Treasure Island (Stevenson)

Author Bio
• Birth—November, 13 1850
• Where—Edinburg, Scotland, UK
• Death—December 3, 1894
• Where—Vailima, Samoan Islands
• Education—J.D., University of Edinburg


Robert Louis Balfour Stevenson was a Scottish novelist, poet, essayist, and travel writer. His most famous works are Treasure Island, Kidnapped, and Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde.

A literary celebrity during his lifetime, Stevenson now ranks among the 26 most translated authors in the world. His works have been admired by many other writers, including Jorge Luis Borges, Bertolt Brecht, Arthur Conan Doyle, Cesare Pavese, Ernest Hemingway, Rudyard Kipling, Jack London, Vladimir Nabokov, J. M. Barrie, and G. K. Chesterton, who said of him that he "seemed to pick the right word up on the point of his pen, like a man playing spillikins."

Formative years
Stevenson was born Robert Lewis Balfour Stevenson in Edinburgh, Scotland to Margaret Isabella Balfour (1829–1897) and Thomas Stevenson (1818–1887), a leading lighthouse engineer. Lighthouse design was had been the family profession for two generations. His mother's father was a minister of the Church of Scotland at nearby Colinton, and Stevenson spent the greater part of his boyhood holidays in his house. Stevenson once wrote:

Now I often wonder what I inherited from this old minister. I must suppose, indeed, that he was fond of preaching sermons, and so am I, though I never heard it maintained that either of us loved to hear them.

Stevenson inherited a tendency to coughs and fevers; indeed, illness would be a recurrent feature of his adult life, leaving him extraordinarily thin. Contemporary views were that he had tuberculosis, but more recent views are that it was bronchiectasis or even sarcoidosis.

An only child, strange-looking and eccentric, Stevenson found it hard to fit in when he was sent to a nearby school at age six, a problem repeated at age eleven when he went on to the Edinburgh Academy. In any case, his frequent illnesses often kept him away from his first school, and he was taught for long stretches by private tutors. He compulsively wrote stories throughout his childhood. His father paid for the printing of Robert's first publication at sixteen, an account of the covenanters' rebellion which was published on its two hundredth anniversary, The Pentland Rising: A Page of History, 1666.

In 1867 Stevenson entered the University of Edinburgh to study engineering. He showed from the start no enthusiasm for his studies and devoted much energy to avoiding lectures. Each year during vacations, Stevenson travelled to inspect the family's engineering works—yet he enjoyed the travels more for the material they gave for his writing than for any engineering interest.

In April 1871 Stevenson notified his father of his decision to pursue a life of letters although he agreed to study Law (again at Edinburgh University) for the sake of financial security. But Stevenson was moving away from his upbringing. His dress became more Bohemian; he already wore his hair long, but he now took to wearing a velveteen jacket. More importantly, he had come to reject Christianity, leading to a long period of dissension with both parents.

Early career
In late 1873, on a visit to a cousin in England, Stevenson met Sidney Colvin, who became his literary adviser and the first editor of Stevenson's letters after his death.

Stevenson was soon active in London literary life, becoming acquainted with many of the writers of the time, including Leslie Stephen, the editor of the Cornhill Magazine (and Virginia Woolf's father). Stephen in turn would introduce him to a more important friend, William Ernest Henley—an energetic and talkative man with a wooden leg., Henley became a close friend and occasional literary collaborator, until a quarrel broke up the friendship in 1888. He is often seen as the model for Long John Silver in Treasure Island.

In November 1873 Stevenson's health failed, and he was sent to the French Riviera to recuperate. He returned in better health in April 1874 and settled down to his studies, but he returned to France several times after that, becoming a member of the artists' colonies and visiting galleries and theaters. In July 1875 he qualified for the bar, but although his law studies would influence his books, he never practised law. All his energies were now spent in travel and writing.

Marriage
In 1876, on a canoe trip through Belgium and France, he met Fanny Van de Grift Osbourne, an American who had come to France with her children—as a separation from her American husband. Although Stevenson returned to Britain shortly after this first meeting, Fanny apparently remained in his thoughts, and he wrote an essay, "On falling in love," for the Cornhill Magazine. They met again early in 1877 and became lovers. Stevenson spent much of the following year with her and her children in France.

Fanny returned to San Francisco, California, in 1878, and a year later Stevenson he set off to join her. From New York City he travelled overland by train to California (later writing about it in The Amateur Emigrant), a trip that broke his health. He was near death when he arrived in Monterey, California, where some local ranchers nursed him back to health.

In December 1879, Stevenson recovered and continued to San Francisco, where he lived on as little as forty-five cents or less a day to support himself in his writing. After another bout of illness, with Fanny now divorced and nursing him back to health, his father cabled him money.

