If Stevenson’s habitual attitude of mind be then examined it will prove to be directly opposed to the habit of mind of the poet. He was about as poetic as a robin. But his habit of mind (unlike that of the robin) was moral as well as practical. It was not philosophical; nor would one willingly use in this connection the word spiritual. It was moral and practical; it was fundamentally a prose habit of mind. The highest and the lowest were alike strange to Stevenson’s mind; it had excellent equipoise, an admirable sanity. It had not, normally, a very wide range of sympathy or interest. I have explained this—or rather, I have tried to explain it—to some extent in earlier chapters; but in this place an explanation may be more clearly offered. Stevenson, we know, was an invalid; his vitality was poor, although the poverty of his vitality was partly concealed by a buoyancy of nervous high spirits. The tendency of all natures is to adjust the indulgence of emotion to the power of withstanding the reaction from such emotion. Highly emotional natures, unless they are morbid, seek instinctively to avoid the exhaustion which overstrained emotion produces. Delicate persons instinctively avoid mental exertion—not from lack of courage, or even from lack of intellectual strength; but purely from lassitude and the dread of lassitude. They do not essay long or vehement excursions from their base of common-sense; they must always be able to return the same night. That is because sustained imaginative effort, as well as poignant emotion, is instinctively recognised as dangerous. It is not that they lack the power to imagine or to feel deeply; it is simply that, as a measure for their own protection, they rely upon the virtues which are less intense and less exacting. They grow cautious. Stevenson was cautious. To him God was a kindly, well-intentioned person of infinite mercy; but He was not a terrible God, nor a God in Whom there was any mystery. If one had used the word “mystery” to Stevenson he would have thought inevitably of Gaboriau. I should explain that by suggesting—not that Stevenson was what is called “unimaginative,” but that his delicate body provoked the compromise. Otherwise he might have been a fanatic. Perhaps I am wrong; perhaps there was simply nothing of the mystic in Stevenson, and perhaps there was nothing of the mystic in Alison Cunningham. It is true that Stevenson’s early wrestlings with religious difficulties seem to have led him to conclusions strictly utilitarian, by which Christianity became a “body of doctrine” rather than a cloud of witnesses. Nevertheless, I am disposed to think that his apparent failure to apprehend any faith more exacting than a lucid morality or ethical code was caused throughout by physical weakness.
The point is interesting rather than conclusive; and it may be thought that Stevenson’s attitude to his art tells strongly against my hypothesis. He was essentially technical in his attitude to style and to art in general. He did not regard writing as a means of expressing truths; he seems to have regarded it as an end in itself. He does not seem to consider the notion of writing to express an idea; his impulse is to gather together as many incidents as will make a book. It is easy, of course, to take an unsophisticated view of art, and pretend that the artist invariably works with the aid of an inner light. I do not wish to pretend that the artist is such a mere instrument; particularly as the writer who claims to be no more than a medium is generally no less than a charlatan. But I cannot help remarking how entirely absent from any declaration by Stevenson is the sense of an artist’s profound disinterested imagining. So far from being profoundly disinterested, he seems to have followed here the custom he admits following in childhood, that of reading and watching everything for the sake of wrinkles subsequently to be used in play. It seems as though he took imaginative writing at its lowest valuation, as so much “fake,” as so much invention very ingeniously contrived but never really, in the last resort, perfectly believed by the creator—as, in fact, something “pretended.” Now Stevenson’s practice, in that case, is better than his theory. Scenes in his romances, and some of his short stories in bulk, are the work of an artist who was working at the bidding of his inspiration. Stevenson did, at these times, believe as an artist in the work he was making. I can give no account of the artist’s state of mind; but it is quite certain that Stevenson did not “pretend” his best work, and that no artist “pretends” his best work. An artist can distinguish between that part of his work which is the result of intense belief and that part which is agnostic. Stevenson seems not to have been so sure; for his aims, whether they are at “vitality” or at the death of the optic nerve and the adjective, suggest that he invariably adopted the attitude of the craftsman, the professional writer of novels for popular consumption. Even so, he is to be applauded for his freedom from artistic cant. If he is too intent upon rattling the bones, at least that is more candid than the habit of playing the priest.
