The Vagabond in Literature Part 10

In the case of Stevenson it may seem strange that one who wrote stirring adventures, who delighted boys of all ages with _Treasure Island_ and _Black Arrow_ (oh, excellent John Silver!), and followed in the steps of Sir Walter in _The Master of Ballantrae_ and _Catriona_, should not be a.s.sociated with the adventurous brother. But Scott and Stevenson have really nothing in common, beyond a love for the picturesque-and there is nothing distinctive in that. It is an essential qualification in the equipment of every Romantic. Adventures, as such, did not appeal to Stevenson, I think; it was the spice of mystery in them that attracted him. Watch him and you will find he is not content until he has thrown clouds of phantasy over his pictures. His longer stories have no unity-they are disconnected episodes strung lightly together, and this is why his short stories impress us far more with their power and brilliance.

_Markheim_ and _Jekyll and Hyde_ do not oppress the imagination in the same way as do Poe's tales of horror; but they show the same pa.s.sion for the dark corners of life, the same fondness for the gargoyles of Art.

This is Romance on its mystic side.

Throughout his writings-I say nothing of his letters, which stand in a different category-one can hear

"The horns of Elfland faintly blowing."

Sometimes the veil of phantasy is shaken by a peal of impish laughter, as if he would say, "Lord, what fools these mortals be!" but the att.i.tude that persists-breaks there must be, and gusty moods, or it would not be Stevenson-is the att.i.tude of the Romantic who loves rather the night side of things.

II

Much has been written about the eternal boy in Stevenson. I confess that this does not strike me as a particularly happy criticism. In a superficial sort of way it is, of course, obvious enough; he was fond of "make-believe"; took a boyish delight in practical joking; was ever ready for an adventure. But so complex and diverse his temperament that it is dangerous to seize on one aspect and say, "There is the real Stevenson."

Ariel, Hamlet, and the Shorter Catechist cross and recross his pages as we read them. Probably each reader of Stevenson retains most clearly one special phase. It is the Ariel in Stevenson that outlasts for me the other moods. If any one phase can be said to strike the keynote of his temperament, it is the whimsical, freakish, but kindly Ariel-an Ariel bound in service to the Prospero of fiction-never quite happy, longing for his freedom, yet knowing that he must for a while serve his master.

One can well understand why John Addington Symonds dubbed Stevenson "sprite." This elfish dement in Stevenson is most apparent in his letters and stories.

The figures in his stories are less flesh-and-blood persons than the shapes-some gracious, some terrifying-that the Ariel world invoke. It is not that Stevenson had no grip on reality; his grip-hold on life was very firm and real. Beneath the light badinage, the airy, graceful wit that plays over his correspondence, there is a steel-like tenacity. But in his stories he leaves the solid earth for a phantastic world of his own.

He does so deliberately: he turns his back on reality, has dealings with phantom pa.s.sions. His historical romances are like ghostly editions of Scott. There is light, but little heat in his fictions. They charm our fancy, but do not seize upon our imagination. Stevenson's novels remind one of an old _Punch_ joke about the man who chose a wife to match his furniture. Stevenson chooses his personages to match his furniture-his cunningly-woven tapestries of style; and the result is that we are too conscious of the tapestry on the wall, too little conscious of the people who move about the rooms. If only Stevenson had suited his style to his matter, as he does in his letters, which are written in fine Vagabond spirit-his romances would have seemed less artificial. I say _seemed_, for it was the stylist that stood in the way of the story-teller.

Stevenson's sense of character was keen enough, particularly in his ripe, old "disreputables." But much of his remarkable psychology was lost, it seems to me, by the lack of dramatic presentment.

Borrow's characters do not speak Borrow so emphatically as do Stevenson's characters speak Stevenson. And with Stevenson it matters more.

