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diff --git a/333-h/333-h.htm b/333-h/333-h.htm new file mode 100644 index 0000000..6240547 --- /dev/null +++ b/333-h/333-h.htm @@ -0,0 +1,1602 @@ +<!DOCTYPE html + PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 Strict//EN" + "http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-strict.dtd"> +<html> +<head> +<meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset=US-ASCII" /> +<title>Robert Louis Stevenson</title> + <style type="text/css"> +/*<![CDATA[ XML blockout */ +<!-- + P { margin-top: .75em; + margin-bottom: .75em; + } + H1, H2 { + text-align: center; + margin-top: 2em; + margin-bottom: 2em; + } + H3, H4 { + text-align: left; + margin-top: 1em; + margin-bottom: 1em; + } + BODY{margin-left: 10%; + margin-right: 10%; + } + TD { vertical-align: top; } + .blkquot {margin-left: 4em; margin-right: 4em;} /* block indent */ + + .smcap {font-variant: small-caps;} + + .pagenum {position: absolute; + left: 92%; + font-size: smaller; + text-align: right; + color: gray;} + + .citation {vertical-align: super; + font-size: .8em; + text-decoration: none;} + // --> + /* XML end ]]>*/ + </style> +</head> +<body> +<h2> +<a href="#startoftext">Robert Louis Stevenson, by Walter Raleigh</a> +</h2> +<pre> +The Project Gutenberg eBook, Robert Louis Stevenson, by Walter Raleigh + + +This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with +almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or +re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included +with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org + + + + + +Title: Robert Louis Stevenson + + +Author: Walter Raleigh + + + +Release Date: January 17, 2007 [eBook #333] + +Language: English + +Character set encoding: ISO-646-US (US-ASCII) + + +***START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON*** +</pre> +<p><a name="startoftext"></a></p> +<p>Transcribed from the 1906 Edward Arnold edition by David +Price, email ccx074@pglaf.org</p> +<h1>ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON</h1> +<p style="text-align: center"><span class="smcap">by</span><br /> +WALTER RALEIGH</p> +<p style="text-align: center"><span class="smcap">professor of +english literature in the university of oxford</span><br /> +<span class="smcap">author of</span><br /> +‘<span class="smcap">style</span>,’ ‘<span +class="smcap">milton</span>,’ ‘<span +class="smcap">wordsworth</span>,’ <span +class="smcap">etc.</span></p> +<p style="text-align: center"><span class="smcap"><i>fourth +impression</i></span></p> +<p style="text-align: center"><span +class="smcap">london</span><br /> +EDWARD ARNOLD<br /> +<span class="smcap">41 & 43 maddox street</span>, <span +class="smcap">bond street</span>, <span +class="smcap">w.</span><br /> +1906</p> +<p style="text-align: center">THE GREATER PART OF THIS<br /> +ESSAY WAS GIVEN AS A LECTURE<br /> +AT THE ROYAL INSTITUTION<br /> +ON THE 17TH OF MAY<br /> +1895</p> +<h2>ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON</h2> +<p>When a popular writer dies, the question it has become the +fashion with a nervous generation to ask is the question, +‘Will he live?’ There was no idler question, +none more hopelessly impossible and unprofitable to answer. +It is one of the many vanities of criticism to promise +immortality to the authors that it praises, to patronise a writer +with the assurance that our great-grandchildren, whose time and +tastes are thus frivolously mortgaged, will read his works with +delight. But ‘there is no antidote against the opium +of time, which temporally considereth all things: our fathers +find their graves in our short memories, and sadly tell us how we +may be buried in our survivors.’ Let us make sure +that our sons will care for Homer before we pledge a more distant +generation to a newer cult.</p> +<p>Nevertheless, without handling the prickly question of +literary immortality, it is easy to recognise that the literary +reputation of Robert Louis Stevenson is made of good stuff. +His fame has spread, as lasting fame is wont to do, from the few +to the many. Fifteen years ago his essays and fanciful +books of travel were treasured by a small and discerning company +of admirers; long before he chanced to fell the British public +with <i>Treasure Island</i> and <i>Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde</i> he +had shown himself a delicate marksman. And although large +editions are nothing, standard editions, richly furnished and +complete, are worthy of remark. Stevenson is one of the +very few authors in our literary history who have been honoured +during their lifetime by the appearance of such an edition; the +best of his public, it would seem, do not only wish to read his +works, but to possess them, and all of them, at the cost of many +pounds, in library form. It would be easy to mention more +voluminous and more popular authors than Stevenson whose +publishers could not find five subscribers for an adventure like +this. He has made a brave beginning in that race against +Time which all must lose.</p> +<p>It is not in the least necessary, after all, to fortify +ourselves with the presumed consent of our poor descendants, who +may have a world of other business to attend to, in order to +establish Stevenson in the position of a great writer. Let +us leave that foolish trick to the politicians, who never claim +that they are right—merely that they will win at the next +elections. Literary criticism has standards other than the +suffrage; it is possible enough to say something of the literary +quality of a work that appeared yesterday. Stevenson +himself was singularly free from the vanity of fame; ‘the +best artist,’ he says truly, ‘is not the man who +fixes his eye on posterity, but the one who loves the practice of +his art.’ He loved, if ever man did, the practice of +his art; and those who find meat and drink in the delight of +watching and appreciating the skilful practice of the literary +art, will abandon themselves to the enjoyment of his +masterstrokes without teasing their unborn and possibly +illiterate posterity to answer solemn questions. Will a +book live? Will a cricket match live? Perhaps not, +and yet both be fine achievements.</p> +<p>It is not easy to estimate the loss to letters by his early +death. In the dedication of <i>Prince Otto</i> he says, +‘Well, we will not give in that we are finally beaten. . . +. I still mean to get my health again; I still purpose, by hook +or crook, this book or the next, to launch a +masterpiece.’ It would be a churlish or a very dainty +critic who should deny that he has launched masterpieces, but +whether he ever launched his masterpiece is an open +question. Of the story that he was writing just before his +death he is reported to have said that ‘the goodness of it +frightened him.’ A goodness that frightened him will +surely not be visible, like Banquo’s ghost, to only one +pair of eyes. His greatest was perhaps yet to come. +Had Dryden died at his age, we should have had none of the great +satires; had Scott died at his age, we should have had no +Waverley Novels. Dying at the height of his power, and in +the full tide of thought and activity, he seems almost to have +fulfilled the aspiration and unconscious prophecy of one of the +early essays:</p> +<blockquote><p>‘Does not life go down with a better grace +foaming in full body over a precipice, than miserably straggling +to an end in sandy deltas?</p> +<p>‘When the Greeks made their fine saying that those whom +the gods love die young, I cannot help believing that they had +this sort of death also in their eye. For surely, at +whatever age it overtake the man, this is to die young. +Death has not been suffered to take so much as an illusion from +his heart. In the hot-fit of life, a-tiptoe on the highest +point of being, he passes at a bound on to the other side. +The noise of the mallet and chisel is scarcely quenched, the +trumpets are hardly done blowing, when, trailing with him clouds +of glory, this happy starred, full-blooded spirit shoots into the +spiritual land.’