Western Woman Shaped Career of Robert Louis Stevenson
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The West brought inspiration to Robert Louis Stevenson when he fell In love with Mrs. Fanny Osbourne, whom
he subsequently married. Western residence Influenced his writings also. Left photos show home at Monterey,
California, which he occupied. Next, Stevenson and his wife. Below, granite plaque on Mount St. Helena mark
ing spot where 8tevenson and his bride took their honeymoon. Right, reproduction, courtesy John Howell's Book
shop, of only known copy of issue No. 1 of "The Surprise," edited by Stevenson's step-son, S. L. Osbourne.
Beloved Writer Reached Peak After Falling In Love With Mrs. Fanny
Osbourne; Outstanding Works Composed on Coast
That Robert Louis Stevenson while at the
French Riviera learned to love another man's wife,
and waited until that marriage was dissolved, even
following his love half way around the world to
California, is one of the human and emotional
highlights of the famed author's life that is little
known. It is told here by one who has for many
years made a study of the life and works of Stev
enson, and who is himself acquainted with the
family. Editor.
By Tom Moriarty
IT'S HIGH time that an honored place among the
great women of the West should be accorded
Mrs. Fanny Osbourne Stevenson, wife of the illus
trious R. L. S., immortal master of the essay and
compounder of blood-stirring adventure tales. But
for the spiritual charm, the engaging personality,
of this California lady, the world of literature
might never have-engraved the name of Robert
Louis Stevenson in its hall of fame. Certainly, if
she had not crossed his path by purest coincidence,
the West today could not claim him among its
literary geniuses. .
Many and far flung were the haunts of Robert
Louis Stevenson, but to the West, and in particular
BUD LAND IS
BUD: Well, who's the first contestant up to the
microphone this week?
Sound: (Silence).
Bud: Come, come where are the amateurs?
Amateur: We're on strike.
Bud: Strike? What in the world are you after?
Amateur: We demand longer hours.
Bud: Gosh, I can't make an hour any longer
than 60 minutes.
Amateur: We'll arbitrate for shorter answers,
then.
Bud: Shorter answers? We can't do anything
about that. This question-asking preliminary is
impromptu it's extemporaneous . . .
Amateur: I know, but at least we ought to get
paid for rehearsals.
Bud: Sh-h-h we make up this patter as we go
along.
Amateur: All right, let's spread it out and make
some more up as we come back. i
Bud: Have you really got a union?
Amateur: Certainly! A person has to serve his
apprenticeship before he can become a journeyman
amateur.
Bud: It doesn't sound right.
Amateur: There have been too many crashing
these beginners' programs without any experienco
at all.
Bud: But that's sort of the idea, isn't it? Be
sides, if you walk out on us we've got a lot of
amateur hours already electrically transcribed.
Amateur: How could you tell who wins the
contest ?
Bud: Oh, the applause, the votes, and even the
prize awarding is right on the records.
Amateur: Canned stuff, ch?
Bud: Well, not exactly. You see we have staff
amateurs right on the payroll.
Amateur: Anyway, I won't do my stuff.
Bud: What was it to bo if you did it?
Amateur: I'm a Swiss bell-ringer.
Bud: Very well then, I'll do your act for you
Listen
Sound: (BONG! EONG!)
to California, goes the credit for having trans
formed a good writer into a great writer; a philo
sophic scholar into a man of dynamic genius.
A young and very sick man, Stevenson, son of
a Scotch lighthouse engineer, was residing in the
sunny comfort of the French Riviera, conva
lescing from his curse of lung disorders, when
Destiny marked him out for the role he was" to
play in the West.
Quite casually, he was introduced to Mrs. Fanny
Osbourne, a traveller from the then far away San
Francisco. Immediate mutual delight in the
acquaintanceship transmuted itself into a mutual
memory of beauty and delicacy a memory that
both of them stored away when Mrs. Osbourne
was forced to return to California and her
husband.
MANY moons later, as 28-year-old Stevenson
hung listlessly over myriad corrections of an
essay intended for a small London literary mag
azine, an exciting letter came to him from the end
of the globe from California.
