Bob Stevenson (centre) Courtesy of RLS Collection, General
Collection, Beinecke Rare Book and
Manuscript Library, Yale University

"what was our dismay, in the midst of quite a crowd of the gay world, to see that open cab, at a word of command from Robert Louis, draw near the pavement as we approached, when two battered straw hats were lifted to us with quite a Parisian grace. Both [Bob and Louis] wore sailor hats with brilliant ribbon bands, both were attired in flannel cricketing jackets with broad bright stripes, and round Louis's neck was knotted a huge yellow silk handkerchief, while over both of their heads one of them held an open umbrella. [. . . ] such an apparition in the open cab required more courage to face than perople accustomed to the present-day use of tennis garb can easily imagine. [. . . ] And when we described that startling vision that was slowly creeping along Princes Street in the open cab, [Mrs Stevenson] laughed till her tears fell"

Robert (Bob) Alan Mowbray Stevenson (1847-1900) was Stevenson’s cousin and lifelong friend. He was born in Edinburgh to Alan Stevenson and Margaret Scott Jones.

An aspiring artist, Bob studied at the Ecole des Beaux Arts in Antwerp in 1873. During the 1870s, he became part of the communities of artists working in Fontainebleau and Barbizon. RLS often visited him, and it was Bob who first met Fanny and Belle Osbourne (who he admired).

In 1881, Bob married Harriet Luisa Purland and the couple had a son in 1894. Unfortunately, Bob had little success as a painter, but gained a strong reputation as an art critic.

Bob and RLS first became friends when Bob was studying at Edinburgh Academy and living at Inverleith Terrace with RLS and his parents. They later cemented their friendship in 1871, when Bob returned to Edinburgh to live with his widowed mother.

RLS and Bob were both members of the Speculative Society at Edinburgh University. They were also members of the LJR (Liberty, Justice, Reverence) League, a club founded with friends like Charles Baxter in a pub in Advocate’s Close, Edinburgh. The club’s tenet was "disregard, everything our parents taught us", a sentiment Thomas Stevenson found deeply upsetting. Indeed, RLS’s father disapproved of Bob, blaming him for his son’s lack of religious faith.

Nevertheless, RLS and Bob had a strong relationship which was marred by a quarrel between RLS and W.E. Henley in March 1888. The quarrel was over a story Bob’s sister, Katharine de Mattos, had written. According to Henley, a story Fanny published, “The Nixie”, was plagiarized from Katharine’s original story. Bob took the side of his sister and Henley, and his relationship with RLS suffered. Bob may also have felt embarrassed about the fact that RLS had been helping to support him, sending him £40 a year from 1887. In addition, in 1881 Bob married Harriet Purland; in a Letter of 1888, RLS says "Two of [my olf friends] have married wives who love me not" and the editor supposes that this refers to Bob and Simpson (Letters , ed. Booth and Mehew, vol 6, p. 135 and n). However, towards the end of RLS’s life, the two exchanged more congenial letters.

Bob is apparently the model for Peter Van Tromp in "The Story of a Lie" (1879, where in "the gaudiest cafés" of Paris "he might be seen jotting off a sketch with an air of some inspiration"), for "The Yong Man with the Cream Tarts in New Arabian Nights (1882, dedicated to Bob), for Paul Somerset in '"Edifying Letters of the Rutherford Family" (probably written 1876-7) and again inThe Dynamiter (1885), the Prince in Prince Otto (1885) and Stennis ainée in The Wrecker (1892). Indeed, Fanny Stevenson says "whenever my husband wished to depict a romantic, erratic, engaging character, he delved into the rich mine of his cousin's personality" ("Prefatory Note", New Arabian Nights, Tusitala Edition, p. xxviii).

The people who knew Bob considered him to be extraordinarily intelligent, a fascinating and engaging character who unfortunately was unable to achieve his artistic goals. In "Talk and Talkers: I", RLS calls Bob "Spring-Heel'd Jack" and praises "the insane lucidity of his conclusions, the humourous eloquence of his language" ("Talk and Talkers I", in Memories and Portraits, The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson, Swanston edn, vol ix [London: Chatto and Windus, 1911], p. 87).

Further Reading: