d the
custom of the country which the family followed, in homely phrase, "going
bare-footed" at home. Pictures of Stevenson in his Samoa home, enjoying
the freedom of this native fashion, have been common enough. This Samoan
custom seemed simple and natural to any one who saw the Stevensons in
Samoa going without shoes and stockings, quite as summer girls on the
Massachusetts shore have gone about without gloves or hats during recent
years, an unconventionality which would once have shocked thousands. The
matter would not be worth mentioning, but a curious myth about Mrs.
Stevenson has sprung from it. A paragraph has been floating through
contemporaries in several cities of late, to the effect that Mrs.
Stevenson went out to dine in London, when first introduced there by her
husband, without shoes and stockings! This little yarn really denies
itself on the face of it. As a matter of fact, Mrs. Stevenson's conformity
to social customs has never been found insufficient wherever she has been.
She is a woman of original talents and great adaptability of talent who,
for many years, was the nurse, the "guide, philosopher and friend," as
well as the beloved wife of the child of genius whose name she bears. She
was studying art in Paris, where she had gone with her three children,
when she first met Robert Louis Stevenson, who was among the artists and
literary folk at Barbizon. She returned to America with her daughter and
her son--one son had died while she was in France--and readily got a
divorce from Mr. Osbourne. No word concerning the father of her children
has ever been uttered for publication by Mrs. Stevenson, or ever will be.
He married a second time and, after a while, left his wife and
disappeared. He has since been seen in South Africa. It is here repeated
that Robert Louis Stevenson never saw him. Mrs. Stevenson wished to delay
her second marriage for a year, but Stevenson had travelled over land and
sea to California, and was ill and homesick. So, by the advice of a close
friend, the marriage was not long postponed. This friend was Mrs. Virgil
Williams, wife of the well-known teacher of painting in San Francisco, the
founder of that pioneer art school of the West, which, since Mr.
Williams's death, was munificently endowed by Mr. Searles as the Hopkins
Institute. Mrs. Williams went with the pair to the house of Dr. Scott, a
Presbyterian minister of San Francisco, who married Mr. and Mrs.
Stevenson. Nobody else was