EARLY LIFE
He was born at 8 Howard Place, Edinburgh, Scotland, on November 13, 1850, the only son of Thomas Stevenson, and his wife Margaret Isabella (born Balfour).
He was christened Robert Lewis Balfour Stevenson. At about age 18, Stevenson changed the spelling of "Lewis" to "Louis", and in 1873, he dropped "Balfour."
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| Robert Louis Stevenson at the age of seven |
Thomas Stevenson was a pious but amenable lighthouse engineer, who followed in the footsteps of Robert's granddad.
Robert had a tendency to extreme coughs and fevers especially in winter. His health problems exacerbated when the family moved to a damp, chilly house at 1 Inverleith Terrace in Edinburgh in 1851.
The family moved again to the sunnier 17 Heriot Row in Newton, Edinugh when Stevenson was six years old, but the tendency to extreme sickness in winter remained with him until he was eleven.
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| Stevenson's childhood home in Heriot Row By Kim Traynor |
As a child young Robert was much influenced by a strict nurse, Cummy (Alison Cunningham), who used tell him stories of ghosts, conspiracies and Calvinist judgement. On one occasion she made him pray for the souls of his parents because they had played whist on the Sabbath.
Robert often explored as a child local cemeteries and he also used to like walking in the East Lothian Lowlands with a lantern. He maintained a fondness for cemeteries all his life.
Stevenson studied at Edinburgh University where he attended few lectures excusing himself on the grounds that too much concentration might bring on brain fever.
As a student Stevenson typically had one book in his pocket for reading and a book in his other pocket for making notes.
Stevenson got a criminal conviction as a student for throwing snowballs.
CAREER
He began his education as an engineer but, despite his family history, Robert showed little aptitude and soon switched to studying law.
As he grew older, Robert's father became disappointed that his son seemed more interested in drinking and dancing rather than following his family's lighthouse engineer career. He considered that Robert spent too much time with the working class elements in the city.
After leaving university Stevenson began to publish reviews in the Cornbull magazine and wandered off to France.
Stevenson qualified as an advocate in 1875, but he never practiced, as he devoted all his energies to travel and writing. His career as an advocate only earned him four guineas in his whole life.
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| Stevenson c. 1877 |
Until he became a successful writer in his 30s, Stevenson's father continued to support his son.
Treasure Island, his first widely popular novel, was first published as a book in 1883, by Cassell & Co. After the success of Treasure Island, Stevenson enjoyed huge financial success.
While in California marrying Fanny Osbourne in 1880, Stevenson wrote pieces for the local Monterey newspaper.
RELATIONSHIPS
Stevenson had a youthful infatuation with Frances Sitwell, a clergyman's wife who was 11 years his senior. She had contacts who were able to introduce him to the London literary scene.
Stevenson met the charming Mrs Fanny Osbourne, who was ten years his senior, in an artist colony in France. She had left her faithless husband in California and was staying in Grez.
Fanny Osbourne was dark haired, olive skinned, a heavy smoker and a gun toting sharp shooter. She was also a writer and painter with little talent.
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| Fanny Van de Grift Osbourne, c. 1876 |
The tomboy Fanny's Wild West experiences triggered Stevenson's imagination and by the summer of 1877 they were courting.
The following year Fanny left for California to arrange a divorce, and Stevenson signed himself "Uxorious Billy" in his letters to his married girlfriend as he wrote of the privations he suffered in the months spent waiting for her to divorce her first husband.
In July 1879 Stevenson received a telegram from her saying she was gravely ill in Monterey, California, please come. The fragile Stevenson arrived sick, the trip having nearly killed him.
It turned out that Fanny had had an emotional breakdown related to indecision about whether to leave her philandering husband. She ultimately chose Stevenson, and in May 1880, they were married in San Francisco. The Scottish novelist also took on her son Lloyd.
Fanny and Stevenson honeymooned on the frontier in Napa Valley, California and during their stay in the sunshine, he regained his health.
After returning to Britain, Stevenson and Fanny lived in Bournemouth between 1884-87 in a house bought for them by his father.
Stevenson described marriage as "At its lowest, a sort of friendship recognized by the police."
TRAVELS
Stevenson was sent to Menton on the French Riviera in November 1873 to recuperate after his health failed. He returned in better health in April 1874, but he returned to France several times after that.
