Imagine an evening at Wolfington Road. Middleton’s children are fast asleep; they are sleeping soundly and dreaming of Tissemao, a pretty South Sea maid, who had been rescued from the amorous advances of a nasty old cuttle fish by a gallant shark who lived in a large cavern to the south west of a forest os sea-weeds, Their goodnight story might have been a South Sea fairy tale.

Downstairs, in the front parlour, their father is entertaining guests. On the music stand of the upright piano in the corner is the score of his latest march ‘The Night Riders’ He strikes the piano keys with abandon. The room is filled with the sound of pounding hooves and the motion of swaying saddles - of night riders on a distant, Australian outback. It is a cheerful rollicking melody and he plays it with gusto. The music is reminiscent of a carnival or the fun of a fair, or a military band on it’s night off. Then, after singing a love duet with his wife, the performer changes the theme of his music - and his instrument, He softly plucks a Samoan chant on his zither. The music brings back memories. West Norwood isn’t the same place, or the same time, as in his youth when he played at native wedding festivals and before tribal kings.

At Wolfington Road, the festivities are over for the evening. The guests depart and Middleton returns to his writing.

His first two travel books had been successful and he embarks on a third. ‘Wine Dark Seas and Tropic Skies’ appeared in 1918. In the following year appeared two romances and a further travel book. How grim Wolfington Road must have seemed and how magical his youth; how colourless the West Norwood natives and how shabby his surroundings. He had become trapped in the very conventions he had travelled so far to escape but he became so engrossed in the colourful and exotic adventures of his youth that he hardly noticed.

‘I was a lad in those days.’ he note in ‘Sailor and Beachcomber,‘ and has opportunities that others who were older and more respected did not. I was a boy, my opinion unrespected, a young beachcomber who knew more than they thought he did, and out came the true man, inglorious and joyous in the wild sprees of those long ago Samoan nights.’

As he writes on he recalls a time when he was invited to play at the wedding festival of the daughter of a local chieftain, Kafola. He takes along a banjo-playing friend to the primitive ballroom where the festivities are to be held. The scene is dominated by an enthusiastic, drum conductor who crashes away at an old army drum with a huge was club, shouting ‘O Le Siva,’ at every stroke.

'In the centre of the throng was the barbarian orchestra. I have conducted many orchestras in my time, but never such a deliberately planned, inharmonious, ear-torturing band of musicians as I led that night. I think the instruments were chiefly strings and wind; the former consisted of wires strung across gourds and the latter of bamboo flutes, old coppers and the drums I have previously mentioned. I sat down in the middle of the orchestral players, squatting with my comrade by my side, on a mat, and all the native musicians around me gazed with great curiosity as I started to tune my violin, and my comrade to pik-e-tee-ponk on his banjo. Indeed so great was their curiosity that they rose from their seats and poked their faces against our instruments. Hitting my violin with my bow, so - tap, tap, I made a sign to them to take their seats, and. then the overture continued. My comrade and I tore away at the strings. I forget what we proposed to play, but as soon as we started and the members of the orchestra heard the violin wailing, they went completely mad with delight, and then tried to outdo us. Placing their flutes to their lips they all started to blow terrifically, and then the drums started off, and the gourds twanged. I quickly realised that to keep up our musical reputations we must outdo the barbarian music. So signed to my comrade who looked at me as though I had gone mad, and then I started to grind away at all my violin strings at once. I believe we 'both caught the primitive barbarian fever, for though the row was terrible my memory of it all is of some far-off musical delight.

Not Wagner's wildest dreams, no Futurist's idea of harmony could have outdone the reality of that tribal music. Then it all changed from thunder to weird sweetness, minor melodies of sad forgotten lovers and dreams, for on a little elevated bamboo platform the bride stood before us. She was a dusky tender-limbed maiden of about sixteen years of age. Dressed in a blue frock that went no higher than her brown bosom, fastened on by a red sash, her thick hair bedecked with tropical blossom, she looked like beautiful princess from. South Sea novel. Her husband, a fine looking Samoan ot about thirty, stood beside her as she gazed up into his admiring eyes and sang a tender song of love! It was really a beautiful melody and I at once caught the spirit of it, as she sang sweetly I extemporised a delicate accompaniment on the violin, interspersed with minor pizzicato As soon as she had ceased her song a tiny child stepped forth, and kissing her feet, handed her a large bouquet of richly coloured flowers; then a bridesmaid stooped and kissed the child on the brow as all the audience murmured '0 Whey' '0 Whey' three times. This child was a relative of the bride and not her own child; though to tell the truth this was often the case in tribal weddings at which I officiated as violinist. Often the custom was that the bride's first born came as chief witness to the alter and was sometimes old enough to toddle all the way!

When she had sung one more island ditty to her delighted husband, the Siva dance commenced. Through a little door behind the stage came about a dozen girls clad only only flower and grass, and when they had squatted in a circle, on the stage, they started to beat their bare limbs with their hands as they chanted, and the orchestra went tootle-tootle on the bamboo flutes...'  

