Stevensoniana Part 1

Stevensoniana.

by Various.

_By Way of Introduction_

The early days of the literary career of Robert Louis Stevenson can hardly be said to have been entirely devoid of recognition, though it would appear doubtful if the world at large was willing to recognize his abilities had it not been for his wonderful personality; with a soul and an imagination far above those of his early a.s.sociates he gradually drew around him the respect and admiration of that larger world of letters, the London coterie. The following biographical notes are to be considered then as a mere resume of the various chronological periods and stages of his career as is shown by the many facts which have already become the common property of the latter day reader, but which by reason of the scattered source of supply and the extreme unlikelyhood of their being included in any authoritative life or biography, makes them at once interesting and valuable.

As sponsor for the abilities of Robert Louis Stevenson, stands first and foremost, the name of William Ernest Henley a belief which was latterly endorsed by most literary critics from Gladstone to LeGallienne.

Robert Louis Balfour Stevenson was born in Howard Place, Edinburgh, on the 13th of November, 1850. From his eighteenth year he seldom, if ever, signed himself aught but Robert Louis Stevenson, omitting the name Balfour therefrom. From birth he was of a slight and excitable nature and suffered keenly from chronic and frequent illness. His recognized literary labors may be said to have commenced at the immature age of six when, it is recalled, he wrote, presumably for his own amus.e.m.e.nt and that of his immediate family, "A History of Moses," and some years later an account of his "Travels in Perth."

In these early years there also took shape and form in his imagination what was afterwards given forth to the world in the pages of "Treasure Island."

At eight, Stevenson was at school, and at eleven entered the Academy of his native city. Here he began his first real literary labors, publis.h.i.+ng, editing and even writing and ill.u.s.trating the contents of a small school periodical.

Stevenson was emphatically a bird of pa.s.sage, for regardless of the ties of kindred and sentiment he was ever on the wing, and when in after years as a seeker after health he proved none the less a careful observer than he had been in his schoolboy days, small wonder it is that he was able to give to the reading world such charming and novel descriptions of things seen.

In his schooldays he journeyed far into the country round about, the inevitable outcome of which was for him to ultimately to write out in his own picturesque and imaginative words a record of his observations. From "Random Memories" we learn of his pleasure at having taken a journey in company with his father around among the lighthouses of the Scottish coast, "_the first in the complete character of a man, without the help of petticoats_." And with these excursions into Fife began his wanderings so charmingly and characteristically chronicled in his later letters and reminiscences.

In 1862 he went abroad to Germany and Holland, and in the next year and in that following to Italy and the Riviera. In 1865 he wintered at Torquay, an English winter resort on the south coast.

At seventeen, at Edinburgh University, Stevenson became a pupil of Fleeming Jenkin, Professor of Engineering, whose biography he wrote with much pride and devotion some years later.

Thus it is seen from early childhood that Stevenson was constantly putting forth the product of his pen, in Verses, Essays, Plays, Parodies, and Tales. In the "Stevenson Medley," a privately issued volume published as a sort of supplement to the "Edinburgh Edition" of his writings are to be found reprints of various of his early efforts, including the famous pamphlet "The Pentland Rising," which, in its original form, is now considered as being perhaps the rarest of all "Stevensoniana."

Quoting from a letter of Stevenson's to a friend, he says: "_I owned that I cared for nothing but literature; my father saying that that was no profession but that I might be called to the Bar, if I chose * * * * so at the age of twenty-one I began to study law._" Accordingly the next few years were spent with ardous reading of Blackstone and his contemporaries, and arriving at the age of twenty-five, in 1875, Stevenson pa.s.sed the examinations and was formally called a few days thereafter. During his matriculation at the law schools Stevenson was all the while perfecting himself in the profession of his heart's choice.

About this time he came to know Mr. Sidney Colvin and Mr. William Ernest Henley, the beginning as the world knows, of a life long friends.h.i.+p with both these gentlemen.

Stevenson's first introduction to the reading world at large was on the occasion of an article which appeared in the _Portfolio_ for December, 1873, with the signature L. S. Stoneven appended.

