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“He a Cripple and I a Boy”: and the Gentleman in ’s Island

Chamutal Noimann

The definition of a gentleman had been occupying English thought for cen- turies. Eminent Victorian thinkers and artists joined this debate, each offer- ing his own idea of what a gentlemen was and how he must be educated. In doing so, they produced an extraordinary collection of philosophical, theo- logical, and intellectual rhetoric. In Victorian Masculinities, Herbert Sussman effectively summarizes the complexity of the issue. His study is based on the notion that “masculinity [is] an historical construction rather than an essen- tialist given.”1 He demonstrates how each artist and writer “shapes the possi- bilities of manliness available to him within his cultural moment into a very personal configuration that necessarily participates within the more discourse of the masculine.”2 , for example, promoted the idea of the gentleman as arti- san with his belief in the profundity of manual work as illustrated in novels like Adam Bede and Great Expectations; the masculine gentleman also showed

1. Herbert Sussman, Victorian Masculinities: Manhood and Masculine Poetics in Early and Art (Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University Press, 1995), 14. 2. Ibid. © 2012 by Washington & Jefferson College. All rights reserved. 0049-4127/2012/5801-004 TOPIC: THE WASHINGTON & JEFFERSON COLLEGE REVIEW an absence of fear and heroic bravery. Cardinal Newman described his own ideal gentleman in The Idea of a University(1852) as one who never inflicts pain upon anyone, mainly by restraining from “whatever may cause a jar or a jolt in the minds of those with whom he is cast, . . . his great concern being to make every one at their ease and at home.”3 Samuel Smiles dedicates the last chapter of Self-Help (1859) to “The True Gentleman,” advocating that a gentleman should be dedicated to a process of self-improvement and, like Carlyle, stressing the workingman’s sense of dignity and independence and the enterprising self-made man.4 In his chapter “Of Vulgarity” in Modern Painters (1860), John Ruskin separates the notion of breeding from class. He replaces the perception of gentlemanliness as an inherited trait with the idea that it is a learned, earned, and achieved quality. True to his Christian Social- ist agenda, the “pure” gentleman, in Ruskin’s view, is sensitive to others and should be “of structure in mind which renders it capable of the most delicate sympathies.”5 In (1883), Robert Louis Stevenson offers his own per- sonal configuration, born not only out of social context but out of personal experience as well. Like many of his contemporaries writing for children, Stevenson blames the empire for the erosion of British fathers’ importance in their children’s lives.6 His juxtaposition of treasure-seeking pirates and gentlemen offers some of the most scathing critiques of the types of men created by greed, capitalism, and colonialism, asking for honest self-criticism of the English character and of the way Englishmen deal with domestic and international issues. By the end of the novel, Stevenson’s view of the British

3. John Henry Newman, The Idea of a University, intro. and notes by Martin J. Svaglic (: Holt, Rinehart, Winston, 1960). Anthony Trollope’s Septimus Harding in The Warden is an ideal example of Newman’s gentleman. 4. Robin Gilmour, The Idea of the Gentleman in the Victorian Novel (London: Allen & Unwin, 1981), 99–101; Samuel Smiles, Self Help: The Art of Achievement, Illustrated by Accounts of the Lives of Great Men (London: Sphere, 1968), 220–35. 5. Gilmour, 87. 6. Notable examples of books for children addressing the detrimental effects of the absent father are ’s The Light that Failed (1890) and ’s A Little Princess (1905) and The Secret Garden (1911). All three books also intertwine issues of masculinity, British imperialism (especially in ), and the role of fathers in the family.

