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@@ -0,0 +1,6811 @@ +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*** + + + + +Transcribed from the Charles Scribner's Sons 1905 edition by David Price, +email ccx074@pglaf.org + + + + + +ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON +A RECORD, AN ESTIMATE, AND A MEMORIAL + + +BY ALEXANDER H. JAPP, LL.D., F.R.S.E + +AUTHOR OF "THOREAU: HIS LIFE AND AIMS"; "MEMOIR OF THOMAS DE QUINCEY"; +"DE QUINCEY MEMORIALS," ETC., ETC. + +WITH HITHERTO UNPUBLISHED LETTERS FROM R. L. STEVENSON IN FACSIMILIE . . +. + +SECOND EDITION + +NEW YORK +CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS +153-157 FIFTH AVENUE +1905 + +_Printed in Great Britain_. + +{Robert Louis Stevenson, from a sketch in oils by Sir William B. +Richmond, K.G.B., R.A.: p0.jpg} + +Dedicated to +C. A. LICHTENBERG, ESQ. +AND +Mrs LICHTENBERG, +OF VILLA MARGHERITA, TREVISO, +WITH MOST GRATEFUL REGARDS, + +ALEXANDER H. JAPP. + +19_th_ _December_ 1904. + + + + +PREFACE + + +A few words may here be allowed me to explain one or two points. First, +about the facsimile of last page of Preface to _Familiar Studies of Men +and Books_. 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. + +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. + +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. + +I have to thank many authors for permission to quote extracts I have +used. + +ALEXANDER H. JAPP. + + + + +CONTENTS + + +I. INTRODUCTION AND FIRST IMPRESSIONS +II. _TREASURE ISLAND_ AND SOME REMINISCENCES +III. THE CHILD FATHER OF THE MAN +IV. HEREDITY ILLUSTRATED +V. TRAVELS +VI. SOME EARLIER LETTERS +VII. THE VAILIMA LETTERS +VIII. WORK OF LATER YEARS +IX. SOME CHARACTERISTICS +X. A SAMOAN MEMORIAL OF R. L. STEVENSON +XI. MISS STUBBS' RECORD OF A PILGRIMAGE +XII. HIS GENIUS AND METHODS +XIII. PREACHER AND MYSTIC FABULIST +XIV. STEVENSON AS DRAMATIST +XV. THEORY OF GOOD AND EVIL +XVI. STEVENSON'S GLOOM +XVII. PROOFS OF GROWTH +XVIII. EARLIER DETERMINATIONS AND RESULTS +XIX. MR EDMUND CLARENCE STEDMAN'S ESTIMATE +XX. EGOTISTIC ELEMENT AND ITS EFFECTS +XXI. UNITY IN STEVENSON'S STORIES +XXII. PERSONAL CHEERFULNESS AND INVENTED GLOOM +XXIII. EDINBURGH REVIEWERS' DICTA INAPPLICABLE TO LATER WORK +XXIV. MR HENLEY'S SPITEFUL PERVERSIONS +XXV. MR CHRISTIE MURRAY'S IMPRESSIONS +XXVI. HERO-VILLAINS +XXVII. MR G. MOORE, MR MARRIOTT WATSON, AND OTHERS +XXVIII. UNEXPECTED COMBINATIONS +XXIX. LOVE OF VAGABONDS +XXX. LORD ROSEBERY'S CASE +XXXI. MR GOSSE AND MS. OF _TREASURE ISLAND_ +XXXII. STEVENSON PORTRAITS +XXXIII. LAPSES AND ERRORS IN CRITICISM +XXXIV. LETTERS AND POEMS IN TESTIMONY +APPENDIX + + + + +CHAPTER I--INTRODUCTION AND FIRST IMPRESSIONS + + +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 _The Cornhill +Magazine_ 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-- + + "And when the Northern seeds are growing, + Another beauty then bestowing, + We shall be fine, and North to South + Be giving kisses, mouth to mouth." + +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. + +The direct result was the essay in _The Cornhill_, 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. + +One of the authorities, quoted by Mr Hammerton, in _Stevensoniana_ says +of the circumstances in which he found our author, when he was busily +engaged on that bit of work: + + "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." + {1} + +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 Bronte 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. + +On some little points of fact, however, Stevenson was wrong; and I wrote +to the Editor of _The Spectator_ 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: + + "THE COTTAGE, CASTLETON OF BRAEMAR, + _Sunday_, _August_ (? _th_), 1881. + + "MY DEAR SIR,--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. + + "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 _all_ references throughout the paper. But you may be + certain a proper reference will now be introduced. + + "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. + + "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. + + "The point of view (and I must ask you not to forget that any such + short paper is essentially only a _section through_ 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. + + "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. + + "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. + + "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 _wale_ of + Scotland--bar Tummelside.--Yours very sincerely, + + ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON." + +{Manuscript letter by R.L.S.: p6.jpg} + +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:-- + + THE COTTAGE, CASTLETON OF BRAEMAR. + (_No date_.) + + "MY DEAR SIR,--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, + ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON." + +I accordingly went to Braemar, where he and his wife and her son were +staying with his father and mother. + +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: + +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 _soupcon_ 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 _The Silverado +Squatters_; 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. + +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. + +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, _Treasure +Island_, grew, as we shall see. + +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 _Treasure Island_ 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. + +I have before me as I write some of these funny momentoes of that time, +carefully kept, often looked at. One of them is, "_The Black Canyon_; +_or_, _Wild Adventures in the Far West_: 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 "_Moral +Emblems_; _a Collection of Cuts and Verses_, by R. L. Stevenson, author +of the _Blue Scalper_, etc., etc. Printers, S. L. Osbourne and Company, +Davos Platz." Here are the lines to a rare piece of grotesque, titled _A +Peak in Darien_-- + + "Broad-gazing on untrodden lands, + See where adventurous Cortez stands, + While in the heavens above his head, + The eagle seeks its daily bread. + How aptly fact to fact replies, + Heroes and eagles, hills and skies. + Ye, who contemn the fatted slave, + Look on this emblem and be brave." + +Another, _The Elephant_, has these lines-- + + "See in the print how, moved by whim, + Trumpeting Jumbo, great and grim, + Adjusts his trunk, like a cravat, + To noose that individual's hat; + The Sacred Ibis in the distance, + Joys to observe his bold resistance." + +R. L. Stevenson wrote from Davos Platz, in sending me _The Black Canyon_: + + "Sam sends as a present a work of his own. I hope you feel flattered, + for _this is simply the first time he has ever given one away_. I + have to buy my own works, I can tell you." + +Later he said, in sending a second: + + "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." + +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 _The Sea-Cook_ +would be read, with due pronouncement on the main points by one or other +of the family audience. + +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. + + + + +CHAPTER II--_TREASURE ISLAND_ AND SOME REMINISCENCES + + +When I left Braemar, I carried with me a considerable portion of the MS. +of _Treasure Island_, with an outline of the rest of the story. It +originally bore the odd title of _The Sea-Cook_, and, as I have told +before, I showed it to Mr Henderson, the proprietor of the _Young Folks' +Paper_, who came to an arrangement with Mr Stevenson, and the story duly +appeared in its pages, as well as the two which succeeded it. + +Stevenson himself in his article in _The Idler_ for August 1894 +(reprinted in _My First Book_ volume and in a late volume of the +_Edinburgh Edition_) has recalled some of the circumstances connected +with this visit of mine to Braemar, as it bore on the destination of +_Treasure Island_: + + "And now, who should come dropping in, _ex machina_, 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 _Young Folks_. Even the ruthlessness of + a united family recoiled before the extreme measure of inflicting on + our guest the mutilated members of _The Sea-Cook_; 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. + + "_Treasure Island_--it was Mr Henderson who deleted the first title, + _The Sea-Cook_--appeared duly in _Young Folks_, 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 _The Pentland Rising_, 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." + +He himself gives a goodly list of the predecessors which had found a +circuitous and unlamented way to the fire + + "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 _Rathillet_, + _The Pentland Rising_, _The King's Pardon_ (otherwise _Park + Whitehead_), _Edward Daven_, _A Country Dance_, and _A Vendetta in the + West_. _Rathillet_ was attempted before fifteen, _The Vendetta_ at + twenty-nine, and the succession of defeats lasted unbroken till I was + thirty-one." + +Another thing I carried from Braemar with me which I greatly prize--this +was a copy of _Christianity confirmed by Jewish and Heathen Testimony_, +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-- + + "MY DEAR DR JAPP,--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. + + "I do not know how to thank you for your kind trouble in the matter of + _The Sea-Cook_, 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, ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON." + +A little later came the following:-- + + "THE COTTAGE, CASTLETON OF BRAEMAR. + (_No date_.) + + "MY DEAR DR JAPP,--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. + + "The map, with all its names, notes, soundings, and things, should + make, I believe, an admirable advertisement for the story. Eh? + + "I hope you got a telegram and letter I forwarded after you to + Dinnat.--Believe me, yours very sincerely, ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON." + +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 +_Memories_--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. + +{Manuscript letter by R.L.S.: p20.jpg} + +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. {2} + +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. + +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." + +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:-- + + "Se tu segui tua stella + Non puoi fallire a glorioso porto." {3} + +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. + +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 formulae. 