R. L. STEVENSON
_UNIFORM WITH THIS VOLUME_:
J. M. SYNGE
BY P. P. HOWE
HENRY JAMES
BY FORD MADOX HUEFFER
HENRIK IBSEN
BY R. ELLIS ROBERTS
THOMAS HARDY
BY LASCELLES ABERCROMBIE
BERNARD SHAW
BY P. P. HOWE
WALTER PATER
BY EDWARD THOMAS
WALT WHITMAN
BY BASIL DE SÉLINCOURT
SAMUEL BUTLER
BY GILBERT CANNAN
A. C. SWINBURNE
BY EDWARD THOMAS
GEORGE GISSING
BY FRANK SWINNERTON
RUDYARD KIPLING
BY CYRIL FALLS
WILLIAM MORRIS
BY JOHN DRINKWATER
ROBERT BRIDGES
BY F. E. BRETT YOUNG
MAURICE MAETERLINCK
BY UNA TAYLOR
[Illustration:
_Yours truly_
_Robert Louis Stevenson_]
R. L. STEVENSON
A CRITICAL STUDY
BY
FRANK SWINNERTON
LONDON
MARTIN SECKER
NUMBER FIVE JOHN STREET
ADELPHI
MCMXIV
_BY THE SAME AUTHOR_
THE MERRY HEART
THE YOUNG IDEA
THE CASEMENT
THE HAPPY FAMILY
ON THE STAIRCASE
GEORGE GISSING:
A CRITICAL STUDY
_The Sargent portrait of Stevenson which forms the frontispiece to
this volume has been included by permission of Mr. Lloyd Osbourne, to
whom the publisher wishes to express his acknowledgments and thanks._
TO
DOUGLAS GRAY
IN MALICE
CONTENTS
CHAPTER PAGE
I. BIOGRAPHICAL 9
II. JUVENILIA 36
III. TRAVEL BOOKS 42
IV. ESSAYS 62
V. POEMS 90
VI. PLAYS 102
VII. SHORT STORIES 116
VIII. NOVELS AND ROMANCES 143
IX. CONCLUSION 185
BIBLIOGRAPHY 211
I
BIOGRAPHICAL
I
As the purpose of this book is entirely critical, and as there already
exist several works dealing extensively with the life of Stevenson, the
present biographical section is intentionally summary. Its object is
merely to sketch in outline the principal events of Stevenson’s life,
in order that what follows may require no passages of biographical
elucidation. Stevenson was a writer of many sorts of stories, essays,
poems; and in all this diversity he was at no time preoccupied with
one particular form of art. In considering each form separately, as I
purpose doing, it has been necessary to group into single divisions
work written at greatly different times and in greatly differing
conditions. In Mr. Graham Balfour’s “Life,” and very remarkably in
Sir Sidney Colvin’s able commentaries upon Stevenson’s letters, may
be found information at first hand which I could only give by acts of
piracy. To those works, therefore, I refer the reader who wishes to
follow in chronological detail the growth of Stevenson’s talent. They
are, indeed, essential to all who are primarily interested in Stevenson
the man. Here, the attempt will be made only to summarise the events
of his days, and to estimate the ultimate value of his work in various
departments of letters. This book is not a biography; it is not an
“appreciation”; it is simply a critical study.
II
Stevenson was born on November 13, 1850; and he died, almost exactly
forty-four years later, on December 3, 1894. His first literary work,
undertaken at the age of six, was an essay upon the history of Moses.
This he dictated to his mother, and was rewarded for it by the gift
of a Bible picture book. It is from the date of that triumph that
Stevenson’s desire to be a writer must be calculated. A history of
Joseph followed, and later on, apparently at the age of nine, he
again dictated an account of certain travels in Perth. His first
published work was a pamphlet on The Pentland Rising, written (but
full of quotations) at the age of sixteen. His first “regular or paid
contribution to periodical literature” was the essay called _Roads_
(now included in _Essays of Travel_), which was written when the
author was between twenty-two and twenty-three. The first actual book
to be published was _An Inland Voyage_ (1878), written when Stevenson
was twenty-seven; but all the essays which ultimately formed the
volumes entitled _Virginibus Puerisque_ (1881) and _Familiar Studies
of Men and Books_ (1882) are the product of 1874 and onwards. These,
indicated very roughly, are the beginnings of his literary career.
Of course there were many other contributary facts which led to his
turning author; and there is probably no writer whose childhood is so
fully “documented” as Stevenson’s. He claimed to be one of those who
do not forget their own lives, and, in accordance with his practice,
he has supplied us with numerous essays in which we may trace his
growth and his experiences. That he was an only child and a delicate
one we all know; so, too, we know that his grandfather was that Robert
Stevenson who built the Bell Rock lighthouse. In the few chapters
contributed by Robert Louis to _A Family of Engineers_ we shall find an
account, some of it fanciful, but some of it also perfectly accurate,
of the Stevenson family and of Robert Stevenson, the grandfather, in
particular. In _Memories and Portraits_ is included a sketch of Thomas
Stevenson, the father of Robert Louis; and in Mr. Balfour’s “Life”
there is ample information for those who wish to study the influences
of heredity.
