Предисловие
Роберт Льюис Стивенсон (1850-1894) был сыном инженера, специалиста по маякам. Шотландец по происхождению, он родился и получил образование в Эдинбурге. Хотя отец предполагал, что Роберт будет продолжать его профессию, будущий писатель предпочел изучать юриспруденцию. Однако с юных лет его интересовала литература.
Слабое состояние здоровья, предрасположение к туберкулезу вызывали необходимость перемены климата, и Стивенсон подолгу жил то во Франции, то в Калифорнии.
Последние годы жизни Стивенсон провел на островах Тихого океана. Он принимал большое участие в судьбе туземного населения островов Тихого океана.
Первые произведения Стивенсона принадлежали к жанру очерка. Уже в этих произведениях Стивенсон показал себя мастером изящного литературного стиля. Он писал также романы, уже первый из которых «Остров сокровищ» (1883) завоевал ему широкую известность. Следующие его романы «Похищенный» (1886), «Катриона» (1893), «Владелец Балантрэ», «Странная история доктора Джекила и мистера Хайда» и другие были также очень популярны у читателей. Главное внимание Стивенсон обращает на изобретение фабулы и интересных ситуаций.
В людях он ценил мужество, энергию, честность и верность.
В основу предлагаемой вниманию читателей книги положен адаптированный вариант повести английской писательницы Кэтрин Оуэнз Пиар (Catherine Owens Peare), в которой подробно и увлекательно рассказывается о жизненном и творческом пути замечательного английского писателя Роберта Льюиса Стивенсона.
В книге также даны отрывки из романов «Остров сокровищ», «Черная стрела», «Похищенный» и стихотворения из сборника «Детский цветник стихов».
После каждой главы предлагаются вопросы и разнообразные задания для контроля понимания прочитанного, а в конце книги имеются темы для обсуждения помещенного в ней материала, англо-русский словарь и списки имен собственных и географических названий.
Chapter I
CUMMY
In winter I get up at night
And dress by yellow candle-light,
In summer, quite the other way,
I have to go to bed by day.
(Bed in Summer)
A prim young lady in a bonnet and shawl and a long flowing skirt rode along Howard Place in an open carriage. She leaned out to watch the numbers on the houses. Every house in the row was the same except for its number. Every house was made of grey stone, with a door and two windows downstairs, three windows upstairs, and a grey slate roof.
“Stop here,” she told the driver when they reached Number Eight. He reined up his horse. His passenger stepped out of the carriage with her bag in her hand, opened the gate in the iron fence and walked up to the front door.
“Is this the Stevenson residence?” she asked when the door opened.
“Aye,” Mrs Stevenson answered. “Are you Miss Alison Cunningham?”
“Aye.”
“We’re so glad you’re here. Do come in. My husband will see to your trunk.”[1]
Before Mrs Stevenson had time to give her a cup of tea, Miss Cunningham said she wanted to see the baby she had come to take care of. So Mrs Stevenson led her upstairs to the nursery.
Miss Cunningham clasped her hands and sighed when she saw Robert Louis Stevenson. He had fair hair like his mother, and blue eyes.
“How old is he?” she asked.
“Eighteen months,” said his mother. “He was born in this very house on November 13, 1850.”
The baby laughed and reached out to the visitor. Miss Cunningham took him up in her arms.
“Oh, I am going to love this position,” she whispered to the baby. “I am going to love being your nurse.”
From then on Alison Cunningham was much more than his nurse. She was like a member of the family almost for the rest of her life.
“Cummy!” Louis called her as soon as he could talk, and from then on she was Cummy to everyone.
Mrs Stevenson wasn’t very strong, Cummy soon learned. That was why she needed someone else to look after the baby. Mr Stevenson turned out to be the robust member of the family. He was a lighthouse engineer. His work kept him out in the fresh air a great deal, and that gave him a healthy look.
But the climate of Scotland is often damp and cold and windy. Everybody felt it from time to time. Even in the city of Edinburgh, where the Stevensons lived, there were days and days of grey skies and chill during the summer, and snow and wind in the winter. Louis felt it most of all, because he grew frailer as he grew older.
When he was two the Stevensons moved to a bigger house at One Inverleith Terrace—just a few doors away from Eight Howard Place. Because it was bigger, it was colder and full of drafts. There he had his first serious sickness: the croup. Thomas and Margaret Stevenson and Cummy watched over him while he coughed and gasped. He was their only child. They didn’t want to lose him. They sighed with relief when he recovered. But it wasn’t for long. From then on every winter saw Louis in bed with something—colds, coughs, even pneumonia.
Cummy had to keep him indoors for days at a time to clear up a cold.[2] He sat in bed wrapped up in a big shawl while Cummy read to him. If it was Sunday, she read to him from the Bible. When he was well enough to get out of bed, he lay on his stomach on the nursery floor, painting water-colour pictures or drawing. One day his mother came into the nursery and he asked:
“Mama, I have drawn a man. Shall I draw his soul now?”
When Louis was sick, it wasn’t always the fault of the cold house or the Scottish climate. One day he and a playmate came down with a strange illness. The doctor took one look and asked:
“What have you been eating?”
“Buttercups,” Louis admitted.
“Oh!” gasped Mrs Stevenson.
“Why did you do that?”
“We were sailors, and we were shipwrecked, and that was all we had to eat,” he answered.
Summers were happier and healthier. And the best part of summer was going to Grandfather Balfour’s house, the Manse, in Colinton. There Aunt Jane Balfour kept the house. She was Mrs Stevenson’s sister. She took care of Grandfather and the Manse. In the summertime she took care of a houseful of nieces and nephews including Louis. Louis’ most favorite cousin was Bob Stevenson, three years older than himself.
Colinton was only a short carriage ride south of Edinburgh. But it was another world. The Manse stood behind the church where Grandfather was the priest. The church had a graveyard where Louis and his cousins imagined they saw “spunkies” dancing among the tombstones after dark. Between the church and the Manse ran a stone wall. The path along the wall was their “witches walk”.[3] In front of the Manse stood a great yew tree. Its branches spread out and touched the ground. Louis and his cousins could climb the branches of the yew tree and find a cool hiding place as big as a room. They built houses in the branches of the tree.
