About this time he came to know Mr. Sidney Colvin and Mr. William Ernest Henley, the beginning as the world knows, of a life long friendship with both these gentlemen.
Stevenson’s first introduction to the reading world at large was on the occasion of an article which appeared in the Portfolio for December, 1873, with the signature L. S. Stoneven appended.
Already Stevenson had begun to reap the benefit of acquaintanceship and association with the little coterie of literary folk whom he had fallen in with in London. For a time he sojourned in the artistic colony which had taken up its abode in the Forest of Fontainebleau, and has recorded its charms of life and association in the essay “Fontainebleau.” He also came to know Bohemian Paris as well, and in certain circles which there exist, or did at one time exist, the memory of M. Stevenson still fondly lingers. Returning to Edinburgh Stevenson hung forth his placard at the now famous 17 Heriot Row, which read Robert Louis Stevenson, Advocate. He did not, however, hang for long between the balance of Law and Literature, and it has been said, he never tried a case. Finally it was but apparent that he was so firmly wedded to literature that, needs must, he should devote himself to it and with the publication of “Virginibus Puerisque,” he is truly said to have emerged from the threatening obscurity of his early struggles.
“An Inland Voyage” has recorded Stevenson’s travels in Belgium in 1876, and “Travels with a Donkey in The Cevennes,” chronicles another wandering in search of the picturesque, undertaken at about the same time. It is doubtful if either volume proved financially profitable at first though they proved, in connection with the volume of essays before mentioned, the means of introducing the name and work of Robert Louis Stevenson to an ever widening circle of fame.
During this period Stevenson was a frequent contributor to the London literary journals, and he had also rewritten an early production in the form of a play; this in collaboration with Mr. W. E. Henley, and had also contributed his notes on “Picturesque Edinburgh” to Hamerton’s Portfolio.
In 1879 Stevenson set sail for the new world taking ship as a mere emigrant, crossing the ocean as a steerage passenger and afterwards by emigrant train, across the American continent to the Golden Gate; a rude but romantic method of travel for one who had been nurtured in comfort and a chronic sufferer from ill health; a long journey though destined to be but the beginnings of a wandering after peace and health which latterly brought him to “Vailima” by the shore of that “ultimate island where now rest the remains of the beloved “Tusitala.”
The “Amateur Emigrant” did not at once meet with the success it deserved in the American literary arena, though no one will deny but that praise was afterward showered upon the author’s work to the full. Eight months were spent in the immediate vicinity of the Golden Gate when he succumbed to a severe illness which proved a serious draft on his powers.
In 1880, Stevenson, then in his thirty-first year, was married to Mrs. Osbourne, an American lady whom he had known in France, and with his step-son Lloyd Osbourne and Mrs. Stevenson took up his abode in an abandoned mining camp at Juan Silverado, situated in the mountains of the Coast range. The life here can be no more pleasantly referred to than by recalling the record which was given to the public in “Silverado Squatters.” The family remained at Silverado through the summer from whence they all journeyed to the old home in North Britain. For his health’s sake, Stevenson, accompanied by his household, then betook himself to the dry and invigorating atmosphere of Davos Platz in the high Alps; and here amid the sunshine and the clear air the family settled for a winter’s stay; and here it was that Stevenson, in conjunction with his step-son, concocted those ingenious and unique booklets known to collectors as the “Davos Platz Brochures.” They had set up a small press and derived much pleasure in designing and printing these little books; “Black Canyon,” “Not I,” and “Moral Emblems,” all of which are now of such extreme rarity as to be almost unobtainable in their original state.
In 1881 was begun the actual labor of writing “Treasure Island,” the germ of which had been lying dormant in Stevenson’s brain since his early schoolboy days. After another visit to Scotland, Stevenson set his footsteps still further to the southward and domiciled himself with his family at the Chalet la Solitude, near Hyeres near Marseilles, on the shores of the Mediterranean. Meanwhile, “Treasure Island” was running its course serially in the Young Folks Paper, and when it appeared as a volume pointed the definite way of Stevenson’s popularity, the book being in every sense his first popular success.
Realizing that his malady grew no better in the southland Stevenson settled at Bournemouth, a mild winter resort on the south coast of England. Here he occupied the house presented to him by his father, and which he named “Skerryvore” after the lighthouse off the coast of Scotland, designed and built by his uncle, Alan Stevenson. Stevenson continued his literary labours at this place unremittingly, though never at any one extended period was he really free from the dread grasp of his malady. Up to now writing had brought him but scant profit, and until his thirty-sixth year, says Mr. Colvin, his income had scarcely, if ever, exceeded three hundred pounds per year. His second great success was that weird tale of “Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde,” and thenceforth he came to know his value as a writer of ability, and felt definitely assured that his labors would return to him a satisfying income.