CHAPTER VI

'His God he cabins not in creeds,'

God and religion remained very real to him; and the high ideal of duty first learned in his childhood's home guided his life to the last. Robert Fergusson's life and poems interested him greatly, and he often declared himself drawn to him by a certain spiritual affinity; while, when suffering from his frequent attacks of distressing illness, he sometimes thought with dread of Fergusson's sad fate.

Pleasure as well as duty, however, was always made welcome in the Stevenson home. Mr and Mrs Thomas Stevenson held no stern views of everyday life, no gayer or brighter household could be found than theirs. None certainly existed where young folk received a warmer welcome, whether the family were established for the winter at 17 Heriot Row, or were spending the summer at Swanston, that delightful nook, nestling in the shelter of the Pentland hills, where the old-fashioned flowers had so sweet a scent, the rustic sounds of country life were so full of charming music, and where the home trio themselves loved

'Every path and every plot,Every bush of roses,Every blue forget-me-notWhere the dew reposes.'

'Every path and every plot,

Every bush of roses,

Every blue forget-me-not

Where the dew reposes.'

Differing much in their natures, but fitting, as it were, closely into each other's souls and characters,Louis Stevenson's parents early made for him that ideal of home and of marriage that shows itself from the first in his writings, just here a line and there a sentence, which indicates how his thoughts ran, and how, whatever enjoyment he might take in poking cynicism at women in the abstract, he was full of a noble idea, a manly longing for that one woman, of whose soul and his own, he could say—

'Once and beyond recollection,Once ere the skies were unfurled,These an immortal affectionFound at the birth of the world,'

'Once and beyond recollection,

Once ere the skies were unfurled,

These an immortal affection

Found at the birth of the world,'

a woman who would be what his mother was to his father, a something as sacred as all through his life that mother was to him. Save that Mrs Thomas Stevenson's eyes were rather hazel than blue, it might have been of her that the late Professor Blackie wrote so sweetly:—

'True to herself and to the high idealThat God's grace gave her to inform the real,True to her kind, and to your every feelingRespondent with a power of kindliest healingShe knows no falseness, even the courtliest lie;She dreams not, truth flows from her deep blue eye,And if her tongue speaks pleasant things to all,'Tis that she loveth well both great and small,And all in her that mortals call politenessIs but the image of her bright soul's brightness.'

'True to herself and to the high ideal

That God's grace gave her to inform the real,

True to her kind, and to your every feeling

Respondent with a power of kindliest healing

She knows no falseness, even the courtliest lie;

She dreams not, truth flows from her deep blue eye,

And if her tongue speaks pleasant things to all,

'Tis that she loveth well both great and small,

And all in her that mortals call politeness

Is but the image of her bright soul's brightness.'

That Stevenson home was to many of us, besides the son of the house, a picture of what a true life ought to be, and one that seemed to make the realisation of all high ideals possible in whatever fashion one's own existence might ultimately be led.

There was something so strong and manly in Mr Thomas Stevenson, something so sweetly womanly in his wife. A beautiful woman always, because hers was the beauty of soul, as well as of feature, in those early seventies, one cannot imagine anyone more graceful, more gracious, or more charming than she was.

It would also be difficult to imagine a wife or mother more sympathetic or more sensible. She could always see the fun of things; she never objected to clubs and men's dinners, and the excuse for a night away from the home hearth, that is so dear to the best of men.

Not many weeks before her death, when we were talking of those happy days of long ago, she told me that she always took a book and contented herself, and then was ready to be interested when the truant returned with a latch-key. An example, that if closely followed, would assuredly make for domestic peace. And one fancies that the woman who said smilingly, she always much approved of 'The Evening Club,' because her husband or son could make merry there so late, that she was sound asleep, and could not miss their conversation, was likely to be a pleasant wife to live with, and an ideal mother for a son of such Bohemian tendencies as Robert Louis.

Even that marvellous taste in dress which her son affected, and which would certainly have dismayed more conventional mothers, only amused her immensely. Among other jottings of hers about him in her little note-book is one which relates with much appreciation that a faithful servant says of him, 'One summer he tried to wear a frock-coat and tall hat, but after a little he laid them aside and said, "I am not going to be a swellany more," and returned to the velveteen coat and the straw hat which he preferred.'

