Returning to Edinburgh by way of Paris in May 1874, Stevenson went to
live with his parents at Swanston and Edinburgh and resumed his reading
for the Bar. Illness and absence had done their work, and the old
harmony of the home was henceforth quite re-established. In his spare
time during the next year he worked hard at his chosen art, trying his
hand at essays, short stories, criticisms, and prose poems. In all this
experimental writing he had neither the aims nor the facility of the
journalist, but strove always after the higher qualities of literature,
and was never satisfied with what he had done. To find for all he had to
say words of vital aptness and animation--to communicate as much as
possible of what he has somewhere called "the incommunicable thrill of
things"--was from the first his endeavour in literature, nay more, it
was the main passion of his life: and the instrument that should serve
his purpose could not be forged in haste. Neither was it easy for this
past master of the random, the unexpected, the brilliantly back-foremost
and topsy-turvy in talk, to learn in writing the habit of orderly
arrangement and organic sequence which even the lightest forms of
literature cannot lack.
In the course of this summer Stevenson's excursions included a week or
two spent with me at Hampstead, during which he joined the Savile Club
and made some acquaintance with London literary society; a yachting trip
with his friend Sir Walter Simpson in the western islands of Scotland; a
journey to Barmouth and Llandudno with his parents; and in the late
autumn a walking tour in Buckinghamshire. The Scottish winter (1874-75)
tried him severely, as Scottish winters always did, but was enlivened by
a new and what was destined to be a very fruitful and intimate
friendship, the origin of which was described in the following letters,
namely that of Mr. W. E. Henley. In April 1875 he made his first visit,
in the company of his cousin R. A. M. Stevenson to the artist haunts of
the forest of Fontainebleau, whence he returned to finish his reading
for the Scottish Bar and face the examination which was before him in
July. During all this year, as will be seen, his chief, almost his
exclusive, correspondents and confidants continued to be the same as in
the preceding winter.