For our own purpose it may be interesting to note three points in this
connection. As a boy, and even as a youth, Stevenson was expected by
his father to be an engineer and to carry on the family tradition.
His early training therefore brought him much to the sea, with rather
special facilities for appreciating the more active relations of man to
the sea. The second point is that the Stevensons had always been, true
to their Scots instincts, very strict religious disciplinarians (Robert
Stevenson the elder is very illuminating on this); but that they
were also very shrewd and determined men of action. Finally, another
grandfather of Robert Louis, this time on the Balfour side, was in fact
a clergyman. Stevenson significantly admits that he may have inherited
from this grandfather the love of sermonising, which is as noticeable
in _An Inland Voyage_ and in _Virginibus Puerisque_ as it is in his
latest non-fictional work. We cannot forget that his contribution
to festivities marking the anniversary of his marriage was upon one
occasion a sermon on St. Jacob’s Oil, delivered from a pulpit carried
as part-cargo by the “Janet Nichol.” From his mother, too, he is said
to have inherited that constitutional delicacy which made him subject
throughout his life to periods of serious illness, and which eventually
led to his early death.
There was one other influence upon his childhood which must not be
neglected as long as the pendulum of thought association swings
steadily from heredity to environment. That influence was the influence
exercised by his nurse, Alison Cunningham. It is admitted to have been
enormous, and I am not sure that it is desirable to repeat in this
place what is so much common knowledge. But it is perhaps worth while
to emphasise the fact that, while Alison Cunningham was not only a
devoted nurse, night and day, to the delicate child, she actually was
in many ways responsible for the peculiar bent of Stevenson’s mind.
She it was who read to him, who declaimed to him, the sounds of fine
words which he loved so well in after life. The meaning of the words
he sometimes did not grasp; the sounds--so admirable, it would seem,
was her delivery--were his deep delight. Not only that: she introduced
him thus early to the Covenanting writers upon whom he claimed to
have based his sense of style; and, however lightly we may regard his
various affirmations as to the source of his “style,” and as to the
principles upon which we might expect to find it based, the sense of
style, which is quite another thing, was almost certainly awakened in
him by these means. Sense of style, I think, is a much greater point in
Stevenson’s equipment than the actual “style.” The style varies; the
sense of style is constant, as it must be in any writer who is not a
Freeman. Alison Cunningham, being herself possessed of this sense, or
of the savour of words, impressed it upon “her boy”; and the result we
may see. All Stevenson’s subsequent “learning” was so much exercise: no
man learns how to write solely by observation and imitation.
From being a lonely and delicate child spinning fancies and hearing
stirring words and stories and sermons in the nursery, Stevenson became
a lonely and delicate child in many places. One of them was the Manse
at Colinton, the home of his clerical grandfather. Another was the
house in Heriot Row, Edinburgh, where he played with his brilliant
cousin R. A. M. Stevenson. R. A. M. was not his only cousin--there
were many others; but the personality of R. A. M. is such that one
could wish to know the whole of it, so attractive are the references
in Stevenson’s essays and letters, and in Mr. Balfour’s biography.
I imagine, although I cannot be sure, that it was with R. A. M. that
Stevenson played at producing plays on toy-stages. We shall see later
how impossible he found it, when he came to consider the drama as
a literary field, to shake off the influence of Skelt’s drama; but
anybody who has played with toy-stages will respond to the enthusiasm
discovered in _A Penny Plain and Twopence Coloured_, and will
sympathise with the delight which Stevenson must later have felt on
being able to revive in Mr. Lloyd Osbourne’s company the old Skeltian
joys.
School followed in due course, the attendances broken by sickness
and possibly by the incurable idleness which one supposes to have
been due to lassitude rather than to mischief. Mr. Balfour details
the components of Stevenson’s education, from Latin and French and
German, to bathing and dancing. Football is also mentioned, while
riding seems to have developed into a sort of reckless horsemanship.
When he was eleven or twelve Stevenson came first to London, and went
with his father to Homburg. Later he went twice with Mrs. Stevenson to
Mentone, travelling, besides, on the first occasion, through Italy, and
returning by way of Germany and the Rhine. It is, however, remarkable
that he does not seem to have retained much memory of so interesting
an experience; a fact which would suggest that, although he was able at
this time to store for future use ample impressions of his own feelings
and his own habits, he had not yet awakened to any very lively or
precise observation of the external world. That observation began with
the determination to write, and Stevenson then lost no opportunity of
setting down exactly his impressions of things seen.
In 1867--that is, after the publication, and after the withdrawal,
of _The Pentland Rising_--Stevenson began his training as a civil
engineer, working for a Science degree at Edinburgh University. One may
learn something of his experience there from _Memories and Portraits_
and even from _The Memoir of Fleeming Jenkin_. It was now that he met
Charles Baxter (the letters to whom are the jolliest and apparently
most candid of any he wrote), James Walter Ferrier, Sir Walter Simpson
(the real hero of _An Inland Voyage_), and Fleeming Jenkin, whose wife
mistook Stevenson for a poet. Here, too, he joined the “Speculative
Society,” of which presently he became an unimportant president.
