Eve Farson was a woman with an indomitable spirit. She defied expectations and embarked on adventures that rivaled those of any man.
The niece of Bram Stoker (author of the gothic horror novel, Dracula), Eve was born Enid Eveleen Stoker in 1893. During World War I she enlisted as a voluntary aid nurse in a British Field Hospital in St. Petersburg, Russia. She met Negley Farson in a London hospital, where he was recuperating from a wartime airplane crash. They married in England on September 22, 1920.
Eve and Negley set sail from England immediately after their wedding. Negley was out of work but had the promise of employment in South America. On their voyage, they learned his job had fallen through, so when they disembarked in New York City, Negley intended to find a job. Negley wrote about Eve, “She had married me with the full knowledge that I did not have one penny in the world. That did not worry her in the least. And it was an unbelievably strengthening feeling to know that you were married to someone who would take any and all sorts of chances with you.” Unfortunately, a job for Negley in New York failed to quickly materialize. Before long they made the decision to move to Chicago where Negley found work as a salesman.
Soon thereafter, the couple moved to British Colombia, Canada. They spent two years living on Cowichan Lake. Their home was a rustic floating cabin where they lived on fish Negley caught and ducks, geese, and other wildlife that he hunted. Negley made planter boxes, which Eve planted with sweet peas and nasturtiums. They loved the solitude and independence.
Negley had an insatiable curiosity and sense of wanderlust. He was fortunate to have found in Eve an able partner in adventure. They set off together in a twenty-six-foot yawl on a 3,600-mile trip across Europe, from the North Sea to the Black Sea. Negley reported on their trip in a series of articles for a Chicago newspaper and a book titled Sailing Across Europe (1926). Quarters were tight on the boat, but Eve, who Negley referred to as “the crew,” seemed unfazed by the prospect of living in such a confined space for nearly a year.
Several years after their voyage across Europe, Eve and Negley’s son Daniel was born. The relationship between Eve and Negley grew strained. Negley took on first one mistress and then another. His drinking became a problem. But despite that, Eve and Negley continued with their travel adventures together.
While much of what we know about Eve comes from the books Negley wrote, four of Eve’s manuscripts are preserved in the Negley Farson papers. Titled “Down the Congo River,” “Lake Islands in Africa,” “A Postage Stamp Country,” and “With the Peres Blancs in Ruanda Irudi,” they give some of Eve’s perspective on the couple’s travels across Africa. The manuscripts, likely written in 1939, paint a colorful picture.
Most of their trip was made in a Ford V8, which, according to Eve, was “packed to bursting with all our luggage for eight months and complete camp kit as well, including food.” Finding a supply of fuel for the car was an ever-present problem. Even more difficult to find than petrol were spare springs for the car. Three times during their cross Africa trip road conditions were so extreme that the springs broke.
In remote African villages, Eve and Negley often spent the night in a traveler’s “Rest House.” Describing one such accommodation, Eve wrote, “Generally there is no door to lock, and in most they consist of roughly built huts with thatched roofs and embarrassingly low walls, about three feet high, on which most of the inhabitants of the village lean for greater comfort as they watch you.”
About another “Rest House” she penned, “In Nando the Rest House was the most primitive we had met yet…After seeing a snake whip across the floor I felt none too happy, even in this verandah, which had sagging and rotten matting for a ceiling, in which horrid movements could be discerned. A mosquito net is certainly better protection than nothing, but it seems sadly inadequate when it is all that stands between you and a possible cobra dropping from above.”
Eve’s musings about the African people she met reflected the era. She was horrified by the many cases of leprosy and elephantiasis that afflicted the local population. She admired the stately Watusi people in Ruanda Irudi (present day Rwanda), noting that “six foot five was common and seven foot by no means rare.” She and Negley visited a Catholic mission where they “deeply admired both (the French missionaries) and the civilization they had brought into that far place.”
She was amused by the puzzlement their trip generated in Africans. Eve wrote, “It is almost unheard of for white people to travel in Africa without a Boy (an African servant), but when our car was packed it would not have contained a mosquito, let alone a Boy, and as a matter of fact we rather enjoyed doing our own cooking and camping chores; but we were a complete mystery to the various villages where we stayed. White people. No Boy. Odd. But whether we lost or gained face by this strange behaviour I never knew.”
Despite their rocky marriage, Negley’s tribute to his wife’s intrepid spirit can be found in the dedication page of his book Behind God’s Back (1944). He wrote, “To my wife – my sole companion on the drive from coast-to-coast across Africa; she was better than any man.” For further glimpses into the life of Eve Farson, see her manuscripts and diaries in the Negley Farson papers at the American Heritage Center.
Post contributed by AHC Writer Kathryn Billington.
