nor able to ignore. As in religion he designated himself for the moment an atheist, so he seems in economics, if not in politics, to have become "a red-hot Socialist." The direction of his views was no doubt partly due to the "healthy democratic atmosphere" of the Scottish University system.

"At an early age the Scottish lad begins his . . experience of crowded class-rooms, of a gaunt quadrangle, of a bell hourly booming over the traffic of the city to recall him from the public-house where he has been lunching, or the streets where he has been wandering fancy-free. His college life has little of restraint, and nothing of necessary gentility. He will find no quiet clique of the exclusive, studious, and cultured; no rotten borough of the arts. All classes rub shoulders on the greasy benches. The raffisb young gentleman in gloves must measure his scholarship with the plain, clever, clownish laddie from the parish school."

Unfortunately the well-meant action of his parents added to his general unhappiness a touch of squalor. They were generosity itself; they provided for their son all that they thought a young man could possibly want. So long as he cared for such entertainments, they gave dinners and dances to his friends, whom they welcomed (if thought suitable) on all occasions to their house; for his health and education there was nothing they were not ready to do. One thing only was wanting to him, and that was liberty, or rather the means of using it. They knew how generous he was by nature, probably they guessed how open-nanded he was likely to be. and until he was

three-and-twenty they restricted him-as others of his friends also were restricted-to half-a-crown or, at the most, five shillings a week as pocket-money. The result was that the lad went his own way, and frequented places which consorted with his means. This may have extended the future novelist's knowledge of man and woman and of the many aspects of human life, but it was scarcely a successful policy in his father's eyes (had he but known) which placed his son's headquarters at a tobacconist's shop, and sent him to the Lothian Road and a succession of such public-houses as "The Green Elephant," "The Twinkling Eye," and "The Gay Japanee."

Stevenson's own account of it ran thus:

"I was always kept poor in my youth, to my great indignation at the time, but since then with my complete approval. Twelve pounds a year was my allowance up to twenty-three (which was indeed far too little), and though I amplified it by a very consistent embezzlement from my mother, I never had enough to be lavish. My monthly pound was usually spent before the evening of the day on which I received it; as often as not, it was forestalled; and for the rest of the time I was in rare fortune if I had five shillings at once in my possession. Hence my acquaintance was of what would be called a very low order. Looking back upon it. I am surprised at the courage with which I first ventured alone into the societies in which I moved; I was the companion of seamen, chimney-sweeps, and thieves; my circle was being continually changed by the action of the police magistrate. I see now the little sanded kitchen, where

Velvet Coat (for such was the name I went by) has spent days together, generally in silence and making sonnets in a penny version-book; and rough as the material may appear, I do not believe these days were among the least happy I have spent. I was distinctly petted and respected; the women were most gentle and kind to me; I might have left all my money for a month, and they would have returned every farthing of it. Such indeed was my celebrity, that when the proprietor and his mistress came to inspect the establishment, I was invited to tea with them; and it is still a grisly thought to me, that I have since seen that mistress then gorgeous in velvet and gold chains, an old, toothless, ragged woman, with hardly voice enough to welcome me by my old name of Velvet Coat."

The days were the days of green-sickness, and they were often miserable. Many a time he leaned over the great bridge which connects the New Town with the Old, and watched the trains smoking out from under him, and vanishing into the tunnel on a voyage to brighter skies. Often he haunted the station itself, envying the passengers; and again, "in the hot fits of youth," he went to the Calton burying-ground, “to be unhappy." "Poor soul," he says of himself, “I remember how much he was cast down at times, and how life (which had not yet begun) seemed already at an end, and hope quite dead, and misfortune and dishonour, like physical presences, dogging him as he went."

Yet the days were the days of youth, and often they were days of happiness. The clouds rolled away

in their season; most of the troubles were subjective, and though they were acutely felt, yet their ultimate solution was certain.

The one difficulty most immediately affecting his outer life-the pursuit of engineering-was, however, among the first to be solved. On April 8th, 1871, Louis told his father of his extreme disinclination for the work, and asked to be allowed to follow literature. It must have come as a heavy disappointment to Thomas Stevenson, who, as we have seen, was devoted to the practice of his calling. Moreover, only twelve days previously Louis had read before the Royal Scottish Society of Arts his first and only contribution to the literature of his profession, a paper on a New Form of Intermittent Light, which was afterwards judged "well worthy of the favourable consideration of the Society, and highly creditable to so young an author." The father felt the blow, but he must to some extent have been prepared for it by his son's entire lack of interest in the solution of problems which to him were the most entrancing in the world. He seems to have met the request with calm; his wife's diary records that he was "wonderfully resigned"; and the matter was compromised without difficulty or delay. Engineering was to be given up forthwith, but lest Louis should find himself with no other profession than that of "failed author,' ," he was to read Law and to be called to the Scottish Bar. If he chose to practise, he would have his profession; his necessary legal and historical studies would add more or less to his general culture, and he would be able during his preparation

to carry on the literary training that was already occupying so large a portion of his time.

The general alleviation of his position was more gradual, but of this he has left an account, the fragment of a larger scheme of biography written in San Francisco in the beginning of 1880.

"I had a happy afternoon scrambling with Bob upon the banks of the Water of Leith above Slateford. And so I may leave this part of my life and take it up in another direction. At last I am now done with morbidity and can wash my hands.

"BOOK III.—FROM JEST TO EARNEST

"I date my new departure from three circumstances: natural growth, the coming of friends, and the study of Walt Whitman. The order or degree of their effectiveness I shall not seek to distinguish. But I shall first say something of my friends.

"My cousin Bob,1 who had now, after a long absence, returned to Edinburgh, is the man likest and most unlike to me that I have ever met. Our likeness was one of tastes and passions, and, for many years at least, it amounted in these particulars to an identity. He had the most indefatigable, feverish mind I have ever known; he had acquired a smattering of almost

1 Robert Alan Mowbray Stevenson (1847-1900), son of Alan Stevenson (see p. 42), born in Edinburgh, educated at Windermere College and Sidney Sussex College, Cambridge. He studied painting chiefly at Antwerp and in France, but became an art critic about 1885, and was (1885–9) Professor of Fine Arts at University College, Liverpool. But with pen or brush he never did full justice to his remarkable personality and powers of expression. York Powell writing in the Saturday Review in 1900 said: "We know what the joy was of the 'Mermaid' since we have known him."