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R. L. S. 
 
JL. J^ Oj^ertMrnAcyrb. aet.35. 
 
R. L. S. 
 
 BY 
 
 FRANCIS WATT 
 
 " E. L. 5., THESE FAMILIAR INITIALS ARE, I SUPPOSE, 
 THE BEST BELOVED IN RECENT LITERATURE, CERTAINLY 
 THEY ARE THE SWEETEST TO ME." 
 
 J. M. BARRIE 
 
 WITH A FRONTISPIECE IN PHOTOGRAVURE 
 
 NEW YORK 
 
 THE MACMILLAN COMPANY 
 
 1913 
 
 E.V. 
 
2 R. L. S. 
 
 with Stevenson. In etymology, especially Gaelic 
 etymology, all things are possible. However, what 
 is certain about the family is that they grew of a 
 stock of westland Whigs who dwelt in a corner of 
 Renfrewshire in the latter part of the eighteenth 
 century. For practical purposes their history 
 begins with our author's grandfather, Robert 
 Stevenson (1772 -1850). In 1796 his stepfather 
 Smith, the first engineer to the Commissioners of 
 Northern Lights, took him into partnership. He 
 married Jean, Smith's eldest daughter, for half a 
 century was himself engineer to the Commissioners. 
 He spent his life in a bouse built by his father and 
 stepfather, 1 and 2 Baxter Place. 
 
 There are strange points of resemblance and con- 
 trast between him and his distinguished grandson. 
 The seas and rocks of Scotland were less figured on 
 charts, less lighted and secure you might think, than 
 those South Seas on which the grandson sailed a 
 century later. The romance of the strange and the 
 unknown had its attraction for both generations. The 
 elder Stevenson was no student in his earlier years, 
 but later a continual worker. He was liked and 
 respected, though his hold was that of awe rather 
 than of charm. The most obvious difference was 
 the one was a man of action, the other a man of 
 thought. The one controlled materials and forces, 
 the other ideas. 
 
 The great exploit of Robert Stevenson was the 
 building of the Bell Rock tower on what is known 
 in poetry as the Inchcape Rock, with its legend of 
 the bell, and to old-time mariners in fact as a 
 
R. L. S. AND HIS PEOPLE 3 
 
 deadly peril. It lies off the mouths of the Tay 
 and Forth, and is about 1400 feet in length, of 
 which 427 are discovered at low water. From 
 1794 it attracted Stevenson. In December 1799, 
 during a great gale, many ships were cast away on 
 it, chief of them H.M.S. York, which went down 
 with all hands. This quickened public interest 
 and anxiety, but there were long and tedious 
 legislative and other preliminaries to be gone 
 through, and it was not till July 1807 that Robert 
 with a floating lightship and a sloop of 40 tons 
 burden, accompanied by a chosen band of seamen 
 and artificers, attacked the work. 
 
 It took four years, for from October to February 
 nothing could be done, and at other times the 
 difficulty was great. It was before the era of 
 steam, and the mechanical appliance of the day 
 seems to us puerile. Forges were built on the 
 Rock, then whenever the tide had sunk, sailors and 
 workers rowed from the ships to the uncovered 
 ground, lighted fires, mined, drilled, scraped with 
 feverish energy for a space of two hours or so, 
 until the tide rose. The workmen toiled up to 
 their knees in water, but presently the furnace 
 hissed in vain against the waves, and all was black. 
 Labour withdrew, carrying many of its implements 
 to the boats, among them the huge bellows which 
 sustained the fire. Not seldom the work was 
 hindered by terrific storms, the lightship tossed 
 so terribly that every minute it threatened to turn 
 turtle, or dash from its moorings on the rock. For 
 twenty-four hours at a time Stevenson never 
 
4 R. L. S. 
 
 closed an eye or swallowed a morsel of food, yet 
 the ship was no sooner free from danger of wreck, 
 the waves were no sooner reduced to manageable 
 height, than the heroic band, still suffering men- 
 tally and bodily, forced themselves to renewed 
 effort. Again the fire glowed and the chisel rang, 
 the smoke rose to the sky, and at length from the 
 ground there began also to rise the structure of the 
 tower. 
 
 In his journal Robert Stevenson recorded the 
 story in minute detail. His grandson was too 
 eminent an artist to spoil the natural force by 
 paraphrase or elaboration, he but pruned and 
 cleared away. It is the most interesting part of the 
 Records of a Family of Engineers, the finest of 
 Stevenson's efforts in biography. The story is full 
 of quaint detail, for here are the men and the 
 manners of another age. The master wished his 
 helpers to labour on Sunday, so he lectured them 
 as to works of necessity and mercy, which the 
 Shorter Catechism allows to break the repose of 
 the Scots Sabbath. His men discussed the point 
 with the unction of an assembly of divines. Yet 
 all were persuaded, save four, whereof three finally 
 gave in. Stevenson records with satisfaction that 
 on that day all toiled with peculiar energy and 
 solemnity. 
 
 Once there was a mutiny : the men thought they 
 had not enough beer, and yet the allowance per 
 man was three quarts {.er diem, with extra draughts 
 on special occasions ; also glasses of spirit were 
 doled out when the weather was stormy, or they 
 
R. L. S. AND HIS PEOPLE 5 
 
 were early at work or late at work, or when it was 
 the King's birthday, or when anything in fact the 
 least out of the usual happened. One man was 
 sent ashore, whereupon the others submitted. A 
 degenerate race can only wonder at and admire 
 the indomitable courage and persistence of all 
 concerned, the nice scrupulosity of their theological 
 convictions, the seasoned stomachs and seasoned 
 heads, untouched by even the mightiest draughts. 
 
 It goes without saying that in every effort and 
 every danger Robert Stevenson was first. No 
 band of men could have accomplished such things 
 without a leader of exceptional force. It is not 
 fanciful to compare those efforts in the face of 
 every physical discouragement with the toil of the 
 grandson who cut and chiselled page after page 
 of word symmetry and beauty through long years 
 of almost mortal sickness ; at work again whenever 
 the cruel foe relaxed his grip for a moment. 
 
 Robert had a large family, whereof three sons rose 
 to distinction. The eldest was Alan (1807-1865). 
 He was partner with his father, and in 1843 he 
 succeeded him as engineer to the Commissioners. 
 He built ten lighthouses ; the most famous of them 
 was Skerryvore. His only son was R. A. M. 
 Stevenson (1847-1900), known in the family circle 
 and beyond it as " Bob," the nearest and most 
 intimate of the friends of R. L. S. David Steven- 
 son, the third son (1815-1886), wrote his father's 
 life. Thomas Stevenson (1818-1887), the father 
 of R. L. S., was the youngest son. A cultured 
 and educated man, he followed the old paths with 
 
6 R. L. S. 
 
 glad acquiescence and intelligent conviction. He 
 had a good knowledge of Latin and was deeply 
 if not widely read. In 1846 he became partner 
 in his father's firm. In 1853 he and his brother 
 David were appointed engineers to the Com- 
 missioners of Northern Lights, which office he held 
 till 1885. He improved lighthouse illumination, 
 a fact gracefully referred to by the son in one of 
 his charming dedications. I do not know whether 
 the master or men who built the Bell Rock 
 would have considered him as one of themselves. 
 To us he seems rather of the older than the modern 
 world, and is, after all, mainly interesting as the 
 father of R. L. S. 
 
 Robert Lewis Balfour Stevenson was born at 
 8 Howard Place, Edinburgh, on 13th November 
 1850. He finally wrote his name Robert Louis 
 Stevenson. The initials R. L. S. became, in Sir 
 J. M. Barrie's words, the best beloved in recent 
 literature. Louis, he and his intimates always 
 pronounced with the final letter sounded. There 
 was a certain Bailie Lewis, Alderman Lewis as one 
 would say in the South, who was a prominent figure 
 in the municipal life of Edinburgh about half a 
 century ago. He was on the democratic or popular 
 side of local politics. There was nothing against 
 his character, and he ended reputably enough in 
 some city office, but the Stevensons were on the 
 other side, and strange as it may appear, R. L. S. 
 and his father carried the doctrine of touch not, 
 taste not, handle not to such an extent that it 
 led to the curious change in the spelling of a name. 
 
R. L. S. AND HIS PEOPLE 7 
 
 This trifle is significant. Old Scotland died slowly. 
 The old Scots got the reputation of being good 
 haters. It is difficult to conceive an incident like 
 this in the Edinburgh of to-day. 
 
 The Robert was after his grandfather the 
 engineer ; the Lewis was from his maternal grand- 
 father, the minister of Colinton, on the northern 
 slope of the Pentlands ; the Balfour from the 
 mother's family name. She was descended from 
 the Balfours of Pilrig, a distinguished family, 
 with wide connections, which brought R. L. S. 
 into line, so to speak, with some considerable 
 figures in Scots history. But a chance mention 
 by a great writer confers a vivid and ever present 
 memory more potent than ought else. R. L. S. 
 was justly proud that his grandfather Robert 
 had been honourably named by Scott in the 
 Preface to The Pirate. His great-grandfather 
 on the other side was the Rev. Dr. Smith of Galston, 
 in Ayrshire. He twice appears in Burns's verse. 
 The chief mention is — 
 
 Smith opens out his cauld harangues 
 
 On practice and on morals, 
 An' aft the godly pour in thrangs 
 
 To gie the jars an' barrels 
 A lift that day. 
 
 Burns, be it noted, adopts the language of the 
 godly only to mock at them, so both references are 
 highly complimentary. But you doubt if R. L. S. 
 was as pleased with the lines from Burns as with 
 those from Scott. From first to last, and more 
 and more in the last, he was moralist, preacher with 
 
8 R. L. S. 
 
 a passion for ethical and theological discussion 
 and dissertation, wherefore his intimates and even 
 acquaintances quoted the " cauld harangues " 
 till he was minded to fling the Opera of Robin at 
 their heads. 
 
 Ingenious writers have traced the strains of his 
 genius part to one, part to the other side of the 
 house. What he took from the brave and worthy 
 Scots lady who was his mother I cannot say. 
 It were possible to trace everything in him either 
 as action or reaction from his fathers ; truer and 
 better to put it down to " the unexpectedness of 
 genius." He arose even as Shakespeare did from 
 a good, sound, middle-class stock, a stock that 
 is the strength of England and Scotland alike. 
 You could not have predicted a wonderful flower 
 of genius from anything in Henley Street at 
 Stratford-on-Avon, and if possible still less from 
 anything in Howard Place in the New Town of 
 Edinburgh. 
 
 After two and a half years the family removed 
 to No. i Inverleith Terrace, which is but on the 
 other side of the street, so to speak. In 1857 
 they " flitted " to No. 17 Heriot Row, where they 
 abode for thirty years. Here the father died, 
 and then the family life was at an end, for the son 
 and the mother became wanderers. The son, as 
 we know, came not back, whilst the mother did 
 return to end her days, to die and to be buried, but 
 not at all to establish a new home. The ill-health 
 which pursued him through life was early developed, 
 so that his very existence was largely due to the 
 
R. L. S. AND HIS PEOPLE 9 
 
 devotion of his nurse, Alison Cunningham (1822- 
 1913). It is not rare that the nurse loves the 
 foster-child, whilst there are one or two cases where 
 the foster-child becomes a famous person, so that she 
 magnifies her office and dotes on his memory. But 
 what is rare is that the child should repay with 
 equal devotion yet with no touch of condescending 
 kindness, nay with gratitude and reverence, what 
 has been done for him. R. L. S. did this; pure 
 gratitude is a rare virtue, but he showed it in the 
 highest degree. 
 
 Through the influence of parents and nurse his 
 childhood was "Covenanting." The picturesque 
 legend of the Covenant so impressed itself on the 
 imagination of R. L. S. that it became of the very 
 essence of his being. It was a devout period in 
 Scotland. Fifty years earlier, at the beginning of 
 the century, the better middle class took religious 
 matters very easily, but the state of things that 
 led up to the Disruption of 1843, especially the Ten 
 Years Conflict which immediately preceded, caused 
 a quickening of certain phases of religious life. As 
 Mr. W. D. M'Kay has pointed out, it revived the 
 thoughts and sentiments of the Covenanting times. 
 True, the Stevensons remained in the Established 
 Church, but as the Reformation evangelized the 
 Church of Rome itself, so the Disruption quickened 
 the zeal of the remnant that remained. In after 
 years the Free Church was to lead the way in 
 strange advances and into entirely new paths, but 
 that belongs to the history of modern religious 
 thought in Scotland, and is not for us here. Steven- 
 
io R. L. S. 
 
 son never gave sign that he was interested in this 
 last development. Intellectually he had antici- 
 pated and outstripped it, but the Covenanting view 
 of things impressed on his imagination during his 
 early years curiously asserted itself more and more 
 towards the end. The " Shorter Catechist," to use 
 Henley's phrase, was never stronger than in Samoa. 
 The Stevensons, like most Edinburgh folk of 
 their class, left town for the summer months, and 
 ill-health multiplied those absences in the case of 
 their son. He was much at the Manse of Colinton, 
 till his grandfather died in i860. In 1867 his father 
 took a lease of the house known as Swanston 
 Cottage, also on the northern slope of the Pentlands, 
 two or three miles south-east of Colinton. For 
 fourteen years the family were there, and R. L. S. 
 has made those hills his own. Earlier, the 
 family had been at North Berwick, then and to-day 
 the Edinburgh Super Mare, just as Brighton is to 
 London. During these years his education had 
 been going on in a more or less desultory fashion. 
 In 1867 he went to the University. A curious 
 Sturm und Drang period, brought about by the 
 collision of opposite forces, followed. As it turned 
 out, R. L. S., who seemed for some time to 
 be steering fair and full on the rocks, made a 
 brilliant success. But we are not to blame his 
 advisers because they took the common -sense 
 view, nor are we to be such worshippers of success 
 as to praise him for the neglect of many ordinary 
 and wise rules. To do so is absurd. On the other 
 hand, there was a method in his madness. 
 
R. L. S. AND HIS PEOPLE n 
 
 The thing fell out in this way. His father was 
 a distinguished and prosperous engineer. His 
 grandfather had been a very eminent engineer 
 indeed. R. L. S. was an only son. The fates seemed 
 to have settled it beforehand that he must follow 
 his father's calling, the ancestral calling. And on 
 a hasty view there were things in him that pointed 
 in the same direction. At first he acquiesced ; 
 he went to the University chiefly to study engineer- 
 ing. From the first he neglected the class of 
 Fleeming Jenkin, the professor of that subject, 
 though with a touch of paradox he became the 
 intimate friend of the teacher himself. Whilst he 
 was neglecting not only this but every other class 
 which he was nominally attending there grew 
 within him the passion for letters, really the passion 
 of his life. Whilst he would have none of the 
 ancestral calling, he laboured in his own vocation 
 with all the ancestral zeal and energy. Himself 
 has told us how he practised, how he kept note- 
 books, how in the very famous and now hackneyed 
 phrase he played " the sedulous ape." But here 
 is another paradox. There is a chair in the Uni- 
 versity of Rhetoric and English Literature. One 
 would have thought that here at least the sedulous 
 ape would have been a sedulous student. Not a 
 bit of it ! He neglected this as well as the others. 
 He became afterwards on friendly terms with the 
 occupant, the late David Masson. Masson is in 
 truth rather a dreary writer, and Lowell's criticism 
 on him in this regard is justified, but he was a 
 profound scholar, a skilled instructor, a genial 
 
12 R. L. S. 
 
 and kindly man. His judgments were right, and 
 his taste excellent. Yet this perverse youth would 
 go his own way. And again with the best possible 
 results. Yet he is not to be applauded, for this 
 conduct showed or developed a strain of weakness in 
 him. He left an enormous deal unfinished, and at 
 critical periods some of his long stories break down. 
 
 He carried this neglect of stated times and 
 places to a much greater and more aggravating 
 and perplexing extent. Modern Edinburgh society 
 is conventional, precise, prim, formal, in speech, 
 in thought, in conduct, in dress, much given to 
 formal parties and to formal exchange of civilities. 
 If it does not rise very high, it is determined not 
 to sink very low. It is very exclusive. The 
 Scots Mrs. Grundy is fearfully and wonderfully 
 made, and is an absolute despot. The Stevensons 
 were people of position in Edinburgh and lived 
 in the best social life of the place. All this R. L. S. 
 detested with his whole heart and soul. He would 
 have none of the formal society. He found more 
 humour, more point, more salt in folk at the other 
 end of the social scale. He had friends of his own 
 class, but they were mainly of his own way of think- 
 ing. Now he has said of Fergusson, " It was not 
 choice as much as an external fate that kept 
 Fergusson in this round of sordid pleasures. A 
 Scot of poetic temperament drops as if by nature 
 into the public-house. The picture may not be 
 pleasing, but what else is a man to do in this dog's 
 weather ? " 
 
 This is almost a confession that hehimself ' 'dropped 
 
R. L. S. AND HIS PEOPLE 13 
 
 into the public-house." No doubt he looked on 
 the wine when it was red, or its Scots equivalent. 
 Now the public -house in Edinburgh is a very 
 different thing from the public-house in London. 
 It is frequented by a lower class of people. You 
 can scarcely " use " one in the North, to employ 
 a curious London vulgarism, and continue re- 
 spectable. There is well-founded reason for this. 
 Liquor in the form of whisky has a certain 
 unholy power over the Scot, and the better his 
 brain and the kinder his heart so much more 
 potent the attraction. The gloom of the climate, 
 the gloom of the national faith, the gloom 
 of the national character, all help to account for 
 this. And yet, by a certain magic, R. L. S. escaped 
 this real and very present danger. If he heard the 
 chimes at midnight, nay, if he lay among the 
 pots, it was but for a season. His physical or 
 mental constitution, his physical and mental 
 delicacy, the strength of his morals or his will, this 
 or something else scared him from the danger to 
 which many a friend succumbed. 
 
 Again, from carelessness or perversity, perhaps 
 it may be from inverted pride, Stevenson dressed 
 in the most outre fashion. Some men can do this 
 and still look distinguished. R. L. S. to the common 
 eye was not one of them. He was often accepted 
 as no better than a tramp. All this was enough to 
 flutter the family dovecot, but one other element 
 more extreme than all remains. However strong 
 the national faith, however rigid the spirit of 
 Scots Calvinism, there was always a violent opposi- 
 
14 R. L. S. 
 
 tion to and reaction from it in certain quarters, 
 and especially of later days, among the younger men 
 at the University. Extreme in belief, the Scot is 
 also extreme in his unbelief. The cheap acqui- 
 escence and practical neglect of the Englishman 
 is or at least was not his. Here Stevenson was 
 in accord with many another student. It was 
 impossible but that he should show that he did 
 not think as his fathers had thought on such 
 matters. It is not surprising that the impression 
 R. L. S. produced in Edinburgh, though he was 
 not then a sufficiently important person to make 
 any great impression at all, was that he was a 
 harum-scarum youth who had some skill in putting 
 words together, but who if he did not go under 
 would never make anything of a creditable appear- 
 ance. It was as such that I first heard of him. 
 
 When all is said and done, the two Stevensons, 
 father and son, must have possessed the strongest 
 affection for one another, and elements of under- 
 standing and compromise, or they would not 
 have arranged things as they did. Here his father 
 gave in, he could not consent to a career of a man 
 of letters. It was possible, no doubt, the father 
 must have reflected, to make a living by writing. 
 The journalist was a not unfamiliar figure, but again 
 journalism in Scotland had never quite the position 
 it has in England, and for good or for ill there was 
 nothing of the journalist about R. L. S. Now 
 there was the profession of the advocate. It 
 would of itself give a good position. It had the 
 command of one of the finest libraries in the world, 
 
R. L. S. AND HIS PEOPLE 15 
 
 the Stevenson influence was powerful in Edinburgh 
 and was likely to bring about a steady stream of 
 briefs, and if a man could write well he was surely 
 able to talk well, also if he could reason in private 
 he ought to be able to reason in public. Thus 
 R. L. S. turned to law, and in due time was admitted 
 an advocate, 16th July 1875. He did nothing. 
 He neglected the courts as he had neglected the 
 classes. 
 
 About these years he was abroad a great deal. 
 During his first visit the Continent attracted him 
 but little, but he soon came to have that love for 
 France which seems part of the nature of the Scot. 
 In the forest of Fontainebleau, and at Barbizon, at 
 Grez, and at Paris, he laid the foundation for that 
 intimate knowledge of French life which he after- 
 wards exhibited. On 30th June 1874 he had been 
 elected member of the Savile Club, which became 
 his London headquarters. Mr. Colvin, as he then 
 was, introduced him to Leslie Stephen, and it was 
 through Stephen that he made the acquaintance 
 of W. E. Henley, then a patient in the Old Infirmary 
 in Edinburgh, on the 13th February 1875. He 
 made an effort to see Carlyle, then in the height of 
 his great power, but he failed. In this failure 
 history had repeated itself. Scott had seen, and 
 only seen Robert Burns. Carlyle failed to see Scott, 
 because Scott was so immersed in business and 
 financial worries and anxieties as to neglect even 
 an introduction from Goethe. Carlyle in turn was 
 ill in body and mind, and at odds with the world 
 in general, or he would have condescended to see 
 
16 R. L. S. 
 
 R. L. S., whose fame was possibly to surpass his 
 own. This same year, 1876, was the year oi his 
 inland voyage with Sir Walter Simpson. In 1874 
 his paper on Victor Hugo's romances appeared 
 in the Cornhitt, his first contribution to that journal, 
 and in the years that followed we had Travels with 
 a Donkey and The New Arabian Nights, a series 
 that was supposed to account for the unpopularity 
 of the journal called London in which they appeared. 
 Such was the criticism of the time on those delicious 
 fantasies. 
 
 In 1876 he met Mrs. Osbourne at Grez. She was 
 living separated from her husband. She and 
 Stevenson fell in love with one another, so that 
 when in 1878 she was obliged to return to Cali- 
 fornia he followed next year, without consultation 
 with his parents. He felt that he could scarcely 
 make them understand his position. They did 
 not know the lady or her story. They would have 
 looked at the undeniable fact that she was a married 
 woman, whilst the explanation that it was proposed 
 to obtain a divorce and legally and properly unite 
 the lovers would only have made things worse. 
 Stevenson proposed to earn his living in America 
 as a writer. Perhaps he might, but he never had 
 a proper chance. He was struck down by severe 
 illness. His efforts after work in New York, San 
 Francisco, and Monterey were not very successful, 
 though he was toiling, on his own account, all the 
 time. It was then he wrote The Pavilion on the 
 Links, which some English critics have, oddly 
 enough, considered his best story. For the first 
 
R. L. S. AND HIS PEOPLE 17 
 
 and last time in his life he felt the actual pinch of 
 poverty. To this illness was added. He met the 
 strokes of ill-fortune with splendid courage, though 
 the evil days were only matters of months. From 
 April 1880 he was allowed an income of £250 
 a year from home. It was generous and prudent 
 on the father's part. It preserved as far as we 
 can see the son's life ; though it is probable that 
 what he then suffered brought about a bodily 
 state that was to render residence in Europe im- 
 possible. Mrs. Osbourne had in the meantime 
 obtained a divorce, and on 19th May 1880 he 
 married her as Fanny Van de Grift at San Francisco. 
 On 17th August 1880 R. L. S. and his wife landed 
 in Liverpool, where they were met by his father 
 and mother. Mrs. Stevenson the younger en- 
 deared herself to the parents of her husband. In 
 every way his choice seems to have been a happy 
 one. Such is his own testimony, and the testimony 
 of his intimate friends. There as elsewhere he 
 was to show the essential wisdom of his action in 
 spite of all appearance to the contrary. But that 
 is only from one point of view. It is difficult to 
 trace the ill-health from which he suffered during 
 the next eight years to anything but his privations 
 during the sojourn in America. He was a young 
 man of a healthy stock. It seemed probable that 
 he would outgrow his early maladies and be strong 
 and well. Everything promised fair. He was 
 happily married, on the best of terms with his 
 parents, not in want of money, finally settled in 
 writing as the business of his life as it was the 
 2 
 
18 R. L. S. 
 
 darling of his choice, then it was becoming every 
 day more evident that he was going to make a 
 great success ; though he came of a famous family 
 he was to be the most famous of them all, if the 
 Stevensons ended with him the end was to be 
 a climax of triumphs. Yet ill-health made the 
 next eight years a long-drawn-out tragedy, only 
 relieved by the invincible cheerfulness and courage 
 of the sufferer, and his constant labour, not merely 
 in the intervals but through days and nights of 
 pain. 
 
 In search of health he was driven forth again 
 as an exile to Davos in Switzerland, where the 
 high, pure air of the mountains is deemed excellent 
 for those suffering from any form of consumption. 
 The story of his residence there is the same as it 
 was in every fresh quarter : the change did him 
 good at first, but the benefit was gradually lost. 
 He himself spoke of the exhilaration of the mountain 
 air, though the narrowness of the life pressed upon 
 him. Here, however, he met John Addington 
 Symonds ; like him, driven to Davos Platz for 
 reasons of health. Next year he was back in 
 Edinburgh, and the summer found him at Kinnaird 
 Cottage, near Pitlochry. Here he wrote Thrawn 
 Janet, The Merry Men, and The Body-Snatcher . 
 It was from here, too, that he made an effort to 
 obtain the chair of Constitutional Law in the 
 University of Edinburgh. It was a strange thing 
 for Pegasus to run in harness, for the man who had 
 practically condemned University training to desire 
 to turn himself into a wheel of the system. But 
 
R. L. S. AND HIS PEOPLE 19 
 
 the chair was in the gift of the Faculty of Advocates, 
 and is always held by a member of their body, 
 whilst in practice it could not be held by a suc- 
 cessful advocate, a man engrossed in the ordinary 
 work of his profession. Thus the competition was 
 considerably restricted. As Sir Sidney Colvin has 
 pointed out, had he succeeded he must have almost 
 immediately resigned, for his ill-health must have 
 prevented him doing the work; but he could not 
 foresee that, and the position seemed eminently 
 desirable. It consisted of an hour's lecture five 
 days in the week for between two and three months 
 in the summer of each year. The lectures are 
 always about the same, so that when you had 
 once written them the chief of your labour was 
 done. The emoluments were an endowment of 
 something like £150 and a fee of £3, 3s. from each 
 student. R. L. S. knew Scots History well, Con- 
 stitutional History probably not at all. Perhaps 
 he could have got it up. Perhaps not. At any 
 rate, he would have made the dry bones of history 
 live in a way that, you believe, no professor had 
 ever done before. 
 
 It is the habit in Scotland to print testimonials 
 of your fitness for such posts, and his were all from 
 men who may fairly be called eminent. It is a 
 note of Scots testimonials that they are pitched 
 in too high a key, but those of Leslie Stephen and 
 Sir Sidney Colvin were as strong as the others, 
 of which some seem to us now slightly patronizing. 
 The most remarkable is one from Professor Churchill 
 Babington, Disney Professor of Archaeology at 
 
20 R. L. S. 
 
 Cambridge, which reads — name, designation, and 
 everything — as if it were a lost page of The New 
 Arabian Nights. The Professor was a relative of 
 our author, as he had married a Balfour cousin. 
 
 He is described by Sir Sidney Colvin as "a 
 Cambridge colleague of mine" and " of learned and 
 amiable memory." It was, however, not to be. 
 Learned bodies must respect themselves ; they are 
 not ready to promote those who treat them as 
 negligible quantities. Stevenson had not yet 
 greatly impressed the outer world. Even though 
 Edinburgh geese are said (to themselves and their 
 intimates) always to rank as swans, yet Edinburgh 
 is too old a town and too chill a town eagerly to 
 welcome a budding reputation. Your goose must 
 in his own small way have arrived before he can 
 rank as swan. Stevenson was not elected. 
 
 Through the influence of Dr. Japp, who visited 
 him in Braemar to discuss Thoreau, Treasure 
 Island was accepted for Young Folks, edited by 
 Mr. Henderson. It is creditable to Dr. Japp and 
 to Mr. Henderson that this was so ; also it was at 
 Mr. Henderson's suggestion that the name was 
 changed to Treasure Island from The Sea-Cook. 
 Surely an unpromising name for a romantic story ! 
 But you wonder what Stevenson was doing dans 
 celte galere. For the serial rights he was getting 
 little more than ten shillings a thousand words. 
 As Andrew Lang says, the market price ought to 
 have been better. Was the literary agent not yet 
 in the land ? or were there no publisher's readers ? 
 He afterwards got from Cassell's £100 for the book 
 
R. L. S. AND HIS PEOPLE 21 
 
 rights. Yet Mr. Henderson did by no means well 
 with his bargain. His young folk were indignant. 
 In the emphatic language of childhood, it was 
 "rot." Perhaps it was— for children ! But Mr. 
 Henderson took another. In The Black Arrow 
 R. L. S. wrote himself down for youth with almost 
 complete success. The circulation of Young Folks 
 went up by leaps and bounds. 
 
 The winter he again spent at Davos, and when 
 he came back to London he was for some time at 
 Weybridge and Burford Bridge. In September 
 1883 his early friend, James Walter Ferrier, died. 
 He felt the blow keenly, more in some ways than 
 any other loss. Before this he had gone to the 
 Riviera, first near Marseilles and St. Marcel, and 
 then, when driven from there by ill-health, to 
 Hyeres. Here, in the Chateau La Solitude, he and 
 his wife lived from March 1883 till June 1884. 
 It was a delightful place, and for some time at 
 least he was very well, though his rest was broken 
 by a serious illness in January. The doctors 
 thought that if they kept him alive till forty he 
 might go on to old age. 
 
 Three years (1884-1887) at Bournemouth fol- 
 lowed. Here he did the second series of The New 
 Arabian Nights, as well as part of the Plays, though 
 that is a long story. His friend Fleeming Jenkin 
 died in June 1885, to his great sorrow. He after- 
 wards wrote his Life. To the Bournemouth time 
 also belong the publication of A Child's Garden of 
 Verses; Kidnapped, which also first appeared in 
 Young Folks, with illustrations; Olalla; and in 
 
22 R. L. S. 
 
 one sense more important than all, The Strange 
 Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. With this last 
 Stevenson for the first time emphatically " knocked " 
 the public. It was a great popular success here, 
 and still more in America. He took decisive rank 
 as one of the first popular writers of the time. 
 
 On the 8th of May 1887 his father, who had 
 been in failing health, died. He went North on 
 the 6th, but was too ill to attend the funeral. At 
 the end of May he came South. Though he knew 
 it not, he was to return to Lochaber no more. He 
 was never again to see the city and the land for 
 which he cherished so passionate an affection. 
 In August there was another break, for with his 
 wife and widowed mother he left London for 
 America. He was not again to visit England. 
 On the 7th of September the party reached New 
 York. Crowds of reporters and callers, and invita- 
 tions, and in short all the inconveniences of 
 celebrity, awaited him. He made his home on 
 the shore of Saranac Lake, near the Adirondack 
 Mountains, where he wrote The Master of Bal- 
 lantrae. But his health continued dubious, and it 
 was almost an inspiration of genius that led him 
 to charter the yacht Casco, wherein on 28th June 
 1888 he sailed on what was to be three wandering 
 years in the South Seas. 
 
 Here again the question of money was of vital 
 importance. His father's death had placed him 
 in immediate funds, and he was paid for writing 
 in what he thought the American lavish way. At 
 Honolulu he finished The Master of Ballantrae. 
 
R. L. S. AND HIS PEOPLE 23 
 
 Finally he made his home at Apia, in Samoa. He 
 bought land and built a house, which he called 
 Vailima, which means the Five Waters. Above it 
 rose the mountain Vaea. Here he did much of 
 his best work. His letters from the South Seas 
 have never been widely popular, but the book 
 entitled In the South Seas, compiled from the best 
 of them, is at least eminently readable, though 
 the subject be remote and the treatment often 
 didactic. Here also he did Catriona. He began 
 and almost finished St. Ives, and he began Weir of 
 Hermiston, his last great romance. Various things 
 he started and never lived to complete. 
 
 In the closing days of 1893 we picture him as 
 full of life and energy, though not in perfect health, 
 the centrepiece of a large household whose affairs 
 he ruled with prudent wisdom, graver than of 
 yore, perhaps, more of the " Shorter Catechist," 
 following more in the ways of his father and grand- 
 father, though always a modern man, a frequent 
 and generous host, a not rare guest at the houses 
 of native chiefs, and an important political per- 
 sonage in the island — the most romantic of literary 
 figures in modern history, his works and days 
 an object of perpetual interest to educated men 
 throughout the world. And then with appalling 
 suddenness he vanishes from the earthly scene. 
 On the morning of Monday, 3rd December 1894, 
 he was at work and in apparent good health, when 
 he was struck down, and died in the evening at 
 ten minutes past eight. He was buried the next 
 day on the summit of Vaea. On his tomb were 
 
24 R. L. S. 
 
 written these lines, his own requiem, well known, 
 yet improper here to omit : — 
 
 A Q 
 
 „ Robert Louis Stevenson 
 
 1850 1894 
 
 Under the wide and starry sky, 
 Dig the grave and let me lie. 
 Glad did I live and gladly die, 
 And I laid me down with a will. 
 
 This be the verse you grave for me ; 
 Here he lies where he longed to be ; 
 Home is the sailor, home from sea, 
 And the hunter home from the hill. 
 
CHAPTER II 
 
 A WALK THROUGH STEVENSON'S 
 EDINBURGH 
 
 I INVITE the reader to walk with me to the 
 chief places in Edinburgh where R. L. S. lived 
 and worked and played. First we seek the 
 original Stevenson home. Thomas Smith, the 
 stepfather of Robert Stevenson, the grandfather 
 of Louis, built for himself the " land " known as 
 i and 2 Baxter Place. Here he lived, and Robert 
 lived, and Thomas also in his early years. Baxter 
 Place is one of the subdivisions of Leith Walk, 
 the name of the long street which leads from Edin- 
 burgh to Leith. It is on the east side, almost 
 opposite Picardy Place. That street is on the site 
 of the village of Picardy, where the French weavers 
 of old plied their looms. Baxter Place is a terrace 
 of houses, solid-looking, plain, old-fashioned, all 
 after the pattern of Number i. Formerly it stood 
 some way back from the street, with a vacant 
 space before it ; but ground is now valuable in that 
 locality, so shops are built in front, one story high, 
 and yet leaving ample room for pavement. The 
 age of the house shows it to have been that which 
 Thomas Smith built for himself. 
 
 If we walk along Picardy Place it takes us to 
 
26 R. L. S. 
 
 Broughton Street, which again reminds us of the 
 old Borough of Barony called Broughton. We 
 turn to the right, and keep on bearing a little to 
 the west, till we come to the Water of Leith, which 
 we cross by a bridge, and are in Howard Place. 
 Thomas Stevenson was married to Miss Balfour in 
 1848, and it was in this street they made their 
 first home at Number 8. Authors do not choose 
 their own birthplaces, nor do a committee of 
 literary experts. The ideal spot had perhaps 
 been Huntly House in the Canongate. Howard 
 Place is a totally undistinguished street, and 
 Number 8 is also without distinction. It consists 
 of two stories and a sunk basement, marked off 
 by a railing, which is partially masked by creepers. 
 Number 1 Inverleith Terrace, to which they moved 
 when Louis was three, is nearly opposite, but a 
 little farther north. It is all the same street. 
 This has also two stories and a basement. There 
 are two stone vases on the roof by way of decora- 
 tion. The houses are both of the same class. If 
 the street is commonplace it is cheerful, and has 
 an air of modest prosperity and propriety, con- 
 ventional but reasonably and properly so. 
 
 The way has another connection with letters. 
 W. E. Henley had his abode there during the time 
 in the nineties when he was editing the Scots 
 Observer. R. L. S., then in the South Seas, was 
 an occasional correspondent. He contributed his 
 fine lines, In Memoriam E. H., on the death 
 of Henley's mother, and his letter in defence of 
 Father Damien. In talking of him Henley once 
 
THROUGH STEVENSON'S EDINBURGH 27 
 
 called my attention to the fact that he had been 
 born in that street. Even then the house was 
 regarded with interest. The cable tramways grind 
 through Howard Place all day long, turning what 
 would have been a very quiet street into a rather 
 noisy one, but they afford an easy means of getting 
 there from Princes Street. 
 
 Thomas Stevenson was a rising man. In 1857 
 he moved into 17 Heriot Row, which was the 
 family house till his death. This was a decided 
 advance. It has large comfortable rooms. It 
 has three stories, with a basement and stone steps 
 up to the door, fit home for a well-to-do Edinburgh 
 citizen. You gain the Row from Howard Place, 
 either by retracing your steps up by Broughton 
 Street and turning off at Albany Street, or going 
 up by the cable tramway, which cuts through it. 
 Like some of the more favoured Edinburgh streets, 
 it faces gardens; only, as far as Heriot Row is 
 concerned, it loses by doing so the front view of 
 the shores of the Forth and Fife and the Highland 
 hills, that most striking effect which you get from 
 the cross streets of the New Town. 
 
 There are points of interest in Heriot Row. It 
 is called after George Heriot, " Jingling Geordie," 
 the famous goldsmith of James VI and I. The 
 ground belongs to the Hospital he founded at 
 Lauriston. At least, the Hospital is the " superior," 
 as it is called in Scotland, or ground landlord. 
 Long ago the place was called "Wood's Farm." 
 Here " Long Sandy Wood," the eccentric Edinburgh 
 surgeon, was born in the farmhouse in 1725. But 
 
28 R. L. S. 
 
 that was before the New Town was thought of. 
 Heriot Row is not in the original New Town, which 
 stopped at Queen Street, on the other side of the 
 gardens. It was built early in the nineteenth 
 century, when some fifty years' experience had 
 convinced the citizens that the place was destined 
 to grow and spread to an extent they had never 
 thought of. Henry Mackenzie, the " Man of 
 Feeling," who died in that street on 14th January 
 1831 at the age of eighty-six, the connecting link 
 between widely different literary periods, used to 
 tell how he shot snipe and all manner of game on 
 Wood's Farm. Other " residenters " almost as 
 well known were the Reverend Archibald Alison 
 and his son, Sir Archibald Alison. The father wrote 
 a once famous Essay on Taste, and the son a once 
 famous History of Europe during the French Revolu- 
 tion, described by a political partisan, not of the 
 same way of thinking, as a " Tory pamphlet in 
 twenty volumes." The gardens, called the Queen 
 Street Gardens, are reserved for those who inhabit 
 the houses which overlook them. The stranger 
 can only admire through inexorable iron railings 
 the shady walks and the trim-kept plots. It was 
 not always thus. The New Town did not spring 
 into being right off. It is the result of much 
 evolution and change. The gardens were once a 
 neglected spot. It was the land between the first 
 and second New Town; it was no-man's-land, a 
 perfect waste where clothes were hung out to dry. 
 However, some Quintus Curtius of a builder jumped 
 into the gulf, and raised the first house, Number 13. 
 
THROUGH STEVENSON'S EDINBURGH 29 
 
 It was thought a mad speculation ; from Queen Street 
 across the waste the solitary pile looked forlorn. 
 But it soon had company, and after some twenty 
 years the gardens were closed in with iron railings, 
 planted with shrubberies, and made generally 
 ornamental. Progress was retarded because the 
 Earl of Wemyss had a house in Queen Street, and 
 the grounds attached to it were shut in by a high 
 wall which stood in the way. However, this was 
 done away with in time. The Earl of Wemyss was 
 said to be the last of the old order of nobles who 
 had his Edinburgh house. However, the Wemyss 
 house passed from the family in the early part of 
 the nineteenth century. 
 
 In the gardens evening fetes were given . Lanterns 
 glittered from the trees . Ladies lightly and elegantly 
 clad flitted over the lawns, and the Edinburgh 
 ragamuffins, gazing in considerable number through 
 the railings, perhaps assumed that the daring 
 experiment was got up for their entertainment. 
 Daring it was, for the east wind must not blow, and 
 the " haar " must hold off, and it must not rain, 
 and these are only some of several assumptions. 
 There was a chance, however, of the perfect evenings 
 with their long-drawn-out magic nightfall that the 
 Scots summer sometimes gives. I saw No. 17 Heriot 
 Row in the autumn of 1912. It was unoccupied 
 and to sell, so had the forlorn air which immediately 
 gathers about the empty house. I know not if 
 the price was raised because it had been the Edin- 
 burgh home of R. L. S. for many years. There is 
 still a lamp-post in front of No. 17, but no one 
 
30 R. L. S. 
 
 uses a ladder to light street lamps nowadays; 
 doubtless some up-to-date Leerie does it by a touch 
 of his wand. 
 
 Those were the homes of R. L. S. in Edinburgh. 
 Next come the places of education between 1857 and 
 1867. All but one may be dismissed with a word. 
 If you walk westward along Heriot Row you come 
 to a street running north called India Street, where 
 Mr. Henderson had a preparatory school. Mr. 
 Henderson was always reported a careful and 
 accurate teacher. I had some slight acquaintance 
 with him ; he struck me as pedantic, but after all 
 that is the way of his calling, especially in its lower 
 walks, and he had no pretension to scholarship, 
 which except in an elementary form cannot count 
 for an advantage in such work. If he did not make 
 very much of R. L. S., no one will blame him. 
 Again, in Frederick Street, which is one of the streets 
 that run north from Princes Street on the line of the 
 cable tramway, a Mr. Thomson kept a school where 
 special attention was given to boys who required 
 it from their health or otherwise. The father 
 thought the system suitable for a boy not in strong 
 health, of curious individual habits and tastes 
 and fancies, that made him unfit for the rough-and- 
 tumble of a schoolboy's life. Here he remained on 
 and off for about three years in 1864-1867. For 
 one term he was at a boarding-school in Spring 
 Grove, Isleworth. Spring Grove is a long suburban, 
 almost semi-rural street beyond Brentford, close 
 to Isleworth Station. In Stevenson's time the rural 
 note was stronger, for miles of houses and several 
 
THROUGH STEVENSON'S EDINBURGH 31 
 
 lines of railway have been added to the locality. 
 The title " Grove " is not quite nominal, as it is 
 planted with a profusion of trees in the street itself 
 and about the houses. Young as he was, for he 
 was but fourteen, it was from his term there that he 
 drew what he ever learned of ordinary English youth. 
 The Spring Grove Academy was the usual English 
 boarding-school of the period, peopled by average 
 John Bull types. He did not like them, though 
 in the Foreigner at Home he has a just and far- 
 sighted criticism of the class — from his point of 
 view. 
 
 He was at the Edinburgh Academy for a year and 
 a half, and that important institution, both in itself 
 and to himself the most important of his schools, calls 
 for some mention. It is not quite a hundred years 
 old. The conception occurred to Lord Cockburn, 
 who lived at Bonaly Tower, not far from Colinton, 
 on the slope of the Pentlands, as he took one of his 
 favourite walks on the hills. It was to be a classical 
 school on the English model. Dr. Johnson's sneers 
 at Scots learning struck deep. The weakness of 
 Scots youth in quantities, which Pitcairne and 
 Professor Dalzel, though clerk to the General As- 
 sembly, had ascribed to the Solemn League and 
 Covenant, was to be remedied. With Lord Cockburn 
 was Sir Walter Scott as another founder. It seems 
 curious that two such pronounced Scots should have 
 hankered after English methods. The foundation 
 stone was laid on the 30th June 1823 on ground 
 " fued," or obtained on perpetual lease in the lan- 
 guage of the South, from the Governors of Heriot's 
 
32 R. L. S. 
 
 Hospital. Its masters, head and otherwise, have 
 often been English scholars, sometimes English 
 churchmen ; and in the school the now almost 
 obsolete, and, one may say, discredited method of 
 pronouncing Latin as if it were English was adopted. 
 It became, and continued for many years, the 
 fashionable Edinburgh school. An Archbishop of 
 Canterbury, a Lord Chancellor, many eminent 
 Professors and Senators of the College of Justice, were 
 pupils. In less than fifty years — namely, in June 
 1863 — Fettes College was founded on the slope of 
 Comely Bank, between Edinburgh and the Firth. 
 It was a more exact model of an English public 
 school than the Academy could pretend to be, and 
 deprived the Academy of its place as the first classi- 
 cal school of Edinburgh. It was inevitable that 
 a boy, a day scholar of the position of R. L. S., should 
 attend the Academy, and so he did. It is some 
 half-mile as the crow flies due north from Heriot 
 Row. It is in Henderson Row, long, one story in 
 height, of classical aspect, with a Latin inscription 
 and a Greek motto inscribed on its walls. There 
 is a huge gravel playground in front, and a consider- 
 able gate with square stone pillars. Next to it on 
 the west is the Deaf and Dumb Institute. Many a 
 moral and many a sage reflection, to the most 
 opposite effect, however, have been drawn from the 
 juxtaposition of the two buildings. The street is 
 on the downward grade, a poor locality for a 
 famous school ; but the ups and downs of city life 
 in Edinburgh have played wilder pranks. R. L. S. 
 in after years addressed in witty and cheerful Scots 
 
THROUGH STEVENSON'S EDINBURGH 33 
 
 verse a dinner club of his former class-mates-. It 
 began — 
 
 Dear Thamson class, whaure'er I gang 
 
 It aye comes ower me wi' a spang, 
 
 " Lordsake ! thae Thamson lads (deil hang, 
 
 Or else the Lord mend them I) 
 An' that wanchancy annual sang 
 
 I ne'er can send them I 
 
 The " Thamson " referred to was Mr. d'Arcy Went- 
 worth Thompson, who was afterwards Professor of 
 Greek in Queen's College, Galway. His Day-Dreams 
 of a Schoolmaster made a considerable sensation 
 in their own day. 
 
 In after years R. L. S. regretted that he had not 
 been at the High School, which you trace back to 
 the beginning of the sixteenth century. Once it 
 stood where is now the Old Infirmary, but in the 
 years 1825-29 it was removed to the southern 
 slope of the Calton Hill. It is a beautiful and 
 imposing building. Looking up to it from the 
 Canongate Churchyard in certain lights, you get 
 the finest architectural effect in new Edinburgh. 
 In outward show it " bears the gree " above the 
 Academy ; perhaps the Town Council had an eye 
 on Henderson Row when they piled those stones 
 together, but they did not recapture the genteel 
 citizen. Thomas, the father of R. L. S., had 
 attended the High School, and had walked in the 
 procession of boys from the old site to the new. 
 It was not this that weighed with Louis. It was 
 that the High School was antique, essentially Scots, 
 and Edinburgh Scots. 
 3 
 
34 R. L. S. 
 
 We must now turn our steps to the University, 
 the old College in South Bridge Street, the classes 
 of which Louis attended, or made the pretence of 
 attending, for some years. Here you are emphati- 
 cally reminded that the Edinburgh of R. L. S. is 
 not the Edinburgh of to-day. The new Infirmary 
 in the Meadows, the new University buildings in 
 Teviot Place, the huge M c Ewan Hall, and other great 
 erections to the west of the old College, throw it into 
 the shade ; nay, the design of Adam the architect 
 had not then been fully carried out, for it was not 
 till 1887 that the dome was supplied. Student 
 life has become more corporate and a little more 
 regulated since his time. It is still marked by much 
 individualism. A student is left to the freedom of 
 his own will. He lives anywhere and anyhow. He 
 must attend the classes or he does not get the class 
 certificate ; but the roll is not called every day, and 
 the professors are fairly lenient. Louis was so 
 outrageous and even ostentatious an absentee that 
 he had difficulty on several occasions. 
 
 If you walk over the North and South Bridge 
 southward, you soon come to the old College on 
 the right hand. It is a huge classical building. 
 There is a raised way by which you can walk round ; 
 from this the classrooms open — such as are on that 
 floor at any rate, for there are others above. During 
 the session every hour the bell clangs, and a tide 
 of youth sweeps out, part through the huge gate 
 to the street, the others broken up into eddies and 
 cross currents as they stream into other rooms. 
 This is changing classes, and if you follow them into 
 
THROUGH STEVENSON'S EDINBURGH 35 
 
 one of the rooms, you will find a man in a gown seated 
 on a platform talking to a number of students who 
 sit on benches of different altitudes, so that all may 
 see and be seen. Most appear to be taking notes, 
 though on the least excuse, or without excuse, they 
 break into violent applause. Such were the classes 
 that Louis attended, or did not attend. Let one 
 who has been through the mill speak the truth 
 about it. If you are interested in the subject, 
 anxious to get a prize, keen to do well, the hour 
 passes speedily by, and may be called enjoyable. 
 If the subject or its treatment be distasteful, or 
 you have no ambition in that direction, nothing can 
 be more dreary and distasteful than that never- 
 ending hour. Without actual physical pain, it 
 afflicts the unfortunate student with a sense of 
 extreme misery. Idleness and inattention are their 
 own severest punishment. Once lose interest in 
 the classes, and failure to attend is almost inevitable. 
 Thus the case of Louis is not solitary or even ex- 
 ceptional. Only he was a man of genius. 
 
 One feature of the University is the students' 
 debating societies. These hold meetings usually 
 weekly in the evenings. R. L. S. belonged to the 
 mostfamous of these — to wit, the Speculative Society. 
 With him here were James Walter Ferrier and Charles 
 Baxter, his devoted friends in after life. He has 
 described the rooms — " a hall, Turkey-carpeted, 
 hung with pictures, looking, when lighted up with 
 fire and candle, like some goodly dining-room; 
 a passage-like library walled with books, and their 
 wire cages ; and a corridor with a fire-place, benches, 
 
36 R. L. S. 
 
 a table, many prints of famous members, and a 
 mural tablet to the virtues of a former secretary." 
 This Stevenson attended for about three years, 
 with considerable irregularity. Another University 
 institution, not so reputable, though in its way 
 quite respectable, must be noted, for R. L. S. was 
 there not infrequently. In a letter of 6th September 
 1888 we have : " All I hoped and feared, as I pickled 
 about Rutherford's in the rain and the east wind." 
 He goes on to say how things had come out much 
 better than he expected — that " I should like the 
 incident set upon a brass plate at the corner of that 
 dreary thoroughfare for all students to read, poor 
 devils, when their hearts are down." Now the 
 " dreary thoroughfare " referred to is Drummond 
 Street. The old College is on the west side of 
 and faces South Bridge Street ; Drummond Street 
 is opposite, on the east side. Along the north of it 
 ran the old town wall, Flodden Wall as it was always 
 called, and here too was the house of Kirk o' Field. 
 Kirk o' Field itself was where is now the old College 
 — famous as the scene of the murder of Darnley, 
 the great tragedy of Mary's reign, and the immediate 
 cause of her ruin. The "Rutherford's" men- 
 tioned by R. L. S. is and was a small public-house 
 restaurant, one of several held by the same firm 
 in Edinburgh and Leith. It was a " howf," to use 
 a Scots expression, or haunt of R. L. S. by day or 
 by night. It is the habit in Scotland to divide 
 such places by wooden partitions into little rooms, 
 each with a table in the centre, a cushion bench 
 surrounding the table, and a bell to summon the 
 
THROUGH STEVENSON'S EDINBURGH 37 
 
 attendant. When the door is shut, you obtain 
 that privacy dear to many a Scot, to whom the 
 imbibing of liquor is an act of dear, sinful enjoyment. 
 These little rooms are technically termed " boxes." 
 They form no bad resort from an inclement Edin- 
 burgh night, with its rain and wind ; no bad place 
 for talk on art or morals, or letters, or what not. 
 And so Rutherford's, which I take as a type of 
 its class, is not to be neglected by the thorough 
 Stevensonian. 
 
 But paulo majora canamus. We move on to the 
 Parliament House opposite St. Giles'. Louis was 
 admitted an advocate on 15th July 1875. Custom 
 requires young advocates to walk the ancient hall 
 where the Parliament of Scotland once sat, and 
 so is still called the Parliament House, for several 
 hours in the forenoon. As most of the legal youth 
 walk there to no profitable purpose, it is truly 
 a salle des pas perdus. The hall is one of the 
 finest in Scotland, which is not rich in such monu- 
 ments of the past. It has a noble oak roof, a stained- 
 glass window representing the foundation of the 
 College of Justice by James V, many portraits 
 and busts of famous lawyers. The courts open 
 off it, and underneath in the Laigh (or low) Parlia- 
 ment House is the Library of the Faculty of Advo- 
 cates, one of the very best in Britain, and very much 
 the best in Scotland. It was founded by Sir George 
 Mackenzie on the eve of the Revolution, and its 
 books occupy the very space where the " Bluidy 
 Advocate" and his fellows tortured the Cove- 
 nanters. The sorrows of the unsuccessful lawyer 
 
38 R. L. S. 
 
 do not excite the sympathy of the outside world. 
 He is usually a man of some little means, so that 
 actual want is a very remote possibility. His life 
 is dreary enough for all that, so the daily promenade 
 became speedily as intolerable to R. L. S. as even 
 college classes had been. And it was even easier 
 to get rid of. Nothing shows that he even betook 
 himself to the library to any extent. In after years, 
 fate prepared for him a curious Nemesis. He was 
 writing on Scots history, and required books not 
 easily to be come at, old files of the extinct Edin- 
 burgh Courant, Lauder of Fountainhall's Decisions, 
 and so forth. Such of those as he could procure 
 he procured with great difficulty, loss of time, 
 temper, and money. In those early years their 
 use was to be had for a word, but that word was 
 not spoken. 
 
 Your interest in R. L. S. will lead you to visit, 
 at least, three Edinburgh graveyards. His Pictur- 
 esque Notes is the gem of all books on Edinburgh, 
 and the gem of the Notes is Greyfriars. Yet he 
 expresses a literary rather than a personal interest. 
 For that you must seek the graveyards on the 
 slopes of the Calton. Now the Calton has a history 
 long before the days of its prison and its monu- 
 ments, classic or Gothic, its fine buildings, and its 
 ways, paved or otherwise. The Calton was like 
 Broughton, a Borough of Barony in the old days. 
 The superior was Lord Balmerino, who on the 
 slope of the hill made a burying-ground for his 
 tenants or vassals, as they were called in Scots law, 
 which used with quaint and picturesque effect 
 
THROUGH STEVENSON'S EDINBURGH 39 
 
 numerous feudal terms, the words of a vanished 
 world. At the beginning of the nineteenth century, 
 when Regent Road was made, the burying-ground 
 was of necessity cut right through. The soil, a 
 very debris of humanity, was removed to the new 
 Calton burying-ground, which is a little way east- 
 ward, also on the south slope of the hill. It is in 
 this new Calton burying-ground that his father was 
 interred, with other members of the family. But 
 R. L. S. took more interest in the other — at least, 
 so we gather from his written word ; for he means 
 it when, in that brilliant essay called Old Mortality, 
 he says : "In the hot fits of youth I came to be 
 unhappy." It is densely crowded. The most 
 famous grave is that of David Hume, a round, 
 Roman-like tower, which accident and history, 
 rather than design, make strikingly, almost start- 
 lingly, prominent, from various spots in the city, 
 especially from the North Bridge. There is also a 
 high obelisk, called the Martyrs' Monument, erected 
 in 1844 to the memory of Thomas Muir and his 
 fellows, who were tried, and banished from Scotland 
 in 1793, by Stevenson's idol, Lord Braxfield. 
 
 This essay has some splendid passages on the 
 last days of his friend James Walter Ferrier. His 
 grave is not in any of those three, but in that which 
 lies around St. Cuthbert's Church, as Henley has 
 recorded in memorable lines — 
 
 Our Athos rests — the wise, the kind, 
 The liberal and august, his fault atoned, 
 Rests in the crowded yard 
 There at the west of Princes Street. 
 
40 R. L. S. 
 
 This last place of tombs has no mention from him, 
 yet it was often under his eye, since on its west side 
 it borders the Lothian Road, which is referred to 
 more than once by him in a half-j esting, half-serious 
 fashion, as a familiar if not favourite promenade. 
 It dates from about a century ago, and the legend 
 runs that, in accordance with a bet made by Clerk 
 of Penicuik, it was constructed, however roughly, in 
 one day. A poor woman, it is said, who had a 
 cottage there, quitted it one morning to attend to 
 her affairs in town. In the evening it had clean 
 vanished, and a broad thoroughfare stood in its 
 place. The Lothian Road may be called the Totten- 
 ham Court Road of Edinburgh. It is a broad, but 
 you cannot say noble, street. One house of en- 
 tertainment in it was a favourite haunt of our 
 author. In a letter of May 1894 to Mr. Baxter he 
 comically suggests that the Edinburgh edition should 
 be called the Lothian Road edition, with the picture 
 of the old Dutch lugger in the corner. The " Dutch 
 lugger " was the name he gave to the landlord of the 
 house he frequented. In another letter he talks of 
 it as rather a convivial place, but most would class 
 it with Leith Walk, another street where the fates 
 willed that R. L. S. should be often present, as a 
 dreary thoroughfare not old enough to have the 
 charm of antiquity, not new enough to have that 
 of novelty. 
 
 Such were the homes and chief haunts of R. L. S. 
 in the city of his birth. But Edinburgh presents 
 itself to us in connection with him in another aspect. 
 It was his favourite literary subject, never more 
 
THROUGH STEVENSON'S EDINBURGH 41 
 
 ;o than when he was far away from it in time or 
 ;pace. It is quite another kind of Edinburgh that 
 ive have now to visit and examine, an Edinburgh 
 that is only very partially that of his own day, 
 much of it vanished ere he was born ; the Edinburgh 
 af his writings. 
 
