Complete Works of Robert Louis Stevenson

by Robert Louis Stevenson

  ‘ I have thus played the sedulous ape to Hazlitt, to Lamb, to Wordsworth, to Sir Thomas Browne, to Defoe, to Hawthorne, to Montaigne, to Baudelaire and to Obermann. I remember one of these monkey-tricks, which was called “ The Vanity of Morals “; it was to have had a second part “ The Vanity of Knowledge “; but the second part was never attempted, and the first part was written (which is my reason for recalling it, ghostlike, from its ashes) no less than three times: first in the manner of Hazlitt, second in the manner of Ruskin, who had cast on me a passing spell, and third, in a laborious pasticcio of Sir Thomas Browne. So with my other works: Cain, an epic, was (save the mark!) an imitation of Sordello: Robin Hood, a. tale in verse, took an eclectic middle course among the fields of Keats, Chaucer, and Morris: in Monmouth, a tragedy, I reclined on the bosom of Mr. Swinburne; in my innumerable gouty- footed lyrics, I followed many masters; in the first draft of The King’s Pardon, a tragedy, I was on the trail of no less a man than John Webster; in the second draft of the same piece, with staggering versatility, I had shifted my allegiance to Congreve, and of course conceived my fable in a less serious vein — for it was not Congreve’s verse, it was his exquisite prose, that I admired and sought to copy. ... So I might go on for ever, through all my abortive novels, and down to my later plays, of which I think more tenderly, for they were not only conceived at first under the bracing influence of old Dumas, but have met with resurrections: one, strangely bettered by another hand, came on the stage itself and was played by bodily actors; the other, originally known as Semiramis, a tragedy,1 I have observed on bookstalls under the alias of Prince Otto. But enough has been said to show by what arts of impersonation, and in what purely ventriloquial efforts I first saw my words on paper.

  ‘ That, like it or not, is the way to learn to write; whether I have profited or not, that is the way. It was so Keats learned, and there was never a finer temperament for literature than Keats’s. . . .

  ‘ It is the great point of these imitations that there still shines, beyond the student’s reach, his inimitable model. Let him try as he please, he is still sure of failure; and it is an old and a very true saying that failure is the only high-road to success. I must have had some disposition to learn; for I clear-sightedly condemned my own per* formances. I liked doing them indeed; but when they were done, I could see they were rubbish. In consequence, I very rarely showed them even to my friends; and such friends as I chose to be my confidants I must have chosen well, for they had the friendliness to be quite plain with me. “ Padding,” said one. Another wrote: “ I cannot understand why you do lyrics so badly.” No more could I! Thrice I put myself in the way of a more authoritative rebuff, by sending a paper to a magazine. These were returned, and I was not surprised or even pained. If they had not been looked at, as (like all amateurs) I suspected was the case, there was no good in repeating the experiment; if they had been looked at — well then I had not yet learned to write, and I must keep on learning and living.’

  Thus the secret of learning was — for the right man — only the secret of taking pains: and yet in the history of 1 The tragedy was in blank verse, Academy, 19th May 1900.

  his endeavours we find, where we should least expect it, a hereditary trait. It seems as absurd to couple with indolence the name of the indefatigable writer, as it was for him to bring his grandfather into a similar connection i1 but it is from himself that we hear of this failing, although we know not to which year it must be referred.

  ‘ I remember a time when I was very idle, and lived and profited by that humour. I have no idea why I ceased to be so, yet I scarce believe I have the power to return to it; it is a change of age. I made consciously a thousand little efforts, but the determination from which these arose came to me while I slept and in the way of growth. I have had a thousand skirmishes to keep myself at work upon particular mornings, and sometimes the affair was hot; but of that great change of campaign, which decided all this part of my life and turned me from one whose business was to shirk into one whose business was to strive and persevere, it seems to me as though all that had been done by some one else. The life of Goethe affected me; so did that of Balzac; and some very noble remarks by the latter in a pretty bad book, the Cousine Bette. I dare say I could trace some other influences in the change. All I mean is, I was never conscious of a struggle, nor registered a vow, nor seemingly had anything personally to do with the matter. I came about like a well-handled ship. There stood at the wheel that unknown steersman whom we call God.’2

  This may be assigned to the time immediately before his retirement from engineering; but it might relate equally to several periods when he was unable to settle down to work: they were seldom of long duration, and, except before his own conscience, there was hardly any time when the author of the Apology for Idlers ever really neglected the tasks of his true vocation.

