Robert Louis Stevenson | Page 7

doctor, surely you'll have him instead of Dr
Hunter?'
A wonderfully quick thought and old-fashioned remark from a child
not four years old, but a suggestively sad one too; he already knew so
well the necessity of a doctor to help human bodies, although he could
not yet comprehend the use of one for the 'cure' of human souls!
When he heard that his aunt was going to see a relative in Saxe Coburg
Place, he begged to be allowed to go with her, and, the permission
granted, started off in great pride on his very first expedition without
his nurse, that faithful friend of the Stevenson family having promised
to follow later to take him home. The aunt at least had cause to
remember that walk! He had started gloveless, and would not go back
for his gloves, but popped his cold hands under the cape of his pelisse,
and even then, unconventional as to clothing, said cheerfully:
'That will keep them from John Frost.'
So the pair set out on what proved a chilly and prolonged excursion; for,
in spite of all remonstrances, the child calmly sat down on every
doorstep and rested till he felt inclined to go on again, to the no small
dismay of his aunt, who knew how serious a thing the taking of a cold
was to the placid little personage smiling at her from the steps.
During the Crimean war, while he was still a very tiny mite, he, entirely
of his own accord, always prayed for the soldiers. When asked by his
mother if he would like to be a soldier, his answer was--
'I would neither like to kill nor to be killed,'--a very sensible reason to
have been thought out by so young a child.

His aunt says of him--
'I never knew so sweet a child.'
And his mother always said of him that his sweetness and patience
were beautiful. On one subject only mother and child sometimes
differed. Louis wished her to agree with him that grandpapa's home
was the nicest in the world, but the mother maintained their own home
was best.
Until his grandfather died in 1860, when he was ten years old, the
manse at Colinton was the little boy's favourite abiding place. Here
'Auntie' lived, and near here, too, was the home of the 'sister-cousin,'
and her brother who grew up with him, and who, of all the much loved
cousins of that large connection, were nearest and dearest in his
child-life, and to whom he sings--
'If two may read aright These rhymes of old delight, And house and
garden play You two, my cousins, and you only may.
'You in a garden green, With me were king and queen, Were soldier,
hunter, tar, And all the thousand things that children are.'
With these two cousins the favourite game was the fleeing from,
conquering, and finally slaying a huge giant called Bunker, invented by
Louis, who, the trio believed, haunted the manse garden, and required
continual killing. One time, on the Bonaly Road, they were
shipwrecked hungry sailors, who ate so many buttercups that the little
boys were poisoned and became very ill, and the little girl only escaped
because she found the flowers too bitter to eat! In the 'Redford burn of
happy memories' they sailed ships richly laden with whin pods for
vanilla, and yellow lichen for gold. They always hoped to see ghosts, or
corpse candles, and were much disappointed they never saw anything
more terrible, in the gruesome place where the sexton kept his tools,
than a swaying branch of ivy.
Of the tall, pale, venerable grandfather, with his snowy hair, Louis
stood a good deal in awe; and he tells us in his charming paper, 'The

Manse,' in Memories and Portraits, that he had not much in common
with the old man although he felt honoured by his connection with a
person reverend enough to enter the pulpit and preach the sermon every
Sunday. So many Balfours were scattered over the world, in India and
the Colonies, that the old rooms at the manse were full of eastern
curiosities and nick-nacks from distant lands dear to the hearts of little
folks. And, while the garden was a bower of delight, the house was a
veritable treasure trove to the grandchildren from far and near who
played in it.
To Robert Louis Stevenson, with his mind full of romance, it must have
been a paradise indeed, and one that he admirably pictures in the verses
addressed to an Anglo-Indian cousin who, as a married woman, has
returned to the India of her birth.
It is worth mentioning--as a note by the way which illustrates that
abiding boyishness in Mr Stevenson, so well known to all who knew
him--that four particularly