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Travels With a Donkey } 17
An Inland Voyage } 17
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Not I } 40
Black Canyon } 40
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A Pentland Rising 49
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A New Form of Intermittent Light 64
_Stevensoniana_
_By Way of Introduction_
The early days of the literary career of Robert Louis Stevenson can hardly
be said to have been entirely devoid of recognition, though it would
appear doubtful if the world at large was willing to recognize his
abilities had it not been for his wonderful personality; with a soul and
an imagination far above those of his early associates he gradually drew
around him the respect and admiration of that larger world of letters, the
London coterie. The following biographical notes are to be considered then
as a mere resume of the various chronological periods and stages of his
career as is shown by the many facts which have already become the common
property of the latter day reader, but which by reason of the scattered
source of supply and the extreme unlikelyhood of their being included in
any authoritative life or biography, makes them at once interesting and
valuable.
As sponsor for the abilities of Robert Louis Stevenson, stands first and
foremost, the name of William Ernest Henley a belief which was latterly
endorsed by most literary critics from Gladstone to LeGallienne.
Robert Louis Balfour Stevenson was born in Howard Place, Edinburgh, on the
13th of November, 1850. From his eighteenth year he seldom, if ever,
signed himself aught but Robert Louis Stevenson, omitting the name Balfour
therefrom. From birth he was of a slight and excitable nature and suffered
keenly from chronic and frequent illness. His recognized literary labors
may be said to have commenced at the immature age of six when, it is
recalled, he wrote, presumably for his own amusement and that of his
immediate family, "A History of Moses," and some years later an account of
his "Travels in Perth."
In these early years there also took shape and form in his imagination
what was afterwards given forth to the world in the pages of "Treasure
Island."
At eight, Stevenson was at school, and at eleven entered the Academy of
his native city. Here he began his first real literary labors, publishing,
editing and even writing and illustrating the contents of a small school
periodical.
Stevenson was emphatically a bird of passage, for regardless of the ties
of kindred and sentiment he was ever on the wing, and when in after years
as a seeker after health he proved none the less a careful observer than
he had been in his schoolboy days, small wonder it is that he was able to
give to the reading world such charming and novel descriptions of things
seen.
In his schooldays he journeyed far into the country round about, the
inevitable outcome of which was for him to ultimately to write out in his
own picturesque and imaginative words a record of his observations. From
"Random Memories" we learn of his pleasure at having taken a journey in
company with his father around among the lighthouses of the Scottish
coast, "_the first in the complete character of a man, without the help of
petticoats_." And with these excursions into Fife began his wanderings so
charmingly and characteristically chronicled in his later letters and
reminiscences.
In 1862 he went abroad to Germany and Holland, and in the next year and in
that following to Italy and the Riviera. In 1865 he wintered at Torquay,
an English winter resort on the south coast.
At seventeen, at Edinburgh University, Stevenson became a pupil of
Fleeming Jenkin, Professor of Engineering, whose biography he wrote with
much pride and devotion some years later.
Thus it is seen from early childhood that Stevenson was constantly putting
forth the product of his pen, in Verses, Essays, Plays, Parodies, and
Tales. In the "Stevenson Medley," a privately issued volume published as a
sort of supplement to the "Edinburgh Edition" of his writings are to be
found reprints of various of his early efforts, including the famous
pamphlet "The Pentland Rising," which, in its original form, is now
considered as being perhaps the rarest of all "Stevensoniana."
Quoting from a letter of Stevenson's to a friend, he says: "_I owned that
I cared for nothing but literature; my father saying that that was no
profession but that I might be called to the Bar, if I chose * * * * so
at the age of twenty-one I began to study law._" Accordingly the next few
years were spent with ardous reading of Blackstone and his contemporaries,
and arriving at the age of twenty-five, in 1875, Stevenson passed the
examinations and was formally called a few days thereafter. During his
matriculation at the law schools Stevenson was all the while perfecting
himself in the profession of his heart's choice.
About this time he came to know Mr. Sidney Colvin and Mr. William Ernest
Henley, the beginning as the world knows, of a life long friendship with
both these gentlemen.
Stevenson's first introduction to the reading world at large was on the
occasion of an article which appeared in the _Portfolio_ for December,
1873, with the signature L. S. Stoneven appended.
