Memories of RES

SINCE we published the old photograph of the Robert Louis Stevenson group, and said that a Sydney newspaper had described the lady looking over his left shoulder as his “Samoan wife,” a number of people have sent in the correct names of the persons concerned. The lady, of course, was not a Samoan wife at all, but was Stevenson’s well-known step-daughter, Mrs. Isobel Field, who herself later achieved some fame as a writer.

American author, J. C. Furnas—who is preparing a book to mark the centenary of Stevenson’s birth —reports that Mrs.

Field is still well and mentally alert, at the great age of 93. She resides at Santa Barbara, in California.

Our old friend, Captain Frank S. Whit combe, aged 78, writes from Levuka, Fiji, on the same subject. He identifies the lady as Stevenson’s step-daughter; and says that the party travelled from Samoa to Sydney in 1891, and that the Lubeck (a German steamer) broke her tail shaft, and lay on the high seas for four or five days while a repair was made.

“If you look at ‘Vailima Letters’ —the 1895, red-paper-cover edition —pages 181 to 190,” says Whitcombe, “you will read about ‘Frank the Sailor.’ That was me.

The Tongan half-caste boy, Jimmy, was James Ledger, of Nukualofa. We were together in Apia for six weeks, that trip, and I have never forgotten our friendship with RLS.”