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A. + + + + +ILLUSTRATIONS + +1875 AS ADVOCATE frontispiece + +AN EDINBURGH STUDENT page thirty-two + +THE TELLER OF TALES page forty-eight + +1892 PORTRAIT PAINTED BY COUNT NERLI IN SAMOA +Reproduced by kind permission of Mrs. Turnbull page sixty-four + + + + +SPIRIT OF THE AGE SERIES + +The publishers desire to announce that it is their purpose to +comprise in this series a collection of little books uniform in +general style and appearance to the present volume and having for +their subjects men and women, whose work and influence, in whatever +field of literature or art was their chosen one, may be said to +faintly reflect the spirit or tendencies of cultivated thought at +the present time. + +The treatment of the subject matter will not be conventional, the +chief aim being to present to the readers a living, marching +personality breathing with the individuality characteristic of the +person. + +Volume I of this series is Whistler + by Haldane Macfall + +Volume II, Robert Louis Stevenson + by Eve Blantyre Simpson + +Additional volumes to be announced shortly. + + + + + + "A spirit all sunshine, graceful from + every gladness, useful because + bright." Carlyle. + + +The mother of Robert Louis Stevenson, when asked to inscribe a motto +on a guest list, wrote:-- + + "The world is so full of a number of things, + I am sure we should all be happy as kings." + + +"That," she said, "includes the whole gospel of R. L. S." These +lines are certainly a concise statement of the spirit in which her +son undertook to expound the benefits to be derived from "performing +our petty round of irritating concerns and duties with laughter and +kind faces." Before he could walk steadily, it had been discovered +he was heavily handicapped by the burden of ill-health. Still the +good fairy who came to his christening endowed him with "sweet +content," a gift which carried him triumphantly through all +hampering difficulties. He never faltered in the task he set +himself--the task of happiness. He began to preach his gospel as a +child. He would not have his tawdry toy sword disparaged even by his +father. "I tell you," he said, "the sword is of gold, the sheath of +silver, and the boy who has it is quite contented." In the same +manner he transformed a coddling shawl into a wrap fit for a soldier +on a night march. To the end of his days he was eager to be happy. +We are told + + "Two men looked out from prison bars; + One saw mud, the other stars." + +When bodily ailments held Stevenson as a captive in bonds, his keen +sight pierced through the obstructions which held him caged. We are +not left in doubt, when we read his books, as to whether his gaze +was earthwards or to heaven's distant lamps. He taught others to see +with his clear vision, and he expounded his gospel in so taking a +manner, even if the import of it had savoured more of mud than +stars, it would have been studied for its style. He had the true +artist soul within him. He wished to create or represent what came +within the range of those brilliant dark eyes of his, so, with +infinite care and effort, he strove to attune his words to the even +cadence and harmony with which he wished to amaze us, for, as A.J. +Balfour said, "he was a man of the finest and most delicate +imagination, a style which, for grace and suppleness, for its power +of being at once turned to any purpose which the author desired, has +seldom been matched." It is difficult for those who knew him before +he had, by pure hard work, won his way to fame, to realise how one +physically so fragile, of so light-somely versatile and whimsical a +nature, apparently so ready to be diverted from the main high-road +by a desire to explore any brambly lane, had in him the deliberate +goal-winning gait of the tortoise. His stubborn tenacity of purpose +he owed to his antecedents. The Scot's inalienable prerogative of +pedigree exercised an influence over him, though he appeared as a +foreign ingraft upon his Scotch family tree. In his record of his +father's kinsfolk, A Family of Engineers, and in many of his essays, +he engages his readers' attention by confiding to them his own and +his forebears' history. "I am a rogue at egotism myself; and to be +plain, I have rarely or never liked any man who was not," he says. + +This Benjamin of Edinburgh's literary sons, the youngest, not the +least, was born in the very middle of last century, 1850. This babe, +that was to do Edinburgh honour yet, had been named after his two +grandfathers, Robert Lewis. He was a mixture of both, the inevitable +result of their diverse qualities, which he inherited. The Robert (a +name he was seldom known by in his youth) was from the Stevenson +side. They were a race of men of sterling metal, who lit our +Northern Lights, and from the besieging sea wrung footholds for +harbours. From them Robert Louis Stevenson inherited that tenacity +of purpose which made him write and rewrite chapters till his +phrases concisely expressed his meaning, and toilsomely labour till +his work was perfected. His minister grandfather he etched with the +"Old Manse." All his mother's people, the Balfours, were of a +sanguine, hopeful strain, retaining an elasticity of spirit which +never lessened under the burden of years. Stevenson writes of "that +wise youth, my uncle," who was a grey-bearded doctor when his nephew +thus referred to him. So from the daughter of the Herd of Men at +Colinton he inherited his perennial youthfulness. "He was ever the +spirit of boyhood," says Barrie, "tugging at the skirts of this old +world, and compelling it to come back and play." + +It was well for the boy that his mother had gifted him