Moreover, the friendships formed at the University led to the
foundation of a mysterious society of six members, called the L.J.R.
(signifying Liberty, Justice, Reverence), which has been the occasion
of much comment on account of the secrecy with which the meaning of the
initials has been guarded.
It was while he was at the University that his desire to write became
acute. By his own account, he went everywhere with two little books,
one to read, and one to write in. He read a great deal, talked a great
deal, made friends, and charmed everybody very much. In 1868, 1869, and
1870 he spent some time on the West Coast of Scotland, watching the
work which was being carried on by his father’s firm at Anstruther,
Wick, and finally at Earraid (an island introduced into _Catriona_
and _The Merry Men_). In 1871 he received from the Scottish Society
of Arts a silver medal for a paper (_A New Form of Intermittent
Light for Lighthouses_); and two years later another paper, _On the
Thermal Influence of Forests_, was communicated to the Royal Society
of Edinburgh. But it was in 1871 that Stevenson gave up, and induced
his father most unwillingly to give up, the plans hitherto regarded as
definite for his future career. He could not become a civil engineer;
but determined that he must make his way by letters. A compromise was
effected, by the terms of which he read for the Bar; and he passed his
preliminary examination in 1872.
III
In 1873 Stevenson, then in great distress because of religious
differences with his father, made the acquaintance of Mrs. Sitwell (now
Lady Colvin) and, through her, of Sidney Colvin himself. The importance
of these two friendships could hardly be over-estimated. Mrs. Sitwell
gave readily and generously the sympathy of which Stevenson was so
much in need; and Mr. Colvin (as he then was) proved to be, not only
a friend, but a guide and a most influential champion. It was through
Mr. Colvin that Stevenson made his real start as a professional writer,
for Mr. Colvin was a writer and the friend of writers, a critic and
the friend of--editors. Stevenson’s plans for removal to London were
made, and to London he came; but he was then so prostrated with nervous
exhaustion, with danger of serious complications, that he was sent
to the Riviera for the winter. Mr. Colvin joined him at Mentone, and
introduced him to Andrew Lang. Thereafter, Stevenson went to Paris; and
it was not until the end of April, 1874, that he returned to Edinburgh,
apparently so far recovered that he could enjoy, three months later, a
long yachting excursion on the West Coast. Further study followed, and
at length Stevenson was in 1875 called to the Scottish Bar, having been
elected previously, through Mr. Colvin’s kindly agency, a member of
the Savile Club. Membership of the Savile led to the beginning of his
association with Leslie Stephen, and to his introduction to the then
editors of “The Academy” and “The Saturday Review.” In this period of
his life occurred the journey described in _An Inland Voyage_, and his
highly important “discovery” of W. E. Henley in an Edinburgh hospital.
Finally, it is important to remember that in these full years,
1874-1879, Stevenson spent a considerable amount of time in France,
where he stayed as a rule either in Paris or in the neighbourhood of
Fontainebleau, most frequently at Barbizon. Details of his life in
France are to be found in _The Wrecker_, in the essay called _Forest
Notes_ in _Essays of Travel_, and in that on _Fontainebleau_ in _Across
the Plains_. He was writing fairly steadily, and he was getting his
work published without embarrassing difficulty, from _Ordered South_
in 1874 to _Travels with a Donkey_ in 1879. And it was in Grez in
1876 that he made the acquaintance of Mrs. Osbourne, an American lady
separated from her husband. The meeting was in fact the turning-point
in his career: even _Travels with a Donkey_, as he admitted in a
letter to his cousin, R. A. M. Stevenson, contains “lots of mere
protestations to F.” When Mrs. Osbourne returned to America in 1878
she sought and obtained a divorce from her husband. Stevenson heard of
her intention, and heard also that she was ill. He was filled with the
idea of marrying Mrs. Osbourne, and was determined to put his character
to the test of so long and arduous a journey for the purpose, with the
inevitable strain which his purpose involved. With perhaps a final
exhibition of quite youthful affectation, and a serious misconception
of his parents’ attitude to himself and to the desirability of such a
marriage, Stevenson took parental opposition for granted. Nevertheless,
it is a proof of considerable, if unnecessary, courage, that he
followed Mrs. Osbourne to California by a sort of emigrant ship and an
American emigrant train. His experiences on the journey are veraciously
recorded in _The Amateur Emigrant_ and _Across the Plains_.
The rough, miserable journey, and the exhaustion consequent upon the
undertaking of so long and difficult an expedition, brought Stevenson’s
vitality very low; so that, after much strain, much miscellaneous
literary work, and many self-imposed privations, he fell seriously
ill at San Francisco towards the end of 1879. Only careful nursing,
and a genial cable from his father, promising an annual sum of £250,
restored health and spirits; and on May 19, 1880, he was married to
Mrs. Osbourne. Their life at Silverado has already been described in
_The Silverado Squatters_; it was followed by a return to Europe, a
succession of journeys from Scotland to Davos, Barbizon, Paris, and St.
