The Life of Mrs. Robert Louis Stevenson, Nellie Van de Grift Sanchez [english novels for students txt] 📗

one place where coolness always held sway--the mouth of the old tunnel, from whose dark, mysterious depths, which we never dared explore for fear of stepping off into some forgotten shaft, a cold, damp wind blew continuously. Just inside its entrance we established a cold-storage plant, for there all articles kept delightfully fresh in the hottest weather. When the coolness of the evening fell, "it was good to gather stones and send them crashing down the chute," and indeed this was almost our only pastime in our queer mountain eyrie. The noise made by these stones as they went bounding down the chute was sent back in tremendous rolling echoes by the mountains on the opposite side of the valley, and it pleased us to liken it to the noise heard by Rip Van Winkle, "like distant peals of thunder," made by the ghosts of Hendrik Hudson's men playing at ninepins in the Catskill Mountains.

Then back to San Francisco, where the only memory that remains is that of a confused blur of preparations for leaving--packing, ticket-buying, and melancholy farewells--for the time had come to return to old Scotland to introduce a newly acquired American wife to waiting parents.

One day Louis came in with his pockets full of twenty-dollar gold pieces, with which he had supplied himself for the journey. He thought this piece of money the handsomest coin in the world, and said it made a man feel rich merely to handle it. In a jesting mood, he drew the coins from his pockets, threw them on the table, whence they rolled right and left on the floor, and said: "Just look! I'm simply lousy wid money!"

Then came the parting, which proved to be eternal, for I never saw him again; but perhaps it is better to remember him only as he was then--before the rainbow hues of youth had faded.

To this picture, which represents my own personal recollections of the California period,[17] something yet remains to be added. Many obstacles seemed to block the path to happiness of these two people, not the least of which was Louis's ill health and consequent inability to earn a sufficient sum to support new obligations. To his great joy this difficulty was finally smoothed away by a promise from his father of an allowance large enough for their needs until such time as restored health might bring about his independence. I remember the day this word came from his father, and the exceeding happiness it gave him. While it is true that his parents had at first objected to his marriage, their objections were based, not on the matter of the divorce, for they held extremely liberal views on that subject, but simply on the fact of his choice being an American and a stranger. They would, quite naturally, have preferred a daughter-in-law of their own race and acquaintance, but both were intensely attached to their only and gifted son, and, although his decision caused their own plans to "gang agley," when they found that his mind was irrevocably made up, they yielded without reserve, and prepared to welcome their new daughter to their home and hearts. Writing at this time to his friend Mr. Edmund Gosse, Stevenson expressed his satisfaction at the turn affairs were taking in these words:

"Many of the thunderclouds that were overhanging me when last I wrote have silently stolen away, like Longfellow's Arabs; and I am now engaged to be married to the woman whom I have loved for three years and a half. I will boast myself so far as to say that I do not think many wives are better loved than mine will be."

[Footnote 17: Previously published in Scribner's
Magazine , October, 1916.]

When the rain-clouds at last rolled away, and the snow had melted from the mountain-tops in the Coast Range, Fanny Osbourne and Robert Louis Stevenson went quietly across the bay and were married, on May 19, 1880, by the Reverend Mr. Scott, with only Mrs. Scott and Mrs. Virgil Williams as witnesses. It was a serious, rather than a joyous occasion, for both realized that a future overcast with doubt lay before them. In 1881 Stevenson wrote from Pitlochry in Scotland to Mr. P. G. Hamerton:

"It was not my bliss that I was interested in when I was married; it was a sort of marriage in extremis ; and if I am where I am, it is thanks to the care of that lady, who married me when I was a mere complication of cough and bones, much fitter for an emblem of mortality than a bridegroom."

As for her, she married him when his fortunes, both in health and finances, were at their lowest ebb, and she took this step in the almost certain conviction that in a few months at least she would be a widow. The best that she hoped for was to make his last days as comfortable and happy as possible, and that her self-sacrifice was to receive the bountiful reward of fourteen rich years in his companionship, during which time she was to see him win fame and fortune by the exercise of his genius, was far from her dreams.

