Complete Works of Robert Louis Stevenson (Illustrated) (1123 page)

It was very pleasant to her to be received everywhere in France with a warm cordiality on the ground of her being an American, and she tells a little story about this in one of her letters:

“When I went in search of doctors I arrived in town at an hour when they all refused to see me, being at luncheon. One man, however, had not yet come in, though his luncheon was waiting for him, so I waited too and caught him in his own hall. He was quite furious and said the most dreadful things to his servant because she had let me in. I sat in a chair and waited till he had done abusing her, and then politely explained my errand. After much beating about the bush, he gave me the information that I wanted, and then, to the astonishment of his servant, went downstairs with me and put me into my cab with the most impressive politeness. Just as I left he told me he had allowed me to break his rule and spoil his lunch because I was an American.”

To their deep disappointment, Louis’s health gained little or nothing in this charming place, and for a time a heavy sadness fell upon his wife, and in desperation her thoughts turned towards the frozen Alps, which they both disliked and where she had suffered so much. She writes: “I am sorry to say that Louis has had another hemorrhage. I begin almost to think we had better go back to Davos and become Symondses and just stay there. Symonds himself, however, has taken a cold and the weather there has not been good. I have news from Davos that the well people that we knew are all dead and the hopeless cases are all right.”

Trouble with drains now came to add to their fear that beautiful Campagne Defli would not do for their permanent home. An epidemic broke out in St. Marcel, and many died. Mrs. Stevenson, stricken with fear for her husband, hurried him off to Nice, while she, armed with a revolver, remained behind to keep guard over their effects, the situation of their place being lonely, and reports of robberies and even murder in the neighbourhood having reached them.

In the next week or two a series of distressing events took place which brought Mrs. Stevenson almost to the verge of nervous prostration. The night before her husband’s departure a peasant on the estate died of the prevailing disease, and for some unknown reason the body, much swollen and disfigured, was permitted to lie just outside the gate during the entire morning. Next in the chapter of unfortunate accidents was the failure to reach her of the promised telegram announcing Louis’s safe arrival at Nice. After four days’ anxious waiting she decided to follow him, and her subsequent adventures may best be told in her own language as written to her mother-in-law:

“The fourth night I went to Marseilles and telegraphed to the gare and the police at Nice. All the people said it was no use, and that it was plain that he had been taken with a violent hemorrhage on the way and was now dead and buried at some little station. They said all I could do was to pack up and go back to Scotland. All were very kind in a dreadful way, but assured me that I had much better accept what ‘le bon Dieu’ had sent and go back to Scotland at once. After much telegraphing back and forth I found that Louis was at the Grand Hotel at Nice, and when I reached there he was calmly reading in bed. At St. Marcel and Marseilles every one was furious with me; they were all fond of Louis and said I had let a dying man go off alone. You may imagine my feelings all this time!”

As though all that went before had not been enough, her return journey to St. Marcel was made so uncomfortable by a tactless fellow passenger that she arrived in a state of complete exhaustion. Of this she writes:

“I have had a miserable time altogether, and the people, meaning to be so kind, were really so dreadful. There was a man on the train, an Englishman, who said such terrible things to me about Louis that when we reached Marseilles another Englishman who had been in the carriage came to me and spoke about it, saying he had been so wretched all the time. He insisted on stopping his journey a day to help me in my affairs. Here is a specimen of the horrid person’s talk: ‘What are you going to do when your husband dies?’ ‘I don’t expect him to die.’ ‘Oh, I know all about that. I’ve heard that kind of talk before. He’s done for, and in this country they’ll shovel him underground in twenty-four hours, almost before the breath is out of his body. His mother’ll never see him again.’ I do not speak but look intently out of the window. Again he speaks, leaning forward to be sure that I hear him. ‘Have him embalmed; that’s the thing; have you got money enough?’ Can you fancy five hours of this? I got out in the rain several times to try to get into another carriage, but they were all filled. But I never heard of anybody being so nice as Mr. Hammond was. I think he was more proud to be able to help Louis and those belonging to him than to help the Queen.”

