Robert Louis Stevenson Part 9

'I have trod the upward and the downward slope; I have endured and done in days before; I have longed for all, and bid farewell to hope; And I have lived, and loved, and closed the door.'

After that one feels no surprise that he is waiting for the final summons, and one has only a sense of the eternal fitness of things when in the last words of the book he says--

'I hear the signal, Lord,--I understand The night at Thy command Comes. I will eat and sleep, and will not question more.'

FOOTNOTE:

[5] Mr Stevenson was very fond of this quotation, which appeals so truly to Caledonia's sons and daughters. He found it in an old volume of _Good Words_, and never knew its source. Like many other people he quoted it incorrectly. According to information kindly supplied by Mr W.

Keith Leask, the lines, which have an interesting history, stand thus in the original--

'From the lone sheiling on the misty island Mountains divide us and a waste of seas, Yet still the blood is strong, the heart is Highland, And we in dreams behold the Hebrides.'

In _Tait's Magazine_ for 1849 it is given as 'Canadian Boat Song, from the Gaelic.' The author of the English version was Burns' 'Sodger Hugh,'

the 12th Earl of Eglinton, who was M.P. for Ayrs.h.i.+re from 1784 to 1789, and was the great-grandfather of the present Earl. When in Canada the author is said to have heard a song of lament sung by evicted Hebridean crofters in Manitoba, which gave him the idea for his verses--the first four lines, and chorus, of which are--

'Listen to me as when we heard our father Sing long ago the song of other sh.o.r.es; Listen to me, and then in chorus gather All your deep voices as ye pull your oars.

_Chorus_--Fair the broad meads, these h.o.a.ry woods are grand, But we are exiles from our fathers' land.'

Professor Mackinnon believes that the Gaelic version, known in the Highlands to this day, is founded upon the Earl of Eglinton's lines, and is not, as might be supposed, an earlier form of the poem which is known and loved by Scotch folk all the world over.

CHAPTER X

HIS STORIES

'... Thy genius mingles strength with grace, ... 'Neath thy spell the world grows fair; Our hearts revive, our inmost souls are stirred, And all our English race awaits thy latest word.'

--Sir L. MORRIS'

Birthday Ode to the late Lord Tennyson.

Beginning his literary career as a writer of such quaint books of travel as _An Inland Voyage_ and _Through the Cevennes with a Donkey_, such charming essays as _Roads_, _Ordered South_, _El Dorado_, and many others, Mr Stevenson was not long in entering the arena as a story-teller. His first printed stories were _A Lodging for the Night_, which appeared in _Temple Bar_ in October 1877; _The Sire de Maletroit's Door_, in the same magazine in January 1878; and _Will o' the Mill_, in _Cornhill_, also in January 1878.

In _Cornhill_, in 1876 had appeared the series of essays republished as _Virginibus Puerisque_, and in 1877 and 1878 those afterwards collected under the t.i.tle _Familiar Studies of Men and Books_. There also began, now and then, to be short stories from his pen in _Cornhill_, _Macmillan_, _Longmans_, Mr H. Norman's _Christmas Annual_, _The Court and Society Review,_ and other magazines. These, as they added originality and a certain weirdness of plot to his already recognised beauty of style, still further attracted that cultured public which had at once accepted his earlier work as that of a master of English. As already stated, it was _Will o' the Mill_, a charmingly written story of still life, with a quiet philosophy all its own, that Mr Hamerton had p.r.o.nounced a masterpiece of style. _Markheim_ was a graphic, but very unpleasant, story of a murder; _Olalla_, a horrible, but powerfully written, sketch of hereditary insanity, with a beautiful setting of Italian scenery to relieve the gloomy picture.

_Thrawn Janet_ which, with most of the tales in _The Merry Men_, was written at Pitlochry, appeared in _Cornhill_ in 1880. Mr Stevenson himself considered it one of his best stories, and thought it an excellent piece of dialect writing. It is weird and impressive in the extreme, and no one who has read it is likely to forget the minister of Balweary in the vale of Dull, and his terrible experiences in the matter of a housekeeper; the 'het lowin' wind' and the coppery sky of that day on which he met the black man coming down by Dull water, and knew that he had spoken with the enemy of souls himself; or the awful storm, in which Satan finally came for all that was left of Thrawn Janet. Into this story of a few pages are condensed a power of forcible expression and a weirdness of theme which have not been surpa.s.sed in any of the larger books.

_The Merry Men_ is a story of wreck and wickedness on a desolate West Highland island where the rocks called 'the Merry Men,' as the tides boil and foam among them, make, as it were, an undercurrent of mad laughter that forms a fitting accompaniment to the hideous pa.s.sions of greed and murder and the dead level of human misery that are the prevailing atmosphere of the tale. It is one of the best of the stories forming the volume, to which it gives its name, published by Messrs Chatto & Windus in 1887.

