Robert Louis Stevenson

In a lonely California lodging, Robert Louis Stevenson lies submerged in bedclothes, Thoreau’s books scattered around him—and keeps writing. His work, one visitor says, is more than a task: it is a life-preserver.

Alexander H. Japp’s late-nineteenth-century portrait begins with an intellectual meeting of minds, then follows Stevenson from his correspondence about Thoreau to a visit in Braemar, Scotland. There, beneath the velvet jacket and cigarette smoke, Japp finds a man of frail health but inexhaustible energy: witty, questioning, and determined not to make his illness the centre of the room. Letters and close observation bring the writer of adventure stories into view as a complex, companionable presence. What did Japp see in Stevenson that no book could quite reveal?

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