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The South Pacific
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Samoa - Famous Faces of Samoa
Through the decades, famous personalities seeking a respite from the strains of notoriety have turned to the islands as a place of refuge. The Polynesian islands of the South Pacific provided a place to “get away from it all” and the friendly people of the islands made it even easier to decide to leave convention behind and make a new life in the middle of a vast ocean.
Samoa attracted its share of those who were celebrities in their time. The three most notable were authors Robert Louis Stevenson and W. Somerset Maugham, and anthropologist Margaret Mead. Two made their home here for a little while. One came to study the people and grew to love the islands.
Robert Louis Stevenson
How did a Scottish essayist, poet, and author of best-selling novels end up in the far reaches of the South Pacific with his beloved wife, Fanny? The story is really quite simple.
Robert, Fanny, and Fanny’s two children from her first marriage decided in 1888 to set out on “a grand adventure”, sailing on a chartered vessel from San Francisco to the waters of the South Pacific. Stevenson had a two-fold reason for the trip. He was an avid explorer and adventurer in his own right (as is seen in his wonderful adventure novels) and wished to explore this rather uncharted territory. Secondly, he suffered from tuberculosis and was in search of a climate that better suited his health.
After spending two years exploring various islands, including Hawaii, the Marquesas, New Zealand, and Tahiti, Stevenson and his family made Samoa their home in 1890. He bought a beautiful patch of land he called Vailima and built a magnificent home that overlooked the ocean.
He became a champion of the Samoan people and supported them in their quest for independence from European colonization. To his Samoan employees and friends, he was a hero. They called him Tusitala, the Teller of Tales. Stevenson died at the young age of 44 and is buried at the top of Mount Vaea, on his estate.
W. Somerset Maugham
British author William Somerset Maugham was equally as enamored with the South Pacific and the islands of Samoa as Robert Louis Stevenson but, by all accounts, he wasn’t always as welcome a visitor as Stevenson.
Maugham spent much of his life traveling and writing books about his travels or those he encountered on his journeys. He made his first trip to the South Pacific in 1917 and returned to Samoa in the 1920s. Maugham’s best known short story – entitled Rain – was set here. The story has been made into a film on several different occasions.
Margaret Mead
Noted anthropologist Margaret Mead, born and bred in Pennsylvania (USA), brought a different sort of fame to the islands of Samoa. Her non-fiction book, The Coming of Age in Samoa, outlined the rather promiscuous sexual practices of the Samoans, particularly their views that ample sex during adolescence was accepted and expected, despite their acceptance of Christian teachings at the hands of Protestant missionaries.
Mead came to the islands in 1928 when she was a graduate student in anthropology at Columbia University in New York. While Mead found the sexual practices of Samoans to be quite fascinating, outside anthropological circles, the book caused her to be dubbed “a dirty old lady” and several other unflattering terms. Mead suggested, nonetheless, that Americans could learn things from the Samoans about raising children.