Robert Louis Stevenson[1] was born at Edinburgh on the 13 November
1850. His father, Thomas, and his grandfather, Robert, were both
distinguished light-house engineers; and the maternal grandfather,
Balfour, was a Professor of Moral Philosophy, who lived to be ninety
years old. There was, therefore, a combination of _Lux et Veritas_ in
the blood of young Louis Stevenson, which in _Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde_
took the form of a luminous portrayal of a great moral idea.
In the language of Pope, Stevenson's life was a long disease. Even as
a child, his weak lungs caused great anxiety to all the family except
himself; but although Death loves a shining mark, it took over forty
years of continuous practice for the grim archer to send the black
arrow home. It is perhaps fortunate for English literature that his
health was no better; for the boy craved an active life, and would
doubtless have become an engineer. He made a brave attempt to pursue
this calling, but it was soon evident that his constitution made it
impossible. After desultory schooling, and an immense amount of
general reading, he entered the University of Edinburgh, and then
tried the study of law. Although the thought of this profession became
more and more repugnant, and finally intolerable, he passed his final
examinations satisfactorily. This was in 1875.
He had already begun a series of excursions to the south of France and
other places, in search of a climate more favorable to his incipient
malady; and every return to Edinburgh proved more and more
conclusively that he could not live in Scotch mists. He had made the
acquaintance of a number of literary men, and he was consumed with a
burning ambition to become a writer. Like Ibsen's _Master-Builder_,
there was a troll in his blood, which drew him away to the continent
on inland voyages with a canoe and lonely tramps with a donkey; these
gave him material for books full of brilliant pictures, shrewd
observations, and irrepressible humour. He contributed various
articles to magazines, which were immediately recognised by critics
like Leslie Stephen as bearing the unmistakable mark of literary
genius; but they attracted almost no attention from the general
reading public, and their author had only the consciousness of good
work for his reward. In 1880 he was married.
Stevenson's first successful work was _Treasure Island_, which was
published in book form in 1883, and has already become a classic. This
did not, however, bring him either a good income or general fame. His
great reputation dates from the publication of the _Strange Case of
Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde,_ which appeared in 1886. That work had an
instant and unqualified success, especially in America, and made its
author's name known to the whole English-speaking world. _Kidnapped_
was published the same year, and another masterpiece, _The Master of
Ballantrae_, in 1889.
After various experiments with different climates, including that of
Switzerland, Stevenson sailed for America in August 1887. The winter
of 1887-88 he spent at Saranac Lake, under the care of Dr. Trudeau,
who became one of his best friends. In 1890 he settled at Samoa in the
Pacific. Here he entered upon a career of intense literary activity,
and yet found time to take an active part in the politics of the
island, and to give valuable assistance in internal improvements.
The end came suddenly, exactly as he would have wished it, and
precisely as he had unconsciously predicted in the last radiant,
triumphant sentences of his great essay, _Aes Triplex_. He had been at
work on a novel, _St. Ives_, one of his poorer efforts, and whose
composition grew steadily more and more distasteful, until he found
that he was actually writing against the grain. He threw this aside
impatiently, and with extraordinary energy and enthusiasm began a new
story, _Weir of Hermiston_, which would undoubtedly have been his
masterpiece, had he lived to complete it. In luminosity of style, in
nobleness of conception, in the almost infallible choice of words,
this astonishing fragment easily takes first place in Stevenson's
productions. At the end of a day spent in almost feverish dictation,
the third of December 1894, he suddenly fainted, and died without
regaining consciousness. "Death had not been suffered to take so much
as an illusion from his heart. In the hot-fit of life, a-tiptoe on the
highest point of being, he passed at a bound on to the other side. The
noise of the mallet and chisel was scarcely quenched, the trumpets
were hardly done blowing, when, trailing with him clouds of glory,
this happy-starred, full-blooded spirit shot into the spiritual land."
He was buried at the summit of a mountain, the body being carried on
the shoulders of faithful Samoans, who might have sung Browning's
noble hymn,
"Let us begin and carry up this corpse,
Singing together!
Leave we the common crofts, the vulgar thorpes
Each in its tether
Sleeping safe on the bosom of the plain...
That's the appropriate country; there, man's thought,
Rarer, intenser,
Self-gathered for an outbreak, as it ought,
Chafes in the censer.
Leave we the unlettered plain its herd and crop;
Seek we sepulture
On a tall mountain...
Thither our path lies; wind we up the heights:
Wait ye the warning!
Our low life was the level's and the night's;
He's for the morning.
Step to a tune, square chests, erect each head,
'Ware the beholders!
This is our master, famous, calm and dead,
Borne on our shoulders...
Here--here's his place, where meteors shoot clouds form,
Lightnings are loosened,
Stars come and go! Let joy break with the storm,
Peace let the dew send!
Lofty designs must close in like effects
Loftily lying,
Leave him--still loftier than the world suspects,
Living and dying."