CHAPTER XIII

HIS LIFE-WORK 150

ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON

CHAPTER I

HEREDITY AND ANTECEDENTS

'These are thy works, O father, these thy crown,

Whether on high the air be pure they shine

Along the yellowing sunset, and all night

Among the unnumbered stars of God they shine.

Or whether fogs arise, and far and wide

The low sea-level drown--each finds a tongue,

And all night long the tolling bell resounds.

So shine so toll till night be overpast,

Till the stars vanish, till the sun return,

And in the haven rides the fleet at last.'

--R. L. STEVENSON.

In no country in the world is heredity more respected than in Scotland,

and her hard-working sons freely acknowledge the debt they owe, for the

successes of to-day, to the brave struggle with sterner conditions of

life their ancestors waged from generation to generation. We of the

present are 'the heirs of all the ages'; but we are also in no small

degree the clay from the potter's hands, moulded and kneaded by the

natures, physical and mental, of those who have gone before us, and

whose lives and circumstances have made us what we are.

Robert Lewis Balfour Stevenson--for so the writer whom the world knows

as Robert Louis Stevenson, was baptised--valued greatly this doctrine of

heredity, and always bore enthusiastic testimony to the influence his

ancestry and antecedents had exercised in moulding his temperament and

character. He was proud of that ancestry, with no foolish pride, but

rather with that appreciation of all that was noble and worthy in his

forefathers, which made him desire to be, in his own widely differing

life-work, as good a man as they.

... 'And I--can I be base?'--he says;

'I must arise, O father, and to port

Some lost complaining seaman pilot home.'

He had reason to think highly of the honourable name which he received

from his father's family. Britain and the whole world has much for which

to thank the Stevensons; not only all along our rough north coasts, but

in every part of the world where the mariner rejoices to see their

beacon's blaze have the firm, who are consulting engineers to the

Indian, the New Zealand, and the Japanese Lighthouse Boards, lit those

lights of which Rudyard Kipling in his 'Songs of the English,' sings--

'Our brows are bound with spindrift, and the weed is on our knees;

Our loins are battered 'neath us by the swinging, smoking seas;

From reef and rock and skerry, over headland, ness, and voe,

The coastguard lights of England watch the ships of England go.'

Wild and wind-swept are the isles and headlands of the northern half of

the sister kingdoms, but from their dreariest points the lights that

have been kindled by Robert Stevenson, the hero of Bell Rock fame, and

his descendants flash and flame across the sea, and make the name of

Stevenson a word of blessing to the storm-tossed sailor.

The author was third in descent from that Robert Stevenson, who, by

skill and heroism, planted the lighthouse on the wave-swept Bell

Rock--only uncovered for the possibility of work for a short time at low

tides--and made safety on the North Sea, where before there had been

death and danger, from the cruel cliffs that guard that iron coast.

What child has not thrilled and shivered over the ballad of 'Ralph the

Rover,' who, hoping doubtless that the wrecked ships might fall into his

own piratical hands, cut the bell which the good monks of Aberbrothock

had placed on the fatal rock, and who, by merited justice, was for lack

of the bell himself, on his return voyage, lost on that very spot! What

boy has not loved the story of one of the greatest engineering feats

that patience and skill has ever accomplished!

If other young folk so loved it what a depth of interest must not that

noble story have had for the grandson of the hero, whose childish soul

was full of chivalry and romance, and whose boyish eyes saw visions of

the future and pictures of the past as no ordinary child could see them,

for his was the gift of genius, and even the commonplace things of life

were glorified to him.

Alan Stevenson, who was the father of Robert, died of fever when in the

island of St Christopher on a visit to his brother, who managed the

foreign business of the Glasgow West India house with which they were

connected. The brother unfortunately dying of the same fever, business

matters were somewhat complicated, and Alan's widow and little boy had

to endure straitened circumstances. The mother strained every nerve to

have her boy, whom she intended for the ministry, well educated, and the

lad profited by her self-denial. Her second marriage, however, very

fortunately changed her plans for Robert, for her second husband, Mr

Smith, had a mechanical bent which led him to make many researches on

the subject of lighting and lighthouses, and finding that his stepson

shared his tastes, he encouraged him in his engineering and mechanical

studies.

The satisfactory results of Mr Smith's researches caused the first Board

of Northern Lights to make him their engineer, and he designed Kinnaird

Head, the first light they exhibited, and illuminated it in 1787. He was

ultimately succeeded as engineer to the Board by his stepson, of Bell

Rock fame, and his descendant, Mr David Alan Stevenson, who now holds

the post, is the sixth in the family who has done so. Young Stevenson

not only became his stepfather's partner but married his eldest

daughter, and with her founded a home that was evidently a happy one,

for the great engineer was a most unselfish character, and made an

excellent husband and father. He was a notable volunteer in the days

when a French invasion was greatly feared, and all his life he took a

keen interest in the volunteering movement.

Like his son Thomas, Mr Robert Stevenson was a man of much intellect and

humour, though of a grave and serious character. He was also a keen

Conservative and a loving member of the Established Church of Scotland.

He was warmly beloved and his society was greatly sought after by his

friends; a voyage of inspection with him on his tours round the coast

was much appreciated. On one occasion Sir Walter Scott made one of the

party which accompanied him. Mr Robert Stevenson died in July 1850, a

few months before the birth of his grandson, Robert Louis.

That this grandson held in high esteem the deeds and sterling qualities

of his grandfather is amply proved by his Samoan Letters to Mr Sydney

Colvin, published in 1895. In many of them he speaks of the history of

his family, which he intended to write, and into which he evidently felt

that he could put his best work. Alas! like so much that the brave

spirit and the busy brain planned, it was not to be, and the writer

passed to his rest without leaving behind him a full record of the

workers who had made his name famous.[1]

Mr Alan, Mr David, and Mr Thomas Stevenson worthily handed on the

traditions of their father, and in its second generation the lustre of

the great engineering family shone undimmed; while now the sons of Alan

Stevenson maintain the reputation of their forefathers, and the

Stevenson name is still one to conjure with wherever their saving lights

shine out across the sea.

Mr Thomas Stevenson served under his brother Alan in building the famous

lighthouse of 'Skerryvore,' and with his brother David he built 'The

Chickens,' 'Dhu Heartach,' and many 'shore lights' and harbours. He was

a notable engineer, widely known and greatly honoured at home and

abroad, besides being a very typical Scotsman.

When one thinks of his grand rugged face, and remembers how the stern

eyes used to light up with humour and soften with tenderness, as their

glance fell on his wife and his son, one realises what a very perfect

picture of such a character in its outward sternness and its inward

gentleness, lies in those lines of Mr William Watson's, in which he

speaks of

'The fierceness that from tenderness is never far.'

Mr Stevenson's broad shoulders, his massive head, his powerful face,

reminded one of that enduring grey Scotch stone from which he and his

ancestors raised round all our coasts, their lighthouses and harbours.

Strong, grey, silent, these solid blocks resist winds and waves, and so

one felt would that powerful reticent nature stand steadfast in life's

battle, a tower of strength to those who trusted him. Like his own

'Beacon Lights,' on cliff and headland brilliant gleams of humour bright

gems of genius flashed out now and then from the silence. One felt too

that safe as the ships in his splendid harbours, would rest family and

friends in the strong yet loving heart that could hold secure all that

it valued through the tests and changes of time and the conflicts of

varying thoughts and opposing opinions. A man of strong prejudices, a

man too of varying moods, Mr Stevenson knew what it was at times to

endure hours of depression, to suffer from an almost morbidly religious

conscience, but he always kept a courageous hold on life and found the

best cure for a shadowed soul lay in constant and varied work.

The charming dedication of _Familiar Studies of Men and Books_ is a

delightful tribute from the gifted son to the strength and nobility of

his father's character.

Highly favoured in his paternal heredity Mr R. L. Stevenson was no less

fortunate in his mother and his mother's family.

If strength and force of intellect characterised Mr Thomas Stevenson,

his wife, Margaret Balfour, had no less powerful an individuality; in

beauty of person, in grace of manner, in the brilliance of a quick and

flashing feminine intelligence--that was deep as well as bright--she was

a fitting helpmate for her husband, and the very mother to sympathise

with and encourage a son whose genius showed itself in quaint sayings,

in dainty ways, and in chivalrous thoughts almost from his infancy.

Mrs Stevenson was the youngest daughter of the Rev. Dr Lewis Balfour,

from 1823 to 1860 minister of Colinton, and of Henrietta Scott Smith,

daughter of the minister of Galston. There had been thirteen children in

the manse of Colinton, and father and mother had made of the picturesque

old house a home in truth as well as in name. Many of these children

survived long enough, two of them indeed are still living, to carry the

sacred traditions of that happy home out into a world where they made

honourable positions for themselves.

After the death of the mother her place was taken by her daughter Jane,

that aunt of whom Robert Louis Stevenson wrote so sweetly in his

_Child's Garden of Verses_--

'Chief of our Aunts not only I

But all your other nurslings cry,

What did the other children do?

And what were childhood wanting you?'

To other 'motherless bairns,' as well as to her own brothers and

sisters, nephews and nieces, that most motherly heart and gentle and

beautiful soul has been a comfort and a refuge on the thorny highway of

life, and many whose love she has earned by the tenderness of her

sympathy still call Miss Balfour blessed.

She was a true helper to her father in the motherless home and in his

parish work, and in spite of much bad health filled the mother's place

in the house and won for herself the undying affection and regard not

only of her own family but of her father's parishioners and friends.

A testimony to the high esteem in which her father's memory and hers,

and indeed that of all the Balfour family, is still held in Colinton,

was given to me a few years ago by the old beadle there. Fond as he was

of Dr Lockhart, to speak to him of the Balfours, whom he remembered in

his younger days, at once won his attention and regard. On my saying to

him it was for their sakes I wished to see the inside of the church he

queried with a brightening face:

'Ye'll no be ane o' them, will ye?'

'No' was the reply, 'but they have been so long known and loved they

seem like my "ain folk" to me.'

'Aweel come awa' an' see the kirk. Will ye mind o' him?'

Alas! no; for the minister of Colinton had died seven years before my

friendship with the Balfours began.

'Eh!' was all the old man said, but that and the shake of his head

eloquently expressed what a loss that was for me!

'But ye'll ken _her_?' meaning Miss Balfour, he queried again, and as I

said I did and well, the face brightened with a great brightness.

So, having found a friend in common, together we went over the church

and the manse grounds, but, as Dr Lockhart was away from home, I

resisted his persuasion to ask leave to go through the house and

contented myself with a pleasant talk with him of Dr John Balfour, who

had fought the mutineers in India and the cholera at Davidson's Mains,

Slateford, and Leven; of Dr George, who is still fighting the ills that

flesh is heir to, in Edinburgh; of the sons and daughters of the manse

who had gone to their rest; of Mrs Stevenson, then in Samoa with her

son, and whose charm of personality made her dear to the old man, and

lastly of 'the clivir lad,' her son, who had spent such happy days in

the old manse garden.

Of all the children in that large family Maggie, the youngest, was

perhaps especially her sister's charge; and one knows, from that elder

sister's description, how sweet, and good, and bright the little girl

was, and how charming was the face, and how loving the heart of the

mother of Robert Louis Stevenson when she too was a child at play in the

manse garden. The mother's beauty and that dainty refinement of face and

voice which she bequeathed to her son came to her in a long and

honourable descent from a family that had for many centuries been noted

for the beauty and the sincere goodness of its women, for the godliness

and the manliness of its men.

