Good Wives

by Margaret Forster

  The marriage took place on 19 May 1880, but the couple did not leave for the mountains immediately. Louis, unromantically, had to have some false teeth made; and then the weather was bad. But by the end of June he and his wife and stepson had travelled to the Napa Valley and were camping in Silverado. Fanny did all the work, literally hammering together planks of wood to make a shack and struggling to make stools out of the wooden packing cases in which they had brought their belongings. She was endlessly resourceful whereas Louis, even when well, could barely bang in a nail. She made him rest in the sun all day, on a platform she erected among the trees, and there he relaxed, recovering. All meals were eaten out of doors. Fanny had found an entrance to an old mine which was cold enough to serve as an ice-chest and here she hung up pigeons and wild ducks, purchased from trappers who supplied the one store down on the toll road above which they lived. She drew water from a nearby spring and there was plenty of wood around to burn. Mid-morning and mid-afternoon Fanny made Louis and herself rum-punches. It was a physically hard life for her, but compared to the Reese River days the daily toil was easy. In any case, there could be no comparison – she was a happy woman now, striving to bring back to health a husband she loved and who loved her more than ever. But they could not stay on the mountainside for ever and, anyway, Louis was homesick for Europe. Besides, he wanted to introduce his wife to his parents. Fanny, not unnaturally, dreaded this meeting. She was apprehensive that the Stevenson parents would be unable to hide their disappointment and that the magnanimity they had shown on paper would vanish.

  But unlike Mary Livingstone, she wisely set herself to woo her parents-in-law. Her letters to them were clever and careful, full of a modest assessment of herself and freely acknowledging how attached their son was to them. One which she wrote jointly with her husband to his mother was a masterpiece of tact. Louis, she said, was obviously a mother’s boy, and she made it clear that, far from dismaying her, this pleased her and she did not see herself in any kind of competition. She was sure Louis even looked like his mother and only wished she had been sent a photograph so that she could see if this was true. She sent her own photograph, about which she was self-deprecrating, warning Mrs Stevenson that it flattered her and she must not expect her to look as good. But Fanny instinctively knew that the way to her mother-in-law’s heart was to stress how well she was looking after Louis, how his health was her prime concern. ‘I do try to take care of him; the old doctor insists that my nursing saved him’,10 she wrote, adding that she herself must know that this taking care was ‘very like angling for sly trout … I am becoming most expert’. But she didn’t boast – if she had had ‘a sad time of it’, she said, she knew it had been far worse for his mother, so far away and unable to do anything. Gently, she tried to establish a bond of sympathy between them, both united in care of their ‘boy’. Her desire for Mrs Stevenson to like her was openly expressed – ‘I do so earnestly hope you will like me, but that can only be for what I am to you after you know me …’

  No wife could have done more to prepare the way for a difficult encounter, but in spite of Mrs Stevenson’s swift and friendly response, saying she liked the photograph and that she was not going to look backwards – ‘I don’t care for ancient history at all’11 – Fanny still worried. Louis didn’t. He had none of his wife’s fears. He loved his parents and had no doubt they would share his love for Fanny. What worried him was securing her future if he died. Her own family had been strongly opposed to this second marriage and he knew none of them was in a position to support her should he fail her. So he wrote to Jacob Vandergrift, Fanny’s only brother, who alone had written to him. He confessed his anxieties about his own health and explained that this was one of the reasons he was in such a hurry to take her to meet his parents – ‘They are well off, thank God; and even suppose that I die, Fanny will be better off than she had much chance of being otherwise.’12 It was a letter which, if they had known about it, his London literary friends could have used in support of their theory that Fanny was a fortune-hunter. But she had never looked to Sam’s family for help when she needed it and even if she had been set to take advantage of Louis’s she would never have counted on it when the Stevensons had every reason to resent her.