CHAPTER III 
 EDINBURGH IN FACT AND FANCY 
 
 THE feelings of R. L. S. for Edinburgh were a 
 mixture of opposites. The wind, the wet, the 
 chill, the gloom affected him with a physical 
 loathing for which there was good reason, since he 
 must have died had fate confined him within its 
 bounds. Likewise he detested the rigid conventions 
 of the class to which he belonged. He was set to 
 uncongenial tasks. The forms of religion practised 
 in the place called forth his anger and contempt. 
 They seemed to him to miss what religion really 
 was. On the other hand, the city had a powerful 
 attraction for him, which grew stronger the farther 
 he was distant from it. When he was there, the 
 events of every day, something cross-grained in the 
 weather and the folk, acted as a continual irritant ; 
 but far off those pinpricks were forgotten, and Auld 
 Reekie asserted over him a singular, a peculiar 
 charm— partly because he was a native, as well as 
 a Scot among Scotsmen, but chiefly that it suited 
 as no other place ever could the peculiar bent of 
 his genius as man of letters. The town, the 
 people, the history, the legends, all were material 
 ready made to his hand. Had he not been a 
 Scotsman, it is possible that he might have neglected 
 
 4 2 
 
EDINBURGH IN FACT AND FANCY 43 
 
 Edinburgh altogether as subject, though even then, 
 had he known as much of it as he afterwards did of 
 London or Paris, he would have written something 
 noteworthy about it. However this may be, had 
 he been born elsewhere in Scotland, he must have 
 made Edinburgh his chief literary subj ect. Aberdeen 
 or even Stirling would not have been rich enough 
 in matter ; and as for Glasgow — what was there in 
 Glasgow, past or present, to attract him ? 
 
 As prelude to what follows, a few words on this 
 famous city will be in place. The Edinburgh of 
 history and romance is a very small portion of the 
 town of to-day, but it is that small portion with 
 which R. L. S., and we after him, are mainly con- 
 cerned. Two miles or over from the Firth of Forth 
 there rises a mass of hills. One of these running 
 east and west has a nearly perpendicular western 
 flank. On its eastern side it descends to the plain 
 in a slope of about a mile. The western summit is 
 the Castle rock . At the bottom of the eastern descent 
 is the palace of Holyrood; the ground between is 
 the High Street, which the Canongate continues to 
 Holyrood. To the north and south of the ridge 
 narrow ways called closes descend to the level. 
 On the north there lay at the bottom for centuries 
 the Nor' Loch. The closes to the south finish in 
 the Cowgate, which thus is parallel with the High 
 Street. The Cowgate runs westward into the open 
 place of the Grassmarket, and from it southward 
 there are, or were, other closes by which you reach 
 various famous places such as Greyfriars and the 
 College. A wall called the Flodden Wall, because 
 
44 R. L. S. 
 
 it was run up in desperate haste after that battle 
 as defence against an English invasion believed to 
 be imminent, ringed and fenced all this in, save 
 for the Nor' Loch, for that of itself was sufficient 
 protection. The wall stopped at the end of the 
 High Street. Holyrood as well as the Canongate, 
 which of old was independent of the city, were like- 
 wise beyond the wall. The ground was small 
 space for a capital city, even for a poor kingdom 
 like Scotland, but the limits for some centuries 
 were rigidly observed ; wherefore, partly from 
 necessity, partly from French example, story was 
 piled on story as the population pressed, so that 
 the houses grew higher and higher, till from one 
 side you had ten or twelve or fourteen or more 
 stories. All the land between the city and the 
 sea was wild and bare, subject to some form of 
 cultivation no doubt, but sparsely inhabited. If 
 you came from the northward any night during all 
 those centuries, you had the blazing illumination 
 of this town hung in air, built as it were between 
 earth and heaven. 
 
 There are other elements of attraction, for Edin- 
 burgh is set about with hills, Arthur's Seat featuring 
 a lion to the south of Holyrood, the Calton Hill to 
 the north, the Braid Hills at some distance to the 
 south, the imposing mass of the Pentlands to the 
 west. More than all, from any moderate height you 
 have the prospect of that arm of the sea, the Firth 
 of Forth, and beyond it the hills of Fife ; nay, in 
 certain aspects of weather there loom beyond and 
 behind, dimly visible yet how suggestive, the 
 
EDINBURGH IN FACT AND FANCY 45 
 
 frowning mass of the Highland ranges. Those hill 
 views are the most surprising of Edinburgh effects. 
 From the grime and toil of the Canongate you look 
 overhead into quiet nooks of Arthur's Seat ; from 
 the Castle your eye conveys you on the instant to 
 remote recesses where your feet will never tread. 
 
 The last great historic event in Edinburgh— the 
 last when it caught for a time the serious attention 
 of the world — was the romantic occupation by 
 Prince Charles Edward Stuart in the '45. When the 
 Highlanders left the city, and the music of their 
 pipes was lost in the distance, the history of Edin- 
 burgh came in many ways to an end ; and then, by 
 one of the contrasts of which her history is full, the 
 era of wealth and intellectual splendour commenced. 
 Dunedin awoke from the Stuart dream, that vision 
 of the past. The North Bridge was thrown over 
 the ravine. The Nor' Loch was drained, and on its 
 north side the New Town arose of splendid buildings, 
 and great wide streets, and roomy spaces, and every- 
 body who was anybody went to live there. Then 
 the great houses in the High Street, which had once 
 sheltered the old Scots nobles and judges and 
 divines, became the homes of the poorest of the 
 poor, so that you had another remarkable contrast. 
 Ever since, Edinburgh has gone on growing in size 
 and numbers ; and as for wealth, though you could 
 not compare it with Glasgow, yet to the poverty- 
 stricken Scot of a couple of centuries ago its riches 
 would seem fabulous and its prosperity beyond belief. 
 
 There is another side to the picture. It is a 
 learned and cultured town, never more so than at 
 
46 R. L. S. 
 
 the present day ; but it is not the home of genuine 
 creative talent or epoch-making writers, and its 
 folk, if correct and better-behaved, are neither so 
 witty, so remarkable, nor so entertaining as their 
 old-time forbears. R. L. S. was the last writer of 
 genius that Edinburgh has produced. The climate, 
 you may believe, is much the same ; but then, by 
 an odd but not singular case of forgetfulness, the 
 builders of the New Town never thought of wind 
 and weather, and their long straight streets and wide 
 open spaces were a pressing invitation for rain cloud 
 and storm cloud and tempest to take them for 
 playground and the scene of their wildest pranks. 
 Fergusson was of the Old Town, which he frankly 
 praises as weather - tight, especially to those 
 "panged" with that inner spirituous lining which 
 no citizen of Old Edinburgh was like to forget. 
 
 Here in town prospects you have the very essence j 
 of the picturesque and the romantic. Those were 
 elements attractive to a writer like Stevenson, 
 and not to him alone. Fergusson, his unhappy 
 predecessor on those same stones, as he named him, 
 was like minded ; only, as he lived in the place nearly 
 all his short life, the charm was even greater. Scott 
 felt this potent attraction. He has summed it up 
 in one brilliant phrase : " Mine own romantic town." 
 Yet it did not attach to his more robust nature in the 
 same enveloping, haunting, clinging way. With 
 the two others it is the devotion of the lover to his 
 mistress. They are overpowered with the charm of 
 their birthplace. To its devotees, Edinburgh has 
 the strange magic of a dream-city. In memory 
 
EDINBURGH IN FACT AND FANCY 47 
 
 and fancy it is a part of cloudland. Even as they 
 walk its streets it seems not altogether compounded 
 of the ordinary working world. In it the past is 
 more ahve than the present, the dead more potent 
 than the living. Its romantic aspects, its great hills, 
 its history, all blend together to influence the mind. 
 The writings of R. L. S. have the peculiar quality of 
 charm : he caught much of it from this city of 
 romance. For she is romantic from first to last 
 — in her history, in her aspects, in her evolution. 
 
 Destiny or character made the events of Edinburgh 
 history happen in the most impressive manner. 
 Take one case — the murder of Darnley. How 
 crowded it is with picturesque incident ! You 
 have the last parting of the Queen and her Consort, 
 the return of Mary to Holyrood in a glitter of flashing 
 torches and gleaming steel, her passage up the 
 Blackfriars Wynd, whilst the conspirators were 
 dragging down the adjacent Todricks Close the bags 
 of powder meant to fire the house of Kirk o' Field ; 
 the ball at Holyrood House, from whose feverish 
 gaiety Bothwell steals at midnight on his fearful 
 business ; more than all, the terrible minutes when he 
 and his fellows crouched to the earth, waiting for the 
 explosion that was to herald in one of the great far- 
 reaching events of history. R. L. S. has not dealt 
 with this scene at all, for he did not handle great 
 themes, but it is only one of a hundred. Thus for 
 him the history of Edinburgh had potent attraction 
 from the very setting of the incidents. He is also 
 a writer with a genius for the supernatural, delicately 
 and yet powerfully introduced, controlled by a fine 
 
48 R. L. S. 
 
 literary sense. Old Edinburgh was pre-eminently 
 a town of the supernatural. If the sense of reality 
 gets confused with you to-day, it was more so with 
 the old-world citizen. The unseen was ever present 
 to him. Legends of ghosts and demons attached 
 themselves to its ways and houses : nay, some closes, 
 as Mary King's Close, some houses, as that of Major 
 Weir, were the peculiar property of dark and evil 
 spirits ; the living dared not dispute their possession, 
 so that they were left tenantless. Each dwelling- 
 place of any pretension bore a pious motto like an 
 amulet or charm to ward off the evil power of Satan 
 and his lesser devils, ever potent, ever present to 
 the fancy of Old Edinburgh. R. L. S. had drunk in 
 those legends and reproduced or imitated or was 
 inspired by them; for though he preached and 
 practised the doctrine of cheerfulness, yet in life 
 and letters the gloomy, the squalidly picturesque, 
 the criminal had for him a potent attraction. You 
 have all these elements in the past of the capital. 
 
 In its darker aspects it was cruel and evil. Argyll 
 gloating over the bound and captive Montrose, 
 his fallen enemy from Moray House, the choicest 
 spectacle of a wedding feast ; the divines that like 
 vultures watched the last agonies of this chivalrous 
 gentleman; and, on the other side, the Cavaliers 
 themselves, who hounded those same divines to 
 their death and set up their limbs on city gates, 
 are no pleasing spectacles, yet as characteristic 
 of the time and the place as the splendid deeds of 
 daring and chivalry. Then there is a long roll of 
 ingenious, determined, and remorseless criminals, 
 
EDINBURGH IN FACT AND FANCY 49 
 
 of villains literally of the deepest dye. As literary 
 subject R. L. S. dearly loved a villain : John Silver, 
 David Pew, and Deacon Brodie are set forth in his 
 pages with a certain touch of sympathy. The 
 criminal annals of our author's birthplace are 
 peculiarly rich. That was not the least of its 
 attractions for him. 
 
 One physical fact of the climate of Edinburgh 
 peculiarly impressed itself on his sensitive nature — 
 that is, the prevalence, you might say the supremacy, 
 of the wind which riots there as it does nowhere 
 else. Its peculiar passionate, wailing, almost animal 
 sound, as of a wild beast in pain, its mournful lower 
 notes, its " infinite wail," as if it bore the sorrows of 
 the countless generations of the place, their woes and 
 their crimes, are set forth by him in many passages. 
 I recall no other writer who has spoken so much and 
 in so many different ways of the wind. He drew this 
 direct from his own experience in his birthplace., - 
 
 Two points are characteristic in his treatment 
 of Edinburgh. He assumes in his reader a know- 
 ledge of the town, and does not explain where one 
 locality is with reference to another. If you don't 
 know you ought to, or you must get up your 
 knowledge elsewhere. If you write of London or 
 Paris you may fairly do this ; the case is more 
 doubtful in regard to the Scots capital. Some 
 knowledge of the Castle and Holyrood, and perhaps 
 Princes Street, may be taken for granted, but who 
 save the native ever heard of Murrayfield or Inver- 
 leith quarry ? The same intimate knowledge was 
 assumed in the famous " Chaldee Manuscript," 
 4 
 
50 R. L. S. 
 
 which appeared in Blackwood's Magazine in 1817. 
 It is full of precise local hits, yet it has some per- 
 manent place in letters. But, after all, the " Manu- 
 script " was mainly addressed to the town itself ; 
 also in 1817 Edinburgh was a more important 
 literary centre than it was fated to be the greater 
 part of a century after. But R. L. S. has a cosmo- 
 politan audience ; he speaks not merely urbi, but 
 orbi. Distant readers might reasonably expect 
 localities to be made plain to them. He handles 
 Old Edinburgh in like fashion. The Luckenbooths, 
 the Gallow Lee, on the way to Pilrig, are intro- 
 duced as familiar objects without note or comment, 
 though both have long vanished. Possibly a 
 future age may justify the assumption R. L. S. 
 tacitly makes. You must get up a whole bio- 
 graphical dictionary of forgotten lives, a whole 
 geography of obscure villages, to read your Burns 
 with complete understanding. A large body of 
 admirers accept and perform the task. The ardent 
 Stevensonian must fulfil a like labour of love fully 
 to comprehend and perfectly enjoy Stevenson's 
 Edinburgh. He is far less explicit than Scott. So 
 much for the first point ; the second is, the places 
 have their real names. He does not invent or 
 pervert, as he does elsewhere, in a quite outrageous 
 manner, as we shall presently discover. Also he 
 commonly gives the name right out, so that, at 
 any rate, it is possible, from reasonably accessible 
 sources, to get a knowledge of the place, present 
 or past, existing or vanished. Some such notes I 
 now propose to give. 
 
CHAPTER IV 
 EDINBURGH IN THE WORKS 
 
 THE scenes of some of the most important of 
 the works of R. L. S. are laid in Edinburgh. 
 In others there are references to it. He is 
 still harping " on it at all times and places. ' ' After 
 all," he writes to Mr. Baxter, " new countries, sun, 
 music, and all the rest, can never take down our 
 gusty, rainy, smoky, grim old city out of the first 
 place that it has been making for itself in the 
 bottom of my soul." When he was forty-two he 
 notes to Sir J. M. Barrie that they both made their 
 " stages in the metropolis of the winds, our Virgil's 
 ' grey metropolis,' and I count that a lasting bond. 
 No place so brands a man." He laments to Mr. 
 Crockett that he would never see Auld Reekie again. 
 To come would be suicide, yet could he once arrange 
 his affairs, he would risk it, even though he must 
 inscribe his trunks : " Passenger to — Hades." Also 
 he remarks to Sir Sidney Colvin, " How singular 
 that I should fulfil the Scots destiny throughout, 
 and live a voluntary exile, and have my head filled 
 with the blessed, beastly place all the time." You 
 turn to more formal and finished works. Here the 
 
 same note rings clear and strong. In his verse he 
 
 s« 
 
53 R. L. S. 
 
 pictures " the grimy spell of the nocturnal town." 
 Even when he is dying, and 
 
 The voice of love 
 
 Falls insignificant on my closing ears, 
 
 What sound shall come but the old cry of the 
 
 wind 
 In our inclement city I 
 
 And again — 
 
 The voice of generations dead 
 Summons me sitting distant to arise, 
 My numerous footsteps nimbly to retrace, 
 And all mutation over, stretch me down 
 In that denoted city of the dead. 
 
 Over all the leagues of sea and land that lie between, 
 the town is present to his physical sense — 
 
 Hearkening, I heard again, 
 
 In my precipitous city, beaten bells 
 
 Winnow the keen sea wind. 
 
 There are no more beautiful passages in English 
 prose than those wherein he glorifies Edinburgh. 
 In The Silverado Squatters he calls it " the quaint 
 grey-castled city where the bells clash of a Sunday, 
 and the wind squalls, and the salt showers fly and 
 beat." And again : " I will say it fairly, ' It grows 
 on me with every year. There are no stars so 
 lovely as Edinburgh street lamps.' When I forget 
 thee, Auld Reekie, may my right hand forget its 
 cunning." In the preface to The Master of Battantrae 
 he talks of himself as an " old, consistent exile," 
 who revisits now and again the city of which he exults 
 to be a native ; and as he sits down to dinner with 
 Mr. Johnston Thompson, W.S. (Mr. Charles Baxter), 
 
EDINBURGH IN THE WORKS 53 
 
 he remarks, " He had already almost forgiven 
 himself his two unpardonable errors — that he should 
 ever have left his native city, or ever returned to it." 
 In the dedication to Catriona he speaks of " the 
 venerable city which I must always think of as my 
 home." There are " purple patches " as gorgeous as 
 those, but I may not set them down here. 
 
 I turn to his individual works. First comes 
 Picturesque Notes on Edinburgh, which is professedly 
 an account of the city, the best account in existence, 
 as brief as it is good, full of vivid, illuminating, and 
 characteristic touches. Here be a few gathered 
 at random : " Beautiful as she is, she is not so much 
 beautiful as interesting." Again : " Like the King 
 of the Black Isles, it is half alive and half a monu- 
 mental marble." And yet again : "To look over 
 the South Bridge and see the Cowgate below full 
 of crying hawkers, is to view one rank of society from 
 another in the twinkling of an eye." 
 
 Let us next take Kidnapped and its sequel 
 Catriona. Towards the end of Kidnapped the hero, 
 David Balfour, enters the town by the West Port, of 
 which the name still survives in the south-west corner 
 of the Grassmarket. The time is 1751, when as yet 
 Edinburgh was the old walled city edged in by stone- 
 work, the Castle rock, and the water of the Nor' Loch. 
 So David could not have got in conveniently by any 
 other way. His nearest alternative route would 
 have been by the Lang Dykes, where is now Princes 
 Street. Then he must cut across the dam at the 
 east of the Nor' Loch, and get through the wall at 
 the Port at the bottom of Halkerston's Wynd, on 
 
54 R- L- S. 
 
 the line of the present North Bridge, though at a 
 much lower level, and so hit the High Street at the 
 Tron Kirk, by which his actual route would also 
 take him. His destination was the British Linen 
 Company's Bank, in front of which he suddenly 
 finds himself. In fiction this was the favourite 
 bank of R. L. S., no doubt because the curious 
 development of a linen company into a bank caught 
 him. It was incorporated in 1746 to manufacture 
 and deal in linen wares, but concluded that occupa- 
 tion in 1763, when it confined itself exclusively to 
 its banking business. The offices were first at 
 Tweeddale's Court, on the south side of the High 
 Street, near the Netherbow Port. They were re- 
 moved to Moray House in the Canongate, and again 
 to St. Andrew Square, where they now are, but they 
 were at Tweeddale's Court during David's visit, and 
 for half a century afterwards. A mysterious crime 
 afterwards made this court or close famous, or 
 infamous. On the evening of 13th November 1806, 
 about five o'clock, William Begbie, a messenger of 
 the bank, was here found murdered. He had been 
 robbed of some £4000. The money was afterwards 
 recovered, but no one was ever punished for the 
 crime. Nay, it was only after the death of James 
 Mackoul, a notorious criminal, that he was surmised 
 the author. A good deal of evidence, though nothing 
 conclusive, pointed that way. R. L. S. refers to 
 this murder in his Picturesque Notes, chapter iv., 
 which deals with legends. The court or close is, and 
 has long been, the head-quarters of Oliver & Boyd, 
 an old-established printing and publishing house, 
 
EDINBURGH IN THE WORKS 55 
 
 producers of a yearly almanac, indispensable to the 
 Edinburgh citizen. 
 
 Kidnapped appeared in 1886, Catriona in 1893, 
 during which considerable interval David remains 
 in the bank kicking his heels, or doing whatever 
 characters in fiction do in the intervals of their 
 existence. However, the spell is finally broken, and 
 in the sequel David comes out of the bank, and walks 
 westward up the street to the Luckenbooths, in one 
 of whose shops he is properly fitted out. The 
 Luckenbooths were a peculiar feature of Old Edin- 
 burgh. They were a huge mass of buildings running 
 parallel to St. Giles', placed between it and the 
 north side of the High Street. As you see it to-day, 
 the space between St. Giles' and the north pavement 
 is not spacious ; then it was shrunk to a straight 
 passage. There was a still narrower footway be- 
 tween the Luckenbooths and the church, also im- 
 peded, since open booths called the Krames were 
 plastered against the St. Giles' wall. The Lucken- 
 booths meant the closed booths in contradistinction 
 to the others. At this very time Allan Ramsay 
 the poet kept shop at the east end of the Lucken- 
 booths, so that with him David might have had 
 a " crack," had he or his creator been so disposed. 
 But the young man was after merchandise other 
 than books. The Luckenbooths dated from the 
 time of James III, and were only pulled down in 
 1817. It was in a close off the High Street that 
 David for the first time saw Catriona with "her 
 wonderful bright eyes like stars." She lived behind 
 the village of Dean, which is on the north side of the 
 
56 R. L. S. 
 
 Water of Leith. You look down to-day on the 
 remains, or at any rate the site of this village, for 
 the last of it vanished in 1881, from the lofty Dean 
 Bridge (built 1832). Since our author's time the 
 parapet has been raised ; the incitement to a terrible 
 flying leap was too great if you were inclined to a 
 swift and dramatic exit from life. The abyss had 
 an alluring fascination of its own ; thus the Bridge 
 had got itself as evil a name as the Monument in 
 London ere its summit was caged. 
 
 Pilrig is David's next house of call. He leaves 
 the town by the Netherbow Port, at the east end 
 of the High Street ; then turning sharp to the left, 
 goes northward by Leith Wynd. He passes round 
 the base of the Calton, and over Mouters Hill, 
 where is now the Register House, and then by the 
 village of Picardy, inhabited by French weavers. 
 A gibbet (by no means the only one that Edinburgh 
 possessed) is fair in his view, for between Edinburgh 
 and Leith was a place of execution special to 
 those given to unholy dealings with the other 
 world, and desperate criminals of a like nature. 
 Here Major Weir and his staff were ended in the 
 same fire. He continues along Leith Walk till 
 he reaches Pilrig, " a pleasant gabled house, set 
 by the Walk side amongst some brave young 
 woods." Pilrig House still stands, though to-day 
 grimy houses and dreary ways hem it round. It 
 has been enlarged, yet you easily trace the first 
 form. It is genuine, interesting, and characteristic. 
 There was probably an old peel tower on the 
 spot, and Pil Rig means a ridge of some sort. 
 
EDINBURGH IN THE WORKS 57 
 
 Tradition will have it a country house of Mary of 
 Gueldres, Queen of James II, the lady who founded 
 Trinity College Church and Hospital, where is now 
 the Waverley Station. The folk of the house are 
 told of in a later chapter. 
 
 Next day was Sunday, and David duly attends 
 service at the West Kirk— that is, St. Cuthbert's, 
 under the Castle. You may call it the mother church 
 of the New Town, whose parishes have chiefly been 
 carved out of this parish. During the Highland 
 occupation of Edinburgh in the '45, the Rev. Neil 
 M'Vicar, the incumbent, distinguished himself by 
 praying for the welfare of King George in this world 
 and a crown of glory for Prince Charlie in the next. 
 David had not the privilege of sitting under this 
 divine, who dropped down dead in 1747, j ust as he was 
 beginning his sermon. The hero tells us that he paid 
 little attention to the discourse ; perhaps he lost not 
 much, as the charge was then held by M'Vicar's 
 successor, the Rev. George Kay, A.M., of whom 
 fame has preserved the scantiest record. He was 
 minister of the second charge, the first being vacant. 
 
 Later in the week we find David in Hope Park, 
 by the Bruntsfield Links, then a fair space, but 
 now built over. He fights an abortive duel in the 
 King's Park, which, alike from its wild solitude 
 and its nearness to the city, was a favourite place 
 for affairs of honour. He drinks at St. Margaret's 
 Well on his way back. This feat you may yourself 
 perform to-day, but I do not quite see how David 
 did, for it was not till 1862 that the Well was 
 removed to its present site from Restalrig, where 
 
58 R. L. S. 
 
 it was threatened with hideous and prosaic destruc- 
 tion by the workshops of the North British Railway. 
 He afterwards goes through the Sanctuary. This 
 was a delimited space round the palace of Holyrood, 
 where debtors were safe from arrest. Imprison- 
 ment for debt was abolished in Scotland in 1880, 
 up to which time the Sanctuary had its own life ; 
 but its privileges are now in abeyance, and the 
 " Lairds of the Abbey," as the debtors were of old 
 time humorously named, have clean vanished. 
 
 You will remember that David met Alan Breck 
 by appointment in the woods at Silvermills. This 
 was then a quiet little village on the Water of 
 Leith, though to-day it is but a word for mono- 
 tonous streets. It is suggested that the name 
 was derived from a silver mine, the property of 
 " Tam o' the Coogate," as the first Earl of Hadding- 
 ton was nicknamed by his royal master, James VI. 
 This sagacious nobleman, in and out of season, 
 kept dropping mysterious hints as to the fecundity 
 of " God's blessing," his pet name for his mine. 
 The fancy of Solomon caught fire. " A Prince, and 
 only a Prince," quoth he, " ought to possess this 
 precious treasure"; so for £5000 he got it for his 
 own, whereupon the vein of silver incontinently 
 vanished. There is nothing new under the sun, 
 so you rather suspect that far-seeing Tam had 
 " salted " the mine. Silvermills lies somewhat to 
 the south of the Edinburgh Academy ; thus the 
 little Louis passed by it every time he went to that 
 school. The way of Alan Breck and his friend 
 was eastward by Broughton, one of those little 
 
EDINBURGH IN THE WORKS 59 
 
 villages which expanding Edinburgh long since 
 obliterated. It was where Broughton Street and 
 Barony Street now stand, on the way between 
 Edinburgh and Leith. A barony was a small 
 place under a lord, not altogether unlike an English 
 manor. Lochend, farther on, with its old house 
 and its little loch, is a fragment of the antique 
 world not altogether vanished. 
 
 The pair reach the sea at the Figgate Whins. 
 At the date of the story, these had still a bad name 
 as a haunt of smugglers and robbers. In 1742, 
 an old sea salt, who had served under Admiral 
 Vernon at the taking of Portobello in 1739, and 
 had laid hands on a noble quantity of pieces of 
 eight and what not as his share of the booty, built 
 a house on this lonely waste, to which he retired 
 in the enjoyment of his gains, well or ill gotten. 
 He named his abode Portobello. It vanished as 
 late as 1862, when round it had grown the populous 
 suburb which bears that name. It is to Edinburgh 
 what Southend is to London, though the connection 
 is more close and intimate. As you hurry along 
 on the tramway, you may chance to note on the 
 southern side of the main way the Fishwives' 
 Causeway. It is an old Roman road, along which 
 the fishwives were wont to convey the spoil of the 
 deep for sale in Auld Reekie. Down it marched 
 Prince Charlie and the clans in all their ragged 
 bravery towards the field of Prestonpans. 
 
 So much for Edinburgh in the middle of the 
 eighteenth century. St. Ives is concerned with it 
 in the second decade of the nineteenth. Its interest 
 
60 R. L. S. 
 
 centres round the Castle, which impressed itself 
 upon R. L. S. more than any other spot in Edin- 
 burgh, almost to the exclusion of Holyrood, which 
 has a more pathetic and romantic charm. He 
 was a New Town boy, and so was often in Princes 
 Street, its main and most important thoroughfare. 
 From thence the Castle is prominent, dominating 
 the scene around. In history the Castle i-s the 
 root from which all Edinburgh grew and developed. 
 Thus he was led to tell the story of a French prisoner 
 of war in the vaults of the fortress. Those vaults 
 are under the great or Parliament Hall. Partly 
 excavated from the solid rock, they are dark and 
 dismal. From the middle of the eighteenth century 
 to the time of Waterloo they were used as a place 
 of confinement for war captives, as many as forty 
 men being cooped for the night in a single vault. 
 Many names or initials or inscriptions cut by these 
 in the rock still remain. Little is known of those 
 mournful depths. They are not shown to the 
 public, nor is there any ground for believing that 
 R. L. S. explored them. In later days his name 
 had acted as an open sesame, but he had not con- 
 ceived the story until he had left Scotland far 
 behind. It is not known when those vaults were 
 cut out, possibly before any building now on the 
 hill was thought of. Your dungeon was an integral 
 part of your old-time castle. If you caught your 
 enemy, and did not end him at once, you needs 
 must hold him fast. To do so above ground was 
 difficult and troublesome ; the risk of escape must 
 needs be great, whilst the living room in the Castle 
 
EDINBURGH IN THE WORKS 61 
 
 was ever scanty. But to have your foe secure, 
 buried alive, under your feet, producible on the 
 instant as long as his miserable life dragged out, 
 was a pleasant and soothing idea to the savage 
 old-time Scots. 
 
 Spite of all difficulties, the annals of the fortress 
 record many remarkable escapes. The French 
 prisoners, or some of them, in 1761, and again in 
 1811, made desperate efforts to get away. R. L. S. 
 models his story after the 1811 attempt, in which 
 the captives cut a hole in the lower part of the 
 parapet, at a place called the Devil's Elbow. 
 Mr. Neil Munro traces the source to a translation 
 published in Chambers' Miscellany of the record of a 
 French captive in Edinburgh Castle. Many of the 
 incidents are the same. Thence they descended by 
 a rope. One fell two hundred feet down the rock, 
 and was smashed to pieces ; the others sped westward 
 by the Glasgow road, but were speedily retaken. 
 This is substantially the history of the mass of French 
 prisoners in St. Ives. Special mention is made, as 
 you might expect, of the Devil's Elbow. There 
 was one curious case between the dates mentioned. 
 An English episcopal clergyman, minister of the 
 Cowgate Chapel, was tried for abetting four French 
 prisoners in their escape from the Castle. After 
 they got out he concealed them in his own house 
 until he could get them over to Inchkeith, the 
 island in the Firth of Forth outside Leith. He 
 seems to have continued his help until they got 
 away altogether. 
 R. L. S. was careful about points of detail. If 
 
62 R. L. S. 
 
 he distorts the facts, it is not from carelessness, 
 but from what seemed to him sufficient artistic 
 motives. At first he supposed the prisoners were 
 dressed anyhow, were unshaven and unshorn, an 
 unkempt crew of ruffians. Presently he discovers 
 they were tricked out in a "grotesque livery" of 
 yellow, and under the barber's hands twice a week. 
 Though loath to alter his draft, he did so when he 
 found out his mistake. Yet it is hard not to 
 make slips, for the history of the New Town is per- 
 plexing. To-day, it is some hundred and fifty years 
 old. Those years were full of incessant change and 
 development. St. Ives remarks on the view of 
 Princes Street from the Castle, " a singularity in a 
 military prison that it should command a view of 
 the chief thoroughfare." The promenaders on it 
 " entered and left the shops which are in that 
 quarter, and for a town of the Britannic provinces 
 particularly fine." This is true of to-day, but not 
 of the years before Waterloo. There were one or 
 two shops, but the street was mainly a residential 
 street like Heriot Row, the houses being built after 
 the same fashion with sunken areas, and steps up 
 to the front door. Again, in his last chapter of 
 St. Ives the author wrote : " I went down on the 
 esplanade off Princes Street, walked and stood 
 there, alone and conspicuous, looking across the 
 garden at the old grey bastions of the fortress." 
 But there Was no garden in those days ; the valley 
 on the site of the Nor' Loch, save for the space 
 taken up by the Mound, popularly known as 
 " Geordie Boyd's mud brig," was a waste howling 
 
EDINBURGH IN THE WORKS 63 
 
 wilderness, a receptacle for all sorts of rubbish. In 
 chapter xxv., St. Ives again re-enters Edinburgh, 
 where he lodged in St. James's Square. This is 
 near the Register House, and both were built on 
 Mouters Hill, as R. L. S. spells it in Catriona. The 
 popular name was Bunker's Hill. The building 
 of the Square was just beginning when two builders 
 engaged thereon had an angry dispute culminating 
 in a battle royal, wherein they pummeled one 
 another lustily, to the delight of a huge mob of 
 spectators. News of the battle of Bunker's Hill 
 reached the town that same day, and the scene of 
 the local battle was forthwith dubbed Bunker's 
 Hill, under which name it is mentioned in the trial 
 of Deacon Brodie, 1788. Robert Burns lived here 
 in 1787, during his visit to Edinburgh. There are 
 many little touches recalling Edinburgh at the 
 time ; thus Dalmahoy, the convivial citizen with 
 whom St. Ives " foregathers " in St. Andrew Square, 
 suggests "a chop and a bottle in Dumbreck's 
 Hotel." This was a well-known hotel of that and 
 an earlier day situate in the Square. 
 
 The last six chapters are contributed by Sir 
 Quiller-Couch, but they are on the outlines sketched 
 by R. L. S., and deserve a word. The Assembly 
 ball was given at Buccleuch Place, a little off 
 George Square. These Assemblies were marked 
 and peculiar features of Old Edinburgh life. They 
 were first held in the West Bow, then on the south 
 side of the High Street, where you may still see the 
 Old Assembly Close, but finally in George Street 
 in the New Town. There were also Assembly 
 
64 R. L. S. 
 
 Rooms in Buccleuch Place, chosen because the 
 escape to Swanston was less impossible from here 
 than from George Street. The place was built 
 between 1766 and 1780 as part of that extension 
 on the South Side which at one time seemed like 
 to outrival the New Town across the valley. Ac- 
 cording to Lord Cockburn, in those beautiful rooms 
 were to be seen the last remains of the stately ball- 
 room discipline of the preceding age. 
 
 Weir of Hermiston is placed in the same period 
 as St. Ives. It is much concerned with Edinburgh 
 and legal life therein. Competent critics consider 
 this brilliant fragment the best thing its author 
 ever did. They have not explained, however, the 
 reason of this, which is sufficiently obvious. He 
 was writing in the full maturity of his power on 
 all his favourite subjects. The Covenanting note 
 appears in Mrs. Weir and her history. Again, he 
 set forth Edinburgh and the life in it of a young 
 man ; such as he was himself in the University and 
 the Parliament House. Also he drew on his know- 
 ledge, which was considerable, of the trappings and 
 furnishings of Scots law, if not of Scots law itself. 
 Adam Weir, the Lord Justice-Clerk with the paper 
 title of Lord Hermiston, according to the fashion 
 of the Senators of the College of Justice, is pro- 
 fessedly a realization of the character as Stevenson 
 conceived it of Lord Braxfield. In Some Portraits 
 by Raeburn Stevenson dwells on the figure in a 
 sort of fascinated way. Braxfield, though coarse, 
 narrow, uncultured, was a man of strong will and 
 great powers. He knew his book of Scots law very 
 
EDINBURGH IN THE WORKS 65 
 
 well indeed, and he also knew all that was evil in 
 human nature. He was not cruel or vicious, but 
 merciless, steady as a rock ; a man of pithy, vigorous 
 expression, his Scots had a deadly force. Ramsay 
 of Ochtertyre compared it with the Scots of Robert 
 Burns. He died in the last year of the eighteenth 
 century, when Scots was not so much of a dead 
 tongue as it is to-day. It was spoken among the 
 better classes as R. L. S. wrote it, for he harked 
 back to the classic models of an earlier time. Brax- 
 field as Lord Justice-Clerk presided over the Court 
 of Justiciary, the Supreme Criminal Court of Scot- 
 land. It was a troubled time : the lower classes 
 were restless, discontented with their lot, demanding 
 more freedom and better conditions of life ; the 
 higher were alarmed and disturbed. Braxfield 
 presided over the " sedition trials," as they were 
 called, and administered what he believed to be 
 justice to the political martyrs entirely in the 
 interests of the ruling classes. Stevenson's portrait 
 follows the original very closely, though he makes 
 Braxfield a nobler figure than he was in reality. 
 Oddly enough, the date of this story is made 1814. 
 From the wild nature of the action, it had been 
 better to antedate rather than postdate. Some 
 later episodes which as fate decreed were never 
 written must have determined the years. 
 
 Of the Edinburgh places mentioned the first 
 is George Square, which is some half-mile walk 
 south of the Parliament House. Here Braxfield 
 went to reside about or before 1784 ; previous to 
 that he had occupied one of the flats in Covenant 
 5 
 
66 R. L. S. 
 
 Close, off the High Street. Even for to-day the 
 houses in George Square are spacious, then the 
 change from the narrow ways of the Close must have 
 seemed remarkable. The Square was built about 
 1765. Scots peers, Lords of Session, and other 
 distinguished people were early tenants. Number 25 
 is memorable as the home of the Scott family 
 between 1776 and 1797, Walter's father having 
 removed there from the College Wynd in the former 
 year. George Square is still eminently respectable, 
 if not genteel. For some occult reason it is to-day 
 particularly affected by dentists. The home-life of 
 young Weir was passed in this Square. " A cad 
 from the Potterrow once struck him in the mouth, 
 he struck back, the pair fought it out in the back 
 stable lane towards the Meadows." This reads 
 like an echo of Scott, who describes the fights between 
 the High School boys such as himself and the cads 
 of the neighbourhood. " Cad " simply means 
 vulgar little boy, and appears to be abbreviated 
 from caddie, the class that performed many im- 
 portant though more or less servile offices in Old 
 Edinburgh. The Potterrow was called a mean 
 street in 1779, and it seems to have always been so 
 during its long if ignoble life. One thing makes it 
 memorable. In June 1567 in a house there was 
 discovered the casket that held those famous 
 letters, conclusive if genuine, of Mary Stuart's 
 complicity in the Darnley murder. The Meadows 
 are immediately behind George Square. They 
 form a large open space, hemmed in now on every 
 side by houses. At the time of the story they 
 
EDINBURGH IN THE WORKS 67 
 
 were a fashionable promenade, wherein the ladies 
 and big-wigs of Old Edinburgh took their walks 
 abroad. 
 
 " Archie went the usual round of Edinburgh boys, 
 the High School and the College." The High 
 School, you will remember, was the old building 
 where is now the Old Infirmary, to the east of the 
 College. At College, Archie was a member of the 
 Speculative Society, but of that I have already said 
 enough. The trial and execution of Duncan Jopp 
 is a turning-point in the narrative. The Justiciary 
 Court was then and still is in the Parliament House 
 buildings. After hearing the sentence, young Weir 
 goes out into and down the High Street. " He 
 saw Holyrood in a dream, remembrance of its 
 romance awoke in him and faded. He had a vision 
 of the old radiant stories of Queen Mary and Prince 
 Charlie, of the hooded stag, the splendour and 
 crime, the velvet and bright iron of the past and 
 dismissed them with a cry of pain." Here is one 
 of the few references R. L. S. makes to Holyrood 
 and its memorable story. The hooded stag is the 
 beast that, according to legend, attacked David I 
 as he was hunting in the forest on the spot on 
 Holy Rood Day 1128. In gratitudef or the miraculous 
 preservation of his life he founded Holyrood Abbey. 
 Archie " lay and moaned in the Hunter's Bog." 
 This is, or rather was, ere the days of rifle practice, 
 a secluded valley in the King's Park, a favourite 
 place for quiet meditation to disturbed minds. The 
 hanging of Jopp is pictured without local detail, 
 but at that time the Tolbooth was still standing; 
 
68 R. L. S. 
 
 the roof of the western portion of it was the place 
 of execution. Next day Weir has " a chance en- 
 counter with the celebrated Doctor Gregory," who 
 gave him some good advice. James Gregory 
 (i 7 53-1821), Professor of Medicine in the University 
 and the best known member of a famous family, 
 was one of the chief physicians in his time in Edin- 
 burgh. He is still remembered, gratefully it is to 
 be hoped, if not pleasantly, as the author and first 
 compounder of " Gregory's mixture." Following on 
 this Archie has an explanation with his father, 
 whereupon the scene of the story shifts from the 
 capital to Hermiston. 
 
 The Body-Snatcher is not one of the best stories of 
 our author. It is excluded from the Edinburgh 
 edition, and R. L. S. " would not take the full 
 payment which had been bargained for." It was 
 the Christmas Number of the Pall Mall Gazette, 
 and achieved some notoriety from the gruesome 
 method of advertisement adopted, a method it was 
 said suppressed by the police, yet it has powerful 
 passages. The incidents are taken from the re- 
 surrection period in Edinburgh that culminated in 
 the Burke and Hare murders in 1827. Some of the 
 characters are historical. The extra-mural teacher 
 of anatomy " whom I shall here designate under the 
 letter K." is obviously Dr. Robert Knox (1791-1862), 
 the anatomist ; Jane Galbraith is " handsome Mary 
 Patterson " ; and the central episode of the story, 
 where Gray after being cut in pieces on the dissect- 
 ing-table is dug out of a grave in a country church- 
 yard, is adapted from a legend of the time, which 
 
EDINBURGH IN THE WORKS 69 
 
 tells of two medicals abstracting a woman's body 
 from Glencorse. The body seems to come to life 
 again, whereat the resurrectionists desert their prey 
 and flee with frantic yells of terror. In the story 
 the horse dashes away with the gig containing the 
 deserted body. The artistic fault of the R. L. S. 
 version is that it ends in an impossibility of which 
 no explanation, natural or supernatural, is suggested. 
 Truth is not merely stranger but more gruesome 
 than fiction. In the actual narrative the husband 
 of the dead woman finds the body deserted on the 
 roadside early next morning. At first he thought 
 it a case of premature bursal, and made frantic 
 efforts to restore consciousness. Only when he saw 
 how hopeless was his task did he suspect what had 
 really happened. 
 
 The works I have considered treat of the Edin- 
 burgh of the past. The Misadventures of John 
 Nicholson deals with the city of Stevenson's youth. 
 It is not of his best, nay, it was only after some 
 hesitation placed among his collected works. The 
 hero is a muff, the heroine does not convince. The 
 cabman, however, is droll and lifelike, a gem of his 
 kind; you might have taken him off the rank at 
 Princes Street. The story was written in 1887, 
 a potboiler or " machine," as the author would 
 have said. It served for the Christmas Number of 
 Yuletide, an annual of the house of Cassell. R. L. S. 
 scarcely refers to it, was perhaps a little ashamed of 
 it and that for various reasons: It is intensely 
 local, and I for one should be sorry to miss it ; for it 
 gives pictures not to be had elsewhere of phases of 
 
70 R. L. S. 
 
 Edinburgh life, recent yet quite vanished. It is 
 not likely that readers out of Scotland will under- 
 stand all its hits. Have they heard of Candlish 
 and Begg and Lee, for instance ? 
 
 The first two were ministers of the Free Church, 
 which at the Disruption of 1843 broke away from 
 the Establishment, and " Disruption principles " 
 expressed their stricter views. Dr. Candlish was 
 for many years the leader of his sect. Dr. Begg was 
 of the Irreconcileables. In Embro Hie Kirk, one 
 of the Scots poems in Underwoods, this divine is 
 introduced suggesting the destruction of the painted 
 windows of St. Giles'. Dr. Robert Lee was a 
 minister of the Church of Scotland, and incumbent 
 of Old Greyfriars, into which he introduced a service- 
 book and a ritual. He and all his works were 
 anathema to the men of the old school, and heated 
 and bitter discussions and proceedings in the Church 
 Courts ensued anent his innovations, though the 
 controversy is dead enough to-day. Randolph 
 Crescent, the home of the Nicholsons, is a little to 
 the south-west of Heriot Row, and its houses are 
 of the same class. " Here at least was a citadel 
 unassailable by right-hand defections or left-hand 
 extremes." Douce Davie Deans in The Heart of 
 Midlothian has a phrase like this. It is a Cove- 
 nanting catchword, archaic at the date of the story. 
 John forgets to lodge £400 in the British Linen 
 Company's Bank in St. Andrew Square, and of this 
 money he is afterwards robbed on the Calton Hill. 
 To assist his friend Alan Houston he had already 
 pawned his watch as " John Frogs, 85 Pleasance." 
 
EDINBURGH IN THE WORKS 71 
 
 This Pleasance is a piece of Old Edinburgh. It is 
 a street continuing St. Mary Street towards the 
 south. It lay just outside the Flodden Wall. 
 Here of old was a convent of St. Mary of Placentia, 
 corrupted into Pleasance, also called for some un- 
 explained reason Dearenough. It is one of the 
 lower quarters of the town. His friend Alan makes 
 an appointment with him in the house of one Collette. 
 " Collette was simply an unlicensed publican who 
 gave suppers after eleven at night, the Edinburgh 
 hour of closing." The mention of this place recalls 
 a curious chapter in municipal history. In the 
 seventies the Licensing Laws were administered in 
 Edinburgh with considerable laxity. The hotels 
 were often kept open till twelve or later. There 
 was no difficulty in obtaining liquor on Sunday, 
 when the houses were supposed to be closed to all 
 but travellers. Dotted over the town were various 
 unlicensed houses called shebeens, where drink was 
 sold all night through. Of these, Collette's was the 
 most famous. There were wild rumours about 
 the proprietor. He was reported a member of 
 Cambridge University, and some averred a barrister- 
 at-law, though what he was doing in that galley 
 no one ever explained. I have seen its like and 
 can say that the picture of dirt and discomfort 
 is not exaggerated. The site as here given is in an 
 obscure lane " whose tail descends into the sunless 
 slums of the Low Carton." On the night of John's 
 presence the house is raided ; the whole company 
 are marched off to the police office and bound over 
 to appear next day. Now the police in a town of 
 
72 R. L. S. 
 
 the moderate dimensions of Edinburgh were well 
 aware of the existence of this and other shebeens. 
 They raided them from time to time, no doubt 
 could have suppressed them had they wished, 
 perhaps minor officials were bribed, whilst their 
 superiors looked upon such places as safety-valves. 
 However, dens like this, and even of a less reputable 
 sort, were not hard to come upon in the Edinburgh 
 of the period. The nightly scenes in Princes Street 
 and the adjacent places now seem incredible. They 
 were commented on by strangers, and pointed 
 contrasts were drawn between Edinburgh Saturday 
 nights and Edinburgh Sunday mornings, it being 
 preposterously assumed that the wild reveller of 
 Saturday and the staid churchgoer of Sunday was 
 one and the same person. This was to visit the 
 sins of John Nicholson on the head of his respect- 
 able parent. The picture R. L. S. gives us of the 
 seamy side shows nothing of the " raptures and 
 roses of vice." It is all sordid and mean. However, 
 the better part of half a century has gone by and all 
 has suffered change. Edinburgh if less theological!" 
 devout than of yore is more decent and orderly. Thti 
 law is rigidly observed, public-houses close at ten, 
 and Princes Street is swept and garnished. 
 
 The little party emerge from the police office in 
 the Old Fishmarket Close, they consult under the 
 buttresses of St. Giles', which is just opposite, and 
 then go to North Castle Street, memorable as the 
 home of Scott for thirty-six happy a.id crowded 
 years. Opposite the Castle, whence its name, it 
 runs north of Princes Street. References to places 
 
EDINBURGH IN THE WORKS 73 
 
 familiar to R. L. S. crowd the little story. Queens- 
 ferry Street, at the West End, is the beginning of 
 Queensferry Road; the near St. George's Church 
 is a huge classic edifice in Charlotte Square, which 
 John observes with emotion after a ten years' 
 absence in San Francisco. He sees the railings 
 on which he " rattled his clackan," a wooden club 
 then in favour with the Edinburgh schoolboy. He 
 visits Houston at the Regent Terrace, a set of 
 substantial, imposing houses on the Calton Hill. 
 He meets a friend at the corner of Pitt Street, and 
 remembers how in his company he had broken a 
 window in India Place down towards the Water 
 of Leith, and climbed the Castle Rock, a favourite 
 feat for centuries of the Edinburgh schoolboy. The 
 course of the story takes him to Murrayfield, where 
 the Lodge is the theatre of the chief action of the 
 piece. The Lodge has been identified as the home 
 of his friend Mr. Baildon, though much altered. 
 Murrayfield, now an outlying suburb on the Cor- 
 storphine road, and on the continuation of Cor- 
 storphine Hill, is a place of good residential houses. 
 It took its name from the family of Murray, whose 
 most important member was the Scots Judge, Lord 
 Henderland. From it " open fields stretch upward 
 to the woods of Corstorphine Hill, or backward to 
 the dales of Ravelston, or downwards to the valley 
 of the Leith." Every year those open fields are 
 more and more invaded by the builder, and the 
 description of the rural surroundings of Murrayfield 
 would now require modification, but you can still 
 walk along Ravelston Dykes and view Ravelston 
 
74 R. L. S. 
 
 House, once the seat of the Keiths, hereditary 
 Marshals of Scotland, with its quaint gardens, on 
 which Scott modelled those of Tullyveolan. R. L. S. 
 mentions the height of the garden walls. The 
 manner in which, especially in the older suburbs, 
 the houses are enclosed by those stone walls is a 
 curious feature of Scots suburban districts. Appar- 
 ently it was imitated from the French, for you find 
 the same thing in the older suburbs of Paris, and in 
 many of the French towns. This hints of a disturbed 
 state of things, when each house was guarded. 
 The absence of those walls in England points to 
 centuries of peace and order. 
 
 Returning from Murrayfield, he meets his cabman 
 in front of Donaldson's Hospital. This is a beauti- 
 ful Tudor building, founded about the middle of the 
 last century by James Donaldson, formerly a printer 
 at the foot of the West Bow, for the education of 
 poor children. It is one of many in Edinburgh, of 
 which George Heriot's is the most famous. Other 
 localities are the Craigleith Quarry, where John 
 conceals himself. From here great part of the stone 
 was taken to build New Edinburgh. Everything is 
 cleared up in the end. The author of the murder 
 proves insane and is removed to Morningside 
 Asylum, which has long been the Bedlam of Edin- 
 burgh. Some consider Nicholson senior drawn from 
 Thomas Stevenson. He is rather the heavy father 
 of the comedy of genteel Edinburgh life as R. L. S. 
 observed it. Whatever be its faults, the story has 
 the true feel of the Edinburgh of the seventies. 
 
 As companion picture and contrast to John 
 
EDINBURGH IN THE WORKS 75 
 
 Nicholson, the fast young man, you have the correct 
 Edinburgh youth set before you in the Francis 
 Scrymgeour of The New Arabian Nights. He is 
 Clerk in the Bank of Scotland, presumably in the 
 head office in Bank Street. It is a conspicuous 
 building on the south side of East Princes Street 
 Gardens, stuck on a high part of the ridge ; for, unlike 
 the other banking corporations of Edinburgh, the 
 Bank of Scotland, faithful to old traditions, has still 
 its head-quarters in the Old Town. A portrait of the 
 correct youth is drawn with a certain droll irony, 
 in words of mock praise. His conventional goodness 
 is only skin deep. At his interview with the Writer 
 to the Signet (the highest class of Scots solicitor) 
 he is directed to go to the Comedie Francaise on 
 Sunday the 15th. " ' I should certainly have pre- 
 ferred a week-day,' replied Francis, ' but, after all, 
 
 once in a way ' ' And in Paris, my dear sir, ' added 
 
 the lawyer soothingly ; ' I believe I am something 
 of a precisian myself, but upon such a consideration 
 I should not hesitate an instant.' And the pair 
 laughed pleasantly together." The usual Scots 
 view of Sabbath observance, and the tacit assump- 
 tion that, like the old Scots Fast Day, it is only a 
 question of latitude, have never been put more 
 neatly. His other views suffer a sudden change. 
 " The flat in Scotland Street looked mean in his 
 eyes, his nostril for the first time rebelled against 
 the odour of broth." Scotland Street is a little to 
 the north-east of Heriot Row, but it is not a street 
 of the same class, since the houses are divided into 
 flats, and not self-contained. In the Old Town in 
 
76 R. L. S. 
 
 the old days practically everybody lived in flats, 
 as is still so frequent in France and Germany, but in 
 the New Town and the suburbs better-class people 
 came to occupy houses of their own. There was, by 
 the way, in Scotland Street a railway tunnel, now 
 long disused. R. L. S. as a lad took a quite 
 romantic view of this tunnel, possibly the memory 
 of it led him to use the name of the street. 
 
 I must refer to one other passage where R. L. S. 
 does not give the name of the locality. In The 
 Wrecker Loudon Dodd is taken by his grandfather 
 to a cemetery, " by some strange chance immured 
 within the bulwarks of a prison, standing besides 
 on the margin of a cliff crowded with elderly stone 
 memorials. ' ' This is the Old Calton burying-ground, 
 on the lower slopes of the Calton Hill. The prison 
 is the Calton Jail, a huge castellated structure be- 
 gun in 1815 and opened in 1817 as successor to 
 the Tolbooth, or Heart of Midlothian, in the High 
 Street. After a century of existence it is about to 
 be removed to make way for Government offices. 
 The cemetery was there long before. It is the one 
 referred to in the brilliant essay entitled Old 
 Mortality. The grandfather is a Scots jerry-builder 
 amusingly portrayed. With him he visits the lions 
 of the city, touched off in a brilliant paragraph, and 
 also the " doleful suburbs." " I have rarely seen a 
 more shocking exhibition ; the bricks seemed to be 
 blushing in the walls, and the slates on the roof 
 to have turned pale with shame." In the chapter 
 on the villa quarters in th|e Picturesque Notes R. L. S. 
 had already poured forth the vials of his wrath on 
 
EDINBURGH IN THE WORKS 77 
 
 those new additions, on those wens and pimples as 
 he considered them on the city he loved so well. 
 The villa quarters are much increased since his day. 
 They cover the plain, they crest ridge after ridge 
 of the Braid Hills, they obliterate one historic 
 spot after another. You understand his rage, and 
 yet may find it exaggerated. Compared with the 
 tumbledown brick of many a London suburb, the 
 stone villa of modern Edinburgh seems fairly solid. 
 
CHAPTER V 
 THE PENTLANDS IN STEVENSON'S LIFE 
 
 THE Pentlands are peculiarly the R. L. S. 
 country. Swanston Cottage is there, and 
 so is Colinton, and after Edinburgh they are 
 the two spots in Scotland that he knew best. There 
 he spent his most impressionable years, and the 
 scenery of this hill district was used by him again 
 and again in his writings. Not that he went far 
 afield even within the circuit of those hills. A 
 name impressed him, so he used it : that does not 
 mean that he ever trod the particular way. Thus 
 I doubt if he even crossed the Cauldstane Slap 
 which in the last days of his life he was to make 
 the scene of some of his most moving passages. He 
 knew well the shady corners of Glencorse. The 
 Hunter's Tryst, the Fisher's Tryst, the Buckstone, 
 are all within the bounds of the places mentioned. 
 He tells us, in his Gossip on a Novel of Dumas, how 
 he roamed about the near heights, and in the evening 
 read the Vicomte de Bragelonne, that huge (there 
 are six volumes) hotchpot of exciting adventures 
 which forms the concluding number of the Trots 
 Mousquetaires series. He was thus acquainted 
 with the prominent characteristics of the range. 
 
 The Pentland Hills begin about threelmiles south- 
 
 78 
 
PENTLANDS IN R. L. S.'s LIFE 79 
 
 west of Edinburgh, they go on for sixteen miles 
 south-westward; they are not a continuous chain 
 or ridge, but are broken or crossed by a great variety 
 of passes. They are soft, rounded, friendly hills, 
 here covered with heather, again green with grass. 
 A variety of villages are on the lower slopes. There 
 are numerous farm-steadings or "touns," in the old 
 Scots phrase, and as all these in one way or other 
 depend on Edinburgh, the connection of the hills 
 with the town is peculiarly intimate. If these 
 depend on Edinburgh in one way, Edinburgh 
 depends on them in another. There are numerous 
 burns and lochs. A little judicious damming, and 
 a small loch becomes greater, or one is created out 
 of a burn ; from them the water supply of Edinburgh 
 is derived. If you look at a map of the district, 
 you find reservoirs and compensation ponds in 
 abundance. The peculiar name of the latter is 
 thus explained. If you interfere with a natural 
 supply of water to divert it in a particular direction, 
 you deprive certain tracts of what nature gave them, 
 you cannot always do this with impunity. The 
 compensation pond restores the balance, helps 
 judiciously to equalize for the benefit of the folk 
 that dwell there the supply of a common necessary. 
 As Hugh Miller said, the name is misleading. The 
 reservoirs are mostly beautiful lochs, with all the 
 wild natural charm that you associate with the very 
 name. They are here exactly as you see them in 
 the Highlands. The Glencorse Reservoir and the 
 North Esk Reservoir are cases in point. 
 The Pentlands are beautiful in every point of 
 
80 R. L. S. 
 
 view. From the Castle you see them from a height. 
 You get in one sweep many important summits, 
 gather at a glance the nature of the range. Still 
 more charming is the prospect from Corstorphine 
 road, that is between them and the sea. This is a 
 low level, so thus you look up, first at the townlets 
 on the lower slopes, then on the fields and woods 
 and farms that are above and around them, and 
 finally on the summits with their exquisite contours. 
 From the hills themselves you have far-reaching 
 views of the Lothian plain, of the waters of the 
 Firth, and the hills of Fife beyond. On the southern 
 slope, where the land falls away towards the border^., 
 you have another set. From the summit of the 
 passes you see around you a very sea of hills, and 
 there is nothing but hills, for all trace of human 
 presence has for the time disappeared. It is this 
 last element that gives the Pentlands their rarest 
 charm. The passes are peculiarly solitary. If 
 you leave the last farm-house on the south side, you 
 go some five or six miles up through one of the 
 passes and down again before you reach a farm- 
 house on the other. Often you will not meet a 
 human being. Though there is a right of way 
 through the passes, there is sometimes no way at 
 all. Here is my own experience in two cases. The 
 first was crossing from the south from Balerno up 
 by Redford across the Threipmuir Reservoir, then 
 along a beautiful avenue of trees, " the gateway 
 of the Pentlands," and past Bavelaw Castle and so 
 on, skirting the Kitchen Moss, ever upward. The 
 legends of the countryside are numerous. This 
 
PENTLANDS IN R. L. S.'s LIFE 81 
 
 about Threipmuir may be told for illustration, as 
 the least likely and most complicated of the lot. 
 St. Clair of Roslyn excited the jealousy of King 
 Robert the Bruce by his extravagant hunting tales, 
 wherein his two dogs Hold and Fast were credited 
 with marvellous power. They would race down 
 anything, in fact he would lay his head on't. King 
 Robert accepted the stake. Perhaps he thought 
 the head of little importance, a fit subject for a 
 trifling wager. A white hart of wondrous speed 
 was hunted by the dogs. An they pulled it not 
 down ere the burn was reached, off went the head. 
 The St. Clair threeped or urged on the dogs with 
 such force and skill that they had their fangs in the 
 haunches of the quarry just in time. The victor 
 had the forest of Pentland as a gift for his daring. 
 He piously ascribed his success to the aid of St. 
 Katherine, whom he had invoked in his hour of need, 
 vowing a chapel in her honour, which he presently 
 erected at Glencorse. As the place is called 
 Threipmuir to this day, and as the ruins of the 
 chapel are still to be seen, or rather would be seen 
 if you drained off Glencorse Reservoir, how can you 
 doubt the truth of either legend ? And Bavelaw 
 Castle itself, of which not a stone remains, was a 
 hunting seat of the old Scots kings. You have 
 evidence of the chase. 
 