Germain; and a further series back again to Pitlochry and Braemar. At
the last-named place _Treasure Island_ was begun, and nineteen chapters
of the book were written: here, too, we gather, the first poems for _A
Child’s Garden of Verses_ laid the foundations of that book. Again,
owing to bad weather in Scotland, it was found necessary to resort to
Davos, where the Stevensons lived in a châlet, and where the works
of the Davos Press saw the light. After a winter so spent, Stevenson
was pronounced well enough to resume normal life, and he returned
accordingly to England and Scotland. But before long it was necessary
to go to the South of France, and after various misfortunes he settled
at length at Hyères. Here he wrote _The Silverado Squatters_ and
resumed work on _Prince Otto_, a work long before planned as both novel
and play.
Further illness succeeded, until it was found possible to settle
at Bournemouth, in the house called Skerryvore; and in Bournemouth
Stevenson spent a comparatively long time (from 1884 to 1887). Here
he made new friendships and revived old ones. Now were published _A
Child’s Garden_, _Prince Otto_, _The Dynamiter_, _Dr. Jekyll and
Mr. Hyde_, and _Kidnapped_; and now, in 1887, occurred the death
of Stevenson’s father, of whom a sketch is given in _Memories and
Portraits_.
The relations of father and son were obviously peculiar. Thomas
Stevenson was strict in the matter of faith--more strict than those
of this day can perhaps understand--and it is evident that this
strictness provoked conflict between Robert Louis and his father. By
the letters to Mrs. Sitwell we gather that the differences greatly
troubled Robert Louis; but it seems very clear on the other hand that
wherever the elder Stevenson’s character is actively illustrated in
Mr. Balfour’s “Life,” or in Stevenson’s letters, the instance is one
of kindness and consideration. Mr. Charles Baxter recalls the dreadful
expression of his friend when the first draft of propositions for the
L.J.R. fell into Thomas Stevenson’s hands; and no doubt there is much
that is personal in such stories as _Weir_, _The Wrecker_, and _John
Nicholson_, in which the relations of fathers and sons are studied.
That Thomas loved and admired his son seems certain; but it must be
supposed that his own austerity was not always tolerable to a nature
less austere and sensitive to the charge of levity.
Almost immediately after the death of his father, Stevenson left
England finally. He went first to New York, and then to Saranac (in
the Adirondacks), where the climate was said to be beneficial to those
suffering from lung trouble. Here he began _The Master of Ballantrae_
while Mr. Lloyd Osbourne was busy on _The Wrong Box_; and, when summer
was returning, the whole party removed, first to New Jersey, and then
to the schooner “Casco,” in which they travelled to the Marquesas. In
the next three years they wandered much among the groups of islands in
the South Seas. _The Master of Ballantrae_ was finished in a house, or
rather, in a pavilion, at Waikiki, a short distance from Honolulu. It
was after finishing that book that Stevenson made further journeys,
until at last, by means of a trading schooner called “The Equator,” the
Stevensons all went to Samoa, where they settled in Apia. Here Robert
Louis bought land, and built a home; and here, during the last years of
his life, he lived in greater continuous health--broken though it was
with occasional periods of illness more or less serious--than he had
enjoyed for a number of years.
IV
At Apia he was active, both physically and in the way of authorship:
his exile, trying though it must at times have been, involved health
and happiness; and his loyal friends and his increasingly numerous
admirers kept him, as far as they were able to do, from the dire
neglect into which the thousands of miles’ distance from home might
suggest that he would inevitably fall. I say his loyal friends, rather
than many, because Mrs. Stevenson particularly declares that Stevenson
had few intimate friends. Well-wishers and admirers he had; but there
is noticeable in the majority of those letters so ably collected and
edited by Sir Sidney Colvin a lack of the genuine give and take of
true intimacy. Information concerning himself and his doings, which
suggests the use of his friends as tests or sounding-boards, forms
the staple of such letters. I am told that many intimate letters are
not included--for reasons which are perfectly clear and good; but the
truth is that it is only in the letters to Baxter that there is any
sense of great ease. Even the letters to Sir Sidney Colvin, full,
clear, friendly as they are, suggest impenetrable reserves and an
intense respect for the man to whom they were written. They suggest
that Stevenson very much wanted Sir Sidney to go on admiring, liking,
and believing in him; but they are not letters showing any deep
understanding or taking-for-granted of understanding. Candour, of
course, there is; a jocularity natural to Stevenson; a reliance upon
the integrity and goodwill of his correspondent; a complete gratitude.
All we miss is the little tick of feeling which would give ease to the
whole series of letters. They might all have been written for other
eyes. When one says that, one dismisses the complete spontaneity of the
letters in what may seem to be an arbitrary fashion. But one is not,
after all, surprised that Stevenson should have made the request that a
selection of his letters should be published.
Of friends, then, there must be few, because Mrs. Stevenson is
obviously in a better position than anybody else to judge upon this
point. She says that, contrary to the general impression, Stevenson had
few really intimate friends, because his nature was deeply reserved.
From that we may infer that, like other vain men, who, however, are
purged by their vanity rather than destroyed by it, he told much about
himself without finally, as the phrase is, “giving himself away.” His
high spirits, his “bursts of confidence,” his gay jocularity--all
these things, part of the man’s irrepressible vanity, were health
to him: they enabled him to keep light in a system which might have
developed, through physical delicacy, in the direction of morbidity.