Borrow's picturesque, vivid, but loose, loquacious style, fits his subject-matter on the whole very well. But Stevenson's delicate, nervous, mannerized style suits but ill some of the scenes he is describing. If it suits, it suits by a happy accident, as in the delightful sentimentality, _Providence and the Guitar_.

To appraise Stevenson's merits as a Romantic one has to read him after reading Scott, Dumas, Victor Hugo; or, better still, to peruse these giants after dallying with Ariel.

We realize then what it is that we had vaguely missed in Stevenson-the human touch. These men believe in the figments of their imagination, and make us believe in them.

Stevenson is obviously sceptical as to their reality; we can almost see a furtive smile upon his lip as he writes. But there is nothing unreal about the man, whatever we feel of the Artist.

In his critical comments on men and matters, especially when Hamlet and the Shorter Catechist come into view, we shall find a vigorous sanity, a shrewd yet genial outlook, that seems to say there is no make-believe _here_; _here_ I am not merely amusing myself; here, honestly and heartily admitted, you may find the things that life has taught me.

III

Stevenson had many sides, but there were two especially that reappear again and again, and were the controlling forces in his nature. One was the Romantic element, the other the Artistic. It may be thought that these twain have much in common; but it is not so. In poetry the first gives us a Blake, a Sh.e.l.ley; the second a Keats, a Tennyson. Variety, fresh points of view, these are the breath of life to the Romantic. But for the Artist there is one constant, unchanging ideal. The Romantic ventures out of sheer love of the venture, the other out of sheer love for some definite end in view. It is not usual to find them coexisting as they did in Stevenson, and their dual existence gives an added piquancy and interest to his work. It is the Vagabond Romantic in him that leads him into so many byways and secret places, that sends him airily dancing over the wide fields of literature; ever on the move, making no tabernacle for himself in any one grove. And it is the Artist who gives that delicacy of finish, that exquisitive nicety of touch, to the veriest trifle that he essays. The matter may be beggarly, the manner is princely.

Mark the high ideal he sets before him: "The Artist works entirely upon honour. The Public knows little or nothing of those merits in its quest of which you are condemned to spend the bulk of your endeavours. Merits of design, the merit of first-hand energy, the merit of a certain cheap accomplishment, which a man of the artistic temper easily acquires; these they can recognize, and these they value. But to those more exquisite refinements of proficiency and finish, which the Artist so ardently desires and so keenly feels, for which (in the vigorous words of Balzac) he must toil 'like a miner buried in a landslip,' for which day after day he recasts and revises and rejects, the gross ma.s.s of the Public must be ever blind. To those lost pains, suppose you attain the highest point of merit, posterity may possibly do justice; suppose, as is so probable, that you fail by even a hair's breadth of the highest, rest certain they shall never be observed. Under the shadow of this cold thought alone in his studio the Artist must preserve from day to day his constancy to the ideal." {124a}

An exacting ideal, but one to which Stevenson was as faithful as a Calvinist to his theology. The question arises, however; is the fastidiousness, the patient care of the Artist, consistent with Vagabondage? Should one not say the greater the stylist, the lesser the Vagabond?

This may be admitted. And thus it is that in the letters alone do we find the Vagabond temperament of Stevenson fully a.s.serting itself.

Elsewhere 'tis held in check. As Mr. Sidney Colvin justly says: {124b} "In his letters-excepting a few written in youth, and having more or less the character of exercises, and a few in after years which were intended for the public eye-Stevenson, the deliberate artist is scarcely forthcoming at all. He does not care a fig for order, or logical sequence, or congruity, or for striking a key of expression and keeping it, but becomes simply the most spontaneous and unstudied of human beings. He will write with the most distinguished eloquence on one day, with simple good sense and good feeling on a second, with flat triviality on another, and with the most slas.h.i.+ng, often ultra-colloquial vehemency on a fourth, or will vary through all these moods, and more, in one and the same letter."

