ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON BY G. K. CHESTERTON
NEW YORK DODD, MEAD & COMPANY 1928
COPYRIGHT, 1928 By DODD, MEAD AND COMPANY, INC.
PRINTED IN U. S. A.
MANUFACTURED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA BY THE VAIL-BALLOU PRESS, INC., BINGHAMTON, N. Y.
CONTENTS
CHAPTER
I “THE MYTH OF STEVENSON” II IN THE COUNTRY OF SKELT III YOUTH AND EDINBURGH IV THE REACTION TO ROMANCE V THE SCOTTISH STORIES VI THE STYLE OF STEVENSON VII EXPERIMENT AND RANGE VIII THE LIMITS OF A CRAFT IX THE PHILOSOPHY OF GESTURE X THE MORAL OF STEVENSON
CHAPTER I
“THE MYTH OF STEVENSON”
IN this brief study of Stevenson I propose to follow a somewhat unusual course; or to sketch what may be considered a rather eccentric outline. It can only be justified in practice; and I have a healthy fear that my practice will not justify it. Nevertheless, I have not adopted it without considerable thought, and even doubt, about the best way of dealing with a real and practical problem. So before it collapses completely in practice, I will give myself the triumph and the joy of justifying it in principle.
The difficulty arises thus. In the great days of Stevenson critics had begun to be ashamed of being critics, and of giving to their ancient function the name of criticism. It was the fashion to publish a book that was a bundle of reviews and to call it “Appreciations.” But the world advances; and if that sort of book is published now, it might well bear the general title of “Depreciations.” Stevenson has suffered more than most from this new fashion of minimising and finding fault; and some energetic and successful writers have thrown themselves into the business almost with the eagerness of stockbrokers, bent on making a slump instead of a boom in Stevenson Stock. It may be questioned whether we need welcome the bear any more than the bull in the china-shop of elegant English letters. Others seem to make quite a hobby of proving a particular writer to be overrated. They write long and laborious articles, full of biographical detail and bitter commentary, in order to show that the subject is unworthy of attention; and write pages upon Stevenson to prove that he is not worth writing about. Neither their motives nor their methods are very clear or satisfactory. If it be true that all swans are geese to the discriminating eye of the scientific ornithologist, it hardly suffices to explain so long or so fatiguing a wild-goose chase.
But it is true that, in a sense more general than that of these rather irritable individuals, such a reaction does exist. And it is a reaction against Stevenson, or at least against Stevensonians. Perhaps it would be most correct to call it a reaction against Stevensoniana. And let me say at this early stage that I heartily agree that there has been far too much Stevensoniana. In one sense, indeed, everything about anybody so interesting as Stevenson is interesting. In one sense, everything about everybody is interesting. But not everybody can interest everybody else: and it is well to know an author is loved, but not to publish all the love-letters. Sometimes we only had to endure that most awful and appalling tragedy: a truth told once too often. Sometimes we heard Stevensonian sentiments repeated in violation of all Stevensonian rules. For of all things he hated dilution: and loved to take language neat, like a liqueur. In short, it was overdone; it was too noisy and yet all on one note; above all, it was too incessant and too prolonged. As I say, there were a variety of causes, which it would be unnecessary and sometimes unamiable to discuss. There was perhaps something in it of the very virtue of Stevenson; he was tolerant of many societies and interested in many men; and there was nothing to ward off the direst results of the men being interested in him. Especially after he was dead, one person after another turned up and wrote a book about meeting Stevenson on a steamboat or in a restaurant; and it is not surprising that such book-makers began to look as vulgar as bookies. There was perhaps something in it of the old joke of Johnson: that the Scots are in a conspiracy to praise each other. It was often because the Scots are secret sentimentalists and cannot always keep the secret. Their interest in a story so brilliant and in some ways so pathetic was perfectly natural and human; but for all that, their interest was overdone. It was sometimes, I regret to say, because the interest might fairly be called a vested interest. Anyhow, any number of things happened to combine to vulgarise the thing; but vulgarising a thing does not really make it vulgar.
Now Stevenson’s life was really what we call picturesque; partly because he saw everything in pictures; and partly because a chapter of accidents did really attach him to very picturesque places. He was born on the high terraces of the noblest of northern cities: in the family mansion in Edinburgh in 1850; he was the son of a house of highly respected architects of lighthouses; and nothing could be more really romantic than such a legend of men laboriously lifting the star-crowned towers of the sea. He failed to follow the family tradition, however, for various reasons; he was blighted with ill-health and a taste for art; the latter sent him to pick up picturesque tricks and poses in the art colony of Barbizon; the former very soon sent him southward into warmer and warmer climates; and it so happens as he himself remarked, that the countries to which we are sent when health deserts us have a magical and rather mocking beauty. At one time he had paid a sort of vagabond visit to America, crossing the ugly plains that lead to the abrupt beauty of California, that promised land. He described it in the studies called Across the Plain: a work vaguely unsatisfying both to writer and reader. I think it records the subconscious blank and sense of bewilderment felt by every true European on first seeing the very light and landscape of America. The shock of negation was in his case truly unnatural. He almost wrote a dull book. But there is another reason for noting this exception here.
This book makes no pretence of being even an outline of the life of Stevenson. In his particular case I deliberately omit such an outline, because I find that it has cut across and confused the very sharp and lucid outline of his art. But indeed in any case it would be very difficult to tell the tale with truth without telling it in detail, and in rather bewildering detail. The first thing that strikes us, on a rapid survey of his life and letters, is his innumerable changes of domicile, especially in his early days. If his friends followed the example he professes to set, in the matter of Mr. Michael Finsbury, and refused to learn more than one address for one friend, he must have left his correspondence very far behind indeed. His wanderings in Western Europe would appear on the map as much wilder as well as wider than the “probable course of David Balfour’s wanderings” in Western Scotland. If we started out to tell his story thus, we should have to note how he went first to Mentone and then back again to Edinburgh and then to Fontainebleau and then to the Highlands and then to Fontainebleau again and then to Davos in the mountains, and so on; a zigzag pilgrimage impossible to compress except in a larger biography. But all or most of it is covered by one generalisation. This navigation chart was really a hospital chart. Its jagged mountains represented temperatures; or at least climates. The whole story of Stevenson is conditioned by a certain complexity, which a tenderness for the English language will restrain us from calling a complex. It was a sort of paradox, by which he was at once more and less protected than other men; like somebody travelling the wildest roads of the world in a covered waggon. He went where he did partly because he was an adventurer and partly because he was an invalid. By that sort of limping agility, he may be said to have seen at once too little and too much. He was perhaps a natural traveller; but he was not a normal traveller. Nobody ever did treat him as quite normal; which is the truth hidden in the falsehood of those who sneer at his childishness as that of a spoilt child. He was courageous; and yet he had to be shielded against two things at once, his weakness and his courage. But his picture of himself as a vagabond with blue fingers on the winter road is avowedly an ideal picture; it was exactly that sort of freedom that he could never have. He could only be carried from sight to sight; or even from adventure to adventure. Indeed there is here a curious aptness in the quaint simplicity of his childish rhyme that ran, “My bed is like a little boat.” Through all his varied experiences his bed was a boat and his boat was a bed. Panoramas of tropic palm and Californian orange-grove passed over that moving couch like the long nightmare of the nursery walls. But his real courage was not so much turned outwards to the drama of the boat as inwards to the drama of the bed. Nobody knew better than he did that nothing is more terrible than a bed; since it is always waiting to be a deathbed.
Broadly speaking, therefore, his biography would consist of journeys hither and thither, with a donkey in the Cevennes, with a baronet on the French canals; on a sledge in Switzerland or in a bathchair at Bournemouth. But they were all, in one way or another, related to the problem of his health as well as to the cheerfulness of his curiosity. Now of all human things the search for health is the most unhealthy. And it is truly a great glory to Stevenson that he, almost alone among men, could go on pursuing his bodily health without once losing his mental health. As soon as he came to any place, he lost no time in finding a new and better reason for having come there. It might be a child or a sonnet, a flirtation or the plan of a story; but he made that the real reason; and not the unhealthy reason of health. Nevertheless, there generally had been, somewhere in the background, some suggestion of the reason of health; as there was in that last great journey to his final home in the South Seas.
The one real break, I suspect, in this curious double process of protection and risk, was his break-away to America, which arose partly at least in connection with the matter of his marriage. It seemed to his friends and family, not so much like the conduct of an invalid who had done a bolt from the hospital, as the conduct of a lunatic unaccountably loose from the asylum. In truth, the voyage struck them as less mad than the marriage. As this is not a biographical study, I need not go deeply into the delicate disputes about that business; but it was admittedly at least unconventional. All that matters to the argument here is that, while there was much in it that was even noble, it was not normal. It was not love as it should come to youth: it is no disrespect to either to say that in both, psychologically speaking, there was an element of patching up as well as of binding together. Stevenson had met, first in Paris and later in America, an American lady married to a seemingly somewhat unsatisfactory American gentleman, against whom she took proceedings for divorce. Stevenson at the same time precipitately crossed the seas and in some sense pursued her to California; I suppose with some vague idea of being in at the death; and indeed he was very nearly in at his own. The escapade brought on him one of the worst and sharpest of his attacks of illness; the lady, being on the spot, naturally threw herself into nursing him; and as soon as he could stand on two rickety legs they were married. It caused consternation to his family, who were however really reconciled afterwards, it would seem, by the personal magnetism of his foreign and almost exotic bride. Certainly in her society his literary work went with a renewed swing and even regularity; and the rest of his story is practically the story of his important works; varied by his, if possible, still more important friendships. There was illness, in which, it should be said, it was often a case of two invalids nursing each other. Then came the decision to fall back on the secure climate of the Pacific Islands; which led to his taking up his last station at Vailima on the island of Samoa: in a coloured archipelago which our cheerful forefathers might have described as the Cannibal Islands, but which Stevenson was more disposed to describe as the Islands of the Blest. There he lived as happily as can an exile who loves his country and his friends, free at least of all the daily dangers of his lung trouble; and there he died very suddenly, at the age of forty-four, the beloved patriarch of a little white and brown community, to whom he was known as Tusitala or the Teller of Tales.
That is the main outline of the actual biography of Robert Louis Stevenson; and from the time when he clambered as a boy among the crags and castellations of the Painted Hill, looking across the islets of the Forth, to the time when tall brown barbarians, crowned with red flowers, bore him on their spears to the peak of their sacred mountain, the spirit of this artist had been permitted to inhabit, and as it were to haunt, the beautiful places of the earth. To the last he had tasted that beauty with a burning sensibility; and it is no joke, in his case, to say that he would have enjoyed coming to his own funeral. Of course, even this generalisation is too much of a simplification. He was not, as we shall later have occasion to note, unacquainted with sombre nor, alas, with sordid surroundings. Oscar Wilde said with some truth that Stevenson might have produced yet richer and more purple romances if he had always lived in Gower Street; and he was certainly one of the very few who have managed to feel fierce and adventurous at Bournemouth. But broadly speaking, it is true that the outline of his life was romantic; and was therefore perhaps too easily turned into a romance. He himself deliberately turned it into a romance; but not all those romancing were such good romancers as he. So the romance tended to turn into mere repetition and gossip; and the romantic figure faded into journalism as the figure of Robin Hood faded into endless penny dreadfuls or schoolboy serials; as the figure of Micawber was multiplied and cheapened into Ally Sloper. Then came the reaction; a reaction which I should call rather excusable than justifiable. But that reaction is the problem in any Popular treatment of him to-day.
Now if I were to follow here the natural course of such a volume as this, I should have to begin by telling slowly and systematically the tale that I have just told rapidly and briefly. I should have to give a chapter to his childhood, to his favourite aunt and his yet more beloved nurse, and to all the things much more clearly recorded in A Child’s Garden of Verses. I should have to give a chapter to his youth, his differences with his father, his struggles with his malady, his greater struggles about his marriage; working up slowly through the whole length of the book to the familiar picture of so many magazines and memoirs; the slender semi-tropical Tusitala with his long brown hair and long olive face and long strange slits of eyes, sitting clad in white or crowned with garlands and telling tales to all the tribes of men. Now the misfortune of all this would be that it would amount to saying, through a slow series of chapters, that there is nothing more to be said about Stevenson except what has been said a thousand times. It would be to suggest that Stevenson’s serious fame does still really depend on this string of picturesque accidents; and that there is really nothing to be told of him, except that he wore long hair in the Savile Club or light clothes in the Samoan mountains. His life really was romantic; but to repeat that romance is like reprinting the Scarlet Pimpernel or offering the world an entirely new portrait of Rudolph Valentino. It is against this repetition that the reaction has set in; perhaps wrongly but certainly strongly. And to spin it out through the whole of this book would be to give the impression (which I should mildly resent) that this book is only the thousandth unnecessary volume of Stevensoniana. However I told his story in detail, though it were with all the sympathy I feel, I could not avoid that suggestion of a sort of jaded journalism. Stevenson’s picturesque attitude and career are rather in his way at this moment; not for me, because I like the picturesque, but for this new pose which may be called the pose of the prosaic. To these unfortunate realists, to say that there were all these romantic things about him is only another way of saying that there was nothing in him. And there was a very great deal in him. I am driven to adopt some other method of bringing it out.
When I come to describing it, I find it is perhaps even more difficult to describe it than to do it. But something of this sort is what I propose to do. Loudon Dodd, in whom there is much of Louis Stevenson, says very truly in The Wrecker, that for the artist the external result is always a fizzle: his eyes are turned inward: “he lives for a state of mind.” I mean to attempt the conjectural description of certain states of mind, with the books that were the “external expression” of them. If for the artist his art is a fizzle, his life is often far more of a fizzle: it is even far more of a fiction. It is the one of his works in which he tells least of the truth. Stevenson’s was more real than most, because more romantic than most. But I prefer the romances, which were still more real. I mean that I think the wanderings of Balfour more Stevensonian than the wanderings of Stevenson: that the duel of Jekyll and Hyde is more illuminating than the quarrel of Stevenson and Henley: and that the true private life is to be sought not in Samoa but in Treasure Island; for where the treasure is, there is the heart also.
In short, I propose to review his books with illustrations from his life; rather than to write his life with illustrations from his books. And I do it deliberately, not because his life was not as interesting as any book; but because the habit of talking too much about his life has already actually led to thinking far too little of his literature. His ideas are being underrated, precisely because they are not being studied separately and seriously as ideas. His art is being underrated, precisely because he is not accorded even the fair advantages of Art for Art’s Sake. There is indeed a queer irony about the fate of the men of that age, who delighted in that axiom. They claimed judgement as artists, not men; and they are really remembered as men much more than they are remembered as artists. More men know the Whistlerian anecdotes than the Whistlerian etchings; and poor Wilde will live in history as immoral rather than unmoral. But there is a real reason for studying intrinsic intellectual values in the case of Stevenson; and it need not be said that exactly where the modern maxim would be useful, it is never used. The new criticism of Stevenson is still a criticism of Stevenson rather than of Stevenson’s work; it is always a personal criticism, and often, I think, rather a spiteful criticism. It is simply nonsense, for instance, for a distinguished living novelist to suggest that Stevenson’s correspondence is a thin stream of selfish soliloquy devoid of feeling for anybody but himself. It teems with lively expressions of longing for particular people and places; it breaks out everywhere with delight into that broad Scots idiom which, as Stevenson truly said elsewhere, gives a special freedom to all the terms of affection. Stevenson might be lying, of course, though I know not why a busy author should lie at such length for nothing. But I cannot see how any man could say any more to suggest his dependence on the society of friends. These are positive facts of personality that can never be proved or disproved. I never knew Stevenson; but I knew very many of his favourite friends and correspondents. I knew Henry James and William Archer; I have still the honour of knowing Sir James Barrie and Sir Edmund Gosse. And anybody who knows them, even most slightly and superficially, must know they are not the men to be in confidential correspondence for years with a silly, greedy and exacting egoist without seeing through him; or to be bombarded with boring autobiographies without being bored. But it seems rather a pity that such critics should still be called upon to hunt up Stevenson’s letter-bag, when they might well think it time to form some conclusions about Stevenson’s place in letters. Anyhow, I propose on the present occasion to be so perverse as to interest myself in literature when dealing with a literary man; and to be especially interested not only in the literature left by the man but in the philosophy inhering in the literature. And I am especially interested in a certain story, which was indeed the story of his life, but not exactly the story in his biography. It was an internal and spiritual story; and the stages of it are to be found rather in his stories than in his external acts. It is told much better in the difference between Treasure Island and The Story of a Lie, or in the difference between A Child’s Garden of Verses and Markheim or Olalla, than in any detailed account of his wrangles with his father or the fragmentary love-affairs of his youth. For it seems to me that there is a moral to the art of Stevenson (if the shades of Wilde and Whistler will endure the challenge), and that it is one with a real bearing on the future of European culture and the hope that is to guide our children. Whether I shall be able to draw out this moral and make it sufficiently large and clear, I know as little as the reader does.
Nevertheless, at this stage of the attempt I will say one thing. I have, in a sense, a sort of theory about Stevenson; a view of him which, right or wrong, concerns his life and work as a whole. But it is perhaps less exclusively personal than much of the interest that has been naturally taken in his personality. It is certainly the very contrary of the attacks which have commonly, and especially recently, been made on that personality. Thus the critics are fond of suggesting that he was nothing if not self-conscious; that the whole of his significance came from self-consciousness. I believe that the one really great and important work which he did for the world was done quite unconsciously. Many have blamed him for posing; some have blamed him for preaching. The matter which mainly interests me is not merely his pose, if it was a pose, but the large landscape or background against which he was posing; which he himself only partly realised, but which goes to make up a rather important historical picture. And though it is true that he sometimes preached, and preached very well, I am by no means certain that the thing which he preached was the same as the thing which he taught. Or, to put it another way, the thing which he could teach was not quite so large as the thing which we can learn. Or again, many of them declare that he was only a nine days’ wonder, a passing figure that happened to catch the eye and even affect the fashion; and that with that fashion he will be forgotten. I believe that the lesson of his life will only be seen after time has revealed the full meaning of all our present tendencies; I believe it will be seen from afar off like a vast plan or maze traced out on a hillside; perhaps traced by one who did not even see the plan while he was making the tracks. I believe that his travels and doublings and returns reveal an idea, and even a doctrine. Yet it was perhaps a doctrine in which he did not believe, or at any rate did not believe that he believed. In other words, I think his significance will stand out more strongly in relation to larger problems which are beginning to press once more upon the mind of man; but of which many men are still largely unaware in our time, and were almost entirely unaware in his. But any contribution to the solution of those problems will be remembered; and he made a very great contribution, probably greater than he knew. Lastly, these same critics do not hesitate, in many cases, to accuse him flatly of being insincere. I should say that nobody, so openly fond of play-acting as he was, could possibly be insincere. But it is more to my purpose now to say that his relation to the huge half-truth that he carried was in its very simplicity a mark of truthfulness. For he had the splendid and ringing sincerity to testify, in a voice like a trumpet, to a truth that he did not understand.
CHAPTER II
IN THE COUNTRY OF SKELT
EVERY now and then the eye is riveted, in reading current criticism, by some statement so astonishingly untrue, or even contrary to the fact, that it seems as if a man walking down the street were suddenly standing on his head. It is all the more noticeable when the critic really has a strong head to stand on. One of the ablest of the younger critics, whose studies in other subjects I have warmly admired, wrote in our invaluable London Mercury a study of Stevenson; or what purported to be a study of Stevenson. And the chief thing he said, indeed almost the only thing he said, was that the thought of Stevenson instantly throws us back to the greater example of Edgar Allan Poe; that both were pallid and graceful figures “making wax flowers,” as somebody said; and of course the earlier and greater had the advantage of the later and the less. In fact, the critic treated Stevenson as the shadow of Poe; which may not unfairly be called the shadow of a shade. He almost hinted that, for those who had read Poe, it was hardly worth while to read Stevenson. And indeed I could almost suspect he had taken his own advice; and never read a line of Stevenson in his life.
If a man were to say that Maeterlinck derives so directly from Dickens that it is difficult to draw the line between them, I should be momentarily at a loss to catch his meaning. If he were to say that Walt Whitman was so close a copyist of Pope that it is hardly worth while to read the copy, I should not at once seize the clue. But I should think these comparisons rather more close, if anything, than the comparison between Stevenson and Poe. Dickens did not confine himself to comic subjects so much as Poe did to tragic ones; and an Essay on Optimism might couple the names of Pope and Whitman. It might also include the name of Stevenson; but it would hardly beam and sparkle with the name of Poe. The contrast, however, is much deeper than labels or the commonplaces of controversy. It is much deeper than formal divisions between what is funny and what is serious. It is concerned with something which it is now fashionable in drawing-rooms to call psychological; but which those who would as soon talk Latin as Greek still prefer to call spiritual. It is not necessarily what the newspapers would call moral; but that is only because it is more moral than most modern morality.
When Stevenson was known as Stennis, by Parisian art students struggling with his name, it was the hour of Art for Art’s Sake. Painting was to be impersonal, though painters (like Whistler) were sometimes perhaps a little personal. But they all insisted that every picture is as impersonal as a pattern. They ought to have insisted that every pattern is as personal as a picture. Whether or no we see faces in the carpet, we ought to see a mind in the carpet; and in fact there is a mind in every scheme of ornament. There is as emphatically a morality expressed in Babylonian architecture or Baroque architecture as if it were plastered all over with Biblical texts. Now in the same manner there is at the back of every artist’s mind something like a pattern or a type of architecture. The original quality in any man of imagination is imagery. It is a thing like the landscapes of his dreams; the sort of world he would wish to make or in which he would wish to wander; the strange flora and fauna of his own secret planet; the sort of thing that he likes to think about. This general atmosphere, and pattern or structure of growth, governs all his creations however varied; and because he can in this sense create a world, he is in this sense a creator; the image of God. Now everybody knows what was in this sense the atmosphere and architecture of Poe. Dark wine, dying lamps, drugging odours, a sense of being stifled in curtains of black velvet, a substance which is at once utterly black and unfathomably soft, all carried with them a sense of indefinite and infinite decay. The word infinite is not itself used indefinitely. The point of Poe is that we feel that everything is decaying, including ourselves; faces are already growing featureless like those of lepers; roof-trees are rotting from root to roof; one great grey fungus as vast as a forest is sucking up life rather than giving it forth; mirrored in stagnant pools like lakes of poison which yet fade without line or frontier into the swamp. The stars are not clean in his sight; but are rather more worlds made for worms. And this corruption is increased, by an intense imaginative genius, with the addition of a satin surface of luxury and even a terrible sort of comfort. “Purple cushions that the lamplight gloated o’er” is in the spirit of his brother Baudelaire who wrote of divans profonds commes les tombeaux. This dark luxury has something almost liquid about it. Its laxity seems to be betraying more vividly how all these things are being sucked away from us, down a slow whirlpool more like a moving swamp. That is the atmosphere of Edgar Allan Poe; a sort of rich rottenness of decomposition, with something thick and narcotic in the very air. It is idle to describe what so darkly and magnificently describes itself. But perhaps the shortest and best way of describing that artistic talent is to say that Stevenson’s is exactly the opposite.
The first fact about the imagery of Stevenson is that all his images stand out in very sharp outline; and are, as it were, all edges. It is something in him that afterwards attracted him to the abrupt and angular black and white of woodcuts. It is to be seen from the first, in the way in which his eighteenth-century figures stand up against the skyline, with their cutlasses and cocked hats. The very words carry the sound and the significance. It is as if they were cut out with cutlasses; as was that unforgettable chip or wedge that was hacked by the blade of Billy Bones out of the wooden sign of the “Admiral Benbow.” That sharp indentation of the wooden square remains as a sort of symbolic shape expressing Stevenson’s type of literary attack; and if all the colours should fade from me and the scene of all that romance grow dark, I think that black wooden sign with a piece bitten out of it would be the last shape that I should see. It is no mere pun to say that it is the best of his woodcuts. Normally, anyhow, the scene is the very reverse of dark, and certainly the very reverse of indefinite. Just as all the form can best be described as clean-cut, so all the colour is conspicuously clear and bright. That is why such figures are so often seen standing against the sea. Everybody who has been at the seaside has noted how sharp and highly coloured, like painted caricatures, appear even the most ordinary figures as they pass in profile to and fro against the blue dado of the sea. There is something also of that hard light that falls full and pale upon ships and open shores; and even more, it need not be said, of a certain salt and acrid clearness in the air. But it is notably the case in the outlines of these maritime figures. They are all edges and they stand by the sea, that is the edge of the world.
This is but a rough experimental method; but it will be found useful to make the experiment, of calling up all the Stevensonian scenes that recur most readily to the memory; and noting this bright hard quality in shape and hue. It will make it seem all the stranger that any ornithologist could have confused the raven of Poe with the parrot of Long John Silver. The parrot was scarce more reputable; but he was a bird from the lands of bright plumage and blue skies, where the other bird was a mere shadow making darkness more dark. It is even worth noting that when the more modern pirates of The Wrecker carried away with them a caged bird, it had to be a canary. It is specially observed when Stevenson is dealing with things which many of his contemporaries made merely shadowy or unfathomably mysterious; such as the Highland hills and all the lost kingdoms of the Gael. His Highland tales have everything Scotch except Scotch mist. At that time, and even before, writers of the school of Fiona Macleod were already treating such peoples entirely as the Children of the Mist. But there is very little mist on the mountains of Stevenson. There is no Celtic twilight about his Celts. Alan Breck Stewart had no yearning for any delicate vapour to veil his bright silver buttons or his bright blue French coat. There was hardly a cloud in the sky upon that day of doom, when Glenure dropped dead in the sunshine; and he did not have red hair for nothing. Stevenson is even moved to mention that the servant behind him was laden with lemons; because lemons are bright yellow. This sort of making of a picture may not be conscious, but it is none the less characteristic. Of course I do not mean literally that all the scenes in any novel could have the same scheme of colour, or occur at the same time of day. There are exceptions to the rule; but even these will generally be found to be exceptions that prove the rule. A time of A Lodging for the Night is not unnaturally at night; but even in that nightmare of winter in mediaeval Paris the mind’s eye is really filled rather with the whiteness of snow than the blackness of darkness. It is against the snow that we see the flaming mediaeval figures; and especially that memorable figure who (like Campbell of Glenure) had no right to have red hair when he was dead. The hair is like a scarlet splash of blood crying for vengeance; but I doubt whether the doomed gentleman in Poe’s poetry would have been allowed to have red hair even when he was alive. In the same way, it would be easy to answer in detail, by finding some description of night in the works of Stevenson; but it would never be the night that broods eternally on the works of Poe. It might be said, for instance, that there are few more vivid or typical scenes in the Stevensonian tales than that of the duel at midnight in The Master of Ballantrae. But there again the exception proves the rule; the description insists not on the darkness of night but on the hardness of winter, the “windless stricture of the frost”; the candles that stand as straight as the swords; the candle-flames that seem almost as cold as the stars. I have spoken of the double meaning of a woodcut; this was surely, in the same double sense, a steel engraving. A steely cold stiffens and steadies that tingling play of steel; and that not only materially but morally. The House of Durrisdeer does not fall after the fashion of The House of Ussher. There is in that murderous scene I know not what that is clean and salt and sane; and, in spite of all, the white frost gives to the candles a sort of cold purification as of Candlemas. But the point is, at the moment, that when we say this deed was done at night, we do not mean that it was done in the dark. There is a sense of exactitude and emphatic detail that belongs entirely to the day. Here indeed the two authors so strangely compared might almost have conspired in advance against the critic who compared them: as when Poe’s ideal detective prefers to think in the dark, and therefore puts up the shutters even during the day. Dupin brings the outer darkness into the parlour, while Durie carries the candle-light into the forest.
These images are not fancies or accidents: their spirit runs through the whole scene. The same incident, for instance, shows all the author’s love of sharp edges and cutting or piercing action. It is supremely typical that he made Mrs. Durie thrust the sword up to the hilt into the frozen ground. It is true that afterwards (perhaps under the sad eye of Mr. Archer and the sensitive realists) he consented to withdraw this as “an exaggeration to stagger Hugo.” But it is much more significant that it did not originally stagger Stevenson. It was the very vital gesture of all his works that that sharp blade should cleave that stiff clay. It was true in many other senses, touching mortal clay and the sword of the spirit. But I am speaking now of the gesture of the craftsman, like that of a man cutting wood. This man had an appetite for cutting it clean. He never committed a murder without making a clean job of it.
Whence did that spirit come; and how did the story of it begin? That is the right and real way of beginning the story of Stevenson. If I say that it began with cutting figures out of cardboard, it might sound like a parody of the pedantic fancies about juvenile psychology and early education. But perhaps it will be better even to run the horrid risk of being mistaken for a modern educationist, rather than to repeat the too familiar phrases by which the admirer of Stevenson has got himself described as a sentimentalist. Too much has been talked in this connection about the Soul of the Child or the Peter Pan of Samoa; not because it is untrue, but because it is a mistake to tell a truth too often, so that it loses its freshness; especially when it is the truth about how to remain fresh. Many are perhaps rather tired of hearing about it; though they would never be tired of having it. I have therefore deliberately approached the matter by another road; and even by a road running backwards. Instead of talking first about Cummy and the nursery anecdotes of Master Louis (at the risk of making a really graceful figure grow ridiculous by mere repetition, in the eyes of multitudes of greatly inferior people) I have tried to take the stock and normal of his work first, and then note that it really does date in a special sense from his childhood; and that it is not sentimental and not senseless and not irrelevant to say so.
If therefore we ask, “Where does the story of Stevenson really start; where does his special style or spirit begin and where do they come from; how did he get, or begin to get, the thing that made him different from the man next-door?” I have no doubt about the answer. He got them from the mysterious Mr. Skelt of the Juvenile Drama, otherwise the toy theatre, which of all toys has most of the effect of magic on the mind. Or rather, of course, he got it from the way in which his own individual temper and talent grasped the nature of the game. He has written it all in an excellent essay and at least in one very real sentence of autobiography. “What is the world, what is man and life but what my Skelt has made them?” The psychological interest is rather more special than is conveyed by the common generalisation about the imagination of infancy. It is not merely a question of children’s toys; it is a question of a particular kind of toy, as of a particular kind of talent. It was not quite the same thing, for instance, to buy toy theatres in Edinburgh as it would have been to go to real theatres in London. In that little pasteboard play there might be something of the pantomime; but there was nothing of the dissolving view. The positive outline of everything, so well sketched in his own essay, the hard favour of the heroine, the clumps of vegetation, the clouds rolled up stiff as bolsters—these things meant something to the soul of Stevenson by their very swollen solidity or angular swagger. And it is hardly an exaggeration to say that he spent his life in teaching the world what he had learnt from them. What he learnt from them was very much more than anybody else had ever learnt from them; and that is his teaching and his qualification to teach. But to the last he presented his morality in a series of Moral Emblems which had something in common with those definite outlines and defiant attitudes; and there was never any name for it but his own name of Skeltery.
It was because he loved to see on those lines, and to think in those terms, that all his instinctive images are clear and not cloudy; that he liked a gay patch-work of colour combined with a zigzag energy of action, as quick as the crooked lightning. He loved things to stand out; we might say he loved them to stick out; as does the hilt of a sabre or the feather in a cap. He loved the pattern of crossed swords; he almost loved the pattern of the gallows because it is a clear shape like the cross. And the point is that this pattern still runs through or underneath all his more mature or complex writing; and is never lost even at the moments when he is really tragic or, what is worse, realistic. Even when he mourns as a man, he still rejoices as a child. The men in divers’ helmets like monsters, in the sordid misery of The Ebb-Tide, are still like masks of pantomime goblins against the glowing azure. And James Durie is quite as clear, we might say quite as bright, in his black coat as Alan Breck in his blue one.
Taking such a toy as a type or symbol, we may well say that Stevenson lived inside his toy theatre. It is certain that he lived in an exceptional sense inside his own home; and often, I imagine, inside his own bedroom. It is here that there appears, thus early in his life, that other element that was destined to darken it, often with something like the shadow of death. I know not how far that shadow could sometimes be traced upon the nursery wall. But it is certain that he was at least relatively a delicate or sickly child; and was therefore more thrown back upon that inner imaginative life than if he had been more robust in boyhood. The world inside that home was largely a world of his own; yes, even a world of his own imagining, a thing not so much of firelight as of pictures in the fire. The world outside his home was very different, even for those who shared his home life; and that is a contrast that I shall have occasion to emphasise, when we come to the crisis of his youth. It is enough to note here the paradox that he was to some extent protected by family life even from the heavier traditions of his family. As it did not build lighthouses in the garden pond, so it did not always bring the Kirk into the nursery. He has described how his stern Calvinistic grandfather tolerated in the nursery the wild Arabian fables that he might well have denounced in the pulpit. As even that Edinburgh house defended him from the winter winds of Edinburgh, so it protected him in some degree from the full icy blasts of Puritanism which blew so high in public life. It may have been that he was a sick child; it may have been that he was a spoilt child; but this fact that he was largely left alone with his daydreams, dwelling in that house within a house which is typified by the toy theatre, is a thing to be remembered; for it means much at a later stage.
In this matter of what has been called the Child in R. L. S., I have admitted that there has been far too much talking; but there has been far too little thinking. The thing is a reality; and it does remain as a very considerable problem for the reason, as yet quite unsolved by the modern world, even when most is said about it. We have a mass of testimony from men of every description, from Treherne to Hazlitt, or from Wordsworth to Thackeray, to the psychological fact that the child experiences joys which glow like jewels even in retrospect. None of the normal naturalistic explanations explain that natural fact; and some have suggested that it is indeed a supernatural fact. In the ordinary sense of mental growth, there is no more reason for the child being better than the man than for the tadpole being better than the frog. And the attempts to explain it by physical growth are even weaker. There is a good example of the weakness in one of the essays of Stevenson, who found himself, of course, at the particular modern moment to catch the first fashion and excitement of Darwinism. Speaking of the old Calvinist minister who confessed the gorgeous spell of the Arabian Nights, he suggests that in the brain of the theologian there is still the gambolling ape; the ancestor of man; “probably arboreal.” It marks the security of such science, I may remark, that anthropologists are now saying that he was probably not arboreal. But anyhow, it is a little difficult to see why a man should love the complexity of labyrinthine cities, or wish to ride with the jewelled cohorts of the high princes of Arabia, merely because his relative had once been a hairy beast clambering like a bear on the top of a branching pole. It reminds one of the glorious apology which Stevenson made for having expected that a wealthy man would know a Governor of Christ’s Hospital: “A man with a cold in his head does not necessarily know a rat-catcher; and the connection, as it appears to my humbled and awakened sense, is equally close.”
The connection between the expanding energy of the young monkey and the secret daydreams of the young child is equally close. As a matter of fact, the time when the boy is most full of the energy of a monkey is emphatically not the time when the child is most full of the imaginative pleasures of a poet. These always come at a less vigorous period; they very often come to a less vigorous person. They especially and notably did so in the case of Stevenson; and it is absurd to explain the intensity of an infant who is an invalid by the bodily exuberance of a lad at the time when he is often rather a lout. Stevenson, with all the advantage of his disadvantages, may have lived through the period when everybody has a touch of loutishness. But that uncomfortable period of youth was not the period when the coloured pictures in his mind were most clear; they were much clearer later in the age of self-control and earlier in the age of innocence. The main point to be seized here is that they were coloured pictures of a particular kind. The colours faded, but in a certain sense the forms remained fixed; that is, that though they were slowly discoloured by the light of common day, yet when the lantern was again lit from within, the same magic-lantern slides glowed upon the blank screen. They were still pictures of pirates and red gold and bright blue sea, as they were in his childhood. And this fact is very important in the story of his mind; as we shall see when his mind reverted to them. For the time was to come when he was truly, like Jim Hawkins, to be rescued by a leering criminal with crutch and cutlass from destiny worse than death and men worse than Long John Silver— from the last phase of the enlightened nineteenth century and the leading thinkers of the age.
CHAPTER III
YOUTH AND EDINBURGH
IT is the suggestion of this chapter that when Stevenson first stepped out of his early Edinburgh home, he slipped upon the step. It may have been nothing worse, to begin with, than the ordinary butter-slide of the buffoonery of youth; such buffoonery as makes up the typical Edinburgh tale called The Misadventures of John Nicholson. But that tale alone would suggest that there was something a little greasy or even grimy about the butter. It is an odd story for Stevenson to have written; and no Stevensonian has any particular desire to dwell on those few of his works that might almost have been written by somebody else. But it has a biographical importance that has hardly been properly estimated, even in connection with this rather overworked biography. It is a curiously unlovely and uncomfortable comedy, not even uncomfortable enough to be a tragedy. The hero is not only not heroic, but he is hardly more amusing than attractive; and the fun that is made of him is not only not genial, but is not particularly funny. It is strange that such misadventures should come from the mind that gave us the radiant harlequinade of The Wrong Box. But I mention it here because it is full of a certain atmosphere, into which Stevenson was plunged too abruptly, as I believe, when he passed from boyhood into youth. It is true to call it the atmosphere, or one of the atmospheres of Edinburgh; yet it is the very reverse of so much that we rightly associate with the arid dignity of the Modern Athens. There is something very specially sordid and squalid in the glimpses of low life given in the dissipations of John Nicholson; and something of the same kind comes to us like a gust of gas from the medical students of The Body Snatcher. When I say that this first step of Stevenson led him rather abruptly astray, I do not mean that he did anything half so bad as multitudes of polite persons have done in the most polished centres of civilisation. But I do mean that his city was not, in that particular aspect, very polite or polished or even particularly civilised. And I notice it because it has been noticed too little; and some other things have been noticed too much.
It is an obvious truth that Stevenson was born of a Puritan tradition, in a Presbyterian country, where still rolled the echoes, at least, of the theological thunders of Knox; and where the Sabbath was sometimes more like a day of death than a day of rest. It is easy, only too easy, to apply this by representing Stevenson’s father as a stern old Covenanter who frowned down the gay talents of his son; and such a simplification stands out boldly in black and white. But like many other black and white statements, it is not true; it is not even fair. Old Mr. Stevenson was a Presbyterian and presumably a Puritan, but he was not a Pharisee; and he certainly did not need to be a Pharisee in order to condemn some parts of the conduct of his son. It is probably true that almost any other son might have offended equally; but it is also true that almost any other father would have been equally offended. The son would have been the last to pretend that the faults were all on one side; the only thing that can concern posterity in the matter is certain social conditions which gave to those faults a particular savour, which counted for something even when the faults themselves have been long left behind. And while people have written rather too much about the shadow of the Kirk and the restrictions of a Puritan society, there is something that has not been seen about what may be called the underside of such a Puritan city. There is something strangely ugly and ungracious not merely about the virtues but about the vices, and especially the pleasures, of such a place. It can be felt, as I say, in Stevenson’s own stories and in many other stories about Edinburgh. Blasts of raw whisky come to us on that raw wind: there is sometimes something shrill, like the skirl of the pipes, about Scottish laughter; occasionally something very nearly insane about Scottish intoxication. I will not connect it, as did a friend of mine, with the hypothesis that the heathen Scots originally worshipped demons; but it is probably connected with the same rather savage intensity which gave them their theological thoroughness. Anyhow, it is true that in such a world even temptation itself has something terrifying as well as tempting; and yet something at the same time undignified and flat. It was this that cut across the natural poetic adventure or ambition of a young poet; and gave to the early part of his story a quality of frustration, if not of aberration.
What was the matter with Stevenson, I fancy, in so far as there was ever anything much the matter with him, was that there was too sharp a contrast between the shelter and delicate fancies of his childhood and the sort of world which met him like the wind on the front door-step. It was not merely the contrast between poetry and Puritanism; it was also the contrast between poetry and prose; and prose that was almost repulsively prosaic. He did not believe enough in Puritanism to cling to it; but he did believe very much in a potential poetry of life, and he was bewildered by its apparently impossible position in the world of real living. And his national religion, even if he had believed in his religion as ardently as he believed in his nation, would never have met that particular point at issue.
Puritanism had no idea of purity. We might almost say that there is every other virtue in Puritanism except purity; often including continence, which is quite a different thing from purity. But it has not many images of positive innocence; of the things that are at once white and solid, like the white chalk or white wood which children love. This does not detract at all from the noble Puritan qualities: the republican simplicity, the fighting spirit, the thrift, the logic, the renunciation of luxuries, the resistance to tyrants, the energy and enterprise which have helped to give the Scot his adventurous advantage all over the world. But it is none the less true that there has been in his creed, at best, negative rather than positive purity: the difference between the blank white window and the ivory tower. I know that a Victorian prejudice still regards this interpretation of history by theology as a piece of most distressing bad taste. I also know that this taboo on the main topic of mankind is becoming an intolerable nuisance; and preventing anybody, from the Papist to the atheist, from saying what he really thinks about the most real themes in the world. And I will take the liberty of stating, in spite of the taboo, that it is really relevant here to remember this Puritan defect. It is as much a fact that the Kirk of Stevenson’s country had no cult of the Holy Child, no feast of the Holy Innocents, no tradition of the Little Brothers of St. Francis, nothing that could in any way carry on the childish enthusiasm for simple things, and link it up with a lifelong rule of life— this is as much a fact as that the Quakers are not a good military school or the good Moslem a good wine-taster. Hence it followed that when Stevenson left his home, he shut the door on a house lined with fairy gold, but he came out on a frightful contrast; on temptations at once attractive and repulsive, and terrors that were still depressing even when they were disregarded. The boy in such surroundings is torn by something worse than the dilemma of Tannhäuser. He wonders why he is attracted by repellent things.
I will here make what is a mere guess in the dark; and in a very dark matter of the mind. But I suspect that it was originally out of this chasm of ugly division that there rose that two-headed monster, the mystery of Jekyll and Hyde. There is indeed one peculiarity about that grim grotesque which I have never seen noted anywhere; though I dare say it may have been noted more than once. It will be realised that I am not, alas, so close a student of Stevensoniana as many who seem to think much less of Stevenson. But it seems to me that the story of Jekyll and Hyde, which is presumably presented as happening in London, is all the time very unmistakably happening in Edinburgh. More than one of the characters seem to be pure Scots. Mr. Utterson, the lawyer, is a most unmistakably Scottish lawyer, strictly occupied with Scots Law. No modern English lawyer ever read a book of dry divinity in the evening merely because it was Sunday. Mr. Hyde indeed possesses the cosmopolitan charm that unites all nations; but there is something decidedly Caledonian about Dr. Jekyll; and especially something that calls up that quality in Edinburgh that led an unkind observer (probably from Glasgow) to describe it as “an east-windy, west-endy place.” The particular tone about his respectability, and the horror of mixing his reputation with mortal frailty, belongs to the upper middle classes in solid Puritan communities. But what is especially to the point of the present argument, there is a sense in which that Puritanism is expressed even more in Mr. Hyde than in Dr. Jekyll. The sense of the sudden stink of evil, the immediate invitation to step into stark filth, the abruptness of the alternative between that prim and proper pavement and that black and reeking gutter— all this, though doubtless involved in the logic of the tale, is far too frankly and familiarly offered not to have had some basis in observation and reality. It is not thus that the ordinary young pagan, of warmer climes, conceives the alternative of Christ and Aphrodite. His imagination and half his mind are involved in defending the beauty and dignity of the joy of gods and men. It is not so that Stevenson himself came to talk of such things, when he had felt the shadow of old Athens fall on the pagan side of Paris. I allow for all the necessary horror of the conception of Hyde. But this dingy quality does not belong only to the demon antics of Hyde. It is implied, somehow, in every word about the furtive and embarrassed vices of Jekyll. It is the tragedy of a Puritan town; every bit as much as that black legend which Stevenson loved, in which the walking-stick of Major Weir went walking down the street all by itself. I hope to say something in a moment about the very deep and indeed very just and wise morality that is really involved in that ugly tale. I am only remarking here that the atmosphere and setting of it are those of some tale of stiff hypocrisy in a rigid sect or provincial village; it might be a tale of the Middle West savagely dissected in the Spoon River Anthology. But the point about it is that the human beauty which makes sin most dangerous hardly appears by a hint; this Belial is never graceful or humane; and in this there seems to me to be something suggestive of the inverted order and ugly contrast with which licence presents itself in a world that has frowned on liberty. It is the utterance of somebody who, in the words of Kipling, knew the worst too young; not necessarily in his own act or by his own fault, but by the nature of a system which saw no difference between the worst and the moderately bad. But whatever form the shock of evil might take, I think it jerked him out of the right development of his romantic nature; and was responsible for much that seemed random or belated in his life.
I do not mean to imply that the morality of the story itself has anything of weakness or morbidity; my opinion is very much the other way. Though the fable may seem mad, the moral is very sane; indeed, the moral is strictly orthodox. The trouble is that most of those who mention it do not know the moral, possibly because they have never read the fable. From time to time those anonymous authorities in the newspapers, who dismiss Stevenson with such languid grace, will say that there is something quite cheap and obvious about the idea that one man is really two men and can be divided into the evil and the good. Unfortunately for them, that does not happen to be the idea. The real stab of the story is not in the discovery that the one man is two men; but in the discovery that the two men are one man. After all the diverse wandering and warring of those two incompatible beings, there was still one man born and only one man buried. Jekyll and Hyde have become a proverb and a joke; only it is a proverb read backwards and a joke that nobody really sees. But it might have occurred to the languid critics, as a part of the joke, that the tale is a tragedy; and that this is only another way of saying that the experiment was a failure. The point of the story is not that a man can cut himself off from his conscience, but that he cannot. The surgical operation is fatal in the story. It is an amputation of which both the parts die. Jekyll, even in dying, declares the conclusion of the matter; that the load of man’s moral struggle is bound upon him and cannot be thus escaped. The reason is that there can never be equality between the evil and the good. Jekyll and Hyde are not twin brothers. They are rather, as one of them truly remarks, like father and son. After all, Jekyll created Hyde; Hyde would never have created Jekyll; he only destroyed Jekyll. The notion is not so hackneyed as the critics find it, after Stevenson has found it for them thirty years ago. But Jekyll’s claim is not that it is the first of such experiments in duality; but rather that it must be the last.
Nor do I necessarily admit the technical clumsiness which some have alleged against the tale, merely because I believe that many of its emotions were first experienced in the crude pain of youth. Some have gone into particular detail in order to pick it to pieces; and Mr. E. F. Benson has made the (to me) strange remark that the structure of the story breaks down when Jekyll discovers that his chemical combination was partly accidental and is therefore unrecoverable. The critic says scornfully that it would have done just as well if Jekyll had taken a blue pill. It seems to me odd that any one who seems to know so much about the devil as the author of Colin should fail to recognise the cloven hoof in the cloven spirit called up by the Jekyll experiment. That moment in which Jekyll finds his own formula fail him, through an accident he had never foreseen, is simply the supreme moment in every story of a man buying power from hell; the moment when he finds the flaw in the deed. Such a moment comes to Macbeth and Faustus and a hundred others; and the whole point of it is that nothing is really secure, least of all a Satanist security. The moral is that the devil is a liar, and more especially a traitor; that he is more dangerous to his friends than his foes; and, with all deference to Mr. Benson, it is not a shallow or unimportant moral. But although the story ultimately emerged as a gargoyle very carefully graven by a mature master-craftsman, and was moreover a gargoyle of the greatest spiritual edification, eminently suited to be stuck on to the most sacred edifice, my point for the moment is that the stone of which it was made was originally found, I think, by Stevenson as a boy, kicking about the street, not to mention the gutter. In other words, he did not need to leave the respectable metropolis of the north to find the weaknesses of Jekyll and the crimes of Hyde.
I deal with these things in general terms, not merely out of delicacy, but partly out of something that I might almost call impatience or contempt. For the quarrels between the Victorian whitewashers and the Post-Victorian mudslingers seem to me deficient in the ordinary decent comprehension of the difficulties of human nature. Both the scandalised and the scandalmonger seem to me to look very silly beside the sensible person in the Bible, who confined himself to saying that there are things that no man knows, such as the way of a bird in the air and the way of a man in his youth. That Stevenson was in the mature and sane sense a good man is certain, without any Victorian apologetics; that he never did anything that he thought wrong is improbable, even without any elaborate cloacan researches; and the whole thing is further falsified by the fact that, outside a certain religious tradition, very few either of the whitewashers or the mudslingers really believe in the morality involved. The former seek to save nothing better than respectability; the latter even when they slander can hardly condemn. Stevenson was not a Catholic: he did not pretend to have remained a Puritan; but he was a highly honourable, responsible and chivalrous Pagan, in a world of Pagans who were most of them considerably less conspicuous for chivalry and honour. I for one, if I may say so, am ready to defend my own standards or to judge other men by theirs. But the Victorian pretence that every well-dressed hero of romance with over five hundred a year is born immune from the temptations which the mightiest saints have rolled themselves in brambles to control— that does not concern me and I shall not discuss it again.
But what does concern me, at this particular stage of the story, is not the question of what Stevenson thought right or wrong when he had become consciously and consistently a Pagan, but the particular way in which right and wrong appeared to him at this crude and groping age when he was still by tradition a Puritan. And I do think there was something tail-foremost, to use one of his own favourite words, in the way in which evil crept into his existence, as it does into everybody else’s. He saw the tail of the devil before he saw his horns. Puritanism gave him the key rather to the cellars than the halls of Babylon; and something thus subterranean, suffocating and debased rolls like a smoke over the story of Jekyll and Hyde. But I only mention these matters as part of a general unfolding of his mind and moral nature, which seems to me to have had a great deal to do with the latter development of his destiny. The normal, or at least the ideal, development of a man’s destiny is from the coloured chamber of childhood to an even more romantic garden of the faith and tryst of youth. It is from the child’s garden of verses to the man’s garden of vows. I do not think that time of transition went right with Stevenson; I think that something thwarted or misled him; I think it was then that the east wind of Edinburgh Puritanism blew him out of his course, so that he returned only long after to anything like a secure loyalty and a right human relation. In a word, I think that in his childhood he had the best luck in the world, and in his youth the worst luck in the world; and that this explains most of his story.
Anyhow, he found no foothold on those steep streets of his beautiful and precipitous city; and as he looked forth over the litter of little islands in the large and shining estuary, he may have had some foreshadowing of that almost vagabond destiny which ended in the ends of the earth. There seemed in one sense no social reason why it should not end in Edinburgh as it had begun in Edinburgh. There seemed nothing against a normal successful career for one so brilliant, so graceful and essentially so humane; his story might have been as comfortable as a Victorian three-volume novel. He might have had the luck to marry an Edinburgh lady as delightful and satisfactory as Barbara Grant. He might have presided over the revels of a new bunch of Stevensons, coming home from Leith Walk laden with the gay portfolios of Skelt. They also might have bought Penny Pickwicks or gone about girt with lanterns; and his own view of these things might have altered, though not necessarily weakened, with the responsibility of one who sees them reproduced in others. But among these early Edinburgh pranks, which he has left on record, was one which is something of a symbol. He speaks somewhere of a special sort of apples which he gathered by the seashore, which were such as might well be gathered from the salted and crooked trees that grow by the sea. I do not know what it was; or what form it took; or whether it ever took any definable form at all. But somehow or other, in thought or word or deed, in that bleak place he ate the apple of knowledge; and it was a crab apple.
I think it was partly the pains of youth that afterwards made so vivid to him the pleasures of childhood. The break in his life was of course partly due to the break in his health. But it was also due, I think, to something ragged and unseemly in the edge of life he laid hold of when he touched the hem of her garment; to something unsatisfactory in all that side of existence as it appears accidentally to the child of Puritan conventions. The effect on him was that, during those years, he grew up too much out of touch with his domestic and civic, if not his national traditions; knowing at once too much and too little. He was never denationalised; for he was a Scotsman; and a Scotsman never is, even when he is in theory internationalised. But he did begin to become internationalised, in the sense that he gained a sort of indiscriminate intimacy with the culture of the world, especially the rather cynical sort of culture which was then current. The local and domestic conventions, which were in many ways wrong, lost their power to control him even when they were right. And in all that retrospect nothing remained so real as the unreal romances of the first days. In the Puritan creeds there was nothing that he could believe, even as much as he had believed in make-believe. There was nothing to call him back half so clearly as the call of that childish rhyme of which he afterwards wrote, in the touching dedication that has the burden, “How far is it to Babylon?” Unfortunately it is not very far to Babylon. That cosmopolitan market of the arts, which is in his story perhaps best represented by Paris, called to him more and more to live the life of the complete artist, which in those days had something like a touch of the complete anarchist. He passed into it, ultimately in person and already in spirit; there was nothing to call him back but the thin and tiny cry of a tin trumpet; that sounded once and was mute.
I say there was nothing to call him back; and very little to restrain him; and to any one who really understands the psychology and philosophy of that time of transition, it is really rather a wonder that he was so restrained. All his after adventures will be misunderstood if we do not realise that he left behind him a dead religion. Men are misled by the fact that he often used the old national creed as a subject; which really means rather that it had become an object. It was a subject that had ceased to be subjective; he worked upon it and not with it. He and the inheritors of his admirable tradition, like Barrie and Buchan, treated that national secret genially and even tenderly; but their very tenderness was the first soft signal that the thing was dead. At least they would never have so fondled the tiger-cat of Calvinism until, for them, its teeth were drawn. Indeed this was the irony and the pathos of the position of Scottish Calvinism: to be rammed down people’s throats for three hundred years as an unanswerable argument and then to be inherited at the last as an almost indefensible affection; to be expounded to boys with a scowl and remembered by men with a smile; to crush down all human sentiments and to linger at last in the sentimental comedy of Thrums. All that long agony of lucidity and masterful logic ended at last suddenly with a laugh; and the laugh was Robert Louis Stevenson. With him the break had come; and it follows that something in himself was broken. The whaups were crying round the graves of the martyrs, and his heart remembered, but not his mind; great Knox blew thrice upon the trumpet, and what thrilled him were no words but a noise; Old Mortality seemed still to be tinkering on his eternal round to preserve the memorials of the Covenant, but a bell had already tolled to announce that even Old Mortality was mortal. When Stevenson stepped into the wider world of the Continent, with its more graceful logic and even its more graceful vice, he went as one emptied of all the ethics and metaphysics of his home, and open to all the views and vices of a rationalistic civilisation. All the deeper lessons of his early life must have seemed to him to be dead within him; nor did he himself know what thing within him was yet alive.
CHAPTER IV
THE REACTION TO ROMANCE
WHEN a man walks down the street with a very long feather stuck in his hat and streaming behind him, or carrying a gold-hilted rapier cocked at a gallant angle, there are some among the typists and clerks of Clapham Junction shrewd enough to perceive that there is something faintly ostentatious about him. And when a man walks down Piccadilly or the parade at Bournemouth with long hair streaming behind him and surmounted by an embroidered smoking-cap, there are not wanting critics so acute as to deduce (with all the detailed shrewdness of Sherlock Holmes) that such a man is not entirely averse from being looked at. Many long and laborious studies of Stevenson have been published lately, to fortify and establish this remarkable result; and I need not devote myself to proving it further. Let us record with all due solemnity that Robert Louis Stevenson has been convicted by the court of being very vain, if “dressing up” in the manner of a child, and not resenting the consequent conspicuous position, be the marks of vanity. But there is one aspect of this truth which seems to me to have been strangely and even astonishingly overlooked. Everybody talks as if Stevenson had been not only conspicuous but quite unique in this sort of vanity. Everybody seems to assume that among the artists of his time he was entirely alone in his affectation. Contrasting in this respect with the humdrum respectability of Oscar Wilde, notable as the very reverse of the evangelical meekness of Jimmy Whistler, standing out as he does against the stodgy chapel-going piety of Max Beerbohm, having none of the cheery commonplaces of Aubrey Beardsley or the prosaic self-effacement of Richard Le Gallienne, he naturally aroused attention by the slightest deviation into oddity or dandyism; things notoriously so unpopular among the decadents of the ‘nineties. Among other things, everybody seems to have forgotten that Stevenson lived for some time among the Parisian art students; who have never been remarkable for the bourgeois regularity of their coats and hats. Yet he actually mentions the offensive smoking-cap himself as originating in the Bohemian masquerade of the Quartier Latin. There he was not so much being eccentric as being conventional; for the convention was unconventionality. A mob of men in that place and at that age, would have played the same sort of tricks and worn the same kind of clothes; nor was Stevenson, as I have said, the only one of them who carried these attitudes and antics through life. Any one of them might have worn a smoking-cap; none of them would have objected to any variety of fool’s cap, though they hardly wished it identified with a dunce’s cap. Many of them, still alive, would cheerfully admit that the cap fits. But poor Stevenson is to be remembered as a fool, because all the fools are forgotten except Stevenson.
It was not that sort of oddity that was really odd. The costume for which he is now conspicuous was really part of a carnival. The attitude in which he stands, to the astonishment and grief of the critics, was really the fashion of a crowd. But what was really individual and interesting about him was the way in which he did actually react against the surroundings; the point at which he refused to run with the crowd or follow the fashion. No insanity in that cheerful lunatic asylum is so interesting to the psychologist as the shock of Stevenson going sane. No romantic ruffianism in which he may or may not have indulged is so curious as the real spirit of his revolt into respectability.
Treasure Island, if hardly a historical novel, was essentially a historical event. The rise or revolt of R. L. S. must be taken in relation to history, to the history of the whole European mind and mood. It was, first and last, a reaction against pessimism. There was thrown across all that earth and sky the gigantic shadow of Schopenhauer. At least it seemed gigantic then, though some of us may already have suspected that the shadow was larger than the man. Anyhow, in that period we might almost say that pessimism was another name for culture. Cheerfulness was associated with the Philistine, like the broad grin with the bumpkin. Pessimism could be read between the lines of the lightest triolet or most elegant essay. Any one who really remembers that time will admit that the world was much more hopeful after the worst of its wars than it was not long before. Mr. H. G. Wells, whose genius had just been discovered by Henley, was very much older than he is now. He was prophesying that the outline of history would end, not in communism, but in cannibalism. He was prophesying the end of the world: a crack of doom not even cheerful enough to be a day of judgement. Oscar Wilde, who perhaps filled up more room, both in mind and body, than anybody else on that stage at that moment, expressed his philosophy in that bitter parable in which Christ seeks to comfort a man weeping and is answered, “Lord, I was dead and you raised me to life; what else can I do but weep?”
This was the spirit that was behind all that levity; a levity that was like fireworks in more ways than one. We talk of some Whistlerian satire as a squib; but squibs can only shine in the dark. It is all the difference between the colours of fireworks that have their back to the vault of night and the colours of church windows that have their backs to the sun. For these people all the light of life was in the foreground; there was nothing in the background but an abyss. They were rather nihilists than atheists; for there is a difference between worshipping Nothing and not worshipping anything. Now the interest of the next stage of Stevenson is that he stood up suddenly amid all these things and shook himself with a sort of impatient sanity; a shrug of scepticism about scepticism. His real distinction is that he had the sense to see that there is nothing to be done with Nothing. He saw that in that staggering universe it was absolutely necessary to stand somehow on something; and instead of falling about anyhow with all the other lunatics, he did seek for a ledge on which he could really stand. He did definitely and even dramatically refuse to go mad; or, what is very much worse, to remain futile. But the whole turning-point of the tale is now missed; partly by the too concentrated idolatry of the sentimentalists, and partly by the too concentrated spite of the iconoclasts. They miss the historic relation of the man to his time and school. It was one of the crowd of artists who showed mutinous signs of deserting art for life. It was even one of the decadents who refused to decay.
Now what really remains interesting in this story of Stevenson, in spite of all the vain repetitions, is the authority to which he appealed. It was rather an odd one; and many would have said that his sanity was madder than madness. He did not appeal to any ideal of the sort usually pursued by idealists; he did not try to construct an optimist philosophy like Spinoza or Emerson; he did not preach a good time coming like William Morris or Wells; he did not appeal to Imperialism or Socialism or Scotland: he appealed to Skelt.
Familiarity had dulled the divine paradox that we should learn morality from little children. He advanced the more disturbing paradox that we should learn morality from little boys. The young child who should lead us was the common (or garden) little boy: the boy of the catapult and the toy pistol—and the toy theatre. Stevenson seemed to say to the semi-suicides drooping round him at the café tables; drinking absinthe and discussing atheism: “Hang it all, the hero of a penny-dreadful play was a better man than you are! A Penny Plain and Twopence Coloured was an art more worthy of living men than the art that you are all professing. Painting pasteboard figures of pirates and admirals was better worth doing than all this, it was fun; it was fighting; it was a life and a lark; and if I can’t do anything else, dang me but I will try to do that again!” So was presented to the world this entertaining spectacle; of the art student surrounded by easels on which other artists were debating the fine shades of Corot and Renoir, while he himself was gravely painting mariners a bright prussian blue of a shilling paint-box and shedding their blood in streams of unmistakable crimson lake. That is the primary paradox about Stevenson’s early manhood; or, if you will, the real joke about Stevenson. Of all that intellectualism in Bohemia the result was the return to Skelt. Of all that wallowing in Balzac the remarkable outcome was Treasure Island. But it is no exaggeration to say that it had still more to do with toys than treasures. Stevenson was not really looking forward or outward to a world of larger things, but backward and inward into a world of smaller ones: in the peepshow of Skelt, which was still the true window of the world.
Thus, Skelt and his puppets seemed made for a repartee to the favourite phrases of the pessimists. All that world was haunted as with melody by the hedonist despair of Fitzgerald’s Omar: one of the great historical documents of this history. No image could make them bow their heads with more hopelessness and helplessness of despair than that famous one:
“We are none other than a moving row Of magic shadow-shapes that come and go Around the sun-illumined lantern held At midnight by the Master of the show.”
And no image could make the infant Stevenson kick his little legs with keener joy. His answer, in effect, to the philosophy of the magic shadow-shapes, was that the shadow-shapes really were magic. At any rate, they really did seem to the children to be magic: and it was not false but true psychology to call the thing a magic lantern. He was capable of feeling passionate delight in being such a Lantern-Bearer. He was capable even of feeling passionate delight in being such a shadow. And any one who has seen a shadow pantomime as a child, as I have, and who has retained any living link with his own childhood, will realise that Omar was as unlucky in his commentary on the lantern-show as the delightful curate in Voces Populi who talked about Valentine and Orson. He was teaching optimism as an illustration to pessimism. Later we may make a guess at the nature of this glamour about such tricks or toys; the point for the moment is that they were associated with gloom in philosophy, while they were associated with pleasure in psychology. The same applies to more common examples of the fancies of the fatalist. When the sage said that men are “only puppets,” it must have seemed to the young Louis almost like the blasphemy of saying they were “only pirates.” It might well seem to any child like saying that they were only fairies. There was something weak about bewailing drearily the fate of the puppets of destiny, to an audience that was eagerly awaiting the joyful apocalypse of a puppet-show. The Stevensonian reaction might be roughly represented by the suggestion—if we are as futile as puppets, is there anything particular to prevent our being as entertaining, as Punch? And there is, as I say, a real spiritual mystery behind this mystical ecstasy of mimicry. If living dolls were so dull and dead, why in the world were dead dolls so very much alive? And if being a puppet is so depressing, how is it that the puppet of a puppet can be so enthralling?
It is to be noted that this sort of romanticism, as compared with realism, is not more superficial, but on the contrary more fundamental. It is an appeal from what is experienced to what is felt. When people are avowedly talking about happiness and unhappiness, as the pessimists were, it is futile to say that shadows and sham pasteboard figures ought not to make people happy. It was futile to tell the young Stevenson that the toy-theatre shop was a dingy booth stocked with dusty rolls of paper, covered with ill-drawn and ungainly figures; and to insist that these were the only facts. He naturally answered: “My facts were my feelings; and what do you make of those facts? Either there is something in Skelt; which you do not admit. Or else there is something in Life; which you also do not admit.” Hence arose that answer to the realists which is best expressed in the essay called The Lantern-Bearers. The realists, who overlook so many details, have never quite noticed where lay the falsity of their method; it lay in the fact that so long as it was materialistic, it could not really be realistic. For it could not be psychological. If toys and trifles can make people happy, that happiness is not a trifle and certainly cannot be a trick.
This is the point that has been missed in all the talk about posing. Those who repeat for the hundredth time that he posed have not got as far as the obvious question, “Posed as what?” All the other poets and artists posed; but they posed as the members of the Suicide Club. He posed as Prince Florizel with a sword, challenging the President of the Suicide Club. He was, if you will, the foolish masker I have imagined, tricked out with a feather and a sword or dagger; but not tricked out more extravagantly than those who appeared as fantastic figures at their own funeral. If he had a feather, it was not a white feather; if he had a dagger, it was not a poisoned dagger or the pessimist dagger that is turned inwards; in short, if he had a posture it was a posture of defence and even of defiance. And it was, after all, the fashionable posture of his time which he set himself to defy. And it is here that it is really relevant to remember that he was not altogether posturing when he said he was defying death. Death was much nearer to him than it was to the pessimists; and he knew it whenever he coughed and found blood on his handkerchief. He was not pretending to defy it half so much as they were pretending to seek it. It is no very unreasonable claim for him that he made a better use of his bad health than Oscar Wilde made of his good health; and nothing affected in the externals of either can alter the contrast. The dagger may have been theatrical; but the blood was real. As Cyrano said of his friend, “Le sang, c’est le sien.” And it really was the absence of courage in the current culture that awoke his protest or pose. In any case, the intellectual fine shades were morally more than a little shady. But he hated chiefly the loss of what soldiers call morale rather than what parsons call morality. All that world cowered under the shadow of death. All alike were travelling under the flag of the skull and crossbones. But he alone could call it the Jolly Roger.
What is really not appreciated about Stevenson is the abruptness of this breakaway. We talk of looking back with gratitude to innovators or the introducers of new ideas; but in fact nothing is more difficult to do, since for us they are now necessarily old ideas. There is only one moment, at most, of triumph for the original thinker; while his thought is an originality and before it becomes merely an origin. News spreads quickly; that is, it grows stale quickly; and though we may call a work wonderful, we cannot easily put ourselves in the position of those for whom it was a cause of wonder, in the sense of surprise. Between the first fashion of talking too much in praise of Stevenson, and the newer fashion of talking nonsense in disparagement of Stevenson, we have become quite familiar with the association of certain ideas; of extreme stylistic polish applied to rough schoolboy adventure, of the Penny Plain figure tinted as carefully as a miniature. But these ideas were not always associated in the way in which Stevenson associated them. We may tear the combination to pieces, but it was he who wove it together; and—as many would have thought— of very incongruous threads. It really did seem preposterous to many that a serious literary artist of the age of Pater should devote himself to rewriting Penny Dreadfuls. It was just as if George Meredith had chosen to put all his fine feminine psychology into writing the sort of twopenny novelettes that were read by housemaids, and called “Pansy’s Elopement” or “Winnie’s Wedding Bells.” It was as if Henry James had been heard to say or, so to speak, to suggest, that there was, after all, and in a way quite annoyingly overlooked, something—something that really should have been better evaluated and re-expressed, as it were, in all that really unquestionable productiveness of Ally Sloper’s Half-Holiday. It was as if Paderewski had insisted on only going round with a barrel-organ; or Whistler had confined himself solely to painting public-house signs. A distinguished dramatist, who is old enough to remember in his youth the first successes of Stevenson’s manhood, told me how absurd it seemed at the time that any one should take seriously such gutter literature of the gamin. A book written only for boys generally meant a book written only for errand-boys. It seemed a strange association of ideas that it should be written carefully as a book for men, and even for literary men. It does not seem so strange now; because Stevenson has done it quite a long time ago. But it is important to realise that not everybody thought it natural to expend the style of Pulvis et Umbra on the equivalent of “Dick Deadshot Among the Pirates.” It was the very last sort of enthusiasm that would have easily carried any of his cultivated contemporaries off their feet. The typical literary man, with the outlook and philosophy of that generation, would have been about as likely to pass his life in throwing paper darts or chalking caricatures of his publisher on a blackboard.
Thus, there is one of those phrases quoted too much, as against so many quoted too little, that he and his artistic friends bore with them bulky yellow volumes “quite impudently French.” But, by the tests of that artistic world, Treasure Island is quite impudently English. By the conventions of that world, there was nothing unconventional about studying Balzac or being Bohemian. It was much more unconventional to study Captain Marryat and to write about the good captain who flew the Union Jack over the stockade, in defiance of the bad buccaneers. From the standpoint of Art in those days, even that flag was a much too Moral Emblem. It is only when we understand what there was that seemed quaint and even undignified in his adventurous antic, that we can clearly understand the unconscious truths that lay behind it. For, as against the black flag of pessimism, his flag really was a Moral Emblem. There was a morality in his reaction into adventure; his appeal to the spirit of the highway—though it were sometimes the spirit of the highwayman.
In other words, he appealed to his own childhood. A tale is told of it: that when some one chaffed him about a toy sword he replied solemnly, “The hilt is of gold and the scabbard of silver and the child is well content.” It was to that moment that he suddenly returned. Groping for something that would satisfy, he found nothing so solid as that fancy. That had not been Nothing; that had not been pessimistic; that was not a life over which Lazarus could do nothing but weep. That was as positive as the paints in the paint-box and the difference between vermilion and chrome yellow. Its pleasures had been as solid as the taste of sweets; and it was nonsense to say that there had been nothing in them worth living for. Play at least is always serious. So long as we can say, “Let us pretend,” we must be sincere. Therefore he appealed across the void or valley of his somewhat sterile youth to that garden of childhood, which he had once known and which was his nearest notion of paradise. There were no shrines in the faith or in the city of his fathers; there were no channels of consecration or confession; there was no imagery save in the faceless images left behind by the image-breakers. A man in his mood of reaction towards happiness, might almost as well have prayed to the Black Man who figured as the Scottish provincial devil as to the God behind the black cloud that sent out such stiff horrific rays in the Calvinist family Bible. But in all that waste of Scottish moorland, the sun still glowed on that square of garden like a patch of gold. The lessons were lost, but the toys were eternal; the men had been harsh, but the child had been well content; if there were nothing better, he would return.
In the elementary philosophy of the thing, of course, what moved Stevenson was what moved Wordsworth; the unanswerable fact of that first vividness in the vision of life. But he had it in his own quaint way; and it was hardly the vision of meadow, grove and stream. It was rather the vision of coffin, gallows and gory sabre that were apparelled in celestial light, the glory and the freshness of a dream. But he was appealing to a sort of sanguinary innocence against a sort of silent and secretive perversion. Here, as everywhere in this rude outline, I am taking a thing like Treasure Island, in a spirit of simplification and symbol. I do not mean, of course, that he wrote Treasure Island sitting in a café on the boulevards; any more than I mean that he wrote Jekyll and Hyde in a cellar or a garret in the lands of the Cowgate. Both these books were developed by stages of the greatest literary care, in later life; and pursued with the characteristic consistency of his art through all the equally characteristic mutability of his domicile. When I say that a certain book came out of a certain experience, I mean that he drew on that experience to write it, or that it was the ultimate result of the reaction which that experience produced in his mind. And I mean in this case that what shaped and sharpened Stevenson’s memory of the mere nonsense of Skeltery was his growing sense of the need of some escape from the suffocating cynicism of the mass of men and artists in his time. He wished to go back to that nonsense; for it seemed, by comparison, quite sensible.
Treasure Island was written as a boy’s book; perhaps it is not always read as a boy’s book. I sometimes fancy that a real boy could read it better if he could read it backwards. The end, which is full of skeletons and ancient crime, is in the fullest sense, beautiful; it is even idealistic. For it is the realisation of an ideal, that which is promised in its provocative and beckoning map; a vision not only of white skeletons but also green palm trees and sapphire seas. But the beginning of the book, considered as a boy’s book, can hardly be called idealistic; and is found in practice to be rather too realistic. I may make an egotistical confession here, which I think is not unique and not without its universal inference about the spirit of youth. When I read the book as a child, I was not horrified by what are called the horrors. Something did indeed shock me, just a little more than a child should be shocked; for of course he would have no fun if he were never shocked at all. But what shook me was not the dead man’s chest or the live man’s crimes or the information that “Drink and the devil have done for the rest”; all that seemed to me quite cheery and comforting. What did seem to me ugly was exactly what might happen in any inn-parlour, if there were no pirates in the world. It was that business about apoplexy; or some sort of alcoholic poisoning. It was the sailor having a mysterious thing called a stroke; so much more terrifying than any sabre-stroke. I was ready to wade in seas of gore; for all that gore was crimson lake; and indeed I always imagined it as a lake of crimson. Exactly what I was not ready for were those few drops of blood drawn from the arm of the insensible sailor, when he was bled by the surgeon. That blood is not crimson lake. Thus we have the paradox that I was horrified by the act of healing; while all the rowdy business of hitting and hurting did not hurt me at all. I was disgusted with an act of mercy, because it took the form of medicine. I will not pause to draw the many morals of this paradox; especially in relation to a common fallacy of pacifism. I will content myself with saying, whether I make my meaning clear or no, that a child is not wicked enough to disapprove of war.
But whatever be the case with most boys, there was certainly one boy who enjoyed Treasure Island; and his name was Robert Louis Stevenson. He really had very much of the feeling of one who had got away to great waters and outlandish lands; perhaps even more vividly than he had it later, when he made that voyage not metaphorically but materially, and found his own Treasure Island in the South Seas. But just as in the second case he was fleeing to clear skies from unhealthy climates, so he was in reviving the adventure story escaping from an exceedingly unhealthy climate. The microbe of morbidity maybe have been within him, as well as the germ of phthisis; but in the cities he had left behind pessimism was raging like a pestilence. Multitudes of pale-faced poets, formless and forgotten, sat crowded at those café tables like ghosts in Hades, worshipping “la sorcière glauque,” like that one of them whose mortality has been immortalised by Max. It is too often forgotten that if Stevenson had really been only a pale young man making wax flowers, he would have found plenty of pale young men to make them with him; and the flowers and flower-makers would long have withered together. But he alone escaped, as from a city of the dead; he cut the painter as Jim Hawkins stole the boat, and went on his own voyage, following the sun. Drink and the devil have done for the rest, especially the devil; but then they were drinking absinthe and not with a “Yo ho ho”; consuming it without the most feeble attempt at any “Yo ho ho”— a defect which was, of course the most serious and important part of the affair. For “Yo ho ho” was precisely what Stevenson, with his exact choice of words, particularly desired to say just then. It was for the present his most articulate message to mankind.
CHAPTER V
THE SCOTTISH STORIES
PROVERBS are generally true, when they are the proverbs of the people; so long as they are not proverbs about another people. It was unwise to search Sussex to discover if Kentish men had tails, or England to learn if French husbands had horns. And obviously there is much that is misleading in the traditional type of the practical Puritanical Scotsman, with his dry thrift and bleak respectability. A figure of such severe decorum is not very vividly evoked either by the title of Rab the Ranter or the Wizard of the North. And few of our own generation are yet convinced of it, even by the scientific severity that has given us Peter Pan or the sober responsibility that stiffens the narrative of The New Arabian Nights. The readers of the latter work will be much interested to realise that a Scotsman is incapable of seeing a joke, since he seems so eminently capable of making one; and the reader of the former will be disposed to suggest that the national jesting is not too sober but rather too extravagant. Peter Pan carries on by lineal tradition the cult of the child, beginning with Treasure Island; but if there be anything to criticise in Sir James Barrie’s beautiful fantasia, it is that wilder things happen to Wendy in a London nursery than ever happened to Jim in a tropical island. The only object to living in a nursery where the dog is the nurse, or the father lives in the dog-kennel, is that there seems no necessity to go to the Never-Never Land to look for the things that never happen. Whatever else we say of the Scottish genius, it is certainly not merely dry or prosaic; and indeed the real mixture of the Scottish genius is as full of contradictions as that pattern of crosses in the Scottish plaid. And even here there is subtlety as well as cross-purposes; and the tartan may be an old tribal form of camouflage.
