Robert Louis Stevenson [48]
the woman is real. Here also he was on the right road - the advance road. The sex-question was coming forward as inevitably a part of life, and could not be left out in any broad and true picture. This element was effectively revived in WEIR OF HERMISTON, and "Weir" has been well said to be sadder, if it does not go deeper than DENIS DUVAL or EDWIN DROOD. We know what Dickens and Thackeray could do there; we can but guess now what Stevenson would have done. "Weir" is but a fragment; but, to a wisely critical and unprejudiced mind, it suffices to show not only what the complete work would have been, but what would have inevitably followed it. It shows the turning-point, and the way that was to be followed at the cross-roads - the way into a bigger, realer, grander world, where realism, freed from the dream, and fancy, and prejudice of youth, would glory in achieving the more enduring romance of manhood, maturity and humanity.
Yes; there was growth - undoubted growth. The questioning and severely moral element mainly due to the Shorter Catechism - the tendency to casuistry, and to problems, and wistful introspection - which had so coloured Stevenson's art up to the date of THE MASTER OF BALLANTRAE, and made him a great essayist, was passing in the satisfaction of assured insight into life itself. The art would gradually have been transformed also. The problem, pure and simple, would have been subdued in face of the great facts of life; if not lost, swallowed up in the grandeur, pathos, and awe of the tragedy clearly realised and presented.
CHAPTER XVIII - EARLIER DETERMINATIONS AND RESULTS
STEVENSON'S earlier determination was so distinctly to the symbolic, the parabolic, allegoric, dreamy and mystical - to treatment of the world as an array of weird or half-fanciful existences, witnessing only to certain dim spiritual facts or abstract moralities, occasionally inverted moralities - "tail foremost moralities" as later he himself named them - that a strong Celtic strain in him had been detected and dwelt on by acute critics long before any attention had been given to his genealogy on both sides of the house. The strong Celtic strain is now amply attested by many researches. Such phantasies as THE HOUSE OF ELD, THE TOUCHSTONE, THE POOR THING, and THE SONG OF THE MORROW, published along with some fables at the end of an edition of DR JEKYLL AND MR HYDE, by Longman's, I think, in 1896, tell to the initiated as forcibly as anything could tell of the presence of this element, as though moonshine, disguising and transfiguring, was laid over all real things and the secret of the world and life was in its glamour: the shimmering and soft shading rendering all outlines indeterminate, though a great idea is felt to be present in the mind of the author, for which he works. The man who would say there is no feeling for symbol - no phantasy or Celtic glamour in these weird, puzzling, and yet on all sides suggestive tales would thereby be declared inept, inefficient - blind to certain qualities that lie near to grandeur in fanciful literature, or the literature of phantasy, more properly.
This power in weird and playful phantasy is accompanied with the gift of impersonating or embodying mere abstract qualities or tendencies in characters. The little early sketch written in June 1875, titled GOOD CONTENT, well illustrates this:
"Pleasure goes by piping: Hope unfurls his purple flag; and meek Content follows them on a snow-white ass. Here, the broad sunlight falls on open ways and goodly countries; here, stage by stage, pleasant old towns and hamlets border the road, now with high sign- poles, now with high minster spires; the lanes go burrowing under blossomed banks, green meadows, and deep woods encompass them about; from wood to wood flock the glad birds; the vane turns in the variable wind; and as I journey with Hope and Pleasure, and quite a company of jolly personifications, who but the lady I love is by my side, and walks with her slim
Yes; there was growth - undoubted growth. The questioning and severely moral element mainly due to the Shorter Catechism - the tendency to casuistry, and to problems, and wistful introspection - which had so coloured Stevenson's art up to the date of THE MASTER OF BALLANTRAE, and made him a great essayist, was passing in the satisfaction of assured insight into life itself. The art would gradually have been transformed also. The problem, pure and simple, would have been subdued in face of the great facts of life; if not lost, swallowed up in the grandeur, pathos, and awe of the tragedy clearly realised and presented.
CHAPTER XVIII - EARLIER DETERMINATIONS AND RESULTS
STEVENSON'S earlier determination was so distinctly to the symbolic, the parabolic, allegoric, dreamy and mystical - to treatment of the world as an array of weird or half-fanciful existences, witnessing only to certain dim spiritual facts or abstract moralities, occasionally inverted moralities - "tail foremost moralities" as later he himself named them - that a strong Celtic strain in him had been detected and dwelt on by acute critics long before any attention had been given to his genealogy on both sides of the house. The strong Celtic strain is now amply attested by many researches. Such phantasies as THE HOUSE OF ELD, THE TOUCHSTONE, THE POOR THING, and THE SONG OF THE MORROW, published along with some fables at the end of an edition of DR JEKYLL AND MR HYDE, by Longman's, I think, in 1896, tell to the initiated as forcibly as anything could tell of the presence of this element, as though moonshine, disguising and transfiguring, was laid over all real things and the secret of the world and life was in its glamour: the shimmering and soft shading rendering all outlines indeterminate, though a great idea is felt to be present in the mind of the author, for which he works. The man who would say there is no feeling for symbol - no phantasy or Celtic glamour in these weird, puzzling, and yet on all sides suggestive tales would thereby be declared inept, inefficient - blind to certain qualities that lie near to grandeur in fanciful literature, or the literature of phantasy, more properly.
This power in weird and playful phantasy is accompanied with the gift of impersonating or embodying mere abstract qualities or tendencies in characters. The little early sketch written in June 1875, titled GOOD CONTENT, well illustrates this:
"Pleasure goes by piping: Hope unfurls his purple flag; and meek Content follows them on a snow-white ass. Here, the broad sunlight falls on open ways and goodly countries; here, stage by stage, pleasant old towns and hamlets border the road, now with high sign- poles, now with high minster spires; the lanes go burrowing under blossomed banks, green meadows, and deep woods encompass them about; from wood to wood flock the glad birds; the vane turns in the variable wind; and as I journey with Hope and Pleasure, and quite a company of jolly personifications, who but the lady I love is by my side, and walks with her slim