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Japp</a> +</h2> +<pre> +The Project Gutenberg eBook, Robert Louis Stevenson, by Alexander H. Japp + + +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 + a Record, an Estimate, and a Memorial + + +Author: Alexander H. Japp + + + +Release Date: May 5, 2007 [eBook #590] + +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 Charles Scribner’s Sons 1905 +edition by David Price, email ccx074@pglaf.org</p> +<h1>ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON<br /> +<span class="smcap">a record</span>, <span class="smcap">an +estimate</span>, <span class="smcap">and a memorial</span></h1> +<p style="text-align: center"><span class="smcap">By</span> +ALEXANDER H. JAPP, LL.D., F.R.S.E</p> +<p style="text-align: center"><span class="smcap">author +of</span> “<span class="smcap">thoreau</span>: <span +class="smcap">his life and aims</span>”; “<span +class="smcap">memoir of thomas de quincey</span>”; +“<span class="smcap">de quincey memorials</span>,” +<span class="smcap">etc.</span>, <span +class="smcap">etc.</span></p> +<p style="text-align: center">WITH HITHERTO UNPUBLISHED LETTERS +FROM R. L. STEVENSON IN FACSIMILIE . . .</p> +<p style="text-align: center"><span class="smcap">second +edition</span></p> +<p style="text-align: center">NEW YORK<br /> +CHARLES SCRIBNER’S SONS<br /> +153-157 FIFTH AVENUE<br /> +1905</p> +<p style="text-align: center"><i>Printed in Great +Britain</i>.</p> +<p style="text-align: center"> +<a href="images/p0b.jpg"> +<img alt="Robert Louis Stevenson, from a sketch in oils by Sir +William B. Richmond, K.G.B., R.A." src="images/p0s.jpg" /> +</a></p> +<p style="text-align: center">Dedicated to<br /> +C. A. LICHTENBERG, <span class="smcap">Esq.</span><br /> +<span class="smcap">and</span><br /> +Mrs LICHTENBERG,<br /> +<span class="smcap">of villa margherita</span>, <span +class="smcap">treviso</span>,<br /> +<span class="smcap">with most grateful regards</span>,</p> +<p style="text-align: right">ALEXANDER H. JAPP.</p> +<p>19<i>th</i> <i>December</i> 1904.</p> +<h2>PREFACE</h2> +<p>A few words may here be allowed me to explain one or two +points. First, about the facsimile of last page of Preface +to <i>Familiar Studies of Men and Books</i>. Stevenson was +in Davos when the greater portion of that work went through the +press. He felt so much the disadvantage of being there in +the circumstances (both himself and his wife ill) that he begged +me to read the proofs of the Preface for him. This illness +has record in the letter from him (pp. 28-29). The +printers, of course, had directions to send the copy and proofs +of the Preface to me. Hence I am able now to give this +facsimile.</p> +<p>With regard to the letter at p. 19, of which facsimile is also +given, what Stevenson there meant is not the “three +last” of that batch, but the three last sent to me +before—though that was an error on his part—he only +then sent two chapters, making the “eleven chapters +now”—sent to me by post.</p> +<p>Another point on which I might have dwelt and illustrated by +many instances is this, that though Stevenson was fond of +hob-nobbing with all sorts and conditions of men, this desire of +wide contact and intercourse has little show in his +novels—the ordinary fibre of commonplace human beings not +receiving much celebration from him there; another case in which +his private bent and sympathies received little illustration in +his novels. But the fact lies implicit in much I have +written.</p> +<p>I have to thank many authors for permission to quote extracts +I have used.</p> +<p>ALEXANDER H. JAPP.</p> +<h2>CONTENTS</h2> +<p>I. INTRODUCTION AND FIRST +IMPRESSIONS<br /> +II. <i>TREASURE ISLAND</i> AND SOME +REMINISCENCES<br /> +III. THE CHILD FATHER OF THE MAN<br /> +IV. HEREDITY ILLUSTRATED<br /> +V. TRAVELS<br /> +VI. SOME EARLIER LETTERS<br /> +VII. THE VAILIMA LETTERS<br /> +VIII. WORK OF LATER YEARS<br /> +IX. SOME CHARACTERISTICS<br /> +X. A SAMOAN MEMORIAL OF R. L. +STEVENSON<br /> +XI. MISS STUBBS’ RECORD OF A +PILGRIMAGE<br /> +XII. HIS GENIUS AND METHODS<br /> +XIII. PREACHER AND MYSTIC FABULIST<br /> +XIV. STEVENSON AS DRAMATIST<br /> +XV. THEORY OF GOOD AND EVIL<br /> +XVI. STEVENSON’S GLOOM<br /> +XVII. PROOFS OF GROWTH<br /> +XVIII. EARLIER DETERMINATIONS AND RESULTS<br /> +XIX. MR EDMUND CLARENCE STEDMAN’S +ESTIMATE<br /> +XX. EGOTISTIC ELEMENT AND ITS EFFECTS<br +/> +XXI. UNITY IN STEVENSON’S STORIES<br /> +XXII. PERSONAL CHEERFULNESS AND INVENTED GLOOM<br /> +XXIII. EDINBURGH REVIEWERS’ DICTA INAPPLICABLE TO +LATER WORK<br /> +XXIV. MR HENLEY’S SPITEFUL PERVERSIONS<br /> +XXV. MR CHRISTIE MURRAY’S IMPRESSIONS<br +/> +XXVI. HERO-VILLAINS<br /> +XXVII. MR G. MOORE, MR MARRIOTT WATSON, AND OTHERS<br /> +XXVIII. UNEXPECTED COMBINATIONS<br /> +XXIX. LOVE OF VAGABONDS<br /> +XXX. LORD ROSEBERY’S CASE<br /> +XXXI. MR GOSSE AND MS. OF <i>TREASURE ISLAND</i><br +/> +XXXII. STEVENSON PORTRAITS<br /> +XXXIII. LAPSES AND ERRORS IN CRITICISM<br /> +XXXIV. LETTERS AND POEMS IN TESTIMONY<br /> +APPENDIX</p> +<h2>CHAPTER I—INTRODUCTION AND FIRST IMPRESSIONS</h2> +<p>My little effort to make Thoreau better known in England had +one result that I am pleased to think of. It brought me +into personal association with R. L. Stevenson, who had written +and published in <i>The Cornhill Magazine</i> an essay on +Thoreau, in whom he had for some time taken an interest. He +found in Thoreau not only a rare character for originality, +courage, and indefatigable independence, but also a master of +style, to whom, on this account, as much as any, he was inclined +to play the part of the “sedulous ape,” as he had +acknowledged doing to many others—a later exercise, perhaps +in some ways as fruitful as any that had gone before. A +recent poet, having had some seeds of plants sent to him from +Northern Scotland to the South, celebrated his setting of them +beside those native to the Surrey slope on which he dwelt, with +the lines—</p> +<blockquote><p>“And when the Northern seeds are growing,<br +/> +Another beauty then bestowing,<br /> +We shall be fine, and North to South<br /> +Be giving kisses, mouth to mouth.”</p> +</blockquote> +<p>So the Thoreau influence on Stevenson was as if a tart +American wild-apple had been grafted on an English pippin, and +produced a wholly new kind with the flavours of both; and here +wild America and England kissed each other mouth to mouth.</p> +<p>The direct result was the essay in <i>The Cornhill</i>, but +the indirect results were many and less easily assessed, as +Stevenson himself, as we shall see, was ever ready to +admit. The essay on Thoreau was written in America, which +further, perhaps, bears out my point.</p> +<p>One of the authorities, quoted by Mr Hammerton, in +<i>Stevensoniana</i> says of the circumstances in which he found +our author, when he was busily engaged on that bit of work:</p> +<blockquote><p>“I have visited him in a lonely lodging in +California, it was previous to his happy marriage, and found him +submerged in billows of bed-clothes; about him floated the +scattered volumes of a complete set of Thoreau; he was preparing +an essay on that worthy, and he looked at the moment like a +half-drowned man, yet he was not cast down. His work, an +endless task, was better than a straw to him. It was to +become his life-preserver and to prolong his years. I feel +convinced that without it he must have surrendered long +since. I found Stevenson a man of the frailest physique, +though most unaccountably tenacious of life; a man whose pen was +indefatigable, whose brain was never at rest, who, as far as I am +able to judge, looked upon everybody and everything from a +supremely intellectual point of view.” <a +name="citation1"></a><a href="#footnote1" +class="citation">[1]</a></p> +</blockquote> +<p>We remember the common belief in Yorkshire and other parts +that a man could not die so long as he could stand up—a +belief on which poor Branwell Brontë was fain to act and to +illustrate, but R. L. Stevenson illustrated it, as this writer +shows, in a better, calmer, and healthier way, despite his lack +of health.</p> +<p>On some little points of fact, however, Stevenson was wrong; +and I wrote to the Editor of <i>The Spectator</i> a letter, +titled, I think, “Thoreau’s Pity and Humour,” +which he inserted. This brought me a private letter from +Stevenson, who expressed the wish to see me, and have some talk +with me on that and other matters. To this letter I at once +replied, directing to 17 Heriot Row, Edinburgh, saying that, as I +was soon to be in that City, it might be possible for me to see +him there. In reply to this letter Mr Stevenson wrote:</p> +<blockquote><p style="text-align: right">“<span +class="smcap">The Cottage, Castleton of Braemar</span>,<br /> +<i>Sunday</i>, <i>August</i> (? <i>th</i>), 1881.</p> +<p>“<span class="smcap">My dear Sir</span>,—I should +long ago have written to thank you for your kind and frank +letter; but, in my state of health, papers are apt to get +mislaid, and your letter has been vainly hunted for until this +(Sunday) morning.</p> +<p>“I must first say a word as to not quoting your book by +name. It was the consciousness that we disagreed which led +me, I daresay, wrongly, to suppress <i>all</i> references +throughout the paper. But you may be certain a proper +reference will now be introduced.</p> +<p>“I regret I shall not be able to see you in Edinburgh: +one visit to Edinburgh has already cost me too dear in that +invaluable particular, health; but if it should be at all +possible for you to pass by Braemar, I believe you would find an +attentive listener, and I can offer you a bed, a drive, and +necessary food.</p> +<p>“If, however, you should not be able to come thus far, I +can promise two things. First, I shall religiously revise +what I have written, and bring out more clearly the point of view +from which I regarded Thoreau. Second, I shall in the +preface record your objection.</p> +<p>“The point of view (and I must ask you not to forget +that any such short paper is essentially only a <i>section +through</i> a man) was this: I desired to look at the man through +his books. Thus, for instance, when I mentioned his return +to the pencil-making, I did it only in passing (perhaps I was +wrong), because it seemed to me not an illustration of his +principles, but a brave departure from them. Thousands of +such there were I do not doubt; still they might be hardly to my +purpose; though, as you say so, I suppose some of them would +be.</p> +<p>“Our difference as to ‘pity,’ I suspect, was +a logomachy of my making. No pitiful acts, on his part, +would surprise me: I know he would be more pitiful in practice +than most of the whiners; but the spirit of that practice would +still seem to me to be unjustly described by the word pity.</p> +<p>“When I try to be measured, I find myself usually +suspected of a sneaking unkindness for my subject, but you may be +sure, sir, I would give up most other things to be as good a man +as Thoreau. Even my knowledge of him leads me thus far.</p> +<p>“Should you find yourself able to push on so +far—it may even lie on your way—believe me your visit +will be very welcome. The weather is cruel, but the place +is, as I daresay you know, the very <i>wale</i> of +Scotland—bar Tummelside.—Yours very sincerely,</p> +<p style="text-align: right"><span class="smcap">Robert Louis +Stevenson</span>.”</p> +</blockquote> +<p style="text-align: center"> +<a href="images/p6b.jpg"> +<img alt="Manuscript letter by R.L.S." src="images/p6s.jpg" /> +</a></p> +<p>Some delay took place in my leaving London for Scotland, and +hence what seemed a hitch. I wrote mentioning the reason of +my delay, and expressing the fear that I might have to forego the +prospect of seeing him in Braemar, as his circumstances might +have altered in the meantime. In answer came this note, +like so many, if not most of his, indeed, without +date:—</p> +<blockquote><p style="text-align: right"><span class="smcap">The +Cottage, Castleton of Braemar</span>.<br /> +(<i>No date</i>.)</p> +<p>“<span class="smcap">My dear Sir</span>,—I am here +as yet a fixture, and beg you to come our way. Would +Tuesday or Wednesday suit you by any chance? We shall then, +I believe, be empty: a thing favourable to talks. You get +here in time for dinner. I stay till near the end of +September, unless, as may very well be, the weather drive me +forth.—Yours very sincerely, <span class="smcap">Robert +Louis Stevenson</span>.”</p> +</blockquote> +<p>I accordingly went to Braemar, where he and his wife and her +son were staying with his father and mother.</p> +<p>These were red-letter days in my calendar alike on account of +pleasant intercourse with his honoured father and himself. +Here is my pen-and-ink portrait of R. L. Stevenson, thrown down +at the time:</p> +<p>Mr Stevenson’s is, indeed, a very picturesque and +striking figure. Not so tall probably as he seems at first +sight from his extreme thinness, but the pose and air could not +be otherwise described than as distinguished. Head of fine +type, carried well on the shoulders and in walking with the +impression of being a little thrown back; long brown hair, +falling from under a broadish-brimmed Spanish form of soft felt +hat, Rembrandtesque; loose kind of Inverness cape when walking, +and invariable velvet jacket inside the house. You would +say at first sight, wherever you saw him, that he was a man of +intellect, artistic and individual, wholly out of the +common. His face is sensitive, full of expression, though +it could not be called strictly beautiful. It is longish, +especially seen in profile, and features a little irregular; the +brow at once high and broad. A hint of vagary, and just a +hint in the expression, is qualified by the eyes, which are set +rather far apart from each other as seems, and with a most +wistful, and at the same time possibly a merry impish expression +arising over that, yet frank and clear, piercing, but at the same +time steady, and fall on you with a gentle radiance and animation +as he speaks. Romance, if with an indescribable +<i>soupçon</i> of whimsicality, is marked upon him; +sometimes he has the look as of the Ancient Mariner, and could +fix you with his glittering e’e, and he would, as he points +his sentences with a movement of his thin white forefinger, when +this is not monopolised with the almost incessant +cigarette. There is a faint suggestion of a hair-brained +sentimental trace on his countenance, but controlled, after all, +by good Scotch sense and shrewdness. In conversation he is +very animated, and likes to ask questions. A favourite and +characteristic attitude with him was to put his foot on a chair +or stool and rest his elbow on his knee, with his chin on his +hand; or to sit, or rather to half sit, half lean, on the corner +of a table or desk, one of his legs swinging freely, and when +anything that tickled him was said he would laugh in the +heartiest manner, even at the risk of bringing on his cough, +which at that time was troublesome. Often when he got +animated he rose and walked about as he spoke, as if movement +aided thought and expression. Though he loved Edinburgh, +which was full of associations for him, he had no good word for +its east winds, which to him were as death. Yet he passed +one winter as a “Silverado squatter,” the story of +which he has inimitably told in the volume titled <i>The +Silverado Squatters</i>; and he afterwards spent several winters +at Davos Platz, where, as he said to me, he not only breathed +good air, but learned to know with closest intimacy John +Addington Symonds, who “though his books were good, was far +finer and more interesting than any of his books.” He +needed a good deal of nursery attentions, but his invalidism was +never obtrusively brought before one in any sympathy-seeking way +by himself; on the contrary, a very manly, self-sustaining spirit +was evident; and the amount of work which he managed to turn out +even when at his worst was truly surprising.</p> +<p>His wife, an American lady, is highly cultured, and is herself +an author. In her speech there is just the slightest +suggestion of the American accent, which only made it the more +pleasing to my ear. She is heart and soul devoted to her +husband, proud of his achievements, and her delight is the +consciousness of substantially aiding him in his enterprises.</p> +<p>They then had with them a boy of eleven or twelve, Samuel +Lloyd Osbourne, to be much referred to later (a son of Mrs +Stevenson by a former marriage), whose delight was to draw the +oddest, but perhaps half intentional or unintentional +caricatures, funny, in some cases, beyond expression. His +room was designated the picture-gallery, and on entering I could +scarce refrain from bursting into laughter, even at the general +effect, and, noticing this, and that I was putting some restraint +on myself out of respect for the host’s feelings, Stevenson +said to me with a sly wink and a gentle dig in the ribs, +“It’s laugh and be thankful here.” On +Lloyd’s account simple engraving materials, types, and a +small printing-press had been procured; and it was +Stevenson’s delight to make funny poems, stories, and +morals for the engravings executed, and all would be duly printed +together. Stevenson’s thorough enjoyment of the +picture-gallery, and his goodness to Lloyd, becoming himself a +very boy for the nonce, were delightful to witness and in degree +to share. Wherever they were—at Braemar, in +Edinburgh, at Davos Platz, or even at Silverado—the +engraving and printing went on. The mention of the +picture-gallery suggests that it was out of his interest in the +colour-drawing and the picture-gallery that his first published +story, <i>Treasure Island</i>, grew, as we shall see.</p> +<p>I have some copies of the rude printing-press productions, +inexpressibly quaint, grotesque, a kind of literary horse-play, +yet with a certain squint-eyed, sprawling genius in it, and +innocent childish Rabelaisian mirth of a sort. At all +events I cannot look at the slight memorials of that time, which +I still possess, without laughing afresh till my eyes are +dewy. Stevenson, as I understood, began <i>Treasure +Island</i> more to entertain Lloyd Osbourne than anything else; +the chapters being regularly read to the family circle as they +were written, and with scarcely a purpose beyond. The lad +became Stevenson’s trusted companion and +collaborator—clearly with a touch of genius.</p> +<p>I have before me as I write some of these funny momentoes of +that time, carefully kept, often looked at. One of them is, +“<i>The Black Canyon</i>; <i>or</i>, <i>Wild Adventures in +the Far West</i>: a Tale of Instruction and Amusement for the +Young, by Samuel L. Osbourne, printed by the author; Davos +Platz,” with the most remarkable cuts. It would not +do some of the sensationalists anything but good to read it even +at this day, since many points in their art are absurdly +caricatured. Another is “<i>Moral Emblems</i>; <i>a +Collection of Cuts and Verses</i>, by R. L. Stevenson, author of +the <i>Blue Scalper</i>, etc., etc. Printers, S. L. +Osbourne and Company, Davos Platz.” Here are the +lines to a rare piece of grotesque, titled <i>A Peak in +Darien</i>—</p> +<blockquote><p>“Broad-gazing on untrodden lands,<br /> +See where adventurous Cortez stands,<br /> +While in the heavens above his head,<br /> +The eagle seeks its daily bread.<br /> +How aptly fact to fact replies,<br /> +Heroes and eagles, hills and skies.<br /> +Ye, who contemn the fatted slave,<br /> +Look on this emblem and be brave.”</p> +</blockquote> +<p>Another, <i>The Elephant</i>, has these lines—</p> +<blockquote><p>“See in the print how, moved by whim,<br /> +Trumpeting Jumbo, great and grim,<br /> +Adjusts his trunk, like a cravat,<br /> +To noose that individual’s hat;<br /> +The Sacred Ibis in the distance, <br /> +Joys to observe his bold resistance.”</p> +</blockquote> +<p>R. L. Stevenson wrote from Davos Platz, in sending me <i>The +Black Canyon</i>:</p> +<blockquote><p>“Sam sends as a present a work of his +own. I hope you feel flattered, for <i>this is simply the +first time he has ever given one away</i>. I have to buy my +own works, I can tell you.”</p> +</blockquote> +<p>Later he said, in sending a second:</p> +<blockquote><p>“I own I have delayed this letter till I +could forward the enclosed. Remembering the night at +Braemar, when we visited the picture-gallery, I hope it may amuse +you: you see we do some publishing hereaway.”</p> +</blockquote> +<p>Delightfully suggestive and highly enjoyable, too, were the +meetings in the little drawing-room after dinner, when the +contrasted traits of father and son came into full +play—when R. L. Stevenson would sometimes draw out a new +view by bold, half-paradoxical assertion, or compel advance on +the point from a new quarter by a searching question couched in +the simplest language, or reveal his own latest conviction +finally, by a few sentences as nicely rounded off as though they +had been written, while he rose and gently moved about, as his +habit was, in the course of those more extended remarks. +Then a chapter or two of <i>The Sea-Cook</i> would be read, with +due pronouncement on the main points by one or other of the +family audience.</p> +<p>The reading of the book is one thing. It was quite +another thing to hear Stevenson as he stood reading it aloud, +with his hand stretched out holding the manuscript, and his body +gently swaying as a kind of rhythmical commentary on the +story. His fine voice, clear and keen it some of its tones, +had a wonderful power of inflection and variation, and when he +came to stand in the place of Silver you could almost have +imagined you saw the great one-legged John Silver, joyous-eyed, +on the rolling sea. Yes, to read it in print was good, but +better yet to hear Stevenson read it.</p> +<h2>CHAPTER II—<i>TREASURE ISLAND</i> AND SOME +REMINISCENCES</h2> +<p>When I left Braemar, I carried with me a considerable portion +of the MS. of <i>Treasure Island</i>, with an outline of the rest +of the story. It originally bore the odd title of <i>The +Sea-Cook</i>, and, as I have told before, I showed it to Mr +Henderson, the proprietor of the <i>Young Folks’ Paper</i>, +who came to an arrangement with Mr Stevenson, and the story duly +appeared in its pages, as well as the two which succeeded it.</p> +<p>Stevenson himself in his article in <i>The Idler</i> for +August 1894 (reprinted in <i>My First Book</i> volume and in a +late volume of the <i>Edinburgh Edition</i>) has recalled some of +the circumstances connected with this visit of mine to Braemar, +as it bore on the destination of <i>Treasure Island</i>:</p> +<blockquote><p>“And now, who should come dropping in, <i>ex +machinâ</i>, but Dr Japp, like the disguised prince, who is +to bring down the curtain upon peace and happiness in the last +act; for he carried in his pocket, not a horn or a talisman, but +a publisher, in fact, ready to unearth new writers for my old +friend Mr Henderson’s <i>Young Folks</i>. Even the +ruthlessness of a united family recoiled before the extreme +measure of inflicting on our guest the mutilated members of +<i>The Sea-Cook</i>; at the same time, we would by no means stop +our readings, and accordingly the tale was begun again at the +beginning, and solemnly redelivered for the benefit of Dr +Japp. From that moment on, I have thought highly of his +critical faculty; for when he left us, he carried away the +manuscript in his portmanteau.</p> +<p>“<i>Treasure Island</i>—it was Mr Henderson who +deleted the first title, <i>The Sea-Cook</i>—appeared duly +in <i>Young Folks</i>, where it figured in the ignoble midst +without woodcuts, and attracted not the least attention. I +did not care. I liked the tale myself, for much the same +reason as my father liked the beginning: it was my kind of +picturesque. I was not a little proud of John Silver also; +and to this day rather admire that smooth and formidable +adventurer. What was infinitely more exhilarating, I had +passed a landmark. I had finished a tale and written The +End upon my manuscript, as I had not done since <i>The Pentland +Rising</i>, when I was a boy of sixteen, not yet at +college. In truth, it was so by a lucky set of accidents: +had not Dr Japp come on his visit, had not the tale flowed from +me with singular ease, it must have been laid aside, like its +predecessors, and found a circuitous and unlamented way to the +fire. Purists may suggest it would have been better +so. I am not of that mind. The tale seems to have +given much pleasure, and it brought (or was the means of +bringing) fire, food, and wine to a deserving family in which I +took an interest. I need scarcely say I mean my +own.”</p> +</blockquote> +<p>He himself gives a goodly list of the predecessors which had +“found a circuitous and unlamented way to the +fire”:</p> +<blockquote><p>“As soon as I was able to write, I became a +good friend to the paper-makers. Reams upon reams must have +gone to the making of <i>Rathillet</i>, <i>The Pentland +Rising</i>, <i>The King’s Pardon</i> (otherwise <i>Park +Whitehead</i>), <i>Edward Daven</i>, <i>A Country Dance</i>, and +<i>A Vendetta in the West</i>. <i>Rathillet</i> was +attempted before fifteen, <i>The Vendetta</i> at twenty-nine, and +the succession of defeats lasted unbroken till I was +thirty-one.”</p> +</blockquote> +<p>Another thing I carried from Braemar with me which I greatly +prize—this was a copy of <i>Christianity confirmed by +Jewish and Heathen Testimony</i>, by Mr Stevenson’s father, +with his autograph signature and many of his own marginal +notes. He had thought deeply on many +subjects—theological, scientific, and social—and had +recorded, I am afraid, but the smaller half of his thoughts and +speculations. Several days in the mornings, before R. L. +Stevenson was able to face the somewhat “snell” air +of the hills, I had long walks with the old gentleman, when we +also had long talks on many subjects—the liberalising of +the Scottish Church, educational reform, etc.; and, on one +occasion, a statement of his reason, because of the subscription, +for never having become an elder. That he had in some small +measure enjoyed my society, as I certainly had much enjoyed his, +was borne out by a letter which I received from the son in reply +to one I had written, saying that surely his father had never +meant to present me at the last moment on my leaving by coach +with that volume, with his name on it, and with pencilled notes +here and there, but had merely given it me to read and +return. In the circumstances I may perhaps be excused +quoting from a letter dated Castleton of Braemar, September 1881, +in illustration of what I have said—</p> +<blockquote><p>“<span class="smcap">My dear Dr +Japp</span>,—My father has gone, but I think I may take it +upon me to ask you to keep the book. Of all things you +could do to endear yourself to me you have done the best, for, +from your letter, you have taken a fancy to my father.</p> +<p>“I do not know how to thank you for your kind trouble in +the matter of <i>The Sea-Cook</i>, but I am not unmindful. +My health is still poorly, and I have added intercostal +rheumatism—a new attraction, which sewed me up nearly +double for two days, and still gives me ‘a list to +starboard’—let us be ever nautical. . . . I do not +think with the start I have, there will be any difficulty in +letting Mr Henderson go ahead whenever he likes. I will +write my story up to its legitimate conclusion, and then we shall +be in a position to judge whether a sequel would be desirable, +and I myself would then know better about its practicability from +the story-telling point of view.—Yours very sincerely, +<span class="smcap">Robert Louis Stevenson</span>.”</p> +</blockquote> +<p>A little later came the following:—</p> +<blockquote><p style="text-align: right">“<span +class="smcap">The Cottage, Castleton of Braemar</span>.<br /> +(<i>No date</i>.)</p> +<p>“<span class="smcap">My dear Dr +Japp</span>,—Herewith go nine chapters. I have been a +little seedy; and the two last that I have written seem to me on +a false venue; hence the smallness of the batch. I have +now, I hope, in the three last sent, turned the corner, with no +great amount of dulness.</p> +<p>“The map, with all its names, notes, soundings, and +things, should make, I believe, an admirable advertisement for +the story. Eh?</p> +<p>“I hope you got a telegram and letter I forwarded after +you to Dinnat.—Believe me, yours very sincerely, <span +class="smcap">Robert Louis Stevenson</span>.”</p> +</blockquote> +<p>In the afternoon, if fine and dry, we went walking, and +Stevenson would sometimes tell us stories of his short experience +at the Scottish Bar, and of his first and only brief. I +remember him contrasting that with his experiences as an engineer +with Bob Bain, who, as manager, was then superintending the +building of a breakwater. Of that time, too, he told the +choicest stories, and especially of how, against all orders, he +bribed Bob with five shillings to let him go down in the +diver’s dress. He gave us a splendid +description—finer, I think, than even that in his +<i>Memories</i>—of his sensations on the sea-bottom, which +seems to have interested him as deeply, and suggested as many +strange fancies, as anything which he ever came across on the +surface. But the possibility of enterprises of this sort +ended—Stevenson lost his interest in engineering.</p> +<p style="text-align: center"> +<a href="images/p20b.jpg"> +<img alt="Manuscript letter by R.L.S." src="images/p20s.jpg" /> +</a></p> +<p>Stevenson’s father had, indeed, been much exercised in +his day by theological questions and difficulties, and though he +remained a staunch adherent of the Established Church of Scotland +he knew well and practically what is meant by the term +“accommodation,” as it is used by theologians in +reference to creeds and formulas; for he had over and over again, +because of the strict character of the subscription required from +elders of the Scottish Church declined, as I have said, to accept +the office. In a very express sense you could see that he +bore the marks of his past in many ways—a quick, sensitive, +in some ways even a fantastic-minded man, yet with a strange +solidity and common-sense amid it all, just as though ferns with +the veritable fairies’ seed were to grow out of a common +stone wall. He looked like a man who had not been without +sleepless nights—without troubles, sorrows, and +perplexities, and even yet, had not wholly risen above some of +them, or the results of them. His voice was “low and +sweet”—with just a possibility in it of rising to a +shrillish key. A sincere and faithful man, who had walked +very demurely through life, though with a touch of sudden, +bright, quiet humour and fancy, every now and then crossing the +grey of his characteristic pensiveness or melancholy, and drawing +effect from it. He was most frank and genial with me, and I +greatly honour his memory. <a name="citation2"></a><a +href="#footnote2" class="citation">[2]</a></p> +<p>Thomas Stevenson, with a strange, sad smile, told me how much +of a disappointment, in the first stage, at all events, Louis (he +always called his son Louis at home), had caused him, by failing +to follow up his profession at the Scottish Bar. How much +he had looked forward, after the engineering was abandoned, to +his devoting himself to the work of the Parliament House (as the +Hall of the Chief Court is called in Scotland, from the building +having been while yet there was a Scottish Parliament the place +where it sat), though truly one cannot help feeling how much +Stevenson’s very air and figure would have been out of +keeping among the bewigged, pushing, sharp-set, hard-featured, +and even red-faced and red-nosed (some of them, at any rate) +company, who daily walked the Parliament House, and talked and +gossiped there, often of other things than law and equity. +“Well, yes, perhaps it was all for the best,” he +said, with a sigh, on my having interjected the remark that R. L. +Stevenson was wielding far more influence than he ever could have +done as a Scottish counsel, even though he had risen rapidly in +his profession, and become Lord-Advocate or even a judge.</p> +<p>There was, indeed, a very pathetic kind of harking back on the +might-have-beens when I talked with him on this subject. He +had reconciled himself in a way to the inevitable, and, like a +sensible man, was now inclined to make the most and the best of +it. The marriage, which, on the report of it, had been but +a new disappointment to him, had, as if by magic, been +transformed into a blessing in his mind and his wife’s by +personal contact with Fanny Van der Griff Stevenson, which no one +who ever met her could wonder at; but, nevertheless, his dream of +seeing his only son walking in the pathways of the Stevensons, +and adorning a profession in Edinburgh, and so winning new and +welcome laurels for the family and the name, was still present +with him constantly, and by contrast, he was depressed with +contemplation of the real state of the case, when, as I have +said, I pointed out to him, as more than once I did, what an +influence his son was wielding now, not only over those near to +him, but throughout the world, compared with what could have come +to him as a lighthouse engineer, however successful, or it may be +as a briefless advocate or barrister, walking, hardly in glory +and in joy, the Hall of the Edinburgh Parliament House. And +when I pictured the yet greater influence that was sure to come +to him, he only shook his head with that smile which tells of +hopes long-cherished and lost at last, and of resignation gained, +as though at stern duty’s call and an honest desire for the +good of those near and dear to him. It moved me more than I +can say, and always in the midst of it he adroitly, and somewhat +abruptly, changed the subject. Such penalties do parents +often pay for the honour of giving geniuses to the world. +Here, again, it may be true, “the individual withers but +the world is more and more.”</p> +<p>The impression of a kind of tragic fatality was but added to +when Stevenson would speak of his father in such terms of love +and admiration as quite moved one, of his desire to please him, +of his highest respect and gratitude to him, and pride in having +such a father. It was most characteristic that when, in his +travels in America, he met a gentleman who expressed plainly his +keen disappointment on learning that he had but been introduced +to the son and not to the father—to the as yet but budding +author—and not to the builder of the great lighthouse +beacons that constantly saved mariners from shipwreck round many +stormy coasts, he should record the incident, as his readers will +remember, with such a strange mixture of a pride and filial +gratitude, and half humorous humiliation. Such is the +penalty a son of genius often pays in heart-throbs for the +inability to do aught else but follow his destiny—follow +his star, even though as Dante says:—</p> +<blockquote><p>“Se tu segui tua stella<br /> +Non puoi fallire a glorioso porto.” <a +name="citation3"></a><a href="#footnote3" +class="citation">[3]</a></p> +</blockquote> +<p>What added a keen thrill as of quivering flesh exposed, was +that Thomas Stevenson on one side was exactly the man to +appreciate such attainments and work in another, and I often +wondered how far the sense of Edinburgh propriety and worldly +estimates did weigh with him here.</p> +<p>Mr Stevenson mentioned to me a peculiar fact which has since +been noted by his son, that, notwithstanding the kind of work he +had so successfully engaged in, he was no mathematician, and had +to submit his calculations to another to be worked out in +definite mathematical formulæ. Thomas Stevenson gave +one the impression of a remarkably sweet, great personality, +grave, anxious, almost morbidly forecasting, yet full of +childlike hope and ready affection, but, perhaps, so earnestly +taken up with some points as to exaggerate their importance and +be too self-conscious and easily offended in respect to +them. But there was no affectation in him. He was +simple-minded, sincere to the core; most kindly, homely, +hospitable, much intent on brotherly offices. He had the +Scottish <i>perfervidum</i> too—he could tolerate nothing +mean or creeping; and his eye would lighten and glance in a +striking manner when such was spoken of. I have since heard +that his charities were very extensive, and dispensed in the most +hidden and secret ways. He acted here on the Scripture +direction, “Let not thy left hand know what thy right hand +doeth.” He was much exercised when I saw him about +some defects, as he held, in the methods of Scotch education (for +he was a true lover of youth, and cared more for character being +formed than for heads being merely crammed). Sagacious, +with fine forecast, with a high ideal, and yet up to a certain +point a most tolerant temper, he was a fine specimen of the +Scottish gentleman. His son tells that, as he was engaged +in work calculated to benefit the world and to save life, he +would not for long take out a patent for his inventions, and thus +lost immense sums. I can well believe that: it seems quite +in keeping with my impressions of the man. There was +nothing stolid or selfishly absorbed in him. He bore the +marks of deep, true, honest feeling, true benevolence, and +open-handed generosity, and despite the son’s great +pen-craft, and inventive power, would have forgiven my saying +that sometimes I have had a doubt whether the father was not, +after all, the greater man of the two, though certainly not, like +the hero of <i>In Memoriam</i>, moulded “in colossal +calm.”</p> +<p>In theological matters, in which Thomas Stevenson had been +much and deeply exercised, he held very strong views, leading +decisively to ultra-Calvinism; but, as I myself could well +sympathise with such views, if I did not hold them, knowing well +the strange ways in which they had gone to form grand, if +sometimes sternly forbidding characters, there were no +cross-purposes as there might have been with some on that +subject. And always I felt I had an original character and +a most interesting one to study.</p> +<p>This is another very characteristic letter to me from Davos +Platz:</p> +<blockquote><p>“<span class="smcap">Chalet Buol</span>, +<span class="smcap">Davos</span>, <span +class="smcap">Grisons</span>,<br /> +<span class="smcap">Switzerland</span>. (<i>No +date</i>.)</p> +<p>“<span class="smcap">My dear Dr Japp</span>,—You +must think me a forgetful rogue, as indeed I am; for I have but +now told my publisher to send you a copy of the <i>Familiar +Studies</i>. However, I own I have delayed this letter till +I could send you the enclosed. Remembering the night at +Braemar, when we visited the picture-gallery, I hoped they might +amuse you.</p> +<p>“You see we do some publishing hereaway.</p> +<p>“With kind regards, believe me, always yours +faithfully,</p> +<p><span class="smcap">Robert Louis Stevenson</span>.”</p> +<p>“I shall hope to see you in town in May.”</p> +</blockquote> +<p>The enclosed was the second series of <i>Moral Emblems</i>, by +R. L. Stevenson, printed by Samuel Osbourne. My answer to +this letter brought the following:</p> +<blockquote><p style="text-align: right">“<span +class="smcap">Chalet-Buol</span>, <span +class="smcap">Davos</span>,<br /> +<i>April</i> 1<i>st</i>, 1882.</p> +<p>“<span class="smcap">My dear Dr Japp</span>,—A +good day to date this letter, which is, in fact, a confession of +incapacity. During my wife’s wretched +illness—or I should say the worst of it, for she is not yet +rightly well—I somewhat lost my head, and entirely lost a +great quire of corrected proofs. This is one of the +results: I hope there are none more serious. I was never so +sick of any volume as I was of that; I was continually receiving +fresh proofs with fresh infinitesimal difficulties. I was +ill; I did really fear, for my wife was worse than ill. +Well, ’tis out now; and though I have already observed +several carelessnesses myself, and now here is another of your +finding—of which indeed, I ought to be ashamed—it +will only justify the sweeping humility of the preface.</p> +<p>“Symonds was actually dining with us when your letter +came, and I communicated your remarks, which pleased him. +He is a far better and more interesting thing than his books.</p> +<p>“The elephant was my wife’s, so she is +proportionately elate you should have picked it out for praise +from a collection, let us add, so replete with the highest +qualities of art.</p> +<p>“My wicked carcass, as John Knox calls it, holds +together wonderfully. In addition to many other things, and +a volume of travel, I find I have written since December ninety +Cornhill pp. of Magazine work—essays and +stories—40,000 words; and I am none the worse—I am +better. I begin to hope I may, if not outlive this +wolverine upon my shoulders, at least carry him bravely like +Symonds or Alexander Pope. I begin to take a pride in that +hope.</p> +<p>“I shall be much interested to see your criticisms: you +might perhaps send them on to me. I believe you know that I +am not dangerous—one folly I have not—I am not touchy +under criticism.</p> +<p>“Sam and my wife both beg to be remembered, and Sam also +sends as a present a work of his own.—Yours very +sincerely,</p> +<p><span class="smcap">Robert Louis Stevenson</span>.”</p> +</blockquote> +<p>As indicating the estimate of many of the good Edinburgh +people of Stevenson and the Stevensons that still held sway up to +so late a date as 1893, I will here extract two characteristic +passages from the letters of the friend and correspondent of +these days just referred to, and to whom I had sent a copy of the +<i>Atalanta</i> Magazine, with an article of mine on +Stevenson.</p> +<blockquote><p>“If you can excuse the garrulity of age, I +can tell you one or two things about Louis Stevenson, his father +and even his grandfather, which you may work up some other day, +as you have so deftly embedded in the <i>Atalanta</i> article +that small remark on his acting. Your paper is pleasant and +modest: most of R. L. Stevenson’s admirers are inclined to +lay it on far too thick. That he is a genius we all admit; +but his genius, if fine, is limited. For example, he cannot +paint (or at least he never has painted) a woman. No more +could Fettes Douglas, skilful artist though he was in his own +special line, and I shall tell you a remark of Russel’s +thereon some day. <a name="citation4"></a><a href="#footnote4" +class="citation">[4]</a> There are women in his books, but +there is none of the beauty and subtlety of womanhood in +them.</p> +<p>“R. L. Stevenson I knew well as a lad and often met him +and talked with him. He acted in private theatricals got up +by the late Professor Fleeming Jenkin. But he had then, as +always, a pretty guid conceit o’ himsel’—which +his clique have done nothing to check. His father and his +grandfather (I have danced with his mother before her marriage) I +knew better; but ‘the family theologian,’ as some of +R. L. Stevenson’s friends dabbed his father, was a very +touchy theologian, and denounced any one who in the least +differed from his extreme Calvinistic views. I came under +his lash most unwittingly in this way myself. But for this +twist, he was a good fellow—kind and hospitable—and a +really able man in his profession. His father-in-law, R. L. +Stevenson’s maternal grandfather, was the Rev. Dr Balfour, +minister of Colinton—one of the finest-looking old men I +ever saw—tall, upright, and ruddy at eighty. But he +was marvellously feeble as a preacher, and often said things that +were deliciously, unconsciously, unintentionally laughable, if +not witty. We were near Colinton for some years; and Mr +Russell (of the <i>Scotsman</i>), who once attended the Parish +Church with us, was greatly tickled by Balfour discoursing on the +story of Joseph and Potiphar’s wife, remarking that Mrs +P---’s conduct was ‘highly +improper’!”</p> +</blockquote> +<p>The estimate of R. L. Stevenson was not and could not be final +in this case, for <i>Weir of Hermiston</i> and <i>Catriona</i> +were yet unwritten, not to speak of others, but the passages +reflect a certain side of Edinburgh opinion, illustrating the old +Scripture doctrine that a prophet has honour everywhere but in +his own country. And the passages themselves bear evidence +that I violate no confidence then, for they were given to me to +be worked into any after-effort I might make on Stevenson. +My friend was a good and an acute critic who had done some +acceptable literary work in his day.</p> +<h2>CHAPTER III—THE CHILD FATHER OF THE MAN</h2> +<p>R. L. Stevenson was born on 13th November 1850, the very year +of the death of his grandfather, Robert Stevenson, whom he has so +finely celebrated. As a mere child he gave token of his +character. As soon as he could read, he was keen for books, +and, before very long, had read all the story-books he could lay +hands on; and, when the stock ran out, he would go and look in at +all the shop windows within reach, and try to piece out the +stories from the bits exposed in open pages and the woodcuts.</p> +<p>He had a nurse of very remarkable character—evidently a +paragon—who deeply influenced him and did much to form his +young mind—Alison Cunningham, who, in his juvenile lingo, +became “Cumy,” and who not only was never forgotten, +but to the end was treated as his “second +mother.” In his dedication of his <i>Child’s +Garden of Verses</i> to her, he says:</p> +<blockquote><p>“My second mother, my first wife,<br /> +The angel of my infant life.”</p> +</blockquote> +<p>Her copy of <i>Kidnapped</i> was inscribed to her by the hand +of Stevenson, thus:</p> +<blockquote><p style="text-align: right">“<span +class="smcap">To Cumy</span>, <span class="smcap">from her +boy</span>, <span class="smcap">the author</span>.<br /> +<span class="smcap">Skerryvore</span>, 18<i>th</i> <i>July</i> +1888.”</p> +</blockquote> +<p>Skerryvore was the name of Stevenson’s Bournemouth home, +so named after one of the Stevenson lighthouses. His first +volume, <i>An Inland Voyage</i> has this pretty dedication, +inscribed in a neat, small hand:</p> +<blockquote><p>“<span class="smcap">My dear +Cumy</span>,—If you had not taken so much trouble with me +all the years of my childhood, this little book would never have +been written. Many a long night you sat up with me when I +was ill. I wish I could hope, by way of return, to amuse a +single evening for you with my little book. But whatever +you think of it, I know you will think kindly of</p> +<p><span class="smcap">The Author</span>.”</p> +</blockquote> +<p>“Cumy” was perhaps the most influential teacher +Stevenson had. What she and his mother taught took effect +and abode with him, which was hardly the case with any other of +his teachers.</p> +<blockquote><p>“In contrast to Goethe,” says Mr +Baildon, “Stevenson was but little affected by his +relations to women, and, when this point is fully gone into, it +will probably be found that his mother and nurse in childhood, +and his wife and step-daughter in later life, are about the only +women who seriously influenced either his character or his +art.” (p. 32).