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Victorian gentleman emerges as part pirate and part child, both committed to their roles in the family.7 Treasure Island was originally published in serial form in the magazine Young Folks. It offered everything boys were supposed to enjoy: adventure, danger, travel, guns, fighting, and gore. Yet the response among young read- ers was lukewarm, at best.8 Arguably, the reason for the book’s failure among boys is that its hero, , is not the kind of young hero boys were conditioned to enjoy. Jim is not a public-school boy training to be a Chris- tian gentleman and soldier of the Empire, like the hero of ’s popular Tom Brown’s Schooldays.9 Son of an innkeeper, Jim is the antithesis. In all his actions, Jim works alone, following his own instinct, his own heart, and not an inculcated patriotic duty to his country dependent on collective actions and motives. On the other hand, once published in book form, it was hailed by adult readers as one of the best adventure books ever pub- lished. Legend has it that Prime Minister Gladstone stayed up all night read- ing it.10 It appealed to contemporary Victorian men’s growing tendencies to reject their domestic role in favor of imperial adventures. Sir remarked that Treasure Island marked the beginning of “the modern masculine novel” because it does not endorse marriage as the ultimate desti- nation of a man’s adventures.11 It ends happily because the men return home safely and economically secure. Yet, upon closer analysis, the book seems to endorse the kind of domes- ticity adult readers thought it was rejecting. Jim Hawkins and Long John are antiheroes, just as the book itself is an antistory, mocking contem- porary adventure tales by clearing away romantic ideas readers at the time

7. Robert Louis Stevenson, Treasure Island, intro. Eoin Colfer (New York: Puffin Classics, 2008). All quotations from the novel are from this edition. 8. Not until 1883, when it was bound and published for adults, did the book received its due popularity. See David Angus, “Youth on the Prow: The First Publica- tion of Treasure Island,” Studies in 25 (1990): 83–99. 9. John Springhall. “Building Character in the British Boy: The Attempt to Extend Christian Manliness to Working-Class Adolescents, 1880–1914,” in Manli- ness and Morality: Middle-Class Masculinity in Britain and America, 1800–1940, ed. J. A. Mangan and James Walvin (New York: St. Martin’s, 1987), 61–65. 10. Graham Balfour, The Life of Robert Lewis Stevenson (New York: Scribner’s, 1901), 211–12. 11. Quoted in J. A. Hammerton, Stevensoniana: An Anecdotal Life and Apprecia- tion of Robert Louis Stevenson (: John Grant, 1907), 243.

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Jim Hawkins and , from the first American edition of Trea- sure Island (Boston: Roberts, 1884), illustration by Frank Thayer Merrill. Image courtesy HathiTrust Digital Library.

58 TOPIC: THE WASHINGTON & JEFFERSON COLLEGE REVIEW might have gotten from novels such as .12 Both Jim and Silver offer alternatives to the contemporary British manly character that placed great emphasis on physical strength, religious devotion, and teamwork.13 Their behavior reveals Stevenson’s notions about the value of breaking with established practices and with expected gentlemanly behaviors.14 Jim’s defi- ance throughout the novel is an act of against boys’ education, against the contemporary notions of the gentleman based on it, and against the established image of the imperialistic and righteous British national char- acter. His accomplice and paternal surrogate, John Silver, is the perfect anti- gentleman gentleman. Stevenson is largely responsible for establishing the pirate in the popular imagination as a good/bad hero: dangerous yet roman- tic, fascinating yet repellent. Silver is the archetype upon whom all other pirates, from to Captain , rely. He is an outlaw, physically deformed, and morally questionable, yet seen by all as a gentle- man. According to David Castronovo, a gentleman can be one owing to his birth, honor, wealth, breeding, religion, and education.15 At various points in the narrative, Silver answers to all but the first of these definitions. At the same time, Stevenson’s juxtaposition of Silver as a “Gentleman o’ Fortune” (Silver’s euphemism for pirate) with the traditional gentleman also makes him a symbol for and critic of the failures of British masculinity. His violence and greed are the ailments of a imperialistic society that condones the prac- tice of stealing the of others in the name of God, Gold, and Glory. This complexity, combined with Jim’s antiheroism, creates a tension exploring alternative definitions of the masculine. Lisa Honaker attributes Silver’s success as a character to his unique combination as both the hero of adventure stories and in his masculine role in the domestic sphere.16 This

