Under the Wide and Starry Sky: A Novel by Nancy Horan

I was struck by the prose and the story. Now I want to read Stevenson's books and more about his life. These passages spoke to me:


Some men would run away from a woman who had lived life. He wanted to dive into that deep pool. page 80


"I don't know about surviving on it [writing], 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." p. 96


Sick as he was, his features showed his boyish sweetness; he had in him a soul as pure as Hervey's [Fanny's youngest child]. He was brilliant, just, and wholesome - the closest thing to a holy man Fanny had ever known. In rooms full of people, she had watched others expand with happiness just to be in his presence. He was the most alive person she'd ever met. And he was funny on top of it all. How useful a thing it would be to keep such a man in the world. How extraordinary a life would be hers if she stayed within that circle of light. p. 181


Perhaps at some deep level she didn't want to look at, she hoped to redeem herself for letting Hervey slip through her fingers. Maybe marrying an invalid would be a prayer, an act of contrition. She didn't know. All she knew for certain was that she loved Louis. "I shall carry you," she told him. "And you can carry me." p. 182


     They made love tenderly and wide-eyed. She let go of the buzzing that usually filled her brain, the questions. Is he thinner? Was that a different sort of cough? Has he eaten his breakfast today? She pretended they were normal people on a holiday. Their reunion invigorated both of them.
     "What a morning," Louis would say as they walked the rocky, dry hills above their rented chateau just outside Marseilles. "I want to take this day, fold it up, and put it in my pocket so I can have it again and again. What is really necessary in life? A blue bay to gaze on. Sun."
     "We're rich," she said. p. 228


"Mr. Stevenson is not the easiest critic. I know from personal experience. You see, he considers writing a sacred calling-"
     "I can accept criticism," the girl insisted.
     "-and he hates bad writing. When you are learning, there is bound to be bad writing." There was something else she needed to say to the girl, though not yet. A woman's imagination is different from a man's. p.245


     Later she would understand that he was, in bursts, doing the writing that would solidify his reputation. Afterward she would recognize something else that they hadn't fully comprehended then: the subtle shiftings beneath  their feet that shook their certainties about who they were. While she thought they were happily expanding into house and garden, Louis felt his life slowly shrinking. p.251


She knew better than to interrupt Louis. Once he had said to her, "A story should read like a dream you don't want to wake from." Right now he was writing about a dream, and he was in a dreamlike trance as he did it. p. 262


      "Obviously, I am not afraid to write about cruelty or violence," Louis said. "but for a writer to feed the reader great dank heaps of ugliness in the name of realism is dispiriting. And to foist such stuff on young minds? It's evil. Writers should find out where joy resides and give it a voice. Every bright word or picture is a piece of pleasure set afloat. The reader catches it, and he goes on his way rejoicing. It's the business of art to send him that way as often as possible. I have to believe that every heart that has beat strongly and cheerfully has left a hopeful impulse behind it in the world. If I cannot believe that, then why should I go on? Why should anyone go on?" p.274


In the space of a minute, Fanny was fairly certain she loathed Henry Adams.
     Louis, on the other hand, was beside himself with joy. It was almost embarrassing to see how excitedly he approached the men. He was like a puppy, eager to play, jumping around a more reserved dog who is not done sniffing, as indeed Adams was not, for his nostrils were flared from the moment he arrived, and they seemed incapable of deflating. ......
The historian's snobbery seeped through his every remark. "one must lower one's standards in the tropics, of course." Adams sighed. "Lord knows, Henry Adams certainly has."
     Fanny engaged the man's eyes. "We don't stand on too much ceremony here," she said. "A simple way of life thankfully preserves us from that burden. Someone without imagination might look at this place and see squalor, but we see possibility," she smiled sweetly. "And we are grateful to be living in Samoa, among people with truly humane manners." ........
     "Is the hostess feeling a bit churlish?" Louis said.
     "What a ridiculous prig! Does Adams always refer to himself in the third person?"
     Louis Stevenson was wondering the same thing," said Louis. p.374-375


     She realized their happiest times had been just like this, when the two of them were alone with the rest of the world at bay, as they'd been at Hyeres. They did best when they were making a new beginning, planning and creating together. She savored having Louis to herself, without friends or family. His jokes and thoughts were only for her. Pulled away from his writing by the physical work at hand, and miraculously healthy, Louis seemed reborn.
p. 375


Louis knew his friend regarded his collaboration with Lloyd [his stepson] as a colossal waste of time. Well, a man did for his family what he could. If I can't help my own, who can I help? p. 382


