An Interview with Robert Louis Stevenson

• Author: Bryan A. Garner
• Pages: 26-27

26 || ABA JOURNAL SEPTEMBER 2018

Readers of this column k now that I

occasionally sit dow n to interview long-dead

authors. I do it not by time traveling but by

consulting their works published long ago

and asking questions a s I read.

This month’s interviewee is the este emed

Robert Louis Stevenson (1850–1894), the

Scottish wr iter famous mainly for his nov-

els Treasure Island and The Strange Case of

Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. Stevenson traveled

the world and spent a great deal of time in

the United States. At the age of 30, he spent a

summer honey mooning at an abandoned mi ning camp

at Mount Saint Helena in California. He was obviously a

romantic. The place he stayed is now ca lled Robert Louis

Stevenson State Park.

On a Thursday in mid-July, we sat down for an agree-

able chat. I was astoni shed, frankly, at his candor and

amiability. The words in his an swers are drawn from a

posthumous collection of his es says titled Learning to

Write (19 20).

Garner: How did you become a writer?

Stevenson: All through my boyhood and youth, I

was always busy tr ying to learn to writ e. I had vowed

that I would learn to w rite. That was a profi ciency that

tempted me; and I practiced to a cquire it, as men learn

to whittle, in a wager w ith myself.

Garner: How did you start?

Stevenson: Description was the principal

fi eld of my exercise; for to anyone with sen ses

there is always something wor th describing,

and town and countr y are but one continuous

subject. But I worked in other ways also. I

often accompanied my w alks with dramatic

dialogues in which I played ma ny parts and

often exercised myself i n writing down conver-

sations from memory.

Garner: That’s how you learned?

Stevenson: No, that wasn’t the most e cient

part of my traini ng. Good though it was, it only

taught me, so far as I have lear ned them at all, the lower

and less intellectua l elements of the art—the choice of the

essential note and the r ight word. It set me no standard of

achievement. So there was perhap s more profi t, as there

was certa inly more e ort, in my secret labors at home.

Garner: Secre t labors? Sounds myster ious.

Stevenson: Whenever I read a book or a passage that

particula rly pleased me, in which a thing was said or

an e ect r endered with propriety, in which there was

either some conspic uous force or some happy dist inction

in style, I must sit down at once and set my self to ape

that quality. I was unsucc essful and I knew it, and tried

again, and was a gain unsuccessful and alway s unsuc-

cessful; but at least i n these vain bouts, I got some prac-

tice in rhythm, i n harmony, in construction and the

coordination of part s. I played the sedulous ape.

PHOTOGRAPHS BY WINN FUQUA PHOTOGRAPHY; CULTURE CLUB/CONTRIBUTOR

An Interview

with Robert

Louis

Stevenson

Some posthumous w isdom

on writing from one of the

masters

By Bryan A. Garner

Bryan Garner

on Words

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