In another collection of short tales Mr Stevenson also deals with the seamy side of life, and _The New Arabian Nights_ published in 1882, and which contains the reprint of such stories as _The Suicide Club_, _The Rajah's Diamond_, _The Sire de Maletroit's Door_, and _The Pavilion on the Links_, is quite as gruesome and by no means less interesting than _The Merry Men_.

_The Sire de Maletroit's Door_ and _The Pavilion on the Links_, are most graphically written, especially the latter with its splendid description of the dreary sea and the wide and wind-swept stretch of drearier links where the curious characters play their mysterious parts. It is interesting to know that Mr Stevenson wrote _The Pavilion on the Links_ while he was very ill in California. All the stories in the two volumes are favourites, and many readers give a preference to _The Suicide Club_, _The Rajah's Diamond_, or _Prince Florizel_.

_Providence and the Guitar_ is also one of his best stories. _Prince Otto_, the first draft of which was written at Monterey, is the peculiar but very beautifully written story of a prince with no fancy for princedom and no talent for governing, who leaves his vain young wife and his unscrupulous prime minister in power and goes roaming among his subjects only to hear some far from complimentary opinions of himself.

In the end both prince and princess learn love and wisdom and find happiness in spite of the revolution that drives them from their tiny kingdom. It is a fanciful tale, the charm of which lies less in the rather vague characters, who have the haziness of motive and of personality of the figures in some old play, than in the absolute perfection of style and of description that make it a book to read and re-read with infinite pleasure.

Mr Stevenson says, in its dedicatory preface, that he meant to make of it a masterpiece; if he did not succeed in doing so, as a story, he certainly gave in it a picture of the woods so true to nature and so exquisite in style and in expression that it will live as among his best work.

Good as this earlier writing was he had not yet found in it his full inspiration, and it hardly appealed to so wide a public as the fresh and delightful stories of adventure to which he finally turned his attention. In connection with Mr Stevenson's fiction, it is interesting to note that in his boyhood he greatly enjoyed the stories of a novelist called Smythe, who at that time contributed to the _London Journal_, and whose work had its influence on the boy's future tales. Smythe's novels were full of stirring adventures, and many lads of that day, besides the aspiring novelist, were much impressed by them, and can even now recall incidents in them read so long ago as 1868!

He had applied for work to Mr Henderson, the Scotch editor of _Young Folks_, and to the acceptance of this application the world owes _Treasure Island_ and the charming stories which followed it. The editor of _Young Folks_, who offered to take a story from him, showed him a treasure-hunting tale by Mr Peace, and asked him to give him something on the same lines. The result was _The Sea Cook_, which appeared in the paper in the autumn of 1881, and was not very highly paid for. It was written under the nom-de-plume of Captain North to give the idea the author was a sailor; it was not given a very important place in the paper and it had no very marked success as a serial. It was, with very little alteration, published by Messrs Ca.s.sell & Co. in 1883, under the name of _Treasure Island_, and it had an instant and well-deserved success. It is an excellent book for boys, full of stirring adventure, in the old-time fas.h.i.+on of fifty years ago, but it is much more; it is a book that grown-up folk, whose taste is still fresh enough to enjoy a good tale of the sea, delight in as heartily as the juniors. It was written while the Stevenson family were staying for a time at Braemar, and Mr Thomas Stevenson gave his son valuable help in it from his own experiences at sea while on his cruises of inspection round the coasts.

_The Black Arrow_ also appeared in _Young Folks_ during 1883 as by Captain North; it is said to have been very successful as a serial, but it has not been a great favourite in book form, and is one of the least interesting of his stories.

_Kidnapped_ came out in 1886 in the same paper and was the first to be signed as by Robert Louis Stevenson. In its serial form it was not highly paid for but it had, when Messrs Ca.s.sell & Co. published it as a book, a large and an immediate success. It forms the first instalment of the delightful experiences of David Balfour, that somewhat pawky young Scot who, from the moment he leaves 'The Hawes Inn' at Queensferry and embarks on his adventures with Alan Breck and other strange worthies in Appin and elsewhere till we finally bid him good-bye on the last page of _Catriona_, never fails at odd times and places to remind one of Mr Stevenson himself at David's age and of what he might have been and done had David Balfour's fate been his in those early days of plot and turmoil in which his part is played.

