<1911 Encyclopædia Britannica

​STEVENSON, ROBERT LEWIS BALFOUR (1850-1894), British essayist, novelist and poet, was the only child of Thomas Stevenson, civil engineer, and his wife, Margaret Isabella Balfour. He was born at 8 Howard Place, Edinburgh, on the 13th of ​November 1850. He suffered from infancy from great fragilityof health, and nearly died in 1858 of gastric fever, which leftmuch constitutional weakness behind it. From the age of sixhe showed a disposition to write. He went to school, mainlyin Edinburgh, from 1858 to 1867, but his ill-health preventedhis learning much, and his teachers, as his mother afterwardssaid, “liked talking to him better than teaching him.” Heoften accompanied his father on his official visits to the lighthousesof the Scottish coast and on longer journeys, thusearly accustoming himself to travel. As his health improvedit was hoped that he would be able to adopt the family professionof civil engineering, and in 1868 he went to Anstruther and thento Wick as a pupil engineer. In 1871 he had so far advanced asto receive the silver medal of the Edinburgh Society of Artsfor a paper suggesting improvements in lighthouse apparatus.But long before this he had started as an author. His earliestpublication, the anonymous pamphlet ofThe Pentland Rising,had appeared in 1866, andThe Charity Bazaar, a trifle in whichhis future manner is happily displayed, in 1868. From about theage of eighteen he dropped his baptismal names of Lewis Balfourand called himself Robert Louis, but was mostly known to hisrelatives and intimate friends as “Louis.” Although he greatlyenjoyed the outdoor business of the engineer's life it strainedhis physical endurance too much, and in 1871 was reluctantlyexchanged for study at the Edinburgh bar, to which he wascalled in 1875. In 1873 he first met Mr Sidney Colvin, whowas to prove the closest of his friends and at last the loyal andadmirable editor of his works and his correspondence; and tothis time are attributed several of the most valuable friendshipsof Stevenson's life.

He was now labouring, with extreme assiduity, to groundhimself in the forms and habits of literary style. In 1875appeared, anonymously, hisAppeal to the Clergy of the Churchof Scotland, and in that year he made the first of many visitsto the forest of Fontainebleau. Meanwhile at Mentone in thewinter of 1873-1874 he had grown in mind under the shadow ofextreme physical weakness, and in the following spring began tocontribute essays of high originality to one or two periodicals,of which theCornhill, then edited by Sir Leslie Stephen, wasat first the most important. Stevenson made no attempt topractice at the bar, and the next years were spent in wanderingsin France, Germany and Scotland. Records of these journeys,and of the innocent adventures which they encouraged, weregiven to the world asAn Inland Voyage in 1878, and asTravelswith a Donkey in the Cevennes in 1879. During these four yearsStevenson's health, which was always bettered by life out ofdoors, gave him little trouble. It was now recognized that hewas to be an author, and he contributed many essays, talesand fantasies to various journals and magazines. At Fontainebleauin 1876 Stevenson had met Mrs Osbourne, the lady whoafterwards became his wife; she returned to her home inCalifornia in 1878, and in August of the following year, alarmedat news of her health, Stevenson hurriedly crossed the Atlantic.He travelled, from lack of means, as a steerage passenger andthen as an emigrant, and in December, after hardships whichseriously affected his health, he arrived in San Francisco. InMay 1880 he married, and moved to the desolate mining-campwhich he has described inThe Silverado Squatters. As Mr Colvinhas well said, these months in the west of America were spent“under a heavy combined strain of personal anxiety and literaryeffort.” Some of his most poignant and most enchanting letterswere written during this romantic period of his life. In theautumn of 1880 he returned to Scotland, with his wife and stepson,who were received at once into the Edinburgh household ofhis parents. But the condition of his health continued to be veryalarming, and they went almost immediately to Davos, wherehe remained until the spring of 1881. In this year was publishedVirginibus puerisque, the earliest collection of Stevenson'sessays. He spent the summer months in Scotland, writingarticles, poems, and above all his first romance,The Sea-Cook,afterwards known asTreasure Island; but he was driven backto Davos in October. In 1882 appearedFamiliar Studies ofMen and Books andNew Arabian Nights. His two winters atDavos had done him some good, but his summers in Scotlandinvariably undid the benefit. He therefore determined toreside wholly in the south of Europe, and in the autumn of1882 he settled near Marseilles. This did not suit him, butfrom March 1883 to July 1884 he was at home at a charminghouse called La Solitude, above Hyères; this was in many waysto be the happiest station in the painful and hurrying pilgrimageof Stevenson's life.The Silverado Squatters was published in1883, and also the more importantTreasure Island, which madeStevenson for the first time a popular writer. He planned avast amount of work, but his schemes were all frustrated inJanuary 1884 by the most serious illness from which he had yetsuffered. He was just pulled through, but the attack wasfollowed by long prostration and incapacity for work, and bycontinued relapses. In July he was brought back to England,and from this time until August 1887 Stevenson's home was atBournemouth. In 1885 he published, after long indecision, hisvolume of poems,A Child's Garden of Verses, an inferior story,The Body Snatcher, and that admirable romance,Prince Otto,in which the peculiar quality of Stevenson's style was displayedat its highest. He also collaborated with W. E. Henley in someplays,Beau Austin,Admiral Guinea andRobert Macaire. Earlyin 1886 he struck the public taste with precision in his wildsymbolic tale ofThe Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde.In the summer of the same year he publishedKidnapped, whichhad been written at Bournemouth.

