I travel not to go anywhere but to go.
Travel for travel’s sake.
The great affair is to move.

Robert Louis Stevenson

The voyage of the Janet Nicoll

ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON

The author of Kidnapped and Treasure Island loved the sea and spent much of the last part of his life aboard ships. In 1890 he came to Sydney for a while and, finding it too cold for his liking, embarked on a cruise around the Pacific aboard a freighter, the SS Janet Nicoll, which he described as ‘the worst roller’ he was ever on.

Stevenson was terminally ill with tuberculosis and, during the voyage and his time in Sydney, wrote to his friends advising them of his decision to move to Samoa and settle there to die.

His letters are full of good humour and wonderful observations. His account of the ship catching fire while leaving Auckland Harbour—apparently some material for making fireworks was stored in a stateroom and exploded!—shows how stoically he coped with the rigours and dramas of sea travel circa 1890.

His accounts of the islands he visited and his decision to stay in Noumea, then a penal colony of France, to study the convict system, show his lust for life and his fascination for all things foreign. His letters give an insight into the mind and character of one of the world’s best loved writers. His terminal illness was obviously in no way an impediment to his curiosity, humour and ability to communicate—Ed.

Written aboard the SS Janet Nicoll, to Sidney Colvin

I was sharply ill at Sydney, cut off.

Out of bed, in this steamer on a fresh island cruise, I have already reaped the benefit. We are excellently found this time, on a spacious vessel, with an excellent table; the captain, supercargo, our one fellow-passenger, etc., very nice; and the charterer, Mr Henderson, the very man I could have chosen.

The truth is, I fear, this life is the only one that suits me; so long as I cruise in the South Seas, I shall be well and happy—alas, no, I do not mean that, and absit omen!—I mean that, so soon as I cease from cruising, the nerves are strained, the decline commences, and I steer slowly but surely back to bedward.

We left Sydney, had a cruel rough passage to Auckland, for the Janet is the worst roller I was ever aboard of. I was confined to my cabin, ports closed, self shied out of the berth, stomach (pampered till the day I left on a diet of perpetual eggnog) revolted at ship’s food and ship eating, in a frowsy bunk, clinging with one hand to the plate, with the other to the glass, and using the knife and fork (except at intervals) with the eyelid.

No matter: I picked up hand over hand. After a day in Auckland, we set sail again and were blown up in the main cabin with calcium fires, as we left the bay.

Let no man say I am unscientific: when I ran, on the alert, out of my stateroom, and found the main cabin incarnadined with the glow of the last scene of a pantomime, I stopped dead: ‘What is this?’ said I. ‘This ship is on fire, I see that; but why a pantomime?’ And I stood and reasoned the point, until my head was so muddled with the fumes that I could not find the companion.

A few seconds later, the captain had to enter crawling on his belly, and took days to recover (if he has recovered) from the fumes. By singular good fortune, we got the hose down in time and saved the ship, but Lloyd lost most of his clothes and a great part of our photographs was destroyed.

Fanny saw the native sailors tossing overboard a blazing trunk; she stopped them in time, and behold, it contained my manuscripts. Thereafter we had three (or two) days fine weather: then got into a gale of wind, with rain and a vexatious sea. As we drew into our anchorage in a bight of Savage Island, a man ashore told me afterwards the sight of the Janet Nicoll made him sick; and indeed it was rough play, though nothing to the night before.

All through this gale I worked four to six hours per diem spearing the ink bottle like a flying fish, and holding my papers together as I might. For, of all things, what I was working at was writing history— the Samoan business—and I had to turn from one to another of these piles of manuscript notes, and from one page to another in each, until I should have found employment for the hands of Briareus.

All the same, this history is a godsend for a voyage; I can put in time, getting events coordinated and the narrative distributed, when my much-heaving numskull would be incapable of finish or fine style.

At Savage we met the missionary barque John Williams. I tell you it was a great day for Savage Island: the path up the cliffs was crowded with gay islandresses (I like that feminine plural) who wrapped me in their embraces, and picked my pockets of all my tobacco, with a manner which a touch would have made revolting, but as it was, was simply charming, like the Golden Age.

