The Life of Mrs. Robert Louis Stevenson Part 3

After three months' stay in Antwerp, finding it to be a difficult place for women to study art, and having been told of a good and cheap school in Paris, she decided to go there. When they parted, with many tears, from their dear Belgian friends, Mrs. Osbourne, with a swelling heart, tried to thank Papa Gerhardt for his kindness to her and her children, but he said he had a large family who would some day have to go out into the world, and he had treated the Americans as he hoped his own would be treated.

From Antwerp they went to Paris, and f.a.n.n.y and her daughter entered the Julien School of Art on the Pa.s.sage des Panorama, where they spent a very busy time working at their drawings under the instruction of Monsieur Tony Fleury. The older of the two boys, Lloyd, was placed in a French school, and he still remembers that in any quarrel with the boys he was called "Prussian" as a dire insult. He did not know what it meant, but nevertheless resented it promptly.

The family lived very plainly, their meals often consisting of smoked herring and brown bread; yet these straitened circ.u.mstances did not prevent Mrs. Osbourne from taking pity on poor and homesick young students, fellow countrymen, whom she met at the school, and, when funds allowed, she invited them to eat Dutch-American dishes prepared by her own hands.

During these Paris days a heavy sorrow fell upon the family. The beautiful golden-haired boy, Hervey, then about five years old, fell ill, and after lingering for some time, pa.s.sed away, and was buried in an exile's grave at St. Germain. Though the mother bore even this heart-crushing blow with outward fort.i.tude, the memory of it dwelt always in an inner chamber of her heart. In a letter of sympathy written by her years afterwards to the Graham Balfours,[5] on hearing of the death of one of their children, she says: "My Hervey would have been a man of forty now had he lived, and yet I am grieving and longing for my little child as though he had just gone. Time doesn't always heal wounds as we are told it does."

[Footnote 5: Now Sir Graham and Lady Balfour. Sir Graham is a cousin of Robert Louis Stevenson, and his biographer.]

After this sad event the bereaved mother was so listless and broken in health that the doctor advised a change to some quiet country place, where she could get the benefit of outdoor life and better air than in the stuffy little Paris apartment. A casual acquaintance, Mr.

Pardessus, an American sculptor whom they had met at the art school, told them about Grez, a little village in Fontainebleau Forest on the River Loing, where there was a ruined castle, a picturesque old inn, and a lovely garden on the river-bank. Above all, it was modest in price and so retired that it was almost unknown to ordinary travellers. This alluring description was not to be resisted, and Mrs.

Osbourne, with her little family, now sadly bereaved, left for the place which was to play so momentous a part in her future.

When they reached Grez they found there only one visitor--Mr. Walter Palmer, then a young student, who was painting in the garden. It was a quiet, restful place, and Mrs. Osbourne began to recover the tone of her health and spirits in its peaceful atmosphere.

[Ill.u.s.tration: The bridge at Grez.]

Previous to this time women artists had been practically unknown in the colonies about Fontainebleau, and the men who haunted these places were disposed to resent the coming of any of the other s.e.x. The news that an American lady and her two children had arrived at Grez spread consternation among them, and they sent a scout, Mr. R. A. M.

Stevenson,[6] ahead to look over the situation and report. The choice of scout was scarcely a wise one, for "Bob" Stevenson, as he was known to his friends, instantly fell a victim to the attractions of the strangers--who, by the way, were utterly unconscious that they were regarded as intruders--and so he stayed on from day to day. After waiting some time for the return of the faithless emissary, another, Sir Walter Simpson, was sent, but he, too, failed to return. Then Robert Louis Stevenson set out to look into the mystery. His coming had been led up to like a stage entrance, for first his cousin had told wonderful stories of adventures in which Louis was always the hero--what Louis did, what Louis said--until the two Americans, mother and daughter, began to get interested in this fascinating person; and then came Sir Walter, with more stories of Louis--stories that are now well known through _An Inland Voyage_.