12. Mara Gubar, Artful Dodgers (New York: , 2009), 70, 74–75. 13. Ibid., 65–67. 14. This defiance, especially by Jim, is what historian Steven Mintz explains as social forces that “increasingly cut off [the authority of the father] from the support of the broader culture. The father’s authority could not be insulated from the corro- sive effects of individualistic and egalitarian values” (A Prison of Expectations: The Family in Victorian Culture [New York: New York University Press, 1983], 61). 15. David Castronovo, The English Gentleman: Images and Ideals in Literature and Society (New York: Ungar, 1987). 16. Lisa Honker, “‘One Man to Rely On’: Long John Silver and the Shifting Character of Victorian Boys’ ,” Journal of Narrative Theory 34, no. 1 (2004): 48.

59 TOPIC: THE WASHINGTON & JEFFERSON COLLEGE REVIEW combination of adventure, greed, and violence, with a commitment to domestic duties (including his commitment to Jim), is key to Stevenson’s unique definition of the British gentleman. Silver owes his success and endurance to the way and the reasons he was created. Biographer Jenni Calder reports that Stevenson did not try to distin- guish himself academically as his father hoped he would. Instead, Stevenson worked hard to distinguish himself among beggars and street folk: He was recognized on the streets, though not always by name, known in the dives he frequented as “velvet coat,” because he wore one, notorious for his practical jokes, valued for his con- versation, regarded askance by many for his gestures against the bourgeois, self-esteeming prudish society of professional, middle-class Edinburgh.17 Stevenson’s incredibly vivid description of the pirates in Treasure Island may have been influenced by his “cultivation of underdogs and prostitutes, the denizens of the decaying, overcrowded Old Town, abandoned by the upper classes.”18 Despite their predicament, Stevenson respected and appreciated his street companions. The character of is based on a real Edin- burgh beggar named Israel Hand, who was also a former pirate. Stevenson’s respect for the disrespected and the homage he pays them in his novel is revealing. Silver is a combination of Stevenson’s fascination with real pirates and his admiration for Ernest Henley (1849–1903). In an 1894 article in McClure’s Magazine entitled “My First Book—‘Treasure Island,’” Stevenson explains that the character of Silver is based on Henley, a poet, good friend, and paternal surrogate. Henley was a large man with an unruly beard who had lost a leg to tuberculosis, which accounts for the physical resemblance to Silver. Stevenson explains that he deprived Silver of Henley’s “finer qualities and higher graces of temperament” and left nothing but Henley’s “strength, his courage, his quickness, and his magnificent geniality.”19 These are curious adjectives to use to describe a murdering pirate, but nonetheless, that is how

17. Jenni Calder, Robert Louis Stevenson: A Life Study (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1980), 3–4. 18. Ibid., 4. 19. Reprinted in Robert Louis Stevenson, “My First Book: Treasure Island,” in The Complete Works of R. L. Stevenson, vol. 5 (New York: Scribner’s, 1922), xxii.

