Complete Works of Robert Louis Stevenson (Illustrated) (1099 page)

But even where he had some set purpose in view, his talk seemed to be a natural and purely spontaneous outpouring of himself. It never seemed to me to be vanity — if it were, it was the most genial that ever existed — but rather a reference to instances within his own knowledge to illustrate the point in hand. He never monopolised the conversation, however eager he might be, but was faithful to his preference for talk which is in its nature a debate, “ the amicable counter- assertion of personality,” and “the Protean quality which is in man “ enabled him, without ceasing to be himself, to meet the temper of his company.

With this multiplicity one might expect to find room in his character for many contradictory qualities or the presence in excess and defect of the very same virtues, and this in truth was so. To reconcile opposites was a task he thought of but little importance, and a fa- vourite phrase with him was Whitman’s: * Do I contradict myself? Very well, then 1 contradict myself.” Consistency was a virtue for which it was easy to pay too high a price, and often it had to be surrendered for matters of greater import. Aspiration and humour, shrewdness and romance, profusion and self-denial, self-revelation and reserve, in him were curiously matched. On his frankness and his reticence 1 have already dwelt. He speaks of himself, as Professor Raleigh says,1 “ with no shadow of hypocrisy and no whiff or taint of indecent familiarity”; he tells you everything, as you think at first, and so simply and so frankly that it is only gradually you realise that he has not been revealing the things nearest his heart, that you learn no secrets of his home or his religion, nor of anything that was not for you to know. Self-denial, again, he showed in many ways; in his youth especially, when money was scarce with him, if any one had to go without, he was the first to surrender his claim and sacrifice himself. On the other hand, with “ that virtue of frugality which is the armour of the artist” he was but ill-equipped.

Of his self-restraint in literature there can be no better instance than the very sparing use he makes of the pathetic. In the early essay on “ Nurses “ it is perhaps a trifle forced; there are hardly two more beautiful or dignified examples of it in English literature than in the essay on “ Old Mortality,” and the death of the fugitive French colonel in St. Ives. But it was only in conversation that one realised the extraordinary degree to 1 Robert Louis Stevenson, by Walter Raleigh, p. 77. Edward Arnold, 1896.

which he possessed the power of moving the heartstrings. It was not that he made frequent or unmanly use of it, but being less upon his guard, the pathetic aspect of some person or incident would appeal to him, and in a moment he would have the least tender-hearted of his hearers hardly less deeply moved than himself. Ordinarily even in conversation he used it chiefly as a weapon of chivalry in defence of the neglected and the old; but as Swift “could write beautifully about a broomstick,” so Stevenson one day described a chair, enlarging upon the hard lot of the legs that had to support the idle seat, until the boy to whom he was talking was almost in tears. On the other side must be set his description of “ Home, Sweet Home “ in Across the Plains, as “belonging to that class of art which may be best described as a brutal assault upon the feelings. Pathos must be redeemed by dignity of treatment. If you wallow naked in the pathetic, like the author of’ Home, Sweet Home,’ you make your hearers weep in an unmanly fashion.”

But the supreme instance of diverse elements in him was patience and its opposite. Never have I heard of any one in whom these contradictories were both shown in so high a degree. His endurance in illness and in work v/e have seen: no pain was too great to bear, no malady too long: he never murmured until it was over. No task was too irksome, no revision too exacting — laboriously, and like an eager apprentice, he went through with it to the end.

But on the other hand, when impatience came to the surface, it blazed up like the anger of a man who had never known a check. It was generally caused by ii 209

some breach of faith or act of dishonesty or unjustifiable delay. The only time I know of its being displayed in public was in a Paris restaurant, where Stevenson had ordered a change of wine, and the very bottle he had rejected was brought back to him with a different label. There was a sudden explosion of wrath; the bottle was violently broken; in an instant the restaurant was emptied, and — so much for long- suffering — the proprietor and his staff were devoting the whole of their attention and art to appease and reconcile the angry man.

