Robert Louis Stevenson, A Record, An Estimate, A Memorial

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Robert Louis Stevenson, A Record, An Estimate, A Memorial by A.H. Japp

Scanned and proofed by David Price, email ccx074@coventry.ac.uk

ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON, BY A. H. JAPP

PREFACE

A FEW words may here be allowed me to explain one or two points.
First, about the facsimile of last page of Preface to FAMILIAR
STUDIES OF MEN AND BOOKS. Stevenson was in Davos when the greater
portion of that work went through the press. He felt so much the
disadvantage of being there in the circumstances (both himself and
his wife ill) that he begged me to read the proofs of the Preface
for him. This illness has record in the letter from him (pp. 28-
29). The printers, of course, had directions to send the copy and
proofs of the Preface to me. Hence I am able now to give this
facsimile.

With regard to the letter at p. 19, of which facsimile is also
given, what Stevenson there meant is not the "three last" of that
batch, but the three last sent to me before - though that was an
error on his part - he only then sent two chapters, making the
"eleven chapters now" - sent to me by post.

Another point on which I might have dwelt and illustrated by many
instances is this, that though Stevenson was fond of hob-nobbing
with all sorts and conditions of men, this desire of wide contact
and intercourse has little show in his novels - the ordinary fibre
of commonplace human beings not receiving much celebration from him
there; another case in which his private bent and sympathies
received little illustration in his novels. But the fact lies
implicit in much I have written.

I have to thank many authors for permission to quote extracts I
have used.

ALEXANDER H. JAPP.

CONTENTS

I. INTRODUCTION AND FIRST IMPRESSIONS
II. TREASURE ISLAND AND SOME REMINISCENCES
III. THE CHILD FATHER OF THE MAN
IV. HEREDITY ILLUSTRATED
V. TRAVELS
VI. SOME EARLIER LETTERS
VII. THE VAILIMA LETTERS
VIII. WORK OF LATER YEARS
IX. SOME CHARACTERISTICS
X. A SAMOAN MEMORIAL OF R. L. STEVENSON
XI. MISS STUBBS' RECORD OF A PILGRIMAGE
XII. HIS GENIUS AND METHODS
XIII. PREACHER AND MYSTIC FABULIST
XIV. STEVENSON AS DRAMATIST
XV. THEORY OF GOOD AND EVIL
XVI. STEVENSON'S GLOOM
XVII. PROOFS OF GROWTH
XVIII. EARLIER DETERMINATIONS AND RESULTS
XIX. MR EDMUND CLARENCE STEDMAN'S ESTIMATE
XX. EGOTISTIC ELEMENT AND ITS EFFECTS
XXI. UNITY IN STEVENSON'S STORIES
XXII. PERSONAL CHEERFULNESS AND INVENTED GLOOM
XXIII. EDINBURGH REVIEWERS' DICTA INAPPLICABLE TO LATER WORK
XXIV. MR HENLEY'S SPITEFUL PERVERSIONS
XXV. MR CHRISTIE MURRAY'S IMPRESSIONS
XXVI. HERO-VILLAINS
XXVII. MR G. MOORE, MR MARRIOTT WATSON, AND OTHERS
XXVIII. UNEXPECTED COMBINATIONS
XXIX. LOVE OF VAGABONDS
XXX. LORD ROSEBERY'S CASE
XXXI. MR GOSSE AND MS. OF TREASURE ISLAND
XXXII. STEVENSON PORTRAITS
XXXIII. LAPSES AND ERRORS IN CRITICISM
XXXIV. LETTERS AND POEMS IN TESTIMONY
APPENDIX

ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON

CHAPTER I - INTRODUCTION AND FIRST IMPRESSIONS

MY little effort to make Thoreau better known in England had one
result that I am pleased to think of. It brought me into personal
association with R. L. Stevenson, who had written and published in
THE CORNHILL MAGAZINE an essay on Thoreau, in whom he had for some
time taken an interest. He found in Thoreau not only a rare
character for originality, courage, and indefatigable independence,
but also a master of style, to whom, on this account, as much as
any, he was inclined to play the part of the "sedulous ape," as he
had acknowledged doing to many others - a later exercise, perhaps
in some ways as fruitful as any that had gone before. A recent
poet, having had some seeds of plants sent to him from Northern
Scotland to the South, celebrated his setting of them beside those
native to the Surrey slope on which he dwelt, with the lines -

"And when the Northern seeds are growing,
Another beauty then bestowing,
We shall be fine, and North to South
Be giving kisses, mouth to mouth."

