SOURCE: "Stevenson's Method in Treasure Island: The Old Romance, Retold," in Essays in Literature, Vol. IX, No. 2, Fall, 1982, pp. 180-93.

[In the following essay, Hardesty and Mann attempt to show "how certain common elements of Victorian boys' books were adapted and surpassed in Treasure Island" by investigating the stock elements of adventure fiction used by Stevenson "and how he changed them or, occasionally, turned them upside down."]

Robert Louis Stevenson's first novel, Treasure Island, began as an entertainment for his stepson Lloyd Osbourne. After devising a map just to break the monotony of the summer of 1881 in Braemar, Scotland, Stevenson followed it immediately with a story whose "characters . . . began to appear [on the map] visibly among imaginary woods; and [whose] brown faces and bright weapons . . . passed to and fro, fighting, and hunting treasure, on these few square inches of a flat projection."¹ The delight Louis and Lloyd found in the exciting yarn was soon communicated to the rest of the family group; by the time three chapters were done, Stevenson could write to W. E. Henley that they had been "heard by Lloyd, F[anny, Lloyd's mother], and [Stevenson's] father and mother, with high approval."² Shortly thereafter he got friendly criticism from visitors to the family circle.³ This genesis is the key to the nature of the novel: it is vivid, exciting, and universally appealing. At the same time it survived close criticism as it was developing and thus became economically composed and lucidly written.

The exuberance with which Stevenson began this new project is even more remarkable when we remember that he not only was embarking on a wholly new type of writing but also before 1881 had produced neither a juvenile work nor a novel. Nevertheless, judging from Stevenson's own remarks at the time of setting down the early chapters of Treasure Island, he consciously was writing for adolescents. In the same letter to Henley, he announced that the text was to go to Routledge, publishers of juvenile fiction by W. H. G. Kingston and F. Mayne Reid.

Later recalling the conception of Treasure Island, Stevenson openly listed his adult, respectable sources, in his essay "My First Book." Yet he was reluctant to mention the boyish backgrounds alluded to in his prefatory poem, "To the Hesitating Purchaser." We shall work with these popular children's books in order to demonstrate that, in using them, Stevenson did not (in most instances) consciously borrow specific items, but rather worked with the stuff of his childhood favorites: "Kingston, or Ballantyne the brave, / Or Cooper of the wood and wave. . . ." Heretofore, there has been little speculation about the nature of Stevenson's debts to these three writers and their literary kin. Indeed, Roger Swearingen's study of Stevenson's early reading specifies only three titles by R. M. Ballantyne (the most relevant being The Coral Island), one by James Fenimore Cooper (The Red Rover, in the dramatization by Edward Fitzball), and none by W. H. G. Kingston.⁴ We shall discuss appropriate works by these three authors; though Stevenson may not have read Kingston, Stevenson does mention him in the prefatory poem, and Kingston's works were published by Routledge. We shall also treat the analogues between Treasure Island and the celebrated boys' story of an earlier generation, Masterman Ready by Frederick Marryat, since Stevenson specifically cites this tale in "My First Book".⁵

This paper is not intended to be a source study—investigations of that type have been done⁶—but to show just how certain common elements of Victorian boys' books were adapted and surpassed in Treasure Island. In order to demonstrate Stevenson's artistry, we shall investigate what stock elements he used, and how he changed them or, occasionally, turned them upside down. The basis for our implicit theory that a writer's excellence is shown in his going beyond the conventions is provided by Stevenson himself, in an essay, "A Note on Realism," published in the same year (1883) as the book version of Treasure Island: "The old stock incidents and accessories," he says, "tricks of workmanship and schemes of composition (all being admirably good, or they would long have been forgotten) haunt and tempt our fancy, offer us ready-made but not perfectly appropriate solutions for any problem that arises, and wean us from the study of nature and the uncompromising practice of art."⁷ The danger in their use is that the writer who leans too heavily on them may "become null and lose all grip of fact, particularity and passion". Ultimately, "the artist must decide for himself what stock elements to use and how to use them; moreover, the artist must "decide afresh and yet afresh for each succeeding work and new creation". As his theory indicates, Stevenson usually refused to take his predecessors too seriously; his approach to conventional elements of the boys' adventure novel employed surprise and even parody, since his theoretical bias forced him to rethink the handling of stock conventions that would come under the scrutiny of his original audience. Stevenson's realization that he had to tell a good story concisely and that he had to make it fresh created a new form of the genre, one exciting and plausible but without preaching.

