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ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON 
 
HEROES OF ALL TIME 
 
 FIRST VOLUMES 
 
 Alexander the Great. By Ada Russell, M.A. 
 (Vict.) 
 
 Alfred the Great. By A. E. McKilliam, M.A. 
 
 Augustus. By Rene Francis, B.A. 
 
 Jeanne d'Arc. By E. M. Wilmot-Buxton, 
 F.R.Hist.S. 
 
 Mohammed. By Edith Holland. 
 
 Robert Louis Stevenson. By Amy Cruse. 
 
 Sir Walter Raleigh. By Beatrice Marshall. 
 
 William the Silent. By A. M. Miall. 
 
 Other volumes in active preparation 
 
R. I.. S. IN THE SOUTH SEAS 
 
ROBERT LOUIS 
 STEVENSON 
 
 BY 
 
 AMY CRUSE 
 
 With Frontispiece in Color and Eight 
 Black-and-White Illustrations 
 
 NEW YORK 
 FREDERICK A. STOKES COMPANY 
 
 PUBLISHERS 
 
Copyright, 1915, by 
 Frederick A. Stokes Company 
 
 All Rights Reserved 
 
 August, 1915 
 
 JL'L 20 1915 
 
 'CI.A4U1833 
 
Acknowledgment 
 
 iJ ^ li 
 
 THE author and publishers acknowledge with 
 thanks the kindness of Messrs. Charles Scrib- 
 ner's Sons, who have permitted the use in this % '• '' 
 volume of copyrighted material from various 
 works of Robert Louis Stevenson published by 
 them. 
 
 [v] 
 
Contents 
 
 CHAPTEB PAGE 
 
 I. A Family of Engineers 13 
 
 II. Childhood 25 
 
 III. Preparing for a Profession .... 40 
 
 IV. Wander-Years 59 
 
 V. California 76 
 
 VI. In Search of Health 92 
 
 VII. America and the South Seas ... 116 
 
 VIII. Vailima 146 
 
 Epilogue: The Writer and the Man . 185 
 
 [vii] 
 
Illustrations 
 
 R. L. S. in the South Seas .... Frontispiece v 
 
 FAGB 
 
 Stevenson's Father 20^ 
 
 R. L. S. and His Mother 26 
 
 Swanston Cottage 46 ' 
 
 "Cummie" 64^- 
 
 Portrait of Stevenson at VaiHma 102 ^ 
 
 Father Damien 132 
 
 The Residence at VaiHma 148 
 
 The Family and Household at Vailima . . 162 
 
 [«] 
 
ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON 
 
CHAPTER I: A Family of 
 Engineers 
 
 THE history of English literature on its 
 biographical side serves to show how few 
 of our great writers have come of a 
 literary stock. In one instance after another the 
 same story is repeated; a strong and virile race, 
 following some active occupation, produces at a 
 certain stage a man or woman who provides it 
 with means of expression; and, though this is 
 probably mere coincidence, the branch of the 
 family thus distinguished has a way of soon after- 
 ward dwindling and dying out. Chaucer came of 
 a family of vintners, Shakespeare of a family of 
 yeomen. Sir Walter Scott had behind him a long 
 line of Border * cattle-lifters.' Thackeray's imme- 
 diate ancestors were India merchants, George 
 Eliot's were carpenters and builders, and Robert 
 Louis Stevenson's father, grandfather, and great- 
 grandfather were engineers. Instances might be 
 multiplied, but these may suffice; and the con- 
 clusion seems to be that in the race as well as in 
 the individual, literature, if it is to be strong and 
 living, must be in the closest touch with life. 
 
 In Robert Louis Stevenson the conception of a 
 man as the product of forces that had gathered 
 through the long line of his ancestors was pecu- 
 liarly vivid. He looked back past his more imme- 
 diate progenitors and saw behind them in the dim 
 distance the figures of certain Highland chiefs of 
 
 [13] 
 
Robert Louis Stevenson 
 
 the clan Macgregor, who, tradition said, were the 
 founders of his race; and he saw the traits of these 
 chiefs perpetuated through the company of "de- 
 cent, reputable folk, following honest trades," who 
 came after them. "I cannot conceal from my- 
 self," he said, "the possibility that James Steven- 
 son in Glasgow, my first authentic ancestor, may 
 have had a Highland alias upon his conscience and 
 a claymore in his back parlour." This James 
 Stevenson had a son, Robert, who became a malt- 
 ster, and the father of ten children; and one of 
 these, Alan, was Robert Louis' great-grandfather. 
 He left behind him when he died, a widow and a 
 little son two years old, who was to become the 
 most famous of a line of engineers. 
 
 Through all these Stevenson traced the gather- 
 ing up of the 'component parts' that were to coa- 
 lesce in the making of himself, their descendant. 
 He looked back also over his ancestors on his 
 mother's side, and saw a certain part of himself 
 in that James Balfour, minister of St. Giles', 
 Edinburgh, who was one of the divines who with- 
 stood James VI in his design of establishing Epis- 
 copacy in Scotland; and in that later James 
 Balfour who became Professor of Moral Philoso- 
 phy in the University of Edinburgh, and took for 
 his wife one of the clan of the Border Elliots. 
 Through this ancestress Stevenson claims that he 
 has "shaken a spear in the Debatable Land, and 
 shouted the slogan of the Elliots." Her grand- 
 son was Lewis Balfour, who became minister of 
 
 [14] 
 
A Family of Engineers 
 
 the parish of Colinton, and whom, in his old age, 
 his own grandson held in reverence and dread for 
 his stately bearing, the cold aloofness of his man- 
 ner, and his strict views on discipline. "Try as 
 I please," says Robert Louis Stevenson, "I cannot 
 join myself on with the reverend doctor, and all 
 the while, no doubt, and even as I write the 
 phrase, he moves in my blood, and whispers 
 words to me, and sits efficient in the very knot 
 and centre of my being." ^ 
 
 But it was not any of these who had the chief 
 voice in deciding what manner of man this de- 
 scendant of theirs should be. It was a certain 
 *lamp and oil man' who, at about the time when 
 the future minister of Colinton was a young stu- 
 dent at Edinburgh University, lived with his wife 
 and five small children in his shop beside the Tron. 
 He had at that time no connection with the Stev- 
 enson family, and his name was the unremarkable 
 name of Thomas Smith. He was, however, not 
 an entirely unremarkable man. He was clear- 
 headed and energetic, and his nature was at once 
 immensely practical and immensely enthusiastic. 
 His ardour for business led him into various com- 
 mercial projects, and these all prospered. He was 
 no scientist, but his keen, practised intelligence 
 carried him into the scientific paths of invention 
 and discovery. He designed a system of oil lights 
 to supersede the primitive coal fires then used in 
 lighthouses, and as a consequence of this he was, 
 
 1 Memories and Portraits, "The Manse." 
 
 [15] 
 
Robert Louis Stevenson 
 
 in August 1786, made engineer to the newly 
 formed Board of Northern Lighthouses. 
 
 It was about a year after this new appointment 
 had changed the character of Thomas Smith's 
 interests and occupations that he married Mrs 
 Alan Stevenson, of whom something has already 
 been said. Twelve years had passed since the 
 death of her first husband, and during those years 
 she had fought a brave fight with poverty and had 
 striven desperately to give her son Robert such an 
 education as would enable him to become a minister 
 of the Scottish Church. But the lad did not share 
 his mother's ambition. He had no zeal for learn- 
 ing, and though he was not a dunce, he failed 
 to distinguish himself in any way as a scholar. At 
 the time of his mother's marriage the motive power 
 that was to shape his life was yet to seek. 
 
 The marriage brought two families together 
 under one roof, and in the household thus formed 
 new forces of influence and attraction were soon 
 at work. Thomas Smith's two eldest daughters, 
 Jean and Janet, gentle, pious, unworldly girls, 
 gravitated naturally toward their gentle, pious, 
 unworldly stepmother, and the three entered upon 
 a mildly busy life, full of church-going and kind 
 deeds, of sanctimonious intimacies and edifying 
 correspondence with devout but unfortunate peti- 
 tioners. Robert, on the other hand, quickly took 
 fire at the glow of his stepfather's enthusiasm, and 
 the calling of a lighthouse engineer became the 
 one calling in the world for him. The romance 
 
 [16] 
 
A Family of Engineers 
 
 of a life so full of adventures in unknown seas, of 
 dangers by storm and shipwreck and savage men, 
 of stern encounters with the forces of nature, of 
 hardly won victories, took hold on the boy's imagi- 
 nation, and his ambition was fired by the possi- 
 bility of great achievements. Henceforward his 
 delight in his profession was "strong as the love 
 of woman." At nineteen he had advanced so far 
 as to be appointed to superintend the construction 
 of a lighthouse on the isle of Little Cumbrae 
 in the Firth of Clyde; and from that time his 
 record shows a steady progress from one great 
 work to another. During the summer months of 
 each year he was engaged in the active work of 
 his calling; in the winter he laboured with a zeal 
 that his student days had never known to im- 
 prove himself in mathematics, chemistry, natural 
 history, agriculture, moral philosophy, and logic, 
 sitting "a bearded man among boys" in the class- 
 rooms of the University of Edinburgh. In 1799, 
 when he was twenty-seven years old, he married 
 his stepfather's daughter, Jean Smith. By this 
 "extraordinary arrangement in which," says his 
 grandson, "it is hard not to suspect the managing 
 hand of a mother," Thomas Smith was brought 
 into blood relationship with the later Stevensons. 
 The marriage was a happy one, though the two 
 had few interests or ideals in common. The hus- 
 band was a busy, active man of the world, enam- 
 oured of his calling and ambitious of gaining 
 distinction in it. He succeeded, and his success 
 
 [17] 
 
Robert Louis Stevenson 
 
 raised him to a social sphere higher than that of 
 his fathers, where his associates were men of posi- 
 tion and culture. The wife remained what she 
 had always been, a pious, mild-natured, kindly 
 woman, interested only in her religion, her chil- 
 dren, ^nd her home, the natural prey of 'godly' but 
 inefficient servants and tradespeople; yet devotedly 
 loved by the husband and sons who smiled with 
 tender amusement at her small weaknesses. 
 
 In 1807 Robert Stevenson succeeded his step- 
 father as sole engineer to the Board of Northern 
 Lights, and in this capacity he established a kind 
 of patriarchal rule over the lighthouse-keepers and 
 workmen under his authority. He made himself 
 dreaded by his insistence upon exact obedience to 
 the rules that he laid down, and loved for the 
 staunchness with which he upheld the interests of 
 his scattered family and the sympathy he showed 
 with their troubles. The slack lighthouse-keeper 
 who had not brought the appointments of hr^ 
 charge to that perfection of cleanliness and bright- 
 ness which Mr Stevenson required trembled when 
 the engineer's boat was sighted; and the man who 
 had ideas of his own grumbled at the minuteness 
 of supervision that regulated even his domestic 
 arrangements. But if these men were in trouble, 
 if their sons wanted a helping hand, or if illness 
 had wasted their resources, it was to this stern 
 martinet that they came, with the assurance that 
 he would listen and do his best to help them. At 
 his house in Edinburgh, No. 1 Baxter's Place, any 
 
 [18] 
 
A Family of Engineers 
 
 man employed by the Northern Lights was always 
 heartily welcome, and there was a constant com- 
 ing and going of "odd, out-of-the-way characters, 
 skippers, light-keepers, masons and foremen of all 
 sorts," greatly to the enjoyment of the family of 
 children who were growing up in that old-fash- 
 ioned roomy, delightful dwelling. Its long garden, 
 its cellars, its garrets and apple-lofts where yarns 
 heard in the parlour could be thrillingly re-enacted; 
 its high windows, where, with perils of darkness 
 and perils of waters, lights could be planted that 
 shone out over the wide and gloomy spaces of the 
 Calton Hill, made it an entrancing home for a 
 family of boys. The fascination of their father's 
 calling was strong upon the young Stevensons. 
 A sense of the romance of the sea and a realiza- 
 tion of the waste and lonely places of the earth 
 were theirs by inheritance. 
 
 For thirty-six years Robert Stevenson held his 
 post as Engineer to the Board of Northern Lights, 
 and one after another there arose the great light- 
 houses that are connected with his name. His 
 first and his greatest triumph was the Bell Rock 
 Lighthouse, which was completed in 1811. He 
 wrote and published an account of his work and 
 the book has been recognized by judges as a 
 masterpiece of its sort. Once each year he made 
 a tour of inspection of tJie lights, starting in the 
 Government yacht froni Leith and sailing round 
 the northern coast to Greenock. Sir Walter Scott, 
 ■"ivho, in 1814 joined the party of Commissioners 
 ^3^ [ 19 ] 
 
Robert Louis Stevenson 
 
 who sailed with Mr Stevenson in the yacht 
 Pharos, spoke of him as "the celebrated engineer," 
 and added, "I delight in these professional men of 
 talent; they always give you some new lights by 
 the peculiarities of their habits and studies, so 
 different from the people who are rounded, and 
 smoothed, and ground down for conversation, and 
 who can say all that every other person says and 
 — nothing more." Robert Stevenson's conversa- 
 tion, as his friends record and his letters go to 
 prove, was certainly not of the order of the com- 
 monplace; and it combined, with his striking 
 appearance — his broad shoulders, massive head, 
 grand rugged face and stern eyes — to make him 
 noted and remembered by all who met him. 
 
 As his sons grew up three of them, Alan, David, 
 and Thomas, became associated with him in his 
 work. They were enthusiasts of the same fine 
 and steady temper as their father, and when in 
 1843, his health began to fail and he resigned the 
 position he had held for so long, he was succeeded 
 by his son Alan. For six years after this he went 
 with his son on the annual tour of inspection. In 
 the seventh year the decline in his health was so 
 rapid that his friends tried to persuade him to 
 give up the idea of taking part in the voyage, 
 but he persisted in his intention until, on the very 
 eve of his son's departure, the truth had to be 
 told to him. He was stricken with a mortal ill- 
 ness that would probably bring his life to an end 
 before the cruise could be finished. The old man 
 
 [20] 
 
STEVENSON S FATHER 
 
A Family of Engineers 
 
 took the news firmly; he was not afraid of death 
 nor greatly disturbed to know that it was near. 
 "But there was something else that would cut 
 him to the quick — the loss of his cruise, the end 
 of all his cruising; the knowledge that he had 
 looked his last on Sunburgh, and the wild crags 
 of Skye, and that Sound of Mull, with the praise 
 of which his letters were so often occupied; that 
 he was never again to hear the surf break in 
 Clashcarnock : never again to see lighthouse after 
 lighthouse (all younger than himself and the more 
 part of his own device) open in the hour of dusk 
 their flowers of fire, or the topaz and the ruby 
 interchange on the summit of the Bell Rock. To 
 a life of so much activity and danger, a life's work 
 of so much interest and essential beauty, here 
 came a long farewell." ^ 
 
 He died in July 1850, and his three sons were 
 left to carry on his work. Each of them in turn 
 filled the post of Engineer to the Board of North- 
 ern Lights. Alan, with Thomas working under 
 him, built that "noblest of all extant deep-sea 
 lights," Skerryvore. This was one of the most 
 dangerous and difiicult of any of the operations 
 the family had undertaken. "It will be a most 
 desolate position for a lighthouse," Scott had said 
 when he had landed on the Skerryvore rocks dur- 
 ing the tour of 1814, "the Bell Rock and Eddy- 
 stone . joke to it, for the nearest land is the wild 
 island of Tyree, at fourteen miles distance." 
 
 * Graham Balfour's Lije. 
 
 [21] 
 
Robert Louis Stevenson 
 
 This great work was completed in 1844, and the 
 brothers always looked upon it as their greatest 
 triumph. Thomas and David Stevenson, working 
 together, "added two — the Chickens and Dhu 
 Heartack — to that small number of man's ex- 
 treme outposts in the ocean." They erected also 
 no fewer than twenty-seven shore-lights and 
 twenty-five beacons, and they built many har- 
 bours. Thomas Stevenson is, however, best known 
 by his inventions and improvements in connexion 
 with the illumination of lighthouses. He per- 
 fected the revolving light, and invented the 
 azimuthal condensing system.^ He wrote several 
 works dealing with the subject, and these gained 
 him much fame among members of his own pro- 
 fession all over the world. 
 
 In many respects Thomas Stevenson resembled 
 his father, but he added to the sturdy traits of 
 the resolute and autocratic old man a melancholy, 
 a rare sensitiveness, and a touch of almost painful 
 humility that softened and sweetened his char- 
 acter. No words can describe him so well as 
 those of his son. "He was a man of somewhat 
 antique strain; with a blended sternness and soft- 
 ness that was wholly Scottish and at first some- 
 what bewildering; with a profound essential 
 melancholy of disposition and (what often accom- 
 panies it) the most humourous geniality in com- 
 
 * An arrangement of prisms by which the light proceeding from 
 the flames is allocated in the different azimuths, or directions, in 
 proportion to the distances at which the light requires to be seen 
 by the mariner in those directions. 
 
 [22] 
 
A Family of Engineers 
 
 pany; shrewd and childish; passionately attached, 
 passionately prejudiced; a man of many extremes, 
 many faults of temper, and no very stable foot- 
 hold for himself among life's troubles. . . . He 
 had never accepted the conditions of man's life 
 or his own character; and his inmost thoughts 
 were ever tinged with the Celtic melancholy. . . . 
 But he found respite from these troublesome 
 humours in his work, in his life-long study of 
 natural science, in the society of those he loved, 
 and in his daily walks which now would carry 
 him far into the country with some congenial 
 friend, and now keep him dangling about the town 
 from one old book-shop to another, and scraping 
 romantic acquaintance with every dog that passed. 
 . . . His talk, compounded of so much sterling 
 sense and so much freakish humour, and clothed 
 in language so apt, droll, and emphatic, was a 
 perpetual delight to all who knew him. ... It 
 was perhaps another Celtic trait that his affec- 
 tions and emotions, passionate as these were, and 
 liable to passionate ups and down, found the most 
 eloquent expression both in words and gestures. 
 Love, anger, and indignation shone through him, 
 and broke forth in imagery, like what we read of 
 Southern races." ^ 
 
 It is not difficult to recognize Robert Louis 
 Stevenson as the son of this man, and he was no 
 less clearly the son of his mother. In 1848 Thomas 
 Stevenson married Margaret Isabella Balfour, 
 
 ^ Memories and Portraits, 
 
 [23] 
 
Robert Louis Stevenson 
 
 daughter of that Lewis Balfour who, as his grand- 
 son imagined, may, as he "posted up the Bridges" 
 to his classes in Edinburgh, have passed the 
 "lamp and oilman taking down the shutters from 
 his shop beside the Tron." The young student 
 had grown to be a man, had taken orders, mar- 
 ried, and became a zealous minister of the Scot- 
 tish church. In 1823 he had come to the parish 
 of Colinton, on the Water of Leith, four miles 
 south-east of Edinburgh, where he was to remain 
 for thirty-seven years. At the manse, as at the 
 house in Baxter Place, there had been thirteen 
 sons and daughters, and these, being grown to 
 manhood and womanhood had gone out into the 
 world, many of them to strange and far-off coun- 
 tries: so that "letters with outlandish stamps 
 became familiar to the local postman, and the 
 walls of the little chambers brightened with the 
 wonders of the East." ^ Margaret Isabella was 
 the youngest of the family, and the special charge 
 of her elder sister, Jane. She was a beautiful girl, 
 tall, slender and graceful, and she had a bright, 
 happy temperament that made friends for her 
 wherever she went. From her came Stevenson's 
 gaiety and brilliance, his spirit of adventure, his 
 thirst for new experiences, and the charm by 
 which he won his way to all hearts. "We are all 
 nobly born," he once said; "fortunate those who 
 know it; blessed those who remember." He indeed 
 was nobly born, and he knew it, and remembered. 
 
 1 Memories and Portraits, *'The Manse." 
 
 [24] 
 
CHAPTER II: Childhood 
 
 THOMAS STEVENSON took his wife to 
 a small stone-built house known as No. 
 8 Howard Place, Edinburgh, which stood 
 on low ground just to the north of the Water of 
 Leith. Here on November 13th, 1850, their son 
 was born. He was called Robert after his grand- 
 father, Robert Stevenson, who had died four 
 months before his birth, and Lewis Balfour after 
 his other grandfather, the minister of Colinton.^ 
 The child from the beginning was delicate, with 
 a weak chest, and a great susceptibility to colds. 
 Even when, in 1857, the family moved to 17 
 Heriot Row, which was in a less damp and ex- 
 posed situation, his health did not greatly improve. 
 He has told us of the terrible long nights during 
 which he lay awake coughing continually, praying 
 that sleep or the morning might come to his relief; 
 and he has gratefully recorded how the tender 
 patient care of his nurse, Alison Cunningham, 
 helped him through those weary hours. "It 
 seems to me that I should have died," he says, 
 "if I had been left there alone to cough and weary 
 in the darkness. How well I remember her lift- 
 ing me out of bed, carrying me to the window, 
 
 ^ In his earliest letters, and down to 1865, Stevenson signed his 
 name 'R. Stevenson.' After that he occasionally used 'R. L. B. 
 Stevenson' until 1868, when he asked his mother to address him 
 for the future as Robert Lewis. In 1873 he definitely changed to 
 the form he finally adopted — 'R. L. Stevenson.' The change 
 from Lewis to Louis was made when he was about eighteen, but 
 the exact date is uncertain. 
 
 [25] 
 
Robert Louis Stevenson 
 
 and showing me one or two lit windows up in 
 Queen Street across the dark belt of gardens; 
 where also we told each other, there might be sick 
 little boys and their nurses waiting, like us, for 
 the morning." ^ Sometimes the night hours held 
 even greater terrors than these. He has told us 
 in "A Chapter on Dreams" of someone ("no less 
 a person than myself") who from a child was "an 
 ardent and uncomfortable dreamer. When he 
 had a touch of fever at night, and the room 
 swelled, and shrank, and his clothes hanging on a 
 nail, now loomed up instant to the bigness of a 
 church, and now drew away into a horror of 
 infinite distance and infinite littleness, the poor 
 soul was very well aware of what must follow, and 
 struggled hard against the approaches of that 
 slumber which was the beginning of sorrows. 
 But his struggles were in vain; sooner or later 
 the night-hag would have him by the throat and 
 pluck him strangling and screaming from his 
 sleep. . . . The two chief troubles of his very 
 narrow existence — the practical and everyday 
 trouble of school tasks and the ultimate and airy 
 one of hell and judgment — were often confounded 
 together into one appalling nightmare. He seemed 
 to himself to stand before the Great White Throne; 
 he was called on, poor little devil, to recite some 
 form of words, on which his destiny depended; 
 his tongue stuck, his memory was blank, hell 
 gaped for him; and he would awake, clinging to 
 
 ^ Graham Balfour's Lije. 
 
 [26] 
 
R. L. S. AND HIS MOTHER 
 
childhood 
 
 the curtain-rod with his knees to his chin." Noth- 
 ing could calm the nervous terror that possessed 
 him save the presence of his father; and Thomas 
 Stevenson, called hurriedly to the bedside of his 
 son, would sit there telling stories, inventing con- 
 versations, doing all that tenderness could suggest 
 to soothe the little boy's agonies, until gradually 
 the fit of terror passed. Louis adored his father, 
 who never petted and spoiled him, as his mother 
 and nurse sometimes did, but who was tenderness 
 itself in time of trouble. A word of quiet praise 
 from him, made *Smout' — which was the boy's 
 nickname — wild with joy, and one of his dry 
 comments on some childish exhibition of petu- 
 lance or vanity was never forgotten. 
 
 Stevenson's delicate health during his early 
 years made a regular school training impossible. 
 When he was seven years old he was sent to a 
 preparatory school, but after a few weeks he fell 
 ill, and was withdrawn, and he did not return to 
 school until two years later. In 1861 he was sent 
 to the Edinburgh Academy, the principal school 
 of Edinburgh; and he remained there for a year 
 and a half, attending more or less regularly. His 
 teacher was Mr D'Arcy Wentworth Thompson, 
 a famous scholar and teacher, and the author of 
 that delightful book, Day-dreams of a Schoolmaster. 
 For one term, while his mother was abroad, he 
 was sent to an English boarding-school in Middle- 
 sex. But his school-days left very little mark 
 upon him. His father, he tells us, had a "con- 
 
 [27] 
 
Robert Louis Stevenson 
 
 tempt for all the ends, processes, and ministers of 
 education." He despised school successes and 
 encouraged his son's natural aversion to school 
 tasks. His mother, indeed, felt differently: and in 
 the journal she kept during these years her son's 
 place in class is carefully noted. But she had 
 few successes to record; Robert Louis Stevenson 
 was undoubtedly an idle and lukewarm scholar. 
 
 His true education he received at home, from 
 his mother and his nurse 'Cummie.' They read 
 to him and talked to him and encouraged him to 
 make efforts for himself. He taught himself his 
 letters by looking at the illustrated papers during 
 his recovery from a severe illness, and by the time 
 he was eight years old he could read and write 
 fluently. Even before this he had attempted 
 original composition. When he was only six his 
 Uncle David offered a prize to the one among his 
 children and his nephews who should write the 
 best History of Moses. Louis dictated his version 
 to his mother on five successive Sunday evenings, 
 and illustrated her manuscript with drawings of 
 the Israelites crossing the Red Sea carrying un- 
 wieldy portmanteaux and smoking huge cigars. 
 A Bible picture book was awarded him as an extra 
 prize. "From that time forward," says his mother, 
 "it was the desire of his heart to be an author." 
 From this ambition he never swerved, though, 
 like the rest of his family, he felt strongly the call 
 to a life of adventure and active effort. He grew 
 up in an atmosphere like that which had so strongly 
 
 [28] 
 
Childhood 
 
 influenced his father. All around him were people 
 whose main interests were concerned with the sea, 
 and whose talk was chiefly of its perils and adven- 
 tures. Father, uncles, cousins — nearly all were, 
 or aspired to be, lighthouse builders. All were 
 proud of the triumphs the family had won, and 
 not one was prouder than little Robert Louis. 
 The strength of his desire to be an author is 
 proved in that it entirely conquered the strong 
 hereditary tendency toward the fascinating calling 
 of his fathers; but the effect of this early environ- 
 ment was to be seen in him and in his work to 
 the end. 
 
 His early religious training had a far stronger 
 influence upon him than his purely intellectual 
 education. Cummie belonged to the strictest sect 
 of the Presbyterians, and under her care Louis 
 spent, as he tells us, "a Covenanting childhood." 
 He was made to study diligently the Bible, the 
 Shorter Catechism, and the writings of the chief 
 Covenanting divines. "When I was a child," 
 he wrote many years afterward to Mr J. M. 
 Barrie, "and indeed until I was nearly a man, I 
 consistently read Covenanting books. ... I have 
 been accustomed to hear refined and intelligent 
 critics . . . trace down my literary descent from 
 all sorts of people. Well, laigh i' your lug, sir, — 
 the clue was found. My style is from the Cove- 
 nanting writers." ^ 
 
 He was taught, moreover, that novels, cards, 
 
 * The Letters of Robert Louis Stevenson, 
 
 [29] 
 
Robert Louis Stevenson 
 
 and the theatre were traps set by the devil to 
 catch souls and that the Presbyterian hymns 
 were finer than all the songs of the ungodly. He 
 received this doctrine eagerly, and his strictness 
 in applying it exceeded that of his teacher. Cum- 
 mie did her best to make the religion that she 
 taught attractive to her charge, and although he 
 suffered sometimes from the nervous terrors that 
 attack highly sensitive children, he chiefly asso- 
 ciated it with stirring and delightful experiences, 
 grateful to his imagination as well as spiritually 
 uplifting. "It is you that gave me a passion for 
 the drama, Cummie," he once said to his old 
 nurse before a roomful of people. Cummie was 
 astounded and a little indignant. "Me! Master 
 Lou," she answered, "I never put foot inside a 
 playhouse in my life." "Ay, woman," he re- 
 sponded, "but it was the grand dramatic way ye 
 had of reciting the hymns." 
 
 His taste for the drama led to one of the most 
 delightful experiences of his boyhood, which he 
 has described in the paper, "A Penny Plain, 
 Twopence Coloured." "There stands, I fancy, to 
 this day (but now how fallen!) a certain stationer's 
 shop at a corner of the wide thoroughfare that 
 joins the city of my childhood with the sea. . . . 
 In the Leith Walk window, all the year round, 
 there stood displayed a theatre in working order, 
 with a 'forest set,' a 'combat,' and a few 'robbers 
 carousing' in the slides; and below and about, 
 dearer tenfold to me! the plays themselves, those 
 
 [30] 
 
Childhood 
 
 budgets of romance, lay tumbled one upon another. 
 . . . To go within, to announce yourself as an 
 intending purchaser, and closely watched, be suf- 
 fered to undo those bundles and breathlessly 
 devour those pages of gesticulating villains, epilep- 
 tic combats, bosky forests, palaces and warships, 
 frowning fortresses and prison vaults — it was a 
 giddy joy. . . . And when at length the deed was 
 done, the play selected, and the impatient shop- 
 man had brushed the rest into the gray portfolio, 
 and the boy was forth again, a little late for din- 
 ner, the lamps springing into light in the blue 
 winter's even, and The Miller, or The Rover, or 
 some kindred drama clutched against his side — 
 on what gay feet he ran, and how he laughed 
 aloud in exultation! I can hear that laughter still." 
 But although Robert Louis Stevenson was a 
 town-bred boy his childhood held other joys than 
 those of the town: and although he was an only 
 child he knew something of the special delights 
 that come to those who have brothers and sisters 
 for playfellows. The old manse at Colinton had 
 given up one generation of the children it had 
 reared — all save — "Aunt Jane" — "Chief of 
 our aunts" — who remained to mother a second 
 generation sent home from distant parts of the 
 world to fill up the empty places. When Louis 
 was sent, as he often was, to recover from a speci- 
 ally severe bout of illness, he found the manse full 
 of coi^ins. Then began a period of purest and 
 most romantic happiness. The frail, yellow-haired 
 
 [31] 
 
Robert Louis Stevenson 
 
 little lad, the spoiled darling of his mother and his 
 nurse, whose delicate beauty seemed to mark him 
 out as a drawing-room pet, became possessed by 
 such a "fury of play" as sent him to bed utterly 
 exhausted. He could tell such wonderful stories 
 and devise such delightful games that he was ac- 
 claimed leader by the universal consent of a loyal 
 and admiring following, and the glory of this posi- 
 tion increased his ardour. The manse garden was 
 an ideal playground. It had a lawn that on sum- 
 mer afternoons was "a perfect goblet for sunshine 
 and the Dionysius' ear for a whole forest of bird- 
 songs"; it had delightful groups of laurels in 
 whose shade small boys might lie, gun in hand, 
 and await with all a hunter's pleasing tremours 
 the herd of wild animals that would certainly soon 
 emerge from the neighbouring cover. Along one 
 side ran a gloomy pathway, whose alluring name 
 was *The Witches Walk,' and this lost itself as it 
 approached the stables in the black shade of a 
 mighty yew tree. A walk down this path was an 
 adventure, and might be depended upon to give 
 the boldest-hearted boy a most enjoyable fit of 
 shivers; but there were higher joys to be attained. 
 The churchyard lay on a level with the top of the 
 garden wall, and the children of the manse might 
 hope, when night was falling, to see the 'Spunkies' 
 playing among the tombstones; or might even, 
 looking through a hole in the wall, spy something 
 that was like a burning eye fixed upon them: and 
 debate among themselves, with the most delicious 
 
 [32] 
 
Childhood 
 
 thrills of shuddering terror, as to whether it was 
 really the eye of a dead man, who was sitting up 
 in his coffin and taking a look at the outer world 
 in this truly extraordinary fashion. Inside the 
 house there were long, low rooms, admirably 
 adapted for the game of 'tig,' while the dark space 
 behind the dining-room sofa made an ideal bivouac 
 for a lonely hunter. There was Aunt Jane's store- 
 room, too, whence Albert biscuits and black-cur- 
 rant jelly appeared opportunely just at that hour 
 in the morning when a small boy was beginning to 
 feel that the support given by the porridge at 
 breakfast was failing; and there was the dark, 
 cold, awe-inspiring study, where the grandfather, 
 with his beautiful face and his silver hair, sat 
 writing those sermons that on Sunday he was to 
 deliver from the proud eminence of the pulpit. 
 