60 TOPIC: THE WASHINGTON & JEFFERSON COLLEGE REVIEW he characterizes Silver. Born out of admiration, fascination, and sympathy, Silver engenders the same response in readers. Silver’s close emotional relationship with Jim Hawkins who, in many ways, is modeled after Stevenson, draws a complete picture of the author’s complaints about Victorian masculinity, especially as it relates to the role of British gentlemen as fathers often absent and detached from their children.20 The paternal of Silver’s relationship with Jim is at the heart of the dis- course over the role of Silver as an anti-imperialist gentleman. Scholarship has long identified Treasure Island as an anti-imperialist novel and Silver as simultaneously a demonized imperialist competitor of the as well as a representation of the corrupt imperialist. As M. Daphne Kutzer notes, before Stevenson, pirates in literature were used to symbolize “what happened to humans when they ‘go native’ and abandon their civilized ways. They became predators.”21 They also served as “symbolic substitutes for foreign competition in imperial acquisition.”22 But Stevenson complicates the paradigm, shifting some of the symbolism to the treasure- hunting non-pirates, blurring the differences. Bradley Deane contends that Treasure Island offers a critique of imperialistic practices by depicting the search for foreign treasures in foreign lands as a cruel game played by chil- dren masquerading as grown men, whose boyish behavior showed “disregard of legal or moral restraint, [and] was neither frivolous nor harmless.”23 Clau- dia Nelson, like Bradley and Andrew Loman,24 identifies Stevenson’s argu- ment with prevailing ideas of masculinity through his criticism of imperial- ism, identifying the stern and authoritative Captain Smollett as a “forbidding father figure” whose absurdly exaggerated manliness is utterly unattractive to Jim.25 Critics also identify Silver as being instrumental in embodying an oppos- ing agenda, one that does not reject the gentleman’s role as head of house-

20. Stevenson possessed rebellious social, religious, and political tendencies, much to the regret of his conservative father. 21. M. Daphne Kutzer, Empire’s Children: Empire and Imperialism in Classic British Children’s Books (New York: Garland, 2000), 9. 22. Ibid. 23. Bradley Deane, “Imperial Boyhood: and the Play Ethic,” Victorian Studies 53, no. 4 (2011): 711. 24. Andrew Loman, “The Sea Cook’s Wife: Evocations of in Treasure Island,” Children’s Literature 38 (2010): 1–26. 25. Claudia Nelson, Boys Be Girls: The Feminine Ethic in British Children’s Fiction, 1857–1917 (New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press, 1991), 130–31.

61 TOPIC: THE WASHINGTON & JEFFERSON COLLEGE REVIEW hold. Both Nelson and Lisa Honaker see the basis for Silver’s opposition to prevailing notions of masculinity in the many feminine aspects Stevenson assigns to him: Silver is a successful innkeeper and a cook, a testament to his domestic abilities.26 Nelson goes as far as to call him an androgynous mother figure to Jim.27 What both critics are responding to are Silver’s abilities and behaviors that, even today, are not traditionally associated with masculinity. I contend, however, that Stevenson did not intend Silver to be a maternal sur- rogate for Jim. What we observe as effeminate tendencies are, for Stevenson, alternative masculine attributes, ones he himself embodied and that were becoming increasingly valued in fathers during the late-Victorian period.28 In A Man’s Place: Masculinity and the Middle-Class Home in Victorian England, John Tosh explains that “the domestic sphere . . . is integral to masculinity.”29 According to Tosh, a gentleman was expected to marry and produce an heir to his name because single men, who were not able to vote and did not pay taxes, never enjoyed the level of societal respect given to married gentlemen. Establishing a home, protecting it and one’s family, pro- viding for and controlling it, had long been essential to a man’s “good stand- ing with his peers.”30 The Victorian cult of domesticity, most often associ- ated with women, also meant that, for men, home was a place of greater importance than before. In the latter half of the century, however, domestic- ity began to change from being an extension of the Victorian gentleman’s imperial, public persona to a space where “privacy and comfort, separation from the workplace, and the merging of domestic space and family members [created a] single commanding concept . . . ‘home.’”31 This association of masculinity with domesticity was at odds with the increasingly industrial and imperialistic society within which middle-class men were expected to function. The father remained the breadwinner, but he often separated from his family for longer, sometimes permanent, periods

26. Honker, 39. 27. Nelson, 130. 28. To understand Stevenson’s critique of masculinity in the empire, we cannot separate Silver as paternal surrogate from his “son” Jim. It is in this nonbiological redefinition of the father-son relationship in Treasure Island—which Stevenson wrote with input from his young stepson Lloyd—that the strength of his argument lies. 29. John Tosh, A Man’s Place: Masculinity and the Middle-Class Home in Victorian England (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1999), 4. 30. Ibid. 31. Ibid.

