Robert Louis Stevenson [author]

Calvin

Welcome to Headstones and Microphones where we use AI to step into the past through a researched, first-person simulation of history's most interesting people. I am your host, Calvin. While we’ve added some creative storytelling, our goal is to inspire your own study of these fascinating lives. Now, let’s meet our guest. Today, we are joined by a man whose imagination took us to Treasure Island and showed us the duality of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. Welcome to the show! For those who may somehow not know who you are... who are you?

White Male Guest

I am Robert Louis Stevenson—a teller of tales, a poet, and a bit of a professional wanderer.

Calvin

We are so glad to have you! Let’s go back to the very beginning. When and where were you born?

White Male Guest

I entered this world on November 13, 1850, in the beautiful, albeit often chilly, city of Edinburgh, Scotland.

Calvin

And what was your given name at birth?

White Male Guest

I was baptized as Robert Lewis Balfour Stevenson.

Calvin

Is there a story behind your birth name?

White Male Guest

There is! "Robert" was for my grandfather, a great engineer of lighthouses, and "Balfour" was my mother’s maiden name. As for "Lewis," I eventually changed the spelling to "Louis" because my father had a particular distaste for a local politician named Lewis. I kept the name but changed the look of it!

Calvin

That’s a classic family move! What was your hometown like growing up?

White Male Guest

Edinburgh is a city of two faces—the stately, refined New Town and the dark, shadowy Old Town. It was a place of mist, cobblestones, and flickering gaslight. It was very atmospheric, which I suppose seeped into my writing later on.

Calvin

What was your family life like?

White Male Guest

I was an only child, born to a family of famous engineers—the "Lighthouse Stevensons." My father, Thomas, was a formidable man but deeply loved me. My mother, Margaret, was devoted, but I spent much of my time with my nurse, Alison Cunningham, or "Cummy" as I called her. She was the one who filled my head with stories of Covenanters and ghosts while I was stuck in bed.

Calvin

What kind of kid were you?

White Male Guest

I was a "sick-room child." I had very weak lungs, so I spent a great deal of my childhood propped up in pillows, looking out at the rain. I was thin, pale, and had a very overactive imagination to compensate for my lack of physical activity.

Calvin

What were your biggest fears growing up?

White Male Guest

Oh, the night was a terrifying place for me! I had dreadful nightmares—"pains of sleep," I called them. I feared the dark and the religious terrors Cummy used to describe, but mostly I feared being stifled or stuck in one place forever.

Calvin

What did you dream of becoming as a child?

White Male Guest

Aside from a hero in one of my own stories? I always wanted to be a writer, though my family expected me to follow the family tradition of engineering.

Calvin

What were some of your favorite activities in school?

White Male Guest

To be honest, Calvin, I wasn’t much of a student! I was a champion truant. I preferred wandering the streets, observing people, and writing in my pocket notebooks. I was "teaching myself to write" by imitating the masters, which I found much more useful than Latin.

Calvin

What was your first job?

White Male Guest

I suppose my first "real" attempt at work was as an apprentice engineer in my father's firm. I spent summers at lighthouse sites, like Wick and Anstruther, but I spent more time looking at the waves than the blueprints.

Calvin

Was there a moment where you realized you were different from everyone else?

White Male Guest

It was during my university years. While my peers were focused on their law degrees or engineering, I was wearing a velvet jacket, growing my hair long, and frequenting the less "respectable" parts of Edinburgh. I realized I couldn't live the quiet, Victorian life expected of me.

Calvin

What’s a decision that changed everything for you, but felt small at the time?

White Male Guest

Going to France in the mid-1870s to improve my health. It seemed like a simple trip for the air, but it was there, at an artists' colony in Grez, that I met Fanny Osbourne. She was American, married, and had children—and I fell completely in love. That changed the entire trajectory of my life.

Calvin

What was your biggest break?

White Male Guest

Treasure Island! It started as a map I drew for my stepson, Lloyd, on a rainy day in Scotland. I began writing the story to entertain him, and when it was published, it finally gave me the popular success I’d been chasing.

Calvin

What were your biggest struggles before success?

White Male Guest

My health was a constant battle, and my finances were often in a dire state. My father and I had a terrible falling out over my lifestyle and my lack of religious faith, which was heartbreaking for us both.

Calvin

Did you ever consider quitting?

White Male Guest

Never! Writing was the only thing that made me feel truly alive. Even when I was so ill I couldn't speak, I would use a sign language I invented to dictate stories.

Calvin

Were there any specific daily habits or routines that you feel are essential to your success?

White Male Guest

I wrote every single day, no matter where I was—on a train, on a ship, or in a sickbed. I also believed in the "Brownies" of the mind—the little spirits that work on your stories while you sleep. I’d feed them a prompt and see what they gave me in the morning!

