The Sea Fogs

by Robert Louis Stevenson

　　A sheeted spectre white and tall,

　　The cold mist climbs the castle wall

　　And lays its hand upon thy cheek.

　　~Longfellow.

　　Introductionby Thomas Rutherford Bacon.

　　Robert Louis Stevenson first came to California in 1879 for the purposeof getting married. The things that delayed his marriage aresufficiently set forth in his "Letters" (edited by Sidney Colvin) and inhis "Life" (written by Graham Balfour). It is here necessary to referonly to the last of the obstacles, the breaking down of his health. Itis in connection with the evil thing that came to him at this time thatbe first makes mention of "the sea fogs," that beset a large part of theCalifornia coast. He speaks of them as poisonous; and poisonous they areto any one who is afflicted with pulmonary weakness, but bracing andglorious to others. They give the charm of climate to dwellers aroundthe great bay. How he took this first very serious attack of theterrible malady is indicated in the letter to Edmund Gosse, dated April16, 1880. His attitude toward death is shown here, and is further shownin his little paper AEs Triplex, in which he successfully vindicates hisgeneration from the charge of cowardice in the face of death.Stevenson's two distinguishing characteristics were his courage and hisdetermination to be happy as the right way of making other people happy.His courage, far more than change of scene and climate, gave himfourteen more years in which to contribute to the sweetness and light ofthe world. These years were made fruitful to others by his determinedhappiness, a happiness in which the main factor, outside of his owndetermination, came from the companionship which his marriage brought tohim. The great principles by which he lived influenced those who did notknow him personally, through his gift of writing. He always maintainedthat it was not a gift but an achievement, and that any one could writeas well as he by taking as much pains. We may well doubt the soundnessof this theory, but we cannot doubt the spiritual attitude from which itcame. It came from no mock humility, but from a feeling that nothing wascreditable to him except what he did. He asked no credit for the talentscommitted to his charge He asked credit only for the use be made of thetalents.Stevenson was married May 19, 1880. His health, which had delayed themarriage, determined the character of the honeymoon. He must get awayfrom the coast and its fogs. His honeymoon experiences are recorded inone of the most delightful of his minor writings, "The SilveradoSquatters." He went, with his wife, his stepson and a dog, to squat onthe eastern shoulder of Mount Saint Helena, a noble mountain whichcloses and dominates the Napa Valley, a wonderful and fertile valley,running northward from the bay of San Francisco. Silverado was adeserted mining-camp. Stevenson has intimated that there are more ruinedcities in California than in the land of Bashan, and in one of these hetook up his residence for about two months, "camping" in the desertedquarters of the extinct mining company. Had he gone a little beyond thetoll-house, just over the shoulder of the mountain, he would probablynever have seen the glory of "the sea fogs." It would have been betterfor his health but worse for English literature.My first knowledge of that glory came to me twenty years ago. I had cometo California to care for one dearly beloved by me, who was fighting thesame fight that Stevenson fought, and against the same enemy, and whowas fighting it just as bravely. I took him to the summit of the SantaCruz Mountains in the hope that we might escape the fogs. As I watchedon the porch of the little cottage where he lay, I saw night after nightwhat I believe to be the most beautiful of all natural phenomena, thesea fog of the Pacific, seen from above. Under the full moon, or underthe early sun which slowly withers it away, the great silver sea withits dark islands of redwood seemed to me the most wonderful of things.With my wonder and delight, perhaps making them more poignant, was thefear lest the glory should mount too high, and lay its attractive handon my beloved. The fog has been dear to me ever since. I have oftengrumbled at it when I was in it or under it, but when I have seen itfrom above, that first thrill of wonder and delight has come back to me- always. Whether on the Berkeley hills I see its irresistible columnsmoving through the Golden Gate across the bay to take possession of theland, or whether I stand on the height of Tamalpais and look at thewhite, 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 anyone had given literary expression to its supreme charm. I searched theworks of some of the better-known California poets, not quite withoutresult. I was familiar with what seem to me the best of the seriousverses of Bret Harte, the lines on San Francisco, - wherein the city ispictured 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 ishardly injured by the cold fog that the penitence of this particularMagdalen has never been of an enduring quality. It is to be noted thatwhat Harte speaks of is not the beauty of the fog, but its sobriety anddignity.Sill, with his susceptibility to the infinite variety of natureand with the spark of the divine fire which burned in him, refers oftento some of the effects of the fog, such as the wonderful sunset colorson the Berkeley hills in summer. But I find only one direct allusion tothe 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'erAnd touches its still face most tenderly."

