Robert Louis Stevenson: a record, an estimate, and a memorial Part 11

Here Stevenson, though original in his vein and way, but follows a great and gracious company in which Fielding and Sterne and so many others stand as pleasant proctors. Scott and d.i.c.kens have each in their way essayed it, and made much of it beyond what mere sentiment would have reached. Pickwick itself-and we must always regard d.i.c.kens as having himself gone already over every bit of road, described every nook and corner, and tried every resource-is a vagrant fellow, in a group of erratic and most quaint wanderers or pilgrims. This is but a return phase of it; Vincent Crummles and Mrs Crummles and the "Infant Phenomenon," yet another. The whole interest lies in the roadways, and the little inns, and the odd and unexpected rencontres with oddly-a.s.sorted fellows there experienced: glimpses of grim or grimy, or forbidding, or happy, smiling smirking vagrants, and out-at-elbows fellow-pa.s.sengers and guests, with jests and quips and cranks, and hanky-panky even. On high roads and in inns, and alehouses, with travelling players, rogues and tramps, d.i.c.kens was quite at home; and what is yet more, he made us all quite at home with them: and he did it as Chaucer did it by thorough good spirits and "hail-fellow-well-met." And, with all his faults, he has this merit as well as some others, that he went willingly on pilgrimage always, and took others, promoting always love of comrades, fun, and humorous by-play. The latest great romancer, too, took his side: like d.i.c.kens, he was here full brother of Dan Chaucer, and followed him. How characteristic it is when he tells Mr Trigg that he preferred Samoa to Honolulu because it was more savage, and therefore yielded more fun.

CHAPTER x.x.x-LORD ROSEBERY'S CASE

Immediately on reading Lord Rosebery's address as Chairman of the meeting in Edinburgh to promote the erection of a monument to R. L. Stevenson, I wrote to him politely asking him whether, since he quoted a pa.s.sage from a somewhat early essay by Stevenson naming the authors who had chiefly influenced him in point of style, his Lords.h.i.+p should not, merely in justice and for the sake of balance, have referred to Th.o.r.eau. I also remarked that Stevenson's later style sometimes showed too much self-conscious conflict of his various models in his mind while he was in the act of writing, and that this now and then imparted too much an air of artifice to his later compositions, and that those who knew most would be most troubled by it. Of that letter, I much regret now that I did not keep any copy; but I think I did incidentally refer to the friends.h.i.+p with which Stevenson had for so many years honoured me. This is a copy of the letter received in reply:

"38 Berkeley Square, W., 17th December 1896.

"Dear Sir,-I am much obliged for your letter, and can only state that the name of Th.o.r.eau was not mentioned by Stevenson himself, and therefore I could not cite it in my quotation.

"With regard to the style of Stevenson's later works, I am inclined to agree with you.-Believe me, yours very faithfully,

Rosebery.

"Dr Alexander H. j.a.pp."

This I at once replied to as follows:

"National Liberal Club, Whitehall Place, S.W., 19th December 1896.

"My Lord,-It is true R. L. Stevenson did not refer to Th.o.r.eau in the pa.s.sage to which you allude, for the good reason that he could not, since he did not know Th.o.r.eau till after it was written; but if you will oblige me and be so good as to turn to p. xix. of Preface, By Way of Criticism, to Familiar Studies of Men and Books you will read:

"'Upon me this pure, narrow, sunnily-ascetic Th.o.r.eau had exercised a wondrous charm. I have scarce written ten sentences since I was introduced to him, but his influence might be somewhere detected by a close observer.'

"It is very detectable in many pa.s.sages of nature-description and of reflection. I write, my Lord, merely that, in case opportunity should arise, you might notice this fact. I am sure R. L. Stevenson would have liked it recognised.-I remain, my Lord, always yours faithfully, etc.,

Alexander H. j.a.pp."

In reply to this Lord Rosebery sent me only the most formal acknowledgment, not in the least encouraging me in any way to further aid him in the matter with regard to suggestions of any kind; so that I was helpless to press on his lords.h.i.+p the need for some corrections on other points which I would most willingly have tendered to him had he shown himself inclined or ready to receive them.

I might also have referred Lord Rosebery to the article in The British Weekly (1887), "Books that have Influenced Me," where, after having spoken of Shakespeare, the Vicomte de Bragelonne, Bunyan, Montaigne, Goethe, Martial, Marcus Aurelius's Meditations, and Wordsworth, he proceeds:

"I suppose, when I am done, I shall find that I have forgotten much that is influential, as I see already I have forgotten Th.o.r.eau."

