From 1864 to 1867 he was principally at a Mr Thompson's school in Frederick Street, and he studied from time to time with private tutors at the different places to which his parents went for the benefit of their own health or his. These rather uncommon educational experiences were of far more value to him in after life than a steady attendance at any one school, as they made him an excellent linguist and gave him, from very youthful years, a wide knowledge of foreign life and foreign manners. In 1862 the Stevenson family visited Holland and Germany, in 1863 they were in Italy, in 1864 in the Riviera, and at Torquay for some months during the winter of 1865 and 1866; but after 1867 the family life became more settled and was chiefly passed between Edinburgh and Swanston.
In those days Louis was a lean, slim lad, inclined to be tall, and with soft, somewhat lank, brown hair and brown eyes of a shade that seemed to deepen and change with every passing impression of his quick working brain. His features were rather long, the upper part of his narrow face was delicately formed like his mother's, but the lips were full, and a more virile strength in chin and jaw faintly reminded one of his father's powerful physiognomy.
He had opinions of his own in regard to education, and they by no means led him to consider a strict attendance at school or a close application to lessons as necessary for his future life-work. He read, it is true, voraciously, but it was hardly on the lines of the sternly respectable classical curriculum which his tutors or the Academy offered him. He was an historical student after a fashion of his own, dipping deep into such books of bygone romance as Sir Walter Scott had conned and loved. His geography at that time took a purely practical and somewhat limited form, and resolved itself into locating correctly the places and abodes sacred to the characters in his favourite books.
In the delightful dedication of Catriona,—to Mr Charles Baxter, W.S., Edinburgh, who was his life-long friend—he describes those pilgrimages charmingly, and one can, in imagination, see the eager lads wandering in search of famous 'streets and numbered houses,' made historic for them by some such magic pen as that which has for ever made sacred the Old Tolbooth or the Heart of Midlothian, from the coblestones of which, in the pavement of St Giles and near the Parliament House, one reverently steps aside lest careless feet should touch that memento of the past. One can picture too as he himself does, the romantic boys of to-day following the wanderings of David Balfour by Broughton and Silver-mills, the Water of Leith, the Hawes Inn at Queensferry, and the wind-swept shores of the Forth. But one can still more clearly see that slim, brown-eyed youth—a-quiver with the eagerness that was so conspicuous a characteristic of his,—as in these very places he remembered bygone tales and even then formed plans for, and saw visions of, his own stories yet to be.
One can think of him with his eyes shining, and his face luminous, as he held forth to some choice friend, of sympathetic soul, on all these things of which his heart and brain were so full. One knows that when his walks were solitary his time was already put to a good account, and that the note-books which even then he carried in his pocket were in constant requisition.
The boy, from the very first, felt a strong leading to the profession of letters, which he ultimately followed; and he describes himself as from very early boyhood having been given to make notes for possible romances, and to choose words of peculiar fitness for the purpose he had in hand, as well as to weave tales of thrilling adventure.
Style was from the first a passion with him; and the lad had already begun in these juvenile note-books that careful choice of words and language which was at the very outset of his literary career to make so competent a critic as Mr Hamerton call him one of the greatest living masters of English prose. That he became something of a master in verse also those few thin volumes of deep thoughts, in a setting of fitly chosen words and rhymes, which he has published, amply prove.
To return, however, to the boy who went to the Academy, or rather who did not go to the Academy, for he had a faculty for playing truant which must have been extraordinarily provoking to parents and masters. No sooner was he out of the door in the morning than he could truly say—
'I heard the winds, with unseen feet,