For the classics, even the most popular and adventurous ones happen, strange things in the world of books: for example, it turns out that not only many of them are unavailable, but that some are even unpublished (or almost). Robert Luis Stevenson, for example: from his dense production we all remember Treasure Island or The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, translated and printed by many publishers. Others have remained forgotten or secret, and for a long time: for example one of the works he worked on in recent years in Samoa, in the large residence of Vailima, on the island of Upolu. It is Saint Yves, the story of a French nobleman, Viscount Anne de Keroual de St-Ives, captured by the English during the Napoleonic wars, who finally escapes in a daring way from Edinburgh Castle; but, having fallen in love during his imprisonment, he finds himself having to face adventures of all kinds to find his beauty.
The novel was not finished, and came out posthumously with an ending written by a young author, Arthur Quiller-Couch, whose name had been suggested to the heirs by James Barrie, the very creator of Peter Pan. Not a bad relay. Here he disappeared after an edition at the beginning of the century, like a ghost. It is now recovered by the publisher Robin, in that “library of the vessel” which is dedicated to this meritorious work, with often surprising returns of relevant and disappeared works, accompanied by introductions and illustrations (in this, the tables designed by Ezio Castellucci in 1906). Then there are the photographs, a rich series of images of the writer (Tusitala, or narrator of stories, as the natives called him), of the family or of his guests in the heart of the tropical landscape. One, delightful, shows him to us in bed, also fully dressed, intent on playing the flute.
Those were years, those immediately preceding 1894 (when he died), in which his health forced him to long periods of rest: not only, but also to have to devise very creative solutions to continue the work. One concerns St Yves himself, who was dictated to his stepdaughter Isabel Strong, his devoted amanuensis, but not only. In January 1893, stuck in bed by the flu and the risk of a heavy bleeding, the writer could no longer even speak (or in any case he should not, on the doctor’s prescription); said fact she taught him the language of the deaf and dumb, thanks to which Stevenson was able to go on for quite a few pages, until his health finally improved.
The writer’s life lasts, especially without electronic aids. From his remote island he wrote to his friends and publishers asking for the books or archival documents he needed and over time, more often than not, he even managed to get them. But, as Marco Catucci recalls in the introduction, when he finally received an essay he believed to be lost, dedicated to British military prisons, he had a moment of real consternation. In fact, he discovered that the French prisoners “wore yellow”. Not only that, but they could only shave twice a week. “This fatal circumstance … condemns the whole beginning,” he wrote to a correspondent, with adequate understatement. And immediately he began to redo – indeed to re-dictate – the first three chapters. A true hero. The doubt that so much dedication is now archived seems legitimate at least.