Complete Works of Robert Louis Stevenson (Illustrated) (1079 page)

But as literature also it was justly received with enthusiasm. Even Symonds, though he doubted “ whether any one had the right so to scrutinise the abysmal depths of personality,” admitted, “The art is burning and intense”; and the cry of horror and pain which he raised was in another sense a tribute to its success. “ How had you the ilia dura ferro et cere triplici duri- ora to write Dr. Jekyll? I know now what was meant when you were called a sprite.”1

In his “ Chapter on Dreams,” Stevenson has told his readers how the “ brownies “ suddenly became useful in providing him with stories for his books, but in spite of this statement it appears that besides Jekyll and Hyde there is only one other plot thus furnished which he ever actually completed. This was “ Olalla,” which appeared in the Christmas number of the Court and Society Review; in connection with it there arises an interesting point — an apparent plagiarism from the Strange Story by Lord Lytton. In either tale a squirrel is caught in the boughs of a tree by a semi-human youth and is shortly afterwards killed. It is true that Margrave slays the animal in revenge for a bite, whereas Stevenson’s Felipe deliberately tortures the innocent creature, but the 1 John Addington Symonds: a Biography. By Horatio F. Brown. London, Nimmo, 1895.

agility and the lack of humanity are the gist of both episodes. Beside the account in “ Dreams “ must be set Stevenson’s own statement that his invention of Felipe was in part deliberate,1 and it is impossible now to say whether (if the resemblance was more than accidental) the incident came back into the author’s mind in his sleep or in his waking hours.

With the general result he was never well satisfied. To Lady Taylor he wrote: “The trouble with ‘Olalla’ is, that it somehow sounds false. . . . The odd problem is: What makes a story true? ‘ Markheim’ is true; ‘Olalla’ false; and I don’t know why, nor did I feel it while 1 worked at them; indeed I had more inspiration with ‘Olalla,’ as the style shows. I am glad you thought that young Spanish woman well dressed; 1 admire the style of it myself, more than is perhaps good for me; it is so solidly written. And that again brings back (almost with the voice of despair) my unanswerable: Why is it false?”

Kidnapped was begun in March, 1885, as another story for boys, and with as little premeditation as afterwards sufficed for its sequel. But when once the hero had been started upon his voyage, the tale was laid aside and not resumed until the following January, just after the publication of Jekyll and Hyde. No greater contrast can be imagined than the strong, healthy, open-air life of the new book and the dark fancies of the allegory which preceded it. Though the former was the product of his waking hours, it was no less spontaneous than a dream.

“In one of my books, and in one only, the characters 1 In the South Seas, p. 353. took the bit in their teeth; all at once, they became detached from the flat paper, they turned their backs on me and walked off bodily; and from that time my task was stenographic — it was they who spoke, it was they who wrote the remainder of the story.”1

But within two months Stevenson began to flag, and not long after a visit for his father’s sake to Matlock, where he had made small progress with the writing, he decided, at Mr. Colvin’s suggestion, to break off with David’s return to Edinburgh and leave the tale half told. Mr. Henderson gladly accepted the story for Young Folks, where it ran under Stevenson’s own name from May to July, and was then published by Messrs. Cassell & Co.

It was dedicated to Mr. Baxter, whose permission was asked in a letter indicating its character and showing its author’s capacity in dialect, if he had ever had a mind to let it run riot in his pages. “ It’s Sc&tch, sir: no strong, for the sake o’ thae pock-puddens, but jist a kitchen o’t, to leaven the wersh, sapless, fushionless, stotty, stytering South Scotch they think sae muckle o’.”

The whole took him, as he said, “probably five months’ actual working; one of these months entirely over the last chapters, which had to be put together without interest or inspiration, almost word for word, for I was entirely worked out.” But as a whole, the author thought it the best and most human work he had yet done, and its success was immediate with all readers. To mention two instances only: — Matthew Arnold, who apparently knew Stevenson’s work little, if at all, before this, was at once filled with delight, and 1 Scribner’s Magazine, 1888, p. 764. we are told that it was the last book Lord Iddesleigh was able to read with pleasure — ” a volume,” continues Mr. Lang, “ containing more of the spirit of Scott than any other in English fiction.”