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 _perfervidum_ 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 _In Memoriam_, moulded "in colossal +calm." + +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. + +This is another very characteristic letter to me from Davos Platz: + + "CHALET BUOL, DAVOS, GRISONS, + SWITZERLAND. (_No date_.) + + "MY DEAR DR JAPP,--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 + _Familiar Studies_. 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. + + "You see we do some publishing hereaway. + + "With kind regards, believe me, always yours faithfully, + + ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON." + + "I shall hope to see you in town in May." + +The enclosed was the second series of _Moral Emblems_, by R. L. +Stevenson, printed by Samuel Osbourne. My answer to this letter brought +the following: + + "CHALET-BUOL, DAVOS, + _April_ 1_st_, 1882. + + "MY DEAR DR JAPP,--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. + + "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. + + "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. + + "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. + + "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. + + "Sam and my wife both beg to be remembered, and Sam also sends as a + present a work of his own.--Yours very sincerely, + + ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON." + +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 _Atalanta_ Magazine, with an article of mine on +Stevenson. + + "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 _Atalanta_ 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. {4} There + are women in his books, but there is none of the beauty and subtlety + of womanhood in them. + + "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 _Scotsman_), 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'!" + +The estimate of R. L. Stevenson was not and could not be final in this +case, for _Weir of Hermiston_ and _Catriona_ 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. + + + + +CHAPTER III--THE CHILD FATHER OF THE MAN + + +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. + +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 _Child's Garden of Verses_ to her, he says: + + "My second mother, my first wife, + The angel of my infant life." + +Her copy of _Kidnapped_ was inscribed to her by the hand of Stevenson, +thus: + + "TO CUMY, FROM HER BOY, THE AUTHOR. + SKERRYVORE, 18_th_ _July_ 1888." + +Skerryvore was the name of Stevenson's Bournemouth home, so named after +one of the Stevenson lighthouses. His first volume, _An Inland Voyage_ +has this pretty dedication, inscribed in a neat, small hand: + + "MY DEAR CUMY,--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 + + THE AUTHOR." + +"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. + + "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). + +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." + +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: + + "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." + +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 _The Pentland Rising_--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 +_Catriona_. 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 _idler_, 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 _Apology for Idlers_ that this confession is made, but elsewhere, as +in his essay on _A College Magazine_, 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!" + +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 _humaniores_, 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. + +_Longman's Magazine_, 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: + + "The tropics vanish, and meseems that I, + From Halkerside, from topmost Allermuir, + Or steep Caerketton, dreaming gaze again. + Far set in fields and woods, the town I see + Spring gallant from the shallows of her smoke, + Cragg'd, spired, and turreted, her virgin fort + Beflagg'd. About, on seaward drooping hills, + New folds of city glitter. Last, the Forth + Wheels ample waters set with sacred isles, + And populous Fife smokes with a score of towns, + There, on the sunny frontage of a hill, + Hard by the house of kings, repose the dead, + My dead, the ready and the strong of word. + Their works, the salt-encrusted, still survive; + The sea bombards their founded towers; the night + Thrills pierced with their strong lamps. The artificers, + One after one, here in this grated cell, + Where the rain erases and the rust consumes, + Fell upon lasting silence. Continents + And continental oceans intervene; + A sea uncharted, on a lampless isle, + Environs and confines their wandering child + In vain. The voice of generations dead + Summons me, sitting distant, to arise, + My numerous footsteps nimbly to retrace, + And all mutation over, stretch me down + In that denoted city of the dead." + + + + +CHAPTER IV--HEREDITY ILLUSTRATED + + +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 naive-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 _Lighthouse Yacht_--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 _The Pirate_ and the notes to _The Pirate_, and with what +pride Robert Stevenson preserved the lines Scott wrote in the lighthouse +album at the Bell Rock on that occasion: + + "PHAROS LOQUITUR + + "Far in the bosom of the deep + O'er these wild shelves my watch I keep, + A ruddy gem of changeful light + Bound on the dusky brow of night. + The seaman bids my lustre hail, + And scorns to strike his timorous sail." + +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. + +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. + +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 naive 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. + +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. + +Mr J. F. George, in _Scottish Notes and Queries_, wrote as follows on +Stevenson's inheritances and indebtedness to certain of his ancestors: + + "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 _Catriona_, 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. + + "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. . . . + + "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. + + "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." {5} + + "From his Highland ancestors," says the _Quarterly Review_, "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." + +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. + +"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." + +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 _The Daily Chronicle_ on the +appearance of the _Letters to Family and Friends_. + + "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: + + "'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.' + + "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: + + "'MY DEAR MOTHER,--I give my father up. I give him a parable: that + the Waverley novels are better reading for every day than the tragic + _Life_. 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. + + "'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? . . . + + "'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.' + + "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." + +Anyway it is clear that much in the interminglings of blood we _can_ +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 _Beau Austin_ 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: + + "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." + +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. + +Miss Simpson says: + + "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. + + "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." + +Miss Simpson then proceeds to say: + + "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 + _Weir of Hermiston_." + + + + +CHAPTER V--TRAVELS + + +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. + +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 _Macmillan's_, +and later, more regularly in the _Cornhill_. Careful readers soon began +to note here the presence of a new force. He had gone on the _Inland +Voyage_ and an account of it was in hand; and had done that tour in the +Cevennes which he has described under the title _Travels with a Donkey in +the Cevennes_, 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. + +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. + +By this time some trouble and cause for anxiety had arisen about the +lungs, and trials of various places had been made. _Ordered South_ +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. + +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 _Inland Voyage_ and _Travels with +a Donkey through the Cevennes_--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 + + "Cities of men, + And manners, climates, councils, governments: + Myself not least, but honoured of them all, + Far on the ringing plains of windy Troy." + +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 _Arabian Nights_, 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. + + + + +CHAPTER VI--SOME EARLIER LETTERS + + +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: + + "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 pounds 0s. 5d.). + + "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." + +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 _Scribner's Magazine_. . . "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 _Ludgate Hill_, 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: + + "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 + _Ludgate Hill_. She arrived in the port of New York without beer, + porter, soda-water, curacoa, fresh meat, or fresh water; and yet we + lived, and we regret her." + +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. + + "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 pounds 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. + + "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." + +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 _The Master +of Ballantrae_. + + "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 _Kidnapped_. . . . 