VIISHORT STORIES
Stevensonhimself establishes the fact that he found short-story writing easier than the writing of novels. “It is the length that kills,” he confessed. But length offered difficulties in the longer stories because Stevenson, besides lacking the physical endurance for continuous imaginative effort, had the experimental and inventive mind rather than the synthetic or the analytical. It was easier for him to see the whole of a short story. It could be compressed: it had not to be sustained. And in the writing of a short story his confidence never slackened. He was then not sailing in uncharted seas. It is for this reason, in the first place, that Stevenson’s short stories are better as works of art than his long ones. A little idea, a flash, it may be, of inspiration; and Stevenson had his story complete, ready for that scrupulous handling and manipulation which the actual composition always involved.He did not greatly deal in anecdote; his psychological studies are inclined to be hollow; but he was perfectly effective in his not very powerful vein of fantasy, could tell a fairy tale with distinction, succeeded once without question in picturesque drama, and, when he fell to anecdote, as inThe Treasure of Franchard,Providence and the Guitar, andThe Beach of Falesá, he was pleasantly triumphant. Moreover, in two of his “bogle” stories, the one inserted inCatriona, and the other famous to all the world asThrawn Janet, he seems to me to have risen clearly above anecdote with matter which might have been left as unsatisfactory as it remains inThe Body-Snatcher.
In one of his reviews Stevenson speaks of “that compression which is the mark of a really sovereign style.” Compression is no more the mark of a sovereign style, of course, than it is of a suit of clothes. Compression brings with it obscurity, and is a mark of self-consciousness. What Stevenson meant was possibly a justification of apophthegm and figure. He rather enjoyed what somebody once called “minting the arresting phrase.” There is, at any rate, a palpable connection between our two quotations. But it is certain that precision, austerity, or, if I may use the word, chastity, of expression is a sign of good style;and compression, where it takes the form of heightening and intensification of effect, is the mark of a good short story. It is the mark of Stevenson’s best stories. It is the mark ofThrawn Janet, ofThe Pavilion on the Links, ofThe Bottle Imp. Sometimes, after promising well, Stevenson abandons himself, it is true, to his natural Scottish aptitude, and literally “talks out” such tales asMarkheimandA Lodging for the Night; but, quite as often, his judgment beats his inclination, and the result is a classic short story in a language not too brilliantly equipped with examples of the craft.
For the short story is above all a matter ofjustesse, by which word I mean to suggest delicate propriety of expression to idea. Mr. Henry James can tell a short story, because Mr. Henry James writes, as it were, with a very fine pen. Stevenson was not comparable as an artist with Mr. Henry James; but he wrote in a less rarified atmosphere; and it is still practically an unsettled question whether a distinguished artist (one who perfectly expresses a fine conception), such as Turgenev or Mr. Henry James, is the superior or the inferior of the writer with more tumultuous sympathies whose sense of form is less than his sense of life. So that when Stevenson wroteThe Pavilion on the Links, orThe Bottle Imp, orThrawn Janet,orMarkheim, he was writing particular stories of which only the last, one supposes, could ever have occurred to Mr. James as a subject for a short story at all. Conversely, one sees Stevenson blundering into the bluntnesses and certainly the ultimate failure ofOlalla, with the knowledge that his delicacy of style was more marked than the poignancy of his perception; and the psychological explorations ofOlallaare jejune stumblings compared with the finished delicacy of “Washington Square.” One does not think, in reading, of Mr. James; but one may perhaps be permitted to illustrate a point by a reference to his work, which has no precise significance as a parallel. That fact, I hope, will excuse a momentary comparison for the purpose of showing thatWill o’ the Mill, for all its stylistic accomplishment, is a barren piece of moralising. Where Stevenson essayed profundity, as all writers are drawn to essay profundity, whether it is from natural profoundness or from the instinct of imitation, he was badly hampered