Bettering the Tradition of Mankind: Robert Louis Stevenson at 170
Back in my school days, I was a voracious reviewer of books. Complementary to the act of reading & discovery of new worlds and characters, I relished analysing the prose, the construction, the literary framework of the stories themselves: a bit of the artist, a bit of the scientist. In reading the books, not only was I invested on an emotional level, I was intrigued from an intellectual one. Why was this so interesting to me? How does an author invoke such investment through prose? What is the vital difference between fiction and non-fiction beyond subject?
At about that time, the internet was in its infancy, so I had the opportunity to read book and film reviews online. I once came across a quote from a Roger Ebert review that made me think:
“I was talking to a friend the other day who said he’d never met a child who liked reading Robert Louis Stevenson’s Treasure Island.
Neither have I, I said. And he’d never met a child who liked reading Stevenson’s Kidnapped. Me neither, I said. My early exposure to both books was via the Classics Illustrated comic books. But I did read the books later, when I was no longer a kid, and I enjoyed them enormously. Same goes for Stevenson’s Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde.
The fact is, Stevenson is a splendid writer of stories for adults, and he should be put on the same shelf with Joseph Conrad and Jack London instead of in between Winnie the Pooh and Peter Pan. ”
I was a bit put off by this. I was but a precocious 12-year-old when he published this review, but I had already read & re-read those three books, and loved them as much as I enjoyed any of the more “age appropriate” books recommended by the school syllabus. But then, a “boy” in Stevenson's time is very different from a boy in Ebert's, and certainly my own: the delineation in maturity, responsibility, intelligence, and experience has evolved much. After all, at the time Treasure Island was first published, many boys and girls of my age and younger were expected to work for a living: spending most of their waking lives in the darkness of mines and chimneys for a pittance, bending & breaking their young bones labouring on farms and in factories, risking their lives scavenging cotton in textile mills and carrying kegs of gunpowder in battleships. The sharp delineation between children and adults seen in the 20th Century simply was not as defined in the 19th, as children's lives were as troubled and hazardous as that of their elders.
Such was the world Robert Louis Stevenson was born in. Even in a nation whose literary crown is studded with jewels, the gem of Stevenson's work shines brighter than many. His literature is among the most-translated in the world – just behind the likes of Charles Dickens and Isaac Asimov, and ahead of Oscar Wilde & Ernest Hemingway – and had incalculable influence on all adventure fiction that followed.
Stevenson was born and raised in Edinburgh on this day in 1850. His father, Thomas, was a civil engineer, the son of lighthouse architect Robert Stevenson: many of the elder Robert's designs are still standing, and can be seen lighting the Scottish coastlines to this day. His mother, Margaret Balfour, was a descendent of the Balfours of Inchyra: her brother, James, was a marine engineer. This joining of modern Scots ingenuity and traditional Scots gentry instilled a familiarity not only with science and engineering, but romance and history: his nurse, Alison Cunningham, instilled a love of stories – and a terror of the macabre – while he worked through his childhood breathing difficulties. Perhaps that fusion is what drew me to his work: his dual admiration for the technical engineering marvels of his forefathers, and his delight in the lore and stories of his homeland and others.
The young Robert started his writing career early with his account of the Covenantors – The Pentland Rising: A Page of History, 1666 – which his father paid for printing on the 200th anniversary of the rebellion, when he was 16. Robert travelled far over his lifetime – Scotland, England, France, Germany, the United States, Australia – until he made his way across the world to the Pacific Islands, spending the last period of his life in Samoa. It is from this rich life of adventure he drew the creative inspiration to pen some of the most iconic adventure stories in literature.
“Them That Die'll be the Lucky Ones”
If sailor tales to sailor tunes,
Storm and adventure, heat and cold,
If schooners, islands, and maroons,
And buccaneers, and buried gold,
And all the old romance, retold
Exactly in the ancient way,
Can please, as me they pleased of old,
The wiser youngsters of today:
So be it, and fall on! If not,
If studious youth no longer crave,
His ancient appetites forgot,
Kingston, or Ballantyne the brave,
Or Cooper of the wood and wave:
So be it, also! And may I
And all my pirates share the grave
Where these and their creations lie!
