(1886), The Master of Ballantrae (1889) and the posthumous Weir of Hermiston (1889)—belongs to the mature part of his biography. But what I subsequently learned of Fanny’s early life, and her personality, confirmed a great deal of what I was already seeing in Stevenson’s own nature at this time—his needs, his strengths, his weaknesses. The difficulties of their early love affair also showed me more clearly the hidden significance of his pilgrimage through the Cévennes: a preparation for his journey of emigration the following year to San Francisco—also undertaken alone—to claim his bride.
Fanny Vandergrift broke the rules, almost all of them, and that was her first and enduring charm. She was a spirit quite as original and adventurous as Stevenson. Born in Indianapolis, Indiana, in March 1840, she was thirty-six when she first met him at Grez in 1876. Her ancestors were Dutch and Swedish; her parents were pioneer farmers who let her run wild on a series of small ranches. They had her baptised in the Presbyterian faith—an interesting emotional link with Stevenson—in one of the total immersion ceremonies in the White River when she was two. By her teens she had grown up into a strong, dark-haired, gypsy-looking girl, who could ride, use a rifle, grow vegetables, make wine, and hand-roll cigarettes. Her passion was painting, and because she was not thought a belle her style was that of the tomboy artist, dashing and devil-may-care. She had big, dark eyes, a determined jaw, and a powerful, stocky body with great sexual presence that remained with her late into middle-age. “God made me ugly,” she used to say with sultry good humour, and the result was that everyone thought her a handsome gal of spirit. She was popular, and her sister Nellie recalled that “there was scarcely a tree in the place that did not bear somewhere the name or initials of Fanny Vandergrift”.
She was married at seventeen—probably already pregnant—to a young lieutenant on the Governor’s staff, Sam Osbourne. He was blond, six-foot, quixotic, amiable and incurably unfaithful, and she loved him passionately. They went West to seek their fortunes, living in mining towns in Nevada, and when the gold-boom was over settling in San Francisco, in 1866. Sam was frequently away, fighting Indians with the army, prospecting in Montana with friends, or having affairs with saloon ladies. But he was always back when the children were born: Isabel (“Belle”) in 1858; Lloyd in 1868; and Hervey in 1871. Jealous rows and passionate reconciliations became the pattern of the household, but gradually Fanny emerged as the stronger, more capable and more stable figure: her children were devoted to her, and remained emotionally dependent on her for the rest of their lives. Moreover Fanny, far from becoming embittered and frumpish, seemed almost to grow younger and more carefree as her family grew up. She lost none of her dash, good humour or energy; she always seemed game for anything. During the 1870s strangers often mistook her and Belle for sisters. When Belle was sent to finish her education at the San Francisco School of Design, Fanny enrolled too as a mature student, and a whole new circle of friendships opened out for her among the artistic “European” set in the city. In particular Fanny became friendly with a young Irish-American lawyer, Timothy Rearden, who was Head of the Mercantile Library, and knew writers like Bret Harte. Rearden became her mentor, possibly for a time her lover. He encouraged her to paint and write, read French and German, think about a new life—a second chance.
Fanny seized the opportunity in a way that would have been almost impossible for her contemporaries in Victorian England or Second Empire France. In 1875, when Belle was seventeen, Lloyd seven and Hervey four, she set off with her three children to study art in Antwerp. Sam Osbourne stayed behind in San Francisco, promising to pay a small allowance. Fanny was at last une femme indépendante, a triumph of spirit over circumstance. A photograph of her at this time shows a distinctly romantic heroine: a dark, determined woman apparently in her late twenties (she was actually thirty-five) with a mass of wild hair brushed impatiently back behind her ears. She wears a velvet-edged jacket over a tight-fitting black dress that carelessly shows off her figure. Knotted round her throat is a large white neckerchief, tied like a man’s tie, loose and full, faintly provocative. The eyes are large and frank, the mouth strong and beautifully formed. She combined force of character with a certain indefinable vulnerability. Her daughter Belle recalled that on the steamer from New York “when in any difficulty, she only had to look helpless and bewildered, and gallant strangers leaped to her assistance”.
