In April they left the Alps and ventured back to their misty island, where they spent an unsatisfactory summer, moving from place to place in a fruitless search for better weather. Several hemorrhages forced them to the conclusion that they must be once more on the wing, and as both felt an unconquerable repugnance to spending another winter at bleak Davos, it was finally decided to go where their hearts led them, and seek a suitable place in the south of France. As Mrs. Stevenson was too ill just then to travel, the invalid, accompanied by his cousin, Mr. R. A. M. Stevenson, started about the middle of September, 1882, for Marseilles. The wife's anxiety, however, gave her little rest, and almost before she was able to stand she set out after him, arriving in an alarmed and fatigued condition, of which he wrote to his mother in his humourous way: "The wreck was towed into port yesterday evening at seven P.M. She bore the reversed ensign in every feature; the population of Marseilles, who were already vastly exercised, wept when they beheld her jury masts and helpless hull."
To her mother-in-law she wrote from here: "This is a lovely spot, and I cannot tell you how my heart goes out to it. It is so like Indiana that it would not surprise me to hear my father or mother speak to me at any moment, and yet it is not like home either. The houses and the ships look foreign, but the color of the sky and the quality of the air, the corn, the grapes, the yellow pumpkins, the flowers, and the trees, are the same. Everything seems as it is at home, steeped in sunshine."
In a few days they found a house, the Campagne Defli, in the suburbs of St. Marcel, "in a lovely spot, among lovely wooded and cliffy hills," where they fondly hoped their pursuing fate would forget them for a time. Of Campagne Defli she joyfully writes to her mother-in-law: "Of all the houses in the world I think I should choose this one. It is a garden of paradise, and I cannot tell you how I long to have you here to enjoy things with me. It is such happiness to be in a place that combines the features of the land where I was born and California, where I have spent the best years of my life."
She set eagerly to work to turn this charming but neglected place into a pleasant home, directing servants in the cleaning and scrubbing, hanging curtains over draughty doors, repapering walls, putting fresh coverings on old furniture, planting flowers and vegetables in the garden—in fact, pouring out her Dutch housekeeping soul in a thousand and one ways. The French servants, amazed at these activities, thought she was very queer. Once when she was on a step-ladder, with a hammer in her hand, putting up some pictures, she heard some one whisper outside: "Elle est folle." As the two servants came in she cried out indignantly, waving the hammer for emphasis, "Pas folle! Beaucoup d'intelligence!" and then, losing her balance, fell over, step-ladder and all, while the servants fled shrieking. To her mother-in-law she writes: "For Louis's birthday I found a violet blooming at the back of the house, and yesterday I discovered in our reserve a large magnolia tree, the delight of my heart. I am continually finding something new."
Two things were to her as a closed book: one was foreign languages and the other was music. She could not sing a note nor hardly tell one tune from another, yet she liked to listen to music. Her speaking voice was low, modulated, and sweet, but with few inflections, and her husband once compared it to the pleasantly monotonous flow of a running brook under ice. As to languages, although she never seemed able to acquire any extended knowledge of the tongue of any foreign land in which she dwelt, she always managed in some mysterious way of her own to communicate freely with the inhabitants. In Spanish she only learned si, yet, supplemented with much gay laughter and many expressive gesticulations, that one word went a long way. She writes amusingly of this difficulty from Marseilles:
"Yesterday the servant and I went out shopping, which was difficult for me, but, although she knows no English, she seems to understand, as did the shopkeepers, my strange lingo. I had to put on the manner of an old experienced shopper and housekeeper, and count my change with great care, for it was important that I should impress both the woman and the shop people with the notion that I knew what was what. I have been in town all day, making arrangements with butchers, buying an American stove—for the enormous gaudy French range is of no account whatever—and even went and got my luncheon in a restaurant, and all upon my pidgin French. To Louis's great amusement I sometimes address him in it. I bought some cups and saucers to-day of a man who said 'yes' to all I said, while to all his remarks I answered 'oui.' The servant we have is very anxious to please us, and I have finally got her to the length of bringing the knives to the table cleaned; she could hardly believe at first that I was serious in wanting clean knives when there was no company."
It was very pleasant to her to be received everywhere in France with a warm cordiality on the ground of her being an American, and she tells a little story about this in one of her letters:
"When I went in search of doctors I arrived in town at an hour when they all refused to see me, being at luncheon. One man, however, had not yet come in, though his luncheon was waiting for him, so I waited too and caught him in his own hall. He was quite furious and said the most dreadful things to his servant because she had let me in. I sat in a chair and waited till he had done abusing her, and then politely explained my errand. After much beating about the bush, he gave me the information that I wanted, and then, to the astonishment of his servant, went downstairs with me and put me into my cab with the most impressive politeness. Just as I left he told me he had allowed me to break his rule and spoil his lunch because I was an American."
To their deep disappointment, Louis's health gained little or nothing in this charming place, and for a time a heavy sadness fell upon his wife, and in desperation her thoughts turned towards the frozen Alps, which they both disliked and where she had suffered so much. She writes: "I am sorry to say that Louis has had another hemorrhage. I begin almost to think we had better go back to Davos and become Symondses[21] and just stay there. Symonds himself, however, has taken a cold and the weather there has not been good. I have news from Davos that the well people that we knew are all dead and the hopeless cases are all right."
Trouble with drains now came to add to their fear that beautiful Campagne Defli would not do for their permanent home. An epidemic broke out in St. Marcel, and many died. Mrs. Stevenson, stricken with fear for her husband, hurried him off to Nice, while she, armed with a revolver, remained behind to keep guard over their effects, the situation of their place being lonely, and reports of robberies and even murder in the neighbourhood having reached them.