SKERRYVORE

Lake Wakatip Mail, Issue 4347, 11 January 1938, Page 2

SKERRYVORE

ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON'S BOURNEMOUTH HOUSE NAMED AFTER LIGHTHOUSE The recent anniversary of Robert Louis Stevenson’s birth —he was born at 8 Howard Place, Edinburgh, on November 13, 1850—recalls the_ very pleasant holiday spent by the writer of this article last September at Skerryvore, Bournemouth. It was a little over 50 years*ago—on August 20, 1887—that the talented Scottish author bade adieu to that delightful Hampshire resort and went to London, where, in a hotel near Finsbury Circus, he passed his last two days in this country. On August 22, accompanied by his wife, his mother, Lloyd Osbourne (his stepson), and the devoted Frenchwoman Valentine Roqh, he sailed from London in the Ludgate Hill for America, never again to behold “ the hills of Horae.” Early in 1885, when it was thought the air of Bournemouth would prove beneficial to Stevenson’s health, his father purchased and gave to his daughter-in-law as a gift a house—“ a brick, ivy-clad house,” to quote Miss Rosaline Masson, “ with a view of the sea from its upper windows, standing in half an acre of garden sloping down at the back through a bank of heather and past a lawn, into a small ravine of rhododendrons, with a little burn trickling at its foot.” To commemorate perhaps one or the greatest engineering accomplishments of his forbears—Skerryvore lighthouse, far out in the stormy Atlantic—the name of the house was changed from Seaview to Skerryvore.

For love of lovely words, and for the Of those, my kinsmen and my countrymen, . Who early and late in the windy ocean toiled To plant a star for seamen, where was then The surfy haunt of seals and cormorants : I, on the lintel of this cot, inscribe The name of a strong tower. It is a long cry to 1887, and time does not stand still. Alterations and renovations there have been, but Skerryvore is easily recognisable from Miss Masson’s description. “ BANK OF HEATHER.” The sea now cannot be seen from the house; on part of “the bank of heather ” there are other villas. The garden, however, still slopes down to the higher reaches of lovely Alum Chine, and though it may not possess the charm of Stevenson’s day—he evinced great pride in the garden—it still has sufficient beauty for us to feel as he did when he wrote:— . . , The truant gull Skims the green level of the lawn, his wing Dispetals roses. The “ blue room ” is now the lounge. The Sheraton furniture and the blue china, together with Turner’s engraving, 1 The Bell Rock Lighthouse,” which used go hang over the mantelpiece, and the Shelley portrait, are, of course, no longer there. Gone, too, is the well-known Sargent painting that found an honoured place in the drawing room; “ walking about in my own dining room, in my own velveteen jacket, and twisting as I go my own moustache,” as R.L.S. himself wrote of it, and added, “ Damn queer as a whole.” At the gate of the house, which is opposite R. L. Stevenson Avenue—is this the’ only instance in which the initials have been used in naming a street after a great man?—prominently displayed is a large board with the following inscription:—

SKERRYVORE THE HOME OF THE LATE R. L, STEVENSON

Mr L , the lessee of Skerryvore, now owned by a firm of Dutch publishers, informed the writer that through the board he has a surprisingly large number of callers of all nationalities Americans, Germans, Swedes, Indians, Chinese, Japanese, etc. He had an amusing anecdote of a Japanese visitor who insisted on seeing No. 1 bedroom (Stevenson’s bedroom). It was occupied at the time and Mr L endeavoured to put him off, hut the Oriental gentleman said he was leaving Bournemouth the next day and was soon sailing for home, it would be his last opportunity and he must see Stevenson’s room. Eventually, after making his excuses to the ladies occupying the room, Mr L was able to oblige, and the pertinacity of the Jap was rewarded. MEMORIAL TABLETS TO DOGS. When touring buses pass the house and the avenue, the guide points them out, adding a few words of explanation. One afternoon the writer himself having shortly before left the house for a tour of Lulworth Cove through part of the Thomas Hardy country, had the experience of listening to the guide describing how Thomas Stevenson gave Skerryvore to his sou’s wife. On the left-hand side of the entrance to the house are two memorial tablets let into the wall to Coolin and Bogue, two of Stevenson’s canine friends; while in the courtyard behind the kitchen hangs an old ship’s bell washed up from a wreck on Skerryvore before the lighthouse was erected by R.L.S.’s uncle. Mr L also mentioned that Stevenson’s garden roller was now in the possession of a Bournemouth plumber, who successfully resisted all his blandishments to obtain it for Skerryvore. Rather indifferent though his health was during those years —“ the pallid brute that lived in Skerryvore, like a weevil in a biscuit,” he so described himself —Stevenson never allowed depression to get a grip of him for very long. On the contrary, he was an incurable optimist. “ I was never bored in my life.” said he. HANDICAP OF ILL-HEALTH. Despite the handicap of ill-health this period of his life was a memorable one as regards literary activity. ‘ Kidnapped ’; that arresting allegory of the duality of man’s nature, ‘ The Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde’; ‘Prince Otto,’ often referred

