Robert Louis Stevenson was a Scottish novelist, poet, and travel writer, and a leading representative of Neo-Romanticism in English literature. He was the man who "seemed to pick the right word up on the point of his pen, like a man playing spillikins", as G. K. Chesterton put it. He was greatly admired by many authors, including Jorge Luis Borges, Ernest Hemingway, Rudyard Kipling and Vladimir Nabokov.¹ Most modernist writers dismissed him, however, because he was popular and did not write within their narrow definition of literature. It is only recently that critics have begun to look beyond Stevenson's popularity and allow him a place in the canon.


Early Life ²
He was born Robert Lewis Balfour Stevenson,³ in Edinburgh, Scotland, on November 13, 1850. His father was Thomas Stevenson, and his grandfather was Robert Stevenson; both were distinguished lighthouse designers and engineers, as was his great-grandfather. It was from this side of the family that he inherited his love of adventure, joy of the sea and of the open road. His maternal grandfather, Lewis Balfour, was a minister and a professor of moral philosophy, and Stevenson spent the greater part of his boyhood holidays in his house. "Now I often wonder," he wrote, "what I have inherited from this old minister. I must suppose, indeed, that he was fond of preaching sermons, and so am I, though I never heard it maintained that either of us loved to hear them." ⁴

From his mother, Margaret Balfour, he inherited weak lungs (perhaps tuberculosis), that kept him constantly in "the land of the counterpane" during the winter, where his nurse spent long hours by his bedside reading from the Bible, and from the lives of the old Covenanters. During the summer he was encouraged to play outside, where he proved to be a wild and carefree child. By the age of eleven, his health had improved so that his parents prepared him for the University of Edinburgh by having him attend Edinburgh Academy, planning for him to follow his father as a lighthouse engineer. During this period he read widely and especially enjoyed Shakespeare, Walter Scott, John Bunyan and The Arabian Nights.

He entered the University of Edinburgh at seventeen, but soon discovered he had neither the scientific mind nor physical endurance to succeed as an engineer. When his father took him for a voyage he found that, instead of being interested in lighthouse construction, his mind was teeming with wonderful romances about the coasts and islands which they visited. Although his father was stern, he finally allowed him to decide upon a career in literature, but wanted him to get a degree in law, so that he might have something to fall back upon. By the age of twenty-five, Stevenson passed the examinations for admission to the bar, though not until he had nearly ruined his health through work and worry. His father's lack of understanding led him to write later:

                    Say not of me that weakly I declined
                    The labours of my sires, and fled the sea,
                    The towers we founded and the lamps we lit,
                    To play at home with paper like a child.⁵


Marriage and Travels
Stevenson spent the next four years (1875-1879) mostly in travel and in search of a climate that would be more beneficial for his health. He made long trips to Fontainebleau, Barbizon, Grez, and Nemours, becoming a member of the artists' colonies there. He made frequent trips to Paris, visiting galleries and the theatres. It was during this period he first met his future wife, Fanny Vandegrift Osbourne, and made most of his lasting friends. These included Sidney Colvin, his biographer and literary agent; William Henley, a collaborator in dramatic composition; Mrs. Sitwell, who helped him through a religious crisis; Andrew Lang, Edmund Gosse, and Leslie Stephen, all writers and critics. He also made the journeys described in An Inland Voyage and Travels with a Donkey in the Cévennes. In addition, he wrote some twenty articles and essays which appeared in various magazines. Although it seemed to his parents he was wasting his time and being idle, he was, in fact, constantly studying to perfect his style of writing and broaden his knowledge of life, emerging as a man of letters.

When Stevenson and Fanny Vandegrift Osbourne met in France in 1876, it was love at first sight. A few months later she returned to her home in San Francisco, California. When he learned that she was sick, Stevenson was determined to follow her. His friends advised against the journey and, knowing his father's temper, he sailed without even notifying his parents. He took steerage passage on the Devonian in part to save money, but also to learn how others travelled, and to increase the adventure of the journey. From New York City he traveled by train to California. He later wrote about the experience in An Amateur Emigrant and Across the Plains. Although the trip was good experience for his writing, it broke his health, and he was near death when he arrived in Monterey, California. There, he was nursed back to health by some ranchers.