Except at a wedding, or some such solemn function, whereat he probably looked misery personified, one cannot remember him so conventionally apparelled as in the frock-coat and the tall hat. Possibly it was before this access of propriety temporarily had him in its grasp that one day we saw him in Princes Street 'taking the air' in an open cab with a Stevenson cousin, attired in like manner with himself. In those days fashionable people often walked in Princes Street in the afternoon, so what was our dismay, in the midst of quite a crowd of the gay world, to see that open cab, at a word of command from Robert Louis, draw near the pavement as we approached, when two battered straw hats were lifted to us with quite a Parisian grace. Both young men wore sailor hats with brilliant ribbon bands, both were attired in flannel cricketing jackets with broad bright stripes, and round Louis's neck was knotted a huge yellow silk handkerchief, while over both their heads one of them held an open umbrella. In days when the wearing of cricketing clothes, except in the playing fields, was in Scotland still so uncommon that it is on authentic record that an elderly unmarried lady in an east coast watering place, on meeting in its high street a young man in boating flannels, was so shocked at the innovation that she promptly went home, leaving all her shopping undone and her tea-drinking and friendly gossip forgotten, such an apparition as that in the open cab required more courage to face than people accustomed to the present-day use of gay tennis garb can easily imagine. It wasfortunate that nerve to return the salutation smilingly was not wanting, or Mr Stevenson would certainly have pitilessly chaffed the timid victims of conventionality afterwards.

Having borne the ordeal with such courage as we possessed, we hastened to have tea with Mrs Stevenson, whose first question was, 'Have you seen Lou?'

And when we described that startling vision that was slowly creeping along Princes Street in the open cab, she laughed till her tears fell. In half an hour or so her son came in cool and unconcerned, and as punctiliously polite as if his attire had been the orthodox apparel for an afternoon tea-party.

The effects of his dressing and appearance on the foreign mind is most humorously described by himself in hisEpilogue to an Inland Voyage, where the extraordinary nature of his garments so dismayed the French police that while his friend, the late Sir Walter G. Simpson, 'The Cigarette,' was allowed to go free, 'The Arethusa' was popped into prison, kept there for an hour or two, and finally hustled off to Paris, an adventure of the two friends, who were so systematically taken for 'bagmen,' on that charming expedition, which was always told with much laughter by 'The Arethusa's' parents.

One of the last memories of Mr Stevenson in Edinburgh that distinctly remains with me was finding him looking into the window of Messrs Douglas & Foulis in Castle Street on a grey, east windy day that was cold enough to make the thickest great-coat necessary. But he was visibly shivering in one of his favourite short velvet coats. It was palpably too short in the arms, andcertainly the worse for wear; his long hair fell almost to his shoulders, and he wore a Tyrolese hat of soft felt. With a whimsical and appreciative glance at his garments, he offered to accompany me along Princes Street; so we set off westwards together, when, so charming was his conversation, that long before we reached the doorsteps of his relative's house, which was my destination, one had forgotten that the wind was in the east, and the sky greyer than the pavements, and only longed for the walk to begin over again, that he might talk all the way. These eccentricities of attire were merely a part of the rather attractive vanity of a clever youth, whose exuberance of spirits was, in spite of much bad health, at that time so great that he was often merry with a gaiety that was as child-like as it was amusing. In later life he gradually modified his ideas as to dress, and in theVailima Lettershe writes of himself in Samoa as going to Apia to social amusements in most orthodox coats and ties.

At evening parties he always looked like a martyr in the dismal black coat and white tie, which he described as a mixture of the livery of a waiter and the mourning of an undertaker. At dances, he propped himself against a wall, in a doorway or in some coign of vantage about the staircase, looking limp and miserable, but keenly observant all the time. When he found a congenial soul, whether man or woman, to talk to, he brightened, the limpness vanished, and his quick flow of wit and fancy streamed on in a delightful river of talk which touched on grave and gay with equal ease, and was exactly what a poet describes, as—

'His talk was like a stream that runsWith rapid change from rocks to roses,It skipped from politics to puns,It passed from Mahomet to Moses.Beginning with the laws that keepThe planets in their rapid courses,And ending with a precept deepFor stewing eels or shoeing horses.'

'His talk was like a stream that runs

With rapid change from rocks to roses,

It skipped from politics to puns,

It passed from Mahomet to Moses.

Beginning with the laws that keep

The planets in their rapid courses,

And ending with a precept deep

For stewing eels or shoeing horses.'

Although he looked so unhappy at dances or 'at homes,' at dinners, if the guests were fitly chosen, he was thoroughly at his ease and exceedingly amusing. With his few intimate friends too he was seen at his best; but in general society he was usually as bored as he looked.

