STEVENSON
It is too early yet to be sure that Robert Louis Stevenson will
make a more cogent appeal for a place in English letters as a
writer of fiction than as an essayist. But had he never written
essays likely to rank him with the few masters of that
delightful fireside form, he would still have an indisputable
claim as novelist. The claim in fact is a double one; it is
founded, first, on his art and power as a maker of romance, but
also upon his historical service to English fiction, as the man
most instrumental in purifying the muddy current of realism in
the late nineteenth century by a wholesome infusion,--the
romantic view of life. It is already easier to estimate his
importance and get the significance of his work than it was when
he died in 1894--stricken down on the piazza of his house at
Vailima, a Scotchman doomed to fall in a far-away, alien place.
We are better able now to separate that personal charm felt from
direct contact with the man, which almost hypnotized those who
knew him, from the more abiding charm which is in his writings:
the revelation of a character the most attractive of his
generation. Rarely, if ever before, have the qualities of
artistry and fraternal fellowship been united in a man of
letters to such a degree; most often they are found apart, the
gods choosing to award their favors less lavishly.
Because of this union of art and life, Stevenson's romances
killed two birds with one stone; boys loved his
adventuresomeness, the wholesome sensationalism of his stories
with something doing on every page, while amateurs of art
responded to his felicity of phrase, his finished technique, the
exhibition of craftsmanship conquering difficulty and danger.
Artist, lover of life, insistent truth-teller, Calvinist,
Bohemian, believer in joy, all these cohabit in his hooks. In
early masterpieces like "Treasure Island" and "The Wrecker" it
is the lover of life who conducts us, telling the story for
story's sake:
"My mistress still the open road
And the bright eyes of danger."
Such is the goddess that beckons on. The creed implicit in such
work deems that life is stirring and worth while, and that it is
a weakness to repine and waste time, to be too subjective when
so much on earth is objectively alluring. This is only a part of
Stevenson, of course, but it was that phase of him vastly liked
of the public and doubtless doing most to give him vogue.
But in later work like "Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde" we get quite
another thing: the skilled story-maker is still giving us
thrilling fiction, to be sure, but here it is the Scotchman of
acute conscience, writing a spiritual allegory with the healthy
instinct which insists that the lesson shall be dramatized. So,
too, in a late fiction like "Ebb Tide," apparently as picaresque
and harum-scarum as "Treasure Island," it is nevertheless the
moralist who is at work beneath the brilliantly picturesque
surface of the narrative, contrasting types subtly, showing the
gradings in moral disintegration. In the past-mastership of the
finest Scotch novels, "Kidnapped" and its sequel "David
Balfour," "The Master of Ballantrae" and the beautiful torso,
"Weir of Hermiston," we get the psychologic romance, which means
a shift of interest;--character comes first, story is secondary
to it. Here is the maturest Stevenson, the fiction most
expressive of his genius, and naturally the inspiration is
native, he looks back, as he so often did in his poetry, to the
distant gray little island which was Motherland to him, home of
his youth and of his kindred, the earth where he was fain to lie
when his time came. Stevenson, to the end, could always return
to sheer story, as in "St. Ives," but in doing so, is a little
below his best: that kind did not call on his complete powers:
in such fiction deep did not answer unto deep.
In 1883, when "Treasure Island" appeared, the public was gasping
for the oxygen that a story with outdoor movement and action
could supply: there was enough and to spare of invertebrate
subtleties, strained metaphysics and coarse naturalistic
studies. A sublimated dime novel like "Treasure Island" came at
the psychologic moment; the year before "The New Arabian Nights"
had offered the same sort of pabulum, but had been practically
overlooked. Readers were only too glad to turn from people with
a past to people of the past, or to people of the present whose
ways were ways of pleasantness. Stevenson substituted a lively,
normal interest in life for plotlessness and a surfeit of the
flesh. The public rose to the bait as the trout to a
particularly inviting fly. Once more reverting to the good old
appeal of Scott--incident, action and derring-do--he added the
attraction of his personal touch, and what was so gallantly
preferred was greedily grasped.
