The Life of Robert Louis Stevenson for Boys and Girls by Jacqueline M. Overton

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THE LIFE OF

ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON

FOR BOYS AND GIRLS

BY

JACQUELINE M. OVERTON

NEW YORK

CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS

1933

[Illustration: Robert Louis Stevenson, from a photograph by Mr. Lloyd
Osbourne]

TO THE BOYS AT THE YORKVILLE LIBRARY
AND
TO ALL OTHER BOYS
WHO LOVE TO TRAMP AND CAMP AND SEEK ADVENTURE
I DEDICATE THIS BOOK
WITH THE HOPE OF MAKING THEM
BETTER FRIENDS WITH A MAN WHO ALSO
LOVED THESE THINGS

CONTENTS

CHAPTER PAGE

I. THE LIGHTHOUSE BUILDERS 3

II. ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON 16

III. THE LANTERN BEARER 31

IV. EDINBURGH DAYS 47

V. AMATEUR EMIGRANT 72

VI. SCOTLAND AGAIN 93

VII. SECOND VISIT TO AMERICA 108

VIII. IN THE SOUTH SEAS 121

IX. VAILIMA 148

BIBLIOGRAPHY 175

ILLUSTRATIONS

Robert Louis Stevenson _Frontispiece_
From a photograph by Mr. Lloyd Osbourne
FACING
PAGE

No. 8 Howard Place, Edinburgh, Stevenson's birthplace 18

Colinton Manse 26

Swanston Cottage 42

Edinburgh Castle 64

Skerryvore Cottage, Bournemouth 98

The Treasure Island map 100

Facsimile of letter sent to Cummy with "An Inland Voyage" 106

Bas-relief of Stevenson by Augustus Saint Gaudens 112

South Sea houses 130

The house at Vailima 154

A feast of chiefs 162

The tomb of Stevenson on Vaea Mountain 172

THE LIFE OF

ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON

FOR BOYS AND GIRLS

"Write me as one who loves his fellowmen."
--HUNT.

CHAPTER I

THE LIGHTHOUSE BUILDERS

"... For the sake
Of these, my kinsmen and my countrymen,
Who early and late in the windy ocean toiled
To plant a star for seamen."

The pirate, Ralph the Rover, so legend tells, while cruising off the
coast of Scotland searching for booty or sport, sank the warning bell on
one of the great rocks, to plague the good Abbot of Arbroath who had put
it there. The following year the Rover returned and perished himself on
the same rock.

In the life of one of Scotland's great men, Robert Louis Stevenson, we
find proud record of his grandfather, Robert Stevenson, having built
Bell Rock Lighthouse on this same spot years afterward.

No story of Robert Louis Stevenson's life would be complete that failed
to mention the work done for Scotland and the world at large by the two
men he held most dear, the engineers, his father and grandfather.

When Robert Stevenson, his grandfather, received his appointment on the
Board of Northern Lights the art of lighthouse building in Scotland had
just begun. Its bleak, rocky shores were world-famous for their danger,
and few mariners cared to venture around them. At that time the coast
"was lighted at a single point, the Isle of May, in the jaws of the
Firth of Forth, where, on a tower already a hundred and fifty years old,
an open coal-fire blazed in an open chaufer. The whole archipelago thus
nightly plunged in darkness was shunned by seagoing vessels." [Footnote:
Stevenson, "Family of Engineers."]

The board at first proposed building four new lights, but afterward
built many more, so that to-day Scotland stands foremost among the
nations for the number and splendor of her coast lights.

Their construction in those early days meant working against tremendous
obstacles and dangers, and the life of the engineer was a hazardous one.

"The seas into which his labors carried him were still scarce charted,
the coasts still dark; his way on shore was often far beyond the
convenience of any road; the isles in which he must sojourn were still
partly savage. He must toss much in boats; he must often adventure much
on horseback by dubious bridle-track through unfrequented wildernesses;
he must sometimes plant his lighthouses in the very camp of wreckers.

"The aid of steam was not yet. At first in random coasting sloop, and
afterwards in the cutter belonging to the service, the engineer must ply
and run amongst these multiplied dangers and sometimes late into the
stormy autumn."

All of which failed to daunt Robert Stevenson who loved action and
adventure and the scent of things romantic.