Now all Louis craved was freedom from expectations. He wanted to try so many things. p. 382


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. They didn't care about her other qualities. It was a sad truth that while his illness had conferred on him an air of heroism, it had marked Fanny, his nurse, as a menial. He'd always held to the idea that she didn't give a damn what people thought of her. She seemed bull-strong. He had learned rather late in the game that Fanny was the kind of woman who needed building up. But then everyone needed praise. The question was: Can a person go mad from want of it? p.433


All this time, had he pitied the downtrodden, ancient Highlanders more than he'd thought about his own wife's suffering? Had Fanny gone mad from being uprooted so often? Time and again, the sweet nests she made had been pulled out from under her as she endured one more leavetaking. She was an earthbound person, seasick from the moment she set foot on a boat. Was it any wonder she had cracked after two years of cruising the Pacific? He recalled the phrase Henry had used to describe poor Arrick: Fa'ape'ape'a e le tu. He is like a swiftlet. He can never rest, for he has no home. Fanny uttered no complaint, but in staying by his side, by pursuing health for him-their holy grail-she had made herself every inch the exile he was.
     Louis felt his face go hot with shame. Dear God, what an ass I am. p.434


What am I to do?" she said, her eyes overflowing with tears. "I see bad things coming, and I want to warn off people."
     "Everyone must make mistakes. It's how we learn."
     "I never felt I was allowed them. for so long, with your health, there was no room for a mistake." .......
"How is it you can be so fearless in the face of real danger, and yet at other times be afraid of mere possibilities?"......
     He hadn't any idea how one was supposed to help a loved one find her way out of such darkness. What have I to fight against so unpitying an enemy? Only kindness. Perhaps with unbridled, importunate, violent kindness, he could woo fanny back from this hell. p. 437


               I will make you brooches and toys for your delight
               Of bird-song at morning and star-shine at night.
               I will make a palace fit for you and me,
               Of green days in forest and blue days at sea...
               And this shall be for music when no one else is near,
               The fine song for singing, the rare song to hear,
               That only I remember, that only you admire,
               Of the broad road that stretches and the roadside fire.
     Louis watched from the doorway as Fanny read the lines slowly, then lifted her mattress and slipped the poem under it. p. 438


     He would regret to his dying day that he'd called her a peasant. It's a grave mistake to identify a person as one thing, especially one's wife. The woman he saw was kind, skilled, and generous-his wife of old, but so much more than a tender of others; she was every bit the adventurer he fancied himself to be. She could write a book of her own about her life in the South Seas. Courage was her greatest strength, and it had gotten her into places no other whites had been.
     Some days she was an explosive engine, but to tamper with her inner workings seemed futile and rather dangerous. She was not his to muck with, anyway. He did not doubt her love or devotion. For the past fifteen years, she'd spent her lavish valor on him. And all the while he'd pined for Scotland, she had wanted only to be by his side.
     He meant to explain to her soon something he'd come to understand. She really was an artist, but her art was not something that would be viewed in a museum or contained between the covers of a book. Fanny's art was in how she had lived her own extraordinary life. She was her best creation.
     In trying to nurse Fanny back from her netherworld, he'd rediscovered something within himself. It had done him good to know as essential decency still resided there. That much had not changed. In the end, what really matters? Only kindness. Only making somebody a little happier for your presence. p. 444


My God, I am nearly forty-four. Never had he imagined he'd live so long. p. 447


Miraculously, in small steps, Fanny had returned very nearly to herself. They were both tender, though, and spoke cautiously to each other. There were sore places that only time might heal.
p. 447 


"Since the day we married, you were my home." p. 449


"I've made mistakes. I have said things I regret, Fanny," He sighed deeply. "Sooner or later, we all sit down to a banquet of consequences." p.  449


She looked lovely in her black velvet gown, and he felt a flush of longing for her in the old way. If he could go back to that day on the North Bridge and alter the years that had intervened, he would change a few things. But not this woman.  p. 452


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.' "
     Fanny's eyes had spilled over when she told that memory. "It's sad that I didn't fully understand at the time what a gift his cheerfulness was. He gave that to me every day I knew him. It's one of the things I miss most." p. 465


Well, there were worse things than being known as the eccentric wife of a great man. p. 466


                Teacher, tender, comrade, wife,
                A fellow-farer true through life,
                Heart-whole and soul free
                The august father gave to me.
                p.466

Beyond the Shadows by Brent Weeks

Do what you know is right, and you'll get the best consequences in the end. p.82