Robert Louis Stevenson Part 3

'I heard the winds, with unseen feet, Pa.s.s up the long and weary street,

'They say "We come from hill and glen To touch the brows of toiling men."

'That each may know and feel we bring The faint first breathings of the spring.'

And the voice of the spring thus calling him as soon as it was heard, was obeyed; and, careless of the frowns that were bound to greet his return, he was off to wander on his beloved Braids and Pentlands, to lie long days among the whin and the broom, or to slip away to watch the busy s.h.i.+pping on the Forth, and to think deep thoughts beside the wave-washed sh.o.r.e of that sea which ever drew him like the voice of a familiar friend.

To that intense love of Nature, and of Nature's solitude, his readers owe much, and we to-day may all say with the writer who gave such an interesting description of Swanston in _Good Words_ in the spring of 1895, that those truant hours of his educated him for his future work far better than a careful attendance at school and college could have done. The same writer says that it was this open air life that he loved so dearly which gave to Stevenson's books their large leisure, and to his style its dignity. There is much truth in the remark; but as far as the style is concerned it is the product of time and thought, and it was most carefully and diligently formed by labour so earnest and painstaking, that few authors can even conceive of it.

In _Memories and Portraits_ Mr Stevenson gives a delightful account of boyish days at a seaside resort, that is evidently North Berwick, and lovingly describes adventures with bull's-eye lanterns; adventures which seem to be intimately a.s.sociated with the young folk of his connection, and which repeated themselves a few years later on the other side of the Forth, where boys and girls recalled the doings of Robert Louis and his friends with bull's-eye lanterns and gunpowder, in that cheerful form known to Louis Stevenson as a 'peeoy,' and considered it a point of honour to do likewise, no matter how indignant such mischief made the authorities. As for him, he was always the inventor and prime mover in every mischievous escapade the heart of youth could glory in.

The wind-swept coast about North Berwick had a strong fascination for him, and in several of his books we feel the salt breeze blowing in from the sea, across the bents, and hear the sea birds crying on the lonely sh.o.r.e. The autumn holidays were a great joy to him, and another epoch-making event must have been the taking of Swanston Cottage, in May 1867, to be the summer home of the Stevensons.

The boy took intense pleasure in his rambles about the hills, in his dreamy rests on 'Kirk Yetton'[2] and 'Allermuir,' and in his wanderings with John Todd, the shepherd, after that worthy had ceased, as he comically puts it, to hunt him off as a dangerous sheep-scarer, and so to play 'Claverhouse to his Covenanter'! The two soon became great friends, and many a bit of strange philosophy, many a wild tale of bygone droving days the lad heard from the old man. Another great friend of early Swanston years was Robert Young, the gardener, whose austere and Puritan views of life were solemnly shared with his young master.

Existence at Swanston was even more provocative of truant-playing than it had been in Edinburgh, and Louis, in his later school days and his early sessions at the University, was more than ever conspicuous by his absence from cla.s.ses, more lovingly wedded to long hours among the hills, long rambles about the 'Old Town,' the Figgate Whins, the port of Leith, and the rapidly changing localities round Leith Walk, somewhat back from which, Pilrig, the ancient home of his ancestors, still stands gravely retired from the work-a-day world.

In the year 1867 he went with his father to the 'Dhu Heartach'

Lighthouse, and so began to develop that pa.s.sion for the Western Isles and the Western seas which future voyages in _The Pharos_ were to bring to the state of fervour and perfection which gave birth of _The Merrymen_, and to those descriptions of the wild and lovely scenery of Appin and the West Highlands, in which David Balfour and Alan Breck wander through the pages of _Kidnapped_.

It was his father's intention that he should follow the family profession of engineering, and with this in view he went to the Edinburgh University in the autumn of 1868. The professors in those days included Professors Kelland, Tait, Crum-Brown, Fleeming-Jenkin, Blackie, Ma.s.son, and many others whose names are still remembered as 'a sweet-smelling savour' in that Edinburgh which they and the truant student, who honoured his cla.s.s attendance 'more in the breach than the observance,' loved so well.

It was a stirring time at the University, and the students who warred manfully against the innovation of Dr Sophia Jex-Blake and the pioneers of the Lady Doctors' movement, were, it would seem on looking back, scarcely so mildly mannered, so peacefully inclined as those who now sit placidly beside 'the sweet girl graduates' of our day, on the cla.s.s-room benches, and acknowledge the reign of the lady doctor as an accomplished fact. A torchlight procession of modern times is apparently a cheerful and picturesque function, smiled on by the authorities, and welcomed as a rather unique means of doing honour to a new Lord Rector or some famous guest of the city or the University. In Mr Stevenson's time, a torchlight procession had all the joys of 'forbidden fruit' to the merry lads who braved the police and the professors for the pleasure of marching through the streets to the final bonfire on the Calton Hill, from the scrimmage round which they emerged with clothes well oiled and singed, and faces and hands as black as much besmearing could make them; while anxious friends at home trembled lest a night in the police cells should be the reward of the ringleaders.