 I toiled onwards and upwards, and presently 
 entered a cuplike depression many miles in circum- 
 ference. Here the loneliness of the way fell upon 
 me. The path was a thin track through the heather. 
 There were sheep feeding on the hill-side. I pro- 
 6 
 
82 R. L. S. 
 
 ceeded for an hour or more in solitude and stillness 
 —nothing but the heather in front and the edge 
 of the cup — 
 
 Like one that on a lonesome road 
 
 Doth walk in fear and dread. 
 
 It was an eerie feeling. I could not help turning 
 round every minute or two, but behind was as 
 solitary as before. In the very depth of the cup 
 ran a burn of dark, gloomy water. It was dyed 
 by the heather that grew over it. There was the 
 midday halt. It is only under such conditions that 
 you know how delightfully the plainest food tastes, 
 how divinely the sip of usquebaugh drinks. In 
 such solitudes, though amid wilder scenes, Prince 
 Charles after Culloden is said to have acquired a 
 taste for liquor that lasted him through life. The 
 wine of the country goes so well with the water of 
 the country ! I crept on between the West Kip Hill 
 and Gap Law. I was close to Ninemileburn, on 
 the road between Carlops and Edinburgh, on the 
 south of the range, before I met anyone. 
 
 Another day I was at the Cauldstane Slap. This 
 is the most famous of all the passes. It runs between 
 Mid Calder and West Linton, a distance of fourteen 
 miles. Approaching from the north side, you go 
 along the old Lanark road till you reach the edge of 
 a dismal stretch called the Cauld Whang. Here is 
 the Little Vantage Inn, once well known to the 
 old-time drovers, who did not fail to bait man and 
 beast ere they attacked the pass. A grim, odd, 
 cynical name for a house of call ! But it is of no 
 advantage to anybody nowadays, for its hearthstone 
 
PENTLANDS IN R. L. S.'s LIFE 83 
 
 is long cold, and its black and tottering walls would 
 not shelter you against weather. The pass, lofty 
 and exposed, runs between the East Cairn and West 
 Cairn Hills. At the beginning of the ascent you 
 cross the Water of Leith, here a moderate burn 
 save in time of flood, and then you must flounder 
 through the heather as best you may, for there is 
 no path at all. There are some guide-posts whereby 
 you steer your course. Yet in one sense the way 
 is clear enough. As you look up from the lower 
 road at any of those cross-ways you see the hills, 
 as they approach one another, dip down, so to 
 speak, and where they dip lowest that is the pass. 
 But if you go straight at it you founder in bogs, 
 are impeded by burns and hindered by hillocks, so 
 that the circuitous route from post to post is best. 
 It is a stiff climb, and the summit of the pass is 
 wild enough, strewn with huge boulders, surrounded 
 by mighty hills, cold and chill. A slap is properly 
 a gateless opening in a dyke, but here the hills are 
 the dyke and the name is by analogy. 
 
 When you visit a place in the chance way I did, it 
 does not always reveal its historic character. It was 
 a mild autumn day, and the wind blew with little 
 force ; far off I had noted a human figure perched 
 on a boulder on the summit. This turned out to be 
 a placed minister of the National Church, though 
 where was his parish I cannot tell, for he was correct 
 and stiff, and a little offended at the offhand way in 
 which I saluted a fellow-wayfarer. He took himself 
 off presently, and I saw him no more then or after- 
 wards. A gipsy or a drover had been much more 
 
84 R. L. S. 
 
 in keeping, for this was once a great drive-road, and 
 along this in the old days " bestial " were driven 
 southward for the English market. At a still 
 earlier date the pass was known to the wild free- 
 booters of the border, the Scotts and Armstrongs 
 and Liddels and Elliotts and so forth, who thus drove 
 towards their border fortresses the cattle they had 
 lifted on the slopes of the Pentlands. Some of 
 those raids from the damage and ruin they caused 
 were historical. Those in 1582 and 1600 may be 
 mentioned. Then came the union of the Crowns, 
 and the borders were speedily quieted by the strong 
 hand. 
 
 It is quiet enough to-day, but you think of those 
 wild nights of yore, the farm-house burning in the 
 distance, the heather and the rocks glimmering in 
 the light of torches, the leaps and bellowing of the 
 frightened cattle as they drove onward, the yells 
 of men in hot strife, the ground dyed with blood ! 
 
 It is made a reproach to the city folk that they do 
 not seek those solitudes oftener and in greater 
 numbers, but the modern love for mountain scenery 
 easily yields before real difficulty, and here there 
 is no train or coach, you must tramp it. In the 
 drove-days the passes were not so solitary. And 
 again, since the town is so populous, more folk are 
 afoot there than in the sixties and seventies when 
 R. L. S. knew them. I have given a specimen of 
 the Pentland legends. They are of all sorts, Cove- 
 nanting, supernatural, romantic. The very name 
 has its charm, for Pentland means Pict-land, and 
 though I do not profess to know who the Picts were, 
 
PENTLANDS IN R. L. S.'s LIFE 85 
 
 yet they were surely old and mysterious. History 
 too was here made, for on Turnhouse Hill on the 
 east side was fought the battle of Rullion Green 
 on 28th November 1666, and the long trenchlike 
 marks which you see looking up from the Edinburgh 
 road that runs out from Morningside are said to 
 show the graves into which the dead were thrown 
 pell-mell. 
 
 Many writers touched the Pentlands before 
 R. L. S., and some of them were near his peculiar 
 ground. Lord Cockburn, the Scots Judge, lived at 
 Bonaly, and built himself there an almost feudal 
 town on the northern slope of the hills in the parish 
 of Colinton. One summer, he tells us, he sat day 
 after day in a favourite nook, and read every word 
 of Tacitus. How the gloomy words of the greatest 
 of the Latins tasted among those quiet hills he has 
 not told us. Scott too has written, " I think I never 
 saw anything more beautiful than the ridge of 
 Cairnethy against a clear, frosty sky with its peaks 
 and varied slopes. The hills glowed like purple 
 amethysts, the sky glowed topaz and vermilion 
 colours. I never saw a finer screen than Pentland 
 considering that it is neither rocky nor highly 
 elevated." Such are the Pentlands, such their 
 memories. 
 
 As to particular places, first must come Colinton, 
 where R. L. S. was so much in the lifetime of 
 his maternal grandfather. The Rev. Dr. Lewis 
 Balfour ministered there 1 823-1 860. In the 
 account of " The Manse " in Memories and Portraits 
 he has told all that you will probably care to know 
 
86 R. L. S. 
 
 of this village. Here as in many other cases I can 
 only add a few words of supplement. Though 
 swollen of late, it is still a little place four miles 
 south-west of Edinburgh. It has no history worth 
 the telling. Steep hills and tree-clad braes slope 
 down to the Water of Leith, in the bed of which 
 there are great rocks forming a succession of cas- 
 cades. The walks by the side of the stream are of 
 peculiar charm ; the river makes a fold enclosing 
 manse and church, as also a hideous paper-mill. 
 The manse is a delightful old house, fairly large, with 
 fine grounds. The church bears the date of 1771, 
 but it has been restored and partly re-edified at 
 various times. Steep steps lead up from it to the 
 houses on the hill-side, where is now the most im- 
 portant street. In the village shops postcards, 
 books, trinkets referring to R. L. S. or his writings 
 are very much in evidence. Villas crown every 
 coign of vantage: they compass the place about, 
 they appear on unlikely and as you might think 
 unsuitable nooks, they are much of the fashion 
 of those structures which R. L. S. cursed with 
 such whole-hearted fervour in early years in The 
 Picturesque Notes, later in The Wrecker. 
 
 Such things must be. Colinton is a pretty place 
 near Edinburgh, Edinburgh expands, communica- 
 tion is easy, and why is not the cit. to spend his 
 hours of ease from toil there as well as elsewhere ? 
 Why not indeed ? But by one of fate's little 
 ironies R. L. S. is himself partly the cause of a 
 growth he detested. His fame is great in his birth- 
 place. He has touched the place with magic wand, 
 
PENTLANDS IN R. L. S.'s LIFE 87 
 
 so that its fields and woods and waters are wider 
 and better known and seem more lovely. Letters 
 like other trades has its rules and even tricks. If 
 you praise a place you take it at its best, select 
 its choicest spots of set purpose, rose-colour your 
 picture. As your citizen balances the pros and 
 cons of locality this literary feather, so to speak, 
 may turn the wavering balance, and at last for 
 Colinton he neglects Currie or Corstorphine. 
 
 The ardent Stevensonian may not find his pilgrim- 
 age to Colinton a source of pure joy, but he will 
 console himself when he turns his steps south-east- 
 ward and makes for Swanston. The distance is 
 about two miles as the crow flies, and about five 
 miles from Edinburgh. Here R. L. S. himself is 
 your best, indeed your only guide. The Cottage is 
 a charming, old-fashioned, roomy house in a nook 
 of the hills— 
 
 Atween the muckle Pentland's knees 
 Secure ye sit. 
 
 The slopes rise above it, and sink under it. It is set 
 off with lawns and privet hedges. Behind it, a 
 little to the west, are the few trim-kept houses that 
 make up the hamlet, for it cannot be called village. 
 Woods are round it, the trees climb some way up the 
 hill, and spread out in the shape of the letter T. 
 It is a conspicuous object from the lower slopes, as 
 well as from Fairmilehead on the Edinburgh road. 
 Numerous excursion coaches pass that way. It is one 
 of the stock objects, and the conductors do not fail to 
 call the attention of the flocks they are shepherding 
 to this now famous place. They supplement with 
 
88 R. L. S. 
 
 entertaining though inaccurate details of the life 
 and works of R. L. S. The Cottage is now in 
 charge of a Lord of Session, the friend and corre- 
 spondent of our author, as well as a careful student 
 of what he has written. He has collected and 
 preserved such relics as have come into his hands. 
 The gates of the garden stand invitingly open, so 
 that you may enter and take a modest survey 
 without let or hindrance. Swanston Farm lies 
 just below, but you cannot roam over the fields as 
 you would, for every gate and post carries a stern 
 warning not to trespass. Such warnings are not 
 rare in that countryside. Is it that the lairds are 
 specially tenacious of their rights, or the populace 
 are possessed with a demon? Certain it is, that 
 were it not for the Rights of Way Society with 
 their presence and their posts, many paths had 
 perished utterly in that long tract of years when 
 men had ceased to tread them for profit and had 
 not yet begun to walk for pleasure. 
 
 If you have come from Colinton you have passed 
 the Hunter's Tryst on your way. From Swanston 
 you come down till you join the cross-road, and a 
 little way along it westward at another bend of 
 the road is a cottage, with storm windows, a small 
 garden in front, and rather extensive stabling at 
 the side. It is now a dairy. Of old it supplied 
 a more generous liquor. The hunter as he returned 
 laden with spoil after his long day in the hills saw 
 with peculiar satisfaction the red light that beamed 
 from its little windows. Such is the old-time 
 picture your fancy paints, for then the Hunter's 
 
PENTLANDS IN R. L. S.'s LIFE 89 
 
 Tryst was sufficiently far from Edinburgh to make 
 it a real country inn. Once it was a favourite 
 walk ; a battered stone post by the roadside states 
 that here is five miles from the General Post Office, 
 also that it was " erected to regulate the post-horse 
 duties payable by hackney coaches 1814." The 
 words seem the echo of a vanished world. To-day 
 the suburbs of the capital are close at hand, and 
 trains, bicycles, and motors — especially motors — 
 have shattered our old ideas of distance. 
 
 Glencorse is a little way farther from Swanston 
 than Colinton. You go south on the highway, 
 then eastward through beautiful leafy lanes, and so 
 to the church, which is a plain modern structure, 
 no remarkable example of Presbyterian archi- 
 tecture. As you see there is no churchyard you 
 suspect a mistake, and presently discover that you 
 must retrace your steps a little to the northward, 
 and there, just off the road, is the old church, the 
 one referred to by R. L. S. It is dismantled and 
 ruinous, ivy-clad, embowered in trees, and round it 
 are low beautiful hills. The burn trickles in the 
 hollow. The crowded churchyard is round it. 
 You gather that the natives were long livers, for 
 many inscriptions are in memory of folk above 
 eighty. Glencorse is a parish, not a village, nor is 
 it ancient, since it only dates from 1616, when it 
 was compounded out of Pentland and Penicuik. If 
 you follow the road that passes by both churches 
 southward, you presently come upon the Fisher's 
 Tryst, which is still an inn, no doubt because it 
 stands on a broad highway, which your road has 
 
go R. L. S. 
 
 just joined. It is quite an ordinary, unpretentious 
 suburban inn, spite of its romantic name. 
 
 Those are the chief places in the Pentlands which 
 bear on the life of R. L. S. Curious inquirers have 
 interviewed the local rustics as to their impressions 
 of the gifted youth. The result is disappointing, 
 but quite in keeping with historic precedent. 
 David Hume's mother thought her son " uncommon 
 weak-minded." The fishwife encountering Adam 
 Smith in the High Street promptly judged him a 
 natural or idiot, though she admitted " weel putten 
 on." With them must go the Swanston dame 
 who summed up R. L. S. as " just naething," 
 though she with wise caution added " when I 
 kenn'd him." Another remembered how he doffed 
 his hat whenever he passed her — sufficiently un- 
 common and at least characteristic . I wish, however, 
 that someone had tapped John Todd and taken his 
 impressions. Perhaps someone did, and was told 
 in the words of Candlish about him that " the lad 
 was grand company," and there was no more. 
 After all, these and their kind would not under- 
 stand or appreciate to-day. Later, when men of 
 letters spoke words of commendation, it was with 
 what seems to us now a misplaced air of patronage. 
 The fairy prince was yet in disguise, later he was to 
 take his rightful place on the throne. 
 
CHAPTER VI 
 
 THE PENTLANDS IN STEVENSON'S 
 WRITINGS 
 
 TWO of the novels are much concerned with 
 the Pentlands. These are St. Ives and Weir 
 of Hermiston. Of the first there is no doubt, 
 for the actual places are named and frequently 
 described. In Swanston Cottage Flora the heroine 
 and Miss Gilchrist her aunt had their abode. In 
 chapter v. Flora standing with the hero on the 
 summit of the Castle Rock points it out in the dis- 
 tance. Chapter viii. is entitled " Swanston Cottage." 
 St. Ives after his escape finds his way to it in the 
 dawn without much difficulty. " The Cottage was a 
 little quaint place " (in Stevenson's own time the 
 house was altered and enlarged — this is a picture of 
 its earlier state) " of many rough-cast gables and grey 
 roofs. It had something of the air of a rambling 
 infinitesimal cathedral ; the body of it rising in the 
 midst two stories high, with a steep-pitched roof, 
 and sending out upon all hands (as it were chapter- 
 houses, chapels, and transepts) one-storied and 
 dwarfish projections. To add to this appearance 
 it was grotesquely decorated with crockets and 
 gargoyles ravished from some mediaeval church." 
 After various alarums and excursions the aunt 
 
92 R. L. S. 
 
 arranges that he is to be put across the border by 
 the two drovers Sims and Candlish (modelled after 
 John Todd, the Swanston shepherd) ; to them she 
 explains that he was a man " put to the horn " for 
 debt. St. Ives thinks there is something barbarous 
 and mediaeval in the sound, and is assured that it 
 is only a process of Scots law. It is a curious 
 term' still used in old-fashioned legal documents in 
 the North, but never actually performed. By an 
 ancient legal fiction, a defaulting debtor was assumed 
 a rebel to the King, and was declared an outlaw by 
 blowing three blasts on the horn, whereupon he 
 suffered all the penalties of outlawry. 
 
 The drovers and their cattle take a westward 
 route. They rest on the top of Howden, which is a 
 summit near Mid Calder, and that is the last definite 
 indication we have. It is probably meant that they 
 passed the Pentlands by the Cauldstane Slap, 
 and they would then proceed by the Thieves' Road, 
 which is a continuation of this last on towards the 
 border. Its name suggests that others besides 
 drovers passed that way — in old times the freebooters, 
 and in later years the smuggler, the gipsy, and every 
 " gangrel " body. At last, from a bare hill-side, he 
 sees " the ribbon of the great north road." He 
 joins it somewhere between Berwick and Newcastle, 
 which latter is the first town he reaches. You 
 observe he makes a considerable detour, for the 
 Great North Road, starting from Edinburgh, passes 
 through Haddington, Dunbar and Berwick, and 
 so on to Newcastle, following pretty closely the line 
 of the coast, though with considerable dives inland 
 
PENTLANDS IN R. L. S.'s WRITINGS 93 
 
 to avoid circuity, and visit more or less important 
 towns. In chapter xxvi., after St. Ives has again 
 returned to Edinburgh, he visits the Cottage on a 
 stormy night. On his way back, on the top of the 
 first hill, " I spied a light on my left about a furlong 
 away." He approaches it, and finds " a plain 
 rustic cottage by the wayside of the sort called 
 double, the signboard over the door, on it the in- 
 scription ' The Hunter's Tryst by Alexander 
 Hendry.' " Here he finds a meeting of the 
 Sixfoot Club, " an athletic society of young men 
 in a good station, who made of the Hunter's Tryst 
 a frequent resort," and here he remains for the 
 night. This club was a reality ; drinking and 
 athletics were the amusements of those young 
 giants, as they were those of the Norse divinities. 
 And sometimes there was good talk, for Scott and 
 Hogg were of their company, and where the Wizard 
 of the North and the Ettrick Shepherd met in social 
 converse things were said, you believe, well worth 
 remembering. He returns to town next morning 
 by Merchiston, where he meets Mr. Robbie, W.S. 
 Merchiston might even then be counted a suburb of 
 Edinburgh. It is a district that grew up round the 
 old peel tower of the Napiers of Merchiston. Here 
 the discoverer and inventor of Logarithms, still the 
 best known member of a famous family, lived and 
 worked. The continuation takes us again to the 
 neighbourhood of Swanston, from whence St. Ives 
 escapes in a balloon. Balloon ascents were favourite 
 exhibitions of this and an earlier period. 
 I turn to Weir of Hermiston. I think substan- 
 
94 R- L- S. 
 
 tially the whole scenery is taken from the Pentlands. 
 But the topography is of the most fantastic descrip- 
 tion ; places are mixed up in the oddest way, 
 and historic rivers are made to run as they do 
 not run in fact. Wide as is the licence allowed to a 
 writer of romance, if there be any bounds at all they 
 are here exceeded. First as to the title name, it is 
 taken, says Sir Sidney Colvin, " from a farm on the 
 Water of Ale, between Ettrick and Teviotdale, and 
 close to the proper country of the Elliots." I think 
 this is not well founded. The Hermiston referred 
 to is on the northern slope of the Pentlands. It is a 
 village or hamlet or farm " toun " in Currie parish, 
 Midlothian, close to the Union Canal. It is on the 
 high road to Mid Calder, five and a half miles west of 
 Edinburgh. It is anything but a " shore of old 
 romance ' ' ; there is a row of quaint, thatched cottages, 
 there is also a smithy, all which points are features 
 of old Scots village-life, but to-day the road is studded 
 with telegraph posts, heavily loaded with wires. 
 Motor buses from Edinburgh and motor cars from 
 everywhere crash through it with endless din, but 
 those later features are since Stevenson's day. In 
 the vicinity there is Hermiston House. It is a con- 
 venient distance from the capital, and those Pent- 
 land slopes, be it remembered, were favourite haunts 
 of the Scots lawyers ; moreover, it is the only place 
 of any size in Scotland bearing that name. It is 
 not a parish, and R. L. S. has, as we know, attached 
 Glencorse Church to it, but that is also in the 
 Pentlands though some distance away. The de- 
 cisive point that clinches the matter to my mind 
 
PENTLANDS IN R. L. S.'s WRITINGS 95 
 
 is that R. L. S. has used this very name in another 
 of his tales. The bibulous cabman in John Nicholson 
 recognizes the hero on the road to Murrayfield, 
 which is also on the way to Hermiston, and declares, 
 " I drove ye to Hermiston to a Christmas party." 
 Glencorse is identified by the fact that Mr. Torrance 
 the divine mentioned in Weir of Hermiston was 
 actually the minister at Glencorse. 
 
 The scene of the most tragic moments of the story 
 was meant to be the grave of the Praying Weaver of 
 Balweary. It was " in the wild end of a moorland 
 parish, far out of the sight of any house." There 
 was a cairn among the heather, and near it a monu- 
 ment with some half-defaced verses. Balweary, I 
 note, is a favourite imaginary parish of Stevenson. 
 It is the parish of Heathercat, and also that of 
 the ' Rev. Murdoch Soulis in the tragic history of 
 Thrawn Janet. The nearest actual name to, and 
 probably the origin of it, is Balwearie, a ruined 
 tower in Fife, the abode of Sir Michael Scott, the 
 Wizard of Dante's Inferno and Scott's Lay of the 
 Last Minstrel. Even if the Wizard be vague and 
 mythical, at any rate the Lairds of Balwearie were 
 sung in old-time ballads, and the last of them cursed 
 by John Knox in a particularly graphic passage. 
 On the west of the Pentland range there is a Black 
 Law and a Black Hill, each of which is practically 
 the same name as the Black Fell of the story. On a 
 wild and desolate part of Black Hill there is a solitary 
 tombstone. Here, according to well-founded tradi- 
 tion, lie the remains of John Carphin. He fought 
 with the Covenanting host at Rullion Green, was 
 
96 R. L. S. 
 
 grievously wounded, and fled after the defeat over 
 the whole course of the Pentlands. He came at 
 dead of night to the lonely farm of Adam Sanderson 
 of Blackhill, a now ruined homestead ; here he 
 was kindly received, but died on the hill-side in 
 Sanderson's arms. He had one last request, that 
 his grave should lie within sight of his native Ayr- 
 shire hills. There is at the spot a gap in the heights, 
 through which it is possible to see the hills of 
 Ayrshire, which are some eighteen miles away 
 in a straight line. The piety of the time marked 
 the spot with a cairn. It has been noted that the 
 Disruption of 1843 in the Scots Kirk revived the 
 ideas of the Covenanting period. Here was an 
 instance, for shortly after that event a tombstone 
 was put up with an inscription. But the Praying 
 Weaver of the tale was shot by Claverhouse with his 
 own hand. Now in the story Crossmichael is given, 
 apparently as the county town of Hermiston. Cross- 
 michael is actually the name of a village and parish 
 in the middle of Kirkcudbrightshire. It is on the 
 river Dee, which there spreads out like a lake. In 
 the graveyard of the parish church is a tombstone 
 which bears " William Graham shot dead by a 
 party of Claverhouse's troops for his adherence to 
 Scotland's Reformation Covenant 1682." This is 
 very similar to the fate of the Praying Weaver of 
 Balweary, but the locality fits in much better with 
 the slope of the Black Hill in the Pentlands. Cross- 
 michael is identified by Sir Sidney Colvin with 
 Peebles, because there is some trace of a convivial 
 club in that abode of pleasure. This reminds of a 
 
PENTLANDS IN R. L. S.'s WRITINGS 97 
 
 famous parallel between Macedon and Monmouth. 
 There was a Hell Fire Club in London, and one in 
 Dublin ; also Wodrow in his Analecta tells us of 
 one in Edinburgh in 1726. They did much business 
 in their head-quarters with sulphurous flames and 
 fumes. The tests of admission were profane and 
 blasphemous. The good old divine lifts up his hands, 
 as well he might, in holy horror. A pious peasantry 
 were equally scandalized. There were feeble imita- 
 tions in several of the provincial towns. The club 
 in the story is a comparatively mild affair. What 
 Scots borough of old was without one of the kind ? 
 
 Among the minor characters mentioned are Hay 
 of Romanes and Pringle of Drumano, which again is 
 odd, since there is a Romanno House on the south- 
 west slope of the Pentlands, which lends a piece 
 to each name. 
 
 The clearest identification with the Pentlands is 
 the Cauldstane Slap, where occurs the brilliant and 
 savage episode of the death of black-avised Gilbert, 
 who farmed the Cauldstane Slap. His assailants 
 were " but little ahead, hot foot for Edinburgh, by 
 way of the Pentland Hills." There is no farm of the 
 name given which belongs solely to the pass, though 
 there are plenty " touns " near at hand that might 
 have served for model. More confusing is the refer- 
 ence to the one who was killed and carried down 
 Tweed to be cast up in the end at Crossmichael 
 Brigg. Wherever that was, it could not have been 
 in Kirkcudbrightshire. Also the Hermiston Water 
 is given as a tributary to the Spango, which in fact 
 is one of the head-streams of Crawick Water. This 
 7 
 
98 R. L. S. 
 
 last is a tributary of the Nith, which finally runs 
 into the Solway Firth. R. L. S. wisely preferred 
 to take his scenery from personal experience. He 
 knew the Pentlands better than any other hill- 
 country in Scotland. It were absurd to suppose 
 that he deliberately chose the Pentlands, and then 
 needlessly disguised his choice as much as possible. 
 But for the reasons given I think he had them mainly 
 in his mind, and they fit in better than any other 
 locality with the incidents of the tale. In regard 
 to proper names he took what best pleased his ear. 
 
 I have sufficiently spoken of the impressions of 
 the Pentlands given in " Pastoral " and other papers 
 in Memories and Portraits. From first to last he 
 was much concerned with these hills. His very 
 earliest work was on the Pentland Rising, which 
 ended at Rullion Green on the 28th November 1666. 
 His essay is dated on the second centenary of the 
 combat. It was not in itself a great battle. Though 
 the year was Dryden's Annus Mirabilis, he does 
 not name it in his classic poem. Its chief interest 
 for us to-day is its place in the literature of the 
 Covenant. This was the cairn to which R. L. S. 
 added his stone. His tract was published anony- 
 mously in 1866 by Mr. Elliot of Princes Street, 
 Edinburgh. It is well written for a lad of sixteen, 
 though it has none of the picked phrases and 
 golden periods of his later years. The best passage 
 is that which tells of the death of Master Andrew 
 Murray, who was an " outed " minister living in the 
 Potterrow. He was drawn to the window by the 
 noise in the street, and saw beneath him the victori- 
 
PENTLANDS IN R. L. S.'s WRITINGS 99 
 
 ous army marching on with such pomp as they 
 could muster, dragging their prisoners behind them 
 in the manner of a Roman triumph. The sight was 
 too much for the old man. He fell mortally ill, and 
 died within the next few days. Three hundred 
 copies of this little pamphlet were published 
 anonymously. It is but twenty- two pages. His 
 father bought up all the copies. A stray one were 
 now worth a considerable figure. The sentiment 
 was strongly pro-Covenanting. In this as in some 
 other matters the mind of the author worked in a 
 circle. He came round at the end, in letters at 
 any rate, to the thoughts and ideas at the beginning. 
 In treating of the Pentlands, however, in the 
 Picturesque Notes on Edinburgh he makes no 
 mention of the Rising, though you would have 
 guessed that the lonely grave of the Covenanter 
 would have touched his quick fancy. But there 
 was a profusion of material ; also he dealt with 
 the east not the western slopes, and the grave is 
 on those western slopes. He treated only of things, 
 so to speak, that were under his own hand : the ghost 
 at the Hunter's Tryst, the beauty of Carketton, 
 which rises straight above Swanston, — perhaps 
 he agreed with Lord Cockburn that this was the 
 most beautiful summit in Scotland, — and with the 
 engaging exciseman of Fairmilehead and Lothian- 
 burn. If it be objected that Rullion Green itself 
 was in the near neighbourhood, the answer is partly 
 that it was a piece of history, and that his mature 
 genius avoided a fair square important historical 
 event. 
 
ioo R. L. S. 
 
 In those notes he makes one curious mistake, 
 trusting too much it may be to casual observation 
 or ignorant gossip. It is about what he calls 
 " General Kay's monument," a monolith standing 
 in a field near the Hunter's Tryst. Now this is 
 also called the Kel Stain or battle stone. It is also 
 known as Camus Stane, " from the name of a 
 Danish commander." This is on the right-hand side 
 as you come from Edinburgh by the Morningside 
 road, and is near the road from Fairmilehead to 
 Hunter's Tryst ; but also on the right-hand side, 
 before you get as far as Fairmilehead, you pass 
 what is called the Buckstone, a rock in the wall on 
 the roadside, and it is said that the Clerks of Penicuik 
 hold their land on the condition that the tenant for 
 the time being shall blow three blasts of a horn 
 from the top of this stone when the King shall come 
 to hunt on the Burghmuir. Hence the motto of 
 the family, " Free for a blast," and Sir Walter 
 Scott's lines — 
 
 From that fair dome where suit is paid 
 By blast of bugle free. 
 
 Stevenson erroneously transfers all this to General 
 Kay's monument. 
 
 Scattered through the four volumes of letters 
 are numerous references to places in the Pentlands. 
 I will only refer to two where Glencorse Church is 
 mentioned. "It is a little cruciform place, with 
 heavy cornices and string course to match, and 
 a steep slate roof. The small kirkyard is full of 
 old gravestones. One of a Frenchman from Dun- 
 kerque— I suppose he died prisoner in the military 
 
PENTLANDS IN R. L. S.'s WRITINGS 101 
 
 prison hard by. . . . In church, old Mr. Torrence 
 preached — over eighty, and a relic of times forgotten, 
 with his black thread gloves and mild old foolish 
 face." The letter is of June 1875 and is addressed 
 to Mrs. Sitwell. The military prison referred to 
 was an ancient mansion which Government had 
 procured and fashioned into a hold for French 
 prisoners of war. It was rather cramped, and in 
 1813, under the belief apparently that the war was 
 to last for ever, our rulers set up a huge place, fit 
 to hold six thousand captives and their keepers, 
 secure and comfortable, at least from the keepers' 
 point of view. It cost a hundred thousand pounds, 
 and then fate played a humorous trick, for there 
 was peace, whereupon all the captives were forthwith 
 packed home. The prison suffered various changes 
 as the years went by, finally becoming a huge 
 military station. It is now known as Greenlaw or 
 Glencorse Barracks. The minister referred to is 
 obviously the original of the Mr. Torrance in Weir 
 of Hermiston, though to get a better sound an a 
 replaces an e — a significant proof of how minute 
 points of style occupied the author's mind. He also 
 would seem to be the original of the divine in the 
 Lowden Sabbath Morn. He and his father before 
 him occupied the living of Glencorse, to which he 
 was presented by Tytler of Woodhouselee, the 
 " haunted Woodhouselee " of Scott's ballad. It is 
 recorded that he enriched that family, whose " seat is 
 near at hand, with a watch, once the property of 
 Queen Mary." It was a gift from the Dauphin of 
 France to Mary before he espoused her, and it was 
 
102 R. L. S. 
 
 " given by her to her French attendant Massie on 
 the eve of her execution." The particularity in 
 the history of such relics is astounding, though 
 possibly you are still sceptical. Mr. Torrence takes 
 his well-earned rest in Glencorse Churchyard, where 
 there is a stone to his memory, preserved more 
 widely, however, by Stevenson's kindly though not 
 altogether respectful reference. Nearly twenty years 
 afterwards, in a letter to Mr. Crockett, 17th May 
 1893, he recurs again to the place, " I shall never 
 take that walk by the Fisher's Tryst and Glencorse ' ' ;, 
 and again, " Do you know where the road crosses 
 the burn under Glencorse Church ? Go there, and 
 say a prayer for me : moriturus salutat. See that 
 it's a sunny day ; I would like it to be a Sunday, 
 but that's not possible in the premises ; and stand 
 on the right-hand bank just where the road goes 
 down into the water, and shut your eyes, and if I 
 don't appear to you ! well, it can't be helped, and 
 will be extremely funny." How clear the place pic- 
 tured itself on his memory after all the intervening 
 years ! 
 
CHAPTER VII 
 ABOUT THE LOTHIANS WITH R. L. S. 
 
 RL. S. was familiar with the Lothian shore 
 of the Firth of Forth. We hear a good deal 
 of it in his books. First there is Queensf erry. 
 The town itself is of little importance, less so now 
 than in earlier years. Its name of Queensferry, or 
 Passagium Regince, is as old as the twelfth century. 
 It derives from the Queen, St. Margaret, wife of 
 Malcolm Canmore, who passed that way again and 
 again between Edinburgh and Dunfermline. Her 
 last journey was in the drear winter of 1093, when 
 the boat bore her dead body to Dunfermline for 
 burial. North Queensferry is exactly opposite, on 
 the Fife coast, and for centuries nearly all who 
 have gone to Fife from the South have gone this 
 royal way. The Queen no doubt followed the 
 example of still earlier travellers, for nature has 
 marked out the place as most convenient for crossing. 
 " Just then we came to the top of the hill and 
 looked down upon the Ferry and the Hope," so 
 David Balfour in Kidnapped. A railway station 
 now crowns the hill ; " the Hope " is St. Margaret's 
 Hope, an anchorage where the ancient fleet that in 
 1068 brought Margaret and her brother Edgar the 
 Atheling, fugitives to Scotland, safely rode out the 
 
104 R- L. S. 
 
 storm. The noble youth has also left his memory 
 in Port Edgar, a little haven to the west of Queens- 
 ferry. Here is wealth of picturesque and charming 
 names. " The islet with some ruins," which David 
 notes in the midst of the narrows, is Inchgarvie. 
 The ruins date from the time of James IV. It was a 
 State prison till the Bass was purchased in 1671. If 
 possible, the earlier place must have been even more 
 uncomfortable. The Americans who visit Queens- 
 ferry in the track of Stevenson perhaps more than 
 in that of Scott, may note with interest that after 
 Paul Jones had frightened the capital, the Lothians, 
 and the kingdom of Fife alike by his audacious 
 cruise far up the Firth, Inchgarvie was fortified 
 with four iron 24-pounders. This was in 1779, 
 and as is the way in such matters, after the special 
 danger was past. The islet is now the central support 
 of the great Forth Bridge, which carries you up 
 in the air over the track of the sainted Queen. 
 
 If you know your Scott, you remember that the 
 Queensferry Fly, that ponderous old-time vehicle, 
 conducts, in the first chapter of The Antiquary, 
 Monkbarns and Lovell to the Hawes Inn at Queens- 
 ferry. Both Scott and Stevenson describe with 
 reasonable gusto the food and drink set before their 
 heroes. But the Hawes Inn makes a more attractive 
 appearance in the pages of the earlier writer, 
 though David calls there both at the beginning and 
 end of Kidnapped, and converses with the land- 
 lord, who gives vent in very excellent Scots to some 
 very imprudent observations anent Uncle Ebenezer. 
 The inn impressed R. L. S., for he had already in a 
 
ABOUT THE LOTHIAN S WITH R. L. S. 105 
 
 Gossip on Romance noted the call it made upon his 
 fancy. " There it stands apart from the town, 
 beside the pier, in a climate of its own, half inland, 
 half marine — in front the ferry bubbling with the 
 tide, and the guardship swinging to her anchor, 
 behind the old garden with the trees." R. L. S. 
 notes that the Americans seek it for the scene in The 
 Antiquary. Some of his intimates thought himself 
 conscious and conceited, but I do not think it ever 
 occurred to him that anyone would seek it for Ms sake. 
 He dwells on the suggestiveness of the place. He 
 lived there in a perpetual flutter, as if something 
 remarkable was about to happen, but it didn't — at 
 least not in his time. " The man or the hour had 
 not yet come, but some day I think a boat shall 
 put off from the Queensferry fraught with a dear 
 cargo." This essay was written in February 1882, 
 and published in November in Longman's Maga- 
 zine. Next year saw the beginning of the Forth 
 Bridge. When the essay was republished in 1887 
 in Memories and Portraits he adds a note, " I have 
 tried to launch the boat with my own hands in 
 Kidnapped," but neither here nor anywhere else 
 does he refer to the Bridge. Yet to one of a family 
 of engineers, to one who had such an interest, albeit 
 a literary interest, in the lighthouse and the harbour, 
 this great Bridge whose story is one of the fairy tales 
 of science must have been of note. 
 
 He has a brief account of Queensferry towards the 
 end of Kidnapped : " The town hall not so fine I 
 thought as that of Peebles, nor yet the streets so 
 noble." It is hard to think of the word " noble " 
 
106 R. L. S. 
 
 in connection with a Queensferry street, even when 
 a raw country lad is the speaker; but R. L. S. 
 delighted in the ironical touch such an observation 
 implied. What with the Bridge, and the railway, 
 and the naval station of Rosyth on the opposite 
 shore, the place is far other than it was in the 
 Stevenson not-distant day. In the autumn of 1912 
 I bicycled there from Edinburgh one Sunday night. 
 The broad and spacious highway was thick with 
 a fortnight's dust, which an endless succession 
 of motors, public and private, kept in perpetual 
 motion. War fleets lay in the Forth, electric flashes 
 lit up all the water, boats came to and went from 
 the shore, which was crowded with nautical men of 
 many sorts and their attendants. The bustling 
 incident of the minute was supreme. The Hawes 
 Inn, or Newhalls Hotel as it is more elegantly termed, 
 hummed with life, Sabbath Day as it was. Its 
 customers thronged it that evening for other than 
 literary memories. I peered over the wall into the 
 garden ; it was dark and deserted, and retained an 
 air of seclusion and mystery. The last motor was 
 loading for Edinburgh, and it panted past as I toiled 
 up the brae, and then the crescent moon rose over 
 the tree-tops and the silence of the night fell on the 
 suburban fields. 
 
 Near places are referred to in the story : Alan 
 Breck " made but a poor meal in an alehouse near 
 Dundas." This is the name of an old castle and hill 
 two miles south-west of the Ferry. It was held 
 for some centuries by a family of that name. David 
 and Alan part at " Rest and be Thankful " on 
 
ABOUT THE LOTHIANS WITH R. L. S. 107 
 
 Corstorphine Hill, still a favourite evening walk of 
 the citizen. Hence they look down on Corstorphine 
 bogs, which lay at the foot of the hill to the north. 
 All this land was once a dreary swamp, but before 
 the time of the story the mineral well there was of 
 such account that a coach ran between the village 
 and the city eight or nine times a day. The urban 
 gourmet smacked his lips over a dish of Corstorphine 
 cream, a choice compound for which the district was 
 famous. Already it had some promise as the future 
 garden of Edinburgh, though rows of villas are 
 making inroads on the garden. But I must stick to 
 the shore, and proceeding westward halt at Cramond. 
 This is a village on the Forth, five miles from 
 Edinburgh, and about the same distance east of 
 Queensferry. The river Almond there joins the 
 Firth. A steep winding street leads you up to the 
 level of the surrounding country, and on that level 
 is a knot of houses and villas of very modern date. 
 On the left hand of the steep street as you rise are 
 Cramond Inn and Cramond Church, and in that inn 
 took place the riotous proceedings of the University 
 of Cramond set forth in St. Ives. Here Dalmahoy 
 and his crew parodied University proceedings to the 
 accompaniment of much eating and more drinking. 
 The inn is a fair-sized, irregular building ; plainly 
 it has been enlarged more than once, but still passes 
 well enough for the village inn of a former year. It 
 is of some age, so you are sure our author had this 
 very " howf " in his mind when he called up before 
 him in the South Seas the aspects of this far-distant 
 countryside. The church is not three hundred 
 
io8 R. L. S. 
 
 years old, but its yard is crowded even more than 
 common with old vaults and monuments. Much of 
 the small wealth of old-time Scotland was lavished 
 on such memorials. If you had the tiniest piece of 
 ground you were So-and-so of So-and-so, and its 
 name in common parlance became your name, thus 
 you must have it on your tombstone. 
 
 All about Cramond are places of interest. A little 
 over a mile up the river is Old Cramond Brig, where 
 James V of amorous rather than pious memory had 
 a famous love adventure. Stevenson in drawing 
 the Cramond University gives you a true picture 
 of Edinburgh pranks of the time. The proceedings 
 of the Bonaly Friday Club, which flourished almost 
 thirty years later, were, if more sober, at least equally 
 ridiculous — nay, many an old-time Edinburgh citizen 
 of good position and usually grave appearance 
 outdid Dalmahoy in folly. Is there not the record 
 of Councillor Pleydell with his High Jinks in Guy 
 Mannering ? In St. Ives the walk to Cramond 
 is by way of Newhaven and the sea-beach — at first 
 through pleasant country roads, and afterwards 
 along a succession of bays of fairy-like prettiness. 
 The miles between the New Town and the sea were 
 not then filled up with houses, which on the coast 
 to-day are well-nigh continuous. Newhaven, about 
 a mile west of Leith, was for centuries a quaint 
 village inhabited by fishermen. The fishwives with 
 their picturesque attire are still seen on Edin- 
 burgh streets, incongruous spectacles in an age of 
 motors and tramways, and those same tramways 
 grind through Newhaven itself, so quaint houses and 
 
ABOUT THE LOTHIANS WITH R. L. S. 109 
 
 quaint community are alike on the verge of ex- 
 tinction. Also Newhaven fish dinners are an untried 
 joy to the young generation, and Newhaven must 
 presently be quite beaten down to the monotonous 
 level of its surroundings. In (strange contradic- 
 tion !) an English fictional writer's work, Charles 
 Reade's Christie Johnstone (1853), you have the 
 place in its brave old days adequately set forth. 
 Reade was not one of the writers who attracted 
 R. L. S., whose own touch on Newhaven is slight. 
 
 I pass round the coast till I come to Prestonpans. 
 Here Alan Breck insisted on dragging David to the 
 field of the famous battle of 1745. He calls the 
 battle Gladsmuir, which is a little village on what was 
 then a wild moor, but is now highly cultivated land. 
 Here to-day, as you go eastward, you reach at last 
 the dulcia arva, for dingy suburbs and coal-pits have 
 made horrid the beginning of the Great North Road 
 from Edinburgh up to this point. But Gladsmuir 
 is some miles west of the battlefield, which the 
 Jacobites called after it from an old rhyme, " On 
 Gladsmuir sail the battle be. " At the fishing village 
 of Cockenzie " they were building herring busses 
 at Mrs. Caddal's," and you may note that Cockenzie 
 House is, as it has long been, the seat of the Caddals, 
 who own much land in the parish. Then they are 
 obliged to go inland, but they strike the shore 
 presently on Gillane sands, not far westward of 
 Dirleton. Here they view the quaint islands 
 that dot the coast. Of these Fidra is the most 
 notable, " a strange grey islet of two humps." 
 There is a ruin on it. It is that of a small chapel. 
 
no R. L. S. 
 
 There was once a Cistercian nunnery at North 
 Berwick, and the nuns used to get them to this 
 chapel once a year for purposes of devotion ; no 
 doubt but it must have made an agreeable break 
 in the monotony of their lives. As the pair came 
 near the island, " by some door or window of these 
 ruins the sea peeped through like a man's eye." A 
 characteristic touch ! 
 
 Gillane, or Gullane as it is now spelt (its most 
 ancient name was Golyn), was then a few houses, 
 scarcely even a hamlet, and it was little more as 
 long as R. L. S. knew it. Here was a ruined kirk, 
 for the name of the parish was in 1612 changed to 
 Dirleton, where is now the parish church. But of 
 late years golf has made the place prosper ex- 
 ceedingly, for Gullane links are famous, thus hotels 
 and shops and villas abound on that once barren 
 hill-side. Alan gets clear, and David is captured 
 and conveyed south of Berwick Law, and so avoids 
 North Berwick, which was then a small fishing village, 
 huddled in between the north side of the Law and 
 the sea. He observes far off the old tower of a 
 church among the trees. This was Whitekirk, once 
 a great place for pilgrimages to the shrine of 
 Our Lady of Whitekirk. Among the pilgrims was 
 iEneas Silvius of the Piccolomini family. David 
 is taken to the Bass Rock from Canty Bay, the little 
 port under the ruin of Tantallon Castle. 
 
 Where much is changed, Tantallon and the Bass 
 at any rate are not. Tantallon stands on the brow 
 of a cliff looking towards the Bass. It is impossible 
 to better Hugh Miller's graphic line of description : 
 
ABOUT THE LOTHIANS WITH R. L. S. in 
 
 " Three sides of wall-like rock, and one side of 
 rock-like wall." A little way off it looks strong and 
 complete, at hand you recognize it a crumbling 
 shell. Only it crumbles ever so slowly. It was 
 the haunt of the Red Douglas. You still see the 
 bloody heart on the shield above the gateway, for 
 thus is commemorated the legend of the family. 
 It is a well-known story. The good Sir James, 
 fulfilling the last wish of his master, carried the heart 
 of the Bruce towards the Holy Land. In Spain he 
 fell fighting with the Saracens, and in death his 
 body still covered the precious heart, which was 
 brought back to Scotland and buried at Dunferm- 
 line. I shall not attempt here to trace the history 
 of this famous fortress or the Rock. As R. L. S. 
 says in The Lantern Bearers, " The Bass in the eye 
 of fancy still flew the colours of King James, and 
 in the ear of fancy the arches of Tantallon still rang 
 with horse-shoe iron and echoed to the commands 
 of Bell-the-Cat." The Castle has its own place in 
 letters. Gawin, Bishop of Dunkeld, son of this same 
 Bell-the-Cat, was almost certainly born here. He 
 turned Virgil into very elegant Scots verse of the 
 period, with some additions of his own describing 
 the seasons and so forth. In them you recognize 
 his native Lothian fields that lay around. And 
 not to mention minor lights, Scott has so " cracked 
 up " the place in Marmion that everyone has heard 
 of it. Thus the reference in Catriona is but a stone 
 as it were added to a huge cairn. The flag of 
 King James on the Bass flew long after the Revolu- 
 tion of 1688. It was not indeed till April 1694 that 
 
ii2 R. L. S. 
 
 the garrison capitulated, and the ensign of the old 
 race disappeared for a time at any rate from Scotland. 
 
 R. L. S. knew the Bass well and was interested 
 in its romantic history. " The sea was extremely 
 little, but there went a hollow ' plowter * round the 
 base of it." There are many such graphic touches. 
 He describes the solan geese, the true and sometimes 
 only inhabitants of the Rock. " The young are 
 dainty eating," says David. So the folk of the 
 period thought, but to-day you would not find them 
 served up at any of the grand North Berwick hotels, 
 though I am sure the sheep of the Rock are, if they 
 can be procured, for they are produced under the 
 best conditions. Harder to find a better gigot du pre 
 said. R. L. S. tells how the Sea-horse came close up 
 under the Rock, and fired guns solely from curiosity 
 to see the birds rise and make evolutions through the 
 air. The author must have seen many an excursion 
 steamer perform this not very remarkable feat. 
 
 The Bass has a long history. Its first known 
 inhabitant was Baldred, a hermit who died on it 
 as early as 756. He wrought many miracles, duly 
 chronicled by monkish writers or handed down by 
 tradition. The place was held by the Lauder 
 family. It was bought in 1671 by the Government 
 for £4000 and used as prison for the Covenanters. 
 " The martyrs of the Bass " was a well-known term. 
 Stevenson, in the interjected story Tod Lapraik, 
 has a good deal to say about them. He drew largely 
 from a book on the Bass Rock published in Edin- 
 burgh in 1848. It was written by five writers; 
 among them, Hugh Miller and Doctor M'Crie, 
 
ABOUT THE LOTHIANS WITH R. L. S. 113 
 
 " the learned and unreadable M'Crie," as R. L. S. 
 rather cruelly calls him in the Preface to Familiar 
 Studies. Patrick Walker, the pedlar and packman 
 who so graphically told the life of Peden the Pro- 
 phet, and Fraser of Brea who left a record of his 
 own captivity, are his chief original sources. The 
 Governor's bad ale, the tobacco pipes, the psalms 
 of the martyrs in their damp and dismal dungeons, 
 the girl who met with so fearful a doom, the re- 
 pentant soldier are history or tradition, not fancy. 
 But they are woven together with a skill which 
 makes them choicer than their sources. 
 
 North Berwick might be called to-day the capital 
 of golf-land, and even in Stevenson's youth, when 
 the game had not assumed its engrossing proportions, 
 the links were famous. Its newer quarters are 
 after the pattern of the streets of the capital. 
 Stevenson was often here. In The Lantern Bearers 
 he . records some impressions. The lanterns were 
 tin and the sport a boyish one, yet the memories 
 are mainly bitter. They are of a coast that seemed 
 for ever bleak, and a boy suffering from an eternal, 
 chill ; also he records local tragedies chronicled no- 
 where else. They assumed morbid proportions to 
 his sick fancy, are touched off with quite gruesome 
 effect. The great historical tragedy of the place is 
 the story of the North Berwick witches, to which 
 reference is made in Catriona, and that reference 
 must here be sufficient, for the story is too long to 
 tell. However, David escapes from the Bass, and 
 is presently off for Inveraray, where we shall soon 
 find ourselves. 
 8 
 
CHAPTER VIII 
 HIGHLAND SCENE AND HIGHLAND STORY 
 
 RL. S. had a good knowledge of the Highlands. 
 He had been by himself or with his father on 
 engineering trips and engineering business 
 over much of Scotland. In 1870 he was for three 
 weeks on the small island of Earraid to the west of 
 Mull, and he had also lived in Speyside, Blair-Atholl, 
 Strathpeffer, and the Braes of Balquhidder. One 
 of his many projects never realized was a History 
 of the Highlands. The information he gathered 
 for this was useful for Kidnapped and Catriona, of 
 which part deals with those regions. We have also 
 the short story or novelette The Merry Men, and 
 the brief essay Memoirs of an Island which treats 
 of Earraid. 
 
 We follow in the track of David Balfour. First 
 there is his voyage in the good (or shall we say bad ?) 
 ship Covenant of Dysart. She is bound for America, 
 and goes round by Shetland to avoid the dangerous 
 currents of the Pentland Firth, for the seamanship 
 is not of the best. The Pentland Firth is the most 
 difficult passage on the seas about Britain. The 
 tides race with terrific force at a speed of from six 
 to twelve miles an hour. Also there are hazardous 
 
 eddies from aquatic twistings and great masses of 
 
 114 
 
HIGHLAND SCENE AND STORY 115 
 
 submerged rocks. One of these is called " The 
 
 Merry Men of Mey," a name which the reader will 
 
 please keep in mind. Under certain conditions the 
 
 sea rises up like a wall, and moves forward in what 
 
 seems a solid mass. The brig gets safely right 
 
 round, though she is beaten back as far as Cape 
 
 Wrath, " that dread cape so fatal to mariners," as 
 
 Sir Walter Scott wrote of it in 1814, before the 
 
 time of the lighthouse, which dates from 1828. 
 
 Among the Hebrides, they took Alan Breck on 
 
 board, after sinking the boat that carried him. 
 
 They contracted to land him at Linnhe Loch, so 
 
 their proper course would have been through the 
 
 narrows of the Sound of Mull. Captain Hoseason 
 
 shyed at the Sound. The sea is sufficiently deep, 
 
 but the strait way is surrounded by huge hills, 
 
 wherefrom descend great blasts to trouble the 
 
 waters, so with even a moderate tempest the 
 
 charing together of opposing tides in the narrow 
 
 channel was perilous to the ships of the time. True 
 
 enough, but you suspect R. L. S. steered the 
 
 Covenant by the west of Tiree and round the south 
 
 of Mull rather for purposes of literature than 
 
 navigation. He wished to introduce his favourite 
 
 islet of Earraid, whereon the brig is cast away. It 
 
 is barren and unpopulated. When the Dhuheartach 
 
 Lighthouse was in course of construction in 1871 the 
 
 island had a temporary population of one hundred 
 
 and twenty-two, among whom was R. L. S. himself. 
 
 Earraid is quite close to the Ross of Mull ; a little 
 
 way to the north-west is Iona, well known in history 
 
 as the chosen abode of Columba, the missionary of 
 
n6 R. L. S. 
 
 the West. It is described in a famous sentence of 
 Dr. Johnson as " once the luminary of the Caledonian 
 regions, whence savage clans and roving barbarians 
 derived the benefits of knowledge and the blessings 
 of religion." There is a Gaelic proverb that he 
 who goes to Iona once will go thrice. (The sage 
 put himself to considerable trouble to make his 
 pilgrimage, for he was an elderly man, and the way 
 was rough and little frequented.) But you do not 
 see on Iona the church of Columba, as R. L. S. 
 rather vaguely puts it, unless you mean only the 
 site, because the cathedral was not begun till the 
 twelfth century. David escapes drowning, passes 
 through Mull, and over the ferry to Kinlochaline 
 on the mainland. The castle here, at an earlier 
 date, was beleaguered by Colkitto, known in history 
 as the lieutenant of the Marquis of Montrose, and 
 in English literature by a cursory and scoffing 
 reference in a famous sonnet of Milton. Then he 
 goes on his way through Morven, and is ferried over 
 Loch Linnhe to Lettermore. 
 
 It is here he meets Colin Campbell of Glenure 
 with a party, and whilst he is talking to him 
 Campbell is shot by an assassin, seen at the time, 
 but not at the time or ever after identified. This 
 is the famous Appin murder. The incidents in the 
 book are taken almost exactly from the records of 
 the trial to be presently referred to, except that 
 David Balfour was present in fiction but not in 
 fact. In the fiction David is hunted by the soldiers 
 and escapes by the help of Alan Breck, who turns 
 up in the nick of time. David at first suspects him 
 
HIGHLAND SCENE AND STORY 117 
 
 as guilty " art or part," in Scots language, of the deed, 
 and for good cause. " Here was murder done upon 
 a man Alan hated, here was Alan skulking among 
 the trees and running from the troops, and whether 
 his was the hand that fired, or only the head that 
 ordered signified but little, by my way of it my only 
 friend in that country was blood-guilty in the first 
 degree." He is easily convinced of Alan Breck's 
 innocence on Alan Breck's word, though Alan 
 practically admits he knew the actual assassin. 
 The pair afterwards go on to the house of James 
 Stewart of the Glen (not Glens as R. L. S. puts it), 
 at Acharn in Duror of Appin. Much of what suc- 
 ceeds is based on recorded fact, selected, arranged, 
 and paraphrased. Here is one incident from the 
 report. Alan Breck wished to write, he got a 
 scrap of paper and " looked about among the trees 
 and finding a wood pigeon's quill made a pen of it, 
 and having made some ink from some powder he took 
 out of a powderhorn that was in his pocket, he 
 wrote a letter." No writer of romance would let 
 this incident escape him, and R. L. S. does not. 
 The chronicle abounds in such picturesque touches. 
 After the pair escape from the district, they wander 
 in Inverness-shire and Perthshire, and so on to 
 Stirling and Fife, then over the Forth to Queens- 
 ferry and the Hawes Inn, which completes the circuit 
 of travel. 
 
 Among interesting places mentioned is Ben 
 Alder in South Inverness-shire, a wild part in the 
 midst of the Grampians. They are tired to death, 
 and though the weather is fine they are not in the 
 
n8 R. L. S. 
 
 mood to admire the picturesque ; also they must be 
 supposed to take the eighteenth-century view of 
 such scenery, which was that it was horrid, with no 
 beauty or comeliness about it at all. An ancient 
 native, according to Hill Burton, commented thus 
 on such a prospect : " A very fulgar place and no' fit 
 for a shentelman." A part of Ben Alder is a very 
 steep and rugged mountain called Letternilik. It is 
 full of holes like caves, and huge masses of stone are 
 scattered over it. A small wood adheres to its side, 
 and within this is " Cluny's Cage," so called because 
 it was the hiding-place of Macpherson of Cluny. 
 The floor of trees was made level with gravel and 
 soil. Plants were left among the trees ; ropes bound 
 round these and attached at the top held the whole 
 in position. The cage was suspended from a huge 
 tree, which inclined over the roof. The top was 
 thatched and covered with moss. The whole was 
 round, inclining to oval in shape, and so hung from 
 the precipice, whereof two stones served as chimney. 
 It was contrived that the smoke from the fire crept 
 gradually along the rock, and so did not betray the 
 hiding-place. It only held six or seven, and the 
 time was spent in playing cards, with usquebaugh at 
 frequent intervals. Here Prince Charles Edward 
 Stuart abode for a fortnight early in September 
 1746. A rough place for a Prince used to the 
 luxuries of France ! But he had experience of much 
 worse before he escaped to the Continent. 
 