 Sometimes one of the cousins came to bear the 
 lonely little lad company in his Edinburgh home, 
 and Stevenson recalls with delight the winter of 
 1856-7, which the only son of his uncle Alan, 
 Robert Alan Mowbray Stevenson, spent with him. 
 The months were passed in a "purely visionary 
 state," and there was scarcely one of the ordinary 
 events of the day that did not provide an oppor- 
 tunity for some fantastic * make-believe.' Robert 
 Alan was almost as brilliant and whimsical as his 
 cousin, and they played delightedly into each 
 other's hands. When they ate their porridge at 
 breakfast Robert Louis sprinkled his with sugar 
 and feigned that it was a country suffering from a 
 
 [33] 
 
Robert Louis Stevenson 
 
 disastrous snowstorm; while Robert Alan deluged 
 his with milk and called upon his cousin to watch 
 his gradual destruction by inundation. Their 
 morning walk took them into the wildest regions 
 of the earth, and sometimes into regions beyond 
 the earth. The tunnel below the Edinburgh rail- 
 way bridge was for them "Death's dark vale," 
 and they passed it with awed faces, and minds 
 braced to a brave endurance of its terrors; the 
 fields near Howard Place were the "green pas- 
 tures" of the Psalm, and the pools formed by the 
 Water of Leith its "still waters." But their fa- 
 vourite game of all was the "Game of Islands." 
 In this each boy had an island of his own. Rob- 
 ert Alan's was shaped something like Ireland, and 
 was called ^Nosingtonia'; that of Robert Louis 
 "lay like a tip-cat across the paper," and had the 
 more serious name of 'Encyclopaedia.' Most mar- 
 vellous things happened in both these territories. 
 Hurricanes descended upon them, earthquakes 
 rent them, volcanoes attempted to bury them 
 under streams of lava; armies marched against 
 them, hideous monsters haunted them, and mys- 
 terious enemies descended upon them from bal- 
 loons. The boys were never tired of inventing 
 fresh trials for their unfortunate provinces, and 
 this 'Game of Islands' left behind it a permanent 
 interest and delight which had something to do 
 later with the evolution of Treasure Island. 
 
 Before he was fourteen years old Robert Louis 
 Stevenson had visited with his parents some of 
 
 [34] 
 
childhood 
 
 the most interesting and beautiful places in Eng- 
 land, France and Italy, but these seem to have 
 made little permanent impression upon him. In 
 none of his many autobiographical papers is there 
 any mention of these journeyings; it was to Scot- 
 tish scenes and Scottish people that his thoughts 
 went back in after days. Of these his memories 
 were extraordinarily clear and exact. He was pro- 
 foundly interested in himself and in his own life; 
 and looking back across the years he loved to 
 watch his own small figure as it travelled on 
 through those early stages of its journey, and to 
 recall what the boy had thought and felt as he 
 walked with his nurse vainly striving *'to piece 
 together in words" his "inarticulate but profound 
 impressions." "I seem," he says, "to have been 
 born with a sentiment of something moving 
 in things, of an infinite attraction and horror 
 coupled." It is to this sentiment that the vivid, 
 strenuous quality which marked his life even to 
 its very end is largely due. He walked about the 
 world feeling acutely that he was moving, not 
 among lifeless objects, but among living realities. 
 He met each experience that came to him as a 
 thrilling adventure, and out of the most prosaic 
 and unpromising materials could extract the pur- 
 est delight. One characteristic instance of this he 
 gives us in his paper, "The Lantern Bearers." 
 When he was twelve years old he spent an autumn 
 at North Berwick, and it was here, he says, that 
 he "tasted in a high degree the glory of existence." 
 
 [35] 
 
Robert Louis Stevenson 
 
 As the dark nights of September came on Louis 
 and his companions bought each for himself a 
 dark lantern. This was fastened to a cricket belt, 
 and the topcoat was buttoned tight over it. The 
 lanterns **smelled noisomely of blistered tin; they 
 never burned aright, though they would always 
 burn our fingers; their use was naught; the pleas- 
 ure of them merely fanciful; and yet a boy with a 
 bull's-eye under his topcoat asked for nothing 
 more." ^ Sometimes several of these 'lantern- 
 bearers' met together in secluded places and held 
 mysterious converse, but this was no real part of 
 the sport. "The essence of this bliss was to walk 
 by yourself in the black night . . . and, deep down 
 in the privacy of your fool's heart, to know you 
 had a bull's-eye at your belt, and to exult and 
 sing over the knowledge." ^ 
 
 His whole life was lived in this spirit. Each 
 new day was welcomed with eagerness, for per- 
 haps before it closed it would bring at least one of 
 those great leaps of the heart that are followed by 
 the full throbbing moments which make up man's 
 real existence; the stretches of time that lay be- 
 tween these he regarded, as he once said of his 
 dinner, as a "mere hurried sustentation of the 
 immortal spirit before exposing it to another ex- 
 citement." To read a new book was, in itself, an 
 event wonderful and soul-stirring. He tells us 
 how, when he was eight years old, he first dis- 
 covered the pleasure that could be gained by read- 
 
 * Across the Plains, "The Lantern-bearers." ^ Ibid. 
 
 [36] 
 
childhood 
 
 ing a story-book for himself. The shock of that 
 pleasure, he says, will remain in his memory 
 always. A little later another book-adventure 
 came with The Arabian Nights, and he tells how 
 he grew ** blind with terror" when his clergyman 
 grandfather came in and found him reading the 
 "fat, old, double-columned volume. . . . But in- 
 stead of ordering the book away, he said he envied 
 me. Ah, well he might." Shakespeare gave him 
 an experience more thrilling, though less pleasant. 
 "One disastrous day of storm, the heavens full of 
 turbulent vapours, the street full of the squalling 
 of the gale, the windows resounding under bucket- 
 fuls of rain, my mother read aloud to me Macbeth. 
 I cannot say I thought the experience agreeable; 
 I far preferred the ditch-water stories that a child 
 could dip and skip and doze over, stealing at 
 times material for play; it was something new 
 and shocking to be thus ravished by a giant, and 
 I shrank under the brutal grasp." ^ 
 
 Nor did this emotional quality fade when he 
 left boyhood behind him. When he was a young 
 man, going through the Edinburgh streets to un- 
 congenial work in a dull office, a vibrant note in 
 the voice of a little boy calling to a dog lingered 
 in his ears during the whole day, and "made me 
 very happy." A clump of gigantic hemlock flower- 
 ing in a public garden gave him an almost over- 
 whelming sense of tropic grace and splendotir, and 
 a talk with a friend — a "good talk," to use his 
 
 * Graham Balfour's Life. 
 
 [37] 
 
Robert Louis Stevenson 
 
 own phrase — heated his heart and his brain and 
 made the whole physical world swim round him 
 *'with the colours of the sunset." "I never was 
 bored in my life," he once declared; and though 
 in tracing the history of his life we often find him 
 intensely sad and sometimes we find him dis- 
 couraged, we never meet him in the mood that 
 doubts that life is supremely worth living. 
 
 By 1864 Robert Louis Stevenson's health had 
 greatly improved, and he was able to go more or 
 less regularly to a private school in Frederick 
 Street, Edinburgh, kept by a Mr Thomson. He 
 had, besides, various masters and tutors to help 
 him in his work at home. He learned quickly 
 anything that interested him, but he never really 
 worked at his school tasks, nor cared greatly to 
 attain any school success. His heart was not in 
 his work. "All through my boyhood and youth," 
 he says, "I was known and pointed out for the 
 pattern of an idler; and yet I was always busy on 
 my own private end, which was to learn to write. 
 I kept always two books in my pocket — one to 
 read, one to write in. As I walked, my mind was 
 busy fitting what I saw with appropriate words; 
 when I sat by the roadside, I would either read, 
 or a pencil and a penny version book would be 
 in my hand to note down the features of the scene 
 or commemorate some halting stanzas. Thus I 
 lived with words." ^ Ever since his literary ambi- 
 tion had been awakened by the memorable History 
 
 ^ Memories and Portraits, "A College Magazine." 
 
 [38] 
 
Childhood 
 
 of Moses the boy had been thus busy, training for 
 the career he had chosen. He had written epics, 
 tragedies, lyrics, stories, and essays. Some of 
 these had appeared in the magazines that he had 
 a passion for starting and attempting to circulate 
 among his school-fellows and his home-friends. 
 One small pamphlet, called The Pentland Rising, 
 a Page of History, 1660, attained the dignity of 
 print. The subject was one upon which his father 
 felt strongly, and probably for this reason rather 
 than for any special literary merits the paper 
 possessed, Mr Thomas Stevenson paid for its 
 publication. Judged, however, as a contribution 
 to literature and not as a schoolboy's essay, its 
 immaturity became so manifest that he soon after- 
 ward bought in all the copies he could obtain. 
 
 This first appearance in print marks the close 
 of the schoolboy period of Robert Louis Steven- 
 son's life. He was now sixteen, and it was high 
 time, so his father thought, that he should begin 
 to prepare himself for his future profession. 
 
 [39] 
 
CHAPTER III : Preparing 
 for a Profession 
 
 IT was one of the great misfortunes of Robert 
 Louis Stevenson's early life that for a long 
 time his family refused to take seriously his 
 determination to be an author. Thomas Steven- 
 son took it for granted that his son would carry 
 on the family tradition and become an engineer. 
 It was true that the boy had shown no aptitude 
 or enthusiasm for the profession, and that his 
 school career, in spite of a certain elusive bril- 
 liance that made one feel he ought to do great 
 things, had been disappointing. But of school 
 honours his father thought little, and there was 
 his famous grandfather's example to show that 
 an indifferent, even an idle student might make a 
 keen and efficient engineer. 
 
 As soon, therefore, as he left school the lad was 
 entered at Edinburgh University to study ior a 
 science degree. He began his work in a spirit 
 unenthusiastic and even rebellious. It seemed to 
 him that he was being forced into a species of con- 
 finement in which he must occupy himself with 
 matters infinitely dull and trivial, while the world 
 was simply teeming with beautiful and wonderful 
 things that he longed to investigate. His univer- 
 sity, like his school life, had little influence upon 
 the development of his character, though as his 
 essay, 8ome College Memories, shows, he was not 
 without happy recollections of the place where "a 
 
 [40] 
 
Preparing for a Profession 
 
 certain lean, ugly, idle, unpopular student" yawned * 
 through such lectures as he could not manage to 
 evade, and at last to his own wonder "escaped out 
 of the stage of studentship not openly shamed." 
 The streets of Edinburgh were, to his mind, full 
 of an intellectual stimulus that was lacking in the 
 University classrooms, and w^henever he possibly 
 could he chose to take his lessons in the less con- 
 fined area. He practised, he says, "an extensive 
 and highly rational system of truantry," so that 
 he profited very little by the teaching the Univer- 
 sity offered. To induce him to work it was always 
 necessary to kindle his imagination, and there was 
 nothing in the college course that could strike a 
 spark of enthusiasm from him. The boy was de- 
 jected and out of heart — foolishly and unreason- 
 ably so, perhaps, yet that made his misery none 
 the less. His relations with his father grew 
 strained and unhappy. Thomas Stevenson was 
 puzzled at the son who, possessing, as it seemed 
 certain, rare and unusual gifts, showed such intel- 
 lectual apathy with regard to the subjects that 
 seemed to the elder man of entrancing interest; 
 and he was inclined to suspect perversity. The 
 son could not conceal his resentment at his own 
 strong prepossessions being entirely set aside, and 
 his life forced to run upon the lines laid down by 
 his father. 
 
 Religious difficulties came to complicate matters 
 still further. By this time the religious fervour 
 that had marked Stevenson's boyhood had cooled. 
 
 [41] 
 
Robert Louis Stevenson 
 
 An inquiry into the grounds of his faith became 
 necessary, and the ardour of his temperament 
 made this both full and searching. As a result he 
 felt that he could no longer hold to the tenets of 
 Calvinism. The strong reaction that followed led 
 him to speak of matters of religion in a way that 
 shocked his devout and sensitive parents; and the 
 breach widened. 
 
 The summer months, which were largely spent 
 in engineering expeditions with his father, served 
 only to increase the unhappy frictic^ between the 
 two. The open-air life, the adventures of the sea, 
 the new experiences in the wild regions to which 
 his father's duties took him, gave Stevenson the 
 keenest delight. No hardship or danger deterred 
 him from eagerly seeking after those excitements 
 which this mode of life offered. He tells us how, 
 by means of a bribe of five shillings he induced 
 one of the divers to allow him to descend to the 
 bottom of the sea; and this experience was, he 
 declares, one of the best things he got from his 
 education as an engineer. He was a keen observer 
 of all that interested him, and he never forgot 
 what he saw in these summer excursions; but 
 unfortunately the things that interested him were 
 not the things that interested his father. The 
 grievance was an old one. "On Tweedside, or by 
 Lyme and Manor," he says, "we have spent to- 
 gether whole afternoons — to me, at the time, 
 extremely wearisome; to him, as I am now sorry 
 to think, extremely mortifying. The river was to 
 
 [42] 
 
Preparing for a Profession 
 
 me a pretty and varied spectacle; I could not see 
 — I could not be made to see — it otherwise. 
 To my father it was a chequer-board of lively 
 forces, which he traced from pool to shallow with 
 minute appreciation and enduring interest. *That 
 bank was being undercut,' he might say. 'Why? 
 Suppose you were to put a groin out here, would 
 not the filum fiuminis be cast abruptly off across 
 the channel? and where would it impinge on the 
 other shore? and what would be the result? Or 
 suppose you were to blast that boulder, what 
 would happen? Follow it — use the eyes that God 
 has given you; can you not see that a great deal 
 of land would be reclaimed upon this side?' It 
 was to me like school in holidays; but to him, 
 until I had worn him out with my invincible triv- 
 iality, a delight." ^ 
 
 During these unhappy, restless years Stevenson 
 was much alone. He loved to walk in solitary 
 places, and, in the 'divine self-pity' natural to 
 youth, to brood over the hardness of his lot. He 
 would stand on the great Edinburgh bridge, watch- 
 ing the trains that passed beneath him, and wish- 
 ing that one would bear him away out into the 
 world; he would spend hours in the Calton bury- 
 ing-ground, feeding his unhappiness with the 
 thought of the brief space of life granted to man, 
 and chafing under his own forced inactivity. If 
 he had had a friend to whom he could have spoken 
 freely during this period of "acrid fermentation," 
 
 ^ A Family oj Engineers. 
 
 [43] 
 
Robert Louis Stevenson 
 
 some of his gloomy humours might have been dis- 
 persed. But there was no one. He suffered most 
 acutely from that special form of loneliness which 
 is "a malady most incident to only sons." He was 
 strongly attracted by one of his University pro- 
 fessors, Fleeming Jenkin, but this friendship had 
 not yet reached a confidential stage; and the 
 cousins who had been the companions of his boy- 
 hood were scattered and out of reach. His father 
 and mother were willing, even anxious, to receive 
 any friends of his in their house, but their son 
 held aloof. He refused to enter the society of 
 Edinburgh, though many pleasant houses were 
 open to him; and at the few houses where he did 
 visit he was not a great favourite, since the nat- 
 ural charm with which, when he willed, he could 
 always win friends, was hidden by the almost 
 defiant unconventionality of his manner, and the 
 slovenliness of his dress. 
 
 Yet he was not without society of a sort. There 
 were certain small public-houses in the poorer 
 quarter of the town where he was well known. 
 When he was tired of wandering about by him- 
 self, he would turn into *The Green Elephant,' 
 *The Twinkling Eye,' or *The Gay Japanee,' and 
 sit down in the little sanded kitchen among 
 a company of "seamen, chimney-sweeps, and 
 thieves" — his circle, he explains being ''con- 
 tinually changed by the action of the police magis- 
 trate." Yet 'Velvet Coat,' as Stevenson was 
 called, was always treated with consideration, 
 
 [44] 
 
Preparing for a Profession 
 
 even with a certain deference; he was petted by 
 the women, and allowed to do very much as he 
 liked without interference. He usually sat silent 
 among the noisy talkers, writing poems in his 
 penny version book, and observing the company. 
 His father knew nothing of these adventures; had 
 he done so it is certain that he would have very 
 strongly disapproved. Yet they were, at least in 
 part, the result of his own action. He held the 
 strict notions of old-fashioned Scottish parents, 
 and regarded his son — even after Louis had 
 attained his majority — as a mere irresponsible 
 boy. Therefore Stevenson, during his student 
 days, was allowed half-a-crown a week as pocket 
 money, which allowance was afterward increased 
 to twelve pounds a year. His monthly allow- 
 ance was usually spent before the day on which 
 he received it was ended, a large part often going 
 to clear off obligations incurred; and for the rest 
 of the month he got along by forestalling the next 
 payment. It was not that Thomas Stevenson 
 grudged to spend money on his son. Louis was 
 at liberty to order whatever clothes or other 
 necessaries he chose from his parents' trades- 
 people, and in the matter of holidays he was 
 treated with lavish generosity. But it did not 
 accord with his father's strict ideas of discipline 
 to allow his son the control of any considerable 
 sum, and the boy was, therefore, in a sense, driven 
 to take his recreation where it could be had at a 
 low price. It is probable, however, that his 
 
 [45] 
 
Robert Louis Stevenson 
 
 opinions, as much as his poverty, led him into the 
 society he frequented. He was at this time in hot 
 revolt against the established social order, and was 
 indignant at the way in which professing Chris- 
 tians ignored the teaching of the Gospel of St 
 Matthew; and he delighted in doing anything 
 that would prove his contempt for all the barriers 
 that society had set up between class and class. 
 
 Nevertheless it is certain that however dark 
 these years looked in retrospect, they were not 
 wholly miserable. Stevenson spent many happy 
 holidays, sometimes alone and sometimes with the 
 family, at Swanston Cottage, his father's country 
 house, at the foot of the Pentland Hills. He made 
 friends with the country folk, he rode, skated, and 
 fished; he sat and made bad verses by a little 
 pool that was fed with 'a perennial teacupful' 
 from Halkerside; and in winter he spent *'long, 
 silent, solitary and lamplit evenings by the fire," 
 renewing his acquaintance with Dumas. In Edin- 
 burgh he joined the Speculative Society — of 
 which Sir Walter Scott in his youth had been a 
 distinguished member — and grew very enthusi- 
 astic over its proceedings. He was twice elected 
 one of the presidents of the Society, and he read 
 various essays at the meetings of its members. 
 
 Still, in spite of all these alleviations, the bur- 
 den of uncongenial work and thwarted ambition 
 became heavier and heavier. For three and a 
 half years he managed to bear it; then, in desper- 
 ation, he confessed to his father during a "dread- 
 
 [46] 
 
Preparing for a Profession 
 
 ful evening walk" the repugnance he felt to 
 becoming an engineer, and his irresistible attrac- 
 tion to literature. His father, who, doubtless, 
 was not altogether unprepared for such a decla- 
 ration, received it with calm and grave kindness. 
 He was keenly disappointed, especially as Louis 
 had, a few days before, read a paper on A New 
 Form of Intermittent Light before the Scottish 
 Society of Arts, and had been highly commended 
 for the promise that it showed. Thomas Steven- 
 son had perhaps allowed himself to hope that his 
 son's interest in the calling of his fathers was 
 awakening; if so, he did not let his disappoint- 
 ment bring any bitterness into the discussion which 
 now became necessary concerning Louis' future 
 plans. He agreed that the engineering should be 
 given up, but he did not consider it wise that the 
 young man should devote himself entirely to 
 literature. He stipulated, therefore, that Louis 
 should take up the profession of Law. If, after 
 his examinations were passed, he found this uncon- 
 genial, the time would not have been wasted, for 
 the course of study would be of considerable value 
 to him in his work as an author; while, if he failed 
 in literature, there would always be his profession 
 to fall back upon. To this arrangement Louis, 
 with a great lightening of heart, agreed. 
 
 The worst was now over, and things began to 
 mend. Other causes besides the change of occu- 
 pation were working to bring Stevenson to a 
 happier and more wholesome state of mind. He 
 
 [47] 
 
Robert Louis Stevenson 
 
 says himself that he dates his new departure from 
 three circumstances — natural growth, the coming 
 of friends, and the study of Walt Whitman. 
 
 Of his friends the chief was his cousin Bob, who 
 about this time returned to Edinburgh. The two 
 cousins had always been in sympathy, and they 
 resumed at once the close, familiar relations of 
 their boyish days. They talked long and inti- 
 mately over every subject in their whole range of 
 ideas, and to Louis the relief of disburdening his 
 mind and speaking out all those thoughts and 
 feelings the repression of which had become abso- 
 lutely painful to him, was tremendous. The 
 return of his cousin, he says, wrought an imme- 
 diate and lasting change in his life. Other friends 
 also, he tells us, he made at this period — Charles 
 Baxter, James Walter Ferrier, and Sir Walter 
 Simpson — all of whom had in a lesser degree an 
 influence upon his life and happiness. 
 
 Concerning the influence of Walt Whitman he 
 has spoken fully in a paper contributed to the 
 Comhill. "His book," he says, "... should be 
 in the hands of all parents and guardians as a 
 specific for the distressing malady of being seven- 
 teen years old. Green-sickness yields to his treat- 
 ment as to a charm of magic; and the youth, 
 after a short course of reading, ceases to carry 
 the world on his shoulders." ^ And, lastly, Steven- 
 son tells us how the change brought about by 
 natural growth worked in him. "I was never 
 
 * Familiar Studies of Men and Books. 
 
 [48] 
 
Preparing for a Profession 
 
 conscious of a struggle, nor registered a vow, nor 
 seemingly had anything to do with the matter. 
 I came about like a well-handled ship. There 
 stood at the wheel that unknown steersman whom 
 we call God." ^ 
 
 Work now went on with better heart. Steven- 
 son began his attendance at the University class 
 in Law, and did fairly well, even gaining some 
 distinction. He passed the preliminary examina- 
 tion by virtue of his store of general knowledge 
 and his ready wit rather than the amount of his 
 solid information, and he worked for some months 
 in the office of a firm of Writers to the Signet, in 
 order to learn conveyancing. He did not neglect 
 his work, but he was not devoted to it. All his 
 enthusiasm was reserved for his own chosen pro- 
 fession, and he laboured diligently to learn to 
 write, playing "the sedulous ape" to Hazlitt, to 
 Lamb, to Wordsworth, to Sir Thomas Browne, to 
 Defoe, to Hawthorne, to Montaigne, to Baude- 
 laire, and to Obermann. Some of his efforts he 
 showed to his friends, and was in no way dis- 
 mayed by their very outspoken criticisms. On 
 three occasions he incurred "a more authoritative 
 rebuff" by sending a paper to a magazine, but he 
 accepted these simply as an indication that he was 
 not yet prepared for the work he aspired to do. 
 
 With three others of the young members of the 
 'Spec' he started a magazine, which a firm of 
 booksellers, whose shop adjoined the University 
 
 ^ Graham Balfour's Lije. 
 
 [49] 
 
Robert Louis Stevenson 
 
 buildings was induced to publish. High hopes 
 v/ere entertained of this magazine, which was to 
 bring great profit to all concerned in it. It ran 
 for four months, with quickly diminishing en- 
 thusiasm on the part of its proprietors, and died 
 *' without a gasp"; whereupon, having had the 
 necessary interview with his father, and paid his 
 share of the expenses, Stevenson told himself that 
 *'the time was not yet ripe, nor the man ready," 
 and set himself again to the work of preparation, 
 
 1873 marked an epoch in Stevenson's develop- 
 ment. Early in the year the misunderstanding 
 with his father reached an acute stage. Stevenson 
 for several years had belonged to a mysterious 
 society called the S.J.R. The significance of these 
 initials was revealed only to the six members of 
 the Society, and its exact tenets were also held 
 secret; but it was known to advocate generally lib- 
 erty of thought and freedom from prejudice. In 
 February 1873 a draft of the constitution of the 
 Society came into the hands of the elder Stevenson, 
 who, probably regarding the sentiments it expressed 
 with far more seriousness than such boyish extrav- 
 agance deserved, showed his displeasure in a 
 manner that awakened an answering resentment 
 in his son. There was a stormy scene, followed by 
 some months of painful estrangement, felt most 
 acutely on both sides. 
 
 "The thunderbolt has fallen with a vengeance, 
 now," Stevenson wrote on February 2nd to his 
 friend Charles Baxter. "On Friday night after 
 
 [50] 
 
Preparing for a Profession 
 
 leaving you, in the course of conversation my 
 father put me one or two questions as to behefs, 
 which I candidly answered. . . . And now! they 
 are both ill, both silent, both as down in the 
 mouth as if — I can find no simile. . . . They 
 don't see either that my game is not the light- 
 hearted scoffer, that I am not (as they call me) 
 a careless infidel. I believe as much as they do, 
 only generally in the inverse ratio. I am, I think, 
 as honest as they can be in what I hold. I have 
 not come hastily to my views. I reserve, as I 
 told them, many points until I acquire fuller in- 
 formation, and I do not think I am thus justly to 
 be called * horrible atheist.'" ^ 
 
 During the summer of this same year Stevenson 
 paid a visit to his cousin, Mrs Churchill Babing- 
 ton, who lived at Cockfield Rectory in Suffolk, 
 and here he made two new friends. The first 
 was Mrs Sitwell, an intimate friend of his cousin's. 
 She became almost at once his confidant and 
 consoler, and his letters to her during the two 
 critical years that followed show how, in a boyish 
 yet not unmanly fashion, he depended upon her 
 for sympathy and guidance. The second was Mr 
 (afterward Sir) Sidney Colvin. Mr Colvin was 
 several years older than Stevenson, and had 
 already gained for himself a considerable literary 
 reputation. He felt at once the charm of the 
 immature, but brilliant, young law student, who 
 expanded so delightfully under the pleasant influ- 
 
 ^ The Letters of Robert Louis Stevenson. 
 
 [51] 
 
Robert Louis Stevenson 
 
 ences of his cousin's home, and a friendship was 
 formed which lasted to the end of Robert Louis 
 Stevenson's life, and was of the greatest impor- 
 tance both to his career and to his happiness. He 
 returned to Edinburgh in September, and resumed 
 his work with enthusiasm. An essay on "Roads" 
 was sent to the Saturday Review, and other work 
 was put in hand; but a severe attack of diph- 
 theria interrupted his activity, and left him weak 
 and dejected. The misunderstanding with his 
 father remained a cause of acutest suffering. He 
 wrote telling Mrs Sitwell of an "awful scene," in 
 which his father had reproached him with cruel 
 and unnatural conduct toward an old man who 
 was ill able to bear it; and of the miserable night 
 he spent afterward, and how he lay awake next 
 morning and listened while his father with a de- 
 jected step came downstairs and went out on 
 some customary bef ore-breakfast errand. And he 
 lay and wished — "O, if he would only whistle 
 when he comes in again." 
 
 In October Stevenson paid another visit to 
 England, with the purpose of being called to the 
 English Bar, but he was so weakened by illness 
 and worry that almost immediately after his 
 arrival in London he completely broke down. The 
 distinguished physician — Sir Andrew Clark — 
 who was consulted, declared him to be suffering 
 from severe nervous exhaustion, combined with 
 weakness of the lungs, and ordered perfect free- 
 dom from work and worry, and a winter in the 
 
 [52] 
 
Preparing for a Profession 
 
 Riviera. Early in November, therefore, Steven- 
 son started for Mentone. 
 
 He had visited the place some years before with 
 his mother, but this was the first time he had 
 undertaken a long journey by himself, and his 
 delight in the new experience partially triumphed 
 over his languor and weariness. But for some 
 weeks after he arrived at Mentone he was in a 
 state to which no effort was possible. He could 
 only bask in the sun and let the days slip by un- 
 noted and unen joyed, dimly aware that he was in 
 a world of beauty, but capable of receiving only 
 the very faintest of impressions from his surround- 
 ings. He wrote long letters to Mrs Sit well, and 
 told her how the consciousness of his own languid 
 state affected him; how he went each day to his 
 favourite corner up in the olive yards, and looked 
 upon the fair view down the valley, and on to the 
 blue floor of the sea; how he watched the shifting 
 colours on the olive leaves and the pleasant 
 shadows that lay softly on the grass; but how 
 none of these things moved him. It was little 
 good being sent to the South, he said, unless you 
 take your soul with you, and his was left behind 
 him. His cry after the old pleasures — the thrill- 
 ing encounters and soul-stirring experiences which 
 he had once enjoyed — is very characteristic of 
 his entire attitude toward life. "To sit by the 
 sea and to be conscious of nothing but the waves 
 and the sunshine over all your body is not un- 
 pleasant; but I was an Archangel once." 
 
 [53] 
 
Robert Louis Stevenson 
 
 To his young despair it seemed as if he had 
 fallen for ever from this high estate; but as he 
 grew slowly stronger, the power of thought and of 
 enjoyment began to come back to him. Very 
 soon he was writing that he had found a new 
 friend, to whom he grew daily more devoted — 
 George Sand. George Sand's novels went with 
 him to his sunny corner among the olives, and 
 their sympathetic and friendly tone helped to 
 bring him back from the aloofness of the invalid. 
 He began to take up the dropped threads of his 
 life. He thought over the past few years with 
 their perplexities and misunderstandings, and look- 
 ing down from the height of his new experience, he 
 saw more clearly where the fault had been. The 
 old difficulties seemed to vanish, and the way lay 
 clear before him. One thing in particular became 
 plain — he could not live much longer in depend- 
 ence on his father. Large sums of money were 
 being spent upon his stay at Mentone, and this 
 troubled his conscience. Money, he said, was the 
 atmosphere of civilized life, and he could not bear 
 to take the breath out of other people's nostrils. 
 If his friends judged that he would never be able 
 to make a living by literature, literature must be 
 given up; and, much as he hated the idea, he must 
 go into an office, and learn how to earn his bread 
 in some humble fashion. If, on the other hand, 
 he might continue his writing, he would work at 
 it with all his powers. The longing to be up and 
 doing came upon him more strongly than ever, 
 
 [54] 
 
Preparing for a Profession 
 
 and he was ready to cry out with joy at the least 
 sign that promised recovery. In December he 
 wrote to Mrs Sitwell that he was able to enjoy 
 things and to feel dull occasionally, both of which 
 had been impossible in his previous apathetic state. 
 ". . . O, I should like to recover, and to be once 
 more well and happy and fit for work, to have 
 done for the rest of time with preludings and 
 doubting, and to take hold of the pillars strongly 
 with Samson!" 
 