One pretty, little, stalwart minx, with a red flower behind her ear, had searched me with extraordinary zeal; and when, soon after, I missed my matches, I accused her (she still following us) of being the thief. After some delay, and with a subtle smile, she produced the box, gave me one match, and put the rest away again.

Written in Noumea, to E.L. Burlingame

As for my health, I got over my cold in a fine style, but have not been very well of late. To my unaffected annoyance, the blood-spitting has started again. I find the heat of a steamer decidedly wearing and trying in these latitudes, and I am inclined to think the superior expedition rather dearly paid for.

Still, the fact that one does not even remark the coming of a squall, nor feel relief on its departure, is a mercy not to be acknowledged without gratitude. The rest of the family seem to be doing fairly well; both seem less run down than they were on the Equator, and Mrs Stevenson very much less so.

We have now been three months away, have visited about thirty-five islands, many of which were novel to us, and some extremely entertaining; some also were old acquaintances, and pleasant to revisit. In the meantime, we have really a capital time aboard ship, in the most pleasant and interesting society, and with (considering the length and nature of the voyage) an excellent table.

I shall probably return to Samoa direct, having given up all idea of returning to civilisation in the meanwhile. There, on my ancestral acres, which I purchased six months ago from a blind Scots blacksmith, you will please address me until further notice.

The name of the ancestral acres is going to be Vailima; but as at the present moment nobody else knows the name, except myself and the co-patentees, it will be safer, if less ambitious, to address R.L.S., Apia, Samoa. The ancestral acres run to upwards of three hundred; they enjoy the ministrations of five streams, whence the name. They are all at the present moment under a trackless covering of magnificent forest, which would be worth a great deal if it grew beside a railway terminus. To me, as it stands, it represents a handsome deficit. Obliging natives from the Cannibal Islands are now cutting it down at my expense.

You would be able to run your magazine to much greater advantage if the terms of authors were on the same scale with those of my cannibals. We have also a house about the size of a manufacturer’s lodge. ’Tis but the egg of the future palace, over the details of which on paper Mrs Stevenson and I have already shed real tears; what it will be when it comes to paying for it, I leave you to imagine. But if it can only be built as now intended, it will be with genuine satisfaction and a grounded pride that I shall welcome you at the steps of my Old Colonial Home, when you land from the steamer on a long-merited holiday . . .

It is suggested to me that you might like to know what will be my future society. Three consuls, all at loggerheads with one another, or at the best in a clique of two against one; three different sects of missionaries, not upon the best of terms; and the Catholics and Protestants in a condition of unhealable ill-feeling as to whether a wooden drum ought or ought not to be beaten to announce the time of school. The native population, very genteel, very songful, very agreeable, very good-looking, chronically spoiling for a fight (a circumstance not to be entirely neglected in the design of the palace). As for the white population of (technically, ‘The Beach’), I don’t suppose it is possible for any person not thoroughly conversant with the South Seas to form the smallest conception of such a society, with its grog-shops, its apparently unemployed hangers-on, its merchants of all degrees of respectability and the reverse.

The paper, of which I must really send you a copy . . . rejoices in the name of Samoa Times and South Sea Advertiser. The advertisements in the Advertiser are permanent, being simply subsidies for its existence. A dashing warfare of newspaper correspondence goes on between the various residents, who are rather fond of referring to one another’s antecedents. But when all is said, there are a lot of very nice, pleasant people, and I don’t know that Apia is very much worse than half a hundred towns that I could name.

Written in Noumea, to Charles Baxter

I have stayed here a week while Lloyd and my wife continue to voyage in the Janet Nicoll; this I did, partly to see the convict system, partly to shorten my stay in the extreme cold—hear me with my extreme! Moi qui suis originaire d’Edimbourg—of Sydney at this season.

I am feeling very seedy, utterly fatigued and overborne with sleep. I have a fine old gentleman of a doctor, who attends and cheers and entertains, if he does not cure me; but even with his ministrations I am almost incapable of the exertion sufficient for this letter; and I am really, as I write, falling down with sleep. What is necessary to say, I must try to say shortly . . .

Here is the idea: to install ourselves, at the risk of bankruptcy, in Samoa. It is not the least likely it will pay (although it may); but it is almost certain it will support life, with very few external expenses.