Fresh and spontaneous his letters invariably appear; with a touch of the invalid's nervous haste, but never lacking in courage, and with nothing of the querulousness which we connect with chronic ill-health. Weak and ailing, shadowed by death for many years before the end, Stevenson showed a fine fort.i.tude, which will remain in the memory of his friends as his most admirable character. With the consistency of Mark Tapley (and with less talk about it) he determined to be jolly in all possible circ.u.mstances. Right to the end his wonderful spirits, his courageous gaiety attended him; the frail body grew frailer, but the buoyant intellect never failed him, or if it did so the failure was momentary, and in a moment he was recovered.

No little of his popularity is due to the desperate valour with which he contested the ground with death, inch by inch, and died, as Buckle and John Richard Green had done, in the midst of the work that he would not quit. Romance was by him to the last, gladdening his tired body with her presence; and if towards the end weariness and heart-sickness seized him for a spell, yet the mind soon resumed its mastery over weakness. In a prayer which he had written shortly before his death he had pet.i.tioned: "Give us to awake with smiles, give us to labour smiling; as the sun lightens the world, so let our lovingkindness make bright this house of our habitation." a.s.suredly in his case this characteristic pet.i.tion had been realized; the prevalent sunniness of his disposition attended him to the last.

IV

Of all our writers there has been none to whom the epithet "charming" has been more frequently applied. Of late the epithet has become a kind of adjectival maid-of-all-work, and has done service where a less emphatic term would have done far better. But in Stevenson's case the epithet is fully justified. Of all the literary Vagabonds he is the most captivating. Not the most interesting; the most arresting, one may admit. There is greater power in Hazlitt; De Quincey is more unique; the "prophetic scream" of Whitman is more penetrating. But not one of them was endowed with such wayward graces of disposition as Stevenson.

Whatever you read of his you think invariably of the man. Indeed the personal note in his work is frequently the most interesting thing about it. I mean that what attracts and holds us is often not any originality, any profundity, nothing specially inherent in the matter of his speech, but a bewitchingly delightful manner.

Examine his attractive essays, _Virginibus Puerisque_ and _Familiar Studies of Men and Books_, and this quality will manifest itself. There is no pleasanter essay than the one on "Walking Tours"; it dresses up wholesome truths with so pleasant and picturesque a wit; it is so whimsical, yet withal so finely suggestive, that the reader who cannot yield to its fascination should consult a mental specialist.

For instance:-

"It must not be imagined that a walking tour, as some would have us fancy, is merely a better or worse way of seeing the country. There are many ways of seeing landscape quite as good; and none more vivid, in spite of canting dilettantes, than from a railway train. But landscape on a walking tour is quite accessory. He who is indeed of the brotherhood does not voyage in quest of the picturesque, but of certain jolly humours-of the hope and spirit with which the march begins at morning, and the peace and spiritual repletion of the evening's rest. He cannot tell whether he puts his knapsack on or takes it off with more delight. The excitement of the departure puts him in key for that of the arrival. Whatever he does will be further rewarded in the sequel; and so pleasure leads on to pleasure in an endless chain."

An admirable opening, full of the right relish. And the wit and relish are maintained down to the last sentence. But it cannot fail to awaken memories of the great departed in the reader of books. "Now to be properly enjoyed," counsels Stevenson, "a walking tour should be gone upon alone. . . . a walking tour should be gone upon alone because freedom is of the essence," and so on in the same vein for twenty or thirty lines. One immediately recalls Hazlitt-"On Going a Journey": "One of the pleasantest things is going on a journey; but I like to go by myself. . . . The soul of a journey is liberty, perfect liberty, to think, feel, do just as one pleases."

A suspicion seizes the mind of the reader, and he will smile darkly to himself. But Stevenson is quite ready for him. "A strong flavour of Hazlitt, you think?" he seems to say, then with the frank ingenuousness of one who has confessed to "playing the sedulous ape," he throws in a quotation from this very essay of Hazlitt's and later on gives us more Hazlitt. It is impossible to resent it; it is so openly done, there is such a charming effrontery about the whole thing. And yet, though much that he says is obviously inspired by Hazlitt, he will impart that flavour of his own less mordant personality to the discourse.

