Design of Stevenson’s victory medal. (Provided image)

Friends of Robert Louis Stevenson found the town of Hyères on the French Riviera to be a more accessible destination than Davos in the Alps so they went there more readily to see him, most notably Henley, Colvin, Baxter, and cousin Bob. Space was at a minimum in the doll’s house of a chalet, called Chalet La Solitude by the invalid Scottish author and his wife, Fanny, who were also calling it home in the year 1883. Squeezed in with them were Fanny’s son Lloyd Osbourne and their Skye terrier Bogue, whose presence may have stimulated another essay that summer, “On the Character of Dogs.” Fortunately, the Hôtel des Iles d’Or was close by for visitors to use on the next street-level down. Hyères is built around a hill crested with medieval ruins.

The strange physique of Robert Louis Stevenson combined with his unconventional preference in clothing and long hair, mustache and cigarette, somehow made a bad impression on authorities throughout his travels in the Old World. Like he said in his first book, “An Inland Voyage,” when he was crossing frontiers in the 1870s he was “rarely taken for anything better than a spy. … It is a great thing, believe me, to present a good normal type of the nation you belong to.” When Sidney Colvin wrote his “Memories and Notes” many years later, he preserved a character revealing incident from a day in the life of RLS when Colvin was at Hyères. The two old friends had gone on an excursion and:

“On the way back from Nice to Royat he had stopped at Clermont-Ferrand. … He went to a bank to cash some circular notes of the British Linen Company in Edinburgh. His appearance had the usual, almost magical, effect of arousing in the business mind suspicions, amounting to conviction, of his dishonesty. The men in office roundly told him that there was no such firm among their correspondents; that they more than suspected him of having come with intent to defraud, but as an act of kindness would give him five minutes to make himself scarce before they sent for the police. For once he kept his head and temper, outwardly at least; sturdily declined to leave the premises; and insisted that the police should be sent for immediately. Presently his eye was caught by a rack of pigeon-holes containing letters and documents which by some intuition he saw or divined to be from foreign correspondents of the firm; dashed at it despite all remonstrances; rummaged the papers before the eyes of the astonished clerks; drew forth in triumph a bundle containing correspondence from the British Linen Company, including the letter of credit for himself; demanded that the partners and men in authority should be brought down, and when they appeared, exposed to them with a torrent of scornful eloquence their misconduct of their business, and drew a terrifying picture of the ruin that they must inevitably reap from such treatment of distinguished foreign clients. His triumph was complete: the whole house, partners and clerks, abased themselves in regrets and apologies, and escorted him to the door with fawning demonstrations of respect.”

Louis related the incident in a letter to Charles Baxter in Edinburgh in October 1883: “Did you hear of the ‘Strange Bankercorum,’ when I smote a whole banking house hip and thigh–arranged their papers for them — and was conducted to the streets by louting managers and secretaries? It took place at Clermont-Ferrand; and I had a medal struck — (design encl.). I am, yours enclitically, R.L.S.”

RLS really did have a medal struck. He designed it himself as well as the Latin inscription.

“Overthrow of the Bankers. At last RLS has taken vengeance on the bankers for many injustices. To God alone be the Glory.”

Alphonse Legros was Slade professor of fine art, University College, London. He painted, etched and made medals and was commissioned by Stevenson to perform the service. Unfortunately, the medal is not in the Stevenson Society’s collection at Baker’s in Saranac Lake. Nobody knows where it is.

In early 1884, Henley and Baxter went south to see their friend in Hyères but someone had put forth the idea that they all go to Nice for a change of venue. There they got hotel rooms and proceeded to party while Fanny, at Chalet La Solitude, had misgivings, a feeling of dread.