At the time of their marriage they took with them Mrs. Stevenson's son, Samuel Lloyd Osbourne, her daughter having been married a short time before to Joseph Strong, a well-known artist of the Pacific Coast. Mr. Stevenson took this boy, then about twelve years of age, to his heart as his own. In fact he always counted it as one of the blessings that came through his wife that she brought to him, a childless man, a son and daughter to be a comfort to him in all the years of his life. In his talk at his last Thanksgiving dinner he referred to this as one of his chief reasons for gratitude.

In the healing air of Mount Saint Helena the invalid grew better with astonishing rapidity, and at the end of June he wrote to his mother:

"You must indeed pardon me. This life takes up all my time and strength. I am truly better; I am allowed to do nothing, never leave our little platform in the canyon nor do a stroke of work. No one to see me now would think I was an invalid."

When, in 1883, his mother expressed surprise that such a rough place should have been chosen for his cure, her daughter-in-law answered:

[Illustration: Fanny Osbourne at the time of her marriage to Robert Louis Stevenson.]

"You wonder at my allowing Louis to go to such a place. Why, if you only knew how thankful I was to get there with him! I was told that nothing else would save his life, and I believe it was true. We could not afford to go to a 'mountain resort' place, and there was no other chance. Then, on the other hand, the next day I put in doors and windows of light frames covered with white cotton, with bits of leather from the old boots (miners' boots found in the deserted cabin) for hinges, made seats and beds, and got things to look quite homelike. We got white and red wine, dried peaches and fruits which we kept cool in the tunnel and which we enjoyed extremely. Louis says nothing about the flowers, but the beauty of them was beyond description, to say nothing of the perfume. At the back door was a thicket of trees covered with cream-colored and scarlet lilies. I have never seen the like anywhere in the world."

Again she writes from Calistoga, July 16, 1880, to the yet unknown mother-in-law:

"As to my dear boy's appearance, he improves every day in the most wonderful way, so that I fancy by the time you see him you will hardly know that he has ever been ill at all. I do try to take care of him; the old doctor insists that my nursing saved him; I cannot quite think it myself, as I shouldn't have known what to do without the doctor's advice, but even having it said is a pleasure to me. Taking care of Louis is, as you must know, very like angling for shy trout; one must understand when to pay out the line, and exercise the greatest caution in drawing him in. I am becoming most expert, though it is an anxious business. I do not believe that any of Louis's friends, outside of his own family, have ever realized how very low he has been; letters followed him continually, imploring, almost demanding his immediate return to England, when the least fatigue, the shortest journey, might, and probably would, have proved fatal; and, which at the moment filled my heart with bitterness against them, they actually asked for work. Now, at last, I think he may venture to make the journey without fear, though every step must be made cautiously. I am sure now that he is on the high road to recovery and health, and I believe his best medicine will be the meeting with you and his father, for whom he pines like a child. I have had a sad time through it all, but it has been worse for you, I know. I am now able to say that all things are for the best. Louis has come out of this illness a better man than he was before; not that I did not think him good always, but the atmosphere of the valley of the shadow is purifying to a true soul; and though he may be no nearer your hearts than before, I believe you will take more comfort in your son than you have ever done. I trust that in about two weeks we shall be able to start, and perhaps in less time than that. Please remember that my photograph is flattering; unfortunately all photographs of me are; I can get no other. At the same time Louis thinks me, and to him I believe I am, the most beautiful creature in the world. It is because he loves me that he thinks that, so I am very glad. I do so earnestly hope that you will like me, but that can only be for what I am to you after you know me, and I do not want you to be disappointed in the beginning in anything about me, even in so small a thing as my looks. Your fancy that I may be a business person is a sad mistake. I am no better in that respect than Louis, and he has gifts that compensate for any lack. I fear it is only genius that is allowed to be stupid in ordinary things."

In this letter the natural trepidation with which she looked forward to the meeting with her husband's parents, divided as they were from her in race and customs, is evident. She was, as she confessed to some of her friends, quite terrified at the prospect, especially as concerned the elder Mr. Stevenson, whose portrait represented a serious Scotchman with a stern, almost forbidding face, firm mouth, and long upper lip. Her fear of her mother-in-law was less, for from her she had had many affectionate and reassuring letters. How utterly groundless her apprehensions were in this matter we shall see later.

Notwithstanding the uncertainty of the future that lay before them, they were both exceedingly happy in the fruition of their long-frustrated plans, and for her it lifted a cloud that had rested upon her spirits for years. One day in San Francisco, shortly after the marriage, her daughter, upon entering a