by his inexperience as an inductive philosopher. BothWill o’ the MillandMarkheimare, as it were, appendages to that doleful failurePrince Otto. They were experiments for Stevenson in a particular genre for which talent and his mental training had lent him no aptitude. It was on otherwork that he more successfully took his stand as a writer of short stories. His success—considering that we are now examining his position among the masters of our literature—can only be attested where his work stands supreme or, at any rate, is clearly distinguished, in its own class. It cannot be doubted for one moment that Stevenson wrote some exceedingly fine short stories, fit to be compared, in their own line, with any that have been written in English. What follows must be read in the light of this claim. In their own way, I regardThe Suicide Club,The Pavilion on the Links,Providence and the Guitar,Thrawn Janet,The Treasure of Franchard,The Beach of Falesá, andThe Bottle Impas first-class short stories. In a distinct second class I should placeThe Rajah’s Diamond, some ofThe Dynamiterstories,The Merry Men,Will o’ the Mill,Markheim,Olalla,The Isle of Voices, andDr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. The least successful short stories seem to me to beThe Story of a Lie,A Lodging for the Night,The Sire de Malétroit’s Door,The Misadventures of John Nicholson, andThe Body-Snatcher. I am aware that one at least of the stories which I have placed in this third division—The Sire de Malétroit’s Door—has given great pleasure to many readers, and has even been not without its direct influenceupon Stevenson’s imitators, while another—A Lodging for the Night—is greatly admired, and has been very highly praised; so that it seems hardly necessary to say that the classification is roughly made, and that it is only here attempted for reasons of convenience. The stories will hereafter be grouped according to subject or treatment, and will be examined individually. Those in the first division are, I think, completely successful in their own conventions; those in the second division are either incompletely successful or successful in conventions which seem to me inferior in artistic value; those in the third division are, as far as I can see, unsuccessful either because they fail to impose their conventions upon the reader or because they fail to convince the reader that Stevenson had mastered the craft of short-story writing. But, upon the whole, I believe Stevenson’s short stories to represent more successfully than any other part of his output the variety and the brilliance of his talent. It is for this reason that I shall endeavour in some detail to justify the divisions indicated above, and to emphasise the fact that such tentative distinctions, even if they prove inaccurate in the case of some one or two stories, may yet have some value as providing a basis for agreement or disagreement.
For that reason I shall add that the stories in the third division seem to me to fail for these reasons.The Story of a Lieis obviously prentice work. It is presumably based upon some experience of his own in France; but the action, once transferred from the Continent, is filled with sentimentality. Although written, apparently, much later thanThe Story of a Lie,The Misadventures of John Nicholsonis a protracted anecdote which does not awaken very much interest by its attempt to blend humorous exaggeration with bizarre incidents.The Body-Snatcheris one which Stevenson had to supply in order to satisfy a journal with which he had made a contract. It is meant to shock us, but it loses power before the climax, which thereupon fails to shock. The idea is horrible, and affords scope for much dreadful detail: Stevenson, however, perhaps through ill-health, was unsuccessful with it, and possibly the ugliness of the whole thing is at fault. ForThe Sire de Malétroit’s DoorI must confess to the greatest distaste. It seems to me to have neither historical nor human convincingness; and the phrase at the end of the story, “her falling body” very significantly conveys the pin-cushion substance of the demoiselle whoseindiscretion gives rise to the sickly and cloying tale. The last story in this division is one that enjoys great reputation, first because it deals with Villon, second because there is an outburst of Villon’s against the red hair of a murdered man, and last because there is an elaborately written but entirely inconclusive duologue between Villon and his host. The story seems to me to be without point or form.