 In the third week of December Colvin came to 
 join him at Mentone, and his recovery in health 
 and spirits went on rapidly. With a friend to 
 share his enjoyment of the lovely Southern land, 
 and to hold with him hour after hour intimate 
 converse on the things of time and the things of 
 eternity, he was perfectly happy. He made 
 friends, too, with some of the people staying at 
 the hotel, and had the new experience of intimate 
 association with two or three delightful children. 
 There was a little American girl named Marie, 
 a sprite of a child, who ran about the hotel, leap- 
 ing and dancing '* simply like a wave." "Both 
 Colvin and I," Stevenson wrote home to his 
 mother, "have planned an abduction already." 
 There were two Russian children, the youngest, 
 Nelitchka, or 'Nellie,' being "a little polyglot 
 button" of two and a half years, who spoke frag- 
 ments of six languages. These children soon recog- 
 nized that the alarmingly thin young man with 
 the bright eyes was not a *Madchen,' as his long 
 
 [55] 
 
Robert Louis Stevenson 
 
 yellow hair had at first led them to suppose, nor 
 was he a real * grown-up'; he was just a boy, who 
 by some means or other had escaped from the con- 
 trol of his parents. He was accordingly promptly 
 admitted as a freeman of their society. He 
 played with them, wrote verses to them, and 
 made them presents; and they in return helped 
 him to regain his place among the Archangels. 
 "Kids are what is the matter with me," he wrote 
 to his mother, and to Mrs Sit well. "Children 
 are certainly too good to be true." 
 
 In January he made an attempt to begin work 
 again. He took up an essay on Walt Whitman 
 that had been begun in the previous autumn, 
 and found that he himself had changed so much 
 during the interval that it was like continuing 
 the work of another man. He was not yet strong 
 enough to do much, but by making a start he 
 seemed to bring complete recovery nearer. The 
 letters of this period show that his natural gaiety 
 of spirit was coming back, and his zest of small 
 happenings reviving. There are many jokes about 
 a cloak that Mr Sidney Colvin, who had made 
 a flying visit to England, had been commissioned 
 to buy for him in Paris. "The price that must be 
 paid for it," he writes to his mother, "is indeed 
 somewhat high," but then his parents will have 
 the satisfaction of thinking that their son pos- 
 sesses simply The Greatest vestment in Mentone. 
 
 It was partly the cloak that made Mr Andrew 
 Lang, who was then staying in the Riviera, and 
 
 [56] 
 
Preparing for a Profession 
 
 who called upon Mr Colvin at his hotel, say that 
 Stevenson "looked nothing less than English ex- 
 cept Scotch." But even without the cloak Steven- 
 son was often taken for a foreigner, especially by 
 the people he met in his Continental wanderings. 
 He was at different times taken for a Frenchman, 
 a German, and a Pole; and in An Inland Voyage 
 he bewails the trials he has suffered through not 
 presenting "a good normal type" of the nation to 
 which he belonged. His chief divergence proba- 
 bly was that the movements of his long thin body 
 had a supple, attractive grace that we are not apt 
 to associate with natives of England or of Scot- 
 land. Mr Lang has confessed that the impression 
 he gained at this time of the smooth-faced, long- 
 haired, hectic young man was not entirely favour- 
 able; but later on he, like almost all who came to 
 know Robert Louis Stevenson intimately, felt the 
 charm of that wonderfully attractive personality, 
 until criticism gave way to real affection. 
 
 Before he left Mentone in April his health 
 seemed quite re-established, and he had finished 
 Ordered South, — the brave essay which was the 
 fruit of the victory he had won in the olive gar- 
 dens among the hills, and which curiously fore- 
 shadows the spirit in which much of his work, 
 throughout his life, was to be done. On his way 
 home he spent several weeks in Paris with his 
 cousin Bob, who had begun work as an art stu- 
 dent, and here he was introduced to that Bohe- 
 mian artist society with which be afterward 
 
 [57] 
 
Robert Louis Stevenson 
 
 became so familiar. By the beginning of May he 
 was back in Edinburgh. It was a joyful home- 
 coming, for illness and absence had brought 
 parents and son to a better understanding of each 
 other. Old differences were forgotten, and old 
 grievances laid by. Stevenson settled down again 
 as the son in his father's house, but certain changes 
 had taken place in the position he held. He was 
 now twenty-three years old, and while he had 
 been abroad considerable sums of money had been 
 of necessity placed in his hands. These had 
 been dealt with in a way that gave him a claim 
 to be regarded as a man capable of managing his 
 own financial affairs. It was obviously absurd 
 to think of putting him back to the old position 
 of a schoolboy in receipt of pocket-money; and 
 his father therefore agreed to make him an allow- 
 ance of eighty-four pounds a year. This, he felt, 
 was wealth; and it made him a free man. 
 
 [58] 
 
CHAPTER IV: Wander^ 
 Years 
 
 FOR the next four years, though his father's 
 house was still his headquarters, Stevenson 
 spent comparatively little time in Edin- 
 burgh. He was, he said, born a 'tramp,' and 
 through all his restless youth the 'tramp' had 
 chafed at being lodged in a comfortable home, and 
 tied down to a daily routine. His recent rise to 
 opulence had been chiefly valued as giving him the 
 means to wander, and he was eager to take advan- 
 tage of his newly-acquired independence. It is 
 true that he was under agreement to qualify him- 
 self for a lawyer, but this involved no very heavy 
 obligations. It kept him in Edinburgh during the 
 winter session of 1874, when he resumed his law 
 classes at the University, and it brought him up 
 for his Final Examination in July 1875. But 
 when this was passed, and he was called to the 
 Scottish Bar, the matter was nearly ended. Ac- 
 cording to Scottish custom a brass plate bearing 
 his name appeared upon the door of his father's 
 home in Heriot Row; and he shared with three 
 or four other incipient lawyers the services of a 
 clerk, whom, it is said, he did not know by sight. 
 He frequented the Parliament House and lounged 
 about among the young and briefless advocates, 
 just as Sir Walter Scott had done more than eighty 
 years before. He tried to work in the Advocates' 
 Library, but found the society there so disturbing 
 
 [59] 
 
Robert Louis Stevenson 
 
 that he retired to his own room at home. After 
 this he came to the Parliament House no more, 
 and very soon all pretence of his devoting him- 
 self to any calling save that of literature was 
 given up. 
 
 But even before this time he had made several 
 flights from Edinburgh. In the summer of 1874 
 he spent a week or two with Colvin at Hamp- 
 stead, and joined the Savile Club, where he met 
 some of the leading literary men of the day. A 
 yachting tour round the western islands of Scot- 
 land with Sir Walter Simpson, a few weeks spent 
 with his parents at Barmouth and Llandudno, 
 and a walking tour in Buckinghamshire, brought 
 him to the winter, when, as has been said, he 
 came back to Edinburgh, to take up his legal 
 studies. The winter is chiefly memorable as hav- 
 ing brought him an introduction to Mr W. E. 
 Henley, who was to become one of his dearest 
 friends. It came about through Mr Leslie Steven- 
 son, the editor of the Cornhill, who was staying in 
 Edinburgh for some months lecturing to the 
 Royal Society. He knew Stevenson as a contrib- 
 utor to his paper, and had met him at the Savile 
 Club; and one day he called upon him and took 
 him to visit a patient in the Edinburgh Infirmary. 
 The patient was W. E. Henley. From his boy- 
 hood Henley had suffered from a tuberculous 
 disease that had already made necessary the 
 amputation of one foot. The other leg was now 
 threatened, and it was to put himself under the 
 
 [60] 
 
JVander' Years 
 
 care of the great physician, Mr (afterward Sir 
 Frederick) Lister that Henley eighteen months 
 before had come to Edinburgh Infirmary. 
 
 Stevenson's account of the meeting, given in a 
 letter to Mrs Sitwell, proves that he had not 
 "lived with words" in vain. It is an unforget- 
 table little picture. The big, burly poet was 
 lying in "a little room with two beds, and a 
 couple of sick children in the other bed; a girl 
 came in to visit the children, and played domi- 
 noes on the counterpane with them; the gas 
 flared and crackled, the fire burned in a dull, 
 economical way; Stephen and I sat on a couple 
 of chairs, and the poor fellow sat up in his bed 
 with his hair and beard all tangled, and talked 
 as cheerfully as if he had been in a king's palace, 
 or the great king's palace of the blue air." ^ 
 
 Thenceforward the two were friends, and dur- 
 ing the months that followed Stevenson came 
 back constantly to that unbeautiful room bringing 
 with him piles of "big, yellow books quite impu- 
 dently French" to shine incongruously under the 
 flaring gaslight and help the brave-hearted invalid 
 through his dreary days. The lonely poet in his 
 almost sordid surroundings touched both Steven- 
 son's heart and his imagination, and he was eager 
 to pour out all that he could command before his 
 new friend. Moreover, he discovered that here 
 was a rare talker, — the best, his cousin Bob 
 excepted, that he had ever met. Henley was a 
 
 ^ The Letters of Robert Louis Stevenson. 
 
 [61] 
 
Robert Louis Stevenson 
 
 man of strong and commanding personality. In 
 talk he was "a bright, fierce adversary" who 
 defended his ground foot by foot, and gave his 
 opponent "full measure of the dust and exertion 
 of battle." There were famous encounters held 
 in that dull hospital room. With Henley, said 
 Stevenson, "you can pass days in an enchanted 
 country of the mind, with people, scenery and 
 manners of its own; live a life apart, more ardu- 
 ous, active and glowing than any real existence; 
 and come forth again when the talk is over, as 
 out of a theatre or a dream, to find the east wind 
 still blowing and the chimney-pots of the old 
 battered city still around you." ^ When the 
 spring came and Henley was able to leave the 
 hospital the two went for drives together through 
 the beautiful country round about Edinburgh, 
 and to the poet who for almost two years had 
 been shut up in his sickroom, the sound of rush- 
 ing waters and the sight of the country "mad 
 with green" came with a freshness of realization 
 that was almost bewildering. "The look on his 
 face," said his companion, "was wine to me." 
 
 For the rest, Stevenson's life in Edinburgh dur- 
 ing that winter went on much as it had done in 
 his student days. He worked with fervour at his 
 business as an author, and half-heartedly at his 
 legal studies. He went little into society, and 
 when he did make his appearance, with his long 
 hair, well-worn velveteen jacket, flannel shirt of 
 
 ^ Memories and Portraits, "Talk and Talkers." 
 
 [62] 
 
Tf^ander- Years 
 
 dismal hue and general air of extreme shabbiness, 
 the good folk of Edinburgh regarded him as any- 
 thing but a credit to their gatherings. He on his 
 side was constant in preferring the streets of Edin- 
 burgh to its drawing-rooms. These he loved, and 
 in them his finest adventures were achieved. 
 *' There are no stars so lovely as Edinburgh street 
 lamps," he wrote long afterward, in a foreign land. 
 "When I forget thee, Auld Reekie, may my right 
 hand forget her cunning." He still consorted with 
 the waifs and strays of the city, and did number- 
 less small acts of kindness to the poor and the 
 helpless. One evening as he was coming home 
 at about eleven o'clock he found a lost child 
 a tiny boy of three years old, who only knew 
 that his name was Tommy Murphy, and that 
 his parents lived in something that sounded 
 like Tobago Street. Stevenson carried the child 
 through the streets of Edinburgh for nearly three 
 hours, seeking, with infinite patience and perse- 
 verance, for the missing parents. "It was two 
 before I got to bed," he wrote; then added, 
 characteristically, "However, you see, I had my 
 excitement." 
 
 In July 1875, just after he had passed his ex- 
 amination, he paid a visit to Paris and was intro- 
 duced by his cousin Bob to the artists' colony at 
 Barbizon. This "noiseless hamlet" stood deep 
 in the shady groves of Fontainebleau; it had been 
 the home of Millet, who was lately dead; and its 
 whole neighbourhood was filled with traditions of 
 
 [63] 
 
Robert Louis Stevenson 
 
 artists and their works. At Barbizon was an inn, 
 known as Siron's, and this had become the head- 
 quarters of a company of happy and mostly 
 impecunious young gentlemen, who guarded it 
 carefully from the intrusions of tourists and capi- 
 talists. They had trained the innkeeper to give 
 unlimited credit, and to treat the most out-at- 
 elbows artist with no visible effects but his paint- 
 box as an honoured guest; to allow him to remain 
 as long as he chose; not to present him with his 
 bill until he asked for it, and to suffer him, with- 
 out question or remonstrance, to depart whither- 
 soever he would leaving it unpaid. The hours 
 and ways of the inn were regulated by these 
 young gentlemen's requirements. They rose at 
 what hour they would, found their simple break- 
 fast ready, and went out into the cool, silent 
 shades of the forest to paint, to write, to medi- 
 tate, to join in merry excursions, or to wander in 
 delightful solitude. At noon and at six o'clock 
 there was a plentiful meal spread for them in the 
 dining-room, whose walls were covered with pic- 
 tures painted by past and present frequenters 
 of Siron's; and then there was so much eating 
 and drinking and jabbering in French and Eng- 
 lish that it would have done your heart good, said 
 Stevenson, to have listened at the door. After 
 dinner came a frolic in the dining-room, when the 
 old piano was played and the artists waltzed one 
 with another with great enjoyment if with little 
 grace; or, by the light of guttering candles in the 
 
 C 64 ] 
 
'cummie' 
 
JVander- Years 
 
 high inn chamber they talked the wild ambitious 
 talk of youth, and jested, with light-hearted 
 laughter, or sometimes took their way to the 
 great city that stood so near their solitudes, and 
 returning at night from its brilliant lamp-lit 
 spaces, passed into "a new forest full of whisper, 
 gloom and fragrance," and bathed their senses in 
 the "fragrant darkness of the wood." Then back 
 to Siron's, a descent into the cellar for beer or 
 wine, a night of sound and dreamless sleep, and 
 a new day. 
 
 Such a life suited Stevenson's tastes exactly, 
 and^ he came back again and again to the little 
 village to pass his time in "strenuous idleness," 
 to acquire that sense of style with which, he says, 
 the very atmosphere of France is saturated, to 
 dream dreams and to see in visions "the House 
 Beautiful shining upon its distant hill-top." He 
 was probably never happier than among the 
 "solemn groves" of Barbizon and in the other 
 villages scattered throughout the Forest of Fon- 
 tainebleau. In the summer of 1875 he visited 
 Grez, which he described to his mother as "a 
 pretty and very melancholy village on the plain." 
 It had a low bridge of many arches, which genera- 
 tions of artists had painted, and it had an old 
 tumble-down inn which rivalled Siron's in the 
 warmth and courtesy of the welcome it gave to 
 artists. Stevenson found Grez a "less inspiring 
 place than Barbizon," though he gave it the palm 
 over Cernay, with its "great empty village square," 
 
 [65] 
 
Robert Louis Stevenson 
 
 and over Nemours and Moret and Chailly-en- 
 Briere, and a host of others clustering close by. 
 
 It was from Barbizon that he started with Sir 
 Walter Simpson, in the summer of 1875, on that 
 walk up the valley of the Loing which was, as he 
 tells in his "Epilogue to an Inland Voyage," un- 
 timely cut short by the action of the officials at 
 Chatillon-sur-Loire. He was, he owns, "unwisely 
 dressed." "On his head he wore a smoking cap 
 of Indian work, the gold lace pitifully frayed and 
 tarnished. A flannel shirt of an agreeable dark 
 hue, which the satirical call black; a light tweed 
 coat made by a good English tailor; ready-made 
 cheap linen trousers and leathern gaiters com- 
 pleted his array." ^ Such an appearance excited 
 the suspicions of the gendarme whom he met, on 
 the third day of the tour, at Chatillon-sur-Loire. 
 He was stopped and politely asked for his papers; 
 and none being forthcoming, he was brought before 
 the commissary, ordered to be detained, conducted 
 to a cellar under the gendarmerie, locked in, and 
 only released upon the arrival of his companion, 
 who had dropped behind on the road. "Here 
 was a man about whom there could be no mistake; 
 a man of unquestionable and unassailable manner, 
 in apple-pie order, dressed not with neatness 
 merely but elegance, ready with his passport at 
 a word, and well supplied with money." ^ His 
 influence sufficed for the release of his comrade, 
 and the two returned by train next day to that 
 
 ^ Across the Plains. 2 J bid. 
 
 [66] 
 
Tf^ander- Years 
 
 "most unfashionable spot in Europe, Barbizon," 
 and at noon were dining in Siron's, telling the 
 story of their misadventure. 
 
 After this experience Stevenson set off to join 
 his parents in a stay at Wiesbaden and Homburg, 
 and returned with them to Edinburgh, where he 
 spent the winter and spring, attending in the 
 perfunctory way that has already been described 
 to his duties as an advocate of the Scottish Bar. 
 He was absent during a week or two in January 
 on a walking tour in Ayrshire and Galloway, and 
 in the early summer he paid a month's visit to 
 London. 
 
 The great event of the year was the canoe 
 voyage that he took with Sir Walter Simpson in 
 September. Sir Walter was an enthusiast and 
 an expert in the art of canoeing. Stevenson had 
 joined his friend in the sport, and, according to 
 his wont, had taken it up with fervour; but in 
 spite of much practice in the Firth of Forth he 
 had attained to no great degree of skill. He was 
 eager for the new experience, however, and the 
 two friends went to Antwerp and started for 
 Brussels, then went on from the French frontier, 
 by the river Oise almost to the Seine. The sea- 
 son, however, was late for such an undertaking. 
 Day after day the rain poured steadily down and 
 the cold winds blew; yet the 'Arethusa' and the 
 'Cigarette,' as Stevenson and his friend called 
 themselves after their respective canoes, managed 
 to get a great deal of fun out of their "inland 
 
 [67] 
 
Robert Louis Stevenson 
 
 voyage." It provided, moreover, excellent ma- 
 terial for one of those delightful books of travel, 
 unique in their delicacy of touch, the intimacy of 
 their personal note, and their delicious, unex- 
 pected humour by means of which Stevenson first 
 made for himself a name in literature. 
 
 "You may paddle all day long; but it is when 
 you come back at night-fall, and look in at the 
 familiar room, that you find Love or Death await- 
 ing you beside the stove; and the most beautiful 
 adventures are not those we go to seek." With 
 these words Stevenson closed An Inland Voyage, 
 which he finished during the following year; and 
 they were probably inspired by the remembrance 
 that he had found his most beautiful adventure 
 waiting for him when he came back to Grez after 
 that voyage was over. He found the inn shaken 
 to its foundations by news of the impending 
 arrival of lady visitors. It was just at this time 
 that the girl students of England and America 
 were beginning to walk calmly into the inns which 
 had long been sacred to the brotherhood of artists, 
 and having by this outrage upon propriety and 
 decorum reduced the French element in the com- 
 pany to a state of bewildered helplessness, were 
 being accepted by the less, or rather the differ- 
 ently, prejudiced Saxon, and establishing for their 
 sex a right to share the amenities of artist life in 
 Fontainebleau. The visitors to Grez turned out 
 to be an American lady with her seventeen-year- 
 old daughter and her little son. The name of the 
 
 [68] 
 
JVander- Years 
 
 family was Osbourne, and they had come from 
 California in order that the young people might 
 have the advantage of a French education. Mrs 
 Osbourne was an enthusiastic student of art, and 
 had friends in Paris who had advised her to visit 
 Grez. The two ladies are described by Mr W. H. 
 Low, one of the Barbizonian group of artists, as 
 slight and graceful, with delicately moulded fea- 
 tures, vivid eyes, and masses of dark hair. They 
 looked, he says, more like two sisters than like 
 mother and daughter. 
 
 With Mrs Osbourne Stevenson at once fell in 
 love; and he did it with the finality and complete- 
 ness that marked all his actions. Hitherto he 
 seems to have felt slight interest in women, save 
 in those who stood toward him in an almost 
 motherly relation. He was nearly twenty-six 
 years old, and the passion of love had never 
 touched him; nor had he apparently ever sought 
 to gain even that theoretical knowledge of it 
 that might have been considered essential to a 
 young writer's practice of his art. Yet he knew 
 at once that this that he felt for Mrs Osbourne 
 was the real thing, that the Great Adventure had 
 come and must be followed up with a stout and 
 faithful heart. 
 
 The first step was readily achieved. It would 
 have been strange indeed if the woman he loved 
 had been almost the only person among those to 
 whom he showed his real self to refuse to love him. 
 But for a time at least the adventure could go no 
 
 [69] 
 
Robert Louis Stevenson 
 
 further. Mrs Osbourne, so Stevenson learned, had 
 a husband then living in California, from whom 
 she had separated under painful circumstances. 
 She was unwilling to apply for a divorce out of 
 consideration for the feelings of her own family; 
 so that it seemed likely that this new attachment 
 would be nothing but a source of suffering to her 
 and to Stevenson. 
 
 For a time, however, the new element that had 
 thus come into his life filled him with happiness 
 and high spirits. The future, it is true, was over- 
 cast, and even the present was not unclouded. 
 He could see little of Mrs Osbourne, and could 
 not feel that his relations with her were assured 
 or satisfactory. He knew that his parents would 
 look upon the whole matter with great disfavour, 
 and that an estrangement more painful and more 
 lasting than those that had arisen in his younger 
 days was probably at hand. But to his happi- 
 ness facts mattered always less than feelings; he 
 was, in some directions, a supreme egoist, and the 
 consciousness of this new and wonderful develop- 
 ment in his own nature was powerful enough, for 
 a time, to dominate his entire being. This great 
 stimulus carried him through 1877, and helped to 
 make this year a wonderfully productive period, 
 its fruits becoming visible to the world in the 
 books that appeared during 1878. In January he 
 paid a visit to London, and formed one of his 
 rapid and intimate friendships with Mr Edmund 
 Gosse, to whom he was introduced by Colvin at 
 
 [70] 
 
W^ander- Years 
 
 the Savile Club. ** Those who have written about 
 him from later impressions than those of which 
 I speak," says Mr Gosse, "seem to me to give 
 insufficient prominence to the gaiety of Stevenson. 
 It was his cardinal quality in those early days. A 
 child-like mirth leaped and danced in him; he 
 seemed to skip upon the hills of life. He was 
 simply bubbling with quips and jests; his inherent 
 earnestness or passion about abstract things was 
 incessantly relieved by jocosity; and when he had 
 built one of his intellectual castles in the sand, a 
 wave of humour was certain to sweep in and 
 destroy it." He had various whims and oddities, 
 and he upheld the most absurd propositions with 
 such outpourings of fantastic and brilliant argu- 
 ment as highly delighted his friends. He de- 
 claimed, for example, against the amassing of any 
 kind of material property, declaring that such 
 possessions destroyed a man's independence, teth- 
 ered him to the earth, and prevented him from 
 attaining complete manhood. This idea so at- 
 tracted him that it seems for a time to have 
 become the foremost tenet of his faith; and when, 
 after a fortnight in London filled full of the stimu- 
 lating intercourse with congenial minds that to 
 him was the breath of life, he returned to Paris, 
 he put it into practice in his own whimsical fash- 
 ion. His cousin and kindred spirit appears to 
 have been readily inoculated with the doctrine, 
 and the two left London "with nothing but great- 
 coats and tooth-brushes. It was expensive, to be 
 
 [71] 
 
Robert Louis Stevenson 
 
 sure, for every time you had to comb your hair 
 a barber must be paid, and every time you 
 changed your linen one shirt must be bought and 
 another thrown away; but anything was better, 
 argued these young gentlemen, than to be the 
 slaves of haversacks." Thus Stevenson in The 
 Wrecker, where the brothers Stennis stand for 
 himself and his cousin. Almost the whole of the 
 Paris part of The Wrecker is, in fact, drawn from 
 his own experience. In some moods he loved the 
 great gay city better even than the leafy soli- 
 tudes of Fontainebleau, to which, however, his 
 true allegiance was given. 
 
 A very large part of 1877 was spent in France, 
 where Mrs Osbourne was then living, and in 1878 
 he was in Scotland only for one fortnight. It was 
 in this year that Mrs Osbourne returned to Cali- 
 fornia, and Stevenson's gaiety and light-hearted- 
 ness went suddenly out. He showed a brave face 
 to the world, but in his letters there is a new note 
 of gravity, sometimes of sadness. "There are not 
 many sadder people in the world, perhaps, than 
 I," he wrote to his father. "... I am lonely and 
 sick and out of heart. Well, I still hope; I still 
 believe; I still see the good in the inch, and cling 
 to it. It is not much, perhaps, but it is always 
 something. . . . 'Tis a strange world, indeed, but 
 there is a manifest God for those who care to look 
 for Him." This sounds as little like the gay- 
 hearted frequenter of the Savile Club as it sounds 
 like the immature atheist who had vexed his 
 
 [73] 
 
JV^ander- Years 
 
 father's soul. Stevenson passed quickly from one 
 phase to another; and the * wander years,' care- 
 less and irresponsible as they seemed, had yet 
 been full of ripening influences that helped to 
 bring him to his brave manhood. 
 
 His literary work had, all this time, been going 
 steadily on. He had written many essays and 
 articles for magazines, and in 1878 his first book. 
 An Inland Voyage, had been published. During 
 the same year his 'New Arabian Nights and Pic- 
 turesque Notes on Edinburgh were appearing serially. 
 Yet with all this he had probably never made as 
 much as £50 in a year by his writing, and was 
 still mainly dependent on his father. He was 
 often in financial difficulties, which were amusing, 
 but inconvenient, but which he met with the same 
 humorous courage with which he was wont to turn 
 uncomfortable situations into interesting adven- 
 tures. In 1877 his father placed the sum of 
 £1000 to his credit, but within two years this was 
 all gone, much of it in helping needy friends. 
 
 For a time after Mrs Osbourne's departure he 
 went steadily on with his work, and in September 
 started on an eleven days' tour through the 
 Cevennes, in company with the wayward but 
 captivating Modestine, whom he bought at Monas- 
 tier for sixty-five francs and a glass of brandy. 
 His book. Travels with a Donkey in the Cevennes, is 
 one of his triumphs. It belongs to the same class 
 as An Inland Voyage, but its style is more natural, 
 its humour sweeter, its sympathy both with na- 
 
 [73] 
 
Robert Louis Stevenson 
 
 ture and humanity truer and deeper. It was 
 published in June 1879, when Stevenson was in 
 London, writing in collaboration with W. E. 
 Henley a play called Deacon Broclie, But his 
 work was suddenly interrupted by the news that 
 Mrs Osbourne was seriously ill in California. He 
 was in a fever of uncertainty as to what he ought 
 to do, and though he tried to work, and managed, 
 in fact, to finish the play, the question as to 
 whether he should or should not go out to Cali- 
 fornia occupied all his thoughts. He could not 
 bear to be separated by almost half the world 
 from the woman he loved; yet to go to her seemed 
 impracticable, and might prove disastrous. He 
 was still largely dependent upon his parents, and 
 even if it should become possible for him to 
 marry Mrs Osbourne he would not be able to 
 provide a home for her. Though he had had no 
 serious illness for some years, his health was still 
 delicate, and there was a possibility that he might 
 fall ill far from home, and add to Mrs Osbou!rne's 
 distresses. The few friends to whom he had con- 
 fided the secret of his attachment strongly advised 
 him not to go. His parents would, he knew, if 
 they were consulted, oppose the project strenu- 
 ously. But none of these considerations could 
 weigh against the longing he felt to be near Mrs 
 Osbourne again; and so, without a word to his 
 parents, he arranged for his voyage. He deter- 
 mined that, since he was doing something of 
 which he knew his father would disapprove, he 
 
 [74] 
 
JVander-^ Years 
 
 would ask for no money from home, but would 
 depend entirely on his own efforts and prove that 
 he was man enough to carry out his enterprise 
 without help. On August 7th, 1879, he sailed 
 from Glasgow in the Devonia, bound for New 
 York. 
 
 [75] 
 
CHAPTER V: California 
 
 FROM motives of economy Stevenson took 
 his passage in the second cabin, which was 
 "a modified oasis in the very heart of 
 the steerage." The fare provided was, however, 
 rather better than that given to the emigrants 
 proper, and, as Stevenson gravely informs us, 
 passengers of the second cabin ranked in the ship's 
 nomenclature as 'gentlemen and ladies' while the 
 steerage were only 'males and females.' The 
 privilege on which he set most store, however, 
 was that of having a table provided for writing, 
 and at this table, to the immense astonishment of 
 his fellow-passengers, he wrote industriously as 
 often as his health allowed him. Besides keeping 
 a full descriptive diary, upon which he afterward 
 founded his Amateur Emigrant, he wrote during 
 the voyage The Story of a Lie. He was nicknamed 
 'The Writer,' and jokes of various kinds went 
 round in derision of what was considered a most 
 unaccountable habit. He bore all this with per- 
 fect good humour, and made himself as good a 
 comrade in the second cabin of the Devonia as 
 in the high inn chamber of Barbizon. The com- 
 pany was a mixed and certainly not a generally 
 attractive one. It was largely made up of "broken 
 men of England," who, having proved themselves 
 to be possessed of no quality that made for success 
 in their native land, were going out to the new 
 country in the blind and cheerful hope that there 
 
 [76] 
 
California 
 
 some miracle would be performed that would 
 transform their fortunes. There were husbands 
 fleeing from drunken wives, sons fleeing from 
 drunken fathers, drunkards fleeing from drink. 
 There were the brutal and debased along with 
 the decent and godly; and there were swarms of 
 children, who, as it seemed, were only by a special 
 Providence saved from falling each day by shoals 
 into the water, and whose narrow escapes gave 
 excitement to the monotonous voyage. On the 
 whole they were a cheerful and very human com- 
 pany. They sang glees and choruses and were 
 moved to tears by the songs that recalled the old 
 days in the old country; they played games, they 
 danced solemn dances to tunes played by a fiddler 
 who was one of their number; when they could 
 they smoked and drank; and they grumbled at 
 the food provided quite in the manner of their 
 betters. There is something very charming in 
 Stevenson's account of his fellow-passengers. The 
 real modesty which was one of his essential quali- 
 ties, and which existed quite naturally side by 
 side with a frank and eager egoism, shows itself 
 in a tone so free from the least sign of superiority 
 or patronage, that it is quite evident he really did 
 not consider himself a better fellow than the 
 broken-down companions whose good-will he tried 
 to gain by small services offered entirely in the 
 spirit of comradeship. His indignation at the 
 arrogance or condescension on the part of officials 
 or saloon passengers is for them, and not for him- 
 
 [77 ] 
 
Robert Louis Stevenson 
 
 self. With all of them he was on the friendliest 
 terms, and he soon learnt a great deal concerning 
 their histories and their prospects. 
 
 His chief intimate on board was a Mr Jones, 
 who was *' always hovering round inventions like 
 a bee over a flower"; and to this man's stories 
 of his amazing achievements, and the ill-luck that 
 had prevented him from turning these to account, 
 Stevenson listened, not only with patience but 
 with real interest. 
 
