AWAY TO SUNNIER LANDS
After boarding the Ludgate Hill, the tramp steamship on which they had taken passage for New York, chiefly on account of her unusually spacious cabins, they discovered, somewhat to their discomfiture, that the cargo, listed by the agent as "notions," really consisted largely of live stock—horses to be taken on at Havre, and a consignment of monkeys. All their party were of the sort, however, who have a "heart for any fate," so they agreed to regard this as only an added adventure. As it turned out, they were not disappointed, for, as the elder Mrs. Stevenson writes, "It was very amusing and like a circus to see the horses come on board," while Jocko, a large ape, which soon struck up a warm friendship with Mr. Stevenson, furnished them with a vast amount of entertainment. The exceptional freedom which they enjoyed on board, too, more than counterbalanced any lack of elegance. In a vein of exuberant joy at this escape from the narrow confines of the sick-room, Louis writes to his Cousin Bob:
"I was so happy on board that ship I could not have believed it possible. We had the beastliest weather and many discomforts; but the mere fact of its being a tramp ship gave us many comforts; we could cut about with the men and officers, stay in the wheel-house, discuss all manner of things, and really be a little at sea. And truly there is nothing else. I had literally forgotten what happiness was, and the full mind—full of external and physical things, not full of cares and labors and rot about a fellow's behavior. My heart literally sang; I truly care for nothing so much as that."
The two ladies took up knitting to while away the long hours at sea, and so the days slipped peacefully by, with the invalid steadily gaining in health until they struck a heavy fog on the Newfoundland banks, where he caught a cold.
They reached New York on September 7, 1887, at the time when Stevenson's fame was in its flood-tide. Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde had just made a tremendous impression on the reading public; the idea of dual personality was being discussed on all sides; ministers preached sermons about it. Stevenson was amazed and bewildered, though immensely pleased, at the sudden turn of fortune's wheel. Here, indeed, was success at last in full measure.
Their original plan had been to try the climate of Colorado, but the long overland journey seemed too great an ordeal in his condition, and, hearing of Saranac in the Adirondacks, then just coming into prominence as a resort for consumptives, they decided to make a trial of it. While Louis and his mother paid a visit to the Fairchilds at Newport, his wife and stepson went on to the mountain place to make arrangements.
This sanatorium was established by Doctor Edward Livingstone Trudeau, a New York physician who had nursed his brother through tuberculosis and later developed the disease himself. He had tried going South and taking daily exercise, but as these attempts at a cure only made matters worse, in a sort of desperation he went to the Adirondacks, not so much for health as for love of the great forest and the wild life. It was then a rough, inaccessible region, visited only by hunters and fishermen, and was considered to have a most inclement and trying climate. Trudeau was carried to the place of Paul Smith, a guide and hotel-keeper, on a mattress, but it was not long before he was able to move about and to get some enjoyment out of life. When he first spent a winter there it was thought to mean his death-warrant, but, to his own surprise, he soon began to eat and sleep, and lost his fever. In 1876 he moved his family to Saranac and lived there always after that. Physicians in New York, hearing of the case of Trudeau, began to send patients now and then to try the climate at Saranac, and in that small way the health resort, now so extensive, had its beginning. Stevenson went there in the early days of the sanatorium, when the place was a mere little logging village, where logs were cut and floated down the river.
There were two churches in the place, called by the appropriate names of St. Luke the Beloved Physician and St. John in the Wilderness, the latter a picturesque structure of logs. These churches, both of the Episcopal denomination, were built and furnished as a testimonial of gratitude by persons who had recovered health or had friends under treatment there.
As soon as Mrs. Stevenson had her people settled at Saranac she left them and went to Indiana to visit her mother and sister, stopping on the way for a few days with the Bellamy Storers at Cincinnati. "The Storers live in a sort of enchanted palace," she writes, "and are very simple and gentle and kind, and altogether lovely. Mrs. Storer has a pottery, where poor ladies with artistic tastes get work and encouragement. She also has a large hospital for children, and a little girl of her own with a genius for drawing. Mr. Storer is six feet three and a half inches in height and has a Greek profile and soft large brown eyes."
The Stevensons reached Saranac when the woods were all aflame with autumn glory, and to Mr. Stevenson's mother it all seemed unreal and "more like a painted scene in a theatre" than actuality.