"It must not be imagined that a walking tour, as some would have us
fancy, is merely a better or worse way of seeing the country. There
are many ways of seeing landscape quite as good; and none more vivid,
in spite of canting dilettantes, than from a railway train. But
landscape on a walking tour is quite accessory. He who is indeed of
the brotherhood does not voyage in quest of the picturesque, but of
certain jolly humours--of the hope and spirit with which the march
begins at morning, and the peace and spiritual repletion of the
evening's rest. He cannot tell whether he puts his knapsack on or
takes it off with more delight. The excitement of the departure puts
him in key for that of the arrival. Whatever he does will be further
rewarded in the sequel; and so pleasure leads on to pleasure in an
endless chain."
An admirable opening, full of the right relish. And the wit and relish
are maintained down to the last sentence. But it cannot fail to awaken
memories of the great departed in the reader of books. "Now to be
properly enjoyed," counsels Stevenson, "a walking tour should be gone
upon alone. . . . a walking tour should be gone upon alone because
freedom is of the essence," and so on in the same vein for twenty or
thirty lines. One immediately recalls Hazlitt--"On Going a Journey":
"One of the pleasantest things is going on a journey; but I like to go by
myself. . . . The soul of a journey is liberty, perfect liberty, to
think, feel, do just as one pleases."
A suspicion seizes the mind of the reader, and he will smile darkly to
himself. But Stevenson is quite ready for him. "A strong flavour of
Hazlitt, you think?" he seems to say, then with the frank ingenuousness
of one who has confessed to "playing the sedulous ape," he throws in a
quotation from this very essay of Hazlitt's and later on gives us more
Hazlitt. It is impossible to resent it; it is so openly done, there is
such a charming effrontery about the whole thing. And yet, though much
that he says is obviously inspired by Hazlitt, he will impart that
flavour of his own less mordant personality to the discourse.
If you turn to another, the "Truth of Intercourse," it is hard to feel
that it would have thrived had not Elia given up his "Popular Fallacies."
There is an unmistakable echo in the opening paragraph: "Among sayings
that have a currency, in spite of being wholly false upon the face of
them, for the sake of a half-truth upon another subject which is
accidentally combined with the error, one of the grossest and broadest
conveys the monstrous proposition that it is easy to tell the truth and
hard to tell a lie. I wish heartily it were!" Similarly in other essays
the influence of Montaigne is strongly felt; and although Stevenson never
fails to impart the flavour of his own individuality to his
discourses--for he is certainly no mere copyist--one realizes the
unwisdom of those enthusiastic admirers who have bracketed him with Lamb,
Montaigne, and Hazlitt. These were men of the primary order; whereas
Stevenson with all his grace and charm is assuredly of the secondary
order. And no admiration for his attractive personality and captivating
utterances should blind us to this fact.
As a critic of books his originality is perhaps more pronounced, but wise
and large though many of his utterances are, here again it is the
pleasant wayward Vagabond spirit that gives salt and flavour to them.
There are many critics less brilliant, less attractive in their speech,
in whose judgment I should place greater reliance. Sometimes, as in the
essay on "Victor Hugo's Romances," his own temperament stands in the way;
at other times, as in his "Thoreau" article, there is a vein of wilful
capriciousness, even of impish malice, that distorts his judgment.
Neither essays can be passed over; in each there is power and shrewd
flashes of discernment, and both are extremely interesting. One cannot
say they are satisfying. Stevenson does scant justice to the
extraordinary passion, the Titanic strength, of Hugo; and in the case of
Thoreau he dwells too harshly upon the less gracious aspects of the
"poet-naturalist."
It is only fair to say, however, that in the case of Thoreau he made
generous amends in the preface to the Collected Essays. Both the
reconsidered verdict and the original essay are highly characteristic of
the man. Other men have said equally harsh things of Thoreau. Stevenson
alone had the fairness, the frank, childlike spirit to go back upon
himself. These are the things that endear us to Stevenson, and make it
impossible to be angry with any of his paradoxes and extravagant capers.
Who but Stevenson would have written thus: "The most temperate of living
critics once marked a passage of my own with a cross and the words, 'This
seems nonsense.' It not only seemed, it was so. It was a private
bravado of my own which I had so often repeated to keep up my spirits
that I had grown at last wholly to believe it, and had ended by setting
it down as a contribution to the theory of life."
Touched by this confidence, one reads Stevenson--especially the
letters--with a more discerning eye, a more compassionate understanding;
and if at times one feels the presence of the Ariel too strong, and longs
for a more human, less elfin personality, then the thought that we are
dealing with deliberate "bravado" may well check our impatience.
Men who suffer much are wont to keep up a brave front by an appearance of
indifference.
V
To turn now to another side of Stevenson--Stevenson the Artist, the
artificer of phrases, the limner of pictures. His power here is shown in
a threefold manner--in deft and happy phrasing, in skilful
characterization, in delicately suggestive scenic descriptions.