Robert Louis Stevenson 
 
 STEVENSON 
 
 HOW TO KNOW HIM 
 RICHARD ASHLEY RICE 
 
WORDSWORTH 
 
 HOW TO KNOW HIM 
 
 By C. T. WINCHESTER 
 
 Professor of English Literature, 
 
 Wesleyan University 
 
 CHRISTIAN GAUSS, Professor of 
 Modern Languages, Princeton 
 University. 
 "It is well planned and most en- 
 gagingly written with a background, 
 taste and a nice sense of literary 
 values, and points the way fairly to- 
 ward the sympathetic approach to 
 the greatest of the English nature 
 poets." 
 
 DANTE 
 
 HOW TO KNOW HIM 
 
 By ALFRED M. BROOKS 
 
 Professor of Fine Arts, 
 
 Indiana University 
 
 "One gets from the book the sense 
 that Dante is a living force in the 
 present world; that his Divine Com- 
 edy is filled with truth and wisdom 
 in the mold of beauty; that it is a 
 wonderful book which should be 
 much more generally read." 
 
 DEFOE 
 
 HOW TO KNOW HIM 
 
 By WILLIAM P. TRENT 
 
 Professor of English Literature, 
 Columbia University 
 
 Professor Trent is the greatest 
 living authority on Defoe and his 
 work. This study makes the man 
 real and destroys the popular con- 
 ception of Defoe as a one-book 
 author. Any reader will find in 
 these carefully chosen, these amply 
 presented selections from Defoe's 
 writings much that he can only 
 find with difficulty elsewhere, much 
 that he will receive with gratitude. 
 The task of delving, of winnowing, 
 of piecing together, has been so well 
 done that future editors will find 
 their path made smoother. The 
 book follows the admirable methods 
 of allowing the author to speak for 
 himself, of holding the editor in the 
 background, of emphasizing a man's 
 output as well as his biography. 
 
 rkeley 
 
STEVENSON 
 
VOLUMES IN THIS SERIES 
 
 PUBLISHED AND IN PREPARATION 
 Edited by Will D. Howe 
 
 Arnold Stuart P. Sherman 
 
 Browning William Lyon Phelps 
 
 Burns W. A. Neilson 
 
 Carlyle * Bliss Perry 
 
 Dante Alfred M. Brooks 
 
 Defoe William P. Trent 
 
 Dickens Richard Burton 
 
 Emerson Samuel M. Crothers 
 
 Hawthorne . . . . \ . George E. Woodberry 
 
 The Bible George Hodges 
 
 Ibsen Archibald Henderson 
 
 Lamb Will D. Howe 
 
 Lowell John H. Finley 
 
 Stevenson Richard A. Rice 
 
 Tennyson Raymond M. Alden 
 
 Whitman Brand Whitlock 
 
 Wordsworth G. T. Winchester 
 
 Etc., Etc. 
 
Robert Louis Stevenson 
 
 HOW TO KNOW HIM 
 
 By 
 RICHARD ASHLEY RICE 
 
 Professor of English Literature at Smith College 
 
 With Portrait 
 
 INDIANAPOLIS 
 
 THE BOBBS-MERRILL COMPANY 
 
 PUBLISHERS 
 
Copyright 1916 
 The Bobbs-Merrill Company 
 
 PRESS OF 
 
 BRAUNWOHTH A CO. 
 
 BOOK MANUFACTURERS 
 
 BROOKLYN. N. Y. 
 
CONTENTS 
 
 Chapter Page 
 
 I The Companionable Author 1 
 
 II Child's Play - 12 
 
 III Literature and the Family Profession .... 34 
 
 IV Ordered South 62 
 
 V Vagabondage and Craftsmanship 78 
 
 VI Vagabondage and Craftsmanship: Barbizon . . 100 
 
 VII The First Great Adventure 116 
 
 VIII III Health and Ambition 138 
 
 IX The Spirit of Romance 156 
 
 X Romance, Melodrama, and Farce 190 
 
 XI The Moral Fables 246 
 
 XII The Mirror of the South Seas 333 
 
 XIII The Mirror of the South Seas:Vailima . . . 349 
 
 XIV Looking Down from the Mill 372 
 
 Passages from Stevenson's Works 385 
 
 Index 389 
 
STEVENSON 
 
STEVENSON 
 
 CHAPTER I 
 
 THE COMPANIONABLE AUTHOR 
 I 
 
 STEVENSON is one of the companionable au- 
 thors. He has been able, in an unusual degree, 
 to give himself out to his readers, to share with 
 them his purposes, his tastes, his experience of life. 
 For it is in the mutual appreciation of these things 
 that congeniality between people usually begins, and 
 it is in the stimulus, the suggestion, the criticism 
 to be derived from them that companionship is al- 
 ways fostered. The best friends are they who 
 share fully and imaginatively each other's purposes, 
 tastes, and past experience. And if this is the gist 
 of a man's relation to his fellows, it may also be the 
 secret of his intimacy with his companionable books. 
 In the case of Stevenson and his readers this seems 
 to be especially full of meaning. 
 
 Doubtless there is a distinction between a man's 
 favorite books and his most companionable author. 
 Every man capable of literary friendship has, or 
 may have, a few books peculiarly his own, in which 
 
 1 
 
2 STEVENSON 
 
 he feels himself dwelling with the characters or on 
 a journey with them, discovering from them not 
 only their ideas but his own, just as one does in the 
 conversation of life, with surprise and satisfaction. 
 But it is only the great books which are thus human, 
 books with lifelong friends, books to be often revis- 
 ited. Your companionable books are those you have 
 reread. That is the first definition of them, and it 
 corresponds to what might be said of your best 
 friends, for are not the companionable books those 
 which you begin to realize you will always be re- 
 reading, much as you keep dropping in on your best 
 friends? Such books, like friends, are rare; you 
 can not often discover them just for the seeking, 
 and, having suspected their kinship, you must culti- 
 vate them with all the sympathy and intelligence 
 you possess in order to deserve the best they have 
 to give in return. 
 
 Companionable books, in this sense, we have all 
 known. There are, in another sense that we do 
 not quite so often appreciate, companionable au- 
 thors. And this, as I say, is a distinction not with- 
 out a difference. The companionable author may or 
 may not have written any of your two or three 
 most admired books. He may or may not be one 
 of the great figures in literature. Perhaps he is, 
 in fact, a very humble one. He must be, how- 
 ever, the author of books you read in order to be 
 with him. He must be a man of whose biography 
 and letters you are a student, and about whom every 
 scrap of information and gossip has come to have 
 
THE COMPANIONABLE AUTHOR 3 
 
 a personal interest — a man whose mind you know, 
 whose temper you have grown used to, whose char- 
 acter you love, because they are his. You know his 
 faults, and you are his defender; you know his 
 virtues, and you are his critic. He belongs to you. 
 He may be centuries old and of towering fame, he 
 may have died obscurely last week ; but he is yours, 
 your part of this world's genius. 
 
 The companionable author, whether great or 
 small in intellectual stature, is of more value to you 
 who possess him than any of his books. I had al- 
 most said, than any book. Especially does this ap- 
 pear to be true in the case of Robert Louis Steven- 
 son, who has written no long sustained great work 
 of art, but whose literary production as a whole 
 makes him the fluent, easy, sympathetic, encourag- 
 ing companion par excellence, whom to know, in 
 his good and in his less good, is always a personal 
 and companionable experience. For if he has left 
 us no very great books, he has instead left us him- 
 self, and that more completely and confidingly, and 
 hence, to those who like him, more en joy ably, than 
 perhaps any other modern writer. He lives as a 
 part of everything he writes, naturally, without 
 subtlety, though in many a different dress and pose 
 for which his fancy and his genial egotism gave 
 him the zest. 
 
 The genial egotist — that is his literary character. 
 If you do not like him, you do not like his books. 
 "Le style c'est Vhomrne;" and in Stevenson's case, 
 it is, "Uhomme c'est tout" You may know easily 
 
4 STEVENSON 
 
 whether you like him; too easily some would say, 
 who prefer more reserve, more subtlety, who find 
 their truest delight in Henry James, who like their 
 Thackeray the better for his long, fascinating game 
 of hide-and-seek with the reader round the corners 
 of the comedy, and Meredith for the smile of baf- 
 fling irony that vaguely marks his presence on the 
 scene. Stevenson is accessible and intimate. Not 
 only does he exist bodily in one of the best biogra- 
 phies and in four surpassing volumes of letters, but 
 also in nearly every romance, essay and tale which 
 came from his pen. He had the autobiographic 
 habit. It makes the warp and woof of his art. 
 His chief motive seems to be to reintroduce himself 
 and his history to the reader until he is on the per- 
 sonal footing of an old friend. 
 
 To do this without egotism is impossible. It re- 
 quires the very essence and energy of an egotism 
 that is ever fresh. But we do not misunderstand. 
 Stevenson in his personal talk is not exploiting him- 
 self after the fashion of those notorieties who now 
 so often "sell their lives" very dearly to the maga- 
 zines. His constant gossip about himself, his ances- 
 tors, his plans, his morality, springs from a natural 
 and social instinct. It rarely grows stale. It is 
 something like the willingness to be confidential in 
 Charles Lamb and something like the desire to sur- 
 prise in Hazlitt. It is both frank and delicate, like 
 the talk of those men. 
 
 Stevenson needs no introduction. His hat is al- 
 ways in his hand, and you see at once if his looks 
 
THE COMPANIONABLE AUTHOR 5 
 
 are to your fancy. If they are, trust him; he will 
 be glad to show you around. Have you a taste for 
 old inns, for smugglers and pirates and all kinds of 
 sea-dogs, for the wind in the rigging and the smell 
 of oakum? Is your fancy haunted with strange 
 islands, tropical forests, cargoes of champagne, coral 
 reefs, and buried treasure? He will know how to 
 do by you properly. Do you care for walking tours, 
 roadside gossip, sleeping out under the stars, or a 
 fire, a change of clothes, and a whiff of comfortable 
 tobacco to help you think it all over again? Then 
 Stevenson is your man. Or do you happen to feel 
 that life is as humdrum as a kitchen stove and all 
 the world made of dust and money, that you have 
 forgotten how to play and that work is only a way 
 of killing time? Perhaps Stevenson will put you 
 right and be very agreeable about it too. Are you 
 in danger of forgetting how it feels to be young 
 or what is the fun of growing old; is your health 
 dwindling and your courage not increasing to match 
 the issue; does your wife appear unromantic and 
 querulous about the future, and is she given to a 
 lot of Grundyism, and you to other forms of spe- 
 cious morality, in short, are you both becoming as 
 trite as two sticks? Stevenson is your doctor — 
 of medicine and of philosophy. His medicine is 
 thought and his philosophy laughter; and you are 
 not worthy of your rightful share in him if you 
 do not take them alternately in large doses. He will 
 finally teach you to prescribe for yourself. 
 
 Now, of course, he will want to do most of the 
 
6 STEVENSON 
 
 talking and to talk much about himself. That is a 
 condition of his companionship. He will expect 
 you to admire him when he says a good thing, to 
 enjoy his gesticulations and to unlimber a little in 
 return. And if you happen to have no enthusiasm 
 for amusing trivialities, for toy soldiers and ghost 
 stories and castles in the air, maps and plans and the 
 unendable beginnings of many things in his con- 
 tinual child's play, you must still pretend, you must 
 play-act now and then to the top of your bent, or 
 you will spoil his fun. He is a child, a wise youth, 
 a mature man, a blind adventurer, or an ardent, 
 hopeful dreamer, as the kaleidoscope of his nature 
 turns. But he is always himself and never confus- 
 ing. His romances do not always have a clear goal, 
 and his romantic philosophy is sometimes paradox- 
 ical; but in his own life, romance is the simplest of 
 human qualities. 
 
 The romantic and genial egotist. It is the ro- 
 mance of Stevenson's outward life, corresponding 
 to the romantic courage of his inward nature and 
 the expression of both in his books, that has fasci- 
 nated most of us. His child's dream of a life of 
 story and adventure, his cheerful fight to live at all, 
 his marriage, his literary and most human success 
 in which we all seemed to have a part, his disappear- 
 ance at last into the far seas of fiction where he 
 became like a legend that grows — this is all within 
 our memory. He arrived in New York only the 
 other day and disappeared again, hull and topsails 
 down into the Westward. It is some twenty years 
 
THE COMPANIONABLE AUTHOR 7 
 
 ago, and you were perhaps, like me, a schoolboy 
 just launching on your first voyage in the real books, 
 a voyage that once properly started never comes to 
 an end. Has not Stevenson at least helped you to 
 prolong it? It is twenty years since he died; but 
 somewhere off the edge of the known world, so the 
 legend goes, his adventure continues, and we may 
 all follow it. Remembering his companionship, we 
 follow in our real adventures. Or for the moment 
 lacking any to our fancy, we sit down by our fire- 
 sides to live out the philosophy of youth with Virgin- 
 ibus Puerisque; or, in illustration, start once more 
 with Dennis de Beaulieu into the hostile town, or 
 plod fearsomely through the snow with Francois 
 Villon to knock on the Seigneur de Brisetout's door. 
 We turn the page to smile at Franchard's optimism, 
 or at Prince Florizel's bravado, so like the bravado 
 and optimism of R. L. S., so genial, so sustaining. 
 The night wears on, the page glows brighter, our 
 worldliness, our mistakes, our truisms, fall from us, 
 and when we at last put out the candle it is in an- 
 other country, the country of the romance and the 
 idealism of youth. 
 
 II 
 
 Stevenson is so whimsical, so mobile, so full of 
 fancies, experiments and surprises, that he is not 
 to be described far in advance. We shall see him 
 through his books, as we come to them; and since 
 they are so truly the mirror of his whole life, and 
 
8 STEVENSON 
 
 correspond, the best of them, to the best of his 
 hopes, we shall so arrange our discussion of their 
 philosophy and their art that it may be illuminated 
 by the facts and the hopes of his career. We shall 
 see him first in certain essays and poems as a fan- 
 ciful, playful child, living in his father's house in 
 a world of his own, and developing the peculiarly 
 youthful imagination that governs his maturest art. 
 That his ambition to use this imagination in litera- 
 ture formed under his father's eyes directly counter 
 to the interests of the family profession, determines 
 the first act in the drama of his life. We shall see 
 him next, in various books and sketches, having his 
 way, making the seemingly irresponsible and vaga- 
 bond experiments his heart was set on and proving 
 that the splendid inheritance of nervous energy from 
 his forebears could serve him well in a new kind of 
 labor, in a new conflict. Out of this conflict be- 
 tween ill health and ambition, tempered by the for- 
 tune of his marriage, he makes his philosophy of 
 life. It is a romantic philosophy, not a philosophy 
 of success; and we shall see finally that both his 
 long and cheerful search for health, and also the 
 books he wrote meanwhile are its romantic illus- 
 tration. 
 
 For while Stevenson was whimsical and full of 
 experimental variety to the end, he was not capri- 
 cious. He was one of the sanest of men. His 
 career and his production are each consistent. Hii 
 purposes grow steadily plainer and are in the end 
 easily definable. He is that rare man whose doc- 
 
THE COMPANIONABLE AUTHOR 9 
 
 trine accords with his experience whether announced 
 before or after. He is that rare man who appears, 
 in spite of jarring difficulties in life, to have seen 
 it whole and to have made the most of it. 
 
 Let me briefly describe some of the general pe- 
 culiarities that belong alike to this man and to his 
 books. 
 
 In them both the inherent and personal quality is 
 romance. What I mean here by romance is this: 
 Stevenson was so fond of using his imagination 
 about all matters, of "supposing," as he used to say, 
 that to him nothing looked as it might to the ordi- 
 nary person. Nothing appeared obvious, and until it 
 struck his fancy in some peculiar light he did not 
 care to think about it at all. This was part of his 
 egotism, which was, in most respects, a poetic 
 egotism. At times, it is true, this makes his style and 
 his attitude only appear forced or strange; far oft- 
 ener it makes him think and act freely and originally. 
 For it is through a poetic imagination that he be- 
 comes individual. But his romantic independence, 
 with its resulting criticism of the conventional world, 
 was not in any sense unsocial. Though he rebelled 
 against the accepted ideas of respectability, morals 
 and religion, he is not a rebel. He is, like Addison, 
 like Hazlitt, like Lamb, the genial, if somewhat satir- 
 ical, critic of humanity. Like them he is first of all 
 social ; only you must take him as he is — and he in- 
 sists on being taken, you can not ignore him — in his 
 soft collar and old velvet jacket. His eccentricities, in 
 fact, served him as points of contact with the world. 
 
10 STEVENSON 
 
 If they increased his feeling of self, they also 
 helped him to get more action out of life; they pre- 
 vented the stale from growing too stale, and called 
 adventure from otherwise calm seas. Stevenson 
 always remained peculiarly sensitive to life. His 
 rough experience never made him callous. Hence 
 his ultimate philosophy is marked by no detachment 
 or aloofness from the world. His moral force of 
 character and the chief thought of his serious writ- 
 ing is best described by the words cheerful courage. 
 It comes from his own experience of life. It is 
 intimate, not theoretic. All courage is not cheerful. 
 Some of it is grim, stern, and unsocial, the courage 
 of the man who takes the bit in the teeth or who 
 bolsters up his spirit with zeal. There is a sense 
 of humor in Stevenson's courage, a sense of propor- 
 tion, which makes it suitable to conditions. It often 
 assumes the form of banter or of bravado, when it 
 does not need to rise to the heights ; and it is always 
 sane and sweet. 
 
 I know there is another side to this. For there 
 are people who remember Stevenson chiefly as a 
 nervous eccentric, an irritable invalid, rather offish 
 in manner; or as a sort of flibbertigibbet and clever- 
 ling, a man who liked, for example, after sitting 
 long perfectly quiet in a room full of people, sud- 
 denly to burst into meteoric flaming talk and wild 
 gesticulation, leaving the impression of mere queer- 
 ness and affectation. There are people in Edinburgh 
 who still think of him as the lad who could not 
 stick to his job, who worried his father to death 
 
THE COMPANIONABLE AUTHOR 11 
 
 with queer doings, and gave away a lot of good 
 hard-earned Scotch money to French ne'er-do-weels 
 in Paris and Barbizon. Stevenson was eccentric. 
 He had a temper. He was a sensitive and often irri- 
 table invalid. He was not very orderly in his way 
 of living, and seemed to be largely incapable of tak- 
 ing decent precautions for the sake of his health. 
 He liked now to magnify his troubles and now to 
 make naught of them, as we all do in order to be 
 martyrs or heroes in our fancy. He liked to dress 
 queerly for the sake of the sensation it gave him 
 to be outwardly different from other people, and 
 then to take offense at those who could not see 
 through his disguise. He had a wonderful gift for 
 exaggeration, for becoming fascinated with his own 
 flights of fancy and with the words of his mouth. 
 He never presented exactly a standard of excellence, 
 and you can say little about him that you must not 
 soon contradict. Yet such a statement does not in- 
 validate the essential consistency of the man, if you 
 know him. 
 
 The popular idea of Stevenson is the true one. 
 I have no new picture to offer. He is the Stevenson 
 of his own books, and by them we shall see him. 
 
CHAPTER II 
 
 CHILD S PLAY 
 
 AMONG the characteristic amusements of Ste- 
 venson was his game of fancy about what he 
 called his antenatal life. Most of us think of our 
 ancestors a few generations back only a little less im- 
 personally than of the presidents of the United 
 States, but Stevenson always felt that he was bound 
 in and with his forebears. Some part of their ad- 
 ventures still stirred in his blood like physical mem- 
 ories; and this young man, so delicate of limb, so 
 often confined to the house for weeks at a time in 
 the bad Edinburgh weather, used to encourage in 
 himself the notion that it had not been always thus, 
 that parts of him had seen life, and that, on the 
 northern seas with his grandfather, the builder of 
 the Bell Rock Light, with his great uncles in the 
 Caribbean, with military ancestors still more remote, 
 he had played a greater role. 
 
 So, whatever is the real significance of heredity 
 in forming the temper and genius of men, Robert 
 Louis himself liked to be a strict evolutionist. On 
 his father's side was a line of devout, Calvinistic, 
 iron men of action, adventurers and fighters, and, 
 
 12 
 
CHILD'S PLAY 13 
 
 in his father and grandfather, followers of that 
 hardest and most fascinating of adventurous call- 
 ings, lighthouse building. This was the family pro- 
 fession. The Stevensons had built the most famous 
 lights on the Scotch coast, Bell Rock and Skerry- 
 vore. Thomas Stevenson, as his father before him, 
 was sole engineer to the Northern Board of Lights ; 
 and though Louis was too delicate in health when 
 the time came to take up this work in earnest, he 
 nevertheless had in his nerves the grim determina- 
 tion it would have required. He was to use it to 
 battle against even more terrible elements than sea 
 and wind. From these men he liked to think he 
 had his love of far adventure, his intense love of the 
 sea and of the open road. His immediate relation- 
 ship with his father was not, however, always a 
 happy one. His father, a whimsical and extremely 
 imaginative man with a peculiar gift for bizarre 
 conversation, was of a stern, moody, melancholic 
 disposition. He was too much like his son on one 
 side, too violently different on another, ever to un- 
 derstand him well. Louis's mother, a brilliant and 
 cheerful woman, with a zest for society and an un- 
 usual literary taste, came of a family of Scotch 
 divines; and her son's peculiar streak of gay mor- 
 ality, the piquant optimism that tinges all his essays 
 and the philosophy of nearly all his heroes of fic- 
 tion, is the fancied inheritance from her. "About 
 the very cradle of the Scot there goes a* hum of 
 metaphysical divinity," writes Stevenson in one of 
 his moralizings on this aspect of his character. 
 
14 STEVENSON 
 
 It was at his clergyman grandfather's house, 
 Colinton Manse, a few miles from Edinburgh, that 
 his childhood was largely passed; and his ancestral 
 adventures on both sides of the family, described 
 in that "memory and portrait" which he calls "The 
 Manse," will serve to introduce us, after his own 
 fanciful fashion, to Stevenson himself. 
 
 "Now I often wonder what I have inherited from 
 this old minister. I must suppose, indeed, that he 
 was fond of preaching sermons, and so am I, though 
 I never heard it maintained that either of us loved 
 to hear them. He sought health in his youth in 
 the Isle of Wight, and I have sought it in both hemi- 
 spheres ; but whereas he found and kept it, I am still 
 on the quest. He was a great lover of Shakespeare, 
 whom he read aloud, I have been told, with taste; 
 well, I love my Shakespeare also, and am persuaded 
 I can read him well, though I own I never have been 
 told so. He made embroidery, designing his own 
 patterns; and in that kind of work I never made 
 anything but a kettle-holder in Berlin wool and an 
 odd garter of knitting, which was as black as the 
 chimney before I had done with it. He loved port, 
 and nuts and porter; and so do I, but they agreed 
 better with my grandfather, which seems to me a 
 breach of contract. He had chalk-stones in his fin- 
 gers ; and these, in good time, I may possibly inherit, 
 but I would much rather have inherited his noble 
 presence. Try as I please, I cannot join myself on 
 with the reverend doctor; and all the while, no 
 
CHILD'S PLAY 15 
 
 doubts and even as I write the phrase, he moves in 
 my blood and whispers words to me, and sits effi- 
 cient in the very knot and center of my being. In 
 his garden, as I played there, I learned the love of 
 mills — or had I an ancestor a miller? — and a kind- 
 ness for the neighborhood of graves, as homely 
 things not without their poetry — or had I an ances- 
 tor a sexton? But what of the garden where he 
 played himself? — for that, too, was a scene of my 
 education. Some part of me played there in the 
 eighteenth century, and ran races under the green 
 avenue at Pilrig; some part of me trudged up 
 Leith Walk, which was still a country place, and sat 
 on the High School benches, and was thrashed, per- 
 haps, by Doctor Adam. The house where I spent 
 my youth was not yet thought upon; but we made 
 holiday parties among the cornfields on its site, and 
 ate strawberries and cream near by at a gardener's. 
 All this I had forgotten, only my grandfather re- 
 membered and once reminded me. I have forgot- 
 ten, too, how we grew up, and took orders, and went 
 to our first Ayrshire parish, and fell in love with 
 and married a daughter of Burns's Doctor Smith — 
 'Smith opens out his cauld harangues.' I have for- 
 gotten, but I was there all the same, and heard 
 stories of Burns at first hand. 
 
 "And there is a thing stranger than all that; for 
 this homunculus or part-man of mine that walked 
 about the eighteenth century with Doctor Balfour 
 in his youth, was in the way of meeting other 
 homunculos or part-men, in the persons of my 
 
16 STEVENSON 
 
 other ancestors. These were of a lower order, and 
 doubtless we looked down upon them duly. But as 
 I went to college with Doctor Balfour, I may have 
 seen the lamp and oil man taking down the shutters 
 from his shop beside the Tron ; — we may have had 
 a rabbit-hutch or a bookshelf made for us by a cer- 
 tain carpenter in I know not what wynd of the old, 
 smoky city; or, upon some holiday excursion, we 
 may have looked into the windows of a cottage in 
 a flower-garden and seen a certain weaver plying 
 his shuttle. And these were all kinsmen of mine 
 upon the other side; and from the eyes of the lamp 
 and oil man, one-half of my unborn father and one- 
 quarter of myself, looked out upon us as we went by 
 to college. Nothing of all this would cross the 
 mind of the young student, as he posted up the 
 Bridges with trim, stockinged legs, in that city of 
 cocked hats and good Scotch, still unadulterated. 
 It would not cross his mind that he should have a 
 daughter; and the lamp and oil man, just then 
 beginning, by a not unnatural metastasis, to bloom 
 into a light-house engineer, should have a grandson ; 
 and that these two, in the fulness of time, should 
 wed; and some portion of that student himself 
 should survive yet a year or two longer in the per- 
 son of their child. 
 
 "But our ancestral adventures are beyond even 
 the arithmetic of fancy; and it is the chief recom- 
 mendation of long pedigrees that we can follow 
 backward the careers of our homunculi and be re- 
 minded of our antenatal lives. Our conscious years 
 
CHILD'S PLAY 17 
 
 are but a moment in the history of the elements 
 that build us. Are you a bank clerk, and do you live 
 at Peckham ? It was not always so. And though to- 
 day I am only a man of letters, either tradition errs 
 or I was present when there landed at St. Andrews 
 a French barber-surgeon, to tend the health and the 
 beard of the great Cardinal Beaton; I have shaken 
 a spear in the Debatable Land and shouted the slo- 
 gan of the Elliots; I was present when a skipper, 
 plying from Dundee, smuggled Jacobites to France 
 after the '15 ; I was in a West India merchant's 
 office, perhaps next door to Bailie Nichol Jarvie's, 
 and managed the business of a plantation in St. 
 Kitt's; I was with my engineer-grandfather (the 
 son-in-law of the lamp and oil man) when he sailed 
 north about Scotland on the famous cruise that gave 
 us the Pirate and the Lord of the Isles; I was with 
 him, too, on the Bell Rock, in the fog, when the 
 Smeaton had drifted from her moorings, and the 
 Aberdeen men, pick in hand, had seized upon the 
 only boats, and he must stoop and lap sea-water 
 before his tongue could utter audible words; and 
 once more with him when the Bell Rock beacon 
 took a 'thrawe,' and his workmen fled into the 
 tower, then nearly finished, and he sat unmoved read- 
 ing in his Bible — or affecting to read — till one after 
 another slunk back with confusion of countenance 
 to their engineer. Yes, parts of me have seen life, 
 and met adventures, and sometimes met them well. 
 And away in the still cloudier past, the threads that 
 make me up can be traced by fancy into the bosoms 
 
18 STEVENSON 
 
 of thousands and millions of ascendants; Picts who 
 rallied round Macbeth and the old (and highly- 
 preferable) system of descent by females, fleers 
 from before the legions of Agricola, marchers in 
 Pannonian morasses, star-gazers on Chaldean pla- 
 teaus; and, furthest of all, what face is this that 
 fancy can see peering through the disparted 
 branches? What sleeper in green tree-tops, what 
 muncher of nuts, concludes my pedigree? Proba- 
 bly arboreal in his habits. . . . 
 
 "And I know not which is the more strange ; that 
 I should carry about with me some fibres of my 
 minister-grandfather; or that in him, as he sat in 
 his cool study, grave, reverend, contented gentle- 
 man, there was an aboriginal frisking of the blood 
 that was not his; tree-top memories; like undevel- 
 oped negatives, lay dormant in his mind; tree-top 
 instincts awoke and were trod down; and Probably 
 Arboreal (scarce to be distinguished from a mon- 
 key) gambolled and chattered in the brain of the 
 old divine." — 'The Manse," Memories and Por- 
 traits. 
 
 II 
 
 His energies and tastes perhaps thus forming in 
 innumerable antenatal lives, Stevenson was born 
 from out the past of romantic adventure and meta- 
 physical divinity, in the romantic and metaphysical 
 city of Edinburgh, in 1850. All his life he was to ro- 
 manticize and moralize his experience. In fact to do 
 both at once, to make morality romantic and ro- 
 
CHILD'S PLAY 19 
 
 mance into a moral, was to be his chief originality 
 as an author. So his playful fancy is here very sig- 
 nificant. 
 
 But the more immediate reality of his inheritance 
 appears in a weak chest and tendency to colds which 
 he inherited from his mother, and which during 
 childhood caused him to be taken continually to the 
 shore at North Berwick or to Colinton for the bet- 
 ter air. After moving twice in the city before he 
 was eight years old, the family settled at 17 Heriot 
 Row, on high ground, with a view from the back 
 windows of the house over the Water of Leith. 
 Stevenson was so delicate that, much of the time, 
 even when he had begun to go to school, he was a 
 housed boy; and not until after two winters spent 
 in Mentone, when he was thirteen and fourteen, 
 does the struggle against sickness appear to have 
 abated, and then only for a few years. 
 
 Though this was largely the fault of the Scotch 
 climate, which he hated, he was to the end of his 
 life, so much of which he lived in foreign lands, a 
 thorough Scot. He is among those famous Scots, 
 like Burns and Sir Walter, who have definitely in- 
 creased the fund of patriotism in the whole world 
 by their romantic feeling for their own land. For 
 perhaps no race loves its racial and tribal home so 
 much as does his. "Scotland," an old man said to 
 me once, after boasting of the vigorous climate of 
 his country, "is a hard mother to her sons. That is 
 why we are all so great!" She proved a hard 
 mother to Stevenson ; and I think she had much to 
 
20 STEVENSON 
 
 do with making him great, in spite of her terrible 
 weather and sea fogs which nearly killed him, and 
 which finally drove him forever from her shores. 
 No country has had a greater hold on the imagina- 
 tion of its people or has been more stimulating to 
 effort. 
 
 "A Scottish child hears much of shipwreck, out- 
 lying iron skerries, pitiless breakers, and great sea- 
 lights ; much of heathery mountains, wild clans, and 
 hunted Covenanters. Breaths come to him in song 
 of the distant Cheviots and the ring of foraying 
 hoofs. He glories in his hard-fisted forefathers, of 
 the iron girdle and the handful of oatmeal, who 
 rode so swiftly and lived so sparely on their raids. 
 Poverty, ill-luck, enterprise, and constant resolu- 
 tion are the fibres of the legend of his country's 
 history. The heroes and kings of Scotland have 
 been tragically fated ; the most marking incidents in 
 Scottish history — Flodden, Darien, or the Forty- 
 five — were still either failures or defeats; and the 
 fall of Wallace and the repeated reverses of the 
 Bruce combine with the very smallness of the coun- 
 try to teach rather a moral than a material criterion 
 for life. Britain is altogether small, the mere tap- 
 root of her extended empire; Scotland, again, which 
 alone the Scottish boy adopts in his imagination, is 
 but a little part of that, and avowedly cold, sterile 
 and unpopulous. It is not so for nothing." — 'The 
 Foreigner at Home/' Memories and Portraits. 
 
CHILD'S PLAY 31 
 
 Stevenson's childhood is a story of a rather un- 
 successful struggle against ill health with a resulting 
 growth of imaginative sensitiveness as the boy, 
 deprived of physical activity, turned his energy 
 inward; for nervous energy Stevenson had to a 
 remarkable degree. Moreover he had a sort of 
 toughness, born perhaps of this very combat with 
 disease, and a buoyancy of disposition that dispelled 
 mental lassitude in the midst of illness. One of 
 Stevenson's chief characteristics, and most impor- 
 tant in understanding his philosophy, was developed 
 early. As a result of the bad Scotch weather and 
 his confinement to the house, he learned to play in 
 his mind as perhaps no perfectly healthy child ever 
 learns. He was an only child, and much of his play 
 was by himself. For this reason, perhaps, his war 
 games were more elaborate, more logically con- 
 tinued. His ship on the stairs, the horseman gal- 
 loping by on windy nights who haunted his imag- 
 ination, the "shadow march," his hunter's camp 
 behind the sofa, about all of which you may read 
 in A. Child's Garden of Verses, were matters of 
 more vivid importance to him than they could have 
 been to most children who had constant outdoor 
 activities to fill their days with reality and their 
 nights with sleep. 
 
 "All round the house is the jet-black night; 
 
 It stares through the window-pane; 
 It crawls in the corners, hiding from the light, 
 
 And it moves with the moving flame. 
 
22 STEVENSON 
 
 "Now my little heart goes a-beating like a drum, 
 With the breath of the Bogie in my hair; 
 
 And all round the candle the crooked shadows come, 
 And go marching along up the stair. 
 
 "The shadow of the balusters, the shadow of the 
 lamp, 
 The shadow of the child that goes to bed — 
 All the wicked shadows coming, tramp, tramp, 
 tramp, 
 With the black night overhead." 
 — "Shadow March," A Child's Garden of Verses. 
 
 And behind the sofa, approached by the forest track 
 all in the dark along the wall — 
 
 "There, in the night, where none can spy, 
 All in my hunter's camp I lie, 
 And play at books that I have read 
 Till it is time to go to bed. 
 
 "These are the hills, these are the woods, 
 These are my starry solitudes; 
 And there the river by whose brink 
 The roaring lions come to drink. 
 
 "I see the others far away 
 As if in firelit camp they lay, 
 And I, like to an Indian scout, 
 Around their party prowled about. 
 
 "So when my nurse comes in for me, 
 Home I return across the sea, 
 And go to bed with backward looks 
 At my dear land of Story-books." 
 —"The Land of Story-Books," A Child's Garden 
 of Verses. 
 
CHILD'S PLAY 23 
 
 He has told of all this in a paper quoted by Mr. 
 Balfour in his Life of Stevenson; and in many auto- 
 biographical essays he has described how he was 
 thus always at play, living in "a purely visionary 
 state." No part of his life Stevenson was fonder 
 of returning to and moralizing about than the play 
 hours and story-books of childhood. They colored 
 with cheerfulness his whole after experience ; and a 
 child who did not know how to invent, to play with 
 zest in his own mind, he always regarded as a pitiful 
 and rather unhappy sort of creature. His wife tells 
 of his watching the games of some children at 
 Bournemouth, and of his disgust at a generation 
 that had forgotten how to play. "I see," he ex- 
 claimed, "the approaching decline of England!" 
 But, no doubt, as his wife observes, it requires some- 
 thing like genius to play as Stevenson played. It 
 requires, at least, a special nervous energy which is 
 the chief part of genius, and also it requires that 
 rare quality of memory that sharpens rather than 
 dulls interest, that makes memory a source of inven- 
 tion, of ability to vary and to continue. Obviously 
 many children have played nearly as well as Steven- 
 son. But have they continued it? Conventional 
 sports usually supersede the games of fancy, and 
 except for an occasional return during some "pas- 
 toral" affair, the spirit of make-believe dies out and 
 is forgotten when we are no more than A. B.'s. 
 
24 STEVENSON 
 
 III 
 
 Stevenson's distinction, and the frequent distinc- 
 tion of genius, is shown in the fact that he did not 
 forget, that a very small part of his accomplishment 
 went to waste. Being a thoroughgoing evolutionist 
 in regard to his own personality, he himself traces a 
 close connection between his mature play, the play 
 of his productive genius, and child's play. He and 
 his cousin Bob (R. A. M. Stevenson) grew up from 
 the stage when they ate buttercups in the back yard 
 as shipwrecked sailors, or spent whole days in draw- 
 ing maps to help them find their adventurous way 
 across imaginary continents to the stage when they 
 wrote out these tales for a magazine they "edited." 
 There were in fact many of these magazines. Louis's 
 interest in writing began early. Whether or not his 
 dreaming one night at the age of four that he "heard 
 the noise of pens writing," is a serious indication of 
 his bent, he at least made his debut at the age of six 
 by writing a History of Moses, dictated to his 
 mother on five successive Sunday evenings, for 
 which he received a prize from his uncle. The next 
 year he composed a History of Joseph, and alto- 
 gether in the period of boyhood some dozen or so 
 tales, most of them, however, not Biblical but of the 
 "Skelt" variety. "The Adventures of Jan van 
 Steen," in The Schoolboy's Magazine, other adven- 
 tures in other periodicals famous for a day, must 
 have been pretty racy reading if we can judge by the 
 samples in Mr. Balfour's Life. 
 
CHILD'S PLAY 25 
 
 "Skeltdom," to which Stevenson pays the homage 
 of genius in "A Penny Plain," was a land of glam- 
 ourous melodrama which so took hold of the boy's 
 imagination that it is now impossible to say how 
 much of Treasure Island, Kidnapped, and other such 
 tales we may not owe to it. In Skeltdom, for a 
 penny, the sickly boy was a hero of romance, and if 
 he soon passed on to the higher and more spacious 
 fields of glory in Dumas he already bore some hon- 
 ors with him. 
 
 "I have, at different times, possessed Aladdin, 
 The Red Rover, The Blind Boy, The Old Oak 
 Chest, The Wood Dcemon, Jack Sheppard, The 
 Miller and His Men, Der Freischutz, The Smuggler, 
 The Forest of Bondy, Robin Hood, The Water- 
 man, Richard I, My Poll and My Partner Joe, The 
 Inchcape Bell (imperfect), and Three-Fingered 
 Jack, the Terror of Jamaica; and I have assisted 
 others in the illumination of The Maid of the Inn 
 and The Battle of Waterloo. In this roll-call of 
 stirring names you read the evidences of a happy 
 childhood." These pieces of literature he bought 
 for a penny "plain." "I cannot deny," he continues, 
 "that joy attended the illumination ; nor can I quite 
 forgive that child who, wilfully foregoing pleasure, 
 stoops to 'twopence coloured.' With crimson lake 
 (hark to the sound of it — crimson lake! — the horns 
 of elf land are not richer on the ear) — with crim- 
 son lake and Prussian blue a certain purple is to be 
 compounded which, for cloaks especially, Titian 
 
26 STEVENSON 
 
 could not equal. The latter colour with gamboge, a 
 hated name although an exquisite pigment, supplied 
 a green of such a savory greenness that to-day my 
 heart regrets it. Nor can I recall without a tender 
 weakness the very aspect of the water where I 
 clipped my brush. Yes, there was pleasure in the 
 painting. But when all was painted, it is needless 
 to deny it, all was spoiled." — "A Penny Plain and 
 Twopence Coloured," Memories and Portraits. 
 
 The psychology of "Child's Play" Stevenson has 
 described in an essay of that title. It is art for art's 
 sake; that is the gist of it. In Stevenson's case the 
 imagination of the man, the useful and romantic 
 imagination, is clearly suggested in what he has told 
 us of his infancy. "An author must live in a book 
 as a child in a game oblivious to the world." In "A 
 Penny Plain," "A Novel of Dumas's," "A Gossip 
 on Romance," "Child's Play," "A Chapter on 
 Dreams," "Rosa Quo Locorum," and here and there 
 casually in many other essays, exists the testimony 
 of the author to this relationship of his early sensi- 
 tiveness of imagination to his later purposes as an 
 artist. Fascinated by the sound of the language, 
 by the reading aloud of his mother and his nurse, 
 by the recitations of his Aunt Jane, associating, for 
 example, all such phrases as "Death's dark vale" 
 and "pastures green," which he read in a graphic 
 version of the Psalms, with definite places in Edin- 
 burgh, he grew early to have that temperament for 
 words which is one of the determining features of 
 
CHILD'S PLAY 27 
 
 his style- He remembers vividly his first great inter- 
 est in Rob Roy, and records that such phrases as 
 "the worthy Doctor Light foot" — "mistrysted with 
 a bogle" — "a wheen green trash" — "Jenny, lass, I 
 think I ha'e her" — were henceforth part of his dia- 
 lect. It is also in "Rosa Quo Locorum" that he tells 
 about his discovery of reading. He had been play- 
 ing all day, and toward evening being sent on an 
 errand to the village, he took along a book of fairy 
 tales. Going down through a firwood in the mag- 
 nificent sunset light and reading as he walked, he 
 experienced a sudden great shock of pleasure the 
 recollection of which never left him and for the 
 rest of his life touched the mere process of explor- 
 ing a book with romance. 
 
 The remarkable thing is not that Stevenson had 
 these experiences, which I believe are the common 
 experiences of imaginative children, but that Ste- 
 venson continued all his life to be thus sensitive, and 
 especially that he kept up a sensational memory of 
 the past. He says somewhere that he is one of the 
 few people who really remembers his past. The 
 more one knows about men of artistic genius, the 
 more one realizes that this kind of memory is an 
 economic condition of such genius, and often an 
 explanation of it. In the minds of the artists there 
 are few waste sensations. In the productions of 
 genius everything has counted. Writing at the end 
 of his life in Samoa, he gives us a picture of his 
 childhood in Edinburgh, which in this connection 
 it will pay the reader to look at. It is quoted at the 
 
28 STEVENSON 
 
 end of the third chapter in Balfour's Life. It is 
 not a description of Edinburgh; it is in reality a 
 picture of his mind, of his vivid memory of "inar- 
 ticulate but profound impressions," as he walked 
 with his nurse "gaping on the universe." 
 
 IV 
 
 There was, as might be expected, another side to 
 this unusual sensitiveness of imagination. Very 
 early he developed his extraordinary capacity for 
 suffering — suffering which was, however, positive 
 and creative. It was part of Stevenson's equipment 
 for close contact with life. In his grave illnesses as a 
 child, the feverish hours of waiting for dawn which 
 he describes to us are the beginnings of a kind of 
 imaginative introspection that later marks his ge- 
 nius. The author of The Merry Men, Dr. Jekyll 
 and Mr. Hyde, "Thrawn Janet," "The Isle of 
 Voices," and of those peculiarly imagined terror- 
 scenes in The Master, "The Beach of Falesa," "The 
 Pavilion on the Links," is the dreamer of strange 
 childish nightmares, and later on, of sleep-fantasies, 
 that so often appear to have a reasoned moral. In 
 his "Chapter on Dreams," Stevenson has described 
 the effects of illness on his early imagination, effects 
 which seem to have been aggravated by the sto- 
 ries of his beloved nurse, Alison Cunningham. 
 "Cummy," unaware how far a child's imagination 
 even in health will carry the dogmas of Calvinistic 
 hell-fire theology, used to give him the benefit of her 
 
CHILD'S PLAY 29 
 
 own cheerful religious views, and Louis did not dare 
 to go to sleep for fear of waking in the flames of the 
 underworld. In the morning he would be feverish 
 and ill. 
 
 And yet Stevenson would not have given up these 
 things. Which of us, in fact, does not look back on 
 such experiences as the better and romantic part of 
 life? Anything in order to have felt! Reality is 
 only what we experience now. It is wholly circum- 
 scribed. The past, like the future, is a dream, and 
 capable of infinite expansion. It transcends fact 
 or truth and becomes a widening field of adventure. 
 
 "The past," Stevenson argued, "is all of one tex- 
 ture — whether feigned or suffered." One recollec- 
 tion may be vivid, another may be dull, but which is 
 true and which merely a dream there is "not one 
 hair to prove." What does our past then amount to? 
 Would we not be just the same Smith or Robinson 
 were it truth or dream? A metaphysician might 
 argue it away entirely. But though fancy and fact, 
 a few years gone, are so much alike as to be indis- 
 tinguishable, imagine us robbed of these "air-painted 
 pictures," this romance of memory which we call 
 our past — how circumscribed would be our outlook ! 
 Without a romantic picture of our past in the back 
 of our brains, could there be any romantic vision of 
 the future before our eyes ? Dreams and memories 
 — they extend the lives of those who cultivate them 
 beyond the lives of their more practical minded 
 neighbors and, as I say, make a field of ever fresh 
 experience. 
 
30 STEVENSON 
 
 Stevenson, the evolutionist, definitely connects 
 this kind of dreaming with the growth of his ge- 
 nius; and for any theory of genius, as energy cre- 
 ated by subconscious activity, which is a theory 
 that at least accounts for the rapid processes and 
 apparently miraculous intuitions of certain men of 
 genius, dreaming might well furnish some minor 
 evidence. There is, I believe, a set of Indian mys- 
 tics who never sleep, at least not the ordinary dark 
 sleep of normal men; they have trained their brains 
 to continue at night certain practical and profitable 
 subconscious processes, and the condition of the 
 body meanwhile they call "white sleep." Steven- 
 son's imagination was to some extent given its cast 
 by similar experiments. 
 
 Stevenson says that he was ever an ardent and 
 uncomfortable dreamer. While he was a student 
 in Edinburgh, he explains in this "Chapter on 
 Dreams," he began to dream a story from night 
 to night; and so persistent was this subconscious 
 streak that it made a kind of double life for him 
 and began to produce a mild form of mental confu- 
 sion. In some alarm he visited a physician, who 
 easily dispelled the trouble by "a simple draught." 
 But in this incident one can see the future imag- 
 iner of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde; and though Ste- 
 venson says here that he never had another such 
 experience as this, he records later that Dr. Jekyll 
 and Mr. Hyde was itself a dream, and that "Olalla" 
 was mostly a dream. In this same "Chapter on 
 
CHILD'S PLAY 31 
 
 Dreams" he goes on to say that he had long been 
 in the custom of putting himself to sleep with tales, 
 as his father before him, "tales where a thread might 
 be dropped, or one adventure quitted for another, 
 on fancy's least suggestion." 
 
 Stevenson calls the sprites of imagination who 
 guide a man's fancies during sleep or waking "the 
 Little People." At first they played upon their 
 stage like children, rather irresponsibly, not like 
 drilled actors. But presently he began to turn this 
 amusement of dreaming and story-telling to account ; 
 he began to write and sell his tales. This made a 
 new business for the Little People. The stories had 
 now to be "trimmed and pared," and to fit with 
 the laws of life. But the Little People understood 
 the change as well as he. When he began to dream 
 it was not an aimless adventure he embarked on, 
 but something that could be turned to account ; and 
 after he had, so to speak, given over the direction 
 of the affair, the Little People continued it. When 
 his bank-account ran low, when he set to stirring 
 his brains for a plot, the Little People at once began 
 to experiment upon their midnight stage. Who are 
 the Little People, the sprites of imagination? Ste- 
 venson says they are beyond doubt near connections 
 of the dreamer. Perhaps they are creations of 
 financial worry! No, they are even closer to him 
 than this. They are creations of his training and 
 perhaps have more talent than he. "One thing is 
 beyond doubt, they can tell him a story piece by 
 
32 STEVENSON 
 
 piece, like a serial, and keep him all the while in 
 ignorance of where they aim." 
 
 These passages are a humorous commentary both 
 on much that is charming and not a little that is 
 futile in Stevenson's literary method. The Little 
 People were not always the best hands to help him 
 arrange a long and complicated matter. They often 
 played him tricks and deserted him. If Treasure 
 Island, The Merry Men, "The Isle of Voices," are 
 the works of the Little People, The Black Arrow 
 is a result of their desertion, "Olalla" is one of their 
 complete failures, and one suspects that the blind 
 alleys in nearly all Stevenson's longer books are 
 places of their perverse invention. Still, his con- 
 tinued reliance on them rather than on any more 
 prosaic creatures has given us those fancies which 
 we most delight in. Their faults and their virtues 
 are complementary. 
 
 From this description of the sources, out of his 
 childhood, of some traits of Stevenson's peculiar 
 genius, it must not be thought that he was growing 
 up merely a fantastic dreamer and player of games. 
 The experiences here described colored his imag- 
 ination and to a great extent determined his taste, 
 but they did not distort his mind. They added to 
 the charm and originality of his creative fancy all 
 through his life. As we shall see, Stevenson was 
 one of those fortunate men who contrive to make 
 all their experience count, and to utilize it thor- 
 oughly. He grew up to the age of school and col- 
 lege full of the zest for experiment, and his char- 
 
CHILD'S PLAY 33 
 
 acter might be described at this time, as well as the 
 quality of his genius, by adding that where he did 
 not come by knowledge naturally he secured it by 
 sheer invention. 
 
CHAPTER III 
 
 LITERATURE AND THE FAMILY PROFESSION 
 
 OUTWARDLY, Stevenson's life from 1859, 
 when he began a rather irregular schooling, 
 to 1875, when, after giving up all idea of following 
 the family profession, he had studied law and had 
 been admitted to the bar, was in accordance with the 
 ideas of a practical, hard-headed Scotch father, who 
 believed in fitting every man for a definite career. 
 As a boy Stevenson attended three different schools 
 in Edinburgh and read under various tutors. He 
 had been once, for a month, at Hamburg, near 
 Frankfurt; two winters with his mother on the 
 Italian Riviera at Mentone, in 1862 and 1863; and 
 the two springs of 1864 and 1865 at Torquay. In 
 Scotland he spent his frequent vacations at Colin- 
 ton, North Berwick, or with his father on lighthouse 
 service. Entering Edinburgh University in 1867, 
 he began a regular course of scientific studies calcu- 
 lated to prepare him for engineering. In 1871 he 
 read before the Royal Scottish Society of Arts a 
 paper on "A New Form of Intermittent Light for 
 
 34 
 
THE FAMILY PROFESSION 35 
 
 Light Houses." Then, twelve days later, he told 
 his father that he did not wish to continue in scien- 
 tific work. What he wished to do was what he had 
 been working at in earnest all the time his normal 
 education had proceeded. He wished to be a writer. 
 
 If we examine those essays which contain Steven- 
 son's memories of school and college days it is evi- 
 dent that his chief interest was all along to learn the 
 art of writing, his ambition to publish. These essays 
 may be divided into three sets : a few dealing with 
 his experience in and about Edinburgh, such as 
 "Lantern Bearers," "Old Mortality," "The Char- 
 acter of Dogs," "Pastoral," "An Old Scotch Gar- 
 dener," "A Winter's Walk"; a few more showing 
 what his interest in the family profession really was, 
 such as "A Family of Engineers," "Memoirs of an 
 Islet," "The Education of an Engineer" ; and finally 
 several essays describing or analyzing his private 
 ambition and his methods of learning to write, which 
 I shall discuss in the next chapters. 
 
 In the first set you perceive the artist's strong and 
 natural delight in all his experiences, with many 
 evidences of what Stevenson called his "consistent 
 egotism." You will see that the zest for play and 
 make-believe described in "Lantern Bearers," that 
 wonderful defense of the romantic purposelessness 
 of youth, widens into an appreciation of all serious 
 artistic material as the only true material for play. 
 Play is making new experiences out of the usual, 
 thinking about things imaginatively, enlarging them 
 into new values, getting more out of life" than mere 
 
36 STEVENSON 
 
 money's worth. It seems, as I look at the set of 
 Stevenson's works on the shelf behind me and real- 
 ize what they stand for, that every vivid experience 
 which Stevenson had at this age must have so occu- 
 pied his imagination afterward, have furnished him 
 so much material for play, that he was forced to 
 explain it to others with somewhat the same de- 
 light as any of us explains the games of our child- 
 hood twenty years later. And there is about these 
 essays much the same combination of spontaneity 
 and artificiality that one finds in the games of youth. 
 For playing with an idea is the secret or open mo- 
 tive of many of Stevenson's writings. Play, mere 
 play, sets his mind free ; it involves all his resources. 
 Upon the function of play in life and in art you 
 may read very learned disquisitions, like the Es- 
 thetic Letters of Schiller, but the gist of the whole 
 thing, or at least its happiest symbol, is perhaps Ste- 
 venson's account of his bull's-eye lantern. It may 
 well be taken as a symbol for the fundamental thing 
 in his own character — the early development of 
 which we have just noticed — his artistic ability to 
 play. The smoky, reeking, tin contrivances which 
 the small boys of Colinton carried under their top- 
 coats on autumn nights, solely for the "joy" of the 
 thing, serves him late in life for an emblem of his 
 whole poetic purpose. Art is not opposed to utility, 
 and play is not opposed to utility. But neither is 
 to be judged by it. The poetry of life is eminently 
 useful, but utility is neither its purpose nor its sanc- 
 tion. "Who misses the joy misses all." This is as 
 
THE FAMILY PROFESSION 37 
 
 true of life as of poetry, which ought to be the es- 
 sence of life. Utility is not the essence of life. 
 Realism is not the essence of art. Of each the es- 
 sence lies in imaginative beauty. 
 
 This is the vital and poetic strain in Stevenson's 
 mind. For whatever else he was or failed to be, he 
 was fundamentally poetic. In this essay on the art 
 of the lantern he is directing his criticism against 
 the school of realists ; but when all is said, his com- 
 plaint of them is not that they fail to touch the joy 
 of romance, but that they failed to touch realism 
 with poetry. This is what Stevenson means by his 
 doctrine of play. Many have dealt more sharply 
 than he with reality, but few have played with it so 
 well. Few have so frequently called in the Little 
 People to bear a hand. 
 
 For an example, and a right homely one, let Ste- 
 venson once feel the glamour of Scotch moors and 
 the Scotchman's intense love of them, let him de- 
 cide that the sheep business is the typical Scotch 
 pursuit, let him catch the image of the old shepherd, 
 John Todd, to give the idea form and make it 
 live, and he has the outline of the game. With the 
 aid of the Little People he can write his essay called 
 "Pastoral." What he saw many a realist has seen, 
 and perhaps has felt what he felt; we may our- 
 selves come from a race of shepherds and know the 
 whole business from A to Z; but are John Todd 
 and his sheep matters to our hand ? No, the Little 
 People are lacking, or the chances are that we at 
 once put them to rout. Not so with Stevenson. He 
 
38 STEVENSON 
 
 invites them in and what they bring him is a height- 
 ened vividness which is beyond realism. 
 
 "We have not so far to climb to come to shep- 
 herds," he says at the end of this essay; "and it may 
 be I had one for an ascendant who has largely 
 moulded me. But yet I think I owe my taste for 
 that hillside business rather to the art and interest 
 of John Todd. He it was that made it live for me, 
 as the artist can make all things live. It was through 
 him the simple strategy of massing sheep upon a 
 snowy evening, with its attendant scampering of 
 earnest, shaggy aides-de-camp, was an affair that 
 I never wearied of seeing, and that I never weary 
 of recalling to mind : the shadow of the night dark- 
 ening on the hills, inscrutable black dots of snow- 
 shower moving here and there like night already 
 come, huddles of yellow sheep and dartings of black 
 dogs upon the snow, a bitter air that took you by 
 the throat, unearthly harpings of the wind along 
 the moors ; and for centerpiece to all these features 
 and influences, John winding up the brae, keeping 
 his captain's eye upon all sides, and breaking, ever 
 and again, into a spasm of bellowing that seemed 
 to make the evening bleaker. It is thus that I still 
 see him in my mind's eye, perched on a hump of 
 the declivity not far from Halkerside, his staff in 
 airy flourish, his great voice taking hold upon the 
 hills and echoing terror to the lowlands; I, mean- 
 while, standing somewhat back, until the fit should 
 
THE FAMILY PROFESSION 39 
 
 be over, and, with a pinch of snuff, my friend re- 
 lapse into his easy, even conversion." — "Pastoral," 
 Memories and Portraits. 
 
 This was a sensation to start the fancy of youth — 
 one of the unforgettable commonplaces for those 
 who have seen it. 
 
 In these essays Stevenson has the methods of the 
 romantic poet. He is expressing his own feelings 
 and his own specific experience. He is part of the 
 scene, never impersonal. He gives shape to an idea 
 not by working his way through it systematically, 
 but by tossing it about in his game of phrases and 
 images till you have seen what it is like in his mind. 
 In "Old Mortality," his own experience, as nearly 
 always, serves as a starting point ; so that this little 
 philosophy for greensick youth is not a set topic, a 
 writer's theme, but something springing naturally 
 from Stevenson's interest in his own character. The 
 fun of reading the essay is like the fun of personal 
 talk. It continues, by a series of suggestions, not 
 by a prearranged plan pointing to a foreseen goal. 
 At the end you have not the satisfaction of arriving; 
 only the pleasure of the author's companionship and 
 of the incidents on the way. This is the spirit of 
 play as distinguished from that of business. The 
 spirit of business is to arrive, to finish, to settle 
 things — a spirit in which most writing is under- 
 taken and completed. The spirit of play is the charm 
 of lyric poetry, and Stevenson's essays about his 
 
40 STEVENSON 
 
 early experiences have both in their origin and 
 method much that is fundamentally poetic because 
 they are so intimate and so personal. 
 
 II 
 
 Let me ask the reader a question: Have you 
 thought what it is like to be a poet? Why are you 
 not a poet ? You are thoroughly interested in your 
 own experiences; you are very likely egotistical 
 enough. Why does your egotism not inspire you? 
 Why does the world not stir it for you until it brims 
 over? You have sat in graveyards, and you have 
 seen sheep herded. Yet you are not Thomas Gray 
 nor Robert Louis Stevenson. Is it feelings that you 
 lack, and words? Or is it the energy to make a 
 play out of what impressions you receive? "It is 
 said," remarks Stevenson, "that a poet has died 
 young in the breast of the most stolid." There are 
 of course thousands of sensitive mortals with nerves 
 responding to all impressions, who are the constant 
 reservoirs of poetic feeling without being able to care 
 for the forms of play that it suggests. They try to 
 make these impressions vivid neither in conversa- 
 tion, nor in music, nor in pictures, nor in writing. 
 But if you will begin to do any one of these things 
 and carry it beyond what may be called an inventory 
 of fact, you have some idea of the energy required 
 for artistic play. 
 
 Such energy was Stevenson's; and so far as we 
 are immediately concerned here, this spirit of play 
 
THE FAMILY PROFESSION 41 
 
 explains the turn of his life during school and col- 
 lege. It explains his motives in choosing a career. 
 He has, at first, no purpose as a writer except this 
 purpose to play, to use his imagination about his 
 various experiences and impressions. Neither does 
 he seem to have special or favorite subject-matter 
 which he takes to for its own sake. A thing inter- 
 ests him chiefly because he had a part in it. Hence, 
 to have experiences of all sorts, to know life in 
 varying detail, to watch John Todd herd his sheep 
 or to go down in a diving-bell, is more significant 
 to him than to become himself a professional sheep- 
 farmer or a trained engineer. To the poet the sig- 
 nificant thing in life is the sequence of his own 
 changing impressions; it could not be the routine 
 of a business. 
 
 That such instinctive considerations were at the 
 bottom of Stevenson's choice of literature as a ca- 
 reer, instead of engineering or law, is obvious from 
 the character of his writings which deal with the 
 period of his youth, and nowhere more so than in 
 those topics connected with the family profession. 
 Thomas Stevenson, as you learn in his son's trib- 
 ute, was devoted to his career of engineer as a ser- 
 vice to the nation. He never, for example, took 
 out a patent on any of his inventions, regarding 
 them as the property of the nation. The profession 
 had come down in the family from his grandfather, 
 Thomas Smith, first engineer to the Board of North- 
 ern Lights, and Thomas Stevenson was the fifth 
 member of the family to be engaged in it. There- 
 
42 STEVENSON 
 
 fore to discover that his son Louis's youthful inter- 
 est in the profession was really a romantic and 
 literary interest, or only an exhibition of good will, 
 instead of serious scientific purpose, was a bitter 
 experience to him. Louis had been with him on 
 various cruises ; he had shown a level head, though 
 not very steady nerves, in various difficult situa- 
 tions; he had done fairly well in the scientific 
 courses at the university. The family still hoped that 
 his frail health might improve. But Louis in his 
 twenty-first year had made up his mind not to ex- 
 periment further with an alien taste and a doubtful 
 practicality. Thomas Stevenson resigned himself 
 to the situation. He stipulated, however, that Louis 
 should be fitted for the law in order to have a pro- 
 fession to fall back on, if literature, as he thor- 
 oughly expected, proved an inadequate support. 
 Louis could not refuse acquiescence in this; and, as 
 it turned out, though he never practised law, he was 
 also never properly self-supporting by means of his 
 pen till his father's death. His health, however, 
 would have made law or literature equally impossi- 
 ble had he desired to follow it in Scotland. 
 
 In those essays called "The Coast of Fife," "The 
 Education of an Engineer," "Memoirs of an Islet," 
 "A Family of Engineers," you may readily perceive 
 what kind of appeal the family profession had for 
 Stevenson. It attracted him in its aspects of adven- 
 ture and danger and as the romantic inheritance of 
 the family. It attracted him as literary material. 
 But it had no practical hold on him. Neither had 
 
THE FAMILY PROFESSION 43 
 
 he any practical aptitude for it, only a certain theo- 
 retical liking. 
 
 Concerning a visit to Anstruther, where he went 
 in July, 1868, to glean engineering experience from 
 watching his father's workmen build a breakwater, 
 he has left a record in the essay called "The Educa- 
 tion of an Engineer.' ' He confesses frankly that 
 the details of construction interested him solely as 
 material for a romance. Such things as rubble, pol- 
 ished ashlar, pierres perdues, the string course, were 
 merely expansions of his vocabulary and went along 
 with the sunshine, the sea-air, the waves, "the green 
 glimmer of the divers' helmets far below," into his 
 romantic dream, not into his practical mind. His 
 real labors were not on the breakwater with the 
 masons, but after dinner in his chamber where he 
 poured forth "literature"— Voces Fidelium and dra- 
 matic monologues in verse "at a terrific speed, 
 spurred on by intimations of early death and im- 
 mortality." 
 
 Another engineering experience the next month 
 at Wick seems to have consisted chiefly in a descent 
 in a diving-bell, which was the real source of this 
 document in romanticism about which I have just 
 spoken. Its title ("The Education of an Engineer") 
 should really be "The Education of a Writer." An- 
 other memory of these days begins as follows : 
 
 "Those who try to be artists use, time after time, 
 the matter of their recollections, setting and reset- 
 ting little coloured memories of men and scenes, 
 
44 STEVENSON 
 
 rigging up (it may be) some especial friend in the 
 attire of a buccaneer, and decreeing armies to ma- 
 neuver, or murder to be done, on the playground of 
 their youth. But the memories are a fairy gift 
 which cannot be worn out in using." This paper 
 entitled "Memoirs of an Islet" goes on to say 
 that these places where he went to observe his fa- 
 ther's operations proved useful to him for the sce- 
 nery and the characters of his tales. "There is an- 
 other isle in my collection, the memory of which 
 besieges me. I put a whole family there, in one of 
 my tales; and later on, threw upon its shores, and 
 condemned to several days of rain and shell-fish on 
 its tumbled boulders, the hero of another. The ink 
 is not yet faded; the sound of the sentences is still 
 in my mind's ear; and I am under a spell to write 
 of that island again." — "Memoirs of an Islet," 
 Memories and Portraits. 
 
 In many things at this period Stevenson thus 
 found his true interest in life to be heretical and, 
 from his father's point of view, wasteful. But for 
 genius everything counts ; which, by the way, is also 
 an explanation of why genius is rare. Truancy, 
 idleness, dreaming, often as much as labor or atten- 
 tion to a definite business in hand, play their part ; 
 for, in the mind of genius, the unity of things is 
 more comprehensive than in the mind of practical- 
 ity. What seems waste turns out or is made to be 
 economy. What seems like a serious set-back finally 
 appears as a decisive step in advance. Life, for 
 
THE FAMILY PROFESSION 45 
 
 the strong and original men, is nearly always thus 
 consistent. In their wills are few false intentions, 
 and in their environment few blind alleys. 
 
 In 1871, when Stevenson declared against the 
 family profession, he knew that his real education 
 had all along been different from that planned by his 
 father. His real education had led him to a com- 
 plete faith in his desire to be a writer and to the 
 belief that his subject-matter would be only his own 
 experience with the world. As we see it now, his 
 life was reasonable; for what he became is precisely 
 what one would expect of a man whose mind had 
 been formed in boyhood in such peculiar fashion 
 as has been described. Genius is logical; the sur- 
 prise would have been R. L. S. as a successful civil 
 engineer. 
 
 Ill 
 
 There are, in this matter of Stevenson's deter- 
 mination to be a writer in opposition to his father's 
 plans and wishes, further circumstances which color 
 his whole life, and therefore greatly affect the char- 
 acter of his literary production. It is a matter he 
 gave much thought to later on. One can not read 
 far in Stevenson without being struck by his fre- 
 quent choice of the divergent views of father and 
 son, of age and youth, both for analysis in an essay 
 and for motive in a story. In Virginibus Puer- 
 isque, "Crabbed Age and Youth," and here and 
 there throughout his papers, he is pointing out the 
 
46 STEVENSON 
 
 characteristic attitudes of the older and younger 
 generations. Youth is full of romance, experiment, 
 socialism, vagabondage, flaunting energy, passing 
 brilliances; age is full of the enjoyment of safe 
 knowledge. This is the gist of his doctrine repeated 
 over and over. The father and son motive was to 
 form the backbone of Weir of Hermiston, where 
 it is heavy and tragic in significance; it was to be 
 lightly presented in The Wrecker, very dully in 
 "The Misadventures of John Nicholson,'* and very 
 trivially in "The Story of a Lie." But all these 
 cases, and several others, reflect something of Ste- 
 venson's own attitude. 
 
 His relationship with his father is a central fact 
 in his career, and to see Stevenson clearly we must 
 see the rather vague, wildish youth and the serious, 
 definite man together in contrast. "Imagine," says 
 Stevenson somewhere, "a young man who shall have 
 grown up in an old and rigid circle, following by- 
 gone fashions and taught to distrust his own fresh 
 instincts." Against the solid dark-browed figure of 
 Thomas Stevenson, with the dignity of his position, 
 his inheritance and personal accomplishment, Louis 
 appears all through his school and college days a 
 good deal of the flibbertigibbet, a fascinating young 
 witch of a boy, a wild and truant stripling full of 
 ingenious practical jokes, and again a strange, awk- 
 ward, yet tunefully voiced and gently mannered, 
 poet, who flashes up into fiery seriousness about reli- 
 gion or socialism, and who always vibrates with an 
 impermanent nervous energy. 'But this energy, 
 
THE FAMILY PROFESSION 47 
 
 which expressed him then, was to grow later into 
 a strong intellectual force. This is a thing the eyes 
 of few parents can foresee, especially if they wish 
 to educate the safe side of their child's character. 
 Or, it may be, that realizing instinctively the im- 
 portance of the other side, they believe that will 
 strengthen itself all the more soundly for a little 
 opposition. Stevenson spent his youth — and what 
 boy of imagination has not? — under the darkening, 
 yet kindly, eye of his father's counsel. The stern- 
 ness of Thomas Stevenson's character corresponded 
 with the sternness of the family profession; and the 
 romantic element in Louis's view of it no doubt 
 seemed trivial to the older man. To his father he 
 often appeared, as he doubtless was, flippant and 
 prone to exaggerate his own conceit. Later on this 
 same flippancy is not quite outgrown, but it gets 
 a tang of genial truth and becomes Stevenson's 
 characteristic form of wit. To his father, as to 
 so many of the citizens of Edinburgh, he was full 
 of affectations and poses. Later on, as in the case 
 of so many men of genius, these things appear nor- 
 mal to his character, expressions of a personality 
 which strives to feel life as completely as possible, 
 which is a widely inclusive personality. To his 
 father and his teachers he appeared negligent of 
 nearly all his set tasks, and his confessed truancy 
 at college flaunted itself in the face of a dignified 
 faculty. Yet his idleness, as it turned out, was per- 
 haps the most serious matter in his education, and 
 the fact that his sincerity and earnestness lay, as 
 
48 STEVENSON 
 
 clearly as elsewhere, in those very things his elders 
 looked askance at, undoubtedly gave a touch of 
 paradox to his whole character. 
 
 He has made his apology in all these essays we 
 have mentioned, for no one preached more honestly 
 and humorously what he practised ; and in one essay 
 especially, "An Apology for Idlers," he goes to the 
 bottom of this matter. It is a retrospect through 
 life to the original problem of the schoolboy. 
 
 "Extreme busyness, whether at school or college, 
 kirk or market, is a symptom of deficient vitality; 
 and a faculty for idleness implies a catholic appetite 
 and a strong sense of personal identity. There is a 
 sort of dead-alive, hackneyed people about, who 
 are scarcely conscious of living except in the exer- 
 cise of some conventional occupation. Bring these 
 fellows into the country, or set them aboard ship, 
 and you will see how they pine for their desk or 
 their study. They have no curiosity; they cannot 
 give themselves over to random provocations; they 
 do not take pleasure in the exercise of their faculties 
 for its own sake; and unless Necessity lays about 
 them with a stick, they will even stand still. It is 
 no good speaking to such folk ; they cannot be idle, 
 their nature is not generous enough ; and they pass 
 those hours in a sort of coma which are not dedi- 
 cated to furious moiling in the gold-mill. When 
 they do not require to go to the office, when they are 
 not hungry and have no mind to drink, the whole 
 breathing world is a blank to them. If they have 
 
THE FAMILY PROFESSION 49 
 
 to wait an hour or so for a train, they fall 
 into a stupid trance with their eyes open. To 
 see them, you would suppose there was nothing 
 to look at and no one to speak with; you 
 would imagine they were paralyzed or alienated; 
 and yet very possibly they are hard workers in their 
 own way, and have good eyesight for a flaw in a 
 deed or a turn of the market. They have been to 
 school and college, but all the time they had their 
 eye on the medal ; they have gone about in the world 
 and mixed with clever people, but all the time they 
 were thinking of their own affairs. As if a man's 
 soul were not too small to begin with, they have 
 dwarfed and narrowed theirs by a life of all work 
 and no play ; until here they are forty, with a listless 
 attention, a mind vacant of all material of amuse- 
 ment, and not one thought to rub against another, 
 while they wait for the train. Before he was breeched 
 he might have clambered on the boxes ; when he was 
 twenty he would have stared at the girls; but now 
 the pipe is smoked out, the snuffbox is empty, and 
 my gentleman sits bolt upright upon a bench, with 
 lamentable eyes. This does not appeal to me as be- 
 ing Success in Life. 
 
