sm, and the stage,
and Stevenson became intimate with many of them, especially with the
staff and the sub-editor (in those days) of "The Saturday Review," Mr.
Walter Pollock; and with Mr. Saintsbury, Mr. Traill, Mr. Charles
Brookfield, Sir Walter Besant; a little later with Mr. Edmund Gosse, who
was by much his favourite in this little society. In addition to the
chaff of the "Saturday" reviewers, he enjoyed the talk of Prof.
Robertson Smith, Prof. W. H. Clifford, and Prof. Fleeming Jenkin.

Stevenson never wrote, to my knowledge, in "The Saturday Review";
journalism never "set his genius." For one reason among many, his manner
was by far too personal in those days of unsigned contributions. He
needed money, he wished to be financially independent, but, in the
Press, his independence could not be all that he desired. He did not
wield the ready, punctual pen of him whom Lockhart most invidiously
calls "the bronzed and mother-naked gentleman of the Press."

His conversation at luncheon, and after luncheon, in the Club was the
delight of all, but, for various reasons, I was seldom present. I do
remember an afternoon when I had him all to myself, but that was later.
He poured out stories of his American wanderings, including a tale of a
murderous lonely inn, kept by Scots, whose genius tended to
assassination. He knew nothing of their exploits at home, but, then or
afterwards, I heard of them from a boatman on Loch Awe. Their mother was
a witch!

At this period Stevenson was much in Paris, and alone, or with his
cousin Bob dwelt at Barbizon and other forest haunts of painters. The
chronicle of these merry days is written in the early chapters of "The
Wrecker."

In literature he was "finding himself," in his Essays, but the world did
not find him easily or early.

History much attracted him, as it did Thackeray, who said, "I like
history, it is so gentlemanly." But it can only be written by gentlemen
of independent means. Stevenson's favourite period was that of the
France of the fifteenth century, and he studied later some aspects of
that time in essays on Charles d'Orleans, in his admirable picture of
Villon as a man and poet, and especially in "A Lodging for the Night,"
and "The Sieur de Maletroit's Door," shut on a windy night in the month
after the Maid failed at Paris (September, 1429).

These unexcelled short stories really revealed Stevenson as the
narrator, his path lay clear before him. But even his friends