the significance of a man’s work, or in appreciating the bent of his
mind; and then, having grasped or appreciated, if one could convey the
results with any precision, the book would have a significance beyond
that of literary criticism. Having “drawed a man,” as Stevenson once
did, one might indeed go on to “draw his soul,” as Stevenson only
offered to do. And the consequence might be that one would throw some
light upon that difficult problem--the psychology of genius. For we
may seek deliberately now, or, if deliberateness seem too dryasdust,
we may seek intuitively, to understand the way in which such a man
as Stevenson grew up to be a successful writer, and the aspects in
which the art of writing appeared to at least one of its exponents. I
have tried here and there in this book to indicate something of the
spirit in which Stevenson approached his art, and I have tried also to
suggest what I regard as the particular strengths and shortcomings of
Stevenson’s talent. But however one may interpret the work of a writer
there must always be the danger that in pursuing an examination such
as this one may be missing the very significance of which one is in
search. At best, one can offer only tentatively the conclusions to be
drawn from the results of such an examination.
Much has been written of Stevenson’s indebtedness in early days to
other writers. He has committed himself to the suggestion that he
coveted the power of writing before he was aware of anything that he
particularly wished to write. For the purpose of learning to write,
he claims to have imitated a dozen different authors, assiduously
practising until he had obtained a mastery over words. My own
impression, which I have given earlier, is that Stevenson’s _sense_ of
style was developed by the histrionic gifts of his nurse. That seems at
least probable. I think that with a sense of style, a habit of spinning
tales (which it appears that he possessed, in common with many people
with no pretensions to literary skill), and a desire to write that was
keen enough to be a hunger, Stevenson is a credible figure of youth.
There must be many youths who get so far and go no further. The point
about Stevenson is that he went on. But he went on as he began--as
a writer, one who was determined to utilise words. Wherever he went
he took the little notebook of which he has given an account; and he
made the attempt to put everything he saw into words which expressed
it exactly. The reader will find in early essays many curiously apt
descriptions of natural phenomena--such, for example, as “the faint
and choking odour of frost”--which show that when once Stevenson began
to write away from the model he began also to observe consciously and
to reproduce his sensations with what would nowadays be called “a
photographic accuracy.” I have already quoted two such accuracies from
_Treasure Island_, where they are very effective; but it would be hard
to stop quoting Stevenson if one wished to record apt phrases, for apt
phrases are as common with Stevenson as leaves on a tree.
What the reader next proceeds to question is the matter which the
writing is used to convey. Until we come to such an essay as _Ordered
South_, I believe there is very little life in this matter. In
_Roads_ there is a little weak vanity, as of fancy paralysed by
self-consciousness, such as one may often see in the work of very young
writers; but there seems no doubt that, by 1874, a year after the
composition of _Roads_, Stevenson had reached a degree of proficiency
which, given a suitable subject, enabled him to escape the flaccidity
which besets a young writer. Poverty of matter, which forces him back
upon incident or upon thin moralising, is, throughout, a defect of
Stevenson’s writing. I suppose that the method by which he worked
was too “near,” too self-conscious, to allow his mind ever to become
rich and fallow. He was using up his experience too immediately and
too continuously as literary material for any very great richness
to mature. He is never, that is to say, a rich writer: whatever
compression there is in his work is the compression that comes of the
excised word and the concentrated phrase rather than the pregnancy of
thought, whether vigorous or abstruse. It must be remembered that,
wherever he went, his journey or his place of residence provided him
almost at once with a practicable background for literary work of some
sort. His travel-books, his stories--these all show immediately the
stage of his life’s journey to which they belong.
That is one thing. Another is that his writing is very clear. It is
a model in its freedom from ambiguities. If clarity is a virtue in
writing, as I believe it to be, then Stevenson deserves praise for
most admirable clarity. There is no difficulty of style. It is easy to
read, because it has so much grace; but it is also easy to understand,
because it is in a high degree explicit. It is essentially a prose
style; as I think Stevenson was essentially a prose-writer. His poems
have this same clearness (though surely he was never a master of poetic
form to the extent to which he was a master of prose), and clearness in
poetry is a less notable virtue than clearness in prose. Unless poetry
expresses something that could not properly be expressed in prose it
clearly has no claim upon our attention. The consequence of this is
that Stevenson, who wrote very capable verses, does not impress us as
a poet. Even in this respect, however, his clearness has its virtue;
because the mark of the ostentatiously minor poet is obscurity of
diction. Stevenson was not obscure in diction, and he was not obscure
in thought, as so many writers with little to say are obscure. He went,
in fact, to the other extreme. His poems are too explicit to be good
poems. They are the poems of a man with all his wits about him; they
are the poems of a man who always had his wits about him. I will go
so far as to say that a man who always, in this common but expressive
phrase, has his wits about him is never within measurable distance of
being a poet.