That he was naturally cold, in the sense that he kept his face always
towards his friends, I am prepared to believe: if he had not done
that he perhaps would have lost their respect, since personal charm
is a fragile base for friendship. By his own family at Vailima he was
accused of being “secretive,” as Mrs. Strong records in “Memories of
Vailima.” And Stevenson, it must be remembered, was a Scotsman, with a
great fund of melancholy. Quite clearly, Henley, his friend for years
and his collaborator, never understood him. Henley deplored the later
Stevenson, and loved the Louis (or rather, the Lewis) he had known in
early days. He loved, that is, the charming person who had discovered
him, and with whom he had talked and plotted and bragged. He did not
love the man who seems to have turned from him. The cause of their
estrangement I do not know. I imagine that they thought differently
of the merits of the plays, that Henley pressed Stevenson at a time
when Stevenson felt himself to be drawing away from Henley and passing
into a rather delightful isolation, and that when Henley clung to
their old comradeship with characteristic vehemence, Stevenson felt
suddenly bored with so loud an ally. That may be sheer nonsense: I only
infer it. Whatever the cause, Stevenson seems to me always a little
patronising to Henley, and Henley’s attack in the “Pall Mall Magazine”
(December, 1901) suggests as well as envy the blunt bewilderment of
a man forsaken. Henley, of course, knew that he lacked the inventive
power of Stevenson; and he knew that his power to feel was more intense
than Stevenson’s. That in itself makes a sufficient explanation of the
quarrel: literary friends must not be rivals, or their critical faculty
will overrun into spleen at any injudicious comparisons.
Besides Henley, there is R. A. M. Stevenson, a fascinating figure; but
imperfectly shown in the “Letters.” There is Sir Sidney Colvin, best
and truest of friends. There is Charles Baxter, the recipient of the
letters which seem to me the jolliest Stevenson wrote--a man of much
joviality, I am told, and a very loyal worker on his friend’s behalf.
For the rest, they are friends in a general sense: not intimates, but
men whose good opinion Stevenson was proud to have earned: friends in
the wide (but not the most subtle) scheme of friendship which makes
for social ease and confidence and interest. Baxter and R. A. M.
Stevenson were survivors of early intimacies. Mrs. Sitwell and Sir
Sidney Colvin belonged to a later time, a time of stress, but a time
also of growth. The others, whom we thus objectionably lump together
in a single questionable word, were the warm, kind acquaintances of
manhood. It is useless to demand intimacy in these cases, and I should
not have laboured the point if it had not been suggested that Stevenson
was one of those who had a genius for friendship. He was always, I
imagine, cordial, friendly, charming to these friends; but his letters
(unless we suppose Sir Sidney Colvin to have edited more freely than we
should ordinarily suspect) do not seem to have much to say about his
correspondents, and it is not perhaps very unreasonable to think that
his own work and his own character were the basis of the exchange of
letters. Stevenson no doubt liked these friends; but I am disposed to
question whether he was very much interested in them. I think Stevenson
generally inspired more affection than he was accustomed to give in
return.
V
We must remember, in thus speaking of Stevenson’s friendships, that
he was a Scotsman, that he had been really a lonely child and boy,
accustomed to a degree of solitude, that he was an egoist (as,
presumably, all writers are egoists), and that his personal charm
is unquestioned. Men who met him for the first time were fascinated
by his vivacity, his fresh play of expression, his manner; and
Stevenson, of course, as was only natural, responded instantly to their
admiration. He was carried away in talk, and in talk walked with his
new friends until they, forced as they were by other engagements to
leave him, gained from such a vivid ripple of comment an impression
of something alive and mercurial, something like the wonderful run of
quicksilver, in a companion so inexhaustibly vivacious. It was the
nervous brilliance of Stevenson which attracted men often of greater
real ability; he possessed a quality which they felt to be foreign,
almost dazzling. So Stevenson, leaving them, strung to a height of
exhilaration by his own excited verbosity, would go upon his way,
also attracted by his happy feelings and his happy phrases. In such
a case the man of charm has two alternatives: he can suppress his
ebullience for the purpose of learning or giving; or he can recognise
the excitement and, supposing it to be lyricism, can, if I may use
that word (as I have above used the word “verbosity”) without any
evil meaning being attached to it, _exploit_ his charm. Stevenson, I
believe, exploited his charm. It is often so exploited; the temptation
to exploit it is sometimes irresistible. The kind thing, the attractive
thing, the charming thing--this is the thing to say and do, rather
than the honest thing. Instinctively a girl learns the better side of
her face, the particular irresistible turn of her head, the perfect
cadence of voice. So does the man who has this personal charm. So,
too, does he realise instinctively the value of the external details
of friendship. In only one point does the knowledge of such externals
fail. The kind thing makes friends (in the sense of cordial strangers);
but it does not make anything more subtle than cordial strangeness; and
it does not seem to me that anybody really ever knew Stevenson very
well. He told them much about himself, gaily; and they knew he was
charming. I do not suggest any duplicity on his part. He was perfectly
real in his vivacity, but it was nervous vivacity, an excitement that
led, when it relaxed, or was relaxed, to exhaustion, possibly even
to tears, just as we know that Stevenson could be carried by his own
fooling to the verge of hysteria. So it was that Stevenson became a
figure to himself, as well as to his friends; by his desire to continue
the pleasant impression already created, he did tend to see himself
objectively (just as he is said to have made the gestures he was
describing in his work, and even to have gone running to a mirror to
see the expression the imagined person in his book was wearing). In his
early books that is plain; in _Lay Morals_ we may feel that he is all
the time in the pulpit, leaning over, and talking very earnestly, very
gently, very persuasively, and with extraordinary self-consciousness,
to a congregation that is quite clearly charmed by his personality.
