The Life of Robert Louis Stevenson for Boys and Girls

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principally in London, where a membership in the Savile Club added to
his enjoyment. Here he met several interesting men, among them Edmund
William Gosse and Sidney Colvin, both writers and literary critics, with
whom he became very intimate.

"My experience of Stevenson," writes Mr. Gosse, "during these first
years was confined to London upon which he would make sudden piratical
descents, staying a few days or weeks and melting into thin air again.
He was much at my house, and it must be told that my wife and I, as
young married people, had possessed ourselves of a house too large for
our slender means immediately to furnish. The one person who thoroughly
approved of our great bare absurd drawing room was Louis, who very
earnestly dealt with us on the immorality of chairs and tables, and
desired us to sit always, as he delighted to sit, upon hassocks on the
floor. Nevertheless, as armchairs and settees straggled into existence,
he handsomely consented to use them, although never in the usual way,
but with his legs thrown sidewise over the arms of them, or the head of