The Edinburgh of that day was very pleasant socially. Its world seemed somewhat smaller than it is now, less ostentatiously rich, more seriously cultured; or so at least it appeared to the young folk who belonged to the old-fashioned law and professional set in which the Stevensons largely had their acquaintance. People in that set still lived, more than they do to-day, eastwards or northwards of Heriot Row, in the large old houses which were so homelike and so comfortable. The centre of things was in those grand grey houses from Heriot Row upwards to Charlotte Square, westwards to Randolph Cliff and a little way over the Dean Bridge. Drumsheugh Gardens was an innovation. The terraces, Royal, Regent, and Carlton, that 'west end of the east,' were still fashionable, and few people had, as yet, migrated southwards to

'That proud part of Morningside,Where houses girt with gardensDo stretch down far and wide.'

'That proud part of Morningside,

Where houses girt with gardens

Do stretch down far and wide.'

It was not a very large world, but it was a very agreeable one, and one which had its notabilities. Lord Neaves with his delightful songs, and the other old-time judges were still with us. Sir David Brewster was not so very long dead; Sir James Y. Simpson was yet a very recent memory. Professor Blackie was in the zenith of his fame. Sir Daniel Macnee told his wonderful stories; Professor, now Sir, Douglas Maclagan sang his delightful songs. Mr Sam Bough's hearty laugh rang out among the artists, and Sir R. Christison, and Syme, and Keith, and Lister, had made the Edinburgh medical world famous. Professors Masson, Tait, Kelland, Crum-Brown, Fleeming-Jenkin—in whose theatricals R. L. Stevenson took a picturesque part—and a host of other well-known names were among the guests at dinners, and most beloved personality of all, perhaps, Dr John Brown, accompanied by his 'doggies' still nodded to us out of his carriage window, or left wonderful scraps of drawings on the hall tables as he passed out from seeing a patient. And everywhere in that pleasant world the Stevenson family were welcome and well known.

By the host of young people who are now in turn taking the busy work of life, from which so many of the elders are resting for ever, parties at 17 Heriot Row and at Swanston were much appreciated. Dinner parties for young people were not then so common as now, and the delightful ones given by Mr and Mrs Thomas Stevenson were greatly enjoyed. The guests were carefully chosen, and limited to ten or twelve, so that conversation at dinner was general. And how amusing that conversation was! The humour of father and son as they dreweach other out was wonderful, they capped each other's good things, and somehow made less gifted folk shine in the conversation also in a way peculiar to them and which was fully shared by Mrs Thomas Stevenson, who made the most charming of hostesses. Father and son on these occasions were simply full of jests and jollity, everything started an argument, and every argument lent itself to fun. It is odd that nothing definite of those clever sayings of theirs seems to return to one; it is only, as it were, the memory of an aroma that filled the air sweetly at the time, and is still faintly present with one that remains; the actual 'bon-mots' have unhappily passed away. It is consoling to find that Mr Edmund Gosse, who inKit-Catswrites delightfully of his friend Louis Stevenson, notes the same intangible character of his talk.

After the little dinners there were delightful informal dances, to which nephews, nieces, friends, and neighbours came as well as the dinner guests, and one can still remember with a smile, perilously near to tears, Mr Thomas Stevenson driving his unwilling son to dance the old-time dance 'Sir Roger de Coverley,' which the elder man loved and the younger professed to scorn even while he entered with a zeal that finally satisfied his father into the performance of it, that always ended an informal evening at 17 Heriot Row.

Music, too, was a pleasant feature of those little parties, and one still recalls, especially, the songs and the lovely voice of a favourite niece of Mrs Stevenson, whose early death made the first break in the home at 'The Turret,' too soon to be followed by the passing away of all save one of that happy household. Even now, after the lapseof so many years, one seems to see Mr Thomas Stevenson leaning eagerly forward as she sang such sweet old songs as 'My Mother bids me bind my Hair,' and 'She wore a wreath of Roses,' or Robert Louis applauding his favourites, 'I shot an Arrow into the Air,' and 'The Sea hath its Pearls.'

On one occasion one of these merry parties was enlivened by the presence of some young Japanese engineer students, who were on tour in Edinburgh, and who had brought introductions to the distinguished engineer, who made them very cordially welcome. It was not then very common to meet Japanese, and these quiet dignified young men, in their gracefully flowing black garments, interested the Stevenson family and their youthful guests greatly.

'A clerk foredoom'd his father's soul to cross,Who pens a stanza when he should engross.'—Pope'sEpistle to Dr Arbuthnot.

'A clerk foredoom'd his father's soul to cross,Who pens a stanza when he should engross.'

'A clerk foredoom'd his father's soul to cross,

Who pens a stanza when he should engross.'