 "But it is not only the person himself who suffers 
 from his busy habits, but his wife and children, his 
 friends and relations, and down to the very people 
 he sits with in a railway carriage or an omnibus. 
 Perpetual devotion to what a man calls his business 
 is only to be sustained by perpetual neglect of many 
 other things. And it is not by any means certain 
 
50 STEVENSON 
 
 that a man's business is the most important thing he 
 has to do." — "An Apology for Idlers," Virginibus 
 Puerisque. 
 
 At the time this was written there was a good deal 
 more here which was paradoxical and daring than 
 is now apparent. We have come to see that, though 
 Stevenson's point of view is perhaps a trifle too pic- 
 turesque, it is none the less sound; and though I 
 have heard it seriously argued that this essay is 
 flippant and artificial and unsafe to be put into the 
 hands of young men, as undermining persistence 
 and fortifying impulse, it is a defense of that real 
 side of life so often obscured by the ambitions of 
 Vanity Fair. Stevenson is talking about the ulti- 
 mate things, the things which romantic youth sees 
 and moneyed age loses sight of. If he must needs 
 accompany his doctrine with a little flourish of 
 bravery, which was a part of his character and a 
 part of his gift of youth, it does not invalidate his 
 doctrine; and if one really knows Stevenson this 
 manner is never flippancy, but only another proof 
 of his sincerity. 
 
 IV 
 
 In this connection — for it will help us to under- 
 stand him better here — it is interesting to look at 
 the youth as he appeared during his school and col- 
 lege days. In the pages of Mr. Baildon's study of 
 Stevenson is a glimpse at this time which ought to 
 
THE FAMILY PROFESSION 51 
 
 be especially remarked, for it is of the Stevenson 
 who most closely corresponds to the genius of these 
 essays. 
 
 "Stevenson calls himself 'ugly' in his student days, 
 but I think that is a term that never at any time 
 fitted him. Certainly to him as a boy about four- 
 teen (with the creed which he propounded to me, 
 that at sixteen one was a man) it would not apply. 
 In body Stevenson was assuredly badly set up. His 
 limbs were long and lean and spidery, and his chest 
 flat, so as almost to suggest some malnutrition, such 
 sharp angles and corners did his joints make under 
 his clothes. But in face this was belied. His brow 
 was oval and full, over soft brown eyes, that seemed 
 already to have drunk the sunlight under Southern 
 vines. The whole face had a tendency to an oval 
 Madonna-like type. But about the mouth and in 
 the mirthful, mocking light of the eyes there lin- 
 gered ever a ready Autolycus roguery, that rather 
 suggested the sly Hermes masquerading as a mortal. 
 Yet the eyes were always genial, however gaily the 
 lights danced in them; but about the mouth there 
 was something tricksy and mocking, as of a spirit 
 that already peeped behind the scenes of Life's pag- 
 eant and more than guessed its unrealities." 
 
 He had little grace of body. He was unspeakably 
 thin, flat-chested, with no promise of filling out as 
 he matured. His body and his hands expressed 
 nothing so much as weakness and limpness, and he 
 
52 STEVENSON 
 
 carried himself in a way to accentuate this impres- 
 sion. But his face was not of the same aspect. 
 There was a liveliness about his mouth and eyes 
 and a geniality that centered the attention there. 
 His voice, vibrating, always enthusiastic, spoke of 
 an energy of mind that made up for the feebleness 
 of his body. When his friend, Mrs. Jenkin, first 
 saw him she described "a slender, brown, long- 
 haired lad, with great dark eyes, a brilliant smile, 
 and a gentle deprecating bend of the head." He 
 was then eighteen. 
 
 From all accounts Stevenson at once impressed 
 his acquaintances, not as a man who was working 
 to be his father's son, but as an artist, the cousin 
 of Bob Stevenson, the painter and Bohemian, and 
 as a poet, a vagabond, anything, in short, except a 
 young man growing up to live behind a desk. From 
 the accounts of Henley, whom he soon met in an 
 Edinburgh hospital; of Sidney Colvin, whom he 
 met in the summer vacation of 1873 at his cousin's 
 house in Suffolk; of Edmund Gosse, who was pre- 
 sented to him at the Saville Club in London, and 
 from many other sources, one gets much the same 
 impression — delicacy and wildness combined, a weak 
 body dignified through power of fascinating by 
 unique and lively energy. This is the infinitely vari- 
 able, fluent youth whom his father wished to mold 
 in a certain definite fashion. It was not - to be. 
 Such force as Stevenson possessed contains the 
 germs of spontaneous combustion. Life for him 
 was a pageant of adventure, a series of social ex- 
 
THE FAMILY PROFESSION 53 
 
 periments, a game to be played as well as possible, 
 and a thousand other things, alike in being anything 
 except a routine. 
 
 To this point of view about life Stevenson was 
 further inclined by his health; and here lies one of 
 the secret explanations of his character. Bad health 
 is usually deadening, invalidism usually reduces peo- 
 ple to a humdrum regime and timorous selfishness. 
 Or, in the case of a boy ambitious for a fine body, 
 it often proves a steadying agency that conduces to 
 a regular and effective life which in the end con- 
 quers disease. Again, it is often simply upsetting, 
 producing rashness and whimsical irregular habits, 
 accompanied by a silly optimism or by a fitful mor- 
 bidity. It does not often have the effect which it 
 had on Stevenson. His uncertain health, making 
 necessary many weeks indoors in the midst of school, 
 as well as a series of irregular vacations in the open 
 air, had undoubtedly increased his innate love of 
 vagabondage. But this was a positive, a creative 
 thing, not just an incapacity for steady work. Then, 
 though it is also true that Stevenson was rash and 
 whimsical, not liking to take care of himself ex- 
 cept in extremity, and that he exposed himself to 
 danger, now foolishly and now heroically, all his 
 life, yet this was not often the result of mere moodi- 
 ness, or of a vain desire to live like other people 
 unconcerned for their health ; it sprang rather from 
 the sane fear which creative genius has of systemati- 
 cally enslaving or checking the spirit. 
 
 The nature of youthful artistic genius drives it 
 
54 STEVENSON 
 
 forth from any routine or restraints which it has not 
 itself established, because it wishes to use all its 
 motives, powers, experiences, to dismiss nothing, 
 to make everything count. Only thus, apparently, 
 can it discover what is wasteful and what is useful. 
 For things which are seemingly, and by all the ac- 
 counts of an older generation, extravagant, are dis- 
 covered to be the indispensables ; and what had been 
 indispensable is now found to be worn hollow. Ste- 
 venson, reacting against the restraint which his 
 health, his parents, and his professional training 
 were imposing on him, became, while he was begin- 
 ning to taste life, rather indulgent and fantastic — 
 especially as viewed against the solidly successful 
 figure of his father. He was the hero of exploits 
 in Jink and Libbelism, to be read of in his own 
 words in Mr. Balfour's Life. He wore a black 
 shirt for the sake of distinction and difference; he 
 talked atheism at the Speculative Society ; and stood 
 in another dangerously secret and less dignified or- 
 ganization, the L. J. R., for the abolition of the 
 House of Lords and like "treasons." He records 
 in Virginibus Puerisque that he was a red-hot 
 socialist and does not regret it. Indeed he counsels 
 us to regret none of our youthful vagaries, which 
 are, perhaps, the beginning of liveness instead of 
 deadness in us. We should reach sanity and matur- 
 ity the richer for discarded opinions. Youth must 
 have speculative wisdom in addition to knowledge, 
 and that is to be got only by coming down through 
 hard experience from pinnacles of dreamy ambi- 
 
THE FAMILY PROFESSION 55 
 
 tion to real life; it is not to be had from real life 
 alone; one must have looked down on that and up 
 toward heaven. "To know what you like is the be- 
 ginning of wisdom and of old age. Youth is wholly 
 experimental' ' — a remark in which you have the 
 cast of his mind at this time, as well as his criticism 
 of it, a remark made in the spirit of genial banter 
 and wise levity which is his rare quality. Stevenson 
 was one of those men who do not grow old and 
 whose wisdom itself remains youthful and experi- 
 mental, maintaining as consistently the recurrent 
 point of view of youth as does Doctor Johnson's 
 wisdom maintain the established, and sometimes 
 stale, verdict of age. With Johnsonian elegance, 
 Stevenson has said, "All sorts of allowances are 
 made for the illusions of youth, and none, or almost 
 none, for the disenchantments of age." Was Samuel 
 Johnson ever wiser than that? 
 
 The beginnings of the logical power which pro- 
 duced the essays of Virginibus Puerisque may very 
 well have been, however, rather disconcerting. To 
 a father they may have all looked a little like re- 
 bellion. 
 
 It is safe to say that the breach, afterward so 
 completely healed, which yet during part of Steven- 
 son's college days, kept father and son apart, came 
 chiefly from Thomas Stevenson's failure to appre- 
 ciate Louis's real seriousness. He saw in the epi- 
 sodes of Libbelism and Jink only the player of 
 pranks, in the truant only the truant, in the consti- 
 tution of the L. J. R., which he happened to discover 
 
56 STEVENSON 
 
 one day, only a dangerous irreligious tendency. He 
 failed to see what the boy's imaginative play, so long 
 continued, had become. To him it looked like seri- 
 ous folly — that part of it which was not, at best, 
 "playing at home with paper like a child." He did 
 not then understand the spirit of his son's protest : 
 
 "Say not of me that weakly I declined 
 The labours of my sires, and fled the sea, 
 The towers we founded and the lamps we lit, 
 To play at home with paper like a child." 
 
 But playing at home with paper was a great part 
 of Stevenson's purpose in life.' In his essay on "A 
 College Magazine," he tells us that all through boy- 
 hood and youth he was known and pointed out for 
 the pattern of an idler; yet he was always busy on 
 his own private end, which was learning to write. 
 And to this end was his experience and experiment 
 to count, not consciously all of it, but, as genius 
 manages the thing, instinctively. What Stevenson 
 refers to in this essay is his end of mastering the 
 technique of the craft, and this was a thoroughly 
 conscious end. To begin with, countless exercises, 
 "monkey tricks" he calls them, in imitation of the 
 poets and essayists, attempts at dramatic dialogues, 
 "gouty-footed lyrics," essays "in the style of the 
 Book of Snobs," "abortive novels" and other "ven- 
 triloquial efforts" were the earnest amusement of 
 
THE FAMILY PROFESSION 57 
 
 his idleness. Later on, when he began to originate 
 ideas of his own important enough to absorb his 
 whole attention, this method was of course aban- 
 doned; and he continued to learn his craft, to the 
 end of his life, as every artist learns it, originally, 
 in terms of his own feelings and experience. In 
 view, however, of Stevenson's facility, without 
 which he could not have hoped, in his variable 
 health, to have produced many of his books, we 
 must take seriously what he says here of this method 
 of the "sedulous ape." As a method for the begin- 
 ner, it has been brilliantly condemned by various 
 authorities. Mr. John Jay Chapman, in an essay 
 which I recommend to the reader, finds in it the 
 source of all the faults of Stevenson's literary art. 1 
 How far I believe this judgment to be true will be 
 more apparent from a following chapter. 2 But it 
 should be said here that obviously Stevenson's 
 method is not the way to learn to write, if by writ- 
 ing we mean the whole of literary art. It is the 
 way Stevenson learned technique, and Stevenson 
 was a mannered and naturally eccentric person who, 
 at this early period before he saw his own ideas 
 growing steadily under his eye, enjoyed playing 
 with tones, much as the young painter enjoys certain 
 combinations of color in the pictures he copies. These 
 practise exercises may have given him a conception 
 of style as something separate from his perception 
 of the subject, which is, I believe, a confusing no- 
 
 1 Emerson and Other Essays: "Robert Louis Stevenson.' 
 
 2 See especially pp. 87-91 and pp. 95-101. 
 
58 STEVENSON 
 
 tion. They may have increased the itch for compo- 
 sition without increasing the fund of materials to 
 compose. But can any one say that they have dulled 
 the distinction which he would otherwise have at- 
 tained as a writer? Is there anything in Steven- 
 son's character as we know it which shows that for 
 him this youthful method was an injurious affecta- 
 tion? On the contrary, it was merely part of his 
 normal enthusiasm, his temperament, for literature. 
 It is, in the connection in which we speak of it 
 here, proof of the seriousness and persistence of 
 his resolve to be a writer at last, after engineering 
 and law were done with. And especially it is a proof 
 of his conviction of original power. For no effort 
 which does not spring from a sense of original 
 power, which depends on the imitative spirit, could 
 have persisted, as did Stevenson's, in the face of ill- 
 ness and discouragement. 
 
 To one following the evolution of his character, 
 this method of his, which was also the method, 
 you will recall, of men as different in tem- 
 per as Benjamin Franklin and John Keats, seems 
 a normal and effective way of learning to write. 
 It supplies the youth, whose experience does 
 not yet sufficiently correspond to his fancy, with 
 materials and forms that may both stimulate and 
 satisfy him. To write entirely out of his own lim- 
 ited experience demands a form and a simplicity 
 which is beyond his power; to write entirely out of 
 his fancies and dreams demands an experience in 
 life which he has not yet had. This is not a para- 
 
THE FAMILY PROFESSION 59 
 
 dox. It is the observation of every teacher of 
 writing. Reading the great men and writing in the 
 light of their methods was, for Stevenson, a bring- 
 ing of the two parts of his nature, his experience 
 and his fancy, into closer relationship. And it may 
 safely be asserted that only an imaginative and orig- 
 inal youth will see the essential quality of style in 
 the great ones in such a way that it will occur to him 
 to imitate them. Wq should remember also that 
 it is a part of the egotism, rather than the humility 
 of authors, that they delight to explain the origins 
 of their craftsmanship, and, in the attribution of 
 their final skill to practical, uninspired, laborious 
 methods, we should not mistake them. Anthony 
 Trollope was prouder of his ability to stick at his 
 desk and write so many words an hour by the clock 
 than to conceive and complete the plot of his whole 
 novel. Shelley juggled long with the words of his 
 "Skylark" before they at all corresponded to those 
 profuse strains of unpremeditated art. Poe has dis- 
 sected his poem, "The Raven," in a way to rob it, 
 for the literal minded, of its last atom of inspira- 
 tion. And I presume if it were known that Mr. 
 Robert Herrick wrote The Common Lot in univer- 
 sity examination books, a chapter to a book, it 
 would convince some persons of my profession that 
 that novel smacks of the blue pencil. Method is, 
 after all, not the interesting thing about art. Any 
 one who has seen the blowers of Venetian glass 
 knows that both the simplest and finest-spun fan- 
 tasies can be created with an old iron tube and pair 
 
60 STEVENSON 
 
 of tongs. It is part of Stevenson's genial egotism 
 that he explained a good deal about his apprentice- 
 ship, and about how he came to write this and that 
 — how he began Treasure Island by drawing a map 
 of it, and how he conjured up the idea of The Mas- 
 ter of Ballantrae from having once thought of the 
 title years before during a night spent in the village 
 of Ballantrae. Such testimony as to his means 
 hardly invalidates his results. 
 
 Stevenson entered on his career — so vague to 
 others, so promising to himself — in the face of oppo- 
 sition. He appears never to have regretted his 
 choice, nor the opposition. Seventeen years later, 
 just after his father had died, and Stevenson, hav- 
 ing come to America, was feeling the full tide of 
 fame, he wrote for Scribner's Magazine a "Letter to 
 a Young Gentleman Who Proposes to Embrace the 
 Career of Art." This young gentleman is Stevenson 
 himself seventeen years back, still in the experi- 
 mental stage, knowing as yet not just what he seeks, 
 thinking it perhaps to be beauty or pleasure, when it 
 is actually but "to verify his own existence and taste 
 the variety of human fate." With wisdom born of 
 trials such as few men undergo, yet with the fullest 
 youthful sympathy, Stevenson advises the young 
 man who once he was. Had he a right to embrace 
 the career of art? Was the appeal merely that of 
 escape from the cut-and-dried professions, and did 
 it correspond chiefly to an impatience with the hon- 
 est trades? If so, it should not have been re'garded. 
 It was a temptation, not a vocation. He tells the 
 
THE FAMILY PROFESSION 61 
 
 young man that when his father so fiercely and so 
 properly discouraged his ambition, he was probably 
 recalling a similar temptation in his own experience. 
 "For the temptation is perhaps nearly as common 
 as the vocation is rare." But was this the case with 
 that young man? Was he not able from the first 
 to pursue his own ends with conviction, and without 
 success, without ever asking himself that discour- 
 aging and fatal question, Is it worth doing? Did 
 he not recognize in himself a decisive taste which 
 only sharpened with habit and practise? These are 
 the tests of the choice. And after seventeen years 
 the proof of the career is not money and applause, 
 says the elder R. L. S., though he had at last re- 
 ceived his share; it is the pleasure of laboring in a 
 craft to which the whole matter of one's life con- 
 tributes, and which opens a way to his tastes, his 
 loves, his hatreds, and his convictions. 
 
 His father's character had been expressed in 
 granite. Stevenson's was to have another perma- 
 nence, an cere perennius in another medium. And 
 his father lived long enough to recognize that his 
 son was also a master of craftsmanship. 
 
CHAPTER IV 
 
 ORDERED SOUTH 
 
 THE plan for Stevenson's career, on graduating 
 from the university in 1871, was that he should 
 study law in order to safeguard the future, and that 
 he should, at the same time, pursue his literary ad- 
 ventures and training. Though neither part of this 
 scheme then seemed to interfere gravely with the 
 other, there can be little doubt that it imposed a 
 nervous strain which precipitated the breakdown of 
 his health in 1873. 
 
 The two previous years had been full of what was 
 for him exciting experience. He had discovered 
 Herbert Spencer and Walt Whitman, and had made 
 a determination, seriously disturbing in such a fam- 
 ily as Thomas Stevenson's, to become a free-thinker 
 in religious and ethical matters. His resulting quar- 
 rels with his parents led him more than ever to 
 cultivate certain friends who were, in those days, 
 both solacing and over-stimulating. "It is the merit 
 and preservation of friendship that it takes place 
 on a level higher than the actual characters of the 
 parties would seem to warrant," says Stevenson, 
 quoting Thoreau. His friendships with his cousin, 
 
 62 
 
ORDERED SOUTH 63 
 
 "Talking Bob" Stevenson, and with Charles Baxter, 
 whom he regarded as the most brilliant conversa- 
 tionalist he ever knew, were a constant exhilaration. 
 Charles Baxter's long and invaluable sympathy 
 is expressed by the fact that at the time of Ste- 
 venson's death he was on his way to Samoa for 
 a visit. Then there was James Ferrier, and Sir 
 Walter Simpson, with the latter of whom he made 
 the Inland Voyage and many other expeditions; 
 and especially there were Colvin and Mrs. Sitwell, 
 who did more than any other people in bringing him 
 out of his mood of despair and in reestablishing him 
 with his parents. These friendships, which re- 
 mained always an absorbing interest with Steven- 
 son, for no man ever kept his friends more inti- 
 mately in spite of isolating disease and of absence, 
 encouraged him to constant literary experiment. He 
 wished to prove himself. Their good-natured ban- 
 ter over his egotism and wildly imaginative talk, 
 their sympathy, their admiration, were all of a mix- 
 ture, I imagine, to drive such a youth beyond the 
 wise limits of effort. 
 
 His earliest productions reflect a state of mental 
 tension, of over-anxiety to write something, any- 
 thing. They are not works of his genius. They 
 are random productions of a state of bad health, 
 when he was possessed by, rather than himself pos- 
 sessing, an ambition to fulfil what he felt to be his 
 promise ; they are tours de force, not productions of 
 the natural overflow and outflow of his mind. Dur- 
 ing these two years he wrote much that was never 
 
64 STEVENSON 
 
 to see the light, but also several articles, such as the 
 essay on "Roads," the travel scenes in The Lakes, 
 Buckinghamshire, Galloway, which were printed 
 later. Of the essay on "Roads" he wrote to his 
 mother that he felt he had there said well several 
 things which are very difficult to say at all. This 
 essay he had just sent to The Portfolio, when he 
 learned in London, in October, 1873, how serious 
 the condition of his health had become. 
 
 During these two years he had nominally been 
 reading law in a firm of writers to the signet in 
 Edinburgh. He had passed the preliminary exam- 
 inations for the Scottish bar in November, 1872. 
 The previous summer vacation he had spent with 
 Sir Walter Simpson in Frankfurt and the Black 
 Forest. This was the first time he had crossed the 
 Channel since his thirteenth year. His parents 
 joined him at the end of August. They appear to 
 have been very critical as to the way he was em- 
 ploying his leisure; and the return to Edinburgh 
 brought fresh complications with his father. In 
 February his father unfortunately found the draft 
 of the constitution of the L. J. R., which, as I have 
 said, was some sort of rather scandalous compact 
 between Stevenson, Baxter and other Edinburgh 
 youths. The nature of it has never been divulged ; 
 but the document convinced the elder man of the 
 truth of his suspicions regarding what he thought 
 to be his son's perverted tendencies, and there was 
 a terrible scene. 
 
 After this for some time, indeed till Stevenson's 
 
ORDERED SOUTH 65 
 
 return from Mentone, things did not greatly im- 
 prove. He grew nervously sick; and the month of 
 August, spent at his cousin's, Mrs. Babington's, in 
 Suffolk, while bringing him the new friendships 
 with Mrs. Sitwell and Sidney Colvin, who were 
 also Mrs. Babington's guests, was too exciting to 
 have been a rest-cure. To Mrs. Sitwell he addressed 
 for several years his most intimate confidences about 
 his ambitions and about his troubles. She was that 
 very important and never soon forgotten person in 
 the history of youth, the first complete confidante. 
 With her encouragement and counsel, and under 
 the criticism of her strong personality, he threshed 
 his ideas. From his letters, full of confession, full of 
 egotism, it is easy to see that she was for him the 
 friend whom every man must have at that age, and 
 should have all his life, the woman by the light of 
 whose nature he sees through the confusion of his 
 own thoughts and morals. Later in life she is the 
 bright memory of those days when fate was not 
 yet darkened by the shadow of exile. His last let- 
 ter, written to her a few months before his death 
 in Samoa, is the pitiful tribute to this relationship. 
 Sidney Colvin, then a young man of twenty-eight, 
 just appoined Professor of Art at Cambridge, a 
 colleague of Professor Babington, became Steven- 
 son's most trusted friend, and finally his literary 
 executor. It is interesting to note that Colvin 
 (afterward Sir Sidney) married Mrs. Sitwell in 
 1903, after Stevenson's death. This summer house- 
 party seems to have been full of satisfactions and 
 
66 STEVENSON 
 
 enthusiasms. Stevenson made the impression of a 
 charmingly eccentric youth, with those immature 
 extravagances that are part of the economy of fu- 
 ture resourcefulness. 
 
 Stevenson had returned to Swanston Cottage, 
 his father's country house near Edinburgh, at the 
 end of August and had shortly fallen ill. To aggra- 
 vate his nervous condition on recovery, the theo- 
 logical arguments with his father once more dis- 
 rupted the household. He writes to Baxter that he 
 has broken his parents' hearts, but does not believe 
 in lying in such matters, even to preserve peace. 
 Largely, therefore, to avoid the constant irritation 
 at home, and also because he was anxious to be at 
 the literary center, he determined to read law in 
 London. There was, perhaps, the ultimate pros- 
 pect of being called to the English bar instead of 
 the Scottish. On arriving in London, in October, 
 1873, his condition was seen by his friends to be 
 alarming. The physician consulted, Doctor Andrew 
 Clark, discovered a threatening of tuberculosis and 
 a state of nervous exhaustion grave enough to war- 
 rant ordering Stevenson to spend the winter on the 
 Riviera. His mother came from Edinburgh to see 
 him off, and he reached Mentone by way of Avi- 
 gnon on November twelfth. 
 
 II 
 
 Stevenson's essay, "Ordered South," is the truth- 
 ful description of the mood through which he passed 
 
ORDERED SOUTH 67 
 
 during this shock and crisis in his life. The theme 
 of cheerful courage which forms the background 
 of his argument, the optimist's challenge to fate and 
 the flourish of bravery with which he encourages 
 himself and the reader, and many of the best-loved 
 traits of his clear, courageous reasoning, are fully 
 exemplified here. They presuppose, however, moods 
 of worry, confusion, even of despair; and the indi- 
 cations of this are in his letters home. For nobody, 
 I venture to say, comes to the expression of such 
 reasoning about life as there is in "Ordered South'* 
 without having reasoned futilely or without having 
 lived in the dark of his own mind, even preferring, 
 for a while, to live there. 
 
 On his journey Stevenson began to revive at 
 Avignon, where the color of the South drew his 
 vision outward. To leave London and Paris in their 
 gray November fog for the sharp brilliance, the 
 yellow and white lights and the black shadows of 
 the Provencal city, is to turn from the subjective 
 to the objective. Stevenson at first felt, as he wrote 
 to Mrs. Sitwell, that he had left his soul behind, 
 that he could not enjoy and yet was not unhappy. 
 At Mentone he was "placid and inert." In the essay 
 he describes the change from negative to positive 
 moods. He tells how the invalid learns to recog- 
 nize his moods and seeks to encourage the most 
 valuable ; how one must therefore compromise some- 
 what with the most prudent advice in order to let 
 the soul expand and to enjoy life sufficiently to keep 
 a reasonably fresh view of it. 
 
68 STEVENSON 
 
 As a thorough romanticist Stevenson distrusted 
 all his life what he calls "cowardly and prudential 
 proverbs." The duty of acting naturally in the face 
 of catastrophe, of noting that the sky is blue and 
 that one still has an appetite for roast beef, this is 
 the invalid's heroism, and may well be any man's. 
 It is living rather than life that counts. On many 
 a page of future essays and stories, Stevenson was 
 to preach this doctrine, a very old one, but never 
 newer than in his mouth and as the expression of 
 his character. The great duty of man in the midst 
 of uncertainty is normal cheerfulness. This is the 
 text of "Aes Triplex," of the fable of "The Sink- 
 ing Ship," of "A Christmas Sermon," of "Pan's 
 Pipes," of "Pulvis et Umbra." It is the unobtru- 
 sive theme of all his essays of travel, "The Ama- 
 teur Emigrant," "Across the Plains," "The Silver- 
 ado Squatters," "In the South Seas," which make 
 together the epical record of a Cheerful Traveler. 
 It lends the chief grace to many of his stories, espe- 
 cially "Providence and the Guitar," and "The Treas- 
 ure of Franchard." 
 
 The theme of these chapters of philosophy and 
 experience is the theme of Stevenson's own recur- 
 rent problem — how to live superior to the inevitable 
 instability of his own fortunes, how to live, not 
 with daring complacency, but with earnestness, on 
 the thin crust of the world and even on the rim 
 of the crater. Feeling always the precariousness 
 of his lot, and at the same time having so keen a 
 
ORDERED SOUTH 69 
 
 sense for the realities and enjoyments of existence, 
 Stevenson grew to see the values of life calmly and 
 sharply. He learned to look on the one hand into 
 an abyss without fear, and on the other toward the 
 solid ground without regret. Always he is asking 
 us, from his vantage point, for our definition of 
 life, and begging us to make it bravely, to touch 
 it with poetry and humor, to defend it from pathos 
 and sentimentality. What is this thing in which 
 we are so bound up, with which we are so in love, 
 from which we tremble to part, and which the whole 
 effort of civilization strives to preserve? The wis- 
 dom of Job, or of Walt Whitman, all literature 
 and all philosophy, is but an attempt to answer the 
 question. But the only answer is the life of a man. 
 The only permanent answer is concrete. Abstractly, 
 life can be defined as a permanent possibility of 
 sensation. That is the result of abstract wisdom. 
 But for what sort of man has that answer ever had 
 a meaning? Who is in love with mere plant-like 
 existence? Now, life is, first of all and last of all, 
 living. This is the comprehensive and concrete ac- 
 count of it — myriad experience, not to be summed 
 up by any philosophical abstraction. For ever-de- 
 sirous and ever-curious man life is not to be reduced 
 to the aspect of "a permanent possibility." It al- 
 ways remains something more precious, more like 
 the divine gift with the breath of immortality in it. 
 "The noise of the mallet and chisel is scarcely 
 quenched, the trumpets are hardly done blowing, 
 
70 STEVENSON 
 
 when, trailing with him clouds of glory, this happy- 
 starred, full-blooded spirit shoots into the spiritual 
 land." Whom the gods love die young, for they 
 are those who can drink from the cup of experience 
 and not grow old. But, mark, they die. Hence, to 
 live eternally they must live here earnestly. If they 
 are part of some vast abstraction, it shall not over- 
 whelm them here. Here, at least, is their chance 
 for individuality. — ["Aes Triplex."] 
 
 With a sane and triumphant cheerfulness the 
 superior individuals of the world rise above its 
 mists of uncertainty and winds of chance. Take 
 what precautions science prescribes. Adopt all the 
 safeguards of civilization that give liberty. But 
 do not encumber your spirit with too much damp- 
 ing caution. For, after all, you have still to obey 
 the sardonic god Pan, even though you know that 
 the dinner table is as dangerous as a field of battle, 
 and that the marriage bed is but the ambuscade of 
 death.— ["Pan's Pipes."] 
 
 How you begin, not how you end, is the thing 
 that matters. It is not safety or Success, but Ro- 
 mance which makes for happiness. Success is the 
 abstract philosophy of life; Romance is the concrete 
 enjoyment of living. Success dries in the mouth; 
 Romance is the unquenchable thirst. What then is 
 life? How will you make your definition? 
 
 Look at the thing as broadly as you like, it will 
 always come to this : your conduct, your looks, your 
 very attitude hour by hour. Can you then succumb 
 
ORDERED SOUTH 71 
 
 to Weltschmerz because of a conviction of the im- 
 personality of nature of which we human beings 
 are but a base mechanical improvement in some 
 part? What if the universe is made of dust, and 
 we are a warming, a disease, of this agglutinated 
 dust? Does that relieve us of any part of our con- 
 duct ? Does not the desire for good, the Implacable 
 Hunter, still follow at our heels? By which will 
 you live — a guess, or your own experience? — ["Pul- 
 vis et Umbra."] 
 
 Obviously we are not intended to succeed. Dis- 
 appointment paves the way for another effort, for 
 further hope, which are the only satisfactions. A 
 Faithful Failure — that is the description of our 
 great man. — ["A Christmas Sermon."] 
 
 Success is sad. Desire and curiosity are the two 
 eyes through which to see the world in enchanted 
 colors.— ["El Dorado."] 
 
 Ill 
 
 This is the description, in these essays, of Steven- 
 son's characteristic thought about life from his 
 vantage point on the rim of the crater. It is a gay 
 philosophy, and every philosopher knows that it is 
 harder to be gay than grim. It boasts, but it is 
 never a mockery. It decks itself out with bravado 
 to challenge the crucial moment, but with a bravado 
 that is cheer, that covers zeal and not weakness. It is 
 a philosophy delicately strong, which your too zeal- 
 
72 STEVENSON 
 
 ous mortal can not lay hold of without crushing, 
 and which your fool always ruins with unintel- 
 ligent enthusiasm. It is always, let it be remem- 
 bered, the finely wrought expression of a man dis- 
 ciplined in the school which unconquerable egotism 
 keeps with unconquerable fate. It is Stevenson's 
 distinctive note; and it was first distinctly struck 
 in his letters from Mentone, and in his essay, "Or- 
 dered South," which is almost as personal as a letter, 
 and which was written with a touch of stylish bra- 
 very for his own encouragement and for the cheer 
 of others. 
 
 This essay, so full of his genial egotism, of his 
 sociability, of his common sense touched with hu- 
 mor, marks the brave beginning of the life he was 
 to face. For a few years, now, and the most impor- 
 tant period of his artistic development, it is true that 
 trouble was less ominous. The crust thickened a 
 little under his feet. But the reverberation was still 
 there. It is important to understand that Steven- 
 son was never a sentimental optimist. His optimism 
 always lay in the fact that he saw happiness take 
 on a certain gay color of bravery, even when the 
 worst evil was upon him. In the year before he 
 died he wrote to George Meredith, from Vailima 
 Plantation, an often-quoted letter presenting his 
 case against fate. He says that he has not had a 
 day's real health for fourteen years, and yet he has 
 kept on writing. 
 
 "For years after I came here the critics (those 
 
ORDERED SOUTH 73 
 
 genial gentlemen) used to deplore the relaxation of 
 my fibre and the idleness to which I had succumbed. 
 I hear less of this now; the next thing is they will 
 tell me I am writing myself out ! and that my uncon- 
 scientious conduct is bringing their grey hairs with 
 sorrow to the dust. I do not know — I mean I do 
 know one thing. For fourteen years I have not 
 had a day's real health; I have wakened sick and 
 gone to bed weary; and I have done my work un- 
 flinchingly. I have written in bed, and written out 
 of it, written in hemorrhages, written in sickness, 
 written torn by coughing, written when my head 
 swam for weakness ; and for so long it seems to me 
 I have won my wager and recovered my glove. I 
 am better now, have been rightfully speaking since 
 first I came to the Pacific ; and still few are the days 
 when I am not in some physical distress. And the 
 battle goes on — ill or well, is a trifle ; so as it goes. 
 I was made for a contest, and the Powers have so 
 willed that my battlefield should be this dingy, inglo- 
 rious one of the bed and the physic bottle. At least 
 I have not failed, but I would have preferred a 
 place of trumpetings and the open air over my 
 head." 
 
 These are the facts, not quite so fearsome, per- 
 haps, as they appear in this bald catalogue; but do 
 they not furnish more than an inkling of the char- 
 acter and energy of the man who could dominate 
 them by his imagination, who could with a gesture 
 relegate the cheerless part of them to a corner of 
 
74 STEVENSON 
 
 his life. This man was the child who made a play 
 out of the hours of sickness, who had grown up 
 from the land of make-believe and dreams into the 
 real world grim with trouble, carrying with him for 
 defense a store of that practical, romantic courage 
 which only the enduring fancy of youth provides. 
 Thus Stevenson's literary character, so distinctly 
 his personal character as well, will be seen to be the 
 result of the conflict between his ambition and his 
 health. It smacks always of the fortunes of this 
 war, of the reverses as well as of the successes, of 
 the attack and of the counter-attack, but always, 
 whether in good or ill fortune, of the gallantry with 
 which the war was conducted. "I will do nothing 
 I cannot do smiling !" This is not mere bravado. 
 
 "It is better to lose health like a spendthrift than 
 to waste it like a miser. It is better to live and be 
 done with it than to die daily in the sickroom. By 
 all means begin your folio: even if the doctor does 
 not give you a year, even if he hesitates about a 
 month, make one brave push and see what can be 
 accomplished in a week. It is not only in finished 
 undertakings that we ought to honour useful labour. 
 A spirit goes out of the man who means execution 
 which outlives the most untimely ending. All who 
 have meant good work with their whole hearts have 
 done good work, although they may die before they 
 have the time to sign it. Every heart that has beat 
 strong and cheerfully has left a hopeful impulse 
 behind it in the world, and bettered the tradition of 
 
ORDERED SOUTH 75 
 
 mankind. And even if death catch people, like an 
 open pitfall, and in mid-career, laying out vast pro- 
 jects and planning monstrous foundations, flushed 
 with hope, and their mouths full of boastful lan- 
 guage, they should be at once tripped up and si- 
 lenced : is there not something brave and spirited in 
 such a termination? and does not life go down with 
 a better grace, foaming in full body over a precipice, 
 than miserably straggling to an end in sandy deltas ? 
 When the Greeks made their fine saying that those 
 whom the gods love die young, I cannot help believ- 
 ing they had this sort of death also in their eye. 
 For surely, at whatever age it overtake the man, 
 this is to die young. Death has not been suffered to 
 take so much as an illusion from his heart. In the 
 hot-fit of life, a-tiptoe on the highest point of being, 
 he passes at a bound on to the other side. The noise 
 of the mallet and chisel is scarcely quenched, the 
 trumpets are hardly done blowing, when, trailing 
 with him clouds of glory, this happy-starred, full- 
 blooded spirit shoots into the spiritual land." — "Aes 
 Triplex/' Virginibus Puerisque. 
 
 Stevenson's winter in Mentone, with its record of 
 friendships, and the writing of "Ordered South," 
 shows us what the foundation of his character had 
 been and what the structure will be. As I have said, 
 the discovery of the threatened disease was, in his 
 condition of nervous exhaustion, a very great shock. 
 During the first morbid fear of dying he developed 
 a fantastic, yet easily accountable, anxiety over not 
 
76 STEVENSON 
 
 being able to repay the money his father was spend- 
 ing on him. Morbidity had been part of Steven- 
 son's problem for several years, and it was only by 
 a moral struggle, as I think can be seen from the 
 essay, that he conquered it. But once conquered it 
 did not easily return. Rarely again, though in the 
 face of a thousand difficulties, did his gay philoso- 
 phy desert him. Let me repeat here that the author 
 of "Ordered South" is the author, five years later, 
 of "Aes Triplex"; of the "Requiem" in 1884, after 
 a like period; of "Pulvis et Umbra" and "A Christ- 
 mas Sermon" in 1888; of the letter to George Mere- 
 dith from which I have quoted, written in 1893, a 
 year before his death. 
 
 IV 
 
 In November he had already learned from Doctor 
 Bennet, at Nice, that there was still no definite sign 
 of tuberculosis, and that with care he might entirely 
 avoid it. He spent a lazy winter, making little at- 
 tempt to write, except for an essay or two; and, 
 having perforce to forego all the more strenuous 
 pleasures of Mentone, such as the marvelous climbs 
 on the heights behind the town, he passed a great 
 deal of time at his hotel with some Russians and 
 Americans, about whose children he composed a 
 paper. Colvin made him two visits. In April it 
 was thought he could safely return to England. He 
 stopped in Paris to see his cousin Bob, who was be- 
 coming a painter, and who was from now on the 
 
ORDERED SOUTH 77 
 
 plausible attraction that brought Stevenson from 
 Edinburgh to France. He proceeded to Edinburgh 
 in May, 1874. But he was never again to remain 
 in Scotland over three months at a time. 
 
 His health, though now much improved, was never 
 good in Scotland. His letters for the next few years 
 make one realize the continual discomfort of his life 
 — sore throats, colds, rheumatism, gout — through 
 all of which he kept at his difficult task of writing. 
 Out of Scotland he seems always more vigorous and 
 in what his biographers speak of as "comparative 
 health and strength." Out of Scotland he was equal 
 to rather rough trips and to some exposure ; he was 
 able to exercise more freely, to sleep out under the 
 stars, and to follow the whims of his vagabond 
 nature. For on leaving Mentone it is to be observed 
 that his long wandering had begun, which never 
 ceased until his death and which yet seemed so little 
 to disturb the continuity of his life. It was a long 
 wandering after many things which no man can 
 follow without overwhelming disorder and fatuity, 
 if at all, unless his character is growing in a strenu- 
 ous and clear purpose. 
 
CHAPTER V 
 
 VAGABONDAGE AND CRAFTSMANSHIP 
 
 TO a young man the world seems always rather 
 elderly. His family and friends are, first and 
 last, prudential. Dull Respectability sits in office 
 chairs and stalks the street in long coats. Solid 
 Citizenship appears to be the one legitimate goal. 
 To dare greatly is not a virtue ; to fail to experiment 
 is not cowardice. And a slight incongruity between 
 a daily method of life and a declared purpose in life 
 indicates a flaw in one's make-up that bodes disaster. 
 No miracles are possible except those at a religious 
 revival. No allowance is made for the moral prob- 
 abilities and transformations of genius. The elderly 
 world takes little account of genius and insists first 
 on some respectable beginnings, some utterly safe 
 successes. The elderly world, judging by the cau- 
 tious rule and not by the hopeful exception, knows 
 that failure to settle down indicates that a young 
 man has no purpose. It always prefers fixity to 
 energy; in fact, unless energy radiates from an 
 established source it hardly recognizes it as energy 
 at all. To prudential family and friends, the failure 
 
 78 
 
VAGABOND AND CRAFTSMAN 79 
 
 to settle down is a clear sign that a young man's 
 pretentions to genius are the result of the untrained 
 enthusiasm of youth, not of a clear understanding 
 of the circumstances of life. It smacks of defiance 
 and further failure, not of success. 
 
 World, family, and friends are usually right ; and 
 in Stevenson's case, his behavior during these criti- 
 cal years, his refusal to find out what regular habits 
 would do for his health, must have been to all con- 
 cerned peculiarly discouraging. Even granting him 
 genius, there could have been little difficulty in show- 
 ing that, logically, his literary production would be 
 sounder if he came to it from some sort of profes- 
 sional point of view than from a boyish decision to 
 be a free lance and to live solely for experience. 
 Dickens, Thackeray, George Eliot, entered literature 
 through the gateway of paid journalism. Trollope's 
 opportunities as a post-office official furnished him 
 with his earliest materials, and, throughout his ca- 
 reer, with the necessary observation of life. Charles 
 Reade had been a lawyer. The polite essayists, 
 Lamb and Hazlitt, whose manners Stevenson some- 
 what copied, were respectively a business man and 
 a painter. Of his friends, Gosse was a librarian, 
 Henley was to be an editor, Meredith was a profes- 
 sional reader and reviewer, and Lang an Oxford 
 don. Of the other men who were growing up about 
 him, Hardy had been an architect, Hall Caine was 
 to be an architect, Kipling and Barrie were both 
 journalists. It is, in fact, difficult to think of many 
 exceptions to the rule that successful literary men 
 
80 STEVENSON 
 
 learn life and how to see life afresh from the van- 
 tage of an active business or profession, from a 
 position in life which is primarily practical rather 
 than primarily critical. The most significant men 
 of the present hour, Conrad, Wells, Bennett, Gals- 
 worthy, De Morgan, were all trained for literature, 
 not as Stevenson trained himself by going about 
 with "a book to read in and another book to write 
 in," while playing truant to a practical task; they 
 were trained by paying attention to practical tasks, 
 in seamanship, in biology, in journalism, in official 
 work, in archaeology. 
 
 Yet no such list of authors with a professional 
 background makes a valid argument for the ulti- 
 mate failure of the unattached writer. (What fail- 
 ure it does predict for him is chiefly temporary and 
 financial, and the prediction was thus far true for 
 Stevenson's case in that he did not for many years 
 earn from his pen a living wage.) It is to be espe- 
 cially noticed that such a list of writers who safe- 
 guard genius by a profession includes few poets. 
 Among the poets there would be a whole set of 
 names that bring to mind no profession, no prac- 
 tical beginnings, and rarely as much "schooling" 
 as Stevenson had received. Nearly all the poets of 
 note have begun as poets and have done little else 
 in the line of regular achievement but write poetry. 
 Now Stevenson's romantic way of life, his method 
 of observation and work, are essentially those of a 
 poet. It has been already noted that he has the 
 same sort of egotistical purposes, or raisons d'etre, 
 
VAGABOND AND CRAFTSMAN 81 
 
 as belong to the poetic temperament. It is hardly 
 to be believed that his production would have been 
 more vital and durable than it is for a longer appren- 
 ticeship in a definite profession. 
 
 II 
 
 To understand, from this point of view, Steven- 
 son's accomplishment, its relation to his character 
 and to his outward life, nothing is more important 
 than to visualize at once broadly and exactly his 
 energies during this period after he returned from 
 Mentone. His life from 1874 to 1880 presents 
 such a picture of random comings and goings, dwell- 
 ings here and there and nowhere, plans perfected 
 only to be abandoned, articles written only to be 
 torn up, that it requires some patience if not some 
 special knowledge of the psychology of romantic 
 genius to catch the drift of it all and to perceive 
 his essential consistency. 
 
 Sir Sidney Colvin, speaking of Stevenson's talk 
 at this period, calls him the "past-master of the 
 random." The phrase will apply as well, though 
 with a slightly different meaning, to his part in life 
 during his apprenticeship. If Stevenson was always 
 a wanderer and vagabond, he was also a master of 
 the art of random living. This is a sanctioning title 
 by which many an artist might seek to defend his 
 way of life, and it should imply a control of the 
 providential and changing details of a wanderer's 
 existence by a constant artistic purpose. In the 
 
82 STEVENSON 
 
 end Stevenson's purpose is apparent, his character 
 emerges from confusion and dominates. 
 
 Let it be understood that he was, during this 
 period, in possession of a sufficient, allowance — 
 seven pounds a month — to support the bare necessi- 
 ties of life where he would, and that in 1875, on be- 
 coming advocate at the Scottish bar he received 
 from his father an instalment of his patrimony, one 
 thousand pounds, which, however, lasted him and 
 his impecunious friends a very short time. Certainly 
 there was little or none of this sum left when he 
 started for California in 1879. From his writing 
 he made only a few pounds — Mr. Balfour says 
 never over fifty pounds — before 1878, his first great 
 year of production. It should also be borne in 
 mind that the necessities of his health, joining nat- 
 urally with his inclination, led him to cultivate 
 a roving disposition. His health during this period 
 probably hampered, no more than stimulated, his 
 literary activity; but unquestionably he was never 
 very well. The recovery at Mentone was only a 
 recovery from acute nervous breakdown, and when 
 Stevenson began his voyage to California he was 
 already suffering from serious weakness of the 
 lungs. 
 
 A mere itinerary of Stevenson's doings for the 
 six years following his return to Edinburgh, in May, 
 1874, is the fundamental comment on his character 
 and aims. Therefore let us observe it carefully. In 
 Edinburgh and Swanston during May and June, 
 1874, he was finishing his essay on Victor Hugo for 
 
VAGABOND AND CRAFTSMAN 83 
 
 Leslie Stephen, editor of The Comhill, and was ra- 
 ther fitfully at work on a study of Walt Whitman. 
 He finished the paper called "Movements of Young 
 Children" and a review of Lytton's Fables in Song. 
 Meanwhile Mentone had not cured his tendency to 
 sore throat, and he also found himself suffering 
 from that confusion in his head which he had com- 
 plained of and learned to tolerate during his conva- 
 lescence. He made a visit to Hampstead with Col- 
 vin ; and in August, much set up by a short yachting 
 trip with Sir Walter Simpson, he went with his 
 parents to North Wales. The article on Knox occu- 
 pied him now for some time, and incidentally he 
 printed a pamphlet called An Appeal to the Clergy 
 of the Church of Scotland. From a letter, it appears 
 that he was writing some of those short fables that 
 were published posthumously. In November he 
 walked through Buckinghamshire, and later made 
 a sketch of his experiences, "An Autumn Effect," 
 for The Portfolio. After visiting London he was 
 again, before the end of the month, in Edinburgh 
 and at work on a story, one of the many never 
 printed, "King Matthias's Hunting Horn," which 
 excited him "like wine, or fire, or death, or love 
 or something," because it seemed so "weird and fan- 
 tastic." "Nothing of my own writing," he says to 
 Mrs. Sitwell, "ever excited me so much." He forth- 
 with proceeds to write an Italian story, "When the 
 Devil was Well," and some dozen others, none ever 
 quite finished, but of which he makes a list that gives 
 him the idea of immediate publication in book form* 
 
84 STEVENSON 
 
 "A book with boards is a book with boards; even 
 if it bain't a very fat one." This plan for a book, 
 conceived in January 1875, seems to have evap- 
 orated in February. That month is notable for his 
 meeting Henley at the City Hospital. April saw 
 him in Barbizon with the ideas for "Forest Notes" 
 beginning to "bubble" in his mind. Before the end 
 of the month he is back in Edinburgh. His bar 
 examination was looming up, and though he wrote 
 an article on Burns for the Britannica (which turned 
 out to be not quite suitable), he devoted himself to 
 reading law, and he passed his examination credit- 
 ably on July fourteenth. 
 
 To this end he had been nominally at work for 
 four years. Yet he never made more than a per- 
 functory effort to practise, and the most obvious 
 result of the whole performance was to prove con- 
 clusively to his father that he would not become a 
 solid Edinburgh citizen in a solid profession of any 
 kind. Thomas Stevenson, in spite of his son's grow- 
 ing literary success, appears to have acquired no 
 new faith in his character. The way in which the 
 patrimony of one thousand pounds disappeared 
 could not have mended matters, and it was only 
 after R. L. S.'s marriage and return from Cali- 
 fornia that his father began to understand the force 
 of that soft and pliant nature which had grown up 
 under his eye. 
 
 Stevenson was at Barbizon and Loiret in August, 
 writing "Forest Notes"; and with his parents at 
 Wiesbaden and Homburg later in the summer. The 
 
VAGABOND AND CRAFTSMAN 85 
 
 winter of 1875-76 was spent with considerable dis- 
 comfort in Edinburgh, where he made a faint- 
 hearted attempt to practise law. In January he took 
 a short walking trip in Carrick and Galloway, de- 
 scribed in one of his essays. During the spring he 
 wrote the articles on "Beranger," "Walking Tours," 
 and "Charles d'Orleans." In August, after a tour in 
 the West Highlands, he and Sir Walter Simpson 
 canoed down the Oise, winding up at Barbizon and 
 Grez. The record of this expedition, An Inland 
 Voyage, which is Stevenson's first book, is by no 
 means the most important matter connected with it. 
 The voyage led to his meeting Mrs. Osbourne at 
 Grez and determined him in his resolution not to 
 settle down in Edinburgh. 
 
 For Stevenson the leisure and the romantic ex- 
 citement of this autumn was immediately fruitful. 
 Some of his unsurpassably best work followed — 
 the first part of Virginibus Puerisque, the essay on 
 Idlers, and the essay on Villon. Besides, he wrote 
 the farcical fragment called "The Hair Trunk." 
 The winter of 1876-77 saw him at work in Edin- 
 burgh on these things, together with what are per- 
 haps his two cleverest short stories, "The Sire de 
 Maletroit's Door" and "A Lodging for the Night." 
 No work of Stevenson shows so well the genius with 
 which he caught the kindred spirit of French ro- 
 mances. In a letter to Mrs. Sitwell from Penzance 
 in August he mentions "The Sire de Maletroit's 
 Door" and "Will o' the Mill" as being finished, and 
 an essay on "The Two Saint Michaels' Mounts" and 
 
86 STEVENSON 
 
 a story called "The Stepfather's Story" as being "in 
 the clouds." "You see," he adds, "how work bub- 
 bles in my mind." 
 
 Eighteen hundred seventy-eight was his great 
 year. He was extraordinarily restless and extraord- 
 inarily productive; and his friendship with Mrs. 
 Osbourne was his great inspiration. The list of this 
 year's essays, stories, plays, was enough to establish 
 a considerable fame. In The Cornhill appeared 
 "Will o' the Mill," "Crabbed Age and Youth," "Aes 
 Triplex," "English Admirals," "Child's Play"; in 
 London (which Henley edited), "A Plea for Gas 
 Lamps," "Pan's Pipes," "El Dorado," "Providence 
 and the Guitar" ; in The Temple Bar, "The Sire de 
 Maletroit's Door" ; in The New Quarterly, "Walt 
 Whitman" ; in The Portfolio, and also in book form, 
 Picturesque Notes on Edinburgh. Besides these was 
 the play Deacon Brodie, written with Henley, and his 
 first book, the Inland Voyage. The year was spent 
 chiefly in France ; and these things were composed in 
 Dieppe, Paris, Monastir (where he began his donkey 
 excursion), Barbizon and Grez. He also made visits 
 in London, Cambridge and Burford Bridge. During 
 the winter he was in Edinburgh writing Travels 
 with a Donkey. In August, 1879, he followed Mrs. 
 Osbourne to California. 
 
 These six years of continual wandering, with their 
 great variety of experience and literary effort, ma- 
 tured Stevenson in his craft. He had not, it is true, 
 written any of his few longer works. He was still 
 over-full of mere plans and beginnings; and indeed 
 
VAGABOND AND CRAFTSMAN 87 
 
 all his life he continued to begin with enthusiasm 
 and assurance ventures which never matured, which 
 were either literary pastimes to be dropped in a day 
 or two or which proved after much labor to lead 
 only toward a mechanical and arbitrary ending. 
 But by 1880 we may say that he had reached that 
 way of thinking, that style, which is typical of his 
 production as a whole. In the essays of Virginibus 
 Puerisque, in "Francois Villon/' in those master- 
 pieces of short story and fable like "Will o' the Mill" 
 and "Lodging for the Night/' you will find his most 
 representative traits. Also in such sketches as "For- 
 est Notes," Travels with a Donkey, you will find his 
 account of how he acquired these traits. 
 
 Ill 
 
 The fact that Stevenson began his career as a 
 writer with a great deal of sermonizing on the sub- 
 ject of craftsmanship is significant. It is in keeping 
 with his self -consciousness, with his desire to write 
 autobiography. It is part of his defense of his 
 way of life. It has also undoubtedly helped to cre- 
 ate the taste by which it is to be appreciated. Now 
 there is in Stevenson a good deal of writing for 
 writing's sake, a good deal of practise work, and 
 this his philosophy of art accounts for. Accord- 
 ing to his professions in "A College Magazine," that 
 essay where he lays down with emphasis his rules 
 for the acquiring of craftsmanship, he went about 
 
88 STEVENSON 
 
 with two books in his pocket, one to read in and one 
 to write in. As he walked or sat by the roadside 
 he was busy fitting what he saw with appropriate 
 words. He accompanied himself on his walks with 
 dramatic dialogues and often wrote down conversa- 
 tions from memory. Thus he "lived with words." 
 But this was not the most efficient part of his train- 
 ing, for it had one grave defect; it set no standard 
 of achievement. There was more profit, as well as 
 more effort, in certain exercises in imitation. When- 
 ever he read any book or passage particularly pleas- 
 ing he at once sat down "to ape that quality." In 
 Hazlitt, Lamb, Wordsworth, Sir Thomas Browne, 
 Defoe, Hawthorne, Montaigne, Baudelaire, Ober- 
 mann, Ruskin, Browning, Keats, Thackeray, Du- 
 mas, he found masters to whom he could play "the 
 sedulous ape," inspirers of his "monkey-tricks." 
 And though he calls them "monkey-tricks," "arts 
 of impersonation," and "purely ventriloquial ef- 
 forts," he concludes his confession of faith as fol- 
 lows : "That, like it or not, it is the way to learn to 
 write; whether I have profited or not, that is the 
 way. It was so Keats learned, and there was never 
 a finer temperament for literature than Keats's; it 
 was so, if we could trace it out, that all men have 
 learned." 
 
 To many people this has seemed an amazing and 
 unnatural doctrine. For it is doctrine ; and whether 
 you believe that Stevenson could really have per- 
 sisted long in so self-conscious a mood, or whether 
 you take his statement as illustrating only his gen- 
 
VAGABOND AND CRAFTSMAN 89 
 
 eral zeal of purpose, it still remains true that Ste- 
 venson, looking back over his apprenticeship years, 
 believed such habits and methods to be essential and 
 usual influences in the acquisition of craftsmanship. 
 But who, it is asked, besides Stevenson, ever car- 
 ried out this sort of thing literally and completely? 
 Perhaps not many people. But nearly all our great 
 poets have comprehended the originality of some- 
 body else so intimately that it was creative in their 
 own minds. Keats and Milton acknowledge Spen- 
 ser to be their master. Wordsworth is greatly in- 
 debted to Cowper. Byron learned much of his art 
 from Pope. This means, however, not that they 
 learned to think by studying models, but that they 
 learned how better to hear and visualize their 
 thoughts. The technique of poetry consists largely 
 in making thought sensational ; ' and just as the 
 painter trains his eye by copying pictures, by submit- 
 ting to the masters, so the poet acquires some power 
 of words by catching the glint and the true ring of 
 them. It can not be inferred that his own composi- 
 tions are echoes. The power to write as artists write 
 consists not only in thinking logically and simply, 
 but in feeling vividly while one writes. The second 
 part of this unified process, usually thought of as 
 the first, is not alone the fixing of thought in 
 language, but the transforming of sensation into 
 thought and the preservation of it still as sensation 
 in language. And it is in this matter that exercises 
 in imitation count, for they bring a writer to a more 
 thorough understanding of the sensational texture 
 
90 STEVENSON 
 
 of language than he can possibly arrive at inde- 
 pendently. 
 
 This kind of imitation, as Stevenson practised it, 
 is a form of curiosity. The artist wishes to get the 
 feel of the language, and he imitates a manner or 
 a tone, not for the sake of modeling his own thoughts 
 in the same way, but for the sake of satisfying his 
 curiosity as to what that peculiar manner and tone 
 consist in. A perfectly literal following of Steven- 
 son's famous advice would require the same sort 
 of persistence that Stevenson himself showed and 
 would almost certainly help a man to discover the 
 vein of his originality. Few men, however, have 
 sufficient character or curiosity to investigate their 
 capabilities in this way. As regards carrying about 
 a note-book to write in by the wayside, there are 
 doubtless few honest adherents to that extreme 
 doctrine; but I find pasted into my copy of Mem- 
 ories and Portraits the following instance, which I 
 believe is from a book of reminiscences by a well- 
 known journalist: 
 
 "Years ago, in old vacation swimming days, and 
 in a prosy little Western river, I used to swim across 
 to the diving log with a notebook and a pencil in my 
 teeth; these instruments were deposited on the log, 
 and up from every dive I came to scribble in the 
 notebook another wet-fingered phrase or two of 
 the underwater world, of how the sun looked like 
 a lamp in a dome, of how my swimming comrades 
 were turned golden, green, beautiful! for I was 
 
VAGABOND AND CRAFTSMAN 91 
 
 writing a poem on Hylas and the nymphs. So in 
 another year I was writing upon a theme whose sym- 
 bol and image was the wind blowing, and, of course, 
 a girl in the wind; I watched five seasons through, 
 watched and caught at and tried to express those 
 beautiful living images. I remember an undated 
 midwinter in Chicago — or was it New York? — 
 when at the corners of those deep city canons every 
 woman became, this instant and that, statuary beau- 
 tiful as the winged Victory. . . . If I may para- 
 phrase Stevenson, that, like it or not, is the way to 
 learn to tell the truth; whether I have profited or 
 not, that is the way. Live it out for yourself, and 
 all these things shall be added unto you, the rules 
 and the rules, as you grow in wise experience of 
 your own life." 
 
 This is interesting because it indicates the danger 
 in which Stevenson himself too often fell — the dan- 
 ger of painting instead of writing. When a young 
 realist, aged fifteen (?) must write his poem by 
 diving under the river to find an adjective, coming 
 up to record golden, diving for another and coming 
 up to record green, he is applying to literature pre- 
 cisely the methods of the more sensational art of 
 painting. He is indeed painting and not writing. 1 
 
 1 That the note-book realist does not have the poets on his 
 side may be seen from the following instance, cited in Knight's 
 edition of Wordsworth's poems : "Mr. Aubrey de Vere tells 
 of a conversation he had with Wordsworth, in which he ve- 
 hemently condemned the ultra-realistic poet, who goes to Na- 
 ture with 'pencil and note-book, and jots down whatever 
 strikes him most,' adding, 'Nature does not permit an inven- 
 
92 STEVENSON 
 
 In the next chapter there will be a good deal to 
 say about the influence of the painter's art on Ste- 
 venson's style, an influence not wholly beneficial. 
 But what Stevenson once wrote in a letter to his 
 young friend, Mr. Trevor Haddon, now a member 
 of the Royal Society of British Artists, about art 
 in general shows his broad understanding of theory 
 as well as his private enthusiasm for technique. 
 He heads his remarks, "Notes for the student 
 of any art:" "1. Keep an intelligent eye on all 
 the others. It is only by doing so that you come to 
 see what Art is : Art is the end common to them all ; 
 it is none of the points by which they differ 2. In 
 this age, beware of realism. 3. In your own art, 
 bow your head over technique. Think of technique 
 when you rise and when you go to bed. Forget 
 purposes in the meanwhile; get to love technical 
 processes, to glory in technical successes ; get to see 
 the world entirely through technical spectacles, to 
 see it entirely in terms of what you can do. Then 
 when you have anything to say, the language will 
 be apt and copious." 
 
 This idealistic doctrine leads us to perceive some- 
 
 tory to be made of her charms! He should have left his 
 pencil and note-book at home ; fixed his eye as he walked with 
 a reverent attention on all that surrounds him, and taken all 
 into a heart that could understand and enjoy. Afterwards he 
 would have discovered that while much of what he had ad- 
 mired was preserved to him, much was also most wisely ob- 
 literated. That which remained, the picture surviving in his 
 mind, would have presented the ideal and essential truth of 
 the scene, and done so in large part by discarding much which, 
 though in itself striking, was not characteristic. In every 
 scene, many of the most brilliant details are but accidental.' " 
 
VAGABOND AND CRAFTSMAN 93 
 
 thing of the incumbencies that are laid on the man 
 who recognizes in himself this aim. And it may 
 help us to account for the conscious effort he makes 
 to be sensitive to and to encompass a hundred pass- 
 ing impressions which we more practical beings, 
 bent only on choosing the practical and advanta- 
 geous, can neglect. In fact, to pay much attention to 
 those other impressions blinds us to the real issues 
 and, as we say, makes dreamers or idlers of us so 
 that we "get nowhere." 
 
 This is what world, family, and friends have said 
 of many an artist during his period of vagabondage, 
 his Wanderjahre, and it was of course said of Ste- 
 venson. He was known and pointed out, he tells 
 us, for the pattern of an idler. The modern world 
 does not recognize the rights of any but the success- 
 ful artist to demand periods of complete leisure and 
 liberty. So in the face of a busy world, and for that 
 world's good, the novice must often take what it 
 would seem to deny him — the right to look on just 
 for the sake of looking on, the right to experience 
 life just for the sake of the experience. He will not 
 often defend his productive idleness in advance of 
 his production; and the world has no way of dis- 
 tinguishing the seemingly idle artist from the ulti- 
 mately vain. The novice, knowing instinctively that 
 it is his task to feel the whole of life actually or in 
 imagination, and to feel it without confusion, finds 
 in his instinct the warrant for his way of life. To 
 him his idleness appears full and serious — an oppor- 
 tunity to note all the contingencies of his experi- 
 
94 STEVENSON 
 
 ence, out of which he must shortly produce a simple, 
 ordered, and vivid picture. 
 
 As we have already seen in "An Apology for 
 Idlers," which Stevenson wrote in 1877 while idling 
 somewhere between Barbizon and Edinburgh, he 
 understood how to defend the morale of his ap- 
 prenticeship. If it is after your fancy you will 
 find more of the same doctrine in "Pan's Pipes/' 
 "Forest Notes/' "Walking Tours," and many illus- 
 trations of it in Travels with a Donkey and the other 
 excursions of this period. "Providence and the 
 Guitar," is a story written in its special humor. 
 "Will o' the Mill" is its more serious reflection. 
 
 Stevenson's fundamental proposition is worth re- 
 curring to here : 
 
 "If the business of all men is to learn the art of 
 living, it is especially that of the artist. Sainte- 
 Beuve," says Stevenson, "came to regard all experi- 
 ence as a single great book, in which to study for a 
 few years ere we go hence ; and it seemed all one to 
 him whether you should read in Chapter XX, which 
 is the differential calculus, or in Chapter XXXIX, 
 which is hearing the band play in the gardens. As 
 a matter of fact, an intelligent person, looking out 
 of his eyes and harkening in his ears, with a smile 
 on his face all the time, will get more true education 
 than many another in a life of heroic vigils. There 
 is certainly some chill and arid knowledge to be 
 found upon the summits of formal and laborious 
 
VAGABOND AND CRAFTSMAN 95 
 
 science; but it is all round about you, and for the 
 trouble of looking, that you will acquire the warm 
 and palpitating facts of life." — "Apology for 
 Idlers," Virginibus Puerisque. 
 
 Idleness does not imply being lazy. The artist 
 makes of it the most important thing he has to do. 
 He can never be vacant, dull, negative. One day at 
 Mentone, while sitting on an olive-clad slope behind 
 the town, Stevenson had noticed how the flurries 
 of wind made "little silverings" over the sea of 
 branches as the undersides of the leaves caught the 
 light. He writes to Mrs. Sitwell that he tried for 
 long to hit on some language that would give ever 
 so faintly this impression, "but the Muse was not 
 favorable." It may seem as if this were a particu- 
 larly idle and trivial occupation and that he might 
 have better devoted himself to the Horace which 
 he had in his pocket. As a matter of fact, one hour 
 spent in trying to solve personally one of the prob- 
 lems of composition can often give more insight 
 into the Art of Poetry than many hours of reading 
 in Horace. The problem was in this case a very 
 difficult one. "Little silverings," as Stevenson rec- 
 ognized, is not the phrase to comprehend the im- 
 pression. "Hoary in the wind" some one else has 
 suggested; but that does not catch the shifting color 
 of the leaves. There are certain impressions of na- 
 ture among them the most beautiful, which have so 
 far escaped the faculties, the coordinations, of either 
 
96 STEVENSON 
 
 poet or painter ; and this particular sensation which 
 one marvels at wherever there are olive trees, is one 
 of them. At Mentone it is made of an intermingled 
 glimmering of sun and air and trees against the 
 "blue of the sea" as Stevenson's letter suggests. 
 But if Stevenson, like other sojourners on the 
 Riviera, failed to compose these elements so as to 
 satisfy the sensational memory, the attempt was 
 the kind of exercise that led toward art. It was the 
 sort of attempt which led him to be successful in 
 many similar instances; which enabled him to de- 
 scribe, for the benefit of his favorite scoundrel, 
 Villon, the snow falling in the streets of Paris: 
 "Flake after flake descended out of the black night 
 air, silent, circuitous, interminable . . . the 
 whole city was sheeted up." Look at the snow 
 falling on a still winter night and see if any other 
 elements will so readily compose the picture for you. 
 "Sheeted up" was a phrase he had hit on several 
 years before to describe snow-fields in Carrick. Take 
 another common sensation, the wind round your 
 house on a November night. What are your words 
 for it? It roars, sobs, sings, sighs, soughs, rattles, 
 and so on, for you. For Stevenson, writing casual 
 letters to his friends, it is a "flapping wind," it is 
 a* horseman riding past with his cloak about his 
 head, it is "the audible haunting of an incarnate 
 anger about the house"; it is a great west wind 
 "flapping above one like an immense banner, and 
 every now and then swooping furiously against my 
 windows." Have you ever thought of anything in 
 
VAGABOND AND CRAFTSMAN 97 
 
 connection with the wind as vivid as that — "flap- 
 ping above one like an immense banner" ? 
 
 Stevenson's writing is full of what we may call 
 sensations of place. While basking in the Mediter- 
 ranean sun at Mentone his thoughts traveled north- 
 ward, "and many a doleful vignette of the grim 
 wintry streets at home returns to him, and begins 
 to haunt his memory. The hopeless, huddled atti- 
 tude of tramps in doorways; the flinching gait of 
 barefoot children on the icy pavement ; the sheen of 
 the rainy streets toward afternoon; the meagre 
 anatomy of the poor defined by the clinging of wet 
 garments; the high canorous note of the North- 
 easter on days when the very houses seem to stiffen 
 with cold ; these, and such as these, crowd back upon 
 him, and mockingly substitute themselves for the 
 fanciful winter scenes with which he had pleased 
 himself awhile before." ("Ordered South," Vir- 
 ginibus Puerisque. ) That is Edinburgh, the north- 
 ern town, the picture of winter chill. I recall my 
 own first impression of that city, one September 
 evening, while I was standing at a windy corner of 
 High Street looking down on the town and far 
 across to the widening Forth. My guide-book under 
 my arm, or the friend at my elbow, had told me 
 that Edinburgh is the most picturesque city in 
 Europe. But at that moment I saw beyond the 
 possibility of any words which one ordinarily has 
 at his command; and that moment remained long 
 in memory, vivid, haunting, and quite inarticulate. 
 I made no effort to reduce it to words. I felt sim- 
 
98 STEVENSON 
 
 ply that I had seen Edinburgh, its history, its ro- 
 mance. Once at a concert, a piece of music by 
 Chopin revived the impression sharply; but it was 
 not till I came across a sentence of Stevenson's, 
 years later, that I knew, as we say, what I had 
 seen. It was "the gloom of high-lying, old stone 
 cities, imminent on the windy seaboard." For me 
 that was instantly the composition of my memory. 
 A writer does not do many such things for one so 
 simply and finally, without there being in his mind 
 the recurrent purpose of seeing and arranging the es- 
 sential elements in every phase of his surroundings. 
 It is thus a purpose by which the casual continually 
 becomes, or is constrained to be, of practical import. 
 In Stevenson's case, though his writing suffers from 
 a certain attendant self -consciousness and other ob- 
 vious dangers, this purpose is none the less the 
 source of his facility and his power. 
 
 Stevenson's letters during this period, especially 
 those to Mrs. Sitwell, are full of his interest in 
 casual and passing scenes — genre pictures of the 
 streets; brief vivid notes on the conditions of na- 
 ture about him; the effects of weather (there is 
 always a great deal about clouds and wind in his 
 letters) ; the trees and flowers. He is a thorough- 
 going impressionist — there is always the general 
 atmosphere and out of it one or two salient details 
 obtruding. Whether it is a chill, foggy day in 
 Edinburgh that strikes his attention, or Avignon 
 and its old bridge in a glare of sun, it is very apt 
 to be formed into a picture in much the same way 
 
VAGABOND AND CRAFTSMAN 99 
 
 that a painter of the Barbizon school would 
 form it. 1 
 
 In his letters these things afford glimpses of his 
 natural, spontaneous imagination. But the same 
 impetus, carried too far, led him to write a series 
 of longish "fragments" commemorating various 
 little tours he made on foot — "Cockermouth and 
 Keswick," "An Autumn Effect," "A Winter's Walk 
 in Carrick and Galloway." They resemble chiefly 
 the sketches of a painter before he knows just what 
 he wants to do. They are interesting chiefly in re- 
 lation to some final result. But in Stevenson's case 
 there is no specific final result, and hence they re- 
 main mere tours de force. Yet how much oftener 
 does greatness in creative art grow out of the 
 vagaries of a youth who is bent on climbing high 
 by constant experiment than out of the little wis- 
 dom of him who learns early a successful method 
 of securing what is on a level with his nose ! 
 