Of one such procession, in the spring when Mr Stevenson's law studies were first interrupted by a journey south for his health, a clever student wrote an epic which was presented to me by one of Louis Stevenson's Balfour cousins as something _very precious_! The occasion was the Duke of Edinburgh's wedding, in 1874, and, yellow and faded, the _Epic_ still graces my _Every Day Book_, and, as one reads its inspiriting lines, one sees again those bygone days in which the slim figure and eager face of Louis Stevenson are always so conspicuous in every memory of the old, grey city of his birth.

The following lines from the clever skit give a really excellent picture of the college life in his day.

... 'A deputation we Sent hither by the students to demand That they--that is the students--in a band May march, illumed by torches flaring bright, Along the leading streets on Friday night.

Brave was the Provost, yet towards his heart The glowing life blood thrilled with sudden start; Well might he tremble at the name he heard, The Students! Kings might tremble at the word!

He thought of all the terrors of the past, Of that fell row in Blackie's, April last-- Of Simpson wight, and Stirling-Maxwell too, Of Miss Jex-Blake and all her lovely crew-- He thought, "If thus these desperadoes dare To act with ladies, learned, young and fair, Old women, like the Councillors and me, To direr torments still reserved may be.

The better part of valour is discretion, I'll try to soften them by prompt concession."

Then coughing thrice, impression due to make And clear his throat, in accents mild he spake, "Ye have my leave, 'V.R.,' I mean 'D.V.'"

The students bowed, retired, and he was free.'

The High Sheriff and the Chief of Police, when they heard of the Provost's weakness, were filled with wrath and dismay, and very promptly insisted on his lords.h.i.+p taking back the concession, so that this historic procession was as much 'forbidden fruit' as its predecessors, and the students probably enjoyed it the more that they had as usual to dare all those in authority to carry it out.

Another old-time enjoyment of that date was a s...o...b..ll fight. Whether snow is less plentiful, or students are too cultured and too refined for these rough pastimes it is impossible to say, but certain it is that a really _great_ s...o...b..ll fight is also a thing of the past. In those days they were Homeric combats, and a source of keen enjoyment to Robert Louis Stevenson, a very funny account of whom, on one of these occasions, was given me at the time by his cousin, Lewis Balfour, from Leven, himself a jovial medical student enjoying an active part in the melee. On the occasion of a great battle in the winter of 1869--or 1870--Mr Stevenson and one or two men, now well known in various professions, had seated themselves on a ledge in the quadrangle to watch the fight. From this vantage ground they encouraged the combatants, but took no active part in the fray. Within swarmed the students armed with s...o...b..a.l.l.s, without, the lads of the town, equally active, stormed the gates. All were too intent on the battle to notice the advent of the police, who rushed into the college quadrangle and made prisoners where they could. Craning his neck too much, in his keen enjoyment, Mr Stevenson overbalanced himself, slipped from his perch and was promptly captured by 'a bobby,' and, in spite of gallant efforts for his rescue, was ignominiously marched off to the Police Office at the very moment that his blandly unconscious mother was driving up the Bridges. It was useless for his attendant friends to a.s.sert that he had been a non-combatant. Was he not taken in the very thick of the fight? The police had him and they meant to keep him for he could not produce sufficient bail from his somewhat empty pockets. His cousin and his friends, by leaving all their stray coins, their watches and other valuables, managed to secure his release so that he had not the experience--which it is possible he might have enjoyed--of pa.s.sing a night in the police cells of his native city.

In his introduction to the _Memoirs of Professor Fleeming-Jenkin_, he himself tells a good story of his relations with that Professor, who was always a true and appreciative friend to his clever if idle student. He had handed in so few cards at the cla.s.s of Engineering that his certificate was not forthcoming until he told his friend that his father would be very vexed if he could not produce the certificate--which he never intended to _use_--whereat the tender-hearted Professor handed it to him.