to as the test of the true Stevensoman; ‘ The Child’s Garden of Verse ‘ Un- ] derwoods ’; several essays and short . stories—all of singular charm and of I a high order of merit—were given to the world. There were also the plays, i written in collaboration with W. L. Henley; they, however, were failures. I Emerson somewhere has said; ‘ Happiness is a perfume you cannot pour on others without getting a few drops yourself.” Stevenson radiated happiness ; with him it amounted almost to a creed, and he had ample opportunity to practise it, for he was blessed with a large circle of friends. But on whom did most of the drops of happiness fall. On R.L.S. himself, probably, for he was perhaps the most cheerful ot all at Skerryvore. Besides visits from nis parents, those to whom a welcome was always extended included Sir Sidney Colvin, Henley, Sir Percy Shelley, (The poet’s son) and his wife, his cousin R. A M. Stevenson and his wife, Miss Boodle (“The Gamekeeper ), Sir Henry and Lady Taylor Professor Pleeming Jenkm and his wife, Charles Baxter. Miss “ Coggie ” Ferner, William Archer (“The Incorruptible One”), Mrs de Matots, Henry James (“ The Prince of Men ”) and Dr Bodley Scott, to whom, in “ the physician dedication ” in ‘ Underwoods, R.L.S. paid a glowing / but well-deserved tribute. GHOSTS. These remarks are prompted by the fact that for a number of years now the writer has been an ardent Stevensoman, but it was not till last, September that he had the opportunity of visiting Bournemouth. Enraptured as he was with the town as a health and holiday resort, his pleasure was irrefragably enhanced by staying at Skerryvore, where he occupied No. 1 bedroom. There, at night, while wooing with a last cigarette the soothing influence of Morpheus, appeared to entertain him some wraith-like forms —creations of Stevenson’s Bournemouth days: David Balfour, proud of his ancestry, conceited and vain, sentimental and easily stirred to emotion, but successful in masking his feelings, a typical, ordinary, middle-class Scot; the immortal Alan Breck, perhaps one of the author’s most felicitous creations, also inordinately vain and overweeningly proud of his Highland blood, inclined to swashbuckling and prone to imagine an affront at the slightest provocation, an expert swordsman, loyal and true to the cause he espouses, and in an encounter full of courage; the upright Dr Jekyll quaffing the potent drug and being transformed into the leering, orgiastic Mr Hyde the personification of all that is lecnerous and evil (a subject, however, more conducive to nightmare than dreamless slumber) ; and several others.

Say not of me that weakly 1 declined The labours of my sires, and fled the sea, The towers we founded and the lamps we lit, To play at home with paper like a child.

Yes, though Thomas Stevenson at first suffered keen disappointment at his son declining to follow the family tradition and become a lighthouse engineer, he eventually recognised there were other lamps to be lit, besides those that nightly flash around our Scottish shores.

And now, in many a home, the works of R.L.S. are treasured as brilliant lamps, transmitting the fourfold rays of happiness, courage, tolerance, and generosity.—C. A. Macintosh Thyne, in the 1 Weekly Scotsman.’