ANZ LitLovers LitBlog

The author of this lively bio about Robert Louis Stevenson (1850-1894) discovered his adventure stories as I did, in childhood:

Growing up in Scotland for my generation meant growing up with Robert Louis Stevenson.  It was not that we were all avid readers, although many of us were, but the B.B.C. did adaptations of his fiction on radio and T.V., and a series of “classic comics” circulated and were keenly read and swopped. Treasure Island and Kidnapped were part of our lives, in the same way, I suppose, as social media is for today’s younger generation.  At least that was the case for boys.  I was surprised when working on this book to be told by female friends that he was regarded as a boys’ writer, not someone for them. (p.13)

Huh? Boys’ writer??  I loved Treasure Island!

Whatever about any of that, feminists will be pleased to see that Farrell gives RLS’s much maligned wife Fanny a fair go.  She was an American and a divorcee and you only need to know about Edward VIII and Mrs Simpson in the 20th century to know that those were two fatal ticks against any woman of the 19th century in Britain.  And #OMGShockHorror! she was ten years older than him.  So, yes, she had a hard time from some unforgiving quarters while RLS was alive, and she got a predictably bad press when the bios were written after his death.

Fanny Stevenson 1885. Source: Wikipedia, attribution** below.

But the fact is that RLS was smitten.  They’d had a fling in in France (where #SansHusband Fanny was studying art) and when she went back to her philandering husband in America, RLS pursued her and wooed her and eventually she agreed to marry him.  And while the Stevensons had a turbulent marriage, it’s clear that Fanny looked after the health and wellbeing of RLS and she enabled his writing by taking care of household management – no mean achievement in Samoa when they settled there for his health. (About which, more later).  Whether she did that at the expense of her own career as an artist isn’t addressed in this book.  She may not have been any good at art –  Farrell doesn’t say (unless I missed it).  But she was certainly an adventurous, spirited woman, and I wish there had been a better photo of her amongst the B&W photos in the book.

If like me, you know RLS only from childhood reading of his tales of derring-do, you may likewise know little about his life and achievements, and perhaps be inclined to underestimate his significance in The Canon.  (RLS has four titles in my 2006 edition of 1001 Books: Treasure Island, Kidnapped, The Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde and The Master of Ballantrae.)  But at a time when 19th century imperial powers were rampaging around in the Pacific – and there were three of them at a standoff in Samoa – RLS was a champion for the Samoan people whose culture and way of life was being trampled by the money-makers.  He hurled off letters to The Times, and he wrote a book protesting the colonial administration called A Footnote to History, Eight Years of Trouble in Samoa. Farrell says that for this reason RLS is still revered among contemporary Samoans as a great man.

Fanny, meanwhile, nursed RLS through bouts of grave illness (he had pulmonary disease and was subject to frequent haemorrhages), and she made a home and mini-farm out of a patch of virgin bush.  She put up with being hard-up, with a lot of travelling about, and with hosting the hordes who visited RLS.  She also had to deal with living in difficult conditions because the Samoan lifestyle that RLS was championing did not include much in the way of finishing building projects or providing reliable staff.  Fair enough, Samoans had lived contentedly for centuries without Victorian values being imposed on them and they had no reason to want to change that – but it made it tough for Fanny.  She was much hurt when RLS once told her that she enjoyed slogging it out in the vegie patch because she was a peasant at heart, and her own papers show that the self-doubt provoked by this possibly throw-away comment lingered for a long time.  Nevertheless…

Whatever Fanny’s faults, however morose and prickly she may have been, she was always assiduous and selfless in her care of her husband. (p.328)

Yes.  When RLS took refuge in Hawaii to escape an outbreak of measles on Samoa, Fanny had stayed behind, only to have to travel urgently to Waikiki when the servant Talolo contracted the disease.  It was she who had to nurse RLS until he was well enough to travel home to Samoa, (and I hope he was grateful).

