1868-1873
The following section consists chiefly of extracts from the
correspondence and journals addressed by Louis Stevenson, as a lad of
eighteen to twenty-two, to his father and mother during summer
excursions to the Scottish coast or to the Continent. There exist enough
of them to fill a volume; but it is not in letters of this kind to his
family that a young man unbosoms himself most freely, and these are
perhaps not quite devoid of the qualities of the guide-book and the
descriptive exercise. Nevertheless they seem to me to contain enough
signs of the future master-writer, enough of character, observation, and
skill in expression, to make a certain number worth giving by way of an
opening chapter to the present book. Among them are interspersed four or
five of a different character addressed to other correspondents, and
chiefly to his lifelong friend and intimate, Mr. Charles Baxter.
On both sides of the house Stevenson came of interesting stock. His
grandfather was Robert Stevenson, civil engineer, highly distinguished
as the builder of the Bell Rock lighthouse. By this Robert Stevenson,
his three sons, and two of his grandsons now living, the business of
civil engineers in general, and of official engineers to the
Commissioners of Northern Lights in particular, has been carried on at
Edinburgh with high credit and public utility for almost a century.
Thomas Stevenson, the youngest of the three sons of the original Robert,
was Robert Louis Stevenson's father. He was a man not only of mark,
zeal, and inventiveness in his profession, but of a strong and singular
personality; a staunch friend and sagacious adviser, trenchant in
judgment and demonstrative in emotion, outspoken, dogmatic,--despotic,
even, in little things, but withal essentially chivalrous and
soft-hearted; apt to pass with the swiftest transition from moods of
gloom or sternness to those of tender or freakish gaiety, and commanding
a gift of humorous and figurative speech second only to that of his more
famous son.
Thomas Stevenson was married to Margaret Isabella, youngest daughter of
the Rev. Lewis Balfour, for many years minister of the parish of
Colinton in Midlothian. This Mr. Balfour (described by his grandson in
the essay called _The Manse_) was of the stock of the Balfours of
Pilrig, and grandson to that James Balfour, professor first of moral
philosophy and afterwards of the law of nature and of nations, who was
held in particular esteem as a philosophical controversialist by David
Hume. His wife, Henrietta Smith, a daughter of the Rev. George Smith of
Galston, to whose gift as a preacher Burns refers scoffingly in the
_Holy Fair_, is said to have been a woman of uncommon beauty and charm
of manner. Their daughter, Mrs. Thomas Stevenson, suffered in early and
middle life from chest and nerve troubles, and her son may have
inherited from her some of his constitutional weakness. Capable,
cultivated, companionable, affectionate, she was a determined looker at
the bright side of things, and hence better skilled, perhaps, to shut
her eyes to troubles or differences among those she loved than
understandingly to compose or heal them. Conventionally minded one might
have thought her, but for the surprising readiness with which in later
life she adapted herself to conditions of life and travel the most
unconventional possible. The son and only child of these two, Robert
Louis (baptized Robert Lewis Balfour[3]), was born on November 13, 1850,
at 8 Howard Place, Edinburgh. His health was infirm from the first, and
he was with difficulty kept alive by the combined care of his mother and
a most devoted nurse, Alison Cunningham; to whom his lifelong gratitude
will be found touchingly expressed in the course of the following
letters. In 1858 he was near dying of a gastric fever, and was at all
times subject to acute catarrhal and bronchial affections and extreme
nervous excitability.
In January 1853 Stevenson's parents moved to Inverleith Terrace, and in
May 1857 to 17 Heriot Row, which continued to be their Edinburgh home
until the death of Thomas Stevenson in 1887. Much of the boy's time was
also spent in the manse of Colinton on the Water of Leith, the home of
his maternal grandfather. Ill-health prevented him getting much regular
or continuous schooling. He attended first (1858-61) a preparatory
school kept by a Mr. Henderson in India Street; and next (at intervals
for some time after the autumn of 1861) the Edinburgh Academy.
Schooling was interrupted in the end of 1862 and first half of 1863 by
excursions with his parents to Germany, the Riviera, and Italy. The love
of wandering, which was a rooted passion in Stevenson's nature, thus
began early to find satisfaction. For a few months in the autumn of
1863, when his parents had been ordered for a second time to Mentone for
the sake of his mother's health, he was sent to a boarding-school kept
by a Mr. Wyatt at Spring Grove, near London. It is not my intention to
treat the reader to the series of childish and boyish letters of these
days which parental fondness has preserved. But here is one written from
his English school when he was about thirteen, which is both amusing in
itself and had a certain influence on his destiny, inasmuch as his
appeal led to his being taken out to join his parents on the French
Riviera; which from these days of his boyhood he never ceased to love,
and for which the longing, amid the gloom of Edinburgh winters, often
afterwards gripped him by the heart.
_Spring Grove School, 12th November 1863._
MA CHERE MAMAN,--Jai recu votre lettre Aujourdhui et comme le jour
prochaine est mon jour de naisance je vous ecrit ce lettre. Ma grande
gatteaux est arrive il leve 12 livres et demi le prix etait 17
shillings. Sur la soiree de Monseigneur Faux il y etait quelques belles
feux d'artifice. Mais les polissons entrent dans notre champ et nos feux
d'artifice et handkerchiefs disappeared quickly, but we charged them out
of the field. Je suis presque driven mad par une bruit terrible tous les
garcons kik up comme grand un bruit qu'il est possible. I hope you will
find your house at Mentone nice. I have been obliged to stop from
writing by the want of a pen, but now I have one, so I will continue.
My dear papa, you told me to tell you whenever I was miserable. I do not
feel well, and I wish to get home. Do take me with you.