IXCONCLUSION
If, in writing such a book as this, one could truly succeed in grasping the significance of a man’s work, or in appreciating the bent of his mind; and then, having grasped or appreciated, if one could convey the results with any precision, the book would have a significance beyond that of literary criticism. Having “drawed a man,” as Stevenson once did, one might indeed go on to “draw his soul,” as Stevenson only offered to do. And the consequence might be that one would throw some light upon that difficult problem—the psychology of genius. For we may seek deliberately now, or, if deliberateness seem too dryasdust, we may seek intuitively, to understand the way in which such a man as Stevenson grew up to be a successful writer, and the aspects in which the art of writing appeared to at least one of its exponents. I have tried here and there in this book to indicate somethingof the spirit in which Stevenson approached his art, and I have tried also to suggest what I regard as the particular strengths and shortcomings of Stevenson’s talent. But however one may interpret the work of a writer there must always be the danger that in pursuing an examination such as this one may be missing the very significance of which one is in search. At best, one can offer only tentatively the conclusions to be drawn from the results of such an examination.
Much has been written of Stevenson’s indebtedness in early days to other writers. He has committed himself to the suggestion that he coveted the power of writing before he was aware of anything that he particularly wished to write. For the purpose of learning to write, he claims to have imitated a dozen different authors, assiduously practising until he had obtained a mastery over words. My own impression, which I have given earlier, is that Stevenson’ssenseof style was developed by the histrionic gifts of his nurse. That seems at least probable. I think that with a sense of style, a habit of spinning tales (which it appears that he possessed, in common with many people with no pretensions to literary skill), and a desire to write that was keen enough tobe a hunger, Stevenson is a credible figure of youth. There must be many youths who get so far and go no further. The point about Stevenson is that he went on. But he went on as he began—as a writer, one who was determined to utilise words. Wherever he went he took the little notebook of which he has given an account; and he made the attempt to put everything he saw into words which expressed it exactly. The reader will find in early essays many curiously apt descriptions of natural phenomena—such, for example, as “the faint and choking odour of frost”—which show that when once Stevenson began to write away from the model he began also to observe consciously and to reproduce his sensations with what would nowadays be called “a photographic accuracy.” I have already quoted two such accuracies fromTreasure Island, where they are very effective; but it would be hard to stop quoting Stevenson if one wished to record apt phrases, for apt phrases are as common with Stevenson as leaves on a tree.
What the reader next proceeds to question is the matter which the writing is used to convey. Until we come to such an essay asOrdered South, I believe there is very little life in this matter. InRoadsthere is a little weakvanity, as of fancy paralysed by self-consciousness, such as one may often see in the work of very young writers; but there seems no doubt that, by 1874, a year after the composition ofRoads, Stevenson had reached a degree of proficiency which, given a suitable subject, enabled him to escape the flaccidity which besets a young writer. Poverty of matter, which forces him back upon incident or upon thin moralising, is, throughout, a defect of Stevenson’s writing. I suppose that the method by which he worked was too “near,” too self-conscious, to allow his mind ever to become rich and fallow. He was using up his experience too immediately and too continuously as literary material for any very great richness to mature. He is never, that is to say, a rich writer: whatever compression there is in his work is the compression that comes of the excised word and the concentrated phrase rather than the pregnancy of thought, whether vigorous or abstruse. It must be remembered that, wherever he went, his journey or his place of residence provided him almost at once with a practicable background for literary work of some sort. His travel-books, his stories—these all show immediately the stage of his life’s journey to which they belong.
