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"I had grown to love Luly Stevenson, as I called him; he used to read the 'Pilgrim's Progress' and the 'Tales of a Grandfather' to me, and tell me stories 'out of his head'; he gave me a sense of protection and warmth, and though I was far too shy ever to have said it aloud, he seemed so much like Greatheart in the book that this was my secret name for him"
(Lloyd Osbourne, An Intimate Portrait of RLS, [New York: Charles Scribner’s and Sons, 1924], pp. 2-3)
Samuel Lloyd Osbourne (1868-1947), known as Lloyd, was RLS’s step-son. He was born in San Francisco to Samuel and Fanny Van de Grift Osbourne.
Lloyd went with his mother and sister Belle to Europe when they were pursuing their art studies. In 1876 when they went to Grez, the family met RLS.
After the marriage of his mother and RLS, Lloyd accompanied the Stevensons on many of their travels, settling with them at Vailima. He and his sister Belle wrote about RLS and their experiences in Samoa in Memories of Vailima (1902). Lloyd also wrote about RLS in An Intimate Portrait of Robert Louis Stevenson (1924).
During a rainy holiday in Scotland when Lloyd was twelve, he and RLS drew a map, which inspired Stevenson to write Treasure Island (1883). He dedicated the novel to his stepson. Lloyd and RLS collaborated on The Wrong Box (1889), The Wrecker (1892) and The Ebb-Tide (1894), although critics have debated on the extent and importance of Lloyd’s contributions.
After RLS’s death, Lloyd continued to write, although he was not very successful. He published more than a dozen novels, for example Baby Bullet: The Bubble of Destiny (1905), Three Speeds Forward: An Automobile Love Story with One Reverse (1907), and Peril (1929). Wild Justice (1906) is a collection of short stories about Samoa.
Lloyd married his first wife, Katharine Durham, in Honolulu in 1896. The couple had two children, Alan and Louis, and divorced in 1914. In 1897, Lloyd became the American Vice Consul in Samoa to the United States. In 1916, he married and divorced again. In 1936 he had a son, Samuel, with Yvonne Payerne, a young woman he’d met in France.
In 1941 Lloyd returned to America and died in California in 1947.
Further Reading:
Hirsch, Gordon, ‘The Fiction of Lloyd Osbourne: Was This “American Gentleman” Stevenson’s Literary Heir?’, Journal of Stevenson Studies 4 (2007), pp. 52-72
- After Stevenson’s death, Osbourne published thirteen volumes of fiction, including four collections of short stories. Some of his work is embarrassing to read today, such as the numerous stories of a rich heiress pursued and won by a hardworking young American man, many of them unpleasantly snobbish and revealing traces of racism. The mystery/adventure novels with elements of comic absurdity (The Adventurer, 1907, and Peril, 1929) are more interesting, reminiscent in ways of The New Arabian Nights, The Wrong Box and The Wrecker.
It was, however, in the short fiction set in the South Seas (The Queen against Billy, 1900, and Wild Justice, 1906) that Osbourne has most affinities with Stevenson. The stories can be grouped in four categories: (i) those about relationships between Euro-American men and native women, (ii) those about exploitative and lawless non-native incomers, (iii) stories with native narrators and their reactions to imperialist intrusion, (iv) stories of moral complexity in situations of multicultural contact. The best of these reflect Stevenson’s influence and “represent an achievement comparable to the Stevenson-Osbourne collaborations”.
Osbourne, Lloyd, An Intimate Portrait of Robert Louis Stevenson (New York: Charles Scribner’s and Sons, 1924
Strong, Isobel and Lloyd Osbourne, Memories of Vailima (New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1902) and (London: Archibald Constable & Co, 1903)
- The US edition is 228 pp. with 31 black and white photographs; the UK edition is 151 pp and with only an engraved portrait frontispiece.
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