  As the vagabond leads the native orchestra, he notes events out of the corner of his eye. There is a major sub-plot threaded into the scenario of the wedding Earlier, a rather sweaty Robert Louis Stevenson had asked the young troubadour if he could come along. ‘Off to the Lyceum Orchestra?’ Stevenson had enquired.

Stevenson turns up late. Ex King Mataafa is one of the guests and the violinist eavesdrops on the local political intrigues, a war is in progress between Mataafa and the incumbent, King Malieton . Mataafa and Stevenson seem friends. They exchange confidences in a corner.

The vagabond learns that King Malieton, the current ruler of Samoa, is a puppet pretender to the throne, supported by the ‘Imperial Powers’. Later Stevenson joins in the midnight festivities. He dances with the native girls with evident pleasure, but leaves early. ‘For the hour was late, and the code of morals strict in the Vailima establishment. (Stevenson’s household)

*

Middleton continued to write about Stevenson and the South Seas until the year of his death. Someone not brave enough to confront the author himself, once asked his wife how much truth there was in her husband’s anecdotes. Hearing her husband shuffling papers in the next room, she put a finger to her lips and replied, ‘Ssh, I think he’s found some more.’

There is a footnote to Stevenson in an old bibliography by W.M Prideaux. It is a comment about ‘Sailor and Beachcomber’ which noted. ‘this book contains some interesting descriptions of Stevenson whom the author met aboard ship and in Samoa.’

In his final travel book ‘In the Green Leaf’ Middleton visits Samoa for the last time. As his ship ‘The Zangwahee’ drops anchor by an ‘Epipsychidion Isle’ he gazes towards the shore and sights an approaching boat. A man climbs aboard the “Zangwahee’ and behaves as though he owns it. Middleton complains, “I was annoyed at the thought that out there, on my ‘Isle of undiscovered seas’ a damnable white man had got in first, taken over my Elysian Isle and wrecked my dream’’

“That white fellow is Robert Louis Stevenson, the chap who wrote ‘Treasure Island,’ replies a crew mate.

*

Middleton was well into his seventies when he wrote ‘In the Green Leaf’. An extract and summery of his final recollections of Stevenson appeared in ‘John O’London’s Weekly’. The article was on the front page of the issue for Jan 20, 1950. It was titled ‘A New View of R.L.S.

In the article Middleton outlines his view that Stevenson was inspired to write ‘Dr Jeckyll and Mr Hyde because of the subconscious nature of his dual mind. He then proceeds to paint a picture of Stevenson escaping from his family late at night and revelling in the native goings on:

...'When the Vailima household slept, R. L. S was often over the hills by Malio, risking the chance of being clubbed or shot, while acting as secret ambassador to ex-king Mataafa. The excitement was not only a tonic but was meat and drink to him. He exulted in the thought of risking deportation as an undesirable alien accused of stirring up trouble between Samoa's rival kings...

...But the boy I loved best (Stevenson's dual nature) was the romantic boy who went at night to Princess Patelise's hut by the forests of Luelooenga. I think she knew a strong attachment for R.L.S. Dying through a bullet in her breast, R.L.S night after night removed the stained bandages and replaced them with clean lint. She was a near kinswoman of ex-king Mataafa. and at her death the sight of grand old Mataafa's grief, and also of R.L.S's was distressing .

(Middleton recalls a later event)

.. .In the great unknown of Samoa's chivalrous underworld it was well known that a tragedy had happened, so tragical that it bought an apology from King Malieton to Mataafa. For, in one of the later skirmishes, R.L.S and many other white men were mistaken for the enemy. Though R.L.S reached Vailima, his island home, safely, he had received a blow from a native weapon that hurried him to his grave...

On November 24 1950, Isobel Field, Stevenson’s daughter-in-law, replied angrily in the same paper: “Mr Middleton wrote about Stevenson, and among the extracts printed in ’John O’London's Weekly' is the absurd story that ‘RLS’ was not the kind of man the public had been taught to consider him - he was a kind, devoted husband, adored by his friends and many readers. Mr Middleton says that he was a very common fellow with low tastes and vicious habits.’

But Middleton had died two weeks earlier and missed the outcome of his article.

*

In 1947, towards the end of his life, Middleton joined the ‘R.L.S’ Society. This was probably at the instigation of Harold Downs, a member of the committee and a colleague from the world of publishing. The secretary acknowledges the application to join in a letter saying what an honour it must have been to have met Stevenson though the secretary queries Middleton’s membership, ‘I don’t quite understand what you mean by being a ‘silent member of the Prometheus type/’

The vagabond’s family continued the association with the ‘R.L.S Society’ for a few years after his death. His shy son, Hugh, once delivered a lecture on his father and ‘Robertson Steven Louis.’