Traditionally, the core of the boys' adventure novel has been the plot, for it is excitement that the reader seeks; picking up the book is intended to bring him thrills. To the modern adult taste, these thrills are created rather artlessly: stories are quite complicated, depending too frequently on outrageous coincidence and implausible melodrama, in accordance with Victorian tastes established for over fifty years before Treasure Island. One kind of complexity is found in the involuted plot of The Red Rover, in which the protagonist Harry Wilder is a Royal Navy officer operating undercover in order to bring to justice the famous pirate of the title. In doing so, he becomes the Rover's agent aboard a merchantman, survives an incredible storm by floating a lifeboat off the deck of the sinking ship, and loses a pitched sea-battle to the Rover after his real identity is disclosed. Taken prisoner, he is saved because he turns out to be the long-lost son of the older companion of his beloved, that older companion actually being (as nearly as we can tell) the Rover's sister. Another sort of complexity—one even more difficult to follow—can be seen in the novels with multiple protagonists, such as Kingston's Three Midshipmen, in which the boys of the title survive illness, shipwreck, battle, capture by infidels, and torture while learning their sea-going trade. Whereas Cooper's protagonist has a specific goal—and the plot, therefore, builds jerkily to a single climax—Kingston's heroes move from adventure to adventure without a specific dramatic end in view. The result is the incredible piling of shock upon shock and extravagance upon extravagance. Though the unbelievability is mitigated somewhat by the author's devising of separate plots for each of the characters (so that not all the dangers befall a single person), the book is consequently marred by the confusion of three unrelated adventures.

To move from these typical works to Treasure Island is, for a modern reader, to move from mechanical plotting to a clear, well-motivated story. Stevenson's single protagonist is the focus and narrator of all the action, except in the three chapters needed midway in the novel to explain what happens to his allies. The action is carefully balanced around the central section narrated by Dr. Livesey. Before that, Jim Hawkins is the bewildered, passive target of unexplained violence; after the doctor's narrative, Jim coolly takes the initiative and helps mete out violent justice to his antagonists. Furthermore, this balanced plot is carefully coordinated with the settings: the opening Part (called "The Prologue" when the novel was first published, as a serial in weekly installments) takes place in a realistic English setting in which Jim is an ordinary boy who discovers a map; the second Part moves the story into the fantasy world of the map; the remaining four Parts allow Jim to achieve the stature of a romantic hero.⁸ Chronology is straightforward, except in the section narrated by Livesey (which, however, doubles back in time for only a few hours), and incidents are carefully orchestrated so that the violence and the thrills are greater at each successive turn.

Not only is the plot well balanced; it is also logically designed. Given the basic notion of a boy who has come into possession of a treasure map, all else follows plausibly. Of course, the pirates are going to try to steal it back; failing that, they will attempt to subvert the treasure hunt and turn it to their purposes. They will resort to violence when their plans are thwarted. And their violent natures will lead them, ultimately, to fall to squabbling among themselves. Meanwhile, the boy who has pluck enough to obtain the treasure map will show his mettle in active ways; if his luck holds, he will succeed in his wildest gambles. All of these elements of the plot follow almost inevitably from the givens of map and the expected happy ending. Contrast this with the more usual handling of plot by Cooper, whose story goes off on a new tack with every new coincidence: the Rover and Wilder are always meeting each other unexpectedly, or meeting someone else who can effect the course of the plot. Equally implausible is the sudden arrival of pirates at Ballantyne's Coral Island, their kidnapping of only one of the three boys, and their subsequent dealings ad seriatim with missionaries, good natives, and hostile ones. Stevenson moves toward a climax developed from what has gone before, eschewing subplots and excursions; Cooper derives his climax from previously unnoticed events, diverting us with several subplots, most left unresolved; Ballantyne writes in a series of episodes, seeming to resolve his basic situation only when he has made his book long enough. Hence, the superior artistry of Stevenson is apparent throughout in his handling of his story.

Even in stock episodes, Stevenson is a more careful craftsman than his predecessors. Take, for example, the catalogue of supplies with which the protagonist and his companions must survive their shipwreck or abandonment—a common enough element in these adolescent novels (going back to Robinson Crusoe). Masterman Ready quite earnestly scrawls a census of animals and an inventory of tools on a plank before he and the remaining crew leave their wrecked ship (I, 95-96). The tone of the passage is serious: Marryat is demonstrating Ready's competence by showing how firmly he controls himself and his environment. Equally seriously, the three boys on Coral Island itemize the few possessions which survive their shipwreck, even enumerating their clothes; the list takes over two pages (pp. 30-32) and ends with a peroration typical of Ballantyne: "This was all we had, and besides these things we had nothing else; but, when we thought of the danger from which we had escaped, and how much worse off we might have been had the ship struck on the reef during the night, we felt very thankful that we were possessed of so much, although, I must confess, we sometimes wished that we had had a little more".

Stevenson seems to recognize the essential absurdity of these lists, which exist mostly to underline the difficulty of the protagonists' situations. (The inventory of goods salvaged from the ship does, of course, fill up pages and make the reader wonder just what the poor shipwrecked boys can do to use the accumulated junk: Ready lists a cow, for instance, but "she has lain down and won't get up again, I'm afraid, so we must kill her" [I]; Ralph's only tool on Coral Island is a "small penknife with a single blade broken off about the middle and very rusty . . ."). So, when Captain Smollett in Treasure Island takes an inventory of supplies with which the loyal party must survive until rescue, Stevenson alters the tone of the stock catalogue. In the preceding paragraph, the loyal servant Redruth has died. Abruptly, Stevenson's narrator shifts his interest to the captain, "wonderfully swollen about the chest and pockets," who promptly lays out the contents of a fairly sizeable storeroom: "the British colours, a Bible, a coil of stoutish rope, pen, ink, the log-book, and pounds of tobacco." Stevenson shifts the reader rapidly from the bathos of Redruth's death scene (itself a parody but in a different way) to a more neutral mood; the change is managed through this absurd set of items which the captain then sets about counting up "as if nothing else existed". Stevenson's joke is at the expense of the pompous captain as well as the readers taken in by the fully equipped maroons of such works as Johann Wyss's Swiss Family Robinson (1812-13).

