Going up to Dinner, a Temperance House

Category

Museums & Galleries Item

Item no

19694

Title

p. 2, Going up to dinner, a temperance house

Description

A caricature of the Stevenson household depicting them going to dinner carrying various beverages. Robert Louis Stevenson heads to line carrying white wine; then Margaret Stevenson with whiskey; Fanny Stevenson with claret; Lloyd Osbourne with beer; Joe Strong with porter and Austin Strong with soda water. The image is signed with a monogram, of the letters I S.

Artist / maker

Strong, Isobel Stuart

Date

1889

Size

19.2 x 29.2 cm

Type

Pen work

Location

Writers' Museum

Margaret Stevenson (nee Balfour) was Robert Louis Stevenson's mother. Fanny (nee Vandegrift) was his wife, who is pictured here with Lloyd; her son from her first marriage to Sam Osbourne. Joe Strong was Fanny's daughter's husband and Austin her son.

Born in Edinburgh on 13th November 1850, Robert Louis Stevenson was a Scottish novelist, poet, essayist, playwright and travel writer. Although he was plagued by ill health all his life, he was extraordinarily well-travelled, visiting Europe, America and the South Seas. He married American born Fanny Van de Grift Osbourne in 1880 and is best-known for works like Treasure Island (1883), Kidnapped and The Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde (both 1886). From the late 1880s, Stevenson stayed in the South Pacific with his family on his own estate in Vailima in Samoa. He died here on the 3rd December 1894 of a brain haemorrhage at the age of 44, leaving what many consider his best work, Weir of Hermiston (1896) unfinished.

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