That is one thing. Another is that hiswriting is very clear. It is a model in its freedom from ambiguities. If clarity is a virtue in writing, as I believe it to be, then Stevenson deserves praise for most admirable clarity. There is no difficulty of style. It is easy to read, because it has so much grace; but it is also easy to understand, because it is in a high degree explicit. It is essentially a prose style; as I think Stevenson was essentially a prose-writer. His poems have this same clearness (though surely he was never a master of poetic form to the extent to which he was a master of prose), and clearness in poetry is a less notable virtue than clearness in prose. Unless poetry expresses something that could not properly be expressed in prose it clearly has no claim upon our attention. The consequence of this is that Stevenson, who wrote very capable verses, does not impress us as a poet. Even in this respect, however, his clearness has its virtue; because the mark of the ostentatiously minor poet is obscurity of diction. Stevenson was not obscure in diction, and he was not obscure in thought, as so many writers with little to say are obscure. He went, in fact, to the other extreme. His poems are too explicit to be good poems. They are the poems of a man with all his wits about him; they are the poems of a man whoalways had his wits about him. I will go so far as to say that a man who always, in this common but expressive phrase, has his wits about him is never within measurable distance of being a poet.
If Stevenson’s habitual attitude of mind be then examined it will prove to be directly opposed to the habit of mind of the poet. He was about as poetic as a robin. But his habit of mind (unlike that of the robin) was moral as well as practical. It was not philosophical; nor would one willingly use in this connection the word spiritual. It was moral and practical; it was fundamentally a prose habit of mind. The highest and the lowest were alike strange to Stevenson’s mind; it had excellent equipoise, an admirable sanity. It had not, normally, a very wide range of sympathy or interest. I have explained this—or rather, I have tried to explain it—to some extent in earlier chapters; but in this place an explanation may be more clearly offered. Stevenson, we know, was an invalid; his vitality was poor, although the poverty of his vitality was partly concealed by a buoyancy of nervous high spirits. The tendency of all natures is to adjust the indulgence of emotion to the power of withstanding the reaction from such emotion. Highly emotional natures, unless they aremorbid, seek instinctively to avoid the exhaustion which overstrained emotion produces. Delicate persons instinctively avoid mental exertion—not from lack of courage, or even from lack of intellectual strength; but purely from lassitude and the dread of lassitude. They do not essay long or vehement excursions from their base of common-sense; they must always be able to return the same night. That is because sustained imaginative effort, as well as poignant emotion, is instinctively recognised as dangerous. It is not that they lack the power to imagine or to feel deeply; it is simply that, as a measure for their own protection, they rely upon the virtues which are less intense and less exacting. They grow cautious. Stevenson was cautious. To him God was a kindly, well-intentioned person of infinite mercy; but He was not a terrible God, nor a God in Whom there was any mystery. If one had used the word “mystery” to Stevenson he would have thought inevitably of Gaboriau. I should explain that by suggesting—not that Stevenson was what is called “unimaginative,” but that his delicate body provoked the compromise. Otherwise he might have been a fanatic. Perhaps I am wrong; perhaps there was simply nothing of the mystic in Stevenson, and perhaps there wasnothing of the mystic in Alison Cunningham. It is true that Stevenson’s early wrestlings with religious difficulties seem to have led him to conclusions strictly utilitarian, by which Christianity became a “body of doctrine” rather than a cloud of witnesses. Nevertheless, I am disposed to think that his apparent failure to apprehend any faith more exacting than a lucid morality or ethical code was caused throughout by physical weakness.
