This article is yet another in the series that lists interesting references to and occurrences of the colour green in the lives and works of selected writers.
Although Robert Louis Stevenson's stories don't inspire commentary the way that, for example, John Buchan's do, he has been mentioned previously in a couple of articles about Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's essay collection Through the Magic Door.
It was the many references to Robert Louis Stevenson in this book of Conan Doyle's that gave me the idea of looking for significant green connections in Stevenson's life and works.
The results of the investigation were a little disappointing when compared with what I had collected for other writers, but I found enough material for an article.
While most of the occurrences of the colour green in Stevenson's writings are just routine descriptions of natural features such as vegetation and the sea, he has some green connections that have been mentioned in articles about other writers. For example, Longmans, Green & Co. published many of Stevenson's works in addition to those of Conan Doyle, and Roger Lancelyn Green, who wrote books about Rudyard Kipling, praised Stevenson's 'consistently high level of literary skill or sheer imaginative power'.
The novelist Graham Greene is mentioned in the second article about John Buchan and the colour green; Graham Greene's maternal grandmother was a first cousin of Robert Louis Stevenson on his mother’s side.
The father of Dora E. Stevenson, who wrote a novel called Green Money about a Mr. Green, was a cousin of Robert Louis Stevenson.
Green clothing of various kinds has been mentioned in several articles, the one about kirtles and shirts for example.
Conan Doyle's Through the Magic Door contains many references to Sir Walter Scott and his Waverley novels.
Robert Louis Stevenson's unfinished novel St. Ives: Being The Adventures of a French Prisoner in England (1897) contains a description of the French prisoner's encounter with Scott.
Scott's green coat is mentioned several times:
”I…have actually met and spoken with that inimitable author. Our encounter was of a tall, stoutish, elderly gentleman...He sat on a hill pony, wrapped in a plaid over his green coat...Years after it chanced that I was one day diverting myself with a Waverley Novel, when what should I come upon but the identical narrative of my green-coated gentleman upon the moors! In a moment the scene, the tones of his voice, his northern accent...flashed back into my mind with the reality of dreams. The unknown in the green-coat had been the Great Unknown!”
Robert Louis Stevenson visited the village of Cockfield in County Durham on more than one occasion because he had family connections there:
“He also attended the wedding of his cousin Jane Wilson...to Reverend Carleton Green.
During this stay, RLS visited Cockfield’s outlying hamlets, including Great Green, Parsons Green, Windsor Green, Old Hall Green, and Cross Green.”
https://robert-louis-stevenson.org/cockfield-and-suffolk/
The second Buchan green article mentions a book called The House with the Green Shutters, which Buchan thought was terrible!
Robert Louis Stevenson wrote a short story called The House with the Green Blinds.
There are a few memorable occurrences of the colour green in Stevenson's poetry.
Conan Doyle says this:
“After all, however, the main characteristic of Stevenson is his curious instinct for saying in the briefest space just those few words which stamp the impression upon the reader’s mind. He will make you see a thing more clearly than you would probably have done had your eyes actually rested upon it.”
The following few words from I will make you brooches, a poem in Songs of Travel and Other Verses (1896), certainly stamped a deep and permanent impression on me when I first read them:
“I will make a palace fit for you and me
Of green days in forests and blue days at sea.”
In the green and gallant spring is the title of a poem in Stevenson's New Poems collection.
Finally, there is Long John Silver's Silver's green parrot Captain Flint in Stevenson's exciting adventure story Treasure Island.
Robert Newton as the pirate with the parrot in the 1950 film:
