Robert Louis Stevenson | Page 5

noted for their zeal in religion, and in their
country's affairs, as well as for an honourable and prudent application
to the business of life on their own account. Andrew Balfour, the
minister of Kirknewton, signed the protestation for the Kirk in 1617,
and was imprisoned for it. His son James was called to the Scotch Bar,
and was a Clerk of Session in Cromwell's time. A son of his was a
Governor of the Darien Company, and his son, in turn, purchased the
estate of Pilrig where his descendants kept up the godly and honourable
traditions of the house, and dispensed a pleasant and a kindly
hospitality 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