MR. STEVENSON'S WORKS

Perhaps the first quality in Mr. Stevenson's works, now so many and so

various, which strikes a reader, is the buoyancy, the survival of the

child in him. He has told the world often, in prose and verse, how vivid

are his memories of his own infancy. This retention of childish

recollections he shares, no doubt, with other people of genius: for

example, with George Sand, whose legend of her own infancy is much more

entertaining, and perhaps will endure longer, than her novels. Her

youth, like Scott's and like Mr. Stevenson's, was passed all in fantasy:

in playing at being some one else, in the invention of imaginary

characters, who were living to her, in the fabrication of endless

unwritten romances. Many persons, who do not astonish the world by their

genius, have lived thus in their earliest youth. But, at a given moment,

the fancy dies out of them: this often befalls imaginative boys in their

first year at school. "Many are called, few chosen"; but it may be said

with probable truth, that there has never been a man of genius in

letters, whose boyhood was not thus fantastic, "an isle of dreams." We

know how Scott and De Quincey inhabited airy castles; and Gillies tells

us, though Lockhart does not, that Scott, in manhood, was occasionally so

lost in thought, that he knew not where he was nor what he was doing.

The peculiarity of Mr. Stevenson is not only to have been a fantastic

child, and to retain, in maturity, that fantasy ripened into imagination:

he has also kept up the habit of dramatising everything, of playing, half

consciously, many parts, of making the world "an unsubstantial fairy

place." This turn of mind it is that causes his work occasionally to

seem somewhat freakish. Thus, in the fogs and horrors of London, he

plays at being an Arabian tale-teller, and his "New Arabian Nights" are a

new kind of romanticism--Oriental, freakish, like the work of a

changeling. Indeed, this curious genius, springing from a family of

Scottish engineers, resembles nothing so much as one of the fairy

children, whom the ladies of Queen Proserpina's court used to leave in

the cradles of Border keeps or of peasants' cottages. Of the Scot he has

little but the power of touching us with a sense of the supernatural, and

a decided habit of moralising; for no Scot of genius has been more

austere with Robert Burns. On the other hand, one element of Mr.

Stevenson's ethical disquisitions is derived from his dramatic habit. His

optimism, his gay courage, his habit of accepting the world as very well

worth living in and looking at, persuaded one of his critics that he was

a hard-hearted young athlete of iron frame. Now, of the athlete he has

nothing but his love of the open air: it is the eternal child that drives

him to seek adventures and to sojourn among beach-combers and savages.

Thus, an admiring but far from optimistic critic may doubt whether Mr.

Stevenson's content with the world is not "only his fun," as Lamb said of

Coleridge's preaching; whether he is but playing at being the happy

warrior in life; whether he is not acting that part, himself to himself.

At least, it is a part fortunately conceived and admirably sustained: a

difficult part too, whereas that of the pessimist is as easy as whining.

Mr. Stevenson's work has been very much written about, as it has engaged

and delighted readers of every age, station, and character. Boys, of

course, have been specially addressed in the books of adventure, children

in "A Child's Garden of Verse," young men and maidens in "Virginibus

Puerisque,"--all ages in all the curiously varied series of volumes.

"Kidnapped" was one of the last books which the late Lord Iddesleigh

read; and I trust there is no harm in mentioning the pleasure which Mr.

Matthew Arnold took in the same story. Critics of every sort have been

kind to Mr. Stevenson, in spite of the fact that the few who first became

acquainted with his genius praised it with all the warmth of which they

were masters. Thus he has become a kind of classic in his own day, for

an undisputed reputation makes a classic while it lasts. But was ever so

much fame won by writings which might be called scrappy and desultory by

the _advocatus diaboli_? It is a most miscellaneous literary baggage

that Mr. Stevenson carries. First, a few magazine articles; then two

little books of sentimental journeyings, which convince the reader that

Mr. Stevenson is as good company to himself as his books are to others.

Then came a volume or two of essays, literary and social, on books and

life. By this time there could be no doubt that Mr. Stevenson had a

style of his own, modelled to some extent on the essayists of the last

century, but with touches of Thackeray; with original breaks and turns,

with a delicate freakishness, in short, and a determined love of saying

things as the newspapers do not say them. All this work undoubtedly

smelt a trifle of the lamp, and was therefore dear to some, and an

offence to others. For my part, I had delighted in the essays, from the

first that appeared in _Macmillan's Magazine_, shortly after the Franco-

German war. In this little study, "Ordered South," Mr. Stevenson was

employing himself in extracting all the melancholy pleasure which the

Riviera can give to a wearied body and a mind resisting the clouds of

early malady,

"Alas, the worn and broken board,

How can it bear the painter's dye!

