Stuart Campbell, author of RLS In Love: The Love Poetry of Robert Louis Stevenson, provides a fascinating context for these verses. He divides RLS's life and loves into three sections.
"The Swinging Gait of Harlots"presents the poems written when Stevenson was a young man in Edinburgh.
"A Long Despair"reflects what is described as his "passionate but doomed" relationship with Fanny Sitwell.
The poems in "The One Illogical Adventure"were written during Stevenson's difficult but equally passionate marriage to his wife, Fanny Osbourne.
Love Poems Written During RLS's Early Life in Edinburgh
"I wish I had made more of a religion of sex." So wrote the young Robert Louis Stevenson in a private letter to a male cousin who was also a very close friend. The fledgling poet and writer seems however to have made the most of the opportunities for sexual adventures available to a well-to-do young man in Victorian Edinburgh. He was particularly fascinated by the prostitutes to be found in the dingy closes, taverns and brothels of Edinburgh's Old Town.
Stuart Campbell offers an interesting evaluation of the tantalising story that RLS wrote a novel featuring one of these prostitutes, titled simply Claire. Some Stevenson scholars believe that the novelist and poet's wife, Fanny Osbourne, threw the manuscript onto the fire, scared that its subject matter would damage her husband's reputation.
"A Long Despair"– Robert Louis Stevenson's Mental Health
In his humorous and humane commentary on the man and the writer, Stuart Campbell makes it clear that Robert Louis Stevenson liked, lusted after and fell in love with many women throughout his all too short life. This could raise RLS to the heights and lower him to the depths. He was already predisposed to what he himself described as "morbid melancholy" and subject to violent mood swings.
A professional in the field of mental health, Stuart Campbell writes: "Today Stevenson's illness would be labelled rapid cycle bipolar disorder. He could travel the road from exhilaration to total despair in the course of a single day."
Stuart Campbell also recounts how a depressed RLS, once more unburdening his soul to his cousin, wrote of going out into Edinbugh looking for "Haschish" and, becoming ever more depressed, spent hours among the gravestones and silent tombs of Greyfriars churchyard.
"The One Illogical Adventure" – Robert Louis Stevenson and his Wife Fanny Osbourne
Stevenson was a popular figure during his life and has remained so ever since. Much vitriol has been directed against his wife Fanny Osbourne. Among many alleged offences, she is charged with never having been worthy of her husband. Stuart Campbell sums her up thus: "Fanny Osbourne was Yoko Ono to Stevenson's John Lennon." Yet their turbulent and often troubled relationship produced some exquisite love poems.
"I Will Make You Brooches and Toys for Your Delight" (1st Stanza)
I will make you brooches and toys for your delight
Of bird-song at morning and star-shine at night.
I will make a palace fit for you and me
Of green days in forests and blue days at sea.
It's there that I'll be yours, it's there that you'll be mine,
Where the green leaves rustle and the blue days shine.
"Dedication for Weir of Hermiston to My Wife"
This may be the last poem Stevenson ever wrote for his wife, while they were living with their respective extended families in Samoa in the South Seas. Stuart Campbell offers it as convincing evidence that RLS was longing too for another love - Edinburgh and the hills of Scotland.
I saw rain falling and the rainbow drawn
On Lammermuir. Hearkening I heard again
In my precipitous city beaten bells
Winnow the keen sea wind. And here afar,
Intent on my own race and place, I wrote.
Take thou the writing: thine it is. For who
Burnished the sword, blew on the drowsy coal,
Held still the target higher, chary of praise
And prodigal of censure - who but thou?
So now, in the end, if this the least be good,
If any deed be done, if any fire
Burn in the imperfect page, the praise be thine!
RLS In Love: The Love Poetry of Robert Louis Stevenson
Complemented by a striking and atmospheric cover, these are pages to be dipped into again and again. Stuart Campbell has created a sparkling little gem of a book.
RLS In Love: The Love Poetry of Robert Louis Stevenson is published by Sandstone Press.
Learn more about Robert Louis Stevenson from the National Library of Scotland, including the opportunity to read the first edition of Kidnapped online.
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