Stevenson also modifies the requirement that the hero prove his mettle by single-handed deeds of derring-do in the teeth of his enemies. The two most frequent variations on this situation show the protagonist captured by the villains, and the protagonist separated from his fellows with a single villain as companion. For example, Wilder fences verbally with the Red Rover alone in the Newport Tower and again secretly aboard Dolphin, the Rover's ship, as the two try to reach an accommodation. Later, after Wilder's true identity and mission are revealed, he is held prisoner aboard Dolphin, his life threatened by the crew and guaranteed only by the iron will of their leader. In The Coral Island, similarly, Ralph is captured by an unnamed, Byronic pirate chieftain, and held prisoner aboard his schooner; Ralph escapes by stealing the schooner in collaboration with the pirate Bloody Bill. Finally, Jack Rogers, one of Kingston's Three Midshipmen, is captured by slavers and held in their fort.

Following the tradition, Stevenson uses both sorts of encounter. First, Jim sails Hispaniola around the island, in company only with Israel Hands; then, having beached the ship and killed Hands, Jim hikes back across the island only to stumble into pirates' custody in the stockade, which they now hold. Stevenson wrings added suspense out of both situations. Jim knows Hands is armed—he has seen Hands conceal the knife—and expects an attack; when it comes, Jim discovers to his (and the reader's) horror that he has neglected the elementary precaution of reloading his damp pistols. Stevenson delights a sophisticated reader by the manner in which he carefully increases the tension during the whole Hands' episode, making Hands a fearfully unregenerate, treacherous villain who is always doing something unexpected. Furthermore, Jim's capture by the pirates is more convincingly frightening than similar incidents in the other books because Jim and Silver have a carefully developed relationship. Though Silver's affection for Jim is genuine, the pirate's affection for himself is paramount. Whereas the Rover's nobility is, for example, an absolute guarantee of Wilder's safety so long as the Rover lives, Silver's self-serving pragmatism could result at any time in the sacrifice of Jim in some stratagem. In adapting these stock situations, Stevenson again employs a mixture of thrilling events and underlying realistic psychology. The situations are exciting, but their dangers possess more verisimilitude than the artificial tensions crafted by Stevenson's predecessors.

In most fiction for children, characterization consists of the author's setting up cardboard figures and moving them around. Fully realized, well motivated characters are seldom found in melodramatic tales: villains are swarthy blackguards, whereas heroes are young knights questing for fame and fortune, undertaking miraculous feats, and surviving despite insurmountable odds. Few readers remember their names or their features. To be sure, Stevenson also uses a number of persons who are little more than names. Several characters—Jim's mother; Dance, the revenuer; the servants Joyce, Hunter, and Redruth; the pirates Black Dog, Tom Morgan, George Merry; Job Anderson, the boatswain—are only functionaries. They serve as foils to other characters or as plot devices, since any novelist with whatever audience in mind will have a share of persons merely for the convenience of plot.

More significant than these functionary characters in Treasure Island are those who are types, or slightly modified stock characters, including Billy Bones, Pew, Israel Hands, Ben Gunn, and Captain Smollett. Here, Stevenson takes some care to make the types more individual and lifelife. Bones, for instance, is a blustering, braggart sailor who paradoxically has a deadly fear of his old shipmates. His personality is built up during the first few chapters by the addition of a number of details, in the handling of which Stevenson's mature craftsmanship is evident. For example, both Stevenson and Cooper use the contents of sea chests to characterize seamen. When, in The Sea Lions, a search is made of Jason Daggett's chest, those present, "the deacon [who has stolen the map] excepted, all supposed that [in] those contents were a profound secret.". But the chest is actually "more than half empty, [and] the articles it [does] contain [are] of the coarsest materials; well-worn sea-clothes that [have] seen their best days." Here, Cooper gives no real insight into Daggett. In Treasure Island, however, both the mundaneness of Daggett's sea chest and the easy symbolism of the flags in The Red Rover (discussed below) are surpassed by the brilliant inventory of the contents of Billy Bone's chest (Ch. 4). An unworn "suit of very good clothes" is on top; below it, the tools of his seafaring trade and souvenirs of his roving life. Underneath all this there is more clothing and then, at the bottom, a bag of coins "of all countries and sizes" and an oilcloth packet which contains the treasure map. Stevenson's catalogue epitomizes Billy Bones—his piracy, his travels, his violent streak, and his sentimentality, all of which have become apparent in his months at the "Admiral Benbow." Additionally, Stevenson hints at the search for treasure and the fighting to come: given the quantity and variety of coin in the chest, the bulk of the treasure must be staggering, for Bones needed "Two brace of very handsome pistols" to defend his knowledge of its location. That Billy Bones is no longer merely a "brown old seaman, with [a] sabre cut" is the result of Stevenson's deft selection of detail.

