Home of Robert Louis Stevenson

I have long been fascinated by the life and work of Edinburgh born author Robert Louis Stevenson. Best known by most people for his works of fiction (Treasure Island, Kidnapped, Dr Jekyll & Mr Hyde, The Master of Ballantrae….) RLS also produced a wide variety of non-fiction: travel journals, autobiography, social commentary and literary studies. These are my absolute favourites. I am also intrigued to know why a lone, sickly, bohemian Scot who lived for just four of the last ten years of the 19th century in a remote South Pacific island should be so well remembered and so highly revered more than a hundred years on. A Samoan taxi driver in New Zealand spoke of him unprompted and with genuine affection within the past year. What did he do to make such lasting impression in such a short time? And that at a time when most Europeans were regarded with suspicion or even fear due to the sweep of colonization. One reason for the indulgence of a trip to that same small island was a quest to find out.

The Scottish writer

My description of Stevenson is not intended to be in any way derogatory. He was unusual for a man of his social class and time. The only son of high class family of renowned engineers (his grandfather built the first lighthouse on Bass Rock in the Firth of Forth), RLS broke with tradition by giving up the practice of law to become a successful and well paid author after the requisite period of starvation and poverty. He married a divorced American woman, Fanny van de Grift or Osborne, became step-father to her two children and gave up practicing the protestant religion he was brought up in for a significant period of his life. That he was a sickly man is not a point of dispute. TB was the whispered cause of frequent chest complaints, haemorrhages and periods of chronic ill health. If there was any room for doubt on this matter, his untimely death at the age of 44 must finally have settled the point.

The sick room

While in Samoa, Stevenson bought, through the agency of an American trader named Moors, a large tract of land in the foothills of Mt Veia behind the main town of Apia. On this estate he built a magnificent house and ran a productive plantation. He gave the property its present day name Vailima, meaning five rivers or streams. Four are actually visible. The fifth may belong to the spirit world.

Villa Vailima

Fanny's room

Home of the bottle imp

After his death, the house was occupied by a German colonial administrator and later by the governor of Independent Samoa. Recent years have seen it restored and transformed into a fabulous museum and shrine to the original owner.

Teller of tales 2009

The mandatory tour thrown in with the 15 tala entry fee features a local guide reciting Stevenson’s famous epitaph at a place in the house where tears seem always to arise.

Under the wide and starry sky, dig the grave and let me lie
Glad did I live and gladly die, and I lay me down with a will
This be the verse thy grave for thee, here he lies where he longed to be
Home is the sailor home from the sea, and the hunter home from the hill.

The tomb on Mt Veia

The very lucky might hear it as a song, as the Samoan tradition can’t let such lyrical lines go without music.

Stevenson’s writing career was both challenged and inspired at Vailima. Challenged by the social and political engagement of its owner, and inspired by the magical tropical surroundings. One of the reasons for Stevenson’s long enduring reputation was his firm stance on the side of the Samoan chiefs and interests against the sweep of European colonization. Other reasons are hard to explain without resort to bland phrases like ‘he was such a nice guy everybody loved him’.

He wrote something like thirteen books, various essays and newspaper articles, built a house then extended it to accommodate his widowed Scottish mother, hosted a family with an extensive social life and many visitors, and still managed to travel extensively to Australia, New Zealand, Hawaii and other islands, all within the space of about five years. As well as nice, he seems to have been something like amazing.


The steep trek to the top of Mt Veia to the chosen site of his grave is worth every sweaty and slippery step. The view of Apia and the reef beyond takes away any laboured breath a visitor accustomed to cooler climes might have left on reaching the top. It seems fitting to arrive breathless at the grave of a man who spent much of his life similarly afflicted. His presence and that of his wife remain strong after all these years. The love and creative spirit is still palpable.
At the time of his December evening death, stepson Lloyd Osborne had long avoided the task of cutting a path to the burial site at the top of the mountain. Bodies need to be buried quickly in the tropics, and by midday the following day, his Samoan friends had cut the path for their loved one’s final journey. What is now a forty-five minute steep hike up a narrow track would have been a formidable task in the tropical heat and the midst of such sorrow. Nothing was too much trouble for the honorary chief Tusitala, the teller of tales.