North Berwick and Robert Louis Stevenson Transcript

A video by Hugh Trevor

0:04 [Music]

0:14 This map was drawn by Robert

0:17 Louis Stevenson to illustrate his famous

0:20 book Treasure Island

0:22 and this island called Fidra Island or

0:26 just Fidra is thought to have been the

0:29 inspiration for that book

0:31 Concerning Fidra, Stevenson wrote “a

0:35 strange grey eyelet of two humps

0:39 and I mind that the sea peeped through

0:42 like a man’s eye.”

0:45 Fidra is 20 miles east of Edinburgh in

0:49 the Firth of Forth.

0:51 The Stevenson family lived in Edinburgh

0:54 and for summer holidays they usually

0:57 went to North Berwick near Fidra by

1:00 train, the first train journeys that

1:03 young Stevenson had ever made.

1:06 While staying in North Berwick, Lewis as

1:10 the boy was called by his family, would

1:12 have walked or ridden a pony along these

1:15 sandy beaches.

1:18 [Music]

1:22 One link with North Berwick are the houses

1:25 rented by the Stevenson family for their

1:28 holidays

1:29 one of which was number seven in the

1:32 curved road called The Quadrant.

1:35 The view from The Quadrant looks

1:38 straight out across the Firth of Forth

1:41 and round the corner is the Bass Rock,

1:44 another of North Berwick’s famous

1:46 islands.

1:48 Stevenson writes about the Bass Rock in

1:51 his letters and books.

1:53 In his book Catriona, Stevenson makes

1:56 David Balfour to be imprisoned on the

1:58 Bass Rock.

1:59 The lighthouse, which was not built in

2:02 Stevenson’s boyhood, being where the

2:04 prison used to be.

2:08 He describes the Bass Rock as “tilted sea

2:12 woods like a doubtful bather, the solan

2:15 geese hanging around its summit like a

2:18 great and glittering smoke.”

2:21 The rock is still famous today 120 years

2:24 later though what Stevenson called

2:27 solan geese are now called gannets.

2:32 Stevenson also writes about the fort of

2:35 the North Berwick Law, the law being the

2:38 little mountain behind the town. In his

2:41 book Catriona, Stevenson mentions the

2:44 three great towers and broken

2:46 battlements of Tantallon, a castle which

2:49 lies two miles east of North Berwick.

2:53 Because of all these links between North

2:56 Berwick and Robert Louis Stevenson, the

2:58 town decided to hold a festival in June

3:02 2006 to celebrate their connection with

3:05 him.

3:07 A badge was designed for the festival

3:09 with the words that Stevenson penned

3:12 many years later “Home is the sailor home

3:15 from sea”.

3:18 Signboards advertising the festival were

3:21 erected on main roads leading into the

3:24 town.

3:26 Banners with quotes from Stevenson’s

3:29 writings were hung in different parts of

3:32 the town.

3:33 This one reads “Hail guest and enter

3:36 freely,

3:38 all you see is for your momentary visit,

3:41 yours; and we who welcome you are but the

3:45 guests of God and know not our departure.”

3:49 The local Council cooperated by making

3:53 one of its flower beds in the same

3:55 pattern as the festival badge.

3:58 Many of the activities of the festival

4:00 were held in the Scottish Seabird Centre.

4:04 The first item was an exhibition of

4:07 memorabilia of Stevenson.

4:10 Preparations for this were done earlier

4:13 on the opening day.

4:16 “Hello, I’m June Douglas Hamilton, I

4:18 organised this exhibition and I’d like

4:20 to show you around some of the exhibits.

4:22 In this glass case we have a very early

4:24 edition of the book Kidnapped. The heroes

4:27 are Alan Breck and David Balfour. Above

4:31 the book is a very good early

4:33 illustration of Alan Breck

4:36 It’s from a similar illustration that Sandy

4:39 Stoddart, one of our great sculptors

4:41 was commissioned by Scottish and

4:44 Newcastle to do a Robert Louis Stevenson

4:46 monument and he chose the figures of

4:48 Alan Breck and David Balfour for his

4:51 wonderful bronze which is out at Corstorphine

4:54 in Edinburgh.

4:55 This is the original plaster cast head

4:58 of the statue which is out at Corstorphine,

5:01 the bronze statue and very kindly

5:03 loaned to us by Sandy Stoddart from his

5:05 own collection.

5:06 This red ensign was originally on the

5:09 boat Casco which belonged to Stevenson

5:12 in Samoa. When he died the flag was taken off

5:15 his boat and placed over his coffin.

5:18 “Under the wide and starry sky, dig the

5:21 grave and let me lie, glad did I live

5:23 and gladly die and I laid me down with a

5:25 will.

5:26 This be the verse you grave for me;

5:28 Here he lies where he longed to be, home

5:31 is the sailor home from sea and the

5:33 hunter home from the hill.”

5:38 This is a picture of Louis Stevenson

5:40 with his mother and cousin Bessie he is

5:43 13 and the photograph is taken in

5:45 Germany.

5:47 This photograph is of Thomas Stevenson

5:49 engineer, with his son Robert Louis

5:51 Stevenson age 15.

5:53 Thomas Stevenson did repairs to the harbour

5:56 in 1865 there this photograph was taken,

5:58 the harbour in North Berwick and later

6:00 did the lighthouse on Fidra.

6:03 This would be the fifth year that the

6:05 family had been coming to North Berwick for

6:07 the summer holidays”.

6:09 Pat Coxhead, the overall organiser

6:12 explains the aims of the festival:

6:25 “We want to involve the North Berwick community in this event celebrating about Robert Louis Stevenson. We have invited shops to participate in the displays, we have organised art workshops and

6:29 writing workshops for both adults and

6:31 children.