If Stevenson’s habitual attitude of mind be then examined it will prove
to be directly opposed to the habit of mind of the poet. He was about
as poetic as a robin. But his habit of mind (unlike that of the robin)
was moral as well as practical. It was not philosophical; nor would one
willingly use in this connection the word spiritual. It was moral and
practical; it was fundamentally a prose habit of mind. The highest and
the lowest were alike strange to Stevenson’s mind; it had excellent
equipoise, an admirable sanity. It had not, normally, a very wide range
of sympathy or interest. I have explained this--or rather, I have
tried to explain it--to some extent in earlier chapters; but in this
place an explanation may be more clearly offered. Stevenson, we know,
was an invalid; his vitality was poor, although the poverty of his
vitality was partly concealed by a buoyancy of nervous high spirits.
The tendency of all natures is to adjust the indulgence of emotion
to the power of withstanding the reaction from such emotion. Highly
emotional natures, unless they are morbid, seek instinctively to avoid
the exhaustion which overstrained emotion produces. Delicate persons
instinctively avoid mental exertion--not from lack of courage, or even
from lack of intellectual strength; but purely from lassitude and the
dread of lassitude. They do not essay long or vehement excursions from
their base of common-sense; they must always be able to return the
same night. That is because sustained imaginative effort, as well as
poignant emotion, is instinctively recognised as dangerous. It is not
that they lack the power to imagine or to feel deeply; it is simply
that, as a measure for their own protection, they rely upon the virtues
which are less intense and less exacting. They grow cautious. Stevenson
was cautious. To him God was a kindly, well-intentioned person of
infinite mercy; but He was not a terrible God, nor a God in Whom there
was any mystery. If one had used the word “mystery” to Stevenson he
would have thought inevitably of Gaboriau. I should explain that by
suggesting--not that Stevenson was what is called “unimaginative,” but
that his delicate body provoked the compromise. Otherwise he might have
been a fanatic. Perhaps I am wrong; perhaps there was simply nothing of
the mystic in Stevenson, and perhaps there was nothing of the mystic
in Alison Cunningham. It is true that Stevenson’s early wrestlings with
religious difficulties seem to have led him to conclusions strictly
utilitarian, by which Christianity became a “body of doctrine” rather
than a cloud of witnesses. Nevertheless, I am disposed to think that
his apparent failure to apprehend any faith more exacting than a lucid
morality or ethical code was caused throughout by physical weakness.
The point is interesting rather than conclusive; and it may be thought
that Stevenson’s attitude to his art tells strongly against my
hypothesis. He was essentially technical in his attitude to style and
to art in general. He did not regard writing as a means of expressing
truths; he seems to have regarded it as an end in itself. He does not
seem to consider the notion of writing to express an idea; his impulse
is to gather together as many incidents as will make a book. It is
easy, of course, to take an unsophisticated view of art, and pretend
that the artist invariably works with the aid of an inner light. I
do not wish to pretend that the artist is such a mere instrument;
particularly as the writer who claims to be no more than a medium
is generally no less than a charlatan. But I cannot help remarking
how entirely absent from any declaration by Stevenson is the sense
of an artist’s profound disinterested imagining. So far from being
profoundly disinterested, he seems to have followed here the custom he
admits following in childhood, that of reading and watching everything
for the sake of wrinkles subsequently to be used in play. It seems
as though he took imaginative writing at its lowest valuation, as so
much “fake,” as so much invention very ingeniously contrived but never
really, in the last resort, perfectly believed by the creator--as, in
fact, something “pretended.” Now Stevenson’s practice, in that case,
is better than his theory. Scenes in his romances, and some of his
short stories in bulk, are the work of an artist who was working at
the bidding of his inspiration. Stevenson did, at these times, believe
as an artist in the work he was making. I can give no account of the
artist’s state of mind; but it is quite certain that Stevenson did not
“pretend” his best work, and that no artist “pretends” his best work.
