At times he might have appeared theatrical to those around him; but it was the expression of an intellectual, dramatic instinct, not for the stage, but for the drama played by men of this world, as though he were ever gazing critically on mortals before the limelight of existence and saying, half to himself: “There you are! I told you so. What would you say to all that you’ve just heard if you read it in a book? You wouldn’t believe it, I’ll be bound.”
His manner to Mrs Stevenson revealed an affectionate, confiding nature that loved attention. I should think it was the affection of a boy’s heart, with the strong strain of a discerning man who knew the nature of women. He would always treat native women with the same deference that he showed to the women of his own race; a deference always delicately courteous, excepting on those occasions when women might court his criticism by criticising him, or by casting aside the delicate armour of their sex and assuming man’s rôle.
His kindness and the trouble he took on behalf of the Samoans is well known, and the natives earnestly expressed their gratitude by listening to and following the advice of “Tusitala,” as they called him, and when he died they loudly bewailed his death. The poet-author’s coffin was borne on the strong shoulders of Samoan chiefs, and the sound of their wailing, as they carried the coffin onwards up the slopes, with slow footsteps, to the grave on Vaea’s sea-girt height, was his funeral chant.
I saw Robert Louis Stevenson in many places and in many moods, and looking back, as I now can, the perspective clearly shows me that he was a religious man in the true sense of that term. In no wise bigoted, he often fell into the ranks of Christianity and beat time, with a smile on his lips, as though he wished to set an example to those around him, in his knowledge that the example was better than his own half-sad, hopeful smile. At times, too, he would fall out of the ranks and become a harum-scarum renegade, and at such moments he seemed to have no idea of the existence of the barrier-lines that men, before the public, draw between the jovial rogue and the respectable citizen. “Well, captain, how goes it? Got an eye-opener aboard?” he would say as he jumped aboard the schooner’s deck; and then he would turn to the sailor who might be cleaning brass close by and offer him a cigarette, or walk into the forecastle and chum with the crew, or look over the ship’s side and shy a copper to the swimming natives who haunted the bay, with the sea-birds, looking for a living. Such was Stevenson’s manner in the isles of Samoa, where, notwithstanding the wildness and the proximity to primitive life, many of the emigrant citizens still did things, or did not do things, because of the standard set by a majority.
It does not matter where you go, or how remote from civilisation your dwelling-place may be, you are sure to have some living illustration before you to tell you that the chains of conventionality are forged from the natures of men. I believe that if we could come back to this world a myriad years hence, when the sun has cooled down to a ghostly moon, when the seas are frozen and swinging to the tideless desolation that precedes the final crashing of the planetary system, and the human race has dwindled to a camp of twelve shivering mortals wrapped in bearskins, we should find them sitting over the last log fire without wood, with gloomy faces, anxiously awaiting Monday—because it is Sunday!
Mrs Stevenson was as much a Bohemian as her husband. She accompanied him on his short visits to Apia town, and on those occasions she was generally to be seen hurriedly rushing back to get, or inquire for, that which had been left behind. The novelist walked ahead and, as he went on dreaming, forgot that his wife was out with him till the domestic voice came again. Mrs Stevenson was very pleasant to talk to; she invited me to Vailima, but I was not able to go. Indeed, I was only a lad and, not being a lady’s man, would have run twenty miles to escape Vailima fashion.
I recall many men who were acquaintances of Robert Louis Stevenson, and whom I have never heard of since. I remember one old man in particular whom Stevenson was always glad to meet. Indeed, the novelist’s face lit up directly he saw him. His name was Callard, and he was a bit of a scallawag, was a character and had plenty of spare cash. He was never silent, but talked all day long and nearly all night, and always had some new trouble to relate. I slept in his room one night with two other men and he kept on and on about some friend who had swindled him out of five dollars in San Francisco, for that was his native place. “Yes, he did me, by heaven he did”; and saying this he would start reckoning up on a bit of paper, and sit on the side of the bed swearing till my friend and I said: “If you won’t worry any more about it we’ll give you the five dollars.” About a week after he took a passage on the ’Frisco mail-boat. I really believe that he hurried home and spent five hundred dollars to ease his mind about that five dollars, and would have spent a thousand dollars sooner than be done. I am rather like that myself, but I do not let such losses prey on my mind, for if I did, and tried to get even with the culprit, I should be incessantly travelling off somewhere or other.
Well, Stevenson often met Callard, and the old chap treated him as though he was a boy, told the novelist jokes, spun yarns and repeatedly nudged him in the ribs; and the two would finally end up by retiring to the bar and standing each other treat.
Callard’s great ambition at that time was to see King Malietoa Laupepa at Mulinuu. I went off with him, and with the assistance of some Malietoans got him an introduction at the royal court. Callard behaved with great propriety, indeed, bowed to almost all the native servants of the court retinue! I played the violin to the King, who was a most agreeable gentleman, and carried himself with a deal more importance than Mataafa did. Callard spoke day and night of the King’s handshake, and chuckled in his very sleep at the thought of what his friends in America would think when they heard of Callard and the King of Samoa together. He went especially to Vailima to tell Stevenson about King Malietoa, and kept the novelist amused the whole evening.
Callard’s eyebrows were about half-an-inch long and they stuck straight out, and as he spoke his eyelids kept closing as though he was in deep thought; and what with that and his high, bald head, he was a cheerful-looking man. He always drank whisky, and Stevenson tucked him up to sleep on his couch at Vailima when he was too full of it to walk back to his lodgings! I am quite sure if Stevenson had lived the world would have heard of Callard.