With the publication of _St. Ives_ the catalogue of Stevenson's
important writings has closed. In truth it closed several years
ago,--in 1891, to be exact,--when _Catriona_ was published. Nothing
which has appeared since that date can modify to any great extent the
best critical estimate of his novels. Neither _Weir of Hermiston_ nor
_St. Ives_ affects the matter. You may throw them into the scales with
his other works, and then you may take them out; beyond a mere
trembling the balance is not disturbed. But suppose you were to take
out _Kidnapped_, or _Treasure Island_, or _The Master of Ballantrae_,
the loss would be felt at once and seriously. And unless he has left
behind him, hidden away among his loose papers, some rare and perfect
sketch, some letter to posterity which shall be to his reputation what
Neil Paraday's lost novel in _The Death of the Lion_ might have been
to his, _St. Ives_ may be regarded as the epilogue.
Stevenson's death and the publication of this last effort of his fine
genius may tend to draw away a measure of public interest from that
type of novel which he, his imitators, and his rivals have so
abundantly produced. This may be the close of a 'period' such as we
read about in histories of literature.
If the truth be told, has not our generation had enough of duels,
hair-breadth escapes, post-chaises, and highwaymen, mysterious
strangers muffled in great-coats, and pistols which always miss fire
when they shouldn't? To say positively that we _have_ done with all
this might appear extravagant in the light of the popularity of
certain modern heroic novels. But it might not be too radical a view
if one were to maintain that these books are the expression of
something temporary and accidental, that they sustain a chronological
relation to modern literature rather than an essential one.
Matthew Arnold spoke of Heine as a sardonic smile on the face of the
Zeitgeist. Let us say that these modern stories in the heroic vein are
a mere heightening of color on the cheeks of that interesting young
lady, the Genius of the modern novel--a heightening of color _on_ the
cheeks, for the color comes from without and not from within. It is a
matter of no moment. Artificial red does no harm for once, and looks
well under gaslight.
These novels of adventure which we buy so cheerfully, read with such
pleasure, and make such a good-natured fuss over, are for the greater
part an expression of something altogether foreign to the deeper
spirit of modern fiction. Surely the true modern novel is the one
which reflects the life of to-day. And life to-day is easy, familiar,
rich in material comforts, and on the whole without painfully striking
contrasts and thrilling episodes. People have enough to eat,
reasonable liberty, and a degree of patience with one another which
suggests indifference. A man may shout aloud in the market-place the
most revolutionary opinions, and hardly be taken to task for it; and
then on the other hand we have got our rulers pretty well under
control. This paragraph, however, is not the peroration of a eulogy
upon 'our unrivaled happiness.' It attempts merely to lay stress on
such facts as these, that it is not now possible to hang a clergyman
of the Church of England for forgery, as was done in 1777; that a man
may not be deprived of the custody of his own children because he
holds heterodox religious opinions, as happened in 1816. There is
widespread toleration; and civilization in the sense in which Ruskin
uses the word has much increased. Now it is possible for a Jew to
become Prime Minister, and for a Roman Catholic to become England's
Poet Laureate.
If, then, life is familiar, comfortable, unrestrained, and easy, as it
certainly seems to be, how are we to account for the rise of this
semihistoric, heroic literature? It is almost grotesque, the contrast
between the books themselves and the manner in which they are
produced. One may picture the incongruous elements of the
situation,--a young society man going up to his suite in a handsome
modern apartment house, and dictating romance to a type-writer. In the
evening he dines at his club, and the day after the happy launching of
his novel he is interviewed by the representative of a newspaper
syndicate, to whom he explains his literary method, while the
interviewer makes a note of his dress and a comment on the decoration
of his mantelpiece.
