Robert Louis Stevenson [41]
because he was Robert Louis Stevenson, and not Mr Pinero, and too long, as he himself confessed, had a tendency to think bad-heartedness was strength; while the only true and enduring joy attainable in this world - whether by deduction from life itself, or from IMPRESSIONS of art or of the drama, is simply the steady, unassailable, and triumphant consciousness that it is not so, but the reverse, that goodness and self-sacrifice and self-surrender are the only strength in the universe. Just as Byron had it with patriotism:-
"Freedom's battle once begun, Bequeathed from bleeding sire to son, Tho' baffled oft is ever won."
To go consciously either in fiction or in the drama for bad- heartedness as strength, is to court failure - the broad, healthy, human heart, thank Heaven, is so made as to resent the doctrine; and if a fiction or a play based on this idea for the moment succeeds, it can only be because of strength in other elements, or because of partial blindness and partially paralysed moral sense in the case of those who accept it and joy in it. If Mr Pinero directly disputes this, then he and I have no common standing- ground, and I need not follow the matter any further. Of course, the dramatist may, under mistaken sympathy and in the midst of complex and bewildering concatenations, give wrong readings to his audience, but he must not be always doing even that, or doing it on principle or system, else his work, however careful and concentrated, will before long share the fate of the Stevenson- Henley dramas confessedly wrought when the authors all too definitely held bad-heartedness was strength.
CHAPTER XV - THEORY OF GOOD AND EVIL
WE have not hitherto concerned ourselves, in any express sense, with the ethical elements involved in the tendency now dwelt on, though they are, of necessity, of a very vital character. We have shown only as yet the effect of this mood of mind on dramatic intention and effort. The position is simply that there is, broadly speaking, the endeavour to eliminate an element which is essential to successful dramatic presentation. That element is the eternal distinction, speaking broadly, between good and evil - between right and wrong - between the secret consciousness of having done right, and the consciousness of mere strength and force in certain other ways.
Nothing else will make up for vagueness and cloudiness here - no technical skill, no apt dialogue nor concentration, any more than "fine speeches," as Mr Pinero calls them. Now the dramatic demand and the ethical demand here meet and take each other's hands, and will not be separated. This is why Mr Stevenson and Mr Henley - young men of great talent, failed - utterly failed - they thought they could make a hero out of a shady and dare-devil yet really cowardly villain generally - and failed.
The spirit of this is of the clever youth type - all too ready to forego the moral for the sake of the fun any day of the week, and the unthinking selfishness and self-enjoyment of youth - whose tender mercies are often cruel, are transcendent in it. As Stevenson himself said, they were young men then and fancied bad- heartedness was strength. Perhaps it was a sense of this that made R. L. Stevenson speak as he did of the EBB-TIDE with Huish the cockney in it, after he was powerless to recall it; which made him say, as we have seen, that the closing chapters of THE MASTER OF BALLANTRAE "SHAME, AND PERHAPS DEGRADE, THE BEGINNING." He himself came to see then the great error; but, alas! it was too late to remedy it - he could but go forward to essay new tales, not backward to put right errors in what was done.
Did Mr William Archer have anything of this in his mind and the far-reaching effects on this side, when he wrote the following:
"Let me add that the omission with which, in 1885, I mildly reproached him - the omission to tell what he knew to be an essential part of the truth about life - was abundantly made good in his later writings. It is true
"Freedom's battle once begun, Bequeathed from bleeding sire to son, Tho' baffled oft is ever won."
To go consciously either in fiction or in the drama for bad- heartedness as strength, is to court failure - the broad, healthy, human heart, thank Heaven, is so made as to resent the doctrine; and if a fiction or a play based on this idea for the moment succeeds, it can only be because of strength in other elements, or because of partial blindness and partially paralysed moral sense in the case of those who accept it and joy in it. If Mr Pinero directly disputes this, then he and I have no common standing- ground, and I need not follow the matter any further. Of course, the dramatist may, under mistaken sympathy and in the midst of complex and bewildering concatenations, give wrong readings to his audience, but he must not be always doing even that, or doing it on principle or system, else his work, however careful and concentrated, will before long share the fate of the Stevenson- Henley dramas confessedly wrought when the authors all too definitely held bad-heartedness was strength.
CHAPTER XV - THEORY OF GOOD AND EVIL
WE have not hitherto concerned ourselves, in any express sense, with the ethical elements involved in the tendency now dwelt on, though they are, of necessity, of a very vital character. We have shown only as yet the effect of this mood of mind on dramatic intention and effort. The position is simply that there is, broadly speaking, the endeavour to eliminate an element which is essential to successful dramatic presentation. That element is the eternal distinction, speaking broadly, between good and evil - between right and wrong - between the secret consciousness of having done right, and the consciousness of mere strength and force in certain other ways.
Nothing else will make up for vagueness and cloudiness here - no technical skill, no apt dialogue nor concentration, any more than "fine speeches," as Mr Pinero calls them. Now the dramatic demand and the ethical demand here meet and take each other's hands, and will not be separated. This is why Mr Stevenson and Mr Henley - young men of great talent, failed - utterly failed - they thought they could make a hero out of a shady and dare-devil yet really cowardly villain generally - and failed.
The spirit of this is of the clever youth type - all too ready to forego the moral for the sake of the fun any day of the week, and the unthinking selfishness and self-enjoyment of youth - whose tender mercies are often cruel, are transcendent in it. As Stevenson himself said, they were young men then and fancied bad- heartedness was strength. Perhaps it was a sense of this that made R. L. Stevenson speak as he did of the EBB-TIDE with Huish the cockney in it, after he was powerless to recall it; which made him say, as we have seen, that the closing chapters of THE MASTER OF BALLANTRAE "SHAME, AND PERHAPS DEGRADE, THE BEGINNING." He himself came to see then the great error; but, alas! it was too late to remedy it - he could but go forward to essay new tales, not backward to put right errors in what was done.
Did Mr William Archer have anything of this in his mind and the far-reaching effects on this side, when he wrote the following:
"Let me add that the omission with which, in 1885, I mildly reproached him - the omission to tell what he knew to be an essential part of the truth about life - was abundantly made good in his later writings. It is true