There is an aspect of a Scottish hill or moor, which for the moment will look grey and at the least change of light look purple; which is in itself an image of Scotland. A passing from the most dispassionate to the most passionate tint, which yet seems to be no more than a new shade, might well represent the mixture of restraint and violence that runs through the national history and the national character. Stevenson stands for one of those moments in the national history when the grey turned to purple; and yet in his purple there is still a great deal of grey. There is a great deal of restraint, artistic even more than moral; there is a certain coolness in the commentary even on picturesque objects; there is even a certain absence of the common conception of passion. There are shades even in purple; there are differences between the purple orchid and the purple heather; and his often seems to be like white heather, for luck. In other words, his idea of happiness is still of the breezy and boyish sort; and though he described the happiness of lovers very happily in Catriona and began to foreshadow their unhappiness in Weir of Hermiston, he attacked the theme relatively late in life; and it counted for little in that original idea of a return to simplicity, which had come upon him like a wind from a playground. Imagine how annoyed Jim Hawkins would have been, if a lot of girls had been allowed to muck up the business of going after treasure! So brilliant is this resurrection of boyhood, that we almost believe for the moment that Stevenson must have been as young and callous as Jim. Only I suspect, as I say, that in some ways he had even made himself a little callous in those matters. There his adventures had been misadventures. He did not recall for mere pleasure the memory of youth, as he did the memory of boyhood.
The two novels about David Balfour are very notable examples of what I have mentioned generally as the Stevensonian note; the brisk and bright treatment, the short speeches, the sharp gestures and the pointed profile of energy, as of a man following his nose very rapidly along the open road. The great scenes in Kidnapped, the defence of the Round House or the confrontation of Uncle Ebenezer and Alan Breck, are full of those snapping phrases that seem to pick things off like pistol shots. A whole essay on the style of Stevenson, such as I shall attempt forlornly and ineffectually on another page, might be written by a real critic on the phrase, “His sword flashed like quicksilver into the huddle of our fleeing enemies.” The fact that the name of a certain metal happens to combine the word “silver” with the word “quick” is simply a rather recondite accident; but the art of Stevenson consisted in taking advantage of such accidents. To those who say that such tricks are easy to play or such words easy to find, the only answer is, “Go and find them.” An author cannot create words, unless he be the happy author of Jaberwocky or The Land Where the Jumblies Live; but the nearest he can come to creating them is finding them in such a fashion and for such a use. The characters in the story are excellent, though perhaps there are really only two of them. There are more in the sequel called Catriona; and the study of the Lord Advocate Prestongrange is a highly interesting attempt to do a very difficult thing; to describe a politician who has not altogether ceased to be a man. The dialogue is spirited and full of fine Scottish humours, but all these things are almost as secondary in Kidnapped and Catriona as they are in Treasure Island itself. The thing is still simply an adventure story, and especially a boy’s adventure story; such as is fitted to describe the adventures of a boy. And there are moments when it is the same boy; and his name is neither Hawkins nor Balfour, but Stevenson.
But though the thing is to be criticised (and admired) strictly as an adventure story, there are side-lights of interest about it considered as a historical novel. It carries on a rather curiously balanced critical attitude, partly inherited from the attitude of Sir Walter Scott; the paradox of being intellectually on the side of the Whigs and morally on the side of the Jacobites. There is enough moral material, in the story of the long legal murder of James of the Glens, to raise a whole clan of Jacobites and roll them red-hot down the pass of Killiecrankie. But there still stands over against it the large legal assumption that in some sort of way all these things will be for the best, which is the inheritance of the providential view of the Presbyterian settlement. Similarly, it is obvious in the earlier story that David Balfour does not really differ very much from Alan Breck, in his view of the oppression of the Highland crofters and their pathetic loyalty to the past. In the ethical balance of the Appin Murder, if he does not palliate tyrannicide, he certainly says nothing calculated to palliate tyranny. It is obvious that he is moved and impressed with the spectacle of a whole peasantry loyal to their ideal and defying a more civilised but a much more cynical pressure. But, curiously enough, when Stevenson saw exactly the same story acted before his eyes in the tragedy of the peasants of Ireland, he was carried away by some newspaper nonsense about the wickedness of the Land League (prodded perhaps by the rather absurd Jingoism of Henley) and, with all his native courage and much less than his native sense, wanted to plant himself on an eviction farm belonging to a family named Curtin, whom he seemed to regard as the sole victims of the social situation. It did not seem to occur to him that he was merely assisting the Master of Lovat to bully David Balfour. He seemed really to suppose that, in those social conditions, the Irish peasants could look for justice to imperial governments which abolished all local rights and carried away every Irish patriot to be tried before a packed jury of foreigners and foes. “Justice, David! The same justice, by all the world, that Glenure found by the roadside.”
But this curious and sometimes inconsistent mingling of the grey Whiggery with the purple Jacobite romance, in the traditional sentiment of such Scots as Stevenson, is connected with much deeper things touching the hold that their history had upon them. It is necessary to state at this stage that there is really and seriously an influence of Scottish Puritanism upon Stevenson; though I think it rather a philosophy partially accepted by his intellect than the special ideal that was the secret of his heart. But every philosopher is affected by philosophy; even if, as in the immortal instance in Boswell, cheerfulness is always breaking out. And there was a part of Stevenson’s mind that was not cheerful; which I think, in some manifestations, was not even healthy. And yet the tribute of truth is due to that special Scottish element; that even when we say it was not healthy, we can hardly venture to say it was not strong. It was the shadow of that ancient heathen fatalism, which in the seventeenth century had taken the hardly less heathen form of Calvinism; and which had sounded in so many Scottish tragedies with a note of doom. We appreciate it sharply when we turn from his two Scottish comedies of adventure to his third Scottish romance, which is a tragedy of character. It is true, as may be noted later, that even into this concentrated drama of sin and sorrow there enters a curious and rather incongruous element of the adventure story; like a fragment of the former adventures of David or Jim. But leaving that aside for the moment, we must do justice to the dignity which is given to the story itself by its more sombre scenery and its sterner creed. Stevenson showed his perfect instinct when he called it A Winter’s Tale. It is his one story in black and white, and I cannot recall one word that is a patch of colour.
In touching on the rather neglected point of the nastier side of Puritan sociology, the raw and barbarous flavour about its evil and excess, I may have seemed to underrate the higher though harsher aspects of Scottish Puritanism. I do not mean to do so; and certainly nobody can afford to do so in attempting an adequate study of Stevenson. He remained to the day of his death in some ways particularly loyal to the Presbyterian tradition; I might say to the Presbyterian prejudices; and at least in one or two cases to the Presbyterian antipathies. But I think it was mostly rather a case of the modern religion of patriotism, as against the larger patriotism of religion. Like many other men of frank, tart and humorous prejudices (which are the sort of prejudices that need never prejudice us against a man) he was apt to see in some foreign things the evils to which he had grown accustomed in native things; and to start again the great international dispute of the pot and the kettle. It is amusing, for instance, to find the young Scotsman in Olalla gravely disapproving of the grim Spanish crucifix, with its tortured and grimacing art; and presumably leaving that land of religious gloom, to go back and enjoy the charm and gaiety of Thrawn Janet. If there was ever grim and grimacing art, one would think it was in that twisted figure; and even Stevenson admitted that Olalla got more comfort from the crucifix than Janet from the minister; or, I will add, the minister from the ministry. Indeed, stories of this kind are told by Stevenson with a deliberate darkening of the Scottish landscape and exultation in the ferocity of the Scottish creed. But it would be quite a mistake to miss in this a certain genuine national pride running through all the abnormal artistry; and a sense that the strength of the tribal tragedy testifies in a manner to the strength of the tribe.
It might be maintained that the best effect of the Scotsman’s religious training was teaching him to do without his religion. It enabled him to survive as a certain sort of freethinker; one who, unlike his more familiar fellows, is not so intoxicated with freedom as to forget to think. It might be said that among the Scots, so far from a sentimental religiosity taking the place of dogmatic religion (as is generally the case among the English), something like the very opposite had occurred. When the religion was dead, the theology remained: at any rate, the taste for theology remained. It remained because, whatever else it is, theology is at least a form of thought. Stevenson certainly retained this turn of mind long after his beliefs, like those of most of his generation, had been simplified to vanishing point. He was, as Henley said, something of the Shorter Catechist; even when his own Catechism had become shorter still. All this, however, was indubitably a strength to him and his nation; and a real reason for gratitude to their old religious tradition. Those dry Deists and hard-headed Utilitarians who stalked the streets of Glasgow and Edinburgh in the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries were very obviously the products of the national religious spirit. The Scottish atheists were unmistakable children of the Kirk. And though they often seemed absurdly detached and dehumanised, the world is now rather suffering for want of such dull lucidity. To put it shortly, by being theological they had at least learnt to be logical; and in dropping the Greek prefix as a superfluous trifle they will have the sympathy of many moderns much less logical than themselves. The influence of all this sort of clarity on Stevenson is very clear. It did not happen to be his mission to figure as the metaphysical Scotsman; or draw out his deductions along the lines of logic. But he did always by instinct draw lines that were as hard and clear as those of a mathematical diagram. He himself has made a very luminous and valuable comparison between a geometrical theorem and a work of art. I have had cause to remark again and again, in the course of this sketch, on a certain almost arid decision in the strokes of Stevenson’s style. I believe it was due in no small degree to that inheritance of definition, that goes with an inheritance of dogma. What he wrote was not written, as he said scornfully of some literary performance, in sand with a salt-spoon; it was at least in the tradition of scriptures cut with steel into stone. This was among the many good things that he got from the spiritual atmosphere of his ancestry. But he got other things as well; though they are less easy to describe and far less easy to command.
From time to time I have insensibly and inevitably fallen into a tone of defending Stevenson, as if he needed defence. And indeed I do think that he needs some defence; though not upon the points in which it is now considered necessary to defend him. I do feel a certain impatience with the petty depreciation of our own time, which seems much more frivolous and far less generous than the boom of a best-seller. I do feel a certain contempt for those who call every phrase affected that happens to be effective; or who charge a man with talking for effect, as if there were anything else to talk for. But I should think it very unfair to revile the revilers of Stevenson, without taking the risk of saying where I think he is, if not to be reviled, at least to be rebuked. There was, I think, a weaker strain in Stevenson; but it is the very opposite of the weakness now generally alleged by critics; indeed it is the very opposite of what they would probably regard as weak. The excuse for it, in so far as it existed to be excused, was in the very direction of that sharp turn which he took in early life, when he turned his back upon the decadents. I have already said, and it can hardly be said too often, that the story of Stevenson was a reaction against an age of pessimism. Now the real objection to being a reactionary is that a reactionary, as such, hardly ever avoids reacting into evil and exaggeration. The opposite of the heresy of pessimism was the twin heresy of optimism. Stevenson was not at all attracted to a placid and pacific optimism. But he did begin to be too much attracted to a sort of insolent and oppressive optimism. The reaction from the idea that what is good is always unsuccessful is the idea that what is good is always victorious. And from that many slide into the worse delusion; that what is victorious is always good.
In the days when Stevenson’s ancestors the Covenanters were fighting with the Cavaliers, a fine old Cavalier of the Episcopalian persuasion made a rather interesting remark; that the change he really hated was represented by saying “The Lord” instead of “Our Lord.” The latter implied affection, the former only fear; indeed he described the former succinctly as the talk of devils. And this is so far true that the very eloquent language in which the name of “The Lord” has figured has generally been the language of might and majesty and even terror. And there really was implied in it in varying degrees the idea of glorifying God for His greatness rather than His goodness. And again there occurred the natural inversion of ideas. Since the Puritan was content to cry with the Moslem: “God is great,” so the descendant of the Puritan is always a little inclined to cry with the Nietzschean: “Greatness is God.” In some of the really evil extremes, this sentiment shaded darkly into a sort of diabolism. In Stevenson it was very faintly present; but it is occasionally felt; and by me (I must confess) felt as a fault. It is faintly felt, for instance, in the next great Scottish romance, The Master of Ballantrae; it is felt more definitely, I think, in the last Scottish romance of Weir of Hermiston. In the first case, Stevenson said in his correspondence, in a tone that was humorous and healthy enough, that The Master was all he knew of The Devil. I do not in the least object to The Master being The Devil. But I do object to a subtle subconscious something, which every now and then seems almost to suggest that he is The Lord. I mean The Lord in the vague sense of a certain authority in aristocracy, or even in mere mastery. Perhaps I even dimly feel that there is the distant thunder of The Lord in the very title of The Master.
This thing, however we define it and in whatever degree we admit it, had advanced in several degrees when he wrote the later story. Perhaps it was partly the influence of Henley; who, with all his many generous virtues, certainly had this weakness to the point of hysteria. I mean the loss of the natural reaction of a man against a tyrant. It sometimes takes the form of that least masculine of all vices, the admiration for brutality. It has been much debated whether bullies are always cowards; I am content to remark that the admirers of bullies are always, by the very nature of things, trying to be cowards. If they do not always succeed, it is because they have unconscious virtues restraining that obscene worship: and this was true even of Henley; and far truer of Stevenson. Stevenson had always a training in real courage; for he fought when he was weak. But it cannot be denied that, by a combination of causes, his own revolt against spineless pessimism, the reactionary violence of Henley, but chiefly I think the vague Scottish tradition of a God of mere power and terror, he grew too familiar in his later works with the sort of swaggering cult of fear. I feel it in the character of Weir of Hermiston, or rather in the attitude of everybody else, including the author, towards that character. I do not mind the judge exulting over the game of insulting and hanging somebody; for I know the judge can be baser than the man he hangs. But I do mind the author exulting over it, when I know he is not base at all. The same fine shade of unpleasantness can be found in the last pages of The Ebb-Tide. My point might be put crudely by saying that I do not object to the author creating such a loathsome person as Mr. Attwater; but I do rather object to his creating him and not loathing him. It would be truer to put the point in another form; that there would be no objection if he loathed and admired Attwater exactly as he loathed and admired Huish. In a sense he obviously did admire Huish; as it was the very passion of his life to admire courage. But he did not expect anybody to look up to Huish; and there are moments when he seems to think it natural that people should look up to Attwater. This secret idolatry of what a feminine sentiment calls “strength,” this was the only lesion in Stevenson’s perfect sanity, the only running sore in the normal health of his soul; and even that had come from too violent an effort to be healthy. So he might, poor fellow, have started a haemorrhage by moving too vigorously on his pillow.
For I am not blaming him for having any such evil, in the sense of having any excess of it. I blame him, being what he was, for having even a touch of it. But I think it is unfortunately certain that he did have a touch of it. There is something almost cruel in thus tracing the innocent springs of cruelty. But, as has been said so often and so foolishly and so truly, Robert Louis Stevenson was a child. It is the moral of these chapters about his nation, his city and his home, that he was also something more than a child. He was a lost child. There was nothing to guide him in the mad movements and reactions of modernity; neither his nation nor his religion nor his irreligion were equal to the task. He had no chart for that gallant voyage; he was hardly to blame if he thought he had to choose between the savage rock of the pride of Scylla and the suicidal whirlpool of the despair of Charybdis. Only, like Ulysses, for all his adventurousness, he was always trying to get home. To vary the metaphor, his face was for ever turning like the sunflower towards the sun, even if it were behind a cloud; and perhaps after all there is nothing truer than the too familiar phrase from the diary of the doctor or the nurse; that he was a sick child, who passed his life in trying to get well.
CHAPTER VI
THE STYLE OF STEVENSON
BEFORE writing this chapter I ought to explain that I am quite incapable of writing it; at least as many serious literary authorities think it ought to be written. I am one of those humble characters for whom the main matter of style is concerned with making a statement; and generally, in the case of Stevenson, with telling a story. Style takes its own most living and therefore most fitting form from within; as the narrative quickens and leaps, or the statement becomes warm or weighty, by being either authoritative or argumentative. The sentence takes its shape from motion; as it takes its motion from motive. And the motive (for us outcasts) is what the man has to say. But there is a technical treatment of style for which I have a profound respect, but it is a respect for the unknown, not to say the unintelligible. I will not say it is Greek to me, for I know the Greek alphabet and I do not know the alphabet of these grammars of cadence and sequence; I can still even read the Greek Testament, but the gospel of pure and abstract English brings me no news. I salute it, from afar as I do musical harmony or the higher mathematics; but I shall not introduce into this book a chapter on any of these three topics. When I speak of the style of Stevenson I mean the manner in which he could express himself in plain English, even if it were in some ways peculiar English; and I have nothing but the most elementary English with which to criticise it. I cannot use the terms of any science of language, or even any science of literature.
Mr. Max Beerbohm, whose fine and classic criticism is full of those shining depths that many mistake for shallowness, has remarked truly enough on the rather wearisome repetitions in the newspapers, which did great harm to the Stevensonian fame at the time of the Stevensonian fashion. He noticed especially that a certain phrase used by Stevenson about his early experiments in writing, that he has “played the sedulous ape” to Hazlitt or to Lamb, must be permanently kept in type in the journalistic offices, so frequently do the journalists quote it. There are about a thousand things in Stevenson much more worth quoting, and much more really enlightening about his education in letters. Every young writer, however original, does begin by imitating other people, consciously or unconsciously, and nearly every old writer would be quite as willing to admit it. The real irony in the incident seems never to have been noticed. The real reason why this confession of plagiarism, out of a hundred such confessions, is always quoted, is because the confession itself has the stamp not of plagiarism but of personal originality. In the very act of claiming to have copied other styles, Stevenson writes most unmistakably in his own style. I think I could have guessed amid a hundred authors who had used the expression “played the sedulous ape.” I do not think that Hazlitt would have added that word “sedulous.” Some might say he was the better because the simpler without it; some would say that the word is in the strict sense too recherché; some might say it can be recognised because it is strained or affected. All that is matter for argument; but it is rather a joke when so individual a trick is made a proof of being merely imitative. Anyhow, that sort of trick, the rather curious combination of two such words, is the thing I mean by the style of Stevenson.
In the case of Stevenson, criticism has always tended to be hypercriticism. It is as if the critic were strung up to be as strict with the artist as the artist was with himself. But they are not very consistent or considerate in the matter. They blame him for being fastidious; and so become more fastidious themselves. They condemn him for wasting time in trying to find the right word; and then waste more time in not very successful attempts to prove it is the wrong word. I remember that Mr. George Moore (who at least led the attack when Stevenson was alive and at the height of his popularity) professed in a somewhat mysterious manner to have exposed or exploded the whole trick of Stevenson, by dwelling at length on the word “interjected”: in the passage which describes a man stopping a clock with interjected finger. There seemed to be some notion that because the word is unusual in that use, it showed that there was nothing but artificial verbalism in the whole tragedy of Jekyll and Hyde or the fun of The Wrong Box. I think it is time that this sort of fastidiousness about fastidiousness should be corrected with a little common sense. The obvious question to ask Mr. Moore, if he objects to the word “interjected,” is, “What word would you use?” He would immediately discover that any other word would be much weaker and even much less exact. To say “interposed finger” would suggest by its very sound a much clumsier and less precise action; “interjected” suggests by its very sound a sort of jerk of neatness; a mechanical neatness correcting mechanism. In other words, it suggests what it was meant to suggest. Stevenson used the word because it was the right word. Nobody else used it, because nobody else thought of it. And that is the whole story of Stevensonian style.
Literature is but language; it is only a rare and amazing miracle by which a man really says what he means. It is inevitable that most conversation should be convention; as when we cover a myriad beautiful contrasts or comedies of opposites by calling any number of different people “nice.” Some writers, including Stevenson, desired (in the old and proper sense) to be more nice in their discrimination of niceness. Now whether we like such fastidious felicities or no, whether we are individually soothed or irritated by a style like that of Stevenson, whether we have any personal or impersonal reason for impatience with the style or the man, we ought really to have enough critical impartiality and justice to see what is the literary test. The test is whether the words are well or ill chosen, not for the purpose of fitting our own taste in words, but for the purpose of satisfying everybody’s sense of the realities of things. Now it is nonsense for anybody who pretends to like literature not to see the excellence of Stevenson’s expression in this way. He does pick the words that make the picture that he particularly wants to make. They do fix a particular thing, and not some general thing of the same sort; yet the thing is often one very difficult to distinguish from other things of the same sort. That is the craft of letters; and the craftsman made a vast multitude of such images in all sorts of materials. In this matter we may say of Stevenson very much what he said of Burns. He remarked that Burns surprised the polite world, with its aesthetes and antiquarians, by never writing poems on waterfalls, ruined castles or other recognised places of interest; the very fact, of course, which showed Burns to be a poet and not a tourist. It is always the prosaic person who demands poetic subjects. They are the only subjects about which he can possibly be poetic. But Burns, as Stevenson said, had a natural gift of lively and flexible comment that could play as easily upon one thing as another; a kirk or a tavern or a group going to market or a pair of dogs in the street. This gift must be judged by its aptness, its vividness and its range; and anybody who suggests that Stevenson’s talent was only one piece of thin silver polished perpetually in its napkin does not, in the most exact and emphatic sense, know what he is talking about. Stevenson had exactly the talent he attributes to Burns of touching nothing that he did not animate. And so far from hiding one talent in one napkin, it would be truer to say that he became ruler over ten cities; set in the ends of the earth. Indeed the last phrase alone suggests an example or a text.
I will take the case of one of his books; I deliberately refrain from taking one of his best books. I will take The Wrecker, a book which many would call a failure and which nobody would call a faultless artistic success, least of all the artist. The picture breaks out of the frame; indeed it is rather a panorama than a picture. The story sprawls over three continents; and the climax has too much the air of being only the last of a long string of disconnected passages. It has the look of a scrap-book; indeed it is very exactly a sketch-book. It is merely the sketch-book of Loudon Dodd, the wandering art student never allowed to be fully an artist; just as his story is never allowed to be fully a work of art. He sketches people with the pen as he does with the pencil, in four or five incongruous societies, in the commercial school of Muskegon or the art school of Paris, in the east wind of Edinburgh or the black squall of the South Seas; just as he sketched the four fugitive murderers gesticulating and lying in the Californian saloon. The point is (on the strict principles of l’art pour l’art, so dear to Mr. Dodd) that he sketched devilish well. We can take the portraits of twenty social types in turn, taken from six social worlds utterly shut out from each other, and find in every case that the strokes are at once few and final; that is, that the word is well chosen out of a hundred words and that one word does the work of twenty. The story starts: “The beginning of this yarn is my poor father’s character”; and the character is compact in one paragraph. When Jim Pinkerton first strides into the story and is described as a young man “with cordial, agitated manners,” we walk through the rest of the narrative with a living man; and listen not merely to words, but to a voice. No other two adjectives could have done the trick. When the shabby and shady lawyer, with his cockney culture and underbred refinement, is first introduced as handling a big piece of business beyond his metier, he bears himself “with a sort of shrinking assumption.” The reader, especially if he is not a writer, may imagine that such words matter little; but if he supposes that it might just as well have been “flinching pride” or “quailing arrogance” he knows nothing about writing and perhaps not much about reading. The whole point is in that hitting of the right nail on the head; and rather more so when the nail is such a very battered little tintack as Mr. Henry D. Bellairs of San Francisco. When Loudon Dodd merely has to meet a naval officer and record that he got next to nothing out of him, that very negation has a touch of chilly life like a fish. “I judged he was suffering torments of alarm lest I should prove an undesirable acquaintance; diagnosed him for a shy, dull, vain, unamiable animal, without adequate defence—a sort of dis-housed snail.” The visit to an English village, under the shadow of an English country house, is equally aptly appreciated; from the green framework of the little town, “a domino of tiled houses and walled gardens,” to the reminiscences of the ex-butler about the exiled younger son; “near four generations of Carthews were touched upon without eliciting one point of interest; and we had killed Mr. Henry in the hunting field with a vast elaboration of painful circumstance and buried him in the midst of a whole sorrowing county, before I could so much as manage to bring upon the stage my intimate friend, Mr. Norris… . He was the only person of the whole featureless series who seemed to have accomplished anything worth mentioning; and his achievements, poor dog, seemed to have been confined to going to the devil and leaving some regrets… . He had no pride about him, I was told; he would sit down with any man; and it was somewhat woundingly implied that I was indebted to this peculiarity for my own acquaintance with the hero.” But I must not be led away by the large temptation of quoting examples of the cool and collected and sustained irony, with which Loudon Dodd tells his whole story. I am only giving random examples of his rapid sketches of very different sorts of societies and personalities; and the point is that he can describe them rapidly and yet describe them rightly. In other words the author does possess a quite exceptional power of putting what he really means into the words that really convey it. And to show that this was a matter of genius in the man, and not (as some of his critics would imply) a matter of laborious technical treatment applied to two or three prize specimens, I have taken all these examples from one of the less known works, one of the least admired and perhaps of the least admirable. Whole tracts of it run almost as casually as his private correspondence; and his private correspondence is full of the same lively and animated neatness. In this one neglected volume of The Wrecker there are thousands of such things; and everything to show that he could have written twenty more volumes, equally full of these felicities. A man who does this is not only an artist doing what most men cannot do, but he is certainly doing what most novelists do not do. Even very good novelists have not this particular knack of putting a whole human figure together with a few unforgettable words. By the end of a novel by Mr. Arnold Bennett or Mr. E. F. Benson I have the sense that Lord Raingo or Lord Chesham is a real man, very rightly understood; but I never have at the beginning that feeling of magic; that a man has been brought to life by three words of an incantation.
This was the genius of Stevenson; and it is simply silly to complain of it because it was Stevensonian. I do not blame either of the other two novelists for not being somebody else. But I do venture to blame them a little for grumbling because Stevenson was himself. I do not quite see why he should be covered with cold depreciation merely because he could put into a line what other men put into a page; why he should be regarded as superficial because he saw more in a man’s walk or profile than the moderns can dig out of his complexes and his subconsciousness; why he should be called artificial because he sought (and found) the right word for a real object; why he should be thought shallow because he went straight for what was significant, without wading towards it through wordy seas of insignificance; or why he should be treated as a liar because he was not ashamed to be a story-teller.
Of course there are many other vivid marks of Stevenson’s style, besides this particular element of picked and pointed phrase, or rather especially the combination of picked and pointed phrases. I might make much more than I have made out of something in his rapidly stepping sentences, especially in narrative, which corresponds to his philosophy of the militant attitude and the active virtues. That word angular, which I have been driven to use too often, belongs to the sharpness of his verbal gestures as much as to the cutlasses and choppers of his paste-board pirates. Those early theatrical figures, from the sketch-book of Skelt, were all of them in their nature like snapshots of people in swift action. Three-Fingered Jack could not have remained permanently with the cudgel or the sabre swung about his head nor Robin Hood with the arrow drawn to his ear; and the descriptions of Stevenson’s characters are seldom static but rather dynamic descriptions; and deal rather with how a man did or said something than with what he was like. The sharp and shrewd Scottish style of Ephraim Mackellar or David Balfour seems by its very sound exactly fitted to describe a man snapping his fingers or rapping with his stick. Doubtless so careful an artist as Stevenson varied his style to suit the subject and the speaker; we should not look for these dry or abrupt brevities in the dilettante deliberations of Loudon Dodd; but I know very few of the writer’s works in which there are not, at the crisis, phrases as short and sharp as the knife that Captain Wicks rammed through his own hand. Something should also have been said, of course, of the passages in which Stevenson deliberately plays on a somewhat different musical instrument; as when he exercised upon Pan’s Pipes in respectful imitation of Meredith upon a penny whistle. Something should have been said of the style of his poems; which are perhaps more successful in their phraseology than their poetry. But these again teem with these taut and trenchant separate phrases; the description of the interlacing branches like crossed swords in battle; the men upholding the falling skies like unfrowning caryatids; the loud stairs of honour and the bright eyes of danger. But I have already explained that I profess no scientific thoroughness about these problems of execution; and can only speak of the style of Stevenson as it specially affects my own taste and fancy. And the thing that strikes me most is still this sense of somebody being pinked with a rapier in a particular button; of a sort of fastidiousness that has still something of the fighting spirit, that aims at a mark and makes a point, and is certainly not merely an idle trifling with words for the sake of their external elegance or intrinsic melody. As a part of the present criticism, such a statement is only another way of saying, in the old phrase, that the style is the man; and that the man was certainly a man and not only a man of letters. I find everywhere, even in his mere diction and syntax, that theme that is the whole philosophy of fairy-tales, of the old romances and even of the absurd libretto of the little theatre— the conception that man is born with hope and courage indeed, but born outside that which he was meant to attain; that there is a quest, a test, a trial by combat or pilgrimage of discovery; or, in other words, that whatever else man is he is not sufficient to himself, either through peace or through despair. The very movement of the sentence is the movement of a man going somewhere and generally fighting something; and that is where optimism and pessimism are alike opposed to that ultimate or potential peace, which the violent take by storm.
CHAPTER VII
EXPERIMENT AND RANGE
IN any generalisation about Stevenson, it is of course easy to forget that his work was very varied, in the sense of being very versatile. In one sense, he tried very different styles; and was always very careful only to try one style at a time. The unity of each accentuates the diversity of all. The very fact that he was careful to keep each several study in its own tone or tint, makes the range of his work look more like a patchwork than it really is. It is always a sharp contrast between complete and homogeneous things; when these things are broken up into subdivisions, the whole falls back into a more mixed but a more general pattern. In one sense this is merely a platitude. It would hardly be difficult to point out that the style of Prince Otto is very different from the style of The Wrong Box. It is different with the whole difference between a man working in wax or cardboard or ivory or ebony. Prince Otto is a sort of china shepherdess group, practising arcadian courtliness in an eighteenth-century park; the other is a sort of Aunt Sally pelted with comic misfortunes as if with cocoanuts. Nobody is likely to confuse these forms of art; nobody sets up a china shepherdess to be pelted with cocoanuts; few are so chivalrous as to approach their Aunt Sally with the deferential bows of a courtier. But when we get past this obvious contrast, which nobody could possibly miss, we find that (in a queer manner) there is versatility without variety. What makes those two stories stand out in our memory is a certain spirit with which they are told; yes, and even a certain style as well as spirit. It is not exactly the stories themselves; still less is it any real immersion of the author in the subjects of the stories themselves. We feel, even as we read, that Stevenson would be the last man really to wish to be imprisoned for life in a petty German court or poised for ever amid such very fragile china. We know it, just as we know that Stevenson does not really intend to turn his attention to the leather-business, or even (though here we may fancy the temptation stronger) to become a rowdy solicitor with shady clients, in the manner of the priceless Mr. Michael Finsbury. We remember the treatment more than the subject; because the treatment is really much more alive than the subject. Long after the ghosts in that ornamental garden have faded, and we have completely forgotten Who was Who at the court of Prince Otto, we hear and remember in the depths of that valley, “the solid plunge of the cataract.” And long after the details of the Tontine System have become blurred and all the far less interesting details of our own daily life along with them, when all lesser things have diminished and life itself is fading from my eyes—I shall still see before me the Form called up by that inspired paragraph: “His costume was of a mercantile brilliancy best described as stylish; nor could anything be said against him, except that he was a little too like a wedding guest to be quite a gentleman.”
Even through these wide divergences of subject, therefore, there runs something which is not only the genius but decidedly the method of Stevenson. In one sense he is careful to vary the style; in another sense the style is never varied. We might say, so to speak, that it is the style within the style that is never varied. But subject to this general understanding, it is only just to him to insist on the wide range that he managed to cover in his short and very much hampered literary life. He once reproached himself with not having enlarged his life by building lighthouses as well as writing books. But the firm of Stevenson and Son might have been mildly convulsed if there had risen on every side lighthouses in seven styles of architecture; a Gothic lighthouse, an ancient Egyptian lighthouse, and a lighthouse like a Chinese pagoda. And that is what he did with the towers of imagination and the light of reason.
There are indeed, as I have hinted, one or two places where it may be maintained that Stevenson let his style stray; and wandered into other tracks, sometimes older tracks, away from the immediate track of travel. Personally, I have this feeling about the wanderings of the Master of Ballantrae and the Chevalier Burke. They are a sort of adventure story in the wrong place; and though Mr. James Durie was certainly an adventurer in the bad sense, it is impossible to make him one in the good. It is impossible to turn a villain into a hero for the purposes of pure romance; Jim Hawkins could not have gone on his adventures permanently arm-in-arm with Long John Silver. The episode of Blackbeard is a sort of fizzling anticlimax, spluttering like the blue matches in that fool’s hat. Such a shoddy person had no claim to be so much as mentioned in that spiritual tragedy of the terrible twin spirits; the brothers of Durrisdeer. It is almost as if pirates were really a private mania with the author; and he could not keep them out of the tale if he tried; though pirates have really no more business in this tale than pirates in The Wrong Box. But it is curious to note how completely they are discoloured by the white death-ray that shines on that winter’s tale. Their blood and gold were not really red; their seas were not even really blue. This was no occasion for Two-pence Coloured. The very style of Mackeller’s narrative might be shrewdly summed up indeed under the title of A Penny Plain. But this is not only because that worthy steward was addicted to plainness and not averse to pennies. It is also because he is addicted to home and habit and averse to adventure; and the notion of the Master dragging him across half the world has something about it ungainly and grotesque and unworthy of the intensity of their intellectual and spiritual relations. The truth is that the Master of Ballantrae is not only a family demon but also a family ghost; and ought not to haunt any house except his own. Ghosts do not travel like tourists; even for the pleasure of visiting their relatives in the colonies. The story of the Duries is emphatically domestic; like those very domestic stories of home life in which Oedipus butchered his father or Orestes trampled on the body of his mother. These incidents were regrettable, and even painful; but they were all kept in the family. Something tells us that most of them happened behind high barred doors or in terrible unrecorded interviews. They did not wash their bloody linen in public; least of all did they wash it in all the seven seas of the British Empire. But the appearance of the Master first in India and then in America has almost the suggestion of the Prince of Wales on an imperial tour. Now those scenes in The Master of Ballantrae which do take place in the dark house of his fathers, or in the dim and wintry plantations without, do have an indefinable grandeur and even hugeness of outline that recalls Greek tragedies. Nay, they have even that hint of long wanderings and remote places, which is lost when the wanderings and the places are too elaborately followed out. At that unforgotten moment when the stranger first stands up, long and black and slender on the point of rock, and makes a motion with his cane that is like a spoken word of mockery, we do feel that he might have come from the ends of the earth, that he might have strolled from the empire of the Mogul or fallen from the moon. But the irony of the story is in that hateful love, or that pure love of hatred, that is the link between him and his; and makes him as domestic as the roof-tree even when he is as destructive as the battering-ram. It is curious, and perhaps over-curious, to find this rare fault in the work which is in its principal parts so faultless. It may seem still more pedantic to pick another very small hole in it; but it seems to me that Stevenson missed one great chance, in a way he rarely did, when he made even Mackellar such a prig as to write for the last line of the epitaph a phrase like, “With his fraternal enemy.” Surely the words would have stood out with a much more sinister and significant finality, if he had merely written, “And sleeps in the same grave with his brother.”
But this mixture of two types of tale in one is the very reverse of characteristic. I know not where else in his works it can be found; unless perhaps we might take exception to the slight element of political irritation that makes itself felt, of all places in the world, in the amiable nightmare of The Dynamiter. It is really impossible to use a story in which everything is ridiculous to prove that certain particular Fenians or anarchist agitators are ridiculous. Nor indeed is it tenable that men who risk their lives to commit such crimes are quite so ridiculous as that. But broadly speaking, the characteristic of this writer’s conscientious artistry is that he is very careful to keep the different forms of art in water-tight compartments. It was, of course, a sentiment about technique and material which was very fashionable in the age of Whistler and the world where Stevenson had studied art. And the artist would as soon have stuck a lump of marble into the middle of a bas-relief in terracotta, or applied a coat of paint to a tracery he was making out of ivory, as put a piece of tragedy into the middle of a tea-table comedy or a burst of righteous indignation into a farce. In all this part of Stevenson’s mind, especially as revealed in his letters, most of the critics have missed the very lasting effect of the chatter of craftsmanship, and all the jargon of tricks of the trade, which he heard among the French art students. He had reversed almost the whole philosophy of everything that they wanted to do; but he still retained the dialect in which they talked about how it was done. But he talked it much better than they did; and he had his own knack of using the right word even for the search for the right word. It is typical that he said that a story must have one general tendency; and that in the whole book there must not be a single word “that looks the other way.” There is not a single word that looks the other way in the whole of Prince Otto or in the whole of The Wrong Box.
But now and then he did something more than this. He created a form of art. He invented a genre which does not really exist outside his work. It may seem a paradox to say that his most original work was a parody. But certainly the notion of The New Arabian Nights is quite as unique in the world as the old Arabian Nights; and it does not owe its real ingenuity to the model which it mocks. Stevenson here wove a singular sort of texture, or mixed a singular sort of atmosphere, which is not like anything else; a medium in which many incongruous things may find a comic congruity. It is partly like the atmosphere of a dream; in which so many incongruous things cause no surprise. It is partly the real atmosphere of London at night; it is partly the unreal atmosphere of Baghdad. The broad and placid presence of Prince Florizel of Bohemia, that mysterious semi-reigning sovereign, is treated with a sort of vast and vague diplomatic reserve; which is like the confused nightmare of an old cosmopolitan courtier. The Prince himself seems to have palaces in every country; and yet the humorous reader suspects, with half his mind, that the man is really only a pompous tobacconist, whom Stevenson happened to find in Rupert Street and chose to make the hero of a standing joke. This double mentality, like that of the true dreamer, is suggested with extraordinary skill without loading with a single question the inimitable lightness of the narrative. The humour of Florizel’s colossal condescension constitutes not only a new character, but a new sort of character. He stands in a new relation to reality and unreality; he is a sort of solid impossibility. Since that time many writers have written such fanciful extravagances about the lights of London; for Stevenson suffered much more than Tennyson from that of which the latter complained when “all had got the seed.” But few of them have really struck those ironical semitones or made the same thing so completely a cockney conspiracy and an Arabian fairy-tale. We have heard much of making the life of the modern town romantic; and many of the attempts in modern poetry seem only to make it more ugly than it really is. We have at the present moment a considerable cult of the fantastic; with the result that the fantastic has become rather a fixed type. It is picked out in crying colours of chrome yellow or magenta; with the result that it is perhaps too obviously a puppet. But Prince Florizel of Bohemia is not a puppet. He is a presence; a person who seems to fill the room and yet to be such stuff as dreams are made of; not simply a thing made of stuffing. The rigid and unreal dolls may fall into dust when the mood changes; but we do not easily imagine anybody kicking the stuffing out of Florizel. I will not say that the New Arabian Nights is the greatest of Stevenson’s works; though a considerable case might be made for the challenge. But I will say that it is probably the most unique; there was nothing like it before, and, I think, nothing equal to it since.
But it is worth while to remark that even here, where the atmosphere might be expected to be more hazy, the generalisation stands about edges and the exact extravagance of Skelt. However delicate is the air of mockery or mystery, there is very little change in the staccato style. The quarrel with the Suicide Club is “put to the touch of swords” and the phrase tingles like the twin blades of Durrisdeer. Nothing could be more angular than Mr. Malthus, the horrible paralysed man who plays on the brink of the precipice of suicide; he is as hard as a huge beetle. There is all the jerk of the old energetic puppets when he jumps from his seat, losing his disease for an instant at the sight of death. There is more movement in that one paralytic than in crowds of softly moving society figures, in milder or more meditative fiction. The very clatter of his broken bones down the stone steps of Trafalgar Square, of which we hear but an echo, has that almost metallic quality. Jack Vandeleur’s “brutalities of gesture,” his pantomime of opening and shutting the hand, are surely somewhat piratical; he had been Dictator of Paraguay; but I think he had sailed there on the Hispaniola. In short we have here once more the continuity of a style within a style. And the inner thread within the silk is as thin and hard as wire.
Again, it illustrates this variety of experiment that Stevenson also wrote a detective story; or as he characteristically called it (in a sort of pedantic plain English) a police novel. He wrote it in collaboration with Mr. Lloyd Osbourne; and I have considered another aspect of it already, in the local colour of The Wrecker. But The Wrecker is ultimately a police novel; and the best sort of police novel, in which the police are never called in. Stevenson explained his reasons for leading up to the problem with studies of social life; and certainly it says much for the liveliness of that life that we do not grow so impatient as to offer the obvious comment. Otherwise we should certainly make one reasonable criticism. The writer may be pardoned if he is a long time getting to the solution, but not when he is such a long time getting to the mystery. It must be confessed that we have to wait for the question to be asked, as well as for it to be answered. Personally I am very glad to wait in the waiting-room of Pinkerton and Dodd. But anyhow when the question is asked, it is with great animation; and the excitement of beginning to piece together a puzzle, which is the essence of a detective story, has seldom been more lively and lifelike than in the cross questions and crooked answers of Captain Nares and his super-cargo. Here, however, the detective story merely illustrates the fact of his having almost as many irons in the fire as Jim Pinkerton. It illustrates the general fact that he tried a great many different styles; and yet his style was not different.
If there were experiments in which his touch was less happy they were, strangely enough perhaps, those connected with the simple or semi-savage world in which he found so much happiness. The Island Nights’ Entertainments are not quite so entertaining as the Arabian Nights’ Entertainments, whether New or Old. The explanation may be found, perhaps, in that casual phrase with which he swept the South Seas and swept away a good many imperial or international illusions, probably without knowing it; when he said of all those regions, “It is a large ocean but a narrow world.” He did not really find new types, at least among the white men; he rather found new countries full of old and battered types, white men who no longer looked very conspicuously white. One exception must be allowed; the story of The Ebb-Tide has a very great deal of kick in it; even though we hardly have the full satisfaction of seeing all the characters kicked. Anyhow, it is quite certain that whatever was the cause of the relative ineffectiveness of some of the work done at Vailima, it was not due to his having written himself out or experienced any weakening of power. For the very last days of all were spent in producing what was, or would have been, his most powerful piece of work. I have said something elsewhere, in connection with the Scottish romances, of his last great story, which is unfortunately a great fragment. Actually (I am tempted to say fortunately) that story named after Weir of Hermiston is not mainly about Weir of Hermiston. At least it is not about the first and most famous person of that name; and the best chapters of the book now in existence are concerned with the most sensitive and passionate shades of the Scottish temperament; richer shades of passion than he had ever yet attempted to touch. If ever the grey moor turned purple, it did at the moment when the girl lifted her voice to sing the song of the Elliots. He never forgets his abrupt gesture; and it was never so arresting as when her psalm-book page was rent across.
When Stevenson drew the long bow for the last time, like Robin Hood, he had two strings to his bow; and they both broke; but one was much stronger than the other. In other words he had two stories in his head, both of which broke off short; and perhaps it is not surprising that the weaker was rather neglected in favour of the stronger. The story of St. Ives contains excellent things, as does everything that he ever wrote, down to the most casual private letter. But it may be called disappointing, with rather more exactitude than is usual in the use of that word. St. Ives can hardly avoid being a sort of historical novel; and yet it is a rather unhistorical novel. By which I do not mean that there may be mistakes about dates or details; which matter nothing in fiction and are made too much fuss of even in history. I mean it is unhistorical in showing a strange lack of historical imagination and the sense of historical opportunity. It is the story of a soldier of Napoleon imprisoned on Edinburgh Rock and escaping from it. But indeed we might fancy it was Stevenson and not St. Ives who was imprisoned on Edinburgh Rock. And Stevenson does not escape from it. Such a subject demanded a sort of international interpreter; but it is in truth the most strangely insular of all his books. St. Ives is not a Frenchman; he is the less and not the more French because he is given all the foppery and swagger which spinsters in Edinburgh in 1813 doubtless did associate with a Frenchman. He is no more a French soldier than Bonaparte was Boney. He has neither the French realism nor the French idealism. He does not look at England as a Frenchman of the revolutionary wars would have looked at it. This story is simply France seen from Britain; it is not, as it should be, Britain seen from France. Unless St. Ives were a very bitter Royalist (which he evidently was not, but a moderate Bonapartist) he would quite certainly have conceived himself as carrying not mere military glory but the light of reason and philosophy and social justice to the aristocratic and autocratic states. He would have been impatient with the illogical resistance to rational things; not merely annoyed at not being shaved or provided with a looking-glass. But St. Ives is not a French soldier. He is a man in a French uniform; but so was Alan Breck Stewart. And that blessed and beloved name may perhaps recall to us that vanity and a love of fine coats can occasionally be found, even in the British Isles.
But perhaps in this very insularity there is something like a return to earlier things, and a rounding off of his life. In that sense the story of Stevenson, like the story of St. Ives, began on the crag and castle of Edinburgh; and it may be right that it should in a fashion end there, and not really get any further. The most really Stevensonian scenes, in their spirit and spitfire animation, are those which occur first in the prison. It seems almost as if St. Ives was more free before he escaped. The business of the duel with sticks turned into spears, by the addition of scissor-blades, has all the hilarity of his old dance of death. That alone serves as an excellent symbol of that magnifying of the sharp and the metallic; and the way in which steel was always a sort of magnet to his mind. Perhaps he was the first quiet householder to whom it ever occurred to see even scissors as swords.
But the book offers a yet better example of this return to an almost narrowly national romance, like the flight of a homing bird. It occurs almost in the first few lines of the book; yet it might stand in a fashion for a title to all his books. It occurs in connection with the highly characteristic passage, typical of his love of gay pictorial colouring, in which he instantly lights up the prison hill with flames; saying that the yellow convict coats and the red uniforms made up together “a lively picture of hell.” And with reference to this he remarks, as if in passing, that the ancient Pictish or Celtic name of that castle of Edinburgh was “The painted hill,” or, as I have seen it somewhere in another version, “The painted rock.” That might stand as a symbol of many things here less sufficiently suggested; of a Scotsman dressed, or almost disguised, as an artist; of a style that could be at once abrupt and austere, and yet was always vivid with colour; but above all of that combination of colour with a solemn and childish caricature which we have seen in the background of his boyhood; for the landscape of Skelt consisted entirely of painted rocks. Stevenson had a passion of compression. With all his output, he had a strange ambition to be a man of few words. It seems to me that he was always seeking in words for a combination that should be also a compression; for two words that should instantly give birth to the third thing that he really wanted to say. It may be questioned, of him as of any other artist, whether he ever really succeeded in saying it. But we might amuse ourselves with the fancy that such a system of brilliant abbreviations might be more and more rapidly, like signals, uttered and understood; that some day a symbol of two words might stand for a thesis as a cryptic Chinese character stands for a word; and that all men could easily write and read such compact hieroglyphics. If that were so, it were hardly an exaggeration to say that the great mission given by God to Robert Louis Stevenson was to say the words “painted rock” and perish.
Anyhow, it was in the midst of these new experiments that he did perish; fulfilling the very terms of his challenge in Aes Triplex; of the happy man whom death finds flushed with hope and planning vast foundations. And indeed his death may well come also at the end of this chapter of experiment, as the last of his experiments. I was a lad when the news came to England; and I remember that some of his friends doubted at first, because the telegram said that he died making a salad; and they “had never heard of his doing such a thing.” And I remember fancying, with a secret arrogance, that I knew one thing about him better than they did, though I never saw him with these mortal eyes; for it seemed to me that if there were something that Stevenson had never been known to do before, it would be the very thing that he would do. So indeed he died mixing new salads of many sorts; and the image is not inappropriate or irreverent; but only touched with a certain lightness and resilience as of a coiled spring that belonged to him from first to last; and is that quality which Dr. Sarolea has truly called the French spirit of Stevenson. He died swiftly as if struck with an arrow and even over his grave something of a higher frivolity hovers upon wings like a bird; “Glad did I live and gladly die,” has a lilt that no repetition can make quite unreal, light as the lifted spires of Spyglass Hill and translucent as the dancing waves; types of a tenuous but tenacious levity and the legend that has made his graveyard a mountain-peak and his epitaph a song.
CHAPTER VIII
THE LIMITS OF A CRAFT
THE truest adverse criticism of Stevenson was written by Stevenson. It was also very Stevensonian; for it took the form of saying, about his own fictitious characters, that his temptation was always “to cut the flesh off the bones.” Even here we may note his peculiar cutting or hacking accent; it sounds like some horrid crime of Barbecue or Billy Bones. Indeed that word is sufficiently symbolic of Stevenson. His name might have been Bones, like the seafaring man at the “Admiral Benbow”; nor was this only because his eternal boyhood was as full of skeletons as the school life of Traddles. It was also because of a certain bony structure in his whole taste and turn of mind; something that was angular though slender like his own slim and brittle frame and long Quixotic face. Nevertheless the words were uttered as a condemnation; and they were a just condemnation.
The real defect of Stevenson as a writer, so far from being a sort of silken trifling and superficial or superfluous embroidery, was that he simplified so much that he lost some of the comfortable complexity of real life. He treated everything with an economy of detail and a suppression of irrelevance which had at last something about it stark and unnatural. He is to be commended among authors for sticking to the point; but real people do not stick quite so stubbornly to the point as that. We can here best realise his real error, as well as his real originality, by comparing him with the great Victorian novelists in whose vast shadow he grew up. I shall have occasion to note afterwards that his collision was not with these in the matter of morals or philosophy; for on that side he was looking forward and not back. But there is a strong contrast, and a striking new departure, in the passage from the very best of Thackeray or Trollope to the first sketches, I had almost said scratches, of Stevenson. Those sketches were in a few lines, and only of the necessary lines; it was the whole point that one necessary line was a loss and not a gain. Compared with this, the very best of the old Victorian novels were full of padding. But there was something to be said for the Victorian padding; as there was for the Victorian upholstery. Comfort is not always a contemptible thing, when its other name is hospitality; and Dickens and Thackeray and Trollope had a huge hospitality for their own characters. They were heartily and unaffectedly glad to see them; and especially glad to see them again. Hence their taste for sequels and continuous family histories; and all the positively last appearances of Mr. Pendennis or Mrs. Proudie. And this repetition, this rambling, even this padding, did in a curious confused fashion confirm the reality of the characters. As the padded Victorian furniture did really make people feel at home, so the padded Victorian novels made the reader feel at home with the characters. Now the reader never does feel quite at home with Stevenson’s characters. He cannot get rid of an impression that he knows too little about them; though he knows that he knows all that is important about them. His tragedy is that he knows only what is important. Alan Breck Stewart is not only a very lively but a very loveable character. And yet there is too little of him to love; though he might well draw his claymore upon us, if we made so dangerous an allusion. We are not quite at ease with him, as we are at ease with Pickwick or Pendennis. We know the vital things about him; and they are very vital. But we do not know thousands of things about him; as we do about a man with whom we have lived through a long Early Victorian novel. Stevenson has in fact done exactly what he accused himself of doing; it is he who wields the claymore and he has cut the flesh off the bones.
An illustration of the difference, of course, could be found in the presentation of the externals of a character. The dark vivacity of the face of Alan Breck, the eyes with their “dancing madness, at once engaging and alarming,” springs up before us as clearly as a coloured photograph in the first few words of description; and the same few words have already set strutting the whole brisk little figure in the blue coat and silver buttons and the swagger of the big sword. But the whole operation is so rapid and complete as to have something about it almost unconvincing, like a conjuring trick. It is like seeing something by a single flash of lightning; there is in that illumination a sort of illusion. For in the heart of anything that partakes of magic there is also something of mockery. It is not so that we “get to know” the personal appearance of somebody in Thackeray or Trollope. It is by a multitude of apparently accidental or even unnecessary allusions that we gradually gain the impression that Warrington was dark and moody with a blue shaven chin. The appearance of Lord Steyne is scattered all over Vanity Fair in scraps; his red whiskers in one chapter, his bandy legs in another, his bald head in a third. But this is so like the way in which we really do talk about real people, that in comparison there is something almost unreal about Stevenson’s rapid realism. Perhaps the story-teller ought to remember more often that he is a man telling a story. Perhaps he even forgets that it is supposed to sound like a true story. And after all a man does not say to his wife at dinner, in real life, “A stranger came to my office this morning; he was of an elegant, strenuous figure, with a fine falcon profile, the eyebrows and the corners of the mouth touched with temper; and a general appearance which, though not without distinction, was thrown up in a somewhat theatrical fashion by his dashing cutaway coat and white spats and the magenta coloured orchid in his buttonhole.” Such a soliloquy seldom resounds in the suburban home; and if the stranger’s appearance comes to count for anything, it comes out bit by bit; as in saying, “I wasn’t altogether surprised when he threw the inkstand; for I saw by his eyebrows he had a beast of a temper,” or, “The office-boy was taken out incapacitated with laughter at the first sight of the spats.” In the same way, nobody does actually say, as Mackellar does in the Stevensonian romance, “I was now near enough to see him, a very handsome figure and countenance, swarthy, lean, long, with a quick, alert, black look, as of one who was a fighter and accustomed to command; upon one cheek he had a mole, not unbecoming; a large diamond sparkled on his hand; his clothes, although of the one hue, were of a French and foppish design; his ruffles, which he wore longer than common, of exquisite lace.” Men do not really describe things like that; would that they described anything so well! These facts about the Master of Ballantrae would have come out in a more fragmentary fashion in the real record of a real Mackellar. The diamond would have been mentioned in connection with a rumour of thieves; the lace in connection with the laundry. And that is more or less how the older Victorian novelists did often describe or mention these things; and I think it really does give an impression of reality. Compared with it, the very completeness of Stevenson seems incomplete. But it is also true that the older Victorians could not have achieved this familiar realism except by being a little more formless than Stevenson and lacking his beautiful and piercing sense of the clarity of form. Though he may seem to describe his subject in detail, he describes it to be done with it; and he does not return to the subject. He never says anything needlessly; above all he never says anything twice. Few will venture to say that Thackeray never says anything twice; or that he was incapable in some cases of saying twenty times. Yet in some ways this repetition, though sometimes boring, is somehow convincing; I might almost say comforting. It comes from that comfortable sense of social ease, which was a mark of the England of that brief period of mercantile success; or at least of that part of England which consisted of the merchants who had succeeded. And it exhibited, along with its other virtues and vices, that rather coarse benevolence that was at once a virtue and a vice. “The British merchant’s son shan’t want, sir,” said old Mr. Osborne; and neither should the spiritual child of Mr. William Makepeace Thackeray. Words shall be poured out on him like wine; pages shall be open for him like parks, in which he may wander. He shall be allowed to hang about as long as he likes and the poorest relations of the story shall be asked again and again to dinner. In short, the reader shall “get to know him” and discuss all sorts of little details about him at leisure; they shall not all be disposed of once and for all in one closely packed paragraph. We return to the word hospitality; and the chatter of a hundred friends and relations at an English Christmas party. In comparison the verbal economy of the Scottish romancer suggests something of the old joke against the Scot. He is so very thrifty that his characters are almost thin.
The loftiest things of this world have their weakness or defect; and with that word “thin” we come to the limit of the glory of Skelt and discover that even the maker of toy theatres is human. Just as Stevenson gained in that school of boyish bravado his admirable sense of symbolic attitude and action, his deep joy in gay colour and gallant carriage, his fine feeling for life as a story and honour as a fight; his response to the challenge of the open door or the drag of the road over the hill—as he gained all these great virtues and values under the symbol of A Penny Plain and Twopence Coloured, so he betrayed also even in his best work something of the technical limitation of such an instrument. And it cannot be more clearly stated than by saying that these flat figures could only be seen from one side. They are aspects or attitudes of men rather than men; though the aspects and attitudes are of great importance considered as symbols, like the flat haloes of saints or the flat blazonry of shields. In that sense only they are not deep enough; and lack another measurement. They are deep enough in the sense in which any beautiful picture is deep; in the sense that anything beautiful always means more than it says; possibly means more than it means to mean. In that sense there can be depth enough even in the shallow scenery of Skelt, when the child’s eye plunges into it. But there is not depth in the sense of a great familiarity with the other side of the scenery or the implied life behind the scenes. When all is said and done, the splendid and inspiring figure of Three-Fingered Jack is a figure and not a statue. You cannot walk round him; and if he has no more than three fingers, he has much less than three dimensions. But the important paradox is that in this the imperfection of the work is actually due to the perfection of the art. It is exactly because Balfour or Ballantrae only do what they are meant to do, and do it so swiftly and well, that we have a vague feeling that we do not know them as we know more loitering, more rambling or more sprawling characters. This is, if you will, a weakness in the author’s work; but it is even more emphatically a weakness in the critics who call him weak. For they accuse him of the very opposite of his real fault; of a sort of self-indulgent delicacy or a luxury of mere words. The evil arises from his very passion of economy and severity; from the fact that he pruned too much, so as almost to kill the plant; from the fact that he went too straight to the point, so that the movement was too quick to be clear, let alone familiar; above all, from the fact that such hardness of technique had about it something almost inhuman. He does sometimes simplify the puppet so much as to show the wire. But even in that relation between wire and wood there is a queer sort of realism.
Stevenson was a man who believed in craftsmanship; that is, in creation. He had not the smallest natural sympathy with all those hazy pagan and pantheistic notions often covered by the name of inspiration. He might not have expressed it in the phrase that man is an image of the Creator; but he did very definitely regard man as a maker of images. There is, and has long been, pouring upon the world, mostly in an immediate sense from the Germans and the Slavs, probably in an ultimate sense from the dark philosophies of Asia, a sort of doctrine of mystical helplessness that takes a hundred forms; and that recognises everything in the world except will. It denies the will of God and it does not believe even in the will of man. It does not believe in one of the most glorious manifestations of the will of man, which is the act of creative choice essential to art. The tendency has been admirably treated in the work of M. Henri Massis in his book on the Defence of the West; and another French writer of the same school, M. Maritain, has remarked on the important part which the word artifex, as the title of an artist, played in mediaeval philosophy as well as mediaeval craftsmanship. As we shall see later, it is the paradox of Stevenson that he would have cared nothing for such mediaeval metaphysics; and yet he carried out in practice precisely what these writers are now maintaining in principle. He was, if ever there was one, an artifex; not a mere mouthpiece of elemental powers or destinies, but a man making something by the force of will and in the light of reason. It was a sort of craftsmanship characteristic of mediaeval work in literature as well as sculpture. It was strikingly present in those mediaeval poets whom Stevenson himself admired; and perhaps admired more than he understood. It is supremely typical of the close and finely carved ballades of Villon. Indeed the name of Stevenson will always, I suppose, be picturesquely associated with the name of Villon; if only because of the fine macabre nocturne of A Lodging for the Night. And yet if there was one thing in the world about which Stevenson was entirely wrong, it was about François Villon. He was even, on that subject, guilty of a very unusual lapse of logic and error of fact. In his essay on Villon, while showing all the enthusiasm of a fine critic for a fine poet, he insists with almost rabid emphasis that the mind of the man was rotten with mere bestial cynicism and base materialism. “His eyes were sealed with their own filth”; and he could see nothing noble or beautiful in heaven or earth. And to this he adds the rather curious remark that even in that France of the fifteenth century Villon might have learnt something better; since a few years before Joan of Arc had lived one of the noblest lives in history. It seems rather hard on poor Villon to attribute to him a contented ignorance of all such people as Joan of Arc; since he actually goes out of his way to mention her in the most famous of his ballades; “The good lady of Lorraine whom the English burnt at Rouen.” But the criticism is far more false according to the spirit than according to the letter. It is founded on a sort of modern fashionable fallacy, compounded of sentimentalism and optimism, to the effect that a man who is rather bitter about this world cannot have any ideals; whereas the bitterness does sometimes come from the intensity of his ideals. Anyhow, there is no doubt, to anybody who can read poetry without prejudice, that Villon had ideals and high ideals; only they happened to be highly Catholic ideals. The devotional poem that he wrote for his old mother, which describes her gazing at the glowing mediaeval window, itself glows with sincerity. And he wrote at least one line that would be sufficient to destroy the accusation; one of those lines that are too simple to be adequately translated, “Offrit à la mort sa très claire jeunesse”; which is something like, “Offered his clear and shining youth to death.” He wrote it of Jesus Christ; but what better thing could be written of Joan of Arc?
I have paused upon this parenthesis; because it foreshadows the general view to which all these rather rambling criticisms ultimately tend; that Stevenson stood for the truth and did not quite understand the truth he stood for. If he had understood it, he would have known that the virile craftsmanship which he was only too eager to admire in Villon, was really connected with certain virtues, which were none the less the virtues of a craftsman because they happened to be the virtues of a thief. Nobody pretends that Villon was a saint; but the socially disreputable externals of his sin do not (for those of his faith) make him a specially or supremely hopeless sinner. If he was a thief, nobody can prove that he was not a penitent thief; and the moral system to which he was attached had raised such a man to its altars under the somewhat paradoxical title of The Good Thief. He was probably the last man to expect in his own person to be that night in paradise; but he was not any further off from heaven merely because he was likely to be hanged high on a gallows. Here we have once more, I fancy, a touch of Calvinism with its finger of fear. There is also that grim and stony optimism attributed to the Old Testament, with its divine favouritism for the fortunate. But though the surface of this rather superficial criticism was alien to that free will which is the creed of craftsmanship, the personal creative spirit underneath the criticism was still that of the genuine Christian craftsman. When Stevenson set about to describe Villon and his gang of ragamuffins, under the snow and gargoyles of mediaeval Paris, he carved his grotesque as carefully as a gargoyle and balanced his story as beautifully as a French ballade. He did not take opium and absinthe and then sit down to wait for nameless cosmic energies to pour into his soul from nowhere. His spirit was a spirit utterly different from the mystical scepticism common in his time. He was responsible; he was deliberate; he was thrifty; he thoroughly deserved the dignified title of a working man.
The point here is that even his chief fault as an artist was typically the fault of a craftsman. He worked too narrowly, perhaps, producing only a thing perfect of its kind out of certain materials, by a certain method and under the limitations of a certain style. The same sort of criticism that feels a French ballade to be too fixed and artificial a form, the same sort of criticism that feels a fourteenth-century Virgin to be too stiff or affected in its posture, does doubtless feel a story of Stevenson to be too meagre in its materials or too strict in its stylistic unity. As I have explained above, I do not mean to suggest that such criticism is entirely unjust or unreasonable. Stevenson’s work has its faults, like other good work; and its chief deficiency does appear in a certain defect of thinness, which is produced by this instinct for hard simplification. But nobody could adequately write a history of nineteenth-century literature without noting this important departure in the direction of a closer and more vigilant verbal choice, as compared either with the cheerful laxity that went before it or the more gloomy laxity that has come since. Whatever else Stevenson stands for, he certainly stands for the idea that literature is not mere sensation or mere self-expression or mere record; but is sensation appealing to certain senses, self-expression in a certain material and record in a certain style. And in this he was certainly asserting the rights of the soul of man, as against various formless forces which some regarded as the soul of nature; the anima mundi of the pantheists. In this way Stevenson represented the same deep, ancient, hieratic and traditional truth that was taught to that generation by William Morris; and neither of them had the least idea what it was.
CHAPTER IX
THE PHILOSOPHY OF GESTURE
SOMETHING has been said, from time to time, in these pages about the justice or injustice of the alleged reaction against Stevenson. Little or nothing will be said about its final success or failure, and that for at least two reasons. First, that such guesses about the fashions of the future are generally quite wide of the mark, because they are founded on a very obvious fallacy. They always imply that public taste will continue to progress in its present direction; which is, in truth, the only thing we know that it will not do. A thing that wanders away in great winding curves may end anywhere; but to turn each curve into a straight line striking out into the void will be wrong in any case. This is obvious even in the tolerably short history of the modern novel. Victorians had a sort of parlour game of comparing Dickens and Thackeray; but they would have been amazed to hear modern young people declaring that Thackeray is much more sentimental than Dickens. They would have been astounded by the revival of Trollope, accompanied by the comparative neglect of Thackeray. For to the more earnest Victorians of that world, Trollope was another name for triviality. They would have felt as we should feel if we were told that Charles Garvice would outlive John Galsworthy. For a great genius may appear in almost any disguise; even in the disguise of a successful novelist. The second reason for which I wave away from me the prophet’s mantle, and decline to decide the question of the future, is that I do not think it very much matters. There are fine writers of the past as well as the present, who are read only by few; and I do not admit that the many know all about them, merely because they never knew them. I do not see why we should so blindly distrust popularity and so blindly trust posterity. But some of the conditions of survival may perhaps be generally considered.
The fame of Stevenson in the future will stand or fall with the strength or weakness of a particular argument. It was perhaps most compactly expressed by a critic who accused him of “externality.” What he called the fault of externality I should be inclined to ascribe to the fallacy of internalism. Perhaps it will be recognised better if I call it the fallacy of “psychology.” It is the notion that a serious novelist should confine himself to the inside of the human skull. Now Stevenson’s fiction is full of pantomime; in the strict sense of animated action or gesture. And it really seems as if the critics, by a sort of pun or perversion of meaning, associated it with a children’s pantomime; though Stevenson would have been the last to object even to that. Anyhow, this idea that intellectual fiction should concern the solitary and uncommunicative intellect is a very obvious fallacy indeed. It is sound enough to say that we can see below the surface; but not that we cannot see what is on the surface. Least of all is it sensible to say that we cannot believe in it because it has come to the surface; though it were as enormous as a spouting whale. Indeed the tone rather recalls that of some sceptics who implied that sailors ought not to think they saw the Great Sea Serpent, because it was a quarter of a mile long when they saw it. So we may well urge that psychological things are not less psychological because they come to the surface in pantomime. The argument amounts to saying that a really delicate piece of clockwork only exists when the clock stops. And indeed I suppose these critics would consider the action of a clock, in whirling its hands about, a very offensive piece of foreign gesticulation. It is like saying that a locomotive steam-engine is only a steam-engine when it is standing still; or that a building blowing up with a loud bang offers a final proof that it was not a powder-magazine.
Indeed in this respect the psychological critics are rather backward even in psychology. It generally distresses such people more to be behind the times than to be against the truth; and in this case it seems possible that they are both. The objection to their fallacy of internalism is that it is nonsense to think only of thoughts and not of words or deeds, since words are only spoken thoughts and deeds are only acted words. They are in fact the most dominant words and the most triumphant thoughts; the thoughts that emerge. But, according to “the latest modern psychology” (that infallible and immutable authority), it is even more of a mistake to treat the surface so superficially. Acts are not only the swiftest thoughts; they are even too swift to be called thoughts. They come from something more fundamental than common or conscious thinking. It is exactly our subconsciousness that appears in acts more than in words, or even thoughts. It is precisely our subconsciousness that bites its nails or twirls its moustaches, that kicks its heels or grinds its teeth. According to some, it is even our subconsciousness (that jolly companion) that occasionally cuts our mother’s throat or picks our father’s pocket. I do not take the latest modern psychology quite so seriously; but what element of truth there is in it is all against the tone of the latest Stevensonian, or Anti-Stevensonian, criticism. The test of fine fiction, by this or any other standard, is not whether it follows out threads of thought in silence; not whether it is subjective rather than objective or avoids any violent issue in events. It is simply whether it is right; whether the psychology is right and whether the act represents it rightly. In psychology, as in any other science, one cannot be more than right. And the most embittered critic will find it very difficult to show that Stevenson was very often wrong. What the embittered critic can show, and what will make him still more embittered, is that Stevenson expressed everything by some dramatic act. And, according to such critics, anything that is dramatic is melodramatic. The boyish brooding and smarting sentimental self-importance of David Balfour during his one quarrel with Alan Breck Stewart are described so delicately and exactly as to be worthy of George Meredith, who was so excellent with boys; they might easily be the broodings of Evan Harrington or Harry Richmond. Only in Stevenson’s story they end (alas!) in the crossing of blades and Alan tossing away his sword; and that, of course, is dreadfully melodramatic. One cannot be psychological inside a sword-belt; and cerebral processes must not take place under a three-cornered hat. The interlude of Henry Durie’s crippled and almost half-witted happiness, when the shadow of his brother is withdrawn for a season and his child is growing in the sun, is as pathetic and as true as any lucid interval (if such there be) in the suburban depression of the school of Gissing. Only when the fool’s paradise is lost, by a random word about the possible perversion of the child, it is not to be denied that Henry Durie falls to the earth like a stone. And the thoughtful critic explains that such a man cannot have had any really internal feelings; because his internal feelings were strong enough to knock him down. The dark, drudging and almost automatic altruism of poor Herrick, amid all his tangle of treasons in The Ebb-Tide, is as sad and true as the most miserable modern could wish it to be. But then Herrick jumps into the sea with a great splash; though he ought to endear himself to the modern critic by not actually doing anything after all, even for the fruitful cult of suicide. The girl Kirstie’s “gabble” of recollection and daydream and imaginary lovers’ quarrels, as she goes home from church, is quite as true to the actual inner workings of the young sentimental mind as any feminine fine shade in Henry James. But then the critic cannot be expected to forgive her for giving two or three little skips as she walks along the road. No lady in Henry James ever skipped. It is because in each of these cases some outward motion makes memorable the inward mood that these critics feel that it cannot really be so very inward. It is to be noted that they do not commit themselves to a positive negation; they do not affirm that the characters in question would not feel as they are described as feeling; they do not even say that they would not act as they are described as acting; that David would not fight or Durie fall or Kirstie leap upon the road. They simply have a refined and delicate feeling that psychological fiction ought to deal only, or mostly, with unspoken words or uncompleted thoughts. That is a very interesting point of view; and it is just as well to have it clearly stated and understood. If Stevenson had only served as an excuse for expounding this interesting critical thesis, they might so far thank him and even constrain themselves to be reasonably polite to him. Anyhow, that seems to be their principle; and I have paused long enough upon it to show that I do not wish to ignore it. Only I would respectfully submit that their quarrel is not with Stevenson; certainly their quarrel is not merely with Stevenson. It is with Homer and the bending of the bow; it is with Hamlet and the leap into the grave; it is with Francesca dropping the book or Quixote driving at the windmill; it is with Henry putting on his crown or Anthony putting off his helmet; it is with Roland in Roncesvaux, blowing the horn and breaking the sword and holding up his glove to God. It is in all those epic energies which gave to the last story and its sequel the noble title of Songs of Action—Chansons de Geste.
Among the many unreasonable objections to the Stevensonian romance, I admit that there is a reasonable objection that may be advanced here. It may be said that he was guilty of externality in this sense; that he sometimes began with externals, in so far as he saw in some scene or other setting the suggestion or rather the provocation of romance. “Certain dank gardens cry aloud for a murder,” he very truly observed; and he was often moved to commit the murder in a vicarious literary manner. He wished sometimes, he said, to fit every such place with its appropriate legend. Superficially there is sense in this objection; but in a deeper and more sympathetic sense I do not admit that it contradicts what I have said of the deep spring of gesture or the deliberation of craftsmanship. It merely means that there was from the first, in any such work of art, the unity of mood that there always ought to be. It means that he had decided what sort of novel he would write, before he had decided what novel he would write; and this is right and inevitable. The dank garden cannot cry aloud immediately, in so many words, “In this place the sinister tutor with one eye larger than the other buried the old sailor’s cutlass with which he had killed the horribly but secretly wicked admiral who was really his brother.” No dank garden ever expressed itself with such accuracy when crying aloud to anybody; but it is none the less true that the exact shade of gloom and the exact outline of disorder may have suggested, not merely a vulgar murder, but a murder having certain special qualities of the unnatural or the strange. This does not prove that they were not deep feelings which thus rose up at the sight of the strange landscape and groped to find their appropriate images of doom. It only proves that the origin of the story was of the same sort as the origin of a poem. We can call Stevenson a prose poet, if we like; but we cannot call him a superficial writer, unless all poets are superficial.
I shall have occasion to remark elsewhere that there is one strictly technical sense in which Stevenson’s treatment can be called a thin or a flat treatment. It is a sense in which we might say that a certain style in decorative ironwork is light and slender, in which we might say that Whistler’s way of laying on monochrome washes was merely flat. It has its defects, even considered as a technical treatment; there is an artistic aversion to filigree; and many have maintained that Whistler’s washes were too washy. But it is essential that this criticism should not be confused with the suggestion I have just answered; the suggestion that the spiritual significance of the pattern or the picture is shallow and not deep. That is another matter and has nothing whatever to do with the question of our favourite form; and though Stevenson’s favourite form was sometimes picturesque to excess, there was nothing platitudinous or merely sentimental about the moral of the picture. On the contrary, he was very much drawn towards difficult and perplexing moral themes and liked to put puzzles to himself in the possible relations of human souls. Only, as we have seen, he liked to make the human soul come to a conclusion in some fashion and announce its conclusion in some way. Hence all the abrupt signals and bodily departures which the sensitive so much lament; hence the coin hurled through the windowpane at Durrisdeer; the banjo flung into the fire on Midway Island; the knife sticking in the mast or the diamond tossed into the river. In short, Stevenson’s stories were often problem stories, in the style of what were called problem plays. But by one crime he disqualified himself for the company of the really realistic and earnest authors of problem plays or problem novels. He had a weakness for solving the problem.
There is in this merit the other side of a fault; and a fault of which he has often been accused. He was called self-conscious; and in his work he was perhaps a little too self-conscious, as compared with some writers whose fundamental and even almost forgotten impulses were allowed to flow forth more freely, and perhaps more naturally. But these things are a matter of degree and balance; and some may hold that it is the opposite type that has now become unbalanced. Walking the world to-day, I am not sure that I do not prefer the self-conscious to the subconscious. Stevenson felt a responsibility in art which was like his vivid and almost morbid sense of responsibility in conduct. His problems of conduct were indeed sometimes a little anarchical; and his ethical decision in them perhaps a little amateurish. Like Ibsen and Bernard Shaw and many men of his time, he had not quite discovered the pressing practical necessity of having a general rule, in the absence of which the world becomes a welter of exceptions. But he was intensely interested in the right moral solution whatever it might be; even if it seemed to involve the inversion of a moral rule. And this sense of social responsibility was thoroughly sincere: even when the special pleading had to be, perhaps, a little too individual to be social. It was natural for a novelist, perhaps, to feel most fiercely and keenly the particular personal case. Anyhow, I think he generally did so; as did Loudon Dodd in The Wrecker, when he balanced opium and Jim. He was certainly vastly intrigued by that sort of problem. Henley called him a Catechist; but he should have said Casuist. He professed to have a defective sympathy with Catholicism; and he was still probably provincial enough to have had a horror of Jesuitry; but as a matter of fact he was more casuistical than any Jesuit. He was much less clear about the original universal dogmas of a catechism, whether it were the Shorter Catechism or the Penny Catechism. But he was much more closely concerned about the special occasion when the general sense of those doctrines seemed challenged by a special necessity. We may say, therefore, that, in life and in literature, he was essentially a conscientious person. And a conscientious person is presumably a conscious person; and sometimes perhaps a self-conscious person. He committed a great many crimes vicariously in his books; and delivered batches of corpses to his publishers in the style required of all writers of sensational romance. But his deaths had the delicacy and fine distinction of murder; and nothing of the vulgar communism of massacre. In the one episode in his stories that might be called a massacre, the butchery of the old crew of The Flying Scud by Wicks and his men, the whole horror of the incident is in its intense individualism. It is in the fact that the men have to be slain one by one; in the fact that the massacre is not a massacre but a series of murders. He went so far, in his correspondence, as to say cheerfully of Henry Durie’s bloody trap for his brother that it is “a perfectly cold-blooded murder of which I expect and intend the reader to approve.” But even here it will be noted that he intended something, and said so; seeming almost as cold-blooded as the murderer. But at least he did not commit murders without knowing it, in the manner of our more subconscious criminals and maniacs in modern fiction. He was not in sympathy with those more recent heroes who seem to seduce and betray and even stab in a sort of prolonged fit of absence of mind. There had not been established, for him or for his characters, that convenient back-stairs of unconscious mind or automatic motion, by which something that is not ourselves (and makes for unrighteousness) may escape from the cellar into the street. It was perhaps a defect; but in the whole of his life and work there is a complete absence of absence of mind.