　　In 1887 I had not read "The Silverado Squatters." Part of it had beenpublished in Scribner's Magazine. It was only in the following year thatI got hold of the book and found an almost adequate expression of my ownfeeling about the sea fogs. Stevenson did not know all their beauty, forhe was not here long enough, but he could tell what be saw. In otherwords, he had a gift which is denied to most of us.Silverado is now a quite impossible place for squatting. When I firsttried to enter, I found it so given over to poison-oak and rattlesnakesthat I did not care to pursue my investigations very far. I did not knowat that time that I was quite immune from the poison of the oak and thatthe California rattlesnake was quite so friendly and harmless an animalas John Muir has since assured us that be is. The last time that Ipassed Silverado, it was accessible only by the aid of a gang ofwood-choppers.Curiously, the last great fog effect that I have seen was almost thesame which Stevenson has described. Last summer we had been staying fora month with our friends who have a summer home about three miles beyondStevenson's "toll-house." It is, I believe, the most beautifulcountry-seat on this round earth, and its free and gentle hospitalitycannot be surpassed. We left this delightful place of sojourning betweenthree and four o'clock in the morning to catch the early train fromCalistoga. Our steep climb up to the toll-house was under the broadsmile of the moon, which gradually gave way to the brilliant dawn. Whenwe passed the toll-house, the whole Napa Valley should have beenrevealed to us, but it was not. The fog had surged through it and hadhidden it. What we saw was better than the beautiful Napa Valley. Ishould like to tell what we saw, but I cannot, - "For what can the mando who cometh after the king?"

　　[1] This exquisite little poem is unaccountably omitted from theHousehold (and presumably complete) Edition of Sill's poems issued byHoughton, Mifflin & Co., 1906. It is found in the little volume,"Poems," by Edward Rowland Sill, published by the same firm at anearlier date. Mountain View Cemetery is no longer a "little city."

