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 customs and habits of thought,
appealed strongly to the ardent young man. He was a devoted admirer of
Walt Whitman, and thought he knew America. The daughter, Isobel,
described by one of the members of the colony[7] at Grez as "a
bewitching young girl of seventeen, with eyes so large as to be out of
drawing," amazed and delighted him by the piquancy of the contrast
between her and the young women he had previously known. In a girlish
description given in one of her letters home, written at the time, she
says:
[Footnote 7: Mr. Birge Harrison, in the _Century
Magazine_, December, 1916.]
"There is a young Scotchman here, a Mr. Stevenson, who looks at me as
though I were a natural curiosity. He never saw a real American girl
before, and he says I act and talk as though I came out of a book--I
mean an American book. He says that when he first met Bloomer[8] he
came up to him and said in his western way: 'These parts don't seem
much settled, hey?' He laughed for an hour at the idea of such an old
place not being much settled. He is such a nice looking ugly man, and
I would rather listen to him talk than read the most interesting book
I ever saw. We sit in the little green arbor after dinner drinking
coffee and talking till late at night. Mama is ever so much better and
is getting prettier every day."
[Footnote 8: An American artist.]
Again she writes:
"Yesterday I canoed to Nemours in Louis Stevenson's _Rob Roy_. We
generally congregate down in the garden by the big tree after dinner.
Mama swings in the hammock, looking as pretty as possible, and we all
form a group around her on the grass, Louis and Bob Stevenson babbling
about boats, while Simpson, seated near by, fans himself with a large
white fan."
[Illustration: Fanny Osbourne at about the time of her first meeting
with Robert Louis Stevenson.]
The little party in the old inn, "entirely surrounded by peasants," as
Bob Stevenson said, devised all sorts of sports, for which the river
afforded many opportunities. There was a huge old boat, a double
canoe, lying at the water's edge; this they put on rollers, and after
the entire party had climbed into it, persuaded the passing peasants
to come and push it off the bank, like a sort of "shoot the chutes."
Another game was to divide the canoes into bands, each under a
captain, and engage in a contest, each side trying to tip over the
enemy canoes. In all this hilarious fun Louis Stevenson was the
leader.
In the old hall they had great times, with dances, now and then a
performance by strolling players, and once a masquerade given by the
guests of the inn themselves, in which they dressed as gods and
goddesses in sheets and wreaths. Once when a couple of wandering
singers arrived after a disappointing season, the artists contributed
a purse and invited them to spend a week and rest. These people told
Stevenson the story he made into _Providence and the Guitar_, and the
money which he received for it he sent to them afterwards to help pay
for the education of their little girl in Paris.
But of all that went on at Grez the talks are remembered as the best,
for, notwithstanding their merry fooling in their idle hours, there
were brilliant minds among the company, and the conversation sparkled
with rare conceits.
Three summers the Osbournes returned to spend at Grez, lingering on
the last time until the snow came. A short visit was made to Barbizon,
too, and once when there the whole party had their silhouettes drawn
on the walls of the dining-room. This was done by placing a lamp so
that it threw a shadow of the face in profile on the wall, then
outlining the shadow and filling it in with black. Louis Stevenson
wrote verses to them all. The place was repainted the next spring,
which was to be regretted, for the walls were completely covered with
the most interesting silhouettes and drawings by painters who later
became famous, to say nothing of the verses made by Stevenson, which
would now have been a priceless memorial of those youthful days.
Among the joyous coterie was the American painter Will H. Low, who
writes thus of Fanny Osbourne in his _Chronicle of Friendships_:
"One evening at Grez we saw two new faces, mother and daughter, though
in appearance more like sisters; the elder, slight, with delicately
moulded features and vivid eyes gleaming from under a mass of dark
hair; the younger of more robust type, in the first precocious bloom
of womanhood."
Another of the company, Mr. Birge Harrison, writing in the _Century
Magazine_ of December, 1916, expresses his mature judgment of her as
he knew her at the little French village:
[Illustration: Robert Louis Stevenson in the French days.]
"Among a few women who were doing serious work at this place was the
lady, 'Trusty, dusky, vivid, and true,' to whom Robert Louis Stevenson
inscribed the most beautiful love song of our time. Mrs. Osbourne
could not have been at that time more than thirty-five years of age--a
grave and remarkable type of womanhood, with eyes of a depth and
sombre beauty that I have never seen equalled--eyes, nevertheless,
that upon occasion could sparkle with humor and brim over with
laughter. Yet upon the whole Mrs. Osbourne impressed me as first of
all a woman of profound character and serious judgment, who could, if
occasion called, have been the leader in some great movement. But she
belonged to the quattrocento rather than to the nineteenth century.
