Chapter V: Introduction: I (4)

The two papers on _Talk and Talkers_ first appeared in the _Cornhill Magazine_, for April and for August, 1882, Vol. XLV, pp. 410-418, Vol. XLVI, pp. 151-158. The second paper had the title, _Talk and Talkers_. (_A Sequel_.) For Stevenson's relations with the Editor, see our note to _An Apology for Idlers_. With the publication of the second part, Stevenson's connection with the _Cornhill_ ceased, as the magazine in 1883 passed from the hands of Leslie Stephen into those of James Payn. The two papers next appeared in the volume _Memories and Portraits_ (1887). The first was composed during the winter of 1881-2 at Davos in the Alps, whither he had gone for his health, the second a few months later. Writing to Charles Baxter, 22 Feb. 1882, he said, "In an article which will appear sometime in the Cornhill, 'Talk and Talkers,' and where I have full-lengthened the conversation of Bob, Henley, Jenkin, Simpson, Symonds, and Gosse, I have at the end one single word about yourself. It may amuse you to see it." (_Letters_, I, 268.) Writing from Bournemouth, England, in February 1885 to Sidney Colvin, he said, "See how my 'Talk and Talkers' went; every one liked his own portrait, and shrieked about other people's; so it will be with yours. If you are the least true to the essential, the sitter will be pleased; very likely not his friends, and that from various motives." (_Letters_, I, 413.) In a letter to his mother from Davos, dated 9 April 1882, he gives the real names opposite each character in the first paper, and adds, "But pray regard these as secrets."

The art of conversation, like the art of letter-writing, reached its highest point in the eighteenth century; cheap postage destroyed the latter, and the hurly-burly of modern life has been almost too strong for the former. In the French Salons of the eighteenth century, and in the coffeehouses and drawing-rooms of England, good conversation was regarded as a most desirable accomplishment, and was practised by many with extraordinary wit and skill. Swift's satire on _Polite Conversation_ (1738) as well as the number of times he discusses the art of conversation in other places, shows how seriously he actually regarded it. Stevenson, like many persons who are forced away from active life, loved a good talk. Good writers are perhaps now more common than good talkers.

FIRST PAPER

[Note 1: _Sir, we had a good talk_. This remark was made by the Doctor in 1768, the morning after a memorable meeting at the Crown and Anchor tavern, where he had been engaged in conversation with seven or eight notable literary men. "When I called upon Dr. Johnson next morning," says Boswell, "I found him highly satisfied with his colloquial prowess the preceding evening. 'Well,' said he, 'we had good talk.' BOSWELL: 'Yes, sir, you tossed and gored several persons.'"]

[Note 2: _As we must account_. This remark of Franklin's occurs in _Poor Richard's Almanac_ for 1738.]

[Note 3: _Flies ... in the amber_. Bartlett gives Martial.]

"The bee enclosed and through the amber shown,
Seems buried in the juice which was his own."

Bacon, Donne, Herrick, Pope and many other authors speak of flies in amber.]

[Note 4: _Fancy free_. See _Midsummer Night's Dream_, Act II, Sc. 2.

"And the imperial votaress passed on,
In maiden meditation, fancy-free."

This has been called the most graceful among all the countless compliments received by Queen Elizabeth. The word "fancy" in the Shaksperian quotation means simply "love."]

[Note 5: _A spade a spade_. The phrase really comes from Aristophanes, and is quoted by Plutarch, as Philip's description of the rudeness of the Macedonians. _Kudos_. Greek word for "pride", used as slang by school-boys in England.]

[Note 6: _Trailing clouds of glory_. _Trailing with him clouds of glory._ This passage, from Wordsworth's _Ode on the Intimations of Immortality_ (1807), was a favorite one with Stevenson, and he quotes it several times in various essays.]

[Note 7: _The Flying Dutchman_. Wagner's _Der Fliegende Holländer_ (1843), one of his earliest, shortest, and most beautiful operas. Many German performances are given in the afternoon, and many German theatres have pretty gardens attached, where, during the long intervals (_grosse Pause_) between the acts, one may refresh himself with food, drink, tobacco, and the open air. Germany and German art, however, did not have anything like the influence on Stevenson exerted by the French country, language, and literature.]

[Note 8: _Theophrastus_. A Greek philosopher who died 287-B.C. His most influential work was his _Characters_, which, subsequently translated into many modern languages, produced a whole school of literature known as the "Character Books," of which the best are perhaps Sir Thomas Overbury's _Characters_ (1614), John Earle's _Microcosmographie_ (1628), and the _Caractères_ (1688) of the great French writer, La Bruyère.]

[Note 9: _Consuelo, Clarissa Harlowe, Vautrin, Steenie Steenson_. _Consuelo_ is the title of one of the most notable novels by the famous French authoress, George Sand, (1804-1876), whose real name was Aurore Dupin. _Consuelo_ appeared in 1842.... _Clarissa_ (1747-8) was the masterpiece of the novelist Samuel Richardson (1689-1761). This great novel, in seven fat volumes, was a warm favorite with Stevenson, as it has been with most English writers from Dr. Johnson to Macaulay. Writing to a friend in December 1877, Stevenson said, "Please, if you have not, and I don't suppose you have, already read it, institute a search in all Melbourne for one of the rarest and certainly one of the best of books--_Clarissa Harlowe._ For any man who takes an interest in the problems of the two sexes, that book is a perfect mine of documents. And it is written, sir, with the pen of an angel." (_Letters_, I, 141.) Editions of _Clarissa_ are not so scarce now as they were thirty years ago; several have appeared within the last few years.... _Vautrin_ is one of the most remarkable characters in several novels of Balzac; see especially _Pere Goriot_ (1834) ... _Steenie Steenson_ in Scott's novel _Redgauntlet_ (1824).]

