R. L. Stevenson was born on 13th November 1850, the very year of the
death of his grandfather, Robert Stevenson, whom he has so finely
celebrated. As a mere child he gave token of his character. As soon as
he could read, he was keen for books, and, before very long, had read all
the story-books he could lay hands on; and, when the stock ran out, he
would go and look in at all the shop windows within reach, and try to
piece out the stories from the bits exposed in open pages and the
woodcuts.
He had a nurse of very remarkable character--evidently a paragon--who
deeply influenced him and did much to form his young mind--Alison
Cunningham, who, in his juvenile lingo, became "Cumy," and who not only
was never forgotten, but to the end was treated as his "second mother."
In his dedication of his _Child's Garden of Verses_ to her, he says:
"My second mother, my first wife,
The angel of my infant life."
Her copy of _Kidnapped_ was inscribed to her by the hand of Stevenson,
thus:
"TO CUMY, FROM HER BOY, THE AUTHOR.
SKERRYVORE, 18_th_ _July_ 1888."
Skerryvore was the name of Stevenson's Bournemouth home, so named after
one of the Stevenson lighthouses. His first volume, _An Inland Voyage_
has this pretty dedication, inscribed in a neat, small hand:
"MY DEAR CUMY,--If you had not taken so much trouble with me all the
years of my childhood, this little book would never have been written.
Many a long night you sat up with me when I was ill. I wish I could
hope, by way of return, to amuse a single evening for you with my
little book. But whatever you think of it, I know you will think
kindly of
THE AUTHOR."
"Cumy" was perhaps the most influential teacher Stevenson had. What she
and his mother taught took effect and abode with him, which was hardly
the case with any other of his teachers.
"In contrast to Goethe," says Mr Baildon, "Stevenson was but little
affected by his relations to women, and, when this point is fully gone
into, it will probably be found that his mother and nurse in
childhood, and his wife and step-daughter in later life, are about the
only women who seriously influenced either his character or his art."
(p. 32).
When Mr Kelman is celebrating Stevenson for the consistency and
continuity of his undogmatic religion, he is almost throughout
celebrating "Cumy" and her influence, though unconsciously. Here, again,
we have an apt and yet more striking illustration, after that of the good
Lord Shaftesbury and many others, of the deep and lasting effect a good
and earnest woman, of whom the world may never hear, may have had upon a
youngster of whom all the world shall hear. When Mr Kelman says that
"the religious element in Stevenson was not a thing of late growth, but
an integral part and vital interest of his life," he but points us back
to the earlier religious influences to which he had been effectually
subject. "His faith was not for himself alone, and the phases of
Christianity which it has asserted are peculiarly suited to the spiritual
needs of many in the present time."
We should not lay so much weight as Mr Kelman does on the mere number of
times "the Divine name" is found in Stevenson's writings, but there is
something in such confessions as the following to his father, when he
was, amid hardship and illness, in Paris in 1878:
"Still I believe in myself and my fellow-men and the God who made us
all. . . . I am lonely and sick and out of heart. Well, I still hope;
I still believe; I still see the good in the inch, and cling to it. It
is not much, perhaps, but it is always something."
Yes, "Cumy" was a very effective teacher, whose influence and teaching
long remained. His other teachers, however famous and highly gifted, did
not attain to such success with him. And because of this non-success
they blamed him, as is usual. He was fond of playing truant--declared,
indeed, that he was about as methodic a truant as ever could have
existed. He much loved to go on long wanderings by himself on the
Pentland Hills and read about the Covenanters, and while yet a youth of
sixteen he wrote _The Pentland Rising_--a pamphlet in size and a piece of
fine work--which was duly published, is now scarce, and fetches a high
price. He had made himself thoroughly familiar with all the odd old
corners of Edinburgh--John Knox's haunts and so on, all which he has
turned to account in essays, descriptions and in stories--especially in
_Catriona_. When a mere youth at school, as he tells us himself, he had
little or no desire to carry off prizes and do just as other boys did; he
was always wishing to observe, and to see, and try things for
himself--was, in fact, in the eyes of schoolmasters and tutors something
of an _idler_, with splendid gifts which he would not rightly apply. He
was applying them rightly, though not in their way. It is not only in
his _Apology for Idlers_ that this confession is made, but elsewhere, as
in his essay on _A College Magazine_, where he says, "I was always busy
on my own private end, which was to learn to write. I kept always two
books in my pocket, one to read and one to write in!"
When he went to College it was still the same--he tells us in the
funniest way how he managed to wheedle a certificate for Greek out of
Professor Blackie, though the Professor owned "his face was not familiar
to him"! He fared very differently when, afterwards his father, eager
that he should follow his profession, got him to enter the civil
engineering class under Professor Fleeming Jenkin. He still stuck to his
old courses--wandering about, and, in sheltered corners, writing in the
open air, and was not present in class more than a dozen times. When the
session was ended he went up to try for a certificate from Fleeming
Jenkin. "No, no, Mr Stevenson," said the Professor; "I might give it in
a doubtful case, but yours is not doubtful: you have not kept my
classes." And the most characteristic thing--honourable to both men--is
to come; for this was the beginning of a friendship which grew and
strengthened and is finally celebrated in the younger man's sketch of the
elder. He learned from Professor Fleeming Jenkin, perhaps unconsciously,
more of the _humaniores_, than consciously he did of engineering. A
friend of mine, who knew well both the Stevenson family and the Balfours,
to which R. L. Stevenson's mother belonged, recalls, as we have seen, his
acting in the private theatricals that were got up by the Professor, and
adds, "He was then a very handsome fellow, and looked splendidly as Sir
Charles Pomander, and essayed, not wholly without success, Sir Peter
Teazle," which one can well believe, no less than that he acted such
parts splendidly as well as looked them.
_Longman's Magazine_, immediately after his death, published the
following poem, which took a very pathetic touch from the circumstances
of its appearance--the more that, while it imaginatively and finely
commemorated these days of truant wanderings, it showed the ruling
passion for home and the old haunts, strongly and vividly, even not
unnigh to death:
"The tropics vanish, and meseems that I,
From Halkerside, from topmost Allermuir,
Or steep Caerketton, dreaming gaze again.
Far set in fields and woods, the town I see
Spring gallant from the shallows of her smoke,
Cragg'd, spired, and turreted, her virgin fort
Beflagg'd. About, on seaward drooping hills,
New folds of city glitter. Last, the Forth
Wheels ample waters set with sacred isles,
And populous Fife smokes with a score of towns,
There, on the sunny frontage of a hill,
Hard by the house of kings, repose the dead,
My dead, the ready and the strong of word.
Their works, the salt-encrusted, still survive;
The sea bombards their founded towers; the night
Thrills pierced with their strong lamps. The artificers,
One after one, here in this grated cell,
Where the rain erases and the rust consumes,
Fell upon lasting silence. Continents
And continental oceans intervene;
A sea uncharted, on a lampless isle,
Environs and confines their wandering child
In vain. The voice of generations dead
Summons me, sitting distant, to arise,
My numerous footsteps nimbly to retrace,
And all mutation over, stretch me down
In that denoted city of the dead."