Under the Wide and Starry Sky

CHAPTER 43

1884

Dearest Dora,

We send greetings and a change of address. We are now moved out of our rented rooms here in Bournemouth. Louis’s father was so pleased to have us nearby, he came from Edinburgh and bought a house for me as a wedding gift! It is a two-story yellow brick cottage with a blue slate roof situated at the edge of a lovely wooded ravine called Alum Chine that has trails down to the ocean. There is a rudimentary garden I can improve upon, and a giant dovecote that’s as busy as a train station. Mr. Stevenson is a great collector of antique furniture and has made it a wonderful game to go with me in search of just the right pieces for this house. We have named it Skerryvore, after a Stevenson lighthouse. Louis grumbles about being a  “householder,” but I think he is secretly crowing inside to be settled in a beautiful spot close enough to London that his friends and family can visit. I am sending along a recent photograph of myself …

Fanny  enclosed the  portrait  she’d just  had made.  It  screamed respectability,  and she knew Dora would notice that, but Fanny also knew her well enough to be certain she would show the picture to all their friends. Six years ago, when Louis was living in San Francisco waiting out Fanny’s divorce, he had gone to over to meet Virgil and Dora Williams at their art school. When Virgil came to the door, he had taken Louis to be a tramp and nearly turned him away. They became good friends the moment the mistake was corrected, and it meant nothing to Louis then or now, but the sting of that encounter still burned for Fanny.
In the full-length photograph, Fanny wore a pearl choker above a white lace dress with a snug white belt around her recently recovered waist. In a previous portrait with Louis’s family taken soon after their arrival in Scotland, she had looked unpleasantly thick around the middle. It had distressed her enough that she’d brushed black paint on the picture to reduce the appearance of her midri?. Happily, this photograph would require no doctoring. She knew it was vanity, but this image was how she wanted to be thought of by her old friends  in  San  Francisco:  composed,  slender  and beautiful  at  forty-?ve,  and very  much

arrived.

Fanny leaped out of bed every morning now that they were in the new house. Maybe it had been a bribe from Thomas Stevenson to get them to stay near Scotland, but surely Thomas had  also  seen  how  desperate  she  was  becoming  without  a  house  of  her  own.  And Skerryvore was her own. It was a place she could make better, and she set about doing that

the moment they moved in. First came a new bed for them and one for Sam; then she went to work on the red dining room. She bought a Sheraton-style dining set, some decorative blue china pieces, two Piranesi prints, and spent ?fty-?ve pounds on napery and silver utensils. When Louis came down one day from his study and saw the latest pile of stu? that had arrived from London, he drew on his cigarette and remarked, “Perhaps we can pawn it for food.”

It was in the blue drawing room that Fanny released a pent-up urge to decorate rather grandly. She bought wicker lounge chairs, enough seating for a proper salon, and yards and yards of yellow silk the color of pale mustard. She imagined a beautiful window seat where Louis could work, where Sam could read a book or guests could sit, drinking their aperitifs.  The  idea  of  hiring  someone  to do the  kind of  carpentry  she  could do herself seemed out of the question. Instead, she acquired several identical oak boxes, lined them along the study wall below the window bay, and topped the surface with cushions covered in the yellow fabric.

The results suited her. The house did not look as if it belonged to Margaret Stevenson. There was nothing precious about it.

When Louis saw the e?ect, he gasped. “It’s so delicious I could eat it,” he said, and then, “Isn’t this too ?ne for the likes of us?” He looked hard at his wife, who was wearing one of her good dresses. “Too ?ne for the likes of me, I should say. You’re a chameleon, Fanny. I swear, you take on your setting.” He turned in a circle to regard the room. “I, on the other hand, feel a qualm coming on.”

It was only a moment later that he threw o? his reservations. He retrieved from a box a plaster sculpture that his friend Auguste Rodin had sent to him. It depicted a naked man and woman kissing and made Fanny squeamish to have it set out. Louis laughed o? her sudden  prudishness, set the piece between  a  pair of smiling  Buddhas, poured himself a whisky, and stood back to admire his cleverness.

Skerryvore. They had taken the name from the most challenging, the tallest and noblest of all the Stevenson lighthouses. Against daunting odds, Alan Stevenson, father to Bob and Katharine, had managed to build the Skerryvore light station  on  a  treacherous strip  of submerged reef o? the west coast of Scotland. The lighthouse had surely saved many lives. It was a  symbol of  indomitable spirit to Louis and Fanny.  Outside,  on  the porch,  they placed a model of Skerryvore.