　　The Sea Fogs

　　A change in the colour of the light usually called me in the morning. Bya certain hour, the long, vertical chinks in our western gable, wherethe boards had shrunk and separated, flashed suddenly into my eyes asstripes of dazzling blue, at once so dark and splendid that I used tomarvel how the qualities could be combined. At an earlier hour, theheavens in that quarter were still quietly coloured, but the shoulder ofthe mountain which shuts in the canyon already glowed with sunlight in awonderful compound of gold and rose and green; and this too wouldkindle, although more mildly and with rainbow tints, the fissures of ourcrazy gable. If I were sleeping heavily, it was the bold blue thatstruck me awake; if more lightly, then I would come to myself in thatearlier and fairier light.One Sunday morning, about five, the first brightness called me. I roseand turned to the east, not for my devotions, but for air. The night hadbeen very still. The little private gale that blew every evening in ourcanyon, for ten minutes or perhaps a quarter of an hour, had swiftlyblown itself out; in the hours that followed, not a sigh of wind hadshaken the treetops; and our barrack, for all its breaches, was lessfresh that morning than of wont. But I had no sooner reached the windowthan I forgot all else in the sight that met my eyes, and I made but twobounds into my clothes, and down the crazy plank to the platform.The sun was still concealed below the opposite hilltops, though it wasshining already, not twenty feet above my head, on our own mountainslope. But the scene, beyond a few near features, was entirely changed.Napa Valley was gone; gone were all the lower slopes and woody foothillsof the range; and in their place, not a thousand feet below me, rolled agreat level ocean. It was as though I had gone to bed the night before,safe in a nook of inland mountains and had awakened in a bay upon thecoast. I had seen these inundations from below; at Calistoga I had risenand gone abroad in the early morning, coughing and sneezing, underfathoms on fathoms of gray sea vapour, like a cloudy sky - a dull sightfor the artist, and a painful experience for the invalid. But to sitaloft one's self in the pure air and under the unclouded dome of heaven,and thus look down on the submergence of the valley, was strangelydifferent and even delightful to the eyes. Far away were hilltops likelittle islands. Nearer, a smoky surf beat about the foot of precipicesand poured into all the coves of these rough mountains. The colour ofthat fog ocean was a thing never to be forgotten. For an instant, amongthe Hebrides and just about sundown, I have seen something like it onthe sea itself. But the white was not so opaline; nor was there, whatsurprisingly increased the effect, that breathless crystal stillnessover all. Even in its gentlest moods the salt sea travails, moaningamong the weeds or lisping on the sand; but that vast fog ocean lay in atrance of silence, nor did the sweet air of the morning tremble with asound.As I continued to sit upon the dump, I began to observe that this seawas not so level as at first sight it appeared to be. Away in theextreme south, a little hill of fog arose against the sky above thegeneral surface, and as it had already caught the sun it shone on thehorizon like the topsails of some giant ship. There were huge waves,stationary, as it seemed, like waves in a frozen sea; and yet, as Ilooked again, I was not sure but they were moving after all, with a slowand august advance. And while I was yet doubting, a promontory of thehills some four or five miles away, conspicuous by a bouquet of tallpines, was in a single instant overtaken and swallowed up. It reappearedin a little, with its pines, but this time as an islet and only to beswallowed up once more and then for good. This set me looking nearer,and I saw that in every cove along the line of mountains the fog wasbeing piled in higher and higher, as though by some wind that wasinaudible to me. I could trace its progress, one pine tree first growinghazy and then disappearing after another; although sometimes there wasnone of this forerunning haze, but the whole opaque white ocean gave astart and swallowed a piece of mountain at a gulp. It was to flee thesepoisonous fogs that I had left the seaboard, and climbed so high amongthe mountains. And now, behold, here came the fog to besiege me in mychosen altitudes, and yet came so beautifully that my first thought wasof welcome.The sun had now gotten much higher, and through all the gaps of thehills it cast long bars of gold across that white ocean. An eagle, orsome other very great bird of the mountain, came wheeling over thenearer pinetops, and hung, poised and something sideways, as if to lookabroad on that unwonted desolation, spying, perhaps with terror, for theeyries of her comrades. Then, with a long cry, she disappeared againtoward Lake County and the clearer air. At length it seemed to me as ifthe flood were beginning to subside. The old landmarks, by whosedisappearance I had measured its advance, here a crag, there a bravepine tree, now began, in the inverse order, to make their reappearanceinto daylight. I judged all danger of the fog was over. This was notNoah's flood; it was but a morning spring, and would now drift outseaward whence it came. So, mightily relieved, and a good dealexhilarated by the sight, I