62 TOPIC: THE WASHINGTON & JEFFERSON COLLEGE REVIEW due to work or .32 Tosh tells us that the empire was run by bachelors: wild, free, adventurous, young bachelors.33 And if not actually bachelors, they nevertheless pretended to be unattached and that their children did not exist. The Empire demanded it. During the time Stevenson wrote Treasure Island, men were feeling the burden presented by domestic expectations and were attempting to them.34 By the end of the novel, the reader is left with a lasting impression that, contrary to these emerging masculine conven- tions, the most admirable personalities in Treasure Island are a boy of four- teen, whose actions from the start are driven by a wish to protect his mother and home, and a crippled pirate, the only married adult in the book besides Jim’s father. At this moment in history, they are also Othered: youth, disabil- ity, or criminal activity makes each unfit to be called “manly.” Jim Hawkins and Long John Silver are within the gray area in which the rebellious Steven- son also belonged. They operate in an absence of conventional, acceptable masculinity, yet they affirm qualities ascribed to the gentleman as, first, a husband and a father. Jim’s development into a man is defined by Silver’s singularity of char- acter. Jim’s biological father is weak, scared, and insignificant. Dr. Livesey, , and Captain Smollett either treat Jim condescendingly or fail to prove worthy of his admiration by not living up to his expectations. Silver is the only character in the novel that takes Jim on, supports him, edu- cates him, treats him with respect, and appreciates his character and abilities. He possesses a manliness that proves superior to all other models. Before he meets Silver, though, Jim is introduced to a different pirate, one who is not the gentleman Silver will reveal himself to be but still more impressive than the rest of the men in Jim’s life. is frightening, yet admirable and exciting. His father’s unhappy death early in the novel creates merely a logistical inconvenience for Jim, but when Billy Bones dies, the lad breaks down and weeps, confessing that “it is a curious thing to understand, for I had certainly never liked the man, though of late I had began to pity him, but as soon as I saw that he was dead, I burst into a flood of tears” (29). Similarly, he thinks only of Billy Bones as he leaves his childhood home, remembering none of the frightening details of his experience with the pirate but only the pleasant ones like “his cocked hat, his sabre-cut cheek, and his old brass telescope” (65). It seems almost as though Jim will miss him more

32. Ibid., 93–101. 33. Ibid., 175. 34. Ibid., 7, 172–74.

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Billy Bones, from Treasure Island (Chicago: Rand, McNally, 1903), illustra- tion by Gustavus C. Widney. Image courtesy HathiTrust Digital Library.

64 TOPIC: THE WASHINGTON & JEFFERSON COLLEGE REVIEW than anyone else. R. H. W. Dillard sees this as the first of a series of betray- als Jim will commit against his adult companions throughout the book. He contends “Jim’s fall from innocence begins with his fascination with the old pirate Billy Bones and the minor betrayal of his father when he takes the pirate’s money to stand watch instead of helping his father, as he should.”35 It is clear why Bones would be more attractive to a young, rebellious child than his own enfeebled father. Jim rebels against the societal conventions that require him to obey his elders and chooses to seek, instead, the company of men as different from his father as he can find.36 Jim is disappointed by his father’s cowardice but also by the men in town, none of whom offer to help his mother retrieve the money owed to her by the recently deceased Bones: They say cowardice is infectious; but then argument is, on the other hand, a great emboldener; and so when each had said his say, my mother made them a speech. She would not, she declared, lose money that belonged to her fatherless boy; “if none of the rest of you dare,” she said, “Jim and I dare. Back we will go, the way we came, and small thanks to you big, hulking, chicken-hearted men. We’ll have that chest open, if we die for it. And I’ll thank you for that bag, Mrs. Crossley, to bring back our lawful money in.” Of course, I said I would go with my mother; and of course they all cried out at our foolhardiness; but even then not a man would go along with us. All they would do was to give me a loaded pistol, lest we were attacked. (32) Stevenson’s point is that the weak biological father is a symbol of a failing model of masculinity that crumbles in the face of threat and adversity. Jim’s father is unable to contend with the problems caused by the pirate; his son, however, can. Jim’s emergence as hero symbolizes a new generation’s alterna- tive solutions to old problems. In other words, “a mere child is more manly than an entire town of grown-ups.”37 If the pirates represent the dangers faced by the empire, Stevenson proposes that the price England pays for dealing with them domestically is in the damage done to its fathers. Billy Bones first introduces Silver with a warning, yet his first impres- sion is curiously and universally positive. Silver’s contradictory character is

