From Gertrude Hills' Diary. September 2, 1935. London.

I Visit Mrs. W. E. Clarke

see R.S. a letter to Colver (ailmen, dillies) Jul. 28, 1922
where Clarke is spoken of as an "amherstian" (a name of grass and angel)."

I spent two hours this afternoon with Mrs. W. E. Clarke, the widow of the missionary the Stevenson family sent for when R. L. S. was dying. She lives at 11 Porchester Terrace, London, on the top floor of a first-class boarding house which she established when her husband returned from Samoa with no work, and could not provide for her and their two daughters. It is an enormous brownstone residence with garden back and front, and inside so spacious three great drawing rooms and lounges are reserved for the comfort of the guests-- as Mrs. Clarke explained, "so they can get away from one another."

I picked up a taxi at the end of my street, by way of Hyde Park we came to Lancaster Gate, and a trifle beyond that to Porchester Terrace, the sort of neighborhood the better class of London. The garden gate of No. 11 was thickly painted a snarling emerald green over many lumpy old coats, and near its vividness the grass, foliage of shrubs and trees died to a dirty yellow-brown. A wide gravel path led from the gate to the front door between geometrical plots of faded zineas. The brownstone front steps were peeling off in patches,

but like the aristocrats they are, disregarded their plight and swept with wide dignity to the heavily panelled door, on which knocker, handle and letterbox were so scoured by hundreds of hands through the long years they appeared to be of silver rather than brass; a nameplate over the bell in the side wall was so worn down from polishing, the letters were no longer legible.

Behind this door I fully expected to find the shabby gentleness of the average boarding-house-- the hall carpeted with rose-patterned threadbare Brussels strips, and golden oak horrors of hatstand and settle, but to my surprise I looked past the smart marcelled, goffered maid who opened to me, to splendid mahogany appointments and a beautiful long Oriental runner. On offering my card, the maid showed me into the lounge, where I seated myself to wait the delivery of my message to Mrs. Clark. Through an archway I saw another room, the windows of it opening into a small conservatory; an enchanting odour of warm loam and growing plants reached me, and a canary hidden by small boughs was singing out of sight.

The lounge was a noble room of perhaps 30X40 feet. On the floor lay an immense thick soft blue and white Chinese rug. The easy chairs and divans still wore gay chinz summer dresses, their starched and fluted petticoat frills standing out as perkily as ballet dancers if they had just come from the ironing board. The mantlepiece was a mausoleum of depressing brown and white marble, one would not have surprised to fine instead of the grate beneath, a bronze tablet, reading, "Here lies--." It looked as if it might

have been made from a gigantic, soggy chocolate cake over and through which white icing had run. On it stood a cumbersome square clock of china and brass; the brass exceedingly brassy and the china panels cracked across their pastoral scenes. These cracks were filled with the dust of years now turned into a sort of black paste, no doubt from the water used in washing the panels--come spring cleaning. On either side of the clock were Greek dancing figures in cheap crockery, of German manufacture. I began to feel like a detective looking for clues in a murder thriller, but I put down this habit of inventory-ing not so much to bad manners or ennui as to a game I used to play with Houdini, when we came to a shop window he would always stop, make me look at the display for one minute, then close my eyes and tell him what I had seen. I had got as far as the occasional table-- some with bowed legs, some with lions' claws for feet, one of bamboo (perhaps from Samoa), one inlaid with mother-of-pearl (perhaps from Honolulu), and I was picturing Mrs. Clarke's guests useing them, bent old men with side hair pasted over bald pates, old ladies with brown wigs slightly askew, with wrinkled hands and diamonds in ancient settings; the aged too fat and wheezing, or too thin and shivvering in the sun wrapt in shawls, the medecine bottle and pill box handy, when the maid appeared. I jumped up thinking I was to follow her, but no, she said: "Mrs. Clarke's compliments, madame, and she begs your indulgence for ten minutes more. She was just beginning her toilet when you arrived."

There was a giddy twinkle in the Irish eye; and I returned the twinkle, being a daughter of Cork myself.

