Posted on 05/28/2015 1:29:52 PM PDT by nickcarraway
Most people who visit Calistoga -- a town in the Napa Valley -- come for the wine and the spa treatments; few come for the literary history. But they could: one of the most romantic honeymoon getaways ever written about happened one hundred and thirty five years ago.
Instead of mud baths and geysers, picture an abandoned mining shack infested with snakes, poison oak, and rusty nails. Now picture a sickly writer and his new wife spending their first two months of married life living there. Sounds crazy, right? But that’s exactly what Robert Louis Stevenson — author of the famous children's book Treasure Island — did.
It all started with a dark-haired American beauty named Fanny Osborne. Before he met Fanny, Robert Louis Stevenson – or Louis, as his friends called him – was just a rebellious young boy trying, and failing, to make it as a writer while living on his parents’ dole. In the spring of 1876, he went vacationing in a small French town with friends. There is a married American woman there with her two children, and it turns out that this is Fanny Osborne; the woman with whom Stevenson falls in love. Fanny lives in San Francisco, and when she goes back, Stevenson drops everything to follow her to America. On the journey he gets sick -- scholars think he had either tuberculosis or a genetic disorder – and develops a skin condition he calls “the Itch”.
Marissa Schleicher, Executive Director at the Robert Louis Stevenson Museum in St. Helena, says Stevenson was in bad shape when he arrived in San Francisco.
“He looked like he was about to fall dead”, Schleicher says. “He lost so much weight, he was about 80 pounds, his clothes were falling off his body, and…his entire skin had been rubbed raw because of the Itch, that…it looked like he had been flayed, almost.”
Finally, Fanny gets a divorce, moves Stevenson into her house, and nurses him back from the brink of death. They get married in the summer of 1880, as soon as he can make it to the church.
With Fanny’s 10-year-old son, Lloyd, in tow, the newlyweds make their way by ferry and stagecoach to Calistoga for their honeymoon - a town, they’re told by friends, with less fog and lots of restorative sunshine. When they get there, they hear about this place called the old Silverado mine. As the name suggests, it had once been a promising silver mine, but boom and bust had left it decrepit and abandoned. But Stevenson had a good feeling about the place.
“As from every point in Calistoga, Mount Saint Helena could be seen towering in the air,” Stevenson wrote in his journal. “There…just where the eastern foothills joined the mountain…was Silverado. The name had already pleased me; the high station pleased me still more.”
Silverado definitely has quirks. The wooden shack is built right up against the mountain so that all three rooms have to be entered through separate doors on top of each other. A layer of dirt covers the rusty mining equipment strewn all over the house. Worse, there’s poison oak sprouting up through the floorboards.
Once Fanny gets the house in order, Stevenson begins to recover from his illness. He spends his time sunbathing, hiking, and playing with Fanny’s son Lloyd. Lloyd is delighted when Stevenson makes up adventure stories – especially stories about pirates.
After months of pirate games on Mount Saint Helena, Stevenson starts hatching an idea for a book -- a book that changes his family’s fortunes forever: Treasure Island. It’s a story of buccaneers and buried gold, told from the point of view of a young boy who comes of age through a swashbuckling adventure.
All his life, Stevenson has written unsuccessful personal travelogues and essays – but this new book is different. Schleicher says his stay at the Silverado mine is a big part of the reason why.
“He sees this beautiful landscape, he wants to create these tales to entertain his new family,” Schleicher says. “It really helps evolve his writing…to being an author who takes the world around him and synthesizes it into an enjoyable romp for everyone.”
When it’s published in 1883, Treasure Island is an instant hit, and Stevenson becomes an international celebrity. And at the height of his stardom, he publishes the journal from his honeymoon on Mount Saint Helena, which he calls The Silverado Squatters. And it flies off the shelves.
“Really, Louis was the first one to bring this neck of the woods out to the world,” Schleicher says. “during the entire time he’s here he’s writing about the people he meets, and keeping a very specific journal that he plans to turn into a book. So that by the time it gets published it’s kind of the first international PR for the region.”
Stevenson writes about Schramsberg, a local winery, in the Silverado Squatters. The winemakers were quick to capitalize on his work once he became famous. And it wasn’t just Schramsberg. All of Napa Valley received a publicity boost from Silverado Squatters – the welcome sign still features a quote from Louis, who once described Napa’s wine as “bottled poetry.”
In 1911, long after Stevenson and his wife were gone, a women’s organization in Napa County erected the stone tablet that marks the spot where their honeymoon shack once stood.
The mouth of the mine shaft is on a hill overlooking the spot where the mining shack used to be, and where the stone table is erected. It’s cool and dark, covered in powdery red stones - no silver to be seen. There’s something peaceful about it, though.
An old wooden miner’s cabin. Convertible double bunk beds in a room with a view. Fog-free weather. Endless pirate games. Come to think of it, that sounds like the perfect honeymoon.
Nice, thanks!!
There is a restaurant on the beach near Diamond Head, Hao Tree Lanai, that still has the huge Hao tree that Stevenson is said to have described while staying in Hawaii.
“Under the wide and starry sky,
Dig the grave and let me lie,
Glad did I live, and gladly die,
And I laid me down with a will.
This be the verse you grave for me;
Here he lies, where he longed to be;
Home is the sailor, home from the sea,
And the hunter home from the hill.”
His Self-written Epitaph.
I think the weirdest honeymoon would go to the first couple. What with Michelle not really liking guys and Barry liking them too much.Not to mention, the huge pictures of Chairman Mao and Mohammed over the bed.
