Was Long John Silver a Braemar miller and did Robert
Louis Stevenson get his pirates' tales from Deeside
smugglers? Ian Sutherland picks up the trail
IN JULY 1881, Robert Louis Stevenson rented a holiday cottage in the
Upper Deeside village of Braemar -- 1200ft above sea level, in the
foothills of the Cairngorms. With him came his new wife, the American
Fanny Osbourne, and 12-year-old Lloyd Osbourne, her son from her
previous marriage. They were joined by Stevenson's father Thomas and his
mother Margaret.
According to common tradition, the rest is history. In the cottage --
described as having belonged to the ''late Miss McGregor'' -- Stevenson
created Treasure Island.
This year, there have been various attempts to identify which part of
the world contains the ''real'' Treasure Island. Claims have been lodged
on behalf of locations as varied as Mykonos, in the Aegean, and Unst, in
Shetland.
In Braemar, retired police officer John Duff is reaching a very
different conclusion: Treasure Island was not only written in his native
village. Many of Stevenson's characters are based on people living in
Braemar in the 1880s, a number of locations can be pinned to sites in
Upper Deeside -- and themes such as buried treasure have their origins
in Braemar folk legends and history.
As befits a lawman, John Duff has been on a quest for hard evidence.
Victorian census records were his first port of call. ''The 1881 census
showed a family called Silver living at an address given as 10 West End,
Braemar. The address doesn't exist now, but it seems to have been in
what is now the Chapel Brae area of the village -- on the route up to
Morrone Hill, from which there's a superb panorama of the Cairngorms.
''The head of the family was a Kincardineshire-born miller by name of
John Silver. He lived with his wife Elizabeth, who was born in
Newmachar, near Aberdeen, and their four children included a son, also
John, then aged 11. Their other son, James, who was 14 in 1881, won
third prize in the boys' race at the 1881 Braemar Gathering. Stevenson
was in the village in early September when the games were held.''
Although the summer of 1881 was wet and cold, there is evidence that
the Stevenson family were not confined to their holiday home. The writer
had many ''walks together'' with his stepson. He recorded that Lloyd
returned from these excursions in a ''glow of romance''. John Duff
suspects strongly that some of that romance involved tales about -- if
not actual contact with -- people whose lifestyles were, even in 1881,
downright piratical.
In most historical accounts of northern Scotland, illicit distilling
and whisky smuggling tend to be associated with Speyside. In fact, Upper
Deeside -- with shorter routes into urban Scotland -- was a major site
for such operations. The general view is that smuggling of illegal
spirits died out completely with the introduction of official licensing,
in 1824. But not in Upper Deeside.
Says John Duff: ''There certainly were illicit stills in the area
below Morrone as late as the 1880s. There were three stills in the area
known as Corienamuick, which was then heavily forested and well-hidden.
Most of the distillers were crofters. The best-known rejoiced in the
name of Charlie 'Princie' Stuart. I think it's possible Stevenson picked
all this up.''
In the hope of controlling Braemar's buccaneers, the Government
maintained a garrison at Braemar Castle, a mile east of the village,
until well into the 1820s. The military presence was occasioned also by
lingering fears in Whitehall of any resurgence of Jacobite activity in
Upper Deeside. John Duff has taken careful note of the fact that Miss
McGregor's cottage stands only yards from Braemar's Invercauld Arms
Hotel. Where the hotel now stands, the Earl of Mar raised the Jacobite
standard to launch the Old Pretender's Rebellion of 1715.
And he wonders whether Stevenson might not have imbibed a little more
than tales of rebellion and challenges to authority. At the beginning of
the nineteenth century, Braemar was described as ''one of the meanest of
Highland clachans''. By the 1880s, it was firmly on international
tourism maps. The ''mean clachan'' had only 850 inhabitants, but --
thanks to Queen Victoria's annual presence -- up to 10,000 visitors came
during the high season. Braemar had arrived, but remained isolated -- a
form of inland island. Because of royal opposition, the railway from
Aberdeen came to a premature halt at Ballater, 17 miles to the east.
Rough and ready horse-drawn transport took visitors on from the
railhead, over appalling roads. Journeys from Perthshire were even worse
ordeals, with the notorious Devil's Elbow a major obstacle. Little
wonder that Deeside Gaelic survived well into the twentieth century,
along with Braemar's ancient Catholic traditions -- and wholesale
lawbreaking in the form of illegal distilling. Royalty's camp followers
wanted to sample uisge -- and it was an impossible task to import large
quantities of the legal variety.
So, Princie Stuart didn't lack for customers. Stevenson didn't lack
for stirring tales of smuggling. And the Invercauld Arms became the
Admiral Benbow, while the slopes of Morrone became isolated parts of the
coast of the Bristol Channel. Stuart would have needed considerable
supplies of barley. John Silver was a miller. QED.
John Duff's patient detective work has thrown up other similarities
between the vivid world of Treasure Island and the realities of
Victorian Braemar. ''In the book, Squire Trelawney takes his trusty
gamekeeper with him on the Hispaniola. The Duke of Fife, a major
landowner in Upper Deeside in the nineteenth century, took his
gamekeeper with him on what's described as 'long travels', big
game-hunting in Africa. The keeper's name was Ronald MacDonald. Back in
the village, he used to wear a jacket which he claimed had a hole in it
from an African spear. He'd have been on the go at the time Stevenson
was writing Treasure Island.''
Just before Stevenson took up temporary residence in Braemar, local
author John Grant brought out his Legends of the Braes of Mar, a rich
lode of references to brigands, vagabonds, rebels, castles, hidden loot,
and tall tales. Says John Duff: ''The book appeared in 1876 and was
well-known in Braemar by 1881. I think it's possible Stevenson met the
author.'' Over a dram of Princie's best, no doubt.
John Duff argues that Morrone makes a first-class analogue for
Spy-Glass Hill along with the smaller eminence of Tom nan Rabhadh,
looking south into Glen Shee, from long-ruined Kindrochit Castle (itself
a few hundred yards from Stevenson's cottage). It translates as
''Hillock of the Watchers''. Lion's Face Crag is another contender. It
used to be called Creag Mhortair -- Murderer's Crag.
In Treasure Island, there are characters named Morgan, Anderson, and
Hunter. Says John Duff: ''Morgan is perhaps the oldest name in the
village. It's supposed to derive from a Pictish name. There are still
Morgans living here.'' There are also Andersons and Hunters. If
Stevenson took any interest in the Braemar Gathering he would have been
aware also of Balmoral resident ''Dancy Rose'', who taught Highland
dancing in Braemar. John Duff's circumstantial evidence includes
reference to Stevenson's Supervisor Dance, the chief revenue officer who
scatters Silver's unholy crew at Kitt's Hole. A number of Braemar
worthies are helping with further inquiries. Retired postmaster and
registrar John Stammers recalls an old lady who kept a parrot, when he
was a boy in the 1920s. Parrots are very long-lived birds. The creature
could easily have been around in 1881. This particular bird was vocal,
too. When the minister called, it's reputed to have shrieked ''the
bugger's in''.
John Duff is not yet ready to announce his final suspects. The jury's
still out. But the coincidences are mounting and the game's afoot.
Robert Louis Stevenson was a famous joker -- he could refer, tongue in
cheek, to rain-soaked Braemar as ''the finest habitable spot in
Britain''.
As for buried pieces of eight, those stories are still being
investigated. John Duff's successors are concerned by the activities of
metal-detector enthusiasts who seem to have done their own homework and
are causing serious problems at a number of sites in the Eastern
Cairngorms. If they're caught, they'll join certain other privateers --
under lock and key in the stockade.
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