 1 For illustration, see his Letters, Biographical Edition, 
 Vol. I, pp. 75, 84, 93, 103, 110, 129. 
 
CHAPTER VI 
 
 VAGABONDAGE AND CRAFTSMANSHIP : BARBIZON 
 
 STEVENSON, who in many respects of his art 
 never matured, was always an experimentalist. 
 Though he became, as Mr. Copeland has said in his 
 essay on Stevenson, 1 "perfect on the page," the 
 page, in relation to the whole, is often fragmentary. 
 In many of Stevenson's productions of this time and 
 later, productions which lack sweep and compre- 
 hensiveness, there is only this kind of piecemeal 
 perfection. No author who has written so many 
 quotable passages has written so few great books. 
 In the essay and in the short tale, his best qualities, 
 which are those of fine workmanship rather than of 
 large structure, shine. In a small compass they 
 can not diffuse themselves. Work of which he 
 could see the end and the shape when he began it, 
 he could properly fill out. But the very qualities 
 that led to success on the page seem rather to have 
 
 1 The Atlantic Monthly, April, 1895. Mr. Hammerton, the 
 editor of that most interesting volume, Stevensoniana, quotes 
 this essay at some length, and regards it very properly, in the 
 present writer's opinion, as the best single essay on Steven- 
 son's art. 
 
 100 
 
VAGABOND AND CRAFTSMAN 101 
 
 blinded him to the cause of failure in many of his 
 longer books. 
 
 Critically, Stevenson understood the broader 
 functions of the novelist's art. This is evident from 
 his extreme devotion to Meredith and from his ad- 
 miration of Hugo, two authors who together in- 
 clude nearly all the positive virtues that he lacked. 
 Yet, though he describes in his essay on Hugo the 
 dominating moral and artistic forces of that writer 
 as they combine to emphasize each other and make 
 one purpose, Stevenson himself but rarely suc- 
 ceeds in that aim of all true art. In The Master of 
 Ballantrae, for example, you follow him for a cer- 
 tain number of pages in surprise at his vivid eye 
 and at what seems a carefully suspended plot. Then 
 you begin to doubt if he knows just what he is 
 doing it all for. At the end you are convinced that 
 he never had a real plan — only a vivid fancy which 
 flashes here and there, and which, so far as illumina- 
 tion of the whole is concerned, grows dimmer. 
 
 In possible explanation of this, I think it should 
 be noted once more that during several crucial years, 
 Stevenson was too strongly affected by the influence 
 of Barbizon and the methods of the painter. A 
 painter needs much practise here and there in the de- 
 tails of composition in order to secure manual apt- 
 ness ; but mental aptness is what the writer is after, 
 and that is properly secured by pursuing some defi- 
 nite and important end to which observation, or 
 sketching, is but contributory. Of this Barbizon in- 
 fluence, "Forest Notes" is the most direct result. It is 
 
102 STEVENSON 
 
 a series of charming sketches composed in the forest 
 of Fontainebleau itself or at Siron's Inn (now the 
 Hotel de l'Exposition), that favorite and most con- 
 genially Bohemian resting place of all Stevenson's 
 vagabondage. A person who walks across the for- 
 est from Fontainebleau to Barbizon may make a 
 curious study in contrast. The palace of Fontaine- 
 bleau, one of the most tritely and formally arranged 
 palaces in France, filled with the vapid gilt and 
 porcelain conventions of her chief period of 
 outward splendor; the park, swept, clipped, geo- 
 metrically perfect and in all its details the exact 
 counterpart of an exercise by a garden poet — these 
 stand on one side of the forest as monuments of 
 splendid, decorative order. On the other side, at a 
 morning's walk, is Siron's Inn and Barbizon. Here 
 everything is irregular, rambling, full of promiscu- 
 ous vines and flowers. Siron's Inn is as far a cry 
 from the palace of Fontainebleau as can be 
 imagined. 
 
 "Siron's Inn, that excellent artists' barrack, was 
 managed upon easy principles. At any hour of the 
 night, when you returned from wandering in the 
 forest, you went to the billiard-room and helped 
 yourself to liquors, or descended to the cellar and 
 returned laden with beer or wine. The Sirons were 
 all locked in slumber; there was none to check your 
 inroads; only at the week's end a computation was 
 made, the gross sum was divided, and a varying 
 share set down to every lodger's name under the 
 
VAGABOND AND CRAFTSMAN 103 
 
 rubric estrats. Upon the more long-suffering the 
 larger tax was levied; and your bill lengthened in 
 a direct proportion to the easiness of your disposi- 
 tion. At any hour of the morning, again, you 
 could get your coffee, or cold milk, and set forth 
 into the forest. The doves had perhaps wakened 
 you, fluttering into your very chamber; and on the 
 threshold of the inn you were met by the aroma of 
 the forest. Close by were the great aisles, the 
 mossy boulders, the interminable field of forest 
 shadow. There you were free to dream and wan- 
 der. And at noon, and again at six o'clock, a good 
 meal awaited you on Siron's table. The whole of 
 your accommodation, set aside that varying item 
 of the estrats, cost you five francs a day; your bill 
 was never offered you until you asked it; and if 
 you were out of luck's way, you might depart for 
 where you pleased and leave it pending. — "Fon- 
 tainebleau," Across the Plains. 
 
 In spite of his sketcher's method which led him, 
 as he says, to get ready his own palette "and lay 
 out the color for a woodland scene in words," in 
 spite of its being, that is, nothing more than a series 
 of drawings of trees, boulders, glades, bosquets 
 tenebreux, d. set of themes on "The Woods by 
 Night," "Siron's Inn," "The Woods in March," 
 "The Freedom of the Woods" and so on, "Forest 
 Notes" reproduces a total effect of marvelous actu- 
 ality. I walked across the forest one day a few 
 years ago. It has a character all its own; I have 
 
104 STEVENSON 
 
 never had the same forest impressions anywhere 
 else; and it seemed to me precisely, and in all its 
 variety, the forest of Stevenson's sketches. This 
 would be, according to the principles of Barbizon, 
 a crowning word of praise; but description for its 
 own sake may scarcely be an end in literature. 
 One of Stevenson's favorite authors of this period, 
 George Borrow, might have taught him that; for 
 Borrow always has in view some kind of arrival in 
 his wanderings. But Stevenson has here little con- 
 tinuity other than that of his own footsteps. He 
 disclaims any other. He winds up his disquisition 
 with a section called "Morality," the gist of which 
 is that in the forest, in this retired realm of art, 
 there can be no morality, for everything there is 
 but part of a picture. This is a moral which might 
 tag all of Stevenson's "Wanderjahre." 
 
 It is part of Stevenson's nature and part of his 
 rather vagabond art that he always held to this 
 point of view. "He enjoyed a strenuous idleness 
 full of visions." He says in "Fontainebleau" that 
 to prate to the novice about the lofty aims and 
 moral influence of art is the lad's ruin. "The love 
 of words and not a desire to publish new discoveries, 
 the love of form and not a novel reading of his- 
 torical events, mark the vocation of the writer and 
 the painter. The arabesque, properly speaking, and 
 even in literature, is the first fancy of the artist; 
 he first plays with his material as a child plays with 
 a kaleidoscope ; and he is already in a second stage 
 when he begins to use his pretty counters for the 
 
VAGABOND AND CRAFTSMAN 105 
 
 end of representation. In that, he must pause long 
 and toil faithfully; that is his apprenticeship; and 
 it is only the few who will really grow beyond it 
 and go forward, fully equipped, to do the business 
 of real art — to give life to abstractions and sig- 
 nificance and charm to facts. In the meanwhile, 
 let him dwell much among his fellow-craftsmen. 
 They alone can take a serious interest in the childish 
 tasks and pitiful successes of these years. They 
 alone can behold with equanimity this fingering of 
 the dumb keyboard, this polishing of empty sen- 
 tences, this dull and literal painting of dull and 
 insignificant subjects. Outsiders will spur him on. 
 They will say, 'Why do you not write a great book, 
 paint a great picture?' If his guardian angel fail 
 him, they may even persuade him to the attempt, 
 and, ten to one, his hand is coarsened and his style 
 falsified for life." — "Fontainebleau," Across the 
 Plains. 
 
 The danger of all this Stevenson himself well 
 understood, and, as I have remarked and shall point 
 out later in regard to his production as a whole, he 
 himself suffered from the disease which he here 
 goes on to describe. "And this brings me to a warn- 
 ing. The life of the apprentice to any art is both 
 unstrained and pleasing ; it is strewn with small suc- 
 cesses in the midst of a career of failure, patiently 
 supported; the heaviest scholar is conscious of a 
 certain progress; and if he come not appreciably 
 nearer to the art of Shakespeare, grows letter-per- 
 
106 STEVENSON 
 
 feet in the domain of A-B, ab. But the time comes 
 when a man should cease prelusory gymnastic, stand 
 up, put a violence upon his will, and for better or 
 worse, begin the business of creation. This evil 
 day there is a tendency continually to postpone; 
 above all with painters. They have made so many 
 studies that it has become a habit ; they make more, 
 the walls of exhibitions blush with them; and death 
 finds these aged students still busy with their horn- 
 book. This class of man finds a congenial home in 
 artist villages; in the slang of the English colony 
 at Barbizon we used to call them 'Snoozers.' Con- 
 tinual returns to the city, the society of men farther 
 advanced, the study of great works, a sense of 
 humour, or, if such a thing is to be had, a little re- 
 ligion or philosophy, are the means of treatment. 
 It will be time enough to think of curing the malady 
 after it has been caught ; for to catch it is the very 
 thing for which you seek that dream-land of the 
 painters' village." — "Fontainebleau," Across the 
 Plains. 
 
 II 
 
 The influence of this fashion of observing life 
 through the half-shut eye, together with what Ste- 
 venson calls a "disinterested love of dullness," is 
 felt a little too largely in Stevenson's first book, 
 An Inland Voyage, a pleasant diary of an unexciting 
 canoe trip, in August, 1876, with Sir Walter Simp- 
 son, from Antwerp through the Sambre Canal and 
 
VAGABOND AND CRAFTSMAN 107 
 
 down the Oise nearly to the Seine, as far as Pon- 
 toise. Stevenson later speaks of the book as "not 
 badly written, thin, mildly cheery and strained." 
 It is obviously written for the sake of style, which 
 leads him to make much out of little and to "paint." 
 But for all that, it is a pleasant diversion. When 
 you finish it you have been to France again, talked 
 with her people, played with her children, put up 
 at her inns, and eaten of her food or gone hungry, 
 always in the most companionable manner. Steven- 
 son's journeys are always confidential, full of him- 
 self and without one touch of conceit. The joke, if 
 there is one, is on the writer, who, though gallant at 
 heart and fond of glowing words, never cuts too 
 fine a figure on his own stage. Most of us, to our- 
 selves, are rather awkward failures ; and every man 
 can find his points of sympathy with Stevenson, who 
 does not pose as one of the world's strong, proud, 
 successful products. 
 
 You must imagine him at this time extremely 
 thin, one hundred sixteen pounds, with something 
 rather unearthly in his face and eyes, a little more 
 than usually absurd in his accoutrement, a velvet 
 jacket and cap, a red sash with a knife stuck through 
 it for bravado. Nearly everywhere he was the 
 game of children of whom he pretends to be 
 abnormally fearful, though he records one occasion 
 of triumph over them: "They could not make 
 enough of my red sash," he says of some inquisitive 
 youngsters along the Sambre; "and my knife filled 
 them with awe." In spite of the solid respectability 
 
108 STEVENSON 
 
 of Sir Walter Simpson, the pair were refused ad- 
 mittance at several inns. In others they were 
 snubbed as pedlers. Stevenson says that though 
 a born British subject, he never succeeded in con- 
 vincing a single foreign official of his nationality. 
 "For the life of me I cannot understand it. I, too, 
 have been knolled to church and sat at good men's 
 feasts, but I bear no mark of it. I am as strange 
 as a Jack Indian to their official spectacles. I might 
 come from any part of the globe, it seems, except 
 from where I do." But he was not speaking the 
 literal truth when he said he could not understand 
 it. In fact he was rather fond of explaining it. 
 To a friend who asked for a photograph, he wrote : 
 "When I get one you shall have a copy. It will 
 not be like me ; sometimes I turn out a capital, fresh 
 bank clerk; once I came out the image of Run j eel 
 Singh ; again a treacherous sun has fixed me in the 
 character of a traveling evangelist. . . . The 
 truth is I have no appearance; a certain air of dis- 
 reputability is one constant character that my face 
 presents ; the rest change like water. But still I am 
 lean, and still disreputable." In another sort of con- 
 fession made somewhat later, when he may have 
 been a wiser, though by no means a sadder man, he 
 describes his attire. It was on the tramp which he 
 and Sir Walter Simpson took in the valley of the 
 Loing the following year — the epilogue to An In- 
 land Voyage. He was, he says, unwisely dressed. 
 That is, he had on an old, tarnished smoking-cap 
 of Indian work, a black flannel shirt and other 
 
VAGABOND AND CRAFTSMAN 109 
 
 rather curious misfits. The result — his arrest and 
 imprisonment as a vagrant by the commissary of 
 Chatillon-sur- Loire — is the example supreme of Ste- 
 vensonian adventure and should be read by every- 
 body for himself in the "Epilogue." 
 
 But before that, one rainy night at La Fere on 
 the Oise, and at other less respectable places, no 
 doubt, Stevenson had suffered. It was not entirely 
 for the sake of literature. He and Sir Walter had 
 stowed their boats by the river and were proceeding 
 toward La Fere on foot. 
 
 "At last a second gateway admitted us to the 
 town itself. Lighted windows looked gladsome, 
 , whiffs of comfortable cookery came abroad upon 
 the air. The town was full of the military reserve, 
 out for the French Autumn manoeuvres, and the 
 reservists walked speedily and wore their formidable 
 greatcoats. It was a fine night to be within doors 
 over dinner and hear the rain upon the windows. 
 
 "The Cigarette and I could not sufficiently con- 
 gratulate each other on the prospect, for we had 
 been told there was a capital inn at La Fere. Such 
 a dinner as we were going to eat ! such beds as we 
 were to sleep in ! and all the while the rain raining 
 on houseless folk over all the poplared country-side. 
 It made our mouths water. The inn bore the name 
 of some woodland animal, stag, or hart, or hind, I 
 forget which. But I shall never forget how spa- 
 cious and how eminently habitable it looked as we 
 drew near. The carriage entry was lighted up, not 
 
110 STEVENSON 
 
 by intention, but from the mere superfluity of fire 
 and candle in the house. A rattle of many dishes 
 came to our ears; we sighted a great field of table- 
 cloth; the kitchen glowed like a forge and smelt 
 like a garden of things to eat. 
 
 "Into this, the inmost shrine and physiological 
 heart of a hostelry, with all its furnaces in action 
 and all its dressers charged with viands, you are 
 now to suppose us making our triumphal entry, a 
 pair of damp rag-and-bone men, each with a limp 
 india-rubber bag upon his arm. I do not believe I 
 have a sound view of that kitchen ; I saw it through 
 a sort of glory, but it seemed to me crowded with 
 the snowy caps of cookmen, who all turned round 
 from their saucepans and looked at us with sur- 
 prise. There was no doubt about the landlady, 
 however ; there she was, heading her army, a flushed, 
 angry woman, full of affairs. Her I asked politely — 
 too politely, thinks the Cigarette — if we could have 
 beds, she surveying us coldly from head to foot. 
 
 " 'You will find beds in the suburb,' she remarked. 
 'We are too busy for the like of you/ 
 
 "If we could make an entrance, change our 
 clothes, and order a bottle of wine, I felt sure we 
 could put things right; so said I, 'If we cannot 
 sleep, we may at least dine' — and was for depositing 
 my bag. 
 
 "What a terrible convulsion of nature was that 
 which followed in the landlady's face! She made 
 a run at us and stamped her foot. 
 
VAGABOND AND CRAFTSMAN 111 
 
 " 'Out with you — out of the door!' she screeched. 
 e Sortez, sortez, sortez par la port el* 
 
 "I do not know how it happened, but next mo- 
 ment we were out in the rain and darkness, and I 
 was cursing before the carriage like a disappointed 
 mendicant. Where were the boating-men of Bel- 
 gium? where the judge and his good wines? and 
 where the graces of Origny? Black, black was the 
 night after the firelit kitchen, but what was that 
 to the blackness in our heart? This was not the 
 first time that I have been refused a lodging. Often 
 and often have I planned what I should do if such 
 a misadventure happened to me again. And nothing 
 is easier to plan. But to put in execution, with the 
 heart boiling at the indignity? Try it; try it only 
 once, and tell me what you did. 
 
 "It is all very fine to talk about tramps and 
 morality. Six hours of police surveillance (such 
 as I have had) or one brutal rejection from an inn 
 door change your views upon the subject like a 
 course of lectures. As long as you keep in the 
 upper regions, with the world bowing to you as 
 you go, social arrangements have a very handsome 
 air; but once get under the wheels and you wish 
 society were at the devil. I will give most respect- 
 able men a fortnight of such a life, and then I will 
 offer them twopence for what remains of their 
 morality. 
 
 "For my part, when I was turned out of the Stag, 
 or the Hind, or whatever it was, I would have set 
 
112 STEVENSON 
 
 the temple of Diana on fire if it had been handy." 
 — An Inland Voyage. 
 
 Stevenson has recorded that he was once a red- 
 hot theoretical socialist and that he had no regrets 
 in looking back on that period of his life. He was 
 all his life the right kind of practical every-day so- 
 cialist; and such experiences as his absurd costume 
 made him liable to were not without their value. 
 Yet at this time he was intent on romance and in- 
 dividualism rather than on social uniformity. He 
 liked to imagine, as he records in the "Epilogue," 
 that he resembled his vagabond scamp, Francois 
 Villon. Perhaps he did — in the scamp's few ami- 
 able traits. At all events, this outward defiance of 
 convention — and it is a very queer queerness that 
 is refused admittance to a French inn — really re- 
 flects his true state of mind. If An Inland Voyage 
 has a secondary purpose in addition to the descrip- 
 tion of the day's journey, it is to record Stevenson's 
 conviction that respectability, regularity, a pro- 
 fessional career, an office chair, and the like, 
 were now beyond the pale of possibility for him. 
 Against them he poses the Arethusa and her 
 swaggerish independence. What is worth while in 
 life? For the artist is it not to note the turns of a 
 river, the meadows and orchards, the margins of 
 sedge, the cattle hanging their mild heads over the 
 embankment, and a sleepy passing barge decorated 
 with pots of flowers? "I am sure I would rather 
 be a bargee than occupy any position under Heaven 
 
VAGABOND AND CRAFTSMAN 113 
 
 that requires attendance at an office," cries Stevenson 
 at the beginning of the book. "There are few call- 
 ings, I should like to say, where a man gives up less 
 of his liberty in return for regular meals." Always 
 full of fanciful humors and romantic purposeless- 
 ness, he seems to have most enjoyed little incidents 
 of the merely casual sort. Handkerchiefs waved 
 from a garden by the river caused quite a stir of 
 heart. "And yet," he says, "how we should have 
 wearied and despised each other, these girls and I, 
 if we had been introduced at a croquet party! But 
 this is a fashion I love: to kiss the hand or wave 
 a handkerchief to people I shall never see again, 
 to play with possibility, and knock in a peg for 
 fancy to hang upon. It gives the traveler a jog, 
 reminds him that he is not a traveler everywhere, 
 and that his journey is no more than a siesta by the 
 way on the real march of life." 
 
 Ill 
 
 It was at the end of this voyage, I believe, that 
 Stevenson, on repairing to Barbizon and Grez, found 
 a much more serious affair on the real march of 
 life than any he had yet encountered. Mrs. Os- 
 bourne, a California woman who had been for some 
 time separated from her husband, was spending a 
 few years in France for the education of her chil- 
 dren. In August, 1876, she was amusing herself 
 with a little sketching in the forest of Fontainebleau. 
 She and Stevenson at once fell in love. With ro- 
 
114 STEVENSON 
 
 mance there came, as always, a practical problem — 
 in this case peculiarly harassing and difficult. The 
 uncertainty of Stevenson's health, the uncertainty 
 of his finances, the uncertainty of Mrs. Osbourne's 
 own problem, made a continually renewed strain 
 which rendered him more than ever susceptible to 
 a return of his physical troubles. At the same time 
 he increased his efforts to prove himself financially 
 equal to the situation; and in 1878 he earned enough 
 from his pen to give him some warrant for the de- 
 cision which he wished to make. Moreover, his 
 trip through the Cevennes, in September and Octo- 
 ber of that year, which furnished him with the 
 materials for his Travels with a Donkey, must have 
 shown him that he had gained much in powers of 
 observation. Though the book is in the same man- 
 ner as An Inland Voyage, it contains far more 
 reflection on life and more interest in the make-up 
 of the community through which he traveled. 
 The same thing is true of the fragment about 
 Le Monastir, "A Mountain Town in France," 
 the place from which he started on the excursion 
 with "Modeste." It may be said that these two 
 productions introduce us to the man who is shortly 
 to write The Amateur Emigrant and Across the 
 Plains. Like those remarkable and genuine studies 
 of life, they prove that Stevenson had learned to 
 give the notes of his sketch-book a durable impor- 
 tance. Many events were teaching him to see life 
 more deeply. 
 
 In the autumn of 1878, Mrs. Osbourne re- 
 
VAGABOND AND CRAFTSMAN 115 
 
 turned to America, and for a few weeks re- 
 joined her husband in Indianapolis, their native 
 town ; but they separated once more, and she went 
 on to California. She was seriously ill there during 
 the winter. In the summer of 1879 she found that 
 she could probably secure a divorce ; and Stevenson 
 no longer hesitated as to what his course should be. 
 He engaged passage on an emigrant ship from 
 Glasgow. In regard to such a step the disapproval 
 of his parents was a foregone conclusion. They 
 were not consulted ; and his father, for a time, was 
 inclined to put the worst construction on his son's 
 conduct. No doubt the author of the productions 
 of 1878 felt some confidence in his powers to face 
 the world alone. But he could not count on health. 
 His health at once belied him and made the next 
 twelve months' experience matter for an epic of 
 hardship. 
 
CHAPTER VII 
 
 THE FIRST GREAT ADVENTURE 
 
 FOR a strong and healthy man what Stevenson 
 now attempted would have proved a task with 
 failure always imminent and the very possibility of 
 success doubtful. For a man in Stevenson's condi- 
 tion, it meant, from the start, skirting the edge of 
 tragedy. This fact is cheerfully accepted in the 
 pages of The Amateur Emigrant and Across the 
 Plains, and it is not by any means forgotten in 
 The Silverado Squatters. It seems as if interest in 
 life alone kept Stevenson alive during this year in 
 America. For that never failed — that tremendous 
 curiosity regarding all the circumstances about him, 
 that interest in humanity which prevented his ever 
 taking a morbid or negative view of any situation. 
 
 The sea voyage from Glasgow to New York on 
 the Devonia, while he was playing his part of ama- 
 teur emigrant, agreed with him in spite of the fact 
 that what he calls "the national disease" was to all 
 appearances definitely setting in. But the ten-day 
 journey across the continent as a second-class pas- 
 senger in the heat and dust of August was one of 
 
 116 
 
THE FIRST GREAT ADVENTURE 117 
 
 his great mistakes and a risk he really had no right 
 to run. With the strain and the bad nourishment of 
 travel, his disease of the lungs, whatever its exact 
 character may have been, gathered such headway 
 that he arrived in California with his health, for 
 the time being, and when he most needed it, com- 
 pletely wrecked. 
 
 But the account of his journey is a classic. It is 
 the best of all his narratives of travel. It differs 
 especially from the previous books in the change 
 of emphasis from scenery and merely picturesque 
 impressions to humanity and social ideas. He is here 
 no longer trying to be a painter ; or rather he is not 
 content to be a mere observer. The attitude of the 
 tourist has vanished. Every one who wishes to 
 see what sort of man Stevenson's buffeting with the 
 world had made of him should read Mrs. Steven- 
 son's preface to The Amateur Emigrant. Indeed 
 the finest, and I think the truest, picture of R. L. S. 
 exists in her contributions to the volumes of The 
 Biographical Edition; and this particular preface, 
 with the succeeding pages of the narrative itself, 
 makes a fundamental document for understanding 
 his social point of view about life. 
 
 The book describes that most interesting of all 
 scenes, the gradual drawing together and establish- 
 ment of relations of a fixed group of people, previ- 
 ously strangers, aboard a passenger ship. Coming 
 out of the Clyde all are looking askance at one an- 
 other. Especially among the Englishmen distance 
 and suspicion prevail. A day later, on leaving 
 
118 STEVENSON 
 
 Lough Foyle, the company begins "to draw together 
 by inscrutable magnetisms." Formalities obtrude 
 less and less. Natural curiosity, or what Anglo- 
 Saxons prefer to call social instinct, begins to mod- 
 ify arbitrary relations, till, in New York harbor, 
 these people have become human and comprehen- 
 sible. Stevenson's interest in this process is not 
 abstract. There is no generalizing talk about "the 
 steerage" and "emigration" which does not reflect 
 intimacy with particular individuals in the problem. 
 Stevenson is not an expert in sociology; but he is 
 never quite at fault in his theories. He limits himself 
 largely to what he sees. His observations are hu- 
 man and artistic, not economic. Yet such economic 
 questions as why the emigrant leaves home, what 
 he expects to find in a new country, what typical 
 incapacities have displanted him and made him 
 merely a part of the great western-setting tide, 
 what energies of his nature drive him forward; all 
 these matters are personally involved in this story 
 of Stevenson's relations with his fellow passengers. 
 No matter how many times the reader has crossed 
 the ocean, and, looking down, or even descending 
 daily, to the levels of the steerage, has thought of 
 the problems that rise in that atmosphere, he will 
 find that Stevenson has been there before him and 
 seen them more sharply and more genuinely, not as 
 facts of social science, but as personal experiences. 
 For on the promenade deck your point of view will 
 never lead to certain bits of wisdom which this 
 unique opportunity of the steamship as a whole pre- 
 
THE FIRST GREAT ADVENTURE 119 
 
 sents. Stevenson, looking from the second cabin, 
 saw centrally what most of us see superficially. The 
 lessons of the occasion were for him great and 
 enduring lessons, while for us they are an amuse- 
 ment. 
 
 It furnished a complete little criticism of the 
 world, that central second cabin, with the saloon 
 passengers above and the steerage below. The 
 higher man is autonymous ; the lower so intimately 
 bound up with his neighbors that he is at their 
 mercy; neither is free. For Stevenson there was a 
 lesson here that made him desire a new kind of citi- 
 zenship in the world, a new freedom. In many ways 
 this voyage was a philosophic preparation for the 
 experiences he was now to undergo. 
 
 Landing in New York on a rainy Sunday, the 
 eighteenth of August, and still clinging to the idea of 
 seeing America from the emigrant's point of view, 
 he spent the night in a lodging house by the docks, 
 where he got not a minute's sleep ; then all the next 
 day he was pattering about in the rain on errands, 
 and was so wet that when he finally went for his 
 train in the evening he had to leave some of his 
 clothes behind at the lodging house. Cabs and up- 
 town hotels are not in vogue for emigrants, and the 
 only inconsistency of his absurd conduct, as far as 
 one can see, was to eat a large meal on Sunday night, 
 with French coffee at the end, at a good restaurant. 
 But this he partly justifies by saying, "I never en- 
 tered into the feeling of Jack on land so completely 
 as when I tasted that coffee." 
 
120 STEVENSON 
 
 II 
 
 With the six big volumes of Bancroft's History 
 of the United States in his traveling rug, he began 
 his journey westward. Across the Plains is not a 
 description of our country. It is a record of endur- 
 ance and kindness, and an indirect description of the 
 author in what was one of the most trying hard- 
 ships of his life. The reason why it is so interesting 
 is because of the common situations it describes. 
 We have all stood in a jam at the ferry — and this 
 scene with which the book opens is one of the most 
 masterly things in all Stevenson's works; we have 
 all suffered from the excessive heat and dust of 
 travel; we have gone hours, and seemingly days, 
 without a meal, owing to a wreck or a flood some- 
 where ahead on the line ; we have been snubbed and 
 roused to indignation by the conductor, or even per- 
 haps by the newsboy; we have had our "words" at 
 the desks of hotels; we have frothed over insults 
 and unkindness; we have also had our amusements 
 by the way, little pleasures over new names — and 
 Stevenson, ever alive to the sound of things, was 
 entranced with Susquehanna, Bellefontaine, and 
 Sandusky, for America has surely outdone the 
 world in this matter; we have wondered whether 
 the Middle West were monotonous or beautiful, or, 
 possibly, both — "a sort of flat paradise, not unfre- 
 quented by the devil," Stevenson decided; we have 
 amused ourselves by declining to give our family 
 history to the man sitting next to us ; and we have 
 
THE FIRST. GREAT ADVENTURE 121 
 
 observed the marvelously patronizing, yet thor- 
 oughly agreeable, familiarity of the negro waiter 
 at a railway restaurant. But, initiated by these 
 vivid commonplaces into the atmosphere of a rail- 
 way journey, the reader comes on much that is not 
 so familiar: the herded life of the emigrants, the 
 smells and foulness of the cars thirty years ago, the 
 meanness or irresponsible loutishness of roughs, the 
 sleeping boards and blankets, the orgy of the morn- 
 ing toilet under vile conditions, sickness, misery, 
 ribaldry and laughter, endlessly intermingled in a 
 few hundred cubic feet of fetid air, hour after hour, 
 mile after mile. 
 
 Attached to the train of emigrants at Ogden was a 
 carload of Chinese, by far the best behaved and 
 cleanly of them all. But the Americans did not think 
 so ; they had for them only maledictions ; they seemed 
 to hate them a priori, and never seemed to have really 
 looked at them or thought about them. "They de- 
 clared them hideous vermin, and affected a kind of 
 choking in the throat when they beheld them. Now, 
 as a matter of fact, the young Chinese man is so 
 like a large class of European women, that on rais- 
 ing my head and suddenly catching sight of one 
 at a considerable distance, I have for an instant 
 been deceived by the resemblance. I do not say it 
 is the most attractive class of our women, but for 
 all that many a man's wife is less pleasantly fa- 
 voured. Again, my emigrants declared that the 
 Chinese were dirty. I cannot say they were clean, 
 for that was impossible upon the journey; but in 
 
122 STEVENSON 
 
 their efforts after cleanliness they put the rest of 
 us to shame. We all pigged and stewed in one 
 infamy, wet our hands and faces for half a minute 
 daily on the platform, and were unashamed. But 
 the Chinese never lost an opportunity, and you could 
 see them washing their feet — an act not dreamed of 
 among ourselves — and going as far as decency per- 
 mitted to wash their whole bodies. I may remark 
 by the way that the dirtier people are in their per- 
 sons the more delicate is their sense of modesty. 
 A clean man strips in a crowded boathouse ; but he 
 who is unwashed slinks in and out of bed without 
 uncovering an inch of skin. Lastly, these very foul 
 and malodorous Caucasians entertained the sur- 
 prising illusion that it was the Chinese wagon and 
 that alone which stank. I have said already that it 
 was the exception and notably the freshest of the 
 three. 
 
 "These judgments are typical of the feeling in all 
 Western America. The Chinese are considered stu- 
 pid, because they are imperfectly acquainted with 
 English. They are held to be base, because their 
 dexterity and frugality enable them to underbid the 
 lazy, luxurious Caucasian. They are said to be 
 thieves; I am sure they have no monopoly of that. 
 They are called cruel; the Anglo-Saxon and the 
 cheerful Irishman may each reflect before he bears 
 the accusation. ... I am told, again, that they 
 are of the race of river pirates, and belong to the 
 most despised and dangerous class in the Celestial 
 Empire. But if this be so, what remarkable pirates 
 
THE FIRST GREAT ADVENTURE 123 
 
 have we here! and what must be the virtues, the 
 industry, the education, and the intelligence of their 
 superiors at home ! 
 
 "A while ago it was the Irish, now it is the Chi- 
 nese that must go. Such is the cry. It seems, after 
 all, that no country is bound to submit to immigra- 
 tion any more than to invasion; each is war to the 
 knife, and resistance to either but legitimate defense. 
 Yet we may regret the free tradition of the republic, 
 which loved to depict herself with open arms, wel- 
 coming all unfortunates. And certainly, as a man 
 who believed that he loves freedom, I may be ex- 
 cused some bitterness when I find her sacred name 
 misused in the contention. It was but the other 
 day that I heard a vulgar fellow in the Sand-lot, the 
 popular tribune of San Francisco, roaring for arms 
 and butchery. 'At the call of Abraham Lincoln/ 
 said the orator, 'ye rose in the name of freedom to 
 set free the negroes; can ye not rise and liberate 
 yourselves from a few dirty Mongolians?' It ex- 
 ceeds the license of an Irishman to rebaptize our 
 selfish interests by the name of virtue. . . . 
 
 "For my own part, I could not look but with won- 
 der and respect on the Chinese. Their forefathers 
 watched the stars before mine had begun to keep 
 pigs. Gunpowder and printing, which the other day 
 we imitated, and a school of manners which we 
 never had the delicacy so much as to desire to imi- 
 tate, were theirs in a long-past antiquity. They 
 walk the earth with us, but it seems they must be 
 of different clay. They hear the clock strike the 
 
124 STEVENSON 
 
 same hour, yet surely of a different epoch. They 
 travel by steam conveyance, yet with such a bag- 
 gage of old Asiatic thoughts and superstitions as 
 might check the locomotive in its course. Whatever 
 is thought within the circuit of the Great Wall; 
 what the wry-eyed, spectacled schoolmaster teaches 
 in the hamlets round Pekin; religions so old that 
 our language looks a hal fling boy alongside ; philoso- 
 phy so wise that our best philosophers find things 
 therein to wonder at; all this traveled alongside of 
 me for thousands of miles over plain and mountain. 
 Heaven knows if we had one common thought or 
 fancy all that way, or whether our eyes, which yet 
 were formed upon the same design, beheld the same 
 world out of the railway windows. And when 
 either of us turned his thoughts to home and child- 
 hood, what a strange dissimilarity must there not 
 have been in these pictures of the mind — when I 
 beheld that old, gray, castled city, high-throned 
 above the firth, with the flag of Britain flying and 
 the redcoat sentry pacing over all; and the man in 
 the next car to me would conjure up some junks 
 and a pagoda and a fort of porcelain, and call it, 
 with the same affection, home." — Across the Plains. 
 
 This car of Chinese gave Stevenson the text for 
 a sermon that is really the moral of his whole jour- 
 ney. And in the spirit here expressed, including 
 both love and knowledge of humanity, is the key 
 to much in Stevenson's own character and in his 
 experience later on. The red-hot socialist of Edin- 
 
THE FIRST GREAT ADVENTURE 125 
 
 burgh University, the defender of despised races, the 
 blood-brother and counselor of Island Kings, is noth- 
 ing more frequently and genuinely than the Scotch 
 lad who keeps a cheerful face in spite of sickness 
 and continues a dozen little services among his 
 neighbors everywhere on life's road. Of him you 
 may read between the lines in all his books. 
 
 Ill 
 
 Looking, as he was told, like a man at death's 
 door, owing to a serious illness during the last few 
 days of the journey, he arrived in San Francisco on 
 August thirtieth. He found that Mrs. Osbourne was 
 getting well ; and then to save himself from a com- 
 plete breakdown he went at once to camp out in the 
 high soft air of the mountains above Monterey. To 
 the work of making his own camp he was quite un- 
 equal. But two old frontiersmen on a goat ranch 
 took him in and nursed him back to a semblance of 
 health. 
 
 Though Stevenson had now a keen sense of how 
 it really was with him, he again continued his lit- 
 erary work when he should have devoted himself 
 to the serious business of resting. Speaking of 
 these days in a letter to Edmund Gosse, he says "it 
 was an odd, miserable piece of my life; and accord- 
 ing to all rule, it should have been my death; but 
 after a while my spirit got up again in a divine 
 frenzy and has since kicked and spurred my vile body 
 forward with great emphasis and success." This 
 
126 STEVENSON 
 
 whole American journey is a tale of conduct at once 
 heroic and blindly foolish. On the Devonia, suffer- 
 ing from bad food and bad air and the general dis- 
 comfort of the quarters he had chosen, he had writ- 
 ten, in his "slantindicular cabin," "The Story of a 
 Lie," which he sent to the New Quarterly, soon after 
 his arrival in California. Besides this, he arranged 
 his notes for The Amateur Emigrant, which he had 
 half drafted by October, when he moved down from 
 the ranch to Monterey. On the emigrant train he 
 had of course eaten irregularly, slept on a board 
 laid across the seats, breathed constantly the gases 
 and bad air of the car, or, while they crawled over 
 the prairies, he had perched on top of the cars — a 
 position he found rather bad for writing; and not 
 free from dirt. The heat was most of the time 
 extreme. He says that he often wore nothing but 
 a shirt and a pair of trousers, and never buttoned 
 his shirt. Added to this kind of strain and ex- 
 posure was the uncertainty of the quest on which 
 he had come, and the feeling that he had alienated 
 the affections of his parents. Throughout the win- 
 ter in California he was quite unfit for work. Life 
 in the open air and good food alone could have saved 
 him from that "galloping consumption" on the verge 
 of which he tells Gosse he had been during the 
 winter. 
 
 In this situation, bordering more and more on 
 the tragic, Stevenson yet felt that he must earn 
 what he could by his pen and meanwhile practise 
 the strictest economy. Till December he lived at 
 
THE FIRST GREAT ADVENTURE 127 
 
 Monterey in the house of a French doctor, and seems 
 to have had one square meal a day at Jules Simon- 
 eau's restaurant, which he later came to regard, in 
 his cheerful and romantic fashion, as the eating- 
 place par excellence of the world. He worked 
 steadily. In a letter to Colvin from San Francisco, 
 January 10, 1880, he reports that he managed to 
 write a good deal down at Monterey "when I was 
 pretty sickly most of the time." 
 
 If you realize what the problematic nature of 
 Stevenson's existence was in those months, and then 
 turn to his poetical description of Monterey in "The 
 Old Pacific Capital," and see what he wishes to re- 
 cord of that existence you will gain considerable 
 insight into the cheerfulness of his character. The 
 first paragraph, a description of the bay of Monte- 
 rey, is quoted in all books of rhetoric for the en- 
 lightenment of college freshmen as a model of 
 orderliness. But what follows is a poem, a lyrical 
 echo of the sea beaches and the forest; and remem- 
 bering Stevenson at Monterey you will feel both 
 how intensely fond of life he was, and how superior 
 to the conditions of life. 
 
 Besides the work already mentioned, he sent in 
 October to Henley, for Stephen to print, "The Pa- 
 vilion on the Links," a "grand carpentry story in 
 nine chapters." He had also written in October 
 eighty-three pages of a story called "A Vendetta in 
 the West," which, with a number of others planned 
 at this time, never matured. • He was desperately 
 worried about the financial aspect of his ventures 
 
128 STEVENSON 
 
 and fills his letters to Colvin with calculations. In 
 January, 1880, he was working up his essays on 
 Thoreau and Yoshida-Torajiro, and remaking an 
 old play, Semiramis, into a novel, "The Forest 
 State," ultimately to become Prince Otto. 
 
 All this time the possibility of death ran in his 
 thoughts. In February it is probable that he wrote 
 the "Requiem," destined to be the best known of 
 his poems. To a letter to Colvin he appended a 
 "Sketch of My Tomb," which contains two lines 
 from the poem and the words, nit or aquis. 
 
 In March he was overcome with grief at the death 
 of his landlord's little four-year-old child, whom he 
 had helped tend during several nights. And soon he 
 was himself almost at death's door, finally worn out 
 with the intense strain of his complex situation. "I 
 have been very sick," he wrote to Gosse, in the 
 middle of April; "on the verge of a galloping con- 
 sumption, cold sweats, prostrating attacks of cough, 
 sinking fits in which I lost the power of speech, 
 fever, and the ugliest circumstances of the disease ; 
 and I have cause to bless God, my wife that is to 
 be, and one Doctor Bamford (a name the Muse 
 repels), that I have come out of all this and got my 
 feet once more upon a little hilltop, with a fair 
 prospect of life and some new desire of living." 
 
 IV 
 
 Mrs. Osbourne, who was now fortunately free 
 to see Stevenson, nursed him back to temporary 
 
THE FIRST GREAT ADVENTURE 129 
 
 health. She had obtained her divorce, and though 
 it was her wish to put off the marriage for a 
 considerable time, the necessity of caring for Ste- 
 venson prevailed upon her. On May 19, 1880, 
 the ceremony took place in the house of some 
 friends in San Francisco. Stevenson never saw 
 his wife's first husband, who shortly remarried, and 
 who is supposed, after leaving his second wife, to 
 have gone to South Africa. Stevenson's union with 
 Fanny Van de Grift was, as he said, a marriage 
 in extremis. But it proved his salvation in more 
 ways than one. It was the immediate means of 
 reuniting him to his family. For his wife soon 
 won the hearts of his father and mother, and in 
 the eight remaining years of Thomas Stevenson's 
 life she was his great comfort. Thomas Stevenson 
 had, some time before the marriage, seen his mis- 
 take in regard to his son's behavior and had cabled 
 Louis to count on an allowance of two hundred and 
 fifty pounds. Later he made his daughter-in-law 
 promise to apply for further funds whenever she 
 thought they were needed, any protests of her hus- 
 band to the contrary notwithstanding. 
 
 Fanny Van de Grift was without question the wife 
 for Stevenson. Of an equally vigorous and roman- 
 tic nature, she was not given to fretting over the 
 lack of conventional comfort in the changeful life 
 they embarked on. She led a positive and enthusi- 
 astic existence beside him. She was his best en- 
 courager and his frankest critic; and if, like his 
 other counselors, she was unable to give him a 
 
130 STEVENSON 
 
 strong sense of intellectual purpose and sequence 
 during these crucial years, she never allowed the 
 responsibilities of marriage to cramp his free and 
 fluent moments. She saw clearly that he could not 
 manage successfully work demanding great powers 
 of endurance, and also that steady, patient work 
 was apt neither to bring him inspiration nor to rep- 
 resent the quality in his temperament which counted 
 most. Her continual response to the sporadic begin- 
 ning of things that were never completed matched 
 his own hopefulness, and did much to bring forth 
 the ultimately successful experiment. Never does she 
 appear to have damped his ardor for these ever-re- 
 curring fresh starts ; and yet she possessed much of 
 that critical sense of which Stevenson had so little — 
 the instinct or energy which knows infallibly a great 
 plan from a small one, which discards the impos- 
 sible, which burns rubbish and does not merely 
 sweep it into a corner. In the charming prefaces 
 she has written for her husband's books she has un- 
 consciously drawn her own portrait ; and the reader 
 who knows only her husband's beautiful verses to 
 her and the facts of her life as his devoted helper, 
 should see her more intimately. She is not alone 
 the woman who nurses Stevenson through a dozen 
 nearly fatal illnesses, who engages and prepares the 
 cottage at Saranac Lake, who goes on ahead to San 
 Francisco and charters the yacht for their South 
 Sea voyage. Possessed of a simple and telling san- 
 ity, combined with a complete sympathy for her 
 husband's whimsical and romantic humors, she is 
 
THE FIRST GREAT ADVENTURE 131 
 
 also that rare kind of woman who is always friendly 
 and always independent. 
 
 Immediately after the marriage, Stevenson, his 
 wife, and his fourteen-year-old stepson, Lloyd Os- 
 bourne, went up into the mountains above Calistoga, 
 some fifty miles north of San Francisco. The Sil- 
 verado Squatters is the story of this honeymoon. 
 It tells how they found a deserted mining camp on 
 a ridge of St. Helena Mountain, how they cleaned 
 the refuse out of one of the cabins and, after a 
 fashion, made themselves at home there. 
 
 Stevenson seems to have been constitutionally un- 
 able to choose comfortable conditions for himself. 
 Through life he more or less camped and roughed 
 it. And a remarkable and typical thing about him 
 is that he always remained utterly unable to cope 
 with the practical difficulties of the kind of life he 
 chose. He was what his wife calls "a handless 
 man." He was hardly to be trusted with an ax, 
 and he never learned to tie a knot that would hold. 
 In his long experience ashore and afloat, in the 
 midst of just such conditions as would seem inevi- 
 tably to develop some ingenuity and handiness, he 
 was consistently a lubber. Evidences of this abound 
 in his own narratives of travel, a classic instance be- 
 ing the affair with Modeste's pack at the very start 
 of his journey with her. 
 
 V 
 
 On this aspect of his character the most interest- 
 ing comment is the essay on Thoreau, which he had 
 
132 STEVENSON 
 
 just written in San Francisco before his marriage. 
 Stevenson recognized in Thoreau a man in many 
 ways his exact opposite. In all the little feats of skill 
 in daily life Thoreau was letter-perfect. He lived 
 by plan. He safeguarded himself by a series of 
 negative precautions — "negative superiorities," Ste- 
 venson calls them. His pride was in perfecting small 
 arrangements and in never disturbing them for 
 greater opportunities. "He had no waste lands, 
 nor kitchen-midden in his nature, but was all im- 
 proved and sharpened to a point." "He was almost 
 shockingly devoid of weaknesses; he had not enough 
 of them to be truly polar with humanity." For Ste- 
 venson, meagerness and abstinence were not human 
 virtues. Thoreau, living in his cabin by Walden 
 Pond, despising comfort, defiant of custom, caring 
 most for high thoughts and less for material success, 
 was, like Stevenson, anticonventional. But Tho- 
 reau was also antisocial ; he was not congenial in his 
 eccentricities ; he was aloof and freakish. He feared 
 "the bracing contact with the world." Stevenson 
 is the congenial Bohemian. He seems never to have 
 learned to do anything but conversation and "style," 
 the latter of which he has by now described as "the 
 essence of thinking"; but his daily life, if a trifle 
 slouchy, was open and radiant. He had never de- 
 cided "to lead a life of self-improvement," and his 
 egotism was not, like Thoreau's, self-centered. Ste- 
 venson's egotism makes always a charming paradox. 
 On the other hand, the essay shows Stevenson's 
 admiration for the challenge that Thoreau threw 
 
THE FIRST GREAT ADVENTURE 133 
 
 down to society, the romanticist's challenge of the 
 doctrine of Success. What Stevenson expresses by 
 his whole warm, varied life and labor, Thoreau puts 
 into a specially maintained attitude, and into the 
 aphorisms of his marvelously incisive intellect. "The 
 cost of a thing is the amount of what I will call 
 life which is required to be exchanged for it, imme- 
 diately or in the long run." Stevenson says that he 
 has been accustomed to put this to himself a little 
 more clearly, "that the price we have to pay for 
 money is paid in liberty." And he adds that whether 
 we can afford a thousand a year, a two thousand, 
 or a ten thousand a year livelihood, is entirely a 
 matter of taste; "it is not in the least degree a 
 question of duty, though commonly supposed so." 
 The two men are together here, and when Thoreau 
 says, "I am convinced that to maintain oneself on 
 this earth is not a hardship, but a pastime, if we 
 will live simply and wisely ; as the pursuits of sim- 
 pier nations are still the sports of the more artifi- 
 cial" — does not this exactly express what Steven- 
 son was learning at Silverado and what he was to 
 learn more thoroughly as a pioneer in the South 
 Seas? 
 
 Much of the charm of all the essays in Familiar 
 Studies of Men and Books, many of which he had 
 written by this time, lies in their representation of 
 his own personality. He is never dully objective. 
 Through his warm sympathies or his sincere antago- 
 nisms the characters he treats of are revealed just 
 as men are revealed to us in real life. He seems al- 
 
134 STEVENSON 
 
 ways to belong to the company of men about whom 
 he writes. You can easily imagine him visiting 
 Thoreau by Walden Pond. They would have un- 
 derstood each other perfectly — and disagreed. He 
 was enough of a tramp to know Villon's soul, its 
 gleeful unrespectability and its impudent satisfac- 
 tions, and enough of an aristocrat to understand its 
 saving grace of scorn. You will perhaps learn more 
 of Burns in his essay on the famous love affairs 
 than anywhere else. It is at the beginning of the 
 essay on Burns that he states his theory of human 
 understanding. "To write with authority about 
 another man we must have fellow-feeling and some 
 common ground of experience with our subject. 
 We may praise or blame according as we find him 
 related to us by the best or worst in ourselves; but 
 it is only in virtue of some relationship that we can 
 be his judges, even to condemn. Feelings which we 
 share and understand enter for us into the tissue of 
 the man's character; those to which we are stran- 
 gers in our own experience we are inclined to regard 
 as blots, exceptions, inconsistencies and excursions 
 of the diabolic; we conceive them with repugnance, 
 explain them with difficulty, and raise our hands to 
 heaven in wonder when we find them in conjunction 
 with talents that we respect or virtues that we ad- 
 mire." — "Some Aspects of Robert Burns," Familiar 
 Studies of Men and Books. 
 
 This is the reason why such different men as 
 Pepys and Walt Whitman and Charles of Orleans 
 
THE FIRST GREAT ADVENTURE 135 
 
 are open books to him. He knew their characters 
 through his own, as it is given few critics of the 
 intellect to know; and this gift of sympathy would 
 have made him one of the great biographers had he 
 so chosen and persisted. For my own part I regret 
 that he did not so choose. I would gladly forego a 
 few of his Wreckers and Prince Ottos for that pro- 
 jected life of Hazlitt (it was even contracted for 1 ) 
 which he never wrote. For he understood the art of 
 describing greatness, personally and intimately, not 
 by any literary dexterity, but by letting it enter into 
 the tissue of his own character. He understood how 
 the acts of greatness, the world over, are interre- 
 lated, though seas appear to flow between them. 
 For like all men of wide sympathy, he lived in the 
 midst of their influence and focused some part of it 
 in his own valiant mind. Speaking of Yoshida- 
 Torajiro and other Japanese reformers, he says : 
 "It is exhilarating to have lived in the same days 
 with these great-hearted gentlemen. Only a few 
 miles from us, to speak by the proportion of the 
 universe, while I was droning over my lessons, Yo- 
 shida was goading himself to be wakeful with the 
 stings of the mosquito; and while you were grudg- 
 ing a penny income tax, Kusakabe was stepping to 
 death with a noble sentence on his lips." There is no 
 more genuine fiber in Stevenson than this sense of 
 the romance which the great deeds of others give to 
 our smaller lives. 
 
 Do you wonder that Fanny Van de Grift wished 
 
 1 Letters, II, p. 76. 
 
136 STEVENSON 
 
 to cast her lot with his and to rescue him from 
 death's door? Sick as he was, his high spirit, which 
 you may see in this essay on Yoshida-Torajiro, 
 written in the midst of his illness, belied the sorry 
 facts and refused to let them dominate. 
 
 VI 
 
 From May until the end of July, 1880, except for 
 a few weeks when the party were forced to return 
 to Calistoga, owing to a light attack of diphtheria 
 with which Mrs. Stevenson and Lloyd came down, 
 they occupied the Silverado mine. Stevenson's in- 
 terests while there were very quiet. He was much 
 too ill to take an active part in life, but his impres- 
 sions served amply for a pleasant book. The owner 
 of the Silverado Hotel, Rufe Hanson, whose por- 
 trait is really a very considerable performance, Kel- 
 mar, the Jew trader, and the few people who pene- 
 trated into this mountain recess, form the mainstay 
 of the narrative. The description of the arrival and 
 departure of the daily stage-coach, the history of 
 the mine, a typical Stevensonian disquisition on the 
 sea fogs that rolled up the mountainside, and such 
 incidental matters, make the setting. Stevenson 
 does not become a woodland philosopher. Even the 
 esthetics which had served him for a motive in 
 "Forest Notes" and "Fontainebleau" is absent from 
 Silverado Squatters. But on closing the little book 
 you have looked at a strange new corner of nature 
 and known its vivid charm. 
 
THE FIRST GREAT ADVENTURE 137 
 
 The first of August saw the party on their way to 
 New York. When they arrived in Glasgow, August 
 seventeenth, Stevenson's parents and Sidney Colvin 
 were on the dock to meet them. 
 
 The first part of the Great Adventure was over. 
 It had meant for Stevenson many vital experiences 
 and the development of a wisdom that sets the tone 
 of his most serious later work. It had marked the 
 culmination of his long misunderstanding with his 
 father. It had settled him in his craft of literature. 
 It had led him to look at the world from an unusual 
 and invaluable point of view. It had given him his 
 life's chief happiness. And in all this there had 
 been for him both a victory and a defeat. For he 
 could not have put the thing through single-handed. 
 Without the care of the wife he set out to win, and 
 without the final generosity of his father the adven- 
 ture might well have been all misadventure. But if 
 it involved the serious damaging of Stevenson's 
 health, it had also brought him a means for safe- 
 guarding the slim remainder; and Stevenson, keep- 
 ing his mind not on the defeat, but on what was left 
 to him, turned that little year by year into victory. 
 
CHAPTER VIII 
 
 ILL HEALTH AND AMBITION 
 
 I 
 
 THE reunion with his family was a deep satis- 
 faction, the more so since it was directly a 
 part of the blessing of his marriage. It strength- 
 ened his nerves for the definite struggle with sick- 
 ness which now lasted almost without intermission 
 until he returned to America in 1888. In Edin- 
 burgh he was told by Doctor Balfour that the 
 seriously diseased condition of his throat and lungs 
 would make it necessary for him to seek the high 
 air of Switzerland at once. So, with his wife and 
 Lloyd he arrived at Davos Platz early in November, 
 1880. 
 
 In many important respects this first winter at 
 Davos marks the beginning of a new phase in 
 Stevenson's life and literary development. For 
 seven years he had been a restless vagabond. He 
 had been full of changing experiences, and had 
 written on this or that topic, as it had presented 
 itself. He had not exercised himself in steady labor 
 on some one thing that required a continually re- 
 newed comprehension of the whole, especially of 
 
 138 
 
ILL HEALTH AND AMBITION 139 
 
 the relation of each gradual phase to a well-under- 
 stood end. All his productions had been short and, 
 so to speak, casual. His unity of purpose was, like 
 a poet's, the expression of his own temperament 
 apropos of a great variety of interests. He had 
 undertaken no work longer than An Inland Voyage, 
 a book of some two hundred pages. Now, for the 
 next eight years, he was enforced, so far as he 
 could be, to settle down at various health resorts, 
 Davos, Hyeres, Bournemouth, Saranac, to an out- 
 wardly regular life, and though he was inwardly 
 ever the same R. L. S. of roving disposition, a 
 natural change occurred in his temperament as a 
 writer. He became less interested in recording his 
 own immediate pursuits, and, after a few papers 
 on life at Davos, he was apt to seek tasks requiring 
 longer attention and more objective enthusiasms. 
 
 And herein lies what seems to me the tragedy of 
 Stevenson's literary career — for even the most suc- 
 cessful author may have his tragedy. It is a matter 
 to be taken up in more detail later ; but it may now 
 be briefly pointed out that at just the time when 
 Stevenson's maturing purposes naturally tempted 
 him on to try his hand at long books, he began to 
 lack essential qualities for their construction — en- 
 durance and evenness of mood. By a struggle he 
 again and again reached the end of a three or four 
 hundred page story; but the struggle shows; and 
 the end is often not the end, but only an end. This 
 I take to be obvious on a second reading of Prince 
 Otto, Catriona, The Master, The Wrecker, and 
 
140 STEVENSON 
 
 St. Ives. It may be said with a fair approach to the 
 truth that the best of Stevenson is always short, 
 and the weakest long ; and it makes a most convinc- 
 ing evidence, in the conflict between his health and 
 his genius, of the handicap under which he worked. 
 He wished to be a writer of romances; and it is to 
 be laid very largely to his health that his genius, 
 as that is now seen, was in the essays, the tales, and 
 moral fables, and not in the romances. A tale like 
 The Merry Men or certain pages of Kidnapped, or 
 the start of Treasure Island, makes one feel that 
 he was equal to anything. Ons is astounded that 
 after certain chapters or passages, he could not put 
 it through, that invention should flag, sequence fail, 
 and the whole thing shortly lack the sweep, the 
 strong hand of a master. Comparing him to Scott 
 and Dumas, Mr. Copeland has said: "He would 
 not, if he could, have written like them; he could 
 not, if he would, have imagined and invented and 
 swung the whole thing along as they did. They 
 with all their faults, are great romantics; he, with 
 all his gifts and graces, is a little romantic; and 
 the many well-meaning persons who range him per- 
 sistently with Scott do him nothing but disservice." 
 Even supposing other things had been equal, 
 Stevenson had not the health for the great books — 
 look at his picture and then look at those of Scott 
 and Dumas. But Stevenson was a little romantic 
 not only because he lacked physical energy, but 
 because his peculiar nervous temperament, his rapid 
 enthusiasms, forbade him to regulate and to pre- 
 
ILL HEALTH AND AMBITION 141 
 
 serve what energy he had. In this respect his friend, 
 John Addington Symonds, makes a most interesting 
 contrast to him. A much sicker man than Stevenson 
 although normally possessed of a little more bodily 
 vigor, Symonds brought to bear on one of the very 
 greatest of literary tasks a regulated persistence as 
 well as his supreme literary skill. But in his own case 
 Stevenson could not reconcile the two qualities. He 
 remarked of Symonds, whom he met on arriving at 
 Davos in November, that he was "much of an inva- 
 lid in mind and character." Symonds, who died in 
 the year before Stevenson, had planned and was see- 
 ing through to completion the seven volumes of the 
 Renaissance in Italy, a monumental work that shows 
 effort of a kind beyond Stevenson's capability. 
 
 It is doubtful if Stevenson really appreciated the 
 value of the qualities he lacked. Eight years 
 later, when he began to revive at Saranac after a 
 long series of complete prostrations, his physician, 
 Doctor Trudeau, took him into his laboratory to 
 show him some of the experiments that he had been 
 making year by year in his lifelong study of tuber- 
 culosis. Doctor Trudeau, himself a victim of the 
 disease, who had for years lived at Saranac and with 
 the utmost patience, in the face of almost over- 
 whelming difficulty, was then beginning to make 
 those practical discoveries which have placed him 
 among the great benefactors of mankind/ could yet 
 
 x Dr. Edward L. Trudeau went to the Adirondacks in the 
 same year in which Stevenson had been "ordered south," 1873. 
 In 1884 he founded at Saranac Lake the Adirondack Cottage 
 Sanitarium, the first American institution attempting climatic 
 
142 STEVENSON 
 
 gain little sympathetic interest from Stevenson. 
 The romance of such labor in science was beyond 
 the comprehension of the writer of tales. Incor- 
 rigible as ever, Stevenson consented to make but a 
 humorous comment: "Well, Trudeau, your lamp 
 may be very brilliant, but it smells to me too much 
 of oil." 
 
 Now to write long romances without oil has 
 never been done. Stevenson, trying it, failed most 
 of the time. For it was the irony of his tempera- 
 ment that just the steady flame, seemingly so in- 
 compatible with his brilliance at its best, was the 
 one requisite to carry out the sort of work he was 
 henceforth always embarking on. 
 
 But given his temperament, and we must remem- 
 ber that it is for this we read Stevenson and this 
 which he was chiefly intent on expressing, it is 
 doubtful whether he could have done better than he 
 did by scrupulous attention to his "case," and by 
 cautious regular expenditure of his energy. Like 
 most affairs in invalidism, the matter is paradoxical. 
 A few things are certain, however. He carried his 
 objection to "cowardly and prudential maxims" a 
 trifle too far. He never allowed himself to be an 
 exception to his own doctrine and the result was 
 that as an invalid he was never a success. For, if 
 
 and open air treatment of pulmonary diseases. In 1894, the 
 year of Stevenson's death, Doctor Trudeau founded the Sara- 
 nac Laboratory for the Study of Tuberculosis, the first re- 
 search laboratory for the purpose in America. The prolonga- 
 tion of his own life is, as I write, a marvelous tribute to the 
 science which he helped to inaugurate. 
 
ILL HEALTH AND AMBITION 143 
 
 he tried religiously now and again to start on the 
 road toward becoming a cure, he was almost cer- 
 tain to upset all he had gained by an unwise, though 
 always generous-minded, bit of conduct. What had 
 appeared to his physicians as by no means a dan- 
 gerous condition became shortly a most dangerous 
 one; and until Stevenson discovered in 1888, in the 
 South Pacific, a climate where his random ways of 
 life and lack of foresight were not ruinous, he was 
 never in as good condition as, with steady regular 
 care, he might well have been. The story of these 
 years, as told in his letters and in Balfour's Life, 
 will appear to even the casual observer a series of 
 mistakes. That Stevenson turned out an immense 
 amount of literary work meanwhile does not blind 
 one to this fact. Precautions which even a com- 
 paratively robust case should have taken scru- 
 pulously, Stevenson, weighing little more than one 
 hundred pounds, nervous and sensitive to every 
 wind that blew, continually neglected, or found him- 
 self forced by circumstances to neglect. 
 
 II 
 
 Thus, after the first winter in Davos, where he 
 had been steadily improving, he returned in April 
 to France and Scotland against his physician's 
 orders. Mrs. Stevenson had found the elevation 
 of Davos very uncongenial. After the second winter, 
 during which she was ill, he therefore returned to 
 Scotland again. All the good of two seasons was 
 
144 STEVENSON 
 
 undone. Stevenson spent the summer in miserable 
 health, and the story of the following winter on the 
 Riviera illustrates at once the folly and the bravery 
 of his behavior. His cousin Bob took him to Mar- 
 seilles in September, 1882. At the time, he was 
 fully resolved to exert every effort toward recovery 
 and had made up his mind to keep out of England 
 for at least three years. But everything went wrong. 
 He chose a bad locality near Marseilles, began to 
 have hemorrhages, and fled to Nice. For a week, 
 his wife, who had lacked ready money to close the 
 villa and follow him, received no word of his ar- 
 rival and was completely at sea as to his where- 
 abouts. She has told the tale in a remarkable letter 
 to John Addington Symonds included in Sir Sidney 
 Colvin's collection. Like Shelley, Stevenson had the 
 ability of genius for getting into peculiar situations 
 that kept him temperamentally stirred up, though 
 not as a result of his opinions, but usually rather 
 because of the condition of his wardrobe or of his 
 failure to have enough money on hand to remove 
 the suspicions of some landlord. This particular 
 episode was followed by a return to Marseilles in 
 order to sublet their villa, a second visit to Nice and 
 a final settling down at the end of March, 1883, 
 at Hyeres in Chalet La Solitude. Here for nine 
 months things went comparatively well, and Steven- 
 son recorded later that he was happier than at any 
 other time in his life. The air on this part of the Ri- 
 viera has an unequaled refreshing mellowness, ex- 
 cept during a month or two in the summer, which 
 
ILL HEALTH AND AMBITION 145 
 
 Stevenson spent at Royat. The scenery is among the 
 most varied and beautiful in Europe. Stevenson's 
 phrase, "a garden like a fairy story and a view like 
 a classical landscape/' seems to sum it up. 
 
 This interim of good health lasted until January, 
 1884, when he had the most serious illness of his 
 life, and from the effects of which he can hardly 
 be said to have ever recovered. At all events, it 
 began a series of attacks which lasted steadily till 
 four years later at Saranac. Charles Baxter and 
 W. E. Henley had come for a visit, and because La 
 Solitude was too small for comfort, the Stevensons 
 went with them to Nice. There Louis came down 
 with acute congestion of the lungs and kidneys. His 
 life was despaired of. But Bob Stevenson arrived 
 from Paris and did wonders in keeping up the sick 
 man's spirits as well as those of his wife. After 
 they returned to La Solitude in February, Stevenson 
 had only a few weeks' respite before he was again 
 at death's door. The immediate occasion of this 
 attack seems to have been a bonfire celebration in 
 his garden over the indictment for libel of a certain 
 London editor. With their devoted French servant, 
 Valentine Roch, the Stevensons danced about the 
 fire in the cold night air. The next day Louis was 
 ill with sciatica followed by a violent hemorrhage. 
 At just this time an epidemic of Egyptian ophthalmia 
 broke out in the locality. He contracted it, and now 
 lay in a darkened room, with a bandage over his 
 eyes, sciatica racking his limbs, and his right arm 
 bound to his side as a precaution against another 
 
146 STEVENSON 
 
 hemorrhage. His frame of mind under these con- 
 ditions his wife has recorded in the preface of The 
 Dynamiter. Thoroughly discouraged by finding that 
 she could not read to him in the darkened room, she 
 remarked ironically that she supposed he would 
 regard even this as for the best. Stevenson replied 
 that it was just what he was about to say. But 
 genius and Providence turn everything to account. 
 Mrs. Stevenson amused her husband by telling him 
 stories. The Dynamiter, their joint work, had its 
 origin in this sick-room. 
 
 After this illness, the Riviera became so danger- 
 ous from an epidemic of cholera that the Steven- 
 sons, abandoning their good resolution to live in a 
 climate advantageous to Louis's disease, started by 
 slow stages for England, and took up quarters at 
 the end of July, 1884, at Richmond. Another rea- 
 son for this step was the serious condition of his 
 father's health. Moving in September to Bourne- 
 mouth on the Channel, where the air is often soft, 
 though damp, they lived in lodgings till April, 1885, 
 and then, till August, 1887, in the house they called 
 Skerryvore, a gift from Thomas Stevenson to his 
 daughter-in-law. During these three years in Eng- 
 land Stevenson was forced by continued illness to 
 lead a very careful existence. His letters record a 
 succession of colds, "hoasts," "thundering influ- 
 enzas," "liver and slight bleeding," hemorrhage, 
 fever, chills, and gloom — often in the gayest man- 
 ner. Housed or in bed a large part of the time, 
 "old, and fagged, and chary of speech," not talking 
 
ILL HEALTH AND AMBITION 147 
 
 aloud, in fact, except for a few hours of an evening, 
 he was still able to continue his literary work, as he 
 had done at Davos and Hyeres. So positive an 
 energy is the will to write. 
 
 But this state of affairs could not have continued 
 much longer, and after his father's death in May, 
 1887, it was decided to see what certain American 
 resorts would do for him. With his mother and 
 Valentine Roch, the party reached New York in 
 September. As before, he had felt benefit from 
 the voyage. But while his wife hastened to Saranac 
 to engage a house, he became ill at Newport where 
 he had gone to visit the Fairchilds. From the 
 first of October until April of the following year 
 he was at Saranac in the care of Doctor Trudeau. 
 It is an interesting fact that Doctor Trudeau found 
 in Stevenson no signs of actual tuberculosis. 1 His 
 disease of the lungs and throat had probably been 
 of the fibroid type and was continued, not by the 
 inroads of the tubercular bacillus, but by erosion of 
 old scars and congestions from other causes. As 
 all readers of Mr. Balfour's Life know, Stevenson 
 did not die of consumption, but of a suffusion of 
 blood in his brain. It may be said with all likeli- 
 hood of truth that a few years of continuous careful 
 regimen at Davos, or on the Riveria, or at Saranac, 
 would long before have so improved his condition 
 that the terrible experiences of the years from 1880 
 to 1888 could have been avoided. To their weaken- 
 
 1 According to Doctor Trudeau's personal statement to the 
 writer. 
 
148 STEVENSON 
 
 ing effect and perhaps to inheritance, his death six 
 years later seems to have been due. 
 
 The winter at Saranac was the beginning of this 
 new, though short, lease of life; and when he left 
 there in April it was with sufficient energy to under- 
 take the journey to California and to embark on 
 the South Sea cruise. 
 
 These are the main facts of Stevenson's long ill- 
 ness. I have detailed them thus at length, for they 
 are the background of his life and of his work. 
 They are in the texture of his philosophy. 
 
 It was during this period that he wrote most of 
 the books by which he is now known; and I shall 
 give a list of them here to accompany the facts of 
 his illness, for the two together constitute the mir- 
 acle of his career. At Davos and in Scotland, Novem- 
 ber, 1880, to September, 1882, he had written The 
 Merry Men, "Thrawn Janet," "The Body Snatcher," 
 the essays on "Pepys," "Talks and Talkers'' and 
 several other papers, The Silverado Squatters, "The 
 Treasure of Franchard" and Treasure Island. He 
 had seen through the press with all the labor of 
 proof correcting, Virginibus Puerisque, Familiar 
 Studies of Men and Books,and New Arabian Nights 
 in two volumes. At Hyeres, March, 1883, to June, 
 1884 (and please recollect the circumstances of those 
 sixteen months), he had been at work on The Black 
 Arrow, printed in Young Folks' during the summer 
 of 1883, Prince Otto, some of the poems in Under- 
 woods' and A Child's Garden of Verses, and several 
 of his most charming essays, such as "A Penny 
 
ILL HEALTH AND AMBITION 149 
 
 Plain" and "The Character of Dogs." On January 
 first, 1884, he boasted of a total of four hundred and 
 sixty-five pounds, no shillings, sixpence for the 
 past twelve months. At Bournemouth, July, 1884, 
 to September, 1887, he had written More New 
 Arabian Nights, "Markheim," "Ollala," Strange 
 Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, Kidnapped, Me- 
 moir of Fleeming Jenkin, and many essays, among 
 them "Pastoral" and "The Manse," included in 
 Memories and Portraits which he saw through the 
 press after reaching America. Prince Otto, A 
 Child's Garden of Verses, and the volume called 
 The Merry Men and Other Tales were also pub- 
 lished during this period. At Saranac, October, 
 1887, to April, 1888, he was writing monthly ar- 
 ticles for Scribner's Magazine and starting The 
 Master of Ballantrae, which ran in Scribner's Maga- 
 zine from November, 1888, to October, 1889. 1 He 
 wrote these things, as he has said, in bed and out 
 of it, in hemorrhages, in sickness, when torn by 
 coughing and when his head swam for weakness. 
 Had he not, for so long, "won his wager and re- 
 covered his glove?" 
 
 Ill 
 
 There are, however, so many different views of 
 the relation of genius and its ambitions to ill health 
 that it may be well to make certain further qualifi- 
 
 1 For a nearly complete list of Stevenson's writings, see 
 Balfour's Life, Vol. II, Appendix F. See also the very inter- 
 esting and complete Bibliography of the works of Robert 
 Louis Stevenson, by Col. W. F. Prideaux, C. S. I. 
 
