Robert Louis Stevenson Part 1

Robert Louis Stevenson.

by Margaret Moyes Black.

PREFACE AND DEDICATION

In so small a volume it would be somewhat hopeless to attempt an exhaustive notice of R. L. Stevenson, nor would it be desirable. The only possible full biography of him will be the _Life_ in preparation by his intimate friend Mr Sydney Colvin, and for it his friends and his public look eagerly. This little book is only a reminiscence and an appreciation by one who, in the old days between 1869 and 1880, knew him and his home circle well. My earlier and later knowledge has been derived from his mother and those other members of his mother's family with whom it was a pleasure to talk of him, and to exchange news of his sayings and doings.

In the actual writing of this volume, I have received most kind help for which I return grateful thanks to the givers. For the verification of dates and a few other particulars I am indebted to Mr Colvin's able article in the _Dictionary of National Biography_.

It is dedicated, in the first instance, to the memory of Mr and Mrs Thomas Stevenson and their son, and, in the second, to all the dearly prized friends of the Balfour connection who have either, like the household at 17 Heriot Row, pa.s.sed into the 'Silent Land,' or who are still here to gladden life with their friendship.

MARGARET MOYES BLACK.

_August_ 1898.

ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON

CHAPTER I

HEREDITY AND ANTECEDENTS

'These are thy works, O father, these thy crown, Whether on high the air be pure they shine Along the yellowing sunset, and all night Among the unnumbered stars of G.o.d they shine.

Or whether fogs arise, and far and wide The low sea-level drown--each finds a tongue, And all night long the tolling bell resounds.

So shine so toll till night be overpast, Till the stars vanish, till the sun return, And in the haven rides the fleet at last.'

--R. L. STEVENSON.

In no country in the world is heredity more respected than in Scotland, and her hard-working sons freely acknowledge the debt they owe, for the successes of to-day, to the brave struggle with sterner conditions of life their ancestors waged from generation to generation. We of the present are 'the heirs of all the ages'; but we are also in no small degree the clay from the potter's hands, moulded and kneaded by the natures, physical and mental, of those who have gone before us, and whose lives and circ.u.mstances have made us what we are.

Robert Lewis Balfour Stevenson--for so the writer whom the world knows as Robert Louis Stevenson, was baptised--valued greatly this doctrine of heredity, and always bore enthusiastic testimony to the influence his ancestry and antecedents had exercised in moulding his temperament and character. He was proud of that ancestry, with no foolish pride, but rather with that appreciation of all that was n.o.ble and worthy in his forefathers, which made him desire to be, in his own widely differing life-work, as good a man as they.

... 'And I--can I be base?'--he says; 'I must arise, O father, and to port Some lost complaining seaman pilot home.'

He had reason to think highly of the honourable name which he received from his father's family. Britain and the whole world has much for which to thank the Stevensons; not only all along our rough north coasts, but in every part of the world where the mariner rejoices to see their beacon's blaze have the firm, who are consulting engineers to the Indian, the New Zealand, and the j.a.panese Lighthouse Boards, lit those lights of which Rudyard Kipling in his 'Songs of the English,' sings--

'Our brows are bound with spindrift, and the weed is on our knees; Our loins are battered 'neath us by the swinging, smoking seas; From reef and rock and skerry, over headland, ness, and voe, The coastguard lights of England watch the ships of England go.'

Wild and wind-swept are the isles and headlands of the northern half of the sister kingdoms, but from their dreariest points the lights that have been kindled by Robert Stevenson, the hero of Bell Rock fame, and his descendants flash and flame across the sea, and make the name of Stevenson a word of blessing to the storm-tossed sailor.

The author was third in descent from that Robert Stevenson, who, by skill and heroism, planted the lighthouse on the wave-swept Bell Rock--only uncovered for the possibility of work for a short time at low tides--and made safety on the North Sea, where before there had been death and danger, from the cruel cliffs that guard that iron coast.

What child has not thrilled and shivered over the ballad of 'Ralph the Rover,' who, hoping doubtless that the wrecked ships might fall into his own piratical hands, cut the bell which the good monks of Aberbrothock had placed on the fatal rock, and who, by merited justice, was for lack of the bell himself, on his return voyage, lost on that very spot! What boy has not loved the story of one of the greatest engineering feats that patience and skill has ever accomplished!

If other young folk so loved it what a depth of interest must not that n.o.ble story have had for the grandson of the hero, whose childish soul was full of chivalry and romance, and whose boyish eyes saw visions of the future and pictures of the past as no ordinary child could see them, for his was the gift of genius, and even the commonplace things of life were glorified to him.

Alan Stevenson, who was the father of Robert, died of fever when in the island of St Christopher on a visit to his brother, who managed the foreign business of the Glasgow West India house with which they were connected. The brother unfortunately dying of the same fever, business matters were somewhat complicated, and Alan's widow and little boy had to endure straitened circ.u.mstances. The mother strained every nerve to have her boy, whom she intended for the ministry, well educated, and the lad profited by her self-denial. Her second marriage, however, very fortunately changed her plans for Robert, for her second husband, Mr Smith, had a mechanical bent which led him to make many researches on the subject of lighting and lighthouses, and finding that his stepson shared his tastes, he encouraged him in his engineering and mechanical studies.

