Did R M Ballantyne Know Robert Louis Stevenson?

Slightly. According to Eric Quayle, Ballantyne's biographer, the two men met when Stevenson was fifteen years old. Stevenson asked Ballantyne to come to his home for dinner, but the older author had to excuse himself because he had just become engaged to his future wife, and was expected at his mother-in-law's.

Ballantyne asked Stevenson which his favorite book was, upon which Stevenson replied that he had read The Coral Island twice, and hoped to read it twice more. Quayle had this fascinating observation about their meeting and Ballantyne's influence on the young man.

As far as is known, this is the only occasion when the two writers met, but the incident detailed above lends weight to the supposition that Stevenson's passionate love of the romantic islands of the South Seas, to one of which he eventually retired and died, may first have been kindled by his reading the adventures of Ralph, Jack and Peterkin as they fought the cannibals and braved the dangers of their remote coral strand. It seems probable that the wonderful romance of Treasure Island, unsurpassed as a straightforward adventure story for boys of all ages, perhaps itself owes some debt to the pages of Ballantyne's most famous book.

Lowell Don Holmes, in his book Treasured Islands: Cruising the South Seas with Robert Louis Stevenson, states that Stevenson "managed to arrange spending an evening" with Ballantyne. (p. 12) I don't know where the sources are for this statement.

Regardless of whether they met either once or twice, the two authors probably did not know each other well, but I think it's evident that Ballantyne strongly impacted Stevenson through his books. I find it fascinating to study the intertwining effects of literature on a culture, and the way that subsequent generations think. Hopefully there will be some follow up about this subject, and specifically Ballantyne and Stevenson, in the future.

Who knows, perhaps future historians will write about Henty and Ballantyne as the inspiration for a generation of Christian authors!

Tueri a vulnere,

John