Another prime favourite of his among the Professors was Professor Kelland; and one can well understand the attraction which the dainty, gentle refinement of that most kind-hearted of men had for a nature so akin to it as young Stevenson's. All Professor Kelland's students loved him; this one understood him also. Professor Ma.s.son was one of the giants of those days whom he was also most capable of appreciating, and whose lectures he occasionally attended although not a member of his cla.s.s; and, himself not without his amiable eccentricities, he could not fail to have a soft spot in his heart for the quaint humour and the pleasant eccentricity which endeared Professor Blackie to his cla.s.s and to the public. He was a poor attender at the Greek Cla.s.s, however, and when he presented himself for his certificate the keen blue eyes of the Professor looked at him critically, and the Professor's remark was that he had been so seldom present at lectures it was hardly possible to recognise his face!

Many of the students of that day have taken a good place in the world; some of them have long ere now left the things of time behind them; one or two of them Mr Stevenson has pictured in his graphic pages. Several of them regarded him as an interesting personality, but very few of them suspected that he was 'the chiel amang them takin' notes' for future work that would bring world-wide fame, not only to himself, but to his University and to the city of his birth.

On the 2nd March 1869 he was proposed by George Melville, Esq., Advocate, as a member of the Speculative Society, and we know from _Memories and Portraits_ how much he appreciated his members.h.i.+p of that Society, which has in its day included in the roll, on which his name stood No. 992, most of the men whose names are honoured in Scotland's capital, and many of whom the fame and the memory are revered in far places of the earth. That he might smoke in the hall of the Speculative, in the very stronghold of University authority, he playfully professes to have been his chief pleasure in the thing; but other men, to whom his earnest face, his eagerness in debate, made one of the pleasures of its meetings, tell another story, and it was commonly said in those days that there would always be something of interest in hand if Stevenson took a part in it.

When he forsook the profession of engineering, Mr Stevenson attended the Law cla.s.ses at the University, with the intention of being called to the Bar, but it is not on record that he was a more exemplary student of law than he had been of engineering, and he still found more satisfaction in his truant rambles and his meditations in old graveyards than he did in the legitimate study of his profession.

FOOTNOTE:

[2] Cairketton is the form used in the Ordnance Survey.

CHAPTER IV

AS I FIRST KNEW HIM

'Blessed are his parents in a son, so graced in face and figure And of mind so wise.'

--LORD DERBY'S TRANSLATION OF _The Iliad_.

That was one of the quotations by which in those days we were wont to describe Mr Stevenson. Strictly speaking, perhaps he was not a handsome man. He was too slim, too ethereal, if one may use the term, to attain to anything sufficiently commonplace to be described as merely handsome.

But he was indeed 'graced in face and figure,' for he possessed that rare attribute _distinction_, and his face, with its wonderfully luminous eyes, its ever changing expression, had a beauty peculiar to itself, and one which harmonised perfectly with the quaint wisdom of his mind.

That wisdom was so deep, yet so whimsical, so peculiar and so many-sided that one can only apply to its possessor another quotation half indignantly thrown at him, when he was too successful in argument, by an acquaintance of his, whose quick wit had a great charm for him.

'We gaze and still the wonder grows That one small head can carry all he knows.'

He bowed to the compliment, he demurred as to the smallness of his head, and he enjoyed the quotation immensely. With the same opponent he once tried a compet.i.tion in verse-making. Both showed considerable skill, but the umpire decided that Louis had won, so he bore off in triumph the prize of a bottle of olives, and was only sorry that he could not compel the loser to share his feast, which he well knew would be as abhorrent to her as it was delightful to him.

With Edinburgh, wind-swept and grey, with its biting breeze, its swirling dust of March, there will always be a.s.sociated in my mind certain memories of Robert Louis Stevenson, and of that happy home of the Stevenson family, 17 Heriot Row. In summer suns.h.i.+ne Swanston, lying cosily at the foot of the Pentlands, claimed them year by year, but every winter found them, for business or pleasure, established in that most homelike house, the windows of which, to the front, looked into the Heriot Row gardens, and at the back, from that upper flat where was the book-lined study of the son of the house, s.n.a.t.c.hed a glimpse, over roofs and chimney cans, of the gold-fringed sh.o.r.es of Fife.

Across the blue Forth in Fife, at the little seaside town of Leven, well known to golfing fame, there had settled in 1866 an uncle of R. L.

Stevenson, Dr John Balfour, who was noted for his gallantry and skill throughout the Indian Mutiny, and in more than one outbreak of cholera in India and at home. Of the town and the man Mr Stevenson gives a graphic picture in _Random Memories_, when describing a visit to the Fife coast, where his father was making an inspection of lights and harbours.

