Robert Louis Stevenson

by Margaret Moyes Black

Only those who knew the elder Mr Stevenson's nature well could fully understand how great a trial to him was his son's decision; and only those very near and dear to him could quite appreciate the depth of the father's love, the tenderness of the father's heart, which permitted no tinge of bitterness, no lasting shadow of repining, to darken his relations with his son or to lessen in the slightest his overwhelming affection for him. Sensitive in the extreme, the son in his turn could not fail to feel his father's disappointment, almost to exaggerate its effect on the older man in his own tender-hearted remorse that he was unable to fulfil his destiny in any other way than by following literature, which was calling him with no uncertain voice. It was good, therefore, to hear from the lips of the wife and mother, who was so fully in the confidence of both, that no abiding cloud remained between the father and the son, and that both quietly accepted the inevitable when law, like engineering, was also laid aside to allow Louis to fulfil his one strong desire. Lovingly and unselfishly the parents finally accepted the fact that genius must have its way, and that in the dainty book lined study, in travel by ways quaint and unusual, in prolonged sojourns in search of health in distant lands, the younger Stevenson's life-work was to be done.

When he found that his son would not be an engineer, Mr Thomas Stevenson very naturally wished him to have a profession to fall back upon should literature not prove a success, and it was agreed that he should read for the Bar. Louis, therefore, about the end of 1871, entered the office of the firm which is now known as Messrs Skene, Edwards, & Garson, W.S. The late Mr Skene, LL.D., was then senior partner of the firm. Another partner was the father of Mr J. R. P. Edwards, who has kindly supplied the following very interesting facts about Robert Louis Stevenson while he was undergoing his legal training in his office.

'Mr Stevenson entered the office, which was then in 18 Hill Street, in 1871, and left it about the middle of the year 1873, and was afterwards called to the Bar. His position in the office was neither that of a clerk nor of an apprentice, but merely of a person gaining some knowledge of business. He never received any salary, and, as is usual with aspirants for the Bar, his position was in no way subject to the ordinary office discipline. After searching through papers which were written in the office during the time Stevenson was in the office, I find a good many papers which were written by him, but they are all merely copies of documents, and I can find no trace of any deeds which were actually drawn up by him. This is no doubt accounted for, firstly, because he was not experienced enough in the drafting of deeds, and, secondly, because he may have found the somewhat dry intricacies of conveyancing, which are for the most part governed by hard and fast rules of law, foreign to his marvellous imagination.

'I have not been able to trace any of the staff of the office who were in it with Robert Louis Stevenson, with the exception of two men, who seem to remember little about him, but they said that he was very reserved and kept very much to himself. One of the men did not even know that he was the great Stevenson. The other man, however, said that he remembered that Stevenson had, as he described it to me, "an awful notion of the Pentland hills, and was that fond of talking about them." I believe he was very fond of scribbling pieces of writing on odd pieces of paper in his spare moments, but, unfortunately, I can find no trace of these; but that is not to be wondered at, as the firm have removed to two different houses since Stevenson was in the office.

'Mr Skene, who was head partner of the firm during the time that Stevenson was in the office, had always a great admiration for his writings, and shortly before his (Mr Skene's) death he said that it was a great regret to him that he had not known him better, and recognised in him a brother in letters. My father, who saw a good deal more of Stevenson, says that he struck him as being a very shy and nervous man, or rather, as he then was, a boy. My father also states that Stevenson was a tremendous walker, and that he used often to come into the office in the morning in the somewhat unprofessional garb of walking kit, having covered a good many miles before breakfast.'

The office staff in 1871 consisted of ten men. Six of them have died, two cannot now be traced, and the remaining two mentioned by Mr Edwards are very old men.

Mr Edwards also says that in one deed which was written by Louis Stevenson there are five errors on two short pages, so that although the handwriting in it is neat, round, and clear, it is evident that his thoughts were not on his work, and that he was no more diligent in law than he had been in engineering. His handwriting, although neat and distinct, can hardly be called pretty, he seemed to use a good deal of ink in those days as the down strokes are all black and heavy. In spite of his lack of interest in his office work he passed advocate with credit on 14th July 1875, was called to the Bar on the 15th, and had his first brief on the 23rd.

He duly donned a wig and gown during the following session, and the delicate face that was so grave and refined looked very picturesque with the luminous eyes gleaming out from under the grey horse-hair. He joined the ranks of those 'Briefless Barristers' whose business it is to walk the hall of the Parliament House in search of clients. He had either one or two briefs, but he gave them away as he never acted as an advocate. His mother treasured the shillings he got for them among her relics of his early days.

Although his connection with the Parliament House was totally devoid of that professional success that ultimately leads to a seat on the Bench—but for which Mr Stevenson had no desire—it was not without its uses as an education for that other success by reason of which very many people who have never seen his face know and love him to-day. If his sojourn within those venerable halls was useless for law it was fruitful for literature, and one can imagine that as he now and then haunted the courts and listened to the advocates and the judges he was already, from a study of the Bench of the present, laying the foundation for those brilliant pictures of the judges of a ruder past which he gives us in Lord Prestongrange or Lord Hermiston. It is not very fair or very complimentary to the judges of 1875 to compare them with such a creation as Lord Hermiston, but it was not much more than half a century, before their day, that customs and manners like his were possible.

The robes, the forms, the etiquette, and the procedure of the Court of Session are still a sufficiently picturesque survival of an older time; and to a mind like Mr Stevenson's that short association with the historic Parliament House, with its far-reaching traditions and with the acting majesty of the law in Scotland that is so old and so unchanged an institution, which to-day employs the very words and phrases of bygone centuries, and still holds, in many points, to the structure of the ancient Roman Law, could not fail to be interesting and useful. Like Sir Walter Scott, when he too walked in the Advocates' Hall, he no doubt found much that was worth studying in the old law procedure as well as in the men and manners of his own day, and appreciated to the full the magnificent library in its dark and silent rooms that are such a contrast to the bustle of the courts, and every corner of which is teeming with history.