Authors

Robert Louis Stevenson

Scottish 1850 - 1894

Few writers have embodied the spirit and romance of adventure as much as Robert Louis Stevenson; the story of his life is as powerful as the fiction that he wrote.

Robert Lewis Balfour Stevenson was born at 8 Howard Place in Edinburgh on 13 November 1850, the cherished only child of Thomas Stevenson, distinguished lighthouse and harbour engineer, and Margaret Isabella Balfour, daughter of the Reverend Lewis Balfour of Colinton Parish Church. His family called him Lewis. As a young man he would change the spelling, but not the pronunciation, to the more cosmopolitan Louis.

Stevenson's Edinburgh Life

In 1857 the family moved to 17 Heriot Row, one of the finest addresses in Edinburgh's New Town, but material comfort did not prevent Louis's childhood from being blighted by severe episodes of respiratory illness. Winter months were spent in bed, as he would write 'full of fever, nightmare, insomnia, painful days and interminable nights'. Yet he would look back on his childhood as a golden age. Affliction nurtured a fertile imagination and helped shape the writer that he would become. For company he had the devoted care of his nurse Alison Cunningham whom he called Cummy. Instilling in her charge both fascination and terror, the stories she told him would influence him throughout these formative years. She sang him ballads, read to him from The Bible and Bunyan's The Pilgrim's Progress, and in her Scots tongue told him 'blood-curdling tales of the Covenanters and their struggles'. As an adult Stevenson would dedicate his poetic celebration of the imaginative world of childhood, A Child's Garden of Verses (1885), to this woman who inspired both love and fear in his young heart. He would call her 'my first wife.'

Because of his illness Louis's schooling was frequently interrupted. He loved having stories read to him but did not learn to read until he was eight years old. He attended Mrs Henderson's school in India Street, Edinburgh Academy and finally Robert Thomson's private school in Frederick Street, however for the most part he was educated at home by private tutors. Holidays usually were taken close to home, Louis loved North Berwick, but the family did on occasion travel abroad, visiting France, Germany and Italy. From 1867 to 1880, Thomas Stevenson rented Swanston Cottage at the foot of the Pentland Hills and this became a much-loved retreat. Louis spent as much time there as he could, its remoteness fuelled his romantic thoughts and helped instil in him a love of nature. The expectation was that Louis would follow the family profession: the Stevensons were responsible for most of the deep-sea lighthouses around the coast of Scotland, and in 1867 he entered Edinburgh University to study Engineering. Lack of enthusiasm soon led him to abandon this and change courses to study law.

Edinburgh was both inspiration and danger to Louis, his relationship with it was a deeply ambivalent one, but it would shape his character as well as his writing. He found its beauty and history stimulating but he disliked its social and religious rigidity and its climate was a constant threat to his health. Later, his wonderfully atmospheric Edinburgh: Picturesque Notes (1878) would capture the visceral effect of its weather memorably. It was a divided city, the prosperous New Town standing in stark contrast to the slum dwellings of the Old Town and in his restless, responsive youth, Louis recognised something of this division in himself. He read James Hogg's great novel The Private Memoirs and Confessions of a Justified Sinner (1824). This strange and unsettling tale of religious fervour, good, evil and a divided self would haunt his imagination and later prove a major influence on his work, most famously in Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde (1886). In his bedroom stood a cabinet made by William Brodie, the notorious Edinburgh deacon who was a pillar of the community by day and a criminal by night.

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“I travel not to go anywhere, but to go. I travel for travel's sake. The great affair is to move.”

- Robert Louis Stevenson

Early Writing Career

As a student Louis led a dual life. Often in the company of his great friend Charles Baxter, he would leave the light and order of his respectable home to visit the dark taverns and brothels of the Old Town. He smoked hashish and rejected the Calvinist faith so central to his father's life; the pair would argue bitterly on the subject of religion. Much to Thomas Stevenson's dismay, Louis would soon declare himself an agnostic, although the moral principles upon which a man should conduct his life would be a central theme in much of his writing. There was a flamboyance in his nature that manifested itself in his bohemian appearance with his long hair and velvet jacket. Bought for him by his father and worn in so many of his portraits, this jacket would enhance the romantic image of its wearer for generations to come.