And with this matter of responsibility, and the reliance on the will in moral matters, we come to that larger question to be considered in the last chapter. It will be in a sense a summary of what has already been said; and yet it will be necessary to say it somewhat more plainly, and in relation to large matters about which many modern people are rather too confused or too timid to talk plain. For the moment it need only be said that the importance of Stevenson largely consists in his relation with the tendency of his age. That tendency was towards a certain mysticism of materialism, of which the most dogmatic expression is what is called monism; but which can be more lightly expressed in a hundred forms, as that all life is one, or that everything is heredity and environment, or that the impersonal is higher than the personal, or that men live by the herd instinct or the soul of the hive. Our fathers called the general atmosphere fatalism; but it has now any number of more idealistic names. Stevenson felt all this, without exactly defining it; he felt it in the realism of nineteenth-century literature, in the pessimism of contemporary poetry, in the timidity of hygienic precaution, in the smugness of middle-class uniformity. And while he was entirely of that time and society, while he read all the realists, knew all the artists, doubted with the doubters and even denied with the deniers, he had that within him which could not but break out in a sort of passionate protest for more personal and poetical things. He flung out his arms with a wide and blind gesture, as one who would find wings at the moment when the world sank beneath him.
CHAPTER X
THE MORAL OF STEVENSON
EVEN those unfortunates for whom the tale of Treasure Island, and the tradition continued in the pirates of Peter Pan, form an episode that is ended, may still be asked to consider it as an episode; to consider it, or perhaps to reconsider it. Even those who hardly feel it as a piece of literature will be forced at least to accept it as a piece of history. I am not one of these dismal and disinherited persons, as the reader has perhaps by this time darkly suspected; but I am quite content for the moment to put aside the question of whether their lack of appreciation is due to the advance of literary experiment or the decline of literary taste. I ask them for the moment to consider it not as a literary masterpiece, but merely as a curiosity of literature. I ask them to pause upon the episode of the Stevensonian Buccaneers, much as they might pause upon the episode of the real Buccaneers; upon some quaint old volume about the real lives of Blackbeard and Henry Morgan. Just as there would always be some historical interest in considering how the pirate sack of Panama was related to the great affairs of the Spanish Empire or the English Navy, so there is always some philosophical interest in considering how Stevenson’s romanticism was related to realism and rationalism and all the great movements of the nineteenth-century. In short, I am content for the moment if all that wonderful library of books is lumped together under the name of one of the least of them; and considered as a Footnote to History.
What was the historical meaning then of that strange splash of crimson lake on the drab age of Gissing and Howells; like a burlesque bloodstain in a detective story? To begin with, I foresee that in having stated the matter thus historically, I have laid myself open to some criticisms of the strictly historical sort. It may be said that the dates and details of Stevenson’s life and time do not correspond with such a comparison; that he came too early in the Victorian progress to be really a type of the ‘nineties; and that his real rivals or models were the Victorian Philistines. I do not admit this as a truth, even where I might admit part of it as a fact. An anachronism is often simply an ellipsis; and an ellipsis is often simply a necessity. The thing that a living intelligence like that of Stevenson feels is not the stale and static conventions of his world, but the way the world is going. We talk familiarly of time and tide; and, in a case like this, it is idle to remember a time without realising that it was a tide. The author of The Ebb-Tide knew well enough what tide was at that moment ebbing. It was the tide of what many regarded as Victorian virtue and all the happiness described in the three-volume novel. Stevenson knew very well that this stuffy sort of stuff was not the strong menace or promise of the coming time. He sometimes pokes fun at the Philistines; but he thrusts with furious energy at the Aesthetes. Compare for instance the way in which he speaks of Walter Besant with the way in which he speaks of Henry James, when he has to differ from them both, in that admirable letter about “art competing with life.” He dismisses the successful novelist as representing something that had already failed; but he takes seriously the serious novelist, and is obviously afraid that in the long run his more subtle methods may succeed. Those more subtle methods, of the impressionists and realists and the rest, were obviously for him the real danger because they were the rising tide. In short, it may be complained that I have represented Stevenson as reacting against decadence before it existed. And I answer that this is the only real way in which a fighting man ever does successfully attack a movement; when he attacks later, he attacks too late.
Or again, it may be said that I exaggerate the novelty of work like that of Treasure Island; and that it was but a natural continuation of the historical novel of Scott or the nautical novel of Marryat. Here again I think the critic will not only miss a fine distinction, but a very sharp point. The old novels were novels; they were not boys’ stories, but simply stories. The comedy of the Oldbucks and Osbaldistones is as much a solid comedy of character as that of Mr. Bennett or Miss Bates. It is only Scott’s incurable and almost unconscious sense of romance that sends the comedy characters to the dangerous cliff or to the Clachan of Aberfoyle. There was no deliberate and defiant return to juvenile art out of season, such as that which is flaunted in Stevenson’s letters as well as in Stevenson’s story. The point can be best illustrated once more by the memory of Skelt’s Juvenile Drama. It is one thing to say that a painter like Maclise or an actor like Macready may have had a style that would strike us as stagey and pompous. Maclise and Macready did not themselves think that they were stagey and pompous. It would be quite another thing to revive the actual figures of the old toy theatre, almost (in a sense) because they were stagey and pompous. Stevenson obviously resurrected all this romance, not because it was the fashion of his time, like the historical painting of Maclise, but because it was against the growing fashion of his time; and had to be fought for as a new fashion because it was really an old fashion. He glorified an antiquated Skeltery, when he knew it was antiquated. He concentrated on a certain type of book for boys, when he knew it had long been abandoned to boys. He is often called self-conscious; and in this sense he was very self-conscious. He was as self-consciously copying an old piratical penny dreadful as the Pre-Raphaelites were self-consciously copying an old mediaeval religious picture. As they were carefully inlaying it with jewels of childlike colour, he was carefully resetting the lost jewel of his own childhood. But he knew he was not merely fashionable, just as he knew that he was not really five years old.
What then exactly did he mean? What, so to speak, did it mean; even if in a sense he did not mean it; or at least, did not mean to mean it? First of all it was, I think, a sort of dash for liberty; and especially a dash for happiness. It was a defence of the possibility of happiness; and a kind of answer to the question, “Can a man be happy?” But it was an answer of a curious kind, defiantly delivered in rather curious circumstances. It was the escape of a prisoner as he was led in chains from the prison of Puritanism to the prison of Pessimism. Few have understood that passage in the history of the manufacturing civilisation of northwest Europe and America. Few have realised that the gloomier sort of modern materialism often came upon a class that was only just escaping from an equally gloomy sort of spirituality. They had hardly come out of the shadow of Calvin when they came into the shadow of Schopenhauer. From the world of the worm that dieth not, they passed into a world of men dying like worms; and in the case of some of the decadents, almost exulting in being devoured by worms like Herod. Puritanism and pessimism, in short, were prisons that stood near together; and none have ever counted how many left one only for the other; or under what a covered way they passed. Stevenson’s escapade was an escape; a sort of runaway romantic evasion for the purpose of escaping both. And as a fugitive has often fled and hidden in his mother’s house, this outlaw took refuge in his old home; barricaded himself in the nursery and almost tried to creep into the dolls’-house. And he did it upon a kind of instinct, that here had dwelt definite pleasures which the Puritan could not forbid nor the pessimist deny. But it was a strange story. He had his answer to the question, “Can a man be happy?”; and it was, “Yes, before he grows to be a man.”
It is only the obvious things that are never seen; and a thing is often counted stale merely because men have been staring at it so long without seeing it. There is nothing harder to bring within a small and clear compass than generalisations about history, or even about humanity. But there is one especially evident and yet elusive in this matter of happiness. When men pause in the pursuit of happiness, seriously to picture happiness, they have always made what may be called a “primitive” picture. Men rush towards complexity; but they yearn towards simplicity. They try to be kings; but they dream of being shepherds. This is equally true whether they look back to a Golden Age or look forward to the most modern Utopia. The Golden Age is always imagined as an age free from the curse of gold. The perfect civilisation of the future is always something which many would call the higher savagery; and is conceived in the spirit that spoke of “Civilisation, its Cause and Cure.” Whether it is Arcadia of the past or Utopia of the future, it is always something simpler than the present. From the Greek or Roman poet yearning for the peace of pastoral life to the last sociologist explaining the ideal social life, this sense of a return and a resolution into elemental things is apparent. The pipe of the shepherd is always something rather plainer than the lyre of the poet; and the ideal social life is some more or less subtle form of the simple life. Of this tendency there is yet a third and perhaps a truer expression. It may be remarked that these daydreams of happiness concern rather the dawn than the day. The reactionary wishes to return to what he would call “the morning of the world.” But the revolutionist is quite equally prone to talk about waiting for the daybreak, about songs before sunrise, and about the dawn of a happier day. He does not seem to think so much about the noon of that day. And one mode in which this morning spirit is expressed is the return to the child.
Stevenson might have been asking his question a hundred years before, at the time of the first humanitarian revolt against the Puritans; when the same city of Geneva, that had seen Calvin found the religion of pessimism, saw Rousseau found the religion of optimism. If he had been in that first liberal or naturalistic movement, he would probably have felt that the best expression of the romantic movement was in the fulfilment of romantic love. Paul and Virginia, instead of Poll and Robinson Crusoe (not to mention Long John Silver), would have been the happy inhabitants of the desert island. In that honeymoon of humanity, it would have seemed quite enough that Edwin and Angelina united at last (by a dignified civil marriage by the Registrar of the Republic) would populate the world with pure and happy republicans. But that eighteenth-century Arcadia had clouded over long before Stevenson’s time; and indeed he was prone to be a little too cloudy even about those of its principles which are really clear. And while the more Bohemian artists of the later time continued to claim all the liberties and more than the laxities of such a theory, they had left off pretending that it led to such felicity in practice. Indeed there has been a curious irony in this respect about the modern artists, especially the literary artists. Half the outcry against them arose, rightly or wrongly, because they insisted that their books must be repulsive in order to be realistic or sordid in order to be true. They insisted on a free hand in describing sex; and seemed to assume, in their own apologia, that to describe sex is to describe sin— and sorrow. They insisted that anything pretty must be a pretence; and never saw how sharply they were reflecting on the end of that very dance of pretty nymphs and cupids, which had brought them the licence that they liked best. In short, they seemed to make two claims; first to be free to find the perfect happiness of passion; and second, to be free to describe how exceedingly unhappy it is. In life one might do anything to follow love, because it was so very beautiful; and in art one must do anything to describe love, because it was so abominably ugly. Their own anarchical doctrines were really contradicted by their own anarchical descriptions. The house of love, in which it was necessary to take out such hospital licences for amputation and vivisection, could hardly be (as the poet said) the house of fulfilment of craving. It was certainly not the house that Rousseau and the old romantic liberals had craved. Anyhow, it was not possible for a man of Stevenson’s generation to look for this light and lucid happiness in sex, or in that sense even in sentiment. It was not possible for a romantic who, perhaps born out of his due time, was living not in the age of Rousseau but in the age of Zola. Thus we find in Stevenson something like an actual avoidance of those themes of passion, that were throbbing in the new fiction all around him; an avoidance even of that normal romantic love, which is not touched at all in Kidnapped and touched gracefully but still lightly even in Catriona. It was not only that girls interfere with adventures. It was not only that he could not be one of those for whom a girl is the only adventure. It was also because a man living under the harsh challenge of the new realism could no longer pretend that it was an adventure which always ended well. He wished to escape into a world of more secure pleasure and perhaps of less potential pain. And this is connected with very profound truths of psychology, which have not yet been properly explored. But most men know that there is a difference between the intense momentary emotion called up by memory of the loves of youth, and the yet more instantaneous but more perfect pleasure of the memory of childhood. The former is always narrow and individual, piercing the heart like a rapier; but the latter is like a flash of lightning, for one split second revealing a whole varied landscape; it is not the memory of a particular pleasure any more than of a particular pain, but of a whole that shone with wonder. The first is only a lover remembering love; the second is like a dead man remembering life.
I once heard in a railway-train a farmer’s family of the Puritan sort discussing with a Nonconformist minister the action of a boy, at the front in the Great War, who had occupied himself in hospital with carving a wooden cross and sent it home to his family. His family was pained but apologetic. Their remarks had a continual chorus of, “He didn’t mean anything by it.” This extraordinary state of mind intrigued me so much that I listened to the rest of the conversation; at intervals of which the minister repeated firmly that we didn’t want that sort of thing; what we wanted was a living Christ. And it never seemed to occur to this reverend gentleman that he was at that moment at war with every living as well as every Christian thing; with the creative instinct, with the desire for form, with the love of family, with the impulse to send signals and messages, with humour, with pathos, with the virility of martyrdom and the vividness of exile. It was in truth the carver of the cross who was bearing witness to a living Christ and the partisan of a living Christ who was repeating a dead form. It was none the less so, because it was not a fixed shape in wood, but only a fixed shape in words. This curious incident has always remained in my memory, however, if only for its fresh and superficial humour. The image of the unconscious youth who didn’t mean anything by it, who merely whittled a stick until it came by sheer ill-luck into the form of a cross, will always be a source of fruitful entertainment to the mind. The idea of the young man hacking wood about right and left in a reckless manner, and seeing theological symbols spring up on every side in spite of his most earnest efforts, has something in it of the fairy-tale. And the idea that if he had only known what was coming, nothing would have induced him to touch anything so improper and shocking, is a matter of deep indwelling joy.
And yet, strangely enough, I must in a manner apologise to the poor minister and admit that something like that fantastic suggestion may really occur. After all, there is in the world a great crowd of unconscious cross-builders or unintentional crosses. There is, running through the very framework of our houses and our furniture, a sort of pattern of crosses. There are a great many honest carpenters and joiners who make wooden crosses and don’t mean anything by it. But the figure means something for all that; precisely because it is a fundamental figure, based on basic principles of balance and conflict and support. All our chairs and tables are full of crosses, of cross-bars and cross-beams; and it is probable that most of us use the furniture without feeling the significance; do not think of a table as the condition of a communion table and can sit on a chair without immediately speaking ex cathedra. And in the same fashion, the more we study active and artistic history, the more often we shall see men making thrones when they meant only to make chairs or building churches when they meant only to build houses. And in the retrospect of religious history, it seems to me that most excursions and even aberrations have only served to scrawl on a larger scale the truth of certain ancient doctrines near and necessary to man; and illustrate orthodoxy if only with awful examples. Milton was himself an example; for he told more truth than he intended, when he said that new Presbyter was but old Priest writ large. It was indeed the human need of a priest written large; and it was written very large indeed.
Now the men of Stevenson’s generation, and especially the men who were as intelligent as he was, were perhaps more unconscious of the real case for these old ideas than any men who have lived before or since. Nothing was further from their thoughts than the suggestion that their artistic fancies could refer back to those antiquated and sombre dogmas about the Fall or the obscuration of the divine light by sin. Wordsworth, though he is sometimes called pantheistic, saw in the vivid pleasures of childhood what he called intimations of immortality. Stevenson admitted that he often found it difficult to get any intimations of immortality. And yet, if he could bear no witness to the Resurrection, he was continually bearing witness to the Fall. We say lightly enough of a good man that he is a Christian without knowing it. But Stevenson was a Christian theologian without knowing it. Nothing, as I say, would have surprised him or his generation more than to discover it; and it may be that some even of a younger generation are so traditional as to have missed the gradual unfolding of the truth. He would have been the first to say that such dogmas were dead and that we cannot put back the clock to the fifth century. Yet he did not explain why he was so often trying to put back his own clock to his fifth year. For the truth is that there really is no sense or meaning, in this continuous tribute of the poets to the poetry of early childhood, unless it be, as Treherne says, that the world of sin comes between us and something more beautiful or, as Wordsworth says, that we came first from God who is our home. I will not pause to distinguish here between the true doctrine of the Fall and the doctrine of depravity which the Calvinists had probably taught to Stevenson, which would alone be enough to explain his not knowing how orthodox he was. Nor will I here expound the distinction between original and acted sin, apart from the ideal of infant baptism; or the already bewildered modern sceptic would probably think I was mad. He must accept my benevolent assurance that it is rather he that is mad; or rather, through no fault of his own, mentally defective. The point is that there really is no explanation of this intense imaginative concentration on babies except a mystical explanation. The whole point of Stevenson’s story is that of a man haunted by a tune, always seeking for the broken notes of a lost melody; which he himself called the note of the time-devouring nightingale. “But only children hear it right.” Why?
Moreover, as I have already noted, this principle of the beatific vision of innocence was even more proved in the breach than in the observance. The rationalists and realists who were praising the adult pursuit of happiness, or ought to have been praising such a pursuit of happiness, were (and still are) mainly occupied with describing unhappiness. They only prove that free life and free love are really worse than any ascetic had ever represented them. The naturalistic philosophies did not only contradict Christianity. The naturalistic philosophies also contradicted the naturalistic novels. Their own exercise of their own right of expression was quite enough to show that the mere combination of the maturity of reason with the pleasures of passion does not in fact produce a Utopia. We need not debate here whether the Zolaists were justified in so laboriously describing horrors. If mere liberty had really led to happiness, they would have been describing happiness. It would not have been necessary for a grown man with a library of modern literature to hide himself in a twopenny toy theatre in order to be happy.
This very simple truth is probably too simple to be seen; because, like many such things, it is too large to be seen. But certainly it is still there to be seen, if any of the moderns could enlarge their minds enough to see it. The type of realism has changed since the days of Zola, just as the type of romance has changed since the days of Stevenson. But it has not answered this unanswerable distinction between the cheerful songs of innocence and the melancholy songs of experience. Of the recent literature of the rising generation, there is much that is frivolous, but uncommonly little that is joyous. Just now we are incessantly asked to rejoice in the sight of youth enjoying itself; which I for one am very ready to do; but all the readier if I can be quite certain that it is enjoying itself. And it is a curious fact that in its characteristic contemporary literature there is an almost complete absence of joy. And I think it would be true to say, in a general fashion, that it is not childish enough to be cheerful. In this connection I may be allowed once more to be at once anecdotal and allegorical. When I first saw the title of The Green Hat I pictured it as the top-hat of an old gentleman who had a fancy for that colour. I imagined him a strutting symbolic figure of springtime, with hair like the hawthorn and a hat like the new leaves; my mind lost itself amid tree-tops and all the antics of the April wind; I imagined him chasing his hat to elfland and the end of the world, or climbing trees to find the blue bird nesting in the green headgear. The mere idea of a green hat gave me a glimpse into that elusive element of which the blue bird was made the emblem. When I opened the book and found that the green hat was only a lady’s hat, and that the book was full of sentiments about sex, I was as blankly disappointed as a boy who has been given a dictionary instead of a book. My feelings towards the intrusive females were those of Jim Hawkins; much what he would have felt if a fashionable lady had dissuaded Squire Trelawney from going to sea. It is true that the people in the book professed to be enjoying themselves, in what appeared to be their own fashion; but they could not help me to enjoy myself, as I should have done with the only true, real and original story of the green hat. I recognised that there was wit in the work, but no fun in it; there was no stir of that deep gale of spring; but rather an accepted air of autumn; of things dancing as dead leaves dance; like the Falling Leaves in the joyful revelation of Mr. Aldous Huxley. I know all about the defence of this gloomy realism on the ground that it is real. I have known it ever since the time of Stevenson writing on Zola. But I am not talking about whether this literature is reasonable or justifiable; I am talking about whether it does in fact call up, or even try to call up, the passion of positive joy.
That is why this episode is worth noting and recalling if only as an episode; and all the more so, if it is in sharp contrast with the episodes that follow as well as the episodes that went before. I have admitted that some part of Stevenson’s deliberate choice of childishness was a reaction from ill-chosen surroundings and courses of conduct in the periods of passion and of youth. But the younger writers, who boast of choosing for themselves, seem just as unsuccessful in making passion identical with pleasure; and just as unsuccessful in preserving the youthful spirit of youth. I have admitted that when he made his dash for liberty and happiness, it may have appeared that there was no other alternative but that of Puritanism or pessimism. But the new writers who are not threatened with Puritanism seem to be just as much moved to pessimism. There seems no explanation of the two tempers; except that the apostle of childhood was at least seeking pleasure where it could be found, while the apostles of youth are seeking it where it cannot be found. What awaits us after all these episodes I will not pretend to prophesy; I will only profess to hope that it may be the rebuilding of the great and neglected Christian philosophy, to which all contributions will be thankfully received, especially those of atheists and anarchists. And that is really the chief importance, both of the man who can show human nature happy in the nursery and the man who can only show it unhappy in the night-club. Both of them may be, and generally are, of the sort that would smile scornfully at the thought of calling up the old pious fables about heaven and hell. But in fact Stevenson was describing the kingdom of heaven and calling it Skelt; while Zola was describing all the kingdoms of hell and calling it real life. Neither of them get outside the iron ring of the real truth of the matter; that the one thing, however babyish, really is a picture of contentment, while in the other the only decent element is discontent.
It may be that the world will forget Stevenson, a century or so after it has forgotten all the present distinguished detractors of Stevenson. It may be quite the other way, as the poet said; it may be the world will remember Stevenson; will remember him with a start, so to speak, when everybody else has forgotten that there ever was any story in a novel. The dissolution hinted at by Sir Edmund Gosse, whereby fiction which was always a rather vague form shall become utterly formless, may have by that time dropped out of the novel all its original notion of a narrative. Mr. H. G. Wells, if he lives to delight the world so long, will be able to deliver the goods in the form of great masses of admirable analyses of economics and social conditions, without the embarrassment of having to remember at every two hundred pages or so that he has somewhere left a hero in a motor-car or a heroine in a lodging-house. Miss Dorothy Richardson may pour out those vivid inventories of the furniture and family crockery, which her subconscious self notes with the accuracy of an inventory clerk, without being pestered to tell us who owned these objects, or what was the object of owning them. The psychologists may present us with a series of subtle and fascinating states of mind, without our being morbidly curious to enquire whose mind. They in turn may yield to some other school; such as those bright and breezy Americans who call themselves Behaviourists. They declare with some warmth that there is really nothing in their minds and that they only think with their muscles; which, in the case of some thinking, we might well believe. At present the Behaviourists are on their best behaviour. But there seems no reason why this new sort of muscular Christianity should not eventually invade the novel, just as psychoanalysis did; and we shall all be able to rejoice in a new type of fiction, in which a bright thought flashes through Edwin’s biceps or a vivid memory rises unbidden in the deltoid of Angelina. For it is the habit of modern psychological science to make quite sure of its fiction a long time before it is sure of its facts. But the trouble about such fiction will be that it is very much of a novelty, but not much of a novel. The passion for making patterns of loops and spirals, like a chart of currents at sea, has so far dissolved the outline of individuality that we lose all sense of what a man is, let alone what a man wants. Nameless universal forces streaming through the subconsciousness, run very truly like that dark and sacred river that wound its way through caverns measureless to man. When this process of shapelessness is complete, it is always possible that men may come upon a shape with something of a sharp surprise; like a geologist finding in featureless rocks the fossil of some wild creature, looking as if petrified in the last wild leap or on the wing. Or it is as if an antiquary, passing through halls and temples of some iconoclastic city, covered with dizzy patterns of merely mathematical beauty, were to come upon the heaving limb or lifted shoulder of some broken statue of the Greeks. In that condition it may be that the novel will again be novel. And in that condition, in that reaction, certainly no novel will serve its purpose so forcibly, or make its point so plainly, as a novel by Stevenson. The story, the first of childish and the oldest of human pleasures, will nowhere reveal its structure and its end so swiftly and simply as in the tales of Tusitala. The world’s great age will in that degree begin anew; the childhood of the earth be rediscovered; for the story-teller will once more have spread his carpet in the dust; and it will really be a magic carpet.
But whether or no the world returns thus to Stevenson, whether or no it returns thus to stories, it will certainly return to something; and to something of this kind. The only thing which we can safely prophesy is the one thing which is always called impossible. Again and again we are told, by all sorts of priggish and progressive persons, that mankind cannot go back. The answer is that if mankind cannot go back, it cannot go anywhere. Every important change in history has been founded on something historic: and if the world had not again and again tried to renew its youth, it would have been dead long ago. As the poet makes his songs out of memories of first love, or the writer of fairy-tales has to play at being a child as the child plays at being a man, so every republican has looked back to the remote republics of antiquity and even the Communist talks about a primitive community of goods. The sharp return to simplicity, as the expression of the fiery thirst for happiness—that is the one recurring fact of all history; and that is the importance of Stevenson’s place in literary history. Nor is there the smallest reason to suppose that the literary history of the future will in this respect be any different from the literary history of the past. On the contrary, the two or three examples of extreme change, with which the most recent days have challenged us, have very curiously confirmed this old truth in a new way. Of that it is indeed true to say that the more it changes, the more it is the same thing; and a jolly good thing too.
Fashions change; but this return to the nursery is not a fashion and it does not change. If we turn to the very latest, and we might say loudest, of literary innovators, we still find that in so far as they are saying anything, they are saying that. Let us suppose that the Stevensonian way of doing it is altogether dated and out of date; let us leave Stevenson behind in the dead past, along with such lumber as Cervantes and Balzac and Charles Dickens. If we shoot forward into the most fashionable fads and fancies, if we rush to the newest salons or listen to the most advanced lectures, we do not escape the challenge of our childhood. There is already a group, we might say a family group, of poets who consider themselves, and are generally considered, the last word in experiment and even extravagance; and who are not without real qualities of deep atmosphere and suggestion. Yet all that is really deep in the best of their work comes out of those depths of garden perspective and large rooms as seen by little children, white with the windows of the morning. The best poetry of Miss Sitwell is after all a sort of parody of A Child’s Garden of Verses, decked with slightly altered adjectives that would mildly surprise the child. But the poet is as certainly groping after her own lost shadow as the child who “rose and found the shining dew on every buttercup”; and is even more ready to idealise the moving cloud of the crinoline than he who was content to say, “Whenever Aunty moves around, her dresses make a curious sound.” In Miss Sitwell’s version they would make a still more curious sound, the nature of which I have not the courage to conjecture. The shining dew might become the shrieking dew, or on a more moderate estimate the sniggering dew; but it would still be a long-lost child who stood bewildered in those grey meadows before the dawn. Many have complained, and perhaps justly, of the almost American modernity of the artistic ambition of these artists. They announce their message through a megaphone; they shout it through pantomime masks; they hustle and push and pick quarrels; but there is something in them, for all their efforts to advertise—or to hide it. And that something is the new form of the reaction of Stevenson; exactly as Stevenson was the new form of the reaction of Rousseau. Many have speculated on what they are really after; but what they are really after is still the same: those lost children who are themselves; lost in the deep gardens at dusk.
That is why the real story of Stevenson must end where it began; because it was to that end that he himself perpetually wandered and strove. I said at the beginning that the key to his career was put early into his hands; it was well symbolised by the paint-brush dipped in purple or prussian blue, with which he started to colour the stiff caricatures upon the cardboard of Skelt. But that paint-brush has been in other hands besides his; I remarked elsewhere that, dipped in somewhat paler hues, it has brightened the lives of many of those vague Victorian aunts whose cloudy crinolines float through the gardens of the new “Early Victorian” poetry. Neither perhaps know that, even in lingering on such things, they do but illustrate a more ancient parable and the mystery of a child set in the midst. Here, however, we may take the matter more lightly and leave it to tell its own story; but at least it is amusing to reflect that the old story of the unconsciously comic tombstone, the epitaph that was the butt of a hundred jests, is not really so far wrong after all; that there is a sort of truth concealed in that remarkable inscription, and that (leaving on one side a somewhat needless allusion to the Earl of Cork) we may repeat the epitaph with truth and even profundity: “He also painted in watercolours. For of such is the kingdom of heaven.”
THE END
CHAPTER
I “THE MYTH OF STEVENSON” II IN THE COUNTRY OF SKELT III YOUTH AND EDINBURGH IV THE REACTION TO ROMANCE V THE SCOTTISH STORIES VI THE STYLE OF STEVENSON VII EXPERIMENT AND RANGE VIII THE LIMITS OF A CRAFT IX THE PHILOSOPHY OF GESTURE X THE MORAL OF STEVENSON
CAPITOLO
I “IL MITO DI STEVENSON” II NEL PAESE DI SKELT III GIOVINEZZA ED EDIMBURGO IV LA REAZIONE VERSO IL ROMANZESCO V I RACCONTI SCOZZESI VI LO STILE DI STEVENSON VII SPERIMENTAZIONE E VARIETÀ VIII I LIMITI DI UN MESTIERE IX LA FILOSOFIA DEL GESTO X LA MORALE DI STEVENSON
CHAPTER I
“THE MYTH OF STEVENSON”
IN this brief study of Stevenson I propose to follow a somewhat unusual course; or to sketch what may be considered a rather eccentric outline. It can only be justified in practice; and I have a healthy fear that my practice will not justify it. Nevertheless, I have not adopted it without considerable thought, and even doubt, about the best way of dealing with a real and practical problem. So before it collapses completely in practice, I will give myself the triumph and the joy of justifying it in principle.
The difficulty arises thus. In the great days of Stevenson critics had begun to be ashamed of being critics, and of giving to their ancient function the name of criticism. It was the fashion to publish a book that was a bundle of reviews and to call it “Appreciations.” But the world advances; and if that sort of book is published now, it might well bear the general title of “Depreciations.” Stevenson has suffered more than most from this new fashion of minimising and finding fault; and some energetic and successful writers have thrown themselves into the business almost with the eagerness of stockbrokers, bent on making a slump instead of a boom in Stevenson Stock. It may be questioned whether we need welcome the bear any more than the bull in the china-shop of elegant English letters. Others seem to make quite a hobby of proving a particular writer to be overrated. They write long and laborious articles, full of biographical detail and bitter commentary, in order to show that the subject is unworthy of attention; and write pages upon Stevenson to prove that he is not worth writing about. Neither their motives nor their methods are very clear or satisfactory. If it be true that all swans are geese to the discriminating eye of the scientific ornithologist, it hardly suffices to explain so long or so fatiguing a wild-goose chase.
But it is true that, in a sense more general than that of these rather irritable individuals, such a reaction does exist. And it is a reaction against Stevenson, or at least against Stevensonians. Perhaps it would be most correct to call it a reaction against Stevensoniana. And let me say at this early stage that I heartily agree that there has been far too much Stevensoniana. In one sense, indeed, everything about anybody so interesting as Stevenson is interesting. In one sense, everything about everybody is interesting. But not everybody can interest everybody else: and it is well to know an author is loved, but not to publish all the love-letters. Sometimes we only had to endure that most awful and appalling tragedy: a truth told once too often. Sometimes we heard Stevensonian sentiments repeated in violation of all Stevensonian rules. For of all things he hated dilution: and loved to take language neat, like a liqueur. In short, it was overdone; it was too noisy and yet all on one note; above all, it was too incessant and too prolonged. As I say, there were a variety of causes, which it would be unnecessary and sometimes unamiable to discuss. There was perhaps something in it of the very virtue of Stevenson; he was tolerant of many societies and interested in many men; and there was nothing to ward off the direst results of the men being interested in him. Especially after he was dead, one person after another turned up and wrote a book about meeting Stevenson on a steamboat or in a restaurant; and it is not surprising that such book-makers began to look as vulgar as bookies. There was perhaps something in it of the old joke of Johnson: that the Scots are in a conspiracy to praise each other. It was often because the Scots are secret sentimentalists and cannot always keep the secret. Their interest in a story so brilliant and in some ways so pathetic was perfectly natural and human; but for all that, their interest was overdone. It was sometimes, I regret to say, because the interest might fairly be called a vested interest. Anyhow, any number of things happened to combine to vulgarise the thing; but vulgarising a thing does not really make it vulgar.
Now Stevenson’s life was really what we call picturesque; partly because he saw everything in pictures; and partly because a chapter of accidents did really attach him to very picturesque places. He was born on the high terraces of the noblest of northern cities: in the family mansion in Edinburgh in 1850; he was the son of a house of highly respected architects of lighthouses; and nothing could be more really romantic than such a legend of men laboriously lifting the star-crowned towers of the sea. He failed to follow the family tradition, however, for various reasons; he was blighted with ill-health and a taste for art; the latter sent him to pick up picturesque tricks and poses in the art colony of Barbizon; the former very soon sent him southward into warmer and warmer climates; and it so happens as he himself remarked, that the countries to which we are sent when health deserts us have a magical and rather mocking beauty. At one time he had paid a sort of vagabond visit to America, crossing the ugly plains that lead to the abrupt beauty of California, that promised land. He described it in the studies called Across the Plain: a work vaguely unsatisfying both to writer and reader. I think it records the subconscious blank and sense of bewilderment felt by every true European on first seeing the very light and landscape of America. The shock of negation was in his case truly unnatural. He almost wrote a dull book. But there is another reason for noting this exception here.
This book makes no pretence of being even an outline of the life of Stevenson. In his particular case I deliberately omit such an outline, because I find that it has cut across and confused the very sharp and lucid outline of his art. But indeed in any case it would be very difficult to tell the tale with truth without telling it in detail, and in rather bewildering detail. The first thing that strikes us, on a rapid survey of his life and letters, is his innumerable changes of domicile, especially in his early days. If his friends followed the example he professes to set, in the matter of Mr. Michael Finsbury, and refused to learn more than one address for one friend, he must have left his correspondence very far behind indeed. His wanderings in Western Europe would appear on the map as much wilder as well as wider than the “probable course of David Balfour’s wanderings” in Western Scotland. If we started out to tell his story thus, we should have to note how he went first to Mentone and then back again to Edinburgh and then to Fontainebleau and then to the Highlands and then to Fontainebleau again and then to Davos in the mountains, and so on; a zigzag pilgrimage impossible to compress except in a larger biography. But all or most of it is covered by one generalisation. This navigation chart was really a hospital chart. Its jagged mountains represented temperatures; or at least climates. The whole story of Stevenson is conditioned by a certain complexity, which a tenderness for the English language will restrain us from calling a complex. It was a sort of paradox, by which he was at once more and less protected than other men; like somebody travelling the wildest roads of the world in a covered waggon. He went where he did partly because he was an adventurer and partly because he was an invalid. By that sort of limping agility, he may be said to have seen at once too little and too much. He was perhaps a natural traveller; but he was not a normal traveller. Nobody ever did treat him as quite normal; which is the truth hidden in the falsehood of those who sneer at his childishness as that of a spoilt child. He was courageous; and yet he had to be shielded against two things at once, his weakness and his courage. But his picture of himself as a vagabond with blue fingers on the winter road is avowedly an ideal picture; it was exactly that sort of freedom that he could never have. He could only be carried from sight to sight; or even from adventure to adventure. Indeed there is here a curious aptness in the quaint simplicity of his childish rhyme that ran, “My bed is like a little boat.” Through all his varied experiences his bed was a boat and his boat was a bed. Panoramas of tropic palm and Californian orange-grove passed over that moving couch like the long nightmare of the nursery walls. But his real courage was not so much turned outwards to the drama of the boat as inwards to the drama of the bed. Nobody knew better than he did that nothing is more terrible than a bed; since it is always waiting to be a deathbed.
CAPITOLO I
“Il mito di Stevenson”
IN questo breve studio su Stevenson propongo di seguire un percorso piuttosto insolito; o di delinare quello che può essere considerato uno schema eccentrico. Può essere giustificato solo nella pratica; e ho una sana paura che la mia pratica non lo giustificherà. Tuttavia, non l’ho adottato senza un’attenta riflessione, e persino con dubbio, sul modo migliore di affrontare un problema reale e pratico. Quindi, prima che crolli completamente nella pratica, mi concederò il trionfo e la gioia di giustificarlo in linea di principio.
La difficoltà sorge così. Nei grandi giorni di Stevenson i critici avevano cominciato ad aver vergogna di essere critici e di dare alla loro antica funzione il nome di critica. Era di moda pubblicare un libro che era un fascio di recensioni e chiamarlo “Apprezzamenti”. Ma il mondo avanza; e se quel tipo di libro viene pubblicato ora, potrebbe ben portare il titolo generale di “Deprezzamenti”. Stevenson ha sofferto più della maggior parte degli altri da questa nuova moda di minimizzare e trovare difetti; e alcuni scrittori energici e di successo si sono buttati nell’impresa quasi con l’ardore dei broker, decisi a provocare un crollo invece che un boom nelle azioni Stevenson. Si può dubitare che abbiamo bisogno di accogliere l’orso più del toro nel negozio di porcellane delle eleganti lettere inglesi. Altri sembrano fare proprio un hobby di dimostrare che uno scrittore particolare è sopravvalutato. Scrivono articoli lunghi e laboriosi, pieni di dettagli biografici e commenti amari, per mostrare che l’argomento non merita attenzione; e scrivono pagine su Stevenson per provare che non vale la pena scriverne. Né le loro motivazioni né i loro metodi sono molto chiari o soddisfacenti. Se è vero che tutti i cigni sono oche all’occhio discriminante dell’ornitologo scientifico, a malapena basta a spiegare una caccia all’oca selvatica così lunga o così faticosa.
Ma è vero che, in un senso più generale di quello di questi individui piuttosto irritabili, una reazione del genere esiste. E’ una reazione contro Stevenson, o almeno contro i stevensoniani. Forse sarebbe più corretto chiamarla una reazione contro la stevensoniana. E permettetemi di dire fin da subito che concordo pienamente sul fatto che ci sia stata troppa stevensoniana. In un certo senso, infatti, tutto ciò che riguarda qualcuno così interessante come Stevenson è interessante. In un certo senso, tutto ciò che riguarda chiunque è interessante. Ma non tutti possono interessare gli altri: e va bene sapere che un autore è amato, ma non pubblicare tutte le lettere d’amore. A volte abbiamo dovuto sopportare quella tragedia più terribile e spaventosa: una verità detta una volta di troppo. A volte abbiamo sentito ripetere sentimenti stevensoniani in violazione di tutte le regole stevensoniane. Perché tra tutte le cose che odiava, lui detestava la diluizione: e amava prendere il linguaggio puro, come un liquore. Insomma, era troppo; era troppo rumoroso eppure tutto su una nota sola; soprattutto, era troppo incessante e prolungato. Come dicevo, c’erano varie cause, che sarebbe inutile e talvolta poco amichevole discutere. C’era forse qualcosa della stessa virtù di Stevenson: tollerava molte società e si interessava a molti uomini; e non c’era nulla per tenere lontani i risultati più terribili degli uomini che si interessavano a lui. Soprattutto dopo la sua morte, una persona dopo l’altra si presentava e scriveva un libro sul fatto di aver incontrato Stevenson su una nave a vapore o in un ristorante; e non sorprende che tali fabbricanti di libri cominciassero ad apparire volgari come i bookmaker. C’era forse qualcosa della vecchia battuta di Johnson: che gli scozzesi sono in una cospirazione per lodarsi a vicenda. Spesso era perché gli scozzesi sono sentimentali segreti e non sempre riescono a mantenere il segreto. Il loro interesse per una storia così brillante e in qualche modo patetica era perfettamente naturale e umano; ma, per quanto riguarda questo, il loro interesse era esagerato. A volte, mi duole dirlo, perché l’interesse poteva essere chiamato un interesse acquisito. Comunque, qualsiasi numero di cose è accaduto a combinare per volgarizzare la cosa; ma volgarizzare una cosa non la rende realmente volgare.
La vita di Stevenson era davvero quella che chiamiamo pittoresca; in parte perché vedeva tutto come se fossero immagini; e in parte perché una serie di incidenti lo legò effettivamente a luoghi molto pittoreschi. Nacque sulle alte terrazze della più nobile delle città del nord: nella casa familiare ad Edimburgo nel 1850; era il figlio di una casa di architetti di fari altamente rispettati; e nulla poteva essere più veramente romantico di questa leggenda di uomini che sollevavano con fatica le torri stellate del mare. Non riuscì a seguire la tradizione familiare, tuttavia, per vari motivi; era afflitto da cattiva salute e un gusto per l’arte; quest’ultimo lo spinse a cercare trucchi pittoreschi e pose nella colonia d’arte di Barbizon; il primo lo mandò molto presto verso sud in climi sempre più caldi; e come lui stesso osservò, accade che i paesi dove siamo inviati quando la salute ci abbandona hanno una bellezza magica e piuttosto beffarda. In un periodo aveva fatto una sorta di visita da vagabondo in America, attraversando le brutte pianure che portano alla brusca bellezza della California, quella terra promessa. La descrisse negli studi chiamati Across the Plain: un’opera vagamente insoddisfacente sia per lo scrittore che per il lettore. Penso che registri il vuoto subconscio e la sensazione di smarrimento provata da ogni vero europeo alla prima vista della luce e del paesaggio dell’America. Lo shock della negazione fu nel suo caso veramente innaturale. Scrisse quasi un libro noioso. Ma c’è un altro motivo per notare questa eccezione qui.
Questo libro non pretende di essere neppure uno schema della vita di Stevenson. Nel suo caso particolare ometto deliberatamente tale schema, perché ritengo che esso abbia incrociato e confuso il contorno molto netto e lucido della sua arte. Ma in ogni caso sarebbe davvero difficile raccontare la storia con verità senza raccontarla nei dettagli, e in dettagli piuttosto sconcertanti. La prima cosa che ci colpisce, ad un rapido esame della sua vita e delle sue lettere, è il suo numero infinito di cambiamenti di domicilio, specialmente nei suoi primi anni. Se i suoi amici avessero seguito l’esempio che lui dice di dare, per quanto riguarda il signor Michael Finsbury, e si fossero rifiutati di imparare più di un indirizzo per ogni amico, la sua corrispondenza sarebbe rimasta davvero molto indietro. I suoi vagabondaggi nell’Europa occidentale apparirebbero sulla mappa molto più selvaggi e ben più vasti del “probabile percorso delle peregrinazioni di David Balfour” nella Scozia occidentale. Se ci mettessimo a raccontare la sua storia così, dovremmo notare come andò prima a Mentone e poi tornò ad Edimburgo, e poi a Fontainebleau e poi nelle Highlands e poi di nuovo a Fontainebleau e poi a Davos tra le montagne, e così via; un pellegrinaggio a zigzag impossibile da comprimere se non in una più ampia biografia. Ma tutto o quasi tutto è coperto da una generalizzazione. Questo grafico di navigazione era in realtà un grafico ospedaliero. I suoi frastagliati monti rappresentavano le temperature; o almeno i climi. Tutta la storia di Stevenson è condizionata da una certa complessità, che un riguardo per la lingua inglese ci tratterrà dal chiamare un complesso. Era una sorta di paradosso, per cui era al tempo stesso più e meno protetto degli altri uomini; come qualcuno che viaggiasse sulle strade più selvagge del mondo in un carro coperto. Andava dove andava in parte perché era un avventuriero e in parte perché era un malato. Con quella sorta di agilità zoppicante, si può dire che vedesse al tempo stesso troppo poco e troppo. Forse era un viaggiatore naturale; ma non era un viaggiatore normale. Nessuno lo ha mai trattato come del tutto normale; ed è questa la verità nascosta nella falsità di coloro che scherniscono la sua infantilità come quella di un bambino viziato. Era coraggioso; eppure doveva essere protetto da due cose insieme, dalla sua debolezza e dal suo coraggio. Ma il suo ritratto di sé come vagabondo con le dita blu sulla inverno strada è dichiaratamente un’immagine ideale; era esattamente quella sorta di libertà che non avrebbe mai potuto avere. Poteva solo essere trasportato da una vista all’altra; o anche da un’avventura all’altra. Infatti c’è qui una curiosa aderenza alla semplicità pittoresca della sua rima infantile che recitava: “Il mio letto è come una piccola barca.” Attraverso tutte le sue varie esperienze il suo letto era una barca e la sua barca era un letto. I panorami di palme tropicali e di aranceti californiani passavano sopra quel letto mobile come l’interminabile incubo delle pareti della nursery. Ma il suo vero coraggio non era rivolto tanto verso l’esterno nel dramma della barca quanto verso l’interno nel dramma del letto. Nessuno sapeva meglio di lui che nulla è più terribile di un letto; dato che aspetta sempre di diventare un letto di morte.
Broadly speaking, therefore, his biography would consist of journeys hither and thither, with a donkey in the Cevennes, with a baronet on the French canals; on a sledge in Switzerland or in a bathchair at Bournemouth. But they were all, in one way or another, related to the problem of his health as well as to the cheerfulness of his curiosity. Now of all human things the search for health is the most unhealthy. And it is truly a great glory to Stevenson that he, almost alone among men, could go on pursuing his bodily health without once losing his mental health. As soon as he came to any place, he lost no time in finding a new and better reason for having come there. It might be a child or a sonnet, a flirtation or the plan of a story; but he made that the real reason; and not the unhealthy reason of health. Nevertheless, there generally had been, somewhere in the background, some suggestion of the reason of health; as there was in that last great journey to his final home in the South Seas.
The one real break, I suspect, in this curious double process of protection and risk, was his break-away to America, which arose partly at least in connection with the matter of his marriage. It seemed to his friends and family, not so much like the conduct of an invalid who had done a bolt from the hospital, as the conduct of a lunatic unaccountably loose from the asylum. In truth, the voyage struck them as less mad than the marriage. As this is not a biographical study, I need not go deeply into the delicate disputes about that business; but it was admittedly at least unconventional. All that matters to the argument here is that, while there was much in it that was even noble, it was not normal. It was not love as it should come to youth: it is no disrespect to either to say that in both, psychologically speaking, there was an element of patching up as well as of binding together. Stevenson had met, first in Paris and later in America, an American lady married to a seemingly somewhat unsatisfactory American gentleman, against whom she took proceedings for divorce. Stevenson at the same time precipitately crossed the seas and in some sense pursued her to California; I suppose with some vague idea of being in at the death; and indeed he was very nearly in at his own. The escapade brought on him one of the worst and sharpest of his attacks of illness; the lady, being on the spot, naturally threw herself into nursing him; and as soon as he could stand on two rickety legs they were married. It caused consternation to his family, who were however really reconciled afterwards, it would seem, by the personal magnetism of his foreign and almost exotic bride. Certainly in her society his literary work went with a renewed swing and even regularity; and the rest of his story is practically the story of his important works; varied by his, if possible, still more important friendships. There was illness, in which, it should be said, it was often a case of two invalids nursing each other. Then came the decision to fall back on the secure climate of the Pacific Islands; which led to his taking up his last station at Vailima on the island of Samoa: in a coloured archipelago which our cheerful forefathers might have described as the Cannibal Islands, but which Stevenson was more disposed to describe as the Islands of the Blest. There he lived as happily as can an exile who loves his country and his friends, free at least of all the daily dangers of his lung trouble; and there he died very suddenly, at the age of forty-four, the beloved patriarch of a little white and brown community, to whom he was known as Tusitala or the Teller of Tales.
That is the main outline of the actual biography of Robert Louis Stevenson; and from the time when he clambered as a boy among the crags and castellations of the Painted Hill, looking across the islets of the Forth, to the time when tall brown barbarians, crowned with red flowers, bore him on their spears to the peak of their sacred mountain, the spirit of this artist had been permitted to inhabit, and as it were to haunt, the beautiful places of the earth. To the last he had tasted that beauty with a burning sensibility; and it is no joke, in his case, to say that he would have enjoyed coming to his own funeral. Of course, even this generalisation is too much of a simplification. He was not, as we shall later have occasion to note, unacquainted with sombre nor, alas, with sordid surroundings. Oscar Wilde said with some truth that Stevenson might have produced yet richer and more purple romances if he had always lived in Gower Street; and he was certainly one of the very few who have managed to feel fierce and adventurous at Bournemouth. But broadly speaking, it is true that the outline of his life was romantic; and was therefore perhaps too easily turned into a romance. He himself deliberately turned it into a romance; but not all those romancing were such good romancers as he. So the romance tended to turn into mere repetition and gossip; and the romantic figure faded into journalism as the figure of Robin Hood faded into endless penny dreadfuls or schoolboy serials; as the figure of Micawber was multiplied and cheapened into Ally Sloper. Then came the reaction; a reaction which I should call rather excusable than justifiable. But that reaction is the problem in any Popular treatment of him to-day.
Now if I were to follow here the natural course of such a volume as this, I should have to begin by telling slowly and systematically the tale that I have just told rapidly and briefly. I should have to give a chapter to his childhood, to his favourite aunt and his yet more beloved nurse, and to all the things much more clearly recorded in A Child’s Garden of Verses. I should have to give a chapter to his youth, his differences with his father, his struggles with his malady, his greater struggles about his marriage; working up slowly through the whole length of the book to the familiar picture of so many magazines and memoirs; the slender semi-tropical Tusitala with his long brown hair and long olive face and long strange slits of eyes, sitting clad in white or crowned with garlands and telling tales to all the tribes of men. Now the misfortune of all this would be that it would amount to saying, through a slow series of chapters, that there is nothing more to be said about Stevenson except what has been said a thousand times. It would be to suggest that Stevenson’s serious fame does still really depend on this string of picturesque accidents; and that there is really nothing to be told of him, except that he wore long hair in the Savile Club or light clothes in the Samoan mountains. His life really was romantic; but to repeat that romance is like reprinting the Scarlet Pimpernel or offering the world an entirely new portrait of Rudolph Valentino. It is against this repetition that the reaction has set in; perhaps wrongly but certainly strongly. And to spin it out through the whole of this book would be to give the impression (which I should mildly resent) that this book is only the thousandth unnecessary volume of Stevensoniana. However I told his story in detail, though it were with all the sympathy I feel, I could not avoid that suggestion of a sort of jaded journalism. Stevenson’s picturesque attitude and career are rather in his way at this moment; not for me, because I like the picturesque, but for this new pose which may be called the pose of the prosaic. To these unfortunate realists, to say that there were all these romantic things about him is only another way of saying that there was nothing in him. And there was a very great deal in him. I am driven to adopt some other method of bringing it out.
In linea di massima, dunque, la sua biografia consisterebbe in viaggi qua e là, con un asino nelle Cevenne, con un baronetto sui canali francesi; su una slitta in Svizzera o in una sedia a rotelle a Bournemouth. Ma erano tutti, in un modo o nell’altro, legati al problema della sua salute così come all’allegria della sua curiosità. Ora, fra tutte le cose umane la ricerca della salute è la più malsana. Ed è davvero una grande gloria di Stevenson che egli, quasi solo fra gli uomini, potesse continuare a inseguire la salute del corpo senza perdere neppure una volta quella della mente. Non appena giungeva in un luogo, non perdeva tempo a trovare una nuova e migliore ragione per esservi venuto. Poteva essere un bambino o un sonetto, un flirt o il progetto di un racconto; ma faceva di quella la vera ragione; e non la ragione malsana della salute. Nondimeno, di solito c’era stata, da qualche parte sullo sfondo, qualche suggestione della ragione della salute; come ci fu in quell’ultimo grande viaggio verso la sua dimora definitiva nei Mari del Sud.
L’unica vera rottura, sospetto, in questo curioso duplice processo di protezione e rischio, fu la sua fuga in America, che nacque almeno in parte in connessione con la questione del suo matrimonio. Ai suoi amici e alla sua famiglia parve non tanto la condotta di un malato che avesse tagliato la corda dall’ospedale, quanto la condotta di un pazzo inspiegabilmente sciolto dal manicomio. In verità, il viaggio parve loro meno folle del matrimonio. Poiché questo non è uno studio biografico, non ho bisogno di addentrarmi nelle delicate dispute intorno a quella faccenda; ma era, per ammissione comune, quantomeno anticonvenzionale. Tutto ciò che importa all’argomento qui è che, per quanto vi fosse molto di persino nobile, non era normale. Non era amore come dovrebbe giungere alla giovinezza: non è mancanza di rispetto verso l’uno o l’altro dire che in entrambi, psicologicamente parlando, vi era un elemento di rammendo così come di unione. Stevenson aveva incontrato, prima a Parigi e più tardi in America, una signora americana sposata a un gentiluomo americano apparentemente alquanto insoddisfacente, contro il quale ella avviò una causa di divorzio. Stevenson nello stesso tempo attraversò precipitosamente i mari e in un certo senso la inseguì fino in California; suppongo con qualche vaga idea di essere presente alla morte; e in verità fu assai vicino alla propria. La scappatella gli procurò uno dei peggiori e più acuti dei suoi attacchi di malattia; la signora, trovandosi sul posto, si gettò naturalmente a curarlo; e non appena poté reggersi su due gambe malferme si sposarono. Ciò causò costernazione nella sua famiglia, che tuttavia si riconciliò in seguito, a quanto pare, per il magnetismo personale della sua sposa straniera e quasi esotica. Certo, nella sua compagnia il suo lavoro letterario procedette con rinnovato slancio e persino regolarità; e il resto della sua storia è praticamente la storia delle sue opere importanti; variata dalle sue amicizie, se possibile, ancora più importanti. Vi fu malattia, in cui, va detto, spesso si trattava di due malati che si curavano a vicenda. Poi venne la decisione di ripiegare sul clima sicuro delle Isole del Pacifico; il che lo portò a prendere la sua ultima dimora a Vailima, nell’isola di Samoa: in un arcipelago screziato che i nostri allegri antenati avrebbero potuto descrivere come le Isole dei Cannibali, ma che Stevenson era più propenso a descrivere come le Isole dei Beati. Là visse felice quanto può esserlo un esule che ama il proprio paese e i propri amici, libero almeno da tutti i pericoli quotidiani del suo male ai polmoni; e là morì all’improvviso, all’età di quarantaquattro anni, l’amato patriarca di una piccola comunità bianca e bruna, alla quale era noto come Tusitala, ovvero il Narratore di Storie.
Questo è il tratto principale dell’effettiva biografia di Robert Louis Stevenson; e dal tempo in cui, ragazzo, si arrampicava fra le rupi e le merlature della Collina Dipinta, guardando oltre gli isolotti del Forth, al tempo in cui alti barbari bruni, coronati di fiori rossi, lo portarono sulle loro lance fino alla cima della loro montagna sacra, lo spirito di questo artista aveva avuto il permesso di abitare, e per così dire di infestare, i luoghi belli della terra. Fino all’ultimo egli aveva assaporato quella bellezza con una sensibilità ardente; e non è uno scherzo, nel suo caso, dire che avrebbe goduto a venire al proprio funerale. Naturalmente, anche questa generalizzazione è troppo una semplificazione. Non era, come avremo occasione di notare più avanti, estraneo a contesti tetri né, ahimè, a contesti sordidi. Oscar Wilde disse con qualche verità che Stevenson avrebbe potuto produrre romanzi ancora più ricchi e più purpurei se fosse sempre vissuto a Gower Street; ed egli fu certamente uno dei pochissimi che siano riusciti a sentirsi fieri e avventurosi a Bournemouth. Ma, in linea di massima, è vero che il profilo della sua vita fu romantico; e perciò forse fu troppo facilmente trasformato in un romanzo. Egli stesso lo trasformò deliberatamente in un romanzo; ma non tutti coloro che lo romanzavano erano romanzieri altrettanto buoni quanto lui. Così il romanzo tese a trasformarsi in mera ripetizione e pettegolezzo; e la figura romantica sbiadì nel giornalismo come la figura di Robin Hood sbiadì in infiniti penny dreadful o feuilleton per scolari; come la figura di Micawber fu moltiplicata e svilita in Ally Sloper. Poi venne la reazione; una reazione che definirei piuttosto scusabile che giustificabile. Ma quella reazione è il problema in qualsiasi trattazione popolare di lui oggi.
Ora, se qui seguissi il corso naturale di un volume come questo, dovrei cominciare col raccontare lentamente e sistematicamente la storia che ho appena raccontato in modo rapido e breve. Dovrei dedicare un capitolo alla sua infanzia, alla sua zia prediletta e alla sua balia ancor più amata, e a tutte le cose registrate assai più chiaramente in A Child’s Garden of Verses. Dovrei dedicare un capitolo alla sua giovinezza, ai suoi dissidi col padre, alle sue lotte contro il male, alle sue lotte ancora maggiori intorno al suo matrimonio; procedendo lentamente per tutta la lunghezza del libro fino al ritratto familiare di tante riviste e memorie; lo snello Tusitala semitropicale dai lunghi capelli bruni e dal lungo volto olivastro e dai lunghi strani spiragli d’occhi, seduto vestito di bianco o coronato di ghirlande a raccontare storie a tutte le tribù degli uomini. Ora la disgrazia di tutto ciò sarebbe che equivarrebbe a dire, attraverso una lenta serie di capitoli, che non c’è nulla di più da dire su Stevenson se non ciò che è stato detto mille volte. Sarebbe suggerire che la seria fama di Stevenson dipenda ancora davvero da questa sfilza di pittoreschi accidenti; e che non ci sia davvero nulla da raccontare di lui, se non che portava i capelli lunghi al Savile Club o abiti chiari sulle montagne samoane. La sua vita fu davvero romantica; ma ripetere quel romanzo è come ristampare la Primula Rossa o offrire al mondo un ritratto interamente nuovo di Rudolph Valentino. È contro questa ripetizione che si è scatenata la reazione; forse a torto ma certamente con forza. E dilatarla per tutto questo libro darebbe l’impressione (che risentirei mitemente) che questo libro non sia che il millesimo inutile volume di Stevensoniana. Per quanto raccontassi la sua storia in dettaglio, sia pure con tutta la simpatia che provo, non potrei evitare quella suggestione di una sorta di giornalismo stanco. L’attitudine e la carriera pittoresche di Stevenson sono piuttosto d’intralcio in questo momento; non per me, perché amo il pittoresco, ma per questa nuova posa che si può chiamare la posa del prosaico. Per questi sfortunati realisti, dire che c’erano tutte queste cose romantiche in lui è solo un altro modo di dire che non c’era nulla in lui. E c’era moltissimo in lui. Sono costretto ad adottare qualche altro metodo per farlo emergere.
When I come to describing it, I find it is perhaps even more difficult to describe it than to do it. But something of this sort is what I propose to do. Loudon Dodd, in whom there is much of Louis Stevenson, says very truly in The Wrecker, that for the artist the external result is always a fizzle: his eyes are turned inward: “he lives for a state of mind.” I mean to attempt the conjectural description of certain states of mind, with the books that were the “external expression” of them. If for the artist his art is a fizzle, his life is often far more of a fizzle: it is even far more of a fiction. It is the one of his works in which he tells least of the truth. Stevenson’s was more real than most, because more romantic than most. But I prefer the romances, which were still more real. I mean that I think the wanderings of Balfour more Stevensonian than the wanderings of Stevenson: that the duel of Jekyll and Hyde is more illuminating than the quarrel of Stevenson and Henley: and that the true private life is to be sought not in Samoa but in Treasure Island; for where the treasure is, there is the heart also.
In short, I propose to review his books with illustrations from his life; rather than to write his life with illustrations from his books. And I do it deliberately, not because his life was not as interesting as any book; but because the habit of talking too much about his life has already actually led to thinking far too little of his literature. His ideas are being underrated, precisely because they are not being studied separately and seriously as ideas. His art is being underrated, precisely because he is not accorded even the fair advantages of Art for Art’s Sake. There is indeed a queer irony about the fate of the men of that age, who delighted in that axiom. They claimed judgement as artists, not men; and they are really remembered as men much more than they are remembered as artists. More men know the Whistlerian anecdotes than the Whistlerian etchings; and poor Wilde will live in history as immoral rather than unmoral. But there is a real reason for studying intrinsic intellectual values in the case of Stevenson; and it need not be said that exactly where the modern maxim would be useful, it is never used. The new criticism of Stevenson is still a criticism of Stevenson rather than of Stevenson’s work; it is always a personal criticism, and often, I think, rather a spiteful criticism. It is simply nonsense, for instance, for a distinguished living novelist to suggest that Stevenson’s correspondence is a thin stream of selfish soliloquy devoid of feeling for anybody but himself. It teems with lively expressions of longing for particular people and places; it breaks out everywhere with delight into that broad Scots idiom which, as Stevenson truly said elsewhere, gives a special freedom to all the terms of affection. Stevenson might be lying, of course, though I know not why a busy author should lie at such length for nothing. But I cannot see how any man could say any more to suggest his dependence on the society of friends. These are positive facts of personality that can never be proved or disproved. I never knew Stevenson; but I knew very many of his favourite friends and correspondents. I knew Henry James and William Archer; I have still the honour of knowing Sir James Barrie and Sir Edmund Gosse. And anybody who knows them, even most slightly and superficially, must know they are not the men to be in confidential correspondence for years with a silly, greedy and exacting egoist without seeing through him; or to be bombarded with boring autobiographies without being bored. But it seems rather a pity that such critics should still be called upon to hunt up Stevenson’s letter-bag, when they might well think it time to form some conclusions about Stevenson’s place in letters. Anyhow, I propose on the present occasion to be so perverse as to interest myself in literature when dealing with a literary man; and to be especially interested not only in the literature left by the man but in the philosophy inhering in the literature. And I am especially interested in a certain story, which was indeed the story of his life, but not exactly the story in his biography. It was an internal and spiritual story; and the stages of it are to be found rather in his stories than in his external acts. It is told much better in the difference between Treasure Island and The Story of a Lie, or in the difference between A Child’s Garden of Verses and Markheim or Olalla, than in any detailed account of his wrangles with his father or the fragmentary love-affairs of his youth. For it seems to me that there is a moral to the art of Stevenson (if the shades of Wilde and Whistler will endure the challenge), and that it is one with a real bearing on the future of European culture and the hope that is to guide our children. Whether I shall be able to draw out this moral and make it sufficiently large and clear, I know as little as the reader does.
Nevertheless, at this stage of the attempt I will say one thing. I have, in a sense, a sort of theory about Stevenson; a view of him which, right or wrong, concerns his life and work as a whole. But it is perhaps less exclusively personal than much of the interest that has been naturally taken in his personality. It is certainly the very contrary of the attacks which have commonly, and especially recently, been made on that personality. Thus the critics are fond of suggesting that he was nothing if not self-conscious; that the whole of his significance came from self-consciousness. I believe that the one really great and important work which he did for the world was done quite unconsciously. Many have blamed him for posing; some have blamed him for preaching. The matter which mainly interests me is not merely his pose, if it was a pose, but the large landscape or background against which he was posing; which he himself only partly realised, but which goes to make up a rather important historical picture. And though it is true that he sometimes preached, and preached very well, I am by no means certain that the thing which he preached was the same as the thing which he taught. Or, to put it another way, the thing which he could teach was not quite so large as the thing which we can learn. Or again, many of them declare that he was only a nine days’ wonder, a passing figure that happened to catch the eye and even affect the fashion; and that with that fashion he will be forgotten. I believe that the lesson of his life will only be seen after time has revealed the full meaning of all our present tendencies; I believe it will be seen from afar off like a vast plan or maze traced out on a hillside; perhaps traced by one who did not even see the plan while he was making the tracks. I believe that his travels and doublings and returns reveal an idea, and even a doctrine. Yet it was perhaps a doctrine in which he did not believe, or at any rate did not believe that he believed. In other words, I think his significance will stand out more strongly in relation to larger problems which are beginning to press once more upon the mind of man; but of which many men are still largely unaware in our time, and were almost entirely unaware in his. But any contribution to the solution of those problems will be remembered; and he made a very great contribution, probably greater than he knew. Lastly, these same critics do not hesitate, in many cases, to accuse him flatly of being insincere. I should say that nobody, so openly fond of play-acting as he was, could possibly be insincere. But it is more to my purpose now to say that his relation to the huge half-truth that he carried was in its very simplicity a mark of truthfulness. For he had the splendid and ringing sincerity to testify, in a voice like a trumpet, to a truth that he did not understand.
Quando mi accingo a descriverlo, trovo che è forse ancora più difficile descriverlo che farlo. Ma qualcosa di simile è ciò che mi propongo di fare. Loudon Dodd, in cui c’è molto di Louis Stevenson, dice con grande verità ne Il relitto, che per l’artista il risultato esteriore è sempre un fallimento: i suoi occhi sono rivolti all’interno: «egli vive per uno stato d’animo». Intendo tentare la descrizione congetturale di certi stati d’animo, insieme ai libri che ne furono l’«espressione esteriore». Se per l’artista la sua arte è un fallimento, la sua vita lo è spesso assai di più: è anzi assai più una finzione. È l’unica fra le sue opere in cui dice meno della verità. Quella di Stevenson era più reale della maggior parte, perché più romanzesca della maggior parte. Ma io preferisco i romanzi, che erano ancora più reali. Voglio dire che ritengo i vagabondaggi di Balfour più stevensoniani dei vagabondaggi di Stevenson: che il duello di Jekyll e Hyde sia più illuminante della lite fra Stevenson e Henley: e che la vera vita privata sia da cercarsi non a Samoa bensì nell’Isola del tesoro; poiché dov’è il tesoro, lì è anche il cuore.
In breve, mi propongo di passare in rassegna i suoi libri con illustrazioni tratte dalla sua vita; piuttosto che scrivere la sua vita con illustrazioni tratte dai suoi libri. E lo faccio deliberatamente, non perché la sua vita non fosse interessante quanto qualsiasi libro; ma perché l’abitudine di parlare troppo della sua vita ha già di fatto condotto a pensare troppo poco alla sua letteratura. Le sue idee vengono sottovalutate, proprio perché non vengono studiate separatamente e seriamente come idee. La sua arte viene sottovalutata, proprio perché non gli si concedono nemmeno gli equi vantaggi dell’Arte per l’Arte. C’è invero una curiosa ironia nel destino degli uomini di quell’epoca, che si compiacevano di quell’assioma. Rivendicavano di essere giudicati come artisti, non come uomini; e in realtà sono ricordati come uomini assai più che come artisti. Più uomini conoscono gli aneddoti whistleriani che le acqueforti whistleriane; e il povero Wilde vivrà nella storia come immorale piuttosto che come amorale. Ma vi è una ragione reale per studiare i valori intellettuali intrinseci nel caso di Stevenson; e non occorre dire che proprio là dove la massima moderna sarebbe utile, non viene mai usata. La nuova critica di Stevenson è ancora una critica di Stevenson piuttosto che dell’opera di Stevenson; è sempre una critica personale, e spesso, credo, piuttosto una critica astiosa. È semplicemente un’assurdità, per esempio, che un illustre romanziere vivente insinui che la corrispondenza di Stevenson sia un esile rivolo di egoistico soliloquio, privo di sentimento per chiunque tranne che per se stesso. Essa pullula di vivaci espressioni di desiderio per persone e luoghi particolari; erompe dappertutto con delizia in quell’ampio idioma scozzese che, come Stevenson disse con verità altrove, conferisce una speciale libertà a tutti i termini dell’affetto. Stevenson potrebbe mentire, certo, sebbene non sappia perché un autore indaffarato dovrebbe mentire tanto a lungo per nulla. Ma non riesco a vedere come un uomo potrebbe dire di più per suggerire la propria dipendenza dalla compagnia degli amici. Questi sono fatti positivi della personalità che non possono mai essere provati né confutati. Non ho mai conosciuto Stevenson; ma ho conosciuto moltissimi dei suoi amici e corrispondenti prediletti. Ho conosciuto Henry James e William Archer; ho tuttora l’onore di conoscere Sir James Barrie e Sir Edmund Gosse. E chiunque li conosca, anche assai lievemente e superficialmente, deve sapere che non sono uomini da restare in corrispondenza confidenziale per anni con uno sciocco, avido ed esigente egoista senza smascherarlo; o da essere bombardati con noiose autobiografie senza annoiarsi. Ma sembra piuttosto un peccato che tali critici debbano ancora essere chiamati a frugare nel sacco delle lettere di Stevenson, quando potrebbero bene ritenere sia tempo di formarsi qualche conclusione sul posto di Stevenson nelle lettere. Comunque sia, mi propongo nella presente occasione di essere tanto perverso da interessarmi alla letteratura quando ho a che fare con un uomo di lettere; e di essere specialmente interessato non solo alla letteratura lasciata dall’uomo, ma alla filosofia inerente a quella letteratura. E sono specialmente interessato a una certa storia, che fu invero la storia della sua vita, ma non esattamente la storia della sua biografia. Era una storia interiore e spirituale; e le sue tappe si ritrovano piuttosto nei suoi racconti che nei suoi atti esteriori. È narrata assai meglio nella differenza fra L’isola del tesoro e La storia di una menzogna, o nella differenza fra Un bambino e il suo giardino di versi e Markheim o Olalla, che in qualsiasi resoconto dettagliato dei suoi litigi con il padre o dei frammentari amori della sua giovinezza. Poiché mi sembra che vi sia una morale nell’arte di Stevenson (se le ombre di Wilde e Whistler sopporteranno la sfida), e che sia una morale con una reale attinenza al futuro della cultura europea e alla speranza che deve guidare i nostri figli. Se sarò capace di trarre questa morale e renderla sufficientemente ampia e chiara, lo so tanto poco quanto lo sa il lettore.
Nondimeno, a questo stadio del tentativo dirò una cosa. Ho, in un certo senso, una sorta di teoria su Stevenson; una visione di lui che, giusta o sbagliata, riguarda la sua vita e la sua opera nel loro insieme. Ma è forse meno esclusivamente personale di gran parte dell’interesse che si è naturalmente rivolto alla sua personalità. È certamente l’esatto contrario degli attacchi che sono stati comunemente, e specialmente di recente, mossi contro quella personalità. Così i critici amano insinuare che egli non fosse altro che consapevole di sé; che l’intero suo significato derivasse dalla coscienza di sé. Io credo che l’unica opera davvero grande e importante che egli compì per il mondo fu compiuta del tutto inconsapevolmente. Molti lo hanno biasimato per il posare; alcuni lo hanno biasimato per il predicare. La questione che mi interessa principalmente non è meramente la sua posa, se posa fu, ma l’ampio paesaggio o sfondo contro il quale egli posava; che egli stesso realizzò solo in parte, ma che concorre a comporre un quadro storico piuttosto importante. E benché sia vero che egli talvolta predicava, e predicava assai bene, non sono affatto certo che ciò che predicava fosse lo stesso di ciò che insegnava. Ovvero, per dirla altrimenti, ciò che egli poteva insegnare non era del tutto tanto ampio quanto ciò che noi possiamo imparare. O ancora, molti di loro dichiarano che egli fu soltanto un prodigio di nove giorni, una figura passeggera che per caso attirò l’occhio e persino influenzò la moda; e che con quella moda sarà dimenticato. Io credo che la lezione della sua vita si vedrà soltanto dopo che il tempo avrà rivelato il pieno significato di tutte le nostre presenti tendenze; credo che si vedrà da lontano come un vasto disegno o labirinto tracciato sul fianco di una collina; forse tracciato da uno che non vedeva nemmeno il disegno mentre faceva le orme. Io credo che i suoi viaggi e i suoi raddoppiamenti e ritorni rivelino un’idea, e persino una dottrina. Eppure era forse una dottrina in cui egli non credeva, o comunque non credeva di credere. In altre parole, penso che il suo significato risalterà con più forza in relazione a problemi più grandi che cominciano a premere ancora una volta sulla mente dell’uomo; ma dei quali molti uomini sono ancora largamente inconsapevoli nel nostro tempo, e lo erano quasi interamente nel suo. Ma ogni contributo alla soluzione di quei problemi sarà ricordato; ed egli diede un contributo grandissimo, probabilmente più grande di quanto sapesse. Infine, questi stessi critici non esitano, in molti casi, ad accusarlo apertamente di essere insincero. Direi che nessuno, così apertamente amante della recitazione com’egli era, potrebbe mai essere insincero. Ma è più al mio scopo dire ora che il suo rapporto con l’enorme mezza verità che portava con sé era, nella sua stessa semplicità, un segno di veridicità. Poiché ebbe la splendida e squillante sincerità di testimoniare, con voce simile a una tromba, una verità che non comprendeva.
CHAPTER II
IN THE COUNTRY OF SKELT
EVERY now and then the eye is riveted, in reading current criticism, by some statement so astonishingly untrue, or even contrary to the fact, that it seems as if a man walking down the street were suddenly standing on his head. It is all the more noticeable when the critic really has a strong head to stand on. One of the ablest of the younger critics, whose studies in other subjects I have warmly admired, wrote in our invaluable London Mercury a study of Stevenson; or what purported to be a study of Stevenson. And the chief thing he said, indeed almost the only thing he said, was that the thought of Stevenson instantly throws us back to the greater example of Edgar Allan Poe; that both were pallid and graceful figures “making wax flowers,” as somebody said; and of course the earlier and greater had the advantage of the later and the less. In fact, the critic treated Stevenson as the shadow of Poe; which may not unfairly be called the shadow of a shade. He almost hinted that, for those who had read Poe, it was hardly worth while to read Stevenson. And indeed I could almost suspect he had taken his own advice; and never read a line of Stevenson in his life.
If a man were to say that Maeterlinck derives so directly from Dickens that it is difficult to draw the line between them, I should be momentarily at a loss to catch his meaning. If he were to say that Walt Whitman was so close a copyist of Pope that it is hardly worth while to read the copy, I should not at once seize the clue. But I should think these comparisons rather more close, if anything, than the comparison between Stevenson and Poe. Dickens did not confine himself to comic subjects so much as Poe did to tragic ones; and an Essay on Optimism might couple the names of Pope and Whitman. It might also include the name of Stevenson; but it would hardly beam and sparkle with the name of Poe. The contrast, however, is much deeper than labels or the commonplaces of controversy. It is much deeper than formal divisions between what is funny and what is serious. It is concerned with something which it is now fashionable in drawing-rooms to call psychological; but which those who would as soon talk Latin as Greek still prefer to call spiritual. It is not necessarily what the newspapers would call moral; but that is only because it is more moral than most modern morality.
When Stevenson was known as Stennis, by Parisian art students struggling with his name, it was the hour of Art for Art’s Sake. Painting was to be impersonal, though painters (like Whistler) were sometimes perhaps a little personal. But they all insisted that every picture is as impersonal as a pattern. They ought to have insisted that every pattern is as personal as a picture. Whether or no we see faces in the carpet, we ought to see a mind in the carpet; and in fact there is a mind in every scheme of ornament. There is as emphatically a morality expressed in Babylonian architecture or Baroque architecture as if it were plastered all over with Biblical texts. Now in the same manner there is at the back of every artist’s mind something like a pattern or a type of architecture. The original quality in any man of imagination is imagery. It is a thing like the landscapes of his dreams; the sort of world he would wish to make or in which he would wish to wander; the strange flora and fauna of his own secret planet; the sort of thing that he likes to think about. This general atmosphere, and pattern or structure of growth, governs all his creations however varied; and because he can in this sense create a world, he is in this sense a creator; the image of God. Now everybody knows what was in this sense the atmosphere and architecture of Poe. Dark wine, dying lamps, drugging odours, a sense of being stifled in curtains of black velvet, a substance which is at once utterly black and unfathomably soft, all carried with them a sense of indefinite and infinite decay. The word infinite is not itself used indefinitely. The point of Poe is that we feel that everything is decaying, including ourselves; faces are already growing featureless like those of lepers; roof-trees are rotting from root to roof; one great grey fungus as vast as a forest is sucking up life rather than giving it forth; mirrored in stagnant pools like lakes of poison which yet fade without line or frontier into the swamp. The stars are not clean in his sight; but are rather more worlds made for worms. And this corruption is increased, by an intense imaginative genius, with the addition of a satin surface of luxury and even a terrible sort of comfort. “Purple cushions that the lamplight gloated o’er” is in the spirit of his brother Baudelaire who wrote of divans profonds commes les tombeaux. This dark luxury has something almost liquid about it. Its laxity seems to be betraying more vividly how all these things are being sucked away from us, down a slow whirlpool more like a moving swamp. That is the atmosphere of Edgar Allan Poe; a sort of rich rottenness of decomposition, with something thick and narcotic in the very air. It is idle to describe what so darkly and magnificently describes itself. But perhaps the shortest and best way of describing that artistic talent is to say that Stevenson’s is exactly the opposite.
