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Stendhal - "Les Cenci"

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

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





In the afternoon, if fine and dry, we went walking, and Stevenson
would sometimes tell us stories of his short experience at the
Scottish Bar, and of his first and only brief. I remember him
contrasting that with his experiences as an engineer with Bob Bain,
who, as manager, was then superintending the building of a
breakwater. Of that time, too, he told the choicest stories, and
especially of how, against all orders, he bribed Bob with five
shillings to let him go down in the diver's dress. He gave us a
splendid description - finer, I think, than even that in his
MEMORIES - of his sensations on the sea-bottom, which seems to have
interested him as deeply, and suggested as many strange fancies, as
anything which he ever came across on the surface. But the
possibility of enterprises of this sort ended - Stevenson lost his
interest in engineering.

Stevenson's father had, indeed, been much exercised in his day by
theological questions and difficulties, and though he remained a
staunch adherent of the Established Church of Scotland he knew well
and practically what is meant by the term "accommodation," as it is
used by theologians in reference to creeds and formulas; for he had
over and over again, because of the strict character of the
subscription required from elders of the Scottish Church declined,
as I have said, to accept the office. In a very express sense you
could see that he bore the marks of his past in many ways - a
quick, sensitive, in some ways even a fantastic-minded man, yet
with a strange solidity and common-sense amid it all, just as
though ferns with the veritable fairies' seed were to grow out of a
common stone wall. He looked like a man who had not been without
sleepless nights - without troubles, sorrows, and perplexities, and
even yet, had not wholly risen above some of them, or the results
of them. His voice was "low and sweet" - with just a possibility
in it of rising to a shrillish key. A sincere and faithful man,
who had walked very demurely through life, though with a touch of
sudden, bright, quiet humour and fancy, every now and then crossing
the grey of his characteristic pensiveness or melancholy, and
drawing effect from it. He was most frank and genial with me, and
I greatly honour his memory. (2)

Thomas Stevenson, with a strange, sad smile, told me how much of a
disappointment, in the first stage, at all events, Louis (he always
called his son Louis at home), had caused him, by failing to follow
up his profession at the Scottish Bar. How much he had looked
forward, after the engineering was abandoned, to his devoting
himself to the work of the Parliament House (as the Hall of the
Chief Court is called in Scotland, from the building having been
while yet there was a Scottish Parliament the place where it sat),
though truly one cannot help feeling how much Stevenson's very air
and figure would have been out of keeping among the bewigged,
pushing, sharp-set, hard-featured, and even red-faced and red-nosed
(some of them, at any rate) company, who daily walked the
Parliament House, and talked and gossiped there, often of other
things than law and equity. "Well, yes, perhaps it was all for the
best," he said, with a sigh, on my having interjected the remark
that R. L. Stevenson was wielding far more influence than he ever
could have done as a Scottish counsel, even though he had risen
rapidly in his profession, and become Lord-Advocate or even a
judge.

There was, indeed, a very pathetic kind of harking back on the
might-have-beens when I talked with him on this subject. He had
reconciled himself in a way to the inevitable, and, like a sensible
man, was now inclined to make the most and the best of it. The
marriage, which, on the report of it, had been but a new
disappointment to him, had, as if by magic, been transformed into a
blessing in his mind and his wife's by personal contact with Fanny
Van der Griff Stevenson, which no one who ever met her could wonder
at; but, nevertheless, his dream of seeing his only son walking in
the pathways of the Stevensons, and adorning a profession in
Edinburgh, and so winning new and welcome laurels for the family
and the name, was still present with him constantly, and by
contrast, he was depressed with contemplation of the real state of
the case, when, as I have said, I pointed out to him, as more than
once I did, what an influence his son was wielding now, not only
over those near to him, but throughout the world, compared with
what could have come to him as a lighthouse engineer, however
successful, or it may be as a briefless advocate or barrister,
walking, hardly in glory and in joy, the Hall of the Edinburgh
Parliament House. And when I pictured the yet greater influence
that was sure to come to him, he only shook his head with that
smile which tells of hopes long-cherished and lost at last, and of
resignation gained, as though at stern duty's call and an honest
desire for the good of those near and dear to him. It moved me
more than I can say, and always in the midst of it he adroitly, and
somewhat abruptly, changed the subject. Such penalties do parents
often pay for the honour of giving geniuses to the world. Here,
again, it may be true, "the individual withers but the world is
more and more."

