VI
By Stevenson’s own account, the first fifteen chapters of Treasure Island were written in as many days. He explains that he consciously and intentionally adopted an “easy” style. “I liked the tale myself,” he says; “it was my kind of picturesque.” Well, it was the simplest kind of picturesque, a sort of real enjoyment of the thing for its own sake; and our own enjoyment of it is of the same kind. It is extraordinarily superior to the imitations which have followed it, for this reason if for no other, that it was the product of an enjoying imagination. It is possible to read Treasure Island over and over again, because it is good fun. There is a constant flow of checkered incident, there is enough simple character to stand the treasure-seekers on their legs, and the book is a book in its own right. It does not need defence or analysis; it sustains its own note, and it is as natural and jolly an adventure-story as one could wish. Moreover, the observation throughout is exceedingly good, as well as unaffected. It is interesting to notice how vividly one catches a picture from such a brief passage as this (in Chap. XXVII): “As the water settled I could see him lying huddled together on the clean, bright sand in the shadow of the vessel’s sides. A fish or two whipped past his body.” Or again, on the following page, when Jim Hawkins has thrown overboard another of the mutineers: “He went in with a sounding plunge; the red cap came off, and remained floating on the surface; and as soon as the splash subsided I could see him and Israel lying side by side, both wavering with the tremulous movement of the water.” Such slight passages really indicate an unusual quality in the book. They convey a distinct impression of the scene which one may feel trembling within one’s own vision and hearing. The fact that Treasure Island has so clear a manner, unaffectedly setting out in simple terms incidents which have the bare convincingness of real romance, gives that book a singular position among the romances of Stevenson. The further fact that the incidents have some more coherence in themselves than incidents have in some of our author’s romances serves to add to the book’s effect. Something of this coherence (I except from the range of this term the doctor’s sudden irruption into authorship, and the picturesque but arbitrary introduction of the castaway) may have resulted from the quickness with which the tale was written. For details of the composition of Treasure Island, the reader may see the essay My First Book in Essays on the Art of Writing.
The Black Arrow, written later, is a tale of the Wars of the Roses, and is a much more commonplace piece of work. It is also a less original kind of story; for serials of a similar character have always been a feature of boys’ papers, as long as boys’ papers have been published. There is, indeed, a constant ebb and flow of incident, but the writing is hardly recognisable as Stevenson’s, and the dramatis personæ are without character. It might almost, apart from the fact that the hero and heroine arrange to marry, have been written by the late G. A. Henty, who perhaps, even if he had made John Matcham really John Matcham, would have substituted for violent episodes some more continuous fable.
Next to Treasure Island among the historical romances comes Kidnapped, with its brilliant pictures and its clear, confident invention. Regarded simply as a tale of adventure, it is exciting, picturesque, vivid; it has qualities of intensity (that is to say, of imagination) which make it without question distinguished work. There are pictures of the country in Chapter XVII which are full of grace and tenderness; it has a stronger, clearer humour than we find in any of the novels until we come to those in which Mr. Osbourne collaborated; the incidents are immediate in their effect. To say so much is to say little enough; it is to say what must have been said in 1886, at the time the book was published. The story, however, is incomplete without Catriona, and Catriona in particular has given rise to such a very bad novel-writing convention that it is difficult to see The Adventures of David Balfour (which, combined, the two stories relate) as anything but a malign influence upon the English romantic novel, an influence which has brought it to a pitch of sterility hard to forgive. It must be said at once, however, that Stevenson was always better than his imitators, and so these stories will be found superior to their imitations. Catriona is manifestly uninspired work, artificial through and through, a sad sentimental anecdote bringing to chagrin the reader’s admiration for Kidnapped. It is not that Catriona is unreadable; it is very readable indeed. In fact that is the trouble about the book, that it has every sort of meretricious attraction, with so little in it that will honestly bear examination. It is palpable fake; an obvious attempt to recapture the first fine carelessness of Kidnapped. For Kidnapped is a good book. It has vitality in it, and it has Alan Breck, who, for all that his vanity has been flattered by so many adorers, remains on the whole a fine picture of a vain, brave Scot. Also good is the picture of David’s uncle, which is very dryly humorous, very shrewd, and exceptionally horrible. These two pieces of characterisation, as well as some minor ones, are enough to give bones to a book that is both readable and estimable. It would be enough, I think, to justify the suggestion that Kidnapped is the best Scottish historical romance since Scott, and indeed one of the best modern historical romances written in what we may for the moment call the English language.
St. Ives belongs to the same order as Catriona. It is accomplished and bad; a fact of which a recently published letter of Stevenson’s shows that he was fully and contritely aware. Skill marks it; the fable is poor and irregular; and the narrator is exceedingly unpleasant. It is worthy of remark that Sir Arthur Quiller-Couch, who completed the book, is responsible for its most impressive and thrilling moments. Otherwise it shows the passive acceptance by Stevenson of his own bad convention, and it is fit only to be popular at the circulating libraries. It is even tedious, which is a sure passport to the suffrages of those who benefit by the circulating libraries.
The Master of Ballantrae, however, is a different affair. Here we have a story which, though it is broken and incomplete, has elements of noble beauty. It loses hold upon the reader in the middle, where there is a lapse of something like seven years; and the introduction of Secundra Dass is the ruin of the book as a work of art, although no doubt, as it supplies a new interest, it may have proved welcome to those reading for distraction. There are some few pieces of sheer greatness in the book, drawn with an economy and simplicity which separates them from the inferior portions as clearly as oil and water are separated. An instance may be found in the scene where Mr. Henry strikes the Master. It would be impossible to carry over in a quotation any hint of the effect which the next sentence, in its due context, has upon the reader:
“The Master sprang to his feet like one transfigured; I had never seen the man so beautiful. ‘A blow!’ he cried. ‘I would not take a blow from God Almighty!’”
In the book that moment seems in some extraordinary way to bring the scene leaping to the eye. The whole scene of the duel, and especially of its sequel, is fine. There are other scenes equally magnificent: even the climax, which is a collapse, does not blind us to the fact that we had been led, by the remarkable tension of the preceding narrative, to expect a poignantly tragical, and not merely a conventionally romantic, conclusion. But the climax throws up the weakness of the book, its rambling course, its wilful attempts to follow the wanderings of a central figure so fascinating to Mr. Mackellar (and to ourselves) as the Master, its lack of framework and true body of character. The Master is clear; Mr. Mackellar is nicely touched; the Chevalier de Burke is pleasantly farcical. In one scene, after the duel, Lord Durrisdeer and Mr. Henry’s wife seem to catch the infection of life into which the heat of excitement has thrown the whole book; but they are truly no more than puppets, and relapse before ever they have stood upright. Even the Master sometimes is no more than a collection of traits; and if the book were not so finely dressed it would assuredly cut a poorer figure. Its magnificent passages it is impossible to forget; its defects are so numerous, and so obvious to be seized upon, that it seems hard to insist that they are present. Nevertheless, they are the defects inherent in Stevenson’s romances.