[Note 10: _No human being, etc_. Stevenson loved action in novels, and was impatient, as many readers are, when long-drawn descriptions of scenery were introduced. Furthermore, the love for wild scenery has become as fashionable as the love for music; the result being a very general hypocrisy in assumed ecstatic raptures.]

[Note 11: _You can keep no men long, nor Scotchmen at all_. Every Scotchman is a born theologian. Franklin says in his _Autobiography_, "I had caught this by reading my father's books of dispute on Religion. Persons of good sense, I have since observed seldom fall into it, except lawyers, university men, and generally men of all sorts who have been bred at Edinburgh." (Chap. I.)]

[Note 12: _A court of love_. A mediaeval institution of chivalry, where questions of knight-errantry, constancy in love, etc., were discussed and for the time being, decided.]

[Note 13: _Spring-Heel'd Jack_. This is Stevenson's cousin "Bob," Robert Alan Mowbray Stevenson (1847-1900), an artist and later Professor of Fine Arts at University College, Liverpool. He was one of the best conversationalists in England. Stevenson said of him,

"My cousin Bob, ... is the man likest and most unlike to me that I
have ever met.... What was specially his, and genuine, was his
faculty for turning over a subject in conversation. There was an
insane lucidity in his conclusions; a singular, humorous eloquence
in his language, and a power of method, bringing the whole of life
into the focus of the subject under hand; none of which I have ever
heard equalled or even approached by any other talker." (Balfour's
_Life of Stevenson_, I, 103. For further remarks on the cousin, see
note to page 104 of the _Life_.)]

[Note 14: _From Shakespeare to Kant, from Kant to Major Dyngwell_. Immanuel Kant, the foremost philosopher of the eighteenth century, born at Königsberg in 1724, died 1804. His greatest work, the _Critique of Pure Reason_ (_Kritick der reinen Vernunft_, 1781), produced about the same revolutionary effect on metaphysics as that produced by Copernicus in astronomy, or by Darwin in natural science.... _Major Dyngwell I know not_.]

[Note 15: _Burly_. Burly is Stevenson's friend, the poet William Ernest Henley, who died in 1903. His sonnet on our author may be found in the introduction to this book. Leslie Stephen introduced the two men on 13 Feb. 1875, when Henley was in the hospital, and a very close and intimate friendship began. Henley's personality was exceedingly robust, in contrast with his health, and in his writings and talk he delighted in shocking people. His philosophy of life is seen clearly in his most characteristic poem:

"Out of the night that covers me,
Black as the Pit from pole to pole,
I thank whatever Gods may be
For my unconquerable soul.

In the fell clutch of circumstance
I have not winced nor cried aloud.
Under the bludgeonings of chance
My head is bloody, but unbowed.

Beyond this place of wrath and tears
Looms but the Horror of the shade,
And yet the menace of the years
Finds, and shall find, me unafraid.

It matters not how strait the gate,
How charged with punishments the scroll,
I am the master of my fate:
I am the Captain of my soul."

After the publication of Balfour's _Life of Stevenson_ (1901), Mr. Henley contributed to the _Pall Mall Magazine_ in December of that year an article called _R.L.S._, which made a tremendous sensation. It was regarded by many of Stevenson's friends as a wanton assault on his private character. Whether justified or not, it certainly damaged Henley more than the dead author. For further accounts of the relations between the two men, see index to Balfour's _Life_, under the title _Henley_.]

[Note 16: _Pistol has been out-Pistol'd_. The burlesque character in Shakspere's _King Henry IV_ and _V_.]

[Note 17: _Cockshot_. (The Late Fleeming Jenkin.) As the note says, this was Professor Fleeming Jenkin, who died 12 June 1885. He exercised a great influence over the younger man. Stevenson paid the debt of gratitude he owed him by writing the _Memoir of Fleeming Jenkin_, published first in America by Charles Scribner's Sons, in 1887.]

[Note 18: _Synthetic gusto; something of a Herbert Spencer_. The English philosopher, Herbert Spencer (1820-1903), whose many volumes in various fields of science and metaphysics were called by their author the _Synthetic Philosophy_. His most popular book is _First Principles_ (1862), which has exercised an enormous influence in the direction of agnosticism. His _Autobiography_, two big volumes, was published in 1904, and fell rather flat.]

[Note 19: _Like a thorough "glutton."_ This is still the slang of the prize-ring. When a man is able to stand a great deal of punching without losing consciousness or courage, he is called a "glutton for punishment."]

[Note 20: _Athelred_. Sir Walter Simpson, who was Stevenson's companion on the _Inland Voyage_. For a good account of him, see Balfour's _Life of Stevenson_, I, 106.]

[Note 21: "_Dry light_." "The more perfect soul," says Heraclitus, "is a dry light, which flies out of the body as lightning breaks from a cloud." Plutarch, _Life of Romulus_.]

[Note 22: _Opalstein_. This was the writer and art critic, John Addington Symonds (1840-1893). Like Stevenson, he was afflicted with lung trouble, and spent much of his time at Davos, Switzerland, where a good part of his literary work was done. "The great feature of the place for Stevenson was the presence of John Addington Symonds, who, having come there three years before on his way to Egypt, had taken up his abode in Davos, and was now building himself a house. To him the newcomer bore a letter of introduction from Mr. Gosse. On November 5th (1880) Louis wrote to his mother: 'We got to Davos last evening; and I feel sure we shall like it greatly. I saw Symonds this morning, and already like him; it is such sport to have a literary man around.... Symonds is like a Tait to me; eternal interest in the same topics, eternal cross-causewaying of special knowledge. That makes hours to fly.' And a little later he wrote: 'Beyond its splendid climate, Davos has but one advantage--the neighbourhood of J.A. Symonds. I dare say you know his work, but the man is far more interesting.'" (Balfour's _Life of Stevenson_, I, 214.) When Symonds first read the essay _Talk and Talkers_, he pretended to be angry, and said, "Louis Stevenson, what do you mean by describing me as a moonlight serenader?" (_Life_, I, 233.)]

