Robert Louis Stevenson: 160 Years

Per Scriptum E. Wesley - Mackinac Center Intern

The below includes four short book reviews in honor of Robert Louis Stevenson's 160th birthday (born November 13, 1850). Stevenson was a master at Victorian children's verse and prose, and formed a canonic realm for other's to follow. Born and bread in the Scottish Lowlands, he later lived in France and America, before settling in the South Sea island of Upolu where his formed a strong attachment with the natives. These fantastical settings produced the dynamic yet timeless backdrops for his poems and adventure stories. For more biographical information see here and here.

A Child's Garden of Verses (1885):

Stevenson was frequently ill as a child and stayed indoors. Child's Garden is like a window into his young soul. His poems contain all the frolics, hopes, and dreams of childhood, with a nievety that is almost melancholy to the adult reader. To the child, it is an encuragement to keep living a chivalric imagination. For example, in his last poem To Any Reader, Stevenson writes:

As from the house your mother sees

You playing round the garden trees,
So you may see, if you will look
Through the windows of this book,
Another child, far, far away,
And in another garden, play.
But do not think you can at all,
By knocking on the window, call
That child to hear you. He intent
Is all on his play-business bent,
He does not hear; he will not look.
Nor yet be lured out of this book.
For, long ago, the truth to say,
He has grown up and gone away,
And it is but a child of air
That lingers in the garden there.

Stevenson was writing of himself as an adult, but also he was preserving the eternal virtues of childhood. In this world of freedom and idyll, children march out for battle with handkerchief flags, play by the seaside, admire the innocent beauty of the seasons, and enjoy stories. However, Stevenson tempers the freedom of children with good behavior and security. Good morals and homeliness transform Child's Garden into a typical Victorian work of not just Romanticism but also cultural and family stability. Stevenson discovered that a child, far from being carefree, needs that motherly security and comfort, that homely bedroom, to keep out the scary night. Stevenson's In Port is perfect in that respect:

Last to the chamber where I lie
My fearful footsteps patter nigh,
And come from out the cold and gloom
Into my warm and cheerful room.
There, safe arrived, we turn about
To keep the coming shadows out,
And close the happy door at last
On all the perils that we past.
Then, when mama goes by to bed,
She shall come in with tip-toe tread,
And see me lying warm and fast
And in the Land of Nod at last.

Stevenson is perhaps the last person we would expect to see such gentleness from, and yet he knew firsthand as an invalid child the need for companionship. In fact, this delicacy, need, and bittersweetness are rarely seen in children's literature, but are the very attributes which make Stevenson's poems so childlike, real, and exemplary. In Child's Garden, Stevenson sets forth an image of family life which is stable, Victorian middle class, and free.

Treasure Island (1883):

Now for a complete change! Little elegance can be found in Treasure Island, but only danger, blood, lust for gold, and opportunities to make right or wrong decisions. Bare of the typical Victorian heaviness of historical description, Stevenson builds the setting and plot with rapid sensations of perspective. This was a unique approach, as Sir Walter Scott and G. A. Henty would rather insert chapters of introduction and explanation before getting to a plot.

In Treasure Island, Jim Hawkins as the young and innocent son of an inn owner, finds himself in possession of a treasure map, and decides to pursue the quest. However, the entire crew of the old treasure secretly accompany Jim on the voyage to the island of treasure, capture the ship, and force Jim into their confidence. Despite all the adventure, Jim desires justice and mercy rather than violence and piracy. In fact, Jim carries with him a sense of nobility and reserve that is juvenile and true. In this respect, the pop cultural stereotype of pirate adventures is unfair to Stevenson's original intent. The often unremembered last words of the novel read (Jim is narrating):

The bar silver and the arms still lie, for all that I know,

where Flint buried them; and certainly they shall lie there for

me. Oxen and wain-ropes would not bring me back again to

that accursed island; and the worst dreams that ever I have are

when I hear the surf booming about its coasts or start upright

in bed with the sharp voice of Captain Flint still ringing in

my ears: “Pieces of eight! Pieces of eight!”

The adventures serve Jim by haunting his dreams, and he emphatically throws off all future opportunities to get the rest of the treasure. He would rather retain civility than get riches through incivility. Jim is the star of moral light in the novel. When faced with the opportunity to embrace freedom almost totally on an island, he would rather choose that freedom within a moral society. In this sense, Treasure Island is a Victorian novel; both Romantic and chivalric. In rhetoric, it is modern; almost akin to Doyle's Sherlock Holmes novels.