So the Thoreau influence on Stevenson was as if a tart American
wild-apple had been grafted on an English pippin, and produced a
wholly new kind with the flavours of both; and here wild America
and England kissed each other mouth to mouth.

The direct result was the essay in THE CORNHILL, but the indirect
results were many and less easily assessed, as Stevenson himself,
as we shall see, was ever ready to admit. The essay on Thoreau was
written in America, which further, perhaps, bears out my point.

One of the authorities, quoted by Mr Hammerton, in STEVENSONIANA
says of the circumstances in which he found our author, when he was
busily engaged on that bit of work:

"I have visited him in a lonely lodging in California, it was
previous to his happy marriage, and found him submerged in billows
of bed-clothes; about him floated the scattered volumes of a
complete set of Thoreau; he was preparing an essay on that worthy,
and he looked at the moment like a half-drowned man, yet he was not
cast down. His work, an endless task, was better than a straw to
him. It was to become his life-preserver and to prolong his years.
I feel convinced that without it he must have surrendered long
since. I found Stevenson a man of the frailest physique, though
most unaccountably tenacious of life; a man whose pen was
indefatigable, whose brain was never at rest, who, as far as I am
able to judge, looked upon everybody and everything from a
supremely intellectual point of view." (1)

We remember the common belief in Yorkshire and other parts that a
man could not die so long as he could stand up - a belief on which
poor Branwell Bronte was fain to act and to illustrate, but R. L.
Stevenson illustrated it, as this writer shows, in a better,
calmer, and healthier way, despite his lack of health.

On some little points of fact, however, Stevenson was wrong; and I
wrote to the Editor of THE SPECTATOR a letter, titled, I think,
"Thoreau's Pity and Humour," which he inserted. This brought me a
private letter from Stevenson, who expressed the wish to see me,
and have some talk with me on that and other matters. To this
letter I at once replied, directing to 17 Heriot Row, Edinburgh,
saying that, as I was soon to be in that City, it might be possible
for me to see him there. In reply to this letter Mr Stevenson
wrote:

"THE COTTAGE, CASTLETON OF BRAEMAR,
SUNDAY, AUGUST (? TH), 1881.

"MY DEAR SIR, - I should long ago have written to thank you for
your kind and frank letter; but, in my state of health, papers are
apt to get mislaid, and your letter has been vainly hunted for
until this (Sunday) morning.

"I must first say a word as to not quoting your book by name. It
was the consciousness that we disagreed which led me, I daresay,
wrongly, to suppress ALL references throughout the paper. But you
may be certain a proper reference will now be introduced.

"I regret I shall not be able to see you in Edinburgh: one visit
to Edinburgh has already cost me too dear in that invaluable
particular, health; but if it should be at all possible for you to
pass by Braemar, I believe you would find an attentive listener,
and I can offer you a bed, a drive, and necessary food.

"If, however, you should not be able to come thus far, I can
promise two things. First, I shall religiously revise what I have
written, and bring out more clearly the point of view from which I
regarded Thoreau. Second, I shall in the preface record your
objection.

"The point of view (and I must ask you not to forget that any such
short paper is essentially only a SECTION THROUGH a man) was this:
I desired to look at the man through his books. Thus, for
instance, when I mentioned his return to the pencil-making, I did
it only in passing (perhaps I was wrong), because it seemed to me
not an illustration of his principles, but a brave departure from
them. Thousands of such there were I do not doubt; still they
might be hardly to my purpose; though, as you say so, I suppose
some of them would be.

"Our difference as to 'pity,' I suspect, was a logomachy of my
making. No pitiful acts, on his part, would surprise me: I know
he would be more pitiful in practice than most of the whiners; but
the spirit of that practice would still seem to me to be unjustly
described by the word pity.

"When I try to be measured, I find myself usually suspected of a
sneaking unkindness for my subject, but you may be sure, sir, I
would give up most other things to be as good a man as Thoreau.
Even my knowledge of him leads me thus far.

"Should you find yourself able to push on so far - it may even lie
on your way - believe me your visit will be very welcome. The
weather is cruel, but the place is, as I daresay you know, the very
WALE of Scotland - bar Tummelside. - Yours very sincerely,

ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON."

Some delay took place in my leaving London for Scotland, and hence
what seemed a hitch. I wrote mentioning the reason of my delay,
and expressing the fear that I might have to forego the prospect of
seeing him in Braemar, as his circumstances might have altered in
the meantime. In answer came this note, like so many, if not most
of his, indeed, without date:-

THE COTTAGE, CASTLETON OF BRAEMAR. (NO DATE.)