I need but to add to what has been said already that, had Lord Rosebery written and told me the result of his references and encouraged me to such an exercise, I should by-and-by have been very pleased to point out to him that he blundered, proving himself no master in Burns' literature, precisely as Mr Henley blundered about Burns' ancestry, when he gives confirmation to the idea that Burns came of a race of peasants on both sides, and was himself nothing but a peasant.

When the opportunity came to correct such blunders, corrections which I had even implored him to make, Lord Rosebery (who by several London papers had been spoken of as "knowing more than all the experts about all his themes"), that is, when his volume was being prepared for press, did not act on my good advice given him "free, gratis, for nothing"; no; he contented himself with simply slicing out columns from the Times, or allowing another man to do so for him, and reprinting them literatim et verbatim, all imperfect and misleading, as they stood. Scripta manet alas! only too truly exemplified to his disadvantage. But with that note of mine in his hand, protesting against an ominous and fatal omission as regards the confessed influences that had operated on Stevenson, he goes on, or allows Mr Geake to go on, quite as though he had verified matters and found that I was wrong as regards the facts on which I based my appeal to him for recognition of Th.o.r.eau as having influenced Stevenson in style. Had he attended to correcting his serious errors about Stevenson, and some at least of those about Burns, thus adding, say, a dozen or twenty pages to his book wholly fresh and new and accurate, then the Times could not have got, even if it had sought, an injunction against his publishers and him; and there would have been no necessity that he should pad out other and later speeches by just a little whining over what was entirely due to his own disregard of good advice, his own neglect-his own fault-a neglect and a fault showing determination not to revise where revision in justice to his subject's own free and frank acknowledgments made it most essential and necessary.

Mr Justice North gave his decision against Lord Rosebery and his publishers, while the Lords of Appeal went in his favour; but the House of Lords reaffirmed the decision of Mr Justice North and granted a perpetual injunction against this book. The copyright in his speech is Lord Rosebery's, but the copyright in the Times' report is the Times'. You see one of the ideas underlying the law is that no manner of speech is quite perfect as the man speaks it, or is beyond revision, improvement, or extension, and, if there is but one verbatim report, as was the case of some of these speeches and addresses, then it is inc.u.mbent on the author, if he wishes to preserve his copyright, to revise and correct his speeches and addresses, so as to make them at least in details so far differ from the reported form. This thing ought Lord Rosebery to have done, on ethical and literary grounds, not to speak of legal and self-interested grounds; and I, for one, who from the first held exactly the view the House of Lords has affirmed, do confess that I have no sympathy for Lord Rosebery, since he had before him the suggestion and the materials for as substantial alterations and additions from my own hands, with as much more for other portions of his book, had he informed me of his appreciation, as would have saved him and his book from such a sadly ironical fate as has overtaken him and it.

From the whole business-since "free, gratis, for nothing," I offered him as good advice as any lawyer in the three kingdoms could have done for large payment, and since he never deemed it worth while, even to tell me the results of his reference to Familiar Studies, I here and now say deliberately that his conduct to me was scarcely so courteous and grateful and graceful as it might have been. How different-very different-the way in which the late R. L. Stevenson rewarded me for a literary service no whit greater or more essentially valuable to him than this service rendered to Lord Rosebery might have been to him.

This chapter would most probably not have been printed, had not Mr Coates re-issued the inadequate and most misleading paragraph about Mr Stevenson and style in his Lord Rosebery's Life and Speeches exactly as it was before, thus perpetuating at once the error and the wrong, in spite of all my trouble, warnings, and protests. It is a tragicomedy, if not a farce altogether, considering who are the princ.i.p.al actors in it. And let those who have copies of the queer prohibited book cherish them and thank me; for that I do by this give a new interest and value to it as a curiosity, law-inhibited, if not as high and conscientious literature-which it is not.