with her +hopeful nature, for his father had Celtic traits in his character, +and was oppressed with a morbid sense of his own unworthiness. It is +Carlyle who vouches for the fact "that wondrous is the strength of +cheerfulness, altogether past calculation its power of endurance." +Little store of bodily vigour had Robert Lewis; but with his +buoyant, enthusiastic, inquisitive spirit he accomplished a strong +man's task, "weaving his garlands when his mood was gay, mocking his +sorrows with a solemn jest." This treasured only son, worshipped by +his doting parents and his nurse, Alison Cunningham, who was a +second mother to him, reports himself to have been a good child. He +also says he had a covenanting childhood. In the mid-Victorian era, +a stricter discipline reigned over nurseries in Scotland's capital +than now. "The serviceable pause" in the week's work on Sunday was +not without real benefits, for the children of these times, if +sermons were long and the Sabbath devoid of toys, learned to sit +still and to endure, and very useful lessons they were to R. L. S. +and others. Despite being an extra model little soul," eminently +religious," he says, he was much like other children. His nurse +tells how, during one of the many feverish, wakeful nights he +suffered from, when he lay wearying for the carts coming (a sign to +him of morning), she read to him for hours at his request the Bible. +He fell asleep, soothed by her kind voice, to awake when the sun was +bright on the window pane. Again he commanded, "Read to me, Cummie." +"And what chapter would my laddie like?" she asked. "Why, it's +daylight now," he answered; "I'm not afraid any longer; put away the +Bible, and go on with Ballantyne's story." + +"I am one of the few people in the world who do not forget their own +lives," he boasted. His Garden of Verses testifies to the truth of +this statement. When he was a man over thirty, he bridged the gulf +of years, and wrote of the golden days of childhood. Not only do the +little people joy to hear his piping, but those who sit in the +elders' seat hearken to these happy songs of merry cheer coming to +them as echoes from the well-nigh forgotten past. His father often +sat by his sick-bed, and beguiled his small son from fears and pains +by tales "of ship-wreck on outlying iron skerries' pitiless +breakers, and great sea-lights, clothed in language apt, droll and +emphatic." His mother and Cummie read to him day and night. Thus +early the instinct of authorship was fired within him. + +One evening the young Stevenson realised that the printed page was +intelligible to him. It was as if a rock that barred his entrance +into the cave of treasure had melted, or swung back at his command. +Till then Louis had been keen, like other youngsters, on adopting +many professions when he grew up. Soldiering, even in the Crimean +War time, did not appeal to the girlishly gentle little chap, for, +as he shrewdly remarked, he neither wanted to kill anybody nor be +killed himself. When he learned to read, he saw before him all the +rows of books which he was told had finer stirring stories in them +than even those his father told him, and he resolved he, too, would +be a maker of tales. + +Those wide apart but penetrating eyes of his had caught sight of an +ideal guiding star to follow, viz., Literature. His juvenile +ambition to be a "Leerie licht the lamp" faded. To reach the gleam +which had enamoured him, he knew he must build with care and +patience, like his family of engineers, a tower to enclose or a +ladder to reach to this will-o'-the-wisp which inveigled him upward. +His mind teemed with ideas; but he saw he would have to serve an +apprenticeship to learn to weave smoothly together the web of his +fancy, till, in his verbal fabric, he had the charm of all the muses +flowering in a single word. + +He describes to us how he became a skilled artificer with his pen, +and how with obstinate persistence he taught himself daintiness of +diction. In his first book of travels he mentions how the branch of +a tree caught him, and the flooded Oise bereft him of his canoe. "On +my tomb, if ever I have one," he wrote, "I mean to get these words +inscribed, HE CLUNG TO HIS PADDLE." The paddle he chose was his pen. +It was the motive power which forwarded him along the river of life, +through shoals and rapids. When but a wee toddling bairn, he drew +his nurse aside and commanded her to write, as he had a story to +tell. He dictated to his mother, too, when a boy of six, an essay on +Moses. As a housebound child, he had to amuse himself. Skelt's +dramas were then his delight; but the life of every child is a +prophecy for those who know how to interpret it. His mother was +prescient, and fore-told her white-faced Louis had the light of +genius in those windows of the soul--the eyes. "Talent," she knew, +"was the result of human labor and culture." He dreamed, when but +four, he "heard the noise of pens writing." She took it and his +childish "Songstries" he sung as an earnest of his future. + +Louis' father, despite being, like Dr. John Brown's Rab, "fu' o' +seriousness," had odd whims, among others, an objection to schools +and lessons, so he raised no objection to his son's regulation +school-days being intermittent. When barely in his teens, Stevenson +was ordered South, and spent two winters abroad. He was a pupil at +Edinburgh Academy for a few years. Andrew Lang was there at the same +time; but, he explains, the future Tusitala,--"the lover of +children, the teller of tales, giver of counsel, and dreams, a +wonder, a world's delight,"--and he did not meet there, for Louis +was "but a little whey-faced urchin, the despicable member of some +lower class," when his future brother author was "an elderly boy of +seventeen." The pity was that the cosseted only son never rubbed +against his compatriot children in the discipline of the play- +fields, but in some of his summer holidays he tasted of the doubtful +pleasures of lantern-bearing and other boyish "glories of +existence." + +When the lad was seventeen, his parents leased Swanston Cottage, +which became their summer home, and a big factor in their boy's +education. It is a spot peculiarly secluded, to be within sight and +sound of Edinburgh, lying hidden in the lap of the hills, sheltered +"frae nirly nippin' Eas'lan' breeze and haar o' seas." It was there +Stevenson began deliberately to educate himself to become the Master +Stylist--the "Virgil of prose" of his contemporaries. These +Pentlands were to him always the hills of home. He lifted his eyes +to them from the old manse of Colinton, when he played there in his +grandfather's garden. He longingly, in gaps between the tall, grey +houses, looked for their familiar outline when winter prisoned him +in Auld Reekie. + +These pastoral hills, with their sweeps of heathy moorlands, appear +from first to last in his works. Two of his initial Memories and +Portraits depict his hill-folk neighbors, the Shepherd and the +Gardener. It was at a church "atween the muckle Pentland's knees" +that Archie Weir of Hermiston noted young Kirsty, and that same +"little cruciform place" was the scene of his "PETIT POEME EN +PROSE," where we can all spend a peaceful "Lowden Sabbath morning" +with his "living Scotch" sounding in our ears. However far away +Louis Stevenson roved, there was mirrored on the tablets of his +memory his own country, its speech, its very atmosphere. He wrote a +New Arabian Nights, but from the old (he tells us how his minister +grandfather envied him his first reading thereof) he had acquired +the secret of the magic carpet, and could be transported at will +from the tropics back to where the curlews and the plovers wailed +and swooped above the whins and the heather on his hills of sheep. + + + + +STEVENSON'S APPRENTICESHIP + + +In his early days, Louis was sociable, pleased when he met +compatriot children, ready to be dressed and go to parties. But +after he left school, his mood changed. He had been completely +sheltered from rebuffs, so, when he stood in the "palace porch of +life," and the peculiar accents of his mind were jeered at, he, who +had never tasted of a whipping, felt the smart of humankind, and +suffered sorely from "maladies incident to only sons." In the +"coiled perplexities of youth" he "sorrowed, sobbed, and feared" +alone. Blackford's uncultured breast had been meet nurse for Sir +Walter when he roamed a truant boy, but further south of the +becastled capital, topmost Allermuir or steep Caerketton became the +cradle of the next poet and master of Romance that Edinburgh reared. +There, in woody folds of the hills, he found, as he said, "bright is +the ring of words," and there he taught himself to be the right man +to ring them. When Swanston became the Stevensons' summer home, the +undisciplined Robert kicked with his fullest vigour against what he +called the Bastille of Civilisation and the bowing down before "the +bestial Goddesses, Comfort and Respectability." He was loudly +rebellious, and too impatient to follow the ordinary rules of life +or the sage advice, "Jowk and let the jaw gae by." + +An impression has arisen, because of his revolt in these years +against convention and creeds, that he was thwarted and +unappreciated in his home and its surroundings. On the contrary, he +was at liberty to indulge his Bohemian tastes and do much as he +listed. His father gave him a seemingly inadequate allowance. Yet +Thomas Stevenson was not a miserly man. He begged his son to go to +his tailor's, for he disapproved of the youth's scuffy, mounte- +bankish appearance. He supplied him with an allowance for travel--in +fact, R. L. S. had all his bills paid, and his own study in a very +hospitable home. R, L. S. owned books, and jewels were the only +things he felt tempted to buy. The 1 pound a month allowance, when +he left school, raised soon after to 82 pounds a year, was to keep +the money from dropping out of that hole in the pocket of his ragged +jacket, which never seemed to get sewed up. Books he had in plenty, +but his parents naturally did not treat him to strings of flashing +stones to wear over his shabby velvet coat, or twine round his +battered straw hat. His money affairs, like the table of Weir of +Hermiston, were likely all his life "just mismanaged." By the time +he settled in Samoa, his literary earnings were thousands a year; +and by then his quiet-living, hard-working father was dead, leaving +an ample fortune. Still he seemed haunted by fear of lack of means. + +Louis' love and admiration for his father was deep and sincere. At +his home, when guests gathered round the engineer's table, the boy, +with his eyes sparkling, listened to his father's "strange, humorous +vein of talk," then glanced round with a smile of expectation to see +how much others appreciated their host's well-told tales. "My father +was always my dearest," he wrote. This was a high certificate of +appreciation, when we remember he had the most devoted of mothers. +It hurt the son to the quick to deal his "dearest" a staggering +blow, and decline to follow his hereditary profession. Louis had +tried to be an engineer. He liked the swinging, smoking seas on +which they struggled for a site for sheltering masonry. As in the +case of other Stevensons, the romance of the work was welcome to +him, but the office stool frightened him. When the would-be author +had refused to follow in his kinsmen's footsteps, he promised to +study as an advocate to satisfy his father, who urged his son to +follow a recognised profession. Owing to his easy-going schooling +and lack of a settled course of study, the law classes were +excellent training for the erratic, mercurial-notioned youth. +Stevenson had the good fortune in 1869 to be elected a member of the +Speculative, the famed Debating Society where Jeffrey first met +Scott. There Stevenson encountered his contemporaries in years and +social standing, his superiors in debate, and he, "the lean, ugly, +idle, unpopular student," as he calls himself, enjoyed "its +atmosphere of good-fellowship, its vivid and varied interests, its +traditions of honourable labour and success." "Speculative +evenings," says R. L. S., "form pretty salient milestones on our +intellectual journey." He had gripped a deal of the foundations of +his hereditary trade when seemingly but a consistent idler. He +mastered the intricacies of law, and took to the abhorred office +stool so as to learn the better the workings of its slow machinery. +He tells us he only obtained the mastery of his pen by toiling +faithfully, but inborn in him was the art of talking. Even as a +petti-coated child, we read he gesticulated to aid his glib tongue. +W. E. Henley (whose acquaintance Louis made about 1875, and who +helped Stevenson with his chary praise and frank criticism) says of +his friend, "He radiates talk. He will discourse with you of morals, +music, marbles, men, manners, meta-physics, medicine, mangold- +wurzel, with equal insight into essentials and equal pregnancy and +felicity of utterance." + +Along with this ready affluence of speech, the youth had what good +talkers often lack, viz., the patience to hearken to others. +Stevenson shone best in what he called a little committee of +talkers, though his father and he used to argue a question together +for days; but, in the Speculative, he had at first to be a listener. +A candid fellow-member says, "I cannot remember that Stevenson was +ever anything as a speaker. He was nervous and ineffective, and had +no power of debate; but his papers were successful." In one of his +essays, touching on this select assemblage, Louis sketches what the +editor of the History of the Speculative Society, just published, +calls "a little Dutch picture; it focuses in vivid colour the +associations which rise in the memory at the name of the Spec.--the +stately old room aglow with many candles, the books, the portraits, +the pious commemoration of the dead,--famous men and our fathers +that begat us." "Stevenson," Mr Dickson goes on to say, "is the most +famous man of letters who has belonged to the Society since Scott. +No more interesting personality has ever been of our number, and no +one has in the public eye been more closely identified with the +Society." "Oh, I do think the Spec, is about the best thing in +Edinburgh," Louis exclaims, and twice he was President of the +"worshipful society." + +A contemporary of Stevenson's, Sheriff Guthrie, wrote in 1899, "I +knew Louis first in the Speculative Society; second, as a fellow +student in the University Law Classes; third, being called to the +Scottish Bar about the same time as a brother-in-law; and last, as a +friend with many interests in common. In the Speculative he spoke +frequently, and read some papers. We recognised his brilliancy, and +we delighted in his vivacity; but we misread the horoscope of his +future. We voted him a light horseman, lacking two essentials for +success--diligence and health. We wondered where he had got the +deftness and rhythm of his style, not knowing that the labour out of +which it was evoked was of itself sufficient to refute our estimate +of his powers of work. As to his health, we forgot behind that +slender, angular frame was not only a father's iron constitution and +a mother's nervous vitality, but his own cheerful spirit and +indomitable will." The Sheriff, in this letter to me, recalls +several reminiscences of Stevenson-some in a playful or contrariwise +vein, and another memory illustrates, he says, "the sweet +reasonableness which mingled with his wayward Bohemianism"; but +space does not allow me to quote more than how, "It seems but +yesterday that I met Louis in the Parliament House, and said I heard +he had got a case. And I seem to see the twinkle in his eye and the +toss of his arms as he answered, 'Yes, my boy, you'll see how I'll +stick in, now that I've tasted blood.'" + +Louis' mother showed this friend, Mr. Guthrie, a succession of her +boy's photographs, ending in wig and gown as an advocate. "That is +what I call from Baby to Bar," she said; and then added, beginning +with a smile, and ending with a break in her voice, "I said to Louis +once that the next collection would be from Bar to Baronet, and he +replied, 'It will be from Bar to Burial.'" Except at the "dear old +Spec.," he mixed little his equals in Edinburgh. As a writer in +Blackwood points out, at the period he had grown into swallow-tails, +Edinburgh was by no means devoid of intellectual company, which even +a famed Robert Louis need not have despised. But he abhorred +constraint and codes of rules. He was a born adventurer and +practical experimentist in life, and he explains he spent much of +his time scraping acquaintance with all classes of men and +womenkind. His insatiable curiosity made him thirst to taste of the +bitter as well as the sweet, to be pricked by the thorn as well as +smell the rose. He was quick to see the humorous side of a tale or +episode, but he was tenderly sensitive to ridicule. When he appeared +among his legal brothers-in-law in the Parliament