Chapter 4

BOYHOOD AND COLLEGE DAYS

'A boy's will is the wind's will, And the thoughts of youth are long, long thoughts.' --LONGFELLOW.

... 'Strange enchantments from the past And memories of the friends of old, And strong tradition binding fast The "flying terms" with bands of gold.' --ANDREW LANG.

The years 1861 and 1862 found Louis, with his childhood left behind him, a boy among other boys who sat on the forms and who played in the yards of the Academy, at which, during the greater part of the present century, many of the sons of Edinburgh men, and indeed of Scotsmen everywhere at home and abroad, have received their education.

From 1864 to 1867 he was principally at a Mr Thompson's school in Frederick Street, and he studied from time to time with private tutors at the different places to which his parents went for the benefit of their own health or his. These rather uncommon educational experiences were of far more value to him in after life than a steady attendance at any one school, as they made him an excellent linguist and gave him, from very youthful years, a wide knowledge of foreign life and foreign manners. In 1862 the Stevenson family visited Holland and Germany, in 1863 they were in Italy, in 1864 in the Riviera, and at Torquay for some months during the winter of 1865 and 1866; but after 1867 the family life became more settled and was chiefly passed between Edinburgh and Swanston.

In those days Louis was a lean, slim lad, inclined to be tall, and with soft, somewhat lank, brown hair and brown eyes of a shade that seemed to deepen and change with every passing impression of his quick working brain. His features were rather long, the upper part of his narrow face was delicately formed like his mother's, but the lips were full, and a more virile strength in chin and jaw faintly reminded one of his father's powerful physiognomy.

He had opinions of his own in regard to education, and they by no means led him to consider a strict attendance at school or a close application to lessons as necessary for his future life-work. He read, it is true, voraciously, but it was hardly on the lines of the sternly respectable classical curriculum which his tutors or the Academy offered him. He was an historical student after a fashion of his own, dipping deep into such books of bygone romance as Sir Walter Scott had conned and loved. His geography at that time took a purely practical and somewhat limited form, and resolved itself into locating correctly the places and abodes sacred to the characters in his favourite books.

In the delightful dedication of _Catriona_,--to Mr Charles Baxter, W.S., Edinburgh, who was his life-long friend--he describes those pilgrimages charmingly, and one can, in imagination, see the eager lads wandering in search of famous 'streets and numbered houses,' made historic for them by some such magic pen as that which has for ever made sacred the _Old Tolbooth_ or the _Heart of Midlothian_, from the coblestones of which, in the pavement of St Giles and near the Parliament House, one reverently steps aside lest careless feet should touch that memento of the past. One can picture too as he himself does, the romantic boys of to-day following the wanderings of David Balfour by Broughton and Silver-mills, the Water of Leith, the Hawes Inn at Queensferry, and the wind-swept shores of the Forth. But one can still more clearly see that slim, brown-eyed youth--a-quiver with the eagerness that was so conspicuous a characteristic of his,--as in these very places he remembered bygone tales and even then formed plans for, and saw visions of, his own stories yet to be.

One can think of him with his eyes shining, and his face luminous, as he held forth to some choice friend, of sympathetic soul, on all these things of which his heart and brain were so full. One knows that when his walks were solitary his time was already put to a good account, and that the note-books which even then he carried in his pocket were in constant requisition.

The boy, from the very first, felt a strong leading to the profession of letters, which he ultimately followed; and he describes himself as from very early boyhood having been given to make notes for possible romances, and to choose words of peculiar fitness for the purpose he had in hand, as well as to weave tales of thrilling adventure.

Style was from the first a passion with him; and the lad had already begun in these juvenile note-books that careful choice of words and language which was at the very outset of his literary career to make so competent a critic as Mr Hamerton call him one of the greatest living masters of English prose. That he became something of a master in verse also those few thin volumes of deep thoughts, in a setting of fitly chosen words and rhymes, which he has published, amply prove.

To return, however, to the boy who went to the Academy, or rather who did _not_ go to the Academy, for he had a faculty for playing truant which must have been extraordinarily provoking to parents and masters. No sooner was he out of the door in the morning than he could truly say--

'I heard the winds, with unseen feet, Pass up the long and weary street,

'They say "We come from hill and glen To touch the brows of toiling men."

'That each may know and feel we bring The faint first breathings of the spring.'

And the voice of the spring thus calling him as soon as it was heard, was obeyed; and, careless of the frowns that were bound to greet his return, he was off to wander on his beloved Braids and Pentlands, to lie long days among the whin and the broom, or to slip away to watch the busy shipping on the Forth, and to think deep thoughts beside the wave-washed shore of that sea which ever drew him like the voice of a familiar friend.

To that intense love of Nature, and of Nature's solitude, his readers owe much, and we to-day may all say with the writer who gave such an interesting description of Swanston in _Good Words_ in the spring of 1895, that those truant hours of his educated him for his future work far better than a careful attendance at school and college could have done. The same writer says that it was this open air life that he loved so dearly which gave to Stevenson's books their large leisure, and to his style its dignity. There is much truth in the remark; but as far as the style is concerned it is the product of time and thought, and it was most carefully and diligently formed by labour so earnest and painstaking, that few authors can even conceive of it.