It was a note from Mrs. Osbourne. Circum
stances had changed. New viewpoints were ripen
ing. The doors of the house of impossible were
being thrown open. Would he come to her?
Stevenson left post-haste, cutting himself off
from the ties of family in Scotland; from the asso
ciations of student days in his native Edinburgh,
in London, Paris, and the Riviera. Destiny and the
West had beckoned to a willing adventurer.
Stevenson's log of the fateful journey to Amer
ica in 1879 was duly placed behind book covers in
"The Amateur Emigrant." The world has read
this tale with interest, but perhaps not with the
knowledge that the lean, somber man who wrote
and polished the sentences was at the time carrying
in his heart the vision of a lady who captivated
him; who fed him of the soul stuff that inspires;
a lady the, very thought of Whom made minutes
drag as hours in his anguish to get to her side.
ALWAYS tortured on the rack of bodily aches,
Stevenson soon found that his tedious travels,
his worries and his longings, had reduced him to
the shadow of a man. He decided to attempt a rest
cure in Monterey, California, while awaiting Mrs.
Osbourne's divorce action.
There, he fell in love with the snowy sand, the
rusty cypress, the sea pines of lofty branch, and
the cobalt inlets awash with foaming breakers.
But the raw salt breezes and the sea fog played
him false. He almost suffered a relapse in Mon
terey, despite friendly ministrations.
Today, the visitor to Monterey may see the Ste
venson house intact; may walk the paths along the
sea wall of the Spanish Presidio, br-tween Mon
terey and Pacific Grove, that Stevenson loved; may
explore the jungle-thick undergrowth of forest on
the peninsula, in the depths of which Stevenson
inadvertently started a raging forest fire when his
naive curiosity prompted the test of the com
bustibility of a lacy rope of Spanish moss!
Sick as he was, R. L. S. felt the keen spur of
inspiration in this dramatic Western setting, and
he took copious notes of the locale and made
scenarios for stories which the world came later
to exalt "Treasure Island," "The Pavilion on tlu
Links," "Prince Otto," and others.
Did you know that you can sec the very cove
into which Jim Hawkins of "Treasure Island"
sailf-d the deserted ship and flung the pirate's
body into the crystal waters of the lagoon? The
getting is out beyond the lighthouse of Pt. Pinos,
near Pacific Grove! And the mountain peak shaped
like a table rock? That bit of "Treasure Island"
was catalogued mentally by R. L. S. when he first
crossed San Francisco Bay in 1879. It's the top
of Mt. Tamalpais. in Marin County, as seen from
the top deck of a ferry boat on the eastern side of
Yerba Buena island!
BACK in San Francisco, Stevenson's efforts to
write were balked by his run-down condition.
And lack of funds prevented him from improving
his estate. In a small boarding house on Bush
Street, he passed the days in bed, too weak to rise,
trying to compose his essays on California capital
cities. He was waited upon, hand and foot, by the
kindly wife of the Irish landlord.
To remedy this condition, Mrs. Osbourne and
several friends moved him to East Oakland, then
a country pasture land. Here, in a house situated
near where the Montgomery - Ward building now
stands on East 14th street, the great R. L. S.
fought his way back to the ranks of the able
bodied. At one 'time during his stay in Oakland, he
thought he was about to die, and he penned an
earlier version of the "Requiem" epitaph that
finally came to mark his grave. This powerful,
but little-known, poem was brought to public
attention long after his death, by Katherine Os
bourne, wife of Lloyd, the son of Mrs. Fanny Os
bourne Stevenson.
With all difficulties now ironed out, Robert Louis
Stevenson and his lady of dreams, were married
in San Francisco in 1880. For a honeymoon, they
chose to travel to the warm Napa Valley, about
50 miles north of San Francisco, to escape the sea
fogs of the Bay Region, which were deadly to
R. L. S.
After a tour of inspection in the neighborhood of
Calistoga, the Stevensons discovered an abandoned
mine property on the eastern slope of forbidding
Mount St. Helena. This was above the Toll House,
with its famous toll gate for stage coaches, on the
mountain road that connects Calistoga and Middle
town. The mine office, with its ship-type bunks,
was converted into a camping cottage;
IT WAS here that R. L. S. composed his book,
"Silverado Squatters," in rough form, to be fin
ished later in Switzerland. The book recounts the
interesting legends of Napa Valley and recalls the
operation of the great red gash in Mount St.