The first fact about the imagery of Stevenson is that all his images stand out in very sharp outline; and are, as it were, all edges. It is something in him that afterwards attracted him to the abrupt and angular black and white of woodcuts. It is to be seen from the first, in the way in which his eighteenth-century figures stand up against the skyline, with their cutlasses and cocked hats. The very words carry the sound and the significance. It is as if they were cut out with cutlasses; as was that unforgettable chip or wedge that was hacked by the blade of Billy Bones out of the wooden sign of the “Admiral Benbow.” That sharp indentation of the wooden square remains as a sort of symbolic shape expressing Stevenson’s type of literary attack; and if all the colours should fade from me and the scene of all that romance grow dark, I think that black wooden sign with a piece bitten out of it would be the last shape that I should see. It is no mere pun to say that it is the best of his woodcuts. Normally, anyhow, the scene is the very reverse of dark, and certainly the very reverse of indefinite. Just as all the form can best be described as clean-cut, so all the colour is conspicuously clear and bright. That is why such figures are so often seen standing against the sea. Everybody who has been at the seaside has noted how sharp and highly coloured, like painted caricatures, appear even the most ordinary figures as they pass in profile to and fro against the blue dado of the sea. There is something also of that hard light that falls full and pale upon ships and open shores; and even more, it need not be said, of a certain salt and acrid clearness in the air. But it is notably the case in the outlines of these maritime figures. They are all edges and they stand by the sea, that is the edge of the world.
CAPITOLO II
NEL PAESE DI SKELT
OGNI tanto l’occhio resta inchiodato, leggendo la critica corrente, da qualche affermazione così stupefacentemente falsa, o persino contraria al fatto, che sembra quasi che un uomo che cammina per la strada si trovi d’improvviso a stare a testa in giù. È tanto più notevole quando il critico ha davvero una testa salda su cui reggersi. Uno dei più abili fra i giovani critici, i cui studi in altri campi ho caldamente ammirato, scrisse nel nostro inestimabile London Mercury uno studio su Stevenson; o ciò che pretendeva di essere uno studio su Stevenson. E la cosa principale che disse, anzi quasi l’unica cosa che disse, fu che il pensiero di Stevenson ci rimanda immediatamente al più grande esempio di Edgar Allan Poe; che entrambi erano figure pallide e aggraziate, intente a «fare fiori di cera», come disse qualcuno; e naturalmente il precedente e più grande aveva il vantaggio sul successivo e minore. Di fatto, il critico trattava Stevenson come l’ombra di Poe; il che non a torto si potrebbe chiamare l’ombra di un’ombra. Lasciò quasi intendere che, per chi avesse letto Poe, non valesse quasi la pena di leggere Stevenson. E in verità potrei quasi sospettare che egli avesse seguito il proprio consiglio; e non avesse mai letto un rigo di Stevenson in vita sua.
Se un uomo dicesse che Maeterlinck deriva così direttamente da Dickens che è difficile tracciare la linea tra loro, resterei per un momento perplesso nel cogliere il suo significato. Se dicesse che Walt Whitman fu un copista di Pope così pedissequo che non vale quasi la pena di leggere la copia, non afferrerei subito il bandolo. Ma riterrei questi paragoni piuttosto più calzanti, semmai, del paragone tra Stevenson e Poe. Dickens non si confinò ai soggetti comici quanto Poe fece con quelli tragici; e un saggio sull’Ottimismo potrebbe accoppiare i nomi di Pope e Whitman. Potrebbe includere anche il nome di Stevenson; ma difficilmente rifulgerebbe e scintillerebbe con il nome di Poe. Il contrasto, tuttavia, è assai più profondo delle etichette o dei luoghi comuni della controversia. È assai più profondo delle divisioni formali tra ciò che è buffo e ciò che è serio. Riguarda qualcosa che ora è di moda nei salotti chiamare psicologico; ma che coloro i quali parlerebbero volentieri il latino come il greco preferiscono ancora chiamare spirituale. Non è necessariamente ciò che i giornali chiamerebbero morale; ma questo solo perché è più morale della maggior parte della moralità moderna.
Quando Stevenson era conosciuto come Stennis, dagli studenti d’arte parigini che si arrabattavano col suo nome, era l’ora dell’Arte per l’Arte. La pittura doveva essere impersonale, benché i pittori (come Whistler) fossero talvolta forse un po’ personali. Ma tutti insistevano che ogni quadro è impersonale quanto un motivo ornamentale. Avrebbero dovuto insistere che ogni motivo è personale quanto un quadro. Che scorgiamo o no volti nel tappeto, dovremmo scorgere una mente nel tappeto; e in effetti c’è una mente in ogni schema di ornamento. C’è una moralità espressa nell’architettura babilonese o nell’architettura barocca con altrettanta enfasi che se fossero intonacate da cima a fondo di testi biblici. Ora, nello stesso modo, sul fondo della mente di ogni artista c’è qualcosa come un motivo o un tipo di architettura. La qualità originale in ogni uomo dotato di immaginazione è l’immaginario. È una cosa simile ai paesaggi dei suoi sogni; il tipo di mondo che vorrebbe creare o in cui vorrebbe errare; la strana flora e fauna del proprio segreto pianeta; il tipo di cosa a cui gli piace pensare. Questa atmosfera generale, e questo schema o struttura di crescita, governa tutte le sue creazioni per quanto varie; e poiché egli può in questo senso creare un mondo, egli è in questo senso un creatore; l’immagine di Dio. Ora, tutti sanno quale fosse in questo senso l’atmosfera e l’architettura di Poe. Vino scuro, lampade morenti, odori stupefacenti, un senso di soffocamento tra cortine di velluto nero, una sostanza che è a un tempo assolutamente nera e insondabilmente soffice, tutto portava con sé un senso di indefinito e infinito disfacimento. La parola infinito non è essa stessa usata indefinitamente. Il punto di Poe è che sentiamo che ogni cosa si sta disfacendo, noi stessi compresi; i volti stanno già perdendo i lineamenti come quelli dei lebbrosi; le travi dei tetti marciscono dalla radice al colmo; un unico grande fungo grigio, vasto come una foresta, succhia la vita anziché emanarla; specchiato in pozze stagnanti simili a laghi di veleno che pure sfumano senza linea né confine nella palude. Le stelle non sono monde al suo sguardo; ma sono piuttosto altri mondi fatti per i vermi. E questa corruzione è accresciuta, da un intenso genio immaginativo, con l’aggiunta di una superficie satinata di lusso e persino di una terribile sorta di agio. «Cuscini purpurei su cui il lume della lampada si compiaceva» è nello spirito del suo fratello Baudelaire, che scrisse di divans profonds commes les tombeaux. Questo cupo lusso ha qualcosa di quasi liquido. La sua mollezza sembra tradire più vividamente come tutte queste cose ci vengano risucchiate via, giù per un lento gorgo più simile a una palude in movimento. Tale è l’atmosfera di Edgar Allan Poe; una sorta di ricca putredine di decomposizione, con qualcosa di denso e narcotico nell’aria stessa. È vano descrivere ciò che così oscuramente e magnificamente descrive se stesso. Ma forse il modo più breve e migliore di descrivere quel talento artistico è dire che quello di Stevenson è esattamente l’opposto.
Il primo fatto riguardo all’immaginario di Stevenson è che tutte le sue immagini risaltano in un contorno assai netto; e sono, per così dire, tutte spigoli. È qualcosa in lui che in seguito lo attrasse verso il brusco e angoloso bianco e nero delle silografie. Lo si vede fin dal principio, nel modo in cui le sue figure settecentesche si stagliano contro l’orizzonte, con le loro sciabole e i loro tricorni. Le parole stesse recano il suono e il significato. È come se fossero ritagliate con le sciabole; come lo fu quella indimenticabile scheggia o tacca che la lama di Billy Bones intagliò dall’insegna di legno dell’«Ammiraglio Benbow». Quella netta intaccatura del quadrato di legno rimane come una sorta di forma simbolica che esprime il tipo di attacco letterario di Stevenson; e se tutti i colori dovessero svanire da me e la scena di tutto quel romanzesco farsi buia, credo che quella nera insegna di legno con un pezzo morso via sarebbe l’ultima forma che vedrei. Non è un mero gioco di parole dire che è la migliore delle sue silografie. Normalmente, comunque, la scena è l’esatto contrario del buio, e certamente l’esatto contrario dell’indefinito. Proprio come tutta la forma si può descrivere al meglio come nettamente tagliata, così tutto il colore è cospicuamente chiaro e vivido. È per questo che tali figure si vedono così spesso stagliarsi contro il mare. Chiunque sia stato al mare ha notato quanto nitide e vivamente colorate, come caricature dipinte, appaiano anche le figure più ordinarie mentre passano di profilo avanti e indietro contro l’azzurro zoccolo del mare. C’è anche qualcosa di quella luce dura che cade piena e pallida sulle navi e sulle spiagge aperte; e ancor più, non occorre dirlo, di una certa salmastra e acre limpidezza nell’aria. Ma è notevolmente il caso nei contorni di queste figure marittime. Sono tutte spigoli e stanno presso il mare, che è il limite del mondo.
This is but a rough experimental method; but it will be found useful to make the experiment, of calling up all the Stevensonian scenes that recur most readily to the memory; and noting this bright hard quality in shape and hue. It will make it seem all the stranger that any ornithologist could have confused the raven of Poe with the parrot of Long John Silver. The parrot was scarce more reputable; but he was a bird from the lands of bright plumage and blue skies, where the other bird was a mere shadow making darkness more dark. It is even worth noting that when the more modern pirates of The Wrecker carried away with them a caged bird, it had to be a canary. It is specially observed when Stevenson is dealing with things which many of his contemporaries made merely shadowy or unfathomably mysterious; such as the Highland hills and all the lost kingdoms of the Gael. His Highland tales have everything Scotch except Scotch mist. At that time, and even before, writers of the school of Fiona Macleod were already treating such peoples entirely as the Children of the Mist. But there is very little mist on the mountains of Stevenson. There is no Celtic twilight about his Celts. Alan Breck Stewart had no yearning for any delicate vapour to veil his bright silver buttons or his bright blue French coat. There was hardly a cloud in the sky upon that day of doom, when Glenure dropped dead in the sunshine; and he did not have red hair for nothing. Stevenson is even moved to mention that the servant behind him was laden with lemons; because lemons are bright yellow. This sort of making of a picture may not be conscious, but it is none the less characteristic. Of course I do not mean literally that all the scenes in any novel could have the same scheme of colour, or occur at the same time of day. There are exceptions to the rule; but even these will generally be found to be exceptions that prove the rule. A time of A Lodging for the Night is not unnaturally at night; but even in that nightmare of winter in mediaeval Paris the mind’s eye is really filled rather with the whiteness of snow than the blackness of darkness. It is against the snow that we see the flaming mediaeval figures; and especially that memorable figure who (like Campbell of Glenure) had no right to have red hair when he was dead. The hair is like a scarlet splash of blood crying for vengeance; but I doubt whether the doomed gentleman in Poe’s poetry would have been allowed to have red hair even when he was alive. In the same way, it would be easy to answer in detail, by finding some description of night in the works of Stevenson; but it would never be the night that broods eternally on the works of Poe. It might be said, for instance, that there are few more vivid or typical scenes in the Stevensonian tales than that of the duel at midnight in The Master of Ballantrae. But there again the exception proves the rule; the description insists not on the darkness of night but on the hardness of winter, the “windless stricture of the frost”; the candles that stand as straight as the swords; the candle-flames that seem almost as cold as the stars. I have spoken of the double meaning of a woodcut; this was surely, in the same double sense, a steel engraving. A steely cold stiffens and steadies that tingling play of steel; and that not only materially but morally. The House of Durrisdeer does not fall after the fashion of The House of Ussher. There is in that murderous scene I know not what that is clean and salt and sane; and, in spite of all, the white frost gives to the candles a sort of cold purification as of Candlemas. But the point is, at the moment, that when we say this deed was done at night, we do not mean that it was done in the dark. There is a sense of exactitude and emphatic detail that belongs entirely to the day. Here indeed the two authors so strangely compared might almost have conspired in advance against the critic who compared them: as when Poe’s ideal detective prefers to think in the dark, and therefore puts up the shutters even during the day. Dupin brings the outer darkness into the parlour, while Durie carries the candle-light into the forest.
These images are not fancies or accidents: their spirit runs through the whole scene. The same incident, for instance, shows all the author’s love of sharp edges and cutting or piercing action. It is supremely typical that he made Mrs. Durie thrust the sword up to the hilt into the frozen ground. It is true that afterwards (perhaps under the sad eye of Mr. Archer and the sensitive realists) he consented to withdraw this as “an exaggeration to stagger Hugo.” But it is much more significant that it did not originally stagger Stevenson. It was the very vital gesture of all his works that that sharp blade should cleave that stiff clay. It was true in many other senses, touching mortal clay and the sword of the spirit. But I am speaking now of the gesture of the craftsman, like that of a man cutting wood. This man had an appetite for cutting it clean. He never committed a murder without making a clean job of it.
Whence did that spirit come; and how did the story of it begin? That is the right and real way of beginning the story of Stevenson. If I say that it began with cutting figures out of cardboard, it might sound like a parody of the pedantic fancies about juvenile psychology and early education. But perhaps it will be better even to run the horrid risk of being mistaken for a modern educationist, rather than to repeat the too familiar phrases by which the admirer of Stevenson has got himself described as a sentimentalist. Too much has been talked in this connection about the Soul of the Child or the Peter Pan of Samoa; not because it is untrue, but because it is a mistake to tell a truth too often, so that it loses its freshness; especially when it is the truth about how to remain fresh. Many are perhaps rather tired of hearing about it; though they would never be tired of having it. I have therefore deliberately approached the matter by another road; and even by a road running backwards. Instead of talking first about Cummy and the nursery anecdotes of Master Louis (at the risk of making a really graceful figure grow ridiculous by mere repetition, in the eyes of multitudes of greatly inferior people) I have tried to take the stock and normal of his work first, and then note that it really does date in a special sense from his childhood; and that it is not sentimental and not senseless and not irrelevant to say so.
Questo è soltanto un rozzo metodo sperimentale; ma si troverà utile fare l’esperimento di richiamare alla memoria tutte le scene stevensoniane che vi ricorrono con maggior prontezza; e notare questa qualità luminosa e dura nella forma e nella tinta. Renderà tanto più strano che un ornitologo abbia potuto confondere il corvo di Poe con il pappagallo di Long John Silver. Il pappagallo era appena più rispettabile; ma era un uccello delle terre dal piumaggio brillante e dai cieli azzurri, là dove l’altro uccello era una mera ombra che rendeva le tenebre più tenebrose. Vale persino la pena notare che quando i più moderni pirati de Il relitto portarono via con sé un uccello in gabbia, doveva trattarsi di un canarino. Lo si osserva in modo speciale quando Stevenson tratta cose che molti dei suoi contemporanei resero soltanto ombrose o insondabilmente misteriose; come le colline delle Highlands e tutti i perduti regni del Gael. I suoi racconti delle Highlands hanno tutto ciò che è scozzese tranne la nebbia scozzese. A quel tempo, e anche prima, gli scrittori della scuola di Fiona Macleod già trattavano tali popoli interamente come i Figli della Nebbia. Ma c’è ben poca nebbia sulle montagne di Stevenson. Non c’è alcun crepuscolo celtico intorno ai suoi Celti. Alan Breck Stewart non aveva alcun anelito per un delicato vapore che velasse i suoi lucenti bottoni d’argento o la sua sgargiante giubba francese azzurra. Non c’era quasi una nuvola nel cielo in quel giorno di sventura, quando Glenure cadde morto nel sole; ed egli non aveva i capelli rossi per nulla. Stevenson è persino spinto a menzionare che il servo dietro di lui era carico di limoni; perché i limoni sono di un giallo vivo. Questa sorta di composizione di un quadro può non essere consapevole, ma non è per questo meno caratteristica. Naturalmente non intendo letteralmente che tutte le scene di un romanzo possano avere lo stesso schema di colore, o svolgersi alla stessa ora del giorno. Vi sono eccezioni alla regola; ma anche queste si troveranno in genere essere eccezioni che confermano la regola. Un momento di Alloggio per la notte è non innaturalmente di notte; ma persino in quell’incubo d’inverno nella Parigi medievale l’occhio della mente è in realtà colmo piuttosto del biancore della neve che del nerore delle tenebre. È contro la neve che vediamo le fiammeggianti figure medievali; e specialmente quella memorabile figura che (come Campbell di Glenure) non aveva diritto ad avere i capelli rossi quando era morta. I capelli sono come uno scarlatto schizzo di sangue che grida vendetta; ma dubito che al gentiluomo condannato della poesia di Poe sarebbe stato consentito di avere i capelli rossi anche da vivo. Nello stesso modo, sarebbe facile rispondere nel dettaglio, trovando qualche descrizione della notte nelle opere di Stevenson; ma non sarebbe mai la notte che grava eternamente sulle opere di Poe. Si potrebbe dire, per esempio, che vi sono poche scene più vivide o tipiche nei racconti stevensoniani di quella del duello a mezzanotte ne Il signore di Ballantrae. Ma anche lì l’eccezione conferma la regola; la descrizione insiste non sull’oscurità della notte bensì sulla durezza dell’inverno, la «stretta senza vento del gelo»; le candele che si ergono dritte come le spade; le fiamme delle candele che paiono quasi fredde quanto le stelle. Ho parlato del duplice significato di una silografia; questa era di certo, nel medesimo duplice senso, un’incisione su acciaio. Un freddo acciaio irrigidisce e rende stabile quel formicolante gioco d’acciaio; e ciò non solo materialmente ma moralmente. La Casa di Durrisdeer non cade alla maniera della Casa degli Usher. C’è in quella scena assassina non so che di netto e salmastro e sano; e, a dispetto di tutto, il bianco gelo conferisce alle candele una sorta di fredda purificazione come della Candelora. Ma il punto è, per il momento, che quando diciamo che quest’atto fu compiuto di notte, non intendiamo che fu compiuto nel buio. C’è un senso di esattezza e di enfatico dettaglio che appartiene interamente al giorno. Qui in verità i due autori così stranamente paragonati potrebbero quasi aver congiurato in anticipo contro il critico che li paragonava: come quando l’ideale investigatore di Poe preferisce pensare nel buio, e perciò tira giù le imposte anche durante il giorno. Dupin porta le tenebre esterne nel salotto, mentre Durie porta il lume di candela nella foresta.
Queste immagini non sono fantasie o casi accidentali: il loro spirito percorre l’intera scena. Il medesimo episodio, per esempio, mostra tutto l’amore dell’autore per gli spigoli netti e per l’azione che taglia o trafigge. È supremamente tipico che egli abbia fatto conficcare alla signora Durie la spada fino all’elsa nel terreno gelato. È vero che in seguito (forse sotto lo sguardo mesto del signor Archer e dei sensibili realisti) egli acconsentì a ritirare questo particolare come «un’esagerazione da far sbalordire Hugo». Ma è assai più significativo che in origine non sbalordisse Stevenson. Era il gesto vitale per eccellenza di tutte le sue opere che quella lama affilata fendesse quella creta rigida. Era vero in molti altri sensi, toccando la creta mortale e la spada dello spirito. Ma sto parlando ora del gesto dell’artigiano, come quello di un uomo che taglia il legno. Quest’uomo aveva un appetito di tagliarlo netto. Non commise mai un omicidio senza farne un lavoro pulito.
Donde venne quello spirito; e come cominciò la sua storia? Questo è il modo giusto e reale di cominciare la storia di Stevenson. Se dico che cominciò col ritagliare figure dal cartone, potrebbe suonare come una parodia delle pedanti fantasticherie sulla psicologia giovanile e sulla prima educazione. Ma forse sarà meglio persino correre l’orrido rischio di essere scambiato per un moderno pedagogista, piuttosto che ripetere le frasi fin troppo familiari con cui l’ammiratore di Stevenson si è fatto descrivere come un sentimentalista. Si è parlato troppo, a questo proposito, dell’anima del fanciullo o del Peter Pan di Samoa; non perché sia falso, ma perché è un errore dire una verità troppo spesso, sì che perde la sua freschezza; specialmente quando è la verità su come restare freschi. Molti sono forse piuttosto stanchi di sentirne parlare; benché non sarebbero mai stanchi di possederla. Ho perciò deliberatamente affrontato la questione per un’altra via; e persino per una via che corre all’indietro. Invece di parlare prima di Cummy e degli aneddoti della nursery del piccolo Louis (a rischio di far diventare ridicola, per mera ripetizione, una figura davvero aggraziata, agli occhi di moltitudini di persone assai inferiori) ho cercato di prendere prima l’insieme e il consueto della sua opera, e poi notare che essa in effetti risale, in un senso speciale, alla sua fanciullezza; e che dirlo non è sentimentale né insensato né irrilevante.
If therefore we ask, “Where does the story of Stevenson really start; where does his special style or spirit begin and where do they come from; how did he get, or begin to get, the thing that made him different from the man next-door?” I have no doubt about the answer. He got them from the mysterious Mr. Skelt of the Juvenile Drama, otherwise the toy theatre, which of all toys has most of the effect of magic on the mind. Or rather, of course, he got it from the way in which his own individual temper and talent grasped the nature of the game. He has written it all in an excellent essay and at least in one very real sentence of autobiography. “What is the world, what is man and life but what my Skelt has made them?” The psychological interest is rather more special than is conveyed by the common generalisation about the imagination of infancy. It is not merely a question of children’s toys; it is a question of a particular kind of toy, as of a particular kind of talent. It was not quite the same thing, for instance, to buy toy theatres in Edinburgh as it would have been to go to real theatres in London. In that little pasteboard play there might be something of the pantomime; but there was nothing of the dissolving view. The positive outline of everything, so well sketched in his own essay, the hard favour of the heroine, the clumps of vegetation, the clouds rolled up stiff as bolsters—these things meant something to the soul of Stevenson by their very swollen solidity or angular swagger. And it is hardly an exaggeration to say that he spent his life in teaching the world what he had learnt from them. What he learnt from them was very much more than anybody else had ever learnt from them; and that is his teaching and his qualification to teach. But to the last he presented his morality in a series of Moral Emblems which had something in common with those definite outlines and defiant attitudes; and there was never any name for it but his own name of Skeltery.
It was because he loved to see on those lines, and to think in those terms, that all his instinctive images are clear and not cloudy; that he liked a gay patch-work of colour combined with a zigzag energy of action, as quick as the crooked lightning. He loved things to stand out; we might say he loved them to stick out; as does the hilt of a sabre or the feather in a cap. He loved the pattern of crossed swords; he almost loved the pattern of the gallows because it is a clear shape like the cross. And the point is that this pattern still runs through or underneath all his more mature or complex writing; and is never lost even at the moments when he is really tragic or, what is worse, realistic. Even when he mourns as a man, he still rejoices as a child. The men in divers’ helmets like monsters, in the sordid misery of The Ebb-Tide, are still like masks of pantomime goblins against the glowing azure. And James Durie is quite as clear, we might say quite as bright, in his black coat as Alan Breck in his blue one.
Taking such a toy as a type or symbol, we may well say that Stevenson lived inside his toy theatre. It is certain that he lived in an exceptional sense inside his own home; and often, I imagine, inside his own bedroom. It is here that there appears, thus early in his life, that other element that was destined to darken it, often with something like the shadow of death. I know not how far that shadow could sometimes be traced upon the nursery wall. But it is certain that he was at least relatively a delicate or sickly child; and was therefore more thrown back upon that inner imaginative life than if he had been more robust in boyhood. The world inside that home was largely a world of his own; yes, even a world of his own imagining, a thing not so much of firelight as of pictures in the fire. The world outside his home was very different, even for those who shared his home life; and that is a contrast that I shall have occasion to emphasise, when we come to the crisis of his youth. It is enough to note here the paradox that he was to some extent protected by family life even from the heavier traditions of his family. As it did not build lighthouses in the garden pond, so it did not always bring the Kirk into the nursery. He has described how his stern Calvinistic grandfather tolerated in the nursery the wild Arabian fables that he might well have denounced in the pulpit. As even that Edinburgh house defended him from the winter winds of Edinburgh, so it protected him in some degree from the full icy blasts of Puritanism which blew so high in public life. It may have been that he was a sick child; it may have been that he was a spoilt child; but this fact that he was largely left alone with his daydreams, dwelling in that house within a house which is typified by the toy theatre, is a thing to be remembered; for it means much at a later stage.
In this matter of what has been called the Child in R. L. S., I have admitted that there has been far too much talking; but there has been far too little thinking. The thing is a reality; and it does remain as a very considerable problem for the reason, as yet quite unsolved by the modern world, even when most is said about it. We have a mass of testimony from men of every description, from Treherne to Hazlitt, or from Wordsworth to Thackeray, to the psychological fact that the child experiences joys which glow like jewels even in retrospect. None of the normal naturalistic explanations explain that natural fact; and some have suggested that it is indeed a supernatural fact. In the ordinary sense of mental growth, there is no more reason for the child being better than the man than for the tadpole being better than the frog. And the attempts to explain it by physical growth are even weaker. There is a good example of the weakness in one of the essays of Stevenson, who found himself, of course, at the particular modern moment to catch the first fashion and excitement of Darwinism. Speaking of the old Calvinist minister who confessed the gorgeous spell of the Arabian Nights, he suggests that in the brain of the theologian there is still the gambolling ape; the ancestor of man; “probably arboreal.” It marks the security of such science, I may remark, that anthropologists are now saying that he was probably not arboreal. But anyhow, it is a little difficult to see why a man should love the complexity of labyrinthine cities, or wish to ride with the jewelled cohorts of the high princes of Arabia, merely because his relative had once been a hairy beast clambering like a bear on the top of a branching pole. It reminds one of the glorious apology which Stevenson made for having expected that a wealthy man would know a Governor of Christ’s Hospital: “A man with a cold in his head does not necessarily know a rat-catcher; and the connection, as it appears to my humbled and awakened sense, is equally close.”
The connection between the expanding energy of the young monkey and the secret daydreams of the young child is equally close. As a matter of fact, the time when the boy is most full of the energy of a monkey is emphatically not the time when the child is most full of the imaginative pleasures of a poet. These always come at a less vigorous period; they very often come to a less vigorous person. They especially and notably did so in the case of Stevenson; and it is absurd to explain the intensity of an infant who is an invalid by the bodily exuberance of a lad at the time when he is often rather a lout. Stevenson, with all the advantage of his disadvantages, may have lived through the period when everybody has a touch of loutishness. But that uncomfortable period of youth was not the period when the coloured pictures in his mind were most clear; they were much clearer later in the age of self-control and earlier in the age of innocence. The main point to be seized here is that they were coloured pictures of a particular kind. The colours faded, but in a certain sense the forms remained fixed; that is, that though they were slowly discoloured by the light of common day, yet when the lantern was again lit from within, the same magic-lantern slides glowed upon the blank screen. They were still pictures of pirates and red gold and bright blue sea, as they were in his childhood. And this fact is very important in the story of his mind; as we shall see when his mind reverted to them. For the time was to come when he was truly, like Jim Hawkins, to be rescued by a leering criminal with crutch and cutlass from destiny worse than death and men worse than Long John Silver— from the last phase of the enlightened nineteenth century and the leading thinkers of the age.
Se dunque chiediamo: «Dove comincia davvero la storia di Stevenson; dove ha inizio il suo particolare stile o spirito e da dove vengono; come acquisì, o cominciò ad acquisire, la cosa che lo rese diverso dall’uomo della porta accanto?», non ho alcun dubbio sulla risposta. Li acquisì dal misterioso signor Skelt del Dramma Giovanile, altrimenti il teatrino dei giocattoli, che di tutti i balocchi ha più di ogni altro l’effetto della magia sulla mente. O piuttosto, s’intende, lo acquisì dal modo in cui il suo individuale temperamento e talento afferrò la natura del gioco. Ha scritto tutto ciò in un eccellente saggio e almeno in una frase di autobiografia assai reale. «Cos’è il mondo, cosa sono l’uomo e la vita se non ciò che il mio Skelt li ha fatti?» L’interesse psicologico è piuttosto più particolare di quanto sia trasmesso dalla comune generalizzazione sull’immaginazione dell’infanzia. Non è meramente una questione di balocchi infantili; è una questione di un particolare genere di balocco, come di un particolare genere di talento. Non era proprio la stessa cosa, per esempio, comprare teatrini a Edimburgo di quanto sarebbe stato andare a teatri veri a Londra. In quel piccolo dramma di cartone poteva esservi qualcosa della pantomima; ma non c’era nulla della veduta che si dissolve. Il positivo contorno di ogni cosa, così ben abbozzato nel suo stesso saggio, i duri lineamenti dell’eroina, i cespugli di vegetazione, le nuvole arrotolate rigide come guanciali—queste cose significavano qualcosa per l’anima di Stevenson per la loro stessa gonfia solidità o angolosa spavalderia. E non è quasi un’esagerazione dire che egli spese la sua vita a insegnare al mondo ciò che aveva appreso da esse. Ciò che apprese da esse era assai più di quanto chiunque altro avesse mai appreso da esse; e questo è il suo insegnamento e il suo titolo per insegnare. Ma fino all’ultimo presentò la sua moralità in una serie di Emblemi Morali che avevano qualcosa in comune con quei contorni definiti e quegli atteggiamenti di sfida; e non vi fu mai altro nome per essa se non il suo proprio nome di Skeltery.
Fu perché amava vedere secondo quelle linee, e pensare in quei termini, che tutte le sue immagini istintive sono chiare e non nebulose; che gli piaceva un gaio mosaico di colore combinato con una zigzagante energia d’azione, rapida come la tortuosa folgore. Amava che le cose risaltassero; potremmo dire che amava che sporgessero; come fa l’elsa di una sciabola o la piuma in un berretto. Amava il motivo delle spade incrociate; amava quasi il motivo della forca perché è una forma netta come la croce. E il punto è che questo motivo percorre ancora, attraverso o al di sotto, tutta la sua scrittura più matura o complessa; e non è mai perduto nemmeno nei momenti in cui è davvero tragico o, cosa peggiore, realistico. Persino quando piange come un uomo, gioisce ancora come un fanciullo. Gli uomini negli elmi da palombaro simili a mostri, nella sordida miseria di La bassa marea, sono ancora come maschere di folletti da pantomima contro l’azzurro splendente. E James Durie è altrettanto nitido, potremmo dire altrettanto luminoso, nella sua giubba nera quanto Alan Breck nella sua azzurra.
Prendendo un tale balocco come tipo o simbolo, possiamo ben dire che Stevenson visse dentro il suo teatrino. È certo che egli visse in un senso eccezionale dentro la sua propria casa; e spesso, immagino, dentro la sua propria camera da letto. È qui che appare, così presto nella sua vita, quell’altro elemento che era destinato a oscurarla, spesso con qualcosa come l’ombra della morte. Non so fino a che punto quell’ombra potesse talvolta essere tracciata sulla parete della nursery. Ma è certo che egli era almeno relativamente un fanciullo delicato o malaticcio; e fu perciò più ricacciato in quella interiore vita immaginativa di quanto sarebbe stato se fosse stato più robusto nella fanciullezza. Il mondo dentro quella casa era in gran parte un mondo suo proprio; sì, persino un mondo del suo proprio immaginare, una cosa non tanto di luce di fuoco quanto di immagini nel fuoco. Il mondo fuori della sua casa era assai diverso, persino per coloro che condividevano la sua vita di casa; e questo è un contrasto che avrò occasione di sottolineare, quando giungeremo alla crisi della sua giovinezza. Basti qui notare il paradosso che egli fu in qualche misura protetto dalla vita familiare persino dalle più pesanti tradizioni della sua famiglia. Come non costruiva fari nello stagno del giardino, così non portava sempre la Kirk nella nursery. Egli ha descritto come il suo arcigno nonno calvinista tollerasse nella nursery le selvagge favole arabe che avrebbe ben potuto denunciare dal pulpito. Come persino quella casa di Edimburgo lo difendeva dai venti d’inverno di Edimburgo, così lo proteggeva in qualche grado dalle piene gelide raffiche del Puritanesimo che soffiavano tanto alte nella vita pubblica. Può darsi che fosse un fanciullo malato; può darsi che fosse un fanciullo viziato; ma questo fatto che egli fu in gran parte lasciato solo con le sue fantasticherie, dimorando in quella casa dentro una casa che è tipizzata dal teatrino, è cosa da ricordare; poiché significa molto in uno stadio successivo.
In questa faccenda di ciò che è stato chiamato il Fanciullo in R. L. S., ho ammesso che si è parlato fin troppo; ma si è pensato fin troppo poco. La cosa è una realtà; e rimane come un problema assai considerevole per la ragione, ancora del tutto irrisolto dal mondo moderno, anche quando se ne dice il più possibile. Abbiamo una massa di testimonianze di uomini di ogni sorta, da Traherne a Hazlitt, o da Wordsworth a Thackeray, del fatto psicologico che il fanciullo prova gioie che risplendono come gemme anche in retrospettiva. Nessuna delle normali spiegazioni naturalistiche spiega quel fatto naturale; e alcuni hanno suggerito che sia invero un fatto soprannaturale. Nel senso ordinario della crescita mentale, non c’è più ragione perché il fanciullo sia migliore dell’uomo di quanta ve ne sia perché il girino sia migliore della rana. E i tentativi di spiegarlo con la crescita fisica sono persino più deboli. C’è un buon esempio di questa debolezza in uno dei saggi di Stevenson, il quale si trovò, s’intende, nel particolare momento moderno per cogliere la prima moda ed eccitazione del darwinismo. Parlando del vecchio pastore calvinista che confessava lo splendido incanto delle Mille e una notte, egli suggerisce che nel cervello del teologo c’è ancora la scimmia che saltella; l’antenato dell’uomo; «probabilmente arboricola». Segna la sicurezza di tale scienza, posso osservare, che gli antropologi ora dicono che egli probabilmente non era arboricolo. Ma comunque sia, è un po’ difficile vedere perché un uomo debba amare la complessità delle città labirintiche, o desiderare di cavalcare con le ingioiellate coorti degli alti principi d’Arabia, solo perché il suo parente era stato un tempo una bestia pelosa che si arrampicava come un orso sulla cima di un palo ramificato. Ricorda la gloriosa scusa che Stevenson addusse per aver supposto che un uomo facoltoso conoscesse un Governatore dell’Ospedale di Cristo: «Un uomo col raffreddore in testa non conosce necessariamente un acchiappatopi; e la connessione, come appare al mio umiliato e ridestato intelletto, è altrettanto stretta».
La connessione tra l’espandersi dell’energia della giovane scimmia e le segrete fantasticherie del giovane fanciullo è altrettanto stretta. In effetti, il tempo in cui il ragazzo è più colmo dell’energia di una scimmia non è affatto il tempo in cui il fanciullo è più colmo dei piaceri immaginativi di un poeta. Questi vengono sempre in un periodo meno vigoroso; molto spesso vengono a una persona meno vigorosa. Così fu specialmente e notevolmente nel caso di Stevenson; ed è assurdo spiegare l’intensità di un bambino che è un invalido con l’esuberanza corporea di un ragazzo nel tempo in cui è spesso piuttosto uno zoticone. Stevenson, con tutto il vantaggio dei suoi svantaggi, può aver attraversato il periodo in cui ognuno ha un tocco di rozzezza. Ma quel periodo scomodo della giovinezza non era il periodo in cui le immagini colorate nella sua mente erano più chiare; erano assai più chiare più tardi, nell’età dell’autocontrollo, e prima, nell’età dell’innocenza. Il punto principale da afferrare qui è che erano immagini colorate di un genere particolare. I colori sbiadirono, ma in un certo senso le forme rimasero fisse; vale a dire che, benché fossero lentamente scolorite dalla luce del giorno comune, pure quando la lanterna veniva di nuovo accesa dall’interno, le medesime diapositive della lanterna magica risplendevano sullo schermo vuoto. Erano ancora immagini di pirati e d’oro rosso e di mare azzurro brillante, come erano nella sua fanciullezza. E questo fatto è molto importante nella storia della sua mente; come vedremo quando la sua mente vi ritornò. Poiché il tempo doveva venire in cui egli sarebbe stato davvero, come Jim Hawkins, salvato da un criminale sogghignante con stampella e sciabola da un destino peggiore della morte e da uomini peggiori di Long John Silver— dall’ultima fase dell’illuminato secolo diciannovesimo e dai maggiori pensatori dell’epoca.
CHAPTER III
YOUTH AND EDINBURGH
IT is the suggestion of this chapter that when Stevenson first stepped out of his early Edinburgh home, he slipped upon the step. It may have been nothing worse, to begin with, than the ordinary butter-slide of the buffoonery of youth; such buffoonery as makes up the typical Edinburgh tale called The Misadventures of John Nicholson. But that tale alone would suggest that there was something a little greasy or even grimy about the butter. It is an odd story for Stevenson to have written; and no Stevensonian has any particular desire to dwell on those few of his works that might almost have been written by somebody else. But it has a biographical importance that has hardly been properly estimated, even in connection with this rather overworked biography. It is a curiously unlovely and uncomfortable comedy, not even uncomfortable enough to be a tragedy. The hero is not only not heroic, but he is hardly more amusing than attractive; and the fun that is made of him is not only not genial, but is not particularly funny. It is strange that such misadventures should come from the mind that gave us the radiant harlequinade of The Wrong Box. But I mention it here because it is full of a certain atmosphere, into which Stevenson was plunged too abruptly, as I believe, when he passed from boyhood into youth. It is true to call it the atmosphere, or one of the atmospheres of Edinburgh; yet it is the very reverse of so much that we rightly associate with the arid dignity of the Modern Athens. There is something very specially sordid and squalid in the glimpses of low life given in the dissipations of John Nicholson; and something of the same kind comes to us like a gust of gas from the medical students of The Body Snatcher. When I say that this first step of Stevenson led him rather abruptly astray, I do not mean that he did anything half so bad as multitudes of polite persons have done in the most polished centres of civilisation. But I do mean that his city was not, in that particular aspect, very polite or polished or even particularly civilised. And I notice it because it has been noticed too little; and some other things have been noticed too much.
It is an obvious truth that Stevenson was born of a Puritan tradition, in a Presbyterian country, where still rolled the echoes, at least, of the theological thunders of Knox; and where the Sabbath was sometimes more like a day of death than a day of rest. It is easy, only too easy, to apply this by representing Stevenson’s father as a stern old Covenanter who frowned down the gay talents of his son; and such a simplification stands out boldly in black and white. But like many other black and white statements, it is not true; it is not even fair. Old Mr. Stevenson was a Presbyterian and presumably a Puritan, but he was not a Pharisee; and he certainly did not need to be a Pharisee in order to condemn some parts of the conduct of his son. It is probably true that almost any other son might have offended equally; but it is also true that almost any other father would have been equally offended. The son would have been the last to pretend that the faults were all on one side; the only thing that can concern posterity in the matter is certain social conditions which gave to those faults a particular savour, which counted for something even when the faults themselves have been long left behind. And while people have written rather too much about the shadow of the Kirk and the restrictions of a Puritan society, there is something that has not been seen about what may be called the underside of such a Puritan city. There is something strangely ugly and ungracious not merely about the virtues but about the vices, and especially the pleasures, of such a place. It can be felt, as I say, in Stevenson’s own stories and in many other stories about Edinburgh. Blasts of raw whisky come to us on that raw wind: there is sometimes something shrill, like the skirl of the pipes, about Scottish laughter; occasionally something very nearly insane about Scottish intoxication. I will not connect it, as did a friend of mine, with the hypothesis that the heathen Scots originally worshipped demons; but it is probably connected with the same rather savage intensity which gave them their theological thoroughness. Anyhow, it is true that in such a world even temptation itself has something terrifying as well as tempting; and yet something at the same time undignified and flat. It was this that cut across the natural poetic adventure or ambition of a young poet; and gave to the early part of his story a quality of frustration, if not of aberration.
What was the matter with Stevenson, I fancy, in so far as there was ever anything much the matter with him, was that there was too sharp a contrast between the shelter and delicate fancies of his childhood and the sort of world which met him like the wind on the front door-step. It was not merely the contrast between poetry and Puritanism; it was also the contrast between poetry and prose; and prose that was almost repulsively prosaic. He did not believe enough in Puritanism to cling to it; but he did believe very much in a potential poetry of life, and he was bewildered by its apparently impossible position in the world of real living. And his national religion, even if he had believed in his religion as ardently as he believed in his nation, would never have met that particular point at issue.
Puritanism had no idea of purity. We might almost say that there is every other virtue in Puritanism except purity; often including continence, which is quite a different thing from purity. But it has not many images of positive innocence; of the things that are at once white and solid, like the white chalk or white wood which children love. This does not detract at all from the noble Puritan qualities: the republican simplicity, the fighting spirit, the thrift, the logic, the renunciation of luxuries, the resistance to tyrants, the energy and enterprise which have helped to give the Scot his adventurous advantage all over the world. But it is none the less true that there has been in his creed, at best, negative rather than positive purity: the difference between the blank white window and the ivory tower. I know that a Victorian prejudice still regards this interpretation of history by theology as a piece of most distressing bad taste. I also know that this taboo on the main topic of mankind is becoming an intolerable nuisance; and preventing anybody, from the Papist to the atheist, from saying what he really thinks about the most real themes in the world. And I will take the liberty of stating, in spite of the taboo, that it is really relevant here to remember this Puritan defect. It is as much a fact that the Kirk of Stevenson’s country had no cult of the Holy Child, no feast of the Holy Innocents, no tradition of the Little Brothers of St. Francis, nothing that could in any way carry on the childish enthusiasm for simple things, and link it up with a lifelong rule of life— this is as much a fact as that the Quakers are not a good military school or the good Moslem a good wine-taster. Hence it followed that when Stevenson left his home, he shut the door on a house lined with fairy gold, but he came out on a frightful contrast; on temptations at once attractive and repulsive, and terrors that were still depressing even when they were disregarded. The boy in such surroundings is torn by something worse than the dilemma of Tannhäuser. He wonders why he is attracted by repellent things.
CAPITOLO III
GIOVINEZZA ED EDIMBURGO
È la tesi di questo capitolo che quando Stevenson mise per la prima volta il piede fuori dalla sua prima casa di Edimburgo, scivolò sul gradino. Può non essere stato nulla di peggio, in principio, dell’ordinaria scivolata sul burro della buffoneria giovanile; quella buffoneria di cui è fatto il tipico racconto edimburghese intitolato Le disavventure di John Nicholson. Ma quel racconto da solo suggerirebbe che ci fosse qualcosa di un po’ untuoso o persino sudicio in quel burro. È una storia strana da parte di Stevenson averla scritta; e nessuno stevensoniano ha alcun particolare desiderio di indugiare su quei pochi tra i suoi lavori che avrebbero quasi potuto essere scritti da qualcun altro. Ma essa ha un’importanza biografica che è stata a stento valutata come si deve, persino in connessione con questa biografia piuttosto sfruttata. È una commedia curiosamente sgradevole e a disagio, neppure abbastanza a disagio da essere una tragedia. L’eroe non solo non è eroico, ma è a stento più divertente che attraente; e la comicità che si fa a sue spese non solo non è geniale, ma non è particolarmente buffa. È strano che tali disavventure provengano dalla mente che ci diede la radiosa arlecchinata de La cassa sbagliata. Ma la menziono qui perché è colma di una certa atmosfera, in cui Stevenson fu immerso troppo bruscamente, a mio credere, quando passò dalla fanciullezza alla giovinezza. È giusto chiamarla l’atmosfera, o una delle atmosfere di Edimburgo; eppure è l’esatto contrario di gran parte di ciò che giustamente associamo all’arida dignità dell’Atene Moderna. C’è qualcosa di specialmente sordido e squallido negli scorci di bassa vita offerti nelle dissipazioni di John Nicholson; e qualcosa dello stesso genere ci giunge come una zaffata di gas dagli studenti di medicina de Il trafugatore di corpi. Quando dico che questo primo passo di Stevenson lo sviò piuttosto bruscamente, non intendo che egli abbia fatto qualcosa di lontanamente tanto cattivo quanto moltitudini di persone perbene hanno fatto nei più raffinati centri della civiltà. Ma intendo bensì che la sua città non era, in quel particolare aspetto, molto educata o raffinata o persino particolarmente civile. E lo rilevo perché è stato rilevato troppo poco; e certe altre cose sono state rilevate troppo.
È un’ovvia verità che Stevenson nacque da una tradizione puritana, in un paese presbiteriano, dove ancora rotolavano gli echi, almeno, dei tuoni teologici di Knox; e dove il Sabato era talvolta più simile a un giorno di morte che a un giorno di riposo. È facile, fin troppo facile, applicare questo raffigurando il padre di Stevenson come un vecchio Covenanter arcigno che reprimeva con cipiglio i gai talenti del figlio; e una tale semplificazione risalta arditamente in bianco e nero. Ma come molte altre affermazioni in bianco e nero, non è vera; non è nemmeno equa. Il vecchio signor Stevenson era un presbiteriano e presumibilmente un puritano, ma non era un fariseo; e certo non aveva bisogno di essere un fariseo per condannare alcune parti della condotta del figlio. È probabilmente vero che quasi ogni altro figlio avrebbe potuto offendere ugualmente; ma è anche vero che quasi ogni altro padre ne sarebbe stato ugualmente offeso. Il figlio sarebbe stato l’ultimo a pretendere che le colpe fossero tutte da una parte sola; l’unica cosa che possa riguardare la posterità in tale faccenda sono certe condizioni sociali che diedero a quelle colpe un particolare sapore, che contò per qualcosa anche quando le colpe stesse furono da tempo lasciate alle spalle. E mentre si è scritto piuttosto troppo sull’ombra della Kirk e sulle restrizioni di una società puritana, c’è qualcosa che non è stato visto riguardo a ciò che si può chiamare il rovescio di una tale città puritana. C’è qualcosa di stranamente brutto e sgraziato non soltanto nelle virtù, ma nei vizi, e specialmente nei piaceri, di un tale luogo. Lo si può sentire, come dico, nelle stesse storie di Stevenson e in molte altre storie su Edimburgo. Zaffate di whisky grezzo ci giungono su quel vento crudo: c’è talvolta qualcosa di stridulo, come lo strillo delle cornamuse, nella risata scozzese; occasionalmente qualcosa di quasi folle nell’ebbrezza scozzese. Non lo collegherò, come fece un mio amico, con l’ipotesi che gli Scoti pagani in origine adorassero i demoni; ma è probabilmente connesso con la medesima intensità piuttosto selvaggia che diede loro la loro compiutezza teologica. Comunque sia, è vero che in un tale mondo persino la tentazione stessa ha qualcosa di terrificante tanto quanto tentatore; eppure qualcosa al medesimo tempo indegno e piatto. Fu questo a tagliare di traverso la naturale avventura o ambizione poetica di un giovane poeta; e diede alla prima parte della sua storia una qualità di frustrazione, se non di aberrazione.
Ciò che non andava in Stevenson, immagino, per quel poco che mai andò gran che storto in lui, era che c’era un contrasto troppo netto tra il riparo e le delicate fantasie della sua fanciullezza e il tipo di mondo che lo investì come il vento sulla soglia di casa. Non era soltanto il contrasto tra poesia e Puritanesimo; era anche il contrasto tra poesia e prosa; e prosa quasi ripugnantemente prosaica. Non credeva abbastanza nel Puritanesimo da aggrapparvisi; ma credeva moltissimo in una potenziale poesia della vita, ed era sconcertato dalla sua posizione apparentemente impossibile nel mondo del vivere reale. E la sua religione nazionale, anche se avesse creduto nella sua religione con altrettanto ardore con cui credeva nella sua nazione, non avrebbe mai affrontato quel particolare punto in questione.
Il Puritanesimo non aveva idea della purezza. Potremmo quasi dire che nel Puritanesimo c’è ogni altra virtù tranne la purezza; spesso inclusa la continenza, che è cosa ben diversa dalla purezza. Ma non ha molte immagini di innocenza positiva; delle cose che sono a un tempo bianche e solide, come il bianco gesso o il legno bianco che i bambini amano. Ciò non toglie affatto nulla alle nobili qualità puritane: la semplicità repubblicana, lo spirito combattivo, la parsimonia, la logica, la rinuncia ai lussi, la resistenza ai tiranni, l’energia e l’intraprendenza che hanno contribuito a dare allo Scozzese il suo avventuroso vantaggio in tutto il mondo. Ma non è per questo meno vero che nel suo credo c’è stata, nel migliore dei casi, una purezza negativa piuttosto che positiva: la differenza tra la vuota bianca finestra e la torre d’avorio. So che un pregiudizio vittoriano considera ancora questa interpretazione della storia mediante la teologia un tratto di pessimo gusto oltremodo penoso. So anche che questo tabù sul principale argomento dell’umanità sta diventando una seccatura intollerabile; e impedisce a chiunque, dal papista all’ateo, di dire ciò che realmente pensa sui temi più reali del mondo. E mi prenderò la libertà di affermare, a dispetto del tabù, che è davvero pertinente qui ricordare questo difetto puritano. È altrettanto un fatto che la Kirk del paese di Stevenson non aveva alcun culto del Santo Fanciullo, nessuna festa dei Santi Innocenti, nessuna tradizione dei Piccoli Fratelli di San Francesco, nulla che potesse in alcun modo proseguire l’entusiasmo infantile per le cose semplici, e collegarlo a una regola di vita duratura— questo è altrettanto un fatto quanto lo è che i Quaccheri non sono una buona scuola militare o che il buon musulmano non è un buon assaggiatore di vino. Ne conseguì dunque che quando Stevenson lasciò la sua casa, chiuse la porta su una dimora foderata d’oro fatato, ma uscì su un contrasto spaventoso; su tentazioni a un tempo attraenti e ripugnanti, e terrori che restavano deprimenti anche quando venivano trascurati. Il ragazzo in tali circostanze è dilaniato da qualcosa di peggiore del dilemma di Tannhäuser. Si chiede perché sia attratto da cose ripugnanti.
I will here make what is a mere guess in the dark; and in a very dark matter of the mind. But I suspect that it was originally out of this chasm of ugly division that there rose that two-headed monster, the mystery of Jekyll and Hyde. There is indeed one peculiarity about that grim grotesque which I have never seen noted anywhere; though I dare say it may have been noted more than once. It will be realised that I am not, alas, so close a student of Stevensoniana as many who seem to think much less of Stevenson. But it seems to me that the story of Jekyll and Hyde, which is presumably presented as happening in London, is all the time very unmistakably happening in Edinburgh. More than one of the characters seem to be pure Scots. Mr. Utterson, the lawyer, is a most unmistakably Scottish lawyer, strictly occupied with Scots Law. No modern English lawyer ever read a book of dry divinity in the evening merely because it was Sunday. Mr. Hyde indeed possesses the cosmopolitan charm that unites all nations; but there is something decidedly Caledonian about Dr. Jekyll; and especially something that calls up that quality in Edinburgh that led an unkind observer (probably from Glasgow) to describe it as “an east-windy, west-endy place.” The particular tone about his respectability, and the horror of mixing his reputation with mortal frailty, belongs to the upper middle classes in solid Puritan communities. But what is especially to the point of the present argument, there is a sense in which that Puritanism is expressed even more in Mr. Hyde than in Dr. Jekyll. The sense of the sudden stink of evil, the immediate invitation to step into stark filth, the abruptness of the alternative between that prim and proper pavement and that black and reeking gutter— all this, though doubtless involved in the logic of the tale, is far too frankly and familiarly offered not to have had some basis in observation and reality. It is not thus that the ordinary young pagan, of warmer climes, conceives the alternative of Christ and Aphrodite. His imagination and half his mind are involved in defending the beauty and dignity of the joy of gods and men. It is not so that Stevenson himself came to talk of such things, when he had felt the shadow of old Athens fall on the pagan side of Paris. I allow for all the necessary horror of the conception of Hyde. But this dingy quality does not belong only to the demon antics of Hyde. It is implied, somehow, in every word about the furtive and embarrassed vices of Jekyll. It is the tragedy of a Puritan town; every bit as much as that black legend which Stevenson loved, in which the walking-stick of Major Weir went walking down the street all by itself. I hope to say something in a moment about the very deep and indeed very just and wise morality that is really involved in that ugly tale. I am only remarking here that the atmosphere and setting of it are those of some tale of stiff hypocrisy in a rigid sect or provincial village; it might be a tale of the Middle West savagely dissected in the Spoon River Anthology. But the point about it is that the human beauty which makes sin most dangerous hardly appears by a hint; this Belial is never graceful or humane; and in this there seems to me to be something suggestive of the inverted order and ugly contrast with which licence presents itself in a world that has frowned on liberty. It is the utterance of somebody who, in the words of Kipling, knew the worst too young; not necessarily in his own act or by his own fault, but by the nature of a system which saw no difference between the worst and the moderately bad. But whatever form the shock of evil might take, I think it jerked him out of the right development of his romantic nature; and was responsible for much that seemed random or belated in his life.
I do not mean to imply that the morality of the story itself has anything of weakness or morbidity; my opinion is very much the other way. Though the fable may seem mad, the moral is very sane; indeed, the moral is strictly orthodox. The trouble is that most of those who mention it do not know the moral, possibly because they have never read the fable. From time to time those anonymous authorities in the newspapers, who dismiss Stevenson with such languid grace, will say that there is something quite cheap and obvious about the idea that one man is really two men and can be divided into the evil and the good. Unfortunately for them, that does not happen to be the idea. The real stab of the story is not in the discovery that the one man is two men; but in the discovery that the two men are one man. After all the diverse wandering and warring of those two incompatible beings, there was still one man born and only one man buried. Jekyll and Hyde have become a proverb and a joke; only it is a proverb read backwards and a joke that nobody really sees. But it might have occurred to the languid critics, as a part of the joke, that the tale is a tragedy; and that this is only another way of saying that the experiment was a failure. The point of the story is not that a man can cut himself off from his conscience, but that he cannot. The surgical operation is fatal in the story. It is an amputation of which both the parts die. Jekyll, even in dying, declares the conclusion of the matter; that the load of man’s moral struggle is bound upon him and cannot be thus escaped. The reason is that there can never be equality between the evil and the good. Jekyll and Hyde are not twin brothers. They are rather, as one of them truly remarks, like father and son. After all, Jekyll created Hyde; Hyde would never have created Jekyll; he only destroyed Jekyll. The notion is not so hackneyed as the critics find it, after Stevenson has found it for them thirty years ago. But Jekyll’s claim is not that it is the first of such experiments in duality; but rather that it must be the last.
Farò qui quella che è una mera congettura al buio; e in una materia della mente molto buia. Ma sospetto che fu originariamente da questo abisso di brutta divisione che sorse quel mostro a due teste, il mistero di Jekyll e Hyde. C’è invero una peculiarità in quel truce grottesco che non ho mai visto rilevata in alcun luogo; benché osi dire che possa essere stata rilevata più di una volta. Ci si renderà conto che io non sono, ahimè, uno studioso di stevensoniana così assiduo quanto molti che paiono stimare Stevenson assai meno. Ma mi sembra che la storia di Jekyll e Hyde, che è presumibilmente presentata come se accadesse a Londra, stia per tutto il tempo inequivocabilmente accadendo a Edimburgo. Più d’uno dei personaggi paiono essere puri Scozzesi. Il signor Utterson, l’avvocato, è un avvocato inequivocabilmente scozzese, strettamente occupato con il Diritto scozzese. Nessun avvocato inglese moderno lesse mai un libro di arida teologia la sera solo perché era domenica. Il signor Hyde possiede in verità il fascino cosmopolita che unisce tutte le nazioni; ma c’è qualcosa di decisamente caledone nel dottor Jekyll; e specialmente qualcosa che richiama quella qualità di Edimburgo che portò un poco benevolo osservatore (probabilmente di Glasgow) a descriverla come «un luogo tutto vento d’est e quartieri a ovest». Il particolare tono riguardo alla sua rispettabilità, e l’orrore di mescolare la sua reputazione con la fragilità mortale, appartiene alle classi medio-alte delle solide comunità puritane. Ma ciò che è specialmente pertinente all’argomento presente, c’è un senso in cui quel Puritanesimo è espresso ancor più nel signor Hyde che nel dottor Jekyll. Il senso del subitaneo fetore del male, l’immediato invito a mettere piede nella nuda sozzura, la bruschezza dell’alternativa tra quel selciato lindo e perbene e quel rigagnolo nero e fetido— tutto questo, sebbene indubbiamente implicato nella logica del racconto, è offerto troppo francamente e familiarmente per non aver avuto qualche base nell’osservazione e nella realtà. Non è così che l’ordinario giovane pagano, di climi più caldi, concepisce l’alternativa tra Cristo e Afrodite. La sua immaginazione e metà della sua mente sono impegnate a difendere la bellezza e la dignità della gioia degli dèi e degli uomini. Non è così che Stevenson stesso giunse a parlare di tali cose, quando ebbe sentito l’ombra della vecchia Atene calare sul lato pagano di Parigi. Concedo tutto il necessario orrore della concezione di Hyde. Ma questa qualità squallida non appartiene soltanto alle demoniache buffonate di Hyde. È implicita, in qualche modo, in ogni parola sui furtivi e imbarazzati vizi di Jekyll. È la tragedia di una città puritana; tanto quanto quella nera leggenda che Stevenson amava, in cui il bastone da passeggio del maggiore Weir se ne andava a spasso per la strada tutto da solo. Spero di dire qualcosa fra un momento sulla assai profonda e invero assai giusta e saggia moralità che è realmente implicata in quel brutto racconto. Rilevo qui soltanto che l’atmosfera e l’ambientazione di esso sono quelle di qualche racconto di rigida ipocrisia in una setta rigorosa o in un villaggio di provincia; potrebbe essere un racconto del Middle West sezionato selvaggiamente nella Spoon River Anthology. Ma il punto è che la bellezza umana che rende il peccato più pericoloso a stento appare per un cenno; questo Belial non è mai aggraziato o umano; e in ciò mi pare esservi qualcosa che suggerisce l’ordine invertito e il brutto contrasto con cui la licenza si presenta in un mondo che ha guardato con cipiglio la libertà. È l’espressione di qualcuno che, nelle parole di Kipling, conobbe il peggio troppo giovane; non necessariamente per proprio atto o per propria colpa, ma per la natura di un sistema che non vedeva alcuna differenza tra il peggio e il moderatamente cattivo. Ma qualunque forma potesse assumere lo shock del male, penso che lo strappò via dal giusto sviluppo della sua natura romantica; e fu responsabile di molto ciò che parve casuale o tardivo nella sua vita.
Non intendo insinuare che la moralità della storia stessa abbia alcunché di debolezza o di morbosità; la mia opinione è tutt’altra. Benché la favola possa sembrare folle, la morale è assai sana; anzi, la morale è strettamente ortodossa. Il guaio è che la maggior parte di coloro che la menzionano non conosce la morale, forse perché non ha mai letto la favola. Di tempo in tempo quelle anonime autorità dei giornali, che liquidano Stevenson con tanta languida grazia, diranno che c’è qualcosa di del tutto scontato e ovvio nell’idea che un uomo sia in realtà due uomini e possa essere diviso nel malvagio e nel buono. Sfortunatamente per loro, non è questa l’idea. Il vero affondo della storia non è nella scoperta che l’unico uomo è due uomini; ma nella scoperta che i due uomini sono un uomo solo. Dopo tutto il vario errare e guerreggiare di quei due esseri incompatibili, c’era ancora un solo uomo nato e un solo uomo sepolto. Jekyll e Hyde sono diventati un proverbio e uno scherzo; solo che è un proverbio letto a rovescio e uno scherzo che nessuno coglie davvero. Ma sarebbe potuto venire in mente ai languidi critici, come parte dello scherzo, che il racconto è una tragedia; e che questo è solo un altro modo di dire che l’esperimento fu un fallimento. Il punto della storia non è che un uomo possa recidersi dalla propria coscienza, ma che non può. L’operazione chirurgica è fatale nella storia. È un’amputazione di cui entrambe le parti muoiono. Jekyll, anche morendo, dichiara la conclusione della faccenda; che il peso della lotta morale dell’uomo gli è legato addosso e non può in tal modo essere eluso. La ragione è che non può mai esservi uguaglianza tra il male e il bene. Jekyll e Hyde non sono fratelli gemelli. Sono piuttosto, come uno di loro giustamente osserva, come padre e figlio. Dopo tutto, Jekyll creò Hyde; Hyde non avrebbe mai creato Jekyll; egli non fece che distruggere Jekyll. L’idea non è così trita come la trovano i critici, dopo che Stevenson l’ha trovata per loro trent’anni fa. Ma la pretesa di Jekyll non è che sia il primo di tali esperimenti di dualità; bensì piuttosto che debba essere l’ultimo.
Nor do I necessarily admit the technical clumsiness which some have alleged against the tale, merely because I believe that many of its emotions were first experienced in the crude pain of youth. Some have gone into particular detail in order to pick it to pieces; and Mr. E. F. Benson has made the (to me) strange remark that the structure of the story breaks down when Jekyll discovers that his chemical combination was partly accidental and is therefore unrecoverable. The critic says scornfully that it would have done just as well if Jekyll had taken a blue pill. It seems to me odd that any one who seems to know so much about the devil as the author of Colin should fail to recognise the cloven hoof in the cloven spirit called up by the Jekyll experiment. That moment in which Jekyll finds his own formula fail him, through an accident he had never foreseen, is simply the supreme moment in every story of a man buying power from hell; the moment when he finds the flaw in the deed. Such a moment comes to Macbeth and Faustus and a hundred others; and the whole point of it is that nothing is really secure, least of all a Satanist security. The moral is that the devil is a liar, and more especially a traitor; that he is more dangerous to his friends than his foes; and, with all deference to Mr. Benson, it is not a shallow or unimportant moral. But although the story ultimately emerged as a gargoyle very carefully graven by a mature master-craftsman, and was moreover a gargoyle of the greatest spiritual edification, eminently suited to be stuck on to the most sacred edifice, my point for the moment is that the stone of which it was made was originally found, I think, by Stevenson as a boy, kicking about the street, not to mention the gutter. In other words, he did not need to leave the respectable metropolis of the north to find the weaknesses of Jekyll and the crimes of Hyde.
I deal with these things in general terms, not merely out of delicacy, but partly out of something that I might almost call impatience or contempt. For the quarrels between the Victorian whitewashers and the Post-Victorian mudslingers seem to me deficient in the ordinary decent comprehension of the difficulties of human nature. Both the scandalised and the scandalmonger seem to me to look very silly beside the sensible person in the Bible, who confined himself to saying that there are things that no man knows, such as the way of a bird in the air and the way of a man in his youth. That Stevenson was in the mature and sane sense a good man is certain, without any Victorian apologetics; that he never did anything that he thought wrong is improbable, even without any elaborate cloacan researches; and the whole thing is further falsified by the fact that, outside a certain religious tradition, very few either of the whitewashers or the mudslingers really believe in the morality involved. The former seek to save nothing better than respectability; the latter even when they slander can hardly condemn. Stevenson was not a Catholic: he did not pretend to have remained a Puritan; but he was a highly honourable, responsible and chivalrous Pagan, in a world of Pagans who were most of them considerably less conspicuous for chivalry and honour. I for one, if I may say so, am ready to defend my own standards or to judge other men by theirs. But the Victorian pretence that every well-dressed hero of romance with over five hundred a year is born immune from the temptations which the mightiest saints have rolled themselves in brambles to control— that does not concern me and I shall not discuss it again.
But what does concern me, at this particular stage of the story, is not the question of what Stevenson thought right or wrong when he had become consciously and consistently a Pagan, but the particular way in which right and wrong appeared to him at this crude and groping age when he was still by tradition a Puritan. And I do think there was something tail-foremost, to use one of his own favourite words, in the way in which evil crept into his existence, as it does into everybody else’s. He saw the tail of the devil before he saw his horns. Puritanism gave him the key rather to the cellars than the halls of Babylon; and something thus subterranean, suffocating and debased rolls like a smoke over the story of Jekyll and Hyde. But I only mention these matters as part of a general unfolding of his mind and moral nature, which seems to me to have had a great deal to do with the latter development of his destiny. The normal, or at least the ideal, development of a man’s destiny is from the coloured chamber of childhood to an even more romantic garden of the faith and tryst of youth. It is from the child’s garden of verses to the man’s garden of vows. I do not think that time of transition went right with Stevenson; I think that something thwarted or misled him; I think it was then that the east wind of Edinburgh Puritanism blew him out of his course, so that he returned only long after to anything like a secure loyalty and a right human relation. In a word, I think that in his childhood he had the best luck in the world, and in his youth the worst luck in the world; and that this explains most of his story.
Anyhow, he found no foothold on those steep streets of his beautiful and precipitous city; and as he looked forth over the litter of little islands in the large and shining estuary, he may have had some foreshadowing of that almost vagabond destiny which ended in the ends of the earth. There seemed in one sense no social reason why it should not end in Edinburgh as it had begun in Edinburgh. There seemed nothing against a normal successful career for one so brilliant, so graceful and essentially so humane; his story might have been as comfortable as a Victorian three-volume novel. He might have had the luck to marry an Edinburgh lady as delightful and satisfactory as Barbara Grant. He might have presided over the revels of a new bunch of Stevensons, coming home from Leith Walk laden with the gay portfolios of Skelt. They also might have bought Penny Pickwicks or gone about girt with lanterns; and his own view of these things might have altered, though not necessarily weakened, with the responsibility of one who sees them reproduced in others. But among these early Edinburgh pranks, which he has left on record, was one which is something of a symbol. He speaks somewhere of a special sort of apples which he gathered by the seashore, which were such as might well be gathered from the salted and crooked trees that grow by the sea. I do not know what it was; or what form it took; or whether it ever took any definable form at all. But somehow or other, in thought or word or deed, in that bleak place he ate the apple of knowledge; and it was a crab apple.
Né ammetto necessariamente la goffaggine tecnica che alcuni hanno imputato al racconto, solo perché credo che molte delle sue emozioni furono provate per la prima volta nel crudo dolore della giovinezza. Alcuni sono entrati in particolari minuti allo scopo di farlo a pezzi; e il signor E. F. Benson ha fatto la (per me) strana osservazione che la struttura della storia crolla quando Jekyll scopre che la sua combinazione chimica era in parte accidentale ed è perciò irrecuperabile. Il critico dice sprezzantemente che sarebbe andata altrettanto bene se Jekyll avesse preso una pillola azzurra. Mi pare strano che chiunque sembri sapere tanto sul diavolo quanto l’autore di Colin non riesca a riconoscere lo zoccolo fesso nello spirito fesso evocato dall’esperimento di Jekyll. Quel momento in cui Jekyll trova che la propria formula gli viene meno, per un incidente che non aveva mai previsto, è semplicemente il momento supremo in ogni storia di un uomo che compra il potere dall’inferno; il momento in cui trova la falla nel patto. Un tale momento giunge a Macbeth e a Faust e a cento altri; e tutto il suo senso è che nulla è davvero sicuro, meno che mai una sicurezza satanica. La morale è che il diavolo è un mentitore, e più specialmente un traditore; che è più pericoloso per i suoi amici che per i suoi nemici; e, con tutto il rispetto per il signor Benson, non è una morale superficiale o irrilevante. Ma sebbene la storia sia infine emersa come un doccione scolpito con grandissima cura da un maturo maestro artigiano, e fosse per giunta un doccione della più grande edificazione spirituale, eminentemente adatto a essere applicato al più sacro edificio, il mio punto per il momento è che la pietra di cui era fatto fu originariamente trovata, credo, da Stevenson fanciullo, mentre la prendeva a calci per la strada, per non dire nel rigagnolo. In altre parole, egli non ebbe bisogno di lasciare la rispettabile metropoli del nord per trovare le debolezze di Jekyll e i delitti di Hyde.
Tratto queste cose in termini generali, non solo per delicatezza, ma in parte per qualcosa che potrei quasi chiamare impazienza o disprezzo. Poiché le dispute tra gli imbianchini vittoriani e gli scagliatori di fango post-vittoriani mi paiono difettose dell’ordinaria e decente comprensione delle difficoltà della natura umana. Sia lo scandalizzato sia lo scandalizzatore mi paiono apparire assai sciocchi accanto alla persona assennata della Bibbia, che si limitò a dire che vi sono cose che nessun uomo conosce, come la via di un uccello nell’aria e la via di un uomo nella sua giovinezza. Che Stevenson fosse, nel senso maturo e sano, un uomo buono è certo, senza alcuna apologetica vittoriana; che non abbia mai fatto nulla che ritenesse sbagliato è improbabile, anche senza alcuna elaborata ricerca cloacale; e il tutto è ulteriormente falsato dal fatto che, al di fuori di una certa tradizione religiosa, ben pochi tanto degli imbianchini quanto degli scagliatori di fango credono davvero nella moralità in questione. I primi cercano di salvare nulla di meglio della rispettabilità; i secondi, persino quando calunniano, a stento riescono a condannare. Stevenson non era cattolico: non pretendeva di essere rimasto un puritano; ma era un pagano altamente onorevole, responsabile e cavalleresco, in un mondo di pagani che per la maggior parte erano assai meno cospicui per cavalleria e onore. Io per primo, se posso dirlo, sono pronto a difendere i miei propri criteri o a giudicare gli altri uomini secondo i loro. Ma la pretesa vittoriana che ogni ben vestito eroe di romanzo con più di cinquecento sterline l’anno nasca immune dalle tentazioni che i più possenti santi si sono rotolati fra i rovi per dominare— ciò non mi riguarda e non ne discuterò più.
Ma ciò che mi riguarda, in questo particolare stadio della storia, non è la questione di ciò che Stevenson riteneva giusto o sbagliato quando era divenuto consapevolmente e coerentemente un pagano, bensì il modo particolare in cui il giusto e lo sbagliato gli apparivano in questa età cruda e brancolante, quando era ancora per tradizione un puritano. E ritengo davvero che ci fosse qualcosa alla rovescia, per usare una delle sue parole predilette, nel modo in cui il male si insinuò nella sua esistenza, come fa in quella di chiunque altro. Vide la coda del diavolo prima di vederne le corna. Il Puritanesimo gli diede la chiave piuttosto delle cantine che delle sale di Babilonia; e qualcosa di così sotterraneo, soffocante e degradato si arrotola come un fumo sulla storia di Jekyll e Hyde. Ma menziono queste faccende soltanto come parte di un generale dispiegarsi della sua mente e della sua natura morale, che mi sembra abbia avuto molto a che fare con il successivo sviluppo del suo destino. Il normale, o almeno l’ideale, sviluppo del destino di un uomo va dalla colorata camera della fanciullezza a un ancor più romantico giardino della fede e del convegno d’amore della giovinezza. Va dal fanciullo e dal suo giardino di versi al giardino di voti dell’uomo. Non credo che quel tempo di transizione andasse bene con Stevenson; credo che qualcosa lo abbia ostacolato o traviato; credo che fu allora che il vento d’est del Puritanesimo di Edimburgo lo soffiò fuori rotta, sì che ritornò solo molto dopo a qualcosa come una salda lealtà e una giusta relazione umana. In una parola, credo che nella sua fanciullezza ebbe la miglior fortuna del mondo, e nella sua giovinezza la peggior fortuna del mondo; e che ciò spiega gran parte della sua storia.
Comunque sia, non trovò appiglio su quelle ripide strade della sua bella e scoscesa città; e mentre volgeva lo sguardo sul disseminarsi di piccole isole nel vasto e splendente estuario, può aver avuto qualche presagio di quel destino quasi vagabondo che si concluse ai confini della terra. In un senso non pareva esservi alcuna ragione sociale perché non dovesse finire a Edimburgo come era cominciato a Edimburgo. Non pareva esservi nulla contro una normale e felice carriera per uno così brillante, così aggraziato ed essenzialmente così umano; la sua storia sarebbe potuta essere agevole quanto un romanzo vittoriano in tre volumi. Avrebbe potuto avere la fortuna di sposare una dama di Edimburgo deliziosa e soddisfacente quanto Barbara Grant. Avrebbe potuto presiedere alle baldorie di una nuova nidiata di Stevenson, tornando a casa da Leith Walk carichi delle gaie cartelle di Skelt. Anch’essi avrebbero potuto comprare i Penny Pickwick o andarsene in giro cinti di lanterne; e la sua stessa visione di queste cose sarebbe potuta mutare, benché non necessariamente affievolirsi, con la responsabilità di chi le vede riprodotte negli altri. Ma tra queste prime birichinate edimburghesi, che egli ha lasciato agli atti, ve n’era una che è quasi un simbolo. Parla in qualche luogo di una particolare sorta di mele che raccoglieva in riva al mare, quali potevano bene essere raccolte dagli alberi salati e storti che crescono presso il mare. Non so cosa fosse; né quale forma prendesse; né se mai prendesse forma alcuna definibile. Ma in un modo o nell’altro, in pensiero o parola od opera, in quel luogo desolato egli mangiò la mela della conoscenza; ed era una mela selvatica.
I think it was partly the pains of youth that afterwards made so vivid to him the pleasures of childhood. The break in his life was of course partly due to the break in his health. But it was also due, I think, to something ragged and unseemly in the edge of life he laid hold of when he touched the hem of her garment; to something unsatisfactory in all that side of existence as it appears accidentally to the child of Puritan conventions. The effect on him was that, during those years, he grew up too much out of touch with his domestic and civic, if not his national traditions; knowing at once too much and too little. He was never denationalised; for he was a Scotsman; and a Scotsman never is, even when he is in theory internationalised. But he did begin to become internationalised, in the sense that he gained a sort of indiscriminate intimacy with the culture of the world, especially the rather cynical sort of culture which was then current. The local and domestic conventions, which were in many ways wrong, lost their power to control him even when they were right. And in all that retrospect nothing remained so real as the unreal romances of the first days. In the Puritan creeds there was nothing that he could believe, even as much as he had believed in make-believe. There was nothing to call him back half so clearly as the call of that childish rhyme of which he afterwards wrote, in the touching dedication that has the burden, “How far is it to Babylon?” Unfortunately it is not very far to Babylon. That cosmopolitan market of the arts, which is in his story perhaps best represented by Paris, called to him more and more to live the life of the complete artist, which in those days had something like a touch of the complete anarchist. He passed into it, ultimately in person and already in spirit; there was nothing to call him back but the thin and tiny cry of a tin trumpet; that sounded once and was mute.
I say there was nothing to call him back; and very little to restrain him; and to any one who really understands the psychology and philosophy of that time of transition, it is really rather a wonder that he was so restrained. All his after adventures will be misunderstood if we do not realise that he left behind him a dead religion. Men are misled by the fact that he often used the old national creed as a subject; which really means rather that it had become an object. It was a subject that had ceased to be subjective; he worked upon it and not with it. He and the inheritors of his admirable tradition, like Barrie and Buchan, treated that national secret genially and even tenderly; but their very tenderness was the first soft signal that the thing was dead. At least they would never have so fondled the tiger-cat of Calvinism until, for them, its teeth were drawn. Indeed this was the irony and the pathos of the position of Scottish Calvinism: to be rammed down people’s throats for three hundred years as an unanswerable argument and then to be inherited at the last as an almost indefensible affection; to be expounded to boys with a scowl and remembered by men with a smile; to crush down all human sentiments and to linger at last in the sentimental comedy of Thrums. All that long agony of lucidity and masterful logic ended at last suddenly with a laugh; and the laugh was Robert Louis Stevenson. With him the break had come; and it follows that something in himself was broken. The whaups were crying round the graves of the martyrs, and his heart remembered, but not his mind; great Knox blew thrice upon the trumpet, and what thrilled him were no words but a noise; Old Mortality seemed still to be tinkering on his eternal round to preserve the memorials of the Covenant, but a bell had already tolled to announce that even Old Mortality was mortal. When Stevenson stepped into the wider world of the Continent, with its more graceful logic and even its more graceful vice, he went as one emptied of all the ethics and metaphysics of his home, and open to all the views and vices of a rationalistic civilisation. All the deeper lessons of his early life must have seemed to him to be dead within him; nor did he himself know what thing within him was yet alive.
