The Amateur Emigrant

By: Robert Louis Stevenson

Narrated by: Donal Donnelly

Length: 4 hrs and 29 mins

Publisher's summary

The great author Robert Louis Stevenson received a fateful telegram from his friend Fanny Osbourne in 1879, urging him to leave Edinburgh and join her in San Francisco. The penniless young writer packed his bags and boarded a ship for a long, difficult voyage across the Atlantic, taking detailed notes of the appalling conditions and struggles of his fellow emigrants. When Stevenson arrived in the United States, he immediately boarded a railroad to California, observing the vast country during his transcontinental journey. A marvelously well-written travelogue, The Amateur Emigrant is one of the best accounts of the increasingly popular 19th-century adventure of Europeans sailing to the New World and discovering America.

©1999 Recorded Books, Inc. (P)1999 Recorded Books, Inc.

Critic reviews

"It is the best book he ever wrote - a marvelous piece of writing, lakelike in its lucidity and depth, a genuine original." (Jonathan Raban, author of Old Glory)

Wonderful detail for family historians

This is a nicely spun accounting of the long journey of immigration to the USA from Europe in the early part of the 20th century. The narration was excellent as well.

What prompted me to obtain this title, however, was the promise of adding interesting details to my genealogical research. Four of my ancestors immigrated to the USA around the same time as this was written, and were themselves steerage passengers. Though I have photos of the ships, and some general information, this "day in the life of" style work was more of what I needed now to paint a more robust visual history of the trip my ancestors undertook. In this, I was most certainly not disappointed! I found this account fascinating.

Even better, when later in the work he recounts his travels across the USA by train, I realized those details were also helpful for my research in a different branch of my family, in which the Midwestern railroad lines formed a large part of transportation.

This is a relatively short title, but do not let that dissuade you if you have even a passing interest in early American history, travel, immigration from Europe, the actual journey details (representative), or even how the USA appeared to some outside eyes upon their arrival. Immigrants are such an integral part of this country's history and growth! This title is a truly remarkable glimpse into that time, and something I firmly believe all historians, family historians, and genealogists should hear/read at a minimum, though I also think a quick reminder of this country's earlier days would be beneficial to all who reside in the USA.

Highly recommended.

A great book

A great book that is a wonderful accompaniment to the authors other books. It is a wonderful story and I found it relatable and generally pleasant. I further highly recommend this book.

Fascinating

At one time Robert Louis Stevenson had to make a journey across the Atlantic as a second class passenger. He would have gone steerage, he said, but second class gave him a table in his room he could use for writing. The second class cabins were next to steerage and for the most part they ate the same fare, and by choice he spent more time there.

He's a deft and mostly light-hearted observer of human foibles, so his account of the journey makes for quiet, fun reading. Apart from his Travels with a Donkey, I haven't had much experience with Stevenson's nonfiction — I did try to read some of his essays on moral philosophy once and found them pretty rough going. This short account is anything but. It's like a snail’s eye view of the Titanic’s maiden voyage with the dancing and good times and without the iceberg.

Stevenson excels at giving thumbnail sketches of his fellow passengers, including the stowaways. When these are found, they are asked to work for the remainder of the voyage. If they have a usable skill, like engineering, that's the job they're given; otherwise they get some kind of makework project. Stevenson contrasts one in particular who has a particular genius for shirking with another who is always looking for additional responsibilities: there's not much question which he admires more.

Eventually the ship reaches New York and he's able to set foot on land and enjoy the “blessings” of an American hotel. Having enjoyed Mark Twain’s satirical books about European travel, it was fun to see the tables turned by someone with an equally sharp eye and acerbic wit. Stevenson and a friend share a room, whose striking feature is that it has two windows — one opening into the hallway and one into the adjoining room, where three men snore the night away. Stevenson spends his night on the floor and never closes his eyes. The next day he goes shopping for books and finds the staff rude and unhelpful: I seem to remember a similar experience the first time I went to New York.

He departs by train for California, numb with the effort of making his way through crowds that almost literally threaten to crush him. The train takes him from the Jersey shore to Pittsburgh, then to Chicago, rebuilt after the fire. (One car is reserved for families, one for single men, and one for Chinese.) He continues his brief portraits of traveling companions, but because the mode of transportation involves frequent stops and fragmented schedules, the opportunities are fewer and the portraits somewhat less detailed. He has his first encounters with black Americans and his first encounter with that longstanding symbol of American individualism, the handgun.

His only concession to physiology is to note that railroad cars have a “convenience” at either end.

The length of the journey is unpredictable. The train is forever having to pull onto a side track to let an express go by. And there are accidents and breakdowns on the tracks ahead that force the train into a prolonged standstill. So forget knowing what hour the train will arrive in San Francisco; the schedule won't even name the day. At one point they have to change trains, it seems, simply because the cars have become so full of “bad air” as to become almost uninhabitable.

This leads him to reflect on the racism of his fellow Caucasians, in this case directed toward the Chinese people on the train. They are described as dirty and blamed for the stink; white people pretend to choke when a Chinese person walks by. And yet Stevenson notes that of all the groups he traveled with, the Chinese were by far the most careful with respect to hygiene, and he hails their science and culture that for many centuries far outclassed that of Europe. Looking out of the train window, he says, do we even see the same world they do? He reflects also on the injustice done to Native Americans, and the “civilized” way Caucasians humiliated, invaded, cheated, and hunted them at every opportunity.

It's a remarkable account, turning what must have been a fairly ordinary journey into a sharply observed exploration. The long travail comes to an end as the train approaches San Francisco, with the rising sun turning the Bay into gold.

Donal Donnelly narrates with his usual skill, striking a balance between bemused wonder and detached irony.

What a rip-off

This might be a good book - but the quality of the recording makes it very difficult to tell. It sounds as if was recorded by Thomas Edison on to a very early wax cylinder, lost in a dusty cupboard for over 100 years, then rediscovered and transferred from an audio file to digital using two tin cans linked by tight string. Why Audible thinks this is suitable quality for commercial resale is anybody's guess. Certainly I'm not sticking around long enough to find out - I'm out of here as soon as I can get free of my subscription.