Robert Louis Stevenson: Legacy of Home, Writing, and Pacific Exploration
Robert Louis Stevenson:
Legacy of Home, Writing, and Pacific Exploration
Robert Louis Stevenson’s historical childhood home in Edinburgh, Scotland is now the private family home of John and Felicitas Macfie. Together as husband and wife, they operate the Macfie Trading Company, offering their home as a hospitality venue for stays, dining, and meetings.
They create a warm, friendly, and family-oriented atmosphere, making their home ideal for their children and grandchildren. This also guarantees a comfortable and inviting environment for their guests.
Surprisingly, this has been John Macfie's childhood home since he was 10 years old. He is well-acquainted and versed with Stevenson’s life.
Meanwhile, Felicitas Macfie, a former hotel manager, recognized the home's potential for entertainment. She was not present during the interview for this feature.
In their private hands, the home is a historical place, but not a heritage site under the National Trust for Scotland.
John Macfie said, ”About 5 years ago, we were visited by a group of Hawaiians, most of whom had never left their home islands before, who had come to perform here at the [Fringe] festival. They stood outside and sang a full request to be allowed to enter the house. There were full necessary exchanges of compliments and questions.”
Stevenson frequently traveled between Scotland, Polynesia, and Hawaii to write his short stories and novels. Among his writings, The Bottle Imp, The Isle of Voices, and The Master of Ballantrae were written in his Hawaii outpost.
Unlike other European writers, Stevenson was “perfused with a kind of curiosity and human sympathy that you do not find in many other men of his day,” explained Macfie.
This perspective enriched and diversified the style and tone of his writing.
His farewell gift to Princess Kaʻiulani was a sonnet:
Forth from her land to mine she goes,
The island maid, the island rose,
Light of heart and bright of face,
The daughter of a double race ...
But our Scots islands far away
Shall glitter with unwonted day,
And cast for once their tempest by
To smile in Kaiulani’s eye.
This heartfelt sonnet exemplifies his deep connections with King Kalahaua, Princess Kaʻiulani, and Hawaii. Thus, the Hawaiians hold Stevenson in high honor and respect for their monarchy and island.
Similarly, in Polynesia, Stevenson is highly respected by the Samoans.
At The Writers' Museum in Edinburgh, Scotland, photographs depict Stevenson's burial and grave according to Samoan traditions.
Macfie clarifies that Stevenson indeed “had been particularly honored in his own lifetime because he was given a chiefly name. That was important because, in the South Pacific, chiefs and members of important families all have these semi-mythical genealogies descending them from divine figures. In the old days, chiefs were considered so important that amongst other things, they always sat on a raised dais. You never spoke to them directly unless you were a chief yourself.”
Stevenson viewed the Samoans as individuals, not as children or objects of exploitation. In his words, it was about occupying their own land.
The Samoans sought Stevenson for his advice.
Papalii Sia Figiel, a Samoan novelist, poet, and playwright, had knocked on the Stevenson house.
She explored Stevenson as a writer and the concept of the white savior syndrome in depth in her Master’s thesis. However, her perspective evolved after further study and learning from her elders about Stevenson's actions.
He became a voice for the Samoans who were close to him in both life and death.
The Macfie family upholds Stevenson’s legacy in Edinburgh through their distinctive roles and dedicated contributions: John Macfie as the raconteur, Felicita Macfie as the facilitator, and their daughter as the tea-time artisan, each playing a vital part in preserving his memory.
John Macfie humbly explains that he is simply driven by curiosity and a passion for his literary interests.
The Stevenson house has witnessed multiple generations of the Macfie family growing up. Over time, the family has become deeply intertwined with the Stevenson legacy, cultivating a lasting connection to its history and heritage.
They kindly accommodated their afternoon tea guests by serving two cakes: a vegan carrot cake and a gluten-free lemon and almond cake, paired with black tea. The delightful part is that they get to enjoy the leftover cake.
While Stevenson did write a book titled Edinburgh, it was published as a series of articles with picturesque notes in what John Macfie says, “is a little kind of [what] I think the publisher expected it to be a sort of bit of tourist advertising.”