Credo che furono in parte le pene della giovinezza a rendergli poi così vivi i piaceri dell’infanzia. La frattura nella sua vita fu naturalmente dovuta in parte alla frattura nella sua salute. Ma fu dovuta anche, credo, a qualcosa di lacero e sconveniente nell’orlo della vita che egli afferrò quando ne toccò il lembo della veste; a qualcosa di insoddisfacente in tutto quel lato dell’esistenza come esso appare accidentalmente al bambino delle convenzioni puritane. L’effetto su di lui fu che, durante quegli anni, egli crebbe troppo fuori contatto con le sue tradizioni domestiche e civiche, se non nazionali; sapendo insieme troppo e troppo poco. Non fu mai snazionalizzato; perché era uno scozzese; e uno scozzese non lo è mai, nemmeno quando è in teoria internazionalizzato. Ma cominciò davvero a internazionalizzarsi, nel senso che acquisì una sorta di intimità indiscriminata con la cultura del mondo, specialmente con quella cultura piuttosto cinica che allora correva. Le convenzioni locali e domestiche, che erano per molti versi sbagliate, persero il loro potere di controllarlo anche quando avevano ragione. E in tutta quella retrospettiva nulla rimase così reale quanto gli irreali romanzi dei primi giorni. Nei credi puritani non c’era nulla in cui potesse credere, nemmeno tanto quanto aveva creduto nella finzione. Non c’era nulla che lo richiamasse indietro con tanta chiarezza quanto il richiamo di quella filastrocca infantile di cui poi scrisse, nella toccante dedica che ha per ritornello: «Quanto è lontana Babilonia?» Purtroppo non è molto lontana Babilonia. Quel mercato cosmopolita delle arti, che nella sua storia è forse meglio rappresentato da Parigi, lo chiamava sempre più a vivere la vita dell’artista completo, che in quei giorni aveva qualcosa come un tocco dell’anarchico completo. Vi passò dentro, alla fine di persona e già nello spirito; non c’era nulla a richiamarlo indietro se non il grido esile e tenue di una trombetta di latta; che risuonò una volta e tacque.
Dico che non c’era nulla a richiamarlo indietro; e ben poco a trattenerlo; e a chiunque comprenda davvero la psicologia e la filosofia di quel tempo di transizione, è davvero piuttosto una meraviglia che egli fosse così trattenuto. Tutte le sue avventure successive saranno fraintese se non ci rendiamo conto che si lasciò dietro una religione morta. Gli uomini sono ingannati dal fatto che egli usò spesso l’antico credo nazionale come soggetto; il che significa in realtà piuttosto che era diventato un oggetto. Era un soggetto che aveva cessato di essere soggettivo; egli lavorava su di esso e non con esso. Egli e gli eredi della sua ammirevole tradizione, come Barrie e Buchan, trattarono quel segreto nazionale con bonarietà e persino con tenerezza; ma la loro stessa tenerezza fu il primo segnale sommesso che la cosa era morta. Perlomeno non avrebbero mai accarezzato così il gatto-tigre del calvinismo se, per loro, i suoi denti non fossero stati estratti. Invero questa fu l’ironia e il pathos della posizione del calvinismo scozzese: essere cacciato in gola alla gente per tre secoli come argomento inconfutabile e poi essere ereditato alla fine come un affetto quasi indifendibile; essere esposto ai ragazzi con un cipiglio e ricordato dagli uomini con un sorriso; schiacciare ogni umano sentimento e sopravvivere infine nella sentimentale commedia di Thrums. Tutta quella lunga agonia di lucidità e di logica imperiosa finì infine d’improvviso con una risata; e la risata era Robert Louis Stevenson. Con lui la frattura era giunta; e ne consegue che qualcosa in lui stesso si era spezzato. I chiurli gridavano intorno alle tombe dei martiri, e il suo cuore ricordava, ma non la sua mente; il grande Knox soffiò tre volte nella tromba, e ciò che lo faceva fremere non erano parole ma un rumore; il Vecchio Mortality sembrava ancora rattoppare nel suo eterno giro per preservare i memoriali del Patto, ma una campana aveva già rintoccato per annunciare che persino il Vecchio Mortality era mortale. Quando Stevenson entrò nel mondo più vasto del Continente, con la sua logica più aggraziata e persino il suo vizio più aggraziato, egli andò come uno svuotato di tutta l’etica e la metafisica della sua casa, e aperto a tutte le idee e i vizi di una civiltà razionalistica. Tutte le lezioni più profonde della sua prima vita dovevano sembrargli morte dentro di lui; né egli stesso sapeva quale cosa dentro di lui fosse ancora viva.
CHAPTER IV
THE REACTION TO ROMANCE
WHEN a man walks down the street with a very long feather stuck in his hat and streaming behind him, or carrying a gold-hilted rapier cocked at a gallant angle, there are some among the typists and clerks of Clapham Junction shrewd enough to perceive that there is something faintly ostentatious about him. And when a man walks down Piccadilly or the parade at Bournemouth with long hair streaming behind him and surmounted by an embroidered smoking-cap, there are not wanting critics so acute as to deduce (with all the detailed shrewdness of Sherlock Holmes) that such a man is not entirely averse from being looked at. Many long and laborious studies of Stevenson have been published lately, to fortify and establish this remarkable result; and I need not devote myself to proving it further. Let us record with all due solemnity that Robert Louis Stevenson has been convicted by the court of being very vain, if “dressing up” in the manner of a child, and not resenting the consequent conspicuous position, be the marks of vanity. But there is one aspect of this truth which seems to me to have been strangely and even astonishingly overlooked. Everybody talks as if Stevenson had been not only conspicuous but quite unique in this sort of vanity. Everybody seems to assume that among the artists of his time he was entirely alone in his affectation. Contrasting in this respect with the humdrum respectability of Oscar Wilde, notable as the very reverse of the evangelical meekness of Jimmy Whistler, standing out as he does against the stodgy chapel-going piety of Max Beerbohm, having none of the cheery commonplaces of Aubrey Beardsley or the prosaic self-effacement of Richard Le Gallienne, he naturally aroused attention by the slightest deviation into oddity or dandyism; things notoriously so unpopular among the decadents of the ‘nineties. Among other things, everybody seems to have forgotten that Stevenson lived for some time among the Parisian art students; who have never been remarkable for the bourgeois regularity of their coats and hats. Yet he actually mentions the offensive smoking-cap himself as originating in the Bohemian masquerade of the Quartier Latin. There he was not so much being eccentric as being conventional; for the convention was unconventionality. A mob of men in that place and at that age, would have played the same sort of tricks and worn the same kind of clothes; nor was Stevenson, as I have said, the only one of them who carried these attitudes and antics through life. Any one of them might have worn a smoking-cap; none of them would have objected to any variety of fool’s cap, though they hardly wished it identified with a dunce’s cap. Many of them, still alive, would cheerfully admit that the cap fits. But poor Stevenson is to be remembered as a fool, because all the fools are forgotten except Stevenson.
It was not that sort of oddity that was really odd. The costume for which he is now conspicuous was really part of a carnival. The attitude in which he stands, to the astonishment and grief of the critics, was really the fashion of a crowd. But what was really individual and interesting about him was the way in which he did actually react against the surroundings; the point at which he refused to run with the crowd or follow the fashion. No insanity in that cheerful lunatic asylum is so interesting to the psychologist as the shock of Stevenson going sane. No romantic ruffianism in which he may or may not have indulged is so curious as the real spirit of his revolt into respectability.
Treasure Island, if hardly a historical novel, was essentially a historical event. The rise or revolt of R. L. S. must be taken in relation to history, to the history of the whole European mind and mood. It was, first and last, a reaction against pessimism. There was thrown across all that earth and sky the gigantic shadow of Schopenhauer. At least it seemed gigantic then, though some of us may already have suspected that the shadow was larger than the man. Anyhow, in that period we might almost say that pessimism was another name for culture. Cheerfulness was associated with the Philistine, like the broad grin with the bumpkin. Pessimism could be read between the lines of the lightest triolet or most elegant essay. Any one who really remembers that time will admit that the world was much more hopeful after the worst of its wars than it was not long before. Mr. H. G. Wells, whose genius had just been discovered by Henley, was very much older than he is now. He was prophesying that the outline of history would end, not in communism, but in cannibalism. He was prophesying the end of the world: a crack of doom not even cheerful enough to be a day of judgement. Oscar Wilde, who perhaps filled up more room, both in mind and body, than anybody else on that stage at that moment, expressed his philosophy in that bitter parable in which Christ seeks to comfort a man weeping and is answered, “Lord, I was dead and you raised me to life; what else can I do but weep?”
This was the spirit that was behind all that levity; a levity that was like fireworks in more ways than one. We talk of some Whistlerian satire as a squib; but squibs can only shine in the dark. It is all the difference between the colours of fireworks that have their back to the vault of night and the colours of church windows that have their backs to the sun. For these people all the light of life was in the foreground; there was nothing in the background but an abyss. They were rather nihilists than atheists; for there is a difference between worshipping Nothing and not worshipping anything. Now the interest of the next stage of Stevenson is that he stood up suddenly amid all these things and shook himself with a sort of impatient sanity; a shrug of scepticism about scepticism. His real distinction is that he had the sense to see that there is nothing to be done with Nothing. He saw that in that staggering universe it was absolutely necessary to stand somehow on something; and instead of falling about anyhow with all the other lunatics, he did seek for a ledge on which he could really stand. He did definitely and even dramatically refuse to go mad; or, what is very much worse, to remain futile. But the whole turning-point of the tale is now missed; partly by the too concentrated idolatry of the sentimentalists, and partly by the too concentrated spite of the iconoclasts. They miss the historic relation of the man to his time and school. It was one of the crowd of artists who showed mutinous signs of deserting art for life. It was even one of the decadents who refused to decay.
CAPITOLO IV
LA REAZIONE VERSO IL ROMANZESCO
QUANDO un uomo cammina per la strada con una piuma molto lunga infilata nel cappello e fluttuante dietro di sé, o portando uno stocco dall’elsa d’oro tenuto ad angolo galante, ci sono alcuni tra i dattilografi e gli impiegati di Clapham Junction abbastanza acuti da percepire che c’è in lui qualcosa di vagamente ostentato. E quando un uomo cammina lungo Piccadilly o il lungomare di Bournemouth con lunghi capelli fluenti dietro di sé e sormontati da una berretta da fumo ricamata, non mancano critici tanto perspicaci da dedurne (con tutta la minuziosa acutezza di Sherlock Holmes) che un tale uomo non è del tutto avverso a essere guardato. Molti lunghi e laboriosi studi su Stevenson sono stati pubblicati di recente, a corroborare e stabilire questo notevole risultato; e non ho bisogno di dedicarmi a dimostrarlo ulteriormente. Registriamo con tutta la debita solennità che Robert Louis Stevenson è stato condannato dalla corte di essere assai vanitoso, se il «travestirsi» alla maniera di un bambino, e il non risentirsi della conseguente posizione cospicua, sono i segni della vanità. Ma c’è un aspetto di questa verità che mi pare sia stato stranamente e persino stupefacentemente trascurato. Tutti parlano come se Stevenson fosse stato non solo cospicuo ma del tutto unico in questa sorta di vanità. Tutti sembrano supporre che tra gli artisti del suo tempo egli fosse interamente solo nella sua affettazione. Contrapposto, sotto questo aspetto, alla monotona rispettabilità di Oscar Wilde, notevole come l’esatto contrario della mitezza evangelica di Jimmy Whistler, spiccante com’è contro la pesante devozione cappellana di Max Beerbohm, privo delle allegre banalità di Aubrey Beardsley o della prosaica cancellazione di sé di Richard Le Gallienne, egli suscitava naturalmente attenzione alla minima deviazione nella stranezza o nel dandismo; cose notoriamente tanto impopolari tra i decadenti degli anni Novanta. Tra l’altro, tutti sembrano aver dimenticato che Stevenson visse per qualche tempo tra gli studenti d’arte parigini; che non sono mai stati notevoli per la borghese regolarità dei loro cappotti e cappelli. Eppure egli stesso menziona l’offensiva berretta da fumo come originata nella mascherata bohémienne del Quartier Latin. Là non era tanto eccentrico quanto convenzionale; poiché la convenzione era l’anticonvenzionalità. Una folla di uomini in quel luogo e a quell’età avrebbe giocato lo stesso genere di scherzi e indossato lo stesso tipo d’abiti; né Stevenson, come ho detto, fu l’unico di loro a portare questi atteggiamenti e queste buffonerie attraverso la vita. Chiunque di loro avrebbe potuto indossare una berretta da fumo; nessuno di loro avrebbe obiettato a una qualsiasi varietà di berretto da matto, benché a stento la volessero identificata con un berretto d’asino. Molti di loro, ancora vivi, ammetterebbero allegramente che il berretto calza. Ma il povero Stevenson dev’essere ricordato come uno sciocco, perché tutti gli sciocchi sono dimenticati tranne Stevenson.
Non era quel genere di stranezza a essere davvero strano. Il costume per cui egli è ora cospicuo era in realtà parte di un carnevale. L’atteggiamento in cui si pone, con stupore e dolore dei critici, era in realtà la moda di una folla. Ma ciò che era davvero individuale e interessante in lui era il modo in cui egli reagì effettivamente contro l’ambiente; il punto in cui rifiutò di correre con la folla o di seguire la moda. Nessuna follia in quel gaio manicomio è tanto interessante per lo psicologo quanto lo shock di Stevenson che rinsavisce. Nessun brigantesco romanticismo in cui possa essersi o non essersi indulto è tanto curioso quanto il vero spirito della sua rivolta verso la rispettabilità.
L’isola del tesoro, se a stento un romanzo storico, fu essenzialmente un evento storico. L’ascesa o rivolta di R. L. S. dev’essere colta in relazione alla storia, alla storia dell’intera mente e dell’intero umore europeo. Fu, prima e ultima cosa, una reazione contro il pessimismo. Era gettata su tutta quella terra e quel cielo la gigantesca ombra di Schopenhauer. Almeno sembrava gigantesca allora, benché alcuni di noi possano già aver sospettato che l’ombra fosse più grande dell’uomo. Comunque sia, in quel periodo potremmo quasi dire che il pessimismo era un altro nome per la cultura. L’allegria era associata al filisteo, come il largo sogghigno allo zoticone. Il pessimismo si poteva leggere tra le righe del più lieve trioletto o del più elegante saggio. Chiunque ricordi davvero quel tempo ammetterà che il mondo era assai più speranzoso dopo il peggio delle sue guerre di quanto lo fosse poco prima. Il signor H. G. Wells, il cui genio era appena stato scoperto da Henley, era molto più vecchio di quanto sia ora. Egli profetizzava che il profilo della storia sarebbe finito, non nel comunismo, ma nel cannibalismo. Profetizzava la fine del mondo: uno schianto del giudizio nemmeno abbastanza allegro da essere un giorno del giudizio. Oscar Wilde, che forse occupava più spazio, tanto nella mente quanto nel corpo, di chiunque altro su quel palcoscenico in quel momento, espresse la sua filosofia in quell’amara parabola in cui Cristo cerca di consolare un uomo che piange e riceve in risposta: «Signore, ero morto e tu mi hai richiamato alla vita; che altro posso fare se non piangere?»
Questo era lo spirito che stava dietro tutta quella leggerezza; una leggerezza che era come fuochi d’artificio in più di un senso. Parliamo di una certa satira whistleriana come di un petardo; ma i petardi possono brillare solo nel buio. È tutta la differenza tra i colori dei fuochi d’artificio che hanno le spalle alla volta della notte e i colori delle vetrate delle chiese che hanno le spalle al sole. Per queste persone tutta la luce della vita era in primo piano; non c’era nulla sullo sfondo se non un abisso. Erano nichilisti più che atei; poiché c’è una differenza tra l’adorare il Nulla e il non adorare nulla. Ora l’interesse della fase successiva di Stevenson è che egli si alzò d’improvviso in mezzo a tutte queste cose e si scosse con una sorta d’impaziente assennatezza; una scrollata di scetticismo verso lo scetticismo. La sua vera distinzione è che ebbe il buon senso di vedere che non c’è nulla da fare col Nulla. Vide che in quell’universo vacillante era assolutamente necessario stare in qualche modo su qualcosa; e invece di cadere qua e là comunque con tutti gli altri lunatici, cercò davvero una sporgenza su cui potesse realmente stare. Rifiutò decisamente e persino drammaticamente d’impazzire; o, ciò che è assai peggio, di restare futile. Ma l’intera svolta del racconto viene ora mancata; in parte per la troppo concentrata idolatria dei sentimentalisti, e in parte per il troppo concentrato astio degli iconoclasti. Essi mancano la relazione storica dell’uomo col suo tempo e la sua scuola. Fu uno della folla di artisti che mostrò segni ammutinati di disertare l’arte per la vita. Fu persino uno dei decadenti che rifiutò di decadere.
Now what really remains interesting in this story of Stevenson, in spite of all the vain repetitions, is the authority to which he appealed. It was rather an odd one; and many would have said that his sanity was madder than madness. He did not appeal to any ideal of the sort usually pursued by idealists; he did not try to construct an optimist philosophy like Spinoza or Emerson; he did not preach a good time coming like William Morris or Wells; he did not appeal to Imperialism or Socialism or Scotland: he appealed to Skelt.
Familiarity had dulled the divine paradox that we should learn morality from little children. He advanced the more disturbing paradox that we should learn morality from little boys. The young child who should lead us was the common (or garden) little boy: the boy of the catapult and the toy pistol—and the toy theatre. Stevenson seemed to say to the semi-suicides drooping round him at the café tables; drinking absinthe and discussing atheism: “Hang it all, the hero of a penny-dreadful play was a better man than you are! A Penny Plain and Twopence Coloured was an art more worthy of living men than the art that you are all professing. Painting pasteboard figures of pirates and admirals was better worth doing than all this, it was fun; it was fighting; it was a life and a lark; and if I can’t do anything else, dang me but I will try to do that again!” So was presented to the world this entertaining spectacle; of the art student surrounded by easels on which other artists were debating the fine shades of Corot and Renoir, while he himself was gravely painting mariners a bright prussian blue of a shilling paint-box and shedding their blood in streams of unmistakable crimson lake. That is the primary paradox about Stevenson’s early manhood; or, if you will, the real joke about Stevenson. Of all that intellectualism in Bohemia the result was the return to Skelt. Of all that wallowing in Balzac the remarkable outcome was Treasure Island. But it is no exaggeration to say that it had still more to do with toys than treasures. Stevenson was not really looking forward or outward to a world of larger things, but backward and inward into a world of smaller ones: in the peepshow of Skelt, which was still the true window of the world.
Thus, Skelt and his puppets seemed made for a repartee to the favourite phrases of the pessimists. All that world was haunted as with melody by the hedonist despair of Fitzgerald’s Omar: one of the great historical documents of this history. No image could make them bow their heads with more hopelessness and helplessness of despair than that famous one:
“We are none other than a moving row Of magic shadow-shapes that come and go Around the sun-illumined lantern held At midnight by the Master of the show.”
And no image could make the infant Stevenson kick his little legs with keener joy. His answer, in effect, to the philosophy of the magic shadow-shapes, was that the shadow-shapes really were magic. At any rate, they really did seem to the children to be magic: and it was not false but true psychology to call the thing a magic lantern. He was capable of feeling passionate delight in being such a Lantern-Bearer. He was capable even of feeling passionate delight in being such a shadow. And any one who has seen a shadow pantomime as a child, as I have, and who has retained any living link with his own childhood, will realise that Omar was as unlucky in his commentary on the lantern-show as the delightful curate in Voces Populi who talked about Valentine and Orson. He was teaching optimism as an illustration to pessimism. Later we may make a guess at the nature of this glamour about such tricks or toys; the point for the moment is that they were associated with gloom in philosophy, while they were associated with pleasure in psychology. The same applies to more common examples of the fancies of the fatalist. When the sage said that men are “only puppets,” it must have seemed to the young Louis almost like the blasphemy of saying they were “only pirates.” It might well seem to any child like saying that they were only fairies. There was something weak about bewailing drearily the fate of the puppets of destiny, to an audience that was eagerly awaiting the joyful apocalypse of a puppet-show. The Stevensonian reaction might be roughly represented by the suggestion—if we are as futile as puppets, is there anything particular to prevent our being as entertaining, as Punch? And there is, as I say, a real spiritual mystery behind this mystical ecstasy of mimicry. If living dolls were so dull and dead, why in the world were dead dolls so very much alive? And if being a puppet is so depressing, how is it that the puppet of a puppet can be so enthralling?
It is to be noted that this sort of romanticism, as compared with realism, is not more superficial, but on the contrary more fundamental. It is an appeal from what is experienced to what is felt. When people are avowedly talking about happiness and unhappiness, as the pessimists were, it is futile to say that shadows and sham pasteboard figures ought not to make people happy. It was futile to tell the young Stevenson that the toy-theatre shop was a dingy booth stocked with dusty rolls of paper, covered with ill-drawn and ungainly figures; and to insist that these were the only facts. He naturally answered: “My facts were my feelings; and what do you make of those facts? Either there is something in Skelt; which you do not admit. Or else there is something in Life; which you also do not admit.” Hence arose that answer to the realists which is best expressed in the essay called The Lantern-Bearers. The realists, who overlook so many details, have never quite noticed where lay the falsity of their method; it lay in the fact that so long as it was materialistic, it could not really be realistic. For it could not be psychological. If toys and trifles can make people happy, that happiness is not a trifle and certainly cannot be a trick.
Ora, ciò che davvero resta interessante in questa storia di Stevenson, nonostante tutte le vane ripetizioni, è l’autorità a cui egli si appellava. Era piuttosto singolare; e molti avrebbero detto che la sua assennatezza era più folle della follia. Non si appellava ad alcun ideale del genere di quelli comunemente perseguiti dagli idealisti; non tentava di costruire una filosofia ottimista come Spinoza o Emerson; non predicava un buon tempo a venire come William Morris o Wells; non si appellava all’imperialismo o al socialismo o alla Scozia: si appellava a Skelt.
La familiarità aveva ottuso il divino paradosso che dovremmo imparare la moralità dai bambini. Egli avanzava il paradosso più inquietante che dovremmo imparare la moralità dai ragazzini. Il giovane fanciullo che dovrebbe guidarci era il comune (o domestico) ragazzino: il ragazzo della fionda e della pistola giocattolo — e del teatrino di cartone. Stevenson sembrava dire ai semi-suicidi che gli languivano intorno ai tavolini del caffè, bevendo assenzio e discutendo di ateismo: «Ma diamine, l’eroe di un dramma da un soldo era un uomo migliore di voi! Un Penny Plain e Twopence Coloured era un’arte più degna di uomini vivi dell’arte che tutti voi professate. Dipingere figure di cartone di pirati e ammiragli valeva più di tutto questo, era divertimento; era combattere; era una vita e uno spasso; e se non so fare nient’altro, che io sia dannato ma cercherò di rifarlo ancora!» Così fu presentato al mondo questo divertente spettacolo: lo studente d’arte circondato da cavalletti su cui altri artisti dibattevano le sottili sfumature di Corot e Renoir, mentre egli stesso dipingeva gravemente marinai di un vivace blu di Prussia da scatola di colori da uno scellino, e ne versava il sangue in fiotti d’inequivocabile lacca cremisi. Questo è il primo paradosso della prima virilità di Stevenson; o, se volete, il vero scherzo su Stevenson. Di tutto quell’intellettualismo nella Bohème il risultato fu il ritorno a Skelt. Di tutto quello sguazzare in Balzac il notevole esito fu L’isola del tesoro. Ma non è esagerato dire che essa ebbe ancor più a che fare coi giocattoli che coi tesori. Stevenson non guardava davvero avanti o fuori verso un mondo di cose più grandi, ma indietro e dentro in un mondo di cose più piccole: nel diorama di Skelt, che era ancora la vera finestra sul mondo.
Così Skelt e i suoi burattini sembravano fatti per una battuta di rimando alle frasi predilette dei pessimisti. Tutto quel mondo era ossessionato come da una melodia dalla disperazione edonista dell’Omar di Fitzgerald: uno dei grandi documenti storici di questa storia. Nessuna immagine poteva far loro chinare il capo con maggiore disperazione e impotenza della disperazione di quella celebre:
«Non siamo altro che una fila mobile Di magiche forme d’ombra che vanno e vengono Attorno alla lanterna illuminata dal sole retta A mezzanotte dal Padrone dello spettacolo.»
E nessuna immagine poteva far dimenare al piccolo Stevenson le gambette con più acuta gioia. La sua risposta, in effetti, alla filosofia delle magiche forme d’ombra, era che le forme d’ombra erano davvero magiche. In ogni caso, esse sembravano davvero ai bambini essere magiche: e non era psicologia falsa ma vera chiamare la cosa una lanterna magica. Egli era capace di provare gioia appassionata nell’essere un tale Portatore di Lanterna. Era capace persino di provare gioia appassionata nell’essere una tale ombra. E chiunque abbia visto una pantomima d’ombra da bambino, come me, e abbia conservato qualche vivo legame con la propria infanzia, si renderà conto che Omar fu tanto sfortunato nel suo commento allo spettacolo di lanterne quanto il delizioso curato in Voces Populi che parlava di Valentine e Orson. Egli insegnava l’ottimismo come illustrazione del pessimismo. Più avanti potremo fare una congettura sulla natura di questo fascino attorno a tali giochi o giocattoli; il punto per ora è che essi erano associati alla tetraggine nella filosofia, mentre erano associati al piacere nella psicologia. Lo stesso vale per esempi più comuni delle fantasie del fatalista. Quando il saggio diceva che gli uomini sono «solo burattini», dev’essere sembrato al giovane Louis quasi come la bestemmia di dire che erano «solo pirati». Poteva ben sembrare a qualsiasi bambino come dire che erano solo fate. C’era qualcosa di debole nel deplorare tetramente la sorte dei burattini del destino, davanti a un pubblico che attendeva avidamente la gioiosa apocalisse di uno spettacolo di burattini. La reazione stevensoniana potrebbe grossolanamente rappresentarsi con l’idea — se siamo futili come burattini, c’è qualcosa in particolare che ci impedisca di essere altrettanto divertenti quanto Pulcinella? E c’è, come dico, un vero mistero spirituale dietro questa mistica estasi della mimica. Se le bambole vive erano tanto insipide e morte, perché mai le bambole morte erano tanto vive? E se essere un burattino è tanto deprimente, com’è che il burattino di un burattino può essere tanto avvincente?
È da notare che questo genere di romanticismo, in confronto al realismo, non è più superficiale, ma al contrario più fondamentale. È un appello da ciò che si sperimenta a ciò che si sente. Quando la gente parla dichiaratamente di felicità e infelicità, come facevano i pessimisti, è futile dire che ombre e finte figure di cartone non dovrebbero rendere felice la gente. Era futile dire al giovane Stevenson che la bottega del teatrino giocattolo era un tugurio squallido pieno di polverosi rotoli di carta, coperti di figure mal disegnate e goffe; e insistere che questi erano gli unici fatti. Egli rispondeva naturalmente: «I miei fatti erano i miei sentimenti; e che ne fate di questi fatti? O c’è qualcosa in Skelt; il che voi non ammettete. Oppure c’è qualcosa nella Vita; il che neppure ammettete.» Di qui sorse quella risposta ai realisti che è meglio espressa nel saggio intitolato The Lantern-Bearers. I realisti, che trascurano tanti dettagli, non hanno mai del tutto notato dove stesse la falsità del loro metodo; stava nel fatto che, finché era materialistico, non poteva essere davvero realistico. Poiché non poteva essere psicologico. Se giocattoli e inezie possono rendere felice la gente, quella felicità non è un’inezia e certo non può essere un trucco.
This is the point that has been missed in all the talk about posing. Those who repeat for the hundredth time that he posed have not got as far as the obvious question, “Posed as what?” All the other poets and artists posed; but they posed as the members of the Suicide Club. He posed as Prince Florizel with a sword, challenging the President of the Suicide Club. He was, if you will, the foolish masker I have imagined, tricked out with a feather and a sword or dagger; but not tricked out more extravagantly than those who appeared as fantastic figures at their own funeral. If he had a feather, it was not a white feather; if he had a dagger, it was not a poisoned dagger or the pessimist dagger that is turned inwards; in short, if he had a posture it was a posture of defence and even of defiance. And it was, after all, the fashionable posture of his time which he set himself to defy. And it is here that it is really relevant to remember that he was not altogether posturing when he said he was defying death. Death was much nearer to him than it was to the pessimists; and he knew it whenever he coughed and found blood on his handkerchief. He was not pretending to defy it half so much as they were pretending to seek it. It is no very unreasonable claim for him that he made a better use of his bad health than Oscar Wilde made of his good health; and nothing affected in the externals of either can alter the contrast. The dagger may have been theatrical; but the blood was real. As Cyrano said of his friend, “Le sang, c’est le sien.” And it really was the absence of courage in the current culture that awoke his protest or pose. In any case, the intellectual fine shades were morally more than a little shady. But he hated chiefly the loss of what soldiers call morale rather than what parsons call morality. All that world cowered under the shadow of death. All alike were travelling under the flag of the skull and crossbones. But he alone could call it the Jolly Roger.
What is really not appreciated about Stevenson is the abruptness of this breakaway. We talk of looking back with gratitude to innovators or the introducers of new ideas; but in fact nothing is more difficult to do, since for us they are now necessarily old ideas. There is only one moment, at most, of triumph for the original thinker; while his thought is an originality and before it becomes merely an origin. News spreads quickly; that is, it grows stale quickly; and though we may call a work wonderful, we cannot easily put ourselves in the position of those for whom it was a cause of wonder, in the sense of surprise. Between the first fashion of talking too much in praise of Stevenson, and the newer fashion of talking nonsense in disparagement of Stevenson, we have become quite familiar with the association of certain ideas; of extreme stylistic polish applied to rough schoolboy adventure, of the Penny Plain figure tinted as carefully as a miniature. But these ideas were not always associated in the way in which Stevenson associated them. We may tear the combination to pieces, but it was he who wove it together; and—as many would have thought— of very incongruous threads. It really did seem preposterous to many that a serious literary artist of the age of Pater should devote himself to rewriting Penny Dreadfuls. It was just as if George Meredith had chosen to put all his fine feminine psychology into writing the sort of twopenny novelettes that were read by housemaids, and called “Pansy’s Elopement” or “Winnie’s Wedding Bells.” It was as if Henry James had been heard to say or, so to speak, to suggest, that there was, after all, and in a way quite annoyingly overlooked, something—something that really should have been better evaluated and re-expressed, as it were, in all that really unquestionable productiveness of Ally Sloper’s Half-Holiday. It was as if Paderewski had insisted on only going round with a barrel-organ; or Whistler had confined himself solely to painting public-house signs. A distinguished dramatist, who is old enough to remember in his youth the first successes of Stevenson’s manhood, told me how absurd it seemed at the time that any one should take seriously such gutter literature of the gamin. A book written only for boys generally meant a book written only for errand-boys. It seemed a strange association of ideas that it should be written carefully as a book for men, and even for literary men. It does not seem so strange now; because Stevenson has done it quite a long time ago. But it is important to realise that not everybody thought it natural to expend the style of Pulvis et Umbra on the equivalent of “Dick Deadshot Among the Pirates.” It was the very last sort of enthusiasm that would have easily carried any of his cultivated contemporaries off their feet. The typical literary man, with the outlook and philosophy of that generation, would have been about as likely to pass his life in throwing paper darts or chalking caricatures of his publisher on a blackboard.
Thus, there is one of those phrases quoted too much, as against so many quoted too little, that he and his artistic friends bore with them bulky yellow volumes “quite impudently French.” But, by the tests of that artistic world, Treasure Island is quite impudently English. By the conventions of that world, there was nothing unconventional about studying Balzac or being Bohemian. It was much more unconventional to study Captain Marryat and to write about the good captain who flew the Union Jack over the stockade, in defiance of the bad buccaneers. From the standpoint of Art in those days, even that flag was a much too Moral Emblem. It is only when we understand what there was that seemed quaint and even undignified in his adventurous antic, that we can clearly understand the unconscious truths that lay behind it. For, as against the black flag of pessimism, his flag really was a Moral Emblem. There was a morality in his reaction into adventure; his appeal to the spirit of the highway—though it were sometimes the spirit of the highwayman.
Questo è il punto che è stato mancato in tutti i discorsi sulla posa. Coloro che ripetono per la centesima volta che egli posava non sono arrivati fino all’ovvia domanda: «Posava da che cosa?» Tutti gli altri poeti e artisti posavano; ma posavano da membri del Club dei Suicidi. Egli posava da Principe Florizel con una spada, sfidando il Presidente del Club dei Suicidi. Egli era, se volete, il folle mascherato che ho immaginato, agghindato con una piuma e una spada o un pugnale; ma non agghindato più stravagantemente di quelli che comparivano come figure fantastiche al proprio funerale. Se aveva una piuma, non era una piuma bianca; se aveva un pugnale, non era un pugnale avvelenato né il pugnale pessimista che è rivolto all’interno; in breve, se aveva una posa era una posa di difesa e persino di sfida. Ed era, dopo tutto, la posa alla moda del suo tempo che egli si accingeva a sfidare. Ed è qui che è davvero pertinente ricordare che egli non posava affatto del tutto quando diceva di sfidare la morte. La Morte gli era assai più vicina di quanto lo fosse ai pessimisti; ed egli lo sapeva ogni volta che tossiva e trovava sangue sul fazzoletto. Non fingeva di sfidarla neppure la metà di quanto essi fingessero di cercarla. Non è pretesa troppo irragionevole per lui dire che egli fece un uso migliore della sua cattiva salute di quanto Oscar Wilde fece della sua buona; e nulla di affettato negli aspetti esteriori di entrambi può alterare il contrasto. Il pugnale può essere stato teatrale; ma il sangue era reale. Come disse Cyrano del suo amico: «Le sang, c’est le sien.» Ed era davvero l’assenza di coraggio nella cultura corrente che destò la sua protesta o posa. In ogni caso, le sottili sfumature intellettuali erano moralmente più che un po’ losche. Ma egli odiava soprattutto la perdita di ciò che i soldati chiamano morale più che di ciò che i pastori chiamano moralità. Tutto quel mondo si rannicchiava sotto l’ombra della morte. Tutti allo stesso modo viaggiavano sotto la bandiera del teschio e delle tibie incrociate. Ma egli solo poteva chiamarla il Jolly Roger.
Ciò che non è davvero apprezzato in Stevenson è la bruschezza di questa rottura. Parliamo di guardare indietro con gratitudine agli innovatori o agli introduttori di nuove idee; ma di fatto nulla è più difficile da fare, poiché per noi esse sono ormai necessariamente vecchie idee. C’è un solo momento, al più, di trionfo per il pensatore originale; mentre il suo pensiero è un’originalità e prima che divenga semplicemente un’origine. Le notizie si diffondono in fretta; cioè, invecchiano in fretta; e benché possiamo definire meravigliosa un’opera, non possiamo facilmente metterci nella posizione di coloro per cui essa fu causa di meraviglia, nel senso di sorpresa. Tra la prima moda del parlare troppo in lode di Stevenson, e la più recente moda del dire sciocchezze in disprezzo di Stevenson, siamo divenuti del tutto familiari con l’associazione di certe idee; di un’estrema levigatezza stilistica applicata a rozze avventure da scolaretto, della figura Penny Plain colorata con cura pari a quella di una miniatura. Ma queste idee non furono sempre associate nel modo in cui Stevenson le associò. Possiamo fare a pezzi la combinazione, ma fu lui a tesserla insieme; e — come molti avrebbero pensato — con fili assai incongrui. Sembrava davvero assurdo a molti che un serio artista letterario dell’età di Pater si dedicasse a riscrivere Penny Dreadful. Era proprio come se George Meredith avesse scelto di riversare tutta la sua fine psicologia femminile nello scrivere quel genere di romanzetti da due soldi letti dalle cameriere, e intitolati «La fuga di Pansy» o «Le Campane nuziali di Winnie». Era come se Henry James fosse stato udito dire o, per così dire, suggerire che c’era, dopo tutto, e in un modo alquanto fastidiosamente trascurato, qualcosa — qualcosa che davvero avrebbe dovuto essere meglio valutato e riespresso, per così dire, in tutta quella davvero indubbia produttività di Ally Sloper’s Half-Holiday. Era come se Paderewski avesse insistito ad andare in giro solo con un organetto; o Whistler si fosse limitato unicamente a dipingere insegne di osterie. Un drammaturgo insigne, abbastanza vecchio da ricordare nella sua giovinezza i primi successi della virilità di Stevenson, mi raccontò quanto assurdo sembrasse a quel tempo che qualcuno prendesse sul serio simile letteratura da rigagnolo del gamin. Un libro scritto solo per ragazzi generalmente significava un libro scritto solo per fattorini. Sembrava una strana associazione d’idee che fosse scritto con cura come libro per uomini, e persino per uomini di lettere. Non sembra più tanto strano ora; perché Stevenson lo ha fatto molto tempo fa. Ma è importante rendersi conto che non tutti pensavano fosse naturale spendere lo stile di Pulvis et Umbra sull’equivalente di «Dick Deadshot tra i pirati». Era il genere di entusiasmo che meno di ogni altro avrebbe facilmente travolto qualcuno dei suoi colti contemporanei. Il tipico uomo di lettere, con la visione e la filosofia di quella generazione, sarebbe stato press’a poco altrettanto propenso a passare la vita a lanciare freccette di carta o a tracciare col gesso caricature del suo editore su una lavagna.
Così, c’è una di quelle frasi citate troppo, contro tante citate troppo poco, secondo cui egli e i suoi amici artisti portavano con sé voluminosi tomi gialli «assai impudentemente francesi». Ma, secondo i criteri di quel mondo artistico, L’isola del tesoro è assai impudentemente inglese. Secondo le convenzioni di quel mondo, non c’era nulla di anticonvenzionale nello studiare Balzac o nell’essere bohémien. Era assai più anticonvenzionale studiare il capitano Marryat e scrivere del buon capitano che innalzava la Union Jack sopra la palizzata, a dispetto dei malvagi bucanieri. Dal punto di vista dell’Arte in quei giorni, persino quella bandiera era un Emblema troppo Morale. È solo quando comprendiamo che cosa vi fosse di bizzarro e persino di indegno nella sua avventurosa buffonata, che possiamo chiaramente comprendere le verità inconsce che vi stavano dietro. Poiché, contro la nera bandiera del pessimismo, la sua bandiera era davvero un Emblema Morale. C’era una moralità nella sua reazione verso l’avventura; il suo appello allo spirito della strada maestra — benché fosse talvolta lo spirito del brigante di strada.
In other words, he appealed to his own childhood. A tale is told of it: that when some one chaffed him about a toy sword he replied solemnly, “The hilt is of gold and the scabbard of silver and the child is well content.” It was to that moment that he suddenly returned. Groping for something that would satisfy, he found nothing so solid as that fancy. That had not been Nothing; that had not been pessimistic; that was not a life over which Lazarus could do nothing but weep. That was as positive as the paints in the paint-box and the difference between vermilion and chrome yellow. Its pleasures had been as solid as the taste of sweets; and it was nonsense to say that there had been nothing in them worth living for. Play at least is always serious. So long as we can say, “Let us pretend,” we must be sincere. Therefore he appealed across the void or valley of his somewhat sterile youth to that garden of childhood, which he had once known and which was his nearest notion of paradise. There were no shrines in the faith or in the city of his fathers; there were no channels of consecration or confession; there was no imagery save in the faceless images left behind by the image-breakers. A man in his mood of reaction towards happiness, might almost as well have prayed to the Black Man who figured as the Scottish provincial devil as to the God behind the black cloud that sent out such stiff horrific rays in the Calvinist family Bible. But in all that waste of Scottish moorland, the sun still glowed on that square of garden like a patch of gold. The lessons were lost, but the toys were eternal; the men had been harsh, but the child had been well content; if there were nothing better, he would return.
In the elementary philosophy of the thing, of course, what moved Stevenson was what moved Wordsworth; the unanswerable fact of that first vividness in the vision of life. But he had it in his own quaint way; and it was hardly the vision of meadow, grove and stream. It was rather the vision of coffin, gallows and gory sabre that were apparelled in celestial light, the glory and the freshness of a dream. But he was appealing to a sort of sanguinary innocence against a sort of silent and secretive perversion. Here, as everywhere in this rude outline, I am taking a thing like Treasure Island, in a spirit of simplification and symbol. I do not mean, of course, that he wrote Treasure Island sitting in a café on the boulevards; any more than I mean that he wrote Jekyll and Hyde in a cellar or a garret in the lands of the Cowgate. Both these books were developed by stages of the greatest literary care, in later life; and pursued with the characteristic consistency of his art through all the equally characteristic mutability of his domicile. When I say that a certain book came out of a certain experience, I mean that he drew on that experience to write it, or that it was the ultimate result of the reaction which that experience produced in his mind. And I mean in this case that what shaped and sharpened Stevenson’s memory of the mere nonsense of Skeltery was his growing sense of the need of some escape from the suffocating cynicism of the mass of men and artists in his time. He wished to go back to that nonsense; for it seemed, by comparison, quite sensible.
Treasure Island was written as a boy’s book; perhaps it is not always read as a boy’s book. I sometimes fancy that a real boy could read it better if he could read it backwards. The end, which is full of skeletons and ancient crime, is in the fullest sense, beautiful; it is even idealistic. For it is the realisation of an ideal, that which is promised in its provocative and beckoning map; a vision not only of white skeletons but also green palm trees and sapphire seas. But the beginning of the book, considered as a boy’s book, can hardly be called idealistic; and is found in practice to be rather too realistic. I may make an egotistical confession here, which I think is not unique and not without its universal inference about the spirit of youth. When I read the book as a child, I was not horrified by what are called the horrors. Something did indeed shock me, just a little more than a child should be shocked; for of course he would have no fun if he were never shocked at all. But what shook me was not the dead man’s chest or the live man’s crimes or the information that “Drink and the devil have done for the rest”; all that seemed to me quite cheery and comforting. What did seem to me ugly was exactly what might happen in any inn-parlour, if there were no pirates in the world. It was that business about apoplexy; or some sort of alcoholic poisoning. It was the sailor having a mysterious thing called a stroke; so much more terrifying than any sabre-stroke. I was ready to wade in seas of gore; for all that gore was crimson lake; and indeed I always imagined it as a lake of crimson. Exactly what I was not ready for were those few drops of blood drawn from the arm of the insensible sailor, when he was bled by the surgeon. That blood is not crimson lake. Thus we have the paradox that I was horrified by the act of healing; while all the rowdy business of hitting and hurting did not hurt me at all. I was disgusted with an act of mercy, because it took the form of medicine. I will not pause to draw the many morals of this paradox; especially in relation to a common fallacy of pacifism. I will content myself with saying, whether I make my meaning clear or no, that a child is not wicked enough to disapprove of war.
But whatever be the case with most boys, there was certainly one boy who enjoyed Treasure Island; and his name was Robert Louis Stevenson. He really had very much of the feeling of one who had got away to great waters and outlandish lands; perhaps even more vividly than he had it later, when he made that voyage not metaphorically but materially, and found his own Treasure Island in the South Seas. But just as in the second case he was fleeing to clear skies from unhealthy climates, so he was in reviving the adventure story escaping from an exceedingly unhealthy climate. The microbe of morbidity maybe have been within him, as well as the germ of phthisis; but in the cities he had left behind pessimism was raging like a pestilence. Multitudes of pale-faced poets, formless and forgotten, sat crowded at those café tables like ghosts in Hades, worshipping “la sorcière glauque,” like that one of them whose mortality has been immortalised by Max. It is too often forgotten that if Stevenson had really been only a pale young man making wax flowers, he would have found plenty of pale young men to make them with him; and the flowers and flower-makers would long have withered together. But he alone escaped, as from a city of the dead; he cut the painter as Jim Hawkins stole the boat, and went on his own voyage, following the sun. Drink and the devil have done for the rest, especially the devil; but then they were drinking absinthe and not with a “Yo ho ho”; consuming it without the most feeble attempt at any “Yo ho ho”— a defect which was, of course the most serious and important part of the affair. For “Yo ho ho” was precisely what Stevenson, with his exact choice of words, particularly desired to say just then. It was for the present his most articulate message to mankind.
In altre parole, egli si appellava alla propria infanzia. Se ne racconta un aneddoto: che quando qualcuno lo canzonò a proposito di una spada giocattolo egli rispose solennemente: «L’elsa è d’oro e il fodero d’argento e il bambino è ben contento.» Fu a quel momento che d’improvviso ritornò. Brancolando in cerca di qualcosa che appagasse, non trovò nulla di così solido come quella fantasticheria. Quello non era stato Nulla; non era stato pessimistico; non era una vita su cui Lazzaro potesse fare altro che piangere. Era positivo come i colori nella scatola dei colori e la differenza tra il vermiglio e il giallo cromo. I suoi piaceri erano stati solidi come il sapore dei dolciumi; ed era assurdo dire che in essi non ci fosse stato nulla per cui valesse la pena di vivere. Il gioco almeno è sempre serio. Finché possiamo dire «Facciamo finta», dobbiamo essere sinceri. Perciò egli si appellò attraverso il vuoto o la valle della sua giovinezza alquanto sterile a quel giardino dell’infanzia, che aveva un tempo conosciuto e che era la sua nozione più prossima del paradiso. Non c’erano santuari nella fede o nella città dei suoi padri; non c’erano canali di consacrazione o di confessione; non c’era alcuna immagine salvo nelle immagini senza volto lasciate dietro dagli iconoclasti. Un uomo nel suo stato di reazione verso la felicità avrebbe quasi potuto altrettanto bene pregare l’Uomo Nero che figurava come il diavolo provinciale scozzese quanto il Dio dietro la nube nera che mandava raggi così rigidi e orridi nella Bibbia di famiglia calvinista. Ma in tutta quella distesa di brughiera scozzese, il sole ancora splendeva su quel quadrato di giardino come una chiazza d’oro. Le lezioni erano perdute, ma i giocattoli erano eterni; gli uomini erano stati aspri, ma il bambino era stato ben contento; se non c’era nulla di meglio, egli sarebbe ritornato.
Nell’elementare filosofia della cosa, naturalmente, ciò che mosse Stevenson fu ciò che mosse Wordsworth; l’inconfutabile fatto di quella prima vividezza nella visione della vita. Ma egli l’ebbe a suo bizzarro modo; e non fu affatto la visione di prato, boschetto e ruscello. Fu piuttosto la visione di bara, forca e sciabola insanguinata rivestita di luce celeste, la gloria e la freschezza di un sogno. Ma egli si appellava a una sorta di innocenza sanguinaria contro una sorta di perversione silenziosa e segreta. Qui, come dappertutto in questo rozzo abbozzo, prendo una cosa come L’isola del tesoro, in uno spirito di semplificazione e di simbolo. Non intendo, naturalmente, che egli scrisse L’isola del tesoro seduto in un caffè sui boulevard; non più di quanto intenda che egli scrisse Jekyll e Hyde in una cantina o in una soffitta nelle terre del Cowgate. Entrambi questi libri furono sviluppati per gradi con la massima cura letteraria, più tardi nella vita; e perseguiti con la caratteristica coerenza della sua arte attraverso tutta l’altrettanto caratteristica mutevolezza del suo domicilio. Quando dico che un certo libro venne da una certa esperienza, intendo che egli attinse a quell’esperienza per scriverlo, o che esso fu il risultato ultimo della reazione che quell’esperienza produsse nella sua mente. E intendo in questo caso che ciò che plasmò e affilò il ricordo di Stevenson del puro nonsenso della Skeltería fu il suo crescente senso del bisogno di una qualche fuga dal soffocante cinismo della massa di uomini e artisti del suo tempo. Egli desiderava tornare a quel nonsenso; poiché sembrava, al confronto, del tutto sensato.
L’isola del tesoro fu scritta come libro per ragazzi; forse non è sempre letta come libro per ragazzi. Talvolta immagino che un vero ragazzo potrebbe leggerla meglio se potesse leggerla a ritroso. La fine, che è piena di scheletri e antichi delitti, è nel senso più pieno bella; è persino idealistica. Poiché è la realizzazione di un ideale, ciò che è promesso nella sua provocante e ammiccante mappa; una visione non solo di bianchi scheletri ma anche di verdi palme e mari di zaffiro. Ma l’inizio del libro, considerato come libro per ragazzi, difficilmente può dirsi idealistico; e alla prova risulta essere piuttosto troppo realistico. Posso fare qui una confessione egotistica, che credo non sia unica e non priva della sua universale implicazione sullo spirito della giovinezza. Quando lessi il libro da bambino, non fui inorridito da ciò che si chiamano gli orrori. Qualcosa mi sconvolse invero, appena un po’ più di quanto un bambino dovrebbe essere sconvolto; poiché naturalmente non si divertirebbe se non fosse mai sconvolto affatto. Ma ciò che mi scosse non fu la cassa del morto o i delitti dell’uomo vivo o l’informazione che «il rum e il diavolo han fatto il resto»; tutto ciò mi sembrava del tutto allegro e confortante. Ciò che mi sembrò brutto fu esattamente ciò che potrebbe accadere in una qualsiasi sala d’osteria, se non ci fossero pirati al mondo. Era quella faccenda dell’apoplessia; o una sorta d’avvelenamento alcolico. Era il marinaio che aveva una cosa misteriosa chiamata colpo apoplettico; tanto più terrificante di qualsiasi colpo di sciabola. Ero pronto a guadare mari di sangue; poiché tutto quel sangue era lacca cremisi; e in verità l’immaginavo sempre come un lago di cremisi. Esattamente ciò a cui non ero pronto erano quelle poche gocce di sangue tratte dal braccio del marinaio privo di sensi, quando fu salassato dal chirurgo. Quel sangue non è lacca cremisi. Abbiamo così il paradosso che io fui inorridito dall’atto di guarire; mentre tutta la chiassosa faccenda del colpire e ferire non mi feriva affatto. Provavo disgusto per un atto di misericordia, perché prendeva la forma di medicina. Non mi fermerò a trarre le molte morali di questo paradosso; specialmente in relazione a una comune fallacia del pacifismo. Mi accontenterò di dire, che io renda chiaro il mio significato o no, che un bambino non è abbastanza malvagio da disapprovare la guerra.
Ma qualunque sia il caso con la maggior parte dei ragazzi, ci fu certamente un ragazzo che godette de L’isola del tesoro; e il suo nome era Robert Louis Stevenson. Egli ebbe davvero moltissimo il sentimento di chi si era involato verso grandi acque e terre esotiche; forse anche più vividamente di quanto l’ebbe più tardi, quando compì quel viaggio non metaforicamente ma materialmente, e trovò la propria Isola del Tesoro nei Mari del Sud. Ma proprio come nel secondo caso fuggiva verso cieli limpidi da climi malsani, così, nel far rivivere il racconto d’avventura, fuggiva da un clima estremamente malsano. Il microbo della morbosità può essere stato dentro di lui, così come il germe della tisi; ma nelle città che si era lasciato dietro il pessimismo infuriava come una pestilenza. Moltitudini di poeti dal volto pallido, informi e dimenticati, sedevano stipati a quei tavolini del caffè come fantasmi nell’Ade, adorando «la sorcière glauque», come quello di loro la cui mortalità è stata immortalata da Max. Troppo spesso si dimentica che se Stevenson fosse stato davvero solo un pallido giovanotto che faceva fiori di cera, avrebbe trovato molti pallidi giovanotti a farli con lui; e i fiori e i fioristi sarebbero da tempo appassiti insieme. Ma egli solo scampò, come da una città dei morti; egli tagliò l’ormeggio come Jim Hawkins rubò la barca, e proseguì il proprio viaggio, seguendo il sole. Il rum e il diavolo han fatto il resto, specialmente il diavolo; ma allora bevevano assenzio e non con uno «Yo ho ho», consumandolo senza il più fiacco tentativo di alcuno «Yo ho ho» — un difetto che era, naturalmente, la parte più seria e importante della faccenda. Poiché «Yo ho ho» era precisamente ciò che Stevenson, con la sua esatta scelta delle parole, desiderava particolarmente dire proprio allora. Era per il momento il suo messaggio più articolato all’umanità.
CHAPTER V
THE SCOTTISH STORIES
PROVERBS are generally true, when they are the proverbs of the people; so long as they are not proverbs about another people. It was unwise to search Sussex to discover if Kentish men had tails, or England to learn if French husbands had horns. And obviously there is much that is misleading in the traditional type of the practical Puritanical Scotsman, with his dry thrift and bleak respectability. A figure of such severe decorum is not very vividly evoked either by the title of Rab the Ranter or the Wizard of the North. And few of our own generation are yet convinced of it, even by the scientific severity that has given us Peter Pan or the sober responsibility that stiffens the narrative of The New Arabian Nights. The readers of the latter work will be much interested to realise that a Scotsman is incapable of seeing a joke, since he seems so eminently capable of making one; and the reader of the former will be disposed to suggest that the national jesting is not too sober but rather too extravagant. Peter Pan carries on by lineal tradition the cult of the child, beginning with Treasure Island; but if there be anything to criticise in Sir James Barrie’s beautiful fantasia, it is that wilder things happen to Wendy in a London nursery than ever happened to Jim in a tropical island. The only object to living in a nursery where the dog is the nurse, or the father lives in the dog-kennel, is that there seems no necessity to go to the Never-Never Land to look for the things that never happen. Whatever else we say of the Scottish genius, it is certainly not merely dry or prosaic; and indeed the real mixture of the Scottish genius is as full of contradictions as that pattern of crosses in the Scottish plaid. And even here there is subtlety as well as cross-purposes; and the tartan may be an old tribal form of camouflage.
There is an aspect of a Scottish hill or moor, which for the moment will look grey and at the least change of light look purple; which is in itself an image of Scotland. A passing from the most dispassionate to the most passionate tint, which yet seems to be no more than a new shade, might well represent the mixture of restraint and violence that runs through the national history and the national character. Stevenson stands for one of those moments in the national history when the grey turned to purple; and yet in his purple there is still a great deal of grey. There is a great deal of restraint, artistic even more than moral; there is a certain coolness in the commentary even on picturesque objects; there is even a certain absence of the common conception of passion. There are shades even in purple; there are differences between the purple orchid and the purple heather; and his often seems to be like white heather, for luck. In other words, his idea of happiness is still of the breezy and boyish sort; and though he described the happiness of lovers very happily in Catriona and began to foreshadow their unhappiness in Weir of Hermiston, he attacked the theme relatively late in life; and it counted for little in that original idea of a return to simplicity, which had come upon him like a wind from a playground. Imagine how annoyed Jim Hawkins would have been, if a lot of girls had been allowed to muck up the business of going after treasure! So brilliant is this resurrection of boyhood, that we almost believe for the moment that Stevenson must have been as young and callous as Jim. Only I suspect, as I say, that in some ways he had even made himself a little callous in those matters. There his adventures had been misadventures. He did not recall for mere pleasure the memory of youth, as he did the memory of boyhood.
The two novels about David Balfour are very notable examples of what I have mentioned generally as the Stevensonian note; the brisk and bright treatment, the short speeches, the sharp gestures and the pointed profile of energy, as of a man following his nose very rapidly along the open road. The great scenes in Kidnapped, the defence of the Round House or the confrontation of Uncle Ebenezer and Alan Breck, are full of those snapping phrases that seem to pick things off like pistol shots. A whole essay on the style of Stevenson, such as I shall attempt forlornly and ineffectually on another page, might be written by a real critic on the phrase, “His sword flashed like quicksilver into the huddle of our fleeing enemies.” The fact that the name of a certain metal happens to combine the word “silver” with the word “quick” is simply a rather recondite accident; but the art of Stevenson consisted in taking advantage of such accidents. To those who say that such tricks are easy to play or such words easy to find, the only answer is, “Go and find them.” An author cannot create words, unless he be the happy author of Jaberwocky or The Land Where the Jumblies Live; but the nearest he can come to creating them is finding them in such a fashion and for such a use. The characters in the story are excellent, though perhaps there are really only two of them. There are more in the sequel called Catriona; and the study of the Lord Advocate Prestongrange is a highly interesting attempt to do a very difficult thing; to describe a politician who has not altogether ceased to be a man. The dialogue is spirited and full of fine Scottish humours, but all these things are almost as secondary in Kidnapped and Catriona as they are in Treasure Island itself. The thing is still simply an adventure story, and especially a boy’s adventure story; such as is fitted to describe the adventures of a boy. And there are moments when it is the same boy; and his name is neither Hawkins nor Balfour, but Stevenson.
But though the thing is to be criticised (and admired) strictly as an adventure story, there are side-lights of interest about it considered as a historical novel. It carries on a rather curiously balanced critical attitude, partly inherited from the attitude of Sir Walter Scott; the paradox of being intellectually on the side of the Whigs and morally on the side of the Jacobites. There is enough moral material, in the story of the long legal murder of James of the Glens, to raise a whole clan of Jacobites and roll them red-hot down the pass of Killiecrankie. But there still stands over against it the large legal assumption that in some sort of way all these things will be for the best, which is the inheritance of the providential view of the Presbyterian settlement. Similarly, it is obvious in the earlier story that David Balfour does not really differ very much from Alan Breck, in his view of the oppression of the Highland crofters and their pathetic loyalty to the past. In the ethical balance of the Appin Murder, if he does not palliate tyrannicide, he certainly says nothing calculated to palliate tyranny. It is obvious that he is moved and impressed with the spectacle of a whole peasantry loyal to their ideal and defying a more civilised but a much more cynical pressure. But, curiously enough, when Stevenson saw exactly the same story acted before his eyes in the tragedy of the peasants of Ireland, he was carried away by some newspaper nonsense about the wickedness of the Land League (prodded perhaps by the rather absurd Jingoism of Henley) and, with all his native courage and much less than his native sense, wanted to plant himself on an eviction farm belonging to a family named Curtin, whom he seemed to regard as the sole victims of the social situation. It did not seem to occur to him that he was merely assisting the Master of Lovat to bully David Balfour. He seemed really to suppose that, in those social conditions, the Irish peasants could look for justice to imperial governments which abolished all local rights and carried away every Irish patriot to be tried before a packed jury of foreigners and foes. “Justice, David! The same justice, by all the world, that Glenure found by the roadside.”
CAPITOLO V
LE STORIE SCOZZESI
I PROVERBI sono generalmente veri, quando sono i proverbi di un popolo; purché non siano proverbi su un altro popolo. Era imprudente frugare il Sussex per scoprire se gli uomini del Kent avessero la coda, o l’Inghilterra per apprendere se i mariti francesi avessero le corna. E ovviamente c’è molto di fuorviante nel tipo tradizionale del pratico scozzese puritano, con la sua arida parsimonia e la sua tetra rispettabilità. Una figura di così severo decoro non è evocata molto vividamente né dal titolo di Rab il Ranter né dal Mago del Nord. E pochi della nostra generazione ne sono ancora convinti, nemmeno dalla scientifica severità che ci ha dato Peter Pan o dalla sobria responsabilità che irrigidisce la narrazione di The New Arabian Nights. I lettori di quest’ultima opera saranno molto interessati a rendersi conto che uno scozzese è incapace di cogliere uno scherzo, dal momento che sembra tanto eminentemente capace di farne uno; e il lettore della prima sarà disposto a suggerire che il celiare nazionale non è troppo sobrio ma piuttosto troppo stravagante. Peter Pan porta avanti per lineare tradizione il culto del fanciullo, cominciato con L’isola del tesoro; ma se c’è qualcosa da criticare nella bella fantasia di Sir James Barrie, è che a Wendy accadono cose più selvagge in una stanza dei bambini di Londra di quante ne accadessero mai a Jim su un’isola tropicale. L’unico scopo del vivere in una stanza dei bambini dove il cane è la bambinaia, o il padre vive nella cuccia del cane, è che non pare esserci necessità di andare all’Isola-che-non-c’è a cercare le cose che non accadono mai. Qualunque altra cosa diciamo del genio scozzese, esso non è certo meramente arido o prosaico; e in verità la vera mescolanza del genio scozzese è tanto piena di contraddizioni quanto quel motivo di croci nel plaid scozzese. E persino qui c’è sottigliezza oltre che intenti incrociati; e il tartan può essere un’antica forma tribale di mimetismo.
C’è un aspetto di una collina o brughiera scozzese, che per un momento appare grigio e al minimo mutamento di luce appare purpureo; il che è di per sé un’immagine della Scozia. Un passaggio dalla tinta più impassibile alla più appassionata, che pure sembra non essere altro che una nuova sfumatura, potrebbe ben rappresentare la mescolanza di ritegno e violenza che percorre la storia nazionale e il carattere nazionale. Stevenson sta per uno di quei momenti nella storia nazionale in cui il grigio si mutò in purpureo; eppure nel suo purpureo c’è ancora una gran quantità di grigio. C’è una gran quantità di ritegno, artistico ancor più che morale; c’è una certa freddezza nel commento persino su oggetti pittoreschi; c’è persino una certa assenza della comune concezione della passione. Ci sono sfumature persino nel purpureo; ci sono differenze tra l’orchidea purpurea e l’erica purpurea; e la sua spesso sembra essere come l’erica bianca, per fortuna. In altre parole, la sua idea di felicità è ancora del tipo arioso e ragazzesco; e benché descrivesse assai felicemente la felicità degli amanti in Catriona e cominciasse a presagirne l’infelicità in Weir of Hermiston, affrontò il tema relativamente tardi nella vita; ed esso contò per poco in quell’idea originaria di un ritorno alla semplicità, che gli era giunta come un vento da un cortile di giochi. Immaginate quanto sarebbe stato seccato Jim Hawkins, se un mucchio di ragazze fosse stato lasciato scompigliare la faccenda dell’andare a caccia del tesoro! Così brillante è questa resurrezione della fanciullezza, che quasi crediamo per un momento che Stevenson dovesse essere giovane e insensibile come Jim. Solo che sospetto, come dico, che in certi modi egli si fosse persino reso un po’ insensibile in quelle materie. Là le sue avventure erano state disavventure. Non rievocava per mero piacere il ricordo della giovinezza, come faceva col ricordo della fanciullezza.
I due romanzi su David Balfour sono esempi assai notevoli di ciò che ho menzionato in generale come la nota stevensoniana; il trattamento vivace e brillante, i discorsi brevi, i gesti scattanti e il profilo appuntito dell’energia, come di un uomo che segue il naso assai rapidamente lungo la strada aperta. Le grandi scene di Kidnapped, la difesa della Casa Rotonda o il confronto tra lo zio Ebenezer e Alan Breck, sono piene di quelle frasi schioccanti che sembrano cogliere le cose come colpi di pistola. Un intero saggio sullo stile di Stevenson, quale tenterò disperatamente e inefficacemente in un’altra pagina, potrebbe essere scritto da un vero critico sulla frase: «La sua spada balenò come argento vivo nel groviglio dei nostri nemici in fuga». Il fatto che il nome di un certo metallo si combini col vocabolo «argento» e col vocabolo «vivo» è semplicemente un accidente piuttosto recondito; ma l’arte di Stevenson consisteva nel trarre vantaggio da simili accidenti. A coloro che dicono che simili trucchi sono facili da giocare o simili parole facili da trovare, l’unica risposta è: «Andate a trovarle». Un autore non può creare parole, a meno che non sia il felice autore di Jaberwocky o di The Land Where the Jumblies Live; ma il più che possa avvicinarsi al crearle è trovarle in tal foggia e per tale uso. I personaggi della storia sono eccellenti, benché forse ce ne siano davvero solo due. Ce ne sono di più nel seguito intitolato Catriona; e lo studio del Lord Advocate Prestongrange è un tentativo assai interessante di fare una cosa assai difficile: descrivere un politico che non ha del tutto cessato di essere un uomo. Il dialogo è brioso e pieno di fini umori scozzesi, ma tutte queste cose sono quasi altrettanto secondarie in Kidnapped e Catriona quanto lo sono ne L’isola del tesoro stessa. La cosa è ancora semplicemente una storia d’avventura, e specialmente una storia d’avventura per ragazzi; tale da essere adatta a descrivere le avventure di un ragazzo. E ci sono momenti in cui è lo stesso ragazzo; e il suo nome non è né Hawkins né Balfour, ma Stevenson.
Ma benché la cosa vada criticata (e ammirata) rigorosamente come storia d’avventura, ci sono barlumi laterali d’interesse su di essa considerata come romanzo storico. Essa porta avanti un atteggiamento critico piuttosto curiosamente bilanciato, in parte ereditato dall’atteggiamento di Sir Walter Scott; il paradosso dell’essere intellettualmente dalla parte dei Whig e moralmente dalla parte dei Giacobiti. C’è abbastanza materiale morale, nella storia del lungo assassinio legale di James of the Glens, per sollevare un intero clan di Giacobiti e rotolarli roventi giù per il passo di Killiecrankie. Ma vi resta ancora contrapposta la grande assunzione legale che in qualche modo tutte queste cose saranno per il meglio, che è l’eredità della visione provvidenziale dell’assetto presbiteriano. Similmente, è ovvio nella storia precedente che David Balfour non differisce davvero molto da Alan Breck, nella sua visione dell’oppressione dei crofter delle Highland e della loro patetica lealtà al passato. Nell’equilibrio etico dell’Assassinio di Appin, se non attenua il tirannicidio, certo non dice nulla calcolato per attenuare la tirannia. È ovvio che egli è commosso e impressionato dallo spettacolo di un’intera contadinanza leale al proprio ideale e sfidante una pressione più civilizzata ma assai più cinica. Ma, abbastanza curiosamente, quando Stevenson vide esattamente la stessa storia recitata davanti ai suoi occhi nella tragedia dei contadini d’Irlanda, si lasciò trascinare da certe sciocchezze giornalistiche sulla malvagità della Land League (pungolato forse dal piuttosto assurdo sciovinismo di Henley) e, con tutto il suo nativo coraggio e assai meno del suo nativo buon senso, volle piantarsi su una fattoria di sfratto appartenente a una famiglia di nome Curtin, che sembrava considerare le uniche vittime della situazione sociale. Non sembrò venirgli in mente che egli stava semplicemente aiutando il Master of Lovat a maltrattare David Balfour. Sembrava davvero supporre che, in quelle condizioni sociali, i contadini irlandesi potessero cercare giustizia presso governi imperiali che abolivano ogni diritto locale e portavano via ogni patriota irlandese per essere giudicato davanti a una giuria manipolata di stranieri e nemici. «Giustizia, David! La stessa giustizia, per tutto il mondo, che Glenure trovò sul ciglio della strada.»
But this curious and sometimes inconsistent mingling of the grey Whiggery with the purple Jacobite romance, in the traditional sentiment of such Scots as Stevenson, is connected with much deeper things touching the hold that their history had upon them. It is necessary to state at this stage that there is really and seriously an influence of Scottish Puritanism upon Stevenson; though I think it rather a philosophy partially accepted by his intellect than the special ideal that was the secret of his heart. But every philosopher is affected by philosophy; even if, as in the immortal instance in Boswell, cheerfulness is always breaking out. And there was a part of Stevenson’s mind that was not cheerful; which I think, in some manifestations, was not even healthy. And yet the tribute of truth is due to that special Scottish element; that even when we say it was not healthy, we can hardly venture to say it was not strong. It was the shadow of that ancient heathen fatalism, which in the seventeenth century had taken the hardly less heathen form of Calvinism; and which had sounded in so many Scottish tragedies with a note of doom. We appreciate it sharply when we turn from his two Scottish comedies of adventure to his third Scottish romance, which is a tragedy of character. It is true, as may be noted later, that even into this concentrated drama of sin and sorrow there enters a curious and rather incongruous element of the adventure story; like a fragment of the former adventures of David or Jim. But leaving that aside for the moment, we must do justice to the dignity which is given to the story itself by its more sombre scenery and its sterner creed. Stevenson showed his perfect instinct when he called it A Winter’s Tale. It is his one story in black and white, and I cannot recall one word that is a patch of colour.
In touching on the rather neglected point of the nastier side of Puritan sociology, the raw and barbarous flavour about its evil and excess, I may have seemed to underrate the higher though harsher aspects of Scottish Puritanism. I do not mean to do so; and certainly nobody can afford to do so in attempting an adequate study of Stevenson. He remained to the day of his death in some ways particularly loyal to the Presbyterian tradition; I might say to the Presbyterian prejudices; and at least in one or two cases to the Presbyterian antipathies. But I think it was mostly rather a case of the modern religion of patriotism, as against the larger patriotism of religion. Like many other men of frank, tart and humorous prejudices (which are the sort of prejudices that need never prejudice us against a man) he was apt to see in some foreign things the evils to which he had grown accustomed in native things; and to start again the great international dispute of the pot and the kettle. It is amusing, for instance, to find the young Scotsman in Olalla gravely disapproving of the grim Spanish crucifix, with its tortured and grimacing art; and presumably leaving that land of religious gloom, to go back and enjoy the charm and gaiety of Thrawn Janet. If there was ever grim and grimacing art, one would think it was in that twisted figure; and even Stevenson admitted that Olalla got more comfort from the crucifix than Janet from the minister; or, I will add, the minister from the ministry. Indeed, stories of this kind are told by Stevenson with a deliberate darkening of the Scottish landscape and exultation in the ferocity of the Scottish creed. But it would be quite a mistake to miss in this a certain genuine national pride running through all the abnormal artistry; and a sense that the strength of the tribal tragedy testifies in a manner to the strength of the tribe.
It might be maintained that the best effect of the Scotsman’s religious training was teaching him to do without his religion. It enabled him to survive as a certain sort of freethinker; one who, unlike his more familiar fellows, is not so intoxicated with freedom as to forget to think. It might be said that among the Scots, so far from a sentimental religiosity taking the place of dogmatic religion (as is generally the case among the English), something like the very opposite had occurred. When the religion was dead, the theology remained: at any rate, the taste for theology remained. It remained because, whatever else it is, theology is at least a form of thought. Stevenson certainly retained this turn of mind long after his beliefs, like those of most of his generation, had been simplified to vanishing point. He was, as Henley said, something of the Shorter Catechist; even when his own Catechism had become shorter still. All this, however, was indubitably a strength to him and his nation; and a real reason for gratitude to their old religious tradition. Those dry Deists and hard-headed Utilitarians who stalked the streets of Glasgow and Edinburgh in the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries were very obviously the products of the national religious spirit. The Scottish atheists were unmistakable children of the Kirk. And though they often seemed absurdly detached and dehumanised, the world is now rather suffering for want of such dull lucidity. To put it shortly, by being theological they had at least learnt to be logical; and in dropping the Greek prefix as a superfluous trifle they will have the sympathy of many moderns much less logical than themselves. The influence of all this sort of clarity on Stevenson is very clear. It did not happen to be his mission to figure as the metaphysical Scotsman; or draw out his deductions along the lines of logic. But he did always by instinct draw lines that were as hard and clear as those of a mathematical diagram. He himself has made a very luminous and valuable comparison between a geometrical theorem and a work of art. I have had cause to remark again and again, in the course of this sketch, on a certain almost arid decision in the strokes of Stevenson’s style. I believe it was due in no small degree to that inheritance of definition, that goes with an inheritance of dogma. What he wrote was not written, as he said scornfully of some literary performance, in sand with a salt-spoon; it was at least in the tradition of scriptures cut with steel into stone. This was among the many good things that he got from the spiritual atmosphere of his ancestry. But he got other things as well; though they are less easy to describe and far less easy to command.
Ma questa curiosa e talvolta incoerente commistione del grigio Whiggismo col purpureo romanzesco giacobita, nel tradizionale sentimento di scozzesi come Stevenson, è connessa a cose assai più profonde che toccano la presa che la loro storia aveva su di essi. È necessario affermare a questo punto che c’è davvero e seriamente un influsso del puritanesimo scozzese su Stevenson; benché io lo ritenga piuttosto una filosofia parzialmente accettata dal suo intelletto che lo speciale ideale che era il segreto del suo cuore. Ma ogni filosofo è influenzato dalla filosofia; anche se, come nell’ immortale caso in Boswell, l’allegria continua a irrompere. E c’era una parte della mente di Stevenson che non era allegra; la quale, credo, in certe manifestazioni non era nemmeno sana. Eppure il tributo della verità è dovuto a quello speciale elemento scozzese; che persino quando diciamo che non era sano, difficilmente possiamo azzardarci a dire che non fosse forte. Era l’ombra di quell’antico fatalismo pagano, che nel diciassettesimo secolo aveva assunto la forma appena meno pagana del calvinismo; e che aveva risuonato in tante tragedie scozzesi con una nota di condanna. Lo apprezziamo nettamente quando passiamo dalle sue due commedie scozzesi d’avventura al suo terzo romanzo scozzese, che è una tragedia di carattere. È vero, come si potrà notare più avanti, che persino in questo concentrato dramma di peccato e dolore entra un curioso e piuttosto incongruo elemento della storia d’avventura; come un frammento delle precedenti avventure di David o di Jim. Ma lasciando ciò da parte per il momento, dobbiamo rendere giustizia alla dignità che è conferita alla storia stessa dal suo scenario più cupo e dal suo credo più severo. Stevenson mostrò il suo perfetto istinto quando lo chiamò Un racconto d’inverno. È la sua unica storia in bianco e nero, e non riesco a ricordare una sola parola che sia una chiazza di colore.
Nel toccare il punto piuttosto trascurato del lato più sgradevole della sociologia puritana, il sapore rozzo e barbaro del suo male e del suo eccesso, posso essere sembrato sottovalutare gli aspetti più alti benché più aspri del puritanesimo scozzese. Non intendo farlo; e certo nessuno può permettersi di farlo nel tentare un adeguato studio di Stevenson. Egli rimase fino al giorno della sua morte in certi modi particolarmente leale alla tradizione presbiteriana; potrei dire ai pregiudizi presbiteriani; e almeno in uno o due casi alle antipatie presbiteriane. Ma credo che fosse per lo più piuttosto un caso della moderna religione del patriottismo, contro il più ampio patriottismo della religione. Come molti altri uomini di franchi, aspri e umoristici pregiudizi (che sono il genere di pregiudizi che non hanno mai bisogno di prevenirci contro un uomo) egli era incline a vedere in certe cose straniere i mali a cui si era abituato nelle cose native; e a ricominciare la grande disputa internazionale della pentola e del paiolo. È divertente, per esempio, trovare il giovane scozzese in Olalla gravemente disapprovare il cupo crocifisso spagnolo, con la sua arte torturata e smorfiosa; e presumibilmente lasciare quella terra di tetraggine religiosa, per tornare a godersi il fascino e la gaiezza di Thrawn Janet. Se mai vi fu arte cupa e smorfiosa, si penserebbe che fosse in quella figura contorta; e persino Stevenson ammise che Olalla trasse più conforto dal crocifisso di quanto Janet ne traesse dal ministro; o, aggiungerò, il ministro dal ministero. In verità, storie di questo genere sono raccontate da Stevenson con un deliberato oscuramento del paesaggio scozzese ed esultanza nella ferocia del credo scozzese. Ma sarebbe del tutto un errore mancare in questo un certo genuino orgoglio nazionale che percorre tutta l’anormale arte; e un senso che la forza della tragedia tribale testimoni in un certo modo la forza della tribù.