Although, as has been said, Stevenson passed from the primitive
romance of the Shilling Shocker to the romance of character, his
interest in character study was keen from the first: the most
plot-cunning and external of his yarns have that illuminative
exposure of human beings--in flashes at least--which mark him
off from the bluff, robust manner of a Dumas and lend an
attraction far greater than that of mere tangle of events. This
gets fullest expression in the Scotch romances.
"The Master of Ballantrae," for one illustration; the interplay
of motive and act as it affects a group of human beings is so
conducted that plot becomes a mere framework, within which we
are permitted to see a typical tragedy of kinship. This receives
curious corroboration in the fact that when, towards the close
of the story, the scene shifts to America and the main motive--the
unfolding of the fraternal fortunes of the tragic brothers,
is made minor to a series of gruesome adventures (however
entertaining and well done) the reader, even if uncritical, has
an uneasy sense of disharmony: and rightly, since the strict
character romance has changed to the romance of action.
It has been stated that the finer qualities of Stevenson are
called out by the psychological romance on native soil. He did
some brilliant and engaging work of foreign setting and motive.
"The Island Nights' Entertainments" is as good in its way as the
earlier "New Arabian Nights"--far superior to it, indeed, for
finesse and the deft command of exotic material. Judged as art,
"The Bottle Imp" and "The Beach of Falesa" are among the
triumphs of ethnic interpretation, let alone their more external
charms of story. And another masterpiece of foreign setting, "A
Lodging for The Night," is further proof of Stevenson's ability
to use other than Scotch motives for the materials of his art.
"Ebb-Tide," again, grim as it is, must always be singled out as
a marvel of tone and proportion, yet seems born out of an
existence utterly removed as to conditions and incentives from
the land of his birth. But when, in his own words:
"The tropics vanish, and meseems that I,
From Halkerside, from topmost Allermuir,
Or steep Caerketton, dreaming gaze again."
then, as if vitalized by mother-earth, Stevenson shows a
breadth, a vigor, a racy idiosyncrasy, that best justify a
comparison with Scott. It means a quality that is easier felt
than expressed; of the very warp and woof of his work. If the
elder novelist seems greater in scope, spontaneity and
substance, the younger surpasses him in the elegancies and
niceties of his art. And it is only a just recognition of the
difference of Time as well as of personality to say that the
psychology of Stevenson is far more profound and searching. Nor
may it be denied that Sir Walter nods, that there are flat,
uninteresting stretches in his heroic panorama, while of
Stevenson at the worst, we may confidently assert that he is
never tedious. He fails in the comparison if anywhere in
largeness of personality, not in the perfectness of the art of
his fiction. In the technical demands of his profession he is
never wanting. He always has a story to tell, tells it with the
skill which means constructive development and a sense of
situation; he creates characters who live, interest and do not
easily fade from memory: he has exceptional power in so filling
in backgrounds as to produce the illusion of atmosphere; and
finally, he has, whether in dialogue or description, a
wonderfully supple instrument of expression. If the style of his
essays is at times mannered, the charge can not be made against
his representative fiction: "Prince Otto" stands alone in this
respect, and that captivating, comparatively early romance,
confessedly written under the influence of Meredith, is a
delicious literary experiment rather than a deeply-felt piece of
life. Perhaps the central gift of all is that for character--is
it, in truth, not the central gift for any weaver of fiction? So
we thought in studying Dickens. Stevenson's creations wear the
habit of life, yet with more than life's grace of carriage; they
are seen picturesquely without, but also psychologically within.
