Robert Louis Stevenson

by Margaret Moyes Black

Pass up the long and weary street,

'They say "We come from hill and glen

To touch the brows of toiling men."

'That each may know and feel we bring

The faint first breathings of the spring.'

And the voice of the spring thus calling him as soon as it was heard, was obeyed; and, careless of the frowns that were bound to greet his return, he was off to wander on his beloved Braids and Pentlands, to lie long days among the whin and the broom, or to slip away to watch the busy shipping on the Forth, and to think deep thoughts beside the wave-washed shore of that sea which ever drew him like the voice of a familiar friend.

To that intense love of Nature, and of Nature's solitude, his readers owe much, and we to-day may all say with the writer who gave such an interesting description of Swanston in Good Words in the spring of 1895, that those truant hours of his educated him for his future work far better than a careful attendance at school and college could have done. The same writer says that it was this open air life that he loved so dearly which gave to Stevenson's books their large leisure, and to his style its dignity. There is much truth in the remark; but as far as the style is concerned it is the product of time and thought, and it was most carefully and diligently formed by labour so earnest and painstaking, that few authors can even conceive of it.

In Memories and Portraits Mr Stevenson gives a delightful account of boyish days at a seaside resort, that is evidently North Berwick, and lovingly describes adventures with bull's-eye lanterns; adventures which seem to be intimately associated with the young folk of his connection, and which repeated themselves a few years later on the other side of the Forth, where boys and girls recalled the doings of Robert Louis and his friends with bull's-eye lanterns and gunpowder, in that cheerful form known to Louis Stevenson as a 'peeoy,' and considered it a point of honour to do likewise, no matter how indignant such mischief made the authorities. As for him, he was always the inventor and prime mover in every mischievous escapade the heart of youth could glory in.

The wind-swept coast about North Berwick had a strong fascination for him, and in several of his books we feel the salt breeze blowing in from the sea, across the bents, and hear the sea birds crying on the lonely shore. The autumn holidays were a great joy to him, and another epoch-making event must have been the taking of Swanston Cottage, in May 1867, to be the summer home of the Stevensons.

The boy took intense pleasure in his rambles about the hills, in his dreamy rests on 'Kirk Yetton'[2] and 'Allermuir,' and in his wanderings with John Todd, the shepherd, after that worthy had ceased, as he comically puts it, to hunt him off as a dangerous sheep-scarer, and so to play 'Claverhouse to his Covenanter'! The two soon became great friends, and many a bit of strange philosophy, many a wild tale of bygone droving days the lad heard from the old man. Another great friend of early Swanston years was Robert Young, the gardener, whose austere and Puritan views of life were solemnly shared with his young master.