Has that Gibson Girl look that I love.
There is more to the story. Stevenson had tuberculosis (then called “consumption.”) Before there were treatments, the main thing you did was look for a dry, arid climate which apparently made the symptoms of the disease less severe (like Arizona—gunslinger Doc Holliday is an example of someone who went to a desert climate to find relief). Much of Stevenson’s life journey was trying to find a climate that would not exacerbate or would ideally “heal” his tuberculosis.
San Francisco was definitely not the place to be because of all the fog, and it had a dramatic effect on him. I think before that, he had arrived in Sacramento (same problem, with the fog from the delta). So he tried to get away from the City and the fog.
He went to Napa Valley (Calistoga was known as a health sanatorium, with hot springs and mud baths that supposedly had restorative powers), but if you’ve spent time in Napa Valley you know that during much of the year and especially in the summer, the fog from the coast basically comes in every night (and usually lifts the next morning around 10 or so).
So the only solution was to try to get above the fog layer. He did that by going up Mr. St. Helena to the old abandoned mining camp.
The other thing I thought was interesting in his account, “The Silverado Squatters,” was his description of constantly hearing buzzing noises—he couldn’t figure out what the sound was although it was all all around him. Somebody finally told him that there were rattlesnakes in the mining camp—in fact, the camp was infested with them. Stevenson and his family (and their dog) were fortunate not to get bitten.
Spent a night in Calistoga in the ‘60s—my parents had friends there and took us all to visit them. We stayed in a house that was supposedly on property that Stevenson had visited (the house had been built later). The house was supposedly haunted.
He eventually went to Hawaii and the South Pacific.
Yep, basically for the same reasons, trying to find that ideal climate.
Here is his poem about Princess Kaiulani in Hawaii, whom he met when she was a young girl. During that period, she was then sent away to boarding school in England:
To Princess Kaiulani
From Songs of Travel
“[Written in April to Kaiulani in the April of her age; and at Waikiki, within easy walk of Kaiulani’s banyan! When she comes to my land and her father’s, and the rain beats upon the window (as I fear it will), let her look at this page; it will be like a weed gathered and pressed at home; and she will remember her own islands, and the shadow of the mighty tree; and she will hear the peacocks screaming in the dusk and the wind blowing in the palms; and she will think of her father sitting there alone. - R. L. S.]
Forth from her land to mine she goes,
The island maid, the island rose,
Light of heart and bright of face:
The daughter of a double race.
Her islands here, in Southern sun,
Shall mourn their Kaiulani gone,
And I, in her dear banyan shade,
Look vainly for my little maid.
But our Scots islands far away
Shall glitter with unwonted day,
And cast for once their tempests by
To smile in Kaiulani’s eye.
Honolulu.”
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Hmm, those didn’t come out.
Thank you for the link. Sarah Stodder, the author, told an enjoyable story about RLS and it’s true. He was very thin and sickly, fell in love with a married lady, followed her back to San Francisco and moved to St. Helena. I encourage everyone to visit Berkeley, make a road trip to Napa Valley for wine tasting (3 hour round trip). Then please stop by the town of St. Helena and visit the Silverado Museum located in the public library. I have been there probably five times with visiting friends.
RLS is a wonderful writer and Fanny was very beautiful.
http://bit.ly/1LMvgsX
His stepson, Lloyd, ended up a collaborating with him on a few books. I’ll have to dig up my RLS books, wherever they are.
He did not live long after the book came out. He sure did travel a lot for a man of his time.
More then me for sure and I have airplanes and cars to use.
Robert Louis Stevenson 1850 – 3 December 1894 Vailima, Samoan Islands. Do Samoans collect heads?... : )
The wife Fanny Van de Grift Osbourne 1840–1914
Another suggestion on top of the RLS Museum in St. Helena. The writer Jack London also had a ranch in the area (actually, on the other side of the hills at Glen Ellen in Sonoma). This is where he spent the final years of his life and passed away (he died relatively young, from kidney and liver ailments and too much drinking). It is now the Jack London State Park (was closed for a while because of the State’s financial difficulties but I think it is open again). Anyway, you can go from the City over the Golden Gate and then up to Sonoma and Jack London Park, spend a couple of hours there, and then drive over the hills to Napa Valley (depending on the route you take, you will come out near Oakville or St.Helena/Calistoga).
Jack London Park is beautiful and interesting. There is a good museum in one of the old stone buildings with a lot of information and personal memorabilia about Jack London, and sometimes his ranch house is open as well, which has been kept in the condition it was in when he died (in fact, you can see the cot he passed away in). And you can take a short hike through meadows and woods to see both the ruins of the large house he was building before he died, “Wolf House,” and to visit Jack London’s gravesite which is situated on the top of a knoll in a stand of redwoods.
This is sort of a pilgrimage site for me. In past years, whenever I was in the area I would go to the park and pay my respects to Jack at his grave. And when my kids were little, on a couple of trips we took them hiking there and had a picnic.
I’ve always liked Jack London (even though he was a doggone Socialist). He led a very interesting and adventurous life.
Thank you for the Jack London information. Very interesting. The bar where he did his homework during grammar school is located in Jack London Square near the Oakland train station.
Thanks for the link to the nice park.
Jack London, Robert Louis Stevenson and Bret Harte are three wonderful authors connected to the Bay Area. I am thankful for Libri Vox recordings and yes, the scenery in Napa Valley is spectacular.
I read a short story by Stevenson last year. I realized why his books fascinated me when I was a kid—the man knew how to tell a tale.
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