Area to check on the home’s progress. One such visit was
described in the social section of the August 9, 1902 Gilroy
Advocate, “Mrs. Robert Louis Stevenson is again enjoying the
quietude of her picturesque mountain home with a party
of friends, among them are Gelett Burgess, an artist and a
literary man.”
When Vanumanutagi was finished later the same year,
Fanny threw a housewarming party. “Hundreds of Japanese
lanterns shed their mellow light upon the scene, lighting up
the surrounding forest of madrones and giant redwoods,” the
Gilroy Advocate reported. Her guests were treated to a tour
of the new cottage, with its stone foundation and redwood-
paneled rooms. “The air was still and cool and the wide
veranda in front was the haven of the tired dancers,” the
paper noted. The cottage interior was described as English
lodge style, with rafters decorating the low-ceilings and
built-in seating along the walls. Mrs. Stevenson’s bedroom
was papered with Samoan tapa fabric. Her usual attire was
described as Polynesian style, with loosely fitting garments.
She was said to wear considerable quantities of jewelry.
Fanny’s sister, writer Nellie Van De Grift Sanchez,
described the Redwood Retreat estate as a place of “sweet
seclusion,” adding that the wooded surroundings offered a
connection between the grieving widow’s California home
and the one she’d shared with Stevenson in Samoa. For the
next several years, Vanumanutagi was Fanny’s summer home.
In 1908 she sold her San Francisco residence and moved to
Montecito where she died in 1916. Her Redwood Retreat
home passed to her son, Lloyd Osbourne and his wife,
Ethel.
Over the following years, Lloyd, a much-published
author, edited his stepfather Stevenson’s last works and
published a biography, “An Intimate Portrait of RLS.”
He died in Santa Barbara in 1947. Ethel remained at
Vanumanutagi until 1954, welcoming artists and writers and
continuing the ambiance set by her illustrious mother-in-law.
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april/may 2019
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