Newspaper Error

RLS’s Stepdaughter , 92, Laughs at Newspaper Error

A FEW months ago, an old picture was found in Sydney, showing Robert Louis Stevenson in a group, which had been photographed in Sydney in 1891.

The photograph (shown herewith) was published in a Sydney newspaper, which said that the figures, reading from left to right, were RLS’s sister, RLS himself, his “Samoan wife,” and RLS’s mother.

This was reproduced in the PIM in November, 1949, and we said that it had never before been reported that Stevenson had a Samoan wife.

It was later shown that the three women shown here, from left to right, Mrs. R. L. Stevenson, formerly Osborne; Mrs. Stevenson’s daughter (and RLS’s step-daughter) Isobel Osborne, who lived with the Stevenson family in Samoa, and who married, first, Mr. Strong, and (after

Stevenson’s death) Mr. Salisbury Field; and Mrs. Stevenson, the famous writer’s mother, who also lived with him in Samoa.

After Mrs. Isobel Field wrote her book about Stevenson in Samoa (“This Life I’ve Loved”) in the ’thirties, she cor responded for a time with the PIM. She was then an aged woman, and in failing health.

We now have a letter from Mrs. Elsie Noble Caldwell, a well-known American writer, who attended the South Pacific Conference in Fiji last May. She reports that, in August, she went to Santa Barbara, in California, and there had an interview with Mrs. Isobel Field—who is now 92 years old, and bed-ridden, “I found her very much her gay self,” writes Mrs. Caldwell. “I took along the

PIM in which you published the photo wherein she has been captioned as Steven son’s Samoan wife, and she had a good laugh. . . . She asked about you, about the Grand Pacific Hotel, about the Fijians and how much they had given way to Western influence, and of course she had endless queries anent social, poli tical and economic conditions in Samoa. . . . She is interested in every-

thing, in everyone and in places all over the world. ... It is difficult to realise that on this September 18 she will be 92. . . .

Mrs. Field has lived a peculiarly emotional life—is living, still, an emotional life, I should say—and this quality makes her still a fascinating personality.”

The photograph printed in this column shows Mrs, Field as she is to-day. It was sent to the Editor of PIM, and signed “Teuila” (see following article).

(Continued Next Page.)

The old photograph referred to above.

A recent photo of Mrs. Field.