In 1849 when home on leave Dr Balfour volunteered to go to Davidson's Mains, in the parish of Cramond, where as a specialist in cholera symptoms he was amazed to find the outbreak as virulent and as fatal as the Asiatic cholera he had seen in India. In 1866, when another wave of cholera swept over Britain, he was asked to go to Slateford, where he coped with its ravages almost single-handed, saving life in every case after he went, except those already too far gone before his arrival. In late autumn of the same year the scourge broke out seriously in the small towns on the coast of Fife, and Dr Balfour went to Leven, where the doctor had just died of it, and a state of panic prevailed, and there too he succeeded in quickly stamping it out.

Having retired from his Indian appointment he felt idle time hang heavy on hand, so he acceded to the request of the inhabitants and went to Leven to take up practice there. His wife, who was a cousin of his own, and their four children, shortly after followed him from Edinburgh, and he built a house called 'The Turret' there, where he remained until his greatly lamented death in 1887.

There from childhood I grew up in intimate friends.h.i.+p with the young Balfours, and went out and in to the doctor's house, receiving in it such kindness from parents and children that it was regarded by me as a second home, and its inmates were looked upon as one's 'ain folk.' As one's 'ain folk,' too, by-and-bye, were regarded those other Balfour families, notably Dr George W. Balfour's household and Miss Balfour, and the nephews and nieces who had their home with her--who made of the little Fife town their holiday resort. Later an Edinburgh school and long visits to Edinburgh relatives made the Scotch capital as familiar to me as Fife; and then the Stevenson family in their home at Heriot Row were added to the little circle of friends, now, alas! so thinned by grievous blanks. Old and young have pa.s.sed into 'The Silent Land,' and life is infinitely the poorer for those severed friends.h.i.+ps--those lost regards of early days.

Not a few of the old folk were notable in their time, some of the younger generation have made, or mean to make, some stir in the world.

But round none of them gathers so much of romance of honour and of distinction as about Robert Louis Stevenson, who used to visit his uncle's house in Leven, doubtless from one of those expeditions to Anstruther, of which he tells us that he spent his time by day in giving a perfunctory attention to the harbour, at which his father's firm were working, and lived his real life by night scribbling romances in his lodgings. It is on record that he felt a thrill of well-merited pride when an Anstruther small boy pointed to him, as he stood beside the workmen, and said: 'There's the man that's takin' charge.' But he a.s.suredly knew more of pleasure in his hours of scribbling than in his hours of inspection, although the out-of-door, wind-swept, wave-splashed part of engineering was never so abhorrent to him as office work. In the office he was known very little; but tradition has it that a small pile of evil spellings is still treasured there as a characteristic memento of the genius, and the thought has been known to comfort the sad hearts of other apprentice engineers afflicted with a like shakiness in their orthography, that the now much appreciated man of letters once shared their melancholy failing.

Stories of all sorts were handed about in our little clique of the wondrous Robert Louis whose sayings and doings were already precious to an appreciative circle of relatives and friends. But it was not till sometime in the autumn of 1869 that he first became personally known to me.

The introduction took place on a September afternoon in the drawing-room of 'The Turret,' and he inspired a great deal of awe in a youthful admirer who even then had literary aspirations, and who therefore looked up to him with much respect as someone who already wrote. From that time he was regarded as one of the quaintest, the most original and the most charming personalities among one's acquaintances. There was about him, in those days, a whimsical affectation, a touch of purely delightful vanity that never wholly left him in later life, and that far from repelling, as it would have done in any one more commonplace, was so intrinsically a part of his artistic nature that it was rather attractive than otherwise. Full of delightful humour, his idlest sayings--when he took the trouble to say anything which he frequently did not!--were teeming with the elements not only of laughter but of thought, and you wondered, long after you had talked with him, why it was that you saw new lights on things, and found food for mirth and matter for reflection where neither had suggested itself before.

In those days he was not only original himself, but he had to a great degree that rare faculty of bringing to the surface in others the very smallest spark of originality, and of remembering it and appreciating it in a way that was stimulating and helpful to those who had the pleasure of knowing him. When the little seaside town was empty of visitors, and it was not time to pay Edinburgh visits for the season, in February and March, one kindness of his was very greatly prized by some of us who beguiled the tedium of the winter months by writing for and conducting an amateur magazine, called _Ours_. For this, in 1872 and 1873, Mr Stevenson gave us a short contribution, _The Nun of Aberhuern_, a trifle in his own graceful style, which, as he was even then beginning to be known in the world of letters, we valued much. Moreover, he took a friendly interest in the sheets of blue MS. paper so closely written over with our somewhat juvenile productions, and made here a criticism, there a prediction, which has not been without its effect on the future work of some of us.