Journal of Stevenson Studies 4 ii Journal of Stevenson Studies Journal of Stevenson Studies iii Editors Dr Linda Dryden Professor Roderick Watson Reader in Cultural Studies English Studies Faculty of Arts and Social University of Stirling Sciences Stirling Craighouse FK9 4LA Napier University Scotland Edinburgh EH10 5LG Scotland Tel: 0131 455 6128 Tel: 01786 467500 Email: [email protected] Email: [email protected] Contributions to issue 5 are warmly invited and should be sent to either of the editors listed above. The text should be submit- ted in MS WORD files in MHRA format. All contributions are subject to review by members of the Editorial Board. Published by The Centre for Scottish Studies University of Stirling c. The contributors 2007 ISSN: 1744-3857 Printed and bound in the UK by Antony Rowe Ltd. Chippenhan, Wiltshire. iv Journal of Stevenson Studies Editorial Board Professor Richard Ambrosini Professor Katherine Linehan Universita’ di Roma Tre Department of English Rome Oberlin College Ohio Professor Stephen Arata School of English Professor Barry Menikoff University of Virginia Department of English University of Hawaii at Professor Oliver Buckton Manoa School of English Florida Atlantic University Professor Glenda Norquay Department of English and Dr Jenni Calder Cultural History National Museum of Scotland Liverpool John Moores University Dr Linda Dryden Faculty of Arts and Social Professor Marshall Walker Science Napier University Department of English The University of Waikato Professor Richard Dury University of Bergamo Professor Roderick Watson (Consultant Editor) Department of English Studies Professor Gordon Hirsch University of Stirling Department of English University of Minnesota Journal of Stevenson Studies v Contents Editorial and Introduction ....................................................... 1 I. THE HISTORICAL CONTEXT Mary B. Hotaling Trudeau, tuberculosis and Saranac Lake .................................4 Jenni Calder ‘I should like to be an American’: Scots in the USA ...............20 Robert Benjamin Stevenson III Stevenson’s dentist: an unsung hero......................................43 II. STEVENSON IN AMERICA Gordon Hirsch The fiction of Lloyd Osbourne: was this ‘American gentleman’ Stevenson’s literary heir? .......................................................52 Wendy R. Katz Stevenson’s Silverado Squatters: the figure of ‘the Jew’ and the rhetoric of race ........................................................................73 Hilary J. Beattie ‘The interest of the attraction exercised by the great RLS of those days’: Robert Louis Stevenson, Henry James and the influence of friendship ............................................................ 91 Roderick Watson ‘The unrest and movement of our century’: the universe of The Wrecker .................................................................................114 Marilyn Simon Doubled brothers, divided self: duality and destruction in The Master of Ballantrae ............................................................ 129 Richard Ambrosini Stevenson’s self-portrait as a popular author in the Scribner’s essays and The Wrong Box ...................................................151 vi Journal of Stevenson Studies III. STEVENSON AND THE SEA Jürgen Kramer The sea in Robert Louis Stevenson’s writings .....................168 Ilaria B. Sborgi ‘Home’ in the South Seas ...................................................... 185 Cinzia Giglioni Stevenson gets lost in the South Seas .................................. 199 IV. FABLES, POEMS AND COMICS R. L. Abrahamson ‘I never read such an impious book’: re-examining Stevenson’s Fables ....................................................................................209 Dennis Denisoff Pleasurable subjectivities and temporal conflation in Stevenson’s aesthetics ..........................................................227 William B. Jones Jr. ‘Hello, Mackellar’: Classics Illustrated meets The Master of Ballantrae .............................................................................247 Reviews .................................................................................270 Contributors .........................................................................276 Journal of Stevenson Studies 1 Editorial This issue of the Journal of Stevenson Studies has been guest- edited by Professors Ann Colley and Martin Danahay, who were the organisers of the 2006 conference at Saranac Lake. Our warm thanks go to them for a memorable conference and also for this excellent edition of the Journal. Stevenson was chosen as the key writer for Edinburgh’s City of Literature celebrations in 2007, and indeed many contemporary writers have expressed their admiration for his work. For