Complete Works of Robert Louis Stevenson (Illustrated) (714 page)

“
June 17, 1869.
— Here are the names of our staff, in whom I expect you to be interested, as future
Great Eastern
stories may be full of them; Theophilus Smith, a man of Latimer Clark’s; Leslie C. Hill, my prizeman at University College; Lord Sackville Cecil; King, one of the Thomsonian Kings; Laws, goes for Willoughby Smith, who will also be on board; Varley, Clark, and Sir James Anderson, make up the sum of all you know anything of. A Captain Halpin commands the big ship. There are four smaller vessels. The
Wm. Cory
, which laid the Norderney cable, has already gone to St. Pierre to lay the shore-ends. The
Hawk
and
Chiltern
have gone to Brest to lay shore-ends. The
Hawk
and
Scanderia
go with us across the Atlantic, and we shall at St. Pierre be transhipped into one or the other.

“
June 18, somewhere in London.
— The shore-end is laid, as you may have seen, and we are all under pressing orders to march, so we start from London to-night at 5.10.

“
June 20, off Ushant.
— I am getting quite fond of the big ship. Yesterday morning in the quiet sunlight she turned so slowly and lazily in the great harbour at Portland, and by and by slipped out past the long pier with so little stir, that I could hardly believe we were really off. No men drunk, no women crying, no singing or swearing, no confusion or bustle on deck — nobody apparently aware that they had anything to do. The look of the thing was that the ship had been spoken to civilly, and had kindly undertaken to do everything that was necessary without any further interference. I have a nice cabin, with plenty of room for my legs in my berth, and have slept two nights like a top. Then we have the ladies’ cabin set apart as an engineer’s office, and I think this decidedly the nicest place in the ship: 35 ft. × 20 ft. broad — four tables, three great mirrors, plenty of air, and no heat from the funnels, which spoil the great dining-room. I saw a whole library of books on the walls when here last, and this made me less anxious to provide light literature; but alas, to-day I find that they are every one Bibles or Prayer-books. Now one cannot read many hundred Bibles.... As for the motion of the ship, it is not very much, but ‘twill suffice. Thomson shook hands and wished me well. I
do
like Thomson.... Tell Austin that the
Great Eastern
has six masts and four funnels. When I get back I will make a little model of her for all the chicks, and pay out cotton reels.... Here we are at 4.20 at Brest. We leave probably to-morrow morning.

“
July 12, Great Eastern.
— Here as I write we run our last course for the buoy at the St. Pierre shore-end. It blows and lightens, and our good ship rolls, and buoys are hard to find; but we must soon now finish our work, and then this letter will start for home.... Yesterday we were mournfully groping our way through the wet grey fog, not at all sure where we were, with one consort lost and the other faintly answering the roar of our great whistle through the mist. As to the ship which was to meet us, and pioneer us up the deep channel, we did not know if we should come within twenty miles of her; when suddenly up went the fog, 258 out came the sun, and there, straight ahead, was the
Wm. Cory
, our pioneer, and a little dancing boat, the
Gulnare
, sending signals of welcome with many-coloured flags. Since then we have been steaming in a grand procession; but now at 2 a.m. the fog has fallen, and the great roaring whistle calls up the distant answering notes all around us. Shall we or shall we not find the buoy?

“
July 13.
— All yesterday we lay in the damp dripping fog, with whistles all round and guns firing so that we might not bump up against one another. This little delay has let us get our reports into tolerable order. We are now, at seven o’clock, getting the cable end again, with the main cable buoy close to us.”

A telegram of July 20.
— ”I have received your four welcome letters. The Americans are charming people.”

VI

And here, to make an end, are a few random bits about the cruise to Pernambuco: —

“
Plymouth, June 21, 1873.
— I have been down to the seashore and smelt the salt sea, and like it; and I have seen the
Hooper
pointing her great bow seaward, while light smoke rises from her funnels, telling that the fires are being lighted; and sorry as I am to be without you, something inside me answers to the call to be off and doing.

“
Lalla Rookh, Plymouth, June 22.
— We have been a little cruise in the yacht over to the Eddystone lighthouse, and my sea-legs seem very well on. Strange how alike all these starts are — first on shore, steaming hot days with a smell of bone-dust and tar and salt water; then the little puffing, panting steam-launch, that bustles out across a port with green woody sides, little yachts sliding about, men-of-war training-ships, and then a great big black hulk of a thing with a mass of smaller vessels sticking to it like parasites; and that is one’s home being coaled. Then comes the champagne lunch, where every one says all that is polite to every one else, and then the uncertainty when to start. So far as we know
now
, we are to start to-morrow morning at daybreak; letters that come later are to be sent to Pernambuco by first mail.... My father has sent me the heartiest sort of Jack Tar’s cheer.