 In the Braes of Balquhidder, whereof Tannahill 
 was afterwards to sing, and Dorothy Wordsworth was 
 to celebrate in prose, they find a haven in the home 
 
HIGHLAND SCENE AND STORY 119 
 
 of the Maclarens. Here they are visited by Robert 
 Oig, son of the " notorious Rob Roy," who died 
 peaceably at his house at Balquhidder on the 28th 
 December 1734. Hard by he had fought the last, 
 and not the most successful of his many combats 
 with Stewart of Invernahyle. Also he, his wife, 
 and one of his sons lie buried in the churchyard 
 there under tombstones which are much older than 
 Rob Roy or any of his family. Another place 
 mentioned is Uam Var, which gives its euphonious 
 name to a brand of whisky. It means in Gaelic 
 the Great Cave, and in fact there is a great cavern 
 on its south side, a noted haunt of robbers of the 
 period. 
 
 R. L. S. was too careful an artist to make his 
 David enthusiastic about the wild seas or the wild 
 hills over which he passed. Here is the account of 
 the waste of heather in the chapter on the moor in 
 Kidnapped : " The mist rose and died away, and 
 showed us that country lying as waste as the sea ; 
 only the moorf owl and the peewees crying upon it, 
 and far over to the east a herd of deer, moving 
 like dots. Much of it was red with heather ; much 
 of the rest broken up with bogs and hags and peaty 
 pools ; some had been burned black in a heath-fire, 
 and in another there was quite a forest of dead firs, 
 standing like skeletons. A wearier-looking desert 
 man never saw." There are lighter touches : " The 
 clearness and sweetness of the night, the shapes of 
 the hills like things asleep, and the fire dwindling 
 away behind us like a bright spot in the midst of 
 the moor." But there is no elaborate attempt to 
 
120 R. L. S. 
 
 picture the scenery. Such would have been out of 
 place. 
 
 I turn to the other Highland story, The Merry 
 Men. The time is somewhat later, as we gather by 
 the introduction of Doctor William Robertson as 
 Principal of the University of Edinburgh, to which 
 office he was appointed in 1762. He is spoken of in 
 connection with Spanish studies, therefore I note 
 that his History of Charles V appeared in 1769, and 
 his History of America in 1777. The impressive 
 scenes are of the sea, always touched with a sense 
 of dread and horror. "The Merry Men " are huge 
 granite rocks that " go down together in troops to 
 the sea like cattle on a summer's day ; they are all 
 shapes and sizes, and in fine weather you can go 
 voyaging among them in a boat for hours, but when 
 it is stormy then you can hear the roaring six miles 
 off." " At the seaward end there comes the strongest 
 of the bubble ; and it's here that these big breakers 
 dance together — the dance of death, it may be 
 called — that have got the name, in these parts, of 
 the Merry Men. . . . Whether they got their name 
 from their movements, which are swift and antic, 
 or from the shouting they make about the turn of the 
 tide, so that all Aros shakes with it, is more than I 
 can tell." And then we are told that on those 
 terrible rocks the schooner goes instantly to pieces. 
 R. L. S. had experience of the wild seas of the 
 Western Isles, and the whole account, of which I have 
 given a small part, was pieced together from first- 
 hand knowledge. It is his most elaborate and most 
 successful picture of a storm, more eerie and grue- 
 
HIGHLAND SCENE AND STORY 121 
 
 some than anything he has written of South Sea 
 hurricanes. 
 
 He has almost nothing to say of Highland scenery 
 in his Letters. There is a picture of a calm night at 
 Oban, when the water was still " and in the dusk the 
 black shadows of the hills reflected across to our 
 very feet and the lights were reflected in long lines." 
 This was in 1870, when he was twenty. Again, there 
 is a note, eleven years after, in a letter to Mrs. 
 Sitwell, of a cold summer at Braemar, graphic enough 
 in its way but without local character. 
 
 I have still a word to say as to the geography 
 or rather nomenclature of The Merry Men. I 
 have already spoken of the " Merry Men of Mey " 
 in the Pentland Firth. Attracted by their name, 
 fascinated by their aspect, R. L. S. transports them 
 south-west to the other side of Scotland, and sticks 
 them down beside the little island of Earraid, which 
 is here called Aros. There is an Aros in Mull. 
 Indeed, a small ruin, a bay, an antique fortress, a 
 village, all go by this name. These, however, are 
 on the north-east coast of Mull, and so away from the 
 Ross of Mull, which is on the south-west of the island. 
 In the story, accordingly, this is called the Ross of 
 Grisapol ; but then again, on the west of the island 
 of Coll, which is to the west of Mull, there is a place 
 called Grisapoll. The Ben Kyaw of the tale is a 
 mountain more than 3000 feet in height, and its 
 name, we are told, is Mountain of the Mist. Now 
 Ben More, which simply means the big mountain, is 
 the greatest height in Mull, and is 3185 feet, and in 
 fact is also a misty mountain. As for the story of 
 
122 R. L. S. 
 
 the Spirito Santo, the lost treasure ship of the 
 Spanish Armada, such legends haunt the Hebrides. 
 Our own day has witnessed desperate search in those 
 parts for the buried riches in the ocean. They never 
 come to anything, but at least they prove the 
 existence of a remarkable, though latent, spirit of 
 romance in the minds of men of commerce. 
 
CHAPTER IX 
 THE TRIAL AT INVERARAY 
 
 THE Appin murder was a subject of intense 
 interest in its own time and for long after. 
 Kidnapped (published in 1881 and 1882) and 
 Catriona (published in 1893) revived that interest 
 and keep it alive. As late as 1907 Mr. David N. 
 Mackay retold the story with great fullness for the 
 series of Notable Scottish Trials. Here a brief 
 summary must suffice. The murder took place in 
 1752, though R. L. S., for no very obvious reason, 
 antedated it by a year. Culloden and the collapse 
 of the last Jacobite rising were in 1746, only six 
 years before; thus the events were still recent 
 memories. James Stewart of the Glen and Alan 
 Breck Stewart were afterwards tried for the murder. 
 They had fought at Culloden. James Stewart had 
 been pardoned ; Alan Breck, who was the ward of 
 the other, had not. James Stewart became farmer 
 at Glenduror, and then at Acharn. The estates 
 of the rebel chieftains were forfeited. Charles 
 Stewart of Ardshiel was a fugitive in France. He was 
 a relative of James Stewart's. The people on the 
 Ardshiel estate paid double rent, part to Govern- 
 ment, who were the owners of the estate at law, part 
 
124 R- L. S. 
 
 to their chieftain Ardshiel from clan affection or 
 habit or tradition. 
 
 Colin Campbell of Glenure was factor under the 
 Government for this among other forfeited estates. 
 He was not at first on bad terms with James 
 Stewart, whom he employed in collecting the rents 
 and so forth. However, there were complaints 
 against Glenure that he was not strict enough. 
 Certain of the tenants of the Ardshiel estates got 
 notice to quit at Whitsuntide (15th May) 1752. 
 They were loath to leave their holdings, and James 
 Stewart was anxious to do what he could for them. 
 Having procured the requisite authority, he j ourneyed 
 to Edinburgh, and on the 18th of April presented a 
 bill of suspension to the Court of Session. He got 
 a sist or stay of proceedings in the meantime, but 
 on the 5th of May the bill was refused. James 
 Stewart had quitted the capital by this time, but 
 Glenure, who had also come there, did not set off 
 till the 7th. On the nth he left his home for Fort 
 William, and on Thursday, 14th May, he quitted Fort 
 William for Appin, intending to put up for the night 
 at Kintalline, and on the next day evict the tenants 
 in due form of law. There was with him Donald 
 Kennedy, a sheriff's officer from Inveraray, who rode 
 first ; also Mungo Campbell, a Writer from Edinburgh , 
 connected by blood with Glenure, who came next. 
 After Glenure himself was Glenure's servant Mac- 
 kenzie, who brought up the rear. None of the party 
 was armed. All went well as they passed through 
 Mamore and crossed the ferry at Ballachulish, which 
 took them over Loch Leven, southward into Appin. 
 
THE TRIAL AT INVERARAY 125 
 
 There had been rumours of danger, but Glenure 
 thought himself safe when he got into Appin, for 
 he had left his mother's country. His mother was 
 a Cameron, and the Camerons of Mamore were 
 strong Jacobites, and so hostile to his present 
 business. There is ground for believing that he 
 had been watched all day from the heights that 
 overhung the road, but no proper opportunity 
 was found for attack. The party were nearing 
 Kintalline and were passing the wood of Letter- 
 more, when from the near height someone fired 
 a shot, and Glenure fell stricken to death. The 
 assassin ran up the hill, being followed for some 
 distance by Campbell, who described him as " a 
 man with a short, dark-coloured coat and a gun in 
 his hand." Campbell did not get sight of the other's 
 face, but thought that the distance was so great 
 that he would not have recognized him if he had. 
 This glimpse, such as it was, was all that was ever 
 known at first hand of the assassin. The body was 
 later in the day taken to the change-house at 
 Kintalline, and thence to Glenure. 
 
 The murder caused great commotion. It was 
 that of a man in position, a servant of the Govern- 
 ment, carrying out the orders of the Government 
 in evicting certain Jacobite tenants. Had he not 
 been slain by the tenants or their friends ? Was 
 his death not the result of a plot ? Were the Jaco- 
 bites now to assassinate when they could not fight 
 in fair combat ? The serious nature of the case is 
 at once apparent. Suspicion fell first of all on 
 two people. Alan Breck was in the neighbour- 
 
i 2 6 R. L. S. 
 
 hood— was at Ballachulish, indeed, that very day. 
 Again, James Stewart was at Acharn, not many 
 minutes' ride from the scene. It was said that 
 when told of it he exclaimed that whoever had 
 committed the deed, he himself would have to pay 
 the penalty of death. Guilty or innocent, he recog- 
 nized his dangerous position. 
 
 Alan Breck, though diligently sought for, was 
 never caught. There was no difficulty about James 
 Stewart. He was taken into custody two days 
 after the murder. His son Alan, about twenty, 
 and about twenty other people, his servants and 
 others, were likewise seized on suspicion, or in order 
 to keep them as witnesses. The case ultimately 
 resolved itself into a private prosecution by the 
 relatives in the name of the widow and children 
 of the murdered man, with the concurrence of the 
 Lord Advocate. The accused was harshly treated. 
 He was not allowed to see his advisers or his family. 
 Thus he was prevented from " running his letters," 
 as the Scots law term goes — that is, forcing on his 
 trial. After a formal notice given by him, he must 
 be tried within a certain time or released. Had he 
 had proper legal advice, he would assuredly have 
 given this notice. Then the case had been heard 
 in Edinburgh, where it would have been more fairly 
 dealt with. 
 
 His agent, Mr. Stewart of Edinglassie, procured 
 his first interview by an accident. He was pro- 
 ceeding to Fort William on this very business 
 when he encountered a party of soldiers on the 
 road at Tyndrum. They were escorting his client 
 
THE TRIAL AT INVERARAY 127 
 
 to Inveraray! This was on 2nd September. On 
 the next day the Gregorian calendar was adopted. 
 Eleven days were dropped out, and the 3rd 
 became the 14th, a circumstance not favourable 
 to the accused, for it deprived him of time when 
 time might seem all-important. The trial was 
 fixed for Thursday the 21st at the Circuit 
 Court at Inveraray. It was not till the 19th 
 that his Counsel were allowed to see the prisoner. 
 Perhaps he was not so much prejudiced by this 
 as has been supposed. He had able men as advo- 
 cates and agent, and they were giving all their 
 attention to the matter. A vast collection of 
 facts relating to one transaction can be got up in 
 an incredibly short time by legal experts, especially 
 when there is oral communication and an oppor- 
 tunity for discussion. The really serious thing 
 was that the murdered man was a Campbell and 
 the accused was a Stewart. Clan feeling and poli- 
 tical feeling ran high. The trial was at Inveraray, 
 in the heart of the Campbell country. The court- 
 house still stands, but it is now the Argyll Estate. 
 Office, a curious reminder of the continuing influ- 
 ence of that great ducal house. 
 
 The then Duke of Argyll presided. He was 
 Archibald, 3rd Duke. He had been mixed up with 
 all the political movements of the time, of course 
 on the Whig side. He had been a Commissioner 
 for the Union of the Parliaments. He was after- 
 wards an Extraordinary Lord of Session, and in 
 1710 was made Lord Justice-General of Scotland. 
 As such he was head of the Justiciary-Court, though 
 
128 R. L. S. 
 
 it was not the habit of the particular noblemen who 
 held the office to sit there. As late as 1830 the 
 Lord Justice-General was a different person from 
 the Lord President of the Court of Session. The 
 latter was always a professional lawyer; the first 
 was not, but was usually some great nobleman. 
 The Duke, as it happened, had not merely received 
 a special legal training, but was a man of wide 
 culture. He was a great collector of books, his 
 library being one of the best in Britain. It is to 
 be noted that before 1747 Argyll as " superior " 
 (in the Scots law phrase) of the land that comprises 
 the Campbell territory would have had the right of 
 trying criminals within that territory, together with 
 the power of pit and gallows — that is, putting them 
 to death when convicted. The Heritable Juris- 
 dictions Act of the last-mentioned year, for which 
 he voted, deprived him of those rights. He received 
 compensation to the amount of £20,000. The Act 
 divided the country into circuits. The county of 
 Argyll was part of the Western Circuit. 
 
 The Duke had two Judges with him, Lord Elchies 
 and Lord Kilkerran. Lord Elchies " was if any- 
 thing too keen a Whig," it is alleged, but both were 
 well spoken of by their contemporaries. According 
 to a Parliament House joke, they neither ate nor 
 drank. A reputation for moderation in such things 
 was not universal among old Scots Judges. In 
 an ordinary case, the tribunal might have been 
 excellent. When it came to choose the fifteen 
 jurors out of a list of thirty-four, the Judges on 
 whom the duty fell, according to the practice of 
 
THE TRIAL AT INVERARAY 129 
 
 the time, picked out eleven who bore the name of 
 Campbell and four who were of the Campbell 
 country. There were eleven on the list from Bute, 
 and three Stewarts ; but they were all passed over. 
 The first day of the trial was taken up with a 
 debate upon the relevancy. The charge was that 
 James Stewart and Alan Breck had conspired to 
 murder Glenure by the hands of Alan Breck. 
 Obviously, Alan Breck must be proved to have 
 done the murder, or there was no case against 
 Stewart. Now, said Stewart's Counsel, you must 
 prove Alan Breck guilty first of all ; but you cannot 
 try him in his absence, and you have not caught 
 him, so the trial of James Stewart cannot take 
 place. Another point was afterwards raised, and 
 indeed is dwelt on in Catriona by the " doer " or 
 agent or solicitor for James Stewart. You could 
 not, he urged, even outlaw Alan Breck for non- 
 appearance, because he had not been properly cited 
 to appear, according to law. But this point is too 
 trifling for discussion here, also it is too technical. 
 Those preliminary debates on the relevancy were 
 features of that and an earlier age. Counsel on 
 both sides took occasion to show their learning, and 
 though in the result their objections were always 
 repelled, neither side would have missed the dis- 
 cussion on any account. There was some authority 
 for the position taken by Stewart's Counsel, but in 
 fact the authorities against were even stronger ; so 
 is common sense and the present practice. True, 
 Alan Breck must be found guilty before Stewart 
 could be convicted, but he could only be found 
 9 
 
130 R. L. S. 
 
 guilty as part of the case against Stewart. Were 
 Breck afterwards captured, the proceedings must 
 all have been gone over again, and his guilt proved 
 with no reference to this trial. 
 
 The objections having been formally repelled, on 
 the morning of the next day, 23rd September, at 
 half-past six, the jury were empanelled, and the 
 proof began. The curious reader must be referred 
 to Mr. Mackay's pages for this. The chief points 
 of evidence against Alan Breck were that he had 
 expressed enmity to the deceased on more than 
 one occasion, and in drink those expressions had 
 become pointed, amounting to a threat of slaughter. 
 He had desired "the red fox's skin"; also he 
 vowed he would make blackcocks of those inter- 
 fering with the Ardshiel tenants, and his hearers 
 inferred that Glenure was the blackcock signified in 
 special. He had asked the ferryman at Ballachu- 
 lish whether Glenure had crossed from Lochaber. 
 He had a dark suit on that same day, whilst almost 
 the only thing known about the assassin was that 
 he wore a dark grey suit. A Judge of to-day would 
 tell a modern jury that these were suspicious cir- 
 cumstances, but they were nothing more. The 
 historical Alan Breck was a person with a loose 
 tongue even when he was sober. It was natural 
 for one in his position to. rail at any person in 
 authority, and when in liquor his statements re- 
 quired a heavy discount. Again, dark suits were 
 not uncommon. His flight was explained by the 
 fact that he was a deserter and a fugitive, and the 
 country was sure to be searched far and near. 
 
THE TRIAL AT INVERARAY 131 
 
 James Stewart admitted having supplied him with 
 money to go away on this account. Mr. Mackay 
 has pointed out that Alan was knock-kneed. 
 This would make him run in a particular manner ; 
 but Mungo Campbell noted nothing in particular 
 in the running of the man, almost certainly the 
 assassin whom he saw in the distance. But as 
 the fugitive was really jumping up a mountain, the 
 deformity might not be noticeable. 
 
 Alan himself declared again and again that he 
 had nothing to do with the murder. His denial 
 counts for little, also the common talk of the 
 neighbourhood showed that he was suspected 
 by everybody; but again, that was only vague 
 suspicion. However, the jury had to be satisfied 
 in the first place that Alan had actually fired the 
 shot, and then- that James Stewart had conspired 
 with him in his murderous design. The evidence 
 on this last point was that the pair were extremely 
 intimate; also both had threatened Glenure and 
 the Campbells generally. The murder -happened on 
 the eve of the proposed evictions, after James 
 Stewart had almost strained the process of the law 
 to stop those evictions. Was he not smarting 
 under the ill-succes6 of his efforts ? Then he had 
 expressed apprehension when told of the murder. 
 Moreover, he had procured the hiding of his own 
 guns and Alan Breck's clothes. Also, he had 
 helped Alan Breck with money to escape. Here 
 again were circumstances of suspicion, but here 
 again there was nothing more. There was really no 
 evidence worthy of the name to go to a jury at 
 
132 R. L. S. 
 
 all. Yet the jury were impatient to find a verdict 
 of " Guilty." It is said that as Sheriff Brown, after- 
 wards Lord Coalstoun, was addressing the jury for 
 the defence, a Campbell among them called out, 
 "Pray, sir, cut it short; we have enough of it." 
 However, it was not till the Sunday morning that 
 the proceedings were over, and the jury retired. 
 They almost immediately agreed upon their 
 verdict, which was dated on Sunday the 24th, and 
 delivered on Monday the 25th, when the Court 
 resumed. It was one of " Guilty." Argyll 
 sentenced the prisoner in an inflamed political 
 harangue, to which Stewart replied in a few dignified 
 words, protesting his innocence. On the 8th of 
 November 1752 he was taken to Ballachulish Ferry, 
 where a gallows had been erected. Here he declared 
 his innocence for the last time, after which he 
 suffered death. 
 
 It is not necessary to suppose that the judge 
 or jury or witnesses acted in bad faith. Argyll 
 and his jury of clansmen honestly believed in the 
 guilt of the accused. Indeed, they believed in it 
 before the trial began, which is the gravamen of the 
 charge against them. It is impossible to know what 
 Elchies and Kilkerran really thought of the pro- 
 ceedings. Probably they were carried away by the 
 current, sympathetically affected by the prejudices 
 of the time and the place, and as keen to convict as 
 Argyll himself. One curious point has not been 
 noticed. James Stewart was undoubtedly techni- 
 cally guilty of an offence even greater than that of 
 murder. That offence was treason; yet no one 
 
THE TRIAL AT INVERARAY 133 
 
 hinted at it. It came about in this way. He was 
 in law a traitor for his share in the battle of Culloden ; 
 but for that he had been pardoned, and so to speak 
 he started afresh. Alan Breck, on the other hand, 
 had never been pardoned, and his case was a much 
 worse one. He had fought on the Hanoverian 
 side at Prestonpans, had been taken prisoner, -and 
 had changed his party. Also he was present at 
 Culloden, and had recruited for the King's enemies. 
 Thus he was both deserter and traitor. Now in the 
 law of treason, which since the Union in 1707 has 
 been the same in England and Scotland, there is 
 no distinction between principals and accessaries. 
 He who comforts and assists a traitor becomes a 
 traitor himself. Thus on the Western Circuit 
 in 1685 the " Lady " Alice Lisle was charged with 
 harbouring one Hicks, a rebel ; and was found guilty, 
 and suffered as a traitor on this ground. The sen- 
 tence was reversed by Act of Parliament after 
 the Revolution, but the case will serve for an 
 illustration. It is difficult to see what James's 
 Counsel could have urged if he had been indicted 
 as a traitor for facilitating the escape of Alan Breck 
 by openly supplying him with money. It might 
 have seemed harsh and oppressive to charge him. 
 Perhaps, even, it would not have suited the ends 
 of those prosecuting who desired his punishment 
 for this crime. Shall we say for this crime alone ? 
 Yet if this be not the answer, it was a strange case 
 of forgetfulness on the part of the prosecution, or 
 they were not quite so vicious as has been supposed. 
 The reader of Catriona will remember that David 
 
134 R- L- S. 
 
 Balfour, just before he is seized and taken to the 
 Bass, assists Alan Breck to escape on board the 
 Thistle off Gillane sands under the lee of the island 
 of Fidra. He also was' technically guilty of treason 
 in so doing, but this does not trouble David. Ap- 
 parently he is more afraid of being brought in for a 
 share in the Appin murder than anything else. He 
 appears at Inveraray only in time to be too late. 
 He is at church there on Sunday, the 24-th Sep- 
 tember, by which time the trial was over and the 
 jury had agreed on their verdict, though it was not 
 delivered till next day, the 25th. Nothing comes of 
 it all, and next day he sees the proceedings from the 
 Justices' private room, where none could see him ; 
 then, without attempting to interfere, he goes quietly 
 off with the Lord Advocate. Considering the des- 
 perate- anxiety he had shown to get to Inveraray 
 and the risks he had run, one would hardly have 
 thought him so tame. Had he been an historical 
 character, it is doubtful if his evidence had been 
 believed. He might have found himself in the 
 dock as art and part in the crime, of which fate 
 indeed he had some apprehension. 
 
 One or two interesting points arose. Whilst 
 holding, that there was no real evidence against 
 James Stewart, I ask, Is it not most probable he 
 knew who the murderer was ? He must have 
 been someone mixed up in the evictions. This, 
 knowledge would, however, come to him after the 
 event, would at the best have been no more than 
 suspicion, and it could have done him no good to have 
 stated that suspicion. Also, his clan would have 
 
THE TRIAL AT INVERARAY 135 
 
 looked on him as a traitor. Now Alan Breck 
 arrived in France in March 1753. He stated that 
 the murderer was Alan-beg, by whom he no doubt 
 meant Alan, the son of James of the Glen. He was 
 a lad of about twenty at the time of the murder. 
 In a letter a year before he had used threatening 
 language towards Glenure and his band. He would 
 not be restrained as his father was by the same 
 considerations of prudence, and his guilt would 
 give a decisive reason for his father's silence. All 
 this amounts to very little. It has been said that 
 there was as much evidence against him as against 
 his father, which is not exactly true, since the father, 
 from age, position, and experience, was more fitted 
 to take part in a plot than was the son. However, 
 he was not prosecuted; he was discharged from 
 prison,, and nothing more is heard of him. 
 
 All the writers on the trial — Andrew Lang, R. L. S., 
 and Mr. Mackay — assert that the name of the 
 murderer is known to the people of Appin to this 
 day, but that it is a point of honour not to divulge. 
 And they more or less darkly hint that they them- 
 selves are in the secret. I doubt if the name is 
 known with any certainty. The neighbourhood at 
 one time fixed on Alan Breck. That we see from 
 the trial. If it is possible to remove that suspicion, 
 the name should be given ; to publish it is a duty 
 incumbent on those who know. Here a mere tradi- 
 tion is no proof. It is more than a century and 
 a half since the date of the tragedy, which is now 
 probably incapable of solution. The Appin murder 
 will remain one of the unsolved mysteries of history. 
 
CHAPTER X 
 
 SOME REAL PEOPLE IN KIDNAPPED AND 
 CATRIONA 
 
 Tr\7 r IDNAPPED and Catriona are historical 
 1^ novels. They deal with people who played 
 JL V. their part, great or small, upon the stage of 
 their time. What of the chief figures ? Are Steven- 
 son's pictures true to the life ? I do not deal with 
 every person he mentions. I have said all I intend to 
 say of the Duke of Argyll and the other Judges sitting 
 at the trial; and with two important exceptions, 
 I shall say nothing about the Counsel on either side. 
 I take first James More, or more fully James 
 More MacGregor or Drummond, indicted as James 
 MacGregor or Campbell, " a son of the notorious 
 Rob Roy," as R. L. S. describes him. In fact, he 
 was the third of the five sons of his father. He was 
 born about 1710. He first appears in history as 
 charged, and no doubt on excellent evidence, with 
 stealing a cow. He was thrust into prison, but 
 presently escaped. In 1735, Robin, his youngest 
 brother, shot Maclaren of Invernenty at the plough. 
 He absconded, but James and another brother were 
 tried for their alleged share in the murder. Duncan 
 Forbes, then Lord Advocate, prosecuted, but the 
 
 verdict was not proven. They were also accused 
 
 136 
 
REAL PEOPLE IN KIDNAPPED 137 
 
 of having houghed four head of cattle belonging 
 to Donald Maclaren, kinsman of John the deceased. 
 It was also urged that they were habit-and-repute 
 thieves. It was somewhat weakly pleaded for them 
 that though they might be guilty of reset of theft 
 (" receiving "), they were not so bad as many of 
 their neighbours. The Court gave full effect to 
 this plea, since it merely ordained them to find 
 caution in the sum of £200 to be of good behaviour 
 for seven years. Well might Bailie Nicol Jarvie 
 exclaim to their father, " I'se plainly telling ye, ye 
 are bringing up your family to gang an ill gate." 
 
 In the '45 James More hesitated; for, like his 
 father, he could look at both sides of the cards. He 
 wanted a commission in a Highland regiment from 
 the Government ; but he was not satisfied, or perhaps 
 the tide of Highland enthusiasm carried him away. 
 At any rate, he elected for the Stuarts, and fought 
 well for them. A small fort had been built at 
 Inversnaid to overawe the Macgregors. James, 
 with only twelve clansmen, attacked and carried it, 
 making the much larger garrison prisoner. He took 
 part in that swift rush at Prestonpans which carried 
 all before it, but fell with a broken thigh in the thick 
 of the fight. He raised himself on his elbow and 
 shouted to his men, " My lads, I am not dead ! By 
 God ! I shall see if any of you does not do his 
 duty." Better for his name had he died there and 
 then. He fought at Culloden, was attainted with 
 many better men, but succeeded somehow or other 
 in making terms with the Government. He returned 
 to Balquhidder, where, as Andrew Lang suggests, he 
 
138 v R. L. S. 
 
 '* probably eked out a livelihood by cattle-stealing 
 and spying." In a few years he was again at grips 
 with the law. 
 
 A young woman named Jean Kay or Wright 
 lived at Edenbellie, Balfron, in Stirling. She had 
 been a widow for four months, and was possessed 
 of some property. The young Macgregors were 
 probably in desperate straits. Cattle-lifting and 
 blackmailing were extinct callings. It occurred to 
 one of them (you suspect James) that a marriage 
 might be arranged between the widow and Robin. 
 Accordingly, on the 3rd of December 1750, a band of 
 them entered the house. Jean hid herself in a closet, 
 but the terrific Gaelic curses were too much for the 
 mother, and she produced the trembling girl, who 
 pleaded in vain the sudden nature of the proposal. 
 Her request for time to consider was scornfully 
 rejected. She was presently thrown over a horse 
 and carried off from place to place in the Highlands, 
 where, after about three months, a mock form of 
 marriage was gone through. Robin had an almost 
 childish faith in the efficacy of the ceremony. Jean 
 was brought to Edinburgh, and there he lost grip of 
 her. The poor thing speedily died from fright and 
 fatigue, and proceedings against the three brothers 
 for " hamesucken," or forcible attack on a house, as 
 well as various other offences involved, were taken. 
 Again Robin could not be found, and was outlawed. 
 But the other two were put on their trial. Robert 
 was acquitted; James was tried on the 5th August 
 1752. The jury returned a special verdict. It 
 seems they meant that he should be punished, but 
 
REAL PEOPLE IN KIDNAPPED 139 
 
 not capitally. There was some doubt as to the legal 
 effect of the verdict, so the case was adjourned for 
 further consideration to the 20th of November of 
 that year, when the Court was to fix the appro- 
 priate sentence, which there is reason to believe would 
 have been capital. But on the 16th he escaped 
 from the Castle, to which he had been removed, the 
 Tolbooth not being considered sufficiently secure. 
 The town was full of Highlanders, as caddies, 
 chairmen, even City Guard itself. There were 
 rumours of a rescue, for clan feeling was strong. 
 No doubt the authorities had in their mind the 
 leading case of Captain Porteous. 
 
 Whilst James lay in prison, the Appin murder 
 occurred ; whereupon the prisoner made a desperate 
 effort to turn the series of events to his own advan- 
 tage. James of the Glen, who knew him personally, 
 had visited him in prison in April 1752, when he 
 was in Edinburgh on business connected with the 
 bill of suspension. According to James More, a 
 suggestion had been made him to assist in the 
 murder of Glenure, with a round sum for reward. 
 The private prosecutors swallowed this no doubt 
 invented story, and did all they could to get him 
 as a witness ; but James was convicted though not 
 sentenced, and he could not appear unless pardoned, 
 which accounts for his zeal in the matter. The 
 Government very properly refused their consent; 
 so, though his name appears in the list of witnesses 
 for the prosecution in the indictment, number 128, 
 he was not and could not have been called. No 
 remark was openly made at the trial as to his non- 
 
140 R. L. S. 
 
 appearance, but it has been asserted that a written 
 statement by him was privately given to the jury. 
 Stevenson adopts this, though there is no actual 
 proof of what in itself is very unlikely. 
 
 We come to his escape, and here for one brief 
 moment, so to speak, Catriona appears an actual 
 person on the scene. We know she gives her name 
 to the book. She is the most charming woman 
 that appears in all Stevenson's many pages, and 
 yet of her we know very little. On this 16th of 
 November, no doubt in the evening, James More 
 sat in prison in company with his wife, when a 
 visit from his cobbler was announced, who, pursuant 
 to order, had brought him a pair of shoes newly 
 soled. A great din was presently heard within 
 the apartment. Macgregor and his spouse were 
 loudly upbraiding the man of leather for his 
 abominable workmanship; then the door was 
 opened, and the " souter " thrust forth still grumb- 
 ling. A strange figure, forsooth! A scarecrow 
 greatcoat wrapped him from head to foot, a leather 
 apron was proof of his calling, and his shoes were a 
 disgrace to his trade. His red stockings were in 
 keeping. No doubt it was a cold night, and that 
 was why the greasy red nightcap was drawn so far 
 down, and the broad hat was plastered so com- 
 pletely over his head. He shuffled off, grumbling, 
 amidst the loudly expressed jeers and merriment 
 of the jailers, and so vanished into the night; and 
 there was quiet within the prison, until the soldiers 
 had occasion to enter the room, when not James 
 More but his daughter was discovered, a tall, hand- 
 
REAL PEOPLE IN KIDNAPPED 141 
 
 some lass, who had disguised herself as a cobbler, 
 clapped the disguise on her father with her mother's 
 aid, and in fact changed places with him. Appar- 
 ently the two women were let go at once. 
 We hear of nothing done to them. Alas ! we 
 hear nothing more of Catriona at all, and even 
 her name is an invention. James More had a 
 plentiful progeny — a dozen or a baker's dozen, it 
 would seem. His own and their piteous straits he 
 urged on a hard-hearted and close-fisted Govern- 
 ment in offering his services as a spy, but who is 
 to tell what became of them or any of them ? 
 Stevenson adopts a rumour of the time that the 
 authorities connived at his escape ; but if so, they 
 carried their make-believe pretty far. A long and 
 minute inquiry followed; two officers were " broke," 
 a sergeant was reduced to the ranks, and a warder 
 was flogged. 
 
 After his escape James hurried southward. He 
 found himself at nightfall on a wild moor in Cumber- 
 land. Four vagrant men were presently discovered 
 in company in an adjacent thicket. James was glad 
 to recognize in one of them his old friend Billy 
 Marshall, the gipsy. Billy was under a cloud 
 about some trifling affair in Galloway— fire-raising, 
 apparently— but he very hospitably entertained 
 the fugitive and helped him on his way to Ireland, 
 from whence he escaped to France. And then he 
 began intrigues with both sides— professed that it 
 was his devotion to the Stuarts that had brought 
 about his banishment, and offered them much 
 valuable information. In particular, he averred 
 
142 R. L. S. 
 
 that there were three thousand Macgregors, descend- 
 ants of members of the clan, driven from Scotland 
 one hundred and fifty years before, and ready to 
 invade Argyllshire in the interest of King James. 
 So he told Macgregor of Bohaldie, chief of the clan, 
 then living about three miles from Paris, occupying 
 himself in the manufacture or collection of tortoise- 
 shell snuff-boxes, wherein you touched a spring and 
 on the instant a portrait of James VIII met your 
 delighted gaze ! In such puerile forms sentimental 
 Jacobites delighted to show their devotion. Bo- 
 haldie, though he kept up communication with 
 James More, to the end suspected him of treachery, 
 and Lord Strathallan declared him a brave man, 
 but with " an indifferent character as to real 
 honesty." Evidently he could get nothing from 
 the exiled Court. 
 
 He had no better luck with the English Govern- 
 ment. They allowed him to come to London, 
 listened to his statements, but would not pay for 
 the information — took what they could get, in 
 fact, and gave nothing in return. Now Alan 
 Breck was in France, and James offered to the 
 English Government to secure him and deliver him 
 over at Dover. Even according to his own account, 
 Alan was too much for him. He had made him- 
 self very friendly, but Alan was not deceived. 
 " The very night I intended to have carried him 
 away" Breck made off, having thoroughly plundered 
 the other's cloak bag and appropriated no less than 
 four snuff-boxes — possibly of the tortoiseshell 
 variety carved by Bohaldie himself. Breck was 
 
REAL PEOPLE IN KIDNAPPED 143 
 
 quite convinced of his treachery and his plots, and 
 vowed openly that if he could but catch him he 
 would certainly have his life. However, they never 
 met, and history is lacking a remarkable duel. He 
 told Bohaldie that he had the offer of " handsome 
 bread in the Government service," but he nobly 
 answered, " I was born in the character of a gentle- 
 man." His last days were sad indeed. He was 
 in bad health, and in the most desperate straits for 
 money. He appeals to Bohaldie for any kind of 
 work— at least for the loan of the Highland bag- 
 pipes : " I would put them in order, and play some 
 melancholy tunes." This was on 25th September 
 1754, and early in October he was dead. Andrew 
 Lang opines that R. L. S. divined his character 
 with the instinct of genius. Neither in history nor 
 fiction has anyone a good word to say for him. He 
 seemed genuinely concerned for his family, and 
 pressed on the Government the banishment in place 
 of the execution of Robin, his younger brother. It 
 would at least save the expense of a trial, he urged. 
 In double-dealing he took after his father, but 
 remember he owed no allegiance to the Stuarts, 
 under whom the clan had been proscribed and its 
 members hunted with fire and sword, the very name 
 forbidden ; nor had the other side shown him special 
 favour. And this is all that one can say for him. 
 
 His brother Robin appears in Maclaren's house 
 in the Braes of Balquhidder in Kidnapped, and 
 beats Alan Breck in playing on the pipes. This 
 Robin Oig— or the young, since he was the fifth and 
 youngest son of Rob Roy— was born about 1718, and 
 
144 R- L. S. 
 
 was thus only seventeen when he murdered 
 Maclaren of Invernenty. For this he was never 
 punished. Possibly he went abroad. It is stated 
 that he was present at the battle of Fontenoy, and 
 presumably fought against the English, though this 
 does not necessarily follow. As a lad he was slender 
 and feebly made, but his weakness of body was more 
 than compensated for by his fierceness of spirit. 
 He was described as " that daft laddie Rob," and 
 as " mad and quarrelsome and given to pranks." 
 I have told of his masquerading as the husband of 
 Jean Kay. It was believed, and no doubt rightly, 
 that he was a tool in the hands of his deeper brother 
 James. The authorities sought for him in vain 
 for some years, but in 1753 he was taken at a fair 
 at Gartmore and conveyed by a military party to 
 Edinburgh, where he arrived on the 26th of May. 
 The law was very deliberate in his case. He was 
 not tried till the 27th of January 1754. The case 
 lasted from between seven and eight in the morning 
 till five o'clock the next morning. The jury con- 
 sidered their verdict for five hours, and then brought 
 him in ' ' Guilty, ' ' and on the 1 6th February he suffered 
 in the Grassmarket. He was " very genteelly 
 dressed," showed some anxiety as to the fate of his 
 brother James, and professed he died a member 
 of the Church of Rome— altogether, made a more 
 edifying end than could have been expected of a 
 wild Highlandman. After hanging for half an 
 hour the body was delivered to his friends, and by 
 them conveyed to the Highlands for burial. 
 A more important and interesting figure is Alan 
 
REAL PEOPLE IN KIDNAPPED 145 
 
 Breck Stewart. There is a very engaging portrait 
 of him in Kidnapped and Catriona. He rights as 
 well as Chicot the jester, and is altogether a very 
 " pretty " man. Some think that this is too 
 flattering, and that Alan was as great a rascal as 
 any of the Macgregors. But no incident recorded 
 of him is inconsistent with Stevenson's picture. 
 The ascertained facts are scanty, but here they are. 
 He was a son of Donald Stewart of the Appin 
 country, a relative of James Stewart of the Glen, 
 to whom his father left the charge of him. His 
 mother was still living in Rannoch, though James 
 was made tutor and curator to her son. Perhaps 
 a stronger hand was needed. You gather that a 
 warm affection existed- between Alan Breck, so 
 called because he was pock-marked, and his 
 guardian. But Alan spent a wild youth. He was 
 hail fellow well met with all the spendthrifts of the 
 neighbourhood. He soon ran through his fortune. 
 Then he enlisted and fought on the Government side 
 at Prestonpans. You believe he never fought worse, 
 for he was already a rebel at heart. He was taken 
 prisoner, and joined Prince Charles's army; so if he 
 turned his coat he only turned it once, for through 
 good and ill he stuck to the Jacobite cause. He 
 fought at Culloden, and escaped the destruction 
 that overtook so many of his name. He fled to 
 France, where he took service in one of the Scots 
 regiments under the French King. Those exiled 
 Highlanders made excellent soldiers. More of 
 them were wanted, so Alan Breck came over again 
 and again to recruit. 
 10 
 
146 R. L. S. 
 
 He had another object. His chief, Stewart of 
 Ardshiels, had lost his lands to the Government, 
 but his tenants still paid something to their old 
 landlord, who was also their chieftain. Breck 
 helped to collect this — sometimes, it was alleged, 
 with threats and curses — and conveyed the money 
 over the water. Thus he was a person in some 
 position, and trusted by people of some position 
 in France; and it is not suggested that he ever 
 betrayed his trust. I have already discussed the 
 question of his guilt or innocence in the matter of 
 the Appin murder. If he knew who was the actual 
 assassin, his was not the hand that fired the shot. 
 He was on the spot at the time, and rumour, as was 
 inevitable, followed him, so that the officers of his 
 own regiment declined his company. Personally 
 he was brave, though that almost goes without 
 saying. He went about the country without 
 molestation, and lived for periods in Edinburgh 
 in the house of a friend at the back of Fountain 
 Well — that is, near John Knox's house in the Nether- 
 bow, possibly in Trunk's Close. No doubt he was 
 a spendthrift. It is noted that in 1750 he had 
 run up a huge bill, which James of the Glen was 
 called upon to pay, and did pay. It is difficult 
 to know what he had to do in Edinburgh except 
 enjoy himself, and that must have been in the 
 evening, and chiefly in taverns. 
 
 After the trial he was extensively " papered." 
 He was described as " a desperate foolish fellow, 
 a tall pock-pitted lad with very black hair ; he wore 
 a blue coat and metal buttons, an old red vest and 
 
REAL PEOPLE IN KIDNAPPED 147 
 
 breeches of the same colour." Again he was de- 
 scribed as "five feet ten inches high, his face much 
 pitted with the smallpox, in-knee'd and round- 
 shouldered (no wonder Alan Breck swore as he 
 read the unflattering account!). He was about 
 thirty years old. His hat had a feather in it . " There 
 is much characteristic of him in the report. Thus 
 Angus Macdonald, one of the witnesses, tells how, in 
 company with Duncan Campbell and another, some 
 little time before he had met Alan Breck on the 
 road, " Alan gave Duncan the common salutation, 
 and said that the last time he had been in Duncan's 
 house he was bad company, though it was not he 
 that was so much bad company as the drink." 
 As Duncan was a change-keeper at Annat, the 
 point of Alan's remark is sufficiently obvious. It 
 seems from the evidence of this same Duncan which 
 immediately follows that Alan in the previous 
 month had been at his house and had indulged 
 in much loose talk, though he " was not drunk, for 
 he could walk and talk as well as any man, but it 
 could easily be observed that he had been drink- 
 ing." Then a certain Malcolm Bane Macoll, who 
 was also a change-keeper, tells how Alan and one 
 John Stewart came to his house after dusk. They 
 sat up all night carousing, and in the morning John 
 Maccoll, a servant in the house, entered in a shabby 
 condition. Alan was informed this was " an 
 honest, poor man with a numerous family of small 
 children," whereupon he directed his friend John 
 Stewart to give Maccoll a stone of meal, which 
 he said he would pay for. This was arranged, and 
 
148 R. L. S. 
 
 then Alan would have Maccoll drink a dram with 
 him, " and told him that if he would fetch him the 
 red fox's skin he would give him what was much 
 better ; to which the said John Maccoll answered 
 he was no sportsman, and that he was much better 
 skilled in ploughing and delving." The " red fox " 
 meant Red Colin — that is to say, Glenure ; but it was 
 only the subsequent murder that gave those idle ex- 
 pressions any importance. They are in the very 
 manner of the Stevensonian Alan. 
 
 Our swashbuckler friend escaped to France. 
 He does not appear to have ever revisited this 
 country, though he lived long afterwards into the 
 Revolution ; in fact, Scott in the appendix to Rob 
 Roy tells how a friend of his was in Paris in 1789, 
 and, in order to see a procession, had obtained en- 
 trance to the chamber of a Scots Benedictine priest. 
 By the fire was " a tall, thin, raw-boned, grim-looking 
 old man with a military decoration on his breast.'' 
 They talked a little in French about the objects of 
 interest in Paris, when the old man muttered, with 
 a sigh and a sharp Highland accent, " Deil ane o' 
 them a' is worth the Hie Street of Edinburgh." 
 This was Alan Breck Stewart living quietly and 
 respectably on a small military pension. " Auld 
 Reekie," his Highland hills, and his turbulent youth 
 — dim, far-off memories in a life that was nearing 
 its close. There is no further note of him, and the 
 curtain falls. At least the last scene is fitting and 
 in character. 
 
 Two of the prosecuting Counsel on the trial of 
 James Stewart of the Glen make considerable 
 
REAL PEOPLE! IN KIDNAPPED 149 
 
 figures in Catriona. These are William Grant, 
 afterwards Lord Prestongrange, and Simon Fraser, 
 called by courtesy the Master of Lovat. Preston- 
 grange was the second son of Sir Francis Grant 
 Lord Cullen, was born about 1700 and died in 1764. 
 He was admitted Advocate on the 24th of February 
 1722, and in 1731 was appointed Procurator to the 
 Church of Scotland, and principal Clerk to the 
 General Assembly. In 1736 he wrote a pamphlet 
 entitled Remarks on the state of the Church of 
 Scotland with respect to patronage with reference to a 
 BUI now depending before Parliament. This was 
 reprinted more than a century afterwards, in 1841 
 to wit, as Number 8 of the " Select Anti-Patronage 
 Library." The evangelical reaction was then in 
 full swing, and you easily gather that Grant was of 
 an evangelical turn of mind. But his time was the 
 days before the Moderates. You remember Steven- 
 son's description of him in the kirk at Inveraray : 
 " He sat well forward like an eager horseman in the 
 saddle, his lips moving with relish, his eyes glued on 
 the minister ; the doctrine was clearly to his mind." 
 No doubt the sermon was an able one. R. L. S. 
 assures us that the preacher was " a skilled hand." 
 The collegiate charge of Inveraray was then occupied 
 by two divines of the name of Campbell. The 
 minister of the second charge, Alexander Campbell, 
 had been presented by Duke Archibald in October 
 1744. He is reported a man of " much eminence 
 and ability." He was as bookish as His Grace, for 
 he " left a valuable library," which after his death 
 was disposed of by the Messrs. Foulis, the famous 
 
150 R. L. S. 
 
 booksellers of Glasgow. He married the daughter 
 of Campbell of Inveraw, and his daughter also 
 married a Campbell. His colleague, the minister 
 of the first charge, was the Rev. Patrick Campbell, 
 A.M. He had succeeded a Campbell, and his first 
 wife was also a Campbell, which is about all we know 
 of him. The Campbells, you see, were as much 
 in evidence in the pulpit as in the jury-box. I 
 prefer to believe that the Assize sermon during the 
 Appin trial was preached by Alexander. At any 
 rate, he had some further intercourse with the panel, 
 since he administered spiritual consolation to him 
 during the last days of his life. But I wander from 
 Prestongrange, for whom the path of piety and 
 preferment was the same. He went the ordinary 
 round of the successful lawyer. In 1737 he was 
 Solicitor-General. In 1746 he was Lord Advocate. 
 Next year he sat as M.P. for the Elgin Burghs. It 
 was an important and troubled period. His it was 
 to draft the Acts of Parliament and superintend the 
 criminal proceedings made necessary by the rebellion. 
 These are said to have induced less ill-will against 
 him than might have been expected. Thus Ramsey 
 of Ochtertyre and a fellow- Judge, Lord Wood- 
 houselee, praise his rectitude and moral feeling, his 
 virtuous integrity, his candour of judgment, his 
 liberality of sentiment, his winning gentleness of 
 manner. " These were the pure offspring of a warm 
 and benevolent heart." In 1754 he went to the 
 Bench as Lord Prestongrange. He died at Bath on 
 the 17th of May 1764, and was buried in the family 
 vault at Prestonpans. 
 
REAL PEOPLE IN KIDNAPPED 151 
 
 It is easy to pick out the principal stages in 
 the career of a great official power, but the touches 
 that show the real man under the official cloak are 
 sadly lacking. It is mere gossip to say that he had 
 a hundred guineas for his work at the trial. There 
 seem to be no stories or traditions about him in the 
 Parliament House. Although he went down to 
 Inveraray to prosecute James Stewart, he did not 
 in any way take undue advantage of his position. 
 His speech for the Crown was a fair piece of reason- 
 ing. You judge him a competent and careful high 
 official, one likely to proceed with caution, to walk 
 warily in his great office. But then this is not 
 the debonair and brilliant figure that Stevenson's 
 imagination has projected on the screen. He was 
 surely the last man in the world to play those 
 tricks with which he is credited. No reason is 
 given why he should protect David Balfour, no 
 reason why he should not have put him in prison, 
 and no real reason why he should have shut him 
 up on the Bass Rock. He is touched off as a 
 convivial person ; but it was a convivial time, and 
 Edinburgh was a convivial place, so this may pass. 
 But to put the matter shortly, the Prestongrange 
 of Catriona is a well-nigh impossible person. And 
 what about charming Barbara Grant ? Now 
 Prestongrange was married to Grizel, daughter of 
 the Rev. Mr. Millar. She long survived her husband, 
 only dying in 1792, aged eighty-three. There were 
 four daughters, though in the romance we only hear 
 of three. The eldest was Janet, who married John, 
 fourth Earl of Hyndford, and died in i?i8. The 
 
152 R. L. S. 
 
 second, Agnes, married Sir George Suttie of Balgone. 
 The third, Jean, married Robert Dundas of Arniston, 
 the second Lord President of that name. The 
 fourth, Christian, died unmarried in 1761. The 
 three girls, you see, made good marriages, and that 
 is all to be said. The brilliant Barbara is entirely 
 imaginary. 
 
 Simon Fraser is an interesting figure, though 
 drawn in dark colours — so dark, indeed, that the clan 
 Fraser have uttered angry protests; but I think 
 R. L. S. divined what must have been the character 
 of the man. The best thing that can be said for 
 Fraser is that his position was difficult. He was 
 drawn only half, if at all, convinced into a plot 
 which put him in peril of his life and ruined his 
 prospects. He made a desperate effort to get back 
 all his family had lost. In a great measure he 
 succeeded, though not for him was the title restored. 
 It is no part of my plan to set my page with brilliant 
 passages from Catriona. Yet I will give the line or 
 two telling of him during that Inveraray sermon. 
 It is a portrait by contrast with that of the Lord 
 Advocate : " As for Simon Fraser, he appeared like 
 a blot, and almost a scandal, in the midst of that 
 attentive congregation, digging his hands in his 
 pockets, shifting his legs, clearing his throat, rolling 
 up his bald eyebrows, and shooting out his eyes to 
 right and left, now with a yawn, now with a secret 
 smile. At times, too, he would take the Bible in 
 front of him, run it through, seem to read a bit, run 
 it through again, and stop and yawn prodigiously, 
 the whole as if for exercise," 
 
REAL PEOPLE IN KIDNAPPED 153 
 
 Simon Fraser, Master of Lovat, was born on the 
 19th October 1726. He was the son of Simon 
 Lord Lovat, and was dragged by him into the Re- 
 bellion. Old Lovat blamed his son sometimes for 
 backwardness and sometimes for forwardness. 
 " He was forcing his son out, and what could he 
 do more ? " he once urged. Various touches show 
 the Master indignant with his father. Thus he 
 threatened that he would himself go to the President 
 (Duncan Forbes of Culloden, the Lord President), 
 and put the saddle on the right horse. " Good God, 
 how can he use me so ! " said he of his father. There 
 were violent quarrels, in one of which " the Master 
 rose up and took his bonnet and threw it upon the 
 floor, and threw the white cockade in the fire." 
 Yet he too was persuaded, or perhaps was carried, 
 away. With six hundred of his father's vassals 
 he joined Prince Charles at Bannockburn before 
 Falkirk on the 17th of January 1746. He was not 
 present at Culloden, but was coming up with three 
 hundred fresh men when half-way between Culloden 
 and Inverness he met the Frasers retreating from 
 defeat. His was one of the forty-three names 
 included in the Act of Attainder of 4th June 1746 ; 
 but on the 2nd of August of that year he gave 
 himself up, and was confined in Edinburgh Castle 
 till the 15th August 1747. His father was be- 
 headed at Tower Hill on the 8th April of that year, 
 and his title was extinguished with him. 
 
 In 1750 a full pardon was granted to the son, and 
 on 25th July he was admitted a member of the 
 Scots Bar. He was the fifth and junior Counsel for 
 
154 R - L - s - 
 
 the prosecution. His speech of the 21st September 
 1752 in the Inveraray court-house was most violent 
 and unfair. It was marked by all the zeal or 
 rancour of the renegade. He soon deserted the Bar 
 for the Army. He came to London with Alexander 
 Wedderburn, afterwards the first Scots Lord Chan- 
 cellor, and was intimate with many eminent people. 
 In 1757 he raised among his clansmen a regiment 
 for the royal service, and became its Lieutenant- 
 Colonel, and was present at Quebec under Wolfe. 
 He fought with the British forces in Portugal, and 
 became Major-General. An old Highland soldier, 
 hearing him address his troops in Gaelic, burst out : 
 " Simon, you are a good soldier ; as long as you live, 
 Simon of Lovat never dies." On the other hand, 
 Mrs. Grant of Laggan says : " He differed from his 
 father only as a chained-up fox does from one at 
 liberty " ; also he is described as " hard and 
 rapacious under a polished exterior." In 1774 he 
 got back the estates of the family, ten years earlier 
 than any other rebel. He was in the House of 
 Commons, and powerful and influential. Probably 
 he might have got back the title, but death came to 
 him in London in 1782. He had married an English 
 lady, but left no descendants, and when the title 
 was restored, it was to another branch of the family. 
 Another character was an ancestor of R. L. S., 
 being the great-grandfather on the mother's side. 
 Perhaps that is why he is introduced, for he is only 
 connected with the main narrative in so far as Mr. 
 Rankeillor, the Writer at Queensferry, gives David 
 an introduction to him, and he in turn furnishes the 
 
REAL PEOPLE IN KIDNAPPED 155 
 
 hero with a note to the Lord Advocate. Yet Mr. 
 James Balfour of Pilrig was a man of some import- 
 ance in his day, and R. L. S., who showed a keen 
 interest in his " forbears " amongst other things, 
 investigated carefully the history of this gentleman, 
 though he had not the advantage of the work on the 
 subject which the family historian, Miss Barbara 
 Balfour-Melville, in recent years (1907) has given 
 to the world, or at any rate the small section of it 
 interested. James was the second Laird of Pilrig, 
 now a grimy district between Leith and Edinburgh, 
 then pleasant fields set with young woods. The 
 grandfather, also called James, was ruined by the 
 Darien affair, and his son at first hesitated to take 
 up the inheritance. He did so at last on his mother's 
 persuasion, for the honour of the name ; and as some 
 compensation was afterwards paid, he came not 
 badly out of the matter. The lad was minded to 
 go abroad, but, paying a visit to the West before 
 his departure, fell in love with handsome Louisa 
 Hamilton, " the fair flower of Clydesdale." They 
 made a match of it, and returned to Edinburgh on 
 one horse, the bride on a pillion behind her " man " — 
 a proceeding which you are sure had won the hearty 
 approval of their descendant. The lady, by the way, 
 was the great-grandaunt of Sir William Hamilton 
 the philosopher. " Marry for love and work for 
 siller," saith a cheerful old Scots proverb. Balfour 
 worked and prospered as a Leith merchant or manu- 
 facturer, and in 1718 bought Pilrig from the then 
 Lord Rosebery, and removed there with his family, 
 including the subject of this little vignette, who 
 
156 R. L. S. 
 
 was born in 1705. He studied at Edinburgh and 
 Leyden. Some letters by him from the latter place 
 are preserved. They are correct and dutiful, but 
 a little pretentious. Horribile dictu I this ancestor 
 of the ingenious R. L. S. discovers distinct traces 
 of the prig. In due time he was admitted an 
 Advocate, and then was made treasurer to the 
 Faculty. In 1748 he was appointed Sheriff-Sub- 
 stitute of Midlothian, a rival beating him for the post 
 of Sheriff-Principal, " as it was well understood that 
 Balfour would do his duty without advancement, 
 which the other would not." 
 
 Virtue was presently rewarded, for in 1754 he 
 was set in the chair of Moral Philosophy in the 
 University of Edinburgh over the head of David 
 Hume ! In 1764 he was transferred to that of 
 the Law of Nature and Nations. He published 
 anonymously some Philosophical Essays directed 
 against the writings of Hume and Lord Karnes. 
 Hume wrote a courteous letter to him, politely 
 asking his name. He replied not less politely, and 
 insisted on remaining anonymous ; but by this time 
 David Balfour's visit was an old story, for it is 
 dated three years before the first professorship. 
 He was " sensible and well-intentioned, but not a 
 powerful thinker," says the learned and competent 
 M'Cosh. There is a tradition that his lectures were 
 " dreich," but the irreverent are apt so to regard 
 all academic prelections. Sir Henry Moncreiff in 
 his Life of Dr. Erskine has some nice things to say 
 about him, and after his death, full of years and 
 honour, in 1793, his daughter, Mrs. Gibson, thus 
 
REAL PEOPLE IN KIDNAPPED 157 
 
 wrote : " He makes a great Blank, for he was a most 
 respectable head." I should mention that in 1760 
 the Lyon King-of-Arms — being approached in a 
 proper manner, no doubt — granted him a coat-of- 
 arms. Extant portraits show him a handsome man 
 with finely cut features. He was troubled with 
 weak eyes ; his wife had the same complaint so 
 badly that she ultimately became blind. The 
 lady was a daughter of Sir John Elphinstone of 
 Logie. Balfour wrote much verse, " which remains 
 in manuscript." Altogether, a reputable and well- 
 doing citizen, if not so entertaining as certain of 
 his contemporaries with whom R. L. S. has made 
 us acquainted. 
 
CHAPTER XI 
 
 ENGLISH SCENES AND INCIDENTS, 
 LONDON 
 
 RL. S. had not an intimate knowledge of 
 England or even of London. He was often 
 in the capital, but his visits were flying ones. 
 He had no permanent residence, nor did he work 
 there. Most English men of letters, from choice or 
 necessity, keep up, through all their lives, an inti- 
 mate touch with the capital, and the attraction of 
 London is felt by people who are not literary. It 
 is the great centre of the Empire's thought and 
 activity. They feel themselves drawn to it by 
 many charms. Their thoughts were not his. 
 Edinburgh was the city of his affection ; it reigneji 
 without rival. Again, London is so vast and com- 
 plex that you cannot grasp it as a whole. You 
 become bewildered in the effort. You end by 
 forming your own circle, and this is what the place 
 means for you. This was true of R. L. S. A few 
 streets in the West End, one or two restaurants in 
 Soho, some intimate friends, chiefly members of 
 the Savile Club, as Sir Sidney Colvin, W. E. Henley, 
 Mr. Gosse, and a few others, were for him London 
 and its folk. Those friends he might and did meet 
 
 in other places. Their talk, you believe, was very 
 
 158 
 
ENGLISH SCENES, LONDON 159 
 
 entertaining, and passed over a wide range of sub- 
 ject, but it was not talk about the town. Yet 
 London is the theatre in which many of his char- 
 acters play their parts. Even without local atmo- 
 sphere, he felt here was the best scene for a fantastic 
 tale. 
 