Of the other slightly modified stock characters, two are handled ironically: Pew, who tries to cloak his menacing aspect under the seeming helplessness of being blind, and Israel Hands, who is both a master gunner and a cynical sea-philosopher. On the other hand, Captain Smollett, the thoroughly British master of Hispaniola, lives entirely by the nautical code. (Smollett's name may also recall the sea stories of Tobias Smollett, written a century earlier.) Finally, Ben Gunn is that essential character of pirate novels, the maroon. By carefully establishing that Ben Gunn had been a member of Flint's crew, Stevenson makes this conventional character useful in the plot. Since Ben has spent his exile digging up the treasure and carrying it to his cave, there is nothing for the pirates to find when they arrive at the X on the map. Ben's responsibility for this climactic irony is the more engaging because, in a clever Stevensonian twist, the jittery old man has been ignored by Flint's other crewmen—"'dead or alive, nobody minds him . . . nobody minds Ben Gunn'" (Ch. 32).

Two important characters in the treasure hunt, Squire Trelawney and Dr. Livesey, are expanded stock figures. By contrast, not one of the three companions in either Kingston's The Three Midshipmen or Ballantyne's The Coral Island comes alive; they are interchangeable and indistinguishable. In Cooper's The Red Rover, likewise, Wilder's companions are mere stereotypes: Richard Fid is the stalwart tar and Scipio Africanus the comic-but-heroic, loyal Black retainer. However, Squire Trelawney is unexpectedly naive, garrulous, and impetuous, hiring Long John Silver and the pirate crew, spilling the information about the treasure hunt, and almost coming to blows with Captain Smollett in an argument that is of Trelawney's own making. In the final chapters, Squire Trelawney almost disappears. His power as the chief country landholder is dissipated by his removal from Devonshire, so that all that remains to him is a hollow title. His friend Doctor Livesey, a voice of reason (albeit with an overtone of Johnsonian pompousness), increasingly takes charge as the novel progresses. As the country magistrate, he refuses to be bullied or intimidated by Billy Bones; on the island he remains the fair-minded Englishman who will not go back on his word, even to the crafty Silver; his ruling passion is the notion that all things should be done with reason and in proper order. Both of Jim's companions from home, then, act like human beings: they have their virtues and vices; they make mistakes and achieve triumphs; they have traits recognizable to old and young alike; they are people we could know or have known. In fact, when preparing the serialized text for book publication, Stevenson took the greatest care to differentiate their characters, rewriting much of Dr. Livesey's narrative. Not only has Stevenson individualized them, but he has also shown subtly changing perceptions of each, so that they are capable of surprising the reader.

The major achievement of Stevenson in characterization is the establishment and development of his main characters, Jim Hawkins and Long John Silver. And Stevenson's success here is demonstrably far greater than that of his predecessors. Stock tags like "the boy hero" simply will not fit Jim Hawkins. As the central protagonist, Jim shares something of the characteristics of each of his companions. Like Trelawney, he is impetuous, twice running off from his friends; but like Livesey he is not to be bullied, facing up to Silver when captured in the stockade. Again like Livesey, he can be pompous, as in his moralizing to Hands. However, he possesses an opportunistic cleverness his elders lack, illustrated by his capturing and beaching the ship and by his taking advantage of secret information (both from the pirates while he is in the apple barrel and from Ben Gunn on shore). There is no question that he is extraordinarily lucky; but perhaps he earns this luck with his innate sense of when to grasp opportunity and of how to use it with both skill and daring. Throughout, Jim discovers new capabilities in himself and unexpected traits in his shipmates, both loyal crew and pirates; his responses to his discoveries make him a rounded character, and lead to increased reader empathy.

Although the reader empathizes with Jim, the most memorable character in Treasure Island is Long John Silver. He dominates the text: the image of a one-legged man haunts Jim's dreams as early as the first chapter, and Silver is the last character Jim speaks of at the end of the book. A cruel and greedy rogue, Silver acts selfishly for the most part. Despite Silver's selfishness, however, a reciprocal affection grows between him and the boy—one so strong that it has even led James Cox to suggest that Silver functions as a surrogate father for Jim.⁹ Though Jim is earlier terri fied by the notion of a one-legged pirate, he is readily befriended by Silver when he first encounters the amiable sea cook hopping about the "Spyglass" inn with a crutch under his left shoulder. Before they leave the "Spyglass," Jim says he "would have gone bail for the innocence of Long John Silver" (Ch. 8). Moreover, Jim's first impression is immediately supported by Livesey ("John Silver suits me") and Trelawney ("the man's a perfect trump"). During the voyage Jim notices that all the crew respect and even obey Long John, yet the sea cook has time to "have a yarn" in the galley with Jim (Ch. 10). But Jim's night in the apple barrel strips away his illusion of a benign Silver. Subsequently, on the island, when Jim watches Silver throw his crutch at a sailor's back, then stab his defenseless victim twice, Silver becomes a "monster" in the boy's view (Ch. 14). Ben Gunn, whom Jim meets shortly thereafter, reinforces Jim's new opinion by his intense and long-time fear of Silver. The unmasking of Silver thus has been prepared for by Stevenson's careful foreshadowing.

