A Visit to Treasure Island
By Leonard Wibberley
First published in 1982
12/1/2015
We are in the middle of the centenary of the publication of one of the most remarkable and exciting books in the English language.
In the middle, I say, because this book was first published, in serial form, in October 1881, at which time the author had finished but eight chapters, and in book form not until 1883, though I regret that I have not got the month.
The book was Treasure Island by Robert Louis Stevenson, a book which, written for children, has appealed to the child in all of us though we be 60 or 70 or more years of age.
After it was published, William E. Gladstone, then prime minister of England, spent a whole afternoon searching for a copy and Winston Churchill, also prime minister of England many years later, was found, during the darkest days of World War II, lying upon a couch in his study and reading Treasure Island.
The book started with a map.
Stevenson, with nothing interesting to write, took pencil and paper and started to draw a map of a fanciful island.
He fell in love with the outline and began to fill in names and topography.
“It contained,” he wrote, “harbors that pleased me like sonnets; and with the unconsciousness of the predestined, I ticketed my performance Treasured Island…as I paused upon my map of Treasure Island, the future characters of the book began to appear there visibly among imaginary woods, and their brown faces and bright weapons peeped out upon me from unexpected quarters as they passed to and fro, fighting and hunting treasure, on these few square inches of flat projection.
“The next thing I knew I had some papers before me and was writing a list of chapters.”
Stevenson, all his life, battled against ill health. Though he loved company, he was compelled to spend his mornings in bed, in complete quiet.
It was only after lunch that he got up, went for a stroll and settled down to his writing.
But I fancy in those quiet mornings he would hear the thunder of the surf on his fanciful island or roam around through the pine woods and groves of live oak with which it was studded.
In reading Treasure Island, I have always thought of the place as tropical—but there is no mention of palm trees and pandanus, for the vegetation is all northern, not unlike that of Central California, where Stevenson lived for a while both in San Francisco and Napa County.
He even has a rattlesnake on Treasure Island—a creature quite foreign to tropical parts.
In writing his book, which was to bring him fame and a decent income, he had the help of his father and many friends.
For his principal character, Long John Silver, the murderous rogue for whom every reader conceives a measure of admiration, Stevenson took as his model the poet William Ernest Henley. They were friends and wrote three plays of little importance together.
But Henley had tuberculosis, had a foot amputated, was often hospitalized and spent his life in pain.
Stevenson so admired his courage and his unbreakable spirit that he decided to model his pirate on him; throwing out Henley’s many virtues and leaving only the courage in the face of adversity and indomitable will.
Long John Silver’s parrot, Stevenson speculated, had once been the companion of Robinson Crusoe. And the skeleton on the island, pointing the way to the place where the treasure was buried, he confessed, he probably lifted from Edgar Allan Poe.
Hispaniola, the schooner on which the treasure hunters set out from Bristol with a crew (unknown to them) of pirates, is the old Spanish name for Cuba, and Stevenson confessed that she should have been a brig—schooners not yet having developed as a type in the reign of Queen Anne, which is when the story takes place.
But the author knew nothing about handling a brig and so used a schooner instead.
All came from drawing an imaginary map for a boy and the sudden recognition that the place was real and had an imperishable story to tell.
In a disturbed world, I know of no vacation more refreshing than a visit to Treasure Island.
PHOTO NOTE: Leonard loved pirates so much he dressed up as one at his son Cormac's wedding. Here he's pictured dancing with his daughter-in-law, Marianne.
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