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"Place of Birth: 8 Howard Place, Edinburgh.
Time of Birth: Wednesday, 13th November, 1850 at 1:30 p.m.
Color of Eyes: Blue at first turning to hazel.
Color of Hair: Very fair almost none at first.
Nurse's name: Mrs Sayers.
Doctor's name: Dr Malcolm
Surname: Stevenson
Christian Names: Robert Louis Balfour
Pet Names: Boulihasker, Smoutie, Baron Broadnose, Signor Sprucki, otherwise, Maister Sprook and many others, but Smoutie stuck to him until he was about 15"
(Margaret Isabella Balfour Stevenson, Stevenson's Baby Book: Being the Record of the Sayings and Doings of Robert Louis Balfour Stevenson, Son of Thomas Stevenson, C.E., and Margaret Isabella Balfour or Stevenson [San Francisco: Printed for John Howell by J.H. Nash, 1922], p. 9)
Margaret Isabella Balfour Stevenson (1829-1897) was RLS’s mother. She was 1 of 13 children born to the Reverend Lewis Balfour, the minister of Colinton, and Henrietta Scott Smith. RLS often visited Colinton (which is near to Edinburgh) as a child.
“Maggie” (as she was known to her family) married Thomas Stevenson in 1848 and gave birth to RLS in 1850. She had a strong and loving relationship with her son. Although quarrels between RLS and his father about religion, his career and his marriage were upsetting to the family, the family remained close.
After her husband died in 1887, Maggie went with RLS and Fanny on their travels to America and the South Seas and even settled with them in Vailima. She returned to Edinburgh to live with her sister after RLS died.
Further Reading:
Sandison, Alan, ‘The Shadow of Jocasta: Margaret Stevenson & Son’, Rivista di Studi Vittoriani 20 (2007), pp. 31-54. This was a special Stevenson number of the journal.
- Stevenson never shook free from his mother. Rivalry over her (“my mother is my father’s wife”, 1875) possibly partly motivated the 1873 rows with his father. Only a few weeks after his father died he insisted that his mother accompany him and family to America and then to the South Seas. Margaret Stevenson was actually delighted by the challenge of backwoods and South Sea islands. An attempt to show independence by writing an account of their travels was discouraged by RLS, so her lively From Saranac to the Marquesas was not published until 1903. Letters from Samoa (1906) is a greater literary achievement (and reveals how much of the creation of Vailima came from her—she encouraged and paid for the new wing, for example).
Stevenson, Margaret Isabella, Letters from Samoa: 1891-1895, ed. and arranged by Marie Clothilde Balfour (New York: Charles Scribner’s & Sons, 1906)
- - - , ‘Notes about Robert Louis Stevenson from his mother’s diary’, The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson,Vailima edn, vol xxvi (New York/London: Scribner’s/Heineman,1923)
- Year-by-year summary 1850-88 from Margaret’s own diaries, prepared by her in 1895-96.
- - - , From Saranac to the Marquesas and Beyond, ed. by Marie Clothilde Balfour (London: Methuen, 1903)
- Letters written to her sister Jane Whyte Balfour from 1887-88.
- - - Stevenson’s Baby Book: Being the Record of the Sayings and Doings of Robert Louis Balfour Stevenson, Son of Thomas Stevenson, C.E., and Margaret Isabella Balfour or Stevenson(San Francisco: Printed for John Howell by J.H. Nash, 1922)
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