Robert Louis Stevenson Part 7

CHAPTER VIII

HIS MARRIAGE AND FRIENDSHIPS

... 'What we seek is but our other self Other and higher, neither wholly like Nor wholly different, the half life the G.o.ds Retained when half was given--one the man And one the woman.'...--_Epic of Hades_.

L. MORRIS.

'Old friends are best, old coats that fit.'

--ROBERT RICHARDSON.

It was naturally to be supposed that a man of Mr Stevenson's temperament, before whose eyes from his earliest childhood there had been present a woman good enough to give him the very highest ideal of womanhood, would not easily or lightly give his heart away. He knew that he longed for the best, and to nothing less than the best could he give his soul's worship. That he did not find his ideal in the beaten track of everyday social life, or among the gay and agreeable girls whom he met in his young manhood, is not surprising.

The element of romance, as well as the longing for what was n.o.blest in womanhood, was in him; and romance for him was not embodied in a pretty young woman in a ball gown. Possibly he considered that the amusing advice as to matrimony which he gives in _Virginibus Puerisque_, was as applicable to a man as to a woman, and that 'the bright' girl of Society was as apt to be a wearisome and an exacting helpmate as her brother, 'the bright boy of fiction,' against whom as a husband his essay warns the woman in search of marriage to whom he recommends, as a more comfortable partner, the man old enough to have loved before, and to have undergone something of an apprenticeship in devotion. Very pertinent also is his advice to men in the same essay, that kindred tastes are more likely to ensure lasting happiness than a fair face or an acceptable dowry.

Beneath the easy brightness of thought and style that make the essay so amusing and so readable, one sees that its writer knows his world well, and has given graver thought to matters matrimonial than at a first reading one is inclined to believe.

Holding firmly the faith that 'all things come to him who knows how to wait,' Mr Stevenson was in no hurry to realise his ideal, and it was not until he was between twenty-seven and thirty that he met the woman whom he chose for his wife. That there was an element of romance in their acquaintance altogether removed from everyday love stories made it all the more fitting an ending to that watchful waiting for what fate had to give him.

When Mr Stevenson arrived in San Francisco in 1879, there was living with her sister, at Monterey, Mrs f.a.n.n.y Van de Grift Osbourne of Indiana. Mrs...o...b..urne had been married when very young, and her domestic experience was so unhappy that she had to obtain a divorce from her husband. She had, with her son and daughter, lived for some time in that student colony at Fontainbleau which Mr Stevenson knew and loved so well, and in after years they must have had in common many pleasant memories of people and places dear to both, so that his ideal of matrimony described in _Virginibus Puerisque_ was realised, and he and his wife had 'many an old joke between them which time cannot wither nor custom stale.'

At a party at San Francisco Mr Stevenson much admired Mrs...o...b..urne and her daughter Belle, who married a Mr Strong, and who afterwards, in the Vailima days, became her step-father's secretary. The young girl he found very fresh and sweet with the gay brightness of youth, but of her mother his impression was much deeper, and he always spoke and wrote of her as the most beautiful and the most charming woman whom he had ever seen. Although she was several years his senior she was then in the very prime of a womanly beauty which, to judge from the photographs taken at Vailima more than ten years later, was only at its ripest when other women are beginning to think of growing old. No one who had even once looked into her dark eyes could fail to endorse Mr Stevenson's verdict, to realise her charm of person, or doubt for a moment the loveliness of nature and the n.o.bility of soul to which these strange deep eyes were the index. She was indeed charming, and it was no wonder that such a nature as Mr Stevenson's found in her that 'other half of the old Platonic tradition, the fortunate finding of which can alone make a marriage perfect.

The romantic and the unusual in the story comes in when, at the request of his doctor, Mrs...o...b..urne gave willingly of her kindness and her skill in nursing to the young man who was lying at point of death alone in a far land. The child of the people with whom he was boarding had been very ill, and when other folk left the house of sickness, Mr Stevenson, who had liked his little playfellow, remained to help the parents with the nursing, and wore himself out in their service as only a man of his rare human sympathy and tenderness of heart would have done. The child recovered, and long years afterwards when the monument to his memory was erected at San Francisco, the mother laid a wreath at its base in remembrance of that unforgotten kindness. Unfortunately, already far from well and suffering much from the effects of the journey by emigrant ship and train and the stern experience of 'roughing it'

which that had entailed, Mr Stevenson was quite unfit for the fatigue of nursing and he became so ill that the doctor despaired of his life. This doctor, who then and afterwards proved a very real friend, was greatly distressed about his patient, especially as the danger of his illness was greatly increased by the lack of that skilled nursing which was there very difficult to obtain. In such a case the physician could do much, but a good nurse could do far more, so the doctor, in his anxiety, recollected that Mrs...o...b..urne was, like himself, interested in the talented young Scotsman, and was also possessed of a rare and womanly gift of nursing, and he begged her to do what she could for his patient.

