Apart from Samoa the universe for him revolved round his native county, Norfolk, whence sprang all that was finest in the British race, particularly the Haggard brothers. I forget how many there were, but they had, he said, all loud voices, and on some occasion won a contested election by the simple process of shouting.
Apart from this quaint strain of simple satisfaction with himself and his surroundings he was the kindest of men, and I was assured that when it came to his legal work all his oddities were cast aside and that he was an excellent and capable Commissioner.
R. L. STEVENSON
On the evening following our arrival he invited Robert Louis Stevenson and Mrs. Stevenson to dinner, and if we had already felt the fascination of Utopia we then fell under the spell of the Enchanter who evoked all the magic woven round its land and sea. I shall never forget the moment when I first saw him and his wife standing at the door of the long, wood-panelled room in Ruge’s Building. A slim, dark-haired, bright-eyed figure in a loose, black velvet jacket over his white vest and trousers, and a scarlet silk sash round his waist. By his side the short, dark woman with cropped, curly hair and the strange piercing glance which had won for her the name in native tongue, “The Witch Woman of the Mountain.”
Stevenson was never one to keep all the treasures of his imagination and humour for his books. Every word, every gesture revealed the man, and he gave one the impression that life was for him a game to be shared with his friends and played nobly to the end. I think that Matthew Arnold’s “Empedocles on Etna” expressed him when he sang:
“Is it so small a thing
To have enjoy’d the sun,
To have lived light in the spring,
To have loved, to have thought, to have done;
To have advanced true friends, and beat down baffling foes?”
But Stevenson, braver to confront life than Empedocles, would not have leapt into the crater!
At that dinner, which inaugurated our friendship, a very merry talk somehow turned on publishers and publishing. It began, if I remember rightly, with a reference to Mrs. Humphry Ward’s latest book, for which she was reported to have received a number of thousands which both Stevenson and Haggard pronounced to be incredible, Haggard speaking from his brother’s experience and Stevenson from his own. Thereupon it was suggested by someone, and carried unanimously, that we should form an “Apia Publishing Company”; and later on in Haggard’s absence the rest of us determined to write a story of which our host should be hero, and the name, suggested, I think, by Stevenson, was to be An Object of Pity, or the Man Haggard.
Before this was completed various incidents occurred which were incorporated into the tale. Another friend of Mr. Haggard was the British Consul, Mr. Cusack Smith, and he took us to tea with him and his pretty wife on the Sunday afternoon following our arrival. They lived in a pleasant bungalow of which the compound—or lawn—was enlivened by a good-sized turtle tied to a post, which was being kept ready to be slaughtered and cooked when we came to dine with them!
The question of fresh meat was not altogether easy to solve in Samoa. We, knowing that there were certain difficulties, had brought with us a provision of tongues and similar preserved foods, also of champagne, but there were few cows and oxen, and sheep were impossible to rear on the island—at least so far means had not been found to feed them amongst the luxuriant tangle of tropical vegetation. Preserved provisions, including butter, were mostly brought from New Zealand. Samoa itself provided skinny chickens, some kind of pigeon, yams, taros, and of course fish.