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[Illustration: Fanny Van de Grift Stevenson during the English
period.]
THE LIFE OF
MRS. ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON
BY
NELLIE VAN DE GRIFT SANCHEZ
ILLUSTRATED
LONDON
CHATTO & WINDUS
1920
Copyright, 1920, by Charles Scribner's Sons, for the
United States of America
Printed by the Scribner Press
New York, U. S. A.
TO
ISOBEL FIELD
IN TOKEN OF OUR COMMON LOVE FOR
HER WHOSE LIFE STORY IS TOLD IN ITS PAGES
THIS BOOK
IS AFFECTIONATELY DEDICATED.
PREFACE
When I first set out to tell the life story of Mrs. Robert Louis
Stevenson, I received the following letter from her old friend Mr.
Bruce Porter:
"Once when I urged your sister to set down the incidents of her life
she listened, pondered, and then dismissed the suggestion as
impossible, as her life had been like a dazed rush on a railroad
express, and she despaired of recovering the incidental memories. The
years with Stevenson have of course been adequately told, but the
earlier period--Indianapolis and California--had a romance as
stirring, even if sharpened by the American glare. This sharpness has
already, for all of us, begun to fade, to take on the glamour of time
and distance, and I cannot think of a better literary service than to
make the fullest possible record now, before it utterly fades away."
It was not only the difficulty of recalling events that caused her to
resist all urgings to undertake this task, but a certain shy
reluctance in speaking of herself that was characteristic of her. It
has, therefore, fallen to me to collect the widely scattered material
from various parts of the world and weave it into a coherent whole as
best I may, but my regret will never cease that she did not herself
tell her own story.
It would take a more competent pen than mine to do her justice; but
whoever reads this book from cover to cover will surely agree that no
woman ever had a life of more varied experiences nor went through them
all with a stauncher courage.
It is right that I should acknowledge here my profound obligation to
the kind friends who have generously placed their personal
recollections at my disposal. These are more definitely referred to in
the body of the book. Aside from these personal contributions, the
main sources of material have been as follows:
Ancestral genealogies, including _The Descendants of Jöran Kyn_, by
Doctor Gregory B. Keen, secretary of the Pennsylvania Historical
Society.
Data concerning the genealogy of the Keen and Van de Grift families
collected by Frederic Thomas, of New York, nephew of Mrs. Stevenson.
Notes covering the life of Mrs. Stevenson up to the age of sixteen
years, as dictated by herself.
A collection of her own letters to friends and relatives.
Letters to Mrs. Stevenson from friends.
Extracts from various books and magazines, including _The Letters of
Mrs. M. I. Stevenson_ (Methuen and Company, London); _The Life of
Robert Louis Stevenson_, by Graham Balfour; _The Letters of Robert
Louis Stevenson_, edited by Sidney Colvin; _Vailima Memories_, by
Lloyd Osbourne and Isobel Osbourne Strong, now Mrs. Salisbury Field;
_The Cruise of the Janet Nichol_, by Mrs. Robert Louis Stevenson;
_McClure's_, _Scribner's_, and the _Century_ magazines. Acknowledgment
is due the publishers of the above books and periodicals for their
courteous permissions.
A diary kept by Mrs. Stevenson of her life in Samoa, for which I am
indebted to the considerate kindness of Miss Gladys Peacock, an
English lady, into whose hands the diary fell by accident.
My own personal recollections.
Above all, I wish to express my heartfelt gratitude to Mrs.
Stevenson's daughter, Isobel Field, without whose unflagging zeal in
forwarding the work it could scarcely have been carried to a
successful conclusion, and to my son, Louis A. Sanchez, for valuable
assistance in the actual writing of the book.
N. V. S.
Berkeley, California, January, 1919.
CONTENTS
CHAPTER PAGE
I. Ancestors 1
II. Early Days in Indiana 9
III. On the Pacific Slope 26
IV. France, and the Meeting at Grez 42
V. In California with Robert Louis Stevenson 55
VI. Europe and the British Isles 82
VII. Away to Sunnier Lands 124
VIII. The Happy Years in Samoa 167
IX. The Lonely Days of Widowhood 226
X. Back To California 260
XI. Travels in Mexico and Europe 279
XII. The Last Days at Santa Barbara 297
ILLUSTRATIONS
Fanny Van de Grift Stevenson during the English period.
_Frontispiece_
Facing Page
John Keen, about 83 years of age, maternal great-grandfather
of Fanny Van de Grift Stevenson. 2
Jacob Van de Grift, about 56 years of age, father of Fanny
Van de Grift Stevenson. 6
The Van de Grift residence at the corner of Illinois and
Washington Streets, Indianapolis. 22
The bridge at Grez. 46
Fanny Osbourne at about the time of her first meeting with
Robert Louis Stevenson. 48
Robert Louis Stevenson in the French days. 50
Fanny Osbourne at the time of her marriage to Robert
Louis Stevenson. 78
The house at Vailima with the additions made to the first
structure. 194
Mrs. Robert Louis Stevenson. 262
The house at Hyde and Lombard Streets, San Francisco,
with some alterations in the way of bay windows, etc.,
which have been made since Mrs. Stevenson sold it. 266
The house at Vanumanutagi ranch. 274
Stonehedge at Santa Barbara. 298
The last portrait of Mrs. Stevenson. 306
The funeral procession as it wound up the hill. 332
The tomb, showing the bronze tablet with the verse from
Stevenson's poem to his wife. 336
THE LIFE OF MRS. ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON
CHAPTER I
ANCESTORS.
