Robert Louis Stevenson [57]
more at concentration and intensity, than at the easy, quiet breadth of Scott."
If, indeed, it should not here have been added that Stevenson's theory of life and conduct was not seldom too insistent for free creativeness, for dramatic freedom, breadth and reality.
Now here I humbly think Mr Baldion errs about the cleverness when he criticises Stevenson for the FAUX PAS artistically of resorting to the piratic filibustering and the treasure-seeking at the close of THE MASTER OF BALLANTRAE, he only tells and tells plainly how cleverness took the place of genius there; as indeed it did in not a few cases - certainly in some points in the Dutch escapade in CATRIONA and in not a few in DR JEKYLL AND MR HYDE. The fault of that last story is simply that we seem to hear Stevenson chuckling to himself, "Ah, now, won't they all say at last how clever I am." That too mars the MERRY MEN, whoever wrote them or part wrote them, and PRINCE OTTO would have been irretrievably spoiled by this self- conscious sense of cleverness had it not been for style and artifice. In this incessant "see how clever I am," we have another proof of the abounding youthfulness of R. L. Stevenson. If, as Mr Baildon says (p. 30), he had true child's horror of being put in fine clothes in which one must sit still and be good, PRINCE OTTO remains attractive in spite of some things and because of his fine clothes. Neither Poe nor Hawthorne could have fallen to the piracy, and treasure-hunting of THE MASTER OF BALLANTRAE.
"Far behind Scott in the power of instinctive, irreflective, spontaneous creation of character, Stevenson tells his story with more art and with a firmer grip on his reader." And that is exactly what I, wishing to do all I dutifully can for Stevenson, cannot see. His genius is in nearly all cases pulled up or spoiled by his all too conscious cleverness, and at last we say, "Oh Heavens! if he could and would but let himself go or forget himself what he might achieve." But he doesn't - never does, and therefore remains but a second-rate creator though more and more the stylist and the artist. This is more especially the case at the very points where writers like Scott would have risen and roused all the readers' interest. When Stevenson reaches such points, he is always as though saying "See now how cleverly I'll clear that old and stereotyped style of thing and do something NEW." But there are things in life and human nature, which though they are old are yet ever new, and the true greatness of a writer can never come from evading or looking askance at them or trying to make them out something else than what they really are. No artistic aim or ambition can suffice to stand instead of them or to refine them away. That way lies only cold artifice and frigid lacework, and sometimes Stevenson did go a little too much on this line.
CHAPTER XXI - UNITY IN STEVENSON'S STORIES
THE unity in Stevenson's stories is generally a unity of subjective impression and reminiscence due, in the first place, to his quick, almost abnormal boyish reverence for mere animal courage, audacity, and doggedness, and, in the second place, to his theory of life, his philosophy, his moral view. He produces an artificial atmosphere. Everything then has to be worked up to this - kept really in accordance with it, and he shows great art in the doing of this. Hence, though, a quaint sense of sameness, of artificial atmosphere - at once really a lack of spontaneity and of freedom. He is freest when he pretends to nothing but adventure - when he aims professedly at nothing save to let his characters develop themselves by action. In this respect the most successful of his stories is yet TREASURE ISLAND, and the least successful perhaps CATRIONA, when just as the ambitious aim compels him to pause in incident, the first-person form creates a cold stiffness and artificiality alien to the full impression he would produce upon the reader. The two stories he left unfinished promised far greater
If, indeed, it should not here have been added that Stevenson's theory of life and conduct was not seldom too insistent for free creativeness, for dramatic freedom, breadth and reality.
Now here I humbly think Mr Baldion errs about the cleverness when he criticises Stevenson for the FAUX PAS artistically of resorting to the piratic filibustering and the treasure-seeking at the close of THE MASTER OF BALLANTRAE, he only tells and tells plainly how cleverness took the place of genius there; as indeed it did in not a few cases - certainly in some points in the Dutch escapade in CATRIONA and in not a few in DR JEKYLL AND MR HYDE. The fault of that last story is simply that we seem to hear Stevenson chuckling to himself, "Ah, now, won't they all say at last how clever I am." That too mars the MERRY MEN, whoever wrote them or part wrote them, and PRINCE OTTO would have been irretrievably spoiled by this self- conscious sense of cleverness had it not been for style and artifice. In this incessant "see how clever I am," we have another proof of the abounding youthfulness of R. L. Stevenson. If, as Mr Baildon says (p. 30), he had true child's horror of being put in fine clothes in which one must sit still and be good, PRINCE OTTO remains attractive in spite of some things and because of his fine clothes. Neither Poe nor Hawthorne could have fallen to the piracy, and treasure-hunting of THE MASTER OF BALLANTRAE.
"Far behind Scott in the power of instinctive, irreflective, spontaneous creation of character, Stevenson tells his story with more art and with a firmer grip on his reader." And that is exactly what I, wishing to do all I dutifully can for Stevenson, cannot see. His genius is in nearly all cases pulled up or spoiled by his all too conscious cleverness, and at last we say, "Oh Heavens! if he could and would but let himself go or forget himself what he might achieve." But he doesn't - never does, and therefore remains but a second-rate creator though more and more the stylist and the artist. This is more especially the case at the very points where writers like Scott would have risen and roused all the readers' interest. When Stevenson reaches such points, he is always as though saying "See now how cleverly I'll clear that old and stereotyped style of thing and do something NEW." But there are things in life and human nature, which though they are old are yet ever new, and the true greatness of a writer can never come from evading or looking askance at them or trying to make them out something else than what they really are. No artistic aim or ambition can suffice to stand instead of them or to refine them away. That way lies only cold artifice and frigid lacework, and sometimes Stevenson did go a little too much on this line.
CHAPTER XXI - UNITY IN STEVENSON'S STORIES
THE unity in Stevenson's stories is generally a unity of subjective impression and reminiscence due, in the first place, to his quick, almost abnormal boyish reverence for mere animal courage, audacity, and doggedness, and, in the second place, to his theory of life, his philosophy, his moral view. He produces an artificial atmosphere. Everything then has to be worked up to this - kept really in accordance with it, and he shows great art in the doing of this. Hence, though, a quaint sense of sameness, of artificial atmosphere - at once really a lack of spontaneity and of freedom. He is freest when he pretends to nothing but adventure - when he aims professedly at nothing save to let his characters develop themselves by action. In this respect the most successful of his stories is yet TREASURE ISLAND, and the least successful perhaps CATRIONA, when just as the ambitious aim compels him to pause in incident, the first-person form creates a cold stiffness and artificiality alien to the full impression he would produce upon the reader. The two stories he left unfinished promised far greater