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." + +His wife grows seriously ill, and Stevenson has to turn to household +work. + + "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." + +In the midst of such domestic tasks and entanglements he writes _The +Master_, and very characteristically gets dissatisfied with the last +parts, "which shame, perhaps degrade, the beginning." + +Of Mr Kipling this is his judgment--in the year 1890: + + "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. + + "Well, we begin to be the old fogies now, and it was high time + _something_ 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?" + +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 _A Footnote to +History_, the most powerful _expose_ 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. + +"I chose Samoa instead of Honolulu," he told Mr W. H. Trigg, who reports +the talk in _Cassells' Magazine_, "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. + + + + +CHAPTER VII--THE VAILIMA LETTERS + + +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." + +In June, 1892, Stevenson says: + + "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 Simele calls it." + +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 _St Ives_ to his stepdaughter, Mrs Strong, he +was "reduced to dictating to her in the deaf-and-dumb alphabet"?--and +goes on: + + "The amanuensis has her head quite turned, and believes herself to be + the author of this novel [_and is to some extent_.--A.M.] and as the + creature (!) has not been wholly useless in the matter [_I told you + so_!--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 _very_ 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." + +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. + +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 _Times_ about Samoan politics, and, say, _David Balfour_. Here is a +characteristic bit in that strain: + + "I have a good dose of the devil in my pipestem atomy; I have had my + little holiday outing in my kick at _The Young Chevalier_, and I guess + I can settle to _David Balfour_, 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." + +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 _a la_ Stevenson: + + "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." + +His relish for companionship is indeed strong. At one place he says: + + "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!" + +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. + + "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. _Nothing_ 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." + +The odd ways of these Samoans, their pride of position, their vices, +their virtues, their vanities, their small thefts, their tricks, their +delightful _insouciance_ 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: + + "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.'" + +Yet in spite of this R. L. Stevenson declares that: + + "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." + +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: + + "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." + +Here, again, is the way in which he celebrates an act of friendly +kindness on the part of Mr Gosse: + + "MY DEAR GOSSE,--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." + + + + +CHAPTER VIII--WORK OF LATER YEARS + + +Mr Hammerton, in his _Stevensoniana_ (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 _Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde_ +volume he wrote: + + "Trudeau was all the winter at my side: + I never saw the nose of Mr Hyde." + +And on _Kidnapped_ is this: + + "Here is the one sound page of all my writing, + The one I'm proud of and that I delight in." + +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 protege 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: + + I, ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON, advocate of the Scots Bar, author of _The + Master of Ballantrae_ and _Moral Emblems_, 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; + + 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; + + 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; + + 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; + + 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, _et tamquam bona filia + familias_, the said birthday not being so young as it once was and + having carried me in a very satisfactory manner since I can remember; + + 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. + + 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. + + ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON. [Seal.] + + _Witness_, LLOYD OSBOURNE. + + _Witness_, HAROLD WATTS. + +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 _Weir of Hermiston_ and _St Ives_, which he +left unfinished--the latter having been brought to a conclusion by Mr +Quiller-Couch. + + + + +CHAPTER IX--SOME CHARACTERISTICS + + +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 _personality_. 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 _Elsie Venner_ and _The +Guardian Angel_, and there were Poe and Charles Whitehead. Stevenson, in +a few of his writings--in one of the _Merry Men_ chapters and in _Dr +Jekyll and Mr Hyde_, and, to some extent, in _The Master of +Ballantrae_--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. + +Even in the stories that would be classed as those of incident and +adventure merely, _Treasure Island_, _Kidnapped_, 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 _more_. 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: + + "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." + +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 _Kidnapped_ and _David Balfour_, 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. + +One writer has very well said on this feature in Stevenson: + + "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 _Child's Garden_, 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 haemorrhage), 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!" + +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: + + "Spring shall come, come again, calling up the moorfowl, + Spring shall bring the sun and rain, bring the bees and flowers, + Red shall the heather bloom over hill and valley, + Soft flow the stream thro' the even-flowing hours; + Fair the day shine, as it shone upon my childhood-- + Fair shine the day on the house with open door; + Birds come and cry there, and twitter in the chimney-- + But I go for ever and come again no more." + + + + +CHAPTER X--A SAMOAN MEMORIAL OF R. L. STEVENSON + + +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. + + "He wrote hard all that morning of the last day; his half-finished + book, _Hermiston_, 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." + +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: + + "I am only a poor Samoan, and ignorant. Others are rich, and can give + Tusitala {6} 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." + +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: + + "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. + + "We thank Thee and praise Thee, and in the words of Him to whom this + day is sacred, close our oblations." + +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: + + "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." + +And turning to the chiefs, Mr Stevenson said: + + "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. . . . + + "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." + +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: + + "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. + + "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." + +Mr A. W. Mackay gives an account of the funeral and a description of the +burial-place, ending: + + "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." + +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: + + I. + + "Listen, O this world, as I tell of the disaster + That befell in the late afternoon; + That broke like a wave of the sea + Suddenly and swiftly, blinding our eyes. + Alas for Loia who speaks tears in his voice! + + _Refrain_--Groan and weep, O my heart, in its sorrow. + Alas for Tusitala, who rests in the forest! + Aimlessly we wait, and sorrowing. Will he again return? + Lament, O Vailima, waiting and ever waiting! + Let us search and inquire of the captain of ships, + 'Be not angry, but has not Tusitala come?' + + II. + + "Teuila, sorrowing one, come thou hither! + Prepare me a letter, and I will carry it. + Let her Majesty Victoria be told + That Tusitala, the loving one, has been taken hence. + + _Refrain_--Groan and weep, O my heart, etc., etc. + + III. + + "Alas! my heart weeps with anxious grief + As I think of the days before us: + Of the white men gathering for the Christmas assembly! + Alas for Aolele! left in her loneliness, + And the men of Vailima, who weep together + Their leader--their leader being taken. + + _Refrain_--Groan and weep, O my heart, etc., etc. + + IV. + + "Alas! O my heart! it weeps unceasingly + When I think of his illness + Coming upon him with fatal swiftness. + Would that it waited a glance or a word from him, + Or some token, some token from us of our love. + + _Refrain_--Groan and weep, O my heart, etc., etc. + + V. + + "Grieve, O my heart! I cannot bear to look on + All the chiefs who are there now assembling: + Alas, Tusitala! Thou art not here! + I look hither and thither in vain for thee. + + _Refrain_--Groan and weep, O my heart, etc., etc." + +And the little booklet closes with Mr Stevenson's own lines: + + "REQUIEM. + + Under the wide and starry sky, + Dig the grave and let me lie; + Glad did I live and gladly die, + And I laid me down with a will. + This be the verse you grave for me: + 'Here he lies where he longed to be; + Home is the sailor, home from sea; + And the hunter home from the hill.'" + +Every touch tells here was a man, with heart and head, with soul and mind +intent on the loftiest things; simple, great, + + "Like one of the simple great ones gone + For ever and ever by. + +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: + + "The clear head and stout heart, + However far they roam, + Yet in every truth have part, + Are everywhere at home." + +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 _A Footnote to History_ and +his letters to the _Times_. 