I believe that popular admiration forA Lodging for the Nightis largely founded upon tradition or imitation, like the popular admiration for Shakespeare, without the basis of fact upon which the popular admiration for Shakespeare rests. It is well known that popular appreciation of great things is shallow, and that it rises from a common attempt to emulate the enthusiasm of the apostles of Art. Unfortunately, popular appreciation is more easily aroused by artifice than by art. Accordingly, those who have been taught to cite “Put out the light, and then—Put out the light” as a profundity are ready to cite with equal conviction the saying of Villon in this story that the murdered man had no right to have red hair. It is one of those dreadful æsthetic blunders that quickly pass into unquestionable dogma. If no protest is made, if those who detect an imposture remain supine, the false continues to masquerade asthe magnificent; and common opinions are so impervious to proclaimed fact that it is at length impossible to cope with them, save by some such wearisome exposition as this. It should be remembered that common appreciation of art is not guided by principles but by intuitions and imitations. The decay of a thing once widely popular is slow; and it is due, not to any native perception of mistake, but to the sluggard realisation that the old enthusiasm is less ardently canvassed than it was.A Lodging for the Nighthas enjoyed great repute, because Stevenson “found” Villon at a time when other young men were finding Villon; and now that Villon is quite settled among the young men, Stevenson’s essay on Villon and his story about Villon have reached the larger public that is always some years after the fleeting fashion. The result is that, by imitation of those who ought to have known better, and even by its muddled acceptance of a bad play about Villon (called “If I were King”), the public has been led to esteemA Lodging for the Nightas something more than the piece of laboured artifice that it always was.
In the second class I believe thatThe Rajah’s Diamond,The Dynamiter, andDr. Jekyll and Mr. Hydeare very efficient pieces of craftsmanship, strong enough in invention to delightthat typical person called by Mr. H. G. Wells the “weary giant,” engrossing reading to the accompaniment of cigars and whisky-and-soda, but not, in the way of art, quite what we require from works of creative imagination.The Merry Men, with one striking piece of characterisation, has vigour, but poor form and several superfluities of invention.The Isle of Voicesis a pleasant enough fairy tale, but clearly inferior to its companion pieceThe Bottle Imp. The other three tales,Will o’ the Mill,Markheim, andOlallaare all psychological studies of a kind that is nowadays called arid. That is to say, they have greater elaborateness of treatment than their intrinsic importance quite justifies.Will o’ the Millis written with great softness and delicacy, in a sort of slow and lulling drone very sweet to the ear;Markheimhas great virtuosity, is faint and exquisite in manner, feeble in perception, and is sometimes, I believe, false in psychology. Its plan and its manner would only be finally true if its understanding pierced more sharply and finely to the heart of truth. It lacks penetration.Olallais, in many ways, fine, in some, beautiful. It is, however, as Stevenson came to be aware, false. It is false, not because it is insincere, but because Stevenson’s knowledge had not the temper and the needle-likecapacity to go ever deeper into the subtleties upon which he was engaged. I suspect that he dared not trust his imagination, that his imagination had more ingenuity than courage or strength. The story does not produce æsthetic emotion: it is as though the author had made a fine net to trap a moonbeam, as though, when he thought to have come at the heart of the matter, it had escaped him. He was perhaps not wise enough in the mysteries of the human soul. Sensitiveness, and the desire to create a passionate beauty, were not fit substitutes for that patient and courageous, that fearless imagination which alone could have given truth to so simple and so unseizable a problem. More, in his handling of the conclusion of his tale, Stevenson’s emotion fell to a lower plane, and his talent played him quite false. He became too intent upon hisrenderingof the idea; his literary sense took command when his knowledge failed. That is the weakness of all these three stories.
