IIJUVENILIA
Beforewe come to the main divisions of Stevenson’s work it may be as well to consider briefly those few early works which, to the majority of readers, were first made known by their inclusion in the Edinburgh Edition. It is unfortunately impossible to recover the original essay upon Moses, or the earliest romances; so that we are presented first withThe Pentland Rising, published as a pamphlet when Stevenson was sixteen. This is conscientious and fully-documented work, written too close to authorities to have much flexibility or personal interest; but it is not strikingly immature. Daniel Defoe, Burnet, Fuller’s “History of the Holy Warre,” and a surprising number of other writers upon the period are successively quoted with good effect; and it is amusing to note the references to “A Cloud of Witnesses,” which appears to have been a favourite with Alison Cunningham. This pamphlet is decidedly the outcome of AlisonCunningham’s teaching, full as it is of the authentic manner of the Covenanters, which Stevenson was presently to imitate to the admiration of all the world.
Many readers of Stevenson must have regarded with eyes of marvel the two serious papers, the gravity of which is perfect, dealing with the Thermal Influence of Forests, and with a new form of Intermittent Light. I have no ability to determine the scientific value of these papers; and as literary works they have less interest than most of the other instances of Juvenilia. They are illustrated with diagrams, and they possess coherence and lucidity. In any work these two qualities are important, and we shall find that clearness is a quality which Stevenson never lost. He always succeeded in being clear, in escaping the obscure sayings of the philosopher or the enthusiast. That is to say, he was a writer. He was a writer in those two scientific papers, no less than inVirginibus PuerisqueorPrince Otto. When obscurity is so easy, clearness is a distinguished virtue; and if Stevenson sometimes errs to the extent of robbing his work of thickets and dim frightening darknesses, that is also because he was a writer, and because he preferred to be a writer.
There follow a number of shorter pieces,some of them the fruit of his University days of practising; some later, so that they include the papers onRoadsandForest Noteswhich are mentioned in the next chapter. These sometimes show obvious immaturity, but they also show more than anything else could do the real doggedness with which Stevenson pursued his aim of learning to write. They show him, at least, forming his sentences with careful attention to rhythm and to sound—not yet elaborate, not yet so “kneaded” as his manner was in a little while to be. It is here sometimes thin, as is the subject-matter. In one sketch,The Wreath of Immortelles, we may catch a glimpse of the method of opening an essay which Stevenson developed later; but, on the other hand, in theForest Notes(possibly more mature work) there is really excellent treatment of good and interesting matter. Three “criticisms” have point. One, of Lord Lytton’s “Fables in Slang,” is fairly conventional; the second, on Salvini’s Macbeth, was the one condemned by Fleeming Jenkin because it showed Stevenson thinking more about himself than about Salvini; the third is a very delightful little paper on Bagster’s illustrated edition of “The Pilgrim’s Progress.”
All these short pieces are of interest because they show the growth of Stevenson as a writer.They are the more interesting because at the same time they illustrate the way in which Stevenson gradually made his work take on the impress of his personality. All young work lacks character, as young hand-writing does, and as young style does; and all young essay-work in particular appears sometimes rather tepid and even silly when the author tries to interest us in his “ego.” Stevenson from the first saw himself as the central object in his essay: it is amusing to watch how soon he begins to make himself count as an effective central object. At first the personality is thin: it has not carried. Later it develops with the development of style: the use of words becomes firmer, and with that firmness comes greater confidence, greater ease, in the projection of the author’s self. It is perhaps not until we reach the familiar essays that we find Stevenson fully master of himself, for literary purposes; but the growth provides matter for rather ingenious study.
In that volume of the collected editions which contains these early essays it is customary to include the works issued by the Davos Press; and Mr. Lloyd Osbourne (at the age of twelve the proprietor of the DavosPress) has also discovered a wholly amusing account of an important military campaign conducted in an attic at Davos by himself and Stevenson as opposed commanders of tin soldiers. The game, which had of course inexhaustible interest, has also, as described by Mr. Osbourne, its intricacies for the lay mind; but Stevenson’s account of this particular campaign, written by means of official reports, rumours, newspapers yellow and otherwise, offers no difficulty. It is an excellent piece of pretence. The Davos Press, which provided the world with unique works by Stevenson and by Mr. Osbourne, illustrated with original woodcuts, belongs, as does the war-game, to the time spent in the châlet at Davos shortly after Stevenson’s marriage. It shows how easily he could enjoy elaborate games (as most men do enjoy them, if they are not deterred by self-importance or preoccupation with matters more strictly commercial); and the relationship with Mr. Osbourne seems to have been as frank and lively as anybody could desire.
I have mentioned these matters out of their due place because they seem to me to have a value as contributing to certain suggestions which I shall make later. By his marriage, Stevenson gained not only a very devotedwife but a very intimate boy-friend, the kind of friend he very likely had long wanted. There was almost twenty years’ difference between them; but that, I think, made the friendship more suited to Stevenson’s nature. By means of this difference he could indulge in that very conscious make-belief for which his nature craved—a detached make-belief, which enabled him to enjoy the play both in fact and as a spectator, to make up for Mr. Osbourne’s admitted superiority in marksmanship by the subtilty of his own military devices; finally, to enjoy the quite personal pleasure of placing upon record, with plans and military terms, in the best journalistic style, accounts of his military achievements. The art of gloating innocently over his own power to gloat; the power to delight consciously in his own delight at being able to play—these, I believe, are naturally Scots pleasures, and profoundly Stevensonian pleasures. I hope that no reader will deny Stevenson the right to such enjoyments, for Stevenson’s not very complex nature is really bound up in them. If we take from him the satisfaction of seeing himself in every conceivable posture, we take from him a vanity which permeates his whole life-work, and which, properly regarded, is harmless to offend our taste.