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To England

It was mid-January, 1884. Fanny Stevenson, the wife of Robert Louis Stevenson, was working her hillside garden in southern France, when a telegram arrived from a hotel up the coast in Nice to advise her that a guest there, her husband, was alone and appeared to be dying and British doctors on the scene had suggested that someone be sent for to stand by in case he died. News like that can take the fun out of a good day any day. Biographers of Fanny like to point out all the stress she endured for years trying to keep Louis alive while some biographers of her husband don’t always give her the credit she deserves and don’t seem to appreciate the constant grind it all had on her own behavior and health. As her husband’s self-appointed nurse, the precarious health of her patient would occupy Fanny’s mind, her time and energy until his fatal stroke and through it all she remained a background figure while Louis increasingly would get all the attention.

From the cute little chalet Fanny and Louis called Chalet La Solitude in the village of Hyères, Fanny hastened to Nice but before leaving she had telegraphed their friend ‘Bart’ Simpson, to come to her assistance immediately. Bart was officially Sir Walter Simpson and was the canoeing companion in Stevenson’s first book An Inland Voyage. Fanny was frantic. Her greatest fear was to be alone with no one to help her when Louis was going through one of his near-death experiences. But Bart was in Edinburgh, Scotland, a great distance from Nice, and Bart never showed up. Fanny called upon cousin Bob who did show up but by then Louis was slightly on the mend, enough for her to support him by easy stages back to Hyères.

Just prior to the onset of this new illness, RLS had been enjoying a reunion with two of his old cronies, Charles Baxter and William Henley. The three had gone for a fling up the Riviera coast, stopping at resort towns along the way and finally ending their party at a hotel in Nice from whence Baxter and Henley returned to England. Soon after they left, their friend’s condition had taken a bad turn. A slight cold had resulted in congestion of the lungs which, in his case, led to hemorrhaging of the lungs. Convalescence was slow at best and Bob returned to England. Finally, Louis could think about something else when he developed a kidney infection and he described his discouraged mood in a letter to Bob:

“‘Pain, pain, forever pain’ played a loathsome solo. Now I dislike pain…but when Pain draws a lingering fiddle-bow, and all the nerves begin to sing, I am conscious of an almost irresistible temptation to chime in, alto: L’Invitation a la Boo-Hoo…I am now shorn of my grog forever. My last habit–my last pleasure–gone. I am myself no more. Of that lean, feverish, voluble and whiskeyfied zany Scot who once sparked through Britain, bent on art and the pleasure of the flesh, there now remains no quality but the strong language. That, at least, I shall take gravewards; my last word, it’s like, will be an execration.” But there was at least some good news to come. The law on grog would be lifted.

This last junket by the three amigos was the last of its kind. Fanny put her foot down. From now on, all friends of Louis would have to put up with her being there, too, when visiting, no matter where they went, like it or not and they didn’t like it so it seldom happened. Furthermore, Fanny was honing her nursing skills with a subscription to The Lancet, a how-to magazine for home-based amateur physicians which was allegedly infused with quackery. However, Fanny seemed to have come into the world with a knack for having correct intuitive instincts. For example, on the day RLS suddenly died, she knew beforehand that something terrible was about to happen. She knew something about the common cold, too, something that would not be validated by science for years to come. She believed that colds were infectious and had observed that colds seemed to herald her patient’s breakdowns, therefore, henceforth no one with the slightest hint of a cold was allowed near Louis. Fanny went to extremes which further eroded her popularity when all visitors were made to hold their handkerchiefs to the light to expose any material evidence of symptoms. Anybody with a cold was humorously labeled a “pizon sarpint” and removed from the scene which infuriated people who had no scientific reason to agree with her about the infectious nature of colds. This practice was still in use when the Stevensons were sharing the home of the Bakers in Saranac Lake in the winter of 1887-88. Edmund Krumbholz, a photographer, experienced it and mentioned it in a letter to Mr. Duncan in 1899: “One time when calling I remember of his being in one room and would not come in the other room because a member of his family had a cold. He would shout from the other room to me in our conversation.”

Dr. Graham Balfour says in his book, Life of Robert Louis Stevenson that “in the first week in May (1884) Stevenson was attacked with the most violent and dangerous hemorrhage he ever experienced. Being choked with the flow of blood and unable to speak, he made signs to her (Fanny) for a paper and pencil and wrote in a neat firm hand, ‘Don’t be frightened; if this is death, it is an easy one.'”

We already know that RLS survived this attack, too, but with it came a new level of inconvenience in the daily life of this chronically ill individual. Now he wrapped himself in a shawl, even at meals or flat on his back with his right arm in a sling or strapped to his side, which they hoped might reduce further hemorrhaging. Also, he was forbidden or unable to speak. Communication was by note writing and a newly invented code of hand signals. In the meantime, Louis taught himself to write left-handed and continued to write new verses for his up-coming hit A Child’s Garden of Verses.

By Spring, the relative happiness that Louis and Fanny enjoyed at their Chalet la Solitude in Hyères was long gone, months ago. When they got news of an outbreak of cholera in a nearby village, no more persuasion was needed for the former royal couple of Silverado to resume their wanderings. Next stop would be England to consult with more doctors.

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