toward letters has run strong, these plans miscarried; and he filled a place and reached a renown little dreamed of at the outset. He inherited from his father a genial humor, a touch of Celtic melancholy, a sensitive conscience, a fondness for dogmatic statement, and a love for romance and for open-air activity; from his mother, a brilliancy, vivacity, and native grace, and a feminine sensitiveness to impressions; from her, likewise, a frail body and a predisposition to pulmonary disease, which he never outgrew, and which condemned him to a life of invalidism. From his second year he was much in bed; and that morbid sense of self which in a healthy body is soon lost sight of, he had always to struggle with. But the myriad impressions from without that came crowding in upon his "full-blooded spirit," enabled him to exercise his morbid impulses with a wholesome restraint and to coin his life's best into living words of cheer, which gave to all his writing its chief charm and to his personality a peculiar human interest. For nowhere have those childish interests the interests of the natural man more completely filled grownup effort nowhere have those visions of childhood, with their wonder and glory, been better preserved to mention but one book than in A Child's Garden of Verse by this child of thirty-five. Thus out of "The Land of Counterpane” "I watched my leaden soldiers go, "And sometimes sent my ships in fleets His school days, which began in 1857, were much broken in consequence of his ill health; but he attended with more or less regularity several schools in the neighborhood of his home: first Mr. Henderson's preparatory school, then the Edinburgh Acadmy, and finally the day-school of Mr. Thomson. In these, together with one term at a boarding-school at Spring Grove, Ilesworth, in Middlesex, and with much private tutoring at home and abroad, he completed his preparation for the University of Edinburgh, which he entered in 1867. But his education was not confined to the school-room, for he early began those travels that finally took him far afield. In 1857 he visited with his parents the English lakes; and in 1862, London and the south of England, and spent a part of the same summer at Homburg. The winter of 1863 the Stevensons spent at Mentone; and in the following spring they made a tour through Italy, Switzerland, and Germany --- - visiting in their itinerary Genoa, Naples, Rome, Florence, Venice, Innsbrück, and the Rhine region. The next spring finds Stevenson with his mother again in the Riviera, and the two following springs with her at Torquay in Devonshire, England. And while we find in his writings no direct reference to these travels, their influence upon this impressionable youth and future writer for he then had the purpose of making of himself a writer -- must have been incalculable. And we know that at least one scene from these travels, the Brenner Pass, lives again in his incomparable "Will o' the Mill" in a manner unknown to histories or guidebooks. Up to this time, however, there was in his attempts at writing nothing remarkable. He had, to be sure, composed in his sixth year a "History of Moses"; and had acquired the habit, when about fourteen, of extemporizing doggerel verse and of starting magazines in manuscript which contained stories filled with horrors; and he had written, when but sixteen, "The Pentland Rising," which has been dignified by a place in the complete edition of his works. Yet these efforts contain nothing that might not have been expected of any clever boy, roman 1 The Merry Men. tic in temperament and much alone, who felt the need of self-expression. But much more remarkable were the impressions of those years which waited for fuller utterance, and which found it in Memories and Portraits and in other of his works. But his university career, while it did not contribute so much to his formal education, had an important bearing upon his future, and was the beginning of what may be called his real education. His health had now become so far improved that he no longer, on that account, had to give over his studies; and he took a young man's interest in the life about him. At first he studied Latin, Greek, and natural philosophy; but soon Greek gave place to mathematics, and later Latin to engineering; and he usually spent a part of his summers in shops and yards, or on inspecting tours, which were to familiarize him with the more practical side of his profession as engineer. In none of these activities, however, could his effort be called assiduous; and no one, as he affirms, " ever had more certificates (of attendance) for less education." Indeed the occasion offered him not so much an opportunity for fitting himself for his father's profession as "a way of life"; and he busied himself far less with the subjects of the