The impression of a kind of tragic fatality was but added to when
Stevenson would speak of his father in such terms of love and
admiration as quite moved one, of his desire to please him, of his
highest respect and gratitude to him, and pride in having such a
father. It was most characteristic that when, in his travels in
America, he met a gentleman who expressed plainly his keen
disappointment on learning that he had but been introduced to the
son and not to the father - to the as yet but budding author - and
not to the builder of the great lighthouse beacons that constantly
saved mariners from shipwreck round many stormy coasts, he should
record the incident, as his readers will remember, with such a
strange mixture of a pride and filial gratitude, and half humorous
humiliation. Such is the penalty a son of genius often pays in
heart-throbs for the inability to do aught else but follow his
destiny - follow his star, even though as Dante says:-


"Se tu segui tua stella
Non puoi fallire a glorioso porto." (3)


What added a keen thrill as of quivering flesh exposed, was that
Thomas Stevenson on one side was exactly the man to appreciate such
attainments and work in another, and I often wondered how far the
sense of Edinburgh propriety and worldly estimates did weigh with
him here.

Mr Stevenson mentioned to me a peculiar fact which has since been
noted by his son, that, notwithstanding the kind of work he had so
successfully engaged in, he was no mathematician, and had to submit
his calculations to another to be worked out in definite
mathematical formulae. Thomas Stevenson gave one the impression of
a remarkably sweet, great personality, grave, anxious, almost
morbidly forecasting, yet full of childlike hope and ready
affection, but, perhaps, so earnestly taken up with some points as
to exaggerate their importance and be too self-conscious and easily
offended in respect to them. But there was no affectation in him.
He was simple-minded, sincere to the core; most kindly, homely,
hospitable, much intent on brotherly offices. He had the Scottish
PERFERVIDUM too - he could tolerate nothing mean or creeping; and
his eye would lighten and glance in a striking manner when such was
spoken of. I have since heard that his charities were very
extensive, and dispensed in the most hidden and secret ways. He
acted here on the Scripture direction, "Let not thy left hand know
what thy right hand doeth." He was much exercised when I saw him
about some defects, as he held, in the methods of Scotch education
(for he was a true lover of youth, and cared more for character
being formed than for heads being merely crammed). Sagacious, with
fine forecast, with a high ideal, and yet up to a certain point a
most tolerant temper, he was a fine specimen of the Scottish
gentleman. His son tells that, as he was engaged in work
calculated to benefit the world and to save life, he would not for
long take out a patent for his inventions, and thus lost immense
sums. I can well believe that: it seems quite in keeping with my
impressions of the man. There was nothing stolid or selfishly
absorbed in him. He bore the marks of deep, true, honest feeling,
true benevolence, and open-handed generosity, and despite the son's
great pen-craft, and inventive power, would have forgiven my saying
that sometimes I have had a doubt whether the father was not, after
all, the greater man of the two, though certainly not, like the
hero of IN MEMORIAM, moulded "in colossal calm."

In theological matters, in which Thomas Stevenson had been much and
deeply exercised, he held very strong views, leading decisively to
ultra-Calvinism; but, as I myself could well sympathise with such
views, if I did not hold them, knowing well the strange ways in
which they had gone to form grand, if sometimes sternly forbidding
characters, there were no cross-purposes as there might have been
with some on that subject. And always I felt I had an original
character and a most interesting one to study.

This is another very characteristic letter to me from Davos Platz:


"CHALET BUOL, DAVOS, GRISONS,
SWITZERLAND. (NO DATE.)

"MY DEAR DR JAPP, - You must think me a forgetful rogue, as indeed
I am; for I have but now told my publisher to send you a copy of
the FAMILIAR STUDIES. However, I own I have delayed this letter
till I could send you the enclosed. Remembering the night at
Braemar, when we visited the picture-gallery, I hoped they might
amuse you.

"You see we do some publishing hereaway.

"With kind regards, believe me, always yours faithfully,
ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON."

"I shall hope to see you in town in May."


The enclosed was the second series of MORAL EMBLEMS, by R. L.
Stevenson, printed by Samuel Osbourne. My answer to this letter
brought the following:


"CHALET-BUOL, DAVOS,
APRIL 1st, 1882.

