The magic of childhood objects
R L Stevenson's memoir highlights how ordinary things get transformed into the most precious objects by the imaginations of children at play
R.L. Stevenson, ‘The Lantern-Bearers’
The essay begins by describing a small group of boys ‘who congregated every autumn about a certain easterly fisher-village [in Scotland], where they tasted in a high degree the glory of existence…’
Toward the end of September, when school-time was drawing near and the nights were already black, we would begin to sally from our respective villas, each equipped with a tin bull's-eye lantern. The thing was so well known that it had worn a rut in the commerce of Great Britain; and the grocers, about the due time, began to garnish their windows with our particular brand of luminary. We wore them buckled to the waist upon a cricket belt, and over them, such was the rigour of the game, a buttoned top-coat. They smelled noisesomely of blistered tin; they never burned aright, though they would always burn our fingers; their use was naught; the pleasure of them merely fanciful; and yet a boy with a bull's-eye under his top-coat asked for nothing more. The fishermen used lanterns about their boats, and it was from them, I suppose, that we had got the hint; but theirs were not bull's-eyes, nor did we ever play at being fishermen. The police carried them at their belts, and we had plainly copied them in that; yet we did not pretend to be policemen. Burglars, indeed, we may have had some haunting thoughts of; and we had certainly an eye to past ages when lanterns were more common, and to certain story-books in which we had found them to figure very largely. But take it for all in all, the pleasure of the thing was substantive; and to be a boy with a bull's-eye under his top-coat was good enough for us.
When two of these asses met, there would be an anxious "Have you got your lantern?" and a gratified "Yes!" That was the shibboleth, and very needful too; for, as it was the rule to keep our glory contained, none could recognize a lantern-bearer, unless (like the polecat) by the smell. Four or five would sometimes climb into the belly of a ten-man lugger, with nothing but the thwarts above them - for the cabin was usually locked, or choose out some hollow of the links where the wind might whistle overhead. There the coats would be unbuttoned and the bull's-eyes discovered; and in the chequering glimmer, under the huge windy hall of the night, and cheered by a rich steam of toasting tinware, these fortunate young gentlemen would crouch together in the cold sand of the links or on the scaly bilges of the fishing-boat, and delight themselves with inappropriate talk. Woe is me that I may not give some specimens - some of their foresights of life, or deep inquiries into the rudiments of man and nature, these were so fiery and so innocent, they were so richly silly, so romantically young. But the talk, at any rate, was but a condiment; and these gatherings themselves only accidents in the career of the lantern-bearer.
The essence of this bliss was to walk by yourself in the black night; the slide shut, the top-coat buttoned; not a ray escaping, whether to conduct your footsteps or to make your glory public; a mere pillar of darkness in the dark; and all the while, deep down in the privacy of your fool's heart, to know you had a bull's-eye at your belt, and to exult and sing over the knowledge.
About the Author
Robert Louis Stevenson (1850–1894) was a Scottish writer best known for works such as Treasure Island (1882), Kidnapped (1886), and that classic of Gothic literature, Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde (1886). During his time at Edinburgh University, where he studied first engineering and then law, Stevenson’s eccentric behaviour and appearance gained him the nickname ‘Velvet Jacket’.
As an adult, Stevenson travelled extensively – for his health, and for love, and just ‘to go…for travel’s sake’, as he so memorably puts it in his Travels with a Donkey in the Cevennes. He especially loved the sea, where his health and spirits rallied. He eventually settled with his family on Samoa and became immersed in the local culture and deeply involved anti-colonialist activism. He wrote about his experiences there in South Sea Letters (appearing in magazines in 1891 and in book form, as In the South Seas, posthumously in 1896).
You can read the full text of ‘The Lantern-Bearers’ here.
What we love about this passage…
Stevenson captures what it’s like to be a child engaged intensely in creating an imaginative world with other children, making out of simple, everyday objects (empty tins, perforated to let out light from a candle placed inside) precious things that seem imbued with magic. He also relishes the memory of their youthful conversations, yet wisely draws a veil over what was said in them - for, like the lanterns, the words spoken might to our ears just seem embarrassingly ordinary.
Stevenson’s evocative scene doesn’t just describe these children at play; it also emphasises that their actions and emotions matter, in ways that adults sometimes forget.
Curator’s Corner
Today’s curator, Kirsten Shepherd-Barr, writes:
I wanted to share this passage in memory of my father, Gordon M Shepherd, a neuroscientist and one of the inspirations for LitHits through his love of literature and his habit of jotting down his favorite bits of whatever he read on little index cards that he kept throughout his life. He had also memorized a vast store of poetry that he would recite with relish, and that he never forgot.
My father loved Stevenson’s ‘The Lantern-Bearers’ and shared his thoughts on it shortly before he passed away, in June 2022:
‘Among the subjects of the essays, I especially liked the "lantern-bearers", for its story that everyone is warmed by his or her own hidden lantern, no matter how noisesomely (what a perfect word) it may burn and smell. We all play our childhood games, warmed by our hidden lanterns - until we go back to school with a little more insight built into our personalities. The story is about a summer game that was played by a small group of boys. I thought I had this discovery all to myself, but no; I found that no less than William James, the famous psychologist at Harvard around 1900, had used this essay in a piece entitled “On a Certain Blindness in Human Beings” to illustrate a crucial aspect of living a life: “Wherever a process of life communicates an eagerness to him who lives it, there the life becomes genuinely significant. Sometimes the eagerness is more knit up with the motor activities, sometimes with the perceptions, sometimes with the imagination, sometimes with reflective thought. But, wherever it is found, there is the zest, the tingle, the excitement of reality; and there is 'importance' in the only real and positive sense in which importance ever anywhere can be. Robert Louis Stevenson has illustrated this by a case, drawn from the sphere of the imagination, in an essay which I really think deserves to become immortal, both for the truth of its matter and the excellence of its form.”’
William James’s essay can be read in full here. He especially loved Stevenson’s statement later in ‘The Lantern-Bearers’ that ‘to miss the joy is to miss all.’ As he says, ‘to one who has not the secret of the lanterns the scene upon the links is meaningless.’ James exhorts us to be open to ‘the vast world of inner life beyond us,’ like the boys’ exhilaration at their lanterns, so that ‘a new centre and a new perspective’ can be found.
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