Margaret Moyes Black - Robert Louis Stevenson

Project Gutenberg's Robert Louis Stevenson, by Margaret Moyes BlackThis eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and withalmost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away orre-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License includedwith this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.orgTitle: Robert Louis StevensonAuthor: Margaret Moyes BlackRelease Date: August 10, 2007 [EBook #22294]Language: EnglishCharacter set encoding: ISO-8859-1*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON ***Produced by Stephen Hope, Martin Pettit and the OnlineDistributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net

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The following Volumes are now ready:

THOMAS CARLYLE. By Hector C. Macpherson .

ALLAN RAMSAY. By Oliphant Smeaton .

HUGH MILLER. By W. Keith Leask .

JOHN KNOX. By A. Taylor Innes .

ROBERT BURNS. By Gabriel Setoun .

THE BALLADISTS. By John Geddie .

RICHARD CAMERON. By Professor Herkless .

SIR JAMES Y. SIMPSON. By Eve Blantyre Simpson .

THOMAS CHALMERS. By Professor W. Garden Blaikie .

JAMES BOSWELL. By W. Keith Leask .

TOBIAS SMOLLETT. By Oliphant Smeaton .

FLETCHER OF SALTOUN. By G. W. T. Omond .

THE BLACKWOOD GROUP. By Sir George Douglas .

NORMAN MACLEOD. By John Wellwood .

SIR WALTER SCOTT. By Professor Saintsbury .

KIRKCALDY OF GRANGE. By Louis A. Barb .

ROBERT FERGUSSON. By A. B. Grosart .

JAMES THOMSON. By William Bayne .

MUNGO PARK. By T. Banks Maclachlan .

DAVID HUME. By Professor Calderwood .

WILLIAM DUNBAR. By Oliphant Smeaton .

SIR WILLIAM WALLACE. By Professor Murison .

ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON. By Margaret Moyes Black .

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[Pg 5]

In so small a volume it would be somewhat hopeless to attempt anexhaustive notice of R. L. Stevenson, nor would it be desirable. Theonly possible full biography of him will be the Life in preparation byhis intimate friend Mr Sydney Colvin, and for it his friends and hispublic look eagerly. This little book is only a reminiscence and anappreciation by one who, in the old days between 1869 and 1880, knew himand his home circle well. My earlier and later knowledge has beenderived from his mother and those other members of his mother's familywith whom it was a pleasure to talk of him, and to exchange news of hissayings and doings.

In the actual writing of this volume, I have received most kind help forwhich I return grateful thanks to the givers. For the verification ofdates and a few other particulars I am indebted to Mr Colvin's ablearticle in the Dictionary of National Biography.

It is dedicated, in the first instance, to the memory [Pg 6] of Mr and MrsThomas Stevenson and their son, and, in the second, to all the dearlyprized friends of the Balfour connection who have either, like thehousehold at 17 Heriot Row, passed into the 'Silent Land,' or who arestill here to gladden life with their friendship.

Margaret Moyes Black .

August 1898.

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[Pg 7]

Heredity and Antecedents

Childhood

Boyhood and College Days

As I First Knew Him

His Home Life

His Choice of a Literary Life and His Early Books

Wanderings in Search of Health

[Pg 8]

His Marriage and Friendships

His Essays and Verses

His Stories

His Life in Samoa

His Death

His Life-Work

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[Pg 9]

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 thesuccesses of to-day, to the brave struggle with sterner conditions oflife their ancestors waged from generation to generation. We of thepresent are 'the heirs of all the ages'; but we are also in no smalldegree the clay from the potter's hands, moulded and kneaded by thenatures, physical and mental, of those who have gone before us, andwhose lives and circumstances have made us what we are.

Robert Lewis Balfour Stevensonfor so the writer [Pg 10] whom the world knowsas Robert Louis Stevenson, was baptisedvalued greatly this doctrine ofheredity, and always bore enthusiastic testimony to the influence hisancestry and antecedents had exercised in moulding his temperament andcharacter. He was proud of that ancestry, with no foolish pride, butrather with that appreciation of all that was noble and worthy in hisforefathers, which made him desire to be, in his own widely differinglife-work, as good a man as they.

He had reason to think highly of the honourable name which he receivedfrom his father's family. Britain and the whole world has much for whichto thank the Stevensons; not only all along our rough north coasts, butin every part of the world where the mariner rejoices to see theirbeacon's blaze have the firm, who are consulting engineers to theIndian, the New Zealand, and the Japanese Lighthouse Boards, lit thoselights of which Rudyard Kipling in his 'Songs of the English,' sings

Wild and wind-swept are the isles and headlands of the northern half ofthe sister kingdoms, but from their dreariest points the lights thathave been kindled by Robert Stevenson, the hero of Bell Rock fame, andhis descendants flash and flame across the sea, and make [Pg 11] the name ofStevenson a word of blessing to the storm-tossed sailor.

The author was third in descent from that Robert Stevenson, who, byskill and heroism, planted the lighthouse on the wave-swept BellRockonly uncovered for the possibility of work for a short time at lowtidesand made safety on the North Sea, where before there had beendeath and danger, from the cruel cliffs that guard that iron coast.

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

If other young folk so loved it what a depth of interest must not thatnoble story have had for the grandson of the hero, whose childish soulwas full of chivalry and romance, and whose boyish eyes saw visions ofthe 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 lifewere glorified to him.

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