It may not have been Farrell’s intention, but I enjoyed reading about Fanny just as much as I enjoyed reading about RLS and the books he wrote.  While I admire RLS for the stance he took over colonialism, I was not so interested in Samoan politics and … a-hem … skipped some parts of the book dealing with the Samoan leadership aspirations that frustrated RLS because they led to endless wars.  After all, we in Australia are disinclined to be romantic about ongoing governance issues that threaten stability in the South Pacific.  I think that RLS would be disappointed to know that other countries are still involved ‘by invitation’ in Samoan affairs because they don’t seem to be able to sort out some things (e.g. corruption) for themselves.  (Wikipedia says that they have a poor human rights record too, discriminating against women, same-sex relationships and disabled people, because (apparently) these human rights conflict with Samoan traditions.  Not that Australia can be proud of itself in all respects either, of course…)

In discussing the literary merits of RLS’s oeuvre, Farrell is excellent.   I love reading literary biographies that analyse the influences on the writing, and I particularly enjoyed the chapter where Farrell explores the parallels in Samoan and Post-Jacobite Scottish politics of the RLS novels, commenting that he was profoundly aware of the moral as well as the physical disruption created in a society by war.  (And we all know about Jacobite risings in Scotland because of the Outlander series, right?)  Farrell also dissects the difference in style and approach employed by [RLS] when treating the two cultures, histories and lands which dominated his consciousness:

He may have been searching for a new liberty to write openly about sex, physical appetites and emotional drives, or indeed about sex, but strangely  he made use of it only when writing on Polynesian subjects.  In the Scottish fiction composed at the same time, he reverted to the observance of late Victorian standards, even of Victorian prudishness.  (p.313)

It was interesting that RLS didn’t care for the novels of Thomas Hardy and Zola (both favourites of mine), but late in his career he had a change of heart about Zola’s realism.  So I wonder whether he was aware that Zola’s English translator Vizetelly found himself in deep trouble with the censors, and whether this made him circumspect?  Whatever the case, Farrell makes it clear that RLS was primarily concerned with the competing claims of ethics and politics, of justice and power and you can see this in the characterisation of David Balfour in Kidnapped when he fights for justice for James Stewart, a pawn in a complex political power game.

Farrell also explores the characterisation of women in the RLS novels, concluding that

Although many critics have seen Catriona as Stevenson’s most successful attempt to create a credible female character, it is hard now to accept that judgement.

…

On the first meeting between the two [Catriona and David] Catriona appears a plucky, spirited young woman, capable of shaping her own destiny, but once the adventure element of the novel is resolved and the emotional drama takes centre stage, she declines into the prim, largely passive heroine common in Victorian fiction. (p.317)

However, the representation of women in an unfinished work called Weir of Hermiston hints at what might have been had RLS lived longer.  No previous novel was so splendid in its depiction of emotional turmoil between such masterfully drawn characters and the strong female characters in this novel actively forge their own condition of life, are gifted with intellectual insight and emotional depth. 

Grave of Robert Louis Stevenson on Samoa, 1909.  Source: Wikipedia, attribution* below

But the author of thirteen novels, six short story collections and a string of other works (see the Bibliography at Wikipedia) was not destined for a long life. Not long after celebrating his 44th birthday in great style, Stevenson suffered a stroke and died within 24 hours.  The verse on his grave (resistant to all Scottish attempts to relocate it) is from Stevenson’s Requeim:

Under the wide and starry sky,
Dig the grave and let me lie.
Glad did I live and gladly die,
And I laid me down with a will.
This be the verse you ‘grave for me:
Here he lies where he longed to be;
Home is the sailor, home from the sea,
And the hunter home from the hill.

(Pedants will note that the 7th line has a superfluous ‘the’ inserted before ‘sea’ which mucks up the rhythm).

If you read nothing else by Stevenson, do read ‘The Bottle Imp’.  It’s a great story.

*Photo of RLS’s grave by Bartlett Tripp (1842-1911) Publisher: Cedar Rapids IA : Torch Press *uploaded to Wikipedia by Teinesavaii – Image from 1909 published book My trip to Samoa (1911) ; (USA,1911)[1], Public Domain.
**Anonymous  Public Domain

Author: Joseph Farrell
Title: Robert Louis Stevenson in Samoa
Publisher: Maclehose Press, an imprint of Quercus Publishing, part of the Hachette group, 2017
ISBN: 9780857057617
Review copy courtesy of Hachette

Available from Fishpond: Robert Louis Stevenson in Samoa