She responded to his appeal, and with her sister showed the invalid a kindness so great that it did more to help his recovery than the best of drugs could have done. He was restored to a certain measure of health, and it may thus be said that he owed his life to his future wife, but he owed her much more for her unselfish devotion in his time of weakness and loneliness, as a stranger in a strange land, glorified to him all womanhood in her person, and the man who knew what it was to have an ideal mother was so peculiarly fortunate as to find an ideal wife also.

Two such natures as theirs were inevitably attracted to each other, and it is not surprising that their friendship deepened into love, or that in later years he says of her:

'Teacher, tender comrade, wife, A fellow-farer true through life, Heart-whole and soul-free, The august Father Gave to me.'

At San Francisco, on the 19th of May 1880, Robert Louis Stevenson and f.a.n.n.y Van de Grift Osbourne were married, and there began for them that perfect life together which anxiety and illness could not cloud, and which found its earthly termination when in that awful and sudden moment in December 1894 Mr Stevenson entered into 'the Rest Eternal.'

Belle Osbourne became Mrs Strong, and by-and-bye she and her little boy Austin joined the Stevensons in their home life. 'Sam,' as Mr Lloyd Osbourne was called in those days, accompanied them to England when they made their home at Bournemouth. He was a bright, eager boy when he used to appear in Edinburgh, and one who was very welcome to the elder Stevensons at Heriot Row. By-and-bye he went to the Edinburgh University and there he was full of life and interest, keen on pleasures, keen on friendships, interested in cla.s.ses, and even then there was something of the same earnestness, the same humour and brightness in him that characterised his stepfather and which made him, by-and-bye, with no small measure of the same gifts, his collaborator and friend. A friendship that was begun in very early days when the two told each other stories and issued romances from a toy printing-press, and when the junior received that delightful dedication of _Treasure Island_ in which he is described as 'a young American gentleman' to whose taste the tale appeals.

Shortly after their marriage Mr and Mrs R. L. Stevenson had had the quaint experience of housekeeping so charmingly described in _Silvarado Squatters_, but their first real home was at Skerryvore, and Bournemouth was the headquarters of the household until the necessities of Mr Stevenson's health again made them wanderers; and that move in 1887 finally ended in the purchase of Vailima, and the pitching of their camp in far Samoa.

The curtest mention of their Bournemouth life would be incomplete without some notice of the many friends who found it so easy to reach from London and so pleasant to visit, and who, themselves well known in the literary world, so greatly appreciated the genius of Mr Stevenson.

Among old Edinburgh friends of long standing were his many Balfour and Stevenson cousins and his old comrades of early days, and among the latter Mr Charles Baxter and the late Sir Walter G. Simpson held a princ.i.p.al place in his regard. Mr Sydney Colvin he had first met in 1873, Mr Henley he first knew in Edinburgh about the end of 1874, and Mr Edmund Gosse was another much valued friend of long standing. Mr Colvin was to the last one of the friends highest in his regard, and to him were written _The Vailima Letters_.

His wonderful attire, at the Savile Club and elsewhere in orthodox London, at first astonished and somewhat repelled literary men accustomed to a more conventional garb than the velvet coats, the long loose hair, and the marvellous ties Mr Stevenson delighted in; but very soon they found out the charm of the personality that lay behind a certain eccentricity of appearance, and Mr Leslie Stephen, Mr James Payn, Dr Appleton, Professor Clifford, Mr Cosmo Monkhouse, and Mr George Meredith, whom he met in 1878 and whose work he so much admired, were numbered among his life-long friends. Mr Henley's description of him in these days is better than any picture:

'Thin-legged, thin-chested, slight unspeakably, Neat-footed, 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 shines a brilliant and romantic grace, A spirit intense and rare, with trace on trace Of pa.s.sion, impudence, and energy.'

Another friend of those days, Mr Andrew Lang, also lets his friendship run into rhyme, and sends across the seas to the author of _The Master of Ballantrae_ a quaint greeting in the best of Southland Doric:

'Whan Suthern winds gar spindrift flee Abune the clachan, faddumes hie, Whan for the cluds I canna see The bonny lift, I'd fain indite an odd to thee Had I the gift!...

... 'O Louis, you that writes in Scots, Ye're far awa' frae stirks and stots, Wi' drookit herdies, tails in knots, An unco way!

My mirth's like thorns aneth the pots In Ballantrae!'