In 1878, Stevenson took a stubborn, manipulative donkey called Modeste on a 12-day, 200-kilometer (120 mi) hiking journey through the sparsely populated and impoverished areas of the Cévennes mountains in south-central France before returning to Edinburgh to write his book Travels with a Donkey.
In the summer of 1882 Fanny and Stevenson rented a cottage in Hyres, near Toulons in the South of France. He later wrote: "I was only happy once and that was at Hyres."
After his father's death in 1887, Stevenson tired of Bournemouth bourgeoisie life and decided to travel again. Fanny and him arrived in New York September 1887. They stayed north of New York in "Cure Cottage" in the frontier town Saranac Lake.
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| Stevenson's "Cure Cottage" in Saranac Lake |
During the intensely cold winter in Saramac Lake, Stevenson wrote some of his best essays and began The Master of Ballantrae. He also planned, for the following summer, a trip to the southern Pacific Ocean.
To gain first hand experience with immigrants who were travelling west to seek their fortunes, Stevenson rode with them from New York to the west coast in a springless, rattling old railway coach with closely bunched backless benches for seats.
In June 1888, Stevenson chartered the yacht Casco and set sail with his wife, step child, his mother and family servants from San Francisco. The sea air and thrill of adventure for a time restored his health, and he wandered the eastern and central Pacific, stopping for extended stays at the Hawaiian Islands.
When they arrived in Samoa in Christmas 1889, the Stevensons were mistaken for a group of wandering actors.
The following year, Stevenson purchased a tract of about 400 acres (1.6 km²) in Upolu, an island in Samoa. Here, after two aborted attempts to visit Scotland, he established himself, after much work, upon his estate in the village of Vailima.
WRITINGS
Robert Louis Stevenson wrote in a concise, precise, journalistic style with appalling handwriting.
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| Stevenson in 1885 |
Stevenson's 1879 account of his walking tour in France, An Inland Voyage and Travels with a Donkey in the Cevennes, was one of the first books to present hiking and camping as recreational activities.
Robert Stevenson collaborated with William Ernest Henley on several plays in the late 1870s and 1880s.
In 1879 Stevenson and Henley wrote Deacon Brodie a melodrama about the criminal Bill Brodie who was a respectable cabinet maker and pillar of the community by day, and a leader of a gang of robbers by night. He was finally hanged on a gallows of his own design. The play was unsuccessful, but Stevenson, whose father owned furniture made by Brodie, remained fascinated by the dichotomy between Brodie's respectable façade and his real nature and was inspired to write Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde.
In 1885 Stevenson wrote a book of poems for children A Child's Garden of Verses. Stevenson dedicated the poems to his nurse Cummy, who cared for him during his many childhood illnesses.
Published on January 5, 1886, The Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde was an immediate best-seller, Stevenson's real breakthrough book, and made him a talking point in Victorian society.
Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde was written in three days in his Bournemouth Villa while Stevenson was wracked by coughing fits and drinking himself into stupors to try to counteract this. The plot was outlined by a nightmare during which one man was pressed into a cabinet where he swallowed a drug and changed into another being.
Stevenson based The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde on his earlier play Deacon Brodie about a respected businessman and Edinburgh town councilor by day who was a robber by night.
Stevenson's wife criticized his story but saw its potential saying it should be a full length allegory, rather than just an essay. As a result, Stevenson burnt the manuscript and rewrote it in another three days. It originally appeared as a shilling shocker.
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| Jekyll and Hyde Title |
You might think the "Jekyll" in "The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde" is pronounced such that it rhymes with "freckle," but you'd be wrong. According to none other than R,L. Stevenson himself, the name should be pronounced "Jee-kal" as in rhymes with “fecal”.
Kidnapped is a historical fiction adventure novel, which was first published in the magazine Young Folks from May to July 1886. It was published as a novel the same year and quickly became one of Stevenson's best known works.
Stevenson also wrote Scottish ballads like "Sing me a song of a land that is gone."
"Nobody moves characters from one room to another like Stevenson." Graham Greene.
"If you don't like Stevenson there is something wrong with you." JL Borges.
APPEARANCE AND CHARACTER
Stevenson had a long face, black lank hair, dark complexion with a lean figure.