This, however, was a period of great physical prostration,so that 1886 and 1887 were perforce among the least productiveyears of Stevenson's life. In the early months of 1887 Stevensonwas particularly ill, and he was further prostrated by beingsummoned in May to the deathbed of his father, who had justreturned to Edinburgh from the south. He printed privately asa pamphlet, in June 1887, a brief and touching sketch of hisfather. In July he published his volume of lyrical poems calledUnderwoods. The ties which bound him to England were nowsevered, and his health was broken to such a discouraging degreethat he determined to remove to anotner hemisphere. Accordingly,having disposed of Skerryvore, his house at Bournemouth,he sailed from London, with his wife, mother and stepson,for New York on the 17th of August 1887. He never set footin Europe again. His memoir of his friend Professor FleemingJenkin was published soon after his departure. After restingat Newport, he went for the winter to be under the care of aphysician at Saranac Lake in the Adirondacks for the winter.Here he was very quiet, and steadily active with his pen, writingboth the greater part of theMaster of Ballantrae and many of hisfinest later essays. He had undertaken, for a regular paymentgreatly in excess of anything which he had hitherto received,to contribute a monthly essay to Scribner's Magazine, and theseessays, twelve in number, were published continuously throughoutthe year 1888. Early in that year was begunThe WrongBox, a farcical romance in which Mr Lloyd Osbourne participated;Stevenson also began a romance about the Indian Mutiny, whichhe abandoned. His attitude about this time to life and experienceis reflected inPulvis et umbra, one of the noblest of all hisessays. In April 1888 he was at the coast of New Jersey forsome weeks, and in June started for San Francisco, where hehad ordered a schooner, the “Casco,” to be ready to receive him.On the 28th of the month, he started, as Mr Colvin has said,“on what was only intended to be a pleasure excursion . . .but turned into a voluntary exile prolonged until the hour ofhis death”: he never again left the waters of the Pacific. The“Casco” proceeded first to the Marquesas, and south and eastto Tahiti, passing before Christmas northwards to Honolulu,where Stevenson spent six months and finishedThe Master ofBallantrae andThe Wrong Box. It was during this time thathe paid his famous visit to the leper settlement at Molokai. In1889, “on a certain bright June day,” the Stevensons sailedfor the Gilbert Islands, and after six months' cruising foundthemselves at Samoa, where he landed for the first time aboutChristmas Day 1889. On this occasion, however, though ​strongly drawn to the beautiful island, he stayed not longer thansix weeks, and proceeded to Sydney, where, early in 1890, hepublished, in a blaze of righteous anger, hisFather Damien:an Open Letter to the Rev. Dr Hyde of Honolulu, in vindication ofthe memory of Father Damien and his work among the lepersof the Pacific. At Sydney he was very ill again: it was nowobvious that his only chance of health lay within the tropics.For nearly the whole of the year 1890 the Stevensons werecruising through unfamiliar archipelagos (on board a littletrading steamer, the “Janet Nicholl.” Meanwhile his volumeofBallads was published in London.

