Nellie Van de Grift Sanchez

“ When at last the long voyage up the Western coast came to an end and the ship sailed into the broad bay of San Francisco, which lay serene and beautiful under the shadow of its towering guardian, Mount Tamalpais, Fanny Osbourne hung over the rail and surveyed the scene with eager interest. Yet it is altogether unlikely that any realization came to her then that the lively seaport town that lay before her was to become to her that magic thing we call "home," for men still regarded California as a place to "make their pile" in and then shake its dust from their feet. ”

“ Honolulu brought back to Mrs. Stevenson many poignant memories of other days, of which she wrote to her mother-in-law in these words:
"As you suppose, this has been a sad season with me. People say that one gets used to things with time, but I do not believe it. Every day seems harder for me to bear. I say to myself many comforting things, but even though I believe them they do not comfort me. Everything here reminds me of Louis, and I do not think there is one moment that I am not thinking of him. ”

“ So the old mountain, sitting in Indian stoicism, indifferent to the storms that sometimes lash its sturdy sides, the fogs that roll in a white, billowy sea around its foot, and earthquakes that shift its latitude and longitude some feet, has very appropriately received its name from the language of the aborigines who once dwelt at its base. ”

“ The scarlet hibiscus, child of the tropics, grows side by side with the aster of northern climes; the bougainvillæa flings out its purple sprays in close neighbourhood to the roses of old England; the sweet-william, dear to the hearts of our grandmothers, blooms in rich profusion in the shade of the pomegranate; and in brotherly companionship with the Norwegian pine the magnolia-tree unfolds its great creamy cups.
In her garden at Stonehedge, situated in lovely Montecito, about six miles from Santa Barbara, Fanny Stevenson found the chief solace of her declining years. ”

“ Stevenson. "The trees are all so big, and the hibiscus hedge is over ten feet high and blazing with flowers. The lawn is like velvet and everywhere the grass is knee-high. If it is true that Louis can see us from another world he would be pleased with this day. This is the day when we decorate the grave, and all the afternoon people kept coming with flowers and strange Samoan ornaments. You should have seen Leuelu's sisters in silk bodices trimmed with gold braid, and green velvet lavalavas bordered with plush furniture fringe! ”

“ Bidding a long farewell to the loving parents who had up to that time stood between her and every trouble, Fanny Osbourne, at an age when most young women are enjoying the care-free life of irresponsible girlhood, took her small daughter Isobel and set forth into a new and strange world.
Crossing the Isthmus by the crookedest railroad ever seen, she stopped at Panama to visit the burial-place of the young soldier, George Marshall, her childhood playmate, beloved friend, and brother-in-law, and over that lonely grave the child for the first time saw her girlish mother shed tears. ”

“ Stevenson's description in a letter to Sir Sidney Colvin:
"On board the Equator, 190 miles off Samoa. We are just nearing the end of our long cruise. Rain, calms, squalls, bang—there's the fore-topmast gone; rain, calms, squalls—away with the staysail; more rain, more calms, more squalls; a prodigious heavy sea all the time, and the Equator staggering and hovering like a swallow in a storm; and the cabin, a great square, crowded with wet human beings, and the rain avalanching on the deck, and the leaks dripping everywhere; Fanny, in the midst of fifteen males, bearing up wonderfully." ”

“ Peacefully the days slipped by, with no event to record, until, on July 28, 1888, their first tropic island rose out of the sea and sent them in greeting a breeze laden with the perfume of a thousand strange flowers. They first dropped anchor in Anaho Bay, Nukahiva Island, which, except for one white trader, was occupied solely by natives, but lately converted from cannibalism. As both Stevenson and his wife were citizens of the world in their sympathies, it was not long before they were on terms of perfect friendliness with the inhabitants. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Stevenson went to his house and remained with him until all was done. The result was most happy, and the grateful man, now proudly holding up his head among his fellows, composed in honour of the event "The Song of the Wen":
"O Tusitala, when you first came here I was ugly and poor and deformed. I was jeered at and scorned by the unthinking. I ate grass; a bunch of leaves was my sole garment, and I had nothing to hide my ugliness. But now, O Tusitala, now I am beautiful; my body is sound and handsome; I bear a great name; I am rich and powerful and unashamed, and I owe it all to you, Tusitala. ”

“ 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 expect 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. ”

“ Company comes in at all hours from early morning till late at night, so that I almost never have a moment alone, and if we do not soon get away from London I shall become an embittered woman. It is not good for my mind, nor my body either, to sit smiling at Louis's friends until I feel like a hypocritical Cheshire cat, talking stiff nothings with one and another in order to let Louis have a chance with the one he cares the most for, and all the time furtively watching the clock and thirsting for their blood because they stay so late.... ”