To delve deeper into Stevenson's persona, Macfie recommends exploring the Essays of Robert Louis Stevenson. In one excerpt, Stevenson reveals his approach to writing:
“As I walked, my mind was busy fitting what I saw with appropriate words; when I sat by the roadside, I would either read, or a pencil and a penny version-book would be in my hand, to note down the features of the scene or commemorate some halting stanzas. Thus I lived with words. And what I thus wrote was for no ulterior use, it was written consciously for practice. It was not so much that I wished to be an author (though I wished that too) as that I had vowed that I would learn to write. That was a proficiency that tempted me; and I practised to acquire it, as men learn to whittle, in a wager with myself.”
Macfie praises Stevenson by remarking that “by the time he came to start writing for publication at the age of 19 or 20, he was already well in control of his voice and could turn his hands to - you know, almost anything from, poetry to criticism.”
He has examined Stevenson from various perspectives over the years and is impressed by his unwavering determination to embrace life fully.
Stevenson was fascinated by the intersections of different social backgrounds, often frequenting low dives, shavings, and disorderly houses to explore their dynamics and environments.
He was interested in understanding the reasons and motivations that cause people to do bad things and go to bad places. This comes out in his writing for Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde (1886) through the exploration of the complexities of human nature.
Macfie articulates this as Stevenson’s “allegorical examination of why people are behaving in certain ways, what stops them in behaving certain ways, and what encouraged them. [H]e is always interested about the why and how, rather than pointing a dramatic finger at people and saying, “Well, that is it!“”
Every year at the Fringe festival, there are reinterpretations of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde being performed as it is an Edinburgh story despite it being set in London.
It is the cultural backdrop of Edinburgh with inspiration from the intriguing story of Deacon William Brodie, a businessman, fine furniture maker, and town council member who led a double life of burglary and housebreaking. A wardrobe he crafted, owned by Stevenson is displayed in The Writer’s Museum, intertwining with Stevenson’s legacy.
Macfie conveys that Stevenson “literally woke up every morning looking at the product of Deacon William Brodie's workshop. Then during his teenage years, he learned just how thin the boundary between respectability and unrespectability is.”
Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde were also stirred by Eugène Marie Chantrelle, a man introduced to Stevenson by his schoolteacher, who notoriously murdered his wife in a case involving domestic violence and a life insurance policy.
He attended all five days of Chantrelle's trial and was shaken to the marrow by the stark contrast between the man he knew from drinking at the bar and the incriminating evidence presented in court.
The stories and lives of Brodie and Chanterelle have sat in his mind for more than a decade until he had to write against the clock to support his wife, Fanny Stevenson, and two step-children.
After experiencing the worst hemorrhage of his life, the inception of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde began to take form.
Macfie describes that Stevenson was confined to bed, with one arm freed for writing and the other restrained due to psychotropic side effects. His treatment included laudanum, a mixture of opium dissolved in brandy, and Ergotin, an extract from the Ergot fungus.
He experiences an overdrive of terrifying hallucinations and nightmares, so intense that he would physically fall off his bed and topple over if he were not restrained. After spending the night at death’s door, he spends the next three days writing the novel based on his visions mixed with allegory.
In five weeks, he completed writing Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde which went on to become a bestseller in both Great Britain and the United States.
Next, with greater maturity, he created a credible female character in his novel titled The Master of Ballantrae (1889).
He continued to refine his craft as a seasoned writer until he embarked on his travels to the Pacific, where his writing took on a different tone.
Many of the stories set in the Pacific depict the islanders as paragons of goodness and decency, contrasting sharply with the depiction of "grubby white men in grubby white suits doing grubby things."
He was also bold and daring in his political views, expressing them through writings submitted to American and British newspapers. While he did encounter trouble, his actions arose from a genuine concern for the lives and welfare of the native islanders in the places he visited and frequented.
As a writer, his ink and pen were his tools for championing moral integrity, human dignity, and social justice.