Finally, in the first division, we have seven stories.Providence and the GuitarandThe Treasure of Franchardare what we may call, if we wish to do so, sentimental stories. Both arecomedies of light character, both show certain influences; but to both the manner, tender and amused, is so appropriate that we are pleased as we were meant to be pleased. Both contain good characterisation and an unstrained knowledge. Both are so entirely naïve in conception that we do not question the inspiration by which they were produced. In style and character dissimilar, but in humour of a like kind, areThe Suicide ClubandThe Bottle Imp. These four stories are all marked with the whimsical and charming manner which made Stevenson so many friends in life. All are more or less lifted by fantasy above their common play with the humours and the pathos of daily affairs. They are founded upon Stevenson’s natural attitude—The Suicide Club, more convincingly thanThe Superfluous Mansion, in which story the idea appears in its native ingenuousness, is an example of Stevenson’s constant wish (a wish not unshared by others) that he might be singled out mysteriously by the agent for some strange adventure in the manner of “The White Cat.” The young man inThe Superfluous Mansion, it will be remembered, was thrilled by an invitation to enter a carriage in which a solitary lady sat: his adventure thereafter was more commonplace, for Stevenson’s wish had in fact gone nofurther than the invitation to the carriage. So Prince Florizel embodied a desire for strange safe experience, such as all lonely children feel; and Stevenson was as much gratified as we are at the adventure of the young man with the cream tarts. My own opinion is, that it was the young man with the cream tarts who mattered; and that in the subsequent intrigues the story falls away to the level ofThe Rajah’s Diamond. To be accosted by a young man with cream tarts in a locality so picturesque as Leicester Square—that is romance: to go to the suicide club, and to participate in what follows, is to leave romance for picturesque stimulation of interest by bizarre incident. The young man, I think, is art: the rest might have been invented by a person without imagination, and so we might call it craft. Nevertheless, even if the events subsequent to the young man with the cream tarts take on a more commonplace air, they have yet an individuality above that of the tales inThe Rajah’s Diamond, and the peculiar fantastic bravado of Stevenson’s writing maintains the quality of surprise with extreme gusto.The Bottle Impis, to me, comparable in quality withThrawn Janetalone; and these two stories offer the two most successful examples of Stevenson’s art as a short-story writer. Each in its way is perfect, in form andin manner.The Beach of Falesá, more anecdotal, and less fine in form than any of the other stories in this division, has excellences of character, emotion, and reality which may elsewhere be considered to be lacking. In all its details it is possibly more vital and more worth the telling thanThe Pavilion on the Links, which in form is superior, but which, in convention, is inferior. I know of nothing with which to compareThe Beach of Falesá; andThe Pavilion on the Linksis perhaps not wholly outside the range of so accomplished a craftsman as Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, or so determined a romancer as Sir Arthur Quiller-Couch. That may be so, and very likely both those gentlemen admireThe Pavilion on the Linksvery much. The fact that requires to be recorded here of this story is that it sustains its own note magnificently; and that if we grant this type of story the right to be described as artThe Pavilion on the Linksis the best example of the type known to us. It is continuously exciting; it is not oppressively false; and it is handled with extreme competence. Possibly one admires its craftsmanship, its consummate treatment of a theme from whose reality one withdraws one’s conviction when the story’s grip has relaxed, more than one admires its quality as a work of imagination. If that is so,one must certainly regardThe Pavilion on the Linksas a magnificent example of craft, but on a lower artistic plane than Stevenson’s best work.
That brings to an end our consideration of the three rough divisions formulated at the beginning of this chapter. It is possible now to group the stories into their particular kinds, and to attempt to obtain, from an examination of these, some more general estimate of Stevenson’s ability as a writer of short stories. As a preliminary to this it will be desirable to set forth what may be regarded as a principle of judgment; and then to tabulate the stories in their various kinds. Thus we shall be able to eliminate the inferior stories, and to arrive at certain, I hope reasonable, conclusions as to the place occupied by the better stories both in Stevenson’s output and in the art of the short story.
