region as their own sacred retreat were startled and alarmed.
Were their chosen haunts to be invaded by tourists--and tourists
of the disturbing sex? Among three happy irresponsibles this
humorous anxiety was particularly acute. One of the trio was sent
over to Grez as a scout, to spy out the situation and report. The
emissary went, and failed to return. A second explorer was
dispatched to study the problem. He, too, was swallowed up in
silence. The third, impatiently waiting tidings from his
faithless friends, set out to make an end of this mystery. He
reached the inn at dusk: it was a gentle summer evening; the
windows were open to the tender air; lamps were lit within, and a
merry party sat at dinner. Through the open window the suspicious
venturer saw the recreant ambassadors, gay with laughter. And
there, sitting in the lamplight, was the American lady--a
slender, thoughtful enchantress with eyes as dark and glowing as
the wine. Thus it was that Robert Louis Stevenson first saw Fanny
Osbourne.

A few days later Mrs. Osbourne's eighteen-year-old daughter
Isobel wrote in a letter: "There is a young Scotchman here, a Mr.
Stevenson. He is such a nice-looking ugly man, and I would rather
listen to him talk than read the most interesting book.... Mama
is ever so much better and is getting prettier every day."

"The Life of Mrs. Robert Louis Stevenson," written by her sister
Mrs. Sanchez (the mother of "little Louis Sanchez on the beach at
Monterey" remembered by lovers of "A Child's Garden of Verses")
is a book that none of the so-called idolaters will want to
overlook. The romantic excitements of R. L. S.'s youth were tame
indeed compared to those of Fanny Van de Grift. R. L. S. had
been thrilled enough by a few nights spent in the dark with the
docile ass of the Cevennes; but here was one, sprung from sober
Philadelphia blood, born in Indianapolis and baptized by Henry
Ward Beecher, who had pioneered across the fabled Isthmus, lived
in the roaring mining camps of Nevada, worked for a dressmaker in
Frisco, and venturously taken her young children to Belgium and
France to study art. She had been married at seventeen, had
already once thought herself to be a widow in fact by the
temporary disappearance of her first husband; and was now, after
enduring repeated infidelities, prepared to make herself a widow
in law. Daring horse woman, a good shot, a supreme cook, artist,
writer, and a very Gene Stratton Porter among f