When Jim returns from his sea adventure, he arrives at a stockade now commanded by Silver, whose account of the pirates' gaining possession of the stockade Jim only "partly believe[s]" (Ch. 28). Even after Jim's outburst concerning the part he played in alerting the loyal crew to the pirates' design, he cannot "decide whether [Silver] were laughing at my request, or had been favourably affected by my courage" (Ch. 28). Still it is Long John Silver who saves Jim from the angry pirates who want to cut the lad's throat, saying to them that Jim is "more a man than any pair of rats of you in this here house" (Ch. 28). The morally ambiguous Silver contrasts sharply with the stock villains of Victorian boys' books and melodrama. His paradoxical conduct helps make the pirate chieftain a fully developed character. Stevenson has here created the Falstaff of children's literature; just as Shakespeare took the stock miles gloriosus and made him a living man, so Stevenson has developed the stock pirate into one of the most memorable personalities in children's literature.

Just as Stevenson expands stock characters, so also he reduces the routine didacticism found in Victorian boy's adventure novels. The nineteenth-century public and publishers did not expect a book to be merely entertaining: it had to be instructive as well. But, as Maurice Rooke Kingsford says, "Treasure Island represents almost a complete break from the traditions of the past. The story was not designed to teach anything at all, but . . . to provide untrammeled hours of spontaneous refreshment and delight."¹⁰ The earlier boys' books are, in fact, now virtually impossible to read straight through, owing to their frequent and overt digressions into instruction—a fault they share with much Victorian literature. The writers are forever lecturing. Stevenson's boyhood favorite, Mayne Reid, may be the worst of the lot—his chapters seem to a modern reader to consist of two sentences of plot and several pages of useless information on such topics as how to cook locusts.¹¹ This sort of information is omitted from Treasure Island. Although Stevenson does describe the island thoroughly, his descriptions are necessary to the setting of the scene or to the explanation of the action; there are no mere catalogues of flora and fauna. (In fact, Stevenson's island is inaccurate, being Californian rather than Caribbean in its details.¹²) More importantly, Stevenson, in refusing to lecture or preach, also refuses to write down to his youthful reader. Mayne Reid would often address his audience avuncularly: "Believing, boy-reader, that they might also instruct and interest you, I here lay [these facts] before you" (The Bush-Boys, p. 4); the combination of sympathy and irony which constitutes Stevenson's tone is wholly different.

A devotional, even more than an instructional, attitude pervades earlier novels, to the inclusion of pious phrases in chapter heads and running titles.¹³ As one might expect, religious characters abound. The most admirable of Ballantyne's characters are the missionaries Ralph encounters; and even without clergymen, Marryat's characters gather each night for Bible reading and prayers of thanksgiving. Stevenson's admirable characters, on the other hand, are secular: a doctor, a squire, a ship captain. Moreover, there are only two Bibles on Treasure Island—the Captain's, a talisman which is never opened, and Dick's, which is cut in order to serve Silver the black spot. Silver's response to this desecration exemplifies Stevenson's tone: "A Bible with a bit cut out! . . . It don't bind no more'n a ballad-book" (Ch. 29). When piety does occur, it seems to be perfunctory. Livesey threatens Bones with a claim that rum will cause the pirate to "die, and go to [his] own place, like the man in the Bible" (Ch. 2)—an ambiguous reference, and one not in the original serialized text. Similarly, Jim's final hopes are for Silver's happiness in this world, "for his chances of comfort in another world are very small" (Ch. 34)—a pompous, smug wish that wholly belies his earlier relationship with Long John.

When using other symbols of patriotic and religious fervor, Stevenson shows a decidedly irreverent attitude. Flags, for example, are significant in the novels of both Stevenson and his predecessors. The Red Rover reveals his identity to the protagonist Wilder by showing him a series of flags, one of which is the red pirates' banner; much later, the Rover explains to Wilder that he sails under the red flag because (the year being 1759) there is no flag symbolizing his identity as an American. At the end of the novel, the Rover reappears to Wilder, now a captain in the new United States Navy, and unrolling the Stars and Stripes, dies "laughing hysterically," because of his ironic vindication. In The Coral Island, Ralph identifies his pirate captors by their black flag, which disproves their captain's claim to be an honest sandalwood trader. In similar instances in Treasure Island, the reader notices a different tone. To be sure, Stevenson uses the standard conventions. The pirates hoist the Jolly Roger to the peak of Hispaniola soon after they take possession of her (Ch. 19), and Jim strikes the flag as one of his first acts after retaking the ship (Ch. 25, entitled "I Strike the Jolly Roger"). But when the loyal party identifies itself by flying the Union Jack over the stockade, Stevenson's tone becomes ironic. The Captain's first action at the stockade is to climb on the roof and "run up the colours" (Ch. 18). He then climbs off the roof and, producing another flag, reverently spreads it over Redruth's body. When the squire quite reasonably points out that the first flag makes an excellent target for Israel Hands' gunnery, the captain is aghast and refuses to strike his colors, a policy all agree with "as soon as he [has] said the words . . . For it [is] not only a piece of stout, seamanly, good feeling; it [is] good policy besides, and show[s] our enemies that we despise . . . their cannonade." Stevenson here pokes fun not only at the implausible flag-consciousness of his predecessors, but also at his bluff, English-sea-dog captain.