What do we demand of a short story before we are willing to consider that it deserves the name of art? And is art, as I am sorry to know that many admirers of Stevenson would at this juncture ask, worth bothering about? Art is surely the quality which distinguishes some of these stories from others; and art, tome, is the disinterested rendering, to perfection, of a theme intensely felt through, and in accordance with, the artist’s philosophic conception of life. I do not suggest that art must involve the conscious expression of a consistent philosophy. I think it should not do that. But unless a writer has a considerable æsthetic and emotional experience which does directly inform his work with a wisdom greater than our utilitarian scheme of conventional morality, no practical experience of life and no sense of æsthetic form can suffice to make that writer an artist. Mr. Clive Bell, in his very brilliant and amusing book “Art,” says that “art is significant form,” which is a very much better and less pretentious definition than the one I have given. It is also easier to apply; but I purposely added a reference to the artist’s philosophic conception, because it seems to me that there can be no art which is not primarily a thing of unblemished artistic sincerity. A thing pretended (artistically, not morally pretended) can, I think, no more be art, in spite of its significant form, than it can be artistically sincere. It may be retorted that there is nothing in this connection between the artist and the charlatan; but there is. There is the craftsman, one who, denied or forgoing the artist’s intellectual basis, makes goods like untoworks of art, which are charged with significance of form, but not with that consistency with philosophic belief which makes significant the artistic vision. For the artist’s vision is not merely executive: it is conceptual. And while significant form means perfect execution of the artist’s concept, there must be a relative connection between the concept and the artist’s fundamental, and possibly inscrutable or inexpressible, “idea.” Otherwise the brilliant men would have it all their own way, which is obviously not the law of such things. To take an example. I regardThe Pavilion on the Linksas doubtful art. In form it is better than certain stories which seem to me superior in content, better than, say,The Beach of Falesá. But it seems to me empty, without heart, so that its warmth is like the warmth of anger, and is chilled when its excitement is done. Ought there not to remain in one’s mind, when the story is finished, some other emotion than stale excitement? I think there ought. I think that an æsthetic emotion remains in the case of all art that is really art; that one continues to feel, not the immediate clash of will or incident, but the author’s true emotion, of which the mere incidents of the story are only the bridge which the author has chosen to bear his emotion by symbol, or example, intoour hearts. If I were to say ofThe Pavilion on the Links: “It is nottrue,” I should by ninety-nine of every hundred people be called unimaginative, and told that “nobody ever said it was.” But of course I should mean, not that the incidents were rare, but that Stevenson had neverartisticallybelieved them, that they hung suspended in the air only by virtue of their power to interest or to excite, by means of the “heat of composition.” I should mean that Stevenson had not firstimaginedthe story, but that he had planned it in cold blood, saying, “We’ll have an estate, and a pavilion, and two men who have quarrelled ...” and so on, when he might equally well have been planning to describe a dairy, or a balloon, or a cataclysm at St. Malo. If I look for emotion in the story I find none. If I look for an æsthetic idea I find none. Perhaps that is where Mr. Bell revives. The story stands there as a piece of virtuosity; and if that is deliberate virtuosity, if there is no artistic conviction behind it, then the story is a fake. I think it is a fake. I am quite ready to think of it as an extraordinary clever piece of business. But if it is fake, it is not art. Does significant form imply the presence of a conviction or merely of craft?
On the other hand, I find what I should liketo call conceptual integrity inThrawn Janetand inThe Beach of Falesá, and these stories seem to me to be art. For the same reason,The Treasure of Franchard,Providence and the Guitar, andThe Bottle Impseem to me to be art. In all these stories I am conscious of æsthetic conviction. I am aware of that delightful emotion also inThe Young Man with the Cream Tarts, and in other parts ofThe Suicide Club, but not in all. I see art baulked by literature inWill o’ the Mill, inMarkheim, andOlalla; and, greatly muddied by clotted moralising, inDr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, which as a whole is suspiciously glib, as though it had been falsified in the transformation from dream to morality. I do not find art in the other short stories by Stevenson. They seem all to have been produced, some from one impulse, some from another, some with painstaking shrewdness, some from vanity, some even from a want of something better to do. The artist receives an inspiration, which shapes his work with the fine glow of vitality (much as a sick person is transformed by mountain air, until his features shape and colour into a new fleshly verve). The craftsman waits upon invention, and sedulously cultivates its friendliness, with a thrifty economy which brings him in the course of his life much respect from his fellows.Dr.Jekyll and Mr. Hydewas dreamed by an artist; and was written by a craftsman. If Sir J. M. Barrie had, as Stevenson once wrote, “a journalist at his elbow,” shall we not admit that, in the same position, Stevenson had an equally dangerous devil, who goes by the name of a craftsman?