“ She was pretty as a young woman, but as she grew older she was beautiful—with that rare type of beauty that "age cannot wither nor custom stale." With her clear-cut profile, like an exquisite cameo, color like old ivory, delicate oval face, eyes dark, vivid, and youthful, her appearance was most unusual. Louis used to say of her eyes that her glance was like that of one aiming a pistol—direct, steady, and to some persons rather alarming. ”

“ I have seen others, apparently no more ill than Louis was at one time, laid in their graves, and I see others, quite as ill, struggling wearily for their daily bread. We see misery and wretchedness on every hand, and here we sit, none of it touching us, Louis feeling better, and both of us complaining shamefully because in the smallest things the world does not go round smoothly enough for us.... I fancy we shall start for Scotland Tuesday, but will travel slowly on account of Louis's fatigue and nervous exhaustion from the shaking of the train. ”

“ The years with Stevenson have of course been adequately told, but the earlier period—Indianapolis and California—had a romance as stirring, even if sharpened by the American glare. This sharpness has already, for all of us, begun to fade, to take on the glamour of time and distance, and I cannot think of a better literary service than to make the fullest possible record now, before it utterly fades away. ”

“ Indeed, to be alone in the jungle is a solemn thing, even for people of stronger mentality than the superstitious natives. The vegetation is so dense that there are no shadows, and, the location of the sun being an unsolvable mystery, one becomes affected by a strange lost feeling. The loneliness, the silence, the impossibility of seeing far into the surrounding wall of foliage, all oppress the soul, and strange alarms attack the most hardy. ”

“ Then the Silver Ship, shaking out her snowy sails, turned her prow across the glittering expanse straight towards the enchanted isles of which Louis Stevenson had dreamed since he was a boy of twenty.
The women had already provided themselves with their old solace of knitting for the slow-passing days at sea, and all settled down for the long voyage. All through the story of their three years of wandering among the islands of the South Seas runs the thread of the wife's devotion ”

“ The glamour of the days of the first mad rush for gold, with their feverish alternations of mounting hope and black despair, was gone, but in its stead had come safety and comfort, and there were few places in the world where one could live more agreeably, or even more luxuriously, than in San Francisco in the '60's.
Here word was brought that Osbourne had been killed by the Indians, and life began to bear heavily upon the young wife and mother, stranded without means in a strange city. She put on widow's weeds and looked about for employment with which to eke out her fast diminishing store. ”

“ 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." ”

“ Stevenson was fleeing from the sea-fogs of the coast. The recollection of this journey seems to have melted into a general impression of winding mountain roads, of deep canyons full of tall green (p. 073) trees, of lovely limpid streams rippling over the stones in darkly shaded depths where the fern-brakes grew rankly, of burning summer heat, and much dust. At the Springs Hotel we lived in one of the separate palm-shaded cottages most agreeably maintained for the guests who liked privacy. ”

“ Crickets and tree frogs and innumerable other insects and small beasts are chirping and pecking with various noises that mingle harmoniously. Occasionally a bird calls with a startling cry—perhaps the very bird that murdered my poor pullet. When I stood in the doorway and looked in, the room seemed to be glowing with color, glowing and melting, and yet there is nothing to go upon but the tapa on the walls, the coral, the pink and maroon window curtains of the coarsest cotton print, a ragged old ink-spotted table-cover, a few print-covered pillows, and the pandanus mats on the floor. ”

“ Then back to San Francisco, where the only memory that remains is that of a confused blur of preparations for leaving—packing, ticket-buying, and melancholy farewells—for the time had come to return to old Scotland to introduce a newly acquired American wife to waiting parents.
One day Louis came in with his pockets full of twenty-dollar gold pieces, with which he had supplied himself for the journey. He thought this piece of money the handsomest coin in the world, and said it made a man feel rich merely to handle it. ”

“ Even when the weather is fair the house shakes as though it would fall if any one comes upstairs rapidly, and the slight iron roof is entirely open at the eaves to catch any wind that blows. We could not keep a lamp burning, and the lantern kept for such emergencies having been broken by Paul, we were in semi-darkness. Late in the afternoon a cloud enveloped us so that we could see no farther than in a London fog. ”

“ 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." ”

“ From the flat roof one looked down on one side upon the picturesque city, with its many hills and steeply climbing streets, all a-glitter at night with a million twinkling lights, and on the other upon the great sparkling expanse of the bay, alive with craft of every sort, from the great ocean steamer just in from the Orient to the tiny fisher boats, with their lateen sails, returning with their day's catch from outside the "Heads." ”

“ From her earliest youth she had always been the kind of person to whom every one instinctively turns in an emergency. When Mr. Stevenson was ill she understood what he wanted by the merest gesture, and was always calm, reassuring, and self-reliant, never breaking down until after the crisis was past. She was a most delightful nurse otherwise, too, for when her children were sick in bed she entertained them with cheerful stories to divert their minds, and when they were convalescent made tempting dishes for them to eat. ”

“ 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 color 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. ”