House, a wit there +among the unemployed advocates in the old hall called him the Gifted +Boy. He winced under the laugh, and fled from "the interminable +patter of legal feet." He had cultivated notoriety by his shabby +dress and lank locks. He did not realise, as an American says, "If +you look as if you had slept in your clothes most men will jump to +the conclusion that you have, and you will never get to know them +well enough to explain that your head is so full of noble thoughts +that you haven't time to bother with the dandruff on your +shoulders." In a corridor in the Parliament House, where the men +called to the Bar keep open-mouthed boxes for documents to be +slipped in, one bore on its plate the inscription R. L. Stevenson. +When that alien-looking advocate with unsuspected gifts had cast off +the wig and gown, and had busied himself for years filling up reams +of paper with his thoughts and studies on people, places, and +things, sightseers going through the Courts would be shown this +unused box, which remained so empty while those around it of his old +rivals at the Spec, were full, as they were scaling the heights +which lead to titles and the Bench. + +Stevenson wrote of Edinburgh and her climate in a carping spirit, +nevertheless he accorded due praise to her unsurpassed beauty. "No +place so brands a man," he declared; and, in his turn, Stevenson +left his brand on the romantic city of his birth, for now no book on +Scotland's capital is written without mention of the haunts and +homes of that changeling-looking son of hers. The door-plate of 17 +Heriot Row bore the inscription of R. L. Stevenson, Advocate. No +blue-bag laden clerk dropped briefs then into its letter-box. In one +of its sun-facing drawing-room windows there stood a big Australian +vine, carefully tended and trained. It was behind it, in the far +window, the eighteen-year-old lad sat when, in the winter's +gloamin', Mrs. Fleeming Jenkin, calling on his mother, was startled +by his voice joining in the conversation. The visitor says, "I +listened in perplexity and arnasement. Who was this son who talked +as Charles Lamb wrote? this young Heine with the Scotch accent? When +I came away the unseen converser came down with me to the front door +to let me out. As he opened it, the light of the gas lamp outside +('For we are very lucky with a lamp before the door,' he says) fell +on him, and I saw a slender, brown, long-haired lad, with great dark +eyes, a brilliant smile, and a gentle, deprecating bend of the head. +I asked him to come and see us. He said, 'Shall I come to-morrow?'" +He called next day, for Louis grasped at anything or any person that +he felt drawn to. He took part in their theatricals, but otherwise +eschewed social functions in Edinburgh. An old friend of his +father's asked him to come to fill a gap at his table, though his +own son had informed him Louis never went to prearranged feasts. +Louis himself replied to this invitation: "C. is textually correct, +only there are exceptions everywhere to prove the rule. I do not +hate dining at your house. At seven, on Wednesday, his temples +wreathed with some appropriate garland, you will behold the victim +come smiling to the altar." The last words are characteristic of his +attitude when he was lured into society,--he went a willing victim, +with no affectation of martyrdom. The few who met him in Edinburgh +drawing-rooms found him prodigal of tongue, somewhat puzzling with +his wholesale enthusiasms, absurd flights of fancy, theories he had +to propound, and ever ready to change like a chameleon to tone with +his surroundings. The spritish, fantastic youth impressed those he +encountered, even when he was one of the unfledged eaglets hatched +in the ancient eyrie of his precipitous city, whom Browning tells us +are not counted "till there is a rush of wings, and lo! they are +flown," "What was so taking in him, and how is one to analyse that +dazzling surface of pleasantry, that changeful, shining humour, wit, +wisdom, recklessness, beneath which beat the most kind and tolerant +of hearts?" asks Andrew Lang. But not only through the magnetism of +his personal presence did he attract even strangers, but through his +pen has he held in thrall all the reading public who liked his work. +"He has put into his books a great deal of all that went to the +making of his life," wrote his cousin, "though he had the art of +confiding a good deal, but not telling everything." It would have +been interesting to see, if Stevenson had taken it into his elfin- +locked head to learn to shine in debate, and, instead of incubating +a budding Scott, as he said, "the Spec." had trained an able +advocate, if the glamour of his personality would have extended to +the judges, and made him, with his well-chosen words, a successful +pleader. The boards of the Parliament House were too well worn a +road for so tramp-blooded a man. The tune "Over the Hills and Far +Away" was for ever humming in his head. He left the venerable city +of his birth, which he vowed he must always think of as home, and +steered a course on his way to fame "far ayont the muckle sea" which +led him from the Bar to Burial. + + + + +ACROSS THE SEAS + + +As an advocate, Stevenson found ample time to pursue his chosen +profession of letters, for, during the winters in Edinburgh, he +wrote much, and gradually his essays, etc., appeared in magazines, +and are now gathered into happily named volumes. He spent the long +vacations, when the Courts had risen, abroad, mostly frequenting an +artist-colony in Fontainebleau. At that time he was full of a +project, in company with some congenial spirits, to form a +peripatetic club, buy a barge, and glide