History Scotland Magazine: Review - Tae the Lasses

Dreams of Elsewhere: Selected Travel Writings of Robert Louis Stevenson

Edited with an Introduction and Notes by June Skinner Sawyers

Neil Wilson Publishing Glasgow, 2002 ISBN: 1903238625 256 pp, hb 15.

Travel, it could be argued, was in the blood of Robert Louis Stevenson. Visiting locations around the country was part of the life for his famous engineering family, celebrated in Bella Bathursts The Lighthouse Stevensons. Travelling around his native land served only to whet the appetite of RLS. Like many a young man then and now he longed for adventure and in this era of the great explorers it was only natural his desire for travel would manifest itself.

Jun Skinner Sawyers has assembled a selection of Stevensons travel writings, a subject for which the term copious output is not sufficient. This book alone covers destinations as diverse as Caithness, the South of France, the expanding Western frontier of America and his final destination in the South Seas. It is not, as Sawyers herself notes in her informative introduction, a complete record of the travel literature of Stevenson- this would obviously require several volumes. However, she has, in my opinion, managed to create here a wonderful taste of the breadth and depth of this wandering writers essays and indeed, his life.

Some of the works here were published posthumously. The Amateur Emigrant, documenting Stevensons travels to America, was held back by his father. It is hard for us to understand today, but a man of Stevensons social class travelling in steerage was not considered proper behaviour. He takes the railroad across the Great Plains to California, travelling through the closing years of the Wild West era. In a wonderfully romantic touch he and his new bride, Fanny, end up living at an abandoned silver mine in the Napa Valley, which he covered in The Silverado Squatters.

The final segment covers RLS in the South Seas, including his final home on the island of Samoa. Travelling to these mysterious, lush, tropical islands must have seemed like a dream come true to a man who had dreamed of adventure and exploration and this is reflected very much in his writings. Regardless of where he was, however, Stevenson seems to have made the most of it. The simple pleasure of finding new places and peoples shines through his writings. His descriptions flow beautifully, crafted by the hand of a traveller who was also a wonderful storyteller.

Sawyers has thoughtfully included details of sites of interest, museums and RLS societies for the reader, should they feel inspired by this work to travel in Stevensons footsteps. The various essays themselves are remarkably modern to read, well-observed and often witty, standing up well to anything contemporary writers such as Bryson or Theroux have produced. The theme which links them all is a simple joy a love of travel and writing, a life lived as the author wished to. I travel not to go anywhere, but to go. I travel for travels sake. The great affair is to move.

Joe Gordon,
Senior bookseller, Waterstones Edinburgh.