Best of all, behind the Manse was a winding river called the Water of Leith. It was not much wider than a brook except when it rained a lot. Its banks were steep and full of trees. Sometimes it curved along under a dark tunnel of leaves.
And there were surprises at the Manse. Whenever Aunt Jane drove into town to shop she brought home a gift for someone. And one day she made Louis’ life happy by handing him a box of toy soldiers. What fun he had with Grandfather marching the soldiers up and down the dining-room table, acting out famous battles.
The days at Colinton always ended too soon. While it was still bright daylight, Aunt Jane came hunting along the “witches walk” or under the yew tree, calling, “Bedtime, children! Seven o’clock!”
Summer bedtime in Scotland was hard to understand. Scotland is so far north that the days are very long in summer and very short in winter. In the summertime it is light until ten o’clock at night, long after bedtime.
Summer or winter, if Louis wasn’t sleepy, he would lie in bed and invent stories, and sing and make up songs. He often found it hard to go to sleep at night.
Sometimes, at One Inverleith Terrace, his father came in at bedtime and told him stories - stories of the sea, stories of his Grandfather Robert Stevenson who had built the famous Bell Rock Lighthouse[4] to protect the Scottish seamen. When Cummy taught him his alphabet there were more stories to go with every letter, and he loved to tell them himself.
“My Lou is a chatterbox,” said Mrs Stevenson.
He imagined and chattered all day. When he was very young he liked to play priest, standing on a chair, preaching a sermon like his grandfather.
At that Mrs Stevenson and Cummy both said, “I hope he will be a priest.”
“I should like him to be an engineer, like his father and his grandfather,” said Mr Stevenson.
The boy’s imagination worked while he slept, and he often had dreams.
“Cummy! Cummy!” he called out one night.
Cummy came running to the boy sitting up in bed.
“I dreamed I heard the noise of pens writing!” he told her.
“Stay with me, Cummy!” he begged, and Cummy sat beside him.
The Stevensons lived at Inverleith Terrace for four years. There were plenty of days when everyone felt well and happy. Mrs Stevenson was young and pretty and full of fun. She liked to laugh and run and play with her son.
While they still lived at Inverleith Terrace, Louis became old enough for his first school. He went just a few doors away to an infant class. There his first real troubles waited for him. He was weak and thin and the other children made fun of him. At home he was his mother’s darling, his father’s darling, and Cummy’s darling. At school all he could do was to take his seat and not look around.
Each morning his mother or Cummy left him there, and the small sensitive boy had to wait for the endless day to end—until he could be brought home again, to love, to comfort, to adoring family and relations.
For Louis was adored by more than his own family. There were his uncles and aunts, too, on both sides. They were always coming and going and visiting, always planning some game or other that children would like.
“We’re having a contest,” said Uncle David Stevenson to all the young Balfour and Stevenson cousins one autumn day. “A prize to the child who can write the best story of Moses.”
Six-year-old Louis was still too young to write, so he dictated his story of Moses to his mother. In a month it was finished. And at Christmastime the prize was his, a Bible picture book.
“My son has decided on his career,”[5] said his mother proudly. “He wants to be an author.”
Chapter II
SMOUT AND COOLIN
For we are very lucky, with a lamp before the door,
And Leerie stops to light it as he lights so many more;
And O! before you hurry by with ladder and with light;
O Leerie, see a little child and nod to him tonight!
(The Lamplighter)
Robert Louis Stevenson was spoiled and pampered by his family, and they had many pet names for him. “Smout” was the one they used most. It was Smout here and Smout there. Poor Smout has a cold. We’re taking Smout to Colinton. Or, What have you been doing, Smout?
“I’ve been playing all day”, was Smout’s reply. “At least, I’ve been making myself cheerful.”
Or, Do listen while Smout recites for us. And Smout would get up and recite whatever psalm or poem Cummy had been teaching him.
Or, Smout loves animals so that we are taking him to the zoo. And, Oh yes, we have bought him a pony.
Smout rode his pony when he was well enough to go out. But, as long as the Stevensons lived at Inverleith Terrace, that wasn’t very often. Both Smout and his mother had so many colds in that house that at last Mr. Stevenson found another place to live—at Seventeen Heriot Row. Heriot Row is one of Edinburgh’s wide, lovely streets. It has houses on only one side, all facing a great park called Queen Street Gardens.
When Smout was well, he could run under the tall trees in the park. When he was too ill to go out, he had another game—watching for the lamplighter. The streets of Edinburgh were lighted by flickering gas lamps in Stevenson’s day. Each lamp had to be lighted separately, and that was the task for the lamplighter. A lamp grew up like a tree from the iron fence in front of Seventeen Heriot Row. And the lamplighter often found Louis with his nose pressed against the glass waiting for him.
Moving to a new house meant moving to a new school. Around the corner down on India Street was Mr. Henderson’s school. There Louis had to go for two hours each day. After just a few weeks he came home from Mr. Henderson’s sick and feverish.
It turned out to be the worst sickness of his young life, gastric fever. He lay so still in bed nobody thought he’d pull through. And he got so thin there was hardly any lump under the covers.
He didn’t go back to school for a long time after that siege. First he sat up in bed wrapped in his shawl. Then for a little while each day Cummy or his father carried him downstairs to be with the family.
Mr. and Mrs. Stevenson looked at each other sorrowfully and shook their heads.
"He won’t be able to ride his pony for a long while,” said Mrs. Stevenson.
“Not until spring,” said her husband, “and he loves animals so.”
They sighed and said no more. Hopefully they watched him gain his strength back.
“Soon it will be his birthday,” they said mysteriously.
Sooner than that he began to cough, and before his birthday could find him he was back in bed with bronchitis.