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. + + + + +CHAPTER XI--MISS STUBBS' RECORD OF A PILGRIMAGE + + +Mrs Strong, in her chapter of _Table Talk in Memories of Vailima_, 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!'" + +Miss Stubbs, in her _Stevenson's Shrine_; _the Record of a Pilgrimage_, +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." + +"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:-- + + "'Sing me a song of a lad that is gone, + Say, could that lad be I?' + +No need now for the despairing finality of: + + "'I have trod the upward and the downward slope, + I have endured and done in the days of yore, + I have longed for all, and bid farewell to hope, + And I have lived, and loved, and closed the door.' + + "Death has set his seal of peace on the unequal conflict of mind and + matter; the All-Mother has gathered him to herself. + + "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." + +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." + +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. + + "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! + +Another of the Count's stories greatly amused the visitors: + + "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." + +Miss Stubbs met on the other side of the island a photographer who told +her this: + + "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'.' + + "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." + + "'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.'" + + 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." + +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 _did_ 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!" + +The story of the _Road of the Loving Heart_ was but another fine +attestation of it. + + + + +CHAPTER XII--HIS GENIUS AND METHODS + + +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. + +Miss Simpson follows Mr Bellyse Baildon with the _Edinburgh Days_, Miss +Moyes Black comes on with her picture in the _Famous Scots_, and +Professor Raleigh succeeds her; Mr Graham Balfour follows with his_ +Life_; Mr Kelman's volume about his Religion comes next, and that is +reinforced by more familiar letters and _Table Talk_, by Lloyd Osbourne +and Mrs Strong, his step-children; Mr J. Hammerton then comes on handily +with _Stevensoniana_--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 _Stevenson's Shrine_: +_the Record of a Pilgrimage_; and Mr Sidney Colvin is now busily at work +on his _Life of Stevenson_, which must do not a little to enlighten and +to settle many questions. + +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 _wale_ 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 _The Home +Country of Stevenson_ may be found very helpful here. + +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, naive 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 _Weir of +Hermiston_, 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, _there is a good deal of the author himself +disguised in petticoats_. I have thought of Stevenson in many suits, +beside that which included the velvet jacket, but--petticoats! + +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: + + "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." + +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: + + "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, _The Master of Ballantrae_, 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." + +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: +"_Eccovi_, that child has been in hell," we may say, "_Eccovi_, 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. + +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): + + 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.' _He of all mortals_, _who was_, _in a sense_, _always still a + boy_!" + +Mr Gosse tells us: + + "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." + +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: + + "A deal of Ariel, just a streak of Puck, + Much Antony, of Hamlet most of all, + _And something of the Shorter Catechist_." + +_Something_! 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 _Old Mortality_, "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: + + "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.'" + +I would rather agree with Mr Chesterton than with Mr Zangwill here: + + "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 _bon vivant_. 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." + +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. + +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. + +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 _weird_ 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." + +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. + + + + +CHAPTER XIII--PREACHER AND MYSTIC FABULIST + + +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 AEsop 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. + +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: + + THE DEVIL AND THE INNKEEPER + + 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. + + The innkeeper got a rope's end. + + "Now I am going to thrash you," said the inn-keeper. + + "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." + + "Is that so?" asked the innkeeper. + + "Fact, I assure you," said the devil. + + "You really cannot help doing ill?" asked the innkeeper. + + "Not in the smallest," said the devil, "it would be useless cruelty to + thrash a thing like me." + + "It would indeed," said the innkeeper. + + And he made a noose and hanged the devil. + + "There!" said the innkeeper. + +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 _The Persons of the Tale_. After chapter xxxii. of +_Treasure Island_, 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: + + "You're a damned rogue, my man," said the Captain. + + "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." + + "Well, I don't really exist either," says the Captain, "which seems to + meet that." + + "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?" + + "Were you never taught your catechism?" said the Captain. "Don't you + know there's such a thing as an Author?" + + "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!" + + "Don't you believe in a future state?" said Smollett. "Do you think + there's nothing but the present sorty-paper?" + + " 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!" + + "I see he's giving you a long rope," said the Captain. . . . + +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 +_Pall Mall Magazine_ 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. + +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 _Ebb-Tide_, 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 _Lilliput Levee_ 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. + +Even in his greatest works, in _The Master of Ballantrae_ and _Weir of +Hermiston_, 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 _dramatically_ is largely lost and make-believe substituted, as +in the Treasure Search in the end of _The Master of Ballantrae_. The +powerful dramatic effect he might have had in his _denouement_ 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. + +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 +_Catriona_, 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 naivete 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. + +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. + + + + +CHAPTER XIV--STEVENSON AS DRAMATIST + + +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. + +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: + + "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, _that_, 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 + _malice prepense_; 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 _The Master of Ballantrae_ (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 _Beau + Austin_, 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 _Ebb-Tide_, 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 _there_ 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 _Weir of Hermiston_ promised something + like an advance to it, and _St Ives_ did, in my idea, yet more." + +The one essential of a _dramatic_ 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 +_Faust_, 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 _Man and Superman_ 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 _outre_ colours. Much the same has to be said of most +of what are problem-plays--several of Ibsen's among the rest. + +Those who remember the Fairy opera of _Hansel and Gretel_ 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, naive, 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 _Scotsman_, 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. + + "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?" + +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. + +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. + +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 _they_, 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 _seek_ the same end, it is by opposing processes--the +original conception alike of nature and of art dictating the process. + +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 +_impressions_ 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:-- + + "Freedom's battle once begun, + Bequeathed from bleeding sire to son, + Tho' baffled oft is ever won." + +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. + + + + +CHAPTER XV--THEORY OF GOOD AND EVIL + + +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. + +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. + +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 _Ebb- +Tide_ 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 _The +Master of Ballantrae_ "_shame_, _and perhaps degrade_, _the beginning_." +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. + +Did Mr William Archer have anything of this in his mind and the +far-reaching effects on this side, when he wrote the following: + + "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." + +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. + + "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. + + "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. + + "Most of Stevenson's titles, too, like _Treasure Island_, _Kidnapped_, + and_ The Master of Ballantrae_, 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. + + "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. + + "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 _Kidnapped_ 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. + + "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? + + "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. + + "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!' + + "Shakespeare