  As to the products of his labours, editors, as he has told us, would have nothing to say to them. So he 1 Page 4. 2 Reflections and Remarks on Human Life, .

  became an editor himself. Magazines had risen and fallen wherever the boy had gone; but none of his serials had yet attained the distinction of type. The idea of the Edinburgh University Magazine was started in the rooms of the 1 Spec.’ by four of the members of that society, of which Stevenson was the youngest and least esteemed; the history of its rise and fall (for print did not save it from the fate of its manuscript predecessors) may be read in Memories and Portraits, while some of Stevenson’s contributions are to be found in the volume of his Juvenilia. Interesting as they are, they constitute no great achievement, and the picture of ‘ An Old Scots Gardener,’ retouched in after days, is the only piece which has found a place with the works of his later years.

  ‘The magazine appeared in a yellow cover, which was the best part of it, for at least it was unassuming; . . . it ran four months in undisturbed obscurity, and died without a gasp. The first number was edited by all four of us, with prodigious bustle; the second fell principally into the hands of Ferrier and me; the third I edited alone; and it has long been a solemn question who it was that edited the fourth. . . .

  ‘ It was no news to me, but only the wholesome confirmation of my judgment, when the magazine struggled into half-birth, and instantly sickened and subsided into night. ... I cleared the decks after this lost engagement; had the necessary interview with my father, which passed off not amiss; paid over my share of expense; . . . and then, reviewing the whole episode, I told myself that the time was not yet ripe, nor the man ready; and to work again I went with my penny version-books, having fallen back in one day from the printed author to the manuscript student.’1

  To the list of the works — books, plays, and articles — already mentioned, which were written at this time, the 1 Memories and Portraits, .

  following names may be added, as showing the direction of his labours. In 1868 he wrote Voces Fidelium, a series of dramatic monologues in verse; and ‘ the bulk of a Covenanting novel,’ possibly another attempt on Hackston of Rathillet or the Pentland Rising.1 The Kings Pardon (otherwise Park Whitehead) and Edward Daven likewise survive only as names; the manuscripts are gone, and we cannot even guess at the models on which they were planned; though the first of them seems to show that here, as well as in Cain, Robert Browning helped to educate the writer who of all others in his day perhaps the least resembled him in style.

  A Retrospect, written at Dunoon in 1870, and the fragment of Cockermouth and Keswick, a visit to Cumberland in 1871, are printed in the Edinburgh edition. The former contains the account of the spae-wife, ‘a poor, mad Highland woman,’ who — along with much nonsense — predicted that he was to visit America, was to be very happy, and was to be much upon the sea. In the latter is an admirable portrait, such as Thackeray would have loved, of the London theatrical manager, lording it in the inn smoking-room at Keswick. There were also written at this date the article on Colinton Manse, from which I have quoted so largely, and another similar paper on his solitary games, which
was afterwards transformed into ‘ Child’s Play.’2

  In 1871 he wrote the paper on ‘A New Form of Intermittent Light for Lighthouses,’ which was highly praised, and received a £3 medal from the Royal Scottish Society of Arts, and in May 1873 his paper ‘On the Thermal Influence of Forests’ was communicated to the Royal Society of Edinburgh by his father, and duly appeared in the Proceedings of that Society. Both these are contained in the Edinburgh edition, but whatever scientific value they possess, as literature they are undis- tinguishable from ordinary papers of the kind. 1 Memories and Portraits, p, 305. 2 Memories and Portraits.