The point is interesting rather than conclusive; and it may be thought that Stevenson’s attitude to his art tells strongly against my hypothesis. He was essentially technical in his attitude to style and to art in general. He did not regard writing as a means of expressing truths; he seems to have regarded it as an end in itself. He does not seem to consider the notion of writing to express an idea; his impulse is to gather together as many incidents as will make a book. It is easy, of course, to take an unsophisticated view of art, and pretend that the artist invariably works with the aid of an inner light. I do not wish to pretend that the artist is such a mere instrument; particularly as the writer who claims to be no more than a medium is generally no less than a charlatan. But I cannot help remarking how entirely absent from anydeclaration by Stevenson is the sense of an artist’s profound disinterested imagining. So far from being profoundly disinterested, he seems to have followed here the custom he admits following in childhood, that of reading and watching everything for the sake of wrinkles subsequently to be used in play. It seems as though he took imaginative writing at its lowest valuation, as so much “fake,” as so much invention very ingeniously contrived but never really, in the last resort, perfectly believed by the creator—as, in fact, something “pretended.” Now Stevenson’s practice, in that case, is better than his theory. Scenes in his romances, and some of his short stories in bulk, are the work of an artist who was working at the bidding of his inspiration. Stevenson did, at these times, believe as an artist in the work he was making. I can give no account of the artist’s state of mind; but it is quite certain that Stevenson did not “pretend” his best work, and that no artist “pretends” his best work. An artist can distinguish between that part of his work which is the result of intense belief and that part which is agnostic. Stevenson seems not to have been so sure; for his aims, whether they are at “vitality” or at the death of the optic nerve and the adjective, suggest that heinvariably adopted the attitude of the craftsman, the professional writer of novels for popular consumption. Even so, he is to be applauded for his freedom from artistic cant. If he is too intent upon rattling the bones, at least that is more candid than the habit of playing the priest.
From this question of Stevenson’s conviction, however (the question of the inevitable as opposed to the practicable), arises a further question. I have said earlier that in the case of a work of art there is left with the reader some abiding emotion, an evocation, as it were, of emotion distinct from all incidental emotions, excitements, dreads, or anxieties aroused in the course of the book. In that pervading and prevailing emotion, it seems to me, lies the particular quality which distinguishes a work of art from a work of merely consummate craft. If I question whether such abiding emotion is evoked by the longer stories of Stevenson, I am bound to answer that these do not arouse in me any emotion greater than that of interest, the consequence of a succession of pleasant excitements. The romances as a whole have great ingenuity, many scenes to which all readers must look back with recollectedenjoyment. In no case does the book reappear as a whole. The recollection is a recollection of “plums.” That they are good plums does not affect the validity of the argument if once the specific test suggested above is accepted. In the case ofWeir of Hermistonthe recollection is obviously difficult, because the book is a fragment: it is, however, perfectly clear and level in performance, which leads to the supposition thatWeir, as it stands, will actually bear whatever test is applied to it. For that reasonWeiris truly regarded as Stevenson’s masterpiece among the longer stories.
With the short stories I have already dealt in considerable detail; to the remaining creative works there is no need to refer on these grounds, for the plays are admittedly poor. And indeed, I should not have raised the question about the romances if it had not been the case that very considerable claims have been made on behalf of the permanent value of Stevenson’s work by many writers whose opinions ordinarily command respect. The truth is probably that all good novels, of whatever kind, whether modern or historical, must be based upon idea and upon character. To Stevenson, character was incidental. To Stevenson incident, picturesque or exciting,and the employment of an atmosphere, or appropriate “style,” were the most important things in romance. That was perhaps the grave mistake which made his romances what they are, and which has very considerably affected the romantic novels published since Stevenson’s time and written in accordance with his conventions. The use of conventional characters, easily-recognisable romantic types, has for twenty years and more been accepted by English romantic novelists as a legitimate evasion of the need for creating character. Thus it happens that so few modern romantic novels have at this time any standing. Their names are forgotten (except, possibly, by their authors, and by some sections of the public only if the novels have been made into stage plays). If Stevenson’s romances had enjoyed the strength of definite themes, and if they had been based upon character, the whole position of the romantic novel in England at the present day might have been different. As it is, the romantic novel is a survival. The freshness of Stevenson’s manipulated convention is stale, and the imitators of Stevenson have forsaken romance for the writing of detective mystery stories. They still have popularity; but they have no status.