has shown us--and never so nobly as in his last great + creation of _The Tempest_--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. + + "We must remember that _The Tempest_ 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!" + +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: + + "Greatest saints were ever most kindly-hearted to sinners; + Here I'm a saint with the best; sinners I never could hate." {7} + +Stevenson's own verdict on _Deacon Brodie_ given to a _New York Herald_ +reporter on the author's arrival in New York in September 1887, on the +_Ludgate Hill_, 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. _But we +were both young men when we did that_, _and I think we had an idea that +bad-heartedness was strength_." + +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 _Pall Mall +Magazine_ about the _Edinburgh Edition_, etc. Men are mirrors in which +they see each other: Henley, after all, painted himself much more +effectively in that now notorious _Pall Mall Magazine_ 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. + +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 _Pippa +Passes_: + + "The year's at the spring, + And day's at the morn; + Morning's at seven; + The hillsides dew-pearled; + + The lark's on the wing; + The snail's on the thorn: + God's in His heaven, + All's right with the world. + + . . . . . . . . . . . . + + "All service ranks the same with God, + If now, as formerly he trod + Paradise, His presence fills + Our earth, each only as God wills + Can work--God's puppets best and worst, + Are we; there is no last or first." + +It shows what he might have accomplished, had longer life been but +allowed him. + + + + +CHAPTER XVI--STEVENSON'S GLOOM + + +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. + +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, naive 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--"_Has the man no gratitude_?" 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. + +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. + +It was well pointed out in _Hammerton_, 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. + +In some other matters the test laid down here is not difficult of +application. Stevenson, at the time he wrote _The Foreigner at Home_, +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: + + "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." {8} + +As there was a great deal of the "John Bull element" {9} 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. + + + + +CHAPTER XVII--PROOFS OF GROWTH + + +Once again I quote Goethe: + + "Natural simplicity and repose are the acme of art, and hence it + follows no youth can be a master." + +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. _The Sedulous Ape_ 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 _Catriona_ 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 _deus ex +machina_, and never do more than just pay a little tribute to Stevenson's +own power of _persiflage_, 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. + +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 _shied_ presenting women +altogether. This is not quite true: _Thrawn Janet_ 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 +_Weir of Hermiston_, and "Weir" has been well said to be sadder, if it +does not go deeper than _Denis Duval_ or _Edwin Drood_. 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. + +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 _The Master of Ballantrae_, +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. + + + + +CHAPTER XVIII--EARLIER DETERMINATIONS AND RESULTS + + +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 _The House of +Eld_, _The Touchstone_, _The Poor Thing_, and _The Song of the Morrow_, +published along with some fables at the end of an edition of _Dr Jekyll +and Mr Hyde_, 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. + +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 _Good +Content_, well illustrates this: + + "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? + + "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. + + "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." + +The record, entitled _Sunday Thoughts_, which is dated some five days +earlier is naive 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. + + "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! + + . . . . . . . . + + "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--'_bad + ware nicht_'--is not that the humour of it? + + . . . . . . . . . + + "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; _if I were what I was + yesterday_, _and what_, _before God_, _I shall be again to-morrow_, + _how should I outface these brazen memories_, _how live down this + unclean resurrection of dead hopes_!" + +Close associated with this always is the moralising faculty, which is +assertive. Take here the cunning sentences on _Selfishness and Egotism_, +very Hawthornian yet quite original: + + "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." + +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 _Pall Mall +Magazine_ article. He could hardly have quoted anything more apparently +apt to the purpose. + +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: + + "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." + +Again: + + "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." + +The moral to _The House of Eld_ is incisive writ out of true +experience--phantasy there becomes solemn, if not, for the nonce, +tragic:-- + + "Old is the tree and the fruit good, + Very old and thick the wood. + Woodman, is your courage stout? + Beware! the root is wrapped about + Your mother's heart, your father's bones; + And, like the mandrake, comes with groans." + +The phantastic moralist is supreme, jauntily serious, facetiously +earnest, most gravely funny in the whole series of _Moral Emblems_. + + "Reader, your soul upraise to see, + In yon fair cut designed by me, + The pauper by the highwayside + Vainly soliciting from pride. + Mark how the Beau with easy air + Contemns the anxious rustic's prayer + And casting a disdainful eye + Goes gaily gallivanting by. + He from the poor averts his head . . . + He will regret it when he's dead." + +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. + +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 _confreres_, yet demands, and will well reward the closest and most +careful attention and thought that can be given to it. + +The parabolic element, with the whimsical humour and turn for paradoxical +inversion, comes out fully in such a work as _Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde_. +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. + +Hence the interest which young and old alike have felt in _Treasure +Island_, _Kidnapped_, and _The Wrecker_--a something which suffices +decisively to mark off these books from the mass with which superficially +they might be classed. + + + + +CHAPTER XIX--EDMUND CLARENCE STEDMAN'S ESTIMATE + + +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 _Waverley Novels_; if a +like fate had overtaken Dickens, we should not have had _A Tale of Two +Cities_; and under a similar stroke, Goldsmith could not have written +_Retaliation_, or tasted the bitter-sweet first night of _She Stoops to +Conquer_. At the age of forty-four Mr Thomas Hardy had probably not +dreamt of _Tess of the D'Urbervilles_. 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. + +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 _New York Tribune_: + + "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 + + "'The Virgilian cry, + The sense of tears in mortal things,' + + 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. + + "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 _Waverley + Novels_ 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.' + + "I remember delighting in two fascinating stories of Paris in the time + of Francois 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 _New Arabian Nights_--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.' + + "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. + + "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: + + "'What though his work unfinished lies? Half bent + The rainbow's arch fades out in upper air, + The shining cataract half-way down the height + Breaks into mist; the haunting strain, that fell + On listeners unaware, + Ends incomplete, but through the starry night + The ear still waits for what it did not tell.'" + +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: + + "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. + + "'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. + + "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." + + + + +CHAPTER XX--EGOTISTIC ELEMENT AND ITS EFFECTS + + +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 _The Master of Ballantrae_ 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 _Studies of a Biographer_: + + "The younger brother in _The Master of Ballantrae_, 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 _Catriona_ 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." + +In the _Ebb-Tide_ it is, in this respect, yet worse: the three heroes +choke each other off all too literally. + +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. + +Mr Baildon thus hits the subjective tendency, out of which mainly this +defect--a serious defect in view of interest--arises. + + "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). + +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 _The Master of Ballantrae_, 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 _Catriona_ in much of the treatment of James +Mohr or More; it is still more so in not a little of the treatment of +_Weir of Hermiston_ 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. + +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. + +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 _Kidnapped_ +and _Catriona_, 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. + +This is essentially the character of the _mystic_; and hence the +justification for this word as applied expressly to Stevenson by Mr +Chesterton and others. + + "The inner life like rings of light + Goes forth of us, transfiguring all we see." + +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 +_penchant_--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 _Address to the Scottish Clergy_ written when Stevenson +was yet but a young man, on all that he afterwards said and did. It +starts in the _Edinburgh Edition_ without any note, comment, or +explanation whatever, but in that respect the _Edinburgh Edition_ 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 _The House of the Seven Gables_, 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 +_Doctor Dolliver_, as indeed it was with Zenobia and with the hero in the +_Marble Faun_. "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. + +Mr Baildon says: + + "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 Brontes, in + that he aims more at concentration and intensity, than at the easy, + quiet breadth of Scott." + +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. + +Now here I humbly think Mr Baldion errs about the cleverness when he +criticises Stevenson for the _faux pas_ artistically of resorting to the +piratic filibustering and the treasure-seeking at the close of _The +Master of Ballantrae_, 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 _Catriona_ and +in not a few in _Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde_. 