[Note 23: _Proxime accessit_. "He comes very near to it."]

[Note 24: _Sirens ... Sphinx Byronic ... Horatian ... Don Giovanni ... Beethoven_. The Sirens were the famous women of Greek mythology, who lured mariners to destruction by the overpowering sweetness of their songs. How Ulysses outwitted them is well-known to all readers of the _Odyssey_. One of Tennyson's earlier poems, _The Sea-Fairies_, deals with the same theme, and indeed it has appeared constantly in the literature of the world.... The _Sphinx_, a familiar subject in Egyptian art, had a lion's body, the head of some other animal (sometimes man) and wings. It was a symbolical figure. The most famous example is of course the gigantic Sphinx near the Pyramids in Egypt, which has proved to be an inexhaustible theme for speculation and for poetry.... The theatrically tragic mood of _Byron_ is contrasted with the easy-going, somewhat cynical epicureanism of Horace.... _Don Giovanni_ (1787) the greatest opera of the great composer Mozart (1756-1791), tells the same story told by Molière and so many others. The French composer, Gounod, said that Mozart's _Don Giovanni_ was the greatest musical composition that the world has ever seen.... _Beethoven_ (1770-1827) occupies in general estimation about the same place in the history of music that Shakspere fills in the history of literature.]

[Note 25: _Purcel_. This stands for Mr. Edmund Gosse (born 1849), a poet and critic of some note, who writes pleasantly on many topics. Many of Stevenson's letters were addressed to him. The two friends first met in London in 1877, and the impression made by the novelist on the critic may be seen in Mr. Gosse's book of essays, _Critical Kitcats_ (1896).]

[Note 26: _I know another person_. This is undoubtedly Stevenson's friend Charles Baxter. See the quotation from a letter to him in our introductory note to this essay. Compare what Stevenson elsewhere said of him: "I cannot characterise a personality so unusual in the little space that I can here afford. I have never known one of so mingled a strain.... He is the only man I ever heard of who could give and take in conversation with the wit and polish of style that we find in Congreve's comedies." (Balfour's _Life of Stevenson_, I, 105.)]

[Note 27: _Restoration comedy ... Congreve_. Restoration comedy is a general name applied to the plays acted in England between 1660, the year of the restoration of Charles II to the throne, and 1700, the year of the death of Dryden. This comedy is as remarkable for the brilliant wit of its dialogue as for its gross licentiousness. Perhaps the wittiest dramatist of the whole group was William Congreve (1670-1729).]

[Note 28: _Falstaff ... Mercutio ... Sir Toby ... Cordelia ... Protean_. Sir John Falstaff, who appears in Shakspere's _King Henry IV_, and again in the _Merry Wives of Windsor_, is generally regarded as the greatest comic character in literature.... _Mercutio_, the friend of Romeo; one of the most marvellous of all Shakspere's gentlemen. He is the Hotspur of comedy, and his taking off by Tybalt "eclipsed the gaiety of nations."... _Sir Toby Belch_ is the genial character in _Twelfth Night_, fond of singing and drinking, but no fool withal. A conversation between Falstaff, Mercutio, and Sir Toby would have taxed even the resources of a Shakspere, and would have been intolerably excellent.... _Cordelia_, the daughter of King Lear, whose sincerity and tenderness combined make her one of the greatest women in the history of poetry.... _Protean_, something that constantly assumes different forms. In mythology, Proteus was the son of Oceanus and Tethys, whose special power was his faculty for lightning changes.

"Have sight of Proteus rising from the sea."--Wordsworth.]

[Note 29: This sequel was called forth by an excellent article in _The Spectator_, for 1 April 1882, and bore the title, _The Restfulness of Talk_. The opening words of this article were as follows:--"The fine paper on 'Talk,' by 'R.L.S.,' in the _Cornhill_ for April, a paper which a century since would, by itself, have made a literary reputation, does not cover the whole field."]

[Note 30: _Valhalla_. In Scandinavian mythology, this was the heaven for the brave who fell in battle. Here they had an eternity of fighting and drinking.]

[Note 31: _Meticulous_. Timid. From the Latin, _meticulosus_.]

[Note 32: _Kindly_. Here used in the old sense of "natural." Compare the Litany, "the kindly fruits of the earth."]

[Note 33: "_The real long-lived things_." For Whitman, see our Note 12 of Chapter III above.]

[Note 34: _Robert Hunter, Sheriff of Dumbarton_. Hunter recognised the genius in Stevenson long before the latter became known to the world, and gave him much friendly encouragement. Dumbarton is a town about 16 miles north-west of Glasgow, in Scotland. It contains a castle famous in history and in literature.]

[Note 35: _A novel by Miss Mather_. The name should be "Mathers." Helen Mathers (Mrs. Henry Reeves), born in 1853, has written a long series of novels, of which _My Lady Greensleeves, The Sin of Hagar_ and _Venus Victrix_ are perhaps as well-known as they deserve to be.]

[Note 36: _Chelsea_. Formerly a suburb, now a part of London, to the S.W. It is famous for its literary associations. Swift, Thomas Carlyle, Leigh Hunt, George Eliot, Dante Gabriel Rossetti and many other distinguished writers lived in Chelsea at various times. It contains a great hospital, to which Stevenson seems to refer here.]