In _Memories and Portraits_ Mr Stevenson gives a delightful account of boyish days at a seaside resort, that is evidently North Berwick, and lovingly describes adventures with bull's-eye lanterns; adventures which seem to be intimately associated with the young folk of his connection, and which repeated themselves a few years later on the other side of the Forth, where boys and girls recalled the doings of Robert Louis and his friends with bull's-eye lanterns and gunpowder, in that cheerful form known to Louis Stevenson as a 'peeoy,' and considered it a point of honour to do likewise, no matter how indignant such mischief made the authorities. As for him, he was always the inventor and prime mover in every mischievous escapade the heart of youth could glory in.

The wind-swept coast about North Berwick had a strong fascination for him, and in several of his books we feel the salt breeze blowing in from the sea, across the bents, and hear the sea birds crying on the lonely shore. The autumn holidays were a great joy to him, and another epoch-making event must have been the taking of Swanston Cottage, in May 1867, to be the summer home of the Stevensons.

The boy took intense pleasure in his rambles about the hills, in his dreamy rests on 'Kirk Yetton'[2] and 'Allermuir,' and in his wanderings with John Todd, the shepherd, after that worthy had ceased, as he comically puts it, to hunt him off as a dangerous sheep-scarer, and so to play 'Claverhouse to his Covenanter'! The two soon became great friends, and many a bit of strange philosophy, many a wild tale of bygone droving days the lad heard from the old man. Another great friend of early Swanston years was Robert Young, the gardener, whose austere and Puritan views of life were solemnly shared with his young master.

Existence at Swanston was even more provocative of truant-playing than it had been in Edinburgh, and Louis, in his later school days and his early sessions at the University, was more than ever conspicuous by his absence from classes, more lovingly wedded to long hours among the hills, long rambles about the 'Old Town,' the Figgate Whins, the port of Leith, and the rapidly changing localities round Leith Walk, somewhat back from which, Pilrig, the ancient home of his ancestors, still stands gravely retired from the work-a-day world.

In the year 1867 he went with his father to the 'Dhu Heartach' Lighthouse, and so began to develop that passion for the Western Isles and the Western seas which future voyages in _The Pharos_ were to bring to the state of fervour and perfection which gave birth of _The Merrymen_, and to those descriptions of the wild and lovely scenery of Appin and the West Highlands, in which David Balfour and Alan Breck wander through the pages of _Kidnapped_.

It was his father's intention that he should follow the family profession of engineering, and with this in view he went to the Edinburgh University in the autumn of 1868. The professors in those days included Professors Kelland, Tait, Crum-Brown, Fleeming-Jenkin, Blackie, Masson, and many others whose names are still remembered as 'a sweet-smelling savour' in that Edinburgh which they and the truant student, who honoured his class attendance 'more in the breach than the observance,' loved so well.

It was a stirring time at the University, and the students who warred manfully against the innovation of Dr Sophia Jex-Blake and the pioneers of the Lady Doctors' movement, were, it would seem on looking back, scarcely so mildly mannered, so peacefully inclined as those who now sit placidly beside 'the sweet girl graduates' of our day, on the class-room benches, and acknowledge the reign of the lady doctor as an accomplished fact. A torchlight procession of modern times is apparently a cheerful and picturesque function, smiled on by the authorities, and welcomed as a rather unique means of doing honour to a new Lord Rector or some famous guest of the city or the University. In Mr Stevenson's time, a torchlight procession had all the joys of 'forbidden fruit' to the merry lads who braved the police and the professors for the pleasure of marching through the streets to the final bonfire on the Calton Hill, from the scrimmage round which they emerged with clothes well oiled and singed, and faces and hands as black as much besmearing could make them; while anxious friends at home trembled lest a night in the police cells should be the reward of the ringleaders.

Of one such procession, in the spring when Mr Stevenson's law studies were first interrupted by a journey south for his health, a clever student wrote an epic which was presented to me by one of Louis Stevenson's Balfour cousins as something _very precious_! The occasion was the Duke of Edinburgh's wedding, in 1874, and, yellow and faded, the _Epic_ still graces my _Every Day Book_, and, as one reads its inspiriting lines, one sees again those bygone days in which the slim figure and eager face of Louis Stevenson are always so conspicuous in every memory of the old, grey city of his birth.

The following lines from the clever skit give a really excellent picture of the college life in his day.

