RLS cottage is Delahant’s life’s work
By Nicholas RankinI first came to Saranac Lake six Olympic Games ago, in August 1984, on a journey around the planet, from Scotland to Samoa via the USA, following in the footsteps of the world-famous author Robert Louis Stevenson (1850-1894) in order to write my own first book.
"Dead Man's Chest: Travels after Robert Louis Stevenson" (Faber, 1987) has 17 pages devoted to Saranac Lake, where RLS spent six months from October 1887 to April 1888, as a lung patient under the care of Dr E.L. Trudeau, great-grandfather of the originator of Doonesbury. On a hill by the river, the Stevenson family rented rooms in a wooden house that belonged to the hunting guide Andrew Baker. My book describes my own arrival at the Stevenson Memorial Cottage, walking 'round the green verandah to where the bronze plaque of Stevenson, cast by Gutzon Borglum, hangs on the wooden wall.
A bluff-looking young man with reddish hair opened the door. I introduced myself, and he stuck out his hand.
"Hi! I'm Mike Delahant!" Mike was the third generation of his family to look after Baker's since his grandfather took it on in 1953. I paid my dollar, and he showed me around.
Mike and I started to become friends. We were linked. His birthday, 6 December, was my saint's day, and we were both born in 1950, 100 years after Stevenson. Seeing I was serious about RLS, Mike invited me to stay with him at the cottage for the weekend. I took copious notes from the books and pamphlets in the cottage and was awed by the Stevenson mementos that the place held. Mike's father, John S. Delahant, helped me move a glass case to get out Robert Louis Stevenson's boots, still stuffed with an 1897 Australian newspaper.
I began to grasp that R.L. Stevenson was a man loved by many. His American friends, wanting to remember him 21 years after he died in Western Samoa, set up a society in 1915 to perpetuate the writer's memory and "to spread his brave philosophy of living." The primary aim of the American Stevenson Society - the world's very first, founded five years before the RLS Club of Edinburgh - was to collect and preserve relics, original manuscripts, first editions and books about the man, and to find a permanent home for them. At first, the not-for-profit, educational Stevenson Society only rented rooms at Andrew Baker's, but in 1925 they bought the house outright. Nearly 60 years later, all those original enthusiasts were dead. The Delahants had become the sole custodians of the shrine, once the village washed its hands of it in 1972, and Mike had been the resident curator since 1980.
When I came back to Saranac Lake 10 years later, it was a swift visit to record a section of the radio version of "Dead Man's Chest" for BBC World Service, broadcast globally to celebrate the centenary of Stevenson's death in December 1894. It seemed to me then that Mike Delahant had slowly come to understand his role in the Stevenson Memorial Cottage as an inherited family duty that would become his life's work. He had already repaired the roof and the sidewalk, put in 58 feet of new verandah and rewired the building, and he had begun organizing all the material inside so that a guided tour of the building told visitors the story of Robert Louis Stevenson's entire life. I was deeply impressed with his knowledge and commitment, and when, in January 1995, he wrote to ask if I would become the "British representative" of the Stevenson Society of America Inc., I was honored to accept the position once held by Sidney Colvin, the first editor of Stevenson's letters.
Two years ago, I came back to Saranac Lake once more, and stayed with Mike and his wife Karla during the fourth Biennial International RLS Conference, held 18-20 July 2006, at which I gave the opening talk, and later discussed "The Master of Ballantrae" with the eminent Stevenson scholar Dr. Roger S. Swearingen.
By then, trouble was clearly looming. Mike's father, newspaperman Jack Delahant, had passed away in 1995. (Fittingly for one who had looked after the Stevenson cottage for so many decades, he died on 13 November, Stevenson's birthday.) Mike then became president of the Stevenson Society of America and, concerned that he could not carry the responsibility alone, reconstituted a board of local worthies to help him with fundraising. This was the beginning of the tragic situation that has now arisen. In brief, a cabal ousted Mike from the board, and now they want to get him out of the house and museum altogether.
One of the charges laid against the embattled resident curator, in a letter publicly circulated by the board in June 2008, is that "he has permitted the unauthorized use and handling of collection materials by individuals, the most recent being his invitation to Nicholas Rankin to stay at the Cottage Museum while he attended the July 2006 'Transatlantic Stevenson' conference in Saranac Lake."
I must confess to you, as I did last July to the scholars attending the fifth Biennial RLS Conference in Bergamo, Italy, that I did indeed clean Robert Louis Stevenson's shoes. Those elegant, high-laced boots, bought from Abbey of Sydney in 1893, were still stuffed with the very same newspaper I found when Jack Delahant let me hold them 22 years before. The singular privilege of saddle-soaping and polishing RLS's narrow boots, before they went into a fine new locked cabinet with his white cap and his red sash, was an honor.
I believe that Mike Delahant's caring for the Stevenson cottage museum and its many visitors over three decades has been a labor of love. In a mostly arid argument over authority, and who is "authorized," my friend Mike has remained truest to the spirit of the great-hearted author that the Saranac Lake memorial cottage is meant to commemorate. For heaven's sake, good folks, surely you can still find room for him there?
Nicholas Rankin lives in London. As he requested, this article is published on Nov. 13, Stevenson's 158th birthday.
(Editor's note: This article has been corrected.)
