Sidney Colvin
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"If you want to realize the kind of effect he made, at least in the early years when I knew him best, imagine this attenuated but extraordinarily vivid and vital presence, with something about it that at first struck you as freakish, rare, fantastic, a touch of the elfin and unearthly, a sprite, an Ariel"

"Ferrier was consumed and wrecked by a miserable craving for drink. Will he, I have still to ask myself as I write these words, will he outlive the tendency, and become a conscientious, and kind gentleman as we knew him in his sober hours? Or will he go downward to the sot, the spunge and the buffoon? When last I parted from him, five months ago, he and I, for the first time in our intimacy, shed tears together over this alternative; he promised me, for my sake as well as for his own, to continue the good fight; and yet ever since I feared to write him"

Sir Edmund William Gosse
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"I have a ludicrous memory of going, in 1878, to buy him a new hat, in company with Mr Lang, the thing then upon his head having lost the semblance of a human article of dress. Aided by a very civil shopman, we suggested several hats and caps, and Louis at first seemed interested; but having presently hit upon one which appeared to us pleasing and decorous, we turned for a moment to inquire the price. We turned back, and found that Louis had fled, the idea of parting with the shapeless object having proved to painful to be entertained"

(Edmund William Gosse, Critical Kit-Kats [London: W. Heinemann, 1896], p. 282)

William Ernest Henley
Image courtesy of Rare Books and Special Collections, Thomas Cooper Library, University of South Carolina

Apparition

Thin-legged, thin-chested, slight unspeakably,
Neat-footed and weak-fingered: in his face
Lean, large-boned, curved of beak, and touched with race,
Bold-lipped, rich-tinted, mutable as the sea,
The brown eyes radiant with vivacity
There shines a brilliant and romantic grace,
A spirit intense and rare, with trace on trace
Of passion and impudence and energy.
Valiant in velvet, light in ragged luck,
Most vain, most generous, sternly critical,
Buffoon and poet, lover and sensualist: A deal of Ariel, just a streak of Puck,
Much Antony, of Hamlet most of all,
And something of the Shorter-Catechist.

"For me there were two Stevensons: the Stevenson who went to America in '87; and the Stevenson who never came back. The first I knew and loved; the other I lost touch with, and, though I admired him, did not greatly esteem"

Fleeming Jenkin
From Memoir of Fleeming Jenkin
by RLS (London: Longmans, Green
& Co, 1912), p. ii

"As everybody knows, Louis Stevenson was only intermittently in Edinburgh during the years that followed; its 'icy winds and conventions' always drove him away. He never looked really well or happy there, and I believe he owed some of his lightest-hearted hours to the friendship of Professor and Mrs Jenkin. One can scarcely imagine what he would have done or been without them. Certainly it is impossible to recall the Louis Stevenson of the seventies except as one 'a favoured one of' that delightful Jenkin coterie"

Andrew Lang
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"On reading 'Ordered South', I saw, at once, that here was a new writer, a writer indeed; one who could do what none of us, nous autres, could rival, or approach. I was instantly 'sealed of the Tribe of Louis', an admirer, a devotee, a fantastic, if you please. . . "

William H. Low
From Low's A Chronicle of Friendships, 1873-1900 (New York: Charles Scribners & Sons, 1908), p. 4.

"Industrious idleness it was to him; for his mind was a treasure-house, where every addition to its store was carefully guarded against the day of need. Many incidents of our common experience, long forgotten by me, I have thus met in fresh guise in after years"

Auguste Rodin
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"How I wish I could have my child's soul and fairy religion of yore to uphold me! My dear friend, I envy you if you have still your pen at the service of your thoughts. . . I congratulate you (on your book). We have the misfortunes that come with age; but you have compensations; and the respect shown to you by your younger contemporaries who accept your advice is no common thing. Good-bye, my dear great friend Affectionately yours, RODIN.

P.S. - And our friend Stevenson who was so dear, also lost on the way, leaving only his glorious name!"

Percy Shelley
From Shelley In England: New Facts and Letters from the Shelley-Whitton Press, by Roger Ingpen (Boston and New York: Houghton Mifflin, 1917).

"There is that singular story, told by a friend of the family, Miss Blantyre Simpson, of how the late Sir Percy and Lady Shelley both believed that Shelley had been re-born in Robert Louis Stevenson, and how Lady Shelley went so far as to bear a deep resentment against Mrs Stevenson as the mother of the child that ought to have been her own!"

Walter Grindlay Simpson
From The Robert Louis Stevenson Originals by
E. Blantyre Simpson (London: T.N. Foulis, 1912), p.80

"Athelred [Simpson], on the other hand, presents you with the spectacle of a sincere and somewhat slow nature thinking aloud. He is the most unready man I ever knew to shine in conversation. You may see him sometimes wrestle with a refractory jest for a minute or two together, and perhaps fail to throw it in the end. And there is something singularly engaging, often instructive, in the simplicity with which he thus exposes the process as well as the result, the works as well as the dial of the clock"

Fanny Sitwell
Image from The Colvins and their Friends, by E.V. Lucas (London: Methuen, 1928)

"My wife [Fanny] reminds me of an incident in point, from the youthful time when he used to make her the chief confidante to his troubles and touchstone of his tastes. One day he came to her with an early [. . .] volume of poems by Mr Robert Bridges, the present poet-laureate, in his hand; declared here was the most wonderful new genius, and enthusiastically read out to her some of the contents in evidence; till becoming aware that they were being coolly received, he leapt up crying, 'My God! I believe you don't like them' - and flung the book across the room and himself out of the house in a paroxysm of disappointment - to return a few hours later and beg pardon humbly for his misbehaviour. But for some time afterwards, whenever he desire her judgement on work of his own or others, he would begin by bargaining: You won't Bridges me this time, will you?"

Sir Leslie Stephen
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"At this time [Stevenson] must not be thought of as a successful author. A very few of us were convinced of his genius; but with the exception of Mr Leslie Stephen, nobody of editorial status was sure of it"