Already Stevenson had begun to reap the benefit of acquaintances.h.i.+p and a.s.sociation with the little coterie of literary folk whom he had fallen in with in London. For a time he sojourned in the artistic colony which had taken up its abode in the Forest of Fontainebleau, and has recorded its charms of life and a.s.sociation in the essay "Fontainebleau." He also came to know Bohemian Paris as well, and in certain circles which there exist, or did at one time exist, the memory of M. Stevenson still fondly lingers.

Returning to Edinburgh Stevenson hung forth his placard at the now famous 17 Heriot Row, which read Robert Louis Stevenson, Advocate. He did not, however, hang for long between the balance of Law and Literature, and it has been said, he never tried a case. Finally it was but apparent that he was so firmly wedded to literature that, needs must, he should devote himself to it and with the publication of "Virginibus Puerisque," he is truly said to have emerged from the threatening obscurity of his early struggles.

"An Inland Voyage" has recorded Stevenson's travels in Belgium in 1876, and "Travels with a Donkey in The Cevennes," chronicles another wandering in search of the picturesque, undertaken at about the same time. It is doubtful if either volume proved financially profitable at first though they proved, in connection with the volume of essays before mentioned, the means of introducing the name and work of Robert Louis Stevenson to an ever widening circle of fame.

During this period Stevenson was a frequent contributor to the London literary journals, and he had also rewritten an early production in the form of a play; this in collaboration with Mr. W. E. Henley, and had also contributed his notes on "Picturesque Edinburgh" to Hamerton's _Portfolio_.

In 1879 Stevenson set sail for the new world taking s.h.i.+p as a mere emigrant, crossing the ocean as a steerage pa.s.senger and afterwards by emigrant train, across the American continent to the Golden Gate; a rude but romantic method of travel for one who had been nurtured in comfort and a chronic sufferer from ill health; a long journey though destined to be but the beginnings of a wandering after peace and health which latterly brought him to "Vailima" by the sh.o.r.e of that "ultimate island where now rest the remains of the beloved "Tusitala."

The "Amateur Emigrant" did not at once meet with the success it deserved in the American literary arena, though no one will deny but that praise was afterward showered upon the author's work to the full. Eight months were spent in the immediate vicinity of the Golden Gate when he succ.u.mbed to a severe illness which proved a serious draft on his powers.

In 1880, Stevenson, then in his thirty-first year, was married to Mrs.

Osbourne, an American lady whom he had known in France, and with his step-son Lloyd Osbourne and Mrs. Stevenson took up his abode in an abandoned mining camp at Juan Silverado, situated in the mountains of the Coast range. The life here can be no more pleasantly referred to than by recalling the record which was given to the public in "Silverado Squatters." The family remained at Silverado through the summer from whence they all journeyed to the old home in North Britain. For his health's sake, Stevenson, accompanied by his household, then betook himself to the dry and invigorating atmosphere of Davos Platz in the high Alps; and here amid the suns.h.i.+ne and the clear air the family settled for a winter's stay; and here it was that Stevenson, in conjunction with his step-son, concocted those ingenious and unique booklets known to collectors as the "Davos Platz Brochures." They had set up a small press and derived much pleasure in designing and printing these little books; "Black Canyon," "Not I," and "Moral Emblems," all of which are now of such extreme rarity as to be almost un.o.btainable in their original state.

In 1881 was begun the actual labor of writing "Treasure Island," the germ of which had been lying dormant in Stevenson's brain since his early schoolboy days. After another visit to Scotland, Stevenson set his footsteps still further to the southward and domiciled himself with his family at the Chalet la Solitude, near Hyeres near Ma.r.s.eilles, on the sh.o.r.es of the Mediterranean. Meanwhile, "Treasure Island" was running its course serially in the _Young Folks Paper_, and when it appeared as a volume pointed the definite way of Stevenson's popularity, the book being in every sense his first popular success.

Realizing that his malady grew no better in the southland Stevenson settled at Bournemouth, a mild winter resort on the south coast of England. Here he occupied the house presented to him by his father, and which he named "Skerryvore" after the lighthouse off the coast of Scotland, designed and built by his uncle, Alan Stevenson. Stevenson continued his literary labours at this place unremittingly, though never at any one extended period was he really free from the dread grasp of his malady. Up to now writing had brought him but scant profit, and until his thirty-sixth year, says Mr. Colvin, his income had scarcely, if ever, exceeded three hundred pounds per year. His second great success was that weird tale of "Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde," and thenceforth he came to know his value as a writer of ability, and felt definitely a.s.sured that his labors would return to him a satisfying income.

