‘It will be the fashion when we have worn the waistcoat once,’ was Gautier’s reply. And he declares that he delivered the answer with a self-possession worthy of a Brummel or ‘any other celebrity of dandyism.’
It is no part of this paper to describe the innocently absurd and good-naturedly extravagant things which Gautier and his companions did, not alone the first night of Hernani, but at all times and in all places. They unquestionably saw to it that Victor Hugo had fair play the evening of February 25, 1830. The occasion was an historic one, and they with their Merovingian hair, their beards, their waistcoats, and their enthusiasm helped to make it an unusually lively and picturesque occasion.
I have quoted a very few of the good things which one may read in Gautier’s Histoire du Romantisme. The narrative is one of much sweetness and humor. It ought to be translated for the benefit of readers who know Gautier chiefly by Mademoiselle de Maupin and that for reasons among which love of literature is perhaps the least influential.
It is pleasant to find that Renduel confirms the popular view of Gautier’s character. M. Jullien says that Renduel never spoke of Gautier but in praise. ‘Quel bon garçon!’ he used to say. ‘Quel brave cœur!’ M. Jullien has naturally no large number of new facts to give concerning Gautier. But there are eight or nine letters from Gautier to Renduel which will be read with pleasure, especially the one in which the poet says to the publisher, ‘Heaven preserve you from historical novels, and your eldest child from the smallpox.’
Gautier must have been both generous and modest. No mere egoist could have been so faithful in his hero-worship or so unpretentious in his allusions to himself. One has only to read the most superficial accounts of French literature to learn how universally it is granted that Gautier had skillful command of that language to which he was born. Yet he himself was by no means sure that he deserved a master’s degree. He quotes one of Goethe’s sayings,—a saying in which the great German poet declares that after the practice of many arts there was but one art in which he could be said to excel, namely, the art of writing in German; in that he was almost a master. Then Gautier exclaims, ‘Would that we, after so many years of labor, had become almost a master of the art of writing in French! But such ambitions are not for us!’
Yet they were for him; and it is a satisfaction to note how invariably he is accounted, by the artists in literature, an eminent man among many eminent men in whose touch language was plastic.
STEVENSON: THE VAGABOND AND THE PHILOSOPHER
A certain critic said of Stevenson that he was ‘incurably literary;’ the phrase is a good one, being both humorous and true. There is comfort in the thought that such efforts as may have been made to keep him in the path of virtuous respectability failed. Rather than do anything Stevenson preferred to loaf and to write books. And he early learned that considerable loafing is necessary if one expects to become a writer. There is a sense in which it is true that only lazy people are fit for literature. Nothing is so fruitful as a fine gift for idleness. The most prolific writers have been people who seemed to have nothing to do. Every one has read that description of George Sand in her latter years, ‘an old lady who came out into the garden at mid-day in a broad-brimmed hat and sat down on a bench or wandered slowly about. So she remained for hours looking about her, musing, contemplating. She was gathering impressions, absorbing the universe, steeping herself in Nature; and at night she would give all this forth as a sort of emanation.’ One shudders to think what the result might have been if instead of absorbing the universe George Sand had done something practical during those hours. But the Scotchman was not like George Sand in any particular that I know of save in his perfect willingness to bask in the sunshine and steep himself in Nature. His books did not ‘emanate.’ The one way in which he certainly did not produce literature was by improvisation. George Sand never revised her work; it might almost be said that Robert Louis Stevenson never did anything else.
Of his method we know this much. He himself has said that when he went for a walk he usually carried two books in his pocket, one a book to read, the other a note-book in which to put down the ideas that came to him. This remark has undoubtedly been seized upon and treasured in the memory as embodying a secret of his success. Trusting young souls have begun to walk about with note-books: only to learn that the note-book was a detail, not an essential, in the process.