Louis took such pleasure in going out in the evening, when he was able, to light the lantern that ?t inside the miniature lighthouse. He would come back inside then, and they would rest snug by the fire, savoring the new chapter they felt opening.
Word spread quickly  in  Bournemouth  circles that an  Author was living  among  them. Women bearing cakes came up the stone walk to pay calls, their faces expectant. Fanny managed to thank them as graciously as possible while letting them know they would not be invited in, for the Author, whom they’d really come to see, was in delicate health and not to be disturbed. Ever.

Only one person managed to get into the house, and that was early on, perhaps the third or fourth day after their arrival. They were unpacking boxes when the doorbell sounded. Fanny peeked out the window through the side of the temporary curtain she’d hung and spied a girl of about ten on the porch, standing beside a timid-looking woman whose face was streaked with tears.

“There’s a woman crying on our porch,” Fanny remarked, wiping her hands on the old painting jacket she wore over her dress.

“We have to answer, then,” Louis said. He was sitting on a wooden box, swathed in a blanket over his jacket, and pawing through another box.

Fanny stepped over piles of packing straw to get to the door. When she ?ung it open, the woman let go a startled sob.

“We thought you weren’t home,” the girl said. “We rang and rang.” “I’m sorry,” Fanny apologized. “We didn’t hear it. We were banging boxes around.” “We’re your neighbors,” the girl announced. “My name is Adelaide Boodle.” She made a
businesslike curtsey. “And this is my mother.”

“Are you quite all right?” Fanny asked the shaken woman. She touched her arm gently. “Come in and sit down.”

The girl sprang into the parlor and settled herself on a packing case before her mother could restrain her.

“I told my daughter you would not want to be disturbed, but she’s an aspiring writer and admires  your  husband’s  work.  I’m  afraid  I  succumbed  to  her  enthusiasm.  I  am  so embarrassed to be bothering you.”

“Come in!” Louis boomed. He led the morti?ed Mrs. Boodle to the only chair in the room. “Valentine!” he called out. “Valentine, dear! We need tea for our new neighbors.”

Much later, when Adelaide was a regular ?xture at Skerryvore, Louis let slip the name he and Fanny  had given  to  the  threshold where  Mrs.  Boodle  had dissolved:  “The  Pool  of Tears.” In turn, Adelaide confessed that her family (far less inhibited in their own quarters) used nicknames for their new neighbors: “R.L.S.” and “His Sine Qua Non.” The girl revealed to Fanny how thrilling it was that first time to finally clap eyes on the Author.
“My mother is shy, but I am not,” Adelaide explained to Fanny on her second, solo visit to the house. “I want to be a writer, and a writer must be able to go out and meet the world as it is. I am hoping Mr. Stevenson would like to take on a pupil.”

Fanny suppressed a smile. Adelaide was a dark-eyed child with soft brown ringlets and an  aquiline  nose  that  suggested  character.  She  was  bright  and  chatty,  con?dent  and curious, a lover of books with a tender spot for any animal, much like Fanny had been at ten. Even if Louis wanted a pupil—which he didn’t—he was too weak to take on such a project. Worse, he could be ruthless with his criticisms, as Fanny knew only too well.
“Have you written stories?” Fanny asked her.

“Yes, a lot of them.”

“I’m afraid Mr.  Stevenson  is not able to give time to tutoring.  He must conserve his energy for his work. I’m a writer, too. I believe I could serve in his place. If you would like to come over next week and read to me while I do my mending, I will give you an honest assessment of your writing.”

So began one of their fondest attachments to Bournemouth friends, of whom there were only a handful. Louis’s health didn’t allow more; he was as sick as he had ever been, and for far longer periods. Many of his days were spent in  bed, occasionally with one arm strapped to his chest so as not to set off a hemorrhage.

Sometimes Louis was so fragile after an episode that he dared not talk, so they had to communicate with hand signals. With his left hand, he wrote out on a scrap of paper the guidelines for the signals. A crooked ?nger asked for explanation. A pantomime should be followed by a statement of what Fanny or Valentine understood him to want. The third guideline hurt Fanny just to read it: The case of the dumb patient is one of great inconvenience and suppressed wrath. When he has made you a sign you have failed to follow and he shrugs his shoulders, drop it forever.

Louis had always hated being fussed over when he was ill. Her attentions—a shawl over the shoulders, a fluffed pillow—had to be done stealthily so he wouldn’t notice them.