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 _Merry +Men_, whoever wrote them or part wrote them, and _Prince Otto_ 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, +_Prince Otto_ 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 _The Master of Ballantrae_. + +"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 _new_." 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. + + + + +CHAPTER XXI--UNITY IN STEVENSON'S STORIES + + +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 _Treasure Island_, and the least +successful perhaps _Catriona_, 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 _shies_, 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. + +On this subject, Mr Baildon has some words so decisive, true, and final, +that I cannot refrain from here quoting them: + + "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. + + + + +CHAPTER XXII--PERSONAL CHEERFULNESS AND INVENTED GLOOM + + +Now, it is in its own way surely a very remarkable thing that Stevenson, +who, like a youth, was all for _Heiterkeit_, 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 _The Master of Ballantrae_--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. _The Master of Ballantrae_ 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 _Ballantrae_, is one of the poorest expedients for +relief in all fiction. + +Will in _Will o' the Mill_ 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: + + "The love scenes in _Weir of Hermiston_ 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 _The Master of + Ballantrae_." + +In a word, between this work and _Weir of Hermiston_ 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. + + + + +CHAPTER XXIII--EDINBURGH REVIEWERS' DICTA INAPPLICABLE TO LATER WORK + + +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 _Edinburgh Review_ +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 _Edinburgh Reviewer_ wrote: + + "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 _Treasure Island_ 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." + + + + +CHAPTER XXIV--MR HENLEY'S SPITEFUL PERVERSIONS + + +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 +_Memoir_ by Mr Graham Balfour, in the _Pall Mall Magazine_. 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 _cum_ 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 _in statu quo_, 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. + + "At bottom Stevenson was an excellent fellow. But he was of his + essence what the French call _personnel_. 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. _Withal_, _if he + wanted a thing_, _he went after it with an entire contempt of + consequences_. _For these_, _indeed_, _the Shorter Catechism was ever + prepared to answer_; _so that whether he did well or ill_, _he was + safe to come out unabashed and cheerful_." + +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. + + "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 _Edinburgh Edition_. I am + not interested in remarks about morals; in and out of letters. _I + have lived a full and varied life_, and my opinions are my own. _So_, + _if I crave the enchantment of romance_, _I ask it of bigger men than + he_, _and of bigger books than his_: of _Esmond_ (say) and _Great + Expectations_, of _Redgauntlet_ and _Old Mortality_, _of La Reine + Margot_ and _Bragelonne_, of _David Copperfield_ and _A Tale of Two + Cities_; 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 _in the last_ 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? + {10} 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 + _charmeur_. 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." + +Just a month or two before Mr Henley's self-revealing article appeared in +the _Pall Mall Magazine_, Mr Chesterton, in the _Daily News_, with almost +prophetic forecast, had said: + + "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." + +And it were indeed hard to reconcile some things here with what Mr Henley +set down of individual works many times in the _Scots and National +Observer_, 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! + +Mr James Douglas, in the _Star_, in his half-playful and suggestive way, +chose to put it as though he regarded the article in the _Pall Mall +Magazine_ 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. + + A LITERARY HOAX. + TO THE EDITOR OF THE _STAR_. + + SIR--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. + + 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. + + First this scene in the infirmary at Edinburgh: + + "(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 shall try to be of use to + him_." + + Secondly, this passage from Stevenson's dedication of _Virginibus + Puerisque_ to "My dear William Ernest Henley": + + "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." + + 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: + + "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. + + "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 _Prince Otto_) 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." + + And, lastly, this extract from the very last of Stevenson's letters to + Henley, published in the two volumes of _Letters_: + + "It is impossible to let your new volume pass in silence. I have not + received the same thrill of poetry since G. M.'s _Joy of Earth_ + volume, and _Love in a Valley_; 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." + +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. + + + + +CHAPTER XXV--MR CHRISTIE MURRAY'S IMPRESSIONS + + +MR CHRISTIE MURRAY, writing as "Merlin" in our handbook in the _Referee_ +at the time, thus disposed of some of the points just dealt with by us: + + "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 _au pied de la lettre_. 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 Napoleon 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. + + "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. + . . . + + "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. . . . + + "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." + +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 +_Robert_, 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 _Pall Mall Magazine_ 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: + + "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. + + "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." + + + + +CHAPTER XXVI--HERO-VILLAINS + + +In truth, it must indeed be here repeated that Stevenson for the reason +he himself gave about _Deacon Brodie_ 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 _Ebb-Tide_ on the one +side, and Prince Otto on the other are possible, it is yet absolutely +demanded that they should not stand _alone_, 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 _The +Master of Ballantrae_, 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 _elevated impression_, +acknowledge it and bow to it) else there can scarce be true _denouement_ +and the sense of any moral rectitude or law remain as felt or +acknowledged in human nature or in the Universe itself. + +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. + +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. + +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 +_Beau Austin_, and the reason of its failure--complete failure--on the +stage: + + "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 _Beau Austin_, 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 _Beau Austin_ 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 _Clarissa Harlowe_, is well aware of this, and is + perfectly right in making his _denouement_ 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." + +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 _fully justified_ 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. + +True, it is not the dramatists part _of himself_ 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 _In Memoriam_, +"Without a conscience or an aim." Mr Henley, in his notorious, all too +confessional, and yet rather affected article on Stevenson in the _Pall +Mall Magazine_, 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 _Edinburgh Edition_ 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 _Beau Austin_ 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. + +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 _Murder as a Fine Art_, 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 _this_ kind +of condensation and concentration, and the stern and severe lopping off +of the indulgence of the _egotistical_ 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. + +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. + +But listen to Mr Baildon: + +"In _A Chapter on Dreams_, 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, _collaborateurs_ 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 +_was his or their want of moral sense_, 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, _The +Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde_, 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. + +"Even in _The Suicide Club_ and the _Rajah's Diamond_, I seem to feel +strongly the presence of the dream-Stevenson. . . . _At certain points +one feels conscious of a certain moral callousness_, _such as marks the +dream state_, _as in the murder of Colonel Geraldine's brother_, _the +horror of which never seems to come fully home to us_. 