Curiosities.

Osbourne, Robert Louis Stevenson, 1885

Steve's pointing to Stevenson wisdom ...

Life is only a very dull and ill-directed theatre unless we have some interests in the piece; and to those who have neither art nor science, the world is a mere arrangement of colours, or a rough footway where they may very well break their shins.  It is in virtue of his own desires and curiosities that any man continues to exist with even patience, that he is charmed by the look of things and people, and that he wakens every morning with a renewed appetite for work and pleasure.

Ask.

The VAGABOND

Give to me the life I love

Let the lave go by me.

Give the jolly heaven above

And the byway nigh me.

Bed in the bush with stars to see

Bread I dip in the river -

There's the life for a man like me,

There's the life for ever.

Let the blow fall soon or late

Let what will be o'er me.

Give the face of earth around,

And the road before me.

Wealth I seek not, hope nor love,

Not a friend to know me.

All I seek, the heaven above

And the road below me.

O let autumn fall on me

When afield I linger

Silencing the bird on tree

Biting the blue finger.

White as meal as frosty field -

Warm the fireside haven -

Not to autumn will I yield,

Not to winter even!

Let the blow fall soon or late

Let what will be o'er me

Give the face of earth around

And the road below me.

Wealth I ask not, hope nor love,

Nor a friend to know me.

All I ask, the heaven above

And the road below me.

Robert Louis Stevenson

Phantasmagoric.

The true realism, always and everywhere, is that of the poets: to find out where joy resides, and give it a voice far beyond singing. For to miss the joy is to miss all. In the joy of the actors lies the sense of any action, for no man lives in the external truth among salts and acids, but in the warm, phantasmagoric chamber of his brain, with the painted windows and the storied wall.

Robert Louis Stevenson from “The Lantern-Bearers”

Hungry.

You've got to feed 'em when they're hungry ...

Kes is one of the best movies I've ever seen.

Lingers.

Manet, The Bench in the Garden of Versailles, 1881

TO ANY READER

As from the house your mother sees

You playing round the garden trees,

So you may see, if you will look

Through the windows of this book,

Another child, far, far away,

And in another garden, play.

But do not think you can at all,

By knocking on the window, call

That child to hear you. He intent

Is all on his play-business bent.

He does not hear; he will not look,

Nor yet be lured out of this book.

For, long ago, the truth to say,

He has grown up and gone away,

And it is but a child of air

That lingers in the garden there.

Robert Louis Stevenson

Inexhaustible.

Sargent, Robert Louis Stevenson, 1887

I am told there are people who do not care for maps, and I find it hard to believe.  The names, the shapes of the woodlands, the courses of the roads and rivers, the prehistoric footsteps of man still distinctly traceable up hill and down dale, the mills and the ruins, the ponds and the ferries, perhaps the standing tone or the Druidic Circle on the heath; here is an inexhaustible fund of interest for any man with eyes to see or twopence-worth of imagination to understand with!  No child but must remember laying his head in the grass, staring into the infinitesimal forest and seeing it grow populous with fairy armies.

Somewhat in this way, as I paused upon my map of Treasure Island, the future character of the book began to appear there visibly among imaginary woods; and their brown faces and bright weapons peeped out upon me from unexpected quarters, as they passed to and fro, fighting and hunting treasure, on these few square inches of a flat projection.  The next thing I knew I had some papers before me and was writing out a list of chapters.  How often have I done so, and the thing gone no further! But there seemed elements of success about this enterprise. 

Robert Louis Stevenson, from "My First Book, Treasure Island"

Please.

TO THE HESITATING PURCHASER

 If sailor tales to sailor tunes,

 Storm and adventure, heat and cold,

 If schooners, islands, and maroons,

 And buccaneers, and buried gold,

 And all the old romance, retold

 Exactly in the ancient way,

 Can please, as me they pleased of old,

 The wiser youngsters of today:

 --So be it, and fall on! If not,

 If studious youth no longer crave,

 His ancient appetites forgot,

 Kingston, or Ballantyne the brave,

 Or Cooper of the wood and wave:

 So be it, also! And may I

 And all my pirates share the grave

 Where these and their creations lie!