Life was not easy in Antwerp. Money was scarce, the lodgings poor, and worst of all the Antwerp Academy would not accept women students. The American Consul tried to help her and Belle find private tuition, but then little Hervey fell ill with fever, and they were advised to take the child to a specialist in Paris. By December they were living in rooms in Montmartre, but in the spring of 1876 Hervey was still ailing, and Lloyd had vivid memories of hanging about hungrily outside patisserie windows because all their money was spent on doctors’ bills. Fanny sent a telegram to Sam Osbourne in San Francisco, telling him their son was dangerously ill. He arrived in Paris to be at Hervey’s death-bed. Bemused with grief, Fanny went back to her life-classes at the atelier, but had fainting fits and hallucinations, and trembled on the edge of a nervous breakdown.
Their French doctor strongly advised them to take Lloyd out of Paris to spend the summer in the country. Fanny discussed this with her friends at the atelier, and a young American sculptor told them about the Hotel Chevillon at Grez-sur-Loing. Sam agreed to come with them, at least for a time; they put their belongings in store and climbed aboard a train.
It was too early in the summer for many others to be in residence, and the hotel was quiet and friendly. Lloyd began to eat and run about like a young colt; Fanny and Belle sat peacefully painting riverscapes and walking in the water-meadows; Sam drank and chatted with Will Low. Gradually other painters turned up at the phalanstére, and each accepted the Osbournes as a picturesque addition to the bohemian enclave. Frank O’Meara fell in love with Belle, and there was much talk of what would happen when the mad Stevensons, Bob and Louis, finally arrived to complete the party. Days were spent swimming, lunching out under the trees, painting in the fields under white umbrellas.
First to arrive at Grez was Bob Stevenson, a tall erratic figure with Mexican moustaches and a ceaseless, brilliant flow of mocking talk. He was generally regarded as the “genius” of the two cousins: painter, musician, linguist, drinker and unreformed rake. He dazzled but also rather frightened Fanny; she described him as “exactly like one of Ouida’s heroes”.
Then, one evening in early July 1876, cousin Louis made his appearance. Young Lloyd Osbourne, who was soon to hero-worship him, remembered the scene vividly. It was dinner-time, with some fifteen of the phalanstére sitting round the long wooden table in the main room of the Chevillon. Oil-lamps stood along the board, pitchers of wine circulated, laughter flew back and forth. The main windows of the dining-room stood open to let in the sweet night air. Occasionally moths flew in from the darkness and fluttered against the bright glass chimneys of the lamps. Fanny and Belle were the only women in the company, and all attention was on them. Then little Lloyd heard a faint noise outside the window, and saw a shadow moving and hesitating beyond the light. There was a clatter of boots, a thin brown forearm on the window-sill, a sharp exclamation, and a dusty figure wearing a slouch hat and carrying a knapsack vaulted lightly into the room. Bob rose gravely from his chair and, turning to the Osbournes, announced like a conjuror: “My cousin, Mr Louis Stevenson.” It was a grand entrance, never to be forgotten, and often to be embroidered. Stevenson himself later said he had waited many minutes outside in the dark, gazing into the bright room, transfixed by Fanny’s face, acknowledging his destiny. Perhaps he did. Certainly Sam Osbourne left Grez and returned to America in September; and when Fanny returned with Belle and Lloyd for the winter to her lodgings at 5 rue Douay in Montmartre, Stevenson soon moved to rooms nearby. As Lloyd put it with delight, “Luly is coming.”
Yet the affair took two years, with much coming and going between Paris and London and Grez, before it became really serious for both of them. Stevenson had other elder Muse figures on hand, notably Mrs Fanny Sitwell, the confidante and future wife of his friend Sidney Colvin. While Fanny Osbourne, for her part, was equally attracted by Bob Stevenson to begin with. Indeed, there is some reason to think that initially Bob was the favourite. She described them both, in