The Rev. Dr Lewis Balfour of Colinton was the third son of Mr Balfour,

the Laird of Pilrig. The quaint old house of Pilrig stands a little back

from Leith Walk, the date on it is 1638; and the text inscribed on its

door-stone, 'For we know, that if our earthly house of this tabernacle

were dissolved we have a building of God, an house not made with hands

eternal in the heavens,' is a fitting motto for a race whose first

prominent ancestor was that James Balfour of Reformation times, who not

only was a cousin of Melville the Reformer, but who married one of the

Melville family. This double tie to those so entwined with the very life

of that great period in Scotland's history brought Mr James Balfour into

very close communion with such men as Erskine of Dun, the Rev. John

Durie, and many others of the Reforming ministers and gentlemen, with

whom a member of the Pilrig family, the late James Balfour-Melville,

Esq., W.S., in his interesting pamphlet dealing with his family says,

that his ancestor had much godly conversation and communing.

The early promise of the race was not belied in its later descendants,

and the Balfours were noted for their zeal in religion, and in their

country's affairs, as well as for an honourable and prudent application

to the business of life on their own account. Andrew Balfour, the

minister of Kirknewton, signed the protestation for the Kirk in 1617,

and was imprisoned for it. His son James was called to the Scotch Bar,

and was a Clerk of Session in Cromwell's time. A son of his was a

Governor of the Darien Company, and his son, in turn, purchased the

estate of Pilrig where his descendants kept up the godly and honourable

traditions of the house, and dispensed a pleasant and a kindly

hospitality to their friends in Edinburgh, from whom, at that time,

their pretty old home was somewhat distant in the country!

With such an ancestry on both sides one can easily understand the bent

of Robert Louis Stevenson's mind towards old things, the curious

traditions of Scotch family history and the lone wild moorlands,

'Where about the graves of the martyrs

The whaups are calling,'

one can comprehend, too, the attraction for him of the power and the

mystery of the sea. All these things came to him as a natural

inheritance from those who had gone before, and in the characters who

people his books, in _Kidnapped_, in _Catriona_, in _Weir of Hermiston_,

we see live again, the folk of that older Edinburgh, whom those bygone

Balfours knew.

In the fresh salt breeze that, as it were, blows keen from the sea in

_Treasure Island_, in _The Merry Men_, and about the sad house of

Durrisdeer in _The Master of Ballantrae_, we recognise the magic wooing

of the mighty ocean that made of the Stevensons builders of lighthouses

and harbours, and masters of the rough, wild coasts where the waves beat

and the spray dashes, and the sea draws all who love it to ride upon its

breast in ships.

From the union of two families who have been so long and so honourably

known in their different ways, there came much happiness, and one feels

somewhat sorry that when Louis Stevenson signed his name to the books by

which he is so lovingly remembered, he did not write it in full and

spell 'Lewis' in the old-time fashion that was good enough for our

Scotch ancestors in the days when many a 'Lewis' drew sword for Gustavus

Adolphus, or served as a gentleman volunteer in the wars of France or

the Netherlands, and when 'O, send Lewie Gordon hame' rang full of

pathos to the Scotch ears, to which the old spelling was familiar. Mr

Stevenson's Balfour relatives naturally regret the alteration of the

older spelling and the omission of his mother's family name from his

signature. With regard to the latter, he himself assured his mother that

having merely dropped out the Balfour to shorten a very long name, he

greatly regretted having done so, after it was too late, and he had won

his literary fame as 'Robert Louis Stevenson,' and much wished that he

had invariably written his name as R. L. Balfour Stevenson. The spelling

of Lewis he altered when he was about eighteen, in deference to a wish

of his father's, as at one time the elder Mr Stevenson had a prejudice

against the name of Lewis, so his son thereafter signed himself Louis.

That he may have himself also preferred it is very possible; he was fond

of all things French, and he may have liked the link to that far off

ancestor, the French barber-surgeon who landed at St Andrews to be one

of the suite of Cardinal Beaton! In spite of the belief on the part of

Robert Louis, who had a fancy to the contrary, the name in the Balfour

family was _invariably_ spelt Lewis. His grandfather was christened

Lewis, and so the entry of his name remains to this day in the old

family Bible at Pilrig; so also it is spelt in that, already mentioned,

most interesting pamphlet for private circulation, written by the late

James Balfour-Melville, Esq., who gives the name of his uncle, the

minister of Colinton, as Lewis Balfour, and so the old clergyman signed

himself all his life.

FOOTNOTE:

[1] The portion of this family history--_Family of

Engineers_--which Mr Stevenson had completed, at the time of his death,

is to be found in 'The Edinburgh Edition' of his works.

CHAPTER II

CHILDHOOD

... 'With love divine

My mother's fingers folded mine.'

--FROM VERSES IN AN AMERICAN PAPER.

'We built a ship upon the stairs,

All made of the back bedroom chairs;

And filled it full of sofa pillows,

To go a-sailing on the billows.'

--R. L. STEVENSON.

Mr and Mrs Thomas Stevenson, who were married in 1848, made their first

home at 8 Howard Place, and there, on 13th November 1850, Robert Lewis

Balfour Stevenson was born. In 1853 they moved to a house in Inverleith

Terrace, and in 1857, when Louis was about seven years old, they took

possession of 17 Heriot Row, the house so long and so intimately

associated with them in the minds of their many friends.

The little Louis was from his earliest babyhood a very delicate child,

and only the most constant and tender care of his devoted mother and

nurse enabled him to survive those first years which must have been so

full of anxiety to his parents. In _The Child's Garden of Verses_ there

are some lines called 'The Land of Counterpane,' the picture heading of

which is a tiny child propped up against his bed pillows, and with all

his toys scattered on the coverlet. Beneath it are four verses that

give a wonderfully graphic description of the life the little boy too

often led.

In the last verse he was a giant who saw before him all 'the pleasant

land of counterpane,' and in the very word 'pleasant' the temperament of

the child shows itself. How many children would have found anything

'pleasant' in the enforced days of lie-a-bed quietness, and would have

made no murmurs over the hard fate which forbade to them the active joys

of other boys and girls?

But this small lad had a sweet temper and an unselfish, contented

disposition, and so he bore the burden of his bad health as bravely in

those days as he did in after years, and made for himself plays and

pleasures with his nimble brain while his weary body was often tired and

restless in that bed whereof he had so much. His mother used to

describe, with the same graphic touch that gives life to all her son

wrote, the bright games the little fellow invented for himself when he

was well enough to be up and about, and tell how, in a corner of the

room, he made for himself a wonder-world all his own, in which heroes

and heroines of romance loved and fought and walked and talked at the

bidding of the wizard in frock and pinafore.

It was not all indoor life happily, and if there were many bad days

there were some good and glad ones also, when he was well and allowed to

be out and at play in the world of outdoor life he always loved so

dearly.

Two quaint pictures of the child as he was in those days have been

supplied by his aunt, Miss Balfour. One of them is from a note-book of

his mother's, in which she had jotted down a few things that had been

said or written of him. The first interesting description is that given

by a very dear old friend of the family, and is an exceedingly early

one, for it was written in October 1853, when Louis was barely three,

and the family had just settled in Inverleith Terrace.

'One day,' she says, 'I called and missed you, and found Cummie' (the

valued nurse) 'and Louis just starting for town, so we walked up

together by Canonmills, keeping the middle of the road all the way.'

Louis, she continues, was dressed in a navy blue pelisse trimmed with

fur, a beaver hat, a fur ruff, and white gloves. A very quaint little

figure he must have been with the thin delicate face and the wonderfully

bright eyes, so luminous and far-seeing even then!

The tiny mite repeated hymns all the way, 'emphasising so prettily,' the

friend goes on to say, 'with the dear little baby hands. All of a

sudden, when near St Mary's Church he stood still, and looking in my

face, said:

'"But by-the-bye did I ever give you my likeness?"

'"No," was the reply, "have you got your likeness?"

'"Oh! yes, I will give it you; I will send it by the _real_ post

to-morrow."'

'It seemed,' the lady adds, 'as if the wonderful little mind had been

considering what other kind thing he could do besides repeating the

hymns.'

The whole incident is an excellent example of his sweetness of

disposition, and his innate thoughtfulness for others. It is pleasant to

know that the pretty promise was fulfilled, Mrs Stevenson herself acting

'postman,' and taking the likeness to her friend next day.

The second picture is from the memory of Miss Balfour herself. She too

describes the blue pelisse trimmed with grey astrakhan, which he wore in

the winter of 1853 and '54. In the spring of 1854 she went to the

Stevensons' house to tell her sister that their father had been given

the degree of Doctor of Divinity. The small Louis, on hearing his

grandfather spoken of as 'Doctor,' immediately said:

'Now that grandpapa is a doctor, surely you'll have him instead of Dr

Hunter?'

A wonderfully quick thought and old-fashioned remark from a child not

four years old, but a suggestively sad one too; he already knew so well

the necessity of a doctor to help human bodies, although he could not

yet comprehend the use of one for the 'cure' of human souls!

When he heard that his aunt was going to see a relative in Saxe Coburg

Place, he begged to be allowed to go with her, and, the permission

granted, started off in great pride on his very first expedition without

his nurse, that faithful friend of the Stevenson family having promised

to follow later to take him home. The aunt at least had cause to

remember that walk! He had started gloveless, and would not go back for

his gloves, but popped his cold hands under the cape of his pelisse, and

even then, unconventional as to clothing, said cheerfully:

'That will keep them from John Frost.'

So the pair set out on what proved a chilly and prolonged excursion;

for, in spite of all remonstrances, the child calmly sat down on every

doorstep and rested till he felt inclined to go on again, to the no

small dismay of his aunt, who knew how serious a thing the taking of a

cold was to the placid little personage smiling at her from the steps.

During the Crimean war, while he was still a very tiny mite, he,

entirely of his own accord, always prayed for the soldiers. When asked

by his mother if he would like to be a soldier, his answer was--

'I would neither like to kill nor to be killed,'--a very sensible reason

to have been thought out by so young a child.

His aunt says of him--

'I never knew so sweet a child.'

And his mother always said of him that his sweetness and patience were

beautiful. On one subject only mother and child sometimes differed.

Louis wished her to agree with him that grandpapa's home was the nicest

in the world, but the mother maintained their own home was best.

Until his grandfather died in 1860, when he was ten years old, the manse

at Colinton was the little boy's favourite abiding place. Here 'Auntie'

lived, and near here, too, was the home of the 'sister-cousin,' and her

brother who grew up with him, and who, of all the much loved cousins of

that large connection, were nearest and dearest in his child-life, and

to whom he sings--

'If two may read aright

These rhymes of old delight,

And house and garden play

You two, my cousins, and you only may.

'You in a garden green,

With me were king and queen,

Were soldier, hunter, tar,

And all the thousand things that children are.'

With these two cousins the favourite game was the fleeing from,

conquering, and finally slaying a huge giant called Bunker, invented by

Louis, who, the trio believed, haunted the manse garden, and required

continual killing. One time, on the Bonaly Road, they were shipwrecked

hungry sailors, who ate so many buttercups that the little boys were

poisoned and became very ill, and the little girl only escaped because

she found the flowers too bitter to eat! In the 'Redford burn of happy

memories' they sailed ships richly laden with whin pods for vanilla, and

yellow lichen for gold. They always hoped to see ghosts, or corpse

candles, and were much disappointed they never saw anything more

terrible, in the gruesome place where the sexton kept his tools, than a

swaying branch of ivy.

Of the tall, pale, venerable grandfather, with his snowy hair, Louis

stood a good deal in awe; and he tells us in his charming paper, 'The

Manse,' in _Memories and Portraits_, that he had not much in common with

the old man although he felt honoured by his connection with a person

reverend enough to enter the pulpit and preach the sermon every Sunday.

So many Balfours were scattered over the world, in India and the

Colonies, that the old rooms at the manse were full of eastern

curiosities and nick-nacks from distant lands dear to the hearts of

little folks. And, while the garden was a bower of delight, the house

was a veritable treasure trove to the grandchildren from far and near

who played in it.

To Robert Louis Stevenson, with his mind full of romance, it must have

been a paradise indeed, and one that he admirably pictures in the verses

addressed to an Anglo-Indian cousin who, as a married woman, has

returned to the India of her birth.