[Note 37: _Webster, Jeremy Taylor, Burke_. John Webster was one of the Elizabethan dramatists, who, in felicity of diction, approached more nearly to Shakspere than most of his contemporaries. His greatest play was _The Duchess of Malfi_ (acted in 1616). Jeremy Taylor (1613-1667), often called the "Shakspere of Divines," was one of the greatest pulpit orators in English history. His most famous work, still a classic, is _Holy Living and Holy Dying_ (1650-1). Edmund Burke (1729-1797) the parliamentary orator and author of the _Sublime and Beautiful_ (1756), whose speeches on America are only too familiar to American schoolboys.]

[Note 38: _Junius_. No one knows yet who "Junius" was. In the _Public Advertiser_ from 21 Jan. 1769 to 21 Jan. 1772, appeared letters signed by this name, which made a sensation. The identity of the author was a favorite matter for dispute during many years.]

[Note 39: _David Hume_. The great Scotch skeptic and philosopher (1711-1776).]

[Note 40: _Shakespeare's fairy pieces with great scenic display._ So far from this being a novelty to-day, it has become rather nauseating, and there are evidences of a reaction in favour of _hearing_ Shakspere on the stage rather than _seeing_ him.]

[Note 41: _Calvinism_. If this word does not need a note yet, it certainly will before long. The founder of the theological system Calvinism was John Calvin, born in France in 1509. The chief doctrines are Predestination, the Atonement (by which the blood of Christ appeased the wrath of God toward those persons only who had been previously chosen for salvation--on all others the sacrifice was ineffectual), Original Sin, and the Perseverance of the Saints (once saved, one could not fall from grace). These doctrines remained intact in the creed of Presbyterian churches in America until a year or two ago.]

[Note 42: _Two bob_. A pun, for "bob" is slang for "shilling."]

[Note 43: _Never read Othello to an end_. In _A Gossip on a Novel of Dumas's,_ Stevenson confessed that there were four plays of Shakspere he had never been able to read through, though for a different reason: they were _Richard III, Henry VI, Titus Andronicus_, and _All's Well that Ends Well_. It is still an open question as to whether or not Shakspere wrote _Titus_.]

[Note 44: _A liberal and pious education_. It was Sir Richard Steele who made the phrase, in _The Tatler_, No. 49: "to love her (Lady Elizabeth Hastings) was a liberal education."]

[Note 45: _Trait d'union_. The French expression simply means "hyphen": literally, "mark of connection."]

[Note 46: _Malvolio_. The conceited but not wholly contemptible character in _Twelfth Night_.]

[Note 47: _The Egoist_. _The Egoist_ (1879) is one of the best-known novels of Mr. George Meredith, born 1828. It had been published only a very short time before Stevenson wrote this essay, so he is commenting on one of the "newest" books. Stevenson's enthusiasm for Meredith knew no bounds, and he regarded the _Egoist_ and _Richard Feverel_ (1859), as among the masterpieces of English literature. _Daniel Deronda_, the last and by no means the best novel of George Eliot (1820-1880), had appeared in 1876.]

V

A GOSSIP ON ROMANCE

In anything fit to be called by the name of reading, the process itself should be absorbing and voluptuous; we should gloat over a book, be rapt clean out of ourselves, and rise from the perusal, our mind filled with the busiest, kaleidoscopic dance of images, incapable of sleep or of continuous thought. The words, if the book be eloquent, should run thence-forward in our ears like the noise of breakers, and the story, if it be a story, repeat itself in a thousand coloured pictures to the eye. It was for this last pleasure that we read so closely, and loved our books so dearly, in the bright, troubled period of boyhood. Eloquence and thought, character and conversation, were but obstacles to brush aside as we dug blithely after a certain sort of incident, like a pig for truffles.[1] For my part, I liked a story to begin with an old wayside inn where, "towards the close of the year 17--," several gentlemen in three-cocked hats were playing bowls. A friend of mine preferred the Malabar coast[2] in a storm, with a ship beating to windward, and a scowling fellow of Herculean proportions striding along the beach; he, to be sure, was a pirate. This was further afield than my home-keeping fancy loved to travel, and designed altogether for a larger canvas than the tales that I affected. Give me a highwayman and I was full to the brim; a Jacobite[3] would do, but the highwayman was my favourite dish. I can still hear that merry clatter of the hoofs along the moonlit lane; night and the coming of day are still related in my mind with the doings of John Rann or Jerry Abershaw;[4] and the words "postchaise," the "great North road,"[5] "ostler," and "nag" still sound in my ears like poetry. One and all, at least, and each with his particular fancy, we read story-books in childhood; not for eloquence or character or thought, but for some quality of the brute incident. That quality was not mere bloodshed or wonder. Although each of these was welcome in its place, the charm for the sake of which we read depended on something different from either. My elders used to read novels aloud; and I can still remember four different passages which I heard, before I was ten, with the same keen and lasting pleasure. One I discovered long afterwards to be the admirable opening of _What will he Do with It?_[6] It was no wonder I was pleased with that. The other three still remain unidentified. One is a little vague; it was about a dark, tall house at night, and people groping on the stairs by the light that escaped from the open door of a sickroom. In another, a lover left a ball, and went walking in a cool, dewy park, whence he could watch the lighted windows and the figures of the dancers as they moved. This was the most sentimental impression I think I had yet received, for a child is somewhat deaf to the sentimental. In the last, a poet, who had been tragically wrangling with his wife, walked forth on the sea-beach on a tempestuous night and witnessed the horrors of a wreck.[7] Different as they are, all these early favourites have a common note--they have all a touch of the romantic.

