Robert Louis Stevenson

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In August 1879, the aspiring Scottish travel writer and poet Robert Louis Stevenson crossed the Atlantic Ocean on a journey to see his lover in Monterey. Suffering from a chronic form of tuberculosis, the 29-year-old bohemian was willing to sacrifice his life to reach Fanny Osbourne. After arrival in New York City, Stevenson boarded a crowded, slow-moving emigrant passenger train. There were faster and more comfortable trains and coaches, but the fledgling writer couldn’t afford the ticket. On board the train, Stevenson was deathly ill, suffering from his usual respiratory ailments plus malaria and pleurisy, a lung infection that causes severe chest pain. Even so, his experiences on the emigrant train inspired essays that were later published in two small volumes: “The Amateur Emigrant” and “Across the Plains.” This journey to America would forever change his writing style and vision. Stevenson felt better when the train reached Ogden, Utah and he boarded the Central Pacific Railroad for the last leg of his journey through Nevada, past Truckee and down into the Golden State: “The cars on the Central Pacific were nearly twice as high, and so proportionally airier; they were freshly varnished, which gave us all a sense of cleanliness as though we had bathed; the seats drew out and joined in the center, so that there was no more need for bed-boards.” Stevenson endured the sweltering journey across northern Nevada in a feverish stupor, but he revived as the train passed Reno and ascended the Truckee River Canyon. He wrote: “It was a clear moonlit night; but the valley was too narrow to admit the moonshine direct, and only a diffused glimmer whitened the tall rocks and relieved the blackness of the pines. The air struck chill but tasted good and vigorous in the nostrils — a fine, dry, old mountain atmosphere. I was dead sleepy, but I returned to roost with a grateful mountain feeling in my heart.” The train rumbled along the cascading Truckee River and pulled into the town of Truckee for a freight, mail and passenger stop. When Stevenson awoke later that day, it was eerily dark. He didn’t know it at the time, but the train was careening through the long wooden snowsheds that protected the line from deep snow and avalanches during the long Sierra Nevada winters. In “The Amateur Emigrant,” Stevenson described his impression of the California mountains: “I had one glimpse of a huge pine-forested ravine upon my left, a foaming river, and a sky already coloured (sic) with the fires of dawn. I am usually very calm over the displays of nature; but you will scarce believe how my heart leaped at this. Few people have praised God more happily than I did. And thenceforward, down by Blue Cañon (sic), Alta, Dutch Flat, and all the old mining camps, through a sea of mountain forests, dropping thousands of feet toward sea-level as we went… this was ‘the good country’ we had been going to for so long.” On Aug. 30, 1879, an exhausted Stevenson stumbled into Monterey where Fanny and her children, Belle and Lloyd, and were living in a rented house, away from her philandering husband Sam Osbourne, who was in San Francisco. In his quest for love, the ailing artist had risked his life traveling from Europe to the California coast. Lloyd, who had met Stevenson in France in 1876, wrote: “He looked ill, even to my childish gaze; his clothes, no longer picturesque but merely shabby, hung loosely on his shrunken body.” It would take nearly four months for Fanny to obtain her divorce — during which time Stevenson nearly died twice. The annulment was granted Dec. 15 in a private ceremony in San Francisco. Fanny and Stevenson married in May 1880. The newlyweds spent their honeymoon at Mount Saint Helena north of Napa Valley where Stevenson wrote “The Silverado Squatters,” a blissful memoir of their time spent together there. The following year they moved to Europe where Stevenson penned “Treasure Island” to entertain Fanny’s son Lloyd. This swashbuckling, coming-of-age children’s story about pirates, buccaneers and buried treasure launched his fame as an adventure writer. In the years that followed, with Fanny’s crucial help, Stevenson wrote “Kidnapped” and the popular psychological thriller, “The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde.” On the advice of doctors, in 1887, the family relocated to a health spa at Saranac Lake, N.Y., but Stevenson’s condition did not improve. The following year they took a train back to San Francisco. Doctors in the Bay Area recommended therapy at Lake Tahoe, where Dr. George M. Bourne had established a popular health spa in Carnelian Bay. The noted physician prescribed “pure mountain air, fresh vegetable juices and abstinence from stimulants, hot and cold mineral baths and trout fishing for a long and healthy life.” But Fanny ruled against the crisp alpine environment and determined to search the tropical Pacific Ocean for the perfect climate that might assuage her husband’s painful illness. The family cruised the South Seas, finally settling on the island of Upolu in Samoa. Their lives were peaceful and healthy until Robert Louis Stevenson died in 1894 of a brain hemorrhage at the age of 45. With love, strength and care, Fanny had kept him alive for years beyond his expected lifespan. Her sister Nellie later wrote: “It seems to me that it is not too much to say that the world owes it to Fanny that [Stevenson] lived to produce his best works.” Three years after Stevenson’s death, Fanny returned to San Francisco. She had money, fame and style. She wore flowing Samoan-style gowns, ornate jewelry, lace, velvet and red ballerina slippers. Although she was approaching 60 years old, she captivated many artistic young men in San Francisco. In 1904 she met Edward “Ned” Field, a 23-year-old dramatist and screenwriter 41 years younger. The couple never married, but for the last decade of her life, Fanny and Field hosted parties in California and toured Europe together. Fanny died of a stroke in Santa Barbara on Feb. 18, 1914, at age 74.

Days after Fanny’s funeral, Field wrote: “For someone who refuses mediocrity, Fanny was simply the only woman in the world. To have known her, to have loved her, would have given meaning enough to a man’s life. But to have been loved by her!” Although Field found it difficult to get over Fanny’s death, six months later he married Belle, who looked so much like Fanny that they matched “feature to feature.” Belle was 22 years older than Ned. n

Robert Louis Stevenson finds his muse

AN ARTFUL LOVE STORY, PART II

BY MARK MCLAUGHLIN

“The air struck chill but tasted good and vigorous in the nostrils — a fine, dry, old mountain atmosphere. I was dead sleepy, but I returned to roost with a grateful mountain feeling in my heart.” - Robert Louis Stevenson

Stevenson family in Hawaii, from left, Robert Louis, Lloyd, Belle, Fanny and Robert’s mother Martha. | Courtesy Library of Congress

Read Part I at TheTahoeWeekly.com