leisurely through Europe by +calm waterways. He had gone yachting one summer with a sea-loving +brother advocate up the west coast of Scotland. The memory of that +trip inhabited his mind, and he made his hero, David Balfour, when +"Kidnapped" sail by the self-same islands and seas. Louis was +persuaded by his boating friend, the following season, to embark +with him on a canoe trip through Belgium; and the log of that tour +became immortalised as An Inland Voyage, Stevenson's first book. His +travels did not end when he left his frail craft at Pontoise, for, +returning to Gretz, on the skirts of Fontainebleau, he first met his +future wife, and that led a few years later to his following her to +San Francisco, when she was free to remarry. + +He crossed the Atlantic and America as an Emigrant. That mode of +life proved too hard for him. He had sailed and paddled without hurt +in his fleet and footless beast of burden, the Arethusa. In the +ensuing year (1877), he travelled "Through the Cevennes with a +Donkey," slept under starry skies, or camped in plumping rain. Often +at home he buckled on his knapsack and tramped along the open road, +but in these trips, as in his two longer outdoor journeys, he had +the heavens above him. The Emigrant was crowded with his fellows, so +Louis arrived sick and sorry on the other side of the Atlantic, +where he had to support himself, having left his home against his +father's wishes. The rising author found his market value in America +low-priced, and his curiosity as to how it felt to be ill and +penniless was satisfied. After his marriage in 1880, Louis, his +wife, and her son became "Silverado Squatters," which proved a +happier venture, both for purse and constitution, than being an +"Amateur Emmigrant"; also, Mr Stevenson generously settled an income +on his son. + +In a perpetual pursuit of health, the writer and his hostages to +fortune rambled from the snows of Switzerland to the vineyards of +France, and finally settled for three years at Bournemouth. +Stevenson's undermined health grew worse; but he laboured on at his +work, from his sick bed. Some summers he spent in Scotland, and at +Braemar wrote Treasure Island: then Jekyll and Hyde brought him +notoriety. He was anxious to return to his Alma Mater, and be there +a Professor of History. A house in the cup-like dell of Colinton, +where every twig had a chorister, would have sheltered him from the +purgatorial climate; and the College, like the Courts, allowed long +vacations, spring and summer, to journey off to bask in the South. +But this plan, like the barge one, came to naught, for he was not +elected. The tales of tropic islands in the South Seas--"beautiful +places green for ever, perfect climate, perfect shapes of men and +women with red flowers in their hair and nothing to do but study +oratory and etiquette, sit in the sun and pick up the fruits as they +fall,"--remained in his tenacious memory. A guest at his father's in +1874 spoke of them, and the young Stevenson had stored the +description away in his mind, to be unearthed when he willed, as was +his habit. When first he heard of those favored spots, he had two +anchors which kept him bound to Edinburgh--his parents. The good +engineer died in 1887; and the other anchor, his mother, he found +could be lifted, and became the best of ballast. When he elected to +become a world wanderer, she left her Edinburgh home and, without +hesitation, went off with her son and his household when they turned +their backs on Europe in 1887. Her journal to her sister tells of +these travels "From Saranac to Marquesas." She simply but racily +describes their course, which ended in the cruise on the Casco. In +her book we enjoy genuine glimpses of the author, not so much as the +man who has written himself into fame, but her happy-tempered, hero- +hearted, eager-minded boy, who for forty-five years was all the +world to her. The invigorating cold of the Adirondacks had its +drawbacks, as had Davos; and Stevenson, who, a few years before had +felt the sharp pinch of poverty at San Francisco, now chartered from +there a ship of his own, and sailed away out of the Golden Gate, on +his South Sea Odyssey, to those islands he had heard of years +before, little thinking, as he listened "till he was sick with +desire to go there," that talk was to be as a sign-post to him where +to travel to. "For Louis' sake," his mother explains in her racy +journal letters, speaking of having chartered the Casco, "I can't +but be glad, for his heart has so long been set upon it, it must +surely be good for his health to have such a desire granted." Louis +warned his mother years before she had a nomad for a son, but she +had never objected, and sat knitting on deck, well content not to be +"in turret pent," but to go forth with the bright sword she had +forged. "She adapted herself," her brother says, "to her strange +surroundings, went about barefoot, found no heat too great for her, +and at an age when her sisters at home were old ladies, learnt to +ride!" After many wanderings through the warm ocean waters, with +"green days in forest and blue days at sea," the yachters finally +saw Samoa, and to the author it was the El Dorado of his dreams. +"When the Casco cast anchor," he avers, "my soul went down with +these moorings, whence no windless may extract nor any diver fish it +up." It was indeed a unique experience for one of the master workers +of the world, one whose subtle mintage of words had made his readers +his friends, to settle in an uttermost isle of the Pacific. He +throve there, and was able to enjoy the flavour of the life of +adventure he had craved for, and to look into the bright face of +danger. He