  Meanwhile their authoi was reading for the Bar, or at any rate attending some of the necessary lectures in Civil Law, Public Law, and Political Economy. In the second of these subjects he was even third in the class and received honourable mention, and from Professor Hodgson he gained a certificate for essays.

  During the years 1872 and 1873 he spent some months in the office of Messrs. Skene and Peacock, Writers to the Signet, in order to learn conveyancing. Part of the process consisted in copying documents, and for this in Scotland it was customary to pay the pupil. Scott in this way increased his meagre pocket-money, probably to a far greater amount than Stevenson ever achieved. I find, nevertheless, that in July 1873 ^e latter was paid six pounds as 6 about the amount of your writings during the period you have been in the office/ The senior partner of this firm was the well-known historian and antiquary, Mr. W. F. Skene, the author of Celtic Scotland, but it seems that he was hardly at all brought into connection with his pupil, and that, in later years, either learned the other’s quality with much regret for a neglected opportunity.

  In November 1872 Stevenson, having no degree or qualification for exemption, passed the preliminary examination for the Scottish Bar; the circumstances are worth mention only for the light they throw on his character and his education. French was one of the subjects offered, and only the day before the examination he discovered that questions would be set him in the grammar of that language. He forthwith procured a book and realised that here was a body of knowledge, the very existence of which had been unknown to him. It was manifestly useless to attempt to get it up in four-and-twenty hours, so he went in, relying on his practical acquaintance with the idiom. His ignorance was exposed, but his knowledge and his plausibility induced and enabled the examiner ‘to find a form of words,’ and his French was accepted as adequate. Another subject was Ethical and Metaphysical Philosophy, and Hamilton or Mackintosh (it is undesirable to be too precise) was the book prescribed. I give Stevenson’s own account of what took place, as I have heard him tell the story. 4 The examiner asked me a question, and I had to say to him, “ I beg your pardon, but I do not understand your phraseology.” “It’s the text-book,” he said. “Yes; but you couldn’t possibly expect me to read so poor a book as that.” He laughed like a hunchback, and then put the question in another form; I had been reading Maine, and answered him by the historical method. They were probably the most curious answers ever given in the subject; I don’t know what he thought of them, but they got me through.’

  In 1872 he proposed to take a summer session at some German university with Sir Walter Simpson, who was also studying Law. But his mother grew so nervous that he gave up the scheme, and in place of it the friends spent two or three weeks together during the first part of August, chiefly in lodgings in Frankfurt. His parents joined him at Baden-Baden, and he then went for a short walking tour in the Black Forest.

  This was the single occasion on which he crossed the Channel during this period of his life, and indeed in these years he was hardly out of Scotland but for his trip to the Lakes, and a visit to R. A. M. Stevenson at Cambridge, where he had a glimpse of the life of the English undergraduate. The last twelve months are of interest as the only time when he turned his attention at all seriously to the study of the German language and literature. For the next year or two there is an occasional reference to Heine or Goethe in his letters, and even a few quotations, chiefly in his unpublished fragments. But with these insignificant exceptions German appears to have passed over him without effect, and French was the only modern language that ever exercised an influence upon his style.

  But Stevenson as he was in the later years of this period may best be seen in the curiously diverse entries of a short diary kept on a folio sheet of paper upon his first entrance to the lawyers’ office. I have printed nearly the whole of it for the sake of the contrasts; the high spirits and the sentiment, the humour, the humanity and the immaturity, make a remarkable conjunction. Already it would be difficult for any one to read it without either recognising the author, or else prognosticating for him a future which, at any rate, should be neither commonplace nor obscure.

  ‘ Thursday, May gth (1872).1 — Went to office for first time. Had to pass an old sailor and an idiot boy, who tried both to join company with me, lest I should be late for office. A fine sunny, breezy morning, walking in. A small boy (about ten) calling out “ Flory “ to a dog was very pretty. There was a quaint little tremolo in his voice that gave it a longing, that was both laughable and touching. All the rest of the way in, his voice rang in my memory and made me very happy.

