Part 15

Much as he gloried in his solitude he 'became aware of a strange lack;' for he was human. And he gave it as his opinion that 'to live out of doors with the woman a man loves is of all lives the most complete and free.' It may be so. Such a woman would need to be of heroic physical mould, and there is danger that she would turn out of masculine mould as well. Isopel Berners was of such sort. Isopel could handle her clenched fists like a prizefighter. She was magnificent in the forest, and never so perfectly in place as when she backed up George Borrow in his fight with the Flaming Tinman. Having been in the habit of taking her own part, she was able to give pertinent advice at a critical moment. 'It's of no use flipping at the Flaming Tinman with your left hand,' she said, 'why don't you use your right?' Isopel called Borrow's right arm 'Long Melford.' And when the Flaming Tinman got his knock-down blow from Borrow's right, Isopel exclaimed, 'Hurrah for Long Melford; there is nothing like Long Melford for shortness all the world over!'

But what an embarrassing personage Miss Berners would have been transferred from the dingle to the drawing-room; nay, how impossible it is to think of that athletic young goddess as Miss Berners! The distinctions and titles of conventional society refuse to cling even to her name. I wonder how Stevenson would have liked Isopel Berners.

And now his philosophy. Yet somehow 'philosophy' seems a big word for so unpretentious a theory of life as his. Stevenson didn't philosophize much; he was content to live and to enjoy. He was deliberate, and in general he would not suffer himself to be driven. He resembled an admirable lady of my acquaintance who, when urged to get something done by a given time, usually replied that 'time was made for slaves.' Stevenson had the same feeling. He says: 'Hurry is the resource of the faithless. When a man can trust his own heart and those of his friends to-morrow is as good as to-day. And if he die in the mean while, why, then, there he dies, and the question is solved.'

You think this a poor philosophy? But there must be all kinds of philosophy; the people in the world are not run into one mould like so much candle-grease. And because of this, his doctrine of Inaction and Postponement, stern men and practical women have frowned upon Stevenson. In their opinion instead of being up and doing he consecrated too many hours to the idleness of literature. They feel towards him as Hawthorne fancied his ancestor the great witch judge would have felt towards him. Hawthorne imagines that ghostly and terrible ancestor looking down upon him and exclaiming with infinite scorn, 'A writer of storybooks. What kind of employment is that for an immortal soul?'

To many people nothing is more hateful than this willingness to hold aloof and let things drift. That any human being should acquiesce with the present order of the world appears monstrous to these earnest souls. An Indian critic once called Stevenson 'a faddling Hedonist.' Stevenson quotes the phrase with obvious amusement and without attempting to gainsay its accuracy.

But if he allowed the world to take its course he expected the same privilege. He wished neither to interfere nor to be interfered with. And he was a most cheerful nonconformist withal. He says: 'To know what you prefer instead of humbly saying amen to what the world tells you you ought to prefer is to have kept your soul alive.' Independence and optimism are vital parts of his unformulated creed. He hated cynicism and sourness. He believed in praise of one's own good estate. He thought it was an inspiriting thing to hear a man boast, 'so long as he boasts of what he really has.' If people but knew this they would boast 'more freely and with a better grace.'

Stevenson was humorously alive to the old-fashioned quality of his doctrine of happiness and content. He says in the preface to an Inland Voyage that although the book 'runs to considerably over a hundred pages, it contains not a single reference to the imbecility of God's universe, nor so much as a single hint that I could have made a better one myself--I really do not know where my head can have been.' But while this omission will, he fears, render his book 'philosophically unimportant' he hopes that 'the eccentricity may please in frivolous circles.'

Stevenson could be militant. His letter on Father Damien shows that. But there was nothing of the professional reformer about him. He had no hobby, and he was the artist first and then the philanthropist. This is right; it was the law of his being. Other men are better equipped to do the work of humanity's city missionaries than was he. Let their more rugged health and less sensitive nerves bear the burden; his poet's mission was not the less important.

The remaining point I have to note, among a number which might be noted, is his firm grasp of this idea: that whether he is his brother's keeper or not he is at all events his brother's brother. It is 'philosophy' of a very good sort to have mastered this conception and to have made the life square with the theory. This doctrine is fashionable just now, and thick books have been written on the subject, filled with wise terms and arguments. I don't know whether Stevenson bothered his head with these matters from a scientific point of view or not, but there are many illustrations of his interest. Was it this that made him so gentle in his unaffected manly way? He certainly understood how difficult it is for the well-to-do member of society to get any idea not wholly distorted of the feelings and motives of the lower classes. He believed that certain virtues resided more conspicuously among the poor than among the rich. He declared that the poor were more charitably disposed than their superiors in wealth. 'A workman or a peddler cannot shutter himself off from his less comfortable neighbors. If he treats himself to a luxury he must do it in the face of a dozen who cannot. And what should more directly lead to charitable thoughts?' But with the advent of prosperity a man becomes incapable of understanding how the less fortunate live. Stevenson likens that happy individual to a man going up in a balloon. 'He presently passes through a zone of clouds and after that merely earthly things are hidden from his gaze. He sees nothing but the heavenly bodies, all in admirable order and positively as good as new. He finds himself surrounded in the most touching manner by the attentions of Providence, and compares himself involuntarily with the lilies and the sky-larks. He does not precisely sing, of course; but then he looks so unassuming in his open landau! If all the world dined at one table this philosophy would meet with some rude knocks.'

