“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. Our admiration for the sturdy old lady was very much tempered by our sympathy with the ladies-in-waiting, with whom driving backward on the front seat did not apparently agree. Their poor noses were very red, and the expression of their faces anxious, not to say cross, as they miserably coughed and sneezed.”
At Braemar the working fever continued, and Treasure Island was planned, but when autumn came they fled before the Scotch mists, and once more wended their way to the frozen Alps, settling for the winter in the Châlet am Stein. From mist to snow was but a rueful change, but this time Louis’s health seemed to gain greater benefit, and a reasonable amount of work was accomplished.
So the level current of their lives flowed on through a rather mild winter, with an occasional föhn wailing about their châlet as the “rocs might have wailed in the valley of diamonds,” until one morning they heard a bird sing, and soon the snow on the higher levels began to melt and send the water with a rush down the sides of the streets. Almost in a breath the hill slopes about them turned as white with crocus blooms as they had been in their winter covering of snow. Into their hearts something of the springtime entered, and one day Louis sat singing beside his wife, who writes: “I do not care for the music, but it makes me feel so happy to see him so well. When I wake in the morning I wonder what it is that brings such a glow to my heart, and then I remember!”
Yet it was then, as the flowers began to bloom and the birds to sing, that many of those to whom they had become attached with the pitiful bond of a common affliction broke the slender cord that held them to life and quietly slipped away. Of these she writes: “Louis is much cut up because a young man whom he liked and had been tobogganing with has been found dead in his bed. Bertie still hovers between life and death. Poor little Mrs. Doney is gone; my heart is sad for those two lovely little girls. In a place like this there are many depressing things, but it is encouraging to know that many are going away cured.”
Their own case had gone better, and Doctor Ruedi had given them leave “to live in France, fifteen miles as the crow flies from the sea, and if possible near a fir wood.”
In April they left the Alps and ventured back to their misty island, where they spent an unsatisfactory summer, moving from place to place in a fruitless search for better weather. Several hemorrhages forced them to the conclusion that they must be once more on the wing, and as both felt an unconquerable repugnance to spending another winter at bleak Davos, it was finally decided to go where their hearts led them, and seek a suitable place in the south of France. As Mrs. Stevenson was too ill just then to travel, the invalid, accompanied by his cousin, Mr. R. A. M. Stevenson, started about the middle of September, 1882, for Marseilles. The wife’s anxiety, however, gave her little rest, and almost before she was able to stand she set out after him, arriving in an alarmed and fatigued condition, of which he wrote to his mother in his humourous way: “The wreck was towed into port yesterday evening at seven P.M. She bore the reversed ensign in every feature; the population of Marseilles, who were already vastly exercised, wept when they beheld her jury masts and helpless hull.”
To her mother-in-law she wrote from here: “This is a lovely spot, and I cannot tell you how my heart goes out to it. It is so like Indiana that it would not surprise me to hear my father or mother speak to me at any moment, and yet it is not like home either. The houses and the ships look foreign, but the colour of the sky and the quality of the air, the corn, the grapes, the yellow pumpkins, the flowers, and the trees, are the same. Everything seems as it is at home, steeped in sunshine.”
In a few days they found a house, the Campagne Defli, in the suburbs of St. Marcel, “in a lovely spot, among lovely wooded and cliffy hills,” where they fondly hoped their pursuing fate would forget them for a time. Of Campagne Defli she joyfully writes to her mother-in-law: “Of all the houses in the world I think I should choose this one. It is a garden of paradise, and I cannot tell you how I long to have you here to enjoy things with me. It is such happiness to be in a place that combines the features of the land where I was born and California, where I have spent the best years of my life.”
She set eagerly to work to turn this charming but neglected place into a pleasant home, directing servants in the cleaning and scrubbing, hanging curtains over draughty doors, repapering walls, putting fresh coverings on old furniture, planting flowers and vegetables in the garden — in fact, pouring out her Dutch housekeeping soul in a thousand and one ways. The French servants, amazed at these activities, thought she was very queer. Once when she was on a step-ladder, with a hammer in her hand, putting up some pictures, she heard some one whisper outside: “Elle est folle.” As the two servants came in she cried out indignantly, waving the hammer for emphasis, “Pas folle! Beaucoup d’intelligence!” and then, losing her balance, fell over, step-ladder and all, while the servants fled shrieking. To her mother-in-law she writes: “For Louis’s birthday I found a violet blooming at the back of the house, and yesterday I discovered in our reserve a large magnolia tree, the delight of my heart. I am continually finding something new.”
Two things were to her as a closed book: one was foreign languages and the other was music. She could not sing a note nor hardly tell one tune from another, yet she liked to listen to music. Her speaking voice was low, modulated, and sweet, but with few inflections, and her husband once compared it to the pleasantly monotonous flow of a running brook under ice. As to languages, although she never seemed able to acquire any extended knowledge of the tongue of any foreign land in which she dwelt, she always managed in some mysterious way of her own to communicate freely with the inhabitants. In Spanish she only learned si, yet, supplemented with much gay laughter and many expressive gesticulations, that one word went a long way. She writes amusingly of this difficulty from Marseilles:
“Yesterday the servant and I went out shopping, which was difficult for me, but, although she knows no English, she seems to understand, as did the shopkeepers, my strange lingo. I had to put on the manner of an old experienced shopper and housekeeper, and count my change with great care, for it was important that I should impress both the woman and the shop people with the notion that I knew what was what. I have been in
town all day, making arrangements with butchers, buying an American stove — for the enormous gaudy French range is of no account whatever — and even went and got my luncheon in a restaurant, and all upon my pidgin French. To Louis’s great amusement I sometimes address him in it. I bought some cups and saucers to-day of a man who said ‘yes’ to all I said, while to all his remarks I answered ‘oui.’ The servant we have is very anxious to please us, and I have finally got her to the length of bringing the knives to the table cleaned; she could hardly believe at first that I was serious in wanting clean knives when there was no company.”
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.”
Complete Works of Robert Louis Stevenson Page 894
