diff options
Diffstat (limited to 'old')
| -rw-r--r-- | old/rlsjp10.txt | 7240 | ||||
| -rw-r--r-- | old/rlsjp10.zip | bin | 0 -> 166659 bytes |
2 files changed, 7240 insertions, 0 deletions
diff --git a/old/rlsjp10.txt b/old/rlsjp10.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..c5822d1 --- /dev/null +++ b/old/rlsjp10.txt @@ -0,0 +1,7240 @@ +The Project Gutenberg Etext of: +Robert Louis Stevenson, A Record, An Estimate, A Memorial by A.H. Japp + + +Copyright laws are changing all over the world, be sure to check +the copyright laws for your country before posting these files!! + +Please take a look at the important information in this header. +We encourage you to keep this file on your own disk, keeping an +electronic path open for the next readers. Do not remove this. + + +**Welcome To The World of Free Plain Vanilla Electronic Texts** + +**Etexts Readable By Both Humans and By Computers, Since 1971** + +*These Etexts Prepared By Hundreds of Volunteers and Donations* + +Information on contacting Project Gutenberg to get Etexts, and +further information is included below. We need your donations. + + +Robert Louis Stevenson, A Record, An Estimate, A Memorial + +by A. H. Japp + +July, 1996 [Etext #590] + + +Robert Louis Stevenson, A Record, An Estimate, A Memorial by A.H. Japp +*****This file should be named rlsjp10.txt or rlsjp10.zip****** + +Corrected EDITIONS of our etexts get a new NUMBER, rlsjp11.txt. +VERSIONS based on separate sources get new LETTER, rlsjp10a.txt. + + +We are now trying to release all our books one month in advance +of the official release dates, for time for better editing. + +Please note: neither this list nor its contents are final till +midnight of the last day of the month of any such announcement. +The official release date of all Project Gutenberg Etexts is at +Midnight, Central Time, of the last day of the stated month. A +preliminary version may often be posted for suggestion, comment +and editing by those who wish to do so. To be sure you have an +up to date first edition [xxxxx10x.xxx] please check file sizes +in the first week of the next month. Since our ftp program has +a bug in it that scrambles the date [tried to fix and failed] a +look at the file size will have to do, but we will try to see a +new copy has at least one byte more or less. + + +Information about Project Gutenberg (one page) + +We produce about two million dollars for each hour we work. The +fifty hours is one conservative estimate for how long it we take +to get any etext selected, entered, proofread, edited, copyright +searched and analyzed, the copyright letters written, etc. This +projected audience is one hundred million readers. If our value +per text is nominally estimated at one dollar then we produce $2 +million dollars per hour this year as we release thirty-two text +files per month: or 400 more Etexts in 1996 for a total of 800. +If these reach just 10% of the computerized population, then the +total should reach 80 billion Etexts. + +The Goal of Project Gutenberg is to Give Away One Trillion Etext +Files by the December 31, 2001. [10,000 x 100,000,000=Trillion] +This is ten thousand titles each to one hundred million readers, +which is only 10% of the present number of computer users. 2001 +should have at least twice as many computer users as that, so it +will require us reaching less than 5% of the users in 2001. + + +We need your donations more than ever! + + +All donations should be made to "Project Gutenberg/BU": and are +tax deductible to the extent allowable by law. (BU = Benedictine +University). (Subscriptions to our paper newsletter go to BU.) + +For these and other matters, please mail to: + +Project Gutenberg +P. O. Box 2782 +Champaign, IL 61825 + +When all other email fails try our Executive Director: +Michael S. Hart <hart@pobox.com> + +We would prefer to send you this information by email +(Internet, Bitnet, Compuserve, ATTMAIL or MCImail). + +****** +If you have an FTP program (or emulator), please +FTP directly to the Project Gutenberg archives: +[Mac users, do NOT point and click. . .type] + +ftp uiarchive.cso.uiuc.edu +login: anonymous +password: your@login +cd etext/etext90 through /etext96 +or cd etext/articles [get suggest gut for more information] +dir [to see files] +get or mget [to get files. . .set bin for zip files] +GET INDEX?00.GUT +for a list of books +and +GET NEW GUT for general information +and +MGET GUT* for newsletters. + +**Information prepared by the Project Gutenberg legal advisor** +(Three Pages) + + +***START**THE SMALL PRINT!**FOR PUBLIC DOMAIN ETEXTS**START*** +Why is this "Small Print!" statement here? You know: lawyers. +They tell us you might sue us if there is something wrong with +your copy of this etext, even if you got it for free from +someone other than us, and even if what's wrong is not our +fault. So, among other things, this "Small Print!" statement +disclaims most of our liability to you. It also tells you how +you can distribute copies of this etext if you want to. + +*BEFORE!* YOU USE OR READ THIS ETEXT +By using or reading any part of this PROJECT GUTENBERG-tm +etext, you indicate that you understand, agree to and accept +this "Small Print!" statement. If you do not, you can receive +a refund of the money (if any) you paid for this etext by +sending a request within 30 days of receiving it to the person +you got it from. If you received this etext on a physical +medium (such as a disk), you must return it with your request. + +ABOUT PROJECT GUTENBERG-TM ETEXTS +This PROJECT GUTENBERG-tm etext, like most PROJECT GUTENBERG- +tm etexts, is a "public domain" work distributed by Professor +Michael S. Hart through the Project Gutenberg Association at +Benedictine University (the "Project"). Among other +things, this means that no one owns a United States copyright +on or for this work, so the Project (and you!) can copy and +distribute it in the United States without permission and +without paying copyright royalties. Special rules, set forth +below, apply if you wish to copy and distribute this etext +under the Project's "PROJECT GUTENBERG" trademark. + +To create