Drama is the poetry of conduct, romance the poetry of circumstance. The pleasure that we take in life is of two sorts--the active and the passive. Now we are conscious of a great command over our destiny; anon we are lifted up by circumstance, as by a breaking wave, and dashed we know not how into the future. Now we are pleased by our conduct, anon merely pleased by our surroundings. It would be hard to say which of these modes of satisfaction is the more effective, but the latter is surely the more constant. Conduct is three parts of life,[8] they say; but I think they put it high. There is a vast deal in life and letters both which is not immoral, but simply a-moral; which either does not regard the human will at all, or deals with it in obvious and healthy relations; where the interest turns, not upon what a man shall choose to do, but on how he manages to do it; not on the passionate slips and hesitations of the conscience, but on the problems of the body and of the practical intelligence, in clean, open-air adventure, the shock of arms or the diplomacy of life. With such material as this it is impossible to build a play, for the serious theatre exists solely on moral grounds, and is a standing proof of the dissemination of the human conscience. But it is possible to build, upon this ground, the most joyous of verses, and the most lively, beautiful and buoyant tales.

One thing in life calls for another; there is a fitness in events and places. The sight of a pleasant arbour[9] puts it in our minds to sit there. One place suggests work, another idleness, a third early rising and long rambles in the dew. The effect of night, of any flowing water, of lighted cities, of the peep of day, of ships, of the open ocean, calls up in the mind an army of anonymous desires and pleasures. Something, we feel, should happen; we know not what, yet we proceed in quest of it. And many of the happiest hours of life fleet by us in this vain attendance on the genius of the place and moment. It is thus that tracts of young fir, and low rocks that reach into deep soundings, particularly torture and delight me. Something must have happened in such places, and perhaps ages back, to members of my race; when I was a child I tried in vain to invent appropriate games for them, as I still try, just as vainly, to fit them with the proper story. Some places speak distinctly. Certain dank gardens cry aloud for a murder; certain old houses demand to be haunted; certain coasts are set apart for ship-wreck. Other spots again seem to abide their destiny, suggestive and impenetrable, "miching mallecho."[10] The inn at Burford Bridge,[11] with its arbours and green garden and silent, eddying river--though it is known already as the place where Keats wrote some of his _Endymion_ and Nelson parted from his Emma--still seems to wait the coming of the appropriate legend. Within these ivied walls, behind these old green shutters, some further business smoulders, waiting for its hour. The old Hawes Inn at the Queen's Ferry makes a similar call upon my fancy. There it stands, apart from the town, beside the pier, in a climate of its own, half inland, half marine--in front, the ferry bubbling with the tide and the guard-ship swinging to her anchor; behind, the old garden with the trees. Americans seek it already for the sake of Lovel and Oldbuck, who dined there at the beginning of the _Antiquary_. But you need not tell me--that is not all; there is some story, unrecorded or not yet complete, which must express the meaning of that inn more fully. So it is with names and faces; so it is with incidents that are idle and inconclusive in themselves, and yet seem like the beginning of some quaint romance, which the all-careless author leaves untold. How many of these romances have we not seen determine at their birth; how many people have met us with a look of meaning in their eye, and sunk at once into trivial acquaintances; to how many places have we not drawn near, with express intimations--"here my destiny awaits me"--and we have but dined there and passed on! I have lived both at the Hawes and Burford in a perpetual flutter, on the heels, as it seemed, of some adventure that should justify the place; but though the feeling had me to bed at night and called me again at morning in one unbroken round of pleasure and suspense, nothing befell me in either worth remark. The man or the hour had not yet come; but some day, I think, a boat shall put off from the Queen's Ferry, fraught with a dear cargo, and some frosty night a horseman, on a tragic errand, rattle with his whip upon the green shutters of the inn at Burford.[12]

Now, this is one of the natural appetites with which any lively literature has to count. The desire for knowledge, I had almost added the desire for meat, is not more deeply seated than this demand for fit and striking incident. The dullest of clowns tells, or tries to tell, himself a story, as the feeblest of children uses invention in his play; and even as the imaginative grown person, joining in the game, at once enriches it with many delightful circumstances, the great creative writer shows us the realisation and the apotheosis of the day-dreams of common men. His stories may be nourished with the realities of life, but their true mark is to satisfy the nameless longings of the reader, and to obey the ideal laws of the day-dream. The right kind of thing should fall out in the right kind of place; the right kind of thing should follow; and not only the characters talk aptly and think naturally, but all the circumstances in a tale answer one to another like notes in music. The threads of a story come from time to time together and make a picture in the web; the characters fall from time to time into some attitude to each other or to nature, which stamps the story home like an illustration. Crusoe[13] recoiling from the footprint, Achilles shouting over against the Trojans, Ulysses bending the great bow, Christian running with his fingers in his ears, these are each culminating moments in the legend, and each has been printed on the mind's eye forever. Other things we may forget; we may forget the words, although they are beautiful; we may forget the author's comment, although perhaps it was ingenious and true; but these epoch-making scenes, which put the last mark of truth upon a story and fill up, at one blow, our capacity for sympathetic pleasure, we so adopt into the very bosom of our mind that neither time nor tide can efface or weaken the impression. This, then, is the plastic part of literature: to embody character, thought, or emotion in some act or attitude that shall be remarkably striking to the mind's eye. This is the highest and hardest thing to do in words; the thing which, once accomplished, equally delights the schoolboy and the sage, and makes, in its own right, the quality of epics. Compared with this, all other purposes in literature, except the purely lyrical or the purely philosophic, are bastard in nature, facile of execution, and feeble in result. It is one thing to write about the inn at Burford, or to describe scenery with the word-painters; it is quite another to seize on the heart of the suggestion and make a country famous with a legend. It is one thing to remark and to dissect, with the most cutting logic, the complications of life, and of the human spirit; it is quite another to give them body and blood in the story of Ajax[14] or of Hamlet. The first is literature, but the second is something besides, for it is likewise art.

