Reminiscences of Stevenson in Tahiti

Ladies' Mirror, Volume 4, Issue 4, 1 October 1925, Page 6

Reminiscences of Stevenson in Tahiti

CBy MARC TIFFANY GREENE

CIR JAMES M. BARRIE, speaking to a large gathering of rather notable persons at a recent dinner in London, observed that most of them were probably writing their reminiscences, and that in so doing they would be well-advised to remember that reminiscences were of little value nowadays unless they included some recollection of Robert Louis Stevenson. Whimsical as that may have been, it was true to the extent that anyone who has anything new to tell of friendship or of association with R.L.S. is as certain to find attentive listeners now as at any time: in point of fact, rather more certain, since one would say that about everything Stevenson ever wrote or ever did of possible interest to anyone has been told and re-told. Letters have been produced from everywhere, and just the other day I saw a Honolulu newspaper which contained a photograph copy of a few congratulatory lines written from Vailima to Queen Liliuokalani, in 1891, on- the occasion of her accession to the throne of Hawaii. But the period of Stevenson’s life which has been discussed least of all is, it seems to me, that of the few brief, but interesting and piquant months which he spent in Tahiti, in the autumn of 1888. And although the present chief of the

village where R.L.S. spent those months remembers the white stranger of nearly forty years ago, and much of his doings and sayings, there is little likelihood of any reminiscences appearing from that quarter. Yet the chief, whose name is Timaree, is an adopted son of the chief • — now dead for some years — who entertained R.L.S. at the little village of Tautira, in Tahiti. It was that chief, Oreore. who conferred upon his guest the high honour of “blood brotherhood,” the deepest manifestation of affection the Tahitians could bestow. This included, naturally, the name and title, and Stevenson was always thereafter known to the natives of Tautira as “the chief Oreore,” and held in equal regard with the tribal chieftain. OPHE Casco and her party sailed from San Francisco for the South Seas on June 28, 1888. That is a well-known fact and date. But there are other facts in the connection not so well known ; and I should like to depart form my main theme long enough to mention them. One of Stevenson’s dreams had always been, of course, a South Sea cruise. he lure of the Pacific and its palm-

shaded islands was felt strongly in the San Francisco of the latter part of the last century, when there always lay at the wharves along the Embarcadero a dozen tradingschooners with their atmosphere of tropic seas and exotic lands. About those wharves has lingered and dreamed many a wanderer; and their romantic appeal to R.L.S. was potent. His determination some day to cruise the South Seas was no doubt born among the San Francisco wharves. But his frail health barred any possibility of joining the crew of a trading vessel, which would have been the average wanderer’s logical course. So, then, when material conditions permitted, on his second visit to America, Stevenson chartered 'the Casco for the South Pacific cruise. But this came very near not happening, and literature quite as nearly lost many notable South Sea stories and sketches. OTEVENSON, or rather S. S. McClure on his behalf, wrote from New York to friends in San Francisco to charter and fit out a suitable yacht for a long voyage in ■the Pacific. But such a project was pot so easily carried out as one might

fancy, even then; and a thorough search of the Bay revealed nothing suitable for the proposed cruise. Some time passed, and R.L.S., having become impatient, concluded to abandon the whole idea, and to make a trip to the West Indies instead. For that purpose McClure was already negotiating for a yacht in New York, and Stevenson wrote to San Francisco that he should not come west after all. But just at that moment the Casco was discovered, having recently arrived in San Francisco. "Have found boat" was wired to New York, and Stevenson promptly telegraphed back "Starting at once." The West Indies yacht had practically been chartered, and McClure was keen for a trip to the Caribbean, but the instant R.L.S. learned that the South Sea cruise was possible after all, he had no heart for anything else. All of which I have on the authority of Mr. Charles G. Yale, who is at present an honorary life member, and librarian, of the Bohemian Club, in San Francisco. And, something more which has never been related, Mr. Yale, who was at that time a wellknown journalist and also an official of the Coast and Geodetic Survey Service, was the very man who car-

ried on and completed the negotiations respecting the Casco , and who telegraphed to Stevenson that the proper boat had been found. All this he told me one evening, with many other recollections of both the visits of R.L.S. to California, as we sat in the library of the Bohemian Club .vith our eyes frequently turning to one of the best paintings of the writer in existence. My informant was one of Stevenson’s best San Francisco friends, and he spent many an evening with him on board the Casco in Oakland Estuary. Immediately upon arriving R.L.S. had taken up his quarters aboard the yacht, where he spent many quiet days and evenings, occasionally entertaining a few San Francisco acquaintances, while he recuperated sufficiently to commence the South Sea trip.