these etexts, the Project expends considerable +efforts to identify, transcribe and proofread public domain +works. Despite these efforts, the Project's etexts and any +medium they may be on may contain "Defects". Among other +things, Defects may take the form of incomplete, inaccurate or +corrupt data, transcription errors, a copyright or other +intellectual property infringement, a defective or damaged +disk or other etext medium, a computer virus, or computer +codes that damage or cannot be read by your equipment. + +LIMITED WARRANTY; DISCLAIMER OF DAMAGES +But for the "Right of Replacement or Refund" described below, +[1] the Project (and any other party you may receive this +etext from as a PROJECT GUTENBERG-tm etext) disclaims all +liability to you for damages, costs and expenses, including +legal fees, and [2] YOU HAVE NO REMEDIES FOR NEGLIGENCE OR +UNDER STRICT LIABILITY, OR FOR BREACH OF WARRANTY OR CONTRACT, +INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO INDIRECT, CONSEQUENTIAL, PUNITIVE +OR INCIDENTAL DAMAGES, EVEN IF YOU GIVE NOTICE OF THE +POSSIBILITY OF SUCH DAMAGES. + +If you discover a Defect in this etext within 90 days of +receiving it, you can receive a refund of the money (if any) +you paid for it by sending an explanatory note within that +time to the person you received it from. If you received it +on a physical medium, you must return it with your note, and +such person may choose to alternatively give you a replacement +copy. If you received it electronically, such person may +choose to alternatively give you a second opportunity to +receive it electronically. + +THIS ETEXT IS OTHERWISE PROVIDED TO YOU "AS-IS". NO OTHER +WARRANTIES OF ANY KIND, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, ARE MADE TO YOU AS +TO THE ETEXT OR ANY MEDIUM IT MAY BE ON, INCLUDING BUT NOT +LIMITED TO WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY OR FITNESS FOR A +PARTICULAR PURPOSE. + +Some states do not allow disclaimers of implied warranties or +the exclusion or limitation of consequential damages, so the +above disclaimers and exclusions may not apply to you, and you +may have other legal rights. + +INDEMNITY +You will indemnify and hold the Project, its directors, +officers, members and agents harmless from all liability, cost +and expense, including legal fees, that arise directly or +indirectly from any of the following that you do or cause: +[1] distribution of this etext, [2] alteration, modification, +or addition to the etext, or [3] any Defect. + +DISTRIBUTION UNDER "PROJECT GUTENBERG-tm" +You may distribute copies of this etext electronically, or by +disk, book or any other medium if you either delete this +"Small Print!" and all other references to Project Gutenberg, +or: + +[1] Only give exact copies of it. Among other things, this + requires that you do not remove, alter or modify the + etext or this "small print!" statement. You may however, + if you wish, distribute this etext in machine readable + binary, compressed, mark-up, or proprietary form, + including any form resulting from conversion by word pro- + cessing or hypertext software, but only so long as + *EITHER*: + + [*] The etext, when displayed, is clearly readable, and + does *not* contain characters other than those + intended by the author of the work, although tilde + (~), asterisk (*) and underline (_) characters may + be used to convey punctuation intended by the + author, and additional characters may be used to + indicate hypertext links; OR + + [*] The etext may be readily converted by the reader at + no expense into plain ASCII, EBCDIC or equivalent + form by the program that displays the etext (as is + the case, for instance, with most word processors); + OR + + [*] You provide, or agree to also provide on request at + no additional cost, fee or expense, a copy of the + etext in its original plain ASCII form (or in EBCDIC + or other equivalent proprietary form). + +[2] Honor the etext refund and replacement provisions of this + "Small Print!" statement. + +[3] Pay a trademark license fee to the Project of 20% of the + net profits you derive calculated using the method you + already use to calculate your applicable taxes. If you + don't derive profits, no royalty is due. Royalties are + payable to "Project Gutenberg Association / Benedictine + University" within the 60 days following each + date you prepare (or were legally required to prepare) + your annual (or equivalent periodic) tax return. + +WHAT IF YOU *WANT* TO SEND MONEY EVEN IF YOU DON'T HAVE TO? +The Project gratefully accepts contributions in money, time, +scanning machines, OCR software, public domain etexts, royalty +free copyright licenses, and every other sort of contribution +you can think of. Money should be paid to "Project Gutenberg +Association / Benedictine University". + +*END*THE SMALL PRINT! FOR PUBLIC DOMAIN ETEXTS*Ver.04.29.93*END* + + + + + +Robert Louis Stevenson, A Record, An Estimate, A Memorial by A.H. Japp + +Scanned and proofed by David Price, email ccx074@coventry.ac.uk + + + + + +ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON, BY A. H. JAPP + + + + +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 + + + +ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON + + + + +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." + + +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. + +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 1st, 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, 18TH 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. + +"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., +17th 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., +19TH 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." + + +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., +1ST 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, 11TH 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 eText Robert Louis Stevenson, A +Record, An Estimate, A Memorial. + diff --git a/old/rlsjp10.zip b/old/rlsjp10.zip Binary files differnew file mode 100644 index 0000000..99f00be --- /dev/null +++ b/old/rlsjp10.zip |