Stevenson shone best in what he called a little committee of
talkers, though his father and he used to argue a question together
for days; but, in the Speculative, he had at first to be a listener.
A candid fellow-member says, "I cannot remember that Stevenson was
ever anything as a speaker. He was nervous and ineffective, and had
no power of debate; but his papers were successful." In one of his
essays, touching on this select assemblage, Louis sketches what the
editor of the History of the Speculative Society, just published,
calls "a little Dutch picture; it focuses in vivid colour the
associations which rise in the memory at the name of the Spec.--the
stately old room aglow with many candles, the books, the portraits,
the pious commemoration of the dead,--famous men and our fathers
that begat us." "Stevenson," Mr Dickson goes on to say, "is the most
famous man of letters who has belonged to the Society since Scott.
No more interesting personality has ever been of our number, and no
one has in the public eye been more closely identified with the
Society.
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