Immediately on reading Lord Rosebery's address as Chairman of the meeting
in Edinburgh to promote the erection of a monument to R. L. Stevenson, I
wrote to him politely asking him whether, since he quoted a passage from
a somewhat early essay by Stevenson naming the authors who had chiefly
influenced him in point of style, his Lordship should not, merely in
justice and for the sake of balance, have referred to Thoreau. I also
remarked that Stevenson's later style sometimes showed too much
self-conscious conflict of his various models in his mind while he was in
the act of writing, and that this now and then imparted too much an air
of artifice to his later compositions, and that those who knew most would
be most troubled by it. Of that letter, I much regret now that I did not
keep any copy; but I think I did incidentally refer to the friendship
with which Stevenson had for so many years honoured me. This is a copy
of the letter received in reply:
"38 BERKELEY SQUARE, W.,
17_th_ _December_ 1896.
"DEAR SIR,--I am much obliged for your letter, and can only state that
the name of Thoreau was not mentioned by Stevenson himself, and
therefore I could not cite it in my quotation.
"With regard to the style of Stevenson's later works, I am inclined to
agree with you.-Believe me, yours very faithfully,
ROSEBERY.
"Dr ALEXANDER H. JAPP."
This I at once replied to as follows:
"NATIONAL LIBERAL CLUB,
WHITEHALL PLACE, S.W.,
19_th_ _December_ 1896.
"MY LORD,--It is true R. L. Stevenson did not refer to Thoreau in the
passage to which you allude, for the good reason that he could not,
since he did not know Thoreau till after it was written; but if you
will oblige me and be so good as to turn to p. xix. of Preface, _By
Way of Criticism_, to _Familiar Studies of Men and Books_ you will
read:
"'Upon me this pure, narrow, sunnily-ascetic Thoreau had exercised a
wondrous charm. _I have scarce written ten sentences since I was
introduced to him_, _but his influence might be somewhere detected by
a close observer_.'
"It is very detectable in many passages of nature-description and of
reflection. I write, my Lord, merely that, in case opportunity should
arise, you might notice this fact. I am sure R. L. Stevenson would
have liked it recognised.--I remain, my Lord, always yours faithfully,
etc.,
ALEXANDER H. JAPP."
{Manuscript letter by R.L.S.: p262.jpg}
In reply to this Lord Rosebery sent me only the most formal
acknowledgment, not in the least encouraging me in any way to further aid
him in the matter with regard to suggestions of any kind; so that I was
helpless to press on his lordship the need for some corrections on other
points which I would most willingly have tendered to him had he shown
himself inclined or ready to receive them.
I might also have referred Lord Rosebery to the article in _The British
Weekly_ (_1887_), "Books that have Influenced Me," where, after having
spoken of Shakespeare, the _Vicomte de Bragelonne_, Bunyan, Montaigne,
Goethe, Martial, Marcus Aurelius's _Meditations_, and Wordsworth, he
proceeds:
"I suppose, when I am done, I shall find that I have forgotten much
that is influential, as I see already I have forgotten Thoreau."
I need but to add to what has been said already that, had Lord Rosebery
written and told me the result of his references and encouraged me to
such an exercise, I should by-and-by have been very pleased to point out
to him that he blundered, proving himself no master in Burns' literature,
precisely as Mr Henley blundered about Burns' ancestry, when he gives
confirmation to the idea that Burns came of a race of peasants on both
sides, and was himself nothing but a peasant.
When the opportunity came to correct such blunders, corrections which I
had even implored him to make, Lord Rosebery (who by several London
papers had been spoken of as "knowing more than all the experts about all
his themes"), that is, when his volume was being prepared for press, did
not act on my good advice given him "_free_, _gratis_, _for nothing_";
no; he contented himself with simply slicing out columns from the
_Times_, or allowing another man to do so for him, and reprinting them
_literatim et verbatim_, all imperfect and misleading, as they stood.
_Scripta manet_ alas! only too truly exemplified to his disadvantage. But
with that note of mine in his hand, protesting against an ominous and
fatal omission as regards the confessed influences that had operated on
Stevenson, he goes on, or allows Mr Geake to go on, quite as though he
had verified matters and found that I was wrong as regards the facts on
which I based my appeal to him for recognition of Thoreau as having
influenced Stevenson in style. Had he attended to correcting his serious
errors about Stevenson, and some at least of those about Burns, thus
adding, say, a dozen or twenty pages to his book wholly fresh and new and
accurate, then the _Times_ could not have got, even if it had sought, an
injunction against his publishers and him; and there would have been no
necessity that he should pad out other and later speeches by just a
little whining over what was entirely due to his own disregard of good
advice, his own neglect--his own fault--a neglect and a fault showing
determination not to revise where revision in justice to his subject's
own free and frank acknowledgments made it most essential and necessary.
