Mrs. Fanny Osbourne, 34, had thrown convention to the winds in the summer of 1875, when she announced that she was leaving her cheating husband, Sam Osbourne, in California, and taking their three children to Europe for a dramatic change.

Such behavior by a woman was frowned upon in the 19th century more than today, and Fanny got a lot of pushback from all sides. But she was one strong-willed and determined woman who was already engaged in revolutionary behavior like rolling and smoking cigarettes and carrying a gun. Books written about Fanny because she had the courage to take the leap have in recent years made her a kind of cult figure among women. This phenomenon has been observed at the Robert Louis Stevenson Memorial Cottage in Saranac Lake, NY, since 1995 with the appearance of A Romance of Destiny by Alexandre Lapierre, and again with Under the Wide and Starry Sky by Nancy Horan, 2014.

The story is now well known, the one in which Robert Louis Stevenson and Mrs. Fanny Osbourne met and fell in love, an actual Romance of Destiny (Fanny’s words), in a little French village overrun with artists, about 45 miles southeast of Paris. Isobel–“Belle”–Osbourne was 17 when her mother loaded her and her two brothers, Lloyd, 7, and Hervéy, 4, on a train going east from Oakland, CA, to get on a ship in New York City called The City of Brooklyn, bound for Antwerp, Belgium. Besides putting distance between herself and Sam, the professed purpose of the journey was exposure to European culture with the emphasis on art, specifically drawing and painting.

Fanny and Belle as mother and daughter would be a hit wherever they went. In her book, This Life I’ve Loved, Belle said her mother looked 10 years younger than she was and that “I began to notice the attention my mother attracted, and realized how very pretty she was with her pale face, her regular features cut like a delicate cameo and her lovely eyes of ‘gold and bramble dew’ (RLS)…When in any difficulty she only had to look helpless and bewildered, and gallant strangers leaped to her assistance. I was looked upon as her younger sister, and when I explained I was her daughter, my word was often doubted.”

Antwerp was a bust. The worst thing that could probably have happened, did happen. Young Hervéy became terminally ill with a terrible disease that lingered for months and caused great suffering. Fanny took everybody to Paris, hoping for better prospects while Sam came all the way from California before the end came and when it did, the boy’s last words to his mother were “Please lie down beside me.” And here is another one of those fatalistic turning points where some imaginative people look at Hervéy like some sacrificial lamb, giving up his life so his mother could accidentally find her new life with a young writer from Scotland in questionable health. Feeling Fanny’s grief at Hervéy’s burial, a fellow American suggested that Fanny take herself to a rustic locale at the southern terminal of the formerly royal forest of Fontainebleau, a haven for artists. There, she was told she could get it together. “It sounds rather nice,” wrote Belle, quoting her mother. “What’s the name of it?” “Grez,” replied a Mr. Pasdesus, “Grez-sur-Loing. It’s a paintable place with a big garden that slopes down to the river.”

This Pasdesus, another painter, knew the primary players in the new life to be for Fanny and Belle Osbourne at Grez on the Loing River. Mother and daughter plied Pasdesus with questions. Belle wanted to know, “Is the village romantic? Are there any castles?” “There’s the ruin of an old castle quite near the inn. They call it the Château de la Reine Blanche because Mary Stuart lived there when she was the wife of the Dauphin…there’s supposed to be a secret underground passage though nobody has found it yet. ‘I’ll find it!’ cried Lloyd. And the strange thing is that he did!”

“‘Do many people go to Grez?’ my mother asked. ‘The only ones who do are artists,’ said Mr. Pasdesus. ‘They like to paint the old bridge and the village street.’ ‘Do any women go there?’ ‘No,’ said Mr Pasdesus…”There isn’t really much to paint at Grez. I thought of it for you because it was so quiet and peaceful.’ ‘That is what I would like,’ said my mother. ‘I hope there won’t be many people there this summer.’

“‘It isn’t likely. Mr. Low–Will H. Low, the painter–and the two Stevensons are often there. They are cousins, Bob and Louis…one paints and the other writes, neither of them very successfully I imagine, but they are very pleasant fellows. I think you would like them.’ Louis Stevenson! That was the first mention of a name that would mean so much to us.”

And so it was that Destiny came closer to having its way as the Osbournes, minus one, went south from Paris and through the beautiful and well maintained forest of Fontainebleau and its namesake village smack in the middle of it. Emerging from the forest onto the surrounding plain, the one immortalized on canvas by the likes of Jean Francois Millet, Belle describes the experience:

“Grez was indeed the lost place Mr. Pasdesus had described. We took a train to Bourron, going on from there by carriage. Driving along the old Roman road one would hardly have noticed the little group of stone houses tucked away in a fold of the rolling green fields. ‘There it is!’ cried Lloyd, who was hanging out of the window. A dip in the landscape showed the spire of a church, then the roofs of the houses, and soon we were rattling over cobblestones along a narrow street.”

Chevillons Inn was their destination with an archway entrance directly off of the street, through a court and out into the large garden which reached about 100 feet down to the river. Chevillon catered almost entirely to artists, but like Pasdesus said, male artists. Fanny was about to upset the status quo again. It was late April and the Osbournes were early arrivals. Greeting the Osbournes were the proprietress, Madame Chevillon, and her niece, Ernestine, described by Belle as “red-cheeked, sturdy, a young girl of about my age (18), in the white peasant’s cap, crisp with starch. They welcomed us hospitably, leading us in and carrying our bags, Madame Chevillon talking volubly, while Ernestine and I exchanged friendly smiles.” And from that a new friendship blossomed that would provide Belle with superb memories of three golden summers at Grez sur Loing, helping Ernestine with all kinds of chores that taught her new skills, like how “to make drip coffee, to turn a perfect omelet, to mix a salad, and to turn the spit of a roast before the open fire in the taproom.”

As for her mom, “My mother found at Grez all that she wanted of quiet and beauty. She set up her easel by the river and started a painting of the old bridge…artists came from far and near to paint it.” As for Lloyd, future president of the Stevenson Society of America in Saranac Lake, all he wanted to do was fish off the famous bridge, close by the inn. But word had gone forth from Grez, warning that women–American women!–had invaded Chevillon Inn and were threatening to bring about a beginning of the end scenario upon their male exclusiveness, not just in the inn but the whole colony. Something had to be done and it was the ‘two Stevensons’ and their compatriots who came up with a plan and had the will to do it. It was not much of a plan and its execution fell on the shoulders of Robert Alan Mowbray–‘R.A.M’–Stevenson who was over-endowed with the gift of gab and persuasive ability just like his cousin, Louis. Belle remembers the day in her book:

“Then just when we were beginning to feel as though the place belonged to us, a stranger appeared; an artist, evidently, from his velvet jacket and flowing tie. He was so slim and dark and so odd and foreign-looking, a sort of gentleman gypsy…” It was R.A.M. Stevenson, “Cousin Bob”, one half of the two Stevensons and he had not come to welcome the forbidden intruders.

To be continued.