In the three years since Stevenson's death many additions have been made to the body of literature by him and about him. There are letters, finished and unfinished novels, and recollections by the heaping handful. Critics are considerably exercised over the question whether any, or all, or only two or three of his books are to last. The matter has, I believe, been definitely decided so that posterity, whatever other responsibilities it has, will at least not have that one; and anything that we can do to relieve the future of its burdens is altruism worthy the name.

Stevenson was one of the best tempered men that ever lived. He never prated about goodness, but was unaffectedly good and sunny-hearted as long as he lived. Of how many men can it be said, as it can be said of him, that he was sick all his days and never uttered a whimper? What rare health of mind was this which went with such poor health of body! I've known men to complain more over toothache than Stevenson thought it worth while to do with death staring him in the face. He did not, like Will o' the Mill, live until the snow began to thicken on his head. He never knew that which we call middle age.

He worked harder than a man in his condition should have done. At times he felt the need to write for money; and this was hostile to his theory of literature. He wrote to his friend Colvin: 'I sometimes sit and yearn for anything in the nature of an income that would come in--mine has all got to be gone and fished for with the immortal mind of man. What I want is an income that really comes in of itself while all you have to do is just to blossom and exist and sit on chairs.'

I wish he might have had it; I can think of no other man whose indolence would have been so profitable to the world.

STEVENSON'S ST. IVES

With the publication of St. Ives the catalogue of Stevenson's important writings has closed. In truth it closed several years ago,--in 1891, to be exact,--when Catriona was published. Nothing which has appeared since that date can modify to any great extent the best critical estimate of his novels. Neither Weir of Hermiston nor St. Ives affects the matter. You may throw them into the scales with his other works, and then you may take them out; beyond a mere trembling the balance is not disturbed. But suppose you were to take out Kidnapped, or Treasure Island, or The Master of Ballantrae, the loss would be felt at once and seriously. And unless he has left behind him, hidden away among his loose papers, some rare and perfect sketch, some letter to posterity which shall be to his reputation what Neil Paraday's lost novel in The Death of the Lion might have been to his, St. Ives may be regarded as the epilogue.

Stevenson's death and the publication of this last effort of his fine genius may tend to draw away a measure of public interest from that type of novel which he, his imitators, and his rivals have so abundantly produced. This may be the close of a 'period' such as we read about in histories of literature.

If the truth be told, has not our generation had enough of duels, hair-breadth escapes, post-chaises, and highwaymen, mysterious strangers muffled in great-coats, and pistols which always miss fire when they shouldn't? To say positively that we have done with all this might appear extravagant in the light of the popularity of certain modern heroic novels. But it might not be too radical a view if one were to maintain that these books are the expression of something temporary and accidental, that they sustain a chronological relation to modern literature rather than an essential one.

Matthew Arnold spoke of Heine as a sardonic smile on the face of the Zeitgeist. Let us say that these modern stories in the heroic vein are a mere heightening of color on the cheeks of that interesting young lady, the Genius of the modern novel--a heightening of color on the cheeks, for the color comes from without and not from within. It is a matter of no moment. Artificial red does no harm for once, and looks well under gaslight.

These novels of adventure which we buy so cheerfully, read with such pleasure, and make such a good-natured fuss over, are for the greater part an expression of something altogether foreign to the deeper spirit of modern fiction. Surely the true modern novel is the one which reflects the life of to-day. And life to-day is easy, familiar, rich in material comforts, and on the whole without painfully striking contrasts and thrilling episodes. People have enough to eat, reasonable liberty, and a degree of patience with one another which suggests indifference. A man may shout aloud in the market-place the most revolutionary opinions, and hardly be taken to task for it; and then on the other hand we have got our rulers pretty well under control. This paragraph, however, is not the peroration of a eulogy upon 'our unrivaled happiness.' It attempts merely to lay stress on such facts as these, that it is not now possible to hang a clergyman of the Church of England for forgery, as was done in 1777; that a man may not be deprived of the custody of his own children because he holds heterodox religious opinions, as happened in 1816. There is widespread toleration; and civilization in the sense in which Ruskin uses the word has much increased. Now it is possible for a Jew to become Prime Minister, and for a Roman Catholic to become England's Poet Laureate.