</p> +</blockquote> +<p>But we on this side are the poorer—by how much we can +never know. What strengthens the conviction that he might +yet have surpassed himself and dwarfed his own best work is, +certainly no immaturity, for the flavour of wisdom and old +experience hangs about his earliest writings, but a vague sense +awakened by that brilliant series of books, so diverse in theme, +so slight often in structure and occasions so gaily executed, +that here was a finished literary craftsman, who had served his +period of apprenticeship and was playing with his tools. +The pleasure of wielding the graven tool, the itch of +craftsmanship, was strong upon him, and many of the works he has +left are the overflow of a laughing energy, arabesques carved on +the rock in the artist’s painless hours.</p> +<p>All art, it is true, is play of a sort; the +‘sport-impulse’ (to translate a German phrase) is +deep at the root of the artist’s power; Sophocles, +Shakespeare, Molière, and Goethe, in a very profound +sense, make game of life. But to make game of life was to +each of these the very loftiest and most imperative employ to be +found for him on this planet; to hold the mirror up to Nature so +that for the first time she may see herself; to ‘be a +candle-holder and look on’ at the pageantry which, but for +the candle-holder, would huddle along in the undistinguishable +blackness, filled them with the pride of place. Stevenson +had the sport-impulse at the depths of his nature, but he also +had, perhaps he had inherited, an instinct for work in more +blockish material, for lighthouse-building and +iron-founding. In a ‘Letter to a Young Artist,’ +contributed to a magazine years ago, he compares the artist in +paint or in words to the keeper of a booth at the world’s +fair, dependent for his bread on his success in amusing +others. In his volume of poems he almost apologises for his +excellence in literature:</p> +<blockquote><p>‘Say not of me, that weakly I declined<br /> +The labours of my sires, and fled the sea,<br /> +The towers we founded, and the lamps we lit,<br /> +To play at home with paper like a child;<br /> +But rather say: <i>In the afternoon of time</i><br /> +<i>A strenuous family dusted from its hands</i><br /> +<i>The sand of granite</i>, <i>and beholding far</i><br /> +<i>Along the sounding coasts its pyramids</i><br /> +<i>And tall memorials catch the dying sun</i>,<br /> +<i>Smiled well-content</i>, <i>and to this childish task</i><br +/> +<i>Around the fire addressed its evening hours</i>.’</p> +</blockquote> +<p>Some of his works are, no doubt, best described as +paper-games. In <i>The Wrong Box</i>, for instance, there +is something very like the card-game commonly called ‘Old +Maid’; the odd card is a superfluous corpse, and each +dismayed recipient in turn assumes a disguise and a pseudonym and +bravely passes on that uncomfortable inheritance. It is an +admirable farce, hardly touched with grimness, unshaken by the +breath of reality, full of fantastic character; the strange +funeral procession is attended by shouts of glee at each of its +stages, and finally melts into space.</p> +<p>But, when all is said, it is not with work of this kind that +Olympus is stormed; art must be brought closer into relation with +life, these airy and delightful freaks of fancy must be subdued +to a serious scheme if they are to serve as credentials for a +seat among the immortals. The decorative painter, whose +pencil runs so freely in limning these half-human processions of +outlined fauns and wood-nymphs, is asked at last to paint an +easel picture.</p> +<p>Stevenson is best where he shows most restraint, and his +peculiarly rich fancy, which ran riot at the suggestion of every +passing whim, gave him, what many a modern writer sadly lacks, +plenty to restrain, an exuberant field for self-denial. +Here was an opportunity for art and labour; the luxuriance of the +virgin forests of the West may be clipped and pruned for a +lifetime with no fear of reducing them to the trim similitude of +a Dutch garden. His bountiful and generous nature could +profit by a spell of training that would emaciate a poorer +stock. From the first, his delight in earth and the +earth-born was keen and multiform; his zest in life</p> +<blockquote><p> ‘put a spirit of youth in +everything,<br /> +That heavy Saturn laugh’d and leap’d with +him;’</p> +</blockquote> +<p>and his fancy, light and quick as a child’s, made of the +world around him an enchanted pleasance. The realism, as it +is called, that deals only with the banalities and squalors of +life, and weaves into the mesh of its story no character but +would make you yawn if you passed ten minutes with him in a +railway-carriage, might well take a lesson from this man, if it +had the brains. Picture to yourself (it is not hard) an +average suburb of London. The long rows of identical +bilious brick houses, with the inevitable lace curtains, a symbol +merely of the will and power to wash; the awful nondescript +object, generally under glass, in the front window—the +shrine of the unknown god of art; the sombre invariable citizen, +whose garb gives no suggestion of his occupation or his +tastes—a person, it would seem, only by courtesy; the +piano-organ the music of the day, and the hideous voice of the +vendor of half-penny papers the music of the night; could +anything be less promising than such a row of houses for the +theatre of romance? Set a realist to walk down one of these +streets: he will inquire about milk-bills and servants’ +wages, latch-keys and Sunday avocations, and come back with a +tale of small meannesses and petty respectabilities, written in +the approved modern fashion. Yet Stevenson, it seems +likely, could not pass along such a line of brick bandboxes +without having his pulses set a-throbbing by the imaginative +possibilities of the place. Of his own Lieutenant +Brackenbury Rich he says:</p> +<blockquote><p>‘The succession of faces in the lamplight +stirred the lieutenant’s imagination; and it seemed to him +as if he could walk for ever in that stimulating city atmosphere +and surrounded by the mystery of four million private +lives. He glanced at the houses and marvelled what was +passing behind those warmly lighted windows; he looked into face +after face, and saw them each intent upon some unknown interest, +criminal or kindly.’</p> +</blockquote> +<p>It was that same evening that Prince Florizel’s friend, +under the name of Mr. Morris, was giving a party in one of the +houses of West Kensington. In one at least of the houses of +that brick wilderness human spirits were being tested as on an +anvil, and most of them tossed aside. So also, in, <i>The +Rajah’s Diamond</i>, it was a quiet suburban garden that +witnessed the sudden apparition of Mr. Harry Hartley and his +treasures precipitated over the wall; it was in the same garden +that the Rev. Simon Rolles suddenly, to his own surprise, became +a thief. A monotony of bad building is no doubt a bad +thing, but it cannot paralyse the activities or frustrate the +agonies of the mind of man.</p> +<p>To a man with Stevenson’s live and searching +imagination, every work of human hands became vocal with possible +associations. Buildings positively chattered to him; the +little inn at Queensferry, which even for Scott had meant only +mutton and currant jelly, with cranberries ‘vera weel +preserved,’ gave him the cardinal incident of +<i>Kidnapped</i>. How should the world ever seem dull or +sordid to one whom a railway-station would take into its +confidence, to whom the very flagstones of the pavement told +their story, in whose mind ‘the effect of night, of any +flowing water, of lighted cities, of the peep of day, of ships, +of the open ocean,’ called up ‘an army of anonymous +desires and pleasures’? To have the +‘golden-tongued Romance with serene lute’ for a +mistress and familiar is to be fortified against the assaults of +tedium.</p> +<p>His attitude towards the surprising and momentous gifts of +life was one prolonged passion of praise and joy. There is +none of his books that reads like the meditations of an +invalid. He has the readiest sympathy for all exhibitions +of impulsive energy; his heart goes out to a sailor, and leaps +into ecstasy over a generous adventurer or buccaneer. Of +one of his earlier books he says: ‘From the negative point +of view I flatter myself this volume has a certain stamp. +Although it runs to considerably upwards of two hundred pages, it +contains not a single reference to the imbecility of God’s +universe, nor so much as a single hint that I could have made a +better one myself.’ And this was an omission that he +never remedied in his later works. Indeed, his zest in +life, whether lived in the back gardens of a town or on the high +seas, was so great that it seems probable the writer would have +been lost had the man been dowered with better health.</p> +<blockquote><p>‘Whereas my birth and spirit rather took<br +/> + The way that takes the town,<br /> +Thou didst betray me to a ling’ring book,<br /> + And wrap me in a gown,’</p> +</blockquote> +<p>says George Herbert, who, in his earlier ambitions, would fain +have ruffled it with the best at the court of King James. +But from Stevenson, although not only the town, but oceans and +continents, beckoned him to deeds, no such wail escaped. +His indomitable cheerfulness was never embarked in the cock-boat +of his own prosperity. A high and simple courage shines +through all his writings. It is supposed to be a normal +human feeling for those who are hale to sympathize with others +who are in pain. Stevenson reversed the position, and there +is no braver spectacle in literature than to see him not asking +others to lower their voices in his sick-room, but raising his +own voice that he may make them feel at ease and avoid imposing +his misfortunes on their notice. ‘Once when I was +groaning aloud with physical pain,’ he says in the essay on +<i>Child’s Play</i>, ‘a young gentleman came into the +room and nonchalantly inquired if I had seen his bow and +arrow. He made no account of my groans, which he accepted, +as he had to accept so much else, as a piece of the inexplicable +conduct of his elders; and, like a wise young gentleman, he would +waste no wonder on the subject.’ Was there ever a +passage like this? The sympathy of the writer is wholly +with the child, and the child’s absolute indifference to +his own sufferings. It might have been safely predicted +that this man, should he ever attain to pathos, would be free +from the facile, maudlin pathos of the hired sentimentalist.</p> +<p>And so also with what Dr. Johnson has called +‘metaphysical distresses.’ It is striking +enough to observe how differently the quiet monasteries of the +Carthusian and Trappist brotherhoods affected Matthew Arnold and +Robert Louis Stevenson. In his well-known elegiac stanzas +Matthew Arnold likens his own state to that of the monks:</p> +<blockquote><p>‘Wandering between two worlds, one dead,<br +/> +The other powerless to be born,<br /> +With nowhere yet to rest my head,<br /> +Like these on earth I wait forlorn.<br /> +Their faith, my tears, the world deride—<br /> +I come to shed them at their side.’</p> +</blockquote> +<p>To Stevenson, on the other hand, our Lady of the Snows is a +mistaken divinity, and the place a monument of chilly +error,—for once in a way he takes it on himself to be a +preacher, his temperament gives voice in a creed:</p> +<blockquote><p>‘And ye, O brethren, what if God,<br /> +When from Heaven’s top He spies abroad,<br /> +And sees on this tormented stage<br /> +The noble war of mankind rage,<br /> +What if His vivifying eye,<br /> +O monks, should pass your corner by?<br /> +For still the Lord is Lord of might;<br /> +In deeds, in deeds, He takes delight;<br /> +The plough, the spear, the laden barks,<br /> +The field, the founded city, marks;<br /> +He marks the smiler of the streets,<br /> +The singer upon garden seats;<br /> +He sees the climber in the rocks;<br /> +To Him, the shepherd folds his flocks;<br /> +For those He loves that underprop<br /> +With daily virtues Heaven’s top,<br /> +And bear the falling sky with ease,<br /> +Unfrowning Caryatides.<br /> +Those He approves that ply the trade,<br /> +That rock the child, that wed the maid,<br /> +That with weak virtues, weaker hands,<br /> +Sow gladness on the peopled lands,<br /> +And still with laughter, song, and shout<br /> +Spin the great wheel of earth about.</p> +<p>But ye?—O ye who linger still<br /> +Here in your fortress on the hill,<br /> +With placid face, with tranquil breath,<br /> +The unsought volunteers of death,<br /> +Our cheerful General on high<br /> +With careless looks may pass you by!’</p> +</blockquote> +<p>And the fact of death, which has damped and darkened the +writings of so many minor poets, does not cast a pallor on his +conviction. Life is of value only because it can be spent, +or given; and the love of God coveted the position, and assumed +mortality. If a man treasure and hug his life, one thing +only is certain, that he will be robbed some day, and cut the +pitiable and futile figure of one who has been saving candle-ends +in a house that is on fire. Better than this to have a +foolish spendthrift blaze and the loving cup going round. +Stevenson speaks almost with a personal envy of the conduct of +the four marines of the <i>Wager</i>. There was no room for +them in the boat, and they were left on a desert island to a +certain death. ‘They were soldiers, they said, and +knew well enough it was their business to die; and as their +comrades pulled away, they stood upon the beach, gave three +cheers, and cried, “God bless the King!” Now, +one or two of those who were in the boat escaped, against all +likelihood, to tell the story. That was a great thing for +us’—even when life is extorted it may be given nobly, +with ceremony and courtesy. So strong was Stevenson’s +admiration for heroic graces like these that in the requiem that +appears in his poems he speaks of an ordinary death as of a +hearty exploit, and draws his figures from lives of adventure and +toil:</p> +<blockquote><p>‘Under the wide and starry sky<br /> +Dig the grave and let me lie.<br /> +Glad did I live and gladly die,<br /> + And I laid me down with a will.<br /> +This be the verse you grave for me:<br /> +<i>Here he lies where he longed to be</i>,<br /> +<i>Home is the sailor</i>, <i>home from the sea</i>,<br /> + <i>And the hunter home from the hill</i>.’</p> +</blockquote> +<p>This man should surely have been honoured with the pomp and +colour and music of a soldier’s funeral.</p> +<p>The most remarkable feature of the work he has left is its +singular combination of style and romance. It has so +happened, and the accident has gained almost the strength of a +tradition, that the most assiduous followers of romance have been +careless stylists. They have trusted to the efficacy of +their situation and incident, and have too often cared little +about the manner of its presentation. By an odd piece of +irony style has been left to the cultivation of those who have +little or nothing to tell. Sir Walter Scott himself, with +all his splendid romantic and tragic gifts, often, in +Stevenson’s perfectly just phrase, ‘fobs us off with +languid and inarticulate twaddle.’ He wrote +carelessly and genially, and then breakfasted, and began the +business of the day. But Stevenson, who had romance +tingling in every vein of his body, set himself laboriously and +patiently to train his other faculty, the faculty of style.</p> +<p>I. <span class="smcap">Style</span>.—Let no one +say that ‘reading and writing comes by nature,’ +unless he is prepared to be classed with the foolish burgess who +said it first. A poet is born, not made,—so is every +man,—but he is born raw. Stevenson’s life was a +grave devotion to the education of himself in the art of +writing,</p> +<blockquote><p>‘The lyf so short, the craft so long to +lerne,<br /> +Thassay so hard, so sharp the conquering.’</p> +</blockquote> +<p>Those who deny the necessity, or decry the utility, of such an +education, are generally deficient in a sense of what makes good +literature—they are ‘word-deaf,’ as others are +colour-blind. All writing is a kind of word-weaving; a +skilful writer will make a splendid tissue out of the diverse +fibres of words. But to care for words, to select them +judiciously and lovingly, is not in the least essential to all +writing, all speaking; for the sad fact is this, that most of us +do our thinking, our writing, and our speaking in phrases, not in +words. The work of a feeble writer is always a patchwork of +phrases, some of them borrowed from the imperial texture of +Shakespeare and Milton, others picked up from the rags in the +street. We make our very kettle-holders of pieces of a +king’s carpet. How many overworn quotations from +Shakespeare suddenly leap into meaning and brightness when they +are seen in their context! ‘The cry is still, +“They come!”’