' S 'HE first group to be visited in -®- the southern ocean was that of the Marquesas, and Stevenson wandered for several days about the valley of Typec, where Herman Melville passed his enlivening months as the guest of a cannibal tribe, safe from harm through the intercession of the chief’s daughter, “the beauteous Fayaway.” Tahiti was reached in September, 1888; and one readily imagines the eagerness with which R.L.S. awaited the first glimpse of what Melville called the “classic of the South Seas.” Many a wanderer and many a traveller through these

hundred and fifty years has passed into the lagoon at Papeete, between the great gates of coral on which the surf ever tumbles and roars, with a sense of fulfilled dreams for the aspect is one of the world’s fairest. But even forty years ago Papeete, already falling into the hands of the Chinese,- was wholly commercial, unromantic, and wrapped in an atmosphere altogether apart from that of the real Tahiti. And so, after a few days, the Casco sought the beautiful little Bay of Tautira, at the end of the island, fifty miles from Papeete, the bay where Captain

Cook and the English astronomical expedition had first anchored, in May, 1769. TN his "Chronicles," Cook wrote of ■*• Tautira, "there is scarcely a spot in the entire universe that affords a more luxurious prospect than the southeast part of Otaheite. On viewing these charming scenes I regretted my inability to transmit to those who have had no opportunity of seeing them such a description as might, in some manner, convey an impression similar to what must be felt by everyone who has been fortunate enough to be on the spot." "Baie de Tautira, ou Mouillage de Cook" is the designation of the little lagoon-harbour on the French charts,

for here the famous Georgian explorer’s two small vessels anchored before proceeding to the northern point of the island where, at the promontory ever since known as Point Venus, the transit of the planet was observed in June, 1769. Around the Bay of Tautira the tro-pically-clad mountains rise as precipitously as those which guard some Norwegian fjord; and on either hand two slender points stretch like long fingers out into the Pacific, cocoanut palms fringing them to the very tips. There is a snowy line of surf along the gleaming beach which extends in a splendid sweep from point to point. Quaint, primitive and unspoiled even to-day is the little Tahitian village which nestles in the shelter of the great, green mountains, and whose pandanus and bamboo huts peep out from groves of cocoanut and wild orange, tamarind and mangrove and banana. SUCH is Tautira, the prettiest village in all the South Seas; and here the people, who had seen few white men, welcomed R.L.S. in a fashion that at once endeared them to him. He was made a “blood brother” to the chief, Oreore, in an elaborate ceremony, and henceforth known by the chief’s name. This was the highest honour possible to a stranger, the ultimate expression of friendship, and how Stevenson’s great heart must have warmed to it is easily imagined. These Tahitians were the first Polynesians with whom he really became acquainted; for the short stay among the Marquesans, who were ever a sombre and unfriendly race, revealed little of the real nature of the South Sea natives. And it is certain that the high regard and deep sympathy that R.L.S. afterward manifested towards all the Polynesian peoples was the direct outgrowth of the delightful first impression of them that he received here at Tautira, in Tahiti. The friendship offered him here was quickly and ardently reciprocated, and the relations between the writer and the natives, during the quicklypassing months in Tahiti, were enchantingly pleasant. r I 'HE present chief of Tautira, Timarec, was a young boy when R.L S. came; but he recalls every detail of the white visitor’s stay, for they were impressions too deeplygraven in memory ever to be eradicated. First of all, in the course of our conversation about Stevenson, he told me that his parents had been urged to permit him to go away with the Casco’s party, presumably to England, to be educated there, after which he should return to bring to his tribe the pleasures and benefits of what he had seen and learned. But even Oreorc’s affection for his white guest was not quite equal to the granting of this request. “My people knew nothing of the outside world then,” Timaree explained. “They did not understand at all what or where it might, be, but they thought that it was full of dangers and diseases and bad people, and that it was the same as departing from life altogether for one of us to go out into it. The white men who had come here before had led us to think such things, for they had treated us very badly, bringing us diseases and taking our food in great quantities without payment. But when Stevenson came we forgot all that, for he was so white and weak

and sick that we felt only sorrow. A large house was made ready on the windward side of the point, where the cool trade wind always blows, and there the stranger was brought, for he was not able to walk by himself. And after a month of the cool air. the native foods and the milk of the cocoanut, he was quite a man again, walking about, and even going part way up one of the mountains where Cook had been.”