Had she been born a Medici, she would have held rank as one of the
remarkable women of all time. That she was a woman of intellectual
attainments is proved by the fact that she was already a magazine
writer of recognized ability, and that at the moment when Stevenson
first came into her life she was making a living for herself and her
two children with her pen. But this, after all, is a more or less
ordinary accomplishment, and Mrs. Osbourne was in no sense ordinary.
Indeed, she was gifted with a mysterious sort of over-intelligence,
which is almost impossible to describe, but which impressed itself
upon every one who came within the radius of her influence. Napoleon
had much of this; likewise his arch enemy, the great Duke of
Wellington; and among women, Catherine of Russia and perhaps Elizabeth
of England. She was therefore both physically and mentally the very
antithesis of the gay, hilarious, open-minded and open-hearted
Stevenson, and for that very reason perhaps the woman in all the world
best fitted to be his life comrade and helpmate. At any rate we may
well ask ourselves if anywhere else he would have found the kind of
understanding and devotion which she gave him from the day of their
first meeting at Grez until the day of his death in far-away Samoa; if
anywhere else there was a woman of equal attainments who would
willingly, nay gladly, throw aside all of the pleasures and comforts
of civilization to live among savages, and the still rougher whites of
the South Pacific, in order that her husband might have just a little
more oxygen for his failing lungs, a little more _chance_ for a
respite and an extension of his shortening years? Probably no one ever
better deserved than she the noble tribute of verse which her husband
gave her, and from which I have quoted the opening line."
In 1878 the Osbournes returned to America, travelling by way of
Queenstown, where, for the sake of stepping on Irish soil, they went
ashore for a few hours and took a ride in a real jaunting-car, with a
driver who was as Irish as possible, with a thick brogue, a hole in
his hat, and a smiling, good-humoured countenance.
A short stop was made in Indiana to visit the old family home in
Hendricks County, now saddened by the death of our father, and then
Fanny Osbourne once more turned her steps towards the setting sun. At
this time she added me, her youngest sister, to her party, and I
remained with her until her marriage to Stevenson and their departure
for Scotland. She was then in the full flower of her striking and
unusual beauty, and so youthful in appearance that she, her daughter,
and I passed everywhere as three sisters. To me, reared as I had been
in the flat country of central Indiana, where mountains and the sea
were wonders known only through books, the journey across the
continent--with its glimpses of the mighty snow-capped crags of the
Rockies outlined against the fiery sunset skies of that region, the
weird castellated rocks of the "Bad Lands," the colonies of funny
little prairie-dogs peeping out of their burrows, the blanket-wrapped
Indians waiting at the stations, and finally the awesome vision of the
stupendous canyons and precipices of the Sierras, was like some
strange, impossible dream; and when at last we came out into the warm
sun and flowery brightness of California, straight from the gloom and
chill of an Indiana November, it was as though the gates of paradise
had suddenly opened.
Not long after her return to California, finding a reconciliation with
her husband to be quite out of the question, Mrs. Osbourne decided to
bring suit for divorce, which was eventually granted without
opposition.
In the meantime, being much run down in health as a result of these
harassing anxieties, she wished to seek rest in some quiet place free
from unpleasant associations. This she found in the charming little
coast town of Monterey, which was then still unspoiled by tourist
travel, and, taking her family with her, she went there for a stay of
several months. In the soft air and peaceful atmosphere of this place
her health and spirits soon revived. There she found an opportunity to
indulge her skill as a horsewoman, and at any time she might have been
seen galloping along the country roads on her little mustang,
Clavel.[9] She even joined a party of friends who accompanied a band
of _vaqueros_[10] in a great _rodéo_[11] on the San Francisquito ranch
near Monterey. We rode for days from station to station, through a
delightful country, under the feathery, scented redwoods and beside
clear mountain-streams in which the trout leaped. We slept in barns on
the hay or on the far-from-downy rawhide cots in the ranch shanties,
and subsisted on freshly killed beef hastily barbecued over the
campfire, coming back to Monterey sunburned to a fine mahogany.
[Footnote 9: A Spanish word, pronounced clahvél, and
meaning a pink.]
[Footnote 10: Cowboys.]
[Footnote 11: Cattle round-up.]