Robert Louis Stevenson [42]
that even in his final philosophy he still seems to me to underrate, or rather to shirk, the significance of that most compendious parable which he thus relates in a letter to Mr Henry James:- 'Do you know the story of the man who found a button in his hash, and called the waiter? "What do you call that?" says he. "Well," said the waiter, "what d'you expect? Expect to find a gold watch and chain?" Heavenly apologue, is it not?' Heavenly, by all means; but I think Stevenson relished the humour of it so much that he 'smiling passed the moral by.' In his enjoyment of the waiter's effrontery, he forgot to sympathise with the man (even though it was himself) who had broken his teeth upon the harmful, unnecessary button. He forgot that all the apologetics in the world are based upon just this audacious paralogism."
Many writers have done the same - and not a few critics have hinted at this: I do not think any writer has got at the radical truth of it more directly, decisively, and clearly than "J. F. M.," in a monthly magazine, about the time of Stevenson's death; and the whole is so good and clear that I must quote it - the writer was not thinking of the drama specially; only of prose fiction, and this but makes the passage the more effective and apt to my point.
"In the outburst of regret which followed the death of Robert Louis Stevenson, one leading journal dwelt on his too early removal in middle life 'with only half his message delivered.' Such a phrase may have been used in the mere cant of modern journalism. Still it set one questioning what was Stevenson's message, or at least that part of it which we had time given us to hear.
"Wonderful as was the popularity of the dead author, we are inclined to doubt whether the right appreciation of him was half as wide. To a certain section of the public he seemed a successful writer of boys' books, which yet held captive older people. Now, undoubtedly there was an element (not the highest) in his work which fascinated boys. It gratified their yearning for adventure. To too large a number of his readers, we suspect, this remains Stevenson's chief charm; though even of those there were many able to recognise and be thankful for the literary power and grace which could serve up their sanguinary diet so daintily.
"Most of Stevenson's titles, too, like TREASURE ISLAND, KIDNAPPED, and THE MASTER OF BALLANTRAE, tended to foster delusion in this direction. The books were largely bought for gifts by maiden aunts, and bestowed as school prizes, when it might not have been so had their titles given more indication of their real scope and tendency.
"All this, it seems to us, has somewhat obscured Stevenson's true power, which is surely that of an arch-delineator of 'human nature' and of the devious ways of men. As we read him we feel that we have our finger on the pulse of the cruel politics of the world. He has the Shakespearean gift which makes us recognise that his pirates and his statesmen, with their violence and their murders and their perversions of justice, are swayed by the same interests and are pulling the same strings and playing on the same passions which are at work in quieter methods around ourselves. The vast crimes and the reckless bloodshed are nothing more nor less than stage effects used to accentuate for the common eye what the seer can detect without them.
"And reading him from this standpoint, Stevenson's 'message' (so far as it was delivered) appears to be that of utter gloom - the creed that good is always overcome by evil. We do not mean in the sense that good always suffers through evil and is frequently crucified by evil. That is only the sowing of the martyr's blood, which is, we know, the seed of the Church. We should not have marvelled in the least that a genius like Stevenson should rebel against mere external 'happy endings,' which, being in flat contradiction to the ordinary ways of Providence, are little short of thoughtless blasphemy against Providence.
Many writers have done the same - and not a few critics have hinted at this: I do not think any writer has got at the radical truth of it more directly, decisively, and clearly than "J. F. M.," in a monthly magazine, about the time of Stevenson's death; and the whole is so good and clear that I must quote it - the writer was not thinking of the drama specially; only of prose fiction, and this but makes the passage the more effective and apt to my point.
"In the outburst of regret which followed the death of Robert Louis Stevenson, one leading journal dwelt on his too early removal in middle life 'with only half his message delivered.' Such a phrase may have been used in the mere cant of modern journalism. Still it set one questioning what was Stevenson's message, or at least that part of it which we had time given us to hear.
"Wonderful as was the popularity of the dead author, we are inclined to doubt whether the right appreciation of him was half as wide. To a certain section of the public he seemed a successful writer of boys' books, which yet held captive older people. Now, undoubtedly there was an element (not the highest) in his work which fascinated boys. It gratified their yearning for adventure. To too large a number of his readers, we suspect, this remains Stevenson's chief charm; though even of those there were many able to recognise and be thankful for the literary power and grace which could serve up their sanguinary diet so daintily.
"Most of Stevenson's titles, too, like TREASURE ISLAND, KIDNAPPED, and THE MASTER OF BALLANTRAE, tended to foster delusion in this direction. The books were largely bought for gifts by maiden aunts, and bestowed as school prizes, when it might not have been so had their titles given more indication of their real scope and tendency.
"All this, it seems to us, has somewhat obscured Stevenson's true power, which is surely that of an arch-delineator of 'human nature' and of the devious ways of men. As we read him we feel that we have our finger on the pulse of the cruel politics of the world. He has the Shakespearean gift which makes us recognise that his pirates and his statesmen, with their violence and their murders and their perversions of justice, are swayed by the same interests and are pulling the same strings and playing on the same passions which are at work in quieter methods around ourselves. The vast crimes and the reckless bloodshed are nothing more nor less than stage effects used to accentuate for the common eye what the seer can detect without them.
"And reading him from this standpoint, Stevenson's 'message' (so far as it was delivered) appears to be that of utter gloom - the creed that good is always overcome by evil. We do not mean in the sense that good always suffers through evil and is frequently crucified by evil. That is only the sowing of the martyr's blood, which is, we know, the seed of the Church. We should not have marvelled in the least that a genius like Stevenson should rebel against mere external 'happy endings,' which, being in flat contradiction to the ordinary ways of Providence, are little short of thoughtless blasphemy against Providence.