Robert Louis Stevenson Memorial Cottage, 1951 (Photo provided)

Tip Roseberry was known as “The Roving Reporter” when he or she wrote this for the Albany Times Union in 1955:

“The present tenants of the Robert Louis Stevenson Cottage are from Albany, and warm welcome awaits anyone with an area license plate who pulls into the parking area across the road from that literary shrine in Saranac Lake. They are Mr. and Mrs. John Delahant. He was appointed custodian of the house two years ago when it was acquired by the village of Saranac Lake. Until that time comparatively few tourists even knew of the existence of the Stevenson Cottage, although it had been preserved by the Stevenson Society. Since the village took over a real job of promotion has been done, with the results that each season brings a larger stream of visitors.”

From the Adirondack Daily Enterprise, by Bill McLaughlin:

“The Robert Louis Stevenson Cottage, now cared for by John Delahant, Sr., is rapidly developing into a real tourist attraction in Saranac Lake. Mr. Delahant appeared at a meeting of the village board last night. He asked for a dozen directions signs to the cottage. He got them. He asked for placards and circulars he would deliver personally to hotels, motels and cabins so that visitors to town might learn about the shrine. He got them. He asked for Stevenson Cottage stationary. He got it. He asked for the appointment of a ‘Stevenson Cottage Committee.’ He got it. Mayor Alton B. Anderson appointed him as a member, Dr. H.M. Kinghorn as chairman and Trustee Joseph Glogan to represent the village board. Mr. Delahant also asked for Mondays off from work. He got that.”

The Robert Louis Stevenson Memorial Cottage had finally made its debut as a tourist attraction. Mr. Delahant’s eldest grandson, Bill, was 10 when he started taking long rides with his grandfather all around the Tri-lakes to place those placards and circulars or brochures. The renowned architect, William Distin, contributed a drawing for one of the placards. At every stop, J.F.D., Sr., waited in the car while Bill ran in to drop off the goods.

Curator Delahant kept busy as a retired business man. Along with his custodial job description, he finally took up oil painting for a hobby and some of his efforts have remained at the Cottage all these years, including a portrait of his little dog “Boots.” His masterpiece is the clipper ship “Sea Witch” sailing along with the peak of the spanker sail accidentally omitted. Family oral tradition has it that John Sr.’s retirement years curating at the Stevenson Cottage were the best.

When Mr. Delahant took time to do his job, he was real curator material. What follows is from another article by Bill McLaughlin:

“Curator John Delahant, in a recent exchange of letters, was able to secure recent photographs of the tomb of RLS from Vailima, Western Samoa. A copy of one of the pictures will be placed at the memorial in Saranac Lake together with a photo also forwarded by G.T. Appleby, of Government House in the islands where Mr. Stevenson is buried.

“The photographs were taken expressly for Mr. Delahant under the Samoan High Commissioner’s orders. Several items describing the facilities here were sent by the curator who had continued his efforts to secure items and information about the famous author who spent time in the village in the 1880’s. Mr. Delahant has been highly commended by the High Commissioner of the Samoan Islands, who stated in a letter through his personal secretary that his excellency is only too pleased to cooperate in your good work and hopes the enclosed photos of the tomb, taken this month will be a useful addition to the Saranac Lake collection. The local collection is considered by experts to be one of the finest in the world and has increased steadily under the direction of its present resident curator.

“Mr. Delahant is engaged in the tedious job of sorting through piles of letters and other personal writings of and about Stevenson which are stored at the shrine. Many interesting sidelights about the author’s life have come to his attention which were previously hidden or lost through the years.”

Resident curators Mr. and Mrs. J.F.D., Sr., spent five years together as the sole occupants of the Stevenson Cottage and they didn’t go south in the winters. Over 90% of the house sat on the ground back then (until 2004), the exception being the root cellar dug out by Col. Milote Baker in 1855, when he built the first part of this house which his son, Andrew, would enlarge in 1866.

Into that little cellar, Andrew Baker had installed a coal steam boiler that circulated hot water to vintage radiators placed throughout the house, through pipes running between the floor and the ground. This project was accomplished just in time to be a well-deserved luxury for the Bakers in their golden years. Before that it was a home full of wood stoves and all the work they require, the kind of work Anson Macintyre did or “Mac,” the 13-year-old chore boy who worked for the Bakers when RLS was in residence.

Another new luxury that the Bakers had little time to appreciate was a real bathroom with running water, tub and toilet all in one space, connected by the pipes running through an impossible crawlspace to the boiler in the tiny cellar. Architecturally speaking, the bathroom is an afterthought, a clapboard closet attached to the main structure. Prior to its construction there were outhouses at each end of the house, and they required work too, which could have been included in Mac’s chore list back in the day.

By 1953, there was still not a shred of insulation anywhere in the RLS cottage. Those radiators could get too hot to touch but prolonged sub-zero arctic temperatures have a way of mitigating their effect in an uninsulated wooden tent, a house Robert Louis Stevenson described as like “A hatbox on a hill in the eye of all winds.”

Consequently, the nature of the beast required Curator Delahant and probably his predecessors, Mrs. C.H.E. Griffith and the Bakers, to stay up all night on such nights, babysitting the system which included placing electric heating pads over the pipes where they ran under the bathroom, accessible by a hatch in the floor. On such nights, John Sr.’s wife Maude, probably lied in bed, wishing they were back in their civilized house in Bogota, New Jersey, the one they left to come here because her husband had a thing for Robert Louis Stevenson.

From President Dr. Hugh Kinghorn’s Annual Report for 1955: “The number of visitors in 1954 nearly tripled the attendance of previous years … The visitors come from about every state, almost every province in Canada, and many foreign countries. Within the past three years, the village of Saranac Lake has made many repairs and improvements to the Cottage and grounds, and have just about caught up with their work … Plans are underway to blacktop Stevenson Lane from Pine St. to the Cottage … I take great pleasure in mentioning the deep appreciation which the Stevenson Society has for Mr. John F. Delahant, Sr., resident director and to Mrs. Delahant for their interest in our Society.”

A year later in 1956, Mr. Delahant was elected president of the Stevenson Society of America, relieving Dr. Kinghorn who had held the position since 1937, during which time he personally held everything together at the Robert Louis Stevenson Memorial Cottage.