Estate of 
 Florence Walne Parquhalkl 
 

The Faith of 
 Robert Louis Stevenson 
 
 BY 
 
 JOHN KELMAN, D.D. 
 
 Pastor of Fifth Avenue Presbyterian Church, 
 New York 
 
 \ 
 
 il, 
 
 New York Chicago 
 
 Fleming H. Revell Company 
 
 L ONDON 
 
 AND 
 
 Edinburgh 
 
TO 
 
 'THAT WISE YOUTH 
 
 MY COLLEAGUE 
 
 DR. BALFOUR 
 
PREFACE TO THE SECOND EDITION 
 
 / CANNOT send forth a second edition of this book without 
 a few further words with my readers, and the first word 
 must he one of heartiest gratitude. The cordiality of its 
 reception by the great majority of revieivers, both in Britain 
 and America, has surprised me; while many letters from 
 friends, known and unknoivn, have touched me very deeply. 
 If the hook has braced the courage of some readers and 
 quickened their belief in life, one of its main ends has been 
 accomplished. For several criticisms revealing errors of detail 
 I also thank my critics, and have gladly made the necessary 
 changes. 
 
 With regard to more important matters, the main attack 
 has been so direct and uncompromising as to exhilarate and 
 delight me hugely. He would he hut a dull fellow whose 
 sense of humour were not touched by the sweeping announce- 
 ment that, good or had, his book should never have been 
 written. ' Schweig Hund ! ' (' Silence, you dog ! '), cries Fritz 
 der Ei^izige ; and Andreas can only say * Das nenn' ich mir 
 einen Konig ' (' There is what I call a King ! '). Yet, with 
 all possible deference, Andreas still ventures to think that his 
 book, or a better one to the same effect^ should have been 
 written. Both these opposite opinions are absolutely dogmatic, 
 but I think that my critics are ^dogmatic and wrong.' 
 I can see no reason at all why the faith of a novelist and 
 
 M5403G4 « 
 
THE FAITH OF R. L. STEVENSON 
 
 a7'tist should not he selected for special study. It is trtie that 
 a man's faith is a matter between himself and his God, but 
 when he has published it in some twenty-seven volumes, he 
 has made it also a matter between himself and his readers. 
 
 But much exception has been taken to the word Faith as 
 here understood. Obviously it is n^t synonymous with Creed 
 in the conventional meaning of that term, for it includes 
 many phases of the man's life and art which are generally 
 reckoned among things secular. All I can say is that this 
 use of ihe word Faith loas emphatic. A man's real faith is 
 not a thing that can be shut off in a department of so-called 
 religious views and interests, far from the world and aloof 
 from life. That is a view of faith which has already cost 
 us dear. It has impoverished the sacred and exiled the 
 secular. My protest was deliberate, and I stand by it. 
 
 One other point has been raised by many reviewers. Is 
 the faith here expounded really the faith of B. L. S. 1 What 
 would Stevenson have said could he have read this? My 
 answer is that this is what he did actually say. Some of his 
 most serious work is as yet accessible only to readers of the 
 Edinburgh Edition, but even those of his books which have 
 been published in popular form contain the message which I 
 have sent forth as his. Since I did not know him personally, 
 I waited with some anxiety for the verdict of certain of the 
 friends who were best acquainted with his mind and heart, 
 and few things have gratified me more than the fact that 
 these consider that I have interpreted him justly. 
 
 But though I believe ^without capitulation* in his faith 
 and in my task, no critic has come near expressing my own 
 sense of the inadequacy of my performance. Bobert Louis 
 
PREFACE TO THE SECOND EDITION 
 
 Stevenson is greater than his contemporaries yet know, and 
 his message is more helpful than they realise. My hope for 
 this new edition is that, with all its defects, it may spread yet 
 more widely the acquaintance of English-speaking men and 
 women with one who has very much to say to them which 
 will be both wholesome and heartening for them to hear. 
 
 JOHN KELMAN 
 
 June 9, 1904. 
 
PREFACE TO THE FIRST EDITION 
 
 No apology is needed for another booh concerning Roocri 
 Louis Stevenson. It would he impossible to have too much of 
 him ; and while his faith has been touched upon in passing by 
 most of those who have written about him, it has never yet 
 been selected for special and detailed study. But a large, and 
 for the most part a very excellent, literature has for the past 
 nine years been gathering round his personality and his work, 
 so that the difficulty grows ever greater for a new writer. 
 How much may be taken for granted ? How much must be 
 explained ? It may be expected that some will read this book 
 who are intimately acquainted with the subject, and others to 
 whom it is almost wholly unknown. It is an arduous task 
 that lies before him who would offer anything of even the 
 slightest value to both these classes. Yet I venture to hope that 
 what I have written may tempt some to enter one of the richest 
 and most delightful regions in modern English literature, and 
 may interest others to whom that region is already familiar. 
 
 I have to thank Mr. Graham Balfour for his generous and 
 cordial permission to make use of his Biography — a permission 
 of which I have availed myself with obvious freedom. To 
 Miss E. Blantyre Simpson, for her ' Edinburgh Bays ' and 
 for other help given with her characteristic good- will, I am 
 also indebted ; to the books and articles of Professors Colvin, 
 Raleigh, Baildon, and Genung ; and to those of Mr. Gosse, 
 
THE FAITH OF R. L. STEVENSON 
 
 Mr. Cope Cornford, and Mr. Chesterton, besides many others. 
 It has often happened that passages which I had chosen for 
 quotation turned out to have been already selected by one or 
 other of the writers named. I have not discarded these 
 passages on that account; hut in no instance {except one or two 
 where the debt is acknowledged) have I quoted from Stevenson 
 anything which I had not found for myself in his works. 
 From him I have quoted incessantly , weaving his words together 
 with what skill I could comrnand, that I might thus induce 
 him to tell his own tale. Abundance of quotation is a feature 
 in every book which has been written about him, and no one 
 would wish that this were otherwise. But the excess of 
 quotation-marks grew alarming as the work advanced. I 
 had a long battle with inverted commas, as the printer knows 
 to his cost. Fearing to irritate even the most forbearing 
 reader, I drove them from their possession of many words and 
 phrases, and allowed them to remain only in the longer 
 extracts. The incorporated fragments will be easily recog- 
 nised by all lovers of Robert Louis Stevenson ; and if any 
 phrase should strike the uninitiated as suspicious, I would 
 respectfully invite them to search for it in Stevenson s books — 
 it will he a most profitable exercise. 
 
 My claim to write is not that of otie v)ho was personally 
 acquainted with Stevenson. I have seen him in Edinburgh, 
 but have never spoken with him. There is, accordingly, no 
 reference to personal and private facts of his life except suA^h 
 as are already public property. An immense number of his 
 writings, and unusually full and sympathetic accounts of his 
 personality, have been given to the public. My endeavour has 
 been to gather from these, so that any one may verify or 
 xiv 
 
PREFACE TO THE FIRST EDITION 
 
 dissent from my contention for himself, the faith which appears 
 to me manifest and precious. And yet I cannot allow that I 
 have felt myself writing quite as an outsider. Like him I 
 spent the Saturdays of my boyhood among the ships at Leith : 
 I knew all about ' Id. plain and 2d. coloured ' : and I too bore 
 a lantern at my belt. These memories alone, to say nothing 
 of the student days in the old Quadrangle, are enough to 
 establish an intimacy of some sort. 'Et ego in Arcadia vixi! 
 But there is a stronger claim in the love I bear him and the 
 great debt I owe him for help of the most vital kind If 
 gratitude qualifies a man for such work, none could be better 
 qualified. Indeed it has often been necessary to restrain the 
 book from becoming a monotonous panegyric — a kind of 
 appreciation which he would have despised, and a kind of 
 book which has less than no value. 
 
 What I have tried to do is to estimate his thought justly, 
 and to pass it on, that its quickening message may go still 
 more widely abroad. It is only beginning to be generally 
 realised that Stevenson had a message to his times and that 
 his faith is to be taken seriously. I have felt myself 
 advocating this against a considerable body of common 
 opinion, and that is one reason why so much of the book 
 is written in his own words, and why certain sayings of his 
 have been repeated in it so often. It is with what he has 
 said, and not with the opinions of others on either side, that 
 we have to reckon. 
 
 The type of faith which his own words declare is peculiarly 
 valuable in the present time. There is around us much 
 unconscious Christianity. There are strong men whom Ood 
 has girded though they have not knovm Him, and quiet men 
 
 rv 
 
THE FAITH OF R. L, STEVENSON 
 
 who do not seem to he following Christ, and yet unquestionably 
 are casting out devils. These are the men who will best 
 appreciate Stevenson's faith. Its unconventionality, its free- 
 dom from dogmatic expression, and the inseparable weaving of 
 it into the warp and woof of his life's various activities, must 
 appeal to many who have found themselves out of sympathy 
 with the external forms of modern Christianity, though in 
 heart they have remained true to its spirit. 
 
 I only wish that the task I have attempted had been done 
 more worthily of him for love of whom it was undertaken. 
 Beside the rare sparkle of his wit, and the swift and irre- 
 sponsible flight of his imagination, any systematic analysis 
 may well seem pedestrian. It comforts one to remember that 
 he was fond of walking tours. At least I may claim to have 
 drawn him into much brilliant conversation by the way, and 
 it is never dull when Stevenson is speaking. 
 
 JOHN KELMAN. 
 
 Edinburgh, April 28, 1903. 
 
 XVI 
 
CONTENTS 
 
 OHAP. PAGE 
 
 I. Religion and the Man, •••«•! 
 II. Subjectivity, .•«••• 18 
 
 III. Actor and Preacher, • . . • • 35 
 
 IV. The Child, . •••... 51 
 V. The Man of Books, . , • , . .64 
 
 VI. Revolt and Originality, ..... 93 
 
 VII. The Gift of Vision, . . . . .112 
 
 VIII. The Gift of Vision (continued), . « • • 128 
 
 IX. The Instinct of Travel, . . , , . 151 
 
 X. The Instinct of Travel (contimied), • • • 161 
 
 XI. Sympathy and Appreciation, . , • .185 
 
 XII. Manliness and Health, . . , • . 213 
 
 XIII. The • Great Task of Happiness,* . • • • 241 
 
 XIV. Stevenson and his Times, . • . • . 268 
 
 General Index, ...*•. 295 
 
 Index to References and Quotations from Stevenson's 
 
 Writings, .•..,. 301 
 
THE FAITH OF 
 ROBERT LOUIS STEVE:NS0]S1 
 
 A 
 
CHAPTER 1 
 
 RELIGION AND THE MAN 
 
 It is not the purpose of this volume to attempt to force 
 words or actions of Kobert Louis Stevenson beyond their 
 real significance, or to clothe him with religious garments 
 not his own. A large collection of extracts might be made, 
 which, if taken apart from his other work, would seem 
 irreligious enough. At the sectarian side of Scottish church 
 life, and at the conventional respectabilities of some common 
 types of religion, he sneers openly. These, of course, are 
 but local matters, but the question becomes more serious 
 when he tells us that he has been a ' youthful atheist ' ; 
 when he sees behind the King of Apemama, busy at his 
 futile devil -work, 'all the fathers of the Church ' ; or when he 
 makes us shudder with the bitter sarcasm of his fable of the 
 yellow paint which was to set men free from the dangers 
 of life, and the bondage of sin, and the fear of death for 
 ever. All this, and much else more pointed still, may 
 strike many readers as disconcerting in a man who is also 
 the friend of missionaries and the humble and devout 
 worshipper, and who holds that all freethinkers * are much 
 under the influence of superstition.' Here, certainly, it 
 will be necessary to avoid the preponderance of single 
 elements, and to consider the wide stretch and whole 
 purpose of the man. It must be again confessed that at 
 the outset this task seems a sufficiently perplexing one. 
 The numberless apparent iiiconpfruities and conflicting 
 
 1 
 
 9 
 
THE FAITH OF R. L. STEVENSON 
 
 aspects of Stevenson's life might at first sight tempt one to 
 take a cynical view of the situation, and to count him among 
 those who smile at faith. Yet no one who knows the spirit 
 of his work could permanently accept that easy but impos- 
 sible solution. Even after a slight acquaintance the religious 
 element is apparent, and further study serves only to show 
 it more deep and clear. 
 
 The explanation is, after all, not far to seek. This man, 
 both by constitution and by experience, was so complex 
 a personality that there is no possibility of defining him 
 in a sentence or of expressing his faith in any set of 
 articles. There are always many — and especially is this 
 the case in an age strong in criticism — who are essentially 
 men of the museum. They look out upon the world as a 
 place of phenomena demanding to be catalogued. To get a 
 definition of a new man — to find a pigeon-hole for him, fit 
 him into it and label him — that is the duty that appeals 
 first to their consciences. Either he is Elias, or else that 
 prophet, or if not these, Who then is he ? Such questioners 
 have forgotten that life is greater than many pigeon-holes, 
 and that every soul of man eludes the subtlest definition. 
 For indeed this rage for defining is often a more dangerous 
 thing than it seems. Apparently the desire for clearness 
 and logical accuracy, it is often but a phase of that deadly 
 worship of antinomies which does such havoc to the search 
 after truth. If a man be not this he must be that ; and it is 
 prearranged that if he be this I may approve of him and 
 admire him, while if he be that I am in duty bound to hate 
 and frustrate him. It never occurs to the inquirer to leave 
 these and all other antinomies alone, and ask apart from 
 them. What manner of man is this ? Yet surely it were 
 wisdom to let the man reveal himself in his own right, as 
 he is, apart from any such labels and divisions. It is the 
 method of synthesis by wliich we construct about us a 
 2 
 
RELIGION AND THE MAN 
 
 world of living knowledge, as contrasted with that dreary 
 analytical method which makes our world but a collection 
 of classified specimens. 
 
 All this applies with special force to such a character 
 and mind as Stevenson's. So complex to begin with, so 
 vitally changeful in his moods, so catholic in his appre- 
 ciation of apparent opposites, so fascinated by the idea 
 which for the time being is most absorbing, — you may 
 define him (to parody the words of Socrates) if you can 
 catch him. Epithets like 'Optimist' or 'Pessimist' are 
 inapplicable to him, and fall off as soon as they are con- 
 sidered — how much more the epithets of religious sect or 
 party ! He felt the mystery of life. He travelled fast in 
 thought and in sympathy across the whole field of human 
 experience, and saw ' the beauty and the terror of the world,' 
 but he found no easy formula which would express them. Nor 
 did he demand such a formula. He did not think that 
 
 ' It 's strange that God should fash to frame 
 
 The yearth and lift sae hie, 
 An' clean forget to explain the same 
 To a gentleman like me.' 
 
 The mystery of things remained and even deepened : 
 
 * 0, I wad like to ken — to the beggar-wife saya I — 
 The reason o' the cause an' the wherefore o' the why, 
 Wi' mony anither riddle brings the tear into my e'e. 
 — It's gey an easy speirin', says the beggar-wife to me.' 
 
 In a memorable passage in the Inland Voyage he tells us 
 that 'it is not at all a strong thing to put one's reliance 
 upon logic ' ; and thirteen years later he speaks of himself 
 and the poet Fergusson as ' born in the same city ; both 
 sickly, both pestered, one nearly to madness, one to the 
 madhouse, with a damnatory creed.' Accordingly we find 
 throughout his work that the distinguishing mark of this 
 moat dogmatic of men is the absence of dogma in the 
 
 3 
 
THE FAITH OF R. L. STEVENSON 
 
 theological sense. The faith of Kobert Louis Stevenson 
 could never be expressed in any formal creed. 
 
 And indeed it were the worst sort of folly to demand 
 this of such a man. To present to him the blunderbuss of 
 conformity, and bid him stand and deliver, were an attempt 
 at intellectual highway robbery. Nor, supposing him to 
 yield, and to state his convictions in formal terms to the 
 best of his ability, would we have gained anything. It is 
 a transparent fallacy that the creed a man may find it 
 possible to formulate will exactly embody his real 
 religious thought and life. ' Almost every person,' says 
 Stevenson, 'if you will believe himself, holds a quite 
 different theory of life from the one on which he is patently 
 acting.' In estimating the position of many men of our 
 time — such men as Carlyle, Matthew Arnold, and certainly 
 also R. L. Stevenson — it may be taken as an axiom that 
 they will invariably understate their faith. In their 
 formulations there will always be expressed less than 
 they are actually working from. That deeper, inner, 
 inexpressible faith may at times find words in a poem or 
 in a sudden outburst of poetic prose ; but the moment 
 it tries for exact expression its light fails, the mystery 
 closes in once more, and words ring cheerless and 
 inadequate. 
 
 We shall not, therefore, attempt to construct any creed 
 for Stevenson out of words of his that bear reference to 
 religious doctrines. The uniting principle of the many 
 elements of his thought must be found in his personality 
 itself. Yet we shall retain and insist upon the word 
 religion. * Eeligion,' by etymology and by common usage, 
 is the connection of the soul of man with God, that which 
 binds the finite with the infinite and eternal. The bonds 
 may be of various material. There are the steel chains of 
 dogma — great bonds which have knit great men with their 
 4 
 
RELIGION AND THE MAN 
 
 Maker in every age. There are also the flexible and yet 
 strong cords of sentiment ; and there are those other cords 
 which we call character. It is at religion understood in the 
 latter senses that we must look directly in this study. "^ 
 
 The Eeligion of Sentiment is a term easily misunder- 
 stood. It may be confused with sentimentalism, and for 
 that we shall look in vain in Stevenson. Whatever else 
 he is, he is robust and healthy ; nor would it be easy to 
 find a writer equally voluminous and imaginative in whose 
 works so little of the sentimental is to be found. He himself 
 has condemned it with the word 'splairging' — a word so 
 expressive as to justify the prophecy that no Scot who had 
 ever used it would dare to sentimentalise again. In a higher 
 vein than the sentimental is the saying of David Balfour 
 in Catriona : ' Indeed there was scarce anything that more 
 affected me than thus to kneel down alone with her before 
 God like man and wife.' Of the same order is his descrip- 
 tion of the New Year in Edinburgh : ' For at this season, on 
 the threshold of another year of calamity and stubborn con- 
 flict, men feel a need to draw closer the links that unite 
 them; they reckon the number of their friends, like allies 
 before a war; and the prayers grow longer in the morning 
 as the absent are recommended by name into God's keeping.' 
 Another passage, from Vailima Letters, may be classed with 
 these : ' Did you see a man who wrote the Stichit Minister, 
 and dedicated it to me, in words that brought the tears 
 to my eyes every time I looked at them — "where about 
 the graves of the martyrs the whaups are crying. Eis 
 heart remembers how." Ah, by God, it does ! ' 
 
 Such quotations might be multiplied, but there is no need. 
 In a still higher form (though this is far more delicate, and 
 hard to express in words) the religion of sentiment appears 
 in that spirituality which is so constant a quality of his 
 work. His nickname ' Sprite ' was prophetic of more than 
 
 5 
 
THE FAITH OF R. L. STEVENSON 
 
 freakishness. * He gave,' as his biographer strikingly says, 
 
 * the impression of something transitory and unreal, some- 
 times almost inhuman.' At times this reminds one of 
 Kipling's Mowgli, where he personifies and, as it were, 
 humanises Nature — as when in Silverado the evening 
 breeze blows ' right down the canyon, fanning it well out, 
 airing it as a mother airs the night nursery before the 
 children sleep ' ; or when ' the dark woods below were shrill 
 with that noisy business of the birds' evening worship.' 
 At other times we think rather of such uncanny creations 
 as Undine or Maeterlinck's Melisande — ' divine or human, 
 or both mingled ' — ' I seem to have been born with a senti- 
 ment of something moving in things, of an infinite attrac- 
 tion and horror coupled.' A man does not write like that 
 for nothing ; there is more in it than the words express. All 
 through his life the thing he most prizes in himself is soul. 
 The horror of deadening or of losing that is vivid, — the loss 
 would be veritable damnation. The worst of the invalid 
 time in Mentone, immortalised in Ordered South, is that 
 
 * my soul is rarely with me here.' But how splendidly his 
 soul is with him at other times, and how brilliantly it 
 thinks and speaks ! Of no man of our time do the great 
 words seem more appropriate : * Eevere the Maker, lift up 
 thine eye to His style and manners of the sky.' When 
 Stevenson's spirituality assumes this grande manure, it 
 touches the highest level of what may be honourably 
 called the religion of sentiment. 
 
 ' Spirituality takes its most definite and highest form in 
 the instinctive sense of God. His biographer tells us 
 that this was at the root of everything, that it filled his 
 soul with strength and patience for his awfully difficult 
 task, and opened his heart in self-sacrifice ; and it is not 
 too much to say of him that, in his own way, ' in God he 
 lived and moved and had his being.' No doubt some caution 
 6 
 
RELIGION AND THE MAN 
 
 13 needed here. The Name of God is the most picturesquely 
 symbolic of all names, and is capable of poetic as well as 
 literal interpretation. Joubert has well said that ' It is not 
 hard to know God, provided one will not force oneself to 
 define him.' Probably there are very many thinkers in our 
 time to whom these words appeal strongly, and we may grant 
 that Stevenson was one of them. Yet the very darkness that 
 is round about Him may be in such a case the guarantee 
 of His divinity. If pressed for definitions Stevenson would 
 have answered that there still are some whose God no 
 house of words that men have builded can contain. 
 
 It is noteworthy how constantly the Divine Name keeps 
 recurring in his later work — too often perhaps, too casually 
 and lightly. Yet it shows how familiar this thought was to 
 him ; and if one test of the irreligious man be that ' God is 
 not in all his thoughts,' we have here a good certificate. 
 If there are references whose faith is a very doubtful 
 quantity — ' God, let us say,' — there are others where the 
 realisation is genuinely deep and instinctive. When he 
 speaks of God as * the master of our pleasures and our 
 pains,' when in the Samoan troubles he prays God his Foot- 
 note be in time to help, and hopes that by His help he may 
 succeed, he is evidently meaning what he says in its simple 
 acceptation. The same is surely true also of the descrip- 
 tion of the night in Vailima, when * we must sit in the 
 dark, the wind would not sufi'er any light, and so loud was 
 the roar of the rain and the beating boughs on the roof, 
 that we must sit in silence also ... in such hours . . . 
 there is a communion impossible in any chapel of ease, 
 even in any cathedral. You are alone with God : with one 
 face of Him, that is : which he who blinks, blinks at his 
 peril.' And there is a note of unmistakable reality in 
 the words he speaks to the Sisters of Charity, weeping 
 quietly as they are rowed shorewards to Molokai with a 
 
 7 
 
THE FAITH OF R. L. STEVENSON 
 
 company of lepers — * Ladies, God Himself is here to give 
 you welcome.' 
 
 But though the Religion of Sentiment is thus finely and 
 worthily represented, we draw nearer to the inmost truth of 
 the man when we turn to the Religion of Character. In two 
 of his weirdest fables he shows how noble action excels 
 and may survive orthodox faith. In the saddest and the 
 bravest song he ever wrote, he turns from the bewilder- 
 ment of a life which for the time had lost faith and almost 
 lost hope, to strenuous and courageous action as a last resort 
 and citadel : 
 
 * God, if this were faith 1 
 
 To go on for ever and fail and go on again, 
 
 And be mauled to the earth and arise, 
 
 And contend for the shade of a word and a tiling not 
 
 seen with the eyes : 
 With the half of a broken hope for a pillow at night 
 That somehow the right is the right, 
 And the smooth shall bloom from the rongh : 
 Lord, if that were enough V 
 
 It was in this fashion, though not often so sadly, that he 
 turned from the speculative to the practical side of religion, 
 and his life bore witness to his right to do so. 'To be 
 the writer that he was, amounted to a great exploit and 
 service to humanity; to become the man that in the eud 
 he became, seems to me an achievement equally great, an 
 example no less eloquent.* He is well aware that ' faith is 
 a more supporting quality than imagination,' but faith was 
 * often as difficult for him as imagination was easy. H*- is 
 content with such speculative faith as he can get : ' If I fj .'m 
 my spy-hole, looking with purblind eyes upon the least }>an 
 of a fraction of the universe, yet perceive in my own destiny 
 some broken evidences of a plan, and some signals of an 
 over-ruling goodness ; shall I then be so mad as to com- 
 plain that all cannot be deciphered ? Shall I not rather 
 8 
 
RELIGION AND THE MAN 
 
 wonder, with infinite and grateful surprise, that in so vast 
 
 a scheme I seem to have been able to read, however little, 
 
 and that little was encouraging to faith?' In the last of 
 
 his published songs he reaches a calmer and more assured 
 
 point still : 
 
 ' So far have I been led, 
 Lord, by Thy will : 
 So far I hare followed, Lord, and wondered still. 
 
 I hear the signal, Lord — I understand 
 
 The night at Thy command 
 
 Comes. I wiU eat and sleep and will not question more.' 
 
 The transition from theory to practice in the matter of 
 religious faith could hardly be stated more explicitly than 
 in his address to the Samoan students: 'The meaning of 
 religion is a rule of life ; it is an obligation to do well ; if 
 that rule, that obligation, is not seen, your thousand texts 
 will be to you like the thousand lanterns to the blind 
 man.' 
 
 This leads us to the most important fact of all in con- 
 nection with Stevenson's religious thought, for it turns our 
 attention away from a man's formal faith to his whole life 
 of character and personality. It is in this that we must see 
 and judge of his religion — in the life, in which a faith of the 
 theoretical sort is involved and, as it were, understood, 
 whether it have found fuller or less full doctrinal con- 
 sistency and expression. Of Stevenson this is truer than 
 of almost any man one can remember. With an altogether 
 exceptional number and variety of interests, he combined a 
 vitality which flung him into each as if it were the only 
 one. He was of that order of beings which 'moveth all 
 together if it move at all.' His work was so much himself 
 for the time being, that it is utterly impossible to separate 
 his human characteristics from his religious message. He 
 did much preaching, but it is his whole life, his thoughts and 
 
 9 
 
THE FAITH OF R. L. STEVENSON 
 
 deeds, his writings, and his experiences — it is these that he 
 gives you to be better or worse for. With a difference, and 
 yet with the same profound truth, his words about the 
 French peasants may be applied to himself: *It is not a 
 basketful of law-papers, nor the hoofs and pistol-butts of a 
 regiment of horse, that can change one tittle of a ploughman's 
 thoughts. Out-door rustic people have not many ideas, but 
 such as they have are hardy plants, and thrive flourishingly 
 in persecution. One who has grown a long while in the 
 sweat of laborious noons, and under the stars at night, a 
 frequenter of hills and forests, an old honest countryman, 
 has in the end a sense of communion with the powers of 
 the universe, and amicable relations towards his God. . . . 
 His religion does not repose upon the choice of logic ; it is 
 the poetry of the man's experience, the philosophy of the 
 history of his life.' So with Stevenson there is no separa- 
 tion of life into departments of secular and sacred. He 
 even scorns the general type of the ' novel with a purpose,' 
 in which * we see the moral forced into every hole and 
 corner of the story, or thrown externally over it like a 
 carpet over a railing.' His religion was as wide as his 
 human life : * I feel every day as if religion had a greater 
 interest for me ; but that interest is still centred on the 
 little rough-and-tumble world in which our fortunes are 
 cast for the moment. I cannot transfer my interests, not 
 even my religious interests, to any different sphere.' 
 
 Surely this is in itself no small gain. It approaches from 
 the other end, as it were, that ideal of Christian men in 
 every age, the ideal of a wholly consecrated life, which has 
 fascinated or tormented so many of the fathers. Nay, 
 it fulfils Christ's own demand for a life in which saying 
 and doing shall not be held apart — a fatal separation 
 which is at the root of all hypocrisy. But at this stage 
 it is more to the point to notice that the identification of 
 10 
 
RELIGION AND THE MAN 
 
 life and religion sets for us the only possible line along 
 which a study of Stevenson's religion may proceed. It will 
 be absolutely necessary for us to get a clear view of the 
 man as he was, and that will be our only necessity. If 
 we can construct for ourselves the image of his manhood, 
 from the physical powers and characteristics up to the 
 inmost spiritual aspirations — we shall need nothiug more. 
 For much of what was most characteristically himself in 
 Kobert Louis Stevenson reveals itself sooner or later in a 
 religious form. 
 
 The successive chapters of this book, then, will be 
 devoted to the study of the man, with the quest of religion 
 for a more or less subconscious principle of guidance. They 
 will not be confined to any one class of his books, but will 
 look across the whole range of his work and interest, since 
 no part of that can be excluded where the message and the 
 movement of life are one. Nor must we confine our atten- 
 tion to any one period of his life. There seems to be an 
 impression in some quarters that his religion was a late 
 phase, developed almost entirely in the Samoan years, and 
 cutting him off entirely from the Robert Louis Stevenson 
 of early days. This, we take it, gives a quite mistaken idea 
 whether of the late or of the early time. In Samoa he is 
 indeed mellowed and sometimes pathetically aged before 
 his time; yet no one can mistake the identity even 
 in respect of the wilder and more freakish characteristics. 
 In some of the early years he is wild enough, no doubt, 
 and often to all appearance daringly and rudely irreligious ; 
 yet, as may be easily shown, even then there is a hidden 
 life very different from the exterior. 
 
 It is quite true that the religious life of the Samoan 
 period is a most impressive fact. Sometimes indeed, in an 
 hour of depression, we hear a cry de profundis whose 
 desolatian is tragic. Yet in spite of such cries these years 
 
 11 
 
THE FAITH OF R. L. STEVENSON 
 
 are years of faith, and even in its outward expression their 
 aspect is conspicuously religious. He attends church. It 
 is true that sometimes it is for the love he bears the native 
 preacher, as in that notable service in the Gilberts when 
 ' The congregation stirred and stretched ; they moaned, they 
 groaned aloud; they yawned upon a singing note, as you 
 may sometimes hear a dog when he has reached the tragic 
 bitterest of boredom.' Yet he tells us of other services in 
 which he found refreshment to his spirit ; and at an earlier 
 period, when in the Adirondacks he first discovered the 
 broadminded and manly sermons of Eobertson of Brighton, 
 he could not find words to express his appreciation. Still 
 more impressive is the family worship in Vailima, for which 
 he wrote prayers, some of which are masterpieces in the 
 literature of devotion. But the climax is reached when, in 
 his account of a Sunday in Samoa written to Sidney Colvin, 
 the words occur * teaching Sunday-school (I actually do).* 
 He actually did : and it makes one remember his saying 
 that Dumas was 'no district visitor.' Yet Eobert Louis 
 Stevenson was, for several months, a Sunday-school teacher 
 in Samoa. 
 
 All these are, no doubt, very outward and conventional 
 facts — inadequate beneath contempt as final tests of a man's 
 religious life. Yet it is just their conventionality and 
 outwardness that make them significant in the biography 
 of so extremely unconventional a man. Had any one been 
 asked beforehand as to what form a religious life would be 
 likely to take in Stevenson, the last answer that would 
 have suggested itself would have been enthusiasm for 
 foreign missions and teaching a Sunday-school class. Yet 
 so it was, and it surely counts for much. 
 
 Hardly less surprising are the records of family worship, 
 conducted morning and evening in his Vailima household. 
 The low-born precentress and her Samoan hymn with five 
 
RELIGION AND THE MAN 
 
 verses and five treble choruses ; the interruptions of un- 
 sympathetic animals from the curiously assorted live-stock 
 of the estate ; the attendance at the functions of * folk of 
 many families and nations ' ; all this might seem a sufficiently 
 incongruous and fantastic manner of religious service. Yet 
 it was for these gatherings that he wrote the prayers which 
 are now happily so widely known. Of them nothing more 
 need be said than to quote two of them, which may serve as 
 typical of alL 
 
 PRAYER FOR SUNDAY 
 
 (Used by Rev. Mr. Clarke as part of the burial-service at the grave or 
 Robert Louis Stevenson) 
 
 *We beseech Thee, Lord, to behold us with favour, folk of 
 many families and nations gathered together in the peace of 
 this roof, weak men and women subsisting under the covert 
 of thy patience. Be patient still; suffer us yet a while longer; 
 with our broken purposes of good, with our idle endeavours 
 against evil, suffer us a while longer to endure and (if it may 
 be) help us to do better. Bless to us our extraordinary 
 mercies ; if the day come when these must be taken, brace us to 
 play the man under affliction. Be with our friends, be with 
 ourselves. Go with each of us to rest ; if any awake, temper 
 to them the dark hours of watching; and when the day returns, 
 return to us, our sun and comforter, and call us up with morn- 
 ing faces and with morning hearts — eager to labour — eager to 
 be happy, if happiness shall be our portion — and if the day be 
 marked for sorrow, strong to endure it. 
 
 *We thank and praise Thee; and in the words of Him to 
 whom this day is sacred, close our oblation.' 
 
 FOR FRIENDS 
 
 ' For our absent loved ones we implore thy loving-kindness. 
 Keep them in life, keep them in growing honour ; and for us. 
 grant that we may remain worthy of their love. For Christ's 
 sake, let not our beloved blush for us, nor we for them. Grant 
 us but that, and grant us courage to endure lesser ills unshaken, 
 and to accept death, loss, and disappointment, as it were straws 
 upon the tide of life.' 
 
 13 
 
THE FAITH OF R. L. STEVENSON 
 
 In the life that grew to so rich and beautiful a close there 
 was no supreme crisis such as those which cleave many 
 lives asunder into parts wholly distinct. There was nothing 
 violent or sudden in his inner experience, though there were, 
 indeed, some points of definite crisis and change. Two of 
 these, characteristically unlike the usual records of religious 
 experience, may be quoted here. The first is that in which 
 the ' youthful atheist ' passed out of his atheism, under the 
 influence of the late Professor Fleeming Jenkin. He had 
 met with a scepticism deeper than his own, a distrust of 
 scepticism itself : ' " Certainly the church was not right, 
 but certainly not the ant i- church either," he would argue — 
 so that the very weapons of the fight were changed to 
 swords of paper.* The other passage is an extremely 
 interesting fragment of autobiography which occurs in the 
 Reflections and Remarks on Human Life, many of which are 
 written very directly from experience: 'I remember a 
 time when I was very idle ; and lived and profited by that 
 humour. I have no idea why I ceased to be so, yet I scarce 
 believe I have the power to return to it ; it is a change of 
 age. I made consciously a thousand little efforts, but the 
 determination from which these arose came to me while I 
 slept and in the way of growth. I have had a thousand 
 skirmishes to keep myself at work upon particular morn- 
 ings, and sometimes the affair was lost ; but of that great 
 change of campaign, which decided all this part of my life, 
 and turned me from one whose business was to shirk into 
 one whose business was to strive and persevere, — it seems 
 as though all that had been done by some one else. The life 
 of Goethe affected me; so did that of Balzac; and some 
 very noble remarks by the latter in a pretty bad book, the 
 Gousine Bette. I daresay I could trace some other influences 
 in the change. All I mean is, I was never conscious of a 
 struggle, nor registered a vow, nor seemingly had anything 
 14 
 
RELIGION AND THE MAN 
 
 personal to do with the matter, I came about like a well- 
 handled ship. There stood at the wheel that unknown 
 steersman whom we call God.' Mr. Graham Balfour quotes 
 this passage and says that there were several periods to 
 which it might equally relate; it would be impossible to 
 say which of these, or whether any of them, should be 
 singled out as the spiritual turning-point of his life. Indeed, 
 we seem to be warranted in holding that the later years 
 were not so much the beginning of religious interest as the 
 choice of religion for an emphasis which it had not had 
 before. It had been often so neglected or abused as to 
 become a mere picturesque background for the more invit- 
 ing but less creditable play of immediate pursuits. Yet it 
 had a real interest for him at every stage, and had been a 
 dormant but genuine element in his nature, which broke out 
 into memorable expression at unexpected times. When it 
 took command at last, it was indeed marked with the scars 
 of early conflict and defeat, but it was no new thing ; it had 
 been there through all. It is quite possible that some of 
 his early friends saw little or nothing of this, and that from 
 some of them he may have studiously concealed it. Such 
 reticence is characteristic of the turbulent period in all 
 such lives as his. Yet we catch glimpses of the hidden 
 life in many passages, of which the following extracts may 
 be taken as typical examples. 
 
 With the days of childhood we shall deal in a later 
 chapter. Suffice it here to say that, susceptible to these 
 influences as all natural childhood is, it would be difficult 
 to find a record of nursery days more wholly saturated with 
 religious thoughts than his. The influence of his parents' 
 faith and character, and the tender faithfulness of his nurse's 
 piety, filled his earliest years with religious thoughts. 
 
 In the wild time of revolt, about 1870, we have this 
 entry in his diary : ' Decline of religion : I take to the New 
 
 B 15 
 
THE FAITH OF R. L. STEVENSON 
 
 Testament : change startling : growing desire for truth : 
 Spencer : should have done better with the New Test.' 
 About 1878 he wrote of the 'unknown steersman.' 
 In the same year he wrote to his father from Paris : ' 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. . . . There is a fine text in the Bible, I don't 
 know where, to the effect that all things work together for 
 good to those who love the Lord. . . . Strange as it may 
 seem to you, everything has been, in one way or the other, 
 bringing me a little nearer to what I think you would like 
 me to be. 'Tis a strange world, indeed, but there is a 
 manifest God for those who care to look for him.' 
 
 From the next period, that of his California life, we may 
 choose from many possible quotations the verses in which 
 he, like his own David Balfour, kneels before God with the 
 woman he loves. In that well-known song of praise the 
 closing lines of the verses name God 'the great artificer,' 
 'the mighty master,' and 'the august father'; and the 
 whole is carefully planned, so that these three names give 
 the key to the entire thought of each verse. 
 
 MY WIFE 
 
 * Trusty, dusky, vivid, true, 
 With eyes of gold and bramble-dew, 
 Steel-true and blade-straight, 
 The great artificer 
 Made my mare. 
 
 Honour, anger, valour, fire ; 
 A love that life could never tire, 
 Death quench or evil stir, 
 The mighty master 
 Gave to her. 
 
 16 
 
RELIGION AND THE MAN 
 
 Teacher, tender, comrade, wife, 
 A fellow-farer true through life, 
 Heart-whole and soul-free 
 The august father 
 Gave to me.' 
 
 In 1883 he writes at the close of a letter to Mr. W. E. 
 Henley : — 
 
 * Sursum corda : 
 Heave ahead : 
 Here 's luck. 
 Art and Blue Heaven, 
 April and God's Larks. 
 Green reeds and the sky-scattering river. 
 A stately music. 
 Enter God ! K L. S. 
 
 * Ay, but you know, until a man can write that " enter God," 
 he has made no art ! None ! Come, let us take counsel 
 together and make some ! ' 
 
 Two years later, in the beginning of 1886, appeared 
 Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, the book which before many 
 months gave him world-wide celebrity as a serious writer. 
 
 From the South Sea voyages no finer example could be 
 given than his words to the Sisters of Charity already quoted. 
 And this has brought us to Samoan days. It is a curious 
 combination of extracts, but it serves at least to prove that 
 the religious element in Stevenson was not a thing of late 
 growth, but an integral part and vital interest of his life. 
 
 17 
 
THE FAITH OF R. L. STEVENSON 
 
 CHAPTER II 
 
 SUBJECTIVITY 
 
 If it be granted that the religion of Robert Louis Stevenson 
 is to be sought, not so much in any formal creed as in his 
 general life of thought and action, our chief task must 
 evidently be that of considering the individuality of the 
 man. It may be hoped that even those readers who had 
 little previous acquaintance with Stevenson's work have 
 already found themselves in contact with a very distinct 
 and conspicuous personality. Such he was, and felt himself 
 to be. To him the world was full of striking phenomena, 
 but for interest none of them all was comparable with 
 that strange being who was impressed by them. He may 
 have learned his habit of writing iu the first person singular 
 from his favourite Montaigne ; but, if so, it must have been 
 a congenial lesson, a permission to follow his bent rather 
 than a mere fashion of style. His own thoughts, experi- 
 ences, likes and dislikes ; the things he saw and heard, and 
 felt and did ; his memories, his impressions, his forecasts ; 
 even his personal appearance and the condition of his 
 health and spirits; these were to him matters in which 
 he was frankly and strongly interested. Such highly 
 developed self-consciousness is no doubt often a painful 
 gift, if it goes with a nature sensitive to criticism and 
 appreciation ; but it has the huge advantage of providing 
 a field of keen interest near home. To find oneself very 
 interesting is to guarantee life at least against dulness. 
 18 
 
SUBJECTIVITY 
 
 And though he was indeed sensitive, yet he had the com- 
 pensating power of counting his own experiences in with 
 the general spectacle of the world ; of sitting off, as it were, 
 and viewing the situation as a fine matter for reflection, as 
 an excuse for laughter or for tears. 
 
 In every department of his work this fact appears. 
 Komance is usually objective, though there is no apparent 
 reason why objectivity should be demanded of it. Yet it 
 is unquestionable that those of his romances are the most 
 successful in which his own individuality is most present. 
 The Black Arrow he considered a failure, and a considerable 
 proportion of his readers have agreed with the verdict. 
 Prince Otto, in spite of his own fondness for it, the delicacy 
 of its character-work, and the infinite care bestowed upon 
 its style, can hardly be counted a success. From both of 
 these he is conspicuously absent. Of them it may be said, 
 as Arnold wrote of Kacine, ' The talent of Eacine is in his 
 works, but Racine himself is not there.' They are perhaps 
 the only books of his which you feel might possibly have 
 been written by some one else. On the other hand the 
 David Balfour novels, in which he seems to live in the 
 personality of his ancestor, have attained a success which, 
 if we discount the personal element, is surprising — no 
 doubt a bold statement, but one which will stand considera- 
 tion. The tales themselves are good, but that which is 
 excellently good about them is the reader's converse with 
 the teller. Again, while many of the Poems reveal a rare 
 and delicate poetic quality, it is not that alone, but our com- 
 munion in them with the soul of the poet, which is the 
 secret of their altogether unusual appeal to the heart. The 
 Essays and Letters are of course the most intimate of his 
 self-revelations. Regarding the latter, one able and friendly 
 critic wrote, among other astonishing things, that 'these 
 letters, except for occasional touches, are indistinguishable 
 
 19 
 
THE FAITH OF R. L. STEVENSON 
 
 from the myriads of letters which are exchanged between 
 young men every day of the year.' The only interest of a 
 statement such as this is the psychological puzzle as to 
 how it ever came to be made. The explanation which 
 suggests itself is, that the critic was on the outlook for 
 work and not for the man. As finished literature, the 
 letters are of course fragmentary and unsatisfying. As 
 brilliant and delightful revelations of one of the most 
 fascinating personalities of our time, they are beyond praise. 
 Again, the volume entitled In the South Seas has not been 
 received with at all the amount of favour which its author 
 anticipated for it, and which its immense store of informa- 
 tion vividly imparted deserves. Probably the reason is 
 that which Professor Colvin has assigned — that he tried 
 to make it too impersonal. Consciously or unconsciously 
 his readers had learned to look for and to welcome himself 
 in all his writings, and in this volume they are kept in the 
 outer court for the most part — discussing subjects in them- 
 selves very fascinating, but seldom crossing the threshold 
 and conversing on intimate matters with their friend. 
 
 One of the ways in which he impresses himself on his 
 readers — coming on them at unawares throughout his work 
 — is in the recurrence of favourite figures and ideas, which 
 in themselves are casual and of little intrinsic value. Just 
 as Jean Valjean, lying on the night of his great temptation 
 in Father Myriel's chamber, sees continually the checked 
 pattern of a fellow-convict's knit cotton suspender, so 
 certain details haunt Stevenson. The idea of a heavy 
 piece of sculpture left upon the artist's hands or travel- 
 ling aimlessly about the world is one such recurrence. 
 Another is that of the bather lingering stripped upon the 
 water's edge, eager to take the plunge and yet fearful. A 
 third instance is that of the cathedral, which does meta- 
 phorical service in so many of his books, sometimes with a 
 20 
 
SUBJECTIVITY 
 
 curious irrelevance. The main interest of these and many 
 
 other such allusions is that he was interested. The images 
 
 had captivated his imagination, and we feel more intimate 
 
 with him every time we meet them. , . 
 
 This kind of intimacy reaches its keenest in the snatches 
 
 of verse which recur — snatches which have evidently caught 
 
 his ear and sung themselves into his heart. Sometimes this 
 
 happens with a verse which occurs but once. Sailing, for 
 
 instance, in the Dangerous Archipelago : ' As I lay in the 
 
 cockpit and looked upon the steersman, I was haunted by 
 
 Emerson's verses : 
 
 "And the lone seaman all the night 
 Sails astonished among stars." ' 
 
 — lines which haunt those to whom he has repeated them, 
 and recall that night near Earaka when ' the heaven was a 
 thing to wonder at for stars,' as if one had actually seen 
 him there in the starlit ship. Still more haunting are the 
 verses which repeat themselves at intervals through a story 
 or a play. The brown old seaman holds us like the Ancient 
 Mariner he is, with the unhallowed spell of his rhyme : 
 
 * Fifteen men on the Dead Man's Chest — 
 Yo-ho-ho, and a bottle of rum ! ' 
 
 Then there is that provokingly unforgettable lilt of Pew's : 
 
 * Time for us to go, 
 Time for us to go, 
 And when we 'd clapped the hatches on 
 'Twas time for us to go.' 
 
 Above all others, there comes back to us the memory of 
 Stevenson's own version of * "Wandering Willie.' It would 
 be difficult to find anywhere a more intimate and poignant 
 pathos than that which lies in the lines : 
 
 'Home no more home to me, whither must I wander?' 
 and 
 
 ' Home was home then, my dear, full of kindly faces. 
 Home was home then, my dear, happy for the child.' 
 
 21 
 
THE FAITH OF R. L. STEVENSON 
 
 We meet fragments of the last-named song in the Master 
 of Ballantrae, The Wrecker, and other books. Obviously they 
 haunt and strike home to our hearts because they come 
 from the depths of his own heart. In his Critical Kitcats 
 Mr. Gosse tells us that Walter Pater, to guard from infection 
 that style of his which has become the very type of the 
 elaborately exquisite, found he had to abstain from reading 
 Stevenson. Nothing could have been further apart than 
 the styles as such : the danger must have been in the 
 irresistible personality. 
 
 More obvious, though hardly less appealing, are the 
 personal reminiscences that appear everywhere in his books. 
 A quite unusual proportion of his work is directly and 
 avowedly autobiographical. Many of the essays are simply 
 chapters or collections of incidents from his private life. 
 All the life of childhood, boyhood, student days, and grow- 
 ing manhood is there — his life, told by an artist, yet without 
 glorification or belittling. In the poems we naturally 
 expect the same thing, and we find it. The travel-books 
 are but pages from his own experience of travel. Even the 
 novels have sometimes Eobert Louis Stevenson rechrist- 
 ened for their hero ; or, if not, they have him for chorus 
 moralising and explaining things. Even if the Letters and 
 the Life had never been published, we would have known 
 him and his friends, and when we read these later 
 volumes we recognise many an old acquaintance. There are 
 parts of John Nicholsons Misadventure which are evidently 
 memories, exaggerated but unforgotten. There are other 
 parts of that, and of many another writing of his, which 
 must be only dimly intelligible — if indeed they are even 
 that — to any reader who has not been a boy in Scotland. 
 Did any town elsewhere, for example, use the classic word 
 ' Leerie ' of its lamplighters ? From Hunter Square there 
 went forth of old a procession of nightly illuminators, with 
 32 
 
SUBJECTIVITY 
 
 black cloth caps and white linen jackets, and little tin 
 lamps swung a-dangle at their fingers by hooks only known 
 to dairy-men and them. Does anybody who then lived 
 elsewhere than in Edinburgh quite understand the inward- 
 ness of : 
 
 * My tea is nearly ready, and the sun has left the sky, 
 It 's time to take the window to see Leerie going by ; 
 For every night at tea-time and before you take your seat, 
 With lantern and with ladder he comes posting up the street ' ? 
 
 In the Family of Engineers — a fragment which carries 
 the family history down to the building of the Bell Eock 
 Lighthouse — there are many recognisable traits. It is here 
 that we understand what gave the cue to the inimitable 
 description of domestic economy in the house of Weir of 
 Hermiston : * My grandmother remained to the end devout 
 and unambitious, occupied with her Bible, her children, and 
 her house ; easily shocked, and associating largely with a 
 clique of godly parasites. . . . The cook was a godly woman, 
 the butcher a Christian man, and the table suffered.' 
 Nothing, again, is more characteristic of Stevenson than 
 the frequent introduction of trivial incidents or everyday 
 allusions, evidently reminiscences of his own life, which 
 few writers would dare to use in so naif a fashion. 
 Finally, there is a favourite phrase of his, which every 
 lover of his work will recognise, so frequently is it 
 repeated. It is the phrase * dying daily,' which he has 
 borrowed from St. Paul. It is a striking combination of 
 words ; but that which made it so familiar to him, and so 
 ready for his use, was its tragic aptness as a description of 
 many days of his invalid life. 
 
 It might be expected that a man so conscious of him- 
 self would in times of depression let his subjectivity sink 
 into morbidness. In the last days of crowding anxieties 
 and broken health there are such seasons of morbid self- 
 
 23 
 
THE FAITH OF R. L. STEVENSON 
 
 examination and depression, but these are not the real 
 man, the soul of him, at all. Occasional outbreaks of the 
 overstrung nerves, they may be, and ought to be, entirely 
 discounted. There is also an uneasy, ill-conditioned stage 
 through which most boys pass on their way to manhood — 
 the * troglodyte ' stage, in which they sulk and dwell apart 
 each in his particular cave. How dark and disagreeable 
 was the cave of Stevenson may be judged from certain 
 of the personal reminiscences in Memories and Portraits. 
 ' The interests of youth are rarely frank ; his passions, 
 like Noah's dove, come home to roost. The fire, the sensi- 
 bility, and volume of his own nature, that is all that he has 
 learned to recognise. The tumultuary and gray tide of 
 life, the empire of routine, the unrejoicing faces of his 
 elders, fill him with contemptuous surprise ; there also he 
 seems to walk among the tombs of spirits ; and it is only 
 in the course of years, and after much rubbing with his 
 fellow-men, that he begins by glimpses to see himself from 
 without, and his fellows from within.' And again : * The 
 ground of all youth's suffering, solitude, hysterics, and 
 haunting of the grave, is nothing else than naked, ignorant 
 selfishness. It is himself that he sees dead ; those are his 
 virtues that are forgotten ; his is the vague epitaph. Pity 
 him but the more, if pity be your cue ; for where a man is 
 all pride, vanity, and personal aspiration, he goes through 
 fire unshielded. In every part and corner of our life, 
 to lose oneself is to be gainer ; to forget oneself is to be 
 happy; and this poor laughable and tragic fool has not 
 yet learned the rudiments.' Through such a stage of 
 unpleasant and aggressive morbidness Stevenson passed in 
 his young Edinburgh days. The Holy Land of this per- 
 verse and unlovely worship of sorrow is the grim old 
 Calton Cemetery in Edinburgh, where he nursed the mood 
 and at the same time watched a certain overlooking window 
 24 
 
SUBJECTIVITY 
 
 for the vision of a pretty face. The Calton Cemetery 
 reappears in later books — that cemetery ' by some strange 
 chance immured within the bulwarks of a prison ; standing, 
 besides, on the margin of a cliff, crowded with elderly stone 
 memorials, and green with turf and ivy.' It was, however, 
 but a phase, this youthful melancholy. His life passed 
 out, like one of the wakeful nights of his childhood, from 
 the miserable silence and fear of the dark into the 
 'wholesome noises' of the morning, and the bright stir 
 of day. 
 
 A less tragic, but perhaps more objectionable, form of his 
 self-consciousness is that of affectation and egoism, which 
 appears to have been the impression he made on all his 
 friends at one period. Miss Simpson, among the many 
 vivid pictures of her EdinhurgJi Days, has left him before 
 our eyes in a drawing-room, sitting in his shirt-sleeves 
 that he might attract attention to himself. Stevenson 
 in all his glory was certainly not arrayed like anybody 
 else. As we see him in all the fantastic absurdity of attire 
 and mannerism which he cultivated in these early days, 
 the words of Milton's chorus come to mind : 
 
 * But who is this ? what thing of sea or land ? . . . 
 That, so bedeck'd, ornate, and gay, 
 Comes this way sailing.' 
 
 Of that young time he tells a story at his own expense. 
 Salvini had visited Edinburgh, and Stevenson wrote to the 
 Academy a notice of his first performance of Macbeth. 
 Fleeming Jenkin opened the paper, read so far, and then 
 flung it on the floor. ' No,' he cried, ' that won't do. You 
 were thinking of yourself, not of Salvini.' Yet the article, 
 as one reads it now in the Edinhn/rgh Edition, certainly 
 does not justify that criticism. All the more plainly 
 do we read between the lines, and note the egoism 
 for which his friend was on the outlook, and which he 
 
 25 
 
THE FAITH OF R. L. STEVENSON 
 
 found. For in those days he must be king of his world, 
 
 or else a conscious and wretched failure — aut Ccesar ant 
 
 7mdlus : 
 
 * This was the world, and I was king : - 
 For me the bees came by to sing, 
 For me the swallows flew.' 
 
 But then, he had the saving grace of knowing it all the 
 time. Your unconscious egoist, whose vanity is so serious 
 a business that he does not know how vain he is — who 
 likes to be the centre of attention, but thinks you have not 
 noticed that — he is indeed in a bad case. It is not so with 
 Stevenson. At an early age he left off keeping diaries, he 
 tells us, ' finding them a school of posturing and melancholy 
 self-deception.' While still president of the Speculative 
 Society at college, he sums himself up in his valedictory 
 address : ' Mr. Stevenson engaged in explaining to the other 
 members that he is the cleverest person of his age and 
 weight between this and California.' Later on he notes 
 how a man who lives apart from society becomes both 
 weak and vain. From Vailima he writes to his American 
 publisher : ' I hope my own little introduction [to the 
 Family of Engineers] is not egoistic ; or rather, I do not care 
 if it is.' To Professor Colvin he speaks of ' Milton and I,' and 
 with refreshing impudence he writes to Mr. Gosse : * You 
 know what a wooden-hearted curmudgeon I am about some 
 contemporary verse. I like none of it except some of my own. 
 (I look back on that sentence with pleasure ; it comes from 
 an honest heart.)' In yet another place he speaks of some- 
 thing he has said as ' honest, for a man naturally vain ' ; and 
 there is a twinkle in his eye as David Balfour hears in 
 Catriona the plain words : ' Ye '11 have tae supple yer back- 
 bone, and think a wee pickle less o' yer dainty self.' A 
 man who disarms criticism in so frank a fashion takes an 
 almost unfair advantage of his critics, and puts them on 
 26 
 
SUBJECTIVITY 
 
 their honour as gentlemen to say no more about a vanity 
 so openly acknowledged. 
 