Above all, very persuasively; and above even his persuasiveness, the
deprecating sense of charm, the use of personal anecdote to give the
sermon an authentic air of confession.
The nervous, vivid buoyancy of his characteristic manner was a part
of his lack of health. He was, it is known, rarely in actual pain;
and it is very often the case that delicate persons have this nervous
exuberance of temperament, which has almost the show of vitality. It
has the show; but when the person is no longer before us, our memory
is a vague, fond dream of something intangible--what we call, elusive.
We talk of elusive charm when we cannot remember a single thing that
has aroused in us the impression of having been charmed. Exactly in
that way was Stevenson remembered by those he met--as a vivid butterfly
is remembered; something indescribably strange and curious, not to
be caught and held, for its brilliant and wayward fluttering. The
charm was the thing that attracted men kinder, more staid, more truly
genial, wiser than himself; it excused the meagre philosophisings
and it excused some of those rather selfish and thoughtless actions
which Mr. Balfour says nobody dreamed of resenting. The same charm
we shall find in most of Stevenson’s work, until it grows stale in
_St. Ives_. We shall speak of its literary aspects later. At this
moment we are dealing exclusively with his manner. I want to show
that Stevenson’s ill-health was not the ill-health which makes a man
peevish through constant pain. It was, in fact, extreme delicacy,
rather than ill-health; and the reaction from delicacy of physical
health (or, in reality, the consequence of this delicacy) was this
peculiar nervous brilliancy of manner which I have described. It
is often mistaken by writers on Stevenson for courage; but this is
an unimaginative conception resulting from the notion that he was
constantly in pain, and that he deliberately _willed_ to be cheerful
and gay. Nobody who deliberately wills to be cheerful ever succeeds
in being more than drolly unconvincing. Stevenson had courage which
was otherwise illustrated: this cheerfulness, this “funning” was the
natural consequence of nervous excitability, which, as I have said,
often appears as though it was vitality, as though it must be of more
substance than we know it really is. It is like the colour in an
invalid’s cheek, like the invalid’s energy, like the invalid’s bright
eyes: it is due to the stimulus of excitement. Stevenson, alone, had
his flat moments of dull mood and tired vanity; Stevenson, in company,
thrilled with the life which his friends regarded as his inimitable and
unquestionable personal charm.
You are thus to imagine a nervously-moving man, tall, very dark, very
thin; his hair generally worn long; his eyes, large, dark, and bright,
unusually wide apart; his face long, markedly boned. His dress, with
velvet jacket, is bizarre; his whole manner is restless; his hands,
skeleton-thin, constantly flickering with every change of pose. His
grace of movement, his extraordinary play of expression, are everywhere
commented upon by those who essay verbal portraiture; and all agree
that the photographs in existence reproduce only the dead features
which expression changed each instant. Stevenson, it seems, varied his
position suddenly and frequently--moving from hearth-rug to chair, from
chair, again, to table, walking quickly and brushing his moustache
as we may see in Sargent’s brilliant impression. Nervousness was in
every movement, every gesture; and the figure of Stevenson seems to be
recalled, by many of those who attempt the description, as invariably
in motion, the face alive with interest and expression, while the man
all the time talked, like “young Mr. Harry Fielding, who pours out
everything he has in his heart, and is, in effect, as brilliant, as
engaging, and as arresting a talker as Colonel Esmond has known.”
I give the portrait for what it may be worth. No doubt it does not
represent the Stevenson of Samoa; perhaps it does not represent the
real Stevenson at all. It is Stevenson as one may imagine him, and
as another may find it impossible to imagine him. There is room,
surely, for a variety of portraits, as for the inevitable variety of
critical estimates; and if the estimates hitherto have all followed
a particular line of pleasant comment, at least the portraits one
sees and reads are all portraits of diverse Stevensons made dull or
trivial or engrossing according to the opportunities and skill of the
delineator. I offer my portrait, in this and in succeeding chapters, in
good faith: more, it would be impossible for me to claim.
