Stevenson’s treasured islands
HOW SCOTLAND’S MOST FAMOUS WRITER FELL IN LOVE WITH SAMOA
Robert Louis Stevenson was born and raised in Edinburgh but the novelist spent his later years and died in Samoa. Scots writer JOE FARRELL tells of Stevenson’s adventures and final days in the south Pacific in his new book Robert Louis Stevenson in Samoa
ALTHOUGH Robert Louis Stevenson was the most Scottish of writers, his delicate health meant that the country’s weather was unsuitable for him, so he spent much of his life travelling to find a climate which would have less of an impact on him.
“My bed is like a little boat,” he wrote in one of his poems for children and in 1888 he set sail from San Francisco in an actual boat for a cruise around the islands of the South Seas.
He was accompanied by his wife Fanny, her son Lloyd, with whom RLS co-authored some novels, his widowed mother as well as a French maid, Valentine.
The main purpose was to find a mild climate but when they set off they had no intention of settling in the Pacific. The cruise was to last a couple of months, after which they would return to London and the literary circles and club life RLS loved, or possibly to Madeira, where they would pass the winter and move to Britain for the summer months.
All that changed in December 1889 when the yacht moored in Samoa.
He had been enchanted by the exotic figures encountered and the bewitching sights seen on his travels.
But his first impressions of Samoa were more muted. That changed.
He informed friends back home that this was where he would make his permanent home.
Most reacted with dismay. As one fellow author told him, the natural place for a British writer was within one mile of London’s Charing Cross.
Stevenson disagreed and never regretted his decision. Nor did the Samoans have any reason to be other than happy at having him among them. When I asked an ex-minister of culture about how Stevenson was regarded in Samoa today, he beat his breast vigorously as a sign of his passionate affection for his memory.
Stevenson became their champion against Western imperialism and defended their interests at a time when domination in the Samoan archipelago was contested by Germany, the USA and the UK.
His was a voice that could not be ignored in the corridors of power in Europe and North America. He issued a series of letters to the international press protesting at the bullying or unjust behaviour which white traders and colonial administrators would have preferred to keep secret.
He made such a nuisance of himself in official circles that he was threatened with deportation by the British representative on the spot, although this officious busybody was overruled by London.
Beguiling though it was, and is, Samoa was not in the late 19th century a place of gentle, undisturbed peace.
In addition to foreign interference, there were rival contenders for kingship and life was marred by a series of civil wars among competing factions.
Stevenson blamed the white men for deepening instability and while he used the prestige he had acquired in Samoa to maintain harmony, he did not stand on the sidelines.
He recognised that the islanders needed a strong leader to defend their interests, and backed the chieftain Mata’afa Iosefo as the man with the necessary qualities. RLS earned his gratitude when he continued to
providewhen they for endedhim and his followers up in custody.
He and his family were never threatened. By January 1891, the building of their home was under way at Vailima, some miles inland from the capital, Apia.
The main problem for some of the Samoans on Stevenson’s staff was that the district was plagued with aitu, or evil spirits.
The house stands under Mount Vaea, on whose peak the writer was later buried.
It commands a spectacular view of the hills and woodland, and Fanny, an enthusiastic amand, and Fanny, and garden, cleared and, Fanny,
RLS found a quiter botanist delight in weeding space for a lawn. On the slopes of the unexpected pool in which RLS bathed. Stevenson
He recognised the islanders needed a strong leader to defend their interests, backing the chieftain
reported that Vailima was “beautiful beyond dreams”.
The house is now a museum and has two wings, one built as the family’s confidence and prosperity grew, the other added much later, after the writer’s death.
The original residence was a two-storey building with a verandah at ground level which doubled as a space for the lavish banquets when a chieftain visited.
The upstairs library and downstairs “great hall” were linked by the grand staircase. When Fanny asked one of the servants to carry a bucket of water upstairs, he gripped it in his teeth and clambered up the roan pipe.
When the purpose of stairs was explained to him, he spent the following hours running delightedly up and down. RLS insisted that a fireplace was indispensable for a home worthy of the name.
RLS had a bedroom-cum-workroom, while Fanny had a room of her own.
Trees and plants mainly planted by Fanny form the surround, and from the upper balcony it is possible to look over the treetops to the sea. There was even a tennis court.
RLS played a little, but when one particularly energetic game led to a recurrence of his haemorrhaging, he resigned himself to looking on longingly. The lawn was ideal for croquet, and cricket, which was played in the Samoan style, that is, with teams of indefinite size.
The native dress was a lavalava, which RLS translated as kilt. He fitted out his servants in the Royal Stewart tartan. Among Samoans, both sexes had gone bare-breasted, until the missionaries compelled the women to cover up.
Although he had lost his faith in his youth, the community gathered every Sunday for evening prayers, written by RLS.
Part of his imagination remained in Scotland, so some of his novels written in his four years in Samoa are set in the land of his birth, but others are inspired by life in the islands. The two enrich each other.
He died suddenly in December 1894, aged 44. His tomb on Mount Vaea carries the epitaph he had written for himself.
“Here he lies where he longed to be/home is the sailor home from sea/and the hunter home from the hill”. ●Robert Louis Stevenson in Samoa will be published by MacLehose Press on September 1.