built for himself a palace in the wild named Vailima. +From Edinburgh came out the familiar furniture he had been brought +up among, which had been the stage scenery of his chimney-corner +days, when the back bed-room chairs became a ship, and the sofa-back +was his hunter's camp. At Vailima he, like Ibsen's Peer Gynt, +received "a race gift from his childhood's home." He had in olden +times played at being a minister like his grandfather, to wile away +a toyless Sunday. When he grew into his unorthodox dark shirt and +velvet-jacket stage, he had been a rebellious, rather atheistical +youth; but at Samoa, maybe to please his truly good, uncanting +mother, or the sight of the belongings from his old home, made him +bethink himself of his father's reverent conducting of family +worship. He would have the same, but set to work and composed +prayers for himself. Beautifully worded they are, full of his gospel +of kindliness and gladness, and he read them with effective fervour +in the hall of Vailima, with his betartaned servants gathered round. +These devotional exercises of his have been quoted by the "unco +guid" to make him into what Henley severely styled "a Seraph in +Chocolate, a barley-sugar effigy of a real man." The religious faith +of Stevenson was the same as Ben Adhem's in Leigh Hunt's poem, who, +when he found his name was not among those who loved the Lord, +cheerily asked the angel to write him as one who loved his fellow- +men. The heavenly messenger returned + + "And showed the names whom love of God had blessed," + And "lo! Ben Adhem's led all the rest" + +To Stevenson, throughout his life, all the world was truly a stage. +He went gaily along playing his part, and when he came to Samoa, he, +on whose brows the dews of youth still sparkled, gleefully revelled +in the pomp and circumstance which allow him to make believe he was +a chieftain. He could go flower-bedecked and garlanded without +comment in among his adopted subjects. He paid deference to Samoan +codes of manners, a thing he had scorned to do in his native land. + +All his life he indulged in too few relaxations. The grim Scots +divines, whose "damnatory creed" Louis objected to so strongly, in +their studies, we read, reserved a corner for rod and gun. In his +library there was never a sign of sporting tools, not even a golf- +club. He was not effeminate; in fact, if "the man had been dowered +with better health, we would have lost the author," says one speaker +of him; but he simply never let go the pen, and, doubtless, his +singleness of purpose, his want of toil-resting hobbies, was +hampering to his health. Walking-tours, during which he was busy all +the while taking mental notes for some article, was no brain +holiday. In Samoa, he enjoyed the purest of pleasures, gardening. +"Nothing is so interesting," he says, in his VAILIMA LETTERS, "as +weeding, clearing, and path-making. It does make you feel so well." +But despite warring with weeds and forest rides, in an enervating +country, he wrote persistently through the swooningly hot days of +damp heat. + +"I have done my fiddling so long under Vesuvius, that I have almost +forgotten to play, and can only wait for the eruption and think it +long of coming," he wrote; and shortly after, in December 1894, it +came and smote him down to the earth with merciful painlessness. His +wife, his step-children, and his mother were beside him when, at the +highest water-mark his craftsmanship had reached, he paid the debt +to overstrain, and laid him down with a will. The closing act of his +life's drama befitted his instinct for effective staging. As he lay +shrouded in his nation's flag, the Samoans, who loved him, came to +pay their tribute and take farewell of their honey-tongued playmate +and counsellor, Tusitala. They counted it an honour to be asked to +hew a track through the tropic forest up which they bore him to his +chosen resting-place on the mountain top of Vaea, overlooking +Vailima, There a table tombstone, like that over the martyrs' graves +on the hills of home, marks where this kindly Scot is laid, with the +Pacific for ever booming his dirge. Samoa, heretofore, to most was +but a speck on a great ocean of another hemisphere. Stevenson +transformed it into a "Mecca of the Mind," where pilgrims, bearing +his name in remembrance, send their thoughts to do reverence at that +shrine where, + + "High on his Patmos of the Southern Seas, + Our Northern dreamer sleeps" + +no longer separated from his own country and kindred by a world of +waters, but, as another friend and poet said, divided from us now +only by the unbridged river of Death. + +Of his writings the list is long and varied, and forms a goodly +heritage. Like himself, they are compounded of many parts, for he +was essayist, poet, novelist, traveller, moralist, biographer, and +historian, and a Master of his Tools at all. Beside his own books, +through many of which we may make his intimate acquaintance, his +letters, and others telling the story of his life, form many +volumes. Stevenson advised every one to read often, not only the +Waverley Novels, but the biography of good Sir Walter. "His life," +he affirmed, "was perhaps more unique than his work," and that +remark applies to R. L. S. himself, as well as to his great +predecessor. Having burned his immature efforts when he was +following his own "private determination to be an author," when +ostensibly studying engineering, there are but two pamphlets, +printed in his boyhood, which are not written when he had acquired +his finished style. Louis' last creation, Weir of Hermiston, he +himself thought was his master-piece, and he was always his own +surest and severest critic. The portrait