Si potrebbe sostenere che il miglior effetto dell’educazione religiosa dello scozzese fu l’insegnargli a fare a meno della sua religione. Gli permise di sopravvivere come un certo tipo di libero pensatore; uno che, a differenza dei suoi più consueti simili, non è tanto inebriato di libertà da dimenticare di pensare. Si potrebbe dire che tra gli scozzesi, ben lungi dal prendere una sentimentale religiosità il posto della religione dogmatica (com’è generalmente il caso tra gli inglesi), fosse accaduto qualcosa come l’esatto contrario. Quando la religione fu morta, la teologia rimase: in ogni caso, il gusto per la teologia rimase. Rimase perché, qualunque altra cosa sia, la teologia è almeno una forma di pensiero. Stevenson certo conservò questa piega mentale assai dopo che le sue credenze, come quelle di gran parte della sua generazione, erano state semplificate fino a svanire. Egli era, come disse Henley, qualcosa del Catechista Minore; persino quando il suo stesso Catechismo era divenuto ancora più breve. Tutto ciò, comunque, fu indubbiamente una forza per lui e per la sua nazione; e una reale ragione di gratitudine verso la loro antica tradizione religiosa. Quei aridi deisti e quegli utilitaristi dalla testa dura che percorrevano le strade di Glasgow ed Edimburgo nel diciottesimo e primo diciannovesimo secolo erano assai ovviamente i prodotti dello spirito religioso nazionale. Gli atei scozzesi erano inconfondibili figli della Kirk. E benché sembrassero spesso assurdamente distaccati e disumanizzati, il mondo ora soffre piuttosto per mancanza di tale ottusa lucidità. Per dirla in breve, essendo teologici avevano almeno imparato a essere logici; e nel lasciar cadere il prefisso greco come inezia superflua essi avranno la simpatia di molti moderni assai meno logici di loro. L’influsso di tutta questa sorta di chiarezza su Stevenson è assai chiaro. Non gli toccò per missione di figurare come lo scozzese metafisico; o di trarre le sue deduzioni lungo le linee della logica. Ma egli tracciava sempre per istinto linee dure e nitide come quelle di un diagramma matematico. Egli stesso ha fatto un assai luminoso e prezioso paragone tra un teorema geometrico e un’opera d’arte. Ho avuto motivo di osservare più e più volte, nel corso di questo Ritratto, una certa quasi arida decisione nei tratti dello stile di Stevenson. Credo che fosse dovuta in non piccola misura a quell’eredità di definizione, che va con un’eredità di dogma. Ciò che egli scrisse non fu scritto, come disse sprezzantemente di una certa prova letteraria, nella sabbia con un cucchiaino da sale; era almeno nella tradizione delle scritture incise con l’acciaio nella pietra. Questo era tra le molte buone cose che egli trasse dall’atmosfera spirituale della sua ascendenza. Ma ne trasse pure altre cose; benché siano meno facili da descrivere e assai meno facili da comandare.
From time to time I have insensibly and inevitably fallen into a tone of defending Stevenson, as if he needed defence. And indeed I do think that he needs some defence; though not upon the points in which it is now considered necessary to defend him. I do feel a certain impatience with the petty depreciation of our own time, which seems much more frivolous and far less generous than the boom of a best-seller. I do feel a certain contempt for those who call every phrase affected that happens to be effective; or who charge a man with talking for effect, as if there were anything else to talk for. But I should think it very unfair to revile the revilers of Stevenson, without taking the risk of saying where I think he is, if not to be reviled, at least to be rebuked. There was, I think, a weaker strain in Stevenson; but it is the very opposite of the weakness now generally alleged by critics; indeed it is the very opposite of what they would probably regard as weak. The excuse for it, in so far as it existed to be excused, was in the very direction of that sharp turn which he took in early life, when he turned his back upon the decadents. I have already said, and it can hardly be said too often, that the story of Stevenson was a reaction against an age of pessimism. Now the real objection to being a reactionary is that a reactionary, as such, hardly ever avoids reacting into evil and exaggeration. The opposite of the heresy of pessimism was the twin heresy of optimism. Stevenson was not at all attracted to a placid and pacific optimism. But he did begin to be too much attracted to a sort of insolent and oppressive optimism. The reaction from the idea that what is good is always unsuccessful is the idea that what is good is always victorious. And from that many slide into the worse delusion; that what is victorious is always good.
In the days when Stevenson’s ancestors the Covenanters were fighting with the Cavaliers, a fine old Cavalier of the Episcopalian persuasion made a rather interesting remark; that the change he really hated was represented by saying “The Lord” instead of “Our Lord.” The latter implied affection, the former only fear; indeed he described the former succinctly as the talk of devils. And this is so far true that the very eloquent language in which the name of “The Lord” has figured has generally been the language of might and majesty and even terror. And there really was implied in it in varying degrees the idea of glorifying God for His greatness rather than His goodness. And again there occurred the natural inversion of ideas. Since the Puritan was content to cry with the Moslem: “God is great,” so the descendant of the Puritan is always a little inclined to cry with the Nietzschean: “Greatness is God.” In some of the really evil extremes, this sentiment shaded darkly into a sort of diabolism. In Stevenson it was very faintly present; but it is occasionally felt; and by me (I must confess) felt as a fault. It is faintly felt, for instance, in the next great Scottish romance, The Master of Ballantrae; it is felt more definitely, I think, in the last Scottish romance of Weir of Hermiston. In the first case, Stevenson said in his correspondence, in a tone that was humorous and healthy enough, that The Master was all he knew of The Devil. I do not in the least object to The Master being The Devil. But I do object to a subtle subconscious something, which every now and then seems almost to suggest that he is The Lord. I mean The Lord in the vague sense of a certain authority in aristocracy, or even in mere mastery. Perhaps I even dimly feel that there is the distant thunder of The Lord in the very title of The Master.
This thing, however we define it and in whatever degree we admit it, had advanced in several degrees when he wrote the later story. Perhaps it was partly the influence of Henley; who, with all his many generous virtues, certainly had this weakness to the point of hysteria. I mean the loss of the natural reaction of a man against a tyrant. It sometimes takes the form of that least masculine of all vices, the admiration for brutality. It has been much debated whether bullies are always cowards; I am content to remark that the admirers of bullies are always, by the very nature of things, trying to be cowards. If they do not always succeed, it is because they have unconscious virtues restraining that obscene worship: and this was true even of Henley; and far truer of Stevenson. Stevenson had always a training in real courage; for he fought when he was weak. But it cannot be denied that, by a combination of causes, his own revolt against spineless pessimism, the reactionary violence of Henley, but chiefly I think the vague Scottish tradition of a God of mere power and terror, he grew too familiar in his later works with the sort of swaggering cult of fear. I feel it in the character of Weir of Hermiston, or rather in the attitude of everybody else, including the author, towards that character. I do not mind the judge exulting over the game of insulting and hanging somebody; for I know the judge can be baser than the man he hangs. But I do mind the author exulting over it, when I know he is not base at all. The same fine shade of unpleasantness can be found in the last pages of The Ebb-Tide. My point might be put crudely by saying that I do not object to the author creating such a loathsome person as Mr. Attwater; but I do rather object to his creating him and not loathing him. It would be truer to put the point in another form; that there would be no objection if he loathed and admired Attwater exactly as he loathed and admired Huish. In a sense he obviously did admire Huish; as it was the very passion of his life to admire courage. But he did not expect anybody to look up to Huish; and there are moments when he seems to think it natural that people should look up to Attwater. This secret idolatry of what a feminine sentiment calls “strength,” this was the only lesion in Stevenson’s perfect sanity, the only running sore in the normal health of his soul; and even that had come from too violent an effort to be healthy. So he might, poor fellow, have started a haemorrhage by moving too vigorously on his pillow.
For I am not blaming him for having any such evil, in the sense of having any excess of it. I blame him, being what he was, for having even a touch of it. But I think it is unfortunately certain that he did have a touch of it. There is something almost cruel in thus tracing the innocent springs of cruelty. But, as has been said so often and so foolishly and so truly, Robert Louis Stevenson was a child. It is the moral of these chapters about his nation, his city and his home, that he was also something more than a child. He was a lost child. There was nothing to guide him in the mad movements and reactions of modernity; neither his nation nor his religion nor his irreligion were equal to the task. He had no chart for that gallant voyage; he was hardly to blame if he thought he had to choose between the savage rock of the pride of Scylla and the suicidal whirlpool of the despair of Charybdis. Only, like Ulysses, for all his adventurousness, he was always trying to get home. To vary the metaphor, his face was for ever turning like the sunflower towards the sun, even if it were behind a cloud; and perhaps after all there is nothing truer than the too familiar phrase from the diary of the doctor or the nurse; that he was a sick child, who passed his life in trying to get well.
Di tempo in tempo, in modo insensibile e inevitabile, sono caduto in un tono di difesa di Stevenson, come se avesse bisogno di difesa. E in verità penso che abbia bisogno di qualche difesa; benché non sui punti in cui oggi si ritiene necessario difenderlo. Provo una certa impazienza per il meschino disprezzo del nostro tempo, che mi pare assai più frivolo e assai meno generoso del clamore di un bestseller. Provo un certo disprezzo per coloro che dicono affettata ogni frase che per caso risulti efficace; o che accusano un uomo di parlare per fare effetto, come se ci fosse qualcos’altro per cui parlare. Ma riterrei assai ingiusto vituperare i vituperatori di Stevenson, senza correre il rischio di dire dove penso che egli sia, se non da vituperare, almeno da rimproverare. Vi era, credo, una vena più debole in Stevenson; ma è l’esatto contrario della debolezza oggi generalmente addotta dai critici; anzi è l’esatto contrario di ciò che essi probabilmente considererebbero debole. La scusa per essa, nella misura in cui esisteva da scusare, stava proprio nella direzione di quella brusca svolta che egli prese nella prima giovinezza, quando voltò le spalle ai decadenti. Ho già detto, e non lo si può dire troppo spesso, che la storia di Stevenson fu una reazione contro un’epoca di pessimismo. Ora, la vera obiezione all’essere un reazionario è che un reazionario, in quanto tale, non evita quasi mai di reagire cadendo nel male e nell’esagerazione. L’opposto dell’eresia del pessimismo era l’eresia gemella dell’ottimismo. Stevenson non era affatto attratto da un ottimismo placido e pacifico. Ma cominciò a essere troppo attratto da una sorta di ottimismo insolente e opprimente. La reazione all’idea che ciò che è buono non abbia mai successo è l’idea che ciò che è buono sia sempre vittorioso. E da lì molti scivolano nell’illusione peggiore: che ciò che è vittorioso sia sempre buono.
Ai tempi in cui gli antenati di Stevenson, i Covenanters, combattevano contro i Cavalieri, un nobile vecchio Cavaliere di persuasione episcopaliana fece un’osservazione piuttosto interessante: che il cambiamento che egli davvero detestava era rappresentato dal dire «Il Signore» invece di «Nostro Signore». Il secondo implicava affetto, il primo soltanto timore; anzi, egli descrisse succintamente il primo come il linguaggio dei demoni. E ciò è vero fin dove il linguaggio assai eloquente in cui è figurato il nome del «Signore» è stato in generale il linguaggio della potenza e della maestà e persino del terrore. E vi era davvero implicata in esso, in varia misura, l’idea di glorificare Dio per la Sua grandezza piuttosto che per la Sua bontà. E di nuovo si verificò la naturale inversione delle idee. Poiché il Puritano si accontentava di gridare col Musulmano: «Dio è grande», così il discendente del Puritano è sempre un poco incline a gridare col Nietzscheano: «La Grandezza è Dio». In alcuni degli estremi davvero malvagi, questo sentimento sfumava cupamente in una sorta di diabolismo. In Stevenson era presente assai debolmente; ma lo si avverte di quando in quando; e da me (devo confessarlo) avvertito come un difetto. Lo si avverte debolmente, per esempio, nel successivo grande romanzo scozzese, The Master of Ballantrae; lo si avverte più nettamente, credo, nell’ultimo romanzo scozzese, Weir of Hermiston. Nel primo caso, Stevenson disse nella sua corrispondenza, in un tono abbastanza umoristico e sano, che il Master era tutto ciò che egli conosceva del Diavolo. Non ho la minima obiezione a che il Master sia il Diavolo. Ma ho un’obiezione a un sottile qualcosa subconscio, che di tanto in tanto sembra quasi suggerire che egli sia il Signore. Intendo il Signore nel senso vago di una certa autorità nell’aristocrazia, o persino nella mera signoria. Forse avverto persino confusamente che c’è il lontano tuono del Signore nel titolo stesso di Master.
Questa cosa, comunque la si definisca e in qualunque grado la si ammetta, era avanzata di parecchi gradi quando egli scrisse il racconto più tardo. Forse fu in parte l’influenza di Henley; il quale, con tutte le sue molte generose virtù, aveva certamente questa debolezza fino all’isteria. Intendo la perdita della naturale reazione di un uomo contro un tiranno. Talvolta assume la forma di quel meno virile fra tutti i vizi, l’ammirazione per la brutalità. Si è molto dibattuto se i prepotenti siano sempre codardi; mi accontento di osservare che gli ammiratori dei prepotenti stanno sempre, per la natura stessa delle cose, cercando di essere codardi. Se non sempre vi riescono, è perché hanno virtù inconsce che frenano quell’osceno culto: e ciò era vero anche di Henley; e assai più vero di Stevenson. Stevenson ebbe sempre un addestramento nel vero coraggio; poiché combatté quando era debole. Ma non si può negare che, per una combinazione di cause — la sua stessa rivolta contro il pessimismo senza spina dorsale, la violenza reazionaria di Henley, ma soprattutto, credo, la vaga tradizione scozzese di un Dio di mera potenza e terrore — egli divenne troppo familiare, nelle sue opere più tarde, con quella sorta di spavaldo culto del timore. Lo avverto nel personaggio di Weir of Hermiston, o piuttosto nell’atteggiamento di tutti gli altri, autore compreso, verso quel personaggio. Non mi dispiace che il giudice esulti sul gioco di insultare e impiccare qualcuno; poiché so che il giudice può essere più abietto dell’uomo che impicca. Ma mi dispiace che l’autore ne esulti, quando so che egli non è affatto abietto. La stessa sottile sfumatura di sgradevolezza si può trovare nelle ultime pagine di The Ebb-Tide. Il mio punto potrebbe essere posto rozzamente dicendo che non ho obiezione a che l’autore crei una persona tanto ripugnante come il signor Attwater; ma ho piuttosto obiezione a che egli lo crei e non lo aborrisca. Sarebbe più esatto porre il punto in un’altra forma: che non vi sarebbe obiezione se egli aborrisse e ammirasse Attwater esattamente come aborriva e ammirava Huish. In un certo senso egli ovviamente ammirava Huish; poiché era la passione stessa della sua vita ammirare il coraggio. Ma non si aspettava che qualcuno guardasse a Huish con ammirazione; e vi sono momenti in cui sembra ritenere naturale che la gente guardi ad Attwater con ammirazione. Questa segreta idolatria di ciò che un sentimento femminile chiama «forza», questa era l’unica lesione nella perfetta sanità di Stevenson, l’unica piaga aperta nella normale salute della sua anima; e persino quella era venuta da uno sforzo troppo violento di essere sano. Così egli avrebbe potuto, pover’uomo, provocarsi un’emorragia muovendosi troppo vigorosamente sul cuscino.
Poiché non lo biasimo per aver avuto un tale male, nel senso di averne avuto un qualche eccesso. Lo biasimo, essendo ciò che era, per averne avuto anche solo un tocco. Ma penso sia purtroppo certo che ne ebbe un tocco. C’è qualcosa di quasi crudele nel rintracciare così le innocenti sorgenti della crudeltà. Ma, come si è detto tanto spesso e tanto scioccamente e tanto veracemente, Robert Louis Stevenson era un fanciullo. È la morale di questi capitoli sulla sua nazione, la sua città e la sua casa, che egli era anche qualcosa di più di un fanciullo. Era un fanciullo smarrito. Non c’era nulla a guidarlo nei folli movimenti e reazioni della modernità; né la sua nazione né la sua religione né la sua irreligione erano all’altezza del compito. Non aveva carta nautica per quel valoroso viaggio; era appena da biasimare se pensava di dover scegliere tra il selvaggio scoglio dell’orgoglio di Scilla e il suicida vortice della disperazione di Cariddi. Solo che, come Ulisse, con tutta la sua avventurosità, egli cercava sempre di tornare a casa. Per variare la metafora, il suo volto si volgeva per sempre come il girasole verso il sole, anche se questo era dietro una nuvola; e forse dopo tutto non c’è nulla di più vero della fin troppo familiare frase dal diario del medico o dell’infermiera: che egli era un fanciullo malato, che passò la vita nel tentativo di guarire.
CHAPTER VI
THE STYLE OF STEVENSON
BEFORE writing this chapter I ought to explain that I am quite incapable of writing it; at least as many serious literary authorities think it ought to be written. I am one of those humble characters for whom the main matter of style is concerned with making a statement; and generally, in the case of Stevenson, with telling a story. Style takes its own most living and therefore most fitting form from within; as the narrative quickens and leaps, or the statement becomes warm or weighty, by being either authoritative or argumentative. The sentence takes its shape from motion; as it takes its motion from motive. And the motive (for us outcasts) is what the man has to say. But there is a technical treatment of style for which I have a profound respect, but it is a respect for the unknown, not to say the unintelligible. I will not say it is Greek to me, for I know the Greek alphabet and I do not know the alphabet of these grammars of cadence and sequence; I can still even read the Greek Testament, but the gospel of pure and abstract English brings me no news. I salute it, from afar as I do musical harmony or the higher mathematics; but I shall not introduce into this book a chapter on any of these three topics. When I speak of the style of Stevenson I mean the manner in which he could express himself in plain English, even if it were in some ways peculiar English; and I have nothing but the most elementary English with which to criticise it. I cannot use the terms of any science of language, or even any science of literature.
Mr. Max Beerbohm, whose fine and classic criticism is full of those shining depths that many mistake for shallowness, has remarked truly enough on the rather wearisome repetitions in the newspapers, which did great harm to the Stevensonian fame at the time of the Stevensonian fashion. He noticed especially that a certain phrase used by Stevenson about his early experiments in writing, that he has “played the sedulous ape” to Hazlitt or to Lamb, must be permanently kept in type in the journalistic offices, so frequently do the journalists quote it. There are about a thousand things in Stevenson much more worth quoting, and much more really enlightening about his education in letters. Every young writer, however original, does begin by imitating other people, consciously or unconsciously, and nearly every old writer would be quite as willing to admit it. The real irony in the incident seems never to have been noticed. The real reason why this confession of plagiarism, out of a hundred such confessions, is always quoted, is because the confession itself has the stamp not of plagiarism but of personal originality. In the very act of claiming to have copied other styles, Stevenson writes most unmistakably in his own style. I think I could have guessed amid a hundred authors who had used the expression “played the sedulous ape.” I do not think that Hazlitt would have added that word “sedulous.” Some might say he was the better because the simpler without it; some would say that the word is in the strict sense too recherché; some might say it can be recognised because it is strained or affected. All that is matter for argument; but it is rather a joke when so individual a trick is made a proof of being merely imitative. Anyhow, that sort of trick, the rather curious combination of two such words, is the thing I mean by the style of Stevenson.
In the case of Stevenson, criticism has always tended to be hypercriticism. It is as if the critic were strung up to be as strict with the artist as the artist was with himself. But they are not very consistent or considerate in the matter. They blame him for being fastidious; and so become more fastidious themselves. They condemn him for wasting time in trying to find the right word; and then waste more time in not very successful attempts to prove it is the wrong word. I remember that Mr. George Moore (who at least led the attack when Stevenson was alive and at the height of his popularity) professed in a somewhat mysterious manner to have exposed or exploded the whole trick of Stevenson, by dwelling at length on the word “interjected”: in the passage which describes a man stopping a clock with interjected finger. There seemed to be some notion that because the word is unusual in that use, it showed that there was nothing but artificial verbalism in the whole tragedy of Jekyll and Hyde or the fun of The Wrong Box. I think it is time that this sort of fastidiousness about fastidiousness should be corrected with a little common sense. The obvious question to ask Mr. Moore, if he objects to the word “interjected,” is, “What word would you use?” He would immediately discover that any other word would be much weaker and even much less exact. To say “interposed finger” would suggest by its very sound a much clumsier and less precise action; “interjected” suggests by its very sound a sort of jerk of neatness; a mechanical neatness correcting mechanism. In other words, it suggests what it was meant to suggest. Stevenson used the word because it was the right word. Nobody else used it, because nobody else thought of it. And that is the whole story of Stevensonian style.
Literature is but language; it is only a rare and amazing miracle by which a man really says what he means. It is inevitable that most conversation should be convention; as when we cover a myriad beautiful contrasts or comedies of opposites by calling any number of different people “nice.” Some writers, including Stevenson, desired (in the old and proper sense) to be more nice in their discrimination of niceness. Now whether we like such fastidious felicities or no, whether we are individually soothed or irritated by a style like that of Stevenson, whether we have any personal or impersonal reason for impatience with the style or the man, we ought really to have enough critical impartiality and justice to see what is the literary test. The test is whether the words are well or ill chosen, not for the purpose of fitting our own taste in words, but for the purpose of satisfying everybody’s sense of the realities of things. Now it is nonsense for anybody who pretends to like literature not to see the excellence of Stevenson’s expression in this way. He does pick the words that make the picture that he particularly wants to make. They do fix a particular thing, and not some general thing of the same sort; yet the thing is often one very difficult to distinguish from other things of the same sort. That is the craft of letters; and the craftsman made a vast multitude of such images in all sorts of materials. In this matter we may say of Stevenson very much what he said of Burns. He remarked that Burns surprised the polite world, with its aesthetes and antiquarians, by never writing poems on waterfalls, ruined castles or other recognised places of interest; the very fact, of course, which showed Burns to be a poet and not a tourist. It is always the prosaic person who demands poetic subjects. They are the only subjects about which he can possibly be poetic. But Burns, as Stevenson said, had a natural gift of lively and flexible comment that could play as easily upon one thing as another; a kirk or a tavern or a group going to market or a pair of dogs in the street. This gift must be judged by its aptness, its vividness and its range; and anybody who suggests that Stevenson’s talent was only one piece of thin silver polished perpetually in its napkin does not, in the most exact and emphatic sense, know what he is talking about. Stevenson had exactly the talent he attributes to Burns of touching nothing that he did not animate. And so far from hiding one talent in one napkin, it would be truer to say that he became ruler over ten cities; set in the ends of the earth. Indeed the last phrase alone suggests an example or a text.
CAPITOLO VI
LO STILE DI STEVENSON
Prima di scrivere questo capitolo dovrei spiegare che sono del tutto incapace di scriverlo; almeno come molte serie autorità letterarie pensano che debba essere scritto. Sono uno di quegli umili individui per cui la questione principale dello stile riguarda il fare un’affermazione; e in generale, nel caso di Stevenson, il raccontare una storia. Lo stile assume la propria forma più viva e perciò più appropriata dall’interno; man mano che la narrazione si ravviva e balza, o l’affermazione si fa calda o grave, per l’essere o autorevole o argomentativa. La frase prende la sua forma dal movimento; come prende il suo movimento dal motivo. E il motivo (per noi reietti) è ciò che l’uomo ha da dire. Ma vi è un trattamento tecnico dello stile per cui ho un profondo rispetto, ma è un rispetto per l’ignoto, per non dire l’inintelligibile. Non dirò che per me è greco, poiché conosco l’alfabeto greco e non conosco l’alfabeto di queste grammatiche di cadenza e sequenza; posso ancora persino leggere il Testamento greco, ma il vangelo dell’inglese puro e astratto non mi porta alcuna notizia. Lo saluto, da lontano come faccio con l’armonia musicale o con la matematica superiore; ma non introdurrò in questo libro un capitolo su alcuno di questi tre argomenti. Quando parlo dello stile di Stevenson intendo il modo in cui egli sapeva esprimersi in un inglese piano, anche se in certi aspetti era un inglese peculiare; e non ho che il più elementare inglese con cui criticarlo. Non so usare i termini di alcuna scienza del linguaggio, né di alcuna scienza della letteratura.
Il signor Max Beerbohm, la cui fine e classica critica è piena di quelle profondità luminose che molti scambiano per superficialità, ha osservato abbastanza giustamente le ripetizioni piuttosto tediose nei giornali, che fecero gran danno alla fama stevensoniana al tempo della moda stevensoniana. Egli notò in particolare che una certa frase usata da Stevenson a proposito dei suoi primi esperimenti di scrittura, quella per cui aveva «fatto la scimmia diligente» a Hazlitt o a Lamb, doveva essere tenuta permanentemente in composizione negli uffici giornalistici, tanto spesso i giornalisti la citano. Vi sono circa mille cose in Stevenson assai più degne di essere citate, e assai più davvero illuminanti sulla sua educazione letteraria. Ogni giovane scrittore, per quanto originale, comincia imitando altri, consciamente o inconsciamente, e quasi ogni vecchio scrittore sarebbe altrettanto disposto ad ammetterlo. La vera ironia dell’episodio pare non essere mai stata notata. La vera ragione per cui questa confessione di plagio, fra un centinaio di simili confessioni, viene sempre citata, è che la confessione stessa porta l’impronta non del plagio ma dell’originalità personale. Nell’atto stesso di dichiarare di aver copiato altri stili, Stevenson scrive nel modo più inconfondibile nel proprio stile. Penso che avrei potuto indovinare fra cento autori chi avesse usato l’espressione «fatto la scimmia diligente». Non credo che Hazlitt avrebbe aggiunto quella parola «diligente». Alcuni direbbero che era migliore perché più semplice senza di essa; altri direbbero che la parola è, in senso stretto, troppo recherché; alcuni direbbero che la si può riconoscere perché è forzata o affettata. Tutto ciò è materia di discussione; ma è piuttosto uno scherzo quando un espediente così individuale è fatto prova di essere meramente imitativo. Comunque sia, quel genere di espediente, la combinazione piuttosto curiosa di due parole simili, è ciò che intendo per stile di Stevenson.
Nel caso di Stevenson, la critica ha sempre teso a essere ipercritica. È come se il critico fosse teso a essere severo con l’artista quanto l’artista lo era con se stesso. Ma non sono molto coerenti né riguardosi nella faccenda. Lo biasimano di essere schizzinoso; e così diventano essi stessi più schizzinosi. Lo condannano di sprecare tempo nel cercare la parola giusta; e poi sprecano più tempo in tentativi non molto riusciti di provare che è la parola sbagliata. Ricordo che il signor George Moore (che almeno guidò l’attacco quando Stevenson era vivo e all’apice della sua popolarità) pretese, in modo alquanto misterioso, di aver smascherato o fatto esplodere l’intero trucco di Stevenson, indugiando a lungo sulla parola «interjected»: nel passo che descrive un uomo che ferma un orologio con un dito interposto d’un tratto. Sembrava esserci l’idea che, poiché la parola è insolita in quell’uso, ciò mostrasse che non c’era altro che verbalismo artificiale nell’intera tragedia di Jekyll and Hyde o nel divertimento di The Wrong Box. Penso sia tempo che questa sorta di schizzinosità circa la schizzinosità venga corretta con un poco di buon senso. La domanda ovvia da porre al signor Moore, se obietta alla parola «interjected», è: «Quale parola userebbe lei?». Egli scoprirebbe subito che qualunque altra parola sarebbe assai più debole e persino assai meno esatta. Dire «interposed finger» suggerirebbe, per il suono stesso, un’azione assai più goffa e meno precisa; «interjected» suggerisce, per il suono stesso, una sorta di scatto di precisione; una precisione meccanica che corregge un meccanismo. In altre parole, suggerisce ciò che era inteso a suggerire. Stevenson usò la parola perché era la parola giusta. Nessun altro la usò, perché nessun altro ci pensò. E questa è l’intera storia dello stile stevensoniano.
La letteratura non è che linguaggio; è solo un raro e stupefacente miracolo quello per cui un uomo dice davvero ciò che intende. È inevitabile che la maggior parte della conversazione sia convenzione; come quando copriamo una miriade di bei contrasti o commedie di opposti chiamando un qualsiasi numero di persone diverse «simpatiche». Alcuni scrittori, tra cui Stevenson, desideravano (nel senso antico e proprio) essere più precisi nel discernere la finezza. Ora, che ci piacciano o no tali schizzinose felicità, che siamo individualmente placati o irritati da uno stile come quello di Stevenson, che abbiamo qualche ragione personale o impersonale d’impazienza verso lo stile o l’uomo, dovremmo davvero avere abbastanza imparzialità e giustizia critica da vedere quale sia la prova letteraria. La prova è se le parole siano bene o male scelte, non allo scopo di adattarsi al nostro gusto in fatto di parole, ma allo scopo di soddisfare il senso di tutti quanti circa la realtà delle cose. Ora, è insensato che chiunque pretenda di amare la letteratura non veda in questo modo l’eccellenza dell’espressione di Stevenson. Egli sceglie davvero le parole che formano il quadro che vuole particolarmente formare. Esse fissano davvero una cosa particolare, e non una qualche cosa generale dello stesso genere; eppure la cosa è spesso assai difficile da distinguere da altre cose dello stesso genere. Questa è l’arte delle lettere; e l’artigiano fece una vasta moltitudine di simili immagini in ogni sorta di materiali. In questa faccenda possiamo dire di Stevenson pressappoco ciò che egli disse di Burns. Osservò che Burns sorprese il mondo raffinato, con i suoi esteti e antiquari, non scrivendo mai poesie su cascate, castelli in rovina o altri riconosciuti luoghi d’interesse; il fatto stesso, naturalmente, che mostrava Burns essere un poeta e non un turista. È sempre la persona prosaica a esigere soggetti poetici. Sono gli unici soggetti su cui gli è possibile essere poetico. Ma Burns, come disse Stevenson, aveva un dono naturale di commento vivace e flessibile che poteva giocare con la stessa facilità su una cosa o su un’altra; una chiesa o una taverna o un gruppo che va al mercato o una coppia di cani per strada. Questo dono va giudicato dalla sua appropriatezza, dalla sua vividezza e dalla sua estensione; e chiunque suggerisca che il talento di Stevenson fosse solo un pezzo di sottile argento perpetuamente lucidato nel suo tovagliolo non sa, nel senso più esatto ed enfatico, di che cosa sta parlando. Stevenson aveva esattamente il talento che attribuisce a Burns, di non toccare nulla che non animasse. E ben lungi dal nascondere un talento in un tovagliolo, sarebbe più esatto dire che divenne signore di dieci città; poste ai confini della terra. Anzi, l’ultima frase da sola suggerisce un esempio o un testo.
I will take the case of one of his books; I deliberately refrain from taking one of his best books. I will take The Wrecker, a book which many would call a failure and which nobody would call a faultless artistic success, least of all the artist. The picture breaks out of the frame; indeed it is rather a panorama than a picture. The story sprawls over three continents; and the climax has too much the air of being only the last of a long string of disconnected passages. It has the look of a scrap-book; indeed it is very exactly a sketch-book. It is merely the sketch-book of Loudon Dodd, the wandering art student never allowed to be fully an artist; just as his story is never allowed to be fully a work of art. He sketches people with the pen as he does with the pencil, in four or five incongruous societies, in the commercial school of Muskegon or the art school of Paris, in the east wind of Edinburgh or the black squall of the South Seas; just as he sketched the four fugitive murderers gesticulating and lying in the Californian saloon. The point is (on the strict principles of l’art pour l’art, so dear to Mr. Dodd) that he sketched devilish well. We can take the portraits of twenty social types in turn, taken from six social worlds utterly shut out from each other, and find in every case that the strokes are at once few and final; that is, that the word is well chosen out of a hundred words and that one word does the work of twenty. The story starts: “The beginning of this yarn is my poor father’s character”; and the character is compact in one paragraph. When Jim Pinkerton first strides into the story and is described as a young man “with cordial, agitated manners,” we walk through the rest of the narrative with a living man; and listen not merely to words, but to a voice. No other two adjectives could have done the trick. When the shabby and shady lawyer, with his cockney culture and underbred refinement, is first introduced as handling a big piece of business beyond his metier, he bears himself “with a sort of shrinking assumption.” The reader, especially if he is not a writer, may imagine that such words matter little; but if he supposes that it might just as well have been “flinching pride” or “quailing arrogance” he knows nothing about writing and perhaps not much about reading. The whole point is in that hitting of the right nail on the head; and rather more so when the nail is such a very battered little tintack as Mr. Henry D. Bellairs of San Francisco. When Loudon Dodd merely has to meet a naval officer and record that he got next to nothing out of him, that very negation has a touch of chilly life like a fish. “I judged he was suffering torments of alarm lest I should prove an undesirable acquaintance; diagnosed him for a shy, dull, vain, unamiable animal, without adequate defence—a sort of dis-housed snail.” The visit to an English village, under the shadow of an English country house, is equally aptly appreciated; from the green framework of the little town, “a domino of tiled houses and walled gardens,” to the reminiscences of the ex-butler about the exiled younger son; “near four generations of Carthews were touched upon without eliciting one point of interest; and we had killed Mr. Henry in the hunting field with a vast elaboration of painful circumstance and buried him in the midst of a whole sorrowing county, before I could so much as manage to bring upon the stage my intimate friend, Mr. Norris… . He was the only person of the whole featureless series who seemed to have accomplished anything worth mentioning; and his achievements, poor dog, seemed to have been confined to going to the devil and leaving some regrets… . He had no pride about him, I was told; he would sit down with any man; and it was somewhat woundingly implied that I was indebted to this peculiarity for my own acquaintance with the hero.” But I must not be led away by the large temptation of quoting examples of the cool and collected and sustained irony, with which Loudon Dodd tells his whole story. I am only giving random examples of his rapid sketches of very different sorts of societies and personalities; and the point is that he can describe them rapidly and yet describe them rightly. In other words the author does possess a quite exceptional power of putting what he really means into the words that really convey it. And to show that this was a matter of genius in the man, and not (as some of his critics would imply) a matter of laborious technical treatment applied to two or three prize specimens, I have taken all these examples from one of the less known works, one of the least admired and perhaps of the least admirable. Whole tracts of it run almost as casually as his private correspondence; and his private correspondence is full of the same lively and animated neatness. In this one neglected volume of The Wrecker there are thousands of such things; and everything to show that he could have written twenty more volumes, equally full of these felicities. A man who does this is not only an artist doing what most men cannot do, but he is certainly doing what most novelists do not do. Even very good novelists have not this particular knack of putting a whole human figure together with a few unforgettable words. By the end of a novel by Mr. Arnold Bennett or Mr. E. F. Benson I have the sense that Lord Raingo or Lord Chesham is a real man, very rightly understood; but I never have at the beginning that feeling of magic; that a man has been brought to life by three words of an incantation.
This was the genius of Stevenson; and it is simply silly to complain of it because it was Stevensonian. I do not blame either of the other two novelists for not being somebody else. But I do venture to blame them a little for grumbling because Stevenson was himself. I do not quite see why he should be covered with cold depreciation merely because he could put into a line what other men put into a page; why he should be regarded as superficial because he saw more in a man’s walk or profile than the moderns can dig out of his complexes and his subconsciousness; why he should be called artificial because he sought (and found) the right word for a real object; why he should be thought shallow because he went straight for what was significant, without wading towards it through wordy seas of insignificance; or why he should be treated as a liar because he was not ashamed to be a story-teller.
Prenderò il caso di uno dei suoi libri; mi astengo deliberatamente dal prendere uno dei suoi libri migliori. Prenderò The Wrecker, un libro che molti definirebbero un fallimento e che nessuno definirebbe un impeccabile successo artistico, tanto meno l’artista. Il quadro erompe dalla cornice; anzi è piuttosto un panorama che un quadro. La storia si sparpaglia su tre continenti; e il culmine ha troppo l’aria di essere soltanto l’ultimo di una lunga serie di passi sconnessi. Ha l’aspetto di un album di ritagli; anzi è assai esattamente un album di schizzi. È semplicemente l’album di schizzi di Loudon Dodd, l’errabondo studente d’arte cui non è mai concesso di essere pienamente un artista; proprio come alla sua storia non è mai concesso di essere pienamente un’opera d’arte. Egli schizza le persone con la penna come fa con la matita, in quattro o cinque società incongrue, nella scuola commerciale di Muskegon o nella scuola d’arte di Parigi, nel vento di levante di Edimburgo o nella nera burrasca dei Mari del Sud; proprio come schizzò i quattro assassini fuggiaschi che gesticolavano e mentivano nel saloon californiano. Il punto è (secondo i rigidi principi di l’art pour l’art, tanto cari al signor Dodd) che egli schizzava diabolicamente bene. Possiamo prendere a turno i ritratti di venti tipi sociali, tratti da sei mondi sociali del tutto chiusi l’uno all’altro, e trovare in ogni caso che i tratti sono al tempo stesso pochi e definitivi; vale a dire, che la parola è ben scelta fra cento parole e che quella sola parola fa il lavoro di venti. La storia comincia: «L’inizio di questa filastrocca è il carattere del mio povero padre»; e il carattere è compatto in un solo paragrafo. Quando Jim Pinkerton entra a grandi passi per la prima volta nella storia ed è descritto come un giovane «dai modi cordiali e agitati», camminiamo per tutto il resto della narrazione con un uomo vivo; e ascoltiamo non meramente parole, ma una voce. Nessun’altra coppia di aggettivi avrebbe potuto fare il colpo. Quando il logoro e losco avvocato, con la sua cultura da cockney e la sua raffinatezza di bassa lega, è introdotto per la prima volta mentre tratta un grosso affare al di là del suo metier, egli si porta «con una sorta di presuntuosa esitazione». Il lettore, specialmente se non è uno scrittore, può immaginare che simili parole contino poco; ma se suppone che sarebbe potuto andare altrettanto bene «orgoglio guardingo» o «arroganza tremante», egli non sa nulla dello scrivere e forse non molto del leggere. Tutto il punto sta in quel colpire il giusto chiodo sulla testa; e ancor più quando il chiodo è una bulletta tanto malridotta come il signor Henry D. Bellairs di San Francisco. Quando Loudon Dodd deve semplicemente incontrare un ufficiale di marina e annotare che ne ricavò quasi nulla, quella stessa negazione ha un tocco di gelida vita come un pesce. «Giudicai che egli soffriva i tormenti dell’allarme, temendo che io mi rivelassi una conoscenza indesiderabile; lo diagnosticai per un animale timido, ottuso, vanitoso, sgradevole, senza difesa adeguata — una sorta di lumaca senza guscio». La visita a un villaggio inglese, all’ombra di una casa di campagna inglese, è apprezzata con pari acume; dalla verde cornice della cittadina, «un domino di case a tegole e giardini cinti da mura», alle reminiscenze dell’ex maggiordomo sul figlio cadetto esiliato; «furono sfiorate quasi quattro generazioni di Carthew senza suscitare un solo punto d’interesse; e avevamo ucciso il signor Henry sul campo di caccia con una vasta elaborazione di penose circostanze e lo avevamo sepolto in mezzo a un’intera contea in lutto, prima che io potessi anche solo riuscire a portare sulla scena il mio intimo amico, il signor Norris… . Era l’unica persona dell’intera serie priva di tratti che sembrasse aver compiuto qualcosa degno di menzione; e le sue imprese, povero cane, sembravano essersi limitate all’andare in malora e al lasciare qualche rimpianto… . Non aveva alcun orgoglio, mi si disse; si sarebbe seduto con chiunque; e mi fu insinuato in modo alquanto offensivo che ero debitore di questa peculiarità per la mia stessa conoscenza dell’eroe». Ma non devo lasciarmi trascinare dalla grande tentazione di citare esempi della fredda, composta e sostenuta ironia con cui Loudon Dodd racconta tutta la sua storia. Sto solo fornendo esempi casuali dei suoi rapidi schizzi di sorte assai diverse di società e personalità; e il punto è che egli sa descriverle rapidamente e tuttavia descriverle giustamente. In altre parole, l’autore possiede davvero un potere del tutto eccezionale di mettere ciò che davvero intende nelle parole che davvero lo trasmettono. E per mostrare che ciò era una questione di genio nell’uomo, e non (come alcuni suoi critici vorrebbero far intendere) una questione di laborioso trattamento tecnico applicato a due o tre esemplari da premio, ho tratto tutti questi esempi da una delle opere meno note, una delle meno ammirate e forse delle meno ammirevoli. Interi tratti di essa scorrono quasi con la stessa casualità della sua corrispondenza privata; e la sua corrispondenza privata è piena della stessa vivace e animata precisione. In questo solo trascurato volume di The Wrecker vi sono migliaia di simili cose; e tutto sta a mostrare che egli avrebbe potuto scrivere venti volumi in più, ugualmente pieni di queste felicità. Un uomo che fa questo non è solo un artista che fa ciò che la maggior parte degli uomini non sa fare, ma sta certamente facendo ciò che la maggior parte dei romanzieri non fa. Persino romanzieri assai buoni non hanno questo particolare talento di mettere insieme un’intera figura umana con poche indimenticabili parole. Alla fine di un romanzo del signor Arnold Bennett o del signor E. F. Benson ho la sensazione che Lord Raingo o Lord Chesham sia un uomo reale, compreso assai giustamente; ma non ho mai al principio quel sentimento di magia; che un uomo sia stato portato in vita da tre parole di un incantesimo.
Questo era il genio di Stevenson; ed è semplicemente sciocco lamentarsene perché era stevensoniano. Non biasimo nessuno degli altri due romanzieri per non essere qualcun altro. Ma oso biasimarli un poco per il loro brontolare perché Stevenson era se stesso. Non vedo bene perché egli debba essere ricoperto di freddo disprezzo solo perché sapeva mettere in una riga ciò che altri mettono in una pagina; perché debba essere considerato superficiale perché vedeva più cose nell’andatura o nel profilo di un uomo di quante i moderni ne possano scavare dai suoi complessi e dalla sua subcoscienza; perché debba essere detto artificiale perché cercava (e trovava) la parola giusta per un oggetto reale; perché debba essere ritenuto superficiale perché andava dritto a ciò che era significativo, senza avanzare a fatica verso di esso attraverso mari verbosi di insignificanza; o perché debba essere trattato da bugiardo perché non si vergognava di essere un narratore di storie.
Of course there are many other vivid marks of Stevenson’s style, besides this particular element of picked and pointed phrase, or rather especially the combination of picked and pointed phrases. I might make much more than I have made out of something in his rapidly stepping sentences, especially in narrative, which corresponds to his philosophy of the militant attitude and the active virtues. That word angular, which I have been driven to use too often, belongs to the sharpness of his verbal gestures as much as to the cutlasses and choppers of his paste-board pirates. Those early theatrical figures, from the sketch-book of Skelt, were all of them in their nature like snapshots of people in swift action. Three-Fingered Jack could not have remained permanently with the cudgel or the sabre swung about his head nor Robin Hood with the arrow drawn to his ear; and the descriptions of Stevenson’s characters are seldom static but rather dynamic descriptions; and deal rather with how a man did or said something than with what he was like. The sharp and shrewd Scottish style of Ephraim Mackellar or David Balfour seems by its very sound exactly fitted to describe a man snapping his fingers or rapping with his stick. Doubtless so careful an artist as Stevenson varied his style to suit the subject and the speaker; we should not look for these dry or abrupt brevities in the dilettante deliberations of Loudon Dodd; but I know very few of the writer’s works in which there are not, at the crisis, phrases as short and sharp as the knife that Captain Wicks rammed through his own hand. Something should also have been said, of course, of the passages in which Stevenson deliberately plays on a somewhat different musical instrument; as when he exercised upon Pan’s Pipes in respectful imitation of Meredith upon a penny whistle. Something should have been said of the style of his poems; which are perhaps more successful in their phraseology than their poetry. But these again teem with these taut and trenchant separate phrases; the description of the interlacing branches like crossed swords in battle; the men upholding the falling skies like unfrowning caryatids; the loud stairs of honour and the bright eyes of danger. But I have already explained that I profess no scientific thoroughness about these problems of execution; and can only speak of the style of Stevenson as it specially affects my own taste and fancy. And the thing that strikes me most is still this sense of somebody being pinked with a rapier in a particular button; of a sort of fastidiousness that has still something of the fighting spirit, that aims at a mark and makes a point, and is certainly not merely an idle trifling with words for the sake of their external elegance or intrinsic melody. As a part of the present criticism, such a statement is only another way of saying, in the old phrase, that the style is the man; and that the man was certainly a man and not only a man of letters. I find everywhere, even in his mere diction and syntax, that theme that is the whole philosophy of fairy-tales, of the old romances and even of the absurd libretto of the little theatre— the conception that man is born with hope and courage indeed, but born outside that which he was meant to attain; that there is a quest, a test, a trial by combat or pilgrimage of discovery; or, in other words, that whatever else man is he is not sufficient to himself, either through peace or through despair. The very movement of the sentence is the movement of a man going somewhere and generally fighting something; and that is where optimism and pessimism are alike opposed to that ultimate or potential peace, which the violent take by storm.
Vi sono naturalmente molti altri segni vividi dello stile di Stevenson, oltre a questo particolare elemento della frase scelta e appuntita, o piuttosto specialmente la combinazione di frasi scelte e appuntite. Potrei ricavare assai più di quanto abbia ricavato da qualcosa nelle sue frasi dal passo rapido, specie nella narrazione, che corrisponde alla sua filosofia dell’atteggiamento militante e delle virtù attive. Quella parola angoloso, che sono stato costretto a usare troppo spesso, appartiene all’acutezza dei suoi gesti verbali tanto quanto alle sciabole e alle mannaie dei suoi pirati di cartapesta. Quelle prime figure teatrali, tratte dallo schizziario di Skelt, erano tutte per loro natura come istantanee di persone in rapido movimento. Jack Tre-Dita non avrebbe potuto restare in eterno col randello o la sciabola roteata attorno al capo, né Robin Hood con la freccia tesa fino all’orecchio; e le descrizioni dei personaggi di Stevenson sono di rado statiche, bensì descrizioni dinamiche; e trattano piuttosto di come un uomo fece o disse qualcosa che di com’egli era fatto. Lo stile scozzese acuto e scaltro di Ephraim Mackellar o di David Balfour sembra, per il suo stesso suono, esattamente adatto a descrivere un uomo che schiocca le dita o batte col bastone. Senza dubbio un artista così accurato come Stevenson variava lo stile per adattarlo al soggetto e a chi parla; non dovremmo cercare queste asciutte o brusche brevità nelle deliberazioni da dilettante di Loudon Dodd; ma conosco pochissime opere dello scrittore in cui non vi siano, al momento culminante, frasi corte e taglienti come il coltello che il Capitano Wicks si conficcò nella propria mano. Qualcosa si sarebbe dovuto dire anche, naturalmente, dei passi in cui Stevenson suona deliberatamente un diverso strumento musicale; come quando si esercitò sui Flauti di Pan in rispettosa imitazione di Meredith su un flautino da un soldo. Qualcosa si sarebbe dovuto dire dello stile delle sue poesie; che sono forse più riuscite nella loro fraseologia che nella loro poesia. Ma anche queste pullulano di queste frasi separate, tese e incisive; la descrizione dei rami intrecciati come spade incrociate in battaglia; degli uomini che reggono i cieli cadenti come cariatidi dalla fronte serena; le rumorose scale dell’onore e i lucenti occhi del pericolo. Ma ho già spiegato che non professo alcun rigore scientifico riguardo a questi problemi d’esecuzione; e posso soltanto parlare dello stile di Stevenson per come esso tocca in particolare il mio gusto e la mia fantasia. E la cosa che più mi colpisce è ancora questo senso di qualcuno trafitto da un fioretto in un bottone preciso; di una sorta di scrupolosità che ha ancora qualcosa dello spirito combattivo, che mira a un bersaglio e coglie il segno, e non è certo un mero, ozioso trastullarsi con le parole per amore della loro eleganza esteriore o della loro intrinseca melodia. Come parte della presente critica, una simile affermazione è soltanto un altro modo di dire, con la vecchia frase, che lo stile è l’uomo; e che l’uomo era certamente un uomo e non soltanto un uomo di lettere. Trovo ovunque, persino nella sua semplice dizione e sintassi, quel tema che è l’intera filosofia delle fiabe, degli antichi romanzi cavallereschi e persino dell’assurdo libretto del piccolo teatro— la concezione che l’uomo è nato con speranza e coraggio sì, ma nato fuori da ciò che era destinato a raggiungere; che vi è una cerca, una prova, un giudizio di Dio o un pellegrinaggio di scoperta; ovvero, in altre parole, che qualunque altra cosa l’uomo sia, egli non è sufficiente a sé stesso, né attraverso la pace né attraverso la disperazione. Il movimento stesso della frase è il movimento di un uomo che va in qualche luogo e generalmente combatte qualcosa; ed è lì che l’ottimismo e il pessimismo sono ugualmente opposti a quella pace ultima o potenziale, che i violenti prendono d’assalto.
CHAPTER VII
EXPERIMENT AND RANGE
IN any generalisation about Stevenson, it is of course easy to forget that his work was very varied, in the sense of being very versatile. In one sense, he tried very different styles; and was always very careful only to try one style at a time. The unity of each accentuates the diversity of all. The very fact that he was careful to keep each several study in its own tone or tint, makes the range of his work look more like a patchwork than it really is. It is always a sharp contrast between complete and homogeneous things; when these things are broken up into subdivisions, the whole falls back into a more mixed but a more general pattern. In one sense this is merely a platitude. It would hardly be difficult to point out that the style of Prince Otto is very different from the style of The Wrong Box. It is different with the whole difference between a man working in wax or cardboard or ivory or ebony. Prince Otto is a sort of china shepherdess group, practising arcadian courtliness in an eighteenth-century park; the other is a sort of Aunt Sally pelted with comic misfortunes as if with cocoanuts. Nobody is likely to confuse these forms of art; nobody sets up a china shepherdess to be pelted with cocoanuts; few are so chivalrous as to approach their Aunt Sally with the deferential bows of a courtier. But when we get past this obvious contrast, which nobody could possibly miss, we find that (in a queer manner) there is versatility without variety. What makes those two stories stand out in our memory is a certain spirit with which they are told; yes, and even a certain style as well as spirit. It is not exactly the stories themselves; still less is it any real immersion of the author in the subjects of the stories themselves. We feel, even as we read, that Stevenson would be the last man really to wish to be imprisoned for life in a petty German court or poised for ever amid such very fragile china. We know it, just as we know that Stevenson does not really intend to turn his attention to the leather-business, or even (though here we may fancy the temptation stronger) to become a rowdy solicitor with shady clients, in the manner of the priceless Mr. Michael Finsbury. We remember the treatment more than the subject; because the treatment is really much more alive than the subject. Long after the ghosts in that ornamental garden have faded, and we have completely forgotten Who was Who at the court of Prince Otto, we hear and remember in the depths of that valley, “the solid plunge of the cataract.” And long after the details of the Tontine System have become blurred and all the far less interesting details of our own daily life along with them, when all lesser things have diminished and life itself is fading from my eyes—I shall still see before me the Form called up by that inspired paragraph: “His costume was of a mercantile brilliancy best described as stylish; nor could anything be said against him, except that he was a little too like a wedding guest to be quite a gentleman.”
Even through these wide divergences of subject, therefore, there runs something which is not only the genius but decidedly the method of Stevenson. In one sense he is careful to vary the style; in another sense the style is never varied. We might say, so to speak, that it is the style within the style that is never varied. But subject to this general understanding, it is only just to him to insist on the wide range that he managed to cover in his short and very much hampered literary life. He once reproached himself with not having enlarged his life by building lighthouses as well as writing books. But the firm of Stevenson and Son might have been mildly convulsed if there had risen on every side lighthouses in seven styles of architecture; a Gothic lighthouse, an ancient Egyptian lighthouse, and a lighthouse like a Chinese pagoda. And that is what he did with the towers of imagination and the light of reason.
There are indeed, as I have hinted, one or two places where it may be maintained that Stevenson let his style stray; and wandered into other tracks, sometimes older tracks, away from the immediate track of travel. Personally, I have this feeling about the wanderings of the Master of Ballantrae and the Chevalier Burke. They are a sort of adventure story in the wrong place; and though Mr. James Durie was certainly an adventurer in the bad sense, it is impossible to make him one in the good. It is impossible to turn a villain into a hero for the purposes of pure romance; Jim Hawkins could not have gone on his adventures permanently arm-in-arm with Long John Silver. The episode of Blackbeard is a sort of fizzling anticlimax, spluttering like the blue matches in that fool’s hat. Such a shoddy person had no claim to be so much as mentioned in that spiritual tragedy of the terrible twin spirits; the brothers of Durrisdeer. It is almost as if pirates were really a private mania with the author; and he could not keep them out of the tale if he tried; though pirates have really no more business in this tale than pirates in The Wrong Box. But it is curious to note how completely they are discoloured by the white death-ray that shines on that winter’s tale. Their blood and gold were not really red; their seas were not even really blue. This was no occasion for Two-pence Coloured. The very style of Mackeller’s narrative might be shrewdly summed up indeed under the title of A Penny Plain. But this is not only because that worthy steward was addicted to plainness and not averse to pennies. It is also because he is addicted to home and habit and averse to adventure; and the notion of the Master dragging him across half the world has something about it ungainly and grotesque and unworthy of the intensity of their intellectual and spiritual relations. The truth is that the Master of Ballantrae is not only a family demon but also a family ghost; and ought not to haunt any house except his own. Ghosts do not travel like tourists; even for the pleasure of visiting their relatives in the colonies. The story of the Duries is emphatically domestic; like those very domestic stories of home life in which Oedipus butchered his father or Orestes trampled on the body of his mother. These incidents were regrettable, and even painful; but they were all kept in the family. Something tells us that most of them happened behind high barred doors or in terrible unrecorded interviews. They did not wash their bloody linen in public; least of all did they wash it in all the seven seas of the British Empire. But the appearance of the Master first in India and then in America has almost the suggestion of the Prince of Wales on an imperial tour. Now those scenes in The Master of Ballantrae which do take place in the dark house of his fathers, or in the dim and wintry plantations without, do have an indefinable grandeur and even hugeness of outline that recalls Greek tragedies. Nay, they have even that hint of long wanderings and remote places, which is lost when the wanderings and the places are too elaborately followed out. At that unforgotten moment when the stranger first stands up, long and black and slender on the point of rock, and makes a motion with his cane that is like a spoken word of mockery, we do feel that he might have come from the ends of the earth, that he might have strolled from the empire of the Mogul or fallen from the moon. But the irony of the story is in that hateful love, or that pure love of hatred, that is the link between him and his; and makes him as domestic as the roof-tree even when he is as destructive as the battering-ram. It is curious, and perhaps over-curious, to find this rare fault in the work which is in its principal parts so faultless. It may seem still more pedantic to pick another very small hole in it; but it seems to me that Stevenson missed one great chance, in a way he rarely did, when he made even Mackellar such a prig as to write for the last line of the epitaph a phrase like, “With his fraternal enemy.” Surely the words would have stood out with a much more sinister and significant finality, if he had merely written, “And sleeps in the same grave with his brother.”
CAPITOLO VII
ESPERIMENTO E RAGGIO D’AZIONE
In ogni generalizzazione su Stevenson, è naturalmente facile dimenticare che la sua opera fu assai varia, nel senso di essere assai versatile. In un senso, egli tentò stili assai diversi; ed ebbe sempre gran cura di tentarne uno solo per volta. L’unità di ciascuno accentua la diversità di tutti. Il fatto stesso che egli avesse cura di mantenere ogni singolo studio nel proprio tono o nella propria tinta fa sembrare la gamma della sua opera più simile a un patchwork di quanto realmente sia. È sempre un netto contrasto tra cose complete e omogenee; quando queste cose sono spezzate in suddivisioni, l’insieme ricade in un disegno più misto ma più generale. In un senso questo è una mera banalità. Non sarebbe difficile far notare che lo stile di Prince Otto è assai diverso dallo stile di The Wrong Box. È diverso con tutta la differenza che passa tra un uomo che lavora la cera o il cartone o l’avorio o l’ebano. Prince Otto è una sorta di gruppo di pastorella di porcellana, che pratica una cortesia arcadica in un parco settecentesco; l’altro è una sorta di Aunt Sally bersagliata di comiche disgrazie come di noci di cocco. Nessuno rischia di confondere queste forme d’arte; nessuno colloca una pastorella di porcellana perché sia bersagliata di noci di cocco; pochi sono tanto cavallereschi da avvicinarsi alla loro Aunt Sally con i deferenti inchini di un cortigiano. Ma quando andiamo oltre questo ovvio contrasto, che nessuno potrebbe mai mancare di cogliere, troviamo che (in un modo bizzarro) c’è versatilità senza varietà. Ciò che fa spiccare quelle due storie nella nostra memoria è un certo spirito con cui sono raccontate; sì, e persino un certo stile come pure lo spirito. Non sono esattamente le storie in sé; ancor meno una qualche reale immersione dell’autore nei soggetti delle storie stesse. Sentiamo, mentre leggiamo, che Stevenson sarebbe l’ultimo uomo a desiderare davvero di essere imprigionato a vita in una meschina corte tedesca o sospeso per sempre in mezzo a una porcellana tanto fragile. Lo sappiamo, proprio come sappiamo che Stevenson non intende davvero rivolgere la sua attenzione al commercio del cuoio, o persino (benché qui possiamo immaginare la tentazione più forte) diventare un chiassoso procuratore legale con clienti loschi, alla maniera dell’impagabile signor Michael Finsbury. Ricordiamo il trattamento più del soggetto; perché il trattamento è davvero assai più vivo del soggetto. Molto dopo che i fantasmi di quel giardino ornamentale sono sbiaditi, e abbiamo del tutto dimenticato Chi era Chi alla corte del Principe Otto, udiamo e ricordiamo nelle profondità di quella valle «il solido tuffo della cateratta». E molto dopo che i particolari del Sistema Tontina si sono offuscati, e con essi tutti i particolari assai meno interessanti della nostra vita quotidiana, quando tutte le cose minori si saranno rimpicciolite e la vita stessa svanirà dai miei occhi — vedrò ancora davanti a me la Forma evocata da quell’ispirato paragrafo: «Il suo costume era di una brillantezza mercantile meglio descritta come elegante; né si poteva dire nulla contro di lui, tranne che somigliava un poco troppo a un invitato di nozze per essere del tutto un gentiluomo».
Anche attraverso queste ampie divergenze di soggetto, dunque, corre qualcosa che è non solo il genio ma decisamente il metodo di Stevenson. In un senso egli ha cura di variare lo stile; in un altro senso lo stile non è mai variato. Potremmo dire, per così dire, che è lo stile dentro lo stile a non essere mai variato. Ma fatta salva questa intesa generale, è solo giusto verso di lui insistere sull’ampia gamma che egli riuscì a coprire nella sua breve e assai ostacolata vita letteraria. Una volta si rimproverò di non aver allargato la propria vita costruendo fari oltre che scrivendo libri. Ma la ditta Stevenson e Figlio avrebbe potuto essere lievemente sconvolta se si fossero levati da ogni parte fari in sette stili di architettura; un faro gotico, un faro dell’antico Egitto, e un faro simile a una pagoda cinese. Ed è ciò che egli fece con le torri dell’immaginazione e la luce della ragione.
Vi sono in verità, come ho accennato, uno o due punti in cui si può sostenere che Stevenson lasciò divagare il suo stile; e si smarrì in altri sentieri, talvolta sentieri più antichi, lontani dall’immediato sentiero del viaggio. Personalmente, ho questa sensazione riguardo alle peregrinazioni del Master of Ballantrae e del Cavaliere Burke. Sono una sorta di storia d’avventura nel posto sbagliato; e benché il signor James Durie fosse certamente un avventuriero nel senso cattivo, è impossibile farne uno nel senso buono. È impossibile trasformare un malvagio in un eroe agli scopi del puro romanzo d’avventura; Jim Hawkins non avrebbe potuto proseguire le sue avventure perpetuamente a braccetto di Long John Silver. L’episodio di Barbanera è una sorta di sfrigolante anticlimax, che sfrigola come i fiammiferi azzurri nel cappello di quel folle. Una persona tanto scadente non aveva diritto di essere neppure menzionata in quella spirituale tragedia dei terribili spiriti gemelli; i fratelli di Durrisdeer. È quasi come se i pirati fossero davvero una privata mania dell’autore; ed egli non riuscisse a tenerli fuori dal racconto neppure provandoci; benché i pirati non abbiano davvero più titolo di stare in questo racconto di quanti ne abbiano i pirati in The Wrong Box. Ma è curioso notare quanto completamente essi siano scoloriti dal bianco raggio di morte che risplende su quel racconto d’inverno. Il loro sangue e il loro oro non erano davvero rossi; i loro mari non erano nemmeno davvero azzurri. Questa non era occasione per il Two-pence Coloured. Lo stile stesso della narrazione di Mackellar potrebbe in verità essere sagacemente riassunto sotto il titolo di A Penny Plain. Ma ciò non è solo perché quel degno maggiordomo era dedito alla semplicità e non avverso ai penny. È anche perché egli è dedito alla casa e all’abitudine e avverso all’avventura; e l’idea del Master che lo trascina attraverso metà del mondo ha in sé qualcosa di goffo e grottesco e indegno dell’intensità delle loro relazioni intellettuali e spirituali. La verità è che il Master of Ballantrae non è solo un demone di famiglia ma anche un fantasma di famiglia; e non dovrebbe infestare alcuna casa tranne la propria. I fantasmi non viaggiano come turisti; nemmeno per il piacere di visitare i loro parenti nelle colonie. La storia dei Durie è enfaticamente domestica; come quelle assai domestiche storie di vita domestica in cui Edipo macellò suo padre od Oreste calpestò il corpo di sua madre. Questi episodi erano deplorevoli, e persino penosi; ma furono tutti mantenuti in famiglia. Qualcosa ci dice che la maggior parte di essi accadde dietro alte porte sbarrate o in terribili colloqui non registrati. Non lavarono i loro panni insanguinati in pubblico; men che mai li lavarono in tutti i sette mari dell’Impero Britannico. Ma la comparsa del Master prima in India e poi in America ha quasi il sapore del Principe di Galles in tour imperiale. Ora, quelle scene di The Master of Ballantrae che si svolgono davvero nella tetra casa dei suoi padri, o nelle fioche e invernali piantagioni all’aperto, possiedono davvero un’indefinibile grandiosità e persino una vastità di contorni che richiama le tragedie greche. Anzi, hanno persino quel sentore di lunghe peregrinazioni e luoghi remoti, che va perduto quando le peregrinazioni e i luoghi sono seguiti troppo minuziosamente. In quel non dimenticato momento in cui lo straniero si erge per la prima volta, lungo e nero e sottile sulla punta della roccia, e fa con il bastone un gesto che è come una parola di scherno pronunciata, sentiamo davvero che egli potrebbe essere venuto dai confini della terra, che potrebbe aver girovagato dall’impero del Mogol o essere caduto dalla luna. Ma l’ironia della storia sta in quell’odioso amore, o in quel puro amore dell’odio, che è il legame tra lui e i suoi; e lo rende domestico come la trave del tetto anche quando è distruttivo come l’ariete. È curioso, e forse fin troppo curioso, trovare questo raro difetto nell’opera che nelle sue parti principali è tanto impeccabile. Può sembrare ancor più pedantesco cavillare su un altro piccolissimo neo; ma mi pare che Stevenson abbia mancato una grande occasione, in un modo che raramente gli capitava, quando fece che persino Mackellar fosse un tale saccente da scrivere per l’ultima riga dell’epitaffio una frase come «Con il suo fraterno nemico». Certo le parole sarebbero risaltate con una finalità assai più sinistra e significativa, se egli avesse semplicemente scritto «E giace nella stessa tomba col fratello».
But this mixture of two types of tale in one is the very reverse of characteristic. I know not where else in his works it can be found; unless perhaps we might take exception to the slight element of political irritation that makes itself felt, of all places in the world, in the amiable nightmare of The Dynamiter. It is really impossible to use a story in which everything is ridiculous to prove that certain particular Fenians or anarchist agitators are ridiculous. Nor indeed is it tenable that men who risk their lives to commit such crimes are quite so ridiculous as that. But broadly speaking, the characteristic of this writer’s conscientious artistry is that he is very careful to keep the different forms of art in water-tight compartments. It was, of course, a sentiment about technique and material which was very fashionable in the age of Whistler and the world where Stevenson had studied art. And the artist would as soon have stuck a lump of marble into the middle of a bas-relief in terracotta, or applied a coat of paint to a tracery he was making out of ivory, as put a piece of tragedy into the middle of a tea-table comedy or a burst of righteous indignation into a farce. In all this part of Stevenson’s mind, especially as revealed in his letters, most of the critics have missed the very lasting effect of the chatter of craftsmanship, and all the jargon of tricks of the trade, which he heard among the French art students. He had reversed almost the whole philosophy of everything that they wanted to do; but he still retained the dialect in which they talked about how it was done. But he talked it much better than they did; and he had his own knack of using the right word even for the search for the right word. It is typical that he said that a story must have one general tendency; and that in the whole book there must not be a single word “that looks the other way.” There is not a single word that looks the other way in the whole of Prince Otto or in the whole of The Wrong Box.
But now and then he did something more than this. He created a form of art. He invented a genre which does not really exist outside his work. It may seem a paradox to say that his most original work was a parody. But certainly the notion of The New Arabian Nights is quite as unique in the world as the old Arabian Nights; and it does not owe its real ingenuity to the model which it mocks. Stevenson here wove a singular sort of texture, or mixed a singular sort of atmosphere, which is not like anything else; a medium in which many incongruous things may find a comic congruity. It is partly like the atmosphere of a dream; in which so many incongruous things cause no surprise. It is partly the real atmosphere of London at night; it is partly the unreal atmosphere of Baghdad. The broad and placid presence of Prince Florizel of Bohemia, that mysterious semi-reigning sovereign, is treated with a sort of vast and vague diplomatic reserve; which is like the confused nightmare of an old cosmopolitan courtier. The Prince himself seems to have palaces in every country; and yet the humorous reader suspects, with half his mind, that the man is really only a pompous tobacconist, whom Stevenson happened to find in Rupert Street and chose to make the hero of a standing joke. This double mentality, like that of the true dreamer, is suggested with extraordinary skill without loading with a single question the inimitable lightness of the narrative. The humour of Florizel’s colossal condescension constitutes not only a new character, but a new sort of character. He stands in a new relation to reality and unreality; he is a sort of solid impossibility. Since that time many writers have written such fanciful extravagances about the lights of London; for Stevenson suffered much more than Tennyson from that of which the latter complained when “all had got the seed.” But few of them have really struck those ironical semitones or made the same thing so completely a cockney conspiracy and an Arabian fairy-tale. We have heard much of making the life of the modern town romantic; and many of the attempts in modern poetry seem only to make it more ugly than it really is. We have at the present moment a considerable cult of the fantastic; with the result that the fantastic has become rather a fixed type. It is picked out in crying colours of chrome yellow or magenta; with the result that it is perhaps too obviously a puppet. But Prince Florizel of Bohemia is not a puppet. He is a presence; a person who seems to fill the room and yet to be such stuff as dreams are made of; not simply a thing made of stuffing. The rigid and unreal dolls may fall into dust when the mood changes; but we do not easily imagine anybody kicking the stuffing out of Florizel. I will not say that the New Arabian Nights is the greatest of Stevenson’s works; though a considerable case might be made for the challenge. But I will say that it is probably the most unique; there was nothing like it before, and, I think, nothing equal to it since.
But it is worth while to remark that even here, where the atmosphere might be expected to be more hazy, the generalisation stands about edges and the exact extravagance of Skelt. However delicate is the air of mockery or mystery, there is very little change in the staccato style. The quarrel with the Suicide Club is “put to the touch of swords” and the phrase tingles like the twin blades of Durrisdeer. Nothing could be more angular than Mr. Malthus, the horrible paralysed man who plays on the brink of the precipice of suicide; he is as hard as a huge beetle. There is all the jerk of the old energetic puppets when he jumps from his seat, losing his disease for an instant at the sight of death. There is more movement in that one paralytic than in crowds of softly moving society figures, in milder or more meditative fiction. The very clatter of his broken bones down the stone steps of Trafalgar Square, of which we hear but an echo, has that almost metallic quality. Jack Vandeleur’s “brutalities of gesture,” his pantomime of opening and shutting the hand, are surely somewhat piratical; he had been Dictator of Paraguay; but I think he had sailed there on the Hispaniola. In short we have here once more the continuity of a style within a style. And the inner thread within the silk is as thin and hard as wire.
Ma questa mescolanza di due tipi di racconto in uno è l’esatto rovescio di ciò che è caratteristico. Non so dove altro nelle sue opere la si possa trovare; a meno che forse non si voglia eccepire sul lieve elemento di irritazione politica che si fa sentire, fra tutti i luoghi del mondo, nell’amabile incubo di The Dynamiter. È davvero impossibile usare una storia in cui tutto è ridicolo per provare che certi particolari Feniani o agitatori anarchici sono ridicoli. Né d’altronde è sostenibile che uomini i quali rischiano la vita per commettere simili delitti siano poi così ridicoli. Ma, in linea di massima, la caratteristica della coscienziosa arte di questo scrittore è che egli ha gran cura di tenere le diverse forme d’arte in compartimenti a tenuta d’acqua. Era, naturalmente, un sentimento circa la tecnica e il materiale che era assai di moda nell’epoca di Whistler e nel mondo in cui Stevenson aveva studiato arte. E l’artista avrebbe conficcato un blocco di marmo in mezzo a un bassorilievo di terracotta, o applicato una mano di vernice a un traforo che stava ricavando dall’avorio, con la stessa prontezza con cui avrebbe messo un pezzo di tragedia in mezzo a una commedia da tavolino da tè o uno scoppio di giusta indignazione in una farsa. In tutta questa parte della mente di Stevenson, specialmente quale si rivela nelle sue lettere, la maggior parte dei critici ha trascurato l’effetto assai duraturo delle chiacchiere di mestiere, e di tutto il gergo dei trucchi del mestiere, che egli udì tra gli studenti d’arte francesi. Egli aveva rovesciato quasi l’intera filosofia di tutto ciò che essi volevano fare; ma conservava ancora il dialetto in cui essi parlavano di come si facesse. Ma lo parlava assai meglio di loro; e aveva il suo proprio talento di usare la parola giusta persino per la ricerca della parola giusta. È tipico che egli dicesse che una storia deve avere una sola tendenza generale; e che in tutto il libro non deve esserci una sola parola «che guardi dall’altra parte». Non c’è una sola parola che guardi dall’altra parte in tutto Prince Otto o in tutto The Wrong Box.
Ma di quando in quando egli fece qualcosa di più. Creò una forma d’arte. Inventò un genre che non esiste davvero al di fuori della sua opera. Può sembrare un paradosso dire che la sua opera più originale fu una parodia. Ma certamente l’idea di The New Arabian Nights è unica al mondo quanto le antiche Arabian Nights; e non deve la sua reale ingegnosità al modello che deride. Stevenson qui intessé un singolare tipo di trama, o mescolò un singolare tipo di atmosfera, che non somiglia a nient’altro; un mezzo in cui molte cose incongrue possono trovare una comica congruità. È in parte come l’atmosfera di un sogno; in cui tante cose incongrue non destano sorpresa. È in parte la reale atmosfera di Londra di notte; è in parte l’irreale atmosfera di Baghdad. L’ampia e placida presenza del Principe Florizel di Boemia, quel misterioso sovrano semi-regnante, è trattata con una sorta di vasta e vaga riserva diplomatica; che è come l’incubo confuso di un vecchio cortigiano cosmopolita. Il Principe stesso sembra avere palazzi in ogni paese; eppure il lettore umoristico sospetta, con metà della mente, che l’uomo sia in realtà solo un pomposo tabaccaio, che Stevenson capitò di trovare in Rupert Street e scelse di fare l’eroe di uno scherzo ricorrente. Questa doppia mentalità, come quella del vero sognatore, è suggerita con straordinaria abilità senza caricare con una sola domanda l’inimitabile leggerezza della narrazione. L’umorismo della colossale condiscendenza di Florizel costituisce non solo un nuovo personaggio, ma un nuovo tipo di personaggio. Egli sta in una nuova relazione con la realtà e l’irrealtà; è una sorta di solida impossibilità. Da quel tempo molti scrittori hanno scritto simili fantasiose stravaganze sulle luci di Londra; poiché Stevenson soffrì assai più di Tennyson di ciò di cui quest’ultimo si lamentava quando «tutti avevano avuto il seme». Ma pochi di essi hanno davvero toccato quei semitoni ironici o reso la stessa cosa tanto completamente una cospirazione cockney e una fiaba araba. Abbiamo udito molto del rendere romantica la vita della città moderna; e molti dei tentativi nella poesia moderna paiono solo renderla più brutta di quanto realmente sia. Abbiamo in questo momento un considerevole culto del fantastico; con il risultato che il fantastico è diventato piuttosto un tipo fisso. È messo in risalto in colori sgargianti di giallo cromo o magenta; con il risultato che è forse fin troppo palesemente un fantoccio. Ma il Principe Florizel di Boemia non è un fantoccio. È una presenza; una persona che sembra riempire la stanza e tuttavia essere fatta della stessa materia di cui son fatti i sogni; non semplicemente una cosa fatta d’imbottitura. Le rigide e irreali bambole possono cadere in polvere quando cambia l’umore; ma non immaginiamo facilmente qualcuno che prenda a calci l’imbottitura fuori da Florizel. Non dirò che le New Arabian Nights siano la più grande delle opere di Stevenson; benché si possa costruire un argomento considerevole per la sfida. Ma dirò che è probabilmente la più unica; non c’era nulla di simile prima, e, credo, nulla di pari da allora.
Ma vale la pena osservare che persino qui, dove ci si aspetterebbe che l’atmosfera fosse più nebulosa, la generalizzazione regge circa i contorni e l’esatta stravaganza di Skelt. Per quanto delicata sia l’aria di scherno o di mistero, vi è ben poco cambiamento nello stile staccato. La contesa con il Club del Suicidio è «messa alla prova delle spade» e la frase formicola come le gemelle lame di Durrisdeer. Nulla potrebbe essere più spigoloso del signor Malthus, l’orribile uomo paralizzato che gioca sull’orlo del precipizio del suicidio; è duro come un enorme scarabeo. C’è tutto lo scatto dei vecchi energici fantocci quando egli balza dal suo posto, perdendo la sua malattia per un istante alla vista della morte. C’è più movimento in quel solo paralitico che in folle di figure di società che si muovono mollemente, in narrativa più mite o più meditativa. Il fragore stesso delle sue ossa spezzate giù per i gradini di pietra di Trafalgar Square, di cui udiamo solo un’eco, ha quella qualità quasi metallica. Le «brutalità di gesto» di Jack Vandeleur, la sua pantomima di aprire e chiudere la mano, sono certo alquanto pirateschi; egli era stato Dittatore del Paraguay; ma penso che vi fosse salpato sull’Hispaniola. In breve, abbiamo qui ancora una volta la continuità di uno stile dentro uno stile. E il filo interno dentro la seta è sottile e duro come fil di ferro.
Again, it illustrates this variety of experiment that Stevenson also wrote a detective story; or as he characteristically called it (in a sort of pedantic plain English) a police novel. He wrote it in collaboration with Mr. Lloyd Osbourne; and I have considered another aspect of it already, in the local colour of The Wrecker. But The Wrecker is ultimately a police novel; and the best sort of police novel, in which the police are never called in. Stevenson explained his reasons for leading up to the problem with studies of social life; and certainly it says much for the liveliness of that life that we do not grow so impatient as to offer the obvious comment. Otherwise we should certainly make one reasonable criticism. The writer may be pardoned if he is a long time getting to the solution, but not when he is such a long time getting to the mystery. It must be confessed that we have to wait for the question to be asked, as well as for it to be answered. Personally I am very glad to wait in the waiting-room of Pinkerton and Dodd. But anyhow when the question is asked, it is with great animation; and the excitement of beginning to piece together a puzzle, which is the essence of a detective story, has seldom been more lively and lifelike than in the cross questions and crooked answers of Captain Nares and his super-cargo. Here, however, the detective story merely illustrates the fact of his having almost as many irons in the fire as Jim Pinkerton. It illustrates the general fact that he tried a great many different styles; and yet his style was not different.