"Not only had towers to be built and apparatus transplanted, the supply
of oil must be maintained and the men fed, in the same inaccessible and
distant scenes, a whole service with its routine ... had to be called
out of nothing; and a new trade (that of light-keeper) to be taught,
recruited and organized."

Bell Rock was only one of twenty lighthouses Robert Stevenson helped to
build, but it was by far the most difficult one ... and even to-day,
after it has been lighted for more than a hundred years, it still
remains unique--a monument to his skill.

Bell Rock was practically a reef completely submerged at full tide and
only a few feet of its crest visible at low water. To raise a tower on
it meant placing a foundation under water, a new and perilous
experiment.

"Work upon the rock in the earliest stages was confined to the calmest
days of the summer season, when the tides were lowest, the water
smoothest, and the wind in its calmest mood. Under such conditions the
men were able to stay on the site for about five hours....

"One distinct drawback was the necessity to establish a depot some
distance from the erecting site. Those were the days before steam
navigation, and the capricious sailing craft offered the only means of
maintaining communication between rock and shore, and for the conveyance
of men and materials to and fro....

"A temporary beacon was placed on the reef, while adjacent to the site
selected for the tower a smith's forge was made fast, so as to withstand
the dragging motion of the waves when the rock was submerged. The men
were housed on the _Smeaton_, which, during the spells of work on the
rock, rode at anchor a short distance away in deep water." [Footnote:
Talbot, "Lightships and Lighthouses."]

Once the engineers were all but lost when the _Smeaton_ slipped her
moorings and left them stranded on the rock.

In spite of all the obstacles, the work was completed at the end of two
years and the light was shown for the first time February 1, 1811.

"I found Robert Stevenson an appreciative and intelligent companion,"
writes Sir Walter Scott in his journal, speaking of a cruise he made
among the islands of Scotland with a party of engineers. The notes made
by him on this trip were used afterward in his two stories, "The Pirate"
and "Lord of the Isles."

"My grandfather was king in the service to his finger-tips," wrote Louis
Stevenson. "All should go his way, from the principal light-keeper's
coat to the assistant's fender, from the gravel in the garden walks to
the bad smell in the kitchen, or the oil spots on the storeroom floor.
It might be thought there was nothing more calculated to awaken men's
resentment, and yet his rule was not more thorough than it was
beneficent. His thought for the keepers was continual.... When a keeper
was sick, he lent him his horse and sent him mutton and brandy from the
ship.... They dwelt, many of them, in uninhabited isles or desert
forelands, totally cut off from shops.

"No servant of the Northern Lights came to Edinburgh but he was
entertained at Baxter Place. There at his own table my grandfather sat
down delightedly with his broad-spoken, homespun officers."

As he grew old his "medicine and delight" was his annual trip among his
lighthouses, but at length there came a time when this joy was taken
away from him and there came "the end of all his cruising; the knowledge
that he had looked the last on Sunburgh, and the wild crags of Skye, and
the Sound of Mull; that he was never again to hear the surf break in
Clashcarnock; never again to see lighthouse after lighthouse (all
younger than himself, and the more, part of his own device) open in the
hour of dusk their flower of fire, or the topaz and ruby interchange on
the summit of Bell Rock."

Throughout the rank and file of his men he was adored. "I have spoken
with many who knew him; I was his grandson, and their words may very
well have been words of flattery; but there was one thing that could
not be affected, and that was the look that came over their faces at the
name of Robert Stevenson."

Of his family of thirteen children, three of his sons became engineers.
Thomas Stevenson, the father of Robert Louis, like the others of his
family, contributed largely to lighthouse building and harbor
improvement, serving under his older brother, Allen, in building the
Skerryvore, one of the most famous deep-sea lights erected on a
treacherous reef off the west coast where, for more than forty years,
one wreck after another had occurred.

"From the navigator's point of view, the danger of this spot lay chiefly
in the fact that it was so widely scattered. The ridge runs like a
broken backbone for a distance of some eight miles.... In rough weather
the whole of the rocks are covered, and the waves, beating heavily on
the mass, convert the scene into one of indescribable tumult....

"There was only one point where a tower could be placed, and this was
so exposed that the safe handling of men and material constituted a
grave responsibility."

It was necessary to erect a tower one hundred and thirty feet high; "the
loftiest and weightiest work of its character that had ever been
contemplated up to this time....