"MY DEAR SIR, - I am here as yet a fixture, and beg you to come our
way. Would Tuesday or Wednesday suit you by any chance? We shall
then, I believe, be empty: a thing favourable to talks. You get
here in time for dinner. I stay till near the end of September,
unless, as may very well be, the weather drive me forth. - Yours
very sincerely, ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON."

I accordingly went to Braemar, where he and his wife and her son
were staying with his father and mother.

These were red-letter days in my calendar alike on account of
pleasant intercourse with his honoured father and himself. Here is
my pen-and-ink portrait of R. L. Stevenson, thrown down at the
time:

Mr Stevenson's is, indeed, a very picturesque and striking figure.
Not so tall probably as he seems at first sight from his extreme
thinness, but the pose and air could not be otherwise described
than as distinguished. Head of fine type, carried well on the
shoulders and in walking with the impression of being a little
thrown back; long brown hair, falling from under a broadish-brimmed
Spanish form of soft felt hat, Rembrandtesque; loose kind of
Inverness cape when walking, and invariable velvet jacket inside
the house. You would say at first sight, wherever you saw him,
that he was a man of intellect, artistic and individual, wholly out
of the common. His face is sensitive, full of expression, though
it could not be called strictly beautiful. It is longish,
especially seen in profile, and features a little irregular; the
brow at once high and broad. A hint of vagary, and just a hint in
the expression, is qualified by the eyes, which are set rather far
apart from each other as seems, and with a most wistful, and at the
same time possibly a merry impish expression arising over that, yet
frank and clear, piercing, but at the same time steady, and fall on
you with a gentle radiance and animation as he speaks. Romance, if
with an indescribable SOUPCON of whimsicality, is marked upon him;
sometimes he has the look as of the Ancient Mariner, and could fix
you with his glittering e'e, and he would, as he points his
sentences with a movement of his thin white forefinger, when this
is not monopolised with the almost incessant cigarette. There is a
faint suggestion of a hair-brained sentimental trace on his
countenance, but controlled, after all, by good Scotch sense and
shrewdness. In conversation he is very animated, and likes to ask
questions. A favourite and characteristic attitude with him was to
put his foot on a chair or stool and rest his elbow on his knee,
with his chin on his hand; or to sit, or rather to half sit, half
lean, on the corner of a table or desk, one of his legs swinging
freely, and when anything that tickled him was said he would laugh
in the heartiest manner, even at the risk of bringing on his cough,
which at that time was troublesome. Often when he got animated he
rose and walked about as he spoke, as if movement aided thought and
expression. Though he loved Edinburgh, which was full of
associations for him, he had no good word for its east winds, which
to him were as death. Yet he passed one winter as a "Silverado
squatter," the story of which he has inimitably told in the volume
titled THE SILVERADO SQUATTERS; and he afterwards spent several
winters at Davos Platz, where, as he said to me, he not only
breathed good air, but learned to know with closest intimacy John
Addington Symonds, who "though his books were good, was far finer
and more interesting than any of his books." He needed a good deal
of nursery attentions, but his invalidism was never obtrusively
brought before one in any sympathy-seeking way by himself; on the
contrary, a very manly, self-sustaining spirit was evident; and the
amount of work which he managed to turn out even when at his worst
was truly surprising.

His wife, an American lady, is highly cultured, and is herself an
author. In her speech there is just the slightest suggestion of
the American accent, which only made it the more pleasing to my
ear. She is heart and soul devoted to her husband, proud of his
achievements, and her delight is the consciousness of substantially
aiding him in his enterprises.

They then had with them a boy of eleven or twelve, Samuel Lloyd
Osbourne, to be much referred to later (a son of Mrs Stevenson by a
former marriage), whose delight was to draw the oddest, but perhaps
half intentional or unintentional caricatures, funny, in some
cases, beyond expression. His room was designated the picture-
gallery, and on entering I could scarce refrain from bursting into
laughter, even at the general effect, and, noticing this, and that
I was putting some restraint on myself out of respect for the
host's feelings, Stevenson said to me with a sly wink and a gentle
dig in the ribs, "It's laugh and be thankful here." On Lloyd's
account simple engraving materials, types, and a small printing-
press had been procured; and it was Stevenson's delight to make
funny poems, stories, and morals for the engravings executed, and
all would be duly printed together. Stevenson's thorough enjoyment
of the picture-gallery, and his goodness to Lloyd, becoming himself
a very boy for the nonce, were delightful to witness and in degree
to share. Wherever they were - at Braemar, in Edinburgh, at Davos
Platz, or even at Silverado - the engraving and printing went on.
The mention of the picture-gallery suggests that it was out of his
interest in the colour-drawing and the picture-gallery that his
first published story, TREASURE ISLAND, grew, as we shall see.