Left alone again I began to examine the walls. Over the mantelpiece hung quite a few square yards of "A Storm at Sea," fenced in with a foot-wide gingerbread gilt frame, and a more gloomy scene of catastrophe could not be imagined even by the Republicans describing the Democratic government. The artist had outdone the fury and malignity of any storm; the desolation of the colors, the murderous intention of sea and sky, the contortions of the dying, the agony of their expressions, the swift swirling and swishing of the sharks, the wrecking of the wreck and the gloating of sharp rocks did not tend to an optimistic faith in a loving Father, such as should have been in a missionary's home. Turning my troubled gaze from this inspiring work, it fell upon its mate-like snakes, bad paintings travel in couples. "Morning After the Storm," was the title, and here a watery sun in a weak heaven, looking like the scene after a drunken brawl, smiled a sickly pink peace over an exhausted sea in which floated bits of kindling that once were a ship, blobs of oblong sepia paint that once were gallent seamen on 'er Majesty's service. So many of these blobs were evident it must have been that the sharks did not care for English meat. Besides these overpowering canvasses there were several steel engravings of simpering ladies with baskets of roses on their arms and pug dogs at their feet. The walls that backed this art collection were panelled in tan plaster, each lower corner being the departing point for pink and blue convolvulus, that sprang upward with

with the leap of a Russian dancer. About the leaves and blossoms
flitted violently colored butterflies, with "eyes" in their wings
the size of trouser buttons, while from each upper corner hung a
fat-bellied cupid with hands outflung to capture the beautiful
things.

I was just hoping with all my soul that the interior decor-
ator responsible for this design was one of the dead gents in
"Storm at Sea," when the maid appeared again. She mounted me in
a lift to the fourth floor, and from there preceded me up a flight
of stairs to the fifth floor, and here, in a huge front room,
grabbing all the sunshine the low roofs opposite allowed Porches-
ter Terrace to have, I found Mrs. W. E. Clarke, seated stiffy on
a sofa, like an empress about to receive an ambassador, attired
in a fine black silk gown trimmed with old lace, and for scepter
she held in her hand an ear-trumpet.

She was, I saw at a glance, a massive, intelligent, ener-
getic old lady of about eighty. A wealth of soft white hair
framed a long, horsey face. Two exceedingly shrewd, small
bright brown eyes were set close together at the root of a huge
nose shaped like a dill pickle. Her chin is long and concave--
altogether a visage planned for a witch's hat. She has a habit
of emphasizing the final syllable of each speech (and every
simple statement issued by her becomes a speech) by tying her
lips into a hard puckered rosette, much like the rosette tied
at the top of the pudding cloth to prevent the juice from seeping
out into the boiling water. She is very deaf and generally uses a

trumpet, but she discarded it after my greeting, saying my
enunciation and voice placement, softness of tone and no vibra-
tions, made it easy to hear me. However, I asked only a question
or two; she did all the talking, and seemed to be delighted to
have an audience. Her vitality is amazing. She suggests nothing
feminine at all, in spite of her black dress and ivory lave about
her neck; and I can well imagine her in her younger years in
flat heel boots and high-necked black bombazine bodices and volu-
minous skirts-- in spite of the deadly heat of the tropics-- with
open Bible in her large square hands, standing in Sunday school
insisting to the intimidated native Samoans that Jesus was God
and God is Love.

She is excessively proud of the fact that her husband held
the position of missionary in Apia-- Ah-pee-ah, as she pronounced
it. She said that by example they tried to lead the inhabitants
of Apia to dignified ways of living and to train the natives to be
appropriate servants for the wellbred. They never neglected their
clothes, were always becomingly dressed, received, and paid calls
socially as well as professionally, dined from a properly appoint-
ed table served by trained natives; for, as she explained to me,
"You teach people by giving them something to look up to, to
admire and wish to possess."