Surely romance written in this way--and we have not grossly
exaggerated the way--bears no relation to modern literature other than
a chronological one. _The Prisoner of Zenda_ and _A Gentleman of
France_, to mention two happy and pleasing examples of this type of
novel, are not modern in the sense that they express any deep feeling
or any vital characteristic of to-day. They are not instinct with the
spirit of the times. One might say that these stories represent the
novel in its theatrical mood. It is the novel masquerading. Just as a
respectable bookkeeper likes to go into private theatricals, wear a
wig with curls, a slouch hat with ostrich feathers, a sword and
ruffles, and play a part to tear a cat in, so does the novel like to
do the same. The day after the performance the whole artificial
equipment drops away and disappears. The bookkeeper becomes a
bookkeeper once more and a natural man. The hour before the footlights
has done him no harm. True, he forgot his lines at one place, but what
is a prompter for if not to act in such an emergency? Now that it is
over the affair may be pronounced a success,--particularly in the
light of the gratifying statement that a clear profit has been
realized towards paying for the new organ.
This is a not unfair comparison of the part played by these books in
modern fiction. The public likes them, buys them, reads them; and
there is no reason why the public should not. In proportion to the
demand for color, action, posturing, and excessive gesticulation,
these books have a financial success; in proportion to the
conscientiousness of the artist who creates them they have a literary
vitality. But they bear to the actual modern novel a relation not
unlike that which _The Castle of Otranto_ bears to _Tom
Jones_,--making allowance of course for the chronological discrepancy.
From one point the heroic novel is a protest against the commonplace
and stupid elements of modern life. According to Mr. Frederic Harrison
there is no romance left in us. Life is stale and flat; yet even Mr.
Harrison would hardly go to the length of declaring that it is also
commercially unprofitable. The artificial apartment-house romance is
one expression of the revolt against the duller elements in our
civilization; and as has often been pointed out, the novel of
psychological horrors is another expression.
There are a few men, however, whose work is not accounted for by
saying that they love theatrical pomp and glitter for its own sake, or
that they write fiction as a protest against the times in which they
live. Stevenson was of this number. He was an adventurer by
inheritance and by practice. He came of a race of adventurers,
adventurers who built lighthouses and fought with that bold outlaw,
the Sea. He himself honestly loved, and in a measure lived, a wild
life. There is no truer touch of nature than in the scene where St.
Ives tells the boy Rowley that he is a hunted fugitive with a price
set upon his head, and then enjoys the tragic astonishment depicted in
the lad's face.
Rowley 'had a high sense of romance and a secret cultus for all
soldiers and criminals. His traveling library consisted of a chap-book
life of Wallace, and some sixpenny parts of the Old Bailey Sessions
Papers; ... and the choice depicts his character to a hair. You can
imagine how his new prospects brightened on a boy of this disposition.
To be the servant and companion of a fugitive, a soldier, and a
murderer rolled in one--to live by stratagems, disguises, and false
names, in an atmosphere of midnight and mystery so thick that you
could cut it with a knife--was really, I believe, more dear to him
than his meals, though he was a great trencher-man and something of a
glutton besides. For myself, as the peg by which all this romantic
business hung, I was simply idolized from that moment; and he would
rather have sacrificed his hand than surrendered the privilege of
serving me.'
One can believe that Stevenson was a boy with tastes and ambitions
like Rowley. But for that matter Rowley stands for universal
boy-nature.
Criticism of _St. Ives_ becomes both easy and difficult by reason of
the fact that we know so much about the book from the author's point
of view. He wrote it in trying circumstances, and never completed it;
the last six chapters are from the pen of a practiced story-teller,
who follows the author's known scheme of events. Stevenson was almost
too severe in his comment upon his book. He says of _St. Ives_:--
'It is a mere tissue of adventures; the central figure not very well
or very sharply drawn; no philosophy, no destiny, to it; some of the
happenings very good in themselves, I believe, but none of them
_bildende_, none of them constructive, except in so far perhaps as
they make up a kind of sham picture of the time, all in italics, and
all out of drawing. Here and there, I think, it is well written; and
here and there it's not.... If it has a merit to it, I should say it
was a sort of deliberation and swing to the style, which seems to me
to suit the mail-coaches and post-chaises with which it sounds all
through. 'Tis my most prosaic book.'
One must remember that this is epistolary self-criticism, and that it
is hardly to be looked upon in the nature of an 'advance notice.'