In 1887, after the death of his father, Stevenson again went to America, sailing for New York in August of that year, and sojourning for short periods among and with friends in the East.

In the spring of 1888, when in his thirty-eighth year, Stevenson accompanied by members of his family, accepted an offer to cruise among the islands of the South Seas and write the story of his voyagings in a series of letters to a syndicate of newspapers. Arrangements were made for the charter of the schooner Casco, Captain Otis, in which he set sail from San Francisco, early in the spring, bound ostensibly for the "Marquesas."

The cruise covered six months. During the voyage northward the Stevensons stayed some months at Honolulu and while there a visit was paid to the leper settlement on the island of Molokai, which ultimately called forth the "open letter" to the Rev. Dr. Hyde of Honolulu, wherein that Reverend gentleman received an unmitigated scathing from Stevenson's incensed pen, an incident which is only too readily recalled for one to linger over it at this time.

From Honolulu the cruise was continued southward for another six months on a trading schooner called the Equator which arrived at Apia, in Samoa, about Christmas time (1889). Here the company remained for some weeks, and here Stevenson purchased an estate of some hundreds of acres, lying on the mountainside overlooking the sea, which he called _Vailima_. The Stevensons went to Sidney, N. S. W. soon after, but again in the month of April steamed away in the trading steamer Janet Nicoll, visiting Auckland and the Penrhyn Islands, thence to the Ellis, Gilbert, and Marshall Islands and via New Caledonia, Sydney, and Auckland to Apia where they arrived again in the early autumn. They settled here upon their estate and the following spring Mrs. Stevenson, the elder, joined the household, as also Stevenson's step-daughter, Mrs. Strong; thus began the four remaining years of Stevenson's life, amid the ties of kith and kin surrounding him as he worked in his exile in a far away land.

Amid these pleasant surroundings Stevenson pursued his constant and daily work, and rode about his island home entertaining the population, both native and European. He became actively interested in the political life of the islands, and when international complications came upon them in 1891, he dignified the whole proceedings by his impartial letters to the _London Times_, and later by the publication of the "Footnote to History,"

a monograph published in 1892.

Meanwhile he was applying himself to his writing with ardous persistancy, and quoting his own words from a letter written in 1893, he was seriously overworked, "_I am overworked bitterly, and my hand is a thing that was, and in the meanwhile so are my brains._"

In January of the same year he suffered from an attack of influenza from which he never fully recovered. While yet ill in bed he had begun to dictate "St. Ives" and "Weir of Hermiston."

From the Dictionary of National Biography is taken the following description of the sad end. "On the afternoon of the Fourth of December he was talking gaily with his wife, when a sudden rupture of a blood-vessel in the brain laid him at her feet and within two hours all was over."

Out across the pearly Pacific on the lonely mountainside at Samoa, lies all that once was mortal of "_Tusitala, the Teller of Tales_."

_APPARITION._

_"Thin-legged, thin-chested, slight unspeakably, Neat-footed and weak-fingered: in his face-- Lean, large-boned, curved of beak, and touched with race.

Bold-lipped, rich-tinted, mutable as the sea, The brown eyes radiant with vivacity-- There s.h.i.+nes a brilliant and romantic grace, A spirit intense and rare, with trace on trace Of pa.s.sion and impudence and energy.

Valiant in velvet, light in ragged luck, Most vain, most generous, sternly critical, Buffoon and poet, lover and sensualist: A deal of Ariel, just a streak of Puck, Much Antony, of Hamlet most of all, And something of the Shorter-Catechist."_ (W. E. HENLEY)

[Ill.u.s.tration: FRONTISPIECE, BY WALTER CRANE, TO AN "INLAND VOYAGE."

(FIRST EDITION.)]

[Ill.u.s.tration: FRONTISPIECE, BY WALTER CRANE, TO "TRAVELS WITH A DONKEY."

(FIRST EDITION.)]

STEVENSON'S FIRST BOOK