Anxious to prevent her husband’s return to St. Marcel while conditions were so unfavourable, she wrote to him: “Don’t you dare to come back to this home of ‘pizon’ until you are really better. I do not see how you are to come back at all under the circumstances, deserting your family as you have done and being hunted down and caught by your wife. Madame desires me to say that she knows what is keeping you in Nice — it is another lady. I told her that instead of amusing yourself with another lady you were weeping for me and home and your Wogg. She was greatly touched at that and almost wept herself into her dishpan. You are a dear creature and I love you, but I am not going to say that I am lonesome lest you come flying back to this den of death.” In the meantime he wrote her letters in which he expressed his own loneliness in humourous verses, illustrated with drawings, one of which runs like this:

“When my wife is far from me
The undersigned feels all at sea.”

R. L. S.

“I am as good as deaf
When separate from F.

I am far from gay
When separate from A.

I loathe the ways of men
When separate from N.

Life is a murky den
When separate from N.

My sorrow rages high
When separate from Y.

And all things seem uncanny
When separate from Fanny.”

“Where is my wife? Where is my Wogg?
I am alone, and life’s a bog.”

All his wife’s expostulations, however, were of no avail, and, much to her annoyance, it was not long before he appeared at Campagne Defli, where she was busy packing up their effects for another flitting. She writes to her mother-in-law:

“I don’t wonder you ask what Louis is doing in Marseilles. He became filled with the idea that it was shirking to leave me here to do all the work. He was a good deal hurt, poor boy, because I wasn’t pleased. Wasn’t it delightful about the article in the Century? The person was evidently writing in such an ecstasy of joy at having found out Louis. I am so pleased that it was in the Century, for every friend and relation I have in the world will read it. I suppose you are even prouder of Louis than I am, for he is only mine accidentally, and he is yours by birth and blood. Two or three times last night I woke up just from pure pleasure to think of all the people I know reading about Louis.... He is incredibly better, and I suppose will just have to stay in Marseilles until I get done with things, for nothing will keep him away from me more than a week. It is so surprising, for I had never thought of Louis as a real domestic man, but now I find that all he wanted was a house of his own. Just the little time that we have been here has sufficed for him to form a quite passionate attachment for everything connected with the place, and it was like pulling up roots to get him away. I am quite bewildered with all the letters I have to write and all the things I have to do. For the present I think we shall have to cling to the little circle of country around Nice, so when you come it must be somewhere there.”

After some search they finally decided upon Hyères, and by the latter part of March had once more hopefully set up their household goods in a little cottage, the Châlet la Solitude, which clung to a low cliff almost at the entrance of the town. This house had been a model Swiss châlet at the Paris Exposition of 1878, and had been removed and again erected at Hyères, where, amid its French neighbours, it was an incongruous and alien object. Mrs. Stevenson writes of it: “It is the smallest doll house I ever saw, but has everything in it to make it comfortable, and the garden is magnificent. The wild flowers are lovely, and the walks, all so close at hand, most enchanting.”

In the garden grew old grey olive-trees, and in them nightingales nested and sang. On the rocky crags above stood the ruins of an ancient Saracen castle, and before them lay the sea — indeed a “most sweet corner of the universe.” Not far away were the rose farms of Toulon, of which Mrs. Stevenson writes:

“I shall never forget the day my husband and I drove through lanes of roses from which the attar of commerce is made. On either side of us the rose hedges were in full bloom; the scent, mingled with the fragrance of innumerable violets, was truly intoxicating. When we alighted at a place dappled with sunlight that filtered through the trees, and cooled by a spouting fountain where girls in coloured gowns laughed and chattered as they plied their trade of lace-making, we felt that our lines had indeed fallen in pleasant places.”

