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Robert Louis Stevenson Interviews and Recollections MACMILLAN INTERVIEWS and RECOLLECTIONS

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Robert Louis Stevenson Interviews and Recollections MACMILLAN INTERVIEWS and RECOLLECTIONS Robert Louis Stevenson Interviews and Recollections MACMILLAN INTERVIEWS AND RECOLLECTIONS Morton N. Cohen (editor) LEWIS CARROLL Philip Collins (editor) DICKENS (2 vols) THACKERAY (2 vols) A. M. Gibbs (editor) SHAW J. R. Hammond (editor) H. G. WELLS David McLellan (editor) KARL MARX E. H. Mikhail (editor) THE ABBEY THEATRE BRENDAN BEHAN (2 vols) JAMES JOYCE SHERIDAN GOLDSMITH Harold Orel (editor) KIPLING (2 vols) SIR ARTHUR CONAN DOYLE GILBERT AND SULLIVAN Norman Page (editor) BYRON HENRY JAMES DR JOHNSON D. H. LAWRENCE (2 vols) TENNYSON Martin Ray (editor) JOSEPH CONRAD J. H. Stape (editor) E. M. FORSTER VIRGINIA WOOLF R. C. Terry (editor) TROLLOPE ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON Interviews and Recollections Edited by R.C.TERRY MACMILLAN ISBN 978-0-333-65099-8 ISBN 978-1-349-24355-6 (eBook) DOI 10.1007/978-1-349-24355-6 Selection and editorial matter © R. C. Terry 1996 Reprint of the original edition 1996 All rights reserved. No reproduction, copy or transmission of this publication may be made without written permission. No paragraph of this publication may be reproduced, copied or transmitted save with written permission or in accordance with the provisions of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988, or under the terms of any licence permitting limited copying issued by the Copyright Licensing Agency, 90 Tottenham Court Road, London WI P 9HE. Any person who does any unauthorised act in relation to this publication may be liable to criminal prosecution and civil claims for damages. First published 1996 by MACMILLAN PRESS LTD Houndmills, Basingstoke, Hampshire RG21 6XS and London Companies and representatives throughout the world ISBN 978-0-333-52394-0 hardcover ISBN 978-0-333-65099-8 paperback A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library. 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 I 05 04 03 02 01 00 99 98 97 96 For Roger and in memory of Ailsa He lived to the topmost pulse. he never fails of the thing that we most love letters for, the full expression of the moment and the mood, the actual good or bad or mid­ dling, the thing in his head, his heart or his house. Henry James, Notes on Novelists, 1914 Contents List of Plates ix Acknowledgements x List of Abbreviations xi Introduction xii A Stevenson Chronology xxx INTERVIEWS AND RECOLLECTIONS Smout's Favourite Occupation Margaret Stevenson 1 A Taste for Adventurous Tales E. Blantyre Simpson 6 'Cummy, I Was Just Telling Myself a Story!' Charles J. Guthrie 10 A Playmate beyond Compare Various 14 Quick and Bright but Somewhat Desultory Scholar H. B. Baildon 20 I Have Seen a Young Poet E. M. Sellar 24 A Poseur, Prone to Exaggerate Himself, Even to Himself Rosaline Masson 27 The Very Worst Ten Minutes I Ever Experienced Flora Masson 32 Delightfully and Fearlessly Boyish Margaret Black 38 Edinburgh Ale and Cold Meat Pies Charles Lowe 42 A Wonderful Talker George Lisle 45 I Do Not Remember an Ill-natured Remark Charles J. Guthrie 49 As Restless and Questing as a Spaniel Edmund Gosse 52 Sealed of the Tribe of Louis Andrew Lang 57 A Touch of the Elfin and Unearthly Sidney Colvin 62 The Best of All Good Times at Grez Isobel Field 67 Industrious Idleness Will Low 72 vii viii CONTENTS Study the Masters Birge Harrison 76 The Scotch Literary Mediocrity Lloyd Osbourne 81 The Silent and, Truth to Tell, Rather Dejected Youth Alice Gordon 85 Submerged in Billows of Bedclothes Charles Warren Stoddard 88 The Look as of the Ancient Mariner Alexander Japp 92 A Rather Odd, Exotic, Theatrical Kind of Man Harold Vallings 96 'You Must Never, Never Write Like That Again' Adelaide Boodle 100 Visiting Skerryvore William and Charles Archer 104 'Looks Like a Sooercide, Don't He, Sir?' William Sharp 111 Beside Himself with Anger Lloyd Osbourne 115 A Most Affectionate Observer M. G. van Rensselaer and Jeanette L. Gilder 118 Inventing One Project After Another S. S. McClure 122 Buffalo Coat and Indian Moccasins Stephen Chalmers 128 The Mannerly Stevenson Charlotte Eaton 134 As Good a Listener as He was a Talker Sir Edmund Radcliffe Pears 138 Always Eager for Excitement T. M. MacCallum 143 Everybody Felt Thoroughly at Home H. J. Moors 147 Writings as Pure as Possible Sydney Press 152 Queer Birds - Mighty Queer Ones Too Henry Adams 157 The Misspent Sunday W. E. Clarke 164 The Soul of a Peasant Fanny Stevenson 169 A Feast at Vailima Marie Fraser 174 Patriarchal Relations Various 178 Working Away Every Morning Like Steam-engines Isobel Field 185 Barley-sugar Effigy of a Real Man W. E. Henley 192 Whatever He Did He Did with His Whole Heart Graham Balfour 197 Called Home Margaret Stevenson 202 