Sternness and tenderness in him were very equally matched, though the former was kept mainly for himself and those nearest to him, of whom he asked nearly as much as of himself: tenderness, on the other hand, was for the failings of others. For like many chivalrous people, he expected but little of what he gave with so much freedom. His tenderness had something feminine, yet without lacking the peculiar strength that distinguishes it in a man. The Roman quality of sternness he so much admired came to himself, no doubt, with his Scottish blood. It is a virtue that for the most part requires exclusive dominion over a character for its proper display, and in Stevenson it had many rivals. But that it was genuine his appreciation of Lord Braxfield and his rendering of it in Lord Hermiston place beyond all doubt.1

Sternness and pity it is quite possible to harmonise, and the secret in Stevenson’s case is perhaps solved in the following letter: “ I wish you to read Taine’s Ori- gines de la France Contemporaine . . . and to try and 1 Cf. Vailima Letters, p. 220. understand what I have in my mind (ay, and in my heart!) when I preach law and police to you in season and out of season. What else do we care for, what else is anything but secondary, in that embroiled, confounded ravelment of politics, but to protect the old, and the weak, and the quiet, from that bloody wild beast that slumbers in man?

“True to my character, 1 have to preach. But just read the book. It is not absolutely fair, for Taine does not feel, with a warm heart, the touching side of their poor soul’s illusions; he does not feel the infinite pathos of the Federations, poor pantomime and orgie, that (to its actors) seemed upon the very margin of heaven; nor the unspeakable, almost unthinkable tragedy of such a poor, virtuous, wooden-headed lot as the methodistic Jacobins. But he tells, as no one else, the dreadful end of sentimental politics.”

To deal with Stevenson’s intellectual qualities alone is to approach his less fascinating side, and to miss far more than half the influence of his charm. I have referred to his chivalry, only to find that in reality I was thinking of every one of the whole group of attributes which are associated with that name. Loyalty, honesty, generosity, courage; courtesy, tenderness, and self-devotion; to impute no unworthy motives and to bear no grudge; to bear misfortune with cheerfulness and without a murmur; to strike hard for the right and take no mean advantage; to be gentle to women and kind to all that are weak; to be very rigorous with oneself and very lenient to others — these, and any other virtues ever implied in “chivalry,” were the traits that distinguished Stevenson. They do not make life easy, as he frequently found. One day, his stepson tells me, they were sitting on the deck of a schooner in the Pacific, and Stevenson was reading a copy of Don Quixote. Suddenly he looked up, and, with an air of realisation, said sadly, as if to himself, “That’s me.”

In spite of his knowledge of the world and his humour, and a vein of cynicism most difficult to define, many were his quixotries and many the windmills at which he tilted, less often wholly in vain than we thought who watched his errantry. The example remains; and “ Would to-day, when Courtesy grows chill, And life’s fine loyalties are turned to jest, Some fire of thine might bum within us still! Ah, would but one might lay his lance in rest, And charge in earnest — were it but a mill!”1

Of some of the virtues I have cited it would be superfluous to say more. There is no need to repeat how he faced death in the Riviera or bore the weariness of exile. But I may be pardoned if I dwell upon a few of the more striking instances in which he displayed his open-mindedness, his generosity of temper, his hatred of cruelty, and his readiness to forgive offences.

Generosity is a word in sore danger of being limited to the giving of money, but to Stevenson the quality must be attributed not only in this, but also in the widest possible application. It is a virtue that from its nature is easily abused: this did but make Stevenson think the more highly of it, and it can have no more splendid motto than his own aphorism, of which one version 1 At the Sign of the Lyre, by Austin Dobson, p. 93. runs: “The mean man doubted, Greatheart was deceived. ‘Very well,’ said Greatheart.”

Of Stevenson’s own generous temper there is no better illustration than a letter written in early days when he had been called to task for some words of depreciation.

“I think the crier-up has a good trade; but I like less and less every year the berth of runner-down; and I

hate to see my friends in it. What is ‘s fault?

That he runs down. What is the easiest thing to do? To run down. What is it that a strong man should scorn to do? To run down. And all this comes steeply home to me; for I am horrified to gather that I begin myself to fall into this same business which I abhor in others.”

No one ever more eagerly welcomed the success of younger writers, entirely unknown to himself; but of this point the published letters are quite sufficient proof.

Any offence against himself he forgave readily, nor did he find it difficult to make excuses for almost any degree of misconduct on the part of others. There was only one action which I heard him say he could never pardon, and the exception was characteristic. The father of an acquaintance came to Edinburgh one day many years ago to render his son material assistance which he could ill afford. The pair met Stevenson, and the son, introducing his father, did not scruple to sneer at him behind his back. Stevenson’s experience of life and of character was very wide; but he looked back on that gesture as the one really unpardonable offence he had ever known.

