________________________________________________
_ Robert Louis Stevenson first came to California in 1879 for the purpose
of getting married. The things that delayed his marriage are
sufficiently set forth in his "Letters" (edited by Sidney Colvin) and in
his "Life" (written by Graham Balfour). It is here necessary to refer
only to the last of the obstacles, the breaking down of his health. It
is in connection with the evil thing that came to him at this time that
be first makes mention of "the sea fogs," that beset a large part of the
California coast. He speaks of them as poisonous; and poisonous they are
to any one who is afflicted with pulmonary weakness, but bracing and
glorious to others. They give the charm of climate to dwellers around
the great bay. How he took this first very serious attack of the
terrible malady is indicated in the letter to Edmund Gosse, dated April
16, 1880. His attitude toward death is shown here, and is further shown
in his little paper AEs Triplex, in which he successfully vindicates his
generation from the charge of cowardice in the face of death.
Stevenson's two distinguishing characteristics were his courage and his
determination to be happy as the right way of making other people happy.
His courage, far more than change of scene and climate, gave him
fourteen more years in which to contribute to the sweetness and light of
the world. These years were made fruitful to others by his determined
happiness, a happiness in which the main factor, outside of his own
determination, came from the companionship which his marriage brought to
him. The great principles by which he lived influenced those who did not
know him personally, through his gift of writing. He always maintained
that it was not a gift but an achievement, and that any one could write
as well as he by taking as much pains. We may well doubt the soundness
of this theory, but we cannot doubt the spiritual attitude from which it
came. It came from no mock humility, but from a feeling that nothing was
creditable to him except what he did. He asked no credit for the talents
committed to his charge He asked credit only for the use be made of the
talents.
Stevenson was married May 19, 1880. His health, which had delayed the
marriage, determined the character of the honeymoon. He must get away
from the coast and its fogs. His honeymoon experiences are recorded in
one of the most delightful of his minor writings, "The Silverado
Squatters." He went, with his wife, his stepson and a dog, to squat on
the eastern shoulder of Mount Saint Helena, a noble mountain which
closes and dominates the Napa Valley, a wonderful and fertile valley,
running northward from the bay of San Francisco. Silverado was a
deserted mining-camp. Stevenson has intimated that there are more ruined
cities in California than in the land of Bashan, and in one of these he
took up his residence for about two months, "camping" in the deserted
quarters of the extinct mining company. Had he gone a little beyond the
toll-house, just over the shoulder of the mountain, he would probably
never have seen the glory of "the sea fogs." It would have been better
for his health but worse for English literature.
My first knowledge of that glory came to me twenty years ago. I had come
to California to care for one dearly beloved by me, who was fighting the
same fight that Stevenson fought, and against the same enemy, and who
was fighting it just as bravely. I took him to the summit of the Santa
Cruz Mountains in the hope that we might escape the fogs. As I watched
on the porch of the little cottage where he lay, I saw night after night
what I believe to be the most beautiful of all natural phenomena, the
sea fog of the Pacific, seen from above. Under the full moon, or under
the early sun which slowly withers it away, the great silver sea with
its dark islands of redwood seemed to me the most wonderful of things.
With my wonder and delight, perhaps making them more poignant, was the
fear lest the glory should mount too high, and lay its attractive hand
on my beloved. The fog has been dear to me ever since. I have often
grumbled at it when I was in it or under it, but when I have seen it
from above, that first thrill of wonder and delight has come back to me
- always. Whether on the Berkeley hills I see its irresistible columns
moving through the Golden Gate across the bay to take possession of the
land, or whether I stand on the height of Tamalpais and look at the
white, tangled flood below, -
"My heart leaps up when I behold."
It remains to me -
"A vision, a delight and a desire."
When the beauty of the fog first got hold of me, I wondered whether any
one had given literary expression to its supreme charm. I searched the
works of some of the better-known California poets, not quite without
result. I was familiar with what seem to me the best of the serious
verses of Bret Harte, the lines on San Francisco, - wherein the city is
pictured as a penitent Magdalen, cowled in the grey of the Franciscans,
- the soft pale grey of the sea fog. The literary value of the figure is
hardly injured by the cold fog that the penitence of this particular
Magdalen has never been of an enduring quality. It is to be noted that
what Harte speaks of is not the beauty of the fog, but its sobriety and
dignity.
Sill, with his susceptibility to the infinite variety of nature
and with the spark of the divine fire which burned in him, refers often
to some of the effects of the fog, such as the wonderful sunset colors
on the Berkeley hills in summer. But I find only one direct allusion to
the beauty of the fog itself: -
[1]"There lies a little city in the hills;
White are its roofs, dim is each dwelling's door,
And peace with perfect rest its bosom fills.
"There the pure mist, the pity of the sea,
Comes as a white, soft hand, and reaches o'er
And touches its still face most tenderly."
In 1887 I had not read "The Silverado Squatters." Part of it had been
published in Scribner's Magazine. It was only in the following year that
I got hold of the book and found an almost adequate expression of my own
feeling about the sea fogs. Stevenson did not know all their beauty, for
he was not here long enough, but he could tell what be saw. In other
words, he had a gift which is denied to most of us.
Silverado is now a quite impossible place for squatting. When I first
tried to enter, I found it so given over to poison-oak and rattlesnakes
that I did not care to pursue my investigations very far. I did not know
at that time that I was quite immune from the poison of the oak and that
the California rattlesnake was quite so friendly and harmless an animal
as John Muir has since assured us that be is. The last time that I
passed Silverado, it was accessible only by the aid of a gang of
wood-choppers.
Curiously, the last great fog effect that I have seen was almost the
same which Stevenson has described. Last summer we had been staying for
a month with our friends who have a summer home about three miles beyond
Stevenson's "toll-house." It is, I believe, the most beautiful
country-seat on this round earth, and its free and gentle hospitality
cannot be surpassed. We left this delightful place of sojourning between
three and four o'clock in the morning to catch the early train from
Calistoga. Our steep climb up to the toll-house was under the broad
smile of the moon, which gradually gave way to the brilliant dawn. When
we passed the toll-house, the whole Napa Valley should have been
revealed to us, but it was not. The fog had surged through it and had
hidden it. What we saw was better than the beautiful Napa Valley. I
should like to tell what we saw, but I cannot, - "For what can the man
do who cometh after the king?"
[1] This exquisite little poem is unaccountably omitted from the
Household (and presumably complete) Edition of Sill's poems issued by
Houghton, Mifflin & Co., 1906. It is found in the little volume,
"Poems," by Edward Rowland Sill, published by the same firm at an
earlier date. Mountain View Cemetery is no longer a "little city." _
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