Adventures in Criticism

by Arthur Quiller-Couch

There was no hurry then, as he now sees: and there never was cause to hurry, I repeat. "But how is this? Is, then, the great book written?" I am sure I don't know. Probably not: for human experience goes to show that The Great Book (like The Great American Novel) never gets written. But that a great story has been written is certain enough: and one of the curious points about this story is its title.

It is not Catriona; nor is it Kidnapped. Kidnapped is a taking title, and Catriona beautiful in sound and suggestion of romance: and Kidnapped (as everyone knows) is a capital tale, though imperfect; and Catriona (as the critics began to point out, the day after its issue) a capital tale with an awkward fissure midway in it. "It is the fate of sequels"—thus Mr. Stevenson begins his Dedication—"to disappoint those who have waited for them"; and it is possible that the boys of Merry England (who, it may be remembered, thought more of Treasure Island than of Kidnapped) will take but lukewarmly to Catriona, having had five years in which to forget its predecessor. No: the title of the great story is The Memoirs of David Balfour. Catriona has a prettier name than David, and may give it to the last book of her lover's adventures: but the Odyssey was not christened after Penelope.

Put Kidnapped and Catriona together within the same covers, with one title-page, one dedication (here will be the severest loss) and one table of contents, in which the chapters are numbered straight away from I. to LX.: and—this above all things—read the tale right through from David's setting forth from the garden gate at Essendean to his homeward voyage, by Catriona's side, on the Low Country ship. And having done this, be so good as to perceive how paltry are the objections you raised against the two volumes when you took them separately. Let me raise again one or two of them.

(1.) Catriona is just two stories loosely hitched together—the one of David's vain attempt to save James Stewart, the other of the loves of David and Catriona: and in case the critic should be too stupid to detect this, Mr. Stevenson has been at the pains to divide his book into Part I. and Part II. Now this, which is a real fault in a book called Catriona, is no fault at all in The Memoirs of David Balfour, which by its very title claims to be constructed loosely. In an Odyssey the road taken by the wanderer is all the nexus required; and the continuity of his presence (if the author know his business) is warrant enough for the continuity of our interest in his adventures. That the history of Gil Blas of Santillane consists chiefly of episodes is not a serious criticism upon Lesage's novel.

(2.) In Catriona more than a few of the characters are suffered to drop out of sight just as we have begun to take an interest in them. There is Mr. Rankeillor, for instance, whose company in the concluding chapter of Kidnapped was too good to be spared very easily; and there is Lady Allardyce—a wonderfully clever portrait; and Captain Hoseason—we tread for a moment on the verge of re-acquaintance, but are disappointed; and Balfour of Pilrig; and at the end of Part I. away into darkness goes the Lord Advocate Preston-grange, with his charming womenkind.

Well, if this be an objection to the tale, it is one urged pretty often against life itself—that we scarce see enough of the men and women we like. And here again that which may be a fault in Catriona is no fault at all in The Memoirs of David Balfour. Though novelists may profess in everything they write to hold a mirror up to life, the reflection must needs be more artificial in a small book than in a large. In the one, for very clearness, they must isolate a few human beings and cut off the currents (so to speak) bearing upon them from the outside world: in the other, with a larger canvas they are able to deal with life more frankly. Were the Odyssey cut down to one episode—say that of Nausicäa—we must round it off and have everyone on the stage and provided with his just portion of good and evil before we ring the curtain down. As it is, Nausicäa goes her way. And as it is, Barbara Grant must go her way at the end of Chapter XX.; and the pang we feel at parting with her is anything rather than a reproach against the author.

(3.) It is very certain, as the book stands, that the reader must experience some shock of disappointment when, after 200 pages of the most heroical endeavoring, David fails in the end to save James Stewart of the Glens. Were the book concerned wholly with James Stewart's fate, the cheat would be intolerable: and as a great deal more than half of Catriona points and trembles towards his fate like a magnetic needle, the cheat is pretty bad if we take Catriona alone. But once more, if we are dealing with The Memoirs of David Balfour—if we bear steadily in mind that David Balfour is our concern—not James Stewart—the disappointment is far more easily forgiven. Then, and then only, we get the right perspective of David's attempt, and recognize how inevitable was the issue when this stripling engaged to turn back the great forces of history.

It is more than a lustre, as the Dedication reminds us, since David Balfour, at the end of the last chapter of Kidnapped, was left to kick his heels in the British Linen Company's office. Five years have a knack of making people five years older; and the wordy, politic intrigue of Catriona is at least five years older than the rough-and-tumble intrigue of Kidnapped; of the fashion of the Vicomte de Bragelonne rather than of the Three Musketeers. But this is as it should be; for older and astuter heads are now mixed up in the case, and Preston-grange is a graduate in a very much higher school of diplomacy than was Ebenezer Balfour. And if no word was said in Kidnapped of the love of women, we know now that this matter was held over until the time came for it to take its due place in David Balfour's experience. Everyone knew that Mr. Stevenson would draw a woman beautifully as soon as he was minded. Catriona and her situation have their foreshadowing in The Pavilion on the Links. But for all that she is a surprise. She begins to be a surprise—a beautiful surprise—when in Chapter X. she kisses David's hand "with a higher passion than the common kind of clay has any sense of;" and she is a beautiful surprise to the end of the book. The loves of these two make a moving story—old, yet not old: and I pity the heart that is not tender for Catriona when she and David take their last walk together in Leyden, and "the knocking of her little shoes upon the way sounded extraordinarily pretty and sad."