Stevenson was humorously alive to the old-fashioned quality of his doctrine of happiness and content. He says in the preface to an Inland Voyage that although the book ‘runs to considerably over a hundred pages, it contains not a single reference to the imbecility of God’s universe, nor so much as a single hint that I could have made a better one myself—I really do not know where my head can have been.’ But while this omission will, he fears, render his book ‘philosophically unimportant’ he hopes that ‘the eccentricity may please in frivolous circles.’
Stevenson could be militant. His letter on Father Damien shows that. But there was nothing of the professional reformer about him. He had no hobby, and he was the artist first and then the philanthropist. This is right; it was the law of his being. Other men are better equipped to do the work of humanity’s city missionaries than was he. Let their more rugged health and less sensitive nerves bear the burden; his poet’s mission was not the less important.
The remaining point I have to note, among a number which might be noted, is his firm grasp of this idea: that whether he is his brother’s keeper or not he is at all events his brother’s brother. It is ‘philosophy’ of a very good sort to have mastered this conception and to have made the life square with the theory. This doctrine is fashionable just now, and thick books have been written on the subject, filled with wise terms and arguments. I don’t know whether Stevenson bothered his head with these matters from a scientific point of view or not, but there are many illustrations of his interest. Was it this that made him so gentle in his unaffected manly way? He certainly understood how difficult it is for the well-to-do member of society to get any idea not wholly distorted of the feelings and motives of the lower classes. He believed that certain virtues resided more conspicuously among the poor than among the rich. He declared that the poor were more charitably disposed than their superiors in wealth. ‘A workman or a peddler cannot shutter himself off from his less comfortable neighbors. If he treats himself to a luxury he must do it in the face of a dozen who cannot. And what should more directly lead to charitable thoughts?’ But with the advent of prosperity a man becomes incapable of understanding how the less fortunate live. Stevenson likens that happy individual to a man going up in a balloon. ‘He presently passes through a zone of clouds and after that merely earthly things are hidden from his gaze. He sees nothing but the heavenly bodies, all in admirable order and positively as good as new. He finds himself surrounded in the most touching manner by the attentions of Providence, and compares himself involuntarily with the lilies and the sky-larks. He does not precisely sing, of course; but then he looks so unassuming in his open landau! If all the world dined at one table this philosophy would meet with some rude knocks.’
In the three years since Stevenson’s death many additions have been made to the body of literature by him and about him. There are letters, finished and unfinished novels, and recollections by the heaping handful. Critics are considerably exercised over the question whether any, or all, or only two or three of his books are to last. The matter has, I believe, been definitely decided so that posterity, whatever other responsibilities it has, will at least not have that one; and anything that we can do to relieve the future of its burdens is altruism worthy the name.
Stevenson was one of the best tempered men that ever lived. He never prated about goodness, but was unaffectedly good and sunny-hearted as long as he lived. Of how many men can it be said, as it can be said of him, that he was sick all his days and never uttered a whimper? What rare health of mind was this which went with such poor health of body! I’ve known men to complain more over toothache than Stevenson thought it worth while to do with death staring him in the face. He did not, like Will o’ the Mill, live until the snow began to thicken on his head. He never knew that which we call middle age.
He worked harder than a man in his condition should have done. At times he felt the need to write for money; and this was hostile to his theory of literature. He wrote to his friend Colvin: ‘I sometimes sit and yearn for anything in the nature of an income that would come in—mine has all got to be gone and fished for with the immortal mind of man. What I want is an income that really comes in of itself while all you have to do is just to blossom and exist and sit on chairs.’
I wish he might have had it; I can think of no other man whose indolence would have been so profitable to the world.
STEVENSON’S ST. IVES
With the publication of St. Ives the catalogue of Stevenson’s important writings has closed. In truth it closed several years ago,—in 1891, to be exact,—when Catriona was published. Nothing which has appeared since that date can modify to any great extent the best critical estimate of his novels. Neither Weir of Hermiston nor St. Ives affects the matter. You may throw them into the scales with his other works, and then you may take them out; beyond a mere trembling the balance is not disturbed. But suppose you were to take out Kidnapped, or Treasure Island, or The Master of Ballantrae, the loss would be felt at once and seriously. And unless he has left behind him, hidden away among his loose papers, some rare and perfect sketch, some letter to posterity which shall be to his reputation what Neil Paraday’s lost novel in The Death of the Lion might have been to his, St. Ives may be regarded as the epilogue.