The last four years of his unquiet life were spent at Samoa,in circumstances of such health and vigour as he had neverpreviously enjoyed, and in surroundings singularly picturesque.It was in November 1890 that he made his abode at Vailima,where he took a small barrack of a wooden box 500 ft. abovethe sea, and began to build himself a large house close by. Thenatives gave him the name of Tusitala. His character developedunanticipated strength on the practical side; he became avigorous employer of labour, an active planter, above all apowerful and benignant island chieftain. He gathered bydegrees around him “a kind of feudal clan of servants andretainers,” and he plunged, with more generous ardour thancoolness of judgment, into the troubled politics of the country.He took up the cause of the deposed king Mataafa with extremeardour, and he wrote a book,A Footnote to History: Eight Yearsof Trouble in Samoa (1892), in the endeavour to win over Britishsympathy to his native friends. In the autumn of this yearhe received a visit at Vailima from the countess of Jersey, incompany with whom and some others he wrote the burlesqueextravagance in prose and verse, calledAn Object of Pity,privately printed in 1893 at Sydney. Whenever the cultivationof his estate and the vigorous championship of his Samoanretainers gave him the leisure, Stevenson was during theseyears almost wholly occupied in writing romances of Scottishlife.The Wrecker, an adventurous tale of American life, whichmainly belonged to an earlier time, was written in collaborationwith Mr Lloyd Osbourne and finally published in 1892; andtowards the close of that very eventful and busy year he beganThe Justice Clerk, afterwardsWeir of Hermiston. A portionof the old record of emigrant experiences in 1879, long suppressedfor private reasons, also appeared in book form in 1892. In1893 Stevenson published the important Scottish romance ofCatriona, written as a sequel toKidnapped, and the three talesillustrative of Pacific Ocean character,Island Nights' Entertainments.But in 1893 the uniform good fortune which had attendedthe Stevensons since their settlement in Samoa began to bedisturbed. The whole family at Vailima became ill, and the finalsubjugation of his protege Mataafa, and the destruction of hisparty in Samoan politics, deeply distressed and discouragedStevenson. In a series of letters toThe Times he exposed thepolicy of the chief justice, Mr Cedercrantz, and the president, ofthe council, Baron Senfft. He so influenced public opinionthat both were removed from office. In the autumn of thatyear he went for a change of scene to the Sandwich Islands,but was taken ill there, and was only too glad to return to Samoa.In 1894 he was greatly cheered by the plan, suggested by friendsin England and carried out by them with the greatest energy,of the noble collection of his works in twenty-eight volumes,since known as the Edinburgh editions. In September 1894was publishedThe Ebb Tide, the latest of his books which he sawthrough the press. Of Stevenson's daily avocations, and of thetemper of his mind through these years of romantic exile, a clearidea may be obtained by the posthumousVailima Letters, editedby Mr Sidney Colvin in 1895. Through 1894 he was engagedin composing two romances, neither of which he lived to complete.He was dictatingWeir of Hermiston, apparently in his usualhealth, on the day he died. This was the 3rd of December1894; he was gaily talking on the verandah of his house at Vailimawhen he had a stroke of apoplexy, from which he never recoveredconsciousness, and passed away painlessly in the course of theevening. His body was carried next day by sixty sturdySamoans, who acknowledged Stevenson as their chief, to thesummit of the precipitous peak of Vaea, where he had wishedto be buried, and where they left him to rest for ever with thePacific Ocean at his feet.

The charm of the personal character of Stevenson and theromantic vicissitudes of his life are so predominant in the mindsof all who knew him, or lived within earshot of his legend, thatthey made the ultimate position which he will take in the historyof English literature somewhat difficult to decide. That hewas the most attractive figure of a man of letters in his generationis admitted; and the acknowledged fascination of his characterwas deepened, and was extended over an extremely wide circleof readers, by the publication in 1899 of hisLetters, which havesubdued even those who were rebellious to the entertainmentof his books. It is therefore from the point of view of its“charm” that the genius of Stevenson must be approached,and in this respect there was between himself and his books,his manners and his style, his practice and his theory, a veryunusual harmony. Very few authors of so high a class havebeen so consistent, or have made their conduct so close a reflectionof their philosophy. This unity of the man in his workmakes it difficult, for one who knew him, to be sure that onerightly gauges the purely literary significance of the latter. Thereare some living who still hear in every page of Stevenson thevoice of the man himself, and see in every turn of his languagehis flashing smile. So far, however, as it is possible todisengage one's self from this captivation, it may be said thatthe mingling of distinct and original vision with a singularlyconscientious handling of the English language, in the sincereand wholesome self-consciousness of the strenuous artist, seemsto be the central feature of Stevenson as a writer by profession.He was always assiduously graceful, always desiring to presenthis idea, his image, his rhapsody, in as persuasive a light aspossible, and, particularly, with as much harmony as possible.He had mastered his manner and, as one may say, learned histrade, in the exercise of criticism and the reflective parts ofliterature, before he surrendered himself to that powerfulcreative impulse which had long been tempting him, so that when,in mature life, he essayed the portraiture of invented characterhe came to it unhampered by any imperfection of language.This distinguished mastery of style, and love of it for its ownsake within the bounds of good sense and literary decorum,gave him a pre-eminence among the story-tellers of his time.No doubt it is still by his romances that Stevenson keeps thewider circle of his readers. But many hold that his lettersand essays are finer contributions to pure literature, and thaton these exquisite mixtures of wisdom, pathos, melody andhumour his fame is likely to be ultimately based. In verse hehad a touch far less sure than in prose. Here we find lessevidence of sedulous workmanship, yet not infrequently a piercingsweetness, a depth of emotion, a sincere and spontaneouslovableness, which are irresistibly touching and inspiring.

The personal appearance of Stevenson has often beendescribed: he was tall, extremely thin, dark-haired, restless,compelling attention with the lustre of his wonderful brown eyes.In the existing portraits of him those who never saw him areapt to discover a strangeness which seems to them sinister oreven affected. This is a consequence of the false stability ofportraiture, since in life the unceasing movement of light inthe eyes, the mobility of the mouth, and the sympathy andsweetness which radiated from all the features, precluded thefaintest notion of want of sincerity. Whatever may be theultimate order of reputation among his various books, or whateverposterity may ultimately see fit to ordain as regards thepopularity of any of them, it is difficult to believe that the timewill ever come in which Stevenson will not be remembered asthe most beloved of the writers of that age which he did so muchto cheer and stimulate by his example.

His cousin R. A. M. Stevenson (1847-1900) was an accomplished art-critic, who in 1889 became professor of fine arts at University College, Liverpool; he published several works on art (Rubens, 1898;Velasquez, 1895;Raeburn, 1900). ​