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!”

Inspiration and creativity in Conan Doyle's Magic Door

This is yet another article in the series inspired by Through the Magic Door, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's little volume of essays about books, reading and associated topics.

This post highlights two propositions that Conan Doyle makes about inspiration and creative people: he suggests that inspiration comes from outside and that creative people are often frail and die young.  

It also mentions a few other writers in connection with these topics. 

Inspiration comes from outside
Conan Doyle says this about the source of inspiration:

“...the feeling which every writer of imaginative work must have, that his supreme work comes to him in some strange way from without, and that he is only the medium for placing it upon the paper...Is it possible that we are indeed but conduit pipes from the infinite reservoir of the unknown? Certainly it is always our best work which leaves the least sense of personal effort.”

That last sentence is often very true. Rudyard Kipling said something similar when he gave his Daemon credit for assisting and inspiring him in his work: he said that the writing he did under this influence was 'frictionless'. 

Conan Doyle's mention of a conduit pipe reminds me of another of Rudyard Kipling's Daemon-related images: he likens the end of a good run of genuine, friction-free creativity to “the water-hammer click of a tap turned off.”

Many other writers have speculated about where their inspiration might come from. 

Robert Louis Stevenson for example said that it came from vivid dreams caused by the Brownies!

Frances Hodgson Burnett thought of herself as just the custodian rather than the originator of her gift. So where did this gift come from then?

Maybe some fiction writers really do channel or download their works and ideas from somewhere.