 On Sunday afternoon, August 18th, the Devonia 
 reached New York. With a sudden and charac- 
 teristic reaction from the cheerful economies of 
 the voyage, Stevenson took his friend Jones to 
 dine at one of the most expensive restaurants in 
 the city; then spent the night in an Irish boarding- 
 house, where he paid the sum of one shilling for 
 his accommodation, and by five o'clock the next 
 day was at the Ferry Depot, waiting to be taken 
 across the river. He carried a small valise, a 
 knapsack, and a railway rug, in which was be- 
 stowed Bancroft's History of the United States in 
 six fat volumes. There was a dense crowd of 
 people, for four emigrant ships had come in since 
 the previous Saturday night, and all the passen- 
 gers were anxious to depart by the earliest possible 
 train. Under the stress of such unusual numbers 
 the ordinary arrangements completely broke down. 
 Cold, wet and weary the emigrants stood in close 
 ranks in a long shed, while officials shouted and 
 fumed without making any impression upon the 
 
 [78] 
 
California 
 
 prevailing chaos. At last the crowd began to 
 move, and, straining, pushing and gasping, passed 
 on to the miserable boat that was to take them 
 across the river. The rain came steadily down, 
 and the heavily-laden, ill-ballasted boat was 
 struck by strong gusts of wind that threatened 
 its destruction. It reached the opposite bank in 
 safety, however, and the emigrants, in whom 
 long-continued misery and discomfort had obliter- 
 ated all kindly human feeling, made a wild rush 
 for the railway station. The distance was only 
 about a hundred yards, yet Stevenson, exhausted 
 by the struggle in which he had been forced to 
 take part, was obliged twice to stop and sit down 
 on his valise to rest. He was wet through when 
 he reached the platform, and there for another 
 hour he had to sit among the weary, dispirited 
 crowd, too dazed with these accumulated miseries 
 to note the doings of his companions. 
 
 At length the cars were unlocked and the emi- 
 grants crowded in. Then began that memorable 
 journey of which Stevenson has told us in Across 
 the Plains. Weak and utterly out of health as he 
 was, it was a wonder that he survived its mani- 
 fold discomforts; but his valiant spirit seemed to 
 constrain his feeble body to endure manfully to 
 the end. He fared scantily and coarsely; he 
 shared his bed — made of boards placed from 
 bench to bench of the car, and three straw cushions 
 — with a Pennsylvanian Dutchman; he washed 
 in a tin washing-dish on the platform of the car, 
 
 [79] 
 
Robert Louis Stevenson 
 
 where he was all the time in the greatest danger of 
 being jerked from his position by the movement of 
 the train; he consorted with the squalid, the dirty, 
 and the vulgar; he was treated by officials with 
 the insolent toleration which is all that the emi- 
 grant can expect; yet he kept a mind at liberty 
 to observe the strange, beautiful or striking fea- 
 tures of the country through which he passed, and 
 to note gratefully the chance kindnesses and 
 courtesies that met him. 
 
 San Francisco was reached in the dark hours 
 of the morning of August 30th. "The day was 
 breaking as we crossed the ferry; the fog was 
 rising over the citied hills of San Francisco; the 
 bay was perfect — not a ripple, scarce a stain upon 
 its blue expanse; everything was waiting breath- 
 less for the sun. A spot of cloudy gold lit first 
 upon the head of Tamalpais, and then widened 
 downward on its shapely shoulder; the air seemed 
 to awaken, and began to sparkle; and suddenly 
 
 The tall hills Titan discovered, 
 
 and the city of San Francisco, and the bay of 
 gold and corn were lit from end to end with 
 summer daylight." ^ 
 
 Thus he reached the end of his journey, but 
 with health entirely broken down. His first care 
 was to seek news of Mrs Osbourne. He learnt 
 that she was much better, and had found that it 
 was possible, without giving undue pain to her 
 
 ^ Across the Plains. 
 
 [80] 
 
California 
 
 family, to obtain a divorce from her husband. 
 There was therefore, at last, a prospect of mar- 
 riage, and he must bestir himself to find the neces- 
 sary money. The restoration of his own health 
 was of the highest importance, and feeling that 
 for the present it was useless for him to try to 
 work, he resolved upon a novel 'cure.' He trav- 
 elled along the coast a hundred and fifty miles 
 to the south and camped out on a goat ranch on 
 the range of mountains that lies about eighteen 
 miles beyond Monterey. But his strength gave 
 out, and for two nights he lay under a tree in a 
 kind of stupor, and here the two ranchers — old 
 bearhunters and soldiers — found him. They car- 
 ried him to their hut and tended him, and he 
 stayed with them for two weeks. As soon as he 
 was well enough he went down to Monterey, the 
 quaint little town which he has celebrated in his 
 essay, "The Old Pacific Capital." This "old 
 township lying among the sands" was "essentially 
 and wholly Mexican," though almost all the land 
 was owned by Americans and Americans held all 
 the public offices. It had had its day of prosper- 
 ity and had declined; and its former owners par- 
 taking of its decay, formed a small society whose 
 stately manners, picturesque customs and brightly- 
 coloured costumes gave to the life of the town a 
 touch of antique grace most healing to those who, 
 like Robert Louis Stevenson, had been rasped by 
 the contemplation of the crude new civilizations 
 of the West. He lodged with a little French 
 
 [81] 
 
Robert Louis Stevenson 
 
 doctor, and took one meal a day at a French 
 restaurant, known as Simoneau's. Thus he added 
 one more to his private collection of remembered 
 inns and restaurants, not one of which, he says, 
 can compare with this little inn at Monterey. 
 Day after day he sat down to dinner in the little 
 chill bare room, whose walls were adorned with 
 rough oil sketches that reminded him of Barbizon. 
 His fellow-guests were of many nationalities — 
 Portuguese, French, Italian, Swiss, German, Chi- 
 nese and Mexican. With all these Stevenson was 
 soon on friendly terms, though he only sparingly 
 allowed himself time for social intercourse and for 
 rambles in the wood and along the shore. He 
 was working hard and steadily. *'The Pavilion 
 on the Links," a story that he had begun some 
 time before, was finished and sent off to the pub- 
 lisher in London. He began a novel called A 
 Vendetta in the West, but half-way through this 
 an attack of pleurisy stopped further efforts for 
 the time. In December he returned to San Fran- 
 cisco, searched the city for a cheap lodging, took 
 a room in a poor house in Bush Street, and settled 
 down to work once more. There was no 'Simo- 
 neau's' here, and no delightful mixture of the 
 dignified and the gay in the squalid company that 
 he met when the hour for dinner came. For 
 days together he spoke to no one except his land- 
 lady and the waiters at the restaurant. Christ- 
 mas passed in loneliness and with no relaxation of 
 the rigorous way of life he had marked out for 
 
 [82] 
 
California 
 
 himself. He was ill, and suffering acutely, yet he 
 never dreamt of giving in and appealing to his 
 parents for help. He would battle this out by 
 himself, and prove himself to be a man, or he 
 would die in the attempt. Remittances from 
 editors in England came in but slowly. Some im- 
 portant letters, including one from his father enclos- 
 ing twenty pounds, were delayed or miscarried. Yet 
 he contrived to write cheerfully to his friends, and 
 in the serio-comic account of his life that he sent 
 to Colvin he did his best to hide what neverthe- 
 less appears between the lines, his real suffering 
 under those sordid conditions. Each morning, he 
 wrote, a gentleman might be seen descending the 
 steps of 608 Bush Street, and might be observed 
 niaking his way to a neighbouring cheap restau- 
 rant, there to take his breakfast of coffee, roll 
 and butter — cost, fivepence. The gentleman, he 
 added, had had some difficulty at first in bringing 
 his roll to an end concurrently with his butter, 
 but practice, and the impossibility of affording a 
 second pat of the latter article, had made him 
 expert, and now roll and butter expired at the 
 same moment. Half an hour later the same gentle- 
 man might be seen, "armed like George Washing- 
 ton with his little hatchet," splitting kindling 
 wood and breaking coal on the window-sill — 
 choosing, so it was explained, this prominent 
 position, not through a desire to exhibit his 
 strength, his skill, or his industry, but simply 
 because there was no other place in the room 
 
 [83] 
 
Robert Louis Stevenson 
 
 where such exercise could be taken without danger 
 of serious damage to the structure. Then for 
 three or four hours the doughty performer is 
 "engaged darkly with the ink-bottle." At mid- 
 day he sallies forth again to dine, enjoys a "copi- 
 ous meal" with half a bottle of wine, and coffee 
 and brandy, for the sum of two and twopence. 
 Then, until 4.30 "the being walks"; an hour's 
 devotion to correspondence, or "the mysterious 
 rites of the forenoon," follows, then another meal 
 of coffee and roll and butter, an evening spent 
 in reading and writing, until bedtime comes at 
 eleven o'clock. 
 
 From the loneliness of his dingy room in a mean 
 street of a crowded city how far away must have 
 appeared the happy comradeship of Fontainebleau, 
 the brilliant, stimulating intercourse of the Savile 
 Club, and even the companionable solitude of 
 Swanston Cottage, "looking to the hills." It is 
 true that even under these unfavourable condi- 
 tions his genius for making friends did not entirely 
 forsake him. Three chance acquaintances who 
 became real friends he made in San Francisco — 
 the artist, Virgil Williams, and his wife, and Charles 
 Warren Stoddard. These gladly welcomed him 
 to their homes whenever he could be induced to 
 come; but his plan of life was so severe, and his 
 industry so unremitting, that he would not allow 
 himself more than an occasional visit. Mr Stod- 
 dard rendered him an important service in another 
 way. He lent him Herman Melville's books, 
 
 [84 3 
 
California 
 
 Typee, Omoo and South Sea Idylls, and these stories 
 of strange and delightful lands opened out new 
 realms to Stevenson and turned his thoughts 
 toward those islands of the Pacific, one of which 
 was, later, to be his home. 
 
 Mrs Osbourne was now free, but no definite 
 arrangement as to the date of her marriage with 
 Stevenson had so far been made. As yet there 
 were no signs of a reconciliation between him and 
 his father, and things were going very badly with 
 the self-exiled man. A letter to Charles Baxter, 
 written toward the end of January 1880, an- 
 nounces that the writer has had to drop from a 
 fifty-cent to a twenty-five cent dinner, so that his 
 daily food now costs him the sum of one shilling 
 and tenpence halfpenny. Yet in February he 
 wrote to W. E. Henley that he was '*well, cheer- 
 ful and happy." He was working desperately to 
 gain the money which meant to him independence 
 and the vindication of his right as a man to choose 
 his own path. The manuscripts that he sent 
 home were accepted by the editors who received 
 them, but the money came in slowly and Steven- 
 son could not afford to wait. The long period of 
 privation was rapidly breaking down his health. 
 If he could only hang out a little longer, however, 
 there was a prospect of some works more con- 
 siderable than magazine articles being finished and 
 of really substantial sums coming in. But in 
 March his landlady's little daughter fell danger- 
 ously ill, and Stevenson, forgetting his own cares, 
 
 [85] 
 
Robert Louis Stevenson 
 
 devoted himself to nursing the child. This brought 
 his long struggle to an end. For six weeks he 
 lay so ill that it was, as he says, a 'toss-up' 
 whether he would recover. But he won the toss, 
 with the help of a kind and skilful doctor, and of 
 his future wife who nursed him with entire devo- 
 tion. Gradually the rapid consumption that 
 threatened him retreated, and left him with only 
 his normal amount of lung weakness, but worn 
 out and attenuated so that it seemed scarcely 
 possible that he could struggle back to health. 
 Meanwhile, his father had heard of the straits to 
 which he had been reduced, and of his terrible 
 illness, and had at once telegraphed that he might 
 in future count on an income of £250 annually. 
 This was a tremendous relief and helped on Louis' 
 convalescence wonderfully. 
 
 On May 19th, 1880, while he was yet, as he 
 afterward said, *'a mere complication of cough 
 and bones," he was married to Mrs Osbourne. 
 He had achieved the Great Adventure, through 
 such trials and dangers, exile and peril of death, 
 as surely entitled him to share the reward of the 
 heroes of the old stories, and 'live happy ever 
 after.' In a sense he did live happy ever after, 
 for his wife brought him such happiness as he 
 had never known before. But the tame and peace- 
 ful life which is implied in the dear, conventional 
 fairy tale ending was not for him. His thirst for 
 adventure was unquenched; and the best proof 
 that the wife he had chosen was his true and 
 
 [86] 
 
California 
 
 fitting helpmate is to be found in her willingness 
 to go with him on those quests which led far 
 away from the smooth highroad of everyday life. 
 Immediately after the marriage she prepared to 
 start with him upon a honeymoon as unconven- 
 tional, surely, as any bride has ever been asked to 
 contemplate. Stevenson has told the story of 
 their adventures in his book The Silverado Squat- 
 ters, and to home-abiding English people the whole 
 reads like pure romance. The two, with Mrs 
 Stevenson's young son, Lloyd Osbourne, crossed 
 the Bay of San Francisco to South Vallejo, where 
 they stayed for a few days looking for some retired 
 and healthful spot where they might live a per- 
 fectly quiet and simple life. Beyond valleys 
 stretched bald, green pasture lands, rising to 
 wooded hills, which were the outposts of one 
 section of the Californian Coast Range. Between 
 the hills green and well-watered valleys extended 
 down to the sea, and it was along one of these 
 — the Napa Valley — that the Stevensons pur- 
 sued their investigations. One end of it was 
 blocked by Mount Helena, the Mont Blanc of the 
 range, and about three miles from this stood the 
 newly-built village of Calistoga, with its one street 
 of bright, clean, low houses. The whole neigh- 
 bourhood of St Helena had once been alive with 
 mining camps and villages, but now most of these 
 were deserted; the houses stood dismantled and 
 empty, the owners having departed and left them 
 to their fate. It seemed to Stevenson that one 
 
 [87] . 
 
Robert Louis Stevenson 
 
 of these houses offered just what he and his wife 
 were looking for, and by the advice of Kelma, the 
 Cahstoga store-keeper and great man of the vil- 
 lage, he decided to explore the Silverado settle- 
 ment. It lay in a sheltered and beautiful position 
 on the slope of Mount Helena; "there in the nick 
 just where the eastern foothills joined the moun- 
 tain, and she herself began to rise above the zone 
 of forest — there was Silverado." To reach it 
 he and his wife travelled two miles up the valley 
 beyond Calistoga, then struck off to the right. 
 The road mounted steeply; vineyards and deep 
 meadows gave place to woods, where grew sturdy 
 oaks and enormous pines. Near the shoulder of 
 St Helena they left the road, took a trail to the 
 left, and came soon to an open grassy space, 
 planted sparsely like an orchard, with forest in- 
 stead of fruit trees. But to their disappointment 
 all the houses that had made up the Silverado 
 settlement had been carted away, except one, 
 which had formerly been the hotel, and was now 
 occupied by a hunter whose name was Rufe 
 Hanson. Mrs Hanson, however, when questioned, 
 remembered that there were some houses remain- 
 ing "at the tunnel," so the seekers pursued their 
 way about a furlong along a road running through 
 a forest and round the side of the hill, to a place 
 where it suddenly widened and ended abruptly 
 in a great canyon. The canyon was walled across 
 by a 'dump' of rolling stones, from twenty to 
 thirty feet high. Up this they mounted by lad- 
 
 [88] 
 
California 
 
 ders, then walked over a mass of loose stones, 
 until they struck a triangular platform filling up 
 the whole glen. Walls of bare red rock rose shut- 
 ting it in on three sides. A line of rails, with 
 trucks and other miners' stock, in front, and two 
 shafts that had been sunk farther back ^showed 
 that this had been the scene of the Silverado 
 mining operations. But the object upon which 
 the eyes of Stevenson and his wife fastened with 
 the greatest eagerness was a small, brown, wooden 
 house built upon one side of the platform, close 
 up to the red wall of rock. It contained three 
 rooms, each of which was entered from a different 
 side and a different level. The window-frames 
 had all been taken away, and sand had drifted in, 
 blocking up the entrance; and in this soil chance 
 seeds had produced a flourishing crop of vegeta- 
 tion. The upper room, which, while the mine 
 was working, had provided sleeping accommoda- 
 tion for thirty miners, was fitted with a triple tier 
 of beds, arranged like the berths in a ship. 
 
 The Stevensons lost no time in making up their 
 minds. This, they decided, should be their home 
 for the summer. With some help from Rufe 
 Hanson and his family the house was cleared and 
 made habitable; some furniture and a stove were 
 brought up from Calistoga, and the "Silverado 
 Squatters" began their experiment. Stevenson 
 and his wife shared the household duties between 
 them. Each morning he rose early from his shelf - 
 like bed and filled the kettle at a pool of clear 
 
 [89] 
 
Robert Louis Stevenson 
 
 water that lay behind one of the shafts; then Ht 
 a fire in the stove and prepared breakfast. After 
 breakfast it was Mrs Stevenson's turn; and her 
 husband went out into the sunlight to smoke his 
 pipe, and gaze down into the beautiful little 
 wooded dell below, with its fragrant trees of bay 
 and nutmeg; and the little stream which, its 
 head waters having been tapped by the shaft, 
 had wandered long underground, but which farther 
 on "came trotting out into the sunlight with a 
 song." Sometimes for many days they saw no 
 one but Mrs Hanson's brother, who came to split 
 the huge logs that lay round about, to make fuel 
 for their stove. Occasionally they walked down 
 the hillside to visit the Toll House, the inn that 
 lay in a glen below Silverado, and were present 
 at the daily scene of excitement when the two 
 Lakeport coaches, the one coming and the other 
 going, woke up the drowsy little settlement for a 
 brief space into shouting, bustling life. But, says 
 Stevenson, "it appears to me looking back as 
 though the far greater part of our life at Silverado 
 had been passed propped upon an elbow or seated 
 on a plank, listening to the silence that there is 
 among the hills." ^ 
 
 The summer, however, did not pass without 
 disaster. Mrs Stevenson and her son both caught 
 diphtheria. An illness in the miners' house at 
 Silverado was a terrible experience, and although 
 happily both patients recovered, it was felt that the 
 
 1 The Silverado Squatters. 
 
 [90] 
 
California 
 
 charm of the place had departed. About the middle 
 of July the party left Silverado, and made their way 
 to New York, homeward bound for England. 
 
 Nothing now remained of the late misunder- 
 standing between Stevenson and his father. A 
 deep and peculiarly beautiful affection existed 
 between these two who had each done so much 
 to wound and sadden the other. From this time 
 forward their relations took on a tenderness un- 
 usual between grown men, and especially touching 
 in view of the stern and rugged character of the 
 elder Stevenson. For his son's sake he was now 
 willing and anxious to receive the wife of whom 
 he had heard little that was agreeable to his strict 
 Scottish notions, and the way for the return of 
 the exile was made as smooth as his affectionate 
 words and freely given money could make it. 
 On August 7th, 1880, just a year since Stevenson 
 had left Scotland, the party sailed from New York. 
 They were met at Liverpool by Thomas Steven- 
 son, his wife, and Colvin, and the party travelled 
 on together to Edinburgh. It did not take the 
 younger Mrs Stevenson long to establish her posi- 
 tion with her new relatives. Her husband's father 
 in particular was strongly attracted to her, and soon 
 learned to regard the marriage as the best thing that 
 could possibly have happened to Louis. The only 
 trouble that remained was the state of his health. 
 He had by no means recovered from the effects of 
 his late privations and serious illness, and must, at 
 any rate for a time, be regarded as an invalid. 
 
 [91] 
 
CHAPTER VI: In Search of 
 Health 
 
 EDINBURGH, as Stevenson admits, "pays 
 cruelly for her high seat in one of the 
 vilest climates under heaven. She is lia- 
 ble to be beaten upon by all the winds that blow, 
 to be drenched with rain, to be buried in cold sea 
 fogs out of the east, and powdered with the snow 
 as it comes flying southward from the Highland 
 hills." 1 
 
 Only sound lungs can endure in a climate such 
 as this; and a very few weeks proved that, for 
 Stevenson, a winter in Edinburgh would be disas- 
 trous. Doctors were consulted, who spoke seri- 
 ously of his condition, and strongly advised him 
 to try what the air of the High Alps would do for 
 him. Accordingly, about the middle of October 
 Mr and Mrs Stevenson, with Lloyd Osbourne, set 
 out for Davos Platz. There was a fourth member 
 of the party also, who, as he became Stevenson's 
 almost constant companion during the next three 
 years, must now be introduced. This was "a 
 little, very alert, well-bred, intelligent Skye terrier, 
 as black as a hat, with a wet bramble for a nose 
 and two cairngorms for eyes." He was a gift from 
 Sir Walter Simpson, and had at first been called 
 ' Walter,' in honour of the donor, but his name had 
 been subjected to a series of corruptions, and it 
 was as 'Woggs' that he travelled to Davos Platz. 
 
 ^ Picturesque Notes on Edinburgh, 
 
 [92] 
 
In Search of Health 
 
 The party arrived on November 4th and estab- 
 Hshed themselves at the Hotel Belvedere. Davos, 
 as a health resort, was at that time only in the 
 first stages of its development, and there were 
 comparatively few visitors. Yet Stevenson did 
 not find in this Swiss valley the sense of freedom 
 and solitude that was essential to him. He com- 
 plained that the valley was so shut in by moun- 
 tains that no glimpse of open country was possible, 
 and the dwellers were forced "to live in holes and 
 corners" and could ''change only one for another." 
 On the confined, monotonous walks that alone 
 were possible you saw houses all the way, dotted 
 to right and to left. You could not get away into 
 happy solitude; there was always "some one in 
 front whom you were visibly overtaking," or 
 "some one behind who was audibly overtaking 
 you"; while a score or so passed going in the 
 opposite direction. But the life had its good 
 points. There were beautiful, still dawns, when 
 the clouds lay low and grey over a world so 
 thickly covered with its carpet of snow that no 
 sound was heard, and men passed, and heavy 
 waggons rolled along, like dream figures before 
 the eyes of sleep. There were solemn starlight 
 nights and clear bright noons; and there were 
 breathless moments when, having with pains 
 dragged one's toboggan up the long slope, one 
 sped like the wind down those strange, white 
 mountains into the vale where the lights glittered 
 below — moments such as teach " the pulse an 
 
 [9S] 
 
Robert Louis Stevenson 
 
 unaccustomed tune" and add "a new excitement 
 to the life of man upon his planet." 
 
 For society, the members of the little party 
 were mainly and happily dependent on each other. 
 Stevenson delighted to join in the occupations of 
 his young stepson, and Woggs, the pugnacious, 
 might confidently be depended upon to provide 
 some small excitement daily. One very congenial 
 friend they had found waiting for them when they 
 reached Davos — John Addington Symonds, who, 
 like Stevenson, had come to seek for health in 
 the High Alps, and to whom Mr Edmund Gosse 
 had given them a letter of introduction. The 
 delight of finding some one with whom he could 
 hold the long intimate discussions that he loved 
 gave Davos, for Stevenson, something of the charm 
 of Barbizon. 
 
 The winter passed without an attack of illness, 
 but no considerable improvement took place in 
 the general state of Stevenson's health. The 
 doctors w^ere confident, however, that the climate 
 of Davos would ultimately have favourable effects, 
 and it was with the prospect of returning in the 
 following winter that, at the end of April, he and 
 his wife left the Alpine valley. Lloyd Osbourne 
 had, before this, been sent to school in England, 
 so they had only Woggs for their companion upon 
 the homeward journey. They made a short stay 
 at Barbizon and another at Paris, and at the end 
 of May reached Edinburgh. 
 
 June and July were spent with Mrs Thomas 
 
 [94] 
 
In Search of Health 
 
 Stevenson at Pitlochry, in a small house near a 
 "wonderful burn." Here work was seriously taken 
 up again. Travel and general articles were for a 
 time put aside, and a volume of tales dealing with 
 the supernatural was projected. Three of these 
 tales, "Thrawn Janet," "The Merry Men," and 
 "The Body Snatcher," were written during the 
 stay at Pitlochry. At the beginning of August 
 the party — now increased by the presence of 
 Lloyd Osbourne, home for the holidays — moved 
 to Braemar, where they lived in a cottage "late 
 the late Miss McGregor's." At Braemar Steven- 
 son began Treasure Island; and his own delightful 
 account of the manner of its inception must be 
 given. "There wa." a schoolboy in the late Miss 
 McGregor's cottage, home from the holidays. . . . 
 He had no thought of literature; it was the art of 
 Raphael that received his fleeting suffrages; and 
 with the aid of pen and ink, and a shilling box 
 of water-colours, he had soon turned one of the 
 rooms into a picture gallery. My more immediate 
 duty towards the gallery was to be showman; but 
 I would sometimes unbend a little, join the artist 
 (so to speak) at the easel, and pass the afternoon 
 with him in a generous emulation, making coloured 
 drawings. On one of these occasions I made the 
 map of an island; it was elaborately, and (I 
 thought) beautifully coloured; the shape of it 
 took my fancy beyond expression; it contained 
 harbours that pleased me like sonnets; and with 
 the unconsciousness of the predestined, I ticketed 
 
 [95] 
 
Robert Louis Stevenson 
 
 my performance 'Treasure Island.' . . . No child 
 but must remember laying his head in the grass, 
 staring into the infinitesimal forest, and seeing it 
 grow populous with fairy armies. Somewhat in 
 this way, as I paused upon my map of Treasure 
 Island, the future characters of the book began to 
 appear there visibly among imaginary woods, and 
 their brown faces and bright weapons peeped 
 out upon me, from unexpected quarters, as they 
 passed to and fro, fighting and hunting treasure 
 on those few square inches of a flat projection. 
 The next thing I knew I had some papers before 
 me, and was writing out a list of chapters. . . . 
 On a chill September morning, by the cheek of 
 a brisk fire and the rain drumming on the window, 
 I began The Sea Cook, for that was the original 
 title. I have begun (and finished) a number of 
 other books, but I cannot remember to have sat 
 down to one of them with more complacency." ^ 
 The whole party took a delighted interest in 
 the new story, and were eager to have a hand in 
 its making. There were to be no women char- 
 acters: *' Lloyd's orders," said Stevenson, "and 
 who so blithe to obey." Mr Thomas Stevenson, 
 who had joined them for a week or two, was as 
 keen as the schoolboy in urging the writer on and 
 supplying details and suggestions. The list of 
 the contents of Billy Bones' chest was his; he 
 spent a whole morning making it out on the back 
 of a legal envelope; and it was at his especial 
 
 * The Art of Writing. 
 
 [96] 
 
In Search of Health 
 
 request that the treasure-seeking ship was called 
 the Walrus. Dr Alexander Hay Japp, a new 
 acquaintance then visiting at the cottage, was 
 almost equally interested, and lamented that he 
 was obliged to leave while the story was still in 
 its early stages. His place was taken by Mr 
 Edmund Gosse, who caught fire at once when the 
 pages already written were read to him; and 
 under the stimulus of such general excitement and 
 appreciation the story went merrily on at the rate 
 of a chapter a day. 
 
 Before September was ended, and when the 
 nineteenth chapter had been reached, there came 
 a change in the weather. Cold winds and rain 
 obliged Stevenson to leave hurriedly for the South. 
 He visited London, had an interview with Dr 
 Clark, and October 18th saw him and his wife 
 again established at Davos. Treasure Island had, 
 in the meantime, been accepted, on the recom- 
 mendation of Dr Japp, by the proprietor of 
 Young Folks, and had begun its course as a serial. 
 It was necessary, therefore, to finish the story as 
 soon as possible. Stevenson's health had so far 
 improved since the previous winter that he was 
 able to sit down regularly to a steady spell of 
 work. In order that he might not be subjected 
 to the interruptions of hotel life, a chalet was 
 taken, a servant hired, and the little household 
 arranged in every way to suit his convenience. 
 In these very different surroundings the work 
 that had been so suddenly dropped at Brae- 
 
 [97] 
 
Robert Louis Stevenson 
 
 mar was resumed. Happily the inspiration held. 
 Fourteen more chapters were written in a fort- 
 night, and the book was finished with the same 
 spirit and ease that had attended its beginning. 
 After a short spell of idleness, Stevenson started 
 on The Silverado Squatters, and before he left 
 Davos in April he had finished this, as well as 
 written five articles for various magazines. Still 
 he was not altogether satisfied with what he had 
 accomplished. His ambition of keeping his family 
 without help from his father was still far from 
 being attained. Treasure Island had attracted 
 but little notice, and there was, so far, no sug- 
 gestion that it should be revived in book form. 
 His papers in the Cornhill had proved very popu- 
 lar, but had not been generally recognized as 
 anything above the ordinary run of magazine 
 articles. He was disappointed, though not dis- 
 couraged; and the inspiration that had carried 
 him on so happily began to flag. The summer 
 was spent mainly in the Highlands, where the 
 family was joined by Colvin, and where The 
 Treasure of Franchard was begun. But the 
 weather was wet and dreary, and again in Sep- 
 tember Stevenson was forced to make a hurried 
 flight southward, this time not before a haemor- 
 rhage had put the whole party in a state of alarm. 
 He went to London, saw Dr Clark, and was 
 delighted to receive from him a confirmation of 
 the opinion given by the doctor at Davos in the 
 previous April that a return to the High Alps for 
 
 [98] 
 
In Search of Health 
 
 the coming winter was not a necessity. The 
 climate of Davos had never agreed with Mrs 
 Stevenson, and as her health, too, had now broken 
 down, the permission to pass the winter months 
 in France was especially welcome. About the 
 middle of September Louis, with his favourite 
 cousin, *Bob,' set out for France, in search of a 
 suitable resting place. They passed through Paris, 
 tried Montpellier without result, and his compan- 
 ion being then obliged to return, Louis went on 
 alone to Marseilles. Here his wife joined him, 
 and together they decided upon a lovely country 
 house at St Marcel, about five miles from Mar- 
 seilles. But the choice was most unfortunate. 
 For some reason that did not appear the house 
 had a most disastrous effect on Stevenson's health, 
 and from October to Christmas he had constant 
 attacks of illness and was only capable of very 
 short and intermittent spells of work. Then, as 
 a crowning disaster, a fever broke out in St Mar- 
 cel. Mrs Stevenson in her letters described most 
 vividly the distressing incidents of this epidemic. 
 Her one endeavour was to shield her husband, 
 and it was hastily arranged that he should pro- 
 ceed to Nice, leaving her to wind up their affairs 
 at St Marcel and follow him later. There ensued 
 a series of mischances that resulted in nearly a 
 week of distressing suspense for Mrs Stevenson. 
 The letters and telegrams sent to her from Nice 
 all miscarried. She waited in a fever of anxiety 
 for four days, then went to Marseilles and tele- 
 
 [99] 
 
Robert Louis Stevenson 
 
 graphed to every place she could think of whence 
 news might possibly be obtained. "The people 
 at Marseilles were very kind," she wrote to Mr 
 Symonds, ''and advised me to take no further 
 steps to find my husband. He was certainly 
 dead, they said. It was plain that he stopped at 
 some little station on the road, speechless and 
 dying, and it was now too late to do anything; 
 I had much better return at once to my friends. 
 *Eet of en appens so,' said the Secretary, and 'Oh 
 yes, all right, very well,' added a Swiss in a sym- 
 pathetic voice." ^ Two days more passed, and 
 then Mrs Stevenson took the train to Nice, mak- 
 ing inquiries at every station on her way. She 
 found her husband safe and well, and reading the 
 first letter of the many she had written to him as 
 she knocked at the door. 
 
