So the Thoreau influence on Stevenson was as if a tart American
wild-apple had been grafted on an English pippin, and produced a
wholly new kind with the flavours of both; and here wild America
and England kissed each other mouth to mouth.

The direct result was the essay in THE CORNHILL, but the indirect
results were many and less easily assessed, as Stevenson himself,
as we shall see, was ever ready to admit. The essay on Thoreau was
written in America, which further, perhaps, bears out my point.

One of the authorities, quoted by Mr Hammerton, in STEVENSONIANA
says of the circumstances in which he found our author, when he was
busily engaged on that bit of work:


"I have visited him in a lonely lodging in California, it was
previous to his happy marriage, and found him submerged in billows
of bed-clothes; about him floated the scattered volumes of a
complete set of Thoreau; he was preparing an essay on that worthy,
and he looked at the moment like a half-drowned man, yet he was not
cast down. His work, an endless task, was better than a straw to
him. It was to become his life-preserver and to prolong his years.
I feel convinced that without it he must have surrendered long
since. I found Stevenson a man of the frailest physique, though
most unaccountably tenacious of life; a man whose pen was
indefatigable, whose brain was never at rest, who, as far as I am
able to judge, looked upon everybody and everything from a
supremely intellectual point of view." (1)

We remember the common belief in Yorkshire and other parts that a