The South Seas: A Record of Three Cruises in the Islands ... Pt 1, The Marquesas, c. 1889
C 233
Manuscript
This manuscript comprises fifteen chapters based on a six-week visit to the Marquesas aboard the yacht Casco in July to September 1888. Robert Louis Stevenson (1850–1894) carefully penned the 89 pages of this manuscript in ink on one side of each page while on a four month cruise on the trading steamer Janet Nicoll in 1890. Departing Sydney in April 1890 with his wife and stepson, the Stevenson’s visited Samoa where they had bought land and were having a house built.
Footnotes
Roger G Swearingen, Robert Louis Stevenson in
Australia: Treasures in the State Library of New South Wales, 2013
Essays on various subjects
By * Stevenson’s step daughter Belle in Sydney to Stevenson’s mother, February and March, 1890 quoted in RG Swearingen, ‘Robert Louis Stevenson in Australia: Treasures in the State Library of New South Wales’, 2013
‘It is so delightful to see what good
spirits they are all in – no fuss – no flurry, everybody good natured and happy
… Louis is very busy writing his South Sea papers, which he is doing in the
form of essays on various subjects. ‘Trading schooners’ Beachcombers’ et
cetera; in that way he avoids being personal and can yet bring in all his
material …’*
Going the full pitch
In May 1888 Stevenson informed his
friend Charles Baxter that he would take a South Seas cruise, one that he
expected to heal him emotionally as well as physically. “ I have found a yacht,
and we are going the full pitch for seven months.” The Stevenson party –
Stevenson, his wife, stepson and mother – chartered the yacht Casco and sailed southwest from San
Francisco to the Marquesas Islands, the Paumotus, the Society Islands and then
on to the Hawaiian Islands. In October 1890 the Stevenson party returned to
Samoa to settle.
Richard A Boyle, Whiting, Indiana
Footnotes
Library & Technology Services, BrandeisUniversity http://people.brandeis.edu/~teuber/stevensonbio.html#_inthesouthseas
Published in installments
By * SS McClure to RL Stevenson, 20 March 1888 in RG Swearingen ‘Robert Louis Stevenson in Australia: Treasures in the State Library of New South Wales’, 2013
Stevenson’s original agreement about The South
Seas covered only the serial publication of installments in the United States
and elsewhere:
‘Should
you go upon a yacht cruise, or other expedition, this year or next, and should
you write letters descriptive of your experiences and observations for
publication I will undertake to sell such letters to syndicates of newspapers,
(or such other periodicals as we may agree upon), in all countries where such
sales can be effected.’*
Savage and civilised
By * Robert Louis Stevenson, letter 2191
‘My book is now practically modeled: if I
can execute what is designed, there are few better books now extant on this globe;
bar the epics, and the big tragedies, and histories, and the choice lyric
poetics, and a novel or so – none. But it is not executed yet; and let not him
that putteth on his armour, vaunt himself. At least, nobody has had such stuff;
such wild stories, such beautiful scenes, such singular intimacies, such
manners and traditions, so incredible a mixture of the beautiful and horrible,
the savage and civilized … I propose to call the book – The South Seas; it is rather a large title, but not many people have
seen more of them than I; perhaps no one: certainly no one capable of using the
material.’*
Astonishing and sometimes humorous
By * RG Swearingen, ‘Robert Louis Stevenson in Australia: Treasures in the State Library of New South Wales’, 2013
Nearly fifty manuscript pages of the
intended first part of The South Seas have recently come to light and are now
in the Stevenson collection of the Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library at
Yale University. They are indeed anecdotal and panoramic, astonishing and
sometimes humorous, and they are as full of life, detail, and activity as a
painting by Breugel.*
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