 From Nice they went on to Marseilles, and then 
 to Hyeres, and here at last they found the ideal 
 home of which they had been in search. "This 
 spot, our garden and our view are sub-celestial," 
 Stevenson wrote to his friends at home. "I sing 
 daily with Bunyan, that great bard, 'I dwell 
 already the next door to Heaven.'"^ 
 
 During the nine months that he spent at his 
 'Chalet La Solitude,' as the house was named, 
 his health steadily improved, and his literary 
 prospects brightened. At the beginning of May 
 he wrote in the highest spirits to his father and 
 mother to tell them that he had received from 
 
 ^ The Letters of Robert Louis Stevenson. 2 ll)id, 
 
 C 100 ] 
 
In Search of Health 
 
 Messrs Cassell an offer for the book rights of 
 Treasure Island, for "... A hundred pounds, all 
 alive, O! A hundred jingling, tingling, golden- 
 minted quid. ... It does look as if I should 
 support myself without trouble in the future. If 
 I have only health, I can, I thank God. It is 
 dreadful to be a great big man, and not be able 
 to buy bread." 
 
 The thought that his great ambition was in a 
 fair way to be realized spurred him on to fresh 
 exertions. The Silverado Squatters was finished 
 and sent off to a publisher in America. A collec- 
 tion of poems for children that had been begun at 
 Braemar was added to until the book was nearly 
 complete. Then Prince Otto, begun in the sad 
 San Francisco days, was taken in hand. Ten 
 days later Stevenson was, as he said, *'up to the 
 waist in it," and it was only by valiant and steady 
 efforts that he finally drew himself triumphantly 
 free. In all his undertakings his wife was his 
 constant helper and sympathizer. ''I love her 
 better than ever, and admire her more," he wrote 
 to his mother in one of his rare expansive mo- 
 ments, "and I cannot think what I have done to 
 deserve so good a gift." His young stepson was 
 also a source of great delight to him. The boy 
 in Stevenson never died, though in the ordinary 
 business of life he made way for the more seriously 
 disposed man; but he was never far away, and in 
 moments of relaxation he stepped naturally to 
 the front place, with the entire and unblushing 
 
 [101] 
 
Robert Louis Stevenson 
 
 approval of the elder partner. For all his youth 
 and his wildness, this 'eternal boy' sometimes 
 did good service; it was he who gave Stevenson 
 his first popular success, for it was he who wrote 
 Treasure Island. The book appeared in Novem- 
 ber 1883, and the stories of statesmen and critics 
 who sat up till the small hours of the morning to 
 read it recall the triumphant days of the Waverley 
 Novels. Scott himself never wrote anything more 
 full of the robust spirit of adventure than this 
 book, the work of a consumptive patient who could 
 not brave a shower, and must flee for his life before 
 a fog. 
 
 One great sorrow clouded the latter part of this 
 year. In September came the news of the death 
 of Walter Ferrier, one of Stevenson's oldest 
 friends. The strange and sad career of this bril- 
 liant, gifted young Scotsman is sketched in the 
 essay *'01d Mortality," and this, with the letter 
 to W. E. Henley, written soon after the news 
 came, shows how deep was Stevenson's grief at this 
 first breach in the inner circle of his friends. 
 
 He looked eagerly for comfort to the promised 
 visit of W. E. Henley and Charles Baxter. They 
 came in January; but after a. week spent at 'La 
 Solitude' it was found that this earthly paradise 
 was too small to accommodate the whole party 
 in comfort. Stevenson therefore proposed that 
 they should all go and take a holiday together in 
 some other place. They went to Nice, and there 
 he caught a cold which brought on congestion of 
 
 [102] 
 
PORTRAIT OF STEVEXSOX AT VAILIMA 
 
In Search of Health 
 
 the lungs. The doctors agreed that there was 
 no hope, and advised Mrs Stevenson to send for 
 some member of the family to be with her at the 
 end. She sent for Bob Stevenson, and he encour- 
 aged her, even in these desperate circumstances, 
 to hope. Together they nursed Louis, and once 
 more the stubborn Scottish constitution triumphed. 
 Inch by inch the enemy was driven back, though 
 it could not be entirely conquered. Time after 
 time during the next few months a similar battle 
 had to be fought, and once at least defeat was very 
 near. In the first week in May, after the Steven- 
 sons had returned to 'La Solitude,' came a most 
 terrible attack of haemorrhage. Being unable to 
 speak, Stevenson made signs to his wife for a 
 paper and pencil, and wrote: "Don't be frightened; 
 if this is death, it is an easy one." Mrs Steven- 
 son's hand shook as she tried to pour out for her 
 husband the medicine that he required; he took 
 the bottle from her, and with a steady hand 
 measured out the dose. 
 
 Through the anxious days that followed, his 
 on-e thought was for his wife, as hers was for him. 
 He bore the accumulation of ills that fell upon 
 him with a cheery patience that helped her, frail 
 as she was, to bear up under the heavy toil of 
 nursing and attendance; and she lightened, by 
 every device that love-directed ingenuity could 
 suggest, the tedium of the sick-room. The pa- 
 tient was forbidden to speak for fear of bringing 
 a return of the haemorrhage, and for the same 
 
 [103] 
 
Robert Louis Stevenson 
 
 reason his right arm was worn in a sling; he suf- 
 fered acutest pain from sciatica; and, finally, an 
 attack of Egyptian ophthalmia condemned him 
 to the almost complete inaction of a darkened 
 room. His wife sat by him, and invented for his 
 amusement some of the marvellous and laughably- 
 serious stories that appeared later in The Dyna- 
 miter. He wrote her cheerful little notes, treat- 
 ing, after his fashion, the effort of forming letters 
 with his left hand in the gloom of his darkened 
 room as a delightful new adventure; and he 
 actually wrote, in the same way, some more 
 verses for his projected Child's Garden. In the 
 face of such a cheerful ignoring of his claims to 
 make his victim miserable and helpless, it is small 
 wonder that the enemy at last retreated in disgust; 
 and before the end of May Louis was pronounced 
 convalescent. "The doctor says," wrote Mrs 
 Stevenson to the anxious parents in Edinburgh, 
 ** ' Keep him alive until he is forty, and then — 
 although a winged bird, he may live to ninety.' 
 But between now and forty he must live as though 
 he were walking on eggs, and for the next two 
 years, no matter how he feels, he must live the 
 life of an invalid." ^ 
 
 At the beginning of June the party left Hyeres, 
 and after a short stay at Royat, travelled by easy 
 stages to England, where they arrived on July 
 1st, 1884. It was now nearly four years since 
 Stevenson's return from California, and the whole 
 
 * Graham Balfour's Life. 
 
 [104] 
 
In Search of Health 
 
 of that time had been spent in a diligent search 
 after health. Yet in 1884 his condition was little 
 better than it had been in 1880, and the prospect 
 was darker in so far as all hope of a moderately 
 speedy recovery had been given up. For some 
 years at least he was condemned to live the life 
 of an invalid, and the question now arose as to 
 where those years should be passed. Stevenson's 
 strongest wish in the matter was that he might 
 be near his father, who was now perceptibly 
 failing. One by one the various activities con- 
 nected with the business in which Thomas Steven- 
 son had delighted were given up, and as his outside 
 interests thus fell away, he drew closer to the 
 members of his small home circle, and especially 
 to his well-loved son. The caressing tenderness 
 of his manner toward Louis touched deeply all 
 those who saw the two together. ''It was," says 
 Mrs Stevenson, ''just like a mother with a young 
 child." That these two, who loved each other so 
 dearly, and whose lives both hung by such a 
 slender thread, might not be entirely cut off from 
 opportunities of meeting, seemed a thing for which 
 some risks might well be run; and since two doc- 
 tors out of four who were consulted were of the 
 opinion that Stevenson might live at Bourne- 
 mouth with tolerable safety, at Bournemouth he 
 decided to remain. Both he and his wife were 
 delighted at the prospect that this plan opened 
 up. Compared with the life they had been forced 
 to live since their marriage, a home within a few 
 
 [105] 
 
Robert Louis Stevenson 
 
 hours' journey of London, and with Edinburgh 
 and Paris at by no means impossible distances, 
 seemed to them a very modified and bearable form 
 of exile. 
 
 The first winter was spent partly at an hotel, 
 and partly in private lodgings; and though Steven- 
 son was rarely able to leave the house, he had 
 no serious attack of illness, and managed to do a 
 very fair amount of work. Mr Henley spent two 
 months at Bournemouth, and the two, whose 
 Deacon Brodie had been produced that summer 
 and had met with some success, worked together 
 at two more plays. Beau Austin and Admiral 
 Guinea, which they hoped would bring them the 
 rich reward that falls to the successful playwright. 
 Stevenson also, in response to a request from the 
 editor of the Pall Mall Gazette for a Christmas 
 story, furbished up the weird and horrible tale 
 "The Body Snatcher," written two years before 
 at Pitlochry. 
 
 Such a record was cheering in the highest degree 
 to those who were watching with anxious tremors 
 the effect of this experiment of a winter in Eng- 
 land. It seemed to justify the provision of a 
 permanent home in Bournemouth for Stevenson 
 and his wife; and at the end of January 1885 
 Thomas Stevenson bought a comfortable, modern, 
 ivy-covered house, with about an acre of ground, 
 and presented it to his daughter-in-law. It was 
 named ' Skerry vore,' in memory of one of the 
 family's greatest achievements in lighthouse build- 
 
 [106] 
 
In Search of Health 
 
 ing. A tiny stream ran at the bottom of the 
 garden, a bank of heather bordered the lawn, 
 and there were glorious clumps of rhododendrons 
 growing in a small chine above the stream. At 
 * Skerry vore' Stevenson and his wife lived for the 
 greater part of the next four years. In the sum- 
 mer and autumn he usually managed to pay some 
 visits to London; once he went with his father 
 to Matlock, and with his wife he visited Cam- 
 bridg;e, Dartmoor, and Paris. But these journeys 
 nearly always brought an attack of illness which 
 meant weeks of confinement to a sick-room. In 
 winter he scarcely went out at all. '* Remember 
 the pallid brute who lived in * Skerry vore' like a 
 weevil in a biscuit," he wrote years later from 
 Vailima to his friend Colvin; but there is little 
 justification for the comparison unless one can 
 imagine it to be characteristic of a weevil to live 
 a life intense as secluded, and to force his narrow 
 surroundings to yield to him that which sufficed 
 to fill his days with variety and interest. Steven- 
 son made new friends, though his opportunities 
 for social intercourse were few, since he was forced 
 to spend weeks together in bed, and forbidden to 
 speak above a whisper. Moreover, if he was in 
 his normal state of health, no visiter — it mattered 
 not from what distance — who was suffering from 
 a cold could be admitted to * Skerry vore,' for fear 
 of infection. So that it is a proof of that genius 
 for friendship which has already been spoken of 
 that he became really intimate, not only with 
 
 [107] 
 
Robert Louis Stevenson 
 
 Dr Scot, who attended him, but also with his 
 neighbours, Sir Henry and Lady Taylor and their 
 daughter. Sir Percy and Lady Shelley, and Miss 
 Boodle. He could no longer roam about the 
 streets as he had been used to do "scraping ac- 
 quaintance with all classes of man- and woman- 
 kind," but this only meant that he got the more 
 out of those few possible acquaintances of a class 
 different from his own who came in his way — 
 servants, tradespeople, the barber who came to 
 cut his hair, and the veterinary surgeon who 
 attended the death-bed of poor Woggs — who had 
 by this time undergone a further transformation 
 and become 'Boguey.' Boguey died from wounds 
 received in battle, and his master and mistress 
 mourned him so deeply that they never could 
 bring themselves to put another dog in his vacant 
 place. 
 
 But work was Stevenson's greatest resource and 
 greatest pleasure. He completed his Child's Gar- 
 den of Verses, and this was published in March 
 1885. In April the first instalment of Prince 
 Otto was published, and in May appeared More 
 New Arabian Nights. In the later part of the 
 same year there came to him the curious experi- 
 ence that led to the production of The Strange 
 Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde. He had, he tells 
 us, been seeking for a long time "to find a body, 
 a vehicle, for that strong sense of man's double 
 being which must at times come in upon and over- 
 whelm the mind of every thinking creature." 
 
 [108] 
 
In Search of Health 
 
 He had tried various forms — The Travelling Com- 
 panion, which was rejected by the editor to whom 
 it was sent, and which he afterward burnt, and 
 MarkheiiUf sl psychological study which was pub- 
 lished later. But neither of these gave a satis- 
 factory shape to the idea that was in his mind, 
 and he still went seeking some fresh inspiration. 
 At length, when for two days his thoughts had 
 been given almost exclusively to this subject, help 
 came to him in his sleep. He has told us how 
 from his earliest years he was a persistent dreamer. 
 In his childhood his dreams were the ordinary 
 vague and terrifying experiences that come to 
 nervous and sensitive natures; but as he grew 
 older, the confused sights and sounds resolved 
 themselves into definite scenes and more or less 
 connected stories; and the stories grew clearer 
 and clearer, until at last enough remained of them 
 in the dreamer's mind when he woke in the morn- 
 ing to enable him to sit down at his desk and 
 write out what the Little People, or Brownies, as 
 he called them, had told him in the night. It was 
 to the Brownies that he owed the inspiration of 
 Dr Jehyll and Mr Hyde. He saw in his sleep, he 
 tells us, two of the most important scenes in his 
 story, and when he woke, although he was still 
 very weak from a recent attack of haemorrhage, 
 he sat down and wrote, from the suggestion thus 
 given, the story of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde. 
 When it was finished it was submitted to his wife, 
 who was his constant and most trusted critic. 
 
 C 109 ] 
 
Robert Louis Stevenson 
 
 She found in it one fundamental fault — it was 
 really an allegory, but was treated as if it were 
 merely a story. Stevenson was, at this time, 
 forbidden to speak, so, according to the custom 
 established for such circumstances, the criticism 
 was written out and left for him to read. After 
 a short interval his bell rang. His wife went to 
 him and found him sitting up in bed and point- 
 ing to a heap of ashes, which was all that re- 
 mained of Br Jehjll and Mr Hyde. He had seen 
 the justice of the criticism, had realized that the 
 new attempt must have in it nothing of the old, 
 and had taken the best means to ensure this 
 result. He set to work again, and wrote with al- 
 most feverish energy during three days; and in- 
 stead of being exhausted by this tremendous 
 effort, he seemed to feel the excitement as a tonic. 
 The next month or six weeks was spent in polish- 
 ing the story, and it was issued — in paper covers 
 at the price of one shilling — by Messrs Long- 
 mans. At first it threatened to fall flat; then a 
 review in the Times drew public attention to it, 
 and it suddenly became the rage. In the next 
 six months forty thousand copies were sold in 
 England; and the American edition was almost 
 equally successful. 
 
 Another story furnished by the Brownies was 
 "Olalla," which appeared in the Christmas num- 
 ber of the Court and Society Revieiv. This, how- 
 ever, was not so successful, and Stevenson himself 
 criticized it severely. In the previous March he 
 
 [110] 
 
In Search of Health 
 
 had began a stoiy for boys, laying the scene in 
 the district he t.new so well — the country near 
 Edinburgh, whei-e the manse of Colinton stood. 
 The story had been taken up without any very 
 serious intent, fmd as lightly discarded after a few 
 chapters had been written. But, in January 1886, 
 after Dr JekyU and Mr Hyde had been fairly 
 launched, Stevenson's thoughts went back to this 
 fragment. ^Phe story was resumed, and flowed 
 wdth such ^jurprising ease that it almost seemed to 
 write itself. "In one of my books, and in one 
 only," savg Stevenson, "the characters took the 
 bit in their teeth; all at once they became de- 
 tached from the flat paper, they turned their 
 backs on me and walked off bodily; and from that 
 time my task was stenographic — it was they who 
 spoke, it was they who wrote the remainder of 
 the story." ^ This was at the beginning; but 
 before the rough outline of the story as it existed 
 in Stevenson's mind was more than half filled in 
 the inspiration flagged, and when Mr Colvin sug- 
 gested that the return of the hero to Edinburgh 
 would give an opportunity of bringing the story 
 to a close he gladly agreed. In this unfinished 
 condition, the story, which he called Kidnapped, 
 was accepted by the editor of Young Folks, and 
 ran in that magazine from May to July. 
 
 But there were many hours and days during 
 this period of his life when, by the doctor's orders, 
 or by sheer physical inability which even his 
 
 ^ The Art of Writing. 
 
 [Ill] 
 
Robert Louis Stevenson 
 
 resolution could not overcome, i^o work could be 
 attempted. Yet even each of these was forced 
 to yield something as it passed Music was a 
 great resource. His old taste for it revived, and 
 
 ' when he was well enough to be up he would sit 
 for hours at the piano trying to pick out the 
 melodies that ran so joyously in bis head. He 
 never learned to play even passably well, and his 
 efforts at composition were still less successful; 
 but he was not one of those men who can find 
 enjoyment only where they excel. Hif^ pleasure 
 came from the effort, from the sense of tl'^^ stirring 
 of new faculties, bodily or mental. Whe'/^ ^^ was 
 
 ' too ill even for music, and was forced to liv^ silent 
 in his bed, he amused himself by modelling^ small 
 figures of wax or clay, and to this employ i-*^^^^ 
 also he brought the keenest possible zest. ^ 
 
 Stevenson took, moreover, a keen interest "^ ^^ 
 public affairs, though, after the incident of tF^^ 
 withdrawal of troops from the Soudan in 1884 he 
 had, as he says, *'died to politics." If an oppor- 
 tunity came for him to do anything, he would, 
 he said, do it; until that hour came he would not 
 vex his soul. Twice while he was living at 
 Bournemouth he believed that the hour had come. 
 The first occasion was upon the fall of Khartoum 
 and the death of Gordon, when he contemplated 
 an attempt to call Mr Gladstone to account and 
 to stir the national conscience by public denuncia- 
 tion of those who had left so many brave soldiers 
 to a cruel death. But he hesitated and the time 
 
 [112] 
 
In Search of Health 
 
 passed, and though it is unlikely that anything 
 he could have done would have proved effective, 
 he always bitterly regretted his inaction. The 
 second occasion arose out of the affairs of Ireland. 
 Toward the end of 1885 a farmer of Kerry was 
 shot by a party of moonlighters, and his family, 
 who had fought bravely in defence of their father 
 and had killed one of his murderers, were after- 
 ward subjected to a cruel and rigorous boycott. 
 Stevenson read the details of the case with horri- 
 fied indignation. It seemed to him terrible that 
 the people of England should sit still and make no 
 sign while brave and innocent men and women all 
 over the sister country were at the mercy of those 
 who could so deal with their fellow-creatures. 
 When the boycott had gone on until the spring 
 of 1887 he decided that he himself as an honest 
 man and one who hated oppression was called 
 upon to do something to help those who were 
 suffering. Pie formed in all seriousness a plan 
 which seemed to his friends, and even to his wife, 
 quixotic and absurd, but which he regarded simply 
 as the fulfilment of a plain duty. He proposed 
 to take the condemned farm, and go with his wife 
 and stepson to live there. His friends pointed 
 out that this would do no good to those he wished 
 to benefit — might possibly do them harm; but 
 he was not to be turned from his purpose. To 
 him the question was not one of expediency or 
 even of benevolence. Should judgment go by 
 default for Might against Right? Should not the 
 
 [113] 
 
Robert Louis Stevenson 
 
 brave, eternal principle of clean justice between 
 man and man be upheld in spite of politics? — 
 it was thus that the case presented itself to him. 
 Mrs Stevenson, respecting, though not sympa- 
 thizing with, her husband's convictions, was ready 
 to go with him and to do her part cheerfully; and 
 it was only his father's rapidly increasing illness 
 that caused the plan to be abandoned. ''To the 
 last," says Sir Sidney Colvin, "he was never well 
 satisfied that he had done right in giving way." 
 
 On May 8th, 1887, Thomas Stevenson died. 
 Since the previous autumn he had been living at 
 Bournemouth in order to be near his son, but 
 during April he grew so ill that it was thought 
 advisable to take him to his home in Edinburgh. 
 The change brought no improvement, and Louis 
 was hurriedly sent for, but arrived too late to be 
 recognized by his father. 
 
 The loss was to him a terrible one, and in his 
 weak physical state he found it hard to fight 
 against the depression that settled heavily upon 
 him. The bleak winds of an Edinburgh spring 
 brought him a fresh cold, and on the day of his 
 father's funeral he was too ill to leave the house. 
 For nearly three weeks this illness kept him in 
 Edinburgh, and when he at length returned to 
 Bournemouth, it was only to be attacked by 
 another haemorrhage, followed by a tedious con- 
 valescence. Before he left his sick-room he had 
 made arrangements for bringing his stay at 
 Bournemouth to a close. The three years' con- 
 
 [114] 
 
In Search of Health 
 
 tinual battle against ill-health had worn him out, 
 bravely as he had faced the enemy. His doctors 
 strongly advised a change, and there was nothing 
 now to keep him in England, since his mother was 
 willing to go with him wherever he elected to 
 settle. He determined, therefore, to see if, the 
 world lying before him, he could not find some 
 place where he might live the ordinary life of a 
 normal man, and be done with invalidism. After 
 consideration it was resolved that America, as 
 being Mrs Stevenson's home, and already in part 
 familiar to them, should first be tried. By the 
 middle of July ' Skerry vore' was let, and passages 
 taken for Stevenson, his wife, mother, stepson, and 
 their attached and capable maid, Valentine Roch, 
 for New York. 
 
 [115] 
 
CHAPTER VII: America and 
 the South Seas 
 
 ON August 20th, 1887, Stevenson left 
 Bournemouth for London, spent a day 
 at Armfield's Hotel, where a succession of 
 his friends visited him to say good-bye, and on the 
 next day embarked with his party on board the 
 Ludgate Hill, The ship was no luxurious liner, 
 but a 'tramp,' carrying a consignment of horses 
 and apes. Of these fellow-passengers the Steven- 
 sons had known nothing, but the discovery that 
 the Ludgate Hill was to put in at Havre for her 
 live cargo was not allowed to spoil either their 
 tempers or their enjoyment of the voyage. "We 
 agree," wrote Stevenson's mother in her journal, 
 "to look upon it as an adventure, and make the 
 best of it." The weather was very bad, and off 
 Newfoundland Stevenson caught cold and was for 
 a few days really ill. Yet he declared that 
 throughout the voyage he was so happy his heart 
 literally sang. He was a true son of his father 
 and his grandfather in that he had always loved 
 the sea and delighted in the free, hardy life on 
 board ship, and his recent escape from the dreary 
 life of the sick-room made everything bright before 
 him. 
 
 The voyage came to an end, and for the second 
 time Stevenson landed at New York, — not as 
 before, a poor 'amateur emigrant,' a mere unit 
 in a mass of people who were treated with scant 
 
 [116] 
 
America and the South Seas 
 
 courtesy, and driven whithersoever the officials 
 would have them go. He was now a celebrity — 
 "Quite the famous party, in fact," as he wrote 
 to Colvin — for whom a crowd of newspaper 
 reporters anxiously waited, and who was the chief 
 object of attention to the people who stood about 
 the landing-stage and stared curiously at *'the 
 man who wrote Dr JeJcyll and Mr HydeJ^ One 
 wonders what the keen-eyed American citizens 
 thought of this carelessly dressed man, with his 
 tall, attenuated figure, his thin, brown face, his 
 eager, quickly glancing eyes, his long hair — now 
 turned dark brown — his lithe, graceful move- 
 ments and quick, significant gestures. They had 
 little more than a passing glimpse of all these 
 things, for Mr W. H. Low, a friend of the old 
 Paris and Barbizon days, was waiting for Steven- 
 son at the landing-stage, and at once carried him 
 off. He stayed for a fortnight — which he spent 
 in bed — at his friend's house in Newport, and for 
 another fortnight at New York, where he was 
 introduced to a few of Mr Low's friends, men 
 famous in literature or in art. It was necessary 
 for him to leave New York before the winter set 
 in, and he was advised to try a sanatorium for 
 consumptive patients that had lately been estab- 
 lished near the shores of the Saranac lake, among 
 the Adirondack mountains. Accordingly he and 
 his family set out for Saranac early in October. 
 They took a small verandahed cottage known as 
 'Baker's,' which Stevenson called "a wind-belea- 
 
 [117] 
 
Robert Louis Stevenson 
 
 guered, hill-top, hat-box." The surrounding coun- 
 try he loved, because it reminded him of the High- 
 lands. There was a stream of running water 
 within sight of the house that brought to mind 
 the burn of Pitlochry, and a "Perthshire hill" 
 rose upon one side. On the other were to be seen 
 some of the scattered houses of the village. The 
 cost of living at Saranac was high, and the condi- 
 tions not too comfortable. Throughout the winter 
 the cold was intense, and the stoves that were 
 kept lighted all over the house seemed to do little 
 toward producing any sensation of warmth. 
 Stevenson's wife and mother, as well as Valen- 
 tine Roch, suffered very severely from colds and 
 influenza, but he himself remained unaffected by 
 the severe weather, and was able to work steadily. 
 It was while he was pacing up and down the 
 verandah of the Saranac cottage, one dark, clear 
 night, with the thermometer below zero, that the 
 idea for the Master of Ballantrae came to him. 
 Gradually it took shape in his mind, and the out- 
 line of the story lay clear before him. **I need 
 not tell my brothers of the craft," he says, "that 
 I was now in the most interesting moment of an 
 author's life; the hours that followed that night 
 upon the balcony, and the following nights and 
 days, whether walking abroad or lying wakeful 
 in my bed, were hours of unadulterated joy." ^ 
 
 The character of the life lived at Saranac nat- 
 urally brought the little company into close 
 
 1 Graham Balfour's Life. 
 
 [118] 
 
America and the South Seas 
 
 association and interdependence, and it was 
 perhaps as an outcome of this that Stevenson 
 and Lloyd Osbourne began the practice of Hter- 
 ary collaboration which ultimately produced The 
 Wrecker, The Ebb Tide, and The Wrong Box. 
 None of these books rank with his best work, and 
 it is doubtful whether the collaboration was of 
 real advantage to either partner. But it is cer- 
 tain that Stevenson enjoyed it. The comrade- 
 ship pleased him, and he came back to his work 
 with fresh zest after having for a time given it 
 over into his stepson's hands. 
 
 But besides those connected with the making of 
 books, thGx'e were other plans and possibilities to 
 be discussed when the party gathered round the 
 homelike log fire — the only one in the house — 
 that burned in the living-room during the long 
 evenings of that bitter winter. Saranac had never 
 been looked upon as more than a temporary rest- 
 ing-place, and both ladies were looking forward 
 eagerly to leaving it as soon as the spring weather 
 should make travelling possible. The great ques- 
 tion was. Where should they go next? Stevenson 
 gave his voice in favour of a yacht and a cruise 
 along the Atlantic seaboard. To possess a yacht 
 had been one of his dreams since his very early 
 days, and though this was still beyond his reach, 
 yet it would be something to hire a yacht and 
 make believe for a time that the dream had come 
 true. His income from literature, which during 
 the years at Bournemouth had averaged about 
 
 [119] 
 
Robert Louis Stevenson 
 
 £400 annually, showed now a prospect of a large 
 and rapid increase, and he had besides the sum 
 of £2000 left him by his father. So ways and 
 means were discussed and plans made; the yacht 
 was furnished and fitted up throughout according 
 to the taste of the would-be voyagers, and noth- 
 ing remained now but to find her. 
 
 The first steps were taken by Mrs Louis Steven- 
 son. At the end of March she started for Cali- 
 fornia to visit some of her own people. Stevenson 
 remained at Saranac until the middle of April; 
 then he spent some time at New York, and after- 
 ward went with his mother and stepson to an hotel 
 near the mouth of the Manasquau, a river of New 
 Jersey. It was here that a telegram arrived from 
 his wife telling him that the yacht Casco might 
 be hired for a trip among the islands of the 
 South Seas, and without hesitation he telegraphed 
 back authorizing her to close with the offer. 
 
 He quickly followed up his message, and by 
 June 7th w^as at San Francisco. He fell in love 
 at once with the graceful, birdlike Casco, and prep- 
 arations for a start were hurried on. The yacht, 
 in fact, was found not as seaworthy as she was 
 beautiful, but defects of construction were over- 
 looked in the anxiety to leave San Francisco, the 
 climate of which was having a very bad effect upon 
 Stevenson's health. By June 26th all was ready, 
 and with a skilful, experienced skipper, four not 
 entirely satisfactory deck hands, and five passen- 
 gers, she put to sea and the great cruise began. 
 
 [120] 
 
America and the South Seas 
 
 It had been decided, after much discussion, to 
 start first for the Marquesas, a group of islands 
 of volcanic origin that lay three thousand miles 
 almost due west of San Francisco. For twenty- 
 two days the Casco sailed across the Pacific Ocean, 
 with no land in sight; and day by day Stevenson 
 grew stronger and the whole party more and more 
 delighted with this 'dream come true.' On the 
 twenty-third day, at dawn, they sighted land. 
 "The first experience can never be repeated. The 
 first love, the first sunrise, the first South Sea 
 island are memories apart, and touched a virgin- 
 ity of sense." ^ By four o'clock the party had 
 gathered on the deck waiting in the silence of 
 expectation for the vision that would come with 
 the light. Slowly the islands took shape — 
 Nukahiva, for which the Casco was bound, rising 
 gradually from a mass of cloud. "The land 
 heaved up in peaks and rising vales; it fell in 
 cliffs and buttresses; its colour ran through fifty 
 modulations in a scale of pearl and rose and olive; 
 and it was crowned above by two opalescent 
 clouds." ^ The Casco headed her course along the 
 shore. The surf broke heavily upon the beach 
 and a few birds skimmed along the waters; but 
 there was no sight or sound upon the island to 
 tell of the presence of man or beast. Beyond the 
 tall cliffs the mountains were piled up height upon 
 height, bare for the most part, but sheltering here 
 and there the waifs and strays of the forest below, 
 * In the South Seas. ^ Ibid. 
 
 [121] 
 
Robert Louis Stevenson 
 
 that had crept up into their nooks and crevices. 
 The Casco rounded a point, and entered a small 
 inlet; and here, where the shores fell, a lovely 
 pastoral scene was spread out before the eyes of 
 the travellers. Under a grove of palm trees on 
 the beach stood the native village; higher up 
 upon the hillside were one or two houses of white 
 settlers, each with its patch of cultivated ground; 
 the song of birds, the bleating of lambs, the scent 
 of a hundred fruits and flowers flowed forth to 
 meet the travellers. "The schooner turned upon 
 her heel; the anchor plunged. It was a small 
 sound, a great event; my soul went down with 
 these moorings whence no windlass may extract 
 nor any diver fish it up; and I, and some part of 
 my ship's company, were from that hour the 
 bondslaves of the isles of Vivien." ^ 
 
 Thus Stevenson gave in his allegiance to those 
 kindly isles whose soft airs floating in from the 
 sea were to bring him back to that "ordinary 
 life of a human being" from which he had been 
 so long shut out. He grew to love these new lands 
 so dearly, that at times he felt a pang of shame, 
 as for some failure in loyalty toward the land of 
 his fathers. But more and more as he travelled 
 among the natives of the South Seas — whom 
 no bribe, he said, would induce him to call savages 
 — he felt how very closely all the families of the 
 earth were related; and he loved to trace out 
 analogies between the history and conditions of 
 
 * In the South Seas. 
 
