Stephen Chalmers

“Mr. Stevenson was my patient, but as he was not really ill while here, I had comparatively few professional calls to make on him. He was so attractive, however, in conversation, that I found myself, as it was growing dark, very often seated by the big fireplace in the Baker cottage having a good talk with my illustrious patient.”

Autobiography, Dr. E.L. Trudeau

One man who made it a mission to meet and get to know Dr. Trudeau was Stephen Chalmers who was born in Dunoon, Scotland, Feb. 29, 1880. By age 10, he was working on a plantation in Jamaica and as a young adult went in search of adventure by roaming the Seven Seas. By age 20, Chalmers was in New York City, trying out journalism for a living, discovered he was good at it and became a special reporter for the New York Times. His knowledge of Jamaica gave him an edge which boosted his career when it came to reporting on a great earthquake there. When President Theodore Roosevelt made his last trip to the Panama Canal zone during his administration, Chalmers was one of his guests. He got inside the White House, too, when the other Roosevelt, FDR, was using it and communicated with him often. By age 25, Chalmers was told by his big city physician that he had tuberculosis which explains his presence in Saranac Lake by 1906. Here he began to write fiction, novels and short stories, based on his own life experience. He also indulged himself in local non-fiction, like Watching the Hourglass, a narrative essay about local conditions here as seen by a newcomer. Chalmers understood right away what a wonderful subject for a little book, Dr. Trudeau would make. Accordingly, “The Beloved Physician–Edward Livingston Trudeau,” was published in 1916, shortly after Trudeau’s death.

In his preface, Chalmers says, “I wasn’t a physician with whom he might be expected to discuss pulmonary symptoms. I was not his

patient, although sufficiently under the common shadow to have sympathy in that which was his thought day and night. He merely found in the writer, I think, a sort of Holmes’s Watson to whom he could discourse on strange matters …”

Chalmers didn’t try to hide his admiration for his subject: “What manner of man this was that, sick unto death, could wield from a little laboratory in the wilderness an influence which is materialized in nearly five hundred sanatoriums in the western hemisphere for the treatment of consumption by fresh air, rest, and a proper philosophy; what manner of personality this was that, from the prostrate depths of an invalid’s chair, could revolutionize the sanitation of business offices where gold seemed life’s only worth while pursuit, and of homes where ignorance shrank from pure air and sunshine–this can be explained only by an intimate personal revelation of the remarkable human being that was Edward Livingston Trudeau.”

And so it was that when Stephen Chalmers began work on his favorite local subject of them all, that being the presence of his fellow countryman and brother in literature, Robert Louis Stevenson, in Saranac Lake in the winter of 1887-88, he enlisted the help of his friend, Dr. Trudeau and said so in the author’s note to “The Penny Piper of Saranac, An Episode in the Life of Robert Louis Stevenson:”

“The following brief sketch of Robert Louis Stevenson’s life at Saranac Lake was done in collaboration with the late Dr. Edward Livingston Trudeau, who carefully edited the original manuscript, paying particular attention to the precise wording, so far as his memory served him of the various conversations between the distinguished patient and himself.” That being the case, it seems reasonable to exploit this source rather than Trudeau’s autobiography for essentially the same information, only because Chalmers was a better writer. Take, for example, the quarrels. Everybody knows that these two men of genius liked to argue. From “The Penny Piper of Saranac:”

“On the really great things of life they were in perfect accord; so they chose the most trivial matters upon which to differ. The best illustration of this is, perhaps, the ‘check story,’ which Dr. Trudeau used to relate, and always with immense delight. There was no stenographer present, and Dr. Trudeau himself did not undertake to repeat the exact dialogue, but from the facts and from a knowledge of the two personalities this is how it was:

Stevenson — My dear Trudeau! I have the greatest respect for your intelligence. For that reason it distresses me–distresses me!–to hear you utter such fallacy. How can the American baggage system be superior to the British luggage system?

Trudeau — But, my dear Stevenson, we are dealing with facts! I know that, as a Britisher, you are naturally prejudiced.

Stevenson (interrupting) — I beg your pardon, Dr. Trudeau. I would never allow racial prejudice to warp my judgement in the matter of a ten-and-sixpenny trunk. The British system is the best. You hire a porter. You look after your own luggage. At your destination, you claim it in person. It is not at all necessary to put your head out of the compartment at every stop and cry like the Irishman: ‘Gyard! Is me tronk all right?’

Trudeau (who has been waiting with fortitude for a chance to continue) — Of course not. Now then–the American system! You are bound, say, from New York to San Francisco. You buy your railway ticket, indicate your baggage to a baggage-master with a pencil stuck in his ear and a bunch of tags in his hands. He gives you a brass check. In a week you are in San Francisco. You haven’t seen or heard of your blessed trunk since you left New York; yet there it is, safe and sound. And all that is required of you in San Francisco is that brass check. Now what have you to say?

Stevenson (who is cornered, but hates to admit it) — We…ell (He puffs great clouds of cigarette smoke and walks up and down, greatly agitated. Then, with a burst of exasperation) That is just you Americans all over! Checks! Checks! Checks! You eat on the check system. You hang your hat on the check system. Why, an American can’t speak of dying without saying that he ‘hands in his checks’!

Trudeau (twenty years later) — He had me that time.”