Fanny and Robert were married in May, 1880, although, as he said, he was "a mere complication of cough and bones, much fitter for an emblem of mortality than a bridegroom." With his new wife and her son, Lloyd, he travelled north of San Francisco to Napa Valley, and spent a summer honeymoon at an abandoned mining camp on Mount Saint Helena. He wrote about this experience in The Silverado Squatters.

He met Charles Warren Stoddard, co-editor of the Overland Monthly and author of South Sea Idylls, who urged Stevenson to travel to the South Pacific, an idea which would return to him years later. But in August 1880 he returned to Britain with Fanny and her son Lloyd where, with Fanny's charm and wit, he reconciled with his family.

Europe and the U.S.
For the next seven years, between 1880 and 1887, Stevenson searched in vain for a place suitable for his health, summering in England and Scotland. In the wintertime, he traveled to France where, for a time, he enjoyed almost complete happiness. "I have so many things to make life sweet for me," he wrote, "it seems a pity I cannot have that other one thing—health."

In spite of his ill health, he produced the bulk of his best-known work during these years: Treasure Island, his first widely popular book; Kidnapped; Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde," the novella which established his wider reputation; The Black Arrow; and two volumes of verse, A Child's Garden of Verses and Underwoods. In Skerryvore, Scotland, he gave a copy of Kidnapped to his friend and frequent visitor Henry James.

When his father died in 1887, Stevenson felt free to follow the advice of his physician to try a complete change of climate, and he started with his mother and family for Colorado. But after landing in New York, they decided to spend the winter at Saranac Lake, New York, in the Adirondacks at a cure cottage now known as Stevenson Cottage. During the intensely cold winter Stevenson wrote some of his best essays, including "Pulvis et Umbra," began The Master of Ballantrae, and began planning a cruise to the southern Pacific Ocean for the following summer.

Journey to the Pacific
In June 1888 Stevenson chartered the yacht Casco and set sail with his family from San Francisco. The sea air and thrill of adventure for a time restored his health, and for nearly three years he wandered the eastern and central Pacific, stopping for extended stays at the Hawaiian Islands, where he spent much time with and became a good friend of King Kalakaua. He spent time in the Gilbert Islands, Tahiti, New Zealand and the Samoan Islands.

During this period he completed The Master of Ballantrae, composed two ballads based on the legends of the islanders, and wrote "The Bottle Imp." He preserved the experience of these years in his various letters and in his In the South Seas (published posthumously), an account of the 1888 cruise and a second in 1889.

In April 1890, Stevenson sailed for his third and final voyage among the South Seas islands. While Stevenson intended to write another book of travel to follow the earlier In the South Seas, it was Fanny who eventually published her journal of their third voyage.

Last years
In 1890 Stevenson purchased 400 acres (1.6 km²) in Upolu, an island in Samoa. Here he established his estate in the village of Vailima. He took the native name Tusitala (Samoan for "Teller of Tales", i.e. a storyteller). His influence spread to the Samoans, who consulted him for advice, and he soon became involved in local politics. He was convinced of the incompetence of the European officials appointed to rule the Samoans and, after many futile attempts to resolve the matter, published A Footnote to History. This was such a stinging protest against existing conditions that it resulted in the recall of two officials, and Stevenson feared for a time it would result in his own deportation.

In addition to building his house, clearing his land, and aiding the Samoans in numerous ways, he found time to work at his writing. He completed The Beach of Falesa, Catriona (titled David Balfour in the USA), The Ebb-Tide, and the Vailima Letters during this period.

Even so, he grew depressed, wondering if he had exhausted his creative vein. With each fresh attempt, the best he felt he could write was "ditch-water." He feared that he might once again become a helpless invalid, but he rebelled against the idea:

I wish to die in my boots; no more Land of Counterpane for me. To be drowned, to be shot, to be thrown from a horse—ay, to be hanged, rather than pass again through that slow dissolution.

Then, with a sudden return of his old energy, he began work on Weir of Hermiston, believing it to be the best work he had done—"so good it frightens me," he is reported to have exclaimed. Of his life, overall, he was convinced that...

Sick and well, I have had splendid life of it, grudge nothing, regret very little...take it all over, damnation and all, would hardly change with any man of my time.

On December 3, 1894, Stevenson was straining to open a bottle of wine when he suddenly collapsed. He died within a few hours, most likely of a cerebral hemorrhage. He was forty-four years old.

The Samoans insisted on surrounding his body with a watch-guard during the night and on bearing their "Tusitala" upon their shoulders to nearby Mount Vaea. There they buried him on a spot overlooking the sea. Stevenson had always wanted his "Requiem" inscribed on his tomb:

Dig the grave and let me lie.
Glad did I live and gladly die,
And I laid me down with a will.
This be the verse you grave for me:
Here he lies where he longed to be;
Home is the sailor, home from sea,
And the hunter home from the hill.

Beloved by the Samoans, Stevenson's tombstone epigraph was translated into a Samoan song of grief, known and sung in Samoa to this day. (Adapted from Wikipedia. Retrieved 6/4/2013.)