In a marvelous portrayal like that of John Silver in "Treasure
Island" the result is a composite of what we see and what we
shudderingly guess: eye and mind are satisfied alike. Even in a
mere sketch, such as that of the blind beggar at the opening of
the same romance, with the tap-tap of his stick to announce his
coming, we get a remarkable example of effect secured by an
economy of details; that tap-tapping gets on your nerves, you
never forget it. It seems like the memory of a childhood terror
on the novelist's part. Throughout his fiction this chemic union
of fact and the higher fact that is of the imagination marks his
work. The smell of the heather is in our nostrils as we watch
Allan's flight, and looking on at the fight in the round-house,
there is a physical impression of the stuffiness of the place;
you smell as well as see it. Or for quite another key, take the
night duel in "The Master of Ballantrae." You cannot think of it
without feeling the bite of the bleak air; once more the twinkle
of the candles makes the scene flicker before you ere it vanish
into memory-land. Again, how you know that sea-coast site in the
opening of "The Pavilion on the Links"--shiver at the "sly
innuendoes of the place"! Think how much the map in "Treasure
Island" adds to the credibility of the thing. It is the
believableness of Stevenson's atmospheres that prepare the
reader for any marvels enacted in them. Gross, present-day,
matter-of-fact London makes Dr. Jekyll and his worser half of
flesh-and-blood credence. Few novelists of any race have beaten
this wandering Scot in the power of representing character and
envisaging it: and there can hardly be successful
characterization without this allied power of creating
atmosphere.
Nothing is falser than to find him imitative in his
representative work. There may be a suspicion of made-to-order
journalism in "The Black Arrow," and the exception of "Prince
Otto," which none the less we love for its gallant spirit and
smiling grace, has been noted. But of the Scotch romances
nothing farther from the truth could be said. They stand or fall
by themselves: they have no model--save that of sound art and a
normal conception of human life. Rarely does this man fall below
his own high level or fail to set his private remarque upon his
labor. It is in a way unfortunate that Stevenson, early in his
career, so frankly confessed to practising for his craft by the
use of the best models: it has led to the silly
misinterpretation which sees in all his literary effort nothing
but the skilful echo. Such judgments remind us that criticism,
which is intended to be a picture of another, is in reality a
picture of oneself. In his lehrjahre Stevenson "slogged at his
trade," beyond peradventure; but no man came to be more
individually and independently himself.
It has been spoken against him, too, that he could not draw
women: here again he is quoted in his own despite and we see the
possible disadvantage of a great writer's correspondence being
given to the world--though not for more worlds than one would we
miss the Letters. It is quite true that he is chary of
petticoats in his earlier work: but when he reached "David
Balfour" he drew an entrancing heroine; and the contrasted types
of young girl and middle-aged woman in "Weir of Hermiston" offer
eloquent testimonial to his increasing power in depicting the
Eternal Feminine. At the same time, it may be acknowledged that
the gallery of female portraits is not like Scott's for number
and variety, nor like Thackeray's for distinction and
charm--thick-hung with a delightful company whose eyes laugh level
with our own, or, above us on the wall, look down with a starry
challenge to our souls. But those whom Stevenson has hung there
are not to be coldly recalled.
Stevenson's work offers itself remarkably as a test for the
thought that all worthily modern romanticism must not lack in
reality, in true observation, for success in its most daring
flights. Gone forever is that abuse of the romantic which
substitutes effective lying for the vision which sees broadly
enough to find beauty. The latter-day realist will be found in
the end to have permanently contributed this, a welcome legacy
to our time, after its excesses and absurdities are forgotten.
Realism has taught romanticism to tell the truth, if it would
succeed. Stevenson is splendidly real, he loves to visualize
fact, to be true both to the appearances of things and the
thoughts of the mind. He is aware that life is more than food--that
it is a subjective state quite as much as an objective
reality. He refers to himself more than once, half humorously,
as a fellow whose forte lay in transcribing what was before him,
to be seen and felt, tasted and heard. This extremely modern
denotement was a marked feature of his genius, often overlooked.