The harp of strained and tuneless chord,

How to the minstrel's skill reply!

To aching eyes each landscape lowers,

To feverish pulse each gale blows chill,

And Araby's or Eden's bowers

Were barren as this moorland hill,"--

wrote Scott, in an hour of malady and depression. But this was not the

spirit of "Ordered South": the younger soul rose against the tyranny of

the body; and that familiar glamour which, in illness, robs Tintoretto of

his glow, did not spoil the midland sea to Mr. Stevenson. His gallant

and cheery stoicism were already with him; and so perfect, if a trifle

overstudied, was his style, that one already foresaw a new and charming

essayist.

But none of those early works, nor the delightful book on Edinburgh,

prophesied of the story teller. Mr. Stevenson's first published tales,

the "New Arabian Nights," originally appeared in a quaintly edited weekly

paper, which nobody read, or nobody but the writers in its columns. They

welcomed the strange romances with rejoicings: but perhaps there was only

one of them who foresaw that Mr. Stevenson's _forte_ was to be fiction,

not essay writing; that he was to appeal with success to the large

public, and not to the tiny circle who surround the essayist. It did not

seem likely that our incalculable public would make themselves at home in

those fantastic purlieus which Mr. Stevenson's fancy discovered near the

Strand. The impossible Young Man with the Cream Tarts, the ghastly

revels of the Suicide Club, the Oriental caprices of the Hansom Cabs--who

could foresee that the public would taste them! It is true that Mr.

Stevenson's imagination made the President of the Club, and the cowardly

member, Mr. Malthus, as real as they were terrible. His romance always

goes hand in hand with reality; and Mr. Malthus is as much an actual man

of skin and bone, as Silas Lapham is a man of flesh and blood. The world

saw this, and applauded the "Noctes of Prince Floristan," in a fairy

London.

Yet, excellent and unique as these things were, Mr. Stevenson had not yet

"found himself." It would be more true to say that he had only

discovered outlying skirts of his dominions. Has he ever hit on the road

to the capital yet? and will he ever enter it laurelled, and in triumph?

That is precisely what one may doubt, not as without hope. He is always

making discoveries in his realm; it is less certain that he will enter

its chief city in state. His next work was rather in the nature of

annexation and invasion than a settling of his own realms. "Prince Otto"

is not, to my mind, a ruler in his proper soil. The provinces of George

Sand and of Mr. George Meredith have been taken captive. "Prince Otto"

is fantastic indeed, but neither the fantasy nor the style is quite Mr.

Stevenson's. There are excellent passages, and the Scotch soldier of

fortune is welcome, and the ladies abound in subtlety and wit. But the

book, at least to myself, seems an extremely elaborate and skilful

_pastiche_. I cannot believe in the persons. I vaguely smell a moral

allegory (as in "Will of the Mill"). I do not clearly understand what it

is all about. The scene is fairyland; but it is not the fairyland of

Perrault. The ladies are beautiful and witty; but they are escaped from

a novel of Mr. Meredith's, and have no business here. The book is no

more Mr. Stevenson's than "The Tale of Two Cities" was Mr. Dickens's.

It was probably by way of mere diversion and child's play that Mr.

Stevenson began "Treasure Island." He is an amateur of boyish pleasures

of masterpieces at a penny plain and twopence coloured. Probably he had

looked at the stories of adventure in penny papers which only boys read,

and he determined sportively to compete with their unknown authors.

"Treasure Island" came out in such a periodical, with the emphatic

woodcuts which adorn them. It is said that the puerile public was not

greatly stirred. A story is a story, and they rather preferred the

regular purveyors. The very faint archaism of the style may have

alienated them. But, when "Treasure Island" appeared as a real book,

then every one who had a smack of youth left was a boy again for some

happy hours. Mr. Stevenson had entered into another province of his

realm: the king had come to his own again.

