STEVENSON, ROBERT LOUIS (BALFOUR). 



725 



magazine, of which he was one of the editors, 

 and had made many experiments, but had pub- 

 lished nothing of note, when, in 1873, his health, 

 never robust, broke down so completely, with 

 symptoms of pulmonary trouble, that he was 

 ordered to a warmer climate and went to the 

 south of France. At this time he wrote and 

 published in " Macmillan's Magazine " " Ordered 

 South," which, though he had printed a little 

 paper, " Roads," in the " Portfolio," is the earliest 

 published of all the more important papers pre- 

 served in his works. He grew better, and his 

 search for health, though from this time almost 

 continuous, was able to be often of a robuster 

 sort than that of the mere invalid, as witness 

 the two expeditions which are the motives of his 

 first two books. Still he had several relapses, and 

 was more than once, especially in the winters, 

 driven to warmer climates during the next four 

 years, during which nevertheless his literary 

 work seems to have been abundant if without 

 much published result as yet. He spent much 

 time, too, in Paris and with the artist colony at 

 Barbizon (passages of which the recollection was 

 long afterward especially preserved in " The 

 Wrecker "). Although papers and stories in the 

 magazines had been scattered through this 

 interval " Will o' the Mill " and " A Lodging for 

 the Night " are named in the autobiographical 

 letter quoted above as the first and second of 

 those which he " dared to reprint " it was only 

 in 1878 that his first book appeared, " An Inland 

 Voyage," ostensibly the story of a canoe voyage 

 on French rivers, but so much more than its 

 story in any ordinary sense that it gave sign at 

 once of a fresh note in literature, and showed 

 an essayist and poet of the most attractive 

 quality/ Though the " Voyage " reached a com- 

 paratively small public, it attracted the kind of 

 attention that means a new reputation, and 

 when the " Travels with a Donkey in the Ce- 

 vennes " followed in 1879 it began to be dis- 

 sinctly recognized that a new writer of at least 

 great promise was trying his first flights. From 

 that time his literary production was constant. 

 In 1879 Stevenson first came to the United 

 States, making the voyage described in the nar- 

 rative published since his death under the title 

 " An Amateur Emigrant." In this year he 

 married, in California, Mrs. Osbourne, an Amer- 

 ican lady whose acquaintance he had made in 

 France, and for some months he remained in 

 Monterey and elsewhere in the southern part of 

 the State. " The Silverado Squatters " is a remi- 

 niscence of this first American experience, and 

 the first of his writings to appear, though long 

 -after, in an American periodical (the " Century 

 Magazine," November and December, 1883). Re- 

 turning to England, Stevenson published in 1881 

 a volume of collected essays, " Virginibus Pu- 

 erisque," and in 1882 a second, " Familiar Studies 

 of Men and Books." and his first stories " New 

 Arabian Nights," having bound with them in the 

 same volume " The Pavilion on the Links " and 

 the three detached stories which his admirers 

 value most of all. In 1883 appeared " Treasure 

 Fsland," which at once added to the still limited 

 circle of his readers an immense popular audi- 

 ence, and to his works a new type the story of 

 adventure justifying many times over the most 

 modestly expressed hope in the verses he prefixed 



to it, that he might contribute to the literature 

 that had captivated his boyhood, like 



Kingston, or Ballantyne the brave, 

 And Cooper of the wood and wave. 



He still found it impossible to pass much time 

 in England or Scotland, and was often inter- 

 rupted by sharp attacks of his illness. The 

 dedication of " Virginibus " is dated at Davos 

 Platz, in 1881 ; " A Child's Garden of Verses," 

 which revealed a new and exquisite power in its 

 author's intimate sympathy with childhood, ap- 

 peared in 1885 ; and " Prince Otto," written at 

 Hyeres. in the same year. About this time he 

 again sought an English home, taking a house 

 at Bournemouth, which he called " Skerry vore " 

 from one of the lights built by his father " the 

 noblest of all extant deep-sea lights," he calls it. 

 It seemed for a while as though the mild climate 

 of the place was favorable to him ; his literary 

 activity continued unabated, and during this 

 Bournemouth residence he published before the 

 end of 1885 " The Dynamiter," written in col- 

 laboration with Mrs. Stevenson ; in 1886 the re- 

 markable " Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. 

 Hyde," possibly even now the most widely 

 known of all his works, and for a year or two 

 after its publication one of the most talked-of 

 books of the time ; and " Kidnapped," by many 

 of his readers held to be his masterpiece, and al- 

 ways one of his own chief favorites. 



In 1887, again beset by illness, he came to the 

 United States to try the climate of the Adiron- 

 dacks, and spent the next winter at Saranac 

 lake : but this year saw the publication of four 

 beoks " Memories and Portraits," a collection 

 of papers ; his memoir of his friend Fleeming 

 Jenkin : " The Merry Men," a volume of tales ; 

 and " Underwoods," a volume of poems. At 

 this time also he arranged with " Scribner's 

 Magazine " to contribute to it a series of month- 

 ly papers, which included " The Lantern Bear- 

 ers," "A Chapter on Dreams," "Pulvis et Um- 

 bra," " Gentlemen," and others of his best-re- 

 membered essays, and continued through the 

 year 1888. In the summer of that year began 

 the last of his many migrations in search of 

 health. He sailed from San Francisco in the 

 yacht " Casco," which he had chartered ; after a 

 stay at the Hawaiian Islands, proceeded to the 

 South Pacific ; and finally, after long cruises in 

 the " Casco " and other vessels, landed in Samoa. 

 Here at last he found a climate in which he 

 could live, if not restored to health, at least free 

 from the frequent relapses which he had suf- 

 fered elsewhere ; and here, near the port of 

 Apia, he bought a tract of some 400 acres, 

 which he named Vailima (in Samoan " Five 

 Streams," from its water courses), and built 

 first a small temporary house and within a year 

 or two a larger one, which was his home until 

 his death. 



The year of his Pacific journey saw only one 

 volume added to the list of' his published works, 

 "The Black Arrow," a reprint of a story some 

 years before issued serially in an English maga- 

 zine for young people ; but even during his 

 voyage his industry was constant, and in 1889 

 he' began in "Scrihner's Magazine" the serial 

 publication of "The Master of Ballantrae," 

 which continued for twelve months. In 1889 