—Pope'sEpistle to Dr Arbuthnot.

His son's refusal to become a civil engineer, and to take his natural position in the family business, was undoubtedly a great trial to a man of Mr Thomas Stevenson's character and professional traditions. That business had in it not only wealth, honour, and success, but, to every Stevenson, the glamour of romance, the fascination of adventure, and to the father his firm's history appealed strongly. Therefore the blow that fell upon him during that memorable walk, when his son at last found courage to confess to him that he could not persevere in the traditional path which he was expected to tread, must have been a crushing one, and it said much for the strength of his fatherly affection that he received it as he did. It was a painful decision for the son to make, and an equally painful one for the parents to hear.

Mrs Thomas Stevenson as well as her husband felt it a keen disappointment that her son could not walk in his father's footsteps. To them, as to all parents of theirposition and very natural social prejudices, it seemed a foolish thing for a man to turn seriously to literature as a means of winning his daily bread. The Edinburgh of that day did not think much of the profession of letters, and although the memory of Sir Walter Scott, the 'Edinburgh Reviewers,' and the literary lights of an earlier time was still green, all parents held the opinion that, although a few authors had made for themselves fame and fortune, literature was but a beggarly trade at the best, and one to which no wise man would apprentice his son.

Only those who knew the elder Mr Stevenson's nature well could fully understand how great a trial to him was his son's decision; and only those very near and dear to him could quite appreciate the depth of the father's love, the tenderness of the father's heart, which permitted no tinge of bitterness, no lasting shadow of repining, to darken his relations with his son or to lessen in the slightest his overwhelming affection for him. Sensitive in the extreme, the son in his turn could not fail to feel his father's disappointment, almost to exaggerate its effect on the older man in his own tender-hearted remorse that he was unable to fulfil his destiny in any other way than by following literature, which was calling him with no uncertain voice. It was good, therefore, to hear from the lips of the wife and mother, who was so fully in the confidence of both, that no abiding cloud remained between the father and the son, and that both quietly accepted the inevitable when law, like engineering, was also laid aside to allow Louis to fulfil his one strong desire. Lovingly and unselfishly the parents finally accepted the fact that genius must have its way, and that in the dainty book lined study, in travel byways quaint and unusual, in prolonged sojourns in search of health in distant lands, the younger Stevenson's life-work was to be done.

When he found that his son would not be an engineer, Mr Thomas Stevenson very naturally wished him to have a profession to fall back upon should literature not prove a success, and it was agreed that he should read for the Bar. Louis, therefore, about the end of 1871, entered the office of the firm which is now known as Messrs Skene, Edwards, & Garson, W.S. The late Mr Skene, LL.D., was then senior partner of the firm. Another partner was the father of Mr J. R. P. Edwards, who has kindly supplied the following very interesting facts about Robert Louis Stevenson while he was undergoing his legal training in his office.

'Mr Stevenson entered the office, which was then in 18 Hill Street, in 1871, and left it about the middle of the year 1873, and was afterwards called to the Bar. His position in the office was neither that of a clerk nor of an apprentice, but merely of a person gaining some knowledge of business. He never received any salary, and, as is usual with aspirants for the Bar, his position was in no way subject to the ordinary office discipline. After searching through papers which were written in the office during the time Stevenson was in the office, I find a good many papers which were written by him, but they are all merely copies of documents, and I can find no trace of any deeds which were actually drawn up by him. This is no doubt accounted for, firstly, because he was not experienced enough in the drafting of deeds, and, secondly, because he may have found the somewhat dry intricacies ofconveyancing, which are for the most part governed by hard and fast rules of law, foreign to his marvellous imagination.

'I have not been able to trace any of the staff of the office who were in it with Robert Louis Stevenson, with the exception of two men, who seem to remember little about him, but they said that he was very reserved and kept very much to himself. One of the men did not even know that he was the great Stevenson. The other man, however, said that he remembered that Stevenson had, as he described it to me, "an awful notion of the Pentland hills, and was that fond of talking about them." I believe he was very fond of scribbling pieces of writing on odd pieces of paper in his spare moments, but, unfortunately, I can find no trace of these; but that is not to be wondered at, as the firm have removed to two different houses since Stevenson was in the office.

'Mr Skene, who was head partner of the firm during the time that Stevenson was in the office, had always a great admiration for his writings, and shortly before his (Mr Skene's) death he said that it was a great regret to him that he had not known him better, and recognised in him a brother in letters. My father, who saw a good deal more of Stevenson, says that he struck him as being a very shy and nervous man, or rather, as he then was, a boy. My father also states that Stevenson was a tremendous walker, and that he used often to come into the office in the morning in the somewhat unprofessional garb of walking kit, having covered a good many miles before breakfast.'