If there were experiments in which his touch was less happy they were, strangely enough perhaps, those connected with the simple or semi-savage world in which he found so much happiness. The Island Nights’ Entertainments are not quite so entertaining as the Arabian Nights’ Entertainments, whether New or Old. The explanation may be found, perhaps, in that casual phrase with which he swept the South Seas and swept away a good many imperial or international illusions, probably without knowing it; when he said of all those regions, “It is a large ocean but a narrow world.” He did not really find new types, at least among the white men; he rather found new countries full of old and battered types, white men who no longer looked very conspicuously white. One exception must be allowed; the story of The Ebb-Tide has a very great deal of kick in it; even though we hardly have the full satisfaction of seeing all the characters kicked. Anyhow, it is quite certain that whatever was the cause of the relative ineffectiveness of some of the work done at Vailima, it was not due to his having written himself out or experienced any weakening of power. For the very last days of all were spent in producing what was, or would have been, his most powerful piece of work. I have said something elsewhere, in connection with the Scottish romances, of his last great story, which is unfortunately a great fragment. Actually (I am tempted to say fortunately) that story named after Weir of Hermiston is not mainly about Weir of Hermiston. At least it is not about the first and most famous person of that name; and the best chapters of the book now in existence are concerned with the most sensitive and passionate shades of the Scottish temperament; richer shades of passion than he had ever yet attempted to touch. If ever the grey moor turned purple, it did at the moment when the girl lifted her voice to sing the song of the Elliots. He never forgets his abrupt gesture; and it was never so arresting as when her psalm-book page was rent across.
When Stevenson drew the long bow for the last time, like Robin Hood, he had two strings to his bow; and they both broke; but one was much stronger than the other. In other words he had two stories in his head, both of which broke off short; and perhaps it is not surprising that the weaker was rather neglected in favour of the stronger. The story of St. Ives contains excellent things, as does everything that he ever wrote, down to the most casual private letter. But it may be called disappointing, with rather more exactitude than is usual in the use of that word. St. Ives can hardly avoid being a sort of historical novel; and yet it is a rather unhistorical novel. By which I do not mean that there may be mistakes about dates or details; which matter nothing in fiction and are made too much fuss of even in history. I mean it is unhistorical in showing a strange lack of historical imagination and the sense of historical opportunity. It is the story of a soldier of Napoleon imprisoned on Edinburgh Rock and escaping from it. But indeed we might fancy it was Stevenson and not St. Ives who was imprisoned on Edinburgh Rock. And Stevenson does not escape from it. Such a subject demanded a sort of international interpreter; but it is in truth the most strangely insular of all his books. St. Ives is not a Frenchman; he is the less and not the more French because he is given all the foppery and swagger which spinsters in Edinburgh in 1813 doubtless did associate with a Frenchman. He is no more a French soldier than Bonaparte was Boney. He has neither the French realism nor the French idealism. He does not look at England as a Frenchman of the revolutionary wars would have looked at it. This story is simply France seen from Britain; it is not, as it should be, Britain seen from France. Unless St. Ives were a very bitter Royalist (which he evidently was not, but a moderate Bonapartist) he would quite certainly have conceived himself as carrying not mere military glory but the light of reason and philosophy and social justice to the aristocratic and autocratic states. He would have been impatient with the illogical resistance to rational things; not merely annoyed at not being shaved or provided with a looking-glass. But St. Ives is not a French soldier. He is a man in a French uniform; but so was Alan Breck Stewart. And that blessed and beloved name may perhaps recall to us that vanity and a love of fine coats can occasionally be found, even in the British Isles.
Di nuovo, illustra questa varietà di esperimento il fatto che Stevenson scrisse anche una storia poliziesca; o come egli caratteristicamente la chiamò (in una sorta di pedantesco inglese piano) un romanzo di polizia. La scrisse in collaborazione con il signor Lloyd Osbourne; e ne ho già considerato un altro aspetto, nel colore locale di The Wrecker. Ma The Wrecker è in ultima analisi un romanzo di polizia; e la migliore sorta di romanzo di polizia, in cui la polizia non è mai chiamata in causa. Stevenson spiegò le sue ragioni per condurre al problema con studi di vita sociale; e certo dice molto sulla vivacità di quella vita il fatto che non ci si impazientisca al punto di offrire l’ovvia osservazione. Altrimenti faremmo certamente una critica ragionevole. Allo scrittore si può perdonare se impiega molto tempo a giungere alla soluzione, ma non quando impiega tanto tempo a giungere al mistero. Bisogna confessare che dobbiamo aspettare che la domanda venga posta, così come che le venga data risposta. Personalmente sono assai lieto di aspettare nella sala d’attesa di Pinkerton e Dodd. Ma comunque, quando la domanda è posta, lo è con grande animazione; e l’eccitazione di cominciare a comporre insieme un rompicapo, che è l’essenza di una storia poliziesca, è stata di rado più vivace e realistica che nelle domande incrociate e nelle risposte tortuose del Capitano Nares e del suo sovraccarico. Qui, tuttavia, la storia poliziesca illustra soltanto il fatto che egli aveva quasi tanti ferri nel fuoco quanti Jim Pinkerton. Illustra il fatto generale che egli tentò moltissimi stili diversi; e tuttavia il suo stile non era diverso.
Se vi furono esperimenti in cui il suo tocco fu meno felice, essi furono, forse abbastanza stranamente, quelli connessi al mondo semplice o semi-selvaggio in cui trovò tanta felicità. The Island Nights’ Entertainments non sono così divertenti quanto le Arabian Nights’ Entertainments, siano esse Nuove o Antiche. La spiegazione si può forse trovare in quella frase casuale con cui egli spazzò i Mari del Sud e spazzò via un buon numero di illusioni imperiali o internazionali, probabilmente senza saperlo; quando disse di tutte quelle regioni: «È un vasto oceano ma un mondo angusto». Egli non trovò davvero nuovi tipi, almeno tra gli uomini bianchi; trovò piuttosto nuovi paesi pieni di tipi vecchi e malridotti, uomini bianchi che non apparivano più tanto cospicuamente bianchi. Va concessa un’eccezione; la storia di The Ebb-Tide ha in sé un gran mordente; anche se non abbiamo proprio la piena soddisfazione di veder presi a calci tutti i personaggi. Comunque, è del tutto certo che qualunque fosse la causa della relativa inefficacia di parte del lavoro fatto a Vailima, essa non fu dovuta al suo essersi esaurito nella scrittura o all’aver sperimentato un qualche indebolimento della potenza. Poiché gli ultimissimi giorni di tutti furono spesi a produrre ciò che era, o sarebbe stato, il suo più potente pezzo d’opera. Ho detto qualcosa altrove, in connessione con i romanzi scozzesi, della sua ultima grande storia, che è purtroppo un grande frammento. In realtà (sono tentato di dire per fortuna) quella storia intitolata a Weir of Hermiston non riguarda principalmente Weir of Hermiston. Almeno non riguarda la prima e più famosa persona di quel nome; e i migliori capitoli del libro ora esistente riguardano le più sensibili e appassionate sfumature del temperamento scozzese; sfumature di passione più ricche di quante ne avesse mai ancora tentato di toccare. Se mai la grigia brughiera si tinse di porpora, lo fece nel momento in cui la fanciulla levò la voce a cantare la canzone degli Elliot. Egli non dimentica mai il suo gesto brusco; e non fu mai tanto arrestante come quando la pagina del suo salterio fu lacerata in due.
Quando Stevenson tese il lungo arco per l’ultima volta, come Robin Hood, aveva due corde al suo arco; ed entrambe si spezzarono; ma una era assai più forte dell’altra. In altre parole, aveva due storie in testa, entrambe delle quali si interruppero di netto; e forse non sorprende che la più debole fosse piuttosto trascurata in favore della più forte. La storia di St. Ives contiene cose eccellenti, come tutto ciò che egli scrisse mai, fino alla più casuale lettera privata. Ma la si può dire deludente, con più esattezza di quanta se ne usi di solito nell’impiego di quella parola. St. Ives non può quasi evitare di essere una sorta di romanzo storico; e tuttavia è un romanzo piuttosto poco storico. Con ciò non intendo che vi possano essere errori su date o particolari; i quali non contano nulla nella narrativa e per cui si fa troppo chiasso persino nella storia. Intendo che è poco storico nel mostrare una strana mancanza di immaginazione storica e del senso dell’opportunità storica. È la storia di un soldato di Napoleone imprigionato sulla Rocca di Edimburgo e in fuga da essa. Ma in verità potremmo immaginare che fosse Stevenson e non St. Ives a essere imprigionato sulla Rocca di Edimburgo. E Stevenson non ne evade. Un tale soggetto richiedeva una sorta di interprete internazionale; ma è in verità il più stranamente insulare di tutti i suoi libri. St. Ives non è un francese; è meno francese e non più francese perché gli sono attribuiti tutta la fatuità e la spavalderia che le zitelle di Edimburgo nel 1813 senza dubbio associavano a un francese. Non è più un soldato francese di quanto Bonaparte fosse Boney. Non ha né il realismo francese né l’idealismo francese. Non guarda all’Inghilterra come vi avrebbe guardato un francese delle guerre rivoluzionarie. Questa storia è semplicemente la Francia veduta dalla Britannia; non è, come dovrebbe essere, la Britannia veduta dalla Francia. A meno che St. Ives non fosse un realista assai accanito (cosa che evidentemente non era, ma un moderato bonapartista) egli si sarebbe quasi certamente concepito come portatore non di mera gloria militare ma della luce della ragione e della filosofia e della giustizia sociale agli stati aristocratici e autocratici. Sarebbe stato impaziente verso l’illogica resistenza alle cose razionali; non semplicemente seccato di non essere rasato o provvisto di uno specchio. Ma St. Ives non è un soldato francese. È un uomo in uniforme francese; ma tale era anche Alan Breck Stewart. E quel benedetto e amato nome può forse richiamarci alla mente che la vanità e l’amore per le belle giubbe si possono occasionalmente trovare persino nelle Isole Britanniche.
But perhaps in this very insularity there is something like a return to earlier things, and a rounding off of his life. In that sense the story of Stevenson, like the story of St. Ives, began on the crag and castle of Edinburgh; and it may be right that it should in a fashion end there, and not really get any further. The most really Stevensonian scenes, in their spirit and spitfire animation, are those which occur first in the prison. It seems almost as if St. Ives was more free before he escaped. The business of the duel with sticks turned into spears, by the addition of scissor-blades, has all the hilarity of his old dance of death. That alone serves as an excellent symbol of that magnifying of the sharp and the metallic; and the way in which steel was always a sort of magnet to his mind. Perhaps he was the first quiet householder to whom it ever occurred to see even scissors as swords.
But the book offers a yet better example of this return to an almost narrowly national romance, like the flight of a homing bird. It occurs almost in the first few lines of the book; yet it might stand in a fashion for a title to all his books. It occurs in connection with the highly characteristic passage, typical of his love of gay pictorial colouring, in which he instantly lights up the prison hill with flames; saying that the yellow convict coats and the red uniforms made up together “a lively picture of hell.” And with reference to this he remarks, as if in passing, that the ancient Pictish or Celtic name of that castle of Edinburgh was “The painted hill,” or, as I have seen it somewhere in another version, “The painted rock.” That might stand as a symbol of many things here less sufficiently suggested; of a Scotsman dressed, or almost disguised, as an artist; of a style that could be at once abrupt and austere, and yet was always vivid with colour; but above all of that combination of colour with a solemn and childish caricature which we have seen in the background of his boyhood; for the landscape of Skelt consisted entirely of painted rocks. Stevenson had a passion of compression. With all his output, he had a strange ambition to be a man of few words. It seems to me that he was always seeking in words for a combination that should be also a compression; for two words that should instantly give birth to the third thing that he really wanted to say. It may be questioned, of him as of any other artist, whether he ever really succeeded in saying it. But we might amuse ourselves with the fancy that such a system of brilliant abbreviations might be more and more rapidly, like signals, uttered and understood; that some day a symbol of two words might stand for a thesis as a cryptic Chinese character stands for a word; and that all men could easily write and read such compact hieroglyphics. If that were so, it were hardly an exaggeration to say that the great mission given by God to Robert Louis Stevenson was to say the words “painted rock” and perish.
Anyhow, it was in the midst of these new experiments that he did perish; fulfilling the very terms of his challenge in Aes Triplex; of the happy man whom death finds flushed with hope and planning vast foundations. And indeed his death may well come also at the end of this chapter of experiment, as the last of his experiments. I was a lad when the news came to England; and I remember that some of his friends doubted at first, because the telegram said that he died making a salad; and they “had never heard of his doing such a thing.” And I remember fancying, with a secret arrogance, that I knew one thing about him better than they did, though I never saw him with these mortal eyes; for it seemed to me that if there were something that Stevenson had never been known to do before, it would be the very thing that he would do. So indeed he died mixing new salads of many sorts; and the image is not inappropriate or irreverent; but only touched with a certain lightness and resilience as of a coiled spring that belonged to him from first to last; and is that quality which Dr. Sarolea has truly called the French spirit of Stevenson. He died swiftly as if struck with an arrow and even over his grave something of a higher frivolity hovers upon wings like a bird; “Glad did I live and gladly die,” has a lilt that no repetition can make quite unreal, light as the lifted spires of Spyglass Hill and translucent as the dancing waves; types of a tenuous but tenacious levity and the legend that has made his graveyard a mountain-peak and his epitaph a song.
Ma forse in questa stessa insularità c’è qualcosa come un ritorno a cose anteriori, e un arrotondamento della sua vita. In quel senso la storia di Stevenson, come la storia di St. Ives, cominciò sulla rupe e sul Castello di Edimburgo; e può essere giusto che essa in un certo modo là finisca, e non vada davvero oltre. Le scene più veramente stevensoniane, nel loro spirito e nella loro animazione da vipera sputafuoco, sono quelle che si svolgono dapprima nella prigione. Sembra quasi che St. Ives fosse più libero prima di evadere. La faccenda del duello con bastoni trasformati in lance, mediante l’aggiunta di lame di forbici, ha tutta l’ilarità della sua vecchia danza macabra. Ciò da solo serve da eccellente simbolo di quell’ingigantimento del tagliente e del metallico; e del modo in cui l’acciaio era sempre una sorta di magnete per la sua mente. Forse egli fu il primo tranquillo padrone di casa a cui sia mai venuto in mente di vedere persino le forbici come spade.
Ma il libro offre un esempio ancora migliore di questo ritorno a un romanzo quasi angustamente nazionale, come il volo di un uccello che torna al nido. Esso ricorre quasi nelle prime righe del libro; eppure potrebbe stare in un certo modo come titolo di tutti i suoi libri. Ricorre in connessione con il passaggio altamente caratteristico, tipico del suo amore per il gaio colorito pittorico, in cui egli illumina all’istante la prigione sul colle di fiamme; dicendo che le gialle casacche dei forzati e le rosse uniformi componevano insieme «un vivace quadro dell’inferno». E a proposito di ciò egli osserva, come di sfuggita, che l’antico nome pittico o celtico di quel Castello di Edimburgo era «Il colle dipinto», o, come l’ho visto da qualche parte in un’altra versione, «La roccia dipinta». Ciò potrebbe stare come simbolo di molte cose qui suggerite in modo non abbastanza sufficiente; di uno scozzese vestito, o quasi travestito, da artista; di uno stile che poteva essere al tempo stesso brusco e austero, e tuttavia era sempre vivido di colore; ma soprattutto di quella combinazione di colore con una caricatura solenne e fanciullesca che abbiamo visto sullo sfondo della sua fanciullezza; poiché il paesaggio di Skelt consisteva interamente di rocce dipinte. Stevenson aveva una passione per la compressione. Con tutta la sua produzione, aveva una strana ambizione di essere un uomo di poche parole. Mi pare che egli cercasse sempre nelle parole una combinazione che fosse anche una compressione; due parole che dessero istantaneamente vita alla terza cosa che egli davvero voleva dire. Ci si può domandare, di lui come di ogni altro artista, se egli sia mai davvero riuscito a dirla. Ma potremmo divertirci con la fantasia che un tale sistema di brillanti abbreviazioni possa essere pronunciato e compreso sempre più rapidamente, come segnali; che un giorno un simbolo di due parole possa stare per una tesi come un criptico carattere cinese sta per una parola; e che tutti gli uomini possano facilmente scrivere e leggere tali compatti geroglifici. Se così fosse, non sarebbe quasi un’esagerazione dire che la grande missione data da Dio a Robert Louis Stevenson fu di dire le parole «roccia dipinta» e perire.
Comunque, fu in mezzo a questi nuovi esperimenti che egli perì; adempiendo ai termini stessi della sua sfida in Aes Triplex; dell’uomo felice che la morte trova acceso di speranza e intento a progettare vaste fondamenta. E in verità la sua morte può ben giungere anche alla fine di questo capitolo di esperimento, come l’ultimo dei suoi esperimenti. Ero un ragazzo quando la notizia giunse in Inghilterra; e ricordo che alcuni dei suoi amici dapprima dubitarono, perché il telegramma diceva che era morto mentre preparava un’insalata; ed essi «non lo avevano mai sentito fare una cosa simile». E ricordo di aver immaginato, con una segreta arroganza, di sapere una cosa su di lui meglio di loro, benché non lo avessi mai visto con questi occhi mortali; poiché mi pareva che se c’era qualcosa che di Stevenson non si era mai saputo che facesse prima, sarebbe stata proprio la cosa che egli avrebbe fatto. E così davvero egli morì mescolando nuove insalate di molte sorte; e l’immagine non è inappropriata né irriverente; ma solo sfiorata da una certa leggerezza ed elasticità come di una molla avvolta che gli appartenne dal principio alla fine; ed è quella qualità che il dottor Sarolea ha giustamente chiamato lo spirito francese di Stevenson. Egli morì rapidamente come colpito da una freccia e persino sopra la sua tomba qualcosa di una più alta frivolezza aleggia su ali come un uccello; «Lieto vissi e lieto muoio» ha una cadenza che nessuna ripetizione può rendere del tutto irreale, lieve come le innalzate guglie di Spyglass Hill e translucida come le danzanti onde; simboli di una tenue ma tenace levità e della leggenda che ha fatto del suo cimitero una vetta di montagna e del suo epitaffio una canzone.
CHAPTER VIII
THE LIMITS OF A CRAFT
THE truest adverse criticism of Stevenson was written by Stevenson. It was also very Stevensonian; for it took the form of saying, about his own fictitious characters, that his temptation was always “to cut the flesh off the bones.” Even here we may note his peculiar cutting or hacking accent; it sounds like some horrid crime of Barbecue or Billy Bones. Indeed that word is sufficiently symbolic of Stevenson. His name might have been Bones, like the seafaring man at the “Admiral Benbow”; nor was this only because his eternal boyhood was as full of skeletons as the school life of Traddles. It was also because of a certain bony structure in his whole taste and turn of mind; something that was angular though slender like his own slim and brittle frame and long Quixotic face. Nevertheless the words were uttered as a condemnation; and they were a just condemnation.
The real defect of Stevenson as a writer, so far from being a sort of silken trifling and superficial or superfluous embroidery, was that he simplified so much that he lost some of the comfortable complexity of real life. He treated everything with an economy of detail and a suppression of irrelevance which had at last something about it stark and unnatural. He is to be commended among authors for sticking to the point; but real people do not stick quite so stubbornly to the point as that. We can here best realise his real error, as well as his real originality, by comparing him with the great Victorian novelists in whose vast shadow he grew up. I shall have occasion to note afterwards that his collision was not with these in the matter of morals or philosophy; for on that side he was looking forward and not back. But there is a strong contrast, and a striking new departure, in the passage from the very best of Thackeray or Trollope to the first sketches, I had almost said scratches, of Stevenson. Those sketches were in a few lines, and only of the necessary lines; it was the whole point that one necessary line was a loss and not a gain. Compared with this, the very best of the old Victorian novels were full of padding. But there was something to be said for the Victorian padding; as there was for the Victorian upholstery. Comfort is not always a contemptible thing, when its other name is hospitality; and Dickens and Thackeray and Trollope had a huge hospitality for their own characters. They were heartily and unaffectedly glad to see them; and especially glad to see them again. Hence their taste for sequels and continuous family histories; and all the positively last appearances of Mr. Pendennis or Mrs. Proudie. And this repetition, this rambling, even this padding, did in a curious confused fashion confirm the reality of the characters. As the padded Victorian furniture did really make people feel at home, so the padded Victorian novels made the reader feel at home with the characters. Now the reader never does feel quite at home with Stevenson’s characters. He cannot get rid of an impression that he knows too little about them; though he knows that he knows all that is important about them. His tragedy is that he knows only what is important. Alan Breck Stewart is not only a very lively but a very loveable character. And yet there is too little of him to love; though he might well draw his claymore upon us, if we made so dangerous an allusion. We are not quite at ease with him, as we are at ease with Pickwick or Pendennis. We know the vital things about him; and they are very vital. But we do not know thousands of things about him; as we do about a man with whom we have lived through a long Early Victorian novel. Stevenson has in fact done exactly what he accused himself of doing; it is he who wields the claymore and he has cut the flesh off the bones.
An illustration of the difference, of course, could be found in the presentation of the externals of a character. The dark vivacity of the face of Alan Breck, the eyes with their “dancing madness, at once engaging and alarming,” springs up before us as clearly as a coloured photograph in the first few words of description; and the same few words have already set strutting the whole brisk little figure in the blue coat and silver buttons and the swagger of the big sword. But the whole operation is so rapid and complete as to have something about it almost unconvincing, like a conjuring trick. It is like seeing something by a single flash of lightning; there is in that illumination a sort of illusion. For in the heart of anything that partakes of magic there is also something of mockery. It is not so that we “get to know” the personal appearance of somebody in Thackeray or Trollope. It is by a multitude of apparently accidental or even unnecessary allusions that we gradually gain the impression that Warrington was dark and moody with a blue shaven chin. The appearance of Lord Steyne is scattered all over Vanity Fair in scraps; his red whiskers in one chapter, his bandy legs in another, his bald head in a third. But this is so like the way in which we really do talk about real people, that in comparison there is something almost unreal about Stevenson’s rapid realism. Perhaps the story-teller ought to remember more often that he is a man telling a story. Perhaps he even forgets that it is supposed to sound like a true story. And after all a man does not say to his wife at dinner, in real life, “A stranger came to my office this morning; he was of an elegant, strenuous figure, with a fine falcon profile, the eyebrows and the corners of the mouth touched with temper; and a general appearance which, though not without distinction, was thrown up in a somewhat theatrical fashion by his dashing cutaway coat and white spats and the magenta coloured orchid in his buttonhole.” Such a soliloquy seldom resounds in the suburban home; and if the stranger’s appearance comes to count for anything, it comes out bit by bit; as in saying, “I wasn’t altogether surprised when he threw the inkstand; for I saw by his eyebrows he had a beast of a temper,” or, “The office-boy was taken out incapacitated with laughter at the first sight of the spats.” In the same way, nobody does actually say, as Mackellar does in the Stevensonian romance, “I was now near enough to see him, a very handsome figure and countenance, swarthy, lean, long, with a quick, alert, black look, as of one who was a fighter and accustomed to command; upon one cheek he had a mole, not unbecoming; a large diamond sparkled on his hand; his clothes, although of the one hue, were of a French and foppish design; his ruffles, which he wore longer than common, of exquisite lace.” Men do not really describe things like that; would that they described anything so well! These facts about the Master of Ballantrae would have come out in a more fragmentary fashion in the real record of a real Mackellar. The diamond would have been mentioned in connection with a rumour of thieves; the lace in connection with the laundry. And that is more or less how the older Victorian novelists did often describe or mention these things; and I think it really does give an impression of reality. Compared with it, the very completeness of Stevenson seems incomplete. But it is also true that the older Victorians could not have achieved this familiar realism except by being a little more formless than Stevenson and lacking his beautiful and piercing sense of the clarity of form. Though he may seem to describe his subject in detail, he describes it to be done with it; and he does not return to the subject. He never says anything needlessly; above all he never says anything twice. Few will venture to say that Thackeray never says anything twice; or that he was incapable in some cases of saying twenty times. Yet in some ways this repetition, though sometimes boring, is somehow convincing; I might almost say comforting. It comes from that comfortable sense of social ease, which was a mark of the England of that brief period of mercantile success; or at least of that part of England which consisted of the merchants who had succeeded. And it exhibited, along with its other virtues and vices, that rather coarse benevolence that was at once a virtue and a vice. “The British merchant’s son shan’t want, sir,” said old Mr. Osborne; and neither should the spiritual child of Mr. William Makepeace Thackeray. Words shall be poured out on him like wine; pages shall be open for him like parks, in which he may wander. He shall be allowed to hang about as long as he likes and the poorest relations of the story shall be asked again and again to dinner. In short, the reader shall “get to know him” and discuss all sorts of little details about him at leisure; they shall not all be disposed of once and for all in one closely packed paragraph. We return to the word hospitality; and the chatter of a hundred friends and relations at an English Christmas party. In comparison the verbal economy of the Scottish romancer suggests something of the old joke against the Scot. He is so very thrifty that his characters are almost thin.
CAPITOLO VIII
I LIMITI DI UN MESTIERE
La critica più veritiera mossa contro Stevenson fu scritta da Stevenson. Ed era anche quanto mai stevensoniana; poiché prese la forma di dire, a proposito dei suoi stessi personaggi immaginari, che la sua tentazione era sempre quella di «staccare la carne dalle ossa». Anche qui possiamo notare il suo peculiare accento tagliente o d’accetta; suona come qualche orrido delitto di Barbecue o di Billy Bones. In verità quella parola è abbastanza simbolica di Stevenson. Avrebbe potuto chiamarsi Bones, come l’uomo di mare all’«Admiral Benbow»; né ciò dipendeva soltanto dal fatto che la sua eterna fanciullezza fosse piena di scheletri quanto la vita scolastica di Traddles. Dipendeva anche da una certa struttura ossuta in tutto il suo gusto e la sua piega mentale; qualcosa di angoloso benché esile, come la sua stessa figura snella e fragile e il suo lungo volto chisciottesco. Nondimeno le parole furono pronunciate come una condanna; ed erano una giusta condanna.
Il vero difetto di Stevenson come scrittore, ben lungi dall’essere una sorta di serica frivolezza e un superficiale o superfluo ricamo, stava nel fatto che egli semplificava tanto da perdere una parte della comoda complessità della vita reale. Trattava ogni cosa con un’economia di particolari e una soppressione dell’irrilevante che alla fine avevano in sé qualcosa di scarno e innaturale. Tra gli autori è da lodare per il suo attenersi al punto; ma le persone reali non si attengono al punto con tanta ostinazione. Possiamo qui cogliere al meglio il suo vero errore, come pure la sua vera originalità, confrontandolo con i grandi romanzieri vittoriani nella cui vasta ombra egli crebbe. Avrò occasione di osservare in seguito che il suo scontro con costoro non riguardava la morale o la filosofia; poiché da quel lato guardava avanti e non indietro. Ma vi è un forte contrasto, e un sorprendente nuovo inizio, nel passaggio dal meglio di Thackeray o di Trollope ai primi schizzi, avrei quasi detto graffi, di Stevenson. Quegli schizzi erano fatti di poche linee, e solo delle linee necessarie; e tutto il punto stava nel fatto che una linea necessaria era una perdita e non un guadagno. Al confronto, il meglio dei vecchi romanzi vittoriani era pieno di imbottitura. Ma qualcosa si poteva dire a favore dell’imbottitura vittoriana; come si poteva dire della tappezzeria vittoriana. La comodità non è sempre una cosa spregevole, quando il suo altro nome è ospitalità; e Dickens e Thackeray e Trollope avevano un’enorme ospitalità per i propri personaggi. Erano cordialmente e senza affettazione lieti di vederli; e specialmente lieti di rivederli. Di qui il loro gusto per i seguiti e le continue storie di famiglia; e tutte le assolutamente ultime apparizioni del signor Pendennis o della signora Proudie. E questa ripetizione, questo divagare, perfino questa imbottitura, confermavano in un modo curiosamente confuso la realtà dei personaggi. Come i mobili vittoriani imbottiti facevano davvero sentire la gente a casa, così i romanzi vittoriani imbottiti facevano sentire il lettore a casa con i personaggi. Ora, il lettore non si sente mai del tutto a casa con i personaggi di Stevenson. Non riesce a liberarsi dell’impressione di saperne troppo poco; benché sappia di sapere tutto ciò che di loro è importante. La sua tragedia è che egli sa soltanto ciò che è importante. Alan Breck Stewart non è solo un personaggio vivacissimo, ma anche assai amabile. Eppure ce n’è troppo poco da amare; per quanto egli potrebbe ben sguainare il suo claymore contro di noi, se facessimo un’allusione tanto pericolosa. Non siamo del tutto a nostro agio con lui, come lo siamo con Pickwick o con Pendennis. Conosciamo di lui le cose vitali; e sono cose molto vitali. Ma non conosciamo di lui migliaia di cose; come le conosciamo di un uomo con il quale abbiamo vissuto attraverso un lungo romanzo del primo periodo vittoriano. Stevenson ha in effetti fatto esattamente ciò di cui accusava se stesso; è lui a impugnare il claymore ed è lui ad aver staccato la carne dalle ossa.
Un’illustrazione della differenza, naturalmente, si potrebbe trovare nella presentazione dei tratti esteriori di un personaggio. La cupa vivacità del volto di Alan Breck, gli occhi con la loro «follia danzante, insieme accattivante e allarmante», balza dinanzi a noi con la chiarezza di una fotografia a colori nelle prime parole della descrizione; e quelle stesse poche parole hanno già messo in posa impettita l’intera vispa figuretta nella giubba blu con i bottoni d’argento e la spavalderia della grande spada. Ma l’intera operazione è tanto rapida e completa da avere in sé qualcosa di quasi poco convincente, come un gioco di prestigio. È come vedere qualcosa a un solo lampo di fulmine; vi è in quella illuminazione una sorta di illusione. Poiché nel cuore di tutto ciò che partecipa della magia vi è anche qualcosa di beffardo. Non è così che «veniamo a conoscere» l’aspetto personale di qualcuno in Thackeray o in Trollope. È attraverso una moltitudine di allusioni apparentemente accidentali o perfino non necessarie che a poco a poco ci facciamo l’impressione che Warrington fosse scuro e cupo, con un mento azzurrognolo e rasato. L’aspetto di Lord Steyne è sparso per tutta La fiera delle vanità a frammenti; i suoi favoriti rossi in un capitolo, le sue gambe storte in un altro, la sua testa calva in un terzo. Ma ciò somiglia tanto al modo in cui davvero parliamo delle persone reali, che al confronto vi è qualcosa di quasi irreale nel rapido realismo di Stevenson. Forse il narratore dovrebbe ricordare più spesso di essere un uomo che racconta una storia. Forse dimentica perfino che essa dovrebbe suonare come una storia vera. E in fondo un uomo non dice alla moglie a cena, nella vita reale: «Uno sconosciuto è venuto oggi nel mio ufficio; era di figura elegante e vigorosa, con un bel profilo di falco, le sopracciglia e gli angoli della bocca segnati dall’ira; e un aspetto generale che, pur non privo di distinzione, era messo in risalto in modo alquanto teatrale dalla sua sgargiante marsina e dalle ghette bianche e dall’orchidea color magenta all’occhiello». Un simile soliloquio di rado risuona nella casa suburbana; e se l’aspetto dello sconosciuto arriva a contare qualcosa, viene fuori a poco a poco; come nel dire: «Non mi sono del tutto sorpreso quando ha scagliato il calamaio; perché avevo visto dalle sopracciglia che aveva un carattere bestiale», oppure: «Il fattorino fu portato via inabilitato dalle risa alla prima vista delle ghette». Allo stesso modo, nessuno dice realmente, come fa Mackellar nel romanzo stevensoniano: «Ero ormai abbastanza vicino da vederlo, una figura e un volto bellissimi, bruno, magro, lungo, con uno sguardo pronto, vigile, nero, come di uno che era un combattente e avvezzo al comando; su una guancia aveva un neo, non sgradevole; un grande diamante scintillava sulla sua mano; i suoi abiti, benché di un’unica tinta, erano di foggia francese e vanesia; le sue trine, che portava più lunghe del solito, di pizzo squisito». Gli uomini non descrivono davvero le cose in tal modo; magari descrivessero qualcosa altrettanto bene! Questi fatti sul Signore di Ballantrae sarebbero venuti fuori in modo più frammentario nel resoconto reale di un vero Mackellar. Il diamante sarebbe stato menzionato in relazione a una voce di ladri; il pizzo in relazione alla lavanderia. Ed è più o meno così che i vecchi romanzieri vittoriani spesso descrivevano o menzionavano queste cose; e credo che ciò dia davvero un’impressione di realtà. Al confronto, la stessa completezza di Stevenson sembra incompleta. Ma è pure vero che i vecchi vittoriani non avrebbero potuto raggiungere questo realismo familiare se non essendo un po’ più informi di Stevenson e privi del suo bello e penetrante senso della chiarezza della forma. Per quanto possa sembrare descrivere il suo soggetto nei particolari, lo descrive per averne finito; e non ritorna sul soggetto. Non dice mai nulla senza necessità; soprattutto non dice mai nulla due volte. Pochi oseranno dire che Thackeray non dice mai nulla due volte; o che fosse incapace, in certi casi, di dirlo venti volte. Eppure per certi versi questa ripetizione, benché talvolta noiosa, è in qualche modo convincente; direi quasi confortante. Nasce da quel comodo senso di agio sociale, che era un tratto distintivo dell’Inghilterra di quel breve periodo di successo mercantile; o almeno di quella parte dell’Inghilterra che era costituita dai mercanti che erano riusciti. Ed esibiva, insieme alle altre sue virtù e vizi, quella benevolenza piuttosto rozza che era a un tempo una virtù e un vizio. «Il figlio del mercante britannico non mancherà di nulla, signore», diceva il vecchio signor Osborne; e nemmeno dovrebbe mancarne il figlio spirituale del signor William Makepeace Thackeray. Le parole gli saranno versate addosso come vino; le pagine gli si apriranno come parchi, nei quali potrà vagare. Gli sarà concesso di gironzolare finché vorrà e i più poveri parenti della storia saranno invitati ancora e ancora a cena. In breve, il lettore «arriverà a conoscerlo» e discuterà con comodo ogni sorta di piccoli particolari su di lui; non saranno tutti sbrigati una volta per tutte in un solo paragrafo fittamente compresso. Torniamo alla parola ospitalità; e al chiacchiericcio di cento amici e parenti a una festa di Natale inglese. Al confronto l’economia verbale del romanziere scozzese richiama qualcosa della vecchia barzelletta contro lo scozzese. È così parsimonioso che i suoi personaggi sono quasi magri.
The loftiest things of this world have their weakness or defect; and with that word “thin” we come to the limit of the glory of Skelt and discover that even the maker of toy theatres is human. Just as Stevenson gained in that school of boyish bravado his admirable sense of symbolic attitude and action, his deep joy in gay colour and gallant carriage, his fine feeling for life as a story and honour as a fight; his response to the challenge of the open door or the drag of the road over the hill—as he gained all these great virtues and values under the symbol of A Penny Plain and Twopence Coloured, so he betrayed also even in his best work something of the technical limitation of such an instrument. And it cannot be more clearly stated than by saying that these flat figures could only be seen from one side. They are aspects or attitudes of men rather than men; though the aspects and attitudes are of great importance considered as symbols, like the flat haloes of saints or the flat blazonry of shields. In that sense only they are not deep enough; and lack another measurement. They are deep enough in the sense in which any beautiful picture is deep; in the sense that anything beautiful always means more than it says; possibly means more than it means to mean. In that sense there can be depth enough even in the shallow scenery of Skelt, when the child’s eye plunges into it. But there is not depth in the sense of a great familiarity with the other side of the scenery or the implied life behind the scenes. When all is said and done, the splendid and inspiring figure of Three-Fingered Jack is a figure and not a statue. You cannot walk round him; and if he has no more than three fingers, he has much less than three dimensions. But the important paradox is that in this the imperfection of the work is actually due to the perfection of the art. It is exactly because Balfour or Ballantrae only do what they are meant to do, and do it so swiftly and well, that we have a vague feeling that we do not know them as we know more loitering, more rambling or more sprawling characters. This is, if you will, a weakness in the author’s work; but it is even more emphatically a weakness in the critics who call him weak. For they accuse him of the very opposite of his real fault; of a sort of self-indulgent delicacy or a luxury of mere words. The evil arises from his very passion of economy and severity; from the fact that he pruned too much, so as almost to kill the plant; from the fact that he went too straight to the point, so that the movement was too quick to be clear, let alone familiar; above all, from the fact that such hardness of technique had about it something almost inhuman. He does sometimes simplify the puppet so much as to show the wire. But even in that relation between wire and wood there is a queer sort of realism.
Stevenson was a man who believed in craftsmanship; that is, in creation. He had not the smallest natural sympathy with all those hazy pagan and pantheistic notions often covered by the name of inspiration. He might not have expressed it in the phrase that man is an image of the Creator; but he did very definitely regard man as a maker of images. There is, and has long been, pouring upon the world, mostly in an immediate sense from the Germans and the Slavs, probably in an ultimate sense from the dark philosophies of Asia, a sort of doctrine of mystical helplessness that takes a hundred forms; and that recognises everything in the world except will. It denies the will of God and it does not believe even in the will of man. It does not believe in one of the most glorious manifestations of the will of man, which is the act of creative choice essential to art. The tendency has been admirably treated in the work of M. Henri Massis in his book on the Defence of the West; and another French writer of the same school, M. Maritain, has remarked on the important part which the word artifex, as the title of an artist, played in mediaeval philosophy as well as mediaeval craftsmanship. As we shall see later, it is the paradox of Stevenson that he would have cared nothing for such mediaeval metaphysics; and yet he carried out in practice precisely what these writers are now maintaining in principle. He was, if ever there was one, an artifex; not a mere mouthpiece of elemental powers or destinies, but a man making something by the force of will and in the light of reason. It was a sort of craftsmanship characteristic of mediaeval work in literature as well as sculpture. It was strikingly present in those mediaeval poets whom Stevenson himself admired; and perhaps admired more than he understood. It is supremely typical of the close and finely carved ballades of Villon. Indeed the name of Stevenson will always, I suppose, be picturesquely associated with the name of Villon; if only because of the fine macabre nocturne of A Lodging for the Night. And yet if there was one thing in the world about which Stevenson was entirely wrong, it was about François Villon. He was even, on that subject, guilty of a very unusual lapse of logic and error of fact. In his essay on Villon, while showing all the enthusiasm of a fine critic for a fine poet, he insists with almost rabid emphasis that the mind of the man was rotten with mere bestial cynicism and base materialism. “His eyes were sealed with their own filth”; and he could see nothing noble or beautiful in heaven or earth. And to this he adds the rather curious remark that even in that France of the fifteenth century Villon might have learnt something better; since a few years before Joan of Arc had lived one of the noblest lives in history. It seems rather hard on poor Villon to attribute to him a contented ignorance of all such people as Joan of Arc; since he actually goes out of his way to mention her in the most famous of his ballades; “The good lady of Lorraine whom the English burnt at Rouen.” But the criticism is far more false according to the spirit than according to the letter. It is founded on a sort of modern fashionable fallacy, compounded of sentimentalism and optimism, to the effect that a man who is rather bitter about this world cannot have any ideals; whereas the bitterness does sometimes come from the intensity of his ideals. Anyhow, there is no doubt, to anybody who can read poetry without prejudice, that Villon had ideals and high ideals; only they happened to be highly Catholic ideals. The devotional poem that he wrote for his old mother, which describes her gazing at the glowing mediaeval window, itself glows with sincerity. And he wrote at least one line that would be sufficient to destroy the accusation; one of those lines that are too simple to be adequately translated, “Offrit à la mort sa très claire jeunesse”; which is something like, “Offered his clear and shining youth to death.” He wrote it of Jesus Christ; but what better thing could be written of Joan of Arc?
Le cose più alte di questo mondo hanno la loro debolezza o difetto; e con quella parola «magro» giungiamo al limite della gloria di Skelt e scopriamo che perfino il fabbricante di teatrini di cartone è umano. Proprio come Stevenson acquistò in quella scuola di fanciullesca spavalderia il suo mirabile senso dell’atteggiamento e dell’azione simbolici, la sua profonda gioia nel colore vivace e nel portamento galante, il suo fine sentire della vita come racconto e dell’onore come battaglia; la sua risposta alla sfida della porta aperta o al richiamo della strada al di là del colle—così come acquistò tutte queste grandi virtù e questi grandi valori sotto il simbolo di A Penny Plain and Twopence Coloured, così tradì anche, perfino nella sua opera migliore, qualcosa del limite tecnico di un simile strumento. E non lo si può dire più chiaramente che affermando che queste figure piatte potevano essere viste da un solo lato. Sono aspetti o atteggiamenti di uomini più che uomini; benché gli aspetti e gli atteggiamenti siano di grande importanza considerati come simboli, come le piatte aureole dei santi o le piatte insegne araldiche degli scudi. In quel senso soltanto non sono abbastanza profondi; e manca loro un’altra dimensione. Sono abbastanza profondi nel senso in cui è profondo qualunque bel quadro; nel senso che qualunque cosa bella significa sempre più di quanto dice; forse significa più di quanto intende significare. In quel senso vi può essere profondità sufficiente perfino nelle superficiali scenografie di Skelt, quando l’occhio del fanciullo vi si tuffa. Ma non vi è profondità nel senso di una grande familiarità con l’altro lato della scenografia o con la vita sottintesa dietro le quinte. Tutto sommato, la splendida e ispiratrice figura di Jack dalle Tre Dita è una figura e non una statua. Non ci si può girare attorno; e se non ha più di tre dita, ha assai meno di tre dimensioni. Ma l’importante paradosso è che in ciò l’imperfezione dell’opera è dovuta in realtà alla perfezione dell’arte. È proprio perché Balfour o Ballantrae fanno solo ciò che sono destinati a fare, e lo fanno con tanta rapidità e tanto bene, che abbiamo la vaga sensazione di non conoscerli come conosciamo personaggi più indugianti, più divaganti o più dilaganti. Questa è, se volete, una debolezza nell’opera dell’autore; ma è ancora più enfaticamente una debolezza nei critici che lo dicono debole. Poiché lo accusano dell’esatto contrario del suo vero difetto; di una sorta di delicatezza autoindulgente o di un lusso di mere parole. Il male sorge dalla sua stessa passione di economia e severità; dal fatto che egli potò troppo, così da quasi uccidere la pianta; dal fatto che andò troppo dritto al punto, sicché il movimento era troppo rapido per essere chiaro, tanto meno familiare; soprattutto dal fatto che una tale durezza di tecnica aveva in sé qualcosa di quasi disumano. A volte semplifica il burattino a tal punto da mostrarne il filo. Ma perfino in quel rapporto tra filo e legno vi è una strana sorta di realismo.
Stevenson era un uomo che credeva nell’artigianato; ossia nella creazione. Non aveva la minima simpatia naturale per tutte quelle nebulose nozioni pagane e panteistiche spesso coperte dal nome di ispirazione. Forse non l’avrebbe espresso nella formula che l’uomo è un’immagine del Creatore; ma considerava molto decisamente l’uomo come un facitore di immagini. Vi è, e da lungo tempo, un riversarsi sul mondo, per lo più in senso immediato dai tedeschi e dagli slavi, probabilmente in senso ultimo dalle oscure filosofie dell’Asia, di una sorta di dottrina dell’impotenza mistica che assume cento forme; e che riconosce ogni cosa al mondo tranne la volontà. Nega la volontà di Dio e non crede nemmeno nella volontà dell’uomo. Non crede in una delle più gloriose manifestazioni della volontà dell’uomo, che è l’atto di scelta creativa essenziale all’arte. La tendenza è stata mirabilmente trattata nell’opera di M. Henri Massis nel suo libro sulla Difesa dell’Occidente; e un altro scrittore francese della stessa scuola, M. Maritain, ha osservato l’importante parte che la parola artifex, come titolo di un artista, ebbe nella filosofia medievale come pure nell’artigianato medievale. Come vedremo più avanti, è il paradosso di Stevenson che egli non si sarebbe curato affatto di una simile metafisica medievale; eppure attuò in pratica precisamente ciò che questi scrittori ora sostengono in linea di principio. Era, se mai ve ne fu uno, un artifex; non un mero portavoce di potenze o destini elementari, ma un uomo che faceva qualcosa per la forza della volontà e alla luce della ragione. Era una sorta di artigianato caratteristico dell’opera medievale nella letteratura come pure nella scultura. Era in modo notevole presente in quei poeti medievali che Stevenson stesso ammirava; e ammirava forse più di quanto comprendesse. È supremamente tipico delle serrate e finemente cesellate ballate di Villon. In verità il nome di Stevenson resterà sempre, suppongo, pittorescamente associato al nome di Villon; non foss’altro per il bel notturno macabro di Un alloggio per la notte. Eppure, se vi era una cosa al mondo intorno alla quale Stevenson aveva del tutto torto, era proprio François Villon. Si rese perfino colpevole, su quel tema, di un ben insolito cedimento di logica e di un errore di fatto. Nel suo saggio su Villon, pur mostrando tutto l’entusiasmo di un fine critico per un fine poeta, insiste con enfasi quasi rabbiosa sul fatto che la mente dell’uomo fosse marcia di puro cinismo bestiale e di basso materialismo. «I suoi occhi erano sigillati dalla loro stessa lordura»; ed egli non riusciva a vedere nulla di nobile o di bello in cielo o in terra. E a ciò aggiunge l’osservazione piuttosto curiosa che perfino in quella Francia del quindicesimo secolo Villon avrebbe potuto imparare qualcosa di meglio; poiché pochi anni prima Giovanna d’Arco aveva vissuto una delle più nobili vite della storia. Sembra piuttosto ingiusto verso il povero Villon attribuirgli una compiaciuta ignoranza di tutte le persone come Giovanna d’Arco; poiché egli fa apposta a menzionarla nella più famosa delle sue ballate: «La buona dama di Lorena che gli inglesi arsero a Rouen». Ma la critica è assai più falsa secondo lo spirito che secondo la lettera. È fondata su una sorta di moderna fallacia alla moda, composta di sentimentalismo e ottimismo, secondo cui un uomo che è piuttosto amaro riguardo a questo mondo non può avere alcun ideale; mentre l’amarezza talvolta proviene proprio dall’intensità dei suoi ideali. Comunque sia, non vi è alcun dubbio, per chiunque sappia leggere poesia senza pregiudizio, che Villon avesse ideali e alti ideali; solo che si dava il caso che fossero ideali altamente cattolici. La poesia devozionale che scrisse per la sua vecchia madre, la quale la descrive mentre contempla la fulgente finestra medievale, risplende essa stessa di sincerità. E scrisse almeno un verso che basterebbe a distruggere l’accusa; uno di quei versi troppo semplici per essere adeguatamente tradotti: «Offrit à la mort sa très claire jeunesse»; che suona all’incirca: «Offrì la sua chiara e splendente giovinezza alla morte». Lo scrisse di Gesù Cristo; ma quale cosa migliore si potrebbe scrivere di Giovanna d’Arco?
I have paused upon this parenthesis; because it foreshadows the general view to which all these rather rambling criticisms ultimately tend; that Stevenson stood for the truth and did not quite understand the truth he stood for. If he had understood it, he would have known that the virile craftsmanship which he was only too eager to admire in Villon, was really connected with certain virtues, which were none the less the virtues of a craftsman because they happened to be the virtues of a thief. Nobody pretends that Villon was a saint; but the socially disreputable externals of his sin do not (for those of his faith) make him a specially or supremely hopeless sinner. If he was a thief, nobody can prove that he was not a penitent thief; and the moral system to which he was attached had raised such a man to its altars under the somewhat paradoxical title of The Good Thief. He was probably the last man to expect in his own person to be that night in paradise; but he was not any further off from heaven merely because he was likely to be hanged high on a gallows. Here we have once more, I fancy, a touch of Calvinism with its finger of fear. There is also that grim and stony optimism attributed to the Old Testament, with its divine favouritism for the fortunate. But though the surface of this rather superficial criticism was alien to that free will which is the creed of craftsmanship, the personal creative spirit underneath the criticism was still that of the genuine Christian craftsman. When Stevenson set about to describe Villon and his gang of ragamuffins, under the snow and gargoyles of mediaeval Paris, he carved his grotesque as carefully as a gargoyle and balanced his story as beautifully as a French ballade. He did not take opium and absinthe and then sit down to wait for nameless cosmic energies to pour into his soul from nowhere. His spirit was a spirit utterly different from the mystical scepticism common in his time. He was responsible; he was deliberate; he was thrifty; he thoroughly deserved the dignified title of a working man.
The point here is that even his chief fault as an artist was typically the fault of a craftsman. He worked too narrowly, perhaps, producing only a thing perfect of its kind out of certain materials, by a certain method and under the limitations of a certain style. The same sort of criticism that feels a French ballade to be too fixed and artificial a form, the same sort of criticism that feels a fourteenth-century Virgin to be too stiff or affected in its posture, does doubtless feel a story of Stevenson to be too meagre in its materials or too strict in its stylistic unity. As I have explained above, I do not mean to suggest that such criticism is entirely unjust or unreasonable. Stevenson’s work has its faults, like other good work; and its chief deficiency does appear in a certain defect of thinness, which is produced by this instinct for hard simplification. But nobody could adequately write a history of nineteenth-century literature without noting this important departure in the direction of a closer and more vigilant verbal choice, as compared either with the cheerful laxity that went before it or the more gloomy laxity that has come since. Whatever else Stevenson stands for, he certainly stands for the idea that literature is not mere sensation or mere self-expression or mere record; but is sensation appealing to certain senses, self-expression in a certain material and record in a certain style. And in this he was certainly asserting the rights of the soul of man, as against various formless forces which some regarded as the soul of nature; the anima mundi of the pantheists. In this way Stevenson represented the same deep, ancient, hieratic and traditional truth that was taught to that generation by William Morris; and neither of them had the least idea what it was.
Mi sono soffermato su questa parentesi, perché essa preannuncia la veduta generale verso cui tendono, in ultima analisi, tutte queste critiche piuttosto divaganti: che Stevenson stava dalla parte della verità senza comprendere del tutto la verità per cui si batteva. Se l’avesse compresa, avrebbe saputo che quel virile mestiere d’artigiano che era fin troppo pronto ad ammirare in Villon era in realtà legato a certe virtù, le quali non erano meno virtù di un artigiano per il fatto di essere le virtù di un ladro. Nessuno pretende che Villon fosse un santo; ma gli esterni socialmente disdicevoli del suo peccato non fanno di lui (per chi condivide la sua fede) un peccatore specialmente o supremamente disperato. Se fu un ladro, nessuno può provare che non fosse un ladro penitente; e il sistema morale a cui era legato aveva innalzato un uomo simile ai suoi altari sotto il titolo alquanto paradossale di Buon Ladrone. Fu probabilmente l’ultimo uomo ad aspettarsi di essere in persona, quella notte, in paradiso; eppure non era più lontano dal cielo per il solo fatto che rischiava di essere impiccato in cima a una forca. Qui abbiamo di nuovo, immagino, un tocco di calvinismo col suo dito di paura. Vi è pure quel truce e petroso ottimismo attribuito al Vecchio Testamento, col suo divino favoritismo per i fortunati. Ma per quanto la superficie di questa critica piuttosto superficiale fosse estranea a quel libero arbitrio che è il credo del mestiere, lo spirito personale e creativo che stava sotto la critica era pur sempre quello del genuino artigiano cristiano. Quando Stevenson si accinse a descrivere Villon e la sua banda di straccioni, sotto la neve e i gargoyle della Parigi medievale, scolpì il suo grottesco con la stessa cura di un doccione e bilanciò la sua storia con la stessa bellezza di una ballata francese. Non prese oppio e assenzio per poi sedersi ad attendere che innominabili energie cosmiche si riversassero nella sua anima dal nulla. Il suo spirito era uno spirito del tutto diverso dallo scetticismo mistico comune al suo tempo. Era responsabile; era deliberato; era parsimonioso; meritava appieno il dignitoso titolo di lavoratore.
Il punto qui è che perfino il suo difetto principale come artista era tipicamente il difetto di un artigiano. Lavorava troppo strettamente, forse, producendo soltanto una cosa perfetta nel suo genere a partire da certi materiali, con un certo metodo e sotto i limiti di un certo stile. La stessa specie di critica che avverte una ballata francese come forma troppo fissa e artificiosa, la stessa specie di critica che avverte una Vergine del Trecento come troppo rigida o affettata nella posa, avverte senza dubbio un racconto di Stevenson come troppo scarno nei suoi materiali o troppo severo nella sua unità stilistica. Come ho spiegato più sopra, non intendo suggerire che tale critica sia del tutto ingiusta o irragionevole. L’opera di Stevenson ha i suoi difetti, come ogni buona opera; e la sua carenza principale appare davvero in un certo vizio di magrezza, prodotto da questo istinto per la dura semplificazione. Ma nessuno potrebbe scrivere adeguatamente una storia della letteratura del diciannovesimo secolo senza notare questa importante svolta nella direzione di una scelta verbale più serrata e più vigile, rispetto tanto alla gioviale trascuratezza che la precedette quanto alla più cupa trascuratezza che è venuta dopo. Qualunque altra cosa Stevenson rappresenti, egli certo rappresenta l’idea che la letteratura non sia mera sensazione né mera espressione di sé né mero documento; ma sia sensazione che si appella a certi sensi, espressione di sé in un certo materiale e documento in un certo stile. E in questo egli affermava certamente i diritti dell’anima dell’uomo, contro le varie forze informi che alcuni consideravano l’anima della natura; l’anima mundi dei panteisti. In tal modo Stevenson rappresentava quella stessa profonda, antica, ieratica e tradizionale verità che a quella generazione veniva insegnata da William Morris; e nessuno dei due aveva la minima idea di cosa fosse.
CHAPTER IX
THE PHILOSOPHY OF GESTURE
SOMETHING has been said, from time to time, in these pages about the justice or injustice of the alleged reaction against Stevenson. Little or nothing will be said about its final success or failure, and that for at least two reasons. First, that such guesses about the fashions of the future are generally quite wide of the mark, because they are founded on a very obvious fallacy. They always imply that public taste will continue to progress in its present direction; which is, in truth, the only thing we know that it will not do. A thing that wanders away in great winding curves may end anywhere; but to turn each curve into a straight line striking out into the void will be wrong in any case. This is obvious even in the tolerably short history of the modern novel. Victorians had a sort of parlour game of comparing Dickens and Thackeray; but they would have been amazed to hear modern young people declaring that Thackeray is much more sentimental than Dickens. They would have been astounded by the revival of Trollope, accompanied by the comparative neglect of Thackeray. For to the more earnest Victorians of that world, Trollope was another name for triviality. They would have felt as we should feel if we were told that Charles Garvice would outlive John Galsworthy. For a great genius may appear in almost any disguise; even in the disguise of a successful novelist. The second reason for which I wave away from me the prophet’s mantle, and decline to decide the question of the future, is that I do not think it very much matters. There are fine writers of the past as well as the present, who are read only by few; and I do not admit that the many know all about them, merely because they never knew them. I do not see why we should so blindly distrust popularity and so blindly trust posterity. But some of the conditions of survival may perhaps be generally considered.
The fame of Stevenson in the future will stand or fall with the strength or weakness of a particular argument. It was perhaps most compactly expressed by a critic who accused him of “externality.” What he called the fault of externality I should be inclined to ascribe to the fallacy of internalism. Perhaps it will be recognised better if I call it the fallacy of “psychology.” It is the notion that a serious novelist should confine himself to the inside of the human skull. Now Stevenson’s fiction is full of pantomime; in the strict sense of animated action or gesture. And it really seems as if the critics, by a sort of pun or perversion of meaning, associated it with a children’s pantomime; though Stevenson would have been the last to object even to that. Anyhow, this idea that intellectual fiction should concern the solitary and uncommunicative intellect is a very obvious fallacy indeed. It is sound enough to say that we can see below the surface; but not that we cannot see what is on the surface. Least of all is it sensible to say that we cannot believe in it because it has come to the surface; though it were as enormous as a spouting whale. Indeed the tone rather recalls that of some sceptics who implied that sailors ought not to think they saw the Great Sea Serpent, because it was a quarter of a mile long when they saw it. So we may well urge that psychological things are not less psychological because they come to the surface in pantomime. The argument amounts to saying that a really delicate piece of clockwork only exists when the clock stops. And indeed I suppose these critics would consider the action of a clock, in whirling its hands about, a very offensive piece of foreign gesticulation. It is like saying that a locomotive steam-engine is only a steam-engine when it is standing still; or that a building blowing up with a loud bang offers a final proof that it was not a powder-magazine.
Indeed in this respect the psychological critics are rather backward even in psychology. It generally distresses such people more to be behind the times than to be against the truth; and in this case it seems possible that they are both. The objection to their fallacy of internalism is that it is nonsense to think only of thoughts and not of words or deeds, since words are only spoken thoughts and deeds are only acted words. They are in fact the most dominant words and the most triumphant thoughts; the thoughts that emerge. But, according to “the latest modern psychology” (that infallible and immutable authority), it is even more of a mistake to treat the surface so superficially. Acts are not only the swiftest thoughts; they are even too swift to be called thoughts. They come from something more fundamental than common or conscious thinking. It is exactly our subconsciousness that appears in acts more than in words, or even thoughts. It is precisely our subconsciousness that bites its nails or twirls its moustaches, that kicks its heels or grinds its teeth. According to some, it is even our subconsciousness (that jolly companion) that occasionally cuts our mother’s throat or picks our father’s pocket. I do not take the latest modern psychology quite so seriously; but what element of truth there is in it is all against the tone of the latest Stevensonian, or Anti-Stevensonian, criticism. The test of fine fiction, by this or any other standard, is not whether it follows out threads of thought in silence; not whether it is subjective rather than objective or avoids any violent issue in events. It is simply whether it is right; whether the psychology is right and whether the act represents it rightly. In psychology, as in any other science, one cannot be more than right. And the most embittered critic will find it very difficult to show that Stevenson was very often wrong. What the embittered critic can show, and what will make him still more embittered, is that Stevenson expressed everything by some dramatic act. And, according to such critics, anything that is dramatic is melodramatic. The boyish brooding and smarting sentimental self-importance of David Balfour during his one quarrel with Alan Breck Stewart are described so delicately and exactly as to be worthy of George Meredith, who was so excellent with boys; they might easily be the broodings of Evan Harrington or Harry Richmond. Only in Stevenson’s story they end (alas!) in the crossing of blades and Alan tossing away his sword; and that, of course, is dreadfully melodramatic. One cannot be psychological inside a sword-belt; and cerebral processes must not take place under a three-cornered hat. The interlude of Henry Durie’s crippled and almost half-witted happiness, when the shadow of his brother is withdrawn for a season and his child is growing in the sun, is as pathetic and as true as any lucid interval (if such there be) in the suburban depression of the school of Gissing. Only when the fool’s paradise is lost, by a random word about the possible perversion of the child, it is not to be denied that Henry Durie falls to the earth like a stone. And the thoughtful critic explains that such a man cannot have had any really internal feelings; because his internal feelings were strong enough to knock him down. The dark, drudging and almost automatic altruism of poor Herrick, amid all his tangle of treasons in The Ebb-Tide, is as sad and true as the most miserable modern could wish it to be. But then Herrick jumps into the sea with a great splash; though he ought to endear himself to the modern critic by not actually doing anything after all, even for the fruitful cult of suicide. The girl Kirstie’s “gabble” of recollection and daydream and imaginary lovers’ quarrels, as she goes home from church, is quite as true to the actual inner workings of the young sentimental mind as any feminine fine shade in Henry James. But then the critic cannot be expected to forgive her for giving two or three little skips as she walks along the road. No lady in Henry James ever skipped. It is because in each of these cases some outward motion makes memorable the inward mood that these critics feel that it cannot really be so very inward. It is to be noted that they do not commit themselves to a positive negation; they do not affirm that the characters in question would not feel as they are described as feeling; they do not even say that they would not act as they are described as acting; that David would not fight or Durie fall or Kirstie leap upon the road. They simply have a refined and delicate feeling that psychological fiction ought to deal only, or mostly, with unspoken words or uncompleted thoughts. That is a very interesting point of view; and it is just as well to have it clearly stated and understood. If Stevenson had only served as an excuse for expounding this interesting critical thesis, they might so far thank him and even constrain themselves to be reasonably polite to him. Anyhow, that seems to be their principle; and I have paused long enough upon it to show that I do not wish to ignore it. Only I would respectfully submit that their quarrel is not with Stevenson; certainly their quarrel is not merely with Stevenson. It is with Homer and the bending of the bow; it is with Hamlet and the leap into the grave; it is with Francesca dropping the book or Quixote driving at the windmill; it is with Henry putting on his crown or Anthony putting off his helmet; it is with Roland in Roncesvaux, blowing the horn and breaking the sword and holding up his glove to God. It is in all those epic energies which gave to the last story and its sequel the noble title of Songs of Action—Chansons de Geste.
CAPITOLO IX
LA FILOSOFIA DEL GESTO
Qualcosa si è detto, di tempo in tempo, in queste pagine, sulla giustizia o ingiustizia della presunta reazione contro Stevenson. Poco o nulla si dirà sul suo definitivo successo o fallimento, e ciò per almeno due ragioni. Primo, che simili congetture sulle mode del futuro sbagliano generalmente di molto il bersaglio, perché sono fondate su una fallacia assai evidente. Esse implicano sempre che il gusto del pubblico continuerà a progredire nella sua direzione presente; il che è, in verità, l’unica cosa che sappiamo non farà. Una cosa che si allontana errando in grandi curve sinuose può finire dovunque; ma trasformare ogni curva in una linea retta lanciata nel vuoto sarà sbagliato in ogni caso. Ciò è evidente perfino nella tollerabilmente breve storia del romanzo moderno. I vittoriani avevano una sorta di gioco di società nel confrontare Dickens e Thackeray; ma sarebbero rimasti stupiti di udire i giovani moderni dichiarare che Thackeray è molto più sentimentale di Dickens. Sarebbero rimasti sbalorditi dalla rinascita di Trollope, accompagnata dal comparativo trascurare di Thackeray. Poiché per i più seri vittoriani di quel mondo, Trollope era un altro nome per la banalità. Avrebbero provato quel che noi proveremmo se ci si dicesse che Charles Garvice sopravvivrà a John Galsworthy. Poiché un grande genio può apparire in quasi ogni travestimento; perfino nel travestimento di un romanziere di successo. La seconda ragione per cui allontano da me il manto del profeta, e mi rifiuto di decidere la questione del futuro, è che non credo che importi molto. Vi sono fini scrittori del passato come pure del presente, che sono letti solo da pochi; e non ammetto che i molti sappiano tutto di loro, per il solo fatto di non averli mai conosciuti. Non vedo perché dovremmo tanto ciecamente diffidare della popolarità e tanto ciecamente confidare nella posterità. Ma alcune delle condizioni della sopravvivenza possono forse essere considerate in generale.
La fama di Stevenson nel futuro reggerà o cadrà con la forza o la debolezza di un argomento particolare. Fu forse espresso nel modo più compatto da un critico che lo accusò di «esteriorità». Ciò che egli chiamava il difetto dell’esteriorità io sarei incline ad ascriverlo alla fallacia dell’interiorismo. Forse sarà riconosciuto meglio se lo chiamo la fallacia della «psicologia». È l’idea che un romanziere serio dovrebbe confinarsi all’interno del cranio umano. Ora, la narrativa di Stevenson è piena di pantomima; nel senso stretto di azione o gesto animati. E sembra davvero che i critici, per una sorta di bisticcio o di perversione di significato, l’abbiano associata a una pantomima per bambini; benché Stevenson sarebbe stato l’ultimo a obiettare anche a questo. Comunque sia, questa idea che la narrativa intellettuale debba riguardare l’intelletto solitario e incomunicabile è davvero una fallacia assai evidente. È abbastanza sensato dire che possiamo vedere al di sotto della superficie; ma non che non possiamo vedere ciò che è sulla superficie. Meno che mai è ragionevole dire che non possiamo crederci perché è venuto in superficie; foss’anche enorme come una balena che soffia. In verità il tono richiama piuttosto quello di certi scettici che insinuavano che i marinai non dovrebbero credere di aver visto il Grande Serpente di Mare, perché era lungo un quarto di miglio quando lo videro. Così possiamo ben sostenere che le cose psicologiche non sono meno psicologiche per il fatto di venire in superficie nella pantomima. L’argomento equivale a dire che un meccanismo a orologeria davvero delicato esiste solo quando l’orologio si ferma. E in verità suppongo che questi critici considererebbero l’azione di un orologio, nel far roteare le sue lancette, un pezzo assai offensivo di gesticolazione straniera. È come dire che una locomotiva a vapore è una macchina a vapore solo quando è ferma; o che un edificio che salta in aria con un forte boato offre la prova definitiva che non era una polveriera.
In verità, sotto questo aspetto, i critici psicologici sono piuttosto arretrati perfino in psicologia. Simili persone si affliggono in genere più di essere indietro rispetto ai tempi che di essere contro la verità; e in questo caso sembra possibile che siano entrambe le cose. L’obiezione alla loro fallacia dell’interiorismo è che è un’assurdità pensare solo ai pensieri e non alle parole o alle azioni, poiché le parole non sono che pensieri detti e le azioni non sono che parole agite. Esse sono anzi le parole più dominanti e i pensieri più trionfanti; i pensieri che emergono. Ma, secondo «l’ultimissima psicologia moderna» (quell’autorità infallibile e immutabile), è un errore ancora maggiore trattare la superficie tanto superficialmente. Gli atti non sono soltanto i più rapidi dei pensieri; sono perfino troppo rapidi per essere chiamati pensieri. Provengono da qualcosa di più fondamentale del pensare comune o cosciente. È proprio il nostro subcosciente a manifestarsi negli atti più che nelle parole, o perfino nei pensieri. È precisamente il nostro subcosciente a mordersi le unghie o ad attorcigliarsi i baffi, a battere i tacchi o a digrignare i denti. Secondo alcuni, è perfino il nostro subcosciente (quel gaio compagno) a tagliare di quando in quando la gola a nostra madre o a sfilare il portafogli a nostro padre. Non prendo l’ultimissima psicologia moderna tanto sul serio; ma quel poco di verità che vi è in essa è tutto contro il tono dell’ultima critica stevensoniana, o anti-stevensoniana. La prova della buona narrativa, secondo questo o qualsiasi altro criterio, non sta nel seguire fino in fondo fili di pensiero in silenzio; non nel se sia soggettiva piuttosto che oggettiva o eviti ogni violento sbocco negli eventi. Sta semplicemente nel se sia giusta; se la psicologia sia giusta e se l’atto la rappresenti giustamente. In psicologia, come in ogni altra scienza, non si può essere più che nel giusto. E il critico più inasprito troverà assai difficile mostrare che Stevenson avesse spesso torto. Ciò che il critico inasprito può mostrare, e ciò che lo renderà ancora più inasprito, è che Stevenson esprimeva ogni cosa mediante qualche atto drammatico. E, secondo tali critici, tutto ciò che è drammatico è melodrammatico. Il fanciullesco rimuginare e la bruciante e sentimentale autoimportanza di David Balfour durante il suo unico litigio con Alan Breck Stewart sono descritti con tanta delicatezza ed esattezza da essere degni di George Meredith, che era così eccellente con i ragazzi; potrebbero facilmente essere i rimuginii di Evan Harrington o di Harry Richmond. Solo che nella storia di Stevenson essi finiscono (ahimè!) nell’incrociarsi delle lame e con Alan che getta via la sua spada; e ciò, naturalmente, è spaventosamente melodrammatico. Non si può essere psicologici dentro un cinturone da spada; e i processi cerebrali non devono aver luogo sotto un cappello a tre punte. L’interludio della felicità storpiata e quasi mezza scema di Henry Durie, quando l’ombra di suo fratello è ritratta per una stagione e il suo figlio cresce al sole, è patetico e vero quanto ogni intervallo lucido (se mai ve n’è) nella depressione suburbana della scuola di Gissing. Solo che, quando il paradiso degli illusi è perduto, per una parola casuale sulla possibile perversione del figlio, non si può negare che Henry Durie cada a terra come una pietra. E il critico riflessivo spiega che un tale uomo non può aver avuto sentimenti davvero interiori; perché i suoi sentimenti interiori erano abbastanza forti da atterrarlo. Il cupo, faticoso e quasi automatico altruismo del povero Herrick, in mezzo a tutto il suo groviglio di tradimenti in La bassa marea, è triste e vero quanto il più miserabile dei moderni potrebbe desiderarlo. Ma poi Herrick si getta in mare con un gran tonfo; benché dovrebbe rendersi caro al critico moderno col non fare in fondo nulla, nemmeno per il fecondo culto del suicidio. Il «cicaleccio» della fanciulla Kirstie, fatto di ricordi e fantasticherie e immaginari litigi d’innamorati, mentre torna a casa dalla chiesa, è altrettanto fedele agli effettivi meccanismi interiori della giovane mente sentimentale quanto ogni fine sfumatura femminile in Henry James. Ma poi non ci si può aspettare che il critico le perdoni di dare due o tre saltelli mentre cammina lungo la strada. Nessuna dama in Henry James saltellò mai. È perché in ciascuno di questi casi qualche moto esteriore rende memorabile lo stato d’animo interiore che questi critici sentono che esso non può essere davvero tanto interiore. È da notare che essi non si impegnano in una negazione positiva; non affermano che i personaggi in questione non proverebbero ciò che sono descritti provare; non dicono nemmeno che non agirebbero come sono descritti agire; che David non combatterebbe o che Durie non cadrebbe o che Kirstie non balzerebbe sulla strada. Hanno semplicemente il raffinato e delicato sentimento che la narrativa psicologica dovrebbe trattare solo, o per lo più, di parole non dette o di pensieri non compiuti. È un punto di vista assai interessante; ed è bene averlo chiaramente enunciato e compreso. Se Stevenson fosse servito soltanto come pretesto per esporre questa interessante tesi critica, essi potrebbero fin qui ringraziarlo e perfino costringersi a essere ragionevolmente cortesi con lui. Comunque sia, questo sembra il loro principio; e mi sono soffermato abbastanza a lungo su di esso per mostrare che non desidero ignorarlo. Solo, sottoporrei rispettosamente che il loro contendere non è con Stevenson; certamente il loro contendere non è soltanto con Stevenson. È con Omero e la tensione dell’arco; è con Amleto e il balzo nella fossa; è con Francesca che lascia cadere il libro o con Chisciotte che si lancia contro il mulino a vento; è con Enrico che si pone la corona o con Antonio che depone l’elmo; è con Orlando a Roncisvalle, che suona il corno e spezza la spada e leva il guanto verso Dio. È in tutte quelle epiche energie che diedero all’ultima storia e al suo seguito il nobile titolo di Canti d’Azione—Chansons de Geste.
Among the many unreasonable objections to the Stevensonian romance, I admit that there is a reasonable objection that may be advanced here. It may be said that he was guilty of externality in this sense; that he sometimes began with externals, in so far as he saw in some scene or other setting the suggestion or rather the provocation of romance. “Certain dank gardens cry aloud for a murder,” he very truly observed; and he was often moved to commit the murder in a vicarious literary manner. He wished sometimes, he said, to fit every such place with its appropriate legend. Superficially there is sense in this objection; but in a deeper and more sympathetic sense I do not admit that it contradicts what I have said of the deep spring of gesture or the deliberation of craftsmanship. It merely means that there was from the first, in any such work of art, the unity of mood that there always ought to be. It means that he had decided what sort of novel he would write, before he had decided what novel he would write; and this is right and inevitable. The dank garden cannot cry aloud immediately, in so many words, “In this place the sinister tutor with one eye larger than the other buried the old sailor’s cutlass with which he had killed the horribly but secretly wicked admiral who was really his brother.” No dank garden ever expressed itself with such accuracy when crying aloud to anybody; but it is none the less true that the exact shade of gloom and the exact outline of disorder may have suggested, not merely a vulgar murder, but a murder having certain special qualities of the unnatural or the strange. This does not prove that they were not deep feelings which thus rose up at the sight of the strange landscape and groped to find their appropriate images of doom. It only proves that the origin of the story was of the same sort as the origin of a poem. We can call Stevenson a prose poet, if we like; but we cannot call him a superficial writer, unless all poets are superficial.
I shall have occasion to remark elsewhere that there is one strictly technical sense in which Stevenson’s treatment can be called a thin or a flat treatment. It is a sense in which we might say that a certain style in decorative ironwork is light and slender, in which we might say that Whistler’s way of laying on monochrome washes was merely flat. It has its defects, even considered as a technical treatment; there is an artistic aversion to filigree; and many have maintained that Whistler’s washes were too washy. But it is essential that this criticism should not be confused with the suggestion I have just answered; the suggestion that the spiritual significance of the pattern or the picture is shallow and not deep. That is another matter and has nothing whatever to do with the question of our favourite form; and though Stevenson’s favourite form was sometimes picturesque to excess, there was nothing platitudinous or merely sentimental about the moral of the picture. On the contrary, he was very much drawn towards difficult and perplexing moral themes and liked to put puzzles to himself in the possible relations of human souls. Only, as we have seen, he liked to make the human soul come to a conclusion in some fashion and announce its conclusion in some way. Hence all the abrupt signals and bodily departures which the sensitive so much lament; hence the coin hurled through the windowpane at Durrisdeer; the banjo flung into the fire on Midway Island; the knife sticking in the mast or the diamond tossed into the river. In short, Stevenson’s stories were often problem stories, in the style of what were called problem plays. But by one crime he disqualified himself for the company of the really realistic and earnest authors of problem plays or problem novels. He had a weakness for solving the problem.
There is in this merit the other side of a fault; and a fault of which he has often been accused. He was called self-conscious; and in his work he was perhaps a little too self-conscious, as compared with some writers whose fundamental and even almost forgotten impulses were allowed to flow forth more freely, and perhaps more naturally. But these things are a matter of degree and balance; and some may hold that it is the opposite type that has now become unbalanced. Walking the world to-day, I am not sure that I do not prefer the self-conscious to the subconscious. Stevenson felt a responsibility in art which was like his vivid and almost morbid sense of responsibility in conduct. His problems of conduct were indeed sometimes a little anarchical; and his ethical decision in them perhaps a little amateurish. Like Ibsen and Bernard Shaw and many men of his time, he had not quite discovered the pressing practical necessity of having a general rule, in the absence of which the world becomes a welter of exceptions. But he was intensely interested in the right moral solution whatever it might be; even if it seemed to involve the inversion of a moral rule. And this sense of social responsibility was thoroughly sincere: even when the special pleading had to be, perhaps, a little too individual to be social. It was natural for a novelist, perhaps, to feel most fiercely and keenly the particular personal case. Anyhow, I think he generally did so; as did Loudon Dodd in The Wrecker, when he balanced opium and Jim. He was certainly vastly intrigued by that sort of problem. Henley called him a Catechist; but he should have said Casuist. He professed to have a defective sympathy with Catholicism; and he was still probably provincial enough to have had a horror of Jesuitry; but as a matter of fact he was more casuistical than any Jesuit. He was much less clear about the original universal dogmas of a catechism, whether it were the Shorter Catechism or the Penny Catechism. But he was much more closely concerned about the special occasion when the general sense of those doctrines seemed challenged by a special necessity. We may say, therefore, that, in life and in literature, he was essentially a conscientious person. And a conscientious person is presumably a conscious person; and sometimes perhaps a self-conscious person. He committed a great many crimes vicariously in his books; and delivered batches of corpses to his publishers in the style required of all writers of sensational romance. But his deaths had the delicacy and fine distinction of murder; and nothing of the vulgar communism of massacre. In the one episode in his stories that might be called a massacre, the butchery of the old crew of The Flying Scud by Wicks and his men, the whole horror of the incident is in its intense individualism. It is in the fact that the men have to be slain one by one; in the fact that the massacre is not a massacre but a series of murders. He went so far, in his correspondence, as to say cheerfully of Henry Durie’s bloody trap for his brother that it is “a perfectly cold-blooded murder of which I expect and intend the reader to approve.” But even here it will be noted that he intended something, and said so; seeming almost as cold-blooded as the murderer. But at least he did not commit murders without knowing it, in the manner of our more subconscious criminals and maniacs in modern fiction. He was not in sympathy with those more recent heroes who seem to seduce and betray and even stab in a sort of prolonged fit of absence of mind. There had not been established, for him or for his characters, that convenient back-stairs of unconscious mind or automatic motion, by which something that is not ourselves (and makes for unrighteousness) may escape from the cellar into the street. It was perhaps a defect; but in the whole of his life and work there is a complete absence of absence of mind.