II
JUVENILIA
I
Before we come to the main divisions of Stevenson’s work it may be as
well to consider briefly those few early works which, to the majority
of readers, were first made known by their inclusion in the Edinburgh
Edition. It is unfortunately impossible to recover the original essay
upon Moses, or the earliest romances; so that we are presented first
with _The Pentland Rising_, published as a pamphlet when Stevenson was
sixteen. This is conscientious and fully-documented work, written too
close to authorities to have much flexibility or personal interest; but
it is not strikingly immature. Daniel Defoe, Burnet, Fuller’s “History
of the Holy Warre,” and a surprising number of other writers upon the
period are successively quoted with good effect; and it is amusing to
note the references to “A Cloud of Witnesses,” which appears to have
been a favourite with Alison Cunningham. This pamphlet is decidedly
the outcome of Alison Cunningham’s teaching, full as it is of the
authentic manner of the Covenanters, which Stevenson was presently to
imitate to the admiration of all the world.
Many readers of Stevenson must have regarded with eyes of marvel the
two serious papers, the gravity of which is perfect, dealing with the
Thermal Influence of Forests, and with a new form of Intermittent
Light. I have no ability to determine the scientific value of these
papers; and as literary works they have less interest than most of the
other instances of Juvenilia. They are illustrated with diagrams, and
they possess coherence and lucidity. In any work these two qualities
are important, and we shall find that clearness is a quality which
Stevenson never lost. He always succeeded in being clear, in escaping
the obscure sayings of the philosopher or the enthusiast. That is to
say, he was a writer. He was a writer in those two scientific papers,
no less than in _Virginibus Puerisque_ or _Prince Otto_. When obscurity
is so easy, clearness is a distinguished virtue; and if Stevenson
sometimes errs to the extent of robbing his work of thickets and dim
frightening darknesses, that is also because he was a writer, and
because he preferred to be a writer.
There follow a number of shorter pieces, some of them the fruit of
his University days of practising; some later, so that they include
the papers on _Roads_ and _Forest Notes_ which are mentioned in the
next chapter. These sometimes show obvious immaturity, but they also
show more than anything else could do the real doggedness with which
Stevenson pursued his aim of learning to write. They show him, at
least, forming his sentences with careful attention to rhythm and
to sound--not yet elaborate, not yet so “kneaded” as his manner
was in a little while to be. It is here sometimes thin, as is the
subject-matter. In one sketch, _The Wreath of Immortelles_, we may
catch a glimpse of the method of opening an essay which Stevenson
developed later; but, on the other hand, in the _Forest Notes_
(possibly more mature work) there is really excellent treatment of
good and interesting matter. Three “criticisms” have point. One, of
Lord Lytton’s “Fables in Slang,” is fairly conventional; the second,
on Salvini’s Macbeth, was the one condemned by Fleeming Jenkin because
it showed Stevenson thinking more about himself than about Salvini;
the third is a very delightful little paper on Bagster’s illustrated
edition of “The Pilgrim’s Progress.”
All these short pieces are of interest because they show the growth of
Stevenson as a writer. They are the more interesting because at the
same time they illustrate the way in which Stevenson gradually made
his work take on the impress of his personality. All young work lacks
character, as young hand-writing does, and as young style does; and
all young essay-work in particular appears sometimes rather tepid and
even silly when the author tries to interest us in his “ego.” Stevenson
from the first saw himself as the central object in his essay: it
is amusing to watch how soon he begins to make himself count as an
effective central object. At first the personality is thin: it has not
carried. Later it develops with the development of style: the use of
words becomes firmer, and with that firmness comes greater confidence,
greater ease, in the projection of the author’s self. It is perhaps not
until we reach the familiar essays that we find Stevenson fully master
of himself, for literary purposes; but the growth provides matter for
rather ingenious study.
II
In that volume of the collected editions which contains these early
essays it is customary to include the works issued by the Davos Press;
and Mr. Lloyd Osbourne (at the age of twelve the proprietor of the
Davos Press) has also discovered a wholly amusing account of an
important military campaign conducted in an attic at Davos by himself
and Stevenson as opposed commanders of tin soldiers. The game, which
had of course inexhaustible interest, has also, as described by Mr.
Osbourne, its intricacies for the lay mind; but Stevenson’s account
of this particular campaign, written by means of official reports,
rumours, newspapers yellow and otherwise, offers no difficulty. It is
an excellent piece of pretence. The Davos Press, which provided the
world with unique works by Stevenson and by Mr. Osbourne, illustrated
with original woodcuts, belongs, as does the war-game, to the time
spent in the châlet at Davos shortly after Stevenson’s marriage. It
shows how easily he could enjoy elaborate games (as most men do enjoy
them, if they are not deterred by self-importance or preoccupation
with matters more strictly commercial); and the relationship with Mr.
Osbourne seems to have been as frank and lively as anybody could desire.
I have mentioned these matters out of their due place because they seem
to me to have a value as contributing to certain suggestions which I
shall make later. By his marriage, Stevenson gained not only a very
devoted wife but a very intimate boy-friend, the kind of friend he
very likely had long wanted. There was almost twenty years’ difference
between them; but that, I think, made the friendship more suited to
Stevenson’s nature. By means of this difference he could indulge in
that very conscious make-belief for which his nature craved--a detached
make-belief, which enabled him to enjoy the play both in fact and as
a spectator, to make up for Mr. Osbourne’s admitted superiority in
marksmanship by the subtilty of his own military devices; finally, to
enjoy the quite personal pleasure of placing upon record, with plans
and military terms, in the best journalistic style, accounts of his
military achievements. The art of gloating innocently over his own
power to gloat; the power to delight consciously in his own delight at
being able to play--these, I believe, are naturally Scots pleasures,
and profoundly Stevensonian pleasures. I hope that no reader will
deny Stevenson the right to such enjoyments, for Stevenson’s not very
complex nature is really bound up in them. If we take from him the
satisfaction of seeing himself in every conceivable posture, we take
from him a vanity which permeates his whole life-work, and which,
properly regarded, is harmless to offend our taste.
