We Try Again!

I¥7E printed this rare old photograph of TT Robert Louis Stevenson and his family in November PIM, with the caption from the Sydney Mirror (where it had originally appeared). The Mirror stated that the group consisted of RLS, his sister, mother and “Samoan wife.”

We had never heard of Stevenson having a Samoan wife, and said so. We now

learn that the “Samoan wife” is actually Isobel Field, or as she was then, Isobel Strong, the American step daughter of RLS.

This has caused the PIM editorial depart ment some slight redness of face as Mrs. Field and the editor of PIM carried on a friendly corres pondence for many years! The corres pondence ceased about the end of the war, when Mrs.

Field, a very old lady

living in California, ended it because of failing sight. Mrs. Field’s book about Stevenson and his family in the Pacific (This Life I’ve Loved) with a photograph of Mrs. Field, has been in the PIM library ever since it was first published.

So, we stand corrected—by Mr. James Tyrrell of Sydney’s famous bookshop, an authority on Australian and Pacific manu scripts and books. He informs us that the group, from left to right, is Mrs.

Robert Louis Stevenson; RLS; Mrs.

Strong (later Field); and Mrs. Stevenson, Snr., RLS’s mother. The Mirror cap tion described Mrs. Stevenson (the younger) as RLS’s sister.

Mr. Tyrrell says that Fanny Osborne divorced her first husband in America and married RLS. There were two child ren of her first marriage, Lloyd and Iso bel. Both became members of the very happy Stevenson menage in Samoa where they were joined by RLS’s mother. Isobel Osborne married Strong; later she divorced him and some time after Steven son’s death, married a Mr. Field. She probably is still living in California.