 It is significant that all his London stories are of 
 his own time— that is, the Victorian era. He has 
 given us a brilliant picture of mediaeval Paris in 
 one short story, also much of eighteenth-century 
 Edinburgh in two fairly long ones, but the romance 
 of London's past had no attractions for him. He 
 planned many works that he never completed or 
 even began. No one of them dealt in any way 
 with the capital. Let us run over the London 
 stories he has written. The Strange Case of Dr. 
 Jekyll and Mr. Hyde and the short story called 
 Markheim are altogether placed in the capital. 
 Markheim has no local touch. You infer it is 
 there from a chance reference : when there comes 
 the knock at the door, the chief character desires 
 " to plunge into a bath of London multitudes," so 
 as to destroy any mark by which discovery were 
 possible. Again, in the Strange Case there is a 
 brief but admirable account of a London fog. Yet 
 if you put it beside the huge canvases on which 
 Dickens painted his London scenes, it is a puny 
 sketch, very different, for instance, from the fog 
 scene in The Old Curiosity Shop where Quilp 
 meets his death. Again, it is but an episode, properly 
 introduced, yet not essential in any way to the 
 narrative. He might have put Markheim in Man- 
 
160 R. L. S. 
 
 Chester and the Strange Case in Edinburgh without 
 loss— nay, with some possible gain in the latter case, 
 except that the nature of both stories makes a very 
 large town best for their scene. And more so with The 
 New Arabian Nights. That brilliant extravaganza, 
 with its frequent touches of tragic farce, must be 
 in the capital; it requires large spaces, movement 
 among vast crowds and different classes, also the 
 bringing together of a great variety of strange 
 characters. 
 
 The topography of this and its continuation 
 The Dynamiter is a little, but not much, in- 
 vented. The tale starts in "an oyster bar in the 
 immediate neighbourhood of Leicester Square." 
 To the north is Soho, the French quarter, with its 
 still distinctive features, especially in its byways. 
 Here are quaint little restaurants and shops, strange 
 tongues chatter in the streets, a strange mixed 
 crew frequent it ; thus it is pervaded with an air 
 of dingy romance. One must remember that it is 
 not now as when R. L. S. knew it best. In 1886 
 the wide street called Shaftesbury Avenue was 
 driven right through the centre. It let in the full 
 light of day on many a dark court and turning. 
 The avenue is now one of the great highways of 
 London traffic, and by it Soho was made less foreign, 
 less mysterious, and more like the rest of London. 
 The " small French restaurant in Soho " where the 
 party had their supper before they proceeded to 
 the premises of the Suicide Club was one of the old 
 order. The club-house, however, was not in Soho, 
 but in one of the streets east of Charing Cross 
 
ENGLISH SCENES, LONDON 161 
 
 Station — Adam Street, Durham Street, Buckingham 
 Street, or Villiers Street. Chepstow Place, West- 
 bourne Grove, where Mr. Malthus lived, is skilfully 
 picked out as a good middle-class neighbourhood 
 in the West End, though beyond what is usually 
 known as such. Trafalgar Square, with its broad 
 spaces, its fountains, and its lions, is a suitable scene 
 for the violent exit of the unfortunate gentleman. 
 The club-house is placed in Box Court, a name so 
 matter-of-fact that you are surprised to find London 
 has no such spot, though there is a Box Street far 
 in the East End. In the second story of The 
 Suicide Club, the court, it is said, opens off 
 the Strand, along which central thoroughfare the 
 Prince was directed to proceed after he had drawn 
 the fatal card. The streets which run from the 
 Strand southward toward the Embankment have 
 suffered many changes since Stevenson's time, but 
 the Craven Hotel, Craven Street, is still a recog- 
 nizable locality. It is here the Saratoga trunk 
 with its horrid burden is taken by Cyrus Q. Scudda- 
 more after his return from Paris. In Rochester 
 House, Regent's Park, on the banks of the Canal, 
 you have a very appropriate locality for the excit- 
 ing events that conclude the narrative. As to 
 Stockdove Lane in The Rajah's Diamond, if you 
 wonder how Harry Hartley reaches this rustic 
 and secluded quarter so speedily, you can only 
 be assured that the lane is imaginary. At the end 
 of the first series we learn that Prince Florizel is 
 deposed " in consequence of his continued absence 
 and edifying neglect of public business." In the 
 ii 
 
162 R. L. S. 
 
 continuation we are introduced to a tobacconist's 
 shop in Rupert Street, Soho. It is of the most 
 orthodox type, the door "flanked with gigantic 
 Highlanders of wood." This is " the Bohemian 
 Cigar Divan by T. Goddall," under which name 
 our magnificent King in exile is masquerading. 
 
 The place is well chosen. It is named from 
 Prince Rupert of the Rhine, son of Frederick, the 
 unfortunate King of Bohemia, and his wife Elizabeth, 
 called " the Queen of Hearts," and daughter of 
 James I. It dates from 1667. In Stevenson's 
 time it ran into Great Crown Court, but it is one of 
 the ways opened up by Shaftesbury Avenue, which 
 cuts across it, to the destruction of its secluded air. 
 Some twenty years ago it held an Italian restaurant 
 called the " Solferino," a favourite haunt of Henley 
 and the band of contributors whom he had gathered 
 round him. Nor was it unknown to R. L. S. Its 
 Chianti remains a fragrant memory with all its 
 frequenters, and up to the very last, though by no 
 means particularly cheap, its meats and drinks 
 were particularly good. The street was the very 
 scene for the impossible apotheosis of the delight- 
 fully impossible Prince. The Divan serves as the 
 connecting link, for there is no other between the 
 two series of The New Arabian Nights ; but not even 
 the most pronounced Stevensonian has ever tried 
 to identify the exact site. The street is alleged by 
 the Prince to be " the strategic centre of the uni- 
 verse," and as such we must take it. 
 
 Somerset tells us that a select society at the 
 " Cheshire Cheese " engaged his evenings. This, as 
 
ENGLISH SCENES, LONDON 163 
 
 most Londoners know, is a tavern of some antiquity 
 in Wine Office Court in Fleet Street, with a hazy 
 and rather unreliable Johnsonian tradition. It 
 has a genuine Bohemian appearance, and is much 
 frequented by gentlemen of the press and societies 
 like the Rhymers' Club. A number of London 
 localities are mentioned, but no purpose could be 
 served by going over them in detail. They are 
 places like Leicester Square, the Marble Arch, 
 the Embankment, Hyde Park, the great railway 
 stations, perfectly well known by name at any rate 
 to thos.e who have never been in London. Their 
 mention shows a lack of intimate knowledge rather 
 than anything else. It may be noted that the 
 superfluous mansion is situated in " the square 
 which I will here call Golden Square, though that 
 is not its name." Why it is not is very obvious. 
 This was the house which was hired for the evening's 
 entertainment which preceded the duel in the 
 first part, and it could not have been so near the 
 heart of London or Colonel Brackenbury would have 
 got to it in much less time, and through far other 
 scenery than that described in the adventure of the 
 hansom cabs. The final scene is again in the Cigar 
 Divan, which has become the strategic centre of 
 the story. Here the characters meet and their 
 futures are comfortably arranged. The 'street 
 nomenclature in Jekytt and Hyde may also be dis- 
 missed with a word. The locality of the house in 
 the episode of the Door is not mentioned, though 
 I believe Stevenson meant to place it in one of the 
 streets to the north of Theobald's Road. Mr. 
 
164 -R. L. S. 
 
 Utterson the lawyer lives in Gaunt Street. The 
 roll of London ways bears no such name, though 
 Ganton Street, Golden Square, may have suggested 
 it. Mr. Hyde lives appropriately enough in Soho. 
 Again, the ordinary London localities are introduced 
 frequently in The Wrong Box, but they do not 
 merit notice. This may be mentioned : if you ap- 
 preciate Stevenson's fondness for peculiar names 
 and his quaint turn of humour, you will see that 
 he would not write much about London without 
 introducing the Isle of Dogs. Joseph Finsbury 
 was honorary president of the Working Men's 
 Mutual Improvement Society, Isle of Dogs, by whom 
 the paper read by him was received with a " literal 
 ovation." The " Isle," though so called for cen- 
 turies, was in fact a peninsula till the West India 
 Dock Canal cut it off from the left bank of the 
 Thames, where it is situated just off Deptford and 
 Greenwich. It is a commonplace, hard-working 
 locality, with an ancient, obscure history. The 
 quaint name is derived no one can say exactly how. 
 An old legend tells of a murdered man and the 
 discovery of the murderer by a faithful hound. 
 Others, again, affirm that when Greenwich was a 
 royal seat our Princes had the kennels for their dogs 
 on this marsh, and their incessant barking got the 
 place the name. Pepys has a note of a night spent 
 in a coach here. For the story of the frolic, you 
 must consult his entertaining page. Another refer- 
 ence is to " the Halls of Nicol and Verrey." 
 These are the two well-known restaurants, the first 
 on the south-east and the other on the north-west 
 
ENGLISH SCENES, LONDON 165 
 
 side of Regent Street. Since Stevenson's day a 
 number of huge hotels and restaurants have sprung 
 up in London: the Ritz, the Carlton, the Cecil, 
 the Savoy — to name but these. The ones he 
 mentions which still deservedly flourish have now 
 an air of almost venerable antiquity. The Caf£ 
 Royal, founded by the late M. Nicol and his wife, is 
 an exact reproduction of a French cafe\ It has a 
 long tradition of eminent French exiles when such 
 men were a feature in London life. The original 
 Verrey was a confectioner ; his cakes and tarts were 
 distributed to the public by his daughter, a young 
 lady of such remarkable beauty that the street was 
 blocked by her admirers. The block became a 
 nuisance until the charmer was packed off to the 
 country, whereat the crowd dissolved. Such is the 
 story preserved in the pages of a Law Report. 
 One of the political reformers of the Georgian era 
 charged with causing crowds in Regent Street by 
 his exhibits more or less pertinently asked why 
 Mr. Verrey had not been prosecuted for a like 
 offence. By a natural process of evolution, the 
 confectioner's shop became the restaurant as we 
 know it. 
 
 Some aspects of London impressed R. L. S. 
 Here he produces and reflects on them. The fog, 
 as already noted, is one. Even this has suffered 
 change. As powerful, malignant demon it has 
 well-nigh vanished since his day, and to a new 
 generation will soon be but a tradition. Also he 
 dwells on the long empty streets of late night or 
 early morning, brilliantly lighted as if for a pro- 
 
166 R. L. S. 
 
 cession, and yet vacant of human life. And again 
 those streets in the early summer dawn, quiet, 
 though the houses that line them be packed with 
 human beings. Again the mystery of London 
 holds him : the huge crowds made up of separate 
 individualities, with their separate lives and their 
 infinite variety of destinies. Such ideas, whether 
 trite or novel, are eminently the ideas of the in- 
 telligent stranger, not of the native and the citizen. 
 We have a note on the " fine and grey old quarter 
 of Bloomsbury, roared about on every side by the 
 high tides of London, but itself rejoicing in romantic 
 silences and city peace." This is the observer from 
 a foreign land, though that observer must be 
 R. L. S. to put his results so choicely and well. 
 There is a want of intimate touch in everything 
 R. L. S. writes about London. He is never the 
 lover; he writes always of the outside and from 
 the outside. 
 
CHAPTER XII 
 
 ENGLISH SCENES AND INCIDENTS, THE 
 PROVINCES 
 
 IF R. L. S. was not greatly interested in London 
 he was still less so in provincial England. It is 
 the points of difference with Scotland that 
 impress him. In South Britain he notes the settled 
 look of everything, the abodes of ancient peace, 
 the warm red of the brick houses, the flatness of the 
 country, the windmills whirling in the breeze, the 
 slow and orderly habits of the people. Their lack 
 of emotion chills him, their speech is insipid and 
 vague. In contrast he comments on the theological 
 character of the Scots peasant ; he quotes, not for 
 the first time, the beginning of the Catechisms of 
 the two Churches : prosaic and practical, that of 
 England demands your name ; you start in the 
 Scots version with the attributes of Deity. Again, 
 he will have the older Southern Universities mere 
 " rotten boroughs of the Arts." The bare and 
 Spartan Scots College shows forth a nobler ideal. 
 You had thought that for a writer of his wide 
 culture and charm Oxford had been a place of 
 profound fascination, and that he would have 
 drawn pictures of singular beauty with such a 
 
 subject, but it is not so. He comments on the 
 
 i6 7 
 
168 R. L. S. 
 
 fact that Highlander and Lowlander regard each 
 other as " brither Scots," whilst they look on folk 
 to the south of the border-line well-nigh as foreigners. 
 Yet the Lowlander is much nearer in blood and 
 speech and manner of life to the Northumbrian than 
 he is to the Highlander. 
 
 Provincial England is the scene of much that he 
 has written. The roads and the inns attract him 
 most, because he was a wanderer by choice and 
 habit. The pageant of the Great North Road of 
 the early years of the last century is set forth in the 
 fragment of that name, as also in St. Ives. On it or 
 its likes the mails do sixty miles a day, the chaises 
 whisk after the bobbing post-boys, the young blood 
 dashes past in a curricle and tandem, and there are 
 huge slow-pacing wagons, with the music of their 
 bells. Finally there is the motley array of travellers 
 on foot. Again, the tavern sentiment is strong in 
 him as in many great writers — in Shakespeare, Dr. 
 Johnson, Scott, to take but three. As he wrote 
 many tales of travel, his page must be dotted with 
 inns, but he gets his characters into them on every 
 occasion. He dwells on their attractions with an 
 almost physical pleasure. Thus in St. Ives there 
 is the inn at Bedford to which he conducts Dudgeon, 
 the lawyer's clerk. " The white table napery, the 
 bright crystal, the reverberation of the fire, the red 
 curtains, the Turkey carpet, the portraits in the 
 coffee-room with the placid faces of their two or 
 three late guests," together with a " glass of excel- 
 lent light dry port," are compensation for the mis- 
 adventures of the night. The " Green Dragon " at 
 
ENGLISH SCENES, THE PROVINCES 169 
 
 Aylesbury and the inn at Kirkby Lonsdale play 
 important parts in this story, so do the sign of 
 " The Rising Sun " at Kettley and the " Goat and 
 Bagpipes " at Shoreby in The Black Arrow. Much 
 of the early action of Treasure Island takes place 
 in the " Admiral Benbow," the inn on the coast road 
 in Devon. Also John Silver is first introduced to us 
 as a retired seaman, who had lost a leg under the im- 
 mortal Hawke, and now keeps " The Spy Glass," a 
 tavern in Bristol for the refreshment of nautical 
 men. In the Body-Snatcher there is an elaborate 
 account of " The George " at Debenham, an old- 
 fashioned place, with its wide oak staircase, the 
 Turkey rug at the bottom, the light upon the stair, 
 and the warm radiance of the bar-room window. 
 
 Of his individual works The Black Arrow is con- 
 cerned with the Wars of the Roses of the time of 
 Henry VI. It is all in provincial England, and 
 most of the scenery is laid in the Forest, but it is 
 a property forest. There is no genuine touch, 
 nor anything that truly smacks of the period. 
 Torches flame in iron holders, the walls are covered 
 with arras, the floors are rust-bescattered, we have 
 pictures of life under the greenwood tree, the 
 mediaeval law of sanctuary is introduced, but all are 
 mere external properties. The language is wittily 
 described by R. L. S. himself as " tushery." He 
 invented the word, or more probably took it from 
 Henley, who had remarkable skill in the coining of 
 such phrases, witness his " Kailyard School," that 
 admirable description of the " mob of gentlemen" 
 who write with anything but ease sentimental novels 
 
170 
 
 R. L. S. 
 
 of Scots lower-class country life. Obviously the 
 language for a romance like The Black Arrow is 
 difficult to hit. You would not, if you could, 
 make it genuine. The average reader could not 
 follow, for he is " stumped " by Chaucer, and even 
 the specialist in English could scarce write in 
 Chaucer's dialect. Practically the author invari- 
 ably gives a sort of sham mediaeval air to the piece 
 by such phrases as " grammercy," " by the mass," 
 " y'are," " an he go," or by addressing a letter 
 thus : " To the most untrue gentylman Sir David 
 Brackley Knyght— These — So much I like you to 
 wit." Scott followed something of this plan, and 
 that so skilfully that the average reader probably 
 enjoys it. In his Letters R. L. S. makes unmerciful 
 fun of " tushery," and he never repeated the ex- 
 periment. Under unfavourable conditions the force 
 of his genius produces ever and again striking 
 passages. Thus the character and appearance of 
 Richard Crookback, Duke of Gloucester, afterwards 
 Richard III, are drawn with powerful touches. 
 You seem to get nearer the man than you do else- 
 where, even in Shakespeare. Here he is a lad 
 slightly deformed in that one shoulder is higher 
 than the other ; his face is pale and distorted, the 
 eyes clear and bold ; he speaks in sneering, cruel 
 tones, and makes a gesture of dangerous nobility. 
 In battle his face is pale as linen, his eyes shine 
 like some strange jewel. At the sight of carnage he 
 smiles upon one side, as if to conceal his pleasure in 
 the horrors of battle. He is a fearsome lad, and Dick, 
 the hero, has a great terror and some hatred of him. 
 
ENGLISH SCENES, THE PROVINCES 171 
 
 In St. Ives English incidents that took the 
 fancy of R. L. S„ though he had only read and 
 could not have seen them, are introduced. Thus 
 there is the funeral of a suicide at midnight where 
 four cross-roads meet, a stake is driven through 
 the body. Now a man who wilfully murders him- 
 self is guilty of felony. At the time of the story, if 
 the coroner's jury brought in a verdict of felo de 
 se, the goods of the suicide were forfeit, and his 
 lands went to the Crown, or very often to the lord 
 of the manor in which they were situate. He was 
 denied Christian burial, and popular custom had 
 added the other cruel rites there described. Again, 
 as St. Ives is nearing the border on his return to 
 Edinburgh, he encounters the charming Dorothy 
 Greensleeves proceeding with a half-bred Hawbuck 
 named Bellamy to make a runaway marriage at 
 Gretna Green. It is a neatly conceived episode. 
 Those marriages, though no doubt they appear in 
 fiction out of all proportion to their number in 
 fact, were features of English life between 1753 and 
 1856 — that is, for just over a century. At the former 
 date Lord Hardwicke's Marriage Act put a stop to 
 speedy and irregular unions in England, but accord- 
 ing to Scots law the consent of the parties constitutes 
 a marriage, so loving English couples had only to 
 cross the border when any form of ceremony made 
 them man and wife. The famous blacksmith of 
 Gretna Green only gave effect to the marriage by 
 supplying evidence of it. Lord Brougham's Act 
 in 1856 required residence of one of the parties 
 at any rate for twenty-one days in Scotland, else 
 
172 R. L. S. 
 
 were the nuptials altogether void, so the business 
 came suddenly to an end. 
 
 In the last passages of The Wrecker we have 
 wanderings in rural England. There is a very 
 charming account of Stalbridge Minster, an im- 
 aginary name, but a very pretty picture of an 
 English country village seen through American 
 spectacles. The church is so big that it dwarfs " the 
 domino of tiled houses, and walled gardens." Also 
 " through the sally port of every, street, there flowed 
 in from the country a silent invasion of green grass." 
 Bees and birds are the most prominent inhabitants ; 
 hives are in every garden, and nests of swallows 
 plastered on every house. Here again some im- 
 portant action takes place in the " Carthew Arms " 
 at Stalbridge-le-Carthew. In the Story of a Lie 
 I note a charming picture of an upland scene, but 
 it is not like the last, local. 
 
 If we turn to speech and character, we find much 
 for comment. The dialect, even when not " tushery," 
 is not English of any sort or kind. Thus the 
 English landladies in St. Ives are mere lay figures. 
 Rowley the servant is elaborated with some care. 
 You laugh because he says and does amusing things, 
 but I think him an impossible person, and his 
 speech impossible. His best English provincial 
 scenes are those in the first part of Treasure Island. 
 Life on the Western seaboard, with the country 
 squires and professional men and labourers and 
 seafaring folk, is adequately portrayed. Blind old 
 Pew, that humorous and sardonic villain, is of 
 himself enough to give a touch of real life and 
 
ENGLISH SCENES, THE PROVINCES 173 
 
 motion to a far less gorgeous tale. I do not say 
 that R. L. S. was unable to understand English 
 character, it was rather that he was not sufficiently 
 interested to apply himself to the study, which was 
 a necessary preliminary to accurate description. 
 He puts a telling phrase into the mouth of one of 
 his Scots characters. He plainly shows how he 
 relishes the phrase as he writes it down ; he under- 
 stands the nature from which the thought comes. 
 I do not find the same accurate touch in his English- 
 man. There is one exception ; oddly enough, it is 
 in a South Sea romance. Huish in The Ebb Tide 
 is a marvellous type of a criminal Cockney, vulgar, 
 cruel, mean. He is not altogether contemptible, 
 for he has courage, daring, and even a certain low 
 humour. Perhaps he divined the character, per- 
 haps it was drawn from rascal vagabond types he 
 had experienced on South Sea beaches ; possibly it 
 was both. There was a certain piquancy in showing 
 forth the man in strange contrast with his surround- 
 ings. The dialect he talks is at least sufficiently 
 accurate. Of its own kind this is a masterpiece of 
 the dark and the ugly. 
 
 In an earlier part of this book I have had occasion 
 to mention the Hawes Inn at Queensferry. In the 
 essay called A Gossip on Romance there is grouped 
 with it the inn at Burford Bridge near Dorking, 
 " with its arbors and green garden and silent eddy- 
 ing river." It is charmingly situated, with its back- 
 ground of high cliff, its frontage of water. As 
 Stevenson notes, "here Keats wrote some of his 
 Endymion and Nelson parted from his Emma." 
 
174 R - L - s - 
 
 I may add that it was an abode of Hazlitt, and for 
 some time of R. L. S. himself. Here he met George 
 Meredith, a writer for whom he and Henley had a 
 whole-hearted admiration. To him they dedicated 
 Beau Austin. The old-time inn must have been a 
 much humbler affair than the splendid modern 
 hotel which now bears the name, and the older 
 house was no doubt the more picturesque if less 
 luxurious. However, this is the only mention 
 that R. L. S. makes of it. 
 
 With one place in provincial England R. L. S. 
 was very intimately concerned. He lived at 
 Bournemouth from September 1884 to August 1887, 
 when he left for America, never again to visit these 
 shores. Apart from his father's house it was the 
 only home he ever had in this country. He was 
 driven to it by ill-health. After some time in 
 lodgings, he and his wife removed to a house in 
 Branksome Park called " Bonallie Towers," which 
 name sounds like a parody of Bonaly Tower on 
 the northern slope of the Pentlands in the R. L. S. 
 home country. Then, in 1885, Thomas Stevenson 
 gave his daughter-in-law a house which they named 
 " Skerryvore," after the lighthouse on a reef ten miles 
 south-west of Tiree. It was in the way of vessels 
 going either to the Clyde or the Mersey, and set 
 amidst miles of dangerous seas and battered by 
 the mighty waves of the Atlantic. It was begun 
 in 1838, and six years were consumed in its con- 
 struction. It was planned and carried out by Alan 
 Stevenson, the uncle of R. L. S. and the father of 
 his cousin and most intimate friend, R. A. M. S. 
 
ENGLISH SCENES, THE PROVINCES 175 
 
 It was one of the proudest achievements of the 
 Stevenson family, and you see how appropriate 
 the name. 
 
 For love of lovely words, and for the sake 
 Of those, my kinsmen and my countrymen, 
 Who early and late in the windy ocean toiled 
 To plant a star for seamen, where was then 
 The surfy haunt of seals and cormorants : 
 I, on the lintel of this cot, inscribe 
 The name of a strong tower. 
 
 The house is on the edge of Hallam Chine. Those 
 chines, which are characteristic features of that coast, 
 are gullies running some way into the land. It is 
 two-storied, built of brick, with a slated roof — the 
 conventional, good-class seaside residence. The 
 front is southward and not to the road, also the 
 gardens stretch over the edge and some way down 
 the chine. In summer it is bright with flowers and 
 grasses ; moreover, there are many charming nooks, 
 even though its ways be narrow. In Stevenson's 
 time the spacious " blue room," as he called the 
 dining-room, was adorned with portraits of his 
 friends, while such of them as were artists had 
 painted and otherwise decorated the panels in the 
 entrance hall. 
 
 R. L. S. did not find the health for which he came. 
 He was nearly always ill, and very much confined 
 to bed, yet he worked steadily and continuously, and 
 with some measure of cheerfulness. He sometimes 
 left home for other places in England, chiefly 
 London. Once he got as far as Paris, but he broke 
 down and had to scurry back. As all the world 
 
176 R. L. S. 
 
 knows, invalids are the staple industry of Bourne- 
 mouth. The place is sheltered and warm, and the 
 air of its pine woods delightful and beneficial, so 
 there is a large floating population of sick folk 
 catered for by the remainder of the inhabitants. 
 R. L. S. had no association with the life of the place, 
 which he describes in The Wrong Box as " that un- 
 chartered wilderness of villas." Sir Henry Taylor 
 with his family, Sir Percy and Lady Shelley, and 
 some others of kindred nature were his intimates, 
 but they themselves were not bound up or identified 
 with the town. His London friends, as Sir 
 Sidney Colvin, Henley, Henry James, J. S. Sar- 
 gent, his cousin R. A. M. S., visited from time 
 to time, but they were birds of passage. In The 
 Wrong Box Bournemouth is briefly touched on. 
 Joseph Finsbury is taken there according to the 
 direction of Sir Faraday Bond, the medical baronet. 
 Joseph walks in Branksome woods and reflects on 
 the tontine, and presently the three Finsburys 
 depart from the East Station, and there is no more 
 of Bournemouth. Perhaps there would not have 
 been as much had not the piece been drafted by 
 Lloyd Osbourne his stepson, who also collaborated 
 in The Wrecker and The Ebb Tide. He had been 
 at school there, and he naturally introduced a place 
 he knew so well ; probably he was more impressed 
 than was his stepfather, and nowhere else does 
 R. L. S. use Bournemouth as literary material. 
 
CHAPTER XIII 
 
 SOME FRENCH PASSAGES 
 
 " T T" E was always happy in France." So said 
 
 I 1 W. E. Henley of our author. He had a 
 
 A A. real affection for the country as well as an 
 educated Scots comprehension for and interest in 
 the people. He found everything more sympa- 
 thetic than in England. Also he understood better. 
 He liked what was odd and picturesque and quaint. 
 And he found it here. He was emotional, in strange 
 sudden ways. His French company rose to the 
 occasion as the stolid Saxon never did. Most of 
 all was the attraction of the literature. He found 
 writers of his own way of thinking and working. 
 With them good expression was an end in itself. 
 He admired the constant effort to say what was 
 to be said in the best possible manner. Though 
 not a painter, he was a sketcher. He understood 
 something about pictures, and the life of the art 
 student in the Paris studio was pleasing to him. 
 It is well pictured in The Wrecker. He knew 
 Paris better than London, not merely modern Paris 
 but the Paris of former days. The mediaeval town 
 is admirably presented in A Lodging for the Night. 
 The sketch is as deftly done though of necessity 
 slighter than Victor Hugo's elaborate picture in 
 
 12 
 
178 R. L. S. 
 
 his famous Notre Dame romance. Also in France 
 he was recognized as Bohemian, and treated with 
 easy tolerance. A Bohemian sober and well- 
 mannered might seem impossible in Edinburgh and 
 difficult in London : R. L. S. was this. He was 
 the exception, that it may be proved the rule for 
 his own country. But he was no exception in 
 France, where there were others like him. Yet they 
 were painters and not writers. He knew men 
 who were already or afterwards became famous 
 in the world of art. None, it seems, who was 
 to be great in the world of letters. It may be 
 because of his fondness for the gipsy-life of the 
 road and the forest. Such was useful, nay necessary, 
 for the painter who worked from nature. It was 
 usually impossible for the man of letters. Many 
 people lived at Siron's to paint, but none to write, 
 except R. L. S. himself. 
 
 His connection with " the forest," by which he 
 meant Fontainebleau, was intimate. It is a huge 
 tract — about forty thousand English acres. Here 
 is the most beautiful woodland scenery — beeches, 
 elms, oaks, huge clumps of black firs; also, like 
 our own New Forest, it is not continuous wood. 
 Much is covered with heath and broom, whilst 
 across it there run some eight or ten ridges of gaunt 
 sandstone. These diverse elements give picturesque 
 touches to the scenery. Once deer abounded, and 
 the old French kings hunted them on many a 
 bright morning long years ago. These same deer 
 are rare to-day, but the dead and gone monarchs 
 have left substantial trace of their presence, for in 
 
SOME FRENCH PASSAGES 179 
 
 1162 they built a castle, and we still have the famous 
 Chateau, a hunting seat of a superb description. It 
 is right in the centre of the forest. A town speedily 
 grew up round it, which is to-day one of the most 
 famous outlying suburbs of Paris, thirty-seven 
 miles off by rail. It is a clean, pleasant place, 
 and its numerous villas are extensively occupied 
 by retired, well-to-do Parisians, who like a touch 
 of the country, though they would not have it too 
 prominent. 
 
 A number of much less pretentious villages and 
 hamlets came in time to dot the outskirts of the 
 forest, whereof the chief in renown and chief in the 
 eyes of Stevenson was Barbizon, on the western 
 outskirts and so south-east of Paris. Here was 
 Siron's, his constant place of residence, of whose 
 quaint ways he has given so charming an account 
 in his essay called Fontainebleau. R. L. S. has 
 spoken with some scorn of the Vie de Boheme of 
 which Murger is the classic chronicler or historian. 
 Life in the Latin Quarter was a bright vision in the 
 young days of many of us, and perhaps it once 
 approached the reality. At least one loves to 
 think so, but it must have been nearly a hundred 
 years ago, for to-day there is no more dreary and 
 sordid place in all Paris than the Pays Latin, 
 artificial and cheap, save in one or two places, and 
 save for some gallant memories. Barbizon was to 
 have a like fate. Perhaps Louis saw it in its best 
 days. Perhaps he himself was its Murger ; at any 
 rate, the Bohemian life of which he tells has suffered 
 dire change. Parisian families crowd it for their 
 
180 R. L. S. 
 
 spring or autumn outing, spite of the flies and 
 mosquitoes which rise from its tracts of sandy soil. 
 There is a lack of grass and water, yet the road to 
 the forest is lined with villas. There is sufficient 
 number of more or less attractive hotels. The 
 available space in some of them bears a great 
 variety of painting, placed thereon by artists grate- 
 ful, or indebted. But the artist now seeks a quieter 
 spot. The life is dear, and even to some extent 
 fashionable, from the spendthrifts and gay bucks 
 " qui s'y installent en galante compagnie." 
 
 This was not the Barbizon that R. L. S. knew 
 from 1875 onward. It was a genuine art centre. 
 There are traces of the place in 808 A.n., but it 
 lived its slow village-life for centuries without 
 notice, for it was only about 1830 that artists began 
 specially to affect it. We have what is called the j 
 " Barbizon School," whose principle was, in contrast 
 with earlier and more artificial methods, to paint 
 direct from nature, after the fashion of our own 
 Constable. Rousseau, Diaz, and Millet lived here 
 for many years, and Corot and Daubigny were 
 frequent visitors. " If you could see how beautiful 
 the forest is," said Millet ; " it is so calm, with such 
 a terrible grandeur, that I feel myself really afraid 
 of it." Such was^the spirit with which those great 
 men approached their work ; perhaps something 
 of it was still present in the minds of the horde of 
 painters of many nationalities who crowded there 
 year after year. Theodore Rousseau and Millet 
 are buried hard by. Their memorial, a plaque in 
 bronze, is also near. Millet had just died when 
 
SOME FRENCH PASSAGES 181 
 
 R. L. S. got there in 1875, and incessant discussion 
 of his work and genius was the topic of every day. 
 His pictures had that exasperating fortune that 
 falls to the works of great artists. He must sell 
 them for a trifle, and work hard to live ; and now 
 they fetch enormous sums, whilst everyone knows 
 "The Angelus," "The Sower," "The Gleaner," to 
 name but these. Mr. W. H. Low tells how he took 
 R. A. M. S., Stevenson's cousin " Bob," to see Millet. 
 It was after a discussion as to the lack of originality 
 in our own time, and after they left " Bob " turned 
 to his companion and asked if he thought it fair 
 in a discussion on minor poets " to spring Shake- 
 speare upon your opponent." 
 
 The artists kept Siron's for themselves with 
 jealous care, so that when R. L. S. went, it must 
 have been an ideal artist's barracks. It was built 
 in a rambling fashion round the courtyard, and 
 additions were run up as occasion required. It was 
 fairly on the street, into which the windows of the 
 dining-room looked. The wood panelling had in 
 course of time become filled with the work of genera- 
 tions of artists. As night fell the generation in 
 possession strolled in from the forest or wherever 
 they were working. There was a delightful and 
 profitable hour of talk before dinner. Aperitifs 
 were consumed, whilst the work of the day was 
 freely criticized. Then followed a simple but 
 prolonged meal, during which and after which, till 
 late into the night, the stream of talk kept on, till 
 at some unknown hour the company broke up, 
 some to their rooms in the hotel, later comers, 
 
18a R. L. S. 
 
 crowded out, so to speak, across the way up to the 
 houses of peasants. The next morning there was 
 milk and coffee in the arbour or the great room, 
 followed by the long day in the forest, an arduous 
 day, yet filled with its own consolations and 
 pleasures. 
 
 R. L. S. mentions other places on the outskirts 
 of the forest where there were like communities. 
 In fact, every hamlet did what it could to fill its 
 houses with painters. The francs received for 
 rooms, for food, for posing as models, were of the 
 first importance to the frugal French peasant. The 
 charge at Siron's was five francs per day, vin ordi- 
 naire for dinner at any rate presumably included. 
 About four shillings is a small price, marvellous it 
 seems in American and English eyes, yet it was 
 really only ordinary rates. Ten years later I fared 
 sumptuously in an hotel at Blois for six francs, and 
 that, even at the seaside and even in the holiday 
 months, was a few years ago the common rate, but 
 the Continental peoples travel nowadays as they 
 never travelled before. Prices, especially in August, 
 the great holiday month in France, and especially 
 at the seaside, have gone up with leaps and bounds. 
 It may or may not give an additional charm to 
 Stevenson's bright pictures that they show forth 
 an extinct order of things, but such is the fact, as 
 the Stevensonian who makes his pilgrimage to 
 Barbizon speedily discovers. 
 
 Grez is next after Barbizon in note. It is a 
 hamlet eight miles or so from Fontainebleau, to the 
 south of and a little distance from the forest. It is 
 
SOME FRENCH PASSAGES 183 
 
 on the Loing, a tributary of the Seine. Here was 
 afterwards a regular colony of American painters, 
 but this was not yet. The Stevensons were among 
 the first of the English-speaking crew that invaded 
 the forest and its precincts. American colonists 
 and lady students of art were yet hid in the future. 
 Here is a picturesque bridge of the fifteenth century 
 which you are not surprised to learn has been 
 painted by almost every artist who ever sought the 
 place, " a low bridge of many arches choked with 
 sedge." The hamlet has also the splendid red 
 ruins of a keep, the sole remains of a castle built by 
 La Reine Blanche, the mother of St. Louis. The 
 Stevensons and some of their friends crossed over 
 here from Barbizon in a moment of disgust, in order 
 that they might enjoy the bathing and the walks 
 by the river. They put up at the Hotel Chevillon, 
 with which they were well content, though their 
 dream of an earthly paradise was not realized. " A 
 pretty and very melancholy village," writes R. L. S. 
 to his mother, and he goes on to speak of " its 
 atmosphere of sadness and slackness." 
 
 Grez is memorable in his life, for here he met the 
 lady who became Mrs. Stevenson. It is noteworthy 
 also as the original of the town described in the 
 Treasure of Franchard, and the inn in fact had the 
 fate which is there given to the doctor's house. 
 The original of Anastasie was taken from Barbizon. 
 She was Madame La Chevre, wife of a French painter 
 who lived there. We go back to Grez for the 
 originals of Monsieur Leon Berthelini and his spouse 
 Elvira in Providence and the Guitar, These were a 
 
184 R. L. S. 
 
 wandering French actor and his Bulgarian wife, who 
 had passed some time in the village. R. L. S. sent 
 them the money he got for the story which they 
 never saw, and could not have read if they had. 
 
 So much for Paris and the suburbs of or at any 
 rate the country about Paris. R. L. S. relates his 
 adventures in the provinces in An Inland Voyage 
 and Travels with a Donkey in the Cevennes. I give 
 some supplementary notes. The Cevennes form 
 the greatest of the mountain ranges of the south of 
 France. They are the fringe of the central plateau 
 of that country. Their shape is a half-moon with 
 the convex towards the Loire River. Though the 
 name is applied to the whole mountainous tract, the 
 Cevennes proper lie between Cairon and Larzac. 
 Here is the wildest and most tangled part. The 
 Cevennes separate two climates, two opposed 
 aspects of nature. To the north and west is a land 
 of rain and snow. Yet the meadows rich and 
 fruitful give a bountiful return to the incessant, 
 steady labour of the peasant. To the south and 
 east there is the hot sun, tracts of sterile desert, or 
 in other places the vine and the olive. 
 
 R. L. S. meant to go from Le Monastier to Alais 
 on the Gardon, a tributary of the Rhone, but he 
 finished at St. Jean du Gard. Here he sold his 
 donkey, the famous Modestine, which he had bought 
 at the starting-place to carry his " traps." He had 
 been twelve days on the journey, had come over a 
 hundred and twenty miles over all sorts of roads, 
 along valleys, over "several respectable ridges," 
 and across many more or less famous streams 
 
SOME FRENCH PASSAGES 185 
 
 and rivers. He made no attempt to explore the 
 Cevennes. It is a land of wild and strange beauty, 
 of remarkable and even savage scenery. But he 
 left the most severely alone, and came through parts 
 that were comparatively tame, though he invests 
 them with a strange charm. He gives us no hint 
 why he made this singular tour. He spent a month 
 in Le Monastier, then apparently determined to 
 rejoin the railway system and ordinary life at 
 Alais, thus the journey between was his plunge 
 into the wilderness. He came near some of the 
 beauty spots. One chapter is entitled In the 
 Valley of the Tarn. Now the gorges of the Tarn are 
 the places which a tourist in the Cevennes would go 
 to see, would " do " conscientiously from end to 
 end; but R. L. S. didn't and in fact couldn't, given 
 his whimsical mode of travel. A man with a 
 donkey yet unaccustomed to donkey-driving must 
 take roads without any real difficulty about them. 
 He did practically without guides, without boats 
 or horses, without the all-powerful aid of steam. 
 
 He went alone. In his essay on Walking Tours 
 he says you must go alone. If you go with a friend 
 you turn the thing into a picnic. This statement 
 needs analysis and distinction. If you go merely 
 for pleasure you are better with a friend to support 
 the solitude, to laugh with you at the humours of 
 the road, to help you to meet the rubs of fate. But 
 then you think of the country only in a far-off 
 way. It is not the centrepiece. It is merely 
 decoration to the theatre of your action. Alone 
 you are completely under the influence of the 
 
186 R. L. S. 
 
 places and the peoples. Each minute has fresh 
 experiences and fresh sensations. Your tour is one 
 long observation. Thus if you walk to write, 
 you must walk alone. And then the solitude in 
 which most of the day is passed leads you to ap- 
 preciate the company at the end or the chance talk 
 by the wayside. You are more eager to cultivate 
 casual intercourse. To put it plainly, vulgarly, 
 you get " copy " at every turn of the road, from 
 every remark at the table of the village inn. 
 
 Those twelve days were not eventful. There 
 was nothing startling or sensational that hap- 
 pened either in the weather or in the people. 
 Nor did the traveller seek to create incidents; an 
 ordinary " bagman " or reporter had made things 
 " hum " to a much greater extent. This is the 
 most remarkable tribute to the power of the writer. 
 R. L. S. has written many fascinating pages, but 
 none more so than those of this little book. Is it 
 the charm of style ? Partly so, still more the 
 human sympathy, the humour, the pathos that 
 makes the ordinary incidents of the ordinary day 
 peculiarly fascinating. 
 
 Some of Stevenson's admirers have followed, 
 and no doubt still follow, the track of their author 
 in the Cevennes. One of them, Mr. J. A. Hammer- 
 ton, has recorded his experiences in an interesting 
 volume. He went the round twenty-five years 
 after, and from first to last found no human being 
 who remembered the passage of the man with his 
 donkey. Surely Father Apollinaris, you suggest. 
 But Father Apollinaris had been dead five years, 
 
SOME FRENCH PASSAGES 187 
 
 and though faithful Mr. Hammerton spent a night 
 at the monastery " Our Lady of the Snows," he 
 records no scrap of personal reminiscence from any 
 of the inmates. He tells us that the place is well 
 called, for in winter it lies buried for weeks under 
 " une neige enorme," as one of the monks said 
 with a shudder. 
 
 At Pont de Montvert Mr. Hammerton was at 
 least successful in tracing the after-history of 
 Clarisse of the Hotel des Cevennes, the maid of the 
 inn on whose rustic charms R. L. S. has dwelt with 
 some detail. Nay, he has embellished his page 
 with an authentic portrait of that damsel, but it is, 
 alas! contemporary with his and not with his 
 author's visit, so he has done rather faithfully than 
 wisely. True, the later life of Clarisse was entirely 
 creditable. She was married and had a family, 
 but the twenty-five years are " chiels that winna 
 ding," as Robin has it. And you think as Scott 
 did when he met Clarinda in later life, that she 
 has few remains of her ancient beauty. Mr. Ham- 
 merton got his information from the Protestant 
 pastor, a well-read and highly intelligent person, 
 though rather too advanced for his visitor's tastes. 
 He was there in the time of R. L. S., but knew 
 nothing of him until he read his works, of which he 
 proved himself an eager student. Through him 
 Clarisse, who also had no memory of the traveller, 
 had learned that she herself had some place in letters. 
 It was at Pont de Montvert that the slaughter 
 of du Chayla, "Archpriest of the Cevennes and 
 Inspector of Missions," and his companions, the 
 
188 R. h, S. 
 
 central tragedy of the Camisard wars, took place. 
 Florae and Alais are, R. L. S. assures us, the capitals 
 of the country of the Camisards, and that at Cas- 
 sagnas you are in its very heart. Spite of which, it 
 seems, he only touched its outskirts. For him the 
 past religious history of the country had a power- 
 ful attraction, possibly from its similarity to the 
 struggles of the Scots Covenanters. Beside refer- 
 ring to it again and again, he has given a detailed 
 and picturesque account of the business at Pont de 
 Montvert. The Cevennes have been from an early 
 period the home of those who sought religious 
 freedom. The Albigenses of the thirteenth century 
 had numerous adherents in this wide tract of 
 country. They aimed at a return to primitive 
 Christianity, and though their enemies said they 
 denied the verities of the Christian faith, that was 
 only the bigots' " pretty way." They or their likes 
 were condemned at a Council of Pope Calixtus II 
 held at Toulouse in 1119. Thence they were known 
 as Toulouse heretics. Their later name came from 
 Albigois in Languedoc, now the department of the 
 Tarn, the point to which a crusade of Pope Inno- 
 cent III (1209) against them was directed. In the 
 course of this Beziers was taken, and a massacre 
 ensued of the inhabitants from twenty to forty 
 thousand in number. Sound Catholics were spared 
 as little as heretics. " Kill them all ! " said Arnold, 
 Abbot of Citeaux, the Papal Legate, in an outburst 
 of cynical bigotry; "God will know His own." 
 Resistance was quelled by the year 1229. The 
 Inquisition took charge of the heretics, of whom 
 
SOME FRENCH PASSAGES 189 
 
 there were numerous executions at the stake, then 
 we hear no more. 
 
 When Louis XIV revoked the Edict of Nantes in 
 1685, a stubborn remnant remained in the Cevennes, 
 and for some time held the King and all his forces 
 at defiance. The cruelties of the Abbe du Chayla 
 stirred up the people against him, and led to his 
 murder on the 24th July 1702 at Pont de Montvert, 
 as already noted. Some terrible years followed. In 
 1703 Marshal Montrevel traversed the country with 
 sixty thousand men. Himself had been a Huguenot, 
 and had all the bitter zeal of the renegade. Four 
 hundred and thirty villages were destroyed, and a 
 vast number of inhabitants killed or executed. 
 This led to savage reprisals. In the diocese of 
 Nimes alone eighty-four priests were strangled, and 
 over two hundred churches burned. Jean Cavalier 
 was the most skilled leader of the insurgents, and 
 he had many notable successes. In April 1704 
 Marshal Villars succeeded Montrevel. He inaugur- 
 ated a new policy. The prisoners were released on 
 taking the oath of allegiance, a free pardon was the 
 reward of all who surrendered, whilst those taken 
 in arms were shot without further question. Both 
 sides were for the moment heartily tired of the 
 struggle. Cavalier presently made terms. His 
 life before and after had strange ups and downs. 
 He entered the British service and ended as Gover- 
 nor of Jersey. Next year there was a partial revival 
 of trouble owing to the unwise conduct of the Duke 
 of Berwick, who succeeded Villars in command. 
 But the King's forces were now too strong to resist. 
 
190 R. L. S. 
 
 The Camisards in appearance submitted, or they 
 followed the example of Cavalier and entered the 
 British service. 
 
 There are various derivations of the word 
 Camisard, but the one that seems to carry most 
 weight is that which traces it from the camise or 
 blouse worn by the peasants. Such is a bare 
 skeleton of the story whereof so many picturesque 
 details are given in the Travels. R. L. S. notes the 
 numerous Protestant section of the folk, and how 
 peacefully they live with their Catholic neighbours. 
 The moral he preaches is the uselessness of persecu-' 
 tion, since here great bodies of Protestants are in 
 evidence to the present day. We need not too 
 curiously examine the theory he propounds. We 
 know that the nascent Reformation was crushed in 
 Italy and Spain, as well as in France, and you 
 suspect that the mutual tolerance shown by Pro- 
 testant and Papist is due first of all to the lack 
 of profound religious conviction in the mind of the 
 average Frenchman, be he of the town or the 
 country, of the ancient or the reformed faith. 
 
 I do not discuss whether the mediaeval touches 
 in The Sire de Maletroit's Door are true or false. 
 This about a name is curious. The former lover 
 of the heroine Blanche was called Champdivers, 
 Which is the name assumed by the hero in St. Ives 
 whilst a prisoner in the Castle. " It was my 
 mother's name and good to go soldiering with," he 
 explains. 
 
CHAPTER XIV 
 R. L. S. ON THE CONTINENT 
 
 I TURN to the Inland Voyage, of which all the 
 interesting and important parts are in France. 
 R. L. S. and his friend went on canoes over 
 rivers and canals some way in the north, through 
 scenery not specially noteworthy. Here as in the 
 other journey the book relies for its interest on the 
 charming manner in which the ordinary incidents 
 of the day are set forth, and the quaint and humor- 
 ous reflections to which they give rise. I pick out 
 one or two points of interest. The travellers cross 
 the frontier by train to Mauberg. It is a place on 
 both banks of the Sambre, a fortress of the first class 
 in the middle of the French Black Country. The 
 weather was bad, and to an ordinary mind the 
 prospect not enchanting. From first to last there 
 were no travellers for pleasure except themselves. 
 They were taken for pedlars, nay possibly for 
 lunatics. At some places they were well entertained. 
 One of them was Landrecies. On the way to it they 
 touched the forest of Mormal. " Alas ! the forest 
 of Mormal is only a little bit of a wood, and it was 
 but for a little way that we skirted by its bound- 
 aries." R. L. S. saw one corner. The forest in 
 fact totals up to the respectable amount of 23,000 
 
192 R. L. S. 
 
 acres, more than half the size of Fontainebleau, 
 which is 41,500. 
 
 The voyage is a frank and amusing record of his 
 impressions. Thus of. Landrecies, which is another 
 fortified town, " the only public buildings which 
 had any interest for us were the hotel and the cafe\ 
 but we visited the church. There lies Marshal 
 Clarke. But as neither of us had ever heard of 
 that military hero we bore the associations of 
 the spot with fortitude." The student of Napoleon 
 knows Clarke very well. He flourished between 
 1765 and 1818. He was one of those men who 
 stopped just below the very first rank, so him 
 the general reader is likely to miss, partly because 
 his name is not " kenspeckle," to use an expressive 
 Scots phrase. Yet he was in his time a big person 
 with a string of high-sounding titles, a Count and 
 Duke under Napoleon, and a Peer and Marshal of 
 France under the restored Bourbons ; also he was 
 Minister of War to both of them. He was opposed 
 to Lord Chatham in the unlucky Walcheren ex- 
 pedition. It was largely owing to his skill and 
 strategy that the affair was for us such a melancholy 
 fiasco. Though he was against his old master in 
 the Hundred Days, Napoleon spoke well of him at 
 St. Helena. He was born and buried here. Hence 
 no doubt the reason of his monument. A yet more 
 eminent Frenchman had his origin in this town, 
 Joseph Dupleix to wit (1697-1764), that Governor of 
 the French possessions in India who fought so well 
 for his country, though in the end with no profit 
 to it or himself, for he was beaten by the greater 
 
R. L. S. ON THE CONTINENT 193 
 
 genius of Give. There is now a statue to him by 
 Fagel, but it only dates from 1888, whereas the 
 voyage started in August 1876. 
 
 Mr. Hammerton followed this route in 1904, 
 twenty-eight years afterwards. He made diligent 
 inquiries as to the travellers, but in only two places 
 did he find any memory of them. Here the land- 
 lord of the "Tete d'Or" gave with much assurance 
 various details about them which were possibly 
 accurate. At any rate, the Juge de Paix who enter- 
 tained them so handsomely was still in office, 
 though as he was now married there were no more 
 pleasant bachelor supper-parties. He is described 
 by Stevenson as " a functionary as far as I can 
 make out of the character of a Scots Sheriff-Substi- 
 tute," which is so far true since that official is a sort 
 of Scots legal maid-of-all-work. His French brother 
 has, however, as his name implies, no criminal 
 jurisdiction. To finish with Landrecies, it is a town 
 of about 4000 folk, and though both Mr. Hammer- 
 ton and his author speak slightingly of its commerce, 
 yet among its industries are breweries, tanneries, 
 printing-works, dye-works, and glass-works. 
 
 The other place where a memory of the voyagers 
 lingered was at La Fere " of cursed memory," 
 where the pair, to their amazement, horror, and 
 indignation, were refused admittance by the irate 
 landlady of the principal hotel as not quite " class " 
 enough. Like many things in life it makes a comic 
 enough story, when told as R. L. S. alone of recent 
 writers could tell it, but it had its nasty side which 
 he does not conceal. And then at the " Croix de 
 13 
 
194 R- L. S. 
 
 Malte," a very humble auberge indeed, they were 
 delightfully entertained, though in a humble fashion, 
 by Monsieur Bazin and his spouse. Stevenson must 
 have felt as he wrote, for he sent them a copy of the 
 book wherefrom they got the passage translated. 
 They had been much interested and were proud of 
 it. Time had not stood still at La Fere any more 
 than in other places. Madame Bazin told Mr. 
 Hammerton that her husband was dead, and Mr. 
 Hammerton had to tell her in return that Stevenson 
 was gone also. Bazin seems to have struck R. L. S. 
 as a good name for an innkeeper. He gives it to 
 the keeper of the auberge in the dunes at 
 Dunkirk, the scene of the exciting adventures which 
 conclude Catriona. 
 
 One other of the halting-places of the voyage 
 deserves a word, and that is Noyon, a very old place 
 of between 7000 and 8000 inhabitants. The 
 Cathedral impressed the travellers. Well it might, 
 for it is a masterpiece of the Transition style of the 
 eleventh and twelfth centuries. Nor is it choked 
 up with buildings as so many foreign cathedrals are. 
 The space around has the grave, solemn, dignified 
 peace of the English close, so that the beautiful 
 church is seen to the best effect. Here a man was 
 born of undoubted interest to Stevenson, no less 
 indeed than the great Reformer Calvin (1509-1564). 
 At the age of twelve he had a benefice in the 
 Cathedral, for he came of influential people. Mr. 
 Hammerton suggests that R. L. S. cannot have 
 known or remembered the fact or he would have 
 edified us with a choice discourse. This is possible 
 
R. L. S. ON THE CONTINENT 195 
 
 but not certain. At Pontoise, eighteen miles from 
 Paris, they stop. The rivers were too broad, and had 
 lost their individual interest. The travellers had 
 received a packet of home letters at Compiegne. 
 That broke for a time the charm or spell. Desire for 
 other things arose in their hearts, and, after all, 
 they began as they liked and stopped as thev 
 liked. 
 
 As the Inland Voyage is now published an Epi- 
 logue is attached. It is of an earlier date, and 
 narrates an adventure of the year before — that is, of 
 1875. The scene is the department of the Loiret. 
 It occurred during a walk in the valley of the 
 Loing, and describes the arrest of Stevenson as a 
 German spy. He had come from " the most un- 
 fashionable spot in Europe, Barbizon." He was 
 "dressed like a tramp, was indeed mistaken by the 
 landlady of a roadside change-house for a beggar. 
 From Chateau Reynard, in a green valley with 
 beautiful trees, they went on to Chatillon-sur- 
 Loing. It is a small place, with a population of 
 247 0, and contains two houses of the sixteenth 
 century, one called Paradise because Catholics wor- 
 shipped there, the other Hell because it was a Calvinist 
 meeting-house. Here was born Admiral de Coligny 
 (15 1 7-1 572). Those facts, you think, would have 
 interested Stevenson if they had come in his way. 
 They crossed over to Gien, a larger place with a 
 population of 8519, in the valley of Loire. They 
 did not visit the ruins of the Roman baths in the 
 neighbourhood, nor did they pay any attention to 
 the mediaeval bridge and castle, but pressed on, 
 
196 R. L. S. 
 
 walking separately, to Chatillon-sur-Loire, where the 
 arrest happened. It is a little place of 3260 in- 
 dwellers, and furnished with a commissary of 
 police, of whose proceedings we hear at length. On 
 condition of leaving for Paris by the train that 
 night, they are finally released from a doubtful 
 situation. 
 
 I say " they," for the Cigarette of the Inland 
 Voyage shared in the adventure though not in the 
 arrest. He is described by his fellow-traveller as 
 of immaculate dress and appearance and of gentle- 
 manly speech and demeanour, and it is elsewhere 
 said of him, " his was a slow fighting mind, he was 
 shy of his own virtues and talents, and above all of 
 the former. He was even ashamed of his own 
 sincere desire to do the right " ; also, " he was an 
 opposite and perhaps an antidote to Bob." This 
 was Sir Walter Grindley Simpson, Bart. (1843- 
 1898). He was nominally of the same profession 
 as Stevenson, since he was admitted advocate 1873, 
 but was no more, perhaps even less of a lawyer 
 than the other. He was the eldest son of Sir James 
 Young Simpson, the eminent Edinburgh surgeon 
 who invented chloroform. He was a friend of 
 Stevenson, one should say of both the Stevensons, 
 and of Henley from an early period. He was with 
 R. L. S. in tours in the Western Islands, in canoe 
 trips on the Firth of Forth, at Frankfort in Germany, 
 and more than all at Barbizon, where he was 
 described by a chance Cockney as the " all-round 
 British sport," a description probably more accept- 
 able to the vulgar than the more profound analysis 
 
R. L. S. ON THE CONTINENT 197 
 
 of his friend. There are but three letters to him in 
 the R. L. S. correspondence, one is from Saranac 
 Lake, America, in October 1887. Many others 
 were destroyed or lost. He was a devoted golfer, 
 Wrote indeed The Art of Golf 1887, 2nd edition 
 1892, and contributed on that subject to The 
 Badminton Library. He edited the second volume 
 of his father's collected works. I remember some 
 poetry of his contributed to Henley's Scots Observer. 
 Strange verse it was indeed. He gave Stevenson 
 the black Skye terrier called Woggs, a corruption of 
 Walter, but I think passed out of his later life. 
 
