Tusitala,—“Teller of Tales,”—was the name which the South Sea Islanders
gave to Stevenson; and he liked it well. Beginning as an essayist, he
turned more and more, as his life went on, to the art of prose fiction
as that in which he most desired to excel. It was in this field, indeed,
that he made his greatest advance. His later essays do not surpass his
earlier ones as much as his later stories excel his first attempts.
Here I conceive my reader objecting: Did not _Treasure Island_ strike
twelve early in the day? Is it not the best book of its kind in English?
Yes, my fellow Stevensonian, it is all that you say, and more,—of its
kind it has no superior, so far as I know, in any language. But the man
who wrote it wrote also books of a better kind,—deeper, broader, more
significant, and in writing these he showed, in spite of some relapses,
a steadily growing power which promised to place him in the very highest
rank of English novelists.
_The Master of Ballantrae_, maugre its defects of construction, has the
inevitable atmosphere of fate, and the unforgettable figures of the
two brothers, born rivals. The second part of _David Balfour_ is not
only a better romance, but also a better piece of character drawing,
than the first part. _St. Ives_, which was left unfinished, may have
been little more than a regular “sword-and-cloak” story, more choicely
written, perhaps, than is usual among the followers of “old Dumas.” But
Stevenson’s other unfinished book, _Weir of Hermiston_, is the torso of
a mighty and memorable work of art. It has the lines and the texture of
something great.
Why, then, was it not finished? Ask Death.
_Lorna Doone_ was written at forty-four years: _The Scarlet Letter_ at
forty-six: _The Egoist_ at fifty-one: _Tess of the D’Urbervilles_ at
fifty-one. Stevenson died at forty-four. But considerations of what he
might have done, (and disputes about the insoluble question,) should not
hinder us from appraising his actual work as a teller of tales which do
not lose their interest nor their charm.
He had a theory of the art of narration which he stated from time to time
with considerable definiteness and inconsiderable variations. It is not
obligatory to believe that his stories were written on this theory. It is
more likely that he did the work first as he wanted to do it, and then,
like a true Scot, reasoned out an explanation of why he had done it in
just that way. But even so, his theory remains good as a comment on the
things that he liked best in his own stories. Let us take it briefly.
His first point is that fiction does not, and can not, compete with
real life. Life has a vastly more varied interest because it is more
complex. Fiction must not try to reproduce this complexity literally,
for that is manifestly impossible. What the novelist has to do is to
turn deliberately the other way, and seek to hold you by simplifying
and clarifying the material Which life presents. He wins not by trying
to tell you everything, but by telling you that which means most in the
revelation of character and in the unfolding of the story. Of necessity
he can deal only with a part of life, and that chiefly on the dramatic
side, the dream side; for a life in which the ordinary, indispensable
details of mere existence are omitted is, after all, more or less
dream-like. Therefore, the story-teller must renounce the notion of
making his story a literal transcript of even a single day of actual
life, and concentrate his attention upon those things which seem to him
the most real in life,—the things that count.
Now a man who takes this view of fiction, if he excels at all, will
be sure to do so in the short story, a form in which the art of
omission is at a high premium. Here, it seems to me, Stevenson is a
master unsurpassed. _Will o’ the Mill_ is a perfect idyl; _Markheim_,
a psychological tale in Hawthorne’s manner; _Olalla_, a love-story of
tragic beauty; and _Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde_, in spite of its obvious
moving-picture artifice, a parable of intense power.
Stevenson said to Graham Balfour: “There are three ways of writing a
story. You may take a plot and fit characters to it, or you may take a
character and choose incidents and situations to develop it, or lastly
you may take a certain atmosphere and get actions and persons to express
and realize it. I’ll give you an example—_The Merry Men_. There I began
with the feeling of one of those islands on the west coast of Scotland,
and I gradually developed the feeling with which that coast affected
me.” This, probably, is somewhat the way in which Hawthorne wrote _The
House of the Seven Gables_; yet I do not think that is one of his best
romances, any more than I think _The Merry Men_ one of Stevenson’s
best short stories. It is not memorable as a tale. Only the bits of
description live. _The Treasure of Franchard_, light and airy as it is,
has more of that kind of reality which Stevenson sought. Therefore it
seems as if his third “way of writing a story” were not the best suited
to his genius.
The second way,—that in which the plot links and unfolds the
characters,—is the path on which he shows at his best. Here the gentleman
adventurer was at ease from the moment he set forth on it. In _Treasure
Island_ he raised the dime novel to the level of a classic.