 It were truer to say that he is more deeply interested in 
 himself than any other writer of our time. In a very 
 remarkable passage of his Lay Morals he describes ' man, 
 a creature compact of wonders, that, after centuries of 
 custom, is still wonderful to himself/ He describes him as 
 if he were some natural curiosity found unexpectedly upon 
 the seashore — the hair on him, growing like grass; the 
 sight, ' which conducts him, which takes notice of the 
 furthest stars, which is miraculous in every way, and a 
 thing defying explanation or belief, yet which is 'lodged 
 in a piece of jelly, and can be extinguished with a touch ' ; 
 his savage energies, his inconsistent emotions and thoughts. 
 Of course in all this he is thinking first of himself. In 
 Mr. Barrie's Sentimental Tommy he recognises himself 
 beyond the intention of the author, and asks (propheti- 
 cally) whether he is to be hanged ! ' I am one of the few 
 people in the world,' he tells us, ' who do not forget their 
 own lives,' and the words have a deeper significance than 
 merely that vivid power of living in the past, which has 
 given us the Child's Garden of Verses. He did not forget the 
 value of his own life any more than he forgot the facts of it. 
 Loyalty to oneself, treated in a very searching and sugges- 
 tive manner, forms the burden of Lay Morals. Conversa- 
 tion with one's own soul is among the highest of human 
 employments. Thus is Stevenson much occupied with 
 himself. Body and soul, take him for all and all, it would 
 be impossible to find any object of consideration at once so 
 intimately known and so vastly impressive. He is puzzled, 
 shocked, delighted, and repelled by himself, and full of 
 curiosity about himself every way. 
 
 Nor does he conceal, or in any way desire to conceal, this 
 interest. On the contrary, after the manner of the shirt- 
 
 27 
 
THE FAITH OF R, L. STEVENSON 
 
 sleeves episode already quoted, he often makes a direct 
 attack upon the attention of his readers by some pointedly 
 personal allusion. You feel that he somehow likes you — 
 likes you well enough, at least, to be unable to let you alone. 
 Half the pleasure of a walk, he considers, lies in sharing one's 
 sentiments and impressions with another; and the reader 
 often seems to feel the friendly shoulder-tap, to see him face 
 to face, and to be taken into his confidence, until it is not 
 reading a book so much as meeting with a friend. This is 
 true even of the novels. The David Balfour of Catriona is 
 the Eobert Louis Stevenson of Memories and Portraits. He 
 has the sentimental weaknesses of youth, but he has also 
 the grace to see them, and the frankness to discuss them 
 with the reader. He discusses himself more directly in 
 such writings as the Essays and the Poems. That is the 
 phrase — 'discusses himself — as the most interesting subject 
 he can think of, to himself, and no doubt to you also. 
 
 Yet there is nothing offensive in all this. He is the very 
 opposite of the blatant egoist, differing from him by the 
 whole width of the difference between '1' and 'we.' 
 Self-centred persons of that type he utterly condemns: 
 * Irvine had come scatheless through life, conscious only of 
 himself, of his great strength and intelligence ; and in the 
 silence of the universe, to which he did not listen, dwelling 
 with delight on the sound of his own thoughts.' Nor does 
 he wear his heart upon his sleeve, garrulous talker though 
 he may be. It would be a gross mistake to imagine that 
 because he has not spoken on a subject he has no views on it. 
 He knows the value of reticence, and has highly appreciated 
 in one of his characters a reserved and old-fashioned 
 precision of manner as ' an excellent thing in woman, 
 since it sets another value on her sweet familiarities.' 
 He believes, with his own Mackellar, that there is 
 no distinction 'which is worth acquiring or preserving 
 28 
 
SUBJECTIVITY 
 
 at the slightest cost of dignity ' — not even the distinction 
 of making oneself conspicuously interesting to a friend. 
 He never makes you ashamed or uncomfortable by telling 
 you more than you feel you ought to have heard. In this 
 respect every man who has published his diary has been a 
 greater offender against reticence than he. 
 
 This, by the way, raises an interesting side-issue. He 
 has often been compared with Scott, by injudicious admirers 
 and others. There is much excuse for the comparison, for 
 the Letters contain many passages in which Scott and he 
 are coupled by himself. His nickname for Vailima was 
 * Subpriorsford ' — a title whose very humility may sound 
 arrogant. Yet surely the seeming arrogance of the colloca- 
 tion is abundantly atoned for by the reverence in which he 
 always held the Master, and the unquestionable fact that 
 they had certain qualities and aims in common. To place 
 him, in respect of general greatness, above or on an equality 
 with Sir Walter, is the most unfriendly kind of friendship. 
 It is appreciation run into fatuousness, and serves no other 
 end than to challenge just antagonism. Yet one point, it 
 may be safely asserted, must be given in his favour in the 
 comparison. Scott is objective from first to last — often 
 boisterously objective, and always healthy. But subjec- 
 tivity is not necessarily morbid, though there is great 
 danger of its becoming so. Stevenson has solved the very 
 difficult problem of healthy subjectivity. This personal 
 presence, these passing notes of confession, are wayside 
 wells where we often find more refreshment than in all the 
 gloriously objective current of Scott's far broader stream. 
 This is one of the few points in which a comparison in 
 favour of Stevenson is anything but absurd. Yet to some 
 of us this is so great a matter, that if condemned to choose 
 between them — say as the one author for the traditional 
 desert island — there are those who would take Kobert Louis 
 
 29 
 
THE FAITH OF R. L. STEVENSON 
 
 Stevenson. Of one thing at least there can be no question 
 — it is this healthy subjectivity which accounts more than 
 any other quality of his for the altogether unusual tribute 
 of personal affection which he has gained from a public who 
 know him only in his books. 
 
 And he is worthy of it. "We do not want to know all 
 about most people. Nothing could be more unnecessary 
 than much of the interview-literature of which our 
 magazines are so full. There are plenty of men who 
 have come before the public with work which is inter- 
 esting and valuable, and yet have awakened no further 
 curiosity, and have flung no spell of personal affection 
 over their readers. But of the man who has written 
 such things as these of Stevenson's, we do want to know. 
 The things are too significant, too important and suggestive, 
 in some cases too surprising, to be accepted as the ipse dixit 
 of anybody. And then the glimpses we have of him reveal 
 a personality of which it would be difficult to have too 
 much revelation. Professor Colvin's Introduction to the 
 Letters — one of the most masterly essays in appreciation 
 ever written - bears out the truth of this. Mr. Barrie's 
 words bear it out : * R. L. S., which initials are, I suppose, 
 the best beloved in recent literature ; certainly they are the 
 sweetest to me.' Mr. G-raham Balfour describes him in 
 one phrase which could hardly be made more perfect: 
 *So lovable and so brilliant.' Besides, he is so fresh 
 and in every way so unusual, that the very surprises of 
 acquaintance with him are enough to enlist and keep our 
 curiosity by the mental excitement in which they hold us 
 on the strain. And again, the character is so complex as to 
 tempt us by its variety and subtlety. In one sense his 
 was a very simple nature, and nothing is more charac- 
 teristic than the unguarded frankness of his confidences. 
 His mind dwelt among a few central persuasions, though 
 30 
 
SUBJECTIVITY 
 
 his interests wandered all up and down the world. Thus 
 there are few real contradictions or inconsistencies in his 
 work ; and it says even more for the wealth and vitality of 
 his mind that there is no monotony nor sense of wearisome 
 repetition, though there are things which he tells us a 
 hundred times over. But his spirit was manifold in its 
 movement, and his heart was open to the world. From the 
 children dancing on the wet streets of Edinburgh to the 
 South Sea beachcombers, there was something akin to every 
 man in him, and this fact alone makes him one to whom 
 most of us will gladly listen when he chooses to be com- 
 municative about himself. 
 
 It may be noted in passing that all this is by no means 
 so remote from religion as it may appear. A strong sense 
 of personal identity is but the philosophical counterpart 
 to what the religious man calls a sense of the value of the 
 soul. In such an essay as the Lay Morals the two points of 
 view are combined, and one hardly knows whether one is 
 reading a treatise on the Ego or a sermon upon the text: 
 * What shall a man give in exchange for his soul ? ' Eeligion, 
 in one aspect of it, is self-denial ; in another aspect it is 
 self-assertion — the realisation of the infinite worth and 
 preciousness of the soul. The deadliest doubt of all is the 
 doubt of one's own value. It may be the cynical doubt 
 which questions the worth of life and things in general ; or 
 the hypochondriac fear that the individual soul is not worth 
 God's while. In either form it is the most irreligious of all 
 phases of thought; and he who has entrenched himself 
 against it in a strong sense of his personal importance, has 
 not indeed achieved a religion, but has made a preparation 
 without which no religion can be secure. 
 
 Before we turn from this subject one point further must 
 be considered, viz. the strong element of sense and the 
 sensuous in all his thought, even the most spiritual. By a 
 
 C 31 
 
THE FAITH OF R. L. STEVENSON 
 
 thousand passing hints and touches his work discloses this. 
 The Homeric directness and vividness of physical impres- 
 sions is everywhere. A buckle found in deep water calls 
 up the image of its drowned wearer : * the very foot that 
 had once worn that buckle, and trod so much along the 
 swerving decks — the whole human fact of him, as a creature 
 like myself, with hair and blood and seeing eyes.' Delaunay 
 the actor so modulates his voice as * to make you feel the 
 cold night air and the moonlight.' The Wrecker abounds 
 in such passages ; as its description of the man steering 
 the Norah Creina through the storm : ' as the seas ranged 
 up behind us, black and imminent, he kept casting behind 
 him eyes of animal swiftness, and drawing in his neck 
 between his shoulders, like a man dodging a blow.' A book 
 still nearer, in places, to the crude sensations of the flesh is 
 The Misadventures of John Nicholson. Who can forget the 
 physical realism of the description of his despair after the 
 scene with his father ? — the smell of horse-hair on the chair 
 at which he knelt, the jangling church-bells, the hard floor 
 that bruised his knees, and the salt taste of tears in his 
 mouth; or that little touch, with its infinitude of dreary 
 suggestion of the hospitals of former days, when he prefers 
 the disgrace of imprisonment to death * in the gas-lit wards 
 of an infirmary.' 
 
 Still more significant are the sudden descriptions of the 
 body itself and its sensations. The 'sharp settle of the 
 springs ' while driving swiftly round a corner of the road ; 
 the air of the forest that * penetrates through your clothes, 
 and nestles to your living body ' ; the hunger of Rahdro 
 when ' the water sprang in his mouth with a sudden desire 
 of meat'; the chill that 'deepened and struck inwards' 
 when the wanderer returned to the estranged house — 
 such flashes as these come upon us continually. And there 
 are broader and more deliberate passages which plainly 
 32 
 
SUBJECTIVITY 
 
 reveal his sensuous keenness. The lad, stripped and ready 
 to dive among the horrors of sunken wreckage in Sandag 
 Bay, hesitates until 'the strong sun upon my shoulders 
 warmed me to the heart, and I stooped forward and plunged 
 into the sea.' Eahero with frowning eyes sees and judges 
 the woman in his boat : 
 
 'Broad of shoulder, ample of girdle, long in the thigh, 
 Deep of bosom she was, and bravely supported his eye.' 
 
 That these are the expressions of deep-set characteristic 
 features of Stevenson, and not merely selected examples of 
 his general power of description, there can be no doubt. 
 No man in whom the physical was not developed to the 
 utmost point of thrilling sensitiveness could possibly have 
 written Olalla — a story which many of his admirers place 
 at the highest level of his work. There, in a horror not 
 second even to that of Ibsen's Ghosts^ the tragedy of heredity, 
 and the degeneration of human nature to that of the 
 wild beast, are depicted with most terrible convincingness. 
 The inhuman element which lurks within the loveliness of 
 Olalla like a suspicion, and breaks out in her mother and 
 her brother into terrific savagery, is animalism depicted by 
 one who knows. That story recalls the remarkable words 
 of Mr. Graham Balfour describing Stevenson : ' In all his 
 movements he was most graceful: every gesture was full 
 of an unconscious beauty, and his restless and supple gait 
 has been well compared to the pacing to and fro of a wild 
 forest animal.' There are times when this faunlike, hardly 
 human element is suddenly revealed. In such times the 
 interplay of flesh and spirit produces an effect of strange- 
 ness which for the moment shatters our sense of intimacy 
 with him. At all times he is a spirit very deeply embodied 
 in flesh. His senses are strong within him and their impi-es- 
 sions are intense. 
 
 33 
 
THE FAITH OF R. L. STEVENSON 
 
 In this characteristic fact we find a guiding principle for 
 our study. He is, as we have said, a man of clear and lofty 
 spirituality, but it is a spirituality always reached through 
 sense. In understanding him the progress must be con- 
 tinually repeated from sense to spirit. Neither element 
 can be considered without reference to the other. In the 
 flesh, as he depicts it, you constantly discern the spirit 
 breaking through; in the spirit, you seem still aware of 
 the red tinge of flesh. Each of his spiritual truths has its 
 roots ir. the ground of the sensuous ; and on the other hand 
 every bit of physical work runs up into spiritual suggestion 
 and symbolism. How far-reaching and deep a principle 
 this is for the critic and appreciator of Stevenson, we shall 
 have abundant opportunity of noting in later pages. 
 
 ^± 
 
ACTOR AND PREACHER 
 
 CHAPTER III 
 
 ACTOR AND PREACHER 
 
 I. Actor 
 
 Our main purpose is, as we have said, to follow out the 
 various developments of Stevenson's nature, working out- 
 ward from physical to spiritual. But there are some other 
 matters which must first be considered. One of the most 
 important of these emerges directly out of that interest in 
 himself which we have found to be so strongly marked a 
 feature of his character. It is obvious that a personality at 
 once so vivid and so interesting to himself and others might 
 easily run off into acting, and this is a view which has been 
 taken by some critics. It has, not unnaturally, been 
 supposed that he did his writing and even his thinking, for 
 effect and with an eye on the audience. In regard to 
 religion this becomes a serious accusation. If the religious 
 side of Stevenson should turn out to be mere posturing, 
 and not in any sense a part of his real self, then the less 
 said or written about it the better. And, in fact, this 
 charge demands all the more serious examination because 
 there was one side of his character, v/hich it is very easy 
 so to misunderstand and exaggerate, as to leave the whole 
 religious life and work valueless because unreal. Of his 
 prayers in Vailima we have already written, of his inter- 
 course with missionaries and their work we shall write in 
 a future page. No doubt such situations offered him a 
 
 35 
 
THE FAITH OF R. L. STEVENSON 
 
 picturesque attitude, such as lie dearly loved from first to 
 last. Yet, though they may reveal the complexity of his 
 nature and his love of picturesqueness in all things, they 
 bear the very hall-mark of sincerity upon them. 
 
 But before we come to these more serious questions, let 
 us glance at the theatrical element in his general taste 
 and disposition. That there was such an element need 
 not be denied. Nothing is more evident than the frequent 
 consciousness, the delight in the spectacular, and the 
 deliberate search for the effective. It might be said with- 
 out fear of contradiction that all his books were conceived 
 by him more or less as theatres, and that all his characters, 
 real and fictitious alike, appear before the footlights. The 
 Master of Ballantrae will leave his relatives alone if they 
 will beg him to do it on their bended knees — * he thinks in 
 public, too ! ' His Japanese hero of real life has a presenta- 
 tion sword three feet long, and too heavy for him to wear 
 without distress, yet he would always gird it on when 
 he went to dig in his garden. Similarly his own surround- 
 ings are a stage and he the player. He loves romantic 
 and picturesque situations. He cannot help striking an 
 attitude upon all possible occasions. He is self-conscious 
 in the midst of all his energies, aware of himself and 
 seldom forgetful of his appearance. 
 
 His style abounds with metaphors drawn from the stage, 
 concerning scenes, acts, players, et hoc genus omne. He con- 
 stantly makes allusions figuratively or literally drawn from 
 the same source. In one of the college papers he chuckles 
 over the medical student of 1824 who 'wore a white 
 waistcoat and consequently talked loud.' He tells of a 
 Marquesan chief that ' he wore gravity like an ornament ' ; 
 and of King Tembinok he goes into great detail to show 
 how well Nature had equipped him for the profession of 
 an aotor. ' You will never change ; and the words of your 
 36 
 
ACTOR AND PREACHER 
 
 part on this stage are irrevocably written down,' says the 
 mysterious visitor to Markheim. Doctor Desprez 'was a 
 connoisseur of sunrises, and loved a good theatrical effect to 
 usher in the day.' Even when he himself was on board a 
 burning ship off Auckland, the main cabin, incarnadined 
 with the glow of fire, reminded him of the last scene of a 
 pantomime. 
 
 His fondness for the stage was so great as to give credi- 
 bility to the story that on the Continent he once joined 
 a company of strolling players and acted with them. An 
 opera, he writes to his mother, is far more real than real 
 life to him. A toy theatre was among the chief delights of 
 his childhood, and the favourite recreation of his student 
 days was acting in Fleeming Jenkin's theatricals. He is 
 said to have been but a poor actor, yet his critique of 
 Salviui's Macbeth is an excellent piece of dramatic sympathy 
 and understanding. In the plays which he wrote in col- 
 laboration with Mr. Henley we perceive a workman who 
 thoroughly enjoys his work. He throws about his stage 
 directions (' aside,' ' business,' etc.) with an amusing appre- 
 ciation of their technicality. It is true that he does not 
 take them quite seriously, but sometimes lets the fun of the 
 thing carry him off. * Goriot/ says Macaire, * noble old man, 
 I grasp your hand ' ; but the astonishing stage direction is 
 — * {he doesn't) ' ! In fact the plays hardly appeal to the 
 reader as plays at all, but as racy bits of novel-writing 
 which sometimes gain, but more frequently suffer, from 
 having been put in dramatic form. But in the Treasure of 
 Franchard and the New Arabian Nights we see the true 
 actor's instinct. In the former the character of Dr. Desprez 
 allows the author to g^t upon the stage and perform comedy 
 to the top of his bent. Desprez reminds one of that strange 
 creation of Meredith's, the father of Harry Eichmond. A 
 combination of egoist, mountebank, and little child, he is 
 
 37 
 
THE FAITH OF R. L. STEVENSON 
 
 excellently well conceived and firmly executed. The same 
 thing is true of Prince Florizel in the New Arabian Nights. 
 To many readers he is the very type of fantastic imagination, 
 in which the theatrical has run to wearisomeness ; and yet 
 it is evident that the Prince represents an actual side, and 
 that no small one, of Stevenson's genius. 
 
 Such being his bent, it would have been strange indeed 
 if there had not been a certain theatrical element in his 
 thought and life. It was, indeed, in his blood. His grand- 
 father had it, though under restraint. It was he who laid 
 out the eastern approaches to Edinburgh in such fashion as 
 to make Cockburn write that * the effect was like drawing 
 up the curtain of a theatre.' That same grandfather estab- 
 lished patriarchal relations with the servants of the Northern 
 Lights, vrhich reappear in the feudal establishment of the 
 grandson in Samoa. His father's childhood had adventures 
 which show that he too had the actor in him. Masquerad- 
 ing in a piece of iron chimney-pot for helmet, or labelling 
 little parcels of ashes ' Gold dust, with care,' and leaving 
 them in quiet streets, we find him the authentic father of 
 his child, who nearly died because, in the character of ship- 
 wrecked sailor, he had eaten buttercups in dangerous quan- 
 tities. ' Pretending ' was the favourite amusement of Robert 
 Louis Stevenson's boyhood, and it remained a favourite 
 amusement to the last. It was his mother's secret also, and 
 it stood them both in good stead. ' We agree to look upon 
 it as an adventure,' is her magic spell for all manner 
 of unpleasant situations; and no one can tell how much 
 that one trick did for him through life. His freakishness, 
 and his susceptibility to the charms of the unusual, made 
 him something of an impression-hunter. Like Disraeli's 
 Vavasour, ' His life was a gyration of energetic curiosity. . . 
 He was everywhere, and at everything ; he had gone down 
 in a diving-bell and gone up in a balloon.' At least he 
 38 
 
ACTOR AND PREACHER 
 
 had gone down in a diver's dress, and if there is no record 
 of an ascent performed in his own person, he sent his hero 
 up in a balloon at the close of ^S'^. Ives. From Saranac he 
 jokes with Mr. W. H. Low about getting himself painted 
 in a buffalo robe and leggings as a wild man of the woods. 
 In Samoa he is photographed standing side by side with 
 the native chief Tui Malealiifano. Altogether he does a 
 great deal of attitudinising, and seems constantly aware of 
 a cloud of witnesses. Even when he himself has to stand 
 for witness, in default of other audience, the play goes on. 
 Recovering from illness in Mentone he writes, ' I burn two 
 candles every night now ; for long, I never lit but one.' In 
 the Cevennes journey, waking after a night's sleep in the 
 open air, he is in high spirits, and views the green earth in 
 the light of the best of inns : ' I had been most hospitably 
 received, and punctually served in my green caravanserai. 
 The room was airy, the water excellent, and the dawn had 
 called me to a moment. I say nothing of the tapestries, or 
 the inimitable ceiling, nor yet the view which I commanded 
 from the windows ; but I felt I was in some one's debt for 
 all this liberal entertainment. And so it pleased me, in 
 a half-laughing way, to leave pieces of money on the turf 
 as I went along, until I had left enough for my night's 
 lodgino;.' 
 
 Life is not divided into compartments so that a tendency 
 which shows itself strongly in one portion can be entirely 
 absent from any of the rest. It may at once be admitted 
 that the theatrical element entered to some extent into the 
 whole of Stevenson's work. Even in the most serious 
 writings a fantastic touch at times reveals some straining 
 after effect. It is seen in several sentences of his prayers : 
 ' Our guard is relieved, the service of the day is over, and 
 the hour is come to rest.' * Let not our beloved blush for 
 us nor we for them.' * Accept us, correct us, guide us, thy 
 
 39 
 
THE FAITH OF R. L. STEVENSON 
 
 guilty innocents.' After all allowance for the habitual 
 use of unexpected words, some slight consciousness of 
 the human audience remains in such petitions. The same 
 tendency does, occasionally, distract for the moment his usual 
 directness and insight in moral situations. In Beau Austin, 
 for example, one feels this. In the particular instance 
 of Dorothy Musgrave, an appeal to honour and to pity 
 happens to strike Austin at the right psychological moment. 
 But the picturesqueness of the denouement obliterates too 
 lightly a long career of vice, and its victims are forgotten as 
 if they had never existed. This is a criticism which may 
 sometimes be applied even to his principle that a man 
 should not brood over his failures, but should strenuously 
 make the most of what is left. Every repentance has its 
 picturesque aspect, but it is not well for the penitent to 
 remember that. In moral crises the first demand is for a 
 reality of despair so intense that the audience has vanished 
 and the soul is alone with sin. While any conscious pose 
 remains, and the situation appeals to the penitent as a 
 striking one, the irrevocable past will slip too easily out 
 of mind. 
 
 Yet so slight is any such effect that it seems almost 
 an injustice to record it. Granting to the conscious and 
 picturesque elements their full weight, the reality of the 
 man is still abundantly evident underneath, and the 
 theory of acting and pose as an explanation of his general 
 religious life is an absolutely impossible one. The prayers 
 undoubtedly show an unusual finish, and sometimes the 
 premeditation of their style detains the spirit in its attempt 
 to rise to God. Yet a man to whom expression was so 
 severe a conscience and so fine an art, and who had by sheer 
 labour attained such perfection of minute mosaic-work in 
 style, must eventually reach a point at which he cannot 
 express himself otherwise. He is but praying in his own 
 40 
 
ACTOR AND PREACHER 
 
 dialect. If we can read these prayers without reverent 
 recognition of a man in real communion with his God, 
 we are no competent critics either of Stevenson or of any- 
 other religious man. 
 
 In the same way we must judge of many incidents in 
 his career. A story is somewhere told of his carrying an 
 armchair up from Heriot Eow to a sick acquaintance in the 
 Old Town. He is said to have carried it on his head, upside 
 down. That was acting. He might conceivably have had 
 it conveyed otherwise. But surely no one will deny that it 
 was also genuine human kindness. Again, the letter quoted 
 on page 17 is no doubt stagey. Yet the postscript shows 
 plainly that he meant it from his heart's depths. In a 
 passage like this : ' You wake every morning, see the gold 
 upon the snow-peaks, become filled with courage, and bless 
 God for your prolonged existence ' — in such a passage it is 
 possible to detect in the reference to God a consciousness of 
 artistic and literary effect, and the love of strong language. 
 Yet after all that is granted, it is evident that here is one to 
 whom God is nevertheless a reality and a lifelong presence. 
 He is continually telling us that we must be heroic in all 
 situations. No doubt there were invisible fife-and-drum 
 accompaniments to his thoughts of heroism, but surely it 
 is heroism none the less for these. To deny this would be 
 to judge in the spirit of an age, now happily past, when 
 Christian burial was denied to actors. 
 
 Especially must this view be admitted when we recollect 
 how deeply conscious Stevenson was of the danger of posing 
 and of his own temptation to it. He has often impressed 
 upon us the value of truth, to be careless of which * is the 
 mark of a young ass.' Still more frequently does he 
 expound the difficulty of telling the truth — a somewhat 
 less customary doctrine. In his essay on Child's Play there 
 is an eloquent plea for those imaginative children who 
 
 41 
 
THE FAITH OF R. L. STEVENSON 
 
 * walk in a vain show, and among mists and rainbows, who 
 are passionate after dreams and unconcerned about realities.' 
 He pleads 'that whatever we are to expect at the hands 
 of children, it should not be any peddling exactitude about 
 matters of fact.' The difficulty of saying what we mean in 
 later life he expounds with great feeling in the fourth of 
 the Virginihus Puerisque essays and in many other places. 
 It is easy for those who have no imagination to tell the 
 truth, and when they tell it it is apt to seem intolerably 
 uninteresting. Stevenson has to watch and pray and strive 
 for it. He is keenly alive to the danger of a combination 
 in character of 'outer sensibility and inward toughness,' 
 which enables a man to appreciate in literature the finest 
 morality, while he himself remains stolid and unmoved. 
 Of his own danger he is well aware, and prays, ' Lord defend 
 me from all idle conformity, to please the face of man ; from 
 all display, to catch applause.' Such a prayer as that is 
 always answered. To be conscious of the danger, is to be 
 far on the way to overcome it. 
 
 One might go further, and say that the religion of almost 
 everybody is more or less of this sort. Eeligion must ever 
 be expressed in the man's own particular terms and style, 
 and is seldom quite unconscious of itself. But surely 
 religion with a romantic air and a dash of scarlet is as 
 legitimate as religion in dull colours and carrying (as 
 Stevenson might have put it) a large umbrella. But he 
 strikes an attitude ? My dear reader, so do you and I. The 
 difference probably is that his attitude is picturesque. Do 
 not let us look askance at the more graceful worshipper. 
 
 For indeed in all human life there is acting. When 
 Shakespeare said that ' all the world 's a stage, and all the 
 men and women merely players,' he spoke neither in jest 
 nor in bitterness, but uttered the simple fact. In all of us 
 there are numberless possible attitudes towards jjfood and 
 42 
 
ACTOR AND PREACHER 
 
 evil. Among these we choose some and reject others ; we 
 think of ourselves in such and such a character, and adopt 
 that as our role. At first it may be but a book of words to 
 us which we have to learn painfully. But in time we shall 
 grow accustomed to ourselves in that character — our part 
 will have become reality to us, whether it be that of villain 
 or of hero. Thus to a large extent we must necessarily live 
 from without inwards ; from unconnected acts to habits, 
 from words to thoughts, from conduct to character. It is 
 not the acting that is wrong, but the parts we often choose 
 to act ; and the highest praise shall go in the end not to 
 those who have simply followed nobler instincts, but to 
 those who have chosen and acted nobler parts. 
 
 So it was in Stevenson's experience. Many actions and 
 courses were chosen as his deliberately adopted role ; and 
 no doubt he was well aware of their picturesqueness and 
 effectiveness. Yet he became identified with the parts he 
 had chosen to play, and was * transfigured by his work.' 
 The religious part was that which he most deliberately 
 adopted. More and more naturally he fell into it until he 
 was indistinguishable from it, and it became the natural 
 expression of his truest self. In a word, he was so made 
 as to have in him a strong taste for the romantic, a dash 
 of bright colour, and a striking attitude for every part of his 
 life. These elements entered into his religion also. But 
 the religion did not on that account cease to be genuine 
 religion. It was just the religion of Eobert Louis 
 Stevenson. 
 
 2. Preacher 
 
 It has been frequently remarked that the actor and the 
 preacher have certain qualities in common, and every one 
 must have observed that in the work of many great 
 
 43 
 
THE FAITH OF R. L. STEVENSON 
 
 preachers there is a strongly histrionic element. Neither 
 actor nor preacher can live unto himself alone : each is bound 
 to keep the audience in mind, and each must aim at effec- 
 tiveness. The actor, indeed, does this as artist, the preacher 
 as prophet. No doubt the lines of demarcation may often 
 cross; the actor may be a prophet and the preacher an 
 artist ; but these are not, according to the common estimate, 
 their immediate and essential vocations. Thus, while the 
 actor's consciousness of his audience leads him to think 
 how he shall appear to them, the preacher's consciousness 
 suggests the question how he shall lead them to act. It is 
 a radical distinction, and yet it leaves a good deal common 
 to the two. The combination is obvious in Stevenson. 
 Even in his most solemn sermon-work he never quite 
 forgets appearances, and in such writings as the Fables the 
 pose is so evident as to lend an air of unnaturalness to 
 the preaching. 
 
 Stevenson was a born preacher. It is said that preaching 
 is in the blood of all Scotsmen, and that they go all over the 
 world, and in whatsoever place they find themselves, good or 
 bad, they conceive of it as a pulpit and proceed to deliver a 
 discourse. With Stevenson there was the additional fact, as 
 he reminds one of his correspondents when the letter has 
 become a kind of sermon, that he was 'the grandson of 
 the manse.' To another he writes, after a few sentences 
 of sermonising, * I would rise from the dead to preach ! ' It 
 is true that his love of preaching was a somewhat one-sided 
 affair. Along with some other preachers, he did not like 
 listening nearly so well as preaching. Like his father 
 before him he had a particular aversion to all things and 
 persons ' tutorial,' and the word ' rabbi ' stands for him at 
 the extreme point of disagreeableness. At times he gives 
 utterance to sweeping statements which would tell against 
 his own methods if applied to them: 'There is an idea 
 44 
 
ACTOR AND PREACHER 
 
 abroad among moral people that they should make their 
 neighbours good. One person I have to make good: 
 myself. But my duty to my neighbour is much more 
 nearly expressed by saying that I have to make him happy 
 — if I may.' A curious aversion to the clerical profession 
 is uncompromisingly proclaimed in some of his earlier 
 works ; but perhaps he was hardly a fair judge of preaching 
 in those bitter days, when his own life was far from peace 
 and needing other sort of help. Even in happier times 
 the only preacher he can tolerate is the cathedral itself, 
 which preaches night and day and sets you preaching to 
 yourself. How any man ' dares to lift up his voice to 
 preach in a cathedral' he cannot fathom. 'What is he 
 to say that will not be an anti-climax ? ' 
 
 Yet the instinct of preaching is in his blood, and in 
 spite of all he has to say against the office he preaches 
 still. Sentences about historical or fictitious characters 
 tail off into allusions to the trespass of Achan or some 
 other biblical theme, in the exact style of the older Scot- 
 tish pulpit. Every reader has to reckon with this instinct, 
 and, however congenial he may find the general doc- 
 trine, may expect some pointed homethrust of unwelcome 
 truth. Little casual touches disclose the preacher every- 
 where, often with a twinkle of fun in them. His Edinburgh 
 readers are confronted with a picture of themselves which, in 
 the old Scottish phrase, is very faithful dealing ; and when 
 Glasgow smiles complacently the preacher turns westward 
 with his threat : ' To the Glasgow people I would say only 
 one word, but that is of gold: I have not written a look 
 about Glasgow' Surely a preacher, in all the glory of cassock, 
 gown, and bands, and one who magnifies his office ! Some- 
 times sermonising is the deliberate and accepted task, and 
 the didactic mood gets free course. The charmingly told 
 conversation with the Plymouth Brother of the Cevennes is 
 
 45 
 
THE FAITH OF R. L. STEVENSON 
 
 a case in point, and that discourse about knowing the 
 Lord ends abruptly with *I did not know I was so good a 
 preacher.' The Fable is a kind of literature to whose prin- 
 ciples he gave special attention, and which he practised 
 with great skill. The sermon to the chiefs in Samoa and 
 the address to the Samoan students at Malua, with its 
 characteristic word ' I am the prophet with the cloth 
 before his face,' are specimens of the pulpit-work of 
 one who entered into his task with gusto. This self- 
 appointed preacher instructs the clergy of the Church of 
 Scotland as to their duty in regard to the ecclesiastical 
 situation, and adds a note, equally authoritative, to the 
 laity. In Lay Morals he gives forth the law to teachers and 
 parents, and in Virginibus Puerisque to married persons and 
 those looking forward to the married state, with a quite 
 professional confidence, and with a certain old-world and 
 sermonesque air. 
 
 The preacher's instinct has much to do with his selection 
 and use of words. His language is generally notable for its 
 compression, the quality he most of all valued and laboured 
 for. So exquisitely did he manipulate his words that the 
 term * mosaic-work * has been applied to his writings by 
 more than one critic. Even when the style flows most freely 
 there is a certain stateliness that reminds one of the olden 
 times and their grand manner. Such a sentence as * the 
 comfortable gift of sleep, which comes everywhere and to all 
 men, quenching anxieties and speeding time,* might have 
 rolled forth from the lips of some eloquent divine in the 
 eighteenth century. But more frequently the words are so 
 carefully chosen, and the meaning so compressed, that the 
 flow is checked and the utterance somewhat abrupt. Each 
 word counts for so much that we have to pause and consider 
 it, so that we cannot read as swiftly as if the writing were 
 more careless. This sort of style is not the preacher's. But 
 46 
 
ACTOR AND PREACHER 
 
 Stevenson has his own method of reclaiming the effect he 
 loses, and turning even the want of ore roUmdo in his 
 diction to account. He does this by the introduction of 
 unexpected words, which arrest the attention. Some- 
 times the words are technical, as when he tells his readers 
 of a building buttressed * with a great strut of wood like the 
 derrick of a crane,' or of ' the tune of slatting canvas.' To 
 none but builders and seafarers do these words call up any 
 very definitely comprehended images. Yet they are effect- 
 ive, both on account of their interesting sounds, and of the 
 whole apparatus of land and sea machinery which they 
 suggest. He is fond of borrowing technical fragments of 
 various crafts, though he does it only in touches, and never 
 after the wholesale fashion of Kipling. Again, the words 
 are sometimes made to arrest attention by the mere volume 
 or quality of their sound. He was extremely sensitive to 
 sounds, and alive to the fulness and richness of their effect. 
 No author of our time is able, with anything like the same 
 skill, to give their full value to resonant and detonating 
 words. They strike us as with blows from a steel gauntlet. 
 Even where they have no particular significance he can feel 
 them and use them with strong effect. It was a prophecy 
 of this literary ear when in his childhood, as he tells us in 
 the beautiful Rosa Quo Locorum, he was fascinated by the 
 Hebrew name which he spells 'Jehovah Tschidkenu.' It 
 was that child, when he became a man, who flung such a 
 weird spell over the tale of the Merry Men- by the haunting 
 recurrence in the wrecker's soul of the name of 'the sunkei? 
 ship Christ-Anna. 
 
 The artifice of style, however, which he most constantly 
 employs, is that curtailed form of the antithesis in 
 which words are coupled in unexpected combinations. 
 'The genial dangers of the sea,' 'an agreeable dismay,' 
 'annoying and attractive, wild, shy, and refined' — such 
 
 D 47 
 
THE FAITH OF R. L. STEVENSON 
 
 phrases illustrate the figure of speech known to the 
 older rhetoricians as 'the surprise* {irapa irpoa-hoKiav). 
 This wayward use of words is not, as might be imagined 
 by unfriendly critics, simply an affectation. It is a more 
 or less conscious device for forcing the attention, in 
 lieu of those swinging periods which are the customary 
 mode of orators. Walter Pater writes of Flaubert that his 
 search 'was not for the smooth, or winsome, or forcible 
 word . . . but for the word's adjustment to its meaning ' ; 
 in other terms, for the exact word. That is the stylist's 
 instinct, and it would be difficult to find a more perfect canon 
 for style in written work. But the preacher's instinct 
 is different. He has to produce an immediate effect upon 
 his hearer; and while there can be no relaxation of the 
 demand for exactness, it is necessary for him to take 
 account also of forcibleness. His word is a projectile 
 chosen for purposes of attack, and he has to estimate its 
 carrying weight. It was thus that the instinct of preaching 
 did something to mould the style of Stevenson. As we 
 shall see later, it did more than this. It determined the 
 choice of certain unexpected turns of thought as well as of 
 diction. Just as brilliant words flash out and suddenly 
 strike, so realistic descriptions, epigrammatic truths, novel 
 presentations of morals, break on us with surprise. In the 
 play of Macaire this kind of work is run into burlesque, 
 but there are many others of his works in which it is to be 
 found in all seriousness. 
 
 Much of all this mechanism for producing effect might 
 be classed either as acting or as preaching: even if the 
 word preaching be admitted, we may still be quite out- 
 side the province of religion. There is such a thing as a 
 mere instinct of preaching which is entirely destitute of 
 religious quality. In The Wrong Box there is a character 
 which well illustrates this fact. Mr. Joseph Finsbury, in the 
 48 
 
ACTOR AND PREACHER 
 
 inn-parlour and elsewhere, is prepared to deliver a sermon 
 upon any text, from the relative cost of living in Spitz- 
 bergen and Bagdad, to the exact number of letters in the 
 English Bible. As regards the artist — in this case the actor 
 — it is a disputed point whether the quality of the matter 
 should be taken into account at all ; whether art is to be 
 allowed to concern itself with anything beyond the style of 
 expression. But with regard to religion, there can be no 
 such question. Whether the instinct of preaching shall pro- 
 duce merely a garrulous kind of egoism, or a prophetic 
 
 * burden of the Lord,' depends entirely on the subject-matter 
 of the sermon, and the moral and spiritual purpose of the 
 preacher. The true religion of a literary man is to have a 
 message in his writing, to take his art as a high calling to 
 practical service, and not as a merely decorative art, wholly 
 occupied with style. Like all other prophetic men, he must 
 have been taken possession of by some truth that demands 
 utterance. No conviction is a gospel to a man, nor is any 
 man a prophet, until that conviction has grown so impera- 
 tive that he feels that ' necessity is laid upon him ; yea, 
 woe is unto him if he preach not this gospel.' Judged by 
 this test, Stevenson must certainly be pronounced a pro- 
 phetic man, a preacher of religion in the true sense. 
 Religion, he tells us, is a practical affair. It is a rule of 
 life ; it is an obligation to do well. The preaching of 
 religion, also, is an affair not of style but of matter and of 
 purpose. He has an unbounded contempt for those who 
 
 * try to cover their absence of matter by an unwholesome 
 vitality of delivery.' * It is one of the worst things of 
 sentiment,' he tells us in another book, ' that the voice grows 
 to be more important than the words, and the speaker than 
 that which is spoken.' He thinks but poorly of his own 
 St. Ives because it is ' a mere tissue of adventures,' with * no 
 philosophic pith under the yarn.' Such sayings reveal the 
 
 49 
 
THE FAITH OF R. L. STEVENSON 
 
 preacher's conscience alongside the artist's. In Stevenson's 
 work the instinct of preaching produced no mere phase of 
 artistry or solemn trick of acting. It made him one of the 
 most forceful and effective preachers of religion in modern 
 literature. It was his utterance of the Word of the Lord to 
 his generation. 
 
 50 
 
THE CHILD 
 
 CHAPTER IV 
 
 THE CHILD 
 
 At this point we must pause for a little, and turn our 
 attention to the sources from which in early days the life 
 and faith of Stevenson were drawn. In one sense it is true 
 that every personality is a fresh creation, and Carlyle's 
 insistence upon the individual has, at least, reminded all 
 succeeding generations that a man is more than any mere 
 bundle of his ancestors. Yet Carlyle's is a very one-sided 
 truth, and the most original personality can only be under- 
 stood in the light of influences not controlled by its own 
 will. Ancestry has always to be reckoned with, and the 
 influences which have been brought to bear upon the man 
 in his childhood; and, if he have been a reader, the books 
 which he has read. 
 
 The subject of the present chapter is the childhood of 
 Kobert Louis Stevenson, and its influence on his later life 
 and work. This has elsewhere been so fully and so charm- 
 ingly depicted, that little would seem to be left to say. 
 The child ' Smout ' is almost as well known and loved as 
 the man Stevenson. Much of what is here noted has been 
 told already, but no account of his religion could possibly 
 be written without some reference to this. It is the period 
 during which the first ideas enter the vacant mind, and 
 occupy its virgin soil; when the wondering baby is re- 
 ceiving his first and strongest impressions of the world. 
 ' A man,' says Kichter, * may be governed through his whole 
 
 51 
 
THE FAITH OF R. L. STEVENSON 
 
 life by one divine image of his spring-time.' Another writer 
 goes the length of asserting that ' a circumnavigator of the 
 world gains less culture from all nations taken together 
 than he did from his nurse.' 
 
 It is a rare privilege to get a glimpse into the mind of 
 a child, and to be permitted to watch him thinking. Such 
 glimpses are, in the case of Stevenson, more frequent and 
 more delightful than in that of almost any other man of 
 letters. He has described for us the scenery of early child- 
 hood, * observed as I walked with my nurse, gaping on the 
 universe, and striving vainly to piece together in words my 
 inarticulate but profound impressions.' The same condition 
 is described in the incomparable essay on Child's Play. 
 'They are wheeled in perambulators or dragged about by 
 nurses in a pleasing stupor. A vague, faint, abiding 
 wonderment possesses them. Here and there some specially 
 remarkable circumstance, such as a water-cart or a guards- 
 man, fairly penetrates into the seat of thought and calls 
 them, for half a moment, out of themselves ; and you may 
 see them, still towed forward sideways by the inexorable 
 nurse as by a sort of destiny, but still staring at the bright 
 object in their wake.' 
 
 Heredity plays as large a part in religion as it does in 
 any department of human life ; and in Scotland there are 
 few men or women who cannot trace their religious dis- 
 positions to some ancestral source. Mr. Graham Balfour's 
 Life of Stevenson and the Family of Engineers make it very 
 plain that Eobert Louis Stevenson was no exception. The 
 women of the family were, we are told, extremely pious, the 
 men a trifle worldly. Yet the men, too, had religion. They 
 were ' conscious, like all Scots, of the fragility and unreality 
 of that scene in which we play our uncomprehended parts ; 
 like all Scots, realising daily and hourly the sense of 
 another will than ours, and a perpetual direction in the 
 52 
 
THE CHILD 
 
 affairs of life.' No one who reads the account of the build- 
 ing of the Bell Kock Lighthouse will dispute that statement. 
 The Sunday prayers, the consecration of the tower to * the 
 Great Architect of the Universe,' and indeed the whole 
 tone of Robert Stevenson's narrative of his work as we read 
 it in A Family of Engineers, discloses a rich inheritance of 
 faith and character. Robert Stevenson, like the hero of 
 Ticonderoga, was truly 'an ancestor worth disputing,' and 
 Robert Louis Stevenson had a peculiarly strong curiosity 
 about his ancestors. He felt in the study of genealogy 
 ' an expansion of his identity/ and expressed the wish * to 
 trace my ancestors a thousand years, if I trace them by 
 gallowses ! ' He made strenuous though futile efforts to 
 run the line of his descent up past the Saxon to the Celtic 
 stock of the clan MacGregor; and there can be no doubt 
 that he felt a bond of honour laid upon him by the religious 
 character which he so plainly descried in the former genera- 
 tions of his family. 
 
 We owe much to his biographer for the account he gives 
 us of Thomas Stevenson and his wife. The description of 
 the latter seems strangely familiar to those over whom her 
 son has cast his spell : ' She had in the highest degree that 
 readiness for enjoyment which makes light of discomfort, 
 and turns into a holiday any break of settled routine. Her 
 desire to be pleased, her prompt interest in any experience, 
 however new or unexpected, her resolute refusal to see the 
 unpleasant side of things, all had their counterpart in her 
 son.' The extract from her diary cited in a later page of 
 the biography bears out the estimate : ' We discover that it 
 is a cattle-ship, and that we are going to Havre to take in 
 horses. We agree to look upon it as an adventure and 
 make the best of it. . . . It is very amusing, and like a 
 circus, to see the horses come on board.' Not less valuable 
 is the account of Thomas Stevenson. In it we see the 
 
 53 
 
THE FAITH OF R. L. STEVENSON 
 
 father, and understand with a new intelligence the nature 
 of the son. The perverse element is there ; the many- 
 sided Celtic temperament, with its ' humour and melancholy, 
 sternness and softness, attachments and prejudices, chivalry, 
 generosity, and sensitive conscience.' Above all, practical 
 engineer though he was, ' yet it was from him that Louis 
 derived all the romantic and artistic elements that drew 
 him away from engineering.' The union of so many 
 qualities gives a very complex character. But all of them, 
 both in the mother and the father, were rooted and grounded 
 in faith. It is true that in the Edinburgh days after child- 
 hood, the religion which accompanied them appeared to have 
 dropped away from the son, and that for lack of its con- 
 trolling peace the other elements struggled in tempestuous 
 warfare ; but in later years it reappeared, and, both in its 
 brighter and its sterner aspect, gave proof of the greatness 
 of his religious inheritance. 
 
 When we turn to the days of childhood, v/e enter a 
 region after the heart of Eobert Louis Stevenson. ' I can't 
 see what any one wants to live for,' he makes Nares say in 
 The Wrecker. ' If I could get into some one else's apple-tree, 
 and be about twelve years old, and just stick the way I was, 
 eating stolen apples, I won't say. But there 's no sense to 
 this grown-up business.' That takes us back to the days 
 of boyhood. * Children are certainly too good to be true,' 
 takes us to the nursery in Heriot Kow. The story of these 
 early days is now widely known, and has become classical 
 in the annals of child-life. We read it in the sketches 
 entitled Nurses and Nidts Blanches ; in the essay on Child's 
 Play and many other pieces ; above all in the Child's 
 Garden of Verses. The long dark nights, the terror of that 
 galloping horseman the wind, the lights twinkling across 
 the gardens in Queen Street, the sepulchral quiet broken 
 at last by the wholesome noises of the morning — these 
 64 
 
THE CHILD 
 
 tell their own tale. It is the tale of a little child whose 
 nerves, strained to the utmost pitch of intensity, tingle in 
 response to the faintest light or the most customary sound ; 
 and whose imagination follows close behind, fitting these 
 sights and sounds to a fine tale of adventure, or with cruel 
 realism lending them a terrible aspect. This childish 
 imagination, in its forms both of nightmare and of romance, 
 does excellent service in Treasure Island, and doubtless has 
 its share in the credit for that book's exceptional popularity 
 with boys. And then there are the days of sickness, when 
 the bed becomes now a boat and now a battlefield, until 
 the dance of evening shadows on the wall ends the day. 
 All children are poets, and most are dramatists as well, but 
 in these wonderful descriptions there is the promise of 
 something quite unusual to follow with the years — a promise 
 seldom so abundantly fulfilled. 
 
 We owe it to Stevenson's peculiar mental constitution 
 that we know so much of that vivid childhood. Barrie has 
 defined genius as 'the power to be a boy again at will.' 
 Certainly Stevenson fulfilled that condition. Writing to 
 Henry James, at the age of thirty-eight, he tells him : ' I 
 am one of the few people in the world who do not forget 
 their own lives.' It is this power that lends its intolerable 
 pathos to Ordered South and its charm to Rosa Quo Locorum. 
 Most of us are so taken up with the business of to-day 
 and the prospect of to-morrow, that yesterday is seen but 
 obliquely and in blurred images. Out of the crowded 
 scenes of the past there may be one or two which retain 
 through life their sharp edge and outline, and the luscious- 
 ness of their colouring. But most memories look down 
 upon us, like the picture in Olalla, ' with eyes of paint ' — 
 facts among the other facts of history, which in a logical 
 conviction we know to have happened to ourselves, but which 
 in no sense happen to us any longer. They are but pictures 
 
 65 
 
THE FAITH OF R. L. STEVENSON 
 
 and most of them are dim. But, as we read Stevenson's 
 
 account of his past childhood, we feel that his memories are 
 
 alive. He still hears the sounds and sees the sights just as 
 
 he did then. The thoughts and feelings, the wonder, fear, 
 
 and admimtion of a little child's life are very different 
 
 from the blunted and restrained experiences of later years. 
 
 In an hour of quiet now and then we catch flying glimpses 
 
 of the old self, only to feel how far away it all is, how 
 
 hopeless the effort to live at that intensity again. With 
 
 him it was otherwise. He seems to have had the power 
 
 literally to be a child again, with all the child's detail and 
 
 finality in its own experience, and all the stretch and wist- 
 
 fulness of the child's horizons. Many of us, like Mr. Baildon, 
 
 would give much now to possess that gift. To read the 
 
 Child's Garden of Verses, or any other of the writings in 
 
 which the early days are still alive, is to receive ourselves 
 
 back again for a moment from the dead. 
 
 Although every book written about him has recorded some 
 
 of these glimpses, it is impossible to resist the temptation to 
 
 quote a few of them again. When he describes the welcome 
 
 country carts passing at last in the morning, you know that 
 
 he is hearing once more the various sounds that ' creaked, 
 
 rolled, and pounded past my windows.' When the old 
 
 gentleman in the Wellington boots assures the little boy 
 
 that he had been just such another at the same age, and 
 
 the little boy wonders to himself * if he had worn at that 
 
 time little Wellingtons and a little bald head,' we recognise 
 
 ourselves thinking as we used to think. The Child's Garden 
 
 is full of the same power. Mr. Baildon's selection of the 
 
 verses on The Cow could not perhaps be surpassed. 
 
 There is Auntie's Skirts too : 
 
 * Whenever Auntie moves around 
 Her dresses make a curious sound, 
 They trail behind her up the floor, 
 And trundle after through the door.' 
 56 
 
THE CHILD 
 
 To children upon whom the splendour of an aunt has shone, 
 representing for them their share in the brightly coloured 
 life of some other town, and telling of the kingdoms of the 
 world and the glory of them, these details are irresistible. 
 Equally exact from the child's point of view is The 
 Gardener : 
 
 *The Gardener does not love to talk, 
 
 He makes me keep tlie gravel walk ; 
 
 • • • • • 
 
 He digs the flowers, green, red, and blue, 
 Nor wishes to be spoken to ; 
 He digs the flowers and cuts the hay 
 And never seems to want to play.' 
 
 That is all there is to know about the gardener as the child 
 sees him. One more verse refuses to be passed by. It is 
 the aspect of the day's routine : 
 
 * Every night my prayers I say 
 And get my dinner every day, 
 And every day that I 've been good 
 I get an orange after food. 
 
 The child that is not clean and neat, 
 With lots of toys and things to eat, 
 Must be a naughty child I'm sure. 
 Or else his dear papa is poor.' 
 
 There is the little land in all its aspects — religion, food, 
 luxury, duty, poverty, and the inevitable moralising on them 
 all. 
 
 Nor was this power of recollecting the incidents and 
 reconstructing the thoughts of childhood the only treasure 
 which Stevenson rescued from the past. Childhood was 
 not for him a vision of what lay irrevocably behind, seen 
 wistfully and among irrecoverable things. As we go on 
 through the years, even those whose memory is keenest in 
 imaginative power feel that the great doors of life are 
 
 57 
 
THE FAITH OF R. L. STEVENSON 
 
 closing behind them. Crystal doors they may be, allowing 
 us to see what once we lived in, but doors none the less 
 through which we cannot pass. Stevenson, in his dedica- 
 tion to Virginihus Puerisqiu, confesses that though he clung 
 to the earlier self, time was too much for him, and his 
 work showed signs of advancing age. With characteristic 
 adaptation to the facts of the case he falls back upon the 
 conviction that ' it is good to have been young in youth and, 
 as years go on, to grow older.' For the sturdy aphorism we 
 have good reason to thank him ; but we envy him for the 
 extraordinary measure in which for himself it was not true. 
 Doubtless on him too the shades of the prison-house fell, and 
 that heavily. Yet he had greater liberty granted him of 
 escaping from them now and then than is given to almost 
 any. To the end he kept a secret key for the crystal doors, 
 and ran back, almost at pleasure, laughing into his childhood. 
 In one sense he aged before his time; in another and 
 equally true sense he never grew up at all. He never 
 passed that bourne at which the picturesque is laid down in 
 favour of the merely sane, and enthusiasm gives place to 
 common-sense. Every reader of Vailima Letters in the old 
 edition must have noted the boyishness of the pictures 
 there, especially that in which he sits on horseback. It 
 reminds one of the ending of Letter xx. — ' also please send 
 me a cricket-bat and a cake, and when I come home for the 
 holidays I should like to have a pony. I am, sir, your 
 obedient servant, Jacob Tonson. P.S. — I am quite well ; I 
 hope you are quite well. The world is too much with us, and 
 my mother bids me bind my hair and lace my bodice blue.' 
 It is not, however, only in such occasional outbursts of 
 high spirits that the perpetual youthfulness of Stevenson is 
 revealed. He appears to be constantly thinking about toys 
 and games, as children do. The cannibals in 7^e Isle of 
 Voices remind him of * a child when he is all alone and has 
 58 
 
THE CHILD 
 
 a wooden sword, and fights, leaping and hewing with the 
 empty air.' The houses in Buritaritari are of all dimen- 
 sions — ' only in the playroom, when the toys are mingled, 
 do we meet such incongruities of scale.' In The Treasure 
 of Franchard the Doctor, looking down on Gretz from his 
 hill-top, sees the place dwindle to a toy, a handful of roofs. 
 When, in The Wrecker, the searchers are demolishing the 
 stranded Flying Scud in search of treasure — * We were now 
 about to taste, in a supreme degree, the double joys of 
 demolishing a toy and playing "Hide the handkerchief" — 
 sports from which we had all perhaps desisted since the 
 days of infancy. And the toy we were to burst in pieces 
 was a deep-sea ship ; and the hidden good for which we 
 were to hunt was a prodigious fortune.' The last quotation 
 happily links the work with the play of life, its hard 
 realities with its pleasant and childish fancies. This is no 
 new association ; but it is usually not without bitterness that 
 a writer reminds us what babies we all are. * Ah vanitas 
 vanitatum ! which of us is happy in this world ? Which 
 of us has his desire ? or having it is satisfied ? Come, 
 children, let us shut up the box and the puppets, for our 
 play is played out.' How different is Thackeray's sad con- 
 clusion from the sprightly and deliberate confession of 
 childishness which runs through Stevenson's work. 
 