Conversion to Christianity is as important to these novels as patriotism. In The Coral Island, Ralph escapes from pirate captivity in the company of Bloody Bill, an "always taciturn and often surly" pirate with a heart of gold. Bill is badly wounded and dies on the voyage back to the Coral Island; but Ralph is able to convert Bill, thereby making his death glorious through his salvation. Jim gets similar notions of converting Hands when the two are alone on the schooner and Hands is wounded. Jim pompously tells the pirate to repent: "'You can kill the body . . . but not the spirit; you must know that already . . . O'Brien there [whom Hands has recently murdered] is in another world, and maybe watching us'" (Ch. 26). Not even Ralph's sermon, a lengthy one with numerous Biblical paraphrases, is more poignant in its appeal. Stevenson's ironic tone is clear in Hands' reply: "'Well, that's unfort'nate—appears as if killing parties was a waste of time. Howsomever, sperrits don't reckon for much, by what I've seen. I'll chance it with the sperrits, Jim.'" Hands' lack of contrition, then, may be amusing, but it does serve as moral justification for his later death.

The situation involving Hands and Jim is part of Stevenson's response to a third potentially didactic element in these books, the pathetic death of a faithful retainer. The most protracted death is that of Bloody Bill, who lingers for ten pages between the time of his wound, inflicted by the pirate captain, and his demise. The reader can be appropriately sad that a good man—if a rather belated Christian—is lost. Cooper's shorter death scenes are classics of exaggeration. A typical example is the death of Scipio, who receives a mortal wound defending Wilder: "As Wilder placed his own [hand] within the grasp of that of the dying negro, the latter succeeded in laying it on his lips, and then, flourishing with a convulsive movement that Herculean arm which he had so lately and so successfully brandished in defence of his master, the limb stiffened and fell, though the eyes still continued their affectionate and glaring gaze on that countenance he had so long loved, and which, in the midst of all his long-endured wrongs, had never refused to meet his look of love in kindness" (The Red Rover.)

In contrast, this obligatory scene is handled with great restraint in Treasure Island. The mortally injured Redruth, Trelawney's old servant, does not end his life with a conversion, although he does at the last suggest that "somebody might read a prayer. 'It's the custom, sir,' he add[s], apologetically" (Ch. 18). When Redruth dies, the absurd inventory of the captain's stores precludes an over-emotional response; and after the captain's brief praise of Redruth's doing his duty, the survivors instantly return to the business at hand. Stevenson refuses to protract the scene beyond its absolute minimum, and modulates the tone rather than lapse into bathos. This modulation of tone is frequent in the novel, for Stevenson continually understates the elements which lead, in other writers' hands, to melodrama.

Shortly after beginning the book, in fact, Stevenson listed the classic elements he proposed to employ: ". . . it is about Buccaneers,. . . it begins in the 'Admiral Benbow' public-house on the Devon coast, . . . it's all about a map, and a treasure, and a mutiny, and a derelict ship, and a current, and a fine old Squire . . . and a doctor, and another doctor, and a sea-cook with one leg, and a sea-song" (Letters, II, 57-58). Yet Stevenson surprises the reader even as he selects items from this list. Of the thirty-four chapters of this sea story, only two (one of which Jim spends in the apple barrel) are devoted to the voyage, which passes without the customary storm; the whole of the book is the story of a hunt for buried treasure, but when the protagonist arrives at the cache, the treasure is gone; and, as we have already noted, a major character, Silver, is an anomaly, a genial killer. Such alteration of the reader's usual expectation about plot, setting, and character aids Stevenson in achieving a unity of effect.

What further unites all the elements is style, "the invariable mark of any master" ("A Note on Realism,"). Stevenson's prose is indeed masterful. A typical passage, demonstrating just how successful Stevenson is in creating a unified effect, can be found in Chapter 29, when Silver gives Jim the black spot passed to him by the pirates.

". . . And now, shipmates, this black spot? . . . Here, Jim—here's a cur'osity for you," said Silver; and he tossed me the paper.

It was a round about the size of a crown piece. One side was blank, for it had been the last leaf; the other contained a verse or two of Revelation—these words among the rest, which struck sharply home upon my mind: "Without are dogs and murderers." The printed side had been blackened with wood ash, which already began to come off and soil my fingers; on the blank side had been written with the same material the one word "Depposed." I have that curiosity beside me at this moment; but not a trace of writing now remains beyond a single scratch, such as a man might make with his thumb-nail.