Treasure Island, more than just about any other novel, is the codification of the Pirate Adventure. Many of the hallmarks of popular pirate culture – “pieces of eight,” treasure maps where X marks the spot, one-legged buccaneers, psittacine familiars – appear in the pages of this story. Every pirate since, from Captain Hook to Captain Blood, the Black Corsair to Jack Sparrow, Guybrush Threepwood to Edward Kenway, can ultimately trace their lineage to this story.
The sheer number of adaptations, and their comparative fidelity to the source material, mean that just about anyone who's encountered a piece of media even vaguely related to the book will know the basics: the ominous opening chapter with its ominous old sailor meeting his doom in a little inn on the Bristol Channel; the excitement of an expedition launch for lost pirate treasure; the terrifying revelations from the perspective of an apple barrel; the desperate fight for survival amidst a mutiny; the hostile mystery of an unexplored island; the weird discovery of the treasure's final guardian; and, of course, the thrilling climax and sombre epilogue. Just about every comic, film, game, tv series, and play I've seen has hewn closely to the book precisely because of how effectively written & plotted it is. Why fix what isn't broken?
From the very first chapter, Stevenson hooks the reader with tantalising hints and clues as to what is to come, with an economy of exposition and a discerning eye for lurid detail:
“He was a very silent man by custom. All day he hung round the cove or upon the cliffs with a brass telescope; all evening he sat in a corner of the parlour next the fire and drank rum and water very strong. Mostly he would not speak when spoken to, only look up sudden and fierce and blow through his nose like a fog-horn; and we and the people who came about our house soon learned to let him be. Every day when he came back from his stroll he would ask if any seafaring men had gone by along the road. At first we thought it was the want of company of his own kind that made him ask this question, but at last we began to see he was desirous to avoid them. When a seaman did put up at the Admiral Benbow (as now and then some did, making by the coast road for Bristol) he would look in at him through the curtained door before he entered the parlour; and he was always sure to be as silent as a mouse when any such was present. For me, at least, there was no secret about the matter, for I was, in a way, a sharer in his alarms. He had taken me aside one day and promised me a silver fourpenny on the first of every month if I would only keep my “weather-eye open for a seafaring man with one leg” and let him know the moment he appeared. Often enough when the first of the month came round and I applied to him for my wage, he would only blow through his nose at me and stare me down, but before the week was out he was sure to think better of it, bring me my four-penny piece, and repeat his orders to look out for “the seafaring man with one leg.”
How that personage haunted my dreams, I need scarcely tell you. On stormy nights, when the wind shook the four corners of the house and the surf roared along the cove and up the cliffs, I would see him in a thousand forms, and with a thousand diabolical expressions. Now the leg would be cut off at the knee, now at the hip; now he was a monstrous kind of a creature who had never had but the one leg, and that in the middle of his body. To see him leap and run and pursue me over hedge and ditch was the worst of nightmares. And altogether I paid pretty dear for my monthly fourpenny piece, in the shape of these abominable fancies. ”
How could you not want to more about this mysterious man, “the seafaring man with one leg,” and what would prompt such interest in this frightening and dangerous old sea wolf? The evocation of the Fachan, a one-legged mythological beast of dark Celtic mythology, is subtle enough that one could consider it unintentional – but Stevenson's reference pool is deep and dark indeed, as one finds many illustrative invocations of the weirder side of folklore in this story of pirates and treasure.
Treasure Island was the heir of classic historical adventure fiction in the mold of Scott, Dumas, Verne, and Wallace, and led the vanguard of a new host of adventure fiction: not long after its novel publication in 1883, H. Rider Haggard debuted the legendary Allan Quatermain in King Solomon's Mines (1885). Historical tales by Wells, Conan Doyle, Kipling, and more followed, then the age of pulp adventure ushered in Lamb, Mundy, Rohmer, Sabatini, Howard, and others.
Some of these authors even paid direct tribute to Stevenson's work. Robert E. Howard's verse, “Flint's Passing,” appears to function as a prologue to Treasure Island:
Bring aft the rum! Life’s measure’s overfull
And down the sides the splashing liquor slops
To mingle in the unknown seas of Doubt.
Bring aft the rum! The tide is going out;
The breeze has lain, the tattered mainsail drops
Against the mast. And on the battered hull
I hear the drowsy slap of lazy waves.
