My God, Do I Look Strange? • Samoa 1894
FANNY WAS IN a mulish mood. Robert Louis Stevenson muttered, “balmawhapple,” (Gaelic for obstinate) under his breath as he descended to the basement to retrieve his finest Burgundy. After a cigarette and a hand or two of whist, he cajoled his discontented wife into helping him construct a luscious salad of Samoan fruits and fresh green lettuce harvested from their tropical garden. He tore a large juicy leaf; his entire body jolted and shuddered as if electrocuted. His expression contorted. His face melted down the side of his head.
The kitchen mirror trapped a visage he'd seen only in his nightmares. The face leering at him from the looking glass was a metaphysical anomaly, a collage of faces, some resembling his younger self, others from early Scottish eras: John Knox, William Deacon Brodie. Discontented to take on a fixed form, the face sluiced into hideous caricatures of his father Thomas, his nanny Alice, and his boyhood friend Bob. Sepia-toned images of the writer's fictional characters fueled the final macabre likeness: Long John Silver, Markheim the murderer, Prince Florizel of the Suicide Club, and finally Dr. Henry Jekyll metamorphosed into Edward Hyde.
Louis' bony fingers clutched his scalp; he swung toward Fanny and slurred, “My God! Do I look… strange?” Fanny graciously lied. Stevenson sank into benevolent deception and died.
Bournemouth, South England 1885
Stricken by Bluidy Jack, as he called his lung disease, Louis, propped on a pillow, turned his face toward the ornate dresser that his father had sent from Edinburgh. Crotchety as his engineer father was at times, Thomas Stevenson had a sentimental core. Louis remembered his father's letters composed during his lighthouse inspection tours. Often his father would ask, “How's my little smoutie (small fry) doing?” The nickname irritated Louis. It drew attention to his frailty, but he understood that the term came directly out of his father's affectionate large heart.
Thomas longed to be greeted by the scrawny lad, whose gigantic imagination told Bible stories in hilarious detail, including cigar-smoking Israelites trooping out of Egypt.
Memories of his father's delight, his barrel-chested laughter and proud embrace had a medicinal effect on the ailing, mid-aged Louis.
The effect dissolved as he remembered that his father's love had changed over the years. Their relationship became shrouded in disappointment and tarnished by stubbornness, suspicion and argument. Recently, in a letter to his cousin and best friend, Robert (Bob) Stevenson, Louis admitted that his parents expected the worst of him and that he consistently gave it to them, to his shame. Accompanied by another wrenching cough, this truth tore into him.
He regretted hurting his parents yet couldn't bear the cost of conforming to their strict Calvinist beliefs and Victorian morals. He was ashamed of his immaturity as he lay on his sickbed: thirty-six years old, financially dependent, living in father's gift house, staring fish-eyed at the old dresser. He felt suffocated, a split self: a passionate free spirit, with a butler and a bride, in what Mark Twain called the gilded cage of duty-filled Victorianism, crushed beneath the velvet glove of his father's controlling kindness. These thoughts and his ensuing rage brought on another lung tearing coughing spell.
Why did an oversensitive conscience and hypersensitive lungs plague him? Pondering the question, his eye turned toward the ornamental design on the bureau on which the letters “W.D. Brodie” were etched. A faintly wicked, mischievous smile crossed his face as he fell asleep exhausted.
It was a fractured dream, part memory, part fantasy; Alice his nanny was seated sidesaddle on the bed tucking the blankets tight as an Egyptian mummy around his body.
“I'll tell ye a little story that'll both place the fear of the Lord in ye and allow you, a bonnie lad, to rest secure in the Father's loving arms this night.”
“There's nothing in Edinburgh history that reveals the divided nature of Man or our town as much as the tale of William Deacon Brodie. Don't let that middle name trick you boy; he was no deacon in the spiritual sense, though he had every opportunity to be one. When the craft guilds ran our town the prestige and power that the deacon of a guild held was transferred by right of title and monopoly to their descendents; some never worked a day in their lives for the privilege. The head of the carpenter guild, William Deacon Brodie was initially a good man but over time was given up to filthy lucre and the pride of life. Not unlike the great kind Saul who originally blessed but betrayed his lord in later years.”