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 _dramatis personae_ 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 +_Providence and the Guitar_; 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." + + + + +CHAPTER XXVII--MR G. MOORE, MR MARRIOTT WATSON AND OTHERS + + +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 _The Daily Chronicle_ 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 _The Secret Rose_ 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 _Hamlet_. +"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 _Secret Rose_ 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. + +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. {11} He even finds the _Ebb-Tide_, 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." + +And well it may! Individual taste and opinion are but individual taste +and opinion, but the _Ebb-Tide_ 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, _pace_ 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 _Ebb-Tide_, 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. + + "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 _full of_" _or_ "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." + +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. + +Mr Baildon says about the _Ebb-Tide_: + + "I can compare his next book, the _Ebb-Tide_ (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 _Vailima Letters_ 'the + ever-to-be-execrated _Ebb-Tide_' (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 _Ebb-Tide_ as 'the ever-to-be-execrated.'" + +Mr Baildon truly says (p. 49): + + "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." + +"Verax," in one of his "Occasional Papers" in the _Daily News_ on "The +Average Reader" has this passage: + + "We should not object to a writer who could repeat Barrie in _A Window + in Thrums_, 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. + + "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." + +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. _The Master of +Ballantrae_ 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 _Ebb-Tide_, 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 _in essence_." 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. + +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 _Morning Post_ 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. + + "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 _bourgeois_ (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 _Ministering Children_. 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." + + + + +CHAPTER XXVIII--UNEXPECTED COMBINATIONS + + +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: + + "As God holding no form of creed, + But contemplating all," + +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. + +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. + +Action in creative literary art is a _sine qua non_; keeping all the +characters and parts in unison, that a true _denouement_, 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 _personnel_, 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 _Walverwandschaften_, _Wilhelm Meister_, or +_Faust_, 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 _Phantasus_ and George MacDonald's _Phantastes_ 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." + +Mr Zangwill, in his own style, wrote: + + "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. + +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. _The modified +creature_ 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. + +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 _Annabella and Giovanni_, 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: + + "Il me semble que les personnages de Stevenson ont justement cette + espece de realisme irreal. La large figure luisante de Long John, la + couleur bleme du crane de Thevenin Pensete s'attachent a la memoire de + nos yeux en vertue de leur irrealite meme. Ce sont des fantomes de la + verite, hallucinants comme de vrais fantomes. Notez en passant que + les traits de John Silver hallucinent Jim Hawkins, et que Francois + Villon est hante par l'aspect de Thevenin Pensete." + +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: + + "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 _Virginibus + Puerisque_ 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." + +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. + + + + +CHAPTER XXIX--LOVE OF VAGABONDS + + +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 +_confreres_. 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 _Travels with a Donkey in the Cevennes_ +or the _Inland Voyage_. 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: + + "Give to me the life I love, + Let the lave go by me; + Give the jolly heaven above, + And the by-way nigh me: + Bed in the bush, with stars to see; + Bread I dip in the river-- + Here's the life for a man like me, + Here's the life for ever. . . . + + "Let the blow fall soon or late; + Let what will be o'er me; + Give the face of earth around + And the road before me. + Health I ask not, hope nor love, + Nor a friend to know me: + All I ask the heaven above, + And the road below me." + +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: + + "I will make you brooches and toys for your delight + Of bird song at morning, and star shine at night, + I will make a palace fit for you and me, + Of green days in forests and blue days at sea. + + "I will make my kitchen, and you shall keep your room, + Where white flows the river, and bright blows the broom, + And you shall wash your linen and keep your body white, + In rainfall at morning and dew-fall at night. + + "And this shall be for music when no one else is near, + The fine song for singing, the rare song to hear! + That only I remember, that only you admire, + Of the broad road that stretches, and the roadside fire." + +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. _Pickwick_ 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 _rencontres_ 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 +_fun_. + + + + +CHAPTER XXX--LORD ROSEBERY'S CASE + + +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: + + "38 BERKELEY SQUARE, W., + 17_th_ _December_ 1896. + + "DEAR SIR,--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. + + "With regard to the style of Stevenson's later works, I am inclined to + agree with you.-Believe me, yours very faithfully, + + ROSEBERY. + + "Dr ALEXANDER H. JAPP." + +This I at once replied to as follows: + + "NATIONAL LIBERAL CLUB, + WHITEHALL PLACE, S.W., + 19_th_ _December_ 1896. + + "MY LORD,--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, _By + Way of Criticism_, to _Familiar Studies of Men and Books_ you will + read: + + "'Upon me this pure, narrow, sunnily-ascetic Thoreau had exercised a + wondrous charm. _I have scarce written ten sentences since I was + introduced to him_, _but his influence might be somewhere detected by + a close observer_.' + + "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., + + ALEXANDER H. JAPP." + +{Manuscript letter by R.L.S.: p262.jpg} + +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. + +I might also have referred Lord Rosebery to the article in _The British +Weekly_ (_1887_), "Books that have Influenced Me," where, after having +spoken of Shakespeare, the _Vicomte de Bragelonne_, Bunyan, Montaigne, +Goethe, Martial, Marcus Aurelius's _Meditations_, and Wordsworth, he +proceeds: + + "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." + +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. + +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 "_free_, _gratis_, _for nothing_"; +no; he contented himself with simply slicing out columns from the +_Times_, or allowing another man to do so for him, and reprinting them +_literatim et verbatim_, all imperfect and misleading, as they stood. +_Scripta manet_ 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 _Times_ 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. + +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 _Times_' report is the +_Times_'. 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 _verbatim_ 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 _grounds_, 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. + +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 _Familiar Studies_, 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. + +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 _Life and Speeches_ 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. + +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 _Life and Speeches_, 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. + + + + +CHAPTER XXXI--MR GOSSE AND MS. OF _TREASURE ISLAND_ + + +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 _Treasure Island_ +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 _sought_ 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 _Academy_ 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. + +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: + +1. _Most assuredly_ I carried away from Braemar in my portmanteau, as R. +L. Stevenson says in _Idler's_ article and in chapter of _My First Book_ +reprinted in _Edinburgh Edition_, several chapters of _Treasure Island_. +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 _first three_, that is, _finally revised +versions for press_. Mr Gosse could not then _have heard R. L. Stevenson +read from these final versions but from first draughts_ ONLY, 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--_completely_ 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. + +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 _Billy Bo'sun_ 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. + +The publication of _Treasure Island_ in _Young Folks_ began on the 1st +October 1881, No. 565 and ran on in the following order: + + _October_ 1, 1881. + THE PROLOGUE + + No. 565. + I. The Old Sea Dog at the Admiral Benbow. + II. Black Dog Appears and Disappears. + + No. 566. + Dated _October_ 8, 1881. + III. The Black Spot. + + No. 567. + Dated _October_ 15, 1881. + IV. The Sea Chart. + V. The Last of the Blind Man. + VI. The Captain's Papers. + + No. 568. + Dated _October_ 22, 1881. + THE STORY + I. I go to Bristol. + II. The Sea-Cook. + Ill. Powder and Arms. + +Now, as the numbers of _Young Folks_ 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 _copy_ 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, +_substantially_ right when he wrote in _My First Book_ in the _Idler_, +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. + + + + +CHAPTER XXXII--STEVENSON PORTRAITS + + +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. + +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. + +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. + +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 naively 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: + + Did ever mortal man hear tell o' sic a ticklin' ferlie + As the comin' on to Apia here o' the painter Mr Nerli? + He cam'; and, O, for o' human freen's o' a' he was the pearlie-- + The pearl o' a' the painter folk was surely Mr Nerli. + He took a thraw to paint mysel'; he painted late and early; + O wow! the many a yawn I've yawned i' the beard o' Mr Nerli. + Whiles I wad sleep and whiles wad wake, an' whiles was mair than + surly; + I wondered sair as I sat there fornent the eyes o' Nerli. + O will he paint me the way I want, as bonnie as a girlie? + O will he paint me an ugly tyke?