“They do not make life easy as he frequently found.”
His resting-place on the crest of Væa Mountain is covered by a tomb of gray stone. On one side is inscribed in English the verses he had written for his own requiem:
A
1850
ROBERT LOUIS
STEVENSON
Ω
1894
“Under the wide and starry sky,
Dig the grave and let me lie,
Glad did I live and gladly die,
And I laid me down with a will.
“This be the verse you grave for me:
Here he lies where he longed to be;
Home is the sailor, home from the sea,
And the hunter home from the hill.”
The tomb of Stevenson on Væa Mountain
On the other side, written in Samoan and surrounded by carvings of thistles, his native flowers, and the hibiscus flowers, emblem of the South, are the words from the Bible:
“Whither thou goest I will go, and where thou lodgest I will lodge; thy people shall be my people; and thy God my God; where thou diest will I die, and there will I be buried.”
The Samoan chiefs have forbidden the use of firearms upon Væa hillside, “that the birds may live there undisturbed, and raise above his grave the songs he loved so well.”
“Tusitala, the lover of children, the teller of tales,
Giver of counsels and dreams, a wonder, a world’s delight,
Looks o’er the labours of men in the plain and the hills; and the sails
Pass and repass on the sea that he loved, in the day and the night.”
— ANDREW LANG.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
SOME WORKS IN RELATION TO STEVENSON’S LIFE, WRITTEN BY HIMSELF AND OTHERS
GENERAL BIOGRAPHY
Balfour, Graham: “Life of Robert Louis Stevenson.” Two vols.
Colvin, Sidney, ed.: “Letters of Robert Louis Stevenson,” with biographical notes and an introduction by the editor.
Simpson, E. Blantyre: “The Robert Louis Stevenson Originals.”
Strong, Mrs. Isobel: “Robert Louis Stevenson.”
Watts, Lauchlan Maclean: “Hills of Home” — with Pentland Essays by R.L. Stevenson.
Watts: “Robert Louis Stevenson.”
ANCESTORS
Stevenson, R.L.: “A Family of Engineers.”
— — “Thomas Stevenson” — in “Memories and Portraits.”
Stevenson: “Picturesque Notes on Edinburgh” — In “Essays of Travel and in the Art of Writing.”
Talbot, F.A.: “Lightships and Lighthouses.” Chapters relating to the building of Bell Rock and Skerryvore.
Poems by Stevenson: “To My Father.” “Skerryvore.”
CHILDHOOD AND SCHOOL-DAYS
Stevenson, R.L.: “The Manse” — in “Memories and Portraits.”
— — “Penny Plain and Twopence Coloured” — in “Memories and Portraits.”
— — “Child’s Play” — in “Virginibus Puerisque.”
— — “The Lantern Bearers” — in “Across the Plains.”
— — “Child’s Garden of Verses.”
THE STUDENT AND WANDERER
Simpson, E. Blantyre: “Robert Louis Stevenson’s Edinburgh Days.”
Stevenson, R.L.: “An Apology for Idlers” — in “Virginibus Puerisque.”
— — “Crabbed Age and Youth” — in “Virginibus Puerisque.”
— — “Walking Tours” — in “Virginibus Puerisque.”
— — “Some College Memories” — in “Memories and Portraits.”
— — “Old Mortality” — in “Memories and Portraits.”
— — “A College Magazine” — in “Memories and Portraits.”
— — “Pastoral” — in “Memories and Portraits.”
— — “An Old Scotch Gardener” — in “Memories and Portraits.”
— — “Books Which Have Influenced Me” — in “Later Essays.”
— — “Memories of an Islet” — in “Memories and Portraits.”
— — “Random Memories” — in “Across the Plains.”
— — “Memoir of Fleeming Jenkin.”
— — “An Inland Voyage.”
— — “Travels with a Donkey in the Cévennes.”
Low, Will H.: “A Chronicle of Friendships.” Chapters dealing with Stevenson’s days in the artists’ colonies of Fontainebleau and Paris.
Poems by Stevenson: “The Vagabond.”
“The Song of the Road.”
“Bright is the Ring of Words.”
“Youth and Love,” II.
“The Canoe Speaks.”
“A Camp.”
“The Country of the Carnisards.”
“Our Lady of the Snows.”
“To a Gardener.”