volume 5 of JSS we have asked a number of distinguished creative writ- ers to give us their reflections on Stevenson, or their creative responses to his work and what he means to them. With this prospect in mind and on the strength of the current edition, may we encourage all contributors and readers to sustain their subscriptions, and persuade their institutions to do the same? If a case has to be made, we would point to the continuing success of the international Stevenson conferences and the developing status of this Journal as an outlet for some of the best work in the field. Linda Dryden and Roderick Watson Introduction to volume 4 The essays in this special issue of the Journal of Stevenson Studies are based upon selected papers delivered at the fifth biennial Robert Louis Stevenson Conference, ‘Transatlantic Stevenson’, held in Saranac Lake, New York, July 18-20, 2006. Saranac Lake is a small town nestled among the Adirondack Mountains. It was both a beautiful and an appropriate setting. Stevenson and his family lived in the community from 3 October 1887 to 18 April 1888. Their residence is now a museum, the Robert Louis Stevenson Cottage and Museum. While there, Stevenson wrote a considerable amount, including two thirds of 2 Journal of Stevenson Studies The Master of Ballantrae, various prefaces and essays and, with Lloyd Osbourne, an early draft of The Wrong Box. Stevenson came to Saranac Lake in order to be under the care of Dr Edward Livingston Trudeau, a specialist in pulmonary disease and himself a sufferer from tuberculosis. Stevenson fortunately enjoyed good health during the cold, winter months of Saranac Lake and did not require care. He and Dr Trudeau, though, became friends. The six or so months in Saranac Lake were important not only because of the writing that Stevenson accomplished but also because they represented yet another transatlantic crossing: the first had been when he had travelled to America as ‘an amateur emigrant’ in August, 1879. This time the move from his country of birth was a permanent one, for in April, 1888, Stevenson left Saranac Lake by train and went to the west coast where he, Fanny, Lloyd, and sometimes Margaret Stevenson, were to begin a series of cruises in the Pacific Ocean. They eventually settled in Samoa until Stevenson’s death in December 1894. Although Stevenson occasionally talked of the possibility, he was never to return home. This collection of essays addresses the various contexts and consequences of Stevenson’s transatlantic experiences. We have divided the essays into four sections: ‘The Historical Context’; ‘Stevenson in America’; ‘Stevenson and the Sea’; and ‘Fables, Poems, and Comics’. The first section, ‘The Historical Context,’ concentrates, in part, on the immigration and various contributions of Scots to North America: it places Stevenson in a broader perspective of immigration patterns; two essays in this section also focus upon Saranac Lake as a centre for the cure of tuberculosis, as well as upon dental practices of the period. The largest portion of the issue, ‘Stevenson and America,’ deals with Stevenson’s relations to America: his literary correspondence with Henry James; the novels he wrote based upon his experiences in the States, as well as upon the ambiguous anti-Semitism expressed Journal of Stevenson Studies 3 while he was living in California. Since part of the transatlantic experience has to do with Stevenson’s representations of the sea and journeys to other lands, the next section, ‘Stevenson and the Sea,’ explores Stevenson’s reactions to being across the sea and away from home. The final portion of this issue, ‘Fables, Poems, and Comics,’ looks at both Stevenson’s imagination and how others have imagined him. These essays discuss his fables, his poems for children as well as twentieth-century Classic Comic interpretations of his texts. We are pleased to present this special issue that continues to demonstrate the growing interest in and range of Stevenson scholarship. Ann C. Colley and Martin A. Danahay Acknowledgements The Journal of Stevenson Studies has permission to reproduce selected artwork from Classics Illustrated No. 82, including cover variants, for illustrative purposes in the academic article ‘“Hello, Mackellar”: Classics Illustrated meets The Master of Ballantrae’ by William B. Jones Jr. Our thanks go to Richard Berger, President, First Classics, Inc. 4 Journal of Stevenson Studies Trudeau, tuberculosis and Saranac Lake Mary B. Hotaling ‘Trudeau, Tuberculosis and Saranac Lake’ is the working title of the museum that the Historical Society is developing in the former Saranac Laboratory on Church Street, in Saranac Lake, New York. All three elements, Trudeau, tuberculosis and Saranac Lake, are essential to understanding