Robert Louis Stevenson and family, March 1893
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Silver gelatin photoprint
This striking photograph taken by Freeman and Company in Sydney in March 1893 is an instance of late-Victorian studio photography at its best … Four stronger personalities than these it is hard to imagine, and they are here captured together: intense, separate, and yet relaxed, at ease in one another’s company, and also focused on the occasion. Belle’s leaning in behind the others is a brilliant stroke that gives the picture concentration, intimacy, intensity and depth.
Footnotes
Roger G Swearingen, ‘Robert Louis Stevenson in Australia: Treasures in the
State Library of New South Wales’, 2013
I am now very dandy
By Stevenson to Sidney Colvin, Letter 2548, quoted in RG Swearingen ‘Robert Louis Stevenson in Australia: Treasures in the State Library of New South Wales’, 2013
At the time this photograph was taken
Robert Louis Stevenson was forty-two years old. On the eve of their arrival
back in Samoa on 29 March 1893, he remarked to a friend that they had had ‘some
splendid photos taken’ … ‘I am now very dandy; I announced two years ago that I
should change. Slovenly youth, all right – not slovenly age. So really now I am
pretty spruce: always a white shirt, white necktie, fresh shave, silk socks, O
a great sight!’
Writer and politician
By Stevenson to Sidney Colvin, Letter 2548, quoted in RG Swearingen ‘Robert Louis Stevenson in Australia: Treasures in the State Library of New South Wales’, 2013
When this photograph was taken, Stevenson
was not only a famous writer. He was important politically and his views were
being taken seriously in London as well as in the Pacific. He was much in
demand for interviews, on Samoan politics and South Seas matters such as the
labour trade and missions as well as on literature. ‘I was entertained at the
General Assembly of the Presbyterian Church; likewise at a sort of artistic
club of a very rowdy character; made speeches at both and may therefore be said
to have been like Saint Paul, all things to all men … Had some splendid photos
taken, likewise a medallion by a French sculptor’.
Bohemian in the bush
By John Tighe Ryan, ‘A Gossip About Robert Louis Stevenson’, The Antipodean, Sydney, 1893
Stevenson
is said to have spent a night ‘at the artists’ camp in Balmoral’ on the north
shore of Sydney Harbour. ‘[T]here he chummed with the cook, ‘Old Ben’, a
stranded, weather-beaten sea-dog, full of reminiscences from all quarters of
the world. Ben is now recognized in one of the novelist’s books, and is the
possessor of a presentation copy of ‘Treasure Island’.
Robert and Fanny
By RG Swearingen, ‘Robert Louis Stevenson in Australia: Treasures in the State Library of New South Wales’, 2013
Robert
Louis Stevenson and Frances (Fanny) Vandegrift Osbourne met at Grez – an
artists’ colony not far from Paris – in 1876. At that time Fanny was married to
Sam Osbourne with whom she had three children: Isobel (Belle), Lloyd and Hervey
(who died aged 5 a few months before Stevenson and Fanny met). With Stevenson’s
support Fanny divorced her chronically unfaithful husband in 1879, then went on
to marry Stevenson in San Francisco in 1880.
The best move I ever made
By Robert Louis Stevenson to Anne Jenkin, 5 December 1892 quoted in RG Swearingen ‘Robert Louis Stevenson in Australia: Treasures in the State Library of New South Wales’, 2013
‘[M]y marriage was hugely in the teeth of what my parents wanted’,
Stevenson remarked to a close friend a few months before this photograph was
taken; ‘they were deeply hurt – I think they were near despairing over it. And
now, as I look back, I think it was the best move I ever made in my life’
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