Robert Louis Stevenson

by Margaret Moyes Black

Many men have drawn excellent female characters, just as a few women have given us life-like heroes. These exceptions, one imagines, must have been to some extent better able to appreciate the other sex thoroughly than most writers; but it strikes one as odd that Mr Stevenson, who had in himself so much of gentleness and of the essentially feminine, should have so continually failed to give a living interest to his heroines. Possibly had he lived longer, and had the maturing of his powers, so evident in Weir of Hermiston, been accompanied by a measure of improved health, the women of his later books might all have been as powerful creations as the two Kirsties promised to be.

His heroes are all that heart can desire, manly, brave, and natural; his villains make villainy interesting; so it may be forgiven him that scarcely one of his feminine characters lives in the reader's memory.

One of the most widely known of his books is that curious story, published in 1886, called The Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde, the popularity of which, especially in America, was immense. It deals with man's dual nature, and while Dr Jekyll embodies the good side of it, Mr Hyde, with whom he is compelled continually to exchange bodies, as well as souls, is the evil side, and commits crimes so atrocious, that the miserable doctor is well-nigh driven to despair. It is a powerful subject, powerfully treated, and contains in its small compass more moral teaching than a hundred sermons. It has, particularly in America, been used by many clergymen as the foundation of their homilies.

The Master of Ballantrae, a weird and striking tale of the times of 'the forty-five,' is extraordinarily graphic both in its descriptions of places and of people. The gloomy house of Durrisdeer, with its stately panelled hall, the fine grounds so carefully laid out, the thick shrubberies, the spot where the duel was fought on the hard, frozen ground by the light of the flickering candles in the tall silver candlesticks, the wave-beaten point where the smuggling luggers land goods and passengers, and finally the awful journey through the uncleared woods of America, make a fit setting, in our memories, for the splendidly drawn pictures of the three Duries, the old father, the unappreciated Henry, the mocking master, their faithful land-steward, Mackellar, and the more shadowy personalities of the Frenchman, the lady, and the children. The tale is one of unrelieved horror, but it is a masterpiece nevertheless, and it has had a very large sale.

With his wife Mr Stevenson in More New Arabian Nights and The Dynamiter did some work of considerable interest, and with his stepson, Mr Lloyd Osbourne, he wrote that quaint tale, The Wrong Box. In collaboration also with Mr Lloyd Osbourne he wrote The Wrecker and The Ebb Tide.

The Wrecker is a wild and interesting story which had a large success. It originally appeared in Scribner's Magazine from August 1891 to July 1892, and was republished in book form by Messrs Cassell & Co. The scene is constantly changing in it, and the hero visits Edinburgh, stays in the students' quarter in Paris, personally conducts speculative picnics at San Francisco, distinguishes himself at the wreck on the lonely reef in mid-ocean, and finally, after appearing in England and Fontainbleau, tells his wonderful story to a friendly trader in the south seas. There is plenty of life and of action in the tale, and there are also some delightful descriptions of the Pacific and of the wonderful glamour lagoons and palm trees throw over the spirit of the man who learns to know and to love the beautiful South Sea islands.

The Ebb Tide, originally published in Mr Jerome K. Jerome's magazine To-day from November 1893 to February 1894, was republished in book form by Mr W. Heinemann in 1894. Like Treasure Island it is a tale without a heroine, almost, indeed, without the mention of a woman except Attwater's statuesque native servant and the shadowy personalities of Herrick's mother and fiancée in London, and Captain Davis's wife and his little girl, who died before she got the doll he had so carefully bought for her, and the memory of whom is the one soft spot in his dark soul. They are merely mentioned, however, and take no actual part in the story. It is not a pleasant tale, everyone in it is more or less bad; more by preference rather than less!—and for no one in it can one feel the slightest sympathy. There are villains and villains in fiction, and for some of them, for instance, Bret Harte's Jack Hamlin, or even the Master himself in The Master of Ballantrae, one can feel a sincere affection or at least have a grudging sort of admiration, but it is not possible to even faintly like or hesitatingly pity a cowardly Robert Herrick, whose self-pity is so strong, and who from first to last is, as his creator intended him to be, a thorough inefficient. Half-hearted in his wickedness, self-saving in his repentance, he somehow fails to interest one; and even his lower-class associates, the horrible Huish and the American captain, are almost less detestable. Huish is quite diabolical, but he, at least, has the courage of his iniquities. Attwater is not attractive either as villain or as religious enthusiast, but he is a fairly possible character and at least a degree less unpleasant than the American captain after his conversion. Captain Davis's effort to save Herrick's soul, given in the last paragraph of the book, is disagreeably profane in its familiarity with things sacred. Altogether it is not an attractive book, although it is an undoubtedly clever one; it has some redeeming features in the really lovely descriptions of the island and the lagoon; and the appearance of the divers in full working costume remind one of Mr Stevenson's own early experience in a diver's dress.

Without collaboration Mr Stevenson wrote the three pretty little tales of South Sea life reprinted, as Island Nights' Entertainments, in book form about 1893. The Beach of Falésa was published in The Illustrated London News from July 2nd to August 6th, 1892. The Bottle Imp appeared in Black and White from March 28th to April 4th, 1891, and The Isle of Voices was in The National Observer between 4th and 25th February of 1893.

They are charming stories, rich in local colour, and in all of them one sees that Mr Stevenson's quick eye for the essential in life has shown to him that among these simple islanders are to be found just the same elements of romance as among more highly civilised peoples, the same motives make and influence character there as elsewhere. So in Wiltshire and his relations with the islanders, in the curious stories of The Bottle Imp and The Isle of Voices, we are interested in a new set of people in fresh surroundings, and can in a large measure sympathise with the pleasure that the Samoans had in reading these tales of island life in their own tongue. The Bottle Imp was the first story ever read by the Samoans in their native language, and it raised their affection for 'Tusitala, the Teller of Stories' to positive enthusiasm.