Robert Louis Stevenson

  connection with Jack the Ripper murders 305

  cultural impact 304

  dream genesis 295–6, 297–8, 328

  echoes of Poe and Hogg 301

  film versions 297, 305, 306, 307

  gothic elements 301–2

  latent sexual meanings in 304–5, 306

  origin of idea 300

  structure and plot 302–4

  success of 307–8, 309, 327–8, 340

  Strong, Austin 254, 289, 420, 447

  Strong, Hervey 254

  Strong, Isobel (née Osbourne, later Field, ‘Belle’) 126, 128, 130, 133, 140, 149, 178, 180, 355: appearance 135

  birth of second son 254

  expecting first child 217

  living in Hawaii 371–2

  marriage to Joe Strong 374–5

  postscript 460

  relationship with mother 135, 186–7, 254

  relationship with RLS 429–30, 433

  in Samoa 420, 429

  in Sydney 398

  Strong, Joseph Dwight 135, 178, 180, 186–7, 198–9, 355–6, 374–5, 385, 396, 424–5

  Swanston (Edinburgh) 40–1

  Swearingen, Roger: Prose Writings of Robert Louis Stevenson 108–9

  Symonds, Catherine 215

  Symonds, John Addington 209–12, 214–15, 304, 384

  syphilis 169

  Tahiti 367–71, 375

  Tati Salmon 370

  Tavernier, Jules 178

  Taylor, Sir Henry 290

  Taylor, Theodosia Alice, Lady 291

  Tebureimoa (King of Butaritari) 379, 380

  Tembinok (King of Apemama) 383

  Times, The 440–1

  Tod, John 41, 42

  Tracy, Spencer 306, 307

  Traquair, Henrietta (RLS’s cousin) 57

  Treasure Island 225–9, 231, 252, 279, 390: appeal of 227

  creation of Long John Silver 228–9

  influences 184

  offer of publication by Cassell 252, 253

  plot 227

  references to in Admiral Guinea 269

  RLS runs out of steam on 226–7

  serialisation in Young Folks 226, 227, 252

  takes shape 225–6

  Trudeau, Dr Edward Livingston 330, 331, 332, 333–4, 446

  tuitui 409, 410

  Tupua Tamasese (King of Samoa) 393–4

  Tulloch, John 202–3

  Twain, Mark 131, 358

  Vailima (Samoa) 405–7, 409–10, 411–12, 415, 420–2, 423, 427, 459–60

  Vailima Letters 409

  Vandegrift, Esther 126

  Vandegrift, Jacob 126, 127, 165

  Vandegrift, Nellie see Sanchez, Nellie

  Victoria, Queen 224

  Virginia City 131–2

  Warden, Jane (née Stevenson, RLS’s aunt) 27

  Weil, Oscar 134

  Wells, H.G. 446

  Whitman, Walt 73, 212: Leaves of Grass 73

  Wilde, Oscar 411n, 443

  Williams, Dora Norton 135, 192, 195

  Williams, Virgil 135, 192

  Wright, Jonathan 182

  Wright, Margaret Berthe 148, 157

  Wrong Box, The 153, 351, 373, 384

  Young, Robert 41

  Young Folks Magazine 226, 245, 252, 313

  Zangwill, Israel 454

  Zassetsky, Nadia 101, 248

  Zassetsky, Nelitchka 101–2

  Acknowledgements

  I would like to thank the following for their help with my research: the librarians and staff of the Bodleian Library; the British Library; the London Library; the Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library, Yale University; New York Public Library; the National Library of Scotland; the Bancroft Library, University of California at Berkeley; les Archives de l’Assistance Publique-Hôpitaux de Paris; the Pacific Room of Apia Library, Upolu, Western Samoa; the Stevenson-Osbourne archive at the Robert Louis Stevenson Silverado Museum, St Helena, Napa, California; the Robert Louis Stevenson Museum at Saranac Lake, New York; the Writers’ Museum, Lady Stair’s House, Edinburgh; the Stevenson Museum at Villa Vailima, Upolu, Western Samoa; and the National University of Samoa. Anyone involved in Stevenson research has reason to be grateful for the website maintained by Richard Dury on behalf of the Association of Stevenson Scholars, an invaluable resource.