I have some copies of the rude printing-press productions,
inexpressibly quaint, grotesque, a kind of literary horse-play, yet
with a certain squint-eyed, sprawling genius in it, and innocent
childish Rabelaisian mirth of a sort. At all events I cannot look
at the slight memorials of that time, which I still possess,
without laughing afresh till my eyes are dewy. Stevenson, as I
understood, began TREASURE ISLAND more to entertain Lloyd Osbourne
than anything else; the chapters being regularly read to the family
circle as they were written, and with scarcely a purpose beyond.
The lad became Stevenson's trusted companion and collaborator -
clearly with a touch of genius.

I have before me as I write some of these funny momentoes of that
time, carefully kept, often looked at. One of them is, "THE BLACK
CANYON; OR, WILD ADVENTURES IN THE FAR WEST: a Tale of Instruction
and Amusement for the Young, by Samuel L. Osbourne, printed by the
author; Davos Platz," with the most remarkable cuts. It would not
do some of the sensationalists anything but good to read it even at
this day, since many points in their art are absurdly caricatured.
Another is "MORAL EMBLEMS; A COLLECTION OF CUTS AND VERSES, by R.
L. Stevenson, author of the BLUE SCALPER, etc., etc. Printers, S.
L. Osbourne and Company, Davos Platz." Here are the lines to a
rare piece of grotesque, titled A PEAK IN DARIEN -

'Broad-gazing on untrodden lands,
See where adventurous Cortez stands,
While in the heavens above his head,
The eagle seeks its daily bread.
How aptly fact to fact replies,
Heroes and eagles, hills and skies.
Ye, who contemn the fatted slave,
Look on this emblem and be brave."

Another, THE ELEPHANT, has these lines -

"See in the print how, moved by whim,
Trumpeting Jumbo, great and grim,
Adjusts his trunk, like a cravat,
To noose that individual's hat;
The Sacred Ibis in the distance,
Joys to observe his bold resistance."

R. L. Stevenson wrote from Davos Platz, in sending me THE BLACK
CANYON:

"Sam sends as a present a work of his own. I hope you feel
flattered, for THIS IS SIMPLY THE FIRST TIME HE HAS EVER GIVEN ONE
AWAY. I have to buy my own works, I can tell you."

Later he said, in sending a second:

"I own I have delayed this letter till I could forward the
enclosed. Remembering the night at Braemar, when we visited the
picture-gallery, I hope it may amuse you: you see we do some
publishing hereaway."

Delightfully suggestive and highly enjoyable, too, were the
meetings in the little drawing-room after dinner, when the
contrasted traits of father and son came into full play - when R.
L. Stevenson would sometimes draw out a new view by bold, half-
paradoxical assertion, or compel advance on the point from a new
quarter by a searching question couched in the simplest language,
or reveal his own latest conviction finally, by a few sentences as
nicely rounded off as though they had been written, while he rose
and gently moved about, as his habit was, in the course of those
more extended remarks. Then a chapter or two of THE SEA-COOK would
be read, with due pronouncement on the main points by one or other
of the family audience.

The reading of the book is one thing. It was quite another thing
to hear Stevenson as he stood reading it aloud, with his hand
stretched out holding the manuscript, and his body gently swaying
as a kind of rhythmical commentary on the story. His fine voice,
clear and keen it some of its tones, had a wonderful power of
inflection and variation, and when he came to stand in the place of
Silver you could almost have imagined you saw the great one-legged
John Silver, joyous-eyed, on the rolling sea. Yes, to read it in
print was good, but better yet to hear Stevenson read it.

CHAPTER II - TREASURE ISLAND AND SOME REMINISCENCES

WHEN I left Braemar, I carried with me a considerable portion of
the MS. of TREASURE ISLAND, with an outline of the rest of the
story. It originally bore the odd title of THE SEA-COOK, and, as I
have told before, I showed it to Mr Henderson, the proprietor of
the YOUNG FOLKS' PAPER, who came to an arrangement with Mr
Stevenson, and the story duly appeared in its pages, as well as the
two which succeeded it.

Stevenson himself in his article in THE IDLER for August 1894
(reprinted in MY FIRST BOOK volume and in a late volume of the
EDINBURGH EDITION) has recalled some of the circumstances connected
with this visit of mine to Braemar, as it bore on the destination
of TREASURE ISLAND:

"And now, who should come dropping in, EX MACHINA, but Dr Japp,
like the disguised prince, who is to bring down the curtain upon
peace and happiness in the last act; for he carried in his pocket,
not a horn or a talisman, but a publisher, in fact, ready to
unearth new writers for my old friend Mr Henderson's YOUNG FOLKS.
Even the ruthlessness of a united family recoiled before the
extreme measure of inflicting on our guest the mutilated members of
THE SEA-COOK; at the same time, we would by no means stop our
readings, and accordingly the tale was begun again at the
beginning, and solemnly redelivered for the benefit of Dr Japp.
From that moment on, I have thought highly of his critical faculty;
for when he left us, he carried away the manuscript in his
portmanteau.

