Stuart Campbell's Blog
RLS: football traitor
When researching RLS in Love I stumbled upon a remarkable fact; Stevenson was a football supporter from a very early age. In a letter to his father the 13 year old writes,
‘My dearest Papa and Mama, I am getting on very well. I hope papa’s cold is better and that mama is keeping well. Yesterday I was playing at football. I have never played at Cricket so Papa may comfort himself with that. I like football very much and it seems nicer than…’
Disconcertingly the letter breaks off at this point as a boy drops by looking for a prayer book. Football is nicer than what? Tunnock’s Tea Cakes? Anything else in the known universe?
RLS ‘ dad would be disappointed many times in the future by his errant son. In retrospect he probably comforted himself with the fact that although the boy later denied the existence of God he never embraced the infernal and indefensible practice of cricket.
Subsequently Stevenson may have been tempted to embrace cricket when the sport almost did him a huge favour. Several years later he was making hundreds of sandwiches at a cricket match when his love rival Sidney Colvin received a very painful blow to the midriff from a cricket ball hit by a small boy. Had the ball landed a foot lower Fanny Sitwell might have surrendered to RLS’s unbruised and rampant charms.
The fact remains that Stevenson loved football. In his poem Child’s Play he declares ‘I knew at least one little boy who was mightily exercised by the presence of the ball, and had to spirit himself up, whenever he came to play, with an elaborate story of enchantment, and take the missile as a sort of talisman bandied about in conflict between two Arabian nations’
This is clearly a prophetic reference to African nations competing in the current World Cup and shows his deep understanding of visualisation techniques loved by such as Fabio Capello.
The letter, dated September 1863, incorporates Stevenson’s primitive stick drawing of a football match. Excited by this discovery I thought of contacting the Football Museum at Hampden. This must, after all, be one of the earliest depictions of a football match -drawn by one of Scotland’s favourite sons. Then, to my growing horror, I realised the letter had been written in Isleworth in London. The shameful truth is that RLS was a supporter of English football.
So which team commandeered his early loyalty? Probably the team that was to morph into Hounslow Borough who in 2007 were expelled from the Hellenic League Division 1 East, and their record expunged.
Stevenson’s opus takes on a completely different significance when viewed through the lens of football. Treasure Island becomes a barely disguised metaphor. His love of pirates suggests early allegiance to Brighton and Hove Albion. Blind Pew must have been sponsored by SpecSavers. After all he meets the nasty fate richly deserved by most referees.
Ben Gunn is an interesting case. If Stevenson’s fist allegiance was divided between Hounslow and Brighton, then his Scottish team of choice was Hibernian. This is a shocking revelation that goes a long way to destroying his reputation. What happened to Ben Gunn? Exactly, He was marooned. A clear reference to Heart of Midlothian. Soon a letter will be uncovered in which RLS shares a fantasy during which B Gunn comes off the bench without boots and wearing tattered shorts as the Easter Road crowd gleefully chant ‘Scruffy, cheese eating Gorgie bastard!’
When I suggested in RLS in Love that Stevenson spent his evenings curb crawling down Leith Walk I was underestimating his moral degeneracy. He was either going to watch Hibs train or was cruising the playing fields of Leith Links begging for a game. He was certainly rich enough to own his own ball, which must have helped his chances of being selected.
In the later Samoan years RLS describes how his wife would spend ages clearing the vegetation that threatened to overwhelm Vailima. She was obviously clearing a five a side pitch in the jungle so that Stevenson, a wiry and skilful but injury prone winger, could record a tenth consecutive victory against the German colonials whom he hated. And herein lies another clue to his true football allegiances. In a little known autobiographical fragment Fanny Stevenson records her irritation at her husband constantly whistling the Damn Buster theme tune as he wrote.
There is additional photographic evidence. Close scrutiny of the famous image of RLS playing the flute to Belle reveals that he is in fact practising his vuvuzela. Recent reports published on the internet have described how visitors to Stevenson’s South Seas grave were alarmed to hear a faint Edinburgh accented voice quietly chanting ‘Eng-er-land, Eng-er-land. Shocking.