But it may be urged that Stevenson saved his ideas for that more direct appeal to readers which is the special privilege of the essay. Now the point in this case is to be reached by the inquiry as to what ideas Stevenson expressed in his essays. They are very simple. Stevenson’s essays are either fanciful treatments of pleasant, or attractive, or ingenious notions; or they are frankly homiletic. Stevenson loved courage, and he thought that courage should have trappings. To his mind the bravest actions were the better for a bit of purple. But when we penetrate beyond this crust of happy truism there is little that will reward us for the search. There is no thought, and little enough feeling in the essays: their charm lies in the fact that they dress prettily, and sometimes beautifully, the rather obvious philosophical small-change which most people cherish as their private wisdom. The essays flatter the reader by mirroring his own mind and giving it an odd twist of grace. They are shrewd mother-wit, dressed for a fairing. That is what causes the popularity of the essays—that and the air they have of “looking on the bright side of things.” They do look on the bright side; they are homely, cheerful, charming;they will continue to adorn the bookshelf with a pretty, pale, bedside cheerfulness which will delight all whose culture exceeds their originality. But I believe that they have ceased to be regarded (it has almost become ridiculous that they should ever have been regarded) as comparable with the essays of Montaigne, or Hazlitt, or Lamb; because their day is sinking and their fragility is seen already to indicate a want of robustness rather than a delicacy of perception. By this I do not mean to suggest that already the essays are out of date: they are only out of date in some instances, and even if they were completely out of date that fact would not have much ultimate critical significance. What is, however, very significant, is that they have ceased to stand as essays, and have become goods for the monger of phrases. Their “aptness,” which of old was the charm that dignified the trite moralism, has recoiled upon them: they are seen to be mere aggregations of “happy thoughts,” fit to be culled and calendared for suburban households. It is not without its pathos that one warning against too-eager judgment of weaker brethren, really written by an American woman poet, is widely and steadfastly attributed to Stevenson by his greatest admirers. For the teaching ofthe essays is one of compromise, not of enlarged ideals; it is the doctrine of “that state of life” which finally ends in a good-natured passivity not unlike the happy innocence of the domesticated cat. Thus, for all his powerful desire to preach, Stevenson taught nothing but a bland acquiescence; for the field of battle to which he likened marriage as well as life was a field in which there was no headstrong conflict of ideal and practice, but a mere accommodation which a phrase could embody.
There seems to be a general tendency to protest against such opinions, not because the opinions are adequately countered, but because in most readers Stevenson produces a vague doting which is entirely uncritical. Stevenson in such warm hearts is incomparable; and a question is a perceptible rebuff to their confidingness. The prevailing feeling appears to be one of affectionate admiration, a matter of personal attraction rather than of critical esteem. Such a claim in any man is very far from being negligible. It is clear that the need of most people is an object of affection. They must love, or they cannot appreciate. The modern school of novelists, which tries to bevery stern and almost legally unjust, provides little enough material for the loving hearts. The modern school says to its readers: “You are wicked, selfish, diseased, but horribly fascinating, and I’m going to set you right by diagnosis”; and the reader feels a sting in the fascination. Stevenson says, “We are all mighty fine fellows; and life is a field of battle; but it is better to be a fool than to be dead; and the true success is to labour”; and the reader feels that Stevenson is One of Us! He is not, that is to say, austere; he does not ask uncomfortable questions; he makes no claim upon his readers’ judgment, but only upon their self-esteem and their gratified assent. He even tells them about himself. He says, “I knew a little boy”; and his readers say: “It’s himself!” They read with enormous satisfaction.
