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.”
Notwithstanding the cramped quarters in the little châlet their solitude was broken now and then by a visitor. Thither went at various times “Bob” Stevenson, Sir Sidney Colvin, Mr. Charles Baxter, Mr. W. E. Henley, and Miss Ferrier. The pleasurable excitement of this society, to which he had been so long a stranger, raised Mr. Stevenson’s spirits to such an extent that he rashly proposed an expedition to Nice, where he took cold, developed pneumonia, was critically ill for weeks, and returned to Hyères still in a very low condition. This was one of the most harrowing periods of Mrs. Stevenson’s life, and she tells of its distresses in a letter written to her mother-in-law in January, 1884:
“If I write like a mad creature do not be surprised, for I have had a period of awful wretchedness. Louis fell ill, and when the doctor came he beckoned to me to follow him, and then told me Louis was dying and could not be kept alive until you could get here. That was yesterday. I watched every breath he drew all night in what sickening apprehension you may guess. To-day another doctor, Dr. Drummond, was called in, and says that Louis may well live to be seventy, only he must not travel about. He is steadily better and is reading a newspaper in bed at this moment. I, who have not slept a wink for two nights, am pretending to be the gayest of the gay, but in reality I am a total wreck, although I am almost off my head with relief and joy.”
As soon as the patient had sufficiently recovered they returned to Hyères, but there new troubles awaited them. His eyes became so severely affected by a contagious ophthalmia then prevailing in the neighbourhood that he had to give up using them for several weeks, sciatic rheumatism confined him to bed, and his right arm was bound to his side to prevent hemorrhage. In the midst of all these afflictions he refused to be cast down and insisted that everything was for the best, for he was now for
ced to take a much-needed rest which he would not otherwise have taken. On March 25, 1884, she writes to his mother:
“I am not very good at letter writing since I have been doing blind man’s eyes, but here is a note to say that the blind man is doing very well, and I consider the blindness a real providence. Since he has been unable to read or do anything at all a wonderful change has come over his health, spirits, and temper, all for the better.... I wish you could see him with his eye tied up and singing away like mad; truly like mad, as there is neither time nor method in it, only a large voice. I am horribly busy, for I have to write for Louis from dictation, answer all his letters, as well as my own, keep house, entertain visitors, and do a good deal of the cooking. Our Wogg is an invalid, having got himself badly mangled in several fights, the maid is ill with symptoms of pleurisy, and altogether we are a forlorn household, but with all this Louis and I are in high spirits. He says it is wonderful how well one gets along without reading. He could never have believed it.”
Perhaps partly for the purpose of getting her out for a little fresh air, he proposed that she should go for an hour’s walk every day, and during her absence invent a story to be told on her return. It was to be a sort of Arabian Nights’ Entertainment, with him as the Sultan and her as Scheherazade. The Dynamiter was suggested by certain attempted outrages in London which had all turned out to be fiascos. She began with the Mormon tale and followed with the others, one for each afternoon. Afterwards, when a lean time came at Bournemouth and money was badly needed, these stories, temporarily forgotten, were recalled, written, and published as the second volume of the New Arabian Nights series. As there was only enough for a thin book he wrote another, The Explosive Bomb, to fill up. It came out at first under the title of More New Arabian Nights, but afterwards appeared as The Dynamiter. Of the stories in this second series only one, The Explosive Bomb, was entirely the work of Mr. Stevenson’s own hand, all the others being done in collaboration with his wife. The Dynamiter did double service, as his wife said, for first it amused his tedious hours of illness at Hyères, and afterwards it replenished his purse in a time of need.
Their peaceful life in the châlet was now broken by a new and most unexpected interruption. Mrs. Stevenson writes in her preface to The Dynamiter:
“So quiet and secluded was our life here that we heard almost nothing of the outside world except through an occasional English correspondent. I remember before we knew that cholera was raging in Toulon, only some three miles away, how we watched a cloud gathering over the town, where it hung heavy and lowering, day after day. We felt that it was somehow ominous, and were vaguely depressed. We were told afterwards that at that very time great fires were burning in the streets of Toulon by order of the mayor, and that the people gathered at night around these fires capering fantastically in a pagan dance, resurrected from the dark ages no one knew by whom or how.”
To add to the alarm caused by the outbreak of the cholera, in the first week in May Mr. Stevenson had a violent hemorrhage. “It occurred late at night, but in a moment his wife was at his side. Being choked by the flow of blood and unable to speak, he made signs to her for a paper and pencil, and wrote in a firm neat hand, ‘Don’t be frightened. If this is death it is an easy one.’ Mrs. Stevenson had always a small bottle of ergotin and a minim glass in readiness; these she brought in order to administer the prescribed quantity. Seeing her alarm he took bottle and glass away from her, measured the dose correctly with a perfectly steady hand, and gave the things back to her with a reassuring smile.” It was said that if his wife had not had everything ready and known exactly what to do he could not have lived. The clergyman came to pray with the supposed dying man, but, having been warned against the least excitement, she refused him admittance. In defense of her action she says: “I know Louis, and I know that he tries always to so live that he may be ready to die.” When Mr. Stevenson heard that a clergyman had come to pray for him as a man in danger of dying, he said: “Tell him to come and see me when I am better and I will offer up a prayer for a clergyman in danger of living.” In a few days he rallied once more, but it was now realised that chronic invalidism was to be his portion for the rest of his days, and his wife wrote to her mother-in-law:
“The doctor says ‘keep him alive until he is forty, and then, though a winged bird, he may live to ninety.’ But between now and forty he must live as though he were walking on eggs. For the next two years, no matter how well he feels, he must live the life of an invalid. He must be perfectly tranquil, trouble about nothing, have no shocks or surprises, not even pleasant ones, must not eat too much, talk very little, and walk no more than can be helped. He must never be crossed, for anger, going upstairs, and walking are the worst things for him.... Yet he is very cheerful and has been all along. He is never frightened.”