It is worth mentioning--as a note by the way which illustrates that

abiding boyishness in Mr Stevenson, so well known to all who knew

him--that four particularly hideous Indian idols stood guard at the hall

door of 'The Turret,' the house of his uncle, John Balfour, at Leven.

Two of them were life-size with their hands discreetly folded in prayer,

two of them were smaller and made in a kneeling posture, and, as

something rattled if you shook them, it was our juvenile belief that

treasure was concealed inside their bodies. This idea Mr R. L. Stevenson

eagerly fostered in the slightly younger generation, and, with the love

of harmless mischief natural to him, implored us to 'rattle them

_soundly_ when we were about it!'

In the manse garden at Colinton there was a mysterious and delightful

gap that gave egress to the Water of Leith, and to pass through this and

stray, out of safe and guarded precincts, into a wide and wet world

beyond was a keen pleasure to the little boy whose gipsy instincts were

already loudly calling to him to take 'the road' his wandering soul so

dearly loved.

'Keepsake Mill' is a charming tribute to the joys of those illicit

escapes and to the memories of the cousin playfellows now scattered in

far lands, or for ever at rest from life's labour, who played in the

garden where the delicate bright-eyed lad was the inventor and leader in

their games.

One sweet fancy of the imaginative child, who all his life had a fine

mental and physical courage in spite of his delicacy, is still recalled

by his 'sister-cousin'; the graveyard wall was at one place high above

the garden it partially enclosed, and the little boy, afflicted with no

superstitious terrors, had an idea that the souls of the dead people at

rest in 'God's acre,' peeped out at him from the chinks of the wall. And

one feels sure that here as all through his life, shadowed by so much of

suffering, he held fast, after a fashion of his own, the belief that

goes deeper than his playful rendering of it in _The Unseen Playmate_

seems at first to infer:

'Whene'er you're happy and cannot tell why,

The Friend of the children is sure to be by.'

A faith that was taught him by an earnest father and by the loving voice

of a mother who held it fast through her own happy childhood and the

joys and sorrows that as wife and mother came to her in later years.

After the death of the Rev. Dr Balfour, in April 1860, the manse ceased

to be the second home of Louis Stevenson, and in the November of that

year his aunt, Miss Balfour, and the nephews and nieces who stayed with

her moved to a house in Howard Place.

In 1858 he went to school, and from 1860 to 1861 he and his cousin,

Lewis Charles Balfour, were together at Mr Henderson's preparatory

school in India Street from which both went to the Academy in 1861. Of

Lewis Stevenson,--who in later life was always called Louis or Lou by

his family and friends,--Mr Henderson reports: 'Robert's reading is not

loud, but impressive.'

In July he was in bed with scarlet fever on his examination day, which

was a great disappointment to him. He had a first prize for reading that

year; but his zeal over school and lessons was very short-lived, and he

never hungered for scholastic honours.

As a child he did not learn quickly, and he was in his eighth year

before he could read fluently for himself. Nevertheless his especial

bent showed itself early, and when in his sixth year he dictated a

_History of Moses_, which he illustrated, giving the men pipes in their

mouths. This, and an account of _Travels in Perth_, composed in his

ninth year, are still in existence. The _History of Moses_ was written

because an uncle had offered a prize to his own children for the best

paper on the subject, and the little Louis was so disappointed at not

being asked to compete that he was finally included among the

competitors, and did a paper which though not best was still good and

which was given a prize. He had begun to print it for himself, with much

toil, but his mother offered to write it out from his dictation. Another

composition of this time was a fierce story of shipwreck and fighting

with savages.

In 1863 he was sent for a few months to a boarding school kept by a Mr

Wyatt at Spring Grove, near London. Life at a boarding school was misery

to a lad so fond of wandering at his own sweet will as the small Louis,

and he was full of distress at the prospect of leaving home. In _Random

Memories_ he gives his ideas as to going to school, and expresses his

belief that it is not so much the first night or day at school that is

so terrible to a courageous child, as the dismay at the thought of

leaving home with its familiar life and surroundings, and the painful

suspense for some days before the plunge into the new world of school is

taken. It was, he says, this miserable feeling of suspense that made

him share his sorrows with a desolate, but amiable cat in the Easter

Road, which mingled its woes with his and as it purred against him

consoled him.

His tender-hearted parents were so touched by his evident affliction,

and especially by the little story of the cat that his father took him a

trip round the coast of Fife in _The Pharos_ and he thus made an early

and delightful acquaintance with some of the lights and harbours which

his father had gone to inspect.

Although the cousin, Lewis Charles Balfour, who had been his

schoolfellow in Edinburgh, and two of his younger brothers were day

pupils at the Spring Grove School, and his aunt, Miss Balfour, was

living near, he became very homesick and unhappy, and the regular school

work, with its impositions and punishments, fretted him and made him so

ill, that in December his father, who had been at Mentone with his

mother, hastily returned and took him away from school. It was too late,

however, the few months had been too great a trial for his health, and

he had a serious illness, during which, Dr Henry Bennett prescribed some

very bracing treatment of which the youthful patient highly disapproved.

Of the home where so much consideration was shown to a child's health

and feelings, no better description can be given than the graphic one of

a little Stevenson cousin who had gone with his parents to stay there,

and who thus spoke of it: 'A child who never cries, a nurse who is never

cross, and late dinners.'

Can one imagine a dignified, childish paradise that could go much

further! Nor were the joys of books awanting to the happy small boy who

describes himself as in early days being carried off by his nurse

'To bed with backward looks,

At my dear world of story books.'

As soon as he had learned to read he was an eager and an omnivorous

reader, and could, from his eighth year, pass happy hours with a book,

any book so long as it did not mean lessons.

He was before very long a book-buyer as well as a book-lover, and he has

for ever immortalised, in the charming pages of _A Penny Plain and

Twopence Coloured_, that old bookshop (late J. L. Smith) at the corner

of Leith Walk, where eager boys without coppers were but coldly

received, but whence the fortunate capitalist could emerge, after having

spent his Saturday pocket-money, the proud possessor of plays positively

bristling with pirates and highwaymen. With these treasures he fled home

in the gathering dusk, while 'Leerie-Light-the-Lamps' was kindling his

cheery beacons along the streets, and, with pleasant terrors, devoured

the weird productions, finally adding to their weirdness by the garish

contents of a child's paint-box.

CHAPTER III

BOYHOOD AND COLLEGE DAYS

'A boy's will is the wind's will,

And the thoughts of youth are long, long thoughts.'

--LONGFELLOW.

... 'Strange enchantments from the past

And memories of the friends of old,

And strong tradition binding fast

The "flying terms" with bands of gold.'

--ANDREW LANG.

The years 1861 and 1862 found Louis, with his childhood left behind him,

a boy among other boys who sat on the forms and who played in the yards

of the Academy, at which, during the greater part of the present

century, many of the sons of Edinburgh men, and indeed of Scotsmen

everywhere at home and abroad, have received their education.

From 1864 to 1867 he was principally at a Mr Thompson's school in

Frederick Street, and he studied from time to time with private tutors

at the different places to which his parents went for the benefit of

their own health or his. These rather uncommon educational experiences

were of far more value to him in after life than a steady attendance at

any one school, as they made him an excellent linguist and gave him,

from very youthful years, a wide knowledge of foreign life and foreign

manners. In 1862 the Stevenson family visited Holland and Germany, in

1863 they were in Italy, in 1864 in the Riviera, and at Torquay for some

months during the winter of 1865 and 1866; but after 1867 the family

life became more settled and was chiefly passed between Edinburgh and

Swanston.

In those days Louis was a lean, slim lad, inclined to be tall, and with

soft, somewhat lank, brown hair and brown eyes of a shade that seemed to

deepen and change with every passing impression of his quick working

brain. His features were rather long, the upper part of his narrow face

was delicately formed like his mother's, but the lips were full, and a

more virile strength in chin and jaw faintly reminded one of his

father's powerful physiognomy.

He had opinions of his own in regard to education, and they by no means

led him to consider a strict attendance at school or a close application

to lessons as necessary for his future life-work. He read, it is true,

voraciously, but it was hardly on the lines of the sternly respectable

classical curriculum which his tutors or the Academy offered him. He was

an historical student after a fashion of his own, dipping deep into such

books of bygone romance as Sir Walter Scott had conned and loved. His

geography at that time took a purely practical and somewhat limited

form, and resolved itself into locating correctly the places and abodes

sacred to the characters in his favourite books.

In the delightful dedication of _Catriona_,--to Mr Charles Baxter, W.S.,

Edinburgh, who was his life-long friend--he describes those pilgrimages

charmingly, and one can, in imagination, see the eager lads wandering in

search of famous 'streets and numbered houses,' made historic for them

by some such magic pen as that which has for ever made sacred the _Old

Tolbooth_ or the _Heart of Midlothian_, from the coblestones of which,

in the pavement of St Giles and near the Parliament House, one

reverently steps aside lest careless feet should touch that memento of

the past. One can picture too as he himself does, the romantic boys of

to-day following the wanderings of David Balfour by Broughton and

Silver-mills, the Water of Leith, the Hawes Inn at Queensferry, and the

wind-swept shores of the Forth. But one can still more clearly see that

slim, brown-eyed youth--a-quiver with the eagerness that was so

conspicuous a characteristic of his,--as in these very places he

remembered bygone tales and even then formed plans for, and saw visions

of, his own stories yet to be.

One can think of him with his eyes shining, and his face luminous, as he

held forth to some choice friend, of sympathetic soul, on all these

things of which his heart and brain were so full. One knows that when

his walks were solitary his time was already put to a good account, and

that the note-books which even then he carried in his pocket were in

constant requisition.

The boy, from the very first, felt a strong leading to the profession of

letters, which he ultimately followed; and he describes himself as from

very early boyhood having been given to make notes for possible

romances, and to choose words of peculiar fitness for the purpose he had

in hand, as well as to weave tales of thrilling adventure.

Style was from the first a passion with him; and the lad had already

begun in these juvenile note-books that careful choice of words and

language which was at the very outset of his literary career to make so

competent a critic as Mr Hamerton call him one of the greatest living

masters of English prose. That he became something of a master in verse

also those few thin volumes of deep thoughts, in a setting of fitly

chosen words and rhymes, which he has published, amply prove.

To return, however, to the boy who went to the Academy, or rather who

did _not_ go to the Academy, for he had a faculty for playing truant

which must have been extraordinarily provoking to parents and masters.

No sooner was he out of the door in the morning than he could truly

say--

'I heard the winds, with unseen feet,

Pass up the long and weary street,

'They say "We come from hill and glen

To touch the brows of toiling men."

'That each may know and feel we bring

The faint first breathings of the spring.'

And the voice of the spring thus calling him as soon as it was heard,

was obeyed; and, careless of the frowns that were bound to greet his

return, he was off to wander on his beloved Braids and Pentlands, to lie

long days among the whin and the broom, or to slip away to watch the

busy shipping on the Forth, and to think deep thoughts beside the

wave-washed shore of that sea which ever drew him like the voice of a

familiar friend.

To that intense love of Nature, and of Nature's solitude, his readers

owe much, and we to-day may all say with the writer who gave such an

interesting description of Swanston in _Good Words_ in the spring of

1895, that those truant hours of his educated him for his future work

far better than a careful attendance at school and college could have

done. The same writer says that it was this open air life that he loved

so dearly which gave to Stevenson's books their large leisure, and to

his style its dignity. There is much truth in the remark; but as far as

the style is concerned it is the product of time and thought, and it was

most carefully and diligently formed by labour so earnest and

painstaking, that few authors can even conceive of it.