If what has been said above has any applicability to this matter, we have reduced to five the number of Stevenson’s short stories to which we can give the name of art. In mentioning that number, I have ventured to eliminateThe Suicide Club, which contains several episodes, excludingThe Young Man with the Cream Tartswhose particular character does not seem to me to warrant the use of the term “art.” That leaves us withThrawn Janet,The Beach of Falesá,The Bottle Imp,Providence and the Guitar, andThe Treasure of Franchard. One of these is a “bogle” story, one is a realistic story of adventure in the South Seas, one is a fairy tale, and the others are light comedies, touched with fancy which transfigures without falsifying the underlying artistic sincerity of their conception. We have eliminated, for what may in some cases appear to be insufficient reasons, some twenty odd stories (counting thevarious episodes ofThe Rajah’s DiamondandThe Dynamiteras stories). Of the whole number of stories, two (or, with the little tale inCatriona, three) are concerned with “bogles,” namelyThrawn JanetandThe Body-Snatcher. Two others are also concerned with the supernatural: they areThe Bottle ImpandThe Isle of Voices. Three are psychological—Will o’ the Mill,Markheim, andOlalla. Four are light comedies—The Story of a Lie,John Nicholson,The Treasure of Franchard,Providence and the Guitar. Two are picturesque or romantic tales of incident—The Pavilion on the LinksandThe Merry Men. One is a realistic tale of incident—The Beach of Falesá. The rest belong to a class of fantastic mystery or criminal tale which is not, apart from the attractiveness of its mayonnaise, intrinsically of great value. It is from the five tales named at the beginning of this section that we shall perhaps draw our best material for the appraisement of Stevenson’s chief success as a short-story writer.
Thrawn Janet, then, is an extraordinarily successful tale of the devil’s entry into the body of an old woman, imagined with great power, and told with enormous spirit.The Beach of Falesáis the narrative, by a trader, of his arrival at a South Sea island, his marriageto a native girl, and his overthrow of a treacherous rival. The character of the man who tells the story—Wiltshire—is well-sustained, the character of Uma, the native wife, is amazingly suggested, considering how little we see her and considering that we receive her, as it were, through the trader’s report alone. For the rest, the story has vividness of local colouring, and a good deal of feeling.The Bottle Imp, the fairy tale, is told without fault in a manner of great simplicity. It relates to the successive purchases and sales, the sales always, by the conditions of purchase, being made at a figure lower than that of the purchase, of a magic bottle as potent as Aladdin’s lamp; and to the certainty of Hell which is involved in the continued possession of the bottle until the lessee’s death. The story was written for the Samoan natives, and, as far as I am able to judge, it bears in a remarkable degree the impress of native ways of thought. It has, that is to say, thenaïvetéand gravity of the folk-tale.Providence and the Guitaris a gay story of the misadventures of some travelling musicians who receive poor welcome from those whom they seek to entertain, but who reconcile at length the claims of art and duty as they find them opposed in the lives of certain disunited hosts.The Treasure of Franchardis the simpletale of an eccentric philosopher, his more stolid wife, and of a little boy whose wisdom leads him to check, by means which are proved legitimate only by their adequacy, the philosopher’s diversion from the path of happiness. The theft by the waif of certain treasure which the philosopher has discovered, to the risk of his immortal soul and the danger of his present happiness; and the appropriate restoration of that treasure when it will be of vital service—upon so slight an invention does the story progress.