[Footnote 6: Robert Alan Mowbray Stevenson, cousin of Robert Louis.]

One evening in the summer of 1876 the little party of guests at the old inn sat at dinner about the long table in the centre of the _salle-a-manger_ with the painted panels--handiwork of artists who had stopped there at various times. It was a soft, sweet evening, and the doors and windows were open; dusk drew near, and the lamps had just been lit. Suddenly a young man approached from the outside. It was Robert Louis Stevenson, who afterwards admitted that he had fallen in love with his wife at first sight when he saw her in the lamplight through the open window.

The autumn months pa.s.sed swiftly by after this meeting in an ideal existence of work and play. Mrs. Osbourne worked industriously at her painting, and as she sat at her easel the acquaintance between her and the young Scotchman rapidly flowered into a full and sympathetic understanding. Everything about this American family, speaking as it did of a land of new and strange customs and habits of thought, appealed strongly to the ardent young man. He was a devoted admirer of Walt Whitman, and thought he knew America. The daughter, Isobel, described by one of the members of the colony[7] at Grez as "a bewitching young girl of seventeen, with eyes so large as to be out of drawing," amazed and delighted him by the piquancy of the contrast between her and the young women he had previously known. In a girlish description given in one of her letters home, written at the time, she says:

[Footnote 7: Mr. Birge Harrison, in the _Century Magazine_, December, 1916.]

"There is a young Scotchman here, a Mr. Stevenson, who looks at me as though I were a natural curiosity. He never saw a real American girl before, and he says I act and talk as though I came out of a book--I mean an American book. He says that when he first met Bloomer[8] he came up to him and said in his western way: 'These parts don't seem much settled, hey?' He laughed for an hour at the idea of such an old place not being much settled. He is such a nice looking ugly man, and I would rather listen to him talk than read the most interesting book I ever saw. We sit in the little green arbor after dinner drinking coffee and talking till late at night. Mama is ever so much better and is getting prettier every day."

[Footnote 8: An American artist.]

Again she writes:

"Yesterday I canoed to Nemours in Louis Stevenson's _Rob Roy_. We generally congregate down in the garden by the big tree after dinner.

Mama swings in the hammock, looking as pretty as possible, and we all form a group around her on the gra.s.s, Louis and Bob Stevenson babbling about boats, while Simpson, seated near by, fans himself with a large white fan."

[Ill.u.s.tration: f.a.n.n.y Osbourne at about the time of her first meeting with Robert Louis Stevenson.]

The little party in the old inn, "entirely surrounded by peasants," as Bob Stevenson said, devised all sorts of sports, for which the river afforded many opportunities. There was a huge old boat, a double canoe, lying at the water's edge; this they put on rollers, and after the entire party had climbed into it, persuaded the pa.s.sing peasants to come and push it off the bank, like a sort of "shoot the chutes."

Another game was to divide the canoes into bands, each under a captain, and engage in a contest, each side trying to tip over the enemy canoes. In all this hilarious fun Louis Stevenson was the leader.

In the old hall they had great times, with dances, now and then a performance by strolling players, and once a masquerade given by the guests of the inn themselves, in which they dressed as G.o.ds and G.o.ddesses in sheets and wreaths. Once when a couple of wandering singers arrived after a disappointing season, the artists contributed a purse and invited them to spend a week and rest. These people told Stevenson the story he made into _Providence and the Guitar_, and the money which he received for it he sent to them afterwards to help pay for the education of their little girl in Paris.

But of all that went on at Grez the talks are remembered as the best, for, notwithstanding their merry fooling in their idle hours, there were brilliant minds among the company, and the conversation sparkled with rare conceits.