If I die, it will be an endowment for the survivors, at least for my wife and Lloyd; and my mother, who might prefer to go home, has her own. Hence I believe I shall do well to hurry my installation.

The letters are already in part done; in part done is a novel for Scribner; in the course of the next twelve months I should receive a considerable amount of money. I am aware I had intended to pay back to my capital some of this. I am now of the opinion I should act foolishly. Better to build the house and have a roof and farm of my own; and thereafter, with a livelihood assured, save and repay . . .

The deuce of the affair is that I do not know when I shall see you and Colvin. I guess you will have to come and see me: many a time already we have arranged the details of your visit in the yet unbuilt house on the mountain. I shall be able to get decent wine from Noumea. We shall be able to give you a decent welcome, and talk of old days.

Written in Sydney, to Henry James

Your two long and kind letters have helped to entertain the old familiar sickbed . . .

I must tell you plainly—I can’t tell Colvin—I do not think I shall come to England more than once, and then it’ll be to die. Health I enjoy in the tropics; even here, which they call sub- or semi-tropical, I come only to catch cold.

I have not been out since my arrival; live here in a nice bedroom by the fireside, and read books and letters from Henry James, and send out to get his Tragic Muse, only to be told they can’t be had as yet in Sydney, and have altogether a placid time. But I can’t go out! The thermometer was nearly down to 50° the other day—no temperature for me, Mr James: how should I do in England? I fear not at all. Am I very sorry? I am sorry about seven or eight people in England, and one or two in the States. And outside of that, I simply prefer Samoa.

These are the words of honesty and soberness. (I am fasting from all but sin, coughing . . . a couple of eggs and a cup of tea.) I was never fond of towns, houses, society, or (it seems) civilisation. Nor yet it seems was I ever very fond of (what is technically called) God’s green earth.

The sea, islands, the islanders, the island life and climate, make and keep me truly happier. These last two years I have been much at sea, and I have never wearied; sometimes I have indeed grown impatient for some destination; more often I was sorry that the voyage drew so early to an end; and never once did I lose my fidelity to blue water and a ship.

It is plain, then, that for me my exile to the place of schooners and islands can be in no sense regarded as a calamity . . . Even my wife has weakened about the sea. She wearied, the last time we were ashore, to get afloat again.

Written in Sydney, to Mrs Charles Fairchild

I began a letter to you on board the Janet Nicoll on my last cruise, wrote, I believe two sheets, and ruthlessly destroyed the flippant trash . . .

Well, such is life. You are quite right; our civilisation is a hollow fraud, all the fun of life is lost by it; all it gains is that a larger number of persons can continue to be contemporaneously unhappy on the surface of the globe. O, unhappy!—there is a big word and a false— continue to be not nearly—by about twenty per cent—so happy as they might be: that would be nearer the mark.

When—observe that word, which I will write again and larger— WHEN you come to see us in Samoa, you will see for yourself a healthy and happy people.

You see, you are one of the very few of our friends rich enough to come and see us; and when my house is built, and the road is made, and we have enough fruit planted and poultry and pigs raised, it is undeniable that you must come—must is the word; that is the way in which I speak to ladies. You and Fairchild, anyway— perhaps my friend Blair—we’ll arrange details in good time. It will be the salvation of your souls, and make you willing to die.

Let me tell you this: In ’74 or 5 there came to stay with my father and mother a certain Mr Seed, a prime minister or something of New Zealand. He spotted what my complaint was; told me that I had no business to stay in Europe; that I should find all I cared for, and all that was good for me, in the Navigator Islands; sat up till four in the morning persuading me, demolishing my scruples. And I resisted: I refused to go so far from my father and mother.

O, it was virtuous, and O, wasn’t it silly! But my father, who was always my dearest, got to his grave without that pang; and now in 1890, I (or what is left of me) go at last to the Navigator Islands. God go with us! It is but a Pisgah sight when all is said; I go there only to grow old and die; but when you come, you will see it is a fair place for the purpose.

Stevenson died, aged 44, four years later. His grave overlooks the sea on Samoa. Having lived life to the fullest under the shadow of death for much of his time on earth—he called it ‘fiddling under Vesuvius’—he famously wrote his own epitaph, as follows—Ed.