"MY DEAR DR JAPP, - A good day to date this letter, which is, in
fact, a confession of incapacity. During my wife's wretched
illness - or I should say the worst of it, for she is not yet
rightly well - I somewhat lost my head, and entirely lost a great
quire of corrected proofs. This is one of the results: I hope
there are none more serious. I was never so sick of any volume as
I was of that; I was continually receiving fresh proofs with fresh
infinitesimal difficulties. I was ill; I did really fear, for my
wife was worse than ill. Well, 'tis out now; and though I have
already observed several carelessnesses myself, and now here is
another of your finding - of which indeed, I ought to be ashamed -
it will only justify the sweeping humility of the preface.

"Symonds was actually dining with us when your letter came, and I
communicated your remarks, which pleased him. He is a far better
and more interesting thing than his books.

"The elephant was my wife's, so she is proportionately elate you
should have picked it out for praise from a collection, let us add,
so replete with the highest qualities of art.

"My wicked carcass, as John Knox calls it, holds together
wonderfully. In addition to many other things, and a volume of
travel, I find I have written since December ninety Cornhill pp. of
Magazine work - essays and stories - 40,000 words; and I am none
the worse - I am better. I begin to hope I may, if not outlive
this wolverine upon my shoulders, at least carry him bravely like
Symonds or Alexander Pope. I begin to take a pride in that hope.

"I shall be much interested to see your criticisms: you might
perhaps send them on to me. I believe you know that I am not
dangerous - one folly I have not - I am not touchy under criticism.

"Sam and my wife both beg to be remembered, and Sam also sends as a
present a work of his own. - Yours very sincerely,
ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON."


As indicating the estimate of many of the good Edinburgh people of
Stevenson and the Stevensons that still held sway up to so late a
date as 1893, I will here extract two characteristic passages from
the letters of the friend and correspondent of these days just
referred to, and to whom I had sent a copy of the ATALANTA
Magazine, with an article of mine on Stevenson.


"If you can excuse the garrulity of age, I can tell you one or two
things about Louis Stevenson, his father and even his grandfather,
which you may work up some other day, as you have so deftly
embedded in the ATALANTA article that small remark on his acting.
Your paper is pleasant and modest: most of R. L. Stevenson's
admirers are inclined to lay it on far too thick. That he is a
genius we all admit; but his genius, if fine, is limited. For
example, he cannot paint (or at least he never has painted) a
woman. No more could Fettes Douglas, skilful artist though he was
in his own special line, and I shall tell you a remark of Russel's
thereon some day. (4) There are women in his books, but there is
none of the beauty and subtlety of womanhood in them.

"R. L. Stevenson I knew well as a lad and often met him and talked
with him. He acted in private theatricals got up by the late
Professor Fleeming Jenkin. But he had then, as always, a pretty
guid conceit o' himsel' - which his clique have done nothing to
check. His father and his grandfather (I have danced with his
mother before her marriage) I knew better; but 'the family
theologian,' as some of R. L. Stevenson's friends dabbed his
father, was a very touchy theologian, and denounced any one who in
the least differed from his extreme Calvinistic views. I came
under his lash most unwittingly in this way myself. But for this
twist, he was a good fellow - kind and hospitable - and a really
able man in his profession. His father-in-law, R. L. Stevenson's
maternal grandfather, was the Rev. Dr Balfour, minister of Colinton
- one of the finest-looking old men I ever saw - tall, upright, and
ruddy at eighty. But he was marvellously feeble as a preacher, and
often said things that were deliciously, unconsciously,
unintentionally laughable, if not witty. We were near Colinton for
some years; and Mr Russell (of the SCOTSMAN), who once attended the
Parish Church with us, was greatly tickled by Balfour discoursing
on the story of Joseph and Potiphar's wife, remarking that Mrs P-'s
conduct was 'highly improper'!"

The estimate of R. L. Stevenson was not and could not be final in
this case, for WEIR OF HERMISTON and CATRIONA were yet unwritten,
not to speak of others, but the passages reflect a certain side of
Edinburgh opinion, illustrating the old Scripture doctrine that a
prophet has honour everywhere but in his own country. And the
passages themselves bear evidence that I violate no confidence
then, for they were given to me to be worked into any after-effort
I might make on Stevenson. My friend was a good and an acute
critic who had done some acceptable literary work in his day.