English people of the present day[15] are apt, I know not why, to look somewhat down on incident, and reserve their admiration for the clink of teaspoons and the accents of the curate. It is thought clever to write a novel with no story at all, or at least with a very dull one. Reduced even to the lowest terms, a certain interest can be communicated by the art of narrative; a sense of human kinship stirred; and a kind of monotonous fitness, comparable to the words and air of _Sandy's Mull_, preserved among the infinitesimal occurrences recorded. Some people work, in this manner, with even a strong touch. Mr. Trollope's inimitable clergymen naturally arise to the mind in this connection. But even Mr. Trollope[16] does not confine himself to chronicling small beer. Mr. Crawley's collision with the Bishop's wife, Mr. Melnette dallying in the deserted banquet-room, are typical incidents, epically conceived, fitly embodying a crisis. Or again look at Thackeray. If Rawdon Crawley's blow were not delivered, _Vanity Fair_ would cease to be a work of art. That scene is the chief ganglion of the tale; and the discharge of energy from Rawdon's fist is the reward and consolation of the reader. The end of _Esmond_ is a yet wider excursion from the author's customary fields; the scene at Castlewood is pure Dumas;[17] the great and wily English borrower has here borrowed from the great, unblushing French thief; as usual, he has borrowed admirably well, and the breaking of the sword rounds off the best of all his books with a manly, martial note. But perhaps nothing can more strongly illustrate the necessity for marking incident than to compare the living fame of _Robinson Crusoe_ with the discredit of _Clarissa Harlowe_.[18] _Clarissa_ is a book of a far more startling import, worked out, on a great canvas, with inimitable courage and unflagging art. It contains wit, character, passion, plot, conversations full of spirit and insight, letters sparkling with unstrained humanity; and if the death of the heroine be somewhat frigid and artificial, the last days of the hero strike the only note of what we now call Byronism,[19] between the Elizabethans and Byron himself. And yet a little story of a ship-wrecked sailor, with not a tenth part of the style nor a thousandth part of the wisdom, exploring none of the arcana of humanity and deprived of the perennial interest of love, goes on from edition to edition, ever young, while _Clarissa_ lies upon the shelves unread. A friend of mine, a Welsh blacksmith, was twenty-five years old and could neither read nor write, when he heard a chapter of _Robinson_ read aloud in a farm kitchen. Up to that moment he had sat content, huddled in his ignorance, but he left that farm another man. There were day-dreams, it appeared, divine day-dreams, written and printed and bound, and to be bought for money and enjoyed at pleasure. Down he sat that day, painfully learned to read Welsh, and returned to borrow the book. It had been lost, nor could he find another copy but one that was in English. Down he sat once more, learned English, and at length, and with entire delight, read _Robinson_. It is like the story of a love-chase. If he had heard a letter from _Clarissa_, would he have been fired with the same chivalrous ardour? I wonder. Yet _Clarissa_ has every quality that can be shown in prose, one alone excepted--pictorial or picture-making romance. While _Robinson_ depends, for the most part and with the overwhelming majority of its readers, on the charm of circumstance.

In the highest achievements of the art of words, the dramatic and the pictorial, the moral and romantic interest, rise and fall together by a common and organic law. Situation is animated with passion, passion clothed upon with situation. Neither exists for itself, but each inheres indissolubly with the other. This is high art; and not only the highest art possible in words, but the highest art of all, since it combines the greatest mass and diversity of the elements of truth and pleasure. Such are epics, and the few prose tales that have the epic weight. But as from a school of works, aping the creative, incident and romance are ruthlessly discarded, so may character and drama be omitted or subordinated to romance. There is one book, for example, more generally loved than Shakespeare, that captivates in childhood, and still delights in age--I mean the _Arabian Nights_--where you shall look in vain for moral or for intellectual interest. No human face or voice greets us among that wooden crowd of kings and genies, sorcerers and beggarmen. Adventure, on the most naked terms, furnishes forth the entertainment and is found enough. Dumas approaches perhaps nearest of any modern to these Arabian authors in the purely material charm of some of his romances. The early part of _Monte Cristo_, down to the finding of the treasure, is a piece of perfect story-telling; the man never breathed who shared these moving incidents without a tremor; and yet Faria is a thing of packthread and Dantès[20] little more than a name. The sequel is one long-drawn error, gloomy, bloody, unnatural and dull; but as for these early chapters, I do not believe there is another volume extant where you can breathe the same unmingled atmosphere of romance. It is very thin and light, to be sure, as on a high mountain; but it is brisk and clear and sunny in proportion. I saw the other day, with envy, an old and a very clever lady setting forth on a second or third voyage into _Monte Cristo_. Here are stories which powerfully affect the reader, which can be reperused at any age, and where the characters are no more than puppets. The bony fist of the showman visibly propels them; their springs are an open secret; their faces are of wood, their bellies filled with bran; and yet we thrillingly partake of their adventures. And the point may be illustrated still further. The last interview between Lucy and Richard Feveril[21] is pure drama; more than that, it is the strongest scene, since Shakespeare, in the English tongue. Their first meeting by the river, on the other hand, is pure romance; it has nothing to do with character; it might happen to any other boy and maiden, and be none the less delightful for the change. And yet I think he would be a bold man who should choose between these passages. Thus, in the same book, we may have two scenes, each capital in its order: in the one, human passion, deep calling unto deep, shall utter its genuine voice; in the second, according circumstances, like instruments in tune, shall build up a trivial but desirable incident, such as we love to prefigure for ourselves; and in the end, in spite of the critics, we may hesitate to give the preference to either. The one may ask more genius--I do not say it does; but at least the other dwells as clearly in the memory.