 He not only thought about toys, he played with them. 
 When over thirty years of age we still find, him playing and 
 unashamed, playing with tin soldiers, building-bricks, and 
 paint-boxes. At the age of thirty-eight he is composing 
 music for the tin whistle (his favourite instrument of music) 
 and explaining that he has 'always some childishness 
 on hand.' So strong is his passion for games that in 
 Apemama he masters an inconceivably dreary variation 
 of the game of poker, invented by the king, and exults in 
 the distinction of being 'the only white who has fairly 
 
 59 
 
THE FAITH OF R. L. STEVENSON 
 
 grasped its principle.' His favourite pastime was the 
 war-game with tin soldiers. In his house at Vailima, as 
 formerly at Davos, a room was set apart for this amuse- 
 ment, and the campaigns went on for days under elaborate 
 rules of his own invention. He records with interest the 
 curious coincidence that the stepfather of Eobert Stevenson 
 of the Bell Eock, fell at the end of his life into the same 
 foible, and ' his family must entertain him with games of 
 tin soldiers, which he took a childish pleasure to array and 
 overset.* As for Robert Louis Stevenson, the delight in toys 
 may be seen in many details of his Vailima life. His rela- 
 tions with the natives, the absorbing attention which he 
 bestows upon the details of his house-building and decora- 
 tion, besides much else, remind us of child's play. He even 
 went the length of writing for large-sized gilded letters 
 of the alphabet to be designed for the purpose of fixing 
 inscriptions on his inner wall commemorative of the visits 
 of his friends. 
 
 There is one small portion of his work, little known 
 indeed, but ranking very high, in which we see the child- 
 likeness of Stevenson at its best. The Letters from Samoa 
 to Young People are choice reading. A lady in England 
 wrote him asking for letters about his ' boys,' for the sake 
 of little girls in a home for sick children. The letters are 
 models of child-work — tales and descriptions told by one 
 child to other childien. They centre round the personality 
 and adventures of ' the lean man ' who writes them. Every 
 figure is alive, and every sentence tells its tale. Along 
 with these are some letters to Austin Strong, as vivid and 
 as fascinating as the rest. There is no laughing at the 
 children. He takes them and their affairs seriously, thinks 
 what would appeal to them, and, by admitting them as it 
 were into partnership of interests with himself, offers them 
 the only kind of flattery that is either decent or helpful, 
 60 
 
THE CHILD 
 
 It will be apparent to every reader that all this has a 
 religious as well as a psychological significance. Those days 
 of childhood, which he recalled so exactly and in which he 
 lived much to the end, were days in which he was, as he 
 himself says, 'eminently religious.' Out of the many 
 incidents for which we are indebted to Mr. Graham Balfour 
 one only shall be quoted, but it is typical of many more. 
 It is a saying recorded by his mother in the fourth year of 
 his age : ' Lou said, " You can never be good unless you 
 pray." When asked how he knew, he said with great 
 emphasis, " Because I Ve tried it." ' Of course it would be 
 absurd to cite any such incident as evidence for a man's 
 religion, but at least it shows us what was the first atmo- 
 sphere and climate of his life. No one can tell how much 
 it had to do with the faith and character of later years. 
 
 Every child is more or less devout in early childhood. It 
 needs but a touch to awaken the response to God whose 
 heaven lies about us all in our infancy. It would seem that 
 Stevenson's childhood was more than usually religious, and 
 those who appreciate religion must feel that this circum- 
 stance sets a special value on his power of recollecting his 
 childhood and continuing to be a child. To revert to such 
 a childhood is to be led constantly in among religious 
 thoughts and ideals. They were to a great extent the 
 thoughts and ideals of his nurse, Alison Cunningham, a 
 Christian believer of the older Scottish school. Yet they 
 were his own also, and long after he had passed out of the 
 influence of her creed he retained much that he had learned 
 from her. The vivid memory of one's former simplicity of 
 faith is to all true men an irresistible appeal for reverence. 
 In the words of Eossetti : 
 
 ' though I loved not holy things, 
 To hear them mocked brought pain : 
 They were my childhood.' 
 
 61 
 
THE FAITH OF R. L. STEVENSON 
 
 Still more important to our present study is the fact of 
 his continued childlikeness of spirit. It is by this, most 
 of all, that he has ' made us all children perforce, as a 
 child draws off a reluctant elder to play, and so refreshes and 
 renews his youth.' It would be difficult to overestimate 
 the preciousness of this one service. In the ever-increasing 
 rush and drive of life we grow old all too rapidly. The 
 fever makes us grey before our time. To preserve, in an 
 age like this, the spirit of the child alive to the end, is to be 
 a great benefactor. Even when the darkness oppresses him 
 Stevenson is still the child. At the age of twenty-nine he 
 writes from California : * But death is no bad friend ; a few 
 aches and gasps, and we are done ; like the truant child I 
 am beginning to grow weary and timid in this big jostling 
 city, and could run to my nurse, even though she had to 
 whip me before putting me to bed.' Eight months before 
 the end he writes again : ' But as I go on in life, day by 
 day, I become more of a bewildered child ; I cannot get 
 used to this world.' That was at the worst, and at the 
 worst it was a good thing for him to be a bewildered 
 child and not a grown-up cynic. But there was a better 
 childhood which remained — a fresh readiness for impres- 
 sions, an unduUed appreciation of whatsoever things were 
 lovely, an unguarded forwardness in entering into new 
 situations and risking new adventures. Beneath all the 
 complex play of thought and feeling upon the varied ex- 
 perience of life, there remained the naiveU that is possible 
 only to the childlike. 
 
 We need to remind ourselves that this is what Clirist 
 claimed to be a characteristic mood of Christianity. To 
 enter that Kingdom a man must be born again, even when 
 he is old, and become a little child. Christian teachers 
 have sometimes misappropriated that 'childhood of the 
 Kingdom.* It does not mean the renunciation of intellect 
 62 
 
THE CHILD 
 
 in favour of a church's dogma. It means something far 
 more human and more beautiful. It means wonder, and 
 humility, and responsiveness — the straight gaze of child- 
 hood past conventionalities, the simplicity of a mind open 
 to any truth, and a heart with love alive iu it. 
 
 E 63 
 
THE FAITH OF R. L,, STEVENSON 
 
 CHAPTER V 
 
 THE MAN OF BOOKS 
 
 We have already had glimpses of a very fresh and original 
 manhood evolving itself out of a childhood which may 
 be truly called unique. The natural sequel would be one 
 of those ' eye-minded' children of Nature, who seem to have 
 no need for the thoughts of others. They live with Nature 
 and hear her message to themselves. They are withdrawn 
 alike from conventionalities and from opinions, aloof from 
 life in the self-dependence of those who live self-poised 
 
 and 
 
 * demand not that the things around them 
 Yield them love, amusement, sympathy.' 
 
 But Stevenson was not one of that company. He was 
 indeed eye-minded, and his keen senses kept him in direct 
 contact with the things around him. Life was more to 
 him than theories of life, and to be vital a higher ambition 
 than to be well informed. Yet he combined with his 
 originality a taste for books and a lifelong habit of hard 
 reading which are rarely found along with it. Indeed, it 
 is in that combination, more perhaps than in any other trait 
 of his, that there lies the secret of his flexible strength and 
 subtle wisdom. He is at once instinctive and educated, 
 and so wields a double-edged sword. In a memorable 
 passage on the morbidness of youth he gives his own 
 experience on the point : ' Books were the proper remedy : 
 books of vivacious human import, forcing upon their 
 6i 
 
THE MAN OF BOOKS 
 
 minds the issues, pleasures, busyness, importance, and 
 immediacy of that life in which they stand ; books of 
 smiling or heroic temper to excite or to console ; books of a 
 large design, shadowing the complexity of that game of 
 consequences to which we all sit down, the hanger-back not 
 least.' 
 
 Thus did books help him, and yet he never was a student 
 in the severe and technical sense. It was the vital spirit 
 of the books that appealed to him rather than any 
 exact system of knowledge which they might have built 
 up. Some books, indeed, he read mainly for their literary 
 value, in the days when he was training himself by vigor- 
 ous discipline to the achievement of style. But there was 
 always a deeper quest in his reading — a quest for truth and 
 life. Never could it be said, like the reading of the Master 
 of Ballantrae, to * pass high above his head like summer 
 thunder,' nor to be to him ' a source of entertainment only, 
 like the scraping of a fiddle in a change-house.' It was 
 one of the main sources from which his personality drew its 
 richness and variety. * I have only to read books, to think,' 
 he tells us, ... ' the mass of people are merely speaking in 
 their sleep.* 
 
 The paternal library would seem to have been of the 
 austere order, with a few bright and surprising islands 
 such as Roh Roy and Robinson Crusoe in its grey sea of 
 information. These were soon mastered, and then came the 
 time when he went forth to discover his own reading in the 
 wide world of literature. From first to last he must have 
 read an amazing variety of books. The lists of volumes he 
 sends for in letters from the South Seas show a catholic 
 appetite and a power of digestion equal to the most miscel- 
 laneous intellectual provender. Of American literature 
 there are fewer traces than might have been expected, and 
 it is curious to note that the Americanisms in diction, 
 
 65 
 
THE FAITH OP R. L. STEVENSON 
 
 which most Britons who cross the Atlantic find so infec- 
 tious, are with one or two exceptions conspicuous by their 
 absence in his work. Thoreau and Whitman were con- 
 genial, and his essays on these authors show how deeply 
 they had influenced him. Emerson also has had his effect 
 — who that has ever opened his books has remained 
 unaffected? It may very likely be a chance coincidence, 
 but if so it is a striking one, that Stevenson's House Beauti- 
 ful is to a large extent but an exquisite expansion of 
 Emerson's words : ' Crossing a bare common, in snow 
 puddles, at twilight under a clouded sky, without having 
 in my thoughts any occurrence of special good fortune, I 
 have enjoyed a perfect exhilaration. I am glad to the 
 brink of fear.' 
 
 The influence of French literature is far more evident. 
 He had felt the mighty power of Hugo, and even his 
 criticisms of that great novelist bear witness to his 
 admiration. Dumas is the counterpart influence to that 
 of Hugo, the aggressively living and human force of 
 D'Artagnan appealing to one side of his nature as strongly 
 as the cosmic tragedy of Hugo's great trilogy appeals to 
 another side. In Saiute-Beuve's work, with its wealth of 
 psychological criticism, he found much that was congenial. 
 In Montaigne — that unblushing, erudite, common-sense 
 pagan — he found perhaps even more. In regard to con- 
 temporary British authors, one is not surprised to find 
 him abandoning Carlyle. It was to save his style that he 
 did this, but in truth there is much difference of a deeper 
 sort between their points of view. Meredith he knew 
 and loved as a friend ; and though there is a somewhat 
 extraordinary lack of reference to his novels, their in- 
 fluence, both as regards mannerism and thought, is 
 frequently in evidence. Browning was not so well known 
 in the seventies as he is to-day. Yet in 1871 Stevenson 
 66 
 
THE MAN OF BOOKS 
 
 quotes a verse of A Grammarian's Funeral in one of his 
 College Papers; and there are a good many traces of 
 Paracelsus, Christmas Eve, and other poems. In their 
 general tone and attitude the two are closely and deeply 
 allied, and he quotes the famous lines on temptation in the 
 last volume of The Ring and the Book as 'the noblest 
 passage in one of the noblest books of this century.' 
 
 It is, however, among the older English and Scottish 
 writers that we must look in order to find the literature 
 to which he owed most. For the English literature 
 of the eighteenth century he had a strong admiration, 
 although he never felt the spell of Addison. Doubtless its 
 opulent and placid worldliness attracted him on one side 
 of his nature, but it was perhaps more an attraction of 
 style than of matter. To this attraction we owe a certain 
 occasional smooth eloquence and careful balance in his 
 construction of sentences which at times makes his work 
 sound antiquated. 
 
 In the Scottish life and literature of the past we have a 
 mine from which he dug far richer treasure. The passionate 
 loyalty with which his heart always warmed to Scotland 
 is familiar to every reader. Frail health, which forced 
 him to leave and stay away from his native land, added to 
 his patriotism all the intensity of exile. Even the climate, 
 which when near at hand he had pronounced ' one of the 
 vilest climates under heaven,' becomes glorified to ' winds 
 austere and pure ' when remembered in Samoa. Among 
 the books of his father's collection which we find him 
 reading as a boy is Billings's Antiquities of Scotland. But 
 the stones of Edinburgh were his great Scottish book. 
 Among them he wandered, identifying the houses which 
 romantic history had marked for its own. He repeopled 
 the changed streets with their ancient dead, until the 
 modern life of the city seemed utterly irrelevant. Of all 
 
 67 
 
THE FAITH OF R. L. STEVENSON 
 
 books written about Edinburgh since Sir Walter Scott's 
 there are none that come anywhere within sight of what 
 he has written for vividness and feeling. ' That dear city 
 of Zeus,' which casts so strong a spell over those who know 
 it as their home, seems to open new depths of its heart and 
 to unroll new aspects of its beauty every time we turn 
 these living and loving pages. 
 
 There was a side of old Edinhurgh life — the side of 
 which Scott has given the world a glimpse in Guy Man- 
 nering, of which Creech and Jupiter Carlyle knew and 
 told, — whose significance is usually overestimated by our 
 critics. This aspect of the past has been taken in connec- 
 tion with Eobert Louis Stevenson as typical of his Scottish 
 heritage. That it is a real side of old Edinhurgh life, no 
 one denies. But a Scotsman's heritage is, like a well-known 
 personage's acquaintance with London, extensive as well as 
 peculiar. While the period is typical of one side of ancient 
 Scottish life, it is but just to remember that behind it lie 
 the events which have peculiarly marked Scotland for their 
 own — the Covenants, the Eeformation, and the Wars. 
 No doubt the kennel flowed on alongside them all, but 
 what land can claim that it is otherwise with any chapter 
 of its past ? 
 
 When Stevenson wandered through the ancient life of 
 Edinburgh in search of history and romance, he found that 
 as well as other matters, and recorded it. In his picture of 
 New Year's Day drunkenness he has noted one of the most 
 ohvious instances in which its tradition remains; and in 
 Mother Clarke's room in Deacon Brodie he has pictured its 
 lower side very faithfully. Among the * numbered houses 
 of romance' there still runs a curious, dark, and ancient 
 alley bearing the name of ' Brodie's Wynd.' Its tradition is 
 of a leading eighteenth-century citizen, a master-craftsman, 
 an ornament of the secular and religious life of his time, 
 68 
 
THE MAN OF BOOKS 
 
 who lived a double life — leader of respectability by day 
 burglar and debauchee by night. The subject was irre- 
 sistible to a romantic genius like Stevenson's, who himself 
 had made acquaintance with the strange under-world of 
 Edinburgh society; and he gave us, in collaboration with 
 Mr. Henley, his play of Deacon Brodie, or The Double Life. 
 Apart from its merits or demerits as a play, the piece is 
 noteworthy as a living picture of the times it represents. 
 By countless minutest touches it wakens response in a 
 Scottish reader. Even its use of the title ' Deacon ' (* lie 
 there, deacon,' etc. etc.) is true to the life ; for the old-time 
 Scotsman rejoiced in all that was in the nature of a title. 
 He named himself from his work, and was to his neighbours 
 ' the smith,' * the minister,' and so on, as by a conscious 
 claim of right. In this characteristic trifle and many other 
 touches besides, the native reader sees to what purpose 
 Stevenson loved and studied Scotland. Yet beyond all that 
 there is the grim psychology of the closing scenes of the 
 play, to say nothing of their melodrama. Very different 
 this from Sir Walter's amused acceptance of the situation. 
 He who would know the real meaning of Stevenson's visit 
 to Brodie's Wynd must read Dr. Jehyll and Mr. Hyde, which 
 is its ultimate product, and which appeared six years after- 
 wards. For the sake of its romance it interested him, but 
 not for that alone. It took him in among the tragic facts 
 of Scottish Calvinism, and formed a stepping-stone in his 
 journey back to the earlier times of the Covenanters. 
 
 The influence which the covenanting history of Scotland 
 exercised over him was profound, and there is hardly a 
 book of his that does not bear some trace of it. Part of 
 its interest is romantic, as any one may see who reads 
 Patrick Walker's account of Kichard Peden, or indeed any 
 other covenanting book ; and that romantic spell is over the 
 whole of Weir of Hermiston. Yet there is far more that 
 
 69 
 
THE FAITH O* K. L. STEVENSON 
 
 connects Stevenson with the Covenanters than the cry of 
 the whaups about the graves of the martyrs, or the 'grey 
 recumbent tombs of the dead in desert places.' He had a 
 covenanting ancestry. On the mother's side are James 
 Balfour of St. Giles, connected by marriage with Andrew 
 Melville the Reformer ; and possibly John Balfour of Burley, 
 the Balfour of Old Mortality. In tracing his father's 
 ancestry in A Family of Engineers he dwells, with evident 
 pride in the connection, on one John Stevenson, land- 
 labourer in the parish of Daily in Carrick, — * that eminently 
 pious man,' whose remarkable experiences, bodily and 
 spiritual, he relates at length. In a letter written from 
 Samoa he speaks of 'his old Presbyterian spirit,' and 
 reminds his correspondent that he is 'a child of the 
 Covenanters.' 
 
 His childhood, as we have already noticed, was spent 
 under the gentle domination of ' Cummy,' the nurse. Her 
 religion was of that pronounced and impressive type 
 which is sure to leave a very deep mark upon a child. It 
 was not indeed forced upon him, for he adopted it with 
 a child's whole-hearted abandon, and literally 'had a 
 covenanting childhood,' as he tells us. Cummy's private 
 library was, like Stevenson's childhood, ' eminently religious.' 
 Her favourite books were the Bible, the Shorter Catechism, 
 the Life of Robert Murray M'Cheyne, The Cameronian's 
 Dream, The Cloud of Witnesses, and the writings of Wodrow 
 and Peden. To these must be added Patrick Walker's 
 Biographia Prcsbyteriana borrowed from his father's library. 
 The result is obvious in his books. No reader of Edinburgh 
 Picturesque Notes is likely to forget that long and grim 
 quotation from the last-named author, in which are described 
 the gruesome adventures of the dishevelled and decayed 
 fragments of five martyrs; the table in Mr. Schaw's 
 summer-house; the 'doubled linen,' and the 'coffin stufft 
 70 
 
THE MAN OF BOOKS 
 
 with shavings.' For ghastly realism, mingled with human 
 tenderness and reverence, the passage stands alone. Had 
 Stevenson been able to finish the tale of Heathercat, we 
 should have had a noteworthy addition to our Covenanting 
 literature. The fragment which we possess is one of the 
 most striking of his conceptions. Here is part of the 
 description of a conventicle: — 
 
 ' On the far side the ground swelled into a bare heath, black 
 with junipers, and spotted with the presence of the standing 
 stones for which the place was famous. They were many in 
 that part, shapeless, white with lichen — you would have said 
 with age : and had made their abode there for untold centuries, 
 since first the heathens shouted for their installation. The 
 ancients had hallowed them to some ill religion, and their 
 neighbourhood had long been avoided by the prudent before 
 the fall of day ; but of late, on the upspringing of new require- 
 ments, these lonely stones on the moor had again become a 
 place of assembly. . . . The minister spoke from a knowe close 
 to the edge of the ring, and poured out the words God gave 
 him on the very threshold of the devils of yore. . . . And the 
 congregation sat partly clustered on the slope below, and partly 
 among the idolatrous monoliths and on the turfy soil of the 
 ring itself. In truth the situation was well qualified to give a 
 zest to Christian doctrines, had there been any wanted. But 
 these congregations assembled under conditions at once so 
 formidable and romantic as made a zealot of the most cold. 
 They were the last of the faithful ; God, who had averted his 
 face from all other countries of the world, still leaned from 
 heaven to observe, with swelling sympathy, the doings of his 
 moorland remnant; Christ was by them with his eternal 
 wounds, with dropping tears ; the Holy Ghost (never perfectly 
 realised nor firmly adopted by Protestant imaginations) was 
 dimly supposed to be in the heart of each and on the lips of 
 the minister. And over against them was the army of the 
 hierarchies, from the men Charles and James Stuart, on to King 
 Lewie and the Emperor ; and the scarlet Pope and the muckle 
 black devil himself, peering out the red mouth of hell in an 
 ecstasy of hate and hope. " One pull more ! " he seemed to 
 cry ; " one pull more, and it 's done. There 's only Clydesdale 
 
 71 
 
THE FAITH OF R. L. STEVENSON 
 
 and the Stewartry and the three Bailiaries of Ayr, left for 
 God." And with such an august assistance of powers and 
 principalities looking on at the last conflict of good and evil, 
 it was scarce possible to spare a thought to those old, infirm, 
 debile, ab agendo devils whose holy place they were now 
 violating.' 
 
 It is difficult to read that passage without au almost rebellious 
 bitterness, as we remember for the thousandth time that the 
 hand that wrote it will write no more. The subtle borrow- 
 ing of magic power from ancient paganism for the new 
 religion which had already much glamour of its own ; the 
 cloud of witnesses so daringly yet so exactly revealed ; the 
 depth of artistic and religious sympathy with the scene and 
 its personages — these are indeed the effect of covenanting 
 blood. This was among the latest of his works. The first 
 of them relates to the same subject. The Pentland Rising, 
 published in his sixteenth year, is an essay in covenanting 
 history. It is a carefully executed piece of work, showing 
 but little trace of the literary skill he was afterwards to 
 learn, but it gives abundant proof of the thoroughness with 
 which he was even then acquainting himself with history. 
 Though it is a pamphlet of but few pages, it contains refer- 
 ences to a dozen old books on its subject. Stevenson is 
 not blind to the faults either of the martyrs or of their 
 historians. Some of Patrick Walker's controversial matter 
 he frankly calls insane, and the word is hardly too strong for 
 such wild invective. He quotes, in Heathercat, one of 
 Walker's coarsest passages, adding that no doubt it was 
 written to excuse his slaughter of Gordon, 'and I have 
 never heard it claimed for Walker that he was either a just 
 witness or an indulgent judge.* As for the Covenanters 
 themselves, he plainly sees that something of what they 
 took to be their duty was a misapprehension. Yet no one 
 has more justly appreciated their heroism, their historic 
 72 
 
THE MAN OF BOOKS 
 
 value to Scotland, and the vast debt which Scotland owes 
 to them for her religion. 
 
 Stevenson's books are literally strewn with more or less 
 conscious quotations and imitations of this literature. In 
 his Thrawn Janet — one of the most powerful of his essays 
 in the ghastly — Mr. Crockett has recognised Walker's 
 * old singular Christian woman in the Cummerhead, named 
 Jean Brown.' In the same sketch we have Mr. Soulis the 
 minister, ' fu' o' booklearnin', but wi' nae leevin' experience 
 in religion.' Like other ministers of his time Mr. Soulis had 
 
 o 
 
 been at the college; but he 'would have learned more sitting in 
 a peat-bog, like their forebears o' the persecution, wi' a Bible 
 under their oxter an' a speerit o' prayer in their heart.' All 
 this is to the manner born, and there is much more of the 
 same sort. The sermon in Eeathercat is almost a transcrip- 
 tion of such preaching as Patrick Walker reports : * In that 
 day ye may go thirty mile and not hear a crawing cock ; 
 and fifty mile and not get a light to your pipe; and an 
 hundred mile and not see a smoking house. For there '11 be 
 naething in all Scotland but deid men's banes and blackness, 
 and the living anger of the Lord. 0, where to find a bield 
 — sirs, where to find a bield from the wind of the 
 Lord's anger?' The two phrases for whose recurrence one 
 watches in reading Patrick Walker are ' left-hand defections 
 and right-hand extremes,' and 'to get cleanly off the 
 stage ' (the metaphor for death), a curious unexpected allu- 
 sion to things theatrical. These two are quoted many 
 times by Stevenson — or misquoted, for he sometimes re- 
 verses the right and left hands of the former quotation, 
 and the latter passes through several variations. He rejoices 
 in the epithet ' rank conformity ' as a name for his pet aver- 
 sion, respectability ; he speaks of * concerned and serious 
 old folk ' — a combination of words bearing on it the peculiar 
 stamp of covenanting days. On its lurid and ghastly 
 
 73 
 
THE FAITH OF R. L. STEVENSON 
 
 side the old literature especially attracted him. Where 
 else, for instance, could he have found the suggestion for 
 those 'deils in the deep sea that would yoke on a com- 
 municant ' ; or for that other idea in the Merry Men, of the 
 sea as * a muckle yett to hell ' for the unprepared souls of 
 mariners ; or for the prayer in the Master of Ballantrae : 
 ' Lord, I thank Thee, and my son thanks Thee, for thy 
 manifold great mercies. Let us have peace for a little; 
 defend us from tlie evil man. Smite him, Lord, upon the 
 lying mouth ' ? Such words, and the wild talk of the lady of 
 Montroymont, might strike the uninitiated as savage to the 
 point of blasphemy. Yet they are modelled with the most 
 detailed fidelity on many passages of the Biographia. 
 
 So deeply was he versed in the books of those grirp 
 Scottish days that they affected his style, even in writings 
 entirely remote from them. Most of the peculiarities in 
 the use of English, which are apt to strike the reader as 
 affectations, are to be traced to this source. In the last 
 year of his life we find him reverting to the reading of 
 covenanting books, and making the curious discovery that 
 his style comes from them. Nothing could be more evident 
 to those who read him with some of the said books at their 
 elbow. ' Scarce * and ' exceeding ' do duty for ' scarcely ' 
 and ' exceedingly ' ; * discomfortable ' for ' uncomfortable ' ; 
 ' in ' for * into ' (* burst in a flame,' etc. etc.). Antique words 
 and constructions are of constant recurrence : * the story 
 leaves to tell of his voyaging,' ' there befell a strange 
 coincidence,' * to prepare his angle for fishing/ and so on. 
 The word ' brisk ' is one of many that strike the ear, as 
 you read his work, with an unusual aptness and vivacity. 
 Here it is, in old Patrick Walker's not very ingenuous 
 account of the killing of a certain trooper : * out of a 
 pocket-pistol, rather fit for diverting a boy than killing such 
 a furious, mad, brisk man.' 
 74 
 
THE MAN OP BOOKS 
 
 As it was to Patrick Walker that Stevenson owed hy far 
 the largest of his debts among writers ot the covenanting 
 times, we may devote a little further space to him before 
 we let him * go cleanly off the stage.' An uneducated man 
 so far as college or the higher learning go, he is an example 
 of that native wit for which Scotland is justly famous. 
 He identified himself with the covenanting cause in those 
 dark times of persecution in the seventeenth century which 
 have proved at once the costliest and the most enriching 
 of all periods of Scottish history. Under examination 
 eighteen times, he was once at least tortured by boot and 
 thumbikins. In later days he kept ' a small shop for the 
 sale of religious tracts, etc., at Bristo Port, opposite the 
 Society Gate' of Edinburgh. His house, at one time, was 
 near at hand — one of those eerie little houses in the 
 Candlemaker Kow whose lower walls, on the west side, 
 buttress the Greyfriars Churchyard. Its grass grows high 
 above the level of their ground-floor rooms ; and its graves 
 are overlooked, with an altogether indecent familiarity, 
 by back windows, and overhung by many-coloured gar- 
 ments on washing-days. At a later time he employed 
 himself in wandering about the country to gather up the 
 old stories which are printed in his book, Biograjphia 
 Presbyteriana. It is a curious collection of the lives of six 
 of the leading Covenanters by Walker, with a life of Mr. 
 Renwick added by the Eev. Alexander Shields. Its contempt 
 for grammar and for the ordinary canons of style, its mixed 
 metaphors and long strings of adjectives unconnected by 
 any conjunction, only serve to throw out in more impressive 
 relief its extraordinary qualities of clear vision and of 
 rugged power.^ The untrained style is wonderfully ex- 
 
 ^ Walker's peart of it has been re-edited of late by Mr. Hay Fleming, 
 under the title of Six Saints of the Covenant, with a foreword by Mr. 
 Crockett. 
 
 75 
 
THE FAITH OF R. L. STEVENSON 
 
 pressive, and there is a refreshing quaiutness about the 
 whole book. In later pages, as we trace the characteristics 
 of Stevenson's genius, we shall have to note many a point 
 which he has in common with this strange volume. 
 Especially is this the case as regards the gifts of vision and 
 vivacity. In respect of both these gifts, it is well to 
 separate Mr. Shields's lAfe of Renwick from Walker's Lives. 
 To pass from the latter to the former is to feel a sore 
 decline. In itself, Shields's work might not seem so bad ; 
 but after Walker it is dull and pedestrian in the extreme. 
 
 The Biographia is redolent of its times. Its variety of 
 language and expression is surprising, yet there are phrases 
 upon which it comes back incessantly, and they are what 
 might be called the covenanting vernacular. We read of 
 the ' singular gift of prefacing,' of the * heights, lengths,' 
 etc. with which the faithful were taunted; the ministers* 
 business is that of ' preaching up all duties and down all 
 sins,' their ideal character is that of ' godly, zealous, painful 
 ministers of Christ.' The church, for want of * exercised ' 
 and ' self-denied ' members, is a ' back-slidden and upsitten 
 church,' which God will visit with ' Moth-judgements and 
 Lion-judgements.' Scripture is constantly quoted, and is so 
 deeply involved in the writer's thought, that without its key 
 much of the book would be only very partially intelligible. 
 Subtle allusions to Old and New Testament texts are 
 everywhere embedded in the sentences and epithets. In 
 depicting the injustice and cruelty of the persecutions the 
 author breaks out often in terror-striking eloquence, that 
 knows not the meaning of restraint. Violence and death 
 stalk like demons through many pages, in a succession of 
 pictures whose ghastly realism haunts and terrifies the 
 imagination. * The broth was hell-hot in those days,' he 
 tells us ; and he scornfully speculates about the unfaithful, 
 * how they would tremble and sweat, if they were in the 
 76 
 
THE MAN OF BOOKS 
 
 Grassmarket, and other such places, going up the Ladder, 
 with the Eope before them, and the Lad with the Pyoted 
 Coat at their Tail.' There is no uncertainty about Walker ; 
 he knows exactly where he is. His path is narrow, but it 
 runs straight forward. He has as hard words for extremists 
 like Gibb as he has for compilers like Wodrow. He has 
 an unconcealed aversion to the ' Englishes.' When hard 
 words are desired, he has them at command, and floods of 
 personalities that Billingsgate would pause to listen to 
 pour themselves out upon his enemies. Even in his milder 
 vein he protests against the * gasping and goUering of 
 preachers ' and their * wisned, warsh, coldrife, formal 
 sermons.' Nor is there lack of sardonic humour — the 
 native thistle in the language of Scotland. Samson is * a 
 rackle-handed saint,' and there are some like him still. 
 Their enemies demanded prayer for the king, and he con- 
 cedes the prayer ' that the Lord would make him what he 
 should be, or take him away and give them better.' Most 
 sardonic of all is his account of the death of the soldier he 
 is supposed to have shot : ' Thus he was 4 miles from 
 Lanark and near a mile from his Comrade, seeking his own 
 death, and got it.' 
 
 His relations with the unseen world give the impression 
 of much uncanny intercourse with the Devil, and a stern 
 familiarity with God. There is a firm belief in magic of 
 both kinds, white and black. We read of men praying all 
 night long upon the moors with a light shining round about 
 them, and of not a little second-sight and witchcraft. Field 
 conventicles are 'the Devil's eyesore.' But God is near 
 also; there are men who in their childhood 'fell in love 
 with the ways of God,' and ' it is praying folk that will win 
 through the storm.' Yet the man and his book are human, 
 with a charming freshness that appeals to us in many ways. 
 That well-worn stage metaphor, for instance — how fresh it 
 
 77 
 
THE FAITH OF R. L. STEVENSON 
 
 is ! 'To get off the stage/ as a metaphor for death, tells of 
 a time when weary actors watched for the end of heavy 
 parts. Yet the figure becomes quite lightsome when it has 
 thoroughly established itself. Not only is the death of 
 martyrs so described, but even the Apostles have 'gone 
 off the stage * in their day. It actually ceases to be a figure, 
 as the mixed metaphors show when we read of * worthy 
 gleanings ' which are * for the most part off the stage ' ; and 
 Peden breaks out ' into a Rapture about our Martyrs saying 
 they were going off the Stage with fresh Gales and full Sails, 
 and now they are all glancing with Glory.' The nautical 
 allusion is frequent. Mr. M'Ward prays ' with more than 
 ordinary Gale upon his Spirit ' — a phrase, by the way, which 
 reappears unchanged in Stevenson's The Scotsman s Beturn 
 from Abroad. Another obvious link with Stevenson is 
 Walker's oft-repeated aspiration to 'steir a steddy course.' 
 Like Stevenson, too, his senses are strong within him, 
 especially the sense of vision. We are told of ' a merciful 
 Cast of Free Grace,' at the Kirk of Shotts, which ' perfumed 
 and gave a scent to Clydesdale.' Again we find Compliance 
 * painted with the Vermilion of Prudence and Peace ' ; and 
 yet again we catch glints of ' the Light of sun-blink days.' 
 The human nature of the book appears plainly in those 
 deeper and more affecting passages which thrill with an in- 
 finite pity for the * precious dear blood,' and the lads cold 
 upon the hills ; and for those who, like Richard Cameron's 
 father, are kissing the bloody head and severed hands of 
 their dearest. It is perhaps this, more than all else about 
 it, that explains Mr. Crockett's confession 'that to-day 
 certain cadences of honest Patrick's speech touch my heart 
 like nothing else in the world save the memory of a 
 mother's voice heard praying at a child's bedside in the 
 night.' In all this of Patrick Walker's there is a wonderful 
 affinity with the genius of Stevenson. If he has occupied 
 78 
 
THE MAN OV BOOKS 
 
 a large portion of this chapter, it is because it would seeDi 
 that he, more than any other writer, has influenced both 
 the style and the thought of the other 'child of the 
 Covenant.' 
 
 Behind all a Scotsman's memories of the Covenanters there 
 stands, large and masterful, the older image of John Knox. 
 As a living influence upon Stevenson's thought, it may be 
 questioned whether Knox can be said to have counted for 
 very much ; yet we everywhere come upon indications of 
 the profound impression which the great statesman and 
 churchman had made upon his imagination. With the 
 audacity of youth he essayed the task of humanising his 
 memory in John Knox and his Relations to Women. Knox, 
 from Stevenson's point of view, lay ' dead and buried in the 
 works of the learned and unreadable M'Crie.' His effort to 
 'break the tomb, and bring him forth, alive again and 
 breathing, in a human book,' was not altogether successful, 
 nor was it even a pleasant failure. ' With the best inten- 
 tions in the world,' he himself confesses, ' I have only added 
 two more flagstones.' He never again attempted the subject, 
 but the reformer often looks down on us, through a window 
 as it were, in passing allusions which show him unforgotten 
 by the writer. The happiest of his allusions to Knox is 
 in Edinhurgh Picturesque Notes : 'In the Parliament Close, 
 trodden daily underfoot by advocates, two letters and a date 
 mark the resting-place of the man who made Scotland over 
 again in his own image, the indefatigable, undissuadable 
 John Knox. He sleeps within call of the church that so 
 often echoed to his preaching. Hard by the reformer, a 
 bandy-legged and garlanded Charles Second, made of lead, 
 bestrides a tun-bellied charger. The King has his back 
 turned, and, as you look, seems to be trotting clumsily 
 away from such a dangerous neighbour. Often, for hours 
 together, these two will be alone in the Close, for it lies out 
 
 F 79 
 
THE FAITH OF R. L. STEVENSON 
 
 of the way of all but legal traffic' The man who wrote 
 these words had surely ' sat under ' the great preacher, as 
 an* occasional hearer at least. 
 
 Two other religious writers of the early times must be 
 included among the master-influences of Stevenson's life-, 
 William Penn was a late acquaintance. Stevenson found 
 a copy of the Fruits of Solitvde'^ on a San Francisco 
 bookstall when, in his thirtieth year, he was passing 
 through a crisis. The book moved him to the depths. It 
 was 'carried in my pocket all about the San Francisco 
 streets, read in street-cars, and ferry-boats, when I was sick 
 unto death, and found in all times and places a peaceful 
 and sweet companion. . . . there is not the man living — 
 no, nor recently dead — that could put, with so lovely a 
 spirit, so much honest, kind wisdom into words.' 
 
 Penn's note is one of brisk and yet quiet optimism. His 
 letters to his wife and family are full of the alert repose 
 of the man who knows his work and has found his place 
 in life. He is ' well, diligent, and successful.' ' Keep thy 
 place,' he advises, ' I ain in mine.' He warns them against 
 letting their usefulness be scattered by ' the snare of doing 
 good to everybody,' and counsels them to ' see with their 
 own eyes, not another's.* The Fruits of Solitude is a collec- 
 tion, in two parts, of eight hundred and fifty-five reflections 
 and maxims upon all sorts of practical subjects. The point 
 of view is a bright and healthy one, calm in its outlook, 
 energetic in its purpose. The maxims are natural and un- 
 laboured. They often light up their subjects with a sudden 
 flame that seems to crackle as you read. There are endless 
 points of contact with Stevenson in the book, but a few of 
 the maxims, selected almost at random, must suffice for 
 
 * The Fruits of Solitude has been re-edited, and published in a charm- 
 ing little volume, by Mr. Edmund Gosse, with an introduction and a 
 portrait. 
 
 80 
 
THE MAN OF BOOKS 
 
 illustration : * If we would amend the World, we should 
 mend Our selves' 'As Pujypets are to Men, and Babies to 
 Children, so is Man's Workmanship to God's. We are the 
 Picture, he the Reality.' * Where Eight or Eeligion gives a 
 Call, a Neuter must be a Coward or an Hypocrite.' * It is a 
 Preposterous thing, that Men can venture their Souls where 
 they will not venture their Money : For they will take 
 their Religion upon trust, but not trust a Synod about the 
 Goodness of Half a Crown.' ' No religion is better than an 
 Unnatural One.' 'Hardly any Thing is given us for our 
 Selves, but the Publick may claim a Share with us. But of 
 all we call ours, we are most accountable to God and the 
 Publick for our Estates : In this we are but Stewards and 
 to Hord up all to ourselves is great Injustice as well as 
 Ingratitude.' ... * those Higher Ranks of Men are but the 
 Trustees of Heaven for the Benefit of lesser Mortals. . . . 
 And 'tis certain, where that Use is not made of the Bounties 
 of Providence, they are ImbezzU'd and Wasted.' Lovers of 
 Stevenson will recognise familiar sentiments and turns 
 of phrase in all of these ; and many more could be quoted. 
 
 * Lastly,' he tells us in his list of books which had influ- 
 enced him, * I must name the Pilgrim's Progress, a book that 
 breathes of every beautiful and valuable emotion.' It was 
 the book in all English literature which he knew best, and 
 to which he oftenest alluded. This is probably rather the 
 rule than the exception in Christian homes in Scotland. 
 One remembers the inimitable scene in Mr. Barriers Margaret 
 Ogilvy, where the child has presumed to take liberties with 
 the quasi-sacred volume, to the extent of constructing a 
 Slough of Despond in the garden ; the seriousness of the 
 affair in the mother's eyes ; and the adventurous infant 
 regarding himself for some days as a * dark character ' in 
 consequence. Into Stevenson's childhood also it entered, 
 for this was one of the nurse's favourites ; and his mother, 
 
 81 
 
THE FAITH OF R. L. STEVENSON 
 
 unlike Barrie's, went so far as to allow him to retain his 
 playthings of a Sunday, ' when a pack was sewn on to the 
 back of one of the wooden figures, and I had then duly 
 promised to play at nothing but " Pilgrim's Progress." ' 
 One of the sweetest impressions in Rosa Quo Locorum is 
 that of the building up of his childish picture of the 
 Twenty-Third Psalm, where the ' foes,' in whose presence 
 the table is furnished, are supplied by the imps — surely the 
 neatest little demons in art — in the pictures of his copy of 
 the allegory, drawn by Miss Eunice Bagster. 
 
 But it is not only the accidental circumstance of a book 
 which had come early into his hands that explains his love 
 for Bunyan. The two had much in common. In each there 
 was the strain of Puritanism, tempered by a very pagan 
 element indeed; though the proportions of the blend and 
 the particular form of its elements are widely different. 
 Both delighted in the spirit of chivalry, and the masculine 
 and heroic verses of Our Lady of the Snows might have been 
 sung by Greatheart himself. Both were dreamers, and men 
 of constructive and vivid imagination. Both had, above all 
 else that was common to them, the instinct of travel and 
 the delight in allegory and symbolic double meaning. 
 
 The instinct of travel falls to be considered more fully in 
 a later chapter. All that concerns us here is the connec- 
 tion which it establishes between the two writers. In their 
 treatment of natural scenery, the two are far apart. John 
 Bunyan has no sense of scenery properly so called. He will 
 tell you of a meadow * curiously diversified with lilies ' — a 
 pre-Eaphselite touch that points back to the romances of 
 an older day — but in the main his scenery is estimated, 
 like Dante's, solely by its ease or difficulty for the foot. 
 Stevenson's view of Nature is of course entirely different. 
 Thomson, and Gray, and Wordsworth had lived between 
 Bunyan's time and his. He delights in nature — in the trees 
 82 
 
THE MAN OF BOOKS 
 
 of the forest and the large open spaces of the plain, in the 
 grass at his feet and in the mountains blue in the distance. 
 But in regard to the human life of the road, they are 
 brothers. Bunyan's road is crowded with moving figures — 
 indeed, it exists solely for their procession and adventure. 
 Stevenson's eye for Nature does not debar him from the love 
 and desire for fellow-travellers : ' As I felt myself on the 
 road at last,' he tells us in his Essay on Roads, ' I was so 
 pleased at my own happiness that I could let none past me 
 till I had taken them into my confidence. I asked my way 
 from every one, and took good care to let them all know, 
 before they left me, what my object was, and how many 
 years since my last visit.' This fact, that their delights 
 are with the sons of men, links the two together. Yet in 
 how different a fashion do they journey ! Bunyan's road is 
 the solemn path of duty ; the interest of its fellow-occupants 
 is the tragic interest of tempters, or helpers, or persons 
 needing help for their souls that may be saved or lost. 
 Stevenson is at times wholly irresponsible. He journeys in 
 
 * the most enviable of all humours,' that in which a person 
 
 * may gratify his every whim and fancy without a pang of 
 reproving conscience or the least jostle to his self-respect.' 
 So, at least, it would appear. But there is another side 
 to this, which we shall consider by and by, and which 
 brings the two travellers into a still deeper sympathy of 
 solemn responsibility and passionate helpfulness for fellow- 
 wayfarers. 
 
 Stevenson's works are full of references to and quota- 
 tions from the great allegory with which his mind had been 
 familiarised in childhood. In relating a South-Sea graveyard 
 story of the Paumotus — a story whose savage realism touches 
 the very bottom limit of the macabre — he at once recalls what 
 Christian saw in the Valley of the Shadow. The forest of 
 Fontainebleau i^ described in terms of the Land of Beulah, 
 
 83 
 
THE FAITH OF R. L. STEVENSON 
 
 with * that subtle something, that quality of the air, that 
 emanation from the old trees, that so wonderfully changes 
 and renews a weary spirit.' In estimating the character of 
 Burns, * to call him bad, with a self-righteous chuckle, is to 
 be talking in one's sleep with Heedless and Too-bold in the 
 arbour.' When his own life has taken him into the thirties, 
 and its great work is not yet done or even conceived, ' as one 
 goes on the wood seems to thicken, the footpath to narrow, 
 and the House Beautiful on the hill's summit to draw 
 further and further away.' 
 
 These are but specimens to which many more might be 
 added. Another curious reminiscence of Bunyan is to be 
 seen in the imitations which here and there he gives us. 
 Sometimes this is but exuberant nonsense, as in that notable 
 signature to a letter : * I am, yours, 
 
 Mr. Muddler. 
 
 Mr. Addlehead. 
 
 Mr. Wanderincr Butter wits. 
 
 Mr. Shiftless Inconsistency. 
 
 Sir Indecision Contentment.' 
 Again, in a letter to his parents, he talks of resignation 
 under the similitude of a garden — 'John, do you see that 
 bed of resignation ? ' etc. etc., and signs at the foot ' John 
 Bunyan.' That is in a more serious vein, and when we 
 come to the third example we find him in no mood for 
 anything but dead earnest — ' The mean man doubted 
 Greatheart was deceived. " Very well," said Greatheart.' 
 A longer and even more clever imitation may be found in 
 An Apology for Idlers. 
 
 Two more allusions are necessary to complete our study of 
 his connection with Bunyan. First, there is the very clever 
 frontispiece to Travels with a Donkey^ etched by Walter 
 Crane, surely with Stevenson's suggestion. It is entirely in 
 the manner of those old-fashioned perspective views of the 
 84 
 
THE MAN OP BOOKS 
 
 Pilgrim's Progress, half picture and half map, in which the 
 distances are foreshortened, and in the course of an upward 
 zig-zagging track, we are presented with small pictures of 
 the main events of the tale, while the * ingenious dreamer ' 
 lies large and conspicuous across the foot of the page. 
 Here, in exactly that manner, is the ingenious dreamer, in 
 the form of Robert Louis Stevenson, awake and smoking, 
 though still enveloped for the most part in his sleeping- 
 bag. Modestine, the donkey, is at hand, and above stretches ./ 
 the zig-zag with the pictured events. In the distance, the 
 knapsack has become indistinguishable from Christian's 
 burden as it is seen in old prints. The final goal and mean- 
 ing of the journey is signified by the silhouette at the 
 extreme summit, of the Pilgrim clear against a rising sun. 
 
 The etching shows how congenial to his imagination had"" 
 been the picturesque aspect of the famous allegory, and this 
 is borne out by the second matter to which we must refer 
 — the paper on Bagster's Pilgrim's Progress. That curious 
 edition, many of whose woodcuts are familiar in various 
 modern reprints, was to an older generation of Scottish 
 boys, inseparable in imagination from the thought of the 
 book. Those of us who were fortunate enough to possess a 
 copy of it in childhood, can never be satisfied with any 
 other pictures. David Scott's illustrations are no doubt 
 wonderful works of art ; Bennett's are drawn from the life of 
 London Streets. But they are not ' The Pilgrim ' in the 
 same way that these quaint little wood-cuts of an inch 
 square were and will be to the end. So, at least, this 
 reader felt. The pictures fascinated him, and in the 
 course of his appreciative discussion of them he was led 
 to write about the book also — a very living and admir- 
 able piece of criticism. As might be expected of one 
 who was himself fond of usins: similitudes, the interest 
 centres in a discussion of Bunyan's management of 
 
 85 
 
THE FAITH OF R. L. STEVENSON 
 
 allegory. But appreciation of the deeper qualities of 
 the book breaks through iu many passages of the most 
 vital and sympathetic sort. The pictures lead him 
 back to his favourite characters — Mr. Valiant-for-Truth 
 giving 'my sword to him that shall succeed me in my 
 pilgrimage, and my courage and skill to him that can get it ' ; 
 Greatheart, 'a stout, honest, big-busted ancient, adjusting 
 his shoulder-belts, twirling his long moustaches as he 
 speaks.' His estimate of Bunyan is well worth record- 
 ing : — ' he feared nothing, and said anything ; and he was 
 greatly served in this by a certain rustic privilege of his 
 style, which, like the talk of strong, uneducated men, when 
 it does not impress by its force, still charms by its simpli- 
 city. The mere story and the allegorical design enjoyed 
 perhaps his equal favour. He believed in both with an 
 energy of faith that was capable of moving mountains.' 
 ' In every page the book is stamped with the same energy 
 of vision and the same energy of belief. . . . Trivial talk 
 over a meal, the dying words of heroes ... all have been 
 imagined with the same clearness, all written of with equal 
 gusto and precision, all created in that same mixed element, 
 of simplicity that is almost comical, and art that, for its 
 purpose, is faultless.' 
 
 The - one point in which he adversely criticises the 
 pictures is that of their religious significance, in which the 
 text outstrips its illustrations. The ' human-hearted piety of 
 Bunyan touches and ennobles, convinces, accuses the reader ' 
 . . , ' to feel the contact of essential goodness, to be made in 
 love with piety, the book must be read, and not the prints 
 examined.' Yet he closes with a last word of gratitude for 
 the pictures, which since his childhood have shown him 
 * every turn and town along the road to the Celestial City, 
 and that bright place itself, seen as to a stave of music, 
 shining afar off upon the hill-top, the candle of the world.' 
 
THE MAN OF BOOKS 
 
 There are several other religious books which more or 
 less influenced his childhood, and of which traces appear 
 throughout his later work. His earliest memories were of 
 * nursery rhymes, the Bible, and Mr. M'Cheyne.' The last 
 of these, a name honoured among many of the religious 
 people of Scotland with a veneration accorded only to one 
 or two writers outside the sacred volume, was a favourite of 
 Alison Cunningham's. Some of M'Cheyne's verses, and still 
 more of his ardent spirit, remained with Stevenson through 
 life. Of other writers of a similar school, traces are to be 
 found. Among the last words of Admiral Guinea are ' But 
 for the grace of God, there lies John Gaunt' — a famous 
 saying of John Bradford's, adopted with only the change of 
 name, and the substitution of 'lies' for 'goes.' Bradford 
 is said to have used the words on seeing a criminal passing 
 to the gallows. 
 
 But it is his close acquaintance with the language of the 
 Bible which has most significance for us. He was literally 
 steeped in its thought and sentiment, for his nurse read it 
 through to him several times, and must have read some 
 parts of it until he knew them by heart. The matchless 
 power and beauty of its language in the Authorised Version 
 have so permeated our literature, that it would be pre- 
 carious to judge, by collected references, as to its direct 
 effect on any author. Yet Stevenson quotes and alludes 
 to it with a frequency, an aptness, and a sympathy, that 
 bear witness to much first-hand knowledge. Nothing 
 could surpass the appositeness and power with which the 
 gambling quarrel at Mother Clarke's in Deacon Brodie is 
 interrupted by the Psalm without : 
 
 * Lord, who shall stand, if Thou, Lord, 
 Should'st mark iniquity ? 
 But yet with thee forgiveness is, 
 That feared thou may est be,' 
 
 87 
 
THE FAITH OF R. L. STEVENSON 
 
 — it needs a covenanting childhood, and the lilt of a 
 certain old tune in the minor key, to feel the full force of 
 that. The strongest praise he can find for Walt Whitman 
 is that ' he has sayings that come home to one like the 
 Bible.' It would be an endless task to gather together 
 the borrowings from the Old and New Testaments, which 
 are to be found in Stevenson's books. Caleb and Joshua, 
 John the Baptist and Peter the Apostle are there, and 
 countless others, each in character and drawn from the life. 
 Miss Simpson has told us that Isaiah Iviii. was his especial 
 chapter, with its repudiation of cant and its demand for 
 self-denying beneficence. Many of the words of Christ, 
 which carry out to fuller completeness the teaching of the 
 Prophet, might be quoted from his works. 
 
 It is true that his dealing with the Scriptures was un- 
 scientific, and that that fact led to misconceptions. With 
 the exception of a few playful allusions in his verses, 
 Stevenson makes hardly any reference to the contemporary 
 struggle between the newer and the more traditional forms 
 of Christian thought. Not only in regard to the Bible, but 
 all along the line of faith, there has been of late years a 
 change in form of expression and in point of view. Funda- 
 mentally the two are at one, and their differences are but 
 differences in the aspects of the same essential truth. The 
 new phase is not less spiritual than the old, though it is 
 less mystical; it is as loyal to Christ and His work, 
 although it does not profess the same competence to define 
 these. It is in closer touch with human nature and the 
 general life of man, and it prefers the psychological and 
 ethical standpoint to that of metaphysical theology. It is 
 no disparagement or want of reverence for the past, to hold 
 that the present may have other needs. The fact is patent 
 that many earnest people are finding it impossible to-day to 
 ignore certain difficulties from which the traditional pre- 
 88 
 
THE MAN OF BOOKS 
 
 sentation of Christianity affords them no relief. To many 
 of these, the newer presentation appears the truer one. For 
 some it is the only way ; and it is keeping open the door of 
 faith to-day, for a large and growing number of thoughtful 
 men and women, who but for this would be absolutely 
 shut out from Christian belief. 
 
 The case of Stevenson illustrates, as aptly as could be 
 imagined, the need for such help as these newer methods 
 seek to give. On the one hand, he was unprotected 
 against the destructive tendencies of sceptical criticism, 
 and unable to distinguish between accredited results and 
 fanciful guesses. Not only was he prepared to question 
 the Old Testament account of picturesque historical figures 
 like Ahab and Jezebel ; he found the New Testament also 
 'an unsettling book.' In one of the Vailima Letters, he 
 discusses Kenan's ' L'Ant(5christ.' ^ With characteristic 
 instinct for fact, he perceives it to be * so little like history, 
 that one almost blames oneself for wasting time.' Yet, a few 
 lines further on, we find * the Apostle John rather dis- 
 credited,' and the impossible and exploded anti-Pauline 
 theory of the Apocalypse accepted as entirely obvious. 
 
 With unbounded hospitality for picturesque theories, he 
 combines, in other directions, an equally extreme insistence 
 upon the letter of the text. To this he seems to have 
 been driven by some time-serving interpreters. He is 
 never more scornful than when, in Lay Morals, he de- 
 scribes the toning down of apparently hard scriptures by 
 *the tender Greatheart of the parish' — 'All was plain. 
 The Bible as usual meant nothing in particular; it was 
 merely an obscure and figurative copy-book.' It was in 
 rebellion against the patent insincerity of such preaching 
 and the type of religion which it fostered, that Stevenson 
 
 ^ * L'Ant^christ ' is the fourth division of Kenan's Histoire des Origines 
 du Christ iaynsme. 
 
