153. Treasure Island by Robert Louis Stevenson

By the age of 31 Stevenson had made many attempts at writing a novel, but to his despair each attempt had ‘stopped inexorably like a schoolboy’s watch.’ In 1881, in Kinnaird, near Pitlochry, he found himself house-bound by rainy weather, and to pass the time joined his young step-son, Lloyd Osbourne, in painting pictures. Stevenson later wrote:

On one of these occasions, I made the map of an island; it was elaborately and (I thought) beautifully coloured; the shape of it took my fancy beyond expression; it contained harbours that pleased me like sonnets; and with the unconsciousness of the predestined, I ticketed my performance 'Treasure Island.' I am told there are people who do not care for maps, and find it hard to believe. The names, the shapes of the woodlands, the courses of the roads and rivers, the prehistoric footsteps of man still distinctly traceable up hill and down dale, the mills and the ruins, the ponds and the ferries, perhaps the STANDING STONE or the DRUIDIC CIRCLE on the heath; here is an inexhaustible fund of interest for any man with eyes to see or twopence-worth of imagination to understand with! No child but must remember laying his head in the grass, staring into the infinitesimal forest and seeing it grow populous with fairy armies.

Somewhat in this way, as I paused upon my map of 'Treasure Island,' the future character 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 a flat projection. The next thing I knew I had some papers before me and was writing out a list of chapters.

With the visual stimulus of the map Stevenson had at last found fluency — and a title. However, the novel was at first christened The Sea Cook: only later was the original source of the inspiration re-enshrined on the title page.

Consulted:
Stevenson, Robert Louis: Treasure Island‎ (intro. by John D. Seelye, 1999)

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