Of Stevenson as a moralist I hesitate to write because whatever is said
on this point is almost certain to be misunderstood. On one side are
the puritans who frown at a preacher in a velvet jacket; on the other
side the pagans who scoff at an artist who cares for morals. Yet surely
there is a way between the two extremes where an artist-man may follow
his conscience with joy to deal justly, to love mercy, and to walk
humbly with his God. And having caught sight of that path, though he may
trace it but dimly and follow it stumbling, surely such a man may say
to his fellows, “This is the good way; let us walk in it.” Not one of
the great writers who have used the English language, so far as I know,
has finished his career without wishing to moralize, to teach something
worth learning, to stand in the pulpit of experience and give an honest
message to the world. Stevenson was no exception to this rule. He avowed
the impulse frankly when he said to William Archer, “I would rise from
the dead to preach.”
In his stories we look in vain for “morals” in the narrow sense,—proverbs
printed in italics and tagged on to the tale like imitation oranges tied
to a Christmas tree. The teaching of his fiction is like that of life,
diffused through the course of events and embodied in the development
of characters. But as the story unfolds we are never in doubt as to the
feelings of the narrator,—his pity for the unfortunate; his scorn for
the mean, the selfish, the hypocritical; his admiration for the brave,
the kind, the loyal and cheerful servants of duty. Never at his lightest
and gayest does he make us think of life as a silly farce; nor at his
sternest and saddest does he leave us disheartened, “having no hope and
without God in the world.” Behind the play there is a meaning, and beyond
the conflict there is a victory, and underneath the uncertainties of
doubt there is a foothold for faith.
I like what Stevenson wrote to an old preacher, his father’s friend.
“Yes, my father was a ‘distinctly religious man,’ but not a pious....
His sentiments were tragic; he was a tragic thinker. Now granted that
life is tragic to the marrow, it seems the proper service of religion
to make us accept and serve in that tragedy, as officers in that other
and comparable one of war. Service is the word, active service in the
military sense; and the religious man—I beg pardon, the pious man—is he
who has a military joy in duty,—not he who weeps over the wounded.”
This is the point of view from which Stevenson writes as a novelist;
you can feel it even in a romance as romantic as _Prince Otto_; and in
his essays, where he speaks directly and in the first person, this way
of taking life as an adventure for the valourous and faithful comes out
yet more distinctly. The grace and vigour of his diction, the pointed
quality of his style, the wit of his comment on men and books, add to the
persuasiveness of his teaching. I can see no reason why morality should
be drab and dull. It was not so in Stevenson’s character, nor is it so
in his books. That is one reason why they are companionable.
“There is nothing in it [the world],” wrote he to a friend, “but the
moral side—but the great battle and the breathing times with their
refreshments. I see no more and no less. And if you look again, it is not
ugly, and it is filled with promise.”