What do you think of the LRB? Share your thoughts in our 7-minute survey
22 January 2018

RLS on Davos

The Editors

On his doctor's advice, Robert Louis Stevenson spent two winters in Davos. He finished Treasure Island there, but didn't like the place:

'Shut in a kind of damned Hotel,/Discountenanced by God and man; /The food? – Sir, you would do as well/ To fill your belly full of bran./The company? Alas the day/That I should toil with such a crew,/With devil anything to say,/Nor anyone to say it to.' 'So,' according to E.S. Turner, 'RLS took to tobogganing, alone and at night, which he found strangely exalting.'