</p> +</blockquote> +<p>When Mr Kelman is celebrating Stevenson for the consistency +and continuity of his undogmatic religion, he is almost +throughout celebrating “Cumy” and her influence, +though unconsciously. Here, again, we have an apt and yet +more striking illustration, after that of the good Lord +Shaftesbury and many others, of the deep and lasting effect a +good and earnest woman, of whom the world may never hear, may +have had upon a youngster of whom all the world shall hear. +When Mr Kelman says that “the religious element in +Stevenson was not a thing of late growth, but an integral part +and vital interest of his life,” he but points us back to +the earlier religious influences to which he had been effectually +subject. “His faith was not for himself alone, and +the phases of Christianity which it has asserted are peculiarly +suited to the spiritual needs of many in the present +time.”</p> +<p>We should not lay so much weight as Mr Kelman does on the mere +number of times “the Divine name” is found in +Stevenson’s writings, but there is something in such +confessions as the following to his father, when he was, amid +hardship and illness, in Paris in 1878:</p> +<blockquote><p>“Still I believe in myself and my fellow-men +and the God who made us all. . . . I am lonely and sick and out +of heart. Well, I still hope; I still believe; I still see +the good in the inch, and cling to it. It is not much, +perhaps, but it is always something.”</p> +</blockquote> +<p>Yes, “Cumy” was a very effective teacher, whose +influence and teaching long remained. His other teachers, +however famous and highly gifted, did not attain to such success +with him. And because of this non-success they blamed him, +as is usual. He was fond of playing truant—declared, +indeed, that he was about as methodic a truant as ever could have +existed. He much loved to go on long wanderings by himself +on the Pentland Hills and read about the Covenanters, and while +yet a youth of sixteen he wrote <i>The Pentland +Rising</i>—a pamphlet in size and a piece of fine +work—which was duly published, is now scarce, and fetches a +high price. He had made himself thoroughly familiar with +all the odd old corners of Edinburgh—John Knox’s +haunts and so on, all which he has turned to account in essays, +descriptions and in stories—especially in +<i>Catriona</i>. When a mere youth at school, as he tells +us himself, he had little or no desire to carry off prizes and do +just as other boys did; he was always wishing to observe, and to +see, and try things for himself—was, in fact, in the eyes +of schoolmasters and tutors something of an <i>idler</i>, with +splendid gifts which he would not rightly apply. He was +applying them rightly, though not in their way. It is not +only in his <i>Apology for Idlers</i> that this confession is +made, but elsewhere, as in his essay on <i>A College +Magazine</i>, where he says, “I was always busy on my own +private end, which was to learn to write. I kept always two +books in my pocket, one to read and one to write in!”</p> +<p>When he went to College it was still the same—he tells +us in the funniest way how he managed to wheedle a certificate +for Greek out of Professor Blackie, though the Professor owned +“his face was not familiar to him”! He fared +very differently when, afterwards his father, eager that he +should follow his profession, got him to enter the civil +engineering class under Professor Fleeming Jenkin. He still +stuck to his old courses—wandering about, and, in sheltered +corners, writing in the open air, and was not present in class +more than a dozen times. When the session was ended he went +up to try for a certificate from Fleeming Jenkin. +“No, no, Mr Stevenson,” said the Professor; “I +might give it in a doubtful case, but yours is not doubtful: you +have not kept my classes.” And the most +characteristic thing—honourable to both men—is to +come; for this was the beginning of a friendship which grew and +strengthened and is finally celebrated in the younger man’s +sketch of the elder. He learned from Professor Fleeming +Jenkin, perhaps unconsciously, more of the <i>humaniores</i>, +than consciously he did of engineering. A friend of mine, +who knew well both the Stevenson family and the Balfours, to +which R. L. Stevenson’s mother belonged, recalls, as we +have seen, his acting in the private theatricals that were got up +by the Professor, and adds, “He was then a very handsome +fellow, and looked splendidly as Sir Charles Pomander, and +essayed, not wholly without success, Sir Peter Teazle,” +which one can well believe, no less than that he acted such parts +splendidly as well as looked them.</p> +<p><i>Longman’s Magazine</i>, immediately after his death, +published the following poem, which took a very pathetic touch +from the circumstances of its appearance—the more that, +while it imaginatively and finely commemorated these days of +truant wanderings, it showed the ruling passion for home and the +old haunts, strongly and vividly, even not unnigh to death:</p> +<blockquote><p>“The tropics vanish, and meseems that I,<br +/> +From Halkerside, from topmost Allermuir,<br /> +Or steep Caerketton, dreaming gaze again.<br /> +Far set in fields and woods, the town I see<br /> +Spring gallant from the shallows of her smoke,<br /> +Cragg’d, spired, and turreted, her virgin fort<br /> +Beflagg’d. About, on seaward drooping hills,<br /> +New folds of city glitter. Last, the Forth<br /> +Wheels ample waters set with sacred isles,<br /> +And populous Fife smokes with a score of towns,<br /> +There, on the sunny frontage of a hill,<br /> +Hard by the house of kings, repose the dead,<br /> +My dead, the ready and the strong of word.<br /> +Their works, the salt-encrusted, still survive;<br /> +The sea bombards their founded towers; the night<br /> +Thrills pierced with their strong lamps. The artificers,<br +/> +One after one, here in this grated cell,<br /> +Where the rain erases and the rust consumes,<br /> +Fell upon lasting silence. Continents<br /> +And continental oceans intervene;<br /> +A sea uncharted, on a lampless isle,<br /> +Environs and confines their wandering child<br /> +In vain. The voice of generations dead<br /> +Summons me, sitting distant, to arise,<br /> +My numerous footsteps nimbly to retrace,<br /> +And all mutation over, stretch me down<br /> +In that denoted city of the dead.”</p> +</blockquote> +<h2>CHAPTER IV—HEREDITY ILLUSTRATED</h2> +<p>At first sight it would seem hard to trace any illustration of +the doctrine of heredity in the case of this master of +romance. George Eliot’s dictum that we are, each one +of us, but an omnibus carrying down the traits of our ancestors, +does not appear at all to hold here. This fanciful realist, +this näive-wistful humorist, this dreamy mystical casuist, +crossed by the innocent bohemian, this serious and genial +essayist, in whom the deep thought was hidden by the gracious +play of wit and phantasy, came, on the father’s side, of a +stock of what the world regarded as a quiet, ingenious, demure, +practical, home-keeping people. In his rich colour, +originality, and graceful air, it is almost as though the bloom +of japonica came on a rich old orchard apple-tree, all out of +season too. Those who go hard on heredity would say, +perhaps, that he was the result of some strange +back-stroke. But, on closer examination, we need not go so +far. His grandfather, Robert Stevenson, the great +lighthouse-builder, the man who reared the iron-bound pillar on +the destructive Bell Rock, and set life-saving lights there, was +very intent on his professional work, yet he had his ideal, and +romantic, and adventurous side. In the delightful sketch +which his famous grandson gave of him, does he not tell of the +joy Robert Stevenson had on the annual voyage in the +<i>Lighthouse Yacht</i>—how it was looked forward to, +yearned for, and how, when he had Walter Scott on board, his fund +of story and reminiscence all through the tour never +failed—how Scott drew upon it in <i>The Pirate</i> and the +notes to <i>The Pirate</i>, and with what pride Robert Stevenson +preserved the lines Scott wrote in the lighthouse album at the +Bell Rock on that occasion:</p> +<blockquote><p>“PHAROS LOQUITUR</p> +<p>“Far in the bosom of the deep<br /> +O’er these wild shelves my watch I keep,<br /> +A ruddy gem of changeful light<br /> +Bound on the dusky brow of night.<br /> +The seaman bids my lustre hail,<br /> +And scorns to strike his timorous sail.”</p> +</blockquote> +<p>And how in 1850 the old man, drawing nigh unto death, was with +the utmost difficulty dissuaded from going the voyage once more, +and was found furtively in his room packing his portmanteau in +spite of the protests of all his family, and would have gone but +for the utter weakness of death.</p> +<p>His father was also a splendid engineer; was full of invention +and devoted to his profession, but he, too, was not without his +romances, and even vagaries. He loved a story, was a fine +teller of stories, used to sit at night and spin the most +wondrous yarns, a man of much reserve, yet also of much power in +discourse, with an aptness and felicity in the use of +phrases—so much so, as his son tells, that on his deathbed, +when his power of speech was passing from him, and he +couldn’t articulate the right word, he was silent rather +than use the wrong one. I shall never forget how in these +early morning walks at Braemar, finding me sympathetic, he unbent +with the air of a man who had unexpectedly found something he had +sought, and was fairly confidential.</p> +<p>On the mother’s side our author came of ministers. +His maternal grandfather, the Rev. Dr Balfour of Colinton, was a +man of handsome presence, tall, venerable-looking, and not +without a mingled authority and humour of his own—no very +great preacher, I have heard, but would sometimes bring a smile +to the faces of his hearers by very naïve and original ways +of putting things. R. L. Stevenson quaintly tells a story +of how his grandfather when he had physic to take, and was +indulged in a sweet afterwards, yet would not allow the child to +have a sweet because he had not had the physic. A veritable +Calvinist in daily action—from him, no doubt, our subject +drew much of his interest in certain directions—John Knox, +Scottish history, the ’15 and the ’45, and no doubt +much that justifies the line “something of +shorter-catechist,” as applied by Henley to Stevenson among +very contrasted traits indeed.</p> +<p>But strange truly are the interblendings of race, and the way +in which traits of ancestors reappear, modifying and transforming +each other. The gardener knows what can be done by grafts +and buddings; but more wonderful far than anything there, are the +mysterious blendings and outbursts of what is old and forgotten, +along with what is wholly new and strange, and all going to +produce often what we call sometimes eccentricity, and sometimes +originality and genius.</p> +<p>Mr J. F. George, in <i>Scottish Notes and Queries</i>, wrote +as follows on Stevenson’s inheritances and indebtedness to +certain of his ancestors:</p> +<blockquote><p>“About 1650, James Balfour, one of the +Principal Clerks of the Court of Session, married Bridget, +daughter of Chalmers of Balbaithan, Keithhall, and that estate +was for some time in the name of Balfour. His son, James +Balfour of Balbaithan, Merchant and Magistrate of Edinburgh, paid +poll-tax in 1696, but by 1699 the land had been sold. This +was probably due to the fact that Balfour was one of the +Governors of the Darien Company. His grandson, James +Balfour of Pilrig (1705-1795), sometime Professor of Moral +Philosophy in Edinburgh University, whose portrait is sketched in +<i>Catriona</i>, also made a Garioch [Aberdeenshire district] +marriage, his wife being Cecilia, fifth daughter of Sir John +Elphinstone, second baronet of Logie (Elphinstone) and Sheriff of +Aberdeen, by Mary, daughter of Sir Gilbert Elliot, first baronet +of Minto.</p> +<p>“Referring to the Minto descent, Stevenson claims to +have ‘shaken a spear in the Debatable Land and shouted the +slogan of the Elliots.’ He evidently knew little or +nothing of his relations on the Elphinstone side. The Logie +Elphinstones were a cadet branch of Glack, an estate acquired by +Nicholas Elphinstone in 1499. William Elphinstone, a +younger son of James of Glack, and Elizabeth Wood of Bonnyton, +married Margaret Forbes, and was father of Sir James Elphinstone, +Bart., of Logie, so created in 1701. . . .</p> +<p>“Stevenson would have been delighted to acknowledge his +relationship, remote though it was, to ‘the Wolf of +Badenoch,’ who burned Elgin Cathedral without the Earl of +Kildare’s excuse that he thought the Bishop was in it; and +to the Wolf’s son, the Victor of Harlaw [and] to his nephew +‘John O’Coull,’ Constable of France. . . . Also +among Tusitala’s kin may be noted, in addition to the later +Gordons of Gight, the Tiger Earl of Crawford, familiarly known as +‘Earl Beardie,’ the ‘Wicked Master’ of +the same line, who was fatally stabbed by a Dundee cobbler +‘for taking a stoup of drink from him’; Lady Jean +Lindsay, who ran away with ‘a common jockey with the +horn,’ and latterly became a beggar; David Lindsay, the +last Laird of Edzell [a lichtsome Lindsay fallen on evil days], +who ended his days as hostler at a Kirkwall inn, and +‘Mussel Mou’ed Charlie,’ the Jacobite +ballad-singer.</p> +<p>“Stevenson always believed that he had a strong +spiritual affinity to Robert Fergusson. It is more than +probable that there was a distant maternal affinity as +well. Margaret Forbes, the mother of Sir James Elphinstone, +the purchaser of Logie, has not been identified, but it is +probable she was of the branch of the Tolquhon Forbeses who +previously owned Logie. Fergusson’s mother, Elizabeth +Forbes, was the daughter of a Kildrummy tacksman, who by constant +tradition is stated to have been of the house of Tolquhon. +It would certainly be interesting if this suggested connection +could be proved.” <a name="citation5"></a><a +href="#footnote5" class="citation">[5]</a></p> +<p>“From his Highland ancestors,” says the +<i>Quarterly Review</i>, “Louis drew the strain of Celtic +melancholy with all its perils and possibilities, and its +kinship, to the mood of day-dreaming, which has flung over so +many of his pages now the vivid light wherein figures imagined +grew as real as flesh and blood, and yet, again, the ghostly, +strange, lonesome, and stinging mist under whose spell we see the +world bewitched, and every object quickens with a throb of +infectious terror.”</p> +</blockquote> +<p>Here, as in many other cases, we see how the traits of +ancestry reappear and transform other strains, strangely the more +remote often being the strongest and most persistent and +wonderful.</p> +<p>“It is through his father, strange as it may +seem,” says Mr Baildon, “that Stevenson gets the +Celtic elements so marked in his person, character, and genius; +for his father’s pedigree runs back to the Highland clan +Macgregor, the kin of Rob Roy. Stevenson thus drew in +Celtic strains from both sides—from the Balfours and the +Stevensons alike—and in his strange, dreamy, beautiful, and +often far-removed fancies we have the finest and most effective +witness of it.”</p> +<p>Mr William Archer, in his own characteristic way, has brought +the inheritances from the two sides of the house into more direct +contact and contrast in an article he wrote in <i>The Daily +Chronicle</i> on the appearance of the <i>Letters to Family and +Friends</i>.</p> +<blockquote><p>“These letters show,” he says, +“that Stevenson’s was not one of those sunflower +temperaments which turn by instinct, not effort, towards the +light, and are, as Mr Francis Thompson puts it, ‘heartless +and happy, lackeying their god.’ The strains of his +heredity were very curiously, but very clearly, mingled. It +may surprise some readers to find him speaking of ‘the +family evil, despondency,’ but he spoke with +knowledge. He inherited from his father not only a stern +Scottish intentness on the moral aspect of life (‘I would +rise from the dead to preach’), but a marked disposition to +melancholy and hypochondria. From his mother, on the other +hand, he derived, along with his physical frailty, a resolute and +cheery stoicism. These two elements in his nature fought +many a hard fight, and the besieging forces from +without—ill-health, poverty, and at one time family +dissensions—were by no means without allies in the inner +citadel of his soul. His spirit was courageous in the +truest sense of the word: by effort and conviction, not by +temperamental insensibility to fear. It is clear that there +was a period in his life (and that before the worst of his bodily +ills came upon him) when he was often within measurable distance +of Carlylean gloom. He was twenty-four when he wrote thus, +from Swanston, to Mrs Sitwell:</p> +<p>“‘It is warmer a bit; but my body is most +decrepit, and I can just manage to be cheery and tread down +hypochondria under foot by work. I lead such a funny life, +utterly without interest or pleasure outside of my work: nothing, +indeed, but work all day long, except a short walk alone on the +cold hills, and meals, and a couple of pipes with my father in +the evening. It is surprising how it suits me, and how +happy I keep.’</p> +<p>“This is the serenity which arises, not from the absence +of fuliginous elements in the character, but from a potent +smoke-consuming faculty, and an inflexible will to use it. +Nine years later he thus admonishes his backsliding parent:</p> +<p>“‘<span class="smcap">My dear +Mother</span>,—I give my father up. I give him a +parable: that the Waverley novels are better reading for every +day than the tragic <i>Life</i>. And he takes it back-side +foremost, and shakes his head, and is gloomier than ever. +Tell him that I give him up. I don’t want no such a +parent. This is not the man for my money. I do not +call that by the name of religion which fills a man with +bile. I write him a whole letter, bidding him beware of +extremes, and telling him that his gloom is gallows-worthy; and I +get back an answer—. Perish the thought of it.</p> +<p>“‘Here am I on the threshold of another year, +when, according to all human foresight, I should long ago have +been resolved into my elements: here am I, who you were persuaded +was born to disgrace you—and, I will do you the justice to +add, on no such insufficient grounds—no very burning +discredit when all is done; here am I married, and the marriage +recognised to be a blessing of the first order. A1 at +Lloyd’s. There is he, at his not first youth, able to +take more exercise than I at thirty-three, and gaining a +stone’s weight, a thing of which I am incapable. +There are you; has the man no gratitude? . . .</p> +<p>“‘Even the Shorter Catechism, not the merriest +epitome of religion, and a work exactly as pious although not +quite so true as the multiplication table—even that +dry-as-dust epitome begins with a heroic note. What is +man’s chief end? Let him study that; and ask himself +if to refuse to enjoy God’s kindest gifts is in the spirit +indicated.’</p> +<p>“As may be judged from this half-playful, half-serious +remonstrance, Stevenson’s relation to his parents was +eminently human and beautiful. The family dissensions above +alluded to belonged only to a short but painful period, when the +father could not reconcile himself to the discovery that the son +had ceased to accept the formulas of Scottish Calvinism. In +the eyes of the older man such heterodoxy was for the moment +indistinguishable from atheism; but he soon arrived at a better +understanding of his son’s position. Nothing appears +more unmistakably in these letters than the ingrained theism of +Stevenson’s way of thought. The poet, the romancer +within him, revolted from the conception of formless force. +A personal deity was a necessary character in the drama, as he +conceived it. And his morality, though (or inasmuch as) it +dwelt more on positive kindness than on negative lawlessness, +was, as he often insisted, very much akin to the morality of the +New Testament.”</p> +</blockquote> +<p>Anyway it is clear that much in the interminglings of blood we +<i>can</i> trace, may go to account for not a little in +Stevenson. His peculiar interest in the enormities of +old-time feuds, the excesses, the jealousies, the queer +psychological puzzles, the desire to work on the outlying and +morbid, and even the unallowed and unhallowed, for purposes of +romance—the delight in dealing with revelations of +primitive feeling and the out-bursts of the mere natural man +always strangely checked and diverted by the uprise of other +tendencies to the dreamy, impalpable, vague, weird and +horrible. There was the undoubted Celtic element in him +underlying what seemed foreign to it, the disregard of +conventionality in one phase, and the falling under it in +another—the reaction and the retreat from what had +attracted and interested him, and then the return upon it, as +with added zest because of the retreat. The confessed +Hedonist, enjoying life and boasting of it just a little, and yet +the Puritan in him, as it were, all the time eyeing himself as +from some loophole of retreat, and then commenting on his own +behaviour as a Hedonist and Bohemian. This clearly was not +what most struck Beerbohm Tree, during the time he was in close +contact with Stevenson, while arranging the production of <i>Beau +Austin</i> at the Haymarket Theatre, for he sees, or confesses to +seeing, only one side, and that the most assertive, and in a +sense, unreal one:</p> +<blockquote><p>“Stevenson,” says Mr Tree, +“always seemed to me an epicure in life. He was +always intent on extracting the last drop of honey from every +flower that came in his way. He was absorbed in the +business of the moment, however trivial. As a companion, he +was delightfully witty; as a personality, as much a creature of +romance as his own creations.”</p> +</blockquote> +<p>This is simple, and it looks sincere; but it does not touch +’tother side, or hint at, not to say, solve the problem of +Stevenson’s personality. Had he been the mere +Hedonist he could never have done the work he did. Mr +Beerbohm Tree certainly did not there see far or all round.</p> +<p>Miss Simpson says:</p> +<blockquote><p>“Mr Henley recalls him to Edinburgh folk as +he was and as the true Stevenson would have wished to be +known—a queer, inexplicable creature, his Celtic blood +showing like a vein of unknown metal in the stolid, steady rock +of his sure-founded Stevensonian pedigree. His cousin and +model, ‘Bob’ Stevenson, the art critic, showed that +this foreign element came from the men who lit our guiding lights +for seamen, not from the gentle-blooded Balfours.</p> +<p>“Mr Henley is right in saying that the gifted boy had +not much humour. When the joke was against himself he was +very thin-skinned and had a want of balance. This made him +feel his honest father’s sensible remarks like the sting of +a whip.”</p> +</blockquote> +<p>Miss Simpson then proceeds to say:</p> +<blockquote><p>“The R. L. Stevenson of old Edinburgh days +was a conceited, egotistical youth, but a true and honest one: a +youth full of fire and sentiment, protesting he was +misunderstood, though he was not. Posing as ‘Velvet +Coat’ among the slums, he did no good to himself. He +had not the Dickens aptitude for depicting the ways of life of +his adopted friends. When with refined judgment he wanted a +figure for a novel, he went back to the Bar he scorned in his +callow days and then drew in <i>Weir of Hermiston</i>.”</p> +</blockquote> +<h2>CHAPTER V—TRAVELS</h2> +<p>His interest in engineering soon went—his mind full of +stories and fancies and human nature. As he had told his +mother: he did not care about finding what was “the strain +on a bridge,” he wanted to know something of human +beings.</p> +<p>No doubt, much to the disappointment and grief of his father, +who wished him as an only son to carry on the traditions of the +family, though he had written two engineering essays of utmost +promise, the engineering was given up, and he consented to study +law. He had already contributed to College Magazines, and +had had even a short spell of editing one; of one of these he has +given a racy account. Very soon after his call to the Bar +articles and essays from his pen began to appear in +<i>Macmillan’s</i>, and later, more regularly in the +<i>Cornhill</i>. Careful readers soon began to note here +the presence of a new force. He had gone on the <i>Inland +Voyage</i> and an account of it was in hand; and had done that +tour in the Cevennes which he has described under the title +<i>Travels with a Donkey in the Cevennes</i>, with Modestine, +sometimes doubting which was the donkey, but on that tour a chill +caught either developed a germ of lung disease already present, +or produced it; and the results unfortunately remained.</p> +<p>He never practised at the Bar, though he tells facetiously of +his one brief. He had chosen his own vocation, which was +literature, and the years which followed were, despite the +delicacy which showed itself, very busy years. He produced +volume on volume. He had written many stories which had +never seen the light, but, as he says, passed through the ordeal +of the fire by more or less circuitous ways.</p> +<p>By this time some trouble and cause for anxiety had arisen +about the lungs, and trials of various places had been +made. <i>Ordered South</i> suggests the Mediterranean, +sunny Italy, the Riviera. Then a sea-trip to America was +recommended and undertaken. Unfortunately, he got worse +there, his original cause of trouble was complicated with others, +and the medical treatment given was stupid, and exaggerated some +of the symptoms instead of removing them, All along—up, at +all events, to the time of his settlement in +Samoa—Stevenson was more or less of an invalid.</p> +<p>Indeed, were I ever to write an essay on the art of wisely +“laying-to,” as the sailors say, I would point it by +a reference to R. L. Stevenson. For there is a wise way of +“laying-to” that does not imply inaction, but +discreet, well-directed effort, against contrary winds and rough +seas, that is, amid obstacles and drawbacks, and even ill-health, +where passive and active may balance and give effect to each +other. Stevenson was by native instinct and temperament a +rover—a lover of adventure, of strange by-ways, errant +tracts (as seen in his <i>Inland Voyage</i> and <i>Travels with a +Donkey through the Cevennes</i>—seen yet more, perhaps, in +a certain account of a voyage to America as a steerage +passenger), lofty mountain-tops, with stronger air, and strange +and novel surroundings. He would fain, like Ulysses, be at +home in foreign lands, making acquaintance with outlying races, +with</p> + +<blockquote><p> “Cities +of men,<br /> +And manners, climates, councils, governments:<br /> +Myself not least, but honoured of them all,<br /> +Far on the ringing plains of windy Troy.”</p> +</blockquote> +<p>If he could not move about as he would, he would invent, make +fancy serve him instead of experience. We thus owe +something to the staying and restraining forces in him, and a +wise “laying-to”—for his works, which are, in +large part, finely-healthy, objective, and in almost everything +unlike the work of an invalid, yet, in some degree, were but the +devices to beguile the burdens of an invalid’s days. +Instead of remaining in our climate, it might be, to lie listless +and helpless half the day, with no companion but his own thoughts +and fancies (not always so pleasant either, if, like +Frankenstein’s monster, or, better still like the imp in +the bottle in the <i>Arabian Nights</i>, you cannot, once for all +liberate them, and set them adrift on their own charges to visit +other people), he made a home in the sweeter air and more steady +climate of the South Pacific, where, under the Southern Cross, he +could safely and beneficially be as active as he would be +involuntarily idle at home, or work only under pressure of +hampering conditions. That was surely an illustration of +the true “laying-to” with an unaffectedly brave, +bright resolution in it.</p> +<h2>CHAPTER VI—SOME EARLIER LETTERS</h2> +<p>Carlyle was wont to say that, next to a faithful portrait, +familiar letters were the best medium to reveal a man. The +letters must have been written with no idea of being used for +this end, however—free, artless, the unstudied +self-revealings of mind and heart. Now, these letters of R. +L. Stevenson, written to his friends in England, have a vast +value in this way—they reveal the man—reveal him in +his strength and his weakness—his ready gift in pleasing +and adapting himself to those with whom he corresponded, and his +great power at once of adapting himself to his circumstances and +of humorously rising superior to them. When he was ill and +almost penniless in San Francisco, he could give Mr Colvin this +account of his daily routine:</p> +<blockquote><p>“Any time between eight and half-past nine +in the morning a slender gentleman in an ulster, with a volume +buttoned into the breast of it, maybe observed leaving No. 608 +Bush and descending Powell with an active step. The +gentleman is R. L. Stevenson; the volume relates to Benjamin +Franklin, on whom he meditates one of his charming essays. +He descends Powell, crosses Market, and descends in Sixth on a +branch of the original Pine Street Coffee-House, no less. . . . +He seats himself at a table covered with waxcloth, and a pampered +menial of High-Dutch extraction, and, indeed, as yet only +partially extracted, lays before him a cup of coffee, a roll, and +a pat of butter, all, to quote the deity, very good. A +while ago, and R. L. Stevenson used to find the supply of butter +insufficient; but he has now learned the art to exactitude, and +butter and roll expire at the same moment. For this +rejection he pays ten cents, or fivepence sterling (£0 0s. +5d.).</p> +<p>“Half an hour later, the inhabitants of Bush Street +observed the same slender gentleman armed, like George +Washington, with his little hatchet, splitting kindling, and +breaking coal for his fire. He does this quasi-publicly +upon the window-sill; but this is not to be attributed to any +love of notoriety, though he is indeed vain of his prowess with +the hatchet (which he persists in calling an axe), and daily +surprised at the perpetuation of his fingers. The reason is +this: That the sill is a strong supporting beam, and that blows +of the same emphasis in other parts of his room might knock the +entire shanty into hell. Thenceforth, for from three hours, +he is engaged darkly with an ink-bottle. Yet he is not +blacking his boots, for the only pair that he possesses are +innocent of lustre, and wear the natural hue of the material +turned up with caked and venerable slush. The youngest +child of his landlady remarks several times a day, as this +strange occupant enters or quits the house, ‘Dere’s +de author.’ Can it be that this bright-haired +innocent has found the true clue to the mystery? The being +in question is, at least, poor enough to belong to that +honourable craft.”</p> +</blockquote> +<p>Here are a few letters belonging to the winter of 1887-88, +nearly all written from Saranac Lake, in the Adirondacks, +celebrated by Emerson, and now a most popular holiday resort in +the United States, and were originally published in +<i>Scribner’s Magazine</i>. . . “It should be said +that, after his long spell of weakness at Bournemouth, Stevenson +had gone West in search of health among the bleak hill +summits—‘on the Canadian border of New York State, +very unsettled and primitive and cold.’ He had made +the voyage in an ocean tramp, the <i>Ludgate Hill</i>, the sort +of craft which any person not a born child of the sea would shun +in horror. Stevenson, however, had ‘the finest time +conceivable on board the “strange floating +menagerie.”’” Thus he describes it in a +letter to Mr Henry James:</p> +<blockquote><p>“Stallions and monkeys and matches made our +cargo; and the vast continent of these incongruities rolled the +while like a haystack; and the stallions stood hypnotised by the +motion, looking through the port at our dinner-table, and winked +when the crockery was broken; and the little monkeys stared at +each other in their cages, and were thrown overboard like little +bluish babies; and the big monkey, Jacko, scoured about the ship +and rested willingly in my arms, to the ruin of my clothing; and +the man of the stallions made a bower of the black tarpaulin, and +sat therein at the feet of a raddled divinity, like a picture on +a box of chocolates; and the other passengers, when they were not +sick, looked on and laughed. Take all this picture, and +make it roll till the bell shall sound unexpected notes and the +fittings shall break loose in our stateroom, and you have the +voyage of the <i>Ludgate Hill</i>. She arrived in the port +of New York without beer, porter, soda-water, curaçoa, +fresh meat, or fresh water; and yet we lived, and we regret +her.”</p> +</blockquote> +<p>He discovered this that there is no joy in the Universe +comparable to life on a villainous ocean tramp, rolling through a +horrible sea in company with a cargo of cattle.</p> +<blockquote><p>“I have got one good thing of my sea voyage; +it is proved the sea agrees heartily with me, and my mother likes +it; so if I get any better, or no worse, my mother will likely +hire a yacht for a month or so in the summer. Good Lord! +what fun! Wealth is only useful for two things: a yacht and +a string quartette. For these two I will sell my +soul. Except for these I hold that £700 a year is as +much as anybody can possibly want; and I have had more, so I +know, for the extra coins were of no use, excepting for illness, +which damns everything. I was so happy on board that ship, +I could not have believed it possible; we had the beastliest +weather, and many discomforts; but the mere fact of its being a +tramp ship gave us many comforts. We could cut about with +the men and officers, stay in the wheel-house, discuss all manner +of things, and really be a little at sea. And truly there +is nothing else. I had literally forgotten what happiness +was, and the full mind—full of external and physical +things, not full of cares and labours, and rot about a +fellow’s behaviour. My heart literally sang; I truly +care for nothing so much as for that.</p> +<p>“To go ashore for your letters and hang about the pier +among the holiday yachtsmen—that’s fame, that’s +glory—and nobody can take it away.”</p> +</blockquote> +<p>At Saranac Lake the Stevensons lived in a +“wind-beleaguered hill-top hat-box of a house,” which +suited the invalid, but, on the other hand, invalided his +wife. Soon after getting there he plunged into <i>The +Master of Ballantrae</i>.</p> +<blockquote><p>“No thought have I now apart from it, and I +have got along up to page ninety-two of the draught with great +interest. It is to me a most seizing tale: there are some +fantastic elements, the most is a dead genuine human +problem—human tragedy, I should say rather. It will +be about as long, I imagine, as <i>Kidnapped</i>. . . . I have +done most of the big work, the quarrel, duel between the +brothers, and the announcement of the death to Clementina and my +Lord—Clementina, Henry, and Mackellar (nicknamed +Squaretoes) are really very fine fellows; the Master is all I +know of the devil; I have known hints of him, in the world, but +always cowards: he is as bold as a lion, but with the same +deadly, causeless duplicity I have watched with so much surprise +in my two cowards. ’Tis true, I saw a hint of the +same nature in another man who was not a coward; but he had other +things to attend to; the Master has nothing else but his +devilry.”</p> +</blockquote> +<p>His wife grows seriously ill, and Stevenson has to turn to +household work.</p> +<blockquote><p>“Lloyd and I get breakfast; I have now, +10.15, just got the dishes washed and the kitchen all clean, and +sit down to give you as much news as I have spirit for, after +such an engagement. Glass is a thing that really breaks my +spirit; and I do not like to fail, and with glass I cannot reach +the work of my high calling—the artist’s.”</p> +</blockquote> +<p>In the midst of such domestic tasks and entanglements he +writes <i>The Master</i>, and very characteristically gets +dissatisfied with the last parts, “which shame, perhaps +degrade, the beginning.”</p> +<p>Of Mr Kipling this is his judgment—in the year 1890:</p> +<blockquote><p>“Kipling is by far the most promising young +man who has appeared since—ahem—I appeared. He +amazes me by his precocity and various endowments. But he +alarms me by his copiousness and haste. He should shield +his fire with both hands, ‘and draw up all his strength and +sweetness in one ball.’ (‘Draw all his strength +and all his sweetness up into one ball’? I cannot +remember Marvell’s words.) So the critics have been +saying to me; but I was never capable of—and surely never +guilty of—such a debauch of production. At this rate +his works will soon fill the habitable globe, and surely he was +armed for better conflicts than these succinct sketches and +flying leaves of verse? I look on, I admire, I rejoice for +myself; but in a kind of ambition we all have for our tongue and +literature I am wounded. If I had this man’s +fertility and courage, it seems to me I could heave a +pyramid.</p> +<p>“Well, we begin to be the old fogies now, and it was +high time <i>something</i> rose to take our places. +Certainly Kipling has the gifts; the fairy godmothers were all +tipsy at his christening. What will he do with +them?”</p> +</blockquote> +<p>Of the rest of Stevenson’s career we cannot speak at +length, nor is it needful. How in steady succession came +his triumphs: came, too, his trials from ill-health—how he +spent winters at Davos Platz, Bournemouth, and tried other places +in America; and how, at last, good fortune led him to the South +Pacific. After many voyagings and wanderings among the +islands, he settled near Apia, in Samoa, early in 1890, cleared +some four hundred acres, and built a house; where, while he wrote +what delighted the English-speaking race, he took on himself the +defence of the natives against foreign interlopers, writing under +the title <i>A Footnote to History</i>, the most powerful +<i>exposé</i> of the mischief they had done and were doing +there. He was the beloved of the natives, as he made +himself the friend of all with whom he came in contact. +There, as at home, he worked—worked with the same +determination and in the enjoyment of better health. The +obtaining idea with him, up to the end, as it had been from early +life, was a brave, resolute, cheerful endeavour to make the best +of it.</p> +<p>“I chose Samoa instead of Honolulu,” he told Mr W. +H. Trigg, who reports the talk in <i>Cassells’ +Magazine</i>, “for the simple and eminently satisfactory +reason that it is less civilised. Can you not conceive that +it is awful fun?” His house was called +“Vailima,” which means Five Waters in the Samoan, and +indicates the number of streams that flow by the spot.</p> +<h2>CHAPTER VII—THE VAILIMA LETTERS</h2> +<p>The Vailima Letters, written to Mr Sidney Colvin and other +friends, are in their way delightful if not inimitable: and this, +in spite of the idea having occurred to him, that some use might +hereafter be made of these letters for publication +purposes. There is, indeed, as little trace of any change +in the style through this as well could be—the utterly +familiar, easy, almost child-like flow remains, unmarred by +self-consciousness or tendency “to put it on.”</p> +<p>In June, 1892, Stevenson says:</p> +<blockquote><p>“It came over me the other day suddenly that +this diary of mine to you would make good pickings after I am +dead, and a man could make some kind of a book out of it, without +much trouble. So for God’s sake don’t lose +them, and they will prove a piece of provision for ‘my +floor old family,’ as Simelé calls it.”</p> +</blockquote> +<p>But their great charm remains: they are as free and gracious +and serious and playful and informal as before. +Stevenson’s traits of character are all here: his largeness +of heart, his delicacy, his sympathy, his fun, his pathos, his +boylike frolicsomeness, his fine courage, his love of the sea +(for he was by nature a sailor), his passion for action and +adventure despite his ill-health, his great patience with others +and fine adaptability to their temper (he says that he never gets +out of temper with those he has to do with), his unbounded, +big-hearted hopefulness, and fine perseverance in face of +difficulties. What could be better than the way in which he +tells that in January, 1892, when he had a bout of influenza and +was dictating <i>St Ives</i> to his stepdaughter, Mrs Strong, he +was “reduced to dictating to her in the deaf-and-dumb +alphabet”?—and goes on:</p> +<blockquote><p>“The amanuensis has her head quite turned, +and believes herself to be the author of this novel [<i>and is to +some extent</i>.—A.M.] and as the creature (!) has not been +wholly useless in the matter [<i>I told you so</i>!—A.M.] I +propose to foster her vanity by a little commemoration gift! . . +. I shall tell you on some other occasion, and when the A.M. is +out of hearing, how <i>very</i> much I propose to invest in this +testimonial; but I may as well inform you at once that I intend +it to be cheap, sir—damned cheap! My idea of running +amanuenses is by praise, not pudding, flattery, and not +coins.”</p> +</blockquote> +<p>Truly, a rare and rich nature which could thus draw sunshine +out of its trials!—which, by aid of the true +philosopher’s stone of cheerfulness and courage, could +transmute the heavy dust and clay to gold.</p> +<p>His interests are so wide that he is sometimes pulled in +different and conflicting directions, as in the contest between +his desire to aid Mataafa and the other chiefs, and his literary +work—between letters to the <i>Times</i> about Samoan +politics, and, say, <i>David Balfour</i>. Here is a +characteristic bit in that strain:</p> +<blockquote><p>“I have a good dose of the devil in my +pipestem atomy; I have had my little holiday outing in my kick at +<i>The Young Chevalier</i>, and I guess I can settle to <i>David +Balfour</i>, to-morrow or Friday like a little man. I +wonder if any one had ever more energy upon so little +strength? I know there is a frost; . . . but I mean to +break that frost inside two years, and pull off a big success, +and Vanity whispers in my ear that I have the strength. If +I haven’t, whistle owre the lave o’t! I can do +without glory, and perhaps the time is not far off when I can do +without corn. It is a time coming soon enough, anyway; and +I have endured some two and forty years without public shame, and +had a good time as I did it. If only I could secure a +violent death, what a fine success! I wish to die in my +boots; no more Land of Counterpane for me. To be drowned, +to be shot, to be thrown from a horse—ay, to be hanged, +rather than pass again through that slow dissolution.”</p> +</blockquote> +<p>He would not consent to act the invalid unless the spring ran +down altogether; was keen for exercise and for mixing among +men—his native servants if no others were near by. +Here is a bit of confession and casuistry quite <i>à +la</i> Stevenson:</p> +<blockquote><p>“To come down covered with mud and drenched +with sweat and rain after some hours in the bush, change, rub +down, and take a chair in the verandah, is to taste a quiet +conscience. And the strange thing that I mark is this: If I +go out and make sixpence, bossing my labourers and plying the +cutlass or the spade, idiot conscience applauds me; if I sit in +the house and make twenty pounds, idiot conscience wails over my +neglect and the day wasted.”</p> +</blockquote> +<p>His relish for companionship is indeed strong. At one +place he says:</p> +<blockquote><p>“God knows I don’t care who I chum +with perhaps I like sailors best, but to go round and sue and +sneak to keep a crowd together—never!”</p> +</blockquote> +<p>If Stevenson’s natural bent was to be an explorer, a +mountain-climber, or a sailor—to sail wide seas, or to +range on mountain-tops to gain free and extensive views—yet +he inclines well to farmer work, and indeed, has to confess it +has a rare attraction for him.</p> +<blockquote><p>“I went crazy over outdoor work,” he +says at one place, “and had at last to confine myself to +the house, or literature must have gone by the board. +<i>Nothing</i> is so interesting as weeding, clearing, and +path-making: the oversight of labourers becomes a disease. +It is quite an effort not to drop into the farmer; and it does +make you feel so well.”</p> +</blockquote> +<p>The odd ways of these Samoans, their pride of position, their +vices, their virtues, their vanities, their small thefts, their +tricks, their delightful <i>insouciance</i> sometimes, all amused +him. He found in them a fine field of study and +observation—a source of fun and fund of humanity—as +this bit about the theft of some piglings will sufficiently +prove:</p> +<blockquote><p>“Last night three piglings were stolen from +one of our pig-pens. The great Lafaele appeared to my wife +uneasy, so she engaged him in conversation on the subject, and +played upon him the following engaging trick: You advance your +two forefingers towards the sitter’s eyes; he closes them, +whereupon you substitute (on his eyelids) the fore and middle +fingers of the left hand, and with your right (which he supposes +engaged) you tap him on the head and back. When you let him +open his eyes, he sees you withdrawing the two forefingers. +‘What that?’ asked Lafaele. ‘My +devil,’ says Fanny. ‘I wake um, my devil. +All right now. He go catch the man that catch my +pig.’ About an hour afterwards Lafaele came for +further particulars. ‘Oh, all right,’ my wife +says. ‘By-and-by that man be sleep, devil go sleep +same place. By-and-by that man plenty sick. I no +care. What for he take my pig?’ Lafaele cares +plenty; I don’t think he is the man, though he may be; but +he knows him, and most likely will eat some of that pig +to-night. He will not eat with relish.’”</p> +</blockquote> +<p>Yet in spite of this R. L. Stevenson declares that:</p> +<blockquote><p>“They are a perfectly honest people: nothing +of value has ever been taken from our house, where doors and +windows are always wide open; and upon one occasion when white +ants attacked the silver chest, the whole of my family treasure +lay spread upon the floor of the hall for two days +unguarded.”