Robert Louis Stevenson: A Documentary Volume, edited by Patrick Scott

Abstract

Patrick Scott is famed through Scottish literary studies for his remarkable service as director of Rare Books and Special Collections at the University of South Carolina. Numerous critics and editors have depended on him for access to the rare or the obscure. Is there a little-known poem or an unfindable play? We all turn to Scott and the Thomas Cooper Library. Scott is, too, a scholar of distinction, with numerous edited volumes, editions, and important analyses to his credit. He is particularly distinguished as a Burnsean and as a scholar of Robert Louis Stevenson. Moreover, as successor, with Tony Jarrells, to G. Ross Roy as editor of Scottish literature’s first American journal (Studies in Scottish Literature), Scott has introduced the work of early career scholars and showcased research from far and wide.It is a pleasure, then, to see Scott’s encyclopedic knowledge present a sometimes-unexpected Robert Louis Stevenson in this “documentary” DLB volume from Gale and to know that this is yet another act of service to authors, readers, and critics.For a volume such as this and a modern, thoroughly published author like Stevenson, the challenge is not a paucity of materials but rather an excess. His thoughts and deeds, avidly recorded by an enthusiastic mother and nurse and elaborated by friends and fans, test an editor’s powers of selection.Scott, in this context, performs miracles of focusing yet redirecting our gaze. He honors well-established principles and narratives—sections track “Coming of Age in Edinburgh,” then “Bohemian and Belletrist.” At the same time, Scott prompts us to think about how these categories are constructed, and how far they derive from a later idea of the author. Thus, the section to follow Edinburgh and Stevenson’s youthful attitudes centers the author’s impact on the narratives of space: “Stevenson in America.”The book’s own structure—where volume parameters allow only excerpts, the telling image intervenes, and an unexpected context erupts—plays nicely within and against any tendency to coherent narrativization of Stevenson’s complex life. Scott’s interjections, too, set off in italics, are as prone to disconnect as to suture the stories that surround an author so borne up on myth. For instance, in a section on Stevenson’s university days, against a lively story of Stevenson’s canvassing against Thomas Carlyle as rector and nonetheless admiring his speech, Scott notes the unlikelihood that Stevenson, not yet a student, could have played much of a role (64).At the same time, this incident brings into surprising conjunction the somewhat checkered career of Stevenson as sometime engineer, actor, and student about town and the Sage of Chelsea. Stevenson’s friend is certain the yet-to-be author attended Carlyle’s speech and that he set aside his preference for Disraeli as rector to celebrate what he called “that glorious old Scot.” But what did Stevenson make of Carlyle’s exhortation to be “diligent” and to do “what you have heard from your advisors, —and among many counsellors there is wisdom—you will bitterly repent when it is too late” (65).One of the virtues of a book like this lies in such unpredictabilities and the sudden insights they bring. Here, the callouts and images play an important role. What merits a callout is often not the great work but its others, or an important detail. Consider this: when Stevenson first traveled to Saranac, he had to go by steamer up the Hudson, then rail, then buggy; after 1887, however, a railway extension allowed him access to a network of friends and publishers from the Eastern Seaboard (322). Images reveal a page of Jekyll and Hyde slashed by a major excision—Utterson could have lurked much longer waiting for Mr. Hyde (292); the unpublished “The Hair Trunk” bounces off the page with the promise of “An Extravaganza,” supported by epigraphs from Dr. Johnson—“Sir, said Doctor Johnson, let us make a society”—and, troublingly, Mephistopheles. Readers will surely find something here to shift a presumption or encourage an addition to their “must read” list (132).Other surprises include access to unexpected and provocative contexts. Who knew that Strathpeffer—where Stevenson began to imagine a history that would become Kidnapped—styled itself “the Harrogate of Scotland” (193)? The metal workman’s barrack at Dhu Heartach is here, its great drum on spindly legs reminiscent of a water tower that has wandered to the sea (73). Where the Stevensons would build a lighthouse, and Robert Louis imagine a castaway on neighboring Earraid, in this moment was an industrial zone. Or there is the “Rob Roy” canoe that Stevenson paddled through the canals and rivers of Belgium and France. A strange contraption it is, in its 1868 diagram from The Boy’s Own Book of Boats—complete with reclined seat, sail, pennant, and little dog (137). The latest design for an athletic young man on the move.And although the image quality is sometimes lacking, given the age of the photographs selected and the vagaries of in-text reproduction, we can only be fascinated—for the Stevensons and in the context of contemporary communities and work—to see the Stevenson family at Peebles in 1865, flanked by two maids and Cummy, the redoubtable nurse (57).If the opportunities of the internet make books like this less significant than they have been for reference, there is a lot to be gained here for Stevenson scholars and admirers alike. Patrick Scott’s careful curation, matched with his extensive knowledge and inclusive spirit, make an engaging and provocative book. It is a good place to start for any of us eager to meet an author, be guided through their work, learn a period, or launch a scholarly project.