Suggestions for Further Reading 208 Index 210 List of Plates 1 Margaret Isabella Balfour Stevenson (The Stevenson Museum, Edinburgh) 2 Thomas Stevenson (The Writers' Museum, Edinburgh) 3 Alison Cunningham, Louis's nurse (The Writers' Museum, Edinburgh) 4 Louis and his father (The Mansell Collection) 5 Fanny Stevenson in the mid 1880s at Bournemouth (The Mansell Collection) 6 Mrs Isobel Strong (Belle) (The Writers' Museum, Edinburgh) 7 Lloyd Osbourne in 1888 at San Francisco (The Writers' Museum, Edinburgh) 8 RLS on board the Casco with King Kalakaua, Fanny, Lloyd and Margaret Stevenson (The Writers' Museum, Edinburgh) 9 Vailima, the Stevenson home, Samoa (The Mansell Collection) 10 Stevenson's family and household at Vailima in 1892, including his wife, mother, Belle and Lloyd (The Mansell Collection) 11 Fanny, Louis, Belle and Margaret Stevenson in 1893 at Sydney, Australia (The Mansell Collection) 12 RLS in Samoa (The Mansell Collection) ix Acknowledgements The editor and publisher wish to thank the following for permis­ sion to reproduce copyright-material: Houghton Mifflin Co., New York, for the extracts from Henry Adams and his Friends, edited by Harold Dean Cater, copyright 1947, © renewed 1974 by Harold Dean Cater; all rights reserved. Charles Neider, for the extracts from Our Samoan Adventure by Fanny Van de Grift and Robert Louis Stevenson, edited by Charles Neider (New York: Harper, 1955). x List of Abbreviations Balfour, Life Sir Graham Balfour, The Life of Robert Louis Stevenson, 2 vols (1901). Baxter Letters RLS: Stevenson's Letters to Charles Baxter, ed. DeLancey Ferguson and Marshall Waingrow (New Haven, Conn., 1956). Bell Ian Bell, Robert Louis Stevenson: Dreams of Exile (1992). Calder Jenni Calder, RLS: A Life Study (1980). Furnas J. c. Fumas, Voyage to Windward: The Life of Robert Louis Stevenson (1951). Knight, Treasury Alanna Knight, The Robert Louis Stevenson Treasury (1985). Letters Sidney Colvin, The Letters of Robert Louis Stevenson to His Family and Friends, 2 vols (1900). McLynn Frank McLynn, Robert Louis Stevenson: A Biogra­ phy (1993). Swearingen Roger C. Swearingen, The Prose Writings of Robert Louis Stevenson: A Guide (1980). xi Introduction In the early summer of 1875, William Seed, a 48-year-old New Zealander collecting information for the development of more efficient lighthouses along his country's rugged coasts, went to Edinburgh to consult the most distinguished lighthouse engineer of his time, Thomas Stevenson, whose family had pioneered light­ house construction for many generations.1 They met several times to discuss winds, tides, currents and fine points of marine engin­ eering, on one occasion at the Stevensons' comfortable Georgian house in Heriot Row. When the conversation turned to travel, Seed revealed that he had been to Samoa five years earlier, to report on trade in the islands for the New Zealand government. Robert Louis Stevenson, then 25, about to sit final Bar examina­ tions at Edinburgh University, listened entranced to his father's guest. Well into the night he questioned Seed about native cus­ toms and traders in the Pacific, reporting to his soul-mate, Mrs Frances Sitwell: Awfully nice man here to-night. Public servant - New Zealand. Telling us all about the South Sea Islands till I was sick with desire to go there ... Navigator's Island [sic] is the place; abso­ lute balm for the weary. (Letters, I, 95) That summer, anxious about the future, guilty about having aban­ doned the engineering career his father had planned for him - and more than half in love with Mrs Sitwell - Louis fled to France, to the artists' community at Barbizon and Grez-sur-Loing, where, one year later, he would meet another married woman, Fanny Vandegrift Osbourne, who was to become his wife. These years, 1875 and 1876, were a time of crisis for Louis. Depression at wounding his parents by his loss of faith alter­ nated with rage at their desire to turn him into a sober, respect­ able Edinburgh lawyer. Dedicated to letters, he longed for the bohemian life, another climate entirely, as he shows in a letter from Edinburgh in January 1876: the sun is gone out utterly; and the breath of the people of this xii INTRODUCTION xiii city lies about as a sort of damp, unwholesome fog, in which we go walking with bowed hearts ... this damned weather weighs on me like a curse. (Letters, I, 113) Mr Seed's visit so haunted him that he began to write a novel the following year to get it out of his system. The Hair Trunk or The Ideal Commonwealth would be about Cambridge friends who found a community in Navigators' Islands. It was unfinished. Some 15 years later, Louis wrote from Sydney to a friend that Seed had told him he had no business staying in Europe, that he would find all that was good for him in the Navigators' Islands: And I resisted: I refused to go so far from my father and mother.
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