Then began terrible nights of coughing and coughing until he shook and trembled all over. And he cried because he couldn’t sleep.
“Oh, Cummy, Cummy. I wish it would be morning,”[6] he cried.
Cummy lifted him up in her arms and carried him to the window. She held him on her lap and showed him other windows with lights burning.
"Maybe there are other sick little boys,” she said, “and their nurses waiting, like us, for the morning.”
Night after night he lay wracked with coughing. In the darkness the furniture took on strange shapes. His clothes hanging on the back of the door grew bigger and bigger. When he did fall asleep, he had nightmares. At the crack of dawn noises outside awakened him. Horses and wagons went clomping and clattering by on the cobblestone street.
By the time his birthday rolled around on November 13, Louis was worn to a frazzle, with dark circles around his eyes. But that morning his parents came into his room smiling happily. They had a birthday gift they knew would cure him. His father held it, while his mother walked in front to hide it. No sooner had Mr. Stevenson set it on the bed than it came to life and bounded across the bedcovers to bark at its new master.
"A dog!” cried Smout. “A black puppy!”
That was Coolin, Louis’ Skye terrior, his friend and companion for many years.
"He is a little, very alert, well-bred, intelligent Skye, as black as a hat, with a wet bramble for a nose and two cairngorms for eyes,” is how Robert Louis Stevenson described him.
So during the rest of the winter Coolin grew from a puppy to a dog, and Smout grew from sick to well. Coolin learned to take a morning walk with Mr. Stevenson, and Smout learned how to raise a well-bred dog.
There was a second treat for a sick boy that winter. Cousin Bob came to stay with him.
A third treat was story books. Louis and Bob read copy after copy of Skelt’s Juvenile Drama[7]. They were only a penny a copy, and a boy could have almost as many as he wanted.
"They’re a penny plain and twopence colored,” the shopkeeper always said.
While the winter winds whistled outside, the boys sat inside and read Aladdin, The Red Rover, The Blind Boy, The Smuggler [8], Robin Hood, The Inchcape Bell, and more.
Stories! Robert Louis Stevenson never had enough of them. That was why he learned to read when he was still young. And Bob was three years ahead of him. That helped his reading, too.
Spring finally came, and the two boys and the dog were turned loose in Queen Street Gardens. When the warm summer weather set in, trotting horses drew the carriage up to the front door and boys, dog, and satchels were driven to the Manse.
"Be a good boy, Master Lou,” were Cummy’s last words.
"Wait until you meet Grandfather Balfour,” Smout said to Coolin. "He has a beautiful face and snow-white hair.”
"Aye!” echoed Cousin Bob. "And maybe Aunt Jane will give a good dog some of her Albert biscuit and calf’s-foot jelly.”
And Coolin did love the Manse. He jumped and barked at Grandfather and Aunt Jane. He scrambled under the branches of the yew tree to look for the other cousins. He ran down to the river with his master and watched while Louis made little boats of wood or paper and floated them down the river.
"Where go the boats?” whispered Robert Louis Stevenson to Coolin.
Louis spent two summers at the Manse with a winter at Heriot Row in between before he had to go back to school. In October, 1859, just before his ninth birthday, he returned to Mr. Henderson’s on India Street. Each morning his mother led him out of the front door into the cold air. He promptly began to shiver.
"Come, Lou! Let’s run to keep warm.”
And down Heriot Row they ran until they were both gasping for breath and their cheeks were pink. For once Louis managed to get through the whole school term without a serious illness—just the usual sniffles and colds.
“Soon it will be summer, Coolin,” he began to say. “Soon we can go back to the Manse.”
But one day in April he and Coolin ran into the house and found everyone looking sad. Mrs. Stevenson and Cummy had out their handkerchiefs. Mr. Stevenson said, “Sit down beside me, Smout.”
Mr. Stevenson explained that Grandfather Balfour had died. He had been almost eighty-three, and so no one was very surprised, but it was crushing news all the same.
Mrs. Stevenson couldn’t talk about it at all. She just walked quietly out of the room and closed the door. Reverend Lewis Balfour had been her father.
“Can’t we go to the Manse this summer?” asked Louis.
“I’m afraid not. The new minister of the church will be living there. Aunt Jane is going to move to a house near London for a while.”
Smout sat very still. He wondered how he could ever be happy in the summertime without Grandfather Balfour and the Manse. Coolin rested his nose on his paws and whimpered a little.
Chapter III
WILD AND LIKE A BOY
Happy hearts and happy faces,
Happy play in grassy places—
That was how, in ancient ages,
Children grew to kings and sages.
(Good and Bad Children)
Louis never forgot Manse and his happy summers there. But he and Cousin Bob found other ways to spend their summers. One year they went to Peebles, near Edinburgh. Peebles has hilly fields and pasturelands and the River Tweed flowing through them. Peebles had plenty of space for Bob and Louis to gallop along on their ponies. They had a girl playmate at Peebles—that is, when they let her come along. She had a pony named Heaven.
“We’re riding to Innerleithen,” they told her one day. “You can ride with us if you can keep up.”
Off they galloped[9] with Heaven after them. The boys rode straight into the Tweed River and swam their ponies across. Heaven had to follow or be left out. Up Heaven came stumbling on the other bank, his rider gasping and wet and ready to cry.
"Louis is getting very wild and like a boy,” sighed Mrs. Stevenson when she heard about it.
Summers that the boys spent at North Berwick were greater fun than at Peebles. North Berwick was a fisherman’s village on the Firth of Forth. It was far out, where the Firth widens into the North Sea. It had a sandy beach and cliffs and caves along the shore where pirates once had hidden treasure, and not far away a ruined castle. Behind the town stretched wide fields called links. Many vacationers played golf on the links.
But young Stevenson and his friends preferred other games—boat races on the water or flying giant kites. The game they loved best was lantern- bearing. They had to wait until summer was nearly over for it, because it had to be dark for lantern- bearing. When the days grew short and darkness fell early, and the nights on the links seemed haunted, every boy got out his bull’s-eye lantern.