—‘More honoured in the +breach than the observance,’—the sight of these +phrases in the splendour of their dramatic context in +<i>Macbeth</i> and <i>Hamlet</i> casts shame upon their daily +degraded employments. But the man of affairs has neither +the time to fashion his speech, nor the knowledge to choose his +words, so he borrows his sentences ready-made, and applies them +in rough haste to purposes that they do not exactly fit. +Such a man inevitably repeats, like the cuckoo, monotonous +catchwords, and lays his eggs of thought in the material that has +been woven into consistency by others. It is a matter of +natural taste, developed and strengthened by continual practice, +to avoid being the unwitting slave of phrases.</p> +<p>The artist in words, on the other hand, although he is a lover +of fine phrases, in his word-weaving experiments uses no shoddy, +but cultivates his senses of touch and sight until he can combine +the raw fibres in novel and bewitching patterns. To this +end he must have two things: a fine sense, in the first place, of +the sound, value, meaning, and associations of individual words, +and next, a sense of harmony, proportion, and effect in their +combination. It is amazing what nobility a mere truism is +often found to possess when it is clad with a garment thus +woven.</p> +<p>Stevenson had both these sensitive capabilities in a very high +decree. His careful choice of epithet and name have even +been criticised as lending to some of his narrative-writing an +excessive air of deliberation. His daintiness of diction is +best seen in his earlier work; thereafter his writing became more +vigorous and direct, fitter for its later uses, but never +unillumined by felicities that cause a thrill of pleasure to the +reader. Of the value of words he had the acutest +appreciation. <i>Virginibus Puerisque</i>, his first book +of essays, is crowded with happy hits and subtle implications +conveyed in a single word. ‘We have all heard,’ +he says in one of these, ‘of cities in South America built +upon the side of fiery mountains, and how, even in this +tremendous neighbourhood, the inhabitants are not a jot more +impressed by the solemnity of mortal conditions than if they were +delving gardens in the greenest corner of England.’ +You can feel the ground shake and see the volcano tower above you +at that word ‘<i>tremendous</i> neighbourhood.’ +Something of the same double reference to the original and +acquired meanings of a word is to be found in such a phrase as +‘sedate electrician,’ for one who in a back office +wields all the lights of a city; or in that description of one +drawing near to death, who is spoken of as groping already with +his hands ‘on the face of the <i>impassable</i>.’</p> +<p>The likeness of this last word to a very different word, +‘<i>impassive</i>,’ is made to do good literary +service in suggesting the sphinx-like image of death. +Sometimes, as here, this subtle sense of double meanings almost +leads to punning. In <i>Across the Plains</i> Stevenson +narrates how a bet was transacted at a railway-station, and +subsequently, he supposes, ‘<i>liquidated</i> at the +bar.’ This is perhaps an instance of the excess of a +virtue, but it is an excess to be found plentifully in the works +of Milton.</p> +<p>His loving regard for words bears good fruit in his later and +more stirring works. He has a quick ear and appreciation +for live phrases on the lips of tramps, beach-combers, or +Americans. In <i>The Beach of Falesá</i> the +sea-captain who introduces the new trader to the South Pacific +island where the scene of the story is laid, gives a brief +description of the fate of the last dealer in copra. It may +serve as a single illustration of volumes of racy, humorous, and +imaginative slang;</p> +<blockquote><p>‘“Do you catch a bit of white there to +the east’ard?” the captain continued. +“That’s your house. . . . When old Adams saw it, he +took and shook me by the hand. ‘I’ve dropped +into a soft thing here,’ says he. ‘So you +have,’ says I. . . . Poor Johnny! I never saw him +again but the once . . . and the next time we came round there he +was dead and buried. I took and put up a bit of stick to +him: ‘John Adams, <i>obit</i> eighteen and +sixty-eight. Go thou and do likewise.’ I missed +that man. I never could see much harm in Johnny.”</p> +<p>‘“What did he die of?” I inquired.</p> +<p>‘“Some kind of sickness,” says the +captain. “It appears it took him sudden. Seems +he got up in the night, and filled up on Pain-Killer and +Kennedy’s Discovery. No go—he was booked beyond +Kennedy. Then he had tried to open a case of gin. No +go again: not strong enough. . . . Poor John!”’</p> +</blockquote> +<p>There is a world of abrupt, homely talk like this to be found +in the speech of Captain Nares and of Jim Pinkerton in <i>The +Wrecker</i>; and a wealth of Scottish dialect, similar in effect, +in <i>Kidnapped</i>, <i>Catriona</i>, and many other +stories. It was a delicate ear and a sense trained by +practice that picked up these vivid turns of speech, some of them +perhaps heard only once, and a mind given to dwell on words, that +remembered them for years, and brought them out when occasion +arose.</p> +<p>But the praise of Stevenson’s style cannot be exhausted +in a description of his use of individual words or his memory of +individual phrases. His mastery of syntax, the orderly and +emphatic arrangement of words in sentences, a branch of art so +seldom mastered, was even greater. And here he could owe no +great debt to his romantic predecessors in prose. Dumas, it +is true, is a master of narrative, but he wrote in French, and a +style will hardly bear expatriation. Scott’s +sentences are, many of them, shambling, knock-kneed giants. +Stevenson harked further back for his models, and fed his style +on the most vigorous of the prose writers of the seventeenth and +early eighteenth centuries, the golden age of English +prose. ‘What English those fellows wrote!’ says +Fitzgerald in one of his letters; ‘I cannot read the modern +mechanique after them.’ And he quotes a passage from +Harrington’s <i>Oceana</i>:</p> +<blockquote><p>‘This free-born Nation lives not upon the +dole or Bounty of One Man, but distributing her Annual +Magistracies and Honours with her own hand, is herself King +People.’</p> +</blockquote> +<p>It was from writers of Harrington’s time and later that +Stevenson learned something of his craft. Bunyan and Defoe +should be particularly mentioned, and that later excellent +worthy, Captain Charles Johnson, who compiled the ever-memorable +<i>Lives of Pirates and Highwaymen</i>. Mr. George Meredith +is the chief of those very few modern writers whose influence may +be detected in his style.</p> +<p>However it was made, and whencesoever the material or +suggestion borrowed, he came by a very admirable instrument for +the telling of stories. Those touches of archaism that are +so frequent with him, the slightly unusual phrasing, or +unexpected inversion of the order of words, show a mind alert in +its expression, and give the sting of novelty even to the +commonplaces of narrative or conversation. A nimble +literary tact will work its will on the phrases of current +small-talk, remoulding them nearer to the heart’s desire, +transforming them to its own stamp. This was what Stevenson +did, and the very conversations that pass between his characters +have an air of distinction that is all his own. His books +are full of brilliant talk—talk real and convincing enough +in its purport and setting, but purged of the languors and +fatuities of actual commonplace conversation. It is an +enjoyment like that to be obtained from a brilliant exhibition of +fencing, clean and dexterous, to assist at the talking bouts of +David Balfour and Miss Grant, Captain Nares and Mr. Dodd, +Alexander Mackellar and the Master of Ballantrae, Prince Otto and +Sir John Crabtree, or those wholly admirable pieces of special +pleading to be found in <i>A Lodging for the Night</i> and <i>The +Sire de Malétroit’s Door</i>. But people do +not talk like this in actual life—‘’tis true, +’tis pity; and pity ’tis, ’tis +true.’ They do not; in actual life conversation is +generally so smeared and blurred with stupidities, so invaded and +dominated by the spirit of dulness, so liable to swoon into +meaninglessness, that to turn to Stevenson’s books is like +an escape into mountain air from the stagnant vapours of a +morass. The exact reproduction of conversation as it occurs +in life can only be undertaken by one whose natural dulness feels +itself incommoded by wit and fancy as by a grit in the eye. +Conversation is often no more than a nervous habit of body, like +twiddling the thumbs, and to record each particular remark is as +much as to describe each particular twiddle. Or in its more +intellectual uses, when speech is employed, for instance, to +conceal our thoughts, how often is it a world too wide for the +shrunken nudity of the thought it is meant to veil, and thrown +over it, formless, flabby, and black—like a +tarpaulin! It is pleasant to see thought and feeling +dressed for once in the trim, bright raiment Stevenson devises +for them.</p> +<p>There is an indescribable air of distinction, which is, and is +not, one and the same thing with style, breathing from all his +works. Even when he is least inspired, his bearing and gait +could never be mistaken for another man’s. All that +he writes is removed by the width of the spheres from the +possibility of commonplace, and he avoids most of the snares and +pitfalls of genius with noble and unconscious skill.</p> +<p>If he ever fell into one of these—which may perhaps be +doubted—it was through too implicit a confidence in the +powers of style. His open letter to the Rev. Dr. Hyde in +vindication of Father Damien is perhaps his only literary +mistake. It is a matchless piece of scorn and invective, +not inferior in skill to anything he ever wrote. But that +it was well done is no proof that it should have been done at +all. ‘I remember Uzzah and am afraid,’ said the +wise Erasmus, when he was urged to undertake the defence of Holy +Church; ‘it is not every one who is permitted to support +the Ark of the Covenant.’ And the only disquietude +suggested by Stevenson’s letter is a doubt whether he +really has a claim to be Father Damien’s defender, whether +Father Damien had need of the assistance of a literary +freelance. The Saint who was bitten in the hand by a +serpent shook it off into the fire and stood unharmed. As +it was in the Mediterranean so it was also in the Pacific, and +there is something officious in the intrusion of a spectator, +something irrelevant in the plentiful pronouns of the first +person singular to be found sprinkled over Stevenson’s +letter. The curse spoken in Eden, ‘Upon thy belly +shalt thou go, and dust shalt thou eat all the days of thy +life,’ surely covered by anticipation the case of the Rev. +Dr. Hyde.</p> +<p>II. <span class="smcap">Romance</span>.—The +faculty of romance, the greatest of the gifts showered on +Stevenson’s cradle by the fairies, will suffer no course of +development; the most that can be done with it is to preserve it +on from childhood unblemished and undiminished. It is of a +piece with Stevenson’s romantic ability that his own +childhood never ended; he could pass back into that airy world +without an effort. In his stories his imagination worked on +the old lines, but it became conscious of its working. And +the highest note of these stories is not drama, nor character, +but romance. In one of his essays he defines the highest +achievement of romance to be the embodiment of ‘character, +thought, or emotion in some act or attitude that shall be +remarkably striking to the mind’s eye.’ His +essay on Victor Hugo shows how keenly conscious he was that +narrative romance can catch and embody emotions and effects that +are for ever out of the reach of the drama proper, and of the +essay or homily, just as they are out of the reach of sculpture +and painting. Now, it is precisely in these effects that +the chief excellence of romance resides; it was the discovery of +a world of these effects, insusceptible of treatment by the +drama, neglected entirely by the character-novel, which +constituted the Romantic revival of the end of last +century. ‘The artistic result of a romance,’ +says Stevenson, ‘what is left upon the memory by any +powerful and artistic novel, is something so complicated and +refined that it is difficult to put a name upon it, and yet +something as simple as nature. . . . The fact is, that art +is working far ahead of language as well as of science, realizing +for us, by all manner of suggestions and exaggerations, effects +for which as yet we have no direct name, for the reason that +these effects do not enter very largely into the necessities of +life. Hence alone is that suspicion of vagueness that often +hangs about the purpose of a romance; it is clear enough to us in +thought, but we are not used to consider anything clear until we +are able to formulate it in words, and analytical language has +not been sufficiently shaped to that end.’ He goes on +to point out that there is an epical value about every great +romance, an underlying idea, not presentable always in abstract +or critical terms, in the stories of such masters of pure romance +as Victor Hugo and Nathaniel Hawthorne.</p> +<p>The progress of romance in the present century has consisted +chiefly in the discovery of new exercises of imagination and new +subtle effects in story. Fielding, as Stevenson says, did +not understand that the nature of a landscape or the spirit of +the times could count for anything in a story; all his actions +consist of a few simple personal elements. With Scott vague +influences that qualify a man’s personality begin to make a +large claim; ‘the individual characters begin to occupy a +comparatively small proportion of that canvas on which armies +manoeuvre and great hills pile themselves upon each other’s +shoulders.’ And the achievements of the great masters +since Scott—Hugo, Dumas, Hawthorne, to name only those in +Stevenson’s direct line of ancestry—have added new +realms to the domain of romance.</p> +<p>What are the indescribable effects that romance, casting far +beyond problems of character and conduct, seeks to realise? +What is the nature of the great informing, underlying idea that +animates a truly great romance—<i>The Bride of +Lammermoor</i>, <i>Monte Cristo</i>, <i>Les +Misérables</i>, <i>The Scarlet Letter</i>, <i>The Master +of Ballantrae</i>? These questions can only be answered by +de-forming the impression given by each of these works to present +it in the chop-logic language of philosophy. But an +approach to an answer may be made by illustration.</p> +<p>In his <i>American Notebooks</i> Nathaniel Hawthorne used to +jot down subjects for stories as they struck him. His +successive entries are like the souls of stories awaiting +embodiment, which many of them never received; they bring us very +near to the workings of the mind of a great master. Here +are some of them:</p> +<blockquote><p>‘A sketch to be given of a modern reformer, +a type of the extreme doctrines on the subject of slaves, cold +water, and the like. He goes about the streets haranguing +most eloquently, and is on the point of making many converts, +when his labours are suddenly interrupted by the appearance of +the keeper of a madhouse whence he has escaped. Much may be +made of this idea.’</p> +<p>‘The scene of a story or sketch to be laid within the +light of a street lantern; the time when the lamp is near going +out; and the catastrophe to be simultaneous with the last +flickering gleam.’</p> +<p>‘A person to be writing a tale and to find it shapes +itself against his intentions; that the characters act otherwise +than he thought, and a catastrophe comes which he strives in vain +to avert. It might shadow forth his own fate—he +having made himself one of the personages.’</p> +<p>‘Two persons to be expecting some occurrence and +watching for the two principal actors in it, and to find that the +occurrence is even then passing, and that they themselves are the +two actors.’</p> +<p>‘A satire on ambition and fame from a statue of +snow.’</p> +</blockquote> +<p>Hawthorne used this idea in one of his sketches.</p> +<blockquote><p>‘A moral philosopher to buy a slave, or +otherwise get possession of a human being, and to use him for the +sake of experiment by trying the operation of a certain vice on +him.’