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

suggestion was received as a good one. He thought we would say: 'How ridiculous! Why, you look just like a brigand!' But the great thing is that the climate is doing Louis good. To have him recover entirely will be so splendid that I must murmur at nothing." The last is perhaps a reference to the bad effect of the altitude on her own health, for her heart was so severely affected that she was compelled to spend much of the time lying on a couch, and was finally obliged to go away for a time.

These two were congenially alike in their careless indifference to the minor details of life. Neither ever dated a letter, and both invariably forgot all anniversaries, even having to be reminded of their own wedding-day by his scandalized mother. What Mr. S. S. McClure called Fanny Stevenson's "robust, inconsequential philosophy of life" permitted her to accept with calm situations which would have driven another woman to distraction. Even in that sad colony of the sick she found compensations, and writing of this she says:

"It is depressing to live with dying and suffering people all about you, but a sanatorium develops a great deal of human interest and sympathy. Every one knows what the others should do, and each among the patients helps to look after the rest. The path of duty always lies so plain before other people's feet.... Then there are always little kindnesses going on that warm the heart. The other morning I told Louis I had dreamed that Alfred Cornish had made him a present of his toboggan, and sure enough the first thing when Louis went out up came Cornish and presented him with the toboggan. I had never thought of such a thing and don't see why I dreamed it."

At Davos they had a great deal of trouble with their little dog, Woggs, a beautiful but eccentric Skye terrier that had been given them by Sir Walter Simpson. Both were tenderly considerate of animals, and when this little creature was ill with a cankered ear they took turns sitting up at night with him. She writes of him: "Woggs is ill-tempered, and obstinate, and rather sly, but he is lovable and intelligent. I imagine that it is with dogs as with people--it is not for being good alone that we love them."

Here Stevenson wrote but little. Of his work she says:

"Louis is worried because he thinks he cannot write as gracefully as he used to, but I believe his writing is more direct and stronger, and that when he is able to join his old style with the new he will do better work than he dreams of now. His later work is fuller of thought, more manly in every way."

With the month of March came Mrs. Stevenson's birthday, and, to her great surprise and confusion, it was made the occasion of a general fête in which the whole colony took part. She thus describes the affair:

"I was told there was to be a dance in the dining-room and cake and ices in my honor, so Louis and I went down in the evening. I watched the dancing awhile, when suddenly I found myself seated alone at the end of the room. Judge of my surprise, and I must confess, dismay, when I saw the two little Doney children, in Watteau costumes, looking just like bits of porcelain painting, coming down the center towards me, one bearing a large birthday cake and the other a bouquet of flowers. The beautiful little creatures dropped on their knees at my feet and presented their offerings. I suppose I should have said something, but Louis said I did the best thing possible; I only kissed both the darlings. Other people had had birthdays and only received congratulations, so I felt horribly embarrassed by all these grand doings in a public room, though I was very grateful for the friendly feelings of those who arranged the affair."

The snow came late, but during the winter it lay deep and heavy on the ground, making the roads almost impassable and their isolation more complete. Both husband and wife began to feel an almost uncontrollable depression amid these bleak surroundings, aggravated as they were by many deaths among the patients. As spring approached Mrs. Stevenson wrote:

"Louis is not very well and not very ill. Spring, I think, sits upon him, and so also all these deaths and Bertie's[19] illness. As soon as he is a little stronger the doctor is going to send him to some place in the neighborhood for a change."

[Footnote 19: The son of Mrs. Sitwell, now Lady Colvin.]

And she, to whom warmth and colour were a very part of her nature, was an exotic, a lost tropic bird, in these icy mountains. In a letter to her mother-in-law her heart cried out: "I cannot deny that living here is like living in a well of desolation. Sometimes I feel quite frantic to look out somewhere, and almost as though I should suffocate. But may Davos forgive me! It has done so much for Louis that I am ashamed to say anything against it."

In the latter part of April their discontent went beyond endurance, and, believing his health now sufficiently improved to warrant the risk, they turned their steps once more towards their beloved France, where they spent a month between Barbizon, St. Germain, and Paris.