MOREOVER, keenly alert to the most direct path to the natives’ friendship and confidence, R.L.S. succeeded in learning enough of their language to converse with them quite readily. This was no inconsiderable feat, as anyone who has tried to gain a working knowledge of any South Sea dialect in two or three months need not be told. But it won the goodwill of the Tahitians as nothing else could have done. For to a Polynesian the fact of a white stranger taking the trouble to learn another language for the mere sake of casual converse is the strongest possible evidence of good intent. And to hear the words of their own singing tongue fall from the lips of so compelling a white stranger as R.L. S. was to experience a delight that scarcely any other mark of friendliness could have brought these people of Tautira. Moreover, it was a phenomenon, such magic as only a being of superior endowments and lofty nature could have achieved: and each native was honoured if the magician entered his hut. while little

children followed him about adoringly but respectfully, and other Tahitians came from far parts of the island to see this wonderful man and to hear him talk. A LL this was told me by the chief, Timaree, a man of distinctive face and dignified bearing, whose wife, the “chiefess,” has the poise of a woman accustomed to the world. Theirs is even yet a hospital-

ity of the old time sort, much as there has been clone by the white man to discourage all such among the Polynesians; and the stranger will be welcomed as courteously and entertained as genuinely almost as was Stevenson. Yet the atmosphere of the village is changing now, and changing rap'dly; for Tautira is the “show place” of Tahiti, and not a tourist who comes ashore during the twelve-hour stop of the monthly mail-steamer, or a visitor from England or America, who is not hurried at once to Tautira in one of the automobiles whose rapid increase is dissipating Tahitian romance to the Pacific breezes. Tahiti, in common with the rest of the fairy islands of the South Seas, has altered greatly during the past forty years, and it will alter even more during the next. “TXfHETHER I should go away ' * with our guest was discussed long by my father and the other older men. But they feared what lay beyond the ocean’s rim, and although anything else would have been his

for the asking, yet this they could not grant. However, that made no difference to our friendship; and when at last he decided to leave Tautira there was such grief as not even the pass’ng of a chief might have caused. Yet he promised us to come back, and on the night before the schooner sailed there was a great feast on the beach. There the white stranger, ‘Oreore,’ talked to us a long time in our own language.” we not visualize the scene? The great circle of natives, seated or reclining upon their mats, with blazing cocoanut fronds flaring in the soft breeze, and R.L.S. in the centre, his pale cheeks reflecting the fitful light, his tawny hair falling to his shoulders, and his eyes burning with appreciation of it all as he talked to the natives of Tautira in the’r own tongue! And the next day they gathered about the shores of the lagoon to say farewell with a grief and a regret that we can well understand. Thereafter they received many letters from Stevenson during the remaining years of his life, from Hawaii and from Sydney and from Samoa, letters written in the language that he had been at pains to learn in order that he might meet these South Sea people on a plane of friendship and intimacy only possible through the medium of a single tongue. From Samoa he wrote, Timaree told me, that Tautira was the fairest place he had ever seen, that it was his favourite of all the world, and that he hoped to return some day. I asked the chief why R.L.S. had left if Tautira had appealed to him so much. Why did he not make his home there instead of at Vailima ? “It was Mrs. Stevenson, his mother, who wished to go,” Timaree told me. “Why I do not know.” But I could surmise that this English lady, never quite content, perhaps, during this South Sea wandering, hoped that by sailing on, “from island unto island at the gateway of the day,” it might be that they would bye and bye return again to “civilisation.” I 'HE house where R.L.S. had liv- -*■ cd, with many articles that he had used and others that he had given the people of Tautira, was cared for and guarded for years as the treasure-house of the village But it could not be held against the unparalleled fury of the South Seas hurricane, and one of the worst in history swept the Society Islands in 1907. Half the peninsula melted away before wind and sea, including all the houses along the windward beach. With the wreck of the Stevenson house went all the relics, and every one of the letters which he had written to the Tahitians in their own language, letters, I think, never published. Most of the villagers were away at the time, harvesting their copra ; and the rest fled to the mountains at the approach of the tempest, forgetting everything but the imminent peril to their very lives. But Stevenson’s most precious gift to his Tautira friends was not lost, for it was in the stone-built church which survived the hurricane. This, a silver communion set of three pieces, was It’s lasting memorial gift to the Tahitian village; and it is proudly shown the visitor to-day, if he can sufficiently establish himself in the confidence of the natives, something not so easy to accomplish as it was forty years ago.