Essays on Modern Novelists

by William Lyon Phelps

The notary, Jean Rossignol, had been summoned to the top of a great house in the Isle St. Louis to make a will; and now, his duties finished, wrapped in a warm roquelaure and with a lantern swinging from one hand, he issued from the mansion on his homeward way. Little did he think what strange adventures were to befall him!—

That is how stories should begin. And I am offered Husks instead.

What should be:	What is:
The Filibuster's Cache.	Aunt Anne's Tea Cosy.
Jerry Abershaw.	Mrs. Brierly's Niece.
Blood Money: A Tale.	Society: A Novel."

What should be:	What is:
The Filibuster's Cache.	Aunt Anne's Tea Cosy.
Jerry Abershaw.	Mrs. Brierly's Niece.
Blood Money: A Tale.	Society: A Novel."

The time was out of joint; but Stevenson was born to set it right. Not seven years after the posting of this letter, the recent Romantic Revival had begun. In the year of his death, 1894, it was in full swing; everybody was reading not only Stevenson, but The Prisoner of Zenda, A Gentleman of France, Under the Red Robe, etc. Whatever we may think of the literary quality of some of these then popular stories, there is no doubt that the change was in many ways beneficial, and that the influence of Stevenson was more responsible for it than that of any other one man. This was everywhere recognised: in the Athenæum for 22 December, 1894, a critic remarked, "The Romantic Revival in the English novel of to-day had in him its leader.... But for him they might have been Howells and James young men." As a germinal writer, Stevenson will always occupy an important place in the history of English prose fiction. And seldom has a man been more conscious of his mission.

Stevenson's high standing as an English classic depends very largely on the excellence of his literary style, although Scott and Cooper won immortality without it. (One wonders if they could to-day.) When some fifteen years ago a few critics had the temerity to suggest that he was equal, if not superior, to these worthies, it sounded like blasphemy; but such an opinion is not uncommon now, and may be reasonably defended. Stevenson lacked in some degree the virility and the astonishing fertility of invention possessed by Scott; but he exhibited a technical skill undreamed of by his great predecessor. From the prefatory verses to Treasure Island, we know that he admired Cooper; and he loved Sir Walter, without being in the least blind to his faults. "It is undeniable that the love of the slap-dash and the shoddy grew upon Scott with success." He "had not only splendid romantic, but splendid tragic, gifts. How comes it, then, that he could so often fob us off with languid, inarticulate twaddle?... He was a great day-dreamer, a seer of fit and beautiful and humorous visions, but hardly a great artist; hardly, in the manful sense, an artist at all." Stevenson seems to have felt that Scott's deficiencies in style were not merely artistic, but moral; he lacked the patience and the particular kind of industry required. Scott loved to tell a good story, but he loved the story better than he did the telling of it; Stevenson, on the other hand, was fully as much absorbed by the manner of narration as by the narration itself. Stevenson was keenly alive to the fact that writers of romances did not seem to feel the necessity of style; whereas those who wrote novels wherein nothing happened, felt that a good style atoned for both the lack of incident and the lack of ideas. Stevenson's articles of literary faith apparently included the dogma that a mysterious, blood-curdling romance had fully as much dignity as a minute examination of the dreary, commonplace life of the submerged; and that the former made just as high a demand on the endowment and industry of a master-artist. If he had had not an idea in his head, he could not have written with more elegance.

There is, of course, some truth in the charge that Stevenson was not only a master of style, but a stylist. He is indeed something of a macaroni in words; occasionally he struts a bit, and he loves to show his brilliant plumes. He performed dexterous tricks with language, like a musician with a difficult instrument. He liked style for its own sake, and was not averse to exhibiting his technique. In a slight degree, his attitude and his influence in mere composition are somewhat similar to those of John Lyly three hundred years before. Lyly delighted his readers with unexpected quips and quiddities, with a fantastic display of rhetoric; he showed, as no one had before him, the possible flexibility of English prose. There is more than a touch of Euphuism in Stevenson; he was never insincere, but he was consciously fine. Many have swallowed without salt his statement that he learned to write by imitation; that by the "sedulous ape" method, employed with unwearying study of great models, he himself became a successful author. Men of genius are never to be trusted when they discuss the origin and development of their powers; it is no more to be believed that Stevenson learned to be a great writer by imitating Browne, than that The Raven really reached its perfection in the manner so minutely described by Poe. The faithful practice of composition will doubtless help any ambitious young man or woman. But Stevensons are not made in that fashion. If they were, anyone with plenty of time and patience could become a great author. This "ape" remark by Stevenson has had one interesting effect; if he imitated others, he has been strenuously imitated himself. Probably no recent English writer has been more constantly employed for rhetorical purposes, and there is none whose influence on style is more evident in the work of contemporary aspirants in fiction.

The stories of Stevenson exhibit a double union, as admirable as it is rare. They exhibit the union of splendid material with the most delicate skill in language; and they exhibit the union of thrilling events with a remarkable power of psychological analysis. Every thoughtful reader has noticed these combinations; but we sometimes forget that Silver, Alan, Henry, and the Master are just as fine examples of character-portrayal as can be found in the works of Henry James. It is from this point of view that Stevenson is so vastly superior to Fenimore Cooper; just as in literary style he so far surpasses Scott. Treasure Island is much better than The Red Rover or The Pirate; its author actually beat Scott and Cooper at their own game. With the exception of Henry Esmond, Stevenson may perhaps be said to have written the best romances in the English language; the undoubted inferiority of any of his books to that masterpiece would make an interesting subject for reflexion.

