Robert Louis Stevenson [14]
genius; for his father's pedigree runs back to the Highland clan Macgregor, the kin of Rob Roy. Stevenson thus drew in Celtic strains from both sides - from the Balfours and the Stevensons alike - and in his strange, dreamy, beautiful, and often far-removed fancies we have the finest and most effective witness of it."
Mr William Archer, in his own characteristic way, has brought the inheritances from the two sides of the house into more direct contact and contrast in an article he wrote in THE DAILY CHRONICLE on the appearance of the LETTERS TO FAMILY AND FRIENDS.
"These letters show," he says, "that Stevenson's was not one of those sunflower temperaments which turn by instinct, not effort, towards the light, and are, as Mr Francis Thompson puts it, 'heartless and happy, lackeying their god.' The strains of his heredity were very curiously, but very clearly, mingled. It may surprise some readers to find him speaking of 'the family evil, despondency,' but he spoke with knowledge. He inherited from his father not only a stern Scottish intentness on the moral aspect of life ('I would rise from the dead to preach'), but a marked disposition to melancholy and hypochondria. From his mother, on the other hand, he derived, along with his physical frailty, a resolute and cheery stoicism. These two elements in his nature fought many a hard fight, and the besieging forces from without - ill-health, poverty, and at one time family dissensions - were by no means without allies in the inner citadel of his soul. His spirit was courageous in the truest sense of the word: by effort and conviction, not by temperamental insensibility to fear. It is clear that there was a period in his life (and that before the worst of his bodily ills came upon him) when he was often within measurable distance of Carlylean gloom. He was twenty-four when he wrote thus, from Swanston, to Mrs Sitwell:
"'It is warmer a bit; but my body is most decrepit, and I can just manage to be cheery and tread down hypochondria under foot by work. I lead such a funny life, utterly without interest or pleasure outside of my work: nothing, indeed, but work all day long, except a short walk alone on the cold hills, and meals, and a couple of pipes with my father in the evening. It is surprising how it suits me, and how happy I keep.'
"This is the serenity which arises, not from the absence of fuliginous elements in the character, but from a potent smoke- consuming faculty, and an inflexible will to use it. Nine years later he thus admonishes his backsliding parent:
"'MY DEAR MOTHER, - I give my father up. I give him a parable: that the Waverley novels are better reading for every day than the tragic LIFE. And he takes it back-side foremost, and shakes his head, and is gloomier than ever. Tell him that I give him up. I don't want no such a parent. This is not the man for my money. I do not call that by the name of religion which fills a man with bile. I write him a whole letter, bidding him beware of extremes, and telling him that his gloom is gallows-worthy; and I get back an answer -. Perish the thought of it.
"'Here am I on the threshold of another year, when, according to all human foresight, I should long ago have been resolved into my elements: here am I, who you were persuaded was born to disgrace you - and, I will do you the justice to add, on no such insufficient grounds - no very burning discredit when all is done; here am I married, and the marriage recognised to be a blessing of the first order. A1 at Lloyd's. There is he, at his not first youth, able to take more exercise than I at thirty-three, and gaining a stone's weight, a thing of which I am incapable. There are you; has the man no gratitude? . . .
"'Even the Shorter Catechism, not the merriest epitome of religion, and a work exactly as pious although not quite so true as the multiplication table - even that dry-as-dust epitome begins with a heroic note. What is man's chief end? Let him study that;
Mr William Archer, in his own characteristic way, has brought the inheritances from the two sides of the house into more direct contact and contrast in an article he wrote in THE DAILY CHRONICLE on the appearance of the LETTERS TO FAMILY AND FRIENDS.
"These letters show," he says, "that Stevenson's was not one of those sunflower temperaments which turn by instinct, not effort, towards the light, and are, as Mr Francis Thompson puts it, 'heartless and happy, lackeying their god.' The strains of his heredity were very curiously, but very clearly, mingled. It may surprise some readers to find him speaking of 'the family evil, despondency,' but he spoke with knowledge. He inherited from his father not only a stern Scottish intentness on the moral aspect of life ('I would rise from the dead to preach'), but a marked disposition to melancholy and hypochondria. From his mother, on the other hand, he derived, along with his physical frailty, a resolute and cheery stoicism. These two elements in his nature fought many a hard fight, and the besieging forces from without - ill-health, poverty, and at one time family dissensions - were by no means without allies in the inner citadel of his soul. His spirit was courageous in the truest sense of the word: by effort and conviction, not by temperamental insensibility to fear. It is clear that there was a period in his life (and that before the worst of his bodily ills came upon him) when he was often within measurable distance of Carlylean gloom. He was twenty-four when he wrote thus, from Swanston, to Mrs Sitwell:
"'It is warmer a bit; but my body is most decrepit, and I can just manage to be cheery and tread down hypochondria under foot by work. I lead such a funny life, utterly without interest or pleasure outside of my work: nothing, indeed, but work all day long, except a short walk alone on the cold hills, and meals, and a couple of pipes with my father in the evening. It is surprising how it suits me, and how happy I keep.'
"This is the serenity which arises, not from the absence of fuliginous elements in the character, but from a potent smoke- consuming faculty, and an inflexible will to use it. Nine years later he thus admonishes his backsliding parent:
"'MY DEAR MOTHER, - I give my father up. I give him a parable: that the Waverley novels are better reading for every day than the tragic LIFE. And he takes it back-side foremost, and shakes his head, and is gloomier than ever. Tell him that I give him up. I don't want no such a parent. This is not the man for my money. I do not call that by the name of religion which fills a man with bile. I write him a whole letter, bidding him beware of extremes, and telling him that his gloom is gallows-worthy; and I get back an answer -. Perish the thought of it.
"'Here am I on the threshold of another year, when, according to all human foresight, I should long ago have been resolved into my elements: here am I, who you were persuaded was born to disgrace you - and, I will do you the justice to add, on no such insufficient grounds - no very burning discredit when all is done; here am I married, and the marriage recognised to be a blessing of the first order. A1 at Lloyd's. There is he, at his not first youth, able to take more exercise than I at thirty-three, and gaining a stone's weight, a thing of which I am incapable. There are you; has the man no gratitude? . . .
"'Even the Shorter Catechism, not the merriest epitome of religion, and a work exactly as pious although not quite so true as the multiplication table - even that dry-as-dust epitome begins with a heroic note. What is man's chief end? Let him study that;