Robert Louis Stevenson, from Treasure Island

Favorite.

I never weary of great churches. It is my favorite kind of mountain scenery. 

Robert Louis Stevenson

Fire-Eater.

Wyeth, The Murderer of Roy Campbell, 1913

From the dedication to Robert Louis Stevenson's Kidnapped ...

This is no furniture for the scholar’s library, but a book for the winter evening school-room when the tasks are over and the hour for bed draws near; and honest Alan, who was a grim old fire-eater in his day has in this new avatar no more desperate purpose than to steal some young gentleman’s attention from his Ovid, carry him awhile into the Highlands and the last century, and pack him to bed with some engaging images to mingle with his dreams.

R.L.S. Skerryvore, Bournmouth

Duty.

There is no duty we so much underrate as the duty of being happy. By being happy, we sow anonymous benefits upon the world, which remain unknown even to ourselves, or when they are disclosed, surprise nobody so much as the benefactor.

Robert Louis Stevenson

Lingers.

Wyeth, N.C., Imagination, 1921

TO ANY READER

As from the house your mother sees

You playing round the garden trees,

So you may see, if you will look

Through the windows of this book,

Another child, far, far away,

And in another garden, play.

But do not think you can at all,

By knocking on the window, call

That child to hear you. He intent

Is all on his play-business bent.

He does not hear; he will not look,

Nor yet be lured out of this book.

For, long ago, the truth to say,

He has grown up and gone away,

And it is but a child of air

That lingers in the garden there.

Robert Louis Stevenson

Smile.

La Tour, Self-portrait, 1737

An intelligent person, looking out of his eyes and hearkening in his ears, with a smile on his face all the time, will get more true education than many another in a life of heroic vigils.

Robert Louis Stevenson, from An Apology for Idlers

Happy Birthday, Robert Louis Stevenson

Kent, Stevenson Memorial, 1903

Though I had lived by the shore all my life, I seemed never to have been near the sea till then. The smell of tar and salt was something new. I saw the most wonderful figure-heads, that had all been far over the ocean. I saw, besides, many old sailors, with rings in their ears, and whiskers curled in ringlets, and tarry pigtails, and their swaggering, clumsy sea-walk; and if I had seen as many kings or archbishops I could not have been more delighted. And I was going to sea myself; to sea in a schooner, with a piping boatswain, and pig-tailed singing seamen; to sea, bound for an unknown island, and to seek for buried treasures!

Robert Louis Stevenson, born on this day in 1850, from Treasure Island

Gallop.

WINDY NIGHTS

Whenever the moon and stars are set,

Whenever the wind is high,

All night long in the dark and wet,

A man goes riding by.

Late in the night when the fires are out,

Why does he gallop and gallop about?

Whenever the trees are crying aloud,

And ships are tossed at sea,

By, on the highway, low and loud,

By at the gallop goes he.

By at the gallop he goes, and then

By he comes back at the gallop again.

Robert Louis Stevenson

Sing.

Knaub, Autumn Bonfire, n/d

AUTUMN FIRES

In the other gardens

And all up the vale,

From the autumn bonfires

See the smoke trail!

Pleasant summer over

And all the summer flowers,

The red fire blazes,

The grey smoke towers.

Sing a song of seasons!

Something bright in all!

Flowers in the summer,

Fires in the fall!

Robert Louis Stevenson

Renews.

Bush, Robert Louis Stevenson, n/d

It is not so much for its beauty that the forest makes a claim upon men’s hearts, as for that subtle something, that quality of the air, that emanation from the old trees, that so wonderfully changes and renews a weary spirit.