35. R. H. W. Dillard, introduction to Treasure Island (New York: Signet/NAL, 1998), xi. 36. See Mintz’s comment in n.14. 37. Gubar, 82.

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Captain Smollet and Long John Silver smoking, from the first illustrated British edition of Treasure Island (London: Cassell, 1885), illustration by George Roux. Roux’s pictures had already appeared in the French transla- tion. Note Silver’s gentlemanly appearance. Image courtesy of Wikimedia Commons.

66 TOPIC: THE WASHINGTON & JEFFERSON COLLEGE REVIEW a source of confusion to the other gentlemen in the book. At first, they are convinced he is the best of all gentlemen, even more than Captain Smollett. Silver’s speech (which he adapts according to his listener), his friendly behav- ior and collegiality (putting all at ease), his work ethic, and his bravery and education make him positively a Ruskinian gentleman. Squire Trelawney introduces Silver to Dr. Livesey in a letter, and he praises Silver for acts and attributes one usually looks for in a gentleman. He sees Silver as “a man of substance” because he has a “banker’s account” that has “never been over- drawn” (43). He reports that Silver lost his leg “in his country’s service, under the immortal Hawke” yet receives no compensation. “Imagine the abomina- ble age we live in!” he cries. His favorable description of Silver and his deal- ings with him comically clash with the reader’s foreknowledge of Jim’s appre- hension and Bones’s warning. The pirate even makes a favorable impression when he first meets Jim. Castrovono’s category of the “Gentleman of Honor” applies here: “This is honor as repute, the most straightforward acceptation. It may apply alike to thieves—‘prigs’—or men of fashion.”38 Silver is able to make others believe that he is what mid-to-late Victorians believed to be the essence of the gentleman. Israel Hands tells Jim about Sil- ver’s life before he came to the sea and reveals details that explain why he so easily wins the admiration of men of higher birth. Hands explains that Silver is “no common man” (by which he means no common seaman) because “he had good schooling in his young days and can speak like a book when so minded; and brave—a lion’s nothing alongside of Long John!” (86). Strength of character, bravery, and good education were essential to a gentleman at the time. Kindness, sensitivity to others’ needs, and helpfulness—additional traits of a gentleman—are also part of Silver’s character. He is respected and obeyed not only because he is well educated and brave but also because “he had a way of talking to each and doing everybody some particular service” (86). This ability answers to an important part of the gentleman’s social con- duct: making all feel at ease in his presence by adapting to the company within which he operates. Stevenson, however, is ridiculing contemporary definitions of the gentleman by showing that a man who fits the criteria may still be a ruthless, murdering pirate. Once the is found out, Squire Trelawney cannot believe that the same men whom he trusted, now revealed to be pirates, are “all Englishmen!” as he and his friends are. Whereas the squire and others see Silver only in white or black, first as honest gentleman and later as criminal, Jim, sometimes despite himself, is drawn to, admires,