The office staff in 1871 consisted of ten men. Six of them have died, two cannot now be traced, and theremaining two mentioned by Mr Edwards are very old men.

Mr Edwards also says that in one deed which was written by Louis Stevenson there are five errors on two short pages, so that although the handwriting in it is neat, round, and clear, it is evident that his thoughts were not on his work, and that he was no more diligent in law than he had been in engineering. His handwriting, although neat and distinct, can hardly be called pretty, he seemed to use a good deal of ink in those days as the down strokes are all black and heavy. In spite of his lack of interest in his office work he passed advocate with credit on 14th July 1875, was called to the Bar on the 15th, and had his first brief on the 23rd.

He duly donned a wig and gown during the following session, and the delicate face that was so grave and refined looked very picturesque with the luminous eyes gleaming out from under the grey horse-hair. He joined the ranks of those 'Briefless Barristers' whose business it is to walk the hall of the Parliament House in search of clients. He had either one or two briefs, but he gave them away as he never acted as an advocate. His mother treasured the shillings he got for them among her relics of his early days.

Although his connection with the Parliament House was totally devoid of that professional success that ultimately leads to a seat on the Bench—but for which Mr Stevenson had no desire—it was not without its uses as an education for that other success by reason of which very many people who have never seen his face know and love him to-day. If his sojourn within those venerablehalls was useless for law it was fruitful for literature, and one can imagine that as he now and then haunted the courts and listened to the advocates and the judges he was already, from a study of the Bench of the present, laying the foundation for those brilliant pictures of the judges of a ruder past which he gives us in Lord Prestongrange or Lord Hermiston. It is not very fair or very complimentary to the judges of 1875 to compare them with such a creation as Lord Hermiston, but it was not much more than half a century, before their day, that customs and manners like his were possible.

The robes, the forms, the etiquette, and the procedure of the Court of Session are still a sufficiently picturesque survival of an older time; and to a mind like Mr Stevenson's that short association with the historic Parliament House, with its far-reaching traditions and with the acting majesty of the law in Scotland that is so old and so unchanged an institution, which to-day employs the very words and phrases of bygone centuries, and still holds, in many points, to the structure of the ancient Roman Law, could not fail to be interesting and useful. Like Sir Walter Scott, when he too walked in the Advocates' Hall, he no doubt found much that was worth studying in the old law procedure as well as in the men and manners of his own day, and appreciated to the full the magnificent library in its dark and silent rooms that are such a contrast to the bustle of the courts, and every corner of which is teeming with history.

But his heart was not in the Law Courts, and already in that book-lined study at 17 Heriot Row, the window of which looked over the Forth to Fife, and the walls ofwhich were so temptingly covered with books, his real life work had begun. No treat was greater, no honour more esteemed, than a visit to that study and a learned disquisition there on its owner's favourite books or methods of work.

Walking up and down with the hands thrown out in gesticulations, semi-foreign but eminently natural—for did not the child of three do it while repeating hymns on that walk to Broughton!—Mr Stevenson gave his opinions on matters grave and gay. Possibly he even produced his note-books, and with a slim finger between the leaves showed us the practice which he considered necessary for the creation of an author and the making of a style, breaking off in the middle of his disquisition to quote some master of the art or to take from the shelves a favourite book and read aloud a pertinent illustration of the subject in hand.

Boswell'sLife of Johnson, Borrow'sBible in Spain, the Bible itself, Butler'sHudibras, George Meredith's novels, then less appreciated than now, were all books for a better knowledge of which some of us had to thank those visits to the study: on the shelves too were Bulwer Lytton, Sir Walter Scott, the old dramatists, ballads, and chapbooks, and innumerable favourites that had a place in his heart as well as in his bookcase.

Keen and clever were the criticisms he made on them—criticisms that come back to one with the pathos of 'a voice that is still' when one reads in hisGossip on RomanceandA Humble Remonstrancehis delight in Boswell, his pleasure inAll Sorts and Conditions of Men, and his admiration for Scott as a Prince ofRomance writers, for whose style he had not one good word to say!