 I turn to that part of Catriona that deals with 
 Holland. According to the chronology of the 
 book, David Balfour and his lady-love were there 
 in 1751. He describes his " first look of Holland 
 a line of windmills birling in the breeze." The 
 quaint aspect of a windmill was a thing to take the 
 author's fancy, and he introduces one again on the 
 sands of Dunkirk with its sails turning like some 
 foolish person, holding up its hands. In their 
 journey to Leyden they passed through historic 
 towns, Amsterdam, Delft, and The Hague, where 
 they had other things to do than to inspect the 
 sights or study the antiquities. But the reason of 
 David's presence at Leyden deserves a word. He 
 was a young man of position, the owner of a com- 
 pact little estate. Alan Breck, you remember, in 
 the Scots fashion, was wont to address him as 
 " Shaws," from the name of the place. He was 
 studying for the Scots Bar. To attend classes 
 at Leyden was the proper, almost the inevitable 
 
198 R. L. S. 
 
 thing to do. At that date the University of Edin- 
 burgh had only three legal chairs. These were that 
 of the Law of Nature and Nations 1707, of Civil 
 Law 1710, and of Scots Law 1722. The habit of 
 foreign study, which was earlier than the century, 
 lasted well into it. Bourges in France was once the 
 fashionable place, and not for Scotsmen only. It 
 was in this " Athens of lawyers" that Sir George 
 Mackenzie, "the bloody advocate Mackenzie" of 
 history and romance, as well as many another old- 
 time jurist studied, and then Ley den, the " Athens 
 of the West," had the vogue and kept it till the 
 Faculty of Law at Edinburgh was fully furnished, 
 and so able to defy foreign competition. The 
 Continental student looked down on the home-bred 
 youth, even though the latter was often more 
 successful in practice. If you care to turn over 
 some of the old volumes of the Scots State Trials 
 you will find a curious result of this Continental 
 training. In the debates on the relevancy of the 
 libel — inevitable and useless, as we have seen, in 
 James Stewart's case — there was a great parade of 
 the works of foreign jurists, of men whose names 
 you have probably never heard, still less have you 
 conned their folios. Yet, in the chapter entitled 
 "Full Story of a Copy of Heineccius," one appears 
 with comic effect to interrupt the love affairs of 
 David and his Catriona. The gentleman in question 
 was a German professor and jurist who flourished 
 between 1681 and 1741. His full name was Johann 
 Gottlieb Heineccius. David does not condescend 
 on the special treatise he tried so vainly to read. 
 
R. L. S. ON THE CONTINENT 199 
 
 Probably it was Historia Juris Civilis Romani 
 
 (1733)- 
 
 I turn to works where the scenery has no fixed 
 locality, though it is more fully described, better 
 realized, than that of places which he himself had 
 visited. There is Will the Mill, said to be drawn 
 from the Murgthal in Baden and the Brenner Pass 
 in the Tyrol, where he was in early life— at the age 
 of twelve, in fact. Yet it would fit in very well 
 with many a scene in the Black Forest or the 
 Odenwald. It is German at every line, in its forest 
 and hills, in its mill which is also an inn, and in 
 Marjory the Parson's daughter. And the same is 
 true of Prince Otto, though we are advised not to 
 look upon any map for Griinewald, that extinct 
 fief of the German or Holy Roman Empire. It is 
 professedly a kingdom of romance, for " on the 
 south it marched with the comparatively powerful 
 kingdom of Seaboard Bohemia, celebrated for its 
 flowers and moimtain bears, and inhabited by 
 people of singular simplicity and tenderness of 
 heart," and that is, of course, the Bohemia of the 
 Winter's Tale, though the Perdita of the play is 
 wife, and not daughter to Prince Florlzel. No 
 doubt the Perdita of Prince Otto was their daughter. 
 On the enchanting scenery of those two pieces I can 
 add no useful word. I think the basis was German, 
 but spiritualized and refined. 
 
 In the story of Olalla R. L. S. has touched on what 
 he never saw, for to him Spain was an untrodden 
 country. Yet the account of the Residencia, of 
 the groves of cork trees, the hill and woods around, 
 
200 R. L. S. 
 
 and the parting at the Crucifix seem to the stranger 
 at any rate admirably Spanish. Keats is the 
 familiar instance of the master mind who realized 
 Greek life and Greek art without the scholar's 
 equipment or any knowledge of the language. 
 R. L. S. has done the same thing here. Olalla is 
 the only story where R. L. S. describes scenery of 
 which he had no personal knowledge. On the other 
 hand, he did not write on everything that he knew. 
 Thus he spent two winters at Davos among the 
 high Alps, yet he has not introduced the scenery 
 of the Alps into anything of importance. His 
 omission to make any use of Italy is more remark- 
 able. In 1863 he was in Genoa, Naples, Rome, 
 Florence and Venice, and the latter city he had 
 often discussed in talk with those who had been 
 there. Again, he recognizes Rome as the centre 
 of the modern world. Virgil was a favourite poet, 
 and it pleased him to introduce Latin mottoes here 
 and there. Yet he did not use his experience for a 
 literary purpose. Perhaps the magnitude of the 
 subject repelled him, perhaps he felt his knowledge 
 was imperfect. Whatever be the cause, the fact is 
 so. Once or twice he has laid the scene in famous 
 cities, but does not say anything material about 
 them. The fragment of the Young Chevalier intro- 
 duces us to Avignon, but without any real local touch, 
 unless it be that the mistral sounds through the piece. 
 As regards the travel writings I make two re- 
 marks. We have seen that R. L. S. held that you 
 cannot travel to real purpose in company, and yet 
 Cigarette was his companion in the Inland Voyage 
 
R. L. S. ON THE CONTINENT 201 
 
 itself and the Epilogue to it. In the first each 
 literally " paddled his own canoe," and so were 
 apart during the day. Each was concerned with 
 his own boat and his own work, and conversation 
 must have been reduced to an occasional word. 
 At their night halts they had each other's society, 
 but there they were no longer travelling. Thus 
 they had the advantage of what was good in two 
 methods. In the Epilogue they deliberately 
 pursued the same plan. By agreement they walked 
 at some considerable distance from each other — 
 out of sight, almost out of mind for the moment. 
 Thus the whole episode of the examination and 
 imprisonment had passed before the friend had 
 arrived on the scene. Why Stevenson attired 
 himself in such a manner as made him the butt and 
 scorn of the common crew I cannot pretend to say. 
 Perhaps carelessness, perhaps vanity of a kind, 
 perhaps as he was a professed tramp he desired to 
 play the part with all the appropriate accessaries. 
 Yet he did not receive the buff etings with philosophic 
 indifference. Afterwards he may have reflected that 
 they gave him adventures; if unpleasant in fact, 
 they were inot so in retrospect. Juvabit meminisse I 
 The rubs were inevitable and admit of easy ex- 
 planation. The traveller on foot, unless he load 
 himself with a preposterous load of baggage, is 
 regarded by the average Boniface with suspicion. 
 You must look at those things from the innkeeper's 
 point of view ; no doubt he has been cheated or has 
 heard of other innkeepers being cheated by foot- 
 travellers. The bird has flown without paying 
 
202 R. L. S. 
 
 for its temporary nest. Then the innkeeper is an 
 ordinary man, and he looks with mistrust on any- 
 thing unusual, and the peregrinations of R. L. S. 
 were always of an unusual description. If the 
 man went that way he could afford to go no better. 
 Let him seek the humblest abode in the place, not 
 the first hotel as R. L. S. did as matter of course. 
 The world has changed since that time. People 
 travel more, especially on the Continent, where they 
 never used to travel at all unless they were beggars 
 or princes, and you can understand in which cate- 
 gory the pedestrian was ranked. Yet even as it 
 is, if you go a solitary walking tour in your own 
 country, though your appearance be quite respect- 
 able, you will not be without some difficulty as 
 to your night's lodging. At the very best you 
 are not a person likely to spend much, or to have 
 any pressing need to dispense liberal tips ; add 
 the difficulties of the foreign air and the general 
 aspect of strangeness, and you account even in a 
 time when there was no spy fever for the troubles 
 that beset the footsteps of Stevenson. 
 
CHAPTER XV 
 AMERICAN SCENES 
 
 A PROPHET is not without honour save in 
 his own country and among his own people. ' ' 
 This text is appropriate to the career of 
 R. L. S. True, he has honour enough nowadays. 
 He had even so in his lifetime, but he had pub- 
 lished much of his best work, the very best you 
 might say, before full and frank recognition came 
 even from his own romantic town, which now 
 dotes on his memory. The real impulse came 
 from America and its folk. If they did not dis- 
 cover, they " boomed " him. Editors and pub- 
 lishers sought him so eagerly that his price went 
 up by leaps and bounds. He was caressed and 
 admired, and then the people at home, the folk 
 whose business it is to buy literary wares, his old 
 fellow-citizens, the British public in general, rubbed 
 their eyes and saw in him a literary figure of the 
 first importance. , 
 
 Stevenson's relations with America were inti- 
 mate. He was there twice at critical periods. 
 The wife to whom he was devotedly attached was 
 purely American. The attraction to the States 
 was stronger because it was mixed with repulsion. 
 Much in the American character and life and 
 
204 R- L- S. 
 
 scenery he admired, much he detested. Both ap- 
 pear in his works. He drew from history as well 
 as from his own experiences. Here his writings 
 are not his worst, nor are they his best. The 
 magic glitter of romance is wanting, except it may 
 be in the last scenes of The Master of Battantrae. 
 We have no short story dealing with America like 
 Will o' the Mill or A Lodging for the Night. On the 
 other hand, we have much admirable realism. It 
 may not be true for all time or for everybody, but 
 it was for him. 
 
 His first visit to America was in 1879. On the 
 7th of August in that year he sailed from the Clyde 
 in the Devonia. His motives were various: his 
 love of adventure and of travel, curiosity to see 
 new phases of life ; more than all, like the true 
 lover of romance, he followed the lady who was 
 afterwards to become his wife. In The Amateur 
 Emigrant we have a vivid account of his experiences. 
 The ship was largely an emigrant ship. Times 
 were bad in the Glasgow district, and many, though 
 certainly not all, of his fellow-passengers were 
 driven from home by want. He assumed the 
 position of emigrant himself. Nay, he would have 
 gone in the steerage, but he required a table on 
 which to scribble, and so he had to go second. It 
 was here he wrote the Story of a Lie. 
 
 The voyage was of the most ordinary description, 
 weather and vessel and company neither very 
 good nor very bad. He goes as an emigrant, for 
 there was scarcely any difference in price or 
 treatment in his slightly superior style of travel. 
 
AMERICAN SCENES 205 
 
 Yet he is amazed and no little chagrined that he is 
 taken so readily at his own valuation. He was univer- 
 sally accepted as a mason, and yet his point of view 
 is distinctly aristocratic : "I was not prepared to 
 find him turn away from a dish palatable to myself." 
 He notes in quite a superior way the horror of 
 fresh air. Again, three cabin passengers, a gentle- 
 man and two young ladies, moved by curiosity or 
 sympathy, take a walk through the lower decks, 
 and cast interested glances into every corner : " It 
 was astonishing what insults these people managed 
 to convey by their presence." We are not told 
 any special act of bad taste of which the visitors 
 were guilty. Again, " I was taken for a steerage 
 passenger, no one seemed surprised that I should 
 be so." But why should they be ? Life is too 
 short for curious analysis of every man one meets, 
 so the ingenious masquerader might have reflected. 
 The world has two tests wherewith it tries the 
 stranger, and R. L. S. himself had applied those 
 tests under other conditions : the purse in the 
 pocket and the coat on the back (he might have 
 reread with advantage his favourite Robert Fer- 
 gusson's poem Braid Claith). He was not much 
 better off as regards money than many of his 
 companions, and he was certainly not conspicuously 
 better dressed — to put it mildly. 
 
 He does not recognize that his experiment is 
 not unusual. Every year many men and some 
 women take up for a little the tramp life, or the 
 servant life, or some lower life not their own, and 
 as long as they do not wish to be known they are 
 
2 o6 R. L. S. 
 
 not even suspected. There is another and a sadder 
 reason. The world is full of what the old Scots 
 Acts called "broken men "—people who have 
 made shipwreck of their lives. They discover 
 their origin only too readily; nay, they are given 
 querulously to assert it. These are accepted as one 
 of the ordinary features of the underworld, which 
 was a lower world than this of the emigrant ship. 
 R. L. S. was nettled, though he suggests that 
 he saw the humorous side of the position : "I 
 passed among the ladies for precisely the average 
 man of the steerage." Finally he sees and admits 
 the principle of assimilation : " I conformed more 
 and more to the type of the place." 
 
 He complains of and is amazed at the laziness 
 of the working man, the manner in which he has 
 reduced malingering to a science. This is quite in 
 the style of the average London householder. 
 Adam Bede in the beginning of the work of which 
 he is the hero makes the same complaint of his 
 fellows. The laziness of the human animal is no 
 new story. R. L. S. might have been reminded 
 that his own inattention to College and other work 
 was a complaint made against him in his youth. 
 The working man, like himself, had no interest and 
 saw no special profit in that which he had to do ; 
 When you take hope — and with most of us that 
 means hope of our own immediate advancement — 
 away, what is left in the Pandora box of life ? When 
 R. L. S. found work that suited his hand he became 
 more than active, and the working man when he 
 takes the form of the French peasant proprietor 
 
AMERICAN SCENES 207 
 
 becomes almost miraculously thrifty and energetic. 
 There is also this obvious difference between R. L. S. 
 and the great bulk of other tramps or emigrants 
 or what not. An admirable Horatian setting of 
 an obvious truth tells that there were great men 
 before Agamemnon, but they lacked a Homer and 
 their exploits go unrecorded. But this emigrant was 
 his own Homer. He could tell his stories so well 
 that he found legions of listeners. 
 
 He arrived in New York on the Sunday, and 
 left again on Monday, continuing his emigrant 
 journey by land across the whole breadth of the 
 American continent to San Francisco. It took 
 him nearly a fortnight. Express trains now do 
 the whole in four days. There are through cars 
 with baths, barber's shops, sumptuous restaurants, 
 all the latest luxuries, in short, of American travel. 
 And yet for the purpose of letters, nay for the 
 purpose of real life, the emigrant train " bears the 
 gree." He comments on the fact that emigrant 
 trains go in a precisely opposite direction, and 
 cross them from time to time, also that " Come 
 back " was the burden of the message from one 
 train to the other. In one way both were right. 
 The desire to wander was at the root of each move- 
 ment, and after all the return was at least another 
 deal of the cards. Something might turn up in 
 the old home which had not turned up in the new. 
 Of course it didn't, but one is attempting to explain 
 human motives and actions, not to justify their 
 wisdom. 
 
 In Old and New Pacific Capitals there are vivid 
 
208 R. L. S. 
 
 accounts of Monterey and San Francisco, and in 
 the case of the latter we have also passages in 
 The Wrecker of the liveliest kind. Monterey lies at 
 the south-east end of the bay of that name, which 
 is of considerable extent, being twenty-two miles 
 wide at the mouth. Round about the town is an 
 amphitheatre of sloping hills, with great forests of 
 pine on their slopes. Once the liveliest and most 
 go-ahead city of California, it has changed all that, 
 for those were the days before the American in- 
 vasion, when it was the capital of the province. In 
 1846 the Americans took it, and Sacramento was 
 made the chief town. In 1872 even the county 
 seat was removed to Salinas. In 1900 the popula- 
 tion was only 1748, chiefly of Spanish race, and for 
 long it had that dreamy, old-world, decayed aspect 
 which our author has so admirably set forth, 
 its chief street being, as he says, " economically 
 paved with sea-sand." But since then another 
 change has come. R. L. S. might have lamented 
 the change, though he may be in part the cause 
 of it, for the house where he lived is pointed 
 out as one of the sights of the place, and after you 
 have conned his description you feel you would 
 like to go there. Then it has an equable climate. 
 It is only ninety miles from the great and wealthy 
 San Francisco. There are the pine woods and the 
 bay, and the obvious result are excursions and 
 summer quarters. Since 1881 it has become one of 
 the favourite stations on the Pacific coast. From 
 1900 the population has steadily increased. All 
 those classes who make their living by the tourist 
 
AMERICAN SCENES 209 
 
 and the visitor abound, and yet, you are assured, 
 Monterey still retains its old charm. 
 
 Of a city so well known as San Francisco it is 
 not permissible to say more than a word. The 
 great event since his time was the destructive 
 earthquake of 1906, and the still more destructive 
 fire that followed. Up to 1900 it was built mainly 
 of wood, only about a thirteenth part was of other 
 material. You remember what R. L. S. says 
 about the frequent fires and the precautions 
 against them. As in London after its great fire, 
 the counsels of those who advised a city planned 
 in a nobler fashion were set at naught, and the 
 old boundaries were preserved; but building was 
 carried on under stringent regulations, wood being 
 replaced by steel, brick, and concrete, all of the 
 least inflammable kind. You will do well to have 
 those facts in mind when you read R. L. S. on 
 the great Western city. 
 
 One other adventure and book we owe to this 
 period, and that is The Silverado Squatters. On 
 the 19th of May 1880 he was married to Fanny 
 Van de Grift at the Rev. Dr. Scott's house in 
 San Francisco. Mr. Scott and Mrs. Williams, the 
 wife of his friend Virgil Williams, were all the 
 attendants the ceremony had. The June and July 
 of that year were spent in the mining town or 
 camp called Silverado. This was far up Mount 
 St. Helena, which rises to the north-east of San 
 Francisco, at a distance of sixty-four miles by rail. 
 It is in the heart of a rich vineyard country. Some 
 of the most charming passages in The Silverado 
 14 
 
210 R. L. S. 
 
 Squatters are on the new wine that was to supple- 
 ment, if not replace, the insufficient yield of the 
 classic fields of Europe. In letters, though not in 
 life, R. L. S. was a consistent worshipper of Bacchus. 
 In the August of that year Stevenson returned 
 from his first visit to America. After the death of 
 his father he sailed for New York again in August 
 1887 in the s.s. Ludgate Hill. He was there on 
 the 7th of September. He was now a well-known 
 writer, and received the usual attentions, pleasant 
 or otherwise, which are the lot of those well known. 
 He spent the winter, from 3rd October till the 
 middle of the following April, at Saranac Lake, 
 in the Adirondack Mountains. From here he got 
 the wild mountain scenery that he used so im- 
 pressively in the last pages of The Master of Bal- 
 lantrae. The district is in the north of New York 
 State, on the Canadian frontier, and near Lake 
 Champlain. It contains more than a thousand 
 lakes, and here is the source of the Hudson and 
 many other rivers. The mountains run in five 
 parallel ranges. It is a perfect hunter's paradise : 
 black bears, wild cats, black eagles, hawks, herons 
 — to name but these — abound. The numerous 
 rivers and lochs are full of fish. On the other 
 hand, there are no rattlesnakes or other venomous 
 serpents. There are great tracts of virgin forest, 
 and to camp out in them in a form more or less 
 luxurious is the mode of life or recreation practised 
 by a large number of those who come from New 
 York, some three hundred miles away, to pass 
 their holiday-time here. Saranac has three lakes 
 
AMERICAN SCENES 211 
 
 of great beauty. Its clear, dry air makes it good 
 for consumptive patients, even though the cold 
 is intense. During the sojourn of R. L. S. the 
 thermometer fell to 30 below zero, but, invalid 
 as he was, his health remained fairly good during 
 his stay. The country was not developed as it 
 has since been. Indeed, it was only whilst he was 
 there that the railway was opened. It was not 
 less pleasing to him on that account. Considerable 
 as the distance was, he had many visitors. 
 
 Except in The Master of Ballantrae, he did not 
 use his experience for any literary purpose. It 
 has been pointed out by more than one critic that 
 the name is curiously chosen. Master is the Scots 
 title of the eldest son of a Baron, though I have 
 known it given to the heir of an untitled landed 
 proprietor. However, the name ought to follow 
 the. title, and here properly it ought to have been the 
 Master of Durrisdeer. Towards the end of July 
 1764 all the parties to the story are collected in 
 New York, which at that time was an English 
 colonial city, as it was not till 1775 that the American 
 War of Independence began. Those who know 
 their Stevenson will remember that the Amateur 
 Emigrant took with him across the plains the bulky 
 volumes of Bancroft's History of the United States 
 as the main part of his baggage. It was from 
 Bancroft he got the historical incidents which he 
 has woven in with his narrative. 
 
 Probably he did not think it necessary to reproduce 
 very accurately the old-world life or personages of 
 British New York. He mentions General Clinton 
 
212 R. L. S. 
 
 as the Governor. The Honourable George Clinton, 
 son of the sixth Earl of Lincoln, was Governor of 
 New York from 1741 to 1751, but that is too early. 
 And again his son, Sir Henry Clinton (1738-1795), 
 who as a General had seen much service in various 
 parts, was in 1777 in command at New York, and 
 in 1778 was made Commander-in-Chief of the British 
 forces in North America ; but this was at a later 
 period, and belongs to the War of Independence, in 
 which Clinton had some considerable successes on 
 the English side. It is not necessary to discuss 
 further a character whose name occurs but once. 
 A greater part is played by Sir William Johnson. 
 It was with him that the last journey into the 
 wilderness was taken, and he is present at the final 
 scene where Secundra Dass attempts to resuscitate 
 the body of the Master. We are told that Sir 
 William " had a diplomatic errand in these parts, 
 and my Lord and I (from curiosity, it was given 
 out) went in his company." " These parts " are the 
 Adirondack Mountains, to which the party travelled 
 from Albany. 
 
 Sir William, who lived from 1715 to 1774, was 
 Superintendent of Indian Affairs in North America. 
 He was of Irish origin, but had gone to America 
 when he was twenty-three, and began by managing 
 the estate for his uncle, Sir Peter Warren. He soon 
 acquired fame for the success of his dealing with 
 the Indian tribes, over whom he obtained more 
 influence than was ever attained by any other white. 
 One of his notable successes was at the " great 
 Council fire" at Onondaga in 1753. Here he called 
 
AMERICAN SCENES 213 
 
 the tribes together, and succeeded in composing 
 very troublesome difficulties. He had the complete 
 confidence of the natives, from the fairness and 
 generosity of his dealings. They urged on the 
 Government his appointment as Superintendent of 
 Indian Affairs. During the war of the conquest of 
 Canada by the English he was actively engaged at 
 the head of a band of Indian warriors. He spent 
 the last years of his life at Johnson Hall, in the 
 village of Johnson, which he had established, and 
 even endowed. Here he dispensed a lavish hospi- 
 tality and lived en grand seigneur. Twice a widower, 
 he finally fixed his affections on an Indian beauty, 
 sister of Thayendonega, war chief of the Mohawks, 
 and famed for her " black eyes and laughing face." 
 They had a family of eight children, whom he duly 
 provided for in his will. He is described as a tall, 
 handsome man of pleasing manner, both active and 
 able. His part in the story is a small one, but his 
 sayings and doings there recorded fit in well with 
 his historic character. 
 
 Of the scenery in this part of the book I say 
 nothing further ; it is a winter tale of evil passions 
 that strikes you cold to the heart. American scenes 
 are introduced in More New Arabian Nights or 
 The Dynamiter, but they are a farce within a farce, 
 though the element of tragic horror is not wanting. 
 There the story is told by the vivacious Clara 
 Luxmore, and is professedly imaginary and spun 
 out of that young lady's fertile brain. One is 
 the story of the destroying angel. Here R. L. S. 
 used his experience of the Rocky Mountains through 
 
214 R- L. S. 
 
 which he had rumbled slowly on the emigrant 
 train as a setting. In the Story of the Fair 
 Cuban the element of farce is pushed much 
 farther, and little else need be said of " the Isle set 
 in the Caribbean Sea some half-hour's rowing from 
 the coast of Cuba." R. L. S. never was in Cuba, 
 but he had sufficient experience of tropical scenery 
 to supply him with material ; and as for the 
 negro rites, these he would take from more or 
 less authentic books of travel, the whole so con- 
 cocted and mixed as to make a very agreeable 
 extravaganza. 
 
CHAPTER XVI 
 THE SOUTH SEAS 
 
 I REPEAT the chief dates of Stevenson's life 
 in the South Seas. On the 28th June 1888 
 he started from San Francisco in the yacht 
 Casco, whose skipper was Captain Otis. The first 
 point touched was the Marquesas Islands. After 
 a visit to the Tahitian group, his party arrived at 
 Honolulu, capital of the Hawaiian Islands. Here 
 they stayed six months. They paid off the yacht 
 Casco. From here R. L. S. visited the leper 
 settlement, on the island of Molokai, which is one 
 of the group. This had important results, to be 
 touched on presently. After visiting the Gilbert 
 Islands in the schooner Equator, we find him in 
 Christmas 1889 among the Samoa Islands, at Apia, 
 in the island of Upolu. The town lies at the foot 
 of a mountain. Stevenson liked the climate so 
 much that he bought an estate part of the way 
 up the height. This was Vailima, or the Five Rivers, 
 which was to be his home for the rest of his life. 
 And on the top of the mountain was to be his home 
 in death, for there he was buried. He did not take 
 up his residence at once— not, indeed, till October 
 1890. He spent the interval in two visits to 
 Sydney and in cruises about the South Seas; 
 
2i6 R. L. S. 
 
 but no place agreed with his health so well, if at all, 
 as Samoa. There he was fit and strong as he had 
 not been for years, as he had scarce been since he 
 was a full-grown man. When he left it he was ill. 
 At Vailima he did much of his best work. There 
 he died on the 3rd of December 1894, in his forty- 
 fifth year. He was in good health till after sunset ; 
 then he was struck down, and at ten minutes past 
 eight was gone. He was buried next day on a 
 peak of Vaea far above his house. 
 
 There is a considerable collection of books about 
 R. L. S. and the South Seas. Besides the official 
 Life by Mr. Graham Balfour, there are his own 
 writings and letters, two volumes of letters by his 
 mother, Memories of Vailima by his stepson and 
 stepdaughter. There are two noteworthy volumes 
 by residents in the islands, keen, shrewd observers, 
 men of the world, men of business, and even to 
 some extent men of letters — Mr. A. Johnstone, 
 whose Robert Louis Stevenson in the Pacific was 
 published in 1905; and Mr. H. J. Moors, whose 
 With Stevenson in Samoa is as late as 1911. 
 They were both Americans, both admirers, yet both 
 critical and discriminating. And there are other 
 books of the type of Miss Fraser's With Stevenson 
 in Samoa of 1895, and Miss L. Stubbs' Stevenson s 
 Shrine, pilgrimages or casual visits which do not 
 add to our knowledge, and may be safely 
 neglected. 
 
 In the South Seas for the first time Stevenson 
 lived the life of an ordinary human being. He 
 came down from his height, or out of his sick- 
 
THE SOUTH SEAS 217 
 
 room, or away from the pleasant land of Bohemia, 
 and was something of the citizen. This had never 
 been so. In his youth he had his own friends. 
 Later on he saw much of men and cities, but it was 
 as a wanderer— here to-day, gone to-morrow. He 
 had no real touch of the inner life of the communities 
 he visited. Again, in Paris and in Barbizon, he 
 lived in a narrow, artistic, or literary circle, whose 
 ways and ideas were not those of ordinary life. 
 It was the same in London and Bournemouth. 
 Also for long periods he was an invalid, confined 
 to his own room and restricted to the inmates of 
 his own house. Nor during his visits to America 
 did he see much of the ordinary round. But in 
 Samoa he was famed ; he was at least fairly healthy, 
 and able to move freely about. He was in easy 
 circumstances. He was known to the man in the 
 street, or on the beach, or whatever be the South 
 Seas equivalent for the phrase. Nay, he was 
 somewhat of the man in the street himself ; shop- 
 keepers, officials, parsons, native chiefs — he was in 
 touch with all. Then he threw himself with the 
 whole energy of his nature into the little whirlpool 
 of Samoan politics. Besides this, he was busy 
 writing. The very finest of his wheat is of this 
 period. He was engaged in the management of a 
 large estate and a large household. 
 
 This must suffice for Samoan history. There 
 were differences between Germany, England, and 
 the United States, the three white Powers interested. 
 There were differences among the natives them- 
 selves, and with the whites. Stevenson threw 
 
218 R. L. S. 
 
 himself passionately in on the native side, especially 
 on that of Mataafa, who was exiled some years 
 before Stevenson's death. In the end, though not 
 until there was much war and havoc, the island 
 was given up to Germany and Mataafa was restored. 
 R. L. S. got on admirably with the natives. 
 He understood their ways and their character. 
 He was popular with them. They were grateful 
 to him for his labours. There was always some- 
 thing of the untamed savage in R. L. S., and that 
 perhaps accounts for his sympathy and under- 
 standing of the aboriginal. How far his views were 
 right, how far his interference was in the interests 
 of the natives themselves, it is not possible for me — 
 I doubt if it is possible for anyone — to say. The point 
 of view or rather the points of view are numerous 
 and opposing. " What right had the white stranger 
 there at all ? " it may be said. But he comes, and 
 in the end all is his. The utmost you can expect 
 is that the change may be carried through in as 
 deft a manner as possible, and with some regard 
 for native interests. You would scarce think 
 R. L. S. fitted for politics. He was impetuous, 
 had strong feelings, and was liable to strong re- 
 actions from them. Much as he mixed with those 
 about him, his views could not be as theirs. Men 
 of his genius live in another world. Solemque 
 suum, sua sidera norunt. Yet if R. L. S. erred, his 
 was a generous error. He was on the side of the 
 poor and oppressed, for people who had scarcely 
 anyone to speak for them, certainly none who 
 could speak as he could. Sir Sidney Colvin regrets 
 
THE SOUTH SEAS 219 
 
 that he mixed himself up with South Sea politics 
 at all. So much time was lost that might have 
 been better employed, and even R. L. S. cannot 
 always hold our attention on this theme. The 
 Footnote to History, which is an account of con- 
 temporary Samoan politics, has had but f ewreaders, 
 and even In the South Seas, which is a serious 
 account of that part of the world, was something of 
 a failure when first published in periodical letters, 
 and in its republished form it is only borne up, 
 so to speak, by Stevenson's other works. 
 
 This is not difficult to explain. The civilized 
 world has a certain interest in those far-off magic 
 islands. It considers them admirable setting for 
 a story of adventure. Thus The Wrecker, spite of 
 its many obvious faults, is popular, and The Ebb 
 Tide, and The Island Nights' Entertainments. But 
 it has no desire to go seriously into the matter; 
 and when Stevenson wished to do so, the attention 
 of his readers flagged. Perhaps R. L. S. felt some- 
 thing of this. At the last he was writing of Scotland 
 more than ever. Yet R. L. S. got much from the 
 islands. The strange trees, the strange cliffs, the 
 coral, the beautiful palms, all the seascapes of 
 the Pacific were new to him. Thus the first para- 
 graph of The Beach of Falesd is a gem, and there 
 are numerous such. It was fresh literary material. 
 He had no predecessor of anything like the same 
 powers and of anything like the same knowledge. 
 Herman Melville is the only name that occurs to 
 one; but Herman Melville, however good, is not 
 R. L. S. In Scots romance there was always the 
 
220 R. L. S. 
 
 overpowering presence of the Wizard of the North, 
 and his themes had even a touch of the worn about 
 them, but it was not so here. And the characters 
 were also strange. Stevenson had a certain sym- 
 pathy with reprobates and the broken men who 
 have gone down in the struggle with life. Where 
 will you ever get the Beachcomber better drawn 
 than in The Ebb Tide ? 
 
 One point is so illustrative of R. L. S. that I 
 here give it more notice than its intrinsic importance 
 deserves, and that is the Father Damien business. 
 Joseph Damien de Vienster was the son of Flemish 
 peasants, and was trained at Louvain in the 
 Seminary for Foreign Missions. In December 1864 
 he came to Honolulu. He was stationed at Hawaii 
 when the question of the lepers engaged his atten- 
 tion. The disease first appeared in the Hawaiian 
 Islands about 1850. In the course of the experience 
 of years, its terrible nature, together with the great 
 risk of infection, pressed on the attention of the 
 Government. The difficulty was met by treatment 
 mediaeval in its severity. The lepers were taken 
 month by month to the neighbouring island of 
 Molokai, where they were left very much to them- 
 selves. In 1873 a church was consecrated on the 
 adjacent island of Mani. The Bishop told the 
 assembled priests he was sorry he could not provide 
 for the leper colony. Damien, who was present, 
 offered to go. The Bishop at first demurred ; but 
 a party of missionaries had just arrived, and 
 Damien's district of Kohala was transferred to a 
 new-comer. The necessary leave was given. 
 
THE SOUTH SEAS 221 
 
 Damien departed the same day, without saying 
 farewell to his friends and acquaintances. 
 
 Molokai is a small, wedge-like island, a few miles 
 to the north-west of Hawaii. It is ringed round 
 with tall cliffs. The settlement was at Kalawao, 
 graphically pictured by R. L. S. as a bracket on 
 the wall. It was truly described as a hell on earth ; 
 and if the daring priest did not do everything that 
 riper experience has shown to be possible, he yet, 
 with limited means, accomplished wonders. He 
 had gone in a cattle boat, which started in an hour ; 
 hence there was no time for leave-taking. Also the 
 boat only stayed an hour at the island. He was 
 about thirty-three years old. He never hesitated 
 or regretted his choice, for he gave the rest of his 
 life to the lepers. In 1884 he became himself 
 afflicted with the disease, from which he died on 
 15th April 1889. 
 
 Stevenson's visit was in May 1889. On the 
 2nd of August the Rev. Dr. Hyde of Honolulu 
 wrote a letter to the Rev. H. H. Gage in 
 which he told his " dear brother " things about 
 Damien which, if correct, were destructive of his 
 reputation. " The simple truth is, he was a coarse, 
 dirty man, headstrong and bigoted. He was not 
 sent to Molokai, but went there without orders." 
 He asserted that the reforms and improvements 
 were not due to him at all, but to " our Board of 
 Health." He was " not a pure man in his relations 
 with women, and the leprosy of which he died 
 should be attributed to his vices and carelessness " 
 — with more to the same effect. It was afterwards 
 
222 R. L. S. 
 
 said that the letter was not meant for publication. 
 However, it was published. Stevenson read it, 
 and was moved to a perfect passion of indignation. 
 He answered in his famous Open Letter to the Rev. 
 Dr. Hyde of Honolulu of 25th February 1890, first 
 published in this country in the Scots Observer, 
 under W. E. Henley's editorship. It is a powerful 
 piece of writing, a bitter invective put in choice 
 language. He meant to wound, and he did his 
 best. The points are clearly made and driven home 
 with great force. You have to go back to the 
 Satires of Pope to get anything like it in English 
 letters. 
 
 The student of R. L. S. will do well to con it 
 carefully, and this same student will find it a 
 curious revelation of the R. L. S. character. It is 
 not logical, and it is no proper defence of Damien 
 at all. Much is made of the comfortable house of 
 Dr. Hyde, his leisured and cultured life, and the 
 fact that he never went to Molokai. This is the 
 most obvious form of fallacy. The point under 
 discussion was not the character and work of 
 Hyde, but the character and work of Damien. In 
 defending Damien, R. L. S. is still more peculiar. 
 What, he asks in effect, if the charges were true? 
 " Damien has been too much depicted with a con- 
 ventional halo and conventional features." He 
 had imperfections like other human beings, but he 
 did splendid work under terrible conditions. The 
 real facts about Damien are abundantly evident 
 to anyone who will take the trouble to examine 
 the evidence. He was not altogether popular with 
 
THE SOUTH SEAS 223 
 
 the lepers. Perhaps no man could work for the real 
 good of human beings degraded almost to the level 
 of beasts, and live with them for years, and be 
 entirely popular. 
 
 He seems himself to have had a somewhat low 
 standard of cleanliness and comfort, which again is 
 not altogether to be wondered at. On the other 
 hand, he was a man of marvellous common sense, 
 obstinate only in the good cause, not more bigoted 
 than any Roman Catholic priest must of needs be. 
 We have numerous letters of his to his parents and 
 friends, all most sensible and moderate in tone. 
 We have his report to the Board of Health in 
 Honolulu dated nth March 1886, in which the 
 condition of the island is set forth in the most 
 direct and practical manner. The improvements 
 accomplished, and what remains to be done, are also 
 told without a touch of egotistical detail. Dr. 
 Hyde might have known enough of the doctrine 
 and discipline of the Roman Catholic Church to be 
 sure that no priest could go anywhere without full 
 permission, and yet retain the confidence and 
 approval of his superiors, as Damien certainly did. 
 As to the suggestion of immorality, it was a base- 
 less and unfounded assertion. 
 
 R. L. S. thought he would be attacked in a libel 
 action, and possibly ruined; but none was ever 
 brought. Dr. Hyde was perhaps not unduly 
 sensitive. Perhaps he was better advised. At 
 least he contented himself with describing R. L. S. 
 as a " Bohemian crank," an odd epithet which 
 must have awakened its subject's scornful glee. 
 
224 R- L- S. 
 
 The letter is not included in the Edinburgh edition, 
 but it was separately republished in 1910 and also 
 in Miss Quinlan's Life of Father Damien, issued in 
 1909 with the approval of the Catholic authorities 
 in this country. R. L. S. was always his own best 
 critic, though, according to his statement, he was 
 much aided by his wife ; and the fact that he was not 
 afterwards satisfied with the Open Letter ought to 
 be remembered, as well as the fact that he deter- 
 mined that neither he nor his should make any 
 profit by its sale. Possibly for the sake of com- 
 pleteness it was included in the Edinburgh edition, 
 planned and carried out with his consent and 
 approval. 
 
 Here is a word as to the subsequent history of 
 Vailima. Much as R. L. S. loved his island home, 
 it would not long have held him had his health 
 permitted his departure. When he was gone, it 
 was natural that his house-party should leave a 
 place of melancholy memories. They did shortly 
 after his death, but some of them were able to 
 return once again for a little. Herr Gustave Kunst, 
 a wealthy German merchant, bought Vailima 
 soon after it was deserted. It was much damaged 
 during the island conflicts in 1899, but a consider- 
 able sum was paid as indemnity by the German 
 Government to its owner, and by 1903 it had not 
 merely been restored, but decorated and em- 
 bellished in the most luxurious manner. Herr 
 Kunst died in 1905, and the German Government 
 acquired Vailima from his heirs to make it the 
 official residence of the Governor of the island. 
 
THE SOUTH SEAS 225 
 
 They also did something for the memory of the 
 famous writer. In process of time, and under the 
 rank vegetation of the tropics, the path to the top 
 had become nearly obliterated and the grave 
 overgrown. They cleared it, set it in order, and 
 drove a new and commodious path through the 
 forest. 
 
 Some have suggested an elaborate monument. 
 One believes this would not have been the wish of 
 R. L. S. himself. The grave on the summit, with 
 its striking inscription, its blended memorials of 
 Samoa and Scotland, is the only monument himself 
 had desired. 
 
 There are many anecdotes of R. L. S. in his 
 Samoan years, but few are instructive. It may 
 be noted that the name Tusitala, or Teller of 
 Tales, by which the natives knew him, was not of 
 native invention. It was the name by which the 
 Rev. J. E. Nowel, a missionary, introduced him 
 to the natives. " The folks on this side of the 
 world would prefer Marie Corelli or Mrs. L. T. 
 Meade." Thus Captain Otis, a better seaman 
 than critic. If sale be the final test, possibly the 
 folks on this side would be of the same opinion ; but 
 it is not, which is a good thing for letters ! 
 
 15 
 
CHAPTER XVII 
 R. L. S. AS LETTER-WRITER 
 
 IN 1888 R. L. S. was in the island of Tahiti. 
 He was very ill, and had to contemplate, as he 
 often had, the possibly abrupt termination of his 
 career. He then committed to paper a desire that 
 his friend Sir Sidney Colvin should write his life, 
 as well as publish a collection of his letters. In 1892 
 he reiterated this wish as to his letters. We have 
 them now in four compact volumes of about three 
 hundred pages each. This is only a part of what he 
 wrote, alas ! not always the best part. He kept no 
 copies, so much has perished. Some of his corre- 
 spondents never thought of storing up what he sent 
 them. Sir Walter Simpson is a case in point, as is also 
 James Walter Ferrier; but few letters of theirs have 
 been preserved out of the many they must have writ- 
 ten. Again, some of the most amusing were far too 
 free-and-easy for print. Many things he wrote to 
 W. E. Henley and his cousin R. A. M. S. are excluded 
 on this account. Again, some were " too sacred and 
 intimate " ; also obviously purely business letters 
 have no interest. Still, a great deal remains, care- 
 fully collected and edited. They furnish the best 
 biography of R. L. S. 
 There is a great difference between his letters 
 
 226 
 
R. L. S. AS LETTER-WRITER 227 
 
 and his other works. In those other he set himself 
 to attain a high standard. He wrote and rewrote. 
 He abhorred the careless, easy, and indifferent. 
 What seems a casual remark is in truth carefully 
 prepared. But in the letters he dashed off every- 
 thing on the spur of the moment, jumped from one 
 subject to the other just as the whim took him. 
 Perhaps this was not his ideal of letter-writing. He 
 described himself " as essentially and originally 
 incapable of the art epistolary." His letters were 
 casual, but they are a complete revelation. From 
 his formal works you might not infer his true nature. 
 Mistakes had been made. Mr. William Archer, from 
 his joy in travel and in life, his breezy optimism, 
 believed him a man of rude health. You could 
 never gather that impression from his letters. 
 R. L. S. was a many-sided man, and you have all the 
 sides in the familiar epistles, all his passing shades 
 of character, theories on art, literary criticism of the 
 most slap-dash, direct, brief, comical nature. He 
 hits the nail on the head with amusing directness, 
 emphasis, and force. He is continually describing 
 scenery and human beings, touching off the common 
 incidents of the day with quaint humour. The 
 letters are the most amusing melange possible — so 
 amusing that you wonder if his elaborate style of 
 work was not a mistake. Had it not been better 
 if he had always written like this ? Here at least he 
 is never studied, never " precious." But then, again, 
 you think of some of the masterpieces like Thrawn 
 Janet or the tale of Tod Lapraik, and what can you 
 say but that Wisdom is justified of her children ? 
 
228 R. L. S. 
 
 And then we have both, and without the letters it is 
 certain you do not know the man. 
 
 Stevenson was frankly interested in himself and 
 his works, so he refers to them continually. Thus 
 the place they occupy in his achievement is properly 
 as final touch, unless you were to read them twice, 
 and they are well worth it — at the beginning to 
 awaken your curiosity, after the rest to satisfy it. 
 
 There is a great change in the tone, corresponding 
 to a change in his life. In his last years he was a 
 man of position, even an important figure in island 
 politics. Thus the South Sea correspondence is 
 more solid than the early parts. He reverted to 
 the paternal type. There is no difficulty in finding 
 in him the true son of his father, a serious member 
 of a serious family. The letters are absolutely 
 spontaneous and unaffected. It can only have been 
 in the last years that he ever thought of them as 
 likely to appear in print. He expressed in plain, 
 direct terms the wish that nothing of the sort should 
 happen in his lifetime. Even yet a good many 
 asterisks are necessary. He was averred a bad 
 correspondent. Sir Sidney Colvin reasonably de- 
 fends him from this charge. Himself is frequently 
 complaining that those whom he esteemed most 
 were remiss in their attentions . Obviously he enj oyed 
 letter-writing, but he had difficulties to contend 
 with. His post-bag was enormous. He had long 
 intervals of ill-health, when it was impossible to do 
 anything. His life was full of many and varied 
 interests, especially in the South Seas, and there also 
 the post played strange pranks. The mails went 
 
AS LETTER-WRITER 229 
 
 systematically amissing. A letter from him was 
 such a delightful present that it led to pressure for 
 more than he was able to give. 
 
 The earlier epistles are the more amusing ; they are 
 full of the joy of life. As we know, ill-health dogged 
 him from the start, while from the very conditions 
 of private letter - writing it called for frequent 
 mention. It is always treated as an irrelevant 
 nuisance. The earlier letters deal with subjects 
 interesting to all who read. When he became 
 engrossed in Samoan politics, he naturally referred 
 much to them ; but Samoan politics cannot be made 
 interesting to the world at large. One of his first 
 correspondents who was able to bring out what 
 was best in him was Mrs. Sit well, now Lady Colvin. 
 In a collection of this kind, we only get one-half the 
 picture, so to speak. We have not the letters that 
 were written to him, so we can only surmise what 
 it was that evoked his answers. 
 
 Wherever he was, he would as by instinct give a 
 picture of the place. Examples are far too numerous 
 to quote or even refer to. But one remarkable 
 word-picture I cannot pass. It is that of Dudding- 
 ston Loch near Edinburgh in the winter. " If you 
 had seen the moon rising, a perfect sphere of smoky 
 gold, in the dark air above the trees, and the white 
 loch thick with skaters, and the great hill, snow- 
 sprinkled, overhead ! It was a sight for a king." And 
 on the return : " The walk home was very solemn 
 and strange. Once through a broken gorge we had a 
 glimpse of a little space of mackerel sky, moon-litten, 
 on the other side of the hill ; the broken ridges stand- 
 
230 R. L. S. 
 
 ing grey and spectral between and the hill-top over 
 all, snow-white, and strangely magnified in size." 
 He was then only twenty-four. He was often more 
 elaborate, but how to better touches like this ? He 
 is specially rich in Edinburgh scenes— the dawn, 
 the Sabbath stillness, the bugle call from the 
 Castle, the horror of winter — to name but these. 
 He had the sensitiveness of genius, but seldom its 
 irritability. And this quite apart from his ill-health. 
 Thus he had a peculiar horror of high winds : "Nothing 
 sours my temper like this coarse, termagant wind. 
 I hate practical joking, and your vulgarist practical 
 joker is a flaw of wind." Again he talks of " the 
 horrible howl of wind round the corner, the horrible 
 haunting of an incarnate anger about the house, the 
 evil spirit that was abroad, and above all the shudder- 
 ing silent pauses when the storm's heart stands 
 dreadfully still for a moment. Oh, how I hate a 
 storm at night ! They have been a great influence 
 in my life, I am sure." There is a French proverb, 
 " II faut hurler avec les loups." R. L. S. rages like 
 the wind itself ! So an imaginative peasant might 
 talk of the dreadful howl of the wolf in the village 
 street in the bitter winter. 
 
 Because he felt strongly, he could describe vividly. 
 Hence his magic accounts of woods and hills and 
 seas. His sympathy was not reserved for nature ; 
 it shows itself in every direction — in his pity at 
 the sight of a crippled man, in a kindly and genial 
 talk with a labourer, in notes on some poor people 
 in a train. His grief at his disagreement with his 
 father is bitter, as is also his grief at the death of 
 
AS LETTER-WRITER 231 
 
 James Walter Ferrier. How beautiful is his con- 
 tinual interest in and sympathy with his friends ! 
 When his cousin, R. A. M. S., was lying seriously 
 ill at Portobello, he goes there in anxiety, he nears 
 the house and sees the blind is not drawn down — the 
 worst has not happened ! How genuine is the relief 
 and the revulsion of feeling ! You understand how 
 loved the man was apart from all his brilliant gifts ; 
 and though you would never have known his name 
 but for those gifts, you have the same warm feelings 
 towards him for himself. 
 
 Of the stray touches of art criticism that are 
 scattered through those letters one stands out — 
 that on the Elgin Marbles is much the best thing 
 ever written on the subject. Not that he was 
 always thus moved by the antique. Three years 
 earlier he says: "Your old Greek statues have 
 scarce enough vitality in them to keep their 
 monstrous bodies fresh withal," whilst in contrast 
 we have this on the figures of Michael Angelo : 
 " The very marble seems to wrinkle with a wild 
 energy that we never feel except in dreams." His 
 point of view changes from time to time and so does 
 his expression, but he is equally delightful and 
 amusing as well as stimulating and instructive. 
 "Chattering away to you on this bit of paper" — 
 we can do with any quantity of such chattering ! 
 Naturally he is most at home in literary criticism. 
 Virgil had always his special admiration from his 
 mastery of style, his pathetic touches — "those cling- 
 ing hexameters that sing themselves in one's mouth 
 to such a curious lilting chaunt." He calls Tennyson 
 
232 R. L. S. 
 
 " Our Virgil." Again, on Carlyle: " I have heard 
 too much against this thrawn, uncomfortable dog. 
 Dead he is, and we may be glad of it ; but he was a 
 better man than most of us no less patently than 
 he was a worse. To fill the world with whining is 
 against all my views ; I do not like impiety, but — 
 there are two sides to all things, and the old scalded 
 baby had his noble side." This is sane and moder- 
 ate, so is a brief word of comparison of Henley and 
 Rudyard Kipling as poets. It is also the exact truth. 
 
 He is never commonplace. To say that Alfred 
 de Musset and Anatole France were well-known 
 French writers would be commonplace; it is at 
 least amusing that he thinks the one an " in- 
 credible cheese," and that he has " no use for 
 Anatole," whom you yourself probably think of as 
 gifted but unequal. Again, when he tells us that 
 Meredith's poetry makes him drunk like wine, and 
 that Marjorie Fleming was " one of the greatest 
 works of God," you do not think the expressions 
 unnatural, nor his inclusion of the revisers of the 
 Bible among " absolutely loathsome literary lepers " 
 uncalled for. 
 
 His best literary criticism is of himself. He took 
 a healthy and natural joy in his own literary effort 
 and in its success. " I find few greater pleasures 
 than reading my own works, but I never read The 
 Black Arrow." He dedicates this last work to his 
 wife, for the whimsical reason that it is " the only 
 book of mine that you have never read — and never 
 willread." Of twoof his short stories, " Tod Lapraik 
 is a piece of living Scots ; if I had never writ any- 
 
AS LETTER-WRITER 233 
 
 thing but that and Thrawn Janet, still I had been 
 a writer." Thrawn Janet was first published in 
 the Cornhill. He wrote to his father : "I made 
 Miss Ferrier read us Thrawn Janet, and was quite 
 bowled over by my own work." If you under- 
 stand Scots and a peculiar vein of antique Scots 
 religious sentiment as Stevenson did, you will have 
 the same opinion. As far as he had gone with 
 Weir oj Hermiston, he thought highly of it. The 
 Merry Men was a special favourite — indeed at one 
 time he thought of expanding it. Of the longer 
 works which he had actually finished he placed 
 Catriona first, and in this the majority of critics 
 would agree. He calls it his high-water mark. 
 
 He draws his own portrait to Mrs. Sitwell : " A 
 strange person; not so lean, say experts, but in- 
 finitely battered. Mighty active again on the 
 whole." But this is not so comic as an earlier account 
 to Cosmo Monkhouse : " High and very narrow. 
 Upon the lungs I will not linger. The heart is large 
 enough for a ball-room, the belly greedy and in- 
 efficient, the brain stocked with the most damnable 
 explosives like a dynamiter's den. The whole 
 place is well furnished, though not in a very pure 
 taste : Corinthian much of it ; showy and not 
 strong." And this at the time of his marriage: 
 " When I was a mere complication of cough and 
 bones, much fitter for an emblem of mortality 
 than a bridegroom." There is his comic exaggera- 
 tion, flashes of truth, a sense of his own weak and 
 strong points. By unexpected turns, he maintains 
 and quickens your interest. Sometimes, it is pure 
 
234 R- L - S. 
 
 jest, so you are not to take him too seriously, but 
 there is sound sense in his jesting. " I have not 
 sold myself to the devil, for I could never find him." 
 Again : " I cannot say why I like the sea ; no man 
 is more cynically and constantly alive to its perils. 
 I regard it as the highest form of gambling, and 
 yet I love the sea as much as I hate gambling.". 
 When he touches land after long absence on the 
 Pacific : " We are now about to rise like whales 
 from this long dive." 
 
 He on occasion drops into Scots, though he 
 commonly reserves this for his Scots correspondents. 
 Thus he describes an addition to his household at 
 Marseilles : " Our servant is a Muckle Hash of a 
 Weedy." Admirably conveying the appearance 
 of a huge, shapeless mass ! It has been laid to 
 his charge that he was egotistical. It is clear that 
 he took a perfectly sane and clear view of his 
 achievement. His reception at New York, when 
 he went there on a second occasion as a well-known 
 man, was a mere nuisance to him. He expresses 
 himself again and again in the most modest manner. 
 He is lavish in praise and compliment for his friends. 
 Naturally much interested in himself, he knew 
 how to make himself interesting to other people. 
 If in some ways he was a Bohemian, he is free 
 from what are considered the attributes of a 
 Bohemian. He was rigidly honest in money 
 matters, and that when money was of great im- 
 portance to him. In fact, if you were to search 
 for faults of character, as exhibited in the letters, 
 you would be hard put to find them. You might 
 
AS LETTER-WRITER 235 
 
 allege a want of balance — that was due to super- 
 sensitiveness ; and he may have had too good an 
 opinion of himself as a politician, but all such are 
 minor matters. On the other hand, you must 
 again remember the Horatian phrase, "Nothing 
 hinders us to talk the truth when laughing." Here 
 are great common sense and shrewdness, true 
 views of life as well as of letters, true pictures of 
 maxim and of polity. His letters are in effect 
 " Familiar Studies of Men and Books." 
 
 His financial relations with his father are expressed 
 with admirable sense and truth : " It is fortunate 
 for me I have a father, or I should long ago have 
 died; but the opportunity of the aid makes the 
 necessity none the more welcome." Had he been 
 a poor man, he must have stayed in Edinburgh, 
 and that had meant early death. It was the 
 knowledge of this fact that gave him his deepest 
 sympathy with Robert Fergusson, of whom he 
 almost believed himself a reincarnation, so like up 
 to a certain point were their lives and destinies. 
 He would have probably gone under in California 
 had there not been generous help extended to him. 
 Of this there is full recognition, with becoming 
 gratitude, and yet with an honest and honourable 
 expression of regret. His remarks on missions are 
 particularly sensible. They are, of course, not 
 ultra-evangelical; just as little are they scornful 
 and disdainful. Finally, almost every letter from 
 first to last is a sermon on the duty of cheerful- 
 ness. A brave and beautiful spirit ! Such must be 
 your final verdict. 
 
CHAPTER XVIII 
 R. L. S. AS PLAYWRIGHT 
 
 STEVENSON wrote four plays in conjunction 
 with W. E. Henley. A study of the works of 
 both writers shows that some characters are 
 mainly the work of R. L. S., whilst others seem 
 originally moulded by Henley. I was told by 
 Henley himself that what each did was revised 
 and gone over by the other, so that no part could 
 be said to be the work of one. The chief play is 
 Deacon Brodie, or The Double Life. The problem 
 of the double life had a peculiar charm for R. L. S. 
 Brodie's career was a choice example. In appear- 
 ance he was a respectable and prosperous citizen, 
 but in fact was housebreaker, burglar, and bankrupt. 
 R. L. S. rewrote the piece several times; the first 
 draft is dated 1865, when he was only fifteen. In 
 1878 it was put together as we have it. It was 
 privately printed in 1880, acted in 1883, and 
 published in 1892. The piece is intensely local, 
 as much so as a poem of Fergusson. And most 
 of the action is in the High Street of Edinburgh 
 or the closes that run from it. The chief places 
 are Brodie's Close, as it is still called. It is in the 
 Lawnmarket, on the same side as and a little to 
 the east of the West Bow. Farther down is Libber- 
 
 236 
 
R. L. S. AS PLAYWRIGHT 237 
 
 ton's Wynd. George IV Bridge now passes over 
 its site. Here lived Jean Watt, one of Brodie's 
 mistresses, by whom he had two children. Anne 
 Grant, his other mistress, had three. She lived 
 in Cant's Close, which is below Niddry Street, on 
 the same side. Across the street, though not so 
 far down, is Fleshmarket Close. Here was Clarke's 
 tavern, a favourite " howf " of the Deacon's. 
 
 Brodie was Deacon of the Wrights or Carpenters, 
 as his father had been before him. The Wrights 
 was one of the incorporated trades of Edinburgh, 
 and the Deacon was their head ; as such he was a 
 member of the Town Council. Old Brodie died 
 in 1782. The son, who then was forty-one years 
 of age, succeeded to a good business and a com- 
 paratively large fortune. There was no abler 
 workman in Edinburgh, so a prosperous life lay 
 easily before him; but he was given over to all 
 sorts of secret vices. Drinking and cock-fighting 
 were not thought of as vices in Old Edinburgh, 
 but gambling and immorality were, and Brodie 
 was a desperate gambler with dice and cards and 
 what not. He joined himself to a gang of house- 
 breakers, was the leader and the most active 
 member. At this time Edinburgh was policed by 
 the Town Guard, whose abilities were scarce equal 
 to quelling a street riot. There was no provision 
 for anything requiring skilled detective work. 
 Then Old Edinburgh arrangements were of a simple 
 and homely character, and Brodie could pick a 
 lock to pieces quicker and more easily than he 
 could construct. His position gave him some 
 
238 R. L. S. 
 
 advantages. It is not certain that he made large 
 sums by his crimes. He enjoyed his wrongdoing. 
 He had the true criminal instinct, the double life 
 was his by preference. 
 
 Finally the gang robbed the Excise Office in 
 Chessel's Court, Canongate. It is on the same side 
 as Brodie's Close and Libberton's Wynd, though 
 much farther down, and out of the bounds of the 
 old city proper. Their booty was but trifling, but 
 this was a Government office, so the authorities 
 were stirred into abnormal activity. Some of the 
 gang peached ; Brodie escaped to Holland, but was 
 arrested at Amsterdam on his way to America. 
 He was brought back, tried along with Smith, one 
 of his associates, before the High Court of Justiciary 
 at Edinburgh. There were five presiding Judges, 
 of whom the chief was Lord Braxfield, that pet 
 figure of Stevenson's. The pair were convicted 
 and hanged on the 2nd October 1788, at the west 
 end of the Tolbooth, where they had been confined. 
 This Tolbooth was the famous Edinburgh prison 
 known as the Heart of Midlothian. It continued 
 westward the line of the Luckenbooths. The 
 drop, it is said, was an invention of Brodie's own. 
 
