Mrs. Robert Louis Stevenson, who has been ill in New York, has recovered
and has gone to England for an indefinite stay. It is, however, her
purpose to make her home again ultimately in San Francisco. Her presence
in England is necessary, as Mr. Sidney Colvin is now engaged in writing
the "Life of Stevenson," and depends upon Mrs. Stevenson for aid in
compilation, and in deciding what shall be said and what shall be left
out. A great deal has been said about the Stevensons which might much
better have been left unsaid, for the simple reason that it is not true.
Like the old story of Phillips Brooks and the boy with the "Episcopalian
Kittens," some of the truthless tales are harmless. Others are less
innocuous than the imaginative yarns which are always likely to be current
about any bright personality, any "shining mark," like Stevenson and his
accomplished wife.
Now that he is dead, and Mrs. Stevenson has gone to his native Britain, it
is well to deny authoritatively the absurd story which has often been
revived during the past twenty years that Mrs. Stevenson's first husband,
Mr. Osbourne, gave her away in marriage on the day of her wedding to
Robert Louis Stevenson, and that Stevenson afterwards fraternized with his
predecessor. As a matter of fact, Stevenson never in his life even saw the
father of Lloyd Osbourne, who was about fourteen years of age at the time
of his mother's marriage to the famous Scot. The father of Stevenson, an
old-time Presbyterian gentlemen, made Lloyd Osbourne his heir, thus wholly
welcoming his beloved daughter-in-law in the family, where she and her
children have found happiness and where they gave so much. It is advisedly
said that the elder Stevenson made Lloyd Osbourne his heir, his property
to be that of his son's step-child after the death of his son and that
son's wife. It is well known that Stevenson's mother was with his family
in Samoa, and this dignified and conservative lady also followed the
custom of the country which the family followed, in homely phrase, "going
bare-footed" at home. Pictures of Stevenson in his Samoa home, enjoying
the freedom of this native fashion, have been common enough. This Samoan
custom seemed simple and natural to any one who saw the Stevensons in
Samoa going without shoes and stockings, quite as summer girls on the
Massachusetts shore have gone about without gloves or hats during recent
years, an unconventionality which would once have shocked thousands. The
matter would not be worth mentioning, but a curious myth about Mrs.
Stevenson has sprung from it. A paragraph has been floating through
contemporaries in several cities of late, to the effect that Mrs.
Stevenson went out to dine in London, when first introduced there by her
husband, without shoes and stockings! This little yarn really denies
itself on the face of it. As a matter of fact, Mrs. Stevenson's conformity
to social customs has never been found insufficient wherever she has been.
She is a woman of original talents and great adaptability of talent who,
for many years, was the nurse, the "guide, philosopher and friend," as
well as the beloved wife of the child of genius whose name she bears. She
was studying art in Paris, where she had gone with her three children,
when she first met Robert Louis Stevenson, who was among the artists and
literary folk at Barbizon. She returned to America with her daughter and
her son--one son had died while she was in France--and readily got a
divorce from Mr. Osbourne. No word concerning the father of her children
has ever been uttered for publication by Mrs. Stevenson, or ever will be.
He married a second time and, after a while, left his wife and
disappeared. He has since been seen in South Africa. It is here repeated
that Robert Louis Stevenson never saw him. Mrs. Stevenson wished to delay
her second marriage for a year, but Stevenson had travelled over land and
sea to California, and was ill and homesick. So, by the advice of a close
friend, the marriage was not long postponed. This friend was Mrs. Virgil
Williams, wife of the well-known teacher of painting in San Francisco, the
founder of that pioneer art school of the West, which, since Mr.
Williams's death, was munificently endowed by Mr. Searles as the Hopkins
Institute. Mrs. Williams went with the pair to the house of Dr. Scott, a
Presbyterian minister of San Francisco, who married Mr. and Mrs.
Stevenson. Nobody else was present at the private wedding, except Mrs.
Scott, the wife of the minister. This divine made Stevenson a present of a
religious book of his own writing to read on the journey to Scotland, and
the whimsical fear of Stevenson that he might not read it all while
crossing the continent and the Atlantic was characteristic. But if he felt
that this was not sufficiently light reading for a steamer journey he
appreciated the gift, and in return sent Dr. Scott a book on a like topic
written by his father in Scotland.
"People are very much like folks"; the fairy tales which are told about
the famous are very likely to need large grains of salt in the taking. The
simple truth about the Stevensons was that theirs was a peculiarly
fortunate and happy marriage, and that if they lived in Bohemia it was "on
the airy uplands" of that land, where freedom of personal action never
meant wilful foolish eccentricity or lack of conformity to the canons of
true courtesy and kindness.