 [122] 
 
America and the South Seas 
 
 life of these Pacific tribes and those of the race 
 he knew best — the Scots folk of the remote 
 Highland districts at home. It is, of course, a 
 truism that human nature is at bottom the same 
 all the world over; yet it is rare to find the per- 
 ception of this fact living and bringing forth fruit 
 in a man as it lived and brought forth fruit in 
 Stevenson. It taught him an unerring tact, by 
 means of which he could draw near to men and 
 women with whom he appeared to have nothing 
 in common; and here in the South Seas it un- 
 locked the hearts of these gentle-hearted, dignified 
 natives, so that they spoke to the strange white 
 man with the sense of kinship strong upon them. 
 "It is this sense of kinship that the traveller must 
 rouse and share," says Stevenson, "or he had 
 better content himself with travels from the blue 
 bed to the brown." For three weeks the Casco 
 lay at anchor in the harbour of Anaho, and the 
 little hamlet was in a flutter of excitement. The 
 resident white trader declared that never, in his 
 experience, had the people worked so industri- 
 ously at cotton-picking as during these weeks. 
 Generally it was impossible to induce them to do 
 more work than would suffice to provide them 
 with the bare means of living; but now every 
 woman must have a new dress and every man a 
 new shirt and trousers, that all might go in dig- 
 nified fashion to pay their ceremonial visit to the 
 Casco. Many parties of tall, handsome, grace- 
 ful Marquesans were received upon the yacht. 
 
 [ ns ] 
 
Robert Louis Stevenson 
 
 Stevenson himself acted as showman, and gravely 
 exhibited all the splendours of fittings and furni- 
 ture; and the beautiful, well-kept ship received 
 praise enough to satisfy even his proprietary pride. 
 When the show was over the visitors were enter- 
 tained in the cabin to biscuit, jam and syrup; 
 and, quite in the approved manner of tea-parties 
 in England, the photograph album, with its por- 
 traits of Queen Victoria and other celebrities, was 
 passed round. The delighted natives were not 
 slow to offer hospitalities in return; and in their 
 fae'pae-hae, or terraced houses, the party from 
 the yacht were received with every sign of honour. 
 There was much lamentation when the Casco left 
 Anaho and sailed round the island to Taiohae, 
 the port of entry. Here lived the French Resi- 
 dent — for the island was under the rule of France 
 — and here was the prison, governed upon a novel 
 and eminently lenient system, which allowed the 
 prisoners to be out as much as they pleased all 
 day if they returned, like children, to their home 
 at night. When Stevenson paid his visit, the 
 prison was empty; the men, he was informed, 
 were out on the mountains hunting goats, and the 
 women were paying calls. 
 
 At Taiohae a native pilot was taken on board 
 to guide the ship through the difficult passage 
 they were now approaching, and after a twelve- 
 days' stay at Hiva-va — an island where canni- 
 balism was still common — the Casco sailed for 
 the Dangerous Archipelago — a sea thickly stud- 
 
America and the South Seas 
 
 ded with low-lying coral islands. There were few 
 lights to guide vessels through the intricate chan- 
 nels that wound between these islands, and no 
 adequate chart; and the danger was increased by 
 changing winds and confused currents. Several 
 times the course was miscalculated, and the Casco 
 found herself where, according to the reckoning, 
 she certainly had no right to be. But at last 
 Fakarava, the capital of the group, was reached 
 in safety, and the Casco entered the lagoon. A 
 fortnight was spent at Fakarava, Stevenson and 
 his family leaving their ship, and living in a native 
 house among the palms. In the last week of 
 September they sailed for Tahiti. 
 
 Tahiti is generally considered by travellers the 
 most beautiful of all the beautiful islands of the 
 South Seas. But it threatened at first to be an 
 unfortunate island for the Stevensons. Louis had 
 caught cold at Fakarava, and by the time he 
 landed at Papeete, the capital of the Society 
 group, the cough and fever had increased alarm- 
 ingly. After a few days he grew a little better, 
 but he did not like Papeete, and it was agreed to 
 go round to Taravao, on the south side of the 
 island. Twice during this two days' passage the 
 Casco was nearly wrecked; and when at last the 
 party landed at Taravao, it was only to find a 
 close, mosquito-infested atmosphere, in which 
 Stevenson grew rapidly worse. The Captain and 
 Lloyd Osbourne set off on an expedition inland, 
 but came back with a report that they could find 
 
 [125] 
 
Robert Louis Stevenson 
 
 no one who had horses or carriage for the removal 
 of the invahd save a Chinaman, and he was un- 
 willing to allow them to be hired. Mrs Stevenson 
 therefore set off next day, and by her entreaties 
 induced the Chinaman to let her have wagon and 
 horses. Stevenson was placed in the wagon, and, 
 with the help of Valentine Roch, his wife managed 
 to bring him safely over sixteen miles of rough 
 road, crossed by twenty-one streams, to the small 
 village of Tautira. By the time he was installed 
 in the miserable house which was all they could 
 secure for him he was in a state of collapse. 
 
 Next day they were visited by Princess Moe, 
 the Queen of Raiatea, who, hearing that a white 
 man was lying very ill at Tautira, came over to 
 see if she could give any help. As soon as the 
 patient was a little recovered she invited the 
 whole party to live with her in the commodious 
 house of Ori, the sub-chief of the village. Ori, 
 with his wife and family, willingly moved into 
 one of the native huts. In his new quarters 
 Stevenson grew rapidly better, and it seemed as 
 if, for a time, their troubles were over. Bad news, 
 however, came from the schooner. It was dis- 
 covered, first, that the jib-boom was sprung, and 
 then, when that had been repaired, the two masts 
 were found to be almost eaten out with dry-rot, 
 so that it was a miracle that the voyage so far 
 had been made without accident. With all pos- 
 sible precautions the schooner put back to Papeete 
 for repairs, and the Stevensons were confined to 
 
 [126] 
 
America aitd the South Seas 
 
 the island until such time as she could be made 
 seaworthy. They spent their days very happily. 
 Stevenson was now quite well again, and revelling 
 in the soft air, the lovely scenes, and the delight- 
 ful people that surrounded him. *'I write to you 
 from fairyland," said Mrs Stevenson in a letter 
 to Sir Sidney Colvin, "where we are living in a 
 fairy story, the guests of a beautiful brown prin- 
 cess." Her husband and her son, she went on 
 to tell, roamed all day about the island, Louis 
 dressed in a pyjama suit of light striped flannel, 
 Lloyd in a light flannel shirt and pareu — that is, 
 a large blue and white cotton window curtain, 
 twisted about the waist, and hanging a little 
 below the bare knees. Neither wore shoes or 
 stockings, and both had wreaths of artificial 
 flowers made of dried pandunis leaf round their 
 hats. They bathed in the sea almost every day, 
 they hunted for shells, and clambered over rocks, 
 and lay luxuriously basking in the sun all through 
 the month of November. They enjoyed the novel 
 food — the luncheons of raw fish, with sauce of 
 cocoanut milk mixed with sea-water and lime 
 juice, bananas roasted between hot stones in a 
 little pit in the ground, and eaten with cocoanut 
 cream, roast pig served with miti, and palm-tree 
 salad; and Stevenson wrote home that at some of 
 the island feasts he had "been known to apply 
 four times for pig." Princess Moe arranged enter- 
 tainments, at which the old songs and dances of 
 Tahiti were performed for their benefit. When 
 
 [ 127 ] 
 
Robert Louis Stevenson 
 
 she was recalled to Papeete by command of the 
 king, Ori became then* host. He was a fine 
 fellow, "a lifeguardsman in appearance, six foot 
 three in bare feet; deep and broad in proportion; 
 unconsciously English to an absurd extent." He 
 adopted Stevenson into his clan and changed 
 names with him, so that the Englishman hence- 
 forth might claim the designation of Teriitera. 
 The whole party adapted themselves readily and 
 happily to the customs of the island, and estab- 
 lished the warmest relations with their enter- 
 tainers. To Mrs Stevenson these weeks on shore 
 came as a welcome respite from life on board the 
 yacht; for to her the tour was not one of unmixed 
 enjoyment. ''I hate the sea," she said, *'and am 
 afraid of it; . . . but I love the tropic weather 
 and the wild people and to see my two boys so 
 happy." 
 
 As soon as his health allowed him Stevenson 
 resumed his work. Before he started on his tour 
 in the South Seas a firm of American publishers, 
 Messrs McClure, had offered him £2000 for a 
 book descriptive of his travels, and this money 
 was to help pay the expenses of the voyage. At 
 every place, therefore, he busied himself in collect- 
 ing materials. At Tautira he gathered a great 
 store of songs and legends, and wrote two bal- 
 lads, ''The Feast of Famine" and ''The Song of 
 Rahero," founded upon traditions of the islands. 
 In addition to work upon his travels he resumed 
 and almost finished The Master of Ballantrae. 
 
 [128] 
 
America and the South Seas 
 
 December came and still the Casco was not 
 ready. Bad weather had set in, and the seas 
 along the coast ran too high for the small native 
 boats to attempt the voyage to Papeete, while 
 swollen rivers rendered a journey across the island 
 impossible. Stevenson's money was all gone, and 
 the daily food of the party was supplied by their 
 generous hosts. Day by day their anxiety in- 
 creased, and the sympathetic natives joined with 
 them in watching eagerly for the white sails of 
 the Casco. At last Ori with a party of young 
 men braved the stormy seas, and went in a whale- 
 boat to Papeete. They were delayed a week 
 beyond the expected time, but at last, to the 
 relief and delight of the whole village, they ap- 
 peared, bringing money and stores and a letter 
 from the captain of the Casco, There was a grand 
 dinner next day, at which a basket of champagne 
 was produced. Ori drank the glass that was 
 poured out for him with delight. "I shall drink 
 it continually," he said, and poured out another 
 glass for himself. *'What is the cost of it by the 
 bottle?" He was told, and he put down his glass 
 with its contents untasted. *'It is not fit that 
 even kings should drink a wine so expensive," he 
 solemnly pronounced; and so he forswore this new 
 delight. On Christmas Day, 1888, the Steven- 
 sons left Tahiti in the Casco, bound for Honolulu. 
 The parting from their island friends, whom dur- 
 ing their two months' stay they had really learned 
 to love, was so painful, that one and all agreed a 
 
 [ 129 ] 
 
Robert Louis Stevenson 
 
 succession of such experiences would be too har- 
 rowing to be borne; short stays and no close 
 intimacies must be henceforth the rule. 
 
 After considerable delay, through calms and 
 contrary winds, the Casco at length reached Hono- 
 lulu. Mrs Stevenson's daughter, who had married 
 and was now Mrs Strong, was living in Honolulu 
 and waiting to welcome them. The yacht was 
 sent back to San Francisco, a house was taken on 
 the coast just outside the town, and here they 
 established themselves, waiting for the summer, 
 when they intended to return to England. Valen- 
 tine Roch had gone back to America, but a na- 
 tive cook, Ah Fu, engaged in Nukahiva, was 
 proving himself a treasure in the kitchen. The 
 stay at Honolulu Stevenson described as *'a 
 spasm of activity chequered with champagne 
 parties." The activity had to do with his liter- 
 ary work, which he made haste to take in hand, 
 for The Master of Ballantrae was being published 
 as a serial in Scribner's Magazine, and the end 
 was not yet written. To finish it was, Stevenson 
 said, the hardest job he ever had to do; and in 
 May he wrote that The Master was finished, and 
 he himself quite a wreck. The 'champagne 
 parties' included all those festivities to which his 
 step-daughter, who had many acquaintances in 
 this island, introduced him, and especially the 
 festivities of the royal palace. With the king he 
 formed a close intimacy which almost amounted 
 to a friendship, and he joined with zest in all that 
 
 [130] 
 
America and the South Seas 
 
 was going on. But on the whole he did not care 
 for Honolulu. He had not been really well since 
 he left the ship, though he had never been en- 
 tirely incapacitated, and it very soon became clear 
 that he was not yet fitted to face even a compara- 
 tively cold climate. The idea of returning to 
 England was therefore given up. He lacked 
 courage, he said, to return to his old life of the 
 house and the sickroom after these active months 
 passed in the open air. Plans were therefore 
 made for another cruise, and in the meantime he 
 made short voyages to islands within easy reach. 
 The most notable of these was the visit he paid 
 to Molokai, where, by special permission, he 
 spent a week in the leper settlement, in which 
 Father Damien had laboured so heroically, and 
 where, not two months before, he had died. 
 With a party of Roman Catholic sisters, and about 
 a dozen lepers who were being sent out to the 
 settlement, Stevenson travelled by steamer from 
 Honolulu to Molokai. **I do not know how it 
 would have been with me," he said, "had the 
 sisters not been there. My horror of the horri- 
 ble is about my weakest point; but the moral 
 loveliness at my elbow blotted all else out; and 
 when I found that one of them was crying, poor 
 soul, quietly under her veil, I cried a little myself; 
 then I felt as right as a trivet, only a little crushed 
 to be there so uselessly." ^ When the boat 
 arrived at the landing stairs hundreds of lepers, 
 
 ^ The Lexers of Robert Louis Stevenson. 
 
 [131] 
 
Robert Louis Stevenson 
 
 ** pantomime masks in poor human flesh," came 
 down to meet the sisters and the new patients, 
 but Stevenson was able to greet them without 
 any sign of disgust, and landed calmly with the 
 rest of the party. The leper settlement was built 
 on a low, bare, stony promontory behind which 
 the cliff rose like a great wall, shutting it off from 
 the rest of the island. A cluster of little brown* 
 wooden houses and a church stood on each side 
 of the promontory, "as bare almost as bathing 
 machines upon a bench"; and all was *' unsightly, 
 sour, northerly," sanctified only by the *' horror 
 of moral beauty" that brooded over it. 
 
 During his stay Stevenson played tennis with 
 the leper girls, went to tea with the sisters, and 
 walked about freely among the patients. He 
 heard a great deal of Father Damien and his 
 labours, so that when two years later he read in 
 an Australian religious paper a letter from Dr 
 Hyde, a Presbyterian minister in Honolulu, de- 
 preciating and slandering this man whom he 
 regarded as a hero, his indignation was aroused. 
 He wrote the celebrated open letter to Dr Hyde, 
 which was published first in Sydney and after- 
 ward in Edinburgh. It laid him open to a charge 
 of libel, but for this he did not care. He faced 
 the ruin that might come cheerfully, that he 
 might clear the memory of one whom he con- 
 sidered to be a great man. 
 
 It was decided that in the next cruise the Gil- 
 bert Islands should be visited. So far Stevenson's 
 
 [m] 
 
FATHER DAMIEN 
 
America and the South Seas 
 
 experience had been confined to high, rocky, very 
 thinly populated islands, under foreign domina- 
 tion. The Gilbert Islands are ivi almost every 
 particular of a quite different character. The 
 group lies near the Equator, and consists of six- 
 teen low islands, of coral formation, thickly popu- 
 lated, and at that time almost every island was 
 governed by an independent king. The inhabi- 
 tants are darker and shorter than the races living 
 in the 'high' islands, as well as more energetic 
 and more ferocious. 
 
 During May and June preparations for the 
 cruise were going on. A trading schooner, the 
 Equator, was chartered, and stores were laid in. 
 Experience had taught the Stevensons what was 
 most needed in the regions to which they were 
 going, and besides provisions for the voyage they 
 carried with them a magic lantern, an American 
 hand organ, cigars, tobacco, fish-hooks, combs, 
 turkey-red calico, a fiddle and a guitar for the 
 benefit of the natives. Stevenson's mother had 
 decided not to accompany them on this cruise 
 and had returned to Scotland. The rest of the 
 party, including Ah Fu, set sail on June 24th, 
 1889, while King Kalakaua stood on the shore 
 waving his hand in farewell, and his band of 
 native musicians sent sad parting strains over the 
 water. 
 
 As soon as the Equator was well away from 
 Honolulu Stevenson's health began to improve. 
 He felt more and more strongly that the life that 
 
 [ 133] 
 
Robert Louis Stevenson 
 
 would give him the greatest amount of health 
 and happiness was a life on the sea. But the 
 expenses were very heavy, and to meet them it 
 was necessary that some new work should at 
 once be begun. Very soon after they left Hono- 
 lulu a chance incident suggested an idea for a 
 story. This was talked over by Stevenson and 
 his stepson, and they set to work to write the 
 book together, intending to complete it as quickly 
 as possible and send it to a publisher from Samoa, 
 which was in direct communication with London. 
 The schooner arrived without accident at Buta- 
 ritari, on the island of Great Makin. The stretch 
 of land by the shore was crowded with brown- 
 roofed houses; and the King's palace, with its 
 roof of corrugated iron, shone out in splendour on 
 one side. The party landed and found the town 
 silent and deserted. As they advanced toward 
 the palace they met no one, but looking in through 
 the open fronts of the houses they saw groups of 
 men, women and children all lying fast asleep. 
 They reached the palace and entered the summer 
 parlour, where the King and his court, some 
 twenty in all, were assembled. The King, Tebu- 
 reimoa, lolled upon a mat. He was a corpulent, 
 drowsy, timorous-looking man, dressed in pyjamas 
 "which sorrowfully misbecame his bulk." He 
 took little interest in the new-comers, and gave 
 them permission through his interpreter — *' an 
 American darkey, runaway ship's cook "^^ to 
 make what arrangements they pleased for their 
 
 [134] 
 
America and the South Seas 
 
 lodging. Within an hour of leaving the palace 
 they were established in the house of Maka, the 
 Hawaiian missionary, who was then absent from 
 the island. The night passed quietly, but the 
 next day they discovered the reason for the state 
 of things they had observed on their arrival. The 
 town was sleeping off the effects of a drunken 
 debauch, and thus preparing for a fresh debauch 
 on the morrow. Nine days before, the King had, 
 in celebration of the fourth of July, the day of 
 American Independence, removed the tapu (or 
 taboo) upon intoxicating liquors, and ever since 
 he and his subjects had been almost constantly 
 drunk. The danger to the white inhabitants of 
 the town was great; for the most trifling circum- 
 stances might, in the present temper of the na- 
 tives, lead to an outbreak. Great efforts were 
 made to induce the King to re-impose the tapu. 
 A deputation was sent to the palace, and he was 
 informed by the wife of the consular agent for the 
 United States, who acted as interpreter, that Mr 
 Stevenson was an intimate, personal friend of 
 Queen Victoria's, and that if he or his family 
 suffered injury or annoyance the offence would 
 be immediately reported, and a man-of-war sent 
 out to execute vengeance. It was, as Stevenson 
 says, *' scarce the fact," but ''rather a just and 
 necessary parable of the fact corrected for lati- 
 tude." It had an effect upon the King, though 
 not the effect desired; he tapu'd the missionary's 
 house, but refused to stop the drinking. So 
 
 [135] 
 
Robert Louis Stevenson 
 
 things went on for another week, and then, when 
 Stevenson and his family were sitting in the 
 lampHght after dinner under a trelHs in the en- 
 closure belonging to the house, a missile suddenly 
 struck the table and rebounded past his ear. 
 *' Three inches to one side," he says, *'and this 
 page had never been written, for the thing trav- 
 elled like a cannon ball." The next evening, 
 under exactly similar circumstances, the incident 
 was repeated, to the general alarm, for those who 
 knew the natives well declared that it meant more 
 than ordinary mischief. One of the two liquor 
 stores on the island had already refused to supply 
 the natives with strong drink; Stevenson now 
 approached the keeper of the other with urgent 
 representations of the threatened danger. Prepa- 
 rations were being made for a feast at which the 
 chiefs from tributary islands were to be present 
 with their followers; and if the drunken orgy 
 continued it could scarcely be hoped that this 
 would pass without an outbreak. Fortunately 
 the store-keeper listened and was persuaded, and 
 the supply was stopped. There remained now the 
 danger from the fury of the baffled natives; but 
 this too was averted, for early next morning the 
 King re-imposed the tapu, and the island returned 
 to its customary sobriety. This was the only 
 time during all his wanderings that Stevenson was 
 in danger of bodily harm from a native popula- 
 tion; and even the inhabitants of Butaritari, 
 their fit of madness over, treated him with the 
 
 C 136 ] 
 
America and the South Seas 
 
 friendliest consideration. He stayed for several 
 weeks longer without adventure of any kind; 
 showed the magic lantern and took various photo- 
 graphs; then when the Equator, which had been 
 absent on a trading cruise, returned, the party 
 went on board and sailed away. 
 
 They visited next Apemama, a large island ruled 
 by King Tembinok. ''There is one great person- 
 age in the Gilberts," says Stevenson, "Tembinok 
 of Apemama: solely conspicuous, the hero of song, 
 the butt of gossip." Scarcely was the Equator 
 moored off the north side of the island before 
 preparations were made for the King to come 
 aboard, and presently, with a crowd of followers 
 in attendant vessels, he put off from the shore. 
 He was, like Tebureimoa, heavy and corpulent, 
 and his gait was "dull, stumbling, and elephan- 
 tine." He had "a beaked profile, like Dante's 
 in the mask, a mane of long black hair, the eye 
 brilliant, imperious, and inquiring." His voice 
 was "shrill, powerful, and uncanny, with a note 
 like a sea-bird's. Where there are no fashions, 
 none to set them, few to follow them if they were 
 set, and none to criticize, he dresses 'to his own 
 heart.' Now he wears a woman's frock, now a 
 naval uniform; now (and more usually) figures 
 in a masquerade costume of his own design; 
 trousers and a singular jacket with shirt tails, 
 the cut and fit wonderful for island workmanship, 
 the material always handsome, sometimes green 
 velvet, sometimes cardinal red silk. This mas- 
 
 [137] 
 
Robert Louis Stevenson 
 
 querade becomes him admirably. In a woman's 
 frock he looks ominous and weird beyond belief." ^ 
 Stevenson was especially anxious to spend some 
 time in Apemama, partly because he wished to 
 study this renowned Tembinok, partly because the 
 old customs of the islands were preserved there 
 to a greater degree than anywhere else. But no 
 one was allowed to land without the King's per- 
 mission, and this was not too readily given. The 
 captain of the Equator preferred Stevenson's 
 request almost as soon as the King came on board, 
 dwelling on the would-be visitor's virtues, and the 
 high position he held in his own land. The King 
 listened, but, without making any answer, began 
 to talk upon another subject, and did not refer 
 in any way to the petition before leaving the ship 
 in the evening. But it was noticed that as he 
 sat at meals with the strangers he intently studied 
 the face of each in turn. Next day he came 
 again, and once more the faces of the party were 
 the objects of his thoughtful scrutiny. Not until 
 the afternoon, however, did he give his answer, 
 but when it came it was a favourable one. '*I 
 look your eye. You good man. You no lie," 
 he said to Stevenson, and henceforward he showed 
 the utmost kindness and liberality toward them. 
 He allowed them to choose a site for their settle- 
 ment, and this his people cleared the next day, 
 and erected upon it two maniaps, or tents, and 
 two native houses. By dusk all was finished, and 
 
 ^ In the South Seas. 
 
 [138] 
 
America and the South Seas 
 
 the whole enclosure, which was called 'Equator 
 Town,' in honour of the ship, tapu'd, so that 
 there was no danger of interference from the 
 natives; and two very interesting and pleasant 
 months were spent in this novel dwelling. All 
 the members of the party soon became great fa- 
 vorites with the King, and were free at all times 
 to visit the palace, where he lived with his mother, 
 his sister, and a vast company of wives. These 
 wives he usually referred to as ''my pamily." 
 There were no male officers in the palace; all 
 positions of trust were held by the wives. They 
 were key-bearers, treasurers, wardens of the ar- 
 moury, the napery and the stores, sentries, guards, 
 and servants. They had in charge vast hoards 
 of miscellaneous articles that the King had col- 
 lected, for, in spite of his shrewdness, he had a 
 mania for buying every article, useful or useless, 
 that was brought by traders to the island. Clocks, 
 musical boxes, blue spectacles, umbrellas, knitted 
 waistcoats, rolls of stuff, tools, rifles, fowling-pieces, 
 medicines, European foods, sewing-machines, stoves 
 — chest after chest in the palace was crammed 
 with these things. Yet that member of the 
 'pamily' in whose charge any particular article 
 was placed could always produce it, in perfect 
 order, at whatever moment it was called for; and 
 the other duties of the household were performed 
 with equal efficiency. 
 
 Over all his subjects Tembinok's authority was 
 absolute, and his visitors soon learned to admire 
 
 C 139 ] 
 
Robert Louis Stevenson 
 
 the firmness of his rule, and the abihty with which 
 he managed the innumerable concerns in which 
 he was engaged. Besides being the sole ruler he 
 was the sole trader in the island, and made his 
 bargains — except with regard to the treasures 
 from Europe already mentioned — with great 
 shrewdness. He had learnt to read and write 
 from the missionaries whom he had readily re- 
 ceived into the island, but whom, later, when, 
 as he believed, they began to aim at a domina- 
 tion other than spiritual, he had banished. *'I 
 send him away ship," he explained to Stevenson, 
 and every visitor or settler who had attempted 
 to interfere with his plans had met with the same 
 fate. His name was a terror both at home and 
 in all the islands round, for, though he was 
 neither cruel nor vindictive, when his wrath was 
 once aroused his vengeance was swift and terrible. 
 
 With this man Stevenson lived in intimate 
 association for two months, and when the time 
 came for the visitors to leave Apemama, the King 
 was deeply dejected. No efforts of consolation 
 made by his 'pamily' had any effect. He him- 
 self took the party on board, shook each one by 
 the hand and departed almost in silence, and they, 
 although they felt for him none of the affection 
 that they had felt for Ori and Moe, were sorry to 
 say good-bye to one whom they really respected 
 and admired. 
 
 The Equator touched once more at Butaritari, 
 and then went on to the Samoan islands. On 
 
 [140] 
 
America and the South Seas 
 
 December 7th she arrived at Apia, the capital 
 and port of Upolu, the chief island of the group. 
 The Samoan are *high' or volcanic islands, and 
 here, to his great delight, Stevenson was "once 
 more refreshed with the sight of mountains." 
 *'For six months," he says, "we had seen no spot 
 of earth so high as an ordinary cottage. Our 
 path had been still on the flat sea, our dwelling 
 upon unerected coral, our diet from the pickle- 
 tub or out of tins; I had learned to welcome 
 shark's flesh for a variety; and a mountain, an 
 onion, an Irish potato or a beefsteak, had been 
 long lost to sense and dear to aspiration." ^ The 
 fruits and other luxuries of Upolu were therefore 
 highly prized. 
 
 The time for which the Equator had been char- 
 tered having expired, she proceeded on her home- 
 ward journey, and Stevenson settled in a cottage 
 just outside the town. After a short time he 
 accepted the invitation given him by Mr H. J. 
 Moors, an American merchant, and with his family 
 became the guest of that gentleman at his house 
 in Apia. The removal was made chiefly in the 
 interests of Stevenson's work, for he was busy 
 collecting material for his book on the South Seas, 
 and was glad to avail himself of the help that was 
 courteously given him by the various European 
 officials and white inhabitants of the town. From 
 them he obtained much information with regard 
 to the late war, which had placed the Samoan 
 
 ^ In the South Seas. 
 
 [141] 
 
Robert Louis Stevenson 
 
 islands under the joint rule of the three great 
 powers — Germany, England, and the United 
 States. A native king, Malietoa Laupepa, had 
 been set up, but his position among the native 
 population was not one of great authority. He 
 had a kinsman, Mataafa, whose claim to the 
 throne was almost, if not quite, as strong as his 
 own, but who, having during the late troubles 
 been active against the Germans, had been quite 
 overlooked in the recent arrangements. Mataafa 
 naturally expected that his kinsman would give 
 him an honourable position among his counsellors, 
 especially as he was extremely popular in the 
 island. But Laupepa persisted in ignoring him, 
 and Mataafa, deeply offended, set up a kind of 
 opposition court just outside the capital. To 
 the impartial inquirer, who was endeavouring 
 honestly to find out the facts of the case, a mass 
 of confused and contradictory evidence was forth- 
 coming from the partisans on either side, and it 
 was with this mass of evidence that Stevenson 
 proceeded to deal. It was a difficult and a weary- 
 ing task, but he gave to it the patient industry 
 and untiring enthusiasm which went into all his 
 work, and in A Footnote to History, which he after- 
 ward published, he gave a most valuable exposi- 
 tion of the political situation in Samoa. 
 
 From Apia he made various expeditions to 
 other parts of the island, and came gradually to 
 the conclusion that Upolu would be the most 
 favourable spot for the winter home that he had 
 
 [142] 
 
America and the South Seas 
 
 now resolved to establish. The island was not as 
 beautiful as others that he had visited, and its 
 people were not specially attractive. But the 
 climate suited him; he had no illness such as had 
 troubled him during his stay at Honolulu, and he 
 had been able to work regularly during the whole 
 time he had spent at TJpolu. Moreover, and this 
 was a crowning advantage, the means of communi- 
 cation with Europe were exceptionally good. The 
 monthly steamers between Sydney and San Fran- 
 cisco called at Apia; a German steamer, the 
 Liihech, ran regularly between Apia and Sydney, 
 and the New Zealand boat, the Richmond, called 
 on her circular trip from Auckland to Tahiti. 
 Stevenson bought, therefore, about three hundred 
 acres of land lying on the heights behind Apia. 
 The whole tract was covered with bush, amid 
 which rose at intervals giant forest trees; even 
 the narrow, winding path bordered with limes that 
 led through it was overgrown and in places almost 
 impassable. The eastern boundary was formed by 
 the Vaisigano, the principal river of the island. 
 On the west side ran a stream made up of a num- 
 ber of mountain torrents that came rushing down 
 the steep side of the Vaea Mountain; and it was 
 from this stream and its four chief tributaries 
 that Stevenson gave to his estate the name of 
 'Vailima' or 'Five Waters.' 
 
 Early in February the party sailed for Sydney, 
 intending to go on from there to England. But 
 unfortunately Stevenson took cold, and a bad 
 
 [143] 
 
Robert Louis Stevenson 
 
 attack of haemorrhage followed. Both he and his 
 wife felt that there was nothing to be done but 
 to return to those regions where for eighteen 
 months he had lived without one of these distress- 
 ing attacks. They still hoped, however, to be 
 able to pay a visit to England later in the year, 
 and a telegram was sent off to the waiting friends 
 at home: *' Return Islands four months. Home 
 September." The next thing was to find a ship, 
 and after having been twice absolutely refused, 
 Mrs Stevenson at last induced the owners of a 
 trading steamer, the Janet Nicoll, then on the 
 point of starting on a cruise among the islands, 
 to allow her party of three a passage. The voyage 
 quickly restored the invalid, and with no other 
 adventure than a fire in the cabin, in which all 
 Stevenson's manuscripts were in great danger of 
 destruction, they came to Apia, where the steamer 
 put in for a few days. Then they went on to the 
 Gilbert and Marshall groups, putting in for a few 
 hours at one island after another, but making no 
 prolonged stay anywhere. At Apemama they 
 saw King Tembinok, and heard from him the 
 news of various disasters, notably an attack of 
 measles, from which his island had suffered since 
 their last visit. Then the vessel turned south- 
 ward, and calling at New California on the way, 
 went on direct to Sydney. Stevenson was left 
 behind at Noumea, where he wished to inspect 
 the French convict settlement, and followed his 
 wife and stepson a few days later. 
 