He had early edited and written for amateur magazines, and when only sixteen he wrote a pamphlet on the Pentland Rising of 1666,[4]which is still in existence but a great rarity; the same subject inspired a romance, and another romance was composed about Hackston of Rathillet, that sombre and impressive witness of the murder of Archbishop Sharp, whose conscientious refusal either to take part for or against the victim had from childhood appealed to Mr Stevenson as pathetic and picturesque. He also wrote in those days a poetical play, some dramatic dialogues, and a pamphlet calledAn Appeal to the Church of Scotland, in which his father was keenly interested. The style in his early letters and notes of travel was excellent, but he destroyed most of his writings at that time as he worked for practice rather than for publication. He contributed frequently about 1871 to theUniversity Magazine, in which, as he kindly lent it to us, some of us had the pleasure of readingAn Old GardenerandA Pastoral, two papers of much promise, very full of outdoor life, the caller air of the Pentland hills and the scent of the old-fashioned flowers in the Swanston garden.

Edinburgh, as a picturesque, historic city, he loved with a life's devotion; Edinburgh, as a frivolous social centre, he despised; so some of the strictures he made on it inPicturesque Edinburgh, published in 1879, and beautifully illustrated by Mr Sam Bough and Mr Lockhart, gave dire offence at the time to the denizens of 'Auld Reekie,' and are in some quarters hardly pardoned even now when death and fame have made Scotland's capital value her gifted son at his true worth.

In 1873 Mr Stevenson made the acquaintance of Mr Sydney Colvin and a life-long friendship ensued. The older man was of great use in many ways to the younger, whose genius he early discovered, and whose leaning to literature he encouraged. In the interesting preface toThe Vailima LettersMr Colvin tells of his help in that time of trial, and that he used his influence to persuade the parents that Louis had found his real vocation in literature, and ought to follow it. No doubt when the large and fullLifeof Mr Stevenson, which Mr Colvin is preparing, appears, he will have much of interest to tell of that turning-point in the young man's life. He was of service also in introducing his friend to editors, and Mr Stevenson's first serious appearance in literature was an essay onRoadssent by Mr Colvin to Mr Hamerton, the editor ofThe Portfolio, in 1873. It appeared shortly, and was followed by more work there and elsewhere;Cornhill,Longmans, andMacmillanhaving all before long printed papers by the new writer. In Macmillan the paperOrdered Southappeared in April 1874, and had a pathetic interest as it was an account of the first of its author's many pilgrimages in search of health, which, after he grew to manhood, were to make up so much of his life's experience.

InFraser's,Scribner's,The New Amphion,The Magazine of Art, his early work also found acceptance, and he occasionally contributed toThe Contemporary ReviewandThe English Illustrated, a list of well-known magazines in the home country which makes the more remarkable the refusal of the American papers to use his contributions largely, during his stay in San Francisco and Monterey.

Of that charming dreamy sketch of those days,Will o' the Mill, which appeared inCornhill, Mr Hamerton wrote in the highest terms of praise. Most of these early essays, sketches, and tales have been republished, and in the beautifulEdinburgh Editionof his works, presently being seen through the press by Mr Colvin and Mr Baxter, and all but completed, his many admirers will be able to read all that came from his busy and graceful pen.

In 1878 Mr Stevenson's first book,An Inland Voyage, was published by Messrs Chatto & Windus. It is a bright, fresh account of a trip in canoes, 'The Arethusa' and 'The Cigarette,' made by Mr Stevenson and his friend the late Sir Walter G. Simpson up the Oise and the Sambre. The travellers had unique opportunities of observing people and scenery, and of these the writer made the most, consequently the book is full of pretty pictures of scenery and quaint touches of human life which make it charming reading.

'There is nothing,' he says, 'so quiet and so much alive as a woodland. And surely of all smells in the world the smell of many trees is sweetest and most satisfying.'

These are the reflections of a man to whom theteeming silence of the woods was very dear, and who, inPrince Otto, afterwards wrote a prose poem on the mystery of the woods which Thoreau himself could not have excelled.

'If we were charged so much a head for sunsets, or if God sent round a drum before the hawthorns came into flower, what a work we should make about their beauty. But these things, like good companions, stupid people early cease to observe;' a state of affairs fortunately incomprehensible to Mr Stevenson, who had not only a keen perception of the beauty of the world but 'that inward eye which is the bliss of solitude' that enabled him to recall and reproduce from memory these pleasures of the past.

The volume which ends with the statement that 'The most beautiful adventures are not those we go to seek,' is from its first page to its last brightly readable and full of pleasant and graceful thoughts and fancies. Its style is more mannered and less excellent than that of his later work, but it already appealed to that cultured public who welcomed the appearance of a new writer likely to make his mark as a 'maker' of English style.

