Silver by Andrew Motion

Previously published in Dawn Books & Authors

It is a sad, sad fact that there is an entire generation who thinks all pirate stories stem from Johnny Depp’s Keith Richard’s inspired Captain Jack of the Pirates of the Caribbean movie franchise. It is a sad, sad fact that this generation will never know the original swashbuckling adventures of buccaneers and buried gold told by Scottish writer Robert Louis Stevenson in 1883’s Treasure Island. Jim Hawkins and Long John Silver’s search for riches is not just the original pirate story, it is also a brilliant adventure novel; the perfect bildungsroman. It spawned hundreds of stories of the sort over decades and decades and now Creative Writing Professor and one time British Poet Laureate, Sir Andrew Motion has decided to venture very directly into Stevenson’s territory with Silver: Return to Treasure Island. 

Motion’s story is a little too literal a sequel for my personal tastes, although he does spare me my initial fear of encountering a zombie Long John Silver stylized by Hollywood. Silver features the children of the original lead characters: Natty, Long John Silver’s daughter and Jim, Jim Hawkin’s son both return to the very same island that captivated their fathers to gather up what was left of the very same treasure. Motion constantly references names, places, characters from Treasure Island - Israel Hands’ nephew makes an ominous appearance; the Hispaniola  (then the very ship that took them to Treasure Island) is now Hawkin’s tavern; the Spyglass (then Spyglass Hill on the island) is now the pub owned by Long John Silver; Natty even has a bird mascot like her father’s Captain Flint – hers is a talkative mynah called Spot (as in Black!). These connections are often explained for those not in the know, and this may irk some true Treasure Island fans who would, of course, have picked up on them regardless. There is a general ‘wink wink nudge nudge’ sense about these references, the most blatant one being that the ‘watch’ on the ship Natty and Jim set sail on, the Silver Nightingale, goes ‘by the name of Mr. Stevenson – a Scotsman and a wisp of a fellow, whose place was generally in the crow’s nest’. 

Silver’s Jim Hawkins has lived a life in ‘melancholy,’ alone with his father, helping run the tavern Hawkins purchased with what remained after he squandered most of his share of the pirate’s booty on whiskey and women. Hawkins is no longer that feisty brave boy Stevenson wrote about; he is now a sad, lonely old drunk whose son is forced into mindless menial labour while hearing about the adventures his father had as a young boy aboard the Hispaniola years ago. Is it any surprise then, that Jim longs for his own adventures on the high seas and jumps at the chance of making his own fortune when he is paid a visit by an attractive young girl who plans on returning to the same island to find the ‘bar silver’ that had been left behind in Stevenson’s novel. This girl is Natty, the complicated, loyal daughter of Long John Silver himself who is now an old, decrepit blind man lying wasting away, dreaming of that remaining silver. In Motion’s incarnation Long John Silver is almost a caricature: a mere slip of the ferocious man now ‘shriveled and sunken’, almost a Hollywood style ghost pirate with a ‘smell hanging over him – very musty and dark, as if he had lain underground for a while and recently been resurrected’. But the formidable Long John Silver is still as greedy as he was before: the entire plan to return to Treasure Island is his. Jim is only involved because he is to steal a map from his father’s chest – just as his father stole it from Billy Bones’ sea chest decades ago. Of course, because no young man with a desire for adventure and an eye for beauty would say no to a request from an alluring stranger, particularly one of the pretty, mysterious girl variety, Jim goes right ahead with the theft of the map, leaves his father without a word and sets off with Natty on a the Silver Nightingale to return to Treasure Island. 

Motion picks up well on the loose ends left behind by Stevenson, particularly those of the marooned pirates left behind on the island by the Hispaniola in the original novel. These are the unsavoury characters Jim and Natty encounter when they reach the island. Here, suspension of disbelief beings to be a little less willing. It is just a little unbelievable at how the pirates have ‘prospered’ – sure, they’re disgusting, flea-ridden, constantly drunk and clearly depraved, but they seem to have set up some sort of functional dictatorial society after a slave ship was also marooned on the island. Here, Motion simply can not avoid the obvious shadows of Conrad’s Heart of Darkness – there’s plenty of lush imagery and rich language describing the mysterious island and its inhabitants. Jim and Natty find a little village existing on Treasure Island, and even though there is no need for any form of currency, the pirates have obviously hidden away the remaining silver. Why? Do they still hope to be made rich if and when rescued? None of them are young or healthy – this sort of forward thinking on the part of a few drunken, violent old men simply doesn’t add up in the narrative. 

Silver is soaked through with Motion’s love and knowledge of Stevenson’s Treasure Island and at times this makes Silver feel like a far too sentimental narrative to follow the original story as directly as it does. There are plenty of adventures here but none of them grip as surely as Stevenson’s did. Perhaps it is unfair to compare Silver to such a powerful and familiar classic, but that’s the very risk Motion has taken and I’ve got to give him credit for gumption.