"The Atlantic swell, which rendered landing on the ridge precarious and
hazardous, did not permit the men to be housed upon a floating home, as
had been the practice in the early days of the Bell Rock tower. In order
to permit the work to go forward as uninterruptedly as the sea would
allow, a peculiar barrack was erected. It was a house on stilts, the
legs being sunk firmly into the rock, with the living quarters perched
some fifty feet up in the air.

"Residence in this tower was eerie. The men climbed the ladder and
entered a small room, which served the purposes of kitchen, living-room,
and parlor....

"When a storm was raging, the waves, as they combed over the rock,
shook the legs violently and scurried under the floor in seething foam.
Now and again a roller, rising higher than its fellows, broke upon the
rock and sent a mass of water against the flooring to hammer at the
door. Above the living-room were the sleeping quarters, high and dry,
save when a shower of spray fell upon the roof and walls like heavy
hail.... The men, however, were not perturbed. Sleeping, even under such
conditions, was far preferable to doubtful rest in a bunk upon an
attendant vessel, rolling and pitching with the motion of the sea. They
had had a surfeit of such experience ... while the barrack was under
erection.

"For two years it withstood the seas without incident, and the engineer
and men came to regard the eyrie as safe as a house on shore. But one
night the little colony received a shock. The angry Atlantic got one or
two of its trip-hammer blows well home, and smashed the structure to
fragments. Fortunately, at the time it was untenanted."

No time was lost in rebuilding the barrack and this time it withstood
all tests until it was torn down after Skerryvore was finished.

"While the foundations were being prepared, and until the barrack was
constructed, the men ran other terrible risks every morning and night
landing upon and leaving the polished surface of the reef. Five months
during the summer was the working season, but even then many days and
weeks were often lost owing to the swell being too great to permit the
rowing boat to come alongside. The engineer relates that the work was 'a
good lesson in the school of patience,' because the delays were frequent
and galling, while every storm which got up and expended its rage upon
the reef left its mark indelibly among the engineer's stock in trade.
Cranes and other materials were swept away as if they were corks;
lashings, no matter how strong, were snapped like pack-threads.

"Probably the worst experience was when the men on the rock were
weather-bound for seven weeks during one season.... Their provisions
sank to a very low level, they ran short of fuel, their sodden clothing
was worn to rags....

"Six years were occupied in the completion of the work, and, as may be
imagined, the final touches were welcomed with thankfulness by those who
had been concerned in the enterprise."

It was in meteorological researches and illumination of lighthouses,
however, that Thomas Stevenson did his greatest work. It was he who
brought to perfection the revolving light now so generally used.

In spite of this and other valuable inventions his name has remained
little known, owing to the fact that none of his inventions were ever
patented. The Stevensons believed that, holding government appointments,
any original work they did belonged to the nation. "A patent not only
brings in money but spreads reputation," writes his son, "and my
father's instruments enter anonymously into a hundred light rooms and
are passed anonymously over in a hundred reports, where the least
considerable patent would stand out and tell its author's story."

He was beloved among a wide circle of friends and the esteem of those in
his profession was shown when in 1884 they chose him for president of
the Royal Society of Edinburgh. To the general public, however, he
remained unknown in spite of the fact that "His lights were in all parts
of the world guiding the mariners."

CHAPTER II

ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON

"As from the house your mother sees
You playing round the garden trees,
So you may see, if you will look
Through the window of this book,
Another child, far, far away,
And in another garden, play."

--"Child's Garden of Verses."

Robert Louis Balfour Stevenson was born at No. 8 Howard Place,
Edinburgh, Scotland, November 13, 1850.

In 1852 the family moved from Howard Place to Inverleith Terrace, and
two years later to No. 17 Heriot Row, which remained their home for many
years.

As a child Louis was very delicate and often ill, for years hardly a
winter passed that he did not spend many days in bed.

Edinburgh in winter is extremely damp and he tells us: "Many winters I
never crossed the threshold, but used to lie on my face on the nursery
floor, chalking or painting in water-colors the pictures in the
illustrated newspapers; or sit up in bed with a little shawl pinned
about my shoulders, to play with bricks or what not."