In 1895An Inland Voyagehad run into its seventh edition; it was followed by the even more popularTravels in the Cevennes with a Donkey, which the same publishers sent out in 1879, and which in 1895 had reached a ninth edition.

On this occasion Mr Stevenson travelled alone. He had been living for a time in the little town of Le Monastier, fifteen miles from Le Puy, and here, in the late autumn, he bought an ass which he called'Modestine,' and with it, to the great interest of his simple neighbours, started on a tour in the Cevennes. The pair set forth speeded on their way by many good wishes and, in spite of a slow pace and not a few misfortunes with the baggage and the pack-saddle, the tour was most successful. As to Modestine's pace her master describes it as being 'as much slower than a walk as a walk is slower than a run'!

The experiences of the traveller in the crisp, bright autumn weather and the perfect scenery of the Cevennes were thoroughly enjoyable. The simple peasantry and the homely innkeepers proved more friendly and agreeable than those along the route of the canoeists had done. In the monastery of 'Our Lady of the Snows' he had a kindly welcome from the Trappist monks, who seemed to have found it possible to break their stern rule of silence in their eagerness to convert him to Roman Catholicism. Among themselves this rule of silence and the poorest diet is rigidly enforced, and as the traveller left their hospitable doors he 'blessed God that he was free to wander, free to hope, and free to love.'

In the country of the Camisards—that little sect of persecuted religionists whose fierce brief struggle against the tyranny of the Church of Rome he so graphically describes—the descendant of Scotch Covenanters found himself at home, and at 'Pont de Montvert' his heart beat in a certain stern sympathy with the persecuted remnant, who here slew Du Chayla, and with that strange weird prophet Spirit Séguir, who, after the deed was done, and he was about to suffer death for it at thestake, said: 'My soul is like a garden full of shelter and fountains.'

The rising took place on 24th July 1702, and Mr Stevenson says of it:

''Tis a wild night's work with its accompaniment of psalms; and it seems as if a psalm must always have a sound of threatening in that town upon the Tarn.'

There is a delightful description of a night among the firs in which the very spirit of nature breathes through his words, and his reason for travelling as he does is happy and convincing.

'I travel for travel's sake. The great affair is to move, to feel the needs and hitches of our life more nearly; to come down off the feather bed of civilisation and find the globe granite under foot and stern with cutting flints. Alas! as we get up in life and are more pre-occupied with our affairs, even a holiday is a thing to be worked for.'

Many people have all through life a closer acquaintance with 'the globe granite under foot' than with 'the feather bed of civilisation,' and daily bread even more than a holiday is a thing to be worked for. But Mr Stevenson's lines had hitherto fallen in very pleasant places, and he had not as yet entered as seriously as he had to do later into the bitter battle of life.

After twelve days together he sold Modestine at St Jean du Gard and made his return journey by diligence. This book, like the first, was widely read and heartily appreciated as soon as it appeared.

FOOTNOTE:[4]This is to be found reprinted in the Edinburgh Edition, in which are also published for the first time theAmateur Emigrantin full, a fragmentary romance,The Great North Road, and other papers and letters, &c., not hitherto known to the public.

[4]This is to be found reprinted in the Edinburgh Edition, in which are also published for the first time theAmateur Emigrantin full, a fragmentary romance,The Great North Road, and other papers and letters, &c., not hitherto known to the public.

'Know how sublime a thing it isTo suffer and be strong.'—Longfellow.

'Know how sublime a thing it is

To suffer and be strong.'—Longfellow.

Mr Stevenson's health, although always a cause of more or less anxiety, was from time to time somewhat better; else he could hardly have learned the practical work of a brass foundry, superintended the building of light towers and harbours, and taken such very active holidays asAn Inland Voyage, and the tourThrough the Cevennes with a Donkey. Nevertheless the delicacy was there, and it not only increased in 1873 but culminated in the autumn of that year in the first of those serious attacks of illness which afterwards frequently caused himself so much suffering and his friends such keen distress all through the life that, in spite of them, he lived so bravely.

In the October of 1873 the doctors took so grave a view of his indisposition that they ordered him south for the winter, and on the 5th of November he started on the first of those pilgrimages in search of health of which he says, somewhat sadly, in writing of his grandfather, in his paper onThe Old Manse:

'He sought health in his youth in the Isle of Wight;I have sought it in both hemispheres, but whereas he found it and kept it, I am still on the quest.'

The anxiety and distress of his parents during that winter were naturally intense, and there is something tragic in the dates so carefully preserved:

'Lou started on 5th November 1873.'

'He returned to Heriot Row on 26th April 1874.'

