Andrew and Mary Baker, the landlords of Robert Louis Stevenson, 1915.
(Provided photo) “He looks extremely well and plays much on a battered old piano we have hired from a livery stableman.” Mrs. Robert Louis Stevenson, Dec. 6, 1887 “In the daytime, when the blizzard piled snowdrifts window-high, the Penny Piper made ‘big medicine’ in his little room under the southern gable of Baker’s. In this room there was an old desk adorned with pens, ink and paper, also a piano …” The Penny Piper of Saranac, by Stephen Chalmers
Visitors to the Robert Louis Stevenson Memorial Cottage in Saranac Lake enter it by way of this little room, the author’s sanctuary. What he called “my study” was also his last hope for refuge when the unsolicited demands of fame came along, like “the day the lady novelists come calling,” to quote Anson Macintyre, or just “Mac,” the Bakers’ 13-year-old chore boy. Pretending not to be home was a new theme for the author of the “