  Fanny, Louis and the twelve-year-old Lloyd arrived in Liverpool on 17 August 1880, met first by Colvin and immediately afterwards by the Stevensons who had come from Edinburgh. They all had lunch together, Lloyd endearing himself to the Stevensons by eating an enormous amount with obvious relish and showing himself ‘a true boy’, and there was remarkably little tension. Louis, though horribly thin, looked well, his new teeth filling out his face and improving his appearance. Colvin, writing to Henley, wondered rather nastily if he would ever grow to like what he described as Fanny’s ‘little determined brown face … and grizzling hair’, but Thomas and Margaret Stevenson seemed to have no reservations. It was in Margaret’s nature to like everyone if she could, though Thomas was much more critical, much more inclined to be suspicious and reserve judgement. Fanny knew he would be the harder parent to win over – he would not be fooled by a display of charm and would, she knew, be scrutinising her every word and expression. She was ten years older than Louis, a divorcée, mother of two children, penniless, not conventionally beautiful, foreign – any parent could be forgiven for fearing the worst. Yet within three weeks Louis was writing to his cousin Bob that Fanny was getting on with ‘the old folks’ better than he had ever dared to hope, and Fanny herself was writing that to her delight she was on very friendly terms with the parents and liked them exceedingly.

  This happy state of affairs was a credit to all of them but perhaps most of all to Fanny. She had pulled off something many a daughter-in-law with far more in her favour could never manage to achieve. Far more wives fail, as Mary Livingstone failed, to make a successful relationship with a husband’s parents and the husband can end up torn between the two rivals for his affections. Fanny worked hard to fit in with the Stevensons’ tastes, allowing her mother-in-law to dress her smartly and enduring hours of shopping with her, though neither clothes nor shopping for them was of any real interest to her. Mrs Stevenson had never had a daughter, and Fanny realised she wanted to do with her what she would have done with a daughter – ‘his mother, I am sure, plays dolls13 with me’, she wrote to a friend. Fanny was no doll, but she was prepared to allow herself to be used as one if it would make her mother-in-law happy. Thomas Stevenson, on the other hand, had no use for a doll-like daughter-in-law. He liked independent minds and hated those who meekly bowed to the opinions of others. Like many men who appear domineering, he liked people who stood up to him and Fanny certainly did that. She was not afraid to argue with him and even to correct him, which amused him and endeared her to him. But at the same time Fanny had the sense to defer to her father-in-law in matters that were unimportant to her, presenting him with little victories. He disliked black stockings, so Fanny, who regularly wore them, immediately changed the colour of hers. And she tried to take up what the Stevensons thought women should do, such as embroidery and going to church.

  But it was in the care of Louis that Fanny scored most highly. They saw how she protected Louis from himself, quietly and cunningly persuading him to husband his energies in such a way that he hardly realised he had been manipulated. She thought and planned for him, and they saw her as an excellent influence, one he had long needed. He respected her opinion as they had regretfully to admit he had never respected theirs, however much he had loved them. Then there was young Lloyd, who gave them so much pleasure and was a credit to Fanny’s mothering. They saw how Louis loved the boy and it seemed right that he should now have a stepson, a child to satisfy his well-known love of children. Fanny was forty and though it was just possible she might yet give them a grandchild, it was probably unlikely. Altogether, Fanny brought into the lives of the Stevenson parents a sense of family which they had long wanted to see their son enjoy. Suddenly, he was rooted, no longer quite such a wayward
spirit forever dashing off on mad whims and often forgetting to write to them.

  But what they didn’t appreciate was something Fanny realised very quickly. Louis had told her often enough that though he loved his parents and was profoundly grateful to them, he couldn’t stand being in their company for long. He had confessed that he always felt conscious of loneliness when he was with his parents. Once, to Mrs Sitwell, he had expressed the opinion that ‘the children of lovers are orphans’ but now he found himself irritated by his parents and oppressed by their need of him. Even their indulgence towards him made him restless – he felt, perversely, that somehow they shouldn’t indulge him so much. Fanny, who had no such difficulty with her own parents, understood very well, once she had lived in Heriot Row for a while, that though Louis’s parents were wonderful, they smothered their son. Louis was not to be blamed for finding the atmosphere at home claustrophobic and she saw how he needed constant respite from their eager involvement. It was up to her, as his wife, to manage some daily degree of separation without hurting them or making them suspect the truth. Even his health was affected by living in their household and this was not all to do with Edinburgh’s climate.