 89 
 
THE FAITH OF R. L. STEVENSON 
 
 adopted a severe literalism in his interpretation of Christ's 
 words. This is but * the right-hand extreme ' in exchange 
 for 'the left-hand defection.' Pressing the demands of the 
 Sermon on the Mount and other sayings of Jesus, into their 
 crudest and most untempered absoluteness, he confronts 
 himself and the world with a conception of Christ like 
 that of Tolstoi. Severe and inhuman, the Christ of Lay 
 Morals undoubtedly is * too hard on man.' Judged by 
 such a standard, ordinary Christianity truly 'disagrees 
 with Christ,' and calls by His name a system He would 
 not have owned. That system Stevenson for the time 
 rejects in favour of the sterner view. Little is gained by 
 the exchange, for the precepts are confessedly so sweeping 
 as to make obedience a sheer impossibility for human 
 nature. Yet in some of his other writings a totally different 
 aspect is presented. Thus, in the kindness, generosity, 
 readiness to give and to forgive, which are seen in some 
 of the South Sea Islanders, he finds 'a mind far liker 
 Christ's than any of the races of Europe.' If we were to be 
 so foolish as to attempt the piecing of these fragmentary 
 aspects together, the result would be an incoherent con- 
 ception of the Divine Man, at once more hard and more 
 soft than that of Christendom. 
 
 It is necessary^ here again to remind the reader that in 
 the case of a man like Stevenson his formal account of his 
 beliefs will ever be an under-statement of the actual faith 
 from which he is working. It would seem as if for such 
 men, Christ is best seen in glimpses — ' by a receding light/ 
 as Browning used to say. Following Him thus, they are 
 very sure of Him ; but when they seek to look upon Him 
 with the plain, direct gaze that they are accustomed to 
 bend on men and things, they lose the wonder and 
 the fascination, and their attempt at description gives you 
 but a harsh or disproportioned figure. Such a figure does 
 90 
 
THE MAN OF BOOKS 
 
 not accurately represent the Christ either of history or of 
 experience. The great and difficult necessity here is 
 obviously to understand Christ, and all who * disagree 
 with Him' must first have misunderstood. But Christ 
 was a poet, and no man can understand Him whose 
 method is that of mere logical prose. At every point 
 Christ's inexpressibleness in formulae is manifest. His 
 words elude the literalist, and strike home with a far 
 subtler and more penetrating stroke than anything he can 
 understand. It is this direct and instinctive spiritual 
 appeal, this fact that Christ's words are charged with so 
 convincing and yet indefinable a quality, that makes men 
 still confess that ' never man spake like this man.' It is 
 this matchless spiritual power that has constrained the 
 world to recognise in Him the Word become flesh. The 
 literalist presents us in Christ with a man speaking 
 extreme and irreconcilable things, impossible to obey in 
 their totality — a man withdrawn and severely remote. The 
 wiser listener hears the voice of the Divine Interpreter of 
 life, offering him indeed no treatise upon the art of living, 
 but flashing upon his soul a light which searches its depths, 
 interprets its mystery, and guides its course. 
 
 It is greatly to be regretted that Stevenson, in his earlier 
 work at least, adopted the role of literalist. It was not a 
 role which in any way suited his genius. In the prosaic 
 and conventional, one expects to find it ; it is the only 
 way of regarding things they know. But he was a poet — 
 none more sensitive to subtle and instinctive interpretations 
 of spiritual facts than he. It must be supposed that by 
 some means or other the thought of Christ had for him 
 become identified with a prosaic attempt to define the 
 indefinable, and had acquired a certain flatness and 
 rigidness in consequence. Had he brought to the task of 
 understanding Christ the same spiritual receptivity as 
 
 91 
 
THE FAITH OF R. L. STEVENSON 
 
 that with which he approached, say, John Bunyan, we 
 should have been spared some of his most inadequate 
 religious work. But of such work, after all, there is very 
 little. Christ is spiritually discerned by the writer of 
 many of the letters and of the prayers ; and indeed in all 
 the writings except a few of those in which he sets himself 
 the task of discussing Him, 
 
 S2 
 
REVOLT AND ORIGINALITY 
 
 CHAPTER VI 
 
 REVOLT AND ORIGINALITY 
 
 A NATURALLY strong personality, nurtured in such a child- 
 hood and fed by vital and non-conforming books, was sure 
 to assert itself sooner or later in some violent form. 
 On one side of his nature confident, wayward, and fearlessly 
 sure of himself, yet on another side he was self-conscious, 
 sensitive, and apt to distrust his moods. These are ex- 
 plosive elements when combined in the person of a vigorous 
 youth. Eevolt is as inevitable as life itself for such a man. 
 Had he been physically more robust, it might have been 
 averted. Field-sports are the safety-valve for much of 
 the wildness of young days, and happy families owe more 
 to them than to any other agency for their fresh breeze and 
 pleasant healthfulness. But Stevenson was no sportsman 
 nor lover of outdoor games, and the pent-up vitality found 
 other means of escape. 
 
 This period and its painful experiences are usually 
 associated with his father. Mr. Graham Balfour has 
 described the situation admirably — 'one period of mis- 
 understanding they had, but it was brief, and might have 
 been avoided had either of the pair been less sincere or less 
 in earnest. Afterwards, and perhaps as a consequence, 
 their comprehension and appreciation of each other grew 
 complete, and their -attachment was even deeper than that 
 usually subsisting between father and only son.' The mis- 
 understanding was unavoidable and it ran deep. Thomas 
 
 93 
 
THE FAITH OF R. L. STEVENSON 
 
 Stevenson's nature was rich and many-sided, with much in 
 it from which Eobert derived his most distinguishing 
 qualities. Yet it was inevitable that the son should 
 perplex the father, who was strongly attached to the pro- 
 prieties and set forms of the society in which he moved, 
 and whose habits of thought did not permit him suddenly 
 to accommodate himself to new views of life or new 
 scales of proportion. The breach may be said to have 
 begun regarding Robert's choice of a profession. The 
 father had, apparently, taken it for granted that every 
 generation of Stevensons would accept its destiny in 
 engineering and the Northern Lights. The son had other 
 views, and cared for nothing but literature. After some 
 vain attempts to foster an engineering enthusiasm, the 
 uncongenial compromise of the Law was adopted, and the 
 would-be author found himself chafing against the dulness 
 of an office, and playing at the law-student business in the 
 university. He succeeded, somehow or other, in passing 
 his examinations, and entered the Parliament House ^ as 
 an advocate. But the only joy he had there was that 
 which its picturesque and romantic aspects afforded. Some 
 historic portraits, the statue of Forbes of Culloden, and a 
 certain room full of 'grim lumber' where the productions 
 from criminal cases are preserved — these gave its meaning 
 to Parliament House for him. The evident half-hearted- 
 ness of his interest in Law naturally disappointed the 
 uncomprehending father. The breach deepened, and they 
 found themselves on opposite sides in politics, in social 
 tastes, in moral principles, and in religious convictions. 
 
 Nothing could more clearly show the mark which this 
 breach had made upon him than his treatment in fiction of 
 the relations of father and son. Remembering The Story 
 
 ^ The old Parliament House of Scotland is now occupied by the Law 
 Courts. 
 
 U 
 
REVOLT AND ORIGINALITY 
 
 of a Lit, and Jolm Nicholson, and several otlier such 
 instances, one feels that he has been less than just to 
 fathers. The iron has entered into his soul, and some of 
 the domestic scenes are little better than caricatures. The 
 Poems, however, might reassure us ; the Letters and the Life 
 are absolutely reassuring, for the reconciliation manifest in 
 them could not be more perfect. Still more do those other 
 passages remove the memory of old estrangements, in which 
 he regards the relation from the father's point of view :— 
 'The love of parents for their children is, of all natural 
 affections, the most ill-starred. ... A good son, who can 
 fulfil what is expected of him, has done his work in life. 
 He has to redeem the sins of many, and restore the world's 
 confidence in children.* 
 
 The revolt, once begun, had to run its course. Every- 
 thing conspired to send him forth into its wild freedom. 
 His romantic figure stood out, in his own imagination, 
 against the background of conventional Edinburgh, — type 
 for him of conventionality in general. It must be surpris- 
 ing to those who know the life of Edinburgh in a different 
 aspect, to remember that from Stevenson's point of view 
 it was a place chiefly notable for conscious rectitude — 
 eminently respectable, and formal to the point of freezing. 
 Its parties he abominated. Its proprieties he violated with 
 an enthusiasm worthy of a better cause. There is some- 
 thing infinitely comical in the remembrance of that weird 
 apparition, of strange raiment and uncut hair, which now 
 and then amazed the Princes Street of the early seventies. 
 The revolt was heightened by his own romantic conception 
 of the city — 'this dream in masonry and living rock' — a 
 conception due partly to historical associations, partly 
 to the splendid thrust of the skylines of the old town, and 
 their matchless chiaroscuro of opalescent grey. * By all the 
 canons of romance ' he tells us, * the place demands to be 
 
 G 95 
 
THE FAITH OF R. L. STEVENSON 
 
 half-deserted and leaning towards decay; birds we might 
 admit in profusion, the play of the sun and winds, and a 
 few gipsies encamped in the chief thoroughfare ; but these 
 citizens, with their cabs and tramways, their trains and 
 posters, are altogether out of key. ... To see them 
 thronging by, in their neat clothes and conscious moral 
 rectitude, and with a little air of possession that verges on 
 the absurd, is not the least striking feature of the place.' 
 For himself, he consistently adopted the part he had 
 assigned to the ideal inhabitant, and was a veritable * gipsy, 
 encamped in the thoroughfare.' 
 
 His student life fell upon days congenial to his spirit. 
 There was no Students' Eepresentative Council then, nor 
 had the instincts of the noble savage yielded to modern 
 civilisation in respect of women-students, or snow-balling, 
 or the conduct of torch-light processions. It was the time 
 when, as in the days of Israel's judges, every man did that 
 which was right in his own eyes. The fact that in 1870 he 
 was arrested for snow-balling and bound over to keep the 
 peace, need cause no vexation to his admirers. It is said 
 that he did not deserve arrest ; certainly there were many 
 others who deserved it better. The serious business of the 
 classes was to him a ratlier irritating detail. He was an 
 irregular and inattentive undergraduate — in his own words, 
 ' a certain lean, ugly, idle, unpopular student, full of chang- 
 ing humours, fine occasional purposes of good, unflinching 
 acceptance of evil, shiverings on wet east- windy mornings, 
 journeys up to class, infinite yawniugs during lectures, and 
 unquestionable gusto in the delights of truancy.' 
 
 It was not long until the revolt became a revolution, 
 which marked everything belonging to the accepted order 
 for destruction, or at least for hatred. 'Respectability* 
 became a byword with him for ' the deadliest gag and 
 wet-blanket that can be laid on man.' It was for its dul- 
 96 
 
REVOLT AND ORIGINALITY 
 
 ness that he most despised it, its stupid acceptance of mean- 
 ingless and unnecessary restrictions. ' I cannot bear idiots,' 
 he tells us, and the bondage of respectability appeared 
 to him the commonest type of idiocy. 'There is some- 
 thing stupefying in the recurrence of unimportant things,' 
 he announces ; and respectability stands as the proof of 
 that. ' A man's view of the universe is mostly a view of the 
 civilised society in which he lives. Other men and women 
 are so much more grossly and so much more intimately 
 palpable to his perceptions, that they stand between him 
 and all the rest. . . . And hence the laws that affect his 
 intercourse with his fellow-men, although merely customary, 
 and the creatures of a generation, are more clearly and 
 continually before his mind than those which bind him into 
 the eternal system of things.' He protests against this in 
 Men and Books and Lay Morals, after the manner of the 
 following — * I can think of no more melancholy disgrace for 
 a creature who professes either reason or pleasure for his 
 guide, than to spend the smallest fraction of his income 
 upon that which he does not desire ; and to keep a carriage 
 in which you do not wish to drive, or a butler of whom you 
 are afraid, is a pathetic kind of folly.' In a word, 'to 
 do anything because others do it, and not because the thing 
 is good or kind or honest in its own right, is to resign all 
 moral control and captaincy upon yourself, and go post 
 haste to the devil with the greater number.' 
 
 For much of this we may all be profoundly grateful to 
 him. But the revolt expresses itself in superlatives and 
 sweeping invectives along the whole line of modern life. 
 The essence of our education he declares to be the incul- 
 cation of three bad things — the terror of public opinion, and 
 the desire of wealth and applause — to which may be added 
 * some dim notions of divinity, perhaps, and book-keeping, 
 and how to walk through a quadrille.' Commerce fares no 
 
 97 
 
THE FAITH OF R. L. STEVENSON 
 
 better at his hands. He endorses Thoreau's contempt foi 
 'so-called business,^ and believes that he lives ' in an age 
 where the spirit of honesty is so sparingly cultivated that 
 all business is conducted upon lies.' Even to its detail 
 he follows the life of the day with sword and fire. Such 
 harmless, necessary adjuncts of civilisation as the marriage 
 gift and the umbrella have to bear the out-pouring of the 
 vials of his wrath. 
 
 The last-mentioned adjunct he has made, in a sense, 
 classical, by adopting it for the very emblem and oriflamme 
 of respectability. This curious innovation in heraldry is 
 expounded with extreme facetiousness in The Philosophy of 
 Umbrellas, a college paper which might serve as a footnote 
 to Sartor Besartus. Again, and again, as we read his works, 
 we are poked at by this objectionable article. It recurs 
 oftener than the cathedral,^ playing the ridiculous to the 
 cathedral's sublime. Always when it appears one suspects 
 a subtle symbolic reference to respectability, and the sus- 
 picion is usually confirmed. Who, for example, can forget 
 the sally against those who give one the impression that 
 'never to forget your umbrella through a long life would 
 seem a higher and wiser flight of achievement than to go 
 smiling to the stake ' ? — a company to which the author 
 evidently did not belong, for we read on his return to 
 Swanston from a month's yachting tour, 'I left my pipe 
 on board the yacht, my umbrella in the dog-cart, and my 
 portmanteau by the way.' 
 
 When a being like Eobert Louis Stevenson breaks loose 
 from conventionalities, we may expect him to break loose 
 with a vengeance. ISTor do the facts in any way belie the 
 expectation. He had in him a strain of the Bohemian, 
 which guaranteed that. He distinguishes between the 
 imaginary Bohemian, — that mere adventurer who drinks and 
 
 » Cf. page 20. 
 98 
 
REVOLT AND ORIGINALITY 
 
 \vear8 strange clothes, — and the true Bohemian, who ' lives 
 wholly to himself, does what he wishes, and not what is 
 thought proper.' No_ doubt he had a touch of both sorts. "X--^ 
 of Bohemia, and the simple passion of being different from*"**^/ 
 other people became a kind of new virtue with nim at 
 times. Yet there was in him also a native and essential 
 tendency to revert to the elementary and the savage. The 
 same delight with which in the South Sea voyages he hails 
 his escape from the shadow of the Eoman Empire, is the 
 explanation of his having found the submerged part of the 
 society of Edinburgh so congenial long before. * I was the 
 companion of seamen, chimney-sweeps, and thieves,' he tells 
 us ; ' my circle was being continually changed by the action 
 of the police magistrate.' Again, that acquaintance with the 
 closes and dens of lowest Edinburgh is but another phase of 
 the delight in the unconventional which made him prefer the 
 open-air ablution in a stream of the Cevennes to * dabbling 
 among dishes in a bedroom ' ; and which inspired the happy 
 sentiment written from the schooner Equator, ' Life is far 
 better fun than people dream who fall asleep among the 
 chimney-stacks and telegraph wires.' 
 
 The time of revolt was a time of Bohemianism turned 
 to bitterness. In all ways, during that time, the accepted 
 principle of his life was to be against the Government. Nor 
 did his rebellion extend only to the province of the earthly 
 magistrate. He appears as the self-appointed critic of a 
 world in which man delights him not nor woman neither. 
 In the preface to An Inland Voyage he remarks that though 
 the book runs to more than two hundred pages * it contains 
 not a single reference to the imbecility of God's universe, 
 nor so much as a single hint that I could have made a 
 better one myself.' The genial confession was made after 
 the waters of his deluge were subsiding : there had been a 
 time when his friends had many broad hints that he could 
 
 99 
 
THE FAITH OF R. L. STEVENSON 
 
 have made a vastly better universe himself. Of the college 
 days, then eight or ten years past, he tells us that ' he began 
 to perceive that life was a handicap upon strange wrong- 
 sided principles, and not, as he had been told, a fair and 
 equal race ' ; and that he was ' unsettled and discouraged, 
 and filled full with that trumpeting anger with which young 
 men regard injustices in the first blush of youth.' So, when 
 he was not declaiming, he would sit back and laugh at it 
 all. It was hardly a great laughter and not at all a whole- 
 some one. Above all, it was very young. 
 
 As was to be expected, the province of morality did not 
 escape the revolt. Of all conventions, conventional morality 
 appeared to him the most irritating. In this connection, 
 the umbrella metaphor reminds one of a tale (or legend) 
 regarding Kant. Looking out from his window after finishing 
 his Critique of Pure Reason, he saw old Ludwig his gardener, 
 laboriously digging in the rain. ' Ah,' said the philosopher, 
 ' this Critique is all very well for me, but what is there left 
 to protect him from the rain ? I must provide an umbrella 
 for poor old Ludwig.' So he sat down to write his Meta- 
 physic of Ethics. It was very much as another such 
 umbrella that Stevenson regarded the popular notions of 
 morality. At the best, they only serve to keep men 
 from thinking for themselves. The Jews compiled their 
 six hundred and fifty precepts ' to make a pocket-book of 
 reference on morals, which should stand to life in some such 
 relation, say, as Hoyle stands in to the scientific game of 
 whist.* Such morality is but playing by rule, and results in 
 what he designated * clockwork virtues ' ; when it is perfectly 
 achieved it produces nothing better than the pattern woman 
 with her 'irritating deliberation and correctness.' 'If she 
 would only write bad grammar, or forget to finish a 
 sentence, or do something or other that looks fallible, it 
 would be a relief.' Still more irritating to him than even 
 100 
 
REVOLT Ai?^D ORIGINALITY 
 
 the complacency of the respectable, was the hypocrisy he 
 detected in them. In the rhyme of The Pirate and the 
 Apothecary we see this brought to its plainest issue, and 
 that is but his extreme delineation of those safe and petty 
 vices of respectability which he most of all abhorred. The 
 bourgeois dislike to capital punishment, combined with the 
 bourgeois way of treating domestic servants, was to him 
 a flaunting emblem of the same kind of hypocrisy. It is, 
 he considers, like much else that society approves, the 
 inevitable result of a want of directness and immediacy in 
 dealing with life's problems. The cautious regulation of 
 life, with a politic eye on the future, and an unceasing 
 regard to the opinions of those round about us, may 
 produce * a docile citizen, but never a man.' For in such 
 instances respectability becomes the rival and the antagonist 
 of virtue. 
 
 As is the habit with those who take it as their first duty 
 to run full tilt against conventionalities, Stevenson selected 
 certain matters in the accepted code, which appeared to 
 him especially conventional, and ostentatiously paraded his 
 defiance of them. In the respect of strong language he is 
 entirely indifferent to ordinary usage. His views and 
 practice with regard to the observance of Sunday were 
 not only far removed from Scottish traditions; they were 
 apparently adopted without any consideration of the 
 social and economic aspects of the question. These are 
 matters whose significance is by no means so slight as it 
 is sometimes supposed to be. Such conventions are more 
 intimately connected with public and social well-being than 
 they appear to those who count them merely conventional. 
 Yet these were by no means the limits of the revolt. In 
 his youthful rage against conventionality, Stevenson seems 
 for a time to have lost the sense of any real distinction 
 between the conventional and the moral, and the whole 
 
 101 
 
THE FAITH OF R. L. STEVENSON 
 
 field of ethics to have lost its landmarks. The mood is well 
 described in Forest Notes : * You may see from afar what it 
 will come to in the end. . . . And yet it will seem well to 
 break all the network bound about your feet by birth and 
 old companionship and loyal love, and bear your shovelful 
 of phosphates to and fro, in town and country, until the 
 hour of the great dissolvent.' Of that time of wandering, 
 a reckless free-lance all round, there are many hints in 
 his own writings and in those of others. With its details 
 we need not concern ourselves. It was a phase of life, 
 characteristic but essentially abnormal. It did not repre- 
 sent the true manhood and permanent self of Stevenson; 
 it represented only these in the crude stages of their develop- 
 ment, exaggerated and embittered by the circumstances of 
 his life at the time. 
 
 In very much the same way the revolt affected his 
 religion. Many things may have conspired to -this result. 
 He may have rebelled against M'Cheyne in the days 
 of boyhood. In youth, the traditional doctrines of ortho- 
 dox Calvinism did certainly provoke him to an angry 
 contradiction. "We have already noted his statement that 
 he had found the New Testament ' an unsettling book.' He 
 may possibly have met in real life some caricature of 
 godliness such as he depicts for us in Admiral Guinea, 
 There may be a personal touch in that strongly drawn 
 episode in John Nicholson's Misadventure, where the some- 
 what inhuman friend insists on John's falling at once 
 upon his knees and begging God's forgiveness — * And 
 the great baby plumped upon his knees and did as he 
 was bid ; and none the worse for that ! But while he 
 was heartily enough requesting forgiveness on general 
 principles, the rational side of him distinguished, and 
 wondered if, perhaps, the apology were not due upon 
 the other part.' With these and similar experiences of the 
 102 
 
REVOLT AND ORIGINALITY 
 
 * coiled perplexities of youth,' most readers must sympathise, 
 as they remember how they too have seen faith distorted 
 and rendered for the time impossible in hours of like 
 bitterness. 
 
 But apart from all such personal and minor causes, the 
 spirit of revolt itself seems to be the real explanation ; 
 and since religion is the most commanding of all elements 
 in life, it is obvious that a serious revolution must reach its 
 climax there. Accordingly we observe how everything con- 
 nected even with the externals of the religious life, came 
 within the sphere of his denunciations. 'The average sermon' 
 we read, * flees the point, disporting itself in that Eternity 
 of which we know, and need to know, so little, avoiding the 
 bright, crowded, and momentous fields of life where destiny 
 awaits us.' Even the music of church bells is ' a hideous 
 clangour, not many uproars in the world more dismal.' So, 
 with the comprehensiveness of a Satanic rebellion against 
 everything in general, he abjured religion and pronounced 
 himself an atheist. There were scenes with his parents 
 which deeply wounded all the three concerned. His 
 metaphor for these scenes is that of a cross, studded with 
 rusty nails to tear the fingers that carry it, of which the 
 heavy end falls with lacerating weight upon the parents. 
 In such scenes, we find him stubbornly convinced that 
 honesty demands the part he takes. He repudiates the 
 accusation of being a ' light-hearted scoffer ' or a ' careless 
 infidel,' and takes himself throughout with the most extreme 
 seriousness. 
 
 This latter fact should give pause to those who, whether 
 on the side of religion or against it, are inclined to pass 
 sweeping judgments on his memory. Life, at such times of 
 crisis, is a very complicated affair, and it generally sho\\ s 
 the most incongruous elements in close proximity. Even 
 at the height of his revolt, there seem to have been seasons 
 
 103 
 
THE FAITH OF K. L. STEVENSON 
 
 of moral earnestness and religious enthusiasm, though these 
 were but occasional and apparently ineffective. Through 
 all, the preaching instinct was strong in him ; at the 
 worst he was rather a Puritan backslidden into a revel than 
 a reveller masquerading as a Puritan ; and there was a 
 certain upright stock in his manhood wherein lay the 
 deepest truth of his character and thought even at the 
 worst times. Afterwards, when his father came to recognise 
 and admit his honesty in regard to the religious difference 
 his trust in him was fully restored. 
 
 One thing is quite obvious, and the change in the spirit 
 of the age between 1873 and 1903 has made it already 
 familiar. That is the distinction between essential religion 
 and the forms in which it may be embodied for the time 
 being. To a large extent the bitterness of this difference 
 between father and son lay in the fact that, as Mr. Graham 
 Balfour has expressed it, ' the one was questioning dogmas 
 and observances which the other regarded as impious to 
 examine.' The father's conception of religion was strong 
 and clear, but it was utterly inelastic, allowing for none of 
 those differences in matters of faith which the complexity 
 of human life and the difficulties that beset all intellectual 
 adventure demand. The son, unable honestly to adopt his 
 father's point of view, imagined himself driven to the oppo- 
 site extreme of ' youthful atheism.* Neither father nor son 
 at that time knew of the existence of a middle space in 
 religious thought. Their intellectual world had but two 
 poles, and both of them were arctic ; while the sunny and 
 fruitful lands between were as yet an undiscovered con- 
 tinent to them. In this phase of his revolt, Stevenson is 
 representative of a very large number of the young men 
 and women of our time. It is daily becoming more obvious 
 that while religion may appeal to ourselves only in certain 
 stated forms of doctrine and observance, we must all allow 
 104 
 
REVOLT AND ORIGINALITY 
 
 that there are some to whom it will appeal only when 
 expressed in other forms. To wholly identify the Christian 
 religion with even the most venerable of the forms in which 
 it has expressed itself, is to throw it into immediate 
 contrast with the breadth of our intellectual life, to 
 give it an inhuman aspect, and to exclude many from its 
 acceptance. 
 
 As to essential morality, it would be as untrue as it 
 would be dangerous to say that a revolt is inevitable for all 
 strong natures. The facts of a thousand lives give to such 
 a view point-blank denial — lives hard pressed with tempta- 
 tion, forsaken for the time by their former faith, and yet 
 carrying through all * the white flower of a blameless life.' 
 Theirs is the most brilliant victory over the world ; and, if 
 one may read between the lines, Stevenson would be the first 
 to admit this. It cannot be too strongly impressed upon each 
 new generation, that such revolt is not a perquisite of genius, 
 but a stain upon its memory. But apart from the great 
 loyalties of conscience, the general spirit of revolt was an 
 inevitable phase of his experience. ' If a man ' says King- 
 lake in Eothen ' be not born of his mother with a chiffney- 
 bit in his mouth, there comes to him a time for loathing 
 the wearisome ways of society — a time for not liking tamed 
 people — a time for not sitting in pews — a time for impugn- 
 ing the foregone opinions of men, and haughtily dividing 
 truth from falsehood — a time, in short, for questioning, 
 scoffing, and railing.' That time came fiercely upon 
 Stevenson and he did not repent of it. * Beeause I 
 have reached Paris,' he informs us, * I am not ashamed 
 of having passed through Newhaven and Dieppe.' ' Shelley 
 was a young fool ... for God's sake give me the 
 young man who has brains enough to make a fool of 
 himself.' 
 
 No sensible person thinks worse of a lad because he has 
 
 105 
 
THE FAITH OF R. L. STEVENSON 
 
 passed through such a phase, yet it is easy to take the 
 matter too seriously. It is but a stage, in itself irrational, 
 valuable only in the light of those goals in later life to 
 which it leads. But on the one hand the respectable 
 Mrs. Grundy is apt to be shocked by it: it so impresses 
 her that she can see nothing else about the man beyond it. 
 On the other hand there are sure to be some who like it so 
 well that they refuse to recognise any later aspect, and 
 insist on retaining the youthful revolutionist for the final 
 picture of the man. Each of these kinds of critic manifests 
 either a want of intelligence or a want of the will to under- 
 stand. In reply to all of them it must be repeated that that 
 period is only intelligible when seen in its place in the 
 development of life and character. In it we see Stevenson 
 coming to himself, but not yet arrived. By deliberate acts 
 of will he chose the better part. All that remained of the 
 bitter and turbulent days was an occasional struggle with old 
 temptations, a large and generous allowance for the failings 
 of others, and an unconcealed contempt for such moral 
 weaklings as make no fight for the flag, but settle down at 
 their worst and talk cynically about the duty they have 
 neglected and the ideals on which they have turned their 
 back. 
 
 Meanwhile we may look upon this distressful period as 
 the time when he was clearing the ground for the free 
 action of his personality among the many facts of life. 
 Breaking away, somewhat violently it must be confessed, 
 from what seemed to him unwarrantable restraints, he 
 would face the future with a mind flexible and untram- 
 melled. The only meaning of such an experience that has 
 any real or permanent value lies in the clearing of the 
 ground that a man may be his true self. 
 
 This leads us to the consideration of Stevenson's origin- 
 106 
 
REVOLT AND ORIGINALITY 
 
 ality. It was not by any means an unattached and irre- 
 sponsible reception of thoughts which seemed to come to 
 him out of nowhere, for he rooted his thought deeply in books 
 and in a careful study of men and things. But he insisted 
 on judging all such materials for himself and using them in 
 his own way. At first there are signs of a certain wilful- 
 ness and freakishness, in which we detect the conscious 
 rebel against the accepted order. Later, and in growing 
 fulness, we perceive that naturalness which is a quality 
 only of the mature. 
 
 Nor must his originality be confounded with the mere 
 thirst for change. Many of the views he had once adopted 
 remained with him to the end. He was in politics a 
 conservative, and the socialism of early days was hardly 
 a break in the conservatism. The two extremes, as recent 
 political history clearly shows, are not so wide apart as 
 might be thought. The middle course of liberalism was 
 wholly uncongenial to his taste, appearing to him pedestrian 
 at its best. He had little sympathy with bourgeoisie either 
 in theory or in the persons of those who represent it. His 
 repeated statement that in Polynesia * the higher the family 
 the better the man ' had really a wider application. His 
 conservatism is a far-reaching and important element in 
 his nature. New light he always welcomed, but it fell 
 upon a mind which had schooled itself to a sense of 
 history, and whose convictions were not easily altered. 
 Every one must remember the scenes in the Travels 
 with a Donkey whose vivid account of the Catholics 
 and Protestants of the Cevennes has for its often-repeated 
 moral, ' It is not good to change.' The same sentiment 
 reaches its climax in St. Ives, when Mr. Anne's servant 
 expresses his willingness to become a Catholic like his 
 master, and is answered : ' I wish to take my chances with 
 my own people, and so should you. If it is a question of 
 
 107 
 
THE FAITH OF R. L. STEVENSON 
 
 going to hell, go to hell like a gentleman with your 
 ancestors.' The greatest of his fables, that House of Eld 
 which strikes home so far and pitilessly, is a protest against 
 theological reform. The other fable of The Four Reformers 
 is a sarcasm upon reform of any kind. 
 
 Not that he altogether disbelieved in change. ' All our 
 attributes are modified or changed; and it will be a poor 
 account of us if our views do not modify and change in a 
 proportion. To hold the same views at forty as we held at 
 twenty is to have been stupefied for a score of years, and 
 take rank, not as a prophet, but as an unteachable brat, 
 well birched and none the wiser.' In all his moralising 
 upon Travel we find the amplification of the same views. 
 But he insisted on naturalness in any changes he might 
 undergo ; for there is such a thing as a stereotyped process 
 of change, a formal system of development. Under such a 
 system progress turns out to mean only the exchange of one 
 set of formulae for another. Stevenson would never commit 
 himself to any policy of forward movement, political or 
 religious. The wind must blow upon him as it listed, and 
 not out of a quarter prescribed even by himself. Such 
 detachment is involved in the meaning of the word origin- 
 ality as he understands it, and from this we see how words 
 like ' progress,' ' orthodoxy,' ' heterodoxy ' are meaningless 
 as applied to him. He has shaken himself clear of them, 
 and to estimate his position we are forced to work with 
 quite another set of categories. 
 
 We have seen him down at the bed-rock of things, far 
 beneath the conventionalities of the world's surface. There 
 is * something elemental, something rude, violent, and 
 savage ' in the mood, and we feel that life there is danger- 
 ously near the brute levels. Yet all this turns out to be 
 not a nihilistic but a constructive criticism of life. It is but 
 the consistent action of that interest in himself, that sense 
 108 
 
REVOLT AND ORIGINALITY 
 
 of the value of his own soul, which we found to be a funda- 
 mental factor in his character. He thinks too much of 
 himsell to be content with half-measures. He will not 
 build his house of life on foundations chosen for him by 
 society. From the very bottom he will be a law unto him- 
 self — 'I, too, have a soul of my own, arrogantly upright, 
 and to that I will listen and conform.' This is the great 
 principle of Lay Morals, Be thyself — and for that end first 
 find out what it is in thee to be. The great function of all 
 teaching is to remind the pupil of his soul ; to make him 
 feel in the most literal sense the truth of the supreme ques- 
 tion What shall it profit a man if he gain the whole world 
 and lose himself] In occasional moods he appears moment- 
 arily to tire of this unchartered freedom, as when he 
 praises the disciplined routine of the monastery in the 
 Cevennes — 'We speak of hardships, but the true hardship 
 is to be a dull fool, and permitted to mismanage life in our 
 own dull and foolish manner.' But then Stevenson was no 
 dull fool, as he was very well aware. Like Thoreau, he can- 
 not understand why a man should ask his neighbour's 
 advice, when there is a nearer and a more loquacious 
 neighbour within. In a word, * To know what you prefer, 
 instead of humbly saying Amen to what the world tells 
 you you ought to prefer, is to have kept your soul alive. . . . 
 Such a man may be a man, acting on his own instincts, 
 keeping in his own shape that God made him in ; and not 
 a mere crank in the social engine-house, welded on prin- 
 ciples that he does not understand, and for purposes that 
 he does not care for.' 
 
 The forms in which his originality showed itself, and 
 some of the views to which it led, will be noted in later 
 chapters. Meanwhile, we are prepared to find that it will 
 offer fresh standards and scales of proportion which may 
 sometimes lead to startling views, both on moral and 
 
 109 
 
THE FAITH OF R. L. STEVENSON 
 
 religious questions. With these in their detail we may 
 agree, or we may differ from them; in either case we 
 shall find them stimulating and suggestive. There may 
 even be some to whom it will do no harm to be reminded 
 that a man whose strong language shocks them, may yet 
 have reached heights of self-sacrifice which they have never 
 attempted; or that their stricter views upon Sabbath 
 observance can hardly turn the scale against his more 
 severe interpretation of commercial honesty. Our present 
 point is to note the principle on which he arrived at all 
 his views, viz., that ' what is right is that for which 
 a man's central self is ever ready to sacrifice immediate or 
 distant interests ; what is wrong, is what the central self 
 discards or rejects as incompatible with the fixed design of 
 righteousness.' The moral outcome of this principle may 
 be summed up in his oft-repeated adherence to Christ's sub- 
 stitution of a spirit for a set of rules. The moral man, 
 according to Stevenson, is he who, acquainting himself with 
 the inner spirit of righteousness, works out his own salva- 
 tion, rather than adopts the regulations laid down for him by 
 another. As to religion, having swept the ground clear of 
 preconceptions, he lives by what vision of God and what 
 glimpses of spiritual light he can have directly for himself. 
 It will no doubt appear to many readers to be a dangerous 
 policy, this disowning of accepted formulae of morality, and 
 laughing at current systems of religious belief — dangerous 
 especially in a young conservative, whose laughter may be 
 expected to show a tendency towards cynicism. Yet it would 
 seem that for Stevenson it was a necessity. Without such 
 revolt there could have been no real reconstruction either 
 of character or of faith such as his mind demanded. This 
 at least may be said of him with assurance, that once the 
 ground was cleared, he committed himself to his new 
 principles. There was no timid reaction, no cautious 
 110 
 
HEYOLT AND OHlGlNALITY 
 
 retreat, such as soon changes the course of many youth- 
 ful adventurers into homeward - bound thoughts and 
 conforming conduct. He took the lifelong risk, and con- 
 sistently followed the light that was granted him to 
 the end. 
 
 Ill 
 
THE FAITH OF R. L. STEVENSON 
 
 CHAPTER VII 
 
 THE GIFT OF VISION 
 
 After so thorough and so costly a clearing of the ground 
 for the play of a man's originality, we are entitled to expect 
 something remarkable when we continue our study on its 
 more positive side. Here, especially, we must remember 
 that in Stevenson there is always a close connection between 
 the physical and the spiritual ; so that all spiritual faculties 
 which are peculiarly well developed are founded upon 
 physical bases equally conspicuous. ' 
 
 His sense of hearing, as well as that of sight, was keen 
 beyond the average. The two are at times combined in 
 metaphors which reveal him in a double intensity, as when 
 he gives a list of the names of British poets and exclaims, 
 ' what a constellation of lordly words ! ' As to the sense of 
 sound, that was developed in him to so fine a pitch of 
 sensitiveness, that it might have almost been chosen instead 
 of vision for our typical instance. So far as technical mastery 
 of the art of music goes, he seems to deserve credit rather 
 for appreciation than for performance, in spite of various 
 learned and technical discussions of 'a dominant eleventh ' 
 or 'a seventh on the D,' and so on. The penny whistle, 
 which retained his fidelity to the end, is hardly an instru- 
 ment likely to hold captive the soul of a heaven-born 
 musician. Yet his hearing was delicate in the extreme. 
 Only one whose ear was sensitive could have made the 
 bugles from the Castle touch the heart as he has done, with 
 112 
 
THE GIFT OF VISION 
 
 their * unspeakable appeal,' * as if something yearningly cried 
 to me out of the darkness overhead to come thither and find 
 rest.' Nor could a dull ear have contrasted the silence of a 
 deserted house with 'that low stir (perhaps audible rather 
 to the ear of the spirit than to the ear of the flesh) by which 
 a house announces and betrays its human lodgers.' This 
 faculty not only gave him an exquisite ear for style ; it 
 infected him unconsciously with the mannerism and the 
 rhythm of the time in which his stories moved. Beau 
 Austin speaks the language of his day with hardly a slip. 
 Heathercat might have been written by a Covenanter. 
 
 Yet there can be no doubt that the gift of vision was 
 his particular and supreme endowment. Perhaps the most 
 surprising of all his personal notes and comments, is the 
 statement that in his young days he never had any real 
 pictorial vision. He had a decided talent for drawing, and 
 a passion for working with colours. But he had discovered 
 that he drew from fancy, and not an actual picture of 
 things that were before him. In Arnold's phrase, his eye was 
 not on the object. One can understand this better in the light 
 of his subjectiveness. He was constantly aware of himself, 
 and what he saw was not the crude fact of the object, 
 but that fact as part of his own experience, interpreted 
 by many private feelings and associations. To some extent 
 this continued to be true of him throughout; and there 
 are few who would wish it otherwise. One thing at least 
 is certain, that he saw, and made his readers see, with a 
 power of vision that has been rarely matched. His eyes, 
 as we know them from pictures and descriptions, were 
 eminently seeing eyes. ' They were the most striking 
 feature of the face,' says his biographer ; ' they were of the 
 deepest brown in colour, set extraordinarily wide apart. 
 At most times they had only a shy, quick glance that was 
 most attractive; but when he was moved to anger or any 
 
 113 
 
THE FAITH OF R. L. STEVENSON 
 
 fierce emotion, they seemed literally to blaze and glow with 
 a fiery light.' Even those who have seen them only in 
 pictures, have perceived how busy and effective they must 
 have been in their work of seeing, and have felt an almost 
 sinister power in them, as if they had seen too much. 
 
 From his Letters we perceive a gradual change from 
 vision to hearing, and indeed from the youthful sensitiveness 
 and intensity of physical life, to the subtler and more 
 spiritual power of psychological perception and analysis. 
 He confessed, in a remarkable passage written in his last 
 year, that his visual sense was being starved, and that one 
 of his two aims in writing was ' death to the optic nerve.' 
 When we remember Weir of Hermiston we are relieved to 
 find that in this aim he signally failed. Take any of his 
 descriptions — especially those of women — and judge them 
 by this test. Of Mrs. Weir he says, that ' her view of history 
 was wholly artless, a design in snow and ink.' The picture 
 of the younger Kirstie in church is perhaps as good an 
 example as could be selected : ' About her face clustered a 
 disorder of dark ringlets, a little garland of yellow French 
 roses surmounted her brow, and the whole was crowned by 
 a village hat of chipped straw. Amongst all the rosy and 
 all the weathered faces that surrounded her in church, she 
 glowed like an opening flower — girl and raiment, and the 
 cairngorm that caught the daylight and returned it in a 
 fiery flash, and the threads of bronze and gold that played 
 in her hair.' In these and innumerable other passages 
 there is a quite reassuring vitality of optic nerve. 
 
 The lifelong gift of vision affords him now and then the 
 luxury of that purely spectacular mood which he has so well 
 described in his essays on Idlers, Walking Tours, and Roads. 
 He blames, indeed, the readers of his generation for not 
 living in a book or character, but standing afar off, specta- 
 tors at a puppet-show. Yet in the mood referred to, that 
 lU 
 
THE GIFT OF VISION 
 
 is precisely what be himself did. He is the man at the 
 window, the wayfaring man at the inn, and the world is 
 but a spectacle to him. Men and women who go by 
 ' are not people in any living and kindly sense.' ' To sit 
 still and contemplate ... to be everything and everywhere 
 in sympathy, and yet content to remain where and what 
 you are — is not this to know both wisdom and virtue, and 
 to dwell with happiness ? After all, it is not they who 
 carry flags, but they who look upon it from a private 
 chamber, who have the fun of the procession.' Thus is 
 Stevenson at times — especially in the days of youth — 
 merely 'interested in the phases of life and human char- 
 acter,' ' insatiably curious in the aspects of life.* 
 
 Sometimes such vision culminates in moments of magni- 
 ficent colour and brightness, the spectacle appearing as ' a 
 splendid nightmare of light and heat.' Yet it is in quieter 
 tints that the procession passes oftenest. Incapable of 
 being bored — except, of course, by * idiots ' — he is like Walt 
 Whitman in his fondness for the dioramic view of everyday 
 things. An idler, and prince of idlers, he can sit all day by 
 a burnside, or beside the stream of human life, and *no 
 think laDg.' In Roads he gives us minute directions for that 
 luxurious and systematic dilettantism which is requisite 
 before a man can enjoy, to its quintessence, the delight of 
 scenery. The essay on Unpleasant Places completes the 
 education of the epicure in vision, telling us that ' any place 
 is good enough to live a life in, while it is only in a few, 
 and those highly- favoured, that we can pass a few hours 
 agreeably.' 
 
 This mood represents, in its extreme and isolated form, 
 one half of the character of Stevenson, the other half being 
 that of strenuousness and exertion. To be more precise, in 
 his own words three-fifths of him is artist and two-fifths 
 adventurer. These two elements, traced from their physical 
 
 115 
 
THE FAITH OF R. L. STEVENSON 
 
 beginnings up to their highest moral and spiritual develop- 
 ments, form the burden of our chapters on vision and travel, 
 and are of central importance to the study of his character. 
 They represent life as he viewed it, oh its two sides of 
 theory and practice ; the spectacle and the business of 
 living. In the present chapter and the next, we shall 
 consider the former of these, the gift of vision, first in the 
 sense of visual perception, then in the wider sense of 
 imagination in general, and particularly imagination in the 
 moral and spiritual region. 
 
 Power of vision may be judged by many criteria, two 
 of which mainly concern us here — its exactness and its 
 intensity. The distinguishing quality of Stevenson's vision 
 is the degree in which it has achieved the combination 
 of these two, each at an unusually high power. Its exact- 
 ness is everywhere apparent, in spite of his confession that 
 it was from fancy rather than from fact that he drew in 
 early days. Visitors in any house may be divided into 
 the two classes of those who see the patterns on wall-papers 
 and floor carpets, and those to whom such unimportant 
 items of daily life are but a pleasing or displeasing blur of 
 colours. Stevenson was of those who saw. Every detail 
 in the visible world was for him a matter of minute obser- 
 vation, and it is this eye for detail which lends their 
 vividness to many of his descriptions and metaphors. In 
 no book is this more striking than in his volume on the 
 South Seas, a collection of curious facts for many of which 
 posterity will thank him. What could be more vivid, for 
 example, than this — ' On a sudden, the trade-wind, coming 
 in a gust over the isthmus, struck and scattered the fans of 
 the palms above the den ; and behold ! in two of the tops 
 there sat a native, motionless as an idol and watching us, 
 you would have said, without a wink. The next moment 
 the tree closed and the glimpse was gone.' The same eyes 
 116 
 
THE GIFT OF VISION 
 
 which saw that, saw also what the ' charming lad ' bought 
 in the store — ' five ship-biscuits, a bottle of scent, and two 
 balls of washing blue.' One king he creates for us as we 
 read ' a puppet and a trembler, the unwieldy shuttlecock of 
 orators ' ; another, wearing a European woman's calico 
 gown, a pith helmet, and blue spectacles, and armed with a 
 Winchester rifle, is introduced as ' this chimsera waiting 
 with his deadly engine.' Similar detail-work may be 
 observed in the account of John Nicholson's return to the 
 house in Randolph Crescent. There is the clothes-brush, 
 and the hat-stand with its coats and hats, and the bust 
 near the stair railings — reading which we know that 
 lobby as we know our own. He has learned from Virgil 
 and from Dante their habit of comparing great things with 
 small, and making an abstract or poetic conception spring 
 to sudden reality by a metaphor drawn from the workaday 
 world. Thus in the Feast of Famine, the spirit of evil 
 moving the savages to wicked designs in the dark heat of 
 a tropical night, is compared to the sweltering baker, work- 
 ing alone amidst the sleeping city in his kneading trough. 
 Sometimes this unexpected introduction of homely and 
 familiar things comes upon us with what is little less than 
 a brutal assault on the imagination. Duncan Jopp stands 
 his trial before Weir of Hermiston, and afterwards goes to 
 the gallows, with a soiled rag of flannel round his sore throat 
 — and we instinctively resent the shock that flannel gives 
 us. In this, from Island Nights Entertainments, it is even 
 harsher — 'With that I gave him the cold steel for all I 
 was worth. His body kicked under me like a spring so/a, 
 he gave a dreadful kind of a long moan, and lay still.' It 
 is, perhaps, difficult to forgive him for these and the like ; 
 it is at least impossible to forget them. They are the work 
 of that vision in detail which, with or against our will, 
 enslaves the memory. The same vividness appears in 
 
 117 
 
THE FAITH OF R. L. STEVENSON 
 
 many pleasanter metaphors, such as that curious and in- 
 tricate imagination in Lay Morals, of a man attempting with 
 cords and pegs to mark out the boundary of the shadow of 
 a great oak, lying abroad upon the ground at noon, perfect, 
 clear, and apparently stable like the earth, but really fleeing 
 with all its multiplicity of leaves before the travelling sun. 
 That also, in all its detail, he has seen. In such a line as 
 this, from The House Beautiful — 
 
 * A shivering pool before the door ' 
 
 we feel the wind of the naked moors, and again note the 
 power of exact observation that has revealed to us a thing 
 at once so familiar and so unremarked. 
 
 A faculty of observation like this seldom goes with large 
 and unified grasp of the whole situation. The man of facts 
 and isolated impressions is usually incapable of taking 
 'conjunct views.* He knows the wall-paper, but has 
 missed the landscape. Stevenson's greatest achievement as 
 mere man of letters is that he has combined the two 
 faculties in so remarkable a degree. In Weir of Hermiston 
 this reaches its greatest perfection. The most marvellous 
 thing in that great novel is its combination of exquisiteness 
 of detail, with a continuous and proportioned grasp of the 
 main purpose and large design. It is an achievement 
 which, had it not been actually accomplished, might well 
 have been pronounced impossible. It is the wedding of 
 pre-Kaphaelite with impressionist art, each at its highest 
 point of excellence. 
 
 The intensity of his vision may be illustrated best by his 
 delight in colour, and his skill in its literary manipulation. 
 That delight in vividness which is so often gratified in his 
 unbridled use of language, finds its visual counterpart in 
 the passionate colour-work illuminating every book of his. 
 There was once a corner shop in Leith Walk, which has 
 118 
 
THE GIFT OF VISION 
 
 given us that essay in Memories and Portraits — ever the 
 favourite with Edinburgh boys — the inimitable Id. plain and 
 2d. coloured. Its successor is no longer dark, nor does it 
 ' smell of Bibles ' like Mr. Smith's old shop. But what glory 
 of improvement will ever thrill the heart again as did those 
 small-paned windows of long ago ? ' One Penny Plain and 
 Twopence Coloured ' — it was not only an advertisement oi 
 certain pasteboard properties of a toy theatre ; it was life 
 itself in a nutshell. So it was, at least, to Eobert Louis 
 Stevenson ; and whoso would understand this riddle must go 
 to the essay named, and read it with as much as may be of 
 the fervour with which we used to read its title in that shop- 
 window. Postage stamps there were too in that window, 
 and postage stamps then were but beginning to come to 
 their kingdom. The soul-satisfying colours of them (for 
 the early stamps were more aggressive than later issues), 
 the quaint devices of foreign birds and American engines, the 
 triangular Cape of Good Hopes, the dainty little Victorian 
 halfpenny stamps — these were side by side with the now 
 classical advertisement, as if to prove its scale of values 
 just. 
 
 But enough of this. Suffice it that from those days to 
 the end of his life Stevenson gladly paid his extra penny for 
 the colour. All through his manhood he amused himself 
 with the colouring of prints. His soul leapt to the splendour 
 of crimson lake and shrank in superstitious dread from a 
 certain shade of brown. When he desires a silencing 
 epithet for finest action he can say no more than that it is 
 better than purple. Whether it was the luscious depth of 
 colour in jewels, or ' the trivial brightness of white paint ' 
 on lighthouse buildings, his heart loved it. In a youthful 
 essay he appreciates the peacock as affording the most 
 satisfying colour in nature to the lust of a man's eyes, and 
 he heightens the effect by a masterly background of ' stone- 
 
 119 
 
THE FAITH OF R. L. STEVENSON 
 
 coloured heavens and russet woods, and grey-brown plough- 
 lands and white roads.' Towards the end, his ideal of style 
 grew more chastened and severe. * I like more and more 
 naked writing,' he tells us in 1893 ; 'and yet sometimes one 
 has a longing for full colour.' Fortunately for us, the long- 
 ing was generally gratified. We see him illuminating the 
 South Seas with a red sash worn round his waist, and 
 describing the shells and fish of the lagoons until they seem 
 to flash out in rainbows. At need he can use colour with 
 fearsome power, as when he introduces the old man of Arcs, 
 the whites of whose eyes were 'yellow, like old stained 
 ivory, or the bones of the dead'; or Mountain, with his 
 * eyeball swimming clear of the lids upon a field of blood- 
 shot white ! ' 
 
 But we might go on for many pages illustrating from his 
 colour-work the intensity of his powers of vision. One 
 more note must sufiice for this preliminary part of our 
 study. We have already noticed how it is his custom to 
 introduce surprising collocations of words apparently incon- 
 gruous. It is his most characteristic figure of speech, and 
 it illustrates perfectly the combination of exactness with 
 intensity of vision. In such phrases as * looking upon the 
 bright face of danger,' and many others of the same kind, 
 we have exactness in the choice of individual words, 
 intensity in the general efifect of brilliance given by the 
 combination. In the remaining part of the present chapter 
 we shall have abundant opportunity for observing these 
 characteristics as we further illustrate the gift of vision 
 along its most apparent lines. 
 
 Most obvious of all is his physical love of light. There 
 is, in the old garden at Swanston, a tree now moribund and 
 clamped up with bands of iron, on which are to be seen the 
 carved letters T.S., his father's initials. Above them is 
 the emblem jf^ of 'The Rising Son.' The little 
 120 
 
THE GIFT OF VISION 
 
 engraving is not without some touch of that cleverness 
 which is manifest in the work executed later at Davos. Its 
 emblem is for him the most appropriate in the world. The 
 love of light was hereditary with him, for the ancestral 
 Smiths had illuminated the city, while the Stevensons had 
 illuminated the sea. In his camp in the Cevennes we have 
 a clear picture of the small lamp lit amidst the wide dark- 
 ness, 'The light was both livid and shifting; but it cut 
 me off from the universe, and doubled the darkness of the 
 surrounding night.' It is in thoughts connected with the 
 play of light and darkness that the physical sensitiveness 
 and intensity of Stevenson are found at their utmost. His 
 fondness for brilliance, his physical necessity for brightness, 
 is everywhere unmistakable. No better proof of this could 
 be cited than the strong effect produced on him by dark- 
 ness. At night in Silverado he goes out to the platform 
 for ' a bath of darkness ' — a phrase whose sensuous fulness 
 of meaning is seen by contrast with the great splash of 
 candle-light falling through the window upon the thicket 
 and the overhanging rock. Darkness usually produces a 
 kind of physical horror in him. The bitterest depths of 
 the Master of Ballantrae and Deacon Brodie, are expressed 
 in the thought of * the old familiar faces gone into darkness.' 
 There is nothing in all his work more significant than the 
 reappearance in Admiral Guinea of the blind man Pew 
 from Treasure Island. As we hear his approaching foot- 
 steps, with the stick beating the ground, and expect another 
 exhibition of his keen and sinister character, we perceive 
 the mingled pity and horror with which the man of vision 
 is attracted to the blind. 
 