“Look over there little Lew, and you will see an emblem of the work produced by the Brodie guild. Fact is, if you look closely you'll see his very initials of the one I want to tell ye of. There it is scrawled on that leaf near the cornice of the cabinet.”
“Would you agree with me that this is a fine piece of work? Crafted as if the Spirit of the Lord had entered the hands and tools of the carver!” Louis' dreamy self smiled and nodded in agreement. “What do you see in that cabinet that appeals, Lew?”
“Well, it is big and sturdy, and it has wonderful carvings. It never sticks when I push the sections they run so smooth.”
“Indeed it does Lew but the one who crafted it came as an angel of light. He wasn't a tall man, broad and brawny he was, just like this cabinet here. The Deacon was a dapper dresser too with tails, a top hat and a flurry of color that drew the townies' and especially the ladies' attention. Smooth, oh so smooth, he operated his business and the town council both day and night. But it was in the nighttime Lou that he shone with an ice cold light.”
“What did he do at night, Cummy?” Louis asked, eyes adjusting to the fall of the night itself around him.
“Nothing I can tell you in any detail without corrupting your innocence. What I can say is half of his blood was Gabriel's and half was Lucifer's. Daytime Brodie sat on the Town Council; nighttime Brodie sat in the pub with lasses and lads not much older than you on his lap. Daytime Brodie meted out justice in the courts; nighttime Brodie schemed and swindled. He formed his self like a wax impression modeled to suit the admiring eyes of the citizenry by day, he used wax impressions of the same citizenries' keys to open their doors and ravage their possessions at night.”
Louis' dream within a dream plummeted him deeper into the life of William Deacon Brodie. The effect of the story was far from Cummy's intention to warn him from evil and direct him toward good. The Deacon thrilled Louis; he envied his style, his energy and, most of all, his imaginative rebellion and humour. He felt that William Deacon Brodie was his own man, who could shape-shift and hide within a disguise for his own purposes of making a fool of traditional wisdom. More appealing to Louis was that both the good citizenry and the denizens of Edinburgh's underside admired the Deacon.
The dream twisted once again. William Brodie and Robert Louis Stevenson became the two sides of a Janus-headed monster. Facing out was young “smoutie”, devoted son, writer of Bible stories, descendent of courageous Scots covenanters and the pride of Thomas his father. Facing inward was the swashbuckling Scots rogue, William Brodie.
Brodie emerged from the Old Town Theater where the Beggar's Opera had been playing for weeks. Smoutie heard the high-pitched playful voice of William declare, “That was the best performance of the play this week. I ought to know, I've been there every single day. Can't get enough of it! Anyone to join me for an evening's adventure?”
Out from the shadow, tentative but magnetized by Brodie's charisma, Lou turned up dressed in his nightgown wiping the sleep from his eyes. “Well, look at that forlorn brownie of night,” laughed Brodie. “First we'll dress ya and then we'll work on your inner man, eh boy? We're a' gonna set you free tonight, lad!”
With that Brodie took Lou's hand and scampered down the fog brown streets of Edinburgh. Touching Brodie's hand Louis felt he was on a carousal ride, whirling past red-lipped faces of the ladies of the night and the powdered dandies. Hawkers of all sorts conned the crowds while bands of cutpurses relieved gawkers of their guineas, sovereigns and pence. The underbelly of Edinburgh throbbed with liveliness, lust and cruelty.
The carousal became the mythological wheel of fortune. Louis found himself dressed identically to Brodie, striped red vest and cream-colored silk shirt, with a coat of long tails. Brodie fulfilled his promise to cloth him. Yet the promise of renewing the inner man remained unclaimed as Louis felt a noose tighten as both he and Brodie bowed to the hangman at dream’s end.