of the judge on whom he +modelled Hermiston, i.e., Braxfield, was not in Stevenson's advocate +days bequeathed to the Parliament House, but he had seen it in a +Raeburn Exhibition he reviewed. He recollected the outward semblance +of the man in his receptive memory till he resurrected Braxfield as +Hermiston. The half-told tale is in itself a monument which, +unfinished though it be, shows us how clever an artificer Louis had +become. + +And what manner of man to the outward eye was this gypsily-inclined +descendant of square-headed Scottish engineers? With his dark eyes +looking as if they had drunk in the sunshine in some southern land, +his uncut hair, his odd, shabby clothes clinging to his attenuated +frame, his elaborate manners and habit of gesticulating as he spoke, +he was often mistaken for a starving musician or foreign mountebank. +It is not surprising that continental officials doubted his +passport's statement that he was a Briton. In France he was +imprisoned, and he complains he could not pass a frontier or visit a +bank without suspicion. "A slender, boyish presence, with a +graceful, somewhat fantastic bearing, and a singular power of +attraction in the eyes and a smile were the first things that +impressed you," says his biographer. Like his mother, he remained to +the end of his life perennially young in appearance and spirits. The +burden of years never weighed him down or dimmed his outlook. His +face kindled and flushed with pleasure when he heard of a doughty +deed, a spice of wit, or some tale to his liking. Few drew him on +canvas in his lifetime, though he summered among artists. Sargent, +in 1885, did a small full-length portrait of him, which "is said to +verge on caricature, and is in Boston. W. B. Richmond, R. A., about +the same time, at Bournemouth, began another in oils, not much more +than laid in in two sittings." Louis sat to an Italian, Count Nerli, +in Samoa; but in this last portrait he looks painfully haggard, +reminding us of his own words, "the practice of letters is miserably +harassing." Because of the too brilliant light elsewhere in Vailima, +he was painted in a room which was close, and the air fatigued him. +While sitting, he wiled away an hour by making doggerel lines all to +rhyme with the artist's name, Nerli. The portrait was bought by a +Scotch-woman travelling in New Zeal and, where, after the author's +death, it had remained unsold. His mother, on returning to Scotland +when bereft of her boy, asked to see the picture again. She had +disapproved of it in Samoa, as it was over true a likeness, +representing him sadly emaciated. Seeing it again, she revoked her +former judgment, and wished to possess it, but the purchaser also +had grown to prize it. So it hangs in her drawing-room, near by +where the Eildons stand sentinel over Scott's resting-place. This +picture of him who lies on Vaea's crest looks down with a slightly +quizzical expression, as if amused at finding himself ensconced in a +place of honour in the house of strangers on Tweedside. Photographs +there are in plenty of Stevenson, and one snapshot, enlarged in the +Edinburgh Edition, recalls him looking up with "long, hatchet face, +black hair, and haunting gaze, that follows as you move about the +room." But his likeness was as difficult for the photographer, or +the sun, to catch, as for the painter to put on canvas, for the +peculiar fascination of the living man lay in himself, in the +elusive charm of his smile, and in his manner of speech. However, +his contemporaries have left their printed records of his appearance +and his peculiar personality. Henley's perfect description in verse +is too well known to need quotation. Ugly, Stevenson called himself, +but this was not so. He was original in looks and mind, his lank +brown hair straggled over his high forehead, and framed his thin, +high-cheeked, sallow, oval face. His brown eyes and full red lips +gave a dash of colour to his features. His schoolmate, Mr. Baildon, +says truly, "his eyes were always genial, however gaily the lights +danced in them; but about the mouth there was something of trickery +and mocking, as of a spirit that had already peeped behind the +scenes of Life's pageant, and more than guessed its unrealities." + +Repose he never tasted of, for his zest in life, his adventurous +inclination to explore, his insatiable curiosity, kept him ever +moving at topmost speed. To understand the mainspring which affected +the man's character--the machinery that supplied him with an +inexhaustible nerve force and vitality--Mr Colvin explains, "besides +humour, which kept wholesome laughter always ready at his lips, was +a perfectly warm, loyal, and tender heart, which, through all his +experiments and agitations, made the law of kindness the one ruling +law of his life." He marvelled, on his way through the Pilgrim's +Progress, why the man with the muck-rake grovelled in straws and +dust, and never looked up to the glittering crown held out for his +acceptance. This mulish blindness puzzled the boy, and when he grew +up, he opened the eyes, and illumined by his work and his example +the dreary-hearted who wasted their opportunities, not seeing the +number of beautiful things which made the world into a royal +pleasance. With tuneful words he persuaded those who plodded with +dusty feet along the high-road to pause for a while and saunter +among the greener fields of earth, and through the stimulating +courage that shone through every chapter he wrote, he, like his +sires, "the ready and the strong of word," has, by his works, left +lights to shine upon the paths of men. + + + + +End Project Gutenberg Etext of Robert Louis Stevenson, by E. Blantyre Simpson + |