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.