The satisfactory results of Mr Smith's researches caused the first Board of Northern Lights to make him their engineer, and he designed Kinnaird Head, the first light they exhibited, and illuminated it in 1787. He was ultimately succeeded as engineer to the Board by his stepson, of Bell Rock fame, and his descendant, Mr David Alan Stevenson, who now holds the post, is the sixth in the family who has done so. Young Stevenson not only became his stepfather's partner but married his eldest daughter, and with her founded a home that was evidently a happy one, for the great engineer was a most unselfish character, and made an excellent husband and father. He was a notable volunteer in the days when a French invasion was greatly feared, and all his life he took a keen interest in the volunteering movement.

Like his son Thomas, Mr Robert Stevenson was a man of much intellect and humour, though of a grave and serious character. He was also a keen Conservative and a loving member of the Established Church of Scotland.

He was warmly beloved and his society was greatly sought after by his friends; a voyage of inspection with him on his tours round the coast was much appreciated. On one occasion Sir Walter Scott made one of the party which accompanied him. Mr Robert Stevenson died in July 1850, a few months before the birth of his grandson, Robert Louis.

That this grandson held in high esteem the deeds and sterling qualities of his grandfather is amply proved by his Samoan Letters to Mr Sydney Colvin, published in 1895. In many of them he speaks of the history of his family, which he intended to write, and into which he evidently felt that he could put his best work. Alas! like so much that the brave spirit and the busy brain planned, it was not to be, and the writer pa.s.sed to his rest without leaving behind him a full record of the workers who had made his name famous.[1]

Mr Alan, Mr David, and Mr Thomas Stevenson worthily handed on the traditions of their father, and in its second generation the l.u.s.tre of the great engineering family shone undimmed; while now the sons of Alan Stevenson maintain the reputation of their forefathers, and the Stevenson name is still one to conjure with wherever their saving lights shine out across the sea.

Mr Thomas Stevenson served under his brother Alan in building the famous lighthouse of 'Skerryvore,' and with his brother David he built 'The Chickens,' 'Dhu Heartach,' and many 'sh.o.r.e lights' and harbours. He was a notable engineer, widely known and greatly honoured at home and abroad, besides being a very typical Scotsman.

When one thinks of his grand rugged face, and remembers how the stern eyes used to light up with humour and soften with tenderness, as their glance fell on his wife and his son, one realises what a very perfect picture of such a character in its outward sternness and its inward gentleness, lies in those lines of Mr William Watson's, in which he speaks of

'The fierceness that from tenderness is never far.'

Mr Stevenson's broad shoulders, his ma.s.sive head, his powerful face, reminded one of that enduring grey Scotch stone from which he and his ancestors raised round all our coasts, their lighthouses and harbours.

Strong, grey, silent, these solid blocks resist winds and waves, and so one felt would that powerful reticent nature stand steadfast in life's battle, a tower of strength to those who trusted him. Like his own 'Beacon Lights,' on cliff and headland brilliant gleams of humour bright gems of genius flashed out now and then from the silence. One felt too that safe as the ships in his splendid harbours, would rest family and friends in the strong yet loving heart that could hold secure all that it valued through the tests and changes of time and the conflicts of varying thoughts and opposing opinions. A man of strong prejudices, a man too of varying moods, Mr Stevenson knew what it was at times to endure hours of depression, to suffer from an almost morbidly religious conscience, but he always kept a courageous hold on life and found the best cure for a shadowed soul lay in constant and varied work.

The charming dedication of _Familiar Studies of Men and Books_ is a delightful tribute from the gifted son to the strength and n.o.bility of his father's character.

Highly favoured in his paternal heredity Mr R. L. Stevenson was no less fortunate in his mother and his mother's family.

If strength and force of intellect characterised Mr Thomas Stevenson, his wife, Margaret Balfour, had no less powerful an individuality; in beauty of person, in grace of manner, in the brilliance of a quick and flashing feminine intelligence--that was deep as well as bright--she was a fitting helpmate for her husband, and the very mother to sympathise with and encourage a son whose genius showed itself in quaint sayings, in dainty ways, and in chivalrous thoughts almost from his infancy.

Mrs Stevenson was the youngest daughter of the Rev. Dr Lewis Balfour, from 1823 to 1860 minister of Colinton, and of Henrietta Scott Smith, daughter of the minister of Galston. There had been thirteen children in the manse of Colinton, and father and mother had made of the picturesque old house a home in truth as well as in name. Many of these children survived long enough, two of them indeed are still living, to carry the sacred traditions of that happy home out into a world where they made honourable positions for themselves.

After the death of the mother her place was taken by her daughter Jane, that aunt of whom Robert Louis Stevenson wrote so sweetly in his _Child's Garden of Verses_--

'Chief of our Aunts not only I But all your other nurslings cry, What did the other children do?

And what were childhood wanting you?'

To other 'motherless bairns,' as well as to her own brothers and sisters, nephews and nieces, that most motherly heart and gentle and beautiful soul has been a comfort and a refuge on the th.o.r.n.y highway of life, and many whose love she has earned by the tenderness of her sympathy still call Miss Balfour blessed.

She was a true helper to her father in the motherless home and in his parish work, and in spite of much bad health filled the mother's place in the house and won for herself the undying affection and regard not only of her own family but of her father's parishioners and friends.

A testimony to the high esteem in which her father's memory and hers, and indeed that of all the Balfour family, is still held in Colinton, was given to me a few years ago by the old beadle there. Fond as he was of Dr Lockhart, to speak to him of the Balfours, whom he remembered in his younger days, at once won his attention and regard. On my saying to him it was for their sakes I wished to see the inside of the church he queried with a brightening face:

'Ye'll no be ane o' them, will ye?'