 The surprising possibilities of lamp-light and candle-light 
 are explored with a wealth of imagination which would 
 yield material for a very fascinating monograph. Some- 
 times it is the mere brightness of the light that forms the 
 
 121 
 
THE FAITH OF R. L. STEVENSON 
 
 attraction. One is startled by the vividness of metaphor 
 when the limbs of a sufiferer are said to be 'lighted up* 
 with torturing pain. The drive through a city delights him 
 by its flashing street lamps, and especially by those more 
 gorgeous luminaries that send their shafts of overpowering 
 colour from chemists' windows. He would have his house 
 at Vailima lighted up full blaze in his absence, that he 
 might enjoy the luxury of its brightness as he returned 
 through the dark. He loves the phantasmagoria of lamp- 
 light — * the lurching sphere of light ' divided by the shadow 
 of the man who bears the lantern across the field. He 
 thus describes a night-scene on the verandah at Vailima : 
 * The faces of the company, the spars of the trellis, stood 
 out suddenly bright on a ground of blue and silver, faintly 
 designed with palm-tops and the peaked roofs of houses. 
 Here and there the gloss upon a leaf, or the fracture of 
 a stone, returned an isolated sparkle. All else had vanished. 
 We hung there, illuminated like a galaxy of stars in vacuo ; 
 we sat, manifest and blind, amid the general ambush of the 
 darkness.' The fragment entitled llie Great North Road 
 abounds in such Kembrandt impressions. In it the ostler's 
 lantern lets up 'spouts of candle-light through the holes 
 with which its conical roof was peppered.' The mail-coach 
 arrives from the south, and ' its lamps were very large and 
 bright, and threw their radiance forward in overlapping 
 cones. . . . the body of the coach followed like a great 
 shadow ; and this lit picture slid with a sort of ineffectual 
 swiftness over the black field of night.' The fantastic play 
 of lights may even lend itself to the weird and gruesome 
 so as to produce strong efifects. The evil spirits that haunt 
 the woods of Samoa seem quite indisputable when you 
 walk ' by the moving light of a lantern, with nothing about 
 you but a curious whirl of shadows, and the black night 
 above and beyond.' All the world knows now of the duel 
 122 
 
THE GIFT OF VISION 
 
 by candle-light in the grounds of the house of Durrisdeer ; 
 the idea seems to have appealed strongly to Stevenson's 
 imagination, for a candle stands burning also on the gravel 
 walk of a second house, in Murrayfield, within which a dead 
 man lies in his blood. In another mood, he turns for 
 sentiment to lamps again — the street lamps of Edinburgh, 
 not seen directly, but reflected in her wet streets — though 
 the pathos is even keener when he remembers the fainter 
 'sheen of the rainy streets towards afternoon.' Lights of 
 candles and of lamps supply him with some of his most vivid 
 metaphors, and not a few of the innermost secret places of 
 his thought and emotion are illuminated by them. The sight 
 of Olalla extinguishes in her lover his romantic fancy for 
 the portrait, which 'had fallen dead, like a candle after 
 sunrise.* Nance, in The Great North Road, draws her finest 
 moral from the tale of a strange land where they used to 
 run races with lighted candles — * that was like life : a man's 
 good conscience is the flame he gets to carry, and if he 
 comes to the winning post with that still burning, why, 
 take it how you will, the man 's a hero.' The finest 
 example is in The Lantern- Bearers, but of that we shall 
 judge later on. 
 
 As was to be expected, there is much reference to light- 
 houses, and the passages which mention them seldom fail 
 to show an exaltation of spirit that draws the writing to 
 its own high level. The location of the lighthouse inspirits 
 him, set up in the air among heather over which sea-birds 
 fly. Underwoods has some memorable descriptions, among 
 which the following is perhaps the finest : 
 
 * Eternal granite hewn from the living isle 
 And do welled with brute iron, rears a tower 
 That from its wet foundation to its crown 
 Of glittering glass, stands, in the sweep of winds, 
 Imraorable, immortal, eminent.' 
 
 123 
 
THE FAITH OF R. L. STEVENSON 
 
 In another poem, published only in The Udinburgh Edi- 
 tiorif The Light-Keeper thus describes his station : 
 
 * The brilliant kernel of the night, 
 The flaming light-room circles me : 
 I sit within a blaze of light 
 
 Held high above the dusky sea. . . .* 
 
 Passing from artificial lights to natural, we find him, like 
 the lone seaman of the rhyme,^^ sailing astonished among 
 stars. If it be the case that many of his most vivid 
 impressions are shown by the light of lanterns, it is equally 
 true that much of his most moving work is done by star- 
 light. The green islands and the bright sea would not be 
 to him what they are if it were not for those 'forty 
 million stars * that shine upon so many of his scenes ' with 
 an imperial brightness.' And the stars, like the street 
 lamps, acquire a new beauty when we see them reflected 
 in water. Now it is a lagoon, bright with ten thousand 
 of them, now a star- reflecting harbour, that is shown. 
 The hero of one tale stoops and drinks, putting his mouth 
 to the level of a starry pool; or, descending the rope 
 in his escape from the castle, he sees ' the stars overhead, 
 and the reflected stars below him in the moat, whirling 
 like dead leaves before the tempest.' 
 
 Moonlight does not affect him so strongly. Once indeed, 
 he speaks of the ' exhilarating lustre ' of the moon in winter 
 but even that is not strong enough to satisfy him, and 
 moonlight generally serves as a background of indistinct 
 beauty for some more vivid sight. ' The burning valley by 
 moonlight' he delights in, and the clean-edged tracery 
 visible when 'the moon drew shadows of trees on the 
 naked bodies of men.' Daylight and the sun are more to 
 his mind, and the day's flash and colour that ' flames, dazzles 
 and puts to sleep.' Every phase of it is known to him, from 
 dawn yellow as sulphur in the Pacific; on through the 
 124 
 
THE GIFT OF VISION 
 
 Spanish morning hour, when the whole face of nature ia 
 * austerely smiling, the heavens of a cold blue, and sown 
 with great cloud islands, and the mountain-sides mapped 
 forth into provinces of light and shadow * ; down to the 
 sunset embers and the ' indigo twilight, starred with street- 
 lamps,' of the Edinburgh evening. 
 
 In his descriptions of landscape and natural scenery, we 
 note the same combination of exactness and intensity 
 which is characteristic of all his vision. Mr. Cornford, in his 
 Rohert Louis Stevenson^ has a chapter entitled * The Limner 
 of Landscape,' in which he brings together as remarkable 
 a collection of such descriptions as could well be compiled. 
 Some of Stevenson's pictures are marked by that pure and 
 simple sense for Nature — that love of Nature for her own 
 sake — which, since Wordsworth, has been so great and 
 beautiful an element in our literature. These again and 
 again remind us of the classical contrast in the Family of 
 Engineers between his father's point of view and his own : — 
 ' The river was to me a pretty and various spectacle ; I 
 could not see — I could not be made to see — it otherwise. To 
 my father it was a chequer-board of lively forces, which he 
 traced from pool to shallow with minute appreciation and 
 enduring interest.* Certainly the loss to engineering has 
 been abundantly compensated by the gain to letters. 
 
 Yet it is but seldom that his descriptions of Nature have 
 either the detachment or the repose of Wordsworth. They 
 come in passionate flashes, often with an effect of startling 
 brilliance and poignancy. To illustrate this by quotations 
 would tempt us farther afield than our limits permit, but 
 almost any of the Nature-work in Silverado Squatters or 
 Prince Otto — and in these it is at its best — will furnish 
 examples. From the latter volume, the night scene in the 
 forest, to which Cornford justly gives the palm, offers us 
 the clue. 'This slow transfiguration [the dawn] reached 
 
 125 
 
THE FAITH OF R. L. STEVENSON 
 
 her heart and played upon it, and transpierced it with a 
 serious thrill. She looked all about, the whole face of 
 Nature looked back, brimful of meaning, finger on lip, leak- 
 ing its glad secret.' That is not Nature in herself, but 
 Nature as she is in the experience of a human soul. It is 
 the subjective element that gives its peculiar value to 
 Stevenson's vision of Nature. Not only do the natural 
 settings adapt themselves to the human interest and follow 
 the change of incident — that is but a necessity of fiction 
 common to all novelists, whose privilege it is to arrange 
 their own weather. In a far more intimate sense is 
 Stevenson's Nature- work subjective. In The Woodman we 
 have the whole forest of Vailima quickened into semi- 
 human life and consciousness, with a result as sinister and 
 uncanny as could well be conceived. The toothless and 
 killing sensitive-plant, plucked by the green hair, shrinks 
 back — 
 
 •And straining by his anchor-strand 
 Captured and scratched the rooting hand. 
 I saw him crouch, I felt him bite.' 
 
 Straightway the woodman's eyes are opened, and he knows 
 the life of the wood from within — half-human, half- 
 demoniac. The House Beautiful is the finest example on 
 the pleasant side. In itself bare and bleak, Nature is there 
 seen by the poetic eye, so as to attain with no other help 
 than that of the days' and seasons' change, to incomparable 
 pomp and splendour, the wizardry of moonlight, and the 
 enchanted beauty of frost. 
 
 In his descriptions of the city which he loved best, he is 
 peculiarly happy. Princes Street lies under our eye, in 
 ' mild sunshine, and the little thrill of easterly wind that 
 tossed the flags along that terrace of palaces.' Leith Walk 
 is the stone gully up which the north wind rushes upon 
 the city. The old town builds itself up, on a misty day, 
 126 
 
THE GIFT OF VISION 
 
 house above house, fitting its arcliitecture to the contour of 
 the rock until the whole seems to be of a piece. In such 
 work the subjective element has been supplied already 
 by the art of man. Again, in his delineation of storms at 
 sea, Stevenson is at his very best. It is probably no 
 exaggeration to say that nothing ever written has excelled 
 the * Hurricane ' chapter in A Footnote to History or the race 
 of the Norah Creina in the Wrecker. The secret of these is 
 easy to discover, for it is the experience of the storm 
 rather than the mere commotion of the elements, that is 
 described : — * The squall itself, the catch at the heart, the 
 opened sluices of the sky, and the relief, the renewed 
 loveliness of life, when all is over, the sun forth again, and 
 our out-fought enemy only a blot upon the leeward sea.' 
 * The frightened leaps of the poor Norah Creina, spanking 
 like a stag for bare existence . . . Overhead the wild hunts- 
 man of the storm passed continuously in one blare of 
 mingled noises ; screaming wind, straining timber, lashing 
 rope's-end, pounding block, and bursting sea.' When the 
 scene to be described is of a quieter character, he often 
 introduces some very strongly outlined piece of foreground, 
 to give distinction and human interest to his picture. A 
 stranded ship in the strong sun under a cloud of sea-birds, 
 or ' a huge truncheon of wreck half-buried in the sands,' are 
 but specimens of many similar expedients for sharpening 
 the picture to exactness and intensity. The finest example, 
 and one of the best pieces of description he ever wrote, is 
 the first glimpse of the Flying Scud caught by the searchers 
 in The Wrecker. For a moment, among high waves, a 
 vista opens, and they see 'the masts and rigging of a brig 
 pencilled on heaven, with an ensign streaming at the main, 
 and the ragged ribbons of a topsail thrashing from the yard/ 
 
 127 
 
THE FAITH OF R. L. STEVENSON 
 
 CHAPTER VIII 
 
 THE GIFT OF VISION {continued) 
 
 Having seen the splendid beginning of the Gift of Vision 
 in the physical, we have now to see its spiritual develop- 
 ment in imagination and insight. Imagination was, in 
 Stevenson's own account of himself, an intoxicating 
 pleasure, so intense as sometimes to weaken or even to 
 destroy the sense of reality. 'It is quite possible,' he 
 affirms, * and even comparatively easy, so to enfold oneself 
 in pleasant fancies that the realities of life may seem but as 
 the white snow-shower in the street, that only gives a relish 
 to the swept hearth and lively fire within.' . . . This power 
 of imagination affected his inner life in many directions. 
 It ' painted images brightly on the darkness ' ; it * put an 
 edge on almost everything ' ; and on it he counted in many 
 trying times for heartening and refreshment. Sometimes 
 it forsook him, and then he was left desolate, with the taste 
 for all other things than its lost splendours blunted and 
 enfeebled ; but in the main it abode faithful. A scientific 
 paper on The Thermal Influence of Forests, written for a 
 Eoyal Society, might seem to promise little but statistics. 
 Yet we have hardly begun to read it when we find ourselves 
 in * the crypt of the forest,' and the whole treatise illustrates 
 the value of poetry to science. 
 
 The simplest exercise which involves the play of imagina- 
 tion is memory — the recalling of images received in the past. 
 The further exercise of constructing images of facts that lie 
 128 
 
THE GIFT OF VISION 
 
 beyond our actual experience, is closely connected with 
 memory, for it is out of fragments of images once actually 
 received that we are able to construct new wholes. 
 Imagination, exercised in either of these two ways, may be 
 called perception in absentia — perception of what is there 
 only as idea and not in outward material fact — and the 
 faculty of such perception was in Stevenson developed to an 
 exceptional degree. One example of simple imagination of 
 the past we have already noted in his vivid recollection of 
 the inmost feelings and the minutest details of life as seen 
 through the eyes of a little child. Another is the accuracy 
 and the graphic force of his thoughts of home from abroad. 
 Nothing could surpass the quality of 
 
 ' Grey recumbent tombs of the dead in desert places, 
 
 Standing stones on the vacant wine-red moor, 
 HiUs of sheep, and homes of the silent vanished races 
 And winds, austere and pure.' 
 
 Yet these lines are dated from Vailima. From Vailima 
 Weir of Hermiston also comes to us, and it is safe to say 
 that there is no novel in the language which has more per- 
 fectly expressed the colours and the forms of Scottish moor- 
 land. The great field of the hills is there, with plover and 
 curlew and lark crying down the wind, and hill-tops that 
 * huddle one behind another, like a herd of cattle, into the 
 sunset.' Where else shall we go in books to find just such 
 *a great rooty sweetness of bogs in the air, and at all 
 seasons such an infinite melancholy piping of hill birds ' ? 
 As to constructive imagination, all his novels are a proof of 
 that, and almost everything else which he has written. One 
 example must suffice, and that a quite casual and unlaboured 
 one. Writing to Austin Strong, and having nothing in 
 particular to say, he fills his letter with a description of 
 those profoundest depths of the ocean in which life begins 
 to reappear again below the zone of death. He describes 
 
 129 
 
THE FAITH OF R. L. STEVENSON 
 
 * our flimsy fellow-creatures/ the fish that live in these 
 lowest places, held together by the great weight of water, 
 but bursting into tatters long before they can be brought to 
 the surface. ' But I dare say,' he adds, ' a cannon sometimes 
 comes careering solemnly down, and circling like a dead 
 leaf.' There we have a specimen of visual imagination than 
 which it would be difficult to find any more interesting or 
 characteristic. 
 
 The wealth and variety of a writer's imagination lie 
 very largely in the development of his mind's faculty for the 
 so-called 'association of ideas.' All of us have immense 
 reserves of impressions stored somewhere in the brain ; but 
 they are stored as it were in separate compartments, and do 
 not come forth readily at the command of new impressions. 
 Genius has been defined as the power of seeing likenesses and 
 relations among things. If that be a sound definition it must 
 be admitted that Stevenson was a genius of the first rank. 
 It seemed as if he had but to open the doors of his mind, 
 and cognate impressions would press and throng in to the 
 side of the one idea already in possession, crowding the 
 stage of thought from every quarter of experience and 
 knowledge. Each new idea seems to have ' thrown down a 
 barrier which concealed significance and beauty/ and to 
 have revealed a new world of relations. 
 
 One of the most interesting examples of this is his treat- 
 ment of the subject of Treasure. Every reader must have 
 remarked how often it occurs. In Treasure Island, Tfie 
 Wrecker, The Merry Men, The Master of Ballantrae, The 
 Treasure of Franchard, and many other stories, either the 
 interest centres on this, or it forms the most conspicuous 
 feature after the plot. Its emphasis is as remarkable as is 
 the absence of the customary love plot. Stevenson has been 
 blamed for this, and indeed it is utterly unlike his char- 
 acter. Generous and lavish to a fault, miserliness is 
 130 
 
f 
 THE GIFT OF VISION 
 
 assuredly the vice for which he needs least of all to blush. 
 The explanation is that Treasure has recondite secrets of 
 attractiveness. When we read of the man who 'by the 
 blaze of a great fire of wreckwood measures ingots by the 
 bucketful on the uproarious beach,' we can see plainly that 
 the writer's interest in the treasure-hunting was a more 
 picturesque one than that of avarice. It was obviously the 
 ancient Saxon's delight in his buried hoard of rings and cups 
 of gold ; delight in the glitter and sparkling beauty of what 
 is rich and rare and bright, and not in its commercial value. 
 But The Treasure of Franchard gives the real clue. The 
 value of treasure is a spending and not a hoarding value ; it 
 signifies the delightful things which it will buy. 'You 
 have no imagination,' cried the doctor. ' Picture to yourself 
 the scene. Dwell on the idea — a great treasure lying in 
 the earth for centuries : the material for a giddy, copious, 
 opulent existence not employed,' and so on — dresses, 
 pictures, horses, castles, parks, ships, ' all lying unborn in a 
 coffin — and the stupid trees growing overhead in the sun- 
 light, year after year.* 
 
 A further step leads us to Personification, which here 
 must be understood in its widest sense, viz. the endowing of 
 an object with the life or nature proper to another class of 
 objects. By this means a new spirit may transform the 
 old idea, as if new blood went tingling down its veins. It is 
 a trick of imagination closely akin to that collocation of 
 apparently incongruous ideas which we have already noticed, 
 and it has an extraordinary power of heightening the value 
 of an impression. In Child's Play he recalls the miracle by 
 which cold mutton suddenly became appetising when the 
 child had agreed with himself to call it venison. Mutton is 
 at best but dead sheep ; venison implies a live huntsman. 
 One of the quaintest and most beautiful passages in An 
 Inland Voyage likens Noyon Cathedral to an old battleship, 
 
 131 
 
THE FAITH OF R. L. STEVENSON 
 
 point for point; and the church gains immense interest 
 from the comparison. So does that coral reef of which we 
 read that it is * sunk to the gunwale in the ocean.' The wind, 
 with Stevenson, is always a kind of Erlking or mystic horse- 
 man ; the shadows are species of ineffective domestic genii. 
 Destiny, when we read of her ' hand of brass,' gains much 
 the same fearsoraeness which belongs to Fenimore Cooper's 
 Water Witch, and the brazen leaves of her book of fate. 
 Further instances innumerable might be quoted, but we add 
 only one, in which the italicised words give a personification 
 worthy of Homer. It is from the Feast of Famine : 
 
 ' All day long from the high place, the drums and the singing came, 
 And the even fell and the sun went down, a wheel of flame ; 
 And night came gleaning the shadows and hushing the sounds of tk* 
 wood.' 
 
 In this connection the most interesting fact of all 
 is that of ' the Brownies ' — the help which Stevenson 
 acknowledges that he received in dreams. For the details 
 of this, we must refer the reader to one of his most charming 
 essays, the Chapter on Dreams. Suffice it to say that to this 
 source he traces two of his most brilliant pieces of imagin- 
 ative work. Dr. Jehyll and Mr. Hyde, and Olalla. The 
 subject is an extremely curious one, and it has been dis- 
 cussed by most of those who have written about him. The 
 one point which appears to be significant for our present 
 purpose is that this phenomenon shows us the author as a 
 recipient rather than a creator. Dreams may be regarded as 
 the complex of our thoughts and feelings released from the 
 directing and controlling power of will, undistracted by 
 casual impressions of the external world, and so left abso- 
 lutely subject to the play of involuntary physical processes 
 which may awaken them to consciousness and direct their 
 sequence. There was a time when all dreams were regarded 
 as revelations, and men lay down to sleep in sacred places, 
 132 
 
THE GIFT OF VISION 
 
 that they might be able to secure such gifts of revelation 
 from the gods. Psychology has changed all that, apparently ; 
 and yet perhaps the change is not so great after all. The 
 religious man owns, in theory at least, that all his powers 
 are gifts from above. Yet, when the exercise of a faculty 
 iHvolves strong and sustained effort of will, the conscious- 
 ness of his own exertion gives the man an apparent claim 
 to the faculty ; the slighter the action of will, the more 
 obviously does he perceive the faculty to be indeed a gift ; 
 in dreams the apparent claim is gone, and the fact that our 
 powers are not our own is manifest. This in itself looks 
 toward a religious meaning, and keeps a man from forgetting 
 that he can boast of nothing which he has not received. 
 
 It would, indeed, be vain to look for any very definite 
 ethical or religious message which his dreams revealed to 
 Stevenson. ' I do most of the morality, worse luck ! ' he 
 tells us, ' and my Brownies have not a rudiment of what we 
 call a conscience.' The nearest approach to religious revela- 
 tion is in the parable which he sometimes finds in a dream. 
 ' Sometimes I cannot but suppose my Brownies have been 
 aping Bunyan, and yet in no case with what would possibly 
 be called a moral in a tract ; never with the ethical narrow- 
 ness ; conveying hints, instead, of life's larger limitations, 
 and that sort of sense which we seem to perceive in the 
 arabesque of time and space.' The psychologist will have 
 no diflQculty in explaining the part which Bunyan played in 
 the dreams of so faithful a student of the Pilgrim's Progress. 
 Yet that in no way alters the fact that the effect of such 
 dreams upon a man like Stevenson must be a more or less 
 definite consciousness of a Giver to whom he owes all his 
 best. At times this evidently amounts to a sense of sacred- 
 ness in his hours of literary inspiration. It is a principle 
 always very definitely realised and proclaimed : ' The true 
 ignorance is when a man does not know that he has received 
 
 133 
 
THE FAITH OF R. L. STEVENSON 
 
 a good gift, or begins to imagine that he has got it for him- 
 self. The self-made man is the funniest windbag after all ! 
 There is a marked difference between decreeing light in 
 chaos, and lighting the gas in a metropolitan back parlour 
 with a box of patent matches ; and do what we will, there is 
 always something made to our hand, if it were only our 
 fingers.' Thus, along the whole range of vision, this true 
 seer confesses that he can rightly lay claim to none of all 
 the powers that are within him. 
 
 Perceiving his power of vision to be a gift, he set no 
 bounds to the freedom with which he looked and saw 
 around him. In strangely opposite directions the gift of 
 vision intensified his life. The most obvious and perhaps 
 the most familiar of these is his imagination of the ghastly 
 and horrible. In his tales and in some of his other work 
 there is a surprising, and often quite an unnecessary 
 amount of murder and of bloodshed. Cold steel flashes 
 and then grows warm in groaning flesh ; the spine cracks, 
 and the body falls slack in the grasp of strong hands ; 
 blood flows and clots, wounds gape and the livid flesh 
 changes colour, with that shameless nakedness which 
 England first learned from the songs of pagan Saxons. In 
 such a tale as The Black Arrow no chapter is complete till 
 it has added to the pile of corpses. In the fights, men go 
 down like ninepins, and the Wrecker is not the only hero 
 of his who learns to 'entertain and welcome the grim 
 thought of bloodshed.' Sometimes the horror is drawn out 
 in a leisurely paragraph of the South Seas which becomes 
 almost unreadable ; again it flaslies forth in a single lurid 
 sentence like that uttered by the murderer in A Lodging for 
 the Night : ' What right has a man to have red hair when 
 he is dead ? ' 
 
 Death itself, in all its crude realism, is much in evidence ; 
 and the morbid interest in its paraphernalia which is 
 134 
 
THE GIFT OF VISION 
 
 characteristic of a certain type of Scottish folklore, is 
 unsparingly introduced. From the bloody winding-sheet of 
 the Covenanter, and the grim loquacity of Scottish grave- 
 diggers, to the long baskets at the feasts of cannibals and 
 their drums in whose tramp you hear ' the beat of the heart 
 of death,' the sinister interest is passed on. Even as a 
 child, playing beside a churchyard, he discovers a light in a 
 cranny of the retaining wall, and wonders ' whether the hole 
 pierced right through into a grave, and it was some dead 
 man who was sitting up in his coffin and watching us with 
 that strange fixed eye.' 
 
 Nor does death end all. He deals freely in the horrors 
 which inhabit the region beyond the grave. Spectral 
 presences that haunt the imagination are familiar in the 
 greater part of his work, but especially in the Scottish and 
 the South Sea writings, between which they form an uncanny 
 link of connection. As in so many families of Scotland, 
 this element was hereditary with him. In A Family of 
 Engineers two stories are told of apparitions of the dead 
 seen in articulo mortis by ancestors of his own. Old cove- 
 nanting superstitions of flames rising from certain 
 graves, gruesome legends of haunted houses, particular 
 forms of demons like the brown dog described in the 
 Chapter on Dreams, are introduced with unmistakable zest. 
 In the South Seas, we find ourselves again in islands 
 'beleaguered by the dead,' in ghost-haunted and devil- 
 haunted woods, in the midst of a people who live in fear 
 of magicians, and who look upon their recently buried dead 
 as new ' ogres loosed upon the isle.' Few passages, even of 
 his Samoan work, are written with a more sympathetic 
 touch, than that which describes the struggle with the mad 
 Paatalise, who had met his dead brother in the bush. * And 
 remember ! ' he says, ' we are fighting the dead, and they 
 [the black boys of the household] had to go out again in the 
 
 135 
 
THE FAITH OF R. L. STEVENSON 
 
 black night, which is the dead man's empire/ though they 
 believed the man's ravings, and * kriew that his dead family, 
 thirty strong, crowded the front verandah and called on him 
 to come to the other world.* The palm goes, however, with- 
 out doubt to the Scottish work of this kind. Tod Lapraik 
 and Thrawn Janet are immortal spectres. Of them he says 
 that if he had never written anything else, ' still I 'd 
 have been a writer.' Of that there can be no question. 
 Tod Lapraik dances on the Bass Rock still for all readers of 
 Catriona. Who has ever forgotten the scene in Thravm 
 Janet, where Mr. Soulis is standing beside his candle at the 
 stairfoot ? * A foot gaed to an' fro in the chalmer whaur the 
 corp was hingin' ; syne the door was opened, — though he 
 minded weel that he had lockit it ; an' syne there was a step 
 upon the landin', and it seemed to him as if the corp was 
 lookin' ower the rail an' doon upon him whaur he stood.* 
 
 His skill and freedom in the manipulation of super- 
 natural machinery are very great. The sustained horror of 
 Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde alone is proof of this. No con- 
 ceivable imagination could be more precarious than that 
 story, so close does it keep to the edge over which the sub- 
 lime falls suddenly to the ridiculous. A slip at any point 
 might have made the situation not only grotesque but 
 fatuous. Yet the story retains its power unbroken to the 
 end. At times — so masterful is his handling of super- 
 natural terrors — he intentionally relieves the strain ; as 
 when the Master of Ballantrae, apparently chiming in with 
 Mackellar's fears, asks him if he knows what the sudden 
 dash of rain forebodes, and answers his own question — 
 ' that there 11 be a man Mackellar unco' sick at sea.' 
 
 Yet it may be questioned whether he ever attains per- 
 fection in his management of the ghastly. The most 
 powerful effect can only be reached by way of reticence 
 and suggestion, and Stevenson saw too clearly to be qmite 
 136 
 
THE GIFT OF VISION 
 
 master of that art. He can make you see a horrible image 
 with a vividness which few writers can match. The subtler 
 power of making you tremble at what you cannot see, is not 
 usually at his command. To this extent his gift of vision 
 overreaches itself, and fails because of its extraordinary 
 success. 
 
 On the other hand, he has an eye for beauty as keen as his 
 perception of its opposite. Many passages quoted elsewhere 
 show not only how vivid but how full of beauty the world 
 appeared to Stevenson. It was his favourite task to explore 
 and point out the wayside beauty that lies all around us. 
 His essay on Walt Whitman exhibits him in the company 
 of a most congenial spirit. In many ways the thought and 
 purpose of the two are one ; yet nothing in that essay is 
 more significant than the criticism in its latter part. Every 
 reader of Whitman knows the large and reckless manner in 
 which he tumbles great things and small together in huge 
 heaps, that he may appreciate and delight in the whole 
 contents of the universe. Nothing could be more to 
 Stevenson's taste than this, and he blames Whitman, not 
 for his intention, but for the unconvincing way in which it 
 is carried out. It is not enough to praise the hill-tops and 
 the factory in one breath, the stately ships in the harbour 
 and the contents of the hatter's shop. To Stevenson as to 
 Whitman all these and all other such facts are capable of 
 revealing beauty, and it is the duty of the writer to make 
 that beauty plain. But to do this more is required than a 
 rollicking catalogue of miscellaneous articles. ' To show 
 beauty in common things is the work of the rarest tact. It 
 is not to be done by the wishing.' The critic knew this as 
 only one could know who had himself laboured hard at 
 such work of the rarest tact. He proves this beyond 
 dispute in T?ie House Beautiful, which is a well-nigh perfect 
 expression of beauty in common things. 
 
 137 
 
THE FAITH OP R. L. STEVENSON 
 
 It is true that looking back long afterward upon his lite 
 he describes his chase of the ideal thus : 
 
 'Still 
 Somewhere on the sunny hill, 
 Or along the 'winding stream 
 Through the willows, flits a dream ; 
 Flits but shows a smiling face, 
 Flees but with so quaint a grace, 
 None can choose to stay at home. 
 All must follow, all must roam. 
 This is unborn beauty.' 
 
 The chase is vain, though it is worth while. As * with grey 
 hair we stumble on,' the vision fades away at last, never to 
 be plainly seen. The fading of the sense of beauty in times 
 of ill-health is described with unusual wealth of metaphor 
 in Ordered South. The most pathetic part of the invalid's 
 experience is that he inhabits a disenchanted world, which 
 he knows intellectually to be beautiful, but whose beauty 
 he no longer feels. But such confessions of failure are proof 
 of extraordinary success. The eye is not satisfied with 
 seeing because it knows what seeing has sometimes meant. 
 Nothing is more characteristic of Stevenson than his 
 exacting fastidiousness in the search for beauty and for 
 words in which to express it. It is the fastidiousness of 
 the high priest, who feels a certain claim and proprietory 
 right in the shrine. If we may quote one figure as 
 peculiarly typical of his vision of the beautiful, it shall 
 be the image of the Garden, which occurs in his books 
 almost as frequently as any except such as are drawn 
 from the battlefield. Most of his tales have one garden- 
 scene at least. The Ideal House has a passage on gardens 
 quite in the style of Bacon's famous essay. Spiritualised, 
 the garden stands for all that is sweetest and gentlest in 
 the inner life. The tortured and dying Du Chayla declares 
 that his soul is 'like a garden full of shelter and of 
 138 
 
THE GIFT OF VISION 
 
 fountains.' ' It is a shaggy world ' we read in Pan's PipeSy 
 ' and yet studded with gardens ; where the salt and tumbling 
 sea receives clear rivers running from among reeds and lilies.' 
 The ghastly and the beautiful are combined in one of 
 his favourite and most characteristic ideas. We have 
 already noted how subjective his treatment of Nature 
 is. He openly confesses that the work he expects his 
 imagination to do upon natural scenery is to let him * see 
 satyrs in the thicket, or picture a highwayman riding 
 down the lane.' The highwayman is often in evidence, 
 but it is the satyr that lends to ISTature her peculiar 
 meaning for him, and the etching of a satyr among reeds 
 prefixed to An Inland Voyage is the work of rare insight. 
 Pan's Pipes gives the key to this almost pagan aspect of the 
 world. The whole of that wonderful little essay is concen- 
 trated in one phrase of his Inland Voyage, in which the 
 music of the river-side reeds is interpreted as the sound 
 that tells of ' the beauty and the terror of the world.' Of 
 the terror he is acutely conscious. The clearing of ground 
 from tropical weeds appears as a battle with inhuman, 
 spiteful, snakelike things, and fills him with a superstitious 
 horror. In Weir of Hermiston, Kirstie describes how the 
 dead body of the would-be assassin is taken charge of all 
 night by the river, which 'dunts' the dead thing on the 
 stones, and 'grunds' it on the shallows, and flings it head 
 over heels at the waterfall. And yet this cruel, lewd, and 
 treacherous Nature is full of the most tender beauty all the 
 time. An overhanging branch had caught him, and he 
 was left clinging to it while his canoe went down the Gise. 
 He felt ' what a dead pull a river makes against a man. 
 Death himself had me by the heels. . . . The devouring 
 element in the universe had leaped out against me in this 
 green valley quickened by a running stream.' Then he 
 realised the mystery of Nature that could be at once so cruel 
 
 139 
 
THE FAITH OF R. L. STEVENSON 
 
 and so beautiful. This combination of terror and beauty 
 is very frequently introduced, and it is evidently one of the 
 conceptions which most deeply impressed his imagination. 
 
 All that concerns us at the present stage is that 
 Stevenson's vision both of the ghastly and the beautiful 
 was intense and clear. In a certain sense he is a realist, 
 though not even such vague terms as realist and idealist 
 can define him. He is a realist in so far as he records the 
 facts of life as they appear to him, impartially, and with- 
 out selection of those which suit the purposes of some 
 particular view. There is another sense in which the term 
 realism is sometimes understood. Under the pretext of an 
 impartial record, this realism tacitly selects the ugly and 
 the evil facts, and, with great ostentation of courage and 
 sincerity, offers these for its picture of life as it actually is. 
 The fallacy is obvious, and such realism is but the inverted 
 form of that so-called idealism which selects the pretty and 
 the innocent facts for its whole picture. There are times 
 when one trembles to think what the work of Stevenson 
 might have been, had he chosen to be a realist of this 
 latter sort. In some rare instances, such as The Wrong 
 Box, with its very ugly story of the travels of a dead body 
 in a packing-case, he makes us feel against our will the 
 attraction which the ugly might have had for him. In a 
 letter to a friend he declares that if that story is not 
 funny, he does not know what is. But this is in no way 
 representative. He pours his scorn upon that kind of 
 literature in which the ugly is de rigueur. He is true 
 to himself when, in approaching the leper island, he 
 describes his feelings : ' My horror of the horrible is about 
 my weakest point; but the moral loveliness at my elbow 
 blotted all else out.' The truth is that though he un- 
 questionably delights in the horrible, it is not because of 
 its horror but because of its conspicuousness. Vision is 
 UO 
 
THE GIFT OF VISION 
 
 his great delight and strong desire. What there is to see 
 in this mingled world, he will see, and what is most 
 vivid will first catch his eye. Obviously the terror and 
 the beauty of the world are its most conspicuous points, 
 and accordingly he sees and shows them. But the special 
 merit of his writing is that it has insisted on the con- 
 spicuousness of beauty. It is a cheap and easy way of 
 enlisting interest which the horrible affords; and without 
 strenuous effort, descriptions of the beautiful are apt to be 
 dull. He has put forth his strength to show that beauty 
 may be made as conspicuous as ugliness, as brilliant as 
 horror. To have succeeded in this is to have rendered a 
 great service to literature. 
 
 When we pass on to the sphere of psychology and of 
 moral and spiritual vision, we take but a short step, and 
 the change is hardly perceptible. The points of similarity 
 between the two regions are so many, that the word 
 insight is hardly a metaphor as regards Stevenson's 
 highest life, and the same powers and effects which we 
 have already noted are still observable. Indeed he has a 
 way of linking together natural colouring and emotional 
 experience with peculiarly subtle skill, and often with great 
 effect. The ancient singers of Wales were wont to alternate 
 a line about the wind-blown reeds, the river, or the trees, 
 with the patriotic or moral sentiments of their poems, in a 
 fashion which Professor Masson has called * the flag and 
 feeling device.' This we may sometimes find in Stevenson, 
 as when he gives his memorable account of the student 
 reading night and day for his examination. On the morning 
 of the examination day he rose from his books and pulled 
 up his blind in a jocund humour. 'Day was breaking, 
 the east was tinging with strange fires ' — a nameless terror 
 seized upon him, and when he oame to the examination 
 
 141 
 
THE FAITH OF R. L. STEVENSON 
 
 hall he had forgotten his name. In like manner ' strange 
 fires' many a time illuminate Stevenson's mental pictures, 
 and blend with them in the reader's memory. 
 
 The characters of his tales are notable for their firmness 
 and clear outline. 'There was nothing oblique or vague 
 about him. What he saw he saw, and what he saw he 
 could describe.' Not only are his men and women clearly 
 visible, they are alive. In one of his books ' they became 
 detached from the flat paper, they turned their backs on me^ 
 and walked off bodily.' In another, certain questions as to 
 the development of the plot must answer themselves * when 
 I get near enough to see.' Nor was this vision of men and 
 women merely artistic. *I am at bottom a psychologist,' 
 he tells us. The insight shown in his psychological analysis 
 is as penetrating as his artistic work is brilliant and har- 
 monious. His delight is in ' looking through a window into 
 other people's lives,' and ' lifting up their roofs ' that he may 
 see what is going on in their house of life. So great is 
 this power, and so constantly is it exercised, that it is un- 
 necessary to offer illustrations. Open any page of his work 
 at random, and whatever may be absent it may be safely 
 prophesied that you shall find some evidence of this. It 
 was in Weir of Hermiston that it reached its greatest, and 
 Professor Sidney Colvin writes of that book, 'If in the 
 literature of romance there is to be found work more 
 masterly, of more piercing human insight or more con- 
 centrated imaginative vision and beauty, I do not know it.' 
 We know, for example, the heart of the elder Kirstie — and 
 what a heart it is ! — and we know its play of concealed 
 and half-conscious motives, and the irrationalities, and the 
 secret fears, and the passion suppressed within iron bands ; 
 we know these things as we read, with a certainty which 
 surprises us at every page, and yet which never fails to 
 convince us in any detail. 
 142 
 
THE GIFT OF VISION 
 
 The moral insight is even more extraordinary. The 
 danger of the artist is that, finding the actual facts of 
 the moral world inharmonious, he should change their 
 emphasis and grouping to suit his taste. * A man of 
 imagination,' says Dr. Desprez, 'is never moral; he out- 
 soars literal demarcations, and reviews life under too 
 many shifting lights to rest content with the invidious 
 distinctions of the law.' But Stevenson can write on morals 
 under a plain white light. His descriptions are often given 
 in words carefully weighed and chosen not for effect but 
 for accuracy. In no part of his work is he less the actor 
 than in this. The result for the reader is a succession of 
 surprising revelations, in which he constantly recognises 
 himself or some other, though he has never had them 
 expressed before. We know what Stevenson means when 
 he divides men into the two classes of those who incline ' to 
 think all things rather wrong,' and those who suppose them 
 ' right enough for all practical purposes' We have met the 
 man of wnom he says, ' Convictions existed in him by divine 
 right; they were virgin, un wrought, the brute metal of 
 decision.' Who can forget the Master of Ballantrae * worm- 
 ing himself with singular dexterity ' into the family troubles, 
 ' as the hand of a bone-setter artfully divides and interrogates 
 the muscles, and settles strongly on the injured place ' ? or 
 Frank Innes, whose practice it was ' to approach any one 
 person at the expense of some one else ' ? ' He offered you 
 an alliance against the some one else ; he flattered you by 
 slighting him ; you were drawn into a small intrigue against 
 him before you knew how.' The casual notes on character 
 are often startling, revealing men to themselves abruptly as 
 with a sudden challenge. One man, in whom we had been 
 watching the progress of what we took to be insanity, turns 
 out not to have gone out of his mind, ' but to have drifted 
 from character.' The irritation which is 'too frequently 
 
 K 143 
 
THE FAITH OF B. L. STEVENSON 
 
 the uppermost feeling on the sickness of those dear to us/ 
 and the anger which is kindled within us 'against those 
 who make themselves the spokesmen of plain obligations/ 
 are other cases in point. 
 
 His best work is done when he finds himself face to face 
 with complex moral situations in which ordinary judgments 
 fail us, and we need a subtler and a clearer insight than 
 that of most men to let us see the case exactly. The 
 supreme instance of this is that passage in his Essay on 
 Burv'., which is at once one of the most courageous and 
 one of the truest things he ever wrote. It is the passage in 
 which he describes the man (if we may paraphrase another 
 of his sayings) as playing sedulous ape to two consciences. 
 It is the punishment of Don Juanism to create continually 
 false positions — relations in life which are wrong in them- 
 selves and which it is equally wrong to break or to per- 
 petuate. ... It was true he could not do as he did without 
 brutally wounding Clarinda; that was the punishment of 
 his bygone fault ; he was, as he truly says, " damned with 
 a choice only of different species of error and misconduct/' 
 ... If he had been strong enough to refrain, or bad enough 
 to persevere in evil ; if he had only not been Don Juan at 
 all, or been Don Juan altogether, there had been some 
 possible road for him throughout this troublesome world ; 
 but a man, alas ! who is equally at the call of his worse 
 and better instincts, stands among changing events without 
 foundation or resource.' 
 
 In the moral sphere we see the same characteristics as 
 have been already noted under the general subject of 
 imagination. The delight in brilliance for its own sake 
 runs through all his work, and here, as elsewhere, it gives 
 the strongest possible effects both in the ghastly and the 
 beautiful. He is artist as well as moralist, and though it 
 is true, as we said on the preceding page, that in many 
 U4 
 
THE GIFT OF VISION 
 
 cases he works at the moral situations with the enthusiasm 
 of a purely ethical interest, yet he does not ever quite sink 
 the artist in the man of conscience. He is artist still, and 
 artist in the manner of Rembrandt, dealing in high lights, 
 and even darkening his shadows to create them. 
 
 Of the ghastly side of morals he treats with freedom 
 and mastery. Sometimes the horror is conveyed in sugges- 
 tions, as in the Merry Meriy but usually it is of the broadest 
 kind. Nothing could be more loudly proclaimed than the 
 terrific moral tragedy in The Bottle Imp or Dr, Jekyll and 
 Mr. Hyde. And this introduces a further point, of much 
 interest in itself, and closely parallel to that delight in 
 the truculent and sanguinary which is so frequent in his 
 novels, viz. the two or three wholly unrelieved pictures he 
 has given us of ugly and disgusting sin. Deacon Brodie is 
 hardly a case in point, though he comes very near it. 
 Much as the Deacon interested Stevenson, he resisted the 
 temptation to make him a hero, in any sense * magnificent 
 in sin.' The Master of Ballantrae ' is all I know of a devil/ 
 he tells us. Mackellar's gorge sometimes 'rose against him 
 as though he were deformed, and sometimes I would draw 
 away as though from something partly spectral.' The 
 Ebb Tide is the darkest example, and it has been much 
 criticised for its portrayal of unrelieved moral ugliness. 
 He himself rec^arded it with increasingf disgust as it went 
 on. He heaps upon it such adjectives as ' devilish,' ' grimy,' 
 and ' rancid,' and says, * There are only four characters, to be 
 sure, but they are such a troop of swine ! ' In Huish he 
 has probably touched bottom in the possibilities of describ- 
 ing an unmitigated cad. In this connection a curious fact 
 may be noted, viz. the recurring allusions to certain wholly 
 bad men he had met in real life. He persuaded Fleeming 
 Jenkin against his will that such a man existed. Another 
 character in the same class is he who is described ic 
 
 U5 
 
THE FAITH OF R. L. STEVENSON 
 
 the lurid sketch A Character. By 1887 he seems to have 
 met two such men. In the Gilbert Islands he met another, 
 whom he describes as an incarnation of baseness. These 
 were to him hatefully impressive, with * a depravity beyond 
 measure depraved, a thirst after wickedness, the pure, dis- 
 interested love of Hell for its own sake.' 
 
 This lingering over the sheer nastiness of sin has been 
 commented upon, and indeed we are all thankful that there 
 is so little of it in his work. Yet whatever Art may have to 
 say, the moralist must be grateful for it. Era Angelico is 
 an eternally lovely soul, but the moral condition of the 
 world demands a man who can paint a devil. The devil- 
 pictures of some of the greatest geniuses in literature have 
 been failures when judged by the moralist's standard. 
 Milton's Satan is only too 'magnificent in sin'; Goethe's 
 Mephistopheles is so clever and interesting as almost to 
 justify his existence. Stevenson's devils are loathsome ; and 
 their sin is not only exceeding sinful, but utterly unpleasant. 
 We have the right to claim such work as showing genuine 
 moral purpose, though he may not have stated this to him- 
 self as a definite aim. His own conscience of evil is never 
 obtruded, but the rare confessions which we have are elo- 
 quent of its depth. Once, by an error of memory, he had 
 broken faith with one of his publishers, and it cut him to 
 the quick. He felt himself involved in dishonour, and he 
 could not sleep for the misery of the thought. 'You re- 
 member my lectures on Ajax, or the Unintentional Sin ? ' 
 he writes. ' Well, I know all about that now. Nothing 
 seems so unjust to the sufferer ; or is more just in essence.' 
 Again there is this, from one of the prayers : ' Help us to 
 look back on the long way that Thou hast brought us, on 
 ^he long days in which we have been served not according 
 to our deserts but our desires ; on the pit and the miry clay, 
 the blackness of despair, the horror of misconduct, from 
 146 
 
THE GIFT OF VISION 
 
 which our feet have been plucked out. For our sins for- 
 given or prevented, for our shame unpublished, we bless 
 and thank Thee, God.' These extracts throw some light 
 on his delineation of badness unrelieved by anything that 
 makes it attractive, and the following fragment of a fine 
 passage taken from his preface to Men and Boohs states his 
 attitude definitely : ' And when we find a man persevering 
 indeed, in his fault, as all of us do, and openly overtaken, as 
 not all of us are, by its consequences, to gloss the matter 
 over, with too polite biographers, is to do the work of the 
 wrecker, disfiguring beacons on a perilous seaboard.' 
 
 Not less noteworthy is his delight in moral beauty and 
 his power in depicting it. He took to heart Fleeming 
 Jenkin's reply to his proof that one man was irredeemably 
 bad : ' Yes, I 'm afraid that is a bad man. I wonder if it 
 isn't a very unfortunate thing for you to have met him . . . 
 this badness is such an easy, lazy explanation. Won't you 
 be tempted to use it instead of trying to understand people ? ' 
 One of the two men he could not forgive * was he who first 
 taught me, in my twenty-seventh year, to believe that it 
 was possible for a man to be evil with premeditation.' In 
 morals, the kind of realism which selects the unclean and 
 ugly for attention, is a most leprous spirit. Yet it is 
 always sure of an audience, for vice has a strong interest 
 of its own, and virtue has for some no beauty that they 
 should desire it. There is no diviner task than that of 
 making goodness appear fascinating, and changing from a 
 pious phrase to a vivid reality ' The Beauty of Holiness.' 
 That Stevenson himself felt this, there can be no question. 
 ' Love is so startlingly real ' in his view ' that it takes rank 
 upon an equal footing of reality with the consciousness of 
 personal existence. We are as heartily persuaded of the 
 identity of those we love as of our own identity.' And 
 again: 'Such things as honour and love are not only nobler 
 
 U7 
 
THE FAITH OF R. L. STEVENSON 
 
 than food and drink, but indeed I think we desire them 
 more, and suffer more sharply for their absence.' The artist 
 in him came to his aid in enforcing this, as well as the 
 converse doctrine. As many later extracts will show, he 
 succeeded in adding brilliance to the thought of goodness. 
 He did this by the air of chivalry with which he invested it. 
 He found his examples among knights and admirals ; and 
 in making himself the champion of righteousness he seems 
 to have sworn, like William the Conqueror, by the splendour 
 of God. Such a poem as Our Lady of the Snows gives this 
 impression at its full brilliance. His good men and women 
 are veritable saints in light, winsome and heroic both. This 
 in itself is no small matter; indeed it would be difficult 
 to exaggerate the value of this one service to morals. It 
 is not difficult to decry sin and to extol goodness, but too 
 often the result is but to make sin appear interesting and 
 goodness deadly dull. He who can succeed in making sin 
 distasteful and virtue not merely proper but fascinating 
 has done much for that healthful belief in life which lies at 
 the roots not only of morality but of faith. 
 
 Following up the gift of vision, we come finally to faith 
 itself, i.e. faith in the theoretical sense as distinguished from 
 the practical, in which it appears as faithfulness. Faith in 
 the former sense has been variously defined, but there is no 
 definition which comes so near exactness as that of ' seeing 
 the invisible ' — a new and higher range for the faculty of 
 vision. The controversy between faith and reason is an 
 unmeaning one. Faith is a kind of perception, the percep- 
 tion of a certain class of phenomena called the spiritual. 
 It neither contradicts reason nor transcends it, for the 
 objects of faith are actually there, and perception of what is 
 really there is part of reason. Thus faith is but the highest 
 exercise of the gift of vision. Such a view of faith has 
 important consequences, for if this be true it follows that a 
 148 
 
THE GIFT OF VISION 
 
 man who has cultivated his powers of vision with success 
 along all the lower lines, has at least the capacity for the 
 higher vision also. No man gifted with keen powers of 
 vision can justly complain that faith is a faculty in which 
 he is impotent. Thus it has seemed truest to Stevenson to 
 review in detail the gift of vision as exercised in regions 
 apparently remote from religion. A man's faith is but one 
 phase of his insight. He sees God with the same faculty 
 which reveals to him the other facts of life. Before we 
 concern ourselves with the details of what a man has seen 
 in the religious region, it is well to ascertain the way in 
 which he looks at things in general, and the power of seeing 
 them which he possesses. The blossoms of the tree of life 
 are curious and beautiful, but the roots are the essential tree. 
 It may be boldly asserted that every unprejudiced man 
 who looks searchingly and steadily at life shall sooner or 
 later see God. God is no phantasm ; He is there, and those 
 who fail to see Him, fail because they have not looked 
 fairly, or with sufficiently intense and patient gaze. Steven- 
 son, at least, had the reward of his search. Quotations 
 might be multiplied at great length, but those given in 
 Chapter i. are quite conclusive evidence that he saw God in 
 Nature and in his own life's experiences. True, it was 
 in the aspects of the world that the vision was revealed, 
 rather than apart from and beyond them ; yet it was enough 
 to persuade him that 'there is a manifest God for those 
 who care to look for Him.' At times the spectacle of the 
 world is all that is visible, and he cries : 
 
 *God, if this were enough, 
 That I see things bare to the buff . , , 
 God, if this were faith 1 ' 
 
 Again, the conflicting aspects of the natural world appear 
 to deaden for a time the vision of God : 
 
 149 
 
THE FAITH OF R. L. STEVENSON 
 
 * And methought that beauty and terror are only one, not two ; 
 And the world has room for lore, and death, and thunder, and dew ; 
 And all the sinews of hell slumber in summer air ; 
 And the face of God is a rock, but the face of the rock is fair.' 
 
 At all times the sense of mystery kept his vision from 
 over-familiarity, and even deprived it of some clearness of 
 outline which it might have had without sacrifice either of 
 truth or of reverence. Yet the vision was direct and 
 instinctive. He ridicules the man who counts it * a credit 
 to believe in God on the evidence of some crack-jaw phi- 
 losopher, although it is a decided slur to believe in Him on 
 His own authority.' His definition of Faith is explicit : 
 ' Faith is not to believe in the Bible, but to believe in God ; 
 if you believe in God, where is there any more room for 
 terror ? ... If you are sure that God, in the long run, 
 means kindness by you, you should be happy; and, if 
 happy, surely you should be kind.' He speaks, through the 
 mouth of the hero of his Merry Men, some words concerning 
 prayer which have an unusual wealth of significance : ' A 
 generous prayer is never presented in vain ; the petition 
 may be refused, but the petitioner is always, I believe, 
 rewarded by some gracious visitation. The horror, at least, 
 was lifted from my mind ; I could look with calm of spirit 
 on that great bright creature, God's ocean.' In these words 
 two things are plain. There is the belief in a direct and 
 personal contact with the Divine ; and there is the vision 
 of God through Nature. It is but one of countless instances 
 in which the eyes that knew so well their task of seeing the 
 bright spectacle of the world, had caught a glimpse beyond 
 the world of the King in His beauty. 
 
 150 
 
THE INSTINCT OF TRAVEL 
 
 CHAPTER IX 
 
 THE INSTINCT OF TRAVEL 
 
 The Instinct of Travel, like the Gift of Vision, is an element 
 in human nature which may be traced up from the physical 
 to the moral and spiritual regions of life. At first the moods 
 of Vision and Travel might seem to be opposed. The one 
 is passive, regarding life as a spectacle, the other active, 
 thinking of it as a campaign. It is undeniable that 
 Stevenson not only had sympathies with both moods, but 
 that he indulged both freely. Now he is artist, now 
 labourer; now French ideals claim him by their mere 
 picturesqueness, again he is the Scottish Puritan and 
 Calvinist, with nothing to be seen about him but the 
 conscience of work. 
 
 It would be easy to say simply that there were two 
 Stevensons, after the manner of Jekyll and Hyde, and the 
 question demanding answer would be which was the real 
 one. There are always the two classes of men, one of 
 whom writes the noun and adjective with capitals, the 
 other the verb — men exclusively of thought or feeling, and 
 men exclusively of action. To which of these classes did he 
 belong ? But a broad and hard division like this, while it 
 has great value for practical purposes, is useless in any 
 attempt at the exact analysis of a man's character. Human 
 nature is far subtler than any such imaginary pairs or groups 
 existing separately within one single personality. However 
 different a man's characteristics may be from one another, 
 
 151 
 
THE FAITH OF R. L. STEVENSON 
 
 they all intermingle as they grow together, and each affects 
 the others. It is this fact that gives its fascination to the 
 analysis of character. If it were not for the blending and 
 interaction of the various elements, character-study would 
 not be worth beginning. In Stevenson the two sides — the 
 seeing and the travelling — are both constantly present, and 
 they blend and modify each other in the most intimate 
 ways. The spectacular is seldom a mere background for 
 the practical, nor is the practical often quite forgotten in the 
 spectacular. So that the main criterion for judging which 
 of the two is the dominant spirit of his work and thought 
 must be the fall of emphasis, now on the one and again on 
 the other side. 
 
 Sometimes we have a mood in which the practical is 
 subordinated to the spectacular. In this mood, travel be- 
 comes for him simply a means of gratifying the lust of the 
 eyes, concerned not with reality but with imagination, in 
 which the whole actual working and suffering of the world 
 is but so much stage furniture. For himself, he is, so far 
 as practical ends are concerned, in ' a pleasing stupor,' like 
 those drivers he has described, ' who pass much of their 
 time in a great vacancy of the intellect, and threading the 
 sights of a familiar country.' He is without responsibilities, 
 living for the moment only, unfettered even by those unim- 
 portant projects (such as the resolution to go a given 
 distance in a given time, or to halt at a certain inn) which 
 become duties for the moment and are apt to grow into pain- 
 ful bonds of obligation to all but the few who can entirely 
 detach themselves. In this mood 'you forget the narrow 
 lane where all men jostle together in unchivalrous conten- 
 tion, and the kennel, deep and unclean, that gapes on either 
 hand for the defeated. Life is simple enough, it seems, and 
 the very idea of sacrifice becomes like a mad fancy out of a 
 last night's dream. Your ideal is not perhaps high, but it is 
 152 
 
THE INSTINCT OF TRAVEL 
 
 plain and possible. You become enamoured of a life of 
 change and movement and the open air, where the muscles 
 shall be more exercised than the affections.' At another 
 time travel quickens imagination to romance, but still with- 
 out awakening any conscience of action. * Clear vision goes 
 with the quick foot,' he tells us, and this clear vision of the 
 quick-footed not only shows us things in sane and natural 
 proportions ; it adds to them a positive charm by its sugges- 
 tions of hidden interesting qualities, and it quickens the 
 imagination by the very exercise of motion. In all such 
 moods we see him subordinating the practical to the 
 spectacular. Morals retain a picturesque interest only, and 
 spiritual things are valued only by their brilliance or dul- 
 ness as parts of the spectacle of the world. He himself is, 
 like his own Prince Florizel, ' the skilled expert in life . . . 
 the man who seemed, like a god, to know all things and to 
 have suffered nothing.' 
 
