Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great | Page 5

And the elder Stevensons
breathed more freely.
* * * * *
On August Tenth, Eighteen Hundred Seventy-nine, Robert Louis sailed
from Glasgow for New York on the steamship "Devonia." It was a
sudden move, taken without the consent of his parents or kinsmen. The
young man wrote a letter to his father, mailing it at the dock.
When the missive reached the father's hands, that worthy gentleman
was unspeakably shocked and terribly grieved. He made frantic
attempts to reach the ship before it had passed out of the Clyde and
rounded into the North Sea, but it was too late. He then sent two
telegrams to the Port of Londonderry, one to Louis begging him to
return at once as his mother was very sick, and the other message to the
captain of the ship ordering him to put the wilful son ashore bag and
baggage.
The things we do when fear and haste are at the helm are usually wrong,
and certainly do not mirror our better selves.
Thomas Stevenson was a Scotchman, and the Scotch, a certain man has
told us, are the owners of a trinity of bad things--Scotch whisky, Scotch
obstinacy and Scotch religion. What the first-mentioned article has to
do with the second and the third, I do not know, but certain it is that the
second and the third are hopelessly intertwined--this according to Ian

MacLaren, who ought to know.
This obstinacy in right proportion constitutes will, and without will life
languishes and projects die a-borning. But mixed up with this religious
obstinacy is a goodly jigger of secretiveness, and in order to gain his
own point the religion of the owner does not prevent him from
prevarication. In "Margaret Ogilvie," that exquisite tribute to his
mother by Barrie, the author shows us a most religious woman who
was well up to the head of the Sapphira class. The old lady had been
reading a certain book, and there was no reason why she should conceal
the fact. The son suddenly enters and finds the mother sitting quietly
looking out of the window. She was suspiciously quiet. The son
questions her somewhat as follows:
"What are you doing, mother?"
"Nothing," was the answer.
"Have you been reading?"
"Do I look like it?"
"Why, yes--the book on your lap!"
"What book?"
"The book under your apron."
And so does this sweetly charming and deeply religious old lady prove
her fitness in many ways to membership in the liar's league. She
secretes, prevaricates, quibbles, lays petty traps and mouses all day
long. The Eleventh Commandment, "Thou Shalt Not Snoop," evidently
had never been called to her attention, and even her gifted son is
seemingly totally unaware of it. So Thomas Stevenson, excellent man
that he was, turned to subterfuge, and telegraphed his runaway son that
his mother was sick, appealing to his love for his mother to lure him
back.

However, children do not live with their forebears for nothing--they
know their parents just as well as their parents know them. Robert
Louis reasoned that it was quite as probable that his father lied as that
his mother was sick. He yielded to the stronger attraction--and stuck to
the ship.
He was sailing to America because he had received word that Fanny
Osbourne was very ill. Half a world divided them, but attraction to
lovers is in inverse ratio to the square of the distance. He must go to
her!
She was sick and in distress. He must go to her. The appeals of his
parents--even their dire displeasure--the ridicule of relatives, all were as
naught. He had some Scotch obstinacy of his own. Every fiber of his
being yearned for her. She needed him. He was going to her!
Of course his action in thus sailing away to a strange land alone was a
shock to his parents. He was a man in years, but they regarded him as
but a child, as indeed he was. He had never earned his own living. He
was frail in body, idle, erratic, peculiar. His flashing wit and subtle
insight into the heart of things were quite beyond his parents--in this he
was a stranger to them. Their religion to him was gently amusing, and
he congratulated himself on not having inherited it. He had a pride, too,
but Graham Balfour said it was French pride, not the Scotch brand. He
viewed himself as a part of the passing procession. His own velvet
jacket and marvelous manifestations in neckties added interest to the
show. And that he admired his own languorous ways there is no doubt.
His "Dr. Jekyl and Mr. Hyde" he declared in sober earnest, in which
was concealed a half-smile, was autobiography. And this is true, for all
good things that every writer writes are a