They say the seamanship is inaccurate; I care no more than I do for the

year 30. They say too many people are killed. They all died in fair

fight, except a victim of John Silver's. The conclusion is a little too

like part of Poe's most celebrated tale, but nobody has bellowed

"Plagiarist!" Some people may not look over a fence: Mr. Stevenson, if

he liked, might steal a horse,--the animal in this case is only a

skeleton. A very sober student might add that the hero is impossibly

clever; but, then, the hero is a boy, and this is a boy's book. For the

rest, the characters live. Only genius could have invented John Silver,

that terribly smooth-spoken mariner. Nothing but genius could have drawn

that simple yokel on the island, with his craving for cheese as a

Christian dainty. The blustering Billy Bones is a little masterpiece:

the blind Pew, with his tapping stick (there are three such blind tappers

in Mr. Stevenson's books), strikes terror into the boldest. Then, the

treasure is thoroughly satisfactory in kind, and there is plenty of it.

The landscape, as in the feverish, fog-smothered flat, is gallantly

painted. And there are no interfering petticoats in the story.

As for the "Black Arrow," I confess to sharing the disabilities of the

"Critic on the Hearth," to whom it is dedicated. "Kidnapped" is less a

story than a fragment; but it is a noble fragment. Setting aside the

wicked old uncle, who in his later behaviour is of the house of Ralph

Nickleby, "Kidnapped" is all excellent--perhaps Mr. Stevenson's

masterpiece. Perhaps, too, only a Scotchman knows how good it is, and

only a Lowland Scot knows how admirable a character is the dour, brave,

conceited David Balfour. It is like being in Scotland again to come on

"the green drive-road running wide through the heather," where David

"took his last look of Kirk Essendean, the trees about the manse, and the

big rowans in the kirkyard, where his father and mother lay." Perfectly

Scotch, too, is the mouldering, empty house of the Miser, with the

stamped leather on the walls. And the Miser is as good as a Scotch

Trapbois, till he becomes homicidal, and then one fails to recognise him

unless he is a little mad, like that other frantic uncle in "The Merry

Men." The scenes on the ship, with the boy who is murdered, are better--I

think more real--than the scenes of piratical life in "The Master of

Ballantrae." The fight in the Round House, even if it were exaggerated,

would be redeemed by the "Song of the Sword of Alan." As to Alan Breck

himself, with his valour and vanity, his good heart, his good conceit of

himself, his fantastic loyalty, he is absolutely worthy of the hand that

drew Callum Bey and the Dougal creature. It is just possible that we

see, in "Kidnapped," more signs of determined labour, more evidence of

touches and retouches, than in "Rob Roy." In nothing else which it

attempts is it inferior; in mastery of landscape, as in the scene of the

lonely rock in a dry and thirsty land, it is unsurpassed. If there are

signs of laboured handling on Alan, there are none in the sketches of

Cluny and of Rob Roy's son, the piper. What a generous artist is Alan!

"Robin Oig," he said, when it was done, "ye are a great piper. I am not

fit to blow in the same kingdom with you. Body of me! ye have mair music

in your sporran than I have in my head."

"Kidnapped," we said, is a fragment. It ends anywhere, or nowhere, as if

the pen had dropped from a weary hand. Thus, and for other reasons, one

cannot pretend to set what is not really a whole against such a rounded

whole as "Rob Roy," or against "The Legend of Montrose." Again,

"Kidnapped" is a novel without a woman in it: not here is Di Vernon, not

here is Helen McGregor. David Balfour is the pragmatic Lowlander; he

does not bear comparison, excellent as he is, with Baillie Nicol Jarvie,

the humorous Lowlander: he does not live in the memory like the immortal

Baillie. It is as a series of scenes and sketches that "Kidnapped" is

unmatched among Mr. Stevenson's works.

In "The Master of Ballantrae" Mr. Stevenson makes a gallant effort to

enter what I have ventured to call the capital of his kingdom. He does

introduce a woman, and confronts the problems of love as well as of

fraternal hatred. The "Master" is studied, is polished _ad unguem_; it

is a whole in itself, it is a remarkably daring attempt to write the

tragedy, as, in "Waverley," Scott wrote the romance, of Scotland about

the time of the Forty-Five. With such a predecessor and rival, Mr.

Stevenson wisely leaves the pomps and battles of the Forty-Five, its

chivalry and gallantry, alone. He shows us the seamy side: the

intrigues, domestic and political; the needy Irish adventurer with the

Prince, a person whom Scott had not studied. The book, if completely

successful, would be Mr. Stevenson's "Bride of Lammermoor." To be frank,

I do not think it completely successful--a victory all along the line.

