In the great and busy city where the East and West are met,
All the little letters did the English printer set;
While you thought of nothing, and were still too young to play,
Foreign people thought of you in places far away.

Ay, and when you slept, a baby, over all the English lands
Other little children took the volume in their hands;
Other children questioned, in their homes across the seas:
Who was little Louis, won't you tell us, mother, please?

Now that you have spelt your lesson, lay it down and go and play,
Seeking shells and seaweed on the sands of Monterey,
Watching all the mighty whalebones, lying buried by the breeze,
Tiny sandpipers, and the huge Pacific seas.

And remember in your playing, as the sea-fog rolls to you,
Long ere you could read it, how I told you what to do;
And that while you thought of no one, nearly half the world away
Some one thought of Louis on the beach of Monterey!

~ Robert Louis Stevenson

In reality, the famous Scottish author of The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, had one stepson - Samuel Lloyd Osbourne.  Samuel was just 12 years old when Robert married his American mother, Fanny, but he soon came to have a major impact on his new stepfather’s literary career. 

Together, the father and son wrote The Wrong Box, The Ebb-Tide and The Wrecker.  In addition, it was the map of an imaginary island that Robert and Samuel drew together that actually inspired Robert’s first and famous novel, Treasure Island.

Samuel attended the same school as his father, Edinburgh University.  And though he studied engineering, he really wanted to become a writer.  Likewise, Robert had studied science in school (under pressure from his father), and made a point of encouraging Samuel to pursue a literary career instead, which he did.

Interestingly, Stevenson is one of the 30 most translated authors in the world.  He ranks just under Charles Dickens.  The Scot has influenced a number of authors throughout history, including Ernest Hemingway, Rudyard Kiping and J.M. Barrie.  The philosopher and novelist C.K. Chesterton once said of Stevenson, “he seemed to pick the right word up on the point of his pen, like a man playing spillikins”.  This game is popularly known as “pick-up sticks”.

Photo: Robert Louis Stevenson as a child.