CHAPTER III - THE CHILD FATHER OF THE MAN



R. L. STEVENSON was born on 13th November 1850, the very year of
the death of his grandfather, Robert Stevenson, whom he has so
finely celebrated. As a mere child he gave token of his character.
As soon as he could read, he was keen for books, and, before very
long, had read all the story-books he could lay hands on; and, when
the stock ran out, he would go and look in at all the shop windows
within reach, and try to piece out the stories from the bits
exposed in open pages and the woodcuts.

He had a nurse of very remarkable character - evidently a paragon -
who deeply influenced him and did much to form his young mind -
Alison Cunningham, who, in his juvenile lingo, became "Cumy," and
who not only was never forgotten, but to the end was treated as his
"second mother." In his dedication of his CHILD'S GARDEN OF VERSES
to her, he says:


"My second mother, my first wife,
The angel of my infant life."


Her copy of KIDNAPPED was inscribed to her by the hand of
Stevenson, thus:


"TO CUMY, FROM HER BOY, THE AUTHOR.
"SKERRYVORE, 18TH JULY 1888."


Skerryvore was the name of Stevenson's Bournemouth home, so named
after one of the Stevenson lighthouses. His first volume, AN
INLAND VOYAGE has this pretty dedication, inscribed in a neat,
small hand:


"MY DEAR CUMY, - If you had not taken so much trouble with me all
the years of my childhood, this little book would never have been
written. Many a long night you sat up with me when I was ill. I
wish I could hope, by way of return, to amuse a single evening for
you with my little book. But whatever you think of it, I know you
will think kindly of
THE AUTHOR."


"Cumy" was perhaps the most influential teacher Stevenson had.
What she and his mother taught took effect and abode with him,
which was hardly the case with any other of his teachers.


"In contrast to Goethe," says Mr Baildon, "Stevenson was but little
affected by his relations to women, and, when this point is fully
gone into, it will probably be found that his mother and nurse in
childhood, and his wife and step-daughter in later life, are about
the only women who seriously influenced either his character or his
art." (p. 32).


When Mr Kelman is celebrating Stevenson for the consistency and
continuity of his undogmatic religion, he is almost throughout
celebrating "Cumy" and her influence, though unconsciously. Here,
again, we have an apt and yet more striking illustration, after
that of the good Lord Shaftesbury and many others, of the deep and
lasting effect a good and earnest woman, of whom the world may
never hear, may have had upon a youngster of whom all the world
shall hear. When Mr Kelman says that "the religious element in
Stevenson was not a thing of late growth, but an integral part and
vital interest of his life," he but points us back to the earlier
religious influences to which he had been effectually subject.
"His faith was not for himself alone, and the phases of
Christianity which it has asserted are peculiarly suited to the
spiritual needs of many in the present time."

We should not lay so much weight as Mr Kelman does on the mere
number of times "the Divine name" is found in Stevenson's writings,
but there is something in such confessions as the following to his
father, when he was, amid hardship and illness, in Paris in 1878:


"Still I believe in myself and my fellow-men and the God who made
us all.... I am lonely and sick and out of heart. Well, I still
hope; I still believe; I still see the good in the inch, and cling
to it. It is not much, perhaps, but it is always something."


Yes, "Cumy" was a very effective teacher, whose influence and
teaching long remained. His other teachers, however famous and
highly gifted, did not attain to such success with him. And
because of this non-success they blamed him, as is usual. He was
fond of playing truant - declared, indeed, that he was about as
methodic a truant as ever could have existed. He much loved to go
on long wanderings by himself on the Pentland Hills and read about
the Covenanters, and while yet a youth of sixteen he wrote THE
PENTLAND RISING - a pamphlet in size and a piece of fine work -
which was duly published, is now scarce, and fetches a high price.
He had made himself thoroughly familiar with all the odd old
corners of Edinburgh - John Knox's haunts and so on, all which he
has turned to account in essays, descriptions and in stories -
especially in CATRIONA. When a mere youth at school, as he tells
us himself, he had little or no desire to carry off prizes and do
just as other boys did; he was always wishing to observe, and to
see, and try things for himself - was, in fact, in the eyes of
schoolmasters and tutors something of an IDLER, with splendid gifts
which he would not rightly apply. He was applying them rightly,
though not in their way. It is not only in his APOLOGY FOR IDLERS
that this confession is made, but elsewhere, as in his essay on A
COLLEGE MAGAZINE, where he says, "I was always busy on my own
private end, which was to learn to write. I kept always two books
in my pocket, one to read and one to write in!"