"TREASURE ISLAND - it was Mr Henderson who deleted the first title,
THE SEA-COOK - appeared duly in YOUNG FOLKS, where it figured in
the ignoble midst without woodcuts, and attracted not the least
attention. I did not care. I liked the tale myself, for much the
same reason as my father liked the beginning: it was my kind of
picturesque. I was not a little proud of John Silver also; and to
this day rather admire that smooth and formidable adventurer. What
was infinitely more exhilarating, I had passed a landmark. I had
finished a tale and written The End upon my manuscript, as I had
not done since THE PENTLAND RISING, when I was a boy of sixteen,
not yet at college. In truth, it was so by a lucky set of
accidents: had not Dr Japp come on his visit, had not the tale
flowed from me with singular ease, it must have been laid aside,
like its predecessors, and found a circuitous and unlamented way to
the fire. Purists may suggest it would have been better so. I am
not of that mind. The tale seems to have given much pleasure, and
it brought (or was the means of bringing) fire, food, and wine to a
deserving family in which I took an interest. I need scarcely say
I mean my own."

He himself gives a goodly list of the predecessors which had found
a circuitous and unlamented way to the fire

"As soon as I was able to write, I became a good friend to the
paper-makers. Reams upon reams must have gone to the making of
RATHILLET, THE PENTLAND RISING, THE KING'S PARDON (otherwise PARK
WHITEHEAD), EDWARD DAVEN, A COUNTRY DANCE, and A VENDETTA IN THE
WEST. RATHILLET was attempted before fifteen, THE VENDETTA at
twenty-nine, and the succession of defeats lasted unbroken till I
was thirty-one."

Another thing I carried from Braemar with me which I greatly prize
- this was a copy of CHRISTIANITY CONFIRMED BY JEWISH AND HEATHEN
TESTIMONY, by Mr Stevenson's father, with his autograph signature
and many of his own marginal notes. He had thought deeply on many
subjects - theological, scientific, and social - and had recorded,
I am afraid, but the smaller half of his thoughts and speculations.
Several days in the mornings, before R. L. Stevenson was able to
face the somewhat "snell" air of the hills, I had long walks with
the old gentleman, when we also had long talks on many subjects -
the liberalising of the Scottish Church, educational reform, etc.;
and, on one occasion, a statement of his reason, because of the
subscription, for never having become an elder. That he had in
some small measure enjoyed my society, as I certainly had much
enjoyed his, was borne out by a letter which I received from the
son in reply to one I had written, saying that surely his father
had never meant to present me at the last moment on my leaving by
coach with that volume, with his name on it, and with pencilled
notes here and there, but had merely given it me to read and
return. In the circumstances I may perhaps be excused quoting from
a letter dated Castleton of Braemar, September 1881, in
illustration of what I have said -

"MY DEAR DR JAPP, - My father has gone, but I think I may take it
upon me to ask you to keep the book. Of all things you could do to
endear yourself to me you have done the best, for, from your
letter, you have taken a fancy to my father.

"I do not know how to thank you for your kind trouble in the matter
of THE SEA-COOK, but I am not unmindful. My health is still
poorly, and I have added intercostal rheumatism - a new attraction,
which sewed me up nearly double for two days, and still gives me 'a
list to starboard' - let us be ever nautical. . . . I do not think
with the start I have, there will be any difficulty in letting Mr
Henderson go ahead whenever he likes. I will write my story up to
its legitimate conclusion, and then we shall be in a position to
judge whether a sequel would be desirable, and I myself would then
know better about its practicability from the story-telling point
of view. - Yours very sincerely, ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON."

A little later came the following:-

"THE COTTAGE, CASTLETON OF BRAEMAR. (NO DATE.)

"MY DEAR DR JAPP, - Herewith go nine chapters. I have been a
little seedy; and the two last that I have written seem to me on a
false venue; hence the smallness of the batch. I have now, I hope,
in the three last sent, turned the corner, with no great amount of
dulness.

"The map, with all its names, notes, soundings, and things, should
make, I believe, an admirable advertisement for the story. Eh?

"I hope you got a telegram and letter I forwarded after you to
Dinnat. - Believe me, yours very sincerely, ROBERT LOUIS
STEVENSON."

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