Staff shortages leave Stevenson a closed book for museum visitors

Published on Monday 21 November 2005 00:52

AN ACCLAIMED collection of memorabilia dedicated to one of Scotland's greatest writers, Robert Louis Stevenson, has been kept closed to the public because of staff shortages.

While visitors to the Writers' Museum in Edinburgh can enjoy full access to the collections of Sir Walter Scott and Robert Burns on the upper floor, Europe's finest Stevenson's artefacts, including photographs, letters and a pair of the author's boots, is mostly kept under lock and key in the basement because there is no attendant to keep an eye on them.

Fans of RLS are particularly incensed as Edinburgh has been named UNESCO's first City of Literature and, to mark the occasion, 100,000 copies of his novel Kidnapped are to be distributed for free.

The Writers' Museum, in Lady Stair's House, off the Lawnmarket, is run by Edinburgh City Council, but the Stevenson collection has been closed three-quarters of the time in recent years because of staffing shortages.

Ian Nimmo, the chairman of the Robert Louis Stevenson Club, said it gifted the collection to the city in 1964 in order that more people could appreciate it. "One of the main conditions that the RLS Club agreed with the city when it handed over its collection for safe keeping was that it would be on public view," he said.

"Too often, the Stevenson Room at the Writers' Museum is closed and hundreds of visitors with a Stevenson interest are being turned away disappointed. As the City of Literature, Edinburgh must surely do better."

He went on: "Here we have Edinburgh's own world-class writer, enjoying increased interest these days, more than a century after his death, and the city's own important collection of Stevenson papers and artefacts are being held in a locked room. Access is generally barred unless RLS Club volunteers are available to staff it. That just isn't good enough."

Elaine Greig, the curator of the Writers' Museum, said Stevenson was by far the most popular writer with visitors.

However, the Stevenson collection had always been kept in the basement and, as a consequence, was the first place to shut when staffing was low.

In recent years she said, the Stevenson collection had been closed 70 per cent of the time, and it was only because of volunteers from the club that many people had been able to see the collection, featuring photographs of the writer's life in Edinburgh, France, California and Samoa.

Edinburgh's Lord Provost, Lesley Hinds, promised to install extra staff at the museum following the complaints. She said: "I hope it will be more accessible and available than at the moment."

The council said a receptionist had been deployed to the museum, allowing two attendants to staff all areas, and it hoped this would become permanent.

RLS - a life in brief

• Born Robert Lewis Balfour Stevenson in Edinburgh on 13 November, 1850.

• Educated at the Edinburgh Academy and Edinburgh University.

• First novel was Treasure Island (1883). Others included The Body Snatcher (1885), Kidnapped (1886) and The Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde (1886).

• Died from a brain haemorrhage in Samoa on 3 December, 1894.