Address and Opening Hours
530 Houston Street,
P.O. Box 624,
Monterey
California 93942,
USA.
April 2012: Due to State financial difficulties, for the near future the Museum will only be open on Saturdays afternoons and the last Sunday of the summer months; also for special events, research and special tours.
History
Girardin’s French House where RLS lived from September to December 1879, waiting for Fanny’s divorce and working onThe Amateur Emigrant, ‘Pavilion on the Links’, and his essay on Thoreau. On first arrival in Monterey and during Fanny’s initial indecision about divorce Stevenson took a horse to go camping in the Carmel Valley southeast of the town. Here he collapsed and was looked after for two weeks at the goat-farm of Jonathan Wright. The ‘French House’ is now a memorial museum.
Collection
Articles of furniture; first editions; RLS manuscripts (2 pp ofWeir, 3 sheets of flageolet music); four of Stevenson’s mother’s scrapbooks of reviews; Fanny’s painting of the bridge at Grez, drawings by Joe Strong, portraits of Stevenson (by Fanny, Joe Strong and A.J. Daplyn); Fanny’s Samoa diary; photographs (including six original glass negatives) and memorabilia.
The Scrapbooks (SHM Boxes 9-12) are: (i) 1881-1886); (ii) 1887-1890); (iii) 1889-1893; (iv) 1893-1894; (v) ‘Mostly Biographical material on the Stevensons & Balfours’. (Three other Scrapbooks are at Saranac; 1876-81, 1886-7 and 1894 ‘in memoriam’). There is also an index (Stevenson House Administrative Records, Box 1, Folder iv).
Further Reading
Lindberg, Lori, Guide to the Stevenson House Collection (San Francisco: California State Parks, 2002)
Contact
Kris Quist, Curator
Tel: (+001)831-647-6206
Email: kquist@parks.ca.gov
Images courtesy of the Stevenson House Collection, Monterey, California State Parks