A bull’s-eye lantern is the kind that fastens on a man’s belt and shines a light in front of him. He can button his overcoat over the lantern so that no one can see his light. Louis and his friends made a great mystery of their lanterns. As soon as it was dark, they came out of the cottages with smelly, oil-burning lanterns hidden under their coats.
“Have you got your lantern?” was the password.
And the answer had to be, “Yes.”
Off they would go to explore a fishing ship tied up at the pier. Or they would disappear over the links to a hollow place in the ground, where the town couldn’t see their lights. Only boys who could show a light dared come to the secret meeting. They would huddle close together and talk about all manner of topics that they couldn’t discuss when girls and grownups were around.
The lantern-bearing season never lasted long enough. The days grew shorter and the nights grew colder, and Louis was headed back to Edinburgh once more.
Winters in a city so far north gave Louis Stevenson another sport that he loved—ice skating. There was always plenty of ice on ponds and lakes in Edinburgh for that. One of his favorite skating haunts was Duddingston Loch at the foot of a hill called Arthur’s Seat.
RLS was a skinny and awkward boy, and he bent way over when he skated. The fashions of the times made him look even odder. His trousers were tight and his jacket was short. He had a flowing, flopping bow tie under his chin, and a fur cap pulled down over his ears.
He entered Edinburgh Academy the fall that he was eleven. This school was on Henderson Row, several blocks farther away from home than the one on India Street. When Louis first went there in October, he found himself walking across a yard and into a huge building that had big round columns in front. There were more than sixty boys in his class, two of them his cousins. That meant that there were sixty boys to taunt him instead of just a handful. Louis was so strange that the same thing happened again. He didn’t play football or cricket. He was too bright in his lessons. And he was always losing time from school with colds and coughs.
More than once he came home from Edinburgh Academy, his clothes torn, angry and sobbing, “They’ve been ragging me! They’ve been ragging me!”
"Smout is so high-strung!” said his mother.
“He’s much too sensitive,” said his father. “I wish he wouldn’t lose his temper so easily.”[10]
His parents worried about his happiness, but they never worried about his grades. They knew he could learn fast and they knew he could read well. Mr. Stevenson had plenty of books in his own library—books on nature and engineering, encyclopedias and novels. Louis was soon reading the stories of Sir Walter Scott and Alexander Dumas.
“Do the best you can at school,” his father said.
During his second term at Edinburgh Academy Louis missed a big piece of the school term. His
father hadn’t been feeling well, so the Stevenson family took a trip to London and southern England.
“School can wait,” said Mr. Stevenson. “Travel is just as educational.”
Twelve-year-old Stevenson saw London for the first time in his life. London was bigger and more crowded than Edinburgh. And it was flat, not built up and down hills the way his own city was built. The people who hurried through the streets had a flat way of talking. They didn’t have any Scottish burr in their talk. They didn’t roll their “r’s” or sing their words. When the Scots talked, everything sounded like poetry.
The next winter Mrs. Stevenson was feeling poorly, and the three Stevensons went in search of a sunny climate for her.
“I think we can forget Edinburgh Academy altogether,” said Mr. Stevenson.
They started out in January, and Louis wasn’t back in Edinburgh until the end of May. It was a grand trip—all through France and Italy. Louis discovered that he liked to travel.
“How do you like France, Smout?”
Smout the excitable! Smout with his imagination. Smout who was going to be a writer of thrilling stories and poetry some day. He loved France, especially southern France where they were staying. He loved it because of its beautiful colors.
They were in the town of Mentone, right on the Mediterranean Sea, close to Italy. The sea was a smooth, vivid blue and glistened in the brilliant sim. The houses in Mentone had red tile roofs. Right behind the town rose giant peaks of the Alps Mountains. The mountains were green part of the way up, then gray-blue-purple, and their tips were capped with snow.
They stayed at Mentone two months, sun bathing and sea bathing and strolling about. Smout had French lessons, too.
Before the Stevensons returned to Scotland they went sight-seeing through Italy. There Louis saw more exciting sights. In Rome he saw the big round Colosseum where the ancient Romans held their combats. He saw the ruins of Pompeii, the city that had been buried by the lava from Mount Vesuvius. In Venice the streets were watery canals, and Smout and his parents had to travel in a boat.
By the time Louis found himself back in London, his mind was a whirl of new sights, new stories, new pictures.
To add to his excitement[11] his parents let him make the train journey back to Edinburgh alone. Mrs. Stevenson wanted to visit in London for a while with Aunt Jane.
When at last he was back in the house on Heriot Row, he could talk and chatter with Cummy and tell her all he had seen.
Chapter IV
THE LIGHTHOUSE STEVENSONS
Here is the sea, here is the sand,
Here is simple Shepherd’s Land,
Here are the fairy hollyhocks,
And there are Ali Baba’s rocks.
(Historical Associations)
If Smout was excited and chattering one day, he could be depressed and miserable another. In the autumn he was wandering around Edinburgh, feeling low and lost, no place to go, nothing to do. The air was cold and the sky was gray. Summer fun was over. Life was dismal. Louis just sat down on a doorstep and began to cry.
While he was enjoying his misery, a stray cat came up and rubbed against his leg. She was lost and miserable, too, and so she could sympathize. Smout loved all animals, and this one in particular. So he took her home with him.
"Where did you find the cat?” his mother and father and Cummy wanted to know. So he told them the story of how he had been crying and miserable and the cat had comforted him.
They all sighed and looked at one another over his head. They had to do something to cheer up their only child!
“You’re old enough to take an interest in engineering,” said Thomas Stevenson. "Dress him warmly in the morning, Cummy. I’m going to take him on a tour of the harbor lights along the Fife coast.”
Thomas Stevenson gave bis wife a nod and a wink. Maybe this trip would inspire Smout to be another "Lighthouse Stevenson.”
Mr. Stevenson was the official engineer of the Board of Northern Lights[12]. For that he had to travel around the coast inspecting harbor lights and lighthouses, making sure that they were in good working order.
