A Violent Passion

'The essence of love is best defined as passionate kindness, run mad and become importunate and violent,' so wrote Robert Louis Stevenson. Fanny Osbourne was already nearly forty, married and mother of two children when they met and in defiance of Victorian morality became lovers. They lived together in Paris for two years before Fanny returned to her husband to obtain a divorce and marry Louis, who had followed her to California. So began a stormy, tortuous relationship as they travelled the world from Scotland to Samoa in search of a place where Fanny could keep the frail RLS alive for a few more years.