Robert Louis Stevenson | Page 5

to their friends in Edinburgh, from whom, at that time, their pretty old home was somewhat distant in the country!
With such an ancestry on both sides one can easily understand the bent of Robert Louis Stevenson's mind towards old things, the curious traditions of Scotch family history and the lone wild moorlands,
'Where about the graves of the martyrs The whaups are calling,'
one can comprehend, too, the attraction for him of the power and the mystery of the sea. All these things came to him as a natural inheritance from those who had gone before, and in the characters who people his books, in Kidnapped, in Catriona, in Weir of Hermiston, we see live again, the folk of that older Edinburgh, whom those bygone Balfours knew.
In the fresh salt breeze that, as it were, blows keen from the sea in Treasure Island, in The Merry Men, and about the sad house of Durrisdeer in The Master of Ballantrae, we recognise the magic wooing of the mighty ocean that made of the Stevensons builders of lighthouses and harbours, and masters of the rough, wild coasts where the waves beat and the spray dashes, and the sea draws all who love it to ride upon its breast in ships.
From the union of two families who have been so long and so honourably known in their different ways, there came much happiness, and one feels somewhat sorry that when Louis Stevenson signed his name to the books by which he is so lovingly remembered, he did not write it in full and spell 'Lewis' in the old-time fashion that was good enough for our Scotch ancestors in the days when many a 'Lewis' drew sword for Gustavus Adolphus, or served as a gentleman volunteer in the wars of France or the Netherlands, and when 'O, send Lewie Gordon hame' rang full of pathos to the Scotch ears, to which the old spelling was familiar. Mr Stevenson's Balfour relatives naturally regret the alteration of the older spelling and the omission of his mother's family name from his signature. With regard to the latter, he himself assured his mother that having merely dropped out the Balfour to shorten a very long name, he greatly regretted having done so, after it was too late, and he had won his literary fame as 'Robert Louis Stevenson,' and much wished that he had invariably written his name as R. L. Balfour Stevenson. The spelling of Lewis he altered when he was about eighteen, in deference to a wish of his father's, as at one time the elder Mr Stevenson had a prejudice against the name of Lewis, so his son thereafter signed himself Louis. That he may have himself also preferred it is very possible; he was fond of all things French, and he may have liked the link to that far off ancestor, the French barber-surgeon who landed at St Andrews to be one of the suite of Cardinal Beaton! In spite of the belief on the part of Robert Louis, who had a fancy to the contrary, the name in the Balfour family was invariably spelt Lewis. His grandfather was christened Lewis, and so the entry of his name remains to this day in the old family Bible at Pilrig; so also it is spelt in that, already mentioned, most interesting pamphlet for private circulation, written by the late James Balfour-Melville, Esq., who gives the name of his uncle, the minister of Colinton, as Lewis Balfour, and so the old clergyman signed himself all his life.
FOOTNOTE:
[1] The portion of this family history--Family of Engineers--which Mr Stevenson had completed, at the time of his death, is to be found in 'The Edinburgh Edition' of his works.
CHAPTER II
CHILDHOOD
... 'With love divine My mother's fingers folded mine.' --FROM VERSES IN AN AMERICAN PAPER.
'We built a ship upon the stairs, All made of the back bedroom chairs; And filled it full of sofa pillows, To go a-sailing on the billows.' --R. L. STEVENSON.
Mr and Mrs Thomas Stevenson, who were married in 1848, made their first home at 8 Howard Place, and there, on 13th November 1850, Robert Lewis Balfour Stevenson was born. In 1853 they moved to a house in Inverleith Terrace, and in 1857, when Louis was about seven years old, they took possession of 17 Heriot Row, the house so long and so intimately associated with them in the minds of their many friends.
The little Louis was from his earliest babyhood a very delicate child, and only the most constant and tender care of his devoted mother and nurse enabled him to survive those first years which must have been so full of anxiety to his parents. In The Child's Garden of Verses there are some lines called 'The Land of Counterpane,' the picture heading of which is a