nd her
daughter returned to the capital, where they took train for
California, and were soon at home again amid the sweet flowers of
Stonehedge. There Mrs. Stevenson once more took up the writing of the
introductions to her husband's books, for which she had contracted
with Charles Scribner's Sons. As I have already said, it was only
after much urging that she consented to do this work, and her almost
painful shrinking from it appears in a letter of March 25, 1911, to
Mr. Charles Scribner: "With this note I send the introduction to
Father Damien. I didn't see how to touch upon the others when I know
so little about them. I know this thing is about as bad as anything
can be. I cringe whenever I think of it, but I seem incapable of doing
better. If, however, it is beyond the pale, write and tell me,
please, and I will try once again. Louis's work was so mixed up with
his home life that it is hard to see just where to draw the line
between telling enough and yet not too much. I dislike extremely
drawing aside the veil to let the public gaze intimately where they
have no right to look at all. I think it is the consciousness of this
feeling that gives an extra woodenness to my style--style is a big
word--I should have put it 'bad style.'"

It was during this time that news came of a severe accident to Alison
Cunningham, Louis's old nurse--a misfortune which resulted in her
death within a few weeks. Mrs. Stevenson always felt an especial
tenderness for "Cummy," as the one whose kind hand had tended her
beloved husband in his infancy, and she very gladly aided in the old
lady's support during her last years. Lord Guthrie, Louis's longtime
friend and schoolmate, says in his booklet on the story of Cummy:

[Illustration: The last portrait of Mrs. Stevenson.]

"From the novelist's widow she always received most delicate and
thoughtful kindness. Mrs. Stevenson often wrote to her and she amply
supplemented the original pension settled on her by Mr. Thomas
Stevenson, Louis's father. A few months before Cummy's death (at the
age of ninety-two), she cordially agreed, on condition that Cummy
should not know of it, to make a special additional annual payment
which I had ascertained, from an outside source, would add to the old
lady's happiness. And as soon as she received my letter telling her of
Cummy's accident (a fall causing a broken hip), I had a
characteristically generous message from her, sent by wire from
San Francisco, giv