The one thing in which Scott really excelled Stevenson was in the depiction of women. The latter has given us no Diana Vernon or Jeannie Deans. For the most part, Stevenson's romances are Paradise before the creation of Eve. The snake is there, but not the woman. This extraordinary absence of sex-interest is a notable feature, and many have been the reasons assigned for it. If he had not tried at all, we should be safe in saying that, like a small boy, he felt that girls were in the way, and he did not want them mussing up his games. There is perhaps some truth in this; for the presence of a girl might have ruined Treasure Island, as it ruined the Sea Wolf. Her fuss and feathers bring in all sorts of bothersome problems to distract a novelist, bent on having a good time with pirates, murders, and hidden treasure. Unfortunately for the complete satisfaction of this explanation, Stevenson wrote Prince Otto, and tried to draw a real woman. The result did not add anything to his fame, and, indeed, the whole book missed fire. He was unquestionably more successful in David Balfour, but, when all is said, the presence of women in a few of Stevenson's romances is not so impressive as their absence in most. It is only in that unfinished work, Weir of Hermiston, which gave every promise of being one of the greatest novels in English literature, that he seemed to have reached full maturity of power in dealing with the master passion. The best reason for Stevenson's reserve on matters of sex was probably his delicacy; he did not wish to represent this particular animal impulse with the same vivid reality he pictured avarice, ambition, courage, cowardice, and pride; and thus hampered by conscience, he thought it best in the main to omit it altogether. At least, this is the way he felt about it, as we may learn from the Vailima Letters:—

"This is a poison bad world for the romancer, this Anglo-Saxon world; I usually get out of it by not having any women in it at all." (February, 1892.)

"I am afraid my touch is a little broad in a love story; I can't mean one thing and write another. As for women, I am no more in any fear of them; I can do a sort all right; age makes me less afraid of a petticoat, but I am a little in fear of grossness. However, this David Balfour's love affair, that's all right—might be read out to a mothers' meeting—or a daughters' meeting. The difficulty in a love yarn, which dwells at all on love, is the dwelling on one string; it is manifold, I grant, but the root fact is there unchanged, and the sentiment being very intense, and already very much handled in letters, positively calls for a little pawing and gracing. With a writer of my prosaic literalness and pertinency of point of view, this all shoves toward grossness—positively even towards the far more damnable closeness. This has kept me off the sentiment hitherto, and now I am to try: Lord! Of course Meredith can do it, and so could Shakespeare; but with all my romance, I am a realist and a prosaist, and a most fanatical lover of plain physical sensations plainly and expressly rendered; hence my perils. To do love in the same spirit as I did (for instance) D. Balfour's fatigue in the heather; my dear sir, there were grossness—ready made! And hence, how to sugar?" (May, 1892.)

On the whole, I am inclined to think, that with the omission of the fragment, Weir of Hermiston, Stevenson's best novel is his first—Treasure Island. He wrote this with peculiar zest; first of all, in spite of the playful dedication, to please himself; second, to see if the public appetite for Romance could once more be stimulated. He never did anything later quite so off-hand, quite so spontaneous. His maturer books, brilliant as they are, lack the peculiar brightness of Treasure Island. It has more unity than The Master of Ballantræ; and it has a greater group of characters than Kidnapped.

Stevenson told this story in the first person, but, by a clever device, he avoided the chief difficulty of that method of narration. The speaker is not one of the principal characters in the story, though he shares in the most thrilling adventures. We thus have all the advantages of direct discourse, all the gain in reality—without a hint as to what will be the fate of the leading actors. Stevenson said, in one of the Vailima Letters, that first-person tales were more in accord with his temperament. The purely objective character of this novel is noteworthy, and entirely proper, coming from a perfectly normal boy. The Essays show that Stevenson could be sufficiently introspective if he chose, and Dr. Jekyll is really an introspective novel, differing in every way from Treasure Island. But here we have romantic adventures seen through the fresh eyes of boyhood, producing their unconscious reflex action on the soul of the narrator, who daily grows in courage and self-reliance by grappling with danger. In Henry James's fine and penetrating essay on Stevenson, he says of this book, "What we see in it is not only the ideal fable, but the young reader himself and his state of mind: we seem to read it over his shoulder, with an arm around his neck." This particular remark has been much praised; but it seems in a way to half-apologise for a man's interest in the story, and to explain it like an affectionate uncle's sympathetic interest in a child's game, who mainly enjoys the child's enthusiasm. Now I venture to say that no one can any more outgrow Treasure Island than he can outgrow Robinson Crusoe. The events in the story delight children; but it is a book that in mature years can be read and reread with ever increasing satisfaction and profit. No one needs to regret or to explain his interest in this novel; it is nothing to be sorry for, nor does it indicate a low order of literary taste. Many serious persons have felt somewhat alarmed by their pleasure in reading Treasure Island, and have hesitated to assign it a high place in fiction. Some have said that, after all, it is only a pirate story, differing from the Sleuths and Harkaways merely in being better written. But this is exactly the point, and a very important point, in criticism. In art, the subject is of comparatively little importance, whereas the treatment is the absolute distinguishing feature. To insist that there is little difference between Treasure Island and any cheap tale of blood-and-thunder, is equivalent to saying that there is little difference between the Sistine Madonna and a cottage chromo of the Virgin.