6:33 We’re inviting the children in the

6:35 schools to participate in all sorts of

6:38 different ways

6:40 in learning about Robert Louis Stevenson and

6:43 in reciting poetry etc and then in the

6:47 evenings we have a variety of different

6:49 events

6:51 all about the great man Robert Louis

6:53 Stevenson.

6:54 At the opening ceremony, Sir Hugh

6:57 Dalrymple, a previous Lord Lieutenant of

7:00 East Lothian and whose family has been

7:02 the legal owners of the Bass Rock for

7:05 several centuries, was the main speaker.

7:10 [Music]

7:21 One of the town shops which cooperated

7:23 in the Stevenson Festival was the

7:26 crystal engraver whose engraved glasses

7:29 have been given as presents to the guest

7:31 speakers and singers.

7:36 “My name is Brian Green. I am the crystal

7:39 engraver in North Berwick.

7:41 I was asked by the Robert Louis

7:44 Stevenson steering committee to produce

7:48 glasses for them. This is the glass that

7:51 I designed for them, it has their logo on

7:54 one side and on the other side my own

7:59 display of the island of Fidra.”

8:05 One afternoon, North Berwick primary school children

8:07 met in the festival tent

8:10 to reenact scenes from Stevenson’s books

8:13 particularly Treasure Island and

8:16 Kidnapped

8:17 and they also performed scenes from his

8:20 life like when he bought a schooner and

8:23 sailed to Samoa.

8:24 [Music]

8:32 [Music]

8:37 May we realise how precious we are.

8:46 [Music]

8:51 These are some of the paintings done by

8:54 the local primary school children

8:55 displayed in a local gallery.

9:00 The Seabird Centre has its own café with

9:04 a view of the sea

9:06 and one evening there was a storytelling

9:09 supper held in that café.

9:16 Thank you

9:21 and so I want to take us a tattoo of his

9:26 great great loves

9:29 and one of course was that the love of

9:33 Scotland

9:34 and he says here “the happiest lot on

9:36 Earth is to be born

9:39 a Scotsman,

9:42 but you must pay for it

9:45 in many ways.

9:48 You have to learn the paraphrases and

9:51 the Shorter Catechism, you generally

9:54 take to drink”.

9:57 [Music]

9:58 We’re not going to look at anybody!

10:03 There was a special cake that evening

10:05 shaped like a book

10:07 on the Fidra page there was one of

10:10 Stevenson’s poems for children:

10:13 “When I was down beside the sea, a wooden

10:16 spade they gave to me, to dig the sandy

10:19 shore.”

10:20 One day there was a showing of films

10:23 based on Stevenson’s stories

10:26 one of these films being of course

10:29 Treasure Island.

10:30 [Music]

10:37 There was a dinner for the great and the

10:39 good of North Berwick.

10:42 [Music]

11:00 All right.

11:03 Thanks so much.

11:19 This is Archie Leslie, great grandson of

11:22 Charles Stevenson, who is a cousin of

11:25 Robert Louis Stevenson and though five

11:28 years older they were playmates and

11:30 companions at family holidays in North

11:33 Berwick.

11:34 Archie had flown over from the United

11:36 States to be present at this dinner and

11:40 to show some photos of those times.

11:44 “This is a picture of Fidra before the

11:49 lighthouse.

11:50 It’s a very old photograph I’m afraid

11:52 so the reproduction is not very good.

11:55 Yeah it’s a little hard to see but

11:57 amongst other things that RLS did was to

11:59 carve his initials in the rock along the

12:01 beach here. Thanks to Chris Marr this in May

12:04 when I was over here we went and found

12:06 the spot in Canty Bay

12:08 where RLS did indeed carve his initials

12:12 let me, it’s a little bit obscure there

12:14 so while we were there Chris and I sort

12:16 of just cleaned out the seaweed”.

12:18 “This, perfect it’s a lovely booklet and

12:21 it's been written by another thing is

12:24 thank you so much”.

12:26 [Music]

12:28 [Applause]

12:30 At one of the evening concerts there was

12:33 a song about Stevenson’s links with

12:35 North Berwick which sums up the spirit

12:38 of the festival.

12:40 [Music]

12:48 As a sickly lad, outcast and sad, some sorrows there ye saw,

12:52 and the sweetest hours ye spent were in the shade of North Berwick Law.

13:00 Wi’ yer kith and kin ye woud loup and rin,

13:14 through sand and surf and sea.

13:20 While the Bass and Fidra fired your dreams,

13:29 and inspired your inner ’ee. Oh Stevenson oh Stevenson, though yer body’s far and gan, your thoughts and spirit linger still o’er the sands of Lothian”.

13:30 Well we come to the end of what has

13:33 proved to be a wonderful week in North

13:35 Berwick, a week during which there have

13:37 been any number of events and happenings,

13:40 activities for everyone from the

13:43 children to the grown-ups and as the

13:46 Robert Louis Stevenson Club of which I’m

13:48 secretary, we are absolutely delighted to

13:51 have been able to support the event

13:53 because Stevenson is special all over

13:56 the world with members all over the world

13:57 and all over the world the people who

13:59 love his writing are fascinated by his

14:01 life but not many may have known so much

14:04 about the young days spent here at the

14:08 seaside with his parents and his cousins

14:10 and the effect that had on his life and

14:13 on his writing, so it’s proved to be a

14:16 most enjoyable week, a lot of people have

14:18 been brought together become friends

14:19 during that time and I think if this

14:22 event were to be repeated next year or

14:25 perhaps in the future I think it would

14:27 be just as great a success it has proved

14:29 in 2006.

14:37 Oh Stevenson oh Stevenson, though yer body’s far and gan, your thoughts and spirit linger still o’er the sands of Lothian”.

14:52 [Applause]