Robert Louis Stevenson [65]
its confidences every time he passed it.' I remember that George Sala, who was certainly under no illusion as to his own personal aspect, made public confession of an identical foible. Mr Henley may not have an equal affection for the looking-glass, but he is a very poor and unimaginative reader who does not see him gloating over the god-like proportions of the shadow he sends sprawling over his own page. I make free to say that a more self-conscious person than Mr Henley does not live. 'The best and most interesting part of Stevenson's life will never get written - even by me,' says Mr Henley.
"There is one curious little mark of animus, or one equally curious affectation - I do not profess to know which, and it is most probably a compound of the two - in Mr Henley's guardedly spiteful essay which asks for notice. The dead novelist signed his second name on his title-pages and his private correspondence 'Louis.' Mr Henley spells it 'Lewis.' Is this intended to say that Stevenson took an ornamenting liberty with his own baptismal appellation? If so, why not say the thing and have done with it? Or is it one of Mr Henley's wilful ridiculosities? It seems to stand for some sort of meaning, and to me, at least, it offers a jarring hint of small spitefulness which might go for nothing if it were not so well borne out by the general tone of Mr Henley's article. It is a small matter enough, God knows, but it is precisely because it is so very small that it irritates."
CHAPTER XXVI - HERO-VILLAINS
IN truth, it must indeed be here repeated that Stevenson for the reason he himself gave about DEACON BRODIE utterly fails in that healthy hatred of "fools and scoundrels" on which Carlyle somewhat incontinently dilated. Nor does he, as we have seen, draw the line between hero and villain of the piece, as he ought to have done; and, even for his own artistic purposes, has it too much all on one side, to express it simply. Art demands relief from any one phase of human nature, more especially of that phase, and even from what is morbid or exceptional. Admitting that such natures, say as Huish, the cockney, in the EBB-TIDE on the one side, and Prince Otto on the other are possible, it is yet absolutely demanded that they should not stand ALONE, but have their due complement and balance present in the piece also to deter and finally to tell on them in the action. If "a knave or villain," as George Eliot aptly said, is but a fool with a circumbendibus, this not only wants to be shown, but to have that definite human counterpart and corrective; and this not in any indirect and perfunctory way, but in a direct and effective sense. It is here that Stevenson fails - fails absolutely in most of his work, save the very latest - fails, as has been shown, in THE MASTER OF BALLANTRAE, as it were almost of perverse and set purpose, in lack of what one might call ethical decision which causes him to waver or seem to waver and wobble in his judgment of his characters or in his sympathy with them or for them. Thus he fails to give his readers the proper cue which was his duty both as man and artist to have given. The highest art and the lowest are indeed here at one in demanding moral poise, if we may call it so, that however crudely in the low, and however artistically and refinedly in the high, vice should not only not be set forth as absolutely triumphing, nor virtue as being absolutely, outwardly, and inwardly defeated. It is here the same in the melodrama of the transpontine theatre as in the tragedies of the Greek dramatists and Shakespeare. "The evening brings a' 'hame'" and the end ought to show something to satisfy the innate craving (for it is innate, thank Heaven! and low and high alike in moments of ELEVATED IMPRESSION, acknowledge it and bow to it) else there can scarce be true DENOUEMENT and the sense of any moral rectitude or law remain as felt or acknowledged in human nature or in the Universe itself.
Stevenson's toleration and constant sermonising
"There is one curious little mark of animus, or one equally curious affectation - I do not profess to know which, and it is most probably a compound of the two - in Mr Henley's guardedly spiteful essay which asks for notice. The dead novelist signed his second name on his title-pages and his private correspondence 'Louis.' Mr Henley spells it 'Lewis.' Is this intended to say that Stevenson took an ornamenting liberty with his own baptismal appellation? If so, why not say the thing and have done with it? Or is it one of Mr Henley's wilful ridiculosities? It seems to stand for some sort of meaning, and to me, at least, it offers a jarring hint of small spitefulness which might go for nothing if it were not so well borne out by the general tone of Mr Henley's article. It is a small matter enough, God knows, but it is precisely because it is so very small that it irritates."
CHAPTER XXVI - HERO-VILLAINS
IN truth, it must indeed be here repeated that Stevenson for the reason he himself gave about DEACON BRODIE utterly fails in that healthy hatred of "fools and scoundrels" on which Carlyle somewhat incontinently dilated. Nor does he, as we have seen, draw the line between hero and villain of the piece, as he ought to have done; and, even for his own artistic purposes, has it too much all on one side, to express it simply. Art demands relief from any one phase of human nature, more especially of that phase, and even from what is morbid or exceptional. Admitting that such natures, say as Huish, the cockney, in the EBB-TIDE on the one side, and Prince Otto on the other are possible, it is yet absolutely demanded that they should not stand ALONE, but have their due complement and balance present in the piece also to deter and finally to tell on them in the action. If "a knave or villain," as George Eliot aptly said, is but a fool with a circumbendibus, this not only wants to be shown, but to have that definite human counterpart and corrective; and this not in any indirect and perfunctory way, but in a direct and effective sense. It is here that Stevenson fails - fails absolutely in most of his work, save the very latest - fails, as has been shown, in THE MASTER OF BALLANTRAE, as it were almost of perverse and set purpose, in lack of what one might call ethical decision which causes him to waver or seem to waver and wobble in his judgment of his characters or in his sympathy with them or for them. Thus he fails to give his readers the proper cue which was his duty both as man and artist to have given. The highest art and the lowest are indeed here at one in demanding moral poise, if we may call it so, that however crudely in the low, and however artistically and refinedly in the high, vice should not only not be set forth as absolutely triumphing, nor virtue as being absolutely, outwardly, and inwardly defeated. It is here the same in the melodrama of the transpontine theatre as in the tragedies of the Greek dramatists and Shakespeare. "The evening brings a' 'hame'" and the end ought to show something to satisfy the innate craving (for it is innate, thank Heaven! and low and high alike in moments of ELEVATED IMPRESSION, acknowledge it and bow to it) else there can scarce be true DENOUEMENT and the sense of any moral rectitude or law remain as felt or acknowledged in human nature or in the Universe itself.
Stevenson's toleration and constant sermonising