Already Stevenson had begun to reap the benefit of acquaintanceship and
association with the little coterie of literary folk whom he had fallen in
with in London. For a time he sojourned in the artistic colony which had
taken up its abode in the Forest of Fontainebleau, and has recorded its
charms of life and association in the essay "Fontainebleau." He also came
to know Bohemian Paris as well, and in certain circles which there exist,
or did at one time exist, the memory of M. Stevenson still fondly lingers.
Returning to Edinburgh Stevenson hung forth his placard at the now famous
17 Heriot Row, which read Robert Louis Stevenson, Advocate. He did not,
however, hang for long between the balance of Law and Literature, and it
has been said, he never tried a case. Finally it was but apparent that he
was so firmly wedded to literature that, needs must, he should devote
himself to it and with the publication of "Virginibus Puerisque," he is
truly said to have emerged from the threatening obscurity of his early
struggles.
"An Inland Voyage" has recorded Stevenson's travels in Belgium in 1876,
and "Travels with a Donkey in The Cevennes," chronicles another wandering
in search of the picturesque, undertaken at about the same time. It is
doubtful if either volume proved financially profitable at first though
they proved, in connection with the volume of essays before mentioned, the
means of introducing the name and work of Robert Louis Stevenson to an
ever widening circle of fame.
During this period Stevenson was a frequent contributor to the London
literary journals, and he had also rewritten an early production in the
form of a play; this in collaboration with Mr. W. E. Henley, and had also
contributed his notes on "Picturesque Edinburgh" to Hamerton's
_Portfolio_.
In 1879 Stevenson set sail for the new world taking ship as a mere
emigrant, crossing the ocean as a steerage passenger and afterwards by
emigrant train, across the American continent to the Golden Gate; a rude
but romantic method of travel for one who had been nurtured in comfort and
a chronic sufferer from ill health; a long journey though destined to be
but the beginnings of a wandering after peace and health which latterly
brought him to "Vailima" by the shore of that "ultimate island where now
rest the remains of the beloved "Tusitala."
The "Amateur Emigrant" did not at once meet with the success it deserved
in the American literary arena, though no one will deny but that praise
was afterward showered upon the author's work to the full. Eight months
were spent in the immediate vicinity of the Golden Gate when he succumbed
to a severe illness which proved a serious draft on his powers.
In 1880, Stevenson, then in his thirty-first year, was married to Mrs.
Osbourne, an American lady whom he had known in France, and with his
step-son Lloyd Osbourne and Mrs. Stevenson took up his abode in an
abandoned mining camp at Juan Silverado, situated in the mountains of the
Coast range. The life here can be no more pleasantly referred to than by
recalling the record which was given to the public in "Silverado
Squatters." The family remained at Silverado through the summer from
whence they all journeyed to the old home in North Britain. For his
health's sake, Stevenson, accompanied by his household, then betook
himself to the dry and invigorating atmosphere of Davos Platz in the high
Alps; and here amid the sunshine and the clear air the family settled for
a winter's stay; and here it was that Stevenson, in conjunction with his
step-son, concocted those ingenious and unique booklets known to
collectors as the "Davos Platz Brochures." They had set up a small press
and derived much pleasure in designing and printing these little books;
"Black Canyon," "Not I," and "Moral Emblems," all of which are now of such
extreme rarity as to be almost unobtainable in their original state.
In 1881 was begun the actual labor of writing "Treasure Island," the germ
of which had been lying dormant in Stevenson's brain since his early
schoolboy days. After another visit to Scotland, Stevenson set his
footsteps still further to the southward and domiciled himself with his
family at the Chalet la Solitude, near Hyeres near Marseilles, on the
shores of the Mediterranean. Meanwhile, "Treasure Island" was running its
course serially in the _Young Folks Paper_, and when it appeared as a
volume pointed the definite way of Stevenson's popularity, the book being
in every sense his first popular success.
Realizing that his malady grew no better in the southland Stevenson
settled at Bournemouth, a mild winter resort on the south coast of
England. Here he occupied the house presented to him by his father, and
which he named "Skerryvore" after the lighthouse off the coast of
Scotland, designed and built by his uncle, Alan Stevenson. Stevenson
continued his literary labours at this place unremittingly, though never
at any one extended period was he really free from the dread grasp of his
malady. Up to now writing had brought him but scant profit, and until his
thirty-sixth year, says Mr. Colvin, his income had scarcely, if ever,
exceeded three hundred pounds per year. His second great success was that
weird tale of "Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde," and thenceforth he came to know
his value as a writer of ability, and felt definitely assured that his
labors would return to him a satisfying income.
