“To be interviewed from morning to night as the mother of Robert Louis Stevenson is no joke, I assure you, however great an honor it may be.”

— Mrs. Margaret Isabella Balfour Stevenson, better known as “Maggie,” September 1887.

The Balfours of Pilrig are a family of “good provincial stock,” said RLS of his mother’s family tree. The Balfours have been prominent in national affairs since Alexander Balfour was placed in charge of the King’s Cellar by King James IV in 1499 with the title of “Cupbearer to the King.” His descendants were mainly ministers, advocates or merchants. One of them, James Balfour, bought the house and estate of Pilrig, not far from Edinburgh, in 1718. The Stevenson Cottage museum includes a framed photograph of the house taken in May 1929 by William T. Alexander of the Robert Louis Stevenson Club, Glasgow, Scotland. He also provided the Stevenson Society with a photograph of the Stevenson ancestral home at Nether Carsewell.

Arthur James Balfour rose to prime minister, but is better remembered as the foreign secretary during World War I who came up with his “Balfour Declaration,” expressing official British approval of Zionism. Francis Maitland Balfour was a scientist and father of modern embryology.

Dr. John Balfour, Stevenson’s uncle, was high in the medical service of the East India Company and could brag about being the last man out of Delhi when the Mutiny broke. His stories about his Far East adventures supplied his nephew with material for the dramatic last chapter of “The Master of Ballantrae,” which is set in the heart of the 18th century Adirondack wilderness on a cold, moonlit November night. In his spare time, Dr. Balfour liked to exercise his artistic talent. One of his small, finely detailed drawings from the Far East made its way to Baker’s, on Stevenson Lane, where it can be seen to this day in “Maggie’s Room,” home of the Maggie collection. The picture is called “Red Rover-Opium Smuggler,” a square-rigged ship at anchor, in China, dated May 15, 1836.

Reverend Dr. Lewis Balfour, the grandfather of RLS, was mighty in the Scottish Presbyterian Church. He was the minister of the Established Kirk at Colinton, four miles outside Edinburgh, and made his home at the official church residence, Colinton Manse. There Margaret Isabella was the 12th of 13 children begat by his wife, Henrietta Scott. As she grew up in a tall, slender way, “Maggie” was known throughout the parish as “the minister’s white-headed lassie.” That minister’s personal Bible from 1735 also is behind glass in Maggie’s Room.

Maggie was 18 when she took a train ride to Glasgow with relatives. By pure chance, on the train, is where she met Thomas Stevenson, 29. They were married on Aug. 28, 1848. Their only child, Robert Lewis Balfour Stevenson, was born on Nov. 13, 1850. His baby cap, at least one of them, claims artifact status at Baker’s, in Maggie’s Room; also, a lock of his platinum hair, cut by mother in 1854, plus an ugly picture for his second birthday.

Some people think that Stevenson inherited his delicate health from his mother and they’re probably right. It seems like he inherited a lot from this parent, like his writing talent but most positively his optimism. Margaret walked on the bright side all her life, by nature, while her husband, Thomas, was prone to melancholy and depression and self-persecution as a self-proclaimed guilty sinner in the eyes of God. He was very religious but in a self-destructive way. They say that Margaret’s opposite behavior was probably the best medicine for him.

Margaret’s example of emotional stability and positive thinking was very useful during the years of warfare between father and son, over choice of vocation and religion. They finally made peace in 1871 with a compromise that compelled Louis to enter law school at the local university and come out as an advocate. That he did. His official graduation picture in robe and wig quickly found a place in another artifact in Maggie’s room.

Lord Charles Guthrie, MP, was a friend and classmate of RLS in law school. In his book, Robert Louis Stevenson, he mentions this artifact which in all likelihood came to Saranac Lake with Maggie in 1887:

“Mrs. Thomas Stevenson had photographs of Louis arranged chronologically in a folding case, beginning with the infant in her arms and ending with the advocate in wig and gown. She told me that when she showed it to Louis she said to him, ‘There you are Louis, from baby to bar. My next collection is going to be from Bar to Baronet.’

“‘No Mother, Louis replied, not from Bar to Baronet, but from Bar to Burial.'”

Louis was right, but instead of filling albums with photographs she turned to filling scrapbooks with newspaper articles and reviews, etc., which were increasing in abundance about her boy and his progress in his chosen career, though she said to the end that she would never understand why he or anyone would ever choose such a vocation. After the death of Thomas in May 1887, it became evident that Maggie’s boy had become the center of her universe and it’s reasonable to imagine her showing off that collapsible picture album to cannibals in the Marquesas Islands and the last king and queen of Hawaii. Living and travelling with her boy took Maggie to places beyond her wildest dreams, starting with Saranac Lake.

In Saranac Lake, Margaret demonstrated her adaptability to change. “We all liked Mrs. Stevenson, the author’s mother, very much. She was more like an American than his wife, who was quiet,” said the Baker twins, Blanche and Bertha, 10 years old in 1887.

As “the minister’s white-headed lassie,” Margaret had known a pampered life. The family residence at 17 Heriot Row in the New Town section of Edinburgh, where RLS grew up, could be called upper middle class, situated in a well-planned grid including parks and gardens. The building was and still is spacious and superbly Victorian, a far cry from the place she walked into a few short weeks after leaving England, a place her son called “Baker’s–emphatically Baker’s.”

As soon as she got settled in, Margaret resumed her letter writing to her sister, Jane Balfour, back in the U.K. Her rented room on present day Stevenson Lane was for 58 years the bedroom of their landlords, Andrew and Mary Baker. In the winter of 1924, this pioneer couple passed away with three weeks of each other, right in this room, having been predeceased by all five of their children. Imagine what went through Mary’s mind after Andy went first. Of course, Maggie could not have known such things, when in October 1887, she described her new surroundings to sister Jane, across the sea in Scotland:

“The house is built of wooden boards, painted white, with green shutters, and a verandah around it. It belongs to a guide, who takes parties into the woods for shooting and fishing excursions … Everything is of the plainest and simplest, but sufficiently comfortable …”

“He calls our house the ‘Hunter’s Home,’ and Louis will not allow anything to be done that interferes with that illusion. We have in the living-room a plain deal table covered with stains; I wanted to put a nice cloth on it, but he would not hear of it. ‘For what,’ he cries, ‘have hunters to do with table-covers?’ There is not a foot-stool in the house, and the draughts along the floor make my feet very cold; so as a special favour to me, a log of wood is to be sewn into suitable pieces to serve as stools and still be in keeping with the ‘Hunter’s Home.'”

The Hunter’s table “covered with stains” (no. 105) and one surviving sawed-off footstool with cigarette burns (no. 98) remain to be seen to this day, among the wonders in Maggie’s Room at “Baker’s–emphatically Baker’s.”