Robert Louis Stevenson
608 Bush over the Stockton Tunnel
24" X 12"
24" X 12"
After an arduous Atlantic crossing to America followed by a cross country trek Robert Louis Stevenson, who suffered from tuberculosis, arrived in California more dead than alive. After being nursed back to health in Monterey he came to San Francisco.
Love had brought him to California. In France he met Fanny Osbourne and they fell in love. She lived in Oakland and was married, but by the time Stevenson arrived in San Francisco she was divorced. At a lodging house on Bush Street run by a working-class family named Carson, he sought an apartment. Mary Carson showed him to a room on second floor with French doors leading to a portico. At the time his money had nearly run out but he took the apartment. Mary Carson admitted that upon meeting him she disliked the man but she was soon won over by his charm. She would later admit, “I loved him like my own child.” Her husband, William. Carson, would later become the model for Speedy in The Wrecker. At the Bush Street apartment he finished his book, The Amateur Emigrant, and began work on Across the Plains. He also began writing an account of his youth titled From Jest to Earnest. It would be three years before he would write Treasure Island. His abject poverty forced him to write to his friends and family in Scotland asking for money but they went unanswered. Attempts to sell stories to city newspapers proved fruitless. More than anything he feared penury. But by February he was facing starvation. Stevenson still loved exploring the city, writing about Chinatown and the Barbary Coast. Much of his time was spent at Portsmouth Square. Today, there is a monument to him at its entrance. When the monument was erected in 1897 Mary Carson laid a wreath at its base. When the Carsons’ young son, Robbie, came down with pneumonia in early March, Stevenson promised to help nurse him. The boy eventually recovered but it had taken a toll on Stevenson. His illness was so severe it was nearly fatal. Fannie was summoned from Oakland to tend to him. She moved him to the Tubbs Hotel in Oakland and eventually to her cottage. After six weeks of hovering between life and death he recovered from the devastating illness that permanently damaged his health. Stevenson eventually married Fannie on May 19, 1880. Stevenson's time in San Francisco is thoroughly recounted in Anne Roller Issler's book, Happier for his Presence. |