Robert Louis Stevenson | Page 8

hideous Indian idols stood guard at the hall
door of 'The Turret,' the house of his uncle, John Balfour, at Leven.
Two of them were life-size with their hands discreetly folded in prayer,
two of them were smaller and made in a kneeling posture, and, as
something rattled if you shook them, it was our juvenile belief that
treasure was concealed inside their bodies. This idea Mr R. L.
Stevenson eagerly fostered in the slightly younger generation, and, with
the love of harmless mischief natural to him, implored us to 'rattle them
soundly when we were about it!'
In the manse garden at Colinton there was a mysterious and delightful
gap that gave egress to the Water of Leith, and to pass through this and
stray, out of safe and guarded precincts, into a wide and wet world
beyond was a keen pleasure to the little boy whose gipsy instincts were
already loudly calling to him to take 'the road' his wandering soul so
dearly loved.
'Keepsake Mill' is a charming tribute to the joys of those illicit escapes
and to the memories of the cousin playfellows now scattered in far
lands, or for ever at rest from life's labour, who played in the garden
where the delicate bright-eyed lad was the inventor and leader in their

games.
One sweet fancy of the imaginative child, who all his life had a fine
mental and physical courage in spite of his delicacy, is still recalled by
his 'sister-cousin'; the graveyard wall was at one place high above the
garden it partially enclosed, and the little boy, afflicted with no
superstitious terrors, had an idea that the souls of the dead people at rest
in 'God's acre,' peeped out at him from the chinks of the wall. And one
feels sure that here as all through his life, shadowed by so much of
suffering, he held fast, after a fashion of his own, the belief that goes
deeper than his playful rendering of it in The Unseen Playmate seems
at first to infer:
'Whene'er you're happy and cannot tell why, The Friend of the children
is sure to be by.'
A faith that was taught him by an earnest father and by the loving voice
of a mother who held it fast through her own happy childhood and the
joys and sorrows that as wife and mother came to her in later years.
After the death of the Rev. Dr Balfour, in April 1860, the manse ceased
to be the second home of Louis Stevenson, and in the November of that
year his aunt, Miss Balfour, and the nephews and nieces who stayed
with her moved to a house in Howard Place.
In 1858 he went to school, and from 1860 to 1861 he and his cousin,
Lewis Charles Balfour, were together at Mr Henderson's preparatory
school in India Street from which both went to the Academy in 1861.
Of Lewis Stevenson,--who in later life was always called Louis or Lou
by his family and friends,--Mr Henderson reports: 'Robert's reading is
not loud, but impressive.'
In July he was in bed with scarlet fever on his examination day, which
was a great disappointment to him. He had a first prize for reading that
year; but his zeal over school and lessons was very short-lived, and he
never hungered for scholastic honours.
As a child he did not learn quickly, and he was in his eighth year before

he could read fluently for himself. Nevertheless his especial bent
showed itself early, and when in his sixth year he dictated a History of
Moses, which he illustrated, giving the men pipes in their mouths. This,
and an account of Travels in Perth, composed in his ninth year, are still
in existence. The History of Moses was written because an uncle had
offered a prize to his own children for the best paper on the subject, and
the little Louis was so disappointed at not being asked to compete that
he was finally included among the competitors, and did a paper which
though not best was still good and which was given a prize. He had
begun to print it for himself, with much toil, but his mother offered to
write it out from his dictation. Another composition of this time was a
fierce story of shipwreck and fighting with savages.
In 1863 he was sent for a few months to a boarding school kept by a Mr
Wyatt at Spring Grove, near London. Life at a boarding school was
misery to a lad so fond of wandering at his own sweet will as the small
Louis, and he was full of distress at the prospect of leaving home. In
Random Memories he gives his ideas as to going to school, and
expresses his belief that it