I remember very well about the time Lord Rosebery spoke on Burns, and Stevenson, and London, that certain London papers spoke of his deliverances as indicating more knowledge-fuller and exacter knowledge-of all these subjects than the greatest professed experts possessed. That is their extravagant and most reckless way, especially if the person spoken about is a "great politician" or a man of rank. They think they are safe with such superlatives applied to a brilliant and clever peer (with large estates and many interests), and an ex-Prime Minister! But literature is a republic, and it must here be said, though all unwillingly, that Lord Rosebery is but an amateur-a superficial though a clever amateur after all, and their extravagances do not change the fact. I declare him an amateur in Burns' literature and study because of what I have said elsewhere, and there are many points to add to that if need were. I have proved above from his own words that he was cra.s.sly and unpardonably ignorant of some of the most important points in R. L. Stevenson's development when he delivered that address in Edinburgh on Stevenson-a thing very, very pardonable-seeing that he is run after to do "speakings" of this sort; but to go on, in face of such warning and protest, printing his most misleading errors is not pardonable, and the legal recorded result is my justification and his condemnation, the more surely that even that would not awaken him so far as to cause him to restrain Mr Coates from reproducing in his Life and Speeches, just as it was originally, that peccant pa.s.sage. I am fully ready to prove also that, though Chairman of the London County Council for a period, and though he made a very clever address at one of Sir W. Besant's lectures, there is much yet-very much-he might learn from Sir W. Besant's writings on London. It isn't so easy to outs.h.i.+ne all the experts-even for a clever peer who has been Prime Minister, though it is very, very easy to flatter Lord Rosebery, with a purpose or purposes, as did at least once also with rarest tact, at Glasgow, indicating so many other things and possibilities, a certain very courtly ex-Moderator of the Church of Scotland.

CHAPTER x.x.xI-MR GOSSE AND MS. OF TREASURE ISLAND

Mr Edmund Gosse has been so good as to set down, with rather an air of too much authority, that both R. L. Stevenson and I deceived ourselves completely in the matter of my little share in the Treasure Island business, and that too much credit was sought by me or given to me, for the little service I rendered to R. L. Stevenson, and to the world, say, in helping to secure for it an element of pleasure through many generations. I have not sought any recognition from the world in this matter, and even the mention of it became so intolerable to me that I eschewed all writing about it, in the face of the most stupid and misleading statements, till Mr Sidney Colvin wrote and asked me to set down my account of the matter in my own words. This I did, as it would have been really rude to refuse a request so graciously made, and the reader has it in the Academy of 10th March 1900. Nevertheless, Mr Gosse's statements were revived and quoted, and the thing seemed ever to revolve again in a round of controversy.

Now, with regard to the reliability in this matter of Mr Edmund Gosse, let me copy here a little note made at request some time ago, dealing with two points. The first is this:

1. Most a.s.suredly I carried away from Braemar in my portmanteau, as R. L. Stevenson says in Idler's article and in chapter of My First Book reprinted in Edinburgh Edition, several chapters of Treasure Island. On that point R. L. Stevenson, myself, and Mr James Henderson, to whom I took these, could not all be wrong and co-operating to mislead the public. These chapters, at least vii. or viii., as Mr Henderson remembers, would include the first three, that is, finally revised versions for press. Mr Gosse could not then have heard R. L. Stevenson read from these final versions but from first draughts only, and I am positively certain that with some of the later chapters R. L. Stevenson wrote them off-hand, and with great ease, and did not revise them to the extent of at all needing to re-write them, as I remember he was proud to tell me, being then fully in the vein, as he put it, and pleased to credit me with a share in this good result, and saying "my enthusiasm over it had set him up steep." There was then, in my idea, a necessity that Stevenson should fill up a gap by verbal summary to Mr Gosse (which Mr Gosse has forgotten), bringing the incident up to a further point than Mr Gosse now thinks. I am certain of my facts under this head; and as Mr Gosse clearly fancies he heard R. L. Stevenson read all from final versions and is mistaken-completely mistaken there-he may be just as wrong and the victim of error or bad memory elsewhere after the lapse of more than twenty years.

2. I gave the pencilled outline of incident and plot to Mr Henderson-a fact he distinctly remembers. This fact completely meets and disposes of Mr Robert Leighton's quite imaginative Billy Bo'sun notion, and is absolute as to R. L. Stevenson before he left Braemar on the 21st September 1881, or even before I left it on 26th August 1881, having clear in his mind the whole scheme of the work, though we know very well that the absolute re-writing out finally for press of the concluding part of the book was done at Davos. Mr Henderson has always made it the strictest rule in his editors.h.i.+p that the complete outline of the plot and incident of the latter part of a story must be supplied to him, if the whole story is not submitted to him in MS.; and the agreement, if I am not much mistaken, was entered into days before R. L. Stevenson left Braemar, and when he came up to London some short time after to go to Weybridge, the only arrangement then needed to be made was about the forwarding of proofs to him.