If you turn to another, the "Truth of Intercourse," it is hard to feel that it would have thrived had not Elia given up his "Popular Fallacies."

There is an unmistakable echo in the opening paragraph: "Among sayings that have a currency, in spite of being wholly false upon the face of them, for the sake of a half-truth upon another subject which is accidentally combined with the error, one of the grossest and broadest conveys the monstrous proposition that it is easy to tell the truth and hard to tell a lie. I wish heartily it were!" Similarly in other essays the influence of Montaigne is strongly felt; and although Stevenson never fails to impart the flavour of his own individuality to his discourses-for he is certainly no mere copyist-one realizes the unwisdom of those enthusiastic admirers who have bracketed him with Lamb, Montaigne, and Hazlitt. These were men of the primary order; whereas Stevenson with all his grace and charm is a.s.suredly of the secondary order. And no admiration for his attractive personality and captivating utterances should blind us to this fact.

As a critic of books his originality is perhaps more p.r.o.nounced, but wise and large though many of his utterances are, here again it is the pleasant wayward Vagabond spirit that gives salt and flavour to them.

There are many critics less brilliant, less attractive in their speech, in whose judgment I should place greater reliance. Sometimes, as in the essay on "Victor Hugo's Romances," his own temperament stands in the way; at other times, as in his "Th.o.r.eau" article, there is a vein of wilful capriciousness, even of impish malice, that distorts his judgment.

Neither essays can be pa.s.sed over; in each there is power and shrewd flashes of discernment, and both are extremely interesting. One cannot say they are satisfying. Stevenson does scant justice to the extraordinary pa.s.sion, the t.i.tanic strength, of Hugo; and in the case of Th.o.r.eau he dwells too harshly upon the less gracious aspects of the "poet-naturalist."

It is only fair to say, however, that in the case of Th.o.r.eau he made generous amends in the preface to the Collected Essays. Both the reconsidered verdict and the original essay are highly characteristic of the man. Other men have said equally harsh things of Th.o.r.eau. Stevenson alone had the fairness, the frank, childlike spirit to go back upon himself. These are the things that endear us to Stevenson, and make it impossible to be angry with any of his paradoxes and extravagant capers.

Who but Stevenson would have written thus: "The most temperate of living critics once marked a pa.s.sage of my own with a cross and the words, 'This seems nonsense.' It not only seemed, it was so. It was a private bravado of my own which I had so often repeated to keep up my spirits that I had grown at last wholly to believe it, and had ended by setting it down as a contribution to the theory of life."

Touched by this confidence, one reads Stevenson-especially the letters-with a more discerning eye, a more compa.s.sionate understanding; and if at times one feels the presence of the Ariel too strong, and longs for a more human, less elfin personality, then the thought that we are dealing with deliberate "bravado" may well check our impatience.

Men who suffer much are wont to keep up a brave front by an appearance of indifference.

V

To turn now to another side of Stevenson-Stevenson the Artist, the artificer of phrases, the limner of pictures. His power here is shown in a threefold manner-in deft and happy phrasing, in skilful characterization, in delicately suggestive scenic descriptions.

This, for instance, as an instance of the first:-

"The victim begins to shrink spiritually; he develops a fancy for parlours with a regulated atmosphere, and takes his morality on the principle of tin shoes and tepid milk. The care of one important body or soul becomes so engrossing that all the noises of the outer world begin to come thin and faint into the parlour with the regulated temperature; and the tin shoes go equally forward over blood and ruin" (_New Arabian Nights_).

Or this:-

"Whitman, like a large, s.h.a.ggy dog, just unchained, scouring the beaches of the world, and baying at the moon" (_Men and Books_).