Well, all that is delightful; but in its way it is a red-herring. It does not help us to assay the literary value of Stevenson’s work. It is simply a wide illustration of the fascination which Stevenson had for his friends. It is an extension of that rare thing, personal charm. We may say that it ought not to influence readers; and no doubt it influences some too-critical readers adversely (criticism being understood by all admirers of Stevenson asthe merest corrosion); but the fact is that it cannot be ignored by anyone who seeks to account for Stevenson’s continued, and even now barely declining, popularity. Another very good reason is that Stevenson had extraordinarily good friends. I think it probable that no writer ever had friends more loyal and affectionate. They criticised his work privately to its great improvement, and then sold his work when it was completed, acting as counsellors and agents. And this was done with the same affectionate admiration which readers of his work still feel. He had few intimate friends, says Mrs. Stevenson: if friendship consisted in affection received (as distinguished from affection exchanged), I think Stevenson would have been in friends the richest man of his own generation. And since his death he has found a hundred thousand friends for every one he had during his lifetime. No man was ever richer in well-wishers. If he had few intimate friends that was because he was naturally reserved, or, as Mrs. Strong says, “secretive.” No doubt it was a part of his charm that his friends were mystified by his reserve: I do not see why his readers also should be mystified, for his writing is free of any mystery. I can only assume that a slight air of sentimentalism which runs throughessays and romances alike, and over into such short stories asWill o’ the MillandMarkheim, combines with the thin optimism of the essays and the picturesque variety of incident of the romances to give body to this charm. I have stated in an earlier chapter the features of the romances which seem to me to be merits: it is not necessary to repeat the merits here. They include occasional pieces of distinguished imagination, a frequent exuberance of fancy, and a great freshness of incident which conceals lack of central or unifying idea and poverty of imagined character. Intrinsically, although their literary quality is much higher, the romances—with the possible exception ofKidnapped—are inferior to the work of Captain Marryat.
Finally, the fact which all must recognise in connection with Stevenson’s work is the versatility of talent which is displayed. From essays personal to essays critical; from short-stories picturesque to short-stories metaphysical, and stories of bogles to fairy stories of princes and magic bottles and wondrous enchanted isles; from tales of treasure to the politics of a principality, from Scottish history to tales of the South Seas; from travel-booksto poems for men and children; from the thermal influences of forests to a defence of a Roman Catholic hero-priest; from Samoan politics to the story of the Justice Clerk; from plays to topographical history and imaginary war-news and the cutting of wood-blocks (to the satisfaction of Mr. Joseph Pennell)—that is a dazzling record. Quite obviously one cannot contemplate it without great admiration. When it is remembered also that it is the product of a man who was very frequently (though not, as is generally supposed, continuously) an invalid, the amount of it, and the variety, seems to be impossible. Yet it is possible, and this fact it is which finally explains our attitude to Stevenson. We think it marvellous that he should have been able to write at all, forgetting, as we do, that “writing his best was very life to him.” We do forget that; we ought not to forget it. We ought not to forget that Stevenson was a writer. He meant to be a writer, and a writer he became. He is known chiefly in these days as a writer; and in the future he will be still more clearly seen as a writer. The weaknesses of his work will be realised; to some extent his writing will fall in popular esteem; but he will be less the brave soul travelling hopefully and labouring to arrive, and more the deliberatewriter. When other men sing and walk and talk and play chess and loiter, Stevenson wrote. In his life there is no question that he sang and walked and loitered and talked and played chess; but when he could do none of these things he could write. Writing was as the breath of his body; writing was his health, his friends, his romance. He will go down into literary history as the man who became a professional writer, who cared greatly about the form and forms of expression. The fact that he concentrated upon expression left his mind to some extent undeveloped, so that he could express very excellently perceptions more suitable to his youth than to his maturer years. It made his earlier writing too scented and velvet-coated. But it enabled him, when his feeling was aroused, as it only could have been in the last years of his life, to write at great speed, with great clearness, an account of the political troubles in Samoa and in particular of German diplomacy there, which seems to us still valuable—not because the facts it records are of extreme significance, but because at the end of his life Stevenson was at last to be found basing his work upon principles, really and consciously grasped, from which the incidental outcome was of less importance than the main realisation. Where hehad hitherto been shuttlecocked by his