 That is the outline of the true facts of the case, 
 but very considerable changes are made in the 
 drama, so as to bring the chief incidents into 
 manageable compass. The action of the play is 
 about fifty hours, beginning on Saturday night 
 and ending on Monday. The Deacon's father is 
 represented as living, though he had been dead six 
 years. Andrew Ainslie, Humphrey Moor, and 
 
AS PLAYWRIGHT 239 
 
 George Smith appear, though their actual parts 
 are varied. A totally imaginary Bow Street runner 
 named Hunt takes an active part in the proceed- 
 ings. Brodie is given a sister called Mary, who 
 has a lover named Walter Leslie. Jean was the 
 real name of the sister, but this is changed to Mary, 
 probably because Jean was the first name of Brodie's 
 mistress. This last, in fact, appeared at the trial 
 to support an attempted alibi which was set up 
 on his behalf. Anne Grant was not called at the 
 trial, nor does she appear in the play. Jean Watt 
 does, and is an admirable picture of a lower-class 
 Scotswoman. You put her down to R. L. S., 
 just as you put down Hunt with his graphic and 
 picturesque slang phrases to Henley. In the play 
 the Deacon attacks Hunt, who parries the blow 
 and mortally wounds him. Thus the complicated 
 and long-drawn business of the arrest, trial, and 
 execution is evaded. 
 
 R. L. S. had almost an antipathy to the Plays. 
 At any rate, he soon lost interest or belief in them. 
 He writes to Sir Sidney Colvin in July 1884 regretting 
 that Henley is likely to lose money on their pro- 
 duction : "It is about Henley, not Brodie, that I 
 care"; and again, "I fear my affections are not 
 strong to my past works. They are blotted out by 
 others, and anyhow the Deacon is dam bad." Mr. 
 Charles Baxter told me that R. L. S. was inclined 
 always to consider the Plays as nothing. Henley 
 to the last believed in them, not merely as literature 
 but as practical working pieces. I have often heard 
 him express this view, for he spoke more of the 
 
240 R. L. S. 
 
 Plays than he did of his other works. He discussed 
 them chiefly in connection with the theatre. He 
 thought highly of the Deacon, as he called the piece. 
 It was played in America throughout a somewhat 
 lengthy tour. The name part was taken by Edward 
 Henley, a brother of W. E. H. and an actor of very 
 considerable promise, which time was not given to 
 him to fulfil, for he died young. The piece had a 
 qualified success. It is occasionally produced on 
 special occasions, but neither it nor any of its 
 fellows, also occasionally represented, have had a 
 continuous or popular run. 
 
 Next in order and importance comes Beau Austin. 
 The place is given as Tunbridge Wells and the time 
 1820. The piece is not less local than Deacon 
 Brodie, though there is no historical incident behind 
 it. It is rather a picture of manners at the Wells 
 when these were at the height of their splendour. 
 " We bring a fancy of those Georgian days," says 
 W. E. H. in a charmingly written prologue. The 
 Wells are not the centre of fashion that they once 
 were, though after Bath they form the oldest 
 watering-place in the kingdom. A quaint Kentish 
 legend accounted for the peculiar taste of the springs. 
 All the world knows how St. Dunstan seized the 
 Devil by the nose with his tongs to the discomfiture 
 of the fiend. Now either Satan cooled his nose or 
 St. Dunstan his tongs in the water, and so the iron 
 taste was variously accounted for by the peasantry, 
 but it was not till 1606 that Dudley Lord North 
 discovered them for himself. He thought the place 
 better than the German spa, and to it he put down 
 
AS PLAYWRIGHT 241 
 
 his recovery from illness. No doubt regular hours, 
 simple diet, and country air played their part. 
 At first all was wild heath, and you had to go to 
 Tunbridge itself, some five miles off, for your night's 
 lodging. However, buildings of one sort or another 
 soon arose, the Court went there, and the place 
 became the very pink of fashion. The Pantiles 
 date from Queen Anne's time. What a charming 
 little place it is, " with its old-world, dignified air " ! 
 You can still imagine Samuel Johnson, LL.D., 
 thrusting aside the gay butterflies of another age as 
 he rolled along towards the spring ! Beau Nash 
 in his time ruled and arranged society at the Wells. 
 He died as far back as 1762, when he was nearly 
 ninety years old ; but the Wells kept something of 
 their reputation down to railway times, when people 
 began to go farther afield and craved for something 
 more exciting in the way of scenery than the 
 pleasant Kentish landscape could afford. 
 
 1820, the date of the piece, is too late. The 
 beginning, not the end of George Ill's reign had 
 been better chosen. Then the Wells were at their 
 zenith, and some strangeness in the ideas would 
 have seemed less obvious. The piece is written in 
 charming English. " A faint and fine perfume " 
 hangs about the lines. From this point of view, 
 and here for once at any rate, R. L. S. collaborated 
 with success. The story is very slight. George 
 Frederick Austin, called " Beau Austin," is the very 
 pink of fashion and a dandy of the first water. He 
 seduces Dorothy Musgrave partly by bribing her 
 maid. Miss Musgrave 'suffers terribly, but her 
 16 
 
242 R. L. S. 
 
 pride prevents her accepting an offer of marriage 
 which the Beau makes to her on account of the 
 intervention of an honest suitor of Dorothy's. 
 The Beau, though insulted by Miss Musgrave's 
 brother, from the best of motives refuses to fight, 
 whereupon Miss Musgrave surrenders, and the thing 
 ends in marriage. The atmosphere of the Wells 
 is admirably given, but the Beau is not a well- 
 conceived character. He pictures forth a buck of 
 the period, but is more like one of the French noblesse 
 imperfectly translated and set down amidst in- 
 congruous surroundings. Truth to tell, he is a bit 
 of a cad, and yet not consistent, since he too swiftly 
 repents at the very mention of his misdeeds. The 
 maiden aunt also is a shadowy, impossible figure ; 
 but Dorothy herself is admirable, and so is John 
 Fenwick of Allonby Shaw, her admirer. 
 
 The scene of the third piece, Admiral Guinea, is 
 in Barnstaple in Devon. There is no local touch 
 which suggests the place, nor even the time, which 
 is 1760, except the mention of the slave trade. 
 Admiral Guinea is the sailors' name for the captain 
 of the slaver Arethusa, now a reformed and Puritan 
 character. He is a widower with one daughter, 
 called after the ship. Kit French, a sailor lad, is 
 her lover. He is not favoured by the Admiral on 
 account of his free-and-easy manners. The scene 
 moves between the house of Admiral Guinea 
 and the Admiral Benbow Inn. David Pew, a 
 blind old seaman, once boatswain to Gaunt but 
 fallen on evil days, appears on the stage, and is 
 repudiated by Gaunt. Pew attempts to rob his old 
 
AS PLAYWRIGHT 243 
 
 employer and to lay the blame on Kit. He is 
 slain by Kit when attempting to injure Arethusa. 
 Admiral Guinea then withdraws his opposition 
 to the union of the lovers. The slave trade was 
 not abolished in Britain till 1807, and slavery itself 
 was only ended in 1833. But in 1760 and long after 
 there was scarce a word against it by Puritans or any- 
 one else. Admiral Guinea's remorse is antedated, nor 
 is he a convincing picture of a Puritan. Arethusa 
 is a very charming young woman of the Dorothy 
 Musgrave and Mary Brodie type. But the gem of 
 the piece is David Pew, the blind old seaman, with 
 his strong and powerful slang speeches and his 
 satanic humour. He is a villain of the deepest dye, 
 but you cannot resist a sneaking fondness for 
 him, with his " noggins of rum " and his slaver 
 " chanties." 
 
 He appears at the beginning of Treasure Island, 
 but there is killed before the action of the story 
 really commences. In both you have him set 
 forth as a wicked old man, blind, witty, desperate, 
 and in both the tapping of his stick sounds strangely 
 through the piece. It is the character of the 
 bos'n of a slaver or pirate, fallen on evil days, 
 perfectly realized; the diabolical humour, the 
 audacious hypocrisy, the greed, the rapacity, the 
 sudden gusts of savage temper at the least rebuff, 
 make up one of the most remarkable if disagree- 
 able characters in fiction. Treasure Island began 
 to appear as a serial in October 1881, whereas it 
 was not till 1884 that Admiral Guinea was privately 
 printed in Edinburgh. Thus R. L. S. had his 
 
244 R- L. S. 
 
 first conception to go upon. Also he had|the^help 
 of Henley's emendations and criticisms. The result 
 is that the Pew of Admiral Guinea is a more definite 
 and determined, if possibly a more repulsive and 
 hateful person than the Pew of Treasure Island. 
 The father of R. L. S. had a bad opinion of Ad- 
 miral Guinea and David Pew alike. The piety 
 of the one and the impiety of the other were equally 
 distasteful. Perhaps R. L. S. was more influenced 
 by this opinion than he admitted, for in March 1885 
 he writes to Henley putting a very low value on 
 the piece, " Pew is in places a reproach to both 
 art and man," though in the next letter he opines 
 that with considerable alterations " it will act some 
 day." 
 
 The last piece is Macaire, described as " a melo- 
 dramatic farce." The time is 1820, and the place 
 an inn on the frontier of France and Savoy. The 
 chief personage is Robert Macaire, whose history or 
 rather the history of whose name is a very long 
 one, which I shall indicate as briefly as may be. 
 Robert Macaire is a synonym in France for a clever 
 rascal who does or tries to do everyone with whom 
 he comes in contact. It is a type of audacious 
 rascality. A poem of the twelfth century which 
 had a widespread reputation though its author is 
 unknown, tells the story of the Chevalier Macaire at 
 the Court of Charlemagne. He was bold enough to 
 make advances to Blanchefleur, spouse to the great 
 Emperor, and daughter of Caesar, ruler of Con- 
 stantinople. He was repulsed with scorn, whereupon 
 with the aid of her husband's favourite dwarf he 
 
AS PLAYWRIGHT 245 
 
 planned her ruin. For a time he was successful ; 
 she was banished from the Court, but his vengeance 
 still pursued her. He killed her devoted attendant 
 Aubry, whose body lay unburied, watched by a 
 faithful dog. The dog afterwards appeared at 
 Court, and persistently attacked Macaire. In- 
 quiries were made, Aubry's body was discovered, 
 and when the Chevalier offered himself for trial 
 by combat the dog was assigned him as adversary. 
 The faithful hound was victor. Macaire confessed 
 his guilt, was degraded and burnt alive, whilst the 
 injured Queen was restored to place and honour. 
 Various versions of this story were afterwards 
 current in France ; one of the best known was that 
 of the dog of Montargis, where the murderer pre- 
 served the name of Macaire. I have already men- 
 tioned a legend not altogether unlike this which 
 was supposed to account for the quaint name of the 
 Isle of Dogs. But a dog plays no part in the 
 version of the story with which we are concerned. 
 On the 2nd of July 1823 a piece entitled the 
 Auberge des Adrets was produced at the Ambigu- 
 Comique. It was a melodrama in three acts by 
 Benjamin, Saint Amand, and Paulyanthe. The 
 scene is an inn at Les Adrets, which is in fact a 
 hamlet near Grenoble. It is this piece which 
 gave Henley and Stevenson the framework. The 
 scene is the same, so is the time, and the majority 
 of characters are identical; also the plot is after 
 the same lines. In each case Robert Macaire and 
 his faithful attendant Bertrand having escaped 
 from prison at Lyons, come to the inn on the 
 
246 R. L. S. 
 
 eve of the marriage of Charles the adopted son of 
 the innkeeper with Ernestine the daughter of a 
 wealthy farmer. Macaire in the earlier piece is 
 the father of Charles, in the later he only pretends 
 to be. In both the pair of rascals play a set of 
 tricks, culminating in the robbery and attempted 
 assassination of a guest. Gendarmes appear on the 
 scene, and Macaire is shot dead — in the first 
 piece by Bertrand, at whose expense he attempts 
 to save himself, in the second by one of the gen- 
 darmes. 
 
 The piece of 1823 was not the final form of the 
 legend. This was given in Robert Macaire, a prose 
 comedy in three acts, produced at the Folies Drama- 
 tique in 1834, of which Frederic Lemaitre was chief 
 author. In this Macaire was supposed to recover 
 and again join forces with Bertrand. He meets the 
 Baron de Wormspere, to whose daughter Elva he 
 becomes engaged. The Baron is reputed a German 
 nobleman of enormous wealth, in reality he is as 
 great a sharper as Macaire himself. The action 
 consists of the plots by which the one rogue seeks 
 to outwit the other. Thus at cards they both cheat 
 with such admirable skill that neither pockets any- 
 thing. Finally Macaire and Bertrand escape in a 
 balloon, to the astonishment of the Baron and his 
 daughter. This is not at all the style of the first 
 piece, which is after the fashion of an Adelphi drama, 
 where vice is suitably punished and virtue suitably 
 rewarded. From the second of the French pieces 
 Henley and Stevenson do not seem to have bor- 
 rowed anything, unless it be the conception of 
 
AS PLAYWRIGHT 247 
 
 Macaire as a superior and humorous villain, and 
 not the mere melodramatic ruffian of the first piece. 
 " Bitten ! " or " Sold again ! " he remarks, as trick 
 after trick is discovered, and he unabashed turns to 
 some new device. 
 
 Macaire is the shortest and slightest of the 
 pieces in our author's theatre. The story is not 
 clear nor is the machinery ingenious. Although 
 the incidents are improbable or impossible, this is 
 not a reproach in a piece of the kind. It is well 
 written, like everything else its authors touched, 
 but that is all I can find to say in its favour. Here 
 as elsewhere R. L. S. was his own most severe critic : 
 " Macaire is a piece of job-work, hurriedly bockled ; 
 might have been worse, might have been better ; 
 happy-go-lucky ; act-it-or-let-it-rot piece of business. " 
 Henley put it much higher ; he thought it would go 
 well if played with verve and brio. As yet it has 
 only had a " success of esteem." We may leave it 
 out of account. The others are not popular successes, 
 but they cannot be classed as failures. They make 
 excellent reading. They have many choice and 
 powerful passages. They are full of fine and strong 
 character drawing and striking situations. I have 
 seen two of them, the Beau and the Admiral to wit, 
 on the stage. They went very well ; they satisfied 
 what was perhaps a picked audience. They are 
 not dead. They are given occasionally and always 
 with satisfaction. Henley's fame is spreading as 
 it deserves to spread. The works of R. L. S. con- 
 tinue to call forth the liveliest interest. Yet up to 
 the present R. L. S. has been right. Now it is 
 
248 R. L. S. 
 
 always easy in some ways to explain a failure as well 
 as a success. General statements can be made to 
 fit in a particular case, with some show of plausi- 
 bility. Failure is no proof of merit, yet it cannot 
 be said that success shows a stage piece to be worth 
 very much. The fashion of the day, blatant appeal to 
 bad taste and worse instincts, cheap rhetoric, tawdry 
 sentiment, all may give an unworthy triumph. 
 There must of necessity be reasons for a failure, but 
 the fault need not of necessity lie with the authors. 
 In February 1903 Sir A. W. Pinero, " our first 
 dramatist," according to Mr. William Archer, lectured 
 in Edinburgh on Stevenson as a dramatist. He 
 had no difficulty in explaining why the Plays failed. 
 They imitated the transpontine drama of the early 
 nineteenth century. Deacon Brodie belongs to the 
 school of Sweeny Tod, and Admiral Guinea to that 
 of Black-Eyed Susan. The Beau is better, and 
 might have succeeded, but there is crude technique 
 and clumsy construction. There is some truth in 
 this criticism on Beau Austin, though plays weighted 
 with much worse faults have been huge draws, but 
 the rest is inept. Deacon Brodie is only like Sweeny 
 Tod in so far as it deals with crime. Now crime is 
 a fact of human life, a favourite and proper subject 
 of the masters of poetry and romance. " As re- 
 gards Deacon Brodie, one cannot but imagine that 
 Stevenson was hampered by the idea of representing 
 strictly the historical personage. In this for aught 
 I know he may have succeeded." As we have seen, 
 R. L. S. does not stick at all to historical truth. 
 The Stevensonian Deacon was like his creator, very 
 
AS PLAYWRIGHT 249 
 
 much of a moralist disposed to musing and intro- 
 spection. In fact, the historical character was droller, 
 braver, more frivolous, more callous, not so superior 
 a fiend, not less interesting on that account, but then 
 truth must be always nearer to facts of life than 
 fiction. Sir A. W. Pinero was clearly right in saying 
 that Stevenson had great dramatic possibilities. 
 Jekyll and Hyde is almost a drama. When drama- 
 tized, though not by R. L. S., it had a huge success. 
 The Plays were too good to win a popular success. 
 It was almost impossible to get a sufficiently cul- 
 tured audience in sufficient numbers to support for 
 any length of time such works. The mass want 
 forcible not fine language, broad not delicate shades 
 of character, simple rather than subtle effects. 
 Their minds are not sufficiently alert to grasp 
 subtleties, and they weary of hearing things they 
 do not fully understand. Shakespeare succeeds on 
 the stage on his lesser, not his deeper merits. If the 
 Deacon had been coarsened, vulgarized, it would 
 have acted more successfully — if by success you mean 
 the applause of the many, not the considerate 
 verdict of the few. Again, an English audience 
 wishes its play just as it wishes its novel to end 
 happily, but none of the pieces really end happily, 
 though two of them conclude with marriage. You 
 must be interested in the darker side of human 
 nature, perhaps in what is in itself disagreeable, to 
 appreciate such things. And many undoubted 
 merits, the excellence of language and so forth, are 
 thrown away or worse than thrown away on the 
 crowd. However, we have not yet the final verdict. 
 
CHAPTER XIX 
 AS RHYMER IN SCOTS AND ENGLISH 
 
 ONE complete volume of the Edinburgh 
 edition of the works of R. L. S. is taken up 
 with his poetry. In the true sense of the 
 term, he is not a poet. He has not that peculiar gift 
 of inspiration which marks Tennyson among his 
 contemporaries, — " Our Virgil " as himself named 
 him, — which also marked his friend Henley. He 
 never quite reaches that region, though it may be 
 that once or twice he comes near it. But then he 
 had a peculiar genius of his own. He was a master 
 both of Scots and English. You would expect him 
 to write noteworthy and remarkable verse. You 
 can give him all the honours except the supreme 
 one, that his verse is not inspired. He is a quaint 
 and ingenious rhymer. The romantic note is as 
 strong as it was in his prose. He pictures forth 
 scenes and incidents with his accustomed facility. 
 He had a right to rhyme. You would feel a distinct 
 want were his verse blotted out from his writings. 
 You may even grant that he said some things in 
 rhyme better than he ever could in prose. 
 
 As usual, he is a severe and excellent critic of him- 
 self. He never ventures to put it high, though he 
 confesses to fondness for part. Thus of A Child's 
 
R. L. S. AS RHYMER 251 
 
 Garden of Verses, he comments : " Not song, if you 
 will, but a child's voice," and for a time he proposed 
 to call it The Penny Whistle. It is still the most 
 popular of his efforts in metre. As has been said, 
 there was something of the child in him to the 
 very last — the superlatively clever child, the child 
 of genius, but always a child. Also his memory 
 was wondrous clear, not merely as to the incidents, 
 but as to the moods and feelings of early life. Thus 
 he was able to reproduce them when he was a man 
 over thirty. He does so with the quaintest effect, 
 because they are the ideas of a child of genius, 
 full of curiosity as to the world which is opening 
 out before his eyes. He draws a child's conclusions. 
 You could deduce from it a child's philosophy of 
 life and of the universe. He not only described 
 what he saw, but he gives us ideas of far-off countries 
 of which he had heard. Already the romantic note is 
 strong in him. It shows itself in a system of make- 
 believe. He would go to sea in a basket. He 
 would have a fight with robbers or pirates at the 
 corner of the garden. If that was not enough, 
 and when that failed, he could at least express 
 his desire for unknown scenes in verses on travel. 
 Even then he felt the romance and mystery of the 
 world. Even then he was haunted by the sound 
 of the wind. 
 
 Whenever the moon and stars are set, 
 
 Whenever the wind is high, 
 
 All night long in the dark and wet 
 
 A man goes riding by 
 
 Late in the night when the fires are out. 
 
 Why does he gallop and gallop about ? 
 
252 R. L. S. 
 
 Most characteristic are the unexpected turns 
 which a line often gives to a simple poem, as in 
 that of The Whole Duty of Children, where the 
 child is to behave mannerly at table — " at least, 
 as far as he is able " ; or the rain that falls on field 
 and tree and ships and — umbrellas ; or the mystery of 
 sleep, when he travels at night into the land of Nod. 
 It is this quaint touch that raises the poems, and 
 marks them out from any ordinary nursery rhyme, as 
 that on the cow, " she gives me cream with all her 
 might, to eat with apple tart " — a delightful variant 
 of the stock nursery poem on this useful animal ! — or 
 on the gardener, with its unexpected moral ; or on the 
 dumb soldier, where you have a higher note, and the 
 reflections of the man mingle with those of the child. 
 
 Underwoods contains in English and in Scots 
 more ambitious, though not more interesting, 
 efforts. They have the same quaint felicity, the 
 same absence of deep notes. Ideas that cannot be 
 called remarkable are set before you in a charm- 
 ing way. Horace was not, as far as one can judge, 
 a special favourite with R. L. S., though he uses 
 his lines for titles. Among the Latins, he pre- 
 ferred the deeper note of Virgil. Yet in the genial 
 humour, the doctrine of contentment, the friendly 
 feeling and friendly compliment, in the moderate 
 and well-expressed delight in what things there are 
 good to eat and to drink in the world, R. L. S. is 
 truly Horatian. To a Gardener is an instance. If 
 likeness there be, the likeness comes not from copy 
 but from a likeness of nature, a similar view of the 
 common objects of life. Every poem has instances 
 
AS RHYMER 253 
 
 both of the aurea mediocritas and the curiosa 
 felicitas. Take, for instance, the six lines A Camp. 
 Where in all literature is the charm of a lodging 
 a la belle etoile more admirably expressed ? The 
 second part of Underwoods is written in Scots. 
 " The day draws near when this illustrious and 
 malleable tongue shall be quite forgotten." It 
 certainly becomes less and less classic. R. L. S. 
 had some advantages and disadvantages in using it. 
 I discuss the point later. 
 
 R. L. S. was well read in Burns, and just as well 
 read in Fergusson. It was inevitable that he 
 should, not seldom, seem to imitate those writers. 
 Thus the favourite rhyme of Burns, as we have 
 it in his Address to the Deil or the Bard's 
 Epitaph, was not original to Burns. You have 
 it in Fergusson's Braid Claith, not to go back 
 to earlier, if not more illustrious, examples. That 
 rhyme you have in a Lowden Sabbath Morn. 
 The facts are carefully drawn from personal obser- 
 vation. It is original ; through it sounds the echo 
 of a well-known tune, and well-known words, and even 
 well-known ideas. This is the most important and 
 interesting piece, though the charming lines entitled 
 Ille Terrarum are as beautiful and reach a higher 
 level of pure poetry. How admirably the approach 
 of evening on..a rural landscape is expressed — 
 
 Or in the gloamin' douce" an' grey 
 • The sweet-throat mavis tunes her lay, 
 
 The herd comes linkin' doun the brae, 
 An' by degrees 
 
 The muckle siller miine maks way 
 Amang the trees. 
 
254 R- L- S. 
 
 The Ballads tell interesting stories in rousing 
 verse, but they are not remarkable, and would have 
 passed unnoticed by any other hand. 
 
 In none of the poems hitherto discussed is there 
 any true lyric nor are there any love songs. This 
 cannot quite be said of the remainder, published 
 as Songs of Travel and Other Verses. Here we 
 have the poems entitled Youth and Love, and 
 the two numbers that follow after. You might 
 rank these and one or two others with some 
 hesitation among love poems, in so far as they 
 deal in some sort with that passion which is the 
 motif of so much poetry. But they leave you cold, 
 and are without any touch of real fire. They are 
 rather the work of a gifted writer exercising himself 
 in various measures in a sort of academic way. 
 Those that tell of travel or of home have infinitely 
 more life and vigour. The first one, for instance, 
 The Vagabond, is rousing and inspiring. And 
 when, as in XVI., they refer to the ruined abodes 
 of other days, or of memories of Scotland, whether 
 it be town or country, Edinburgh or moorland, they 
 are instinct with true feeling, and move you because 
 they first moved the heart of the writer. In 
 referring to the verses containing the now well- 
 known lines — 
 
 Where about the graves of the martyrs the whaups are 
 
 crying 
 My heart remembers how ! 
 
 R. L. S. said that the words expressed the strongest 
 feeling that was in him about his native land. 
 And the same strong sentiment appears through 
 
AS RHYMER 255 
 
 the mannered, grave, and beautiful words of the 
 verses called Evensong, which conclude the 
 volume. Such things have their place in the 
 memory of all who read them, yet he succeeds 
 best when he is touching things with a lighter hand 
 and in ironical humour ; in other words, when he is 
 not seeking the higher realms of poetry. 
 
A 
 
 CHAPTER XX 
 
 AS ENGINEER AND LAWYER 
 
 CCORDING to his mother, R. L. S. when six 
 years old, having won a prize for writing an 
 essay on Moses, " from that time forward it 
 was the desire of his heart to be an author." In this, 
 as we know, he ultimately succeeded with brilliant 
 results, but it was only after trying two other 
 callings, one of which had a marked influence on 
 his work . His parents intended him to be an engineer. 
 His father and grandfather had been civil engineers. 
 Their interest in the life of the world was bound 
 up with that calling. He was always recognized 
 as a clever lad. His path in life seemed marked 
 clearly out for him. Though he never was an 
 engineer, he went some way on the road to become 
 one. As early as 1862 he was his father's com- 
 panion in a round of inspection of the lighthouses 
 on the Fife coast, and in the course of one day 
 during this tour they visited seventeen lights. For 
 over three years he nominally studied scientific 
 subjects, especially civil engineering at Edinburgh ; 
 also we find him engaged in practical work at 
 Anstruther, Wick, and at Earraid, the little island 
 off the coast of Mull already mentioned. In 1869 
 
 he made part of the same tour that his grandfather 
 
 256 
 
R. L. S. AS ENGINEER AND LAWYER 257 
 
 had made with Sir Walter Scott. He went to 
 Shetland in the Pharos, the ship of the Commis- 
 sioners of Northern Lights. 
 
 He might have seemed an advanced student, 
 for on 27th March 1871 he read a paper before 
 the Royal Scottish Society of Arts on a New Form 
 of Intermittent Light for Lighthouses. For this he 
 was awarded a silver medal. As far as a non- 
 scientific reader is able to judge, it is a clear, well- 
 expressed paper. But all this was more show than 
 substance. He neglected his classes. He did 
 not assimilate the essential facts of his calling, 
 though the accidents of it attracted him. He loved 
 the travel incidents, the pictures of human life, the 
 romance and mystery of the sea. Himself has 
 made this distinction. His father and he would 
 look with equal interest on a river. The father 
 watched the flow of the current, calculated its 
 effect on the shore, tried to appreciate the result 
 of building a breakwater or removing a boulder ; the 
 son observed the life on the flood, the picturesque 
 contrast of trees and fields and water, the scenic 
 effect of the landscape and how it might be rendered 
 in words. He recognized, and as we now know 
 wisely, that he had nothing to do with that business, 
 and within a fortnight of reading the paper referred 
 to he told his father so decisively. 
 
 From that time he was done with the subject, and 
 thought no more about it . Other writers have raked 
 up stores of scientific knowledge, which they have 
 used even in the composition of novels. Zola is a 
 case in point, though you may think the result not 
 *7 
 
258 R. L. S. 
 
 altogether happy. Here there might well have 
 been a New Arabian Night, in which a lighthouse, 
 or some other engineering subject, was made to 
 play a great part. But except the poem of The 
 Lightkee-per, where there is some little display of 
 technical knowledge, we have nothing of the 
 kind. No doubt he used the knowledge he acquired, 
 but it was never the scientific knowledge. It was 
 afterwards his pious task to write a Life of his 
 friend Fleeming Jenkin, and Records of a Family of 
 Engineers, this latter being a domestic history, in 
 which he unfortunately never got beyond the story 
 of his grandfather and the Bell Rock Lighthouse. 
 Though not the most important of his works, they 
 are both eminently readable. Their interest is a 
 human interest. There is nothing that exhibits 
 scientific knowledge in either of them. Many of 
 his earlier letters were written whilst he was a 
 student of engineering. They are interesting, but 
 it is the same human, not scientific, interest. His 
 father had been vastly pleased with epistles describ- 
 ing or discussing scientific details, but we have not 
 any such. 
 
 As already stated, it was arranged on his giving 
 up engineering that he should study for the Scots 
 Bar, supplementary, at any rate, to his already 
 professed calling of a man of letters ; for his father, 
 naturally enough, considered that calling highly 
 dubious. Now he made practically nothing at all 
 as an advocate. In a phrase of the North, he might 
 be fairly called a " stickit " lawyer; though, as the 
 majority of advocates are, by the very conditions 
 
AS ENGINEER AND LAWYER 259 
 
 of their calling, in the same position, the reproach 
 need not be considered serious. He gave up the 
 battle almost at once. Law impressed him in a 
 way that engineering never did. No class oi men 
 are so well represented in his works as lawyers. 
 Also there is a display of technical detail impossible 
 to a man who had not studied the subject. He 
 attended a considerable number of classes at the 
 University indispensable for an aspiring Scots 
 advocate. He had third place in the class of Public 
 Law ; but it is a small class, and this does not imply 
 much. In other cases he scraped through with a 
 minimum amount of attendance. In England it 
 is the habit for students or members of the Bar 
 to attend barristers' chambers, and there pick up 
 what they can. In Edinburgh it is usual to pass 
 some time in a solicitor's office. It was the fate 
 of R. L. S. to attend for part of two years the 
 office of a firm of W.S., of which Dr. Skene, author 
 of Celtic Scotland, and a very eminent historical 
 scholar, was the senior partner. Principal and 
 pupil might be supposed to have much in common, 
 yet they did not notice one another, a fact re- 
 gretted by both in subsequent years. 
 
 He succeeded in passing, and was admitted on 
 16th July 1875, and on the 25th he had his first 
 brief. As is the habit in Edinburgh, the door-plate 
 of his residence, 17 Heriot Row, was marked with 
 his name and calling. It remained there long 
 after Stevenson had renounced the Bar and was 
 famous in another way— remained, I suppose, till the 
 father died, and the rest of the household dis- 
 
260 R. L. S. 
 
 persed. I have often wondered why no " agent " 
 of a humorous turn of mind ever dropped a 
 memorial into the spacious letter-box. Was it 
 lack of humour or the need to accompany the papers 
 with a cheque that prevented this ? 
 
 He trod the boards of the Parliament House in wig 
 and gown for some time, and in all had four briefs. 
 One case seemed promising, but was settled. " If it 
 had prospered," said he, "I might have stuck to 
 the Bar, and then, I suppose, I should have been 
 dead of the climate long ago." Himself has de- 
 scribed, in the Picturesque Notes on Edinburgh, the 
 dreariness of this daily walk, which to an outsider 
 might seem pleasant and even dignified. Perhaps 
 the feeling of disgust is caused chiefly by the 
 sensation of being entirely out of it — the shame of 
 a rank outsider among a busy and prosperous 
 throng to which he nominally belongs. However 
 that may be, before the year was up he had practi- 
 cally given up the Bar, though he had already re- 
 ceived influences which lasted to the end of his 
 life. Let me point this out with reference to his 
 works. 
 
 Besides this brilliant little book on Edinburgh, 
 there are the Notes on some Portraits by Raeburn, 
 there are the comments on the portrait of Braxfield ; 
 but his treatment here, as well as of Deacon Brodie, 
 is literary. The legal part of the story does not 
 emerge. But his portraits of lawyers ! In the 
 Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde we have 
 Mr. Utterson the solicitor sketched with graphic 
 touches. Mr. J. T. Mowbray, the family agent, is 
 
AS ENGINEER AND LAWYER 261 
 
 affirmed the original of this. The Master ofBattantrae 
 has in the brilliant prol.:ve a sketch of Mr. Thomp- 
 son, who professedly is Mr. Charles Baxter, W.S., 
 his old friend. There are also various details 
 evincing knowledge of a Writer's office from the 
 inside. In The Wrecker there is Bellairs the 
 " shyster." In The Wrong Boxwe have Michael Fins- 
 bury. Catriona is full of lawyers. Most important 
 is the Lord Advocate, Prestongrange. Then there 
 is Mr. Balfour of Pilrig, sheriff, professor, author, 
 and his own ancestor. There is Simon Fraser, son 
 of the attainted Lord Lovat ; also the Counsel for 
 the defence in the Appin murder trial, who with 
 Mr. Stewart of Edinglassie, agent for the panel 
 in the same business, are all historic figures. In 
 their talk and action technical details are introduced, 
 as, for instance, in the preparation of the memorial. 
 David Balfour, the non-historical hero, is himself a 
 law student. His experiences in Holland in that 
 capacity have already been set forth. In St. Ives 
 there is the London solicitor, Daniel Romaine; 
 Dudgeon, his comic clerk ; and most important, Mr. 
 Robbie, W.S., of Edinburgh, an admirable full- 
 length portrait. Finally, there is Weir of Her- 
 miston, where a lawyer is professedly the main 
 figure. There also David Keith Carnegie, Lord 
 Glenalmond, is admirably and even tenderly 
 touched off, perhaps after the historic figure of 
 William Erskine, Lord Kinneder, the friend of 
 Scott, " he was often compared with the statue 
 of Forbes of Culloden in the Parliament House " 
 (Duncan Forbes of Culloden already mentioned 
 
262 R. L. S. 
 
 (1685-1747), President of the Court of Session, and 
 one of the greatest of Sects lawyers and Scotsmen of 
 his time) . He is made to observe, " We were hearing 
 the parties in a long crucial case before the fifteen." 
 This is an anachronism. The " fifteen," or "a' 
 the fifteen," was a well-known phrase in old 
 Scotland. It meant the fifteen Judges of the Court 
 of Session, who all sat together to hear appeals 
 from the Lords Ordinary. But in 1808 this Court 
 of Appeal was split up into a first and second 
 division with four Judges apiece, which thus made 
 up the Inner House. Hermiston, as Lord Justice- 
 Clerk, would preside over the second division. 
 This is the modern constitution of the Court ; the 
 number fifteen was afterwards reduced to thirteen, at 
 which figure it still remains, the Judges not in the 
 Inner House sitting as Lords Ordinary. Another 
 senator is Lord Glenkindie, the best and most 
 genuine sketch in letters of the coarse, hard- 
 drinking Judge of an earlier epoch ; but again such 
 a figure was something of an anachronism. 
 
 R. L. S., quite apart from the question of health, 
 could never have made an engineer. His brain was 
 not built that way. In a striking poem he tells us 
 not to reproach him for deserting the strenuous 
 lives of his fathers " to play at home with paper 
 like a child," but rather to consider him as the end 
 of a family that, having done their work in the world, 
 Smiled well content, and to this childish task 
 Around the fire addressed its evening hours. 
 
 It is his own testimony on the point. But I think 
 he might have made a fairly successful lawyer, 
 
AS ENGINEER AND LAWYER 263 
 
 especially in criminal law, if adequate opportunity 
 had been given. In one thing he was like not merely 
 " bloody Braxfield," but even " bloody Jeffreys." 
 He had an acquaintance with the worst side of 
 human life and human character ; he had, moreover, 
 a certain scientific satisfaction akin to that of the 
 surgeon in another field in probing and estimating 
 the doings of evil men. But he was not contemptuous 
 or scornful; he could find excuses, he could be 
 humanly sympathetic, all which things would have 
 been useful to him in criminal defences. As for 
 civil matters, it is to be remembered that every law 
 case is a story, and oft an interesting story. He 
 would have understood and readily perceived where 
 the truth lay. He had strength of mind and will, 
 and power of work. With a little practice he would 
 have made an excellent speaker, and the charm of 
 his personality must have attracted to him clients, 
 agents, and judges alike. There is something on the 
 other side. He was erratic, he was impulsive, he was 
 supersensitive — not one whom you could call well- 
 balanced. All those things would have detracted, 
 but the result would have been something to the 
 good. With the strong influence of his family 
 behind him, he would have succeeded, but not 
 remarkably well. His best and rarest qualities 
 were not for the Law Courts, and the Parliament 
 House would have been a poor exchange for the 
 Universe. It is well for his country's literature that 
 he acted as he did. Thus what has been said in this 
 chapter is merely a curious speculation. 
 
CHAPTER XXI 
 WOMEN OF R. L. S. 
 
 IT has been put against R. L. S. that he could not 
 draw a real woman. Some of his admirers, on 
 the other hand, have praised his skill in this re- 
 gard. The question is interesting. In attempting an 
 answer we shall get some insight into his character 
 and the peculiar nature of his gifts as man of letters. 
 He has written many novels into which no woman 
 enters as a person of the story. This implies 
 an exceptional course of treatment. The love 
 interest is the main interest in the great bulk 
 of fiction as we know it. It might even seem 
 difficult to compose a romance without a love 
 affair of some sort. Such things occupy a dispro- 
 portionate place in fiction. " The stage is more 
 beholden to love than the life of man " : thus Lord 
 Bacon writing of a time when the play took the 
 place of the novel, and if for " play " you read 
 " novel " you will probably agree. Here is a list 
 of what one may call his sexless novels — they 
 are taken in order of publication — A Lodging for the 
 Night, Treasure Island, the Body-Snatcher, Marhheim, 
 The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, Kid- 
 napped, The Ebb Tide. Some of those stories are 
 
 of his best. 
 
 264 
 
WOMEN OF R. L. S. 265 
 
 Numerous women appear in his other novels, 
 this as a matter of course. His genius did not expend 
 itself along a single narrow line; he delighted to 
 picture forth many and various phases of life, 
 he could not do so whilst he excluded half the 
 human race. What importance and vitality has 
 he given to those women ? Now he was confessedly 
 a man of genius. It would be easy for such a one 
 to introduce women where their presence was 
 called for by the exigences of the story, to construct 
 and adorn them with a certain mechanical ability. 
 The puppets might walk and talk after a fashion, 
 but essentially they would be mere " machines " 
 as himself might say, lay figures into which their 
 creator had not been able to breathe the breath 
 of life. Such lay figures are frequent in his works. 
 Here is a sufficiently numerous list : Flora Mac- 
 kenzie in John Nicholson, Julia Hazeltine in The 
 Wrong Box, Mary Maclean in The Merry Men, Flora 
 Gilchrist in St. Ives, Alison Graham, afterwards 
 Lady Durrisdeer, in The Master of Ballantrae. In 
 the last two cases there are graphic touches that 
 might make one dubious as to the correctness of 
 this classification, but it is true on the whole; 
 and though there are purple patches in Mary 
 Brodie in Deacon Brodie, Dorothy Musgrave in 
 Beau Austin, and Arethusa Gaunt in Admiral 
 Guinea, yet I rank them as conventional and 
 their charm artificial. They are admirable wax 
 flowers. Perhaps it would be to ask too much 
 of The Black Arrow to expect that the women 
 should be other than the lay figures they are, 
 
266 R. L. S. 
 
 spite of some pretty touches in Johanna and 
 Alicia Risingham. Also Clara Huddlestone, in The 
 Pavilion on the Links, is an obvious " machine," 
 and there is no more to be said of her. 
 
 There are few points in which R. L. S. resembles \ 
 Scott, but one is the tasteless nature of the con- 
 ventional heroine. Scott followed the ideals of 
 another period. We have other standards, and thus 
 Sir Walter's seem even more insipid than those, 
 but both are equal in their lack of genuine vitality. 
 Their creators had no real joy in setting them 
 forth ; they exist not for themselves, but for the 
 purposes of the story. So much for this class. 
 There is another set worth more serious considera- | 
 tion. They do not affect you as real, yet are they 
 wonderfully made, and have a charm and attraction ■, 
 though not of flesh and blood. R. L. S. was an artist 
 in the fantastic, he could create a fairy world of his 
 own. The best examples are Prince Otto and The 
 New Arabian Nights. In Prince Otto there is 
 Princess Amelie Seraphina and the Countess von 
 Rosen. They are charming and attractive, but 
 not with the attraction of real life. You do not ask 
 that they should be ; perhaps if they were they 
 would spoil the story. The first part of The New 
 Arabian Nights has only a slight female interest. 
 The chief figure will illustrate the point I am about 
 to make. As regards the second part, there is the 
 delightfully impossible Clara Luxmore, afterwards 
 Mrs. Desborough, and her equally impossible 
 mother — quite charming in their own way, and 
 again too much reality had spoilt the fantasy. 
 
WOMEN OF R. L. S. 267 
 
 Also Blanche de Maletroit, in The Sire de Maletroit' s 
 Door, is a genuine Stevensonian creation, and again 
 you do not ask for probability, or even possibility. 
 
 Providence and the Guitar is one of the best 
 stories, for the subject suited admirably the genius 
 of R. L. S. Perhaps the men are actual, but I am 
 sure the women are not, neither the charming 
 Elvira nor the painter's peevish wife. 
 
 A still more remarkable illustration is Olalla, a 
 brilliant vision, in which R. L. S. imagined every- 
 thing — the scenery that he had never seen — a 
 people of whom he knew nothing — the heroine, her 
 mother, her brother, whom he did not make real by 
 imputing to them a touch of madness. The heroine 
 is beautifully touched off, though too much a being 
 of another world to make you really sympathetic 
 or truly pity her tragic sorrows. The tale is unlike 
 anything else of its author's, for it is essentially and 
 of intention a love story. In all the others, although 
 love stories are introduced, they are episodes, not 
 the real centrepiece. 
 
 What is left after those considerable deductions ? 
 R. L. S. could draw certain types of women with 
 admirable skill, and though some of the sketches 
 are slight they are life-like. But before passing to 
 this third class I ought to note this. However true 
 the divisions may be, they are not made by the 
 author, and from their nature cannot be complete. 
 Even the lay figures have their better moments 
 where they really live, or they have their sometime 
 part in a fairy-life where the touch of charm is on 
 them. Lady Vandaleur, in the first part of The 
 
268 R. L. S. 
 
 New Arabian Nights, is a profile rather than a full 
 portrait, yet she combines in herself the three ele- 
 ments. She is partly a mere machine, a mechanical 
 figure necessary to the development of the plot. 
 In her gay flirtation with crime and danger she 
 is scarcely the inferior of the Reverend Simon 
 Rolls, and is not less amusing, even because of the 
 fantastic touch. But there is a genuine element in 
 her, the fashionable woman of the world who 
 beneath her soft graces and charms possesses a 
 stern, hard, cold nature, a keen shrewdness ready to 
 turn everything to its own advantage, and a cynical 
 disregard for the feelings and interests of others 
 when they come in the way of her designs. 
 
 The real women of R. L. S. are marked as being 
 what is called in the North " characters," or even 
 oddities. Such have humorous points which al- 
 lured him. He was not one of the " masters of the 
 commonplace." An ordinary type had no interest 
 for him. It did not call forth his powers. Scott 
 at his best was otherwise. Thus Jeanie Deans in 
 The Heart of Midlothian is simply a shrewd peasant 
 woman inspired by high ideals of duty. Scott 
 makes her interesting by setting her forth with 
 great vividness, making her consistent from first to 
 last, describing with admirable truth her actions 
 in hours of difficulty, showing her true to herself 
 under all circumstances. She had not sufficient 
 whim, was both too commonplace and too great 
 for a Stevensonian heroine. A lower-class Scots- 
 woman of a more pronounced type suited him 
 better. He had observed closely, had been in- 
 
WOMEN OF R. L. S. 269 
 
 tensely amused at, and understood and appreciated 
 the actions of such. Here he never fails. Such is 
 Mrs. Drummond Ogilvie, Lady Allerdyce with her 
 trenchant, insolent phrases, as " Saxpencehad better 
 take his broth with us. Catrine, run and tell the 
 lasses." Mrs. Gilchrist in St. Ives is a higher pro- 
 duct of the same mind, just as Bethiah M'Rankine 
 in the same work is a lower, Jean Watt, the mistress 
 of Deacon Brodie in the play of that name, is life- 
 like and consistent throughout. I would almost 
 call her the author's best woman, were it not for 
 Kirstie Elliott in Weir of Hermiston, who has the 
 vitality and biting speech of the others, but a higher 
 and deeper nature admirably shown forth, though not 
 finished off, since the picture was never completed. 
 And Christina Elliott is also real ; her pretty ways, 
 her essential shallowness, are put before you with 
 delicate touches. She does not stand out with the 
 prominence and vitality of her aunt, but that is 
 because there is an essential difference in the two 
 characters. In this remarkable fragment R. L. S. 
 has for once drawn the commonplace with success. 
 The weak, well-meaning, conventional, pious Scots- 
 woman is set forth in Mrs. Weir. R. L. S. had seen 
 and studied the type, though he only gives us one 
 example. When from a point of vantage in the 
 grounds she comes in sight of the ridges that rise 
 round Hermiston, " her hand would tighten on the 
 child's fingers, her voice rise like a song,'/ to the hills ! ' 
 she would repeat, ' And O, Erchie, arena these like 
 the hills of Naphtali ? ' and her tears would flow." 
 I turn to the twin heroines of Catriona. Barbara 
 
270 
 
 R. L. S. 
 
 Grant, the daughter of Prestongrange, is of the same 
 type as Kirstie Elliott, and indeed of Mrs. Gilchrist 
 and Lady Allerdyce, though she moves in a higher 
 circle. Catriona herself is the most elaborate por- 
 trait of a woman that R. L. S. ever drew. I put 
 her down among the real figures, though she has 
 impossible touches. Of her great charm there is 
 no doubt. Her Highland idioms, her Highland 
 ways, her Highland pride are delightful. The love 
 scenes in Holland are very prettily touched off, 
 and the misunderstanding is even possible, if you 
 assume as you must, that David Balfour, spite of 
 his many excellent qualities, is a solemn ass. You 
 will not be deceived by the title page, however, nor 
 forget that the main incident of the story is the 
 Appin murder trial and things connected with it 
 before and after, not the love-making of two young 
 people. Finally, there is the Parson's Marjory in 
 Will 0' the Mill, where her appearance is only an 
 episode, though an important one. She plays a 
 fantastic part, but has so many genuinely womanly 
 touches that I venture to put her among the 
 realities. 
 
 Besides the romances, R. L. S. has written one or 
 two things which deserve notice under this head. 
 John Knox and his Relations to Women is an 
 historical inquiry interesting but not from this 
 point of view. The essay on Falling in Love in 
 Virginibus Puerisque is whimsical, amusing, even 
 cynical, but the subject is looked at from the stand- 
 point of a philosophical outsider. One other thing 
 is to be mentioned. In 1874 R. L. S. went with Mrs. 
 
WOMEN OF R. L. S. 271 
 
 Sitwell (afterwards Lady Colvin) to view the Elgin 
 Marbles in the British Museum. He had taken 
 to Edinburgh photographs to serve him as a re- 
 minder, and from there in November he wrote to 
 this lady two very striking letters in which he sets 
 forth the remarkable impression those monuments 
 of antiquity had made upon him — those " great 
 white stars of eternal marble," and " those shapely 
 colossal women and yet not women." He says they 
 seem to him wonderfully womanly, " and those girt 
 draperies are drawn over a wonderful greatness of 
 body instinct with sex." We feel, however, that 
 they belong to another race, and lowly adoration 
 rather than love are the sentiments which they 
 inspire. " We do not desire to see their great eyes 
 troubled with our passions, or the great impassive 
 members contorted by any hope of gain or pain or 
 pleasure." But then in the next letter he strikes 
 a more passionate note : " And think if one could 
 love a woman like that once, see her once grow pale 
 with passion, and once wring your lips out upon hers, 
 would it not be a small thing to die ? " He has 
 written nothing more passionate than this on those 
 headless fragments. By a curious whimsical char- 
 acteristic touch he reserves the depth of his 
 admiration for those mutilated divine figures of 
 a far-off vanished world ! 
 
CHAPTER XXII 
 THE RELIGION OF R. L. S. 
 
 THERE are some difficulties in discussing with 
 all reverence the religious views of R. L. S. 
 His utterances are not consistent ; they 
 underwent change and development. They are 
 mixed up with his work as a man of letters. Let 
 us attempt to look at them in a plain way. First the 
 external history. He began by accepting the points 
 of view of his father's family, perhaps still more of 
 his able and intelligent nurse, Alison Cunningham. 
 These were the orthodox Presbyterian views, un- 
 troubled as yet by the New Learning. You gather 
 that from The Pentland Rising, which was pub- 
 lished in 1866, when he was sixteen. The struggle 
 is told from the Evangelical standpoint. Then 
 came the Sturm und Drang period, when in violent 
 reaction he professed himself a sceptic and was in 
 conflict with his father. That also passed away. 
 He was reconciled to his parent. He conceived a 
 strong aversion from professed and notorious un- 
 believers. He did not concern himself with religious 
 matters. He lived in particular sets, whose ideas 
 were not hostile but rather indifferent and aloof. 
 
 In the South Seas religious matters again occupied 
 his attention. He almost conformed. He professed 
 
 himself a Presbyterian. In the letter to Dr. Hyde 
 
 272 
 
THE RELIGION OF R. L. S. 273 
 
 we have, " You belong, sir, to a sect— I believe my 
 sect and that in which my ancestors laboured"; 
 and again, " Your sect (and remember, as far as 
 any sect avows me, it is mine"). On various 
 occasions he attended church, nay, he taught for 
 a little in the Sunday school. He was in sympathy 
 with the missionaries ; also he had morning and 
 evening prayers in his household, the only non- 
 missionary, non-professional so to speak, white 
 household in the place, his wife assures us, where 
 such a ceremony, ritual, or duty was punctually 
 performed. Yet with all this it is clear to any- 
 one who approaches the subject with a sole desire 
 to get at the truth that he was destitute of fixed 
 creed or belief, and that he is properly described 
 as an agnostic. Even the Prayers, carefully con- 
 sidered, prove this. In all he did he was sincere 
 and open. His mother lived with him in the last 
 years of his life. To her simple and pious nature 
 family worship even under such strange conditions 
 was attractive and satisfying. Also some such 
 ceremony was desirable in the best interest of his 
 numerous native household. 
 
 There is a peculiar and marked element in his style 
 and writing, what one may call the Covenanting note, 
 sounding clear and strong. His first published work 
 was a sympathetic account of the Pentland Rising. 
 From early years he read the Covenanting authors 
 with avidity. In September 1868 he writes from Wick 
 to his mother acknowledging receipt of Aikman's 
 Annals of the Persecution in Scotland, " a precious 
 and most acceptable donation for which I tender 
 18 
 
274 R- L. S. 
 
 my most ebullient thanksgivings. I almost forgot 
 to drink my tea and eat mine egg." And in the 
 year before his death he tells Sir J. M. Barrie 
 that for weeks he has been reading little else but 
 the Covenanting writers. He had assimilated their 
 thought and manner to such an extent that he 
 could write and did write as one of themselves. 
 He had read much in Wodrow, the Cloud of 
 Witnesses, and Law's Memorials. He particularly 
 affected Patrick Walker s whose Lives were a continual 
 feast to him, and whose phrases had such a charm 
 that he was continually repeating them. Thus 
 " their resting graves " fascinated him. He uses 
 it in the Letter to Dr. Hyde, in the poem A 
 Lowden Sabbath Mom, and elsewhere. You could 
 " lif t " a set of phrases from his two best short 
 stories that might have been written by Patrick 
 himself. Both stories are of necessity put as nar- 
 rated by a contemporary or his immediate descend- 
 ant, after the fashion of Wandering Willie's Tale. 
 Among the last things to which he set his hand, and 
 which he left unfinished, were Heathercat, which is 
 a professedly Covenanting story, and Weir of 
 Hermiston, which has a Covenanting element. But 
 this " note " has nothing to do with his essential 
 beliefs. It is a characteristic of great writers that 
 they are also great actors, and can set forth modes 
 of thought and feeling with a view to their literary 
 effect ; whether they themselves have those thoughts 
 or feelings as personal convictions is entirely irrele- 
 vant. No one has touched the beauty of holiness 
 from a Catholic point of view so well as Victor Hugo, 
 
THE RELIGION OF R. L. S. 275 
 
 and George Eliot's pictures of religious life in pro- 
 vincial England of her time among Church folk and 
 Chapel folk go down to the very root of the matter. 
 Yet neither George Eliot nor Victor Hugo could be 
 called religious in the ordinary meaning of the term. 
 And so you must discount most of R. L. S.'s artistic 
 representations in poem and story as literary matter. 
 But you get plenty of expressions of his real 
 views if you look for them in the right places. The 
 best and most succinct account seems to me that 
 reported by Mr. Arthur Johnston in his Robert 
 Louis Stevenson in the. Pacific of a conversation in 
 the United States Consulate at Apia. " There is an 
 insoluble mystery," said R. L. S., " preceding and 
 following our lives which cuts the thread of polemic 
 and makes our best speculations futile. We are all 
 religious. I am religious in my own way, but I am 
 hardly brave enough to interpose a theory of my 
 own between life and death. Here both our creeds 
 and our philosophies seem to me to fail." This is 
 the view borne in upon you by a perusal of the 
 Letters, and though it might be preached from some 
 pulpits nowadays with little disturbance, still it 
 is best described by the phrase " agnostic." R. L. S. 
 is as far as possibly may be from the mocking 
 sceptic. He will poke a little fun at " the bonny 
 U.P. Kirks " and at the preacher — 
 
 Wi' sappy unction, hoo he burkes 
 The hopes o' men that trust in works, 
 Expounds the fau'ts o' ither Kirks, 
 
 An' shaws the best o' them 
 
 No' muckle better than mere Turks 
 
 When a's confessed o' them. 
 
276 R. L. S. 
 
 But people of unimpeachable orthodoxy do such 
 things without reproach. The Appeal to the Clergy 
 of the Church of Scotland, published in 1875, merely 
 proves an interest in ecclesiastical matters. It is 
 a plea to the Old Church to take advantage of the 
 circumstances of the time, so as to restore unity 
 and heal the breach which the secession of the 
 Free Church had made. 
 
 This is only the negative side. It shows lack of 
 faith with an adoption for literary purposes of 
 what was for him a " creed outworn." R. L. S. 
 had religious principles upon which he strongly 
 insisted. True, some of them are pagan and 
 might be paralleled from the maxims of Horace> 
 whose philosophy in some points was akin to his. 
 He was one of the authors that influenced our 
 author, though not a favourite. One of his most 
 remarkable essays is Pulvis et Umbra, one of his 
 most charming poems in Scots is Ille Terrarum, 
 and both titles are quotations from Horace, as 
 are also Virginibus Puerisque and Aes Triplex. 
 In Travels with a Donkey he approves this senti- 
 ment, it is not good to change. He thinks 
 it well to remain for all external purposes in the 
 faith in which one is born. Thus he professed 
 himself to the end a Presbyterian, though only in 
 a peculiar sense could he be called " true blue." 
 Dean Stanley has claimed for Robert Burns that 
 even in revolt he was a son of the Scots Kirk. 
 Those who are anxious to include R. L. S. in the 
 fold may urge the same claim for him. His creed 
 was ethical. It consisted not in theological maxims 
 
THE RELIGION OF R. L. S. 277 
 
 but in practical precepts, rules of right living and 
 right conduct. It is hard to take away from such 
 things the appearance of truism. The difficulty 
 about all religions is to supply the motive power. 
 That religion must be bad indeed which does not 
 contain excellent maxims of conduct. The problem 
 is to make the disciples act up to their own pre- 
 cepts. Stript of magic of style, of quaint or forcible 
 modes of expression, what is novel in the ethics of 
 R. L. S. ? 
 
 His central doctrine is the duty of being cheerful, 
 and brave, and kind, and happy. Happiness is 
 to be sought for not so much for itself, or for any 
 utilitarian purpose, but because you thus act in 
 accordance with the best law of your nature and 
 of the universe. You are best able to help others. 
 You are best fitted to do your work in the world. 
 Nay, happiness may be attained even in suffering. 
 What is this but the ancient Stoic paradox of the 
 wise man happy upon the rack ? You are to be 
 kind to your fellows, help them over the difficulties 
 of life, and rather look at the beam in your own 
 eye than the mote in that of your neighbour. A 
 slight examination of some of the more professed 
 ethical works sufficiently proves the truth of this. 
 Thus he issues A Christmas Sermon in 1888 as a 
 conclusion to twelve articles in Scribner's Magazine. 
 It is full of such maxims : " Christ will never hear 
 of negative morality. Try to be kind and honest. 
 There is no cutting of the Gordian knots of life. 
 Each must be smilingly unravelled." And again, 
 " Gentleness and cheerfulness : these come before 
 
278 R. L. S. 
 
 all morality. They are the perfect duties." And 
 then he asserts it is a mistaken idea that our duty 
 to our neighbour is to make him good. " One 
 person I have to make good ; myself, but my duty 
 to my neighbour is much more nearly expressed by 
 saying that I have to make him happy if I may." 
 Not, indeed, that happiness and goodness are 
 related as cause and effect, and so you cannot 
 expect happiness though you are to profit by it 
 when it arises. Again he says : " A man is on duty 
 here, he knows not how or why, and does not need 
 to know. He knows not for what hire and must 
 not ask," where again you have the Stoic note. 
 And then we have this paradox : " Somehow or 
 other, though he does not know what goodness is, 
 he must try to be good ; somehow or other, though 
 he cannot tell what will do it, he must try to give 
 happiness to others." This also is paradox, but 
 by no means falsehood. It is an attempt to appre- 
 hend the truth by looking at it in various ways. 
 And the same motive prompts him to say that life 
 must be a failure, though from another point of 
 view he might have urged from his own philosophy 
 that it must be a success. 
 