150 STEVENSON 
 
 cations for Stevenson's case. It is said, for example, 
 that a disease of the lungs is not always a depressing 
 disease, and that in fact it is sometimes stimulating. 
 This is true ; but that it added stimulation to Steven- 
 son's normal genius is unlikely. And there are, in 
 this connection, several fallacies, medical and senti- 
 mental, which it is well to avoid. 
 
 First, Stevenson does not belong in any possible 
 list of those men whose originality appears to have 
 some source in their physical and mental defects, 
 whose creative power seems to result from a cer- 
 tain degenerate sensitiveness. For while it is true 
 that many artists have suffered, like millions of 
 people not artists, from some undermining disease 
 or habit, very few have found out their artistic capa- 
 bilities through the action of ill health, or in the 
 excitement produced, let us say, by alcohol. After 
 a careful sifting of much evidence in this matter, 
 there appears to the writer little warrant for con- 
 necting casually the artistic nature with the un- 
 sound body. In the face of a thousand healthy 
 exceptions, no such theory, if proposed, is really 
 tenable. On the other hand, it is, of course, equally 
 impossible to say that health is a fundamental con- 
 dition of art; and such a theory, if proposed, would 
 be untenable in the face of significant exceptions. 
 All one can assert is that the sort of health which 
 means nervous energy is usually necessary to any 
 sustained artistic effort and that the artistic tempera- 
 ment has usually been born and bred in that sort of 
 health, whatever circumstances later surround it. 
 
ILL HEALTH AND AMBITION 151 
 
 Secondly, it is sometimes pointed out that it is 
 not invariably harder or more heroic for the un- 
 healthy man to do literary work than for the 
 healthy, since the limitations imposed by invalidism, 
 if it is not some form of nervous exhaustion, often 
 serve but to increase a man's devotion to the one 
 interest remaining to him. Now it is true that art 
 is mistress, that a man does not so naturally incline 
 to give up writing as he might a business or a pro- 
 fession for ill health ; and in this sense ill health may 
 have occasionally benefited the world by increasing 
 the leisure of an author who previously was full of 
 other duties. But it could hardly help the quality 
 of his work. It could hardly increase the number 
 of those authors whom Carlyle wished to pay for 
 what they had not written. And to this case Steven- 
 son is no exception. He wrote too much. Like 
 every earnest modern author he wrote for money. 
 No one who loves and knows him would dream of 
 excusing him, on the ground of his invalidism, by 
 saying that at all events he did his best. The words 
 would be curiously ironical. His best is of the very 
 finest and brooks no such condescension; but he 
 wrote a great deal in those hours of suffering that 
 could not be his best, and he persisted doggedly in 
 putting it forth along with the other and sometimes 
 in believing it worthy. So easily is the will to write 
 led into temptation. In brief, it is probable that 
 his health so limited other activities that he devoted 
 more of his energy to writing than was good for his 
 art. In his paradoxical case — and the case of the 
 
152 STEVENSON 
 
 invalid is, as we have remarked, often a paradox — 
 the energy which was necessary to produce his art 
 at all somewhat weakened its quality. If he often 
 worked with great skill in the face of weariness and 
 sickness he was probably supported not so much 
 by moral fortitude as by that peculiar nervous ardor 
 which literary labor develops; and thus he was led 
 into the temptation to write under circumstances 
 when the vision of his purpose grew vague, grew 
 to be a sort of whimsical license to ramble hither 
 and thither, instead of a definite and inspiring guide. 
 Thirdly, we must not imagine Stevenson to be 
 one of those natures whom disease hardens, who 
 go with gritted teeth to their tasks. For the won- 
 derful thing about his character was his ability to 
 escape the cankerous effects of sickness and to retain 
 his enthusiasms near at hand. The positive idea to 
 realize is that Stevenson, ' like most sensitive and 
 enthusiastic natures, enjoyed getting as much action 
 or emotion, or what people call interest, out of the 
 circumstances of his life as he possibly could. So 
 he liked to exaggerate, as a satirist likes to ridicule, 
 for the sake of appreciating a certain aspect of a 
 thing more sharply. He exaggerated now his woes 
 and now his sense of superiority to them, in order 
 to profit doubly in his own esteem. Who has not 
 done this? But who has succeeded so well as Ste- 
 venson in painting a picture of his troubles, at once 
 painfully vivid and positively cheerful? Stevenson 
 had undoubtedly a glorious capacity for trouble. 
 It never dwarfed, though I believe it somewhat 
 
ILL HEALTH AND AMBITION 153 
 
 diffused, his character. It is in this respect that he 
 is different from most men. Trouble for most men 
 is thoroughly troublesome, and little else. It does 
 not transmute itself into anything positive, any- 
 thing, at least, which does not savor of martyrdom 
 and self-sacrifice or of self -satis factions of a nega- 
 tive order. Stevenson is always high on the positive 
 side of life. His sharpest satire has the rare quality 
 of being always constructive; and so fearful was 
 he of destroying any of the positive illusions of 
 youth that he withheld from publication that essay, 
 printed only the other day, on "The Choice of a 
 Profession" — an essay which any one, hoping to 
 do anything positive in art in this commercialized 
 age, would do well to read forthwith. 
 
 Finally then, in view of the facts and opinions 
 just cited, it would appear to make little difference 
 whether one believes with such a critic as Mr. Frank 
 Swinnerton that Stevenson's "peculiar nervous 
 brilliance" is partly due to his delicate health, as it 
 undoubtedly was, or whether one prefers to say that 
 genius is so positive an energy that it can always 
 transform a certain amount of sickness and irrita- 
 tion into fuel for its purposes. Neither statement 
 greatly affects the central fact, the extraordinary 
 will to write which Stevenson at all times displayed. 
 Nor does it affect the unforgettable lesson of this 
 whole matter, the close relationship in Stevenson 
 of character and genius as expressed by this will to 
 write. It is sheer sophistry to argue on the one 
 hand that courage is shown only by the author who 
 
154 STEVENSON 
 
 labors in the face of sharp physical pain, or on the 
 other that genius requires no support from courage. 
 Let us repeat that Stevenson's genius and his cour- 
 age were, like the moral doctrine that he derived 
 from them, continually combined in positive action. 
 His courage lay not in outfacing obstacles, but in 
 being cheerful under ordinary circumstances. In 
 the face of obstacles most of us can assume some 
 sort of grin and play-act a noble part for the mo- 
 ment. Doubtless, kind friends, who for the rest 
 of the time are bored to death with glumness, will 
 tell us that in such moments our real character comes 
 out. If this were true, we had better seek trouble 
 daily. But Stevenson preaches a saner doctrine — 
 the cultivation of a positive, not a latent courage, a 
 courage which is effective in the face of three meals 
 to-day, and the funeral baked meats to-morrow. It 
 is, more especially, a courage that creates its own 
 adventures, even with a touch of whimsical bravado 
 after the manner of Don Quixote, Stevenson's con- 
 fessed prototype. 
 
 Therefore, the important point to perceive in 
 connection with the facts of Stevenson's health is 
 that though the character of his work was harmed 
 by his health, it is mainly in the form, the coherence 
 of certain books, rarely in the tone or in the out- 
 look on life of the writer. Above the ills of these 
 years, recorded now humorously and now as mere 
 family news in the letters of Sir Sidney Colvin's 
 second volume, the spirit of Stevenson sails indom- 
 itable. So it seemed to the friends at his bedside, 
 
ILL HEALTH AND AMBITION 155 
 
 and so it seems to us in reading the books he then 
 wrote. How great was this achievement, and how 
 noble the energy that accomplished it is a thought 
 not to be discounted in any impersonal estimate, 
 like that which follows, of his books as works of art. 
 
CHAPTER IX 
 
 THE SPIRIT OF ROMANCE 
 
 ONE of the changes that comes over the char- 
 acter of Stevenson's work with his confine- 
 ment by ill health is, as we have remarked, a 
 diminution of the autobiographic temper. Until 
 1880 he had largely concerned himself with his per- 
 sonal experiences and opinions. Until 1880 one 
 might construct from his writings an account, al- 
 most year by year, of his employments and purposes. 
 But after 1880 this would no longer be possible. 
 Except for a few sketches of life at Davos and his 
 journal of South Sea cruises, the record is as in- 
 direct as that in the novels and essays of Thackeray. 
 I say indirect, for I would not imply that Steven- 
 son stopped talking of himself. He was still intent 
 on painting life in the colors of his own mind and 
 he never made the mistake of trying to depersonalize 
 his style or to eliminate his own character from the 
 atmosphere of his books. But when Stevenson took 
 to writing romances, it means, first, that he blended 
 his feelings, his experience, his philosophy, with 
 more objective purposes and, second, that he was 
 
 156 
 
THE SPIRIT OF ROMANCE 157 
 
 forming literary ambitions independent of his own 
 comings and goings which he could hardly regard 
 during those eight years of illness from 1880 to 
 1888 as matter to his hand. It did not mean that 
 Stevenson began to write about the external world 
 of the novels of society. His realism is all of his 
 own making. Like the romantic poet, he has a 
 world about him that is his own, and fiction is his 
 more diffuse mode of self-expression, or of self-en- 
 tertainment, during his long period of bad weather. 
 
 II 
 
 A romance is primarily a flight of fancy. It is 
 in this sense a very personal matter and yet not 
 always personally controllable. It is something like 
 a dream. It takes on its local color, not .from cor- 
 responding accurately to any corner of the real 
 world, but from being spun out of the author's pure 
 imagination. The author of romances must be true 
 primarily to himself, to the inner actuality of his 
 mind. He must be ruled by the habits of his fancy 
 and not too much by the facts of the outer world. 
 In telling a story he is as much like one trying to 
 recall a vision as he is like one telling what he has 
 seen with his own eyes. Stevenson's romantic 
 stories have this peculiar texture. They have the 
 sound of stories told out of a dream. There is a 
 marvelous unreality which is yet in no respect a 
 falseness and which one accepts in place of reality 
 
158 STEVENSON 
 
 without looking back. Setting, action, sequence, 
 motive, denouement, the whole fabrication in such 
 stories as The Merry Men, Dr. Jekyll, "The Pa- 
 vilion on the Links," or even The Master of Ballan- 
 trae, is a piece of transcendent make-believe. It is, 
 in fact, very much like Stevenson himself — the 
 child who had told wonder-tales all day long, who 
 had played endless games of "supposing" alone in 
 the corners of his father's house, and who had kept 
 on playing all his life. 
 
 In Stevenson's letters and in his essays on his own 
 disposition as a writer of romances, he has pretty 
 well explained himself. So, in his romances them- 
 selves, we are prepared to see a man who has long 
 been enlarging the place of his imagination and 
 who now continues to do this in maturity, not as a 
 novelist ordinarily does by peopling his imagination 
 with realities and by letting in as much of the light 
 of day as he can command, but rather by finding 
 out the strange beings who are, so to speak, already 
 living behind the shadows of that unexplored and 
 inexhaustible region. To preserve the shadows, to 
 preserve the zest of their exploration, to keep the 
 whole adventure in the atmosphere of its original oc- 
 currence in fancy and never to let it issue into the 
 raw air of actuality, is the Stevensonian purpose. 
 It had been the unconscious purpose of little R. L. S. 
 in child's play. 
 
 Stevenson was never a realist in the narrow sense 
 of the word. The young man who carried his note- 
 book in his pocket and who spent hours studying 
 
THE SPIRIT OF ROMANCE 159 
 
 "at first hand" in the forest of Fontainebleau or 
 along the rocks at Anstruther was also intent on 
 making over the object that it might better accord 
 with his dreams; and it is entirely characteristic 
 that, as he began to write romances, he should 
 also proceed, in various essays and letters, to warn 
 against the so-called realistic school as dangerous 
 and baneful. "The danger is lest, in seeking to 
 draw the normal, a man should draw the dull, and 
 write the novel of society instead of the romance 
 of man." The essays called "Lantern Bearers," 
 "A Novel of Dumas's," "A Humble Remon- 
 strance," "Penny Plain," "A Note on Realism," 
 all but one written during these years at 
 Davos and Hyeres, where he was also writing 
 his first long stories, are his emphatic insistence 
 on the half-shut eye against "the dazzle and con- 
 fusion of reality," as the artistic method par excel- 
 lence, whether a man "reasons or creates." 
 
 Truth exists within the mind. Realism, as a 
 purpose in literature, only pretends that it exists 
 exclusively without. Truth is what one aims at in 
 all art. Realism is only a technical fidelity to the 
 external world which leads a writer to seek therein 
 something other than the beautiful. Impersonality in 
 art is but half-truth. It is always possible that mere 
 truth of fact may be truth without charm. Charm 
 and beauty are the positive, the personal virtues of 
 artistic insight; dulness and ugliness are the nega- 
 tive and impersonal qualities of things themselves. 
 For a man of romantic imagination, life untinged 
 
160 STEVENSON 
 
 with beauty is not life-like. What we look for in 
 a book, says Stevenson, is some projection of the 
 author. Charm is a personal emanation — "the one 
 excuse and breath of art." So in his narratives, 
 as in other writings, it is always Stevenson's inten- 
 tion to weave a spell of style and to capture the 
 mind by fancy. This practise leads him to say 
 emphatically that "true realism, always and every- 
 where, is that of the poet's." 
 
 If a romance is a flight of poetic fancy, it must 
 lead to a place somewhat removed from the world 
 — and one is inclined to add that this is the ro- 
 manticist's notion about any piece of reading worthy 
 of the name. A book is a place by itself. It is not 
 just a mirror of the world. It is like something in 
 life, maybe ; but it is not merely a part of life. It is 
 another, an additional, resort. We know our way 
 round in its geography, not because of our experi- 
 ence in the outer world, but because we have, each 
 of us in our heads, a small tract of the same en- 
 chanted region from which to explore further. 
 From this the writer of romances starts and soon 
 emerges, one can hardly tell how, into his special 
 country. Strange colors play over the landscape. 
 The vestiges of logic disappear and are not re- 
 gretted; the sights and sounds of the place can be 
 at once less real and more vivid than those of life, 
 just as the sensations of a dream are more vivid 
 than those of any given waking moment ; and though 
 memory refuses to divulge them accurately to con- 
 sciousness, they somehow retain a glamourous bril- 
 
THE SPIRIT OF ROMANCE 161 
 
 liance and a far suggestion to which reality has no 
 parallel. 
 
 Yet it is all so true. For this place is the creation 
 of a strong sense within us for what is fitting as dis- 
 tinguished from what merely is. On the earth are 
 places full of actual deeds and memories. But the 
 deeds might often as naturally have occurred else- 
 where, and the memories usually haunt the place 
 only by that sort of accident which makes up the 
 realism of an arbitrary world. In the enchanted 
 region of romance, the longing for fitness is always 
 being satisfied. There, as Stevenson has suggested, 
 if certain dank gardens cry aloud for murder, the 
 murder is properly committed; and seacoasts set 
 apart for shipwreck do not wait long for the event. 
 According to the laws of romance, which are the 
 laws of fitness and not of logic and morals, true 
 reality consists in having all these things fit to- 
 gether as they should, in bringing about "the mark- 
 ing incident" at just the proper time, and in making 
 "all the circumstances of the tale answer one to 
 another like notes in music." Obviously the fas- 
 cination of this country of romance is not in the 
 characters and consciences and morals that are de- 
 veloped there, but in the likely adventures of the 
 place, and also especially in the fact that we are the 
 adventurers. "Something happens as we desire to 
 have it happen to ourselves; some situation, that 
 we have long dallied with in fancy, is realized in the 
 story with enticing and appropriate details. Then 
 we forget the characters; then we push the hero 
 
162 STEVENSON 
 
 aside ; then we plunge into the tale in our own person 
 and bathe in fresh experience; and then, and then 
 only, do we say that we have been reading a ro- 
 mance." — "A Gossip on Romance," Memories and 
 Portraits. 
 
 It was no doubt so that things had happened in 
 Skeltdom, and, for a true reader like Stevenson, 
 would happen anywhere in story books. "What 
 am I? What are life, art, letters, the world, but 
 what my Skelt has made them? He stamped him- 
 self upon my immaturity. The world was plain 
 before I knew him, a poor penny world; but soon 
 it was all coloured with romance." — "A Penny 
 Plain," Memories and Portraits. 
 
 To understand this, one must certainly know how 
 to read — or rather to listen, for a romance is listened 
 to, rather than read. It is the tone of the thing 
 that counts most. The reader must surrender him- 
 self utterly. Criticism of a romance and of the ro- 
 mantic temper by one who has never read as, for 
 example, Stevenson himself read, would be pretty 
 nearly worthless ; it may be nearly worthless in any 
 case. But I believe that the best criticism of Ste- 
 venson's tales is in such pictures as he draws of his 
 evenings with some favorite book like the Vicomte 
 de Bragelonne. "I would return in the early night," 
 he says, "from one of my patrols with the shepherd 
 (John Todd) ; a friendly face would meet me in 
 the door, a friendly retriever scurry up-stairs to 
 
THE SPIRIT OF ROMANCE 163 
 
 fetch my slippers; and I would sit down with the 
 Vicomte for a long, silent, solitary lamplight evening 
 by the fire. And yet I know not why I call it silent, 
 when it was enlivened with such a clatter of horse- 
 shoes, and such a rattle of musketry, and such a stir 
 of talk; or why I call those evenings solitary in 
 which I gained so many friends. I would rise 
 from my book and pull the blind aside, and see the 
 snow and the glittering hollies chequer a Scotch 
 garden, and the winter moonlight brighten the white 
 hills. Thence I would turn again to that crowded 
 and sunny field of life in which it was so easy to 
 forget myself, my cares, and my surroundings; a 
 place busy as a city, bright as a theatre, thronged 
 with memorable faces, and sounding with delightful 
 speech. I carried the thread of that epic into my 
 slumbers, I woke with it unbroken, I rejoiced to 
 plunge into the book again at breakfast, it was with 
 a pang that I must lay it down and turn to my own 
 labours.'* — "A Novel of Dumas's," Memories and 
 Portraits. 
 
 The long romance is of all books the most en- 
 thralling and the most companionable, and it was not 
 for nothing that Stevenson understood so instinc- 
 tively its fascination. When all the weaknesses in 
 his own fabrications have been pointed out, traced 
 to his bad health or to his supposed purposeless- 
 ness, it still remains that his books and even his 
 fragments of books, make marvelous reading for 
 those not too much concerned with getting some- 
 
164 STEVENSON 
 
 where. If, like the stories one tells to children, or 
 like the adventures one has in dreams, they do not 
 often work out very inevitably; if they fade or 
 merely stop; if the sequence of adventures is de- 
 cidedly haphazard, and the characters for a large 
 part of the time do not appear to be much beyond 
 their clothes and a quaint phrase or two; yet each 
 incident, while it lasts, is enthralling; the situation 
 and the scenery are ever in accord; and the reader 
 has always been for the time being in the country 
 of his own imagination. 
 
 Ill 
 
 This much is true for nearly any of Stevenson's 
 books, especially if read at the same age at which 
 Scott and Dumas are most appreciated. But a great 
 deal more can be said for two or three; and for 
 Treasure Island, though confessedly a tale written 
 much at random, there is more to say than any 
 matter-of-fact tongue can possibly speak. 1 
 
 I can well remember the first time I read that al- 
 most perfect yarn. I was twenty-five years old. 
 I had somehow missed it in my boyhood, and I now 
 came on it while I was teaching in the United 
 States Naval Academy which, as every one knows, 
 is an utterly matter-of-fact place completely sur- 
 rounded by the seas of romance. I was at the time 
 steeped in the practical details of ships and their 
 
 1 See "My First Book," printed as an introduction to 
 Treasure Island in the Biographical Edition. 
 
THE SPIRIT OF ROMANCE 165 
 
 history. Moreover, so far as fiction went, I had 
 just made the discovery, in the Academy library, of 
 Joseph Conrad and his true romances of the sea, 
 which at once became and have remained my fa- 
 vorite books in that supreme part of nature. And 
 one day I picked up Treasure Island with a premoni- 
 tion that it had come to me, alas, too late; for I 
 knew well enough what the story was about. In- 
 stead, I launched on a voyage second to none. I 
 was never surer that I had really got somewhere at 
 last, that this was one of those bits of geography 
 from which no traveler willingly returns, which 
 with years do not fade in his mind, which bring 
 the conviction that he has again seen the promised 
 land and reassure him that he can never live quite 
 in vain. 
 
 Will you read the opening pages once more. It 
 will take only a moment. 
 
 THE OLD SEA DOG AT THE "ADMIRAL BENBOW" 
 
 "Squire Trelawney, Dr. Livesey, and the rest of 
 these gentlemen having asked me to write down the 
 whole particulars about Treasure Island, from the 
 beginning to the end, keeping nothing back but the 
 bearings of the island, and that only because there 
 is still treasure not yet lifted, I take up my pen in 
 the year of grace 17 — , and go back to the time when 
 my father kept the 'Admiral Benbow* inn, and the 
 brown old seaman, with the sabre cut, first took up 
 his lodging under our roof. 
 
166 STEVENSON 
 
 "I remember him as if it were yesterday, as he 
 came plodding to the inn door, his sea chest follow- 
 ing behind him in a hand-barrow; a tall, strong, 
 heavy, nut-brown man ; his tarry pigtail falling over 
 the shoulders of his soiled blue coat; his hands 
 ragged and scarred, with black, broken nails; and 
 the sabre cut across one cheek, a dirty, livid white. 
 I remember him looking round the cove and whis- 
 tling to himself as he did so, and then breaking out 
 in that old sea-song that he sang so often after- 
 wards : — 
 
 " 'Fifteen men on the dead man's chest — 
 Yo-ho-ho, and a bottle of rum!' 
 
 in the high, old tottering voice that seemed to have 
 been tuned and broken at the capstan bars. Then 
 he rapped on the door with a bit of stick like a 
 handspike that he carried, and when my father ap- 
 peared, called roughly for a glass of rum. This, 
 when it was brought to him, he drank slowly, like 
 a connoisseur, lingering on the taste, and still look- 
 ing about him at the cliffs and up at our signboard. 
 
 " This is a handy cove/ says he, at length ; 'and 
 a pleasant sittyated grog-shop. Much company, 
 mate ?' 
 
 "My father told hirn no, very little company, the 
 more was the pity. 
 
 " 'Well, then,' said he, 'this is the berth for me. 
 Here, you, matey,' he cried to the man who trundled 
 the barrow; 'bring up alongside and help up my 
 chest. I'll stay here a bit,' he continued. 'I'm a 
 
THE SPIRIT OF ROMANCE 167 
 
 plain man ; rum and bacon and eggs is what I want, 
 and that head up there for to watch ships off. What 
 you mought call me? You mought call me captain. 
 Oh, I see what you're at — there;' and he threw 
 down three or four gold pieces on the threshold. 
 'You can tell me when I've worked through that,' 
 says he, looking as fierce as a commander. 
 
 "And, indeed, bad as his clothes were, and coarsely 
 as he spoke, he had none of the appearance of a 
 man who sailed before the mast; but seemed like a 
 mate or skipper, accustomed to be obeyed or to 
 strike. The man who came with the barrow told 
 us the mail had set him down the morning before at 
 the 'Royal George ;' that he had inquired what inns 
 there were along the coast, and hearing ours well 
 spoken of, I suppose, and described as lonely, had 
 chosen it from the others for his place of residence. 
 And that was all we could learn of our guest. 
 
 "He was a very silent man by custom. All day 
 he hung round the cove, or upon the cliffs, with a 
 brass telescope; all evening he sat in a corner of 
 the parlour next the fire, and drank rum and water 
 very strong. Mostly he would not speak when 
 spoken to ; only look up sudden and fierce, and blow 
 through his nose like a fog-horn; and we and the 
 people who came about our house soon learned to let 
 him be. Every day, when he came back from his 
 stroll, he would ask if any seafaring men had gone 
 by along the road? At first we thought it was the 
 want of company of his own kind that made him 
 ask this question ; but at last we began to see he was 
 
168 STEVENSON 
 
 desirous to avoid them. When a seaman put up 
 at the 'Admiral Benbow' (as now and then some 
 did, making by the coast road for Bristol), he would 
 look in at him through the curtained door before he 
 entered the parlour; and he was always sure to be 
 as silent as a mouse when any such was present. 
 For me, at least, there was no secret about the mat- 
 ter ; for I was, in a way, a sharer in his alarms. He 
 had taken me aside one day, and promised me a 
 silver fourpenny on the first of every month if I 
 would only keep my 'weather-eye open for a sea- 
 faring man with one leg,' and let him know the mo- 
 ment he appeared. Often enough, when the first 
 of the month came round, and I applied to him for 
 my wage, he would only blow through his nose at 
 me, and stare me down; but before the week was 
 out he was sure to think better of it, bring me my 
 fourpenny piece, and repeat his orders to look out 
 for 'the seafaring man with one leg.' . . . 
 
 "It was not very long after this that there oc- 
 curred the first of the mysterious events that rid us 
 at last of the captain, though not, as you will see, of 
 his affairs. It was a bitter cold winter, with long, 
 hard frosts and heavy gales ; and it was plain from 
 the first that my poor father was little likely to see 
 the spring. He sank daily, and my mother and I 
 had all the inn upon our hands ; and were kept busy 
 enough, without paying much regard to our un- 
 pleasant guest. 
 
 "It was one January morning, very early — a 
 
THE SPIRIT OF ROMANCE 169 
 
 pinching, frosty morning — the cove all grey with 
 hoar-frost, the ripple lapping softly on the stones, 
 the sun still low and only touching the hill-tops and 
 shining far to seaward. The captain had risen 
 earlier than usual, and set out down the beach, his 
 cutlass swinging under the broad skirts of the old 
 blue coat, his brass telescope under his arm, his hat 
 tilted back upon his head. I remember his breath 
 hanging like smoke in his wake as he strode 
 off. . . . 
 
 "Well, mother was up-stairs with father; and I 
 was laying the breakfast table against the captain's 
 return, when the parlour door opened, and a man 
 stepped in on whom I had never set my eyes before. 
 He was a pale, tallowy creature, wanting two fingers 
 of the left hand; and though he wore a cutlass, he 
 did not look much like a fighter. I had always my 
 eye open for seafaring men, with one leg or two, 
 and I remember this one puzzled me. He was 
 not sailorly, and yet he had a smack of the sea about 
 him too. 
 
 "I asked him what was for his service, and he 
 said he would take rum; but as I was going out of 
 the room to fetch it he sat down upon a table and 
 motioned me to draw near. I paused where I was 
 with my napkin in my hand. 
 
 " 'Come here, sonny,' says he. 'Come nearer 
 here.' I took a step nearer. 
 
 " 'Is this here table for my mate Bill ?' he asked, 
 with a kind of leer. 
 
170 STEVENSON 
 
 "I told him I did not know his mate Bill ; and this 
 was for a person who stayed in our house, whom 
 we called the captain. 
 
 " 'Well/ said he, 'my mate Bill would be called 
 the captain, as like as not. He has a cut on one 
 cheek, and a mighty pleasant way with him, par- 
 ticularly in drink, has my mate Bill. We'll put it, 
 for argument like, that your captain has a cut on 
 one cheek — and we'll put it, if you like, that that 
 cheek's the right one. Ah, well ! I told you. Now, 
 is my mate Bill in this here house ?' 
 
 "I told him he was out walking. 
 
 " 'Which way, sonny ? Which way is he gone ?' 
 
 "And when I had pointed out the rock and told 
 him how the captain was likely to return, and how 
 soon, and answered a few other questions, 'Ah,' 
 said he, 'this'll be as good as drink to my mate Bill.' 
 
 "The expression of his face as he said these words 
 was not at all pleasant, and I had my own reasons 
 for thinking that the stranger was mistaken, even 
 supposing he meant what he said. But it was no 
 affair of mine, I thought; and, besides, it was diffi- 
 cult to know what to do. The stranger kept hang- 
 ing about just inside the inn door, peering round 
 the corner like a cat waiting for a mouse. Once I 
 stepped out myself into the road, but he immediately 
 called me back, and, as I did not obey quick enough 
 for his fancy, a most horrible change came over his 
 tallowy face, and he ordered me in, with an oath that 
 made me jump. As soon as I was back again he 
 returned to his former manner, half fawning, half 
 
THE SPIRIT OF ROMANCE 171 
 
 sneering, patted me on the shoulder, told me I was 
 a good boy, and he had taken quite a fancy to me. 
 'I have a son of my own/ said he, 'as like you as 
 two blocks, and he's all the pride of my 'art. But 
 the great thing for boys is discipline, sonny — disci- 
 pline. Now, if you had sailed along of Bill, you 
 wouldn't have stood there to be spoke to twice — not 
 you. That was never Bill's way, nor the way of 
 sich as sailed with him. And here, sure enough, is 
 my mate Bill, with a spyglass under his arm, bless 
 his old 'art, to be sure. You and me' 11 just go back 
 into the parlour, sonny, and get behind the door, 
 and we'll give Bill a little surprise — bless his 'art, I 
 say again.' 
 
 "So saying, the stranger backed along with me 
 into the parlour, and put me behind him in the 
 corner, so that we were both hidden by the open 
 door. I was very uneasy and alarmed, as you may 
 fancy, and it rather added to my fears to observe 
 that the stranger was certainly frightened himself. 
 He cleared the hilt of his cutlass and loosened the 
 blade in the sheath ; and all the time we were waiting 
 there he kept swallowing as if he felt what we used 
 to call a lump in the throat. 
 
 "At last in strode the captain, slammed the door 
 behind him, without looking to the right or left, 
 and marched straight across the room to where his 
 breakfast awaited him. 
 
 " 'Bill,' said the stranger, in a voice that I thought 
 he had tried to make bold and big. 
 
 "The captain spun round on his heel and fronted 
 
172 STEVENSON 
 
 us ; all the brown had gone out of his face, and even 
 his nose was blue; he had the look of a man who 
 sees a ghost, or the evil one, or something worse, 
 if anything can be; and, upon my word, I felt sorry 
 to see him, all in a moment, turn so old and sick. 
 
 " 'Come, Bill, you know me ; you know an old 
 shipmate, Bill, surely/ said the stranger. 
 
 "The captain made a sort of gasp. 
 
 "'Black Dog!' said he. 
 
 " 'And who else ?' returned the other, getting 
 more at his ease. 'Black Dog as ever was, come for 
 to see his old shipmate Billy, at the "Admiral Ben- 
 bow ,, inn. Ah, Bill, Bill, we have seen a sight of 
 times, us two, since I lost them two talons,' holding 
 up his mutilated hand. 
 
 " 'Now look here/ said the captain ; 'you've run 
 me down; here I am; well, then, speak up: what 
 is it?' 
 
 "'That's you/ returned Black Dog; 'you're in 
 the right of it, Billy. I'll have a glass of rum from 
 this dear child here, as I've took such a liking to; 
 and we'll sit down, if you please, and talk square, 
 like old shipmates.' 
 
 "When I returned with the rum, they were al- 
 ready seated on either side of the captain's break- 
 fast table — Black Dog next to the door, and sitting 
 sideways, so as to have one eye on his old shipmate 
 and one, as I thought, on his retreat. 
 
 "He bade me go and leave the door wide open. 
 'None of your keyholes for me, sonny/ he said; 
 and I left them together and retired into the bar. 
 
THE SPIRIT OF ROMANCE 173 
 
 "For a long time, though I certainly did my best 
 to listen, I could hear nothing but a low gabbling. 
 But at last the voices began to grow higher, and I 
 could pick up a word or two, mostly oaths, from the 
 captain. 
 
 " 'No, no, no, no ; and an end of it !' he cried once. 
 And again, Tf it comes to swinging, swing all, 
 say I.' 
 
 "Then all of a sudden there was a tremendous 
 explosion of oaths and other noises — the chair and 
 the table went over in a lump, a clash of steel fol- 
 lowed, and then a cry of pain, and the next instant 
 I saw Black Dog in full flight, and the captain hotly 
 pursuing, both with drawn cutlasses, and the for- 
 mer streaming blood from the left shoulder. Just 
 at the door the captain aimed at the fugitive one 
 last tremendous cut, which would certainly have 
 split him to the chine had it not been intercepted by 
 our big signboard of Admiral Benbow. You may see 
 the notch on the lower side of the frame to this day. 
 
 "That blow was the last of the battle. Once out 
 upon the road, Black Dog, in spite of his wound, 
 showed a wonderful clean pair of heels and disap- 
 peared over the edge of the hill in half a minute. 
 The captain, for his part, stood staring at the sign- 
 board like a bewildered man. Then he passed his 
 hand over his eyes several times, and at last turned 
 back into the house. 
 
 " 'Jim,' says he, 'rum ;■ and as he spoke he reeled 
 a little and caught himself with one hand against 
 the wall. 
 
174 STEVENSON 
 
 " 'Are you hurt ¥ cried I. 
 
 " 'Rum/ he repeated. 'I must get away from 
 here. Rum! rum!' 
 
 "I ran to fetch it; but I was quite unsteadied by 
 all that had fallen out, and I broke one glass and 
 fouled the tap, and while I was still getting in my 
 own way I heard a loud fall in the parlour, and, 
 running in, beheld the captain lying full length upon 
 the floor. . . . 
 
 "A great deal of blood was taken before the cap- 
 tain opened his eyes and looked mistily about him. 
 First he recognized the doctor with an unmistakable 
 frown; then his glance fell upon me, and he looked 
 relieved. But suddenly his colour changed, and he 
 tried to raise himself, crying: — 
 
 "'Where's Black Dog?' 
 
 " 'There is no Black Dog here/ said the doctor, 
 'except what you have on your own back. You have 
 been drinking rum ; you have had a stroke, precisely 
 as I told you; and I have just, very much against 
 my own will, dragged you headforemost out of the 
 grave. Now, Mr. Bones — ' 
 
 " 'That's not my name,' he interrupted. 
 
 "'Much I care,' returned the doctor. 'It's the 
 name of a buccaneer of my acquaintance ; and I call 
 you by it for the sake of shortness, and what I have 
 to say to you is this: one glass of rum won't kill 
 you, but if you take one you'll take another and an- 
 other, and I stake my wig if you don't break off 
 short you'll die — do you understand that ? — die, and 
 go to your own place, like the man in the Bible. 
 
THE SPIRIT OF ROMANCE 175 
 
 Come, now, make an effort. I'll help you to your 
 bed for once.' 
 
 "Between us, with much trouble, we managed to 
 hoist him up-stairs, and laid him on his bed, where 
 his head fell back on the pillow, as if he were almost 
 fainting. 
 
 " 'Now, mind you,' said the doctor, 'I clear my 
 conscience — the name of rum for you is death.' 
 
 "And with that he went off to see my father, 
 taking me with him by the arm. 
 
 " This is nothing,' he said, as soon as he had 
 closed the door. 'I have drawn blood enough to 
 keep him quiet awhile; he should lie for a week 
 where he is — that is the best thing for him and you ; 
 but another stroke would settle him.' 
 
 "About noon I stopped at the captain's door with 
 some cooling drinks and medicines. He was lying 
 very much as we had left him, only a little higher, 
 and he seemed both weak and excited. . . . 
 
 " 'Jim/ he said, at length, 'you saw that seafaring 
 man to-day?' 
 
 " 'Black Dog?' I asked. 
 
 " 'Ah! Black Dog/ says he. 'He's a bad un; but 
 there's worse that put him on. Now, if I can't 
 get away nohow, and they tip me the black spot, 
 mind you, it's my old sea-chest they're after; you 
 get on a horse — you can, can't you ? Well, then, you 
 get on a horse, and go to — well, yes, I will ! — to that 
 eternal Doctor swab, and tell him to pipe all hands 
 — magistrates and sich — and he'll lay 'em aboard at 
 the "Admiral Benbow" — all old Flint's crew, man 
 
176 STEVENSON 
 
 and boy, all on 'em that's left. I was first mate, I 
 was, old Flint's first mate, and I'm the on'y one as 
 knows the place. He gave it me at Savannah, when 
 he lay a-dying, like as if I was to now, you see. 
 But you won't peach unless they get the black spot 
 on me, or unless you see that Black Dog again, or 
 a seafaring man with one leg, Jim — him above all.' 
 
 " 'But what is the black spot, captain ?' I asked. 
 
 " That's a summons, mate. I'll tell you if they 
 get that. But you keep your weather-eye open, Jim, 
 and I'll share with you equals, upon my honour.' " 
 
 IV 
 
 The genius of sheer fiction is in these first pages. 
 No other story of buried treasure will ever have 
 such a start as this. The way in which the original 
 crew of cut-throats is unwittingly reassembled by 
 Squire Trelawny and their acceptance forced on 
 Doctor Livesy and the captain, in spite of protest, 
 is all the most fascinating invention. Whimsicality 
 in no way robs the reader of excitement. And it 
 seems to me that Stevenson's special gift lay in the 
 combination of thrilling romance and wonderful 
 nonsense. "No born fools would have started with 
 such a crew as that," you may say. "And the sea- 
 manship ! let alone Jim Hawkins, a mere boy, tack- 
 ing an old-fashioned two-hundred-ton schooner 
 about the island all by himself!" The answer to 
 such questions is not the answer of reason. But, 
 for my own part, I used to do the very thing when 
 
THE SPIRIT OF ROMANCE 177 
 
 I was ten years old and still completely landlocked 
 by the Berkshire Hills. I have done it recently sev- 
 eral times with Jim Hawkins, and I shall never be- 
 lieve that a fact in romance isn't as much a fact as 
 in actuality and a sight more real at the same time, 
 if a man like R. L. S. says so. As for seamanship, 
 I am sure there is no officer in the navy who would 
 not sail under Captain Smollet any day in the year 
 and never offer to mend his vocabulary one jot or 
 tittle. You may prefer The Bluejacket's Manual, 
 and carry it in your hip-pocket to guard against mis- 
 takes, but I prefer to pull the wrong tackle now and 
 then with Stevenson, who himself, it is true, barely 
 knew one rope's end from another. And if one 
 were to drown, after the manner of Shelley, with 
 the sheets belayed, how much finer, and how far less 
 ironical, to have them discover afterward that one 
 had been navigating by Treasure Island instead of 
 by the Manual, 
 
 It was certainly with pardonable condescension 
 that Stevenson remarked in a letter to Henley, when 
 the tale had appeared in book form, that he knew 
 very well his seamanship was "jimmy," but that if 
 his characters were fairly lively on the wires he 
 wanted applause — for the work, he added, "is not 
 a work of realism." 
 
 Romance does not depend for its power on fidel- 
 ity to externals, but rather, like poetry, on the tone 
 and on the rhythm of fancy. Later, when Steven- 
 son knew infinitely more about the sea and ships 
 and islands than he did in his first story; when he 
 
178 STEVENSON 
 
 had himself lived through a voyage of strange ad- 
 venture somewhere off the edge of the chart, S. S. 
 W. out of San Francisco, could he write romance 
 any more truly? He could be infinitely more faith- 
 ful to detail. But you may go to sleep in the 
 vaunted "realism" of The Wrecker, 1 and though 
 The Ebb Tide is gruesome enough to keep one 
 awake, a nap being hardly possible with that little 
 cockney Huish lurking about, is it the pretty piece 
 of navigation that charms you, or something else? 
 No, Stevenson never wrote another tale of the sea 
 to compare with your first reading of Treasure 
 Island. One must not hope to make such a voyage 
 twice, except in memory. 
 
 Therefore, if you ask where else in Stevenson 
 can be found anything nearly like this, as boyish 
 and as eternally captivating, I believe I should rec- 
 ommend you, first of all, to read the book straight 
 over. It will stand it — a rare thing for a mere ro- 
 mance. It is there you will .find afresh what you 
 are looking for. Then I should suggest that story 
 of "The Sire de Malctroit's Door" at the end of 
 the volume of New Arabian Nights; and I should be 
 inclined to add that in no other spot in all Stevenson 
 will you so nearly find the acme of adventure as you 
 do in those twenty pages. That is also one of the 
 classics. There are, to be sure, the opening chapters 
 of "The Pavilion on the Links," and things just as 
 good of a different sort in other of his short stories 
 
 1 See the Epilogue to Will Low at the end of The Wrecker. 
 
THE SPIRIT OF ROMANCE 179 
 
 of which we shall speak later. But in Stevenson's 
 longer romances you might look far and in vain, 
 especially in those books planned primarily for boys. 
 
 Certainly you won't find it in The Black Arrow, 
 a yarn written very rapidly the year after Treasure 
 Island at Hyeres and Royat. Compared to Treas- 
 ure Island, it is much like dreaming to order. In 
 the first place, there is inserted, ready-made, almost 
 every possible element of boy-and-girl melodrama, 
 and of course a great deal of it is as good as such 
 things can be. The very idea of the mysterious 
 arrows which arrive one by one fascinates the imag- 
 ination. The third of them, I think it is, crashes 
 through the high, stained-glass window, when Dick 
 and Sir Daniel are talking in the chapel, and sticks 
 quivering into the long table. That is a pretty good 
 place, and the human eye in the tapestry of the 
 Savage Hunter is a devilish good bit of old ma- 
 chinery. But the trouble is that here the whole prin- 
 ciple of fitness is overdone, is carried out almost as 
 completely as in the stories of Hay ward and Skelt. 
 When the castle is attacked from the sea there is, 
 in the first place, a thick black night made extra 
 thick and black by a driving snow-storm and extra 
 confusing and boisterous by the wine which the 
 ruffians get up from the hold of the ship. The castle 
 has a secret passage, a trap door, a haunted room, 
 a dark moat to swim — everything that the word 
 
180 STEVENSON 
 
 castle stands for in the medieval mind of a small 
 boy. At the end, the villainous bridegroom is shot 
 at the altar, and the hero inherits. I have not 
 counted the number of people who are killed in The 
 Black Arrow, but there must be one for every page. 
 Therefore you will conclude properly that it is not 
 at all a bad tale for children, or for anybody whose 
 historical fancy is easily roused and for whom 
 phrases like "methinks," "alack," "varlet with a 
 link," "nay, I am shrewedly afeard, Sir Parson, but 
 this runs hard on sacrilege," are the essence of local 
 color. But you will not care to read it yourself. 
 
 I think you will also look in vain through St. 
 Ives, a long and spirited yarn which Stevenson had 
 not quite brought to an end when he died. St. Ives 
 is a serious matter ; far more serious than Treasure 
 Island, because it is first of all a character study, 
 and a boy's story of plot but incidentally. In it 
 Stevenson has expended a vast amount of art, and, 
 one might add, of artificiality. St. Ives, an irrepres- 
 sible young Frenchman, beyond doubt the most flu- 
 ent lad in Europe, intrudes his high spirits into 
 every corner of the endless adventure, and in the 
 end strikes you as made of nothing so much as of 
 words. He is a most consistent character — most 
 wonderfully sustained — a veritable impersonation 
 of the maxim, "le style ccst llxomme." But thus, 
 though the whole thing is a breathless tale of the 
 road, of inns, of escape and pursuit, with a lot 
 about love, in the days just before Waterloo, you 
 will not find that charm of incident which you may 
 
THE SPIRIT OF ROMANCE 181 
 
 be looking for. The point of the story is merely to 
 talk — and I can not help remarking that it was writ- 
 ten entirely by dictation. It is told with a sort of 
 flurry that overwhelms rather than stimulates. Ste- 
 venson knew his Dumas ; but Dumas never wore us 
 out with the activity of his vocabulary or confused 
 us with a medley of language. In Dumas there was 
 always some purpose in sight, something to settle 
 down to. In St. Ives, and in too many of Steven- 
 son's other books, the improbability of any signifi- 
 cant end or purpose robs the reader of considerable 
 satisfaction by the way. He ceases to guess at what 
 the turns of the plot may point to, for it grows 
 steadily more and more obvious that a whimsical 
 purposelessness, a day to day foresight, usurps the 
 place of thoroughness of imagination. 
 
 Better than St. Ives is The Wrecker, a delightful, 
 nonsensical medley, which has in the midst of itself 
 a mystery of the ocean that for a few chapters will 
 vie with your memory of Treasure Island. It is, 
 however, quite a different sort of mystery. The 
 germs of the tale Lloyd Osbourne and Stevenson 
 discovered at Honolulu, in 1889, from a ship- 
 wrecked crew who had just arrived in the harbor 
 under most peculiar circumstances. The two authors 
 proceeded to develop the matter during their subse- 
 quent cruise to Samoa. So the story was written 
 in the very atmosphere and on the very waters of 
 romance which it describes. But some of the ro- 
 mance gives way to realism, and much of the charm 
 to a spooky, detective sort of plot which I believe 
 
182 STEVENSON 
 
 the authors thought would make a hit with the 
 American public. You will find, nevertheless, in 
 Chapter XIV, entitled "The Cabin of the Flying 
 Scud," if you read every word of the previous med- 
 ley of two hundred seventy-eight pages and under- 
 stand all its intricacies, a bit of excitement not to 
 be missed. At least you will be as neatly puzzled 
 for a time as you ever have been between the covers 
 of a book. But you will not be charmed. 
 
 VI 
 
 It is only in Kidnapped, a tale of 1745 in Scot- 
 land, that Stevenson has given us many pages that 
 definitely compare with Treasure Island. Kid- 
 napped was Stevenson's favorite among all his 
 books; and I have known a few people who agree 
 with this judgment, though it is notorious that an 
 author always prefers his second best to his best — 
 on the ground, I suppose, of sympathy with the 
 under-dog. Kidnapped, divorced from its senti- 
 mental sequel, Catriona, is certainly a very fair 
 second. It was written in 1886, five years after 
 Treasure Island. (Catriona, or David Balfour, as 
 the book was entitled in America, belongs to the St. 
 Ives period, much later.) The true spirit of adven- 
 ture descends upon the hero, David, and under 
 the guidance of Alan Breck he moves spellbound 
 through all the wonderful antics of the action. 
 David is of course R. L. S., and also there is 
 much of R. L. S. in Alan Breck, with his ro- 
 
THE SPIRIT OF ROMANCE 183 
 
 mantic philosophy, his exhibition of all the ges- 
 tures of bravado, and the flashing brand of his 
 glorified egotism. Hence these two, so intimately 
 idealized, are very real people to the fancy. If you 
 care for Jim Hawkins, searching Billy Bones's 
 sea-chest, or hiding under the bridge in the foggy 
 night, or hiding again in an apple barrel, you will 
 care for David on the old staircase in the House 
 of Shaws, and for David and Alan in the deckhouse 
 of the Covenant, on the rock in Glencoe stream, 
 and in their long flight through the heather. The 
 pieces are all of the same fabric. You may open 
 the book very much where you will. The nature of 
 it is like this : 
 
 "For all our hurry, day began to come in while 
 we were still far from any shelter. It found us in 
 a prodigious valley, strewn with rocks and where 
 ran a foaming river. Wild mountains stood around 
 it; there grew there neither grass nor trees; and I 
 have sometimes thought since then that it may have 
 been the valley called Glencoe, where the massacre 
 was in the time of King William. But for the de- 
 tails of our itinerary, I am all to seek; our way 
 lying now by short cuts, now by great detours ; our 
 pace being so hurried; our time of journeying usu- 
 ally by night; and the names of such places as I 
 asked and heard being in the Gaelic tongue and the 
 more easily forgotten. 
 
 "The first peep of morning, then, showed us this 
 horrible place, and I could see Alan knit his brow. 
 
184 STEVENSON 
 
 " 'This is no fit place for you and me,' he said. 
 'This is a place they're bound to watch.' 
 
 "And with that he ran harder than ever down to 
 the water-side in a part where the river was split 
 in two among three rocks. It went through with 
 a horrid thundering that made my belly quake ; and 
 there hung over the lynn a mist of spray. Alan 
 looked neither to the right nor to the left, but 
 jumped clean upon the middle rock and fell there 
 on his hands and knees to check himself, for that 
 rock was small and he might have pitched over on 
 the far side. I had scarce time to measure the dis- 
 tance or to understand the peril before I had fol- 
 lowed him, and he had caught and stopped me. 
 
 "So there we stood, side by side upon a small rock 
 slippery with spray, a far broader leap in front of 
 us, and the river dinning upon all sides. When I 
 saw where I was there came on me a deadly sick- 
 ness of fear, and I put my hand over my eyes. 
 Alan took me and shook me ; I saw he was speaking, 
 but the roaring of the falls and the trouble of my 
 mind prevented me from hearing; only I saw his 
 face was red with anger, and that he stamped upon 
 the rock. The same look showed me the water rag- 
 ing by and the mist hanging in the air; and with 
 that I covered my eyes again and shuddered. 
 
 "The next minute Alan had set the brandy bottle 
 to my lips, and forced me to drink about a gill, 
 which sent the blood into my head again. Then, 
 putting his hands to his mouth and his mouth to 
 my ear he shouted, 'Hang or Drown!' and turning 
 
THE SPIRIT OF ROMANCE 185 
 
 his back upon me leaped over the farther branch of 
 the stream and landed safe. 
 
 "I was now alone upon the rock, which gave me 
 the more room ; the brandy was singing in my ears ; 
 I had this good example fresh before me, and just 
 wit enough to see that if I did not leap at once I 
 should never leap at all. I bent low on my knees 
 and flung myself forth, with that kind of anger of 
 despair that has sometimes stood me in stead of 
 courage. Sure enough, it was but my hands that 
 reached the full length ; these slipped, caught again, 
 slipped again; and I was sliddering back into the 
 lynn, when Alan Seized me, first by the hair, then 
 by the collar and with a great strain dragged me 
 into safety. 
 
 "Never a word he said, but set off running again 
 for his life, and I must stagger to my feet and run 
 after him. I had been weary before, but now I 
 was sick and bruised, and partly drunken with the 
 brandy; I kept stumbling as I ran, I had a stitch 
 that came near to overmaster me ; and when at last 
 Alan paused under a great rock that stood there 
 among a number of others, it was none too soon for 
 David Balfour. 
 
 "A great rock, I have said; but by rights it was 
 two rocks leaning together at the top, both some 
 twenty feet high, and at the first sight inaccessible. 
 Even Alan (though you may say he had as good as 
 four hands) failed twice in an attempt to climb 
 them; and it was only at the third trial, and then 
 by standing on my shoulders and leaping up with 
 
186 STEVENSON 
 
 such force as I thought must have broken my col- 
 lar-bone, that he secured a lodgment. Once there, 
 he let down his leathern girdle; and with the aid of 
 that and a pair of shallow footholds in the rock 
 I scrambled up beside him. 
 
 "Then I saw why we had come there; for the 
 two rocks, both being somewhat hollow on the top 
 and sloping one to the other, made a kind of dish 
 or saucer, where as many as three or four men might 
 have lain hidden. 
 
 "All this while Alan had not said a word, and 
 had run and climbed with such a savage, silent 
 frenzy of hurry, that I knew he was in mortal fear 
 of some miscarriage. Even now we were on the 
 rock he said nothing, nor so much as relaxed the 
 frowning look upon his face ; but clapped flat down, 
 and keeping only one eye above the edge of our 
 place of shelter scouted all round the compass. The 
 dawn had come quite clear; we could see the stony 
 sides of the valley, and its bottom, which was be- 
 strewed with rocks, and the river, which went from 
 one side to another, and made white falls; but no- 
 where the smoke of a house, nor any living creature 
 but some eagles screaming round a cliff. 
 
 "Then at last Alan smiled. 
 
 " 'Ay,' said he, 'now we have a chance ;' and then 
 looking at me with some amusement, 'Ye're no very 
 gleg at the jumping/ said he. 
 
 "At this I suppose I coloured with mortification, 
 for he added at once, 'Hoots ! small blame to ye ! To 
 
THE SPIRIT OF ROMANCE 187 
 
 be feared of a tiring and yet to do it, is what makes 
 the prettiest kind of a man. And then there was 
 water there, and water's a thing that dauntons even 
 file. No, no/ said Alan, 'it's no you that's to blame, 
 it's me." 
 
 "I asked him why. 
 
 " Why/ said he, 'I have proved myself a gomeral 
 this night For the first of all I take a wrong road, 
 and that in my own country of Appin ; so that the 
 day has caught us where we should never have been ; 
 and thanks to that, we lie here in some danger and 
 mair discomfort And next (which is the worst of 
 the two, for a man that has been so much among 
 the heather as myself) I have come wanting a water- 
 bottie, and here we lie for a long summer's day with 
 naething but neat spirit. Ye may think that a small 
 matter; but before it comes night, David, ye'll give 
 me news of it/ 
 
 "I was anxious to redeem my character, and of- 
 fered, if he would pour out the brandy, to run 
 down and fill the bottle at the river. 
 
 " 'I wouldnae waste the good spirit either/ says 
 he. 'It's been a good friend to you this night, or 
 in my poor opinion, ye would still be cocking on 
 yon stone. And what's mair,' says he, 'ye may have 
 observed (you that's a man of so much penetra- 
 tion) that Alan Breck Stewart was perhaps walk- 
 ing quicker than his ordinar'/ 
 
 " 'You !' I cried, 'you were running fit to burst.' 
 
 '"Was I so?' said he. 'Well, then, ye may de- 
 
188 STEVENSON 
 
 pend upon it, there was nae time to be lost. And 
 now were is enough said; gang you to your sleep, 
 lad, and I'll watch/ 
 
 "Accordingly I lay down to sleep; a little peaty 
 earth had drifted in between the top of the two 
 rocks, and some bracken grew there, to be a bed 
 to me; the last thing I heard was the crying of the 
 eagles. 
 
 "I daresay it would be nine in the morning when 
 I was roughly awakened, and found Alan's hand 
 pressed upon my mouth. 
 
 " 'Wheesht !' he whispered. 'Ye were snoring/ 
 
 " 'Well/ said I, surprised at his anxious and 
 dark face, 'and why not?' 
 
 "He peered over the edge of the rock, and signed 
 to me to do the like. 
 
 "It was now high day, cloudless, and very hot. 
 The valley was as clear as in a picture. About half- 
 a-mile up the water was a camp of redcoats; a big 
 fire blazed in their midst, at which some were cook- 
 ing; and near by, on the top of a rock about as high 
 as ours, there stood a sentry, with the sun sparkling 
 on his arms. All the way down along the riverside 
 were posted other sentries ; here near together, there 
 widelier scattered; some planted like the first on 
 places of command, some on the ground level, and 
 marching and countermarching, so as to meet half 
 way. Higher up the glen, where the ground was 
 more open, the chain of posts was continued by 
 horse-soldiers, whom we could see in the distance 
 riding to and fro. Lower down the infantry con- 
 
THE SPIRIT OF ROMANCE 189 
 
 tinued; but as the stream was suddenly swelled by 
 the confluence of a considerable burn, they were 
 more widely set, and only watched the fords and 
 stepping-stones. 
 
 "I took but one look at them and ducked again 
 into my place. It was strange indeed to see this 
 valley, which had lain so solitary in the hour of 
 dawn, bristling with arms and dotted with the red- 
 coats and breeches. 
 
 " 'Ye see,' said Alan, 'this was what I was afraid 
 of Davie: that they would watch the burnside. 
 They began to come in about two hours ago, and, 
 man! but ye're a grand hand at sleeping! We're 
 in a narrow place. If they get up the sides of the 
 hill they could easily spy us with a glass; but if 
 they'll only keep in the foot of the valley, we'll do 
 yet. The posts are thinner down the water; and 
 come night we'll try our hand at getting by them.' 
 
 " 'And what are we to do till night ?' I asked. 
 
 " 'Lie here/ says he 'and birstle.' " — Kidnapped. 
 
 There is a zest for adventure in this story and in 
 Treasure Island which perhaps only D'Artagnan 
 surpasses. Certainly there are few others which 
 for this come up to it. Amyas Leigh in Charles 
 Kingsley's romance, John Ridd, in Lorna Doone, 
 are not far behind, and in other respects may have 
 delights for the reader which David and Alan and 
 Jim Hawkins can not offer. But these are the im- 
 mortals in England. 
 
CHAPTER X 
 
 ROMANCE, MELODRAMA, AND FARCE 
 
 I 
 
 ^TREASURE ISLAND and Kidnapped are clas- 
 -* sics of their kind, not great romances, certainly, 
 to vie with Dumas in scope, but tales that take one 
 over the borders of real life as wholly for the time 
 as any of them. They will always be for us part of 
 the Great Illusion. 
 
 Treasure Island was Stevenson's promise of a 
 greater romance ; and surely it would seem that the 
 inventor of this day-dream could have sustained 
 other and wider visions. But the promise was never 
 fulfilled, and the truth is that Stevenson's habit of 
 work rather precluded it. His fine work was to be 
 done, as it already had been, in the romantic fable 
 and essay — not in anything much over a hundred 
 pages long. "Will o' the Mill" is perhaps the best 
 thing before Treasure Island; Dr. Jekyll, "Mark- 
 heim," "The Treasure of Franchard," "The Isle of 
 Voices," are among the best things that follow. 
 They are not his long romances, only one or two of 
 which he knew how to bring to a real conclusion. 
 
 190 
 
ROMANCE, MELODRAMA, FARCE 191 
 
 Stevenson never had enough continuous energy 
 to learn the craft of sustained fiction as Dumas 
 learned it. The delightful, characteristic story of 
 how Treasure Island was composed has its moral. 
 The map of the island was drawn first — before there 
 was idea of anything more than a yarn to amuse 
 Lloyd Osboume with ; then Stevenson's father made 
 a list of all the articles in Billy Bones's sea-chest; 
 and Stevenson, finding two interested auditors, 
 wrote a chapter each day for fifteen days to read 
 aloud to them, after which not another incident 
 could be for some time imagined. This was at Brse- 
 nar, in the summer of 1881, and Gosse and Colvin, 
 visiting him there, so much encouraged him to con- 
 tinue that he finally succeeded in carrying it on ; but 
 Mrs. Stevenson says that had the tale not shortly 
 begun to appear as a serial in Young Folks it would 
 probably never have been concluded. 
 
 One of Stevenson's faults, the fault of random 
 progress of which there is so much evidence in his 
 longer works, is due partly to the exaggerated im- 
 portance which romance as a method had for him 
 in art. There is something delightfully humorous 
 and gay about his habit of reading aloud to a breath- 
 less audience the first chapters of a marvelous tale 
 that leads in a day or two into a nearly inextri- 
 cable cul-de-sac, out of which, if he is to come at 
 all, it is only by means of the pick and shovel. It 
 was undoubtedly more fun to keep up his spirits 
 with beginnings and plans, when his troubles made 
 him incapable of any prolonged labor, than to guard 
 
192 STEVENSON 
 
 his energy for the real work in hand. He usually 
 kept three or four stories going at once and was 
 forever making wonderful lists of a dozen others 
 that he expected to attack in a week or so. It 
 exhilarated him beyond measure to write up his 
 first conception of a plot; and his audience always 
 caught the contagion. "No finished story," says 
 one of his friends, "was, or ever will be, so good 
 as Weir of Her mist on shone to us in those days by 
 the light of its author's first ardour of creation." 
 And Gosse, who was one of the fortunate people to 
 hear Treasure Island thus read aloud, says, "I look 
 back to no keener intellectual pleasure than those 
 cold nights at Braemar, with the sleet howling out- 
 side, and Louis reading his budding romance by the 
 lamplight, emphasizing the purpler passages with 
 lifted voice and gesticulating finger." Stevenson 
 seems to have needed the excitement, human sym- 
 pathy and applause of an audience. This is a socia- 
 ble trait. But I imagine that if their interest flagged 
 he began to work at something else. I think that 
 as the plot of these splendid beginnings was dis- 
 covered not to be a plot, only a situation with one 
 or two obviously contingent situations, the author's 
 enthusiasm fell, the construction of the story became 
 mechanical, and the movement came to depend al- 
 most entirely on keeping up a certain line of talk, a 
 certain attitudinizing, among the characters. Ro- 
 mance, as a method of craftsmanship, is not often 
 successful. An author can hardly hope to do for 
 himself, as he writes, what he tries to do for the 
 
ROMANCE, MELODRAMA, FARCE 193 
 
 reader, as that gentleman reads. But Stevenson was 
 always attempting it. 
 
 In his own life and in his philosophy, Stevenson 
 carried out the trick with eclat, or at least trammeled 
 up the disillusionment. But in romantic fiction, just 
 as in realistic fiction, the magician must have his 
 stand outside the spell he creates. He must always 
 be in control. He must be able to see it all com- 
 plete. In other words, the final method, even of the 
 dreamer, is not to be dreaming, but to have dreamed. 
 In spite of the fact that one could not possibly make 
 a romance by the stark impersonal methods of real- 
 ism, this general principle still holds true. It is a 
 principle that Stevenson in nearly all his shorter 
 things understands, and then, curiously enough, in 
 nearly all his longer stories forgets. He tells as 
 he goes, dreams away boldly in plain view, and 
 therefore can say no more than the reader what is 
 coming next. Before he knows it the spell has 
 vanished. From the point of view of artistic unity 
 there is very little of Stevenson besides the essays, 
 fables, and short stories that is satisfactory; and 
 Treasure Island and Kidnapped, alone of his longer 
 books, will belong to English literature. In Treas- 
 ure Island the yarn spinner's method was fortunate. 
 All the random and whimsical episodes chime in 
 and the end is the ample conclusion of what has 
 gone before. This can be said of no other long 
 tale except The Ebb-Tide, which, since it has a 
 moral to teach, has its end in view from the begin- 
 ning. Of the shorter pieces over fifty pages long, 
 
194 STEVENSON 
 
 the only well-rounded-out performance, also of the 
 moral order, is Dr. Jekyll. 
 
 But in Stevenson so great often is the charm of 
 style from page to page that the fault of incom- 
 pleteness or shiftiness of plot by no means robs 
 the reader of his pleasure. For those who are fas- 
 cinated by the act of story-telling, who never really 
 wish for the end and who care little for it in rela- 
 tion to the hazard of the incidents, there is much 
 entertainment to be had from following the Ste- 
 vensonian fancy wherever it wanders. 
 
 ii 
 
 In Stevenson's first tale of any length, "The Pa- 
 vilion on the Links," written in California, this 
 charm is at first very subtly at work. One is soon 
 aware that the plot is too melodramatic to come to 
 very much, but meanwhile there is probably no bet- 
 ter beginning for a wildly romantic extravaganza 
 than the first chapter, which tells "How I Camped 
 in Graden Seawood and Beheld a Light in the Pa- 
 vilion." The scenery here is that of convincing and 
 enthralling unreality. The desolate stretch of sand 
 along the German Ocean, the lonely cabin at some 
 distance from the wood, the mysterious nocturnal 
 landing from the yacht, the presence of Italians 
 in the fishing village, all this induces an atmosphere 
 tensely ominous. It is as well, however, an atmos- 
 phere so hauntingly dreamlike that any definite 
 action must play into it at first imperceptibly or 
 
ROMANCE, MELODRAMA, FARCE 195 
 
 most certainly strike a false note; and Stevenson 
 did not know how to manage this. The issue is a 
 sentimental anticlimax, which turns the spell at the 
 crucial moment into clap-trap. 
 
 But in the next tale that he attempted, this fault 
 is at least so long delayed, the atmosphere of sus- 
 pense is so long continued, and the dime-novel con- 
 clusion, due to what Stevenson has called "ease of 
 dreaming," is so brief as to allow the whole piece al- 
 most its proper unity of tone. The Merry Men, writ- 
 ten just before he began Treasure Island, is, save 
 for the very end, one of Stevenson's masterpieces, 
 and illustrates his weirdly fantastic imagination at 
 its best. While he was at work on it, in July, 1881, 
 at Pitlochry, he wrote Colvin: "If ever I shall 
 make a hit I have the line now, as I believe." Cer- 
 tainly it strikes many of the notes to which his tem- 
 perament always vibrated; and two years later, at 
 Hyeres, the hearing of it read by a friend moved 
 him strangely. He calls it "a fantastic sonata 
 about the sea"; but later, realizing perhaps that 
 the very end did not belong to any of the themes 
 previously developed in the sonata, he had deter- 
 mined to make it much longer, "with a whole new 
 denouement, not quite clear to me." This he never 
 accomplished, not being able, as his wife has said, 
 to get a real grip on his story. What he needed to 
 do was to prevent the story from emerging, with 
 bald farce at the last moment, out of its poetic at- 
 mosphere. 
 
 The dominant theme of this sonata about the sea 
 
196 STEVENSON 
 
 is the terror that surrounds the storm-beaten island 
 of Aros. The story begins with a strong sense of 
 it which is afterward never quite unfelt as the thin, 
 queer thread of the plot appears and disappears 
 through its variations. In two pages of Eilean 
 Aros, you are, as nearly always in Stevenson, who 
 was a master of beginnings, succumbing to a pecu- 
 liar enchantment. 
 
 "On all this part of the coast, and especially near' 
 Aros, these great granite rocks that I have spoken 
 of go down together in troops into the sea, like cattle 
 on a summer's day. There they stand, for all the 
 world like their neighbours ashore; only the salt 
 water sobbing between them instead of the quiet 
 earth, and clots of sea-pink blooming on their sides 
 instead of heather; and the great sea conger to 
 wreathe about the base of them instead of the poi- 
 sonous viper of the land. On calm days you can go 
 wandering between them in a boat for hours, echoes 
 following you about the labyrinth; but when the 
 sea is up, Heaven help the man that hears that caul- 
 dron boiling. 
 
 "Off the southwest end of Aros these blocks are 
 very many, and much greater in size. Indeed, they 
 must grow monstrously bigger out to sea, for there 
 must be ten sea miles of open water sown with them 
 as thick as a country place with houses, some stand- 
 ing thirty feet above the tides, some covered, but all 
 perilous to ships ; so that on a clear, westerly blow- 
 ing day I have counted, from the top of Aros, the 
 
ROMANCE, MELODRAMA, FARCE 197 
 
 great rollers breaking white and heavy over as many 
 as six-and- forty buried reefs. But it is nearer in 
 shore that the danger is worst; for the tide, here 
 running like a mill race, makes a long belt of broken 
 water — a Roost we call it — at the tail of the land. 
 I have often been out there in a dead calm at the 
 slack of the tide; and a strange place it is, with the 
 sea swirling and combing up and boiling like the 
 cauldrons of a linn, and now and again a little danc- 
 ing mutter of sound as though the Roost were talk- 
 ing to itself. But when the tide begins to run again, 
 and above all in heavy weather, there is no man 
 could take a boat within half a mile of it, nor a ship 
 afloat that could either steer or live in such a place. 
 You can hear the roaring of it six miles away. At 
 the seaward end there comes the strongest of the 
 bubble; and it's here that these big breakers dance 
 together — the dance of death, it may be called — 
 that have got the name in these parts of the Merry 
 Men. I have heard it said that they run fifty feet 
 high; but that must be the green water only, for 
 the spray runs twice as high as that. Whether they 
 got the name from their movements, which are swift 
 and antic, or from the shouting they make about 
 the turn of the tide, so that all Aros shakes with it, 
 is more than I can tell. 
 
 "The truth is, that in a southwesterly wind, that 
 part of our archipelago is no better than a trap. If 
 a ship got through the reefs, and weathered the 
 Merry Men, it would be to come ashore on the south 
 coast of Aros, in Sandag Bay, where so many dis- 
 
198 STEVENSON 
 
 mal things befell our family, as I propose to tell. 
 The thought of all these dangers, in the place I knew 
 so long, makes me particularly welcome the works 
 now going forward to set lights upon the headlands 
 and buoys along the channels of our iron-bound, 
 inhospitable islands. 
 
 "The country people had many a story about 
 Aros, as I used to hear from my uncle's man, Rorie, 
 an old servant of the Macleans, who had transferred 
 his services without afterthought on the occasion of 
 the marriage. There was some tale of an unlucky 
 creature, a sea-kelpie, that dwelt and did business in 
 some fearful manner of his own among the boiling 
 breakers of the Roost. A mermaid had once met 
 a piper on Sandag beach, and there sang to him a 
 long, bright midsummer's night, so that in the morn- 
 ing he was found stricken crazy, and from thence- 
 forward, till the day he died, said only one form 
 of words; what they were in the original Gaelic I 
 cannot tell, but they were thus translated: 'Ah, 
 the sweet singing out of the sea.' Seals that haunted 
 on that coast have been known to speak to man in 
 his own tongue, presaging great disasters. It was 
 here that a certain saint first landed on his voyage 
 out of Ireland to convert the Hebrideans. And, in- 
 deed, I think he had some claim to be called a saint ; 
 for, with the boats of that past age, to make so 
 rough passage, and land on such a ticklish coast, 
 was surely not far short of the miraculous. It was 
 to him, or to some of his monkish underlings who 
 
ROMANCE, MELODRAMA, FARCE 199 
 
 had a cell there, that the islet owes its holy and 
 beautiful name, the House of God." 
 
 Now, there is something wrong with Eilean Aros. 
 The hero, on landing, is full of a sense of ominous 
 locality. Undefined memories of evil haunt the 
 air, suspicions of foul play. Whether these belong 
 normally to the atmosphere of the place or whether 
 they emanate from the strange mental state of Un- 
 cle Darnaway is not certain. The uncanny conversa- 
 tion of the old man, who is one of Stevenson's 
 best brief characters, is perhaps the most powerful 
 source of this doubt. 
 
 " 'Was it there ?' asked my uncle. 
 
 " 'Ou, ay !' said Rorie. 
 
 "I observed that they both spoke in a manner of 
 aside, and with some show of embarrassment, and 
 that Mary herself appeared to colour, and looked 
 down on her plate. Partly to show my knowledge, 
 and so relieve the party from an awkward strain, 
 partly because I was curious, I pursued the subject. 
 
 " 'You mean the fish ?' I asked. 
 
 " 'Whatten fish ?' cried my uncle. 'Fish, quo' he ! 
 Fish ! Your een are f u' o' fatness, man ; your heid 
 dozened wi' carnal leir. Fish ! it's a bogle !' 
 
 "He spoke with great vehemence, as though an- 
 gry; and perhaps I was not very willing to be put 
 down so shortly, for young men are disputatious. 
 At least I remember I retorted hotly, crying out 
 upon childish superstitions. 
 