In _Memories and Portraits_ Mr Stevenson gives a delightful account of

boyish days at a seaside resort, that is evidently North Berwick, and

lovingly describes adventures with bull's-eye lanterns; adventures which

seem to be intimately associated with the young folk of his connection,

and which repeated themselves a few years later on the other side of the

Forth, where boys and girls recalled the doings of Robert Louis and his

friends with bull's-eye lanterns and gunpowder, in that cheerful form

known to Louis Stevenson as a 'peeoy,' and considered it a point of

honour to do likewise, no matter how indignant such mischief made the

authorities. As for him, he was always the inventor and prime mover in

every mischievous escapade the heart of youth could glory in.

The wind-swept coast about North Berwick had a strong fascination for

him, and in several of his books we feel the salt breeze blowing in from

the sea, across the bents, and hear the sea birds crying on the lonely

shore. The autumn holidays were a great joy to him, and another

epoch-making event must have been the taking of Swanston Cottage, in May

1867, to be the summer home of the Stevensons.

The boy took intense pleasure in his rambles about the hills, in his

dreamy rests on 'Kirk Yetton'[2] and 'Allermuir,' and in his wanderings

with John Todd, the shepherd, after that worthy had ceased, as he

comically puts it, to hunt him off as a dangerous sheep-scarer, and so

to play 'Claverhouse to his Covenanter'! The two soon became great

friends, and many a bit of strange philosophy, many a wild tale of

bygone droving days the lad heard from the old man. Another great friend

of early Swanston years was Robert Young, the gardener, whose austere

and Puritan views of life were solemnly shared with his young master.

Existence at Swanston was even more provocative of truant-playing than

it had been in Edinburgh, and Louis, in his later school days and his

early sessions at the University, was more than ever conspicuous by his

absence from classes, more lovingly wedded to long hours among the

hills, long rambles about the 'Old Town,' the Figgate Whins, the port of

Leith, and the rapidly changing localities round Leith Walk, somewhat

back from which, Pilrig, the ancient home of his ancestors, still stands

gravely retired from the work-a-day world.

In the year 1867 he went with his father to the 'Dhu Heartach'

Lighthouse, and so began to develop that passion for the Western Isles

and the Western seas which future voyages in _The Pharos_ were to bring

to the state of fervour and perfection which gave birth of _The

Merrymen_, and to those descriptions of the wild and lovely scenery of

Appin and the West Highlands, in which David Balfour and Alan Breck

wander through the pages of _Kidnapped_.

It was his father's intention that he should follow the family

profession of engineering, and with this in view he went to the

Edinburgh University in the autumn of 1868. The professors in those days

included Professors Kelland, Tait, Crum-Brown, Fleeming-Jenkin, Blackie,

Masson, and many others whose names are still remembered as 'a

sweet-smelling savour' in that Edinburgh which they and the truant

student, who honoured his class attendance 'more in the breach than the

observance,' loved so well.

It was a stirring time at the University, and the students who warred

manfully against the innovation of Dr Sophia Jex-Blake and the pioneers

of the Lady Doctors' movement, were, it would seem on looking back,

scarcely so mildly mannered, so peacefully inclined as those who now sit

placidly beside 'the sweet girl graduates' of our day, on the class-room

benches, and acknowledge the reign of the lady doctor as an accomplished

fact. A torchlight procession of modern times is apparently a cheerful

and picturesque function, smiled on by the authorities, and welcomed as

a rather unique means of doing honour to a new Lord Rector or some

famous guest of the city or the University. In Mr Stevenson's time, a

torchlight procession had all the joys of 'forbidden fruit' to the merry

lads who braved the police and the professors for the pleasure of

marching through the streets to the final bonfire on the Calton Hill,

from the scrimmage round which they emerged with clothes well oiled and

singed, and faces and hands as black as much besmearing could make them;

while anxious friends at home trembled lest a night in the police cells

should be the reward of the ringleaders.

Of one such procession, in the spring when Mr Stevenson's law studies

were first interrupted by a journey south for his health, a clever

student wrote an epic which was presented to me by one of Louis

Stevenson's Balfour cousins as something _very precious_! The occasion

was the Duke of Edinburgh's wedding, in 1874, and, yellow and faded, the

_Epic_ still graces my _Every Day Book_, and, as one reads its

inspiriting lines, one sees again those bygone days in which the slim

figure and eager face of Louis Stevenson are always so conspicuous in

every memory of the old, grey city of his birth.

The following lines from the clever skit give a really excellent picture

of the college life in his day.

... 'A deputation we

Sent hither by the students to demand

That they--that is the students--in a band

May march, illumed by torches flaring bright,

Along the leading streets on Friday night.

Brave was the Provost, yet towards his heart

The glowing life blood thrilled with sudden start;

Well might he tremble at the name he heard,

The Students! Kings might tremble at the word!

He thought of all the terrors of the past,

Of that fell row in Blackie's, April last--

Of Simpson wight, and Stirling-Maxwell too,

Of Miss Jex-Blake and all her lovely crew--

He thought, "If thus these desperadoes dare

To act with ladies, learned, young and fair,

Old women, like the Councillors and me,

To direr torments still reserved may be.

The better part of valour is discretion,

I'll try to soften them by prompt concession."

Then coughing thrice, impression due to make

And clear his throat, in accents mild he spake,

"Ye have my leave, 'V.R.,' I mean 'D.V.'"

The students bowed, retired, and he was free.'

The High Sheriff and the Chief of Police, when they heard of the

Provost's weakness, were filled with wrath and dismay, and very promptly

insisted on his lordship taking back the concession, so that this

historic procession was as much 'forbidden fruit' as its predecessors,

and the students probably enjoyed it the more that they had as usual to

dare all those in authority to carry it out.

Another old-time enjoyment of that date was a snowball fight. Whether

snow is less plentiful, or students are too cultured and too refined for

these rough pastimes it is impossible to say, but certain it is that a

really _great_ snowball fight is also a thing of the past. In those days

they were Homeric combats, and a source of keen enjoyment to Robert

Louis Stevenson, a very funny account of whom, on one of these

occasions, was given me at the time by his cousin, Lewis Balfour, from

Leven, himself a jovial medical student enjoying an active part in the

melee. On the occasion of a great battle in the winter of 1869--or

1870--Mr Stevenson and one or two men, now well known in various

professions, had seated themselves on a ledge in the quadrangle to watch

the fight. From this vantage ground they encouraged the combatants, but

took no active part in the fray. Within swarmed the students armed with

snowballs, without, the lads of the town, equally active, stormed the

gates. All were too intent on the battle to notice the advent of the

police, who rushed into the college quadrangle and made prisoners where

they could. Craning his neck too much, in his keen enjoyment, Mr

Stevenson overbalanced himself, slipped from his perch and was promptly

captured by 'a bobby,' and, in spite of gallant efforts for his rescue,

was ignominiously marched off to the Police Office at the very moment

that his blandly unconscious mother was driving up the Bridges. It was

useless for his attendant friends to assert that he had been a

non-combatant. Was he not taken in the very thick of the fight? The

police had him and they meant to keep him for he could not produce

sufficient bail from his somewhat empty pockets. His cousin and his

friends, by leaving all their stray coins, their watches and other

valuables, managed to secure his release so that he had not the

experience--which it is possible he might have enjoyed--of passing a

night in the police cells of his native city.

In his introduction to the _Memoirs of Professor Fleeming-Jenkin_, he

himself tells a good story of his relations with that Professor, who was

always a true and appreciative friend to his clever if idle student. He

had handed in so few cards at the class of Engineering that his

certificate was not forthcoming until he told his friend that his father

would be very vexed if he could not produce the certificate--which he

never intended to _use_--whereat the tender-hearted Professor handed it

to him.

Another prime favourite of his among the Professors was Professor

Kelland; and one can well understand the attraction which the dainty,

gentle refinement of that most kind-hearted of men had for a nature so

akin to it as young Stevenson's. All Professor Kelland's students loved

him; this one understood him also. Professor Masson was one of the

giants of those days whom he was also most capable of appreciating, and

whose lectures he occasionally attended although not a member of his

class; and, himself not without his amiable eccentricities, he could not

fail to have a soft spot in his heart for the quaint humour and the

pleasant eccentricity which endeared Professor Blackie to his class and

to the public. He was a poor attender at the Greek Class, however, and

when he presented himself for his certificate the keen blue eyes of the

Professor looked at him critically, and the Professor's remark was that

he had been so seldom present at lectures it was hardly possible to

recognise his face!

Many of the students of that day have taken a good place in the world;

some of them have long ere now left the things of time behind them; one

or two of them Mr Stevenson has pictured in his graphic pages. Several

of them regarded him as an interesting personality, but very few of them

suspected that he was 'the chiel amang them takin' notes' for future

work that would bring world-wide fame, not only to himself, but to his

University and to the city of his birth.

On the 2nd March 1869 he was proposed by George Melville, Esq.,

Advocate, as a member of the Speculative Society, and we know from

_Memories and Portraits_ how much he appreciated his membership of that

Society, which has in its day included in the roll, on which his name

stood No. 992, most of the men whose names are honoured in Scotland's

capital, and many of whom the fame and the memory are revered in far

places of the earth. That he might smoke in the hall of the Speculative,

in the very stronghold of University authority, he playfully professes

to have been his chief pleasure in the thing; but other men, to whom his

earnest face, his eagerness in debate, made one of the pleasures of its

meetings, tell another story, and it was commonly said in those days

that there would always be something of interest in hand if Stevenson

took a part in it.

When he forsook the profession of engineering, Mr Stevenson attended the

Law classes at the University, with the intention of being called to the

Bar, but it is not on record that he was a more exemplary student of law

than he had been of engineering, and he still found more satisfaction in

his truant rambles and his meditations in old graveyards than he did in

the legitimate study of his profession.

FOOTNOTE:

[2] Cairketton is the form used in the Ordnance Survey.

CHAPTER IV

AS I FIRST KNEW HIM

'Blessed are his parents in a son, so graced in face and figure

And of mind so wise.'

--LORD DERBY'S TRANSLATION OF _The Iliad_.

That was one of the quotations by which in those days we were wont to

describe Mr Stevenson. Strictly speaking, perhaps he was not a handsome

man. He was too slim, too ethereal, if one may use the term, to attain

to anything sufficiently commonplace to be described as merely handsome.

But he was indeed 'graced in face and figure,' for he possessed that

rare attribute _distinction_, and his face, with its wonderfully

luminous eyes, its ever changing expression, had a beauty peculiar to

itself, and one which harmonised perfectly with the quaint wisdom of his

mind.

That wisdom was so deep, yet so whimsical, so peculiar and so many-sided

that one can only apply to its possessor another quotation half

indignantly thrown at him, when he was too successful in argument, by an

acquaintance of his, whose quick wit had a great charm for him.

'We gaze and still the wonder grows

That one small head can carry all he knows.'

He bowed to the compliment, he demurred as to the smallness of his head,

and he enjoyed the quotation immensely. With the same opponent he once

tried a competition in verse-making. Both showed considerable skill, but

the umpire decided that Louis had won, so he bore off in triumph the

prize of a bottle of olives, and was only sorry that he could not compel

the loser to share his feast, which he well knew would be as abhorrent

to her as it was delightful to him.

With Edinburgh, wind-swept and grey, with its biting breeze, its

swirling dust of March, there will always be associated in my mind

certain memories of Robert Louis Stevenson, and of that happy home of

the Stevenson family, 17 Heriot Row. In summer sunshine Swanston, lying

cosily at the foot of the Pentlands, claimed them year by year, but

every winter found them, for business or pleasure, established in that

most homelike house, the windows of which, to the front, looked into the

Heriot Row gardens, and at the back, from that upper flat where was the

book-lined study of the son of the house, snatched a glimpse, over roofs

and chimney cans, of the gold-fringed shores of Fife.

Across the blue Forth in Fife, at the little seaside town of Leven, well

known to golfing fame, there had settled in 1866 an uncle of R. L.