To arrive at a full understanding of the complex and unusual character
of Fanny Van de Grift Stevenson, which perhaps played as large a part
as her beauty and intellectual charm in drawing to her the affections
of one of the greatest romance writers of our day, one must go back
and seek out all the uncommon influences that combined to produce
it--a long line of sturdy ancestors, running back to the first
adventurers who left their sheltered European homes and sailed across
the sea to try their fortunes in a wild, unknown land; her childhood
days spent among the hardy surroundings of pioneer Indiana, with its
hints of a past tropical age and its faint breath of Indian
reminiscence; the early breaking of her own family ties and her
fearless adventuring by way of the Isthmus of Panama to the distant
land of gold, and her brave struggle against adverse circumstances in
the mining camps of Nevada. All these prenatal influences and personal
experiences, so foreign to the protected lives of the women of
Stevenson's own race, threw about her an atmosphere of thrilling New
World romance that appealed with irresistible force to the man who was
himself Romance personified.
Fanny Stevenson was a lineal descendant of two of the oldest families
in the United States, her first ancestors landing in this country in
the early part of the seventeenth century. In 1642 Jöran Kyn, called
"The Snow White," reached America in the ship _Fama_ as a member of
the life-guard of John Printz, governor of the Swedish colony
established in the New World by King Gustavus Adolphus. He took up a
large tract of land and was living in peace and comfort on the
Delaware River when William Penn landed in America. He was the
progenitor of eleven generations of descendants born on American soil.
His memory is embalmed in an old document still extant as "a man who
never irritated even a child."
In the list of his descendants one Matthias stands out as "a tall
handsome man, with a very melodious voice which could be intelligibly
heard at times across the Delaware."
[Illustration: John Keen, about 83 years of age, maternal
great-grandfather of Fanny Van de Grift Stevenson.]
A later descendant, John Keen, born in 1747, fought and shed his blood
in the war of American Independence, having been wounded in the battle
of Princeton while in the act of delivering a message to General
Washington. It was he who married Mildred Cook, daughter of James
Cook, an English sea-captain who commanded the _London Packet_, plying
between London and New York. Family tradition has it that he was a
near relative of Captain Cook of South Sea fame. When Fanny Stevenson
went a-sailing in the South Seas, following in the track of the great
explorer, she boldly claimed this kinship, and, much to her
delight, was immediately christened Tappeni Too-too, which was as near
as the natives could come to Captain Cook's name.
We have a charming old-fashioned silhouette portrait in our family of
a lovely young creature with a dainty profile and curls gathered in a
knot. It is "sweet Kitty Weaver," who married John Cook Keen, son of
the Revolutionary hero, and became the grandmother of Fanny Stevenson.
Little Fanny, when on a visit to Philadelphia in her childhood days,
was shown a pair of red satin slippers worn by this lady, and was no
doubt given a lecture on the folly of vanity, for it was by walking
over the snow to her carriage in the little red slippers that sweet
Kitty Weaver caught the cold which caused her death.
Our mother, Esther Thomas Keen, one of John and Kitty Keen's six
children, was born in Philadelphia, December 3, 1811. She was
described by one who knew her in her youth as "a little beauty of the
dark vivid type, with perfectly regular features, black startled eyes,
and quantities of red-brown curls just the color of a cherry wood
sideboard that stood in her house." She was a tiny creature, under
five feet in height, and never in her life weighed more than ninety
pounds; but in spite of that she was exceedingly strong, swift in her
movements, straight as an arrow to the end of her days, and always
went leaping up the stairs, even when she was over eighty. Fear was
absolutely unknown to her. She once caught a mad dog and held its
mouth shut with her hands, protecting her children till help came.
She was resourceful in emergency, whether it was sickness or accident,
and never lost her presence of mind. She had a tender sympathy for
animals and all weak, suffering, and young creatures, and it could be
truthfully said of her, as of Jöran Kyn, her ancestor, that she "never
irritated even a child." Her daughter Fanny said of her: "I never
heard my mother speak an angry word, no matter what the provocation,
and she was the mother of seven children. No matter what the offense
might be she always found an excuse." In this she was like the old
Scotch woman who, when told she would find something to praise even in
the devil, said: "Weel, there's nae denyin' he's a verra indoostrious
body."
It was from our little mother that my sister Fanny inherited her vivid
dark beauty, her reticence, her fortitude in suffering, her
fearlessness in the presence of danger, and her unfailing
resourcefulness.
