The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition, Vol. 01

Volume One

LONDON: PUBLISHED BY CHATTO AND WINDUS: IN ASSOCIATION WITH CASSELL AND COMPANY LIMITED: WILLIAM HEINEMANN: AND LONGMANS GREEN AND COMPANY MDCCCCXI

ALL RIGHTS RESERVED

CONTENTS

PAGE INTRODUCTION TO THE SWANSTON EDITION ix

AN INLAND VOYAGE

ANTWERP TO BOOM 7

ON THE WILLEBROEK CANAL 11

THE ROYAL SPORT NAUTIQUE 16

AT MAUBEUGE 21

ON THE SAMBRE CANALISED: TO QUARTES 26

PONT-SUR-SAMBRE: WE ARE PEDLARS 31 THE TRAVELLING MERCHANT 36

ON THE SAMBRE CANALISED: TO LANDRECIES 41

AT LANDRECIES 46

SAMBRE AND OISE CANAL: CANAL BOATS 50

THE OISE IN FLOOD 55

ORIGNY SAINTE-BENOITE: A BY-DAY 62 THE COMPANY AT TABLE 68

DOWN THE OISE: TO MOY 74

LA FERE OF CURSED MEMORY 79

DOWN THE OISE: THROUGH THE GOLDEN VALLEY 84

NOYON CATHEDRAL 86

DOWN THE OISE: TO COMPIEGNE 91

AT COMPIEGNE 94

CHANGED TIMES 99

DOWN THE OISE: CHURCH INTERIORS 105

PRECY AND THE MARIONNETTES 111

BACK TO THE WORLD 120

EPILOGUE 122

TRAVELS WITH A DONKEY IN THE CEVENNES

VELAY

THE DONKEY, THE PACK, AND THE PACK-SADDLE 143

THE GREEN DONKEY-DRIVER 149

I HAVE A GOAD 158

UPPER GEVAUDAN

A CAMP IN THE DARK 167

CHEYLARD AND LUC 177

OUR LADY OF THE SNOWS

FATHER APOLLINARIS 183

THE MONKS 188

THE BOARDERS 195

UPPER GEVAUDAN (continued)

ACROSS THE GOULET 203

A NIGHT AMONG THE PINES 206

THE COUNTRY OF THE CAMISARDS

ACROSS THE LOZERE 213

PONT DE MONTVERT 218

IN THE VALLEY OF THE TARN 224

FLORAC 234

IN THE VALLEY OF THE MIMENTE 237

THE HEART OF THE COUNTRY 241

THE LAST DAY 248

FAREWELL, MODESTINE! 253

A MOUNTAIN TOWN IN FRANCE 257

EDINBURGH:

CHAPTER

I. INTRODUCTORY 271

II. OLD TOWN: THE LANDS 278

III. THE PARLIAMENT CLOSE 285

IV. LEGENDS 291

V. GREYFRIARS 298

VI. NEW TOWN: TOWN AND COUNTRY 305

VII. THE VILLA QUARTERS 311

VIII. THE CALTON HILL 314

IX. WINTER AND NEW YEAR 320

X. TO THE PENTLAND HILLS 327

INTRODUCTION TO THE SWANSTON EDITION

So much has been written on R. L. Stevenson, as a boy, a man, and a man of letters, so much has been written both by himself and others, that I can hope to add nothing essential to the world's knowledge of his character and appreciation of his genius. What is essential has been said, once for all, by Sir Sidney Colvin in "Notes and Introductions" to R. L. S.'s "Letters to His Family and Friends." I can but contribute the personal views of one who knew, loved, and esteemed his junior that is already a classic; but who never was of the inner circle of his intimates. We shared, however, a common appreciation of his genius, for he was not so dull as to suppose, or so absurd as to pretend to suppose, that much of his work was not excellent. His tale "Thrawn Janet" "is good," he says in a letter, with less vigour than but with as much truth as Thackeray exclaiming "that's genius," when he describes Becky's admiration of Rawdon's treatment of Lord Steyne, in the affray in Curzon Street. About the work of other men and novelists, or poets, we were almost invariably of the same mind; we were of one mind about the great Charles Gordon. "He was filled," too, "with enthusiasm for Joan of Arc," says his biographer, "a devotion, and also a cool headed admiration, which he never lost." In a letter he quotes Byron as having said that Jeanne "was a fanatical strumpet," and he cries shame on the noble poet. He projected an essay on the Blessed Maid, which is not in "the veniable part of things lost."

