Companionable Books

by Henry Van Dyke

He had a theory of the art of narration which he stated from time to time with considerable definiteness and inconsiderable variations. It is not obligatory to believe that his stories were written on this theory. It is more likely that he did the work first as he wanted to do it, and then, like a true Scot, reasoned out an explanation of why he had done it in just that way. But even so, his theory remains good as a comment on the things that he liked best in his own stories. Let us take it briefly.

His first point is that fiction does not, and can not, compete with real life. Life has a vastly more varied interest because it is more complex. Fiction must not try to reproduce this complexity literally, for that is manifestly impossible. What the novelist has to do is to turn deliberately the other way, and seek to hold you by simplifying and clarifying the material Which life presents. He wins not by trying to tell you everything, but by telling you that which means most in the revelation of character and in the unfolding of the story. Of necessity he can deal only with a part of life, and that chiefly on the dramatic side, the dream side; for a life in which the ordinary, indispensable details of mere existence are omitted is, after all, more or less dream-like. Therefore, the story-teller must renounce the notion of making his story a literal transcript of even a single day of actual life, and concentrate his attention upon those things which seem to him the most real in life,—the things that count.

Now a man who takes this view of fiction, if he excels at all, will be sure to do so in the short story, a form in which the art of omission is at a high premium. Here, it seems to me, Stevenson is a master unsurpassed. Will o’ the Mill is a perfect idyl; Markheim, a psychological tale in Hawthorne’s manner; Olalla, a love-story of tragic beauty; and Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, in spite of its obvious moving-picture artifice, a parable of intense power.

Stevenson said to Graham Balfour: “There are three ways of writing a story. You may take a plot and fit characters to it, or you may take a character and choose incidents and situations to develop it, or lastly you may take a certain atmosphere and get actions and persons to express and realize it. I’ll give you an example—The Merry Men. There I began with the feeling of one of those islands on the west coast of Scotland, and I gradually developed the feeling with which that coast affected me.” This, probably, is somewhat the way in which Hawthorne wrote The House of the Seven Gables; yet I do not think that is one of his best romances, any more than I think The Merry Men one of Stevenson’s best short stories. It is not memorable as a tale. Only the bits of description live. The Treasure of Franchard, light and airy as it is, has more of that kind of reality which Stevenson sought. Therefore it seems as if his third “way of writing a story” were not the best suited to his genius.

The second way,—that in which the plot links and unfolds the characters,—is the path on which he shows at his best. Here the gentleman adventurer was at ease from the moment he set forth on it. In Treasure Island he raised the dime novel to the level of a classic.

It has been charged against Stevenson’s stories that there are no women in them. To this charge one might enter what the lawyers call a plea of “confession and avoidance.” Even were it true, it would not necessarily be fatal. It may well be doubted whether that primitive factor which psychologists call “sex-interest” plays quite such a predominant, perpetual, and all-absorbing part in real life as that which neurotic writers assign to it in their books. But such a technical, (and it must be confessed, somewhat perilous,) defense is not needed. There are plenty of women in Stevenson’s books,—quite as many, and quite as delightful and important as you will find in the ordinary run of life. Marjory in Will o’ the Mill is more lovable than Will himself. Olalla is the true heroine of the story which bears her name. Catriona and Miss Grant, in the second part of David Balfour, are girls of whom it would be an honour to be enamoured; and I make no doubt that David, (like Stevenson) was hard put to it to choose between them. Uma, in The Beach of Falesa, is a lovely insulated Eve. The two Kirsties, in Weir of Hermiston, are creatures of intense and vivid womanhood. It would have been quite impossible for a writer who had such a mother as Stevenson’s, such a friend of youth as Mrs. Sitwell, such a wife as Margaret Vandegrift, to ignore or slight the part which woman plays in human life. If he touches it with a certain respect and pudor, that also is in keeping with his character,—the velvet jacket again.

The second point in his theory of fiction is that in a well-told tale the threads of narrative should converge, now and then, in a scene which expresses, visibly and unforgettably, the very soul of the story. He instances Robinson Crusoe finding the footprint on the beach, and the Pilgrim running from the City of Destruction with his fingers in his ears.

There are many of these flash-of-lightning scenes in Stevenson’s stories. The duel in The Master of Ballantrae where the brothers face each other in the breathless winter midnight by the light of unwavering candles, and Mr. Henry cries to his tormentor, “I will give you every advantage, for I think you are about to die.” The flight across the heather, in Kidnapped, when Davie lies down, forspent, and Alan Breck says, “Very well then, I’ll carry ye”; whereupon Davie looks at the little man and springs up ashamed, crying “Lead on, I’ll follow!” The moment in Olalla when the Englishman comes to the beautiful Spanish mistress of the house with his bleeding hand to be bound up, and she, catching it swiftly to her lips, bites it to the bone. The dead form of Israel Hands lying huddled together on the clean, bright sand at the bottom of the lagoon of Treasure Island. Such pictures imprint themselves on memory like seals.

The third point in Stevenson’s theory is, that details should be reduced to a minimum in number and raised to a maximum in significance. He wrote to Henry James, (and the address of the letter is amusing,) “How to escape from the besotting particularity of fiction? ‘Roland approached the house; it had green doors and window blinds; and there was a scraper on the upper step.’ To hell with Roland and the scraper!” Many a pious reader would say “thank you” for this accurate expression of his sentiments.