Scottish writer Robert Louis Stevenson1850-1894 (44 years) and his wife and muse, Fanny Van de Grift(1840-1914) 15/06/2025
Henry James considered her a termagant- a harsh-tempered or overbearing woman. Stevenson's his “Complete Works” takes up more than three feet on my bookshelf. A credible posthumous diagnosis is bronchiectasis, which would have caused his frequent hemorrhages. Without fanny there would be no RL Stevenson.
He was an educated writer from a prominent family in Scotland while she was high school graduate from the rustic Mid West. This is the first book that deals with Fanny's work as we as her famous husband. Her role was to keep him alive and to keep him writing. The only medications he had laudanum (tincture of opium) and ergotin( a LSD derivative)Her younger sister Nellie van de Grift wrote The Life of Mars Robert Louis Stevenson. (Died 1935)
Jacob Vandegrift wanted his 5 daughter to feel they could be independent. He taught to them hunting , horse riding and to use a hammer and nails. |He owned lumber and had a real estate business.
1857 Fanny married Sam Osbourne.1864 She and Sam went out west before the railroad was build via Confederates blockaded ports and Panama to S. Francisco. She had visions of women having greater status in the west and was an avid reader. Silver had been discovered in 1862 in Toiyabe range, Nevada but it was in decline when they arrived. Sam was bankrupt and in debt but Fanny thrived where there were 6000 men and less that 60 respectable women.
In San Francisco it was the prostitutes' that set women's fashion
1866 Fanny was back in Indiana at her parents. After Belle they had a son Lloyd, followed by Hervey in 1871. Sam was living with his mistress in San Francisco. Women who divorced their philandering husband lost out in those days. Fanny enrolled Belle at what later become the San Francisco Art Institute. Fanny hired a nanny for the 2 boys and joined Belle.
1875 Fanny Osbourne left S. Francisco to get a mail steamer from NY to Europe with her children ,she wanted to be an artist. She took Belle to the Royal Academy of Fine Arts Belgium. After the Franco Prussian War 1871 they moved to Paris. The person assigned to help Fanny settle in was Abigail May Alcott Louisa's whose sister wrote Little Women.
Hervey contracted tuberculosis and died a few days after Sam arrived. Fanny Belle and Lloyd went to live in Grez- sur-Loing on the edge of the Fontainebleau forest.
Louis had a hacking cough and his parents were concerned about him and he was largely a shut in child with a nanny as a playmate. He was an only child unusual at this time as he had 54 first cousins. His mother Margaret at the age of 70 learned to ride a bicycle. The Stevenson's were strict Calvinists and knew the bible, and he was terrified of sin as a young kid. Later he upset Thomas his father as he did not believe in Christianity. Alison Cunningham was his nanny was with him all the time and his second mother. From A Childs Garden of Verses 1885 we see that he was home alone and played alone. Some of his happiest days were visiting his grandfather Lewis Balfour. His mother also had chest ailment so they travelled abroad to the French and Italian Riviera's. Climatotherapy. He became a Francophile and could speak and read French perfectly. He was a story teller as a kid and wrote the only issue of School Boys Magazine at 12. Later as rebellion or adventure he hung out with seamen, chimney sweeps, thieves, and preferred prostitutes to girls.
On the Scottish coast in 1799 alone in a 3 day storm more that 70 vessels sent hundreds to their death. Grandfather Robert Stevenson build 97 light houses as he felt it a duty. Bell Rock the oldest is in a JMW. Turner picture 1819.
Louis started studying engineering in Edinburgh at his father insistence. 1870 He took apprenticeships in engineering which supplied him with stories about smuggling and shipwrecks.
Louis switched to Law as a compromise with his father. 1868 Poems of Walt Whitman published in UK but heavily censored.
1800s Edinburgh was renown for medical research but needed corpses for anatomy but religious beliefs limited the supply of cadavers. 1884 RLS wrote a short story called The Body Snatcher.
As a writer he was a disappointment to his parents but reliant on them for financially. Later he became more famous than the Lighthouse parents. Opium was freely available in the UK and he had an experience with it. In London became a member of the Saville Club which included people like Henry James, Thomas Hardy and Virginia Woolf's father the publisher. Louis started many stories that he never completed. 1875 he passed the Bar exam.
Ernest Henly best known for he poem Invictus 1888.
American literature reached Britain with Uncle Toms Cabin and books by James Ferrymore Cooper , Nathaniel Hawthorne, Poe , Thoreau and Whitman. Louis met Fanny at Grez, France and he started writing fiction again. She believed in his talent and urged him on.
Fanny's husband Sam could use her adulatory as grounds to take the children. While Louis was penniless.
1879 Louis hired a donkey and went for a12 day hike the purpose was that his parents wanted him to distance himself from Fanny in the US meanwhile he wrote the book Travels with a Donkey in the Cévennes. 106 pg Today this trail attract hikers to do his walk. Meanwhile at this same time Fanny wrote an article about Chinese men attracted to the U S to work on gold mines and the railroads for low wages were seen as a threat to jobs and wages. 1882 Congress passed the Chinese Exclusion Act.