impulses, and tethered by his moralism, he became capable of appreciating ideas as of more importance than their expression. If he had been less prolific, less versatile, less of a virtuoso, Stevenson might have been a greater man. He would have been less popular. He would have been less generally admired and loved. But with all his writing he took the road of least resistance, the road of limited horizons; because with all his desire for romance, his desire for the splendour of the great life of action, he was by physical delicacy made intellectually timid and spiritually cautious. He was obliged to take care of himself, to be home at night, to allow himself to be looked after. Was not that the greatest misfortune that could have befallen him? Is the work that is produced by nervous reaction from prudence ever likely to enjoy an air of real vitality? In the versatility of Stevenson we may observe his restlessness, the nervous fluttering of the mind which has no physical health to nourish it. In that, at least, and the charming and not at all objectionable inclination to pose. He was a poseur because if he had not pretended he would have died. It was absolutely essential to him that he should pose and that he should write, justas it was essential that he should be flattered and anxiously guarded from chill and harm. But it was necessary for the same reason, lest the feeble flame should perish and the eager flicker of nervous exuberance be extinguished. That Stevenson was deliberately brave in being cheerful and fanciful I do not for one moment believe; I think such a notion is the result of pure ignorance of nervous persons and their manifestations. But that Stevenson, beneath all his vanity, realised his own disabilities, seems to me to be certain and pathetic. That is what makes so much of the extravagant nonsense written and thought about Stevenson since his death as horrible to contemplate as would be any dance of ghouls. The authors of all this posthumous gloating over Stevenson’s illnesses have been concerned to make him a horribly piteous figure, to harrow us in order that we should pity. How much more is Stevenson to be pitied for his self-constituted apostles! We shall do ill to pity Stevenson, because pity is the obverse of envy, and is as much a vice. Let us rather praise Stevenson for his real determination and for that work of his which we can approve as well as love. To love uncritically is to love ill. To discriminate with mercy is very humbly to justify one’s privilege as a reader.
It is sufficient here to maintain that Stevenson’s literary reputation, as distinct from the humanitarian aspect of his fortitude, is seriously impaired. It is no longer possible for a serious critic to place him among the great writers, because in no department of letters—excepting the boy’s book and the short story—has he written work of first-class importance. His plays, his poems, his essays, his romances—all are seen nowadays to be consumptive. What remains to us, apart from a fragment, a handful of tales, and two boy’s books (forKidnapped, although finely romantic, was addressed to boys, and still appeals to the boy in us) is a series of fine scenes—what I have called “plums”—and the charm of Stevenson’s personality. Charm as an adjunct is very well; charm as an asset is of less significance. We find that Stevenson, reviving the never-very-prosperous romance of England, created a school which has brought romance to be the sweepings of an old costume-chest. I am afraid we must admit that Stevenson has become admittedly a writer of the second class, because his ideals have been superseded by other ideals and shown to be the ideals of a day, a season, and not the idealsof an age. In fact, we may even question whether his ideals were those of a day, whether they were not merely treated by everybody as so much pastime; whether the revival of the pernicious notion that literature is only a pastime is not due to his influence. We may question whether Stevenson did not make the novel a toy when George Eliot had finished making it a treatise. If that charge could be upheld, I am afraid we should have another deluge of critical articles upon Stevenson, written as blindly as the old deluge, but this time denouncing him as a positive hindrance in the way of the novel’s progress. However that may be, Stevenson seems very decidedly to have betrayed the romantics by inducing them to enter acul-de-sac; for romantic literature in England at the present time seems to show no inner light, but only a suspicious phosphorescence. And that fact we may quite clearly trace back to Stevenson, who galvanised romance into life after Charles Reade had volubly betrayed it to the over-zealous compositor.
Stevenson, that is to say, was not an innovator. We can find his originals in Wilkie Collins, in Scott, in Mayne Reid, in Montaigne, Hazlitt, Defoe, Sterne, and in many others. No need for him to admit it: the fact ispatent. “It is the grown people who make the nursery stories; all the children do, is jealously to preserve the text.” That is what Stevenson was doing; that is what Stevenson’s imitators have been doing ever since. And if romance rests upon no better base than this, if romance is to be conventional in a double sense, if it spring not from a personal vision of life, but is only a tedious virtuosity, a pretence, a conscious toy, romance as an art is dead. The art was jaded when Reade finished his vociferous carpet-beating; but it was not dead. And if it is dead, Stevenson killed it.