Helena's side, known as the Silverado gald, silver,
i and quicksilver mine. If you visit the cabin site
today, you can see the very trees and the cinnabar
platform as described by Stevenson.
That fall, home and family called the Stevensons
to Scotland. There, growing fame throughout the
years brought the easements of life to R. L. S.. his
bride, and the step-son. There, his creation, "The
Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde," elevated
him overnight into the category of great writers.
The next Stevenson pilgrimage to America came
in 1887. This trip, R. L. S. was a man of fame,
a personality. After a stay in upper New York
state, where he went for the cold mountain air,
as a possible cure for his lung trouble and to com
plete "The Master of Ballantrae," the Stevenson
family headed west again.
IN OAKLAND. Stevenson sought out Dr. Mrrritt,
the owner of a trim, tall-masted ya'ht that he
had admired in the Alameda Estuary. The leasing
papers were duly made out and the Caxco was
fitted and tested for duty on the lonely Pacific.
A fine photo, showing the Ca.ico being run in a
test off the shores of Sausalito, Calif., is now in
possession of Oscar Sutro, well-known western
bibliophile. R. L. S., a ghostly wisp in white shirt
ing and black slouch hat, stands at the bow in the
rigging.
In 1888, the man of super literary gifts sailed
out the Golden Gate with his faithful lady of the
West. The West had inspired him and now the
West lost him, for R. L. S. found his last resting
place in Samoa in 1894. At Vailima, on the island's
mountain peak, he lies where he longed to be,
"under the wide and starry sky" and "home is the
sailor, home from the sea, and the hunter home
from the hill."
MYSTERY SHIPS
The Boussole and Astrolabe
Two French Frigates
Lost With 233 Men
SOME unchartered spot in Polynesia's isles holds
the secret of the lost ships of la Perouse.
Two of the finest frigates of France were sent on
a voyage of discovery to the South Pacific . . . the
Boussole and the Astrolabe, fully equipped and
manned. They carried the "Sieur de la Perouse," a
body of scientists, cadets from wealthy families, a
total of 223 men. The year was 1785.
Louis XVI himself gave la Perouse a document
setting forth the purpose of the expedition; to
chart the seas from Kamtchatka to New Zealand,
from the Malay Straits to America.
Two years of dangerous cruising, and the frig
ates anchored in Botany Bay now New South
Wales. La Perouse sent dispatches to France, "I
shall make a run to the Friendly Islands, and per
form everything that had been enjoined me." It
was his last message. Ships and crew were never
seen again.
YEARS later, Captain Dillon, scouting the islands
in the Research, heard rumors of two ships
wrpeked at Vanikoro. Ho sailed to the place, and
found relics cast up by the surf, sword hilts, cloth
ing, bits of figure head. Natives said that the crew
of n ship had been drowned or eaten by sharks.
Thrc were sharks in the lagoons, but sixty skulls
hung in the spirit-house at Whanoo. Nothing, how
ever, was conclusive evidence. Bodies of the vic
tims had disappeared, the ships themselves had
vanished.
One of the crew was reported to have escaped
from Vanikoro in a canoe. He was never traced.
Not one of the more than 200 men were found; no
wrecks were identified as the ships of la Perouse.
What their fate was why no messages were
ever received is a tale which may some day un
fold. There are several battered wrecks of vessels em
bedded in coral in the surf that sprays Vanikoro.
A fitter of brass swivels, cannon-ballH, anchors
can be seen today at a depth of 15 or 20 feet. Are
these relics of the French frigates?
If the bleached Bkulls in the native spirit-house
could speak, another South Sea mystery might be
solved.
PAGE THREES