</p> +</blockquote> +<p>Here is a bit on a work of peace, a reflection on a +day’s weeding at Vailima—in its way almost as +touching as any:</p> +<blockquote><p>“I wonder if any one had ever the same +attitude to Nature as I hold, and have held for so long? +This business fascinates me like a tune or a passion; yet all the +while I thrill with a strong distaste. The horror of the +thing, objective and subjective, is always present to my mind; +the horror of creeping things, a superstitious horror of the void +and the powers about me, the horror of my own devastation and +continual murders. The life of the plants comes through my +finger-tips, their struggles go to my heart like +supplications. I feel myself blood-boltered; then I look +back on my cleared grass, and count myself an ally in a fair +quarrel, and make stout my heart.”</p> +</blockquote> +<p>Here, again, is the way in which he celebrates an act of +friendly kindness on the part of Mr Gosse:</p> +<blockquote><p>“<span class="smcap">My dear +Gosse</span>,—Your letter was to me such a bright spot that +I answer it right away to the prejudice of other correspondents +or—dants (don’t know how to spell it) who have prior +claims. . . . It is the history of our kindnesses that alone +makes this world tolerable. If it were not for that, for +the effect of kind words, kind looks, kind letters, multiplying, +spreading, making one happy through another and bringing forth +benefits, some thirty, some fifty, some a thousandfold, I should +be tempted to think our life a practical jest in the worst +possible spirit. So your four pages have confirmed my +philosophy as well as consoled my heart in these ill +hours.”</p> +</blockquote> +<h2>CHAPTER VIII—WORK OF LATER YEARS</h2> +<p>Mr Hammerton, in his <i>Stevensoniana</i> (pp. 323-4), has +given the humorous inscriptions on the volumes of his works which +Stevenson presented to Dr Trudeau, who attended him when he was +in Saranac in 1887-88—very characteristic in every way, and +showing fully Stevenson’s fine appreciation of any +attention or service. On the <i>Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde</i> +volume he wrote:</p> +<blockquote><p>“Trudeau was all the winter at my side:<br +/> +I never saw the nose of Mr Hyde.”</p> +</blockquote> +<p>And on <i>Kidnapped</i> is this:</p> +<blockquote><p>“Here is the one sound page of all my +writing,<br /> +The one I’m proud of and that I delight in.”</p> +</blockquote> +<p>Stevenson was exquisite in this class of efforts, and were +they all collected they would form indeed, a fine supplement and +illustration of the leading lesson of his essays—the true +art of pleasing others, and of truly pleasing one’s self at +the same time. To my thinking the finest of all in this +line is the legal (?) deed by which he conveyed his birthday to +little Miss Annie Ide, the daughter of Mr H. C. Ide, a well-known +American, who was for several years a resident of Upolo, in +Samoa, first as Land Commissioner, and later as Chief Justice +under the joint appointment of England, Germany, and the United +States. While living at Apia, Mr Ide and his family were +very intimate with the family of R. L. Stevenson. Little +Annie was a special pet and protégé of Stevenson +and his wife. After the return of the Ides to their +American home, Stevenson “deeded” to Annie his +birthday in the following unique document:</p> +<blockquote><p>I, <span class="smcap">Robert Louis +Stevenson</span>, advocate of the Scots Bar, author of <i>The +Master of Ballantrae</i> and <i>Moral Emblems</i>, civil +engineer, sole owner and patentee of the palace and plantation +known as Vailima, in the island of Upolo, Samoa, a British +subject, being in sound mind, and pretty well, I thank you, in +mind and body;</p> +<p>In consideration that Miss Annie H. Ide, daughter of H. C. +Ide, in the town of Saint Johnsbury, in the County of Caledonia, +in the State of Vermont, United States of America, was born, out +of all reason, upon Christmas Day, and is, therefore, out of all +justice, denied the consolation and profit of a proper +birthday;</p> +<p>And considering that I, the said Robert Louis Stevenson, have +attained the age when we never mention it, and that I have now no +further use for a birthday of any description;</p> +<p>And in consideration that I have met H. C. Ide, the father of +the said Annie H. Ide, and found him as white a land commissioner +as I require, I have transferred, and do hereby transfer, to the +said Annie H. Ide, all and whole of my rights and privileges in +the 13th day of November, formerly my birthday, now, hereby and +henceforth, the birthday of the said Annie H. Ide, to have, hold, +exercise, and enjoy the same in the customary manner, by the +sporting of fine raiment, eating of rich meats, and receipt of +gifts, compliments, and copies of verse, according to the manner +of our ancestors;</p> +<p>And I direct the said Annie H. Ide to add to the said name of +Annie H. Ide the name of Louisa—at least in +private—and I charge her to use my said birthday with +moderation and humanity, <i>et tamquam bona filia familias</i>, +the said birthday not being so young as it once was and having +carried me in a very satisfactory manner since I can +remember;</p> +<p>And in case the said Annie H. Ide shall neglect or contravene +either of the above conditions, I hereby revoke the donation and +transfer my rights in the said birthday to the President of the +United States of America for the time being.</p> +<p>In witness whereof I have hereto set my hand and seal this +19th day of June, in the year of grace eighteen hundred and +ninety-one.</p> +<p style="text-align: right"><span class="smcap">Robert Louis +Stevenson</span>. [Seal.]</p> +<p><i>Witness</i>, <span class="smcap">Lloyd Osbourne</span>.</p> +<p><i>Witness</i>, <span class="smcap">Harold Watts</span>.</p> +</blockquote> +<p>He died in Samoa in December 1894—not from phthisis or +anything directly connected with it, but from the bursting of a +blood-vessel and suffusion of blood on the brain. He had up +to the moment almost of his sudden and unexpected death been busy +on <i>Weir of Hermiston</i> and <i>St Ives</i>, which he left +unfinished—the latter having been brought to a conclusion +by Mr Quiller-Couch.</p> +<h2>CHAPTER IX—SOME CHARACTERISTICS</h2> +<p>In Stevenson we lost one of the most powerful writers of our +day, as well as the most varied in theme and style. When I +use the word “powerful,” I do not mean merely the +producing of the most striking or sensational results, nor the +facility of weaving a fascinating or blood-curdling plot; I mean +the writer who seemed always to have most in reserve—a +secret fund of power and fascination which always pointed beyond +the printed page, and set before the attentive and careful reader +a strange but fascinating <i>personality</i>. Other authors +have done that in measure. There was Hawthorne, behind +whose writings there is always the wistful, cold, far-withdrawn +spectator of human nature—eerie, inquisitive, and, I had +almost said, inquisitorial—a little bloodless, eerie, +weird, and cobwebby. There was Dr Wendell Holmes, with his +problems of heredity, of race-mixture and weird inoculation, as +in <i>Elsie Venner</i> and <i>The Guardian Angel</i>, and there +were Poe and Charles Whitehead. Stevenson, in a few of his +writings—in one of the <i>Merry Men</i> chapters and in +<i>Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde</i>, and, to some extent, in <i>The +Master of Ballantrae</i>—showed that he could enter on the +obscure and, in a sense, weird and metaphysical elements in human +life; though always there was, too, a touch at least of gloomy +suggestion, from which, as it seemed, he could not there wholly +escape. But always, too, there was a touch that suggests +the universal.</p> +<p>Even in the stories that would be classed as those of incident +and adventure merely, <i>Treasure Island</i>, <i>Kidnapped</i>, +and the rest, there is a sense as of some unaffected but fine +symbolism that somehow touches something of possibility in +yourself as you read. The simplest narrative from his hand +proclaimed itself a deep study in human nature—its motives +tendencies, and possibilities. In these stories there is +promise at once of the most realistic imagination, the most +fantastic romance, keen insights into some sides of human nature, +and weird fancies, as well as the most delicate and dainty +pictures of character. And this is precisely what we +have—always with a vein of the finest autobiography—a +kind of select and indirect self-revelation—often with a +touch of quaintness, a subdued humour, and sweet-blooded vagary, +if we may be allowed the word, which make you feel towards the +writer as towards a friend. He was too much an artist to +overdo this, and his strength lies there, that generally he +suggests and turns away at the right point, with a smile, as you +ask for <i>more</i>. Look how he sets, half slyly, these +words into the mouth of David Balfour on his first meeting with +Catriona in one of the steep wynds or closes off the High Street +of Edinburgh:</p> +<blockquote><p>“There is no greater wonder than the way the +face of a young woman fits in a man’s mind, and stays +there, and he never could tell you why: it just seems it was the +thing he wanted.”</p> +</blockquote> +<p>Take this alongside of his remark made to his mother while +still a youth—“that he did not care to understand the +strain on a bridge” (when he tried to study engineering); +what he wanted was something with human nature in it. His +style, in his essays, etc., where he writes in his own person, is +most polished, full of phrases finely drawn; when he speaks +through others, as in <i>Kidnapped</i> and <i>David Balfour</i>, +it is still fine and effective, and generally it is fairly true +to the character, with cunning glimpses, nevertheless, of his own +temper and feeling too. He makes us feel his confidants and +friends, as has been said. One could almost construct a +biography from his essays and his novels—the one would give +us the facts of his life suffused with fancy and ideal colour, +humour and fine observation not wanting; the other would give us +the history of his mental and moral being and development, and of +the traits and determinations which he drew from along a +lengthened line of progenitors. How characteristic it is of +him—a man who for so many years suffered as an +invalid—that he should lay it down that the two great +virtues, including all others, were cheerfulness and delight in +labour.</p> +<p>One writer has very well said on this feature in +Stevenson:</p> +<blockquote><p>“Other authors have struggled bravely +against physical weakness, but their work has not usually been of +a creative order, dependent for its success on high animal +spirits. They have written histories, essays, contemplative +or didactic poems, works which may more or less be regarded as +‘dull narcotics numbing pain.’ But who, in so +fragile a frame as Robert Louis Stevenson’s, has retained +such indomitable elasticity, such fertility of invention, such +unflagging energy, not merely to collect and arrange, but to +project and body forth? Has any true ‘maker’ +been such an incessant sufferer? From his childhood, as he +himself said apropos of the <i>Child’s Garden</i>, he could +‘speak with less authority of gardens than of that other +“land of counterpane.”’ There were, +indeed, a few years of adolescence during which his health was +tolerable, but they were years of apprenticeship to life and art +(‘pioching,’ as he called it), not of serious +production. Though he was a precocious child, his genius +ripened slowly, and it was just reaching maturity when the +‘wolverine,’ as he called his disease, fixed its +fangs in his flesh. From that time forward not only did he +live with death at his elbow in an almost literal sense (he used +to carry his left arm in a sling lest a too sudden movement +should bring on a hæmorrhage), but he had ever-recurring +intervals of weeks and months during which he was totally unfit +for work; while even at the best of times he had to husband his +strength most jealously. Add to all this that he was a slow +and laborious writer, who would take more pains with a phrase +than Scott with a chapter—then look at the stately shelf of +his works, brimful of impulse, initiative, and the joy of life, +and say whether it be an exaggeration to call his tenacity and +fortitude unique!”</p> +</blockquote> +<p>Samoa, with its fine climate, prolonged his life—we had +fain hoped that in that air he found so favourable he might have +lived for many years, to add to the precious stock of innocent +delight he has given to the world—to do yet more and +greater. It was not to be. They buried him, with full +native honours as to a chief, on the top of Vaea mountain, 1300 +feet high—a road for the coffin to pass being cut through +the woods on the slopes of the hill. There he has a +resting-place not all unfit—for he sought the pure and +clearer air on the heights from whence there are widest +prospects; yet not in the spot he would have chosen—for his +heart was at home, and not very long before his death he sang, +surely with pathetic reference now:</p> +<blockquote><p>“Spring shall come, come again, calling up +the moorfowl,<br /> +Spring shall bring the sun and rain, bring the bees and +flowers,<br /> +Red shall the heather bloom over hill and valley,<br /> +Soft flow the stream thro’ the even-flowing hours;<br /> +Fair the day shine, as it shone upon my childhood—<br /> + Fair shine the day on the house with open door;<br +/> +Birds come and cry there, and twitter in the chimney—<br /> + But I go for ever and come again no more.”</p> +</blockquote> +<h2>CHAPTER X—A SAMOAN MEMORIAL OF R. L. STEVENSON</h2> +<p>A few weeks after his death, the mail from Samoa, brought to +Stevenson’s friends, myself among the number, a precious, +if pathetic, memorial of the master. It is in the form of +“A Letter to Mr Stevenson’s Friends,” by his +stepson, Mr Lloyd Osbourne, and bears the motto from Walt +Whitman, “I have been waiting for you these many +years. Give me your hand and welcome.” Mr +Osbourne gives a full account of the last hours.</p> +<blockquote><p>“He wrote hard all that morning of the last +day; his half-finished book, <i>Hermiston</i>, he judged the best +he had ever written, and the sense of successful effort made him +buoyant and happy as nothing else could. In the afternoon +the mail fell to be answered—not business correspondence, +for this was left till later—but replies to the long, +kindly letters of distant friends received but two days since, +and still bright in memory. At sunset he came downstairs; +rallied his wife about the forebodings she could not shake off; +talked of a lecturing tour to America that he was eager to make, +‘as he was now so well’; and played a game of cards +with her to drive away her melancholy. He said he was +hungry; begged her assistance to help him make a salad for the +evening meal; and, to enhance the little feast he brought up a +bottle of old Burgundy from the cellar. He was helping his +wife on the verandah, and gaily talking, when suddenly he put +both hands to his head and cried out, ‘What’s +that?’ Then he asked quickly, ‘Do I look +strange?’ Even as he did so he fell on his knees +beside her. He was helped into the great hall, between his +wife and his body-servant, Sosimo, losing consciousness instantly +as he lay back in the armchair that had once been his +grandfather’s. Little time was lost in bringing the +doctors—Anderson of the man-of-war, and his friend, Dr +Funk. They looked at him and shook their heads; they +laboured strenuously, and left nothing undone. But he had +passed the bounds of human skill. He had grown so well and +strong, that his wasted lungs were unable to bear the stress of +returning health.”</p> +</blockquote> +<p>Then ’tis told how the Rev. Mr Clarke came and prayed by +him; and how, soon after, the chiefs were summoned, and came, +bringing their fine mats, which, laid on the body, almost hid the +Union jack in which it had been wrapped. One of the old +Mataafa chiefs, who had been in prison, and who had been one of +those who worked on the making of the “Road of the Loving +Heart” (the road of gratitude which the chiefs had made up +to Mr Stevenson’s house as a mark of their appreciation of +his efforts on their behalf), came and crouched beside the body +and said:</p> +<blockquote><p>“I am only a poor Samoan, and +ignorant. Others are rich, and can give Tusitala <a +name="citation6"></a><a href="#footnote6" +class="citation">[6]</a> the parting presents of rich, fine mats; +I am poor, and can give nothing this last day he receives his +friends. Yet I am not afraid to come and look the last time +in my friend’s face, never to see him more till we meet +with God. Behold! Tusitala is dead; Mataafa is also +dead. These two great friends have been taken by God. +When Mataafa was taken, who was our support but Tusitala? +We were in prison, and he cared for us. We were sick, and +he made us well. We were hungry, and he fed us. The +day was no longer than his kindness. You are great people, +and full of love. Yet who among you is so great as +Tusitala? What is your love to his love? Our clan was +Mataafa’s clan, for whom I speak this day; therein was +Tusitala also. We mourn them both.”</p> +</blockquote> +<p>A select company of Samoans would not be deterred, and watched +by the body all night, chanting songs, with bits of Catholic +prayers; and in the morning the work began of clearing a path +through the wood on the hill to the spot on the crown where Mr +Stevenson had expressed a wish to be buried. The following +prayer, which Mr Stevenson had written and read aloud to his +family only the night before, was read by Mr Clarke in the +service:</p> +<blockquote><p>“We beseech thee, Lord, to behold us with +favour, folk of many families and nations, gathered together in +the peace of this roof; weak men and women, subsisting under the +covert of Thy patience. Be patient still; suffer us yet a +while longer—with our broken purposes of good, with our +idle endeavours against evil—suffer us a while longer to +endure, and (if it may be) help us to do better. Bless to +us our extraordinary mercies; if the day come when these must be +taken, have us play the man under affliction. Be with our +friends; be with ourselves. Go with each of us to rest: if +any awake, temper to them the dark hours of watching; and when +the day returns to us, our Sun and Comforter, call us up with +morning faces and with morning hearts—eager to +labour—eager to be happy, if happiness shall be our +portion; and if the day be marked for sorrow, strong to endure +it.</p> +<p>“We thank Thee and praise Thee, and in the words of Him +to whom this day is sacred, close our oblations.”</p> +</blockquote> +<p>Mr Bazzet M. Haggard, H.B.M., Land-Commissioner, tells, by way +of reminiscence, the story of “The Road of Good +Heart,” how it came to be built, and of the great feast Mr +Stevenson gave at the close of the work, at which, in the course +of his speech, he said:</p> +<blockquote><p>“You are all aware in some degree of what +has happened. You know those chiefs to have been prisoners; +you perhaps know that during the term of their confinement I had +it in my power to do them certain favours. One thing some +of you cannot know, that they were immediately repaid by +answering attentions. They were liberated by the new +Administration. . . . As soon as they were free +men—owing no man anything—instead of going home to +their own places and families, they came to me. They +offered to do this work (to make this road) for me as a free +gift, without hire, without supplies, and I was tempted at first +to refuse their offer. I knew the country to be poor; I +knew famine threatening; I knew their families long disorganised +for want of supervision. Yet I accepted, because I thought +the lesson of that road might be more useful to Samoa than a +thousand bread-fruit trees, and because to myself it was an +exquisite pleasure to receive that which was so handsomely +offered. It is now done; you have trod it to-day in coming +hither. It has been made for me by chiefs; some of them +old, some sick, all newly delivered from a harassing confinement, +and in spite of weather unusually hot and insalubrious. I +have seen these chiefs labour valiantly with their own hands upon +the work, and I have set up over it, now that it is finished the +name of ‘The Road of Gratitude’ (the road of loving +hearts), and the names of those that built it. ‘In +perpetuam memoriam,’ we say, and speak idly. At +least, as long as my own life shall be spared it shall be here +perpetuated; partly for my pleasure and in my gratitude; partly +for others continually to publish the lesson of this +road.”</p> +</blockquote> +<p>And turning to the chiefs, Mr Stevenson said:</p> +<blockquote><p>“I will tell you, chiefs, that when I saw +you working on that road, my heart grew warm; not with gratitude +only, but with hope. It seemed to me that I read the +promise of something good for Samoa; it seemed to me as I looked +at you that you were a company of warriors in a battle, fighting +for the defence of our common country against all +aggression. For there is a time to fight and a time to +dig. You Samoans may fight, you may conquer twenty times, +and thirty times, and all will be in vain. There is but one +way to defend Samoa. Hear it, before it is too late. +It is to make roads and gardens, and care for your trees, and +sell their produce wisely; and, in one word, to occupy and use +your country. If you do not, others will. . . .</p> +<p>“I love Samoa and her people. I love the +land. I have chosen it to be my home while I live, and my +grave after I am dead, and I love the people, and have chosen +them to be my people, to live and die with. And I see that +the day is come now of the great battle; of the great and the +last opportunity by which it shall be decided whether you are to +pass away like those other races of which I have been speaking, +or to stand fast and have your children living on and honouring +your memory in the land you received of your fathers.”</p> +</blockquote> +<p>Mr James H. Mulligan, U.S. Consul, told of the feast of +Thanksgiving Day on the 29th November prior to Mr +Stevenson’s death, and how at great pains he had procured +for it the necessary turkey, and how Mrs Stevenson had found a +fair substitute for the pudding. In the course of his +speech in reply to an unexpected proposal of “The +Host,” Mr Stevenson said:</p> +<blockquote><p>“There on my right sits she who has but +lately from our own loved native land come back to me—she +to whom, with no lessening of affection to those others to whom I +cling, I love better than all the world besides—my +mother. From the opposite end of the table, my wife, who +has been all in all to me, when the days were very dark, looks +to-night into my eyes—while we have both grown a bit +older—with undiminished and undiminishing affection.</p> +<p>“Childless, yet on either side of me sits that good +woman, my daughter, and the stalwart man, my son, and both have +been and are more than son and daughter to me, and have brought +into my life mirth and beauty. Nor is this all. There +sits the bright boy dear to my heart, full of the flow and the +spirits of boyhood, so that I can even know that for a time at +least we have still the voice of a child in the house.”</p> +</blockquote> +<p>Mr A. W. Mackay gives an account of the funeral and a +description of the burial-place, ending:</p> +<blockquote><p>“Tofa Tusitala! Sleep peacefully! on +thy mountain-top, alone in Nature’s sanctity, where the +wooddove’s note, the moaning of the waves as they break +unceasingly on the distant reef, and the sighing of the winds in +the distant tavai trees chant their requiem.”</p> +</blockquote> +<p>The Rev. Mr Clarke tells of the constant and active interest +Mr Stevenson took in the missionaries and their work, often +aiding them by his advice and fine insight into the character of +the natives; and a translation follows of a dirge by one of the +chiefs, so fine that we must give it:</p> +<blockquote><p>I.</p> +<p>“Listen, O this world, as I tell of the disaster<br /> +That befell in the late afternoon;<br /> +That broke like a wave of the sea<br /> +Suddenly and swiftly, blinding our eyes.<br /> +Alas for Loia who speaks tears in his voice!</p> +<p><i>Refrain</i>—Groan and weep, O my heart, in its +sorrow.<br /> +Alas for Tusitala, who rests in the forest!<br /> +Aimlessly we wait, and sorrowing. Will he again return?<br +/> +Lament, O Vailima, waiting and ever waiting!<br /> +Let us search and inquire of the captain of ships,<br /> +‘Be not angry, but has not Tusitala come?’</p> +<p>II.</p> +<p>“Teuila, sorrowing one, come thou hither!<br /> +Prepare me a letter, and I will carry it.<br /> +Let her Majesty Victoria be told<br /> +That Tusitala, the loving one, has been taken hence.</p> +<p><i>Refrain</i>—Groan and weep, O my heart, etc., +etc.</p> +<p>III.</p> +<p>“Alas! my heart weeps with anxious grief<br /> +As I think of the days before us:<br /> +Of the white men gathering for the Christmas assembly!<br /> +Alas for Aolele! left in her loneliness,<br /> +And the men of Vailima, who weep together<br /> +Their leader—their leader being taken.</p> +<p><i>Refrain</i>—Groan and weep, O my heart, etc., +etc.</p> +<p>IV.</p> +<p>“Alas! O my heart! it weeps unceasingly<br /> +When I think of his illness<br /> +Coming upon him with fatal swiftness.<br /> +Would that it waited a glance or a word from him,<br /> +Or some token, some token from us of our love.</p> +<p><i>Refrain</i>—Groan and weep, O my heart, etc., +etc.</p> +<p>V.</p> +<p>“Grieve, O my heart! I cannot bear to look on<br +/> +All the chiefs who are there now assembling:<br /> +Alas, Tusitala! Thou art not here!<br /> +I look hither and thither in vain for thee.</p> +<p><i>Refrain</i>—Groan and weep, O my heart, etc., +etc.”</p> +</blockquote> +<p>And the little booklet closes with Mr Stevenson’s own +lines:</p> +<blockquote><p>“REQUIEM.</p> +<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 /> +‘Here he lies where he longed to be;<br /> +Home is the sailor, home from sea;<br /> +And the hunter home from the hill.’”</p> +</blockquote> +<p>Every touch tells here was a man, with heart and head, with +soul and mind intent on the loftiest things; simple, great,</p> +<blockquote><p>“Like one of the simple great ones gone<br +/> +For ever and ever by.</p> +</blockquote> +<p>His character towered after all far above his books; great and +beautiful though they were. Ready for friendship; from all +meanness free. So, too, the Samoans felt. This, +surely, was what Goethe meant when he wrote:</p> +<blockquote><p>“The clear head and stout heart,<br /> +However far they roam,<br /> +Yet in every truth have part,<br /> +Are everywhere at home.”</p> +</blockquote> +<p>His manliness, his width of sympathy, his practicality, his +range of interests were in nothing more seen than in his +contributions to the history of Samoa, as specially exhibited in +<i>A Footnote to History</i> and his letters to the +<i>Times</i>. He was, on this side, in no sense a dreamer, +but a man of acute observation and quick eye for passing events +and the characters that were in them with sympathy equal to his +discernments. His portraits of certain Germans and others +in these writings, and his power of tracing effects to remote and +underlying causes, show sufficiently what he might have done in +the field of history, had not higher voices called him. His +adaptation to the life in Samoa, and his assumption of the +semi-patriarchal character in his own sphere there, were only +tokens of the presence of the same traits as have just been dwelt +on.</p> +<h2>CHAPTER XI—MISS STUBBS’ RECORD OF A +PILGRIMAGE</h2> +<p>Mrs Strong, in her chapter of <i>Table Talk in Memories of +Vailima</i>, tells a story of the natives’ love for +Stevenson. “The other day the cook was away,” +she writes, “and Louis, who was busy writing, took his +meals in his room. Knowing there was no one to cook his +lunch, he told Sosimo to bring him some bread and cheese. +To his surprise he was served with an excellent meal—an +omelette, a good salad, and perfect coffee. ‘Who +cooked this?’ asked Louis in Samoan. ‘I +did,’ said Sosimo. ‘Well,’ said Louis, +‘great is your wisdom.’ Sosimo bowed and +corrected him—‘Great is my love!’”</p> +<p>Miss Stubbs, in her <i>Stevenson’s Shrine</i>; <i>the +Record of a Pilgrimage</i>, illustrates the same devotion. +On the top of Mount Vaea, she writes, is the massive sarcophagus, +“not an ideal structure by any means, not even beautiful, +and yet in its massive ruggedness it somehow suited the man and +the place.”</p> +<p>“The wind sighed softly in the branches of the +‘Tavau’ trees, from out the green recesses of the +‘Toi’ came the plaintive coo of the +wood-pigeon. In and out of the branches of the magnificent +‘Fau’ tree, which overhangs the grave, a king-fisher, +sea-blue, iridescent, flitted to and fro, whilst a scarlet +hibiscus, in full flower, showed up royally against the gray +lichened cement. All around was light and life and colour, +and I said to myself, ‘He is made one with nature’; +he is now, body and soul and spirit, commingled with the +loveliness around. He who longed in life to scale the +height, he who attained his wish only in death, has become in +himself a parable of fulfilment. No need now for that +heart-sick cry:—</p> +<blockquote><p>“‘Sing me a song of a lad that is +gone,<br /> +Say, could that lad be I?’</p> +</blockquote> +<p>No need now for the despairing finality of:</p> +<blockquote><p>“‘I have trod the upward and the +downward slope,<br /> +I have endured and done in the days of yore,<br /> +I have longed for all, and bid farewell to hope,<br /> +And I have lived, and loved, and closed the door.’</p> +<p>“Death has set his seal of peace on the unequal conflict +of mind and matter; the All-Mother has gathered him to +herself.</p> +<p>“In years to come, when his grave is perchance +forgotten, a rugged ruin, home of the lizard and the bat, +Tusitala—the story-teller—‘the man with a heart +of gold’ (as I so often heard him designated in the +Islands), will live, when it may be his tales have ceased to +interest, in the tender remembrance of those whose lives he +beautified, and whose hearts he warmed into gratitude.”</p> +</blockquote> +<p>The chiefs have prohibited the use of firearms or other +weapons on Mount Vaea, “in order that the birds may live +there undisturbed and unafraid, and build their nests in the +trees around Tusitala’s grave.”</p> +<p>Miss Stubbs has many records of the impression produced on +those he came in contact with in Samoa—white men and women +as well as natives. She met a certain Austrian Count, who +adored Stevenson’s memory. Over his camp bed was a +framed photograph of R. L. Stevenson.</p> +<blockquote><p>“So,” he said, “I keep him +there, for he was my saviour, and I wish ‘good-night’ +and ‘good-morning,’ every day, both to himself and to +his old home.” The Count then told us that when he +was stopping at Vailima he used to have his bath daily on the +verandah below his room. One lovely morning he got up very +early, got into the bath, and splashed and sang, feeling very +well and very happy, and at last beginning to sing very loudly, +he forgot Mr Stevenson altogether. All at once there was +Stevenson himself, his hair all ruffled up, his eyes full of +anger. “Man,” he said, “you and your +infernal row have cost me more than two hundred pounds in +ideas,” and with that he was gone, but he did not address +the Count again the whole of that day. Next morning he had +forgotten the Count’s offence and was just as friendly as +ever, but—the noise was never repeated!</p> +</blockquote> +<p>Another of the Count’s stories greatly amused the +visitors:</p> +<blockquote><p>“An English lord came all the way to Samoa +in his yacht to see Mr Stevenson, and found him in his cool +Kimino sitting with the ladies, and drinking tea on his verandah; +the whole party had their feet bare. The English lord +thought that he must have called at the wrong time, and offered +to go away, but Mr Stevenson called out to him, and brought him +back, and made him stay to dinner. They all went away to +dress, and the guest was left sitting alone in the +verandah. Soon they came back, Mr Osbourne and Mr Stevenson +wearing the form of dress most usual in that hot climate a white +mess jacket, and white trousers, but their feet were still +bare. The guest put up his eyeglass and stared for a bit, +then he looked down upon his own beautifully shod feet, and +sighed. They all talked and laughed until the ladies came +in, the ladies in silk dresses, befrilled with lace, but still +with bare feet, and the guest took a covert look through his +eyeglass and gasped, but when he noticed that there were gold +bangles on Mrs Strong’s ankles and rings upon her toes, he +could bear no more and dropped his eyeglass on the ground of the +verandah breaking it all to bits.”</p> +</blockquote> +<p>Miss Stubbs met on the other side of the island a photographer +who told her this:</p> +<blockquote><p>“I had but recently come to Samoa,” he +said, “and was standing one day in my shop when Mr +Stevenson came in and spoke. ‘Man,’ he said, +‘I tak ye to be a Scotsman like mysel’.’</p> +<p>“I would I could have claimed a kinship,” deplored +the photographer, “but, alas! I am English to the +backbone, with never a drop of Scotch blood in my veins, and I +told him this, regretting the absence of the blood +tie.”</p> +<p>“‘I could have sworn your back was the back of a +Scotsman,’ was his comment, ‘but,’ and he held +out his hand, ‘you look sick, and there is a fellowship in +sickness not to be denied.’ I said I was not strong, and +had come to the Island on account of my health. +‘Well, then,’ replied Mr Stevenson, ‘it shall +be my business to help you to get well; come to Vailima whenever +you like, and if I am out, ask for refreshment, and wait until I +come in, you will always find a welcome there.’”</p> +<p>At this point my informant turned away, and there was a break +in his voice as he exclaimed, “Ah, the years go on, and I +don’t miss him less, but more; next to my mother he was the +best friend I ever had: a man with a heart of gold; his house was +a second home to me.”</p> +</blockquote> +<p>Stevenson’s experience shows how easy it is with a +certain type of man, to restore the old feudal conditions of +service and relationship. Stevenson did this in essentials +in Samoa. He tells us how he managed to get good service +out of the Samoans (who are accredited with great unwillingness +to work); and this he <i>did</i> by firm, but generous, kindly, +almost brotherly treatment, reviving, as it were, a kind of clan +life—giving a livery of certain colours—symbol of all +this. A little fellow of eight, he tells, had been taken +into the household, made a pet of by Mrs Strong, his +stepdaughter, and had had a dress given to him, like that of the +men; and, when one day he had strolled down by himself as far as +the hotel, and the master of it, seeing him, called out in +Samoan, “Hi, youngster, who are you?” The +eight-year-old replied, “Why, don’t you see for +yourself? I am one of the Vailima men!”</p> +<p>The story of the <i>Road of the Loving Heart</i> was but +another fine attestation of it.</p> +<h2>CHAPTER XII—HIS GENIUS AND METHODS</h2> +<p>To have created a school of idolaters, who will out and out +swear by everything, and as though by necessity, at the same +time, a school of studious detractors, who will suspiciously +question everything, or throw out suggestions of disparagement, +is at all events, a proof of greatness, the countersign of +undoubted genius, and an assurance of lasting fame. R. L. +Stevenson has certainly secured this. Time will tell what +of virtue there is with either party. For me, who knew +Stevenson, and loved him, as finding in the sweet-tempered, +brave, and in some things, most generous man, what gave at once +tone and elevation to the artist, I would fain indicate here my +impressions of him and his genius—impressions that remain +almost wholly uninfluenced by the vast mass of matter about him +that the press now turns out. Books, not to speak of +articles, pour forth about him—about his style, his art, +his humour and his characters—aye, and even about his +religion.</p> +<p>Miss Simpson follows Mr Bellyse Baildon with the <i>Edinburgh +Days</i>, Miss Moyes Black comes on with her picture in the +<i>Famous Scots</i>, and Professor Raleigh succeeds her; Mr +Graham Balfour follows with his<i> Life</i>; Mr Kelman’s +volume about his Religion comes next, and that is reinforced by +more familiar letters and <i>Table Talk</i>, by Lloyd Osbourne +and Mrs Strong, his step-children; Mr J. Hammerton then comes on +handily with <i>Stevensoniana</i>—fruit lovingly gathered +from many and far fields, and garnered with not a little tact and +taste, and catholicity; Miss Laura Stubbs then presents us with +her touching <i>Stevenson’s Shrine</i>: <i>the Record of a +Pilgrimage</i>; and Mr Sidney Colvin is now busily at work on his +<i>Life of Stevenson</i>, which must do not a little to enlighten +and to settle many questions.</p> +<p>Curiosity and interest grow as time passes; and the places +connected with Stevenson, hitherto obscure many of them, are now +touched with light if not with romance, and are known, by name at +all events, to every reader of books. Yes; every place he +lived in, or touched at, is worthy of full description if only on +account of its associations with him. If there is not a +land of Stevenson, as there is a land of Scott, or of Burns, it +is due to the fact that he was far-travelled, and in his works +painted many scenes: but there are at home—Edinburgh, and +Halkerside and Allermuir, Caerketton, Swanston, and Colinton, and +Maw Moss and Rullion Green and Tummel, “the <i>wale</i> of +Scotland,” as he named it to me, and the Castletown of +Braemar—Braemar in his view coming a good second to Tummel, +for starting-points to any curious worshipper who would go the +round in Scotland and miss nothing. Mr Geddie’s work +on <i>The Home Country of Stevenson</i> may be found very helpful +here.</p> +<p>1. It is impossible to separate Stevenson from his work, +because of the imperious personal element in it; and so I shall +not now strive to gain the appearance of cleverness by affecting +any distinction here. The first thing I would say is, that +he was when I knew him—what pretty much to the end he +remained—a youth. His outlook on life was boyishly +genial and free, despite all his sufferings from +ill-health—it was the pride of action, the joy of +endurance, the revelry of high spirits, and the sense of victory +that most fascinated him; and his theory of life was to take +pleasure and give pleasure, without calculation or stint—a +kind of boyish grace and bounty never to be overcome or disturbed +by outer accident or change. If he was sometimes haunted +with the thought of changes through changed conditions or +circumstances, as my very old friend, Mr Charles Lowe, has told +even of the College days that he was always supposing things to +undergo some sea-change into something else, if not “into +something rich and strange,” this was but to add to his +sense of enjoyment, and the power of conferring delight, and the +luxuries of variety, as boys do when they let fancy loose. +And this always had, with him, an individual reference or +return. He was thus constantly, and latterly, +half-consciously, trying to interpret himself somehow through all +the things which engaged him, and which he so +transmogrified—things that especially attracted him and +took his fancy. Thus, if it must be confessed, that even in +his highest moments, there lingers a touch—if no more than +a touch—of self-consciousness which will not allow him to +forget manner in matter, it is also true that he is cunningly +conveying traits in himself; and the sense of this is often at +the root of his sweet, gentle, naïve humour. There is, +therefore, some truth in the criticisms which assert that even +“long John Silver,” that fine pirate, with his one +leg, was, after all, a shadow of Stevenson himself—the +genial buccaneer who did his tremendous murdering with a smile on +his face was but Stevenson thrown into new circumstances, or, as +one has said, Stevenson-cum-Henley, so thrown as was also Archer +in <i>Weir of Hermiston</i>, and more than this, that his most +successful women-folk—like Miss Grant and +Catriona—are studies of himself, and that in all his +heroes, and even heroines, was an unmistakable touch of R. L. +Stevenson. Even Mr Baildon rather maladroitly admits that +in Miss Grant, the Lord Advocate’s daughter, <i>there is a +good deal of the author himself disguised in +petticoats</i>. I have thought of Stevenson in many suits, +beside that which included the velvet jacket, +but—petticoats!</p> +<p>Youth is autocratic, and can show a grand indifferency: it +goes for what it likes, and ignores all else—it fondly +magnifies its favourites, and, after all, to a great extent, it +is but analysing, dealing with and presenting itself to us, if we +only watch well. This is the secret of all prevailing +romance: it is the secret of all stories of adventure and +chivalry of the simpler and more primitive order; and in one +aspect it is true that R. L. Stevenson loved and clung to the +primitive and elemental, if it may not be said, as one +distinguished writer has said, that he even loved savagery in +itself. But hardly could it be seriously held, as Mr I. +Zangwill held:</p> +<blockquote><p>“That women did not cut any figure in his +books springs from this same interest in the elemental. +Women are not born, but made. They are a social product of +infinite complexity and delicacy. For a like reason +Stevenson was no interpreter of the modern. . . . A child to the +end, always playing at ‘make-believe,’ dying young, +as those whom the gods love, and, as he would have died had he +achieved his centenary, he was the natural exponent in literature +of the child.”</p> +</blockquote> +<p>But there were subtly qualifying elements beyond what Mr +Zangwill here recognises and reinforces. That is just about +as correct and true as this other deliverance:</p> +<blockquote><p>“His Scotch romances have been as +over-praised by the zealous Scotsmen who cry ‘genius’ +at the sight of a kilt, and who lose their heads at a waft from +the heather, as his other books have been under-praised. +The best of all, <i>The Master of Ballantrae</i>, ends in a bog; +and where the author aspires to exceptional subtlety of +character-drawing he befogs us or himself altogether. We +are so long weighing the brothers Ballantrae in the balance, +watching it incline now this way, now that, scrupulously removing +a particle of our sympathy from the one brother to the other, to +restore it again in the next chapter, that we end with a +conception of them as confusing as Mr Gilbert’s conception +of Hamlet, who was idiotically sane with lucid intervals of +lunacy.”</p> +</blockquote> +<p>If Stevenson was, as Mr Zangwill holds, “the child to +the end,” and the child only, then if we may not say what +Carlyle said of De Quincey: “<i>Eccovi</i>, that child has +been in hell,” we may say, “<i>Eccovi</i>, that child +has been in unchildlike haunts, and can’t forget the memory +of them.” In a sense every romancer is a +child—such was Ludwig Tieck, such was Scott, such was James +Hogg, the Ettrick Shepherd. But each is something +more—he has been touched with the wand of a fairy, and +knows, at least, some of Elfin Land as well as of +childhood’s home.</p> +<p>The sense of Stevenson’s youthfulness seems to have +struck every one who had intimacy with him. Mr Baildon +writes (p. 21 of his book):</p> +<blockquote><p>I would now give much to possess but one of +Stevenson’s gifts—namely, that extraordinary +vividness of recollection by which he could so astonishingly +recall, not only the doings, but the very thoughts and emotions +of his youth. For, often as we must have communed together, +with all the shameless candour of boys, hardly any remark has +stuck to me except the opinion already alluded to, which struck +me—his elder by some fifteen months—as very amusing, +that at sixteen ‘we should be men.’ <i>He of +all mortals</i>, <i>who was</i>, <i>in a sense</i>, <i>always +still a boy</i>!”</p> +</blockquote> +<p>Mr Gosse tells us:</p> +<blockquote><p>“He had retained a great deal of the +temperament of a child, and it was his philosophy to encourage +it. In his dreary passages of bed, when his illness was +more than commonly heavy on him, he used to contrive little +amusements for himself. He played on the flute, or he +modelled little groups and figures in clay.”</p> +</blockquote> +<p>2. One of the qualifying elements unnoted by Mr Zangwill is +simply this, that R. L. Stevenson never lost the strange tint +imparted to his youth by the religious influences to which he was +subject, and which left their impress and colour on him and all +that he did. Henley, in his striking sonnet, hit it when he +wrote:</p> +<blockquote><p>“A deal of Ariel, just a streak of Puck,<br +/> +Much Antony, of Hamlet most of all,<br /> +<i>And something of the Shorter Catechist</i>.”</p> +</blockquote> +<p><i>Something</i>! he was a great deal of Shorter +Catechist! Scotch Calvinism, its metaphysic, and all the +strange whims, perversities, and questionings of “Fate, +free-will, foreknowledge absolute,” which it inevitably +awakens, was much with him—the sense of reprobation and the +gloom born of it, as well as the abounding joy in the sense of +the elect—the Covenanters and their wild resolutions, the +moss-troopers and their dare-devilries—Pentland Risings and +fights of Rullion Green; he not only never forgot them, but they +mixed themselves as in his very breath of life, and made him a +great questioner. How would I have borne myself in this or +in that? Supposing I had been there, how would it have +been—the same, or different from what it was with those +that were there? His work is throughout at bottom a series +of problems that almost all trace to this root, directly or +indirectly. “There, but for the grace of God, goes +John Bradford,” said the famous Puritan on seeing a felon +led to execution; so with Stevenson. Hence his fondness for +tramps, for scamps (he even bestowed special attention and pains +on Villon, the poet-scamp); he was rather impatient with poor +Thoreau, because he was a purist solitary, and had too little of +vice, and, as Stevenson held, narrow in sympathy, and too +self-satisfied, and bent only on self-improvement. He held +a brief for the honest villain, and leaned to him +brotherly. Even the anecdotes he most prizes have a fine +look this way—a hunger for completion in achievement, even +in the violation of fine humane feeling or morality, and all the +time a sense of submission to God’s will. +“Doctor,” said the dying gravedigger in <i>Old +Mortality</i>, “I hae laid three hunner an’ fower +score in that kirkyaird, an’ had it been His wull,” +indicating Heaven, “I wad hae likeit weel to hae made oot +the fower hunner.” That took Stevenson. Listen +to what Mr Edmond Gosse tells of his talk, when he found him in a +private hotel in Finsbury Circus, London, ready to be put on +board a steamer for America, on 21st August, 1887:</p> +<blockquote><p>“It was church time, and there was some talk +of my witnessing his will, which I could not do because there +could be found no other reputable witness, the whole crew of the +hotel being at church. ‘This,’ he said, +‘is the way in which our valuable city hotels—packed +no doubt with gems and jewellery—are deserted on a Sunday +morning. Some bold piratical fellow, defying the spirit of +Sabbatarianism, might make a handsome revenue by sacking the +derelict hotels between the hours of ten and twelve. One +hotel a week would enable such a man to retire in course of a +year. A mask might perhaps be worn for the mere fancy of +the thing, and to terrify kitchen-maids, but no real disguise +would be needful.’”