Robert Louis Stevenson, from Essays on Travel

I'm beginning to sense Mama Nature's morning breath.

Published.

Wyeth, N.C., Billy Bones, 1911

His stories were what frightened people worst of all. Dreadful stories they were--about hanging, and walking the plank, and storms at sea, and the Dry Tortugas, and wild deeds and places on the Spanish Main. By his own account he must have lived his life among some of the wickedest men that God ever allowed upon the sea, and the language in which he told these stories shocked our plain country people almost as much as the crimes that he described. My father was always saying the inn would be ruined, for people would soon cease coming there to be tyrannized over and put down, and sent shivering to their beds; but I really believe his presence did us good. People were frightened at the time, but on looking back they rather liked it; it was a fine excitement in a quiet country life, and there was even a party of the younger men who pretended to admire him, calling him a "true sea-dog" and a "real old salt" and such like names, and saying there was the sort of man that made England terrible at sea.

Robert Louis Stevenson, from Treasure Island, published on this day in 1883

Tenor.

Sargent, Robert Louis Stevenson, 1887

The cruelest lies are often told in silence. A man may have sat in a room for hours and not opened his teeth, and yet come out of that room a disloyal friend or a vile calumniator. And how many loves have perished because, from pride, or spite, or diffidence, or that unmanly shame which withholds a man from daring to betray emotion, a lover, at the critical point of the relation, has but hung his head and held his tongue? And, again, a lie may be told by a truth, or a truth conveyed through a lie. Truth to facts is not always truth to sentiment; and part of the truth, as often happens in answer to a question, may be the foulest calumny. A fact may be an exception; but the feeling is the law, and it is that which you must neither garble nor belie. The whole tenor of a conversation is a part of the meaning of each separate statement; the beginning and the end define and travesty the intermediate conversation. You never speak to God; you address a fellow-man, full of his own tempers; and to tell truth, rightly understood, is not to state the true facts, but to convey a true impression; truth in spirit, not truth to letter, is the true veracity. To reconcile averted friends a Jesuitical discretion is often needful, not so much to gain a kind hearing as to communicate sober truth. 

Robert Louis Stevenson, from "Truth of Intercourse"

Onward.

FOREIGN LANDS

Up into the cherry tree 

Who should climb but little me? 

I held the trunk with both my hands 

And looked abroad in foreign lands. 

I saw the next door garden lie, 

Adorned with flowers, before my eye, 

And many pleasant places more 

That I had never seen before. 

I saw the dimpling river pass 

And be the sky's blue looking-glass; 

The dusty roads go up and down 

With people tramping in to town. 

If I could find a higher tree 

Farther and farther I should see, 

To where the grown-up river slips 

Into the sea among the ships, 

To where the road on either hand 

Lead onward into fairy land, 

Where all the children dine at five, 

And all the playthings come alive.

Robert Louis Stevenson

'Tis.

Homer, North Woods Club, Adirondacks (The Interrupted Tete-a-Tete), 1892

The UNSEEN PLAYMATE

When children are playing alone on the green,  
In comes the playmate that never was seen.  
When children are happy and lonely and good,  
The Friend of the Children comes out of the wood.  
  
Nobody heard him and nobody saw,         
His is a picture you never could draw,  
But he’s sure to be present, abroad or at home,  
When children are happy and playing alone.  
  
He lies in the laurels, he runs on the grass,  
He sings when you tinkle the musical glass;   
Whene’er you are happy and cannot tell why,  
The Friend of the Children is sure to be by!  
  
He loves to be little, he hates to be big,  
’Tis he that inhabits the caves that you dig;  
’Tis he when you play with your soldiers of tin   
That sides with the Frenchman and never can win.  
’Tis he, when at night you go off to your bed,  
Bids you go to your sleep and not trouble your head;  
For wherever they’re lying, in cupboard or shelf,  
’Tis he will take care of your playthings himself!

Robert Louis Stevenson