The publication of Treasure Island in Young Folks began on the 1st October 1881, No. 565 and ran on in the following order:

October 1, 1881.

THE PROLOGUE

No. 565.

I. The Old Sea Dog at the Admiral Benbow.

II. Black Dog Appears and Disappears.

No. 566.

Dated October 8, 1881.

III. The Black Spot.

No. 567.

Dated October 15, 1881.

IV. The Sea Chart.

V. The Last of the Blind Man.

VI. The Captain's Papers.

No. 568.

Dated October 22, 1881.

THE STORY I. I go to Bristol.

II. The Sea-Cook.

Ill. Powder and Arms.

Now, as the numbers of Young Folks were printed about a fortnight in advance of the date they bear under the t.i.tle, it is clear that not only must the contract have been executed days before the middle of September, but that a large proportion of the copy must have been in Mr Henderson's hands at that date too, as he must have been entirely satisfied that the story would go on and be finished in a definite time. On no other terms would he have begun the publication of it. He was not in the least likely to have accepted a story from a man who, though known as an essayist, had not yet published anything in the way of a long story, on the ground merely of three chapters of prologue. Mr Gosse left Braemar on 5th September, when he says nine chapters were written, and Mr Henderson had offered terms for the story before the last of these could have reached him. That is on seeing, say six chapters of prologue. But when Mr Gosse speaks about three chapters only written, does he mean three of the prologue or three of the story, in addition to prologue, or what does he mean? The facts are clear. I took away in my portmanteau a large portion of the MS., together with a very full outline of the rest of the story, so that Mr Stevenson was, despite Mr Gosse's cavillings, substantially right when he wrote in My First Book in the Idler, etc., that "when he (Dr j.a.pp) left us he carried away the ma.n.u.script in his portmanteau." There was nothing of the nature of an abandonment of the story at any point, nor any difficulty whatever arose in this respect in regard to it.

CHAPTER x.x.xII-STEVENSON PORTRAITS

Of the portraits of Stevenson a word or two may be said. There is a very good early photograph of him, taken not very long before the date of my visit to him at Braemar in 1881, and is an admirable likeness-characteristic not only in expression, but in pose and att.i.tude, for it fixes him in a favourite position of his; and is, at the same time, very easy and natural. The velvet jacket, as I have remarked, was then his habitual wear, and the thin fingers holding the constant cigarette an inseparable a.s.sociate and accompaniment.

He acknowledged himself that he was a difficult subject to paint-not at all a good sitter-impatient and apt to rebel at posing and time spent in arrangement of details-a fact he has himself, as we shall see, set on record in his funny verses to Count Nerli, who painted as successful a portrait as any. The little miniature, full-length, by Mr J. S. Sarjent, A.R.A., which was painted at Bournemouth in 1885, is confessedly a mere sketch and much of a caricature: it is in America. Sir W. B. Richmond has an unfinished portrait, painted in 1885 or 1886-it has never pa.s.sed out of the hands of the artist,-a photogravure from it is our frontispiece.

There is a medallion done by St Gauden's, representing Stevenson in bed propped up by pillows. It is thought to be a pretty good likeness, and it is now in Mr Sidney Colvin's possession. Others, drawings, etc., are not of much account.

And now we come to the Nerli portrait, of which so much has been written. Stevenson himself regarded it as the best portrait of him ever painted, and certainly it also is characteristic and effective, and though not what may be called a pleasant likeness, is probably a good representation of him in the later years of his life. Count Nerli actually undertook a voyage to Samoa in 1892, mainly with the idea of painting this portrait. He and Stevenson became great friends, as Stevenson navely tells in the verses we have already referred to, but even this did not quite overcome Stevenson's restlessness. He avenged himself by composing these verses as he sat:

Did ever mortal man hear tell o' sic a ticklin' ferlie As the comin' on to Apia here o' the painter Mr Nerli?

He cam'; and, O, for o' human freen's o' a' he was the pearlie- The pearl o' a' the painter folk was surely Mr Nerli.

He took a thraw to paint mysel'; he painted late and early; O wow! the many a yawn I've yawned i' the beard o' Mr Nerli.

Whiles I wad sleep and whiles wad wake, an' whiles was mair than surly; I wondered sair as I sat there fornent the eyes o' Nerli.