Father and son set out across the Forth River, then turned east along the northern coast of the Firth of Forth, out toward the sea. The coast along the Forth was rocky and cliffy with little fishing villages all along the way. Louis could see many ships and boats in the Firth of Forth, because it was a safe harbor. But as they traveled on out toward the North Sea there were fewer and fewer boats. Soon there were none at all. At last they reached the easternmost point of Fife, and there was the North Sea. The surf roared and rolled and broke over the crags. The sea water had washed the rocks into strange and frightening shapes.
Thomas Stevenson stood beside his son and pointed out to sea. Louis knew why he did that. Far out, marking a long, dangerous reef of rocks, stood the Bell Rock Lighthouse.
‘'Your grandfather Robert Stevenson built that famous lighthouse,” Louis’ father reminded him.
"It has saved the lives of thousands of seamen who would have been dashed to pieces on the reef.”[13]
Louis’ grandfather, his father, and all of his uncles were engineers.
They traveled on until they reached St. Andrews, and there Thomas Stevenson began checking every harbor light as they went along. He chatted with each caretaker. The wind and the surf made so much noise the men could hardly hear each other, and the sea gulls swooped around them. Louis stood about and listened and watched and stuffed his hands deep into his pockets to keep them warm.
By the end of the day they had visited seventeen lights. Driving home, Mr. Stevenson talked on and on to his son, hoping to inspire him to be an engineer.
"The Stevensons have invented many improvements for lighthouses,” he said.
Louis knew that, and he knew that his own father had perfected the revolving light.
It was late when they reached home. Mrs. Stevenson and Cummy were watching for them. Louis came into the home, cheeks rosy from the sharp sea wind, eyes sparkling from excitement. That was a good sign, the ladies agreed.
But RLS had so many moods that no one ever lasted long. Sometimes his moods took him climbing to the top of Edinburgh’s Calton Hill, because, he always said, he wanted to see the best view of Edinburgh. If he wanted to feel sad, he went to the Calton graveyard nearby and sat among the tombstones. Sometimes his moods came from the dreams he had at night. As he grew older he began to enjoy his dreams, because they were stories. "When he was asleep his mind became a stage, with little people acting on it. The little people of his dreams gave him ideas for stories when he awakened.
“The little people in my dreams are Brownies[14] who do one-half my work for me,” he said when he was grown and an author.
Louis had one of his depressed moods shortly after his trip along the Fife coast, and it didn’t come from his dreams. His parents and Cummy were going to spend the winter months in Mentone again, and he couldn’t go.
“You will have to stay at a boarding school at Spring Grove near Aunt Jane,” they told him.
And no matter how much he said he would rather loll about in sunny France[15], that was what they made him do. On their way south his parents stopped off in London to turn him over to Aunt Jane. Stevenson liked Spring Grove School less than any school he had ever been in. The boys all seemed too young. They didn’t like to read as much as he. They spent most of their time at sports and games that he didn’t enjoy. By the time his birthday came around in November, he was so miserable that he wrote to his mother and father: “I hope you will find your house at Mentone nice… You told me to tell you whenever I was miserable. I do not feel well, and I wish to get home. Do take me with you.”
That was enough for the Stevensons! They couldn’t bear to let him suffer. Mr. Stevenson dashed home to England and took Louis with him to Mentone. And they all had a happy winter together, looking at the Mediterranean Sea.
When they returned to Edinburgh in May, Mrs. Stevenson said, “We must do something about Smout’s schooling.”
"I think Mr. Thompson’s private school on Frederick Street would be the best,” said Mr. Stevenson.
Mr. Thompson specialized in problem boys—boys who were behind in their studies and boys who weren’t strong enough to get along in the regular schools. Smout didn’t get into any trouble at Mr. Thompson’s, that is, when he went and when he wasn’t out of school sick or traveling with his family.
But Smout’s big interest was still writing. He was always writing something—always practicing. He went around with two books in his pocket, one to read, one to write in.
“As I walked, my mind was busy fitting what I saw with appropriate words; when I sat by the roadside, I would either read, or a pencil and a penny version-book would be in my hand, to note down the features of the scene or commemorate some halting stanzas. Thus I lived with words.
And what I thus wrote was for no ulterior use, it was written consciously for practice.”
By then his family had given him both rooms on the top floor at Heriot Row. One room was his bedroom, the other was his study and work room.
Every once in a while he persuaded his friends and his Cousin Bob to help him start a magazine. The first was The Schoolboy’s Magazine. That only lasted one issue, and Louis wrote all four stories—horrible tales full of ghosts, murders, and shipwrecks.
“What are you writing now, Smout?” Cummy asked him one day.
“Oh,” he replied airily, "I am writing a novel.”
Of course, nothing came of that. He was only fifteen, and he didn’t have enough experience to start such a big job.
Next season he was off on another project[16], The Sunbeam Magazine. That was more successful than The Schoolboy’s Magazine. It lasted three issues.
He did write[17] a book when he was only sixteen— The Pentland Rising [18]. It was the story of a real battle that had taken place in the Pentland Hills, near Edinburgh, two hundred years earlier. Mr. Stevenson was so pleased that his son had written something serious for a change, that he took it to the printer and paid to have it published.
But Mr. Stevenson didn’t want his son to spend all of his time writing. He lost patience with him completely by the time Louis was seventeen. The boy was showing no interest in engineering. He was showing no interest in any one thing for very long.
“You are old enough for college,” said Mr. Stevenson. “I am going to enroll you at Edinburgh University next fall.”
Chapter V
IN THE PENTLAND HILLS
I saw you toss the kites on high
And blow the birds about the sky;
And all around I heard you pass,
Like ladies’ skirts across the grass—
О wind, a-blowing all day long,
О wind, that sings so loud a song.
(The Wind)
But in the spring before Louis started college, Mr. Stevenson rented a summer home for his family, Swanston Cottage. It was hidden in the hilly pasture country south of Edinburgh called the Pentlands. For Louis it became one of the happiest places of his life.