38. Castronovo, 19–20.

67 TOPIC: THE WASHINGTON & JEFFERSON COLLEGE REVIEW and respects Silver and all his positives and negatives. Jim is able to synthe- size the honest gentleman and criminal into a new definition of manliness. Jim recognizes Long John Silver for what he really is. Before he meets Silver, Jim has nightmares about him because of Bones’s stories. But his description of Silver when he first sees him demonstrates Jim’s ability to identify those qualities in Silver that distinguish him from other pirates and gentlemen: As I was waiting, a man came out of a side room, and at a glance I was sure he must be Long John. His left leg was cut off close by the hip, and under the left shoulder he carried a crutch, which he managed with wonderful dexterity, hopping about upon it like a bird. He was very tall and strong, with a face as big as a ham—plain and pale, but intelligent and smil- ing. Indeed, he seemed in the most cheerful spirits, whistling as he moved about among the tables, with a merry word or a slap on the shoulder for the more favoured of his guests. Now to tell you the truth, from the very first mention of Long John in Squire Trelawney’s letter I had taken a fear in my mind that he might prove to be the very one-legged sailor whom I had watched for so long at the old Benbow. But one look at the man before me was enough. I had seen the captain, and Black Dog, and the blind man Pew, and I thought I knew what a was like—a very different creature, according to me, from this clean and pleasant-tempered landlord. (68) As careful as he tries to be, drawing on his experience and studying him carefully, Jim immediately finds Silver intriguing. When he finally finds out about the mutiny and Silver’s real character, we are also introduced to Sil- ver’s own definition of the gentleman as “the gentleman of fortune.” As Jim quickly realizes, Silver uses the phrase “gentleman of fortune” to mean “nei- ther more nor less than a common pirate” (94). Silver’s ironic use of the term gentleman here further undermines contemporary notions of a gentleman’s characteristics, especially those of the bourgeoisie that hold that the posses- sion of fortune alone turns one into a gentleman. As soon as he learns of Silver’s plans for mutiny, Jim’s understanding of what makes a good man is shattered, and this encourages him to take charge of his own life and destiny. He knows he cannot trust others to determine

68 TOPIC: THE WASHINGTON & JEFFERSON COLLEGE REVIEW his course for him, and he begins doing things that seem rash but are actu- ally essential to his self-determination and that shape his character and new worldview. By leaving his friends on the and landing on the dreaded island on his own, Jim places himself in the position of an outsider who must “find his own way, choosing among different father figures (and, therefore, different modes of behavior) rather than conforming to a given model.”39 In Jim’s quest for self-definition, Silver becomes an inspiration because of the way he overcomes physical deformity and hardships to achieve a position of power and influence. None of the other characters, not even the doctor, may claim such success. It becomes clear that, from the start, Jim respects Silver and prefers him to all other father surrogates offered to him. Silver’s clean and well-run inn, his appearance, demeanor, and the obvious efficiency with which he runs his establishment impress Jim and is in contrast to his biological father’s inability to run his own inn. The connection between the two fathers is established and continues when Silver almost immediately takes on Jim’s education: On our little walk along the quays, he made himself the most interesting companion, telling me about the different that we passed by, their rig, tonnage, and nationality, explaining the work that was going forward—how one was discharging, another taking in cargo, and a third making ready for sea—and every now and then telling me some little anecdote of ships or seamen or repeating a nautical phrase till I had learned it per- fectly. I began to see that here was one of the best of possible shipmates. (72–73) This is more than we have been told Jim’s father ever bestowed upon his son. Silver’s attention to Jim begins to build a relationship based on elements one would consider to belong between father and son. Later on, when he is con- fronted with the challenge of moving the Hispaniola to a safe hiding space, Jim recalls the teachings of his surrogate father: I remembered what Silver had said about the current that sets northward along the whole west coast of Treasure Island, and seeing from my position that I was already under its influence, I preferred to leave Haulbowline Head behind me and reserve my strength for an attempt to land upon the kindlier-looking Cape of the Woods. (201)

