CLAN & FAMILY CARRUTHERS: Robert Louis Stevenson and the Carruthers connection.

Robert Louis Balfour Stevenson was born in Edinburgh, Scotland in 1850. He was the son of a civil engineer, Thomas Stevenson and his wife Margaret Balfour and although a sickly child he attended Edinburgh prestigious Edinburgh Academy, going on to study Law at the University of Edinburgh, both highly prestigious educational establishments. Although called to the Bar, he never actually practiced.

However, his passion was writing and his early passion for the Covenanters led to his first printed works, The Pentland Rising. A bit like Burns in his outlook he abhorred the hypocrisies of bourgeois respectability and became more a man of the people. In 1873, his health once again failed him, suffering a severe respiratory illness, which led him to move to the French Riviera. His time in France resulted in two publications; An Inland Voyage and Travels with a Donkey in the Cévennes, however it was his early essays that first brought his writing to the attention of others.

In 1876, Stevenson met an American woman called Fanny Osbourne who was separated from her husband and they fell in love. However, she returned to California, much to the relief of Stevenson’s parents who did not agree with their son seeing a married woman. It seems love knew no barriers and he followed her, arriving in California ill and penniless in 1879 . This journey was later recorded in The Amatuer Immigrant in 1895 and Across the Plains in 1892. He eventually married Fanny in early 1880, after her divorce and although struggling to survive financially, his father stepped in with much needed financial support. This leadn to Stevenson and his wife being welcomed back into the family on his return to Scotland.

Stevenson’s health remained an issue and on a diagnosis of tuberculosis, he had treatment in Switzerland but returned to Scotland to spend the summer in Pitlochry in Perthshire and Braemar in Aberdeenshire. It was here he wrote his seminal novel, Treasure Island, completing it on his return to Davos, in Switzerland. The book was published in 1883.

Although he again returned to Scotland, his health deteriorated, leading him to return to the South of France. He spent many happy times in Provence and his writing continued, however a threat of a cholera epidemic brought him and his family back to Britain, but even in Bournemouth in the south of the country, the weather was not conducive to his health. He did however write the novels Kidnapped and the Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde there, which wewre met with some acclaim.

In a further attempt to improve his health he moved back to America, where his reputation as a writer was met positively receiving offers and contracts for his work. It was while he was stateside that he wrote The Master of Ballantrae.

So where does Carruthers fit in, well in 1888 Stevenson, along with his family chartered a schooner to travel around the ‘South Seas’ visiting Tahiti and Honolulu then onto Samoa. It was on this latter island that he found peace, happiness and a climate that suited his health, where he chose to live out the rest of his life.

The Carruthers Connection

The connection to Carruthers was through Irving (Eveni) Carruthers, from the cadet line of Carruthers of Denbie. Richard Irving Hetherington Carruthers was a Lawyer who lived in Australia and acted for Stevenson in the purchase of his estate. He eventually moved to Samoa himself where he lived out his days. More on the Carruthers of Samoa can be found here.

To the left are the Arms displayed in a shop in Samoa, taken by Elizabeth Roads, former Lyon Clerk, depicting the ‘arms’ of Carruthers of Denbie.

NB Two chevrons are used rather than two engrailed chevrons and also the use of the crest of the cherub proper rather than the seraphim above the helm. The chiefly motto, of Holmains, Promptus et Fidelis has been kept albeit it seems, as one word.

These arms would be blazoned, Gules (red), two chevron between three fleurs de lis Or (Gold), although there is no indication nor record that they were registered in Scotland. As such the chevrons will probably be a misunderstanding by the plaque maker or in the late 1800’s, an attempt to differentiate the cadet line of Denbie from the main line of Holmains, which would not these days have been allowed.