 This, however, is but an exceptional mood — a relapse from 
 that higher one which evidently represents his real and 
 deepest self. In this latter, the spectacular is subordinated to 
 the ^practical ; he no longer travels in order to see, but sees 
 in order to travel. *It is to this wandering and uneasy 
 spirit of anticipation that roads minister. Every little vista, 
 every little glimpse that we have of what lies before us, 
 gives the impatient imagination rein, so that it can outstrip 
 the body and already plunge into the shadow of the woods, 
 and overlook from the hill-top the plain beyond it, and 
 wander in the windings of the valley that are still far in 
 front. The road is already there — we shall not be long 
 behind.' Thus may vision be brought into the direct 
 service of travel, even on the material plane. When we 
 come to morals, this is even more profoundly true. A 
 German theologian has told us, in one of those pregnant 
 sentences whose meaning seems to grow continually fuller, 
 
 153 
 
THE FAITH OF R. L. STEVENSON 
 
 that the first thing requisite for gaining the victory over the 
 world is that we shall understand the lie of the world. 
 So, in the serious business of life, all clear vision is for the 
 sake of the quick foot. This is true along the whole line, in 
 Stevenson's judgment, and in the highest matter of faith it 
 is supremely true. Morality springs directly from faith. 
 There is no use of a belief in God, or almost none, except 
 to take that belief for a foundation on which to build your 
 sense of what is right, and your attempt to do it. In a 
 word, it was in its practical form, as faithfulness, that faith 
 chiefly interested Kobert Louis Stevenson. 
 
 In the most literal sense, the instinct of travel was strong 
 in Stevenson. There is no need for our enlarging on this 
 obvious fact, but it is so far-reaching and influential that 
 a few notes can hardly be omitted. To begin with, he 
 had the geographical sense and instinct, which manifested 
 itself in many different ways. As a child this was con- 
 stantly with him, adding a new interest to all his employ- 
 ments. The favourite Saturday walk in his boyhood was 
 to the docks at Leith, for he loved a ship * as a man loves 
 Burgundy or daybreak.' In earlier years, the invalid 
 child had lain in bed, interpreting the hills and hollows of 
 the white sheets as mountains and valleys in a broad 
 land ; or had looked upon his favourite garden as a con- 
 tinent ' cut into provinces ' by its beech hedge. Bosa quo 
 Locorum shows this geographical instinct in a religious 
 light in childhood. The Scottish metrical version of the 
 twenty-third psalm was for him a scripture of very tender 
 private interpretations. *" The pastures green " were repre- 
 sented by a certain suburban stubble-field, where I had 
 once walked with my nurse, under an autumnal sunset, on 
 the banks of the Water of Leith.' '"Death's dark vale" 
 was a certain archway in the Warriston Cemetery ; a formid- 
 able yet beloved spot.' 
 154 
 
THE INSTINCT OF TRAVEL 
 
 His love of maps was strong from first to last. 'The 
 author,' he tells us, ' must know his countryside, whether 
 real or imaginary, like his hand.' Accordingly, before he 
 wrote Treasure. Tsland, he made an elaborate and coloured 
 map of an island, and as he paused over that map the char- 
 acters seemed to peep out and pass to and fro until the tale 
 was made. Among the furniture of The Ideal Eottse, maps 
 have an unusual prominence, and charts with 'the reefs, 
 soundings, anchors, sailing marks and litlle pilot-pictures,' 
 and there are even to be tables for modelling imaginary or 
 actual countries in putty and plaster. The war game was 
 played at Davos, in an attic room upon whose floor ' a map 
 was roughly drawn in chalks of different colours, with moun- 
 tains, rivers, towns, bridges, and roads of two classes.' Not 
 less than in maps he delights in stringing together the names 
 of far-off places, especially when the names are sonorous, or 
 suggestive of curious and interesting things that have been 
 brought from far. In Will o' the Mill the miller tries to tell 
 Will where the river goes to, and opens his heart up for new 
 longings by the account of its way by cities and bridges, 
 through marshes and sands to the sea * where the ships are 
 that bring parrots and tobacco from the Indies.' ' Dollars 
 of mine,' says The Wrecker, 'were tacking off the shores of 
 Mexico, in peril of the deep and the guardacostas ; they 
 rang on saloon counters in the city of Tombstone, Arizona ; 
 they shone in faro-tents among the mountain diggings.* 
 The 'industrious pirate ' of the Moral EniUems daily sweeps 
 his telescope round the horizon ' from Hatteras or Matapan.' 
 The Child's Garden is full of allusions to distant lands. 
 Japan and Babylon, Tartary and California, all the width of 
 the world is there, and the whole book is a sort of children's 
 hymn of praise for the wide world. Indeed George Mac- 
 Donald's lines come to mind often as wo read Stevenson's 
 books : 
 
 165 
 
THE FAITH OF R. L. STEVENSON 
 
 * all wide spaces, far from feverous towns ! 
 
 Great shining seas ! pine forests ! mountains wild ! 
 Rock-bosomed shores ! rough heaths ! and sheep-cropt downs I 
 
 Vast pallid clouds ! blue spaces undefiled ! 
 Room ! give me room ! give loneliness and air 1 
 Free things and plenteous in your regions fair.' 
 
 In other ways, very delicately and often with extraordi- 
 narily powerful suggestion of the unexplored, he impresses us 
 with his sense of the width of the world. The present spot 
 whereon he stands is always seen in relation with other 
 places held apart from it by vast breadths of sea or land. 
 The quaintest of all instances that come to memory is that 
 verse from The Child's Garden : 
 
 * The rain is raining all around, 
 It raius on field and tree, 
 It rains on the umbrellas here, 
 And on the ships at sea.' 
 
 Nothing could surpass that coupling of the umbrellas and 
 the ships, in which we see the comfort and the adventure of 
 the world brought together under the dark but homely roof of 
 the clouds. Again he can detach himself from the spot, and 
 view Scotland from the outside, seeing it for the time 
 being purely with the eye of the geographer — ' this neck of 
 barren hills between two inclement seaways.' To him there 
 is no foreign land, * every place is a centre to the earth, 
 whence highways radiate or ships set sail.' The Marquesan 
 cemetery impresses him with the thought 'how far these 
 sleepers had all travelled, and from what diverse ports they 
 had set forth, to lie here in the end together.' On Pagopago 
 a bell rings for service, and he reminds us how various its 
 associations are — to the natives a new, strange, outlandish 
 thing; to the priests calling up memories of French and 
 Flemish cities, to himself ' talking of the grey metropolis of 
 the north, of a village on a stream, of vanished faces and 
 silent tongues.' 
 156 
 
THE INSTINCT OF TRAVEL 
 
 He was from first to last a great traveller. The nomadic 
 habit he declared to be part of himself, and regarded it as 
 the natural state to which mankind reverts on the slightest 
 provocation. By sea and land, with a canoe, with a donkey, 
 or tramping the roads with a knapsack, he is ever at his 
 best when journeying. The passion for exploring takes him 
 masterfully by the hand ; friendly voices call him further 
 and further into the unknown regions. The safe comfort 
 of the untravelled he mocks with delicious raillery : 
 
 ' The frozen peaks he once explored 
 But now he's dead and by the board ; 
 How better far at home to hare stayed. 
 Attended by the parlour maid.' 
 
 In more serious mood is Will o' the Mill, which many 
 critics have placed among his best achievements. It is the 
 study of a man who, living in a secluded spot, far from the 
 great activities of the world although on the highway that 
 leads to them, is often tempted to the adventure of travel, 
 yet always hangs back, hesitates, and stays in his place. The 
 increasing formality, the sense of unnatural and even in- 
 human aloofness in the man, alienates the reader more and 
 more as the tale proceeds. In Stevenson's hands it could 
 not have been otherwise. The travelling life is for him the 
 only normal type. His delight in seafaring was inherited. 
 His grandfather, we are told, so loved his annual cruise 
 among the Northern Lights that, when told that his death 
 was fast approaching, he seemed to feel more keenly the loss 
 of the voyage than the coming of the last enemy. The 
 chief delight of Stevenson's own early days was that same 
 cruise in the Pharos. Many years later we still find him 
 enjoying above all things the excitement of a landfall 
 among the islands of the South Seas ; and declaring that 
 even literary fame is * no good compared to a yacht.' 
 
 Walking is, however, the ultimate test for the instinct of 
 
 167 
 
THE FAITH OF R. L. STEVENSON 
 
 travel. Your steamer or Pullman car have many adventitious 
 elements of interest — the plain road is the joy of none but 
 the heaven-born traveller. Here again Stevenson is not 
 wanting. His essay on Walking Tours is proof of this, and 
 there is the inimitable conversation with the Commissary at 
 Chatillon: C. 'Why, then, do you travel?' R. L S. 'I 
 travel for pleasure.' G. (pointing to the knapsack, and 
 with sublime incredulity) ' With that ? Look here, I am a 
 person of intelligence ! ' Yet, in spite of the Commissary, 
 that word ' I travel for pleasure ' counts for much. It is 
 significant that to this delight in walking we owe the 
 Essay on Roads, which was one of his own chief favourites 
 among his writings, and which certainly exhibits some of 
 his most perfect work. In it he has caught the nomadic 
 spirit and has described it, giving literary expression to 
 the meaning of the road in a manner which is altogether 
 beyond praise. The following extracts are but a fragment 
 of one of the completest pieces of picturesque analysis in 
 the language : 
 
 ' Conspicuous among these sources of quiet pleasure (is) the 
 character and variety of the road itself, along which he takes his 
 way. Not only near at hand, in the lithe contortions with 
 which it adapts itself to the interchanges of level and slope, but 
 far away also, when he sees a few hundred feet of it upheaved 
 against a hill, and shining in the afternoon sun, he will find it 
 an object so changeful and enlivening that he can always 
 pleasurably busy his mind about it. He may leave the river- 
 side, or fall out of the way of villages, but the road he has 
 always with him ; and in the true humour of observation, will 
 find in that sufficient company. From its subtle windings and 
 changes of level there arises a keen and continuous interest, 
 that keeps the attention ever alert and cheerful. Every sensi- 
 tive adjustment to the contour of the ground, every little dip 
 and swerve, seems instinct with life and an exquisite sense of 
 balance and beauty. The road rolls upon the easy slopes of the 
 country, like a long ship in the hollows of the sea. . . . The 
 158 
 
THE INSTINCT OF TRAVEL 
 
 traveller is also aware of a sympathy of mood between himself 
 and the road he travels. We have all seen ways that have 
 wandered into heavy sand near the sea-coast, and trail wearily 
 over the dunes like a trodden serpent : here we too must plod 
 forward at a dull, laborious pace ; and so a sympathy is pre- 
 served between our frame of mind and the expression of the 
 relaxed, heavy curves of the roadway. . . . Something that 
 we have seen from miles back upon an eminence, is so long hid 
 from us, as we wander through folded valleys or among woods, 
 that our expectation of seeing it again is quickened into a 
 violent appetite, and as we draw nearer we impatiently quicken 
 our steps and turn every corner with a beating heart. It is 
 through these prolongations of expectancy, this succession of 
 one hope to another, that we live out long seasons of pleasure 
 in a few hours' walk. It is in following these capricious 
 sinuosities that we learn, only bit by bit, and through one 
 coquettish reticence after another, much as we learn the heart 
 of a friend, the whole loveliness of the country.' 
 
 The place which Travel has in his books is one of their 
 most constant and essential features. Wherever he is, his 
 thoughts are in some other place. At home, he v^istfully 
 dreams of the Antipodes ; in the Antipodes his heart is full 
 of the exile's longing for home. All his romances are 
 famous for their long sweeps of journey across Scotland or 
 England, or over seas. The titles of many poems — Songs of 
 Travel, The Song of the Road, The Vagabond, etc. — bear 
 witness to this; and one of the finest of his unfinished 
 stories is entitled The Great North Road. Eoadside inns are 
 often introduced, and always with a peculiar gusto. It is 
 true that the excessive indulgence in the delights of travel 
 lends sometimes to his tales a globe-trotting and restless 
 air, and threatens their artistic unity. He utilises the 
 distances of the world almost unfairly. When the ad- 
 ventures slacken and the pace threatens to slow down he 
 whisks you away to New York, or Fontainebleau, or Sydney. 
 The change acts like a new stimulus upon the book, and the 
 
 L 159 
 
THE FAITH OF R. L. STEVENSON 
 
 tale at once leaps. lu Prince Florizel we have travel gone 
 crazy. The Wrecker has scenes in San Francisco, Paris, 
 Midway Island, Honolulu, Edinburgh, Tai-o-hae, and 
 Fontainebleau ; and no novel has nerves that can stand 
 that amount of change in five-and-twenty chapters. The 
 Master of Ballantrae, with all its power and its magnificent 
 insight, and its sustained and even growing interest, still is 
 broken-backed: the Scottish and American parts, from 
 the point of view of literary art, fall asunder. Yet any 
 such defects are amply compensated by the magnificent 
 stride — the sense of distance and movement — which the 
 constant travelling imparts to his work. The Vagabond 
 gives the note of this in swinging lines : 
 
 ' Give to me the life I love, 
 
 Let the lave go by me ; 
 Give the jolly heaven above, 
 
 And the byway nigh me. . . . 
 Let the blow fall toon or late, 
 
 Let what will be o'er me ; 
 Give the face of earth around, 
 
 And the road before me.' 
 
 That note is sustained, and to read his books is to feel 
 an exhilaration like that of a swift walk through breezy 
 morning air. ^The valleys are but a stride to you; you 
 cast your shoe over the hill-tops ; your ears and your heart 
 sing; in the words of an unverified quotation from the 
 Scotch psalms, you feel yourself fit " on the wings of all the 
 winds" to "come flying all abroad." Europe and your 
 mind are too narrow for that flood of energy.' 
 
 160 
 
THE INSTINCT OF TRAVEL 
 
 CHAPTER X 
 
 THE INSTINCT OF TRAVEL {continued) 
 
 Just as the physical gift of vision passes over naturally 
 and unconsciously into mental and spiritual insight, so 
 does the physical urgency of travel pass into the inner life. 
 There it appears as a courageous doctrine which he took 
 with him throughout, and which largely determined his 
 energetic dealing with all problems, the doctrine of travel 
 for travel's sake. ' For my part, I travel not to go anywhere, 
 but to go. I travel for travel's sake. The great affair is to 
 move.' He moves accordingly — travels in the matter, as 
 the suggestive old ecclesiastical phrase has it — under the 
 prompting of ^ that divine unrest, that old stinging trouble 
 of humanity that makes all high achievements and all 
 miserable failure.' One of his subtlest essays in analysis is 
 Will o' the Mill, which, as we have seen, describes with 
 marvellous insight the inner life of one who hesitates ever 
 upon the brink of action, and who never steps forward either 
 into travel or love. For his own part, he is otherwise 
 minded. Love he regards as a voyage to the unknown and 
 lovely country of a woman's soul, and afterwards a journey 
 there (for there is the keeping in love as well as the falling 
 in love) through the years towards the still unattained ideal. 
 Similarly in all the other business of life, travel is the law : 
 ' The artist who says It will do is on the downward path.' 
 The true El Dorado is not ahead, but on the road — * to have 
 many aspirations is to be spiritually rich.' In fine, 'to 
 
 161 
 
THE FAITH OF R. L. STEVENSON 
 
 travel hopefully is a better thing than to arrive, and the 
 true success is to labour/ 
 
 In this doctrine there is involved a curious combination 
 of an instinctive fascination by the future, and a rational 
 distrust of it. He hears continually the call of the time to 
 come, the Song of the Morrow ; yet the mysterious fable to 
 which he has given that title is heavy with sinister antici- 
 pation. Compare it with Montaigne's lightsome essay on 
 To-morroio's a New Day — an essay with which Stevenson 
 was doubtless familiar, — and you feel an ominous sense of 
 the inevitable tragedy of life. In plain words, he asks, in 
 the person of Florizel, 'Is there anything in life so dis- 
 enchanting as attainment ? ' and declares success to be 
 impossible for man upon this earth ; we are not intended to 
 succeed. Nothing is commoner in his letters than those 
 touches for which every earnest worker loves him, in which 
 he describes himself as pursuing an ideal which he can 
 never quite reach; and with him the result is not the 
 usual wailing confession of failure, but the acceptance of 
 failure only to glorify it with a new and altogether health- 
 ful meaning. ' Our business in this world,' he tells us, ' is 
 not to succeed, but to continue to fail, in good spirits.' 
 When the end shall come he is content with this for his 
 epitaph, ' Here lies one who meant well, tried a little, failed 
 much,' and ' there goes another Faithful Failure ! ' 
 
 It is bold teaching, and in truth the doctrine is only a 
 
 safe one for the strenuous. There are plenty of us who 
 
 would willingly believe it, and in the strength of that 
 
 belief accept the situation and consent to fail. For all such, 
 
 a hopeless lapse to pessimism is the inevitable result, and 
 
 they will find words of his to confirm it : 
 
 ' On every hand the roads begin, 
 And people walk with zeal therein ; 
 But wheresoe'er the highways teud, 
 Be sure there 's nothing at the end.' 
 162 
 
THE INSTINCT OF TRAVEL 
 
 Yet those who find pessimism in A Christmas Sermon, the 
 essay which most carefully expounds the doctrine of 
 failure, have read it to little purpose. For the strenuous^/ 
 there is no defeat, and Stevenson, with all his theory of 
 failure, never consents to fail. He knows, like St. Paul, that at 
 no future time shall he be able to boast that he has already 
 attained, or is already perfect. Yet he turns back with 
 undeadened enthusiasm to the gallant task of life in the 
 present hour, and accepts the 'glory of going on,' for his 
 never-failing and sufficient reward. ' God forbid it should 
 be man that wearies in well-doing, that despairs of un- 
 rewarded effort, or utters the language of complaint. Let 
 it be enough for faith, that the whole creation groans in 
 mortal frailty, strives with unconquerable constancy : surely 
 not all in vain.* 
 
 This view of life throws light upon Stevenson's sayings 
 about immortality. His doctrine of travel for travel's sake, 
 with its accompanying disparagement of success, goes with 
 an extreme objection to the hope of reward as an incentive 
 to labour. ' The soul of piety was killed long ago by that 
 idea of reward' he affirms. 'Nor is happiness, whether 
 eternal or temporal, the reward that mankind seeks. 
 Happinesses are but his wayside campings ; his soul is in 
 the journey.' He hates working for money, he holds all 
 racing ' as a creature of the devil,' and discounts even the 
 desire for fame as the ruling motive of heroic deeds. In- 
 deed even 'To ask to see some fruit of our endeavour is 
 but a transcendental way of serving for reward.' 
 
 It would not be difficult to show that there is another 
 side to this question. Life is a very complicated engage- 
 ment, and among the many motives to noble deeds, that of 
 reward plays no mean part. Since good conduct, and still 
 more good character, is so very difficult to achieve, we 
 cannot afford to discard any of ito incentives ; and it were 
 
 163 
 
THE FAITH OF R. L. STEVENSON 
 
 wiser to take our stand on the simple human ground of 
 Shakspeare's Cynibeline : 
 
 'Fear no more the heat of the sun, 
 Nor the furious winter's rages ; 
 Thou thy worldly task hast done, 
 Home art gone, and ta'en thy wages.* 
 
 Yet those who are least inclined to agree with Stevenson 
 in his view of reward may still appreciate and admire the 
 spirit of which it is the outcome. It can do none of us 
 any harm to have our attention recalled at times from the 
 future to the present, and to be told emphatically that 
 energetic living is good enough in itself without a bribe. 
 As for immortality, while there are passages in which his 
 objection to serving for hire leads him to discount it, there 
 are many other passages in which it is presupposed and 
 accepted as that to which life leads on its travellers. His 
 general attitude to the whole question is summed up in 
 one memorable sentence of his Memories arid Portraits, ' To 
 believe in immortality is one thing, but it is first needful 
 to believe in life.' 
 
 The first result of the Instinct of Travel with Stevenson 
 is seen in that demand for immediacy which was always so 
 imperative with him. In his novels the lapse of time is 
 hardly noticed. Few of his characters change very materially, 
 nor does age, in any one instance, really overtake the people 
 of his creation. The times given for the action in his four 
 plays are 48 hours; 10 hours; part of a day and night; 
 12 to 14 hours. This swiftness of thought and action is 
 unconsciously expressed in his insistence on compression 
 as the essential thing in writing, 'the note of a really 
 sovereign style.' He is always at his best when he feels 
 the jog of travel, not pausing long in passages of descriptive 
 information, but giving scenery and impressions in flashes, 
 as they appear to one moving swiftly. Will o' the Mill has 
 164 
 
THE INSTINCT OF TRAVEL 
 
 been several times alluded to. It is a great piece of work, 
 such as is possible only to high genius. It is his deliberate 
 attempt to live from within a character in which life runs 
 slow. Its want of spontaneity shows how impossible the 
 task was for him. 
 
 Immediacy is the word which perhaps better than any 
 other summarises the practical side of Stevenson's character. 
 The eagerness and forcefulness of his attack upon what- 
 ever thing it is that confronts him, is of the very essence 
 of the man. He refused to deaden his vitality by a 
 cautious calculation of consequences, remote or near. It 
 was the moment that called him to its duty or its pleasure, 
 and he rose at once to its summons. Of himself, as of 
 St. Ives, it could be said that he had never chosen the 
 cheap and easy — only that he had staked his life upon 
 the most immediate. Nothing strikes fire from the flint 
 more frequently in his books than this. When duty 
 presents an immediate challenge, the situation flashes out 
 into brilliance, and the very words seem to blaze. The 
 captain in the Fable despises the man who would omit 
 to wind up his watch upon a sinking ship. ' It is better,' 
 we are told in Aes Triplex, ' to lose health like a spendthrift 
 than to waste it like a miser. It is better to live and 
 be done with it than to die daily in the sick-room. By 
 all means begin your folio ; even if the doctor does not 
 give you a year, even if he hesitates about a month, make 
 one brave push and see what can be accomplished in a 
 week. It is not only in finished undertakings that we 
 ought to honour useful labour. A spirit goes out of the 
 man who means execution which outlives the most un- 
 timely ending. All who have meant good work with their 
 whole hearts, have done good work, although they may die 
 before they have the time to sign it. Every heart that has 
 beat strong and cheerfully has left a hopeful impulse 
 
 165 
 
THE FAITH OF R. L. STEVENSON 
 
 behind it in the world, and bettered the tradition of man- 
 kind.' Nothing that Stevenson ever wrote came more 
 direct from his heart than that, unless perhaps it was this, 
 concerning Walt Whitman : ' He treats evil and sorrow 
 in a spirit almost as of welcome ; as an old sea-dog 
 might have welcomed the sight of the enemy's topsails 
 off the Spanish Main. There, at least, he seems to say, 
 is something obvious to be done.' 
 
 It might be imagined that in his usage the principle of 
 immediacy has little to do with morality or religion, 
 and that what it has to do with them is mostly wrong. 
 He has a word of praise for impudent daring and instant 
 retaliation ; he almost forces sympathy for Deacon Brodie, 
 who 'felt it great to be a bolder, craftier rogue than the 
 drowsy citizen ' ; he has something approaching admiration 
 for the tattooed white man of Ua-pu, who had so un- 
 hesitatingly obeyed his love for an island princess as to 
 submit to the torture of tattooing that he might have her 
 for his wife. Mr. Loudon Dodd commits himself to enter- 
 prises which on the large scale are mischievous, quieting 
 his conscience with the thought that he is doing it for 
 his poor friend Jim Pinkerton; 'this is a poor, private 
 morality, if you like,' he truly confesses, 'but it is mine, 
 and the best I have.' Yet in all such instances there is an 
 underlying quality which is good, and from which much 
 goodness springs. It is the quality which Browning im- 
 mortalises in The Statue and the Bust, and without which no 
 man may enter the heaven of * the soldier saints who, row 
 on row, burn upward each to his point of bliss.' The 
 quality of immediacy has thus a certain claim to virtue in its 
 own right, dangerous and uncertain though its action may 
 often be. It at least saves a man from the tamer immor- 
 ality of accepting the universe without thinking about right 
 or wrong at all. Tt saves a man from the opposite 
 166 
 
THE INSTINCT OF TRAVEL 
 
 temptation, yielding to which ' the ingenious human mind, 
 face to face with something it downright ought to do, does 
 something else.' It never, even at its worst, approaches the 
 level of those who give themselves solemnly to dissipation 
 * with a perverse seriousness, a systematic rationalism of 
 wickedness that would have surprised the simpler sinners 
 of old.' On the other hand, enlisted on the better side, it 
 guides men to the right course in many a situation. ' He who 
 temporises with his conscience is already lost,' he warns us ; 
 and a golden rule of his was, ' When you are ashamed to 
 speak, speak up at once.' We see in Carthew, how the 
 broken gentleman finds himself again when in the squad of 
 navvies he is face to face with work that must be done 
 instantly, with no time left for asking whether it were 
 necessary. In Christian ethics there is ever a double duty, 
 Christianity trains men's eyes upon the far-off ideal, and 
 vet commands them to lay hold upon the nearest duty. 
 Either, if alone, gives but faulty and imperfect result. 
 Of Stevenson it certainly cannot be said that he neglected 
 the long results of conduct ; but in a time of many 
 theories and much speculating by people who do not commit 
 themselves to action, he has done a still higher service by 
 calling attention in so clear a voice to what another has 
 called ' the commanding immediacy of life.* 
 
 It was largely this delight in immediacy which developed 
 in Stevenson his interest in war, and that soldier spirit 
 which is so remarkable in him. True, he does not seem, at 
 first sight, a likely type of military man. That weak body, 
 which kept so many of his days in silence and inaction, 
 might have seemed to close for him all chances of active 
 service, and to turn him to quieter thoughts. Yet in this 
 region he claimed his inheritance all the more imperiously 
 because it seemed beyond his reach. The lifelong fight 
 with illness and weakness of body became in his hands an 
 
 167 
 
THE FAITH OF R. L. STEVENSON 
 
 accepted campaign and warfare. In early childhood we 
 find him girded with a little sword. When made to wear 
 a shawl above the sword, he was distressed by the un- 
 soldierly uniform, until a new interpretation comforted 
 him — * Do you think it will look like a night-march ? ' 
 That was exactly the problem of life for him — to translate 
 the careful and darkened journey of the invalid into a 
 night-march, the shawl into a martial cloak. The metaphor 
 remained. When he is nearing forty he writes that the 
 ill-health with which he has to struggle is ' an enemy who 
 was exciting at first, but has now, by the iteration of his 
 strokes, become merely annoying and inexpressibly irk- 
 some.' Still nearer the end he writes to Meredith: 'For 
 fourteen years I have not had a day's real health. ... I 
 have written in bed, and written out of it, written in 
 hemorrhages, written in sickness, written torn by coughing, 
 written when my head swam for weakness ; and for so long, 
 it seems to me, I have won my wager and recovered my 
 glove. . . . The battle goes on — ill or well, is a trifle ; so as 
 it goes. I was made for a contest, and the Powers have so 
 willed that my battlefield should be this dingy, inglorious 
 one of the bed and the physic bottle.* 
 
 His spirit of soldierhood was, however, by no means 
 confined to any one campaign. His whole heart was in 
 soldiering, and there are few of his romances in which he 
 does not fight battles vicariously in the persons of his 
 heroes. Those are always brilliant passages in which 
 fighting is described. Sometimes, as we have already seen, 
 they are gruesome and sanguinary, but always they are full 
 of gusto, and the sheer delight in fighting for fighting's 
 sake. His theory of the brave deeds of the English 
 admirals is that they fought their actions because they 
 had an inclination that way, and it is a theory which he 
 counts true and wholesome. 
 168 
 
THE INSTINCT OF TRAVEL 
 
 Thus it came to pass that the whole of life to him wore a 
 military aspect, and in that aspect we have both brilliance 
 and immediacy at their keenest. Life, in his view of it, 
 was ' an affair of cavalry ' — ' a thing to be dashingly used 
 and cheerfully hazarded.' He lived, and cried aloud to us 
 all to live, to the music of bugles, and on the point of 
 instant engagement. It was in this sense that he welcomed 
 ' the harsh voice of duty,' and watched for ' the bright face 
 of danger.' In his one touch of actual warfare, when in 
 Samoa he rode for the first time to a field where troops 
 were gathered for battle, his spirits rose to a wild exhilara- 
 tion — ' War is a huge entrainement ; there is no other tempta- 
 tion to be compared to it, not one. . . . We came home like 
 schoolboys, with such a lightness of spirits, and I am sure 
 such a brightness of eye, as you could have lit a candle at.' 
 
 As in the treatment of the general subject of immediacy, 
 
 so in this particular phase of it, there may or there may 
 
 not be any definite ethical quality. The disreputable 
 
 Deacon Brodie asks, ' Shall I have it out and be done with 
 
 it ? ... to carry bastion after bastion at the charge — there 
 
 were the true safety after all ! ' There is nothing very lofty 
 
 in that. But the immediacy of war has given him some 
 
 passages than which nothing that he has done is more 
 
 characteristic of his faith. The first is from Our Lady 
 
 of the Snows : 
 
 ' Forth from the casemate, on the plain 
 Where honour has the world to gain, 
 Pour forth, and bravely do your part, 
 Oh knights of the unshielded heart 1 
 Forth and forever forward ! — out 
 From prudent turret and redoubt, 
 And in the mellay charge amain, 
 To fall but yet to rise again I 
 Captive 1 ah, still, to honour bright, 
 A captive soldier of the right ! 
 Or free and fighting, good with ill ? 
 Unconquering but unconqnered still I ' 
 
 169 
 
THE FAITH OF R. L. STEVENSON 
 
 The second, given only in the Lift, is there entitled Envoy 
 to No. XXV, of Songs of Travel ('God, if this were 
 enough ') : 
 
 * Wanted Volunteera 
 To do their best for twoscore years I 
 A ready soldier, here I stand, 
 Primed for thy command, 
 With burnished sword. 
 If this be faith, Lord 
 Help Thou mine unbelief 
 And be my battle brief.' 
 
 Precious as the doctrine of immediacy is, it is yet the 
 easier part of life to which it guides us. At the moment, 
 there is always 'something obvious to be done.' To do 
 that gallantly, so as to bring picturesqueness to the aid of 
 action, is a great thing. But there is a greater thing still 
 awaiting us in the longer and quieter tasks which demand 
 patience as well as attack. It is not enough to start the 
 journey with brilliant occasional rushes. We have yet to 
 learn to live and labour strenuously and with hope. Thus 
 the Instinct of Travel leads on to a further stretch of 
 practical doctrine. 
 
 The great word for this as for the former travel-doctrine 
 is Vitality. ' Everything 's alive,' shouts Archie in Weir of 
 Hermiston, ' thank God, everything 's alive ' ; and Stevenson 
 is with him there. In Michael Augelo's art, it is 'the 
 latent life ' that he admires, ' the coiled spring in the sleep- 
 ing dog,' the marble that 'seems to wiinkle with a wild 
 energy.' He prefers life to art, or even to ease and pleasure, 
 and delights in poignant experience of any kind. He 
 prefers, as one of the Letters has it, peril to annoyance, and 
 fear to ill-humour. Even in revolt, so long as a man is a 
 'vital sceptic' it is well; and indeed it was to this that he 
 owed his own deliverance. Of all maladies he counts that 
 of not wanting the worst ; of all men he is the most pitiable 
 170 
 
THE INSTINCT OF TRAVEL 
 
 who is * born disenchanted,' and for whom there seems not 
 to be ' even one thing needful.' In Aes Triplex and Crahhed 
 Age and Youth he protests against paralysing life and its 
 present desires by brooding on the thought of death, or 
 checking the energies of youth by too minute a preparation 
 for the days of age. Let a man take the risk of living 
 while he is at it; let him wade deep in the tide of life. 
 Sooner or later age and death will have their way with 
 him, meanwhile there is the glowing hour. * By managing 
 its own work, and following its own happy inspiration, 
 youth is doing the best it can to endow the leisure of age. 
 A full, busy youth is your only prelude to a self-contained 
 and independent age; and the muff inevitably develops 
 into the bore.' ' Every bit of brisk living, and above all if 
 it be healthful, is just so much gained upon the wholesale 
 filcher, death.' In this fashion does the image of life as a 
 road on which it is man's business to travel from the cradle 
 to the grave, lead to the dominating principle ' Live while 
 you live.' It is, as he understands it, a very different 
 maxim from that with which the fool encourages his heart 
 to its destruction — * Let us eat and drink, for to-morrow we 
 die.' Eor Stevenson life is far more than meat and drink ; 
 
 ' Since I am sworn to live my life 
 And not to keep an easy heart, 
 Some men may sit and drink apart, 
 I bear a banner in the strife.' 
 
 'Vital, that's what I am at, first: wholly vital, with a 
 buoyancy of life.' 
 
 The principle of ' living while we live ' may be applied in 
 either of two apparently opposite senses. It may be a plea 
 for idleness or a plea for work. With Stevenson it was 
 both. Just as it is only those who have travelled far that 
 can appreciate the wayside rest upon a mossy bank, or the 
 evening by the fireside of the inn, so he knew the delight of 
 
 171 
 
THE FAITH OF R. L. STEVENSON 
 
 idleness as none know it who are not also strenuous. Yet it 
 was not only for the pleasure of it, but as a real department 
 of vitality, that he advocated idling. People who cannot idle 
 miss something of the meaning of life. *We are in such 
 haste to be doing, to be writing, to be gathering gear, to 
 make our voice audible a moment in the derisive silence of 
 eternity, that we forget that one thing, of which these are 
 but the parts — namely, to live.' To such persons 'some- 
 thing to do ' has become the enemy of joy, business habits 
 a menace to the soul, and hurry but a token of their lack 
 of faith. * Extreme busyriess, whether at school or college, 
 kirk or market, is a symptom of deficient vitality; and a 
 faculty for idleness implies a catholic appetite and a strong 
 sense of personal identity.' To imagine that the world 
 demands unremitting labour, and that duty allows of no 
 relaxations, is to take ourselves far too seriously. * Atlas 
 was just a gentleman with a protracted nightmare ! And 
 yet you see merchants who go and labour themselves into a 
 great fortune and thence into the bankruptcy court; . . . 
 and fine young men who work themselves into a decline, 
 and are driven off in a hearse with white plumes upon it.' 
 
 The Apology for Idlers, from which some of the passages 
 just quoted have been taken, goes further, and discourses 
 with great insight and wisdom upon the positive virtues of 
 idleness. The idler is a healthy-minded person. ' He has 
 had time to take care of his health and his spirits; he 
 has been a great deal in the open air, which is the most 
 salutary of all things for both body and mind.' He has 
 acquired a peculiar kind of wisdom, not elsewhere to be 
 found. ' While others behold the East and West, the Devil 
 and the Sunrise, he will be contentedly aware of a sort of 
 morning hour upon all sublunary things, with an army of 
 shadows running speedily and in many different directions 
 into the great daylight of eternity. The shadows and the 
 172 
 
THE INSTINCT OF TRAVEL 
 
 generations, the shrill doctors and the plangent wars, go 
 by into ultimate silence and emptiness ; but underneath all 
 this a man may see out of the Belvedere windows much 
 green and peaceful landscape ; many firelit parlours ; good 
 people laughing, drinking, and making love as they did 
 before the Flood or the French Kevolution ; and the old 
 shepherd telling his tale under the hawthorn.' 
 
 Yet the other way of living while you live was essenti- 
 ally his way. This, we take it, is what he means by 
 saying that he was never ' very fond of (what is technically 
 called) God's green earth.' If the choice were between 
 work and idleness as that which gives its essential meaning 
 to life, he would unquestionably have chosen work. No 
 prayer seems to come more directly from his heart than 
 this : ' Give us to go blithely on our business. Help us to 
 play the man; help us to perform the petty round of 
 irritating concerns and duties with laughter and kind faces ; 
 let cheerfulness abound with industry.* Any kind of labour 
 was precious in his sight. In Vailima we see him toiling 
 with equal eagerness in a dozen different directions, from 
 politics to pig-rearing, and from bush-clearing to writing 
 poetry. ' The tenacity of many ordinary people in ordinary 
 pursuits is a sort of standing challenge to everybody else. 
 If one man can grow absorbed in delving his garden, others 
 may grow absorbed and happy over something else. Not to 
 be upsides in this with any groom or gardener is to be very 
 meanly organised. A man should be ashamed to take his 
 food if he has not alchemy enough in his stomach to turn 
 some of it into intense and enjoyable occupation.' In this 
 spirit it is man's first duty to fight on until he dies ; and 
 the gallant fighter will die young, however old he be when 
 death sh;di overtake him. * Death has not been suffered 
 to take so much as an illusion from his heart. In the 
 hot-fit of life, a-tiptoe on the highest point of being, he 
 
 173 
 
THE FAITH OF R. L. STEVENSON 
 
 passes at a bound on to the other side. The noise of the 
 mallet and chisel is scarcely quenched, the trumpets are 
 hardly done blowing, when, trailing with him clouds of 
 glory, this happy-starred, full-blooded spirit shoots into the 
 spiritual land.' 
 
 A man's view of labour must be gathered chiefly from 
 the manner in which he faces the chosen work of his life. 
 In Stevenson's case we have copious materials for studying 
 his methods of literary work and his feelings regarding it. 
 On this he is more communicative than most writers ; and 
 his letters, especially the Vailima Letters, are full of refer- 
 ences to the subject. He makes no pretence of underrating 
 his diligence. Indeed, to vindicate it, he will even under- 
 rate his natural gifts. 'I frankly believe (thanks to my 
 dire industry) I have done more with smaller gifts than 
 almost any man of letters in the world.' 'The work I 
 have been doing the last twelve months (1892), in one 
 continuous spate, mostly with annoying interruptions and 
 without any collapse to mention, would be incredible in 
 Norway.' 
 
 First, there was the apprenticeship. Literature has to be 
 a trade before it can become an art, the student working 
 indefatigably at the mechanical technique of style before 
 he thinks of matter and creation. Stevenson, full from the 
 first of matter calling for expression, bowed his neck and 
 set himself to learn the trade of writing. Furnished with two 
 books, one to read and one to write in, he ' played sedulous 
 ape ' to an incredible number of authors, forcing himself to 
 imitate their style, until he had caught the secret of each. 
 It was a sure instinct that guided him to this, for no 
 amount of reading will so impress a style upon one as even 
 a little writing in imitation of it will do. But there are not 
 many writers who have patience for such toil, and the 
 result is a mastery of rhetoric which many will envy who 
 174 
 
THE INSTINCT OF TRAVEL 
 
 little dream that it is in large part the reward of long 
 drudgery. While still an apprentice he tried again and 
 again to get his work published, and had it refused. Even 
 the Essay on Roads was returned. Back he went to penny 
 note-books and drudgery once more, determined that if he 
 had not yet learned to write, he would learn. ' Never mind,' 
 says he in 1875, 'ten years hence I shall have learned, so 
 help me God.' 
 
 Apprenticeship over, the labour was in no measure re- 
 laxed. There is an almost envious admiration in his verses 
 to Doctor John Brown who, ' didnae fash himsel' to think ' : 
 
 * Ye stapped your pen into the ink, 
 An' there was Kab ! ' 
 
 With Stevenson it was very different. The Wrong Box 
 begins with a graphic account of the labours involved in 
 writing a work of fiction, which after all will serve but to 
 while away an hour for the reader in a railway train. 
 Having attained to the mastery over style, there is still 
 the matter which must be mastered afresh for each new 
 book. 'Neither clearness, compression, nor beauty of 
 language come to any living creature till after a busy and 
 prolonged acquaintance with the subject.' Even in fiction 
 he cannot make another end to a story, however distasteful 
 the natural end may turn out to be. ' That 's not the way 
 I write ; the whole tale is implied ; I never use an effect, 
 when I can help it, unless it prepares the effects that are to 
 follow ; that 's what a story consists in. To make another 
 end, that is to make the beginning all wrong.' So much 
 for his literary conscience concerning the matter of his 
 work. But his troubles with style were not over when he 
 had learned the art. There are times when he 'breaks 
 down at every paragraph,' and has to ' wring one sentence 
 out after another.' Few things, even in the Vailima Letters, 
 are more pathetic than this: *I must own that I liave 
 
 M 175 
 
THE FAITH OF R. L. STEVENSON 
 
 overworked bitterly — overworked — there, that 's legible. 
 My hand is a thing that was, and in the meantime so are 
 my brains.' His work discourages and disgusts him. He 
 took a month to two chapters of In the South Seas ; twenty- 
 one days to twenty-four pages of The Ehb Tide ; four days 
 to his preface to An Inland Voyage. He rewrote some 
 passages of his work four times over : he burned the entire 
 first draft of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, lest it should tempt 
 him, when a criticism by his wife had revealed a funda- 
 mental flaw in it. The Parable of the Talents was a 
 favourite Scripture with him, and all this was what he 
 understood that parable to mean. 
 
 * Of making books there is no end,' Stevenson quotes from 
 the ancient; and he puts the passage in a new light by 
 adding that the preacher ' did not perceive how highly he 
 was praising letters as an occupation.' Certainly he himself 
 had abundant opportunity of testing his loyalty to the pro- 
 fession for which he had risked everything. When those 
 trials were over which beset the entrance of all aspirants in 
 literature, writing became one of the chief joys of his exist- 
 ence. It is true that during the last months we have an 
 undertone of melancholy, and occasional acute fits of despond- 
 ency ; but that was when the breaking strain was on him, and 
 even then they are not the characteristic mood. Previously, 
 for many years, there had been growing a record of work 
 done under difficulties which it would be hard to parallel in 
 any literary biography. His health compelled him to travel, 
 and no one who has not had experience of it knows the 
 dead lift that writing comes to be when the mind is dis- 
 tracted and the body disturbed by strange surroundings and 
 constant change. Yet he worked on steadily, and every sort 
 of uncouth place served him for a study. The fight against 
 ill-health has been already described to us by himself ^ in 
 
 1 Page 168. 
 
 176 
 
THE INSTINCT OF TRAVEL 
 
 words modelled upon those of St. Paul when he tells the 
 story of his past conflicts. As blow after blow descends, we 
 watch anxiously, expecting to see him succumb and cease to 
 strive. But after each he rises, fighting against still more 
 impossible odds, with undiminished valour, and with ever 
 finer skill. When a temporary illness lays him on his back, he 
 writes in bed one of his most careful and thoughtful papers, 
 the discourse on The Technical Elements in Style. When 
 ophthalmia confines him to a darkened room, he writes by 
 the diminished light. When, after hemorrhage, his right 
 hand has to be held in a sling, he writes some of his Child's 
 Garden with his left hand. When the hemorrhage has been 
 so bad that he dare not speak, he dictates a novel in the 
 deaf-and-dumb alphabet. The final touch is added when we 
 find that at the age of thirty-nine, scrivener's cramp came 
 upon him in addition to all the rest, and forced him to write 
 by proxy, utilising the devoted and unfailing help of his 
 step-daughter, Mrs. Strong. After all this we must allow 
 his claim to have ' done perhaps as much work as anybody 
 else under the most deplorable conditions.' Scott himself, 
 after the crash, has not left behind him a more inspiring 
 example of indomitable strength of purpose. The two men 
 stand together and they stand almost alone, as types of that 
 splendid ignorance of the meaning of defeat on which 
 British men most pride themselves. Each new assault of 
 outrageous fortune they understand only as a challenge, 
 never as a doom. Destiny has ceased to be an external force 
 for them. They lay hands upon their doom and hold it 
 prisoner to their will within, while they push forward in 
 travel every step of which is heroic. In such circumstances 
 the journey has become a forced march through a dangerous 
 and distressful land. But they drive on undiscouraged, 
 with an unconquerable energy which shows the instinct 
 of travel at its bravest. 
 
 177 
 
THE FAITH OF R. L. STEVENSON 
 
 The principal expositions of his gospel of work are to be 
 found in Lay Morals^ and the Addresses to the Polynesian 
 students and chiefs. In the first of these he expounds his 
 favourite doctrine that the negative virtues are as nothing 
 in comparison with the positive. * Acts may be forgiven/ he 
 used to say, 'not even God himself can forgive the hanger- 
 back.' He did not admire the virtue of those who merely 
 stood still and refrained from evil. 'We are content/ he 
 says, 'to avoid the inconvenient wrong and to forgo the 
 inconvenient right with almost equal self-approval, until at 
 last we make a home for our conscience among the negative 
 virtues and the cowardly vices.' It is when protesting 
 against this that he gives us his boldest moral teaching, and 
 at the same time comes into close and conscious unison with 
 Jesus Christ. It was perhaps for this that Christ meant 
 most to him ; and it may even be said that it was by this that 
 Christ saved him. For it was on this doctrine that Christ 
 spoke many of His most strenuous and most heroic words — 
 words which never failed to appeal to Stevenson. If he missed 
 Christ as poet, he certainly found Him as hero, and in no 
 part of his work does he so frequently lay claim to his share 
 in Christ as in this. He refuses to be ' magnetised by the 
 ten commandments,' but he does not mean by that anything 
 of the decadent sort. On the contrary, he disparages them 
 rather because they are not sufficiently drastic. He hardly 
 admits that class of virtues to be virtues at all, nor does he 
 'care a straw for all the nots.* 'We are not damned for 
 doing wrong, but for not doing right ; Christ would never 
 hear of negative morality ; tJiou sJialt was ever his word, 
 with which he superseded thou shalt not' So he tells us in 
 his Christmas Sermon, and goes on to dwell at length on the 
 dangers of defiling our imagination, and introducing into our 
 judgments of sinners a secret element of gusto, when we 
 make our thoughts on morality centre in forbidden acts. 
 178 
 
THE INSTINCT OF TRAVEL 
 
 Quoting Christ elsewhere he writes, * " Thou shalt not " is 
 but an example ; " thou shalt ' is the law of God.' * The sins 
 of omission are in my view the only serious ones ; I call it 
 my view, but it cannot have escaped you that it was also 
 Christ's.' 'A kind of black, angry look goes with that 
 statement of the law of negatives. " To love one's neighbour 
 as oneself" is certainly much harder, but states life so much 
 more actively, gladly and kindly, that you can begin to see 
 some pleasure in it ; and till you can see pleasure in these 
 hard choices and bitter necessities, where is there any good 
 news to men ? It is much more important to do right than 
 not to do wrong ; further, the one is possible, the other has 
 always been and will always be impossible ; and the faithful 
 design to do right is accepted by God ; that seems to me to 
 be the Gospel, and that was how Christ delivered us from 
 the Law. ... It is your business, (1) to find out what is 
 right in any given case, and (2) to try to do it ; if you fail 
 in the last, that is by commission, Christ tells you to hope ; 
 if you fail in the first, that is by omission, his picture of the 
 last day gives you but a black outlook' 
 
 That is the moral aspect of Stevenson's gospel of work. 
 To him, as to Thomas Carlyle, it was a gospel indeed ; and 
 while Carlyle's labour was generally a severe and sombre 
 ideal, Stevenson's was for the most part a source of gladness 
 and uplifting. It is true that one of the most perfect pieces 
 of portraiture he has given us is that of Weir of Hermiston 
 — ' On he went up the great bare staircase of his duty, un- 
 cheered and undepressed.' But that is by no means all he 
 has to say upon the subject. A story is told by his grand- 
 father in A Family of Engineers, which might stand as a 
 parable of the grandson's faith. On a foggy day, a ship, 
 laden with stones for the Bell Eock Lighthouse, was steering 
 straight upon the rock, and would inevitably have been 
 destroyed, when the sailors heard the sound of the smith's 
 
 179 
 
THE FAITH OF R. L. STEVENSON 
 
 hammer and anvil right ahead, and in the nick of time put 
 the helm about and saved her. In like manner did work 
 save Stevenson's ship of life, and it saved his faith as well. 
 Faith ever came to him essentially as faithfulness. Like 
 James the Apostle, he found his faith better expressed in 
 works than in theories. To exercise his powers to the full, 
 to live at the utmost stretch and tension for such right ends 
 of living as were clear to him, that was his way of approach- 
 ing religion. Vitality and whole - heartedness in one's 
 attack upon the practical problem of life — so far he could 
 always see plainly. 
 
 But to see plainly so far is to be on the way to see more. 
 To the end of time the great words remain true : If any 
 man willeth to do His will, he shall know of the doctrine. 
 There is no hope of a man's finding a faith that will satisfy 
 him until he is prepared to do the nearest duty that he 
 knows. There are some who seem to think that faith in 
 God is a special faculty, wholly disconnected from the rest 
 of life, so that a man may be a good student, or an able 
 merchant, or an intelligent craftsman, and yet lack the 
 power to be a religious man. It is even supposed that one 
 may be faithful in morals and may succeed in obeying the 
 demands of conscience, while still he is doomed to spiritual 
 ineffectiveness and darkness. Nothing could be more untrue 
 to facts. There is no such thing as a religious faculty 
 which men highly gifted in other departments of life may 
 wholly lack. The religious faculty is identical with the 
 faculty for study or for any other kind of work. If a man 
 have proved that he can succeed in any of them, he may 
 take it for certain that he can, if he will, succeed in the 
 religious life also. His capacity for success in religion is 
 but the application of his ordinary human powers to another 
 set of facts. He who has it in him efficiently to serve his 
 employers, or his conscience — or for that matter the devil — 
 180 
 
THE INSTINCT OF TRAVEL 
 
 has it in him also to serve God. No man who does his daily 
 work strenuously and effectively as Stevenson did his, is 
 debarred from a strenuous and effective religious life. We 
 may go further, and say that he who does his daily work in 
 that fashion is already serving God. He may indeed be 
 unconscious of the fact, but if he remain faithful, and if no 
 perverse theory of life be allowed to warp his conscience and 
 dim his spiritual vision, he shall sooner or later discover 
 the higher service. Of Stevenson this was magnificently 
 true. Taking for his rule of life the Parable of the 
 Talents, he could not but be aware of a Lord who had com- 
 mitted them to his charge. It was not his part to speculate 
 about God, but to obey Him — to think and act so that He 
 would approve. Thus, behind the energies of his life there 
 was the consciousness of the unseen Master of life ; behind 
 his faithfulness there was faith. It is true that none of 
 God's servants always realises the presence of the Master. 
 To all of them, too often, He is as a man journeying in a far 
 country. But the realisation of God near and not far off is 
 ever possible ; and the test of faithfulness, in the religious 
 sense, is the constancy and vividness of that realisation. 
 Stevenson certainly wrought out his life-work under a high 
 and solemn sense of the great Taskmaster's eye. Often he 
 realised it so keenly as to enter into that divine fellowship 
 of labour in which a man can say my Father worheth hitherto 
 and I work. It is this that he expresses in the song which 
 is at once the most bracing and the most religious of all his 
 utterances : 
 
 ' to be up and doing, 
 Unfearing and unshamed to go 
 In all the uproar and the press 
 About my human business ! . . . 
 For still the Lord is Lord of might ; 
 In deeds, in deeds he takes delight ; 
 The plough, the spear, the laden barks, 
 The field, the founded city, marks ; 
 
 181 
 
THE FAITH OF R. L. STEVENSON 
 
 He marks the smiler of the streets, 
 The singer upon garden seats ; 
 He sees the climber in the rocks : 
 To him, the shepherd folds his flocks , . . 
 Those he approves that ply the trade, 
 That rock the child, that wed the maid, 
 That with weak virtues, weaker hands. 
 Sow gladness on the peopled lands, 
 And still with laughter, song and shout, 
 Spin the great wheel of earth about.' 
 
 About such an Instinct of Travel, and its consequent 
 association with wandering vagabonds and gipsies, ordinary 
 folk who bide at home at ease are likely to feel a certain 
 sense of homelessness, both in regard to its physical and its 
 moral aspects. It is very breezy and healthful, but there is 
 a bleakness about the open air if there be no fireside to 
 return to at nightfall. We may admit that ' to travel hope- 
 fully is a better thing than to arrive'; and yet, if there never 
 is any arriving, it grows difficult to travel hopefully. Must 
 we then consider this spirit of wandering as part of an 
 unhomely and fantastic strain in his nature, which so far 
 keeps him aloof from us ? To some extent it is true that 
 he professes no desire to arrive, and cherishes no thoughts 
 beyond travelling for travel's sake. In his intellectual 
 point of view this is entirely the case. To try to pin him 
 down to any closed and final theory of life would be to 
 show oneself incompetent to write a line about him. In his 
 thinking he is always aware of a further place to which the 
 road is leading, and he plainly leaves himself open for 
 advance. The theories he may express are but the wayside 
 inns where he tarries till he must start again on new 
 adventures. This is why it is so impossible to allocate for 
 him a defined and classified place among the doctrines. He 
 is essentially a traveller, and our conception of his faith is 
 that of one upon whom the Spirit of the Lord has come 
 182 
 
THE INSTINCT OF TRAVEL 
 
 while he presses forward, and who travels as one of the 
 company of the sons of God. 
 
 Yet there is another side to his character, in virtue of 
 which he feels the discomfort of the open, and longs for the 
 warmth and kindliness of the chimney-corner. In many 
 passages of great tenderness this sentiment of home appears, 
 even in connection with physical travel. At the close of 
 the voyage he too grows weary of dipping the paddle, and 
 ready for home. ' You may paddle all day long ; but it is 
 when you come back at nightfall, and look in at the 
 familiar room, that you find love or death awaiting you 
 beside the stove ; and the most beautiful adventures are not 
 those we go to seek.' How passionately the longing could 
 possess him, is familiar to all those who have read the 
 thoughts of home from abroad in Songs of Travel and 
 Vailima Letters. In a deeper sense, as it concerned the 
 inward life, the same thing is true. Apparently an unrest- 
 ing traveller in the spiritual country, he yet had come to 
 rest upon certain great convictions, in which his spirit had 
 its home. These he expresses often with an evident sense 
 of relief and the comfortable peace of assurance. In the 
 longest journey of all, the lifelong journey, the same 
 shadowy but hospitable and firelit sweetness awaits its 
 close. The Covenanters pass the dark river amid a 'storm 
 of harsh and fiercely jubilant noises ' which add a tenfold 
 peacefulness to the shores which they had reached. Tor 
 himself, who does not know the Requiem which, written 
 seven years before his death, was inscribed upon his tomb- 
 stone at the last : 
 
 ' Under the wide and starry sky, 
 Dig the grave and let me lie. 
 Glad did I live and gladly die, 
 And I laid mo down with a will 
 
 183 
 
THE FAITH OF R. L. STEVENSON 
 
 This be the verse you grave for me ; 
 Here he lies wJiere he longed to be ; 
 Home is the sailor, home from sea, 
 And the hunter home from the hill.' 
 