 [ 144 ] 
 
America and the South Seas 
 
 The state of his health when he arrived at 
 Sydney made it clear that there could be no visit 
 to England that year. The improvement shown 
 at the beginning of the voyage had not been 
 maintained, and a second haemorrhage had still 
 further reduced his strength. Lloyd Osbourne, 
 therefore, went on alone to England, with instruc- 
 tions to make the arrangements necessary for his 
 stepfather's prolonged absence abroad, and to 
 send out the Skerryvore furniture to Samoa. 
 Stevenson and his wife, after a short stay at 
 Sydney, during which he was confined to his room, 
 returned in October 1890 to Upolu, where a con- 
 siderable portion of his land had by this time been 
 cleared, and a four-roomed wooden house erected 
 to serve as a temporary dwelling-place. 
 
 [145] 
 
CHAPTER VIII: Failima 
 
 SINCE the old days in Heriot Row Steven- 
 son had not known what it was to have a 
 home; for Skerry vore and Hyeres, where 
 he had spent the longest periods, can scarcely be 
 regarded as anything but experimental settle- 
 ments, liable to be broken up at a moment's 
 notice. He never really took possession of them 
 in the sense of associating them with his future 
 plans or impressing his personality upon them. 
 For this attitude of detachment his health, which 
 made it impossible for him to settle in his own 
 country, was mainly responsible. But there was 
 about him also a natural aloofness that made all 
 bonds, even the kindly bonds of home, intolerable. 
 The detachment from material things, which in 
 his youth he had advocated with such whimsical 
 earnestness, was, shorn of the absurdities and 
 extravagances with which he had chosen to invest 
 it, really a fundamental part of his nature, and 
 was somehow expressed, his friends tell us, in his 
 frail body, his quick, graceful movements, his 
 mobile face and bright, glancing eyes. To think 
 of Robert Louis Stevenson as an ordinary British 
 householder, interested in his chairs and tables, 
 absorbed in his garden, and deeply concerned in the 
 small affairs of his parish, would have struck even 
 his casual acquaintances as a manifest incongruity. 
 It seemed almost as if the home-making instinct, 
 which to men like Sir Walter Scott supplies the 
 motive power of life, was in him entirely wanting. 
 
 [ 146] 
 
Vailima 
 
 But, after all his wanderings, here in the utter- 
 most parts of the earth the desire to make a home 
 for himself and his family came upon him, and he 
 set to work with characteristic directness and 
 energy. For three and a half years he was as 
 absorbed in clearing and planting and building on 
 his estate of the Five Waters as ever Scott had 
 been in the development of Abbotsford, and as 
 interested in his *' blacks and chocolates" as Sir 
 Walter in his Tweedside peasants. ^^ Nothing, ^^ 
 he wrote to Colvin in November 1890, "is so 
 interesting as weeding, clearing and path-making." 
 He was obliged to make stern resolutions to con- 
 fine himself to the house, or no literary work at 
 all would have been done; and, with the heavy 
 expenses of establishing a plantation and building 
 a house added to those already incurred in the 
 South Sea cruises, there was urgent need for this 
 money-making labour. But often the tempta- 
 tion to be *' bossing his labourers" and working 
 with his hands at outdoor matters became too 
 strong to be resisted, and he would steal half- 
 guiltily away. He had always exulted in manual 
 labour, probably because the chances of under- 
 taking it had come so seldom in his life; and now, 
 in the kindly Samoan air, he really felt that he 
 could work like other men. He laboured with his 
 'boys,' cutting down bush and burning out tree- 
 stumps till his hands were blistered and torn. 
 He fought great fights with the tuitui, or sensitive 
 plant, that singular, insidious thing which was the 
 
 [147] 
 
Robert Louis Stevenson 
 
 deadliest enemy the island planters had to deal 
 with; and he had hand-to-hand skirmishes with 
 the wild lime that fought so tenaciously with its 
 spines and elastic suckers. Moreover, he con- 
 ceived the plan of making a path up the Vaituliga 
 — one of his 'five streams' — single-handed, and 
 stole away gleefully to this work whenever he 
 could make an opportunity, labouring hard and 
 secretly so that his path might "burst upon the 
 public complete." He was stung by poisonous 
 plants, and nearly hung by the tough lianas; he 
 waded knee-deep in ice-cold streams, and came 
 home looking like a "mud-statue" — and all this 
 during November and December, the months 
 which, had he been in England, he would have 
 passed in a sick-room with terrors of colds and 
 alarms of haemorrhages. It is, after all, not won- 
 derful that he loved his home in the South Seas. 
 Each day, moreover, had its unexpected alarms 
 and excursions. First it was the black sow which 
 got loose and for twelve hours baffled the attempts 
 of the entire family and eight hired 'boys' to 
 recapture her; then it was the two great New 
 Zealand hack-horses which were overdriven by a 
 zealous but inexperienced boy, and whose lives 
 were only saved by a prompt and vigorous rubbing 
 down — with underclothing from Mrs Stevenson's 
 store, as being the readiest thing to hand. One 
 evening all the horses got out of the paddock, 
 went across and smashed the nearest neighbour's 
 garden into a big hole; on another day all the 
 
 C 148] 
 
rvAi "■:! -i%i * 
 
Vailima 
 
 hired labourers left in a body through a misunder- 
 standing with the 'ganger.' After such adventures 
 the bursting of a case of kerosene in the kitchen, 
 and the mistake made by the carpenter's horse, 
 who planted his foot in a nest of fourteen eggs, 
 and "made an omelette of our hopes," were 
 minor excitements; and an occasional failure in 
 the food supply which reduced dinner to *'one 
 avocado pear between Fanny and me, a ship's 
 biscuit for the guidman, white bread for the 
 missis, and red wine for the twa," was merely an 
 unremarkable domestic incident. 
 
 Thus far 'Stevenson the Planter'; but there is 
 also that "less estimable character" (as he himself 
 puts it), Stevenson 'the Writer of Books,' to be 
 considered. In spite of frequent truancies, this 
 Stevenson also managed to make considerable 
 way during the two closing months of 1890. He 
 worked industriously at The Wrecker and the South 
 Sea book, writing some chapters as many as four 
 times before they seemed to him as good as he 
 could make them. The South Sea book, in par- 
 ticular, gave him endless trouble. He had accum- 
 ulated such a vast mass of material that, as he 
 said, he staggered under it. How to manipulate 
 it, to build it up so that it should become "jointed 
 and moving," was the problem that troubled him; 
 and as he sent home one instalment of manuscript 
 after another to his trusted friend and critic, 
 Colvin, it became evident that he had not been 
 able to command the lightness of touch that had 
 
 [149] 
 
Robert Louis Stevenson 
 
 so delightfully distinguished his early books of 
 travel. Mrs Stevenson, whose criticism of her 
 husband's work was seldom at fault, had, when 
 the book was in its earliest stages, put her finger 
 upon the weak point. Louis had, she said, the 
 most enchanting material in the world, but she 
 was afraid he was going to spoil it. "He has 
 taken it into his Scotch Stevenson head that a 
 stern duty lies before him, and that his book must 
 be a sort of scientific, historic, impersonal thing." 
 Such a book was quite outside the range of Robert 
 Louis Stevenson's powers, versatile as he was, 
 and it was foredoomed to at least comparative 
 failure. He himself, however, was very hopeful 
 that in the end he would be able to make a book 
 worthy of his material, and he went on coura- 
 geously though somewhat wearily. In the respites 
 he allowed himself from this heavy labour he found 
 refreshment in writing verses and in planning a 
 new story to be called "The High Woods of 
 Ulufanua," the idea of which, he says, shot 
 through him like a bullet while he was working 
 alone in the depths of his tangled forest. 
 
 By the end of the year both Stevenson and his 
 wife were growing tired of life in the tiny cottage. 
 There was no place where he could write without 
 interruption, and no accommodation for the serv- 
 ants who were necessary to relieve him and his 
 wife from constant household drudgery. They 
 had one ' boy ' for domestic work — a German 
 named Paul, who had been a cook and steward, 
 
 [150] 
 
Vailima 
 
 "a glutton of work," but an "inveterate bungler, 
 a man with twenty thumbs." His ideas of house- 
 hold cleanliness were such that Mrs Stevenson 
 preferred to do much of the work herself. In 
 addition she superintended the pigs and the poul- 
 try, and worked hard to make a garden where 
 vegetables for the use of the household could be 
 grown. Consequently she suffered severely from 
 overwork, and when she was incapacitated her 
 duties fell upon her husband. Both of them, 
 therefore, were looking forward eagerly to the time 
 when the new house, which was being built a little 
 higher up the hill, should be completed. 
 
 By January it was so far advanced that Steven- 
 son set off to Sydney to fetch his mother and 
 Lloyd Osbourne, who were waiting for him there 
 on their way out from England. At Sydney he 
 spent nearly a month, working hard at his book 
 and living quietly and carefully; but in spite of 
 his care he had a sharp attack of illness, and when 
 the time came to start on the return voyage, he 
 was carried on board the Liiheck *'a wonderful 
 wreck." The sea air, as usual, wrought a great 
 and immediate improvement, but he was still very 
 weak when, toward the end of February, he 
 arrived at Samoa. The new house was not yet 
 habitable, so Stevenson and his wife made shift 
 to use one of its lower rooms as a bedroom, that 
 the elder Mrs Stevenson might be accommodated 
 in the cottage. She stayed, however, only for a 
 short time, then went back to Australia to wait 
 
 c 151 : 
 
Robert Louis Stevenson 
 
 until things should be farther advanced, and did 
 not return until the beginning of May. With her 
 came Mrs Stevenson's daughter, Mrs Strong, and 
 her boy, Austin; and the family, thus enlarged, 
 settled down in its new quarters. 
 
 The house as it then stood was fairly large and 
 commodious, but later it was found insufficient 
 for the party, and another building about equal 
 in size was added. Behind stood the kitchen and 
 a native house for the cook, and round about were 
 grouped milking-sheds, pig-pens, and stables. The 
 original cottage was moved from its first site, and 
 set up again about a hundred yards from the new 
 house, where it provided additional bedrooms and 
 storage accommodation. All three buildings were 
 of wood painted a dark green, two-storeyed, and 
 with roofs of red corrugated iron. On the ground 
 floor a verandah ran round the front and one side 
 of the house, and above it was built another in 
 front of the library, which occupied the whole 
 of that floor. This, however, made the library 
 so dark that Stevenson found that he could not 
 work in it. He therefore made a new study and 
 bedroom for himself by having one-half of the 
 verandah boarded and roofed in. This little 
 chamber he furnished with a small bedstead, a 
 plain deal table, two book-cases, two chairs and a 
 few pictures, and here most of his work was done. 
 
 In front of the house a beautiful lawn of smooth 
 green couch grass was made, and around this a 
 hibiscus hedge was planted. It grew rapidly and 
 
 [ 152 ] 
 
Vailima 
 
 was soon six feet high, and a mass of scarlet 
 blossoms. A little below the house the river 
 made a fall of about twelve feet, and formed a 
 delightful bathing pool which was arched over 
 with orange trees. The garden, which was Mrs 
 Stevenson's special care, lay at a little distance 
 on the left bank of the river; vegetables such as 
 beans, cabbages, tomatoes and asparagus, intro- 
 duced from Europe, grew freely in that rich soil, 
 and many fruits and vegetables natural to the 
 island were also cultivated. Higher up the stream 
 were banana patches, whose produce formed an 
 important part of the food of the household. 
 There were stretches of pasture land for the cattle, 
 swampy plots planted with taro, which was used 
 as a substitute for the potato, several acres planted 
 with pine-apples, and a fine plantation of kava 
 shrubs, from the powdered root of which the 
 Samoan national drink is made. Bread-fruit, 
 cocoa-nuts, oranges, guavas and mangoes were 
 cultivated, and produced abundant crops, and 
 many other tropical fruits grew in a wild or semi- 
 wild state. All the hedges were formed of fra- 
 grant lime trees, and limes were so plentiful that 
 they were used for scouring the kitchen floor and 
 tables. East and west and south the clearing was 
 shut in by thick bush and lofty forests; north- 
 ward the land fell away to the sea, and Steven- 
 son, looking out from his little writing chamber, 
 could see "a nick of the blue Pacific." 
 
 A large part of the estate was given up to 
 
 [153] 
 
Robert Louis Stevenson 
 
 plantations of cacao, which Stevenson and his 
 friend Mr H. J. Moors were making great efforts 
 to induce the natives of Upolu to cultivate. One 
 of the most characteristic pictures given by Steven- 
 son of the life at Vailima is that which shows the 
 whole family engaged in planting cacao. *'You 
 should have seen us; the verandah was like an 
 Irish bog; our hands and faces w^ere bedaubed 
 with soil. . . . The cacao (you must understand) 
 has to be planted at first in baskets of plaited 
 cocoa-leaf. From four to ten natives were plait- 
 ing these in the woodshed. Four boys were dig- 
 ging up soil and bringing it by the boxful to the 
 verandah. Lloyd and I and Belle . . . were fill- 
 ing the baskets, removing stones and lumps of 
 clay; Austin and Fauma carried them when full 
 to Fanny, who planted a seed in each, and then 
 set them, packed close, in the corner of the veran- 
 dah. From twelve on Friday till five p.m. on 
 Saturday we planted the first 1500, and more than 
 700 of the second lot. You cannot dream how 
 filthy we were, and we were all properly tired." 
 
 As large tracts of the estate were thus cleared 
 and planted a considerable number of regular 
 outdoor hands became necessary. The new house 
 also required its staff of servants. Little by little 
 a small colony was established at Vailima, to 
 which Stevenson was master, friend, teacher, 
 doctor, lawgiver and earthly Providence. At 
 first European and Colonial servants were tried. 
 But it was found that these could not adapt 
 
 [ 154 ] 
 
Vailima 
 
 themselves to the work and customs of a Samoan 
 estate. The German cook Paul — who came into 
 a fortune and went home to 'Hie Germanic* — 
 was succeeded by another of the same nationality, 
 who was equally zealous and equally incompetent, 
 and who quarreled with the white housemaid. 
 The white overseer declared that manual labour 
 was the one thing that never agreed with him, 
 and objected to being called in the morning on the 
 ground that a man ought to wake up "natural 
 like." Various other white servants were tried, 
 until the members of the household felt that they 
 could bear no more. Finally a clean sweep was 
 made, and a staff of natives installed, and then, 
 though there were still troubles, things went more 
 smoothly. Of his Samoan servants Stevenson 
 speaks freely in his letters. Henry Simele, a 
 "chiefling" from a neighbouring island, was the 
 overseer of the plantation. Stevenson began by 
 loathing him, but the loathing passed into respect 
 and respect into liking, until Henry became a real 
 friend. After work was over Stevenson gave him 
 lessons in English, or, as the pupil called it, "long 
 explessions." He rubbed up his own almost for- 
 gotten arithmetical lore to teach this Samoan 
 chiefling decimals; and sometimes by the unaccus- 
 tomed fire — for the new house contained two fire- 
 places, though these were seldom used — Henry 
 was entertained with "the fairy tales of civiliza- 
 tion." Lafaele, the steward, known in the house- 
 hold as 'the archangel,' was, in spite of his 
 
 [155] 
 
Robert Louis Stevenson 
 
 superstition and his dullness, another favourite; 
 he was a great strong Hercules of a man, devoted 
 to 'Papa,' as he called Stevenson, and capable of 
 braving even the terrors of a dark night, with the 
 spirits of the dead crowding, as he firmly believed, 
 about his path, to come at his chief's bidding. 
 Lafaele's wife, Fauma, Stevenson's "bronze candle- 
 stick," was, if not particularly useful, ''highly 
 decorative" and good-tempered. *'The weird fig- 
 ure of Fauma," wrote Stevenson in one of his 
 letters to Mr Colvin, "is in the room washing 
 my windows, in a black lava-lava (kilt), with a 
 red handkerchief hanging from round her neck 
 between her breasts; not another stitch; her hair 
 close-cropped and oiled." All the house-servants 
 at Vailima went about bare-footed and very 
 scantily clothed. Sosimo, the butler, who waited 
 at table, wore only, on ordinary occasions, a 
 piece of calico draping his tattooed waist and loins, 
 but his bearing and manner had a noble dignity 
 that made the attendance of this tall, brown- 
 skinned, finely-formed native at Stevenson's beau- 
 tifully appointed modern dinner-table appear 
 not incongruous but picturesque. Sosimo was 
 also Stevenson's faithful and devoted personal 
 attendant, who delighted in performing any and 
 every service that his master might require. On 
 one occasion, Mrs Strong tells us, the cook was 
 absent, and Stevenson therefore contented himself 
 with ordering a luncheon of bread and cheese. But 
 at the proper time Sosimo served up an excellent 
 
 [156] 
 
Vailima 
 
 omelette, a good salad, and perfect coffee. ''Who 
 cooked this?" asked Stevenson; and Sosimo 
 replied, "I did." "Then great is your wisdom," 
 said his master; but Sosimo bowed his fine head 
 and answered, "Great is my love." 
 
 There were, as a rule, six or eight servants in 
 the house and three or four outside men, who 
 worked with a gang of hired labourers, which 
 varied, according to the work in hand, from six to 
 thirty. The Samoan works best under a strict 
 and orderly system, and this Stevenson was at 
 pains to establish. Outdoors and indoors a fixed 
 daily routine was followed. Each servant had his 
 list of duties and knew that their exact fulfilment 
 would be insisted upon. Nothing delighted Steven- 
 son more than to see among the members of this 
 considerable household signs of the development of 
 a clan spirit, such as had formerly existed among 
 the Highlanders of his native country. To bring 
 this to perfection was the ideal he set before him- 
 self, and to which, in a great measure, he at- 
 tained. His people learned to come to him for 
 advice in their private and domestic matters, and 
 he directed, reprimanded and praised, entering 
 into their affairs with the keenest interest, and 
 by his quick sympathy speedily appreciating the 
 native point of view, and learning to deal wisely 
 with native prejudices. He attempted to create 
 common interests and common ambitions. He 
 punished, when punishments were necessary, in 
 the sight of the whole community. For slight 
 
 [157] 
 
Robert Louis Stevenson 
 
 offences fines were imposed, which were handed 
 over to the charities of the rehgious denomina- 
 tion to which the offender belonged; or if he did 
 not choose to submit to this, he might be paid 
 his wages, and depart. In more serious cases a 
 solemn Bed of Justice was held. Stevenson sat at 
 the head of the table, with members of his family 
 on either hand. The servants made a ring upon 
 the floor. Evidence was given, and the verdict 
 pronounced; and then came what was considered 
 the heaviest part of the guilty man's punishment. 
 The 'high chief addressed him at length, dwelling 
 on the heinousness of his fault, and the grief it 
 had caused to all the household. "Fuaali," said 
 Stevenson on one such occasion, '^yow have con- 
 fessed that you stole the cooked pigs, the taro, 
 the palusamis, the bread-fruit, and fish that fell 
 to Vailima's portion at yesterday's feast. Your 
 wish to eat pig was greater than your wish to be 
 a gentleman. ... It is easy to say that you are 
 sorry, that you wish you were dead; but that is 
 no answer. We have lost far more than a few 
 dozen baskets of food; we have lost our trust in 
 you, which used to be so great, our confidence in 
 your loyalty and high-chief ness." And so on, 
 dwelling on the enormity of the fault and the 
 shame that it had brought on Vailima. The 
 punishment pronounced was that the value of the 
 stolen food should be deducted from Fuaali's 
 wages, and that when the whole amount was in 
 hand, he should make a feast, to which he should 
 
 [158] 
 
Vailima 
 
 invite not his own friends but the friends of those 
 faithful servants of the house whom he had tried, 
 but vainly, to corrupt. 
 
 Stevenson's wise and kindly rule soon began to 
 have its effect. The 'boys' were proud of belong- 
 ing to Vailima, and willing to do anything to 
 uphold the honour of the house. When, in 
 November 1890, they went down to a feast in 
 Apia, they went of their own accord in the Vailima 
 uniform — white shirt, red-and- white blazer, and 
 lava-lava of the Stuart tartan — and formed 
 themselves into a company instead of going each 
 man to join his own village. Their master was 
 highly gratified at this open declaration of their 
 allegiance. 
 
 As soon as the difficulties connected with the 
 service of the house had been surmounted, the 
 daily life of Vailima ran smoothly enough. Steven- 
 son was usually stirring before the dawn began to 
 break over the *' down-hill profile of the eastern 
 road," and had often been working for more than 
 an hour when, somewhere about six o'clock, one 
 of the 'boys' brought him a light breakfast. If 
 the weather was cold — cold, that is, for Samoa, 
 where a morning temperature of 70° produced a 
 sensation of discomfort, in contrast to the greater 
 heat of the day — he sometimes worked in bed. 
 He used the Samoan bed of mats, with a pillow 
 and a blanket, and sang its praises vigorously. 
 When the weather was warm he went out on the 
 verandah and looked with the rapture of spirit 
 
 [159] 
 
Robert Louis Stevenson 
 
 that pure and perfect beauty always aroused 
 in him at the glories of the tropic day. By seven 
 the whole household was astir, but Stevenson was 
 usually left to work uninterruptedly at his writ- 
 ing until near eleven o'clock, when the loud boom- 
 ing of the pu or great conch shell blown in the 
 verandah called the family to luncheon. After- 
 ward came a ride or a walk, a game of tennis, or 
 some other recreation; dinner at half -past five, 
 then cards, music or reading, until, a little after 
 eight, the members of the family went to their 
 rooms. Stevenson generally read for an hour or 
 so, but was nearly always in bed by ten o'clock. 
 This is an outline plan of Stevenson's day, but 
 it was subject to so many and such great varia- 
 tions that the only two points which can be re- 
 garded as fairly fixed and constant are the hour 
 of rising and the hour of going to bed. Time had 
 to be found for all those duties that belonged to 
 'Stevenson the Planter,' and often 'Stevenson 
 the Writer,' too, became unduly importunate in 
 his claims. When work of special interest was 
 going on and enthusiasm and inspiration were in 
 full tide, Stevenson would give the whole day to 
 his writing; and even at ordinary times there 
 were usually some hours in the afternoon or even- 
 ing when he worked in one fashion or another 
 upon the book then in progress. On the other 
 hand, entire days were sometimes spent in long 
 expeditions or in attendance at native festivals. 
 There was, also, a constant stream of guests com- 
 
 [ 160] 
 
Vailima 
 
 ing and going at Vailima, and when a large dinner 
 was to be given the whole family was kept at work 
 from early morning 'dressing the ship.' Steven- 
 son always undertook the preparation of 'the 
 crystal/ and was as happy as man could be polish- 
 ing decanters and glasses until they reached such a 
 state of dazzling brightness that even the silver 
 set out on the festal table in the great hall could 
 not outshine them. 
 
 This great hall was the centre of life at Vailima, 
 and its master's constant pride. Its walls and 
 ceiling were covered with varnished redwood from 
 California, its waxed floor was bare except for the 
 huge tiger- skin rugs which were objects of great 
 interest to the Samoans. *'I suppose," a little 
 native boy once said to Mrs Strong, "that there 
 are many animals like that in the forests of 
 London." All the family treasures were collected 
 within this great hall. There was a portrait of 
 old Robert Stevenson and a large picture of Skerry- 
 vore Lighthouse. There was Stevenson's portrait 
 by Sargeant, and his bust by Rodin, and Mr 
 Colvin's portrait sent out from England. Many 
 mementoes of the South Sea cruises were there, 
 showing somewhat strangely against a sideboard 
 set out with silver. A safe was built into one 
 corner of the hall, and here money and valuables 
 were stored; and the natives firmly believed that 
 within this safe dwelt the 'Bottle Imp' on whom 
 Stevenson's fortune depended. On his first com- 
 ing to Samoa he had caused his story "The Bottle 
 
 [161] 
 
Robert Louis Stevenson 
 
 Imp" to be translated into the native language by 
 one of the missionaries of the island, with all of 
 whom he was on terms of cordial friendship; and 
 it had been published in a paper issued by the 
 London Missionary Society and read by the Samo- 
 ans before it was heard of in England. It was 
 through this story that Stevenson's native name 
 of 'Tusitala' (Teller of Tales) — by which one of 
 the missionaries, the Rev. J. Newell, had intro- 
 duced him to the Samoans — was permanently 
 adopted. 
 
 On Sunday evenings Stevenson conducted a 
 religious service in the great hall. A chapter 
 from the Samoan Bible was read, and Samoan 
 hymns were sung; then came a prayer in English, 
 usually one written by Stevenson, and, finally, the 
 Lord's Prayer in Samoan. Stevenson wrote many 
 prayers for the use of his household at Vailima, 
 and the tone and temper of the daily life can 
 scarcely be better indicated than by reference to 
 his "Prayer at Morning." He prays that the 
 round of small duties that begins with the new 
 day may be performed bravely and cheerfully, 
 that laughter, kindness and mirth may abound 
 with industry, and that when the day is ended 
 tired workers may have quiet rest. 
 
 With the native population outside his own 
 household Stevenson's position was one of weight 
 and authority. He and his family were always 
 careful to observe those small points of etiquette 
 that meant so much to the Samoans, and he won 
 
 [162] 
 
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 S 
 
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 W 
 
Vailima 
 
 their hearts as much by his thoughtful courtesy 
 as by his active kindness. A very large part of 
 his valuable morning hours was taken up in re- 
 ceiving chiefs who came to obtain help in their 
 difficulties from the "chief house of wisdom." 
 His ruling was accepted on political questions and 
 on trifling local disputes. Money collected for a 
 special purpose was entrusted to him, with a 
 request that he would see the purpose carried out; 
 and in the troublous times that came in 1893 he 
 was besieged on all sides by those who wanted 
 news of the latest developments, and those who 
 wanted to know what course to take to ensure 
 their own safety. Stevenson would sigh, Lloyd 
 Osbourne tells us, when he saw the chiefs ap- 
 proaching the house in their stately, solemn 
 fashion, but he never refused to see them and, 
 as far as he could, to help them. 
 
 In the political dissensions that divided the 
 island Stevenson took a keen interest. He was 
 from the beginning the friend of the deposed 
 Mataafa, who was proclaimed a rebel in October 
 1891, but whom he recognized as being a man of 
 greater ability and higher character than Laupepa, 
 the nominee of the allied Powers. But he was 
 not in any sense a partisan. He aimed, in single- 
 ness of mind, at the establishment of good govern- 
 ment in the island, and he considered that the 
 chief obstacles to this were the two officials 
 appointed by the Berlin Convention — the Chief 
 Justice, a Swedish gentleman named Cedarkrantz, 
 
 C 163] 
 
Robert Louis Stevenson 
 
 and the President of the Council, Baron Leufft 
 von Pilsuch. He did everything he could to pro- 
 cure the withdrawal of these gentlemen, and this 
 although he had a strong personal liking for 
 Cedarkrantz. They on their side were equally 
 anxious to get rid of him, and made strenuous 
 efforts, by reports to the allied Powers of the mis- 
 chievous results of his interference in Samoan 
 politics, to obtain an order for his deportation. 
 For a time it seemed likely that they would suc- 
 ceed, and Stevenson, realizing that at any moment 
 his little kingdom might suddenly be left without 
 a head, carefully prepared and wrote out instruc- 
 tions for the guidance of his family in such an 
 event. He relates with immense enjoyment a 
 dramatic incident that took place just when the 
 struggle was in its acutest stage. There was a 
 ball given in Apia — one of the balls at which 
 almost every class of the community was repre- 
 sented. Stevenson was there and Cedarkrantz, 
 and the two greeted each other with the punctili- 
 ous politeness that Samoan etiquette demanded 
 under the circumstances. A few days before 
 Cedarkrantz had been trying to obtain evidence 
 against the interfering chief of Vailima by bullying 
 and threatening a half -white interpreter; and 
 that very morning Stevenson had been engaged 
 in writing one of those letters to the Times which 
 had first called the attention of people in England 
 to Samoan affairs, and in which he had stated in 
 the plainest and most energetic terms his opinion 
 
 [164] 
 
Vailima 
 
 of the influence of Cedarkrantz upon the islands 
 Nevertheless the two found themselves later on 
 in the evening face to face in a quadrille — the 
 sort of quadrille that was danced in Apia, "rackety 
 and prancing and embracatory beyond words." 
 They both tried hard, says Stevenson, to behave 
 with becoming dignity, but the situation was too 
 much for them. Their eyes met, and they grinned; 
 confidential relations were established between 
 them; and "for the remainder of that prance 
 we pranced for each other. Hard to imagine 
 any position more ridiculous." 
 
 But in spite of his appreciation of such ridicu- 
 lous episodes there was nothing of the detach- 
 ment of the outsider in Stevenson's attitude toward 
 Samoan politics. He quite calmly and knowingly 
 put himself in danger of imprisonment or deporta- 
 tion; he risked what was dearer to him than 
 his own safety, the well-being of the little colony 
 he had planted and nurtured; he gave himself 
 endless trouble and fatigue in arranging deputa- 
 tions, drawing up petitions, and writing letters 
 to the Times; and he sacrificed ungrudgingly the 
 time that meant bread for himself and his family. 
 As a result of his efforts Cedarkrantz and Pilsuch 
 were withdrawn in January 1893, but this did not 
 end the troubles. "The triple-headed ass at 
 home," as Stevenson called the allied Powers, 
 still carried on the policy of the dismissed officials, 
 and, as a consequence, the party of Mataafa rose 
 in armed rebellion. Stevenson had laboured con- 
 
 [ 165 ] 
 
Robert Louis Stevenson 
 
 sistently for peace; but when, in spite of all that 
 he could do, war broke out, that high adventur- 
 ous spirit which neither years, nor ill-health, nor 
 hardships had done anything to quell, leapt up 
 and exulted at the sound of the trumpet. He 
 rode with his cousin, Graham Balfour, who had 
 come out to Vailima for a long visit, through the 
 Mataafa villages, and marked the activity and 
 excitement that had transformed old men into 
 boys, and boys into steadfast warriors. "The 
 impression on our minds," he says, "was extraor- 
 dinary; the sight of . . . those ardent, happy 
 faces whirls in my head; the old aboriginal awoke 
 in both of us and knickered like a stallion." He 
 chafed at his own enforced inaction; but he knew 
 that if he allowed himself to be drawn into the 
 struggle any power that he might otherwise have 
 had of helping the rebels would be taken from 
 him. Yet it was hard to keep quiet. "War is 
 a huge entrainement; there is no other tempta- 
 tion to be compared to it, not one. We were all 
 wet; we had been about five hours in the saddle, 
 mostly riding hard; and we came home like 
 schoolboys — with such a lightness of spirits, and 
 I am sure such a brightness of eye as you could 
 have lit a candle at!" 
 