True romantic art, again, makes a romance of all things. It reaches into the highest abstraction of the ideal; it does not refuse the most pedestrian realism. _Robinson Crusoe_ is as realistic as it is romantic:[22] both qualities are pushed to an extreme, and neither suffers. Nor does romance depend upon the material importance of the incidents. To deal with strong and deadly elements, banditti, pirates, war and murder, is to conjure with great names, and, in the event of failure, to double the disgrace. The arrival of Haydn[23] and Consuelo at the Canon's villa is a very trifling incident; yet we may read a dozen boisterous stories from beginning to end, and not receive so fresh and stirring an impression of adventure. It was the scene of Crusoe at the wreck, if I remember rightly, that so bewitched my blacksmith. Nor is the fact surprising. Every single article the castaway recovers from the hulk is "a joy for ever"[24] to the man who reads of them. They are the things that should be found, and the bare enumeration stirs the blood. I found a glimmer of the same interest the other day in a new book, _The Sailor's Sweetheart_,[25] by Mr. Clark Russell. The whole business of the brig _Morning Star_ is very rightly felt and spiritedly written; but the clothes, the books and the money satisfy the reader's mind like things to eat. We are dealing here with the old cut-and-dry legitimate interest of treasure trove. But even treasure trove can be made dull. There are few people who have not groaned under the plethora of goods that fell to the lot of the _Swiss Family Robinson_,[26] that dreary family. They found article after article, creature after creature, from milk kine to pieces of ordnance, a whole consignment; but no informing taste had presided over the selection, there was no smack or relish in the invoice; and these riches left the fancy cold. The box of goods in Verne's _Mysterious Island_[27] is another case in point: there was no gusto and no glamour about that; it might have come from a shop. But the two hundred and seventy-eight Australian sovereigns on board the _Morning Star_ fell upon me like a surprise that I had expected; whole vistas of secondary stories, besides the one in hand, radiated forth from that discovery, as they radiate from a striking particular in life; and I was made for the moment as happy as a reader has the right to be.

To come at all at the nature of this quality of romance, we must bear in mind the peculiarity of our attitude to any art. No art produces illusion; in the theatre we never forget that we are in the theatre; and while we read a story, we sit wavering between two minds, now merely clapping our hands at the merit of the performance, now condescending to take an active part in fancy with the characters. This last is the triumph of romantic story-telling: when the reader consciously plays at being the hero, the scene is a good scene. Now in character-studies the pleasure that we take is critical; we watch, we approve, we smile at incongruities, we are moved to sudden heats of sympathy with courage, suffering or virtue. But the characters are still themselves, they are not us; the more clearly they are depicted, the more widely do they stand away from us, the more imperiously do they thrust us back into our place as a spectator. I cannot identify myself with Rawdon Crawley or with Eugène de Rastignac,[28] for I have scarce a hope or fear in common with them. It is not character but incident that woos us out of our reserve. Something happens as we desire to have it happen to ourselves; some situation, that we have long dallied with in fancy, is realised in the story with enticing and appropriate details. Then we forget the characters; then we push the hero aside; then we plunge into the tale in our own person and bathe in fresh experience; and then, and then only, do we say we have been reading a romance. It is not only pleasurable things that we imagine in our day-dreams; there are lights in which we are willing to contemplate even the idea of our own death; ways in which it seems as if it would amuse us to be cheated, wounded or calumniated. It is thus possible to construct a story, even of tragic import, in which every incident, detail and trick of circumstance shall be welcome to the reader's thoughts. Fiction is to the grown man what play is to the child; it is there that he changes the atmosphere and tenor of his life; and when the game so chimes with his fancy that he can join in it with all his heart, when it pleases him with every turn, when he loves to recall it and dwells upon its recollection with entire delight, fiction is called romance.

Walter Scott is out and away the king of the romantics. _The Lady of the Lake_ has no indisputable claim to be a poem beyond the inherent fitness and desirability of the tale. It is just such a story as a man would make up for himself, walking, in the best health and temper, through just such scenes as it is laid in. Hence it is that a charm dwells undefinable among these slovenly verses, as the unseen cuckoo fills the mountains with his note; hence, even after we have flung the book aside, the scenery and adventures remain present to the mind, a new and green possession, not unworthy of that beautiful name, _The Lady of the Lake_,[29] or that direct, romantic opening,--one of the most spirited and poetical in literature,--"The stag at eve had drunk his fill." The same strength and the same weaknesses adorn and disfigure the novels. In that ill-written, ragged book, _The Pirate_,[30] the figure of Cleveland--cast up by the sea on the resounding foreland of Dunrossness--moving, with the blood on his hands and the Spanish words on his tongue, among the simple islanders--singing a serenade under the window of his Shetland mistress--is conceived in the very highest manner of romantic invention. The words of his song, "Through groves of palm," sung in such a scene and by such a lover, clench, as in a nutshell, the emphatic contrast upon which the tale is built. In _Guy Mannering_,[31] again, every incident is delightful to the imagination; and the scene when Harry Bertram lands at Ellangowan is a model instance of romantic method.

"'I remember the tune well,' he says, 'though I cannot guess what should at present so strongly recall it to my memory.' He took his flageolet from his pocket and played a simple melody. Apparently the tune awoke the corresponding associations of a damsel.... She immediately took up the song--

"'Are these the links of Forth, she said;
Or are they the crooks of Dee,
Or the bonny woods of Warroch Head
That I so fain would see?'