 The Prayers which he wrote for use at Vailima 
 were part of the mixed service which he was wont 
 to hold there. The rest was made up in the reading 
 of the Bible in the Samoan language by his step- 
 son. Hymns were sung in Samoan, and the prayers 
 were as we have them, or sometimes extempore. 
 They inculcate the duty of cheerfulness and mutual 
 help : " For our sins forgiven or prevented, for 
 
THE RELIGION OF R. L. S. 279 
 
 our shame unpublished, we bless and thank Thee, 
 O God " ; and again, " that we may be true to what 
 small best we can attain " ; also he prays for the 
 grace of courage. " Thy guilty innocents," he 
 names himself and his household, again a paradox, 
 not unnatural, and one not difficult to understand. 
 The service concluded with the Lord's Prayer in 
 Samoan, " that sublime prayer of the Christians," 
 says Balzac. 
 
 R. L. S. was interested in an enormous number of 
 subjects. Almost of necessity one crowded out or 
 partly obscured the other, and to this must be added 
 distracting occupations, frequent attacks of illness, 
 and the shortness of the years that were given to him. 
 In 1879 he began Lay Morals, a complete treatise on 
 Ethics. It was never finished and remains, as 
 unfortunately much of his remains, fragmentary. 
 Yet he called Ethics his " veiled mistress." If 
 he did not serve her in one way, he did in another. 
 Not for nothing was he the great-grandson of a 
 great preacher. " I would rise from the dead to 
 preach," he said ; and preach he did and does, for 
 being dead he yet speaketh. There is not much 
 professed theology in the fragment : " Christ must 
 be understood and viewed historically and in His 
 environment. Give some of His sayings a literal 
 interpretation and they are unworkable." In 
 some brilliant destructive criticism he sets forth 
 the hollowness of conventional morality, points 
 out the difficulty of being honest and just and kind 
 and truthful, and then not for the first time, but 
 in flashing and striking phrases that give us a 
 
280 R. L. S. 
 
 fresh impression of the facts of life, he comments 
 on the strange position of man in a strange world, 
 the corner of the universe that we inhabit curiously 
 warmed by the sun, human life for ever dependent 
 on a thread, our ignorance and wonder. In short, 
 "our mysterious life in this mysterious universe." 
 These are not the words of R. L. S., but they are 
 a phrase which he brings home to us. 
 
 All this is in effect a confession of ignorance. He 
 is strong when he comes to practical morals. Be 
 honest in the exactest sense of the term. You are 
 as much a thief if you scamp your work as if 
 you give a bad shilling for a good one. This is 
 how he puts the matter in his own profession : " Or 
 take the case of men of letters. Every piece of 
 work which is not as good as you can make it, 
 which you have palmed off, imperfect, meagrely 
 thought, niggardly in execution, upon mankind 
 who is your paymaster on parole and in a sense your 
 pupil, every hasty or slovenly or untrue performance, 
 should rise up against you in the court of your own 
 heart and condemn you for a thief." As con- 
 nected with this is the question of money : " Our 
 society is built with money for mortar," " Penury is 
 the worst slavery and will soon lead to death." 
 Then he goes on to point out that money is only a 
 means after all, and " presupposes a man to use it." 
 The whole essay is full of striking sentences, re- 
 flections that are, if not original, at any rate old 
 truth presented in a fresh light. 
 
 In the last analysis there is this difficulty. It is 
 hard to say on what ultimate basis the whole system 
 
THE RELIGION OF R. L. S. 281 
 
 rests. You can have a system of exalted morals 
 without any supernatural element, — such is the 
 Utilitarianism of John Stuart Mill, — but R. L. S. 
 would not have admitted that his maxims had this for 
 basis. On the other hand, it does not advance us to 
 say, " I believe in the supernatural, but I cannot tell 
 what it is or how it comes to be." R. L. S. would 
 certainly have said he believed in God, but he would 
 have refused any definition or explanation; he 
 would have said " I cannot tell," which is the 
 agnostic answer to all questions. His morality 
 was the morality he was taught in his youth, 
 purged of conventional or merely adventitious 
 elements, with particular stress laid on the maxims 
 that inculcated courage, cheerfulness, and kindness. 
 But as he certainly did not hold or continue to 
 accept the theological doctrines he had first imbibed, 
 he would have been hard put to it to give reasons for 
 such faith as was in him. He postulates maxims of 
 conduct as self-evident truths, or which upon re- 
 flection are entitled to rank as proving themselves. 
 And here I leave this interesting but dubious 
 subject. 
 
82 R. L. S. 
 
 ceeded for an hour or more in solitude and stillness 
 —nothing but the heather in front and the edge 
 of the cup — 
 
 Like one that on a lonesome road 
 
 Doth walk in fear and dread. 
 
 It was an eerie feeling. I could not help turning 
 round every minute or two, but behind was as 
 solitary as before. In the very depth of the cup 
 ran a burn of dark, gloomy water. It was dyed 
 by the heather that grew over it. There was the 
 midday halt. It is only under such conditions that 
 you know how delightfully the plainest food tastes, 
 how divinely the sip of usquebaugh drinks. In 
 such solitudes, though amid wilder scenes, Prince 
 Charles after Culloden is said to have acquired a 
 taste for liquor that lasted him through life. The 
 wine of the country goes so well with the water of 
 the country ! I crept on between the West Kip Hill 
 and Gap Law. I was close to Ninemileburn, on 
 the road between Carlops and Edinburgh, on the 
 south of the range, before I met anyone. 
 
 Another day I was at the Cauldstane Slap. This 
 is the most famous of all the passes. It runs between 
 Mid Calder and West Linton, a distance of fourteen 
 miles. Approaching from the north side, you go 
 along the old Lanark road till you reach the edge of 
 a dismal stretch called the Cauld Whang. Here is 
 the Little Vantage Inn, once well known to the 
 old-time drovers, who did not fail to bait man and 
 beast ere they attacked the pass. A grim, odd, 
 cynical name for a house of call ! But it is of no 
 advantage to anybody nowadays, for its hearthstone 
 
PENTLANDS IN R. L. S.'s LIFE 83 
 
 is long cold, and its black and tottering walls would 
 not shelter you against weather. The pass, lofty 
 and exposed, runs between the East Cairn and West 
 Cairn Hills. At the beginning of the ascent you 
 cross the Water of Leith, here a moderate burn 
 save in time of flood, and then you must flounder 
 through the heather as best you may, for there is 
 no path at all. There are some guide-posts whereby 
 you steer your course. Yet in one sense the way 
 is clear enough. As you look up from the lower 
 road at any of those cross-ways you see the hills, 
 as they approach one another, dip down, so to 
 speak, and where they dip lowest that is the pass. 
 But if you go straight at it you founder in bogs, 
 are impeded by burns and hindered by hillocks, so 
 that the circuitous route from post to post is best. 
 It is a stiff climb, and the summit of the pass is 
 wild enough, strewn with huge boulders, surrounded 
 by mighty hills, cold and chill. A slap is properly 
 a gateless opening in a dyke, but here the hills are 
 the dyke and the name is by analogy. 
 
 When you visit a place in the chance way I did, it 
 does not always reveal its historic character. It was 
 a mild autumn day, and the wind blew with little 
 force ; far off I had noted a human figure perched 
 on a boulder on the summit. This turned out to be 
 a placed minister of the National Church, though 
 where was his parish I cannot tell, for he was correct 
 and stiff, and a little offended at the offhand way in 
 which I saluted a fellow-wayfarer. He took himself 
 off presently, and I saw him no more then or after- 
 wards. A gipsy or a drover had been much more 
 
THE CHARACTER OF R. L. S. 283 
 
 were made to supply his need. The prodigal son 
 is usually not considered as an object of either 
 admiration or pity. The money difficulties of 
 R. L. S. were from first to last, if not of his own 
 seeking, at least so easy to be avoided that they 
 call for no sympathy. It is to be said for him that 
 he bore them cheerfully and courageously, that he 
 was reasonably and properly independent, that he 
 accepted help because he was sane and rational, 
 but he did so unwillingly, since it was necessary, and 
 only to the extent necessary — not that he might 
 live in idle ease, but that he might be able to work. 
 From the Bournemouth time he was a well-known 
 and successful author. Thus there was no question 
 of financial difficulty. What had been the effect 
 on his sensitive spirit of long years of poverty and 
 failure ? One cannot be certain, yet there are good 
 grounds for believing that his character had been 
 equal to the strain. If the ship had at last gone 
 down, it would have done so with colours flying. 
 Still its sailor would have said — 
 
 I am the master of my fate, 
 I am the captain of my soul. 
 
 The reasons for this belief are the manner in 
 which he met his long periods of ill-health. From 
 first to last he was never well for any time. He was 
 a delicate child, a sickly youth, an infirm man. 
 These were external facts which he could not con- 
 trol, for from the time of his marriage at any rate 
 himself and his household took every possible care. 
 His sickness was of a chronic nature, and of the 
 most distressing and discouraging kind. There 
 
THE CHARACTER OF R. L. S. 285 
 
 Dickens is perhaps another, though he sometimes 
 gains the mob by what are blemishes, faults of 
 taste and sentiment, and tawdry rhetoric unworthy 
 his great powers. This double success is inspiring 
 and delightful. R. L. S. had it. It was the 
 only success he really cared for, and it went on 
 increasing till the very end. In the last days of 
 his life he did some of his very best work. Thus he 
 had what is judged to be the happiest human con- 
 dition — work with hope. It might not have been 
 so. You can conceive him equally great, but not 
 equally successful. There is the case of his friend 
 Henley, whom no competent critic would pro- 
 nounce inferior in power of mind, whose work at 
 its best you could put beside the best that R. L. S. 
 ever did. He did not make large sums by his 
 writing — very much the opposite, in fact. Suppose 
 R. L. S. equally great as author, and yet not popular. 
 What then ? How would that have affected his 
 cheerfulness and his courage ? The might-have- 
 beens of life are hard to estimate. Yet one again 
 can believe that he would have sustained a literary 
 reverse with courage. He was curiously level- 
 headed in his estimate of his own work. He 
 proved his good sense by that estimate. Then he 
 took success in the most admirable manner. He 
 was honestly and openly glad, but not extra- 
 vagantly or ridiculously so. Such success might 
 have turned many a man's head, made him vain, 
 pompous, affected. He has been accused as self- 
 conscious, very much interested in his own moods 
 of mind, given even to posing. But no one has 
 
286 R. L. S. 
 
 suggested that he was all these things after, and 
 not before; or that success increased them or 
 developed bad seeds in his nature into active and 
 noxious weeds. Rather he mellowed and ripened 
 with prosperity. Though not less gifted, he was 
 more of a normal human being. 
 
 In the great scriptural parable of Job, every evil 
 is pictured as falling on the good man, and we see 
 a character tried and strained but not destroyed. 
 There may be even higher tests. " Prosperity," says 
 Lord Bacon, " is the blessing of the Old Testament, 
 adversity that of the New." R. L. S. had in no 
 common degree, and from very different quarters, 
 high gifts both of prosperity and adversity. His 
 character sustained the strain. One last malice of 
 fate he was spared. He sometimes feared that the 
 mine was worked out, and he had nothing else 
 worth to give the world. This seems to us almost 
 ridiculous. Of course his work is unequal ; so is that 
 of every writer. The second part of New Arabian 
 Nights is much below the first part, and the Wrong 
 Box is far inferior to the Master of Ballantrae. Also 
 we have the names of works that he began and 
 abandoned because he did not find them good 
 enough, and his fear was that he would only do 
 things like this in the future. We know he was 
 wrong ; but had it been otherwise, I think he had 
 strength of mind to have realized and accepted the 
 fact. He would not have produced rubbish, and 
 imposed it on the public because of his name. 
 
 So much for his moral courage, but he had 
 physical as well. Captain Otis of the steamship 
 
THE CHARACTER OF R. L. S. 287 
 
 Casco, reports that in dangerous hurricanes he 
 was perfectly undisturbed. In his wanderings, 
 especially in the South Seas, there were times when 
 he incurred considerable risk, from perils of sea and 
 land, from lawless natives or still more lawless 
 whites, even the forces of local government were 
 arrayed against him; but he never blanched or 
 turned back or even hesitated. There was in him 
 the fighting spirit of the men of the Covenant or 
 of the old warriors. He would have given whole- 
 hearted admiration to the dying Douglas at Otter- 
 burn, who first of all gave thanks to God that he had 
 fallen on the field of battle, not passed away in- 
 gloriously in his bed. R. L. S. had looked death so 
 often in the face in periods of mortal sickness that 
 it had lost all terror for him. The whole external 
 forces of nature were less hostile than his own frail 
 body. 
 
 Of his kindness to his friends and all connected 
 with him his Life and Letters afford abundant proof. 
 It is not necessary to enter the sacred circle of his 
 family relationships to seek for evidence of what is 
 patent. He was naturally proud of the family of 
 which he came. They had a record of some length, 
 and entirely honourable. Their works do follow 
 them. He was no doubt the most distinguished 
 member of a distinguished family; yet before he 
 was born the name of Stevenson, the engineers and 
 lighthouse builders, was a household word through- 
 out the length and breadth of Scotland. And on 
 this account you may say his family affection is 
 easily explained. But he was truly grateful, as wit- 
 
THE CHARACTER OF R. L. S. 287 
 
 Casco, reports that in dangerous hurricanes he 
 was perfectly undisturbed. In his wanderings, 
 especially in the South Seas, there were times when 
 he incurred considerable risk, from perils of sea and 
 land, from lawless natives or still more lawless 
 whites, even the forces of local government were 
 arrayed against him; but he never blanched or 
 turned back or even hesitated. There was in him 
 the fighting spirit of the men of the Covenant or 
 of the old warriors. He would have given whole- 
 hearted admiration to the dying Douglas at Otter- 
 burn, who first of all gave thanks to God that he had 
 fallen on the field of battle, not passed away in- 
 gloriously in his bed. R. L. S. had looked death so 
 often in the face in periods of mortal sickness that 
 it had lost all terror for him. The whole external 
 forces of nature were less hostile than his own frail 
 body. 
 
 Of his kindness to his friends and all connected 
 with him his Life and Letters afford abundant proof. 
 It is not necessary to enter the sacred circle of his 
 family relationships to seek for evidence of what is 
 patent. He was naturally proud of the family of 
 which he came. They had a record of some length, 
 and entirely honourable. Their works do follow 
 them. He was no doubt the most distinguished 
 member of a distinguished family; yet before he 
 was born the name of Stevenson, the engineers and 
 lighthouse builders, was a household word through- 
 out the length and breadth of Scotland. And on 
 this account you may say his family affection is 
 easily explained. But he was truly grateful, as wit- 
 
THE CHARACTER OF R. L. S. 289 
 
 warm welcome, consideration, and respect. R. L. S. 
 
 does not seem to have analysed the reasons that 
 
 led to his favourable reception by his countrymen. 
 
 He appears to have put it down to the kindly nature 
 
 of the people, for he did not ascribe it to himself 
 
 until he became well known, when he naturally was 
 
 compelled to recognize the fact. Had his family 
 
 history been otherwise, he probably would have 
 
 judged somewhat differently of his fellow-Scot. I 
 
 talk of the days before he was famous, for he saw 
 
 almost nothing of his native land after his renown 
 
 was world-wide. He must have felt in those last 
 
 years, however, that even from that remote corner 
 
 of the world he was first of all addressing a Scots 
 
 audience. He must have recognized that many 
 
 a humorous or pathetic touch would come home 
 
 to the Scot as it would to no one else. 
 
 This local or national patriotism did not make 
 
 him unjust to other nations. He was the most 
 
 perfect example possible of the truth of the sentiment 
 
 expressed in two well-known lines of Tennyson — 
 
 That man's the best Cosmopolite 
 Who loves his native country best. 
 
 He understood and loved three very different 
 types of other nations — the Frenchman, the 
 Yankee, the South Sea Islander. He had intimate 
 friends who belonged to one or other of those folks, 
 and he wrote of their countries in a manner which 
 evinced whole-hearted admiration, sympathy, 
 and liking. He was no mawkish sentimentalist. 
 His pathos never becomes bathos ; there is always 
 a spice of quaint humour which corrects and 
 
 !9 
 
290 R. L. S. 
 
 preserves. His insight was too clear not to 
 recognize the evil and the ugly in human life and 
 character — the shark's teeth, active and cruel, 
 that lay hid under the smiling sea. Nay, more, he 
 had a positive taste for the study of what was 
 grimy. His bad characters are not of unrelieved 
 badness, nor his good ones of impossible perfection. 
 The necessity of his story made Edward Hyde an 
 exception; but Hyde is not put forth as a real 
 human being, but as a monster like Frankenstein. 
 Also his neglect of his own rules revenged itself, 
 since Hyde is more melodramatic, more a picture 
 after the style of common or garden fiction, than 
 anything else he ever did. 
 
 Of the charm of character of R. L. S. many of his 
 intimates have spoken in emphatic terms. Of the 
 charm of his works, it is for his readers to judge ; 
 yet how many of them who have never seen him 
 in the flesh have told that they felt towards him 
 as towards a dear friend? Henley once quoted 
 to me the remark that was made of Burns by Mrs. 
 Dunlop that the man himself was so much greater 
 and more delightful than even the best of his works. 
 He said the same thing was true of R. L. S. 
 
CHAPTER XXIV 
 THE QUESTION OF STYLE 
 
 I PRO POSE to set down here some plain points 
 in our author's methods. They are character- 
 istic; they explain the singular charm he 
 possesses ; they give a glimpse into the secret of his 
 success. R. L. S. did not magnify his office either 
 as poet or prose writer. He thinks himself no 
 sacer vates. He has not the proud outlook or 
 pretensions of Dante or Milton. If he does not 
 say, like Burns, that he rhymes for fun, he does not 
 take himself with great seriousness. He is some- 
 thing of a cherry-stone artist ; he works in miniature 
 of set purpose; he avoids great subjects in history 
 and romance, as well as in what he would himself 
 describe as verse rather than poetry. Take the 
 '45, and compare him with Scott. Sir Walter treats 
 naturally, as it were, main incidents of the Rising — 
 the march on Edinburgh, the occupation of the city, 
 the fight at Prestonpans ; also important historical 
 figures, as the Prince and Colonel Gardiner, are 
 set fair and square before you. R. L. S. deals 
 with the Appin murder and some after-effects 
 of the rebellion in Kidnapped and Catriona. His 
 historical characters are all minor — Prestongrange 
 the Lord Advocate, Alan Breck the fugitive 
 
CHAPTER XXIV 
 THE QUESTION OF STYLE 
 
 I PRO POSE to set down here some plain points 
 in our author's methods. They are character- 
 istic; they explain the singular charm he 
 possesses ; they give a glimpse into the secret of his 
 success. R. L. S. did not magnify his office either 
 as poet or prose writer. He thinks himself no 
 sacer vates. He has not the proud outlook or 
 pretensions of Dante or Milton. If he does not 
 say, like Burns, that he rhymes for fun, he does not 
 take himself with great seriousness. He is some- 
 thing of a cherry-stone artist ; he works in miniature 
 of set purpose; he avoids great subjects in history 
 and romance, as well as in what he would himself 
 describe as verse rather than poetry. Take the 
 '45, and compare him with Scott. Sir Walter treats 
 naturally, as it were, main incidents of the Rising — 
 the march on Edinburgh, the occupation of the city, 
 the fight at Prestonpans ; also important historical 
 figures, as the Prince and Colonel Gardiner, are 
 set fair and square before you. R. L. S. deals 
 with the Appin murder and some after-effects 
 of the rebellion in Kidnapped and Catriona. His 
 historical characters are all minor— Prestongrange 
 the Lord Advocate, Alan Breck the fugitive 
 
THE QUESTION OF STYLE 293 
 
 He afterwards issued, but for practical rather 
 than literary purposes, an account of Samoan 
 politics during some troubled years. This he 
 admirably calls A Footnote to History. Even with 
 literary names of his own country he deals very 
 sparingly. He was attracted both by Robert 
 Fergusson and Robert Burns. He frequently refers 
 to the first, though he does not professedly write 
 on him. He has spoken on Some Aspects of the 
 other; this professedly is not a whole-length or 
 even a half-length portrait. He introduces Sir 
 Walter Scott in St. Ives, but it is only a brief inter- 
 view on the hill-side, where the Great Unknown is 
 altogether unknown to the hero, and only known 
 to his companions as the " Shirra." His one 
 short story that deals with an historical character 
 is A Lodging for the Night, an episode in the life of 
 Villon, that picturesque vagabond of genius, wickedly 
 attractive in himself, made more so by the deft 
 touch of a master hand. In Weir of Hermiston 
 we have Braxfield as R. L. S. conceived him, inter- 
 esting, graphic — even important ; though not very 
 important, yet the most important historical person 
 with whom he has dealt in detail. As already noted, 
 his books of travel are interesting, almost, you might 
 say, from the lack of interest. Except in the incident 
 of the Epilogue, nothing important ever happens. 
 Yet with how admirable a skill the most trivial 
 things are set forth ! They call up quaint or 
 humorous or even profound reflections, and you 
 read with delight where more pretentious writings 
 or descriptions would fail to charm. 
 
294 R- L. S. 
 
 With true artistic instinct he selects those 
 narrow fields of history or character or travel as best 
 suited to his genius. He works at ease, not merely 
 in spite of, but because of, the limitations. On 
 deliberate choice he prefers to be an artist in minia- 
 ture. But you never doubt he is an artist. It has 
 been said against him that he is " precious." If 
 that means that he is affected, it is not correct. It 
 is true that he strove diligently after effects in 
 words, and it is true that he was very conscious of 
 those effects. If it is the highest art to conceal 
 art, he is by no means always successful. When he 
 makes a point, hits the bull's eye as it were, brings 
 off his effect, you note the careful workmanship, 
 and his joy in it. 
 
 Scott or Dickens did not work in this way. 
 They painted with broad brush and elementary 
 colours. They too designed their effects, but on a 
 larger scale. There is no mark in them of minute 
 care or elaboration, and you are tolerably certain 
 that no such things were in their plan. R. L. S. is 
 not so great, but he is more subtle, more careful, 
 more conscious. In one sense of the term he is 
 more artistic. He is rather like a French than an 
 English writer, just from his care and use of language. 
 He knows when he has said a good thing, and is 
 pleased with himself for so bringing the effect off. 
 
 Scott or Dickens might be pleased to look back 
 on a favourite among their works, but this would 
 not have reference to paragraphs or phrases, but 
 to the general result. Now R. L. S. weighed and 
 pointed and considered not merely the effect of a 
 
THE QUESTION OF STYLE 295 
 
 paragraph, but that of a sentence, nay even of a 
 single word, trying it as a swordsman might try 
 the temper of his sword. He uses words in un- 
 expected applications, or adjectives qualifying 
 strangely, yet with artistic propriety. He is never 
 cloudy or obscure. This last is perhaps not great 
 praise in an English author, because an analytic 
 language like ours is suitable for clear, not obscure 
 ideas ; but R. L. S. is singularly clear and expressive. 
 It was part of his artistic plan that his words should 
 make very definite impressions, should catch and 
 fix the attention of the reader, arouse interest, 
 and at the same time gratify that interest. 
 
 Let me illustrate this by the quotation of some 
 phrases, though I feel that, like jewels torn from 
 their setting, they shine with diminished lustre, 
 and you must reset them in their own page to get 
 their proper effect. However, to begin with, here 
 are some from Jekyll and Hyde. He talks of the 
 " gaiety of note " in a street he is describing, of 
 " the low growl of London from all round," and 
 again of " the vast hum and patter of the city." 
 I pass the striking account of a London fog, for I 
 cannot disentangle or break off the phrases that 
 together make up one definite impression; and 
 none of the more elaborate effects are reproduced 
 here, for their very reason of length and complexity. 
 But we have this charming touch on some rare 
 vintage : " And the glow of hot autumn afternoons 
 on hill-side vineyards was ready to be set free and 
 disperse the fogs of London." Or again, this of a 
 physical effect : " ' Sir,' said the butler, turning 
 
296 R. L. S. 
 
 to a sort of mottled pallor," which is an exact and 
 vivid description, bringing up the face before you ; 
 or this of a mental process: "To turn on some 
 nobler hinge than the principle of hatred." " Your 
 sight shall be blasted by a prodigy to stagger the 
 unbelief of Satan " — this is not so choice or re- 
 markable, and is more popular almost in the vein 
 of transpontine drama ; but you would not say 
 that of the next two : " Any drug that so potently 
 controlled and shook the very fortress of identity," 
 and " The animal within me licking the chops of 
 memory." This latter is R. L. S. all over. No 
 other writer would have phrased it in that way. 
 Finally : " The slime of the pit seemed to utter cries 
 and voices, the amorphous dust gesticulated and 
 sinned." 
 
 I pick out a few characteristic phrases from 
 The Merry Men : " The rain falling black like 
 crape upon the mountain," "A breeze, I suppose, 
 had flawed the surface," " A wonderful clear night 
 of stars." This last was a favourite phrase of 
 his. You may compare it with one of his most 
 characteristic lines in the scraps of poetry with 
 which he adorned Travels with a Donkey : " By 
 punctual eve the stars were lit." One of his most 
 powerful passages in The Merry Men is the account 
 of those rocks in a storm, a whole page of 
 graphic phrases. Will o' the Mill has at least 
 one eminently characteristic touch, where Death 
 says to Will on the last night, " You have sat close 
 all your days like a hare in its forme." You fancy 
 R. L. S. regarded this with complacency when he 
 
THE QUESTION OF STYLE 297 
 
 had brought it off. It gives the whole essence of 
 the story, which is an experiment in opposites, 
 as Will's philosophy and practice are in marked 
 contrast to the philosophy and practice of his 
 creator. " Let us see," said R. L. S., " how the 
 thing can be put the other way," and you have 
 a brilliant tour de force, the man beginning with a 
 desire to travel, and yet finally contenting himself 
 with an ideal which he never put into practice. 
 It represents one truth in life which may be thus 
 illustrated. You desire for years to visit some 
 famous spot, — Rome or Athens, or it may be Jeru- 
 salem, — and your ambition seems never like to be 
 achieved. Circumstances change, so that you are 
 able to go there. You may be well satisfied, yet 
 you feel afterwards that you have lost something. 
 The vague dream is gone. The attraction of the 
 unknown is gone. At least Will kept this to the 
 last. 
 
 Markheim is also full of characteristic phrases, 
 as : " And through a haggard lift of his upper lip 
 his teeth looked out." This of the dealer : in his 
 shop there is "an intricate chorus of tickings"; 
 and of Markham himself : " Brute terrors like the 
 scurrying of rats in a deserted attic filled the more 
 remote chambers of his brain with riot." 
 
 I limit my quotations from Olalla to those of 
 the wind. You know from his own express state- 
 ments — and if you did not, you would gather it 
 from his works, with their curious references and 
 strange imaginings — that of all the things in the 
 material universe this impressed him most. You 
 
298 R. L. S. 
 
 must remember his exquisite sensitiveness, his 
 peculiar nervous build, his early years in a city 
 where the wind has always a voice, and one that 
 is ever changing. In Olalla the scene is laid far 
 up the Sierras, and it is natural that it should be 
 a place of tempests. Here are some of his de- 
 scriptive phrases : " The wind stormed about the 
 house with a great hollow buzzing and whistling 
 that was wearisome to the ear and dismally de- 
 pressing to the mind." And again : " It did not 
 so much blow in gusts as with the steady sweep 
 of a waterfall." And again : " A far-off wailing 
 infinitely grievous to hear." Or, to take the 
 monster in a softer mood: " The wind in the trees 
 and the many falling torrents in the mountains 
 filled the air with delicate and haunting music." 
 From his Travels, a milk-can is a " great amphora 
 of hammered brass." This is quaint and makes you 
 smile, but it exactly places the object before you. 
 " The hills and the tree-tops looked in from all 
 sides on the clear air." " The leaves danced and 
 prattled in the wind all about us," " but I was rare 
 and hungry." " The world was flooded with a blue 
 light, the mother of the dawn." " The golden 
 specks of autumn in the birches tossed shiveringly." 
 Prince Otto is peculiarly rich in elaborate scenic 
 effects, most remarkable, perhaps, the coming of 
 the day to the Princess, who, " falling from the whole 
 height of civilization, ran forth into the woods 
 a ragged Cinderella." But I will leave the book 
 with this one atom : " The starlight dark, the 
 faint wood airs, the clank of the horse -shoes 
 
THE QUESTION OF STYLE 299 
 
 making broken music, accorded together and 
 attuned his mind." Even in his most solemn 
 moments he puts a thing quaintly, but with how 
 impressive a quaintness ! Thus in the essay Old 
 Mortality he speaks of the destruction of his old 
 friend : " His whole city of hope both ploughed 
 and salted, silently awaiting the deliverer." 
 
 A keen observer of the life around him, he saw 
 its ironic as well as its pathetic aspects. He is 
 humorous and not seldom with an almost sardonic 
 humour, an agreeable acid touch, not too pronounced 
 but distinctly present, which, as he says of his old 
 Scots gardener, lends " a raciness to the merest 
 trivialities of talk." Of this same figure : " He would 
 prelect over some thriving plant with wonderful 
 enthusiasm, piling reminiscence on reminiscence 
 of former yet perhaps finer specimens." The com- 
 panion figure of the shepherd talks with "a kind 
 of honeyed friendly whine." This ironic touch is 
 more pronounced where he is giving us fiction pure 
 and simple, as in The Suicide Club, where " His 
 Highness took the President aside, and congratu- 
 lated him warmly on the demise of Mr. Malthus." 
 Or again : " Florizel in his official robes, and covered 
 with all the orders of Bohemia, received the members 
 of the Suicide Club." In the next story, that de- 
 lightful curate, the Rev. Simon Rolls, reflects : 
 " Here am I with learning enough to be a Bishop, 
 and I positively do not know how to dispose of a 
 stolen diamond. . . . This inspires me with very 
 low ideas of University training." The remarkable 
 lay sermon which Florizel delivers to the detective 
 
300 R. L. S. 
 
 before he throws the Rajah's diamond into the 
 Seine is in point. It has a smack of Horatian 
 commonplaces on wealth expanded, a little of a 
 Scots sermon — and we know that R. L. S. loved 
 ethical speculation, and loved to preach. Yet there 
 is a mocking touch of unreality about it all, and you 
 cannot tell — you suspect the author could not him- 
 self tell — whether he was in jest or earnest. To 
 give one last example. In the Lodging for the Night, 
 after the murder of the monk, Villon, in whom the 
 event has called forth many and various emotions, 
 is robbed by his companions. Occupied with his 
 own reflections, he does not at the time note the 
 theft. " In many ways an artistic nature unfits a 
 man for practical existence." 
 
 Far as he goes in some of those reflections, he does 
 not go too far. He has an exquisite propriety, an 
 instinct of things, a kind of refined common sense, 
 which saves him from opposite dangers. He is 
 pathetic, but always with a certain reserve. He is 
 eloquent, but never merely rhetorical ; and his wit 
 and humour never degenerate into a grin. To 
 put it in another way, he has command of his tools 
 and of his material; the subject never quite runs 
 away with him, though it sometimes goes near it, 
 as in The New Arabian Nights, and perhaps in An 
 Old Scots Gardener. There he begins in a lower and 
 more commonplace way, as if he meant merely to 
 set forth the humours and conceits of a fussy old 
 labourer. But he rises, whether of set purpose or 
 not, into a higher mood, so that the last lines are 
 among the most impressive things even he has ever 
 
THE QUESTION OF STYLE 301 
 
 written. The contrast with the " haughty Baby- 
 lonian " is a master touch, for it "prays in aid," a 
 striking passage in Isaiah, scarcely to be matched 
 even in the Old Testament. He is particularly 
 careful of his conclusions. He never leaves jagged 
 or ragged ends; nay, the whole chapter seems to 
 lead up and to be rounded off by the last few words. 
 Finis coronat opus is true in a peculiar sense of him. 
 Take the Inland Voyage, and glance over the chap- 
 ters. Note the impressive and graceful way in which 
 each of them concludes. And in A Lodging for the 
 Night, the last words that conclude the interview 
 between the Lord of Brisetout and Villon, with the 
 rascal poet's final reflections in the early dawn, 
 rounding off on a low note the tragic horrors of the 
 night, are the very perfection of artistic skill. 
 
 R. L. S. has a yet higher' literary achievement, 
 and that is his use of Scots, not in verse, where he 
 is more of an imitator, but in some phrases and 
 passages in prose. Here he was using a powerful 
 but a dangerous tool, the most dangerous of all in a 
 hand not perfectly skilled, and one like to cut the 
 hand of the would-be artist. Scots lends itself 
 with fatal facility to rhyme, so that it tends to 
 become slipshod. It is difficult to write with 
 dignity and solemnity. There is nothing more 
 drivelling or contemptible than the great mass of 
 Scots minor poetry. Paisley must stand in letters 
 for the third city of the plain, and there is nothing 
 more hideous or more vulgar than the language 
 that is spoken in the by-ways of Glasgow or in a 
 hundred mining villages. But R. L. S. had learned 
 
302 R. L. S. 
 
 his in a better school, " being born Britannis in 
 montibus, indeed, but alas ! inerudito saeculo." He 
 picked up what he knew from old folk in remote 
 glens of the Lammermoors or the Pentlands, yet 
 perhaps the ihiost from written record — Ramsay and 
 Fergusson and Burns, vivified by the simpler talk 
 that he himself had heard. Wherever he got it, 
 he knew how to use it. His archaic terms had 
 height and depth. He attains a gloomy, intense 
 brevity not to be matched out of Tacitus ; a biting, 
 sarcastic humour only equalled in Burns, save that 
 Burns had the advantage of the poet and the native 
 as over the prose writer and the one to whom the 
 words could scarcely be the very words of his child- 
 hood. Scots is full of graphic phrases, of words 
 expressing love and endearment, of descriptive 
 epithets impossible to translate without lengthy 
 paraphrase. In Tod Lapraik and Thrawn Janet 
 he is at his very best. He thought so himself, and 
 his estimates of such things were ever just. The 
 Scots reader at any rate will agree with him. But 
 when his characters talk Scots anywhere, you have 
 this remarkable force. Thus of the Merry Men and 
 the doomed ship : " They're yowlin' for thon 
 schooner." And Uncle Gordon in the same tale: 
 " Muckle, gutsy, blawing whales ; an' fish — the hale 
 clan o' them — cauld-wamed, blind-ee'd, uncanny 
 ferlies." Or the account of Tod Lapraik : " There 
 he sat, a muckle fat white hash of a man like 
 creish, wi' a kind of a holy smile that gart me scunner.' ' 
 And again of the hunter for solan geese : " They 
 pu'd him up like a deid corp, dadding on the craig." 
 
THE QUESTION OF STYLE 303 
 
 There is something of the terrible in the picture of 
 Peden the prophet. As for Thrawn Janet, it is 
 terrible all through : " The saughs skreighed like 
 folk " — but this last phrase is the climax to the 
 scene, and scarcely bears transplanting. I will only 
 refer without further quotation to the Scots of the 
 Judge, his wife, and of Kirstie in Weir of Hermiston. 
 It is the Scots of people of position of an earlier day. 
 As we know, Stevenson said he got his style from 
 the Covenanting writers. It was a conscious ex- 
 aggeration, but at least he got there some of his 
 most impressive phrases ; and not merely that, but 
 as an artist he assimilated their point of view and 
 could, reproduce it clarified and refined, purged of 
 tedious absurdities and irrelevancies. From a some- 
 time neglected garden choked with rank vegetation 
 and wild growth he has plucked his rarest flowers. 
 And not merely he, but others — Sir J. M. Barrie, 
 the late Ian Maclaren, Mr. S. R. Crockett, and so on 
 through the descending ranks of the " kailyard 
 school." The dangers of the language and the 
 thought is shown in countless passages where the 
 writers, to adapt the words of R. L. S. himself, 
 make brutal assaults on your feelings, and wallow 
 naked and not ashamed in pools of drivel. The 
 history of the whole movement or phase is singular. 
 For long years Scots literature seemed altogether on 
 the other side. Sir George Mackenzie was the most 
 elegant of writers for his time. Patrick Walker's 
 Lives had seemed to him the mere ravings of a 
 fanatic. And Allan Ramsay and Fergusson and the 
 learned Pitcairne, all Cavaliers, and the whole 
 
304 R. L. S. 
 
 school they represent, reserved literary admiration 
 for elegant — which usually meant Latin — prose or 
 Scots or Latin verse ; and even yet Mackenzie was 
 a name to conjure with. And then came Scott, in 
 sympathy a Cavalier, and yet with a strange delight 
 in Wodrow and Patrick Walker, and a strange 
 power to picture the folk and the sentiments of 
 the Covenant, so that his own favourites — his Claver- 
 house, his Rob Roy, his Prince Charlie — seem mere 
 lay figures, sawdust dolls, beside living folk like 
 Jeanie Deans, and Cuddie Headrig, and Bailie Nicol 
 Jarvie. And after him the thing came with a rush. 
 Nobody reads Sir George Mackenzie ; probably 
 nobody could if they tried. But the tales of the 
 other side have become more and more popular. 
 They had even surprising success in England and 
 among all the English-speaking peoples. The 
 school, through its excesses, has declined of late 
 years ; yet the thing, when well done, never fails to 
 charm. The eternal spirit of romance is as per- 
 manent as human nature. The Covenanting lives 
 and incidents were, though the actors did not 
 know it, essentially romantic. Moreover, the touch 
 of the supernatural is not merely an added charm, 
 but a charm which in itself is just as powerful. It is 
 fortunate for the fame of R. L. S. that he worked 
 so admirably well in that medium, for, except in 
 Scott's Wandering Willie's Tale in Redgauntlet, there 
 is nowhere else anything approaching Thrawn 
 Janet in the same class of writing to which those 
 two stories belong. It is one of the causes of 
 the continued popularity of our author, and until 
 
THE QUESTION OF STYLE 305 
 
 there is a considerable change in a widespread 
 sentiment he would seem secure of his place. You 
 cannot conceive of anyone arising who would do 
 the thing better. 
 
 Literary fashions, like other fashions, change. 
 The Covenanting note cannot for ever sound pleasing 
 to a great number of readers. Even as it is, it is only 
 on those who know something of the Covenanting 
 mode of thought that Thrawn Janet strikes with 
 its full dire import. The purely English as dis- 
 tinguished from the Scots reader would, no doubt 
 does, prefer Will 0' the Mill or A Lodging for the 
 Night to this record of a lonely northern parish. 
 In considering the future place of R. L. S., you 
 must discount this element, powerfully attractive 
 as it is. It is truly said that the question of his 
 permanent place must be left for time to answer, 
 but a few tentative remarks may be useful, for 
 they will help us to distinguish the essential in 
 his achievement. The croakers who have talked 
 of the inevitable reaction may talk truly, but 
 they are premature. Some thought the reaction 
 would begin with his death; his fame has gone 
 on increasing since. However, some parts of the 
 edifice are only supported by the others. Nothing 
 that he did in collaboration is of the first value, 
 possibly with the exception of his plays or parts 
 of them, when he worked with a man of equal 
 genius. With regard to The Wrong Box, The 
 Wrecker, and More New Arabian Nights, he was 
 encumbered with assistance. No doubt his stepson 
 and his wife were people of ability, but no one ranks 
 20 
 
306 R. L. S. 
 
 them with him as writers, and here at the best they 
 were a fly on the wheel, more often a serious clog. 
 Again, he was not at his best in a long story. The 
 high level is not sustained throughout. The worker 
 in miniature was overweighted by a big plan. I 
 do not see how anyone can place his longer novels 
 on the same level as his short stories, but these are 
 uniformly of the highest merit. Deserving to rank 
 with them are his essays and sketches, and the 
 two volumes of travel, where all his qualities are 
 at their best — his candour and openness, his wit and 
 pathos, his personality vivid on every page, con- 
 stituting the most essential element of that singu- 
 lar charm which permeates his work. Here, he is 
 most the artist in words. He maintains the high 
 level throughout; his construction is perfect. It 
 is difficult to conceive a time when those pieces 
 will fail to attract. If some of his merits be local 
 and accidental, others were founded on a profound 
 knowledge of what is of true interest to everyone 
 who possesses the brain to read intelligently, and 
 the taste to appreciate not merely picturesque 
 and romantic adventure, but refined, tender, and 
 generous human sentiment. Surely the mind of 
 man must undergo radical change ere the best of 
 his work be permanently neglected. 
 
INDEX 
 
 Academy, Edinburgh, 31, 32, 
 
 33.58 
 Advocates' Library, 37, 38 
 Archer, William, 227, 248 
 Argyll, Archibald Duke of, 
 
 127, 128, 132, 149 
 Arthur's Seat, 44, 45 
 
 Balfour, Rev. Dr., 7, 83 
 Balfours of Pilrig, 7, 56, 
 
 I 54~ I 57. 261, 292 
 Barbizon, 15, 179-183, 193, 196 
 Barrie, Sir J. M., Bart., 6, 51, 
 
 274, 303 
 Bass, The, 104, 110-112, 151 
 Baxter, Charles, 33, 40, 31, 52, 
 
 239, 261 
 Baxter Place, 2, 25 
 Bournemouth, 21, 174, 176 
 Braxfield, Lord, 39, 64, 65, 
 
 238, 260, 263, 293 
 Breck, Alan, 58, 106, no, 
 
 115-117, 123, 123, 126, 
 
 129-131, 133-135, 142, 
 
 145-148, 291 
 Bridge, The Forth, 104, 106 
 British Linen Company's 
 
 Bank, 54, 70 
 Broughton, 26, 58, 59 
 Buckstone, The, 78, 100 
 Burns, Robert, 7, 15, 65, 187, 
 
 253. 276. 290. 291, 293, 
 
 302 
 
 Calton Hill, 33, 38, 39, 44. 5&. 
 
 76 
 Canongate, The, 44, 45 
 Carlyle, Thomas, 15, 232 
 Church, Established, 9, 70, 276 
 Church, Free, 9, 70, 276 
 
 Club, Savile, The, 15 
 Cockburn, Lord, 31, 64, 85, 99 
 Colinton, 7, 10, 78, 85-89 
 Colvin, Lady, 101, 229, 233, 
 
 270, 271 
 Colvin, Sir Sidney, 19, 20, 51, 
 94, 96, 158, 226, 228, 239 
 Constitutional Law, Chair of, 
 
 18, 19 
 Cornhill Magazine, The, 16 
 Corstorphine and neighbour- 
 hood, 73, 74, 80, 87, 
 106, 107 
 Covenanters, The, 9, 70, 95, 
 
 96, 98, 99, 188, 272- 
 274, 292, 303, 303 
 
 Cramond, 107, 108 
 Crockett, S. R, 31, 102, 303 
 Cunningham, Alison, 9, 288 
 
 Damien, Father, 26, 220-224 
 
 Davos Platz, 18, 21 
 
 Dickens, Charles, 159, 285, 294 
 
 Edinburgh, 6, 7, ro, 12, 14, 18, 
 20, 25, 27, 29, 32-34, 38, 
 4°-79. 82, 85-87, 89, 92, 
 
 97, 100, 103, 106-109, 
 112, r24, 138, 139, 144, 
 146, 148, 155, 156, 160, 
 171, 178, 229, 235-238, 
 248, 256, 259, 260, 288, 
 291, 292 
 
 Edinburgh Castle, 43, 45, 49, 
 
 60-62, 72, 80, 139 
 Edinburgh, New Town of, 27- 
 
 29. 45. 46 
 Edinburgh, Old, 46, 50, 53, 55, 
 57-59, 63-67, 71, 98, 
 236-238 
 
308 
 
 R.»L. S. 
 
 Edinburgh University, 10, ii, 
 14, 18, 34-36, 156, 259 
 Elgin Marbles, 231, 271 
 
 Fairmilehead, 87, 99, 100, 292 
 Fergusson, Robert, 12, 46, 205, 
 
 235. 236, 253, 293, 302, 
 
 303 
 Ferrier, James Walter, 33, 39, 
 
 226, 231 
 Firth of Forth, 27, 43, 80, 103, 
 
 104 
 Fontainebleau, 15, 178, 179, 192 
 Forbes, Duncan, of Culloden, 
 
 I 3 fl . J 53i 261, 262 
 Fraser, Simon, 149, 152-154, 
 
 261 
 Frederick Street, 30 
 
 George Square, 65, 66 
 Glencorse, 78, 79, 8i, 89, 94, 
 
 95, 100-102 
 Greyfriars, 38, 292 
 Grez, 15, 182, 183 
 Gullane, 109, no 
 
 Hammerton, J. A., 186, 187, 
 
 193. 194 
 Henley, W. E., 10, 15, 26, 39, 
 
 158, 162, 169, 177, 196, 
 
 197. 222, 232, 236, 239, 
 
 240, 244-247, 250, 285, 
 
 290 
 Heriot Row, 8, 27-30, 75, 259 
 Heriot's Hospital, 27, 31, 32 
 Highlands, The, r8, 27, 45, 
 
 1 1 4-1 22 
 High School, Edinburgh, 33, 67 
 High Street, 44, 45, 56, 67, 90, 
 
 148 
 Holyrood, 43, 44, 47, 49, 58, 67 
 Horace, 207, 252, 276, 300 
 Howard Place, 6, 8, 26, 27 
 Hugo, Victor, 16, 177, 274, 275 
 Hume, David, 39, 90, 156 
 
 Inverleith Terrace, 8, 26 
 
 Jacobites, The, 45, 59, 67, 82, 
 118, 123, 137, 142-146, 
 153. 291, 292, 303, 304 
 
 {enkin, Fleeming, n, 21, 258 
 ohnson, Dr. Samuel, 116, 
 168, 241 
 Judges, Scots, 64, 66, 127, 128, 
 261, 262 
 
 Knox, John, 95, 292 
 
 Lang, Andrew, 20, 135, 137, 143 
 
 Leith, 25, 155 
 
 Leith Walk, 23, 40, 56 
 
 Leith, Water of, 26, 56, 83, 86 
 
 Lewis, Bailie, 6 
 
 London, 10, 15, 49, 50, 97, 142, 
 
 158-167, 176-178 
 Lothian Road, 40 
 
 Mackenzie, Sir George, 37, 198, 
 
 3°3. 304 
 Masson, Professor, n, 12 
 Monterey, 16, 208, 209 
 Moray House, 48, 54 
 Murder, The Appin, 11S, 117, 
 
 123-126, 134, 135, 139, 
 
 291 
 
 New York, 16, 22, 207, 210, 
 
 211 
 Nor' Loch, 43-45, 53, 62 
 North Berwick, 10, no, 112, 
 
 "3 
 
 Osbourne, Lloyd, 176, 305, 306 
 Otis, Captain, 215, 225, 286 
 
 Paris, 15, 49, 74, 148, 161, 175, 
 
 177, 179, 184, 195, 196 
 Parliament House, 37, 64, 67, 
 
 131, 260, 261, 263 
 Peebles, 96, 103 
 Pentlands, The, 7, 10, 44, 
 
 78-102, 292, 302 
 Picardy Place, 23, 56 
 Pinero, Sir A. W., 248, 249 
 Prestongrange, Lord, 1 49-1 51, 
 
 261, 291 
 Princes Street, 30, 39, 49, 53, 
 
 62, 69, 72 
 
 Queensferry, 103-107, 117, 173 
 Queen Street, 28, 29 
 
INDEX 
 
 309 
 
 Ramsay, Allan, 55, 302, 303 
 Religion of R. L. S., 272-381 
 Road, Great North, ©2, 109, 
 
 168 
 Rock, Inchcape, 2, 3 
 Roy, Rob, and his sons, 119, 
 
 136-144, 292 
 Rullion Green, 85, 98, 99, 292 
 
 San Francisco, 16, 17, 207-209 
 
 Scots Observer, The, 26, 197, 222 
 
 Scott, Sir Walter, Bart., 15, 31, 
 
 46, 66, 85, 93, 100, 104, 
 
 in, 115, 148, 168, 170, 
 
 220, 257, 261, 291-294, 
 
 304 
 Shakespeare, 8, 168, 170, 284 
 Silvermills, 58 
 Simpson, Sir W. G., Bart., 16, 
 
 1 91-197, 200, 201, 226 
 Slap, The Cauldstane, 78, 82- 
 
 84, 92, 97 
 Smith, Rev. Dr., of Galston, 7 
 Smith, Thomas, engineer, 2, 
 
 25 
 South Seas, Books on, 216, 
 
 219, 224 
 St. Cuthbert's Church, 39, 57 
 St. Giles', 37, 55, 72 
 Stephen, Sir Leslie, 15, 19 
 Stevenson, Allan, 5, 174 
 Stevenson, David, 3, 6 
 Stevenson, Robert, 2-3, 7, 11, 
 
 25, 256 
 Stevenson, R. A. M. (" Bob"), 
 S, 174, 181, 196,226, 231 
 Stevenson, R. L. — 
 
 Advocate, 14, 15, 37, 38 
 America, in, 16, 17, 22, 
 
 203-214 
 As engineer and lawyer, 
 
 236-263 
 As letter-writer, 226-235 
 As playwright, 236-249 
 As rhymer, 250-255 
 Birth, 6 
 
 Character, 49, 282-290 
 Continent, on the, 15, 18, 21, 
 
 178-202 
 Courtship and marriage, 16, 
 17, 209 
 
 Stevenson, R. L. (continued) — 
 Death, 23 
 
 Dress, 13, 201, 202, 205 
 Early years, 7-10 
 Education, 11, 12, 14, 30, 
 
 31-34 
 England, in, 15, 21, 158- 
 
 176, 283 
 Family, 1, 2 
 France, in, 15, 177-196 
 Grave and epitaph, his, 23, 
 
 24, 225 
 Health, 17, 18, 22, 23, 174, 
 
 175, an, 227, 283, 284 
 Highlands, in the, 18-20 
 Mention, 4, 5, 7, 8, 46, 
 
 65, 85-90, 102-104, 108, 
 
 112, 113, 115, 121, 140, 
 
 143. J 49. 151. 15a 
 Name, 1, 2 
 
 Scots.use of,234,233,30i-303 
 Speculative Society, 35, 36, 
 
 67 
 Style, question of, 291-306 
 Works — 
 
 Aes Triplex, 276 
 Amateur Emigrant, 204- 
 
 207, 211 
 Appeal to the Clergy of the 
 
 Church of Scotland, 276 
 Ballads, 254 
 Beau Austin, 174, 240- 
 
 242, 247, 248, 265 
 Black Arrow, The, 169, 
 
 170, 232, 265 
 Body-Snatcher, The, 18, 68, 
 
 69, 169, 264 
 Brodie, Deacon, 236-240, 
 
 248, 249, 260, 265, 269 
 Burns, Robert, Some 
 
 Aspects of, 293 
 Camp, A, 253 
 Catriona, 23, 53, 55-59, 
 
 109-113, 114, 123, 133, 
 
 134, 136, 140, 141, 145- 
 
 149, 151, 132, I94i 197- 
 
 199, 233. 261, 269, 291 
 Child's Garden of Verses, 
 
 21, 250, 251 
 Children, The Whole Duty 
 
 of, 252 
 
3io 
 
 R. L. S. 
 
 Stevenson, R. L. {continued) — 
 Works (continued) — 
 
 Christmas Sermon, A, 277 
 Donkey, Travels with a, 16, 
 
 184-190, 276, 296, 298 
 Ebb Tide, The, 173, 176, 
 
 219, 220, 264 
 Engineers, Records of a 
 
 Family of, 4, 258 
 Evensong, 255 
 Falesd, The Beach of, 219 
 Falling in Love, 270 
 Fontainebleau, 179 
 Footnote to History, 219, 
 
 293 
 Foreigner at Home, The, 31 
 Gardener, An old Scots, 
 
 300, 301 
 Gardener, To a, 151 
 Gossip on Romance, 105, 
 
 173. 174 
 
 Guinea, Admiral, 242- 
 244, 247-248, 263 
 
 Heathercat, 95, 274 
 
 Ille Terrarum, 253, 276 
 
 Inland Voyage, An,l6,i84, 
 191-197, 200, 201, 293, 
 301 
 
 Island Nights' Entertain- 
 ments, 219 
 
 Jenhin, Fleeming, Life of, 
 21, 258 
 
 Kidnappedj 21, 53, 55, 
 103-107, 114-120, 123, 
 136, 143, 145, 264, 291 
 
 Knox, John, and his Rela- 
 tions to Women, 270, 292 
 
 Lantern Bearers, The, 1 1 1 , 
 
 "3 
 
 Lapraih, Tod, 112, 227, 
 
 232, 302 
 Lay Morals, 279 
 Letters, The, 121, 170, 275, 
 
 287 
 Lightkeeper, The, 258 
 Lodging for the Night, A, 
 
 177, 204, 264, 293, 300, 
 
 3°i, 305 
 Lowden Sabbath Morn, A, 
 
 101, 253, 274 
 Macaire, 244-248 
 
 Stevenson, R. L. (continued) — 
 Works (continued) — 
 
 Markheim, 159, 160, 264, 
 
 297 
 Master of Ballantrae, 22, 
 
 32, 204, 210-213, 261, 
 
 265, 286 
 Memories and Portraits, 
 
 85. 105 
 Merry Men, The, 18, 120, 
 
 hi, 233, 265, 296, 302 
 New ArabianNights,i6,2i, 
 
 75, 76, 160-163,213,214, 
 
 266-268, 286, 300, 305 
 Nicholson, John, Misad- 
 venture's of, 69-74,95, 265 
 Olalla, 21, 199, 200, 267, 
 
 297, 298 
 Old and New Pacific 
 
 Capitals, 207 
 Old Mortality, 39, 76, 299 
 Open Letter, 222-224, 272- 
 
 274 
 Otto, Prince, 199, 266, 298, 
 
 299 
 PavilionontheLinks, 16,266 
 Pentland Rising, The, 98, 
 
 99, 272, 273 
 Picturesque Notes, 38, 53, 
 
 54, 76, 260, 292 
 Poems, 70 
 
 Prayers, 273, 278, 279 
 Providence and the Guitar, 
 
 183, 267 
 Pulvis el Umbra, 276 
 Raebum, Notes on Some 
 
 Portraits by, 64, 260 
 Rajah's Diamond, The, 161 
 Silverado Squatters, 52, 
 
 209, 210 
 Sire de Malitroif s Door, 
 
 190, 267 
 Songs of Travel and Other 
 
 Verses, 254 
 South Seas, In the, 22-24, 
 
 26, 216-225 
 St. Ives, 59-64, 91-93, 107, 
 
 108, 168, 171, 172, 190, 
 
 261, 265, 269 
 Story of a Lie, 172, 204 
 Story of the Pair Cuban, 214 
 
INDEX 
 
 3" 
 
 Stevenson, R. L. (continued) — 
 Works (continued) — 
 
 Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll 
 
 and Mr. Hyde, The, 22, 
 
 139, 160, 163, 164, 249, 
 
 260, 264, 290, 295 
 Suicide Club, The, 161, 299 
 Thrown Janet, 18, 95, 
 
 227, 233, 302-305 
 Treasure Island, 20, 169, 
 
 172, 173, 243, 244, 264 
 Treasure of Franchard, 
 
 The, 183 
 Underwoods, 70, 252, 253 
 Vagabond, The, 254 
 Virginibus Puerisque, 270, 
 
 276 
 Walking Tours, 185 
 Weir of Hermiston, 23, 64, 
 
 91,93-98, 101,233,261, 
 
 262, 269, 274, 293, 303 
 Will o' the Mill, 199, 204, 
 
 270, 296, 305 
 Wrecker, The, 76, 172, 
 
 176, 177, 219, 261, 305 
 Wrong Box, The, 164, 165, 
 
 176, 261, 265, 286, 305 
 Young Chevalier, The, 200 
 Youth and Love, 254 
 Stevenson, Mrs. R. L., 16, 17, 
 
 22, 183, 203, 204, 209, 
 
 273. 305. 3°8 
 
 Stevenson, Thomas, 5, 6, 11, 
 14, 17, 22, 25-27, 33, 39, 
 74, 174, 210, 235, 244, 
 256, 257, 259 
 
 Stevenson, Mrs. Thomas, 7, 8, 
 17, 22, 26, 256 , 273 
 
 Stewart, James, of the Glen, 
 117, 123, 124, 126, 129- 
 
 133. 139, 145. 14 6 . !5i 
 Stewart, James, Trial of, 127- 
 
 135. 139, 140. *4 8 . T 49. 
 
 *53, I 54> I 98, 261 
 Supernatural, 48 
 Swanston, 10, 64, 78, 87, 88, 
 
 90, 91, 99, 292 
 Symonds, J. A., 18 
 
 Tantallon, no, in. 
 Tennyson, 231, 250, 289 
 Tryst, The Fisher's, 78, 89, 
 
 102 
 Tryst, The Hunter's, 78, 88, 
 
 89, 99, 100 
 
 Virgil, 200, 232, 250, 252 
 
 Walker, Patrick, 113, 274, 303, 
 
 304 
 Weir, Major, 48, 56 
 Wind, The, 29, 46, 49, 230, 251, 
 
 297, 298 
 Women of R. L. S., 264-271 
 
PriitUd h 
 
 Morrison & Gibe Limited 
 Edinburgh 
 
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