_Catriona_, which is a continuation of _Kidnapped_, at first appeared in _Atalanta_, and was published in book form by Messrs Ca.s.sell & Co. in 1893. In the recent edition of 1898 both volumes are brought out as _The History of David Balfour_, and are beautifully ill.u.s.trated. _Catriona_ is a charming book, full of life and action, and the breezy, outdoor existence, in the picturing of which its author excels. The Edinburgh of the last half of the eighteenth century, with its quaint closes, and quainter manners, is admirably portrayed, and the old lady with whom Catriona lives, and Lord Prestongrange and his daughters, are very clever pictures from a bygone day. Indeed, Miss Grant is one of the best drawn women in all Mr Stevenson's books; she has life and reality in a greater degree than most of his female characters. She is true to feminine human nature in any age, and as she makes eyes at David Balfour from under her plumed hat, and flirts with him across the narrow close, she is very woman, and alive enough to be some later day judge's daughter of modern Edinburgh, coquetting with Mr Stevenson himself, while she playfully adjusts her becoming head-gear, and lets her long feathers droop to the best advantage.

She and the two Kirsties in the unfinished _Weir of Hermiston_ stand out alone among all the heroines in Mr Stevenson's books as real breathing, living women. They are natural, they are possible, they have life and interest; all the rest are more or less lay figures put in because a heroine is necessary--the more's the pity evidently from the author's point of view!--and drawn somewhat perfunctorily by their creator, with but a limited knowledge of the virtues, the faults, the failings, and, above all, the 'little ways,' which go to make up the ordinary woman.

The women are undoubtedly a weakness in the author's work. It looks as if he had known intimately only exceptional women,--who, possibly, had left behind them, before he knew them well, most of a young girl's faults and follies, and some of her attractions also,--and had never found other women worth studying deeply, so that the girls in his books do not read _real_ enough to interest one greatly, and it is almost a relief to take up _Treasure Island_, _The Wrecker_, or _The Ebb Tide_, in which there is very little about them. Lady Violet Greville, in a recent article, expresses much the same opinion. She says, 'The late Robert Louis Stevenson had no opinion of women writers, he said they were incapable of grasping the essential facts of life. He was a great master of style, but I doubt if he had much knowledge of feminine character'--a dictum in which many women will agree with her. She goes on to say that there is some truth in what he says of women writers, because women and men regard as essential quite different facts in life; and she explains it by saying that it is the difference of personality and of point of view. Certainly Mr Stevenson's point of view in regard to his heroines is not a satisfying one to most women.

Many men have drawn excellent female characters, just as a few women have given us life-like heroes. These exceptions, one imagines, must have been to some extent better able to appreciate the other s.e.x thoroughly than most writers; but it strikes one as odd that Mr Stevenson, who had in himself so much of gentleness and of the essentially feminine, should have so continually failed to give a living interest to his heroines. Possibly had he lived longer, and had the maturing of his powers, so evident in _Weir of Hermiston_, been accompanied by a measure of improved health, the women of his later books might all have been as powerful creations as the two Kirsties promised to be.

His heroes are all that heart can desire, manly, brave, and natural; his villains make villainy interesting; so it may be forgiven him that scarcely one of his feminine characters lives in the reader's memory.

One of the most widely known of his books is that curious story, published in 1886, called _The Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde_, the popularity of which, especially in America, was immense. It deals with man's dual nature, and while Dr Jekyll embodies the good side of it, Mr Hyde, with whom he is compelled continually to exchange bodies, as well as souls, is the evil side, and commits crimes so atrocious, that the miserable doctor is well-nigh driven to despair. It is a powerful subject, powerfully treated, and contains in its small compa.s.s more moral teaching than a hundred sermons. It has, particularly in America, been used by many clergymen as the foundation of their homilies.

_The Master of Ballantrae_, a weird and striking tale of the times of 'the forty-five,' is extraordinarily graphic both in its descriptions of places and of people. The gloomy house of Durrisdeer, with its stately panelled hall, the fine grounds so carefully laid out, the thick shrubberies, the spot where the duel was fought on the hard, frozen ground by the light of the flickering candles in the tall silver candlesticks, the wave-beaten point where the smuggling luggers land goods and pa.s.sengers, and finally the awful journey through the uncleared woods of America, make a fit setting, in our memories, for the splendidly drawn pictures of the three Duries, the old father, the unappreciated Henry, the mocking master, their faithful land-steward, Mackellar, and the more shadowy personalities of the Frenchman, the lady, and the children. The tale is one of unrelieved horror, but it is a masterpiece nevertheless, and it has had a very large sale.

With his wife Mr Stevenson in _More New Arabian Nights_ and _The Dynamiter_ did some work of considerable interest, and with his stepson, Mr Lloyd Osbourne, he wrote that quaint tale, _The Wrong Box_. In collaboration also with Mr Lloyd Osbourne he wrote _The Wrecker_ and _The Ebb Tide_.

_The Wrecker_ is a wild and interesting story which had a large success.