39. Dillard, x.

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In this and in his confrontation with Israel Hands, Jim shows a confidence he did not previously possess. This is largely due to his interactions with John Silver. Silver tells Jim that he reminds him of his younger self and that he “always wanted [Jim] to jine and take [his] share, and die a gentleman” (241). He offers Jim a chance to join him in his quest to secure the treasure, as a father who is interested in securing his son’s financial future as well as his own. Jim answers in a long dramatic speech, confessing everything he had done to sabotage the pirate’s plans. Silver’s reaction to this brave confession puzzles Jim: “I could not, for the life of me, decide whether he were laughing at my request, or had been favorably affected by my courage” (244). Some critics believe the former, that Silver is amused by and mocking the . Silver’s actions follow- ing Jim’s speech, however, testify to the latter’s being a more viable reaction. Silver stops the other pirates from attacking Jim, announcing “I like that boy, now; I never seen a better boy than that. He’s more man than any pair of rats of you in this here house, and what I say is this: Let me see him that’ll lay a hand on him—that’s what I say, and you may lay to it” (246). This is not mockery: with this speech, Silver chooses Jim over his own men. He acknowledges (and Jim agrees) that their fate is tied together “back to back” when he says, “you save your witness, and he’ll save your neck!” (248). Jim knows that Silver’s fear of being hanged by the neck is real and that his pledge is true. The bond connecting them is more profound than with any other man Jim knows. Their lives depend on one another, their fortune is tied together, and their reputation is intertwined. When the pirates discover that the trea- sure has already been found and taken and are ready to kill Silver for their loss, it is the moment of truth for their bond. Jim is full of admiration: “Well, there we stood, two on one side, five on the other, the pit between us, and nobody screwed up high enough to offer the first blow. Silver never moved; he watched them, very upright in his crutch, and looked as cool as ever I saw him. He was brave, and no mistake” (288). At the end of the novel, Jim declares himself happy to be rid of Silver when he learns of his escape, and his wish for Silver’s future is one of domestic comfort with his wife (301). Defining the function of a father in a child’s life is complicated, but, in this model, Stevenson attempts to articulate it as clearly as he can. One’s father may not be perfect, but if he has his son’s back, if he takes responsi- bility for his education, honor, financial security, and life, then he is a good father and, thus, a gentleman. Silver’s interactions with Jim have moved him to strive to use his share of the treasure to become a “gentleman in ear-

70 TOPIC: THE WASHINGTON & JEFFERSON COLLEGE REVIEW nest.” Honaker asserts that Silver “defies the traditional restrictive categories romance imposes on character,” which, in turn, allows Stevenson to create “the ultimate romantic hero.”40 This transformation is informed by Steven- son’s unique ideas about the kind of man that deserves the status of hero. For Stevenson, writing the novel to strengthen bonds with both his own father and his stepson, Silver and Jim represent an ideal paternal relationship. The Janus-faced image of Long John Silver and Jim Hawkins standing back to back at the end of the novel as they defend themselves and each other from the pirates distills perfectly the author’s point. Stevenson is postulating that the definition of a gentleman need not reject the role of men as fathers. Their commitment to the domestic does not stand in contradiction to late- Victorian men’s desires for the empire’s promise of adventure and danger. Silver possesses the spirit of exploration in all its glory and risk, but he also acknowledges his domestic duty to his adopted son and, after his escape, pre- sumably, to his wife. Stevenson meant for him to be the antihero, the uncon- ventional gentleman in a book he originally named The Sea Cook, a title that highlights Silver’s domestic abilities alongside his manly seamanship. Steven- son offers a combination of the “gentleman o’ Fortune” with those critical qualities he believes make a father a gentleman. Drawing on his own experi- ence as father, son, rebel, and explorer, Stevenson redefined the image of the pirate and the gentleman in the popular imagination.41

40. Honaker, 48. 41. I would like to thank my husband, Sheldon Serkin, a wonderful father and a gentleman, for all his love and support.

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