The Project Gutenberg EBook of The Life of Mrs. Robert Louis Stevenson, by
Nellie Van de Grift Sanchez

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Title: The Life of Mrs. Robert Louis Stevenson

Author: Nellie Van de Grift Sanchez

Release Date: January 16, 2008 [EBook #24332]

Language: English

Character set encoding: ASCII

*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK MRS. ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON ***

Produced by Christine P. Travers and the Online Distributed
Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net (This file was
produced from images generously made available by The
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[Transcriber's note: Obvious printer's errors have been corrected, all
other inconsistencies are as in the original. Author's spelling has
been maintained.]

[Illustration: Fanny Van de Grift Stevenson during the English
period.]

THE LIFE OF

MRS. ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON

BY

NELLIE VAN DE GRIFT SANCHEZ

ILLUSTRATED

LONDON
CHATTO & WINDUS
1920

Copyright, 1920, by Charles Scribner's Sons, for the
United States of America

Printed by the Scribner Press
New York, U. S. A.

TO
ISOBEL FIELD

IN TOKEN OF OUR COMMON LOVE FOR
HER WHOSE LIFE STORY IS TOLD IN ITS PAGES
THIS BOOK
IS AFFECTIONATELY DEDICATED.

PREFACE

When I first set out to tell the life story of Mrs. Robert Louis
Stevenson, I received the following letter from her old friend Mr.
Bruce Porter:

"Once when I urged your sister to set down the incidents of her life
she listened, pondered, and then dismissed the suggestion as
impossible, as her life had been like a dazed rush on a railroad
express, and she despaired of recovering the incidental memories. The
years with Stevenson have of course been adequately told, but the
earlier period--Indianapolis and California--had a romance as
stirring, even if sharpened by the American glare. This sharpness has
already, for all of us, begun to fade, to take on the glamour of time
a