</p> +</blockquote> +<p>I would rather agree with Mr Chesterton than with Mr Zangwill +here:</p> +<blockquote><p>“Stevenson’s enormous capacity for joy +flowed directly out of his profoundly religious +temperament. He conceived himself as an unimportant guest +at one eternal and uproarious banquet, and instead of grumbling +at the soup, he accepted it with careless gratitude. . . . His +gaiety was neither the gaiety of the pagan, nor the gaiety of the +<i>bon vivant</i>. It was the greater gaiety of the +mystic. He could enjoy trifles because there was to him no +such thing as a trifle. He was a child who respected his +dolls because they were the images of the image of God, portraits +at only two removes.”</p> +</blockquote> +<p>Here, then, we have the child crossed by the dreamer and the +mystic, bred of Calvinism and speculation on human fate and +chance, and on the mystery of temperament and inheritance, and +all that flows from these—reprobation, with its dire +shadows, assured Election with its joys, etc., etc.</p> +<p>3. If such a combination is in favour of the story-teller up +to a certain point, it is not favourable to the highest flights, +and it is alien to dramatic presentation pure and simple. +This implies detachment from moods and characters, high as well +as low, that complete justice in presentation may be done to all +alike, and the one balance that obtains in life grasped and +repeated with emphasis. But towards his leading characters +Stevenson is unconsciously biassed, because they are more or less +shadowy projections of himself, or images through which he would +reveal one or other side or aspect of his own personality. +Attwater is a confessed failure, because it, more than any other, +testifies this: he is but a mouth-piece for one side or tendency +in Stevenson. If the same thing is not more decisively felt +in some other cases, it is because Stevenson there showed the +better art o’ hidin’, and not because he was any more +truly detached or dramatic. “Of Hamlet most of +all,” wrote Henley in his sonnet. The Hamlet in +Stevenson—the self-questioning, egotistic, moralising +Hamlet—was, and to the end remained, a something alien to +bold, dramatic, creative freedom. He is great as an artist, +as a man bent on giving to all that he did the best and most +distinguished form possible, but not great as a free creator of +dramatic power. “Mother,” he said as a mere +child, “I’ve drawed a man. Now, will I draw his +soul?” He was to the end all too fond to essay a +picture of the soul, separate and peculiar. All the Jekyll +and Hyde and even Ballantrae conceptions came out of +that—and what is more, he always mixed his own soul with +the other soul, and could not help doing so.</p> +<p>4. When; therefore, I find Mr Pinero, in lecturing at +Edinburgh, deciding in favour of Stevenson as possessed of rare +dramatic power, and wondering why he did not more effectively +employ it, I can’t agree with him; and this because of the +presence of a certain atmosphere in the novels, alien to free +play of the individualities presented. Like +Hawthorne’s, like the works of our great symbolists, they +are restricted by a sense of some obtaining conception, some +weird metaphysical <i>weird</i> or preconception. This is +the ground “Ian MacLaren” has for saying that +“his kinship is not with Boccaccio and Rabelais, but with +Dante and Spenser”—the ground for many remarks by +critics to the effect that they still crave from him “less +symbol and more individuality”—the ground for the +Rev. W. J. Dawson’s remark that “he has a powerful +and persistent sense of the spiritual forces which move behind +the painted shows of life; that he writes not only as a realist +but as a prophet, his meanest stage being set with eternity as a +background.”</p> +<p>Such expressions are fullest justification for what we have +here said: it adds, and can only add, to our admiration of +Stevenson, as a thinker, seer, or mystic, but the asserting sense +of such power can only end in lessening the height to which he +could attain as a dramatic artist; and there is much indeed +against Mr Pinero’s own view that, in the dramas, he finds +that “fine speeches” are ruinous to them as acting +plays. In the strict sense overfine speeches are yet almost +everywhere. David Balfour could never have writ some +speeches attributed to him—they are just R. L. Stevenson +with a very superficial difference that, when once detected, +renders them curious and quaint and interesting, but not +dramatic.</p> +<h2>CHAPTER XIII—PREACHER AND MYSTIC FABULIST</h2> +<p>In reality, Stevenson is always directly or indirectly +preaching a sermon—enforcing a moral—as though he +could not help it. “He would rise from the dead to +preach a sermon.” He wrote some first-rate fables, +and might indeed have figured to effect as a moralist-fabulist, +as truly he was from beginning to end. There was a bit of +Bunyan in him as well as of Æsop and Rousseau and +Thoreau—the mixture that found coherency in his most +peculiarly patient and forbearing temper is what gives at once +the quaintness, the freedom, and yet the odd didactic something +that is never wanting. I remember a fable about the Devil +that might well be brought in to illustrate this +here—careful readers who neglect nothing that Stevenson +wrote will remember it also and perhaps bear me out here.</p> +<p>But for the sake of the young folks who may yet have some +leeway to make up, I shall indulge myself a little by quoting it: +and, since I am on that tack, follow it by another which presents +Stevenson in his favourite guise of quizzing his own characters, +if not for his own advantage certainly for ours, if we would in +the least understand the fine moralist-casuistical qualities of +his mind and fancy:</p> +<blockquote><p>THE DEVIL AND THE INNKEEPER</p> +<p>Once upon a time the devil stayed at an inn, where no one knew +him, for they were people whose education had been +neglected. He was bent on mischief, and for a time kept +everybody by the ears. But at last the innkeeper set a +watch upon the devil and took him in the act.</p> +<p>The innkeeper got a rope’s end.</p> +<p>“Now I am going to thrash you,” said the +inn-keeper.</p> +<p>“You have no right to be angry with me,” said the +devil. “I am only the devil, and it is my nature to +do wrong.”</p> +<p>“Is that so?” asked the innkeeper.</p> +<p>“Fact, I assure you,” said the devil.</p> +<p>“You really cannot help doing ill?” asked the +innkeeper.</p> +<p>“Not in the smallest,” said the devil, “it +would be useless cruelty to thrash a thing like me.”</p> +<p>“It would indeed,” said the innkeeper.</p> +<p>And he made a noose and hanged the devil.</p> +<p>“There!” said the innkeeper.</p> +</blockquote> +<p>The deeper Stevenson goes, the more happily is he +inspired. We could scarcely cite anything more +Stevensonian, alike in its humour and its philosophy, than the +dialogue between Captain Smollett and Long John Silver, entitled +<i>The Persons of the Tale</i>. After chapter xxxii. of +<i>Treasure Island</i>, these two puppets “strolled out to +have a pipe before business should begin again, and met in an +open space not far from the story.” After a few +preliminaries:</p> +<blockquote><p>“You’re a damned rogue, my man,” +said the Captain.</p> +<p>“Come, come, Cap’n, be just,” returned the +other. “There’s no call to be angry with me in +earnest. I’m on’y a character in a sea +story. I don’t really exist.”</p> +<p>“Well, I don’t really exist either,” says +the Captain, “which seems to meet that.”</p> +<p>“I wouldn’t set no limits to what a virtuous +character might consider argument,” responded Silver. +“But I’m the villain of the tale, I am; and speaking +as one seafaring man to another, what I want to know is, +what’s the odds?”</p> +<p>“Were you never taught your catechism?” said the +Captain. “Don’t you know there’s such a +thing as an Author?”</p> +<p>“Such a thing as a Author?” returned John, +derisively. “And who better’n me? And the +p’int is, if the Author made you, he made Long John, and he +made Hands, and Pew, and George Merry—not that George is up +to much, for he’s little more’n a name; and he made +Flint, what there is of him; and he made this here mutiny, you +keep such a work about; and he had Tom Redruth shot; +and—well, if that’s a Author, give me Pew!”</p> +<p>“Don’t you believe in a future state?” said +Smollett. “Do you think there’s nothing but the +present sorty-paper?”</p> +<p>“I don’t rightly know for that,” said +Silver, “and I don’t see what it’s got to do +with it, anyway. What I know is this: if there is sich a +thing as a Author, I’m his favourite chara’ter. +He does me fathoms better’n he does you—fathoms, he +does. And he likes doing me. He keeps me on deck +mostly all the time, crutch and all; and he leaves you measling +in the hold, where nobody can’t see you, nor wants to, and +you may lay to that! If there is a Author, by thunder, but +he’s on my side, and you may lay to it!”</p> +<p>“I see he’s giving you a long rope,” said +the Captain. . . .</p> +</blockquote> +<p>Stevenson’s stories—one and all—are too +closely the illustrations by characters of which his essays +furnish the texts. You shall not read the one wholly apart +from the other without losing something—without losing much +of the quaint, often childish, and always insinuating personality +of the writer. It is this if fully perceived which would +justify one writer, Mr Zangwill, if I don’t forget, in +saying, as he did say, that Stevenson would hold his place by his +essays and not by his novels. Hence there is a unity in +all, but a unity found in a root which is ultimately inimical to +what is strictly free dramatic creation—creation, broad, +natural and unmoral in the highest sense just as nature is, as it +is to us, for example, when we speak of Shakespeare, or even +Scott, or of Cervantes or Fielding. If Mr Henley in his +irruptive if not spiteful <i>Pall Mall Magazine</i> article had +made this clear from the high critical ground, then some of his +derogatory remarks would not have been quite so personal and +offensive as they are.</p> +<p>Stevenson’s bohemianism was always restrained and +coloured by this. He is a casuistic moralist, if not a +Shorter Catechist, as Mr Henley put it in his clever +sonnet. He is constantly asking himself about moral laws +and how they work themselves out in character, especially as +these suggest and involve the casuistries of human nature. +He is often a little like Nathaniel Hawthorne, but he hardly +follows them far enough and rests on his own preconceptions and +predilections, only he does not, like him, get into or remain +long in the cobwebby corners—his love of the open air and +exercise derived from generations of active lighthouse engineers, +out at all times on sea or land, or from Scottish ministers who +were fond of composing their sermons and reflecting on the +backwardness of human nature as they walked in their gardens or +along the hillsides even among mists and storms, did something to +save him here, reinforcing natural cheerfulness and the warm +desire to give pleasure. His excessive elaboration of +style, which grew upon him more and more, giving throughout often +a sense of extreme artificiality and of the self-consciousness +usually bred of it, is but another incidental proof of +this. And let no reader think that I wish here to decry R. +L. Stevenson. I only desire faithfully to try to understand +him, and to indicate the class or group to which his genius and +temperament really belong. He is from first to last the +idealistic dreamy or mystical romancer, and not the true idealist +or dealer direct with life or character for its own sake. +The very beauty and sweetness of his spirit in one way militated +against his dramatic success—he really did not believe in +villains, and always made them better than they should have been, +and that, too, on the very side where wickedness—their +natural wickedness—is most available—on the +stage. The dreamer of dreams and the Shorter Catechist, +strangely united together, were here directly at odds with the +creative power, and crossed and misdirected it, and the casuist +came in and manoeuvred the limelight—all too like the old +devil of the mediaeval drama, who was made only to be laughed at +and taken lightly, a buffoon and a laughing-stock indeed. +And while he could unveil villainy, as is the case pre-eminently +in Huish in the <i>Ebb-Tide</i>, he shrank from inflicting the +punishments for which untutored human nature looks, and thus he +lost one great aid to crude dramatic effect. As to his +poems, they are intimately personal in his happiest moments: he +deals with separate moods and sentiments, and scarcely ever +touches those of a type alien to his own. The defect of his +child poems is distinctly that he is everywhere strictly +recalling and reproducing his own quaint and wholly exceptional +childhood; and children, ordinary, normal, healthy children, will +not take to these poems (though grown-ups largely do so), as they +would to, say, the <i>Lilliput Levée</i> of my old friend, +W. B. Rands. Rands showed a great deal of true dramatic +play there within his own very narrow limits, as, at all events, +adults must conceive them.</p> +<p>Even in his greatest works, in <i>The Master of Ballantrae</i> +and <i>Weir of Hermiston</i>, the special power in Stevenson +really lies in subduing his characters at the most critical point +for action, to make them prove or sustain his thesis; and in this +way the rare effect that he might have secured +<i>dramatically</i> is largely lost and make-believe substituted, +as in the Treasure Search in the end of <i>The Master of +Ballantrae</i>. The powerful dramatic effect he might have +had in his <i>dénouement</i> is thus completely +sacrificed. The essence of the drama for the stage is that +the work is for this and this alone—dialogue and everything +being only worked rightly when it bears on, aids, and finally +secures this in happy completeness.</p> +<p>In a word, you always, in view of true dramatic effect, see +Stevenson himself too clearly behind his characters. The +“fine speeches” Mr Pinero referred to trace to the +intrusion behind the glass of a part-quicksilvered portion, which +cunningly shows, when the glass is moved about, Stevenson himself +behind the character, as we have said already. For long he +shied dealing with women, as though by a true instinct. +Unfortunately for him his image was as clear behind +<i>Catriona</i>, with the discerning, as anywhere else; and this, +alas! too far undid her as an independent, individual character, +though traits like those in her author were attractive. The +constant effort to relieve the sense of this affords him the most +admirable openings for the display of his exquisite style, of +which he seldom or never fails to make the very most in this +regard; but the necessity laid upon him to aim at securing a +sense of relief by this is precisely the same as led him to write +the overfine speeches in the plays, as Mr Pinero found and +pointed out at Edinburgh: both defeat the true end, but in the +written book mere art of style and a naïvete and a certain +sweetness of temper conceal the lack of nature and creative +spontaneity; while on the stage the descriptions, saving +reflections and fine asides, are ruthlessly cut away under sheer +stage necessities, or, if left, but hinder the action; and art of +this kind does not there suffice to conceal the lack of +nature.</p> +<p>More clearly to bring out my meaning here and draw aid from +comparative illustration, let me take my old friend of many +years, Charles Gibbon. Gibbon was poor, very poor, in +intellectual subtlety compared with Stevenson; he had none of his +sweet, quaint, original fancy; he was no casuist; he was utterly +void of power in the subdued humorous twinkle or genial by-play +in which Stevenson excelled. But he has more of dramatic +power, pure and simple, than Stevenson had—his +novels—the best of them—would far more easily yield +themselves to the ordinary purposes of the ordinary +playwright. Along with conscientiousness, perception, +penetration, with the dramatist must go a certain indescribable +common-sense commonplaceness—if I may name it +so—protection against vagary and that over-refined egotism +and self-confession which is inimical to the drama and in which +the Stevensonian type all too largely abounds for successful +dramatic production. Mr Henley perhaps put it too strongly +when he said that what was supremely of interest to R. L. +Stevenson was Stevenson himself; but he indicates the tendency, +and that tendency is inimical to strong, broad, effective and +varied dramatic presentation. Water cannot rise above its +own level; nor can minds of this type go freely out of themselves +in a grandly healthy, unconscious, and unaffected way, and this +is the secret of the dramatic spirit, if it be not, as Shelley +said, the secret of morals, which Stevenson, when he passed away, +was but on the way to attain. As we shall see, he had risen +so far above it, subdued it, triumphed over it, that we really +cannot guess what he might have attained had but more years been +given him. For the last attainment of the loftiest and +truest genius is precisely this—to gain such insight of the +real that all else becomes subsidiary. True simplicity and +the abiding relief and enduring power of true art with all +classes lies here and not elsewhere. Cleverness, +refinement, fancy, and invention, even sublety of intellect, are +practically nowhere in this sphere without this.</p> +<h2>CHAPTER XIV—STEVENSON AS DRAMATIST</h2> +<p>In opposition to Mr Pinero, therefore, I assert that +Stevenson’s defect in spontaneous dramatic presentation is +seen clearly in his novels as well as in his plays proper.</p> +<p>In writing to my good friend, Mr Thomas M’Kie, Advocate, +Edinburgh, telling him of my work on R. L. Stevenson and the +results, I thus gathered up in little the broad reflections on +this point, and I may perhaps be excused quoting the following +passages, as they reinforce by a new reference or illustration or +two what has just been said:</p> +<blockquote><p>“Considering his great keenness and force on +some sides, I find R. L. Stevenson markedly deficient in grip on +other sides—common sides, after all, of human nature. +This was so far largely due to a dreamy, mystical, so far +perverted and, so to say, often even inverted casuistical, +fatalistic morality, which would not allow him scope in what +Carlyle would have called a healthy hatred of fools and +scoundrels; with both of which classes—vagabonds in +strictness—he had rather too much of a sneaking +sympathy. Mr Pinero was wrong—totally and +incomprehensibly wrong—when he told the good folks of +Edinburgh at the Philosophical Institution, and afterwards at the +London Birkbeck Institution, that it was lack of concentration +and care that made R. L. Stevenson a failure as a +dramatist. No: it was here and not elsewhere that the +failure lay. R. L. Stevenson was himself an unconscious +paradox—and sometimes he realised it—his great +weakness from this point of view being that he wished to show +strong and original by making the villain the hero of the piece +as well. Now, <i>that</i>, if it may, by clever +manipulation and dexterity, be made to do in a novel, most +certainly it will not do on the stage—more especially if it +is done consciously and, as it were, of <i>malice prepense</i>; +because, for one thing, there is in the theatre a very varied yet +united audience which has to give a simultaneous and immediate +verdict—an audience not inclined to some kinds of +overwrought subtleties and casuistries, however clever the +technique. If <i>The Master of Ballantrae</i> (which has +some highly dramatic scenes and situations, if it is not in +itself substantially a drama) were to be put on the stage, the +playwright, if wisely determined for success, would really +have—not in details, but in essential conception—to +kick R. L. Stevenson in his most personal aim out of it, and take +and present a more definite moral view of the two villain-heroes +(brothers, too); improve and elevate the one a bit if he lowered +the other, and not wobble in sympathy and try to make the +audience wobble in sympathy also, as R. L. Stevenson certainly +does. As for <i>Beau Austin</i>, it most emphatically, in +view of this, should be re-writ—re-writ especially towards +the ending—and the scandalous Beau tarred and feathered, +metaphorically speaking, instead of walking off at the end in a +sneaking, mincing sort of way, with no more than a little +momentary twinge of discomfort at the wreck and ruin he has +wrought, for having acted as a selfish, snivelling poltroon and +coward, though in fine clothes and with fine ways and fine +manners, which only, from our point of view, make matters +worse. It is, with variations I admit, much the same all +through: R. L. Stevenson felt it and confessed it about the +<i>Ebb-Tide</i>, and Huish, the cockney hero and villain; but the +sense of healthy disgust, even at the vile Huish, is not +emphasised in the book as it would have demanded to be for the +stage—the audience would not have stood it, and the more +mixed and varied, the less would it have stood it—not at +all; and his relief of style and fine or finished speeches would +not <i>there</i> in the least have told. This is demanded +of the drama—that at once it satisfies a certain crude +something subsisting under all outward glosses and veneers that +might be in some a lively sense of right and wrong—the +uprisal of a conscience, in fact, or in others a vague instinct +of proper reward or punishment, which will even cover and +sanction certain kinds of revenge or retaliation. The one +feeling will emerge most among the cultured, and the other among +the ruder and more ignorant; but both meet immediately on +beholding action and the limits of action on the demand for some +clear leading to what may be called Providential +equity—each man undoubtedly rewarded or punished, roughly, +according to his deserts, if not outwardly then certainly in the +inner torments that so often lead to confessions. There it +is—a radical fact of human nature—as radical as any +reading of trait or determination of character +presented—seen in the Greek drama as well as in Shakespeare +and the great Elizabethan dramatists, and in the +drama-transpontine and others of to-day. R. L. Stevenson +was all too casuistical (though not in the exclusively bad sense) +for this; and so he was not dramatic, though <i>Weir of +Hermiston</i> promised something like an advance to it, and <i>St +Ives</i> did, in my idea, yet more.”</p> +</blockquote> +<p>The one essential of a <i>dramatic</i> piece is that, by the +interaction of character and incident (one or other may be +preponderating, according to the type and intention of the +writer) all naturally leads up to a crisis in which the moral +motives, appealed to or awakened by the presentation of the play, +are justified. Where this is wanting the true leading and +the definite justification are wanting. Goethe failed in +this in his <i>Faust</i>, resourceful and far-seeing though he +was—he failed because a certain sympathy is awakened for +Mephistopheles in being, so to say, chivied out of his bargain, +when he had complied with the terms of the contract by Faust; and +Gounod in his opera does exactly for “immediate dramatic +effect,” what we hold it would be necessary to do for R. L. +Stevenson. Goethe, with his casuistries which led him to +allegory and all manner of overdone symbolisms and perversions in +the Second Part, is set aside and a true crisis and close is +found by Gounod through simply sending Marguerite above and Faust +below, as, indeed, Faust had agreed by solemn compact with +Mephistopheles that it should be. And to come to another +illustration from our own times, Mr Bernard Shaw’s very +clever and all too ingenious and over-subtle <i>Man and +Superman</i> would, in my idea, and for much the same reason, be +an utterly ineffective and weak piece on the stage, however +carefully handled and however clever the setting—the reason +lying in the egotistic upsetting of the “personal +equation” and the theory of life that lies behind +all—tinting it with strange and even <i>outré</i> +colours. Much the same has to be said of most of what are +problem-plays—several of Ibsen’s among the rest.</p> +<p>Those who remember the Fairy opera of <i>Hansel and Gretel</i> +on the stage in London, will not have forgotten in the witching +memory of all the charms of scenery and setting, how the scene +where the witch of the wood, who was planning out the baking of +the little hero and heroine in her oven, having +“fatted” them up well, to make sweet her eating of +them, was by the coolness and cleverness of the heroine locked in +her own oven and baked there, literally brought down the +house. She received exactly what she had planned to give +those children, whom their own cruel parents had unwittingly, by +losing the children in the wood, put into her hands. +Quaint, naïve, half-grotesque it was in conception, yet the +truth of all drama was there actively exhibited, and all +casuistic pleading of excuses of some sort, even of justification +for the witch (that it was her nature; heredity in her aworking, +etc., etc.) would have not only been out of place, but hotly +resented by that audience. Now, Stevenson, if he could have +made up his mind to have the witch locked in her own oven, would +most assuredly have tried some device to get her out by some +fairy witch-device or magic slide at the far end of it, and have +proceeded to paint for us the changed character that she was +after she had been so outwitted by a child, and her witchdom +proved after all of little effect. He would have put +probably some of the most effective moralities into her mouth if +indeed he would not after all have made the witch a triumph on +his early principle of bad-heartedness being strength. If +this is the sort of falsification which the play demands, and is +of all tastes the most ungrateful, then, it is clear, that for +full effect of the drama it is essential to it; but what is +primary in it is the direct answering to certain immediate and +instinctive demands in common human nature, the doing of which is +far more effective than no end of deep philosophy to show how +much better human nature would be if it were not just quite thus +constituted. “Concentration,” says Mr Pinero, +“is first, second, and last in it,” and he goes on +thus, as reported in the <i>Scotsman</i>, to show +Stevenson’s defect and mistake and, as is not, of course, +unnatural, to magnify the greatness and grandeur of the style of +work in which he has himself been so successful.</p> +<blockquote><p>“If Stevenson had ever mastered that +art—and I do not question that if he had properly conceived +it he had it in him to master it—he might have found the +stage a gold mine, but he would have found, too, that it is a +gold mine which cannot be worked in a smiling, sportive, +half-contemptuous spirit, but only in the sweat of the brain, and +with every mental nerve and sinew strained to its +uttermost. He would have known that no ingots are to be got +out of this mine, save after sleepless nights, days of gloom and +discouragement, and other days, again, of feverish toil, the +result of which proves in the end to be misapplied and has to be +thrown to the winds. . . . When you take up a play-book (if ever +you do take one up) it strikes you as being a very trifling +thing—a mere insubstantial pamphlet beside the imposing +bulk of the latest six-shilling novel. Little do you guess +that every page of the play has cost more care, severer mental +tension, if not more actual manual labour, than any chapter of a +novel, though it be fifty pages long. It is the height of +the author’s art, according to the old maxim, that the +ordinary spectator should never be clearly conscious of the skill +and travail that have gone to the making of the finished +product. But the artist who would achieve a like feat must +realise its difficulties, or what are his chances of +success?”</p> +</blockquote> +<p>But what I should, in little, be inclined to say, in answer to +the “concentration” idea is that, unless you have +first some firm hold on the broad bed-rock facts of human nature +specially appealed to or called forth by the drama, you may +concentrate as much as you please, but you will not write a +successful acting drama, not to speak of a great one. Mr +Pinero’s magnifications of the immense effort demanded from +him must in the end come to mean that he himself does not +instinctively and with natural ease and spontaneity secure this, +but secures it only after great conscious effort; and hence, +perhaps, it is that he as well as so many other modern +playwrights fall so far behind alike in the amount turned out, +and also in its quality as compared with the products of many +playwrights in the past.</p> +<p>The problem drama, in every phase and turn of it, endeavours +to dispense with these fundamental demands implied in the common +and instinctive sense or consciousness of the mass of men and +women, and to substitute for that interest something which will +artificially supersede it, or, at any rate, take its place. +The interest is transferred from the crises necessarily worked up +to in the one case, with all of situation and dialogue directed +to it, and without which it would not be strictly explicable, to +something abnormal, odd, artificial or inverted, or exceptional +in the characters themselves. Having thus, instead of +natural process and sequence, if we may put it so, the problem +dramatist has a double task—he must gain what unity he can, +and reach such crises as he may by artificial aids and inventions +which the more he uses the more makes natural simplicity +unattainable; and next he must reduce and hide as far as he can +the abnormality he has, after all, in the long run, created and +presented. He cannot maintain it to the full, else his work +would become a mere medical or psychological treatise under the +poorest of disguises; and the very necessity for the action and +reaction of characters upon each other is a further element +against him. In a word no one character can stand alone, +and cannot escape influencing others, and also the action. +Thus it is that he cannot isolate as a doctor does his patient +for scientific examination. The healthy and normal must +come in to modify on all sides what is presented of unhealthy and +abnormal, and by its very presence expose the other, while at the +same time it, by its very presence, ministers improvement, +exactly as the sunlight disperses mist and all unhealthy vapours, +germs, and microbes.</p> +<p>The problem dramatist, in place of broad effect and truth to +nature, must find it in stress of invention and resource of that +kind. Thus care and concentration must be all in all with +him—he must never let himself go, or get so interested and +taken with his characters that <i>they</i>, in a sense, control +or direct him. He is all too conscious a +“maker” and must pay for his originality by what in +the end is really painful and overweighted work. This, I +take it, is the reason why so many of the modern dramatists find +their work so hard, and are, comparatively, so slow in the +production of it, while they would fain, by many devices, secure +the general impression or appeal made to all classes alike by the +natural or what we may call spontaneous drama, they are yet, by +the necessity of subject matter and methods of dealing with it, +limited to the real interest of a special class—to whom is +finally given up what was meant for mankind—and the +troublesome and trying task laid on them, to try as best they may +to reconcile two really conflicting tendencies which cannot even +by art be reconciled but really point different ways and tend to +different ends. As the impressionist and the +pre-Raphaelite, in the sister-art of painting cannot be combined +and reconciled in one painter—so it is here; by conception +and methods they go different ways, and if they <i>seek</i> the +same end, it is by opposing processes—the original +conception alike of nature and of art dictating the process.</p> +<p>As for Stevenson, it was no lack of care or concentration in +anything that he touched; these two were never lacking, but +because his subtlety, mystical bias and dreaminess, and +theorising on human nature made this to him impossible. He +might have concentrated as much as he pleased, concentrated as +much as even Mr Pinero desires, but he would not have made a +successful drama, because he was Robert Louis Stevenson, and not +Mr Pinero, and too long, as he himself confessed, had a tendency +to think bad-heartedness was strength; while the only true and +enduring joy attainable in this world—whether by deduction +from life itself, or from <i>impressions</i> of art or of the +drama, is simply the steady, unassailable, and triumphant +consciousness that it is not so, but the reverse, that goodness +and self-sacrifice and self-surrender are the only strength in +the universe. Just as Byron had it with +patriotism:—</p> +<blockquote><p>“Freedom’s battle once begun,<br /> +Bequeathed from bleeding sire to son,<br /> +Tho’ baffled oft is ever won.”</p> +</blockquote> +<p>To go consciously either in fiction or in the drama for +bad-heartedness as strength, is to court failure—the broad, +healthy, human heart, thank Heaven, is so made as to resent the +doctrine; and if a fiction or a play based on this idea for the +moment succeeds, it can only be because of strength in other +elements, or because of partial blindness and partially paralysed +moral sense in the case of those who accept it and joy in +it. If Mr Pinero directly disputes this, then he and I have +no common standing-ground, and I need not follow the matter any +further. Of course, the dramatist may, under mistaken +sympathy and in the midst of complex and bewildering +concatenations, give wrong readings to his audience, but he must +not be always doing even that, or doing it on principle or +system, else his work, however careful and concentrated, will +before long share the fate of the Stevenson-Henley dramas +confessedly wrought when the authors all too definitely held +bad-heartedness was strength.</p> +<h2>CHAPTER XV—THEORY OF GOOD AND EVIL</h2> +<p>We have not hitherto concerned ourselves, in any express +sense, with the ethical elements involved in the tendency now +dwelt on, though they are, of necessity, of a very vital +character. We have shown only as yet the effect of this +mood of mind on dramatic intention and effort. The position +is simply that there is, broadly speaking, the endeavour to +eliminate an element which is essential to successful dramatic +presentation. That element is the eternal distinction, +speaking broadly, between good and evil—between right and +wrong—between the secret consciousness of having done +right, and the consciousness of mere strength and force in +certain other ways.</p> +<p>Nothing else will make up for vagueness and cloudiness +here—no technical skill, no apt dialogue nor concentration, +any more than “fine speeches,” as Mr Pinero calls +them. Now the dramatic demand and the ethical demand here +meet and take each other’s hands, and will not be +separated. This is why Mr Stevenson and Mr +Henley—young men of great talent, failed—utterly +failed—they thought they could make a hero out of a shady +and dare-devil yet really cowardly villain generally—and +failed.</p> +<p>The spirit of this is of the clever youth type—all too +ready to forego the moral for the sake of the fun any day of the +week, and the unthinking selfishness and self-enjoyment of +youth—whose tender mercies are often cruel, are +transcendent in it. As Stevenson himself said, they were +young men then and fancied bad-heartedness was strength. +Perhaps it was a sense of this that made R. L. Stevenson speak as +he did of the <i>Ebb-Tide</i> with Huish the cockney in it, after +he was powerless to recall it; which made him say, as we have +seen, that the closing chapters of <i>The Master of +Ballantrae</i> “<i>shame</i>, <i>and perhaps degrade</i>, +<i>the beginning</i>.” He himself came to see then +the great error; but, alas! it was too late to remedy it—he +could but go forward to essay new tales, not backward to put +right errors in what was done.</p> +<p>Did Mr William Archer have anything of this in his mind and +the far-reaching effects on this side, when he wrote the +following:</p> +<blockquote><p>“Let me add that the omission with which, in +1885, I mildly reproached him—the omission to tell what he +knew to be an essential part of the truth about life—was +abundantly made good in his later writings. It is true that +even in his final philosophy he still seems to me to underrate, +or rather to shirk, the significance of that most compendious +parable which he thus relates in a letter to Mr Henry +James:—‘Do you know the story of the man who found a +button in his hash, and called the waiter? “What do +you call that?” says he. “Well,” said the +waiter, “what d’you expect? Expect to find a +gold watch and chain?” Heavenly apologue, is it +not?’ Heavenly, by all means; but I think Stevenson +relished the humour of it so much that he ‘smiling passed +the moral by.’ In his enjoyment of the waiter’s +effrontery, he forgot to sympathise with the man (even though it +was himself) who had broken his teeth upon the harmful, +unnecessary button. He forgot that all the apologetics in +the world are based upon just this audacious +paralogism.”</p> +</blockquote> +<p>Many writers have done the same—and not a few critics +have hinted at this: I do not think any writer has got at the +radical truth of it more directly, decisively, and clearly than +“J. F. M.,” in a monthly magazine, about the time of +Stevenson’s death; and the whole is so good and clear that +I must quote it—the writer was not thinking of the drama +specially; only of prose fiction, and this but makes the passage +the more effective and apt to my point.</p> +<blockquote><p>“In the outburst of regret which followed +the death of Robert Louis Stevenson, one leading journal dwelt on +his too early removal in middle life ‘with only half his +message delivered.’ Such a phrase may have been used +in the mere cant of modern journalism. Still it set one +questioning what was Stevenson’s message, or at least that +part of it which we had time given us to hear.</p> +<p>“Wonderful as was the popularity of the dead author, we +are inclined to doubt whether the right appreciation of him was +half as wide. To a certain section of the public he seemed +a successful writer of boys’ books, which yet held captive +older people. Now, undoubtedly there was an element (not +the highest) in his work which fascinated boys. It +gratified their yearning for adventure. To too large a +number of his readers, we suspect, this remains Stevenson’s +chief charm; though even of those there were many able to +recognise and be thankful for the literary power and grace which +could serve up their sanguinary diet so daintily.</p> +<p>“Most of Stevenson’s titles, too, like <i>Treasure +Island</i>, <i>Kidnapped</i>, and<i> The Master of +Ballantrae</i>, tended to foster delusion in this +direction. The books were largely bought for gifts by +maiden aunts, and bestowed as school prizes, when it might not +have been so had their titles given more indication of their real +scope and tendency.</p> +<p>“All this, it seems to us, has somewhat obscured +Stevenson’s true power, which is surely that of an +arch-delineator of ‘human nature’ and of the devious +ways of men. As we read him we feel that we have our finger +on the pulse of the cruel politics of the world. He has the +Shakespearean gift which makes us recognise that his pirates and +his statesmen, with their violence and their murders and their +perversions of justice, are swayed by the same interests and are +pulling the same strings and playing on the same passions which +are at work in quieter methods around ourselves. The vast +crimes and the reckless bloodshed are nothing more nor less than +stage effects used to accentuate for the common eye what the seer +can detect without them.</p> +<p>“And reading him from this standpoint, Stevenson’s +‘message’ (so far as it was delivered) appears to be +that of utter gloom—the creed that good is always overcome +by evil. We do not mean in the sense that good always +suffers through evil and is frequently crucified by evil. +That is only the sowing of the martyr’s blood, which is, we +know, the seed of the Church. We should not have marvelled +in the least that a genius like Stevenson should rebel against +mere external ‘happy endings,’ which, being in flat +contradiction to the ordinary ways of Providence, are little +short of thoughtless blasphemy against Providence. But the +terrible thing about the Stevenson philosophy of life is that it +seems to make evil overcome good in the sense of absorbing it, or +perverting it, or at best lowering it. When good and evil +come in conflict in one person, Dr Jekyll vanishes into Mr +Hyde. The awful Master of Ballantrae drags down his +brother, though he seems to fight for his soul at every +step. The sequel to <i>Kidnapped</i> shows David Balfour +ready at last to be hail-fellow-well-met with the supple +Prestongrange and the other intriguers, even though they had +forcibly made him a partner to their shedding of innocent +blood.</p> +<p>“Is it possible that this was what Stevenson’s +experience of real life had brought him? Fortunate himself +in so many respects, he was yet one of those who turn aside from +the smooth and sunny paths of life, to enter into brotherly +sympathy and fellowship with the disinherited. Is this, +then, what he found on those darker levels? Did he discover +that triumphant hypocrisy treads down souls as well as lives?</p> +<p>“We cannot doubt that it often does so; and it is well +that we should see this sometimes, to make us strong to contend +with evil before it works out this, its worst mischief, and to +rouse us from the easy optimist laziness which sits idle while +others are being wronged, and bids them believe ‘that all +will come right in the end,’ when it is our direct duty to +do our utmost to make it ‘come right’ to-day.</p> +<p>“But to show us nothing but the gloomy side, nothing but +the weakness of good, nothing but the strength of evil, does not +inspire us to contend for the right, does not inform us of the +powers and weapons with which we might so contend. To gaze +at unqualified and inevitable moral defeat will but leave us to +the still worse laziness of pessimism, uttering its discouraging +and blasphemous cry, ‘It does not matter; nothing will ever +come right!’</p> +<p>“Shakespeare has shown us—and never so nobly as in +his last great creation of <i>The Tempest</i>—that a man +has one stronghold which none but himself can deliver over to the +enemy—that citadel of his own conduct and character, from +which he can smile supreme upon the foe, who may have conquered +all down the line, but must finally make pause there.</p> +<p>“We must remember that <i>The Tempest</i> was +Shakespeare’s last work. The genuine consciousness of +the possible triumph of the moral nature against every assault is +probably reserved for the later years of life, when, somewhat +withdrawn from the passions of its struggle, we become those +lookers-on who see most of the game. Strange fate is it +that so much of our genius vanishes into the great silence before +those later years are reached!”</p> +</blockquote> +<p>Stevenson was too late in awakening fully to the tragic error +to which short-sighted youth is apt to wander that +“bad-heartedness is strength.” And so, from +this point of view, to our sorrow, he too much verified +Goethe’s saw that “simplicity (not artifice) and +repose are the acme of art, and therefore no youth can be a +master.” In fact, he might very well from another +side, have taken one of Goethe’s fine sayings as a motto +for himself:</p> +<blockquote><p>“Greatest saints were ever most +kindly-hearted to sinners;<br /> +Here I’m a saint with the best; sinners I never could +hate.” <a name="citation7"></a><a href="#footnote7" +class="citation">[7]</a></p> +</blockquote> +<p>Stevenson’s own verdict on <i>Deacon Brodie</i> given to +a <i>New York Herald</i> reporter on the author’s arrival +in New York in September 1887, on the <i>Ludgate Hill</i>, is +thus very near the precise truth: “The piece has been all +overhauled, and though I have no idea whether it will please an +audience, I don’t think either Mr Henley or I are ashamed +of it. <i>But we were both young men when we did that</i>, +<i>and I think we had an idea that bad-heartedness was +strength</i>.”</p> +<p>If Mr Henley in any way confirmed R. L. Stevenson in this +perversion, as I much fear he did, no true admirer of Stevenson +has much to thank him for, whatever claims he may have fancied he +had to Stevenson’s eternal gratitude. He did +Stevenson about the very worst turn he could have done, and aided +and abetted in robbing us and the world of yet greater works than +we have had from his hands. He was but condemning himself +when he wrote some of the detractory things he did in the <i>Pall +Mall Magazine</i> about the <i>Edinburgh Edition</i>, etc. +Men are mirrors in which they see each other: Henley, after all, +painted himself much more effectively in that now notorious +<i>Pall Mall Magazine</i> article than he did R. L. +Stevenson. Such is the penalty men too often pay for +wreaking paltry revenges—writing under morbid memories and +narrow and petty grievances—they not only fail in truth and +impartiality, but inscribe a kind of grotesque parody of +themselves in their effort to make their subject ridiculous, as +he did, for example, about the name Lewis=Louis, and various +other things.