He and his parents and Cummy moved into the white stone house in May and stayed there until October. They all liked Swanston Cottage so much that they went there every summer for years and years.
Cummy stayed with the Stevensons all through those years. Even though the baby had long since grown up and didn’t need a nurse, Cummy seemed to belong with the family[19]. She was a companion for Mr. Stevenson, and she looked after Louis whenever he was home. He was “her boy”.
Louis loved to walk about the grassy Pentland hills with Coolin. There was always a stoss-about wind blowing, stirring his hair and the dog’s hair and the tops of the tall yellow grass.
He and Coolin made John Tod, the shepherd, angry when they first went to live at Swans ton. They wandered right through the middle of a flock of sheep and lambs. The shepherd roared at them, and from then on he was the “roaring shepherd” to young Stevenson. They learned to be friends when Stevenson learned to keep himself and his dog out of John Tod’s flock of sheep.
Stevenson was fairly tall by the time he was seventeen, but he was thin and frail-looking and rather hollow-chested. His hair had turned brown, and he let it grow long like a poet. That made his long, narrow face look even longer. His eyes were his most attractive feature. They were big and deep and bright. Everyone noticed his eyes.
In the peace and quiet of Swanston, Louis slept better at night without so many nightmares. And so his health was better. But the free and happy summer there seemed to end more quickly than summer had ever ended before.
In blustery November he was walking up the hill on North Bridge to the University. He only had to attend two classes—one in Latin and one in Greek. But he never quite made either one. Because he loved to write, he was interested in writers. So, each day, he slipped quietly into the class in literature. Sir Walter Scott was one of his favorite authors. Sir Walter Scott had belonged to Edinburgh, too.
Thomas Stevenson didn’t seem to worry about the fact that Louis wasted so much time in college.
"I didn’t do very well in school myself, but I’m a success now,” he said.
Mrs. Stevenson and Cummy worried about his health and comfort. They saw to it that he dressed warmly enough and that he had the foods he liked. His father tried to be strict with money and gave him an allowance of a pound a month, which was about five dollars then. It was never enough. Stevenson went around with the poorest students in college, and he ate in the cheapest restaurants. He even wore odd clothes, although this was more to make himself conspicuous. He took to wearing a velvet smoking jacket to class. He did everything he could to look like a writer. He even grew a mustache.
The more he wanted to be a writer, the more his father wanted him to be an engineer. Louis loved his father, and for a while he did settle down to learn engineering. As soon as the first year at the University ended, his father sent him back to the Scottish coast to learn more about lighthouses and the sea.
He went first to Anstruther on the coast of Fife. It was a harbor town where the herring boats gathered, and it was on the north side of the Firth of Forth. Louis and his father had passed through it on their inspection trip. At Anstruther, Louis was supposed to study the harbor works. He boarded in a small cottage with a carpenter and his family. During the day he watched the divers go below the water to test the ground and report. He watched the masons work with the Fife-ness stone[20] to build piers. After the day’s work was done, there was some fun in a seaside town in the summer.
"Tonight I went to see a strolling band of players,” he wrote to his mother.
But he soon grew tired of Anstruther and tired of trying to like engineering. He wrote to his mother again,
“I am utterly sick of this grey, grim, sea-beaten hole. I have a little cold in my head, which makes my eyes sore; and you can’t tell how utterly sick I am, and how anxious to get back among trees and flowers.”
It was July, and he knew his family was enjoying Swanston Cottage. There was no quitting, though, until he had gone on to Wick to see more harbor works.
Wick is way up on the northern tip of Scotland, another harbor for herring fishers. There the masons and divers were building a breakwater. As Louis stood watching them, his imagination went to work and he had an inspiration. To go down in a diver’s suit! Fancy the adventure of walking around on the bottom of the North Sea.
He had to do a lot of talking, but Stevenson was clever with words. The men gave in and let him.[21] He put on layers and layers of woolen underwear and climbed into the diving suit. The shoes were solid lead, so heavy he could hardly move. Someone lifted the helmet and set it down on top of his head and screwed it into place. He was shut inside, looking at his friends through a heavy glass window. He felt panicky for a minute, but no one could hear a word he said. Men pushed and helped him to the ladder, and he had to go over the side.
Rung by rung in his lead shoes he went down into the sea. Another diver went with him to guide him. Here’s how Stevenson described it:
"Some twenty rounds below the platform, twilight fell. Looking up, I saw a low green heaven mottled with vanishing bells of white; looking around, except for the weedy spokes and shafts of the ladder, nothing but a green gloaming, somewhat opaque but very restful and delicious. Thirty rounds lower, I stepped off.... A dumb helmeted figure took me by the hand…. As I began to go forward with the hand of my estranged companion, a world of tumbled stones was visible, pillared with the weedy uprights of the staging: overhead, a flat roof of green: a little in front, the sea-wall, like an unfinished rampart. And presently in our upward progress, Bob motioned me to leap upon a stone; I looked to see if he were possibly in earnest, and he only signed to me the more imperiously. Now the block stood six feet high; it would have been quite a leap to me unencumbered; with the breast and back weights, and the twenty pounds upon each foot, and the staggering load of the helmet, the thing was out of reason[22]. I laughed aloud in my tomb; and to prove to Bob how far he was astray, I gave a little impulse from my toes. Up I soared like a bird, my companion soaring at my side. As high as to the stone, and then higher, I pursued my impotent and empty flight. Even when the strong arm of Bob had checked my shoulders, my heels continued their ascent; so that I blew out sideways like an autumn leaf, and must be hauled in, hand over hand, as sailors haul in the slack of a sail, and propped upon my feet again like an intoxicated sparrow.”
They found their way back to the ladder and began to climb up.
“Out of the green, I shot at once into a glory of rosy, almost sanguine light!”
Now that had been an experience! That was worth writing about.[23]
“It was one of the best things I got from my education as an engineer,” he declared.