The elder Stevenson had for several years, as we have seen, been declining in health and spirits, and the shadows began to close about his path. In 1885 he gradually reduced the amount of his work, though he still continued his practice, and could not altogether refuse the solicitations he received to appear as a scientific witness before Parliamentary Committees.

The tenderness of the relation between father and son now became pathetic in the extreme. As the old man’s powers began to fail, he would speak to Louis as though he were still a child. When they went to the theatre together, and Louis stood up in his place, the father put his arm round him, saying: “Take care, my dearie, you might fall.” At night, as he kissed his son, he would say reassuringly: “ You ‘11 see me in the morning, dearie.” “ It was,” says his daughter-in-law, “ just like a mothei with a young child.”

It was chiefly in the summers and autumns that Louis left Bournemouth, but even then he rarely travelled any distance or was absent for any length of time. In 1885 he went to London in June, and then accompanied his wife on a last visit to Cambridge, to stay with Mr. Colvin, who was now resigning his professorship. In August he started for Dartmoor, but after meeting Mr. Thomas Hardy and his wife at Dorchester, was laid up with a violent hemorrhage at Exeter, in the hotel, and was compelled to remain there for several weeks before he was able to return home. In the following year he went to town in June, and again in August, the latter time extending his journey to Paris in the company of his wife and Mr. Henley, to see their friends Mr. and Mrs. W. H. Low, then, after a long interval, revisiting France for the first time.

Meeting once more in their early haunts, the old friends revived many memories. One trivial reminiscence of this occasion is yet so characteristic of Stevenson, and so illustrates the working of his mind, that it may find a place here. The two friends, painter and writer, both possessing a fine palate for certain wines, had always laughed at one another’s pretensions to such taste. In 1875 or 1876, soon after Mr. Low’s marriage, he and his wife had gone to dine with Stevenson at the Musee de Cluny in the Boulevard St. Michel. Mr. Low hesitating for a moment in his choice of a wine, Stevenson turned to Mrs. Low, and on the spot made up and elaborately embellished a story of how her husband had once gone with him to dine at a restaurant, and had tasted and rejected every vintage the establishment was able to offer. At last — so the tale ran — the proprietor confessed that there was one bottle even finer in his cellar, which had lain there forty years, but that he was ready to give it up to such a master, although it was like surrendering a part of his life. A procession was formed, first the proprietor, then the cellarman, then the waiters of the establishment, and they all went down to the cellar to get the famous bottle. Back they came in the same order with the priceless treasure borne tenderly in the arms of the cellarman, a man with a long beard down to his waist, who had been so much in the cellar that the light made him blink. Slowly and rev- erently they approached the table, and then they all sighed. The bottle was deliberately and ceremoniously uncorked, and the wine poured into small glasses, while the waiters looked on with breathless reverence. The two connoisseurs touched glasses and slowly carried them to their lips. There was absolute silence. All eyes were upon them, and when they drank deeply and expressed their satisfaction, the whole establishment heaved a sigh of relief.

Mrs. Low now reminded Stevenson of this story, and he, declaring it was no “story,” but an historical account of what had actually happened, repeated it word for word as he had originally told it. When he came to the end, he added, “And the cellarman, overcome with emotion, dropped dead.” As he said these words, he saw by his hearers’ faces that this was a divergence from the original tale, and added quickly, “ That about the cellarman is not really true!”

The quickness with which he caught the first sign of surprise at the only variation, and the readiness with which he recovered himself, were no less characteristic of Stevenson, as Mr. Low truly says, than the fact that the story of his invention took so concrete a form in his mind that, perhaps without its having recurred to his memory in all the interval, he was able to give the identical words and details as they had originally presented themselves to him.

An old project had this year been revived by Mr. Gilder of a boat-voyage down the Rhone to be written by Stevenson and illustrated by Mr. Low, but the former’s health was now too precarious for even the most luxurious of such journeys. His visit to Paris, however, was most successful, its chiet event being a visit to Rodin the sculptor, to whom Mr. Henley introduced him. He came home in what was for him exceptionally good health; but returning in October to The Monument — his invariable name for Mr. Colvin’s house at the British Museum — he did not escape so easily. The second holiday began delightfully, for it was on this occasion that he met some of the most distinguished of his elders in the world of letters and of art — especially, as Mr. Colvin records, Browning, Lowell, and Burne-Jones. But soon the visitor was taken ill, confined to bed, and unable to return home until the very end of November, when a succession of fogs made the danger of remaining in London greater than the risk of any journey.

