NOTE BY MR. LLOYD OSBOURNE
Stevenson and I little knew, when we began our collaboration, that we were afterwards to raise such a hornets’ nest about our ears. The critics resented such an unequal partnership, and made it impossible for us to continue it. It may be that they were right; they wanted Stevenson’s best, and felt pretty sure they would not get it in our collaboration. But when they ascribed all the good in our three books to Stevenson and all the bad to me, they went a little beyond the mark. It is a pleasure to me to recall that the early part of both “The Wrecker” and “The Ebb-Tide” was almost entirely my own; so also were the storm scenes of the Norah Creina; so also the fight on the Flying Scud; so also the inception of Huish’s scheme, the revelation of it to his companions, his landing on the atoll with the bottle of vitriol in his breast. On the other hand, the Paris portion of “The Wrecker” was all Stevenson’s, as well as the concluding chapters of both the South Sea books.
It is not possible to disentangle anything else that was wholly mine or his—the blending was too complete, our method of work too criss-crossed and intimate. For instance, we would begin by outlining the story in a general way; this done, we marshalled it into chapters, with a few explanatory words to each; then it was for me to write the first draft of Chapter I. This I would read to him, and if satisfactory it was laid to one side; but were it not, I would rewrite it, embodying his criticisms. Each chapter in turn was fully discussed in advance before I put pen to paper; and in this way, though the actual first draft was in my own hand, the form of the story continually took shape under Stevenson’s eyes. When my first draft of the entire book was finished he would rewrite it again from cover to cover.
I can remember nothing more delightful than the days we thus passed together. If our three books are in no wise great, they preserve, it seems to me, something of the zest and exhilaration that went into their making—the good humour, the eagerness.
We were both under the glamour of the Islands—and that life, so strange, so picturesque, so animated, took us both by storm. Kings and beachcombers, pearl-fishers and princesses, traders, slavers, and schooner-captains, castaways, and runaways—what a world it was! And all this in a fairyland of palms, and glassy bays, and little lost settlements nestling at the foot of forest and mountain, with kings to make brotherhood with us, and a dubious white man or two, in earrings and pyjamas, no less insistent to extend to us the courtesies of the “beach.”
It was amid such people, and amid such scenes, that “The Ebb-Tide” and “The Wrecker” were written.
Lloyd Osbourne.