 Such words imply more than they express ; perhaps they 
 mean more than the speaker knows. In them we hear 
 echoes of a great voice that calls home the thinker to faith, 
 the straggler to achievement, and the dead from dying to a 
 new life. And so there is arrival as well as travel, after 
 all. Indeed the two are combined in regard to faith, and 
 achievement, and that dimly seen but beautiful country 
 beyond the grave. In all these, the true life is at once 
 making for a land that is very far off, and yet at the same 
 time it is ever coming home. 
 
 184 
 
SYMPATHY AND APPRECIATION 
 
 CHAPTEK XI 
 
 SYMPATHY AND APPRECIATION 
 
 We have endeavoured to depict a personality whose funda- 
 mental faculties were vision and travel, and to show how 
 these expressed themselves in life, both physical and 
 spiritual. The task which now remains for us is that of 
 following the same faculties up into the ideals which chiefly 
 guided and ruled his character. How did they define for 
 him the chief duties of man ? What was the message 
 which he proclaimed to the world by his teaching and his 
 life ? In a word, what did life essentially mean to him, 
 as vision and travel wrought out its meaning ? 
 
 First of all, as it concerned others, the meaning of life, 
 and the message he learned and delivered, may be summed 
 up as sympathy and appreciation. We have seen how 
 strongly the spectacle of the world appealed to him. Life, 
 at his command, becomes pageantry at times, and the figures 
 of history or of experience march past our wondering eyes 
 at the bidding of a consummate master of spectacle. We 
 have noted also the geographical sense, which feels the 
 width of the world, delights in sky-room and sea-room, and 
 the broad stretch of the peopled lands ; and which keeps 
 him in every place aware of his relation to all other places. 
 Every one must have noted those frequently recurring 
 catalogues in which he brings together things and persons 
 apparently unrelated. Now it is ' Books, and my food, and 
 
 186 
 
THE FAITH OF R. L. STEVENSON 
 
 summer rain'; again 'the State, the Churches, peopled 
 empires, war and the rumours of war, and the voices of the 
 Arts.' On the world's great floor we see with one sweep 
 of the eye troops swaying hither and thither in battle, 
 astronomers finding new stars, actors performing in lighted 
 theatres, and people being carried to hospitals on stretchers. 
 In one of his prayers he contrasts the handful of men on 
 the island with the myriads of trees and the teeming fishes, 
 and prays that we may understand the lesson of the trees 
 and the meaning of the fishes : * Let us see ourselves for 
 what we are, one out of the countless number of the clans 
 of Thy handiwork. When we would despair, let us re- 
 member that these also please and serve Thee.' Thus does 
 he move about the crowded world, * catholic as none but the 
 entirely idle can be catholic,' yet busy with all the interests 
 of which his versatile nature is capable: sitting loose for 
 any wind to play upon, yet always ready to devote his whole 
 soul to the pursuit which has chanced to take his fancy. 
 
 This catholicity was due first of all to the many-sidedness 
 of his own nature. It was not merely that he was tolerant 
 of many different phases of life, and hospitable to all sorts 
 and conditions of interests, whether of occupation or of 
 companionship. He was himself alive at so many points, 
 that each new appeal to his interest awoke a whole-hearted 
 response. To travel about in the world was to pass through 
 a constant succession of congenial experiences, and to dis- 
 cover that there was hardly anything between north and 
 south which was really alien to him. He had little patience 
 with the cramping and narrowing devotion to any specialism, 
 whether in science or in nationality. He cherished no 
 reverence for the man who is above all others 'in the 
 classification of toad-stools, or Carthaginian history'; and 
 in the South Seas he repudiated the narrowness of British 
 prejudices, and gloried in the fact that his brotherhood with 
 186 
 
SYMPATHY AND APPRECIATION 
 
 the natives had given him the right to pronounce himself a 
 man of two civilisations. It is no idle curiosity, but the 
 extraordinary richness of his nature, which gives such 
 world-wide range to his interests, and such intensity to 
 each as it possesses him for the time being. As a youth, 
 he writes as if he were an aged man ; in middle age he 
 expresses the heart of a little child. Braxfield the man of 
 iron, and Prince Otto the man of shadows, claim an equal 
 share in his appreciation. 
 
 Catholicity is confessedly a dangerous principle in morals. 
 Those whose wide sympathies send them voyaging on many 
 seas need an unusually clear judgment to steer their vessel 
 past rocks. Stevenson's sanity and soundness are nowhere 
 more remarkable than in this. His catholic habit of mind 
 enables him to detect the one-sidedness of much popular 
 morality. He understands the error of those who denounce 
 any excess of natural appetite, but have a quite different 
 standard 'for all displays of the truly diabolic — envy, 
 malice, the mean lie, the mean silence, the calumnious 
 truth, the backbiter, the petty tyrant, the peevish poisoner 
 of family life.' This he has undoubtedly learned of 
 Christ, in whose treatment of moral questions there is a 
 standing protest against just that one-sidedness in moral 
 judgment, a protest which Christendom has not yet laid 
 to heart. He perceives, too, the relativity of morals, al- 
 though he does not allow that perception to blind him to the 
 seriousness of the issues involved. ' There is no quite good 
 book without a good morality,* he says regarding D'Artagnan, 
 'but the world is wide, and so are morals. ... Of two 
 readers, one shall have been pained by the morality of a 
 religious memoir, one by that of the Vicomte de Bragelonne. 
 And the point is that neither need be wrong. We always 
 shock each other, both in life and art.' He is equally alive 
 to the change and development in moral ideals which goes 
 
 187 
 
THE FAITH OF R. L. STEVENSON 
 
 on with the passing of time. Every student of history 
 knows how true this is of successive periods, one age having 
 strenuousness for its ideal virtue to the disparagement of 
 compassion; another, kindliness to the neglect of purity. 
 In the individual life it is the same : ' What was the best 
 yesterday, is it still the best in this changed theatre of a 
 to-morrow? Will your own past truly guide you in your 
 own violent and unexpected future ? ' This variableness of 
 conscience in its view of moral values appears most clearly 
 in the unceasing rivalry of Greek and Hebrew ideals — the 
 humane and gracious, as against the severe and ascetic. 
 The attraction of one or other of these depends upon the 
 point of view of the age or individual ; and the point of 
 view is determined by a thousand details of heredity, 
 education, society, and circumstances. The bigot takes 
 none of these into account in his harsh and damnatory 
 judgment ; the moral trifler pronounces one way as good as 
 another, and loses all sense of reality in moral distinctions. 
 From the form^^r danger Stevenson was saved by his 
 catholicity, from the latter by his moral earnestness. He 
 sets himself against the injustice of sweeping condemnations 
 by those who see only one side of the question and make 
 no allowance ; but he insists upon the reality of right and 
 wrong in a man's obedience or disobedience to the light he 
 has. Above all he falls back upon certain general principles, 
 which remain for our guidance through all perplexities and 
 dilemmas — chiefly the spirit of magnanimity and the spirit 
 of harmony. It can never be wrong in any circumstances, 
 he would have us believe, to choose the greater instead of 
 the meaner course; and if we find ourselves able to look 
 beyond the immediate demand for action in the moment, 
 let it not be to reward that we turn our eyes, but rather to 
 the relation of the proposed action to the general purpose 
 and balanced harmony of the life. 
 188 
 
SYMPATHY AND APPRECIATION 
 
 In religion, catholic sentiments are receiving a wider and 
 more sympathetic audience to-day than the conditions of 
 the past allowed. It is to be hoped, that as the smoke of 
 battle clears away, many of the soldiers may find that their 
 supposed enemies are but other regiments in one great 
 army, and that the difference between them is rather one 
 of uniform than of loyalty. So Stevenson most heartily 
 believed. In the tenderness of A Lowden Sabbath Morn there 
 is a wide catholicity. The tears are not far away while he 
 writes of the bell swinging in tho steeple, that calls the 
 scattered family to their meeting among the graves of the 
 churchyard, and 
 
 * Just a wee thing nearer brings 
 The quick an' deid.' 
 
 There is a great love for them all — the weary ploughman 
 'perplext wi' leisure'; the serious-faced congregation, with 
 their peppermints and southernwood, ' fisslin' for the text ' ; 
 the ' auld precentor hoastin' sair ' ; ay, and the * minister 
 himsel'.' Yet he cannot resist the chance of saying his say 
 about the sermon : 
 
 'Wi' aappy unction, how he burkes 
 The hopes o' men that trust in works, 
 Expounds the fau'ts o' ither kirks, 
 
 An' shaws the best o' them 
 No muckle better than mere Turks, 
 
 When a 's confessed o' them. 
 
 Be thankit ! what a bonny creed ! 
 What mair would ony Christian need ? — 
 The braw words rumm'le ower his heid, 
 
 Nor steer the sleoper ; 
 And in their restin' graves, the deid 
 
 Sleep aye the deeper.' 
 
 It is the same in France. When the parish priest would 
 have converted him to the Eoman faith, he defended liimself 
 
 189 
 
THE FAITH OF R. L. STEVENSON 
 
 ■ with the plea that they were all drawing near by different 
 sides to the same Friend and Father. * That, as it seems to 
 lay-spirits, would be the only gospel worthy of the name. 
 But different men think differently.' The most interesting 
 and the finest of all such pleas is told in the story of his 
 meeting with a Plymouth Brother in the Cevennes : — 
 
 * A step or two farther I was overtaken by an old man in a 
 brown nightcap, clear-eyed, weather-beaten, with a faint excited 
 smile. A little girl followed him, driving two sheep and a 
 goat; but she kept in our wake, while the old man walked 
 beside me and talked about the morning and the valley. It 
 was not much past six ; and for healthy people who have slept 
 enough, that is an hour of expansion and of open and trustful 
 talk. 
 
 ' " Connaissez-vous le Seigneur f " he said at length. 
 
 * I asked him what Seigneur he meant ; but he only repeated 
 the question with more emphasis and a look in his eyes denoting 
 hope and interest. 
 
 * " Ah," said I, pointing upwards, " I understand you now. 
 Yes, I know Him ; He is the best of acquaintances." 
 
 'The old man said he was delighted. "Hold," he added, 
 striking his bosom; **it makes me happy here." There were a 
 few who knew the Lord in these valleys, he went on to tell me ; 
 not many, but a few. "Many are called," he quoted, "and 
 few chosen." 
 
 *"My father," said I, "it is not easy to say who know the 
 Lord ; and it is none of our business. Protestants and Catholics, 
 and even those who worship stones, may know Him and be 
 known by Him ; for He has made all."' 
 
 The last sentence reminds us of the great reception-hall of 
 his Samoan house. There a broad staircase led up from 
 the centre of the hall to the upper floor, and on either side 
 of it, by the great posts which sprang from the bottom steps 
 to the roof, sat two Burmese idols, their hands folded as in 
 prayer. It was there that the family prayers were con- 
 ducted, and the thought of these Asiatic deities of former 
 days watching the prayers of the islanders, who had but 
 190 
 
SYMPATHY AND APPRECIATION 
 
 yesterday turned from their own idolatries to the worship of 
 Christ, is curiously symbolic. Stevenson had indeed * a 
 great and cool allowance for all sorts of people and opinions.' 
 In this, as in many other matters, he has sometimes used 
 unguarded and absolute expressions from which something 
 must be deducted. Yet when he speaks of a deeper and 
 essential unity beneath the surface differences in the 
 opinions of honest men, he utters a profound and most 
 precious truth. If in the present age there be one thing 
 which becomes daily more evident than any other, it is 
 that earnest thinkers who have counted themselves far 
 apart from each otlier in the past, are really very near at 
 hand; they often speak words that seem to differ, while 
 essentially they mean the same thing. 
 
 Interested in all the aspects of life, and catholic in his 
 temper while judging them, it was to be expected that he 
 should set peculiar value on the virtue of fairness in judg- 
 ment. He confesses that he has never found it easy to be 
 just, and it is a confession which every earnest man must 
 make. Almost anything is, in fact, easier. Severity on the 
 one hand appearing in the guise of faithfulness to conviction, 
 lax indifference on the other under the name of good-nature, 
 tempt us all from the straight path. Stevenson delightedly 
 recalls Montaigne's famous question, ' Shall we not dare to 
 say of a thief that he has a handsome leg ? ' But he knows 
 how difficult many conscientious persons will find it to 
 admit even that. Few passages that he ever wrote are 
 stronger or more far-seeing than Chapter iv. of Weir of 
 Hermiston, in which this difficulty is most finely expressed. 
 Archie is in miserable rebellion against the brutality of 
 his father's character. Glenalmond, that rare and delicate 
 spirit, replies : * We say we sometimes find him coarse, but 
 I suspect he might retort that he finds us always dull . . . 
 and I sometimes wonder whether you and I — who are a 
 
 N 191 
 
THE FAITH OF R. L. STEVENSON 
 
 pair of sentimentalists — are quite good judges of plain men.* 
 The great difficulty is in detachment. We are, to begin 
 with, identified with one party to the transaction. He tells 
 an amusing story of his grandmother which illustrates 
 our point. A pious crony of hers had fallen from an 
 outside stair, and Mrs. Stevenson recognised a special 
 providence in the circumstance that a baker had been 
 passing underneath with his bread upon his head. The 
 grandfather's remark was that he would like to know what 
 kind of providence the baker thought it. That was ever 
 Stevenson's point of view — to ask how a matter looked when 
 detached from the special preconceptions of one side ; how, 
 in short, it looked to the baker. 
 
 The most familiar example of this fairness in judgment is 
 afforded us by his views of the Samoan natives and of the 
 white men who dealt with them. It is not pity for them 
 that he chiefly feels or pleads for, but only just judgment. 
 He regards them as perfectly competent to stand their trial 
 by any fair-minded man, and for the last four years of his 
 life-time he proclaimed this unceasingly. He insisted on 
 ' the vast amount of moral force reservoired in every race,' 
 and entreated all white men to study and encourage that in 
 natives. This was no mere opinion accepted without 
 investigation to buttress an adopted theory. It was the 
 result of minute and interested observation of a race which 
 he loved ever better as he knew it more intimately. No- 
 thing is more striking than his methods of pursuing savage 
 psychology — a science which he vigorously champions. He 
 drew out native tales by the bait of Scottish ones which he 
 told the Samoans ; for in truth the parallel is often close, 
 and the one great secret of his success with the natives and 
 of his interest in them is simply this, that he found them so 
 remarkably like our Scottish selves. It is almost amusing 
 to note how all his South Sea work is written on the defen- 
 192 
 
SYMPATHY AND APPRECIATION 
 
 sive, and with what evident enjoyment he turns the edge of 
 criticism by reminding Europeans that they are as bad or 
 worse than the Polynesians. The Islanders' devil-work, their 
 tajpu, and a good many other ways of theirs, have counter- 
 parts near home. Their honour and their simple goodness 
 are sometimes held up as models for the whites. It is the 
 same in his treatment of Europeans. Whatever may be 
 said of his furious defence of Father Damien, this at least is 
 certain, that it was prompted by a burning desire to right 
 the memory of one whom he believed to have been grossly 
 slandered. He refused to receive any emolument for it, 
 since it was a personal attack, and his share of the profits 
 was sent direct from the publisher to the funds of the leper 
 settlement. The Footnote to History is a still greater 
 instance. In it he sacrificed not money, but what was more 
 precious to him, literary effect and careful expression. He 
 wrote it not as literature but as a plain appeal for justice to 
 An ill-governed people. In the course of it he had to say 
 many hard things about European officials in Samoa, but 
 the book is a standing monument of fairness. Personal 
 bitterness is singularly absent. He observes with rare 
 fidelity the rule of separating the points in dispute from the 
 rest of his relations with those concerned. Some of them 
 had been, and remained, his personal friends through all the 
 contest. The Chief-Justice, for instance, he likes, and even 
 loves — ' No, sir, I can't dislike him ; but if I can't make hay 
 of him it shall not be for want of trying.' Altogether the 
 Footnote is a singularly good and great book. Where wrong 
 was being done to the native race, he risked everything 
 that he might right it. Yet he did so without any touch 
 of spite or any slightest indulgence in the meaner passions 
 of controversy. It does not surprise us when he asserts 
 that it had proved * a means of grace ' to him ; for indeed 
 it is the Christian way of writing history. 
 
 193 
 
THE FAITH OF R. L. STEVENSON 
 
 The secret which underlies all fairness of judgment and 
 true sympathy and appreciation, is that of putting oneself in 
 the place of others, and appropriating the situation so as to 
 conceive it from within and not from without. He pleads 
 for this in the instance of the Samoans, and characteristically 
 adds, ' It is the proof of not being a barbarian, to be able to 
 enter into something outside of oneself, something that does 
 not touch one's next neighbour in the city omnibus.' He 
 lays it down as an essential duty of the poet, that he shall be 
 able to enter into the minds of others, and express for them 
 ideals which are already there, though unexpressed. In all 
 this we see how far removed his view of his fellow- men is 
 from a cold and dispassionate study of human nature. All 
 his keen powers of psychological and moral insight, and his 
 immense energy of imagiuation, are bent en the task of 
 estimating justly the acts and motives of the lives around 
 him. 
 
 For this his writing gave him a wide and open field, and it 
 is because of his extraordinary power of putting himself in 
 the place of others that the characters are so natural and the 
 situations so impressive. He felt the mortification of men 
 doomed to bear grotesque names, as if he himself had been 
 called Pym or Habakkuk. He writhed in impossible moral 
 and social situations, in the person of the wife of Durrisdeer 
 and Archie Weir. He thoui:ht of the lives of those who 
 crossed his path, whether they were civilised or savage, as 
 if he had to live them himself, and traced out their inner 
 experience and outward adventure with a personal anxiety 
 and excitement. It is probable that there is in the language 
 no finer piece of sympathetic interpretation of another's life 
 than his essay on Nurses, whose insight had been quickened 
 by much love and gratitude. You feel there the affection for 
 successive children twining itself round a woman's tender 
 heart, only to be broken off, when the friend becomes again 
 194 
 
SYMPATHY AND APPRECIATION 
 
 the servant, until in the end * the neighbours may hear hei 
 sobbing to herself in the dark, with the fire burnt out for 
 want of fuel, and the candle still unlit upon the table.' Even 
 the most alien departments of life tempt him to enter that 
 he may understand and sympathise. He knows how it must 
 feel to be overwhelmed and rendered useless by the very 
 greatness of a sudden opportunity, and he understands the 
 heart of him who has been made a coward from his mother's 
 womb. He has thought of the homelessness of many great 
 people whose wealth and social position deprive them of some 
 more precious gifts ; he has realised how one-sided an affair 
 gentlemanliness looks to the outsider who would fain be 
 and be accepted as a gentleman. Bigotry of any kind is an 
 abomination to him, yet he has been able to enter into the 
 soul of Du Chayla as well as that of Pierre Siguier. He 
 has shown us the facts of human conscience and heart 
 that are ignored in some popular ideas of the iniquitous 
 South Sea trader, and he has been at great pains to point 
 out the many and perplexing moral difficulties of his 
 situation. The interview between the trader Wiltshire and 
 the missionary Tarleton in The Beach of Falesd is a notable 
 instance of fair-minded valuation of men and gentlemen. 
 The cold-blooded conduct of the wreckers on the Shetland 
 Islands he has traced to its source, not in wickedness so 
 much as in the sense of isolation, and apathy to the concerns 
 of others, which is characteristic of feeble races. Even for 
 cannibals he has a word to say, when they are judged, as 
 they ought to be, by savage and not by civilised standards. 
 In all such cases as these, he who would judge fairly, and 
 therefore truly, must remember the surroundings in which 
 the man is placed, and the standards to which he has been 
 educated. 'Not the nature, but the congruity of men's 
 deeds and circumstances damn and save them.' 
 
 The same principles apply to more ordinary and familiar 
 
 195 
 
THE FAITH OF R. L. STEVENSON 
 
 questions. With his sense of the difficulty of moral pro- 
 blems we shall deal by-and-by : meanwhile their complexity 
 demands a moment's notice. From several points of view 
 this fact appealed to Stevenson. It tempted his curiosity as 
 a puzzle, and his sense of the picturesque as a vivid piece of 
 moral spectacle. It also called forth his sympathetic insight 
 into the evident bewilderment of many lives around him. 
 Some of them are perplexed by the fact that * there are 
 many kinds of good ' ; honour, generosity, truth, gentleness, 
 appearing as equally imperative aspects of duty, and confusing 
 the mind with their rival claims. Others are so overstrung 
 by the excitement of critical moments that they have lost 
 all sense of the proportion of things. Some who have 
 formulated general principles for action, but never related 
 these into any kind of a system of conduct, are running to 
 and fro distracted among their own ideals. Many are in- 
 adequately equipped in respect of conscience, having 
 consciences void of all refinement in good or evil ; or being 
 unable to keep a whole conscience except by winking now 
 and then ; or finding conscience perversely scrupulous 
 about trifles, while it perceives no evil in serious faults 
 until, when it is too late, it turns and rends the sinner. 
 The plain lesson of all this is that of charitable judgment, 
 and it is a good lesson, though not without its danger. 
 He who applies it to his own morality may find it lead 
 him far astray. Accordingly Stevenson reminds us many 
 times that ' it is the business of this life to make excuses 
 for others, but none for ourselves.' 
 
 His appreciation of others is that of a great and generous 
 spirit. He is well aware that every one has good and evil 
 in his nature, but his confident belief is that it is the part 
 of all who judge to dwell rather on the good than on the 
 evil. Whatsoever things are lovely and of good report, he 
 will think by preference on these things. Accordingly we 
 196 
 
SYMPATHY AND APPRECIATION 
 
 find that his bitterest invectives are reserved for those who 
 have been harsh judges of their neighbours. It is this 
 character that he satirises in A Portrait, wliere the slanderer 
 speaks in the guise of an ape, swinging by his irreverent tail 
 all over the most holy places of human life. 
 
 * I am " the smiler with the knife," 
 The battener upon garbage, I — 
 Dear heaven, with such a rancid life, 
 Were it not better far to die ? ' 
 
 He hates those who * have an eye for faults and failures, 
 who take a pleasure to find and publish them, and who 
 forget the overveiliug virtues and the real success.' He 
 condemns the satirist, who * has learned the first lesson, 
 that no man is wholly good ; but he has not even suspected 
 that there is another equally true, to wit, that no man is 
 wholly bad. . . . He does not want light, because the dark- 
 ness is more pleasant. He does not wish to see the good, 
 because he is happier without it.' The temptation of the 
 satirist is to be amusing at the expense of others, but 
 Fleeming Jenkin taught Stevenson that Christ would not 
 have counselled that. Without further question Stevenson 
 accepted the lesson and broadened it into the sweeping 
 statement that * There is no more sure sign of a shallow 
 mind than the habit of seeing always the ludicrous side of 
 things.' In one who had at his command such powers of 
 wit, and such a literary gift for its expression, this senti- 
 ment involves much self-denial : but the biographer of his 
 Edinburgh Days has told us that he seldom spoke unkindly 
 of any one, and that if others did so in his presence he at 
 once became the champion of those attacked. He resents 
 Thoreau's saying that we are always disappointed in our 
 friends, and replies that ' We are ninety-nine times dis- 
 appointed in our beggarly selves for once that we are 
 
 197 
 
THE FAITH OF R. L. STEVENSON 
 
 disappointed in our friend.' Of his own early essays he 
 asserts — unnecessarily as it appears to some — that he had 
 been too grudging of praise. 
 
 Thus Stevenson systematically turns from the evil to the 
 good side of men and things, except vvhere the purpose of 
 his work demands another course. He knows well that all 
 dealings between man and man must proceed upon the 
 understanding that certain differences are to be first recog- 
 nised and then ignored in favour of the points which they 
 have in common. His canon for the study of great periods 
 of literature and history is, * Be sure you do not understand 
 when you dislike them; condemnation is non-comprehen- 
 sion.' More and more he turns from the business of the 
 runner-down to that of the crier- up. The former has the 
 easier thing to do, but a strong man scorns to do it, and * the 
 Abstract Bagman will grow like an Admiral at heart, not 
 by ungrateful carping, but in a heat of admiration.' This 
 was no theoretical principle with him, but a real part of him- 
 self, most intimate and living. He frankly enjoyed being 
 appreciated, and he paid back the debt most lavishly in his 
 appreciation of others. His principle is that men are 
 generally better than they appear to be, better than their 
 manners, or the words they utter, or even the deeds they 
 do. He delights in competence wherever it is found, and 
 even in the dark pages of the Master of Ballantrae, some of 
 the strongest and most congenial work is their portrayal of 
 sheer ability. He believes enthusiastically in man in 
 general, and many individual men in particular. He knows 
 the greatness of the Mighty Dead, and he knows the worth 
 and goodness of the living. His letters to his parents and to 
 his old nurse, his thoughts and memories of absent friends, 
 and his dealings with the people immediately about him, 
 form an extraordinary series of studies in appreciation. His 
 references to contemporary and rising authors are not only 
 198 
 
SYMPATHY AND APPRECIATION 
 
 marked by a rare generosity, but a positive delight in their 
 good work. With his publishers it is the same — he only 
 'wishes all his publishers were not so nice.' He never 
 fails to notice any good deed or to acknowledge any touch 
 of kindness that has come his way. In the emigrant train 
 he is grateful to a station lad for speaking a civil word to 
 him ; at Vailima he lingers over the pleasure which it gives 
 him when the black boys working on the estate value his 
 ' Good-morning ! ' Wherever any one about him is trying, 
 with however much of failure, to act manfully and do his 
 duty, Stevenson is ready with his word of encouragement 
 and appreciation, whether it be a little child managing 
 cattle, or a native king fighting for his kingdom. 
 
 Among the many instances which prove this, his judg- 
 ments of professedly religious people would form an 
 interesting study. If we except those which belong to the 
 embittered period of revolt, we shall find the same catho- 
 licity and the same power of seeing essential truth rather 
 than eccentric error, good intention rather than indifferent 
 performance. Whether it were Roman priest, or Protestant 
 missionary, or Plymouth brother, it was the same. Sheriff 
 Hunter, the fearless and gentle believer of the old style, 
 has a soul ' like an ancient violin, so subdued to harmony, 
 responding to a touch in music ' ; but * the two young lads, 
 revivalists,' are not censured. 
 
 We shall, however, refer at greater length only to the 
 one fact of his relations with missions and missionaries in 
 the South Seas. It would be an insult to the reader's 
 knowledge of public facts to cite a traveller's appreciation 
 of mission work as anything wonderful or specially credit- 
 able. Yet from a man like Stevenson we expect prejudice 
 or at best aloofness. Foreign Mission interests and enthu- 
 siasm are still too much within an inner circle of our British 
 church-life. They are expected of those deeply identified 
 
 199 
 
THE FAITH OF R. L. STEVENSON 
 
 with the church, but are still looked upon by only too many 
 as counsels of perfection rather than essential parts of 
 Christianity ; while there are yet others who openly confess 
 to a prejudice against them. Prejudiced Stevenson was, 
 according to his own showing : * I had feared to meet a 
 missionary, feared to find the narrowness and the self-suffi- 
 ciency that deface their publications, that too often disgrace 
 their behaviour.' Whether anything that he had actually 
 seen in missionaries had been such as to justify these words 
 may be doubted. But the fact that so strong a prejudice 
 was there renders his conduct all the more striking, as we 
 now know it. His bearing towards the missionaries was 
 such as to win them to him in a quite astonishing manner. 
 Claxton translated his Bottle Imp into Samoan ; Whitmee 
 acted as his interpreter ; Clarke read the funeral service at 
 his grave. Missionaries consulted and trusted him con- 
 cerning difficult points in their work. They received from 
 him advice in which they recognised as fully the sympathy 
 of the fellow-worker as the shrewdness of the skilled critic 
 of men and things. His opinion of them in the main may 
 be judged by che fact that it is to missionaries that he 
 has paid some of the highest of his many appreciations of 
 noble character and work. He defends them from the 
 charge of meddling, and he testifies to the reality and value 
 of the work they have done in Christianising the natives. 
 In the Samoan political troubles he made common cause 
 with them, consulted them, understood them, appreciated 
 them, until whole-hearted co-operation ripened into mutual 
 trust and love. Even his adverse criticisms show how much 
 he was impressed with the reality of their work : had he 
 not been so, his judgments regarding it would not have been 
 so painstaking and so thoughtful. He knew its tempta- 
 tions, its difficulties, and its discouragements; the thank- 
 lessness of much of it, and the demand for long patience in 
 200 
 
SYMPATHY AND APPRECIATION 
 
 it all. He realised also its splendid opportunities, and 
 recognised ungrudgingly its success. 
 
 Before passing on, it may be worth while to put together 
 one or two of his estimates of missionaries, for they are very 
 remarkable even among the sayings of one so liberal in praise 
 and so outspoken in appreciation as he. * Those who have 
 a taste for hearing missions, Protestant or Catholic, decried, 
 must seek their pleasure somewhere else than in my pages. 
 Whether Catholic or Protestant, with all their gross blots, 
 with all their deficiency of candour, of humour, and of 
 common sense, the missionaries are the best and the most 
 useful whites in the Pacific* * The best specimen of the 
 Christian hero I ever met was one of [the] native mission- 
 aries.' Of Clarke he writes : * The excellent Clarke up here 
 almost all day yesterday, a man I esteem and like to the 
 soles of his boots ; I prefer him to any one in Samoa, and to 
 most people in the world ; a real good missionary, with the 
 inestimable advantage of having grown up a layman. Pity 
 they can't all get that ! * He calls another * a hero, a man 
 who took me fairly by storm, for the most attractive, simple, 
 brave, and interesting man in the whole Pacific' The late 
 James Chalmers of New Guinea he refers to as ' a man I 
 love,' and asserts that he would hardly change with any 
 man of his time, ' unless perhaps it were [General] Gordon 
 or our friend Chalmers. . . . You can't weary me of that 
 fellow; he is as big as a house and far bigger than any 
 church.' It would be easy, if space permitted, to bring 
 together an equally enthusiastic set of the sayings of 
 missionaries about him. 
 
 Altogether, the general impression left on the mind after 
 reading his work is that of a most kindly and generous spirit. 
 No doubt there are passages of deep horror and ugliness on 
 the one hand, and on the other hand the praise is some- 
 times exaggerated until it almost loses its sense of reality. 
 
 201 
 
THE FAITH OF R. L. STEVENSON 
 
 Yet in reading him we find ourselves among an uncom- 
 monly rich assembly of delightful things and admirable 
 people. Competent men are thinking and acting com- 
 petently: blunderers are after all meaning well. Writers 
 are writing, preachers preaching, labourers labouring, and 
 on the whole the work is done honestly and not in vain. 
 Behind us stand the glorious dead, around us are the noble 
 living. It is a heartening world, and one well worth living 
 in, and its whole atmosphere braces us to do our best, 
 that we may not shame so gallant a company of our 
 fellow-mortals. 
 
 We have been, however, as yet but in the outer court of 
 the temple. A man may school himself to just and 
 appreciative criticism, while remaining naturally and per- 
 sistently apathetic. How about the inner life of actual 
 needs and desires ? Of this, in Stevenson's case, there can 
 be no question. He was by nature and by habit the most 
 companionable man known to the public of his time. * A 
 man,' in his opinion ' who must separate himself from his 
 neighbours' habits in order to be happy, is in much the 
 same case with one who requires to take opium for the 
 same purpose.' For himself, he frankly admits that he 
 loves to be loved and hates to have any one angry with him. 
 His power of winning affection was phenomenal, and its 
 secret lay to a large extent in his felt need of affection. 
 One friend, writing when he had received the news of his 
 death, says : ' So great was his power of winning love that, 
 though I knew him for less than a week, I could have borne 
 the loss of many a more intimate friend with less sorrow.' 
 One of the strongest impressions left on the mind by his 
 biography and his letters is that the landmarks and mile- 
 stones of his life were the successive friendships which he 
 formed. Fleeming Jenkin, Sidney Colvin, and others who 
 came afterwards, marked the critical points in life for 
 202 
 
SYMPATHY AND APPRECIATION 
 
 him, and each added some contribution to the development 
 of his individuality. 
 
 He values the most casual and slight acquaintance with 
 a fellow-mortal. In towns he is delighted with the pleasant 
 faces of men and women seen in passing. In the country, 
 to see some one before him on the road, is enough to make 
 him quicken his steps. In unfrequented districts * a meet- 
 ing is an affair of moment ; we have the sight far off of 
 some one coming towards us, the growing definiteness of 
 the person, and then the brief passage and salutation, and 
 the road left empty before us for perhaps a great while to 
 come. Such encounters have a wistful interest that can 
 hardly be understood by the dweller in places more 
 populous.* So he goes along, finding pleasure in * waving a 
 handkerchief to people he shall never see again,' at home 
 with all the world on easy terms. For ' the knowledge that 
 another has felt as we have felt, and seen things, even if 
 they are little things, not much otherwise than we have 
 seen them, will continue to the end to be one of life's 
 choicest pleasures.' When there is no human companion- 
 ship — so great is his need of company — he will create 
 it. Imagination comes to the rescue, and the fascinating 
 Dick Turpin rides down the empty lane to meet him. He 
 was a lover of animals ; to him a stray dog was ' God's 
 dog,' and therefore his friend. Even inanimate things would 
 serve his turn. He knew the exquisite sympathy that 
 exists between the engineer and his machine. Breakers on 
 a reef, the great company of the mountains, even the very 
 road itself, became at need his companions, and in their 
 fellowship he was well attended. 
 
 Yet friendship is not with him a light matter worn upon 
 his sleeve. The passing acquaintance is pleasant, but there 
 is more in friendship than that. * In this world of imper- 
 fection we gladly welcome even partial intimacies. And 
 
 203 
 
THE FAITH OF R. L. STEVENSON 
 
 if we find but one to whom we can speak out of our heart 
 freely, with whom we can walk in love and simplicity 
 without dissimulation, we have no ground of quarrel with 
 the world or God.' That deeper sort of friendship he 
 knows, and he has proclaimed its worth : 
 
 'For the dearest friends are the auldest friern^s, 
 And the young are just on trial.' 
 
 The deeper friendship is not a matter of how much one can 
 get, either of instruction, or sympathy, or any other sort of 
 mutual improvement. ' I cannot,* he exclaims, ' count that a 
 poor dinner, or a poor book, where I meet with those I love.' 
 It is a matter of faith and love. * When we have fallen 
 through storey after storey of our vanity and aspiration, 
 and sit rueful among the ruins, then it is that we begin to 
 measure the stature of our friends ; how they stand between 
 us and our own contempt, believing in our best; how, 
 linking us with others, and still spreading wide the in- 
 fluential circle, they weave us in and in with the fabric of 
 contemporary life.' A curious proof of the seriousness with 
 which he took his friendships is the diffident and self- 
 excusing way in which he broke the news to them from 
 the South Seas, that he would not return at the expected 
 time. It would not occur to many voyagers in search of 
 health to dispute their right to another year of sunshine. 
 But with him friendship meant that he was not his own, 
 and he had to borrow his year from those he loved. 
 
 A nature so rich in love is never far from the 
 Kingdom of Heaven. The aged John has told us that 
 ' love is of God ; and every one that loveth is born of God 
 and knoweth God.' It is difficult to conceive what these 
 words mean if it be not that in all pure and unselfish love 
 there is an element of real religion. Now and then we find 
 love declaring its hidden meaning to Stevenson in terms of 
 204 
 
SYMPATHY AND APPRECIATION 
 
 a more than usually clear faith. Thus ' to love is the great 
 amulet which makes the world a garden ; and hope, which 
 comes to all, outwears the accidents of life, and reaches 
 with tremulous hand beyond the grave and death. Easy to 
 say : yea, but also, by God's mercy, both easy and grateful to 
 believe.' Yet it was not so much on the theoretical as on 
 the practical side that love led Stevenson to faith. As 
 has been already stated, vision is with him the signal for 
 travel, and the quick foot goes with the clear and far-seeing 
 eye. Thus his love not only quickened his own life with a 
 glow of happiness, and drew out his various powers to 
 their utmost of enjoyable and healthful exercise ; it also sent 
 him forth among men in helpfulness and service. He was 
 no mere paragon of glad life, whose love had kindled his 
 ideals and kept them shining brightly for men to see and 
 envy. All that he has is for the sake of those who need it. 
 Like Herakles in Balaustion' s Adventure, he 
 
 * held his life 
 Out on his hand, for any man to take.' 
 
 Thus is love twice blessed in his experience. Intrinsically, 
 and for its own dear sake, it is the best thing in all the 
 world. But in its uses also it is blessed. We run to those 
 who love us when we are mortified with failure, ' not to 
 hear ourselves called better, but to be better men in point 
 of fact' * So long as we love we serve ; so long as we are 
 loved by others, I would almost say tliat we are indis- 
 pensable ; and no man is useless while he has a friend.' 
 'The essence of love is kindness; and indeed it may be 
 best defined as passionate kindness ; kindness, so to speak, 
 run mad and become importunate and violent.' 
 
 Stevenson's love for his fellows is never shown so keen 
 and strong as in those cases where there is nothing to be 
 gained by it in the way of service or of intellectual return — 
 
 206 
 
THE FAITH OF R. L. STEVENSON 
 
 nothing but such return of gratitude and affection as only 
 love prizes. His whole work is full of compassion for the 
 multitude, and for the individual men and women who 
 compose it. His heart is open to all who are helpless and 
 miserable, and in a man's mere pitiableness he recognises 
 a claim upon himself. He realises how the banished 
 Samoans must loathe the rough food and brackish water of 
 the coral reef to which civilised rulers had sent them ; his 
 soul is touched by the horrors which runaway blackboys 
 must suffer at night, as they hide in the homeless, devil- 
 haunted bush ; his heart burns as he sees the sufferings of 
 the wounded in the hospital. That was toward the close, 
 among the islanders to whom he paid out so much of his 
 heart. Yet for them he had so strong an admiration, 
 that, as we have already said, it was rather justice than pit}- 
 which Samoa called forth. But a deep compassion goes to 
 men and women in all parts of the world, who are entangled 
 in the toils of the inner life and struggle. The hopeless 
 faithfulness of love that meets with no response, whether 
 it be in Lord Durrisdeer's son or in the disfigured wife of a 
 heartless artisan in the Portobello train; the homelessness 
 of those who have by their own fault alienated friendship ; 
 the hapless plight of all ' sinful men walking before the 
 Lord among the sins and dangers of this life ' — all these 
 fill his heart with tears. Still more does he feel, and make 
 his readers feel, the pity of it, when a good man has 
 degenerated from his former character, and we remember 
 the brave fight he once made against the temptations he no 
 longer resists — * Was not this a thing at once to rage and to 
 be humbled at ? ... I was overborne with a pity almost 
 approaching the passionate, not for my master alone, but 
 for the sons of man.' 
 
 In these, and countless other examples of his compassion 
 for individual fellow-mortals, the reader is startled by the 
 206 
 
SYMPATHY AND APPRECIATION 
 
 intimacy of his understandiDg — he has imagined so exactly 
 how it must feel to be in such a case. And the last quota- 
 tion reminds us of the fact that his sympathy was not only 
 drawn forth by known cases of individual suffering, whose 
 picturesqueness might move the artistic man to emotion. 
 In imagination he went out among the painful facts of the 
 world, with the same great-hearted compassion. At the time 
 of the Franco-Prussian war, he was travelling among the 
 Western Isles, and he tells us how he could hear the shots 
 fired and feel the pang of the bullets striking his breast. ' It 
 was sometimes so distressing, so instant, that I lay in the 
 heather on the top of the island, with my face hid, kicking 
 my heels for agony.' ' In that year,' he writes elsewhere, 
 * cannon were roaring for days together on French battle- 
 fields, and I would sit in my isle (I call it mine after the 
 use of lovers) and think upon the war, and the pain of 
 men's wounds, and the weariness of their marching. And 
 I would think, too, of that other war which is as old as 
 mankind, and is indeed the life of man ; the unsparing 
 war, the grinding slavery of competition ; the toil of seventy 
 years, dear-bought bread, precarious honour, the perils and 
 pitfalls, and the poor rewards. It was a long look forward ; 
 the future summoned me as with trumpet-calls, it warned 
 me back as with a voice of weeping and beseeching ; and I 
 thrilled and trembled on the brink of life, like a childish 
 bather on the beach.* 
 
 Sympathy, such as he so eloquently expressed both in 
 theory and in practice, is in itself a great moral force. 
 Apart from its definite outgoings in acts of helpfulness, if 
 it pervade the spirit of a man it will instinctively solve 
 many problems and lead to just and useful decisions. Yet 
 it is possible to substitute sympathy for kindness, and to 
 bring to the thirsty lips of men the empty cup of sentiment 
 instead of the water of life. Stevenson knew the tempta- 
 
 o 207 
 
THE FAITH OF R. L. STEVENSON 
 
 tion and repeatedly described it, but it never was his own 
 danger. That tenderness of sentiment which shrank from 
 giving pain to ants, which led him to give up even the sport 
 of fishing, and which found vent in fierce anger against any 
 one who ill-treated an animal, guaranteed that sympathy 
 should find a practical outlet. ' Kind deeds and words,' 
 he says — * that 's the true blue of piety ; to hope the best, 
 and do the best, and speak the best.' The code by which 
 he guided his whole life, and arranged its relations to those 
 most intimately connected with him, had kindness as one 
 of its first principles. His relations to the members of his 
 family, both before and after marriage, are full of kindness, 
 which mellows and increases as years advance. Professor 
 Colvin has borne testimony to * the charm of his talk, which 
 was irresistibly sympathetic and inspiring ' ; and, knowing 
 him with an intimacy which very few were privileged to 
 enjoy, he tells us that his was 'one of the bravest and 
 tenderest of human hearts.' He refused to accept the 
 ordinary trade conceptions of his relations to workmen he 
 employed, or the ordinary domestic standards for the treat- 
 ment of the servants of his household. It has been 
 supposed that the feudal relations which existed between 
 him and his dependents in Vailima are traceable wholly to 
 his love for the picturesque and striking. We have already 
 admitted that this element was present in much of what 
 he did, but it is difficult to see why we should hesitate to 
 admit the more direct and simple motive. He treated his 
 people kindly because he liked to be kind. It was im- 
 possible for him ever to regard the living persons about 
 him in any other light than as human beings, or to school 
 himself into any other than the natural human attitude 
 toward them. 
 
 Nor did his kindness stop short in attitude and affection; 
 it passed over into deeds such as are prompted only by the 
 208 
 
SYMPATHY AND APPRECIATION 
 
 most complete unselfishness and the heroic love of man. 
 The real value of a man's life, and the reason why he 
 should cling to it, is that ' he, as a living man, has some to 
 help, some to love.' The test question for a life is ' what 
 difference has it made to this world and our country and 
 our family and our friends, that we have lived. The man 
 who has only been pious and not useful will stand with a 
 long face on that great day when Christ puts to him his 
 questions.' Thus the needs of others and their pitiable 
 situations were for him not merely a vivid spectacle but a 
 clamorous and exacting conscience. His enthusiasm kindles 
 to every piece of real and conscientious work that has been 
 done for others. Describing the Norah Creinas fight with 
 the storm, he says : ' God bless every man that swung a 
 mallet on that tiny and strong hull ! It was not for wages 
 only that he laboured, but to save men's lives.' Two of the 
 greatest poems which he wrote, distinguished from the rest 
 by their stately and solemn loftiness, are those in which he 
 commemorates the lighthouse-building of his fathers and 
 claims to be himself a lighthouse-builder of the spirit : 
 
 * Say not of me that weakly I declined 
 The labours of my sires, and fled, the sea, 
 The towers we founded and the lamps we lit, 
 To play at home with paper like a child.' 
 
 * These are thy works, father, these thy crown 
 Whether on high the air be pure, they shine 
 Along the yellowing sunset, and all night 
 Among the unnumbered stars of God they shine ; 
 Or whether fogs arise and far and wide 
 
 The low sea-level drown — each finds a tongue, 
 And all night long the tolling bell resounds ; 
 So shine, so toll, till night be overpast, 
 Till the stars vanish, till the sun return, 
 And in the haven rides the fleet secure. 
 
 This thou hast done, and I — can I be base 1 
 
 I must arise, father, and to port 
 
 Some lost, complaining seaman pilot home.' 
 
 209 
 
THE FAITH OF R. L. STEVENSON 
 
 The ideal of service to man, which these verses express 
 so well, was the rule of his life. In little things, where 
 men occupied with great service are often selfish, he carried 
 it out as conscientiously as in great things, and there is 
 nothing which better proves the sincerity of his altruism. 
 His devotion to children was unwearied. Whether it was 
 'taking charge of a kid' to let its mother sleep on the 
 emigrant train, or nursing a sick one, or racking his brains 
 to find something for a letter that would interest a little 
 boy, or patiently teaching any children who happened to be 
 in his neighbourhood, it is the same delight in serviceable- 
 ness that we find. In all places he seems to have been 
 drawn into some local tussle or other, and impelled to 
 champion the cause of the weak and wronged. He was 
 only restrained by the utmost pressure from going at the 
 risk of his life to occupy an Irish farm where the 
 occupant had been murdered. In California it was the 
 same. In the Samoan troubles he spent his last years in 
 the defence of the natives against the unsympathetic and 
 blundering government of Europeans. He ^v^ote incessantly 
 on their behalf — letters, articles, and a book which cost 
 him infinite labour. He fought for them in meetings to 
 which he went through storm and rain while sick with colic 
 or in the intervals of hemorrhage. He did this at the risk 
 of trial, prison, and banishment. He had to quarrel with 
 all the officials on the island, and was attacked by a * pretty 
 scurrilous' article in the local newspaper week by week. 
 And all this was service rendered in a department alien to 
 his tastes. Politics was but an interruption to literature 
 with Stevenson, and it is hardly possible to exaggerate the 
 sacrifice of his natural inclinations which such politics in- 
 volved. It is no wonder that the natives loved him, 
 accepted him as a chief among them, and built 'the road 
 of gratitude ' to his house. For a man of his temperament 
 210 
 
SYMPATHY AND APPRECIATION 
 
 and in his health to do so much from pure love of helpless 
 and half savage fellow men is surely a very honourable 
 record on the roll of heroic self-sacrifice and service. 
 
 All this must be considered in the light of the fact that 
 no one believed less in self-sacrifice for its own sake than 
 he. His ideal was the fulfilling, not the denying, of the 
 instinctive desires of human nature. Asceticism had no 
 attractions for him, except those which love and service 
 lent it. It is peculiarly significant that his two finest 
 stories of self-sacrifice are stories of native life in the South 
 Seas. The Feast of Famine and The Bottle Imp are as great 
 morally as they are in point of literary merit. The latter 
 rises to a simple eloquence in the words of Kokua, the wife 
 of Keawe, which in its own line could hardly be surpassed. 
 She had doomed her soul to eternal torment that she 
 might rescue her husband from a like fate: 'But now at 
 least I take my soul in both the hands of my affection. 
 Now I say farewell to the white steps of heaven and the 
 waiting faces of my friends. A love for a love, and let mine 
 be equalled with Keawe's. A soul for a soul, and be it 
 mine to perish.' 
 
 Of course the Samoan period was very picturesque and 
 romantic. * Tusitala,' ^ in his various capacities of patriarch, 
 demigod, missionary, and bard, is a charmingly theatrical 
 figure. But all this may be true and yet may never have 
 touched the real truth of the situation. No kind of 
 criticism is more unworthy than that which selects some 
 striking but insignificant detail, and explains the whole of 
 a man's conduct in its terms : it is the cheapest way of 
 disparaging obviously noble character. In Stevenson's case, 
 one who has rendered such self-sacrificing and effective 
 service may well be permitted to do it in what manner he 
 prefers. The essential truth of such actions lies simply in 
 
 * Tusitala was the name given to Stevenson by the natives in Samoa. 
 
 211 
 
THE FAITH OF R. L. STEVENSON 
 
 his love of men ; and the thing most obvious about them is 
 their likeness to the character of Jesus Christ, whose spirit 
 breathes through them all. That Stevenson, in such conduct, 
 sought to follow in His footsteps, we are not left in doubt. 
 'The truth of his (Christ's) teaching would seem to be this: 
 in our own person and fortune, we should be ready to accept 
 and pardon all; it is our cheek we are to turn, our coat 
 that we are to give away to the man who has taken our 
 cloak. But when another's face is buffeted, perhaps a 
 little of the lion will become us best. That we are to 
 suffer others to be injured, and stand by, is not conceivable 
 and surely not desirable.* In acting as he did, Stevenson 
 was but trying to obey his own favourite verses in Isaiah : 
 ' Is not this the fast that I have chosen ? to loose the bands 
 of wickedness, to undo the heavy burdens, and to let the 
 oppressed go free, and that ye break every yoke ? Is it not 
 to deal thy bread to the hungry, and that thou bring the 
 poor that are cast out to thy house ? when thou seest the 
 naked, that thou cover him ; and that thou hide not thyself 
 from thine own flesh ? ' In Tusitala, as in any other man, 
 self-sacrifice for others is a Christ-like thing. To believe 
 in life and to rejoice in it, yet to be always ready to lay it 
 down that we may save others by bearing the burden of 
 their sufferings with them and for them — surely that is 
 faith in an intimately Christian sense. Such faith is worth 
 more to God and to the world than many abstract beliefs. 
 Browning's Herakles again comes back to memory as we 
 think of the Samoan years : 
 
 * Gladness be with thee, Helper of our world 1 
 I think this is the authentic sign and seal 
 Of Godship, that it ever waxes glad, 
 And more glad, until gladness blossoms, bursts 
 Into a rage to suffer for mankind.' 
 
 212 
 
MANLINESS AND HEALTH 
 
 CHAPTER XII 
 
 MANLINESS AND HEALTH 
 
 Tt was natural to look for the resultant message of Steven- 
 son's vision and travel first as it concerned those among 
 whom he walked and whose lives he saw. We turn now to 
 the reaction of these faculties upon himself, as they deter- 
 mined the management of his own life and his conception 
 of what a man's own life ought to be. Had he been asked 
 to state in two words his ideal for life and character, it may- 
 be conjectured that the definition would not have been very 
 different from the title of the present chapter. 
 
 Manliness for him meant first of all strength. ' Quit you 
 like men, be strong,' was a command he never failed to hear 
 and answer, preferring always in himself and others what 
 he called 'the manly virtues.' With weakness accepted 
 and offered as an excuse for failure, he had little sympathy. 
 ' Those who go to the devil in youth, with anything like a 
 fair chance, were probably little worth saving from the 
 first ; they must have been feeble fellows — creatures made 
 of putty and packthread, without steel or fire, anger or 
 true joyfulness, in their composition ; we may sympathise 
 with their parents, but there is not much cause to go into 
 mourning for themselves ; for, to be quite honest, the weak 
 brother is the worst of mankind.' For himself, strenuous- 
 ness was ever a welcome demand upon life. It was with 
 no suspicion of complaint, but rather with a sort of not 
 unnatural boastfulness, that he wrote of himself as * facing 
 
 213 
 
THE FAITH OF R, L. STEVENSON 
 
 as stoutly as I can a hard, combative existence, full of 
 doubt, difficulties, defeats, disappointments, and dangers.' 
 He delights in hard tasks, for the very hardness of them. 
 He often presents life to himself and others in its most 
 difficult aspects, that he may tempt us all to heroism. He 
 does not count that life a high calling whose main part is 
 pleasure, but that which confronts many uncongenial tasks 
 and dangerous adventures. 
 
 In one whose bodily health was so weak and precarious 
 as his, this is perhaps not surprising, for it is usual for the 
 weak to realise the value of strength and covet it as the 
 best of gifts. Yet it is none the less heroic, when we think 
 how much effort and pain it must often have cost him 
 to carry it out in practice. And he is entirely free from 
 the harshness that sometimes characterises those who live 
 strenuously against great odds. True manhood is not only 
 strong — it is strong graciously, delicately, and sanely. The 
 Greek element in life must be added to the Hebrew, the 
 lighter facts must balance the darker and more sombre. 
 This kind of manhood, with its all-round balance and 
 harmony, Stevenson achieved. As he conceived of it, normal 
 human life was something clean and healthy as well as robust, 
 lived in the open air, freshened by a breeze ; and this frank 
 and natural ideal dominated all departments of his thought. 
 It gave their tone to his moral and spiritual judgments, 
 and it culminated in that Gospel of Happiness which is 
 at once his highest and his most characteristic message. 
 
 In all true strength there is the consciousness of another 
 and greater Power in the universe before which man's 
 strength is but weakness. This is but one instance of the 
 universal truth that in order to really know any part of the 
 world a man must take into his reckoning that which is 
 beyond the world. So incomplete is this life of ours, so 
 literally a broken arc, that none who confine their attention 
 2U 
 
MANLINESS AND HEALTH 
 
 to what they see upon the earth can by any possibility 
 understand even that. Not for beauty only, nor for hope, 
 must we look beyond the world, but for truth also — for 
 anything but a mistaken conception of the world itself. This 
 is especially true in the matter of strength. He who thinks 
 proudly of his human strength, who exults in that and is 
 satisfied, has, like Samson of old, let his strength lead him 
 into blindness. From him the world need look for neither 
 permanent heartiness nor truly valuable service. 
 
