Robert Louis Stevenson: A Record, an Estimate, and a Memorial

the case of this master of romance. George Eliot's dictum that we are, each one of us, but

pple-tree, all out of season too. Those who go hard on heredity would say, perhaps, that he was the result of some strange back-stroke. But, on closer examination, we need not go so far. His grandfather, Robert Stevenson, the great lighthouse-builder, the man who reared the iron-bound pillar on the destructive Bell Rock, and set life-saving lights there, was very intent on his professional work, yet he had his ideal, and romantic, and adventurous side. In the delightful sketch

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rom going the voyage once more, and was found furtively in his room packing his portmanteau in s

arns, a man of much reserve, yet also of much power in discourse, with an aptness and felicity in the use of phrases-so much so, as his son tells, that on his deathbed, when his power of speech was passing from him, and he couldn't articulate the right

the faces of his hearers by very na?ve and original ways of putting things. R. L. Stevenson quaintly tells a story of how his grandfather when he had physic to take, and was indulged in a sweet afterwards, yet would not allow the child to have a sweet because he had not had the physic. A veritable C

ows what can be done by grafts and buddings; but more wonderful far than anything there, are the mysterious blendings and outbursts of what is old and forg

, wrote as follows on Stevenson's inheritances

paid poll-tax in 1696, but by 1699 the land had been sold. This was probably due to the fact that Balfour was one of the Governors of the Darien Company. His grandson, James Balfour of Pilrig (1705-1795), sometime Professor of Moral Philosophy in Edinburgh University, whose po

of his relations on the Elphinstone side. The Logie Elphinstones were a cadet branch of Glack, an estate acquired by Nicholas Elphinstone in 1499. William Elphinstone, a

ull,' Constable of France. . . . Also among Tusitala's kin may be noted, in addition to the later Gordons of Gight, the Tiger Earl of Crawford, familiarly known as 'Earl Beardie,' the 'Wicked Master' of the same line, who was fatally stabbed by a Dundee cobbler 'for taking a stoup of drink from

James Elphinstone, the purchaser of Logie, has not been identified, but it is probable she was of the branch of the Tolquhon Forbeses who previously owned Logie. Fergusson's mother, Elizabeth Forbes,

the mood of day-dreaming, which has flung over so many of his pages now the vivid light wherein figures imagined grew as real as flesh and blood, and yet, agai

y reappear and transform other strains, strangely the more rem

s; for his father's pedigree runs back to the Highland clan Macgregor, the kin of Rob Roy. Stevenson thus drew in Celtic strains from both sides-from the B

the two sides of the house into more direct contact and contrast in an article he

his father not only a stern Scottish intentness on the moral aspect of life ('I would rise from the dead to preach'), but a marked disposition to melancholy and hypochondria. From his mother, on the other hand, he derived, along with his physical frailty, a resolute and cheery stoicism. These two elements in his nature fought many a hard fight, and the besieging forces from without-ill-health, poverty, and at one time family dissension

such a funny life, utterly without interest or pleasure outside of my work: nothing, indeed, but work all day long, except a short walk alon

s in the character, but from a potent smoke-consuming faculty, and an inflexib

kes his head, and is gloomier than ever. Tell him that I give him up. I don't want no such a parent. This is not the man for my money. I do not call that by the name of religion which

, I will do you the justice to add, on no such insufficient grounds-no very burning discredit when all is done; here am I married, and the marriage recognised to be a blessing of the first order. A1 at L

e so true as the multiplication table-even that dry-as-dust epitome begins with a heroic note. What is man's chie

ormulas of Scottish Calvinism. In the eyes of the older man such heterodoxy was for the moment indistinguishable from atheism; but he soon arrived at a better understanding of his son's position. Nothing appears more unmistakably in these letters than the ingrained theism of Stevenson's way of thought. The poet, the romance

checked and diverted by the uprise of other tendencies to the dreamy, impalpable, vague, weird and horrible. There was the undoubted Celtic element in him underlying what seemed foreign to it, the disregard of conventionality in one phase, and the falling under it in another-the reaction and the retreat from what had attracted and interested him, and then the return upon it, as with added zest because of the retreat. The confessed Hedonist, enjoying life and boasting of i

op of honey from every flower that came in his way. He was absorbed in the business of the moment, however trivial

say, solve the problem of Stevenson's personality. Had he been the mere Hedonist he could n

impson

c blood showing like a vein of unknown metal in the stolid, steady rock of his sure-founded Stevensonian pedigree. His cousin and model, 'Bob' Steve

joke was against himself he was very thin-skinned and had a want of balance. T

n then proc

erstood, though he was not. Posing as 'Velvet Coat' among the slums, he did no good to himself. He had not the Dickens aptitude for depicting the ways of life of his