The reader must remember Jim's condition at this time: he does not know whom to trust. The pirates are threatening both him and his protector Silver. He cannot trust the pirates, but neither can he put any confidence in the sea cook. Moreover, Jim has had very little sleep in the past forty-eight hours; his energies have been sapped; he is wounded from his fight with Hands; and he is exhausted from his single-handed beaching of Hispaniola. In the present state of affairs, Jim does not know where to turn, and he does not know what has happened to his companions. The simplicity of Stevenson's prose contrasts sharply with the complex situation in which Jim finds himself. Furthermore, one must remember that Jim is recalling all this at a later period of time—a fact that Stevenson is careful to point out, perhaps to account for the calm, analytic prose in which Jim expresses himself.

In order to render the complex emotions felt by Jim the man and Jim the boy, Stevenson uses homely language—the odd word being "Depposed," which Stevenson quotes from the pirates' own misspelling, without comment. Other nouns are plain and simple—"round," "leaf," "verse." The verbs too are ordinary—"contained," "blackened," "written." The images are also commonplace—the black spot is compared with a "crown piece," thus anchoring it in the reader's experience (while also, perhaps, reminding us of the quest and the potential danger to Jim). The literary citation on the reverse leaf of the black spot is to the most familiar of books. Moreover, it is wonderfully appropriate to the situation: "Without are dogs and murderers." In keeping with the general simplicity, Stevenson has carefully expurgated the verse (Revelation 22:15), which reads in full: "For without are dogs, and sorcerers, and whoremongers, and murderers, and idolaters, and whosoever loveth and maketh a lie." The quotation furthermore picks up the animal imagery found so frequently in reference to the pirates, more evidence of Stevenson's use in the novel of the Bible for its literary aptness rather than its moral values. Finally, the animal imagery is only one of several echoes in the passage. Most importantly, this second black spot reminds the reader of the earlier black spot delivered to Billy Bones, when Jim first witnessed physical violence; now the passing of the black spot directly to Silver (and from Silver to Jim) threatens to involve Jim in the violence. The novel has come full circle, but Jim, no longer an intrigued spectator, is now in grave danger. Stevenson's deft repeating of events and actions unifies the effect of the novel.

As the novel's narrator, the adult Jim has the "round" before him, giving the tale verisimilitude. He ironically picks up Silver's word "cur'osity" in describing the still extant bit cut out of the Bible. Yet the word written in wood ash has been rubbed off, and only the piece itself is left to remind Jim of the events. This "cur'osity" attests to the reality of the episode, but it is, nevertheless, ambiguous; only a possible thumb mark remains. Though it proves that the events occurred, this disfigured circle emphasizes the dreamlike state into which they have receded.

The reader should, finally, observe the organization and pacing of the paragraph that begins with a short sentence of eleven words (only one of which, "about," is polysyllabic), followed by three carefully balanced sentences. The first ("One side was blank, for it had been the last leaf; the other contained a verse or two of Revelation—these words among the rest, which struck sharply home upon my mind: 'Without are dogs and murderers'") directs the reader from the blank to the printed side on which Jim finds appropriate words written. The second ("The printed side had been blackened with wood ash, which already began to come off and soil my fingers; on the blank side had been written with the same material the one word 'Depposed'") moves us from the printed side to the verso and the one word no longer visible, with its piratical misspelling. It may have happened as Jim tells us, but it is receding in his memory: the ash is returning to dust even as Jim handles the round, and he is soiled. The third and last sentence in the paragraph ("I have that curiosity beside me at this moment; but not a trace of writing now remains beyond a single scratch, such as a man might make with his thumb-nail") gives the reader the tangible evidence that, although the ash and the word are obliterated, the circle of paper still "might" show the human touch of a mark by a thumb nail. The entire paragraph demonstrates Stevenson's literary craftsmanship at its best. Diction is precise and suitable; syntax and sentence length are carefully manipulated to achieve the desired rhythm and, hence, pace; tone is thus controlled by both choice of diction and pacing. The contrast with the extravagances of Cooper's much less controlled style, quoted earlier, is marked; the superiority of Stevenson to the others is emphasized by one's realization that Cooper's limp art noticeably surpasses that of Kingston, Ballantyne, and Marryat. The self-consciousness of Stevenson's style—of its architectural syntax and its insistence on le mot juste—is mitigated by its clarity, its sharp impact, and, above all, its suitability to the self-conscious narrator.

Seen in relation to a variety of Victorian's boy's novels, then, Treasure Island is a great achievement. Stevenson's plot is swifter and cleaner, his characterization (though in some cases stock) less exaggerated and more real, his style more precise and graceful. A careful reading of the novel, with its analogues in mind, raises Treasure Island above the tradition in which it was born: the gripping tale of taut excitement is cleverly modulated by the effects of Stevenson's conscious artistry. We remember Stevenson's remark that he improved the usual flat characterization of boys' books "because he was himself more or less grown up."¹⁴ What we have established is that Stevenson altered and improved various elements of the juvenile novel and thus created a wholly new standard for adolescent fiction.