The point to be observed in all these stories is that they possess unquestionable unity. Only one of them,The Beach of Falesá, is in any true sense a narrative. The others are examples of situation imposed upon character. In each there is an absolute relation between the conception or inspiration and Stevenson’s treatment. Each will bear the pressure which may legitimately be exerted by the seeking imagination. InProvidence and the Guitaralone is there the least air of accident; and for this reasonProvidence and the Guitar, which has this slight air of possible manipulation, is less good than the others.The Beach of Falesá, although a narrative, and although its perfection of form is thus affected (since, with our consciousness of narrative, is interrupted the singleness of ouræsthetic emotion) has a strict consistency of action. Whether this consistency is native, or whether it is aided by the imagined personality of the narrator, which may thus impose an artificial unity upon the tale, I am unable to determine. The other three stories,The Bottle Imp,Thrawn Janet, andThe Treasure of Franchard, granting to each story its own convention, seem to me to be perfect examples of their craft.
To have written three such stories would alone be a sufficient performance to give Stevenson’s name continued life among our most distinguished writers. That, in addition to these three stories, he should have written two others of such considerable value asThe Beach of FalesáandProvidence and the Guitar, and so many more of varying degrees of excellence, fromThe Pavilion on the LinksandThe Suicide ClubtoThe Merry MenandThe Isle of Voices, is, I think, enough to warrant a very confident claim that Stevenson not only was at his best in the short story, but that he was among the best English writers of short stories. His particular aptitude in this branch of his many-sided talent was due, as I have said, to the fact that he was here able to see and toperform with a single effort which did not unduly strain his physical endurance. Whereas, in continuous effort, he lost the strength of his first impulse in the exhausting labour which is involved in any lengthy exercise of the imagination, in the short story he was able to give effect immediately to his impulse to set out or to create complete his imagined or invented theme. What fluctuation there is to be observed of talent or performance is due entirely to the nature of his inspiration. If the idea came unsought, if some clear and inevitable idea for a short story suggested itself to him, the result, providing it was suited to his genius, and not merely to his literary ability, was a short story of distinguished or even of first-class quality. If, in the pursuance of his business as a literary craftsman, he “hit-on” a practicable plan for a short story, the result was almost certain to be distinguished in craftsmanship, acceptable to the wide and diversified tastes of the educated public, and, in fact, to be distinguishable from his genuine works of art only by the application of some test which should call in question the nature of his preliminary inspiration.
Stevenson was so distinguished a craftsman that he could often deceive his critics, but for that deception I do not think he can be heldmorally responsible. His other habit, of being able to deceive himself about the nature of his inspiration—exemplified, I believe, inThe Suicide Club, for reasons which I have already given—is more serious. It is a habit illustrated with more force in the longer romances, and takes the form of beginning a story with a genuine romantic notion (or, if the reader prefers, inspiration), of finding that inspiration fail, and of proceeding nevertheless with the work so begun, relying upon his talent, his invention, or his literary skill to carry through the remaining performance at a level near enough to that established by his first inspiration to convince (at its worst, to delude) the reader. This habit, I am sure, was not indulged in bad faith; it was sometimes, perhaps nearly always, unconscious, or only partly conscious. It very likely is the habit of all modern writers whose work is regulated by the laws of supply and demand. Equally, it was possibly the habit of all past writers of fiction, because they too were affected in the same way. But in Stevenson’s case the supply of a commodity took a peculiar form of falseness which proved much to the taste of his readers. It took the form of a sort of deliberate romanticism with which I have dealt at length in the next chapter, and to which I have given the more exactly descriptiveterm of picturesqueness. I believe this sort of romanticism gave rise to such a story asThe Pavilion on the Links; and if I am right in regarding such picturesqueness as a bastard form of art, as, in fact, a particularly cunning form of craft, then its persistence in Stevenson makes all the more wonderful, and all the more notable, his magnificent performance in the stories singled out for praise in the present chapter. It also enforces the desirability of some very close discrimination between the work of Stevenson which is the genuine product of his indubitable genius and the work which was produced by his talent, his invention, and his literary skill.