  I am indebted to many people for help with specific queries, ideas, leads, suggestions and practical assistance during the writing of this book: Stuart Airlie, Scott Ashley, Mark Bostridge, Kate Clanchy, Aisling Foster, Lyndall Gordon, Siamon Gordon, Elaine Greig, Richard Holmes, Nicola Ireland, Andrew Kelly, Patrick McGuinness, Robyn Marsack, Agnès Masson, Ernest Mehew, Barry Menikoff, Andrew Nash, Nicholas Rankin, Julia Reid, Graham Robb, Karen Steele, Roger Swearingen, Belinda Thomson and Jenny Uglow. Mike Delahunt provided hot drinks and helpful guidance on a freezing January day at Baker’s Cottage, Devon Jersild drove me there; while at the other end of my travels Gatoloai Tili Afamasaga, Mata’ino Te’o and Juliana Tevaga all helped me to a better understanding of Stevenson’s years in Samoa. In Edinburgh Isabel Schmidt and Alison Harman have been kind hosts, as have Belinda and Richard Thomson and John and Felicitas Macfie, current owners of 17 Heriot Row.

  At HarperCollins, I would like to thank Richard Johnson and Robert Lacey for their friendly support and deft editorial skills and Holley Miles for her work on the illustrations. I am especially grateful to the trustees and administrators of the Leverhulme Trust for their award of an emeritus grant for travel expenses related to my research and to the Arts Council for a Writers’ Award in 2003.

  Claire Harman

  AUGUST 2004

  I am grateful to the following for permission to quote from manuscript material in their possession:

  Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library, Yale University

  National Library of Scotland, Edinburgh

  R.L.S. Silverado Museum, St Helena, California

  The Bancroft Library, University of California, Berkeley

  While I have made every effort to contact copyright holders, in some cases this has not proved possible. The publishers would be grateful to hear from anyone who has inadvertently been overlooked.

  Claire Harman

  APRIL 2005

  About the Author

  CLAIRE HARMAN’S first book, a biography of the writer Sylvia Townsend Warner, won the Mail on Sunday/John Llewellyn Rhys Prize in 1990, and her second, Fanny Burney: A Biography, was shortlisted for the Whitbread Award. She has edited Warner’s poems and diaries, as well as works by Robert Louis Stevenson, and writes regularly for the literary press. Since 2003 she has been teaching a course in biography at Columbia University. She lives in New York City and Oxford.

  Notes

  ABBREVIATIONS

  CB – Charles Baxter

  FJS – Frances Jane Sitwell

  FS – Fanny Stevenson (née Vandegrift, formerly Osbourne)

  GB – Graham Balfour

  HJ – Henry James

  IF – Isobel Field (née Osbourne, formerly Strong; ‘Belle’)

  LO – Samuel Lloyd Osbourne

  MIS – Margaret Isabella Stevenson (née Balfour)

  RAMS – Robert Alan Mowbray Stevenson

  RLS – Robert Louis Stevenson

  SC – Sidney Colvin

  TS – Thomas Stevenson

  WEH – William Ernest Henley

  BL – Manuscript Collections, British Library

  MS Bancroft – Stevenson-Osbourne family papers 1839–1970, Bancroft Library, University of California, Berkeley, California

  MS Silverado – Manuscripts relating to Robert Louis Stevenson, Fanny Osbourne and her family in the collection of the Silverado Museum, St Helena, California

  MS Yale – Robert Louis Stevenson Collection, Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library, Yale University, New Haven, Connecticut

  NLS – National Library of Scotland, Edinburgh

  NLS Balfour – National Library of Scotland, Papers of Sir Graham Balfour

  Balfour – G
raham Balfour, The Life of Robert Louis Stevenson, 2 vols (London and New York, 1901)