This autumn there occurred a curious event in Stevenson’s literary career, which is recorded only in a letter to his mother. “5th Sept., 1886. — ... I have just written a French (if you please!) story for a French magazine! Heaven knows what it’s like; but they asked me to do it, and I was only too pleased to try.”

Mr. Osbourne and Mrs. de Mattos alone of the intimates of that time remember the fact, but whether the tale was ever despatched to its destination, or what that destination was, are questions that can no longer be answered. Although Stevenson had a wide and full vocabulary, and spoke French with a good accent and complete fluency, it seems certain that he had not the perfect knowledge of the language necessary for serious composition. He once wrote a French dedication in a book which he presented to Mrs. Low, prefacing it with the statement — ” I am now going to make several mistakes,” as in fact, says her husband, he immediately proceeded to do.

By this time he had begun to write the Memoir of his friend Jenkin, the only biography which he ever actually carried to an end. A few months later Mrs. Jenkin came to Skerry vore to afford him what assistance he needed, and of his method of dealing with the work, she has given us a description.

“I used to go to his room after tea, and tell him all I could remember of certain times and circumstances. He would listen intently, every now and then checking me while he made a short note, or asking me to repeat or amplify what I had said, if it had not been quite clear. Next morning I went to him again, and he read aloud to me what he had written — my two hours of talk compressed into a page, and yet, as it seemed to me, all there, all expressed. He would make me note what he had written word by word, asking me, ‘ Does this express quite exactly what you mean?’ Sometimes he offered me alternative words, ‘ Does this express it more truly?’ If I objected to any sentence as not conveying my meaning, he would alter it again and again — unwearied in taking pains.”

His life in England led him to take both in home and in foreign politics a closer interest than he had felt before. He was deeply moved during these years by two events, though neither in the end led to any action on his part, nor even an open Ideclaration of his views. These were the death of Gordon and a case of boycotting women in Ireland.

In 1884 he had felt acutely the withdrawal of the garrisons from the Soudan. “ When I read at Nice that Graham was recalled from Suakim after all that butchery, I died to politics. I saw that they did not regard what I regarded, and regarded what I despised; and I closed my account. If ever I could do anything, I suppose I ought to do it; but till that hour comes, I will not vex my soul.”

This was no passing wave of sentiment; Gordon’s fate was laid even more deeply to heart, and one of the motives which induced Stevenson to begin his letters to the Times upon Samoan affairs was the memory that in 1884 he had stood by in silence while a brave man was being deserted and a population dependent for help on the government of this country was handed over to the mercies of barbarism. So when he finally came to the point of writing the letter to Mr. Gladstone about the Iron Duke,1 he could think of no other signature open to him than “ Your fellow-criminal in the eyes of God,” and forbore.

But although the passionate indignation and “that chastity of honour which felt a stain like a wound” were highly characteristic of Stevenson, at the most they could have led to nothing more than a series of letters to the papers. They might have stirred the public conscience, but though Stevenson would have been dealing with matters less remote from the knowledge of his readers, yet his part in any agitation or protest would not have differed greatly from his efforts in the cause of Samoa. The other project, on the contrary, would, if he had been able to carry it out, have led to a definite and entire change of the whole course of his life. On November 13th, 1885, Mr. John Curtin had 1 See vol. ii. p. 7. been murdered by a party of moonlighters in his house, Castle Farm, at Castle Island, County Kerry. His grown-up sons and daughters had shown the greatest courage, and one of the murderers had been shot. For this the family were cut off as far as possible from all the necessaries of life, and in April, 1887, the boycott still continued. Stevenson, while admitting the wrongs of Ireland, had always the most profound regard for the paramount claims of the law, and had long been shocked both by the disregard of it in Ireland and by the callous indifference of the English to the needs of those engaged in its support. He now pitched upon the case of the Curtin family as a concrete instance in which it behoved England to do her duty, and since no one else was forthcoming for the task, he prepared to offer himself as an agent, and, if need were, a martyr in the cause. As a man of letters he was not tied down to any one place to do his work, so he proposed to take the Curtins’ farm and there live with his wife and his stepson. His wife added her protests to those of all his friends who heard of the project, but in vain, and so without sharing his illusions she cheerfully prepared to accompany him.