Claire Harmanβs Myself and the Other Fellow has enough ribald anecdote and irreverent detail to do her subject proud, though she includes too much Fanny for polite company. Fortunately, when Harman is not busy lauding Stevensonβs wife, she spends scant moments speculating on Stevensonβs sexuality and the βcrushesβ of Henry James and other would-be admirers. She is even kind enough to spare us the oh-so-typical post-colonial readings of his time in the Pacific. Recounting a delightful episode where a Samoan servant is introduced to the wonders of staircases, Harman shares Stevensonβs merriment: βHe found it so novel that for two or three days he did nothing but run up and down, βchuckling and crowing in an ecstasy of joy.ββ
Because Harman concentrates the bulk of her efforts on Stevensonβs Samoan adventures with Fanny and Company, the dismalness of his hypochondriac βinvalidβ years fades as he learns pidgins, takes to wearing cotton sarongs, nestles tropical buds behind his ears, and battles jungle growth with his bare hands. In short, Harman notes, βStevenson had gone native.β
Fame and fortune, which had eluded Stevenson in his βrovingsβ about the Continent, finally found him on the shores of the Westβmuch to the chagrin of his British colleagues and friends. But soon Stevenson confesses:
The whole celebrity business was particularly characteristic; the Captain has certainly never read a word of mine; and as for the Jew with the Kodak, he had never heard of me till he came on board. There was a third admirer who sent messages in to the Captainβs cabin asking if the Lion would accept a gift of Websterβs Unabridged. I went out to him and signified a manly willingness to accept a gift of anything.
By the end of the biography, we are left to wonder at how Harman is able to make the death of a man whose entire life was leading toward the grave so jarring, so abrupt. And just as his novel Weir of Hermiston endsβmid-thoughtβthe brain hemorrhage which attacked while Stevenson helped Fanny make mayonnaise βseemed unprovoked, a willful convulsion of brute nature.β