“
SS. Hooper, off Funchal, June 29.
— Here we are, off Madeira at seven o’clock in the morning. Thomson has been sounding with his special toy ever since half-past three (1087 fathoms of water). I have been watching the day break, and long jagged islands start into being out of the dull night. We are still some miles from land; but the sea is calmer than Loch Eil often was, and the big
Hooper
rests very contentedly after a pleasant voyage and favourable breezes. I have not been able to do any real work except the testing [of the cable], for, though not sea-sick, I get a little giddy when I try to 259 think on board.... The ducks have just had their daily souse and are quacking and gabbling in a mighty way outside the door of the captain’s deck cabin, where I write. The cocks are crowing, and new-laid eggs are said to be found in the coops. Four mild oxen have been untethered and allowed to walk along the broad iron decks — a whole drove of sheep seem quite content while licking big lumps of bay salt. Two exceedingly impertinent goats lead the cook a perfect life of misery. They steal round the galley and
will
nibble the carrots or turnips if his back is turned for one minute; and then he throws something at them and misses them; and they scuttle off laughing impudently, and flick one ear at him from a safe distance. This is the most impudent gesture I ever saw. Winking is nothing to it. The ear normally hangs down behind; the goat turns sideways to her enemy — by a little knowing cock of the head flicks one ear over one eye, and squints from behind it, for half a minute — tosses her head back, skips a pace or two further off, and repeats the manœuvre. The cook is very fat, and cannot run after that goat much.

“
Pernambuco, Aug. 1.
— We landed here yesterday, all well and cable sound, after a good passage.... I am on familiar terms with cocoa-nuts, mangoes, and bread-fruit trees, but I think I like the negresses best of anything I have seen. In turbans and loose sea-green robes, with beautiful black-brown complexions and a stately carriage, they really are a satisfaction to my eye. The weather has been windy and rainy; the
Hooper
has to lie about a mile from the town, in an open roadstead, with the whole swell of the Atlantic driving straight on shore. The little steam-launch gives all who go in her a good ducking, as she bobs about on the big rollers; and my old gymnastic practice stands me in good stead on boarding and leaving her. We clamber down a rope-ladder hanging from the high stern, and then, taking a rope in one hand, swing into the launch at the moment when she can contrive to steam up under us — bobbing about like an apple thrown into a tub all the while. The President of the province and his suite tried to come off to a State luncheon on board on Sunday; but the launch, being rather heavily laden, behaved worse than usual, and some green seas stove in the President’s hat and made him wetter than he had probably ever been in his life; so after one or two rollers, he turned back; and indeed he was wise to do so, for I don’t see how he could have got on board.... Being fully convinced that the world will not continue to go round unless I pay it personal attention, I must run away to my work.”

CHAPTER VI

1869-1

Edinburgh — Colleagues —
Farrago vitæ
— I. The family circle — Fleeming and his sons — Highland life — The cruise of the steam-launch — Summer in Styria — Rustic manners — II. The drama — Private theatricals — III. Sanitary associations — The phonograph — IV. Fleeming’s acquaintance with a student — His late maturity of mind — Religion and morality — His love of heroism — Taste in literature — V. His talk — His late popularity — Letter from M. Trélat.

The remaining external incidents of Fleeming’s life, pleasures, honours, fresh interests, new friends, are not such as will bear to be told at any length or in the temporal order. And it is now time to lay narration by, and to look at the man he was, and the life he lived, more largely.

Edinburgh, which was thenceforth to be his home, is a metropolitan small town; where college professors and the lawyers of the Parliament House give the tone, and persons of leisure, attracted by educational advantages, make up much of the bulk of society. Not, therefore, an unlettered place, yet not pedantic, Edinburgh will compare favourably with much larger cities. A hard and disputatious element has been commented on by strangers: it would not touch Fleeming, who was himself regarded, even in this metropolis of disputation, as a thorny table-mate. To golf unhappily he did not take, and golf is a cardinal virtue in the city of the winds. Nor did he become an archer of the Queen’s Body Guard, which is the Chiltern Hundreds of the distasted golfer. He did not even frequent the Evening Club, where his colleague 261 Tait (in my day) was so punctual and so genial. So that in some ways he stood outside of the lighter and kindlier life of his new home. I should not like to say that he was generally popular; but there, as elsewhere, those who knew him well enough to love him, loved him well. And he, upon his side, liked a place where a dinner-party was not of necessity unintellectual, and where men stood up to him in argument.