He had a "musing and melancholy expression" with "splendid smouldering rich eyes" according to Mark Twain.
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| Photograph of Robert Louis Stevenson |
A bohemian in his 20s in Edinburgh, Stevenson wore a black velveteer smoking jacket (in colder climes) and a wide hat.
When the New York Herald interviewed Robert Louis Stevenson, he was wearing a "short velvet jacket and a peculiarly cut low hat". With his black hair full over his shoulders and his clean cut refined features he suggested a Van Dyke.
Stevenson was a charismatic but private individual. He was said to be witty, charming, straightforward, likeable, open, warm and self-depreciating.
In later life, Stevenson had his rotten teeth replaced with wooden ones.
BELIEFS
Influenced by his Calvinist nanny, the young Stevenson feared he might plummet into eternal torment while he slept, and had nightmares in which he stood tongue-tied before God's throne. These nocturnal terrors persisted throughout his life, sometimes making him doubt his sanity. They were, he acknowledged, vital for his writing, giving access to the febrile inventiveness of the unconscious. But he condemned adults who exposed children to such horrors, and sloughed off religion as an adolescent, converting instead to Darwinism.
Stevenson's Presbyterian father was disappointed when Robert announced that he had decided to become an agnostic and a believer in Darwinism. They had many powerful arguments on the truth of Christianity with Stevenson claiming that the God of his parent's religion showed a "disloyalty to Christian love".
HOBBIES AND INTERESTS
Besides playing the piano and flageolet, Stevenson wrote over 123 original musical compositions or arrangements.
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| Portrait by John Singer Sargent, 1887 |
Robert Louis Stevenson loved God's creatures. He once traveled on a boat to America that turned out to be carrying a cargo of zoo animals. The stink and din were unbearable to everyone but Stevenson found them bracing and made friends with a baboon.
Once, when playing billiards with Herbert Spencer at London's Saville Club Stevenson came up with the maxim "Proficiency in billiards is a sign of a mis-spent youth."
HEALTH
Stevenson suffered from catarrhal consumption from an early age, and the chronic Edinburgh dampness where he was bought up didn't aid his health . Most of his childhood was spent in bed where he spent many a long night, kept awake by his coughing. There his imagination ran wild, and he often dreamed of exciting adventures.
Illness continued to be a recurrent feature of Stevenson's adult life and left him extraordinarily thin.
In 1873 at the age of 23, Stevenson fell ill and the diagnosis was "nervous exhaustion with a threatening of phthisis". The prescription was a winter on the French Riviera.
After marrying Fanny Osbourne the delicate Stevenson had his first hemorrhage and became increasingly anxious. He decided to leave for the South Seas for health reasons.
LAST YEARS
In 1888, Stevenson traveled to the island of Molokai just weeks after the death there of Father Damien. He spent twelve days at the missionary priest's residence, Bishop Home at Kalawao. Stevenson taught the local girls there to play croquet.
Stevenson settled at Vailima, high above Apia, in Western Samoa where he sought a cure for his tuberculosis. There he built an extravagant house from redwood imported from California which he filled with some of his family's Edinburgh furniture. In its grounds he made a garden and farm.
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| Stevenson with his wife and their household in Vailima, Samoa, c. 1892 |
Of his Samoan farm Stevenson commented, "There is nothing so interesting as weeding."
Stevenson threw parties at his Samoa home for native chiefs and visiting warships and ran a large household with 19 island servants. He felt isolated there from his literary friends.
He played cricket on the island with his family with unripe oranges.
Stevenson found himself in the middle of a bloody civil war during his time in Samoa. He loved it- he was living out one of his adventure stories.
He was known to Samoans as "Tustala", the Teller of Tales".
DEATH
On December 3, 1894, Stevenson was preparing a supper salad and talking to his wife. He went to fetch a bottle of wine from his cellar and suddenly collapsed.
Stevenson died within a few hours, probably of a brain (cerebral) haemorrhage, aged 44.
He was buried like a mountain chief in a hillside grave by the Samoaeans at his Western Samoa house.
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| Burial on Mount Vaea in Samoa, 1894 |
In his will, Stevenson bequeathed his birthday to a little girl who had been born on Christmas Day.
Sources The Penguin Book of Interviews, Sunday Times Culture magazine, Independent on Sunday Review.
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