"Treasure Island" Robert Louis Stevenson

“'Ah,' said Silver, 'it were fortunate for me that I had Hawkins here. You would have let old john be cut to bits, and never given it a thought, doctor.'

'Not a thought,' replied Dr. Livesey cheerily.” 

― Robert Louis Stevenson, Treasure Island

I couldn't find any pictures of the cover of this book that were true to the story, because they showed Silver without the blond hair that he had in the book or without his crutch as shown here, so I chose one I found most pleasing.  I like that Cap'n Flint, the parrot, is shown in gray here, almost like a ghost.  I also like that it is ambiguous whether Silver has his hand around Hawkins' arm or not.

It is amazing how much this one story has become a part of the culture in the U.S.  When we were children, my mother would drive us 35 miles to Pine Bluff, Arkansas, and we would stay Friday and Saturday night at the Admiral Benbow Inn.  The purpose was to get away for the weekend and to spend as much time in the pool as possible.  I had no idea that Admiral Benbow might be a real person, or that this was the name of the inn where Jim Hawkins first met Billy Bones.  And when we were kids, we often sang a rendition of "Yo Ho Ho and a bottle of rum".  But how much of our current image of pirates is due to this book alone?  I don't know, but we are still fascinated by pirate tales as evidenced by the popularity of the Pirates of the Caribbean, not to mention all the uses of the name Treasure Island.

We had a set of children's classics on the bookshelf, but I didn't read many of them.  Stories like this didn't interest me.  Not that I was into girly types of stories, but I did like mysteries and science fiction more than historic adventure tales.  I suspect I would have understood more references, like the background of the name of Long John Silver's fast food restaurant, if I had read it back then, but I still wouldn't have eaten there.

In my 6th decade I am trying to make up for all that lost reading I should have done as a child and teenager.  I found the story here riveting, even in my old age.  Not having read it as a child or seen any of the movies, I didn't know how it was going to go, except that since Jim Hawkins was writing the narrative of those events, I know he and Dr. Livesy would survive.  A nice touch by Stevenson to let the whereabouts of Silver remain a mystery.  Even at the time this was written, the idea of a series of books was part of the novelist's modus operandi.