 The war was short and inglorious. Mataafa's 
 forces were defeated in the first engagement. 
 The allied Powers sent a warship with orders to 
 suppress the insurgent chief at once, and in a few 
 days it was all over. Mataafa was in exile, and 
 
 [166] 
 
Vailima 
 
 the Mataafa villages were destroyed, the whole 
 being accomplished with such unnecessary cruelty 
 and outrage — tacitly, at least, if not openly, 
 sanctioned by the white authorities — as filled 
 Stevenson with shame and anger. There was 
 nothing to be done, however, but submit, and 
 Stevenson had to content himself with showing 
 every kindness in his power to the Mataafa chiefs 
 who had been taken prisoners. When the British 
 man-of-war brought the chiefs to Apia, Stevenson 
 was the first who boarded the ship to greet them. 
 He sent down his servants loaded with baskets of 
 food; he visited the prisoners when, having been 
 flogged through the streets and suffered every 
 species of insult, they were at last harboured in 
 the foul hole that served for a jail; he brought 
 doctors to them, and supplied them with all the 
 comforts possible to their miserable position; he 
 had the filthy prison cleansed. Finally, he brought 
 the officials, through shame, to provide for them 
 food and lodging that had some approach to 
 wholesomeness and decency, and he laboured 
 hard to get the decree that imposed the forfeiture 
 of their goods reversed. To show their gratitude 
 the chiefs invited him and his family to a native 
 feast at the jail, and loaded them with presents. 
 Later, they gave a more signal mark of their 
 appreciation of his services, and of the risks he 
 had run in openly befriending a proscribed party. 
 Almost as soon as they were released from prison, 
 in September 1894, nine of them came up to 
 
 [167] 
 
Robert Louis Stevenson 
 
 Vailima for a consultation. They sat in a solemn 
 circle on the floor of the hall, and made known 
 their intentions to Stevenson and his assembled 
 family. He had, they said, done much to improve 
 their position in prison and to hasten their release, 
 and they had been considering what they could 
 do in return. They had decided to make, with 
 their own hands and the hands of their families, 
 a road from the house at Vailima as far as the 
 public way to Apia, to bear all charges and to 
 supply their own food while the work was going 
 on; and Tusitala was especially notified that 
 none of the customary 'presents' would be ac- 
 cepted. Mrs Strong describes how the "talking 
 man" of the party began with the usual formal 
 expressions and the usual Samoan composure of 
 countenance, but when he began to speak of the 
 love and gratitude they bore to Tusitala, of how 
 they prayed for him and cherished the memory of 
 his kindness, his calmness broke down, and he 
 spoke with strong and real emotion. The whole 
 incident touched Stevenson very deeply. Road- 
 making was the most detested task of any in the 
 whole island, and it was diflScult to find men who, 
 either for the desire of high wages or the fear of 
 punishment, would undertake it. But the chiefs 
 entered on their task with the heartiest good-will 
 and good-humour. In a few weeks the road was 
 finished, and was known henceforward as 'Ala 
 Loto Alofa,' the Road of the Loving Heart. 
 Stevenson invited all the workers and their friends 
 
 [168] 
 
Vailima 
 
 to a feast, and made to them a speech that em- 
 bodies all his feeling for Samoa and his ideals and 
 hopes for its future. "I love the land," he said. 
 "I have chosen it to be my home while I live, 
 and my grave after I am dead; and I love the 
 people, and have chosen them to be my people, 
 to live and die with." 
 
 It might seem that to rule and guide a large 
 household, to superintend a plantation, and to 
 take an active part in public affairs was enough 
 to employ the time and the energies of any ordi- 
 nary man. But the main business of Stevenson's 
 life during the years at Vailima has as yet been 
 scarcely touched upon. Through all his cares 
 and occupations his literary work went steadily 
 on. He was, before anything else, a writer, and 
 it was from his writing that the income enabling 
 him to support the great expense of his Vailima 
 estate was gained. The plantation, in spite of 
 his hopeful anticipations that it would in the 
 course of five or six years provide him with an 
 income, never became self-supporting. He had 
 not the commercial instinct that could turn such 
 an undertaking to profit, and he would not allow 
 on his plantation the methods of dealing with 
 native workers and of cutting down expenses that 
 were practised elsewhere. 
 
 The South Sea book dragged on heavily all 
 through 1891 and 1892. In April, as a relief 
 from this distasteful labour, Stevenson took up 
 again "The High Woods of Ulufanua," which 
 
 C 169 ] 
 
Robert Louis Stevenson 
 
 had been dropped because he thought the story 
 on which it was founded too fantastic and extrav- 
 agant. But on re-reading he fell in love with the 
 first chapter, and decided that, for good or evil, 
 it must be finished. He worked at it at intervals 
 during the next five months, and by the end of 
 September it was finished, the *yarn,' as he put 
 it, having been 'cured,' and the title changed to 
 "The Beach of Falesa." The Wrecker was com- 
 pleted by the middle of November, and in 1892 
 began its course as a serial story in Scribner's 
 Magazine. Meanwhile, at the suggestion of Mr 
 Colvin, a selection from Stevenson's published 
 essays was made, which appeared the next year 
 under the title of Across the Plains. 
 
 In October Stevenson, moved by the unhappy 
 state of public affairs in Samoa, and hoping to 
 draw the attention of the people at home in 
 England to the misgovernment that was doing so 
 much mischief, began to write, against time, A 
 Footnote to History: Eight Years of Trouble in 
 Samoa. It was, as he explained to Colvin, journal- 
 ism rather than literature. He worked at it with 
 the intense and honest conviction that he was 
 fulfilling a plain duty toward the people among 
 whom he had made his home. He looked for 
 no profit or honour arising from it, and prophesied 
 that its fate would be "to bloom unread in shop 
 windows." He laboured hard, hoping to finish 
 it by March; but May had come before the little 
 book of two hundred and thirty-three pages was 
 
 C 170] 
 
Vailima 
 
 ready for publication, and he feared that it would 
 appear just too late to be of use. It is a sober, 
 reasoned piece of work, the first serious attempt 
 to unravel the tangle of Samoan politics. 
 
 The months, however, had produced other fruit 
 besides this "weariful history." The creative 
 power had been active, and when his piece of 
 journalistic drudgery was finally off his hands, 
 there were five stories planned out — two of them 
 partly written — on which Stevenson was longing 
 to be at work. These were The Young Chevalier, 
 the plot of which had been suggested in a letter 
 from Mr Andrew Lang; Sophia Scarlet, a "regular 
 novel," the scene laid in a big South Sea planta- 
 tion; *'The Shovels of Newton French," a story 
 of the Peninsular War; The Pearl Fisher, written 
 in collaboration with Lloyd Osbourne; and David 
 Balfour. This last story he had begun in Febru- 
 ary, when the weakness that followed an attack 
 of Samoa colic had forced him to give himself a 
 holiday from the "History." He "slid," as he 
 says, into David Balfour, taking up the history of 
 his hero after having "left him five years in the 
 British Linen Company's office." At once the 
 rapture of inception, such as he had felt on the 
 shores of the Saranac lake at the first idea of The 
 Master of Ballantrae, took hold on him. The tale 
 interfered with his sleeping and his eating; and, 
 in spite of the pressure of other work, before the 
 end of the month the whole story was planned 
 out and fifteen chapters written. This was one 
 
 [171] 
 
Robert Louis Stevenson 
 
 of the periods when political matters were specially 
 pressing, but, in spite of all interruptions, David 
 Balfour "went skelping along." With a spell of 
 The Young Chevalier interposed by way of "a 
 holiday outing," it progressed without other 
 interruption than those occasioned by the political 
 business that was absorbing many hours of Steven- 
 son's time each day; until, in July, the scrivener's 
 cramp, which had attacked him eight years before, 
 once more threatened him and made writing both 
 painful and difficult. His step-daughtei', Mrs 
 Strong, came to his assistance; he dictated, and 
 she wrote, and again the work went forward. 
 "This is a great invention," said Stevenson, '*to 
 which I shall stick if it can be managed." Man- 
 aged it was. Mrs Strong cheerfully devoted her- 
 self to his service, and from that time forward 
 became his quick and able amanuensis, so that 
 his literary work suffered scarcely at all, while 
 his hand was greatly benefited by this relief from 
 constant exertion. But he would not allow him- 
 self to depend entirely on such assistance, and 
 when the cramp became less painful took up his 
 own pen again. We hear of him gallantly copying 
 out portions of David Balfour with his left hand, 
 "a most laborious task," as he acknowledged. 
 By the end of September the book was done, 
 "and its author along with it, or nearly so." 
 "Strange," he says, "to think of even our doctor 
 here repeating his nonsense about debilitating 
 climate. Why, the work I have been doing during 
 
Vailima 
 
 the last twelve months, in one continuous spate, 
 mostly with annoying interruptions, and without 
 any collapse to mention, would be incredible in 
 Norway. But I have broken down now, and will 
 do nothing as long as I possibly can." 
 
 An attack of illness followed, but, a pressing 
 affair cropping up, he was able, as he said, to 
 put it in his pocket, and go down to Apia day 
 after day and attend to the troublesome business. 
 His general health had indeed greatly improved, 
 but nevertheless he sorely needed the rest that he 
 refused to give himself, and the evil effects of this 
 incessant work were soon to be seen. By the end 
 of October he was all on fire once more with the 
 idea for a new novel. He left for a time all the 
 other schemes that he had in hand, and gave his 
 days to Weir of Ilermiston. He could think and 
 talk of nothing else, and as the whole story shaped 
 itself in his brain, and the characters came to life 
 and began to play their parts, the joy of creation 
 entirely possessed him. He had never, he said, 
 in any other work felt so sure of himself; Ilermis- 
 ton would be his greatest book. But this first 
 phase being passed, Weir of Ilermiston was put on 
 one side for other matters more immediately call- 
 ing for attention. A selection of short stories 
 dealing with the South Seas, and called The Island 
 Nights' Entertainment, was to be published, and 
 Stevenson was soon hard at work completing and 
 retouching those he had in hand. Then there 
 were the proofs of David Balfour, which was 
 
 C 1'73] 
 
Robert Louis Stevenson 
 
 running as a serial story in Atalanta, and arrange- 
 ments had to be made for its publication in book 
 form under the title of Catriona. Toward the 
 end of December work was interrupted by an 
 attack of fever followed by acute dyspepsia, and 
 the new year opened with an epidemic of in- 
 fluenza which attacked eight members of the 
 Vailima household, including its master. A haem- 
 orrhage, though happily not a very serious one, 
 accompanied the influenza, and recovery was slow. 
 The illness, however, had what Stevenson called 
 "a huge alleviation," in the shape of an idea for 
 a new story, which was to be called St Ives, with 
 a subtitle, Experiences of a French Prisoner in 
 England. He could not write, so he dictated the 
 opening chapters to *the Amanuensis,' as he began 
 jokingly to call Mrs Strong. So bent was he upon 
 continuing his story, that when at one stage of 
 his illness he was forbidden to speak for fear of a 
 return of the haemorrhage, he dictated by means 
 of the deaf and dumb alphabet. Mrs Strong 
 caught his enthusiasm, and the two laboured 
 happily together until early in February, when, 
 with Mrs Stevenson, they started out for 'a 
 month's lark,' which took the form of a voyage 
 to Sydney and a stay of two or three weeks there. 
 It was hoped that the change would reestablish 
 Stevenson's health, but, as usual, Sydney did 
 not suit him, and he caught a succession of colds 
 that ended in pleurisy. The voyage home did 
 something toward setting him up, and as soon as 
 
 [174] 
 
Vailima 
 
 he reached his own "beautiful, shining, windy 
 house," for which in the streets of Sydney he 
 had longed, he was able to begin work once 
 more. 
 
 Stevenson by this time was making an income 
 far in excess of the seven hundred pounds which 
 he had once said was as much as anybody could 
 possibly want. In 1892 he had earned about 
 £4000, and there was every likelihood that 1893 
 would be yet more prosperous. He was not, 
 however, free from money worries. His expenses 
 were very great, and he found that, considerable 
 as were his earnings, his outgoings nearly equalled 
 them. The responsibility of his family weighed 
 heavily upon him, and urged him on to work when 
 he had neither the strength nor the inclination. 
 "What I want," he said, "is the * income' that 
 really comes in of itself, while all you have to do 
 is just to blossom and exist and sit on chairs." 
 But the time for this was not yet. For a few 
 weeks after his return to Vailima the drudgery of 
 proof-reading occupied him, and he had, as he 
 said, a "heart-breaking time" over the final 
 corrections of David Balfour. Before this was 
 quite finished he took up again The Pearl Fisher, 
 which he now rechristened The Ebb Tide. This 
 story, the grimmest that Stevenson ever wrote, 
 had been begun in collaboration with Lloyd Os- 
 bourne, who had joined in drawing out the plan 
 of the story, written the first four chapters and 
 worked with Stevenson on the remaining chapters 
 
 [175] 
 
Robert Louis Stevenson 
 
 of the first half of the book. Stevenson now set 
 to work to finish the story by himself. The work 
 was hateful to him; he felt more strongly than 
 any reader can do the tragic horror of those last 
 painful pages; but the dark story must be worked 
 out to its inevitable conclusion, and so, with stress 
 and suffering, the end was written. "I have 
 spent," wrote Stevenson, "thirteen days about as 
 nearly in Hell as a man could expect to live 
 through." He turned for relief to a work happier 
 and more wholesome in tone, which he had begun 
 as far back as 1891, and which, according to his 
 usual custom, he had put by and taken up from 
 time to time, when the mood for it was upon him. 
 This was a record of three generations of his own 
 family, which he at first purposed calling The 
 Lives of the Stevensons, but which finally appeared 
 as A Family of Engineers. It was just at this time 
 that war became imminent in Samoa, and for more 
 than a month his letters make no mention of his 
 literary work, if any such was done, but are filled 
 with the pitiful details of a futile struggle in 
 which, to the writer's shame, white men played 
 but an ignoble part. In August he writes that 
 he has been "recasting the beginning of the Hang- 
 ing Judge or Weir of Hermiston,^^ and "cobbling 
 on my grandfather." A little later he is "deep 
 in St Ives/' and expects that this will be the next 
 novel done. But by December the effect of hard 
 and continuous labour had made some rest an 
 absolute necessity. Hitherto illness had never 
 
 [176] 
 
Vailima 
 
 affected his brave and happy outlook on life; but 
 now there were signs that a deep depression was 
 beginning to settle upon him. He grew anxious 
 and careful, supersensitive to criticism, and apt 
 to allow a chance wounding word to rankle within 
 him in a way which showed that some change was 
 affecting the kindly sweetness of his nature. 
 Work went heavily, and there came times when 
 he was ready to believe that his literary gift had 
 been finally lost. Yet he would not give himself 
 the complete rest that, time after time, was pre- 
 scribed for him. It was the old cry — money, for 
 the sake of his family, he must have. His friends 
 at home, Colvin and Mr Charles Baxter, recog- 
 nizing the note of unaccustomed despondency in 
 his letters, telegraphed out to him news of the 
 great success of the Edinburgh edition of his 
 works, which had lately been published, and which 
 promised to afford a regular and assured income. 
 But even this did not induce him to rest. He 
 took up Weir of Hermiston once more, and dic- 
 tated to Mrs Strong those wonderful chapters 
 which show his powers at their very highest, 
 and indicate, as most of his critics believe, that 
 he was entering upon a fuller and richer stage 
 in the development of his genius. Once more 
 the fervour of inspiration returned; for months 
 he had walked heavily, with dragging, weary 
 feet; now once more he stepped out lightly and 
 gallantly. He dictated, according to Mrs Strong, 
 without pause or hesitation, "as clearly and 
 
 [ 177] 
 
Robert Louis Stevenson 
 
 steadily as though he was reading from an un- 
 seen book." 
 
 During all the time that he spent at Vailima 
 Stevenson never once, as it seems, contemplated 
 a return to England, even for a short visit, but 
 he was constantly making plans to meet one or 
 other of his friends at various places — Egypt, 
 Ceylon, Honolulu, Vailima itself. Not one of 
 these plans came to anything; his friends were 
 busy men who could not get away from their 
 duties for a period long enough to take such a 
 journey, and from the day on which he sailed on 
 the Ludgate Hill he never saw one of his old com- 
 panions again, except Mr W. H. Low, from whom 
 he parted in New York. Mr Charles Baxter was 
 on his way out to visit Vailima when he heard 
 the news of Stevenson's death. 
 
 The loss of the comradeship which had been 
 even more to him than it is to most men at times 
 weighed heavily upon him; at times, also, he 
 felt an exile's home-sickness for the land of his 
 birth, and for "the quaint, grey-castled city, where 
 the bells clash of a Sunday, and the wind squalls, 
 and the salt showers fly and beat." "Did you 
 see," he wrote to Colvin, "a man who wrote the 
 Stickit Minister, and dedicated it to me, in words 
 that brought the tears to my eyes every time I 
 looked at them, 'Where about the graves of the 
 martyrs the whaups are crying. His heart re- 
 members how.' Ah, by God, it does! Singular 
 that I should fulfil the Scots destiny throughout, 
 
 [178] 
 
Vailima 
 
 and live a voluntary exile, and have my head 
 filled with the blessed, beastly place all the 
 time." ^ Yet he would never allow his friends to 
 pity him, or to depreciate the land he had chosen 
 for his home. "Why, you madman," he replied 
 to some such condolences from Colvin, " I wouldn't 
 change my present installation for any post, dig- 
 nity, honour, or advantage conceivable to me. 
 It fills the bill; I have the loveliest time." 
 
 His little circle at Vailima saw little of the 
 desponding moods that had alarmed his friends 
 at home. To them he was still the gay and 
 tender comrade that he had always been, the 
 eternal boy among them who kept up the zest 
 and excitement of living. He joined in all the 
 gaieties of Apia, and went to lunches and balls 
 given by the officers and men of his favourite 
 warship, the Curaqoa, then stationed at Samoa. 
 He organized and took part in a paper-chase, and 
 related with great glee how, although he followed 
 "every false scent on the whole course," he came 
 in third on his "little Jack, who stuck to it gal- 
 lantly." "I felt myself about seventeen again," 
 he said; "a pleasant experience." He was im- 
 mensely touched and delighted by the action of 
 the chiefs, who, throughout September, were work- 
 ing at the Road of the Loving Heart; and the 
 rekindling of his interest in Weir of Hermiston 
 brought him the joy of successful, happy labour 
 that he appreciated beyond all others. On his 
 
 ^ Vailima Letters. 
 
 [179] 
 
Robert Louis Stevenson 
 
 birthday the customary native feast was held, 
 and he entertained his guests with his own 
 delightful courtesy. 
 
 December came, with Weir of Hermiston still 
 going happily on. Monday, the third day of the 
 month, was mail day, and all the afternoon 
 Stevenson was occupied in writing letters to his 
 friends at home. When, at sunset, he joined the 
 rest of the family on the verandah he was in the 
 gayest spirits. He talked over plans for the fu- 
 ture, and especially about a lecturing tour in 
 America that he was eager to make; he joked with 
 his wife, who had all day been oppressed by a 
 presentiment of coming evil, and drew her to 
 join with him in preparations for making of their 
 evening meal a little festival. Suddenly he put 
 both hands to his head, and cried out, "What's 
 that?" and then, quickly, "Do I look strange?" 
 and fell on his knees before his wife. Sosimo, 
 his faithful attendant, came running in, and helped 
 Mrs Stevenson to carry him into the great hall 
 and put him into the arm-chair, where he lay 
 unconscious, but breathing heavily. Doctors were 
 hurriedly sent for, and two soon arrived. Every- 
 thing their knowledge and skill could suggest 
 was done, but with no avail. The master of the 
 house, the centre and mainspring of all its activi- 
 ties, was dying. 
 
 Loving hands lifted the unconscious form and 
 laid it down gently upon a bed that had been 
 brought in and placed in the middle of the hall. 
 
 [180] 
 
Vailima 
 
 As the dire news spread over the estate, awe- 
 stricken native servants stole silently in and 
 seated themselves in a wide semi-circle on the floor, 
 their dark, anxious faces all turned toward their 
 chief, the well-loved Tusitala. His wife and the 
 other members of his family gathered in anguish 
 round his bed, and his missionary friend, Mr 
 ' Clarke, who had come hurrying to Vailima at the 
 news of the attack, knelt and prayed aloud. The 
 deep, painful breaths grew slower and fainter, 
 then ceased. Robert Louis Stevenson was dead. 
 
 Silently his native servants went about the last 
 sad duties they owed to their dead chief. The 
 great Union Jack that his loyal heart had loved 
 to see floating over the walls he had built in a 
 strange land was hauled down and placed over his 
 body; and under that symbol of home the Scots- 
 man who was no more an exile lay at rest. His 
 servants each knelt and reverently kissed the dead 
 hand of their master. Not one could be induced 
 to take any rest all through that long, sad night. 
 There was no loud lamentation, but their mourn- 
 ful faces and dejected bearing showed how heavily 
 this loss had fallen upon them. They sat silent, 
 or chanted in a mixture of Latin and Samoan the 
 long, solemn prayers that the Romish Church has 
 ordained for use in the chamber of death, till 
 the dawn came and brought in the day on which 
 Tusitala must be laid in his grave. 
 
 Many feet trod that morning the Road of the 
 Loving Heart, and chief after chief brought the 
 
 [181] 
 
Robert Louis Stevenson 
 
 customary offering of a fine mat to lay upon 
 the body of the dead. Flowers, too, were brought, 
 brilliant tropical flowers that filled the great hall 
 with a blaze of colour. 
 
 An old Mataafa chief, one of those who had 
 been in prison and who had afterward helped in 
 building the road, came among the others; and 
 as he crouched beside the dead body of Tusitala, 
 he lamented over him in touching words. "I 
 am only a poor Samoan, and ignorant," he said, 
 "others are rich and can give Tusitala the parting 
 presents of rich, fine mats; I am poor, and can 
 give nothing this last day he receives his friends. 
 Yet I am not afraid to come and look the last 
 time in my friend's face, never to see him more 
 till we meet with God. . . . We were in prison, 
 and he cared for us. W^e were sick, and he made 
 us well. We were hungry, and he fed us. The 
 day was no longer than his kindness. You are 
 great people, and full of love. Yet who among 
 you is so great as Tusitala .f^ What is your love 
 to his love.^"^ 
 
 Near at hand the grave was being prepared. 
 Stevenson was to be buried in the place that he 
 himself had chosen when he knew that he could 
 not be laid with his fathers, "where the whaups 
 and the plovers were crying," in the bleak Scotch 
 graveyard at home. On the top of Vaea there is 
 a small tableland no larger than a room; and 
 here was to be his resting-place. No path led up 
 
 * The Letters of Robert Louis Stevenson. 
 
 [ 182] 
 
Vailima 
 
 to the steep side of the mountain, so forty of those 
 who had gathered to offer their services were sent 
 to hew one out with knives and axes, while a band 
 of the Vaihma servants, headed by Lloyd Os- 
 bourne, dug the grave on the summit. 
 
 The coffin, quickly made by the skilful hands 
 of an old friend, was ready by noon, and Sosimo 
 reverently placed the body of his master within 
 it, posing the dead hands in the attitude of prayer. . 
 Then the tattered red ensign that had gone with 
 him in his South Sea voyagings was laid upon the 
 coffin, and it was borne on the shoulders of power- 
 ful Samoans up the steep path to the mountain 
 top. The ascent was a work of almost incredible 
 labour and difficulty, and each slow and painful 
 step that brought them nearer to the summit 
 tried most severely the strength of the devoted 
 bearers. In all nineteen Europeans and about 
 sixty Samoans assembled at the grave, where the 
 Rev. W. E. Clarke read the Burial Service of the 
 Church of England; and there, on the top of the 
 mountain that had guarded his home, Robert 
 Louis Stevenson was laid to rest. 
 
 His grave is marked by a tomb, built, in Sa- 
 moan fashion, of great blocks of cement. On 
 either side is a bronze plate. One bears in Sa- 
 moan the words, "The Tomb of Tusitala." 
 "Whither thou goest, I will go; and where thou 
 lodgest, I will lodge; thy people shall be my 
 people, and thy God my God; where thou diest, 
 will I die, and there will I be buried." 
 
 [183] 
 
Robert Louis Stevenson 
 
 On the other plate is written in English two 
 verses from his own "Requiem," with his name 
 and the date of his birth and his death: 
 
 ROBERT LOUIS 
 1850 STEVENSON 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 the sea. 
 And the hunter home from the hill. 
 
 [184] 
 
EPILOGUE : The Writer 
 and the Man 
 
 THE time has not yet come for estimating 
 Robert Louis Stevenson's influence upon 
 English literature, or for allotting to him 
 his permanent position in the ranks of English 
 writers. All that is at present possible is to point 
 out some of those qualities which constitute his 
 claim to a place among the immortals; the final 
 judgment must be pronounced by a later generation. 
 The first and most striking of these qualities is 
 his great range and versatility. He wrote essays, 
 plays, novels, short stories, lyrics and blank verse, 
 fables, lay sermons, and prayers; and his work 
 shows as great a diversity in matter and manner 
 as in form. That the same man wrote A ChiWs 
 Garden of Verses and Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde; 
 that Treasure Island is by the same hand as 
 Ordered South; that the charming egoist who gave 
 us Travels with a Donhey in the Cevennes could 
 pass to the grim horror of The Ebb Tide; that 
 the man who keeps us chuckling as he shows us 
 David Balfour naively making his way through 
 many dangers and difiiculties toward happiness 
 and prosperity, can make our hearts hot with fu- 
 tile rage as we follow the House of Durisdeer to 
 its slow-approaching, inevitable doom, — these 
 things seem almost beyond belief; and the wonder 
 grows as the reader recognizes that each work is 
 in its class a masterpiece. 
 
 [185] 
 
Robert Louis Stevenson 
 
 This extraordinary versatility of the writer is 
 simply a reflection of the many-sidedness of the 
 man. Stevenson's range of interests was alto- 
 gether remarkable for its width and its variety. 
 He would occupy himself fearlessly with such 
 stupendous and baflfling subjects as the mixture 
 of good and evil in man, and for weeks the ideas 
 to which these musings suggested would take 
 possession of him, to the exclusion of almost every 
 other thought. On the other hand the most 
 trifling interest or occupation would for a time 
 absorb all his energies. Mrs Strong tells us how 
 once, when a fit of restlesssness had made him dis- 
 inclined for his ordinary occupations, she taught 
 him how to herring-bone saddle-blankets in red 
 worsted, and how he became so intent upon ac- 
 quiring this new art that he sat at his work during 
 every available moment of a whole day, hurrying 
 back to it after necessary interruptions, as to 
 some great task. He flung himself upon each 
 new thing that came under his observation as if 
 that alone were the object of his desires and the 
 goal of his energies. His brain was filled with 
 the ideas that it suggested, and every power that 
 he had was concentrated upon the effort to make 
 it yield to him all that it was capable of yielding. 
 It is true that when this was done he passed on 
 eagerly to the next thing that presented itself; 
 so that friends whom he had inspired with his 
 own interest were often disconcerted when they 
 returned after a short period of absence and found 
 
 [186] 
 
The Worker and the Man 
 
 that the subject they were eager to talk about 
 was forgotten, and a new red-hot enthusiasm 
 installed in its place. These quick changes were 
 not, however, due to lightness or fickleness, but 
 rather to the intensity and concentration which 
 carried Stevenson swiftly through all those grada- 
 tions of feeling which in the case of the ordinary 
 man are passed as distinct stages. It is little 
 wonder, therefore, that with such a temperament 
 Stevenson could write and write well on so many 
 and such varied subjects. 
 
 The second striking feature of Stevenson's writ- 
 ing is his distinctive and finished style. He has 
 told us with what labour this was acquired; but 
 it is, even in his earliest works, such a perfect 
 instrument, and wielded with such delightful ease, 
 that but for his confession we should be tempted 
 to think that here was the born artist, the for- 
 tunate legatee who had inherited all that his 
 predecessors had accumulated of skill and experi- 
 ence, and had added to this his own natural and 
 effective charm. He himself has defined literature 
 as " words used to the best purpose, with no waste, 
 but going tight round a subject," and his works 
 show how well his practice accorded with his 
 theory. But he added to this essential quality of 
 conciseness those other nameless graces that make 
 his style a delight. One reads Stevenson slowly 
 
 — his stories excepted, for in these the style must 
 wait for the second, or perhaps the third reading 
 
 — as one turns a delicious morsel on the palate, 
 
 [187] 
 
Robeft Louis Stevenson 
 
 loth to let the treat come too soon to an end. 
 But this simile is too material in its character to 
 express adequately the pleasure that Stevenson's 
 airily-delightful style gives to us. One sentence 
 is so exquisitely turned that it affords a gratifica- 
 tion comparable to that which comes from the 
 contemplation of a perfect piece of sculpture; 
 the next contains such a felicitous epithet that 
 the reader's consciousness goes out to meet it 
 with a shock of acquiescence; the humour lurks 
 so captivatingly behind the demure words that 
 one stands, as it were, on tiptoe to catch a glimpse 
 of it, and, meeting it full face by some unexpected 
 turn in the way, goes gaily on with it, treading to 
 the measure of light-hearted laughter — only to 
 find, after a while, that one's companion is not 
 Humour after all, but Pathos, her twin-sister. 
 
 Yet that which even more than his wonderful 
 style gives the peculiar charm to Robert Louis 
 Stevenson's writing is the intimate personal rela- 
 tion he sets up between the reader and himself. 
 This is true not only of his autobiographical works 
 — though of these pre-eminently — but of almost 
 everything that he has written. It is as if he 
 walked beside the reader in friendly talk, with 
 hand laid, comrade-fashion, on the other's shoulder. 
 We learn to know Stevenson as we know few other 
 writers; and this is probably because he knew 
 himself so well. He had a vivid and eager interest 
 in his own personality, and when he was a man he 
 still held a clear remembrance of the child, the 
 
 [188] 
 
The Worker and the Man 
 
 boy, and the youth that he once had been; so 
 that he is able to make these known to his readers, 
 and he grows dearer to us as we see him pass from 
 one stage to another, just as a friend whose face 
 we can see grows dearer with the passing years. 
 The interest that we feel in Stevenson himself 
 even rivals the interest that we feel in his books. 
 If the verdict on the writer remain in suspense 
 there can be no doubt regarding the verdict on 
 the man. Robert Louis Stevenson's brave life 
 has won for him a certain place in the great rank 
 of heroes who are honoured in every land. It is 
 no matter that, as he himself says, his battlefield 
 was the dingy, inglorious one of the bed and the 
 physic bottle. The cause was a fine one, and the 
 victory splendid. The foe was one with whom 
 all of us at some time or other must contend, 
 though few are attacked with such persistency 
 and fierceness as was Stevenson. We hear his 
 cheery voice, and see him come smiling gaily 
 from the hottest encounter, and we feel that to 
 give way even an inch in our own small struggles, 
 to allow our heart to be daunted or the face that 
 we turn upon the glories of this beautiful world 
 to be clouded, would be almost an act of treachery 
 toward the brave and faithful soul who so gal- 
 lantly defied the enemy's power to take from man 
 the joy of living. To many of those who have 
 tried to fight a good fight Robert Louis Steven- 
 son's victory has come with sustaining power. 
 "I remember," says Helen Keller, who herself 
 
 [189] 
 
Robert Louis Stevenson 
 
 has surmounted difficulties greater, perhaps, than 
 have been surmounted by any other human being, 
 "an hour when I was discouraged and ready to 
 falter. For days I had been pegging away at a 
 task which refused to get itself accomplished. 
 In the midst of my perplexity I read an essay of 
 Stevenson, which made me feel as if I had been 
 * outing' in the sunshine. I tried again with new 
 courage, and succeeded almost before I knew it. 
 I have failed many times since; but I have never 
 felt so disheartened as I did before that sturdy 
 preacher gave me my lesson on the 'fashion of 
 the smiling face.' " ^ 
 
 Stevenson, we are told, always held, with Sir 
 Walter Scott, that *'to have done things worthy 
 to be written was a dignity to which no man made 
 any approach who had only written things worthy 
 to be read." In his humility it probably never 
 occurred to him that he himself had '*done things 
 worthy to be written"; but he was, in the best 
 and truest sense of the words, a man of action as 
 well as a man of letters, and it is as such that 
 we remember him. 
 
 * The Practice of Optimism. 
 
 [190] 
 
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