II
From this question of Stevenson’s conviction, however (the question of the inevitable as opposed to the practicable), arises a further question. I have said earlier that in the case of a work of art there is left with the reader some abiding emotion, an evocation, as it were, of emotion distinct from all incidental emotions, excitements, dreads, or anxieties aroused in the course of the book. In that pervading and prevailing emotion, it seems to me, lies the particular quality which distinguishes a work of art from a work of merely consummate craft. If I question whether such abiding emotion is evoked by the longer stories of Stevenson, I am bound to answer that these do not arouse in me any emotion greater than that of interest, the consequence of a succession of pleasant excitements. The romances as a whole have great ingenuity, many scenes to which all readers must look back with recollected enjoyment. In no case does the book reappear as a whole. The recollection is a recollection of “plums.” That they are good plums does not affect the validity of the argument if once the specific test suggested above is accepted. In the case of Weir of Hermiston the recollection is obviously difficult, because the book is a fragment: it is, however, perfectly clear and level in performance, which leads to the supposition that Weir, as it stands, will actually bear whatever test is applied to it. For that reason Weir is truly regarded as Stevenson’s masterpiece among the longer stories.
With the short stories I have already dealt in considerable detail; to the remaining creative works there is no need to refer on these grounds, for the plays are admittedly poor. And indeed, I should not have raised the question about the romances if it had not been the case that very considerable claims have been made on behalf of the permanent value of Stevenson’s work by many writers whose opinions ordinarily command respect. The truth is probably that all good novels, of whatever kind, whether modern or historical, must be based upon idea and upon character. To Stevenson, character was incidental. To Stevenson incident, picturesque or exciting, and the employment of an atmosphere, or appropriate “style,” were the most important things in romance. That was perhaps the grave mistake which made his romances what they are, and which has very considerably affected the romantic novels published since Stevenson’s time and written in accordance with his conventions. The use of conventional characters, easily-recognisable romantic types, has for twenty years and more been accepted by English romantic novelists as a legitimate evasion of the need for creating character. Thus it happens that so few modern romantic novels have at this time any standing. Their names are forgotten (except, possibly, by their authors, and by some sections of the public only if the novels have been made into stage plays). If Stevenson’s romances had enjoyed the strength of definite themes, and if they had been based upon character, the whole position of the romantic novel in England at the present day might have been different. As it is, the romantic novel is a survival. The freshness of Stevenson’s manipulated convention is stale, and the imitators of Stevenson have forsaken romance for the writing of detective mystery stories. They still have popularity; but they have no status.
III
But it may be urged that Stevenson saved his ideas for that more direct appeal to readers which is the special privilege of the essay. Now the point in this case is to be reached by the inquiry as to what ideas Stevenson expressed in his essays. They are very simple. Stevenson’s essays are either fanciful treatments of pleasant, or attractive, or ingenious notions; or they are frankly homiletic. Stevenson loved courage, and he thought that courage should have trappings. To his mind the bravest actions were the better for a bit of purple. But when we penetrate beyond this crust of happy truism there is little that will reward us for the search. There is no thought, and little enough feeling in the essays: their charm lies in the fact that they dress prettily, and sometimes beautifully, the rather obvious philosophical small-change which most people cherish as their private wisdom. The essays flatter the reader by mirroring his own mind and giving it an odd twist of grace. They are shrewd mother-wit, dressed for a fairing. That is what causes the popularity of the essays—that and the air they have of “looking on the bright side of things.” They do look on the bright side; they are homely, cheerful, charming; they will continue to adorn the bookshelf with a pretty, pale, bedside cheerfulness which will delight all whose culture exceeds their originality. But I believe that they have ceased to be regarded (it has almost become ridiculous that they should ever have been regarded) as comparable with the essays of Montaigne, or Hazlitt, or Lamb; because their day is sinking and their fragility is seen already to indicate a want of robustness rather than a delicacy of perception. By this I do not mean to suggest that already the essays are out of date: they are only out of date in some instances, and even if they were completely out of date that fact would not have much ultimate critical significance. What is, however, very significant, is that they have ceased to stand as essays, and have become goods for the monger of phrases. Their “aptness,” which of old was the charm that dignified the trite moralism, has recoiled upon them: they are seen to be mere aggregations of “happy thoughts,” fit to be culled and calendared for suburban households. It is not without its pathos that one warning against too-eager judgment of weaker brethren, really written by an American woman poet, is widely and steadfastly attributed to Stevenson by his greatest admirers. For the teaching of the essays is one of compromise, not of enlarged ideals; it is the doctrine of “that state of life” which finally ends in a good-natured passivity not unlike the happy innocence of the domesticated cat. Thus, for all his powerful desire to preach, Stevenson taught nothing but a bland acquiescence; for the field of battle to which he likened marriage as well as life was a field in which there was no headstrong conflict of ideal and practice, but a mere accommodation which a phrase could embody.