Notes

¹ "My First Book," in Treasure Island, Skerryvore ed. (London: Heinemann et al., 1925), II, xxx. Citations to letters and essays of Stevenson other than Treasure Island are to the Skerryvore edition, hereafter cited as Works. Citations to the text of Treasure Island are to the first edition (London: Cassell, 1883) and include both chapter and page numbers. Since no other reliable text exists, we are in the process of preparing a critical edition.

²Letters, ed. Sir Sidney Colvin (London: Heinemann et al., 1926), II, 58, Works, XXVIII; hereafter cited in text as Letters.

³ Alexander H. Japp, Robert Louis Stevenson: A Record, an Estimate, and a Memorial (New York: Scribner's, 1905), p. 13.

⁴ "The Early Literary Career of Robert Louis Stevenson[,] 1850-1881: A Bibliographical Study," Diss. Yale 1970, II, 515-20, 528, 530. Other critics have proposed various popular works as sources for Treasure Island. Of these, W. H. Bonner, in Pirate Laureate: The Life and Legends of Captain Kidd (New Brunswick, N.J.: Rutgers Univ. Press, 1947) gives the most extensive list; he makes a case for Stevenson's heavy reliance on Cooper's The Sea Lions (p. 201).

⁵ We have used the following editions of the novels cited: R. M. Ballantyne, The Coral Island (London: T. Nelson and Sons, 1867); J. Fenimore Cooper, The Red Rover, ed. William S. Walker (1828; rpt. Lincoln: Univ. of Nebraska Press, 1963) and The Sea Lions, or the Lost Sealers (1849; rpt. New York: G. P. Putnam's Sons, n.d. [Knickerbocker ed.]); W. H. G. Kingston, The Three Midshipmen (1859; rpt. London: Dent and New York: Dutton [Everyman's Library], 1906); Captain [Frederick] Marryat, Masterman Ready; or, The Wreck of the Pacific, Written for Young People (London: Longman, Brown, Green, and Longmans, 1841-42), 3 vols.

⁶ Harold Francis Watson, Coasts of Treasure Island: A study of the backgrounds and sources for Robert Louis Stevenson's romance of the sea (San Antonio: Naylor Co., 1969), is an exhaustive source study which incorporates previous investigations of Stevenson's borrowings. For a concise treatment, see Roger G. Swearingen, The Prose Writings of Robert Louis Stevenson: A Guide (Hamden, Conn.: Archon Books, 1980), pp. 63-70.

⁷ "A Note on Realism," in Essays Literary and Critical, Works, XXIV, 82. Further citations to this essay are given in the text.

⁸ A full discussion of the relationship between setting and structure can be found in W. H. Hardesty and D. D. Mann, "Historical Reality and Fictional Daydream in Treasure Island," Journal of Narrative Technique, 7 (1977), 94-103. The most extensive discussion of the romantic adventure is by Robert Kiely, Robert Louis Stevenson and the Fiction of Adventure (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard Univ. Press, 1964), since Edwin M. Eigner, Robert Louis Stevenson and Romantic Tradition (Princeton: Princeton Univ. Press, 1966), comments on Treasure Island only in passing; neither book deals directly with the structure of the novel.

⁹"Treasure Island and Tom Sawyer," Folio, 18 (1953), 17, n. 2.

¹⁰The Life, Work, and Influence of William Henry Giles Kingston (Toronto: The Ryerson Press, 1947), p. 205.

¹¹ F. Mayne Reid. The Bush-Boys (1856; rpt. New York: James Miller, 1875), Ch. IV. "A Talk about Locusts," pp. 31-32. Reid goes so far as to use the scientific Latin terms for flora and fauna: "the third species (Catoblepas taurina) is the 'ko-koon' of the natives" (p. 222). Swearingen, Literary Career (II, 513f), notes Stevenson's debt to Reid and his distaste as an adult for Reid's didacticism.

¹² George R. Stewart, "The Real Treasure Island," The University of California Chronicle, 28 (Apr. 1926), 207-13. The article is founded on Stewart's unpublished M.A. thesis, "Stevenson in California: A Critical Study" (California-Berkeley, 1920), esp. pp. 87-100. Stevenson himself said "the scenery is Californian in part, and in part chic" (Letters, II, 226).

¹³ Such references occur offhandedly amid other mundane events. One of Ballantyne's chapter heads reads:* "The voyage—The island, and a consultation in which danger is scouted as a thing unworthy of consideration—Rats and cats—The native teacher—Awful revelations—Wonderful effects of Christianity" (Ch. 30, p. 366). Marryat's running titles for one chapter (I, Ch. 6) are: p. 87, "Juno praying"; p. 88, "Building storehouse [sic]"; p. 89, "On the beach"; p. 90, "Employment happiness"; p. 91, "Tommy killing beetles"; pp. 92-96, "Creation"; pp. 97-98, "The Heavens"; pp. 99-101, "Christianity."

¹⁴ A Humble Remonstrance," Memories and Portraits, Works, XXV, 162.