III
TRAVEL BOOKS
I
“One of the pleasantest things in the world,” says Hazlitt, “is going
on a journey; but I like to go alone.” In his earliest days of manhood,
Stevenson also formed the habit of going alone; and in his own essay
upon _Walking Tours_ he very circumstantially endorses Hazlitt’s
view, for reasons into which we need not enter here. We may find
an indication of his habit even so early as the fragment, included
in _Essays of Travel_, which describes a journey from Cockermouth
to Keswick. Other papers, of various dates, show that, either from
choice or from necessity, he often did tramp solitary; but it is worth
noting that only in the walk through the Cevennes and in his journey
to America did Stevenson ever travel alone for any length of time.
His other, and on the whole more important, travel-books are the
descriptions of journeys taken in company.
Furthermore, in the early essay which we have just noted he rather
ostentatiously proclaims his practice in writing accounts of his tours.
He says, “I cannot describe a thing that is before me at the moment,
or that has been before me only a little while before; I must allow
my recollections to get thoroughly strained free from all chaff till
nothing be except the pure gold.” Apart from the surprising alchemy of
the declaration, this disability is wholly to his credit; but Stevenson
found, of course, that when he planned to record a journey of some
duration, in a form more or less chronological, he must preserve a
sense of fabric in his book by keeping a daily diary of experiences.
That is why, in his earliest book of travel, _An Inland Voyage_,
he mentions “writing-up” his diary at the end of each day; and it
explains also the frequent references in later books to such an evening
occupation. As Stevenson admitted in _Cockermouth and Keswick_, the
process of incubation might in the long run be unreasonably prolonged;
and perhaps it is true that experience taught him very early that in
the professional writer thrift is a virtue. It was, if so, a lesson
that he never forgot.
Although the fragment on Keswick to which I have referred is clearly a
juvenile piece of work, it is highly entertaining as a small piece of
autobiography. On its own account the essay is rather pragmatical and
anecdotal, after the manner of an afternoon sermon, and it gives as
yet small evidence that the writer has any highly developed sense of
accurate and significant observation. But to the reader who cares to go
below its superficial interest, there is other material. Not without
value are the boyish allusions to his pipe, to his whisky-and-soda,
and to his importance in the smoking-room of the hotel. These are all
typical, and interesting. What, however, is clear on the question of
mere literary talent, is Stevenson’s ability to spin something out of
himself. He must be talking; and, if he has nothing of much moment to
say, there must follow some apt reflection, or a “tale of an old Scots
minister.”
Would that the ability, a very dangerous ability, had been shed as soon
as were some of Stevenson’s juvenile theories about the art of writing!
This particular ability remains very noticeably in his first full-size
travel-book, _An Inland Voyage_, along with another trait--his abnormal
consciousness of his own appearance in the eyes of other people.
Stevenson was always interested in that aspect of his personality: he
could not forget for a moment that his costume, his face, his manner,
all carried some impression to the beholder. It was a part of his
nature that he should see children upon the river bank, not merely as
children, but as an audience, a congregation of speculating souls busy
wondering about him, likening him among themselves to some particular
figure, interested in him. Nobody, I think, had ever failed to be
interested in him.
II
_An Inland Voyage_, on the whole, is a poor book. It records a canoeing
expedition made with a friend; and it is full of Puritanical obtuseness
and a strained vanity which interferes with the main narrative. Setting
out from Antwerp, the two friends paddled, often in the rain, and
sometimes--as in the case of Stevenson’s arrest, and his dangerous
accident with the fallen tree across the swollen Oise--in dire straits.
They travelled on the Sambre and down the Oise by Origny and Moy,
Noyon, Compiègne, and Précy; but the weather was bad, and there were
trying difficulties about lodgings; and Stevenson’s account reads as
though he had been chilled through and through, and as though he needed
nothing so much as his home. Almost invariably, in this book, his
little spurts of epigram and apophthegm suggest low spirits as well
as a sort of cautious experimentalism; and the book, which apparently
was very handsomely received by the Press on its publication, is eked
out with matter which, beneath the nervous delicacy of Stevenson’s
practising style, is raw and sometimes _banale_. In no other
travel-book is there shown such obvious effort. What emerges from
_An Inland Voyage_ is the charmingly natural behaviour on several
occasions of Stevenson’s companion, a proof even thus early of the
author’s ability to be aware of these traits in his friends which, on
the printed page, convey to the reader an impression of the person so
lightly sketched. This, however, is an exiguous interest in a book
supposed to be a picturesque work of travel and topography.