Under the Wide and Starry Sky

by Nancy Horan

“I’m an old hand at making silk purses out of sows’ ears,” Fanny told her friend, who looked confused standing in the middle of one dusty shop after another.

This happened with girls; they developed secret lives and behaved mysteriously and worried you to death.

That was the thing about good children. If you got busy, you could forget to watch.

“One year my parents hired a French tutor, and all we did was play cards. It’s not a bad way to learn French.”

“I’m wary of walks in the woods with you Stevenson men,”

don’t know about surviving on it, but when you have a gift, it isn’t yours to keep to yourself. It’s the reason you’re here. It’s your purpose.”

Her hand brushed against his belt, and he took it as a sign. She let him unbutton and unlace her, and when her garments were a pile on the floor next to his bed, she welcomed his body to hers. She felt his hipbone press against hers as he whispered how he had wanted her so desperately that day in the woods. When he spoke her name, it sounded like an intimate foreign word.

this brilliant, warm, funny Scotsman said he loved her spirit was enough for the moment.

And so we go, step for step, like a pair of children venturing together into a dark room—with both pleasure and embarrassment.

He felt deep affection for Parisians nevertheless, because in their city, more than any other place, a man could devote his life to art—and be taken seriously.

He’s carrying rolled up sheets of paper inside …” “Antique erotic prints from Japan?” “Your mind does run in a certain direction, my love,” she teased. “They are priceless drawings, stolen, of course, and intended for that woman over there. The two of them are in cahoots.”

“I love you because you have the heart of a man inside the body of a luscious—” “No,” she said. “Not here.” “Fanny …” “A woman’s reputation is a fragile thing. Even in Paris.” Her eyes darted toward the parlor.

I believe I love my friends better when snow is falling on them.”

“You have made my mother laugh again. I haven’t heard her sound so happy since Hervey was a baby.”

“Watch Hervey!” she called over her shoulder. “I know who you mean,” Belle called back.

Falling in love is the one illogical adventure, the one thing of which we are tempted to think as supernatural

“Loosely,” she said. “Daniel is on Sam’s side, and the captain on my mother’s. But it makes a better story.” “Fanny, Fanny,” he murmured indulgently. She smiled up at him. “I was simply obliging the audience, darlin’.”

I wish a companion to lie near me in the starlight, silent and not moving, but ever within touch. For there is a fellowship more quiet even than solitude, and which, rightly understood, is solitude made perfect. And to live out of doors with the woman a man loves is of all lives the most complete and free.

Henley let out one of his shaking laughs. “You’ve changed your tune. What was it you used to call marriage? A friendship recognized by the police?” “Ah, hell. I envy you.”

human beings had an uncanny knack for labeling their fellow specimens.

“First, sir, what is your name?” “Cap’n Anson Smith. This here’s my partner, Jonathan Wright.” “I am Louis Stevenson. And I thank you both for saving my life.”

“I’ve lived in a ghost town or two. Their charm is overrated,” Fanny said. “But if you are asking, yes, my love, I will camp with you wherever you want to go.”

The boy laughed. “Tell me a pirate story.” Louis drank down his cup of wine. “Well, let me think on it, Sammy. You would have to begin with the main pirate. Let’s say you name him”—he cast his eyes around for some inspiration—“Silver. John Silver.” “Does he have a saber?” “Oh, yes, or maybe a cutlass,” Louis said.

Fanny stifled a snicker. What high opinions these fellows have of themselves.

Fanny tiptoed into his room, he cried out, “There’ll be widders in the morning!” “Widders?” “Widows, madam.”

“The trouble with a boy’s story is to write it without any cursing in it. And pirates do nothing but curse. I need tepid oaths, I suppose.” “Fiddlesticks?” Maggie offered. “Carpet bowls!” Thomas thundered.

Soon they could hear Louis shouting in his study. “Son of a Dutchman!” he would yell. “Dash my buttons!” Passing by his door, Fanny h...

Henry was different from Louis’s other friends in many ways. For one thing, he understood a woman’s mind so much better, as was evident in everything he wrote. But there was another difference: He’d not had a friendship with Louis before his marriage to Fanny.

she had lived long enough with a novelist to know how friends’ speech and mannerisms found their way into Louis’s writing.

“A novel must compete with life,” Henry said with slyness, as if baiting Louis into a familiar argument. “Ah, there is where we differ, my friend,” Louis said. “I don’t object to literary realism per se. But I can’t bear Zola’s sordid view of the world. He rubs the nose of the reader in ugliness. It’s gratuitous.”

“What is wealth good for, anyway? Just two things, as I see it—a yacht and a string quartet.”

What good is a man if he will not defend the honor of the woman he loves?

He had seen ambition often enough in a man who took leave of his moral compass in a fit of mad enthusiasm. He’d seen such ambition in women, though rarely so naked, which made it all the more unseemly.

In their three voyages, Louis and Fanny had come across laborers who had been dumped on far-flung islands after their service, with no hope of making their way home.

After fifteen years, shouldn’t disagreeing with Fanny be easier? When they quarreled, he felt as if he were walking barefoot across jagged coral. Shouldn’t their marriage be smooth by now, like a polished stone?

She would walk out to find Louis in a field valiantly weeding, fall on her knees beside him, and declare, “Fanny Stevenson loves you madly.”

“I wonder what would become of you, Louis Stevenson, if you had to get by as a woman must.” She straightened her back and pinned him with a withering look. “You would hate it, I can assure you—to have to beg and scheme to get any say over how the household money is spent, to have to regard the clothes you wear as gifts and be beholden for whatever else comes to you. I think you would be a resentful person, indeed. I suspect you would make quite a stink about it.”

If craggy coastlines treacherous with submerged rocks had been the ground where his ancestors proved their valor, the sickbed had been his battlefield.

Always, since he’d first known her, she had wanted to live a creative life. Did all women married to well-known men struggle for recognition? It occurred to him that his friends thought her greatest achievement was keeping him alive.

“Fanny Van de Grift Stevenson,” he said, “you’ve kept me breathing against the odds, and I owe you my life. Look at me. Am I not the very picture of health? Now it’s time to rest and make yourself well.”

It came clear to him as he stood at the top of Mount Vaea. This is where I shall be buried.

He asked me one sunny day, ‘What do you see?’ I shivered and said, ‘A lot of ice and two frozen peaks. What do you see?’ “ ‘I see the blue space between them,’ he told me. ‘I see a cup full of sky.’ ”