  The climate – the cold, the damp, the biting wind – at least provided the excuse to leave the Stevensons and go south, not to France, which Louis would have preferred and to which Fanny was attracted, but to Davos in Switzerland. The doctors had decreed that only the climate of this relatively new alpine spa would cure Louis’s lung complaint and, though the thought of snow and the high altitude made Fanny apprehensive, she was ready to try anything. But they had to pass through London on the way, and this meant her husband’s meeting up with his friends which she quickly discovered was far worse for his health. Henley, Colvin, Baxter, Gosse – they all came to see him and stayed far too long, smoking and drinking and talking for hours. Fanny sat in a corner and listened and kept quiet, but she disapproved strongly. The morning after one of these sessions found him worn out – but still eager for more. It was bad enough when his friends came to their hotel but worse still when Louis went to visit them and Fanny could exercise no control. She was furious one evening, when Louis, who obviously wasn’t well, insisted on going to dine with the Gosses. She had, of course, been invited too, but refused to accompany him. He went alone, seeming to want to be with his friends more than with her, for that evening at least. It made her miserable. As Louis’s wife, she felt her judgement should matter, but in London he rejected it. He wanted to see his friends and that was that. Anyone who thought he was under Fanny’s thumb was greatly mistaken.

  Henley (whom Fanny disliked the most of Louis’s old friends) realised eventually that Louis was stronger-willed than his wife, whatever the appearance to the contrary. He decided they were a ‘couple of Babes in the Wood … the male Babe is the principal’.14 In fact, he felt sorry for Fanny, seeing, over the course of time, that when Louis had made up his mind, she could do nothing with him. Henley judged her ‘indolent, impractical and feckless’ but Louis was worse. Both of them were extravagant but Louis was the more thoughtless – Fanny was only ‘careless and thriftless’ but at least spent nothing on herself. It was Louis who should have realised, for example, the cost of staying at the expensive Grosvenor Hotel while they were in London, but who gaily ran up enormous bills, which his parents had to settle. Henley, while considering that Fanny, as a good wife, should have curbed her husband’s expenditure, at least did not lay the blame directly upon her.

  Fanny herself felt ill by the time she and Louis departed for Davos, and wrote to her parents-in-law that if they had stayed any longer she would have become an embittered woman, full of hate for her husband’s friends who went on refusing to notice what damage they were doing to him. At least, once in Davos, he was free of them, though nothing about their arrival on a bleak, bitterly cold evening after a tedious and dreadfully long journey made the place seem otherwise attractive, and Fanny was dismayed. Davos was 5,000 feet (1525 m) above sea-level, situated in the most easterly canton of Switzerland. A massive mountain wall at the end of the wedge-shaped valley in which it lay formed part of the border with Austria. It was, Fanny wrote, like ‘living in a well of desolation’. The Belvedere, where they stayed, was a good hotel, only fifteen years old, and with above-average sanitary arrangements and extremely effective steam-heating. They would be comfortable there, but still Fanny was depressed by the gloom of the place. There wasn’t even any snow, only frost in November when they arrived. Everything seemed grey and forlorn.

  What lifted her spirits after a few weeks was the vast improvement in Louis’s health. There was no doubt that Dr Karl Ruedi’s treatment was working, though it consisted of little more than keeping Louis in the open air. She liked Dr Ruedi, a tall, genial man who had learned his excellent English in Colorado, and quickly had faith in him, so much so that she allowed him to put her on a diet. Fanny had become decidedly plump – or, as her husband bluntly put it, fat. He made constant jokes in letters about ‘this fat woman at my elbow’,15 called her ‘a barrel of butter’ and reported with glee that she had burst a button off her dress. He didn’t seem to mind Fanny’s being fat, rather relishing her plumpness as a sign that she was thriving, but Fanny minded. She’d weighed 131 lb (59.4 kg) in California (which, for her height, was quite heavy), and had since put on much more weight. Dr Ruedi had no doubt that the weight gain was the cause of her not feeling well and, according to Louis, threatened her with being obese. ‘The word OBESITY’,16 observed her very thin husband, ‘was like a dart through her liver.’ She obeyed Dr Ruedi’s dietary advice: no bread, no butter, no potatoes, nothing but meat and wine. Soon, she was feeling much better and yet was puzzled to find that, though she had become much thinner, she appeared to weigh the same.