It originally appeared in _Scribner's Magazine_ from August 1891 to July 1892, and was republished in book form by Messrs Ca.s.sell & Co. The scene is constantly changing in it, and the hero visits Edinburgh, stays in the students' quarter in Paris, personally conducts speculative picnics at San Francisco, distinguishes himself at the wreck on the lonely reef in mid-ocean, and finally, after appearing in England and Fontainbleau, tells his wonderful story to a friendly trader in the south seas. There is plenty of life and of action in the tale, and there are also some delightful descriptions of the Pacific and of the wonderful glamour lagoons and palm trees throw over the spirit of the man who learns to know and to love the beautiful South Sea islands.

_The Ebb Tide_, originally published in Mr Jerome K. Jerome's magazine _To-day_ from November 1893 to February 1894, was republished in book form by Mr W. Heinemann in 1894. Like _Treasure Island_ it is a tale without a heroine, almost, indeed, without the mention of a woman except Att.w.a.ter's statuesque native servant and the shadowy personalities of Herrick's mother and fiancee in London, and Captain Davis's wife and his little girl, who died before she got the doll he had so carefully bought for her, and the memory of whom is the one soft spot in his dark soul.

They are merely mentioned, however, and take no actual part in the story. It is not a pleasant tale, everyone in it is more or less bad; more by preference rather than less!--and for no one in it can one feel the slightest sympathy. There are villains and villains in fiction, and for some of them, for instance, Bret Harte's Jack Hamlin, or even the Master himself in _The Master of Ballantrae_, one can feel a sincere affection or at least have a grudging sort of admiration, but it is not possible to even faintly like or hesitatingly pity a cowardly Robert Herrick, whose self-pity is so strong, and who from first to last is, as his creator intended him to be, a thorough inefficient. Half-hearted in his wickedness, self-saving in his repentance, he somehow fails to interest one; and even his lower-cla.s.s a.s.sociates, the horrible Huish and the American captain, are almost less detestable. Huish is quite diabolical, but he, at least, has the courage of his iniquities.

Att.w.a.ter is not attractive either as villain or as religious enthusiast, but he is a fairly possible character and at least a degree less unpleasant than the American captain after his conversion. Captain Davis's effort to save Herrick's soul, given in the last paragraph of the book, is disagreeably profane in its familiarity with things sacred.

Altogether it is not an attractive book, although it is an undoubtedly clever one; it has some redeeming features in the really lovely descriptions of the island and the lagoon; and the appearance of the divers in full working costume remind one of Mr Stevenson's own early experience in a diver's dress.

Without collaboration Mr Stevenson wrote the three pretty little tales of South Sea life reprinted, as _Island Nights' Entertainments_, in book form about 1893. _The Beach of Falesa_ was published in _The Ill.u.s.trated London News_ from July 2nd to August 6th, 1892. _The Bottle Imp_ appeared in _Black and White_ from March 28th to April 4th, 1891, and _The Isle of Voices_ was in _The National Observer_ between 4th and 25th February of 1893.

They are charming stories, rich in local colour, and in all of them one sees that Mr Stevenson's quick eye for the essential in life has shown to him that among these simple islanders are to be found just the same elements of romance as among more highly civilised peoples, the same motives make and influence character there as elsewhere. So in Wilts.h.i.+re and his relations with the islanders, in the curious stories of _The Bottle Imp_ and _The Isle of Voices_, we are interested in a new set of people in fresh surroundings, and can in a large measure sympathise with the pleasure that the Samoans had in reading these tales of island life in their own tongue. _The Bottle Imp_ was the first story ever read by the Samoans in their native language, and it raised their affection for 'Tusitala, the Teller of Stories' to positive enthusiasm.

_St Ives_ is a bright story of adventure which Mr Stevenson had almost completed, and which Mr Quiller Couch was enabled very skilfully to finish with the a.s.sistance of the author's step-daughter, Mrs Strong, who had, besides being its amanuensis, helped Mr Stevenson with this story and been much in his confidence regarding it. It appeared first in _The Windsor Magazine_ where it was received with favour. It is the history of a French prisoner in Edinburgh Castle during the wars of the great Napoleon. He makes, like the other prisoners, little carved ornaments for sale, and Flora, the heroine, has so touched him while buying these that he falls in love with her and presents her with a carved lion. She returns his sentiment of admiration, and after his escape she and her brother, a natural gentlemanly lad, hide Mr St Ives in the henhouse at Swanston Cottage where they live with a stern old aunt. The aunt is a well-drawn type of old-fas.h.i.+oned Scotchwoman, infinitely more natural and more interesting than the niece. In Edinburgh and round Mr Stevenson's own country home Swanston, the interest at first largely centres, and the writer gives a very graphic description of the home garden and the cottage and its outhouses,

'Marvellous places though handy to home.'