When he went to College it was still the same - he tells us in the
funniest way how he managed to wheedle a certificate for Greek out
of Professor Blackie, though the Professor owned "his face was not
familiar to him"! He fared very differently when, afterwards his
father, eager that he should follow his profession, got him to
enter the civil engineering class under Professor Fleeming Jenkin.
He still stuck to his old courses - wandering about, and, in
sheltered corners, writing in the open air, and was not present in
class more than a dozen times. When the session was ended he went
up to try for a certificate from Fleeming Jenkin. "No, no, Mr
Stevenson," said the Professor; "I might give it in a doubtful
case, but yours is not doubtful: you have not kept my classes."
And the most characteristic thing - honourable to both men - is to
come; for this was the beginning of a friendship which grew and
strengthened and is finally celebrated in the younger man's sketch
of the elder. He learned from Professor Fleeming Jenkin, perhaps
unconsciously, more of the HUMANIORES, than consciously he did of
engineering. A friend of mine, who knew well both the Stevenson
family and the Balfours, to which R. L. Stevenson's mother
belonged, recalls, as we have seen, his acting in the private
theatricals that were got up by the Professor, and adds, "He was
then a very handsome fellow, and looked splendidly as Sir Charles
Pomander, and essayed, not wholly without success, Sir Peter
Teazle," which one can well believe, no less than that he acted
such parts splendidly as well as looked them.

LONGMAN'S MAGAZINE, immediately after his death, published the
following poem, which took a very pathetic touch from the
circumstances of its appearance - the more that, while it
imaginatively and finely commemorated these days of truant
wanderings, it showed the ruling passion for home and the old
haunts, strongly and vividly, even not unnigh to death:


"The tropics vanish, and meseems that I,
From Halkerside, from topmost Allermuir,
Or steep Caerketton, dreaming gaze again.
Far set in fields and woods, the town I see
Spring gallant from the shallows of her smoke,
Cragg'd, spired, and turreted, her virgin fort
Beflagg'd. About, on seaward drooping hills,
New folds of city glitter. Last, the Forth
Wheels ample waters set with sacred isles,
And populous Fife smokes with a score of towns,
There, on the sunny frontage of a hill,
Hard by the house of kings, repose the dead,
My dead, the ready and the strong of word.
Their works, the salt-encrusted, still survive;
The sea bombards their founded towers; the night
Thrills pierced with their strong lamps. The artificers,
One after one, here in this grated cell,
Where the rain erases and the rust consumes,
Fell upon lasting silence. Continents
And continental oceans intervene;
A sea uncharted, on a lampless isle,
Environs and confines their wandering child
In vain. The voice of generations dead
Summons me, sitting distant, to arise,
My numerous footsteps nimbly to retrace,
And all mutation over, stretch me down
In that denoted city of the dead."



CHAPTER IV - HEREDITY ILLUSTRATED



AT first sight it would seem hard to trace any illustration of the
doctrine of heredity in the case of this master of romance. George
Eliot's dictum that we are, each one of us, but an omnibus carrying
down the traits of our ancestors, does not appear at all to hold
here. This fanciful realist, this naive-wistful humorist, this
dreamy mystical casuist, crossed by the innocent bohemian, this
serious and genial essayist, in whom the deep thought was hidden by
the gracious play of wit and phantasy, came, on the father's side,
of a stock of what the world regarded as a quiet, ingenious,
demure, practical, home-keeping people. In his rich colour,
originality, and graceful air, it is almost as though the bloom of
japonica came on a rich old orchard apple-tree, all out of season
too. Those who go hard on heredity would say, perhaps, that he was
the result of some strange back-stroke. But, on closer
examination, we need not go so far. His grandfather, Robert
Stevenson, the great lighthouse-builder, the man who reared the
iron-bound pillar on the destructive Bell Rock, and set life-saving
lights there, was very intent on his professional work, yet he had
his ideal, and romantic, and adventurous side. In the delightful
sketch which his famous grandson gave of him, does he not tell of
the joy Robert Stevenson had on the annual voyage in the LIGHTHOUSE
YACHT - how it was looked forward to, yearned for, and how, when he
had Walter Scott on board, his fund of story and reminiscence all
through the tour never failed - how Scott drew upon it in THE
PIRATE and the notes to THE PIRATE, and with what pride Robert
Stevenson preserved the lines Scott wrote in the lighthouse album
at the Bell Rock on that occasion:

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