Robert Louis Stevenson was born on November 13, 1850 in Edinburgh, Scotland. He suffered from serious health issues his entire life and spent most of his childhood isolated in the family home. In 1867 he entered the University of Edinburgh to study engineering, but eventually changed his focus to writing. He ended up in London where he became immersed in the city’s literary circles. He was an eccentric character with long hair and velveteen jackets.
In 1876, while on a canoe voyage in Belgium and France, Stevenson met Fanny Van de Grift Osbourne. He was 25 and she was 36. Fanny (1840-1914) was born in Indianapolis and married at the age of 17. She moved with her husband and their son to a silver mine in Nevada. In 1866, while her husband headed off to prospect gold in Idaho, Fanny and her daughter settled in San Francisco. When her husband returned, the family settled into a small cottage in Oakland. In 1869 their third child was born. But infidelities led to multiple separations and in 1875 Fanny took her three children with her to Paris, France. Her youngest son died of tuberculosis a year later and she moved to Grez-Sur-Loing in the south of France, where Fanny was able to support herself and her children by writing magazine articles. It was here that she met Stevenson. They had an affair, but Fanny broke off the relationship and returned to her husband in California in 1878. Soon thereafter she wrote to Stevenson, telling him that she planned on divorcing her husband. Stevenson traveled to California, but the journey proved arduous and he arrived in Monterey near death. Local ranchers found him in a field and nursed him back to health. In December 1879 Stevenson recovered enough to move to San Francisco, moving into lodgings at 608 Bush. He got sick again, and Fanny, now divorced, nursed Stevenson back to health at her cottage at 11th and 18th in Oakland. They married in San Francisco on May 17, 1880 and spent two nights at the Palace Hotel[1] before spending their honeymoon at an abandoned mining camp on Mount Saint Helena. They then traveled to New York and sailed to Great Britain, settling in Westbourne, Dorset. While in Westbourne Stevenson wrote his two most famous books: Treasure Island and The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde.
In 1888 the Stevenson family returned to San Francisco and stayed at the Occidental Hotel[2] before sailing to the South Pacific, arriving in Samoa in December 1889. Stevenson wrote an estimated 700,000 words while he lived there. On December 3, 1894, he died suddenly at the age of 44 of a cerebral hemorrhage and was buried at the top of Mount Vaea. Fanny moved back to San Francisco, spending the remainder of her life publishing and promoting Stevenson’s writings. In 1900 she hired Willis Polk[3] to design a Mediterranean/Tudor-style mansion at 2323 Hyde, across the street from the famous serpentine section of Lombard[4]. Polk designed a stained glass window at the top of the main staircase that depicts Hispaniola, the ship in Treasure Island. It can still be seen today. Her mansion was in the path of the 1906 Fires[5] and was slated to be dynamited, but firefighters forgot the explosives and by the time they returned the winds had shifted and the house was saved.
Fanny was a local celebrity in San Francisco, wearing colorful Polynesian outfits and ostentatious jewelry. In 1908 she moved to Santa Barbara with her companion, writer Edward Salisbury Field Jr. (38 years her junior). Fanny died on February 10, 1914 at the age of 73. Her ashes were buried next to Stevenson on top of Mount Vaea. Field married Fanny’s daughter that same year.
Fanny’s mansion in San Francisco was made into a convent for Carmelite nuns, a silent order of the Catholic Church. It was later converted into an apartment building before once again becoming a single residence. In 2000 it was enlarged from 2 levels to 4 and now boasts 6 bedrooms, 6.5 bathrooms, a 4-car garage and an elevator.
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[1] Palace Hotel: https://thesanfranciscophoenix.com/?p=3616 [2] Occidental Hotel: https://thesanfranciscophoenix.com/?p=4522 [3] Willis Polk: https://thesanfranciscophoenix.com/?p=5219 [4] Lombard Street: https://thesanfranciscophoenix.com/?p=2883 [5] 1906 Earthquake and Fires: https://thesanfranciscophoenix.com/?p=2849