Louis sailed to the US at a time of a surge of immigration there. He wanted to travel steerage for the experience but needed a desk to write on so went Second Class and wrote The Amateur Emigrant 1895 106pg This was only published later. He took a train to California and this was the time that the railways needed immigrants to keep them busy.
Sam was prepared to divorce Fanny as long as she and Louis lived separately for a decent amount of time. However Sam lost his job at the district court. and could no longer support her Meanwhile living in Monterey was a opportunity for ideas for Louis and was the setting for Treasure Island. 240pg. Louis live 5 months in S. Francisco where he got ideas for The Wrecker 1892 297pg here he met Italian fishermen , Dutch merchants, Mexican vequeres, and an English schooner captain. In Scotland Louis family who build lighthouses faced hostility of wreckers.
Fanny knew Louis would get fame and fortune, and he urged her to marry him to legalize her claim to his inheritance if he should have one. When he became ill she moved him into her family home and probably saved his life. Fanny heard of an abandoned mining camp high up on mount St Helens as it would be good for his health. 1880 a year to the day that he had arrived in NY they arrived in Liverpool. Thomas Stevenson got on with Fanny even though she spoke her mind.
Since the death of John Keats in 1821 aged 25 there was considered link between genius and consumptive. Only in 1882 was tuberculosis discovered to be a bacillus bacteria. Between 1850 and 1910, 4 million people died of tuberculosis in Britain. Sometimes Fanny was not comfortable amongst all of Louis men circles and more than a century later Yoko Ono was blamed for the Beatle break up and ruining "a boys club" She found it difficult to make women friends.
The moved to Davos where almost all visitors had TB and Louis loved toboggining here. Thomas Mann described Davos sanatorium in his book Magic Mountain. A lot of patients came there for relief of symptoms and died.
Thomas Stevenson had told Louis sea stories on his long sick night, Louis was doing the same for Fanny's son reawakening the child of his own father. But Louis had many unfinished novels. Once he had good work of a serialized story over 17 installment he had to finished the novels fast. Treasure Island caused Louis to be the most read author by 1890 but many of his books were bootlegged editions in the US. Long John Silver with his peg leg and Captain Flints parrot would become famous as a real pirate. Fanny with her adventurous spirit kept the boyishness alive in Louis. He called her" teacher , tender comrade , wife."
1885 A Childs Garden of Verses was dedicated to his nanny Alison Cunningham. He felt she would understand it the best and it showed her, his appreciation. Only after his death did this appear with drawings. He was a sickly child who knew what it was like to hear other children playing outside.
Living in France had always suited Louis as he was fluent in the French language and literature. Hyeres (close to the Cote de Azur in Southern France) was a great time of productivity. 1884 They left Hyeres as their was a plague of cholera and moved to Toulon.
Trevor Haddon a British painter said " about any art think not of what it pays, first of what pleases."
1891 Congress passed the International Copyright Act, till then despite his big sales he was always short of money.
Louis wrote plays with William Ernest Henley who was a famous poet, known for the poem Invictus but they were not successful.
1885 Feb. Dynamite Saturday bombs went off in House of Commons , Tower of London and Westminster Hall simultaneously. This was by the IRA and it lead to the Special Irish branch of the Metropolitan police to deal with this. Louis wrote the book the Dynamiter- More Arabian Nights short stories.
Louis lived a remarkable long time for an afflicted man and he never infected anyone. He had bronchiectasis bronchial tubes damaged by his childhood illnesses like whooping cough, flu, croup and bronchises. Fanny suffered from PTSD from losing her son. Fanny like many caregivers neglected her own health. In the 1880s there began to be warning about addiction to pills that contained opiates cannabis and cocaine. Aspirin was first patented by Bayer in 1899. Florence Nightingale, Elizabeth Barret Browning and Elizabeth Siddal (artist 1829 to 1862) were addicted to laudanum. Louis health came first his writing second and Fanny 's needs last.
Louis on the way to Bournemouth visited Thomas Hardy in Dorchester as Louis admired Far From the Maddening Crowd which rocketed Hardy to success.
1886The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde by Louis. This book appeared first in the US and this book became the subject of countless sermons one in St Paul's. The moral message about the struggle between virtue and sin. It was a major bestseller in its day. Only at the end of the book do we discover that he is one person and the idea came to Oscar Wilde who wrote about a double life person in 1890 The Picture of Dorian grey.
1885 Criminal Amendment Act . Any sexual between males became a punishably offence and made it easier to blackmail gay men and convict Oscar Wilde. This Act also strengthened the prostitution laws and raised the age of consent from 13 to 16.
Louis and Fanny had moved to Bournemouth to be near Lloyd but he began studying at the University of Edinburgh in 1885. There, their favorite new friend was Henry James Daisy Miller and Portrait of a Lady made him a celebrity and Fanny appreciated the portrayal of ex patriot American women. James appreciated Louis works more than most Brits.
1886 Kidnapped came out in 14 weekly installments in a juvenile magazine. It is set in the period after the crushing British defeat of Bonnie Prince Charlie.1746 Battle of Culloden.