And with this matter of responsibility, and the reliance on the will in moral matters, we come to that larger question to be considered in the last chapter. It will be in a sense a summary of what has already been said; and yet it will be necessary to say it somewhat more plainly, and in relation to large matters about which many modern people are rather too confused or too timid to talk plain. For the moment it need only be said that the importance of Stevenson largely consists in his relation with the tendency of his age. That tendency was towards a certain mysticism of materialism, of which the most dogmatic expression is what is called monism; but which can be more lightly expressed in a hundred forms, as that all life is one, or that everything is heredity and environment, or that the impersonal is higher than the personal, or that men live by the herd instinct or the soul of the hive. Our fathers called the general atmosphere fatalism; but it has now any number of more idealistic names. Stevenson felt all this, without exactly defining it; he felt it in the realism of nineteenth-century literature, in the pessimism of contemporary poetry, in the timidity of hygienic precaution, in the smugness of middle-class uniformity. And while he was entirely of that time and society, while he read all the realists, knew all the artists, doubted with the doubters and even denied with the deniers, he had that within him which could not but break out in a sort of passionate protest for more personal and poetical things. He flung out his arms with a wide and blind gesture, as one who would find wings at the moment when the world sank beneath him.
Fra le molte irragionevoli obiezioni al romanzo stevensoniano, ammetto che ve n’è una ragionevole che può essere qui avanzata. Si può dire che egli fu colpevole di esteriorità in questo senso; che talvolta cominciava dagli esteriori, in quanto vedeva in qualche scena o ambientazione il suggerimento, o piuttosto la provocazione, del romanzo. «Certi giardini umidi gridano a gran voce chiedendo un assassinio», osservò con molta verità; ed era spesso mosso a commettere l’assassinio in una maniera letteraria vicaria. Desiderava talvolta, diceva, di fornire ogni luogo simile della sua appropriata leggenda. Superficialmente vi è senso in questa obiezione; ma in un senso più profondo e più comprensivo non ammetto che essa contraddica quanto ho detto della profonda sorgente del gesto o della deliberazione dell’artigianato. Significa soltanto che vi era fin dal principio, in ogni simile opera d’arte, l’unità di tono che vi dovrebbe sempre essere. Significa che egli aveva deciso quale sorta di romanzo avrebbe scritto, prima di aver deciso quale romanzo avrebbe scritto; e ciò è giusto e inevitabile. Il giardino umido non può gridare a gran voce immediatamente, con tante parole: «In questo luogo il sinistro precettore con un occhio più grande dell’altro seppellì la sciabola del vecchio marinaio con la quale aveva ucciso l’orribilmente ma segretamente malvagio ammiraglio che era in realtà suo fratello». Nessun giardino umido si espresse mai con tale accuratezza gridando a gran voce a chicchessia; ma non è per questo meno vero che l’esatta sfumatura di tetraggine e l’esatto profilo del disordine possono aver suggerito, non un volgare assassinio soltanto, ma un assassinio dotato di certe qualità speciali dell’innaturale o dello strano. Ciò non prova che non fossero sentimenti profondi quelli che così si levavano alla vista dello strano paesaggio e brancolavano per trovare le loro appropriate immagini di rovina. Prova soltanto che l’origine della storia era della stessa specie dell’origine di una poesia. Possiamo chiamare Stevenson un poeta in prosa, se vogliamo; ma non possiamo chiamarlo uno scrittore superficiale, a meno che tutti i poeti non siano superficiali.
Avrò occasione di osservare altrove che vi è un senso strettamente tecnico nel quale il trattamento di Stevenson può essere chiamato un trattamento sottile o piatto. È un senso nel quale potremmo dire che un certo stile nel ferro battuto decorativo è leggero ed esile, nel quale potremmo dire che il modo di Whistler di stendere velature monocrome era semplicemente piatto. Ha i suoi difetti, anche considerato come trattamento tecnico; vi è un’avversione artistica alla filigrana; e molti hanno sostenuto che le velature di Whistler fossero troppo acquose. Ma è essenziale che questa critica non sia confusa con il suggerimento cui ho appena risposto; il suggerimento che il significato spirituale del disegno o del quadro sia superficiale e non profondo. Quella è un’altra faccenda e non ha proprio nulla a che vedere con la questione della nostra forma prediletta; e benché la forma prediletta di Stevenson fosse talvolta pittoresca fino all’eccesso, non vi era nulla di banale o di meramente sentimentale nella morale del quadro. Al contrario, egli era assai attratto da temi morali difficili e sconcertanti e amava porsi enigmi nelle possibili relazioni delle anime umane. Solo che, come abbiamo visto, gli piaceva far giungere l’anima umana a una conclusione in qualche modo e annunciare la sua conclusione in qualche maniera. Di qui tutti i bruschi segnali e le partenze corporee che i sensibili tanto lamentano; di qui la moneta scagliata attraverso il vetro della finestra a Durrisdeer; il banjo gettato nel fuoco sull’isola di Midway; il coltello conficcato nell’albero maestro o il diamante lanciato nel fiume. In breve, le storie di Stevenson erano spesso storie a tesi, nello stile di ciò che si chiamavano drammi a tesi. Ma con un solo delitto egli si squalificò dalla compagnia dei davvero realistici e seri autori di drammi a tesi o di romanzi a tesi. Aveva una debolezza per la soluzione del problema.
Vi è in questo merito l’altra faccia di un difetto; e di un difetto del quale è stato spesso accusato. Fu detto autocosciente; e nella sua opera era forse un po’ troppo autocosciente, in confronto ad alcuni scrittori i cui impulsi fondamentali e perfino quasi dimenticati erano lasciati sgorgare più liberamente, e forse più naturalmente. Ma queste cose sono una questione di grado e di equilibrio; e alcuni potranno sostenere che è il tipo opposto a essere ora divenuto squilibrato. Camminando per il mondo d’oggi, non sono sicuro di non preferire l’autocosciente al subcosciente. Stevenson sentiva una responsabilità nell’arte che era simile al suo vivido e quasi morboso senso di responsabilità nella condotta. I suoi problemi di condotta erano invero talvolta un po’ anarchici; e la sua decisione etica in essi forse un po’ dilettantesca. Come Ibsen e Bernard Shaw e molti uomini del suo tempo, egli non aveva del tutto scoperto la pressante necessità pratica di avere una regola generale, in mancanza della quale il mondo diventa un caos di eccezioni. Ma era intensamente interessato alla giusta soluzione morale, quale che fosse; anche se sembrava comportare l’inversione di una regola morale. E questo senso di responsabilità sociale era pienamente sincero: perfino quando la difesa d’ufficio doveva essere, forse, un po’ troppo individuale per essere sociale. Era naturale per un romanziere, forse, sentire nel modo più fiero e più acuto il caso personale particolare. Comunque sia, credo che generalmente facesse così; come faceva Loudon Dodd in Il naufragatore, quando bilanciava l’oppio e Jim. Era certamente vastamente incuriosito da quella sorta di problema. Henley lo chiamò un Catechista; ma avrebbe dovuto dire un Casuista. Professava di avere una difettosa simpatia per il cattolicesimo; ed era ancora probabilmente abbastanza provinciale da nutrire orrore per il gesuitismo; ma di fatto era più casuistico di qualsiasi gesuita. Era assai meno chiaro riguardo agli originari dogmi universali di un catechismo, fosse esso lo Shorter Catechism o il Penny Catechism. Ma era assai più da vicino preoccupato dell’occasione speciale in cui il senso generale di quelle dottrine sembrava messo alla prova da una necessità speciale. Possiamo dire, dunque, che, nella vita e nella letteratura, egli era essenzialmente una persona coscienziosa. E una persona coscienziosa è presumibilmente una persona cosciente; e talvolta forse una persona autocosciente. Egli commise moltissimi delitti in modo vicario nei suoi libri; e consegnò partite di cadaveri ai suoi editori nello stile richiesto a tutti gli scrittori di romanzo sensazionale. Ma le sue morti avevano la delicatezza e la fine distinzione dell’omicidio; e nulla del volgare comunismo del massacro. Nell’unico episodio delle sue storie che potrebbe chiamarsi un massacro, la macellazione della vecchia ciurma del Flying Scud da parte di Wicks e dei suoi uomini, tutto l’orrore dell’incidente sta nel suo intenso individualismo. Sta nel fatto che gli uomini devono essere uccisi a uno a uno; nel fatto che il massacro non è un massacro ma una serie di omicidi. Giunse perfino, nella sua corrispondenza, a dire allegramente della sanguinosa trappola di Henry Durie per suo fratello che essa è «un omicidio perfettamente a sangue freddo che mi aspetto e intendo che il lettore approvi». Ma anche qui si noterà che egli intendeva qualcosa, e lo diceva; sembrando quasi a sangue freddo quanto l’assassino. Ma almeno non commetteva omicidi senza saperlo, alla maniera dei nostri più subcoscienti criminali e maniaci nella narrativa moderna. Non simpatizzava con quei più recenti eroi che sembrano sedurre e tradire e perfino pugnalare in una sorta di prolungato accesso di distrazione. Non era stata istituita, per lui o per i suoi personaggi, quella comoda scala di servizio della mente inconscia o del moto automatico, per la quale qualcosa che non è noi stessi (e che tende all’iniquità) può fuggire dalla cantina nella strada. Era forse un difetto; ma in tutta la sua vita e la sua opera vi è una completa assenza di distrazione.
E con questa faccenda della responsabilità, e con il fare affidamento sulla volontà nelle questioni morali, giungiamo a quella più ampia questione che sarà considerata nell’ultimo capitolo. Sarà in un certo senso un riepilogo di quanto è già stato detto; eppure sarà necessario dirlo in modo un po’ più schietto, e in relazione a grandi questioni intorno alle quali molti moderni sono piuttosto troppo confusi o troppo timidi per parlare chiaro. Per il momento basti dire che l’importanza di Stevenson consiste in gran parte nel suo rapporto con la tendenza della sua epoca. Quella tendenza era verso un certo misticismo del materialismo, di cui l’espressione più dogmatica è ciò che si chiama monismo; ma che può essere espresso più alla leggera in cento forme, come che tutta la vita è una, o che ogni cosa è eredità e ambiente, o che l’impersonale è più alto del personale, o che gli uomini vivono per l’istinto del gregge o l’anima dell’alveare. I nostri padri chiamavano l’atmosfera generale fatalismo; ma essa ha ora un numero qualsiasi di nomi più idealistici. Stevenson sentiva tutto questo, senza definirlo esattamente; lo sentiva nel realismo della letteratura del diciannovesimo secolo, nel pessimismo della poesia contemporanea, nella timidezza della precauzione igienica, nella compiacenza dell’uniformità borghese. E mentre era interamente di quel tempo e di quella società, mentre leggeva tutti i realisti, conosceva tutti gli artisti, dubitava con i dubbiosi e perfino negava con i negatori, aveva dentro di sé qualcosa che non poteva non erompere in una sorta di appassionata protesta per cose più personali e poetiche. Slanciò le braccia con un gesto ampio e cieco, come chi voglia trovare ali nel momento in cui il mondo gli sprofonda sotto.
CHAPTER X
THE MORAL OF STEVENSON
EVEN those unfortunates for whom the tale of Treasure Island, and the tradition continued in the pirates of Peter Pan, form an episode that is ended, may still be asked to consider it as an episode; to consider it, or perhaps to reconsider it. Even those who hardly feel it as a piece of literature will be forced at least to accept it as a piece of history. I am not one of these dismal and disinherited persons, as the reader has perhaps by this time darkly suspected; but I am quite content for the moment to put aside the question of whether their lack of appreciation is due to the advance of literary experiment or the decline of literary taste. I ask them for the moment to consider it not as a literary masterpiece, but merely as a curiosity of literature. I ask them to pause upon the episode of the Stevensonian Buccaneers, much as they might pause upon the episode of the real Buccaneers; upon some quaint old volume about the real lives of Blackbeard and Henry Morgan. Just as there would always be some historical interest in considering how the pirate sack of Panama was related to the great affairs of the Spanish Empire or the English Navy, so there is always some philosophical interest in considering how Stevenson’s romanticism was related to realism and rationalism and all the great movements of the nineteenth-century. In short, I am content for the moment if all that wonderful library of books is lumped together under the name of one of the least of them; and considered as a Footnote to History.
What was the historical meaning then of that strange splash of crimson lake on the drab age of Gissing and Howells; like a burlesque bloodstain in a detective story? To begin with, I foresee that in having stated the matter thus historically, I have laid myself open to some criticisms of the strictly historical sort. It may be said that the dates and details of Stevenson’s life and time do not correspond with such a comparison; that he came too early in the Victorian progress to be really a type of the ‘nineties; and that his real rivals or models were the Victorian Philistines. I do not admit this as a truth, even where I might admit part of it as a fact. An anachronism is often simply an ellipsis; and an ellipsis is often simply a necessity. The thing that a living intelligence like that of Stevenson feels is not the stale and static conventions of his world, but the way the world is going. We talk familiarly of time and tide; and, in a case like this, it is idle to remember a time without realising that it was a tide. The author of The Ebb-Tide knew well enough what tide was at that moment ebbing. It was the tide of what many regarded as Victorian virtue and all the happiness described in the three-volume novel. Stevenson knew very well that this stuffy sort of stuff was not the strong menace or promise of the coming time. He sometimes pokes fun at the Philistines; but he thrusts with furious energy at the Aesthetes. Compare for instance the way in which he speaks of Walter Besant with the way in which he speaks of Henry James, when he has to differ from them both, in that admirable letter about “art competing with life.” He dismisses the successful novelist as representing something that had already failed; but he takes seriously the serious novelist, and is obviously afraid that in the long run his more subtle methods may succeed. Those more subtle methods, of the impressionists and realists and the rest, were obviously for him the real danger because they were the rising tide. In short, it may be complained that I have represented Stevenson as reacting against decadence before it existed. And I answer that this is the only real way in which a fighting man ever does successfully attack a movement; when he attacks later, he attacks too late.
Or again, it may be said that I exaggerate the novelty of work like that of Treasure Island; and that it was but a natural continuation of the historical novel of Scott or the nautical novel of Marryat. Here again I think the critic will not only miss a fine distinction, but a very sharp point. The old novels were novels; they were not boys’ stories, but simply stories. The comedy of the Oldbucks and Osbaldistones is as much a solid comedy of character as that of Mr. Bennett or Miss Bates. It is only Scott’s incurable and almost unconscious sense of romance that sends the comedy characters to the dangerous cliff or to the Clachan of Aberfoyle. There was no deliberate and defiant return to juvenile art out of season, such as that which is flaunted in Stevenson’s letters as well as in Stevenson’s story. The point can be best illustrated once more by the memory of Skelt’s Juvenile Drama. It is one thing to say that a painter like Maclise or an actor like Macready may have had a style that would strike us as stagey and pompous. Maclise and Macready did not themselves think that they were stagey and pompous. It would be quite another thing to revive the actual figures of the old toy theatre, almost (in a sense) because they were stagey and pompous. Stevenson obviously resurrected all this romance, not because it was the fashion of his time, like the historical painting of Maclise, but because it was against the growing fashion of his time; and had to be fought for as a new fashion because it was really an old fashion. He glorified an antiquated Skeltery, when he knew it was antiquated. He concentrated on a certain type of book for boys, when he knew it had long been abandoned to boys. He is often called self-conscious; and in this sense he was very self-conscious. He was as self-consciously copying an old piratical penny dreadful as the Pre-Raphaelites were self-consciously copying an old mediaeval religious picture. As they were carefully inlaying it with jewels of childlike colour, he was carefully resetting the lost jewel of his own childhood. But he knew he was not merely fashionable, just as he knew that he was not really five years old.
CAPITOLO X
LA MORALE DI STEVENSON
Perfino quegli sventurati per i quali il racconto de L’isola del tesoro, e la tradizione proseguita nei pirati di Peter Pan, formano un episodio che è concluso, possono pur sempre essere invitati a considerarlo come un episodio; a considerarlo, o forse a riconsiderarlo. Perfino coloro che a stento lo sentono come un’opera di letteratura saranno costretti almeno ad accettarlo come un’opera di storia. Non sono uno di questi tetri e diseredati individui, come il lettore ha forse a questo tempo oscuramente sospettato; ma per il momento sono ben contento di mettere da parte la questione se la loro mancanza di apprezzamento sia dovuta al progresso della sperimentazione letteraria o al declino del gusto letterario. Chiedo loro per il momento di considerarlo non come un capolavoro letterario, ma soltanto come una curiosità della letteratura. Chiedo loro di soffermarsi sull’episodio dei Bucanieri stevensoniani, così come potrebbero soffermarsi sull’episodio dei veri Bucanieri; su qualche curioso vecchio volume sulle vite reali di Barbanera e di Henry Morgan. Proprio come vi sarebbe sempre qualche interesse storico nel considerare come il saccheggio pirata di Panama fosse legato alle grandi vicende dell’Impero spagnolo o della Marina inglese, così vi è sempre qualche interesse filosofico nel considerare come il romanticismo di Stevenson fosse legato al realismo e al razionalismo e a tutti i grandi movimenti del diciannovesimo secolo. In breve, per il momento mi accontento se tutta quella meravigliosa biblioteca di libri viene ammucchiata insieme sotto il nome di uno dei più piccoli tra essi; e considerata come una Nota a piè di pagina alla Storia.
Qual era dunque il significato storico di quello strano schizzo di lacca cremisi sull’età scialba di Gissing e Howells; come una burlesca macchia di sangue in un racconto poliziesco? Tanto per cominciare, prevedo che, avendo esposto la questione in modo così storico, mi sono esposto ad alcune critiche di tipo strettamente storico. Si può dire che le date e i particolari della vita e del tempo di Stevenson non corrispondano a un simile confronto; che egli venne troppo presto nel progresso vittoriano per essere davvero un tipo degli anni Novanta; e che i suoi veri rivali o modelli furono i Filistei vittoriani. Non lo ammetto come verità, anche là dove potrei ammetterne una parte come fatto. Un anacronismo è spesso semplicemente un’ellissi; e un’ellissi è spesso semplicemente una necessità. Ciò che un’intelligenza viva come quella di Stevenson sente non sono le stantie e statiche convenzioni del suo mondo, ma la direzione verso cui il mondo va. Parliamo familiarmente di tempo e di marea; e, in un caso come questo, è vano ricordare un tempo senza rendersi conto che era una marea. L’autore de La bassa marea sapeva assai bene quale marea stesse in quel momento rifluendo. Era la marea di ciò che molti consideravano virtù vittoriana e di tutta la felicità descritta nel romanzo in tre volumi. Stevenson sapeva assai bene che questa roba soffocante non era la forte minaccia o promessa del tempo che veniva. Talvolta si fa beffe dei Filistei; ma affonda con furiosa energia sugli Esteti. Si confronti per esempio il modo in cui parla di Walter Besant con il modo in cui parla di Henry James, quando deve dissentire da entrambi, in quella mirabile lettera sull’«arte che compete con la vita». Congeda il romanziere di successo come rappresentante di qualcosa che era già fallito; ma prende sul serio il romanziere serio, ed è evidentemente timoroso che alla lunga i suoi metodi più sottili possano riuscire. Quei metodi più sottili, degli impressionisti e dei realisti e degli altri, erano evidentemente per lui il vero pericolo perché erano la marea montante. In breve, mi si può rimproverare di aver rappresentato Stevenson come reagente contro la decadenza prima che essa esistesse. E rispondo che questo è l’unico modo reale in cui un uomo battagliero attacca mai con successo un movimento; quando attacca più tardi, attacca troppo tardi.
Oppure, di nuovo, si può dire che io esageri la novità di un’opera come quella de L’isola del tesoro; e che essa non fosse che una naturale continuazione del romanzo storico di Scott o del romanzo marinaresco di Marryat. Anche qui credo che il critico non solo mancherà una fine distinzione, ma un punto assai acuto. I vecchi romanzi erano romanzi; non erano storie per ragazzi, ma semplicemente storie. La commedia degli Oldbuck e degli Osbaldistone è una solida commedia di carattere tanto quanto quella del signor Bennett o di Miss Bates. È soltanto l’inguaribile e quasi inconscio senso del romanzesco di Scott che manda i personaggi da commedia al pericoloso dirupo o al Clachan di Aberfoyle. Non vi fu alcun deliberato e sfidante ritorno all’arte giovanile fuori stagione, come quello che è ostentato nelle lettere di Stevenson come pure nella storia di Stevenson. Il punto si può illustrare al meglio ancora una volta con il ricordo del Dramma Giovanile di Skelt. Una cosa è dire che un pittore come Maclise o un attore come Macready possano aver avuto uno stile che ci colpirebbe come teatrale e pomposo. Maclise e Macready non pensavano essi stessi di essere teatrali e pomposi. Sarebbe tutt’altra cosa far rivivere le effettive figure del vecchio teatrino di cartone, quasi (in un certo senso) perché erano teatrali e pompose. Stevenson evidentemente resuscitò tutto questo romanzesco, non perché fosse la moda del suo tempo, come la pittura storica di Maclise, ma perché era contro la crescente moda del suo tempo; e doveva essere difeso come una nuova moda perché era in realtà una vecchia moda. Glorificò un’antiquata Skelteria, sapendo che era antiquata. Si concentrò su un certo tipo di libro per ragazzi, sapendo che era da lungo tempo abbandonato ai ragazzi. È spesso chiamato autocosciente; e in questo senso era molto autocosciente. Copiava un vecchio penny dreadful piratesco con la stessa autocoscienza con cui i Preraffaelliti autocoscientemente copiavano un vecchio quadro religioso medievale. Come essi lo intarsiavano accuratamente con gioielli di colore fanciullesco, così egli rincastonava accuratamente il gioiello perduto della propria fanciullezza. Ma sapeva di non essere semplicemente alla moda, proprio come sapeva di non avere davvero cinque anni.
What then exactly did he mean? What, so to speak, did it mean; even if in a sense he did not mean it; or at least, did not mean to mean it? First of all it was, I think, a sort of dash for liberty; and especially a dash for happiness. It was a defence of the possibility of happiness; and a kind of answer to the question, “Can a man be happy?” But it was an answer of a curious kind, defiantly delivered in rather curious circumstances. It was the escape of a prisoner as he was led in chains from the prison of Puritanism to the prison of Pessimism. Few have understood that passage in the history of the manufacturing civilisation of northwest Europe and America. Few have realised that the gloomier sort of modern materialism often came upon a class that was only just escaping from an equally gloomy sort of spirituality. They had hardly come out of the shadow of Calvin when they came into the shadow of Schopenhauer. From the world of the worm that dieth not, they passed into a world of men dying like worms; and in the case of some of the decadents, almost exulting in being devoured by worms like Herod. Puritanism and pessimism, in short, were prisons that stood near together; and none have ever counted how many left one only for the other; or under what a covered way they passed. Stevenson’s escapade was an escape; a sort of runaway romantic evasion for the purpose of escaping both. And as a fugitive has often fled and hidden in his mother’s house, this outlaw took refuge in his old home; barricaded himself in the nursery and almost tried to creep into the dolls’-house. And he did it upon a kind of instinct, that here had dwelt definite pleasures which the Puritan could not forbid nor the pessimist deny. But it was a strange story. He had his answer to the question, “Can a man be happy?”; and it was, “Yes, before he grows to be a man.”
It is only the obvious things that are never seen; and a thing is often counted stale merely because men have been staring at it so long without seeing it. There is nothing harder to bring within a small and clear compass than generalisations about history, or even about humanity. But there is one especially evident and yet elusive in this matter of happiness. When men pause in the pursuit of happiness, seriously to picture happiness, they have always made what may be called a “primitive” picture. Men rush towards complexity; but they yearn towards simplicity. They try to be kings; but they dream of being shepherds. This is equally true whether they look back to a Golden Age or look forward to the most modern Utopia. The Golden Age is always imagined as an age free from the curse of gold. The perfect civilisation of the future is always something which many would call the higher savagery; and is conceived in the spirit that spoke of “Civilisation, its Cause and Cure.” Whether it is Arcadia of the past or Utopia of the future, it is always something simpler than the present. From the Greek or Roman poet yearning for the peace of pastoral life to the last sociologist explaining the ideal social life, this sense of a return and a resolution into elemental things is apparent. The pipe of the shepherd is always something rather plainer than the lyre of the poet; and the ideal social life is some more or less subtle form of the simple life. Of this tendency there is yet a third and perhaps a truer expression. It may be remarked that these daydreams of happiness concern rather the dawn than the day. The reactionary wishes to return to what he would call “the morning of the world.” But the revolutionist is quite equally prone to talk about waiting for the daybreak, about songs before sunrise, and about the dawn of a happier day. He does not seem to think so much about the noon of that day. And one mode in which this morning spirit is expressed is the return to the child.
Stevenson might have been asking his question a hundred years before, at the time of the first humanitarian revolt against the Puritans; when the same city of Geneva, that had seen Calvin found the religion of pessimism, saw Rousseau found the religion of optimism. If he had been in that first liberal or naturalistic movement, he would probably have felt that the best expression of the romantic movement was in the fulfilment of romantic love. Paul and Virginia, instead of Poll and Robinson Crusoe (not to mention Long John Silver), would have been the happy inhabitants of the desert island. In that honeymoon of humanity, it would have seemed quite enough that Edwin and Angelina united at last (by a dignified civil marriage by the Registrar of the Republic) would populate the world with pure and happy republicans. But that eighteenth-century Arcadia had clouded over long before Stevenson’s time; and indeed he was prone to be a little too cloudy even about those of its principles which are really clear. And while the more Bohemian artists of the later time continued to claim all the liberties and more than the laxities of such a theory, they had left off pretending that it led to such felicity in practice. Indeed there has been a curious irony in this respect about the modern artists, especially the literary artists. Half the outcry against them arose, rightly or wrongly, because they insisted that their books must be repulsive in order to be realistic or sordid in order to be true. They insisted on a free hand in describing sex; and seemed to assume, in their own apologia, that to describe sex is to describe sin— and sorrow. They insisted that anything pretty must be a pretence; and never saw how sharply they were reflecting on the end of that very dance of pretty nymphs and cupids, which had brought them the licence that they liked best. In short, they seemed to make two claims; first to be free to find the perfect happiness of passion; and second, to be free to describe how exceedingly unhappy it is. In life one might do anything to follow love, because it was so very beautiful; and in art one must do anything to describe love, because it was so abominably ugly. Their own anarchical doctrines were really contradicted by their own anarchical descriptions. The house of love, in which it was necessary to take out such hospital licences for amputation and vivisection, could hardly be (as the poet said) the house of fulfilment of craving. It was certainly not the house that Rousseau and the old romantic liberals had craved. Anyhow, it was not possible for a man of Stevenson’s generation to look for this light and lucid happiness in sex, or in that sense even in sentiment. It was not possible for a romantic who, perhaps born out of his due time, was living not in the age of Rousseau but in the age of Zola. Thus we find in Stevenson something like an actual avoidance of those themes of passion, that were throbbing in the new fiction all around him; an avoidance even of that normal romantic love, which is not touched at all in Kidnapped and touched gracefully but still lightly even in Catriona. It was not only that girls interfere with adventures. It was not only that he could not be one of those for whom a girl is the only adventure. It was also because a man living under the harsh challenge of the new realism could no longer pretend that it was an adventure which always ended well. He wished to escape into a world of more secure pleasure and perhaps of less potential pain. And this is connected with very profound truths of psychology, which have not yet been properly explored. But most men know that there is a difference between the intense momentary emotion called up by memory of the loves of youth, and the yet more instantaneous but more perfect pleasure of the memory of childhood. The former is always narrow and individual, piercing the heart like a rapier; but the latter is like a flash of lightning, for one split second revealing a whole varied landscape; it is not the memory of a particular pleasure any more than of a particular pain, but of a whole that shone with wonder. The first is only a lover remembering love; the second is like a dead man remembering life.
Che cosa intendeva dunque esattamente? Che cosa, per così dire, intendeva esso; anche se in un certo senso egli non lo intendeva; o almeno, non intendeva intenderlo? Prima di tutto era, credo, una sorta di slancio verso la libertà; e specialmente uno slancio verso la felicità. Era una difesa della possibilità della felicità; e una specie di risposta alla domanda: «Può un uomo essere felice?». Ma era una risposta di specie curiosa, consegnata con aria di sfida in circostanze piuttosto curiose. Era la fuga di un prigioniero mentre veniva condotto in catene dalla prigione del Puritanesimo alla prigione del Pessimismo. Pochi hanno compreso quel passaggio nella storia della civiltà manifatturiera dell’Europa nordoccidentale e dell’America. Pochi hanno capito che la specie più cupa del materialismo moderno spesso si abbatté su una classe che stava appena sfuggendo a una specie egualmente cupa di spiritualità. Erano appena usciti dall’ombra di Calvino quando entrarono nell’ombra di Schopenhauer. Dal mondo del verme che non muore, passarono in un mondo di uomini che morivano come vermi; e nel caso di alcuni dei decadenti, quasi esultando di essere divorati dai vermi come Erode. Puritanesimo e pessimismo, in breve, erano prigioni che stavano vicine l’una all’altra; e nessuno ha mai contato quanti lasciarono l’una soltanto per l’altra; o sotto quale passaggio coperto transitarono. La scappatella di Stevenson fu una fuga; una sorta di evasione romantica in fuga allo scopo di sfuggire a entrambe. E come un fuggiasco è spesso fuggito e si è nascosto nella casa di sua madre, così questo fuorilegge si rifugiò nella sua vecchia casa; si barricò nella stanza dei bambini e quasi cercò di intrufolarsi nella casa delle bambole. E lo fece per una sorta di istinto, che qui avessero dimorato ben precisi piaceri che il Puritano non poteva vietare né il pessimista negare. Ma era una strana storia. Egli aveva la sua risposta alla domanda: «Può un uomo essere felice?»; ed era: «Sì, prima di diventare un uomo».
Sono soltanto le cose ovvie a non essere mai viste; e una cosa è spesso ritenuta stantia semplicemente perché gli uomini l’hanno fissata così a lungo senza vederla. Non vi è nulla di più difficile da racchiudere entro un piccolo e chiaro spazio che le generalizzazioni sulla storia, o perfino sull’umanità. Ma ve n’è una particolarmente evidente e tuttavia sfuggente in questa faccenda della felicità. Quando gli uomini si fermano nella ricerca della felicità, per raffigurarsi seriamente la felicità, hanno sempre fatto ciò che si può chiamare un quadro «primitivo». Gli uomini corrono verso la complessità; ma anelano alla semplicità. Cercano di essere re; ma sognano di essere pastori. Ciò è egualmente vero sia che guardino indietro a un’Età dell’oro sia che guardino avanti alla più moderna Utopia. L’Età dell’oro è sempre immaginata come un’età libera dalla maledizione dell’oro. La perfetta civiltà del futuro è sempre qualcosa che molti chiamerebbero la più alta barbarie; ed è concepita nello spirito che parlava di «Civiltà, sua Causa e Cura». Che si tratti dell’Arcadia del passato o dell’Utopia del futuro, è sempre qualcosa di più semplice del presente. Dal poeta greco o romano che anela alla pace della vita pastorale all’ultimo sociologo che spiega la vita sociale ideale, questo senso di un ritorno e di una risoluzione nelle cose elementari è evidente. Il flauto del pastore è sempre qualcosa di piuttosto più semplice della lira del poeta; e la vita sociale ideale è una qualche forma più o meno sottile della vita semplice. Di questa tendenza vi è ancora una terza e forse più veritiera espressione. Si può notare che queste fantasticherie di felicità riguardano piuttosto l’alba che il giorno. Il reazionario desidera tornare a ciò che chiamerebbe «il mattino del mondo». Ma il rivoluzionario è del tutto egualmente incline a parlare dell’attendere lo spuntar del giorno, dei canti prima dell’aurora, e dell’alba di un giorno più felice. Non sembra pensare molto al mezzogiorno di quel giorno. E un modo in cui questo spirito mattutino si esprime è il ritorno al fanciullo.
Stevenson avrebbe potuto porre la sua domanda cento anni prima, al tempo della prima rivolta umanitaria contro i Puritani; quando la stessa città di Ginevra, che aveva visto Calvino fondare la religione del pessimismo, vide Rousseau fondare la religione dell’ottimismo. Se fosse stato in quel primo movimento liberale o naturalistico, avrebbe probabilmente sentito che la migliore espressione del movimento romantico stava nel compimento dell’amore romantico. Paolo e Virginia, invece di Poll e Robinson Crusoe (per non dire di Long John Silver), sarebbero stati i felici abitanti dell’isola deserta. In quella luna di miele dell’umanità, sarebbe sembrato del tutto sufficiente che Edwin e Angelina, uniti alfine (da un dignitoso matrimonio civile celebrato dall’Ufficiale di stato civile della Repubblica), popolassero il mondo di puri e felici repubblicani. Ma quell’Arcadia settecentesca si era annuvolata molto prima del tempo di Stevenson; e invero egli era incline a essere un po’ troppo nebuloso perfino su quelli tra i suoi princìpi che sono davvero chiari. E mentre gli artisti più bohémien del tempo successivo continuavano a reclamare tutte le libertà e più che le licenze di una simile teoria, avevano smesso di fingere che essa conducesse in pratica a tanta felicità. In verità vi è stata una curiosa ironia a questo riguardo intorno agli artisti moderni, specialmente gli artisti letterari. Metà del clamore contro di loro sorse, a torto o a ragione, perché essi insistevano che i loro libri dovessero essere ripugnanti per essere realistici o sordidi per essere veri. Insistevano su una mano libera nel descrivere il sesso; e sembravano presumere, nella loro stessa apologia, che descrivere il sesso sia descrivere il peccato—e il dolore. Insistevano che qualunque cosa graziosa dovesse essere una finzione; e non videro mai quanto acutamente stessero condannando la fine di quella stessa danza di graziose ninfe e amorini, che aveva loro procurato la licenza che prediligevano. In breve, sembravano avanzare due pretese; primo, di essere liberi di trovare la perfetta felicità della passione; e secondo, di essere liberi di descrivere quanto essa sia estremamente infelice. Nella vita si potrebbe fare qualsiasi cosa per seguire l’amore, perché era così bello; e nell’arte si deve fare qualsiasi cosa per descrivere l’amore, perché era così abominevolmente brutto. Le loro stesse dottrine anarchiche erano davvero contraddette dalle loro stesse descrizioni anarchiche. La casa dell’amore, nella quale era necessario procurarsi tali licenze ospedaliere per l’amputazione e la vivisezione, poteva a stento essere (come disse il poeta) la casa dell’appagamento del desiderio. Non era certo la casa che Rousseau e i vecchi liberali romantici avevano bramato. Comunque sia, non era possibile per un uomo della generazione di Stevenson cercare questa leggera e lucida felicità nel sesso, o in quel senso perfino nel sentimento. Non era possibile per un romantico che, forse nato fuori dal suo giusto tempo, viveva non nell’età di Rousseau ma nell’età di Zola. Così troviamo in Stevenson qualcosa come un effettivo evitare quei temi della passione, che pulsavano nella nuova narrativa tutt’intorno a lui; un evitare perfino quel normale amore romantico, che non è affatto sfiorato in Il ragazzo rapito ed è sfiorato con grazia ma pur sempre lievemente perfino in Catriona. Non era soltanto che le ragazze interferiscono con le avventure. Non era soltanto che egli non poteva essere uno di quelli per i quali una ragazza è l’unica avventura. Era anche perché un uomo che viveva sotto l’aspra sfida del nuovo realismo non poteva più fingere che fosse un’avventura che finiva sempre bene. Desiderava fuggire in un mondo di piacere più sicuro e forse di minore dolore potenziale. E ciò è connesso con verità assai profonde della psicologia, che non sono ancora state esplorate come si deve. Ma la maggior parte degli uomini sa che vi è una differenza tra l’intensa e momentanea emozione suscitata dal ricordo degli amori della giovinezza, e il piacere ancora più istantaneo ma più perfetto del ricordo della fanciullezza. Il primo è sempre stretto e individuale, e trafigge il cuore come uno stocco; ma il secondo è come un lampo di fulmine, che per una frazione di secondo rivela un intero paesaggio variegato; non è il ricordo di un piacere particolare più di quanto lo sia di un dolore particolare, ma di un tutto che risplendeva di meraviglia. Il primo è soltanto un amante che ricorda l’amore; il secondo è come un morto che ricorda la vita.
I once heard in a railway-train a farmer’s family of the Puritan sort discussing with a Nonconformist minister the action of a boy, at the front in the Great War, who had occupied himself in hospital with carving a wooden cross and sent it home to his family. His family was pained but apologetic. Their remarks had a continual chorus of, “He didn’t mean anything by it.” This extraordinary state of mind intrigued me so much that I listened to the rest of the conversation; at intervals of which the minister repeated firmly that we didn’t want that sort of thing; what we wanted was a living Christ. And it never seemed to occur to this reverend gentleman that he was at that moment at war with every living as well as every Christian thing; with the creative instinct, with the desire for form, with the love of family, with the impulse to send signals and messages, with humour, with pathos, with the virility of martyrdom and the vividness of exile. It was in truth the carver of the cross who was bearing witness to a living Christ and the partisan of a living Christ who was repeating a dead form. It was none the less so, because it was not a fixed shape in wood, but only a fixed shape in words. This curious incident has always remained in my memory, however, if only for its fresh and superficial humour. The image of the unconscious youth who didn’t mean anything by it, who merely whittled a stick until it came by sheer ill-luck into the form of a cross, will always be a source of fruitful entertainment to the mind. The idea of the young man hacking wood about right and left in a reckless manner, and seeing theological symbols spring up on every side in spite of his most earnest efforts, has something in it of the fairy-tale. And the idea that if he had only known what was coming, nothing would have induced him to touch anything so improper and shocking, is a matter of deep indwelling joy.
And yet, strangely enough, I must in a manner apologise to the poor minister and admit that something like that fantastic suggestion may really occur. After all, there is in the world a great crowd of unconscious cross-builders or unintentional crosses. There is, running through the very framework of our houses and our furniture, a sort of pattern of crosses. There are a great many honest carpenters and joiners who make wooden crosses and don’t mean anything by it. But the figure means something for all that; precisely because it is a fundamental figure, based on basic principles of balance and conflict and support. All our chairs and tables are full of crosses, of cross-bars and cross-beams; and it is probable that most of us use the furniture without feeling the significance; do not think of a table as the condition of a communion table and can sit on a chair without immediately speaking ex cathedra. And in the same fashion, the more we study active and artistic history, the more often we shall see men making thrones when they meant only to make chairs or building churches when they meant only to build houses. And in the retrospect of religious history, it seems to me that most excursions and even aberrations have only served to scrawl on a larger scale the truth of certain ancient doctrines near and necessary to man; and illustrate orthodoxy if only with awful examples. Milton was himself an example; for he told more truth than he intended, when he said that new Presbyter was but old Priest writ large. It was indeed the human need of a priest written large; and it was written very large indeed.
Now the men of Stevenson’s generation, and especially the men who were as intelligent as he was, were perhaps more unconscious of the real case for these old ideas than any men who have lived before or since. Nothing was further from their thoughts than the suggestion that their artistic fancies could refer back to those antiquated and sombre dogmas about the Fall or the obscuration of the divine light by sin. Wordsworth, though he is sometimes called pantheistic, saw in the vivid pleasures of childhood what he called intimations of immortality. Stevenson admitted that he often found it difficult to get any intimations of immortality. And yet, if he could bear no witness to the Resurrection, he was continually bearing witness to the Fall. We say lightly enough of a good man that he is a Christian without knowing it. But Stevenson was a Christian theologian without knowing it. Nothing, as I say, would have surprised him or his generation more than to discover it; and it may be that some even of a younger generation are so traditional as to have missed the gradual unfolding of the truth. He would have been the first to say that such dogmas were dead and that we cannot put back the clock to the fifth century. Yet he did not explain why he was so often trying to put back his own clock to his fifth year. For the truth is that there really is no sense or meaning, in this continuous tribute of the poets to the poetry of early childhood, unless it be, as Treherne says, that the world of sin comes between us and something more beautiful or, as Wordsworth says, that we came first from God who is our home. I will not pause to distinguish here between the true doctrine of the Fall and the doctrine of depravity which the Calvinists had probably taught to Stevenson, which would alone be enough to explain his not knowing how orthodox he was. Nor will I here expound the distinction between original and acted sin, apart from the ideal of infant baptism; or the already bewildered modern sceptic would probably think I was mad. He must accept my benevolent assurance that it is rather he that is mad; or rather, through no fault of his own, mentally defective. The point is that there really is no explanation of this intense imaginative concentration on babies except a mystical explanation. The whole point of Stevenson’s story is that of a man haunted by a tune, always seeking for the broken notes of a lost melody; which he himself called the note of the time-devouring nightingale. “But only children hear it right.” Why?
Udii una volta in treno una famiglia di contadini della specie puritana discutere con un ministro anticonformista l’azione di un ragazzo, al fronte nella Grande Guerra, che si era occupato in ospedale a intagliare una croce di legno e l’aveva mandata a casa alla sua famiglia. La sua famiglia era addolorata ma si scusava. Le loro osservazioni avevano un continuo coro di: «Non intendeva nulla con ciò». Questo straordinario stato d’animo mi incuriosì tanto che ascoltai il resto della conversazione; a intervalli della quale il ministro ripeteva con fermezza che non volevamo quel genere di cose; ciò che volevamo era un Cristo vivente. E non sembrava mai venire in mente a questo reverendo signore che egli era in quel momento in guerra con ogni cosa vivente come pure con ogni cosa cristiana; con l’istinto creativo, con il desiderio di forma, con l’amore della famiglia, con l’impulso di inviare segnali e messaggi, con l’umorismo, con il pathos, con la virilità del martirio e la vividezza dell’esilio. Era in verità l’intagliatore della croce a rendere testimonianza a un Cristo vivente, ed era il partigiano di un Cristo vivente a ripetere una forma morta. Non lo era di meno per il fatto che non si trattava di una forma fissa nel legno, ma soltanto di una forma fissa nelle parole. Questo curioso episodio è rimasto tuttavia sempre nella mia memoria, non foss’altro per il suo fresco e superficiale umorismo. L’immagine del giovane inconsapevole che non intendeva nulla con ciò, che si limitò a scheggiare un bastone finché esso non prese, per pura sfortuna, la forma di una croce, sarà sempre per la mente una fonte di fecondo divertimento. L’idea del giovane che sminuzza il legno a destra e a manca in modo sconsiderato, e vede simboli teologici spuntare da ogni lato a dispetto dei suoi più seri sforzi, ha in sé qualcosa della fiaba. E l’idea che, se solo avesse saputo ciò che stava per accadere, nulla lo avrebbe indotto a toccare qualcosa di tanto sconveniente e scandaloso, è motivo di profonda e insita gioia.
Eppure, per quanto strano, devo in un certo modo scusarmi con il povero ministro e ammettere che qualcosa di simile a quella fantastica supposizione può davvero accadere. Dopo tutto, vi è al mondo una gran folla di inconsapevoli costruttori di croci o di croci non intenzionali. Vi è, che corre attraverso l’ossatura stessa delle nostre case e dei nostri mobili, una sorta di trama di croci. Vi sono moltissimi onesti falegnami ed ebanisti che fanno croci di legno e non intendono nulla con ciò. Ma la figura significa qualcosa a dispetto di tutto; proprio perché è una figura fondamentale, basata su princìpi elementari di equilibrio, conflitto e sostegno. Tutte le nostre sedie e i nostri tavoli sono pieni di croci, di crociere e di travi a croce; ed è probabile che la maggior parte di noi usi i mobili senza sentirne il significato; non pensi a un tavolo come alla condizione di una mensa eucaristica e possa sedersi su una sedia senza subito parlare ex cathedra. E allo stesso modo, quanto più studiamo la storia attiva e artistica, tanto più spesso vedremo uomini fare troni quando intendevano soltanto fare sedie, o costruire chiese quando intendevano soltanto costruire case. E nella retrospettiva della storia religiosa, mi sembra che la maggior parte delle escursioni e perfino delle aberrazioni non abbiano fatto altro che scarabocchiare su più larga scala la verità di certe antiche dottrine vicine e necessarie all’uomo; e illustrare l’ortodossia foss’anche con terribili esempi. Milton fu egli stesso un esempio; poiché disse più verità di quanta ne intendesse, quando disse che il nuovo Presbitero non era che il vecchio Prete scritto in grande. Era invero il bisogno umano di un prete scritto in grande; ed era scritto davvero in grandissimo.
Ora, gli uomini della generazione di Stevenson, e specialmente gli uomini che erano intelligenti quanto lui, erano forse più inconsapevoli delle reali ragioni di queste vecchie idee di qualsiasi uomo vissuto prima o dopo. Nulla era più lontano dai loro pensieri del suggerimento che le loro fantasie artistiche potessero risalire a quegli antiquati e cupi dogmi sulla Caduta o sull’oscuramento della luce divina a opera del peccato. Wordsworth, benché sia talvolta detto panteista, vedeva nei vividi piaceri della fanciullezza ciò che chiamava intimazioni di immortalità. Stevenson ammetteva di trovare spesso difficile ottenere una qualche intimazione di immortalità. Eppure, se non poteva rendere alcuna testimonianza alla Resurrezione, rendeva di continuo testimonianza alla Caduta. Diciamo abbastanza alla leggera di un uomo buono che è cristiano senza saperlo. Ma Stevenson era un teologo cristiano senza saperlo. Nulla, come dico, avrebbe sorpreso lui o la sua generazione più che scoprirlo; e può darsi che alcuni perfino di una generazione più giovane siano tanto tradizionalisti da aver mancato il graduale dispiegarsi della verità. Sarebbe stato il primo a dire che tali dogmi erano morti e che non possiamo riportare indietro l’orologio al quinto secolo. Eppure non spiegava perché cercasse così spesso di riportare indietro il proprio orologio al proprio quinto anno. Poiché la verità è che non vi è davvero senso o significato, in questo continuo tributo dei poeti alla poesia della prima fanciullezza, se non sia, come dice Treherne, che il mondo del peccato si frappone tra noi e qualcosa di più bello o, come dice Wordsworth, che venimmo dapprima da Dio che è la nostra casa. Non mi soffermerò qui a distinguere tra la vera dottrina della Caduta e la dottrina della depravazione che i Calvinisti avevano probabilmente insegnato a Stevenson, la quale da sola basterebbe a spiegare il suo non sapere quanto fosse ortodosso. Né esporrò qui la distinzione tra il peccato originale e il peccato attuale, a prescindere dall’ideale del battesimo dei neonati; o già lo sconcertato scettico moderno penserebbe probabilmente che io fossi pazzo. Egli deve accettare la mia benevola assicurazione che è piuttosto lui a essere pazzo; o meglio, senza sua colpa, mentalmente difettoso. Il punto è che non vi è davvero spiegazione di questa intensa concentrazione immaginativa sui neonati se non una spiegazione mistica. Tutto il senso della storia di Stevenson è quello di un uomo perseguitato da una melodia, sempre in cerca delle note spezzate di una melodia perduta; che egli stesso chiamava la nota dell’usignolo divoratore del tempo. «Ma solo i bambini la odono giusta». Perché?
Moreover, as I have already noted, this principle of the beatific vision of innocence was even more proved in the breach than in the observance. The rationalists and realists who were praising the adult pursuit of happiness, or ought to have been praising such a pursuit of happiness, were (and still are) mainly occupied with describing unhappiness. They only prove that free life and free love are really worse than any ascetic had ever represented them. The naturalistic philosophies did not only contradict Christianity. The naturalistic philosophies also contradicted the naturalistic novels. Their own exercise of their own right of expression was quite enough to show that the mere combination of the maturity of reason with the pleasures of passion does not in fact produce a Utopia. We need not debate here whether the Zolaists were justified in so laboriously describing horrors. If mere liberty had really led to happiness, they would have been describing happiness. It would not have been necessary for a grown man with a library of modern literature to hide himself in a twopenny toy theatre in order to be happy.
This very simple truth is probably too simple to be seen; because, like many such things, it is too large to be seen. But certainly it is still there to be seen, if any of the moderns could enlarge their minds enough to see it. The type of realism has changed since the days of Zola, just as the type of romance has changed since the days of Stevenson. But it has not answered this unanswerable distinction between the cheerful songs of innocence and the melancholy songs of experience. Of the recent literature of the rising generation, there is much that is frivolous, but uncommonly little that is joyous. Just now we are incessantly asked to rejoice in the sight of youth enjoying itself; which I for one am very ready to do; but all the readier if I can be quite certain that it is enjoying itself. And it is a curious fact that in its characteristic contemporary literature there is an almost complete absence of joy. And I think it would be true to say, in a general fashion, that it is not childish enough to be cheerful. In this connection I may be allowed once more to be at once anecdotal and allegorical. When I first saw the title of The Green Hat I pictured it as the top-hat of an old gentleman who had a fancy for that colour. I imagined him a strutting symbolic figure of springtime, with hair like the hawthorn and a hat like the new leaves; my mind lost itself amid tree-tops and all the antics of the April wind; I imagined him chasing his hat to elfland and the end of the world, or climbing trees to find the blue bird nesting in the green headgear. The mere idea of a green hat gave me a glimpse into that elusive element of which the blue bird was made the emblem. When I opened the book and found that the green hat was only a lady’s hat, and that the book was full of sentiments about sex, I was as blankly disappointed as a boy who has been given a dictionary instead of a book. My feelings towards the intrusive females were those of Jim Hawkins; much what he would have felt if a fashionable lady had dissuaded Squire Trelawney from going to sea. It is true that the people in the book professed to be enjoying themselves, in what appeared to be their own fashion; but they could not help me to enjoy myself, as I should have done with the only true, real and original story of the green hat. I recognised that there was wit in the work, but no fun in it; there was no stir of that deep gale of spring; but rather an accepted air of autumn; of things dancing as dead leaves dance; like the Falling Leaves in the joyful revelation of Mr. Aldous Huxley. I know all about the defence of this gloomy realism on the ground that it is real. I have known it ever since the time of Stevenson writing on Zola. But I am not talking about whether this literature is reasonable or justifiable; I am talking about whether it does in fact call up, or even try to call up, the passion of positive joy.
That is why this episode is worth noting and recalling if only as an episode; and all the more so, if it is in sharp contrast with the episodes that follow as well as the episodes that went before. I have admitted that some part of Stevenson’s deliberate choice of childishness was a reaction from ill-chosen surroundings and courses of conduct in the periods of passion and of youth. But the younger writers, who boast of choosing for themselves, seem just as unsuccessful in making passion identical with pleasure; and just as unsuccessful in preserving the youthful spirit of youth. I have admitted that when he made his dash for liberty and happiness, it may have appeared that there was no other alternative but that of Puritanism or pessimism. But the new writers who are not threatened with Puritanism seem to be just as much moved to pessimism. There seems no explanation of the two tempers; except that the apostle of childhood was at least seeking pleasure where it could be found, while the apostles of youth are seeking it where it cannot be found. What awaits us after all these episodes I will not pretend to prophesy; I will only profess to hope that it may be the rebuilding of the great and neglected Christian philosophy, to which all contributions will be thankfully received, especially those of atheists and anarchists. And that is really the chief importance, both of the man who can show human nature happy in the nursery and the man who can only show it unhappy in the night-club. Both of them may be, and generally are, of the sort that would smile scornfully at the thought of calling up the old pious fables about heaven and hell. But in fact Stevenson was describing the kingdom of heaven and calling it Skelt; while Zola was describing all the kingdoms of hell and calling it real life. Neither of them get outside the iron ring of the real truth of the matter; that the one thing, however babyish, really is a picture of contentment, while in the other the only decent element is discontent.
Inoltre, come ho già osservato, questo principio della visione beatifica dell’innocenza fu dimostrato ancor più nella trasgressione che nell’osservanza. I razionalisti e i realisti che lodavano l’adulta ricerca della felicità, o che avrebbero dovuto lodare una simile ricerca della felicità, erano (e sono tuttora) occupati soprattutto a descrivere l’infelicità. Non fanno che provare come la vita libera e il libero amore siano in realtà peggiori di quanto qualsiasi asceta li avesse mai rappresentati. Le filosofie naturalistiche non contraddicevano soltanto il Cristianesimo. Le filosofie naturalistiche contraddicevano anche i romanzi naturalistici. Il loro stesso esercizio del proprio diritto di espressione bastava a mostrare che la mera combinazione della maturità della ragione con i piaceri della passione non produce affatto un’Utopia. Non occorre qui discutere se gli zoliani fossero giustificati nel descrivere con tanta fatica gli orrori. Se la mera libertà avesse davvero condotto alla felicità, essi avrebbero descritto la felicità. Non sarebbe stato necessario che un uomo adulto, con una biblioteca di letteratura moderna, si nascondesse in un teatrino di cartone da due soldi per essere felice.
Questa semplicissima verità è probabilmente troppo semplice per essere vista; perché, come molte cose di questo genere, è troppo grande per essere vista. Ma di certo è ancora lì, pronta a essere vista, se qualcuno dei moderni sapesse allargare la propria mente abbastanza da scorgerla. Il tipo di realismo è cambiato dai giorni di Zola, così come il tipo di romanzesco è cambiato dai giorni di Stevenson. Ma esso non ha dato risposta a questa insolubile distinzione tra i lieti canti dell’innocenza e i malinconici canti dell’esperienza. Della recente letteratura della nuova generazione, molto è frivolo, ma insolitamente poco è gioioso. Proprio ora ci si chiede incessantemente di rallegrarci nel vedere la gioventù divertirsi; cosa che, da parte mia, sono prontissimo a fare; ma tanto più pronto se posso essere del tutto certo che essa si stia davvero divertendo. Ed è un fatto curioso che nella sua caratteristica letteratura contemporanea vi sia una quasi completa assenza di gioia. E penso che sarebbe vero dire, in modo generale, che essa non è abbastanza fanciullesca per essere lieta. A questo proposito mi sia concesso ancora una volta di essere insieme aneddotico e allegorico. Quando vidi per la prima volta il titolo di The Green Hat me lo raffigurai come il cilindro di un vecchio gentiluomo che avesse un debole per quel colore. Lo immaginai come un’impettita figura simbolica della primavera, coi capelli come il biancospino e il cappello come le nuove foglie; la mia mente si perse tra le cime degli alberi e tutte le birichinate del vento d’aprile; lo immaginai inseguire il proprio cappello fino al paese degli elfi e alla fine del mondo, o arrampicarsi sugli alberi per trovare l’uccello azzurro annidato nel verde copricapo. La sola idea di un cappello verde mi offrì uno scorcio di quell’elemento sfuggente di cui l’uccello azzurro era stato fatto emblema. Quando aprii il libro e scoprii che il cappello verde era soltanto il cappello di una signora, e che il libro era pieno di sentimenti sul sesso, rimasi deluso e attonito come un ragazzo a cui sia stato dato un dizionario invece di un libro. I miei sentimenti verso quelle femmine invadenti erano quelli di Jim Hawkins; press’a poco ciò che egli avrebbe provato se una signora alla moda avesse dissuaso lo Squire Trelawney dall’andare per mare. È vero che le persone del libro dichiaravano di divertirsi, a quello che pareva il loro modo; ma non potevano aiutare me a divertirmi, come avrei fatto con l’unica vera, reale e originale storia del cappello verde. Riconobbi che nell’opera c’era spirito, ma non allegria; non vi era il fremito di quella profonda burrasca di primavera; ma piuttosto un’accettata aria d’autunno; di cose che danzano come le foglie morte danzano; come le Foglie cadenti nella gioiosa rivelazione del signor Aldous Huxley. Conosco bene la difesa di questo tetro realismo, fondata sul fatto che esso è reale. La conosco fin dal tempo in cui Stevenson scriveva a proposito di Zola. Ma io non sto discutendo se questa letteratura sia ragionevole o giustificabile; sto discutendo se essa in effetti evochi, o anche solo tenti di evocare, la passione della gioia positiva.
Ecco perché questo episodio merita di essere notato e ricordato non fosse che come episodio; e tanto più se è in netto contrasto con gli episodi che seguono così come con gli episodi che precedettero. Ho ammesso che una parte della deliberata scelta di fanciullaggine di Stevenson fu una reazione a un ambiente mal scelto e a condotte mal scelte nei periodi della passione e della gioventù. Ma gli scrittori più giovani, che si vantano di scegliere da sé, sembrano altrettanto incapaci di rendere la passione identica al piacere; e altrettanto incapaci di conservare il giovanile spirito della gioventù. Ho ammesso che quando egli fece il suo slancio verso la libertà e la felicità, poté sembrare che non vi fosse altra alternativa se non quella del Puritanesimo o del pessimismo. Ma i nuovi scrittori che non sono minacciati dal Puritanesimo sembrano spinti al pessimismo esattamente quanto lui. Non pare esservi spiegazione dei due temperamenti; se non che l’apostolo dell’infanzia cercava almeno il piacere là dove poteva essere trovato, mentre gli apostoli della gioventù lo cercano là dove non può essere trovato. Ciò che ci attende dopo tutti questi episodi non pretenderò di profetizzarlo; mi limiterò a professare la speranza che possa essere la ricostruzione della grande e trascurata filosofia cristiana, alla quale tutti i contributi saranno accolti con gratitudine, specialmente quelli degli atei e degli anarchici. E questa è davvero l’importanza principale, tanto dell’uomo che sa mostrare la natura umana felice nella stanza dei bambini quanto dell’uomo che sa mostrarla soltanto infelice nel locale notturno. Entrambi possono essere, e generalmente sono, del genere che sorriderebbe con disprezzo al pensiero di rievocare le antiche pie favole sul cielo e sull’inferno. Ma in realtà Stevenson descriveva il regno dei cieli chiamandolo Skelt; mentre Zola descriveva tutti i regni dell’inferno chiamandoli vita reale. Nessuno dei due esce dall’anello di ferro della vera verità della questione; ossia che l’una cosa, per quanto puerile, è davvero un quadro di contentezza, mentre nell’altra il solo elemento decente è lo scontento.
It may be that the world will forget Stevenson, a century or so after it has forgotten all the present distinguished detractors of Stevenson. It may be quite the other way, as the poet said; it may be the world will remember Stevenson; will remember him with a start, so to speak, when everybody else has forgotten that there ever was any story in a novel. The dissolution hinted at by Sir Edmund Gosse, whereby fiction which was always a rather vague form shall become utterly formless, may have by that time dropped out of the novel all its original notion of a narrative. Mr. H. G. Wells, if he lives to delight the world so long, will be able to deliver the goods in the form of great masses of admirable analyses of economics and social conditions, without the embarrassment of having to remember at every two hundred pages or so that he has somewhere left a hero in a motor-car or a heroine in a lodging-house. Miss Dorothy Richardson may pour out those vivid inventories of the furniture and family crockery, which her subconscious self notes with the accuracy of an inventory clerk, without being pestered to tell us who owned these objects, or what was the object of owning them. The psychologists may present us with a series of subtle and fascinating states of mind, without our being morbidly curious to enquire whose mind. They in turn may yield to some other school; such as those bright and breezy Americans who call themselves Behaviourists. They declare with some warmth that there is really nothing in their minds and that they only think with their muscles; which, in the case of some thinking, we might well believe. At present the Behaviourists are on their best behaviour. But there seems no reason why this new sort of muscular Christianity should not eventually invade the novel, just as psychoanalysis did; and we shall all be able to rejoice in a new type of fiction, in which a bright thought flashes through Edwin’s biceps or a vivid memory rises unbidden in the deltoid of Angelina. For it is the habit of modern psychological science to make quite sure of its fiction a long time before it is sure of its facts. But the trouble about such fiction will be that it is very much of a novelty, but not much of a novel. The passion for making patterns of loops and spirals, like a chart of currents at sea, has so far dissolved the outline of individuality that we lose all sense of what a man is, let alone what a man wants. Nameless universal forces streaming through the subconsciousness, run very truly like that dark and sacred river that wound its way through caverns measureless to man. When this process of shapelessness is complete, it is always possible that men may come upon a shape with something of a sharp surprise; like a geologist finding in featureless rocks the fossil of some wild creature, looking as if petrified in the last wild leap or on the wing. Or it is as if an antiquary, passing through halls and temples of some iconoclastic city, covered with dizzy patterns of merely mathematical beauty, were to come upon the heaving limb or lifted shoulder of some broken statue of the Greeks. In that condition it may be that the novel will again be novel. And in that condition, in that reaction, certainly no novel will serve its purpose so forcibly, or make its point so plainly, as a novel by Stevenson. The story, the first of childish and the oldest of human pleasures, will nowhere reveal its structure and its end so swiftly and simply as in the tales of Tusitala. The world’s great age will in that degree begin anew; the childhood of the earth be rediscovered; for the story-teller will once more have spread his carpet in the dust; and it will really be a magic carpet.
But whether or no the world returns thus to Stevenson, whether or no it returns thus to stories, it will certainly return to something; and to something of this kind. The only thing which we can safely prophesy is the one thing which is always called impossible. Again and again we are told, by all sorts of priggish and progressive persons, that mankind cannot go back. The answer is that if mankind cannot go back, it cannot go anywhere. Every important change in history has been founded on something historic: and if the world had not again and again tried to renew its youth, it would have been dead long ago. As the poet makes his songs out of memories of first love, or the writer of fairy-tales has to play at being a child as the child plays at being a man, so every republican has looked back to the remote republics of antiquity and even the Communist talks about a primitive community of goods. The sharp return to simplicity, as the expression of the fiery thirst for happiness—that is the one recurring fact of all history; and that is the importance of Stevenson’s place in literary history. Nor is there the smallest reason to suppose that the literary history of the future will in this respect be any different from the literary history of the past. On the contrary, the two or three examples of extreme change, with which the most recent days have challenged us, have very curiously confirmed this old truth in a new way. Of that it is indeed true to say that the more it changes, the more it is the same thing; and a jolly good thing too.
Fashions change; but this return to the nursery is not a fashion and it does not change. If we turn to the very latest, and we might say loudest, of literary innovators, we still find that in so far as they are saying anything, they are saying that. Let us suppose that the Stevensonian way of doing it is altogether dated and out of date; let us leave Stevenson behind in the dead past, along with such lumber as Cervantes and Balzac and Charles Dickens. If we shoot forward into the most fashionable fads and fancies, if we rush to the newest salons or listen to the most advanced lectures, we do not escape the challenge of our childhood. There is already a group, we might say a family group, of poets who consider themselves, and are generally considered, the last word in experiment and even extravagance; and who are not without real qualities of deep atmosphere and suggestion. Yet all that is really deep in the best of their work comes out of those depths of garden perspective and large rooms as seen by little children, white with the windows of the morning. The best poetry of Miss Sitwell is after all a sort of parody of A Child’s Garden of Verses, decked with slightly altered adjectives that would mildly surprise the child. But the poet is as certainly groping after her own lost shadow as the child who “rose and found the shining dew on every buttercup”; and is even more ready to idealise the moving cloud of the crinoline than he who was content to say, “Whenever Aunty moves around, her dresses make a curious sound.” In Miss Sitwell’s version they would make a still more curious sound, the nature of which I have not the courage to conjecture. The shining dew might become the shrieking dew, or on a more moderate estimate the sniggering dew; but it would still be a long-lost child who stood bewildered in those grey meadows before the dawn. Many have complained, and perhaps justly, of the almost American modernity of the artistic ambition of these artists. They announce their message through a megaphone; they shout it through pantomime masks; they hustle and push and pick quarrels; but there is something in them, for all their efforts to advertise—or to hide it. And that something is the new form of the reaction of Stevenson; exactly as Stevenson was the new form of the reaction of Rousseau. Many have speculated on what they are really after; but what they are really after is still the same: those lost children who are themselves; lost in the deep gardens at dusk.
That is why the real story of Stevenson must end where it began; because it was to that end that he himself perpetually wandered and strove. I said at the beginning that the key to his career was put early into his hands; it was well symbolised by the paint-brush dipped in purple or prussian blue, with which he started to colour the stiff caricatures upon the cardboard of Skelt. But that paint-brush has been in other hands besides his; I remarked elsewhere that, dipped in somewhat paler hues, it has brightened the lives of many of those vague Victorian aunts whose cloudy crinolines float through the gardens of the new “Early Victorian” poetry. Neither perhaps know that, even in lingering on such things, they do but illustrate a more ancient parable and the mystery of a child set in the midst. Here, however, we may take the matter more lightly and leave it to tell its own story; but at least it is amusing to reflect that the old story of the unconsciously comic tombstone, the epitaph that was the butt of a hundred jests, is not really so far wrong after all; that there is a sort of truth concealed in that remarkable inscription, and that (leaving on one side a somewhat needless allusion to the Earl of Cork) we may repeat the epitaph with truth and even profundity: “He also painted in watercolours. For of such is the kingdom of heaven.”
THE END
Può darsi che il mondo dimentichi Stevenson, un secolo o giù di lì dopo aver dimenticato tutti gli attuali illustri denigratori di Stevenson. Può darsi che vada proprio all’opposto, come disse il poeta; può darsi che il mondo ricordi Stevenson; che lo ricordi con un sussulto, per così dire, quando tutti gli altri avranno dimenticato che vi fu mai una qualche storia in un romanzo. La dissoluzione adombrata da Sir Edmund Gosse, per cui la narrativa, che fu sempre una forma piuttosto vaga, diverrà del tutto informe, potrà a quel tempo aver fatto cadere dal romanzo ogni sua originaria nozione di racconto. Il signor H. G. Wells, se vivrà tanto a lungo da deliziare il mondo, potrà consegnare la merce sotto forma di grandi masse di ammirevoli analisi di economia e di condizioni sociali, senza l’imbarazzo di doversi ricordare ogni duecento pagine o giù di lì di aver lasciato in qualche luogo un eroe in automobile o un’eroina in una pensione. La signorina Dorothy Richardson potrà riversare quei vividi inventari dei mobili e delle stoviglie di famiglia, che il suo io subconscio annota con la precisione di un magazziniere, senza essere tormentata dal doverci dire chi possedesse quegli oggetti, o quale fosse lo scopo di possederli. Gli psicologi potranno presentarci una serie di sottili e affascinanti stati d’animo, senza che noi si sia morbosamente curiosi di domandare di chi sia la mente. Essi a loro volta potranno cedere il passo a qualche altra scuola; come quei brillanti e spigliati americani che si chiamano Comportamentisti. Dichiarano con una certa foga che nella loro mente non c’è in realtà nulla e che pensano soltanto coi muscoli; il che, nel caso di certi pensieri, potremmo ben credere. Al momento i Comportamentisti si comportano nel migliore dei modi. Ma non pare esservi ragione per cui questa nuova sorta di Cristianesimo muscolare non debba alla fine invadere il romanzo, proprio come fece la psicoanalisi; e tutti potremo rallegrarci di un nuovo tipo di narrativa, in cui un pensiero luminoso guizza attraverso i bicipiti di Edwin o un vivido ricordo sorge non richiesto nel deltoide di Angelina. Poiché è abitudine della moderna scienza psicologica accertarsi della propria narrativa molto tempo prima di accertarsi dei propri fatti. Ma il guaio di una simile narrativa sarà che essa è assai una novità, ma poco un romanzo. La passione di comporre disegni di anse e di spirali, come una carta delle correnti in mare, ha ormai a tal punto dissolto il contorno dell’individualità che perdiamo ogni senso di ciò che un uomo è, per non dire ciò che un uomo vuole. Innominate forze universali che scorrono attraverso il subconscio corrono davvero come quel fiume oscuro e sacro che si snodava attraverso caverne incommensurabili per l’uomo. Quando questo processo di informità sarà compiuto, è sempre possibile che gli uomini si imbattano in una forma con qualcosa di simile a una brusca sorpresa; come un geologo che trovi in rocce prive di lineamenti il fossile di qualche creatura selvaggia, quasi pietrificata nell’ultimo balzo selvaggio o in volo. Oppure è come se un antiquario, attraversando sale e templi di qualche città iconoclasta, ricoperti di vertiginosi disegni di pura bellezza matematica, s’imbattesse nel palpitante arto o nella spalla sollevata di qualche statua spezzata dei Greci. In quella condizione può darsi che il romanzo torni a essere nuovo. E in quella condizione, in quella reazione, certamente nessun romanzo servirà al suo scopo con tanta forza, o esporrà il suo assunto con tanta chiarezza, quanto un romanzo di Stevenson. La storia, il primo dei piaceri fanciulleschi e il più antico dei piaceri umani, in nessun luogo rivelerà la propria struttura e il proprio fine così rapidamente e semplicemente come nei racconti di Tusitala. La grande età del mondo in tal misura ricomincerà da capo; l’infanzia della terra sarà riscoperta; poiché il narratore avrà ancora una volta steso il suo tappeto nella polvere; e sarà davvero un tappeto magico.
Ma che il mondo ritorni o no in tal modo a Stevenson, che ritorni o no in tal modo alle storie, esso ritornerà di certo a qualcosa; e a qualcosa di questo genere. La sola cosa che possiamo profetizzare con sicurezza è l’unica cosa che viene sempre detta impossibile. Più e più volte ci viene detto, da ogni sorta di persone saccenti e progressiste, che l’umanità non può tornare indietro. La risposta è che se l’umanità non può tornare indietro, non può andare da nessuna parte. Ogni mutamento importante nella storia si è fondato su qualcosa di storico: e se il mondo non avesse tentato più e più volte di rinnovare la propria giovinezza, sarebbe morto da lungo tempo. Come il poeta trae i suoi canti dai ricordi del primo amore, o come lo scrittore di fiabe deve giocare a fare il bambino come il bambino gioca a fare l’uomo, così ogni repubblicano ha guardato indietro alle remote repubbliche dell’antichità e perfino il Comunista parla di una primitiva comunità dei beni. Il brusco ritorno alla semplicità, come espressione dell’ardente sete di felicità: è questo l’unico fatto ricorrente di tutta la storia; ed è questa l’importanza del posto di Stevenson nella storia letteraria. Né vi è la minima ragione di supporre che la storia letteraria del futuro sarà, sotto questo aspetto, in alcunché diversa dalla storia letteraria del passato. Al contrario, i due o tre esempi di mutamento estremo, coi quali i giorni più recenti ci hanno sfidato, hanno in modo assai curioso confermato questa antica verità in un modo nuovo. Di ciò è davvero vero dire che più cambia, più resta la stessa cosa; e per giunta un’ottima cosa.
Le mode cambiano; ma questo ritorno alla stanza dei bambini non è una moda e non cambia. Se ci volgiamo ai più recenti, e potremmo dire ai più rumorosi, tra gli innovatori letterari, troviamo pur sempre che, nella misura in cui dicono qualcosa, dicono proprio questo. Supponiamo che il modo stevensoniano di farlo sia del tutto datato e fuori moda; lasciamoci Stevenson alle spalle nel passato morto, insieme a cianfrusaglie come Cervantes e Balzac e Charles Dickens. Se ci slanciamo in avanti verso le mode e le fantasticherie più in voga, se corriamo ai salotti più nuovi o ascoltiamo le conferenze più avanzate, non sfuggiamo alla sfida della nostra infanzia. C’è già un gruppo, potremmo dire un gruppo di famiglia, di poeti che considerano se stessi, e sono generalmente considerati, l’ultima parola in fatto di sperimentazione e persino di stravaganza; e che non sono privi di reali qualità di profonda atmosfera e suggestione. Eppure tutto ciò che è davvero profondo nel meglio della loro opera nasce da quelle profondità di prospettive di giardino e di grandi stanze come viste da bambini piccoli, bianche delle finestre del mattino. La miglior poesia di Miss Sitwell è dopo tutto una sorta di parodia di A Child’s Garden of Verses, adorna di aggettivi lievemente alterati che stupirebbero blandamente il bambino. Ma la poetessa brancola con altrettanta certezza in cerca della propria ombra perduta quanto il bambino che «si levò e trovò la rugiada splendente su ogni ranuncolo»; ed è persino più pronta a idealizzare la nuvola in movimento della crinolina di quanto lo fosse colui che si accontentava di dire: «Ogni volta che la zia si aggira, i suoi abiti fanno un curioso suono». Nella versione di Miss Sitwell essi farebbero un suono ancor più curioso, la cui natura non ho il coraggio di congetturare. La rugiada splendente potrebbe diventare la rugiada stridente, o secondo una stima più moderata la rugiada sghignazzante; ma sarebbe pur sempre un bambino perduto da tempo a starsene smarrito in quei grigi prati prima dell’alba. Molti si sono lamentati, e forse a ragione, della modernità quasi americana dell’ambizione artistica di questi artisti. Annunciano il loro messaggio attraverso un megafono; lo gridano attraverso maschere da pantomima; spingono e sgomitano e attaccano briga; ma c’è qualcosa in loro, malgrado tutti i loro sforzi per farne pubblicità — o per nasconderlo. E quel qualcosa è la nuova forma della reazione di Stevenson; esattamente come Stevenson fu la nuova forma della reazione di Rousseau. Molti hanno congetturato su ciò che essi realmente cercano; ma ciò che essi realmente cercano è ancora lo stesso: quei bambini perduti che sono loro stessi; perduti nei profondi giardini al crepuscolo.
Ecco perché la vera storia di Stevenson deve finire là dove cominciò; poiché fu verso quel fine che egli stesso perpetuamente vagò e si adoperò. Ho detto all’inizio che la chiave della sua carriera gli fu posta presto tra le mani; essa fu ben simboleggiata dal pennello intinto nel porpora o nel blu di Prussia, col quale egli cominciò a colorare le rigide caricature sul cartone di Skelt. Ma quel pennello è passato per altre mani oltre le sue; ho osservato altrove che, intinto in tinte alquanto più pallide, ha rallegrato la vita di molte di quelle vaghe zie vittoriane le cui nebulose crinoline fluttuano tra i giardini della nuova poesia «primo-vittoriana». Forse né le une né gli altri sanno che, anche indugiando su tali cose, non fanno che illustrare una più antica parabola e il mistero di un bambino posto in mezzo a loro. Qui, tuttavia, possiamo prendere la cosa più alla leggera e lasciare che racconti da sé la propria storia; ma è almeno divertente riflettere che la vecchia storia della lapide inconsapevolmente comica, l’epitaffio che fu bersaglio di cento facezie, non è dopo tutto poi così sbagliata; che vi è una sorta di verità celata in quella notevole iscrizione, e che (lasciando da parte un’alquanto superflua allusione al Conte di Cork) possiamo ripetere l’epitaffio con verità e persino con profondità: «Dipingeva anche ad acquerello. Poiché di questi è il regno dei cieli».
FINE