Mr Justice North gave his decision against Lord Rosebery and his
publishers, while the Lords of Appeal went in his favour; but the House
of Lords reaffirmed the decision of Mr Justice North and granted a
perpetual injunction against this book. The copyright in his speech is
Lord Rosebery's, but the copyright in the _Times_' report is the
_Times_'. You see one of the ideas underlying the law is that no manner
of speech is quite perfect as the man speaks it, or is beyond revision,
improvement, or extension, and, if there is but one _verbatim_ report, as
was the case of some of these speeches and addresses, then it is
incumbent on the author, if he wishes to preserve his copyright, to
revise and correct his speeches and addresses, so as to make them at
least in details so far differ from the reported form. This thing ought
Lord Rosebery to have done, on ethical and literary _grounds_, not to
speak of legal and self-interested grounds; and I, for one, who from the
first held exactly the view the House of Lords has affirmed, do confess
that I have no sympathy for Lord Rosebery, since he had before him the
suggestion and the materials for as substantial alterations and additions
from my own hands, with as much more for other portions of his book, had
he informed me of his appreciation, as would have saved him and his book
from such a sadly ironical fate as has overtaken him and it.
From the whole business--since "free, gratis, for nothing," I offered him
as good advice as any lawyer in the three kingdoms could have done for
large payment, and since he never deemed it worth while, even to tell me
the results of his reference to _Familiar Studies_, I here and now say
deliberately that his conduct to me was scarcely so courteous and
grateful and graceful as it might have been. How different--very
different--the way in which the late R. L. Stevenson rewarded me for a
literary service no whit greater or more essentially valuable to him than
this service rendered to Lord Rosebery might have been to him.
This chapter would most probably not have been printed, had not Mr Coates
re-issued the inadequate and most misleading paragraph about Mr Stevenson
and style in his Lord Rosebery's _Life and Speeches_ exactly as it was
before, thus perpetuating at once the error and the wrong, in spite of
all my trouble, warnings, and protests. It is a tragicomedy, if not a
farce altogether, considering who are the principal actors in it. And
let those who have copies of the queer prohibited book cherish them and
thank me; for that I do by this give a new interest and value to it as a
curiosity, law-inhibited, if not as high and conscientious
literature--which it is not.
I remember very well about the time Lord Rosebery spoke on Burns, and
Stevenson, and London, that certain London papers spoke of his
deliverances as indicating more knowledge--fuller and exacter
knowledge--of all these subjects than the greatest professed experts
possessed. That is their extravagant and most reckless way, especially
if the person spoken about is a "great politician" or a man of rank. They
think they are safe with such superlatives applied to a brilliant and
clever peer (with large estates and many interests), and an ex-Prime
Minister! But literature is a republic, and it must here be said, though
all unwillingly, that Lord Rosebery is but an amateur--a superficial
though a clever amateur after all, and their extravagances do not change
the fact. I declare him an amateur in Burns' literature and study
because of what I have said elsewhere, and there are many points to add
to that if need were. I have proved above from his own words that he was
crassly and unpardonably ignorant of some of the most important points in
R. L. Stevenson's development when he delivered that address in Edinburgh
on Stevenson--a thing very, very pardonable--seeing that he is run after
to do "speakings" of this sort; but to go on, in face of such warning and
protest, printing his most misleading errors is not pardonable, and the
legal recorded result is my justification and his condemnation, the more
surely that even that would not awaken him so far as to cause him to
restrain Mr Coates from reproducing in his _Life and Speeches_, just as
it was originally, that peccant passage. I am fully ready to prove also
that, though Chairman of the London County Council for a period, and
though he made a very clever address at one of Sir W. Besant's lectures,
there is much yet--very much--he might learn from Sir W. Besant's
writings on London. It isn't so easy to outshine all the experts--even
for a clever peer who has been Prime Minister, though it is very, very
easy to flatter Lord Rosebery, with a purpose or purposes, as did at
least once also with rarest tact, at Glasgow, indicating so many other
things and possibilities, a certain very courtly ex-Moderator of the
Church of Scotland.