An artist can distinguish between that part of his work which is the
result of intense belief and that part which is agnostic. Stevenson
seems not to have been so sure; for his aims, whether they are at
“vitality” or at the death of the optic nerve and the adjective,
suggest that he invariably adopted the attitude of the craftsman, the
professional writer of novels for popular consumption. Even so, he is
to be applauded for his freedom from artistic cant. If he is too intent
upon rattling the bones, at least that is more candid than the habit of
playing the priest.
II
From this question of Stevenson’s conviction, however (the question
of the inevitable as opposed to the practicable), arises a further
question. I have said earlier that in the case of a work of art there
is left with the reader some abiding emotion, an evocation, as it were,
of emotion distinct from all incidental emotions, excitements, dreads,
or anxieties aroused in the course of the book. In that pervading and
prevailing emotion, it seems to me, lies the particular quality which
distinguishes a work of art from a work of merely consummate craft.
If I question whether such abiding emotion is evoked by the longer
stories of Stevenson, I am bound to answer that these do not arouse
in me any emotion greater than that of interest, the consequence of
a succession of pleasant excitements. The romances as a whole have
great ingenuity, many scenes to which all readers must look back with
recollected enjoyment. In no case does the book reappear as a whole.
The recollection is a recollection of “plums.” That they are good plums
does not affect the validity of the argument if once the specific test
suggested above is accepted. In the case of _Weir of Hermiston_ the
recollection is obviously difficult, because the book is a fragment: it
is, however, perfectly clear and level in performance, which leads to
the supposition that _Weir_, as it stands, will actually bear whatever
test is applied to it. For that reason _Weir_ is truly regarded as
Stevenson’s masterpiece among the longer stories.
With the short stories I have already dealt in considerable detail;
to the remaining creative works there is no need to refer on these
grounds, for the plays are admittedly poor. And indeed, I should
not have raised the question about the romances if it had not been
the case that very considerable claims have been made on behalf
of the permanent value of Stevenson’s work by many writers whose
opinions ordinarily command respect. The truth is probably that all
good novels, of whatever kind, whether modern or historical, must
be based upon idea and upon character. To Stevenson, character was
incidental. To Stevenson incident, picturesque or exciting, and the
employment of an atmosphere, or appropriate “style,” were the most
important things in romance. That was perhaps the grave mistake which
made his romances what they are, and which has very considerably
affected the romantic novels published since Stevenson’s time and
written in accordance with his conventions. The use of conventional
characters, easily-recognisable romantic types, has for twenty years
and more been accepted by English romantic novelists as a legitimate
evasion of the need for creating character. Thus it happens that so
few modern romantic novels have at this time any standing. Their
names are forgotten (except, possibly, by their authors, and by some
sections of the public only if the novels have been made into stage
plays). If Stevenson’s romances had enjoyed the strength of definite
themes, and if they had been based upon character, the whole position
of the romantic novel in England at the present day might have been
different. As it is, the romantic novel is a survival. The freshness
of Stevenson’s manipulated convention is stale, and the imitators of
Stevenson have forsaken romance for the writing of detective mystery
stories. They still have popularity; but they have no status.
III
But it may be urged that Stevenson saved his ideas for that more direct
appeal to readers which is the special privilege of the essay. Now the
point in this case is to be reached by the inquiry as to what ideas
Stevenson expressed in his essays. They are very simple. Stevenson’s
essays are either fanciful treatments of pleasant, or attractive, or
ingenious notions; or they are frankly homiletic. Stevenson loved
courage, and he thought that courage should have trappings. To his
mind the bravest actions were the better for a bit of purple. But when
we penetrate beyond this crust of happy truism there is little that
will reward us for the search. There is no thought, and little enough
feeling in the essays: their charm lies in the fact that they dress
prettily, and sometimes beautifully, the rather obvious philosophical
small-change which most people cherish as their private wisdom. The
essays flatter the reader by mirroring his own mind and giving it an
odd twist of grace. They are shrewd mother-wit, dressed for a fairing.