</p> +</blockquote> +<p>M. Bourget, the French romancer, has made use of this idea in +his novel called <i>Le Disciple</i>. Only it is not a slave, but +a young girl whom he pretends to love, that is the subject of the +moral philosopher’s experiment; and a noisy war has been +waged round the book in France. Hawthorne would plainly +have seized the romantic essence of the idea and would have +avoided the boneyard of ‘problem morality.’</p> +<blockquote><p>‘A story the principal personage of which +shall seem always on the point of entering on the scene, but +shall never appear.’</p> +</blockquote> +<p>This is the device that gives fascination to the figures of +Richelieu in <i>Marion Delorme</i>, and of Captain Flint in +<i>Treasure Island</i>.</p> +<blockquote><p>‘The majesty of death to be exemplified in a +beggar, who, after being seen humble and cringing in the streets +of a city for many years, at length by some means or other gets +admittance into a rich man’s mansion, and there +dies—assuming state, and striking awe into the breasts of +those who had looked down upon him.’</p> +</blockquote> +<p>These are all excellent instances of the sort of idea that +gives life to a romance—of acts or attitudes that stamp +themselves upon the mind’s eye. Some of them appeal +chiefly to the mind’s eye, others are of value chiefly as +symbols. But, for the most part, the romantic kernel of a +story is neither pure picture nor pure allegory, it can neither +be painted nor moralised. It makes its most irresistible +appeal neither to the eye that searches for form and colour, nor +to the reason that seeks for abstract truth, but to the blood, to +all that dim instinct of danger, mystery, and sympathy in things +that is man’s oldest inheritance—to the superstitions +of the heart. Romance vindicates the supernatural against +science and rescues it from the palsied tutelage of morality.</p> +<p>Stevenson’s work is a gallery of romantic effects that +haunt the memory. Some of these are directly pictorial: the +fight in the round-house on board the brig <i>Covenant</i>; the +duel between the two brothers of Ballantrae in the island of +light thrown up by the candles from that abyss of windless night; +the flight of the Princess Seraphina through the dark mazes of +the wood,—all these, although they carry with them +subtleties beyond the painter’s art, yet have something of +picture in them. But others make entrance to the corridors +of the mind by blind and secret ways, and there awaken the echoes +of primæval fear. The cry of the +parrot—‘Pieces of eight’—the tapping of +the stick of the blind pirate Pew as he draws near the +inn-parlour, and the similar effects of inexplicable terror +wrought by the introduction of the blind catechist in +<i>Kidnapped</i>, and of the disguise of a blind leper in <i>The +Black Arrow</i>, are beyond the reach of any but the literary +form of romantic art. The last appearance of Pew, in the +play of <i>Admiral Guinea</i>, written in collaboration with Mr. +W. E. Henley, is perhaps the masterpiece of all the scenes of +terror. The blind ruffian’s scream of panic fear, +when he puts his groping hand into the burning flame of the +candle in the room where he believed that he was unseen, and so +realises that his every movement is being silently watched, is +indeed ‘the horrors come alive.’</p> +<p>The animating principle or idea of Stevenson’s longer +stories is never to be found in their plot, which is generally +built carelessly and disjointedly enough around the central +romantic situation or conception. The main situation in +<i>The Wrecker</i> is a splendid product of romantic aspiration, +but the structure of the story is incoherent and ineffective, so +that some of the best passages in the book—the scenes in +Paris, for instance—have no business there at all. +The story in <i>Kidnapped</i> and <i>Catriona</i> wanders on in a +single thread, like the pageant of a dream, and the reader feels +and sympathises with the author’s obvious difficulty in +leading it back to the scene of the trial and execution of James +Stewart. <i>The Master of Ballantrae</i> is stamped with a +magnificent unity of conception, but the story illuminates that +conception by a series of scattered episodes.</p> +<p>That lurid embodiment of fascinating evil, part vampire, part +Mephistopheles, whose grand manner and heroic abilities might +have made him a great and good man but for ‘the malady of +not wanting,’ is the light and meaning of the whole +book. Innocent and benevolent lives are thrown in his way +that he may mock or distort or shatter them. Stevenson +never came nearer than in this character to the sublime of +power.</p> +<p>But an informing principle of unity is more readily to be +apprehended in the shorter stories, and it is a unity not so much +of plot as of impression and atmosphere. His islands, +whether situated in the Pacific or off the coast of Scotland, +have each of them a climate of its own, and the character of the +place seems to impose itself on the incidents that occur, +dictating subordination or contrast. The events that happen +within the limits of one of these magic isles could in every case +be cut off from the rest of the story and framed as a separate +work of art. The long starvation of David Balfour on the +island of Earraid, the sharks of crime and monsters of blasphemy +that break the peace of the shining tropical lagoons in +<i>Treasure Island</i> and <i>The Ebb Tide</i>, the captivity on +the Bass Rock in <i>Catriona</i>, the supernatural terrors that +hover and mutter over the island of <i>The Merry +Men</i>—these imaginations are plainly generated by the +scenery against which they are thrown; each is in some sort the +genius of the place it inhabits.</p> +<p>In his search for the treasures of romance, Stevenson +adventured freely enough into the realm of the supernatural.</p> +<p>When he is handling the superstitions of the Scottish people, +he allows his humorous enjoyment of their extravagance to peep +out from behind the solemn dialect in which they are +dressed. The brief tale of <i>Thrawn Janet</i>, and Black +Andy’s story of Tod Lapraik in <i>Catriona</i>, are +grotesque imaginations of the school of <i>Tam o’ +Shanter</i> rather than of the school of Shakespeare, who deals +in no comedy ghosts. They are turnip-lanterns swayed by a +laughing urchin, proud of the fears he can awaken. Even +<i>The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde</i> and the story +of <i>The Bottle Imp</i> are manufactured bogeys, that work on +the nerves and not on the heart, whatever may be said by those +who insist on seeing allegory in what is only +dream-fantasy. The supernatural must be rooted deeper than +these in life and experience if it is to reach an imposing +stature: the true ghost is the shadow of a man. And +Stevenson shows a sense of this in two of his very finest +stories, the exquisite idyll of <i>Will o’ the Mill</i> and +the grim history of <i>Markheim</i>. Each of these stories +is the work of a poet, by no means of a goblin-fancier. The +personification of Death is as old as poetry; it is wrought with +moving gentleness in that last scene in the arbour of +Will’s inn. The wafted scent of the heliotropes, +which had never been planted in the garden since Marjory’s +death, the light in the room that had been hers, prelude the +arrival at the gate of the stranger’s carriage, with the +black pine tops standing above it like plumes. And Will +o’ the Mill makes the acquaintance of his physician and +friend, and goes at last upon his travels. In the other +story, Markheim meets with his own double in the house of the +dealer in curiosities, whom he has murdered. It is not such +a double as Rossetti prayed for to the god of Sleep:</p> +<blockquote><p>‘Ah! might I, by thy good grace,<br /> + Groping in the windy stair<br /> +(Darkness and the breath of space<br /> + Like loud waters everywhere),<br /> +Meeting mine own image there<br /> + Face to face,<br /> +Send it from that place to her!’</p> +</blockquote> +<p>but a clear-eyed critic of the murderer, not unfriendly, who +lays bare before him his motives and history. At the close +of that wonderful conversation, one of the most brilliant of its +author’s achievements, Markheim gives himself into the +hands of the police. These two stories, when compared with +the others, serve to show how Stevenson’s imagination +quickened and strengthened when it played full upon life. +For his best romantic effects, like all great romance, are +illuminative of life, and no mere idle games.