Three summers the Osbournes returned to spend at Grez, lingering on the last time until the snow came. A short visit was made to Barbizon, too, and once when there the whole party had their silhouettes drawn on the walls of the dining-room. This was done by placing a lamp so that it threw a shadow of the face in profile on the wall, then outlining the shadow and filling it in with black. Louis Stevenson wrote verses to them all. The place was repainted the next spring, which was to be regretted, for the walls were completely covered with the most interesting silhouettes and drawings by painters who later became famous, to say nothing of the verses made by Stevenson, which would now have been a priceless memorial of those youthful days.

Among the joyous coterie was the American painter Will H. Low, who writes thus of f.a.n.n.y Osbourne in his _Chronicle of Friendships_:

"One evening at Grez we saw two new faces, mother and daughter, though in appearance more like sisters; the elder, slight, with delicately moulded features and vivid eyes gleaming from under a ma.s.s of dark hair; the younger of more robust type, in the first precocious bloom of womanhood."

Another of the company, Mr. Birge Harrison, writing in the _Century Magazine_ of December, 1916, expresses his mature judgment of her as he knew her at the little French village:

[Ill.u.s.tration: Robert Louis Stevenson in the French days.]

"Among a few women who were doing serious work at this place was the lady, 'Trusty, dusky, vivid, and true,' to whom Robert Louis Stevenson inscribed the most beautiful love song of our time. Mrs. Osbourne could not have been at that time more than thirty-five years of age--a grave and remarkable type of womanhood, with eyes of a depth and sombre beauty that I have never seen equalled--eyes, nevertheless, that upon occasion could sparkle with humor and brim over with laughter. Yet upon the whole Mrs. Osbourne impressed me as first of all a woman of profound character and serious judgment, who could, if occasion called, have been the leader in some great movement. But she belonged to the quattrocento rather than to the nineteenth century.

Had she been born a Medici, she would have held rank as one of the remarkable women of all time. That she was a woman of intellectual attainments is proved by the fact that she was already a magazine writer of recognized ability, and that at the moment when Stevenson first came into her life she was making a living for herself and her two children with her pen. But this, after all, is a more or less ordinary accomplishment, and Mrs. Osbourne was in no sense ordinary.

Indeed, she was gifted with a mysterious sort of over-intelligence, which is almost impossible to describe, but which impressed itself upon every one who came within the radius of her influence. Napoleon had much of this; likewise his arch enemy, the great Duke of Wellington; and among women, Catherine of Russia and perhaps Elizabeth of England. She was therefore both physically and mentally the very ant.i.thesis of the gay, hilarious, open-minded and open-hearted Stevenson, and for that very reason perhaps the woman in all the world best fitted to be his life comrade and helpmate. At any rate we may well ask ourselves if anywhere else he would have found the kind of understanding and devotion which she gave him from the day of their first meeting at Grez until the day of his death in far-away Samoa; if anywhere else there was a woman of equal attainments who would willingly, nay gladly, throw aside all of the pleasures and comforts of civilization to live among savages, and the still rougher whites of the South Pacific, in order that her husband might have just a little more oxygen for his failing lungs, a little more _chance_ for a respite and an extension of his shortening years? Probably no one ever better deserved than she the n.o.ble tribute of verse which her husband gave her, and from which I have quoted the opening line."

In 1878 the Osbournes returned to America, travelling by way of Queenstown, where, for the sake of stepping on Irish soil, they went ash.o.r.e for a few hours and took a ride in a real jaunting-car, with a driver who was as Irish as possible, with a thick brogue, a hole in his hat, and a smiling, good-humoured countenance.

A short stop was made in Indiana to visit the old family home in Hendricks County, now saddened by the death of our father, and then f.a.n.n.y Osbourne once more turned her steps towards the setting sun. At this time she added me, her youngest sister, to her party, and I remained with her until her marriage to Stevenson and their departure for Scotland. She was then in the full flower of her striking and unusual beauty, and so youthful in appearance that she, her daughter, and I pa.s.sed everywhere as three sisters. To me, reared as I had been in the flat country of central Indiana, where mountains and the sea were wonders known only through books, the journey across the continent--with its glimpses of the mighty snow-capped crags of the Rockies outlined against the fiery sunset skies of that region, the weird castellated rocks of the "Bad Lands," the colonies of funny little prairie-dogs peeping out of their burrows, the blanket-wrapped Indians waiting at the stations, and finally the awesome vision of the stupendous canyons and precipices of the Sierras, was like some strange, impossible dream; and when at last we came out into the warm sun and flowery brightness of California, straight from the gloom and chill of an Indiana November, it was as though the gates of paradise had suddenly opened.