That is what causes the popularity of the essays--that and the air they
have of “looking on the bright side of things.” They do look on the
bright side; they are homely, cheerful, charming; they will continue
to adorn the bookshelf with a pretty, pale, bedside cheerfulness which
will delight all whose culture exceeds their originality. But I believe
that they have ceased to be regarded (it has almost become ridiculous
that they should ever have been regarded) as comparable with the essays
of Montaigne, or Hazlitt, or Lamb; because their day is sinking and
their fragility is seen already to indicate a want of robustness rather
than a delicacy of perception. By this I do not mean to suggest that
already the essays are out of date: they are only out of date in some
instances, and even if they were completely out of date that fact would
not have much ultimate critical significance. What is, however, very
significant, is that they have ceased to stand as essays, and have
become goods for the monger of phrases. Their “aptness,” which of old
was the charm that dignified the trite moralism, has recoiled upon
them: they are seen to be mere aggregations of “happy thoughts,” fit to
be culled and calendared for suburban households. It is not without its
pathos that one warning against too-eager judgment of weaker brethren,
really written by an American woman poet, is widely and steadfastly
attributed to Stevenson by his greatest admirers. For the teaching of
the essays is one of compromise, not of enlarged ideals; it is the
doctrine of “that state of life” which finally ends in a good-natured
passivity not unlike the happy innocence of the domesticated cat.
Thus, for all his powerful desire to preach, Stevenson taught nothing
but a bland acquiescence; for the field of battle to which he likened
marriage as well as life was a field in which there was no headstrong
conflict of ideal and practice, but a mere accommodation which a phrase
could embody.
IV
There seems to be a general tendency to protest against such opinions,
not because the opinions are adequately countered, but because in most
readers Stevenson produces a vague doting which is entirely uncritical.
Stevenson in such warm hearts is incomparable; and a question is a
perceptible rebuff to their confidingness. The prevailing feeling
appears to be one of affectionate admiration, a matter of personal
attraction rather than of critical esteem. Such a claim in any man
is very far from being negligible. It is clear that the need of most
people is an object of affection. They must love, or they cannot
appreciate. The modern school of novelists, which tries to be very
stern and almost legally unjust, provides little enough material for
the loving hearts. The modern school says to its readers: “You are
wicked, selfish, diseased, but horribly fascinating, and I’m going
to set you right by diagnosis”; and the reader feels a sting in the
fascination. Stevenson says, “We are all mighty fine fellows; and life
is a field of battle; but it is better to be a fool than to be dead;
and the true success is to labour”; and the reader feels that Stevenson
is One of Us! He is not, that is to say, austere; he does not ask
uncomfortable questions; he makes no claim upon his readers’ judgment,
but only upon their self-esteem and their gratified assent. He even
tells them about himself. He says, “I knew a little boy”; and his
readers say: “It’s himself!” They read with enormous satisfaction.
Well, all that is delightful; but in its way it is a red-herring. It
does not help us to assay the literary value of Stevenson’s work.
It is simply a wide illustration of the fascination which Stevenson
had for his friends. It is an extension of that rare thing, personal
charm. We may say that it ought not to influence readers; and no doubt
it influences some too-critical readers adversely (criticism being
understood by all admirers of Stevenson as the merest corrosion); but
the fact is that it cannot be ignored by anyone who seeks to account
for Stevenson’s continued, and even now barely declining, popularity.
Another very good reason is that Stevenson had extraordinarily good
friends. I think it probable that no writer ever had friends more loyal
and affectionate. They criticised his work privately to its great
improvement, and then sold his work when it was completed, acting as
counsellors and agents. And this was done with the same affectionate
admiration which readers of his work still feel. He had few intimate
friends, says Mrs. Stevenson: if friendship consisted in affection
received (as distinguished from affection exchanged), I think Stevenson
would have been in friends the richest man of his own generation. And
since his death he has found a hundred thousand friends for every one
he had during his lifetime. No man was ever richer in well-wishers. If
he had few intimate friends that was because he was naturally reserved,
or, as Mrs. Strong says, “secretive.” No doubt it was a part of his
charm that his friends were mystified by his reserve: I do not see why
his readers also should be mystified, for his writing is free of any
mystery. I can only assume that a slight air of sentimentalism which
runs through essays and romances alike, and over into such short
stories as _Will o’ the Mill_ and _Markheim_, combines with the thin
optimism of the essays and the picturesque variety of incident of
the romances to give body to this charm. I have stated in an earlier
chapter the features of the romances which seem to me to be merits: it
is not necessary to repeat the merits here. They include occasional
pieces of distinguished imagination, a frequent exuberance of fancy,
and a great freshness of incident which conceals lack of central
or unifying idea and poverty of imagined character. Intrinsically,
although their literary quality is much higher, the romances--with the
possible exception of _Kidnapped_--are inferior to the work of Captain
Marryat.
V