Stevenson, Dr John Balfour, who was noted for his gallantry and skill

throughout the Indian Mutiny, and in more than one outbreak of cholera

in India and at home. Of the town and the man Mr Stevenson gives a

graphic picture in _Random Memories_, when describing a visit to the

Fife coast, where his father was making an inspection of lights and

harbours.

In 1849 when home on leave Dr Balfour volunteered to go to Davidson's

Mains, in the parish of Cramond, where as a specialist in cholera

symptoms he was amazed to find the outbreak as virulent and as fatal as

the Asiatic cholera he had seen in India. In 1866, when another wave of

cholera swept over Britain, he was asked to go to Slateford, where he

coped with its ravages almost single-handed, saving life in every case

after he went, except those already too far gone before his arrival. In

late autumn of the same year the scourge broke out seriously in the

small towns on the coast of Fife, and Dr Balfour went to Leven, where

the doctor had just died of it, and a state of panic prevailed, and

there too he succeeded in quickly stamping it out.

Having retired from his Indian appointment he felt idle time hang heavy

on hand, so he acceded to the request of the inhabitants and went to

Leven to take up practice there. His wife, who was a cousin of his own,

and their four children, shortly after followed him from Edinburgh, and

he built a house called 'The Turret' there, where he remained until his

greatly lamented death in 1887.

There from childhood I grew up in intimate friendship with the young

Balfours, and went out and in to the doctor's house, receiving in it

such kindness from parents and children that it was regarded by me as a

second home, and its inmates were looked upon as one's 'ain folk.' As

one's 'ain folk,' too, by-and-bye, were regarded those other Balfour

families, notably Dr George W. Balfour's household and Miss Balfour, and

the nephews and nieces who had their home with her--who made of the

little Fife town their holiday resort. Later an Edinburgh school and

long visits to Edinburgh relatives made the Scotch capital as familiar

to me as Fife; and then the Stevenson family in their home at Heriot Row

were added to the little circle of friends, now, alas! so thinned by

grievous blanks. Old and young have passed into 'The Silent Land,' and

life is infinitely the poorer for those severed friendships--those lost

regards of early days.

Not a few of the old folk were notable in their time, some of the

younger generation have made, or mean to make, some stir in the world.

But round none of them gathers so much of romance of honour and of

distinction as about Robert Louis Stevenson, who used to visit his

uncle's house in Leven, doubtless from one of those expeditions to

Anstruther, of which he tells us that he spent his time by day in giving

a perfunctory attention to the harbour, at which his father's firm were

working, and lived his real life by night scribbling romances in his

lodgings. It is on record that he felt a thrill of well-merited pride

when an Anstruther small boy pointed to him, as he stood beside the

workmen, and said: 'There's the man that's takin' charge.' But he

assuredly knew more of pleasure in his hours of scribbling than in his

hours of inspection, although the out-of-door, wind-swept, wave-splashed

part of engineering was never so abhorrent to him as office work. In the

office he was known very little; but tradition has it that a small pile

of evil spellings is still treasured there as a characteristic memento

of the genius, and the thought has been known to comfort the sad hearts

of other apprentice engineers afflicted with a like shakiness in their

orthography, that the now much appreciated man of letters once shared

their melancholy failing.

Stories of all sorts were handed about in our little clique of the

wondrous Robert Louis whose sayings and doings were already precious to

an appreciative circle of relatives and friends. But it was not till

sometime in the autumn of 1869 that he first became personally known to

me.

The introduction took place on a September afternoon in the drawing-room

of 'The Turret,' and he inspired a great deal of awe in a youthful

admirer who even then had literary aspirations, and who therefore looked

up to him with much respect as someone who already wrote. From that time

he was regarded as one of the quaintest, the most original and the most

charming personalities among one's acquaintances. There was about him,

in those days, a whimsical affectation, a touch of purely delightful

vanity that never wholly left him in later life, and that far from

repelling, as it would have done in any one more commonplace, was so

intrinsically a part of his artistic nature that it was rather

attractive than otherwise. Full of delightful humour, his idlest

sayings--when he took the trouble to say anything which he frequently

did not!--were teeming with the elements not only of laughter but of

thought, and you wondered, long after you had talked with him, why it

was that you saw new lights on things, and found food for mirth and

matter for reflection where neither had suggested itself before.

In those days he was not only original himself, but he had to a great

degree that rare faculty of bringing to the surface in others the very

smallest spark of originality, and of remembering it and appreciating

it in a way that was stimulating and helpful to those who had the

pleasure of knowing him. When the little seaside town was empty of

visitors, and it was not time to pay Edinburgh visits for the season, in

February and March, one kindness of his was very greatly prized by some

of us who beguiled the tedium of the winter months by writing for and

conducting an amateur magazine, called _Ours_. For this, in 1872 and

1873, Mr Stevenson gave us a short contribution, _The Nun of Aberhuern_,

a trifle in his own graceful style, which, as he was even then beginning

to be known in the world of letters, we valued much. Moreover, he took a

friendly interest in the sheets of blue MS. paper so closely written

over with our somewhat juvenile productions, and made here a criticism,

there a prediction, which has not been without its effect on the future

work of some of us.

Mr Stevenson was always kind and always sympathetic; he laughed at your

follies of course, but he did it so pleasantly that the laughter seemed

almost a compliment, and the kindness was more memorable than the mirth.

In one among his juniors at least, imbued like himself with a love of

old-time romance and of ancient story, he inspired a passion of

gratitude that abides to this day. Mr Stevenson not only never laughed,

as the other boys and girls did, nor treated the memory of delightful

childish plays with contempt, as was the fashion of the generation just

grown up, he never even smiled over the unfeminine tastes of a child who

went pirate-hunting in an upturned table with a towel for a sail and

dried orange skins for provender--or whose dolls were not treated as

those dainty girlish playthings ought to be, as pretty babies and gay

society dames, but figured as the tattered and battered followers of

Prince Charlie--himself a hero very much the worse for the wear in a

plaid and a kilt!--after Culloden. Or, in gayer moods, the same dolls

attended his receptions at Holyrood in garish garments, or masqueraded

as Mary Queen of Scots and her four Maries in that 'turret chamber high

of ancient Holyrood' where 'she summoned Rizzio with his lute and bade

the minstrel play.'

Mr Stevenson listened gravely to all these things. He professed a real

interest in them. He even remembered the names of the puppets and the

parts they had played, and so gained for himself an enduring niche in

the heart that had bitterly resented the mockery of the others. It is

quite possible that a nature so gentle and so appreciative as his really

_felt_ the sympathy. The juniors are rarely mistaken as to the

genuineness of the feelings of their elders, and his interest certainly

rang true to the youthful mind. He had been himself a delicate child, so

he was capable of understanding how many weary and solitary hours the

romantic plays had filled pleasantly.

It is not a memory of much moment, perhaps, but it shows that even at an

age when most young men are too keenly concerned with themselves and

their own affairs to take much trouble for those who are a few years

their juniors, Mr Stevenson had thought and sympathy to spare for the

small joys and sorrows, the interests, and the 'make-believes' that had

amused a lonely child, and which, after all, in one form or another,

make up a good deal of life to most of us.

One is inclined to gather from his books, and from the statements

accredited to him in magazines and newspapers, that he never took women

very seriously. He may not have done so--save those who were very near

and dear to him, and they were set in a sacred shrine of their own--but

he certainly always treated women very charmingly; and the young girl

relatives and friends, who were accustomed to be much in his home

circle, had never any reason to complain of the lack of the most dainty

and courtly attentions or of a most constant and spontaneous kindness

from the somewhat solemn youth, who, like other youths of twenty,

considered that it showed a great knowledge of the world to affect a

rather cynical disdain of the feminine half of humanity. In himself

there was, curiously enough, always a reminder of the feminine; an

almost girlish look passed now and again, in those days, over the thin

delicately-tinted face, and a womanly gentleness in voice and manner

reminded one of his mother.

The same ready sympathy, the same power, as it were, of putting himself

into a friend's place and entering with heart and soul into the affairs

of others which made him so interested a listener to a young girl's

story of her childhood's plays, made him in his later years the friend

of the Samoans, the champion of Samoan liberties, and, all through his

life, the one man whom the men and women who knew him loved with the

love that is only given to the very few, and those the few, too often,

whose death in life's prime, or before it, prove them to have been among

those whom the old poet tells us 'the gods love.'

Nothing at this time was more remarkable in Mr Stevenson than his

extraordinary youthfulness of mind. At an age when other young men

affect to be blase and world weary he was delightfully and fearlessly

boyish. Boyish even in his occasional half-comic solemnity of

appearance; he was boyish likewise in his charming jests and jokes, and,

above all, in his hearty delight in any outdoor 'ploy' that came in his

way.

A comical instance of this nearness of the boy to the surface in him

displayed itself one grey east-windy afternoon at Leven, when one saw

quite another side to him than the literary and dilettante one

displayed, with something of a mannered affectation, the day before in

'The Turret' drawing-room. He had walked down to the sands with his aunt

and there were assembled various younger members of the Balfour clique,

and some whom age and sex ought perhaps to have taught to despise,

though it had not, the hoydenish pleasures of 'a sea-house.' A

'sea-house,' for the benefit of the uninitiated, is a deep hole dug in

the sand while the tide is out, and the sand taken from the hole is

built round in broad, high walls to make the fort resist as long as

possible the rush of the incoming waves. It takes hours to make, but no

trouble is too great, for is there not the fierce joy of adventure at

the last when the waves finally win in the struggle and the

huddled-together inmates of the now submerged house are thoroughly

soaked with spray and salt water?

The 'sea-house,' the shouts of its builders, the tempting curl on the

waves, as each one came a little further, the slight rise of the wind

driving the breakers hurriedly landwards, were evidently too much for Mr

Stevenson. One moment the weight of his nineteen years and the duty of

politeness to his aunt restrained him, the next Mrs Balfour was left

standing alone, and overcome with laughter, while Louis was in the sea

house scolding, praising, and exhorting all at once, but above all

imploring us to 'sit it out a little longer' as wave after wave widened

the breach in the ramparts of sand, and

'In every hole the sea came up,

Till it could come no more,'

while wetter and wetter grew the heroic few who, with Mr Stevenson 'sat

it out' loyally, till it was possible to sit there no longer. Then

wet--wetter indeed than ever before--the remnant crept home to be

frowned upon and punished but to know no repentance; for had not Robert

Louis been the ringleader, and was there any punishment invented that

could take from the joy and the pride of a mischievous adventure in

which _he_ had had a part! And he, with the water dripping from his

trousers and 'squirching' in his boots, was perfectly and placidly

happy, regardless of his aunt's dismay and the future horrors of a

possible bad cold. He had been a schoolboy again for the all too brief

half hour beside the grey and gurly sea, and that youthfulness, that

survived through all the patient suffering of his life and that seems to

laugh out of the pages of his books to the last, was in the ascendant as

he walked off jauntily townwards, amiably oblivious of the lecture his

aunt gave him by the way.

Anything which brought him into close contact with the sea had a charm

for him, even that mock combat with the waves of the autumn equinox on

the flat shore of Fife. Therefore at this time although classes and

study were a weariness to him his days spent in the old-fashioned town

of Anstruther, or on the desolate coast of Caithness, had many

pleasures; had many romances also, for everywhere he went he picked up

odd and out-of-the-way knowledge, and came across strange stories and

stranger characters, from the lingering tradition of the poor relic of

the Spanish Armada, the Duke of Modena Sidonia,[3] who after his sojourn

in Fair Isle landed at Anstruther and still glorified the quaint

sea-port in the East Neuk with his ghostly dignity--to the peer of the

realm, in actual flesh and blood, whom Mr Stevenson found acting as a

home missionary to the present day population of the Fair Isle. All

things were treasured in the note-book of his memory, or jotted down in

the note-book in his pocket; and, while the engineer progressed very

little in his profession, the future novelist was undergoing a training

for his work almost perfect in its way and assuredly most admirably

suited to the nature that loved an open air life and revelled in an

existence on the sea or beside it.'