In this charming spot it seemed for a time that their pursuing fate had forgotten them, and for the greater part of a year happiness sat by their fireside. Louis always referred to this time as the happiest period of his life, and in a letter to his old friend in California, Jules Simoneau, he says: “Now I am in clover, only my health a mere ruined temple; the ivy grows along its shattered front, otherwise I have no wish that is not fulfilled; a beautiful large garden, a fine view of plain, sea, and mountain; a wife that suits me down to the ground, and a barrel of good Beaujolais.”

Under these happy conditions much work was accomplished, and, to the great pride and satisfaction of both husband and wife, they were at last able to live upon his earnings. Their almost idyllic life here is described by Mrs. Stevenson:

“My husband was then engaged on Prince Otto, begun so long ago in the little rose-covered cottage in Oakland, California. Our life in the châlet was of the utmost simplicity, and with the help of one untrained maid I did the cooking myself. The kitchen was so narrow that I was in continual danger of being scorched by the range on one side, and at the same time impaled by the saucepan hooks on the other, and when we had a guest at dinner our maid had to pass in the dishes over our heads, as our chairs touched the walls of the dining-room, leaving her no passageway. The markets of Hyères were well supplied, and the wine both good and cheap, so we were able, for the first time, to live comfortably within our limited income.

“My husband usually wrote from the early morning until noon, while my household duties occupied the same time. In the afternoon the work of the morning was read aloud, and we talked it over, criticising and suggesting improvements. This finished, we walked in our garden, listened to the birds, and looked at our trees and flowers; or, accompanied by our Scotch terrier, wandered up the hill to the ruins of the castle. After dinner we talked or read aloud, and on rare occasions visited Mr. Powell or received a visit from him. The châlet was well named, as far as we were concerned, for it was almost a solitude à deux, but the days slipped by with amazing celerity.”

Their mutual affection and their dependence upon each other grew as the years went by, and in 1884 he wrote to his mother: “My wife is in pretty good feather; I love her better than ever and admire her more; and I cannot think what I have done to deserve so good a gift. This sudden remark came out of my pen; it is not like me; but in case you did not know, I may as well tell you, that my marriage has been the most successful in the world.... She is everything to me; wife, brother, sister, daughter, and dear companion; and I would not change to get a goddess or a saint. So far, after four years of matrimony.”

At another time he wrote: “As for my wife, that was the best investment ever made by man; but ‘in our branch of the family’ we seem to marry well. Here am I, who you were persuaded was born to disgrace you, no very burning discredit when all is said and done; here am I married, and the marriage recognized to be a blessing of the first water — A1 at Lloyds.”

As Christmas, 1883, approached, their content seemed to reach its highest tide, and out of a full heart Mrs. Stevenson wrote to her mother-in-law:

“What a Christmas of thanksgiving this should be for us all, with Louis so well, his father so well, everything pointing to comfort and happiness. Louis is making such a success with his work, and doing better work every day. Dear mother and father of my beloved husband, I send you Christmas greetings from my heart of hearts. I mean to have a Merry Christmas and be as glad and thankful as possible for all the undeserved mercies and blessings that have been showered upon me.”

They snatched at these moments of respite from eating care with an almost pathetic eagerness, and set to work once more to make a home in their doll’s house. Mrs. Stevenson had what she called a “painting fever,” and devised a scheme of Japanese decorations for the doors of the châlet which her husband thought might be made to produce a lot of money if they were nearer London. One of the panels had a woman yawning over a fire in the early morning, and the hypnotic effect of it kept the family and their guests yawning their heads off, so that Mrs. Stevenson decided the sleepy lady would be better for a bedroom.

Among their acquaintances here was a certain doctor who was such an inveterate optimist that he could have given lessons even to Louis Stevenson himself. She says of him: “This doctor has bought a piece of land here upon which he expects to build a house and settle down when he retires from practice. How old do you suppose he will be when he stops work and settles down to enjoy life? Only ninety-one, and subject to hemorrhages and other things! It seems to be the received opinion that when one passes the age of sixty-three years life takes a new start and one may live to almost any age. As to Louis, I verily believe he is going to be like the old doctor, only a little better looking, I hope.”