Will Low speaking to members and guests of the Stevenson Society of America at the annual meeting on Aug. 28, 1923. (Photo provided)

Will Hickock Low was born in Albany, New York in 1852, making him two years younger than Robert Louis Stevenson from Edinburgh, Scotland.

A train station in Paris, France was the setting for their first meeting in June 1875. Low sensed right away that something new was at hand and recalled the occasion many years later for his own book, “A Chronicle of Friendships,” 1908:

“At the appointed hour there descended from the Calais train a youth ‘unspeakably slight’ (E. Henley), with the face now familiar to us, the eyes widely spaced … a face not unlike that of many of his comrades in his native town. It was not a handsome face until he spoke, and then I can hardly imagine that any could deny the appeal of the vivacious eyes or fail to realize that here was one so evidently touched with genius that the higher beauty of the soul was his.”

Such was the effect that R.L.S. projected, and Low just happened to be, on that spring day, the next in line to have the experience.

Mrs. Isobel Field was the name of Stevenson’s stepdaughter in her second marriage when she came to Saranac Lake in 1917, bearing gifts for the fledgling Stevenson Society to put in their new little museum at Baker’s.

Mrs. Field is better known as, “Belle,” in this series, “The Hunter’s Home,” and she is the primary donor of Stevenson memorabilia in the Saranac Lake collection. On Aug. 11, 1930, Belle wrote a letter to the president and members of the Stevenson Society of America. In the second paragraph, she writes that “he was so vitally alive that other people seemed colorless beside him. No one ever said of R.L.S. ‘I don’t remember whether I ever met him or not.’ He made an instant impression that was unforgettable.”

Will Low was an aspiring painter when he took himself to France in 1873, to learn about it from the French masters. He was just one face in the host of students drawn there from several nationalities who coalesced to form communities called “bohemian.” In the winter, they learned to paint within the city limits of Paris. In the spring, they escaped to the country to paint from nature. Traditionally, men went to the Fontainebleau region southeast of the city while women went to Normandy.

While in Paris, Low and a handful of his peers frequented No. 81 Boulevard Mont Parnasse, to the third floor which was entirely the studio of Carolus Duran, one of the current masters. He was the art guru of his pupils among whom was Robert Alan Mowbray Stevenson, better known as R.A.M., cousin of Robert Louis Stevenson. Will and Bob had the right chemistry for the friendship that ensued and it was Bob who introduced Will to cousin Louis, just two days before they all went south, to Fontainebleau, for the summer of 1875.

1875 was the summer in which Stevenson wrote his popular Forest Notes in which he recalls the incident in the forest that would become memorialized in Low’s post-impressionist painting called “Stevenson and the Muse.” This pleasant feeling piece has covered 16 square feet of wall space for the last 99 years in the former study of the painting’s subject, at Baker’s, or the Robert Louis Stevenson Memorial Cottage in Saranac Lake, on Stevenson Lane. Low had made it a point to unveil this labor of love on the same day as he performed as guest speaker at the annual meeting of the Stevenson Society of America. The rest of this segment of the “The Hunter’s Home” is given over to excerpts from the transcript of Low’s address to his audience, gathered around on the museum grounds on Aug. 28, 1923. This would be the last such meeting attended by the society’s landlords, Andrew and Mary Baker. Just like all five of their children, both would be deceased by spring. Mary went last. From the veranda made famous by R.L.S., Will Hickock Low began to talk:

“We might have a better day — but almost any day is a good day to recall Stevenson, and what I am going to say to you is simply a talk of the most informal kind.

“I do not know that I can begin any better than to relate the simple circumstances that brought him to Saranac Lake the first time. We brought him to New York with the idea, at first, of going to Colorado, but his state of health was such, when he reached New York, that he was not able to make the trip. Someone heard of Dr. Trudeau’s early work up here, and Lloyd, and Mrs. Stevenson came up on an expedition of discovery. The report was good, and on a bright, charming, October morning, Louis and his mother, and Valentine the maid servant, started. I was very anxious for them to go by boat, so that they could see the Hudson, and so we sent down to the day boat and took a stateroom, so that they could have some degree of privacy, and then, with the usual amount of impedimenta, went on board, with a large hat, together with Mrs. Stevenson — and the moment we got in the stateroom, off came her large hat and on her widow’s cap, quite as we will recall of Queen Victoria. Mrs. Stevenson never appeared in public or in any house without it.

“I got them settled, and as I started out of the stateroom I was questioned by a porter, who wanted to know who they were. Not wishing to cause Louis to be disturbed unnecessarily, I simply said: ‘Oh! They’re no one in particular.’ On which he said, ‘Say! I guess they must be royalty!!’ And I said: ‘Prince Otto.’ (Title of a novel by R.L.S.)

“When they got to Albany (the passenger railroad did not come up here) they, through some influential friends, got a special train which brought them on up.

“Well, upon his arrival, in the first letter that they wrote me — I think I must quote:

“‘We are here at a first rate place — Baker’s is the name of our house but we don’t address there. We prefer the tender care of the Post Office, which does not give a single name.

“‘Baker’s have a prophet’s chamber, which has hypnotized my eyes — will you say a garret? — with a hole in the floor, and as the prophet will you come and slumber?’

“Well, I did not come.

“They lived there the first winter, and it was quite amazing to see him when he came back in the spring. All the letters that I had spoke not of hilariously loving this climate particularly but of first rate health; and thinking of him as anxiously as we had thought of him at that time — because as we know, he was very, very ill when he came, and undoubtedly, leaving England saved his life. In coming across he caught cold, and was in very bad condition at the time he arrived in New York, butsoon again quite like the old Louis.

“In the years and months before, when I knew him, I had never thought of him as being ill, and strangely enough I don’t today. I don’t think of him as being sick. I never saw him with a hemorrhage or anything of that sort; I have seen him, I remember, when he was a guest in my house and we would all be sitting around the table, talking and laughing, I would see Stevenson get up and go out of the door, and he would be holding his handkerchief to his mouth — but no hemorrhage — no. In two or three minutes time he was back, laughing, talking merrily with the rest of us. This, of course, was because of his great courage, but he succeeded amazingly in giving the impression of being a well man. He generally regarded his illness, I think, as being apart from him. I have seen him at times when he was not allowed to speak, and when he scribbled on the back of his tablet as though he spoke and spoke again — but even then, he did not seem to think of his illness as of himself.

“Well, he came back to New York from Saranac Lake, and until he left for his trip to the South Seas, he would not see people, and a great many people wanted to see him — often on the most trivial matters — but please remember (and here Mr. Low spoke quickly as if to check a thought in the minds of his hearers) Stevenson liked everybody — almost anyone would interest him. I have seen him with some perfectly ‘dead’ boys and he would be having a most delightful time! And I have talked with him afterward. (here Mr. Low chuckled reminiscently). The fact of it is, I think he used to get the best of us. I have the conviction that I have talked very brilliantly with him, just for that reason. You know, when you leave Louis, you were cock-sure he was right. He had that talent.

“He wearied under the restraint in New York of not seeing these different people. … although we did not go very many places, but we would occasionally go off, and then I would go in again in the evening, because when he left Saranac Lake, his wife was already in California, and he was with his mother and Lloyd in New York. He said that morning:

“‘Low, I’m dead tired. You’ve got to get me out of it.’

“… so, we all went down to Manasquan (on the New Jersey seashore). It was early in May, and the weather — well, we had a great deal of weather like this: ‘Fine, good, soft weather,’ he called it.'”

(To be continued.)