lecture-room than with that 'system of truantry, which cost him a deal of trouble to put in exercise." And the particular way waves had of impinging upon a harbor-bar was far less interesting to him than the din of the surf in the distance, the scent of the salt wind in his nostrils, or the thrilling sense of physical danger. The companionship, too, of those years filled a want that could not be wholly satisfied by books. And the "high jinks," the exercise in the open air, the laughter (the mere expression of animal spirit), and the talk big with purpose and varied in scope were all wholesome; for they broke a "miserable isolation," and helped Stevenson to discover himself. It was at this time that his cousin, R. A. M. Stevenson, an Oxford student, a man of the world, and a brilliant talker,1 was much with him; and it was his mere coming that "changed," as Stevenson declared, " at once and forever the course of my life.". Others who shared this comradeship were Charles Baxter, the faithful adviser and constant friend; James Walter Ferrier, gentle and gifted, who figures in "Old Mortality Sir Walter Simpson, with whom he made An Inland Voyage; and Fleeming Jenkin, his professor of engineering. These were men of rich personalities, yet of different types; and each gave to his friend of his best, and helped to create an atmosphere, free from restraint, in which it was a pleasure to breathe. son. 3 Yet these years were not altogether years of gayety to StevenThe conscious purpose of life weighed heavily with him. And the insolent way youth has of disposing of grave problems caused him not joy but sorrow, since it gave pain to others. For in seeking to square a freedom from within by that freedom from restraint which he enjoyed from without, he was led to look upon the creed and conventionalities that were held by those he loved, as ugly and mean. And without understanding, as he later did, that creeds may be the intellectual expressions of a kindred faith, he called himself an atheist, and gave bitter anguish to his fathers. But had Stevenson never suffered from "the green sickness of youth," Archie Weir would not have had the same ailment, and Weir of Hermiston would have lost its informing idea. Another thing that also weighed heavily with him was his conduct toward his father in the matter of his profession. This, happily, was something that could be more easily mended; for during a memorable week in April, 1871, shortly after he had read his paper "On a New Form of Intermittent Light" 1 Spring-Heel'd Jack of "Talk and Talkers": Memories and Por traits. In the same essay W. E. Henley is disguised as Burley, Jenkin as Cockshot, Simpson as Athelred, and J. A. Symonds as Opalstein. 2 Memories and Portraits, p. 50. 8 Cf. Memoir of Fleeming Jenkin. And his one contribution to the profession he unbosomed him self to his father, made clear to him his distaste for engineering, and sought his consent to follow the profession of letters. while this consent in part was withheld, and it was agreed that Louis was to fit himself instead for the Scottish Bar, it was nevertheless understood that the law was only to serve him as a livelihood, should he ever be in want and letters fail him as his father feared they might. And with the atmosphere thus cleared, he entered upon his career with more earnestness. He attended the law lectures at the University; entered the office of a law firm as clerk; was admitted to the practice of the profession, in 1875; and then waited for clients. But the real business of those years, as it had been of those before, was the making of himself a writer; and the freedom from the routine of professional life, which the absence of clients now assured him, was not unwelcome. And with the same avidity as he had pursued the task of writing (an account of which he has given us in "A College Magazine; an account which should be diligently studied by all who would find in their writing an adequate expression of self), he still pursued his preparation for authorship. And for the next five years we find him, in essay, and in notes on travel, and later in the short-story, winning his way with the public. " 1 The year 1873-74 was a memorable one in Stevenson's career. It marked the beginning of that friendship with Mr. Sidney Colvin, which became at once such a spur to his literary endeavor, was so enduring, and which had its monument in the Vailima Letters. It was also in this year that his first accepted article, "Roads," saw light in The Portfolio; and it was likewise in this same year that he learned of the threatening phthisis, which sent him again for the winter to the Riviera - and of this sojourn, all he saw and thought and felt he gave the next spring in “Ordered South.” 2 And it was here that Mr. Colvin, 1 Memories and Portraits. 2 Virginibus Puerisque. |