The diverting history of "Hop-O'-My-Thumb" and the "Seven-League Boots,"
"Little Arthur's History of England," "Peter Parley's Historical Tales,"
and "Harry's Ladder to Learning" were books which he delighted to pore
over and their pages bore many traces of his skill with the pencil and
paint-brush.

Those who have read the "Child's Garden of Verses" already know the
doings of his childish days, for although those rhymes were not written
until he was a grown man he was "one of the few who do not forget their
own lives" and "through the windows of this book" gives us a vivid and
living picture of the boy who dwelt so much in a world of his own with
his quaint thoughts.

If his body was frail his spirit was strong and his power of
imagination so great that he cheered himself through many a weary day by
playing he was "captain of a tidy little ship," a soldier, a fierce
pirate, an Indian chief, or an explorer in foreign lands. Miles he
travelled in his little bed.

"I have just to shut my eyes,
To go sailing through the skies--
To go sailing far away
To the pleasant Land of Play"

he says.

[Illustration: No. 8 Howard Place, Edinburgh, Stevenson's birthplace]

In spite of his power for amusing himself, days like these would have
gone far harder had it not been for two devoted people, his mother and
his nurse, Alison Cunningham or "Cummie" as he called her. His mother
was devoted to him in every way and encouraged his love for reading and
story-making. She kept a diary of his progress from day to day, and
treasured every picture he drew or scrap he wrote. Cummie came to him as
a Torryburn lassie when he was eighteen months old and was like a second
mother to him. She not only cared for his bodily comforts but was his
friend and comrade as well. She sang for him, danced for him, spun fine
tales of pirates and smugglers, and read to him so dramatically that his
mind was fired then and there with a longing for travel and adventure
which he never lost. When they took their walks through the streets
together Cummie had many stories to tell him of Scotland and Edinburgh
in the old days. For Edinburgh is a wonderful old city with a wonderful
history full of tales of stirring adventure and romance. "For centuries
it was a capitol thatched with heather and more than once, in the evil
days of English invasion, it has gone up in flames to Heaven, a beacon
to ships at sea.... It was the jousting-ground of jealous nobles, not
only on Greenside or by the King's Stables, where set tournaments were
fought to the sound of trumpets and under the authority of the royal
presence, but in every alley where there was room to cross swords.... In
the town, in one of those little shops plastered like so many swallows'
nests among the buttresses of the old Cathedral, that familiar autocrat
James VI. would gladly share a bottle of wine with George Heriot the
goldsmith. Up on the Pentland Hills, that so quietly look down on the
castle with the city lying in waves around it, those mad and dismal
fanatics, the Sweet Singers, haggard from long exposure on the moors,
sat day and night 'with tearful psalms.'... In the Grassmarket,
stiff-necked covenanting heroes offered up the often unnecessary, but
not less honorable, sacrifice of their lives, and bade eloquent farewell
to sun, moon and stars and earthly friendships, or died silent to the
roll of the drums. Down by yon outlet rode Grahame of Claverhouse and
his thirty dragoons, with the town beating to arms behind their horses'
tails--a sorry handful thus riding for their lives, but with a man at
their head who was to return in a different temper, make a bold dash
that staggered Scotland, and die happily in the thick of the fight....

"The palace of Holyrood is a house of many memories.... Great people of
yore, kings and queens, buffoons and grave ambassadors played their
stately farce for centuries in Holyrood. Wars have been plotted, dancing
has lasted deep into the night, murder has been done in its chambers.
There Prince Charlie held his phantom levees and in a very gallant
manner represented a fallen dynasty for some hours....

"There is an old story of the subterranean passage between the castle
and Holyrood and a bold Highland piper who volunteered to explore its
windings. He made his entrance by the upper end, playing a strathspey;
the curious footed it after him down the street, following his descent
by the sound of the chanter from below; until all of a sudden, about the
level of St. Giles the music came abruptly to an end, and the people in
the street stood at fault with hands uplifted. Whether he choked with
gases, or perished in a quag, or was removed bodily by the Evil One,
remains a point of doubt, but the piper has never again been seen or
heard of from that day to this. Perhaps he wandered down into the land
of Thomas the Rhymer, and some day, when it is least expected, may take
a thought to revisit the sunlit upper world. That will be a strange
moment for the cabmen on the stands beside St. Giles, when they hear the
crone of his pipes reascending from the earth below their horses' feet."

