TWO unknown comic stories by Robert Louis Stevenson have been discovered in the archive of an American library more than a century after his death.

The author, fondly remembered for Treasure Island and Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde, wrote The Clockmaker and The Scientific Ape in the 1870s and 1880s, but both satires were removed from a collection of his fables by his editor, possibly because they were too controversial. The stories appear in the current issue of the Times Literary Supplement.

The Clockmaker concerns a community of microbes living in a carafe who are divided by their attempts to explain the appearance of a man who arrives to wind up a nearby clock. Both the religious and the scientific groups get their comeuppance when he drinks the contents of the carafe. The Scientific Ape, which satirises colonialism as well as the scientific community, tells the story of a collection of apes who discuss the benefits of experimenting on humans.

Sidney Colvin, Stevenson’s editor, was known to dislike the “revoltingness” of the author’s later writing.

Ralph Parfect, who found the manuscript in the Beinecke Library at Yale University, said: “The Clockmaker . . . repudiates not only scientific discourse but the validity of all religious belief.” He believes The Scientific Ape to be even more caustic in its condemnation, by analogy, of “any colonialist practice which hypocritically inflicts cruelty on the colonised in the name of ‘progress’ ”.

THE CLOCKMAKER

The Clockmaker, the object of worship for a community of microbes or “aniumalcules” living in a carafe, arrives to wind a nearby clock.

“Animalcules of every age and station crowded to the seats of worship; the caraffe rang with psalms; and there was no sentient creature from one side of the bottle to the other who would not have sacrificed all that he possessed to do the clockmaker a service.

“By the time he had done winding the clock, the clockmaker spied the caraffe; and being thirsty after last night’s beer, drained it to the dregs. For three weeks after, he lay sick in bed; and the doctor, who attended him, had the water supply of that part of town completely overhauled.”

THE SCIENTIFIC APE

A group of apes has kidnapped a baby human for vivisection, but some object on compassionate grounds.

“At this the whole crew began chasing and screaming; and the noise called up the chief, who was in the neighbourhood, killing fleas. ‘What is all this about?’ cried the chief. And when they had told him, he wiped his brow. ‘Great cocoanuts!’ cried he, ‘is this a nightmare? Can apes descend to such barbarity?’.”

© English Literature in Transition

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