As for Wick itself, it wasn’t Swanston Cottage either. On a gray day the houses were gray, the sky was gray, the sea was gray, the shore was gray. The sea air was sharp and cold, especially when it rained.
He had work to do there. He had to go out in a small boat with the other workmen, rain or not, from ten to two and from three to seven. Sometimes the waves were high. He took his dog out once, and the dog got terribly seasick. At night he was so tired he couldn’t write or even stay awake.
He was there until the middle of October.
Chapter VI
A MADCAP
Come up here, O dusty feet!
Here is fairy bread to eat.
Here in my retiring room,
Children you may dine
On the golden smell of broom
And the shade of pine;
And when you have eaten well,
Fairy stories hear and tell.
(Fairy-Bread)
The out-of-doors was good for Smout’s health, even though he didn’t always like the places his father sent him to. His education was gradually improving as well. His writing was improving most of all, because he practiced it all the time. He liked words more and more, and putting words together to make vivid pictures. One of his poems begins: “For love of lovely words…”
Whenever he saw something of his own in print, he was so happy it was almost more than he could bear. He wrote a four-page booklet called The Charity Bazaar [24]. It was printed up to be sold at a charity bazaar in Edinburgh. There were a lot of copies left over. So, whenever visitors came to the house on Heriot Row, Louis bestowed a copy on them.
"Were you at the bazaar?” he asked a lady friend of his mother’s one day.
No, she told him, she had missed the bazaar. "That’s too bad,” replied the young author, "because you missed buying my booklet.”
The lady’s eyes twinkled. “Perhaps I could still buy one,” she said.
“No,” he replied. “The sale is over. But I can give you a copy!”
With a great flourish and a deep bow he produced a copy of The Charity Bazaar and showed her the author’s name, “RLS.”
Some people who met him thought Stevenson was a spoiled, conceited young man. Others who met him realized he was a genius. One of these was Mrs. Fleeming Jenkin. When she began to talk to Louis, she almost forgot that she had come to see Mrs. Stevenson. She listened to his Scottish accent and his brilliant talk. She watched him, too, because she noticed his big eyes and his smile.
“I have made the acquaintance of a poet,” she told her husband as soon as she reached home. “And he’s coming here to visit with us tomorrow.”
From then on RLS and Dr. and Mrs. Fleeming Jenkin were friends. Dr. Jenkin was a professor of engineering, but he was also interested in art, especially the theatre. He understood Stevenson.
By the time Stevenson was eighteen, he was thinking seriously about his pen name. His whole name was Robert Louis Balfour Stevenson. That was too long. He decided to drop the Balfour. He also informed his family that he wished to be called Robert Louis instead of Louis.
His second winter at the University he did more of just what he pleased. He cut classes[25] and read his favorite authors instead of his lessons. He still went about in a velvet smoking jacket instead of a coat, and everyone called him “Velvet Coat.”
The high spot of his second college year was the Speculative Society[26]. “The Spec” was a famous club that met at the University. Its members talked and debated—and speculated. Usually, one member wrote a paper on his favorite subject and read it to the meeting. After that there was a discussion. Sir Walter Scott had been a member of the Speculative Society and so had many other famous Scotsmen. How Stevenson enjoyed the meetings and the discussions!
Once more, come summer, he tried to work at engineering. He went with his father aboard a steamer of the Northern Lights Commissioners to cruise among the northern islands of Scotland. Then he took Dr. Jenkin’s course in engineering.
But Robert Louis’ heart was elsewhere. It was with his "love of lovely words.” And it was with Coolin, who had died at the age of twelve. Coolin lay buried at the foot of the garden at Swanston Cottage. The Stevensons found him one day, lying in the road, not far from the cottage.
“What happened?” they asked tearfully of everyone they saw.
“He picked a fight with a collie twice as big,” said one of the farmers.
Coolin’s master wrote something for his grave:
“To Coolin, the gentle and friendly, who, in a green old age, by some unhappy chance, met his death at the place where three roads meet, where the hunters are wont to gather[27]. This stone has been set up to his memory by his sorrowing friends. 1869.
RLS”
The summer that he was nineteen, Stevenson went out once more with his father to cruise among Scotland’s western islands. They paid a special visit to the bland of Earraid where a new lighthouse was being built. RLS jotted down a lot of notes about the island, and many years later he used them to write Kidnapped [28].
Near the end of his last year at the University, he made hb last big effort for engineering. He wrote a paper called, "On a New Form of Intermittent Light for Lighthouses”[29]. Thomas Stevenson was overjoyed. The paper was to be read at a meeting of the very important Royal Scottish Academy of Arts[30]. The night of the meeting the author himself was called upon to read his own paper.
But when Thomas Stevenson’s hopes were highest, Robert Louis Stevenson’s were the lowest. RLS simply did not want to be an engineer. He would have to face his father about it. So, feeling depressed and worried and a little sickish, he went for a long walk with his father. They talked it out.
His father was shocked, but he did understand. He knew in his heart that Robert Louis wasn’t strong enough for such heavy work.
“What do you want to do for a living?”
Stevenson could only say, "I like literature, and I want to write.”
“That won’t do,” said the older man, shaking his head.
They walked on for a while, both silent.
At last Thomas Stevenson said, “I think law would be best for you.” So law it was for a while.
Robert Louis spent the whole lovely summer at Swanston Cottage first, talking to the “roaring shepherd” or sitting in the garden working on an essay about his childhood at Colinton Manse.
The next winter wasn’t too bad. Stevenson really did a little studying for his law classes. There was Duddingston Loch to skate on. There was Professor Fleeming Jenkin’s house to visit in. DR. Jenkin and his friends gave plays. They rehearsed for them for weeks and weeks. Because plays were another kind of writing, RLS discovered that he loved them. Rehearsals were happy times. Dr. Jenkin and his friends often let him hold the book and be the prompter. The Speculative Society was another place for gay and cheerful company.