More respectable pursuits in his student years included membership of The Speculative Society, the Scottish Enlightenment literary debating club that counted Walter Scot among past members, and joining the university's Conservative Club. But his adventures among 'seamen, chimneysweeps and thieves' enriched his life and broadened his outlook, developing in him a strong social response; he would always be on the side of the underdog and alert to hypocrisy: he was aware that many members of the New Town's professional class preached morality but took their pleasures in less salubrious quarters.

In 1875, Louis passed his final examination and was called to the Scottish Bar. His career as an advocate was brief; he soon decided that writing was his true vocation. Whilst still a student, through a family connection, he had met London-based Professor Sidney Colvin. Well-connected Colvin was to play a pivotal role in Stevenson's literary career. He was the first to recognise and fully support the young man's great potential and he would become a close friend as well as literary mentor, introducing him to such great figures as Edmund Gosse and Leslie Stephen. Thomas Stevenson had paid for the printing of his son's first historical essay entitled The Pentland Rising: A Page of History, 1666, published anonymously in 1866; in 1871 he contributed six essays to the Edinburgh University Magazine. Through Sidney Colvin's influence, in 1874 Louis began contributing to The Cornhill Magazine under the initials R.L.S. and wrote the series of light-hearted essays that later would be collected as Virginibus Puerisque (1881), and the weightier essays tackling subjects including John Knox, Victor Hugo, Robert Burns and Walt Whitman (whom he greatly admired), which would be collected as Familiar Studies of Men and Books (1882). He would also produce a series of fantasies of modern life for the short-lived London Magazine that were collected as New Arabian Nights (1882).

Stevenson's Travels

Louis's health was relatively good in the mid 1870s. He was able to enjoy walking holidays in Scotland, England and France, often in the company of his friend Walter Simpson and his cousin Bob Stevenson. A canoe journey with Simpson through Belgium and France became the subject of Stevenson's first book, An Inland Voyage, published in 1878.

Fanny Van De Grift Osbourne

Sharing Louis's dislike of convention and a taste for the bohemian life, Bob frequented the French artist's colonies in Fontainebleau, Barbizon and Grez. Louis too became a frequent visitor, enjoying the easier pace of life and speaking the language fluently.

It was in Grez in September 1876 that Louis met the woman with whom he would soon spend the rest of his life. Frances (Fanny) Van De Grift Osbourne was an American who had left an unhappy marriage to travel and study art in Europe with her daughter Belle. She had also a son called Lloyd and had recently suffered the tragic loss of her five-year-old youngest child Hervey. Ten years Louis's senior, she was experienced, spirited, forthright, practical, imaginative and intelligent. On his return to Edinburgh, he wrote the essay On Falling In Love, published in The Cornhill Magazine the following year. Louis and Fanny reunited in Paris before Fanny returned to America in 1878 and heartbroken Louis set off on the journey across the Cevennes that would be immortalised in Travels With A Donkey (1879).

Later Works and Legacy

In 1879, Louis took the reckless step that would mark the decisive split with his former life, his family and all they stood for. In response to a message from still married Fanny, he set sail to join her in California. She would divorce her husband later that year. Thomas Stevenson was shocked by his son's 'sinful' behaviour and did his best to persuade him to return. Estrangement followed, lasting several months. Living near Fanny in Monterey without financial support, Louis worked hard on his writing in an attempt to support himself, but he was very poor and often hungry. This severely damaged his already fragile health and he was ill for most of this time. In March 1880 Louis suffered a haemorrhage in his lung and nearly died. Fanny took him into her home and nursed him devotedly. His parents, realising their son's desperate predicament, relented and renewed his allowance. They would soon be reconciled with Louis and would come to accept and welcome the presence of Fanny in his life.

