Saturday 27 June 2009

Stevenson vanishes











I have no idea how it happens but the house of Robert Louis Stevenson in 17 Heriot Row keeps on hiding. Whenever I am passing down Heriot Row looking for it - I am not able to find it. When I am just walking by, not concentrating on locating it, I always ending up right in front of it - just like I did today.

When I was taking these pictures an eldery American lady asked me if it was THIS Stevenson's house. Yes, I answered, it was his house so she started getting excited about a possibilty of visiting the writer's museum. When I said that she would not be able to as it was a private house (there was even a plaque on the wall stating exactly that) she stumped her foot and exclaimed 'Bummer!' with a very heavy Texan accent.
Stevenson lived in this house as a child and the quote on the lamp in front of the doorstep says about a little boy, carried in arms of his nurse Alison Cunningham known as Cummy, looking out of the window for Leerie the Lamplighter ' for we are very lucky, with a lamp before the door'. From here he would go to school (one of them was Edinburgh Academy where Simon was also attending), not very often however, as he was of very poor health, suffering especially during cold, wet Edinburgh's winters.

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