Cousin Bob had been away a long time. He had been studying at Cambridge University, and he had been in France studying art. He came back to Edinburgh, to add to Robert Louis’ gaiety[31]. Bob had all kinds of adventures to tell Robert Louis, and he had learned all manner of things about art. Bob and Robert Louis were both cheerful when they were together. They both loved to talk about everything under the sun. They roved all over Edinburgh together, talking and talking, then laughing, then talking some more.
Now that they were both grown, and both clever, they could think of all kinds of mischief. “Mr. Libbel” was the prank they enjoyed most. They were the mysterious Mr. Libbel. They took small treasures of their own to pawn shops and left them there in the name of “Mr. Libbel.” They had calling cards printed up for John Libbel. They went calling when they knew the folks would not be home and left Mr. Libbel’s card. They went about asking for Mr. Libbel.
The two were both old enough to be more serious. Robert Louis was twenty-one and his cousin was three years older.
“What a great mystery we’ll have in Edinburgh!” they agreed, and plotted ways to make people believe there really was a Mr. Libbel around the town whom no one had seen.
But they were not as clever as they thought. One day they were talking to a shopkeeper about Mr. Libbel. The man looked right at them—and right through them.
“Oh, I know who you are,” he said. "You two Stevensons are Mr. Libbel.”
And that was the end of that prank.
By spring Robert Louis took the next step toward becoming a Scottish advocate, a lawyer who presents cases in court. He went to work in the office of the law company, Skene, Edwards & Bilton. There he made copies of deeds and leases.
“I can’t stand office work,” he told Dr. Jenkin one evening.
“Never mind,”[32] said Professor Jenkin. “We’re starting rehearsals for our new play. We’re doing The Taming of the Shrew [33] this year, and we’ve decided to give you a part in it.”
So Stevenson went back and forth[34]—between the depressing hours at the law company to the hilarious hours at Jenkin’s. He never really felt well or happy. He wasn’t feeling well, because his old troubles were back—coughs and colds, and cold-weather sick periods. He wasn’t happy, because his father was unhappy about him. The disagreement between Robert Louis and his father was becoming serious.
That summer Stevenson took a trip to Europe with Walter Simpson. The Simpsons were neighbors who lived on Queen Street, just on the other side of Queen Street Gardens from Heriot Row. Stevenson and Simpson had a lazy, restful journey through Belgium, Germany, and France. Stevenson’s health was improved by it, but the good was lost as soon as he got back to blowy, snowy Edinburgh.
He felt miserable from colds and depressed because he and his father quarreled so much. When he went to a rehearsal at Dr. Jenkin’s, he was gayer than ever. He was too gay because he was trying to cover up his true feelings.
“He’s a madcap,” one of Stevenson’s professors once said of him, and he certainly was.
He could never stay at one thing for very long at a time. When he felt ill, and probably had a temperature, he was more of a madcap than ever.
Winter and spring finally passed, and summer came once more. Stevenson could leave Edinburgh for the countryside. This time Stevenson’s illness was more than summertime could cure. He lost weight. He grew nervous. He wore himself out with fits of excitement. He couldn’t sleep well at night. His old nightmares haunted him.
There was nothing to do but consult a doctor. The doctor was firm.
“You must go south at once,” he told Stevenson. “You need sunshine and rest. And go alone so that you can stop worrying.”
“I’ve been ordered south[35],” RLS told his friends. His parents obeyed the doctor. They gave Robert Louis the money and arranged the trip.
Stevenson was returning to his most favorite place, Mentone in France on the Mediterranean Sea.
Chapter VII
ORDERED SOUTH
Great is the sun, and wide he goes
Through empty heaven without repose;
And in the blue and glowing days
More thick than rain he showers his rays.
Though closer still the blinds we pull
To keep the shady parlour cool,
Yet he will find a chink or two
To slip his golden fingers through.
(Summer Sun)
The journey from Edinburgh to London to Dover to France, and all through France down to Mentone, was tiring, especially for anyone as worn out as Robert Louis Stevenson. He thought he would collapse before he finally reached his room at the Hotel du Pavilion.
He looked out of his window at the Mediterranean Sea. The water was still glistening in the warm sun. He began to relax. This winter there would be no snow and cold, no worries, no law.
“I’ll rest a while,” he thought, “then I will write.”
After just a few weeks at Mentone he received the most important news of his life. He had made his first real sale to a commercial magazine! He had written an essay just the summer before called “On Roads”[36], and Portfolio magazine bought it. He knew who had helped Him—a new friend, someone he had met shortly before coming to Mentone—Sidney Colvin. Colvin was the same age as Stevenson, and he was interested in the same things—art and literature. He himself wrote articles for magazines, and he had shown Stevenson’s essay to an editor friend.
When Stevenson saw the December issue of Portfolio with his article in it, he shouted for joy.
“I’m started on my career at last!”
He began to write another essay immediately. The new one was to be called "Ordered South”[37]. Stevenson worked. He gained strength He felt happier. To make life even better, Sidney Colvin came to Mentone in December. The two young men spent three months together talking and ranging about. Stevenson now could speak excellent French, and that made it easier for both of them.
One happiness piled upon another. Colvin read “Ordered South,” and he said, “I am going to send this to Macmillan’s Magazine for you.”
And the magazine bought it.
With so much good fortune, Stevenson could have stayed in a lucky place like Mentone forever. But holidays never last forever. In April he had to start home.
When RLS finally walked into the house on Heriot Row in Edinburgh, his mother and Cummy and even his father burst into smiles. He looked so much better with his suntan!
““Why, Smout!” declared Cummy. “I think you’ve gained a wee bit of weight.”
“Aye!” said his father brusquely.
Although Smout still had to finish his law studies, his father was pleased to hear of the two articles he had sold.
“Instead of a pound a month pocket money,” said his father, "I’ve decided to give you a yearly allowance of eighty-four pounds.”
That amounted to seven pounds a month, much better than his schoolboy’s allowance. But Stevenson usually spent money as soon as he had it, or gave it to someone who needed it. His father soon shook his head. His son didn’t