  Bathurst – Bella Bathurst, The Lighthouse Stevensons (London, 1999)

  Baxter Letters – Delancey Ferguson and Marshall Waingrow (eds), R.L.S.: Stevenson’s Letters to Charles Baxter (London and New Haven, 1956)

  Collected Poems – The Collected Poems of Robert Louis Stevenson, ed. Roger C. Lewis (Edinburgh, 2003)

  Colvin – Sidney Colvin, Memories and Notes (London, 1921)

  Field – Isobel Strong Field, This Life I’ve Loved (London, 1937)

  From Saranac – Margaret Isabella Stevenson, From Saranac to the Marquesas and Beyond (London, 1903)

  Furnas – J.C. Furnas, Voyage to Windward: The Life of Robert Louis Stevenson (London, 1952)

  Gosse – Edmund Gosse, Critical Kit-Kats (London, 1913)

  Hammerton – J.A. Hammerton (ed.), Stevensoniana: An Anecdotal Life and Appreciation of Robert Louis Stevenson (Edinburgh, 1907)

  ICR – Rosaline Masson (ed.), I Can Remember Robert Louis Stevenson (Edinburgh, 1925)

  Letters – Bradford A. Booth and Ernest Mehew (eds), The Letters of Robert Louis Stevenson, 8 vols (Yale University Press, New Haven and London, 1994–95)

  Lucas – E.V. Lucas, The Colvins and their Friends (London, 1928)

  Maixner – Paul Maixner (ed.), Robert Louis Stevenson: The Critical Heritage (London, 1981)

  ‘Memoirs’ – ‘Memoirs of Himself’, Vailima Edition of the Works of Robert Louis Stevenson, vol. 26

  Portrait – Lloyd Osbourne, An Intimate Portrait of R.L.S. (New York, 1924)

  Swearingen – Roger G. Swearingen, The Prose Writings of Robert Louis Stevenson: A Guide (London, 1980)

  Tusitala – The Tusitala Edition of the Works of Robert Louis Stevenson, 35 vols (London, 1923–24)

  Vailima – The Vailima Edition of the Works of Robert Louis Stevenson, 26 vols (New York and London, 1923)

  1 : BARON BROADNOSE

  1 MS Yale

  2 ‘Records of a Family of Engineers’, Vailima, vol. 12, p.411

  3 ‘The Lamplighter’, Collected Poems, p.39

  4 ‘Records of a Family of Engineers’, Vailima, vol. 12, pp.426–7

  5 Ibid., pp.432–3

  6 Quoted in Bathurst, p.72

  7 Ibid., pp.99–100

  8 ‘Thomas Stevenson, Civil Engineer’, Vailima, vol. 12, p.106

  9 Ibid., p.107

  10 Quoted in Bathurst, p.103

  11 Letters, vol. 8, p.235

  12 Collected Poems, p.98

  13 Balfour, vol. 1, p.22

  14 Ibid., p.9

  15 MS Huntington, the Huntington Library, San Marino, California, quoted and partly published in ibid., p.18

  16 Balfour, vol. 1, p.20

  17 Ibid., p.24

  18 Hammerton, p.5

  19 ‘Thomas Stevenson, Civil Engineer’, Vailima, vol. 12, p.108

  20 MS Bancroft

  21 Vailima, vol. 7. p.428

  22 Quoted in Letters, vol. 1, p.31

  23 TS to MIS, 21 June 1848, MS Bancroft

  24 Ibid., 1 March 1850

  25 FS to Dora Williams, September 1880, MS Yale

  26 Balfour, vol. 1, p.8

  27 J.C. Furnas suggests that this may have been due to thyroid problems, and that the ‘croup’ might have been diphtheria; see Furnas, p.421 n8 and 9

  28 ‘Notes of Childhood’, MS Yale, vault 805, box 2

  29 ‘Memoirs’, p.220

  30 FS, in Preface to Collected Poems, Biographical Collection of the Works of Robert Louis Stevenson (New York, 1908), p.vi