</p> +<p>R. L. Stevenson’s fate was to be a casuistic and mystic +moralist at bottom, and could not help it; while, owing to some +kink or twist, due, perhaps, mainly to his earlier sufferings, +and the teachings he then received, he could not help giving it +always a turn to what he himself called +“tail-foremost” or inverted morality; and it was not +till near the close that he fully awakened to the fact that here +he was false to the truest canons at once of morality and life +and art, and that if he pursued this course his doom was, and +would be, to make his endings “disgrace, or perhaps, +degrade his beginnings,” and that no true and effective +dramatic unity and effect and climax was to be gained. Pity +that he did so much on this perverted view of life and world and +art: and well it is that he came to perceive it, even though +almost too late:—certainly too late for that full +presentment of that awful yet gladdening presence of a +God’s power and equity in this seeming tangled web of a +world, the idea which inspired Robert Browning as well as +Wordsworth, when he wrote, and gathered it up into a few lines in +<i>Pippa Passes</i>:</p> +<blockquote><p>“The year’s at the spring,<br /> +And day’s at the morn;<br /> +Morning’s at seven;<br /> +The hillsides dew-pearled;</p> +<p>The lark’s on the wing;<br /> +The snail’s on the thorn:<br /> +God’s in His heaven,<br /> +All’s right with the world.</p> +<p>. . . . . . . . . . . .</p> +<p>“All service ranks the same with God,<br /> +If now, as formerly he trod<br /> +Paradise, His presence fills<br /> +Our earth, each only as God wills<br /> +Can work—God’s puppets best and worst,<br /> +Are we; there is no last or first.”</p> +</blockquote> +<p>It shows what he might have accomplished, had longer life been +but allowed him.</p> +<h2>CHAPTER XVI—STEVENSON’S GLOOM</h2> +<p>The problem of Stevenson’s gloom cannot be solved by any +commonplace cut-and-dried process. It will remain a problem +only unless (1) his original dreamy tendency crossed, if not +warped, by the fatalistic Calvinism which was drummed into him by +father, mother, and nurse in his tender years, is taken fully +into account; then (2) the peculiar action on such a nature of +the unsatisfying and, on the whole, distracting effect of the +bohemian and hail-fellow-well-met sort of ideal to which he +yielded, and which has to be charged with much; and (3) the +conflict in him of a keenly social animus with a very strong +egotistical effusiveness, fed by fancy, and nourished by the +enforced solitariness inevitable in the case of one who, from +early years up, suffered from painful, and even crushing, +disease.</p> +<p>His text and his sermon—which may be shortly summed in +the following sentence—be kind, for in kindness to others +lies the only true pleasure to be gained in life; be cheerful, +even to the point of egotistic self-satisfaction, for through +cheerfulness only is the flow of this incessant kindliness of +thought and service possible. He was not in harmony with +the actual effect of much of his creative work, though he +illustrated this in his life, as few men have done. He +regarded it as the highest duty of life to give pleasure to +others; his art in his own idea thus became in an unostentatious +way consecrated, and while he would not have claimed to be a +seer, any more than he would have claimed to be a saint, as he +would have held in contempt a mere sybarite, most certainly a +vein of unblamable hedonism pervaded his whole philosophy of +life. Suffering constantly, he still was always +kindly. He encouraged, as Mr Gosse has said, this +philosophy by every resource open to him. In practical +life, all who knew him declared that he was brightness, +naïve fancy, and sunshine personified, and yet he could not +help always, somehow, infusing into his fiction a pronounced, and +sometimes almost fatal, element of gloom. Even in his own +case they were not pleasure-giving and failed thus in +essence. Some wise critic has said that no man can ever +write well creatively of that in which in his early youth he had +no knowledge. Always behind Stevenson’s latest +exercises lies the shadow of this as an unshifting background, +which by art may be relieved, but never refined away +wholly. He cannot escape from it if he would. Here, +too, as George MacDonald has neatly and nicely said: We are the +victims of our own past, and often a hand is put forth upon us +from behind and draws us into life backward. Here was +Stevenson, with his half-hedonistic theories of life, the duty of +giving pleasure, of making eyes brighter, and casting sunshine +around one wherever one went, yet the creator of gloom for us, +when all the world was before him where to choose. This +fateful shadow pursued him to the end, often giving us, as it +were, the very justificative ground for his own father’s +despondency and gloom, which the son rather too decisively +reproved, while he might have sympathised with it in a stranger, +and in that most characteristic letter to his mother, which we +have quoted, said that it made his father often seem, to him, to +be ungrateful—“<i>Has the man no +gratitude</i>?” Two selves thus persistently and +constantly struggled in Stevenson. He was from this point +of view, indeed, his own Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde, the buoyant, +self-enjoying, because pleasure-conferring, man, and at the same +time the helpless yet fascinating “dark interpreter” +of the gloomy and gloom-inspiring side of life, viewed from the +point of view of dominating character and inherited +influence. When he reached out his hand with desire of +pleasure-conferring, lo and behold, as he wrote, a hand from his +forefathers was stretched out, and he was pulled backward; so +that, as he has confessed, his endings were apt to shame, perhaps +to degrade, the beginnings. Here is something pointing to +the hidden and secret springs that feed the deeper will and bend +it to their service. Individuality itself is but a mirror, +which by its inequalities transforms things to odd shapes. +Hawthorne confessed to something of this sort. He, like +Stevenson, suffered much in youth, if not from disease then +through accident, which kept him long from youthful +company. At a time when he should have been running free +with other boys, he had to be lonely, reading what books he could +lay his hands on, mostly mournful and puritanic, by the borders +of lone Sebago Lake. He that hath once in youth been +touched by this Marah-rod of bitterness will not easily escape +from it, when he essays in later years to paint life and the +world as he sees them; nay, the hand, when he deems himself +freest, will be laid upon him from behind, if not to pull him, as +MacDonald has said, into life backward, then to make him a +mournful witness of having once been touched by the Marah-rod, +whose bitterness again declares itself and wells out its +bitterness when set even in the rising and the stirring of the +waters.</p> +<p>Such is our view of the “gloom” of +Stevenson—a gloom which well might have justified something +of his father’s despondency. He struggles in vain to +escape from it—it narrows, it fatefully hampers and limits +the free field of his art, lays upon it a strange atmosphere, +fascinating, but not favourable to true dramatic breadth and +force, and spontaneous natural simplicity, invariably lending a +certain touch of weakness, inconsistency, and inconclusiveness to +his endings; so that he himself could too often speak of them +afterwards as apt to “shame, perhaps to degrade, the +beginnings.” This is what true dramatic art should +never do. In the ending all that may raise legitimate +question in the process—all that is confusing, perplexing +in the separate parts—is met, solved, reconciled, at least +in a way satisfactory to the general, or ordinary mind; and thus +such unity is by it so gained and sealed, that in no case can the +true artist, whatever faults may lie in portions of the +process-work, say of his endings that “they shame, perhaps +degrade, the beginning.” Wherever this is the case +there will be “gloom,” and there will also be a sad, +tormenting sense of something wanting. “The evening +brings a ‘hame’;” so should it be +here—should it especially be in a dramatic work. If +not, “We start; for soul is wanting there;” or, if +not soul, then the last halo of the soul’s serene +triumph. From this side, too, there is another cause for +the undramatic character, in the stricter sense of +Stevenson’s work generally: it is, after all, distressful, +unsatisfying, egotistic, for fancy is led at the beck of some +pre-established disharmony which throws back an abiding and +irremovable gloom on all that went before; and the free +spontaneous grace of natural creation which ensures natural +simplicity is, as said already, not quite attained.</p> +<p>It was well pointed out in <i>Hammerton</i>, by an unanonymous +author there quoted (pp. 22, 23), that while in the story, Hyde, +the worse one, wins, in Stevenson himself—in his real +life—Jekyll won, and not Mr Hyde. This writer, too, +might have added that the Master of Ballantrae also wins as well +as Beau Austin and Deacon Brodie. R. L. Stevenson’s +dramatic art and a good deal of his fiction, then, was untrue to +his life, and on one side was a lie—it was not in +consonance with his own practice or his belief as expressed in +life.</p> +<p>In some other matters the test laid down here is not difficult +of application. Stevenson, at the time he wrote <i>The +Foreigner at Home</i>, had seen a good deal; he had been abroad; +he had already had experiences; he had had differences with his +father about Calvinism and some other things; and yet just see +how he applies the standard of his earlier knowledge and +observation to England—and by doing so, cannot help +exaggerating the outstanding differences, always with an almost +provincial accent of unwavering conviction due to his early +associations and knowledge. He cannot help paying an +excessive tribute to the Calvinism he had formally rejected, in +so far as, according to him, it goes to form character—even +national character, at all events, in its production of types; +and he never in any really effective way glances at what Mr +Matthew Arnold called “Scottish manners, Scottish +drink” as elements in any way radically qualifying. +It is not, of course, that I, as a Scotsman, well acquainted with +rural life in some parts of England, as with rural life in many +parts of Scotland in my youth, do not heartily agree with +him—the point is that, when he comes to this sort of +comparison and contrast, he writes exactly as his father would or +might have done, with a full consciousness, after all, of the +tribute he was paying to the practical outcome on character of +the Calvinism in which he so thoroughly believed. It is, in +its way, a very peculiar thing—and had I space, and did I +believe it would prove interesting to readers in general, I might +write an essay on it, with instances—in which case the +Address to the Scottish Clergy would come in for more notice, +citation and application than it has yet received. But +meanwhile just take this little snippet—very characteristic +and very suggestive in its own way—and tell me whether it +does not justify and bear out fully what I have now said as +illustrating a certain side and a strange uncertain limitation in +Stevenson:</p> +<blockquote><p>“But it is not alone in scenery and +architecture that we count England foreign. The +constitution of society, the very pillars of the empire, surprise +and even pain us. The dull neglected peasant, sunk in +matter, insolent, gross and servile, makes a startling contrast +to our own long-legged, long-headed, thoughtful, Bible-loving +ploughman. A week or two in such a place as Suffolk leaves +the Scotsman gasping. It seems impossible that within the +boundaries of his own island a class should have been thus +forgotten. Even the educated and intelligent who hold our +own opinions and speak in our own words, yet seem to hold them +with a difference or from another reason, and to speak on all +things with less interest and conviction. The first shock +of English society is like a cold plunge.” <a +name="citation8"></a><a href="#footnote8" +class="citation">[8]</a></p> +</blockquote> +<p>As there was a great deal of the “John Bull +element” <a name="citation9"></a><a href="#footnote9" +class="citation">[9]</a> in the little dreamer De Quincey, so +there was a great deal, after all, of the rather conceited +Calvinistic Scot in R. L. Stevenson, and it is to be traced as +clearly in certain of his fictions as anywhere, though he himself +would not perhaps have seen it and acknowledged it, as I am here +forced now to see it, and to acknowledge it for him.</p> +<h2>CHAPTER XVII—PROOFS OF GROWTH</h2> +<p>Once again I quote Goethe:</p> +<blockquote><p>“Natural simplicity and repose are the acme +of art, and hence it follows no youth can be a master.”</p> +</blockquote> +<p>It has to be confessed that seldom, if ever, does Stevenson +naturally and by sheer enthusiasm for subject and characters +attain this natural simplicity, if he often attained the +counterfeit presentment—artistic and graceful euphony, and +new, subtle, and often unexpected concatenations of phrase. +Style is much; but it is not everything. We often love +Scott the more that he shows loosenesses and lapses here, for, in +spite of them, he gains natural simplicity, while not seldom +Stevenson, with all his art and fine sense of verbal music, +rather misses it. <i>The Sedulous Ape</i> sometimes +disenchants as well as charms; for occasionally a word, a touch, +a turn, sends us off too directly in search of the model; and +this operates against the interest as introducing a new and alien +series of associations, where, for full effect, it should not be +so. And this distraction will be the more insistent, the +more knowledge the reader has and the more he remembers; and +since Stevenson’s first appeal, both by his spirit and his +methods, is to the cultured and well read, rather than to the +great mass, his “sedulous apehood” only the more +directly wars against him as regards deep, continuous, and +lasting impression; where he should be most simple, natural and +spontaneous; he also is most artificial and involved. If +the story-writer is not so much in earnest, not so possessed by +his matter that this is allowed to him, how is it to be hoped +that we shall be possessed in the reading of it? More than +once in <i>Catriona</i> we must own we had this experience, +directly warring against full possession by the story, and +certain passages about Simon Lovat were especially marked by +this; if even the first introduction to Catriona herself was not +so. As for Miss Barbara Grant, of whom so much has been +made by many admirers, she is decidedly clever, indeed too clever +by half, and yet her doom is to be a mere <i>deus ex +machinâ</i>, and never do more than just pay a little +tribute to Stevenson’s own power of <i>persiflage</i>, or, +if you like, to pay a penalty, poor lass, for the too perfect +doing of hat, and really, really, I could not help saying this +much, though, I do believe that she deserved just a wee bit +better fate than that.</p> +<p>But we have proofs of great growth, and nowhere are they +greater than at the very close. Stevenson died young: in +some phases he was but a youth to the last. To a true +critic then, the problem is, having already attained so +much—a grand style, grasp of a limited group of characters, +with fancy, sincerity, and imagination,—what would +Stevenson have attained in another ten years had such been but +allotted him? It has over and over again been said that, +for long he <i>shied</i> presenting women altogether. This +is not quite true: <i>Thrawn Janet</i> was an earlier effort; and +if there the problem is persistent, the woman is real. Here +also he was on the right road—the advance road. The +sex-question was coming forward as inevitably a part of life, and +could not be left out in any broad and true picture. This +element was effectively revived in <i>Weir of Hermiston</i>, and +“Weir” has been well said to be sadder, if it does +not go deeper than <i>Denis Duval</i> or <i>Edwin +Drood</i>. We know what Dickens and Thackeray could do +there; we can but guess now what Stevenson would have done. +“Weir” is but a fragment; but, to a wisely critical +and unprejudiced mind, it suffices to show not only what the +complete work would have been, but what would have inevitably +followed it. It shows the turning-point, and the way that +was to be followed at the cross-roads—the way into a +bigger, realer, grander world, where realism, freed from the +dream, and fancy, and prejudice of youth, would glory in +achieving the more enduring romance of manhood, maturity and +humanity.</p> +<p>Yes; there was growth—undoubted growth. The +questioning and severely moral element mainly due to the Shorter +Catechism—the tendency to casuistry, and to problems, and +wistful introspection—which had so coloured +Stevenson’s art up to the date of <i>The Master of +Ballantrae</i>, and made him a great essayist, was passing in the +satisfaction of assured insight into life itself. The art +would gradually have been transformed also. The problem, +pure and simple, would have been subdued in face of the great +facts of life; if not lost, swallowed up in the grandeur, pathos, +and awe of the tragedy clearly realised and presented.</p> +<h2>CHAPTER XVIII—EARLIER DETERMINATIONS AND RESULTS</h2> +<p>Stevenson’s earlier determination was so distinctly to +the symbolic, the parabolic, allegoric, dreamy and +mystical—to treatment of the world as an array of weird or +half-fanciful existences, witnessing only to certain dim +spiritual facts or abstract moralities, occasionally inverted +moralities—“tail foremost moralities” as later +he himself named them—that a strong Celtic strain in him +had been detected and dwelt on by acute critics long before any +attention had been given to his genealogy on both sides of the +house. The strong Celtic strain is now amply attested by +many researches. Such phantasies as <i>The House of +Eld</i>, <i>The Touchstone</i>, <i>The Poor Thing</i>, and <i>The +Song of the Morrow</i>, published along with some fables at the +end of an edition of <i>Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde</i>, by +Longman’s, I think, in 1896, tell to the initiated as +forcibly as anything could tell of the presence of this element, +as though moonshine, disguising and transfiguring, was laid over +all real things and the secret of the world and life was in its +glamour: the shimmering and soft shading rendering all outlines +indeterminate, though a great idea is felt to be present in the +mind of the author, for which he works. The man who would +say there is no feeling for symbol—no phantasy or Celtic +glamour in these weird, puzzling, and yet on all sides suggestive +tales would thereby be declared inept, inefficient—blind to +certain qualities that lie near to grandeur in fanciful +literature, or the literature of phantasy, more properly.</p> +<p>This power in weird and playful phantasy is accompanied with +the gift of impersonating or embodying mere abstract qualities or +tendencies in characters. The little early sketch written +in June 1875, titled <i>Good Content</i>, well illustrates +this:</p> +<blockquote><p>“Pleasure goes by piping: Hope unfurls his +purple flag; and meek Content follows them on a snow-white +ass. Here, the broad sunlight falls on open ways and goodly +countries; here, stage by stage, pleasant old towns and hamlets +border the road, now with high sign-poles, now with high minster +spires; the lanes go burrowing under blossomed banks, green +meadows, and deep woods encompass them about; from wood to wood +flock the glad birds; the vane turns in the variable wind; and as +I journey with Hope and Pleasure, and quite a company of jolly +personifications, who but the lady I love is by my side, and +walks with her slim hand upon my arm?</p> +<p>“Suddenly, at a corner, something beckons; a phantom +finger-post, a will o’ the wisp, a foolish challenge writ +in big letters on a brand. And twisting his red moustaches, +braggadocio Virtue takes the perilous way where dim rain falls +ever, and sad winds sigh. And after him, on his white ass, +follows simpering Content.</p> +<p>“Ever since I walk behind these two in the rain. +Virtue is all a-cold; limp are his curling feather and fierce +moustache. Sore besmirched, on his jackass, follows +Content.”</p> +</blockquote> +<p>The record, entitled <i>Sunday Thoughts</i>, which is dated +some five days earlier is naïve and most characteristic, +touched with the phantastic moralities and suggestions already +indicated in every sentence; and rises to the fine climax in this +respect at the close.</p> +<blockquote><p>“A plague o’ these Sundays! How +the church bells ring up the sleeping past! I cannot go in +to sermon: memories ache too hard; and so I hide out under the +blue heavens, beside the small kirk whelmed in leaves. +Tittering country girls see me as I go past from where they sit +in the pews, and through the open door comes the loud psalm and +the fervent solitary voice of the preacher. To and fro I +wander among the graves, and now look over one side of the +platform and see the sunlit meadow where the grown lambs go +bleating and the ewes lie in the shadow under their heaped +fleeces; and now over the other, where the rhododendrons flower +fair among the chestnut boles, and far overhead the chestnut +lifts its thick leaves and spiry blossom into the dark-blue +air. Oh, the height and depth and thickness of the chestnut +foliage! Oh, to have wings like a dove, and dwell in the +tree’s green heart!</p> +<p>. . . . . . . .</p> +<p>“A plague o’ these Sundays! How the Church +bells ring up the sleeping past! Here has a maddening +memory broken into my brain. To the door, to the door, with +the naked lunatic thought! Once it is forth we may talk of +what we dare not entertain; once the intriguing thought has been +put to the door I can watch it out of the loophole where, with +its fellows, it raves and threatens in dumb show. Years ago +when that thought was young, it was dearer to me than all others, +and I would speak with it always when I had an hour alone. +These rags that so dismally trick forth its madness were once the +splendid livery my favour wrought for it on my bed at +night. Can you see the device on the badge? I dare +not read it there myself, yet have a guess—‘<i>bad +ware nicht</i>’—is not that the humour of it?</p> +<p>. . . . . . . . .</p> +<p>“A plague o’ these Sundays! How the Church +bells ring up the sleeping past! If I were a dove and dwelt +in the monstrous chestnuts, where the bees murmur all day about +the flowers; if I were a sheep and lay on the field there under +my comely fleece; if I were one of the quiet dead in the +kirkyard—some homespun farmer dead for a long age, some +dull hind who followed the plough and handled the sickle for +threescore years and ten in the distant past; if I were anything +but what I am out here, under the sultry noon, between the deep +chestnuts, among the graves, where the fervent voice of the +preacher comes to me, thin and solitary, through the open +windows; <i>if I were what I was yesterday</i>, <i>and what</i>, +<i>before God</i>, <i>I shall be again to-morrow</i>, <i>how +should I outface these brazen memories</i>, <i>how live down this +unclean resurrection of dead hopes</i>!”</p> +</blockquote> +<p>Close associated with this always is the moralising faculty, +which is assertive. Take here the cunning sentences on +<i>Selfishness and Egotism</i>, very Hawthornian yet quite +original:</p> +<blockquote><p>“An unconscious, easy, selfish person shocks +less, and is more easily loved, than one who is laboriously and +egotistically unselfish. There is at least no fuss about +the first; but the other parades his sacrifices, and so sells his +favours too dear. Selfishness is calm, a force of nature; +you might say the trees were selfish. But egotism is a +piece of vanity; it must always take you into its confidence; it +is uneasy, troublesome, seeking; it can do good, but not +handsomely; it is uglier, because less dignified, than +selfishness itself.”</p> +</blockquote> +<p>If Mr Henley had but had this clear in his mind he might well +have quoted it in one connection against Stevenson himself in the +<i>Pall Mall Magazine</i> article. He could hardly have +quoted anything more apparently apt to the purpose.</p> +<p>In the sphere of minor morals there is no more important +topic. Unselfishness is too often only the most +exasperating form of selfishness. Here is another very +characteristic bit:</p> +<blockquote><p>“You will always do wrong: you must try to +get used to that, my son. It is a small matter to make a +work about, when all the world is in the same case. I meant +when I was a young man to write a great poem; and now I am +cobbling little prose articles and in excellent good +spirits. I thank you. . . . Our business in life is not to +succeed, but to continue to fail, in good spirits.”</p> +</blockquote> +<p>Again:</p> +<blockquote><p>“It is the mark of good action that it +appears inevitable in the retrospect. We should have been +cut-throats to do otherwise. And there’s an +end. We ought to know distinctly that we are damned for +what we do wrong; but when we have done right, we have only been +gentlemen, after all. There is nothing to make a work +about.”</p> +</blockquote> +<p>The moral to <i>The House of Eld</i> is incisive writ out of +true experience—phantasy there becomes solemn, if not, for +the nonce, tragic:—</p> +<blockquote><p>“Old is the tree and the fruit good,<br /> +Very old and thick the wood.<br /> +Woodman, is your courage stout?<br /> +Beware! the root is wrapped about<br /> +Your mother’s heart, your father’s bones;<br /> +And, like the mandrake, comes with groans.”</p> +</blockquote> +<p>The phantastic moralist is supreme, jauntily serious, +facetiously earnest, most gravely funny in the whole series of +<i>Moral Emblems</i>.</p> +<blockquote><p>“Reader, your soul upraise to see,<br /> +In yon fair cut designed by me,<br /> +The pauper by the highwayside<br /> +Vainly soliciting from pride.<br /> +Mark how the Beau with easy air<br /> +Contemns the anxious rustic’s prayer<br /> +And casting a disdainful eye<br /> +Goes gaily gallivanting by.<br /> +He from the poor averts his head . . .<br /> +He will regret it when he’s dead.”</p> +</blockquote> +<p>Now, the man who would trace out step by step and point by +point, clearly and faithfully, the process by which Stevenson +worked himself so far free of this his besetting tendency to +moralised symbolism or allegory into the freer air of life and +real character, would do more to throw light on Stevenson’s +genius, and the obstacles he had had to contend with in becoming +a novelist eager to interpret definite times and character, than +has yet been done or even faithfully attempted. This would +show at once Stevenson’s wonderful growth and the saving +grace and elasticity of his temperament and genius. Few men +who have by force of native genius gone into allegory or +moralised phantasy ever depart out of that fateful and enchanted +region. They are as it were at once lost and imprisoned in +it and kept there as by a spell—the more they struggle for +freedom the more surely is the bewitching charm laid upon +them—they are but like the fly in amber. It was so +with Ludwig Tieck; it was so with Nathaniel Hawthorne; it was so +with our own George MacDonald, whose professedly real pictures of +life are all informed of this phantasy, which spoils them for +what they profess to be, and yet to the discerning cannot +disguise what they really are—the attempts of a mystic poet +and phantasy writer and allegoristic moralist to walk in the ways +of Anthony Trollope or of Mrs Oliphant, and, like a stranger in a +new land always looking back (at least by a side-glance, an +averted or half-averted face which keeps him from seeing steadily +and seeing whole the real world with which now he is fain to +deal), to the country from which he came.</p> +<p>Stevenson did largely free himself, that is his great +achievement—had he lived, we verily believe, so marked was +his progress, he would have been a great and true realist, a +profound interpreter of human life and its tragic laws and +wondrous compensations—he would have shown how to make the +full retreat from fairyland without penalty of too early an +escape from it, as was the case with Thomas the Rymer of +Ercildoune, and with one other told of by him, and proved that to +have been a dreamer need not absolutely close the door to insight +into the real world and to art. This side of the subject, +never even glanced at by Mr Henley or Mr Zangwill or their +<i>confrères</i>, yet demands, and will well reward the +closest and most careful attention and thought that can be given +to it.</p> +<p>The parabolic element, with the whimsical humour and turn for +paradoxical inversion, comes out fully in such a work as <i>Dr +Jekyll and Mr Hyde</i>. There his humour gives body to his +fancy, and reality to the half-whimsical forms in which he +embodies the results of deep and earnest speculations on human +nature and motive. But even when he is professedly +concerned with incident and adventure merely, he manages to +communicate to his pages some touch of universality, as of +unconscious parable or allegory, so that the reader feels now and +then as though some thought, or motive, or aspiration, or +weakness of his own were being there cunningly unveiled or +presented; and not seldom you feel he has also unveiled and +presented some of yours, secret and unacknowledged too.</p> +<p>Hence the interest which young and old alike have felt in +<i>Treasure Island</i>, <i>Kidnapped</i>, and <i>The +Wrecker</i>—a something which suffices decisively to mark +off these books from the mass with which superficially they might +be classed.</p> +<h2>CHAPTER XIX—EDMUND CLARENCE STEDMAN’S +ESTIMATE</h2> +<p>It should be clearly remembered that Stevenson died at a +little over forty—the age at which severity and simplicity +and breadth in art but begin to be attained. If Scott had +died at the age when Stevenson was taken from us, the world would +have lacked the <i>Waverley Novels</i>; if a like fate had +overtaken Dickens, we should not have had <i>A Tale of Two +Cities</i>; and under a similar stroke, Goldsmith could not have +written <i>Retaliation</i>, or tasted the bitter-sweet first +night of <i>She Stoops to Conquer</i>. At the age of +forty-four Mr Thomas Hardy had probably not dreamt of <i>Tess of +the D’Urbervilles</i>. But what a man has already +done at forty years is likely, I am afraid, to be a gauge as well +as a promise of what he will do in the future; and from Stevenson +we were entitled to expect perfect form and continued variety of +subject, rather than a measurable dynamic gain.</p> +<p>This is the point of view which my friend and correspondent of +years ago, Mr Edmund Clarence Stedman, of New York, set out by +emphasising in his address, as President of the meeting under the +auspices of the Uncut Leaves Society in New York, in the +beginning of 1895, on the death of Stevenson, and to honour the +memory of the great romancer, as reported in the <i>New York +Tribune</i>:</p> +<blockquote><p>“We are brought together by tidings, almost +from the Antipodes, of the death of a beloved writer in his early +prime. The work of a romancer and poet, of a man of insight +and feeling, which may be said to have begun but fifteen years +ago, has ended, through fortune’s sternest cynicism, just +as it seemed entering upon even more splendid achievement. +A star surely rising, as we thought, has suddenly gone out. +A radiant invention shines no more; the voice is hushed of a +creative mind, expressing its fine imagining in this, our +peerless English tongue. His expression was so original and +fresh from Nature’s treasure-house, so prodigal and +various, its too brief flow so consummate through an inborn gift +made perfect by unsparing toil, that mastery of the art by which +Robert Louis Stevenson conveyed those imaginings to us so +picturesque, yet wisely ordered, his own romantic life—and +now, at last, so pathetic a loss which renews</p> +<p>“‘The Virgilian cry,<br /> +The sense of tears in mortal things,’</p> +<p>that this assemblage has gathered at the first summons, in +tribute to a beautiful genius, and to avow that with the putting +out of that bright intelligence the reading world experiences a +more than wonted grief.</p> +<p>“Judged by the sum of his interrupted work, Stevenson +had his limitations. But the work was adjusted to the scale +of a possibly long career. As it was, the good fairies +brought all gifts, save that of health, to his cradle, and the +gift-spoiler wrapped them in a shroud. Thinking of what his +art seemed leading to—for things that would be the crowning +efforts of other men seemed prentice-work in his case—it +was not safe to bound his limitations. And now it is as if +Sir Walter, for example, had died at forty-four, with the +<i>Waverley Novels</i> just begun! In originality, in the +conception of action and situation, which, however phantastic, +are seemingly within reason, once we breathe the air of his +Fancyland; in the union of bracing and heroic character and +adventure; in all that belongs to tale-writing pure and simple, +his gift was exhaustless. No other such charmer, in this +wise, has appeared in his generation. We thought the +stories, the fairy tales, had all been told, but ‘Once upon +a time’ meant for him our own time, and the grave and gay +magic of Prince Florizel in dingy London or sunny France. +All this is but one of his provinces, however distinctive. +Besides, how he buttressed his romance with apparent truth! +Since Defoe, none had a better right to say: ‘There was one +thing I determined to do when I began this long story, and that +was to tell out everything as it befell.’</p> +<p>“I remember delighting in two fascinating stories of +Paris in the time of François Villon, anonymously +reprinted by a New York paper from a London magazine. They +had all the quality, all the distinction, of which I speak. +Shortly afterward I met Mr Stevenson, then in his twenty-ninth +year, at a London club, where we chanced to be the only loungers +in an upper room. To my surprise he opened a +conversation—you know there could be nothing more +unexpected than that in London—and thereby I guessed that +he was as much, if not as far, away from home as I was. He +asked many questions concerning ‘the States’; in +fact, this was but a few months before he took his steerage +passage for our shores. I was drawn to the young Scotsman +at once. He seemed more like a New-Englander of +Holmes’s Brahmin caste, who might have come from Harvard or +Yale. But as he grew animated I thought, as others have +thought, and as one would suspect from his name, that he must +have Scandinavian blood in his veins—that he was of the +heroic, restless, strong and tender Viking strain, and certainly +from that day his works and wanderings have not belied the +surmise. He told me that he was the author of that charming +book of gipsying in the Cevennes which just then had gained for +him some attentions from the literary set. But if I had +known that he had written those two stories of sixteenth-century +Paris—as I learned afterwards when they reappeared in the +<i>New Arabian Nights</i>—I would not have bidden him +good-bye as to an ‘unfledged comrade,’ but would have +wished indeed to ‘grapple him to my soul with hooks of +steel.’</p> +<p>“Another point is made clear as crystal by his life +itself. He had the instinct, and he had the courage, to +make it the servant, and not the master, of the faculty within +him. I say he had the courage, but so potent was his +birth-spell that doubtless he could not otherwise. Nothing +commonplace sufficed him. A regulation stay-at-home life +would have been fatal to his art. The ancient mandate, +‘Follow thy Genius,’ was well obeyed. +Unshackled freedom of person and habit was a prerequisite; as an +imaginary artist he felt—nature keeps her poets and +story-tellers children to the last—he felt, if he ever +reasoned it out, that he must gang his own gait, whether it +seemed promising, or the reverse, to kith, kin, or alien. +So his wanderings were not only in the most natural but in the +wisest consonance with his creative dreams. Wherever he +went, he found something essential for his use, breathed upon it, +and returned it fourfold in beauty and worth. The longing +of the Norseman for the tropic, of the pine for the palm, took +him to the South Seas. There, too, strange secrets were at +once revealed to him, and every island became an ‘Isle of +Voices.’ Yes, an additional proof of +Stevenson’s artistic mission lay in his careless, careful, +liberty of life; in that he was an artist no less than in his +work. He trusted to the impulse which possessed +him—that which so many of us have conscientiously disobeyed +and too late have found ourselves in reputable bondage to +circumstances.</p> +<p>“But those whom you are waiting to hear will speak more +fully of all this—some of them with the interest of their +personal remembrance—with the strength of their affection +for the man beloved by young and old. In the strange and +sudden intimacy with an author’s record which death makes +sure, we realise how notable the list of Stevenson’s works +produced since 1878; more than a score of books—not fiction +alone, but also essays, criticism, biography, drama, even +history, and, as I need not remind you, that spontaneous poetry +which comes only from a true poet. None can have failed to +observe that, having recreated the story of adventure, he seemed +in his later fiction to interfuse a subtler purpose—the +search for character, the analysis of mind and soul. Just +here his summons came. Between the sunrise of one day and +the sunset of the next he exchanged the forest study for the +mountain grave. There, as he had sung his own wish, he lies +‘under the wide and starry sky.’ If there was +something of his own romance, so exquisitely capricious, in the +life of Robert Louis Stevenson, so, also, the poetic conditions +are satisfied in his death, and in the choice of his burial-place +upon the top of Pala. As for the splendour of that maturity +upon which we counted, now never to be fulfilled on sea or land, +I say—as once before, when the great New-England romancer +passed in the stillness of the night:</p> +<p>“‘What though his work unfinished lies? Half +bent<br /> +The rainbow’s arch fades out in upper air,<br /> + The shining cataract half-way down the height<br /> +Breaks into mist; the haunting strain, that fell<br /> + On listeners unaware,<br /> + Ends incomplete, but through the starry night<br /> +The ear still waits for what it did not tell.’”</p> +</blockquote> +<p>Dr Edward Eggleston finely sounded the personal note, and told +of having met Stevenson at a hotel in New York. Stevenson +was ill when the landlord came to Dr Eggleston and asked him if +he should like to meet him. Continuing, he said:</p> +<blockquote><p>“He was flat on his back when I entered, but +I think I never saw anybody grow well in so short a time. +It was a soul rather than a body that lay there, ablaze with +spiritual fire, good will shining through everywhere. He +did not pay me any compliment about my work, and I didn’t +pay him any about his. We did not burn any of the incense +before each other which authors so often think it necessary to +do, but we were friends instantly. I am not given to speedy +intimacies, but I could not help my heart going out to him. +It was a wonderfully invested soul, no hedges or fences across +his fields, no concealment. He was a romanticist; I +was—well, I don’t know exactly what. But he let +me into the springs of his romanticism then and there.</p> +<p>“‘You go in your boat every day?’ he +asked. ‘You sail? Oh! to write a novel a man +must take his life in his hands. He must not live in the +town.’ And so he spoke, in his broad way, of course, +according to the enthusiasm of the moment.</p> +<p>“I can’t sound any note of pathos here +to-night. Some lives are so brave and sweet and joyous and +well-rounded, with such a completeness about them that death does +not leave imperfection. He never had the air of sitting up +with his own reputation. He let his books toss in the waves +of criticism and make their ports if they deserve to. He +had no claptrap, no great cause, none of the disease of pruriency +which came into fashion with Flaubert and Guy de +Maupassant. He simply told his story, with no +condescension, taking the readers into his heart and his +confidence.”</p> +</blockquote> +<h2>CHAPTER XX—EGOTISTIC ELEMENT AND ITS EFFECTS</h2> +<p>From these sources now traced out by us—his youthfulness +of spirit, his mystical bias, and tendency to +dream—symbolisms leading to disregard of common +feelings—flows too often the indeterminateness of +Stevenson’s work, at the very points where for direct +interest there should be decision. In <i>The Master of +Ballantrae</i> this leads him to try to bring the balances even +as regards our interest in the two brothers, in so far justifying +from one point of view what Mr Zangwill said in the quotation we +have given, or, as Sir Leslie Stephen had it in his second series +of the <i>Studies of a Biographer</i>:</p> +<blockquote><p>“The younger brother in <i>The Master of +Ballantrae</i>, who is black-mailed by the utterly reprobate +master, ought surely to be interesting instead of being simply +sullen and dogged. In the later adventures, we are invited +to forgive him on the ground that his brain has been affected: +but the impression upon me is that he is sacrificed throughout to +the interests of the story [or more strictly for the working out +of the problem as originally conceived by the author]. The +curious exclusion of women is natural in the purely boyish +stories, since to a boy woman is simply an incumbrance upon +reasonable modes of life. When in <i>Catriona</i> Stevenson +introduces a love story, it is still unsatisfactory, because +David Balfour is so much the undeveloped animal that his passion +is clumsy, and his charm for the girl unintelligible. I +cannot feel, to say the truth, that in any of these stories I am +really among living human beings with whom, apart from their +adventures, I can feel any very lively affection or +antipathy.”</p> +</blockquote> +<p>In the <i>Ebb-Tide</i> it is, in this respect, yet worse: the +three heroes choke each other off all too literally.</p> +<p>In his excess of impartiality he tones down the points and +lines that would give the attraction of true individuality to his +characters, and instead, would fain have us contented with his +liberal, and even over-sympathetic views of them and allowances +for them. But instead of thus furthering his object, he +sacrifices the whole—and his story becomes, instead of a +broad and faithful human record, really a curiosity of +autobiographic perversion, and of overweening, if not extravagant +egotism of the more refined, but yet over-obtrusive kind.</p> +<p>Mr Baildon thus hits the subjective tendency, out of which +mainly this defect—a serious defect in view of +interest—arises.</p> +<blockquote><p>“That we can none of us be sure to what +crime we might not descend, if only our temptation were +sufficiently acute, lies at the root of his fondness and +toleration for wrong-doers (p. 74).</p> +</blockquote> +<p>Thus he practically declines to do for us what we are +unwilling or unable to do for ourselves. Interest in two +characters in fiction can never, in this artificial way, and if +they are real characters truly conceived, be made equal, nor can +one element of claim be balanced against another, even at the +beck of the greatest artist. The common sentiment, as we +have seen, resents it even as it resents lack of guidance +elsewhere. After all, the novelist is bound to give +guidance: he is an authority in his own world, where he is an +autocrat indeed; and can work out issues as he pleases, even as +the Pope is an authority in the Roman Catholic world: he +abdicates his functions when he declines to lead: we depend on +him from the human point of view to guide us right, according to +the heart, if not according to any conventional notion or +opinion. Stevenson’s pause in individual presentation +in the desire now to raise our sympathy for the one, and then for +the other in <i>The Master of Ballantrae</i>, admits us too far +into Stevenson’s secret or trick of affected +self-withdrawal in order to work his problem and to signify his +theories, to the loss and utter confusion of his aims from the +point of common dramatic and human interest. It is the same +in <i>Catriona</i> in much of the treatment of James Mohr or +More; it is still more so in not a little of the treatment of +<i>Weir of Hermiston</i> and his son, though there, happily for +him and for us, there were the direct restrictions of known fact +and history, and clearly an attempt at a truer and broader human +conception unburdened by theory or egotistic conception.</p> +<p>Everywhere the problem due to the desire to be overjust, so to +say, emerges; and exactly in the measure it does so the source of +true dramatic directness and variety is lost. It is just as +though Shakespeare were to invent a chorus to cry out at +intervals about Iago—“a villain, bad lot, you see, +still there’s a great deal to be said for him—victim +of inheritance, this, that and the other; and considering +everything how could you really expect anything else +now.” Thackeray was often weak from this same +tendency—he meant Becky Sharp to be largely excused by the +reader on these grounds, as he tries to excuse several others of +his characters; but his endeavours in this way to gloss over +“wickedness” in a way, do not succeed—the +reader does not carry clear in mind as he goes along, the +suggestions Thackeray has ineffectually set out and the +“healthy hatred of scoundrels” Carlyle talked about +has its full play in spite of Thackeray’s suggested excuses +and palliations, and all in his own favour, too, as a +story-wright.</p> +<p>Stevenson’s constant habit of putting himself in the +place of another, and asking himself how would I have borne +myself here or there, thus limited his field of dramatic +interest, where the subject should have been made pre-eminently +in aid of this effect. Even in Long John Silver we see it, +as in various others of his characters, though there, owing to +the demand for adventure, and action contributory to it, the +defect is not so emphasised. The sense as of a projection +of certain features of the writer into all and sundry of his +important characters, thus imparts, if not an air of egotism, +then most certainly a somewhat constrained, if not somewhat +artificial, autobiographical air—in the very midst of +action, questions of ethical or casuistical character arise, all +contributing to submerging individual character and its dramatic +interests under a wave of but half-disguised autobiography. +Let Stevenson do his very best—let him adopt all the +artificial disguises he may, as writing narrative in the first +person, etc., as in <i>Kidnapped</i> and <i>Catriona</i>, +nevertheless, the attentive reader’s mind is constantly +called off to the man who is actually writing the story. It +is as though, after all, all the artistic or artificial disguises +were a mere mask, as more than once Thackeray represented +himself, the mask partially moved aside, just enough to show a +chubby, childish kind of transformed Thackeray face below. +This belongs, after all, to the order of self-revelation though +under many disguises: it is creation only in its manner of work, +not in its essential being—the spirit does not so to us go +clean forth of itself, it stops at home, and, as if from a remote +and shadowy cave or recess, projects its own colour on all on +which it looks.