Complete Works of Robert Louis Stevenson (Illustrated) (1107 page)

He finished “Treasure Island,” the book that gained him his first popularity, and wrote “Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde,” which made him famous at home and abroad.

“Treasure Island” had been started some time previous to please Lloyd, who asked him to write a “good story.” It all began with a map. Stevenson always loved maps, and one day during a picture-making bout he had drawn a fine one. “It was elaborately and (I thought) beautifully coloured,” he says. “The shape of it took my fancy beyond expression; it contained harbors that pleased me like sonnets.... I ticketed my performance Treasure Island.”

Immediately the island began to take life and swarm with people, all sorts of strange scenes began to take place upon it, and as he gazed at his map Stevenson discovered the plot for the “good story.”

“It is horrid fun,” he wrote, “and begins in the Admiral Benbow public house on the Devon coast; all about a map and a treasure and a mutiny, and a derelict ship ... and a doctor and a sea-cook with one leg with the chorus ‘yo-ho-ho and a bottle of rum,’ ... No women in the story, Lloyd orders.”

Parts of the coast at Monterey flashed back to his mind and helped him to picture the scenery of his “Treasure Island.” “It was just such a place as the Monterey sand hills the hero John Hawkins found himself on leaving his mutinous shipmates. It was just such a thicket of live oak growing low along the sand like brambles, that he crawled and dodged when he heard the voices of the pirates near him and saw Long John Silver strike down with his crutch one of his mates who had refused to join in his plan for murder.”

The Treasure Island map

As the story grew he read each new chapter aloud to the family in the evening. He was writing it for one boy, but found he had more in his audience. “My father,” he says, “not only heard with delight the daily chapter, but set himself actively to collaborate. When the time came for Billy Bones’ chest to be ransacked, he must have passed the better part of a day preparing on the back of a legal envelope an inventory of its contents, which I exactly followed, and the name of Flint’s old ship, the Walrus, was given at his particular request.”

When the map was redrawn for the book it was embellished with “blowing whales and sailing ships; and my father himself brought into service a knack he had of various writing, and elaborately
forged
the signature of Captain Flint and the sailing directions of Billy Bones.”

These daily readings were rare treats to those at Skerryvore, for Stevenson was a most dramatic reader. “When he came to stand in the place of Silver you could almost have imagined you saw the great one-legged John Silver, joyous-eyed, on the rolling sea.”

The book was not long in springing into popularity. Not only the boys enjoyed it but all sorts of staid and sober men became boys once more and sat up long after bedtime to finish the tale. Mr. Gladstone caught a glimpse of it at a friend’s house and did not rest the next day until he had procured a copy for himself, and Andrew Lang said: “This is the kind of stuff a fellow wants. I don’t know when, except Tom Sawyer and the Odyssey, that I ever liked a romance so well.”

It was translated into many different languages, even appearing serially in certain Greek and Spanish papers.

“Kidnapped” followed; a story founded on the Appan murder. David Balfour, the hero, was one of his own ancestors; Alan Breck had actually lived, and the Alison who ferried Alan and David over to Torryburn was one of Cummie’s own people. The Highland country where the scenes were laid, he had traversed many times, and the Island of Earraid, where David was shipwrecked, was the spot where he had spent some of his engineering days.

Stevenson had often said the “brownies” in his dreams gave him ideas for his tales. At Skerryvore they came to him with a story that among all his others is counted the greatest.

“In the small hours one morning,” says his wife, “I was awakened by cries of horror from Louis. Thinking he had a nightmare I awakened him. He said angrily, ‘Why did you wake me? I was dreaming a fine bogey tale.’“

The dream was so vivid that he could not rest until he had written off the story, and it so possessed him that the first draft was finished within three days. It was called “The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde.”

This story instantly created much discussion. Articles were written about it, sermons were preached on it, and letters poured in from all sorts of people with their theories about the strange tale. Six months after it was published nearly forty thousand copies were sold in England alone; but its greatest success was in America where its popularity was immediate and its sale enormous.

One day he was attracted by a book of verses about children by Kate Greenaway, and wondered why he could not write some too of the children he remembered best of all. Scenes and doings in the days spent at Colinton with his swarm of cousins; the games they had played and the people they had known all trooped back with other memories of Edinburgh days. As he recalled these children, they tripped from his pen until he had a delightful collection of verses and determined to bring them together in a book.

First he called it “The Penny Whistle,” but soon changed the title to “A Child’s Garden of Verses” and dedicated it, with the following poem, to the only one he said who would really understand the verses, the one who had done so much to make his childhood days happy:

TO ALISON CUNNINGHAM

FROM HER BOY

“For the long nights you lay awake
And watched for my unworthy sake;
For your most comfortable hand
That led me through the uneven land;
For all the story-books you read;
For all the pains you comforted;
For all you pitied, all you bore
In sad and happy days of yore; —
My second Mother, my first wife,
The angel of my infant life —
From the sick child, now well and old,
Take, nurse, the little book you hold!

