New-York tribune., 1920-04-11


spring of the most productive
gears of Robert Louis Steven
son's life that life of her is indis-
pensablc in the interests of the Steven
ssnia which has gathered with such
astonishing rapidity around his mem
ory. But 1t is not for that academic
reason alone that this biography is in
teresting. 1t is thoroughly justified as
the portrait of an amazing, vivid, COM
ptex and adventurous woman, one ap-
parently singled out by life for unique
and romantic experience and endowed
in turn with something of the grand
manner for meeting it.
Her years with Stevenson have been
amply published in the memoirs and
letters. But rumor has often had it's
way with the time before her life with
Stevenson. Her background was so un-
familiar to the world that knew Stew
enson, the exigencies Of their nomadic
hunt for health so unfavorable to init
macy with many people, that a sort of
mystery seems always to have over
hung her. This biography is the work
of her sister, Mrs. Nellie Van der Grift
Sanchez 1t is an easy narrative, un-
pretentious enough from a literary
point Of view, but intelligent and ex-
pYicit enough to reveal Mrs Stevenson
70 the world as a personality in her
own right-a character as romantic in
her way as Stevenson was In his.
Fanny Van der Grift Osbourne Stew
snson was the daughter of Indiana pi-
oneers. descendants Of early Dutch and
English settlers. There is q charming
picture, quoted from her own story, "a
Backwoods Childhood" of her life in
Indianapolis, when that city was mere
bsckwoods, in which she sets down
with delightful simplicity and humor
the outstanding figures of her family
She was dark, spirited, precocious
child--a sort of little ugly duckling,
who fowered with her maturity into
really remarkable beauty.
She was married when she was seven
teen to Samuel Osbourne, an adventur-
Gus young man of good Southern
family. Soon after their marriage he
went to serve in the Civil War and then
went to try his fortune in the West.
The gold fever had evaporated but the
silver mining towns of Nevada and
Montana were booming wildly. Fanny
Osbourne followed with her child after
his flickering fortunes as mining
prospector, experiencing the pictur-
esque life of the mining towns of Ne
vada and Montana of the SOS. The ebb
of the boom left the Osbournes settled
IN San Francisco, where Fanny Os-
bourne found a congenial place in the
little group of really brilliant artists
and writer's whom San Francisco boasted
at that time. She had gift for draw
ing, which she cultivated desultorily,
and something Of q literary gift. It
was then that the structural weaknesses
of that Immature marriage began to
show. Osbourne's inhdelities led to
several tentative separations, and In
1875 Fanny Osbourne left her husband
definitely, taking her three children
with her. She went with them to Paris,
where she supported her family by
writing for the American periodicals,
meanwhile enrolling herself and her
young daughter in Julien's atelier. Her
youngest child died at this time and in
the depression of health and spirts
following this loss Mrs Osbournc was
urged by friend to go for change to
little village in Cree, on the edge of
Fontainebleau forest. This is where
Fanny Osbourne met Stevenson.
1t is plain that Mrs Sanchez cannot
resist making the most OF the romantic
features of that meeting. Women
artists were still a rarity in those early