Michael Morpurgo: How Robert Louis Stevenson became my mentor
The scene in Treasure Island in which Jim Hawkins discovers a murder and mutiny plot still shivers the timbers of War Horse author Michael Morpurgo
I live far away in Devon, where my life has been, where I have done most of my writing, but I am drawn to Scotland. Like a swallow, like a salmon, I return. Yet I was not born in Scotland; it has never been my home.
It’s true I have a brother, Mark, who was adopted by Scotland through marriage to his late wife, Linda, and is passionate about his new homeland, by Glasgow, where he lives, and its people, by the vibrant music culture, by the Highlands and the Lowlands, by all the rivers and their ‘bonny, bonny banks’, by the islands they know and the seas they loved together.
But it was Robert Louis Stevenson who first brought me over the Border, first opened my mind’s eye to the country, to the history of Scotland and its people, to the faraway hills and glens, a new landscape to me, and a new people to me.
His stories were told in English, but in a voice and with a music and a rhythm in his words I’d never heard before. These stories read off the page as if he was telling them to me face to face, in his own voice. Personally.
.jpeg?trim=0,0,1,0&crop=&width=640&quality=65)
I was never a great reader. I read everything Enid Blyton wrote because every page rattled on. Enchanted trees, Smugglers’ Top, and often with the same five children in every adventure. But that’s fine, I liked predicable. It turned the pages. I always wanted more. She got me reading. And I’m grateful for that.
Stevenson could do that too I discovered, but his stories I live as I read. There is truth in them. Baddies are never entirely bad, and goodies are never entirely good. I learned that unpredictable was better, more interesting, more complex than predictable, in fact more like life.
I came first to Scotland in Kidnapped and in Catriona. And Treasure Island may not be a Scottish Island, but the Admiral Benbow Inn could be anywhere, and Jim Hawkins could be me, was me as I was reading.
I was hiding in the barrel of apples on the deck of the Hispaniola on the way to Treasure Island. It was there I overheard my erstwhile friend plotting murder and mutiny with his dastardly crew. I must have first read that scene when I was nine or ten. I’m 82 now, and the thought of it still gives me and my timbers the shivers.
That story-maker supreme, RLS, wrote adventure stories for youngsters, wrote dark novels for grown-up children – like the great Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde – wrote iconic travel books – like Travels With A Donkey in the Cévennes – and countless wonderful poems.
He was an adventurer, a traveller, who brought the world he knew and imagined into his writing, and gave it to me. And for me, he became a mentor.
I came across a photo of him on the island of Samoa, when he was poorly, towards the end of his all too short life. He was sitting on his bed, propped up on his pillows, his knees drawn up and writing away on his notebook.
He looked so comfortable. I’d never been comfortable at my writing. Sitting at a desk, my neck hurt, my wrist hurt, my shoulder hurt. I tried it the RLS way, on my bed and comfortable.
I wrote War Horse like that, and Kensuke’s Kingdom, my island story. Not a patch on Treasure Island, but you’ll find echoes of his story in mine, and in all my island stories set on Scilly, Why the Whales Came, The Wreck of the Zanzibar and others.
And RLS has encouraged me to take risks, to begin in my 80s to dare to write poetry, and to write more for grown-up children too. I owe him. And as I said, he brought me to Scotland.
I’ve written stories and poems set in Scotland, The Last Wolf, and my favourite poem, in a collection of my poetry called My Heart Was a Tree. It’s a rare enough subject for a poem – inspired by a chair. I called it Driftwood.
It came from my travels to Orkney, where I discovered they make the most beautiful chairs from driftwood and rushes. I have one at home in Devon now, a reading chair by the fire.
I’m off back up to Scotland soon, to visit first the best bookshop I know, the Mainstreet Trading Company in St Boswells. And then I go to meet my Scottish brother, Mark, at the most hospitable book festival I’ve ever been to, the Boswell Book Festival at Dumfries House, to launch my most recent book, a retelling of Black Beauty.
It’ll be a retelling of Treasure Island next. Not enough children read it these days. And I want them to. Hope RLS won’t mind. I’ve taken no liberties! Promise!
Author Michael Morpurgo will be appearing at Boswell Book Festival on May 9
Comments
Want to join the conversation? Please or to comment on this article.