Chairman of Robert Louis Stevenson Club finds out more about author's Wick links
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A Robert Louis Stevenson aficionado has been finding out about the celebrated author's links to Caithness during a visit to Wick Heritage Museum.
Dr Mitchell Manson, a retired geneticist, is chairman of the Robert Louis Stevenson Club in Edinburgh. He wanted to learn more about Stevenson's time in Wick and to visit some of the places mentioned in letters the 17-year-old sent home to his mother.
Stevenson (1850-1894) would go on to become the author of classic stories such as Treasure Island, Kidnapped and The Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde.
In 1868, he spent six weeks in Wick as a trainee engineer working on the ill-fated breakwater being constructed by the family firm, the so-called Lighthouse Stevensons.
During his visit to the museum in Bank Row, Dr Manson was delighted to see Johnston photos of Peggy Sue – who lived in the caves outside the town, and who gave Stevenson inspiration for his stories in exchange for money for whisky – and Bob Bain, a local diver with whom the aspiring writer ventured into the sea off the unfinished breakwater.
Stevenson described that experience in an essay entitled The Education of an Engineer. “Looking up, I saw a low green heaven mottled with vanishing bells of white; looking around, except for the weedy spokes and shafts of the ladder, nothing but a green gloaming, somewhat opaque but very restful and delicious,” he wrote.
While submerged, Stevenson tried “to lay hands on the fish that darted here and there about me, swift as hummingbirds”. Returning to the surface, “the glory faded into the hard, ugly daylight of a Caithness autumn”.
Bain – whom Stevenson described as “a certain handsome scamp of a diver" – received "five shillings for his trouble”.
Dr Manson was interested to see a diving outfit similar to that worn by Bain.
He was impressed to find that the museum houses the Stevenson light that was once at Noss Head, and was also struck by the extent of the fishing industry in Wick during Stevenson's time, as depicted in the Johnston collection.
He also took a look at the former lodging house in Harbour Terrace where Stevenson resided when he was in Wick. It is now divided into offices, including one used by the editorial team of the Caithness Courier and John O' Groat Journal.
Dr Manson hopes to return with other members of the club during the summer and is keen to visit the site of the breakwater in Wick Bay.