Possibly not all aspiring civil engineers, certainly very few budding

novelists, so test the reality of things as to go down into the ocean

depths in a diver's dress and in the company of a professional diver,

but this Robert Louis Stevenson actually did. His account of it, in

bygone days, was gruesomely graphic, his pen-and-ink sketch of it, to be

read in _Random Memories_, is not less so; and the thing itself must

have been an experience well worth having to a mind like his. Well worth

knowing too, both to the man and to the future creator of character,

were those brave hardy sons of toil who did the rough work of his firm's

harbours and lighthouses; and many a good yarn he must have heard them

spin as he stood side by side with them on some solid block of granite,

or on some outlying headland, or chatted and smoked with the captain and

the sailors of _The Pharos_ as she made her rounds among the islands.

FOOTNOTE:

[3] Although Mr Stevenson spoke and wrote of this personage as

'the Duke of Modena Sidonia,' he was in reality Don Jan Gomez de Modena,

who is mentioned in T. M'Crie's 'Life of Andrew Melville.'

CHAPTER V

HOME LIFE

'O, pleasant party round the fire.'

--R. L. STEVENSON.

Often a little indifferent, sometimes politely bored in general society,

it was at home that Robert Louis Stevenson seemed to me to be seen to

the greatest advantage. That little household of three, that delightful

trio who so thoroughly appreciated each other were charming everywhere,

but only quite perfect when taken together within the hospitable walls

that enshrined so true a home. Not a house or an abiding place merely,

whence the business or the gaieties of life could be comfortably

indulged in, but a _home_ where, however much the amusements of the

Scotch capital were shared in and appreciated, the truest happiness lay

around the quiet fireside where the mother, father, and son loved and

understood each other with a love the deeper, that the intense Scotch

reticence of all made it, like a hidden jewel, the more precious because

so rarely displayed to strangers' eyes.

No son could be more fortunate in his parents, no parents could have

given a child a more unselfish devotion, a more comprehending sympathy.

His very delicacy and the anxiety it had so often caused them had drawn

their hearts more tenderly to him, and, absolutely happy in each other,

they were equally happy in their pride and pleasure in their son's

evident genius and most original personality.

In days when discontent and extravagance have done so much to lessen, at

least upon the surface of things, the sacredness of home, and weaken the

solemnity of marriage, it is comforting and pleasant to look back upon

such a home as that was, and to realise that it is possible, in the

midst of a busy life of work and of pleasure, to preserve an inner holy

of holies around the domestic hearth, into which no jarring discord, no

paltry worldly worry, can come, because love is there. Before love's

clear gaze all that is selfish and petty and false dies away, while all

that is true, good, and gentle makes for sweet peace and that perfect

union of hearts which can alone create a true marriage and a perfect

home life.

Into the Stevenson household, as into other households, came from time

to time real worry, real grief, and not infrequent anxiety. The very

frailty of tenure by which their son had always held his life was in

itself a daily burden to the parents. Mrs Stevenson, especially in her

earlier married life, was often far from strong; to Mr Stevenson came

now and then those darker moods to which the Scotch temperament,

particularly when tinged with the Celtic, is liable. Personal and

business disappointments were not wholly unknown, although life in these

latter respects was one saved at least from monetary anxieties, and

crowned with a large measure of success. But in "all the changes and

chances of this mortal life" this household had a sure sheet anchor on

which to depend. Love met the trials smiling, and because they loved

each other they were clothed in the armour of defence.

It was a home ennobled by a high ideal of what life ought to be, and

hallowed by a strong and personal faith in God. Mr Stevenson's somewhat

austere Calvinism gave a gravity to his character and his religion that

were admirably balanced by the happy nature and the sunny active faith

of his wife, whose religion was none the less real and earnest that it

was bright and always cheerfully practical. Both loved the grand old

Church of Scotland, with her far-reaching history and her noble

traditions; both, with money and with personal interest, helped not only

their own congregation of St Stephen's but the missions and schemes of

the Church at large, and many private kindnesses and public charities

besides evinced their liberality of heart. Mrs Stevenson, among other

things, took a keen pleasure in work for the Indian Zenanas, and among

his many engrossments Mr Stevenson was greatly occupied as to the public

good of Edinburgh, and notably interested himself in the restoration of

St Giles, that grand old landmark of national history of which, in its

present condition, Scotland has every reason to be proud.

In such a home as this Robert Louis Stevenson was from early childhood

educated in a deeply-rooted respect for the Bible and the old solemn

teachings which gave to Scotland those 'graves of the martyrs,' of which

he so often writes. The Calvinism of his ancestors, inherited to a

certain extent by his father, softened to him by his mother's sweetness

of nature and brightness of faith, always remained with him something

to be regarded with a tender reverence; and if, as he grew to manhood,

the 'modern spirit' changed and modified his beliefs, so that it might

be said of him, as of so many large natures and earnest souls,

'His God he cabins not in creeds,'

God and religion remained very real to him; and the high ideal of duty

first learned in his childhood's home guided his life to the last.

Robert Fergusson's life and poems interested him greatly, and he often

declared himself drawn to him by a certain spiritual affinity; while,

when suffering from his frequent attacks of distressing illness, he

sometimes thought with dread of Fergusson's sad fate.

Pleasure as well as duty, however, was always made welcome in the

Stevenson home. Mr and Mrs Thomas Stevenson held no stern views of

everyday life, no gayer or brighter household could be found than

theirs. None certainly existed where young folk received a warmer

welcome, whether the family were established for the winter at 17 Heriot

Row, or were spending the summer at Swanston, that delightful nook,

nestling in the shelter of the Pentland hills, where the old-fashioned

flowers had so sweet a scent, the rustic sounds of country life were so

full of charming music, and where the home trio themselves loved

'Every path and every plot,

Every bush of roses,

Every blue forget-me-not

Where the dew reposes.'

Differing much in their natures, but fitting, as it were, closely into

each other's souls and characters, Louis Stevenson's parents early made

for him that ideal of home and of marriage that shows itself from the

first in his writings, just here a line and there a sentence, which

indicates how his thoughts ran, and how, whatever enjoyment he might

take in poking cynicism at women in the abstract, he was full of a noble

idea, a manly longing for that one woman, of whose soul and his own, he

could say--

'Once and beyond recollection,

Once ere the skies were unfurled,

These an immortal affection

Found at the birth of the world,'

a woman who would be what his mother was to his father, a something as

sacred as all through his life that mother was to him. Save that Mrs

Thomas Stevenson's eyes were rather hazel than blue, it might have been

of her that the late Professor Blackie wrote so sweetly:--

'True to herself and to the high ideal

That God's grace gave her to inform the real,

True to her kind, and to your every feeling

Respondent with a power of kindliest healing

She knows no falseness, even the courtliest lie;

She dreams not, truth flows from her deep blue eye,

And if her tongue speaks pleasant things to all,

'Tis that she loveth well both great and small,

And all in her that mortals call politeness

Is but the image of her bright soul's brightness.'

That Stevenson home was to many of us, besides the son of the house, a

picture of what a true life ought to be, and one that seemed to make the

realisation of all high ideals possible in whatever fashion one's own

existence might ultimately be led.

There was something so strong and manly in Mr Thomas Stevenson,

something so sweetly womanly in his wife. A beautiful woman always,

because hers was the beauty of soul, as well as of feature, in those

early seventies, one cannot imagine anyone more graceful, more gracious,

or more charming than she was.

It would also be difficult to imagine a wife or mother more sympathetic

or more sensible. She could always see the fun of things; she never

objected to clubs and men's dinners, and the excuse for a night away

from the home hearth, that is so dear to the best of men.

Not many weeks before her death, when we were talking of those happy

days of long ago, she told me that she always took a book and contented

herself, and then was ready to be interested when the truant returned

with a latch-key. An example, that if closely followed, would assuredly

make for domestic peace. And one fancies that the woman who said

smilingly, she always much approved of 'The Evening Club,' because her

husband or son could make merry there so late, that she was sound

asleep, and could not miss their conversation, was likely to be a

pleasant wife to live with, and an ideal mother for a son of such

Bohemian tendencies as Robert Louis.

Even that marvellous taste in dress which her son affected, and which

would certainly have dismayed more conventional mothers, only amused her

immensely. Among other jottings of hers about him in her little

note-book is one which relates with much appreciation that a faithful

servant says of him, 'One summer he tried to wear a frock-coat and tall

hat, but after a little he laid them aside and said, "I am not going to

be a swell any more," and returned to the velveteen coat and the straw

hat which he preferred.'

Except at a wedding, or some such solemn function, whereat he probably

looked misery personified, one cannot remember him so conventionally

apparelled as in the frock-coat and the tall hat. Possibly it was before

this access of propriety temporarily had him in its grasp that one day

we saw him in Princes Street 'taking the air' in an open cab with a

Stevenson cousin, attired in like manner with himself. In those days

fashionable people often walked in Princes Street in the afternoon, so

what was our dismay, in the midst of quite a crowd of the gay world, to

see that open cab, at a word of command from Robert Louis, draw near the

pavement as we approached, when two battered straw hats were lifted to

us with quite a Parisian grace. Both young men wore sailor hats with

brilliant ribbon bands, both were attired in flannel cricketing jackets

with broad bright stripes, and round Louis's neck was knotted a huge

yellow silk handkerchief, while over both their heads one of them held

an open umbrella. In days when the wearing of cricketing clothes, except

in the playing fields, was in Scotland still so uncommon that it is on

authentic record that an elderly unmarried lady in an east coast

watering place, on meeting in its high street a young man in boating

flannels, was so shocked at the innovation that she promptly went home,

leaving all her shopping undone and her tea-drinking and friendly gossip

forgotten, such an apparition as that in the open cab required more

courage to face than people accustomed to the present-day use of gay

tennis garb can easily imagine. It was fortunate that nerve to return

the salutation smilingly was not wanting, or Mr Stevenson would

certainly have pitilessly chaffed the timid victims of conventionality

afterwards.

Having borne the ordeal with such courage as we possessed, we hastened

to have tea with Mrs Stevenson, whose first question was, 'Have you seen

Lou?'

And when we described that startling vision that was slowly creeping

along Princes Street in the open cab, she laughed till her tears fell.

In half an hour or so her son came in cool and unconcerned, and as

punctiliously polite as if his attire had been the orthodox apparel for

an afternoon tea-party.

The effects of his dressing and appearance on the foreign mind is most

humorously described by himself in his _Epilogue to an Inland Voyage_,

where the extraordinary nature of his garments so dismayed the French

police that while his friend, the late Sir Walter G. Simpson, 'The

Cigarette,' was allowed to go free, 'The Arethusa' was popped into

prison, kept there for an hour or two, and finally hustled off to Paris,

an adventure of the two friends, who were so systematically taken for

'bagmen,' on that charming expedition, which was always told with much

laughter by 'The Arethusa's' parents.

One of the last memories of Mr Stevenson in Edinburgh that distinctly

remains with me was finding him looking into the window of Messrs

Douglas & Foulis in Castle Street on a grey, east windy day that was

cold enough to make the thickest great-coat necessary. But he was

visibly shivering in one of his favourite short velvet coats. It was

palpably too short in the arms, and certainly the worse for wear; his

long hair fell almost to his shoulders, and he wore a Tyrolese hat of

soft felt. With a whimsical and appreciative glance at his garments, he

offered to accompany me along Princes Street; so we set off westwards

together, when, so charming was his conversation, that long before we

reached the doorsteps of his relative's house, which was my destination,

one had forgotten that the wind was in the east, and the sky greyer than

the pavements, and only longed for the walk to begin over again, that he

might talk all the way. These eccentricities of attire were merely a

part of the rather attractive vanity of a clever youth, whose exuberance

of spirits was, in spite of much bad health, at that time so great that

he was often merry with a gaiety that was as child-like as it was

amusing. In later life he gradually modified his ideas as to dress, and

in the _Vailima Letters_ he writes of himself in Samoa as going to Apia

to social amusements in most orthodox coats and ties.