In Paris their haunting Nemesis gave them a little breathing spell, and when Louis's strength permitted, they wandered about the streets in their own careless, irresponsible fashion, having a delightful time poking into all sorts of strange places, in one of which he insisted on spending practically his last sou for an antique watch for which she had expressed admiration. "Now we'll starve," said she, but after reaching home he happened to put his hand in the pocket of an old coat and drew out an uncashed cheque which had been forgotten. One day when out alone she went into a dismal-looking pawn-shop in a part of the city that was not considered exactly safe. She was puzzled by the evident superiority of the proprietor to his surroundings, and when he invited her to follow him, she went without hesitation back through winding passages until they stepped out into a beautiful garden, where sat a charming invalid lady, wife of the pawnbroker. It seemed that they were people who had fallen from a high estate, and, through devotion to his wife, who was helplessly confined to her chair, he had for years kept the secret of his occupation from her, and she had lived in her garden like a fair flower, uncontaminated by the slums of Paris. In this shop Mrs. Stevenson bought four rich mahogany posts, part of an antique bedstead, which she used many years afterwards as pillars in the drawing-room of her San Francisco house.

But alas, their pleasant jaunting soon came to an end, for Louis had a relapse which brought desperate disappointment to them both, and of which she writes to his mother: "I felt compelled to tell him that he must be prepared for whatever may happen. Naturally the poor boy yearned for his mother. I think it must be very sweet to you to have this grown-up man of thirty still clinging to you with his child love."

The setback dashed their spirits so severely that his conscientious Scotch parents thought it their duty to lecture them on the sin of ingratitude for the blessings that were still theirs. In great contrition their daughter-in-law writes:

"I was just about to write when a double letter from you and Mr. Tommy came to hand. When I read what Mr. Tommy said about gratitude I felt more conscience-stricken than words can express. Neither Louis nor I have any right to feel even annoyed about anything. Certainly God has been good. I have seen others, apparently no more ill than Louis was at one time, laid in their graves, and I see others, quite as ill, struggling wearily for their daily bread. We see misery and wretchedness on every hand, and here we sit, none of it touching us, Louis feeling better, and both of us complaining shamefully because in the smallest things the world does not go round smoothly enough for us.... I fancy we shall start for Scotland Tuesday, but will travel slowly on account of Louis's fatigue and nervous exhaustion from the shaking of the train."

Edinburgh was reached on May 31, 1881, and a few days later, accompanied by his mother, they went to Pitlochry, where they spent two months in Kinnaird Cottage, on the banks of a lovely river. This was a beautiful but inclement region, and cold winds and rain prevailed almost constantly. The two ladies never ventured out without umbrellas, and even then usually returned in a drenched condition. Imprisoned by the weather, the sick man was compelled to spend all his waking time in the sitting-room, where his confinement was made the more penitential by the absence of books. It happened that the only books in the house were two volumes of Voltaire, and these were taken from the younger pair one dreary Sunday by their stern parents as not proper "Sabba'-day" reading.

Thrown entirely on their own resources, they decided to write stories and read them to each other. These tales, coloured by the surroundings, were of a sombre cast. Here Thrawn Janet was begun. In a preface, written years later, Mrs. Stevenson gives a graphic description of the first writing of this gloomy but powerful story.

"That evening is as clear in my memory as though it were yesterday--the dim light of our one candle, with the acrid smell of the wick that we had forgotten to snuff, the shadows in the corners of the 'lang, laigh, mirk chamber, perishing cauld,' the driving rain on the roof close above our heads, and the gusts of wind that shook our windows. The very sound of the names, 'Murdock Soulis, the Hangin' Shaw in the beild of the Black Hill, Balweary in the vale of Dule,' sent a 'cauld grue' along my bones. By the time the tale was finished my husband had fairly frightened himself, and we crept down the stairs clinging hand in hand like two scared children."

"Weather wet, bad weather, still wet, afraid to go out, pouring rain," appeared almost constantly in Mrs. Thomas Stevenson's diary, and though Stevenson, whether inspired by home scenes or driven in upon himself for relief from the outer dreariness, did some of his best work here, it became clear that a more favourable spot must be sought. From Pitlochry they went to Braemar, but that place proved to be no improvement. Mrs. Stevenson writes of it in her preface to Treasure Island :

"It was a season of rain and chill weather that we spent in the cottage of the late Miss McGregor, though the townspeople called the cold, steady, penetrating drizzle 'just misting,' In Scotland a fair day appears to mean fairly wet. 'It is quite fair now,' they will say, when you can hardly distinguish the houses across the street. Queen Victoria, who had endeared herself greatly to the folk in the neighborhood, showed a true Scotch spirit in her indifference to the weather. Her Majesty was in the habit of driving out to take tea in the open, accompanied by a couple of ladies-in-waiting. The road to Balmoral ran not far behind the late Miss McGregor's cottage, and as the Queen always drove in an open carriage, with her tea basket strapped on behind, we could see her pass very plainly.