  31 ‘Notes of Childhood’, MS Yale, vault 805, box 2

  32 ‘A Chapter on Dreams’, Vailima, vol. 12, p.234

  33 ‘Notes of Childhood’, MS Yale, vault 805, box 2

  34 ‘Memoirs’, pp.215–16

  35 Ibid., p.217

  36 ‘Stevenson’s Infancy’, Vailima, vol. 26, p.276

  37 Ibid., p.280

  38 ‘Memoirs’, pp.209–10

  39 NLS, Acc 10356

  40 MS Bancroft, Robert Louis Stevenson collection of letters and papers c.1873–1949, C-H 107

  41 Furnas, p.31

  42 ‘Memoirs’, p.220

  43 Hammerton, p.12

  44 Vailima, vol. 26, p.295

  45 ICR, p.152

  46 ‘Memoirs’, p.218

  47 Ibid.

  48 Ibid., p.211

  49 FS, in Preface to Collected Poems, Biographical Collection of the Works of Robert Louis Stevenson (New York, 1908), p.vii

  50 ‘Memoirs’, p.214

  51 ‘Reminiscences of Colinton Manse’, MS Yale, vault 805, box 2

  52 ‘Memoirs’, p.213

  53 ‘Reminiscences of Colinton Manse’, MS Yale, vault 805, box 2

  54 RLS to WEH, June 1881, Letters, vol. 3, p.199

  55 ‘A Penny Plain and Twopence Coloured’, Vailima, vol. 12, pp. 169–70

  56 Letters, vol. 1, p.95

  57 Ibid., p.98

  58 Cummy’s Diary: A diary kept by Robert Louis Stevenson’s nurse, Alison Cunningham, while travelling with him on the continent during 1863, with a preface and notes by Robert T. Skinner (London, 1926), p.2

  59 Ibid., p.54

  60 Ibid., p.37

  61 Ibid., p.60

  62 Ibid., p.7

  63 RLS to Emily Robertson, Letters, vol. 5, p.83

  64 NLS Balfour, 9897, ff128–9

  65 Balfour, vol. 1, p.87

  66 NLS Balfour, 9895, f118

  2 : VELVET COAT

  1 Letters, vol. 1, p.111

  2 Vailima, vol. 26, pp.47–8

  3 Jane Whyte Balfour to Graham Balfour, 25 January 1900, NLS Balfour, 9895, f15

  4 Maude Parry to SC, n.d., NLS Balfour, 9896

  5 ICR, pp.34–5

  6 As related by the shepherd’s son; ibid., p.35

  7 ‘Pastoral’, Memories and Portraits, Vailima, vol. 12, pp.76–7

  8 Note to ‘Underwoods’, Collected Poems, p.71

  9 Vailima, vol. 12, p.19

  10 Charles Guthrie, Robert Louis Stevenson: Some Personal Recollections (Edinburgh, 1924), p.24

  11 ‘A Layman’ (Thomas Stevenson), The Immutable Laws of Nature in Relation to God’s Providence (Edinburgh and London, 1868), pp.12–13

  12 Vailima, vol. 12, p.375

  13 Letters, vol. 1, p.121

  14 Memories and Portraits, Vailima, vol. 12, pp.50–1

  15 Letters, vol. 6, p.47

  16 Vailima, vol. 12, pp.49–50

  17 Letters, vol. 1, p.130

  18 ‘The Education of an Engineer’, Vailima, vol. 12, p.376

  19 Ibid.

  20 Letters, vol. 1, p.132

  21 Ibid., p.136

  22 Colvin, p.108

  23 Letters, vol. 1, p.142

  24 ‘Thomas Stevenson, Civil Engineer’, Vailima, vol. 12, p.105

  25 ‘The Education of an Engineer’, Vailima, vol. 12, pp.379, 380

  26 Ibid.

  27 ‘On the Enjoyment of Unpleasant Places’, Vailima, vol. 24, p.340. I have Graham Robb to thank for identifying the quote from Béranger’s ‘Le Refus’