He could be angry enough and stern enough upon 213

occasion, but never was there any one so ready to melt at the least appeal to his compassion or mercy. In his political quarrels he found the greatest difficulty in keeping up an open breach with persons whom he liked in themselves, and for whom his sympathy was engaged, although he was convinced that they were ruining Samoa.1 Truly he might say: “There was no man born with so little animosity as I.”

But in fact the two kinds of generosity went frequently together. It is impossible for me to give the instances I know, but it is the fact that over and over again, no sooner had any one quarrelled with him, than Stevenson at once began to cast about for some means of doing his adversary a service, if only it could be done without divulging the source from whence it came.

In the narrower sense he was generous to a fault, but was ready to take any amount of personal trouble, and exercised judgment in his giving. When there was occasion he set no limit to his assistance. “ Pray remember that if ever X should be in want of help, you are to strain my credit to breaking, and to mortgage all I possess or can expect, to help him.” But in another case: “I hereby authorise you to pay when necessary £            to Z     ; if I gave him more, it would only lead to his starting a gig and a Pomeranian dog. I hope you won’t think me hard about this. If you think the sum insufficient, you can communicate with me by return on the subject.” Of course he received applications from all sorts of people on all manner of pretexts. There was one man who embarrassed him greatly by frequent letters. As far as could be 1 Vailima Letters, p. 162. gathered this person desired to abandon entirely the use of clothing, and coming to Samoa with “ a woman I love,” was there to gain his livelihood by whitewashing Stevenson’s fences, which, by the way, consisted almost entirely of barbed wire. This, individual even presented himself (but in the garb of civilisation) at Stevenson’s hotel in Sydney; there, however, the line was drawn, and he was refused an interview.

But Stevenson’s best service was often in the words with which he accompanied his gift. To his funeral only close personal friends were invited, but there appeared a tall gaunt stranger, whom nobody remembered to have seen before. He came up and apologised for his presence, and said he could not keep away, for Stevenson had saved him one day when he was at his lowest ebb. “I was wandering despondently along the road, and I met Mr. Stevenson, and I don’t know whether it was my story, or that he saw I was a Scotchman, but he gave me twenty dollars and some good advice and encouragement. I took heart again, and I’m getting on all right now, but if I had n’t met Mr. Stevenson, and he had n’t helped me, I should have killed myself that day.” And the tears ran down his face.

Of Stevenson’s open mind there could perhaps be no better proof than the passage in his last letter to R. A. M. Stevenson, written only two months before his death. If there was a class of men on this earth whom Louis loathed and placed beyond the pale of humanity, it was the dynamiters and anarchists; yet he could write of them in the following strain: — ”There is a new something or other in the wind, which exercises me hugely: anarchy. — I mean, anarchism. People who (for pity’s sake) commit dastardly murders very basely, die like saints, and leave beautiful letters behind ‘em (did you see Vaillant to his daughter? it was the New Testament over again); people whose conduct is inexplicable to me, and yet their spiritual life higher than that of most. This is just what the early Christians must have seemed to the Romans. ... If they go on being martyred a few years more, the gross, dull, not unkindly bourgeois may get tired or ashamed or afraid of going on martyring; and the anarchists come out at the top just like the early Christians.”

I have never met any one who hated cruelty of any kind with so lively a horror — I had almost said with so fanatical a detestation — from his earliest years.

“Do you remember telling me one day when I came in,” wrote the Rev. Peter Rutherford, his tutor, to Mrs. Thomas Stevenson after her son’s death, “ how it was his eyes were so swollen: tear-swollen? You had found him in the study sobbing bitterly over a tale of cruelty he had been reading all alone.” At the other end of his life I can remember his own impassioned account, given late one Sunday evening on his return from Apia, of how he had found a crowd of natives watching a dog-fight. He had plunged into their midst and stopped it, and turned to rebuke them. “But I found all my Samoan had clean gone out of my head, and all I could say to them was’ Pala’ai, Pala’ai! ‘ (‘ Cowards, cowards!’).” But the most characteristic of all his utterances was at Pitlochry in 1881, when he saw a dog being ill-treated. He at once interposed, and when the owner resented his interference and told him: “ It’s not your dog,” he cried out: “ It’s God’s dog, and I’m here to protect it.”