Complete Works of Robert Louis Stevenson (Illustrated) (1101 page)

“From the navigator’s point of view, the danger of this spot lay chiefly in the fact that it was so widely scattered. The ridge runs like a broken backbone for a distance of some eight miles.... In rough weather the whole of the rocks are covered, and the waves, beating heavily on the mass, convert the scene into one of indescribable tumult....

“There was only one point where a tower could be placed, and this was so exposed that the safe handling of men and material constituted a grave responsibility.”

It was necessary to erect a tower one hundred and thirty feet high; “the loftiest and weightiest work of its character that had ever been contemplated up to this time....

“The Atlantic swell, which rendered landing on the ridge precarious and hazardous, did not permit the men to be housed upon a floating home, as had been the practice in the early days of the Bell Rock tower. In order to permit the work to go forward as uninterruptedly as the sea would allow, a peculiar barrack was erected. It was a house on stilts, the legs being sunk firmly into the rock, with the living quarters perched some fifty feet up in the air.

“Residence in this tower was eerie. The men climbed the ladder and entered a small room, which served the purposes of kitchen, living-room, and parlor....

“When a storm was raging, the waves, as they combed over the rock, shook the legs violently and scurried under the floor in seething foam. Now and again a roller, rising higher than its fellows, broke upon the rock and sent a mass of water against the flooring to hammer at the door. Above the living-room were the sleeping quarters, high and dry, save when a shower of spray fell upon the roof and walls like heavy hail.... The men, however, were not perturbed. Sleeping, even under such conditions, was far preferable to doubtful rest in a bunk upon an attendant vessel, rolling and pitching with the motion of the sea. They had had a surfeit of such experience ... while the barrack was under erection.

“For two years it withstood the seas without incident, and the engineer and men came to regard the eyrie as safe as a house on shore. But one night the little colony received a shock. The angry Atlantic got one or two of its trip-hammer blows well home, and smashed the structure to fragments. Fortunately, at the time it was untenanted.”

No time was lost in rebuilding the barrack and this time it withstood all tests until it was torn down after Skerryvore was finished.

“While the foundations were being prepared, and until the barrack was constructed, the men ran other terrible risks every morning and night landing upon and leaving the polished surface of the reef. Five months during the summer was the working season, but even then many days and weeks were often lost owing to the swell being too great to permit the rowing boat to come alongside. The engineer relates that the work was ‘a good lesson in the school of patience,’ because the delays were frequent and galling, while every storm which got up and expended its rage upon the reef left its mark indelibly among the engineer’s stock in trade. Cranes and other materials were swept away as if they were corks; lashings, no matter how strong, were snapped like pack-threads.

“Probably the worst experience was when the men on the rock were weather-bound for seven weeks during one season.... Their provisions sank to a very low level, they ran short of fuel, their sodden clothing was worn to rags....

“Six years were occupied in the completion of the work, and, as may be imagined, the final touches were welcomed with thankfulness by those who had been concerned in the enterprise.”

It was in meteorological researches and illumination of lighthouses, however, that Thomas Stevenson did his greatest work. It was he who brought to perfection the revolving light now so generally used.

In spite of this and other valuable inventions his name has remained little known, owing to the fact that none of his inventions were ever patented. The Stevensons believed that, holding government appointments, any original work they did belonged to the nation. “A patent not only brings in money but spreads reputation,” writes his son, “and my father’s instruments enter anonymously into a hundred light rooms and are passed anonymously over in a hundred reports, where the least considerable patent would stand out and tell its author’s story.”

He was beloved among a wide circle of friends and the esteem of those in his profession was shown when in 1884 they chose him for president of the Royal Society of Edinburgh. To the general public, however, he remained unknown in spite of the fact that “His lights were in all parts of the world guiding the mariners.”

CHAPTER II

ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON

“As from the house your mother sees
You playing round the garden trees,
So you may see, if you will look
Through the window of this book,
Another child, far, far away,
And in another garden, play.”

— ”Child’s Garden of Verses.”

Robert Louis Balfour Stevenson was born at No. 8 Howard Place, Edinburgh, Scotland, November 13, 1850.

In 1852 the family moved from Howard Place to Inverleith Terrace, and two years later to No. 17 Heriot Row, which remained their home for many years.

As a child Louis was very delicate and often ill, for years hardly a winter passed that he did not spend many days in bed.

Edinburgh in winter is extremely damp and he tells us: “Many winters I never crossed the threshold, but used to lie on my face on the nursery floor, chalking or painting in water-colors the pictures in the illustrated newspapers; or sit up in bed with a little shawl pinned about my shoulders, to play with bricks or what not.”

The diverting history of “Hop-O’-My-Thumb” and the “Seven-League Boots,” “Little Arthur’s History of England,” “Peter Parley’s Historical Tales,” and “Harry’s Ladder to Learning” were books which he delighted to pore over and their pages bore many traces of his skill with the pencil and paint-brush.

Those who have read the “Child’s Garden of Verses” already know the doings of his childish days, for although those rhymes were not written until he was a grown man he was “one of the few who do not forget their own lives” and “through the windows of this book” gives us a vivid and living picture of the boy who dwelt so much in a world of his own with his quaint thoughts.

If his body was frail his spirit was strong and his power of imagination so great that he cheered himself through many a weary day by playing he was “captain of a tidy little ship,” a soldier, a fierce pirate, an Indian chief, or an explorer in foreign lands. Miles he travelled in his little bed.

“I have just to shut my eyes,
To go sailing through the skies —
To go sailing far away
To the pleasant Land of Play”

he says.