Ordered Southappeared inMacmillanfor that same April, and in its very beauty there is a most painful pathos. The polish of its style, its exquisitely chosen words, give to it something of the sadness of the brilliant autumn tints on a wood, the red gold and the glory of decay. It is a brave paper and it is an intensely sad one, the sadness in which goes straight to the reader's heart, while the courage takes his respect by storm. No wonder it calls forth universal sympathy; too many homes have been darkened by the dread sentence 'Ordered South,' too many sufferers have obeyed it in life's gay noonday, or in its sunny prime, and few, alas! very few, have even returned to face the long struggle with fate that Mr Stevenson fought so heroically! This was the first, for him, of many journeys 'South'; for although the winter in the Riviera sent him back somewhat stronger, the inherent delicacy was still there, and time after time, in the twenty years and eleven months that he lived after the November morning when he set out on that melancholy journey, the recurrence of the graver symptoms of his malady obliged him to seek sunnier skies and warmer climates.

Scotland which he loved, the grey skies, the greyer mists, the snell winds,—that even in his happy Samoan life his exile's heart hungered for to the last,—were fatalto his delicate lungs, and year by year he was compelled to live less and less in his old Edinburgh home.

In 1880 when he brought his wife to Scotland to visit his parents his health was so precarious that he had to hurry abroad before the winter, and he and his wife and stepson went to Davos where they met and formed a pleasant friendship with Mr J. A. Symonds and his family. On their return it was hoped that the climate of the south of England might suit Mr Stevenson and be conveniently near London for literary business and literary friendships, so he, and his wife and son settled at Bournemouth in a house called Skerryvore, after the famous lighthouse so dear to all the Stevensons. Here too, alas! his enemy found him out; and chronic, indifferent health, with not infrequent attacks of lung disease in its more serious forms, finally obliged him about 1887 to take another journey to America in the hope that it might do him good.

Through all his life the shadow of death was never quite out of sight for him or for those who loved him; the skeleton hand was continually beckoning to him. When we think what that means, in a man's life, we realise with amazement his charming cheerfulness, his wonderful courage, and the magnitude of his work, the exactitude of his methods, the carefulness of his research, appeal to us as something positively heroic in one so handicapped by adverse fate.

When many men in despair would have given in he fought on; and the sum of his work, the length of his years—comparatively short as these were—witness to the truth thatwillcan do many things. He willed to fight,he willed to live, he scorned to drop by the wayside, or to die one day before the battle was hopeless, and he fought his fight with a smiling face and a gay courage that was as fine a thing in its way as an act which has won a Victoria Cross; nay, finer, perhaps, for the struggle was not of minutes, or of hours, but of a lifetime, a stern prolonged tussle with death, in which he was never selfish, never peevish, always thoughtful of others, invariably merry and bright, with a wonderful sparkling whimsical mirth that had in it no touch of bitterness or of cynicism. Even the last years of life, when the need to work hard for an income that would sufficiently maintain his household, made brain work, under conditions of physical weakness, often peculiarly trying, were largely full of the same marvellous pluck and illumined by the same sunny temperament.

In the years between 1873 and 1879, in the summer of which he went to San Francisco, he had sought health in many places with a varying degree of success. He had seen much of life and, as he was an excellent linguist, had everywhere formed friendships with men of all nationalities, and was thus enabled to study at his leisure continental life and manners. He frequently stayed at Fontainbleau, where he had a Stevenson cousin studying art, and the pleasant unconventional life of the student settlement at Brabazon was very attractive to a man of Mr Stevenson's temperament. His first visit to the artist colony was paid in 1875, and it was often repeated.

His wanderings had unfortunately brought no permanent improvement to his health so, for that and otherreasons, it occurred to him in 1879 to go to San Francisco to see if the Californian climate would be of benefit to him. Eager as ever to study life in all its phases and from every point of view he took his passage in an emigrant ship—where he tells us he posed as a mason and played his part but indifferently well!—and at New York resolved to continue his journey across America by emigrant train.

In the graphic account of his experiences, in the volume of essays entitledAcross the Plains, and inThe Amateur Emigrant, he describes what must have been a very trying time to a man of his refined upbringing and frail constitution. But he looks, here as elsewhere, at the bright side of people and things; and even for the Chinaman, from whom the other emigrants hold themselves aloof, he has a good word to say. He keenly observed everything from his fellow-passengers, the character of the newsboys on the cars, and the petty oppressions of the railway officials to the glories of the scenery on that marvellous journey of which Joaquin Miller says:—

Back to Index Next