In 1887, after the death of his father, Stevenson again went to America,
sailing for New York in August of that year, and sojourning for short
periods among and with friends in the East.
In the spring of 1888, when in his thirty-eighth year, Stevenson
accompanied by members of his family, accepted an offer to cruise among
the islands of the South Seas and write the story of his voyagings in a
series of letters to a syndicate of newspapers. Arrangements were made for
the charter of the schooner Casco, Captain Otis, in which he set sail from
San Francisco, early in the spring, bound ostensibly for the "Marquesas."
The cruise covered six months. During the voyage northward the Stevensons
stayed some months at Honolulu and while there a visit was paid to the
leper settlement on the island of Molokai, which ultimately called forth
the "open letter" to the Rev. Dr. Hyde of Honolulu, wherein that Reverend
gentleman received an unmitigated scathing from Stevenson's incensed pen,
an incident which is only too readily recalled for one to linger over it
at this time.
From Honolulu the cruise was continued southward for another six months on
a trading schooner called the Equator which arrived at Apia, in Samoa,
about Christmas time (1889). Here the company remained for some weeks, and
here Stevenson purchased an estate of some hundreds of acres, lying on the
mountainside overlooking the sea, which he called _Vailima_. The
Stevensons went to Sidney, N. S. W. soon after, but again in the month of
April steamed away in the trading steamer Janet Nicoll, visiting Auckland
and the Penrhyn Islands, thence to the Ellis, Gilbert, and Marshall
Islands and via New Caledonia, Sydney, and Auckland to Apia where they
arrived again in the early autumn. They settled here upon their estate and
the following spring Mrs. Stevenson, the elder, joined the household, as
also Stevenson's step-daughter, Mrs. Strong; thus began the four remaining
years of Stevenson's life, amid the ties of kith and kin surrounding him
as he worked in his exile in a far away land.
Amid these pleasant surroundings Stevenson pursued his constant and daily
work, and rode about his island home entertaining the population, both
native and European. He became actively interested in the political life
of the islands, and when international complications came upon them in
1891, he dignified the whole proceedings by his impartial letters to the
_London Times_, and later by the publication of the "Footnote to History,"
a monograph published in 1892.
Meanwhile he was applying himself to his writing with ardous persistancy,
and quoting his own words from a letter written in 1893, he was seriously
overworked, "_I am overworked bitterly, and my hand is a thing that was,
and in the meanwhile so are my brains._"
In January of the same year he suffered from an attack of influenza from
which he never fully recovered. While yet ill in bed he had begun to
dictate "St. Ives" and "Weir of Hermiston."
From the Dictionary of National Biography is taken the following
description of the sad end. "On the afternoon of the Fourth of December he
was talking gaily with his wife, when a sudden rupture of a blood-vessel
in the brain laid him at her feet and within two hours all was over."
* * * * *
Out across the pearly Pacific on the lonely mountainside at Samoa, lies
all that once was mortal of "_Tusitala, the Teller of Tales_."
_APPARITION._
_"Thin-legged, thin-chested, slight unspeakably,
Neat-footed and weak-fingered: in his face--
Lean, large-boned, curved of beak, and touched with race.
Bold-lipped, rich-tinted, mutable as the sea,
The brown eyes radiant with vivacity--
There shines a brilliant and romantic grace,
A spirit intense and rare, with trace on trace
Of passion and impudence and energy.
Valiant in velvet, light in ragged luck,
Most vain, most generous, sternly critical,
Buffoon and poet, lover and sensualist:
A deal of Ariel, just a streak of Puck,
Much Antony, of Hamlet most of all,
And something of the Shorter-Catechist."_
(W. E. HENLEY)
[Illustration: FRONTISPIECE, BY WALTER CRANE, TO AN "INLAND VOYAGE."
(FIRST EDITION.)]
[Illustration: FRONTISPIECE, BY WALTER CRANE, TO "TRAVELS WITH A DONKEY."
(FIRST EDITION.)]