200 STEVENSON 
 
 " 'And ye come frae the College !' sneered Uncle 
 Gordon. 'Glide kens what they. learn folk there; 
 it's no muckle service onyway. Do ye think, man, 
 that there's naething in a' yon saut wilderness o' a 
 world oot wast there, wi' the sea grasses growin', 
 an' the sea beasts fechtin', an' the sun glintin' down 
 into it day by day? Na; the sea's like the land, but 
 fearsomer. If there's folk ashore, there's folk in 
 the sea — deid they may be, but they're folk what- 
 ever; and as for deils, there's nane that's like the 
 sea deils. There's no sae muckle harm in the land 
 deils, when a's said and done. Lang syne, when I 
 was a callant in the south country, I mind there was 
 an auld, bald bogle in the Peewie Moss. I got a 
 glisk o' him mysel', sittin' on his hunkers in a hag, 
 as grey's a tombstane. An', troth, he was a fear- 
 some-like taed. But he steered naebody. Nae 
 doobt, if ane that was a reprobate, ane the Lord 
 hated, had gane by there wi' his sin still upon his 
 stamach, nae doobt the creature would hae lowped 
 upo' the likes o' him. But there's deils in the deep 
 sea would yoke on a communicant! Eh, sirs, if ye 
 had gane doon wi' the puir lads in the Christ- Anna, 
 ye would ken by now the mercy o' the seas. If ye 
 had sailed it for as lang as me, ye would hate the 
 thocht of it as I do. If ye had but used the een God 
 gave ye, ye would hae learned the wickedness o' that 
 fause, saut, cauld, bullering creature, and of a' that's 
 in it by the Lord's permission : labsters an' partans, 
 an' sic like, howking in the deid; muckle, gutsy, 
 blawing whales; an' fish — the hale clan o' them — 
 
ROMANCE, MELODRAMA, FARCE 201 
 
 cauld-wamed, blind-eed uncanny ferlies. O, sirs,' 
 he cried, 'the horror — the horror o' the sea!' 
 
 i> >> 
 
 Very gradually it dawns on the reader that in 
 Uncle Darnaway's mind is the source of the evil 
 which permeates the whole island. In spite of ex- 
 ternal details that arouse suspicion, like the rare 
 wood in the thwarts of the coble, noticed in the 
 passage to Aros, only a faint guess about the whole 
 strange matter can be made till all the complications 
 are complete at the end of Chapter III. Because 
 the threatened evil is really psychic, rather than an 
 external thing, the author has from now on, a very 
 puzzling situation to handle if he wishes to pre- 
 serve its peculiar horror. The solution adopted at 
 the last moment is crude. He brings on a storm, 
 turns his mad murderer loose in the midst of it, 
 and winds the matter up without more ado. Until 
 the actual breaking of the storm the piece is a won- 
 derfully fluent fantasy. From that point on, it is 
 largely mechanical tour de force — "a braw nicht for 
 a shipwreck !" and not much else — "twa in ae twal- 
 month! eh, but the Merry Men'll dance bonny!" 
 
 So far as popularity goes, Stevenson was right 
 in thinking that he had found his line in the roman- 
 tic tale of terror. He had just written "Thrawn 
 Janet," an inimitable piece in the Uncle Darnaway 
 key, which, together with the tale of Todd Lapraik 
 in David Balfour, seems, incidentally, to prove the 
 superiority qf the Scots vocabulary for spookiness 
 over anything imaginable in plain English. But 
 
202 STEVENSON 
 
 where the creation of terror is the main purpose, 
 Stevenson is really not often so successful as where 
 it accompanies a moral theme. The stories of 
 "Olalla" and "The Body Snatcher" do not compare 
 in imaginative effects with "Markheim" or Dr. 
 Jekyll or "The Bottle Imp" or "The Isle of Voices," 
 which are his masterpieces. The first two stories are 
 practically failures ; the others are. at once both far 
 more terrible and far more interesting for their 
 moral issue. So, in the long romances, the introduc- 
 tion of terror scenes for their own sake usually 
 brought in as much clap-trap as thrills. The least 
 satisfactory part of The Master is the live-burial in 
 the wilderness. The devil-work is by no means the 
 best part of "The Beach of Falesa." Melodrama is 
 never quite out of sight in these places, and melo- 
 drama uncombined with farce is rarely successful in 
 Stevenson. 
 
 Ill 
 
 In two novels, The Master and the unfinished 
 Weir, Stevenson had it in mind to involve in an 
 atmosphere of strangeness and terror a more seri- 
 ous dramatic problem than he has elsewhere 
 presented. In The Master he all but succeeded. 
 The theme is of a fascinating romantic rarity, and 
 yet with a sharp reference to life as the reader has 
 himself observed it. The simplest terms of the 
 plot give us an essentially dramatic confrontation 
 between two brothers : At the time of the Forty-five 
 
ROMANCE, MELODRAMA, FARCE 203 
 
 the elder of the two Duries of Ballantrae, -sons of 
 Lord Durrisdeer, joins the rebels at Culloden, and 
 is forced afterward to live the life of a wanderer 
 and exile. His younger brother, Henry, thus in- 
 herits, not only the estate, but also the girl who 
 should have been the Master's wife. Presently the 
 Master returns, the feeling for Prince Charlie's side 
 being so strong in the neighborhood as to allow this 
 without much fear of his betrayal to the authorities. 
 By nature a proud, brilliant, and malicious man, 
 his trials and adventures in strange lands and on 
 the sea have given him a streak of diabolical per- 
 versity. He at once begins a systematic and vastly 
 clever persecution of his brother, Henry, which 
 seems to all outsiders, and even to his brother's 
 wife, to put Henry in the wrong. The duel be- 
 tween the two goes on under the blind eyes of the 
 girl who would have married the Master had for- 
 tune favored. Romantically in love with him, yet 
 always nominally faithful to her husband, she be- 
 comes the perverse arbiter of the destinies of this 
 inglorious combat. An oppressive terror, an om- 
 inousness which could only be dispelled by murder, 
 begins to develop. It assumes gigantic psychological 
 proportions. The character and purposes of the 
 Master loom ever more and more dominant, and 
 even in temporary defeat only more baffling. He 
 is driven out of Ballantrae, hovers for years, a sort 
 of roving Nemesis, over the invisible issue, and at 
 last returns, fortified in villainy by the presence of 
 a mysterious Indian servant, Secundra Dass. 
 
204 STEVENSON 
 
 Meanwhile Henry has justified himself to his wife. 
 They vainly attempt to evade the Master by fleeing 
 to New York, thus making possible in the plot, the 
 preconceived finale, a live burial in the Adirondack 
 forest, over which Secundra Dass presides. All 
 this last part of the adventure, including the inci- 
 dents in India and Mr. Mackellar's journey with 
 the Master across the Atlantic, a model of sardonic 
 humor, seems to be tacked on to the rest of the 
 narrative. It is peculiarly oppressive, and the end 
 brings no relief, no sense of issuing from what has 
 been a rather meaningless cul-de-sac. 
 
 In his essay on "The Genesis of The Master of 
 Ballantrae" Stevenson says that he planned the tale 
 to be a tale of many lands, and that having located 
 the main action in Ballantrae, the end in the Adiron- 
 dacks, he needed only to get the Master in and out 
 of India to complete his scheme. But obviously the 
 true scheme is alone the confrontation of the two 
 brothers. It is there that our whole attention is 
 absorbed and not in the miscellaneous adventure. 
 There is, of course, no reason why each element 
 in the story should not enhance the others, or why 
 they should not be inextricably linked. But the 
 story has Stevenson's characteristic defects. The 
 main theme is that of a problem novel ; the method 
 is that of the fantastically conceived romance. The 
 two join only with mutual embarrassment. Also it 
 must be confessed, even by those for whom the 
 "grand carpentry" style in fiction has an unerring 
 charm, that the end of this matter of the two Duris- 
 
ROMANCE, MELODRAMA, FARCE 205 
 
 deers is mere melodrama — a preconceived end, to be 
 sure, but not an adherent end. It neither throws a 
 light back over the whole, nor serves to shroud the 
 Master's strange character from our final scrutiny. 
 
 To the engrossing interest of the narrative 
 these defects may not appear fatal — in Stevenson 
 no defects of structure ever count as absolutely 
 fatal. For being vastly clever page by page and 
 always a stylist, he can piece out, hopefully putting 
 off the day of reckoning till the reader's ear has 
 been captured. And nowhere in Stevenson are 
 there scenes of such dramatic deftness as those 
 which show the Master on his first return, always 
 a courteous, brilliant, cheerful gentleman in the 
 presence of Henry's wife, and always the fiend 
 when alone with Henry. Of all this the duel with 
 swords fought in the garden in the still winter 
 night, is a true "marking incident." Had it been 
 more elaborately led up to, with a more careful 
 picture of the locality and of the characters, it 
 might well have served to bring the plot to a more 
 direct and reasonable end, and have taken the place 
 of the murder which, as I say, the atmosphere seems 
 to demand. Certainly the Master is, at this moment 
 of the duel, as we see him by the light of the candles 
 in the midst of the frosted trees, one of the great 
 villains of literature. 
 
 Let us listen for a few moments to Mr. Mackel- 
 lar, the secretary, who reports this matter. It is 
 perhaps the most powerful scene in all Stevenson. 
 
206 STEVENSON 
 
 ACCOUNT OF ALL THAT PASSED ON THE NIGHT OF 
 FEBRUARY 27, 1757 
 
 "To show how far affairs had gone with Mr. 
 Henry, I will give some words of his, uttered (as 
 I have cause not to forget) upon the 26th of Feb- 
 ruary, 1757. It was unseasonable weather, a cast 
 back into Winter: windless, bitter cold, the world 
 all white with rime, the sky low and gray : the sea 
 black and silent like a quarry-hole. Mr. Henry sat 
 close by the fire, and debated (as was now common 
 with him) whether 'a man* should 'do things/ 
 whether 'interference was wise/ and the like gen- 
 eral propositions, which each of us particularly ap- 
 plied. I was by the window, looking out, when 
 there passed below me the Master, Mrs. Henry, and 
 Miss Katharine, that now constant trio. The child 
 was running to and fro, delighted with the frost ; the 
 Master spoke close in the lady's ear with what 
 seemed (even from so far) a devilish grace of in- 
 sinuation ; and she on her part looked on the ground 
 like a person lost in listening. I broke out of my 
 reserve. 
 
 " 'If I were you, Mr. Henry/ said I, 'I would deal 
 openly with my lord/ 
 
 " 'Mackellar, Mackellar/ said he, 'you do not see 
 the weakness of my ground. I can carry no such 
 base thoughts to any one — to my father least of all ; 
 that would be to fall into the bottom of his scorn. 
 The weakness of my ground,' he continued, 'lies in 
 
ROMANCE, MELODRAMA, FARCE 207 
 
 myself, that I am not one who engages*love. I have 
 their gratitude, they all tell me that; I have a rich 
 estate of it ! But I am not present in their minds ; 
 they are moved neither to think with me nor to 
 think for me. There is my loss !' He got to his feet, 
 and trod down the fire. 'But some method must be 
 found, Mackellar,' said he, looking at me suddenly 
 over his shoulder ; 'some way must be found. I am 
 a man of a great deal of patience — far too much — 
 far too much. I begin to despise myself. And 
 yet, sure, never was a man involved in such a toil f 
 He fell back to his brooding. 
 
 " 'Cheer up,' said I. 'It will burst of itself/ 
 
 " 'I am far past anger now,' says he, which had 
 so little coherency with my own observation that I 
 let both fall. 
 
 "On the evening of the interview referred to, the 
 Master went abroad; he was abroad a great deal 
 of the next day also, that fatal 27th; but where he 
 went, or what he did, we never concerned ourselves 
 to ask until next day. If we had done so, and by 
 any chance found out, it might have changed all. 
 But as all we did was done in ignorance, and should 
 be so judged, I shall so narrate these passages as 
 they appeared to us in the moment of their birth, 
 and reserve all that I since discovered for the time 
 of its discovery. For I have now come to one of 
 the dark parts of my narrative, and must engage 
 the reader's indulgence for my patron. 
 
 "All the 27th that rigorous weather endured: a 
 stifling cold; the folk passing about like smoking 
 
208 STEVENSON 
 
 chimneys ; the wide hearth in the hall piled high with 
 fuel; som£ of the spring birds that had already 
 blundered north into our neighbourhood, besieging 
 the windows of the house or trotting on the frozen 
 turf like things distracted. About noon there came 
 a blink of sunshine; showing a very pretty, wintry, 
 frosty landscape of white hills and woods, with 
 Crail's lugger waiting for a wind under the Craig 
 Head, and the smoke mounting straight into the air 
 from every farm and cottage. With the coming of 
 night, the haze closed in overhead; it fell dark and 
 still and starless, and exceeding cold: a night the 
 most unseasonable, fit for strange events. 
 
 "Mrs. Henry withdrew, as was now her custom, 
 very early. We had set ourselves of late to pass 
 the evening with a game of cards; another mark 
 that our visitor was wearying mightily of the life 
 at Durrisdeer; and we had not been long at this 
 when my old lord slipped from his place beside the 
 fire, and was off without a word to seek the warmth 
 of bed. The three thus left together had neither 
 love nor courtesy to share; not one of us would 
 have sat up one instant to oblige another; yet from 
 the influence of custom, and as the cards had just 
 been dealt, we continued the form of playing out 
 the round. I should say we were late sitters; and 
 though my lord had departed earlier than was his 
 custom, twelve was already gone some time upon 
 the clock, and the servants long ago in bed. An- 
 other thing I should say, that although I never saw 
 the Master anyway affected with liquor, he had been 
 
ROMANCE, MELODRAMA, FARCE 209 
 
 drinking freely, and was perhaps (although he 
 showed it not) a trifle heated. 
 
 "Anyway, he now practised one of his transi- 
 tions; and so soon as the door closed behind my 
 lord, and without the smallest change of voice, 
 shifted from ordinary civil talk into a stream of 
 insult. 
 
 " 'My dear Henry, it is yours to play/ he had 
 been saying, and now continued: 'It is a very 
 strange thing how, even in so small a matter as a 
 game of cards, you display your rusticity. You 
 play, Jacob, like a bonnet laird, or a sailor in a 
 tavern. The same dulness, the same petty greed, 
 cette lenteur d'hebete qui me fait rager; it is strange 
 I should have such a brother. Even Square-toes 
 has a certain vivacity when his stake is imperilled; 
 but the dreariness of a game with you I positively 
 lack language to depict/ 
 
 "Mr. Henry continued to look at his cards, as 
 though very maturely considering some play; but 
 his mind was elsewhere. 
 
 " 'Dear God, will this never be done V cries the 
 Master. 'Quel lourdeau! But why do I trouble you 
 with French expressions, which are lost on such an 
 ignoramus ? A lourdeau, my dear brother, is as we 
 might say a bumpkin, a clown, a clodpole : a fellow 
 without grace, lightness, quickness ; any gift of pleas- 
 ing, any natural brilliancy: such a one as you shall 
 see, when you desire, by looking in the mirror. I 
 tell you these things for your good, I assure you; 
 and besides, Square-toes' (looking at me and stifling 
 
210 STEVENSON 
 
 a yawn), 'it is one of my diversions in this very 
 dreary spot to toast you and your master at the fire 
 like chestnuts. I have great pleasure in your case, 
 for I observe the nickname (rustic as it is) has 
 always the power to make you writhe. But some- 
 times I have more trouble with this dear fellow here, 
 who seems to have gone to sleep upon his cards. 
 Do you not see the applicability of the epithet I have 
 just explained, dear Henry? Let me show you. 
 For instance, with all those solid qualities which I 
 delight to recognise in you, I never knew a woman 
 who did not prefer me — nor, I think/ he continued, 
 with the most silken deliberation, 'I think — who did 
 not continue to prefer me/ 
 
 "Mr. Henry laid down his cards. He rose to his 
 feet very softly, and seemed all the while like a per- 
 son in deep thought. 'You coward !' he said gently, 
 as if to himself. And then, with neither hurry nor 
 any particular violence, he struck the Master in the 
 mouth. 
 
 "The Master sprang to his feet like one trans- 
 figured; I had never seen the man so beautiful. 'A 
 blow !' he cried. 'I would not take a blow from God 
 Almighty !' 
 
 " 'Lower your voice,' said Mr. Henry. 'Do you 
 wish my father to interfere for you again?' 
 
 " 'Gentlemen, gentlemen,' I cried, and sought to 
 come between them. 
 
 "The Master caught me by the shoulder, held me 
 at arm's length, and still addressing his brother: 
 'Do you know what this means ?' said he. 
 
ROMANCE, MELODRAMA, FARCE 211 
 
 " 'It was the most deliberate act of my life/ says 
 Mr. Henry. 
 
 " 'I must have blood, I must have blood for this/ 
 says the Master. 
 
 H 'Please God it shall be yours,' said Mr. Henry ; 
 and he went to the wall and took down a pair of 
 swords that hung there with others, naked. These 
 he presented to the Master by the points. 'Mackel- 
 lar shall see us play fair/ said Mr. Henry. 'I think 
 it very needful/ 
 
 " 'You need insult me no more/ said the Master, 
 taking one of the swords at random. 'I have hated 
 you all my life/ 
 
 " 'My father is but newly gone to bed/ said Mr. 
 Henry. 'We must go somewhere forth of the 
 house/ 
 
 " 'There is an excellent place in the long shrub- 
 bery,' said the Master. 
 
 " 'Gentlemen,' said I, 'shame upon you both ! Sons 
 of the same mother, would you turn against the life 
 she gave you?' 
 
 " 'Even so, Mackellar/ said Mr. Henry, with the 
 same perfect quietude of manner he had shown 
 throughout. 
 
 " 'It is what I will prevent/ said I. 
 
 "And now here is a blot upon my life. At these 
 words of mine the Master turned his blade against 
 my bosom ; I saw the light run along the steel ; and 
 I threw up my arms and fell to my knees before 
 him on the floor. 'No, no/ I cried, like a baby. 
 
 " 'We shall have no more trouble with him,' said 
 
212 STEVENSON 
 
 the Master. 'It is a good thing to have a coward in 
 the house.' 
 
 " 'We must have light,' said Mr. Henry, as though 
 there had been no interruption. 
 
 " This trembler can bring a pair of candles,' said 
 the Master. 
 
 "To my shame, be it said, I was still so blinded 
 with the flashing of that bare sword that I volun- 
 teered to bring a lantern. 
 
 " 'We do not need a 1-1-lantern,' says the Master, 
 mocking me. 'There is no breath of air. Come, 
 get to your feet, take a pair of lights, and go be- 
 fore. I am close behind with this — ' making the 
 blade glitter as he spoke. 
 
 "I took up the candlesticks and went before them, 
 steps that I would give my hand to recall; but a 
 coward is a slave at the best; and even as I went, 
 my teeth smote each other in my mouth. It was 
 as he had said: there was no breath stirring; a 
 windless stricture of frost had bound the air; and 
 as we went forth in the shine of the candles, the 
 blackness was like a roof over our heads. Never a 
 word was said; there was never a sound but the 
 creaking of our steps along the frozen path. The 
 cold of the night fell about me like a bucket of 
 water; I shook as I went with more than terror; 
 but my companions, bare-headed like myself, and 
 fresh from the warm hall, appeared not even con- 
 scious of the change. 
 
 " 'Here is the place,' said the Master. 'Set down 
 the candles.' 
 
ROMANCE, MELODRAMA, FARCE 213 
 
 "I did as he bid me, and presently the flames went 
 up, as steady as in a chamber, in the midst of the 
 frosted trees, and I beheld these two brothers take 
 their places. 
 
 " 'The light is something in my eyes,' said the 
 Master. 
 
 " 'I will give you every advantage,' replied Mr. 
 Henry, shifting his ground, 'for I think you are 
 about to die.' He spoke rather sadly than other- 
 wise, yet there was a ring in his voice. 
 
 " 'Henry Dune/ said the Master, 'two words be- 
 fore I begin. You are a fencer, you can hold a 
 foil ; you little know what a change it makes to hold 
 a sword ! And by that I know you are to fall. But 
 see how strong is my situation! If you fall, I shift 
 out of this country to where my money is before me. 
 If I fall, where are you? My father, your wife — 
 who is in love with me, as you very well know — 
 your child even, who prefers me to yourself: — how 
 will these avenge me! Had you thought of that, 
 dear Henry?' He looked at his brother with a 
 smile; then made a fencing-room salute. 
 
 "Never a word said Mr. Henry, but saluted too, 
 and the swords rang together. 
 
 "I am no judge of the play; my head, besides, was 
 gone with cold and fear and horror; but it seems 
 that Mr. Henry took and kept the upper hand from 
 the engagement, crowding in upon his foe with a 
 contained and glowing fury. Nearer and nearer he 
 crept upon the man, till of a sudden the Master 
 leaped back with a little sobbing oath; and I be- 
 
214 STEVENSON 
 
 lieve the movement brought the light once more 
 against his eyes. To it they went again, on the 
 fresh ground; but now methought closer, Mr. Henry 
 pressing more outrageously, the Master beyond 
 doubt with shaken confidence. For it is beyond 
 doubt he now recognised himself for lost, and had 
 some taste of the cold agony of fear; or he had 
 never attempted the foul stroke. I cannot say I 
 followed it, my untrained eye was never quick 
 enough to seize details, but it appears he caught his 
 brother's blade with his left hand, a practise not 
 permitted. Certainly Mr. Henry only saved himself 
 by leaping on one side; as certainly the Master, 
 lunging in the air, stumbled on his knee, and before 
 he could move the sword was through his body. 
 
 "I cried out with a stifled scream, and ran in; 
 but the body was already fallen to the ground, where 
 it writhed a moment like a trodden worm, and then 
 lay motionless. 
 
 " 'Look at his left hand,' said Mr. Henry. 
 
 " It is all bloody,' said I. 
 
 "'On the inside?' said he. 
 
 " 'It is cut on the inside,' said I. 
 
 " 'I thought so,' said he, and turned his back. 
 
 "I opened the man's clothes; the heart was quite 
 still, it gave not a flutter. 
 
 " 'God forgive us, Mr. Henry !' said I. 'He is 
 dead.' 
 
 " 'Dead ?' he repeated, a little stupidly ; and then 
 with a rising tone, 'Dead ? dead ?' says he, and sud- 
 denly casts his bloody sword upon the ground. 
 
ROMANCE, MELODRAMA, FARCE 215 
 
 " 'What must we do?' said I. 'Be yourself, sir. 
 It is too late now : you must be yourself.' 
 
 "He turned and stared at me. 'Oh, Mackellar!' 
 says he, and put his face in his hands. 
 
 "I plucked him by the coat. 'For God's sake, for 
 all our sakes, be more courageous !' said I. 'What 
 must we do ?' 
 
 "He showed me his face with the same stupid 
 stare. 'Do?' says he. And with that his eye fell on 
 the body, and 'Oh!' he cries out, with his hand to 
 his brow, as if he had never remembered; and, turn- 
 ing from me, made off towards the house of Durris- 
 deer at a strange stumbling run. 
 
 "I stood a moment mused ; then it seemed to me 
 my duty lay most plain on the side of the living; 
 and I ran after him, leaving the candles on the 
 frosty ground and the body lying in their light under 
 the trees. But run as I pleased, he had the start of 
 me, and was got into the house, and up to the hall, 
 where I found him standing before the fire with his 
 face once more in his hands, and as he so stood 
 he visibly shuddered. 
 
 " 'Mr. Henry, Mr. Henry,' I said, 'this will be 
 the ruin of us all.' 
 
 " 'What is this that I have done ?' cries he, and 
 then looking upon me with a countenance that I 
 shall never forget, 'Who is to tell the old man?' he 
 said. 
 
 "The word knocked at my heart; but it was no 
 time for weakness. I went and poured him out a 
 glass of brandy. 'Drink that,' said I, 'drink it 
 
216 STEVENSON 
 
 down/ I forced him to swallow it like a child ; and, 
 being still perished with the cold of the night, I fol- 
 lowed his example. 
 
 " 'It has to be told, Mackellar,' said he. 'It must 
 be told/ And he fell suddenly in a seat — my old 
 lord's seat by the chimney-side — and was shaken 
 with dry sobs. 
 
 "Dismay came upon my soul; it was plain there 
 was no help in Mr. Henry. 'Well/ said I, 'sit there, 
 and leave all to me/ And taking a candle in my 
 hand, I set forth out of the room in the dark house. 
 There was no movement; I must suppose that all 
 had gone unobserved; and I was now to consider 
 how to smuggle through the rest with the like se- 
 crecy. It was no hour for scruples; and I opened 
 my lady's door without so much as a knock, and 
 passed boldly in. 
 
 " 'There is some calamity happened,' she cried, 
 sitting up in bed. 
 
 " 'Madam,' said I, T will go forth again into the 
 passage; and do you get as quickly as you can into 
 your clothes. There is much to be done.' 
 
 "She troubled me with no questions, nor did she 
 keep me waiting. Ere I had time to prepare a word 
 of that which I must say to her, she was on the 
 threshold signing me to enter. 
 
 " 'Madam,' said I, 'if you cannot be very brave, 
 I must go elsewhere ; for if no one helps me to-night, 
 there is an end of the house of Durrisdeer/ 
 
 " 'I am very courageous/ said she ; and she looked 
 
ROMANCE, MELODRAMA, FARCE 217 
 
 at me with a sort of smile, very painful to see, but 
 very brave too. 
 
 " 'It has come to a duel,' said I. 
 
 "'A duel?' she repeated. 'A duel! Henry 
 and—' 
 
 " 'And the Master/ said I. 'Things have been 
 borne so long, things of which you know nothing, 
 which you would not believe if I should tell. But 
 to-night it went too far, and when he insulted 
 you — ' 
 
 '"Stop/ said she. 'He? Who?' 
 
 " 'Oh ! madam,' cried I, my bitterness breaking 
 forth, 'do you ask me such a question? Indeed, 
 then, I may go elsewhere for help; there is none 
 here!' 
 
 " 'I do not know in what I have offended you,' 
 said she. 'Forgive me ; put me out of this suspense.' 
 
 "But I dared not tell her yet; I felt not sure of 
 her; and at the doubt, and under the sense of im- 
 potence it brought with it, I turned on the poor 
 woman with something near to anger. 
 
 " 'Madam,' said I, 'we are speaking of two men : 
 one of them insulted you, and you ask me which. 
 I will help you to the answer. With one of these 
 men you have spent all your hours: has the other 
 reproached you? To one you have been always 
 kind; to the other, as God sees me and judges be- 
 tween us two, I think not always : has his love ever 
 failed you? To-night one of these two men told 
 the other, in my hearing— the hearing of a hire4 
 
218 STEVENSON 
 
 stranger, — that you were in love with him. Before 
 I say one word, you shall answer your own ques- 
 tion: Which was it? Nay, madam, you shall an- 
 swer me another: If it has come to this dreadful 
 end, whose fault is it?' 
 
 "She stared at me like one dazzled. 'Good God !' 
 she said once, in a kind of bursting exclamation; 
 and then a second time in a whisper to herself : 
 'Great God! — In the name of mercy, Mackellar, 
 what is wrong?' she cried. 'I am made up; I can 
 hear all/ 
 
 " 'You are not fit to hear/ said I. 'Whatever it 
 was, you shall say first it was your fault.' 
 
 " 'Oh!' she cried, with a gesture of wringing her 
 hands, 'this man will drive me mad! Can you not 
 put me out of your thoughts?' 
 
 " 'I think not once of you,' I cried. 'I think of 
 none but my dear unhappy master.' 
 
 " 'Ah !' she cried, with her hand to her heart, 'is 
 Henry dead?' 
 
 " 'Lower your voice,' said I. 'The other.' 
 
 "I saw her sway like something stricken by the 
 wind ; and I know not whether in cowardice or mis- 
 ery, turned aside and looked upon the floor. 'These 
 are dreadful tidings,' said I at length, when her 
 silence began to put me in some fear; 'and you and 
 I behove to be the more bold if the house is to be 
 saved.' Still she answered nothing. 'There is Miss 
 Katharine, besides,' I added; 'unless we bring this 
 matter through her inheritance is like to be of 
 shame.' 
 
ROMANCE, MELODRAMA, FARCE 219 
 
 "I do not know if it was the thought of her child 
 or the naked word shame, that gave her deliverance; 
 at least, I had no sooner spoken than a sound passed 
 her lips, the like of it I never heard ; it was as though 
 she had lain buried under a hill and sought to move 
 that burthen. And the next moment she had found 
 a sort of voice. 
 
 " 'It was a fight/ she whispered. 'It was not — W 
 and she paused upon the word. 
 
 " 'It was a fair fight on my dear master's part/ 
 said I. 'As for the other, he was slain in the very 
 act of a foul stroke/ 
 
 " 'Not now !' she cried. 
 
 " 'Madam/ said I, 'hatred of that man glows in 
 my bosom like a burning fire; ay, even now he is 
 dead. God knows, I would have stopped the fight- 
 ing, had I dared. It is my shame I did not. But 
 when I saw him fall, if I could have spared one 
 thought from pitying of my master, it had been to 
 exult in that deliverance/ 
 
 "I do not know if she marked; but her next words 
 were, 'My lord ?' 
 
 " 'That shall be my part/ said I. 
 
 " 'You will not speak to him as you have to me ?' 
 she asked. 
 
 " 'Madam/ said I, 'have you not some one else 
 to think of? Leave my lord to me/ 
 
 " 'Some one else?' she repeated. 
 
 " 'Your husband/ said I. She looked at me with 
 a countenance illegible. 'Are you going to turn 
 your back on him?' I asked. 
 
220 STEVENSON 
 
 "Still she looked at me; then her hand went to 
 her heart again. 'No/ said she. 
 
 " 'God bless you for that word !' I said. 'Go to 
 him now, where he sits in the hall ; speak to him — it 
 matters not what you say ; give him your hand ; say, 
 'I know all'; — if God gives you grace enough, say, 
 'Forgive me/ 
 
 " 'God strengthen you, and make you merciful,' 
 said she. 'I will go to my husband.' 
 
 " 'Let me light you there/ said I, taking up the 
 candle. 
 
 " 'I will find my way in the dark/ she said, with a 
 shudder, and I think the shudder was at me. 
 
 "So we separated — she downstairs to where a 
 little light glimmered in the hall-door, I along the 
 passage to my lord's room. It seems hard to say 
 why, but I could not burst in on the old man as I 
 could on the young woman; with whatever reluct- 
 ance, I must knock. But his old slumbers were light, 
 or perhaps he slept not ; and at the first summons I 
 was bidden enter. 
 
 "He, too, sat up in bed; very aged and bloodless 
 he looked; and whereas he had a certain largeness 
 of appearance when dressed for daylight, he now 
 seemed frail and little, and his face (the wig being 
 laid aside) not bigger than a child's. This daunted 
 me ; nor less, the haggard surmise of misfortune in 
 his eye. Yet his voice was even peaceful as he in- 
 quired my errand. I set my candle down upon a 
 chair, leaned on the bed- foot, and looked at him. 
 
 " 'Lord Durrisdeer/ said I, 'it is very well known 
 to you that I am a partisan in your family/ 
 
ROMANCE, MELODRAMA, FARCE 221 
 
 " 'I hope we are none of us partisans,' said he. 
 'That you love my son sincerely, I have always been 
 glad to recognise.' 
 
 " 'Oh ! my lord, we are past the hour of these 
 civilities,' I replied. 'If we are to save anything 
 out of the fire, we must look the fact in its bare 
 countenance. A partisan I am; partisans we have 
 all been; it is as a partisan that I am here in the 
 middle of the night to plead before you. Hear me ; 
 before I go, I will tell you why.' 
 
 " 'I would always hear you, Mr. Mackellar,' said 
 he, 'and that at any hour, whether of the day or 
 night, for I would be always sure you had a reason. 
 You spoke once before to very proper purpose; I 
 have not forgotten that.' 
 
 " 'I am here to plead the cause of my master,' I 
 said. 'I need not tell you how he acts. You know 
 how he is placed. You know with what generosity 
 he has always met your other — met your wishes,' I 
 corrected myself, stumbling at that name of son. 
 'You know — you must know — what he has suffered 
 — what he has suffered about his wife.' 
 
 " 'Mr. Mackellar !' cried my lord, rising in bed 
 like a bearded lion. 
 
 " 'You said you would hear me,' I continued. 
 'What you do not know, what you should know, 
 one of the things I am here to speak of, is the perse- 
 cution he must bear in private. Your back is not 
 turned before one whom I dare not name to you 
 falls upon him with the most unfeeling taunts ; twits 
 him — pardon me, my lord — twits him with your 
 
222 STEVENSON 
 
 partiality, calls him Jacob, calls him clown, pursues 
 him with ungenerous raillery, not to be borne by 
 man. And let but one of you appear, instantly he 
 changes; and my master must smile and courtesy 
 to the man who has been feeding him with insults ; 
 I know, for I have shared in some of it, and I tell 
 you the life is insupportable. All these months it 
 has endured; it began with the man's landing; it 
 was by the name of Jacob that my master was 
 greeted the first night/ 
 
 "My lord made a movement as if to throw aside 
 the clothes and rise. 'If there be any truth in this — ' 
 said he. 
 
 " 'Do I look like a man lying?' I interrupted, 
 checking him with my hand. 
 
 " 'You should have told me at first,' he said. 
 
 " 'Ah, my lord ! indeed I should, and you may 
 well hate the face of this unfaithful servant !' I cried. 
 
 " 'I will take order,' said he, 'at once.' And again 
 made the movement to rise. 
 
 "Again I checked him. 'I have not done,' said I. 
 'Would God I had! All this my dear unfortunate 
 patron has endured without help or countenance. 
 Your own best word, my lord, was only gratitude. 
 Oh, but he was your son, too! He had no other 
 father. He was hated in the country, God knows 
 how unjustly. He had a loveless marriage. He 
 stood on all hands without affection or support — 
 dear, generous, ill-fated, noble heart!' 
 
 " 'Your tears do you much honour and me much 
 shame/ says my lord, with a palsied trembling. 'But 
 
ROMANCE, MELODRAMA, FARCE 223 
 
 you do me some injustice. Henry has been ever 
 dear to me, very dear. James (I do not deny it, Mr. 
 Mackellar), James is perhaps dearer; you have not 
 seen my James in quite a favourable light; he has 
 suffered under his misfortunes ; and we can only re- 
 member how great and how unmerited these were. 
 And even now his is the more affectionate nature. 
 But I will not speak of him. All that you say of 
 Henry is most true; I do not wonder, I know him 
 to be very magnanimous ; you will say I trade upon 
 the knowledge ? It is possible ; there are dangerous 
 virtues: virtues that tempt the encroacher. Mr. 
 Mackellar, I will make it up to him ; I will take order 
 with all this. I have been weak ; and, what is worse, 
 I have been dull.' 
 
 " 'I must not hear you blame yourself, my lord, 
 with that which I have yet to tell upon my con- 
 science/ I replied. 'You have not been weak; you 
 have been abused by a devilish dissembler. You 
 saw yourself how he had deceived you in the matter 
 of his danger; he has deceived you throughout in 
 every step of his career. I wish to pluck him from 
 your heart; I wish to force your eyes upon your 
 other son ; ah, you have a son there !' 
 
 " 'No, no/ said he, 'two sons — I have two sons/ 
 
 "I made some gesture of despair that struck him ; 
 he looked at me with a changed face. 'There is 
 much worse behind?' he asked, his voice dying as 
 it rose upon the question. 
 
 " 'Much worse/ I answered. 'This night he said 
 these words to Mr. Henry : "I have never known a 
 
224 STEVENSON 
 
 woman who did not prefer me to you, and I think 
 who did not continue to prefer me." ' 
 
 " 'I will hear nothing against my daughter,' he 
 cried; and from his readiness to stop me in this di- 
 rection, I conclude his eyes were not so dull as I 
 had fancied, and he had looked not without anxiety 
 upon the siege of Mrs. Henry. 
 
 " 'I think not of blaming her,' cried I. 'It is not 
 that. These words were said in my hearing to Mr. 
 Henry; and if you find them not yet plain enough, 
 these others but a little after : "Your wife who is in 
 love with me." ' 
 
 " 'They have quarrelled ?' he said. 
 
 "I nodded. 
 
 " 'I must fly to them/ he said, beginning once 
 again to leave his bed. 
 
 " 'No, no !' I cried, holding forth my hands. 
 
 " 'You do not know,' said he. 'These are danger- 
 ous words/ 
 
 " 'Will nothing make you understand, my lord ?' 
 said I. 
 
 "His eyes besought me for the truth. 
 
 "I flung myself on my knees by the bedside. 'Oh, 
 my lord,' cried I, 'think on him you have left; think 
 of this poor sinner whom you begot, whom your 
 wife bore to you, whom we have none of us strength- 
 ened as we could; think of him, not of yourself; he 
 is the other sufferer — think of him! That is the 
 door for sorrow — Christ's door, God's door : oh ! it 
 stands open. Think of him, even as he thought of 
 you. "Who is to tell the old man?" — these were his 
 
ROMANCE, MELODRAMA, FARCE 225 
 
 words. It was for that I came; that is why I am 
 here pleading at your feet.' 
 
 " 'Let me get up,' he cried, thrusting me aside, 
 and was on his feet before myself. His voice shook 
 like a sail in the wind, yet he spoke with a good 
 loudness; his face was like the snow, but his eyes 
 were steady and dry. 'Here is too much speech/ 
 said he. 'Where was it?' 
 
 " 'In the shrubbery/ said I. 
 
 " 'And Mr. Henry?' he asked. And when I had 
 told him he knotted his old face in thought. 
 
 " 'And Mr. James?' says he: 
 
 " 'I have left him lying,' said I, 'beside the can- 
 dles/ 
 
 " 'Candles ?' he cried. And with that he ran to 
 the window, opened it, and looked abroad. 'It 
 might be spied from the road/ 
 
 " 'Where none goes by at such an hour,' I ob- 
 jected. 
 
 " 'It makes no matter/ he said. 'One might. 
 Hark P cries he. 'What is that ?' 
 
 "It was the sound of men very guardedly rowing 
 in the bay ; and I told him so. 
 
 " 'The freetraders/ said my lord. 'Run at once, 
 Mackellar; put these candles out. I will dress in 
 the meanwhile ; and when you return we can debate 
 on what is wisest.' 
 
 "I groped my way downstairs, and out at the 
 door. From quite a far way off a sheen was visible, 
 making points of brightness in the shrubbery ; in so 
 black a night it might have been remarked for miles ; 
 
226 STEVENSON 
 
 and I blamed myself bitterly for my incaution. How 
 much more sharply when I reached the place ! One 
 of the candlesticks was overthrown, and that taper 
 quenched. The other burned steadily by itself, and 
 made a broad space of light upon the frosted ground. 
 All within that circle seemed, by the force of con- 
 trast and the overhanging blackness, brighter than 
 by day. And there was the bloodstain in the midst ; 
 and a little farther off Mr. Henry's sword, the pom- 
 mel of which was of silver; but of the body, not a 
 trace. My heart thumped upon my ribs, the hair 
 stirred upon my scalp, as I stood there staring — so 
 strange was the sight, so dire the fears it wakened. 
 I looked right and left; the ground was so hard, 
 it told no story. I stood and listened till my ears 
 ached, but the night was hollow about me like an 
 empty church; not even a ripple stirred upon the 
 shore; it seemed you might have heard a pin drop 
 in the county. 
 
 "I put the candle out, and the blackness fell about 
 me groping dark; it was like a crowd surrounding 
 me; and I went back to the house of Durrisdeer, 
 with my chin upon my shoulder, startling, as I went, 
 with craven suppositions. In the door a figure 
 moved to meet me, and I had near screamed with 
 terror ere I recognised Mrs. Henry. 
 
 " 'Have you told him ?' says she. 
 
 " 'It was he who sent me,' said I. 'It's gone. But 
 why are you here ?' 
 
 " 'It is gone!' she repeated. 'What is gone?' 
 
 " 'The body,' said I. 'Why are you not with 
 your husband?' 
 
ROMANCE, MELODRAMA, FARCE 227 
 
 " 'Gone ?' said she. 'You cannot have looked. 
 Come back/ 
 
 " There is no light now,' said I. 'I dare not.' 
 
 "'I can see in the dark. I have been standing 
 here so long — so long,' said she. 'Come, give me 
 your hand.' 
 
 "We returned to the shrubbery hand in hand, and 
 to the fatal place. 
 
 " 'Take care of the blood,' said I. 
 
 " 'Blood ?' she cried, and started violently back. 
 
 " 'I suppose it will be,' said I. 'I am like a blind 
 man.' 
 
 " 'No,' said she, 'nothing ! Have you not 
 dreamed ?' 
 
 " 'Ah, would to God we had !' cried I. 
 
 "She spied the sword, picked it up, and seeing the 
 blood, let it fall again with her hands thrown wide. 
 'Ah !' she cried. And then, with an instant courage, 
 handled it the second time, and [sought to] thrust it 
 to the hilt into the frozen ground. 'I will take it back 
 and clean it properly,' says she, and again looked 
 about her on all sides. 'It cannot be that he was 
 dead?' she added. 
 
 " 'There was no flutter of his heart,' said I, and 
 then remembering: 'Why are you not with your 
 husband ?' 
 
 " 'It is no use,' said she ; 'he will not speak to me.' 
 
 " 'Not speak to you ?' I repeated. 'Oh ! you have 
 not tried.' 
 
 " 'You have a right to doubt me,' she replied, 
 with a gentle dignity. 
 
228 STEVENSON 
 
 "At this, for the first time, I was seized with sor- 
 row for her. 'God knows, madam,' I cried, 'God 
 knows I am not so hard as I appear ; on this dreadful 
 night who can veneer his words? But I am a 
 friend to all who are not Henry Durie's enemies.' 
 
 " 'It is hard, then, you should hesitate about his 
 wife,' said she. 
 
 "I saw all at once, like the rending of a veil, how 
 nobly she had borne this unnatural calamity, and 
 how generously my reproaches. 
 
 " 'We must go back and tell this to my lord,' 
 said I. 
 
 " 'Him I cannot face,' she cried. 
 
 " 'You will find him the least moved of all of us/ 
 said I. 
 
 " 'And yet I cannot face him,' said she. 
 
 " 'Well,' said I, 'you can return to Mr. Henry ; 
 I will see my lord.' 
 
 "As we walked back, I bearing the candlesticks, 
 she the sword — a strange burthen for that woman — 
 she had another thought. 'Should we tell Henry?' 
 she asked. 
 
 " 'Let my lord decide,' said I. 
 
 "My lord was nearly dressed when I came to his 
 chamber. He heard me with a frown. 'The free- 
 traders,' said he. 'But whether dead or alive?' 
 
 " T thought him — ' said I, and paused, ashamed 
 of the word. 
 
 " T know ; but you may very well have been in 
 error. Why should they remove him if not living?' 
 he asked, 'Oh I here is a great door of hope, It 
 
ROMANCE, MELODRAMA, FARCE 229 
 
 must be given out that he departed — as he came — 
 without any note of preparation. We must save all 
 scandal/ 
 
 "I saw he had fallen, like the rest of us, to think 
 mainly of the house. Now that all the living mem- 
 bers of the family were plunged in irremediable 
 sorrow, it was strange how we turned to that con- 
 joint abstraction of the family itself, and sought to 
 bolster up the airy nothing of its reputation: not 
 the Duries only, but the hired steward himself. 
 
 " 'Are we to tell Mr. Henry?' I asked him. 
 
 " 'I will see/ said he. 'I am going first to visit 
 him ; then I go forth with you to view the shrubbery 
 and consider/ 
 
 "We went downstairs into the hall. Mr. Henry 
 sat by the table with his head upon his hand, like a 
 man of stone. His wife stood a little back from 
 him, her hand at her mouth ; it was plain she could 
 not move him. My old lord walked very steadily 
 to where his son was sitting; he had a steady coun- 
 tenance, too, but methought a little cold. When he 
 was come quite up, he held out both his hands and 
 said, 'My son!' 
 
 "With a broken, strangled cry, Mr. Henry leaped 
 up and fell on his father's neck, crying and weeping, 
 the most pitiful sight that ever a man witnessed, 
 'Oh ! father,' he cried, 'you know I loved him ; you 
 know I loved him in the beginning; I could have 
 died for him — you know that ! I would have given 
 my life for him and you. Oh! say you know that. 
 Oh! say you can forgive me. O father, father, 
 
230 STEVENSON 
 
 what have I done — what have I done? And we 
 used to be bairns together!' and wept and sobbed, 
 and fondled the old man, and clutched him about 
 the neck, with the passion of a child in terror. 
 
 "And then he caught sight of his wife (you would 
 have thought for the first time), where she stood 
 weeping to hear him, and in a moment had fallen 
 at her knees. 'And O my lass,' he cried, 'you must 
 forgive me, too! Not your husband — I have only 
 been the ruin of your life. But you knew me when 
 I was a lad; there was no harm in Henry Durie 
 then; he meant aye to be a friend to you. It's him 
 — it's the old bairn that played with you — oh, can 
 ye never, never forgive him ?' 
 
 "Throughout all this my lord was like a cold, 
 kind spectator with his wits about him. At the first 
 cry, which was indeed enough to call the house 
 about us, he had said to me over his shoulder, 'Close 
 the door.' And now he nodded to himself. 
 
 " 'We may leave him to his wife now,' says he. 
 'Bring a light, Mr. Mackellar.' 
 
 "Upon my going forth again with my lord, I was 
 aware of a strange phenomenon; for though it was 
 quite dark, and the night not yet old, methought I 
 smelt the morning. At the same time there went 
 a tossing through the branches of the evergreens, 
 so that they sounded like a quiet sea, and the air 
 puffed at times against our faces, and the flame 
 of the candle shook. We made the more speed, I 
 believe, being surrounded by this bustle ; visited the 
 scene of the duel, where my lord looked upon the 
 
ROMANCE, MELODRAMA, FARCE 231 
 
 blood with stoicism; and passing farther on to- 
 ward the landing-place, came at last upon some evi- 
 dences of the truth. For, first of all, where there 
 was a pool across the path, the ice had been trodden 
 in, plainly by more than one man's weight; next, 
 and but a little farther, a young tree was broken, 
 and down by the landing-place, where the traders' 
 boats were usually beached, another stain of blood 
 marked where the body must have been infallibly 
 set down to rest the bearers. 
 
 "This stain we set ourselves to wash away with 
 the sea water, carrying it in my lord's hat; and as 
 we were thus engaged there came up a sudden moan- 
 ing gust and left us instantly benighted. 
 
 " 'It will come to snow,' says my lord ; 'and the 
 best thing that we could hope. Let us go back now ; 
 we can do nothing in the dark.' 
 
 "As we went houseward, the wind being again 
 subsided, we were aware of a strong pattering noise 
 about us in the night ; and when we issued from the 
 shelter of the trees, we found it raining smartly. 
 
 "Throughout the whole of this, my lord's clear- 
 ness of mind, no less than his activity of body, had 
 not ceased to minister to my amazement. He set 
 the crown upon it in the council we held on our 
 return. The freetraders had certainly secured the 
 Master, though whether dead or alive we were still 
 left to our conjectures ; the rain would, long before 
 day, wipe out all marks of the transaction; by this 
 we must profit. The Master had unexpectedly come 
 after the fall of night; it must now be given out 
 
232 STEVENSON 
 
 he had as suddenly departed before the break of 
 day; and, to make all this plausible, it now only 
 remained for me to mount into the man's chamber, 
 and pack and conceal his baggage. True, we still 
 lay at the discretion of the traders; but that was the 
 incurable weakness of our guilt. 
 
 "I heard him, as I said, with wonder, and hastened 
 to obey. Mr. and Mrs. Henry were gone from the 
 hall; my lord, for warmth's sake, hurried to his 
 bed; there was still no sign of stir among the serv- 
 ants, and as I went up the tower stair, and entered 
 the dead man's room, a horror of solitude weighed 
 upon my mind. To my extreme surprise, it was all 
 in the disorder of departure. Of his three port- 
 manteaux, two were already locked; the third lay 
 open and near full. At once there flashed upon me 
 some suspicion of the truth. The man had been 
 going, after all; he had but waited upon Crail, as 
 Crail waited upon the wind; early in the night the 
 seamen had perceived the weather changing; the 
 boat had come to give notice of the change and call 
 the passenger aboard, and the boat's crew had stum- 
 bled on him lying in his blood. Nay, and there was 
 more behind. This prearranged departure shed 
 some light upon his inconceivable insult of the night 
 before; it was a parting shot, hatred being no longer 
 checked by policy. And, for another thing, the na- 
 ture of that insult, and the conduct of Mrs. Henry, 
 pointed to one conclusion, which I have never veri- 
 fied, and can now never verify until the great as- 
 size — the conclusion that he had at last forgotten 
 
ROMANCE, MELODRAMA, FARCE 233 
 
 himself, had gone too far in his advances, and had 
 been rebuffed. It can never be verified, as I say; 
 but as I thought of it that morning among his bag- 
 gage, the thought was sweet to me like honey. 
 
 "Into the open portmanteau I dipped a little ere 
 I closed it. The most beautiful lace and linen, many 
 suits of those fine plain clothes in which he loved 
 to appear; a book or two, and those of the best, 
 Caesar's Commentaries, a volume of Mr. Hobbes, 
 the Henriade of M. de Voltaire, a book upon the 
 Indies, one on the mathematics, far beyond where 
 I have studied: these were what I observed with 
 very mingled feelings. But in the open portmanteau, 
 no papers of any description. This set me musing. 
 It was possible the man was dead; but, since the 
 traders had carried him away, not likely. It was 
 possible he might still die of his wound; but it was 
 also possible he might not. And in this latter case 
 I was determined to have the means of some de- 
 fence. 
 
 "One after another I carried his portmanteaux to 
 a loft in the top of the house which we kept locked; 
 went to my own room for my keys, and, returning 
 to the loft, had the gratification to find two that 
 fitted pretty well. In one of the portmanteaux there 
 was a shagreen letter-case, which I cut open with my 
 knife; and thenceforth (so far as any credit went) 
 the man was at my mercy. Here was a vast deal 
 of gallant correspondence, chiefly of his Paris days; 
 and, what was more to the purpose, here were the 
 copies of his own reports to the English Secretary, 
 
234 STEVENSON 
 
 and the originals of the Secretary's answers : a most 
 damning series: such as to publish would be to 
 wreck the Master's honour and to set a price upon 
 his life. I chuckled to myself as I ran through 
 the documents; I rubbed my hands, I sang aloud 
 in my glee. Day found me at the pleasing task; 
 nor did I then remit my diligence, except in so far 
 as I went to the window — looked out for a moment, 
 to see the frost quite gone, the world turned black 
 again, and the rain and the wind driving in the 
 bay — and to assure myself that the lugger was gone 
 from its anchorage, and the Master (whether dead 
 or alive) now tumbling on the Irish Sea. 
 
 "It is proper I should add in this place the very 
 little I have subsequently angled out upon the doings 
 of that night. It took me a long while to gather it ; 
 for we dared not openly ask, and the freetraders 
 regarded me with enmity, if not with scorn. It was 
 near six months before we even knew for certain 
 that the man survived; and it was years before I 
 learned from one of Crail's men, turned publican 
 on his ill-gotten gain, some particulars which smack 
 to me of truth. It seems the traders found the 
 Master struggled on one elbow, and now staring 
 round him, and now gazing at the candle or at his 
 hand which was all bloodied, like a man stupid. 
 Upon their coming, he would seem to have found 
 his mind, bade them carry him aboard, and hold 
 their tongues; and on the captain asking how he 
 had come in such a pickle, replied with a burst of 
 passionate swearing, and incontinently fainted. They 
 
ROMANCE, MELODRAMA, FARCE 235 
 
 held some debate, but they were momently looking 
 for a wind, they were highly paid to smuggle him 
 to France, and did not care to delay. Besides which, 
 he was well enough liked by these abominable 
 wretches : they supposed him under capital sentence, 
 knew not in what mischief he might have got his 
 wound, and judged it a piece of good nature to 
 remove him out of the way of danger. So he was 
 taken aboard, recovered on the passage over, and 
 was set ashore a convalescent at the Havre de Grace. 
 What is truly notable: he said not a word to any 
 one of the duel, and not a trader knows to this day 
 in what quarrel, or by the hand of what adversary, 
 he fell. With any other man I should have set this 
 down to natural decency; with him, to pride. He 
 could not bear to avow, perhaps even to himself, 
 that he had been vanquished by one whom he had 
 so much insulted and whom he so cruelly despised/' 
 — The Master of Ballantrae. 
 
 This I believe to be the finest passage in Steven- 
 son, but beyond this and certain scenes of pictur- 
 esque force, we look vainly for any comprehensive 
 thought, such as Victor Hugo, or Dumas, or several 
 of our present romancers display in the management 
 of their plot — "a large design, shadowing the com- 
 plexity of that game of consequences to which we all 
 sit down, the hanger-back not least." Interrelating 
 incident and character throughout a long story was 
 a faculty of thought very frequently denied to Ste- 
 venson. He sought to make up for its lack by vivid- 
 
236 STEVENSON 
 
 ness of the moment, and did not realize that of the 
 long succession of moments in a novel, none can 
 have its proper vividness if the succession points 
 not toward a fuller clarity. 
 
 It is possible that in The Master a great novel was 
 spoiled for the sake of dreaming out a fantastic 
 tale of "many lands." In Her mist on it looks as if a 
 powerful drama, or at least a powerful melodrama, 
 might have been worked out had Stevenson lived. 
 Many critics see in the book signs of greater genius 
 than elsewhere in Stevenson, and of the ambitious- 
 ness of the matter there is no question. The 
 crisis of the story was to be the trial of his own 
 son Archie for murder by Weir of Hermiston, the 
 famous "hanging judge" — a nightmare situation ob- 
 viously, but one to which Stevenson's powers of 
 dramatic compression, estimated by some of his 
 short stories, and by scenes between the two Dur- 
 risdeers in The Master, would have been equal. In 
 preparation, the story opens with a vivid narrative 
 showing the temperamental difference between the 
 father and the son. This theme, which played so 
 large a part in Stevenson's own life, is prominent in 
 several of his other tales, appearing in The 
 Wrecker, "The Story of a Lie," and "The Adven- 
 tures of John Nicholson"; but in Hermiston alone 
 is it seriously treated. Elsewhere it is material for 
 farce; and whether in Hermiston it might not very 
 probably have become hyper-melodramatic at the 
 end, is a grave question. 
 
 There is some good reading at the beginning of 
 
ROMANCE, MELODRAMA, FARCE 237 
 
 the novel, where the "hanging judge" is having his 
 portrait drawn for us, especially that scene, in 
 typical sinister humor, in which the judge's servant, 
 Kirstie, goes out along the road to meet him with 
 the news that his wife has just died. But aside 
 from a few masterly fragments like this, the char- 
 acter of the judge, who is to play such a terrible 
 part in the issue of the story, is rather thinly made 
 out. He fades rather than looms in the background, 
 and, by the sixtieth page, after which we hear no 
 more of him at all, he is already a mere stock 
 figure — religion, drink, dourness — typical perhaps, 
 but also a parody. 
 
 Shortly begins Archie's flirtation with young 
 Kirstie which is to cause all Archie's trouble. Sev- 
 eral of the boy and girl scenes here show the in- 
 fluence of Meredith, and, indeed, the book might 
 have been a sort of Calvinistic, dourly melodra- 
 matic Fever el. Stevenson never learned the art of 
 interweaving skilfully, as Meredith did, the various 
 threads of his story. Some sixty pages are given 
 up to the flirtation with young Kirstie into which 
 no further development of the first motive, of 
 father and son, enters. Now at page one hundred 
 twenty-seven, Innes arrives, and much time must 
 be devoted to the character of Archie's friend 
 who is to bring the plot back to the judge. For 
 Innes is obviously the young seducer; Kirtsie will 
 be his victim; Archie will kill him; the judge 
 will try Archie. Archie's relations with Innes are 
 made interesting by a clever bit of psychology. 
 
238 STEVENSON 
 
 Archie is enough like his father that his treat- 
 ment of Innes resembles his father's treatment 
 of himself. The fragment ends with a neces- 
 sary, but utterly mechanical, alienation scene be- 
 tween Archie and young Kirstie. The tale as we 
 have it is only a fragment; therefore one is de- 
 barred from passing any conclusive judgment on 
 the management of the plot, and the seeming fault 
 of totally neglecting the chief character, Weir of 
 Hermiston himself, after the first sixty pages, 
 might, perhaps, have later been trammeled up. 
 
 Of Stevenson's romances, Weir of Hermiston, 
 like St. Ives, was not finished, and The Master of 
 Ballantrae comes by its particular end only because 
 the author happened to be living at Saranac when 
 he began to write it and had made up his mind 
 arbitrarily that it should somehow end in that lo- 
 cality. These books, together with Prince Otto and 
 The Wrecker, illustrate the flow and the manifold 
 possibilities of Stevenson's imagination and also his 
 one great impossibility, the impossibility of con- 
 ducting a long romance to a fascinating, inevitable 
 end. For even a romance may very well have such 
 an end, and in so far outdo the dreams of sleep 
 which usually cheat us of this satisfaction. As we 
 have already observed, Stevenson's greatest fault as 
 a craftsman is that he was all his life the prey of 
 hints and suggestions rather than the master of com- 
 pleted ideas, and in these books his imagination is 
 too often of the over-impressionable instead of the 
 creative type. He seems to have been much like a 
 
ROMANCE, MELODRAMA, FARCE 239 
 
 boy starting on his first journey, to whom expecta- 
 tion is the keenest part of the pleasure, and who 
 does not wish many instructions about how he 
 shall proceed for fear of spoiling the fun of finding 
 the way by himself. Obviously in regard to The 
 Master, Hermiston, The Wrecker, and Prince Otto, 
 there was no detailed plan in Stevenson's mind even 
 when he was half-way through the story. Incidents 
 pile up in the wrong places and block progress, cer- 
 tain threads are quite forgotten or picked up again 
 only at random. In Prince Otto, the peasant and 
 Ottilia are let lie, though excellent figures to re- 
 turn to, and the Prince might perfectly well have 
 gone back to them for some sort of finale when he 
 left the court. Captain Trent, in The Wrecker, a 
 central figure in the main plot, is utterly neglected 
 for two hundred pages at the end. This is the flim- 
 siness and not the fitness of romance. 
 
 This general wandering geography of so many of 
 Stevenson's plots is a direct reflection of his own 
 existence. He himself doubtless found it as inter- 
 esting to wander in fiction as in the geography of 
 life, and to find himself, driven hither and thither 
 by no inevitable agencies, winding up his tale where 
 he, the author, happened at the moment to be. And 
 I am, of course, aware that such whimsicality is the 
 trait supposed to appeal most to any reader of a 
 true romantical and roving fancy; but whimsicality 
 was intended in but one of these books. In all but 
 The Wrecker Stevenson was trying to write well- 
 constructed romance, untinged by farce, and the 
 
240 STEVENSON 
 
 farce creeps in in spite of him, or perhaps, rather, 
 because it was an inevitable part of his own nature. 
 In a medley like The Wrecker the element of 
 farce is intentionally predominant. Romance oc- 
 cupies the two hundred pages in the middle of the 
 book; the other three hundred and fifty being a 
 series of elaborate burlesques on the detective story, 
 on methods of American advertising, on English 
 family pride, on the man of the world, or on any 
 matter that happened to float into the writer's imagi- 
 nation. In The Wrecker the gleeful irresponsi- 
 bility of Stevensonian humor outstrips any possi- 
 ble attempt at serious criticism. It is all very cheap 
 nonsense or all very good fun, as you happen to 
 feel at the moment. If the story had a romantic 
 purpose in its inception — the first ten pages have 
 a ring that echoes in the ear — this is abruptly 
 forgotten till, on nearing page two hundred, the 
 phantom plot, which you may have been vainly pur- 
 suing from the Latin Quarter to California, again 
 turns up. For two hundred pages there is a stirring 
 sea adventure with a magnificent storm and a guano 
 island, largely done by Lloyd Osbourne, and other 
 matters full of unequaled terror. Toward page four 
 hundred this again fizzles out and the farce resumes 
 full sway. Few readers can have a grain of com- 
 mon sense left at the end of this amazing tale, and 
 certainly the authors, if one should take them in 
 earnest, are guilty of having but the haziest notion 
 from chapter to chapter of what they were intending 
 to do or, at the end, of what they had done. 
 
ROMANCE, MELODRAMA, FARCE 241 
 
 In the Epilogue to Will Lowe, the authors make 
 a defense of the structure of this "modern" yarn, 
 "full of details of our barbaric manners and un- 
 stable morals; — full of the need and the lust of 
 money, so that there is scarce a page in which the 
 dollars do not jingle; — full of the unrest and move- 
 ment of our century, so that the reader is hurried 
 from place to place and sea to sea, and the book is 
 less a romance than a panorama; — in the end, as 
 blood-bespattered as an epic." The authors hoped 
 that this panoramic structure would produce a new 
 illusion of reality; but it does not work out that way 
 for most readers. "Hurried from place to place and 
 sea to sea," the mind of the reader can no more 
 receive an impression of reality than in the vagaries 
 of a fantastic dream; and as for the "tone of a novel 
 of manners and experience," in which the authors 
 assert their epic starts, who could be beguiled so 
 far? The Wrecker is a commentary on Stevenson's 
 other books. Its ground for success is the humorous 
 emphasis of the very traits which elsewhere mar his 
 serious efforts — the dislocations, the arbitrary ar- 
 rangement of scenes, the lack of foresight. Here, 
 they are a part of the fun. They actually carry us 
 along. 
 
 Besides The Wrecker, there is Prince Otto, The 
 Dynamiter, and The New Arabian Nights, of one 
 imagination all compact — romance, satire, farce, al- 
 most indistinguishably mingled. 
 
 Prince Otto, a rather spiritless tour de force con- 
 taining two or three amusing puppets endowed with 
 
242 STEVENSON 
 
 a lingo, unquestionably has the germ of an idea in it. 
 Stevenson intended to create a mock-government, 
 a mirror for politicians, and a guide to vanity for 
 all serious souls. In the principality of Grunewald, 
 Otto, a hesitating socialist, can alone see things in 
 proportion. He has had a glimpse of the world and 
 has heard the laughter of the people. The rest of 
 his ridiculous court are puppets on the wires of illu- 
 sion. But, much like Hamlet, he is full of the vani- 
 ties himself. That is why he understands them so 
 well, and why he enjoys life like a play and is 
 incapable of grasping the wand that would destroy 
 the spell. It has often been said that Stevenson has 
 described himself, or a mixture of himself and his 
 cousin Bob, in Otto. The character possibly has 
 that curious interest for some readers; but Otto 
 does not fill the tale with reality as the character 
 of Jim Hawkins and that of Alan Breck fill their 
 respective extravaganzas. If the fantastic Prince 
 is Stevenson, then Stevenson is nothing but a trick 
 of styles. For surely Otto, no more than Seraphina 
 or Madame von Rosen, walks in the story; he is a 
 figment suitable only for a kind of false fairy-land. 
 In spite of what Stevenson says in the dedication 
 about General Braddock, when defeated in America, 
 promising himself to do better next time, the book 
 is not one of the author's brave efforts. 
 
 To mix successfully romance, melodrama, farce, 
 and satire is by no means an impossible feat when 
 not too seriously undertaken. A great many of 
 Stevenson's intimate friends were of the opinion 
 
ROMANCE, MELODRAMA, FARCE 243 
 
 that he accomplished it essentially in his own per- 
 sonality. Indeed most of the character sketches in 
 Mr. Hammerton's volume of Stevensoniana lead 
 one to this view of the novelist's eccentric and vastly 
 entertaining nature. His was a rare blend — 
 
 "A brilliant and romantic grace, 
 A spirit intense and rare, with trace on trace 
 Of passion, impudence, and energy. 
 Valiant in velvet, light in ragged luck, 
 Most vain, most generous, sternly critical, 
 Buffoon and poet, lover and sensualist: 
 A deal of Ariel, just a streak of Puck, 
 Much Antony, of Hamlet most of all, 
 And something of the Shorter-Catechist. ,, 
 
 So his friend Henley has described him, and 
 somewhere, surely, he has himself put this mixture 
 into fiction without forcing, without loss of humor. 
 There are three places where I think you will find it. 
 They do not represent Stevenson at his literary best, 
 but perhaps they do represent his personal humor 
 most truly. The stories of Desprez in "The Treas- 
 ure of Franchard,' , of Challoner and Sommerset in 
 The Dynamiter, and of Prince Florizel in The New 
 Arabian Nights are masterpieces of this composite 
 character. They are Henley's old, intrepid, scornful 
 Stevenson; they are Stevenson of Barbizon days 
 with Bob, as his wife has described him, not belong- 
 ing quite to his own century, and differing in some 
 indefinable way both in appearance and character 
 from the majority of mankind; they are the talka- 
 
244 STEVENSON 
 
 tive boisterous Stevenson, full of the lightest fancy 
 and full of the most farcical fun. They are things 
 to be read with a gleaming eye and a grin, for they 
 contain the essence of Stevenson's bravado, of ad- 
 venture for adventure's sake and folly for pure 
 foolishness. 
 
 As you read about The Suicide Club, you can not 
 suppress your nervous excitement, nor can you stop 
 laughing hilariously. You are forced to adopt the 
 Stevensonian manner and carry the thing off lightly. 
 This is not Henley's "artist in morals," the "very 
 nearly faultless monster," the "Seraph in Choco- 
 late," but rather the "buffoon and poet." 
 
 Yet if this is the Stevenson whom Henley re- 
 gretted to have lost, and whom all the more intimate 
 of his critics seemed to have chiefly delighted in, 
 it is not the Stevenson whom the next generation 
 has accepted. For them Stevenson as a writer of 
 fiction is always one of two people. He is the 
 magician with the golden key to the palace of dreams 
 in Treasure Island and in Kidnapped, or he is the 
 romantic moralist whom Henley repudiates, the 
 author of Dr. Jekyll, The Ebb-tide, and "The Isle 
 of Voices." And I feel sure that the next genera- 
 tion is right. These are the original and durable 
 parts of Stevenson. Farce and satire have been 
 better done from Swift to Chesterton than Steven- 
 son could do them ; and Joseph Conrad and Maurice 
 Hewlett have succeeded with the long romance 
 where Stevenson failed for lack of thoughts or a 
 good spy-glass. After so long a chapter, it is pos- 
 
ROMANCE, MELODRAMA, FARCE 245 
 
 sibly disheartening to come to this conclusion — 
 Treasure Island and Kidnapped out of them all, to 
 which some would add The Master, and to which 
 we would all supply many favorite scenes from the 
 other books. 
 
 These novels of Stevenson, taken all together, 
 present a curious array — curious rather than im- 
 pressive. The ten volumes on my shelves do not 
 bid for comparison with any ten volumes of Scott, 
 or Victor Hugo, or Dumas, or Conrad, in so far 
 as they stand for adventure in the land of fancy, 
 or in so far as they attempt a picture of society. 
 They do not seem to encompass the region marked 
 for exploration as those other volumes encompass 
 it — Rob Roy, Ninety-Three, The Black Tulip, Nos- 
 tromo, and the rest. These are the products of ma- 
 ture imaginations, and though Stevenson's imagina- 
 tion surpasses each of them in some respects, it is 
 not as evenly extensive, it is not nearly so capable 
 of filling out the expectations it arouses. Steven- 
 son's imagination is suggestive, but not far-sighted. 
 On the other hand, as one looks at this set of vol- 
 umes, it brings memories of many marvelous shores 
 and of mountain tops where Fancy has her abode, 
 memories of supreme moments. 
 
CHAPTER XI 
 
 THE MORAL FABLES 
 
 STEVENSON has the peculiar distinction of 
 being a man of three books. At the mention 
 of his name, it is not Treasure Island alone or Vir- 
 ginibus Puerisque alone, that comes instantly to 
 mind; but Treasure Island, Virginibus Puerisque, 
 and Dr. Jekyll. This is a peculiar distinction, be- 
 cause few authors are finally thought of with equal 
 reference to three phases of their art. At the name 
 of Thackeray the world answers Vanity Fair or 
 Esmond or Pendennis, which are, after all, one and 
 the same thing. If you say Dickens, the world an- 
 nounces a confusion of favorites which are all very 
 closely related to one another. Pickwick, Oliver 
 Twist, Copper field, A Christmas Carol, are of one 
 family; and even A Tale of Two Cities is a first 
 cousin. George Meredith is the author of a great 
 variety of novels, some remarkable poetry, and a 
 few essays, all of which are conceived, as it were, 
 from the same side of his mind — or better, in his 
 whole mind, which is characterized by its strong 
 
 246 
 
THE MORAL FABLES 247 
 
 marking unity rather than by its entertaining versa- 
 tility. A similar statement might be made concern- 
 ing George Eliot or Thomas Hardy; and though 
 Stevenson's mind has as well its marking unity, 
 which I shall be at pains to point out, it is given to a 
 more divergent variety of forms than is the case 
 with these other writers. 
 
 From such considerations one should, however, 
 beware of drawing a rule, of supposing that typical 
 unity is a characteristic of the greater writers and 
 that versatility is a characteristic of the less great. 
 Schiller, Goethe, and Victor Hugo occur to one in- 
 stantly as examples of versatile greatness; while on 
 the other hand of second rate monotony are the 
 examples of Charles Reade, Lever, and Marry at. 
 But the whole matter, the rule and its exceptions, 
 makes a comment to be emphasized. The fact that 
 the first examples of versatile greatness which come 
 to mind are apt to be Frenchmen or Germans rather 
 than Englishmen, is worth noting. It leads us to 
 reflect that Stevenson is one of the very few British 
 authors of marked versatility who ranks well up 
 in the scale — and it is perhaps to be recollected that 
 he is a thorough Scot. Stevenson's essays place 
 him beside Hazlitt and Lamb. His two or three suc- 
 cessful romances are the classics of boyhood. His 
 moral fables are in a realm of imagination, where 
 he is alone in English letters. In so excellent a 
 variety of criticisms, popular philosophy, short 
 stories, romances, fables, and poetry, you will not 
 find anybody in modern England to compare with 
 
248 STEVENSON 
 
 him, or hardly in Europe. But it is to such men as 
 Anatole France, Jules Lemaitre, Hauptmann, and 
 Bjornsen that one turns for any similar excellence 
 of variety among contemporary writers. 
 