Not long after her return to California, finding a reconciliation with her husband to be quite out of the question, Mrs. Osbourne decided to bring suit for divorce, which was eventually granted without opposition.

In the meantime, being much run down in health as a result of these hara.s.sing anxieties, she wished to seek rest in some quiet place free from unpleasant a.s.sociations. This she found in the charming little coast town of Monterey, which was then still unspoiled by tourist travel, and, taking her family with her, she went there for a stay of several months. In the soft air and peaceful atmosphere of this place her health and spirits soon revived. There she found an opportunity to indulge her skill as a horsewoman, and at any time she might have been seen galloping along the country roads on her little mustang, Clavel.[9] She even joined a party of friends who accompanied a band of _vaqueros_[10] in a great _rodeo_[11] on the San Francisquito ranch near Monterey. We rode for days from station to station, through a delightful country, under the feathery, scented redwoods and beside clear mountain-streams in which the trout leaped. We slept in barns on the hay or on the far-from-downy rawhide cots in the ranch shanties, and subsisted on freshly killed beef hastily barbecued over the campfire, coming back to Monterey sunburned to a fine mahogany.

[Footnote 9: A Spanish word, p.r.o.nounced clahvel, and meaning a pink.]

[Footnote 10: Cowboys.]

[Footnote 11: Cattle round-up.]

CHAPTER V

IN CALIFORNIA WITH ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON.

As the months pa.s.sed, Stevenson, drawn by an irresistible desire to see the one who had become dearest in all the world to him, and having heard that she was soon to be freed from the bonds that held her to another, decided to take ship for America. After the long ocean voyage and the fatiguing journey from sea to sea, which he has himself so graphically described, he went straight to meet the family at Monterey.

In the year 1879 there remained one spot in practical America where the Spirit of Romance still lingered, though even there she stood a-tiptoe, ready to take wing into the mists of the Pacific. It seems fitting that it should have been at that place that I first knew Robert Louis Stevenson. Although the pa.s.sing of the years has dimmed the memory of those days to a certain degree, yet here and there a high light gleams out in the shadowy haze of the picture and brings back the impression of his face and personality and of the surroundings and little events of our daily life in his company as though they had happened but yesterday. The little town of Monterey, being out of the beaten track of travel, and having no mines or large agricultural tracts in its vicinity to stimulate trade, had dreamed away the years since American occupation, and still retained much of the flavour of the pastoral days of Spanish California. It is true that at the _cascarone_[12] b.a.l.l.s--at which the entire population, irrespective of age or worldly position, dressed in silks or in flannel shirts, as the case might be, still gathered almost weekly in truly democratic comradeship--the egg-sh.e.l.ls were no longer filled with gold-dust, as sometimes happened in the prodigal Spanish days; yet time was still regarded as a thing of so little value that no one thought of abandoning the pleasures of the dance until broad daylight.

Along the narrow, crooked streets of the little town, with its precarious wooden sidewalks, the language of old Castile, spoken with surprising purity, was heard more often than English. In fact, as Mr.

Stevenson himself says in his essay on _The Old Pacific Capital_: "It was difficult to get along without a word or two of that language for an occasion."

[Footnote 12: These entertainments were so called in allusion to the custom of breaking _cascarones_ (egg-sh.e.l.ls), previously filled with finely cut coloured or tinsel paper, upon the heads of the dancers. By the time the midnight hour rolled around, every head glittered with the confetti, and the floor was piled several inches deep with it.]