“And grant it, Heaven, that all who read,
May find as dear a nurse at need,
And every child who lists my rhyme,
In the bright fireside, nursery clime,
May hear it in as kind a voice
As made my childish days rejoice.”

“Of course,” he said, speaking of this dedication when he wrote to Cummie about the book, “this is only a flourish, like taking off one’s hat, but still a person who has taken the trouble to write things does not dedicate them to anyone without meaning it; and you must try to take this dedication in place of a great many things that I might have said, and that I ought to have done; to prove that I am not altogether unconscious of the great debt of gratitude I owe you.”

Facsimile of letter sent to Cummy with “An Inland Voyage”

If Thomas Stevenson had been one of the first to doubt his boy’s literary ability, he was equally quick to acknowledge himself mistaken. He was proud of his brilliant son, keenly interested in whatever he was working on and, during the days spent together at Skerryvore, gave him valuable aid in his writing.

To have this old-time comradeship with his father, to enjoy his sympathy and understanding once more was Stevenson’s greatest joy at this time; a joy which he sorrowfully realised he must soon part with forever as his father’s health was failing rapidly.

Thomas Stevenson remained at Skerryvore until April, 1887, when he left for a short visit to Edinburgh. While there he became suddenly worse and died on the 8th of May.

Louis’s greatest reason for remaining in England was gone now, and he determined to cross the ocean with his family once more.

His mother willingly gave up her home, her family, her friends, and the comforts she had always enjoyed to go with him to a new country, on any venture he might propose if his health could only be improved thereby.

On August 21, 1887, Louis bade good-by to Scotland for the last time and sailed away from London on the steamship
Ludgate Hill
for New York.

CHAPTER VII

SECOND VISIT TO AMERICA

“Tis a good land to fall in with men, and a pleasant land to see.”

— (Words spoken by Hendrik Hudson when he first brought his ship through the Narrows and saw the Bay of New York.)

Stevenson’s second landing in New York was a great contrast to his first. The “Amateur Emigrant” had no one to bid him welcome and Godspeed but a West Street tavern-keeper, and now when Mr. Will Low, his old friend of Fontainebleau days, hastened to the dock to welcome him on the
Ludgate Hill
, he found the author of “Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde” already surrounded by reporters.

The trip had done him good in spite of their passage having been an unusually rough one, with numerous discomforts. The
Ludgate Hill
was not an up-to-date liner and she carried a very mixed cargo. The very fact of her being a tramp ship and that the passengers were free to be about with the men and officers, stay in the wheel-house, and enjoy a real sea life, delighted Stevenson, and he wrote back to Sidney Colvin:

“I enjoyed myself more than I could have hoped on board our floating menagerie; stallions and monkeys and matches made our cargo; and the vast continent of the incongruities rolled the while like a haystack; and the stallions stood hypnotized by the motion, looking through the port at our dinner table, and winnied when the crockery was broken; and the little monkeys stared at one another in their cages ... and the big monkey, Jacko scoured about the ship and rested willingly in my arms ... the other passengers, when they were not sick, looked on and laughed. Take all this picture, and make it roll till the bell shall sound unexpected notes and the fittings shall break loose in our state rooms, and you have the voyage of the Ludgate Hill. She arrived in the port of New York without beer, porter, soda-water, curaçoa, fresh meat, or fresh water, and yet we lived and we regret her.”

After a short visit with friends in Newport they returned to New York and settled down for a time in the Hotel St. Stephen, on 11th Street, near University Place, to make plans for their winter’s trip.

Soon after their arrival “Jekyll and Hyde” was dramatized and produced with great success. When it was known that the author of this remarkable story was in the city, people flocked from all sides to call on him, and fairly wearied him with their attentions, although he liked to see them and made many interesting acquaintances at the time.

Washington Square was one of his favorite spots in New York, and he spent many hours there watching the children playing about. A day he always recalled with special pleasure was the one when he had spent a whole forenoon in the Square talking with Mark Twain.

Among those who were anxious to know Stevenson was the American sculptor Augustus St. Gaudens. He had been delighted with his writings and regretted he had not met him in Paris when he and Mr. Low had been there together. “If Stevenson ever comes to New York,” he said to Mr. Low, “I want to meet him,” and added that he would consider it a great privilege if Stevenson would permit him to make his portrait.

It was with much pleasure, therefore, that Mr. Low brought them together, and they took to one another immediately. “I like your sculptor. What a splendid straightforward and simple fellow he is,” said Stevenson; and St. Gaudens’s comment after their first meeting was: “Astonishingly young, not a bit like an invalid and a bully fellow.”

Stevenson readily consented to sit for his portrait, and they spent many delightful hours together while the sketches were being made for it.

One day the sculptor brought his eight-year-old son, Homer, with him, and years afterward gave the following description of the child’s visit:

“On the way I endeavored to impress on the boy the fact that he was about to see a man whom he must remember all his life. It was a lovely day and as I entered the room Stevenson lay as usual on rather a high bed. I presented Homer to him ... but since my son’s interest, notwithstanding my injunctions, was to say the least far from enthusiastic, I sent him out to play.