</p> +<p>III. <span class="smcap">Morality</span>.—His +genius, like the genius of Nathaniel Hawthorne, was doubly rich +in the spirit of romance and in a wise and beautiful +morality. But the irresponsible caprices of his narrative +fancy prevented his tales from being the appropriate vehicles of +his morality. He has left no work—unless the two +short stories mentioned above be regarded as exceptions—in +which romance and morality are welded into a single perfect +whole, nothing that can be put beside <i>The Scarlet Letter</i> +or <i>The Marble Faun</i> for deep insight and magic fancy joined +in one. Hence his essays, containing as they do the gist of +his reflective wisdom, are ranked by some critics above his +stories.</p> +<p>A novel cannot, of course, be moral as an action is moral; +there is no question in art of police regulations or conformity +to established codes, but rather of insight both deep and +wide. Polygamy and monogamy, suttee, thuggism, and +cannibalism, are all acceptable to the romancer, whose business +is with the heart of a man in all times and places. He is +not bound to display allegiance to particular moral laws of the +kind that can be broken; he is bound to show his consciousness of +that wider moral order which can no more be broken by crime than +the law of gravitation can be broken by the fall of +china—the morality without which life would be impossible; +the relations, namely, of human beings to each other, the +feelings, habits, and thoughts that are the web of society. +For the appreciation of morality in this wider sense high gifts +of imagination are necessary. Shakespeare could never have +drawn Macbeth, and thereby made apparent the awfulness of murder, +without some sympathy for the murderer—the sympathy of +intelligence. These gifts of imagination and sympathy +belong to Stevenson in a very high degree; in all his romances +there are gleams from time to time of wise and subtle reflection +upon life, from the eternal side of things, which shine the more +luminously that they spring from the events and situations with +no suspicion of homily. In <i>The Black Arrow</i>, Dick +Shelton begs from the Duke of Gloucester the life of the old +shipmaster Arblaster, whose ship he had taken and accidentally +wrecked earlier in the story. The Duke of Gloucester, who, +in his own words, ‘loves not mercy nor +mercy-mongers,’ yields the favour reluctantly. Then +Dick turns to Arblaster.</p> +<blockquote><p>‘“Come,” said Dick, “a +life is a life, old shrew, and it is more than ships or +liquor. Say you forgive me, for if your life is worth +nothing to you, it hath cost me the beginnings of my +fortune. Come, I have paid for it dearly, be not so +churlish.”</p> +<p>‘“An I had my ship,” said Arblaster, +“I would ’a’ been forth and safe on the high +seas—I and my man Tom. But ye took my ship, gossip, +and I’m a beggar; and for my man Tom, a knave fellow in +russet shot him down, ‘Murrain,’ quoth he, and spake +never again. ‘Murrain’ was the last of his +words, and the poor spirit of him passed. ’A will +never sail no more, will my Tom.”</p> +<p>‘Dick was seized with unavailing penitence and pity; he +sought to take the skipper’s hand, but Arblaster avoided +his touch.</p> +<p>‘“Nay,” said he, “let be. +Y’ have played the devil with me, and let that content +you.”</p> +<p>‘The words died in Richard’s throat. He saw, +through tears, the poor old man, bemused with liquor and sorrow, +go shambling away, with bowed head, across the snow, and the +unnoticed dog whimpering at his heels; and for the first time +began to understand the desperate game that we play in life, and +how a thing once done is not to be changed or remedied by any +penitence.’</p> +</blockquote> +<p>A similar wisdom that goes to the heart of things is found on +the lips of the spiritual visitant in Markheim.</p> +<blockquote><p>‘“Murder is to me no special +category,” replied the other. “All sins are +murder, even as all life is war. I behold your race, like +starving mariners on a raft, plucking crusts out of the hands of +famine, and feeding on each other’s lives. I follow +sins beyond the moment of their acting; I find in all that the +last consequence is death; and to my eyes the pretty maid, who +thwarts her mother with such taking graces on a question of a +ball, drips no less visibly with human gore than such a murderer +as yourself.”’</p> +</blockquote> +<p>The wide outlook on humanity that expresses itself in passages +like these is combined in Stevenson with a vivid interest in, and +quick appreciation of, character. The variety of the +characters that he has essayed to draw is enormous, and his +successes, for the purposes of his stories, are many. Yet +with all this, the number of lifelike portraits, true to a hair, +that are to be found in his works is very small indeed. In +the golden glow of romance, character is always subject to be +idealised; it is the effect of character seen at particular +angles and in special lights, natural or artificial, that +Stevenson paints; he does not attempt to analyse the complexity +of its elements, but boldly projects into it certain principles, +and works from those. It has often been said of Scott that +he could not draw a lady who was young and beautiful; the glamour +of chivalry blinded him, he lowered his eyes and described his +emotions and aspirations. Something of the same disability +afflicted Stevenson in the presence of a ruffian. He loved +heroic vice only less than he loved heroic virtue, and was always +ready to idealise his villains, to make of them men who, like the +Master of Ballantrae, ‘lived for an idea.’ Even +the low and lesser villainy of Israel Hands, in the great scene +where he climbs the mast to murder the hero of <i>Treasure +Island</i>, breathes out its soul in a creed:</p> +<blockquote><p>‘“For thirty years,” he said, +“I’ve sailed the seas, and seen good and bad, better +and worse, provisions running out, knives going, and what +not. Well, now I tell you, I never seen good come o’ +goodness yet. Him as strikes first is my fancy; dead men +don’t bite; them’s my views—Amen, so be +it.”’</p> +</blockquote> +<p>John Silver, that memorable pirate, with a face like a ham and +an eye like a fragment of glass stuck into it, leads a career of +wholehearted crime that can only be described as sparkling. +His unalloyed maleficence is adorned with a thousand graces of +manner. Into the dark and fetid marsh that is an evil +heart, where low forms of sentiency are hardly distinguishable +from the all-pervading mud, Stevenson never peered, unless it +were in the study of Huish in <i>The Ebb Tide</i>.</p> +<p>Of his women, let women speak. They are traditionally +accredited with an intuition of one another’s hearts, +although why, if woman was created for man, as the Scriptures +assure us, the impression that she makes on him should not count +for as much as the impression she makes on some other woman, is a +question that cries for solution. Perhaps the answer is +that disinterested curiosity, which is one means of approach to +the knowledge of character, although only one, is a rare attitude +for man to assume towards the other sex. Stevenson’s +curiosity was late in awaking; the heroine of <i>The Black +Arrow</i> is dressed in boy’s clothes throughout the course +of the story, and the novelist thus saved the trouble of +describing the demeanour of a girl. Mrs. Henry, in <i>The +Master of Ballantrae</i>, is a charming veiled figure, drawn in +the shadow; Miss Barbara Grant and Catriona in the continuation +of <i>Kidnapped</i> are real enough to have made many suitors for +their respective hands among male readers of the book;—but +that is nothing, reply the critics of the other party: a walking +doll will find suitors. The question must stand over until +some definite principles of criticism have been discovered to +guide us among these perilous passes.