To this Mr Stevenson promptly replied in equally fine Doric, and with a playful allusion to the early 'grizzelled' hair which gives to Mr Andrew Lang an appearance venerable beyond his years.

Mr Crockett, in the delightful dedication to _The Stickit Minister_, celebrates his friendship with Mr Stevenson; and among the younger school of writers, for whose work he had so generous an appreciation, he had many friends as well as admirers. Mr Barrie, Mr Rudyard Kipling, Mr Le Galliene, and a host of others loved him as a friend, as well as looked up to him as a literary leader. To many of them he wrote charming letters, although in several cases no actual meeting had ever taken place. It was a keen disappointment to both men that circ.u.mstances prevented Mr Rudyard Kipling from paying a visit to Samoa.

In his island home he was not forgetful of his 'own romantic town,' nor of the interests of one, at least, of its publishing firms, whose travellers and agents he introduced to new fields of usefulness in India and the South Seas. One of his own favourite books was _Coral Island_, by Mr R. M. Ballantyne, published by the Messrs Nelson.

But Stevenson, whose charm of personality was even greater than his fame, had other friends, whose friendship is not measured by the intellect but by the heart. Little children and young folk everywhere loved the man whose _Child's Garden of Verses_ shows such a marvellous insight into the hearts of children.

The a.s.s Modestine, the Samoan horse Jack, well knew that the indignant flow of language meant nothing, and that their master's heart was altogether in the right place, although, when they were too provoking, his words might be very unparliamentary.

For dogs he had as great an attraction as they had for him, and the master of Coolin the wise, and Woggs, or Bogue, the gallant, discourses as few men could do about canine thoughts and feelings in his essay _The Character of Dogs_.

No fear of his being among the foolish people who remark that 'they like dogs in their proper place,' and, as he stingingly adds, say, '"Poo'

fellow! Poo' fellow!" and are themselves far poorer!' He knew, because he had taken the trouble to study him, that 'to the dog of gentlemanly feelings, theft and falsehood are disgraceful vices.'

CHAPTER IX

HIS ESSAYS AND POEMS

'Golden thoughts that ever will resound, And be re-echoed to the utmost parts of land and sea.'

--R. S. MUTCH.

Mr Stevenson inherited both from the Stevenson and Balfour families some measure of literary talent. His father and his grandfather had written with considerable acceptance on the subject of their profession. His father also wrote on religious matters, and at least one of these pamphlets was believed to be of lasting value by competent judges. On scientific and engineering subjects his work was thought so excellent, and was so well known, that R. L. Stevenson tells, with some amus.e.m.e.nt, that he was surprised to find in the New World it was his father and not himself who was considered the important author. _The Life of Robert Stevenson_, of Bell Rock fame, written by David Stevenson, is a very interesting book.

Among his mother's relatives the gift of fluent and graceful expression is also widely diffused, and in common with Mrs Thomas Stevenson and her son, not a few of the Balfour connection have been very charming letter writers, in the days when letters were worth receiving, and not the hurried and uncharacteristic sc.r.a.ps which do duty for present-day correspondence.

He himself considered that he inherited his literary talent largely from his father's family, but there is interesting proof that even in his grandfather's day it was inherent also in his Balfour ancestors. The minister of Colinton wrote verses in his youth, and a sonnet preserved by his surviving son and daughter is interesting as a proof of his earnest mind and his literary skill. It was written on the fly-leaf of a folio copy of _Pearson on the Creed_, presented to him by his friend, the Reverend Patrick Macfarlane, who became, about 1832, minister of the West Church at Greenock, and is dated 18th May 1801.

'My friend, my Patrick, let me boast the name, For my breast glows with no inferior flame, This gift was thine, expressive of thy love, Which spurning earthborn joys for those above Would teach my friend in sacred lore to grow, And feel the truths impressive as they flow.

While with our faith our kindred bosoms glow, And love to G.o.d directs our life below, One view of things now seen, and things to come, But pilgrims here, a future state our home, Nor time, nor death, our friendship shall impair, Begun below, but rendered perfect there.'

More than one of the old gentleman's family inherited his talent for graceful and forcible writing. His son, Dr George W. Balfour, has written two well-known medical books which have brought to him a large measure of fame. These are _Clinical Lectures on Diseases of the Heart_, and the even more popular _The Senile Heart_. About the latter he tells an excellent story. A well-known literary critic, seeing the book lying on the table, thought it a work of fiction with an admirable and unique t.i.tle, carried it off for review, and found to his disgust it was a learned medical treatise. Dr John Balfour, an elder son of the manse, wrote papers in _The Indian Annals_ and _The Edinburgh Medical Journal_, which were very highly esteemed.