The obvious weak point is Secundra Dass, that Indian of unknown

nationality; for surely his name marks him as no Hindoo. The Master

could not have brought him, shivering like Jos Sedley's black servant, to

Scotland. As in America, this alien would have found it "too dam cold."

My power of belief (which verges on credulity) is staggered by the

ghastly attempt to reanimate the buried Master. Here, at least to my

taste, the freakish changeling has got the better of Mr. Stevenson, and

has brought in an element out of keeping with the steady lurid tragedy of

fraternal hatred. For all the rest, it were a hard judge that had

anything but praise. The brilliant blackguardism of the Master; his

touch of sentiment as he leaves Durisdeer for the last time, with a sad

old song on his lips; his fascination; his ruthlessness; his irony;--all

are perfect. It is not very easy to understand the Chevalier Bourke,

that Barry Lyndon, with no head and with a good heart, that creature of a

bewildered kindly conscience; but it is easy to like him. How admirable

is his undeflected belief in and affection for the Master! How excellent

and how Irish he is, when he buffoons himself out of his perils with the

pirates! The scenes are brilliant and living, as when the Master throws

the guinea through the Hall window, or as in the darkling duel in the

garden. It needed an austere artistic conscience to make Henry, the

younger brother, so unlovable with all his excellence, and to keep the

lady so true, yet so much in shadow. This is the best woman among Mr.

Stevenson's few women; but even she is almost always reserved, veiled as

it were.

The old Lord, again, is a portrait as lifelike as Scott could have drawn,

and more delicately touched than Scott would have cared to draw it: a

French companion picture to the Baron Bradwardine. The whole piece reads

as if Mr. Stevenson had engaged in a struggle with himself as he wrote.

The sky is never blue, the sun never shines: we weary for a "westland

wind." There is something "thrawn," as the Scotch say, about the story;

there is often a touch of this sinister kind in the author's work. The

language is extraordinarily artful, as in the mad lord's words, "I have

felt the hilt dirl on his breast-bone." And yet, one is hardly thrilled

as one expects to be, when, as Mackellar says, "the week-old corpse

looked me for a moment in the face."

Probably none of Mr. Stevenson's many books has made his name so familiar

as "Dr. Jekyll and Mr Hyde." I read it first in manuscript, alone, at

night; and, when the Butler and Mr. Urmson came to the Doctor's door, I

confess that I threw it down, and went hastily to bed. It is the most

gruesome of all his writings, and so perfect that one can complain only

of the slightly too obvious moral; and, again, that really Mr. Hyde was

more of a gentleman than the unctuous Dr. Jekyll, with his "bedside

manner."

So here, not to speak of some admirable short stories like "Thrawn

Janet," is a brief catalogue--little more--of Mr. Stevenson's literary

baggage. It is all good, though variously good; yet the wise world asks

for the masterpiece. It is said that Mr. Stevenson has not ventured on

the delicate and dangerous ground of the novel, because he has not

written a modern love story. But who has? There are love affairs in

Dickens, but do we remember or care for them? Is it the love affairs

that we remember in Scott? Thackeray may touch us with Clive's and Jack

Belsize's misfortunes, with Esmond's melancholy passion, and amuse us

with Pen in so many toils, and interest us in the little heroine of the

"Shabby Genteel Story." But it is not by virtue of those episodes that

Thackeray is so great. Love stories are best done by women, as in "Mr.

Gilfil's Love Story"; and, perhaps, in an ordinary way, by writers like

Trollope. One may defy critics to name a great English author in fiction

whose chief and distinguishing merit is in his pictures of the passion of

Love. Still, they all give Love his due stroke in the battle, and

perhaps Mr. Stevenson will do so some day. But I confess that, if he

ever excels himself, I do not expect it to be in a love story.

Possibly it may be in a play. If he again attempt the drama, he has this

in his favour, that he will not deal in supernumeraries. In his tales

his minor characters are as carefully drawn as his chief personages.

Consider, for example, the minister, Henderland, the man who is so fond

of snuff, in "Kidnapped," and, in the "Master of Ballantrae," Sir William

Johnson, the English Governor. They are the work of a mind as attentive

to details, as ready to subordinate or obliterate details which are

unessential. Thus Mr. Stevenson's writings breathe equally of work in

the study and of inspiration from adventure in the open air, and thus he

wins every vote, and pleases every class of reader.