He had a desire to know all manner of men; he had the noble
curiosity of Montaigne; this it was, along with his human
sympathy, that led him to rough it in emigrant voyages and
railroad trips across the plains. It was this characteristic,
unless I err, the lack of which in "Prince Otto" gives it a
certain rococo air: he was consciously fooling in it, and felt
the need of a solidly mundane footing. Truth to human nature in
general, and that lesser truth which means accurate photography--his
books give us both; the modern novelist, even a romancer
like Stevenson, is not permitted to slight a landscape, an idiom
nor a point of psychology: this one is never untrue to the
trust. There is in the very nature of his language a proof of
his strong hunger for the actual, the verifiable. No man of his
generation has quite such a grip on the vernacular: his speech
rejoices to disport itself in root flavors; the only younger
writer who equals him in this relish for reality of expression
is Kipling. Further back it reminds of Defoe or Swift, at their
best, Stevenson cannot abide the stock phrases with which most
of us make shift to express our thoughts instead of using first-hand
effects. There is, with all its music and suavity,
something of the masculinity of the Old English in the following
brief descriptive passage from "Ebb-Tide":
There was little or no morning bank. A brightening came in
the East; then a wash of some ineffable, faint, nameless
hue between crimson and silver; and then coals of fire.
These glimmered awhile on the sea line, and seemed to
brighten and darken and spread out; and still the night and
the stars reigned undisturbed. It was as though a spark
should catch and glow and creep along the foot of some
heavy and almost incombustible wall-hanging, and the room
itself be scarce menaced. Yet a little after, and the whole
East glowed with gold and scarlet, and the hollow of heaven
was filled with the daylight. The isle--the undiscovered,
the scarce believed in--now lay before them and close
aboard; and Herrick thought that never in his dreams had he
beheld anything more strange and delicate.
Stevenson's similes, instead of illustrating concrete things by
others less concrete, often reverse the process, as in the
following: "The isle at this hour, with its smooth floor of
sand, the pillared roof overhead and the pendant illumination of
the lamps, wore an air of unreality, like a deserted theater or
a public garden at midnight." Every image gets its foothold in
some tap-root of reality.
The place of Robert Louis Stevenson is not explained by
emphasizing the perfection of his technique. Artist he is, but
more: a vigorous modern mind with a definite and enheartening
view of things, a philosophy at once broad and convincing. He is
a psychologist intensely interested in the great questions--which,
of course, means the moral questions. Read the quaint
Fable in which two of the characters in "Treasure Island" hold
converse upon themselves, the story in which they participate
and the author who made them. It is as if Stevenson stood aside
a moment from the proper objectivity of the fictionist, to tell
us in his own person that all his story-making was but an
allegory of life, its joy, its mystery, its duty, its triumph
and its doom. Although he is too much the artist to intrude
philosophic comments upon human fate into his fiction, after the
fashion of Thackeray or Meredith, the comment is there, implicit
in his fiction, even as it is explicit in his essays, which are
for this reason a sort of complement of his fiction: a sort of
philosophical marginal note upon the stories. Stevenson was that
type of modern mind which, no longer finding it possible to hold
fast by the older, complacent cock-sureness with regard to the
theologian's heaven, is still unshaken in its conviction that
life is beneficent, the obligation of duty imperative, the
meaning of existence spiritual. Puzzlingly protean in his
expressional moods (his conversations in especial), he was
constant in this intellectual, or temperamental, attitude:
"Though He slay me, yet will I trust Him," represents his
feeling, and the strongest poem he ever wrote, "If This Were
Faith," voices his deepest conviction. Meanwhile, the
superficies of life offered a hundred consolations, a hundred
pleasures, and Stevenson would have his fellowmen enjoy them in
innocence, in kindness and good cheer. In fine, as a thinker he
was a modernized Calvinist; as an artist he saw life in terms of
action and pleasure, and by perfecting himself in the art of
communicating his view of life, he was able, in a term of years
all too short, to leave a series of books which, as we settle
down to them in the twentieth century, and try to judge them as
literature, have all the semblance of fine art. In any case,
they will have been influential in the shaping of English
fiction and will be referred to with respect by future
historians of literature. It is hard to believe that the
desiccation of Time will so dry them that they will not always
exhale a rich fragrance of personality, and tremble with a
convincing movement of life.