At evening parties he always looked like a martyr in the dismal black

coat and white tie, which he described as a mixture of the livery of a

waiter and the mourning of an undertaker. At dances, he propped himself

against a wall, in a doorway or in some coign of vantage about the

staircase, looking limp and miserable, but keenly observant all the

time. When he found a congenial soul, whether man or woman, to talk to,

he brightened, the limpness vanished, and his quick flow of wit and

fancy streamed on in a delightful river of talk which touched on grave

and gay with equal ease, and was exactly what a poet describes, as--

'His talk was like a stream that runs

With rapid change from rocks to roses,

It skipped from politics to puns,

It passed from Mahomet to Moses.

Beginning with the laws that keep

The planets in their rapid courses,

And ending with a precept deep

For stewing eels or shoeing horses.'

Although he looked so unhappy at dances or 'at homes,' at dinners, if

the guests were fitly chosen, he was thoroughly at his ease and

exceedingly amusing. With his few intimate friends too he was seen at

his best; but in general society he was usually as bored as he looked.

The Edinburgh of that day was very pleasant socially. Its world seemed

somewhat smaller than it is now, less ostentatiously rich, more

seriously cultured; or so at least it appeared to the young folk who

belonged to the old-fashioned law and professional set in which the

Stevensons largely had their acquaintance. People in that set still

lived, more than they do to-day, eastwards or northwards of Heriot Row,

in the large old houses which were so homelike and so comfortable. The

centre of things was in those grand grey houses from Heriot Row upwards

to Charlotte Square, westwards to Randolph Cliff and a little way over

the Dean Bridge. Drumsheugh Gardens was an innovation. The terraces,

Royal, Regent, and Carlton, that 'west end of the east,' were still

fashionable, and few people had, as yet, migrated southwards to

'That proud part of Morningside,

Where houses girt with gardens

Do stretch down far and wide.'

It was not a very large world, but it was a very agreeable one, and one

which had its notabilities. Lord Neaves with his delightful songs, and

the other old-time judges were still with us. Sir David Brewster was not

so very long dead; Sir James Y. Simpson was yet a very recent memory.

Professor Blackie was in the zenith of his fame. Sir Daniel Macnee told

his wonderful stories; Professor, now Sir, Douglas Maclagan sang his

delightful songs. Mr Sam Bough's hearty laugh rang out among the

artists, and Sir R. Christison, and Syme, and Keith, and Lister, had

made the Edinburgh medical world famous. Professors Masson, Tait,

Kelland, Crum-Brown, Fleeming-Jenkin--in whose theatricals R. L.

Stevenson took a picturesque part--and a host of other well-known names

were among the guests at dinners, and most beloved personality of all,

perhaps, Dr John Brown, accompanied by his 'doggies' still nodded to us

out of his carriage window, or left wonderful scraps of drawings on the

hall tables as he passed out from seeing a patient. And everywhere in

that pleasant world the Stevenson family were welcome and well known.

By the host of young people who are now in turn taking the busy work of

life, from which so many of the elders are resting for ever, parties at

17 Heriot Row and at Swanston were much appreciated. Dinner parties for

young people were not then so common as now, and the delightful ones

given by Mr and Mrs Thomas Stevenson were greatly enjoyed. The guests

were carefully chosen, and limited to ten or twelve, so that

conversation at dinner was general. And how amusing that conversation

was! The humour of father and son as they drew each other out was

wonderful, they capped each other's good things, and somehow made less

gifted folk shine in the conversation also in a way peculiar to them and

which was fully shared by Mrs Thomas Stevenson, who made the most

charming of hostesses. Father and son on these occasions were simply

full of jests and jollity, everything started an argument, and every

argument lent itself to fun. It is odd that nothing definite of those

clever sayings of theirs seems to return to one; it is only, as it were,

the memory of an aroma that filled the air sweetly at the time, and is

still faintly present with one that remains; the actual 'bon-mots' have

unhappily passed away. It is consoling to find that Mr Edmund Gosse, who

in _Kit-Cats_ writes delightfully of his friend Louis Stevenson, notes

the same intangible character of his talk.

After the little dinners there were delightful informal dances, to which

nephews, nieces, friends, and neighbours came as well as the dinner

guests, and one can still remember with a smile, perilously near to

tears, Mr Thomas Stevenson driving his unwilling son to dance the

old-time dance 'Sir Roger de Coverley,' which the elder man loved and

the younger professed to scorn even while he entered with a zeal that

finally satisfied his father into the performance of it, that always

ended an informal evening at 17 Heriot Row.

Music, too, was a pleasant feature of those little parties, and one

still recalls, especially, the songs and the lovely voice of a favourite

niece of Mrs Stevenson, whose early death made the first break in the

home at 'The Turret,' too soon to be followed by the passing away of all

save one of that happy household. Even now, after the lapse of so many

years, one seems to see Mr Thomas Stevenson leaning eagerly forward as

she sang such sweet old songs as 'My Mother bids me bind my Hair,' and

'She wore a wreath of Roses,' or Robert Louis applauding his favourites,

'I shot an Arrow into the Air,' and 'The Sea hath its Pearls.'

On one occasion one of these merry parties was enlivened by the presence

of some young Japanese engineer students, who were on tour in Edinburgh,

and who had brought introductions to the distinguished engineer, who

made them very cordially welcome. It was not then very common to meet

Japanese, and these quiet dignified young men, in their gracefully

flowing black garments, interested the Stevenson family and their

youthful guests greatly.

CHAPTER VI

HIS CHOICE OF A LITERARY LIFE AND HIS EARLIER BOOKS

'A clerk foredoom'd his father's soul to cross,

Who pens a stanza when he should engross.'

--POPE'S _Epistle to Dr Arbuthnot_.

His son's refusal to become a civil engineer, and to take his natural

position in the family business, was undoubtedly a great trial to a man

of Mr Thomas Stevenson's character and professional traditions. That

business had in it not only wealth, honour, and success, but, to every

Stevenson, the glamour of romance, the fascination of adventure, and to

the father his firm's history appealed strongly. Therefore the blow that

fell upon him during that memorable walk, when his son at last found

courage to confess to him that he could not persevere in the traditional

path which he was expected to tread, must have been a crushing one, and

it said much for the strength of his fatherly affection that he received

it as he did. It was a painful decision for the son to make, and an

equally painful one for the parents to hear.

Mrs Thomas Stevenson as well as her husband felt it a keen

disappointment that her son could not walk in his father's footsteps. To

them, as to all parents of their position and very natural social

prejudices, it seemed a foolish thing for a man to turn seriously to

literature as a means of winning his daily bread. The Edinburgh of that

day did not think much of the profession of letters, and although the

memory of Sir Walter Scott, the 'Edinburgh Reviewers,' and the literary

lights of an earlier time was still green, all parents held the opinion

that, although a few authors had made for themselves fame and fortune,

literature was but a beggarly trade at the best, and one to which no

wise man would apprentice his son.

Only those who knew the elder Mr Stevenson's nature well could fully

understand how great a trial to him was his son's decision; and only

those very near and dear to him could quite appreciate the depth of the

father's love, the tenderness of the father's heart, which permitted no

tinge of bitterness, no lasting shadow of repining, to darken his

relations with his son or to lessen in the slightest his overwhelming

affection for him. Sensitive in the extreme, the son in his turn could

not fail to feel his father's disappointment, almost to exaggerate its

effect on the older man in his own tender-hearted remorse that he was

unable to fulfil his destiny in any other way than by following

literature, which was calling him with no uncertain voice. It was good,

therefore, to hear from the lips of the wife and mother, who was so

fully in the confidence of both, that no abiding cloud remained between

the father and the son, and that both quietly accepted the inevitable

when law, like engineering, was also laid aside to allow Louis to fulfil

his one strong desire. Lovingly and unselfishly the parents finally

accepted the fact that genius must have its way, and that in the dainty

book lined study, in travel by ways quaint and unusual, in prolonged

sojourns in search of health in distant lands, the younger Stevenson's

life-work was to be done.

When he found that his son would not be an engineer, Mr Thomas Stevenson

very naturally wished him to have a profession to fall back upon should

literature not prove a success, and it was agreed that he should read

for the Bar. Louis, therefore, about the end of 1871, entered the office

of the firm which is now known as Messrs Skene, Edwards, & Garson, W.S.

The late Mr Skene, LL.D., was then senior partner of the firm. Another

partner was the father of Mr J. R. P. Edwards, who has kindly supplied

the following very interesting facts about Robert Louis Stevenson while

he was undergoing his legal training in his office.

'Mr Stevenson entered the office, which was then in 18 Hill Street, in

1871, and left it about the middle of the year 1873, and was afterwards

called to the Bar. His position in the office was neither that of a

clerk nor of an apprentice, but merely of a person gaining some

knowledge of business. He never received any salary, and, as is usual

with aspirants for the Bar, his position was in no way subject to the

ordinary office discipline. After searching through papers which were

written in the office during the time Stevenson was in the office, I

find a good many papers which were written by him, but they are all

merely copies of documents, and I can find no trace of any deeds which

were actually drawn up by him. This is no doubt accounted for, firstly,

because he was not experienced enough in the drafting of deeds, and,

secondly, because he may have found the somewhat dry intricacies of

conveyancing, which are for the most part governed by hard and fast

rules of law, foreign to his marvellous imagination.

'I have not been able to trace any of the staff of the office who were

in it with Robert Louis Stevenson, with the exception of two men, who

seem to remember little about him, but they said that he was very

reserved and kept very much to himself. One of the men did not even know

that he was the great Stevenson. The other man, however, said that he

remembered that Stevenson had, as he described it to me, "an awful

notion of the Pentland hills, and was that fond of talking about them."

I believe he was very fond of scribbling pieces of writing on odd pieces

of paper in his spare moments, but, unfortunately, I can find no trace

of these; but that is not to be wondered at, as the firm have removed to

two different houses since Stevenson was in the office.

'Mr Skene, who was head partner of the firm during the time that

Stevenson was in the office, had always a great admiration for his

writings, and shortly before his (Mr Skene's) death he said that it was

a great regret to him that he had not known him better, and recognised

in him a brother in letters. My father, who saw a good deal more of

Stevenson, says that he struck him as being a very shy and nervous man,

or rather, as he then was, a boy. My father also states that Stevenson

was a tremendous walker, and that he used often to come into the office

in the morning in the somewhat unprofessional garb of walking kit,

having covered a good many miles before breakfast.'

The office staff in 1871 consisted of ten men. Six of them have died,

two cannot now be traced, and the remaining two mentioned by Mr Edwards

are very old men.

Mr Edwards also says that in one deed which was written by Louis

Stevenson there are five errors on two short pages, so that although the

handwriting in it is neat, round, and clear, it is evident that his

thoughts were not on his work, and that he was no more diligent in law

than he had been in engineering. His handwriting, although neat and

distinct, can hardly be called pretty, he seemed to use a good deal of

ink in those days as the down strokes are all black and heavy. In spite

of his lack of interest in his office work he passed advocate with

credit on 14th July 1875, was called to the Bar on the 15th, and had his

first brief on the 23rd.

He duly donned a wig and gown during the following session, and the

delicate face that was so grave and refined looked very picturesque with

the luminous eyes gleaming out from under the grey horse-hair. He joined

the ranks of those 'Briefless Barristers' whose business it is to walk

the hall of the Parliament House in search of clients. He had either one

or two briefs, but he gave them away as he never acted as an advocate.

His mother treasured the shillings he got for them among her relics of

his early days.