Mrs. Robert Louis Stevenson, according to her, fell far
short of what a white woman should have been in morals and
manners. When she was dining with the Clarkes for the time and
dessert places were used, Mrs. R. L. S. frankly stated that she

"thought it a lot of foolishness" since there was no dessert but bananas and oranges, which they all ate at all times all over the place. In spite of this attitude, Mrs. Clarke endeavored to show her what a wellbred woman ought to do, even in Samoa, to which pleading she added she hoped the whole family at Vailima would try to behave in such a way to earn the respect of their servants. But, alas, there was no one at Vailima capable of inspiring a servant's respect, no one capable of training them, and if a trained servant was sent to work there, he was quickly spoiled by who members were (e.g., Careless, who is nature's independent house constantly at war and in worse disorder.) Even Mrs. Thomas Stevenson, when she was there, had no influence in this respect. (Note: the Whalauants, its line in Cleanline orders, had to learn to serve themselves.)

The family at Vailima are arranged in Mrs. Clarke's head as clearly as if she were referring to files and when she spoke of the individual members it was as though she plucked a card out of a deck of cards, much as follows:--

**Lloyd Osbourne.** Just of no account at all-- no account at all. (This terse summing up was accompanied by an expression that plainly said, "Ugh-- what I could tell you about him, my dear! But she left my imagination to fill in the rest).

**Katharine D. Osbourne.** An unscrupulous liar, if not totally mad.

**Isobel Strong.** A clever artist and a bad lot.

**Joe Strong.** A bum; known before his relationship to R. L. Ss was discovered, as the beach drunk, woman chaser, thief and white trash. When R. L. S. arrived in Apia and it was learned he was Strong's step-father-in-law, consternation reigned among the decent inhabitants and they one and all agreed to pretend to know nothing about Strong if R. L. S. questioned them. But their silence was futile; Strong's character could not be smothered by good intentions and R. L. S. soon found out what he was in for.

He did everything in his power to rehabilitate the weakling, but to no effect, and he was finally repaid by Strong stealing the keys to the Vailima wine stock and going on a hair-raising bender. Stevenson then gave him up as hopeless and shipped him and his wife, Belle, to Sydney, giving them an allowance to live on.

**Austin Strong.** A nice, quiet, studious, decnet lad. He turned from the family "paganism" to Roman Catholicism. He could not enter the church without Stevenson's permission. At first this was refused, as he despised Rome, but after a talk on the subject with the Rev. W. E. Clarke, he withdrew his opposition. Mr. Clarke's argument "for" went something like this: "Why not let him join the church if it can make a Christian out of him? It is far better for him to be in that fold, considering the bad blood in him, that in none at all, like the rest of them. The Roman Catholics do have a way, even if it is only through fear and superstition, of controlling and holding down their people, and at least Austin would have something to look up to."

(One can imagine R. L. S. looking out to sea, and saying to himself, "What does it matter, anyway?") So he gave his permission and Austin was immediately received into the Roman church of Samoa. And to this day he remains a member, soсал Wuskeola-

**Fanny van de Grift Osbourne Stevenson.** Coarse, ill-bred and bad-mannered, plain of features, which were slightly negroid-- this very plain in Isobel-- a strange magnetism, dirty physically, a slovenly housekeeper, all together, a "sort of white person gone native." She took excellent care of her husband when he was

ill, but when he was well he often broke under her violent temper and extreme rudeness to his friends and acquaintances. He lived at a tension never knowing what mood his wife was going to indulge. She suffered sometimes from a mental trouble and was not always reliable. When she wished, she could positively fascinate people.

When R. L. S. had particular guests, such as officers from ships that had put into Samoa, resident officials, famous travelers, etc., Mrs. R. L. S. thought nothing of coming in out of the garden to greet them-- if she greeted them at all-- in a dirty cotton native wrapper, her hair in wild disorder, unwashed, her feet covered with soil. She would throw herself on a lounge or a mat on the floor and stick her feet in the air. Steenson could do nothing with her and he encouraged Mrs. Clarke's visits because she alone seemed to be able to influence her to better temper or ways.

Mrs. R. L. S. stood in awe of Louis's mother. She always treated her with the greatest deference and, Mrs. Clarke said, during her whole very close association with the family, she never heard any criticism of Mrs. Thomas from the daughter-in-law nor any from Mrs. Thomas of her daughter-in-law's treatment of her-- though Mrs. Thomas did not hesitate to criticize her own dead husband severely.