IV
There seems to be a general tendency to protest against such opinions, not because the opinions are adequately countered, but because in most readers Stevenson produces a vague doting which is entirely uncritical. Stevenson in such warm hearts is incomparable; and a question is a perceptible rebuff to their confidingness. The prevailing feeling appears to be one of affectionate admiration, a matter of personal attraction rather than of critical esteem. Such a claim in any man is very far from being negligible. It is clear that the need of most people is an object of affection. They must love, or they cannot appreciate. The modern school of novelists, which tries to be very stern and almost legally unjust, provides little enough material for the loving hearts. The modern school says to its readers: “You are wicked, selfish, diseased, but horribly fascinating, and I’m going to set you right by diagnosis”; and the reader feels a sting in the fascination. Stevenson says, “We are all mighty fine fellows; and life is a field of battle; but it is better to be a fool than to be dead; and the true success is to labour”; and the reader feels that Stevenson is One of Us! He is not, that is to say, austere; he does not ask uncomfortable questions; he makes no claim upon his readers’ judgment, but only upon their self-esteem and their gratified assent. He even tells them about himself. He says, “I knew a little boy”; and his readers say: “It’s himself!” They read with enormous satisfaction.
Well, all that is delightful; but in its way it is a red-herring. It does not help us to assay the literary value of Stevenson’s work. It is simply a wide illustration of the fascination which Stevenson had for his friends. It is an extension of that rare thing, personal charm. We may say that it ought not to influence readers; and no doubt it influences some too-critical readers adversely (criticism being understood by all admirers of Stevenson as the merest corrosion); but the fact is that it cannot be ignored by anyone who seeks to account for Stevenson’s continued, and even now barely declining, popularity. Another very good reason is that Stevenson had extraordinarily good friends. I think it probable that no writer ever had friends more loyal and affectionate. They criticised his work privately to its great improvement, and then sold his work when it was completed, acting as counsellors and agents. And this was done with the same affectionate admiration which readers of his work still feel. He had few intimate friends, says Mrs. Stevenson: if friendship consisted in affection received (as distinguished from affection exchanged), I think Stevenson would have been in friends the richest man of his own generation. And since his death he has found a hundred thousand friends for every one he had during his lifetime. No man was ever richer in well-wishers. If he had few intimate friends that was because he was naturally reserved, or, as Mrs. Strong says, “secretive.” No doubt it was a part of his charm that his friends were mystified by his reserve: I do not see why his readers also should be mystified, for his writing is free of any mystery. I can only assume that a slight air of sentimentalism which runs through essays and romances alike, and over into such short stories as Will o’ the Mill and Markheim, combines with the thin optimism of the essays and the picturesque variety of incident of the romances to give body to this charm. I have stated in an earlier chapter the features of the romances which seem to me to be merits: it is not necessary to repeat the merits here. They include occasional pieces of distinguished imagination, a frequent exuberance of fancy, and a great freshness of incident which conceals lack of central or unifying idea and poverty of imagined character. Intrinsically, although their literary quality is much higher, the romances—with the possible exception of Kidnapped—are inferior to the work of Captain Marryat.