And through the port I see the sandy beach,
And sullen trees beyond, a swampland dank.
I’ve known the isles the furtherest tide surge laves—
Now like a stranded hulk I come to die
Beside a shore mud-foul and forest-rank.
Bring aft the rum! And set it just in reach.
I’ve sailed the seven seas, long, bloody years.
I’ve seen men die and ships go reeling down—
I might have robbed my fellow man in style
But I was long on force and short on guile—
So ’stead of trade I chose the buccaneers—
Rig aft a plank there, damn you! Sink or drown!—
Life is a vain, illusive, fickle thing—
Now nearly done with me—it could not hold
Allurement to allay my thirst—for rum.
Steps on the main companion? Let them come.
Here is the map; let Silver have the gold
Gems, wenches, rum—aye, I have shed my fling.
I guzzled Life as I have guzzled rum.
Run up the sails—throw off the anchor chain—
The courses sway, the straining braces thrum,
The breezes lift, the scents of ocean come—
Bring aft the rum! I’ll put to sea again.
Certainly the idea of a prequel to Treasure Island is not uncommon: the tv series “Black Sails” uses the story as a basis, and features younger iterations of Flint, Silver, Billy Bones, and Israel Hands in the cast alongside historical buccaneers like Calico Jack, Anne Bonny, and the terrible Blackbeard himself. You know you've arrived when the Muppets make a film based on your work, and Bart Simpson lies about reading your book in an early episode.
Rough Worlds and Cold, Proud People
“By what I have read in books, I think few that have held a pen were ever really wearied, or they would write of it more strongly. I had no care of my life, neither past nor future, and I scarce remembered there was such a lad as David Balfour. I did not think of myself, but just of each fresh step which I was sure would be my last, with despair – and of Alan, who was the cause of it, with hatred. Alan was in the right trade as a soldier; this is the officer’s part to make men continue to do things, they know not wherefore, and when, if the choice was offered, they would lie down where they were and be killed. And I dare say I would have made a good enough private; for in these last hours it never occurred to me that I had any choice but just to obey as long as I was able, and die obeying. ”
Treasure Island alone would be enough to cement Stevenson's literary legacy, but it was not his lone novel, nor was it his sole success. Three years after the Narrative of Jim Hawkins burst onto the scene, another young man's tale was published. This time, Stevenson hewed closer to home with a tale set in his homeland, and unlike the deliberately nebulous “17__” dating of that book, this new story directly referenced contemporaneous historical events.
Kidnapped is the account of young David Balfour, a young Scottish heir who finds himself embroiled in inheritance drama, familial treachery, indentured servitude, Jacobite plotting, Highland clan feuds, and the political landscape of 1750s Scotland. Yet despite Stevenson's own preface remarking “it is more honest to confess at once how little I am touched by the desire of accuracy” in his dedication to Charles Baxter at the beginning of the book, one finds a great deal of historical fidelity in the pages. James and Alan Stewart, Colin Campbell, Ewen “Cluny” MacPherson, and Rob Roy Macgregor were all historical individuals; the town Cramond, the Torran Rocks, the isle of Erraid, the village Limekilns, and Corstorphine Hill are all real locations; the Appin Murder, serving as the catalyst for the plot, is a true event from one of the darkest periods in Scotland's history.
Like its predecessor, Kidnapped is about the anticipation and discovery of adventure, and its use of phonetic vernacular in the dialogue further enriches the characters' voices. While Treasure Island used the inimitable West Country accent favoured by pirates and farmers alike, Kidnapped utilises the Scots Language itself, often as a method of delineation between the Lallan Scots south and east of the Highland Boundary, and the more romantic traditional Highlanders, whose Scottish Gaelic is translated into English for the English reader's benefit. This cultural conflict between the indigenous Highlanders and the encroaching imperialism of the nascent British Empire is central to the book's narrative, and part of its lasting appeal, following as it does in the Scott school of romantic Highland adventure with a tragic pallour.
