 Fanny Sitwell Image from The Colvins and their Friends, by E.V. Lucas (London: Methuen, 1928) "My wife [Fanny] reminds me of an incident in point, from the youthful time when he used to make her the chief confidante to his troubles and touchstone of his tastes. One day he came to her with an early [. . .] volume of poems by Mr Robert Bridges, the present poet-laureate, in his hand; declared here was the most wonderful new genius, and enthusiastically read out to her some of the contents in evidence; till becoming aware that they were being coolly received, he leapt up crying, 'My God! I believe you don't like them' - and flung the book across the room and himself out of the house in a paroxysm of disappointment - to return a few hours later and beg pardon humbly for his misbehaviour. But for some time afterwards, whenever he desire her judgement on work of his own or others, he would begin by bargaining: You won't Bridges me this time, will you?"
(Sidney Colvin, Memories and Notes of Persons and Places, 1851-1912 [London: E. Arnold, 1912], pp. 122-23)
RLS first met Frances (Fanny) Sitwell (1839-1924) on 26 July 1873. RLS was visiting his cousin Maud Babington at Cockfield Rectory, Suffolk when Fanny was also visiting. RLS soon fell in love with her, but she was in a relationship with Sidney Colvin. On this visit to the rectory, RLS also met Colvin and the three developed a lifelong friendship.
Fanny was born Frances Jane Fetherstonhaugh in Ireland. She made an unhappy marriage with the Reverend Albert Hurt Sitwell (1824-1894). The couple had two sons, Frederick, (who died in 1873) and Francis Albert (Bertie). Fanny later brought Bertie to Davos, Switzerland, in 1881 in the hope of curing his tuberculosis. The Stevensons were also in Davos at the time. Tragically, Bertie died on 3 April 1881. He was only eighteen years old.
Fanny worked as a secretary at the College for Working Women. She also worked as a translator and reviewer. She had met Sidney Colvin in the late 1860s, and they had fallen in love. Fanny’s husband died in 1894, but it seems that worries about money kept Fanny and Colvin from marrying until July 1903.
After the death of her first son in 1873, Fanny became estranged from her husband. It was then that she made RLS’s acquaintance. She and Colvin offered Stevenson their support when he was arguing with his father about his loss of religious faith. They helped him to gain much-needed time away from his parents, urging Dr Andrew Clark to send him away. The doctor agreed, and RLS was “ordered south” to Mentone in 1873.
In Fanny, RLS found a confidante, a sympathetic woman who he often idealized. He wrote her intimate letters, fluctuating between writing to her as is she were his lover and treating her as a maternal figure. He often referred to her in his letters as “Madonna”, or sometimes “Claire”. His letters demonstrate the often overblown and romantic way he wrote to her, for example:
“I want to say so many things to you, that I find it impossible to begin. I want to tell you how any little detail of your life makes absence a mere dream; but on that head, dear, you know already all that I feel. And I want to tell you what I hope to do and of what I fear to fail in the accomplishment. And again, I want to tell you all manner of small things out of my own life, all sorts of infinitesimal joys and sorrows and disappointments and happy surprises, that I desire to share with my dearest of all friends; and yet these and many other things (do you understand me?) it seems a sort of insincerity to write about between us two, as when people talk of the weather for a long while, warily avoiding something of superlative interest to both” (Letter from RLS to Fanny Sitwell, 8 September 1873, The Letters of Robert Louis Stevenson, ed. by Bradford A Booth and Ernest Mehew, vol i [New Haven: Yale University Press, 1995], pp. 290-91).
While some critics suggest that she and RLS consummated their relationships physically, others reject the idea. Fanny had asked that RLS destroy her letters to him, making a full understanding of the relationship difficult. It seems, though, that in 1874 Fanny made clear how the relationship stood – they would be friends, and nothing more. They did indeed remain friends, and RLS wrote to both Colvin and Fanny for the rest of his life.
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