Robert Louis Stevenson | Page 9

is not so much the first night or day at school
that is so terrible to a courageous child, as the dismay at the thought of
leaving home with its familiar life and surroundings, and the painful
suspense for some days before the plunge into the new world of school
is taken. It was, he says, this miserable feeling of suspense that made
him share his sorrows with a desolate, but amiable cat in the Easter
Road, which mingled its woes with his and as it purred against him
consoled him.
His tender-hearted parents were so touched by his evident affliction,
and especially by the little story of the cat that his father took him a trip
round the coast of Fife in The Pharos and he thus made an early and
delightful acquaintance with some of the lights and harbours which his
father had gone to inspect.
Although the cousin, Lewis Charles Balfour, who had been his
schoolfellow in Edinburgh, and two of his younger brothers were day
pupils at the Spring Grove School, and his aunt, Miss Balfour, was
living near, he became very homesick and unhappy, and the regular

school work, with its impositions and punishments, fretted him and
made him so ill, that in December his father, who had been at Mentone
with his mother, hastily returned and took him away from school. It
was too late, however, the few months had been too great a trial for his
health, and he had a serious illness, during which, Dr Henry Bennett
prescribed some very bracing treatment of which the youthful patient
highly disapproved.
Of the home where so much consideration was shown to a child's
health and feelings, no better description can be given than the graphic
one of a little Stevenson cousin who had gone with his parents to stay
there, and who thus spoke of it: 'A child who never cries, a nurse who
is never cross, and late dinners.'
Can one imagine a dignified, childish paradise that could go much
further! Nor were the joys of books awanting to the happy small boy
who describes himself as in early days being carried off by his nurse
'To bed with backward looks, At my dear world of story books.'
As soon as he had learned to read he was an eager and an omnivorous
reader, and could, from his eighth year, pass happy hours with a book,
any book so long as it did not mean lessons.
He was before very long a book-buyer as well as a book-lover, and he
has for ever immortalised, in the charming pages of A Penny Plain and
Twopence Coloured, that old bookshop (late J. L. Smith) at the corner
of Leith Walk, where eager boys without coppers were but coldly
received, but whence the fortunate capitalist could emerge, after having
spent his Saturday pocket-money, the proud possessor of plays
positively bristling with pirates and highwaymen. With these treasures
he fled home in the gathering dusk, while 'Leerie-Light-the-Lamps' was
kindling his cheery beacons along the streets, and, with pleasant terrors,
devoured the weird productions, finally adding to their weirdness by
the garish contents of a child's paint-box.
CHAPTER III

BOYHOOD AND COLLEGE DAYS
'A boy's will is the wind's will, And the thoughts of youth are long,
long thoughts.' --LONGFELLOW.
... 'Strange enchantments from the past And memories of the friends of
old, And strong tradition binding fast The "flying terms" with bands of
gold.' --ANDREW LANG.
The years 1861 and 1862 found Louis, with his childhood left behind
him, a boy among other boys who sat on the forms and who played in
the yards of the Academy, at which, during the greater part of the
present century, many of the sons of Edinburgh men, and indeed of
Scotsmen everywhere at home and abroad, have received their
education.
From 1864 to 1867 he was principally at a Mr Thompson's school in
Frederick Street, and he studied from time to time with private tutors at
the different places to which his parents went for the benefit of their
own health or his. These rather uncommon educational experiences
were of far more value to him in after life than a steady attendance at
any one school, as they made him an excellent linguist and gave him,
from very youthful years, a wide knowledge of foreign life and foreign
manners. In 1862 the Stevenson family visited Holland and Germany,
in 1863 they were in Italy, in 1864 in the Riviera, and at Torquay for
some months during the winter of 1865 and 1866; but after 1867 the
family life became more settled and was chiefly passed between
Edinburgh and Swanston.
In those days Louis was a lean, slim lad, inclined to be tall, and with
soft, somewhat lank, brown hair and brown