Sam Osbourne had disappeared mysteriously. He had asked his wife Rebecca Paul to have supper waiting ready for him after work at the night court and never returned. Sam's disappearance did draw Lloyd closer to Louis. In 1887 they went to the ailing Thomas Stevenson in Edinburgh and he died 2 days later. Louis was now freed of his fathers strict Calvinist domination, and Louis inheritance was £3,000.
Margaret, Lloyd, Louis, Fanny and their maid Valentine travelled to Le Harve to take a cheaper less popular shipping line they discovered they were on a smelly cattle ship. In NY waiting at the dock was a crowd and reporters to greet Louis. In NY Louis met another fan Mark Twain. they were 2 authors whose boys novel confounder standard notions of Victorian masculinity - Kidnapped and Huckleberry Finn.
Magazines had offered Louis a lucrative contract for articles of his travels when they heard he was going to the South Seas. While in the Adirondacks they decided to take a South Seas voyage as an adventure but also to to to a warm climate.
In California Fanny's ex Sam Osbourne had left his wife Paulie with his debts for another women. Fanny reconciles with her daughter Belle and her 7 year old grandson Austen. Belle's husband Joe Strong had left her.
1888 they sailed from San Francisco to French Polynesia. They visited Nuka Hiva , Fakarava and Tahiti written about by Herman Melville. Then the took a 62 ton trading schooner Equator that toured the Gilbert Islands (now Republic of Kiribati) Fanny was the only woman amongst 15 men. They decided to settle in Samoa as the climate was right for Louis's health. They bought 315 hilly acres for $10 an acre. This was relatively close to New South Wales and had a good mail service.
The US and Europe were carving up the region to expand their empires. David Kalakaua the king of Hawaii had brokered a free trade agreement with the US. After meeting Edison he installed electric lights in his palace 5 years before the White House. The monarchy in Hawai was overthrown and in 1898 it was annexed to the US. Britain had annexed the Gilbert Islands.
1890 the visited Sydney and when the wanted to leave there was a strike of seamen and dockworkers. The Janet Nicoll managed to get a non union crew of mostly Solomon Islanders. They found that islanders were conned by promises and taken to be slaves on mines and plantations by French German British , American labor traders. They visited 35 islands over 4 months including the Cook , Marshall and New Caledonia. Wherever they went they got to know about the local inhabitants. Not only Western powers were changing the face of Polynesia but missionaries , beach combers, traders, and the indigenous people wad creating a new hybrid culture.
Fanny sold Skerrymore in Bournemouth a gift from Thomas Stevenson, to build their house in Samoa. Vallima had a tennis court and grass for cricket and croquet. It became the social centre of Upolu. They also had a plantation of nearly 8000 coffee trees. At this time the artist Paul Gauguin was on Tahiti fathering children with young girls and producing paintings promoting the island as a sexual paradise for Western men.
"A writer has to keep on being reborn" The story The Enchantress is of a man who married a heiress she ditches him the same day with a pledge of £300 a year. This way she can inherit and is independent of a man. It shows the length a women will go to gain independence.
1880 a few German firms had taken over land for plantations while the Samoa's were in tribal battled. The US intervened. Germany UK and US now formed a tripartite government with a puppet Samoan king. Louis wrote Footnote in History : Eight years of trouble in Samoa. Galsworthy, Author Conan Doyle, and J.M.Barry started corresponding with him. The White Company a novel by A.C.Doyle on the 100 years war. Conrad was thinking of Louis's 1894 Ebb Tide when he wrote of the charterers in Heart of Darkness a decade later.
The Beach in Falesa is what in 1953 Dylan Thomas based a screenplay and which later Richard Burton got Christopher Isherwood to work on but it never got to the screen.
On Samoa Belle's husband Joe secretly had a Samoan wife and Fanny pushed her to divorce him. Her son Austin, Louis sent to San Francisco to be with Fanny's sister Nellie Sanchez
Later New Zealand ousted German from Western Samoa in WW1 1914 and administered as a mandate till 1962 independence.
Louis altered his will leaving some to his brother Alan's children but most in favor of Belle , Lloyd and Austin.
Louis was a chain smoker even though he was advised against it and died of a cerebral hemorrhage. Graham Green's grandmother was Louis first cousin.
Vallima the house was sold by Fanny to a German merchant who sold it to the German Government in 1911and became the Samoan governor's residence. Today it is the Stevenson Museum.
Fanny got Graham Balfour to write the official biography and it came out in 1901 The life of Robert Louis Stevenson.
1907 Fanny and Ned went for a motor tour of Europe with Lloyd as driver, early car enthusiasts. Austin was becoming a successful playwright,
1914 Fanny died also of cerebral hemorrhage and Belle and Ned Field who she later married took her ashes to Samoa to bury in Louis grave. Lloyd edited some of Louis works and died in 1947 after 2 unsuccessful marriages and an undistinguished literary career. Belle died in 1953 aged 94 having outlived both husbands , her brother and her son Austin by a year.
Of all his work Louis is best known for his children's fiction. Walter Scott and Robert Burns were given memorials in Edinburgh but Louis only got one in 2013 as a child sitting on a tree stump reading a book.
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