Chief of Sinners and Sufferers
“I do not blame our old friend,” Jekyll wrote, “but I share his view that we must never meet. I mean from henceforth to lead a life of extreme seclusion; you must not be surprised, nor must you doubt my friendship, if my door is often shut even to you. You must suffer me to go my own dark way. I have brought on myself a punishment and a danger that I cannot name. If I am the chief of sinners, I am the chief of sufferers also. I could not think that this earth contained a place for sufferings and terrors so unmanning; and you can do but one thing, Utterson, to lighten this destiny, and that is to respect my silence.”
The Strange Case of Doctor Jekyll & Mister Hyde is variously considered gothic horror, psychological thriller, and early modern science fiction: perhaps the most fitting I can think of is a Weird Tale. As with Treasure Island, it seems redundant to bother with an overview of one of the most impactful stories in English literature, to the point where the very term “Jekyll and Hyde” is synonymous with duality in human nature.
Just about any duality can be reflected in Jekyll's turmoil with his inner Hyde: public persona versus private angst, intellectual ego against primal id, the influence of civilisation against the atavism of the primitive, selflessness against selfishness, repression against excess. A surface reading means this complexity is often unfairly reduced to a rote Good versus Evil narrative – but in my mind, this ruins the tension and nuance of the story, as it relies on the notion that Jekyll is remarkably “good” to the degree Hyde is so “evil” = which is most assuredly not the whole story.
Jekyll & Hyde forms something of a bridge between Mary Shelley's early modern science fiction masterpiece Frankenstein, and any number of other modern stories where a normal, decent human transforms into a horrifying monster – be it a werewolf, a gamma-irradiated green giant, or a seemingly suave and not-at-all nutty professor. Howard's most direct reference to Jekyll & Hyde is a cheeky parody: a ““Dr. Jerkall and Mr. Hideall” by R.L. Stevenson” is included in a list of book titles in a 7th July 1923 letter to Tevis Clyde Smith. Nonetheless, the central theme of the story – of man against his own dark nature – is not difficult to find. The elegant, angelic beings of “Queen of the Black Coast” warp and mutate into bestial, brutish devils upon contact with a strange substance tainting the Zarkheba river – perhaps an allusion to the Winged Ones' super-science going awry?
Yet Stevenson acknowledges that such duality often has very blurred edges – that what is “good” and “evil” can be the subject of social whims, practicalities, and even individual perspectives, and often used and abused for their own ends. It is from this perspective that the torment of Jekyll and the feverish desperation of Hyde are equally compelling, as is the mystery in the early part of the story (much like Planet of the Apes, the twist is so infamous and influential on popular culture that one almost forgets it was a twist at all). Perhaps the most profound twist of the tale is that the duality does not exist at all – that Hyde is perpetually under the surface of every Jekyll, waiting for an opportunity to assert himself, and that rigid repression could be as damaging as reckless indulgence.
“My characters are more like men than these real men are, see. They’re rough and rude, they got hands and they got bellies. They hate and they lust; break the skin of civilization and you find the ape, roaring and red-handed.”
While most famous, deservedly, for those three tales, Stevenson wrote many great adventures. Stevenson followed Kidnapped with several other historical adventures, including a sequel, Catriona, following directly from David's parting with Alan on Corstorphine Hill; The Master of Ballantrae was another Jacobite narrative, this time focusing on the riven Mackellar brothers finding themselves on opposite sides of the divide. Stevenson's historical adventures were not restricted to Scotland: The Black Arrow is a chivalrous romance of revenge set during the early days of the War of the Roses, Prince Otto is a comic adventure set in the fictional German kingdom of Grünewald; he wrote a number of books in conjunction with his stepson lloyd Osbourne.
Whether it be historical adventure or cautionary weird tale, Stevenson's prose is exhilarating and compelling enough to persist long after his death 120 years ago, and his legacy as an author – and fellow Scot – is more than assured among the literary giants of eternity.
“All who have meant good work with their whole hearts, have done good work, although they may die before they have the time to sign it. Every heart that has beat strong and cheerfully has left a hopeful impulse behind it in the world, and bettered the tradition of mankind. And even if death catch people, like an open pitfall, and in mid-career, laying out vast projects, and planning monstrous foundations, flushed with hope, and their mouths full of boastful language, they should be at once tripped up and silenced: is there not something brave and spirited in such a termination? and does not life go down with a better grace, foaming in full body over a precipice, than miserably straggling to an end in sandy deltas? ”