Robert Louis Stevenson in 1876, painted by Fanny Van de Grift Osbourne (1840-1915). Fanny was not only a competent artist (and horsewoman) but a writer, who when Stevenson first knew her supported herself and her children by her writing. She encouraged Stevenson to write, and in the difficult months that passed between the day that Fanny suddenly left for America to attempt a reconciliation with her husband, and the bewildering joy of a cable from her announcing that she was filing for divorce, Stevenson devoted himself furiously to his work.
Part 1 of 2
IT is by no means in the way of every one to fall in love. As for the innumerable army of anaemic and tailorish persons who occupy the face of this planet with so much propriety, it is palpably absurd to imagine them in any such situation as a love-affair. A wet rag goes safely by the fire; and if a man is blind, he cannot expect to be much impressed by romantic scenery.
Apart from all this, many lovable people miss each other in the world, or meet under some unfavourable star. There is the nice and critical moment of declaration to be got over. From timidity or lack of opportunity a good half of possible love cases never get so far, and at least another quarter do there cease and determine.* A very adroit person, to be sure, manages to prepare the way and out with his declaration in the nick of time. And then there is a fine solid sort of man, who goes on from snub to snub; and if he has to declare forty times, will continue imperturbably declaring, amid the astonished consideration of men and angels, until he has a favourable answer.*
* A legal phrase meaning ‘stop,’ where ‘determine’ is related to ‘terminate.’ Stevenson had legal training, though he never practised at the Bar.
* To her regret Elizabeth Bennet, in Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice (1813), knew such a man. “‘I am not now to learn,’ replied Mr Collins, with a formal wave of the hand, ‘that it is usual with young ladies to reject the addresses of the man whom they secretly mean to accept, when he first applies for their favour; and that sometimes the refusal is repeated a second, or even a third time. I am therefore by no means discouraged by what you have just said, and shall hope to lead you to the altar ere long.’”
Précis
Falling in love, said Robert Louis Stevenson, is not something which every one will experience. Some people simply do not possess sufficient warmth of personality. Others are prevented from it by misfortune, bad timing or excessive caution, though there are those who will persevere for as long as it takes to wear the object of their affections into compliance. (59 / 60 words)
Part Two
Robert Louis Stevenson and his family at Valima on the island of Upolu, Samoa, in 1892. Left to right: Mary Carter, maid to Stevenson’s mother; Lloyd Osbourne, Stevenson’s stepson; Margaret Balfour, Stevenson’s mother; Isobel Strong, Stevenson’s stepdaughter; Robert Louis Stevenson; Austin Strong, the Strong’s son; Stevenson’s wife Fanny Stevenson; and Joseph Dwight Strong, Isobel’s husband. In her sister Nellie’s opinion, Fanny was “both physically and mentally the very antithesis of the gay, hilarious, open-minded and open-hearted Stevenson, and for that very reason perhaps the woman in all the world best fitted to be his life comrade and helpmate.”
I DARESAY, if one were a woman, one would like to marry a man who was capable of doing this, but not quite one who had done so. It is just a little bit abject, and somehow just a little bit gross; and marriages in which one of the parties has been thus battered into consent scarcely form agreeable subjects for meditation.*
Love should run out to meet love with open arms. Indeed, the ideal story is that of two people who go into love step for step, with a fluttered consciousness, like a pair of children venturing together into a dark room. From the first moment when they see each other, with a pang of curiosity, through stage after stage of growing pleasure and embarrassment, they can read the expression of their own trouble in each other’s eyes. There is here no declaration, properly so called; the feeling is so plainly shared, that as soon as the man knows what it is in his own heart, he is sure of what it is in the woman’s.
If any English author has achieved this alchemy, and made dogged suitors into sympathetic characters, it is P. G. Wodehouse. “I am a married man,” says a Whisky-and-Splash to Mr Mulliner in A Few Quick Ones (1959), “and it took me two years and more boxes of chocolates than I care to think of to persuade the lady who is now my wife to sign on the dotted line.” One of Wodehouse’s own favourites from among his novels was Sam the Sudden (1925), in which Sam Shotter pursues Kay Derrick with a particularly unwavering determination. Eve Halliday, in Leave it to Psmith (1923), has to put up with two such suitors at once.
Précis
For a woman to be pursued relentlessly, said Stevenson, might be romantic in theory; but in practice, it is perhaps rather alarming. Better to find a partner with whom one can walk hand-in-hand into love, with whom love is a shared adventure in which each knows what the other is feeling without needing to be told. (56 / 60 words)