... 'A deputation we Sent hither by the students to demand That they--that is the students--in a band May march, illumed by torches flaring bright, Along the leading streets on Friday night. Brave was the Provost, yet towards his heart The glowing life blood thrilled with sudden start; Well might he tremble at the name he heard, The Students! Kings might tremble at the word! He thought of all the terrors of the past, Of that fell row in Blackie's, April last-- Of Simpson wight, and Stirling-Maxwell too, Of Miss Jex-Blake and all her lovely crew-- He thought, "If thus these desperadoes dare To act with ladies, learned, young and fair, Old women, like the Councillors and me, To direr torments still reserved may be. The better part of valour is discretion, I'll try to soften them by prompt concession." Then coughing thrice, impression due to make And clear his throat, in accents mild he spake, "Ye have my leave, 'V.R.,' I mean 'D.V.'" The students bowed, retired, and he was free.'

The High Sheriff and the Chief of Police, when they heard of the Provost's weakness, were filled with wrath and dismay, and very promptly insisted on his lordship taking back the concession, so that this historic procession was as much 'forbidden fruit' as its predecessors, and the students probably enjoyed it the more that they had as usual to dare all those in authority to carry it out.

Another old-time enjoyment of that date was a snowball fight. Whether snow is less plentiful, or students are too cultured and too refined for these rough pastimes it is impossible to say, but certain it is that a really _great_ snowball fight is also a thing of the past. In those days they were Homeric combats, and a source of keen enjoyment to Robert Louis Stevenson, a very funny account of whom, on one of these occasions, was given me at the time by his cousin, Lewis Balfour, from Leven, himself a jovial medical student enjoying an active part in the melée. On the occasion of a great battle in the winter of 1869--or 1870--Mr Stevenson and one or two men, now well known in various professions, had seated themselves on a ledge in the quadrangle to watch the fight. From this vantage ground they encouraged the combatants, but took no active part in the fray. Within swarmed the students armed with snowballs, without, the lads of the town, equally active, stormed the gates. All were too intent on the battle to notice the advent of the police, who rushed into the college quadrangle and made prisoners where they could. Craning his neck too much, in his keen enjoyment, Mr Stevenson overbalanced himself, slipped from his perch and was promptly captured by 'a bobby,' and, in spite of gallant efforts for his rescue, was ignominiously marched off to the Police Office at the very moment that his blandly unconscious mother was driving up the Bridges. It was useless for his attendant friends to assert that he had been a non-combatant. Was he not taken in the very thick of the fight? The police had him and they meant to keep him for he could not produce sufficient bail from his somewhat empty pockets. His cousin and his friends, by leaving all their stray coins, their watches and other valuables, managed to secure his release so that he had not the experience--which it is possible he might have enjoyed--of passing a night in the police cells of his native city.

In his introduction to the _Memoirs of Professor Fleeming-Jenkin_, he himself tells a good story of his relations with that Professor, who was always a true and appreciative friend to his clever if idle student. He had handed in so few cards at the class of Engineering that his certificate was not forthcoming until he told his friend that his father would be very vexed if he could not produce the certificate--which he never intended to _use_--whereat the tender-hearted Professor handed it to him.

Another prime favourite of his among the Professors was Professor Kelland; and one can well understand the attraction which the dainty, gentle refinement of that most kind-hearted of men had for a nature so akin to it as young Stevenson's. All Professor Kelland's students loved him; this one understood him also. Professor Masson was one of the giants of those days whom he was also most capable of appreciating, and whose lectures he occasionally attended although not a member of his class; and, himself not without his amiable eccentricities, he could not fail to have a soft spot in his heart for the quaint humour and the pleasant eccentricity which endeared Professor Blackie to his class and to the public. He was a poor attender at the Greek Class, however, and when he presented himself for his certificate the keen blue eyes of the Professor looked at him critically, and the Professor's remark was that he had been so seldom present at lectures it was hardly possible to recognise his face!

Many of the students of that day have taken a good place in the world; some of them have long ere now left the things of time behind them; one or two of them Mr Stevenson has pictured in his graphic pages. Several of them regarded him as an interesting personality, but very few of them suspected that he was 'the chiel amang them takin' notes' for future work that would bring world-wide fame, not only to himself, but to his University and to the city of his birth.

On the 2nd March 1869 he was proposed by George Melville, Esq., Advocate, as a member of the Speculative Society, and we know from _Memories and Portraits_ how much he appreciated his membership of that Society, which has in its day included in the roll, on which his name stood No. 992, most of the men whose names are honoured in Scotland's capital, and many of whom the fame and the memory are revered in far places of the earth. That he might smoke in the hall of the Speculative, in the very stronghold of University authority, he playfully professes to have been his chief pleasure in the thing; but other men, to whom his earnest face, his eagerness in debate, made one of the pleasures of its meetings, tell another story, and it was commonly said in those days that there would always be something of interest in hand if Stevenson took a part in it.

When he forsook the profession of engineering, Mr Stevenson attended the Law classes at the University, with the intention of being called to the Bar, but it is not on record that he was a more exemplary student of law than he had been of engineering, and he still found more satisfaction in his truant rambles and his meditations in old graveyards than he did in the legitimate study of his profession.

FOOTNOTE:

[2] Cairketton is the form used in the Ordnance Survey.