Back in March I found myself at home, sick in bed looking for something to read. Due to my enfeebled state, I thought I’d go for something that wasn’t too complicated, demanding, cynical or overly blood-soaked.  That is when I reached for Robert Louis Stevenson’s Treasure Island

 I had never read Treasure Island before but had high hopes after reading the opening address to the potential reader at the start of the book:  

To The Hesitating Purchaser

If sailor tales to sailor tunes,
Storm and adventure, heat and cold,
If schooners, islands, and maroons,
And buccaneers, and buried gold,
And all the old romance, retold
Exactly in the ancient way,
Can please, as me they pleased of old,
The wiser youngsters of today:

— So be it and fall on! If not,
If studious youth no longer crave,
His ancient appetites forgot,
Kingston, or Ballantyne the brave,
Or Cooper of the wood and wave:
So be it, also! And may I
And all my pirates share the grave
Where these and their creations lie

Although it’s debatable whether or not I’ve ever fit into the “wiser youngster” category, I found the story to be everything I hoped it would be, drawing me in as strongly as it did readers 125 years ago when it first came out as a serial in 1881-1882. 

The adventure tale includes so much, not the least of which is some grade A pirate talk and plenty of rum consumption for what is often considered a children’s book…the two dovetail nicely in this toast delivered by peg legged Long John Silver himself : “Here’s to ourselves, and hold your luff, plenty of prizes and plenty of duff.”  Also part of the story is of course, buried treasure, as well as talking parrots, secret maps, mutiny, marooning, the now infamous Black Spot (which has its own Wikipedia entry) and one of the world’s most famous pirates, the aforementioned Long John Silver.  Depending on which copy you read, you may also get the fantastic illustrations by N.C. Wyeth, often reproduced from the 1911 edition. 

After finishing the book, I was inspired to re-watch Disney’s old film adaptation from 1950.  I remember seeing this movie a couple of times as a child but not since (happily, I did not find the pirate Blind Old Pew as scary as I did when I was 7) and I think it’s safe to say that Robert Newton’s portrayal of Long John Silver became the template for pretty much every cinematic pirate that followed. (Here’s a not very fun fact: As I often do when watching older movies, I check out the directors, actors etc on the internet – so naturally I looked up Disney child actor Bobby Driscoll who plays Jim Hawkins. Sadly, I learned that Driscoll had a very difficult life after he grew up – becoming a heroin addict, going to jail, hanging out at Andy Warhol’s Factory before  being found dead in an abandoned New York tenement in 1968.  His body remained unidentified for over a year afterwards and was buried in an unmarked grave.  Knowing all of this beforehand, it was hard to then watch Treasure Island without thinking about how tragic the young actor’s life turned out to be) 

Reading Treasure Island got me interested in other classic adventure tales, fantastic stories and speculative fiction from days of yore.  Some of these titles I’ve already read, but the rest of them were moved up a few rankings in my To Read List                                         

H.G. Wells – The Invisible Man, The War of the Worlds, The Island of Dr. Moreau etc 

Herge – Tin Tin  Series    

Sir Arthur Conan Doyle – The Lost World   

Jules Verne –Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea, Journey To the Centre of the ,   The Mysterious Island

James Hilton – Lost Horizon

H. Rider Haggard – King Solomon’s Mines, She: A History of Adventure

Robert Louis Stevenson – Kidnapped, The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde 

Arthur Ransome – Swallows and Amazons  

Edgar Rice Burroughs – Tarzan series, A Princess From Mars          

In an age where nary a cell phone or gps existed, characters couldn’t always tell what was around the corner, over the mountain, across the desert, through the jungle,  beneath the sea or…well..you get the idea.  This is partly why I like these sorts of stories: the mystery of the unknown, the exoticism of the locales, the lure of lost treasure and hidden lands mixed with all the pitfalls, wrong turns, long journeys and ultimately successful resolutions that we come to expect from good yarn.

I’ve listed more titles than you can shake a cutlass at and as  Robert Louis Stevenson would say, if adventure is your thing, “So Be It and Fall On”