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

and begged her pardon, and the poor girl wept and loved me, and thenceforth made life miserable for me among my schoolmates by acts of 'favoritism.'"

In the little rose-covered cottage in Oakland a second son, Hervey, was born to the Osbournes. He was an extraordinarily beautiful child, with the rare combination of large dark eyes and yellow curls, but there was an ethereal look about him that boded no long stay on this earthly sphere.

It was perhaps partly to fill a great void that she began to feel in her life that Mrs. Osbourne took up the study of art in the School of Design conducted by Virgil Williams in San Francisco. Mother and daughter studied there side by side. While there Mrs. Osbourne won the prize, a silver medal, for the best drawing. She seemed not to value it at the time, but after her death her daughter found it in a little box laid away in her jewel-case.

When the little yellow-haired boy was about four years old, the cloud which had menaced the happiness of the family for so long again descended upon them. For years Mrs. Osbourne had made earnest and conscientious efforts to avoid the disruption of her marital ties, plighted with such high hopes in the springtime of her girlhood, but her husband's infidelities had now become so open and flagrant that the situation was no longer bearable. Divorce was at that time a far more serious step than it is now, and, for the sake of her family, she hesitated long before taking it, but there is no doubt that she was deeply wounded and humiliated by this painful episode in her life, and, in 1875, partly to remove herself as far as possible from distressing associations, partly to give her daughter the advantage of instruction in foreign schools of art, she took her three children and set out for Europe. When she left California for this journey it is no exaggeration to say that every bond of affection that held her to Samuel Osbourne had been broken.


CHAPTER IV

FRANCE, AND THE MEETING AT GREZ.


When they arrived on the other side, the Osbournes went directly to Antwerp, having decided to make a trial of that place first for their art studies. They landed at night in that most picturesque old city and took quarters at the Hotel du Bien-être, a quaint little old bourgeois inn where you walked in through the kitchen--full of copper pots and pans. It was in the days before "improvements"--broad avenues, street-cars, and the like--had robbed the old town of much of its distinctive charm, when at the corners of the narrow, stone-paved streets shrines of the Virgin and Child might still be seen. The passing crowds--peasant women in elaborate lace caps and long cloaks, groups of soldiers, milk carts drawn by dogs--all were intensely interesting to the newcomers from America, for whom this was the first foreign experience. The evening of their arrival they hung fascinated from their windows, listening to the glorious chimes from the cathedral near by, and watching the changing spectacle below. There were little tables in the street where soldiers sat drinking, while maids in huge caps filled their flagons. Isobel remarked: "It is like a scene in an opera; all we need is music." At that moment a band at the corner struck up "La Fille de Madame Angot," and the illusion was complete.

The Hotel du Bien-être was kept by the Gerhardts, a delightful family of father, mother, and eleven children. It was a happy time in Antwerp for the Osbourne children, for this large family of young people provided them with pleasant companionship.

But if the Osbourne children had a happy time in Antwerp, it was far otherwise with their mother, for she was alone with her family in a foreign land and had little money, and the responsibility weighed heavily upon her, her anxiety being further increased by signs of ill-health in her youngest child, Hervey. In this state of mind she was deeply touched by the warm-hearted kindness of the Gerhardts, which they exhibited in a thousand ways. One day the newspapers published an account of the failure of a bank in San Francisco, and, knowing that his guests came from that city, Papa Gerhardt was troubled lest they might suffer some pecuniary distress from the failure. Out of the fulness of his good heart he said to Mrs. Osbourne: "Do not be anxious; it does not matter if you have lost your money; you can stay with Papa Gerhardt." Fortunately, the bank failure did not affect her in any way, but the generosity of these good people in her lonely situation went straight to her heart, and to the end of her days one only had to be a Belgian to call forth her help and sympathy.

Finding it necessary to economize, she took a house, a queer little stone building with a projecting roof, containing four small rooms, one on top of the other. The rooms were so tiny that when the big front door stood ajar it opened up almost all the little apartment dignified by the name of "salon." The entire Gerhardt family took a hand in getting them settled, bringing little gifts--crocheted mats, bouquets of artificial flowers, and two pictures, bright-coloured chromos of "Morning" and "Night," representing two little children, awake and asleep. Mrs. Osbourne loyally kept these pictures for years, hanging them upon her wall in tender and grateful memory of the Gerhardts.

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 Fanny and her daughter entered the Julien School of Art on the Passage 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 circumstances 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, passed away, and was buried in an exile's grave at St. Germain. Though the mother bore even this heart-crushing blow with outward fortitude, 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.

[Illustration: 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 sex. 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-à-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 passed 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