——; — ! 92 STEVENSONIANA VIII ISLAND DAYS TO TUSITALA IN VAILIMA^ Clearest voice in Britain's chorus, Tusitala Years ago, years four-and-twenty. Grey the cloudland drifted o'er us, When these ears first heard you talking, When these eyes first saw you smiling. Years of famine, years of plenty, Years of beckoning and beguiling. Years of yielding, shifting, baulking, ' When the good ship Clansman ' bore us Round the spits of Tobermory, Glens of Voulin like a vision. Crags of Knoidart, huge and hoary, We had laughed in light derision. Had they told us, told the daring Tusitala, What the years' pale hands were bearing, Years in stately dim division. II Now the skies are pure above you, Tusitala; Feather'd trees bow down to love you 1 This poem, addressed to Robert Louis Stevenson, reached him at Vailima three days before his death. It was the last piece of verse read by Stevenson, and it is the subject of the last letter he wrote on the last day of his life. The poem was read by Mr. Lloyd Osbourne at the funeral. It is here printed, by kind permission of the author, from Mr. Edmund Gosse's ' In Russet and Silver,' 1894, of which it was the dedication. After the Photo by] [./. Davis, Apia, Samoa STEVENSON AT VAILIMA [To face page i>'l ! ——— ! ISLAND DAYS 93 Perfum'd winds from shining waters Stir the sanguine-leav'd hibiscus That your kingdom's dusk-ey'd daughters Weave about their shining tresses ; Dew-fed guavas drop their viscous Honey at the sun's caresses, Where eternal summer blesses Your ethereal musky highlands ; Ah ! but does your heart remember, Tusitala, Westward in our Scotch September, Blue against the pale sun's ember, That low rim of faint long islands. Barren, granite-snouted nesses, Plunging in the dull'd Atlantic, Where beyond Tiree one guesses At the full tide, loud and frantic ? By strange pathways God hath brought you, Tusitala, In strange webs of fortune caught you. Led you by strange moods and measures To this paradise of pleasures And the body-guard that sought you To conduct you home to glory, Dark the oriflammes they carried, In the mist their cohort tarried, They were Languor, Pain, and Sorrow, Tusitala Scarcely we endured their story Trailing on from morn to morrow. Such the devious roads they led you, Such the error, such the vastness. Such the cloud that overspread you, Under exile bow'd and banish'd, Lost, like Moses in the fastness. Till we almost deem'd you vanished. — ; ; 94 STEVENSONIANA IV Vanish'd? Ay, that's still the trouble, Tusitala Though your tropic isle rejoices, 'Tis to us an Isle of Voices Hollow like the elfin double Cry of disembodied echoes. Or an owlet's wicked laughter. Or the cold and hornfed gecko's Croaking from a ruined rafter, Voices these of things existing, Yet incessantly resisting Eyes and hands that follow after You are circled, as by magic. In a surf-built palmy bubble, Tusitala Fate hath chosen, but the choice is Half delectable, half tragic. For we hear you speak, like Moses, And we greet you back, enchanted. But reply 's no sooner granted, Than the rifted cloudland closes. Stptember 1894. Edmund Gosse. ' For three years . Stevenson wandered up and down the face of the Pacific, spending most of his time in the Hawaiian Islands and the Gilberts, in Tahiti, and in Samoa, his future home. During this period he visited, however cursorily, almost every group of importance in the Eastern and Central Pacific!'^ Early in i2,go he purchased some three hundred acres of land two miles from the town of Apia, in Samoa, with the idea of building a house and settling there ; but it was not until early in the succeeding year that his house, Vailima, had been completed and he • Mr. Graham Balfour in the ' Life.' ISLAND DAYS 95 was at rest from his voyaging. In May his family circle was increased by the arrival of his mother and Mrs. Isabel Strong, his step-daughter, with her son. In December of 1892 his mountain dwelling was considerably increased in size. He was called Tusitala by his native retainers, the name being Samoan for the ' Teller of Tales! On Decem- ber 3, 1894, he died suddenly, having been engaged that forenoon on his half-finished book, ' Weir of Hermiston.' Very little has been published about Stevenson's visits to the Hawaiian Islands, beyond what he himself wrote of these episodes in his wander-years, so that the following pages quoted from the Scots j„^^°^°y Pictorial, July 3, 1897, possess considerable value as a link in the chain of Stevenson's history. The writer is Mr. W. F. Wilson of