Driven from Hyères by the cholera, they sought a temporary refuge at an enchanting little watering-place near Clermont-Ferrand called Royat, in whose healing springs Cæsar himself had once bathed. The surroundings, of wooded ravines and cliffs and numberless waterfalls, were charming, and in the centre of the town stood an ancient cathedral, whose former use as a fortress was still proclaimed by the loopholes in its walls and the hooded projections on its towers.
In this romantic place they spent the summer in the company of his parents, who came to visit them, but the joy of this meeting was tempered by the failing health and spirits of the father, who was now only able to keep up a semblance of cheerfulness in the presence of his son.
At the end of the summer of 1884 they returned to Hyères, but the prospect of a permanent recovery there seemed so slight that it was finally decided to go to England and seek medical advice. On the 1st of July they reached England, and shortly afterwards went to London to consult Sir Andrew Clark and other eminent physicians. Mrs. Stevenson writes from there: “I suppose it comes from being so long a recluse, but seeing the few people I have seen has quite shattered my nerves, so that I tremble and can hardly speak. Louis, on the contrary, is quite calm, and is at this moment, after a hearty meal, resting quietly in his bed.”
Snatching at a half-hearted permission given by some of the doctors to remain in England, their decision being assisted by the desire to be near his father, whose health was rapidly failing, they went to Bournemouth for a trial of its climate and conditions. Nothing untoward having occurred by the end of January, the elder Stevenson purchased a house there as a present to his daughter-in-law. Both the wanderers were filled with inexpressible joy at the prospect of living under their own rooftree, and at once plunged with ardour into the business of furnishing and gardening. The first thing was to change the name of the place to Skerryvore, in honour of the best known of the lighthouses built by the Stevenson family, the name being partly suggested by the fact that a distant view of the sea was to be had from the upper windows.
Skerryvore was a pleasant, ivy-covered brick cottage, surrounded by a half-acre of garden, which has been so delightfully described by William Archer in the Critic of November 5, 1887, that one can do no better than quote his words:
“Though only a few paces from the public road, it is thoroughly secluded. Its front faces southward (away from the road) and overlooks a lawn,
‘Linnet haunted garden ground,
Where still the esculents abound.’
“The demesne extends over the edge, and almost to the bottom of the Chine; and here, amid laurel and rhododendron, broom and gorse, the garden merges into a network of paths and stairways, with tempting seats and unexpected arbors at every turn. This seductive little labyrinth is of Mrs. Stevenson’s own designing. She makes the whole garden her special charge and delight, but this particular corner of it is as a kingdom conquered, where to reign. Mrs. Stevenson, the tutelary genius of Skerryvore, is a woman of small physical stature but surely of heroic mould. Her features are clear cut and delicate, but marked by unmistakable strength of character; her hair is an unglossy black, and her complexion darker than one would exp
ect in a woman of Dutch extraction.... Her personality, no less than her husband’s, impresses itself potently on all who have the good fortune to be welcomed at Skerryvore.”
Writing to her mother-in-law from Bournemouth, she says:
“I have just been going the rounds of my garden, and have brought in as a sentimental reminder of you the first marguerite, which I will enclose in this letter. The weather is like paradise, the sun is shining, the birds are singing, and Louis is walking up and down in front of the house with a red umbrella over his head, enjoying the day.... I could only ask one thing more to have the most perfect life that any woman could have, and that is, of course, good health for Louis.... I should be perfectly appalled if I were asked to exchange his faults for other people’s virtues.”
Three years were spent at this pleasant place, and though Louis’s health was never good, and he lived there, as he afterwards wrote, “like a pallid weevil in a biscuit,” a great deal was accomplished in literary work by both husband and wife. There they put together the stories in The Dynamiter, which, as will be remembered, Mrs. Stevenson had made up to while away the hours of illness at Hyères. When the book came out little credit was given her by the book reviewers for her part in it, a neglect which caused her some mortification. Writing to her mother-in-law, she says: “I thought in the beginning that I shouldn’t mind being Louis’s scapegoat, but it is rather hard to be treated like a comma, and a superfluous one at that. And then in one paper, the only one in which I am mentioned, the critic refers to me as ‘undoubtedly Mr. Stevenson’s sister.’ Why, pray? Surely there can be nothing in the book that points to a sister in particular.”
Complete Works of Robert Louis Stevenson (Illustrated) Page 867