His interest in engineering soon went--his mind full of stories and
fancies and human nature. As he had told his mother: he did not care
about finding what was "the strain on a bridge," he wanted to know
something of human beings.
No doubt, much to the disappointment and grief of his father, who wished
him as an only son to carry on the traditions of the family, though he
had written two engineering essays of utmost promise, the engineering was
given up, and he consented to study law. He had already contributed to
College Magazines, and had had even a short spell of editing one; of one
of these he has given a racy account. Very soon after his call to the
Bar articles and essays from his pen began to appear in _Macmillan's_,
and later, more regularly in the _Cornhill_. Careful readers soon began
to note here the presence of a new force. He had gone on the _Inland
Voyage_ and an account of it was in hand; and had done that tour in the
Cevennes which he has described under the title _Travels with a Donkey in
the Cevennes_, with Modestine, sometimes doubting which was the donkey,
but on that tour a chill caught either developed a germ of lung disease
already present, or produced it; and the results unfortunately remained.
He never practised at the Bar, though he tells facetiously of his one
brief. He had chosen his own vocation, which was literature, and the
years which followed were, despite the delicacy which showed itself, very
busy years. He produced volume on volume. He had written many stories
which had never seen the light, but, as he says, passed through the
ordeal of the fire by more or less circuitous ways.
By this time some trouble and cause for anxiety had arisen about the
lungs, and trials of various places had been made. _Ordered South_
suggests the Mediterranean, sunny Italy, the Riviera. Then a sea-trip to
America was recommended and undertaken. Unfortunately, he got worse
there, his original cause of trouble was complicated with others, and the
medical treatment given was stupid, and exaggerated some of the symptoms
instead of removing them, All along--up, at all events, to the time of
his settlement in Samoa--Stevenson was more or less of an invalid.
Indeed, were I ever to write an essay on the art of wisely "laying-to,"
as the sailors say, I would point it by a reference to R. L. Stevenson.
For there is a wise way of "laying-to" that does not imply inaction, but
discreet, well-directed effort, against contrary winds and rough seas,
that is, amid obstacles and drawbacks, and even ill-health, where passive
and active may balance and give effect to each other. Stevenson was by
native instinct and temperament a rover--a lover of adventure, of strange
by-ways, errant tracts (as seen in his _Inland Voyage_ and _Travels with
a Donkey through the Cevennes_--seen yet more, perhaps, in a certain
account of a voyage to America as a steerage passenger), lofty mountain-
tops, with stronger air, and strange and novel surroundings. He would
fain, like Ulysses, be at home in foreign lands, making acquaintance with
outlying races, with
"Cities of men,
And manners, climates, councils, governments:
Myself not least, but honoured of them all,
Far on the ringing plains of windy Troy."
If he could not move about as he would, he would invent, make fancy serve
him instead of experience. We thus owe something to the staying and
restraining forces in him, and a wise "laying-to"--for his works, which
are, in large part, finely-healthy, objective, and in almost everything
unlike the work of an invalid, yet, in some degree, were but the devices
to beguile the burdens of an invalid's days. Instead of remaining in our
climate, it might be, to lie listless and helpless half the day, with no
companion but his own thoughts and fancies (not always so pleasant
either, if, like Frankenstein's monster, or, better still like the imp in
the bottle in the _Arabian Nights_, you cannot, once for all liberate
them, and set them adrift on their own charges to visit other people), he
made a home in the sweeter air and more steady climate of the South
Pacific, where, under the Southern Cross, he could safely and
beneficially be as active as he would be involuntarily idle at home, or
work only under pressure of hampering conditions. That was surely an
illustration of the true "laying-to" with an unaffectedly brave, bright
resolution in it.