In Edinburgh to-day there are armed men and cannon in the castle high up
on the great rock above you: "You may see the troops marshalled on the
high parade, and at night after the early winter evenfall and in the
morning before the laggard winter dawn, the wind carries abroad over
Edinburgh the sounds of drums and bugles." (Stevenson, "Essay on
Edinburgh.")

Long before Louis could write he made up verses and stories for himself,
and Cummie wrote them down for him. "I thought they were rare nonsense
then," she said, little dreaming that these same bits of "rare
nonsense" were the beginnings of what was to make "her boy" famous
across two seas in years to come.

He writes of her when speaking of long nights he lay awake unable to
sleep because of a troublesome cough: "How well I remember her lifting
me out of bed, carrying me to the window and showing me one or two lit
windows up in Queen Street across the dark belt of garden, where also,
we told each other, there might be sick little boys and their nurses
waiting, like us, for the morning."

Her devotion to him had its reward in the love he gave her all his life.
One of his early essays written when he was twenty and published in the
_Juvenilia_ was called "Nurses." Fifteen years later came the
publication of the "Child's Garden of Verses" with a splendid tribute to
her as a dedication. He sent her copies of all his books, wrote letters
to her, and invited her to visit him. She herself tells that the last
time she ever saw him he said to her, "before a room full of people,
'It's _you_ that gave me a passion for the drama, Cummie,' 'Me, Master
Lou,' I said, 'I never put foot inside a playhouse in my life.' 'Ay,
woman,' said he, 'but it was the good dramatic way ye had of reciting
the hymns.'"

When he was six years old his Uncle David offered a Bible picture-book
as a prize to the nephews who could write the best history of Moses.

This was Louis's first real literary attempt. He was not able to write
himself, but dictated to his mother and illustrated the story and its
cover with pictures which he designed and painted himself.

He won the prize and from that time, his mother says, "it was the desire
of his heart to be an author."

During the winter of 1856-57 his favorite cousin, Robert Alan Mowbray
Stevenson, usually called Bob, visited them; a great treat for Louis,
not only because his ill health kept him from making many companions of
his own age, but because Bob loved many of the same things he did and to
"make believe" was as much a part of his life as Louis's. Many fine
games they had together; built toy theatres, the scenery and characters
for which they bought for a "penny plain and twopence colored," and were
never tired of dressing up. One of their chief delights, he says, was in
"rival kingdoms of our own invention--Nosingtonia and Encyclopaedia, of
which we were perpetually drawing maps." Even the eating of porridge at
breakfast became a game. Bob ate his with sugar and said it was an
island covered with snow with here a mountain and there a valley; while
Louis's was an island flooded by milk which gradually disappeared bit by
bit.

In the spring and summer his mother took him for short trips to the
watering-places near Edinburgh. But the spot unlike all others for a
real visit was at Colinton Manse, the home of his grandfather, the
Reverend Lewis Balfour, at Colinton, on the Water of Leith, five miles
southwest of Edinburgh. Here he spent glorious days. Not only was there
the house and garden, both rare spots for one of an exploring turn of
mind, but, best of all, there were the numerous cousins of his own age
sent out from India, where their parents were, to be nursed and educated
under the loving eye of Aunt Jane Balfour, for whom he wrote:

"Chief of our aunts--not only I,
But all the dozen nurslings cry--
What did the other children do?
And what was childhood, wanting you?"

[Illustration: Colinton Manse]

If Louis lacked brothers and sisters he had no dearth of cousins, fifty
in all they numbered, many of them near his own age. Alan Stevenson,
Henrietta and Willie Traquair seem to have been his favorite chums at
Colinton.

Of his grandfather Balfour he says: "We children admired him, partly for
his beautiful face and silver hair ... partly for the solemn light in
which we beheld him once a week, the observed of all observers in the
pulpit. But his strictness and distance, the effect, I now fancy, of old
age, slow blood, and settled habits, oppressed us with a kind of terror.
When not abroad, he sat much alone writing sermons or letters to his
scattered family.... The study had a redeeming grace in many Indian
pictures gaudily colored and dear to young eyes.... When I was once sent
in to say a psalm to my grandfather, I went, quaking indeed with fear,
but at the same time glowing with hope that, if I said it well, he might
reward me with an Indian picture."

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