It has been charged against Stevenson’s stories that there are no women
in them. To this charge one might enter what the lawyers call a plea of
“confession and avoidance.” Even were it true, it would not necessarily
be fatal. It may well be doubted whether that primitive factor which
psychologists call “sex-interest” plays quite such a predominant,
perpetual, and all-absorbing part in real life as that which neurotic
writers assign to it in their books. But such a technical, (and it must
be confessed, somewhat perilous,) defense is not needed. There are plenty
of women in Stevenson’s books,—quite as many, and quite as delightful
and important as you will find in the ordinary run of life. Marjory in
_Will o’ the Mill_ is more lovable than Will himself. Olalla is the true
heroine of the story which bears her name. Catriona and Miss Grant, in
the second part of _David Balfour_, are girls of whom it would be an
honour to be enamoured; and I make no doubt that David, (like Stevenson)
was hard put to it to choose between them. Uma, in _The Beach of Falesa_,
is a lovely insulated Eve. The two Kirsties, in _Weir of Hermiston_,
are creatures of intense and vivid womanhood. It would have been quite
impossible for a writer who had such a mother as Stevenson’s, such a
friend of youth as Mrs. Sitwell, such a wife as Margaret Vandegrift, to
ignore or slight the part which woman plays in human life. If he touches
it with a certain respect and _pudor_, that also is in keeping with his
character,—the velvet jacket again.
The second point in his theory of fiction is that in a well-told tale
the threads of narrative should converge, now and then, in a scene which
expresses, visibly and unforgettably, the very soul of the story. He
instances Robinson Crusoe finding the footprint on the beach, and the
Pilgrim running from the City of Destruction with his fingers in his ears.
There are many of these flash-of-lightning scenes in Stevenson’s stories.
The duel in _The Master of Ballantrae_ where the brothers face each other
in the breathless winter midnight by the light of unwavering candles,
and Mr. Henry cries to his tormentor, “I will give you every advantage,
for I think you are about to die.” The flight across the heather, in
_Kidnapped_, when Davie lies down, forspent, and Alan Breck says, “Very
well then, I’ll carry ye”; whereupon Davie looks at the little man and
springs up ashamed, crying “Lead on, I’ll follow!” The moment in _Olalla_
when the Englishman comes to the beautiful Spanish mistress of the house
with his bleeding hand to be bound up, and she, catching it swiftly to
her lips, bites it to the bone. The dead form of Israel Hands lying
huddled together on the clean, bright sand at the bottom of the lagoon of
_Treasure Island_. Such pictures imprint themselves on memory like seals.
The third point in Stevenson’s theory is, that details should be
reduced to a minimum in number and raised to a maximum in significance.
He wrote to Henry James, (and the address of the letter is amusing,)
“How to escape from the besotting _particularity_ of fiction? ‘Roland
approached the house; it had green doors and window blinds; and there was
a scraper on the upper step.’ To hell with Roland and the scraper!” Many
a pious reader would say “thank you” for this accurate expression of his
sentiments.
But when Stevenson sets a detail in a story you see at once that it
cannot be spared. Will o’ the Mill, throwing back his head and shouting
aloud to the stars, seems to see “a momentary shock among them, and a
diffusion of frosty light pass from one to another along the sky.” When
Markheim has killed the antiquarian and stands in the old curiosity
shop, musing on the eternity of a moment’s deed,—“first one and then
another, with every variety of pace and voice,—one deep as the bell from
a cathedral turret, another ringing on its treble notes the prelude of a
waltz,—the clocks began to strike the hour of three in the afternoon.”
Turning over the bit of paper on which “the black spot,” the death-notice
of the pirates, has been scrawled with charcoal, Jim Hawkins finds it has
been cut from the last page of a Bible, and on the other side he reads
part of a verse from the last chapter of the Revelation: _Without are
dogs and murderers_.
There is no “besotting particularity” in such details as these. On the
contrary they illustrate the classic conception of a work of art, in
which every particular must be vitally connected with the general, and
the perfection of the smallest part depends upon its relation to the
perfect whole. Now this is precisely the quality, and the charm, of
Stevenson’s stories, short or long. He omits the non-essential, but his
eye never misses the significant. He does not waste your time and his
own in describing the coloured lights in the window of a chemist’s shop
where nothing is to happen, or the quaint costume of a disagreeable
woman who has no real part in the story. That kind of realism, of local
colour, does not interest him. But he is careful to let you know that
Alan Breck wore a sword that was much too long for him; that Mr. Hyde
was pale and dwarfish, gave an impression of deformity without any
nameable malformation, and bore himself “with a sort of murderous mixture
of timidity and boldness”; that John Silver could use his wooden leg as
a terrible weapon; that the kitchen of the cottage on Aros was crammed
with rare incongruous treasures from far away; and that on a certain
cold sunny morning “the blackbirds sung exceeding sweet and loud about
the House of Durisdeer, and there was a noise of the sea in all the
chambers.” Why these _trivia_? Why such an exact touch on these details?
Because they count.
Yet Stevenson’s tales and romances do not give—at least to me—the effect
of over-elaboration, of strain, of conscious effort; there is nothing
affected and therefore nothing tedious in them. They move; they carry you
along with them; they are easy to read; one does not wish to lay them
down and take a rest. There is artifice in them, of course, but it is
a thoroughly natural artifice,—as natural as a clean voice and a clear
enunciation are to a well-bred gentleman. He does not think about them;
he uses them in his habit as he lives. Tusitala enjoys his work as a
teller of tales; he is at home in it. His manner is his own; it suits
him; he wears it without fear or misgiving,—the velvet jacket again.