</p> +<p>One character must never be passed over in an estimate of +Stevenson’s work. The hero of his longest work is not +David Balfour, in whom the pawky Lowland lad, proud and precise, +but ‘a very pretty gentleman,’ is transfigured at +times by traits that he catches, as narrator of the story, from +its author himself. But Alan Breek Stewart is a greater +creation, and a fine instance of that wider morality that can +seize by sympathy the soul of a wild Highland clansman. +‘Impetuous, insolent, unquenchable,’ a condoner of +murder (for ‘them that havenae dipped their hands in any +little difficulty should be very mindful of the case of them that +have’), a confirmed gambler, as quarrel-some as a +turkey-cock, and as vain and sensitive as a child, Alan Breek is +one of the most lovable characters in all literature; and his +penetration—a great part of which he learned, to take his +own account of it, by driving cattle ‘through a throng +lowland country with the black soldiers at his +tail’—blossoms into the most delightful reflections +upon men and things.</p> +<p>The highest ambitions of a novelist are not easily +attainable. To combine incident, character, and romance in +a uniform whole, to alternate telling dramatic situation with +effects of poetry and suggestion, to breathe into the entire +conception a profound wisdom, construct it with absolute unity, +and express it in perfect style,—this thing has never yet +been done. A great part of Stevenson’s subtle wisdom +of life finds its readiest outlet in his essays. In these, +whatever their occasion, he shows himself the clearest-eyed +critic of human life, never the dupe of the phrases and +pretences, the theories and conventions, that distort the vision +of most writers and thinkers. He has an unerring instinct +for realities, and brushes aside all else with rapid grace. +In his lately published <i>Amateur Emigrant</i> he describes one +of his fellow-passengers to America:</p> +<blockquote><p>‘In truth it was not whisky that had ruined +him; he was ruined long before for all good human purposes but +conversation. His eyes were sealed by a cheap school-book +materialism. He could see nothing in the world but money +and steam engines. He did not know what you meant by the +word happiness. He had forgotten the simple emotions of +childhood, and perhaps never encountered the delights of +youth. He believed in production, that useful figment of +economy, as if it had been real, like laughter; and production, +without prejudice to liquor, was his god and guide.’</p> +</blockquote> +<p>This sense of the realities of the world,—laughter, +happiness, the simple emotions of childhood, and +others,—makes Stevenson an admirable critic of those social +pretences that ape the native qualities of the heart. The +criticism on organised philanthropy contained in the essay on +<i>Beggars</i> is not exhaustive, it is expressed paradoxically, +but is it untrue?</p> +<blockquote><p>‘We should wipe two words from our +vocabulary: gratitude and charity. In real life, help is +given out of friendship, or it is not valued; it is received from +the hand of friendship, or it is resented. We are all too +proud to take a naked gift; we must seem to pay it, if in nothing +else, then with the delights of our society. Here, then, is +the pitiful fix of the rich man; here is that needle’s eye +in which he stuck already in the days of Christ, and still sticks +to-day, firmer, if possible, than ever; that he has the money, +and lacks the love which should make his money acceptable. +Here and now, just as of old in Palestine, he has the rich to +dinner, it is with the rich that he takes his pleasure: and when +his turn comes to be charitable, he looks in vain for a +recipient. His friends are not poor, they do not want; the +poor are not his friends, they will not take. To whom is he +to give? Where to find—note this phrase—the +Deserving Poor? Charity is (what they call) centralised; +offices are hired; societies founded, with secretaries paid or +unpaid: the hunt of the Deserving Poor goes merrily +forward. I think it will take a more than merely human +secretary to disinter that character. What! a class that is +to be in want from no fault of its own, and yet greedily eager to +receive from strangers; and to be quite respectable, and at the +same time quite devoid of self-respect; and play the most +delicate part of friendship, and yet never be seen; and wear the +form of man, and yet fly in the face of all the laws of human +nature:—and all this, in the hope of getting a belly-god +burgess through a needle’s eye! Oh, let him stick, by +all means; and let his polity tumble in the dust; and let his +epitaph and all his literature (of which my own works begin to +form no inconsiderable part) be abolished even from the history +of man! For a fool of this monstrosity of dulness there can +be no salvation; and the fool who looked for the elixir of life +was an angel of reason to the fool who looks for the Deserving +Poor.’</p> +</blockquote> +<p>An equal sense of the realities of life and death gives the +force of a natural law to the pathos of <i>Old Mortality</i>, +that essay in which Stevenson pays passionate tribute to the +memory of his early friend, who ‘had gone to ruin with a +kingly abandon, like one who condescended; but once ruined, with +the lights all out, he fought as for a kingdom.’ The +whole description, down to the marvellous quotation from Bunyan +that closes it, is one of the sovereign passages of modern +literature; the pathos of it is pure and elemental, like the rush +of a cleansing wind, or the onset of the legions commanded by</p> +<blockquote><p>‘The mighty Mahmud, Allah-breathing Lord,<br +/> +That all the misbelieving and black Horde<br /> + Of Fears and Sorrows that infest the Soul<br /> +Scatters before him with his whirlwind Sword.’</p> +</blockquote> +<p>Lastly, to bring to an end this imperfect review of the works +of a writer who has left none greater behind him, Stevenson +excels at what is perhaps the most delicate of literary tasks and +the utmost test, where it is successfully encountered, of +nobility,—the practice, namely, of self-revelation and +self-delineation. To talk much about oneself with detail, +composure, and ease, with no shadow of hypocrisy and no whiff or +taint of indecent familiarity, no puling and no posing,—the +shores of the sea of literature are strewn with the wrecks and +forlorn properties of those who have adventured on this dangerous +attempt. But a criticism of Stevenson is happy in this, +that from the writer it can pass with perfect trust and perfect +fluency to the man. He shares with Goldsmith and Montaigne, +his own favourite, the happy privilege of making lovers among his +readers. ‘To be the most beloved of English +writers—what a title that is for a man!’ says +Thackeray of Goldsmith. In such matters, a dispute for +pre-eminence in the captivation of hearts would be unseemly; it +is enough to say that Stevenson too has his lovers among those +who have accompanied him on his <i>Inland Voyage</i>, or through +the fastnesses of the Cevennes in the wake of Modestine. He +is loved by those that never saw his face; and one who has sealed +that dizzy height of ambition may well be content, without the +impertinent assurance that, when the Japanese have taken London +and revised the contents of the British Museum, the yellow +scribes whom they shall set to produce a new edition of the +<i>Biographie Universelle</i> will include in their entries the +following item:—‘<i>Stevenson</i>, <i>R. L.</i> +<i>A prolific writer of stories among the aborigines</i>. +<i>Flourished before the Coming of the Japanese</i>. <i>His works +are lost</i>.’</p> +<p style="text-align: center">THE END</p> +<p style="text-align: center"><span class="smcap">billing and +sons</span>, <span class="smcap">ltd.</span>, <span +class="smcap">printers</span>, <span +class="smcap">guildford</span></p> +<p>***END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON***</p> +<pre> + + +***** This file should be named 333-h.htm or 333-h.zip****** + + +This and all associated files of various formats will be found in: +http://www.gutenberg.org/dirs/3/3/333 + + + +Updated editions will replace the previous one--the old editions +will be renamed. + +Creating the works from public domain print editions means that no +one owns a United States copyright in these works, so the Foundation +(and you!) can copy and distribute it in the United States without +permission and without paying copyright royalties. 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