Complete Works of Robert Louis Stevenson

by Robert Louis Stevenson

  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? 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.