</p> +<p>This is essentially the character of the <i>mystic</i>; and +hence the justification for this word as applied expressly to +Stevenson by Mr Chesterton and others.</p> +<blockquote><p>“The inner life like rings of light<br /> +Goes forth of us, transfiguring all we see.”</p> +</blockquote> +<p>The effect of these early days, with the peculiar tint due to +the questionings raised by religious stress and strain, persists +with Stevenson; he grows, but he never escapes from that peculiar +something which tells of childish influences—of boyish +perversions and troubled self-examinations due to Shorter +Catechism—any one who would view Stevenson without thought +of this, would view him only from the outside—see him +merely in dress and outer oddities. Here I see definite and +clear heredity. Much as he differed from his worthy father +in many things, he was like him in this—the old man like +the son, bore on him the marks of early excesses of wistful +self-questionings and painful wrestlings with religious problems, +that perpetuated themselves in a quaint kind of self-revelation +often masked by an assumed self-withdrawal or indifference which +to the keen eye only the more revealed the real case. +Stevenson never, any more than his father, ceased to be +interested in the religious questions for which Scotland has +always had a <i>penchant</i>—and so much is this the case +that I could wish Professor Sidney Colvin would even yet attempt +to show the bearing of certain things in that <i>Address to the +Scottish Clergy</i> written when Stevenson was yet but a young +man, on all that he afterwards said and did. It starts in +the <i>Edinburgh Edition</i> without any note, comment, or +explanation whatever, but in that respect the <i>Edinburgh +Edition</i> is not quite so complete as it might have been +made. In view of the point now before us, it is far more +important than many of the other trifles there given, and wants +explanation and its relation to much in the novels brought out +and illustrated. Were this adequately done, only new ground +would be got for holding that Stevenson, instead of, as has been +said, “seeing only the visible world,” was, in truth, +a mystical moralist, once and always, whose thoughts ran all too +easily into parable and fable, and who, indeed, never escaped +wholly from that atmosphere, even when writing of things and +characters that seemed of themselves to be wholly outside that +sphere. This was the tendency, indeed, that militated +against the complete detachment in his case from moral problems +and mystical thought, so as to enable him to paint, as it were, +with a free hand exactly as he saw; and most certainly not that +he saw only the visible world. The mystical element is not +directly favourable to creative art. You see in Tolstoy how +it arrests and perplexes—how it lays a disturbing check on +real presentation—hindering the action, and is not +favourable to the loving and faithful representation, which, as +Goethe said, all true and high art should be. To some +extent you see exactly the same thing in Nathaniel Hawthorne as +in Tolstoy. Hawthorne’s preoccupations in this way +militated against his character-power; his healthy characters who +would never have been influenced as he describes by morbid ones +yet are not only influenced according to him, but suffer +sadly. Phoebe Pyncheon in <i>The House of the Seven +Gables</i>, gives sunshine to poor Hepzibah Clifford, but is +herself never merry again, though joyousness was her natural +element. So, doubtless, it would have been with Pansie in +<i>Doctor Dolliver</i>, as indeed it was with Zenobia and with +the hero in the <i>Marble Faun</i>. “We all go +wrong,” said Hawthorne, “by a too strenuous +resolution to go right.” Lady Byron was to him an +intolerably irreproachable person, just as Stevenson felt a +little of the same towards Thoreau; notwithstanding that he was +the “sunnily-ascetic,” the asceticism and its +corollary, as he puts it: the passion for individual +self-improvement was alien in a way to Stevenson. This is +the position of the casuistic mystic moralist and not of the man +who sees only the visible world.</p> +<p>Mr Baildon says:</p> +<blockquote><p>“Stevenson has many of the things that are +wanting or defective in Scott. He has his philosophy of +life; he is beyond remedy a moralist, even when his morality is +of the kind which he happily calls ‘tail foremost,’ +or as we may say, inverted morality. Stevenson is, in fact, +much more of a thinker than Scott, and he is also much more of +the conscious artist, questionable advantage as that sometimes +is. He has also a much cleverer, acuter mind than Scott, +also a questionable advantage, as genius has no greater enemy +than cleverness, and there is really no greater descent than to +fall from the style of genius to that of cleverness. But +Stevenson was too critical and alive to misuse his cleverness, +and it is generally employed with great effect as in the +diabolical ingenuities of a John Silver, or a Master of +Ballantrae. In one sense Stevenson does not even belong to +the school of Scott, but rather to that of Poe, Hawthorne, and +the Brontës, in that he aims more at concentration and +intensity, than at the easy, quiet breadth of Scott.”</p> +</blockquote> +<p>If, indeed, it should not here have been added that +Stevenson’s theory of life and conduct was not seldom too +insistent for free creativeness, for dramatic freedom, breadth +and reality.</p> +<p>Now here I humbly think Mr Baldion errs about the cleverness +when he criticises Stevenson for the <i>faux pas</i> artistically +of resorting to the piratic filibustering and the +treasure-seeking at the close of <i>The Master of Ballantrae</i>, +he only tells and tells plainly how cleverness took the place of +genius there; as indeed it did in not a few cases—certainly +in some points in the Dutch escapade in <i>Catriona</i> and in +not a few in <i>Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde</i>. The fault of +that last story is simply that we seem to hear Stevenson +chuckling to himself, “Ah, now, won’t they all say at +last how clever I am.” That too mars the <i>Merry +Men</i>, whoever wrote them or part wrote them, and <i>Prince +Otto</i> would have been irretrievably spoiled by this +self-conscious sense of cleverness had it not been for style and +artifice. In this incessant “see how clever I +am,” we have another proof of the abounding youthfulness of +R. L. Stevenson. If, as Mr Baildon says (p. 30), he had +true child’s horror of being put in fine clothes in which +one must sit still and be good, <i>Prince Otto</i> remains +attractive in spite of some things and because of his fine +clothes. Neither Poe nor Hawthorne could have fallen to the +piracy, and treasure-hunting of <i>The Master of +Ballantrae</i>.</p> +<p>“Far behind Scott in the power of instinctive, +irreflective, spontaneous creation of character, Stevenson tells +his story with more art and with a firmer grip on his +reader.” And that is exactly what I, wishing to do +all I dutifully can for Stevenson, cannot see. His genius +is in nearly all cases pulled up or spoiled by his all too +conscious cleverness, and at last we say, “Oh Heavens! if +he could and would but let himself go or forget himself what he +might achieve.” But he doesn’t—never +does, and therefore remains but a second-rate creator though more +and more the stylist and the artist. This is more +especially the case at the very points where writers like Scott +would have risen and roused all the readers’ +interest. When Stevenson reaches such points, he is always +as though saying “See now how cleverly I’ll clear +that old and stereotyped style of thing and do something +<i>new</i>.” But there are things in life and human +nature, which though they are old are yet ever new, and the true +greatness of a writer can never come from evading or looking +askance at them or trying to make them out something else than +what they really are. No artistic aim or ambition can +suffice to stand instead of them or to refine them away. +That way lies only cold artifice and frigid lacework, and +sometimes Stevenson did go a little too much on this line.</p> +<h2>CHAPTER XXI—UNITY IN STEVENSON’S STORIES</h2> +<p>The unity in Stevenson’s stories is generally a unity of +subjective impression and reminiscence due, in the first place, +to his quick, almost abnormal boyish reverence for mere animal +courage, audacity, and doggedness, and, in the second place, to +his theory of life, his philosophy, his moral view. He +produces an artificial atmosphere. Everything then has to +be worked up to this—kept really in accordance with it, and +he shows great art in the doing of this. Hence, though, a +quaint sense of sameness, of artificial atmosphere—at once +really a lack of spontaneity and of freedom. He is freest +when he pretends to nothing but adventure—when he aims +professedly at nothing save to let his characters develop +themselves by action. In this respect the most successful +of his stories is yet <i>Treasure Island</i>, and the least +successful perhaps <i>Catriona</i>, when just as the ambitious +aim compels him to pause in incident, the first-person form +creates a cold stiffness and artificiality alien to the full +impression he would produce upon the reader. The two +stories he left unfinished promised far greater things in this +respect than he ever accomplished. For it is an +indisputable fact, and indeed very remarkable, that the ordinary +types of men and women have little or no attraction for +Stevenson, nor their commonplace passions either. Yet +precisely what his art wanted was due infusion of this very +interest. Nothing else will supply the place. The +ordinary passion of love to the end he <i>shies</i>, and must +invent no end of expedients to supply the want. The +devotion of the ordinary type, as Thomas Hardy has over and over +exhibited it, is precisely what Stevenson wants, to impart to his +novels the full sense of reality. The secret of morals, +says Shelley, is a going out of self. Stevenson was only on +the way to secure this grand and all-sufficing motive. His +characters, in a way, are all already like himself, romantic, but +the highest is when the ordinary and commonplace is so +apprehended that it becomes romantic, and may even, through the +artist’s deeper perception and unconscious grasp and +vision, take the hand of tragedy, and lose nothing. The +very atmosphere Stevenson so loved to create was in itself alien +to this; and, so far as he went, his most successful revelations +were but records of his own limitations. It is something +that he was to the end so much the youth, with fine impulses, if +sometimes with sympathies misdirected, and that, too, in such a +way as to render his work cold and artificial, else he might have +turned out more of the Swift than of the Sterne or +Fielding. Prince Otto and Seraphina are from this cause +mainly complete failures, alike from the point of view of nature +and of art, and the Countess von Rosen is not a complete failure, +and would perhaps have been a bit of a success, if only she had +made Prince Otto come nearer to losing his virtue. The most +perfect in style, perhaps, of all Stevenson’s efforts it is +yet most out of nature and truth,—a farce, felt to be +disguised only when read in a certain mood; and this all the more +for its perfections, just as Stevenson would have said it of a +human being too icily perfect whom he had met.</p> +<p>On this subject, Mr Baildon has some words so decisive, true, +and final, that I cannot refrain from here quoting them:</p> +<blockquote><p>“From sheer incapacity to retain it, Prince +Otto loses the regard, affection, and esteem of his wife. +He goes eavesdropping among the peasantry, and has to sit silent +while his wife’s honour is coarsely impugned. After +that I hold it is impossible for Stevenson to rehabilitate his +hero, and, with all his brilliant effects, he fails. . . . I +cannot help feeling a regret that such fine work is thrown away +on what I must honestly hold to be an unworthy subject. The +music of the spheres is rather too sublime an accompaniment for +this genteel comedy Princess. A touch of Offenbach would +seem more appropriate. Then even in comedy the hero must +not be the butt.” And it must reluctantly be +confessed that in Prince Otto you see in excess that to which +there is a tendency in almost all the rest—it is to make up +for lack of hold on human nature itself, by resources of style +and mere external technical art.</p> +</blockquote> +<h2>CHAPTER XXII—PERSONAL CHEERFULNESS AND INVENTED +GLOOM</h2> +<p>Now, it is in its own way surely a very remarkable thing that +Stevenson, who, like a youth, was all for <i>Heiterkeit</i>, +cheerfulness, taking and giving of pleasure, for relief, change, +variety, new impressions, new sensations, should, at the time he +did, have conceived and written a story like <i>The Master of +Ballantrae</i>—all in a grave, grey, sombre tone, not +aiming even generally at what at least indirectly all art is +conceived to aim at—the giving of pleasure: he himself +decisively said that it “lacked all pleasurableness, and +hence was imperfect in essence.” A very strange +utterance in face of the oft-repeated doctrine of the essays that +the one aim of art, as of true life, is to communicate pleasure, +to cheer and to elevate and improve, and in face of two of his +doctrines that life itself is a monitor to cheerfulness and +mirth. This is true: and it is only explainable on the +ground that it is youth alone which can exult in its power of +accumulating shadows and dwelling on the dark side—it is +youth that revels in the possible as a set-off to its brightness +and irresponsibility: it is youth that can delight in its own +excess of shade, and can even dispense with +sunshine—hugging to its heart the memory of its own often +self-created distresses and conjuring up and, with +self-satisfaction, brooding over the pain and imagined horrors of +a lifetime. Maturity and age kindly bring their own +relief—rendering this kind of ministry to itself no longer +desirable, even were it possible. <i>The Master of +Ballantrae</i> indeed marks the crisis. It shows, and +effectively shows, the other side of the adventure +passion—the desire of escape from its own sombre +introspections, which yet, in all its “go” and glow +and glitter, tells by its very excess of their tendency to pass +into this other and apparently opposite. But here, too, +there is nothing single or separate. The device of piracy, +etc., at close of <i>Ballantrae</i>, is one of the poorest +expedients for relief in all fiction.</p> +<p>Will in <i>Will o’ the Mill</i> presents another. +When at the last moment he decides that it is not worth while to +get married, the author’s then rather incontinent +philosophy—which, by-the-bye, he did not himself act +on—spoils his story as it did so much else. Such an +ending to such a romance is worse even than any blundering such +as the commonplace inventor could be guilty of, for he would be +in a low sense natural if he were but commonplace. We need +not therefore be surprised to find Mr Gwynn thus writing:</p> +<blockquote><p>“The love scenes in <i>Weir of Hermiston</i> +are almost unsurpassable; but the central interest of the story +lies elsewhere—in the relations between father and +son. Whatever the cause, the fact is clear that in the last +years of his life Stevenson recognised in himself an ability to +treat subjects which he had hitherto avoided, and was thus no +longer under the necessity of detaching fragments from +life. Before this, he had largely confined himself to the +adventures of roving men where women had made no entrance; or, if +he treated of a settled family group, the result was what we see +in <i>The Master of Ballantrae</i>.”</p> +</blockquote> +<p>In a word, between this work and <i>Weir of Hermiston</i> we +have the passage from mere youth to manhood, with its wider, +calmer views, and its patience, inclusiveness, and mild, genial +acceptance of types that before did not come, and could not by +any effort of will be brought, within range or made to adhere +consistently with what was already accepted and workable. +He was less the egotist now and more the realist. He was +not so prone to the high lights in which all seems overwrought, +exaggerated; concerned really with effects of a more subdued +order, if still the theme was a wee out of ordinary nature. +Enough is left to prove that Stevenson’s life-long devotion +to his art anyway was on the point of being rewarded by such a +success as he had always dreamt of: that in the man’s +nature there was power to conceive scenes of a tragic beauty and +intensity unsurpassed in our prose literature, and to create +characters not unworthy of his greatest predecessors. The +blind stroke of fate had nothing to say to the lesson of his +life, and though we deplore that he never completed his +masterpieces, we may at least be thankful that time enough was +given him to prove to his fellow-craftsmen, that such labour for +the sake of art is not without art’s peculiar +reward—the triumph of successful execution.</p> +<h2>CHAPTER XXIII—EDINBURGH REVIEWERS’ DICTA +INAPPLICABLE TO LATER WORK</h2> +<p>From many different points of view discerning critics have +celebrated the autobiographic vein—the self-revealing turn, +the self-portraiture, the quaint, genial, yet really child-like +egotistic and even dreamy element that lies like an amalgam, +behind all Stevenson’s work. Some have even said, +that because of this, he will finally live by his essays and not +by his stories. That is extreme, and is not critically +based or justified, because, however true it may be up to a +certain point, it is not true of Stevenson’s quite latest +fictions where we see a decided breaking through of the old +limits, and an advance upon a new and a fresher and broader +sphere of interest and character altogether. But these +ideas set down truly enough at a certain date, or prior to a +certain date, are wrong and falsely directed in view of +Stevenson’s latest work and what it promised. For +instance, what a discerning and able writer in the <i>Edinburgh +Review</i> of July 1895 said truly then was in great part utterly +inapplicable to the whole of the work of the last years, for in +it there was grasp, wide and deep, of new +possibilities—promise of clear insight, discrimination, and +contrast of character, as well as firm hold of new and great +human interest under which the egotistic or autobiographic vein +was submerged or weakened. The <i>Edinburgh Reviewer</i> +wrote:</p> +<blockquote><p>“There was irresistible fascination in what +it would be unfair to characterise as egotism, for it came +natural to him to talk frankly and easily of himself. . . . He +could never have dreamed, like Pepys, of locking up his +confidence in a diary. From first to last, in inconsecutive +essays, in the records of sentimental touring, in fiction and in +verse, he has embodied the outer and the inner +autobiography. He discourses—he prattles—he +almost babbles about himself. He seems to have taken minute +and habitual introspection for the chief study in his analysis of +human nature, as a subject which was immediately in his reach, +and would most surely serve his purpose. We suspect much of +the success of his novels was due to the fact that as he seized +for a substructure on the scenery and situations which had +impressed him forcibly, so in the characters of the most +different types, there was always more or less of +self-portraiture. The subtle touch, eminently and +unmistakably realistic, gave life to what might otherwise have +seemed a lay-figure. . . . He hesitated again and again as to his +destination; and under mistakes, advice of friends, doubted his +chances, as a story-writer, even after <i>Treasure Island</i> had +enjoyed its special success. . . . We venture to think that, with +his love of intellectual self-indulgence, had he found +novel-writing really enjoyable, he would never have doubted at +all. But there comes in the difference between him and +Scott, whom he condemns for the slovenliness of hasty +workmanship. Scott, in his best days, sat down to his desk +and let the swift pen take its course in inspiration that seemed +to come without an effort. Even when racked with pains, and +groaning in agony, the intellectual machinery was still driven at +a high pressure by something that resembled an irrepressible +instinct. Stevenson can have had little or nothing of that +inspiriting afflatus. He did his painstaking work +conscientiously, thoughtfully; he erased, he revised, and he was +hard to satisfy. In short, it was his weird—and he +could not resist it—to set style and form before fire and +spirit.”</p> +</blockquote> +<h2>CHAPTER XXIV—MR HENLEY’S SPITEFUL +PERVERSIONS</h2> +<p>More unfortunate still, as disturbing and prejudicing a sane +and true and disinterested view of Stevenson’s claims, was +that article of his erewhile “friend,” Mr W. E. +Henley, published on the appearance of the <i>Memoir</i> by Mr +Graham Balfour, in the <i>Pall Mall Magazine</i>. It was +well that Mr Henley there acknowledged frankly that he wrote +under a keen sense of “grievance”—a most +dangerous mood for the most soberly critical and self-restrained +of men to write in, and that most certainly Mr W. E. Henley was +not—and that he owned to having lost contact with, and +recognition of the R. L. Stevenson who went to America in 1887, +as he says, and never came back again. To do bare justice +to Stevenson it is clear that knowledge of that later Stevenson +was essential—essential whether it was calculated to deepen +sympathy or the reverse. It goes without saying that the +Louis he knew and hobnobbed with, and nursed near by the Old +Bristo Port in Edinburgh could not be the same exactly as the +Louis of Samoa and later years—to suppose so, or to expect +so, would simply be to deny all room for growth and +expansion. It is clear that the W. E. Henley of those days +was not the same as the W. E. Henley who indited that article, +and if growth and further insight are to be allowed to Mr Henley +and be pleaded as his justification <i>cum</i> spite born of +sense of grievance for such an onslaught, then clearly some +allowance in the same direction must be made for Stevenson. +One can hardly think that in his case old affection and +friendship had been so completely submerged, under feelings of +grievance and paltry pique, almost always bred of grievances +dwelt on and nursed, which it is especially bad for men of genius +to acknowledge, and to make a basis, as it were, for clearer +knowledge, insight, and judgment. In other cases the +pleading would simply amount to an immediate and complete arrest +of judgment. Mr Henley throughout writes as though whilst +he had changed, and changed in points most essential, his +erewhile friend remained exactly where he was as to literary +position and product—the Louis who went away in 1887 and +never returned, had, as Mr W. E. Henley, most unfortunately for +himself, would imply, retained the mastery, and the Louis who +never came back had made no progress, had not added an inch, not +to say a cubit, to his statue, while Mr Henley remained <i>in +statu quo</i>, and was so only to be judged. It is an +instance of the imperfect sympathy which Charles Lamb finely +celebrated—only here it is acknowledged, and the +“imperfect sympathy” pled as a ground for claiming +the full insight which only sympathy can secure. If Mr +Henley was fair to the Louis he knew and loved, it is clear that +he was and could only be unjust to the Louis who went away in +1887 and never came back.</p> +<blockquote><p>“At bottom Stevenson was an excellent +fellow. But he was of his essence what the French call +<i>personnel</i>. He was, that is, incessantly and +passionately interested in Stevenson. He could not be in +the same room with a mirror but he must invite its confidences +every time he passed it; to him there was nothing obvious in time +and eternity, and the smallest of his discoveries, his most +trivial apprehensions, were all by way of being revelations, and +as revelations must be thrust upon the world; he was never so +much in earnest, never so well pleased (this were he happy or +wretched), never so irresistible as when he wrote about +himself. <i>Withal</i>, <i>if he wanted a thing</i>, <i>he +went after it with an entire contempt of consequences</i>. +<i>For these</i>, <i>indeed</i>, <i>the Shorter Catechism was +ever prepared to answer</i>; <i>so that whether he did well or +ill</i>, <i>he was safe to come out unabashed and +cheerful</i>.”</p> +</blockquote> +<p>Notice here, how undiscerning the mentor becomes. The +words put in “italics,” unqualified as they are, +would fit and admirably cover the character of the greatest +criminal. They would do as they stand, for Wainwright, for +Dr Dodd, for Deeming, for Neil Cream, for Canham Read, or for +Dougal of Moat Farm fame. And then the touch that, in the +Shorter Catechism, Stevenson would have found a cover or +justification for it somehow! This comes of writing under a +keen sense of grievance; and how could this be truly said of one +who was “at bottom an excellent fellow.” W. +Henley’s ethics are about as clear-obscure as is his +reading of character. Listen to him once again—more +directly on the literary point.</p> +<blockquote><p>“To tell the truth, his books are none of +mine; I mean that if I wanted reading, I do not go for it to the +<i>Edinburgh Edition</i>. I am not interested in remarks +about morals; in and out of letters. <i>I have lived a full +and varied life</i>, and my opinions are my own. <i>So</i>, +<i>if I crave the enchantment of romance</i>, <i>I ask it of +bigger men than he</i>, <i>and of bigger books than his</i>: of +<i>Esmond</i> (say) and <i>Great Expectations</i>, of +<i>Redgauntlet</i> and <i>Old Mortality</i>, <i>of La Reine +Margot</i> and <i>Bragelonne</i>, of <i>David Copperfield</i> and +<i>A Tale of Two Cities</i>; while if good writing and some other +things be in my appetite, are there not always Hazlitt and +Lamb—to say nothing of that globe of miraculous continents; +which is known to us as Shakespeare? There is his style, +you will say, and it is a fact that it is rare, and <i>in the +last</i> times better, because much simpler than in the +first. But, after all, his style is so perfectly achieved +that the achievement gets obvious: and when achievement gets +obvious, is it not by way of becoming uninteresting? And is +there not something to be said for the person who wrote that +Stevenson always reminded him of a young man dressed the best he +ever saw for the Burlington Arcade? <a name="citation10"></a><a +href="#footnote10" class="citation">[10]</a> +Stevenson’s work in letters does not now take me much, and +I decline to enter on the question of his immortality; since +that, despite what any can say, will get itself settled soon or +late, for all time. No—when I care to think of +Stevenson it is not of R. L. Stevenson—R. L. Stevenson, the +renowned, the accomplished—executing his difficult solo, +but of the Lewis that I knew and loved, and wrought for, and +worked with for so long. The successful man of letters does +not greatly interest me. I read his careful prayers and +pass on, with the certainty that, well as they read, they were +not written for print. I learn of his nameless +prodigalities, and recall some instances of conduct in another +vein. I remember, rather, the unmarried and irresponsible +Lewis; the friend, the comrade, the <i>charmeur</i>. Truly, +that last word, French as it is, is the only one that is worthy +of him. I shall ever remember him as that. The +impression of his writings disappears; the impression of himself +and his talk is ever a possession. . . . Forasmuch as he was +primarily a talker, his printed works, like these of others after +his kind, are but a sop for posterity. A last dying speech +and confession (as it were) to show that not for nothing were +they held rare fellows in their day.”</p> +</blockquote> +<p>Just a month or two before Mr Henley’s self-revealing +article appeared in the <i>Pall Mall Magazine</i>, Mr Chesterton, +in the <i>Daily News</i>, with almost prophetic forecast, had +said:</p> +<blockquote><p>“Mr Henley might write an excellent study of +Stevenson, but it would only be of the Henleyish part of +Stevenson, and it would show a distinct divergence from the +finished portrait of Stevenson, which would be given by Professor +Colvin.”</p> +</blockquote> +<p>And it were indeed hard to reconcile some things here with +what Mr Henley set down of individual works many times in the +<i>Scots and National Observer</i>, and elsewhere, and in +literary judgments as in some other things there should, at +least, be general consistency, else the search for an honest man +in the late years would be yet harder than it was when Diogenes +looked out from his tub!</p> +<p>Mr James Douglas, in the <i>Star</i>, in his half-playful and +suggestive way, chose to put it as though he regarded the article +in the <i>Pall Mall Magazine</i> as a hoax, perpetrated by some +clever, unscrupulous writer, intent on provoking both Mr Henley +and his friends, and Stevenson’s friends and +admirers. This called forth a letter from one signing +himself “A Lover of R. L. Stevenson,” which is so +good that we must give it here.</p> +<blockquote><p style="text-align: center">A LITERARY HOAX.<br /> +TO THE EDITOR OF THE <i>STAR</i>.</p> +<p><span class="smcap">Sir</span>—I fear that, despite the +charitable scepticism of Mr Douglas, there is no doubt that Mr +Henley is the perpetrator of the saddening Depreciation of +Stevenson which has been published over his name.</p> +<p>What openings there are for reprisals let Mr Henley’s +conscience tell him; but permit me to remind him of two or three +things which R. L. Stevenson has written concerning W. E. +Henley.</p> +<p>First this scene in the infirmary at Edinburgh:</p> +<p>“(Leslie) Stephen and I sat on a couple of chairs, and +the poor fellow (Henley) sat up in his bed with his hair and +beard all tangled, and talked as cheerfully as if he had been in +a king’s palace, or the great King’s palace of the +blue air. He has taught himself two languages since he has +been lying there. <i>I shall try to be of use to +him</i>.”</p> +<p>Secondly, this passage from Stevenson’s dedication of +<i>Virginibus Puerisque</i> to “My dear William Ernest +Henley”:</p> +<p>“These papers are like milestones on the wayside of my +life; and as I look back in memory, there is hardly a stage of +that distance but I see you present with advice, reproof, or +praise. Meanwhile, many things have changed, you and I +among the rest; but I hope that our sympathy, founded on the love +of our art, and nourished by mutual assistance, shall survive +these little revolutions, undiminished, and, with God’s +help, unite us to the end.”</p> +<p>Thirdly, two scraps from letters from Stevenson to Henley, to +show that the latter was not always a depreciator of R. L. +Stevenson’s work:</p> +<p>“1. I’m glad to think I owe you the review that +pleased me best of all the reviews I ever had. . . . To live +reading such reviews and die eating ortolans—sich is my +aspiration.</p> +<p>“2. Dear lad,—If there was any more praise in what +you wrote, I think—(the editor who had pruned down Mr +Henley’s review of Stevenson’s <i>Prince Otto</i>) +has done us both a service; some of it stops my throat. . . . +Whether (considering our intimate relations) you would not do +better to refrain from reviewing me, I will leave to +yourself.”</p> +<p>And, lastly, this extract from the very last of +Stevenson’s letters to Henley, published in the two volumes +of <i>Letters</i>:</p> +<p>“It is impossible to let your new volume pass in +silence. I have not received the same thrill of poetry +since G. M.’s <i>Joy of Earth</i> volume, and <i>Love in a +Valley</i>; and I do not know that even that was so intimate and +deep. . . . I thank you for the joy you have given me, and remain +your old friend and present huge admirer, R. L. S.”</p> +</blockquote> +<p>It is difficult to decide on which side in this literary +friendship lies the true modesty and magnanimity? I had +rather be the author of the last message of R. L. Stevenson to W. +E. Henley, than of the last words of W. E. Henley concerning R. +L. Stevenson.</p> +<h2>CHAPTER XXV—MR CHRISTIE MURRAY’S IMPRESSIONS</h2> +<p><span class="smcap">Mr Christie Murray</span>, writing as +“Merlin” in our handbook in the <i>Referee</i> at the +time, thus disposed of some of the points just dealt with by +us:</p> +<blockquote><p>“Here is libel on a large scale, and I have +purposely refrained from approaching it until I could show my +readers something of the spirit in which the whole attack is +conceived. ‘If he wanted a thing he went after it +with an entire contempt for consequences. For these, +indeed, the Shorter Catechist was ever prepared to answer; so +that whether he did well or ill, he was safe to come out +unabashed and cheerful.’ Now if Mr Henley does not +mean that for the very express picture of a rascal without a +conscience he has been most strangely infelicitous in his choice +of terms, and he is one of those who make so strong a profession +of duty towards mere vocables that we are obliged to take him +<i>au pied de la lettre</i>. A man who goes after whatever +he wants with an entire contempt of consequences is a scoundrel, +and the man who emerges from such an enterprise unabashed and +cheerful, whatever his conduct may have been, and justifies +himself on the principles of the Shorter Catechism, is a +hypocrite to boot. This is not the report we have of Robert +Louis Stevenson from most of those who knew him. It is a +most grave and dreadful accusation, and it is not minimised by Mr +Henley’s acknowledgment that Stevenson was a good +fellow. We all know the air of false candour which lends a +disputant so much advantage in debate. In Victor +Hugo’s tremendous indictment of Napoléon le Petit we +remember the telling allowance for fine horsemanship. It +spreads an air of impartiality over the most mordant of +Hugo’s pages. It is meant to do that. An +insignificant praise is meant to show how a whole Niagara of +blame is poured on the victim of invective in all sincerity, and +even with a touch of reluctance.</p> +<p>“Mr Henley, despite his absurdities of +‘’Tis’ and ‘it were,’ is a fairly +competent literary craftsman, and he is quite gifted enough to +make a plain man’s plain meaning an evident thing if he +chose to do it. But if for the friend for whom ‘first +and last he did share’ he can only show us the figure of +one ‘who was at bottom an excellent fellow,’ and who +had ‘an entire contempt’ for the consequences of his +own acts, he presents a picture which can only purposely be +obscured. . . .</p> +<p>“All I know of Robert Louis Stevenson I have learned +from his books, and from one unexpected impromptu letter which he +wrote to me years ago in friendly recognition of my own +work. I add the testimonies of friends who may have been of +less actual service to him than Mr Henley, but who surely loved +him better and more lastingly. These do not represent him +as the victim of an overweening personal vanity, nor as a person +reckless of the consequences of his own acts, nor as a Pecksniff +who consoled himself for moral failure out of the Shorter +Catechism. The books and the friends amongst them show me +an erratic yet lovable personality, a man of devotion and +courage, a loyal, charming, and rather irresponsible person whose +very slight faults were counter-balanced many times over by very +solid virtues. . . .</p> +<p>“To put the thing flatly, it is not a heroism to cling +to mere existence. The basest of us can do that. But +it is a heroism to maintain an equable and unbroken cheerfulness +in the face of death. For my own part, I never bowed at the +literary shrine Mr Henley and his friends were at so great pains +to rear. I am not disposed to think more loftily than I +ever thought of their idol. But the Man—the Man was +made of enduring valour and childlike charm, and these will keep +him alive when his detractors are dead and buried.”</p> +</blockquote> +<p>As to the Christian name, it is notorious that he was +christened Robert Lewis—the Lewis being after his maternal +grandfather—Dr Lewis Balfour. Some attempt has been +made to show that the Louis was adopted because so many cousins +and relatives had also been so christened; but the most likely +explanation I have ever heard was that his father changed the +name to Louis, that there might be no chance through it of any +notion of association with a very prominent noisy person of the +name of Lewis, in Edinburgh, towards whom Thomas Stevenson felt +dislike, if not positive animosity. Anyhow, it is clear +from the entries in the register of pupils at the Edinburgh +Academy, in the two years when Stevenson was there, that in early +youth he was called Robert only; for in the school list for 1862 +the name appears as Robert Stevenson, without the Lewis, while in +the 1883 list it is given as Lewis Robert Stevenson. +Clearly if in earlier years Stevenson was, in his family and +elsewhere, called <i>Robert</i>, there could have then arisen no +risk of confusion with any of his relatives who bore the name of +Lewis; and all this goes to support the view which I have given +above. Anyhow he ceased to be called Robert at home, and +ceased in 1863 to be Robert on the Edinburgh Academy list, and +became Lewis Robert. Whether my view is right or not, he +was thenceforward called Louis in his family, and the name +uniformly spelt Louis. What blame on Stevenson’s part +could be attached to this family determination it is hard to +see—people are absolutely free to spell their names as they +please, and the matter would not be worth a moment’s +attention, or the waste of one drop of ink, had not Mr Henley +chosen to be very nasty about the name, and in the <i>Pall Mall +Magazine</i> article persisted in printing it Lewis as though +that were worthy of him and of it. That was not quite the +unkindest cut of all, but it was as unkind as it was +trumpery. Mr Christie Murray neatly set off the trumpery +spite of this in the following passage:</p> +<blockquote><p>“Stevenson, it appears, according to his +friend’s judgment, was ‘incessantly and passionately +interested in Stevenson,’ but most of us are incessantly +and passionately interested in ourselves. ‘He could +not be in the same room with a mirror but he must invite its +confidences every time he passed it.’ I remember that +George Sala, who was certainly under no illusion as to his own +personal aspect, made public confession of an identical +foible. Mr Henley may not have an equal affection for the +looking-glass, but he is a very poor and unimaginative reader who +does not see him gloating over the god-like proportions of the +shadow he sends sprawling over his own page. I make free to +say that a more self-conscious person than Mr Henley does not +live. ‘The best and most interesting part of +Stevenson’s life will never get written—even by +me,’ says Mr Henley.</p> +<p>“There is one curious little mark of animus, or one +equally curious affectation—I do not profess to know which, +and it is most probably a compound of the two—in Mr +Henley’s guardedly spiteful essay which asks for +notice. The dead novelist signed his second name on his +title-pages and his private correspondence +‘Louis.’ Mr Henley spells it +‘Lewis.’ Is this intended to say that Stevenson +took an ornamenting liberty with his own baptismal +appellation? If so, why not say the thing and have done +with it? Or is it one of Mr Henley’s wilful +ridiculosities? It seems to stand for some sort of meaning, +and to me, at least, it offers a jarring hint of small +spitefulness which might go for nothing if it were not so well +borne out by the general tone of Mr Henley’s article. +It is a small matter enough, God knows, but it is precisely +because it is so very small that it irritates.”</p> +</blockquote> +<h2>CHAPTER XXVI—HERO-VILLAINS</h2> +<p>In truth, it must indeed be here repeated that Stevenson for +the reason he himself gave about <i>Deacon Brodie</i> utterly +fails in that healthy hatred of “fools and +scoundrels” on which Carlyle somewhat incontinently +dilated. Nor does he, as we have seen, draw the line +between hero and villain of the piece, as he ought to have done; +and, even for his own artistic purposes, has it too much all on +one side, to express it simply. Art demands relief from any +one phase of human nature, more especially of that phase, and +even from what is morbid or exceptional. Admitting that +such natures, say as Huish, the cockney, in the <i>Ebb-Tide</i> +on the one side, and Prince Otto on the other are possible, it is +yet absolutely demanded that they should not stand <i>alone</i>, +but have their due complement and balance present in the piece +also to deter and finally to tell on them in the action. If +“a knave or villain,” as George Eliot aptly said, is +but a fool with a circumbendibus, this not only wants to be +shown, but to have that definite human counterpart and +corrective; and this not in any indirect and perfunctory way, but +in a direct and effective sense. It is here that Stevenson +fails—fails absolutely in most of his work, save the very +latest—fails, as has been shown, in <i>The Master of +Ballantrae</i>, as it were almost of perverse and set purpose, in +lack of what one might call ethical decision which causes him to +waver or seem to waver and wobble in his judgment of his +characters or in his sympathy with them or for them. Thus +he fails to give his readers the proper cue which was his duty +both as man and artist to have given. The highest art and +the lowest are indeed here at one in demanding moral poise, if we +may call it so, that however crudely in the low, and however +artistically and refinedly in the high, vice should not only not +be set forth as absolutely triumphing, nor virtue as being +absolutely, outwardly, and inwardly defeated. It is here +the same in the melodrama of the transpontine theatre as in the +tragedies of the Greek dramatists and Shakespeare. +“The evening brings a’ ‘hame’” and +the end ought to show something to satisfy the innate craving +(for it is innate, thank Heaven! and low and high alike in +moments of <i>elevated impression</i>, acknowledge it and bow to +it) else there can scarce be true <i>dénouement</i> and +the sense of any moral rectitude or law remain as felt or +acknowledged in human nature or in the Universe itself.</p> +<p>Stevenson’s toleration and constant sermonising in the +essays—his desire to make us yield allowances all round is +so far, it may be, there in place; but it will not work out in +story or play, and declares the need for correction and +limitation the moment that he essays artistic +presentation—from the point of view of art he lacks at once +artistic clearness and decision, and from the point of view of +morality seems utterly loose and confusing. His artistic +quality here rests wholly in his style—mere style, and he +is, alas! a castaway as regards discernment and reading of human +nature in its deepest demands and laws. Herein lies the +false strain that has spoiled much of his earlier work, which +renders really superficial and confusing and undramatic his +professedly dramatic work—which never will and never can +commend the hearty suffrages of a mixed and various theatrical +audience in violating the very first rule of the theatre, and of +dramatic creation.</p> +<p>From another point of view this is my answer to Mr Pinero in +regard to the failure of Stevenson to command theatrical +success. He confuses and so far misdirects the sympathies +in issues which strictly are at once moral and dramatic.</p> +<p>I am absolutely at one with Mr Baildon, though I reach my +results from somewhat different grounds from what he does, when +he says this about <i>Beau Austin</i>, and the reason of its +failure—complete failure—on the stage:</p> +<blockquote><p>“I confess I should have liked immensely to +have seen [? to see] this piece on the boards; for only then +could one be quite sure whether it could be made convincing to an +audience and carry their sympathies in the way the author +intended. Yet the fact that <i>Beau Austin</i>, in spite of +being ‘put on’ by so eminent an actor-manager as Mr +Beerbohm Tree, was no great success on the stage, is a fair proof +that the piece lacked some of the essentials, good or bad, of +dramatic success. Now a drama, like a picture or a musical +composition, must have a certain unity of key and tone. You +can, indeed, mingle comedy with tragedy as an interlude or relief +from the strain and stress of the serious interest of the +piece. But you cannot reverse the process and mingle +tragedy with comedy. Once touch the fine spun-silk of the +pretty fire-balloon of comedy with the tragic dagger, and it +falls to earth a shrivelled nothing. And the reason that no +melodrama can be great art is just that it is a compromise +between tragedy and comedy, a mixture of tragedy with comedy and +not comedy with tragedy. So in drama, the middle course, +proverbially the safest, is in reality the most dangerous. +Now I maintain that in <i>Beau Austin</i> we have an element of +tragedy. The betrayal of a beautiful, pure and noble-minded +woman is surely at once the basest act a man can be capable of, +and a more tragic event than death itself to the woman. +Richardson, in <i>Clarissa Harlowe</i>, is well aware of this, +and is perfectly right in making his <i>dénouement</i> +tragic. Stevenson, on the other hand, patches up the matter +into a rather tame comedy. It is even much tamer than it +would have been in the case of Lovelace and Clarissa Harlowe; for +Lovelace is a strong character, a man who could have been put +through some crucial atonement, and come out purged and +ennobled. But Beau Austin we feel is but a frip. He +endures a few minutes of sharp humiliation, it is true, but to +the spectator this cannot but seem a very insufficient expiation, +not only of the wrong he had done one woman, but of the +indefinite number of wrongs he had done others. He is at +once the villain and the hero of the piece, and in the narrow +limits of a brief comedy this transformation cannot be +convincingly effected. Wrongly or rightly, a theatrical +audience, like the spectators of a trial, demand a definite +verdict and sentence, and no play can satisfy which does not +reasonably meet this demand. And this arises not from any +merely Christian prudery or Puritanism, for it is as true for +Greek tragedy and other high forms of dramatic art.”