  28 Letters, vol. 1, p.157

  29 Ibid., p.143

  30 Eve Blantyre Simpson, Robert Louis Stevenson (Boston and London, 1906), pp.34–5

  31 Letters, vol. 4, pp.305–6

  32 MS Yale, vault 805, box 2

  33 Letters, vol. 1, p.166

  34 Ibid.

  35 ‘Notes of Childhood’, MS Yale, vault 805, box 2

  36 Ibid., p.4

  37 The Memoirs of Walter Pringle of Greenknow, ed. W. Wood (Edinburgh, 1847), p.6

  38 Moray Maclaren, Stevenson and Edinburgh: A Centenary Study (London, 1950), p.80

  39 Quoted in Letters, vol. 1, p.210

  40 Eve Blantyre Simpson, Robert Louis Stevenson (Boston and London, 1906), pp.29–31

  41 Letters, vol. 1, p.211

  42 Eve Blantyre Simpson, Robert Louis Stevenson (Boston and London, 1906), pp.29, 40

  43 ICR
, p.159. The second meaning of ‘yellow yite’ in the Scottish National Dictionary, vol.10 (Edinburgh, 1976), is ‘a person of small stature’, ‘also [ … ] a general term of contempt’

  44 ‘My brain swims empty and light’, Collected Poems, p.260

  45 NLS Balfour, 9895, f155

  46 This section of RLS’s fragmentary autobiography, written in 1880, is in NLS Balfour, 9897

  47 ‘A College Magazine’, Vailima, vol. 12, p.59

  48 ‘You looked so tempting in the pew’, Collected Poems, pp.243–4

  49 ‘Duddingston’, ibid., p.245

  50 ‘Talk and Talkers’, 2nd paper, Vailima, vol. 12, p.144

  51 NLS Balfour, 9896

  52 ‘Memoirs’, p.223

  53 Letters, vol. 1, p.208

  54 Ibid., p.193

  55 MS Yale; published in Tusitala, vol. 30, and in the Edinburgh Edition of the Works of Robert Louis Stevenson

  56 Vailima, vol. 12, pp.235–6

  57 Letters, vol. 1, p.188

  58 Ibid., p.198

  59 Gosse, p.276

  60 Ibid., p.277

  61 Kidnapped, Vailima, vol. 9, pp.170–1

  62 Memories and Portraits, Vailima, vol. 12, p.98

  63 It was printed posthumously as an ‘unfinished treatise’ in the Edinburgh Edition

  64 ‘Reflections and Remarks on Human Life’, Vailima, vol. 26, p.117

  65 ‘A College Magazine’, Vailima, vol. 12, p.58

  66 Quoted in Letters, vol. 1, p.41 n3

  67 Collected Poems, p.312

  68 ‘Memoir of Fleeming Jenkin’, Vailima, vol. n, p.529

  69 NLS, Acc 4534

  70 D.A. Stevenson to GB, n.d., NLS Balfour, 9895, f37

  71 Letters, vol. 6, p.47

  72 MS Yale, box 2, vol. 4, folder D

  3 : THE CARELESS INFIDEL

  1 Charles Guthrie, Robert Louis Stevenson: Some Personal Recollections (Edinburgh, 1924), p.31

  2 NLS, MS 9822, Law Notes, Caricatures, Drawings and Verses

  3 ICR, p.100

  4 Ibid., p.101

  5 Charles Guthrie, Robert Louis Stevenson: Some Personal Recollections (Edinburgh, 1924), P.34

  6 Sir Alfred Ewing, An Engineer’s Outlook (London, n.d.), p.250

  7 ICR, p.123

  8 An amusing account of how this yacht, the Purgle, got into trouble on its maiden voyage is included in RLS’s ‘Memoir of Fleeming Jenkin’, Vailima, vol. 11