Still more confidential and epistolary is the humorous and reckless
affirmation that _St. Ives_ is 'a rudderless hulk.' 'It's a pagoda,'
says Stevenson in a letter dated September, 1894, 'and you can just
feel--or I can feel--that it might have been a pleasant story if it
had only been blessed at baptism.'
He had to rewrite portions of it in consequence of having received
what Dr. Johnson would have called 'a large accession of new ideas.'
The ideas were historical. The first five chapters describe the
experiences of French prisoners of war in Edinburgh Castle. St. Ives
was the only 'gentleman' among them, the only man with ancestors and a
right to the 'particle.' He suffered less from ill treatment than from
the sense of being made ridiculous. The prisoners were dressed in
uniform,--'jacket, waistcoat, and trousers of a sulphur or mustard
yellow, and a shirt of blue-and-white striped cotton.' St. Ives
thought that 'some malignant genius had found his masterpiece of irony
in that dress.' So much is made of this point that one reads with
unusual interest the letter in which Stevenson bewails his 'miserable
luck' with _St. Ives_; for he was halfway through it when a book,
which he had ordered six months before, arrived, upsetting all his
previous notions of how the prisoners were cared for. Now he must
change the thing from top to bottom. 'How could I have dreamed the
French prisoners were watched over like a female charity school, kept
in a grotesque livery, and shaved twice a week?' All his points had
been made on the idea that they were 'unshaved and clothed anyhow.' He
welcomes the new matter, however, in spite of the labor it entails.
And it is easy to see how he has enriched the earlier chapters by
accentuating St. Ives's disgust and mortification over his hideous
dress and stubby chin.
The book has a light-hearted note, as a romance of the road should
have. The events take place in 1813; they might have occurred fifty or
seventy-five years earlier. For the book lacks that convincing
something which fastens a story immovably within certain chronological
limits. It is the effect which Thomas Hardy has so wonderfully
produced in that little tale describing Napoleon's night-time visit to
the coast of England; the effect which Stevenson himself was equally
happy in making when he wrote the piece called _A Lodging for a
Night_.
_St. Ives_ has plenty of good romantic stuff in it, though on the
whole it is romance of the conventional sort. It is too well bred, let
us say too observant of the forms and customs which one has learned to
expect in a novel of the road. There is an escape from the castle in
the sixth chapter, a flight in the darkness towards the cottage of the
lady-love in the seventh chapter, an appeal to the generosity of the
lady-love's aunt, a dragon with gold-rimmed eyeglasses, in the ninth
chapter. And so on. We would not imply that all this is lacking in
distinction, but it seems to want that high distinction which
Stevenson could give to his work. Ought one to look for it in a book
confessedly unsatisfactory to its author, and a book which was left
incomplete?
There is a pretty account of the first meeting between St. Ives and
Flora. One naturally compares it with the scene in which David Balfour
describes his sensations and emotions when the spell of Catriona's
beauty came upon him. Says David:--
'There is no greater wonder than the way the face of a young woman
fits in a man's mind and stays there, and he could never tell you why;
it just seems it was the thing he wanted.'
This is quite perfect, and in admirable keeping with the genuine
simplicity of David's character:--
'She had wonderful bright eyes like stars; ... and whatever was the
cause, I stood there staring like a fool.'
This is more concise than St. Ives's description of Flora; but St.
Ives was a man of the world who had read books, and knew how to
compare the young Scotch beauty to Diana:--
'As I saw her standing, her lips parted, a divine trouble in her eyes,
I could have clapped my hands in applause, and was ready to acclaim
her a genuine daughter of the winds.'
The account of the meeting with Walter Scott and his daughter on the
moors does not have the touch of reality in it that one would like.
Here was an opportunity, however, of the author's own making.
There are flashes of humor, as when St. Ives found himself locked in
the poultry-house 'alone with half a dozen sitting hens. In the
twilight of the place all fixed their eyes on me severely, and seemed
to upbraid me with some crying impropriety.'