High adobe walls, topped with tiles, concealed pleasant secluded gardens, from which the heavy perfume of the floribundia and other semitropical flowers poured out on the evening air. Behind such a wall and in the midst of such a garden stood the two-story adobe dwelling of the Senorita Maria Ygnacia Bonifacio, known to her intimates as Dona Nachita. In the "clean empty rooms" of this house, furnished with Spanish abstemiousness and kept in shining whiteness, "where the roar of the water dwelt as in a sh.e.l.l upon the chimney," we had our temporary residence, and here Louis Stevenson came often to visit us and share our simple meals, each of which became a little fete in the thrill of his presence and conversation. Something he had in him that made life seem a more exciting thing, better worth living, to every one a.s.sociated with him, and it seemed impossible to be dull or bored in his company. It is true that he loved to talk, and one of his friends complained that he was too "deuced explanatory," but it seemed to me that the flood of talk he sometimes poured out was the overflow of a full mind, a mind so rich in ideas that he could well afford to bestow some of it upon his friends without hope of return. His was no narrow vein to be jealously h.o.a.rded for use in his writings, but his difficulty lay rather in choosing from the wealth of his store. He once remarked that he could not understand a man's having to struggle to "find something to write about," and perhaps it is true that one who has to do that has no real vocation as a writer.

When he came to us at Monterey he was newly arrived in this country, and seemed to be in a rather peculiar state of mind concerning it, complaining that it was too much like England to have the piquancy of a foreign land, and yet not enough like it to have the restfulness of home, therefore it left him with a strange, unsatisfied feeling. One of the things in the new land that pleased him much was its food, for he believed in enjoying the good things of this life, and he was like a second Christopher Columbus, just discovering green corn and sweet potatoes. In a letter to his friend Sidney Colvin he says: "In America you eat better than anywhere else; fact. The food is heavenly!" During his first days at Monterey he kept singing the praises of certain delectable "little cakes," which he had found much to his liking in the railroad eating-houses while crossing the continent. These were a great mystery to us until one day Ah Sing, the Chinese cook, placed upon the table a plate of smoking-hot baking-powder biscuits. Behold the famous "little cakes"!

The unexpected discovery in the town of Jules Simoneau, to whom he refers in his letters as "a most pleasant old boy, with whom I discuss the universe and play chess," a man of varied talents, who was able to furnish him with an excellent dinner, as well as the intelligent companionship that he valued more than food, was a great satisfaction to him. Often we all repaired together to Simoneau's little restaurant, where we were served meals that were a rare combination of French and Spanish cookery, for our host's wife, Dona Martina, was a native of Miraflores, in Lower California, and was skilled in the preparation of the _tamales_[13] and _carne con chile_[14] of the Southwest. It has always seemed to me that in the oft-told story of the friendship between Jules Simoneau and Robert Louis Stevenson but scant justice has been done to that uncommonly fine woman Dona Martina, who, no doubt, had her part in caring for the writer when he lay so ill in Monterey. Perhaps more often than not it was her kind and skilful hand that prepared the broth and smoothed the pillow for Don Roberto Luis, as she called him; and though she had but little book knowledge, she was, in her native good sense, her well-chosen language, and the dignity and courtesy of her manners, what people call a "born lady." Mrs. Stevenson was profoundly grateful to Jules Simoneau for his early kindness to her husband, and had a sincere admiration for his wife as well. When he fell into straitened circ.u.mstances in his old age, she went to his rescue and provided him with a comfortable living during his last years. When he died she followed him to his last resting-place, and afterwards erected a suitable monument to mark it, only stipulating that the name of Dona Martina should also be placed upon it, she having died some time before him.

[Footnote 13: _Tamales_, perhaps the most famous culinary product of the Southwest, were probably of Indian origin. Their construction is too complicated to explain here, further than to say that they are made of corn-meal and chopped meat rolled in corn-husks and boiled.]