Excerpt
The early days of the literary career of Robert Louis Stevenson can hardly be said to have been entirely devoid of recognition, though it would appear doubtful if the world at large was willing to recognize his abilities had it not been for his wonderful personality; with a soul and an imagination far above those of his early associates he gradually drew around him the respect and admiration of that larger world of letters, the London coterie. The following biographical notes are to be considered then as a mere resumé of the various chronological periods and stages of his career as is shown by the many facts which have already become the common property of the latter day reader, but which by reason of the scattered source of supply and the extreme unlikelyhood of their being included in any authoritative life or biography, makes them at once interesting and valuable.
As sponsor for the abilities of Robert Louis Stevenson, stands first and foremost, the name of William Ernest Henley a belief which was latterly endorsed by most literary critics from Gladstone to LeGallienne.
Robert Louis Balfour Stevenson was born in Howard Place, Edinburgh, on the 13th of November, 1850. From his eighteenth year he seldom, if ever, signed himself aught but Robert Louis Stevenson, omitting the name Balfour therefrom. From birth he was of a slight and excitable nature and suffered keenly from chronic and frequent illness. His recognized literary labors may be said to have commenced at the immature age of six when, it is recalled, he wrote, presumably for his own amusement and that of his immediate family, “A History of Moses,” and some years later an account of his “Travels in Perth.”
In these early years there also took shape and form in his imagination what was afterwards given forth to the world in the pages of “Treasure Island.”
At eight, Stevenson was at school, and at eleven entered the Academy of his native city. Here he began his first real literary labors, publishing, editing and even writing and illustrating the contents of a small school periodical.
Stevenson was emphatically a bird of passage, for regardless of the ties of kindred and sentiment he was ever on the wing, and when in after years as a seeker after health he proved none the less a careful observer than he had been in his schoolboy days, small wonder it is that he was able to give to the reading world such charming and novel descriptions of things seen.
In his schooldays he journeyed far into the country round about, the inevitable outcome of which was for him to ultimately to write out in his own picturesque and imaginative words a record of his observations. From “Random Memories” we learn of his pleasure at having taken a journey in company with his father around among the lighthouses of the Scottish coast, “the first in the complete character of a man, without the help of petticoats.” And with these excursions into Fife began his wanderings so charmingly and characteristically chronicled in his later letters and reminiscences.
In 1862 he went abroad to Germany and Holland, and in the next year and in that following to Italy and the Riviera. In 1865 he wintered at Torquay, an English winter resort on the south coast.
At seventeen, at Edinburgh University, Stevenson became a pupil of Fleeming Jenkin, Professor of Engineering, whose biography he wrote with much pride and devotion some years later.
Thus it is seen from early childhood that Stevenson was constantly putting forth the product of his pen, in Verses, Essays, Plays, Parodies, and Tales. In the “Stevenson Medley,” a privately issued volume published as a sort of supplement to the “Edinburgh Edition” of his writings are to be found reprints of various of his early efforts, including the famous pamphlet “The Pentland Rising,” which, in its original form, is now considered as being perhaps the rarest of all “Stevensoniana.”
Quoting from a letter of Stevenson’s to a friend, he says: “I owned that I cared for nothing but literature; my father saying that that was no profession but that I might be called to the Bar, if I chose * * * * so at the age of twenty-one I began to study law.” Accordingly the next few years were spent with ardous reading of Blackstone and his contemporaries, and arriving at the age of twenty-five, in 1875, Stevenson passed the examinations and was formally called a few days thereafter....