Contents
1. Reese River	1
2. Billy Bird	10
3. Hard Times	15
4. Lincoln Grammar School	22
5. Dancing Academy	27
6. My Father	31
7. The Farm	39
8. Happy Days	49
9. I Meet an Artist	59
10. High School	63
11. Antwerp	71
12. Paris	82
13. Grez	88
14. Monterey	105
15. Old San Francisco	112
16. My Son	122
17. 728 Montgomery Street	128
18. On the Consuelo	141
19. The Coronation Ball	145
20. Mostly Fishes	157
21. Queen Emma	166
22. Opera House	173
23. Ulupalakua	181
24. Dark Days	190
25. The Star of Oceania	194
26. Entertainments	200
27. The Stevensons	206
28. Waikiki	215
29. New Plans	222
30. Aloha Oe	226
31. Australia	234
32. Miss Leaney’s	240
33. R.L.S. in Sydney	247
34. The Janet Nicholl	254
35. Vailima	259
36. Vailima Household	268
37. Amanuensis	277
38. Daughter of the House	285
39. Visitors	292
40. Tapatefau	301
41. Afternoons	307
42. “Under the Wide and Starry Sky”	315
Appendix	324
Editor's Epilogue	335

Illustrations
Isobel Field in the 1930s	
The author as a child	
Lincoln Grammar School	
Oakland High School	
Fanny in 1875	
Drawing at Grez	
The old bridge at Grez	
Sam Osbourne	
Joe Strong, Belle, and Barney	
Silverado cabin	
728 Montgomery St.	
King Kalakaua and R.L.S.	
Lloyd Osbourne	
At Waikiki	
A favorite pastime	
Stevenson Family in Sydney, 1893	
Main House at Vailima	
The Family at Vailima	
R.L.S. dictating to Belle	
Fanny and a Samoan girl	
Robert Louis Stevenson	
Packing provisions for Vailima

 

 

Editor’s Introduction
Isobel Osbourne Strong Field published this autobiography/memoir in 1937. 
The book does not cover her entire life. She was born in 1858, and lived until 1953. 
The book begins with her earliest memories, but it effectively ends in 1894 when 
she was not yet 36.
Isobel led a picturesque and colorful life. Born in Indiana; early childhood in Austin 
and Virginia City, Nevada; thence to school in San Francisco and Oakland; 
Antwerp, Belgium; painting and drawing in Julian's atelier in Paris; three summers in 
Grez, France; back to Oakland and San Francisco; Hawaii and the brilliant court of 
King Kalakaua; an actors' boardinghouse in Sydney, Australia; and Samoa. She is a 
wonderful story-teller, and a writer of great wit and acuity. She had a life of interest 
and recognition after 1894, but her claim to notoriety is that she was the stepdaughter 
of Robert Louis Stevenson. She was with her mother, Fanny (Frances Van de Grift 
Osbourne), when they met Stevenson in Grez in 1876; when Fanny and Louis married 
in 1880 in San Francisco and at the Silverado sojourn; with the Stevensons in Hawaii 
in the late 1880s; and finally with them at Vailima in Samoa from 1890 until Stevenson’s 
death in 1894. Thus this book ends with the death of the stepfather rather than with that 
of the author.
I have made a small number of changes to the text—mainly to punctuation—and I 
corrected several typos. The informational footnotes are mine.
I want to express my profound thanks to Ann Kindred and Ed Reynolds at the 
Silverado Museum in St. Helena, California, for their time and generous assistance in 
providing me with an array of photographs and other illustrations from which I made 
the selections for the book. My thanks and appreciation also to my nephew, William B. 
Browning, for his translations from the French in the Antwerp and Grez chapters.

—Peter Browning