Author: Charlotte Annie Waldie Eaton

Publisher:

Published: 2017-10-18

Total Pages: 42

ISBN-13: 9781549998850

When I came face to face with Robert Louis Stevenson it was therealization of one of my most cherished dreams.This was at Manasquan, a village on the New Jersey coast, where he hadcome to make a farewell visit to his old friend Will Low, the artist.Mr. Low had taken a cottage there that summer while working on hisseries of Lamia drawings for Lippincott's, and Stevenson, hearing thatwe were on the other side of the river, sent word that he would come tosee us on the morrow."Stevenson is coming," was announced at the breakfast-table as calmlyas though it were a daily occurrence._Stevenson coming to Manasquan!_I was in my 'teens, was an enthusiastic student of poetry andmythology, and Stevenson was my hero of romance. Was it any wonder theintelligence excited me?My husband, the late Wyatt Eaton, and Stevenson, were friends in theirstudent days abroad, and it was in honor of those early days that I wasto clasp the hand of my favorite author.It was in the mazes of a contradance at Barbizon, in the picturesquesetting of a barn lighted by candles, that their first meeting tookplace, where Mr. Eaton, though still a student in the schools ofParis, had taken a studio to be near Jean François Millet, and hitherStevenson had come, with his cousin, known as "Talking Bob," to takepart in the harvest festivities among the peasants.