Louis and Fanny were married in San Franscisco on 19 May 1880. Their honeymoon was spent in an abandoned mining camp in Mount St Helena and Louis would recount this experience in The Silverado Squatters (1884). The couple returned with Lloyd to Scotland in August 1880. By this time, Louis was suffering form chronic lung disease and from now on would be vulnerable to infections, hemorrhages and fevers; it would determine the pattern of his life, his travels and chosen places of residence. He thought of himself as 'physically dishonored' by his illness, but it would be intrinsic to the creation of the great works that he would come to write. Motion suited his restless nature and exile from home would sharpen his perception. His flight to better health would stimulate his great creative energy and talent; it would free him to confront the nature of identity, morality and choice. He once said that when he suffered, stories were his refuge and he would refer to them as a drug.

Inspiration for The "Island"

Initially, the Stevensons travelled to Davos in Switzerland for the healthy mountain air. It was on a return visit to Scotland, on a rainy day in Braemar, that Louis began the great adventure story that would become his first novel. Treasure Island (1883), originally serialised in Young Folks Magazine from 1881-1882, grew out of a map of an imaginary romantic island drawn by Louis and his stepson Lloyd. As a boy, Louis had loved the books of Edinburgh born R.M Ballantyne, especially The Coral Island (1857), the story of three boys shipwrecked and marooned on an idyllic South Pacific Island who soon have to fend off cannibals and pirates. Originally called 'The Sea Cook', Louis's own boy's adventure would combine his great gifts for storytelling and characterisation, with the relatable boy hero Jim Hawkins and the charismatic Long John Silver. This quest for a mysterious Island and its buried treasure would become one of the most successful and enduring stories ever written, loved by adults and children alike and adapted numerous times for stage and screen. Having found a successful genre that he enjoyed, Louis would return to it in books such as Prince Otto (1885), The Black Arrow (1888) and most importantly, Kidnapped (1886).

A Child's Garden of Verses and Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde

1882-1884 saw the Stevensons travel restlessly between Scotland and various locations in France including Nice and Hyeres. 1884 would see them settle in Bournemouth, where they would remain for three years and where Louis would suffer terrible health and become bed-ridden, living 'like a weevil in a biscuit'. Yet it was to be a rich period creatively, and it was in the house bought for Fanny by Thomas Stevenson and named 'Skerryvore', (after the lighthouse built by Louis's uncle), that he produced some of his finest and most enduring work including his famous A Child's Garden of Verses (1885).

With its brilliant ability to capture the experience of the world through a child's eyes, it would become one of the most memorable children's books of the nineteenth century. Deeply embedded in his own memories, like watching the romantic and magical figure of Leerie the lamplighter from his bedroom window, it was also universal in its successful imaginative identification with a child's eye view.

In stark contrast to this endearing world of innocence would be the dark horror of another book written at this time, Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde (1886). The psychology of evil continued to fascinate Louis and although set in a nightmarish London, the novella would have its roots in Edinburgh. The respectable doctor turned murderous beast owed much to Louis's obsession with those divided characters Deacon Brodie and James Hogg's Justified Sinner. It would also would reveal an anxiety surrounding scientific advancement with the post-Darwinian depiction of 'ape-like' Mr Hyde, and with Dr Jekyll's dangerous experiments in his laboratory. Louis's university friend Walter was the son of James Young Simpson, the distinguished Edinburgh doctor and pioneer of the use of chloroform as an anaesthetic who tested the drug on himself, nearly dying in the process.

Kidnapped (1886), also written in Bournemouth, would see Louis turn his mind back to Scottish history and character. Set in the aftermath of the 1745 Jacobite rebellion and the events of the Appin murder, it follows the young lowland Whig David Balfour and his adventures with the romantic highlander Alan Breck Stewart. Masterful in its handling of story and dialogue, it would impress the great American novelist Henry James, who had become a friend, visiting Louis at home in Bournemouth and maintaining a lively correspondence with him thereafter. Stevenson was a brilliant letter writer and his correspondences with both James and fellow Scot J.M. Barrie have been collected and published.

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Thomas Stevenson died in May 1887. His life was commemorated by his son in an essay in Memories and Portraits that same year. Louis now felt free to move again and the great success of Treasure Island, Kidnapped and Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde, which had brought him International literary fame, would help fund his travels in search of a climate better suited to his health. He returned to America with Fanny, Lloyd, and his widowed mother. From here in 1888 the party chartered the schooner yacht Casco and set sail on a voyage through the South Pacific. Louis would record this journey in a series of articles that would be collected as In The South Seas (1892). He eventually settled on the island of Upolu in Samoa and would never return to Scotland.

In 1890, The Stevensons purchased a plantation estate on the island where land and was cleared and a house built. Louis named it Vailima, meaning Five Waters, and it would be his home for the remaining four years of his life. From its high mountainside setting it had a beautiful view over the ocean, and the South Pacific would open new vistas for Stevenson's writing. Taking immediately to the island's inhabitants, he studied and learned their language. Always alert to society and its problems, Louis was sympathetic to the character and culture of the Samoan people, and he likened the erosion of their traditions to that of Highland culture in Scotland.

Critical of the area's exploitation by Europeans and Americans, he involved himself in local politics and would take up the cause of a Polynesian chief defeated in a brief civil war. In return he was a loved and respected figure to the Samoans who named him Tusitala, meaning teller of tales. Works directly influenced by Polynesian culture include The Bottle Imp (1991) and Isle of Voices (1993). The finest was The Beach of Falesa, originally serialised in Illustrated London News in 1892, which explores the clash of cultures between white traders and islanders and would be a bold statement in support of the suppressed. The Ebb Tide (1894) would return to the theme of morality and personal responsibility that would run through so much of Stevenson's work.

Scotland and its history continued to haunt Louis and he would write vividly of his homeland in his final years. The Master of Ballantrae (1889), written on his pacific journey, is the tale of a feud between two brothers: James, the rightful Master of Ballantrae, and the younger Henry, who, believing James dead in the 1745 rebellion, succeeds to his brother's estate and marries his intended bride. The novel ends with the dramatic destruction of the estate and death of both brothers. Catriona (1893), the sequel to Kidnapped, was written at Vailima. On the day that he died, Louis was working on what would be his last great work, although it remained unfinished.

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Later Life

Weir of Hermiston (1896) shows signs of great artistic growth and highlights the tremendous loss to literature that Stevenson's early death would be. Set in Edinburgh and The Borders and again centering on family division and conflict, it tells of the bitterly fraught relationship between a sensitive young man and his cruel father, Lord Hermiston, based on the infamous eighteenth century 'hanging judge' Lord Braxfield. It was to end with Archie Weir being sentenced to hang by his own father. Notable for its brilliant use of Scots dialogue, it also marks a development in Stevenson's characterisation, especially that of female characters, something of an absence until this time.

Although the climate of Upolu suited Louis's bronchial illness, he was nevertheless under considerable strain in these final years; he worked exhaustively on his writing while Fanny worked hard on the garden and plantation. Long used to caring for her husband, Fanny's own health now faltered and she suffered a serious breakdown in 1893. Louis too was often depressed. The cost of maintaining their estate and lifestyle was immense and he overworked to keep it up. On the 3 December 1894, Louis, suffering from writer's cramp, spent the day dictating Weir of Hermiston to his stepdaughter Belle, now too staying at Vailima. By evening he joined Fanny on their veranda but collapsed with a cerebral haemorrhage. Without regaining consciousness, two hours later he died. Led by Lloyd, the islanders cut a steep path up Mount Vaea the following day and Robert Louis Stevenson was buried at its summit. His tomb bears his own Requiem ( 'Under the wide and starry sky').

Two months before he died, a feast was held at Vailima to celebrate the completion of a road built by the islanders to thank Louis for his support. Linking his home to the public road, it was named "The Road of the Loving Heart".

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