Thus we were so much of the same sentiments, in so many ways, that I can hope to speak with sympathy, if not always with complete understanding, of Stevenson. Like a true Scot, he was interested in his ancestry, his heredity; regarding Robert Fergusson, the young Scottish poet, who died so young, in an asylum, as his spiritual forefather, and hoping to attach himself to a branch of the Royal Clan Alpine, the MacGregors, as the root of the Stevensons. Of Fergusson, he had, in early youth, the waywardness, the liking for taverns and tavern talk, the half-rueful appreciation of the old closes and wynds of Old Edinburgh, a touch of the recklessness and more than all the pictorial power which, in Fergusson, Burns so magnanimously admired.

But genealogical research shows that Stevenson drew nothing from the dispossessed MacGregors, a clan greatly wronged, from Robert Bruce's day, and greatly given to wronging others. Alan Breck did not like "the Gregara," apart from their courage, and in Alan's day they were not consistent walkers.

Stevenson, as far as one can learn, had no Celtic blood; none, at least, of traceable infusion: he was more purely Lowland than Sir Walter Scott. His paternal line could be traced back to a West Country Stevenson of 1675; probably a tenant farmer, who was contemporary with the Whig rising at Bothwell Bridge, with the murder of Archbishop Sharp, with Claverhouse, and Sir George Mackenzie, called "the bluidy Advocate." An earnest student of Mr. Wodrow's "History of the Sufferings," Louis did not find "James Stevenson in Nether Carsewell" among the many martyrs who live in the Libre d'Or of the Remnant. But he had "a Covenanting childhood;" his father, Mr. Thomas Stevenson, was loyal to the positions of John Knox (the theological positions); and, brought up in these, Louis had a taste, when the tenets of Calvin ceased to convince his reason, of what non-Covenanters endured at the hands of the godly in their day of power.

Every little Presbyterian, fifty years ago, was compelled to be familiar with the Genevan creed, as expressed in "The Shorter Catechism," but most little Presbyterians regarded that document as a necessary but unintelligible evil--the sorrow that haunted the Sabbath. I knew it by rote, Effectual Calling and all, but did not perceive that it possessed either meaning or actuality. Nobody was so unkind as to interpret the significance of the questions and answers; but somebody did interpret them for Stevenson, or his early genius enabled him to discover what it is all about, as he told me once, and it seems that the tendency of the theology is terribly depressing. A happier though more or less theological influence on his childhood he found in the adventures and sufferings of the Covenanters. It is curious (and shows how much early education can do) that he never was a little Royalist: always his heart, like Lockhart's, which is no less strange, was with the true blue Remnant. I can remember no proof that he was fascinated by the greatness of Montrose.

As is well known, at about the age of sixteen he perverted a romance of his own making, "Hackston of Rathillet" (a fanatic of Fife), into a treatise: "The Pentland Rising, a Page of History," published in 1866. One would rather have possessed the romance.

Stevenson came from the Balfours of Pilrig, and was of gentle blood, on the spindle side. An ancestress of his mother was a granddaughter of Sir Gilbert Elliot (as a "law lord," or judge, Lord Minto), and so he could say: "I have shaken a spear in the debatable land, and shouted the slogan of the Elliots": perhaps "And wha dares meddle wi' me!" In "Weir of Hermiston" he returns to "the auld bauld Elliots" with zest. He was not, perhaps, aware that, through some remote ancestress on the spindle side, he "came of Harden's line," so that he and I had a common forebear with Sir Walter Scott, and were hundredth cousins of each other, if we reckon in the primitive manner by female descent. Of these Border ancestors, Louis inherited the courage; he was a fearless person, but one would not trace his genius to "The Bard of Rule," an Elliot named "Sweet Milk" who was slain in a duel by another minstrel, about 1627.

Genius is untraceable; the granite intellect of Louis's great engineering forefathers, the Stevensons, was not, like his, tuneful: though his father was imaginative, diverting himself with daydreams; and his uncle, Alan Stevenson, the builder of Skerryvore, yielded to the fascinations of the religious Muse. A volume of verse was the pledge of this dalliance. His mother, who gave him her gay indifference to discomfort and readiness for travel, also read to him, in his childhood, much good literature; for not till he was eight years of age was he an unreluctant reader--which is strange. The whole record of his life, from his eighteenth month, is a chronicle of fever and ill-health, borne always with heroic fortitude. His dear nurse, Alison Cunningham, seems to have been a kind of festive Cameronian. Her recitation of hymns was, though she hated "the playhouse," "grand and dramatic." There is a hymn, "Jehovah Tsidkenu," in which he rejoiced; and no wonder, for the refrain "Jehovah Tsidkenu was nothing to me," moves with the galloping hoof-beats of

"'Tis up wi' the bonnets o' Bonny Dundee!"

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