Lady Jersey despised Mrs. R. L. S., she thought her "insufferable and utterly impossible." This spring (1935) Countess Jersey opened a bazaar in London and it Mrs. Clarke saw her for the

first time since their Samoan days, so she went up to her, and
said: "The last time I saw you, Countess, was in Apia." The
Countess started violently and quickly drew back, saying in a
distasteful tone, "You-- you are not Mrs. Robert Louis Stevenson!"
Mrs. Clarke immediately reassured her, "No, indeed! I am Mrs.
Clarke, the widow of the Rev. Clarke, missionary to Samoa."
Whereupon the Countess beamed, stretched forth both her hands in
welcome and chatted freely of the old days.

Mrs. Clarke said Mrs. R. L. S. was "a typical heathen." She
went to live in a native Samoan house, to "understand" the native.
But all she succeeded in doing was to lose cast, the whites refus-
ed to acknowledge her existence until she returned to Vailima,
and the natives thought she had been turned out of the house by
R. L. S., and treated her with derision. So she quickly moved back
on the hill again.

Mrs. Thomas Stevenson. A sort of minor gentlewoman of the old
school, conventional, orthodox, proud of her "station" (which she
over-rated), with a great capacity for enjoying healthy recreation,
found of admiration, ashamed and proud of her notable son. She
told Mrs. Clarke over the dessert plates, which she appreciated,
that as a youth R. L. S. was incorrigible, his companions and
habits were a constant source of humiliation to her; she ferquently
saw in him the Edinburgh streets with people of such low mein, she
turned her head in disgust, refusing to recognize him. (Mrs. C.
added that he had not much improved in this respect with the years,
he consorted with low and high equally cheerfully).

Mrs. T. Stevenson thought her husband was to blame for Louis's waywardness, to some extent, he was so very hard. She believed no father and husband had any right to so much opinion as he expressed, frequently violently, and enforced. While his vigor lasted he laid down the law for the whole family, often in absolute opposition to or with no consideration for their needs or preferences. She said that at a certain period of her life she began to suffer from alarming giddy spells, and as she and her husband occupied the front seat in the balcony at church, when she stood up she felt she was going to pitch over the low rail that reached her knees and fall through the air to the congregation below. She told her husband of her suffering and begged him to take a seat downstairs, but he refused, telling her it would strengthen her character to learn to control such fancies. The giddiness finally became so acute, she was afraid to go to church, and at last refused to do so. Then Thomas called a doctor in "to be done with this nonsense." The doctor told him that his wife was more than likely to lose her balance in a fit of vertigo and plunge below, and if she did so, no one would be to blame but Thomas; in fact, he would be a deliberate murderer. And only then did he relent and agree to sit on the main floor of the church. It wasn't good form to row in public, so Thomas held his bad temper and repressed his temperament for family exhibition only; those outside the charmed circle never knew to what degrees of anguish he could drive his wife and child.

**Robert Louis Stevenson.** Full of fun. (Mrs. Clarke said that first). Full of fun. Full of energy, too; full of a zest of life, which he was able to communicate to his companions. He was generous and kind-hearted, and while not orthodox, "good." That is he had a native kindness of heart. His marriage to Mrs. R. L. Stevenson, in spite of two things in its favor, was a tragedy. He told Mrs. Clarke he married her to repay her for nursing him when he was desperately ill. He was inclined to be moody, and often acted as though his mind were miles away from his body; he had the air of a sleepwalker. Mrs. Clarke often gave him a "good talking to," which he took in cheerful part.

He was at one time so dangerously ill the doctor told the
Clarkes he could not possibly recover. He was alone at Vailiam
with no member of the family there save Mrs. R. L. S. Missionary
Clarke was obliged to go far afield, so his wife took it upon her
to dash for Vailima, "so he might have a Christian in the room at
his parting."

Mrs. R. L. S. met on the porch and flatly refused to allow her to enter the sickroom, Louis was too seriously ill following a severe hemorrhage:--

Mrs. Clarke. But I am going in. My husband, who is the proper person, would have the right to minister to a dying man, and as he cannot be here, I represent him, the duty is mine, and you are not going to keep me out!

Mrs. R. L. S. Oh, well, if you must-- but don't let him speak a word. And when I step into the room you must get up and leave at once.