  Davos was dull for her. Louis spent his time tobogganing with Lloyd once the snow came, and he had made a congenial friend, the scholar John Addington Symonds (who’d arrived in 1877 and spent the rest of his life there), but she pined for the Californian sun and wondered restlessly how long she would have to endure this cold, remote prison. By the following June, Dr Ruedi pronounced Louis well enough to spend the summer in Scotland with his parents and, though the prospect depressed Fanny, it was preferable to Davos. Unfortunately, the summer of 1881 in Scotland turned out to be atrocious. The rain never stopped. ‘The nice little Highland cottage’ near Pitlochry, which Mrs Stevenson had rented, practically floated in the torrential downpour. It did Louis’s lungs no good to be there. Soon, he was prostrate with a heavy cold and all the good done by wintering in Davos seemed undone. They needed to get away, but they only moved to another cottage near Braemar. The rain still fell there too, great squalls of it, and the black clouds never lifted. But here, kept inside by the weather, Louis began to write a story to amuse his stepson Lloyd. He was weak, easily tired and spitting blood but his boredom was so acute that only writing seemed to lift it. Fanny watched apprehensively. She was glad to see Louis absorbed, and more cheerful, and glad to have Lloyd entertained, but she thought Louis was wasting his creative energies by writing a children’s story instead of attempting more serious stuff.

  By October, when the return to Davos was made – reluctantly, but of necessity – Louis had found a magazine, Young Folks, to publish the story, in episodes. Fanny was proved wrong to doubt its worth. The story was Treasure Island, and its success, when published in book form in November 1883, was to transform their lives.

  III

  THE SECOND WINTER in Davos was an abnormally mild one, with very little snow and almost continuous sunshine. They lived not in the Hotel Belvedere but in a chalet on a hillside above it. With her own home around her, Fanny felt able to make her husband more comfortable (though there were plenty of visitors who remarked on how untidy and chaotic was their household). She hoped that the right atmosphere would enable him to write and be more successfully productive than he had been since their marriage. It irritated her that Louis had fooled around with a children’s story
all summer and that he was also now expending precious energy on a history of the Highland clans. Her faith in his talent was absolute but she felt he needed direction and stringent criticism to produce his best work.

  This she was eager to supply. Almost everything about Fanny annoyed Louis’s friends, but the way she set herself up as a judge of his writing infuriated them most. Where were her literary credentials? Non-existent. But the lack of either a proper education or experience of publishing did not seem to deter her from giving her opinion of her husband’s work. She had no embarrassment about damning or praising it. What seemed astonishing to them was that Louis ever showed her his writing. The phrase ‘Fanny thinks’ in Louis’s letters enraged them – what Fanny, just a little housewife, thought was of no importance, and it alarmed them to have evidence that Louis was listening to her. So far away from them, cooped up in Davos, she had a dangerous literary power which she was entirely unequipped to exercise.

  Then there were her own literary ambitions which Louis appeared to encourage in a misguided way. Colvin was told, while the Stevensons were at Pitlochry, that Fanny had finished a story, The Shadow on the Bed, and was busy completing a second. She very much wanted to see them published. Henley, to whom Louis sent the first story, when he sent his own The Merry Men, saying that as it was his wife’s he didn’t feel in a position to judge it but he felt it had something, pronounced it good and thought a magazine editor might buy it. Fanny was naturally thrilled and became hopeful, feeling (rightly) that Henley would not lie. It gave her, she wrote, ‘a great lift’. But it also worried her that Louis, as a consequence, had decided that The Shadow on the Bed should appear not in a magazine on its own but in a volume with his own stories. She was not stupid. Unless her story really was good, people, she knew, would say it was only there because she was Louis’s wife. It would, she wrote to Henley, ‘be brought into such prominence by appearing with Louis’s that I feel doubtful whether it is not foolish’.1 And yet she could not resist the idea of being a published writer alongside her already published and well-noticed, husband.