In December 1879 Stevenson had recovered his health enough to continue to San Francisco, where for several months he struggled "all alone on forty-five cents a day, and sometimes less, with quantities of hard work and many heavy thoughts,"⁶ in an effort to support himself through his writing; but by the end of the winter his health gave out again, and he found himself at death's door. Vandegrift — now officially divorced from her husband and recovered from her own illness — came to Stevenson's bedside and nursed him to health. "After a while," he wrote, "my spirit got up again in a divine frenzy, and has since kicked and spurred my vile body forward with great emphasis and success."⁷ When Stevenson's father heard of his condition, he cabled him money to help him through this period.

In May 1880 he married, although, as he said, he was "a mere complication of cough and bones, much fitter for an emblem of mortality than a bridegroom."⁸ With his new wife and her son, Lloyd, he traveled north of San Francisco to Napa Valley, and spent a summer honeymoon at an abandoned mining camp on Mount Saint Helena. This experience he published in The Silverado Squatters. Next, he met Charles Warren Stoddard, co-editor of the Overland Monthly and author of South Sea Idylls, who urged Stevenson to travel to the South Pacific, an idea which would return to him many years later. In August 1880 he sailed from New York with his family back to Britain, and found his parents and his friend Sidney Colvin on the wharf at Liverpool, happy to see him return home. Gradually, his new wife was able to patch up the differences between father and son and make herself a part of the new family through her charm and wit.


Journey to the Pacific

John Singer Sargent, 1885.

For the next seven years, between 1880 and 1887, Stevenson searched in vain for a place of residence suitable to his health. He spent his summers at various places in Scotland and England, including Westbourne, Dorset; for his winters, he escaped to sunny France, and lived at Châlet am Stein, Davos-Platz and the Châlet de Solitude at Hyères, where, for a time, he enjoyed almost complete happiness. "I have so many things to make life sweet to me," he wrote, "it seems a pity I cannot have that other one thing—health. But though you will be angry to hear it, I believe for myself, at least, what is is best. I believed it all through my worst days, and I am not ashamed to profess it now."⁹ In spite of the blood on his handkerchief and the medicine bottle at his elbow, his optimistic spirit kept him going, and he produced the bulk of his best known work: Treasure Island, his first widely popular book; Kidnapped; The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, the story which established his wider reputation; and two volumes of verse, A Child's Garden of Verses and Underwoods.

On the death of his father in 1887, Stevenson felt free to follow the advice of his physician to try a complete change of climate. He started with his mother and family for Colorado, but after landing in New York, decided to spend the winter at Saranac Lake, in the Adirondacks. During the intensely cold winter Stevenson wrote a number of his best essays, including Pulvis et Umbra. He also began The Master of Ballantrae, and lightheartedly planned, for the following summer, a cruise to the southern Pacific Ocean. "The proudest moments of my life," he wrote, "have been passed in the stern-sheets of a boat with that romantic garment over my shoulders."¹⁰

John Singer Sargent, 1887.

In June 1888, Stevenson chartered the yacht Casco and set sail with his family from San Francisco. The vessel "ploughed her path of snow across the empty deep... far from any hand of help."¹¹ The salt sea air and thrill of adventure for a time restored his health; and for nearly three years he wandered the eastern and central Pacific, visiting important island groups. He stopped for extended stays at the Hawaiian Islands, where he became a good friend of King David Kalakaua. Stevenson also befriended the king's niece, Princess Victoria Kaiulani, who was of Scottish heritage. He also spent time at the Gilbert Islands, Tahiti and the Samoan Islands. During this period he completed The Master of Ballantrae, composed two ballads based on the legends of the islanders, and wrote The Bottle Imp. These experiences are preserved in his various letters and in The South Seas.


Last years
In 1890 Stevenson purchased four hundred acres (about 1.6 square kilometres) of land in Upolu, one of the Samoan islands. Here, after two aborted attempts to visit Scotland, he established himself, after much work, upon his estate, which he named Vailima ("Five Rivers"). His influence spread to the natives who consulted him for advice, and he soon became involved in local politics. He was convinced the European officials appointed to rule the natives were incompetent, and after many futile attempts to resolve the matter, he published A Footnote to History. This was such a stinging protest against existing conditions that it resulted in the recall of two officials, and Stevenson feared for a time it would result in his own deportation. When things had finally blown over he wrote a friend, "I used to think meanly of the plumber; but how he shines beside the politician!"¹²

In addition to building his house, clearing his land, and helping the natives in many ways, Stevenson found time to work at his writing. In his enthusiasm, he felt that "there was never any man had so many irons in the fire."¹³ He wrote The Beach of Falesa, David Balfour, and Ebb Tide, as well as the Vailima Letters, during this period.

By Girolamo Nerli, 1892.

For a time during 1894 Stevenson felt depressed; he wondered if he had exhausted his creative vein and completely worked himself out. He wrote that he had "overworked bitterly."¹⁴ He felt more clearly, with each fresh attempt, that the best he could write was "ditch water."¹⁵ He even feared that he might again become a helpless invalid. He rebelled against this idea: "I wish to die in my boots; no more land of counterpane for me. To be drowned, to be shot, to be thrown from a horse — ay, to be hanged rather than pass again through that slow dissolution."¹⁶ He then suddenly had a return of his old energy and he began work on Weir of Hermiston. He felt that this was the best work he had done. He was convinced, "sick and well, I have had a splendid life of it, grudge nothing, regret very little ... take it all over, damnation and all, would hardly change with any man of my time."¹⁷

Without knowing it, he was to have his wish fulfilled. During the morning of December 3, 1894, he had worked hard as usual on Weir of Hermiston. During the evening, while conversing with his wife and straining to open a bottle of wine, he suddenly fell to the ground, asking "What's the matter with me, what is this strangeness, has my face changed?"¹⁸ He died within a few hours, probably of a cerebral hemorrhage, at the age of 44. The natives insisted on surrounding his body with a watch-guard during the night, and on bearing their Tusitala (Samoan for "Story Writer") several miles upon their shoulders to the top of a cliff overlooking the sea, where he was buried. A tablet was placed there, which bore the inscription of his 'Requiem', the piece he had always intended as his epitaph:

                                            REQUIEM
                    Under the wide and starry sky,
                    Dig the grave and let me lie.
                    Glad did I live and gladly die,
                         And I laid me down with a will.

                    This be the verse you grave for me:
                    Here he lies where he longed to be;
                    Home is the sailor, home from the sea,
                         And the hunter home from the hill. ¹⁹




Modern Reception
Stevenson was a celebrity in his own time, but with the rise of modern literature after World War I, he was seen for much of the 20th century as a second-class writer, relegated to children's literature and horror genres. Condemned by authors such as Virginia Woolf and Leonard Woolf, he was gradually excluded from the canon of literature taught in schools. His exclusion reached a height when his work was entirely unmentioned in the 1973 2,000-page Oxford Anthology of English Literature. The Norton Anthology of English Literature excluded him from 1968 to 2000 (eds. 1-7), including him only in the 8th edition (2006). The late 20th century saw the start of a re-evaluation of Stevenson as an artist of great range and insight, a literary theorist, an essayist and social critic, a witness to the colonial history of the South Pacific, and a humanist. He is now being re-evaluated as a peer with authors such as Joseph Conrad (whom Stevenson influenced with his South Seas fiction) and Henry James, with new scholarly studies and organizations devoted to Stevenson.²⁰ No matter what the scholarly reception, Stevenson remains very popular. According to the Index Translationum, Stevenson is ranked the 25th most translated author in the world, ahead of Charles Dickens, Oscar Wilde and Edgar Allan Poe.



Notes

1. Dillard, xiii.
   
2. Unless otherwise noted, the biography of Stevenson in this article,
   from birth to death, was adapted from Bowman.
   
3. When Stevenson was around 18 years old he changed the spelling of 'Lewis' to 'Louis'.
   
4. Stevenson. "Memories," 55.
5. Underwoods, 1887.
   
6. Aldington, 118.
   
7. Letter to Edmund Gosse, October 8, 1879. In Letters, i. 150.
   
8. Letter to P. G. Hamerton, July 1881. In Letters,i. 208.
   
9. Letter to Sidney Colvin, August 1881. In Letters, i. 214.
   
10. Letter to W. E. Henley, August 1881. In Letters,i. 213.
    
11. Stevenson's Diary, July 1888. Quoted in Balfour, ii. 43.
    
12. Letter to Sidney Colvin, April 17, 1893. In Vailima Letters, ii. 122.
    
13. Letter to Sidney Colvin, January 3, 1892. In Vailima Letters, i. 213.
    
14. Letter to Sidney Colvin, December 1893. In Vailima Letters, ii. 200.
    
15. Letter to W. E. Henley, Autumn 1878. In Letters, i. 150.
    
16. Letter to Sidney Colvin, May, 1892. In Vailima Letters, i. 280.
    
17. Letter to H. B. Baildon, [1891]. In Letters, ii. 219-220.
    
18. Nabokov, 34.
    
19. Underwoods, 1887.
    
20. Arata.