The Cruise of the Janet Nichol Among the South Sea Islands: A Diary by Mrs. Robert Louis Stevenson

by Fanny Van de Grift Osbourne Stevenson

In April 1890 the steamer Janet Nicoll set off from Sydney for a three-month trading voyage through the central and western Pacific. Aboard were seven white men, a crew of forty islanders, and one a short-haired, barefoot, cigarette-smoking American, Fanny Van de Grift Stevenson, wife of the famous novelist Robert Louis Stevenson. The Cruise of the 'Janet Nichol' is her account of her journey with her husband and grown son through the Cook Islands, Tuvalu, Kiribati and the Marshall Islands.
Fanny Stevenson's spirited personality led her into scenes and situations few Europeans, and fewer European women, had experienced. Her diary and its accompanying photographs offer unique glimpses of life in some of the last independent Pacific kingdoms and those just coming under colonial rule at the end of the nineteenth century. This book, with an introduction by Roslyn Jolly, is the story of an unconventional woman, her unusual marriage, and her adventurous journey through a rapidly changing Pacific world.

Genres: Memoir, History, Nonfiction, Travel

208 pages, Hardcover

First published October 1, 1914

About the author

Frances (Fanny) Matilda Van de Grift Osbourne Stevenson was the wife of the Scottish author Robert Louis Stevenson.

While in Paris, she met and befriended Stevenson. Convinced of his talent, she encouraged and inspired him. He became deeply attached to her, but Fanny returned abruptly to California.

Stevenson announced his intention of following her, but his parents refused to pay for it, so he saved for three years to pay his own way. In 1879, despite protests of family and friends, Stevenson went to Monterey, California, where Fanny was recovering from an emotional breakdown related to indecision about whether to leave her philandering husband. Stevenson wrote many of his most 'muscular' essays in Monterey while awaiting Fanny's decision.

The lady ultimately chose Stevenson, and in May 1880, they were married in San Francisco. A few days later, the couple left for a honeymoon in the Napa Valley, where Stevenson produced his work Silverado Squatters. He later wrote The Amateur Emigrant in two parts about his passage to America: From the Clyde to Sandy Hook and Across the Plains. His middle-class friends were shocked by his travel with the lower classes; it was not published in full in his lifetime, and his father bought up most copies.

In August 1880, the family moved to Great Britain, where Fanny helped to patch things up between Robert and his father. Always in search of a climate conducive to Stevenson's ailing health, the couple travelled to the Adirondacks in the US. In 1888, they chartered the Casco out of San Francisco and sailed to Western Samoa. Later voyages on the Equator and Janet Nicoll with Lloyd followed. They settled in Upolu, at their home Vailima, where Stevenson died on 3 December 1894.

[https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fanny...]

Reviews

[Takoneando entre libros · Rating 5 out of 5]

Me ha gustado muchísimo y qué maravilla de fotografías.
No conocía nada de la esposa de Stevenson y desde ahora he caído rendida a sus pies. Qué gran mujer.

[Michelle O'flynn · Rating 5 out of 5]

I bought this book prior to leaving on a coastal sailing trip up the east coast of Queensland Australia to give me a sense of a real sailing adventure. This book, taken from the diary of Fanny Stevenson is a true adventure and much more. It gives us insight into who Fanny and Robert Louis were as young people before they married and life as newly weds as almost star-crossed lovers...Robert's family not approving of the match. Their first home was an old abandoned silver mine before setting sail across the Pacific Ocean to discover the warm welcomes of islanders in a tropical haven. This book provides the reader with an understanding and view of the islands as they were before resorts, air travel, pollution and invasion. At the time the only invaders had been white missionaries who came to live or die in these parts. I learned that some houses and churches were made of coral, that some islands could barely support the life of a coconut tree, even with soil imported from other islands, while others were lush with abundance of fruit and tropical life. Having read this story, I have an ambition to travel the same path one day, although I will have to fly to the US to begin as it is less likely to succeed in attempting this jouney in the reverse order due to the trade winds and currents. This is the one book that truly filled me with a yearning to visit the Marquesas Islands and places like Kiribati and Tuvalu just to name a very few. Fanny made the diary entries such easy reading, one feels a familiarity with the original Fanny Stevenson, such a generous lady and she and her true love became such identities in the Pacific region where they came and stayed, trading, teaching, loving the life and becoming integral part of the local community.

Their adventure is one of romance and bravery, which all of us at one time or another would have loved to try, but whether we could have succeeded like Fanny is probably never likely to be discovered. This story is a classic, all the more so because it is true, and the accompanying photographs give context and realism bringing the reader ever closer to this famous couple.

[Jeff Carpenter · Rating 2 out of 5]

I found this because of Camille Peri's story of Fanny Stevenson and I think this diary is interesting only because of that wonderful story. The writing is a bit like reading the caption under a black and white photograph; I'd much rather be there, in living color.