Robert Louis Stevenson and the colour green

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'.

Green family connections
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 coats and Sir Walter Scott
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!”

More about John Buchan and the colour green

Looking for reasonably significant references to the colour green in John Buchan's books involves eliminating a very large number of descriptions of natural features such as uplands and downs, mountains and moors, water and trees, not to mention discarding a large quantity of protective outdoor clothing such as felt hats, capes and tweed coats. The much smaller number of occurrences of specific shades such as apple green and olive green are not of much interest either. 

After the routine references to the colour green have been removed, some examples of interest remain; it has taken two articles to cover what might be described as “the best of the rest”. 

The first article about John Buchan and the colour green  contains green references taken from his writings; this article contains more such references, and it also lists some green people and places of interest in his life.

Some miscellaneous green references
This section of the article has been inspired by some amusing material in Buchan's Prince of the Captivity that I quoted in the article about his Island of Sheep: 

“There were too many houses at Bournemouth, and too many people at Broadstairs, and a horrible band in green jackets at Eastbourne, and a man who made ugly faces at Littlehampton...”

Using that as a model, I have listed some miscellaneous, mostly minor, green references from various novels.

There is an archaeologist called Wintergreen, some green lizards, some wallpaper with pink and green parrots, an envelope heavily sealed with green wax and a strange girl dressed in an unusual shade of green who wears one green glove in The Dancing Floor; there is a Liberal candidate called Orlando Greenstone, a knitted tea-cosy in purple and green and an ancient hostelry called the Green Tree in Castle Gay.

There is a man called Green, a little green lamp, more green lizards, a Border dining club whose members wear faded green coats, green face paint and a translucent green tablet in The Island of Sheep; there is veined green marble, green alabaster, green imperial jade, two green doors and an emerald necklace in Huntingtower.

There is a man called Greenlees and a green drawing room in A Gap in the Curtain; there are green crabs, a green awning, green wooden seats and many references to Greenland in A Prince of the Captivity; in addition to the material already quoted, there are green sun-shutters, green sickness, a pink and green hearthrug and a green dressing gown in Greenmantle.

Strange coincidences: three green men and some MacLeans

There was a phase in my life during which incredible coincidences and synchronicity were the norm. Most of these events were interesting, amusing and beneficial. I am glad now that I was able to enjoy them while they happened; I did not know that a very bad time was ahead of me. 

I remember one sequence of coincidences that is unusual by any standards. 

A new young colleague came to work in my group. His last name began with Green, and they put him next to someone whose – different - last name also began with Green. The third man in the small, partitioned off area had Verde in his last name. I was very interested in anagrams and the meaning of names at the time, and thought that it was quite a coincidence that three green men should be sitting close together. 

I told one colleague, who said that four was his threshold: he wanted another green man before he would believe that it was anything more than coincidence. There was someone else who might have been interested, but I did not tell him because he was frantically checking his notes for an imminent major software upgrade at the weekend. 

I decided to wait until after the system had gone live so as to get his full attention, but he suddenly looked up from his papers and - out of the blue, to no one in particular - said that he would be going to the video shop (this was before DVDs became the norm) to get The Third Man – a very good film. 

I think that it is a great film, but the coincidence is that the third man is Harry Lime, and the screenplay was taken from a story written by Graham Greene. I told the first colleague that his fourth and fifth men had appeared. 

This was just the start of it: there was much more to come.