No. 8 Howard Place, Edinburgh, Stevenson’s birthplace

In spite of his power for amusing himself, days like these would have gone far harder had it not been for two devoted people, his mother and his nurse, Alison Cunningham or “Cummie” as he called her. His mother was devoted to him in every way and encouraged his love for reading and story-making. She kept a diary of his progress from day to day, and treasured every picture he drew or scrap he wrote. Cummie came to him as a Torryburn lassie when he was eighteen months old and was like a second mother to him. She not only cared for his bodily comforts but was his friend and comrade as well. She sang for him, danced for him, spun fine tales of pirates and smugglers, and read to him so dramatically that his mind was fired then and there with a longing for travel and adventure which he never lost. When they took their walks through the streets together Cummie had many stories to tell him of Scotland and Edinburgh in the old days. For Edinburgh is a wonderful old city with a wonderful history full of tales of stirring adventure and romance. “For centuries it was a capitol thatched with heather and more than once, in the evil days of English invasion, it has gone up in flames to Heaven, a beacon to ships at sea.... It was the jousting-ground of jealous nobles, not only on Greenside or by the King’s Stables, where set tournaments were fought to the sound of trumpets and under the authority of the royal presence, but in every alley where there was room to cross swords.... In the town, in one of those little shops plastered like so many swallows’ nests among the buttresses of the old Cathedral, that familiar autocrat James VI. would gladly share a bottle of wine with George Heriot the goldsmith. Up on the Pentland Hills, that so quietly look down on the castle with the city lying in waves around it, those mad and dismal fanatics, the Sweet Singers, haggard from long exposure on the moors, sat day and night ‘with tearful psalms.’... In the Grassmarket, stiff-necked covenanting heroes offered up the often unnecessary, but not less honorable, sacrifice of their lives, and bade eloquent farewell to sun, moon and stars and earthly friendships, or died silent to the roll of the drums. Down by yon outlet rode Grahame of Claverhouse and his thirty dragoons, with the town beating to arms behind their horses’ tails — a sorry handful thus riding for their lives, but with a man at their head who was to return in a different temper, make a bold dash that staggered Scotland, and die happily in the thick of the fight....

“The palace of Holyrood is a house of many memories.... Great people of yore, kings and queens, buffoons and grave ambassadors played their stately farce for centuries in Holyrood. Wars have been plotted, dancing has lasted deep into the night, murder has been done in its chambers. There Prince Charlie held his phantom levées and in a very gallant manner represented a fallen dynasty for some hours....

“There is an old story of the subterranean passage between the castle and Holyrood and a bold Highland piper who volunteered to explore its windings. He made his entrance by the upper end, playing a strathspey; the curious footed it after him down the street, following his descent by the sound of the chanter from below; until all of a sudden, about the level of St. Giles the music came abruptly to an end, and the people in the street stood at fault with hands uplifted. Whether he choked with gases, or perished in a quag, or was removed bodily by the Evil One, remains a point of doubt, but the piper has never again been seen or heard of from that day to this. Perhaps he wandered down into the land of Thomas the Rhymer, and some day, when it is least expected, may take a thought to revisit the sunlit upper world. That will be a strange moment for the cabmen on the stands beside St. Giles, when they hear the crone of his pipes reascending from the earth below their horses’ feet.”

In Edinburgh to-day there are armed men and cannon in the castle high up on the great rock above you: “You may see the troops marshalled on the high parade, and at night after the early winter evenfall and in the morning before the laggard winter dawn, the wind carries abroad over Edinburgh the sounds of drums and bugles.”

Long before Louis could write he made up verses and stories for himself, and Cummie wrote them down for him. “I thought they were rare nonsense then,” she said, little dreaming that these same bits of “rare nonsense” were the beginnings of what was to make “her boy” famous across two seas in years to come.

He writes of her when speaking of long nights he lay awake unable to sleep because of a troublesome cough: “How well I remember her lifting me out of bed, carrying me to the window and showing me one or two lit windows up in Queen Street across the dark belt of garden, where also, we told each other, there might be sick little boys and their nurses waiting, like us, for the morning.”

Her devotion to him had its reward in the love he gave her all his life. One of his early essays written when he was twenty and published in the
Juvenilia
was called “Nurses.” Fifteen years later came the publication of the “Child’s Garden of Verses” with a splendid tribute to her as a dedication. He sent her copies of all his books, wrote letters to her, and invited her to visit him. She herself tells that the last time she ever saw him he said to her, “before a room full of people, ‘It’s
you
that gave me a passion for the drama, Cummie,’ ‘Me, Master Lou,’ I said, ‘I never put foot inside a playhouse in my life.’ ‘Ay, woman,’ said he, ‘but it was the good dramatic way ye had of reciting the hymns.’“

When he was six years old his Uncle David offered a Bible picture-book as a prize to the nephews who could write the best history of Moses.

This was Louis’s first real literary attempt. He was not able to write himself, but dictated to his mother and illustrated the story and its cover with pictures which he designed and painted himself.

He won the prize and from that time, his mother says, “it was the desire of his heart to be an author.”

During the winter of 1856-57 his favorite cousin, Robert Alan Mowbray Stevenson, usually called Bob, visited them; a great treat for Louis, not only because his ill health kept him from making many companions of his own age, but because Bob loved many of the same things he did and to “make believe” was as much a part of his life as Louis’s. Many fine games they had together; built toy theatres, the scenery and characters for which they bought for a “penny plain and twopence coloured,” and were never tired of dressing up. One of their chief delights, he says, was in “rival kingdoms of our own invention — Nosingtonia and Encyclopædia, of which we were perpetually drawing maps.” Even the eating of porridge at breakfast became a game. Bob ate his with sugar and said it was an island covered with snow with here a mountain and there a valley; while Louis’s was an island flooded by milk which gradually disappeared bit by bit.