Essays from the Chap-Book: Being a Miscellany of Curious and interesting Tales, Histories, &c; newly composed by Many Celebrated Writers and very delightful to read.Various
History
Essays from the Chap-Book: Being a Miscellany of Curious and interesting Tales, Histories, &c; newly composed by Many Celebrated Writers and very delightful to read.
Various
American essays; Literature, Modern -- History and criticism
He was very sore and somewhat rebellious over writing not being
considered a profession, and having to bend to his good father in so
far as to join the Scottish bar. For long “R. L. Stevenson, Advocate,”
was on the door-plate of 17 Heriot Row. The Parliament House saw
him seldom, never therein to practise his bewigged profession. We
frightened him much by avowing that a clerk was hunting for him, and
even the rich library below the trampling advocate’s feet could not
wile him into the old Hall for some time after that false scare. He
also heard he had been dubbed “That Gifted Boy and the New Chatterton”
by an idle legal wit. That name more nearly persuaded him to have
his hair shorn to an orthodox length than any other entreaty. Like
all people with character, he had animosities, but he was very just
and tolerant in belaboring an adversary with his tongue, which,
considering he was in the full bloom of the critical self-satisfiedness
of youth, showed a just mind and kindliness of heart. When he had
fallen foul of and had hurled some sarcasms at the stupid dulness
of people, he next, in his queer inquisitive way, fell to wondering
what it would be like to be inside their torpid minds and view things
from their dead level. He was fond of travel, of boating, of walking
tours, but he was no sportsman, and not even a lover of the Gentle
Art. Though his friends were all golfers (and golf then was mostly
confined to Scotland), I do not think he ever took a club in hand. His
eyes, when outside, were wholly occupied enjoying his surroundings
and painting them in words. “Even in the thickest of our streets,”
he noted, “the country hill-tops find out a young man’s eyes and set
his heart beating for travel and pure air.” He loved to wander round
his native city. Duddingstone was one favorite haunt, Queensferry was
another, and the Hawes Inn there, now grown into a villafied hotel,
with the hawthorn hedges still in its garden, had attractions for him.
From it Davie Balfour was “kidnapped,” and Rest-And-Be-Thankful on
Corstorphine Hill, where Allan and Davie part after their adventures,
we often walked to on Sundays, and all the while he was busy talking
and full of plans and projects. The Jekyll and Hyde plot he had in his
brain, and told us of in those days. Burke and Hare had a fascination
for him. A novel called the “Great North Road” was another plot in his
mind. His “Virginibus Puerisque” is dedicated to W. E. Henley, of whom
I heard Stevenson speak when he had first discovered him an invalid in
the Edinburgh Infirmary. He came in glowing with delight at the genius
he had found and began ransacking our shelves for books for him. A
few days later he was bristling with indignation because some people
who visited the sick objected to the advanced and foreign literary
food Stevenson had fed his new acquaintance on, and left a new supply
of tract literature in their stead. In the preface of “Virginibus
Puerisque,” which is dedicated to Mr.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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