Beyond the Book is series of articles I began publishing monthly in August 2024 to subscribers. I’m republishing the first issue here today. To receive future issues as they appear and a bonus chapter, sign up here.
An elusive heroine
I think most writers would agree we don’t usually choose our characters, they choose us! This was certainly the case with In the Blink of an Eye, where I found the story of early photographer D.O. Hill so compelling I couldn’t resist the challenge of making it into a novel. That story, however, is well-documented, if not widely known. With Frances (Fanny) Sitwell there are a lot more blanks to be filled in.
| What makes Fanny Sitwell such an elusive heroine? Mostly of course her own reticence. For two years after they met, the lovelorn Robert Louis Stevenson poured out his heart out to her in almost daily letters, but we can only guess at her responses because, for whatever reason (discretion, caution—she was in the throes of separating from her husband—or even a smidgeon of guilt?) she insisted he destroy all of her letters to him. He later described his state at that time as one of ‘unrequited love.’ But something must have happened to set him off on this torrent of letter-writing and perhaps it didn’t feel quite so one-sided at the time. All we know is that, after two years, those letters tailed off, allowing most biographers to dismiss her as a young man’s passing infatuation. |
Apart from a few isolated incidents, we hear little more about her until the 1890s when she is a subject of interest to the biographer of curator and critic Sidney Colvin as his companion and hostess. Even this openly acknowledged partnership is cloudy. They were in some kind of relationship before her separation from Albert Sitwell, but Colvin barely mentions her publicly until later in his life. Did he provide just friendship, a social circle and moral support, or when she met R.L.S. was this donnish young man (more about S.C. in a future edition!) also her lover?
For those intervening years, during which R.L.S. met and married his wife, another Fanny, it’s not just a case of ‘what was she feeling, what was she thinking’ (the novelist’s usual territory) ’ as ‘what was she actually doing?’
Frances maintained her discretion until the end, and eventually, if we look at her one public statement about R.L.S. [i], possibly took some pleasure in being coy! However she also suffered from the invisibility of most middle-class Victorian women, mentioned only when her place in the lives of illustrious men friends couldn’t be ignored.
The one thing we do know is that she was strikingly beautiful. The enraptured R.L.S. describes her in one of many poems, “sweet hair, sweet breast and sweeter eyes”[ii] while the more analytical Colvin talks of, “the exquisite finish of her form and features”, “perfectly shaped and proportioned.”[iii] Then there’s R.L.S.’s wife, with whom Frances struck up an unlikely friendship. Surely there’s a touch of envy when Fanny Stevenson writes to Colvin in 1880, “[she] really grows ore lovely as time passes by. I wish I knew how she did it.” [iv]
Sadly the image at the top of this article falls short, I think, of these descriptions, although this one copied from The Colvins and Their Friends, by E.V. Lucas, and echoed in an even stronger version by Charles Holroyd’s drawing in the British Museum (do search, for some reason a link won’t work!) hints at the charisma which added to her physical attributes.
But what should we make of this one, appearing in the Burne Jones Catalogue Raisonne? Even if she was much younger, it’s hard to see much resemblance to the older woman. However, if we take a look at good old Wikipedia and compare Burne Jones’s portraits of his wife and daughter, the similarities are striking. If it’s unlikely that the Fitzwilliam Museum (and before them Sidney Colvin) misattributed this piece, I can only assume Burne Jones simply drew all of his women to look pretty much the same. In any case, I’m rejecting the idea that Frances was ever this doe-eyed ingenue!
Does it matter exactly what she looked like? Readers coming to a novel will form their own judgement of her looks just as they will of the thoughts, feelings and characteristics I’ve given her. Research is only a starting point. The rest is fiction!
Next month we’ll take a look at the history of a man sometimes cast as a villain, a character so different from RLS it’s hard to see how they became such firm friends. I’m talking about Frances’s partner and RLS’s mentor, Sidney Colvin.
Thank you for our interest in Beyond the Book. The Absent Heart will be published on March 26th by Linen Press, pre-orders from March 12th.
References:
[i] I Can Remember Robert Louis Stevenson,ed. R. Masson, Chambers 1922, p87-88
[ii] ‘If I Had Wings, My Lady, Like a Dove’, in RLS in Love, Stuart Campbell,Sandstone 2009
[iii] Her Infinite Variety, ed. E.V. Lucas, Methuen 1908, p.78
[iv] The Colvins and their Friends, E.V. Lucas, Methuen, 1928, p.150
Ali Bacon, Author 