The presence of his old classmate, Tait, was one of his early attractions to the Chair; and now that Fleeming is gone again, Tait still remains, ruling and really teaching his great classes. Sir Robert Christison was an old friend of his mother’s; Sir Alexander Grant, Kelland, and Sellar were new acquaintances, and highly valued; and these too, all but the last, have been taken from their friends and labours. Death has been busy in the Senatus. I will speak elsewhere of Fleeming’s demeanour to his students; and it will be enough to add here that his relations with his colleagues in general were pleasant to himself.

Edinburgh, then, with its society, its University work, its delightful scenery and its skating in the winter, was thenceforth his base of operations. But he shot meanwhile erratic in many directions: twice to America, as we have seen, on telegraph voyages; continually to London on business; often to Paris; year after year to the Highlands to shoot, to fish, to learn reels and Gaelic, to make the acquaintance and fall in love with the character of Highlanders; and once to Styria, to hunt chamois and dance with peasant maidens. All the while he was pursuing the course of his electrical studies, making fresh inventions, taking up the phonograph, filled with theories of graphic representation; reading, writing, publishing, founding sanitary associations, interested in technical education, investigating the laws of metre, drawing, acting, 262 directing private theatricals, going a long way to see an actor — a long way to see a picture; in the very bubble of the tideway of contemporary interests. And all the while he was busied about his father and mother, his wife, and in particular his sons; anxiously watching, anxiously guiding these, and plunging with his whole fund of youthfulness into their sports and interests. And all the while he was himself maturing — not in character or body, for these remained young — but in the stocked mind, in the tolerant knowledge of life and man, in pious acceptance of the universe. Here is a farrago for a chapter; here is a world of interests and activities, human, artistic, social, scientific, at each of which he sprang with impetuous pleasure, on each of which he squandered energy, the arrow drawn to the head, the whole intensity of his spirit bent, for the moment, on the momentary purpose. It was this that lent such unusual interest to his society, so that no friend of his can forget that figure of Fleeming coming charged with some new discovery: it is this that makes his character so difficult to represent. Our fathers, upon some difficult theme, would invoke the Muse; I can but appeal to the imagination of the reader. When I dwell upon some one thing, he must bear in mind it was only one of a score; that the unweariable brain was teeming at the very time with other thoughts; that the good heart had left no kind duty forgotten.

I

In Edinburgh, for a considerable time, Fleeming’s family, to three generations, was united: Mr. and Mrs. Austin at Hailes, Captain and Mrs. Jenkin in the suburb of Merchiston, Fleeming himself in the city. It is not every family that could risk with safety such close inter-domestic dealings; but in this also Fleeming was particularly 263 favoured. Even the two extremes, Mr. Austin and the Captain, drew together. It is pleasant to find that each of the old gentlemen set a high value on the good looks of the other, doubtless also on his own; and a fine picture they made as they walked the green terrace at Hailes, conversing by the hour. What they talked of is still a mystery to those who knew them; but Mr. Austin always declared that on these occasions he learned much. To both of these families of elders due service was paid of attention; to both, Fleeming’s easy circumstances had brought joy; and the eyes of all were on the grandchildren. In Fleeming’s scheme of duties, those of the family stood first; a man was first of all a child, nor did he cease to be so, but only took on added obligations, when he became in turn a father. The care of his parents was always a first thought with him, and their gratification his delight. And the care of his sons, as it was always a grave subject of study with him, and an affair never neglected, so it brought him a thousand satisfactions. “Hard work they are,” as he once wrote, “but what fit work!” And again: “O, it’s a cold house where a dog is the only representative of a child!” Not that dogs were despised; we shall drop across the name of Jack, the harum-scarum Irish terrier, ere we have done; his own dog Plato went up with him daily to his lectures, and still (like other friends) feels the loss and looks visibly for the reappearance of his master; and Martin the cat Fleeming has himself immortalised, to the delight of Mr. Swinburne, in the columns of the
Spectator
. Indeed, there was nothing in which men take interest, in which he took not some; and yet always most in the strong human bonds, ancient as the race and woven of delights and duties.