 A peculiar pliancy of mood which, in his weaker 
 moments, is almost that of the impersonator, and 
 which, in his stronger moments, thoroughly cor- 
 responds to his own virile complexity, is the Ste- 
 vensonian trait — three men or more in one. His 
 works testify to it, and, as it appeared in daily inter- 
 course, his friends never tired of remarking on it. 
 Once while reading Don Quixote, Stevenson jumped 
 to his feet and exclaimed that the book must have 
 been written especially for him. Many of us per- 
 ceive ourselves in that extravaganza; but I do not 
 know that many people have so good a right as 
 Stevenson to be overcome with the exactness of 
 the characterization. 
 
 II 
 
 So I believe that, in a not too literal sense, it is 
 typical of Stevenson's genius that it should make 
 its first wide appeal in a fable of multiple personal- 
 ity, Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. Stevenson's relation 
 to this amazing tale has very usually been misunder- 
 stood. To many people the plot seems a sheer tour 
 de force, or else the sort of thing that pops into a 
 man's brain for no personal reason at all. That 
 is, such people pretend that the conception is of 
 the sort which does not belong naturally here rather 
 
THE MORAL FABLES 249 
 
 than there in the human mind, and imagine that 
 some other writer might have developed it had it 
 occurred to him. That it was first suggested to 
 Stevenson in a dream is cited as argument in this 
 view of the case. On the contrary Dr. Jekyll is one 
 of Stevenson's most characteristic and intimate pro- 
 ductions; and his dreaming the plot shows that it 
 was especially personal, for in one sense, surely, a 
 dream is the very essence of spontaneity. Besides 
 this, there can be no doubt that Stevenson was in- 
 tensely interested in what he calls the different men 
 in us. He had already written "Markheim," a fable 
 about the better self. Such subjects were matters 
 of frequent conversation with him; and the sug- 
 gestion of this particular dream of the Jekyll-Hyde 
 transformation was all he needed to start him on 
 a fresh illustration of the general thesis. 
 
 In the "Chapter on Dreams," while whimsically 
 explaining his theory, already referred to, of the 
 part which the subconsciousness plays in artistic 
 production, he illustrates that theory by specific 
 reference to Dr. Jekyll. He says he had long been 
 trying to write a story on this subject of dual per- 
 sonality, and, after going about racking his brains 
 for a plot, dreamed one night the scene of Jekyll 
 at the window, and also a scene in which Hyde took 
 the powder and underwent transformation in the 
 presence of those pursuing him. All the rest of the 
 tale he invented while awake, "although I think I 
 can trace in much of it the manner of my Brownies." 
 Thus the meaning of the tale is his, and "the cen- 
 
250 STEVENSON 
 
 tral idea of a voluntary change becoming involun- 
 tary." But "the business of the powders, which 
 so many have censured, is, I am relieved to say, not 
 mine at all but the Brownies'." 
 
 On the morning after Stevenson had this dream 
 he started afresh on the tale and finished the first 
 draft of thirty thousand words in three days. But 
 in this, it appeared to his wife that he had not made 
 the allegory clear, and he therefore rewrote it com- 
 pletely from a different point of view — a point of 
 view that enabled him to see the mystery as a moral, 
 and to make the moral the explanation of the mys- 
 tery. This is the obvious secret and the hidden 
 significance of the tale. 
 
 A great mystery story must mean something be- 
 sides an exhibition of detective skill in exposing the 
 mystery. It must mean something more than the 
 opposition of strange characters and strange forces. 
 Poe's tales, which are marvels of cleverness in 
 creating the atmosphere, the rhythms, of strange- 
 ness, seek few meanings beyond those of nervous 
 sensation; and a Poe tale with a moral would be 
 an artistic contradiction. But the great mystery 
 plot must have, besides an atmosphere of ominous- 
 ness and besides details of action which peculiarly 
 haunt the mind, an imaginative analysis to increase 
 interest in the intellectual aspect of the plot and to 
 guide the reader toward the mystery of its inner 
 meaning. This mystery must reside actually in the 
 plot and not be finally discovered to have evaporated 
 in the "atmosphere." The meaning, the moral, and 
 
THE MORAL FABLES 251 
 
 the mystery must be one and the same; and yet 
 an explanation of the mystery must in nowise dis- 
 pel the atmosphere of mystery. 
 
 What then is the moral of Dr. Jekyllf Let us 
 begin with the most obvious aspect of "the strange 
 case." There are, says Stevenson, two men in us, 
 a better and a worse, who find it convenience or 
 policy, if permitted, to play two roles. So long as 
 the two men are kept distinct, each recognizing 
 clearly which is which, moral corruption is not in- 
 evitable. But in some natures a point is reached 
 sooner than is suspected where the better man finds 
 himself automatically turning into the worse and 
 this when he least of all desires it, when policy and 
 convenience are directly against it. His nature, be- 
 cause it is double, slips from his single control. 
 The man who allows the two sides of his nature to 
 develop at will and who hopes to keep them apart, 
 is soon forced ironically to use his better side merely 
 as a shield for his worse side. That is, he becomes 
 a hypocrite. 
 
 Now this moral plot of Dr. Jekyll is not extrane- 
 ous to the narrative. It is not a tag at the end. For 
 example, long before you have at all guessed what 
 the relation between Jekyll and Hyde may be, you 
 are led to believe by the circumstantial evidence that 
 Jekyll is in Hyde's power, or that he is at least 
 persecuted by Hyde. This turns out to be exactly 
 the truth in the moral plot, though in the narrative 
 plot it is true only in a new way that you never 
 suspected. Next door to a right guess, you are 
 
252 STEVENSON 
 
 still as far as ever from sensing the real state of 
 affairs, and you are also just in the position that 
 Jekyll himself hoped to be. 
 
 Again, the peculiar revulsion of feeling that char- 
 acterizes every meeting between Hyde and an or- 
 dinary man, the "haunting sense of unexpressed 
 deformity," which the reader at first takes to be 
 only a part of the atmosphere, is finally seen to 
 have been part of the moral plot. Lanyon dies 
 mysteriously. Why? Because the evil of this man 
 Hyde is contagious. Lanyon dies of Hyde's Evil. 
 The fact is a haunting detail of the narrative plot, 
 and its peculiar significance is a more fearfully 
 haunting suggestion in the moral plot. 
 
 The two strains of the fable are so perfectly in- 
 terwoven that at last there is a very peculiar and 
 unusual effect. In most stories of terror the solu- 
 tion comes as a distinct relief. It explains away 
 much of the terror. But here the explanation, the 
 final sense of the moral meaning, throws back over 
 many a half- forgotten detail of the narrative plot 
 a light so sharp and terrible that the reader at once 
 begins to contemplate the whole with fresh amaze- 
 ment and increasing awe. It is this which really 
 makes the story a great story and not one where the 
 art of the thing, the trick, becomes obvious and 
 stale as the mind dwells on it. 
 
 A definite, though paradoxical proof of the sound- 
 ness of the art of this story is the stark simplicity 
 of those scenes which most stir the reader. We are 
 
THE MORAL FABLES 253 
 
 doubtless impressionable beings ; but I can still recall 
 the thrills that first stole up my back as Mr. Enfield, 
 on the fourth page of the tale, pointed across the 
 street with his cane, and, as I now read, the same 
 thrills return. 
 
 "'Did you ever remark that door?' he asked; 
 and when his companion had replied in the affirma- 
 tive, 'It is connected in my mind/ he added, 'with 
 a very odd story.' 
 
 "'Indeed?' said Mr. Utterson, with a slight 
 change of voice, 'and what was that?' " 
 
 That "slight change of voice" spreads mystery 
 for miles around. At just that point, before the 
 reader knows anything at all, it is a stroke of 
 genius. 
 
 The most famous spot is probably the scene at 
 the window, a window in a court of this same 
 house. Mr. Enfield and Mr. Utterson are again 
 on one of their rambles. 
 
 "The court was very cool and a little damp, and 
 full of premature twilight, although the sky, high 
 up overhead, was still bright with sunset. The 
 middle one of the three windows was half-way open ; 
 and sitting close beside it, taking the air with an 
 infinite sadness of mien, like some disconsolate 
 prisoner, Utterson saw Dr. Jekyll. 
 
 "'What! Jekyll!' he cried: T trust you are 
 better.' 
 
254 STEVENSON 
 
 " 'I am very low, Utterson/ replied the doctor, 
 drearily, Very low. It will not last long, thank 
 God/ 
 
 " 'You stay too much indoors,* said the lawyer. 
 'You should be out, whipping up the circulation 
 like Mr. Enfield and me. (This is my cousin — Mr. 
 Enfield — Dr. Jekyll.) Come now; get your hat and 
 take a quick turn with us.' 
 
 " 'You are very good/ sighed the other. 'I should 
 like to very much; but no, no, no, it is quite im- 
 possible; I dare not. But indeed, Utterson, I am 
 very glad to see you ; this is really a great pleasure ; 
 I would ask you and Mr. Enfield up, but the place 
 is really not fit/ 
 
 " 'Why, then,' said the lawyer, good-naturedly, 
 'the best thing we can do is to stay down here and 
 speak with you from where we are/ 
 
 " 'That is just what I was about to venture to 
 propose/ returned the doctor with a smile. But 
 the words were hardly uttered, before the smile 
 was struck out of his face and succeeded by an ex- 
 pression of such abject terror and despair, as froze 
 the very blood of the two gentlemen below. They 
 saw it but for a glimpse, for the window was in- 
 stantly thrust down; but that glimpse had been 
 sufficient, and they turned and left the court with- 
 out a word. In silence, too, they traversed the by- 
 streets; and it was not until they had come into a 
 neighbouring thoroughfare, where even upon a Sun- 
 day there were still some stirrings of life, that Mr. 
 Utterson at last turned and looked at his companion. 
 
THE MORAL FABLES 255 
 
 They were both pale; and there was an answering 
 horror in their eyes. 
 
 " 'God forgive us, God forgive us,' said Mr. Ut- 
 terson. 
 
 "But Mr. Enfield only nodded his head very seri- 
 ously, and walked on once more in silence." — Dr. 
 Jekyll. 
 
 Surely, this is not the dime novel method of 
 trumping up excitement. As one comes to this 
 scene in the narrative, full of the most terrible suspi- 
 cions, one feels an almost unbearable horror, be- 
 side which the excitements of cheap literature are 
 merely things to be bought with money over a 
 counter. 
 
 Ill 
 
 The publication of this story in 1886 changed 
 Stevenson's reputation from that of a writer of 
 philosophic sketches and a graceful contributor to 
 magazines to that of the inventor of an idea and a 
 man of artistic force. The book established him 
 internationally. It was soon translated into many 
 European languages. It was dramatized. Sermons 
 were preached about it. The title was on every- 
 body's tongue, and has since passed into the lan- 
 guage. And a coincidence, which I think marks the 
 crest of popular literary fame in modern time, was 
 that the pilot who came out from New York to 
 meet Stevenson's ship was known as Hyde by his 
 
256 STEVENSON 
 
 crew, while his better tempered companion was 
 known as Jekyll. 
 
 Moreover, with so powerful a stimulus as this 
 story, the reading public, anxious to discover more 
 of the author, soon found that Stevenson had long 
 been a romantic moralist in fiction and in the essay. 
 A year before he had written a terrible sermon in 
 the form of a murder tale called "Markheim." Two 
 years before that he had set forth his whimsical 
 philosophy of optimism and bravado in "The Treas- 
 ure of Franchard," and previously still in "Provi- 
 dence and the Guitar." "Will o' the Mill," "Lodg- 
 ing for the Night," were also moral ideas in the 
 story form. The public discovered, that is, that 
 these tales were exemplifications of the ideas of his 
 essays, and that Stevenson's work, instead of being 
 casual magazine work, had in its great variety, a 
 marking purpose. The author of "Ordered South," 
 "Apology for Idlers," "Aes Triplex," "Lantern 
 Bearers," "Child's Play," was giving out the same 
 message as the author of Dr. Jekyll, "Markheim," 
 "The Treasure of Franchard." v 
 
 Let us attempt to perceive from other fables 
 what the gist of that message is. 
 
 "Markheim" is in many ways the most note- 
 worthy and the most original of Stevenson's short 
 stories. Like Dr. Jekyll it is a hair-raising piece of 
 philosophy; and it has much the same significance. 
 It is again the simple union of sheer romance and 
 downright morality, a rare trick which it took genius 
 to discover. It is that which gives the tale its 
 
THE MORAL FABLES 257 
 
 flavor. The situation, the murder that is, is put 
 before us in one of those carefully vivid scenes 
 that hang in the memory almost intact and cast their 
 shadow across succeeding pages. Then while the 
 imagination is thus affected, the real mystery, the 
 real problem of the story, suddenly confronts us. 
 And in this lies the surpassing art of Stevenson as 
 a fabulist. For he can confront us with the terrible 
 moral question of Markheim still shrouded in all 
 the mystery that clings to it in every human life. 
 The question is that of moral evil and the soul. 
 The murderer and his uncorrupted better self come 
 face to face. But does such a better self really 
 exist for Markheim, or is it only a bogle? Ste- 
 venson's answer to the question is masterly. He 
 shows Markheim that the worst sin is probably the 
 one we commit in the hope of rescuing our better 
 selves which we have all along been ruining. 
 
 These two stories, "Markheim" and Dr. Jekyll, 
 are striking symbols of the same sharp truth. 
 
 IV 
 
 Another tale of quite different purport, in which 
 adventure and philosophy are yet blended with 
 similar art, is "A Lodging for the Night." It -is 
 significant that it should be Stevenson's first story, 
 and that it should have in addition to the temper 
 of romance the fabulist's touch. Just what this 
 does for the romantic adventure can be thoroughly 
 understood if one comes to the story from "The 
 
258 STEVENSON 
 
 Pavilion on "the Links," which immediately pre- 
 cedes it in New Arabian Nights. "The Pavilion on 
 the Links" has no traces of ethics. It is a mere 
 adventure and rather loosely strung together. "A 
 Lodging for the Night," on the other hand, is a 
 most incisive incident, the mark it leaves being as 
 much on the conscience as on the care- free imagina- 
 tion. Like "Markheim," "Will o' the Mill," or 
 "Providence and the Guitar," it is the expression of 
 several sides of Stevenson's genius; and not, like 
 "The Pavilion" or "The Merry Men," an expression 
 of one side alone. There is in it that weight of 
 thought and that precision of phrase characteristic 
 of his finest essays, and also a heightened at- 
 mosphere of romantic excitement. In the ability to 
 perfect these combined qualities lay Stevenson's 
 genius, and this story offers an exceptional chance 
 to study it. 
 
 Stevenson had been investigating the life and 
 times of Francois Villon, "student, poet, and house- 
 breaker," and had two months before shaped his 
 inclinations and impressions into an essay for The 
 Cornhill. That essay is distinctly a document in 
 morals. The keenest relish of the humors of Vil- 
 lon's escapades, and of the significance for French 
 literature of his flexible lyric verse, do not prevent 
 Stevenson from passing a judgment of conscience 
 on this man who cast his jail-bird sentiments into 
 so deft a form. As in the essays on Burns and on 
 Pepys, he is intent on showing a man in his true 
 lights. He carefully does Villon no injustice. A 
 
THE MORAL FABLES 259 
 
 charming indulgence, however, leads finally but into 
 the strong light of direct comprehension. I wish to 
 quote enough of the essay to show not only how 
 vivid is Stevenson's delineation of Villon's character, 
 but also the skill with which the moralist wins our 
 sympathy for his victim. Sympathy alone is the 
 basis of direct comprehension. This is one of Ste- 
 venson's axioms as a critic. You will note after- 
 ward that he employs a nearly similar skill and a 
 like sympathy in constructing his romantic tale about 
 the scapegrace. 
 
 The essay opens as follows : 
 
 "Perhaps one of the most curious revolutions in 
 literary history is the sudden bull's-eye light cast 
 by M. Longnon on the obscure existence of Francois 
 Villon. His book is not remarkable merely as a 
 chapter of biography exhumed after four centuries. 
 To readers of the poet it will recall, with a flavor 
 of satire, that characteristic passage in which he 
 bequeaths his spectacles — with a humorous reserva- 
 tion of the case — to the hospital for blind paupers 
 known as the Fifteen-Score. Thus equipped, let 
 the blind paupers go and separate the good from 
 the bad in the cemetery of the Innocents ! For his 
 own part the poet can see no distinction. Much 
 have the dead people made of their advantages. 
 What does it matter now that they have lain in state 
 beds and nourished portly bodies upon cakes and 
 cream ! Here they all lie, to be trodden in the mud ; 
 the large estate and the small, sounding virtue and 
 
260 STEVENSON 
 
 adroit or powerful vice, in very much the same con- 
 dition ; and a bishop not to be distinguished from a 
 lamplighter with even the strongest spectacles." 
 
 "Such," says Stevenson, "was Villon's cynical 
 philosophy." He shows how poor Villon, poor, 
 dependent, well enough educated, yet lacking any 
 sense of obligation to his benefactors, was early 
 initiated into the ways of the crooks of the student 
 quarter in Paris. So the poet begins to lead that 
 life of thievery that he celebrates in the ballads. 
 
 "And yet it is not as a thief, but as a homicide, 
 that he makes his first appearance before angry 
 justice. One June 5, 1455, when he was about 
 twenty-four, and had been Master of Arts for a 
 matter of three years, we behold him for the first 
 time quite definitely. Angry justice had, as it were, 
 photographed him in the act of his homicide; and 
 M. Longnon, rummaging among old deeds, has 
 turned up the negative and printed it off for our 
 instruction. Villon had been supping — copiously 
 we may believe — and sat on a stone bench in front 
 of the Church of St. Benoit, in company with a 
 priest called Gilles and a woman of the name of 
 Isabeau. It was nine o'clock, a mightly late hour 
 for the period, and evidently a fine summer's night. 
 Master Francois carried a mantle, like a prudent 
 man, to keep him from the dews (serain), and had 
 a sword below it dangling from his girdle. So these 
 three dallied in front of St. Benoit, taking their 
 pleasure (pour soy esbatre). Suddenly there ar- 
 
THE MORAL FABLES 261 
 
 rived upon the scene a priest, Philippe Chermoye 
 or Sermaise, also with a sword and cloak, and ac- 
 companied by one Master Jehan le Mardi. Ser- 
 maise, according to Villon's account, which is all 
 we have to go upon, came up blustering and deny- 
 ing God; as Villon rose to make room for him 
 upon the bench, thrust him rudely back into his 
 place; and finally drew his sword and cut open his 
 lower lip, by what I should imagine was a very 
 clumsy stroke. Up to this point, Villon professes 
 to have been a model of courtesy, even of feeble- 
 ness; and the brawl, in his version, reads like the 
 fable of the wolf and the lamb. But now the lamb 
 was roused; he drew his sword, stabbed Sermaise 
 in the groin, knocked him on the head with a big 
 stone and then, leaving him to his fate, went away 
 to have his own lip doctored by a barbei of the name 
 of Fouquet. In one version, he says that Gilles, 
 Isabeau, and Le Mardi ran away at the first high 
 words, and that he and Sermaise had it out alone; 
 in another, Le Mardi is represented as returning 
 and wresting Villon's sword from him: the reader 
 may please himself. Sermaise was picked up, lay 
 all that night in the prison of St. Benoit where he 
 was examined by an official of the Chatelet and ex- 
 pressly pardoned Villon, and died on the following 
 Saturday in the Hotel Dieu. 
 
 "This, as I have said, was in June. Not before 
 January of the next year could Villon extract a 
 pardon from the king; but while his hand was in, 
 he got two. One is for 'Francois des Loges, alias 
 
262 STEVENSON 
 
 (autrement dit) de Villon'; and the other runs in 
 the name of Francois de Montcorbier. Nay, it ap- 
 pears there was a further complication; for in the 
 narrative of the first of these documents, it is men- 
 tioned that he passed himself off upon Fouquet, the 
 barber-surgeon, as one Michel Mouton. M. Long- 
 non has a theory that this unhappy accident with 
 Sermaise was the cause of Villon's subsequent ir- 
 regularities; and that up to that moment he had 
 been the pink of good behavior. But the matter 
 has to my eyes a more dubious air. A pardon neces- 
 sary for Des Loges and another for Montcorbier? 
 and these two the same person? and one or both of 
 them known by the alias of Villon, however hon- 
 estly come by? and lastly, in the heat of the moment, 
 a fourth name thrown out with an assured coun- 
 tenance ? A ship is not to be trusted that sails under 
 so many colours. This is not the simple bearing of 
 innocence. No — the young master was already 
 treading crooked paths; already, he would start 
 and blench at a hand upon his shoulder, with the 
 look we know so well in the face of Hogarth's Idle 
 Apprentice; already, in the blue devils, he would 
 see Henry Cousin, the executor of high justice, 
 going in dolorous procession toward Montfaucon, 
 and hear the wind and the birds crying around 
 Paris gibbet." 
 
 This is a sample exploit; and here is another 
 which began at a memorable supper at the Mule 
 Tavern, in front of the Church of St. Mathurin. 
 
THE MORAL FABLES 263 
 
 One of Villon's crew, Tabary, had ordered the sup- 
 per. Others joined them at the feast. 
 
 "This supper party was to be his first introduc- 
 tion to De Cayeux and Petit- Jehan, which was prob- 
 ably a matter of some concern to the poor man's 
 muddy wits; in the sequel, at least, he speaks of 
 both with an undisguised respect, based on profes- 
 sional inferiority in the matter of picklocks. Dom 
 Nicolas, a Picardy monk, was the fifth and last at 
 table. When supper had been despatched and fairly 
 washed down, we may suppose, with white Bai- 
 gneux or red Beaune, which were favorite wines 
 among the fellowship, Tabary was solemnly sworn 
 over to secrecy on the night's performances; and 
 the party left the Mule and proceeded to an unoc- 
 cupied house belonging to Robert de Saint-Simon. 
 This, over a low wall, they entered without diffi- 
 culty. All but Tabary took off their upper gar- 
 ments; a ladder was found and applied to the high 
 wall which separated Saint-Simon's house from the 
 court of the College of Navarre; the four fellows 
 in their shirt-sleeves (as we might say) clambered 
 over in a twinkling: and Master Guy Tabary re- 
 mained alone beside the overcoats. From the court 
 the burglars made their way into the vestry of the 
 chapel, where they found a large chest, strengthened 
 with iron bands and closed with four locks. One 
 of these locks they picked, and then, by levering up 
 the corner, forced the other three. Inside was a 
 small coffer, of walnut wood, also barred with iron, 
 
264 STEVENSON 
 
 but fastened with only three locks, which were all 
 comfortably picked by the way of the keyhole. In 
 the walnut coffer — a joyous sight by our thieves' 
 lantern — were five hundred crowns of gold. There 
 was some talk of opening the aumries, where, if 
 they had only known, a booty eight or nine times 
 greater lay ready to their hand, but one of the party 
 (I have a humorous suspicion it was Dom Nicolas, 
 the Picardy monk) hurried them away. It was ten 
 o'clock when they mounted the ladder; it was about 
 midnight before Tabary beheld them coming back. 
 To him they gave ten crowns, and promised a share 
 of a two-crown dinner on the morrow ; whereat we 
 may suppose his mouth watered. In course of time, 
 he got wind of the real amount of their booty and 
 understood how scurvily he had been used; but he 
 seems to have borne no malice. How could he, 
 against such superb operators as Petit- Jehan and 
 De Cayeux ; or a person like Villon, who could have 
 made a new improper romance out of his own head, 
 instead of merely copying an old one with mechan- 
 ical right hand?" 
 
 Such affairs are all one knows of Villon's his- 
 tory. His temperament is illustrated by them and by 
 his poems, especially by the Large Testament, "that 
 admirable and despicable performance." The date 
 of this work "is the last date in the poet's biogra- 
 phy," Stevenson remarks. "How or when he died, 
 whether decently in bed or trussed up to a gallows, 
 remains a riddle for foolhardy commentators." — 
 "Francois Villon," Familiar Studies. 
 
THE MORAL FABLES 265 
 
 Now I think that any one who may have tried 
 it will tell us that to make a successful short story 
 out of the same materials with which he has con- 
 structed a critical essay, to turn suddenly from ap- 
 preciated into creator, is a very rare gift. Cer- 
 tainly it implies an intimacy with the .subject, a 
 rapid and thorough absorption of detail, that most 
 students of literature and biography never even 
 dream of striving for. Yet all that this comes to, 
 if viewed from a slightly different angle, is a really 
 sympathetic comprehension of a man. It would 
 be a thesis which I should like to defend that any- 
 body who could write an essay as thorough as Ste- 
 venson's, could also write a story as vivid as "A 
 Lodging for the Night." My ground of argument 
 would be that the story and the essay have their 
 essential points in common: a personal realization 
 of Villon's humor, a perfectly suggested local back- 
 ground, and the taste for the sort of moral frame 
 which best suits the portrait. The essay begins 
 with a whimsical illustration of Villon's philosophy 
 of life and death. The story begins with an illustra- 
 tion of the actual effect of death on Villon's imagina- 
 tion while he struggles to let his whimsical philoso- 
 phy reassert itself. The essay proceeds to detail a 
 set of his escapades and to draw the moral. The 
 story selects one typical escapade, embellishes it with 
 moralized dialogue to suit, and then, like the essay, 
 thrusts the hero forth into the uncertainty of his 
 vagabond future. 
 
266 STEVENSON 
 
 A LODGING FOR THE NIGHT 
 
 "It was late in November, 1456. The snow fell 
 over Paris with rigorous, relentless persistence; 
 sometimes the wind made a sally and scattered it 
 in flying vortices; sometimes there was a lull, and 
 flake after flake descended out of the black night 
 air, silent, circuitous, interminable. To poor people, 
 looking up under moist eyebrows, it seemed a won- 
 der where it all came from. Master Francis Villon 
 had propounded an alternative that afternoon, at a 
 tavern window : was it only Pagan Jupiter plucking 
 geese upon Olympus ? or were the holy angels moult- 
 ing? He was only a poor Master of Arts, he went 
 on; and as the question somewhat touched upon 
 divinity, he durst not venture to conclude. A silly 
 old priest from Montargis, who was among the 
 company, treated the young rascal to a bottle of 
 wine in honour of the jest and grimaces with which 
 it was accompanied, and swore on his own white 
 beard that he had been just such another irreverent 
 dog when he was Villon's age. 
 
 "The air was raw and pointed, but not far below 
 freezing; and the flakes were large, damp, and ad- 
 hesive. The whole city was sheeted up. An army 
 might have marched from end to end and not a foot- 
 fall given the alarm. If there were any belated birds 
 in heaven, they saw the island like a large white 
 patch, and the bridges like slim white spars, on the 
 black ground of the river. High up overhead the 
 snow settled among the tracery of the cathedral 
 
THE MORAL FABLES 267 
 
 towers. Many a niche was drifted full; many a 
 statue wore a long white bonnet on its grotesque or 
 sainted head. The gargoyles had been transformed 
 into great false noses, drooping towards the point. 
 The crockets were like upright pillows swollen on 
 one side. In the intervals of the wind, there was 
 a dull sound of dripping about the precincts of the 
 church. 
 
 "The cemetery of St. John had taken its own share 
 of the snow. All the graves were decently covered ; 
 tall white housetops stood around in grave array; 
 worthy burghers were long ago in bed, be-night- 
 capped like their domiciles ; there was no light in all 
 the neighbourhood but a little peep from a lamp 
 that hung swinging in the church choir, and tossed 
 the shadows to and fro in time to its oscillations. 
 The clock was hard on ten when the patrol went by 
 with halberds and a lantern, beating their hands; 
 and they saw nothing suspicious about the cemetery 
 of St. John. 
 
 "Yet there was a small house, backed up against 
 the cemetery wall, which was still awake, and awake 
 to evil purpose, in that snoring district. There was 
 not much to betray it from without; only a stream 
 of warm vapour from the chimney-top, a patch 
 where the snow melted on the roof, and a few half- 
 obliterated footprints at the door. But within, be- 
 hind the shuttered windows, Master Francis Villon 
 the poet, and some of the thievish crew with whom 
 he consorted were keeping the night alive and pass- 
 ing round the bottle. 
 
268 STEVENSON 
 
 "A great pile of living embers diffused a strong 
 and ruddy glow from the arched chimney. Before 
 this straddled Dom Nicolas, the Picardy monk, with 
 his skirts picked up and his fat legs bared to the 
 comfortable warmth. His dilated shadow cut the 
 room in half; and the firelight only escaped on either 
 side of his broad person, and in a little pool between 
 his outspread feet. His face had the beery, bruised 
 appearance of the continual drinker's; it was cov- 
 ered with a network of congested veins, purple in 
 ordinary circumstances, but now pale violet, for even 
 with his back to the fire the cold pinched him on 
 the other side. His cowl had half fallen back, and 
 made a strange excrescence on either side of his 
 bull neck. So he straddled, grumbling, and cut the 
 room in half with the shadow of his portly frame. 
 
 "On the right, Villon and Guy Tabary were hud- 
 dled together over a scrap of parchment; Villon 
 making a ballade which he was to call the 'Ballade 
 of Roast Fish/ and Tabary spluttering admiration 
 at his shoulder. The poet was a rag of a man, 
 dark, little, and lean, with hollow cheeks and thin 
 black locks. He carried his four-and-twenty years 
 with feverish animation. Greed had made folds 
 about his eyes, evil smiles had puckered his mouth. 
 The wolf and pig struggled together in his face. 
 It was an eloquent, sharp, ugly, earthly countenance. 
 His hands were small and prehensile, with fingers 
 knotted like a cord ; and they were continually flick- 
 ering in front of him in violent and expressive pan- 
 tomime. As for Tabary, a broad, complacent, ad- 
 
THE MORAL FABLES 269 
 
 miring imbecility breathed from his squash nose and 
 slobbering lips: he had become a thief, just as he 
 might have become the most decent of burgesses, 
 by the imperious chance that rules the lives of 
 human geese and human donkeys. 
 
 "At the monk's other hand, Montigny and The- 
 venin Pensete played a game of chance. About 
 the first there clung some flavour of good birth 
 and training, as about a fallen angel; something 
 long, lithe, and courtly in the person; something 
 aquiline and darkling in the face. Thevenin, poor 
 soul, was in great feather: he had done a good 
 stroke of knavery that afternoon in the Faubourg 
 St. Jacques, and all night he had been gaining from 
 Montigny. A flat smile illuminated his face; his 
 bald head shone rosily in a garland of red curls; 
 his little protuberant stomach shook with silent 
 chucklings as he swept in his gains. 
 
 " 'Doubles or quits ?' said Thevenin. 
 
 "Montigny nodded grimly. 
 
 " 'Some may prefer to dine in state/ wrote Villon, 
 'On bread and cheese on silver plate. Or, or — help 
 me out, Guido!' 
 
 "Tabary giggled. 
 
 " 'Or parsley on a golden dish' scribbled the poet. 
 
 "The wind was freshening without; it drove the 
 snow before it, and sometimes raised its voice in a 
 victorious whoop, and made sepulchral grumblings 
 in the chimney. The cold was growing sharper as 
 the night went on. Villon, protruding his lips, im- 
 itated the gust with something between a whistle 
 
270 STEVENSON 
 
 and a groan. It was an eerie, uncomfortable talent 
 of the poet's, much detested by the Picardy monk. 
 
 "'Can't you hear it rattle in the gibbet?' said 
 Villon. 'They are all dancing the devil's jig on 
 nothing, up there. You may dance, my gallants, 
 you'll be none the warmer! Whew! what a gust! 
 Down went somebody just now ! A medlar the 
 fewer on the three-legged medlar-tree ! — I say, Dom 
 Nicolas, it'll be cold to-night on the St. Denis Road ?' 
 he asked. 
 
 "Dom Nicolas winked both his big eyes, and 
 seemed to choke upon his Adam's apple. Montfau- 
 con, the great grisly Paris gibbet, stood hard by the 
 St. Denis Road, and the pleasantry touched him on 
 the raw. As for Tabary, he laughed immoderately 
 over the medlars ; he had never heard anything more 
 light-hearted; and he held his sides and crowed. 
 Villon fetched him a fillip on the nose, which turned 
 his mirth into an attack of coughing. 
 
 " 'Oh, stop that row,' said Villon, 'and think of 
 rhymes to "fish."' 
 
 " 'Doubles or quits/ said Montigny doggedly. 
 
 " 'With all my heart,' quoth Thevenin. 
 
 "'Is there any more in that bottle?' asked the 
 monk. 
 
 " 'Open another,' said Villon. 'How do you ever 
 hope to fill that big hogshead, your body, with little 
 things like bottles ? And how do you expect to get 
 to heaven? How many angels, do you fancy, can 
 be spared to carry up a single monk from Picardy? 
 
THE MORAL FABLES 271 
 
 Or do you think yourself another Elias — and they'll 
 send the coach for you ?' 
 
 " 'Hotninibus impossibile/ replied the monk as he 
 filled his glass. 
 
 "Tabary was in ecstasies. 
 
 "Villon filliped his nose again. 
 
 " 'Laugh at my jokes, if you like/ he said. 
 
 " 'It was very good,' objected Tabary. 
 
 "Villon made a face at him. Think of rhymes to 
 "fish," ' he said. 'What have you to do with Latin? 
 You'll wish you knew none of it at the great as- 
 sizes, when the devil calls for Guido Tabary, cleri- 
 cus — the devil with the hump-back and red-hot 
 finger-nails. Talking of the devil,' he added in a 
 whisper, 'look at Montignyl' 
 
 "All three peered covertly at the gamester. He 
 did not seem to be enjoying his luck. His mouth 
 was a little to a side; one nostril nearly shut, and 
 the other much inflated. The black dog was on his 
 back, as people say, in terrifying nursery metaphor; 
 and he breathed hard under the gruesome burden. 
 
 " 'He looks as if he could knife him,' whispered 
 Tabary, with round eyes. 
 
 "The monk shuddered, and turned his face and 
 spread his open hands to the red embers. It was 
 the cold that thus affected Dom Nicolas, and not any 
 excess of moral sensibility. 
 
 " 'Come, now,' said Villon — 'about this ballade. 
 How does it run so far?' And beating time with 
 his hand, he read it aloud to Tabary. 
 
272 STEVENSON 
 
 "They were interrupted at the fourth rhyme by 
 a brief and fatal movement among the gamesters. 
 The round was completed, and Thevenin was just 
 opening his mouth to claim another victory, when 
 Montigny leaped up, swift as an adder, and stabbed 
 him to the heart. The blow took effect before he 
 had time to utter a cry, before he had time to move. 
 A tremor or two convulsed his frame; his hands 
 opened and shut, his heels rattled on the floor; then 
 his head rolled backward over one shoulder with the 
 eyes wide open, and Thevenin Pensete's spirit had 
 returned to Him who made it. 
 
 "Every one sprang to his feet; but the business 
 was over in two twos. The four living fellows 
 looked at each other in rather a ghastly fashion; 
 the dead man contemplating a corner of the roof 
 with a singular and ugly leer. 
 
 " 'My God !' said Tabary ; and he began to pray 
 in Latin. 
 
 "Villon broke out into hysterical laughter. He 
 came a step forward and ducked a ridiculous bow 
 at Thevenin, and laughed still louder. Then he sat 
 down suddenly, all of a heap, upon a stool, and 
 continued laughing bitterly as though he would 
 shake himself to pieces. 
 
 "Montigny recovered his composure first. 
 
 " 'Let's see what he has about him,' he remarked, 
 and he picked the dead man's pockets with a prac- 
 tised hand, and divided the money into four equal 
 portions on the table. 'There's for you,' he said. 
 
 "The monk received his share with a deep sigh, 
 
THE MORAL FABLES 273 
 
 and a single stealthy glance at the dead Thevenin, 
 who was beginning to sink into himself and topple 
 sideways off the chair. 
 
 " 'We're all in for it/ cried Villon, swallowing 
 his mirth. 'It's a hanging job for every man jack 
 of us that's here — not to speak of those who aren't.' 
 He made a shocking gesture in the air with his 
 raised right hand, and put out his tongue and threw 
 his head on one side, so as to counterfeit the ap- 
 pearance of one who has been hanged. Then he 
 pocketed his share of the spoil, and executed a 
 shuffle with his feet as if to restore the circulation. 
 
 "Tabary was the last to help himself; he made a 
 dash at the money, and retired to the other end of 
 the apartment. 
 
 "Montigny stuck Thevenin upright in the chair, 
 and drew out the dagger, which was followed by a 
 jet of blood. 
 
 " 'You fellows had better be moving,' he said, as 
 he wiped the blade on his victim's doublet. 
 
 " 'I think we had,' returned Villon, with a gulp. 
 'Damn his fat head !' he broke out. 'It sticks in my 
 throat like phlegm. What right has a man to have 
 red hair when he is dead ?' And he fell all of a heap 
 again upon the stool, and fairly covered his face 
 with his hands. 
 
 "Montigny and Dom Nicolas laughed aloud, even 
 Tabary feebly chiming in. 
 
 " 'Cry baby,' said the monk. 
 
 " 'I always said he was a woman,' added Mon- 
 tigny, with a sneer. 'Sit up, can't you?' he went 
 
274 STEVENSON 
 
 on, giving another shake to the murdered body. 
 Tread out that fire, Nick !' 
 
 "But Nick was better employed; he was quietly 
 taking Villon's purse, as the poet sat, limp and 
 trembling, on the stool where he had been making 
 a ballade not three minutes before. Montigny and 
 Tabary dumbly demanded a share of the booty, 
 which the monk silently promised as he passed the 
 little bag into the bosom of his gown. In many 
 ways an artistic nature unfits a man for practical 
 existence. 
 
 "No sooner had the theft been accomplished than 
 Villon shook himself, jumped to his feet, and began 
 helping to scatter and extinguish the embers. Mean- 
 while Montigny opened the door and cautiously 
 peered into the street. The coast was clear; there 
 was no meddlesome patrol in sight. Still it was 
 judged wiser to slip out severally; and as Villon 
 was himself in a hurry to escape from the neigh- 
 bourhood of the dead Thevenin, and the rest were 
 in a still greater hurry to get rid of him before he 
 should discover the loss of his money, he was the 
 first by general consent to issue forth into the street. 
 
 "The wind had triumphed and swept all the clouds 
 from heaven. Only a few vapours, as thin as moon- 
 light, fleeted rapidly across the stars. It was bitter 
 cold ; and by a common optical effect, things seemed 
 almost more definite than in the broadest daylight. 
 The sleeping city was absolutely still; a company of 
 white hoods, a field full of little alps, below the 
 twinkling stars. Villon cursed his fortune. Would 
 
THE MORAL FABLES 275 
 
 it were still snowing! Now, wherever he went, he 
 left an indelible trail behind him on the glittering 
 streets; wherever he went he was still tethered to 
 the house by the cemetery of St. John; wherever he 
 went he must weave, with his own plodding feet, 
 the rope that bound him to the crime and would 
 bind him to the gallows. The leer of the dead man 
 came back to him with a new significance. He 
 snapped his fingers as if to pluck up his own spirits, 
 and choosing a street at random, stepped boldly 
 forward in the snow. 
 
 "Two things preoccupied him as he went: the 
 aspect of the gallows at Montfaucon in this bright, 
 windy phase of the night's existence, for one; and 
 for another, the look of the dead man with his bald 
 head and garland of red curls. Both struck cold 
 upon his heart, and he kept quickening his pace as 
 if he could escape from unpleasant thoughts by 
 mere fleetness of foot. Sometimes he looked back 
 over his shoulder with a sudden nervous jerk; but 
 he was the only moving thing in the white streets, 
 except when the wind swooped round a corner and 
 threw up the snow, which was beginning to freeze, 
 in spouts of glittering dust. 
 
 "Suddenly he saw, a long way before him, a black 
 clump and a couple of lanterns. The clump was in 
 motion, and the lanterns swung as though carried 
 by men walking. It was a patrol. And though it 
 was merely crossing his line of march he judged it 
 wiser to get out of eyeshot as speedily as he could. 
 He was not in the humour to be challenged, and he 
 
276 STEVENSON 
 
 was conscious of making a very conspicuous mark 
 upon the snow. Just on his left hand there stood a 
 great hotel, with some turrets and a large porch be- 
 fore the door; it was half -ruinous, he remembered, 
 and had long stood empty; and so he made three 
 steps of it, and jumped into the shelter of the porch. 
 It was pretty dark inside, after the glimmer of the 
 snowy streets, and he was groping forward with 
 outspread hands, when he stumbled over some sub- 
 stance which offered an indescribable mixture of 
 resistances, hard and soft, firm and loose. His 
 heart gave a leap, and he sprang two steps back 
 and stared dreadfully at the obstacle. Then he gave 
 a little laugh of relief. It was only a woman, and 
 she dead. He knelt beside her to make sure upon 
 this latter point. She was freezing cold, and rigid 
 like a stick. A little ragged finery fluttered in the 
 wind about her hair, and her cheeks had been heavily 
 rouged that same afternoon. Her pockets were quite 
 empty; but in her stocking, underneath the garter, 
 Villon found two of the small coins that went by the 
 name of whites. It was little enough; but it was 
 always something; and the poet was moved with a 
 deep sense of pathos that she should have died be- 
 fore she had spent her money. That seemed to him 
 a dark and pitiable mystery; and he looked from 
 the coins in his hand to the dead woman, and back 
 again to the coins, shaking his head over the riddle 
 of man's life. Henry V of England, dying at Vin- 
 cennes just after he had conquered France, and this 
 poor jade cut off by a cold draught in a great man's 
 
THE MORAL FABLES 277 
 
 doorway, before she had time to spend her couple 
 of whites — it seemed a cruel way to carry on the 
 world. Two whites would have taken such a little 
 while to squander; and yet it would have been one 
 more good taste in the mouth, one more smack of 
 the lips, before the devil got the soul, and the body 
 was left to birds and vermin. He would like to 
 use all his tallow before the light was blown out 
 and the lantern broken. 
 
 "While these thoughts were passing through his 
 mind, he was feeling, half mechanically, for his 
 purse. Suddenly his heart stopped beating; a feel- 
 ing of cold scales passed up the back of his legs, 
 and a cold blow seemed to fall upon his scalp. He 
 stood petrified for a moment; then he felt again 
 with one feverish movement ; and then his loss burst 
 upon him, and he was covered at once with perspira- 
 tion. To spendthrifts money is so living and actual 
 — it is such a thin veil between them and their pleas- 
 ures ! There is only one limit to their fortune — that 
 of time; and a spendthrift with only a few crowns 
 is the Emperor of Rome until they are spent. For 
 such a person to lose his money is to suffer the 
 most shocking reverse, and fall from heaven to 
 hell, from all to nothing, in a breath. And all the 
 more if he has put his head in the halter for it; 
 if he may be hanged to-morrow for that same purse, 
 so dearly earned, so foolishly departed! Villon 
 stood and cursed ; he threw the two whites into the 
 street ; he shook his fist at heaven ; he stamped, and 
 was not horrified to find himself trampling the poor 
 
278 STEVENSON 
 
 corpse. Then he began rapidly to retrace his steps 
 towards the house beside the cemetery. He had 
 forgotten all fear of the patrol, which was long 
 gone by at any rate, and had no idea but that of 
 his lost purse. It was in vain that he looked right 
 and left upon the snow : nothing was to be seen. He 
 had not dropped it in the streets. Had it fallen 
 in the house? He would have liked dearly to go 
 in and see; but the idea of the grisly occupant un- 
 manned him. And he saw besides, as he drew near, 
 that their efforts to put out the fire had been unsuc- 
 cessful ; on the contrary, it had broken into a blaze, 
 and a changeful light played in the chinks of door 
 and window, and revived his terror for the au- 
 thorities and Paris gibbet. 
 
 "He returned to the hotel with the porch, and 
 groped about upon the snow for the money he had 
 thrown away in his childish passion. But he could 
 only find one white ; the other had probably struck 
 sideways and sunk deeply in. With a single white 
 in his pocket, all his projects for a rousing night 
 in some wild tavern vanished utterly away. And 
 it was not only pleasure that fled laughing from his 
 grasp; positive discomfort, positive pain, attacked 
 him as he stood ruefully before the porch. His 
 perspiration had dried upon him; and although the 
 wind had now fallen, a binding frost was setting 
 in stronger with every hour, and he felt benumbed 
 and sick at heart. What was to be done ? Late as 
 was the hour, improbable as was success, he 
 
THE MORAL FABLES 279 
 
 would try the house of his adopted father, the chap- 
 lain of St. Benoit. 
 
 "He ran there all the way, and knocked timidly. 
 There was no answer. He knocked again and again, 
 taking heart with every stroke; and at last steps 
 were heard approaching from within. A barred 
 wicket fell open in the iron-studded door, and 
 emitted a gush of yellow light. 
 
 " 'Hold up your face to the wicket/ said the chap- 
 lain from within. 
 
 " 'It's only me/ whimpered Villon. 
 
 " 'Oh, it's only you, is it ?' returned the chaplain ; 
 and he cursed him with foul unpriestly oaths for dis- 
 turbing him at such an hour, and bade him be off 
 to hell, where he came from. 
 
 " 'My hands are blue to the wrist/ pleaded Villon ; 
 'my feet are dead and full of twinges; my nose 
 aches with the sharp air; the cold lies at my heart. 
 I may be dead before morning. Only this once, 
 father, and before God, I will never ask again'/ 
 
 " 'You should have come earlier/ said the ecclesi- 
 astic coolly. 'Young men require a lesson now and 
 then/ He shut the wicket and retired deliberately 
 into the interior of the house. 
 
 "Villon was beside himself ; he beat upon the door 
 with his hands and feet, and shouted hoarsely after 
 the chaplain. 
 
 " 'Wormy old fox!' he cried. 'If I had my hand 
 under your twist, I would send you flying headlong 
 into the bottomless pit/ 
 
280 STEVENSON 
 
 "A door shut in the interior, faintly audible to 
 the poet down long passages. He passed his hand 
 over his mouth with an oath. And then the humour 
 of the situation struck him, and he laughed and 
 looked lightly up to heaven, where the stars seemed 
 to be winking over his discomfiture. 
 
 "What was to be done? It looked very like a 
 night in the frosty streets. The idea of the dead 
 woman popped into his imagination, and gave him 
 a hearty fright; what had happened to her in the 
 early night might very well happen to him before 
 morning. And he so young! and with such im- 
 mense possibilities of disorderly amusement before 
 him! He felt quite pathetic over the notion of his 
 own fate, as if it had been some one else's, and made 
 a little imaginative vignette of the scene in the 
 morning when they should find his body. 
 
 "He passed all his chances under review, turning 
 the white between his thumb and forefinger. Un- 
 fortunately he was on bad terms with some old 
 friends who would once have taken pity on him in 
 such a plight. He had lampooned them in verses; 
 he had beaten and cheated them ; and yet now, when 
 he was in so close a pinch, he thought there was at 
 least one who might perhaps relent. It was a chance. 
 It was worth trying at least, and he would go 
 and see. 
 
 "On the way, two little accidents happened to 
 him which coloured his musings in a very different 
 manner. For, first, he fell in with the track of a 
 patrol, and walked in it for some hundred yards, 
 
THE MORAL FABLES 281 
 
 although it lay out of his direction. And this 
 spirited him up; at least he had confused his trail; 
 for he was still possessed with the idea of people 
 tracking him all about Paris over the snow, and 
 collaring him next morning before he was awake. 
 The other matter affected him quite differently. He 
 passed a street corner, where, not so long before, 
 a woman and her child had been devoured by wolves. 
 This was just the kind of weather, he reflected when 
 wolves might take it into their heads to enter Paris 
 again; and a lone man in these deserted streets 
 would run the chance of something worse than a 
 mere scare. He stopped and looked upon the place 
 with an unpleasant interest — it was a centre where 
 several lanes intersected each other; and he looked 
 down them all, one after another, and held his 
 breath to listen, lest he should detect some galloping 
 black things on the snow or hear the sound of howl- 
 ing between him and the river. He remembered 
 his mother telling him the story and pointing out 
 the spot, while he was yet a child. His mother! 
 If he only knew where she lived, he might make 
 sure at least of shelter. He determined he would 
 inquire upon the morrow ; nay, he would go and see 
 her too, poor old girl! So thinking, he arrived at 
 his destination — his last hope for the night. 
 
 "The house was quite dark, like its neighbours; 
 and yet after a few taps, he heard a movement over- 
 head, a door opening, and a cautious voice asking 
 who was there. The poet named himself in a loud 
 whisper, and waited, not without some trepidation, 
 
282 STEVENSON 
 
 the result. Nor had he to wait long. A window 
 was suddenly opened, and a pailful of slops splashed 
 down upon the doorstep. Villon had not been un- 
 prepared for something of the sort, and had put 
 himself as much in shelter as the nature of the porch 
 admitted; but for all that, he was deplorably 
 drenched below the waist. His hose began to freeze 
 almost at once. Death from cold and exposure 
 stared him in the face; he remembered he was of 
 phthisical tendency, and began coughing tentatively. 
 But the gravity of the danger steadied his nerve*. 
 He stopped a few hundred yards from the door 
 where he had been so rudely used, and reflected with 
 his finger to his nose. He could only see one way 
 of getting a lodging, and that was to take it. He 
 had noticed a house not far away, which looked as 
 if it might be easily broken into, and thither he be- 
 took himself promptly, entertaining himself on the 
 way with the idea of a room still hot, with a table 
 still loaded with the remains of supper, where he 
 might pass the rest of the black hours and whence 
 he should issue, on the morrow, with an armful 
 of valuable plate. He even considered on what 
 viands and what wines he should prefer; and as he 
 was calling the roll of his favourite dainties, roast 
 fish presented itself to his mind with an odd mixture 
 of amusement and horror. 
 
 " 'I shall never finish that ballade,' he thought to 
 himself; and then, with another shudder at the recol- 
 lection, 'Oh, damn his fat head!' he repeated fer- 
 vently, and spat upon the snow. 
 
THE MORAL FABLES 283 
 
 "The house in question looked dark at first sight ; 
 but as Villon made a preliminary inspection in search 
 of the handiest point of attack, a little twinkle of 
 light caught his eye from behind a curtained window. 
 
 " The devil !' he thought. 'People awake ! Some 
 student or some saint, confound the crew ! Can't they 
 get drunk and lie in bed snoring like their neigh- 
 bours ! What's the good of curfew, and poor devils 
 of bell-ringers jumping at a rope's end in bell- 
 towers? What's the use of day, if people sit up all 
 night ? The gripes to them f He grinned as he saw 
 where his logic was leading him. 'Every man to 
 his business, after all/ added he, 'and if they're 
 awake, by the Lord, I may come by a supper hon- 
 estly for once, and cheat the devil.' 
 
 "He went boldly to the door and knocked with an 
 assured hand. On both previous occasions, he had 
 knocked timidly and with some dread of attracting 
 notice; but now when he had just discarded the 
 thought of a burglarious entry, knocking at a door 
 seemed a mighty simple and innocent proceeding. 
 The sound of his blows echoed through the house 
 with thin, phantasmal reverberations, as though it 
 were quite empty ; but these had scarcely died away 
 before a measured tread drew near, a couple of bolts 
 were withdrawn, and one wing was opened broadly, 
 as though no guile or fear of guile were known to 
 those within. A tall figure of a man, muscular and 
 spare, but a little bent, confronted Villon. The head 
 was massive in bulk, but finely sculptured ; the nose 
 blunt at the bottom, but refining upward to where it 
 
284 STEVENSON 
 
 joined a pair of strong and honest eyebrows; the 
 mouth and eyes surrounded with delicate markings, 
 and the whole face based upon a thick white beard, 
 boldly and squarely trimmed. Seen as it was by the 
 light of a flickering hand-lamp, it looked perhaps 
 nobler than it had a right to do; but it was a fine 
 face, honourable rather than intelligent, strong, 
 simple, and righteous. 
 
 " 'You knock late, sir,' said the old man in 
 resonant, courteous tones. 
 
 "Villon cringed and brought up many servile 
 words of apology; at a crisis of this sort, the beggar 
 was uppermost in him, and the man of genius hid his 
 head with confusion. 
 
 " 'You are cold,' repeated the old man, 'and hun- 
 gry? Well, step in.' And he ordered him into the 
 house with a noble enough gesture. 
 
 " 'Some great seigneur/ thought Villon, as his 
 host, setting down the lamp on the flagged pave- 
 ment of the entry, shot the bolts once more into 
 their places. 
 
 " 'You will pardon me if I go in front,' he said, 
 when this was done; and he preceded the poet up- 
 stairs into a large apartment, warmed with a pan 
 of charcoal and lit by a great lamp hanging from 
 the roof. It was very bare of furniture : only some 
 gold plate on a sideboard ; some folios ; and a stand 
 of armour between the windows. Some smart 
 tapestry hung upon the walls, representing the cru- 
 cifixion of our Lord in one piece, and in another a 
 
THE MORAL FABLES 285 
 
 scene of shepherds and shepherdesses by a running 
 stream. Over the chimney was a shield of arms. 
 
 " 'Will you seat yourself,' said the old man, 'and 
 forgive me if I leave you? I am alone in my house 
 to-night, and if you are to eat I must forage for 
 you myself.' 
 
 "No sooner was his host gone than Villon leaped 
 from the chair on which he had just seated him- 
 self, and began examining the room, with the stealth 
 and passion of a cat. He weighed the gold flagons 
 in his hand, opened all the folios, and investigated 
 the arms upon the shield, and the stuff with which 
 the seats were lined. He raised the window cur- 
 tains, and saw that the windows were set with rich 
 stained glass in figures, so far as he could see, of 
 martial import. Then he stood in the middle of 
 the room, drew a long breath, and retaining it with 
 puffed cheeks, looked round and round him, turning 
 on his heels, as if to impress every feature of the 
 apartment on his memory. 
 
 " 'Seven pieces of plate,' he said. 'If there had 
 been ten, I would have risked it. A fine house, and 
 a fine old master, so help me all the saints !' 
 
 "And just then, hearing the old man's tread re- 
 turning along the corridor, he stole back to his chair, 
 and began humbly toasting his wet legs before the 
 charcoal pan. 
 
 "His entertainer had a plate of meat in one hand 
 and a jug of wine in the other. He set down the 
 plate upon the table, motioning Villon to draw in 
 
286 STEVENSON 
 
 his chair, and going to the sideboard, brought back 
 two goblets, which he filled. 
 
 " 'I drink your better fortune,' he said, gravely 
 touching Villon's cup with his own. 
 
 " To our better acquaintance,' said the poet, 
 growing bold. A mere man of the people would 
 have been awed by the courtesy of the old seigneur, 
 but Villon was hardened in that matter; he had 
 made mirth for great lords before now, and found 
 them as black rascals as himself. And so he de- 
 voted himself to the viands with a ravenous gusto, 
 while the old man, leaning backward, watched him 
 with steady, curious eyes. 
 
 " 'You have blood on your shoulder, my man,' 
 he said. 
 
 "Montigny must have laid his wet right hand upon 
 him as he left the house. He cursed Montigny in 
 his heart. 
 
 " 'It was none of my shedding,' he stammered. 
 
 '* 'I had not supposed so,' returned his host quietly. 
 'A brawl?' 
 
 " 'Well, something of that sort,' Villon admitted 
 with a quaver. 
 
 " 'Perhaps a fellow murdered?' 
 
 " 'Oh no, not murdered,' said the poet, more and 
 more confused. 'It was all fair play — murdered by 
 accident. I had no hand in it, God strike me dead !' 
 he added fervently. 
 
 " 'One rogue the fewer, I dare say,' observed the 
 master of the house. 
 
 " 'You may dare to say that,' agreed Villon, in- 
 
THE MORAL FABLES 287 
 
 finitely relieved. 'As big a rogue as there is between 
 here and Jerusalem. He turned up his toes like a 
 lamb. But it was a nasty thing to look at. I dare 
 say you've seen dead men in your time, my lord?' 
 he added, glancing at the armour. 
 
 " 'Many,' said the old man. 'I have followed the 
 wars, as you imagine.' 
 
 "Villon laid down his knife and fork, which he 
 had just taken up again. 
 
 " 'Were any of them bald?' he asked. 
 
 " 'Oh yes, and with hair as white as mine.' 
 
 " 'I don't think I should mind the white so much,' 
 said Villon. 'His was red.' And he had a return 
 of his shuddering and tendency to laughter, which 
 he drowned with a great draught of wine. 'I'm a 
 little put out when I think of it,' he Went on. 'I 
 knew him — damn him! And then the cold gives a 
 man fancies — or the fancies give a man cold, I don't 
 know which.' 
 
 " 'Have you any money?' asked the old man. 
 
 " 'I have one white,' returned the poet, laughing. 
 'I got it out of a dead jade's stocking in a porch. 
 She was as dead as Caesar, poor wench, and as cold 
 as a church, with bits of ribbon sticking in her hair. 
 This is a hard world in winter for wolves and 
 wenches and poor rogues like me.' 
 
 ' 'I,' said the old man, 'am Enguerrand de la 
 Feuillee, seigneur de Brisetout, bailly du Patatrac. 
 Who and what may you be ?' 
 
 "Villon rose and made a suitable reverence. 'I 
 am called Francis Villon,' he said, 'a poor Master 
 
288 STEVENSON 
 
 of Arts of this university. I know some Latin, and 
 a deal of vice. I can make chansons, ballades, lais, 
 virelais, and roundels, and I am very fond of wine. 
 I was born in a garret, and I shall not improbably 
 die upon the gallows. I may add, my lord, that from 
 this night forward I am your lordship's very ob- 
 sequious servant to command.' 
 
 " 'No servant of mine,' said the knight; 'my guest 
 for this evening, and no more/. 
 
 " 'A very grateful guest/ said Villon, politely, 
 and he drank in dumb show to his entertainer. 
 
 " 'You are shrewd/ began the old man, tapping 
 his forehead, 'very shrewd; you have learning; you 
 are a clerk; and yet you take a small piece of money 
 off a dead woman in the street. Is it not a kind of 
 theft?' 
 
 " 'It is a kind of theft much practised in the wars, 
 my lord.' 
 
 " 'The wars are the field of honour/ returned the 
 old man proudly. 'There a man plays his life upon 
 the cast ; he fights in the name of his lord the king, 
 his Lord God, and all their lordships the holy saints 
 and angels.' 
 
 " 'Put it/ said Villon, "that I were really a thief, 
 should I not play my life also, and against heavier 
 odds?' 
 
 " 'For gain but not for honour/ 
 
 " 'Gain ?' repeated Villon with a shrug. 'Gain ! 
 The poor fellow wants supper, and takes it. So 
 does the soldier in a campaign. Why, what are all 
 these requisitions we hear so much about? If they 
 
THE MORAL FABLES 289 
 
 are not gain to those who take them, they are loss 
 enough to the others. The men-at-arms drink by a 
 good fire, while the burgher bites his nails to buy 
 them wine and wood. I have seen a good many 
 ploughmen swinging on trees about the country; 
 ay, I have seen thirty on one elm, and a very poor 
 figure they made ; and when I asked some one how 
 all these came to be hanged, I was told it was be- 
 cause they could not scrape together enough crowns 
 to satisfy the men-at-arms/ 
 
 " 'These things are a necessity of war, which the 
 lowborn must endure with constancy. It is true that 
 some captains drive overhard; there are spirits in 
 every rank not easily moved by pity; and indeed 
 many follow arms who are no better than brigands.' 
 
 " 'You see/ said the poet, 'you cannot separate 
 the soldier from the brigand; and what is a thief 
 but an isolated brigand with circumspect manners? 
 I steal a couple of mutton chops, without so much 
 as disturbing people's sleep ; the farmer grumbles a 
 bit, but sups none the less wholesomely on what 
 remains. You come up blowing gloriously on a 
 trumpet, take away the whole sheep, and beat the 
 farmer pitifully into the bargain. I have no trum- 
 pet ; I am only Tom, Dick, or Harry ; I am a rogue 
 and a dog, and hanging's too good for me — with all 
 my heart; but just ask the farmer which of us he 
 prefers, just find out which of us he lies awake to 
 curse on cold nights.' 
 
 " 'Look at us two,' said his lordship. T am old, 
 strong, and honoured. If I were turned from my 
 
290 STEVENSON 
 
 house to-morrow, hundreds would be proud to shel- 
 ter me. Poor people would go out and pass the 
 night in the streets with their children, if I merely 
 hinted that I wished to be alone. And I find you 
 up, wandering homeless, and picking farthings off 
 dead women by the wayside! I fear no man and 
 nothing; I have seen you tremble and lose coun- 
 tenance at a word. I wait God's summons con- 
 tentedly in my own house, or, if it please the king 
 to call me again, upon the field of battle. You look 
 for the gallows; a rough, swift death, without hope 
 or honour. Is there no difference between these 
 two?' 
 
 " 'As far as to the moon,' Villon acquiesced. 
 'But if I had been born lord of Brisetout, and you 
 had been the poor scholar Francis, would the differ- 
 ence have been any the less ? Should not I have been 
 warming my knees at this charcoal pan, and would 
 not you have been groping for farthings in the 
 snow? Should not I have been the soldier, and 
 you the thief?' 
 
 "'A thief?' cried the old man. 'I a thief! If 
 you understood your words, you would repent them.' 
 
 "Villon turned out his hands with a gesture of 
 inimitable impudence. 'If your lordship had done 
 me the honour to follow my argument !' he said. 
 
 " 'I do you too much honour in submitting to 
 your presence,' said the knight. 'Learn to curb your 
 tongue when you speak with old and honourable 
 men, or some one hastier than I may reprove you 
 in a sharper fashion.' And he rose and paced the 
 
THE MORAL FABLES 291 
 
 lower end of the apartment, struggling with anger 
 and antipathy. Villon surreptitiously refilled his 
 cup, and settled himself more comfortably in the 
 chair, crossing his knees and leaning his head upon 
 one hand and the elbow against the back of the 
 chair. He was now replete and warm ; and he was 
 in nowise frightened for his host, having gauged 
 him as justly as was possible between two such dif- 
 ferent characters. The night was far spent, and in 
 a very comfortable fashion after all; and he felt 
 morally certain of a safe departure on the morrow. 
 
 " 'Tell me one thing,' said the old man, pausing 
 in his walk. 'Are you really a thief?' 
 
 " T claim the sacred rights of hospitality/ re- 
 turned the poet. 'My lord, I am.' 
 
 " 'You are very young,' the knight continued. 
 
 " T should never have been so old,' replied Villon, 
 showing his fingers, 'if I had not helped myself with 
 these ten talents. They have been my nursing 
 mothers and my nursing fathers.' 
 
 " 'You may still repent and change.' 
 
 " T repent daily,' said the poet. 'There are few 
 people more given to repentance than poor Francis. 
 As for change, let somebody change my circum- 
 stances. A man must continue to eat, if it were 
 only that he may continue to repent.' 
 
 " 'The change must begin in the heart,' returned 
 the old man solemnly. 
 
 " 'My dear lord,' answered Villon, 'do you really 
 fancy that I steal for pleasure? I hate stealing, 
 like any other piece of work or of danger. My 
 
292 STEVENSON 
 
 teeth chatter when I see a gallows. But I must eat, 
 I must drink, I must mix in society of some sort. 
 What the devil ! Man is not a solitary animal — cui 
 Deus fcominam tradit. Make me king's pantler — 
 make me abbot of St. Denis; make me bailly of the 
 Patatrac; and then I shall be changed indeed. But 
 as long as you leave me the poor scholar Francis 
 Villon, without a farthing, why, of course, I re- 
 main the same.' 
 
 " The grace of God is all-powerful.' 
 
 " 'I should be a heretic to question it,' said Fran- 
 cis. 'It has made you lord of Brisetout and bailly 
 of the Patatrac; it has given me nothing but the 
 quick wits under my hat and these ten toes upon my 
 hands. May I help myself to wine? I thank you 
 respectfully. By God's grace, you have a very su- 
 perior vintage/ 
 
 "The lord of Brisetout walked to and fro with 
 his hands behind his back. Perhaps he was not yet 
 quite settled in his mind about the parallel between 
 thieves and soldiers; perhaps Villon had interested 
 him by some cross-thread of sympathy; perhaps his 
 wits were simply muddled by so much unfamiliar 
 reasoning; but whatever the cause, he somehow 
 yearned to convert the young man to a better way 
 of thinking, and could not make up his mind to drive 
 him forth again into the street. 
 
 " 'There is something more than I can under- 
 stand in this,' he said at length. 'Your mouth is 
 full of subtleties, and the devil has led you very far 
 astray; but the devil is only a very weak spirit be- 
 
THE MORAL FABLES 293 
 
 fore God's truth, and all his subtleties vanish at a 
 word of true honour, like darkness at morning. 
 Listen to me once more. I learned long ago that 
 a gentleman should live chivalrously and lovingly 
 to God, and the king, and his lady; and though I 
 have seen many strange things done, I have still 
 striven to command my ways upon that rule. It is 
 not only written in all noble histories, but in every 
 man's heart, if he will take care to read. You 
 speak of food and wine, and I know very well that 
 hunger is a difficult trial to endure ; but you do not 
 speak of other wants; you say nothing of honour, 
 of faith to God and other men, of courtesy, of love 
 without reproach. It may be that I am not very 
 wise — and yet I think I am — but you seem to me 
 like one who has lost his way and made a great 
 error in life. You are attending to the little wants, 
 and you have totally forgotten the great and only 
 real ones, like a man who should be doctoring tooth- 
 ache on the Judgment Day. For such things as 
 honour and love and faith are not only nobler than 
 food and drink, but indeed I think we desire them 
 more, and suffer more sharply for their absence. I 
 speak to you as I think you will most easily under- 
 stand me. Are you not, while careful to fill your 
 belly, disregarding another appetite in your heart, 
 which spoils the pleasure of your life and keeps you 
 continually wretched?' 
 
 "Villon was sensibly nettled under all this ser- 
 monising. 'You think I have no sense of honour!' 
 he cried. 'I'm poor enough, God knows ! It's hard 
 
294 STEVENSON 
 
 to see rich people with their gloves, and you' blow- 
 ing in your hands. An empty belly is a bitter thing, 
 although you speak so lightly of it. If you had had 
 as many as I, perhaps you would change your tune. 
 Anyway Fma thief — make the most of that — but 
 I'm not a devil from hell, God strike me dead. I 
 w r ould have you to know I've an honour of my own, 
 as good as yours, though I don't prate about it all 
 day long, as if it was a God's miracle to have any. 
 It seems quite natural to me ; I keep it in its box till 
 it's wanted. Why now, look you here, how long 
 have I been in this room with you? Did you not 
 tell me you were alone in the house ! Look at your 
 gold plate! You're strong, if you like, but you're 
 old and unarmed, and I have my knife. What did 
 I want but a jerk of the elbow and here would have 
 been you with the cold steel in your bowels, and 
 there would have been me, linking in the streets, 
 with an armful of golden cups! Did you suppose 
 I hadn't wit enough to see that? And I scorned 
 the action. There are your damned goblets, as 
 safe as in a church ; there are you, with your heart 
 ticking as good as new ; and here am I, ready to go 
 out again as poor as I came in, with my one white 
 that you threw in my teeth ! And you think I have 
 no sense of honour — God strike me dead !' 
 
 "The old man stretched out his right arm. 'I will 
 tell you what you are,' he said. 'You are a rogue, 
 my man, an impudent and black-hearted rogue and 
 vagabond. I have passed an hour with you. Oh! 
 believe me, I feel myself disgraced ! And you have 
 
THE MORAL FABLES 295 
 
 eaten and drunk at my table. But now I am sick at 
 your presence ; the day has come, and the night-bird 
 should be off to his roost. Will you go before, or 
 after?' 
 
 " 'Which you please/ returned the poet, rising. 'I 
 believe you to be strictly honourable.' He thought- 
 fully emptied his cup. 'I wish I could add you were 
 intelligent,' he went on, knocking on his head with 
 his knuckles. 'Age ! age ! the brains stiff and rheu- 
 matic.' 
 
 "The old man preceded him from a point of self- 
 respect ; Villon followed, whistling, with his thumbs 
 in his girdle. 
 
 " 'God pity you,' said the lord of Brisetout at the 
 door. 
 
 " 'Good-bye, papa,' returned Villon with a yawn. 
 'Many thanks for the cold mutton.' 
 
 "The door closed behind him. The dawn was 
 breaking over the white roofs. A chill, uncomfort- 
 able morning ushered in the day. Villon stood and 
 heartily stretched himself in the middle of the road. 
 
 " 'A very dull old gentleman,' he thought. 'I 
 wonder what his goblets may be worth.' " 
 
 The consummate assurance of Master Francois's 
 entrance into the house of Enguerrand de la Feuillee, 
 seigneur de Brisetout, bailly du Patatrac, and the 
 sardonic swagger of his exit represent traits which, 
 in different characters, Stevenson never tired of 
 
296 STEVENSON 
 
 delineating. Bravado is perhaps the most frequent 
 property of his people. In his bad men, like the 
 Master, it is made into a fascinating vice of pride. 
 In his likeable characters it becomes a charming 
 vanity. Its extremes are perhaps in the Master and 
 in Alan Breck. But between these two are a num- 
 ber of people who have it in milder, more intel- 
 lectual or whimsical form, people who are a sort of 
 humorous exaggeration of the sentiments of certain 
 of his essays. Of this type Leon Berthelini in 
 "Providence and the Guitar," and Desprez in "The 
 Treasure of Franchard," are the two most eminent 
 examples. 
 
 Monsieur Leon Berthelini, strolling player and 
 man of temper, fallen among the disenchantments 
 of life, or, more exactly, finding himself stranded in 
 the hostile town of Castel-le-Gachis, where the com- 
 missary of police is a boor and the cafe audiences 
 unfeeling, not to mention the odious character of 
 the landlord of the Black Head Hotel, Monsieur 
 Leon and Elvira, his wife, in these untoward cir- 
 cumstances, attempt to play the part of peripatetic 
 philosophers. At least Leon does — he has some 
 difficulty at first in converting his wife to hedonistic 
 stoicism. The night is damp and she fears for her 
 voice. Leon is more successful with a young pedes- 
 trian named Stubbs, a Cambridge undergraduate, 
 whom they find asleep in the fields to the west of the 
 town. Stubbs is a good, honest sort, and even if 
 he is just now short of cash, he is going to be a 
 banker. But for the present evening he is made 
 
THE MORAL FABLES 297 
 
 to talk about art and the stars, and to put his re- 
 spectable profession in the balance with Leon's. 
 And here lies the point of the story, which, like 
 several other of Stevenson's moralities, has begun 
 with completely humorous unconcern, and will, in 
 fact, not once need to change the tone to the moral 
 end. Let us look at the end. 
 