In  the  close  atmosphere  of  Skerryvore,  sealed  o?  from  drafts  and  visitors,  Adelaide Boodle blew in most days like beach air. In between the informal writing lessons, she made herself useful by watering plants and helping Fanny feed her pigeons and the stray cats that lived in the chine below. She knew everyone in the neighborhood, and if a rented room was needed for one of Louis’s friends who came down from London, Adelaide knew where to ?nd one. Her reward was free access to the Skerryvore library. With Sammy gone during  the  week,  Fanny  took  pleasure  in  having  a  child  in  the  house;  she  savored afternoons spent with the girl in the drawing room, the sun slanting across the Persian rug as Fanny read Little Women to her, just as she had read it to Belle at the age of ten. Later, she introduced Adelaide to stories she loved by other American writers—Charles Warren Stoddard and Bret Harte, whose Gold Rush prospectors amused the girl. The fact that Fanny had known both writers in her San Francisco days raised her profile considerably.
A couple  of  months  into  their  lives  at  Skerryvore,  Sidney  Colvin  and Bob  Stevenson visited. Colvin had a new job title, “Keeper of the Department of Prints and Drawings,” and occupied an apartment in the British Museum as a perquisite of the job.  “Why don’t you o?er a  course for aspiring young writers at the museum?” Colvin  proposed to Louis. It nearly broke Fanny’s heart to witness her husband’s excitement at the prospect of getting out of the house. “I want it!” he said. “I could do it. Absolutely.”

Fanny and Bob locked eyes in that moment.

“I didn’t realize he was so terribly frail,” Bob whispered to her later. “Do you think he is up to …?”

“No,”  Fanny  said  sadly.  “The  doctor  would  never  allow  it.  But  it  can’t  hurt  him  to entertain the idea. Maybe he’ll improve if he feels some hope.”

When  Bob  and  Colvin  were  gone,  Louis  said  to  Fanny,  “I  will  need  to  practice  on someone. Sammy might tolerate it on his days at home, but …” His eyes brightened. “Get me Boodle!”

“It terri?es me a little to send you into the lion’s den,” Fanny warned the girl when she told her  of  the  proposal. “Mr.  Stevenson  is  not  the  easiest  critic.  I  know  from  personal experience. You see, he considers writing a sacred calling—”

“I can accept criticism,” the girl insisted.

“—and he hates bad writing. When you are learning, there is bound to be bad writing.”

“I am stronger than I look,” Adelaide said. “I want to take lessons with him.” “All right, dear. I will be in the next room. If he gets surly, you just come to me.” Fanny listened in on the first few lessons. She could hear Louis in the adjoining room, instructing Adelaide to write short paragraphs in the various styles of a
few classical writers. After three weeks of such exercises, Louis announced that the girl had managed the assignments satisfactorily.

“It comes naturally,” Adelaide explained. “We like to mimic people in our house.” “You’re ready to write something in your own style,” he told her. “Describe a place. No
more than a page. We shall discuss it tomorrow.”

“My mother’s garden,” the girl whispered to Fanny on her way out the door. “I know it front to back.”

The next day, while the lesson proceeded in the dining room, Fanny lay down on the window seat in the drawing room. The cat jumped up and spread himself over her belly while Fanny fought o? the urge to sleep. She remembered a few lessons in writing she’d had  with  Louis  when  they  were  at  Silverado  and,  later,  in  Scotland.  They  were  so contentious that Fanny and Louis agreed to abandon the idea.

“This is absolutely appalling.” Fanny sat upright when she heard Louis’s raised voice. “Let us begin with the adjective green,” he said. He uttered the word as if it were bile in his mouth. She knew, if he were able, he would be pacing back and forth in high dudgeon.
“You say ‘green lawn’ in this paragraph,” he went on. “Everyone knows a lawn is green. Never  use  green  to  describe  a  lawn.  In  fact,  never  use  the  word!  Get  rid  of  all  these adjectives. Better to use active verbs. Don’t say, ‘Climbing red roses are everywhere,’ as you do here.  Make  them do something. Say  ‘the roses clamber up the trunk of the elm, and redden an arbor that creaks under their weight.’ Do you get my meaning?”
Louis sighed heavily. Fanny hated those sighs when she heard them. The poor girl must be melting with humiliation in there.

“The English language is old, Boodle. But a good writer owns every word he puts on paper because he makes it new and fresh, you see. It must be precise, though. Precision is everything. Why? Because words have power—to inspire or embarrass, or even to kill.”
There was a weighty pause, and Fanny waited for some gentler encouragement. “Adelaide. You must promise me you will never, ever write anything this dreadful again.” “Stop that, you brute!” Fanny shouted from the drawing room. She bolted from the seat

and went to fetch the girl. “Are you all right, dear?”
“Yes,” Adelaide squeaked. She departed in tears.

“Look what you’ve done,” Fanny growled. “You were perfectly savage to her. And people think you are the Prince of Kindness. Ha!”

Louis waved o? the rebuke.  “Adelaide has backbone.  She will return  with  something better tomorrow.”

Fanny shook her head.  “They will be having quite a mimic session over in the Boodle parlor tonight.”