"'By heaven!' said Bertram, 'it is the very ballad.'"

On this quotation two remarks fall to be made. First, as an instance of modern feeling for romance, this famous touch of the flageolet and the old song is selected by Miss Braddon for omission. Miss Braddon's idea[32] of a story, like Mrs. Todgers's idea of a wooden leg,[33] were something strange to have expounded. As a matter of personal experience, Meg's appearance to old Mr. Bertram on the road, the ruins of Derncleugh, the scene of the flageolet, and the Dominie's recognition of Harry, are the four strong notes that continue to ring in the mind after the book is laid aside. The second point is still more curious. The reader will observe a mark of excision in the passage as quoted by me. Well, here is how it runs in the original: "a damsel, who, close behind a fine spring about half-way down the descent, and which had once supplied the castle with water, was engaged in bleaching linen." A man who gave in such copy would be discharged from the staff of a daily paper. Scott has forgotten to prepare the reader for the presence of the "damsel"; he has forgotten to mention the spring and its relation to the ruin; and now, face to face with his omission, instead of trying back and starting fair, crams all this matter, tail foremost, into a single shambling sentence. It is not merely bad English, or bad style; it is abominably bad narrative besides.

Certainly the contrast is remarkable; and it is one that throws a strong light upon the subject of this paper. For here we have a man of the finest creative instinct touching with perfect certainty and charm the romantic junctures of his story; and we find him utterly careless, almost, it would seem, incapable, in the technical matter of style, and not only frequently weak, but frequently wrong in points of drama. In character parts, indeed, and particularly in the Scotch, he was delicate, strong and truthful; but the trite, obliterated features of too many of his heroes have already wearied two generations of readers. At times his characters will speak with something far beyond propriety with a true heroic note; but on the next page they will be wading wearily forward with an ungrammatical and undramatic rigmarole of words. The man who could conceive and write the character of Elspeth of the Craigburnfoot,[34] as Scott has conceived and written it, had not only splendid romantic, but splendid tragic gifts. How comes it, then, that he could so often fob us off with languid, inarticulate twaddle?

It seems to me that the explanation is to be found in the very quality of his surprising merits. As his books are play to the reader, so were, they play to him. He conjured up the romantic with delight, but he had hardly patience to describe it. He was a great day-dreamer, a seer of fit and beautiful and humorous visions, but hardly a great artist; hardly, in the manful sense, an artist at all. He pleased himself, and so he pleases us. Of the pleasures of his art he tasted fully; but of its toils and vigils and distresses never man knew less. A great romantic--an idle child.

NOTES

This essay first appeared in _Longman's Magazine_ for November 1882, Vol. I, pp. 69-79. Five years later it was published in the volume _Memories and Portraits_ (1887), followed by an article called _A Humble Remonstrance_, which should really be read in connection with this essay, as it is a continuation of the same line of thought. In the eternal conflict between Romanticism and Realism, Stevenson was heart and soul with the former, and fortunately he lived long enough to see the practical effects of his own precepts and influence. When he began to write, Realism in fiction seemed to have absolute control; when he died, a tremendous reaction in favor of the historical romance had already set in, that reached its climax with the death of the century. Stevenson's share in this Romantic revival was greater than that of any other English writer, and as an English review remarked, if it had not been for him most of the new authors would have been Howells and James young men.

This paper was written at Davos in the winter of 1881-2, and in February, writing to Henley, the author said, "I have just finished a paper, 'A Gossip on Romance,' in which I have tried to do, very popularly, about one-half of the matter you wanted me to try. In a way, I have found an answer to the question. But the subject was hardly fit for so chatty a paper, and it is all loose ends. If ever I do my book on the Art of Literature, I shall gather them together and be clear." (_Letters_, I, 269). On Dec. 8, 1884--the same month in which _A Humble Remonstrance_ was printed, Stevenson wrote an interesting letter to Henry James, whose views on the art of fiction were naturally contrary to those of his friend. See _Letters_, I, 402.

[Note 1: _Like a pig for truffles_. See the _Epilogue_ to Browning's _Pacchiarotto etc_., Stanza XVIII:--"Your product is--truffles, you hunt with a pig!"]

[Note 2: _The Malabar coast_. A part of India.]

[Note 3: _Jacobite_. After James II was driven from the throne in 1688, his supporters and those of his descendants were called Jacobites. Jacobus is the Latin for James.]

[Note 4: _John Rann or Jerry Abershaw_. John Rann I cannot find. Louis Jeremiah (or Jerry) Abershaw was a highway robber, who infested the roads near London; he was hung in 1795, when scarcely over twenty-one years old.]

[Note 5: "_Great North road_." The road that runs on the east of England up to Edinburgh. Stevenson yielded to the charm that these words had for him, for he began a romance with the title, _The Great North Road_, which however, he never finished. It was published as a fragment in _The Illustrated London News_, in 1895.]

[Note 6: _What will he Do with It_? One of Bulwer-Lytton's novels, published in 1858.]

[Note 7: Since traced by many obliging correspondents to the gallery of Charles Kingsley.]

[Note 8: _Conduct is three parts of life_. In _Literature and Dogma_ (1873) Matthew Arnold asserted with great emphasis, that conduct was three-fourths of life.]

[Note 9: _The sight of a pleasant arbour_. Possibly a reminiscence of the arbour in _Pilgrim's Progress_, where Christian fell asleep, and lost his roll. "Now about the midway to the top of the hill was a pleasant arbour."]

[Note 10: "_Miching mallecho." Hamlet's_ description of the meaning of the Dumb Show in the play-scene, Act III, Sc. 2. "Hidden treachery"--see any annotated edition of _Hamlet_.]