 Madame's artistic fear for her voice having be- 
 come excessive, the trio are now seeking in earnest 
 for some kind of shelter. 
 
 "Leon strode ahead as if he knew exactly where 
 he was going; the sobs of Madame were still faintly 
 audible, and no one uttered a word. A dog barked 
 furiously in a court-yard as they went by ; then the 
 church clock struck two, and many domestic clocks 
 followed or preceded it in piping tones. And just 
 then Berthelini spied a light. It burned in a small 
 house on the outskirts of the town, and thither the 
 party now directed their steps. 
 
 " 'It is always a chance,' said Leon. 
 
 "The house in question stood back from the 
 street behind an open space, part garden, part turnip 
 field; and several outhouses stood forward from 
 either wing at right angles to the front. One of 
 these had recently undergone some change. An 
 enormous window, looking towards the north, had 
 been effected in the wall and roof, and Leon began 
 to hope it was a studio. 
 
 " Tf it's only a painter,' he said, with a chuckle, 
 'ten to one we get as good a welcome as we want/ 
 
298 STEVENSON 
 
 " 'I thought painters were principally poor/ said 
 Stubbs. 
 
 " 'Ah/ cried Leon, 'you do not know the world 
 as I do. The poorer the better for us/ 
 
 "And the trio advanced into the turnip field. 
 
 "The light was in the ground floor; as one win- 
 dow was brightly illuminated and two others more 
 faintly, it might be supposed that there was a single 
 lamp in one corner of a large apartment; and a cer- 
 tain tremulousness and temporary dwindling showed 
 that a live fire contributed to the effect. Jhe sound 
 of a voice now became audible; and the trespassers 
 paused to listen. It was pitched in a high, angry 
 key, but had still a good, full, and masculine note 
 in it. The utterance was voluble, too voluble even 
 to be quite distinct; a stream of words, rising and 
 falling, with ever and again a phrase thrown out by 
 itself, as if the speaker reckoned on its virtue. 
 
 "Suddenly another voice joined in. This time 
 it was a woman's; and if the man were angry, the 
 woman was incensed to the degree of fury. There 
 was that absolutely blank composure known to suf- 
 fering males ; that colourless unnatural speech which 
 shows a spirit accurately balanced between homicide 
 and hysterics; the tone in which the best of women 
 sometimes utter words worse than death to those 
 most dear to them. If Abstract Bones-and-Sepulchre 
 were to be endowed with the gift of speech, thus, 
 and not otherwise, would it discourse. Leon was a 
 brave man, and I fear he was somewhat sceptically 
 given (he had been educated in a Papistical coun- 
 
THE MORAL FABLES 299 
 
 try), but the habit of childhood prevailed, and he 
 crossed himself devoutly. He had met several 
 women in his career. It was obvious that his in- 
 stinct had not deceived him, for the male voice broke 
 forth instantly in a towering passion. 
 
 "The undergraduate, who had not understood the 
 significance of the woman's contribution, pricked up 
 his ears at the change upon the man. 
 
 " There's going to be a free fight,' he opined. 
 
 "There was another retort from the woman, still 
 calm but a little higher. 
 
 "'Hysterics?' asked Leon of his wife. Ts that 
 the stage direction?' 
 
 " 'How should I know ?' returned Elvira, some- 
 what tartly. 
 
 " 'Oh, woman, woman !' said Leon, beginning to 
 open the guitar-case. 'It is one of the burdens of 
 my life, Monsieur Stubbs; they support each other; 
 they always pretend there is no system; they say 
 it's nature. Even Madame Berthelini who is a 
 dramatic artist !' 
 
 " 'You are heartless, Leon/ said Elvira ; 'that 
 woman is in trouble.' 
 
 " 'And the man, my angel ?' inquired Berthelini, 
 passing the ribbon of his guitar. 'And the man, 
 m'amourf 
 
 " 'He is a man/ she answered. 
 
 "'You hear that?' said Leon to Stubbs. 'It is 
 not too late for you. Mark the intonation. And 
 now,' he continued, 'what are we to give them?' 
 
 " 'Are you going to sing?' asked Stubbs. 
 
300 STEVENSON 
 
 " 'I am a troubadour,' replied Leon. 'I claim a 
 welcome by and for my art. If I were a banker 
 could I do as much?' 
 
 " 'Well, you wouldn't need, you know,' answered 
 the undergraduate. 
 
 " 'Egad,' said Leon, 'but that's true. Elvira, that 
 is true.' 
 
 " 'Of course it is,' she replied. 'Did you not 
 know it?' 
 
 " 'My dear,' answered Leon, impressively, 'I know 
 nothing but what is agreeable. Even my knowledge 
 of life is a work of art superiorly composed. But 
 what are we to give them ? It should be something 
 appropriate.' 
 
 "Visions of 'Let dogs delight' passed through the 
 undergraduate's mind; but it occurred to him that 
 the poetry was English and that he did not know 
 the air. Hence he contributed no suggestion. 
 
 " 'Something about our houselessness,' said El- 
 vira. 
 
 " 'I have it,' cried Leon. And he broke forth into 
 a song of Pierre Dupont's : — 
 
 "Savez-vous oil gite 
 Mai, ce joli moist 
 
 "Elvira joined in; so did Stubbs, with a good ear 
 and voice, but an imperfect acquaintance with the 
 music. Leon and the guitar were equal to the situa- 
 tion. The actor dispensed his throat-notes with 
 prodigality and enthusiasm; and, as he looked up 
 to heaven in his heroic way, tossing the black ring- 
 
THE MORAL FABLES 301 
 
 lets, it seemed to him that the very stars contributed 
 a dumb applause to his efforts, and the universe lent 
 him its silence for a chorus. That is one of the 
 best features of the heavenly bodies, that they belong 
 to everybody in particular; and a man like Leon, a 
 chronic Endymion who managed to get along with- 
 out encouragement, is always the world's centre for 
 himself. 
 
 "He alone — and it is to be noted, he was the 
 worst singer of the three — took the music seriously 
 to heart, and judged the serenade from a high ar- 
 tistic point of view. Elvira, on the other hand, was 
 preoccupied about their reception; and, as for 
 Stubbs, he considered the whole affair in the light 
 of a broad joke. 
 
 " 'Know you the lair of May, the lovely month?' 
 went the three voices in the turnip field. 
 
 "The inhabitants were plainly fluttered ; the light 
 moved to and fro, strengthening in one window, 
 paling in another; and then the door was thrown 
 open, and a man in a blouse appeared on the thresh- 
 old carrying a lamp. He was a powerful young 
 fellow, with bewildered hair and beard, wearing his 
 neck open; his blouse was stained with oil-colours 
 in a harlequinesque disorder; and there was some- 
 thing rural in the droop and bagginess of his belted 
 trousers. 
 
 "From immediately behind him, and indeed over 
 his shoulder, a woman's face looked out into the 
 darkness; it was pale and a little weary, although 
 still young; it wore a dwindling, disappearing pretti- 
 
302 STEVENSON 
 
 ness, soon to be quite gone, and the expression was 
 both gentle and sour, and reminded one faintly of 
 the taste of certain drugs. For all that, it was not 
 a face to dislike ; when the prettiness had vanished, 
 it seemed as if a certain pale beauty might step in 
 to take its place; and as both the mildness and the 
 asperity were characters of youth, it might be hoped 
 that, with years, both would merge into a constant, 
 brave, and not unkindly temper. 
 
 " 'What is all this ?' cried the man. 
 
 "Leon had his hat in his hand at once. He came 
 forward with his customary grace; it was a mo- 
 ment which would have earned him a round of 
 cheering on the stage. Elvira and Stubbs advanced 
 behind him, like a couple of Admetus' sheep fol- 
 lowing the god Apollo. 
 
 " 'Sir/ said Leon, 'the hour is unpardonably late, 
 and our little serenade has the air of an impertinence. 
 Believe me, sir, it is an appeal. Monsieur is an 
 artist, I perceive. We are here three artists be- 
 nighted and without shelter, one a woman — a deli- 
 cate woman — in evening dress — in an interesting sit- 
 uation. This will not fail to touch the woman's 
 heart of Madame, whom I perceive indistinctly be- 
 hind Monsieur her husband, and whose face speaks 
 eloquently of a well-regulated mind. Ah! Mon- 
 sieur, Madame — one generous movement, and you 
 make three people happy ! Two or three hours be- 
 side your fire — I ask it of Monsieur in the name of 
 Art — I ask it of Madame by the sanctity of woman- 
 hood/ 
 
THE MORAL FABLES 303 
 
 "The two, as by a tacit consent, drew back from 
 the door. 
 
 " 'Come in/ said the man. 
 
 " 'Entrez, Madame/ said the woman. 
 
 "The door opened directly upon the kitchen of 
 the house, which was to all appearance the only sit- 
 ting-room. The furniture was both plain and 
 scanty; but there were one or two landscapes on 
 the wall handsomely framed, as if they had already 
 visited the committee-rooms of an exhibition and 
 been thence extruded. Leon walked up to the pic- 
 tures and represented the part of a connoisseur be- 
 fore each in turn, with his usual dramatic insight 
 and force. The master of the house, as if irresistibly 
 attracted, followed him from canvas to canvas with 
 the lamp. Elvira was led directly to the fire, where 
 she proceeded to warm herself, while Stubbs stood 
 in the middle of the floor and followed the proceed- 
 ings of Leon with mild astonishment in his eyes. 
 
 " 'You should see them by daylight/ said the 
 artist. 
 
 " T promise myself that pleasure/ said Leon. 
 'You possess, sir, if you will permit me an observa- 
 tion, the art of composition to a TV 
 
 " 'You are very good/ returned the other. 'But 
 should you not draw nearer to the fire ?' 
 
 " 'With all my heart/ said Leon. 
 
 "And the whole party soon gathered at the table 
 over a hasty and not an elegant cold supper, washed 
 down with the least of small wines. Nobody liked 
 the meal, but nobody complained; they put a good 
 
304 STEVENSON 
 
 face upon it, one and all, and made a great clattering 
 of knives and forks. To see Leon eating a single 
 cold sausage was to see a triumph; by the time he 
 had done he had got through as much pantomime 
 as would have sufficed for a baron of beef, and he 
 had the relaxed expression of the over-eaten. 
 
 "As Elvira had naturally taken a place by the side 
 of Leon, and Stubbs as naturally, although I believe 
 unconsciously, by the side of Elvira, the host and 
 hostess were left together. Yet it was to be noted 
 that they never addressed a word to each other, 
 nor so much as suffered their eyes to meet. The 
 interrupted skirmish still survived in ill feeling ; and 
 the instant the guests departed it would break forth 
 again as bitterly as ever. The talk wandered from 
 this to that subject — for with one accord the party 
 had declared it was too late to go to bed ; but those 
 two never relaxed towards each other; Goneril and 
 Regan in a sisterly tiff were not more bent on en- 
 mity. 
 
 "It chanced that Elvira was so much tired by all 
 the little excitements of the night, that for once she 
 laid aside her company manners, which were both 
 easy and correct, and in the most natural manner 
 in the world leaned her head on Leon's shoulder. 
 At the same time, fatigue suggesting tenderness, 
 she locked the fingers of her right hand into those 
 of her husband's left; and, half-closing her eyes, 
 dozed off into a golden borderland between sleep 
 and waking. But all the time she was not unaware 
 of what was passing, and saw the painter's wife 
 
THE MORAL FABLES 305 
 
 studying her with looks between contempt and 
 envy. 
 
 "It occurred to Leon that his constitution de- 
 manded the use of some tobacco; and he undid his 
 ringers from Elvira's in order to roll a cigarette. 
 It was gently done, and he took care that his in- 
 dulgence should in no other way disturb his wife's 
 position. But it seemed to catch the eye of the 
 painter's wife with a special significancy. She 
 looked straight before her for an instant, and then, 
 with a swift and stealthy movement, took hold of 
 her husband's hand below the table. Alas! she 
 might have spared herself the dexterity. For the 
 poor fellow was so overcome by this caress that he 
 stopped with his mouth open in the middle of a 
 word, and by the expression of his face plainly de- 
 clared to all the company that his thoughts had been 
 diverted into softer channels. 
 
 "If it had not been rather amiable, it would have 
 been absurdly droll. His wife at once withdrew 
 her touch; but it was plain she had to exert some 
 force. Thereupon the young man coloured and 
 looked for a moment beautiful. 
 
 "Leon and Elvira both observed the by-play, and 
 a shock passed from one to the other ; for they were 
 inveterate match-makers, especially between those 
 who were already married. 
 
 " T beg your pardon,' said Leon, suddenly. 'I 
 see no use in pretending. Before we came in here 
 we heard sounds indicating — if I may so express 
 myself — an imperfect harmony.' 
 
306 STEVENSON 
 
 " 'Sir — ,' began the man. 
 
 "But the woman was beforehand. 
 
 " 'It is quite true,' she said. 'I see no cause to be 
 ashamed. If my husband is mad I shall at least do 
 my utmost to prevent the consequences. Picture to 
 yourself, Monsieur and Madame,' she went on, for 
 she passed Stubbs over, 'that this wretched person — 
 a dauber, an incompetent, not fit to be a sign-painter 
 — receives this morning an admirable offer from an 
 uncle — an uncle of my own, my mother's brother, 
 and tenderly beloved — of a clerkship with nearly a 
 hundred and fifty pounds a year, and that he — pic- 
 ture to yourself! — he refuses it! Why? For the 
 sake of Art, he says. Look at his art, I say — look 
 at it ! Is it fit to be seen ? Ask him — is it fit to be 
 sold? And it is for this, Monsieur and Madame, 
 that he condemns me to the most deplorable exist- 
 ence, without luxuries, without comforts, in a vile 
 suburb of a country town. O non !' she cried, 'non 
 — je ne me tairai pas — c'est plus fort que moi! I 
 take these gentlemen and this lady for judges — is 
 this kind? is it decent? is it manly? Do I not 
 deserve better at his hands after having married him 
 and' — (a visible hitch) — 'done everything in the 
 world to please him?' 
 
 "I doubt if there were ever a more embarrassed 
 company at a table ; every one looked like a fool ; and 
 the husband like the biggest. 
 
 " 'The art of Monsieur, however/ said Elvira, 
 breaking the silence, 'is not wanting in distinction.' 
 
THE MORAL FABLES 307 
 
 " 'It has this distinction/ said the wife, 'that no- 
 body will buy it.' 
 
 " 'I should have supposed a clerkship — ' began 
 Stubbs. 
 
 " 'Art is Art,' swept in Leon. 'I salute Art. It 
 is the beautiful, the divine; it is the spirit of the 
 world, and the pride of life. But —   And the 
 actor paused. 
 
 " 'A clerkship — ' began Stubbs. 
 
 " I'll tell you what it is,' said the painter. 'I am 
 an artist, and as this gentleman says, Art is this and 
 the other; but of course, if my wife is going to 
 make my life a piece of perdition all day long, I pre- 
 fer to go and drown myself out of hand.' 
 
 " 'Go!' said his wife. 'I should like to see you!' 
 
 " 'I was going to say,' resumed Stubbs, 'that a 
 fellow may be a clerk and paint almost as much as 
 he likes. I know a fellow in a bank who makes cap- 
 ital water-colour sketches; he even sold one for 
 seven-and-six.' 
 
 "To both the women this seemed a plank of 
 safety; each hopefully interrogated the countenance 
 of her lord; even Elvira, an artist herself! — but 
 indeed there must be something permanently mer- 
 cantile in the female nature. The two men ex- 
 changed a glance ; it was tragic ; not otherwise might 
 two philosophers salute, as at the end of a laborious 
 life each recognised that he was still a mystery to 
 his disciples. 
 
 "Leon arose. 
 
308 STEVENSON 
 
 " 'Art is Art/ he repeated sadly. 'It is not water- 
 colour sketches, nor practising on a piano. It is a 
 life to be lived/ 
 
 " 'And in the meantime people starve !' observed 
 the woman of the house. 'If that's a life, it is not 
 one for me/ 
 
 " 'I'll tell you what,' burst forth Leon ; 'you, 
 Madame, go into another room and talk it over with 
 my wife; and I'll stay here and talk it over with 
 your husband. It may come to nothing, but let's 
 try.' 
 
 " 'I am very willing,' replied the young woman ; 
 and she proceeded to light a candle. 'This way if 
 you please.' And she led Elvira upstairs into a bed- 
 room. 'The fact is,' said she, sitting down, 'that 
 my husband cannot paint.' 
 
 " 'No more can mine act,' replied Elvira. 
 
 " 'I should have thought he could,' returned the 
 other; 'he seems clever.' 
 
 " 'He is so, and the best of men besides,' said 
 Elvira ; 'but he cannot act.' 
 
 " 'At least he is not a sheer humbug like mine ; 
 he can at least sing.' 
 
 " 'You mistake Leon,' returned his wife, warmly. 
 'He does not even pretend to sing; he has too fine 
 a taste; he does so for a living. And believe me, 
 neither of the men are humbugs. They are people 
 with a mission — which they cannot carry out.' 
 
 " 'Humbug or not,' replied the other, 'you came 
 very near passing the night in the fields; and, for 
 my part, I live in terror of starvation. I should 
 
THE MORAL FABLES 309 
 
 think it was a man's mission to think twice about his 
 wife. But it appears not. Nothing is their mission 
 but to play the fool. Oh !' she broke out, 'is it not 
 something dreary to think of that man of mine? 
 If he could only do it, who would care? But no — 
 not he — no more than I can !' 
 
 " 'Have you any children ?' asked Elvira. 
 
 " 'No ; but then I may/ 
 
 " 'Children change so much,' said Elvira, with a 
 sigh. 
 
 "And just then from the room below there flew 
 up a sudden snapping cord on the guitar; one fol- 
 lowed after another; then the voice of Leon joined 
 in ; and there was an air being played and sung that 
 stopped the speech of the two women. The wife of 
 the painter stood like a person transfixed; Elvira, 
 looking into her eyes, could see all manner of beau- 
 tiful memories and kind thoughts that were passing 
 in and out of her soul with every note; it was a 
 piece of her youth that went before her; a green 
 French plain, the smell of apple-flowers, the far 
 and shining ringlets of a river, and the words and 
 presence of love. 
 
 " 'Leon has hit the nail/ thought Elvira to her- 
 self, T wonder how/ 
 
 "The how was plain enough. Leon had asked the 
 painter if there were no air connected with court- 
 ship and pleasant times; and having learned what 
 he wished, and allowed an interval to pass, he had 
 soared forth into 
 
310 STEVENSON 
 
 "O mon amante, 
 O mon desir, 
 Sachons cueillir 
 
 L'heure charmante! 
 
 tc r 
 
 'Pardon me, Madame/ said the painter's wife, 
 'your husband sings admirably well.' 
 
 " 'He sings that with some feeling,' replied El- 
 vira, critically, although she was a little moved 
 herself, for the song cut both ways in the upper 
 chamber ; 'but it is as an actor and not as a musician.' 
 
 " 'Life is very sad,' said the other; 'it so wastes 
 away under one's fingers.' 
 
 " 'I have not found it so,' replied Elvira. 'I 
 think the good parts of it last and grow greater every 
 day.' 
 
 " 'Frankly, how would you advise me ?' 
 
 " 'Frankly I would let my husband do what he 
 wished. He is obviously a very loving painter ; you 
 have not yet tried him as a clerk. And you know — 
 if it were only as the possible father of your chil- 
 dren — it is as well to keep him at his best.' 
 
 " 'He is an excellent fellow,' said the wife. 
 
 "They kept it up till sunrise with music and all 
 manner of good-fellowship; and at sunrise, while 
 the sky was still temperate and clear, they separated 
 on the threshold with a thousand excellent wishes 
 for each other's welfare. Castel-le-Gachis was be- 
 ginning to send up its smoke against the golden 
 East; and the church bell was ringing six. 
 
 " 'My guitar is a familiar spirit,' said Leon, as he 
 
THE MORAL FABLES 311 
 
 and Elvira took the nearest way toward the inn; 
 'it resuscitated a Commissary, created an English 
 tourist, and reconciled a man and wife/ 
 
 "Stubbs, on his part, went off into the morning 
 with reflections of his own. 
 
 " They are all mad/ thought he, 'all mad — but 
 wonderfully decent/ " — "Providence and the Gui- 
 tar," New Arabian Nights. 
 
 This story, which so directly reflects the argu- 
 ments of "An Apology for Idlers," as well as Ste- 
 venson's own experiences in regard to the family 
 profession, might well be called an "Idyll for Op- 
 timists." "Even my knowledge of life is a work 
 of art superiorly composed," says Leon. And some- 
 where else Stevenson remarks characteristically, "I 
 would do nothing that I cannot do smiling." This 
 selective or creative optimism is the very opposite 
 of going blind to the facts. It implies an intense 
 realization of the other possible judgments in the 
 case and a careful choice — some would say a per- 
 verse choice. At all events, Stevenson's optimism 
 never lacks humor. It pokes fun at itself and keeps 
 perfectly sane in the midst of its own extravagance. 
 For Stevenson is a critic of optimism as well as an 
 optimist. 
 
 VI 
 
 There is another yarn, written in 1883, five years 
 later, where this critical philosophy (gleanings from 
 Epictetus, if you like) is put into narrative form, 
 
312 STEVENSON 
 
 an extravaganza called "The Treasure of Fran- 
 chard." Desprez, the sublimely ridiculous phan- 
 tasist, is one more of Stevenson's insuppressibles. 
 He is a theorist, especially of optimisms, but he has 
 at his elbow an admirable imp who pricks his in- 
 flations as often as they swell. Desprez and Jean- 
 Marie are sublime theory and natural sense, and it is 
 hard to say which is the more captivating reasoner. 
 Jean-Marie, a waif whom Desprez has adopted, 
 grows up at the doctor's elbow and learns from 
 theory. One of the first things he learns is that 
 it is wrong to steal — though he himself has been 
 forced to steal in order to keep alive. Here is a bit 
 of their ethical dialogue on a morning when the 
 doctor has risen early only to find Jean-Marie up 
 before him. 
 
 "'And why do you rise early in the morning?' 
 he pursued. 
 
 "Jean-Marie, after a long silence, professed that 
 he hardly knew. 
 
 " 'You hardly know ?' repeated Desprez. 'We 
 hardly know anything, my man, until we try to 
 learn. Interrogate your consciousness. Come, 
 push me this inquiry home. Do you like it?' 
 
 " 'Yes,' said the boy slowly; 'yes, I like it.' 
 
 " 'And why do you like it ?' continued the Doctor. 
 
 '"(We are now pursuing the Socratic method.) 
 Why do you like it?' 
 
 " 'It is quiet,' answered Jean-Marie ; 'and I have 
 nothing to do; and then I feel as if I were good.' 
 
THE MORAL FABLES 313 
 
 "Doctor Desprez took a seat on the post at the 
 opposite side. He was beginning to take an interest 
 in the talk, for the boy plainly thought before he 
 spoke, and tried to answer truly. 'It appears you 
 have a taste for feeling good,' said the Doctor. 
 'Now, there you puzzle me extremely ; for I thought 
 you said you were a thief; and the two are incom- 
 patible.' 
 
 " 'Is it very bad to steal ?' asked Jean-Marie. 
 
 " 'Such is the general opinion, little boy/ replied 
 the Doctor. 
 
 " 'No ; but I mean as I stole,' exclaimed the other. 
 Tor I had no choice. I think it is surely right to 
 have bread; it must be right to have bread, there 
 comes so plain a want of it. And then they beat me 
 cruelly if I returned with nothing/ he added. 'I 
 was not ignorant of right and wrong; for before 
 that I had been well taught by a priest, who was 
 very kind to me/ (The Doctor made a horrible 
 grimace at the word 'priest/) 'But it seemed to 
 me, when one had nothing to eat and was beaten, it 
 was a different affair. I would not have stolen for 
 tartlets, I believe; but any one would steal for 
 baker's bread.' 
 
 " 'And so I suppose,' said the Doctor, with a rising 
 sneer, 'you prayed God to forgive you, and ex- 
 plained the case to Him at length.' 
 
 " 'Why, sir?' asked Jean-Marie. 'I do not see.' 
 
 " 'Your priest would see, however,' retorted Des- 
 prez. 
 
 " 'Would he ?' asked the boy, troubled for the first 
 
314 STEVENSON 
 
 time. 'I should have thought God would have 
 known.' 
 
 " 'Eh?' snarled the Doctor. 
 
 " 'I should have thought God would have under- 
 stood me/ replied the other. 'You do not, I see; 
 but then it was God that made me think so, was it 
 not?'" 
 
 Especially does Jean-Marie learn from this rati- 
 ocinator of Grez (Stevenson has most charmingly 
 framed the legend among his early haunts) all about 
 the blessings of simple forest life as compared with 
 the luxuries of Paris. Desprez does not dare to 
 live in Paris because of his bibulous and spendthrift 
 propensities. Forced to live in Grez, it is the law 
 of golden mediocrity as laid down by the ancients, 
 to whom it was given to do nothing too much, that 
 forms the basis of his creed. But he never wishes 
 to be taken literally or denied the chance of ex- 
 ceptions. Jean-Marie, however, transforms his 
 ratiocinations so rapidly into natural sense and 
 sticks to that so tenaciously, that the doctor is not 
 wholly pleased with the result. The trouble is that 
 Jean-Marie's logic, which has an unanswerable 
 naivete, does not leave room for that play of fancy 
 which, in the doctor's enjoyable optimisms, is a 
 most essential element. 
 
 So, when it happens that Doctor Desprez, search- 
 ing for herbs to study for his "Comparative Pharma- 
 copoeia," discovers the legendary treasure of Fran- 
 chard — plates of gold and a huge coffer — and when 
 
THE MORAL FABLES 315 
 
 his imagination, instantly transcending all his doc- 
 trines of golden mediocrity, soars Paris-ward bear- 
 ing Anastasie his wife and Jean-Marie to the 
 heights of social grandeur, the imp suffers a great 
 disillusionment. He does the one practical and use- 
 ful thing. He again pricks the inflation — that is, 
 he steals the treasure. This is not the end of the 
 story, of course; but it is a climax after which 
 nothing matters. And I am not sure but that it is 
 a climax of comic proportion such as you will hardly 
 find outside of Moliere. 
 
 Here is the doctor in the morning, the sublime 
 sophister whirling himself superiorly in the air on 
 his pinions of fancy as he and Jean-Marie, actually 
 in their two-wheeled noddy, pitch and jerk along the 
 road toward Franchard. Desprez is giving him a 
 history of the place. 
 
 " 'Singular being !' said Desprez. 'But I divagate 
 (I perceive in a thousand ways that I grow old). 
 Franchard was at length destroyed in the English 
 wars, the same that levelled Grez. But — here is 
 the point — the hermits ( for there were already more 
 than one) had foreseen the danger and carefully 
 concealed the sacrificial vessels. These vessels were 
 of monstrous value, Jean-Marie — monstrous value 
 — priceless, we may say; exquisitely worked, of 
 exquisite material. And now, mark me, they have 
 never been found. In the reign of Louis Quatorze 
 some fellows were digging hard by the ruins. Sud- 
 denly — tock! — the spade hit upon an obstacle. 
 
316 STEVENSON 
 
 Imagine the men looking one to another; imagine 
 how their hearts bounded, how their colour came 
 and went. It was a coffer, and in Franchard the 
 place of buried treasure. They tore it open like 
 famished beasts. Alas! it was not the treasure; 
 only some priestly robes, which, at the touch of the 
 eating air, fell upon themselves and instantly wasted 
 into dust. The perspiration of these good fellows 
 turned cold upon them, Jean-Marie. I will pledge 
 my reputation, if there was anything like a cutting 
 wind, one or other had a pneumonia for his trouble.' 
 
 " 'I should like to have seen them turning into 
 dust/ said Jean-Marie. 'Otherwise, I should not 
 have cared so greatly.' 
 
 " 'You have no imagination,' cried the Doctor. 
 'Picture to yourself the scene. Dwell on the idea 
 — a great treasure lying in the earth for centuries : 
 the material for a giddy, copious, opulent existence 
 not employed; dresses and exquisite pictures un- 
 seen; the swiftest galloping horses not stirring a 
 hoof, arrested by a spell; women with the beautiful 
 faculty of smiles, not smiling; cards, dice, opera 
 singing, orchestras, castles, beautiful parks and gar- 
 dens, big ships with a tower of sailcloth, all lying 
 unborn in a coffin — and the stupid trees growing 
 overhead in the sunlight, year after year. The 
 thought drives one frantic' 
 
 " 'It is only money,' replied Jean-Marie. 'It 
 would do harm.' 
 
 " 'O come !' cried Desprez, 'that is philosophy ; it 
 is all very fine, but not to the point just now. And 
 
THE MORAL FABLES 317 
 
 besides, it is not "only money," as you call it; there 
 are works of art in the question; the vessels were 
 carved. You speak like a child. You weary me 
 exceedingly, quoting my words out of all logical 
 connection, like a parroquet.' 
 
 " 'And at any rate we have nothing to do with 
 it,' returned the boy submissively. 
 
 "They struck the Route Ronde at that moment; 
 and the sudden change of the rattling causeway com- 
 bined, with the Doctor's irritation, to keep him silent. 
 The noddy jigged along; the trees went by, looking 
 on silently, as if they had something on their minds. 
 The Quadrilateral was passed; then came Fran- 
 chard. They put up the horse at the little solitary 
 inn, and went forth strolling. The gorge was dyed 
 deeply with heather; the rocks and birches standing 
 luminous in the sun. A great humming of bees 
 about the flowers disposed Jean-Marie to sleep, and 
 he sat down against a clump of heather, while the 
 Doctor went briskly to and fro, with quick turns, 
 culling his simples. 
 
 "The boy's head had fallen a little forward, his 
 eyes were closed, his fingers had fallen lax about his 
 knees, when a sudden cry called him to his feet. 
 It was a strange sound, thin and brief; it fell dead, 
 and silence returned as though it had never been 
 interrupted. He had not recognised the Doctor's 
 voice ; but, as there was no one else in all the valley, 
 it was plainly the Doctor who had given utterance 
 to the sound. He looked right and left, and there 
 was Desprez, standing in a niche between two boul- 
 
318 STEVENSON 
 
 ders, and looking round on his adopted son with a 
 countenance as white as paper. 
 
 " 'A viper !' cried Jean-Marie, running towards 
 him. 'A viper ! You are bitten !' 
 
 "The Doctor came down heavily out of the cleft, 
 and advanced in silence to meet the boy, whom he 
 took roughly by the shoulder. 
 
 " T have found it/ he said with a gasp. 
 
 " ' A plant ?' asked Jean-Marie. 
 
 "Desprez had a fit of unnatural gaiety, which the 
 rocks took up and mimicked. 'A plant !' he repeated 
 scornfully. 'Well — yes — a plant. And here,' he 
 added suddenly, showing his right hand, which he 
 had hitherto concealed behind his back — 'here is one 
 of the bulbs.' 
 
 "Jean-Marie saw a dirty platter, coated with earth. 
 That?' said he. Tt is a plate!' 
 f It is a coach and horses/ cried the Doctor. 
 'Boy/ he continued, growing warmer, T plucked 
 away a great pad of moss from between these boul- 
 ders, and disclosed a crevice ; and when I looked in, 
 what do you suppose I saw ? I saw a house in Paris 
 with a court and garden, I saw my wife shining with 
 diamonds, I saw myself a deputy, I saw you — well, 
 I — saw your future/ he concluded, rather feebly. 
 'I have just discovered America/ he added. 
 
 " 'But what is it?' asked the boy. 
 
 " 'The Treasure of Franchard/ cried the Doctor; 
 and, throwing his brown straw hat upon the ground, 
 he whooped like an Indian and sprang upon Jean- 
 Marie, whom he suffocated with embraces and be- 
 
 
THE MORAL FABLES 319 
 
 dewed with tears. Then he flung himself down 
 among the heather and once more laughed until the 
 valley rang." 
 
 Desprez decides to telegraph for his brother-in- 
 law Casimir — the unromantic, level-headed busi- 
 ness man. So they return with the treasure through 
 the forest by way of Fontainebleau, Desprez im- 
 proving his new philosophy with every mile, and 
 raised,. if that were possible, slightly above the acme 
 of his own temperament by a bottle of English ale 
 drunk at an inn. 
 
 " 'Beautiful forest/ he cried, 'farewell! Though 
 called to other scenes, I will not forget thee. Thy 
 name is graven in my heart. Under the influence 
 of prosperity I become dithyrambic, Jean-Marie. 
 Such is the impulse of the natural soul; such was 
 the constitution of primaeval man. And I — well, I 
 will not refuse the credit — I have preserved my 
 youth like a virginity; another, who should have 
 led the same snoozing, countrified existence for 
 these years, another had become rusted, become 
 stereotype; but I, I praise my happy constitution, 
 retain the spring unbroken. Fresh opulence and a 
 new sphere of duties find me unabated in ardour 
 and only more mature by knowledge. For this 
 prospective change, Jean-Marie — it may probably 
 have shocked you. Tell me now, did it not strike 
 you as an inconsistency? Confess — it is useless to 
 dissemble — it pained you ?' 
 
320 STEVENSON 
 
 " 'Yes,' said the boy. 
 
 " 'You see,' returned the Doctor, with sublime 
 fatuity, 'I read your thoughts! Nor am I sur- 
 prised — your education is not yet complete; the 
 higher duties of men have not been yet presented to 
 you fully. A hint — till we have leisure — must suffice. 
 Now that I am once more in possession of a modest 
 competence; now that I have so long prepared my- 
 self in silent meditation, it becomes my superior duty 
 to proceed to Paris. My scientific training, my un- 
 doubted command of language, mark me out for the 
 service of my country. Modesty in such a case 
 would be a snare. If sin were a philosophical ex- 
 pression, I should call it sinful. A man must not 
 deny his manifest abilities, for that is to evade his 
 obligations. I must be up and doing; I must be no 
 skulker in life's battle.' 
 
 "So he rattled on, copiously greasing the joint 
 of his inconsistency with words; while the boy 
 listened silently, his eyes fixed on the horse, his 
 mind seething. It was all lost eloquence; no array 
 of words could unsettle a belief of Jean-Marie's; 
 and he drove into Fontainebleau filled with pity, 
 horror, indignation, and despair. 
 
 "In the town Jean-Marie was kept a fixture on 
 the driving-seat, to guard the treasure; while the 
 Doctor, with a singular, slightly tipsy airiness of 
 manner, fluttered in and out of cafes, where he 
 shook hands with garrison officers, and mixed an 
 absinthe with the nicety of old experience; in and 
 out of shops, from which he returned laden with 
 
THE MORAL FABLES 321 
 
 costly fruits, real turtle, a magnificent piece of silk 
 for his wife, a preposterous cane for himself, and 
 a kepi of the newest fashion for the boy; in and 
 out of the telegraph office, whence he despatched 
 his telegram, and where three hours later he received 
 an answer promising a visit on the morrow; and 
 generally pervaded Fontainebleau with the first fine 
 aroma of his divine good humour. 
 
 "The sun was very low when they set forth again ; 
 the shadows of the forest trees extended across the 
 broad white road that led them home ; the penetrat- 
 ing odour of the evening wood had already arisen, 
 like a cloud of incense, from that broad field of tree- 
 tops; and even in the streets of the town, where the 
 air had been baked all day between white walls, it 
 came in whiffs and pulses, like a distant music. 
 Half-way home, the last gold flicker vanished from 
 a great oak upon the left ; and when they came forth 
 beyond the borders of the wood, the plain was al- 
 ready sunken in pearly greyness, and a great, pale 
 moon came swinging skyward through the filmy 
 poplars. 
 
 "The Doctor sang, the Doctor whistled, the Doc- 
 tor talked. He spoke of the woods, and the wars, 
 and the deposition of dew; he brightened and bab- 
 bled of Paris ; he soared into cloudy bombast on the 
 glories of the political arena. All was to be changed ; 
 as the day departed, it took with it the vestiges of 
 an outworn existence, and to-morrow's sun was to 
 inaugurate the new. 'Enough/ he cried, 'of this life 
 of maceration!' His wife (still beautiful, or he was 
 
322 STEVENSON 
 
 sadly partial) was to be no longer buried ; she should 
 now shine before society. Jean-Marie would find 
 the world at his feet; the roads open to success, 
 wealth, honour, and posthumous renown. 'And 
 O, by the way/ said he, 'for God's sake keep your 
 tongue quiet! You are, of course, a very silent 
 fellow; it is a quality I gladly recognise in you — 
 silence, golden silence! But this is a matter of 
 gravity. No word must get abroad; none but the 
 good Casimir is to be trusted; we shall probably 
 dispose of the vessels in England/ 
 
 " 'But are they not even ours?' the boy said, al- 
 most with a sob — it was the only time he had spoken. 
 
 " 'Ours in this sense, that they are nobody else's/ 
 replied the Doctor. 'But the State would have some 
 claim. If they were stolen, for instance, we should 
 be unable to demand their restitution; we should 
 have no title ; we should be unable even to communi- 
 cate with the police. Such is the monstrous condi- 
 tion of the law. 1 It is a mere instance of what re- 
 mains to be done, of the injustices that may yet be 
 righted by an ardent, active, and philosophical dep- 
 uty/ 
 
 "Jean-Marie put his faith in Madame Desprez; 
 and as they drove forwards down the road from 
 Bourron, between the rustling poplars, he prayed 
 in his teeth, and whipped up the horse to an unusual 
 speed. Surely, as soon as they arrived, madame 
 would assert her character, and bring this waking 
 nightmare to an end. 
 
 1 Let it be so for my tale. 
 
THE MORAL FABLES 323 
 
 "Their entrance into Grez was heralded and 
 accompanied by a most furious barking; all the 
 dogs in the village seemed to smell the treasure in 
 the noddy. But there was no one in the street, save 
 three lounging landscape painters at Tentaillon's 
 door. Jean-Marie opened the green gate and led 
 in the horse and carriage; and almost at the same 
 moment Madame Desprez came to the kitchen 
 threshold with a lighted lantern ; for the moon was 
 not yet high enough to clear the garden walls. 
 
 " 'Close the gates, Jean-Marie !' cried the Doctor, 
 somewhat unsteadily alighting. 'Anastasie, where 
 is Aline?' 
 
 " 'She has gone to Montereau to see her parents/ 
 said madame. 
 
 " 'All is for the best F exclaimed the Doctor fer- 
 vently. 'Here, quick, come near to me; I do not 
 wish to speak too loud/ he continued. 'Darling, 
 we are wealthy!' 
 
 " 'Wealthy!' repeated the wife. 
 
 " 'I have found the treasure of Franchard,' re- 
 plied her husband. 'See, here are the first fruits; 
 a pineapple, a dress for my ever-beautiful — it will 
 suit her — trust a husband's, trust a lover's, taste! 
 Embrace me, darling ! This grimy episode is over ; 
 the butterfly unfolds its painted wings. To-morrow 
 Casimir will come ; in a week we may be in Paris — 
 happy at last! You shall have diamonds. Jean- 
 Marie, take it out of the boot, with religious care, 
 and bring it piece by piece into the dining-room. We 
 shall have plate at table! Darling, hasten and pre- 
 
324 STEVENSON 
 
 pare this turtle; it will be a whet — it will be an 
 addition to our meagre ordinary. I myself will pro- 
 ceed to the cellar. We shall have a bottle of that 
 little Beaujolais you like, and finish with the Her- 
 mitage; there are still three bottles left. Worthy 
 wine for a worthy occasion/ 
 
 " 'But, my husband ; you put me in a whirl,' she 
 cried. 'I do not comprehend.' 
 
 "The turtle, my adored, the turtle!' cried the 
 Doctor; and he pushed her towards the kitchen, 
 lantern and all. 
 
 "Jean-Marie stood dumfounded. He had pic- 
 tured to himself a different scene — a more immedi- 
 ate protest, and his hope began to dwindle on the 
 spot. 
 
 "The Doctor was everywhere, a little doubtful on 
 his legs, perhaps, and now and then taking the wall 
 with his shoulder; for it was long since he had 
 tasted absinthe, and he was even then reflecting that 
 the absinthe had been a misconception. Not that he 
 regretted excess on such a glorious day, but he made 
 a mental memorandum to beware; he must not, a 
 second time, become the victim of a deleterious 
 habit. He had his wine out of the cellar in a 
 twinkling; he arranged the sacrificial vessels, some 
 on the white table-cloth, some on the sideboard, still 
 crusted with historic earth. He was in and out of 
 the kitchen, plying Anastasie with vermouth, heating 
 her with glimpses of the future, estimating their 
 new wealth at ever larger figures; and before they 
 sat down to supper, the lady's virtue had melted in 
 
THE MORAL FABLES 325 
 
 the fire of his enthusiasm, her timidity had disap- 
 peared; she, too, had begun to speak disparagingly 
 of the life at Grez; and as she took her place and 
 helped the soup, her eyes shone with the glitter of 
 prospective diamonds. 
 
 "All through the meal, she and the Doctor made 
 and unmade fairy plans. They bobbed and bowed 
 and pledged each other. Their faces ran over with 
 smiles; their eyes scattered sparkles, as they pro- 
 jected the Doctor's political honours and the lady's 
 drawing-room ovations. 
 
 " 'But you will not be a Red !' cried Anastasie. 
 
 " T am Left Centre to the core,' replied the 
 Doctor. 
 
 " 'Madame Gastein will present us — we shall find 
 ourselves forgotten,' said the lady. 
 
 " 'Never/ protested the Doctor. 'Beauty and 
 talent leave a mark.' 
 
 " T have positively forgotten how to dress,' she 
 sighed. 
 
 " 'Darling, you make me blush,' cried he. "Yours 
 has been a tragic marriage !' 
 
 " 'But your success — to see you appreciated, hon- 
 oured, your name in all the papers, that will be more 
 than pleasure — it will be heaven !' she cried. 
 
 " 'And once a week,' said the Doctor, archly scan- 
 ning the syllables, 'once a week — one good little 
 game of baccarat?' 
 
 " 'Only once a week ?' she questioned, threatening 
 him with a finger. 
 
 " T swear it by my political honour,' cried he. 
 
326 STEVENSON 
 
 " 'I spoil you/ she said, and gave him her hand. 
 
 "He covered it with kisses. 
 
 "Jean-Marie escaped into the night. The moon 
 swung high over Grez. He went down to the gar- 
 den end and sat on the jetty. The river ran by with 
 eddies of oily silver, and a low, monotonous song. 
 Faint veils of mist moved among the poplars on the 
 farther side. The reeds were quietly nodding. A 
 hundred times already had the boy sat, on such a 
 night, and watched the streaming river with un- 
 troubled fancy. And this perhaps was to be the 
 last. He was to leave this familiar hamlet, this 
 green, rustling country, this bright and quiet stream ; 
 he was to pass into the great city; his dear lady 
 mistress was to move bedizened into saloons; his 
 good, garrulous, kind-hearted master to become a 
 brawling deputy ; and both be lost for ever to Jean- 
 Marie and their better selves. He knew his own 
 defects; he knew he must sink into less and less 
 consideration in the turmoil of a city life; sink more 
 and more from the child into the servant. And he 
 began dimly to believe the Doctor's prophecies of 
 evil. He could see a change in both. His generous 
 incredulity failed him for this once; a child must 
 have perceived that the Hermitage had completed 
 what the absinthe had begun. If this were the first 
 day, what would be the last? 'If necessary, wreck 
 the train,' thought he, remembering the Doctor's 
 parable. He looked round on the delightful scene; 
 he drank deep of the charmed night air, laden with 
 the scent of hay. 'If necessary, wreck the train,' 
 
THE MORAL FABLES 327 
 
 he repeated. And he rose and returned to the 
 house. 
 
 "The next morning there was a most unusual out- 
 cry in the Doctor's house. The last thing before 
 going to bed, the Doctor had locked up some valu- 
 ables in the dining-room cupboard; and behold, 
 when he rose again, as he did about four o'clock, 
 the cupboard had been broken open, and the valu- 
 ables in question had disappeared. Madame and 
 Jean-Marie were summoned from their rooms, and 
 appeared in hasty toilets; they found the Doctor 
 raving, calling the heavens to witness and avenge his 
 injury, pacing the room bare-footed, with the tails 
 of his night-shirt flirting as he turned. 
 
 " 'Gone !' he said ; 'the things are gone, the for- 
 tune gone ! We are paupers once more. Boy ! what 
 do you know of this? Speak up, sir, speak up. Do 
 you know of it? Where are they?' He had him by 
 the arm, shaking him like a bag, and the boy's words, 
 if he had any, were jolted forth in inarticulate mur- 
 murs. The Doctor, with a revulsion from his own 
 violence, set him down again. He observed Anas- 
 tasie in tears. 'Anastasie,' he said, in quite an 
 altered voice, 'compose yourself, command your feel- 
 ings. I would not have you give way to passion like 
 the vulgar. This — this trifling accident must be 
 lived down. Jean-Marie, bring me my smaller med- 
 icine chest. A gentle laxative is indicated.' 
 
 "And he dosed the family all around, leading the 
 way himself with a double quantity. The wretched 
 Anastasie, who had never been ill in the whole course 
 
328 STEVENSON 
 
 of her existence, and whose soul recoiled from reme- 
 dies, wept floods of tears as she sipped, and shud- 
 dered and protested, and then was bullied and 
 shouted at until she sipped again. As for Jean- 
 Marie, he took his portion down with stoicism. 
 
 " 'I have given him a less amount,' observed the 
 Doctor, 'his youth protecting him against emotion. 
 And now that we have thus parried any morbid con- 
 sequences, let us reason.' 
 
 " 'I am so cold,' wailed Anastasie. 
 
 " 'Cold !' cried the Doctor. 'I give thanks to God 
 that I am made of fierier material. Why, madame, 
 a blow like this would set a frog into a transpiration. 
 If you are cold, you can retire; and, by the way, 
 you might throw me down my trousers. It is 
 chilly for the legs.' " 
 
 This is near the top of Stevensonian humor. But 
 do not imagine that the Doctor loses his philosophy. 
 He only changes it. — Always thus with optimists. 
 He of course fails utterly to discover the criminal. 
 For how could philosophy which had been the 
 teacher of common sense hope to detect it ! His in- 
 ductive process of reasoning is perfect. Anastasie 
 is more than ever convinced that her husband is a 
 genius. All the evidence leads straight to Jean- 
 Marie ; but obviously, as Desprez's pupil, he is above 
 suspicion. It is only when Casimir, the city man 
 without sentiments, arrives, that Desprez is con- 
 vinced. Being convinced, however, makes no dif- 
 ference. Desprez refuses to believe. " 'If that boy 
 
THE MORAL FABLES 329 
 
 came and told me so himself, I should not believe 
 him; and if I did believe him, so implicit is my trust, 
 I should conclude that he had acted for the best.' 
 'Well, well/ said Casimir, indulgently. 'Have you 
 alight? I must be going/ " 
 
 The rationalization of the Doctor now follows. 
 A tornado blows down his house, his investments in 
 "Turks," which Casimir has vainly tried to make 
 him sell, go to smash. He is ruined. And mean- 
 while Jean-Marie watches dolefuly for the proper 
 moment. At last it arrives. Of course, they all 
 think that Jean-Marie has deserted them when he 
 saw that nothing more was to be gained. Romantic 
 Optimism, Female Propriety, Practical Unim- 
 portance — Desprez, Anastasie, Casimir, that is — all 
 think that perverse Natural Sense has turned hypo- 
 crite. He has, however, only gone to fetch, at the 
 right moment, their sine qua non. 
 
 " 'Hullo/ cried Casimir, 'there goes the stable- 
 boy with his luggage; no, egad, he is taking it into 
 the inn/ 
 
 "And sure enough, Jean-Marie was seen to cross 
 the snowy street and enter Tentaillon's, staggering 
 under a large hamper. 
 
 "The Doctor stopped with a sudden, wild hope. 
 
 " 'What can he have ?' he said. 'Let us go and 
 see/ And he hurried on. 
 
 " 'His luggage, to be sure/ answered Casimir. 
 'He is on the move — thanks to the commercial 
 imagination/ 
 
330 STEVENSON 
 
 " 'I have not seen that hamper for — for ever so 
 long,' remarked the Doctor. 
 
 " 'Nor will you see it much longer,' chuckled Casi- 
 mir; "unless, indeed, we interfere. And by the 
 way, I insist on an examination.' 
 
 " 'You will not require,' said Desprez, positively 
 with a sob ; and, casting a moist, triumphant glance 
 at Casimir, he began to run. 
 
 " 'What the devil is up with him, I wonder ?' 
 Casimir reflected; and then, curiosity taking the 
 upper hand, he followed the Doctor's example and 
 took to his heels. 
 
 "The hamper was so heavy and large, and Jean- 
 Marie himself so little and so weary, that it had 
 taken him a great while to bundle it upstairs to the 
 Desprez' private room; and he had just set it down 
 on the floor in front of Anastasie, when the Doctor 
 arrived, and was closely followed by the man of 
 business. Boy and hamper were both in a most 
 sorry plight; for the one had passed four months 
 underground in a certain cave on the way to 
 Acheres, and the other had run about five miles, as 
 hard as his legs would carry him, half that distance 
 under a staggering weight. 
 
 " 'Jean-Marie,' cried the Doctor, in a voice that 
 was only too seraphic to be called hysterical, 'is 
 it — ? It is!' he cried. 'O, my son, my son!' And 
 he sat down upon the hamper and sobbed like a 
 little child. 
 
 " 'You will not go to Paris, now,' said Jean-Marie 
 sheepishly. 
 
THE MORAL FABLES 331 
 
 " 'Casimir,' said Desprez, raising his wet face, 'do 
 you see that boy, that angel boy? He is the thief; 
 he took the treasure from a man unfit to be en- 
 trusted with its use; he brings it back to me when 
 I am sobered and humbled. These, Casimir, are the 
 Fruits of my Teaching, and this moment is the Re- 
 ward of my Life.' 
 
 " 'Tiens/ said Casimir." — "The Treasure of 
 Franchard," The Merry Men, etc. 
 
 It may be said that in all Stevenson there is but 
 one doctrine: Expand the fine and enjoyable part 
 of your own nature. Of this Stevenson's philosophy 
 is but a constant development and restatement. His 
 stories are again and again its illustration. He 
 treats the matter in many ways: lightly and per- 
 sonally as in "Ordered South" and "An Apology 
 for Idlers"; with calm seriousness as in "Aes 
 Triplex" ; whimsically as in "Franchard" ; with ter- 
 rible force in the parables of Dr. Jekyll and "Mark- 
 heim." But it is ever a vision that touches the 
 same truth. 
 
 And this is Stevenson's chief claim to distinction 
 — that he has made one of the great moral doctrines 
 of life vivid, viewed it from every side, understood 
 all its significances, its multiplicity of contacts. The 
 ordinary man repeats : "Oh, yes, cheerfulness and 
 courage are fine qualities. Be cheerful, be brave. 
 Be on the positive side of life. You will be happier 
 and more successful. Stick to your better self, your 
 true nature," etc. These are the tedious generalities 
 
332 STEVENSON 
 
 of the ordinary man. Stevenson lets the doctrine 
 permeate life. With him it becomes the guiding 
 principle. In religion, in morals, in art, in friend- 
 ship, in intellectual growth, in the progress of a 
 realistic and material civilization, it has the same 
 mission. It is this which gives force and unity to 
 Stevenson's work and which led the public to expect 
 a certain rather definite thing from him, in spite 
 of the varying shapes with which his imagination 
 was endowing it. 
 
CHAPTER XII 
 
 THE MIRROR OF THE SOUTH SEAS 
 I 
 
 BY the time of Stevenson's second brief so- 
 journ in America and departure to the South 
 Seas, the public had come to regard him as their 
 most entertaining and perhaps their most significant 
 moralist. He humanized afresh and brought into 
 the sun much of the wisdom of the storehouses — 
 much that young men of his day were looking for, 
 and might have found in Epictetus, Montaigne, 
 Hazlitt, or Emerson. Stevenson's originality can 
 be truly perceived only by one who comes directly 
 from Stevenson's favorite reading in these authors. 
 His originality consisted very largely in learning 
 their careful wisdom with more daring enthusiasm ; 
 and it is difficult for us of a later generation, which 
 has had its fill of "morals" if ever a generation has 
 had, to realize how fresh, even how revolutionary, 
 Stevenson's doctrine sounded to the youth of Eng- 
 land and New England who were being brought up 
 literally on the catechism, and who, like their fathers, 
 had been taught to sniff the smoke of the under- 
 
 333 
 
334 STEVENSON 
 
 world in every wind of destiny. It may be a true 
 creed, that old one — it may be that, even in child- 
 hood or before birth, we are all hell-scorched and 
 devil-bitten; but that is not the valuable thing to 
 think on in youth. Stevenson's mission was to 
 bring once more a positive message to his fellow 
 victims. No philosopher whom they were capable 
 of understanding had spoken out so sanely and so 
 enthusiastically about the immediate concerns of 
 youthful thought — about courage, and anarchy, and 
 love, and success. His reasonings were not ab- 
 stract; his examples were intimate. For many a 
 young man, they seemed to put the stamp of high 
 seriousness on those latent notions which he had 
 long sneakingly suspected of being the better part 
 of his nature. Now he had the courage of his 
 suspicions and could look the world in the face. 
 
 Thus, though Stevenson was the author of many 
 other things which an admiring public was ready to 
 accept, he undoubtedly had his serious regard as 
 a man devoted to the discovery of a fresh and more 
 positive outlook on life. His sermons were some- 
 times very definitely sermons; oftener they were 
 essays and fables. In any case he came to be cher- 
 ished as a most stimulating, a most graceful, and 
 certainly as the least tedious, preacher whom 
 preacher-loving Americans and English had found 
 for a generation. The fact that the preacher was 
 himself a man with one foot in the grave who yet 
 told splendid stories of youth and courage, gave 
 his morality only the greater weight. He spoke 
 
THE MIRROR OF THE SOUTH SEAS 335 
 
 out of experience and out of imagination, but never 
 out of dogma or mere theory. 
 
 At the flood-tide of popular interest, and enor- 
 mously enhancing the character of it, the adventurer 
 in fictions and moralities embarked on the sea of 
 true romance. Nothing has ever interested the con- 
 temporary world in a literary career so much as the 
 voyages of Stevenson in 1888 across the face of 
 the Pacific in search of health, and his settling at 
 last in 1890 on the island of Upolu in Samba. It 
 was wonderfully stirring to the imagination. It 
 opened a vista. It taught Europe a new geography. 
 That the author of Treasure Island was himself 
 chartering a topsail schooner and going on a hunt 
 for something more precious than gold, something 
 which would perhaps prove to be over the edge of 
 the map, fascinated all of us in that day. No doubt 
 we expected a new marvelous romance of the sea 
 as the natural result. And a few of us professed 
 to find it in The Wrecker, a tale conceived and writ- 
 ten in a ship's cabin. 
 
 But the significant thing about Stevenson's South 
 Sea writings, taken as a whole, is not the spirit of 
 far adventure in them. Though they are most 
 fanciful, they are also the most realistically inspired 
 of all his work; and their great significance is the 
 criticism they make of what seems to most people 
 the realest thing in history — the "success," or, as 
 one must say in the light of the Great War, the 
 power, of our commercial civilization. 
 
 It is difficult to explain just what this criticism 
 
336 STEVENSON 
 
 consists in, for it is a criticism of civilization that 
 rests on a philosophy as yet not well formulated — a 
 philosophy that exists sanely only in its illustrations 
 in works of fiction and travel. Its clearest popular 
 exponent is for the moment Jack London, in his 
 terrible story, The Call of the Wild, and in certain 
 shorter tales; and by far its subtlest expression lies 
 in the romances of Joseph Conrad. But Stevenson's 
 Ebb Tide, "The Beach of Falesa," and certain pages 
 of The Wrecker are evidences of the same kind of 
 thought. 
 
 Primitivism, it is true, has often been a motive 
 in art and in philosophy. It was such a hundred 
 years ago with the socialistic poets and philosophers 
 who for the most part romanticized it. They claimed 
 that a return to the "natural" state would enable 
 men to perceive what is unessential in their present 
 accumulation of conventions, and to grow up again 
 clearer minded and less encumbered, and hence in 
 closer personal sympathy with one another. But the 
 present group of socialistic writers, with whom 
 Stevenson has certain affinities, show us the matter 
 less theoretically. They tell the story of human 
 nature as it would be without the all-valuable veneer. 
 In the light of various types of primitivism, some- 
 where out on the borders of society, the character 
 of modern civilization is symbolically reflected and 
 becomes less inscrutable. The South Seas are a 
 mirror for Europe, where a carefully bred English- 
 man, let us say, may see himself stripped of his mor- 
 als, his tastes, his clothes, and most of his other 
 
THE MIRROR OF THE SOUTH SEAS 337 
 
 clever adjustments to implacable nature. What is 
 he like in this mirror ? 
 
 The sight at first disgusts, then fascinates, and 
 at last inspires. Man is still so much an animal ; yes, 
 but a God-made animal. He is real. He can not be 
 denaturalized. He is part of evolution. "I love the 
 Polynesian," Stevenson writes to Low : "This civil- 
 ization of ours is a dingy, ungentlemanly business; 
 it drops out too much of man, and too much of 
 that the very beauty of the poor beast; who has his 
 beauties in spite of Zola and Co." 
 
 Out on the borderlands we can see what the ele- 
 mental laws really are and what they signify. In 
 society, for instance, we talk about private ambi- 
 tions; in the borderland that is just a law — it can 
 not be escaped — and it is called the law of club and 
 fang. How horribly plain that becomes in Jack 
 London's Call of the Wild. How the veneer cracks 
 off, and how infinitely valuable it at once appears 
 to be. Obviously, it is the veneer that we must 
 improve, not the law that we must try to change. 
 For the law is the survival of the fittest, the law 
 that includes all others, the law that itself is civiliza- 
 tion. It is on this law that the socialistic argument 
 depends; for this is also the law of the unity of all 
 nature. It is the law which says that we are all 
 directed by the same fundamental passions. In 
 society we have a saying that one should control 
 these passions, and we accordingly describe them 
 to suit ideals of self-control, love, honor, loyalty, 
 in our parlance. In the far mirror of the sea it is 
 
338 STEVENSON 
 
 plain that they are meant to be embodied rather 
 than controlled, if one would survive; and hence 
 they appear more crudely as sexual desire, physical 
 courage, family instinct. 
 
 And now it becomes apparent why barbarism is 
 so interesting to us, why "The Beach of Falesa" 
 and parts of In the South Seas are absorbing read- 
 ing. It is not just because of the strangeness of 
 it all. It is really because of its awful familiarity. 
 It lurks under our skins. It beats in the pulse of 
 our cities. For barbarism, with its squalor, its 
 brutality, its crude struggle for the upper hand, or 
 else with its cheerful passivity, its sensuous abandon, 
 its indifference to fate, makes perfectly plain what 
 is still going on among ourselves in a more com- 
 plicated, a more inscrutable, but no less inevitable 
 fashion. 
 
 Let us look at an illustration. 
 
 The beach of Falesa is one of the outposts of 
 civilization in the midst of the sea — that is, a trading 
 station. For it is barter that makes civilized laws 
 necessary and that ultimately brings in the soundest 
 notions of responsibility, trust, and justice. But when 
 Wiltshire comes to his new station at Falesa, laws 
 are very distant, usually a couple of thousand of 
 miles or so, though shadowed forth now and then 
 by the steamer or the missionary. Othef ideas, 
 however, take their places : the native superstitions ; 
 sheer competition — all's fair in trade and war, which 
 is only another way of saying that trade is war; 
 and finally the universal instinct of family and sex. 
 
THE MIRROR OF THE SOUTH SEAS 339 
 
 These things, if thoroughly understood are pretty 
 definite matters. But Wiltshire is ignorant of the 
 exact nature of Falesa superstition; he is fooled by 
 Mr. Case into believing that the rule of competi- 
 tion has been temporarily suspended in favor of 
 cooperation; and he is for some time rather skep- 
 tical about the moral value of the universal instinct, 
 so far as it concerns the Kanaka girl whom he takes 
 to wife. It is a fair confusion, typical of the con- 
 flict of notions from which civilized custom has 
 arisen. 
 
 Thus the most interesting thing in the story is 
 Wiltshire's psychology. He has been leading a soli- 
 tary life on an island where there are no other white 
 men. At Falesa there are three — two whites and 
 a negro. They will be his rivals in the copra trade ; 
 but rivalry, with company, is welcome. However, 
 it is not exactly rivalry, he is to meet. It is rivalry 
 removed from all thought of responsibility, trust, 
 or justice. Mr. Case, the fakir and sensualist, typi- 
 fies the horrible nature of competition under such 
 conditions. Wiltshire and Uma, on the other 
 hand, have the decent streak in their natures that 
 has always wrought civilization instead of animal- 
 ism out of human relationships. Its development, 
 under these circumstances, is the essence of the 
 story. Yet were the plot adapted to a civilized set- 
 ting this development would not be any too obvious. 
 It requires the beach of Falesa and its morals to 
 illustrate the point. 
 
 Wiltshire is welcomed to the beach by Case, who 
 
340 STEVENSON 
 
 immediately reminds him that the first thing on the 
 program is to pick out a wife. They review the 
 crowd of island girls who are all dressed out because 
 of the arrival of the ship; but Wiltshire takes a 
 fancy to Uma, a girl slenderer and more timid than 
 the others, whom he sees coming up from fishing 
 attired only in a chemise. Case does the wooing 
 in the Falesa dialect which Wiltshire does not un- 
 derstand. Then they are married by the negro, 
 and Case writes out Uma's certificate to the effect 
 that she is "illegally" married to Mr. John Wilt- 
 shire and that he may send her packing when he 
 pleases. "A nice paper to put in a girl's hand and 
 see her hide away like gold," says Wiltshire, who 
 adds that this practise is all due to the missionaries, 
 for if it weren't for the notions they put into girls* 
 heads no such deception would be necessary. 
 
 This bit of morality is the first stirring of Wilt- 
 shire's conscience. It develops with amazing ra- 
 pidity through the devotion that Uma shortly in- 
 spires, and through the peculiar situation in which 
 he finds that she has placed him. The marriage has 
 been a trick of Case's — Uma belongs to another 
 island and she is taboo in Falesa. So long as she 
 stays with him, Wiltshire can not sell a yard of 
 calico or buy a pound of copra. But he does not 
 throw her over. Case had told her that he was 
 wild about her and cared nothing for the taboo; 
 and now Wiltshire proceeds to get even with Case. 
 That makes the finale of the story, but not the best 
 part of it. The best part is at the beginning — as 
 
THE MIRROR OF THE SOUTH SEAS 341 
 
 nearly always in Stevenson — about the develop- 
 ment of Wiltshire's romantic moral sense, and about 
 his true marriage performed by the visiting mission- 
 ary. Here there is a curious thing that must not 
 pass unnoticed. Wiltshire is in a situation that 
 would develop a conscience, if ever a man was; 
 but between the devotion of TJma, on the one hand, 
 and the utter treachery of Case, on the other, he 
 acts according to absolute instinct. Convention can 
 hardly be said to guide hirn at all. It will occur to 
 the reader only afterward that his conduct is just 
 what European convention would also demand of 
 him. 
 
 This first part of the story, told in Wiltshire's 
 peculiarly picturesque vocabulary and strain of orig- 
 inal wisdom, is undoubtedly at Stevenson's highest 
 pitch. The whole temperament of the trader, as 
 a restless vagabond who has yet been forced to do 
 a good deal of quiet thinking during long island 
 exiles, a man whose morals are not all they should 
 be but whose deductions from experience are un- 
 questionable, is a careful and serious creation. His 
 sentiment and imagination belong to him alone. 
 For ninety pages he is a masterpiece. Then the 
 plot swallows him, or, rather, cuts him off, and he 
 vanishes, like too many of Stevenson's characters, 
 into the mechanics of melodrama. 
 
 I do not mean that there is anything unlikely in 
 the "devil work" at the end of "The Beach of 
 Falesa." It is true enough to island superstition. 
 But compared to the similar coloring in "The Isle 
 
342 STEVENSON 
 
 of Voices," for instance, it fails lamentably. The 
 emphasis is all on a lurid realism, which is against 
 Stevenson's own rule. 
 
 II 
 
 There must perhaps be the same final judgment of 
 The Ebb-Tide, which has an entrancingly true and 
 romantic start on the beach of Papeete, the work of 
 Lloyd Osbourne, and then a dime-novel climax on 
 Attwater's mysterious island. But meanwhile the 
 story, though nowhere done with the genius that 
 marks the delineation of Wiltshire's character, is a 
 more evenly sustained piece of work, having a more 
 definite purpose. The Ebb-Tide is distinctly one 
 of Stevenson's moral fables. It might be compared 
 to Dr. Jekyll; and though I have heard it argued 
 that it is just a wild romantic tale, the title, and the 
 motto, and the last three chapters, are written for 
 him who can read morality and not for the plot- 
 sleuth. 
 
 It is a fable of the relation of Evil to Fate, and its 
 significance depends very largely on its setting in 
 a part of the world where any connection between 
 the two is often so vague as to appear a mere acci- 
 dent. The writer's problem was therefore to make 
 the evil reside in a course of characteristic and 
 logical actions by the dramatis personce, and then to 
 give the atmosphere of fate that surrounds them a 
 portentous, arbitrary, even God-like, quality, such 
 as fate has where the influence of moral obligations 
 
THE MIRROR OF THE SOUTH SEAS 343 
 
 is no more sharply felt than that of weather two 
 thousand miles off. It is this quality of fate in 
 barbaric civilization that produces its myths. So 
 in the story this quality for a time hides the fact 
 that fate has all along resided with the evil in the 
 course of evil action, and not in external circum- 
 stances. In the end, the more intelligent of the 
 characters is brought to understand that the results 
 are logical, that the net which encloses him and his 
 two pals has not dropped from the sky, but is en- 
 tirely of their own weaving. Attwater is an avenger 
 only because they make him such. Hence Attwater 
 is for them a sort of mythical deity, or, as Her rick 
 puts it, he "looks at us and laughs like God." The 
 whole thing symbolizes the character of crime and 
 of that inly- working power which brings a criminal 
 to justice. 
 
 The story is about three men who are "on the 
 beach" at Papeete. Herrick and Davis, a university 
 man and a sea-captain, have seen better days. Huish, 
 the cockney, one of Stevenson's masterly creations, 
 may be with them as a result of something worse 
 than ill-fortune and mere "bad character." Papeete 
 would like to be rid of all three, and a golden 
 opportunity soon offers. A pest-ridden schooner 
 anchors off the harbor, her captain and mate dead 
 of the smallpox. Davis, with his pals as mate and 
 cook, is put in charge. No one else will touch the 
 job. Now there is more than smallpox the matter 
 with the Farallone, bound "out of 'Frisco for Syd- 
 ney, in California champagne." For the cham- 
 
344 STEVENSON 
 
 pagne, as the new "officers" soon discover in their 
 tippling, is mostly bottled water. Hence it is obvi- 
 ous that she was never intended to arrive in Sydney 
 or any other regular port. She was intended for 
 a tale to the insurance companies. Of course the 
 new officers are not above seeing a nice little chance 
 for themselves in all this, a rather better chance than 
 that offered by their original plan of trying to sell 
 the champagne in Peru instead of in Sydney. 
 
 But while their broaching the cargo saved them 
 from making that mistake, they soon discover some- 
 thing that would have effectually prevented them 
 from carrying out a fool's errand, and that also 
 threatens to spoil the new plan of getting the Faral- 
 lone back on her course, wrecking her, and then 
 blackmailing the owners. Their new plan of black- 
 mail is spoiled by their shiftlessness in the first 
 instance. They suddenly discover that the provi- 
 sions on the Farallone were calculated to hold out 
 only a little farther than Papeete, and here they 
 are well on their islandless course to Peru with not 
 enough rations left to get anywhere at all. There 
 is a good deal of cursing fate, though as yet they 
 don't understand what fate really is. Then a thing 
 happens which seems just like Providence. Att- 
 water's uncharted atoll springs up out of the sea, 
 heralding itself by the reflections of its lagoon on 
 the sky. 
 
 That is the beginning of the story as far as I 
 need remind you; and, thanks to Huish's insubor- 
 dination and sheer cussedness, it makes a mar- 
 
THE MIRROR OF THE SOUTH SEAS 345 
 
 velously good yarn for one hundred and thirty pages. 
 The fable element now grows in importance and 
 you not only have to keep your eyes about you, but 
 to cast them back over the beginning, if you hope to 
 understand it from the author's point of view. 
 
 Huish, Davis, and Herrick are gradations in the 
 courage and purpose of evil. Huish is the strongest 
 of the three because he is beyond pangs of con- 
 science and repentance. He never wavers. Davis 
 and Herrick would like to reform if they had a 
 permanent chance — Davis because he is tired of 
 evil life as uncomfortable and unsocial, and Her- 
 rick because he has still some shreds of conscience. 
 It is Herrick's conscience that renders him weak, 
 sensitive, will-less. Though he can rise above some 
 petty dissipation like champagne, he is dominated by 
 Davis in all important decisions. And just so Davis 
 is dominated by Huish; for Huish expresses the 
 stronger side of Davis's character as a force for evil. 
 
 These three souls play out their little game against 
 Fate. At every turn they lose. Herrick alone, the 
 weaker, more imaginative, more intelligent nature, 
 perceives vaguely what is beating them — that it is 
 their own evil and not the unfortunate externals in 
 the situation. So when Providence Itself seems to 
 arrive on the scene and rescue them with an un- 
 charted island containing the gigantic shape of Att- 
 water, Herrick soon recognizes that this is not be- 
 neficent Providence, but a terrible ultimate revenge. 
 Huish and Davis go about to conquer it, to conquer 
 Fate ! and the irony of the case drives Herrick wild. 
 