  1 Friday, May 10th. — Office work — copying, at least — is the easiest of labour. There is just enough mind-work necessary to keep you from thinking of anything else, so that one simply ceases to be a reasoning being and feels stodged and stupid about the head, a consummation devoutly to be wished for.

  4 Sunday, May 2.1st (12th). — My father and I walked over to Glencorse to church. A fat, ruddy farm wench showed us the way; for the church, although on the top of a hill, is so buried among the tree-tops that one does not see it till one trips against the plate.2 It is a quaint 1 The year is settled beyond question by the corresponding entries in his mother’s diary.

  2 I.e. the plate for contributions, which is left at the door of Scotch churches.

  old building, and the minister, Mr. Torrance (his father and grandfather were here before him), is still more quaint and striking. He is about eighty; and he lamed himself last summer dancing a reel at a wedding. He wears black thread gloves; and the whole manner of the man in the pulpit breathes of last century.

  ‘ Monday, May 12th (11 th). — In all day at the office. In the evening dined with Bob. Met X , who was quite drunk and spent nigh an hour in describing his wife’s last hours — an infliction which he hired us to support with sherry ad lib. Splendid moonlight night. Bob walked out to Fairmilehead with me. We were in a state of mind that only comes too seldom in a lifetime. We danced and sang the whole way up the long hill, without sensible fatigue. I think there was no actual conversation — at least none has remained in my memory: I recollect nothing but “ profuse bursts of unpremeditated song.” Such a night was worth gold untold. Ave pia testa! After we parted company at the toll, I walked on counting my money, and I noticed that the moon shone upon each individual shilling as I dropped it from one hand to the other; which made me think of that splendid passage in Keats, winding up with the joke about the “ poor patient oyster.”1

  ‘ Wednesday, 22nd. — At work all day at Court — work being periphrasis for sitting still, taking three luncheons, and running two errands. In the evening started in the rain alone, and seeing a fellow in front, I whistled him to wait till I came up. He proved to be a pit-worker from Mid-Calder, and — -faute de mieux — I bribed him by the promise of ale to keep me company as far as New Pentland Inn. ... I heard from him that the Internationale was already on foot at Mid-Calder, but was not making much progress. I acquitted myself as became a child of the Proprietariat, and warned him, quite apostolically, 1 The references are to Shelley’s 4 Skylark,’ 1. 5; Horace Odes, iii. 21. 4; Keats’s Endymion, iii. 67.

  against all conversation with this abomination of Desolation. He seemed much impressed, and more wearied.

  ‘He told me some curious stories of body-snatching from the lonely little burying-ground at Old Pentland, and spoke w
ith the exaggerated horror that I have always observed in common people of this very excusable misdemeanour. I was very tired of my friend before we got back again, and so I think he was of me. But I paid for the beer; so he had the best of it.

  4 Friday, July tyh. — A very hot sunny day. The Princes Street Gardens were full of girls and idle men, steeping themselves in the sunshine. A boy lay on the grass under a clump of gigantic hemlocks in flower, that looked quite tropical and gave the whole garden a southern smack that was intensely charming in my eyes. He was more ragged than one could conceive possible. It occurred to me that I might here play le dieu des pauvres gens, and repeat for him that pleasure that I so often try to acquire artificially for myself by hiding money in odd corners and hopelessly trying to forget where I have laid it; so I slipped a halfpenny into his ragged waistcoat pocket. One might write whole essays about his delight at finding it.’

  CHAPTER VI

  LIFE AT FIVE-AND-TWENTY — 1873-76

  ‘ Since I am sworn to live my life And not to keep an easy heart, Some men may sit and drink apart, I bear a banner in the strife.

  Some can take quiet thought to wife, I am all day at tierce and carte^ Since I am sworn to live my life And not to keep an easy heart.