First he called it "The Penny Whistle," but soon changed the title to "A Child's Garden of Verses" and dedicated it, with the following poem, to the only one he said who would really understand the verses, the one who had done so much to make his childhood days happy:
TO ALISON CUNNINGHAM
FROM HER BOY
"For the long nights you lay awake
And watched for my unworthy sake;
For your most comfortable hand
That led me through the uneven land;
For all the story-books you read;
For all the pains you comforted;
For all you pitied, all you bore
In sad and happy days of yore;—
My second Mother, my first wife,
The angel of my infant life—
From the sick child, now well and old,
Take, nurse, the little book you hold!
"And grant it, Heaven, that all who read,
May find as dear a nurse at need,
And every child who lists my rhyme,
In the bright fireside, nursery clime,
May hear it in as kind a voice
As made my childish days rejoice."
"Of course," he said, speaking of this dedication when he wrote to Cummie about the book, "this is only a flourish, like taking off one's hat, but still a person who has taken the trouble to write things does not dedicate them to anyone without meaning it; and you must try to take this dedication in place of a great many things that I might have said, and that I ought to have done; to prove that I am not altogether unconscious of the great debt of gratitude I owe you."
Facsimile of letter sent to Cummy with "An Inland Voyage"
If Thomas Stevenson had been one of the first to doubt his boy's literary ability, he was equally quick to acknowledge himself mistaken. He was proud of his brilliant son, keenly interested in whatever he was working on and, during the days spent together at Skerryvore, gave him valuable aid in his writing.