Calvin

What job would you have had if fame never happened?

White Male Guest

I likely would have been a very mediocre lawyer. I did pass the bar in Scotland, though I only ever had one brief, and I didn't even get paid for it!

Calvin

What was your life like before fame?

White Male Guest

It was a life of "bohemian" poverty. I traveled through the Cevennes with a donkey named Modestine and lived in drafty flats in Paris and San Francisco, often wondering where my next meal was coming from.

Calvin

How did relationships change after success?

White Male Guest

I finally had the means to support my family and travel as I pleased. My relationship with my father mended before he passed, which meant the world to me.

Calvin

Did fame bring happiness?

White Male Guest

It brought freedom, which is a cousin to happiness. It allowed me to sail the South Seas and eventually settle in Samoa, where I lived like a king—or at least a very busy storyteller.

Calvin

What was the downside of becoming famous?

White Male Guest

The loss of privacy and the pressure to keep producing "hits." Everyone wanted another Treasure Island, but my mind wanted to explore darker, more complex themes like those in The Master of Ballantrae.

Calvin

What misconceptions did people have about you?

White Male Guest

People often thought of me as just a writer for children because of Treasure Island and A Child’s Garden of Verses. They missed the grittiness and the moral ambiguity I tried to weave into my "grown-up" work.

Calvin

What’s something people misunderstood about your life?

White Male Guest

Many saw me as a fragile invalid. While I was often ill, I was actually quite adventurous! I traveled across the American plains in an emigrant train and spent my final years clearing brush and building a home in the Samoan jungle.

Calvin

Tell me about a time when everything went wrong and how did you handle it?

White Male Guest

My first trip to America to find Fanny. I arrived in New York nearly dead from the crossing, then took a train to California in terrible conditions. I was penniless and starving in Monterey. I handled it by writing. I wrote The Amateur Emigrant and kept moving until I found her.

Calvin

Who had the biggest influence on your life?

White Male Guest

My wife, Fanny. She was my critic, my nurse, and my fiercest protector. I wouldn't have survived half as long without her.

Calvin

What was life like in your final years?

White Male Guest

I lived in Samoa on an estate called Vailima. I was deeply involved in local politics and became a sort of tribal leader to the Samoans, who called me "Tusitala," the Teller of Tales. I was very happy there.

Calvin

What were you working on in your career before you passed away?

White Male Guest

I was in the middle of Weir of Hermiston. I truly believed it was going to be my masterpiece.

Calvin

When and where and how did you pass away and how old were you?

White Male Guest

I passed away on December 3, 1894, at my home in Vailima, Samoa. It wasn't the lungs that got me in the end—it was a brain hemorrhage. I was only 44 years old.

Calvin

What’s a random fact about you most people have never heard?

White Male Guest

I was an avid player of the flageolet—a small wind instrument. I wasn't particularly good at it, but I found it very soothing!

Calvin

What’s the craziest rumor ever told about you?

White Male Guest

There were rumors in Edinburgh that I spent my nights in the lowest "shebeens" and brothels. While I did enjoy the company of all sorts of people, I think my reputation was a bit more colorful than the reality!

Calvin

What was your favorite food?

White Male Guest

I had a great fondness for a good Scottish kipper, but in Samoa, I grew to love the fresh tropical fruits and the local feasts.

Calvin

What was your favorite book?

White Male Guest

I adored the works of Sir Walter Scott and William Hazlitt. But if I had to pick one to stay with me, it would be the New Testament—not for the dogma, but for the humanity.

Calvin

Tell us a story nobody talks about.

White Male Guest

Once, while I was living in San Francisco and very poor, I spent my last coins to buy a toy for a child I saw crying in the street. I went without dinner that night, but the look on that child's face was worth more than any meal.

Calvin

What advice would you give people chasing success?

White Male Guest

To know what you prefer, instead of humbly saying Amen to what the world tells you you ought to prefer, is to have kept your soul alive. Follow your own path, even if it’s paved with velvet jackets and long hair!

Calvin

Robert, do you have any closing remarks about the interview or the stories you shared that you would like to share with the listeners before we sign off?

White Male Guest

Only that life is a great adventure, and even from the sickbed, the mind can travel to the ends of the earth. Thank you, Calvin, for letting me tell my story one more time. It’s been a grand romp!

Calvin

That was truly fascinating! We’ve journeyed from the misty streets of Edinburgh to the tropical shores of Samoa with one of history's greatest storytellers. Thank you so much for coming on the show. And that wraps up another conversation from beyond the grave. Thanks for joining us on The Headstones and Microphones Podcast. Remember—legends may die, but their stories never do. Please help spread the word by sharing and following the pod.