I
Stevenson himself establishes the fact that he found short-story writing easier than the writing of novels. “It is the length that kills,” he confessed. But length offered difficulties in the longer stories because Stevenson, besides lacking the physical endurance for continuous imaginative effort, had the experimental and inventive mind rather than the synthetic or the analytical. It was easier for him to see the whole of a short story. It could be compressed: it had not to be sustained. And in the writing of a short story his confidence never slackened. He was then not sailing in uncharted seas. It is for this reason, in the first place, that Stevenson’s short stories are better as works of art than his long ones. A little idea, a flash, it may be, of inspiration; and Stevenson had his story complete, ready for that scrupulous handling and manipulation which the actual composition always involved. He did not greatly deal in anecdote; his psychological studies are inclined to be hollow; but he was perfectly effective in his not very powerful vein of fantasy, could tell a fairy tale with distinction, succeeded once without question in picturesque drama, and, when he fell to anecdote, as in The Treasure of Franchard, Providence and the Guitar, and The Beach of Falesá, he was pleasantly triumphant. Moreover, in two of his “bogle” stories, the one inserted in Catriona, and the other famous to all the world as Thrawn Janet, he seems to me to have risen clearly above anecdote with matter which might have been left as unsatisfactory as it remains in The Body-Snatcher.
In one of his reviews Stevenson speaks of “that compression which is the mark of a really sovereign style.” Compression is no more the mark of a sovereign style, of course, than it is of a suit of clothes. Compression brings with it obscurity, and is a mark of self-consciousness. What Stevenson meant was possibly a justification of apophthegm and figure. He rather enjoyed what somebody once called “minting the arresting phrase.” There is, at any rate, a palpable connection between our two quotations. But it is certain that precision, austerity, or, if I may use the word, chastity, of expression is a sign of good style; and compression, where it takes the form of heightening and intensification of effect, is the mark of a good short story. It is the mark of Stevenson’s best stories. It is the mark of Thrawn Janet, of The Pavilion on the Links, of The Bottle Imp. Sometimes, after promising well, Stevenson abandons himself, it is true, to his natural Scottish aptitude, and literally “talks out” such tales as Markheim and A Lodging for the Night; but, quite as often, his judgment beats his inclination, and the result is a classic short story in a language not too brilliantly equipped with examples of the craft.
For the short story is above all a matter of justesse, by which word I mean to suggest delicate propriety of expression to idea. Mr. Henry James can tell a short story, because Mr. Henry James writes, as it were, with a very fine pen. Stevenson was not comparable as an artist with Mr. Henry James; but he wrote in a less rarified atmosphere; and it is still practically an unsettled question whether a distinguished artist (one who perfectly expresses a fine conception), such as Turgenev or Mr. Henry James, is the superior or the inferior of the writer with more tumultuous sympathies whose sense of form is less than his sense of life. So that when Stevenson wrote The Pavilion on the Links, or The Bottle Imp, or Thrawn Janet, or Markheim, he was writing particular stories of which only the last, one supposes, could ever have occurred to Mr. James as a subject for a short story at all. Conversely, one sees Stevenson blundering into the bluntnesses and certainly the ultimate failure of Olalla, with the knowledge that his delicacy of style was more marked than the poignancy of his perception; and the psychological explorations of Olalla are jejune stumblings compared with the finished delicacy of “Washington Square.” One does not think, in reading, of Mr. James; but one may perhaps be permitted to illustrate a point by a reference to his work, which has no precise significance as a parallel. That fact, I hope, will excuse a momentary comparison for the purpose of showing that Will o’ the Mill, for all its stylistic accomplishment, is a barren piece of moralising. Where Stevenson essayed profundity, as all writers are drawn to essay profundity, whether it is from natural profoundness or from the instinct of imitation, he was badly hampered by his inexperience as an inductive philosopher. Both Will o’ the Mill and Markheim are, as it were, appendages to that doleful failure Prince Otto. They were experiments for Stevenson in a particular genre for which talent and his mental training had lent him no aptitude. It was on other work that he more successfully took his stand as a writer of short stories. His success—considering that we are now examining his position among the masters of our literature—can only be attested where his work stands supreme or, at any rate, is clearly distinguished, in its own class. It cannot be doubted for one moment that Stevenson wrote some exceedingly fine short stories, fit to be compared, in their own line, with any that have been written in English. What follows must be read in the light of this claim. In their own way, I regard The Suicide Club, The Pavilion on the Links, Providence and the Guitar, Thrawn Janet, The Treasure of Franchard, The Beach of Falesá, and The Bottle Imp as first-class short stories. In a distinct second class I should place The Rajah’s Diamond, some of The Dynamiter stories, The Merry Men, Will o’ the Mill, Markheim, Olalla, The Isle of Voices, and Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. The least successful short stories seem to me to be The Story of a Lie, A Lodging for the Night, The Sire de Malétroit’s Door, The Misadventures of John Nicholson, and The Body-Snatcher. I am aware that one at least of the stories which I have placed in this third division—The Sire de Malétroit’s Door—has given great pleasure to many readers, and has even been not without its direct influence upon Stevenson’s imitators, while another—A Lodging for the Night—is greatly admired, and has been very highly praised; so that it seems hardly necessary to say that the classification is roughly made, and that it is only here attempted for reasons of convenience. The stories will hereafter be grouped according to subject or treatment, and will be examined individually. Those in the first division are, I think, completely successful in their own conventions; those in the second division are either incompletely successful or successful in conventions which seem to me inferior in artistic value; those in the third division are, as far as I can see, unsuccessful either because they fail to impose their conventions upon the reader or because they fail to convince the reader that Stevenson had mastered the craft of short-story writing. But, upon the whole, I believe Stevenson’s short stories to represent more successfully than any other part of his output the variety and the brilliance of his talent. It is for this reason that I shall endeavour in some detail to justify the divisions indicated above, and to emphasise the fact that such tentative distinctions, even if they prove inaccurate in the case of some one or two stories, may yet have some value as providing a basis for agreement or disagreement.