went into the house to light the fire.I suppose it was nearly seven when I once more mounted the platform tolook abroad. The fog ocean had swelled up enormously since last I sawit; and a few hundred feet below me, in the deep gap where the TollHouse stands and the road runs through into Lake County, it had alreadytopped the slope, and was pouring over and down the other side likedriving smoke. The wind had climbed along with it; and though I wasstill in calm air, I could see the trees tossing below me, and theirlong, strident sighing mounted to me where I stood.Half an hour later, the fog had surmounted all the ridge on the oppositeside of the gap, though a shoulder of the mountain still warded it outof our canyon. Napa Valley and its bounding hills were now utterlyblotted out. The fog, sunny white in the sunshine, was pouring over intoLake County in a huge, ragged cataract, tossing treetops appearing anddisappearing in the spray. The air struck with a little chill, and setme coughing. It smelt strong of the fog, like the smell of awashing-house, but with a shrewd tang of the sea-salt.Had it not been for two things - the sheltering spur which answered as adyke, and the great valley on the other side which rapidly engulfedwhatever mounted - our own little platform in the canyon must have beenalready buried a hundred feet in salt and poisonous air. As it was, theinterest of the scene entirely occupied our minds. We were set just outof the wind, and but just above the fog; we could listen to the voice ofthe one as to music on the stage; we could plunge our eyes down into theother, as into some flowing stream from over the parapet of a bridge;thus we looked on upon a strange, impetuous, silent, shifting exhibitionof the powers of nature, and saw the familiar landscape changing frommoment to moment like figures in a dream.The imagination loves to trifle with what is not. Had this been indeedthe deluge, I should have felt more strongly, but the emotion would havebeen similar in kind. I played with the idea as the child flees indelighted terror from the creations of his fancy. The look of the thinghelped me. And when at last I began to flee up the mountain, it wasindeed partly to escape from the raw air that kept me coughing, but itwas also part in play.As I ascended the mountainside, I came once more to overlook the uppersurface of the fog; but it wore a different appearance from what I hadbeheld at daybreak. For, first, the sun now fell on it from highoverhead, and its surface shone and undulated like a great nor'land moorcountry, sheeted with untrodden morning snow. And, next, the new levelmust have been a thousand or fifteen hundred feet higher than the old,so that only five or six points of all the broken country below me stillstood out. Napa Valley was now one with Sonoma on the west. On thehither side, only a thin scattered fringe of bluffs was unsubmerged; andthrough all the gaps the fog was pouring over, like an ocean into theblue clear sunny country on the east. There it was soon lost; for itfell instantly into the bottom of the valleys, following the watershed;and the hilltops in that quarter were still clear cut upon the easternsky.Through the Toll House gap and over the near ridges on the other side,the deluge was immense. A spray of thin vapour was thrown high above it,rising and falling, and blown into fantastic shapes. The speed of itscourse was like a mountain torrent. Here and there a few treetops werediscovered and then whelmed again; and for one second, the bough of adead pine beckoned out of the spray like the arm of a drowning man. Butstill the imagination was dissatisfied, still the ear waited forsomething more. Had this indeed been water (as it seemed so, to theeye), with what a plunge of reverberating thunder would it have rolledupon its course, disembowelling mountains and deracinating pines And yetwater it was and sea-water at that - true Pacific billows, only somewhatrarefied, rolling in mid-air among the hilltops.I climbed still higher, among the red rattling gravel and dwarfunderwood of Mount Saint Helena, until I could look right down uponSilverado, and admire the favoured nook in which it lay. The sunny plainof fog was several hundred feet higher; behind the protecting spur agigantic accumulation of cottony vapour threatened, with every second toblow over and submerge our homestead; but the vortex setting past theToll House was too strong; and there lay our little platform, in thearms of the deluge, but still enjoying its unbroken sunshine. Abouteleven, however, thin spray came flying over the friendly buttress, andI began to think the fog had hunted out its Jonah after all. But it wasthe last effort. The wind veered while we were at dinner, and began toblow squally from the mountain summit and by half-past one all thatworld of sea fogs was utterly routed and flying here and there into thesouth in little rags of cloud. And instead of a lone sea-beach, we foundourselves once more inhabiting a high mountainside, with the clear greencountry far below us, and the light smoke of Calistoga blowing in theair.This was the great Russian campaign for that season. Now and then, inthe early morning, a little white lakelet of fog would be seen far downin Napa Valley but the heights were not again assailed, nor was thesurrounding world again shut off from Silverado.

　　THE END.* * * * * * * * * * * *