“To Will H. Low.”
“To Andrew Lang.”
FIRST VISIT TO AMERICA
Shipman, L.E.: “First Landing in New York” — In Book Buyer, vol. 13, .
Stevenson, R.L.: “The Amateur Emigrant.”
— — “Across the Plains.”
— — “The Old Pacific Capital (Monterey)” — in “Across the Plains.”
— — “The Silverado Squatters.”
SCOTLAND AGAIN
Gosse, Edmund: “Personal Memories of Stevenson” — in Century, vol. 28, .
Osbourne, Lloyd: “Stevenson at Play” — in Scribner’s Magazine, vol. 24, .
Stevenson, Mrs. R.L.: Preface to Biographical edition of “Treasure Island.”
Stevenson, R.L.: “My First Book, ‘Treasure Island’” — in McClure’s Magazine, vol. 3, .
— — “Chapter on Dreams” — in “Across the Plains.”
Stevenson, Mrs. R.L.: Preface to the Biographical edition of “Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde.”
Poems by Stevenson: “Skerryvore, the Parallel.”
“Bells upon the City are Ringing in the Night.”
“I Know Not How It Is With You.”
“Ticonderoga — a Legend of the West Highlands.”
“Heather Ale — a Galloway Legend.”
SECOND VISIT TO AMERICA
Low, Will H.: “Chronicle of Friendships.” Chapters relating to Stevenson’s second visit to New York and his meeting with General Sherman and the sculptor, Augustus Saint-Gaudens.
Saint-Gaudens, Augustus: “Reminiscences of Saint-Gaudens.” Chapters dealing with Mr. Saint-Gaudens’s recollections of Stevenson at the time he made his portrait.
Stevenson, Mrs. Margaret: “Letters — From Saranac to the Marquesas and Beyond.”
Poems by Stevenson: “In the States.”
“Winter.”
IN THE SOUTH SEAS
Stevenson, Mrs. Margaret: “Letters — From Saranac to the Marquesas and Beyond.”
Stevenson, R.L.: “In the South Seas.”
Stevenson, Mrs. R.L.: “Cruise of the Janet Nichol Among the South Sea Islands — a Diary.”
Stevenson, R.L.: “Beach of Falesá,” “Isle of Voices,” “Bottle Imp” — in “Island Nights’ Entertainments.”
— — “The Wrecker.”
— — “The Ebb Tide.”
—— Letters Dealing with Pacific Voyages and Life in Samoa — in his collected letters edited by Sidney Colvin.
Stevenson, Mrs. Margaret: “Letters from Samoa.”
Stevenson, R.L.: “A Foot-Note to History. Eight Years of Trouble in Samoa.”
Strong, Mrs. Isobel, and Osbourne, Lloyd: “Memories of Vailima.”
Stevenson, R.L.: “Prayers Written at Vailima.”
Poems by Stevenson: “The Song of Rahéro — a Legend of Tahiti.”
“The Feast of Famine — Marquesan Manners.”
“To an Island Princess.”
“To Kalakaua.”
“To Princess Kaiulani.”
“The House of Tembinoka.”
“The Woodman.”
“Tropic Rain.”
“To My Wife.�
��
“To My Wife” (a fragment).
Poems of Farewell: “The Morning Drum-Call on My Eager Ear.”
“In the Highlands, in the Country Places.”
“To My Old Familiars.”
“The Tropics Vanish.”
“To S.C.”
“To S.R. Crockett.”
“Evensong.”
“We Uncommiserate Pass into the Night.”
“I Have Trod the Upward and Downward Slope.”
“An End of Travel.”
“The Celestial Surgeon.”
“Home No More Home to Me, Whither Must I Wander?”
“Farewell, Fair Day and Fading Light.”
“Requiem.”
Lang, Andrew: “Tusitala” — in “Later Collected Verses.”
THE LIFE OF MRS. ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON by Nellie Van De Grift Sanchez
CONTENTS
PREFACE
CHAPTER I
CHAPTER II
CHAPTER III
CHAPTER IV
CHAPTER V
CHAPTER VI
CHAPTER VII
CHAPTER VIII
CHAPTER IX
CHAPTER X
CHAPTER XI
CHAPTER XII
Fanny Van de Grift Stevenson
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.
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.”
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. Sh
e 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 colour 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.
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