Part 6 (1/2)

[Ill.u.s.tration: The Treasure Island map]

As the story grew he read each new chapter aloud to the family in the evening. He was writing it for one boy, but found he had more in his audience. ”My father,” he says, ”not only heard with delight the daily chapter, but set himself actively to collaborate. When the time came for Billy Bones' chest to be ransacked, he must have pa.s.sed the better part of a day preparing on the back of a legal envelope an inventory of its contents, which I exactly followed, and the name of Flint's old s.h.i.+p, the Walrus, was given at his particular request.”

When the map was redrawn for the book it was embellished with ”blowing whales and sailing s.h.i.+ps; and my father himself brought into service a knack he had of various writing, and elaborately _forged_ the signature of Captain Flint and the sailing directions of Billy Bones.”

These daily readings were rare treats to those at Skerryvore, for Stevenson was a most dramatic reader. ”When he came to stand in the place of Silver you could almost have imagined you saw the great one-legged John Silver, joyous-eyed, on the rolling sea.”

The book was not long in springing into popularity. Not only the boys enjoyed it but all sorts of staid and sober men became boys once more and sat up long after bedtime to finish the tale. Mr. Gladstone caught a glimpse of it at a friend's house and did not rest the next day until he had procured a copy for himself, and Andrew Lang said: ”This is the kind of stuff a fellow wants. I don't know when, except Tom Sawyer and the Odyssey, that I ever liked a romance so well.”

It was translated into many different languages, even appearing serially in certain Greek and Spanish papers.

”Kidnapped” followed; a story founded on the Appan murder. David Balfour, the hero, was one of his own ancestors; Alan Breck had actually lived, and the Alison who ferried Alan and David over to Torryburn was one of c.u.mmie's own people. The Highland country where the scenes were laid, he had traversed many times, and the Island of Earraid, where David was s.h.i.+pwrecked, was the spot where he had spent some of his engineering days.

Stevenson had often said the ”brownies” in his dreams gave him ideas for his tales. At Skerryvore they came to him with a story that among all his others is counted the greatest.

”In the small hours one morning,” says his wife, ”I was awakened by cries of horror from Louis. Thinking he had a nightmare I awakened him.

He said angrily, 'Why did you wake me? I was dreaming a fine bogey tale.'”

The dream was so vivid that he could not rest until he had written off the story, and it so possessed him that the first draft was finished within three days. It was called ”The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr.

Hyde.”

This story instantly created much discussion. Articles were written about it, sermons were preached on it, and letters poured in from all sorts of people with their theories about the strange tale. Six months after it was published nearly forty thousand copies were sold in England alone; but its greatest success was in America where its popularity was immediate and its sale enormous.

One day he was attracted by a book of verses about children by Kate Greenaway, and wondered why he could not write some too of the children he remembered best of all. Scenes and doings in the days spent at Colinton with his swarm of cousins; the games they had played and the people they had known all trooped back with other memories of Edinburgh days. As he recalled these children, they tripped from his pen until he had a delightful collection of verses and determined to bring them together in a book.

First he called it ”The Penny Whistle,” but soon changed the t.i.tle to ”A Child's Garden of Verses” and dedicated it, with the following poem, to the only one he said who would really understand the verses, the one who had done so much to make his childhood days happy:

TO ALISON CUNNINGHAM

FROM HER BOY

”For the long nights you lay awake And watched for my unworthy sake; For your most comfortable hand That led me through the uneven land; For all the story-books you read; For all the pains you comforted; For all you pitied, all you bore In sad and happy days of yore;-- My second Mother, my first wife, The angel of my infant life-- From the sick child, now well and old, Take, nurse, the little book you hold!

”And grant it, Heaven, that all who read, May find as dear a nurse at need, And every child who lists my rhyme, In the bright fireside, nursery clime, May hear it in as kind a voice As made my childish days rejoice.”

”Of course,” he said, speaking of this dedication when he wrote to c.u.mmie about the book, ”this is only a flourish, like taking off one's hat, but still a person who has taken the trouble to write things does not dedicate them to anyone without meaning it; and you must try to take this dedication in place of a great many things that I might have said, and that I ought to have done; to prove that I am not altogether unconscious of the great debt of grat.i.tude I owe you.”

[Ill.u.s.tration: Facsimile of letter sent to c.u.mmy with ”An Inland Voyage”]

If Thomas Stevenson had been one of the first to doubt his boy's literary ability, he was equally quick to acknowledge himself mistaken.

He was proud of his brilliant son, keenly interested in whatever he was working on and, during the days spent together at Skerryvore, gave him valuable aid in his writing.

To have this old-time comrades.h.i.+p with his father, to enjoy his sympathy and understanding once more was Stevenson's greatest joy at this time; a joy which he sorrowfully realized he must soon part with forever as his father's health was failing rapidly.

Thomas Stevenson remained at Skerryvore until April, 1887, when he left for a short visit to Edinburgh. While there he became suddenly worse and died on the 8th of May.

Louis's greatest reason for remaining in England was gone now, and he determined to cross the ocean with his family once more.