Kidnapped (1886):

Stevenson's Kidnapped is like Scott's Waverley at light-speed, having much less introduction than Waverley, but more cultural setting than Treasure Island. Set in a Romanticized 18th century Scotland, the novel chronicles the adventures of David Balfour, who is kidnapped in an attempt to reclaim his newly inherited land, loaded on a ship headed to the Carolina's, shipwrecked in Scotland, blamed for the murder of a Campbell, and forced to hide with aJacobite outlaw named Alan Breck Stewart until he can get back to his estate. David, aCovenanter and a Whig, clashes with his gambling, drinking Highland rough, but in the end gains a friendship that only the struggle for survival could create. David and Alan part as fellow soldiers would. This connection, stronger than the Long John/Jim partnership in Treasure Island, usually serves the main character to remain true to his morals despite the broadening of his relationships. The challenge is to be in the world of adventure but not of it, and is topical of Victorian novels of the time. David is but a sojourner in the Scottish Highlands, and can walk away from his adventures with a sense of intrigue and unfamiliarity.

It is upon this unfamiliarity, or what C. S. Lewis would call a longing for "northernness," that the seemingly paradox of Scottish Romantic myth is formed. Although the Highlanders are contrarians and worldly, their geographic and cultural setting is almost ethereal. Highlanders are forced to traverse the wildernesses of Scotland like deer, and the beauty of such an adventure is almost like a crusade. In this sense, the Highlands prefigure a mystic land of paradise rather than worldliness. The protagonist is unfamiliar with the Highlands because it is filled with worldly characters and because it is oppositely filled with beauty and intrigue. In the first case, the protagonist has a desire to get back to his homeland, and in the second, he wishes to explore. This is why David has mixed feelings in the story. Regarding the intrigue for mystery and beauty, there is a scene in the book where Alan and a MacGregor have a bagpipe duel to settle their differences (see illustration above). David is enthralled. The geographic and cultural setting in Kidnapped is far more developed than in Treasure Island.

The Black Arrow (1888):

Evidently, some readers were not satisfied with the quaintness of Treasure Island, and The Black Arrow was Stevenson's attempt to create a more intellectually fulfilling novel. In his preface, he writes, "...in the eyes of readers who thought less than nothing of Treasure Island, The Black Arrow was supposed to mark a clear advance. Those who read volumes and those who read story papers belong to different worlds." In trying to penetrate the world of volumes with The Black Arrow, Stevenson slows down the plot, complicates the political setting, antiquates the duologue, and tells a chivalric romance between the two protagonists Richard (Dick) Shelton and Joanne Sedley.

Although Stevenson still retains his knack for adventure, The Black Arrow almost resembles a Scott or Henty novel in delivery. The story itself takes place during the War of the Roses. Dick, the protagonist, joins an outlaw band and welcomes the York dynastic cause in order to rescue Joanne from the clutches of Sir Daniel Brackley who intends to marry her off to Lord Shoreby. Being a far more complex character than Jim Hawkins or David Balfour, Dick often finds himself making flippant decisions about complex political and social issues in order to accomplish his narrow goals. Throughout the story he is bombarded with the ill effects of such a disrespect for the complexity of his surroundings, and repents for his many flaws. By the same token, he never gives up his narrow quest to save Joanne. The Black Arrow is a rich story that demands the attention of Stevenson's greatest criticizers. It is a clear departure from his simple adventure novels.


Stevenson was a man of diverse talents. Forming an critical opinion of him from Treasure Island or Kidnapped would be very narrow minded. His unique ballance between ever changing and enduring themes is due to his emphasis of liberty and constancy. There is almost certainly something for everyone in Stevenson's works.

Sources:

Image of Robert Louis StevensonJune 1885 from Wikipedia

Image in Child's Garden form Gutenberg

Image of Treasure Island-Scribner's-1911 from Wikipedia

Image in Robin struck into the slow measure of a pibroch from Google books

Image in The Black Arrow from Google books

http://fliiby.com/file/220231/obior6x8pe.html

http://www2.hn.psu.edu/faculty/jmanis/rlsteven/blackar.pdf

http://www.planetpdf.com/planetpdf/pdfs/free_ebooks/Kidnapped_NT.pdf

http://ebooks.gutenberg.us/Coradella_Collegiate_Bookshelf_Collection/stevenson-treasureisland.pdf

http://www.heartoscotland.com/Categories/RobertLStevenson.htm

http://www.robert-louis-stevenson.org/

http://people.brandeis.edu/~teuber/stevensonbio.html