 Sir Edmund William Gosse Licensed by Creative Commons"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)
Edmund William Gosse (1849-1928) was a critic, author, poet and close friend to RLS. RLS first met Gosse in August 1870 on board a ship bound for Erraid (J.R. Hammond, A Robert Louis Stevenson Chronology [Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 1997], p. 7). At that time, RLS was still getting his “education of an engineer”, and he spent three weeks on Erraid during the construction of the Dhu Heartach lighthouse (constructed between 1867-1872).
The two men did not become close, however, until 1877 (according to Graham Balfour, The Life of Robert Louis Stevenson [London: Elibron, 2005], p. 105). The men lunched at the Savile Club in London and a lifelong friendship was born. RLS and Gosse exchanged many letters and Gosse visited the Stevensons at Braemar while RLS was writing Treasure Island (1883).
Gosse was an art critic (particularly interested in sculpture), an English Literature lecturer at Cambridge University and chief librarian of the House of Lords Library. He published many volumes of poetry, and introduced readers in the UK to Henrik Ibsen’s work. He is probably most famous for his autobiographical work, Father and Son (1907). He was knighted in 1925.
Gosse also wrote literary criticism – in his Critical Kit-Kats (1896) he described RLS: “At the tail of this chatty, jesting little crowd of invaders came a youth of about my own age, whose appearance, for some mysterious reason, instantly attracted me. [Stevenson] was tall, preternaturally lean, with longish hair, and as restless and questing as a spaniel” (Edmund William Gosse, Critical Kit-Kats, [London: Heinemann, 1896], p. 276).
William Archer. literary frind of RLS, was also a friend of Gosse and a fellow-Ibsenite; W. E. Henley, however, seems to have disltrusted him and usually referred to him in letters to RLS as 'Becky' or 'Becky Sharp'.
Stevenson wrote about Gosse in “Talk and Talkers: I” (1882), referring to his friend as “Purcel”: “He is no debater, but appears in conversation, as occasion rises, in two distinct characters, one of whom I admire and fear, and the other love” (“Talk and Talkers: I”, in Memories and Portraits, The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson, Swanston edn, vol xi [London: Chatto and Windus, 1911], p. 92).
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