Treasure Island Read Free Page B

can doubt that here is the original not only of the apple-barrel incident but of Long John Silver’s character as well? Stevenson ends his anecdote by telling how as a boy he had himself met the old sailor in full hypocritical fig, and that “he abounded in the praises of my grandfather, encouraged me (in the most admirable manner) to pursue his footprints, and left impressed for ever on my memory the image of his own Bardolphian nose. He died not long after.” None of this rules out the inspiration derived from Stevenson’s friend Henley, nor does it mean that the apple-barrel episode was not in part influenced by the similar incident in
Tom Sawyer
, but it does suggest that we need to be careful in compiling sources, aside from those instances the author himself admitted to.
    And yet it is his use of American material, I think, that provides Stevenson’s tale with considerably more complexity than it has been given credit for, even the kind that ends with a question we can go on forever attempting to answer, and which I intend to spend the following section asking. Simply put, Why is a tale of adventure that is so palpably British in character and situation not only derived from a number of American stories and novels, but given a setting that can be nothing but American, indeed quintessentially so? But that is simply put; what follows is an extended diagram of the complex ways in which Stevenson wove together a romantic fabric from materials derived from American stories and scenes.
    II
    If, as Hemingway famously declared, modern American literature begins with a novel by Mark Twain, then nineteenth-century American literature begins with the writings of Washington Irving, especially
The Sketch Book
, but also a number of humorous stories written immediately after that collection first appeared. That Stevenson was familiar with Irving’s writing is testified to by his admitted indebtedness to
Tales of a Traveller
. Although not generally considered one of Irving’s most successful works, this collection does include the well-known ghost story “The Devil and Tom Walker” among the tales randomly gathered in the concluding section, called “The Money-Diggers,” as well as the description of the bullying old pirate that was the inspiration for Billy Bones. Since
Treasure Island
starts with that episode, then it too may be said to have begun with Washington Irving. But the American connection, as I have already suggested, is strengthened by Cooper’s
The Sea Lions
, and Cooper was not only Irving’s contemporary, but is an acknowledged giant of American literature, having successfully translated Scott’s romance formulas to the landscape of the rapidly expanding United States.
    The plot of
The Sea Lions
is not familiar to most readers, so I begin with a brief synopsis of the opening chapters, which contain those elements that seem to have caught Stevenson’s presumably youthful attention. The story begins in Oyster Pond, near Sag Harbor, a Yankee stronghold on Long Island, and centers on a courageous young sea captain, Roswell Gardiner, and his pious sweetheart, Mary Pratt, who is niece and ward of her greedy old uncle, Deacon Pratt, a compound of the nastiest characteristics that New Yorkers such as Cooper associated with the latter-day Puritan character. Following one of those interminable first chapters by means of which Cooper establishes his detailed settings, the story begins with the arrival at Oyster Pond of “a worn-out and battered seaman,” a native of Martha’s Vineyard named Tom Daggett, en route from the West Indies to his birthplace.
    Elderly, ill, and without friends, Daggett is also without apparent means, though like Billy Bones and Irving’s pirate he carries with him “a substantial sea-chest,” which, “from its appearance, had made almost as many voyages as its owner.” While waiting for chance transportation to the Vineyard, Daggett (like Bones) takes up residence with a widow, and