Although his connection with the Parliament House was totally devoid of

that professional success that ultimately leads to a seat on the

Bench--but for which Mr Stevenson had no desire--it was not without its

uses as an education for that other success by reason of which very many

people who have never seen his face know and love him to-day. If his

sojourn within those venerable halls was useless for law it was

fruitful for literature, and one can imagine that as he now and then

haunted the courts and listened to the advocates and the judges he was

already, from a study of the Bench of the present, laying the foundation

for those brilliant pictures of the judges of a ruder past which he

gives us in Lord Prestongrange or Lord Hermiston. It is not very fair or

very complimentary to the judges of 1875 to compare them with such a

creation as Lord Hermiston, but it was not much more than half a

century, before their day, that customs and manners like his were

possible.

The robes, the forms, the etiquette, and the procedure of the Court of

Session are still a sufficiently picturesque survival of an older time;

and to a mind like Mr Stevenson's that short association with the

historic Parliament House, with its far-reaching traditions and with the

acting majesty of the law in Scotland that is so old and so unchanged an

institution, which to-day employs the very words and phrases of bygone

centuries, and still holds, in many points, to the structure of the

ancient Roman Law, could not fail to be interesting and useful. Like Sir

Walter Scott, when he too walked in the Advocates' Hall, he no doubt

found much that was worth studying in the old law procedure as well as

in the men and manners of his own day, and appreciated to the full the

magnificent library in its dark and silent rooms that are such a

contrast to the bustle of the courts, and every corner of which is

teeming with history.

But his heart was not in the Law Courts, and already in that book-lined

study at 17 Heriot Row, the window of which looked over the Forth to

Fife, and the walls of which were so temptingly covered with books, his

real life work had begun. No treat was greater, no honour more esteemed,

than a visit to that study and a learned disquisition there on its

owner's favourite books or methods of work.

Walking up and down with the hands thrown out in gesticulations,

semi-foreign but eminently natural--for did not the child of three do it

while repeating hymns on that walk to Broughton!--Mr Stevenson gave his

opinions on matters grave and gay. Possibly he even produced his

note-books, and with a slim finger between the leaves showed us the

practice which he considered necessary for the creation of an author and

the making of a style, breaking off in the middle of his disquisition to

quote some master of the art or to take from the shelves a favourite

book and read aloud a pertinent illustration of the subject in hand.

Boswell's _Life of Johnson_, Borrow's _Bible in Spain_, the Bible

itself, Butler's _Hudibras_, George Meredith's novels, then less

appreciated than now, were all books for a better knowledge of which

some of us had to thank those visits to the study: on the shelves too

were Bulwer Lytton, Sir Walter Scott, the old dramatists, ballads, and

chapbooks, and innumerable favourites that had a place in his heart as

well as in his bookcase.

Keen and clever were the criticisms he made on them--criticisms that

come back to one with the pathos of 'a voice that is still' when one

reads in his _Gossip on Romance_ and _A Humble Remonstrance_ his delight

in Boswell, his pleasure in _All Sorts and Conditions of Men_, and his

admiration for Scott as a Prince of Romance writers, for whose style he

had not one good word to say!

He had early edited and written for amateur magazines, and when only

sixteen he wrote a pamphlet on the Pentland Rising of 1666,[4] which is

still in existence but a great rarity; the same subject inspired a

romance, and another romance was composed about Hackston of Rathillet,

that sombre and impressive witness of the murder of Archbishop Sharp,

whose conscientious refusal either to take part for or against the

victim had from childhood appealed to Mr Stevenson as pathetic and

picturesque. He also wrote in those days a poetical play, some dramatic

dialogues, and a pamphlet called _An Appeal to the Church of Scotland_,

in which his father was keenly interested. The style in his early

letters and notes of travel was excellent, but he destroyed most of his

writings at that time as he worked for practice rather than for

publication. He contributed frequently about 1871 to the _University

Magazine_, in which, as he kindly lent it to us, some of us had the

pleasure of reading _An Old Gardener_ and _A Pastoral_, two papers of

much promise, very full of outdoor life, the caller air of the Pentland

hills and the scent of the old-fashioned flowers in the Swanston garden.

Edinburgh, as a picturesque, historic city, he loved with a life's

devotion; Edinburgh, as a frivolous social centre, he despised; so some

of the strictures he made on it in _Picturesque Edinburgh_, published

in 1879, and beautifully illustrated by Mr Sam Bough and Mr Lockhart,

gave dire offence at the time to the denizens of 'Auld Reekie,' and are

in some quarters hardly pardoned even now when death and fame have made

Scotland's capital value her gifted son at his true worth.

In 1873 Mr Stevenson made the acquaintance of Mr Sydney Colvin and a

life-long friendship ensued. The older man was of great use in many ways

to the younger, whose genius he early discovered, and whose leaning to

literature he encouraged. In the interesting preface to _The Vailima

Letters_ Mr Colvin tells of his help in that time of trial, and that he

used his influence to persuade the parents that Louis had found his real

vocation in literature, and ought to follow it. No doubt when the large

and full _Life_ of Mr Stevenson, which Mr Colvin is preparing, appears,

he will have much of interest to tell of that turning-point in the young

man's life. He was of service also in introducing his friend to editors,

and Mr Stevenson's first serious appearance in literature was an essay

on _Roads_ sent by Mr Colvin to Mr Hamerton, the editor of _The

Portfolio_, in 1873. It appeared shortly, and was followed by more work

there and elsewhere; _Cornhill_, _Longmans_, and _Macmillan_ having all

before long printed papers by the new writer. In Macmillan the paper

_Ordered South_ appeared in April 1874, and had a pathetic interest as

it was an account of the first of its author's many pilgrimages in

search of health, which, after he grew to manhood, were to make up so

much of his life's experience.

In _Fraser's_, _Scribner's_, _The New Amphion_, _The Magazine of Art_,

his early work also found acceptance, and he occasionally contributed to

_The Contemporary Review_ and _The English Illustrated_, a list of

well-known magazines in the home country which makes the more remarkable

the refusal of the American papers to use his contributions largely,

during his stay in San Francisco and Monterey.

Of that charming dreamy sketch of those days, _Will o' the Mill_, which

appeared in _Cornhill_, Mr Hamerton wrote in the highest terms of

praise. Most of these early essays, sketches, and tales have been

republished, and in the beautiful _Edinburgh Edition_ of his works,

presently being seen through the press by Mr Colvin and Mr Baxter, and

all but completed, his many admirers will be able to read all that came

from his busy and graceful pen.

In 1878 Mr Stevenson's first book, _An Inland Voyage_, was published by

Messrs Chatto & Windus. It is a bright, fresh account of a trip in

canoes, 'The Arethusa' and 'The Cigarette,' made by Mr Stevenson and his

friend the late Sir Walter G. Simpson up the Oise and the Sambre. The

travellers had unique opportunities of observing people and scenery, and

of these the writer made the most, consequently the book is full of

pretty pictures of scenery and quaint touches of human life which make

it charming reading.

'There is nothing,' he says, 'so quiet and so much alive as a woodland.

And surely of all smells in the world the smell of many trees is

sweetest and most satisfying.'

These are the reflections of a man to whom the teeming silence of the

woods was very dear, and who, in _Prince Otto_, afterwards wrote a prose

poem on the mystery of the woods which Thoreau himself could not have

excelled.

'If we were charged so much a head for sunsets, or if God sent round a

drum before the hawthorns came into flower, what a work we should make

about their beauty. But these things, like good companions, stupid

people early cease to observe;' a state of affairs fortunately

incomprehensible to Mr Stevenson, who had not only a keen perception of

the beauty of the world but 'that inward eye which is the bliss of

solitude' that enabled him to recall and reproduce from memory these

pleasures of the past.

The volume which ends with the statement that 'The most beautiful

adventures are not those we go to seek,' is from its first page to its

last brightly readable and full of pleasant and graceful thoughts and

fancies. Its style is more mannered and less excellent than that of his

later work, but it already appealed to that cultured public who welcomed

the appearance of a new writer likely to make his mark as a 'maker' of

English style.

In 1895 _An Inland Voyage_ had run into its seventh edition; it was

followed by the even more popular _Travels in the Cevennes with a

Donkey_, which the same publishers sent out in 1879, and which in 1895

had reached a ninth edition.

On this occasion Mr Stevenson travelled alone. He had been living for a

time in the little town of Le Monastier, fifteen miles from Le Puy, and

here, in the late autumn, he bought an ass which he called 'Modestine,'

and with it, to the great interest of his simple neighbours, started on

a tour in the Cevennes. The pair set forth speeded on their way by many

good wishes and, in spite of a slow pace and not a few misfortunes with

the baggage and the pack-saddle, the tour was most successful. As to

Modestine's pace her master describes it as being 'as much slower than a

walk as a walk is slower than a run'!

The experiences of the traveller in the crisp, bright autumn weather and

the perfect scenery of the Cevennes were thoroughly enjoyable. The

simple peasantry and the homely innkeepers proved more friendly and

agreeable than those along the route of the canoeists had done. In the

monastery of 'Our Lady of the Snows' he had a kindly welcome from the

Trappist monks, who seemed to have found it possible to break their

stern rule of silence in their eagerness to convert him to Roman

Catholicism. Among themselves this rule of silence and the poorest diet

is rigidly enforced, and as the traveller left their hospitable doors he

'blessed God that he was free to wander, free to hope, and free to

love.'

In the country of the Camisards--that little sect of persecuted

religionists whose fierce brief struggle against the tyranny of the

Church of Rome he so graphically describes--the descendant of Scotch

Covenanters found himself at home, and at 'Pont de Montvert' his heart

beat in a certain stern sympathy with the persecuted remnant, who here

slew Du Chayla, and with that strange weird prophet Spirit Seguir, who,

after the deed was done, and he was about to suffer death for it at the

stake, said: 'My soul is like a garden full of shelter and fountains.'

The rising took place on 24th July 1702, and Mr Stevenson says of it:

''Tis a wild night's work with its accompaniment of psalms; and it seems

as if a psalm must always have a sound of threatening in that town upon

the Tarn.'

There is a delightful description of a night among the firs in which the

very spirit of nature breathes through his words, and his reason for

travelling as he does is happy and convincing.

'I travel for travel's sake. The great affair is to move, to feel the

needs and hitches of our life more nearly; to come down off the feather

bed of civilisation and find the globe granite under foot and stern with

cutting flints. Alas! as we get up in life and are more pre-occupied

with our affairs, even a holiday is a thing to be worked for.'

Many people have all through life a closer acquaintance with 'the globe

granite under foot' than with 'the feather bed of civilisation,' and

daily bread even more than a holiday is a thing to be worked for. But Mr

Stevenson's lines had hitherto fallen in very pleasant places, and he

had not as yet entered as seriously as he had to do later into the

bitter battle of life.

After twelve days together he sold Modestine at St Jean du Gard and made

his return journey by diligence. This book, like the first, was widely

read and heartily appreciated as soon as it appeared.

FOOTNOTE:

[4] This is to be found reprinted in the Edinburgh Edition, in

which are also published for the first time the _Amateur Emigrant_ in

full, a fragmentary romance, _The Great North Road_, and other papers

and letters, &c., not hitherto known to the public.

CHAPTER VII

WANDERINGS IN SEARCH OF HEALTH

'Know how sublime a thing it is

To suffer and be strong.'--LONGFELLOW.

Mr Stevenson's health, although always a cause of more or less anxiety,

was from time to time somewhat better; else he could hardly have learned

the practical work of a brass foundry, superintended the building of

light towers and harbours, and taken such very active holidays as _An

Inland Voyage_, and the tour _Through the Cevennes with a Donkey_.

Nevertheless the delicacy was there, and it not only increased in 1873

but culminated in the autumn of that year in the first of those serious

attacks of illness which afterwards frequently caused himself so much

suffering and his friends such keen distress all through the life that,

in spite of them, he lived so bravely.