There are sentences in which, after Stevenson's own manner, real
insight is combined with felicitous expression. St. Ives is commenting
upon the fact that he has done a thing which most men learned in the
wisdom of this world would have pronounced absurd; he has 'made a
confidant of a boy in his teens and positively smelling of the
nursery.' But he has no cause to repent it. 'There is none so apt as a
boy to be the adviser of any man in difficulties like mine. To the
beginnings of virile common sense he adds the last lights of the
child's imagination.'
Men have been known to thank God when certain authors died,--not
because they bore the slightest personal ill-will, but because they
knew that as long as the authors lived nothing could prevent them from
writing. In thinking of Stevenson, however, one cannot tell whether he
experiences the more a feeling of personal or of literary loss,
whether he laments chiefly the man or the author. It is not possible
to separate the various cords of love, admiration, and gratitude which
bind us to this man. He had a multitude of friends. He appealed to a
wider audience than he knew. He himself said that he was read by
journalists, by his fellow novelists, and by boys. Envious admiration
might prompt a less successful writer to exclaim, 'Well, isn't that
enough?' No, for to be truly blest one must have women among one's
readers. And there are elect ladies not a few who know Stevenson's
novels; yet it is a question whether he has reached the great mass of
female novel-readers. Certainly he is not well known in that circle of
fashionable maidens and young matrons which justly prides itself upon
an acquaintance with Van Bibber. And we can hardly think he is a
familiar name to that vast and not fashionable constituency which
battens upon the romances of Marie Corelli under the impression that
it is perusing literature, while he offers no comfort whatever to that
type of reader who prefers that a novel shall be filled with hard
thinking, with social riddles, theological problems, and 'sexual
theorems.' Stevenson was happy with his journalists and boys. Among
all modern British men of letters he was in many ways the most highly
blest; and his career was entirely picturesque and interesting. Other
men have been more talked about, but the one thing which he did not
lack was discriminating praise from those who sit in high critical
places.
He was prosperous, too, though not grossly prosperous. It is no new
fact that the sales of his books were small in proportion to the
magnitude of his contemporary fame. People praised him tremendously,
but paid their dollars for entertainment of another quality than that
supplied by his fine gifts. _An Inland Voyage_ has never been as
popular as _Three Men in a Boat_, nor _Treasure Island_ and
_Kidnapped_ as _King Solomon's Mines_; while _The Black Arrow_, which
Mr. Lang does not like, and Professor Saintsbury insists is 'a
wonderfully good story,' has not met a wide public favor at all.
_Travels with a Donkey_, which came out in 1879, had only reached its
sixth English edition in 1887. Perhaps that is good for a book so
entirely virtuous in a literary way, but it was not a success to keep
a man awake nights.
We have been told that it is wrong to admire _Jekyll and Hyde_, that
the story is 'coarse,' an 'outrage upon the grand allegories of the
same motive,' and several other things; nay, it is even hinted that
this popular tale is evidence of a morbid strain in the author's
nature. Rather than dispute the point it is a temptation to urge upon
the critic that he is not radical enough, for in Stevenson's opinion
all literature might be only a 'morbid secretion.'
The critics, however, agree in allowing us to admire without stint
those smaller works in which his characteristic gifts displayed
themselves at the best. _Thrawn Janet_ is one of these, and the story
of Tod Lapraik, told by Andie Dale in _Catriona_, is another.
Stevenson himself declared that if he had never written anything
except these two stories he would still have been a writer. We hope
that there would be votes cast for _Will o' the Mill_, which is a
lovely bit of literary workmanship. And there are a dozen besides
these.
He was an artist of undoubted gifts, but he was an artist in small
literary forms. His longest good novels are after all little books.
When he attempted a large canvas he seemed not perfectly in command of
his materials, though he could use those materials as they could have
been used by no other artist. There is nothing in his books akin to
that broad and massive treatment which may be felt in a novel like
_Rhoda Fleming_ or in a tragedy like _Tess of the D'Urbervilles_.
Andrew Lang was right when he said of Stevenson: He is a 'Little
Master,' but of the Little Masters the most perfect and delightful.