Honolulu : A few stray jottings regarding Robert Louis Stevenson's con- nection with the Hawaiian Islands will, it is to be hoped, prove acceptable to the many admirers of that gifted and genial ' author. It is true that most of the time spent by Tusitala ' in the isles of the great Pacific was passed at his mountain retreat at Vailima, Samoa, yet on two different occasions he stayed a considerable period at the Hawaiian Islands. The first time was in 1889. He arrived at Honolulu on 24th January on the yacht Casco from Tahiti, accompanied by his wife, mother, and a party of friends. He stayed for a time at the Hawaiian hotel, but later on took up his quarters at a cottage at Waikiki, a seaside resort distant about three miles from Honolulu. Here he led a life of dolcefar niente. He had not long escaped from the ' glorious climate of California,' as it is exemplifi«rd in foggy, windy San Francisco, and doubtless he enjoyed the change to the warm, sunny island shores of Hawaii net. He lived six months in Honolulu while on this visit, but the fact of his having come south to recuperate, and the indifferent state of his health while here, probably explains why he has not written more about Hawaii in his stories, or has not employed ' 96 STEVENSONIANA the old Hawaiian myths and folk-lore as the foundation of some of his sketches. For not only is there a wealth of old ' meles or chants and legends from which to pick and choose, but the beauty of the country itself is such as would naturally inspire the pen of a poet and lover of nature like Stevenson. His health, however, was so bad that he did not even get the length of the Kilauea volcano. He once started to visit it, but got off the steamer half-way, at Hookena, a native village in the district of South Kona, Island of Hawaii, and there he remained until the rest of his party returned. Hookena lies seven miles south from Kealakekua Bay, the scene cff Captain Cook's death ; and about half-way between the two places iS Honaunau, where still stand the remains of the black lava walls of the ' Puuhonua' or Hawaiian City of Refuge. This was a sort of walled enclosure used in times of war as a place of safety for the women and children, and for any warriors defeated in battle. Once within the walls of the enclosure, the fugitives were 'kapu ' or sacred, and could not be touched. It was whilst waiting for the return of his party of friends from their visit to Kilauea volcano that Stevenson must have composed his tale of the ' Bottle Imp.' The sole occupation of the Hawaiians living on the beach at Hookena is fishing in their slender outrigger canoes, apd occasionally surf-swimming in the bay. The late D. H. Nahinu's house at Hookena, where Stevenson lived during his sojourn, is close to the beach, immediately in front of the spot where the semi-naked fishermen are wont to launch their long narrow canoes ; and it was very likely when seated on the verandah in the cool of the evening and watching the different crews paddling to land with their loads of 'opelu'or 'akule,'that the idea of the 'Bottle Imp' came into his head. Apart from the occupation of watching the young men and children amusing themselves by swimming in the breakers on the top of their surf boards, there is little to interest the visitor to Hookena. Certainly the view just before sunset looking towards the palm-trees of Kalahiki and the slopes of the huge snow- capped Maunaloa, where the coffee and awa grow, is enchant- but unless one can live on fish and ing J poi, or rice and eggs (it is difficult to get anything else to eat there), one soon tires — ;— — ISLAND DAYS 97 of Hookena and is glad to get a change to fresh fields and pastures new. During his stay in Honolulu, Mr. and Mrs. Stevenson at- ' tended a grand luau ' or feast given in the old Hawaiian style. King Kalakaua was present, and Mrs. Stevenson presented the King with a rare pearl from the Paumotus, the presentation being accompanied with the following lines by Mr. Stevenson which he read himself : The silver ship, my King—that was her name In the bright islands whence your fathers came The silver ship at rest from wind and tides Below your palace, in your harbour rides And the sea fairies, sitting safe on shore, Like eager merchants, count their treasures o'er. One gift they find, one strange and lovely thing. Now doubly precious, since it pleased a King. The right, my liege, is ancient as the lyre, For bards to give to Kings what Kings admire ; 'Tis mine to offer for Apollo's sake.