</p> +</blockquote> +<p>The transformation of villain into hero, if possible at all, +could only be convincingly effected in a piece of wide scope, +where there was room for working out the effect of some great +shock, upheaval of the nature, change due to deep and +unprecedented experiences—religious conversion, witnessing +of sudden death, providential rescue from great peril of death, +or circumstance of that kind; but to be effective and convincing +it needs to be marked and <i>fully justified</i> in some such +way; and no cleverness in the writer will absolve him from +deference to this great law in serious work for presentation on +the stage; if mere farces or little comedies may seem sometimes +to contravene it, yet this—even this—is only in +appearance.</p> +<p>True, it is not the dramatists part <i>of himself</i> to +condemn, or to approve, or praise: he has to present, and to +present various characters faithfully in their relation to each +other, and their effect upon each other. But the moral +element cannot be expunged or set lightly aside because it is +closely involved in the very working out and presentation of +these relations, and the effect upon each other. Character +is vital. And character, if it tells in life, in influence +and affection, must be made to tell directly also in the +drama. There is no escape from this—none; the +dramatist is lopsided if he tries to ignore it; he is a monster +if he is wholly blind to it—like the poet in <i>In +Memoriam</i>, “Without a conscience or an aim.” +Mr Henley, in his notorious, all too confessional, and yet rather +affected article on Stevenson in the <i>Pall Mall Magazine</i>, +has a remark which I confess astonished me—a remark I could +never forget as coming from him. He said that he “had +lived a very full and varied life, and had no interest in remarks +about morals.” “Remarks about morals” +are, nevertheless, in essence, the pith of all the books to which +he referred, as those to which he turned in preference to the +<i>Edinburgh Edition</i> of R. L. Stevenson’s works. +The moral element is implicit in the drama, and it is implicit +there because it is implicit in life itself, or so the great +common-sense conceives it and demands it. What we might +call the asides proper of the drama, are “remarks about +morals,” nothing else—the chorus in the Greek tragedy +gathered up “remarks about morals” as near as might +be to the “remarks about morals” in the streets of +that day, only shaped to a certain artistic consistency. +Shakespeare is rich in “remarks about morals,” often +coming near, indeed, to personal utterance, and this not only +when Polonius addresses his son before his going forth on his +travels. Mr Henley here only too plainly confessed, indeed, +to lack of that conviction and insight which, had he but +possessed them, might have done a little to relieve <i>Beau +Austin</i> and the other plays in which he collaborated with R. +L. Stevenson, from their besetting and fatal weakness. The +two youths, alas! thought they could be grandly original by +despising, or worse, contemning “remarks about +morals” in the loftier as in the lower sense. To +“live a full and varied life,” if the experience +derived from it is to have expression in the drama, is only to +have the richer resource in “remarks about +morals.” If this is perverted under any +self-conscious notion of doing something spick-and-span new in +the way of character and plot, alien to all the old conceptions, +then we know our writers set themselves boldly at loggerheads +with certain old-fashioned and yet older new-fashioned laws, +which forbid the violation of certain common demands of the +ordinary nature and common-sense; and for the lack of this, as +said already, no cleverness, no resource, no style or graft, will +any way make up. So long as this is tried, with whatever +concentration of mind and purpose, failure is yet inevitable, and +the more inevitable the more concentration and less of humorous +by-play, because genius itself, if it despises the general moral +sentiment and instinct for moral proportion—an ethnic +reward and punishment, so to say—is all astray, working +outside the line; and this, if Mr Pinero will kindly excuse me, +is the secret of the failure of these plays, and not want of +concentration, etc., in the sense he meant, or as he has put +it.</p> +<p>Stevenson rather affected what he called “tail-foremost +morality,” a kind of inversion in the field of morals, as +De Quincey mixed it up with tail-foremost humour in <i>Murder as +a Fine Art</i>, etc., etc., but for all such perversions as these +the stage is a grand test and corrector, and such perversions, +and not “remarks about morals,” are most strictly +prohibited there. Perverted subtleties of the sort +Stevenson in earlier times especially much affected are not only +amiss but ruinous on the stage; and what genius itself would +maybe sanction, common-sense must reject and rigidly cut +away. Final success and triumph come largely by <i>this</i> +kind of condensation and concentration, and the stern and severe +lopping off of the indulgence of the <i>egotistical</i> genius, +which is human discipline, and the best exponent of the doctrine +of unity also. This is the straight and the narrow way +along which genius, if it walk but faithfully, sows as it goes in +the dramatic pathway all the flowers of human passion, hope, +love, terror, and triumph.</p> +<p>I find it advisable, if not needful, here to reinforce my own +impressions, at some points, by another quotation from Mr +Baildon, if he will allow me, in which Stevenson’s +dependence in certain respects on the dream-faculty is +emphasised, and to it is traced a certain tendency to a moral +callousness or indifference which is one of the things in which +the waking Stevenson transparently suffered now and then +invasions from the dream-Stevenson—the result, a kind of +spot, as we may call it, on the eye of the moral sense; it is a +small spot; but we know how a very small object held close before +the eye will wholly shut out the most lovely natural prospects, +interposing distressful phantasmagoria, due to the strained and, +for the time, morbid condition of the organ itself. So, it +must be confessed, it is to a great extent here.</p> +<p>But listen to Mr Baildon:</p> +<p>“In <i>A Chapter on Dreams</i>, Stevenson confesses his +indebtedness to this still mysterious agency. From a child +he had been a great and vivid dreamer, his dreams often taking +such frightful shape that he used to awake ‘clinging in +terror to the bedpost.’ Later in life his dreams +continued to be frequent and vivid, but less terrifying in +character and more continuous and systematic. ‘The +Brownies,’ as he picturesquely names that +‘sub-conscious imagination,’ as the scientist would +call it, that works with such surprising freedom and ingenuity in +our dreams, became, as it were, <i>collaborateurs</i> in his work +of authorship. He declares that they invented plots and +even elaborated whole novels, and that, not in a single night or +single dream, but continuously, and from one night to another, +like a story in serial parts. Long before this essay was +written or published, I had been struck by this phantasmal +dream-like quality in some of Stevenson’s works, which I +was puzzled to account for, until I read this extraordinary +explanation, for explanation it undoubtedly affords. +Anything imagined in a dream would have a tendency, when retold, +to retain something of its dream-like character, and I have on +doubt one could trace in many instances and distinguish the +dreaming and the waking Stevenson, though in others they may be +blended beyond recognition. The trouble with the Brownies +or the dream-Stevenson <i>was his or their want of moral +sense</i>, so that they sometimes presented the waking author +with plots which he could not make use of. Of this +Stevenson gives an instance in which a complete story of marked +ingenuity is vetoed through the moral impossibility of its +presentment by a writer so scrupulous (and in some directions he +is extremely scrupulous) as Stevenson was. But Stevenson +admits that his most famous story, <i>The Strange Case of Dr +Jekyll and Mr Hyde</i>, was not only suggested by a dream, but +that some of the most important and most criticised points, such +as the matter of the powder, were taken direct from the +dream. It had been extremely instructive and interesting +had he gone more into detail and mentioned some of the other +stories into which the dream-element entered largely and pointed +out its influence, and would have given us a better clue than we +have or now ever can have.</p> +<p>“Even in <i>The Suicide Club</i> and the +<i>Rajah’s Diamond</i>, I seem to feel strongly the +presence of the dream-Stevenson. . . . <i>At certain points one +feels conscious of a certain moral callousness</i>, <i>such as +marks the dream state</i>, <i>as in the murder of Colonel +Geraldine’s brother</i>, <i>the horror of which never seems +to come fully home to us</i>. But let no one suppose these +stories are lacking in vividness and in strangely realistic +detail; for this is of the very nature of dreaming at its height. +. . . While the <i>dramatis personæ</i> play their parts +with the utmost spirit while the story proceeds, they do not, as +the past creations do, seem to survive this first contact and +live in our minds. This is particularly true of the +women. They are well drawn, and play the assigned parts +well enough, but they do not, as a rule, make a place for +themselves either in our hearts or memories. If there is an +exception it is Elvira, in <i>Providence and the Guitar</i>; but +we remember her chiefly by the one picture of her falling asleep, +after the misadventures of the night, at the supper-table, with +her head on her husband’s shoulder, and her hand locked in +his with instinctive, almost unconscious tenderness.”</p> +<h2>CHAPTER XXVII—MR G. MOORE, MR MARRIOTT WATSON AND +OTHERS</h2> +<p>From our point of view it will therefore be seen that we could +not have read Mr George Moore’s wonderfully uncritical and +misdirected diatribe against Stevenson in <i>The Daily +Chronicle</i> of 24th April 1897, without amusement, if not +without laughter—indeed, we confess we may here quote +Shakespeare’s words, we “laughed so consumedly” +that, unless for Mr Moore’s high position and his assured +self-confidence, we should not trust ourselves to refer to it, +not to speak of writing about it. It was a review of <i>The +Secret Rose</i> by W. B. Yeats, but it passed after one single +touch to belittling abuse of Stevenson—an abuse that was +justified the more, in Mr Moore’s idea, because Stevenson +was dead. Had he been alive he might have had something to +say to it, in the way, at least, of fable and moral. And +when towards the close Mr Moore again quotes from Mr Yeats, it is +still “harping on my daughter” to undo Stevenson, as +though a rat was behind the arras, as in <i>Hamlet</i>. +“Stevenson,” says he, “is the leader of these +countless writers who perceive nothing but the visible +world,” and these are antagonistic to the great literature, +of which Mr Yeats’s <i>Secret Rose</i> is a survival or a +renaissance, a literature whose watchword should be Mr +Yeats’s significant phrase, “When one looks into the +darkness there is always something there.” No doubt +Mr Yeats’s product all along the line ranks with the great +literature—unlike Homer, according to Mr Moore, he never +nods, though in the light of great literature, poor Stevenson is +always at his noddings, and more than that, in the words of +Leland’s Hans Breitmann, he has “nodings +on.” He is poor, naked, miserable—a mere +pretender—and has no share in the makings of great +literature. Mr Moore has stripped him to the skin, and +leaves him to the mercy of rain and storm, like Lear, though Lear +had a solid ground to go on in self-aid, which Stevenson had not; +he had daughters, and one of them was Cordelia, after all. +This comes of painting all boldly in black and white: Mr Yeats is +white, R. L. Stevenson is black, and I am sure neither one nor +other, because simply of their self-devotion to their art, could +have subscribed heartily to Mr Moore’s black art and white +art theory. Mr Yeats is hardly the truest modern Celtic +artist I take him for, if he can fully subscribe to all this.</p> +<p>Mr Marriott Watson has a little unadvisedly, in my view, too +like ambition, fallen on ’tother side, and celebrated +Stevenson as the master of the horrifying. <a +name="citation11"></a><a href="#footnote11" +class="citation">[11]</a> He even finds the +<i>Ebb-Tide</i>, and Huish, the cockney, in it richly +illustrative and grand. “There never was a more +magnificent cad in literature, and never a more foul-hearted +little ruffian. His picture glitters (!) with life, and +when he curls up on the island beach with the bullet in his body, +amid the flames of the vitriol he had intended for another, the +reader’s shudder conveys something also, even (!) of +regret.”</p> +<p>And well it may! Individual taste and opinion are but +individual taste and opinion, but the <i>Ebb-Tide</i> and the +cockney I should be inclined to cite as a specimen of +Stevenson’s all too facile make-believe, in which there is +too definite a machinery set agoing for horrors for the horrors +to be quite genuine. The process is often too forced with +Stevenson, and the incidents too much of the manufactured order, +for the triumph of that simplicity which is of inspiration and +unassailable. Here Stevenson, alas! all too often, +<i>pace</i> Mr Marriott Watson, treads on the skirts of E. A. +Poe, and that in his least composed and elevated artistic +moments. And though, it is true, that “genius will +not follow rules laid down by desultory critics,” yet when +it is averred that “this piece of work fulfils +Aristotle’s definition of true tragedy, in accomplishing +upon the reader a certain purification of the emotions by means +of terror and pity,” expectations will be raised in many of +the new generation, doomed in the cases of the more sensitive and +discerning, at all events, not to be gratified. There is a +distinction, very bold and very essential, between melodrama, +however carefully worked and staged, and that tragedy to which +Aristotle was there referring. Stevenson’s +“horrifying,” to my mind, too often touches the +trying borders of melodrama, and nowhere more so than in the very +forced and unequal <i>Ebb-Tide</i>, which, with its rather +doubtful moral and forced incident when it is good, seems merely +to borrow from what had gone before, if not a very little even +from some of what came after. No service is done to an +author like Stevenson by fatefully praising him for precisely the +wrong thing.</p> +<blockquote><p>“Romance attracted Stevenson, at least +during the earlier part of his life, as a lodestone attracts the +magnet. To romance he brought the highest gifts, and he has +left us not only essays of delicate humour” (should this +not be “essays <i>full of</i>” <i>or</i> +“characterised by”?) “and sensitive +imagination, but stories also which thrill with the realities of +life, which are faithful pictures of the times and tempers he +dealt with, and which, I firmly believe, will live so” +(should it not be “as”?) “long as our noble +English language.”</p> +</blockquote> +<p>Mr Marriott Watson sees very clearly in some things; but +occasionally he misses the point. The problem is here +raised how two honest, far-seeing critics could see so very +differently on so simple a subject.</p> +<p>Mr Baildon says about the <i>Ebb-Tide</i>:</p> +<blockquote><p>“I can compare his next book, the +<i>Ebb-Tide</i> (in collaboration with Osbourne) to little better +than a mud-bath, for we find ourselves, as it were, unrelieved by +dredging among the scum and dregs of humanity, the ‘white +trash’ of the Pacific. Here we have Stevenson’s +masterly but utterly revolting incarnation of the lowest, vilest, +vulgarest villainy in the cockney, Huish. Stevenson’s +other villains shock us by their cruel and wicked conduct; but +there is a kind of fallen satanic glory about them, some shining +threads of possible virtue. They might have been good, even +great in goodness, but for the malady of not wanting. But +Huish is a creature hatched in slime, his soul has no true +humanity: it is squat and toad-like, and can only spit venom. . . +. He himself felt a sort of revulsive after-sickness for the +story, and calls it in one passage of his <i>Vailima Letters</i> +‘the ever-to-be-execrated <i>Ebb-Tide</i>’ (pp. +178 and 184). . . . He repented of it like a debauch, and, as +with some men after a debauch, felt cleared and strengthened +instead of wrecked. So, after what in one sense was his +lowest plunge, Stevenson rose to the greatest height. That +is the tribute to his virtue and strength indeed, but it does not +change the character of the <i>Ebb-Tide</i> as ‘the +ever-to-be-execrated.’”</p> +</blockquote> +<p>Mr Baildon truly says (p. 49):</p> +<blockquote><p>“The curious point is that Stevenson’s +own great fault, that tendency to what has been called the +‘Twopence-coloured’ style, is always at its worst in +books over which he collaborated.”</p> +</blockquote> +<p>“Verax,” in one of his “Occasional +Papers” in the <i>Daily News</i> on “The Average +Reader” has this passage:</p> +<blockquote><p>“We should not object to a writer who could +repeat Barrie in <i>A Window in Thrums</i>, nor to one who would +paint a scene as Louis Stevenson paints Attwater alone on his +South Sea island, the approach of the pirates to the harbour, and +their subsequent reception and fate. All these are surely +specimens of brilliant writing, and they are brilliant because, +in the first place, they give truth. The events described +must, in the supposed circumstances, and with the given +characters, have happened in the way stated. Only in none +of the specimens have we a mere photograph of the outside of what +took place. We have great pictures by genius of +the—to the prosaic eye—invisible realities, as well +as of the outward form of the actions. We behold and are +made to feel the solemnity, the wildness, the pathos, the +earnestness, the agony, the pity, the moral squalor, the +grotesque fun, the delicate and minute beauty, the natural +loveliness and loneliness, the quiet desperate bravery, or +whatever else any of these wonderful pictures disclose to our +view. Had we been lookers-on, we, the average readers, +could not have seen these qualities for ourselves. But they +are there, and genius enables us to see them. Genius makes +truth shine.</p> +<p>“Is it not, therefore, probable that the brilliancy +which we average readers do not want, and only laugh at when we +get it, is something altogether different? I think I know +what it is. It is an attempt to describe with words without +thoughts, an effort to make readers see something the writer has +never seen himself in his mind’s eye. He has no +revelation, no vision, nothing to disclose, and to produce an +impression uses words, words, words, makes daub, daub, daub, +without any definite purpose, and certainly without any real, or +artistic, or definite effect. To describe, one must first +of all see, and if we see anything the description of it will, as +far as it is in us, come as effortless and natural as the leaves +on trees, or as ‘the tender greening of April +meadows.’ I, therefore, more than suspect that the +brilliancy which the average reader laughs at is not +brilliancy. A pot of flaming red paint thrown at a canvas +does not make a picture.”</p> +</blockquote> +<p>Now there is vision for outward picture or separate incident, +which may exist quite apart from what may be called moral, +spiritual, or even loftily imaginative conception, at once +commanding unity and commanding it. There can be no doubt +of Stevenson’s power in the former line—the earliest +as the latest of his works are witnesses to it. <i>The +Master of Ballantrae</i> abounds in picture and incident and +dramatic situations and touches; but it lacks true unity, and the +reason simply is given by Stevenson himself—that the +“ending shames, perhaps degrades, the beginning,” as +it is in the <i>Ebb-Tide</i>, with the cockney Huish, +“execrable.” “We have great pictures by +genius of the—to the prosaic eye—invisible realities, +as well as the outward form of the action.” True, but +the “invisible realities” form that from which true +unity is derived, else their partial presence but makes the whole +the more incomplete and lop-sided, if not indeed, top-heavy, from +light weight beneath; and it is in the unity derived from this +higher pervading, yet not too assertive “invisible +reality,” that Stevenson most often fails, and is, in his +own words, “execrable”; the ending shaming, if not +degrading, the beginning—“and without the true sense +of pleasurableness; and therefore really imperfect <i>in +essence</i>.” Ah, it is to be feared that Stevenson, +viewing it in retrospect, was a far truer critic of his own work, +than many or most of his all too effusive and admiring +critics—from Lord Rosebery to Mr Marriott Watson.</p> +<p>Amid the too extreme deliverances of detractors and especially +of erewhile friends, become detractors or panegyrists, who +disturb judgment by overzeal, which is often but half-blindness, +it is pleasant to come on one who bears the balances in his hand, +and will report faithfully as he has seen and felt, neither more +nor less than what he holds is true. Mr Andrew Lang wrote +an article in the <i>Morning Post</i> of 16th December 1901, +under the title “Literary Quarrels,” in which, as I +think, he fulfilled his part in midst of the talk about Mr +Henley’s regrettable attack on Stevenson.</p> +<blockquote><p>“Without defending the character of a friend +whom even now I almost daily miss, as that character was +displayed in circumstances unknown to me, I think that I ought to +speak of him as I found him. Perhaps our sympathy was +mainly intellectual. Constantly do those who knew him +desire to turn to him, to communicate with him, to share with him +the pleasure of some idea, some little discovery about men or +things in which he would have taken pleasure, increasing our own +by the gaiety of his enjoyment, the brilliance of his +appreciation. We may say, as Scott said at the grave of +John Ballantyne, that he has taken with him half the sunlight out +of our lives. That he was sympathetic and interested in the +work of others (which I understand has been denied) I have reason +to know. His work and mine lay far apart: mine, I think, we +never discussed, I did not expect it to interest him. But +in a fragmentary manuscript of his after his death I found the +unlooked for and touching evidence of his kindness. Again, +he once wrote to me from Samoa about the work of a friend of mine +whom he had never met. His remarks were ideally judicious, +a model of serviceable criticism. I found him chivalrous as +an honest boy; brave, with an indomitable gaiety of courage; on +the point of honour, a Sydney or a Bayard (so he seemed to me); +that he was open-handed I have reason to believe; he took life +‘with a frolic welcome.’ That he was +self-conscious, and saw himself as it were, from without; that he +was fond of attitude (like his own brave admirals) he himself +knew well, and I doubt not that he would laugh at himself and his +habit of ‘playing at’ things after the fashion of +childhood. Genius is the survival into maturity of the +inspiration of childhood, and Stevenson is not the only genius +who has retained from childhood something more than its +inspiration. Other examples readily occur to the +memory—in one way Byron, in another Tennyson. None of +us is perfect: I do not want to erect an immaculate clay-cold +image of a man, in marble or in sugar-candy. But I will say +that I do not remember ever to have heard Mr Stevenson utter a +word against any mortal, friend or foe. Even in a case +where he had, or believed himself to have, received some wrong, +his comment was merely humorous. Especially when very +young, his dislike of respectability and of the <i>bourgeois</i> +(a literary tradition) led him to show a kind of contempt for +virtues which, though certainly respectable, are no less +certainly virtuous. He was then more or less seduced by the +Bohemian legend, but he was intolerant of the fudge about the +rights and privileges of genius. A man’s first +business, he thought, was ‘keep his end up’ by his +work. If, what he reckoned his inspired work would not +serve, then by something else. Of many virtues he was an +ensample and an inspiring force. One foible I admit: the +tendency to inopportune benevolence. Mr Graham Balfour says +that if he fell into ill terms with a man he would try to do him +good by stealth. Though he had seen much of the world and +of men, this practice showed an invincible ignorance of +mankind. It is improbable, on the doctrine of chances, that +he was always in the wrong; and it is probable, as he was human, +that he always thought himself in the right. But as the +other party to the misunderstanding, being also human, would +necessarily think himself in the right, such secret benefits +would be, as Sophocles says, ‘the gifts of foeman and +unprofitable.’ The secret would leak out, the +benefits would be rejected, the misunderstanding would be +embittered. This reminds me of an anecdote which is not +given in Mr Graham Balfour’s biography. As a little +delicate, lonely boy in Edinburgh, Mr Stevenson read a book +called <i>Ministering Children</i>. I have a faint +recollection of this work concerning a small Lord and Lady +Bountiful. Children, we know, like to ‘play at’ +the events and characters they have read about, and the boy +wanted to play at being a ministering child. He +‘scanned his whole horizon’ for somebody to play +with, and thought he had found his playmate. From the +window he observed street boys (in Scots ‘keelies’) +enjoying themselves. But one child was out of the sports, a +little lame fellow, the son of a baker. Here was a +chance! After some misgivings Louis hardened his heart, put +on his cap, walked out—a refined little +figure—approached the object of his sympathy, and said, +‘Will you let me play with you?’ ‘Go to +hell!’ said the democratic offspring of the baker. +This lesson against doing good by stealth to persons of unknown +or hostile disposition was, it seems, thrown away. Such +endeavours are apt to be misconstrued.”</p> +</blockquote> +<h2>CHAPTER XXVIII—UNEXPECTED COMBINATIONS</h2> +<p>The complete artist should not be mystical-moralist any more +than the man who “perceives only the visible +world”—he should not engage himself with problems in +the direct sense any more than he should blind himself to their +effect upon others, whom he should study, and under certain +conditions represent, though he should not commit himself to any +form of zealot faith, yet should he not be, as Lord Tennyson puts +it in the Palace of Art:</p> +<blockquote><p>“As God holding no form of creed,<br /> +But contemplating all,”</p> +</blockquote> +<p>because his power lies in the broadness of his humanity +touched to fine issues whenever there is the seal at once of +truth, reality, and passion, and the tragedy bred of their +contact and conflict.</p> +<p>All these things are to him real and clamant in the measure +that they aid appeal to heart and emotion—in the measure +that they may, in his hands, be made to tell for sympathy and +general effect. He creates an atmosphere in which each and +all may be seen the more effectively, but never seen alone or +separate, but only in strict relation to each other that they may +heighten the sense of some supreme controlling power in the +destinies of men, which with the ancients was figured as Fate, +and for which the moderns have hardly yet found an enduring and +exhaustive name. Character revealed in reference to that, +is the ideal and the aim of all high creative art. +Stevenson’s narrowness, allied to a quaint and occasionally +just a wee pedantic finickiness, as we may call it—an +over-elaborate, almost tricky play with mere words and phrases, +was in so far alien to the very highest—he was too often +like a man magnetised and moving at the dictates of some outside +influence rather than according to his own freewill and as he +would.</p> +<p>Action in creative literary art is a <i>sine quâ +non</i>; keeping all the characters and parts in unison, that a +true <i>dénouement</i>, determined by their own tendencies +and temperaments, may appear; dialogue and all asides, if we may +call them so, being supererogatory and weak really unless they +aid this and are constantly contributory to it. Egotistical +predeterminations, however artfully intruded, are, alien to the +full result, the unity which is finally craved: Stevenson fails, +when he does fail, distinctly from excess of egotistic regards; +he is, as Henley has said, in the French sense, too +<i>personnel</i>, and cannot escape from it. And though +these personal regards are exceedingly interesting and indeed +fascinating from the point of view of autobiographical study, +they are, and cannot but be, a drawback on fiction or the +disinterested revelation of life and reality. Instead, +therefore, of “the visible world,” as the only thing +seen, Stevenson’s defect is, that between it and him lies a +cloud strictly self-projected, like breath on a mirror, which +dims the lines of reality and confuses the character marks, in +fact melting them into each other; and in his sympathetic +regards, causing them all to become too much alike. Scott +had more of the power of healthy self-withdrawal, creating more +of a free atmosphere, in which his characters could freely +move—though in this, it must be confessed, he failed far +more with women than with men. The very defects poor +Carlyle found in Scott, and for which he dealt so severely with +him, as sounding no depth, are really the basis of his strength, +precisely as the absence of them were the defects of Goethe, who +invariably ran his characters finally into the mere moods of his +own mind and the mould of his errant philosophy, so that they +became merely erratic symbols without hold in the common +sympathy. Whether <i>Walverwandschaften</i>, <i>Wilhelm +Meister</i>, or <i>Faust</i>, it is still the same—the +company before all is done are translated into misty shapes that +he actually needs to label for our identification and for his +own. Even Mr G. H. Lewes saw this and could not help +declaring his own lack of interest in the latter parts of +Goethe’s greatest efforts. Stevenson, too, tends to +run his characters into symbols—his moralist-fabulist +determinations are too much for him—he would translate them +into a kind of chessmen, moved or moving on a board. The +essence of romance strictly is, that as the characters will not +submit themselves to the check of reality, the romancer may +consciously, if it suits him, touch them at any point with the +magic wand of symbol, and if he finds a consistency in mere +fanciful invention it is enough. Tieck’s +<i>Phantasus</i> and George MacDonald’s <i>Phantastes</i> +are ready instances illustrative of this. But it is very +different with the story of real life, where there is a definite +check in the common-sense and knowledge of the reader, and where +the highest victory always lies in drawing from the reader the +admission—“that is life—life exactly as I have +seen and known it. Though I could never have put it so, +still it only realises my own conception and observation. +That is something lovingly remembered and re-presented, and this +master makes me lovingly remember too, though ’twas his to +represent and reproduce with such vigor, vividness and truth that +he carried me with him, exactly as though I had been looking on +real men and women playing their part or their game in the great +world.”</p> +<p>Mr Zangwill, in his own style, wrote:</p> +<blockquote><p>“He seeks to combine the novel of character +with the novel of adventure; to develop character through +romantic action, and to bring out your hero at the end of the +episode, not the fixed character he was at the beginning, as is +the way of adventure books, but a modified creature. . . . It is +his essays and his personality, rather than his novels, that will +count with posterity. On the whole, a great provincial +writer. Whether he has that inherent grip which makes a +man’s provinciality the very source of his strength . . . +only the centuries can show.</p> +</blockquote> +<p>The romanticist to the end pursued Stevenson—he could +not, wholly or at once, shake off the bonds in which he had bound +himself to his first love, and it was the romanticist crossed by +the casuist, and the mystic—Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde, Markheim +and Will of the Mill, insisted on his acknowledging them in his +work up to the end. <i>The modified creature</i> at the end +of Mr Zangwill was modified too directly by the egotistic element +as well as through the romantic action, and this point missed the +great defect was missed, and Mr Zangwill spoke only in +generals.</p> +<p>M. Schwob, after having related how unreal a real +sheep’s heart looked when introduced on the end of +Giovanni’s dagger in a French performance of John +Ford’s <i>Annabella and Giovanni</i>, and how at the next +performance the audience was duly thrilled when Annabella’s +bleeding heart, made of a bit of red flannel, was borne upon the +stage, goes on to say significantly:</p> +<blockquote><p>“Il me semble que les personnages de +Stevenson ont justement cette espèce de réalisme +irréal. La large figure luisante de Long John, la +couleur blême du crâne de Thevenin Pensete +s’attachent à la mémoire de nos yeux en +vertue de leur irréalité même. Ce sont +des fantômes de la vérité, hallucinants comme +de vrais fantômes. Notez en passant que les traits de +John Silver hallucinent Jim Hawkins, et que François +Villon est hanté par l’aspect de Thevenin +Pensete.”</p> +</blockquote> +<p>Perhaps the most notable fact arising here, and one that well +deserves celebration, is this, that Stevenson’s development +towards a broader and more natural creation was coincident with a +definite return on the religious views which had so powerfully +prevailed with his father—a circumstance which it is to be +feared did not, any more than some other changes in him, at all +commend itself to Mr Henley, though he had deliberately dubbed +him even in the times of nursing nigh to the Old Bristo Port in +Edinburgh—something of “Shorter Catechist.” +Anyway Miss Simpson deliberately wrote:</p> +<blockquote><p>“Mr Henley takes exception to +Stevenson’s later phase in life—what he calls his +‘Shorter Catechism phase.’ It should be +remembered that Mr Henley is not a Scotsman, and in some things +has little sympathy with Scotch characteristics. Stevenson, +in his Samoan days, harked back to the teaching of his youth; the +tenets of the Shorter Catechism, which his mother and nurse had +dinned into his head, were not forgotten. Mr Henley knew +him best, as Stevenson says in the preface to <i>Virginibus +Puerisque</i> dedicated to Henley, ‘when he lived his life +at twenty-five.’ In these days he had [in some +degree] forgotten about the Shorter Catechism, but the +‘solemn pause’ between Saturday and Monday came back +in full force to R. L. Stevenson in Samoa.”</p> +</blockquote> +<p>Now to me that is a most suggestive and significant +fact. It will be the business of future critics to show in +how far such falling back would of necessity modify what Mr +Baildon has set down as his corner-stone of morality, and how far +it was bound to modify the atmosphere—the purely egotistic, +hedonistic, and artistic atmosphere, in which, in his earlier +life as a novelist, at all events, he had been, on the whole, for +long whiles content to work.</p> +<h2>CHAPTER XXIX—LOVE OF VAGABONDS</h2> +<p>What is very remarkable in Stevenson is that a man who was so +much the dreamer of dreams—the mystic moralist, the +constant questioner and speculator on human destiny and human +perversity, and the riddles that arise on the search for the +threads of motive and incentives to human action—moreover, +a man, who constantly suffered from one of the most trying and +weakening forms of ill-health—should have been so +full-blooded, as it were, so keen for contact with all forms of +human life and character, what is called the rougher and coarser +being by no means excluded. Not only this: he was himself a +rover—seeking daily adventure and contact with men and +women of alien habit and taste and liking. His patience is +supported by his humour. He was a bit of a vagabond in the +good sense of the word, and always going round in search of +“honest men,” like Diogenes, and with no tub to +retire into or the desire for it. He thus on this side +touches the Chaucers and their kindred, as well as the Spensers +and Dantes and their often illusive +<i>confrères</i>. His voyage as a steerage passenger +across the Atlantic is only one out of a whole chapter of such +episodes, and is more significant and characteristic even than +the <i>Travels with a Donkey in the Cevennes</i> or the <i>Inland +Voyage</i>. These might be ranked with the +“Sentimental Journeys” that have sometimes been the +fashion—that was truly of a prosaic and risky order. +The appeal thus made to an element deep in the English nature +will do much to keep his memory green in the hearts that could +not rise to appreciation of his style and literary gifts at +all. He loves the roadways and the by-ways, and those to be +met with there—like him in this, though unlike him in most +else. The love of the roadsides and the greenwood—and +the queer miscellany of life there unfolded and ever +changing—a kind of gipsy-like longing for the tent and +familiar contact with nature and rude human-nature in the open +dates from beyond Chaucer, and remains and will have +gratification—the longing for novelty and all the +accidents, as it were, of pilgrimage and rude social +travel. You see it bubble up, like a true and new +nature-spring, through all the surface coatings of culture and +artificiality, in Stevenson. He anew, without pretence, +enlivens it—makes it first a part of himself, and then a +part of literature once more. Listen to him, as he +sincerely sings this passion for the pilgrimage—or the +modern phase of it—innocent vagabond roving:</p> +<blockquote><p>“Give to me the life I love,<br /> + Let the lave go by me;<br /> +Give the jolly heaven above,<br /> + And the by-way nigh me:<br /> +Bed in the bush, with stars to see;<br /> + Bread I dip in the river—<br /> +Here’s the life for a man like me,<br /> + Here’s the life for ever. . . .</p> +<p>“Let the blow fall soon or late;<br /> + Let what will be o’er me;<br /> +Give the face of earth around<br /> + And the road before me.<br /> +Health I ask not, hope nor love,<br /> + Nor a friend to know me:<br /> +All I ask the heaven above,<br /> + And the road below me.”</p> +</blockquote> +<p>True; this is put in the mouth of another, but Stevenson could +not have so voiced it, had he not been the born rover that he +was, with longing for the roadside, the high hills, and forests +and newcomers and varied miscellaneous company. Here he +does more directly speak in his own person and quite to the same +effect:</p> +<blockquote><p>“I will make you brooches and toys for your +delight<br /> +Of bird song at morning, and star shine at night,<br /> +I will make a palace fit for you and me,<br /> +Of green days in forests and blue days at sea.</p> +<p>“I will make my kitchen, and you shall keep your +room,<br /> +Where white flows the river, and bright blows the broom,<br /> +And you shall wash your linen and keep your body white,<br /> +In rainfall at morning and dew-fall at night.</p> +<p>“And this shall be for music when no one else is +near,<br /> +The fine song for singing, the rare song to hear!<br /> +That only I remember, that only you admire,<br /> +Of the broad road that stretches, and the roadside +fire.”</p> +</blockquote> +<p>Here Stevenson, though original in his vein and way, but +follows a great and gracious company in which Fielding and Sterne +and so many others stand as pleasant proctors. Scott and +Dickens have each in their way essayed it, and made much of it +beyond what mere sentiment would have reached. +<i>Pickwick</i> itself—and we must always regard Dickens as +having himself gone already over every bit of road, described +every nook and corner, and tried every resource—is a +vagrant fellow, in a group of erratic and most quaint wanderers +or pilgrims. This is but a return phase of it; Vincent +Crummles and Mrs Crummles and the “Infant +Phenomenon,” yet another. The whole interest lies in +the roadways, and the little inns, and the odd and unexpected +<i>rencontres</i> with oddly-assorted fellows there experienced: +glimpses of grim or grimy, or forbidding, or happy, smiling +smirking vagrants, and out-at-elbows fellow-passengers and +guests, with jests and quips and cranks, and hanky-panky +even. On high roads and in inns, and alehouses, with +travelling players, rogues and tramps, Dickens was quite at home; +and what is yet more, he made us all quite at home with them: and +he did it as Chaucer did it by thorough good spirits and +“hail-fellow-well-met.” And, with all his +faults, he has this merit as well as some others, that he went +willingly on pilgrimage always, and took others, promoting always +love of comrades, fun, and humorous by-play. The latest +great romancer, too, took his side: like Dickens, he was here +full brother of Dan Chaucer, and followed him. How +characteristic it is when he tells Mr Trigg that he preferred +Samoa to Honolulu because it was more savage, and therefore +yielded more <i>fun</i>.</p> +<h2>CHAPTER XXX—LORD ROSEBERY’S CASE</h2> +<p>Immediately on reading Lord Rosebery’s address as +Chairman of the meeting in Edinburgh to promote the erection of a +monument to R. L. Stevenson, I wrote to him politely asking him +whether, since he quoted a passage from a somewhat early essay by +Stevenson naming the authors who had chiefly influenced him in +point of style, his Lordship should not, merely in justice and +for the sake of balance, have referred to Thoreau. I also +remarked that Stevenson’s later style sometimes showed too +much self-conscious conflict of his various models in his mind +while he was in the act of writing, and that this now and then +imparted too much an air of artifice to his later compositions, +and that those who knew most would be most troubled by it. +Of that letter, I much regret now that I did not keep any copy; +but I think I did incidentally refer to the friendship with which +Stevenson had for so many years honoured me. This is a copy +of the letter received in reply:</p> +<blockquote><p style="text-align: right">“38 <span +class="smcap">Berkeley Square</span>, W.,<br /> +17<i>th</i> <i>December</i> 1896.</p> +<p>“<span class="smcap">Dear Sir</span>,—I am much +obliged for your letter, and can only state that the name of +Thoreau was not mentioned by Stevenson himself, and therefore I +could not cite it in my quotation.</p> +<p>“With regard to the style of Stevenson’s later +works, I am inclined to agree with you.-Believe me, yours very +faithfully,</p> +<p style="text-align: right"><span +class="smcap">Rosebery</span>.</p> +<p>“Dr <span class="smcap">Alexander H. +Japp</span>.”</p> +</blockquote> +<p>This I at once replied to as follows:</p> +<blockquote><p style="text-align: right">“<span +class="smcap">National Liberal Club</span>,<br /> +<span class="smcap">Whitehall Place</span>, S.W.,<br /> +19<i>th</i> <i>December</i> 1896.</p> +<p>“<span class="smcap">My Lord</span>,—It is true R. +L. Stevenson did not refer to Thoreau in the passage to which you +allude, for the good reason that he could not, since he did not +know Thoreau till after it was written; but if you will oblige me +and be so good as to turn to p. xix. of Preface, <i>By Way of +Criticism</i>, to <i>Familiar Studies of Men and Books</i> you +will read:</p> +<p>“‘Upon me this pure, narrow, sunnily-ascetic +Thoreau had exercised a wondrous charm. <i>I have scarce +written ten sentences since I was introduced to him</i>, <i>but +his influence might be somewhere detected by a close +observer</i>.’</p> +<p>“It is very detectable in many passages of +nature-description and of reflection. I write, my Lord, +merely that, in case opportunity should arise, you might notice +this fact. I am sure R. L. Stevenson would have liked it +recognised.—I remain, my Lord, always yours faithfully, +etc.,</p> +<p><span class="smcap">Alexander H. Japp</span>.”</p> +</blockquote> +<p style="text-align: center"> +<a href="images/p262b.jpg"> +<img alt="Manuscript letter by R.L.S." src="images/p262s.jpg" /> +</a></p> +<p>In reply to this Lord Rosebery sent me only the most formal +acknowledgment, not in the least encouraging me in any way to +further aid him in the matter with regard to suggestions of any +kind; so that I was helpless to press on his lordship the need +for some corrections on other points which I would most willingly +have tendered to him had he shown himself inclined or ready to +receive them.</p> +<p>I might also have referred Lord Rosebery to the article in +<i>The British Weekly</i> (<i>1887</i>), “Books that have +Influenced Me,” where, after having spoken of Shakespeare, +the <i>Vicomte de Bragelonne</i>, Bunyan, Montaigne, Goethe, +Martial, Marcus Aurelius’s <i>Meditations</i>, and +Wordsworth, he proceeds:</p> +<blockquote><p>“I suppose, when I am done, I shall find +that I have forgotten much that is influential, as I see already +I have forgotten Thoreau.”</p> +</blockquote> +<p>I need but to add to what has been said already that, had Lord +Rosebery written and told me the result of his references and +encouraged me to such an exercise, I should by-and-by have been +very pleased to point out to him that he blundered, proving +himself no master in Burns’ literature, precisely as Mr +Henley blundered about Burns’ ancestry, when he gives +confirmation to the idea that Burns came of a race of peasants on +both sides, and was himself nothing but a peasant.