If, then, life is familiar, comfortable, unrestrained, and easy, as it certainly seems to be, how are we to account for the rise of this semihistoric, heroic literature? It is almost grotesque, the contrast between the books themselves and the manner in which they are produced. One may picture the incongruous elements of the situation,--a young society man going up to his suite in a handsome modern apartment house, and dictating romance to a type-writer. In the evening he dines at his club, and the day after the happy launching of his novel he is interviewed by the representative of a newspaper syndicate, to whom he explains his literary method, while the interviewer makes a note of his dress and a comment on the decoration of his mantelpiece.

Surely romance written in this way--and we have not grossly exaggerated the way--bears no relation to modern literature other than a chronological one. The Prisoner of Zenda and A Gentleman of France, to mention two happy and pleasing examples of this type of novel, are not modern in the sense that they express any deep feeling or any vital characteristic of to-day. They are not instinct with the spirit of the times. One might say that these stories represent the novel in its theatrical mood. It is the novel masquerading. Just as a respectable bookkeeper likes to go into private theatricals, wear a wig with curls, a slouch hat with ostrich feathers, a sword and ruffles, and play a part to tear a cat in, so does the novel like to do the same. The day after the performance the whole artificial equipment drops away and disappears. The bookkeeper becomes a bookkeeper once more and a natural man. The hour before the footlights has done him no harm. True, he forgot his lines at one place, but what is a prompter for if not to act in such an emergency? Now that it is over the affair may be pronounced a success,--particularly in the light of the gratifying statement that a clear profit has been realized towards paying for the new organ.

This is a not unfair comparison of the part played by these books in modern fiction. The public likes them, buys them, reads them; and there is no reason why the public should not. In proportion to the demand for color, action, posturing, and excessive gesticulation, these books have a financial success; in proportion to the conscientiousness of the artist who creates them they have a literary vitality. But they bear to the actual modern novel a relation not unlike that which The Castle of Otranto bears to Tom Jones,--making allowance of course for the chronological discrepancy.

From one point the heroic novel is a protest against the commonplace and stupid elements of modern life. According to Mr. Frederic Harrison there is no romance left in us. Life is stale and flat; yet even Mr. Harrison would hardly go to the length of declaring that it is also commercially unprofitable. The artificial apartment-house romance is one expression of the revolt against the duller elements in our civilization; and as has often been pointed out, the novel of psychological horrors is another expression.

There are a few men, however, whose work is not accounted for by saying that they love theatrical pomp and glitter for its own sake, or that they write fiction as a protest against the times in which they live. Stevenson was of this number. He was an adventurer by inheritance and by practice. He came of a race of adventurers, adventurers who built lighthouses and fought with that bold outlaw, the Sea. He himself honestly loved, and in a measure lived, a wild life. There is no truer touch of nature than in the scene where St. Ives tells the boy Rowley that he is a hunted fugitive with a price set upon his head, and then enjoys the tragic astonishment depicted in the lad's face.

Rowley 'had a high sense of romance and a secret cultus for all soldiers and criminals. His traveling library consisted of a chap-book life of Wallace, and some sixpenny parts of the Old Bailey Sessions Papers; ... and the choice depicts his character to a hair. You can imagine how his new prospects brightened on a boy of this disposition. To be the servant and companion of a fugitive, a soldier, and a murderer rolled in one--to live by stratagems, disguises, and false names, in an atmosphere of midnight and mystery so thick that you could cut it with a knife--was really, I believe, more dear to him than his meals, though he was a great trencher-man and something of a glutton besides. For myself, as the peg by which all this romantic business hung, I was simply idolized from that moment; and he would rather have sacrificed his hand than surrendered the privilege of serving me.'

One can believe that Stevenson was a boy with tastes and ambitions like Rowley. But for that matter Rowley stands for universal boy-nature.

Criticism of St. Ives becomes both easy and difficult by reason of the fact that we know so much about the book from the author's point of view. He wrote it in trying circumstances, and never completed it; the last six chapters are from the pen of a practiced story-teller, who follows the author's known scheme of events. Stevenson was almost too severe in his comment upon his book. He says of St. Ives:--

'It is a mere tissue of adventures; the central figure not very well or very sharply drawn; no philosophy, no destiny, to it; some of the happenings very good in themselves, I believe, but none of them bildende, none of them constructive, except in so far perhaps as they make up a kind of sham picture of the time, all in italics, and all out of drawing. Here and there, I think, it is well written; and here and there it's not.... If it has a merit to it, I should say it was a sort of deliberation and swing to the style, which seems to me to suit the mail-coaches and post-chaises with which it sounds all through. 'Tis my most prosaic book.'