--and be d-d to Mr Nerli. + But still an' on whichever it be, he is a canty kerlie, + The Lord protect the back an' neck o' honest Mr Nerli. + +Mr Hammerton gives this account of the Nerli portrait: + + "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: + + "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. + + "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. + + "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.'" + + + + +CHAPTER XXXIII--LAPSES AND ERRORS IN CRITICISM + + +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) _Treasure Island_ +appeared in _Young Folks_ as _The Sea-Cook_. It did nothing of the kind; +it is on plain record in print, even in the pages of the _Edinburgh +Edition_, that Mr James Henderson would not have the title _The +Sea-Cook_, as he did not like it, and insisted on its being _Treasure +Island_. 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 _North American_, 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" _Jack_; so Mr Baildon there follows +Henley, unaware that Mr Henderson did not like _The Sea-Cook_, and was +still alive, and that a certain Jack in the fatal _North American_ has +Japp's credit. + +Mr Baildon's words are: + + "This was the famous book of adventure, _Treasure Island_, appearing + first as _The Sea-Cook_ 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 + _Gulliver's Travels_, _The Pilgrim's Progress_, and _Robinson Crusoe_ + itself for all ages--boys, men, and women." + +Which just shows how far lapse as to a fact may lead to critical +misreadings also. + +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: + + "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, _a water- + colour painter of some repute_, who was to die in 1878." + +Mr Sam Bough _was_ "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 _wee_ 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: + + "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!'" + +In Mr Hammerton's copy of the verses in reply to Mr Crockett's dedication +of _The Stickit Minister_ 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": + + "Blows the wind to-day and the sun and the rain are flying: + Blows the wind on the moors to-day and now, + Where about the graves of the martyrs the whaups are crying, + My heart remembers how. + + "Grey recumbent tombs of the dead in desert places, + Standing stones on the vacant wine-red moor, + Hills of sheep, and the _homes_ of the silent vanished races, + And winds austere and pure. + + "Be it granted me to behold you again in dying, + Hills of home! and to hear again the call-- + Hear about the graves of the martyrs the pee-weet crying, + And hear no more at all." + +Mr Hammerton prints _howes_ instead of _homes_, 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 _pee-weets_ 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 _Ker-lee_, _ker-lee_, and of the other _pee- +weet_, _pee-weet_, hence its common name. + +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. + +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 _Address to the Scottish Clergy_. 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 _Life of Stevenson_, and make it more +interpretive than anything yet published. If he does this, then, a +dreadful _lacuna_ in the _Edinburgh Edition_ will also be supplied. + +Carefully reading over again Mr Arthur Symons' _Studies in Two +Literatures_--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 _role_ 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: + + "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." + +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. + +The other thing relates to Stevenson's _human soul_. 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 +_to us on easy terms_, with whom we _may exchange affections_." How +"affections" could be exchanged on easy terms between the normal human +being and an elfish creature actually _without a human soul_ (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 _maladroit_ 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. + +I am sorry I _cannot_ 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. + + + + +CHAPTER XXXIV--LETTERS AND POEMS IN TESTIMONY + + +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: + + "37 ST DONATT'S ROAD, + LEWISHAM HIGH ROAD, S.E., + 1_st_ _March_ 1895. + + "DEAR SIR,--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 _The Weekly Sun_ 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: + + "'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.' + + "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, + + F. J. COX." + + + +GREETING + + +(TO ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON, IN SAMOA) + +We, pent in cities, prisoned in the mart, +Can know you only as a man apart, +But ever-present through your matchless art. + +You have exchanged the old, familiar ways +For isles, where, through the range of splendid days, +Her treasure Nature lavishly displays. + +There, by the gracious sweep of ampler seas, +That swell responsive to the odorous breeze. +You have the wine of Life, and we the lees! + +You mark, perchance, within your island bowers, +The slow departure of the languorous hours, +And breathe the sweetness of the strange wild-flowers. + +And everything your soul and sense delights-- +But in the solemn wonder of your nights, +When Peace her message on the landscape writes; + +When Ocean scarcely flecks her marge with foam-- +Your thoughts must sometimes from your island roam, +To centre on the sober face of Home. + +Though many a league of water rolls between +The simple beauty of an English scene, +From all these wilder charms your love may wean. + +Some kindly sprite may bring you as a boon +Sweets from the rose that crowns imperial June, +Or reminiscence of the throstle's tune; + +Yea, gladly grant you, with a generous hand, +Far glimpses of the winding, wind-swept strand, +The glens and mountains of your native land, + +Until you hear the pipes upon the breeze-- +But wake unto the wild realities +The tangled forests and the boundless seas! + +For lo! the moonless night has passed away, +A sudden dawn dispels the shadows grey, +The glad sea moves and hails the quickening day. + +New life within the arbours of your fief +Awakes the blossom, quivers in the leaf, +And splendour flames upon the coral reef. + +If such a prospect stimulate your art, +More than our meadows where the shadows dart, +More than the life which throbs in London's heart, + +Then stay, encircled by your Southern bowers, +And weave, amid the incense of the flowers, +The skein of fair romance--the gain is ours! + +F. J. COX. + +_Weekly Sun_, 11_th_ November 1904. + + + +R. L. S., IN MEMORIAM. + + +An elfin wight as e'er from faeryland + Came to us straight with favour in his eyes, + Of wondrous seed that led him to the prize +Of fancy, with the magic rod in hand. +Ah, there in faeryland we saw him stand, + As for a while he walked with smiles and sighs, + Amongst us, finding still the gem that buys +Delight and joy at genius's command. + +And now thy place is empty: fare thee well; + Thou livest still in hearts that owe thee more + Than gold can reckon; for thy richer store +Is of the good that with us aye most dwell. + Farewell; sleep sound on Vaea's windy shrine, + While round the songsters join their song to thine. + +A. C. R. + + + + +APPENDIX + + +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: + + + +THE LAND OF STEVENSON, +_ON AN AFTERNOON'S WALK_ + + +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 + + +THE TOP OF CAERKETTON CRAGS. + + +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 + + +VISITED HIS FOREST OF PENTLAND. + + +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 + + +HAVE BEEN FAMILIAR TO STEVENSON. + + +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 _The +Pentland Rising_ (his first printed work) + + +THE WESTLAND WHIGS WERE SCATTERED + + +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." + + + + +Footnotes: + + +{1} Professor Charles Warren Stoddard, Professor of English Literature +at the Catholic University of Washington, in _Kate Field's Washington_. + +{2} 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. + +{3} _Inferno_, Canto XV. + +{4} 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. + +{5} Quoted by Hammerton, pp. 2 and 3. + +{6} Tusitala, as the reader must know, is the Samoan for Teller of +Tales. + +{7} _Wisdom of Goethe_, p. 38. + +{8} _The Foreigner at Home_, in _Memories and Portraits_. + +{9} A great deal has been made of the "John Bull element" in De Quincey +since his _Memoir_ was written by me (see _Masson's Condensation_, p. +95); so now perhaps a little more may be made of the rather conceited +Calvinistic Scot element in R. L. Stevenson! + +{10} It was Mr George Moore who said this. + +{11} _Fortnightly Review_, October, 1903. + + + +***END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON*** + + +******* This file should be named 590.txt or 590.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. Special rules, +set forth in the General Terms of Use part of this license, apply to +copying and distributing Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works to +protect the PROJECT GUTENBERG-tm concept and trademark. 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