Jacob Leendertsen Van de Grift, the first paternal ancestor of whom we
have any record, settled in Bucks County, Pennsylvania, towards the
close of the seventeenth century. The graves of several of his
descendants are still to be seen in the fine old cemetery at
Andalusia, and upon the tombstone of one of them is this epitaph:
"Farewell my friends and wife so dear,
I am not dead but sleeping here.
My debts are paid, my grave you see."
This name has descended in an unbroken line from Jacob Leendertsen Van
de Grift, of New Amsterdam, through eleven generations, to the
brother of Fanny Stevenson, Jacob Van de Grift, of Riverside,
California.
John Miller, a paternal great-grandfather of ours, was also Dutch. The
family account of him is that he fought at Brandywine, crossed the
Delaware with Washington, was wounded at the battle of Trenton, and
that when he died, at the age of eighty-four years, the city of
Philadelphia paid him the tribute of burial with military honours.
Miller married twice, and it was Elizabeth, a daughter by his second
wife, who married a Jacob Van de Grift.
Her son, Jacob Van de Grift, was born in Philadelphia in 1816. Upon
the early death of her first husband she married again, presenting to
her children the cruel stepfather of fiction. Indeed, the story of our
father's childhood and youth and the adventures of his brothers and
sisters reads more like melodrama than sober fact. One brother, Harry,
wandering disconsolate in the market-place, was carried off by a kind
and wealthy Kentuckian, who took a fancy to the handsome boy and
brought him up as his own son. Matilda, the beauty of the family,
seeing a peaceful Quaker couple sitting by a window, was so struck by
the contrast between their gentle lives and her own that she went into
the house and asked to be allowed to stay with them. The kind-hearted
people were so touched by her distress and beauty that they adopted
her as their own. Little Jacob, encouraged by the success of his
brother and sister, ran away on his own account, but fell into evil
hands, and was beaten and ill-used until rescued by his beautiful
sister Matilda. Fortunately for Jacob, he found favour in the sight of
Grandfather Miller, who educated him, dressed him well, and gave him a
good allowance. At this time there was an outbreak of small riots in
Philadelphia, caused by roughs attacking the Quakers. The
"shadbellies," as they were derisively called, did not fight back,
which made the sport all the more alluring to the cowardly rioters.
Young Van de Grift, who was an excellent amateur boxer, joined in
these frays with enthusiasm in defense of the Quakers. It was not only
his fine American spirit of fair play that urged him into these
fights, but he felt a deep gratitude to the Quakers all his life on
account of his sister Matilda. Strangely enough, Grandfather Miller
disapproved of young Van de Grift's conduct. He scolded and fumed, and
when, early one morning, his grandson was found on his door-step
beaten black and blue, the unreasonable old man, utterly losing sight
of the chivalric cause, sent the troublesome lad away--to the farthest
place, in fact, that he could reach. This place turned out to be the
frontier backwoods town of Indianapolis, Indiana.
Here Jacob's attention was soon attracted by a pretty young woman, a
tiny, dainty creature named Esther Keen (our mother, whom I have
already described), who was on a visit to her sister. The records show
that they were married in Philadelphia in 1837.
[Illustration: Jacob Van de Grift, about 56 years of age, father of
Fanny Van de Grift Stevenson.]
Like many another irresponsible young man, Jacob Van de Grift married
became quite a different person. Returning to Indianapolis, he
built a house for himself with the aid of friends, and, launching out
into the lumber business, soon became one of the prosperous and solid
citizens of the place. His house was on the "Circle," next door to
Henry Ward Beecher's church. This was Mr. Beecher's first pastorate,
and between him and his neighbour a warm friendship sprang up. In
after years, when Beecher had become a national figure and scandal
attacked his name, the friend of his youth, Jacob Van de Grift, clung
loyally to his faith in his old pastor and firmly refused to believe
any of the charges against him.
The little house on the Circle was made into a pleasant home partly by
furniture sent by Jacob's mother from Philadelphia, partly by articles
made by himself, for he had served a short apprenticeship at
cabinet-making while living in his grandfather's house. Among other
pieces of furniture made by him was the cradle in which Fanny Van de
Grift was rocked. As long as she lived she never forgot just how this
cradle looked.
Jacob Van de Grift, father of Fanny Van de Grift Stevenson, was a
fine-looking man, broad-shouldered and deep-chested, slightly above
medium height, blue-eyed, black-haired, and with the regular features
and rosy complexion of his Dutch ancestors. One particularly noticed
the extraordinarily keen expression of his eyes, which seemed to pin
you to the wall when he looked at you. This penetrating glance was
inherited by his daughter Fanny, and was often remarked upon by those
who met her. He made money easily but spent it royally, and, in
consequence, died comparatively poor. He had a hasty temper but a
generous heart, and while his hand was always open to the poor and
unhappy, it was a closed fist ready to strike straight from the
shoulder to resent an insult or defend the oppressed. Like his
ancestor of the Andalusia cemetery, he could not endure to owe any man
a debt. It was from our father that my sister Fanny inherited her
broad and tolerant outlook on life, her hatred of injustice and
cruelty, her punctiliousness in money matters, and her steadfast
loyalty to friends.