346 STEVENSON 
 
 He attempts suicide, but Attwater rescues him, and 
 thus his weakness in evil becomes his salvation. So 
 it is, in the end, with Davis. Rendered utterly de- 
 fenseless, after Huish takes his little fling at Fate 
 with a bottle of vitriol, Davis at last discovers, in 
 the further nothingness of his resources in evil, his 
 positive freedom. And that is the doctrine which 
 Fate really holds for us all. 
 
 So far as the art of the story is concerned, this 
 moral is probably insisted on too late. There is the 
 usual lack, in Stevenson's longer things, of a definite 
 intellectual plan at the start. Though suggested by 
 the story of the magic carpet which Herrick tells 
 on the beach at Papeete, and by what each man 
 wishes for — Huish's "B and S" being without ques- 
 tion the best moment of his life — the moral idea of 
 the whole tale dawns on the reader only about page 
 one hundred and thirty. It requires an equal space 
 to develop it, and the story henceforth, rather en- 
 cumbered with it, is by no means as good reading 
 as at first. It is possible that this is the way to 
 drive home a moral — to surprise the reader with 
 it half-way through a book. But I believe that if it 
 were better prepared for, the end might have been, 
 not the sooner, but the more rapidly, approached. 
 The characters, after the middle of the story, fail to 
 grow more real. Instead they become moral mouth- 
 pieces. One can imagine how Joseph Conrad would 
 have seized on the vital issues at this point, how he 
 would have developed them in a definite atmosphere 
 and have kept the people of the drama in livelier pos- 
 
THE MIRROR OF THE SOUTH SEAS 347 
 
 session of their temperaments — though nobody 
 could possibly improve on Huish's vocabulary. Yet 
 he would not succeed so well as Stevenson with the 
 fabulous meaning, one of the most difficult ideas to 
 handle in philosophy, and convincing perhaps only 
 in the novels of Thomas Hardy. 
 
 Ill 
 
 Stevenson has written two short and very perfect 
 fables of the lust for gold as he saw it in that part 
 of the world: "The Bottle Imp" and "The Isle of 
 Voices." Conceived in the finest vein of his imagina- 
 tion and touched with the poetry of island life, they 
 are more nearly Polynesian romances than any- 
 thing else of their author's. "The Bottle Imp" is 
 taken from a German story and vastly improved. 
 No setting could suit the idea better than the Pa- 
 cific. It was written for the natives and first printed 
 in Samoan — a tale such as Tusitala, teller of tales, 
 might be expected to invent. "The Isle of Voices" 
 is about South Sea magic, which is quite unlike the 
 magic of Jack and the Bean Stalk, Hans Andersen, 
 or the Arabian Nights. One feels, in spite of him- 
 self, like the missionary in another of Stevenson's 
 stories, that there is "something in it." It is full 
 of a barbaric terror and superstition that is yet 
 pervaded by a very real meaning and a vivid charm. 
 The scenery is never a mere fairy-land scenery. The 
 spell is that of reality. Mrs. Stevenson has said 
 that she could never read it without seeing again 
 
348 STEVENSON 
 
 the lagoon at Fakarava where her husband had heard 
 stories something like it from the half-caste gov- 
 ernor as they sat on the beach in the evening. The 
 governor believed his stories and the Stevensons 
 did not wholly doubt them. 
 
CHAPTER XIII 
 
 THE MIRROR OF THE SOUTH SEAS: VAILIMA 
 I 
 
 FROM all these tales and their philosophy it 
 would be obvious that the writer was a man 
 who knew the islands, the natives, and the traders, 
 with exceptional intimacy. Yet the extent of Ste- 
 venson's travels through Polynesia is not often ap- 
 preciated, and before discussing his life in these 
 parts and the volume about his cruises, In the South 
 Seas, I wish to give here an itinerary which I be- 
 lieve is more exact than the reader will be apt to 
 discover elsewhere. 
 
 The seventy-ton racing schooner, Casco, ninety- 
 five feet in length, with Captain Otis, a cook, four 
 deck-hands (sea-lawyers all of them), Mrs. Thomas 
 Stevenson, Mrs. R. L. Stevenson, Lloyd Osbourne 
 (then twenty years old), Valentine Roch (who 
 the captain insisted should ship as cabin-boy) and 
 R. L. S. sailed from San Francisco on June twenty- 
 eighth, 1888, and sighted Nukuhiva in the Marquesas 
 (high islands) just a month later. This was a voy- 
 age of some twenty-eight hundred sea miles nearly 
 
 349 
 
350 STEVENSON 
 
 southwest. In this general region they remained until 
 Christmas day, when they left Tautira in the Island 
 of Tahiti for Honolulu. They were at Nukuhiva, 
 entertained by Prince Stanislao and the old cannibal 
 queen, Vaekehu, until August twenty-second. On 
 August twenty-third they reached Taahauku in 
 Hiva-oa, and then left the Marquesas for the 
 neighboring group of the Paumotos (low islands) 
 September fourth, arriving at Fakarava Sep- 
 tember ninth, a voyage still southwest about six 
 hundred miles. There they remained till the 
 last week in September, and voyaged two days, 
 in a more westerly direction, three hundred miles, 
 to Papeete in the island of Tahiti (a high island). 
 They encircled this island to Taravao on the south 
 side, where Stevenson left the Casco and went six- 
 teen miles in a cart to Tautira in order to escape 
 mosquitoes and get into more sanitary quarters dur- 
 ing a sharp illness. While the Casco was being re- 
 paired at Papeete, they lived in Tautira with Prin- 
 cess Moe and the sub-chief of the* village, Ori, a 
 very fine Polynesian, of surpassing generosity and 
 courtesy. Leaving on Christmas day, they arrived 
 in Honolulu, after a voyage of thirty days and 
 some twenty- four hundred miles, almost due north, 
 on January 24, 1889. The Casco was sent back to 
 San Francisco, and also Valentine Roch returned 
 to France. 
 
 Stevenson lived four miles out of Honolulu at 
 Waikiki. He was not very well and found it difficult 
 to work on The Master, which he finished in May. 
 
THE SOUTH SEAS— VAILIMA 351 
 
 He spent a week at the leper colony on the island of 
 Molokai. From Honolulu Mrs. Thomas Stevenson 
 went home to Scotland, Stevenson then expecting 
 to follow before the end of the year. 
 
 On June twenty- fourth, Stevenson, his wife, 
 Lloyd, and their cook, Ah Fu, whom they had 
 picked up in the Marquesas in place of the original 
 pseudo-Jap, took passage with Captain Reid on the 
 trading schooner Equator, and arrived in Butaritari 
 in the Gilberts (low islands), a journey of two 
 thousand miles southwest, July thirteenth. It was 
 on this voyage that Stevenson and Lloyd, in order 
 to defray their expenses, began to construct the mad 
 plot of The Wrecker from a mysterious yarn that 
 had come to them in Honolulu. After some six 
 weeks at Butaritari they went on two hundred miles 
 in a southeasterly direction to Apemama in the same 
 group, arriving there September first. King Tem- 
 binok admitted them into the royal enclosure as his 
 guests, giving Stevenson probably his most intimate 
 taste of island life. They were there two months, 
 returning to Butaritari in the Equator, and from 
 thence cruising about in a general southeasterly di- 
 rection and reaching Apia (Apia) in Upolu, of the 
 Samoan group (high islands), a direct distance of 
 fourteen hundred miles, on December 7, 1889. 
 
 As yet Stevenson had little thought of settling in 
 Polynesia. He intended to collect material for his 
 book concerning the islands and return to England 
 via Sydney. But during January he bought four 
 hundred acres behind Apia on Vaea Mountain and 
 
352 STEVENSON 
 
 decided to build a house. For six months he lived 
 in Apia chiefly with the American trader, H. J. 
 Moors, who became his great friend and who has 
 written a book of Stevensonian reminiscences. Ste- 
 venson was then busy getting information for his 
 Foot-note to History, an account of the interna- 
 tional difficulties in the Samoan Islands. 
 
 In February, 1890, the Stevensons went to Syd- 
 ney, where Mrs. Strong was waiting to see them 
 on their way to England. Here he immediately 
 became ill with colds and indigestion. It was during 
 this visit to Sydney that he wrote his open letter 
 about Father Damien in reply to accusations against 
 the priest's character in a private letter by the Rev- 
 erend Mr. Hyde of Honolulu, which had been 
 printed without that gentleman's knowledge. Da- 
 mien had died at Molokai of leprosy in April, while 
 Stevenson was living in Honolulu. Stevenson's 
 letter is a brave but illogical letter; and in doing 
 justice to Damien, Stevenson undoubtedly did an 
 injustice to Mr. Hyde. In Sydney Stevenson in- 
 formed Baxter, his official agent in England, that 
 he was putting off his return home till September. 
 
 He spent three months, from April to August, in 
 the trading steamer Janet Nichol, cruising among 
 the islands as far as Penrhyn Island east of Samoa, 
 and, to the north, as far as the Marshall group. 
 He was again ill at Sydney in August and Septem- 
 ber, 1890. 
 
 This seems to have determined him to give up 
 thought of an immediate return to Europe, and 
 
THE SOUTH SEAS— VAILIMA 353 
 
 Lloyd Osbourne was dispatched to Skerry vore for 
 their household goods. Stevenson and his wife 
 went back to Apia in October, and they lived six 
 months in a rough house on their land. In January, 
 1891, he again went to Sydney to meet his mother, 
 and, after a third sharp illness there, he returned 
 with her, reaching Apia March first; but the house 
 was not ready and she went to visit friends in Aus- 
 tralia and New Zealand for two months. She re- 
 turned the middle of May, and Mrs. Strong and 
 her boy, Austin, came a week later. By this time 
 the house at Vailima plantation had been built. It 
 was considerably enlarged at the end of the next 
 year. 
 
 Stevenson paid one more visit to Sydney early in 
 1893, and in September went up to Honolulu for a 
 rest from the harassing political troubles at Samoa. 
 He was taken sick, however, with pneumonia, and 
 his wife came on to take care of him. They re- 
 turned to Apia 1 in November. During the last 
 year of Stevenson's life he left the island only on 
 short boating excursions. He died suddenly at 
 Vailima from an infusion in the brain on December 
 16, 1894. 2 
 
 1 Apia is centrally located in Polynesia, nearly midway be- 
 tween the New Hebrides and Tahiti. It is 2,260 miles to 
 Honolulu, 2,355 to Sydney, 4,161 to San Francisco. Steven- 
 son's house at Vailima is now the residence of the German 
 governor. 
 
 2 It seems worth remarking here the energy which Mrs. 
 Thomas Stevenson displayed in these last years of her life. 
 She was nearly sixty when she first went to the South Seas 
 with her son in the Casco. She came out again in 1891 and 
 remained two years. Then, after a year's absence in Scotland, 
 
354 STEVENSON 
 
 II 
 
 Stevenson's activities and home life at Samoa 
 and among the islands have been treated at con- 
 siderable length in so many books, by those who 
 knew him there, that I shall give only a summary 
 of a few important points. 
 
 His health during this period of five and a half 
 years had improved so far as the condition of his 
 lungs and throat was concerned. This seems to be 
 true in spite of the constant reference in his letters 
 and his mother's to colds and the threatenings of 
 hemorrhage. For he was able to take an unprece- 
 dented amount of physical exercise, working in the 
 jungle at path-making, exploring, constantly plan- 
 ning the development of his estate, riding horseback 
 to and from Apia, and bearing up surprisingly well 
 on long excursions to native villages. This is one 
 side of the picture, and there is a little more of it 
 visible than elsewhere in his life. At rather fre- 
 quent intervals, however, he was down with in- 
 fluenza, which was then ravaging Europe, and which 
 has a specially virulent form in the islands. He 
 had bad fits of indigestion and headache, and certain 
 of his visitors remark on his habitual appearance 
 of fatigue or complete lassitude. 
 
 His achievement at this period is, nevertheless, 
 absolute evidence of his energy. In literature, be- 
 sides The Wrecker, The Ebb-Tide, and the three 
 
 she returned in June, 1894, with Graham Balfour. After Ste- 
 venson's death she was at Vailima till March, 1895, and then 
 returning to Scotland, died there two years later. 
 
THE SOUTH SEAS— VAILIMA 355 
 
 shorter tales that we have noticed, there are also 
 Weir of Hermiston and St. Ives (both unfinished), 
 The Master, and David Balfour. A number of his 
 most interesting essays, poems, and sketches belong 
 to this period, notably "A Christmas Sermon," 
 "Rosa Quo Locorum," "A Family of Engineers/' 
 A Foot-note to History, "Father Damien," the Bal- 
 lads. His record of South Sea travel, a book of 
 four hundred pages, and his letters to Colvin, would 
 alone be a sign of considerable vitality. When 
 Stevenson lay unconscious on his death-bed, one of 
 the physicians in attendance remarking the thinness 
 of his arms said, "How can anybody write books 
 with arms like these?" That he had written them 
 all with arms like those seemed miraculous. Ste- 
 venson's vitality seems to have been chiefly a matter 
 of spirit, to have had a peculiarly nervous and untir- 
 ing quality. The details of daily life, on the cruises 
 and afterward when building his house at Vailima 
 Plantation, his wife and Lloyd Osbourne were never 
 able to take quite off his shoulders. He seems never 
 to have long neglected the minor responsibilities of 
 the life he shared. Mrs. Strong was his devoted 
 amanuensis, but the mechanics of book-making rest, 
 after all, very largely on the author himself. Mr. 
 Moors was of the greatest service during the months 
 of settling and building at Vailima; yet it is no 
 small accomplishment to have a house built for you 
 and an estate developed, and to follow the personal 
 grievances of a score of native servants, and all 
 the time to satisfy the curiosity of visitors. 
 
356 STEVENSON 
 
 The Stevensons were beset by visitors, both 
 Europeans and natives; and since for the natives, 
 especially the Samoan chiefs, Stevenson was the 
 most important white man in the islands, he took in- 
 finite pains to understand their affairs. This alone 
 was a great and humane service. The outward 
 evidences of it exist in his Letters to "The Times" 
 and the Foot-note to History, to say nothing of cer- 
 tain official documents now buried in the office of 
 the colonial secretary. 
 
 Stevenson had probably seen more varieties of 
 Polynesian life than any other European traveler 
 of significance. He seems to have had a peculiar 
 faculty for adapting himself to its customs, and 
 hence for endearing himself to the people. "To love 
 a character is the only heroic way of understanding 
 it," he once wrote. Trusting always in the "warm 
 and mutual tolerations" of men, he had long been 
 intimate with all sorts and conditions: the painters 
 at Barbizon, the chemist at Hyeres whom he in- 
 spired to write stories, the captain of the schooner 
 Equator, similarly inspired but not so successful, 
 the company of the steamer Janet Nichol, to whom 
 he dedicated the Island Nights Entertainments, the 
 knife-grinder whom he describes in his essay on 
 "Beggars" and with whom he says he could not 
 have got on so well had he himself been a consistent 
 first-class passenger through life. And just as his 
 sympathies had gone out in abstract fashion to the 
 Chinese in the emigrant train, so they now went out 
 personally in his close contact with the alien peoples 
 
THE SOUTH SEAS— VAILIMA 357 
 
 of the Pacific. "Indeed, we all speak different 
 dialects," he remarks, and adds elsewhere, "but, in- 
 deed, I think we all belong to many countries." 
 This stands, moreover, not for the curiosity of a 
 traveler, but for what Stevenson regarded as a 
 normal human duty. Frequently he mentions the 
 duty of understanding people, the duty of affection 
 and of cultivating those habits that make its chan- 
 nels easy. The Stevensons were criticized by puri- 
 tans at home for their rather easy-going ways in 
 Polynesia. But the emphasis that Stevenson placed 
 on a new sort of morality, a more positive sort 
 than that of the puritans, was perfectly exemplified 
 there and most beautifully rewarded. 
 
 The signal instance is the Road of the Loving 
 Heart which the rebel Mataafa chiefs completed 
 for him on their release from a political imprison- 
 ment that Stevenson had done all in his power to 
 alleviate. They had come immediately to Vailima 
 Plantation. Mrs. Strong, in her charming book, 
 describes the incident as follows: "Louis enter- 
 tained them in the smoking-room ; we all sat on the 
 floor in a semi-circle and had ava made. Their 
 speeches were very beautiful, and full of genuine 
 gratitude as they went back over the history of 
 every kindness that Louis had done for them. In 
 proof of their gratitude they offered to make a 
 road, sixty feet wide, connecting us with the high- 
 way across the island. The offer touched and sur- 
 prised Louis very much, and though he tried to 
 refuse, they overruled every objection. He said 
 
358 STEVENSON 
 
 if they made the road he would like to name it 'The 
 Road of the Grateful Hearts,' but they said no, it 
 would be called 'The Road oi thf Loving Heart,' 
 in the singular, and they asked me to copy out a 
 paper they had written with that name, and all their 
 titles attached, to be painted on a board and put 
 up at the cross-roads." 1 Stevenson's friend, Mr. H. 
 J. Moors of Apia, in whose reminiscences I believe 
 you will find the truest, certainly the least flattering, 
 picture of Stevenson in Samoa that has been made, 
 says that while Stevenson cut no great figure in the 
 minds of most white men in Samoa, to the natives he 
 was a prophet. "By them he was honored as a man 
 set apart from his fellows. They made the 'Road of 
 Gratitude' . . . leading up to his house, in 
 memory of a great kindness; and when he died they 
 cut the track up the steep slope of Vaea that their 
 Tusitala might be buried on the mountain-top 'where 
 he longed to be.' " 2 
 
 III 
 
 It is his personal relations with Polynesians, 
 rather than an objective and somewhat anthropo- 
 logical description of them, that forms the chief 
 interest of his volume of cruises called In the South 
 Seas. That a man like Stevenson spent five years 
 among the islands is one of the important facts in 
 the progress of civilization there. Not because he 
 
 1 Memories of Vailima, by Isobel Strong and Lloyd Os- 
 bourne, p. 95. 
 
 2 With Stevenson in Samoa, p. viii. 
 
THE SOUTH SEAS— VAILIMA 359 
 
 was bent on changing barbaric manners and cus- 
 toms, so many of which are gentility itself compared 
 to certain others in Europe ; but because he was bent 
 on creating sympathy between men of different 
 races. The value to the world of such documents as 
 Ori's farewell at Tautira, on the one hand, and, on 
 the other, the chapters about the cannibalism that 
 existed next door to Ori, is inestimable. These things 
 are done with an equally vivid comprehension. But 
 the book as a whole could not be one of his literary 
 successes. He makes the mistake of attempting 
 to be every now and again impersonal instead of 
 impressionistic. The tone of the thing is uneven, 
 at one moment like an encyclopaedia, at the next 
 like a letter. The probability is that a book of trav- 
 els will be chiefly interesting as it reveals the trav- 
 eler. An impersonal traveler, is, in literature, a mere 
 nonentity. So most people, who are not curious 
 about Polynesian customs, find In the South Seas 
 rather dull reading whenever the author is not in 
 the foreground. Nearly all Stevenson's writings 
 represent qualities, like romance or bravado or 
 fine cheer, that were especially his own. A few 
 chapters without a glimpse of the familiar gestures 
 and attitudes, and we lose interest. In the South 
 Seas is not very characteristic, nor does it go very 
 deep. A successful struggle for vividness is accom- 
 panied by no very significant comment. It is the 
 opposite of The Amateur Emigrant — the opposite 
 one might say, of .Stevenson himself. There is little 
 emphasis, little exercise of choice. 
 
360 STEVENSON 
 
 Yet for this reason it may outwardly correspond 
 all the better to the medley of scenes and peoples and 
 customs strewn over the Pacific. Volcanoes, atolls, 
 reefs, the roaring trades, the shining beaches, the 
 fish beaked like parrots, the cannibal queens, Yankee 
 traders, missionaries, pirates, murderers and French 
 gendarmes, the long roll of Kanaka sailors and 
 Chinese cooks, the native gifts and ceremonies, the 
 kava-feasts, gin-feasts, tapus, the melodious dia- 
 lects of the eastern islands, the rugged dialects of 
 the western, the bar-rooms, trade-rooms, ships, har- 
 bors, whale-boats, crowds of natives in the cabin, 
 crowds of drunken natives in their houses on shore, 
 naked and black and wonderfully tatooed, or dressed 
 in cotton shifts and picture hats — they pass in pro- 
 cession, now gaily, now grimly. But the whole 
 thing somehow lacks an art, an art indescribable, 
 yet one that another writer knew well how to use 
 in his great medley epic of India — Kim. 
 
 The central theme of Stevenson's book, so far as 
 it turns out to have one, seems to be a study of the 
 invasions of civilization and trade into the barbarism 
 of the islands. And here lies the moral of it all. 
 Western civilization, clothes, Christian manners do 
 not at first improve the barbaric state. They only 
 disrupt and confuse it. This is what one would 
 expect. Clothes bring ill health and a sense of 
 shame but do not diminish sensuality. Christian 
 manners seem only to emphasize, if not really to 
 add a new field to the native superstitiousness and 
 unreliability of mind. Trade brings in new diseases, 
 
THE SOUTH SEAS—VAILIMA 361 
 
 new forms of vice, absurd and utterly inartistic 
 tastes. Civilization, as it reaches these barbarians, 
 is a ridiculous parody of what we think it to con- 
 sist in at home. And here we have again, in some 
 sense, a mirror for our civilization, showing it in a 
 new light. But it is not the mirror we expect an 
 artist to hold up for us, the mirror which Conrad, 
 or Kipling, or Pierre Loti has held up. There are 
 not many pages in the whole volume of very dis- 
 tinguished observation. There is a continual sym- 
 pathy and understanding which yet fails curiously 
 to be very illuminating. Nor does Stevenson's art 
 of description, at which he worked so consciously 
 in youth, stand him in very good stead throughout 
 the whole book. The best of it is undoubtedly 
 the description of the king of Apemama in Part IV. 
 This is the portrait of the man who embodies and 
 appears to make consonant a strange medley of 
 traits — originality, force, intelligence, utter laziness, 
 and the old inherited superstitions and fears. Mean- 
 while Chapter IV in Part I, on "Death," an astound- 
 ing testimony to the inroads of civilized diseases on 
 some islands, and to the grim necessity of keeping 
 down population by arbitrary methods on others, 
 should make a wise man ponder. (After all, the 
 planet is an island, and an island from which the pos- 
 sibility of voyaging seems hardly worth considera- 
 tion.) The portrait of Vaekehu and Stanislao in 
 Chapter IX, the "story of a plantation" in Chapter 
 XII — a sample that shows Stevenson's aptitude for 
 those various pieces of historical writing he de- 
 
362 STEVENSON 
 
 signed but rarely carried out — the approach to and 
 description of the atolls of the dangerous archi- 
 pelago, especially of the beach at Fakarava, in Part 
 II, are all remarkable pieces of writing. 
 
 IV 
 
 Of all his literary work after 1888, it is quite 
 possible that another generation will find the Vailima 
 Letters to Colvin and other friends the outstanding 
 product. Joseph Conrad, whose preference for 
 In the South Seas to Treasure Island has been re- 
 corded in the Biographical Edition of the letters, 
 may very likely prefer the letters to The Ebb-Tide 
 and to The Wrecker. Among my own acquaintance, 
 good judges of what has lasting interest and what 
 has not, incline that way; and one thing about the 
 comparison is obvious — the letters could be re-read 
 oftener. Stevenson himself, toward the end of his 
 life, seems to have preferred biography to most 
 fiction. 1 
 
 Like all of Stevenson's letters these from Vailima 
 are among the pleasantest in English, and unlike 
 his earlier letters they have little of that "author- 
 ship" style which so many critics have objected to. 
 The epistolary authorship style is precisely like 
 Stevenson in youth; the daily-news manner is like 
 him at the age of forty. His letters from Mentone 
 and Edinburgh show his enormous interest in the 
 art of observation. His letters from Samoa show 
 
 1 Letter to Gosse, Biographical Edition, Vol. IV, p. 211. 
 
THE SOUTH SEAS— VAILIMA 363 
 
 rather his untiring fidelity to the art of living. At 
 forty in Samoa he was much closer to life, much 
 more implicated in his environment, than he was 
 at twenty-five in Edinburgh. His interest, there- 
 fore, is less in the telling, more in the thing itself, 
 which always means with a writer that the distinc- 
 tion here implied has ceased to exist for him. 
 
 The original scheme of the Vailima letters was 
 not quite fulfilled. Toward the end of 1890 when 
 Stevenson was settling on his plantation, he began 
 a sort of diary for Colvin which soon suggested to 
 them the idea of having it published after his death. 
 But the plan was no sooner definitely in mind than 
 all regularity in making a diary was abandoned, and 
 we have, instead of an interesting diary, a more 
 interesting set of letters. For four years they re- 
 flect practically every phase of Stevenson's life and 
 of his peculiar surroundings. 
 
 His literary work is still Stevenson's largest em- 
 ployment and occupies the largest place in his cor- 
 respondence. This is worthy of remark; for, on the 
 one hand, all the allurements of a tropical climate 
 and the needs of health beckoned toward a life of 
 extreme ease, and, on the other hand, the fascinating 
 pursuits of supervising, building, estate-making, 
 agriculture, called especially to Stevenson's enthu- 
 siasm for physical tasks. He might very well have 
 lived cheaply, satisfied himself with the generous 
 income he then had, and attempted no very long 
 or trying flights. And had he done so, my own 
 opinion is that we should be the gainers, that we 
 
364 STEVENSON 
 
 should have more tales like "The Beach of Falesa" 
 and "The Bottle Imp," and none like St. Ives and 
 The Wrecker. But Stevenson seems to have been 
 little influenced mentally by the climatic relaxation. 
 He still wrote nervously and without the calm full 
 view. His energies still drew him into tasks where 
 the prolonged vigorous thinking which he could not 
 command could alone have guided him successfully. 
 As a critic, ex post facto, he is, however, as ur- 
 bane, as little self-assured, as any man of his popu- 
 lar eminence whose letters we possess. He is no 
 longer greatly deluded, either by the enthusiasm 
 of beginnings or by the fact of making an end, 
 into thinking the whole as good as it should be. 
 It is only over Wiltshire in "The Beach," the moral- 
 ity of The Ebb-Tide, the "queer realism" of "The 
 Isle of Voices," and "The Bottle Imp," which he 
 rightly estimates as one of his "best works and 
 ill to equal," that he expresses himself with any 
 degree of ultimate satisfaction. About The Ebb- 
 Tide, he was at first very doubtful. He says that 
 there seemed to be "a veil of words" over it, and 
 that he more and more likes "naked writing," and 
 yet that with the longing for full color the veil 
 comes again. The Young Chevalier (St. Ives), he 
 says, is in very full color, and he fears it for that 
 reason. There is a humorous letter, May 29- June 
 18, 1893, that tells of his struggles to finish The 
 Ebb-Tide, how he can not get beyond page ninety- 
 three of his manuscript, how he struggles up to page 
 ninety-seven, but is thrust back, how he touches 
 
THE SOUTH SEAS— VAILIMA 365 
 
 page one hundred and one, fighting with dyspepsia 
 and the effects of tobacco meanwhile, and at last, at 
 4:15 p. M. on June fifth, after "13 days about as 
 nearly in hell as a man could expect to live through," 
 he finishes the book. 
 
 In a letter, at this same time, to S. R. Crockett, 
 in which he has spoken very dubiously of both 
 The Ebb-Tide and Weir of Hermiston, he adds this 
 postscript : "P. S. — Be it known to this fluent gen- 
 eration that I, R. L. S., in the forty-third year of 
 my age and the twentieth of my professional life, 
 wrote twenty- four pages in twenty-one days, work- 
 ing from six to eleven, and again in the afternoon 
 from two to four or so, without fail or interrup- 
 tion. . . . Such was the facility of this prolific 
 writer !" It might be expected that his correspond- 
 ents' enthusiasm would not be very great over The 
 Ebb-Tide, and Stevenson so far accepted Colvin's 
 first judgment of the book as to wish Lloyd Os- 
 bourne's name removed from the title page so that 
 responsibility for a second-rate thing would not 
 rest on his young shoulders. But on another read- 
 ing, Colvin somewhat changed his mind, and Mr. 
 Osbourne has his share of the credit. When Ste- 
 venson read the "tract," as he called it, after pub- 
 lication, he apparently realized more clearly its im- 
 port than he had been able to do before. When 
 the mail brought the book, he retired with it and 
 read it all before going to bed. He "did not dream 
 it was near as good" ; and was afraid he thought it 
 excellent — "a little indecision about Attwater, not 
 much." 
 
366 STEVENSON 
 
 About St. Ives he has, finally, little good to say — 
 in spite of the enthusiasm of labor recorded so de- 
 lightfully in the memoirs of his amanuensis. "A 
 tissue of adventures," Stevenson calls St. Ives, with 
 "no style in particular" — a remark which shows 
 that a distinct tone without much meaning was not 
 style for R. L. S. "No philosophical pith under the 
 yarn," probably explains what he means by this. 
 "No philosophy, no destiny to it," he says again — 
 "some of the happenings very good in themselves, 
 I believe, but none of them bildende, none of them 
 constructive, except in so far as they make up a 
 kind of sham picture of the time, all in italics and 
 all out of drawing." 
 
 Of David Balfour, though he wrote Mrs. Sitwell 
 that it was his high- water mark — a judgment based 
 on his great partiality for the character of David — 
 he could also say to W. H. Low that for the "top 
 flower" of a man's life it seemed inadequate : "Small 
 is the word; it is a small age and I am of it." The 
 Wrecker, he tells Henry James, is a machine, a po- 
 lice machine; "but I believe the end is one of the 
 most genuine butcheries in literature." By this he 
 probably refers to the pastoral denouement at Bar- 
 bizon and the way in which all the villains in the 
 story go scot free. "It didn't set up to be a book, 
 only a long tough yarn," he explained. 1 
 
 Many such rather casual remarks, taken together 
 
 1 Every one who is interested in these books should read 
 what Stevenson has to say regarding collaboration and the art 
 of collaborate character drawing, in a letter to his cousin Bob. 
 Letters, Biographical Edition, IV, p. 355. 
 
THE SOUTH SEAS— VAILIMA 367 
 
 with his acute and generous praise of contem- 
 poraries — of Kipling, Barrie, Weyman, Conan 
 Doyle — show Stevenson as a man unusually free 
 from that vanity of authorship which is often attrib- 
 uted to him. It has, in fact, been the habit of recent 
 criticisms to confuse a type of vanity which he 
 singularly lacked with the delightful vanity which 
 Stevenson, the invalid, displayed on all occasions 
 in recounting his triumphs of social or physical 
 prowess, or in his similar pride in putting through 
 the manual labor of book-making under trying con- 
 ditions. His letter to George Meredith, which we 
 have quoted, is the depth of that tone; and its 
 lighter accents are audible in all those descriptions 
 of his farm labors, his management of domestic 
 affairs, and his position as adviser to the natives. 
 It was part of Stevenson's character that, being 
 denied a normal social and physical life, he should 
 indulge a little bravado in that field whenever the 
 chance offered. This explains the tone, the per- 
 sonality, of his earliest books of travel, and now 
 once more it furnishes ^a zest for writing long let- 
 ters about his adventures at Vailima. 
 
 In one of the first of them he has made a very 
 poignant observation that all professional literary 
 men will understand. He has been describing his 
 enthusiasm for outdoor work, weeding, clearing, 
 path-making, the oversight of laborers, which last 
 delight, he says, "becomes a disease." "And the 
 strange thing that I mark is this: If I go out and 
 make sixpense, bossing my labourers and plying 
 
368 STEVENSON 
 
 the cutlass or the spade, idiot conscience applauds 
 me; if I sit in the house and make twenty pounds, 
 idiot conscience wails over my neglect and the day 
 wasted." 
 
 It is typical of Stevenson that he should make a 
 duty and a lark out of his labors. He was especially 
 fond of exploring the thick hammock on his estate, 
 either making a rough path with a machette or fol- 
 lowing up one of the streams to its source. To come 
 back covered with mud and perspiration, to bathe 
 and rest, and then concoct an elaborate salad for 
 dinner, was one of the durable satisfactions of life. 
 He has a great deal to say about the eccentricities 
 of his horse Jack, and more about the follies of his 
 native servants, Sosimo, beautiful Faauma of the 
 light heart, the madness of Paatalise and its relief 
 by a mysterious island drug, "pure Rider Haggard," 
 the exact nature of which his foreman Lafaele kept 
 a secret. There is an amazing tolerance of native 
 ways, of their lies, stealing, and other tricks with 
 which they passed the time. But other testimony 
 than Stevenson's shows the respect in which he and 
 his easy-going household were held, and the ulti- 
 mate good which radiated from that center of hu- 
 man-heartedness, even to neighboring islands. 
 Against a background of farm incidents — animals 
 always escaping from the compound, men injuring 
 themselves in a score of ways, Mrs. R. L. S. fre- 
 quently ill; and to the accompaniment of bursts of 
 tropic rain "demonizing" on the iron roof, or threat- 
 ened hurricanes, Stevenson worked at literature. 
 
THE SOUTH SEAS— VAILIMA 369 
 
 Life did not lack for that excitement and variety 
 which he seemed to require, and many circumstances, 
 which for others are so often negative in their ef- 
 fect, he used on the positive side of existence. This 
 is perhaps the last word that may be said concerning 
 an optimist's character. 
 
 Among the more serious features of the corre- 
 spondence is the constant evidence of Stevenson's 
 part in local political affairs. Colvin, who rather 
 deprecates this, has yet given a very concise and 
 clear summary in the fourth volume of letters in 
 the Biographical Edition, of the facts in the situa- 
 tion. There is a more elaborate and equally clear 
 account in Moors' s book. Armed with these ex- 
 planations the reader has no difficulty in following 
 Stevenson's references. They assume a large im- 
 portance; and anybody with a real knowledge of 
 Stevenson's mind will appreciate how deeply inter- 
 ested he could be in the questions of justice, espe- 
 cially of justice to the natives, which were involved 
 in the international disputes at Samoa. The Foot- 
 note to History and the Letters to "The Times" 
 are his real documents in the matter. But perhaps 
 his pictures, in the letters, of Cedarkrantz and von 
 Pilsach, the local officials, but really two characters 
 out of opera buffe, and his many prophecies as to 
 the outcome of entanglements, are more interesting 
 to the casual reader. The Polynesian Stevenson 
 seems to have known instinctively. Stanislao at 
 Nukuhiva had flatteringly told him that if he would 
 remain there he would be obeyed throughout the 
 
370 STEVENSON 
 
 islands. Mataafe, the rebel chief who came into 
 power after Stevenson's death, and who had been 
 his great friend among the Samoans, regarded Tusi- 
 tala as his wisest adviser. 
 
 The most interesting single incidents in the letters 
 are the expeditions to native villages, and the feasts 
 at Vailima. In August, 1892, he took Lady Jersey, 
 incognito, to visit Mataafe's court, where they spent 
 the night and were honored, after breakfast, by a 
 royal kava ceremony and much speech-making. At 
 Vailima Stevenson entertained very lavishly — for 
 the sake of the natives not least. Moors, who had 
 a great deal to do with Stevenson's finances, thinks 
 the household expenses amounted to some six thou- 
 sand five hundred dollars a year, and that Stevenson 
 spent in all about twenty thousand dollars on land 
 and houses, which was, however, not more than one 
 year's income from his books at this time. The 
 great hall, sixty feet long and forty feet wide, 
 lined and ceiled with California redwood, might 
 have had an air of considerable magnificence; but 
 it seems to have been curiously rather than beauti- 
 fully furnished. Here the white citizens of Apia, 
 the natives, the seamen and officers of cruising war- 
 ships, especially of H. M. S. Curacoa, were con- 
 stantly welcomed. In photographs in Mr. Moors's 
 book, in Hammerton's St evens oniana, and in many 
 magazine articles, you may see those medley assem- 
 blages and realize from them more vividly than in 
 any other way the curious position of Tusitala, the 
 Scot, in this far quarter of the globe. 
 
THE SOUTH SEAS— VAILIMA 371 
 
 In regard both to the outward facts of this final 
 period and to the humors of his personality, the 
 Vailima letters give a singularly complete impression 
 which in no essential details is modified by the 
 published gossip of visitors. To a student of his 
 character these letters thus come as a crowning 
 satisfaction. Stevenson was what he seemed to be, 
 a man intensely interested in all the little details of 
 immediate circumstance. Hence a man of very 
 varying humor. He had none of the serenity of 
 aloofness, none of the superiorities of preoccupa- 
 tion, and also none of its narrowness. He met life 
 constantly. He never shirked. He had a dozen 
 levels on which to meet it without ever reaching 
 either pettiness or greatness. His friends seem not 
 to have thought of him as a great man. Greatness 
 has something daemonic, something above and be- 
 yond our every-day scrutiny. Greatness is a power- 
 ful and a rare inspiration. It points toward the 
 stars. In place of greatness Stevenson embodied, 
 to a rare yet always comprehensible extent, human 
 sympathy, which points toward the more immediate 
 mysteries of daily life. 
 
CHAPTER XIV 
 
 LOOKING DOWN FROM THE MILL 
 
 \ CCORDING to wise men of all sorts there are 
 ./"Xonly two forms of happiness in this world: 
 the hopeful happiness of romance and the satisfied 
 happiness of success. The web of life is made 
 from their incessant interweaving. But while suc- 
 cess is nominally the brighter strand in the pattern, 
 the strand by which we oftenest recognize the pat- 
 tern, it may be disputed which more strengthens 
 the texture of the whole. Success, which puts the 
 ultimate material value on the product, can, of 
 course, be thought of as the ultimate purpose for 
 which it has been made; but some people still be- 
 lieve that romance is the more essential element in 
 its making and the truer measure of its worth. In 
 less figurative language it may be said that one who 
 lives for the sake of becoming a finished product is 
 a devotee of success; and that one who prefers liv- 
 ing to the material satisfactions of life is a follower 
 of romance. 
 
 This is a very broad definition, and by it you will 
 no doubt find many triflers, mediocrities, and pau- 
 
 372 
 
LOOKING DOWN FROM THE MILL 373 
 
 pers already arrived on the docks of success, and 
 many experts, geniuses, and millionaires, still voy- 
 aging on the ship of romance. On the whole, are 
 not the followers of romance the happier men? 
 Their wisdom begins where the others' wisdom 
 leaves off, and their satisfactions, being satisfactions 
 in eternal expectancy, are really the more constant. 
 They more rarely come to an end. Is not their 
 happiness, then, bound to go beyond the others'? 
 For they will be satisfied with nothing short of the 
 universe, while it is conceivable that the devotees 
 of success could be persuaded to limit themselves 
 to the planet. 
 
 It does no good to say that this is mere talk, and 
 that since both types are actually limited to the 
 planet, and hence must ultimately be practical and 
 worldly, they will ultimately be one and the same. 
 Is not the immediate reply to this that their most 
 striking difference is observable in this very connec- 
 tion? The devotees of success are quite capable of 
 filling the planet with themselves, and can be seen 
 sitting down daily to take stock of that eminently 
 practical achievement. But the followers of ro- 
 mance have already begun to deduce the universe, 
 like the gods, from their station in the ether. That 
 nothing may ever be done with their deductions to 
 increase the stock of planetary success is quite beside 
 the point. Even if a thousand generations hence the 
 romancers still have not ascertained the practical 
 value of their guesses, they will yet prove wiser than 
 the devotees. For beside the devotees' worldly 
 
374 STEVENSON 
 
 wisdom, the profound depth of the romancers' ex- 
 perimental ignorance will be as an inexhaustible 
 well of light. 
 
 But let us reduce the scale to something com- 
 mensurate with our unepical imaginations. Happi- 
 ness has often been described, and that by very 
 wise old men, as of the valley. Toward the end of 
 life, or at least after the storm and stress, it seems 
 likely that a man will hit on this homely figure, and, 
 fooling himself by a word, carry us along to be- 
 lieve that youth is less happy than age, when he 
 means only that it is less satisfied. Doctor Johnson 
 and Boswell were one day driving in a post-chaise. 
 "Sir/ 1 said Boswell, "you observed one day at 
 General Oglethorpe's that a man is never happy for 
 the present but when he is drunk. Will you not add 
 — or when driving rapidly in a post-chaise?" "No, 
 sir," said Johnson, "you are driving rapidly from 
 something or to something." 
 
 You will recall that in Doctor Johnson's famous 
 story of Rasselas, the Happy Valley is a place of 
 perfect content — in all respects save one. There is 
 curiosity about the world and no way of satisfying 
 it from afar. But after Rasselas, urged on by the 
 tales of a poet, has made his escape from the valley 
 and toured the world in search of another basis for 
 human felicity than that of inaction, he finally re- 
 turns satisfied that there is none, satisfied, in short, 
 that happiness exists only in satisfaction undisturbed 
 by curiosity and search. This is the happiness of 
 the valley; and the valley is not a place from which 
 
LOOKING DOWN FROM THE MILL 375 
 
 to contemplate the world, but in which to grow ig* 
 no rant of it. 
 
 A hundred years later, the orthodox picture of 
 happiness has considerably altered — just as the 
 orthodox notion of eternity as a heaven of perfect 
 bliss where nothing new ever happens has grown 
 into a belief in eternal evolution. So, from our 
 point of view, Stevenson's fable for philosophers 
 of happiness, "Will o' the Mill," is a more reason- 
 ably constructed affair than was Doctor Johnson's. 
 Stevenson has also another advantage than that of a 
 later century — the advantage of writing his fable 
 early in his own career instead of in old age. "Will 
 o' the Mill," on his hillside above the plain, is, at all 
 events, favorably situated. He is given a fair start. 
 He is not buried in the prejudices of a valley. Nor 
 is he so far dehumanized as to think satisfaction 
 possible in a state that bars all hope. The Happy 
 Valley was a self-contradiction. The Mill, how- 
 ever, is the apex of consistent idealism. It is a 
 superb vantage point. The world is ever before it. 
 It looks out over the world, understands the world, 
 and yet is never of the world. That is its ideal 
 position, its strong unpractical advantage. It sus- 
 tains every hope but will risk no failures. Hence it 
 is a place in which to grow worldly-wise without 
 experience — an illuminating paradox, not an impos- 
 sibility. It is not far different from our idea of the 
 position of God in that spiritual wisdom toward 
 which we strive to rise out of our terrible experi- 
 ence. 
 
376 STEVENSON 
 
 All life flows down past the Mill toward experi- 
 ence. Only a little rises to return. Life yearns for 
 the plain. And the image of this for Will was the 
 running water that went singing over the weir. The 
 romance of the distant world, the lure of the open 
 road, this feeling is for him, the foundation of 
 knowledge and the explanation of history. "The 
 running water carried his desires along with it as 
 he dreamed over its fleeting surface." But his wis- 
 dom lay in images. The fat philosopher who took 
 him out under the stars had shown him that actual 
 experience could at the most cover but the smallest 
 fraction of a man's knowledge, and often proved 
 only a dulling of the imagination at that. Why not, 
 then, know all life ideally as we know the stars? 
 This one lesson taught Will more about the world 
 than Imlac had been able to show Rasselas in their 
 entire journey. So Will increased in wisdom till he 
 was the teacher both of the many who were descend- 
 ing toward the plain and of those few who returned. 
 
 Will had already discovered that these men of 
 action were not his opposites just because they went 
 down into the plain. Indeed they were not his op- 
 posites at all. They were merely his complements. 
 He could deduce them, as it were, from himself. 
 His opposites he perhaps saw pictured in the fish in 
 the stream. The stream flowed ever down into the 
 plain; but the fish kept looking patiently in their 
 own blind direction up-hill. And yet Will was like 
 the fish in one respect. He never changed his the- 
 ory; he never experimented. When he fell in love 
 
LOOKING DOWN FROM THE MILL 377 
 
 he perceived only that by patient waiting happiness 
 had come to his door. He had not sought it out. 
 It was like an asset of contemplation, like a new 
 hope, and then merely like an idea. So he realized 
 that to possess it bodily would be directly against 
 his whole philosophy. Even in regard to marriage, 
 he therefore decided to remain a sheer romancer. 
 This was his highest accomplishment and also the 
 height of his vanity. At first he could not see that 
 he had make a mistake. But presently the object of 
 his romance married and then died, and he was left 
 with his delicious fancies turned to stone upon his 
 soul. He was not, however, disillusionized. In- 
 stead he made one of his wise sayings: "When I 
 was a boy,' , he said, "I was a bit puzzled and hardly 
 knew whether it was myself or the world that was 
 curious and worth looking into. Now, I know it is 
 myself, and stick to that." The idealist's refusal 
 to act and to suffer results in a sort of cold wisdom 
 that deadens the passions and leaves introspection to 
 take the place of the greater romance of living. 
 
 In the end Will's lost experiences rise about him, 
 like exhalations from the flowers of his garden 
 which he had always refused to pluck, holding that 
 his pleasure in them was greater where they were. 
 He knows, as he welcomes death, that he has missed 
 the fragrance of life. 
 
 II 
 
 "What we want to see is one who can breast into 
 the world, do a man's works, and still preserve his 
 
378 STEVENSON 
 
 first and pure enjoyment of existence," Stevenson 
 quotes from Thoreau, and he has made the follow- 
 ing maxims himself : 
 
 "Acts may be forgiven : not even God can forgive 
 the hanger-back." 
 
 "No art is true in this sense: none can 'compete 
 with life' ! not even history." 
 
 "There is more adventure in the life of the work- 
 ingman who descends as a common soldier in the 
 battle of life, than that of the millionaire who sits 
 apart in an office, like Von Moltke, and only directs 
 the manoeuvres by telegraph." 
 
 "To be truly happy is a question of how we be- 
 gin, and not of how we end, of what we want, and 
 not of what we have." 
 
 "An aspiration is a joy forever, a possession as 
 solid as a landed estate, a fortune which we can 
 never exhaust and which gives us year by year a 
 revenue of pleasurable activity." 
 
 "There is indeed one element in human destiny 
 that not blindness itself can controvert: whatever 
 else we are intended to do, we are not intended to 
 succeed; failure is the fate allotted." 
 
 So Stevenson, the cheer fullest man of our time, 
 turns out to be a pessimist after all ; and these sen- 
 tences, each taken from a different one of his works, 
 represent fairly his romantic, yet pessimistic, creed. 
 For his creed has nothing to do at all with a smug 
 optimism. The assertion of the necessity of strug- 
 
[LOOKING POWN FROM THE MILL 379 
 
 gle, the denial that success is a valid object— there 
 it is, consistent and paradoxical. 
 
 Would you hear Stevenson's description of suc- 
 cess ? It is particularly interesting because it comes 
 just before that sentence about failure being the 
 fate allotted. 
 
 'To be honest, to be kind — to earn a little and 
 to spend a little less, to make upon the whole a 
 family happier for his presence, to renounce when 
 that shall be necessary and not be embittered, to 
 keep a few friends, but these without capitulation 
 — above all, on the same grim condition, to keep 
 friends with himself — here is a task for all that a 
 man has of fortitude and delicacy. He has an am- 
 bitious soul who would ask more; he has a hopeful 
 spirit who should look in such an enterprise to be 
 successful." 
 
 We take this as Stevenson's description of suc- 
 cess. It is really his description of failure. It is, 
 he says, the best we can do, for we are intended to 
 fail. The romanticist always fails. His great plans 
 vanish and all that remains for self -congratulation 
 out of the storm and stress is his humanity, his cul- 
 ture. Beware of material success. Beware also of 
 sheer intellectualism, that it does not leave us high 
 and dry without the human touch, without the little 
 local record behind us. 
 
 But while failure is the fate allotted, failure in 
 anything great, or even in anything small that has 
 required our finest effort, is not just failure. It is 
 
380 STEVENSON 
 
 romance, which is the greatest thing in life. 
 Against the satisfactions of mediocrity, of material 
 success that constructs no further vision, Stevenson 
 directs a withering satire. On the other hand, to- 
 ward the dreamer like Will, even though he lives 
 solely to cherish his dreams, Stevenson is more in- 
 dulgent. For such a man is a teacher not without 
 wisdom and not without charm. But the true life 
 is that of the follower of romance — a far goal, a 
 long effort, a life requiring infinite pride, patience, 
 and humbleness. And meanwhile, knowing that the 
 goal is never to be attained, the follower of romance 
 sees also that he must be governed by the rule of 
 daily life: "To be honest, to be kind," to give his 
 time to founding the efforts of other men who will 
 some day go further than he. For it is only thus 
 that one honestly joins himself to posterity. 
 
 Stevenson's tomb on the summit of Vaea Moun- 
 tain looks far across the waters of the Pacific. It is 
 a place from which to contemplate the world, a re- 
 mote and isolated place peculiarly fitting for the last 
 repose of a great adventurer. But it is not a lonely 
 place. For thither are directed the thoughts of a 
 million friends whom his adventures have made for 
 him. He came to this distant grave bearing with 
 him the love of more fellow men than perhaps has 
 ever been the fortune of a writer, and that, because 
 his life was a superbly successful effort to enjoy 
 myriad experience among his fellow men without 
 disillusionment. In most untoward circumstances 
 he had found the world good; he left it better. He 
 
LOOKING DOWN FROM THE MILL 381 
 
 had proved his theorem of the livableness of life. 
 This man who was carried to his grave on the shoul- 
 ders of Samoan chiefs, as if he were a king, had 
 there, at the hands of an alien people, not only the 
 final tribute to a European literary fame, but a most 
 perfect acknowledgment of his citizenship in the 
 world. 
 
382 STEVENSON 
 
 POSTSCRIPT 
 
 "In the highlands, in the country places, 
 
 Where the old plain men have rosy faces, 
 
 And the young fair maidens 
 
 Quiet eyes ; 
 
 Where essential silence cheers and blesses, 
 
 And for ever in the hill-recesses 
 
 Her more lovely music 
 
 Broods and dies. 
 
 "O to mount again where erst I haunted ; 
 
 Where the old red hills are bird-enchanted, 
 
 And the low green meadows 
 
 Bright with sward ; 
 
 And when even dies, the million-tinted, 
 
 And the night has come, and planets glinted, 
 
 Lo ! the valley hollow, 
 
 Lamp-bestarred. 
 
 "O to dream, O to awake and wander 
 There, and with delight to take and render, 
 Through the trance of silence, 
 Quiet breath ; 
 
 Lo ! for there, among the flowers and grasses, 
 Only the mightier movement sounds and passes ; 
 Only winds and rivers, 
 Life and death." 
 
PASSAGES FROM STEVENSON'S 
 WORKS 
 
PASSAGES FROM STEVENSON'S 
 WORKS 
 
 PAGE 
 
 "The Manse," Memories and Portraits .... 14-18 
 
 "The Foreigner at Home," Memories and Portraits 20 
 
 "Shadow March," A Child's Garden of Verses . . 21 
 "The Land of Story-Books," A Child's Garden of 
 
 Verses 22 
 
 "A Penny Plain," Memories and Portraits . . . 25-26 
 
 "Pastoral," Memories and Portraits 38-39 
 
 "Memoirs of an Islet," Memories and Portraits . 43-44 
 
 "An Apology for Idlers," Virginibus Puerisque . . 48-50 
 
 "Aes Triplex," Virginibus Puerisque 74-75 
 
 "An Apology for Idlers," Virginibus Puerisque . . 94-95 
 
 "Fontainebleau," Across the Plains 102-106 
 
 "The Inn at La Fere," An Inland Voyage .... 109-112 
 
 "The Chinese Car," Across the Plains 121-124 
 
 "A Novel of Dumas's," Memories and Portraits . . 162-163 
 
 "The Old Sea Dog," Treasure Island 165-176 
 
 "The Flight in the Heather," Kidnapped .... 183-189 
 
 "Eileen Aros," The Merry Men ....... 196-201 
 
 "Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde," The Merry Men . . . 252-255 
 
 "Francois Villon," Familiar Studies 259-264 
 
 "A Lodging for the Night," New Arabian Nights . 266-295 
 
 "Providence and the Guitar," New Arabian Nights . 297-311 
 
 "The Treasure of Franchard," The Merry Men . . 312-331 
 
 385 
 
INDEX 
 
INDEX 
 
 Across the Plains, 68, 114, 116, 120-121, quoted 121-124. 
 
 Addison, Joseph, 9. 
 
 "Adventures of Jan van Steen, The," 24. 
 
 "Aes Triplex," 68-70, quoted 74-75, 76, 86, 256, 331. 
 
 Amateur Emigrant, The, 68, 114, 116-119, 126, 359. 
 
 "Apology for Idlers, An," quoted 48-50 and 94-95, 256, 311, 
 
 331. 
 Appeal to the Clergy of the Church of Scotland, An, 83. 
 "Autumn Effect, An," 83, 99. 
 
 Babington, Professor Churchill, 65. 
 
 Baildon, H. B., quoted 51. 
 
 Balfour, Dr. George W., 138. 
 
 Balfour, Graham, Life of Stevenson, 23, 28, 54, 143, 147. 
 
 Balfour, Jane, 26. 
 
 Balfour, Rev. Dr. Lewis (grandfather of R. L. S.), 14-18. 
 
 Ballads, The, 355. 
 
 Bancroft, George, History of the United States, 120. 
 
 Barbizon, 101-106. 
 
 Barrie, J. M., 79, 367. 
 
 Baxter, Charles, 63, 145, 164. 
 
 "Beach of Falesa, The," 28, 202, 336, 338-342, 364. 
 
 Bennet, Stevenson's doctor at Nice, 76. 
 
 Bennett, Arnold, 80. 
 
 "Beranger," 85. 
 
 Black Arrow, The, 32, 148, 179-180. 
 
 Black Tulip, The, 245. 
 
 "Body Snatcher, The," 148, 202. 
 
 Book of Snobs, The, 56. 
 
 Borrow, George, 104. 
 
 Boswell, J, 374. 
 
 "Bottle Imp, The," 202, 347, 364. 
 
 Burns, Robert, 19, 84. 
 
 "Burns, Robert, Some Aspects of," quoted 134. 
 
 Byron, Lord, 89. 
 
 Caine, Hall, 79. 
 
 Carlyle, Thomas, 151. 
 
 Casco, The, 349, 350. 
 
 Chapman, John Jay, "Robert Louis Stevenson," 57. 
 
 "Chapter on Dreams, A," 26, 28-31, 249. 
 
 "Character of Dogs, The," 35, 149. 
 
 389 
 
390 INDEX 
 
 "Charles d'Orleans," 85, 134. 
 
 Chesterton, Gilbert, 244. 
 
 Child's Garden of Verses, A, quoted 21-22, 148, 149. 
 
 "Child's Play," 26, 86, 256. 
 
 "Choice of a Profession, The," 153. 
 
 Christmas Sermon, A," 68, quoted 71, 76, 355. 
 
 Clark, Doctor (Sir) Andrew, 66. 
 
 "Coast of Fife, The," 42. 
 
 Colinton Manse, 14. 
 
 "College Magazine, A," 56, 87-88. 
 
 Colvin, Sir Sidney: 52, 63, 65, 76, 81, 128, 137. 191, 355, 362, 
 
 365, 369 ; letters to, 154. 
 Conrad, Joseph, 80, 165, 244, 245, 336, 362. 
 Copeland, C. T., 100, 140. 
 Cornhill, The, 83, 86, 258. 
 Cowper, William, 89. 
 "Crabbed Age and Youth," 45, 86. 
 Cunningham, Alison, 28. 
 
 Damien, Father, 352, 355. 
 
 David Balfour, 182. 
 
 Deacon Brodie, 86. 
 
 De Morgan, William, 80. 
 
 Devonia, The, 116. 
 
 Dickens, Charles, 79, 246. 
 
 Don Quixote, 154, 248. 
 
 Doyle, Conan, 367. 
 
 Dumas, A., 140, 181, 190, 235, 245. 
 
 Dynamiter, The, 146, 241, 243. 
 
 Ebb Tide, The, 178, 193, 244, 336, 342-347, 354, 362, 365. 
 
 "Education of an Engineer, The," 35, 42, 43. 
 
 "El Dorado," quoted 71, 86. 
 
 Eliot, George, 79, 247. 
 
 Emerson, R. W., 333. 
 
 "English Admirals," 86. 
 
 Epictetus, 333. 
 
 Equator, The, 351, 356. 
 
 Fairchild, Charles, 147. 
 
 Familiar Studies of Men and Books, 133, 148. 
 
 "Family of Engineers, A," 35, 42, 355. 
 
 Ferrier, James, 63. 
 
 "Fontainebleau," quoted 102-103, quoted 104-106, 136. 
 
 Foot-note to History, A, 352, 355, 356, 369. 
 
 "Foreigner at Home, The," quoted 20. 
 
 "Forest Notes," 84, 87, 94, 101, 136. 
 
 Forest State, The, 128. 
 
 France, Anatole, 248. 
 
 Franklin, Benjamin, 57. 
 
INDEX 391 
 
 Galsworthy, John, 80. 
 
 Goethe, 247. 
 
 Gosse, Edmund, 52, 79, 126, 128, 191, 192. 
 
 "Gossip on Romance, A," 26, 161-162. 
 
 Haddon, Trevor, 92. 
 
 "Hair Trunk, The," 85. 
 
 Hardy, Thomas, 79, 247, 347. 
 
 Hazlitt, William: 4, 9, 79, 247; life of, projected by Stevenson, 
 135 333 
 
 Henley, William E.: 52, 79, 84, 86, 145, 177; poem on Steven- 
 son, 243, 244. 
 
 Herrick, Robert, 58. 
 
 Hewlett, Maurice, 244. 
 
 "History of Joseph," 24. 
 
 "History of Moses," 24. 
 
 Hugo, Victor, 83, 235, 245, 247. 
 
 "Humble Remonstrance, A," 159. 
 
 Hyde, open letter to the Reverend Mr. Hyde about Fathor 
 Damien, 352. 
 
 Inland Voyage, An, 85, 86, 106, 108, quoted 109-112, 114, 139. 
 
 In the South Seas, 68, 338, 35&-362. 
 
 Island Nights Entertainments, 356. 
 
 "Isle of Voices, The," 28, 32, 190, 202, 244, 347. 
 
 James, Henry, 4, 366. 
 
 Janet Nichol, the steamship, 352, 356. 
 
 Jenkin, Mrs. Fleeming, 52. 
 
 Jersey, Lady, 370. 
 
 Johnson, Samuel, 55, 374. 
 
 Keats, John, 57, 88, 89. 
 
 Kidnapped, 140, 149, 182, quoted 183-189, 190, 193, 244, 245. 
 
 "King Matthias's Hunting Horn," 83. 
 
 Kipling, Rudyard, 79, 360, 367. 
 
 Knox, John, 83. 
 
 Lamb, Charles, 4, 9, 79, 247. 
 
 Lang, Andrew, 79. 
 
 "Lantern Bearers, The," 35, 159, 256. 
 
 "Letter to a Young Gentleman Who Proposei to Embrace thf 
 
 Career of Art," 60. 
 Letters to "The Times," 356, 369. 
 Lever, Charles, 247. 
 Little People, The, 31, 32, 37. 
 L. J. R., The, 54, 55, 64. 
 "Lodging for the Night, A," 85, 87, 256, 257, 258, 265, quoted 
 
 266-295. 
 
392 INDEX 
 
 London, Jack, 336, 337. 
 London Magazine, 86. 
 Lorna Doone, 189. 
 Low, W. H., 366. 
 Lytton, Bulwer, 83. 
 
 "Manse, The," quoted 14-18, 149. 
 
 "Markheim," 149, 190, 202, 249, 256-257, 258, 331. 
 
 Marryat, Frederick, 249. 
 
 Master of Ballantrae, The, 28, 60, 101, 139, 149, 158, 202-205, 
 
 quoted 206-235, 236, 238, 245, 350, 355. 
 "Master of Ballantrae, Genesis of, The," 204. 
 Mataafe, 370. 
 
 Memoir of Fleeming Jenkin, 149. 
 "Memoirs of an Islet," 35, quoted 43-44. 
 Memories and Portraits, 90, 149. 
 
 Meredith, George, 4, 72; letter to, quoted 72-73, 76, 246, 367. 
 Merry Men, The, 140, 148, 149, 158, 195, quoted 196-201, 258. 
 Milton, John, 89. 
 
 "Misadventures of John Nicholson, The," 46. 
 Montaigne, Michel de, 333. 
 Moors, H. J., 352, 355, 358, 369, 370. 
 More New Arabian Nights, 149. 
 "Movements of Young Children," 83. 
 "My First Book," 164, note. 
 
 New Arabian Nights, 148, 178, 241, 243. 
 
 New Quarterly, The, 86, 126. 
 
 "Note on Realism, A," 159. 
 
 "Novel of Dumas, A," 26, 159, quoted 162-163. 
 
 "Olalla," 30, 32, 149, 202. 
 
 "Old Mortality," 35, 39. 
 
 "Old Scotch Gardener, An," 35. 
 
 "Ordered South," 66, 67, 72, 75, 76, quoted 97, 256, 331. 
 
 Ori-a-Ori, 359. 
 
 Osbourne, Lloyd, 131, 136, 181, 351, 353, 355, 365. 
 
 "Pan's Pipes," 68, 70, quoted 70, 86. 
 
 "Pastoral," 35, quoted 38-39, 149. 
 
 "Pavilion on the Links, The," 28, 127, 158, 178, 194, 258. 
 
 "Penny Plain and Twopence Coloured, A," quoted 25-26, 149, 
 
 159, quoted 162. 
 Pepys, Samuel, 134; essays on, 148. 
 Picturesque Notes on Edinburgh, 86. 
 "Plea for Gas Lamps, A," 86. 
 Poe, E. A., 58, 250. 
 Pope, Alexander, 89. 
 Portfolio, The, 64, 83, 86. 
 
INDEX 393 
 
 Prideaux, W. R, bibliography of the works of R. L. S., note, 
 
 149. 
 Prince Otto, 128, 139, 148, 149, 238, 239, 241-242. 
 "Providence and the Guitar," 68, 86, 94, 256, 258, 296-297 
 
 quoted 297-311. 
 "Pulvis et Umbra," 68, quoted 70-71, 76. 
 
 Rasselas, 374. 
 
 Reade, Charles, 79, 247. 
 
 Reid, Captain (of Equator), 351. 
 
 "Requiem," 76. 
 
 Road of the Loving Hearts, The, 357, 358. 
 
 "Roads," 64. 
 
 Rob Roy, 27, 245. 
 
 Roch, Valentine, 145, 147, 349, 350. 
 
 "Rosa quo Locorum," 26, 27, 355. 
 
 Saville Club, 52. 
 
 Schiller, 247. 
 
 Schoolboys' Magazine, The, 24. 
 
 Scott, Sir Walter, 19, 140, 245. 
 
 Shelley, Percy B., 59. 
 
 "Silverado Squatters, The," 68, 116, 131, 136, 148. 
 
 Simoneau, Jules, 127. 
 
 Simpson, Sir Walter, 63, 64, 83, 85, 106, 108. 
 
 "Sinking Ship, The," 68. 
 
 "Sire de Maletroit's Door, The," 85, 86, 178. 
 
 Siron's Inn, 102. 
 
 Sitwell, Mrs., 63, 65, 67, 98, 366. 
 
 Skeltdom, 25, 179. 
 
 "Skerryvore," 146. 
 
 South Sea itinerary, 349-353. 
 
 Spencer, H., 62. 
 
 Stanislao, 350. 
 
 "Stepfather's Story, The," 86. 
 
 Stephen, Leslie, 83. 
 
 Stevenson, R. A. M., 24, 52, 63, 76, 144, 145, 243. 
 
 Stevenson, Robert Louis, his career : ancestry, 12-18 ; birth in 
 1850 in Edinburgh, 18; boyhood in Edinburgh, visits to 
 Mentone and Torquay, 19, 34; effect of ill health as a 
 child, 21 ; boyish writings, 24 ; schooling, Edinburgh 
 University, 34; engineering experiences, 42-45; choice 
 of a profession, 41-45; R. L. S. and his father, 46, 55, 
 61, 137 ; appearance as a young man, 50-53 ; health, 53 ; 
 ambition to write, 56-60, 63 ; his own criticism of his 
 ambition, 60-61 ; graduation from Edinburgh Univer- 
 sity in 1871, the study of law, breakdown in health in 
 1873; ordered south, 62-66; early friendships, 62-65; 
 early publications, 63-64, 82-85; journey to Mentone, 
 67; life in Mentone, 76; return to Scotland in 1874, 77; 
 
394 INDEX 
 
 bar examinations in 1875, 84; life from 1874 to 1880, 
 81-115; list of writings from 1874 to 1880, 82-86; health 
 at twenty-five, 82; meeting with Henley, 84; Barbizon, 
 101-106 ; first book, 106 ; appearance at twenty-five, 108 ; 
 meeting with Mrs. Osbourne in 1876, 113; tour of the 
 Cevennes in 1878, 114; journey to California, 116-125; 
 San Francisco, 125, 128; Monterey, 127; marriage to 
 Mrs. Osbourne in 1880, 129; Silverado, 131, 136; return 
 to Scotland, 137 ; Davos, 1880 to 1882, 138 ; effect of ill 
 health on his genius and writings, 138-143, 149-156; the 
 Riviera, 1882 to 1884, 144-146; Bournemouth, 1884 to 
 1887, 146; his father's death, 147; Saranac, 1887 to 1888, 
 147 ; list of works from 1880 to 1889, 148-149 ; the South 
 Sea cruises, itinerary, 1888 to 1894, 349-353; his ac- 
 count of the islands, 358-362; buys Vailima Plantation 
 at Apia, 351; settles at Vailima in 1890, 353; life at 
 Vailima, 354, 363, 368-371 ; list of works from 1889 to 
 1894, 354-355; his own criticism of his later works, 
 364-366; death in 1894 at Vailima, 353. 
 
 Stevenson, Robert Louis, his character and opinions : romantic 
 temper, 6, 40-41, 46, 50, 68, 372-381; egotism, 3, 72; 
 evolutionary theories, 12, 30; general character of his 
 work, 7-11 ; his genius for play, 23, 35-39, 40; his theory 
 of dreams, 29-33 ; R. L. S., the poet, 39-41 ; the theory 
 of genius, 44-47; versatility of his genius, 246-248, 256, 
 258; radicalism, 45, 53-55, 93, 112-113; socialism, 135, 
 335-338, 356-359; courage, 68-76; theories of composi- 
 tion, 56-61, 79-81, 87-91, 95-99, 101, 132, 365; literary 
 realism and romanticism, 90-92, 104-106, 157-164, 177- 
 178, 192-194. 
 
 Stevenson, Mrs. R. L. (Fanny Van de Grift Osbourne) : 86; 
 meeting with Stevenson, 113, 114-115, 125; care of Ste- 
 venson in California, 128; marriage, 129; character of. 
 129-131, 135 ; at Silverado, 136 ; affected by elevation of 
 Davos, 143 ; troubles at Marseilles, 144 ; The Dynamiter, 
 146 ; engages cottage at Saranac, 147, 191 ; on board the 
 Casco, 349; on board the Equator, 351; at Vailima, 353, 
 355, 356, 357, 368. 
 
 Stevenson, Thomas, 41, 42, 46, 47, 55, 62, 84, 147. 
 
 Stevenson, Mrs. Thomas (Margaret Balfour), 13, 349, 351, 
 foot-note 353-354. 
 
 Stevensoniana, 243, 370. 
 
 St Ives, 140, 180, 238, 355, 364, 366. 
 
 "Story of a Lie, The," 46, 126, 236. 
 
 Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, The, 28, 30, 149, 
 158, 190, 194, 202, 244, 246, 248-255, quoted 254-255, 256, 
 331. 
 
 Strong, Austin, 353. 
 
 Strong, Mrs. Isobel, 352, 353, 355, 357, 358, 366. 
 
 Suicide Club, The, 244. 
 
INDEX 395 
 
 Swift, Jonathan, 244. 
 Swinnerton, F., 153. 
 
 Symonds, J. A.: compared with Stevenson, 141; Renaissance 
 in Italy, 141. 
 
 "Talks and Talkers," 148. 
 
 Temple Bar, The, 86. 
 
 Thackeray, W. M., 4, 79, 156, 246. 
 
 Thoreau, H. D. : 62, 378 ; essay on, 128, 131-134. 
 
 "Thrawn Janet," 28, 148, 201. 
 
 Titian, 25. 
 
 Todd, John, 37, 38, 41. 
 
 Travels with a Donkey, 86, 87, 94, 114. 
 
 Treasure Island, 25, 32, 60, 140, 148, 164, quoted 165-176, 177, 
 
 179, 180, 181, 189, 190, 191, 192, 193, 244, 245, 246, 335, 
 
 362. 
 "Treasure of Franchard, The," 68, 148, 190, 243, 256, 296, 
 
 quoted 312-314, 314-315, quoted 315-331. 
 Trollope, Anthony, 58. 
 Trudeau, E. L., 141, 147. 
 Tusitala, 358, 370. 
 "Two Saint Michaels' Mounts, The" 85. 
 
 Underwood's Magazine, 148. 
 
 Vaekehu, 350. 
 
 Vailima Letters, 362-371. 
 
 "Vendetta in the West, A," 127. 
 
 "Villon, Francois," 87, 112, 257-259, quoted 259-264. 
 
 Virginibus Puerisque, 45, 54, 55, 75, 85, 87, 148, 246. 
 
 "Voces Fidelium," 43. 
 
 "Walking Tours," 85, 94. 
 Weir of Hermiston, 46, 192, 236-238, 355, 365. 
 Wells, H. G., 80. 
 Weyman, Stanley, 367. 
 "When the Devil Was Well," 83. 
 Whitman, Walt, 62, 69, 83, 134. 
 "Will o' the Mill," 85, 86, 87, 94, 190, 256, 258, 37S-377. 
 "Winter's Walk, A," 35, 99. 
 Wordsworth, William, 89. 
 
 Wrecker, The, 46, 139, 178, 181-182, 236, 239-241, 335, 336, 351, 
 354, 362, 366. 
 
 Yoshida Torajiro, 128, 135. 
 Young Folks, 148, 190. 
 
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