</p> +<p>When the opportunity came to correct such blunders, +corrections which I had even implored him to make, Lord Rosebery +(who by several London papers had been spoken of as +“knowing more than all the experts about all his +themes”), that is, when his volume was being prepared for +press, did not act on my good advice given him +“<i>free</i>, <i>gratis</i>, <i>for nothing</i>”; no; +he contented himself with simply slicing out columns from the +<i>Times</i>, or allowing another man to do so for him, and +reprinting them <i>literatim et verbatim</i>, all imperfect and +misleading, as they stood. <i>Scripta manet</i> alas! only +too truly exemplified to his disadvantage. But with that +note of mine in his hand, protesting against an ominous and fatal +omission as regards the confessed influences that had operated on +Stevenson, he goes on, or allows Mr Geake to go on, quite as +though he had verified matters and found that I was wrong as +regards the facts on which I based my appeal to him for +recognition of Thoreau as having influenced Stevenson in +style. Had he attended to correcting his serious errors +about Stevenson, and some at least of those about Burns, thus +adding, say, a dozen or twenty pages to his book wholly fresh and +new and accurate, then the <i>Times</i> could not have got, even +if it had sought, an injunction against his publishers and him; +and there would have been no necessity that he should pad out +other and later speeches by just a little whining over what was +entirely due to his own disregard of good advice, his own +neglect—his own fault—a neglect and a fault showing +determination not to revise where revision in justice to his +subject’s own free and frank acknowledgments made it most +essential and necessary.</p> +<p>Mr Justice North gave his decision against Lord Rosebery and +his publishers, while the Lords of Appeal went in his favour; but +the House of Lords reaffirmed the decision of Mr Justice North +and granted a perpetual injunction against this book. The +copyright in his speech is Lord Rosebery’s, but the +copyright in the <i>Times</i>’ report is the +<i>Times</i>’. You see one of the ideas underlying +the law is that no manner of speech is quite perfect as the man +speaks it, or is beyond revision, improvement, or extension, and, +if there is but one <i>verbatim</i> report, as was the case of +some of these speeches and addresses, then it is incumbent on the +author, if he wishes to preserve his copyright, to revise and +correct his speeches and addresses, so as to make them at least +in details so far differ from the reported form. This thing +ought Lord Rosebery to have done, on ethical and literary +<i>grounds</i>, not to speak of legal and self-interested +grounds; and I, for one, who from the first held exactly the view +the House of Lords has affirmed, do confess that I have no +sympathy for Lord Rosebery, since he had before him the +suggestion and the materials for as substantial alterations and +additions from my own hands, with as much more for other portions +of his book, had he informed me of his appreciation, as would +have saved him and his book from such a sadly ironical fate as +has overtaken him and it.</p> +<p>From the whole business—since “free, gratis, for +nothing,” I offered him as good advice as any lawyer in the +three kingdoms could have done for large payment, and since he +never deemed it worth while, even to tell me the results of his +reference to <i>Familiar Studies</i>, I here and now say +deliberately that his conduct to me was scarcely so courteous and +grateful and graceful as it might have been. How +different—very different—the way in which the late R. +L. Stevenson rewarded me for a literary service no whit greater +or more essentially valuable to him than this service rendered to +Lord Rosebery might have been to him.</p> +<p>This chapter would most probably not have been printed, had +not Mr Coates re-issued the inadequate and most misleading +paragraph about Mr Stevenson and style in his Lord +Rosebery’s <i>Life and Speeches</i> exactly as it was +before, thus perpetuating at once the error and the wrong, in +spite of all my trouble, warnings, and protests. It is a +tragicomedy, if not a farce altogether, considering who are the +principal actors in it. And let those who have copies of +the queer prohibited book cherish them and thank me; for that I +do by this give a new interest and value to it as a curiosity, +law-inhibited, if not as high and conscientious +literature—which it is not.</p> +<p>I remember very well about the time Lord Rosebery spoke on +Burns, and Stevenson, and London, that certain London papers +spoke of his deliverances as indicating more +knowledge—fuller and exacter knowledge—of all these +subjects than the greatest professed experts possessed. +That is their extravagant and most reckless way, especially if +the person spoken about is a “great politician” or a +man of rank. They think they are safe with such +superlatives applied to a brilliant and clever peer (with large +estates and many interests), and an ex-Prime Minister! But +literature is a republic, and it must here be said, though all +unwillingly, that Lord Rosebery is but an amateur—a +superficial though a clever amateur after all, and their +extravagances do not change the fact. I declare him an +amateur in Burns’ literature and study because of what I +have said elsewhere, and there are many points to add to that if +need were. I have proved above from his own words that he +was crassly and unpardonably ignorant of some of the most +important points in R. L. Stevenson’s development when he +delivered that address in Edinburgh on Stevenson—a thing +very, very pardonable—seeing that he is run after to do +“speakings” of this sort; but to go on, in face of +such warning and protest, printing his most misleading errors is +not pardonable, and the legal recorded result is my justification +and his condemnation, the more surely that even that would not +awaken him so far as to cause him to restrain Mr Coates from +reproducing in his <i>Life and Speeches</i>, just as it was +originally, that peccant passage. I am fully ready to prove +also that, though Chairman of the London County Council for a +period, and though he made a very clever address at one of Sir W. +Besant’s lectures, there is much yet—very +much—he might learn from Sir W. Besant’s writings on +London. It isn’t so easy to outshine all the +experts—even for a clever peer who has been Prime Minister, +though it is very, very easy to flatter Lord Rosebery, with a +purpose or purposes, as did at least once also with rarest tact, +at Glasgow, indicating so many other things and possibilities, a +certain very courtly ex-Moderator of the Church of Scotland.</p> +<h2>CHAPTER XXXI—MR GOSSE AND MS. OF <i>TREASURE +ISLAND</i></h2> +<p>Mr Edmund Gosse has been so good as to set down, with rather +an air of too much authority, that both R. L. Stevenson and I +deceived ourselves completely in the matter of my little share in +the <i>Treasure Island</i> business, and that too much credit was +sought by me or given to me, for the little service I rendered to +R. L. Stevenson, and to the world, say, in helping to secure for +it an element of pleasure through many generations. I have +not <i>sought</i> any recognition from the world in this matter, +and even the mention of it became so intolerable to me that I +eschewed all writing about it, in the face of the most stupid and +misleading statements, till Mr Sidney Colvin wrote and asked me +to set down my account of the matter in my own words. This +I did, as it would have been really rude to refuse a request so +graciously made, and the reader has it in the <i>Academy</i> of +10th March 1900. Nevertheless, Mr Gosse’s statements +were revived and quoted, and the thing seemed ever to revolve +again in a round of controversy.</p> +<p>Now, with regard to the reliability in this matter of Mr +Edmund Gosse, let me copy here a little note made at request some +time ago, dealing with two points. The first is this:</p> +<p>1. <i>Most assuredly</i> I carried away from Braemar in my +portmanteau, as R. L. Stevenson says in <i>Idler’s</i> +article and in chapter of <i>My First Book</i> reprinted in +<i>Edinburgh Edition</i>, several chapters of <i>Treasure +Island</i>. On that point R. L. Stevenson, myself, and Mr +James Henderson, to whom I took these, could not all be wrong and +co-operating to mislead the public. These chapters, at +least vii. or viii., as Mr Henderson remembers, would include the +<i>first three</i>, that is, <i>finally revised versions for +press</i>. Mr Gosse could not then <i>have heard R. L. +Stevenson read from these final versions but from first +draughts</i> <span class="smcap">only</span>, and I am positively +certain that with some of the later chapters R. L. Stevenson +wrote them off-hand, and with great ease, and did not revise them +to the extent of at all needing to re-write them, as I remember +he was proud to tell me, being then fully in the vein, as he put +it, and pleased to credit me with a share in this good result, +and saying “my enthusiasm over it had set him up +steep.” There was then, in my idea, a necessity that +Stevenson should fill up a gap by verbal summary to Mr Gosse +(which Mr Gosse has forgotten), bringing the incident up to a +further point than Mr Gosse now thinks. I am certain of my +facts under this head; and as Mr Gosse clearly fancies he heard +R. L. Stevenson read all from final versions and is +mistaken—<i>completely</i> mistaken there—he may be +just as wrong and the victim of error or bad memory elsewhere +after the lapse of more than twenty years.</p> +<p>2. I gave the pencilled outline of incident and plot to Mr +Henderson—a fact he distinctly remembers. This fact +completely meets and disposes of Mr Robert Leighton’s quite +imaginative <i>Billy Bo’sun</i> notion, and is absolute as +to R. L. Stevenson before he left Braemar on the 21st September +1881, or even before I left it on 26th August 1881, having clear +in his mind the whole scheme of the work, though we know very +well that the absolute re-writing out finally for press of the +concluding part of the book was done at Davos. Mr Henderson +has always made it the strictest rule in his editorship that the +complete outline of the plot and incident of the latter part of a +story must be supplied to him, if the whole story is not +submitted to him in MS.; and the agreement, if I am not much +mistaken, was entered into days before R. L. Stevenson left +Braemar, and when he came up to London some short time after to +go to Weybridge, the only arrangement then needed to be made was +about the forwarding of proofs to him.</p> +<p>The publication of <i>Treasure Island</i> in <i>Young +Folks</i> began on the 1st October 1881, No. 565 and ran on in +the following order:</p> +<blockquote><p style="text-align: center"><i>October</i> 1, +1881.<br /> +THE PROLOGUE</p> +<p>No. 565.<br /> +I. The Old Sea Dog at the Admiral Benbow.<br /> +II. Black Dog Appears and Disappears.</p> +<p>No. 566.<br /> +Dated <i>October</i> 8, 1881.<br /> +III. The Black Spot.</p> +<p>No. 567.<br /> +Dated <i>October</i> 15, 1881.<br /> +IV. The Sea Chart.<br /> +V. The Last of the Blind Man.<br /> +VI. The Captain’s Papers.</p> +<p>No. 568.<br /> +Dated <i>October</i> 22, 1881.<br /> +THE STORY<br /> +I. I go to Bristol.<br /> +II. The Sea-Cook.<br /> +Ill. Powder and Arms.</p> +</blockquote> +<p>Now, as the numbers of <i>Young Folks</i> were printed about a +fortnight in advance of the date they bear under the title, it is +clear that not only must the contract have been executed days +before the middle of September, but that a large proportion of +the <i>copy</i> must have been in Mr Henderson’s hands at +that date too, as he must have been entirely satisfied that the +story would go on and be finished in a definite time. On no +other terms would he have begun the publication of it. He +was not in the least likely to have accepted a story from a man +who, though known as an essayist, had not yet published anything +in the way of a long story, on the ground merely of three +chapters of prologue. Mr Gosse left Braemar on 5th +September, when he says nine chapters were written, and Mr +Henderson had offered terms for the story before the last of +these could have reached him. That is on seeing, say six +chapters of prologue. But when Mr Gosse speaks about three +chapters only written, does he mean three of the prologue or +three of the story, in addition to prologue, or what does he +mean? The facts are clear. I took away in my +portmanteau a large portion of the MS., together with a very full +outline of the rest of the story, so that Mr Stevenson was, +despite Mr Gosse’s cavillings, <i>substantially</i> right +when he wrote in <i>My First Book</i> in the <i>Idler</i>, etc., +that “when he (Dr Japp) left us he carried away the +manuscript in his portmanteau.” There was nothing of +the nature of an abandonment of the story at any point, nor any +difficulty whatever arose in this respect in regard to it.</p> +<h2>CHAPTER XXXII—STEVENSON PORTRAITS</h2> +<p>Of the portraits of Stevenson a word or two may be said. +There is a very good early photograph of him, taken not very long +before the date of my visit to him at Braemar in 1881, and is an +admirable likeness—characteristic not only in expression, +but in pose and attitude, for it fixes him in a favourite +position of his; and is, at the same time, very easy and +natural. The velvet jacket, as I have remarked, was then +his habitual wear, and the thin fingers holding the constant +cigarette an inseparable associate and accompaniment.</p> +<p>He acknowledged himself that he was a difficult subject to +paint—not at all a good sitter—impatient and apt to +rebel at posing and time spent in arrangement of details—a +fact he has himself, as we shall see, set on record in his funny +verses to Count Nerli, who painted as successful a portrait as +any. The little miniature, full-length, by Mr J. S. +Sarjent, A.R.A., which was painted at Bournemouth in 1885, is +confessedly a mere sketch and much of a caricature: it is in +America. Sir W. B. Richmond has an unfinished portrait, +painted in 1885 or 1886—it has never passed out of the +hands of the artist,—a photogravure from it is our +frontispiece.</p> +<p>There is a medallion done by St Gauden’s, representing +Stevenson in bed propped up by pillows. It is thought to be +a pretty good likeness, and it is now in Mr Sidney Colvin’s +possession. Others, drawings, etc., are not of much +account.</p> +<p>And now we come to the Nerli portrait, of which so much has +been written. Stevenson himself regarded it as the best +portrait of him ever painted, and certainly it also is +characteristic and effective, and though not what may be called a +pleasant likeness, is probably a good representation of him in +the later years of his life. Count Nerli actually undertook +a voyage to Samoa in 1892, mainly with the idea of painting this +portrait. He and Stevenson became great friends, as +Stevenson naïvely tells in the verses we have already +referred to, but even this did not quite overcome +Stevenson’s restlessness. He avenged himself by +composing these verses as he sat:</p> +<blockquote><p>Did ever mortal man hear tell o’ sic a +ticklin’ ferlie<br /> +As the comin’ on to Apia here o’ the painter Mr +Nerli?<br /> +He cam’; and, O, for o’ human freen’s o’ +a’ he was the pearlie—<br /> +The pearl o’ a’ the painter folk was surely Mr +Nerli.<br /> +He took a thraw to paint mysel’; he painted late and +early;<br /> +O wow! the many a yawn I’ve yawned i’ the beard +o’ Mr Nerli.<br /> +Whiles I wad sleep and whiles wad wake, an’ whiles was mair +than surly;<br /> +I wondered sair as I sat there fornent the eyes o’ +Nerli.<br /> +O will he paint me the way I want, as bonnie as a girlie?<br /> +O will he paint me an ugly tyke?—and be d-d to Mr Nerli.<br +/> +But still an’ on whichever it be, he is a canty kerlie,<br +/> +The Lord protect the back an’ neck o’ honest Mr +Nerli.</p> +</blockquote> +<p>Mr Hammerton gives this account of the Nerli portrait:</p> +<blockquote><p>“The history of the Nerli portrait is +peculiar. After being exhibited for some time in New +Zealand it was bought, in the course of this year, by a lady who +was travelling there, for a hundred guineas. She then +offered it for that sum to the Scottish National Portrait +Gallery; but the Trustees of the Board of Manufactures—that +oddly named body to which is entrusted the fostering care of Art +in Scotland, and, in consequence, the superintendence of the +National Portrait Gallery—did not see their way to accept +the offer. Some surprise has been expressed at the action +of the Trustees in thus declining to avail themselves of the +opportunity of obtaining the portrait of one of the most +distinguished Scotsmen of recent times. It can hardly have +been for want of money, for though the funds at their disposal +for the purchase of ordinary works of art are but limited, no +longer ago than last year they were the recipients of a very +handsome legacy from the late Mr J. M. Gray, the accomplished and +much lamented Curator of the Scottish National Portrait +Gallery—a legacy left them for the express purpose of +acquiring portraits of distinguished Scotsmen, and the income of +which was amply sufficient to have enabled them to purchase this +portrait. One is therefore almost shut up to the conclusion +that the Trustees were influenced in their decision by one of the +two following reasons:</p> +<p>“1. That they did not consider Stevenson worthy of a +place in the gallery. This is a position so +incomprehensible and so utterly opposed to public sentiment that +one can hardly credit it having been the cause of this +refusal. Whatever may be the place which Stevenson may +ultimately take as an author, and however opinions may differ as +to the merits of his work, no one can deny that he was one of the +most popular writers of his day, and that as a mere master of +style, if for nothing else, his works will be read so long as +there are students of English Literature. Surely the +portrait of one for whom such a claim may legitimately be made +cannot be considered altogether unworthy of a place in the +National Collection, as one of Scotland’s most +distinguished sons.</p> +<p>“2. The only other reason which can be suggested as +having weighed with the Trustees in their decision is one which +in some cases might be held to be worthy of consideration. +It is conceivable that in the case of some men the Trustees might +be of opinion that there was plenty of time to consider the +matter, and that in the meantime there was always the chance of +some generous donor presenting them with a portrait. But, +as has been shown above, the portraits of Stevenson are +practically confined to two: one of these is in America, and +there is not the least chance of its ever coming here; and the +other they have refused. And, as it is understood that the +Trustees have a rule that they do not accept any portrait which +has not been painted from the life, they preclude themselves from +acquiring a copy of any existing picture or even a portrait done +from memory.</p> +<p>“It is rumoured that the Nerli portrait may ultimately +find a resting-place in the National Collection of Portraits in +London. If this should prove to be the case, what a +commentary on the old saying: ‘A prophet is not without +honour save in his own country.’”</p> +</blockquote> +<h2>CHAPTER XXXIII—LAPSES AND ERRORS IN CRITICISM</h2> +<p>Nothing could perhaps be more wearisome than to travel +o’er the wide sandy area of Stevenson criticism and +commentary, and expose the many and sad and grotesque errors that +meet one there. Mr Baildon’s slip is innocent, +compared with many when he says (p. 106) <i>Treasure Island</i> +appeared in <i>Young Folks</i> as <i>The Sea-Cook</i>. It +did nothing of the kind; it is on plain record in print, even in +the pages of the <i>Edinburgh Edition</i>, that Mr James +Henderson would not have the title <i>The Sea-Cook</i>, as he did +not like it, and insisted on its being <i>Treasure +Island</i>. To him, therefore, the vastly better title is +due. Mr Henley was in doubt if Mr Henderson was still alive +when he wrote the brilliant and elevated article on “Some +Novels” in the <i>North American</i>, and as a certain dark +bird killed Cock Robin, so he killed off Dr Japp, and not to be +outdone, got in an ideal “Colonel” <i>Jack</i>; so Mr +Baildon there follows Henley, unaware that Mr Henderson did not +like <i>The Sea-Cook</i>, and was still alive, and that a certain +Jack in the fatal <i>North American</i> has Japp’s +credit.</p> +<p>Mr Baildon’s words are:</p> +<blockquote><p>“This was the famous book of adventure, +<i>Treasure Island</i>, appearing first as <i>The Sea-Cook</i> in +a boy’s paper, where it made no great stir. But, on +its publication in volume form, with the vastly better title, the +book at once ‘boomed,’ as the phrase goes, to an +extent then, in 1882, almost unprecedented. The secret of +its immense success may almost be expressed in a phrase by saying +that it is a book like <i>Gulliver’s Travels</i>, <i>The +Pilgrim’s Progress</i>, and <i>Robinson Crusoe</i> itself +for all ages—boys, men, and women.”</p> +</blockquote> +<p>Which just shows how far lapse as to a fact may lead to +critical misreadings also.</p> +<p>Mr Hammerton sometimes lets good folks say in his pages, +without correction, what is certainly not correct. Thus at +one place we are told that Stevenson was only known as Louis in +print, whereas that was the only name by which he was known in +his own family. Then Mr Gosse, at p. 34, is allowed to +write:</p> +<blockquote><p>“Professor Blackie was among them on the +steamer from the Hebrides, a famous figure that calls for no +description, and a voluble shaggy man, clad in homespun, with +spectacles forward upon his nose, who it was whispered to us, was +Mr Sam Bough, the Scottish Academician, <i>a water-colour painter +of some repute</i>, who was to die in 1878.”</p> +</blockquote> +<p>Mr Sam Bough <i>was</i> “a water-colour painter of some +repute,” but a painter in oils of yet greater +repute—a man of rare strength, resource, and +facility—never, perhaps, wholly escaping from some traces +of his early experiences in scene-painting, but a true genius in +his art. Ah, well I remember him, though an older man, yet +youthful in the band of young Scotch artists among whom as a +youngster I was privileged to move in Edinburgh—Pettie, +Chalmers, M’Whirter, Peter Graham, MacTaggart, MacDonald, +John Burr, and Bough. Bough could be voluble on art; and +many a talk I had with him as with the others named, especially +with John Burr. Bough and he both could talk as well as +paint, and talk right well. Bough had a slight cast in the +eye; when he got a <i>wee</i> excited on his subject he would +come close to you with head shaking, and spectacles displaced, +and forelock wagging, and the cast would seem to die away. +Was this a fact, or was it an illusion on my part? I have +often asked myself that question, and now I ask it of +others. Can any of my good friends in Edinburgh say; can Mr +Caw help me here, either to confirm or to correct me? I +venture to insert here an anecdote, with which my friend of old +days, Mr Wm. MacTaggart, R.S.A., in a letter kindly favours +me:</p> +<blockquote><p>“Sam Bough was a very sociable man; and, +when on a sketching tour, liked to have a young artist or two +with him. Jack Nisbett played the violin, and Sam the +’cello, etc. Jack was fond of telling that Sam used +to let them all choose the best views, and then he would take +what was left; and Jack, with mild astonishment, would say, that +‘it generally turned out to be the best—on the +canvas!’”</p> +</blockquote> +<p>In Mr Hammerton’s copy of the verses in reply to Mr +Crockett’s dedication of <i>The Stickit Minister</i> to +Stevenson, in which occurred the fine phrase “The grey +Galloway lands, where about the graves of the martyrs the whaups +are crying, his heart remembers how”:</p> +<blockquote><p>“Blows the wind to-day and the sun and the +rain are flying:<br /> + Blows the wind on the moors to-day and now,<br /> +Where about the graves of the martyrs the whaups are crying,<br +/> + My heart remembers how.</p> +<p>“Grey recumbent tombs of the dead in desert places,<br +/> + Standing stones on the vacant wine-red moor,<br /> +Hills of sheep, and the <i>homes</i> of the silent vanished +races,<br /> + And winds austere and pure.</p> +<p>“Be it granted me to behold you again in dying,<br /> + Hills of home! and to hear again the call—<br +/> +Hear about the graves of the martyrs the pee-weet crying,<br /> + And hear no more at all.”</p> +</blockquote> +<p>Mr Hammerton prints <i>howes</i> instead of <i>homes</i>, +which I have italicised above. And I may note, though it +does not affect the poetry, if it does a little affect the +natural history, that the <i>pee-weets</i> and the whaups are not +the same—the one is the curlew, and the other is the +lapwing—the one most frequenting wild, heathery or peaty +moorland, and the other pasture or even ploughed land—so +that it is a great pity for unity and simplicity alike that +Stevenson did not repeat the “whaup,” but wrote +rather as though pee-weet or pee-weets were the same as +whaups—the common call of the one is <i>Ker-lee</i>, +<i>ker-lee</i>, and of the other <i>pee-weet</i>, +<i>pee-weet</i>, hence its common name.</p> +<p>It is a pity, too, that Mr Hammerton has no records of some +portions of the life at Davos Platz. Not only was Stevenson +ill there in April 1892, but his wife collapsed, and the tender +concern for her made havoc with some details of his literary +work. It is good to know this. Such errata or +omissions throw a finer light on his character than controlling +perfection would do. Ah, I remember how my old friend W. B. +Rands (“Matthew Browne” and “Henry +Holbeach”) was wont to declare that were men perfect they +would be isolated, if not idiotic, that we are united to each +other by our defects—that even physical beauty would be +dead like later Greek statues, were these not departures from the +perfect lines. The letter given by me at p. 28 transfigures +in its light, some of his work at that time.</p> +<p>And then what an opportunity, we deeply regret to say, Mr +Hammerton wholly missed, when he passed over without due +explanation or commentary that most significant +pamphlet—the <i>Address to the Scottish Clergy</i>. +If Mr Hammerton had but duly and closely studied that and its +bearings and suggestions in many directions, then he would have +written such a chapter for true enlightenment and for interest as +exactly his book—attractive though it is in much—yet +specially lacks. It is to be hoped that Mr Sidney Colvin +will not once more miss the chance which is thus still left open +to him to perfect his <i>Life of Stevenson</i>, and make it more +interpretive than anything yet published. If he does this, +then, a dreadful <i>lacuna</i> in the <i>Edinburgh Edition</i> +will also be supplied.</p> +<p>Carefully reading over again Mr Arthur Symons’ +<i>Studies in Two Literatures</i>—published some years +ago—I have come across instances of apparent contradiction +which, so far as I can see, he does not critically altogether +reconcile, despite his ingenuity and great charm of style. +One relates to Thoreau, who, while still “sturdy” as +Emerson says, “and like an elm tree,” as his sister +Sophia says, showed exactly the same love of nature and power of +interpreting her as he did after in his later comparatively short +period of “invalidity,” while Mr Symons says his view +of Nature absolutely was that of the invalid, classing him +unqualifiedly with Jefferies and Stevenson, as invalid. +Thoreau’s mark even in the short later period of +“invalidity” was complete and robust independence and +triumph over it—a thing which I have no doubt wholly +captivated Stevenson, as scarce anything else would have done, as +a victory in the exact <i>rôle</i> he himself was most +ambitious to fill. For did not he too wrestle well with the +“wolverine” he carried on his back—in this like +Addington Symonds and Alexander Pope? Surely I cannot be +wrong here to reinforce my statement by a passage from a letter +written by Sophia Thoreau to her good friend Daniel Ricketson, +after her brother’s death, the more that R. L. Stevenson +would have greatly exulted too in its cheery and invincible +stoicism:</p> +<blockquote><p>“Profound joy mingles with my grief. I +feel as if something very beautiful had happened—not death; +although Henry is with us no longer, yet the memory of his sweet +and virtuous soul must ever cheer and comfort me. My heart +is filled with praise to God for the gift of such a brother, and +may I never distrust the love and wisdom of Him who made him and +who has now called him to labour in more glorious fields than +earth affords. You ask for some particulars relating to +Henry’s illness. I feel like saying that Henry was +never affected, never reached by it. I never before saw +such a manifestation of the power of spirit over matter. +Very often I heard him tell his visitors that he enjoyed +existence as well as ever. The thought of death, he said, +did not trouble him. His thoughts had entertained him all +his life and did still. . . . He considered occupation as +necessary for the sick as for those in health, and accomplished a +vast amount of labour in those last few months.”</p> +</blockquote> +<p>A rare “invalidity” this—a little confusing +easy classifications. I think Stevenson would have felt and +said that brother and sister were well worthy of each other; and +that the sister was almost as grand and cheery a stoic, with no +literary profession of it, as was the brother.</p> +<p>The other thing relates to Stevenson’s <i>human +soul</i>. I find Mr Symons says, at p. 243, that Stevenson +“had something a trifle elfish and uncanny about him, as of +a bewitched being who was not actually human—had not +actually a human soul”—in which there may be a +glimmer of truth viewed from his revelation of artistic +curiosities in some aspects, but is hardly true of him otherwise; +and this Mr Symons himself seems to have felt, when, at p. 246, +he writes: “He is one of those writers who speak <i>to us +on easy terms</i>, with whom we <i>may exchange +affections</i>.” How “affections” could +be exchanged on easy terms between the normal human being and an +elfish creature actually <i>without a human soul</i> (seeing that +affections are, as Mr Matthew Arnold might have said, at least, +three-fourths of soul) is more, I confess, than I can quite see +at present; but in this rather <i>maladroit</i> contradiction Mr +Symons does point at one phase of the problem of +Stevenson—this, namely that to all the ordinary happy or +pleasure-endings he opposes, as it were of set purpose, gloom, as +though to certain things he was quite indifferent, and though, as +we have seen, his actual life and practice were quite opposed to +this.</p> +<p>I am sorry I <i>cannot</i> find the link in Mr Symons’ +essay, which would quite make these two statements consistently +coincide critically. As an enthusiastic, though I hope +still a discriminating, Stevensonian, I do wish Mr Symons would +help us to it somehow hereafter. It would be well worth his +doing, in my opinion.</p> +<h2>CHAPTER XXXIV—LETTERS AND POEMS IN TESTIMONY</h2> +<p>Among many letters received by me in acknowledgment of, or in +commentary on, my little tributes to R. L. Stevenson, in various +journals and magazines, I find the following, which I give here +for reasons purely personal, and because my readers may with me, +join in admiration of the fancy, grace and beauty of the +poems. I must preface the first poem by a letter, which +explains the genesis of the poem, and relates a striking and very +touching incident:</p> +<blockquote><p style="text-align: right">“37 <span +class="smcap">St Donatt’s Road</span>,<br /> +<span class="smcap">Lewisham High Road</span>, S.E.,<br /> +1<i>st</i> <i>March</i> 1895.</p> +<p>“<span class="smcap">Dear Sir</span>,—As you have +written so much about your friend, the late Robert Louis +Stevenson, and quoted many tributes to his genius from +contemporary writers, I take the liberty of sending you herewith +some verses of mine which appeared in <i>The Weekly Sun</i> of +November last. I sent a copy of these verses to Samoa, but +unfortunately the great novelist died before they reached +it. I have, however, this week, received a little note from +Mrs Strong, which runs as follows:</p> +<p>“‘Your poem of “Greeting” came too +late. I can only thank you by sending a little moss that I +plucked from a tree overhanging his grave on Vaea +Mountain.’</p> +<p>“I trust you will appreciate my motive in sending you +the poem. I do not wish to obtrude my claims as a +verse-writer upon your notice, but I thought the incident I have +recited would be interesting to one who is so devoted a collector +of Stevensoniana.—Respectfully yours,</p> +<p><span class="smcap">F. J. Cox</span>.”</p> +</blockquote> +<h3>GREETING</h3> +<p>(TO ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON, IN SAMOA)</p> +<p>We, pent in cities, prisoned in the mart,<br /> +Can know you only as a man apart,<br /> +But ever-present through your matchless art.</p> +<p>You have exchanged the old, familiar ways<br /> +For isles, where, through the range of splendid days,<br /> +Her treasure Nature lavishly displays.</p> +<p>There, by the gracious sweep of ampler seas,<br /> +That swell responsive to the odorous breeze.<br /> +You have the wine of Life, and we the lees!</p> +<p>You mark, perchance, within your island bowers,<br /> +The slow departure of the languorous hours,<br /> +And breathe the sweetness of the strange wild-flowers.</p> +<p>And everything your soul and sense delights—<br /> +But in the solemn wonder of your nights,<br /> +When Peace her message on the landscape writes;</p> +<p>When Ocean scarcely flecks her marge with foam—<br /> +Your thoughts must sometimes from your island roam,<br /> +To centre on the sober face of Home.</p> +<p>Though many a league of water rolls between<br /> +The simple beauty of an English scene,<br /> +From all these wilder charms your love may wean.</p> +<p>Some kindly sprite may bring you as a boon<br /> +Sweets from the rose that crowns imperial June,<br /> +Or reminiscence of the throstle’s tune;</p> +<p>Yea, gladly grant you, with a generous hand,<br /> +Far glimpses of the winding, wind-swept strand,<br /> +The glens and mountains of your native land,</p> +<p>Until you hear the pipes upon the breeze—<br /> +But wake unto the wild realities<br /> +The tangled forests and the boundless seas!</p> +<p>For lo! the moonless night has passed away,<br /> +A sudden dawn dispels the shadows grey,<br /> +The glad sea moves and hails the quickening day.</p> +<p>New life within the arbours of your fief<br /> +Awakes the blossom, quivers in the leaf,<br /> +And splendour flames upon the coral reef.</p> +<p>If such a prospect stimulate your art,<br /> +More than our meadows where the shadows dart,<br /> +More than the life which throbs in London’s heart,</p> +<p>Then stay, encircled by your Southern bowers,<br /> +And weave, amid the incense of the flowers,<br /> +The skein of fair romance—the gain is ours!</p> +<p style="text-align: right"><span class="smcap">F. J. +Cox</span>.</p> +<p style="text-align: right"><i>Weekly Sun</i>, 11<i>th</i> +November 1904.</p> +<h3>R. L. S., IN MEMORIAM.</h3> +<p>An elfin wight as e’er from faeryland<br /> + Came to us straight with favour in his eyes,<br /> + Of wondrous seed that led him to the prize<br /> +Of fancy, with the magic rod in hand.<br /> +Ah, there in faeryland we saw him stand,<br /> + As for a while he walked with smiles and sighs,<br +/> + Amongst us, finding still the gem that buys<br /> +Delight and joy at genius’s command.</p> +<p>And now thy place is empty: fare thee well;<br /> + Thou livest still in hearts that owe thee more<br /> + Than gold can reckon; for thy richer store<br /> +Is of the good that with us aye most dwell.<br /> + Farewell; sleep sound on Vaea’s windy +shrine,<br /> + While round the songsters join their song to +thine.</p> +<p style="text-align: right">A. C. R.</p> +<h2>APPENDIX</h2> +<p>The following appeared some time ago in one of the London +evening papers, and I make bold, because of its truth and vigour, +to insert it here:</p> +<h3>THE LAND OF STEVENSON,<br /> +<i>ON AN AFTERNOON’S WALK</i></h3> +<p>Will there be a “Land of Stevenson,” as there is +already a “Land of Burns,” or a “Land of +Scott,” known to the tourist, bescribbled by the guide-book +maker? This the future must tell. Yet will it be easy +to mark out the bounds of “Robert Louis Stevenson’s +Country”; and, taking his native and well-loved city for a +starting-point, a stout walker may visit all its principal sites +in an afternoon. The house where he was born is within a +bowshot of the Water of Leith; some five miles to the south are +Caerketton and Allermuir, and other crests of the Pentlands, and +below them Swanston Farm, where year after year, in his +father’s time, he spent the summer days basking on the hill +slopes; two or three miles to the westward of Swanston is +Colinton, where his mother’s father, Dr Balfour, was +minister; and here again you are back to the Water of Leith, +which you can follow down to the New Town. In this +triangular space Stevenson’s memories and affections were +firmly rooted; the fibres could not be withdrawn from the soil, +and “the voice of the blood” and the longing for this +little piece of earth make themselves plaintively heard in his +last notes. By Lothian Road, after which Stevenson quaintly +thought of naming the new edition of his works, and past +Boroughmuirhead and the “Bore Stane,” where James +FitzJames set up his standard before Flodden, wends your +southward way to the hills. The builder of suburban villas +has pushed his handiwork far into the fields since Stevenson was +wont to tramp between the city and the Pentlands; and you may +look in vain for the flat stone whereon, as the marvelling child +was told, there once rose a “crow-haunted +gibbet.” Three-quarters of an hour of easy walking, +after you have cleared the last of the houses will bring you to +Swanston; and half an hour more will take the stiff climber, a +little breathless, to</p> +<h4>THE TOP OF CAERKETTON CRAGS.</h4> +<p>You may follow the high road—indeed there is a choice of +two, drawn at different levels—athwart the western skirts +of the Braid Hills, now tenanted, crown and sides of them, by +golf; then to the crossroads of Fairmilehead, whence the road +dips down, to rise again and circumvent the most easterly wing of +the Pentlands. You would like to pursue this route, were it +only to look down on Bow Bridge and recall how the last-century +gauger used to put together his flute and play “Over the +hills and far away” as a signal to his friend in the +distillery below, now converted into a dairy farm, to stow away +his barrels. Better it is, however, to climb the stile just +past the poor-house gate, and follow the footpath along the +smoothly scooped banks of the Braid Burn to +“Cockmylane” and to Comiston. The wind has been +busy all the morning spreading the snow over a glittering +world. The drifts are piled shoulder-high in the lane as it +approaches Comiston, and each old tree grouped around the +historic mansion is outlined in snow so virgin pure that were the +Ghost—“a lady in white, with the most beautiful clear +shoes on her feet”—to step out through the back gate, +she would be invisible, unless, indeed, she were between you and +the ivy-draped dovecot wall. Near by, at the corner of the +Dreghorn Woods, is the Hunters’ Tryst, on the roof of +which, when it was still a wayside inn, the Devil was wont to +dance on windy nights. In the field through which you +trudge knee-deep in drift rises the “Kay Stane,” +looking to-day like a tall monolith of whitest marble. +Stevenson was mistaken when he said that it was from its top a +neighbouring laird, on pain of losing his lands, had to +“wind a blast of bugle horn” each time the King</p> +<h4>VISITED HIS FOREST OF PENTLAND.</h4> +<p>That honour belongs to another on the adjacent farm of +Buckstane. The ancient monument carries you further back, +and there are Celtic authorities that translate its name the +“Stone of Victory.” The “Pechtland +Hills”—their elder name—were once a refuge for +the Picts; and Caerketton—probably Caer-etin, the +giant’s strong-hold—is one of them. Darkly its +cliffs frown down upon you, while all else is flashing white in +the winter sunlight. For once, in this last buttress thrown +out into the plain of Lothian towards the royal city, the outer +folds of the Pentlands loses its boldly-rounded curves, and drops +an almost sheer descent of black rock to the little glen +below. In a wrinkle of the foothills Swanston farm and +hamlet are snugly tucked away. The spirit that breathes +about it in summer time is gently pastoral. It is sheltered +from the rougher blasts; it is set about with trees and green +hills. It was with this aspect of the place that Stevenson, +coming hither on holiday, was best acquainted. The village +green, whereon the windows of the neat white cottages turn a +kindly gaze under low brows of thatch, is then a perfect place in +which to rest, and, watching the smoke rising and listening to +“the leaves ruffling in the breeze,” to muse on men +and things; especially on Sabbath mornings, when the ploughman or +shepherd, “perplext wi’ leisure,” it is time to +set forth on the three-mile walk along the hill-skirts to +Colinton kirk. But Swanston in winter time must also</p> +<h4>HAVE BEEN FAMILIAR TO STEVENSON.</h4> +<p>Snow-wreathed Pentlands, the ribbed and furrowed front of +Caerketton, the low sun striking athwart the sloping fields of +white, the shadows creeping out from the hills, and the frosty +yellow fog drawing in from the Firth—must often have +flashed back on the thoughts of the exile of Samoa. Against +this wintry background the white farmhouse, old and crow-stepped, +looks dingy enough; the garden is heaped with the fantastic +treasures of the snow; and when you toil heavily up the waterside +to the clump of pines and beeches you find yourself in a fairy +forest. One need not search to-day for the pool where the +lynx-eyed John Todd, “the oldest herd on the +Pentlands,” watched from behind the low scrag of wood the +stranger collie come furtively to wash away the tell-tale stains +of lamb’s blood. The effacing hand of the snow has +smothered it over. Higher you mount, mid leg-deep in drift, +up the steep and slippery hill-face, to the summit. +Edinburgh has been creeping nearer since Stevenson’s musing +fancy began to draw on the memories of the climbs up “steep +Caerketton.” But this light gives it a mystic +distance; and it is all glitter and shadow. Arthur Seat is +like some great sea monster stranded near a city of dreams; from +the fog-swathed Firth gleams the white walls of Inchkeith +lighthouse, a mark never missed by Stevenson’s +father’s son; above Fife rise the twin breasts of the +Lomonds. Or turn round and look across the Esk valley to +the Moorfoots; or more westerly, where the back range of the +Pentlands—Caernethy, the Scald, and the knife-edged +Kips—draw a sharp silhouette of Arctic peaks against the +sky. In the cloven hollow between is Glencarse Loch, an +ancient chapel and burying ground hidden under its waters; on the +slope above it, not a couple miles away, is Rullion Green, where, +as Stevenson told in <i>The Pentland Rising</i> (his first +printed work)</p> +<h4>THE WESTLAND WHIGS WERE SCATTERED</h4> +<p>as chaff on the hills. Were “topmost +Allermuir,” that rises close beside you, removed from his +place, we might see the gap in the range through which Tom +Dalyell and his troopers spurred from Currie to the fray. +The air on these heights is invigorating as wine; but it is also +keen as a razor. Without delaying long yon plunge down to +the “Windy Door Nick”; follow the “nameless +trickle that springs from the green bosom of Allermuir,” +past the rock and pool, where, on summer evenings, the poet +“loved to sit and make bad verses”; and cross +Halkerside and the Shearers’ Knowe, those “adjacent +cantons on a single shoulder of a hill,” sometimes +floundering to the neck in the loose snow of a drain, sometimes +scaring the sheep huddling in the wreaths, or putting up a covey +of moorfowl that circle back without a cry to cover in the +ling. In an hour you are at Colinton, whose dell has on one +side the manse garden, where a bright-eyed boy, who was to become +famous, spent so much of his time when he came thither on visits +to his stern Presbyterian grandfather; on the other the old +churchyard. The snow has drawn its cloak of ermine over the +sleepers, it has run its fingers over the worn lettering; and +records almost effaced start out from the stone. In vain +these “voices of generations dead” summon their +wandering child, though you might deem that his spirit would rest +more quietly where the cold breeze from Pentland shakes the +ghostly trees in Colinton Dell than “under the flailing +fans and shadows of the palm.”</p> +<h2>Footnotes:</h2> +<p><a name="footnote1"></a><a href="#citation1" +class="footnote">[1]</a> Professor Charles Warren Stoddard, +Professor of English Literature at the Catholic University of +Washington, in <i>Kate Field’s Washington</i>.</p> +<p><a name="footnote2"></a><a href="#citation2" +class="footnote">[2]</a> In his portrait-sketch of his +father, Stevenson speaks of him as a “man of somewhat +antique strain, and with a blended sternness and softness that +was wholly Scottish, and at first sight somewhat +bewildering,” as melancholy, and with a keen sense of his +unworthiness, yet humorous in company; shrewd and childish; a +capital adviser.</p> +<p><a name="footnote3"></a><a href="#citation3" +class="footnote">[3]</a> <i>Inferno</i>, Canto XV.</p> +<p><a name="footnote4"></a><a href="#citation4" +class="footnote">[4]</a> Alas, I never was told that +remark—when I saw my friend afterwards there was always too +much to talk of else, and I forgot to ask.</p> +<p><a name="footnote5"></a><a href="#citation5" +class="footnote">[5]</a> Quoted by Hammerton, pp. 2 and +3.</p> +<p><a name="footnote6"></a><a href="#citation6" +class="footnote">[6]</a> Tusitala, as the reader must know, +is the Samoan for Teller of Tales.</p> +<p><a name="footnote7"></a><a href="#citation7" +class="footnote">[7]</a> <i>Wisdom of Goethe</i>, p. +38.</p> +<p><a name="footnote8"></a><a href="#citation8" +class="footnote">[8]</a> <i>The Foreigner at Home</i>, in +<i>Memories and Portraits</i>.</p> +<p><a name="footnote9"></a><a href="#citation9" +class="footnote">[9]</a> A great deal has been made of the +“John Bull element” in De Quincey since his +<i>Memoir</i> was written by me (see <i>Masson’s +Condensation</i>, p. 95); so now perhaps a little more may be +made of the rather conceited Calvinistic Scot element in R. L. +Stevenson!</p> +<p><a name="footnote10"></a><a href="#citation10" +class="footnote">[10]</a> It was Mr George Moore who said +this.</p> +<p><a name="footnote11"></a><a href="#citation11" +class="footnote">[11]</a> <i>Fortnightly Review</i>, +October, 1903.</p> +<p>***END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON***</p> +<pre> + + +***** This file should be named 590-h.htm or 590-h.zip****** + + +This and all associated files of various formats will be found in: +http://www.gutenberg.org/dirs/5/9/590 + + + +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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