and brings us the petty round of irritating concerns and duties. Help us to play the man, help us to perform them with laughter and kind faces, let cheerfulness abound with industry. Give us to go blithely on our business all this day, bring us to our resting beds weary and content and undishonored, and grant us in the end the gift of sleep." About him there

Introduction xxi

is " no flurry, no high words, ho long faces ; only hard work and honest thought." He makes his practice a reflection of his philosophy ; in his creed as in his life he is always the soldier and the gentleman. He purges the mind and sets the feet upon the honest, manly journey.

The charm of Stevenson's personality carries over into his style. There is an unusual harmony between the man and his books. In grace, appeal, and melody, his style is practically perfect. "I have one feather in my cap," he says, ''and that is I am not a sloven." During his formative years he associated intimately with the genre painters of France, and formed the habit of studying his words as the artist studies his colors. He loves the striking epithet and the harmonious sentence. He is the born artist and knows how to mingle the rhythm with the sound in an infinitely varied and irresistible pattern.

"Too many of us," he counsels, "read by the eye, but the man who means to write, must, whether he articulates or not, read everything by the ear. In short, as a musician reads score and can hear harmony, so the Hterary man, even while skimming with the eye, must be able to hear all the uttered words." His love of style for its own sake, together with his artistic sensitiveness and ceaseless labor, produces a beauty of rhythm and sound, an avoidance of artifice, and a perfect concord between sound and sense. Yes, and there runs like a golden thread through all that he writes a freshness and a masculine vigor which is unmistakable. Withal, as in his personality, there is an exquisite blending of pathos and humor, melody and wisdom.

But one must end somewhere in this enumeration, although not half through dissecting the motley personxxii Introduction

ality. There remains still the man of the world, the obsolete soldier of fortune, the whimsical child, the critic. But at whatever length one continues, one must feel that one has failed to give any definite conception of the charm which must be felt through reading the author, if it is to be appreciated. It is all too much like tearing a bit of protoplasm into its elements, and then expecting the nitrogen and the oxygen and the hydrogen to have life. After all, is it not in the infinitely complex blending of all these qualities that the charm of Stevenson really exists ? Perhaps his friend Henley has come nearest expressing this :

Thin-legged, thin-chested, sUght unspeakably.

Neat-footed and weak-fingered : in his face —

Lean, large-boned, curved of beak, and touched with race,

Bold-lipped, rich-tinted, mutable as the sea,

The brown eyes radiant with vivacity —

There shone a brilliant and romantic grace,

A spirit intense and rare, with trace on trace

Of passion, impudence, and energy.

Valiant in velvet, light in ragged luck,

Most vain, most generous, sternly critical,

Buffoon and poet, lover and sensualist ;

A deal of Ariel, just a streak of Puck,

Much Antony, of Hamlet most of all.

And something of the Shorter Catechist.

Ill

An Inland Voyage and Travels with a Donkey

It is the companionable Stevenson that one accompanies in An Inland Voyage and Travels with a Donkey. His mind is as open and as fresh as that of a child. He is unafraid and confiding. He does not attempt to force theories

Introduction xxiii

upon one nor to slap one constantly with cocksure convictions : he simply allows his mind to take color from each passing sight and sound along the way ; and he is so surcharged with wit and pathos, insight and wisdom, and is so cheerful and natural about it all, that one cannot help being captivated. The grace and harmony of the expression is but a small part of the potent charm ; the larger part lies in the strangeness and picturesqueness with which every commonplace thing is enveloped, and in the revelation that — if one has but the eye to see it — everything in the world is flooded with artistry and beauty.

In An Inland Voyage Stevenson gives the log of a canoeing journey which he took during September, 1876, from Antwerp, through Belgium and northern France, to Pontoise, a town on the Oise near Paris. On this voyage he was accompanied by his old friend, Walter Simpson, with whom he had previously taken many and varied excursions. The voyage lasted for seventeen days. "I have been wet through nearly every day of travel since the second (inclusive) ; besides this, I have had to fight against pretty mouldy health ; so that, on the whole, the essayist and reviewer has shown, I think, some pluck."

Yet in the report he gives us, we have but a veiled suggestion here and there of the disagreeable weather and the poor health. One feels instead that "he who is of the brotherhood does not voyage in quest of the picturesque but of certain jolly humors — of the hope and spirit with which the march begins at morning, and the peace and spiritual reflections of the evening's rest." From almost every page there radiates the white sunlight of a joyous spirit.

Travels with a Donkey is Stevenson's log of his walking xxlv Introduction

journey over the Cevennes in southeastern France. He left Le Monastier the last week of September, 1878, and after spending twelve days in the company of Modestine, reached Alais, on the Gardon. His journey lay in the present departments of Ardeche and Lozere, though Stevenson preferred to use the names of the corresponding old districts, Viveras and Gevaudan. The general direction of his foot-steps lay toward the south, though his winding, irregular way often took him toward almost every other point of the compass. He pays more attention than in the Voyage to the people he meets, and his eyes turn oftener to the stars.

In each of the stories he reverts again and again to his joy in personal freedom. He is sure he would ''rather be a bargee than occupy any position under heaven that requires attendance at an office." In each there is much of the feeling and philosophy of the gypsy and the vagabond.

IV Bibliography

List of Stevenson's Books:

1879. Travels with a Donkey in the Cevennes

1 881. Virginibus Puerisque, and Other Papers

1882. Familiar Studies of Men and Books

1882. New Arabian Nights

1883. Treasure Island 1885. Prince Otto

1885. A Child's Garden of Verses

1885. The Dynamiter: More New Arabian Nights

Introduction xxv

1886. The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde

1886. Kidnapped: being Memoirs of the Adven-

tures of David Balfour in the Year 1751

1887. The Merry Men, and Other Tales

1887. Memories and Portraits

1888. The Black Arrow

1889. The Master of Ballantrae

1889. The Wrong Box

1890. Father Damien : an Open Letter to the Rev.

Dr. Hyde of Honolulu 1892. Across the Plains, with Other Memories and Essays

1892. The Wrecker

1893. Island Nights' Entertainments

1893. Catriona: a Sequel to Kidnapped (Pub-

lished in America under the title, David Balfour)

1894. The Ebb Tide

1895. Vailima Letters

1896. Weir of Hermiston

1897. St. Ives: being the Adventures of a French

Prisoner in England 1899. Letters to his Family and Friends, selected and edited by Sidney Colvin, 2 vols.

Editions of Stevenson's Works:

The Thistle Edition. This edition in twenty-six volumes contains the author's Life by Balfour, and his Letters by Colvin.

The Biographical Edition. This edition in twentyseven volumes contains instructive and entertaining prefaces by Mrs. Stevenson.

xxvi Introduction

Biographies of Stevenson: Graham Balfour.