 Accordingly we find that there is an element of fatalism, 
 in one form or another, in all really great thinkers, and 
 Stevenson is no exception. Sometimes, as in Olalla, this 
 appears in a sense of the dread physical forces of the world, 
 whose play is seen in natural law in general, and in 
 heredity in particular. We have already discussed this in 
 connection with the double aspect of Nature — 'the beauty 
 and the terror of the world.' In Olalla the woman is for 
 the man who loves her 'the link that bound me in with 
 dead things on one hand, and with our pure and pitying 
 God upon the other : a thing brutal and divine, and akin 
 at once to the innocence and to the unbridled forces of the 
 earth.' It is dangerous for a fatalist to have so stroug an 
 imagination as Stevenson's, and Olalla is a standing tribute 
 to a faith which could look with steady and undaunted eye 
 upon the Sphinx-like mystery of the world. Seen vaguely, 
 the great powers of the universe are only awe-inspiring and 
 sublime : seen in detail, they are often too terrible for any but 
 the most indissuadable faith. A somewhat different aspect 
 of destiny is presented in those curious fragments where 
 the characters of his fiction come out from their places and 
 discuss the story, and the purpose of their author. Thus, in 
 the first fable, John Silver and Captain Smollett, two of the 
 puppets from Treasure Island, converse. The miscreant 
 Silver is confident that if there be such a thing as an author, 
 
 215 
 
THE FAITH OF R. L. STEVENSON 
 
 he himself is his favourite character ; while the Captain is 
 equally certain that the author is on the side of good, and he 
 needs to know nothing more. It is a cunning device, and 
 extraordinarily effective as a commentary upon some of the 
 common arguments about Calvinism, for and against. In 
 other passages the treatment of the subject is more solemn 
 and the teaching plain and weighty. Eebellion against 
 the established order of the universe is exhibited in all 
 its futile irrationality on the one hand; God's slow but 
 irresistible designs are manifest on the other. 'The 
 world, the universe, turns on vast hinges, proceeds on a 
 huge plan; you, and we, and — and all, I potently believe 
 it — used for good ; but we are all — and this I know — as the 
 dust of the balances. The loss or the salvation of the 
 Lubeck was weighed, and was decided, in the hour of birth 
 of the universe.' 
 
 * The child, the seed, the grain of corn, 
 The acorn on the hill, 
 Each for some separate end is born 
 In season fit, and still 
 Each must in strength arise to work the almighty wilL 
 
 • • • • • • • 
 
 So from the sally each obeys 
 
 The UDseen almighty nod ; 
 
 So till the ending all their ways 
 
 Blindfolded loth have trod ; 
 
 Nor knew their task at all, but were the tools of God.' 
 
 Fatalism, taken as a doom, is the death of energy and 
 hope alike, and one of the strongest entrenchments of sin 
 against goodness. In the persons of those characters in his 
 stories whom Stevenson has marked out for evil, we see 
 this repeatedly. Markheim, the unwilling criminal, protests 
 that ever since his birth the giants of circumstance have 
 dragged him about by the wrists. Mr. Archer, in The Great 
 North Roady sets the pieces of a broken rush to float upon a 
 216 
 
MANLINESS AND HEALTH 
 
 stream, and accepts the path of evil because two out of the 
 three go down a certain channel.^ In such cases the agents 
 have persuaded themselves that nothing they may do at the 
 prompting of reason or conscience is of any avail — it is 
 written otherwise. No theory of fate could be more con- 
 venient and consoling for the sinner, whose plea is that he 
 cannot help his nature and must be excused for gratifying it. 
 Meredith has spoken of this kind of fatalism as * regarding 
 the Spirit of Life as a remote externe, who plays the human 
 figures, to bring about this or that issue.' "With that external 
 view of destiny he has contrasted another — * beside us, 
 within us, our breath, if we will ; marking on us where at 
 each step we sink to the animal, mount to the divine.' 
 
 The distinction between the outer and the inner view 
 of destiny is, as regards its practical effects, one of the 
 most important points in ethical controversy. It was the 
 latter aspect that braced the life of Stevenson. Destiny 
 was constantly present to his imagination, yet its effect was 
 always quickening and tonic. The man's mind and will 
 sprang to the great alliance with the mind and will of the 
 universe, and wrought out actions and character as in a 
 veritable sense inspired and chosen of heaven. No soul 
 is ever great without the sense of this alliance. To 
 explain even the most commonplace experience wholly 
 in terms of one poor little human life, is to show that 
 one has never realised the meaning of life at all. There 
 is always the surd, the unexplained and inexplicable 
 element beyond all that. The recognition of this is the 
 first requisite of true manliness, and a belief in predestina- 
 tion of some sort is the necessary basis for any healthy 
 view of life. Thus does the thought of destiny perform at 
 
 1 Yet it is significant that he does not launch them evenly, declaring 
 that * no man can put complete reliance in blind fate : he must still cog 
 the dice.' 
 
 217 
 
THE FAITH OF R. L. STEVENSON 
 
 all times a double function in the world : the bad it commits 
 to badness, slackening all their powers of resistance, and 
 thrusting them ever deeper into the evil of their choice; 
 the good it braces for action, until, claiming it for their 
 own, they are competent to face and conquer anything that 
 life may set before them. The latter was Stevenson's course, 
 summed up with even more than his usual appositeness in 
 the phrase, 'to waylay destiny and bid him stand and 
 deliver.* 
 
 The result in character was one of the most brilliant 
 records of human courage which are to be found anywhere 
 in the biographies of British men. Courage is not one of 
 the highest or most delicate virtues. It is closely connected 
 with the physical life, and even moral and intellectual dar- 
 ing has its roots among the nerves of a man. Yet even so, 
 it is, in Stevenson's phrase, 'the footstool of the virtues, 
 upon which they stand,' and therefore it is * the principal 
 virtue, for all the others presuppose it,' so that ' no man is 
 of any use until he has dared everything.' It is a note- 
 worthy fact that in almost every one of his recorded prayers 
 there is a petition for courage, for it will generally be found 
 that a man's most distinguishing characteristic is that for 
 which he has oftenest prayed. That the circumstances of 
 his life demanded an unusual fortitude will be denied by 
 none who have any knowledge of the facts. In Vailima the 
 demand became excessive. Vailima Letters, from this point 
 of view, records a continuous succession of troubles. The 
 incessant worries with the native servants — who seem always 
 to be reverting to savage madness, or breaking down with 
 illness, or relapsing into moral weakness and failure — were 
 of themselves enough to discourage any ordinary man. 
 They were met with a constant compassion, an unfailing 
 effort to please and help. We have already written of the 
 part he played in the political situation and tlie difficulties 
 218 
 
MANLINESS AND HEALTH 
 
 under which he did his literary work. The courage dis- 
 played in these is eclipsed only by the still more splendid 
 courage with which he met his many illnesses. We have seen 
 how, in the words of Mr. Graham Balfour, ' his sufferings 
 did not dull the kindliness and sympathy which largely 
 formed the fascination of his character.' Yet the inner vic- 
 tory over trouble was even more brilliant. As we read of the 
 incessant returns of prostrating illness and blindness ; pain 
 in the head, the back, the limbs ; wakefulness, and its 
 sense of ruin ; fever, racking cough and bleeding lungs ; we 
 can but thank God for a creature able to meet them all as 
 he did. Dr. Kobertson Nicoll has somewhere said very 
 memorably that to understand Eobert Louis Stevenson one 
 must have put up a little hlood. Yet even those who cannot 
 thus know to its depth the meaning of that splendid 
 courage, may well perceive that here there is the record of 
 no ordinary heroism. He met it all with a gallant defiance, 
 often whimsical, always good-natured and exhilarating. 
 The hemorrhage he nicknamed ' Bluidy Jack,' and fought 
 it as an admiral might engage a three-decker of the enemy. 
 After two of its attacks, in his last year, he writes : ' No 
 good denying that this annoys, because it do. However, 
 you must expect influenza to leave some harm, and my 
 spirits, appetite, peace on earth and good-will to men are all 
 on a rising market.' When at one time nature had been too 
 much for him, and he had written some pages of ' the wail- 
 ings of a crushed worm,' he destroyed them and sent a fine 
 piece of fooling instead. Stevenson's St Ives, like Scott's 
 Count Robert of Paris, is the work of a dying man. With a 
 pathetic intuition he likens his book to the other, and the 
 most enthusiastic lover of Scott will own that *S^^. Ives does 
 not suffer in that comparison. Thus he constantly flung ofi* 
 depression and turned again to his task with a glorious 
 laughter, until he had fairly turned the tables upon calamity. 
 
 219 
 
THE FAITH OF R. L. STEVENSON 
 
 Long before the Vailima days he had written of Scotland : 
 ' Poverty, ill-luck, enterprise and constant resolution, are the 
 fibres of the legend of this country's history. The heroes 
 and kings of Scotland have been tragically fated ; the most 
 marking incidents in Scottish history — Flodden, Darien, or 
 the Forty-Five — were still either failures or defeats ; and 
 the fall of Wallace and the repeated reverses of the Bruce, 
 combine with the very smallness of the country to teach 
 rather a moral than a material criterion for life.' In 
 another of his earlier books he quotes the words of Thoreau : 
 ' Make your failure tragical by courage, and it will not differ 
 from success.' In his closing years all this came home to 
 himself, and found him prepared with an unflinching 
 intrepidity, so that his other words were never more ex- 
 plicitly proved true than in his own experience : ' A high 
 measure of health is only necessary for unhealthy people,' 
 and ' true health is to be able to do without it.' 
 
 The conjunction of fatalism and courage prepares us to 
 expect a serious view of moral life. The noble life is never 
 easy, and was never meant to be so. It is a kingdom of 
 the strenuous, and its gates open for them alone. Its 
 gospel may begin with thoughts about birds of the air and 
 lilies of the field, and the promise of an easy yoke ; but when 
 it comes to the actual grapple of experience, it is a narrow 
 way and a strait gate by which men must enter, not without 
 an agony of striving. Every book of Stevenson's shows how 
 well he knew this. The difficulty of life's task and the height 
 of its calling are ever before him, and it was the sense of 
 these which gave him some of his greatest thoughts. 
 
 Chief among such thoughts was that of dual personality, 
 which found so speedy and world-wide a recognition in Dr. 
 Jehyll and Mr. Hyde. Popular religion adopted the allegory 
 partly because it was a modern echo of St. Paul's words to the 
 Romans, in which the apostle describes himself as leading 
 220 
 
MANLINESS AND HEALTH 
 
 the double life of unwilling sin and unfulfilled desire for 
 holiness. But still more must the popularity of Jekyll and 
 Hyde be attributed to its ghastly truthfulness as a rescript 
 of common experience. In this mysterious twofoldness of 
 the inner life it was felt that Stevenson, like St. Paul before 
 him, had exposed the root of all our moral difficulties. It is 
 because of the war of the carnal man against the spiritual man 
 within them that the best men, though they may approach 
 the great task and adventure of life with light hearts, grow 
 grave and stern as they advance. For Stevenson this was 
 a dominant type of ethical thought, and it is never absent 
 from any of his delineations of character. It corresponds 
 with the duality which he finds in nature — that ' beauty and 
 terror of the world ' to which we have referred so often. In 
 many different lights and aspects he exhibits it. Some- 
 times we see the essential life in poise, ready to identify 
 itself with either the good or the evil possible man within. 
 In other cases, described with equal power, each of the two 
 alternately claims the soul for its own. Now it is selfish- 
 ness and generosity that are pitted against each other ; again 
 it is a just reason against nerves quivering with petty spite. 
 In Deacon Brodie the tragedy is represented as it wrought 
 itself out in an actual history ; in many of the novels it is 
 invented to bring out various aspects of the same dread 
 warfare. Dr. Desprez exclaims to Jean-Marie : * I am in the 
 black fit: the evil spirit of King Saul, the hag of the 
 merchant Abudah, the personal devil of the mediaeval 
 monk, is with me, is in me (tapping on his breast). The 
 vices of my nature are now uppermost ; innocent pleasures 
 woo me in vain ; I long for Paris, for my wallowing in the 
 mire,' — and he hands over to the boy the money in his 
 pockets and beseeches him rather to wreck the train than 
 to let him go. The Master of Ballantrae is another instance, 
 in which the refined sensitiveness of the exterior serves but 
 
 221 
 
THE FAITH OF R. L. STEVENSON 
 
 to throw into darker relief the impudent grossness within. 
 It is the personal note of deep and sore experience that 
 makes all such descriptions of the double life and its 
 warfare so wonderfully telling. * I send you/ he writes to 
 Mr. Low, in a letter accompanying the newly written Dr, 
 Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, * I send you herewith a Gothic gnome 
 for your Greek nymph ; but the gnome is interesting, I think, 
 and he came out of a deep mine, where he guards the 
 fountain of tears.' We are left to conjecture what inner 
 struggles gave the suggestion for that dream which took its 
 final form in the allegory. 
 
 Our double nature is the radical difficulty in morals, yet 
 it is but the beginning of the trouble. In every department 
 the detail of goodness is far more difficult than it seems. 
 Any course in life, looked at thoughtlessly, seems to offer us 
 not only a possible but an easy career of goodness, if only we 
 were set free from the present, which always appears to be 
 handicapped. Yet the easy aspect is but an illusion, and 
 we only need to enter on the career to find that out. The 
 most typical instance of this is the case of honesty, to which 
 he very often reverts. People in one rank of society view 
 with envious eyes those in another rank, thinking that for 
 them ' honesty is no virtue, but a thing as natural as breath- 
 ing.' Even for themselves most people consider honesty a 
 virtue which they may take for granted, and which they 
 find ' as easy as Blind-Man's BuJBf.' Stevenson thinks other- 
 wise. In legal and commercial questions he shows by many 
 illustrations scattered throughout his books that honesty 
 is ' a more delicate affair than that ; delicate as any art.' It 
 is in this that he finds the difficulty of moral life most 
 pressing, and he devotes much labour to working out the 
 detail of his contention. As regards possession, for instance, 
 he is very explicit, whether the possession be great or smalL 
 * It is not enough to take off your hat, or to thank God upon 
 222 
 
MANLINESS AND HEALTH 
 
 your knees for the admirable constitution of society and 
 your own convenient situation in its upper and more orna- 
 mental stories. Neither is it enough to buy the loaf with 
 a sixpence, for then you. are only changing the point of the 
 inquiry; and you must first have bought the sixpence. 
 Service for service : how have you bought your sixpences ? ' 
 Again, as regards labour, the same principles apply. He 
 who undertakes to forge a knife, to cultivate a farm, to 
 write a book, to hold an office, is accepting a certain portion 
 of the material or intellectual property of mankind on trust. 
 That he shall produce good workmanship is not a matter 
 which concerns himself alone. In no department can he 
 produce bad workmanship without abusing the trust con- 
 fided in him, and fraudulently wasting material which is in 
 no sense his own. In all employments ' the slovenly is the 
 dishonest,' and the careless workman has by no means settled 
 his score with the universe when he is punished by personal 
 want of success. He has still to answer for abuse of trust 
 property. 
 
 This instance of honesty is but one out of many examples 
 which might be chosen. We have called it the typical ex- 
 ample, because it sets the point of view for Stevenson's theory 
 of the whole active service of human life. In his view of 
 duty there is nothing slavish, as of those who cringe before 
 a master, and act under the lash ; neither is there much of 
 the free and comprehending spirit of love to God, in which 
 all theorising is lost in the desire to please One who is very 
 dear to our hearts. His attitude is rather that of a man 
 passionately endeavouring to be honest and to pay his debt 
 so far as he may. It is not the fully developed Christian 
 doctrine ; yet it is exactly modelled upon many sayings of 
 Christ. The parables of the Pounds and the Talents are 
 with him in this teaching, and that far-reaching and seldom 
 realised word to the disciples, ' When ye have done all, . . . 
 
 P 223 
 
THE FAITH OF R. L. STEVENSON 
 
 say, We are unprofitable servants : we have done that which 
 was our duty to do.* There was much unexpressed love 
 behind vStcvenson's service, as there is behind that of 
 many another reticent disciple. 
 
 This, however, is but a specimen. The difficulty of 
 forgiving injuries is almost as pointedly stated as that of 
 being honest. Truth is difficult, so is good temper, so is 
 purity; and passages might be quoted which show every 
 one of the cardinal virtues in an arduous and trying aspect. 
 The difficulty is increased by circumstances. Heredity in 
 some, natural taste and disposition in others, marriage, the 
 necessities of business, the condition of one's health, all help 
 to complicate the situation. Altogether the art of living is 
 very hard to learn, and this is a supremely difficult world 
 to be good in. To many these constantly repeated warn- 
 ings may appear disconcerting and unintelligible. But all 
 those who have any experience of earnest struggle against 
 evil, and any consequent knowledge of their own hearts, will 
 find in them a wonderfully companionable and helpful 
 message. It is much to know, when we are tempted and 
 discouraged, that there are others by our side who feel the 
 same difficulties. It is far more when these difficulties are 
 expressed as Stevenson has been able to express them. In 
 his lucid words they stand out in such clearness that we 
 feel we have seen them in their final form, and that the 
 vague burden of a general sense of demand which we cannot 
 fulfil is exchanged for a set of definite encounters with life 
 on fields which he has made plain to our eyes. 
 
 All teaching which emphasises the difficulty of high ideals 
 runs the risk of ending in laxity. Professor Masson has 
 cited Milton as a standing exception to the common rule 
 that poets and artists generally ' are and ought to be dis- 
 tinguished by a predominance of sensibility over principle, 
 an excess of what Coleridge called the spiritual over what 
 224 
 
MANLINESS AND HEALTH 
 
 he called the moral part of man.' How shall Stevenson 
 stand in this judgment ? His sensibility and spirituality 
 are beyond question, and we have already shown that 
 these qualities were reinforced by a catholic appreciation 
 of all sorts and conditions of men, and by a kindly interest 
 in all the phases of life. We might therefore expect his 
 strong sense of the difficulty of being good to end in a 
 general amnesty, with no place left in it for condemnation 
 or even for moral earnestness. He has praised in a friend 
 ' his pious acceptance of the universe ' : how much, ethically, 
 does that involve ? Does it mean that we are to refrain 
 from attempting to change the universe in any part, or is 
 there still room left for aggression in the moral domain ? 
 He, more than almost any other writer, has helped us to 
 realise plainly the extreme difficulty of a noble life, and he 
 has, like many humane thinkers of our time, insisted on the 
 gentleness of God in judgment. * He who shall pass judg- 
 ment on the records of our life is the same that formed us 
 in frailty ' ; and while men know only, in regard to flagrant 
 acts, our exceptional sins, God knows and allows for our 
 exceptional excuses. Yet with all this he does not succumb 
 to that nerveless and maudlin compassion which some have 
 mistaken for charitable judgment. The God of such weak- 
 lings has good - humour for His distinguishing attribute 
 instead of holiness ; and Stevenson is well aware that 
 without holiness no man shall see the Lord. It is because 
 of his consuming sense of the reality of moral character 
 that he feels its difficulty so keenly. His interests and his 
 sympathies are wide, and he has seen that sterling virtue is 
 widely diffused in the world. Accordingly he falls back 
 from the sense of difficulty not upon slackness as a thing 
 inevitable in so impossible a world, but upon courage and 
 strenuousness that may, at worst, rescue what we can from 
 the wreck. His elaborate and frequent exposition of the 
 
 225 
 
THE FAITH OF R. L. STEVENSON 
 
 difficulties is not of the nature of a sentimental sigh, which 
 is really an excuse for failure; it is a challenge sent out 
 into the battle by a willing soldier. 
 
 Thus we come again to that moral earnestness in him of 
 which our past studies have afforded us so many examples. 
 It is true that no writer of our time has introduced a more 
 quaint humour into serious considerations. Thus in The 
 Black Arrow, Joanna laments her forced wearing of men's 
 clothes, ' which is a deadly sin for a woman ; and, besides, 
 they fit me not.' In the children's rhymes and Moral 
 Emblems there is much in this vein. The whole duty of a 
 child is to behave himself well in various specified situa- 
 tions, *at least as far as he is able.' In the emblem 
 attached to a woodcut of one man pushing another over 
 a cliff, we are invited to 
 
 *Mark, printed on the opposing page, 
 The unfortunate effects of rage,' 
 
 which turn out, however, to consist mainly in the uncomfort- 
 able reflections which are likely to annoy the murderer. A 
 more elaborate engraving of a beggar asking alms in vain 
 from a gentleman in a tall hat, has a verse opposite it 
 which ends in the lines : 
 
 ' He from the poor averts his head. . . 
 He will regret it when he 's dead.' 
 
 The comicality of these is irresistible, and it is the comicality 
 of the Scottish Stevenson rather than of the French. It 
 does not mean that he judged moral questions simply from 
 the artistic standpoint, as ultimately matters of good or bad 
 taste; but only that in all Scotsmen there is that grim 
 humour with which Carlyle has familiarised the world, and 
 which is never more effective than when it plays on moral 
 problems. 
 
 To convince ourselves of his moral earnestness we need 
 226 
 
. MANLINESS AND HEALTH 
 
 only recollect the exag^zerated condemnation of reward as a 
 motive to good deeds. Whether in the shape of money, or 
 of glory, or even of seeing some result of our labour, we noted 
 how he utterly repudiated the notion of payment for virtue, 
 and considered it the enemy of piety. It is by no means 
 necessary to agree with him in that view in order to see the 
 moral earnestness which lay behind it. The main reason 
 for his antagonism was that in his opinion morality was far 
 too serious a matter to allow any such consideration to 
 enter. ' The world must return some day to the word duty, 
 and be done with the word reward. There are no rewards 
 and plenty duties. And the sooner a man sees that and 
 acts upon it like a gentleman or a fine old barbarian, the 
 better for himself.' Another illustration is found in his 
 views as to the nature and value of money. Pressing the 
 well-known principle of political economy to its detailed 
 applications, he finds that a certain amount of money is 
 necessary, ' but beyond that, it is a commodity to be bought 
 or not to be bought, a luxury in which we may either 
 indulge or stint ourselves like any other. And there are 
 many luxuries that we may legitimately prefer to it, such 
 as a grateful conscience, a country life, or the woman of our 
 inclination.' Without soul, with its appetites, aspirations, 
 appreciations, the rich man remains miserably poor — * bank- 
 rupt of desire and hope, there, in his great house, let him sit 
 and look upon his fingers.' For his own part, Stevenson 
 tells us he wants but little money, 'and I do not want to 
 be decent at all, but to be good.' 
 
 This desire to be good involves more than appears. He 
 knows the cost of goodness in anxious carefulness of life, and 
 in ' the daily expense of spirit.' Every situation in life is a 
 dangerous and critical post. Those who are married have 
 doubled the ideals which they must serve: they have 'domesti- 
 cated the Kecording Angel,' and ' their witness is not only the 
 
 227 
 
THE FAITH OF R. L. STEVENSON 
 
 judge but the victim of their sins.' Yet even for the unmarried 
 the demands of conscience are searching and severe beyond 
 men's ordinary ideas of morality, for they are dealing with a 
 divine and eternal criterion in every act. Every day brings 
 to every man new opportunities ; and one of the things 
 on which Stevenson lays great stress is the critical nature 
 of the question whether a man shall prove worthy of his 
 opportunities. The doctrine of positive as contrasted with 
 negative virtue still further proves our point, for ' as we must 
 account for every idle word, so we must account for every 
 idle silence.' And then, to fail is a desperate matter, 
 because evil is so hateful. If our reading of his portrayal 
 of the sinfulness of sin ^ be the correct one, we have already 
 shown how bitterly in his heart he hated evil. This must, 
 of course, be gathered not so much from direct statements 
 or tirades against wickedness, as from the general tone of 
 his treatment of moral questions. No one thinks of 
 inveighing against evil in the abstract, because it is taken 
 for granted that every man, if he be not reprobate, is on the 
 side of good. A man's moral attitude is to be judged rather 
 from the sincerity and spontaneousness of his shrinking from 
 what is evil and his unconscious influence in leading his 
 readers to shrink from it, as from a thing loathsome and 
 abhorrent. That Stevenson has done with a power which has 
 seldom been surpassed. It is needless to multiply examples, 
 when they are to be found in almost everything he wrote. 
 Yet the one touch in Markheim, where he describes for us a 
 man in whom the hatred of evil survives the death of all 
 love of good, is itself a conclusive proof that in him we have 
 one whose earnestness, as well as his insight, is assured. 
 To most men, in this world where the finer spiritual and 
 moral life grows slowly from the primitive soil of coarse 
 and animal instincts, hatred is a principle hardier and more 
 
 1 P. 146. 
 228 
 
MANLINESS AND HEALTH 
 
 inalienable than love, whether for evil or for good. Browuing 
 knew this well when he wrote his great lines : 
 
 'Dante, "who loved well because he hated, 
 Hated wickedness that hinders loving/ 
 
 Stevenson could not have loved the good so well, had there 
 not been in him a bitter hatred of the evil. 
 
 We have already noted his power of depicting the moral 
 tragedy of life. It must now be added that apart from all 
 considerations of the picturesque and vivid by which that 
 tragedy may have tempted him, the real secret of his success 
 in this department lay in moral earnestness. In some of 
 his more violent work, such as The Bottle Imp, we see the 
 tragedy at its most exciting point of horror ; or, as in The 
 Great North Road, the criminal, growing insane in the reck- 
 lessness of crime, finds that it has now come to the question 
 whether he ' minds for God.' Yet it is not in such passages as 
 these that Stevenson's moral earnestness is most impressive, 
 but rather in his calmer work. Near the close of The Black 
 Arrow there is a passage which it would be hard to match 
 for quiet power of this kind, where Dick, at the expense of 
 his own favour with the Duke, saves the life of Captain 
 Arblaster, upon whom he has unwittingly brought ruin. 
 
 ' Arblaster,' said Dick, ' I have done you ill ; but now, by the 
 rood, I think I have cleared the score.' 
 
 But the old skipper only looked upon him dully and held his 
 peace. 
 
 'Come,' continued Dick, 'a life is a life, old shrew, and it is 
 more than ships or liquor. Say ye forgive me ; lor if your life 
 is worth nothing to you, it hath cost me the beginnings of my 
 fortune. Come, I have paid for it dearly ; be not so churlish.' 
 
 ' An I had had my ship,' said Arblaster, * I would 'a been 
 forth and safe on the high seas — I and my man Tom. But ye 
 took my ship, gossip, and I 'm a beggar ; and for my man Tom, 
 a knave fellow in russet shot him down. " Murrain ! " quoth 
 he, and spake never again. " Murrain " was the last of his 
 
 229 
 
THE FAITH OF R. L. STEVENSON 
 
 words, and the poor spirit of him passed. 'A will never sail no 
 more will my Tom.' 
 
 Dick was seized with unavailing penitence and pity ; he 
 sought to take the skipper's hand, but Arblaster avoided his 
 touch. 
 
 'Nay,' said he, *Iet be. Y' have played the devil with me, 
 and let that content you.' 
 
 The words died in Richard's throat. He saw, through 
 tears, the poor old man, bemused with liquor and sorrow, go 
 shambling away, with bowed head, across the snow, and the 
 unnoticed dog whimpering at his heels ; and for the first time 
 began to understand the desperate game that we play in life, 
 and how a thing once done is not to be changed or remedied by 
 any penitence.' 
 
 The moral earnestness which this passage and many others 
 reveal might well have led him into an austere morality 
 and given us our last glimpse of him trudging, in the wake 
 of Hermiston, ' up the great bare staircase of his duty.' He 
 cultivates a solemnising and sometimes terrifying serious- 
 ness in dealing with grave moral subjects, and insists that 
 it is part of true manhood to be able to be serious when 
 occasion requires it. Remembering the morbid passages in 
 Memories and Portraits^ and the exceptional power he had 
 of lowering his lights until the darkness of his work grew 
 altogether depressing, one watches for the end and the final 
 verdict with anxious curiosity. He has a Hebrew con- 
 science and a Greek imagination, a Scottish sense of sin 
 and a French delight in beauty. Austerity might con- 
 ceivably claim such a spirit for its own, and send him 
 eventually forth in sackcloth, a prophet of pessimism. On 
 the other hand, by sheer force of reaction from his sense of 
 the tragic in human life, he might have left the bitter 
 problems alone and turned to lightness. 
 
 As a matter of fact, he took neither of these courses, but 
 one better and more true to himself than either of them. 
 Tn him duty and pleasure were both imperative and he 
 230 
 
MANLINESS AND HEALTH 
 
 managed to retain them both. A passing sentence in a letter 
 to Mr. Edmund Gosse may serve to illustrate this. He is 
 counselling his friend regarding style: 'And in a style 
 which (like yours) aims more and more successfully at the 
 academic, one purple word is already much ; three — a 
 whole phrase — is inadmissible. Wed yourself to a clean 
 austerity; that is your force. Wear a linen ephod, 
 splendidly candid' The words which we have italicised 
 are delightfully significant. Both are Latin words, obvi- 
 ously intended to be understood in their Latin sense. With 
 this shining whiteness, this brilliance of raiment white and 
 glistering, a writer assuredly needs no purple. But the 
 austerity which has reached such effulgence has almost 
 ceased to be austere, and this was his only sort of austerity 
 either in art or in morals. Life was painted for him in 
 high lights and deep shadows, and neither the light nor the 
 darkness had it all its own way. In the brightest hour 
 there is a shadow, in the darkest a gleam. 
 
 Nor do the two moods alternate in a broken and fitful 
 life. Eather, the impression which grows as we watch the 
 advancing years is that of sanity and balanced thought. It 
 there is less of exuberance, there is more of quiet certainty. 
 He retains his enthusiasm. Sanity never means with him 
 a deadening of vitality, nor yet does he ever return even 
 for a moment to the prison-house of the conventional from 
 which he broke loose once for all in youth. Only there 
 is an assured and confirmed healthfulness and an all- 
 round naturalness of view, which are increasingly marked 
 and always bracing and inspiring. ' I am,' so he tells us at 
 the age of thirty- eight, ' vqyj glad to fight out my battle, 
 and see some fine sunsets, and hear some excellent jests be- 
 tween whiles round the camp fire.' Thus do the affectations 
 of youth pass more and more into a harmonious naturalness 
 of thought and character. He knows himself, and what he 
 
 231 
 
THE FAITH OF R. L. STEVENSON 
 
 is fit for, and what he prefers. He is no longer either 
 aggressive or on his defence, but calm and smiling even 
 while he makes his most startling announcements. Pagan 
 in the frank delight in pleasant and bright things, Puritan 
 in the austerity of his moral judgments, he appreciates the 
 strength of rude elemental virtues and also the delicacy of 
 spiritual refinements. But ever it is naturalness, truth to 
 himself and his nature as he finds these, that is his guiding 
 principle. He recognises the fact that each man has, for 
 any given period of his life, a certain normal level, on which 
 alone he can lead a healthy moral life. There are some who 
 allow themselves to sink below that level, and these are they 
 who dwell in darkness, lit by no ideals : others have been 
 taught by conventional morality to aspire to high-flown 
 virtues which are entirely out of their present reach, and 
 these, blind to the fact that the ideals they claim to live by 
 are for them no more than words, are the unconscious and 
 well-meaning hypocrites. For himself, he knows his limit- 
 ations and his reach, and lives up to the stretch of his 
 present strength and light, knowing that the only way to 
 gain the sunlit heights is by patiently climbing shoulder 
 after shoulder of the mountain-side. 
 
 Health is, above all other words, the distinguishing and 
 appropriate word for him. Cynicism he hates as an acute 
 and disastrous form of morbidness. He will allow just a 
 touch of it, as a tonic * in cases of advanced sensibility,' or 
 to keep people from a silly extravagance of optimism in 
 moral affairs. ' So much of cynicism to recognise that 
 nobody does right is the best equipment for those who do 
 not wish to be cynics in good earnest.' For the fashionable 
 cynic he cannot find words too scornful. He knows the 
 perverse modern delight in misery, and the books in which 
 * young gentlemen with three or four hundred a year of 
 private means look down from a pinnacle of doleful experi- 
 232 
 
MANLINESS AND HEALTH 
 
 ence on all the grown and hearty men who have dared to 
 say a good word for life since the beginning of the world.' 
 He knows that sort of book, and he abominates it. * I hate 
 cynicism a great deal worse than T do the devil/ says he, 
 
 * unless perhaps the two were the same thing ! ' In contrast 
 with all such morbidness we turn to his descriptions of 
 heroes and to those casual lists of ideals in which a writer 
 betrays without premeditation his own preference and ad- 
 miration. Here are a few of them, typical of many others. 
 ' Fire, thrift, and courage — a creature full-blooded and in- 
 spired with energy.' * Never to set up to be soft, only to be 
 square and hearty, and a man all round.' ' A fine face, hon- 
 ourable rather than intelligent, strong, simple, and righteous.' 
 
 * Strong, healthy, high-strung and generous natures.' ' Very, 
 very nice fellows, simple, good, and not the least dull.' 
 Such estimates prepare us for the more deliberate summary 
 of human virtue which is now one of the most familiar of 
 his sayings : ' To be honest, to be kind — to earn a little and 
 to spend a little less, to make upon the whole a family 
 happier for his presence, to renounce when that shall be 
 necessary and not be embittered, to keep a few friends but 
 these without capitulation — above all, on the same grim 
 condition, to keep friends with himself — here is a task for 
 all that a man has of fortitude and delicacy.' The closing 
 words may be taken as the best possible summary of his 
 ideals, and the best account also of his achievement. 
 Fortitude and delicacy — in these is the fulfilling of the Law 
 according to R. L. S. 
 
 One other instance of his general healthfulness must be 
 mentioned. It is the spirit of purity which everywhere 
 breathes in hfs work. It would be difficult to find any 
 writer of so many books who has penned so few lines that 
 leave a stain upon the memory. Not that there is the 
 slightest suspicion of prudery about him. He is realist 
 
 233 
 
THE FAITH OF R. L. STEVENSON 
 
 enough to insist upon facts when he has to deal with 
 unpleasant characters and situations, and he resents inter- 
 ference in such matters. Indeed they are safe in his hands. 
 In reading his broadest delineations of ugly vice or savage 
 roughness of manners, there still remains the undefinable 
 sense that we are in the presence of a man of delicate and 
 clean instincts. He has described men's houses as the little 
 clean spots which they create to dwell in; and one feels, 
 in all his books, that he has built for the imagination 
 many such houses. There is nothing obtrusive about this, 
 it is simply part of his healthiness of mind, and we owe him 
 all the deeper debt for it on that account. In a good 
 deal of the literature of our time this phase of healthiness 
 has been conspicuous by its absence. The demand of the 
 age is for what is interesting ; ennui threatens many, and to 
 combat it several devices have been employed. Anything 
 (within certain limits of course) will be forgiven a writer 
 nowadays — any grossness, or falsehood, or unpleasantness — 
 so long as he is not dull. To meet this demand one easy 
 expedient is, by suggestion and allusion at least, to utilise 
 the impure facts of life. Not that the morals inculcated are 
 bad — the modern conscience is not robust enough, or rather 
 perhaps it is not honest enough, to permit of that. The 
 moral is generally excellent ; but a real impurity is possible, 
 and it is quite as interesting, in attacks upon certain vices as 
 in defences of them — a secret well known to some of our 
 writers of problem novels. From any suspicion of this, 
 Stevenson is free. He succeeded in the task of being 
 interesting without the help of sensuality. He has sent a 
 clean and fresh breeze blowing over us, like that which we 
 feel in Scott's work ; and for this service alone our literature 
 and our public morals owe him much. 
 
 As a final illustration of Stevenson's health of mind, let 
 us take his view of the future and of the past — regions of 
 234 
 
MANLINESS AND HEALTH 
 
 thought in which a man has perhaps a greater chance of 
 growing morbid than any other. The spirit in which a man 
 looks forward to the future is perhaps the most obvious test 
 of his health of mind in the present. For Stevenson the 
 future essentially means a new chance. The meaning of life 
 itself is progress, and the thought of what we yet may be 
 is the inspiration of the present. * If we are indeed here 
 to perfect and complete our own natures, and grow larger, 
 stronger, and more sympathetic against some nobler career 
 in the future, we had all best bestir ourselves to the utmost 
 while we have the time. To equip a dull, respectable 
 person with wings would be but to make a parody of an 
 angel.' For the strenuous, the future wears but one aspect. 
 For them there is no fearful looking for of judgment nor 
 yet resignation in view of an approaching doom. Theirs it 
 is to go bravely into the thick of the fight, 
 
 * And in the mellay charge remain, 
 To fall but yet to rise again.' 
 
 Fall they will, no doubt, as they have fallen in the past, but 
 God, who sent them their opportunity and who also set for 
 them the impediment through which they missed it, will 
 act in a manner worthier and more Godlike than that of 
 one who is quick to mark iniquity. Eather will He 
 
 ' Diviner vengeance take — 
 Give me to sleep, give me to wake 
 Girded and shod, and bid me play 
 The hero in the coming day.' 
 
 It is, however, in regard to the past that the questions of 
 moral earnestness and health are most severely tested, and 
 demand the most careful balance. On the one hand, the sick 
 soul is tempted to despair ; on the other, the healthy-minded 
 are led off into too light-hearted and shallow a view of sin. 
 Stevenson's course is steered between the two, and there is 
 no part of his theory of life more easy to formulate with 
 
 235 
 
THE FAITH OF R. L. STEVENSON 
 
 definiteness than his doctrine of repentance. His prayers 
 afford the clearest examples, though there is a great deal 
 besides that might be cited. We have seen his views 
 of the evil of sin and of its hatefulness, and to these 
 passages we would again refer the reader.^ The prayer 
 quoted on p. 146 is itself sufficient evidence of the im- 
 portance of the place which he found for repentance in his 
 moral system. But repentance is, in his estimate, a very 
 different thing from ' the unclean passion of remorse/ and 
 for that he found no place. In his Prayer for Self-blame, 
 after the request that we may feel our offences with our 
 hands, see them great and bright like the sun, eat and drink 
 them for our diet, he goes on to pray : * Help us at the same 
 time with the grace of courage, that we be none of us cast 
 down when we sit lamenting amid the ruins of our happiness 
 or our integrity ; touch us with fire from the altar, that we 
 may be up and doing to rebuild our city.' 
 
 In a word, without energy, repentance is disease. He 
 who can find nothing to do but weep for his sins, will end 
 by weeping because he has nothing to eat. Like Mackellar, 
 he * knows nothing less respectable than the tears of drunk- 
 enness, and turns his back impatiently on this poor sight.' 
 He is not afraid of the application of his principles to 
 individual cases, and says plainly of Kobert Burns : ' He 
 was still not perhaps devoted to religion, but haunted by 
 it; and at a touch of sickness prostrated himself before 
 God in what I can only call unmanly penitence.' It is in 
 the light of these and other such statements that we must 
 read his assertion that we all think too much of sin. 
 * Never allow your mind to dwell on your own misconduct : 
 that is ruin. The conscience has morbid sensibilities; it 
 must be employed but not indulged. . . . Shut your eyes 
 hard on the recollection of your sins. Do not be afraid, you 
 
 1 P. 145. 
 
 236 
 
MANLINESS AND HEALTH 
 
 will not be able to forget tliem. . . . Not every action 
 should be higgled over; one of the leading virtues therein 
 is to let oneself alone. But if you make it your chief 
 ^-xjmployment, you are sure to meddle too much.' Taken by 
 themselves these latter statements are no doubt startling. 
 But nothing could be healthier than their teaching, if we 
 understand them in the sense which he intended. There is 
 all the difference in the world between a sensitive conscience 
 and a scrupulous one. And in these sentences he is also 
 combating a more serious evil — a frame of mind in which 
 men are meanly grovelling before God. In doing this he is 
 but echoing the words wliich the prophet heard when he 
 fell upon his face by the river Chebar, stunned and terrified 
 by his vision, and the Voice said to him, ' Son of man, stand 
 upon thy feet and I will speak unto thee.' So, in Stevenson's 
 view, should life even at its worst be taken standing. 
 Otherwise remorse can only lead to uselessness, and the 
 sense of one's own sin to the stern and unfeeling condem- 
 nation of the trespasses of others. 
 
 To save us from such inert and profitless discouragement 
 he reminds us that even sin has its uses in the great and 
 mysterious design of human life. * To any but the brutish 
 man his sins are the beginning of wisdom,' he protests, and 
 God warns men by their crimes. If life be progress to all 
 the strenuous, then the past, at its worst, is yet a stage on 
 the way to better things. He tells the story of a former 
 friend which remains with all who have read it as a hopeful 
 and inspiring memory. * The tale of this great failure is, 
 to those who remained true to him, the tale of a success. 
 In his youth he took thought for no one but himself; when 
 he came ashore again, his whole armada lost, he seemed to 
 think of none but others. . . . He had gone to ruin with a 
 kind of kingly abandon, like one who condescended ; but once 
 ruined, with the light:^ all out, he fought as for a kingdom.' 
 
 237 
 
THE FAITH OF R. L. STEVENSON 
 
 And so we come to the moral of it all, which may be 
 expressed in the one phrase, ' Cling to what is left.' It is 
 a phrase illuminated by its association with that accident to 
 the canoe, when Stevenson, in imminent danger of his life, 
 still clung to his paddle, and chose this record for a fitting 
 epitaph to be inscribed upon his tomb. The incident is a 
 not unfitting allegory of his whole view of the way in which 
 a man should deal with character. It is a tragic affair, this 
 human life of ours, beset with dangers and foredoomed to 
 many failures. Even the victors in its contest shall as- 
 suredly, every one of them, enter into life maimed. In 
 many a moral crisis there will be much that is lost, and 
 what is lost in that warfare is lost for ever. But, apart 
 from what may be actually gained, there is always at least 
 something that remains not yet lost. In judging others it 
 is well to remember this, and ' boldly make up your mind 
 that you can do perfectly well without the rest ; and that 
 ten thousand bad traits cannot make a single good one any 
 the less good.' In meditating over our own past, it is 
 important, with all our regret and shame, still to be 
 'thankful that we are no worse.' 'Honour can survive a 
 wound,' he writes in his discussion of Dumas' novel; 'it 
 can live and thrive without a member. The man rebounds 
 from his disgrace ; he begins fresh foundations on the ruins 
 of the old; and when his sword is broken he will do 
 valiantly with his dagger. So it is with Fouquet in the 
 book ; so it was with Dumas on the battlefield of life. To 
 cling to what is left of any damaged quality is virtue in 
 the man.' In this there is the hope and the spring of 
 renewed activity. There is no conceivable situation in life 
 which does not offer a man one right course to follow at the 
 moment. We have seen how he describes as the saddest 
 and most miserable feature in the plight of Eobert Burns 
 this, that he is condemned to the choice of two evils, and 
 238 
 
MANLINESS AND HEALTH 
 
 whichever way he chooses he will still be wrong. That, 
 however, is but the appearance of the case. In reality 
 there is always a way which will be right. ' Conceive a 
 man,' says Mr. Archer, ' damned to a choice of only evil — 
 misconduct upon either side . . . naught before him but 
 this choice of sins. How would you say then ? ' * I would 
 say that he was much deceived, Mr. Archer/ returned 
 Nance. ' I would say that there was a third choice, and 
 that the right one.' It is true that in this case there was no 
 apparent fault behind the man driving him to the dilemma. 
 Yet even if there had been, Nance's was the true answer. 
 Life never absolutely commits any man to crime ; there is 
 always set before every man an open door. 
 
 It is thus that Stevenson's moral earnestness is the inspira- 
 tion not of a morbid but of a supremely healthy view of life. 
 To some of his detailed statements we may take exception, and 
 it is true also that there is another side to all this teaching, 
 without due consideration of which it is not without its 
 dangers. There are depths of moral experience which it has 
 never sounded, and the sick soul will sometimes touch bottom 
 in a despair far below its range of helpfulness. Yet still 
 his doctrine retains its truth and value. It is not a wise, 
 though it is only a too common, principle of criticism, which 
 judges a man by what he has has left unsaid. For that 
 silence there may be various motives, and his experience 
 may have gone at times too deep for any attempt at 
 expression. So far as it goes, this part of his faith is 
 Christian, full of a courage, a resoluteness, and a hope 
 which Christ Himself approved. In some of those to whom 
 He said, ' Go and sin no more,' there can have been but a 
 very halting faith, so far as intellectual understanding went. 
 In all of them there was the forsaking of the broken and 
 wasted past, to face the future with that which remained. 
 The power to do this certainly lay in Him who inspired 
 
 Q 239 
 
THE FAITH OP R. L. STEVENSON 
 
 them with new courage and offered them the new chance. 
 But when we see a man, obviously inspired for duty, un- 
 dismayed by failure, facing the future a^3 Stevenson ever 
 faced it for himself and urged his fellows to face it, may 
 we not discern behind the gallant figure of the human 
 combatant the form of the Son of Man ? At least we may 
 be sure of this, that there are very many persons whose 
 moral condition needs exactly this message. With faith 
 confused and dim, with the irrevocable past filling all their 
 souls with discouragement, it cannot but be well for them 
 to hear the voice that calls to them to hold fast that which 
 remains. If they will take heart and obey, sooner or later 
 the Master will reveal Himself to them ; for it was Himself 
 who said that many acts done strenuously and lovingly by 
 those who knew not that they were serving Him would 
 prove at the last to have been done unto Him. 
 
 240 
 
THE 'GREAT TASK OF HAPPINESS 
 
 CHAPTER XIII 
 
 THE 'GREAT TASK OF HAPPINESS 
 
 The faith which expressed itself in sympathy and appreci- 
 ation, and in manliness and health, led up to one great 
 truth in which it culminated. The duty of joy, the ethical 
 value of happiness, is par excellence the message of Eobert 
 Louis Stevenson. This, more than any other ideal, was the 
 light of his vision, and the inspiration of his travel. It 
 touches every part of his experience, from physical pleasures, 
 up through the delights of intellectual and moral life, to 
 the most exalted spiritual joys; and its proclamation is 
 the distinguishing feature of his life-work. 
 
 The idea of enjoyment cannot be mentioned in connection 
 with ethics, without at once suggesting the utilitarian 
 doctrine that the end of action is happiness, which thus 
 becomes the ultimate motive and test of conduct. We must 
 hasten at the outset to dissociate Stevenson from any such 
 doctrine. Much as he has praised happiness and inculcated 
 it, there is nothing further from his faith than this, nor 
 anything which he has more explicitly disowned. Fleeming 
 Jenkin had said to one who announced that she would 
 never be happy again : ' What does that signify ? We are 
 not here to be happy, but to be good.' Stevenson, who 
 recorded the saying, heartily endorsed it, correcting it, how- 
 ever, by a significant addition : * We are not here to be 
 happy but to try to be good.' This sentiment he repeats in 
 some of his most serious letters, and he adds the further 
 
 241 
 
THE FAITH OF R. L. STEVENSON 
 
 assertion that happiness is not only not the end of our life, 
 it is not even our deepest desire. ' We are not put here to 
 enjoy ourselves : it was not God's purpose ; and I am 
 prepared to argue, it is not our sincere wish.' * Men do not 
 want, and I do not think they would accept, happiness ; 
 what they live for is rivalry, effort, success.' The relation 
 of all this to his doctrine of reward is obvious, and it is 
 plainly stated in another letter : ' Nor is happiness, whether 
 eternal or temporal, the reward that mankind seeks. 
 Happinesses are but his wayside campings ; his soul is in 
 the journey.' 
 
 So far Stevenson is at one with Carlyle, and would readily 
 subscribe to the immortal words of Sartor Resartus: 'What 
 is this that, ever since earliest years, thou hast been fretting 
 and fuming, and lamenting and self-tormenting, on account 
 of ? Say it in a word : is it not because thou art not HAPPY ? 
 Because the Thou (sweet gentleman) is not sufficiently 
 honoured, nourished, soft-bedded, and lovingly cared for? 
 Foolish soul ! What Act of Legislature was there that thou 
 shouldst be Happy ? ' But he soon comes to a practical 
 dilemma, at which he parts from Carlyle. So far as the 
 man himself is concerned, he can repudiate happiness. ' In 
 his own life, then, a man is not to expect happiness, only to 
 profit by it gladly when it shall arise.' But where the happi- 
 ness of others is involved, the case is different. Stevenson 
 feels that ' somehow or other, though he cannot tell what 
 will do it, he must try to give happiness to others. And 
 of course there arises here a frequent clash of duties. How 
 far is he to make his neighbour happy ? How far must 
 he respect that smiling face, so easy to cloud, so hard to 
 brighten again ? ' And besides, if happiness be indeed no 
 right end of conduct for oneself, how can it be the proper 
 thing to aim at for one's neighbours ? 
 
 This is one of the few instances in which there appears to 
 242 
 
THE 'great task OF HAPPINESS' 
 
 be some inconsistency or at least confusion in Stevenson's 
 thought. He is aware of the dilemma, and he escapes from 
 it not by working out a theory, but by committing himself to 
 a practical principle of action. Solvitur ambulando ; and 
 the solution is as satisfactory as any that the most subtle 
 logic could have offered. In the Carlylian mood he states 
 in strong terms the opinion that happiness is by no means a 
 certain accompaniment of right conduct. ' Happiness and 
 goodness, according to canting moralists, stand in the 
 relation of effect and cause. There was never anything less 
 proved or less probable : our happiness is never in our own 
 hands ; we inherit our constitution ; we stand buffet among 
 friends and enemies ; we may be so built as to feel a sneer 
 or an aspersion with unusual keenness, and so circum- 
 stanced as to be unusually exposed to them ; we may have 
 nerves very sensitive to pain, and be afflicted with a disease 
 very painful. Virtue will not help us, and it is not meant 
 to help us. It is not even its own reward, except for the 
 self-centred and — I had almost said — the unamiable.' Thus 
 does he cast aside the doctrine of the happiness of duty as 
 it has been generally held. Happiness, considered from the 
 point of view of ethics, he defines as nothing but an internal 
 harmony — a harmony between our conduct and our con- 
 viction, whether the conduct be in itself right or wrong. 
 
 We might naturally expect, as the sequel, a final dis- 
 missal of all considerations of happiness in the moral life. 
 Nothing could be further from his mind. The doctrine of 
 the happiness of duty is only cast aside in favour of the 
 less familiar one of the duty of happiness. The theoretical 
 perplexities are left to settle themselves ; the facts of life 
 present him with the practical exit from their coil. To a 
 man of sympathy and strong human affection, the happiness 
 of those around him, so far as that lies in his power, cannot 
 fail to be imperative. Accordingly we come atonce to the 
 
 243 
 
THE FAITH OF R. L. STEVENSON 
 
 duty of making others happy, and of being happy ourselves 
 that we may be able so to do. These principles are stated 
 with his usual absoluteness, in epigrams which, taken by 
 themselves, are sometimes startling. * Pleasures are more 
 beneficial than duties, because, like the quality of mercy, 
 they are not strained, and they are twice blest. . . . 
 Wherever there is an element of sacrifice the favour is 
 conferred with pain, and, among generous people, received 
 with confusion. There is no duty we so much underrate as 
 the duty of being happy.' 'No man was ever anything but 
 a wet blanket and a cross to his companions, who boasted 
 not a copious spirit of enjoyment.' 'A happy man or 
 woman is a better thing to find than a five-pound note. 
 He or she is a radiating focus of good-will; and their 
 entrance into a room is as though another candle had been 
 lighted.' 
 
 Once canonised as a duty in its own right, the duty of 
 happiness soon takes the place of honour and precedence. 
 'Gentleness and cheerfulness, these come before all 
 morality ; they are the perfect duties. ... If your morals 
 make you dreary, depend upon it they are wrong.' ' Noble 
 disappointment, noble self-denial, are not to be admired, not 
 even to be pardoned, if they bring bitterness.' In a word, 
 we have no right to be gloomy upon any pretext. The 
 poem in which this sentiment finds fullest expression is 
 The Celestial Surgeon, in which he contemplates the pos- 
 sibility of lapsing into a condition of joyless apathy and 
 sullen gloom, and prays for anything that may arouse him, 
 whether it be a pleasure, or a pain, or even a killing sin. 
 This poem has been frequently quoted by writers who are 
 alive to the spiritual dangers of the time, and it has 
 quickened not a few whose spirits were flagging. Although 
 to many readers it is familiar, we copy it entire from 
 Underwoods : 
 244 
 
THE 'GREAT TASK OE HAPPINESS' 
 
 * If I have faltered more or less 
 In my great task of happiness ; 
 If I have moved among my race 
 And shown no glorious morning face ; 
 If beams from happy human eyes 
 Have moved me not ; if morning skies, 
 Books, and my food, and summer rain 
 Knocked on my sullen heart in vain : — 
 Lord, thy most pointed pleasure take 
 And stab my spirit broad awake ; 
 Or, Lord, if too obdurate I, 
 Choose thou, before that spirit die, 
 A piercing pain, a killing sin, 
 And to my dead heart run them in.' 
 
 For that one phrase of the fourth line, a ' glorious morning 
 face/ we owe him much. It was one which was evidently- 
 very attractive to himself, for we find it again in one of his 
 prayers, in The Black Arrow, and elsewhere. Had he done 
 nothing else than to set these bright words in the hearts 
 of his readers, he would have still been a man with a 
 message to his generation. 
 
 The phrase *duty of happiness' is rather suggestive of 
 happiness at the sword's point, and there were times when 
 it needed all the determination and courage at his command. 
 Yet it was reinforced by an abundant spring of natural 
 gaiety and joy which he preserved unchanged from his 
 childhood. Mr. Gosse says that gaiety was his cardinal 
 quality — ' a childlike mirth leaped and danced in him ; he 
 seemed to skip upon the hills of life.' Such continued 
 childhood was evidently a favourite type of character with 
 him. No one who has read his Memoir of Fleeming Jenkin 
 can ever forget the charming picture of the last days of the 
 Professor's father, Captain Jenkin, a chapter breathing the 
 sweetest spirit of the child, and one which could have been 
 written only by a man possessed of the rarest genius for 
 such work. The Captain's request for a device to be hung 
 below the trophy in his dining-room is significant of the 
 
 245 
 
THE FAITH OF R. L. STEVENSON 
 
 whole : ' I want you to work me something, Annie. An 
 anchor at each side — an anchor — stands for an old sailor, 
 you know — stands for hope, you know — an anchor at each 
 side, and in the middle THANKFUL.' Stevenson must 
 surely have had the Captain in his mind, when, in the year 
 following the publication of the Memoir, he wrote in A 
 Christmas Sermon : ' And the kingdom of heaven is of the 
 childlike, of those who are easy to please, who love and 
 who give pleasure. Mighty men of their hands, the smiters 
 and the builders and the judges, have lived long and done 
 sternly and yet preserved this lovely character ; and among 
 our carpet interests and twopenny concerns, the shame 
 were indelible if we should lose it.' 
 
 It was in his own childhood that he learned the secret of 
 gladness. The glee of children is partly a matter of 
 physical vitality : it is as inevitable as childhood itself — 
 
 'Happy hearts and happy faces, 
 \ Happy play in grassy places — 
 / That was how, in ancient ages, 
 V Children grew to kings and sages.' 
 
 From his earliest days he never found it hard to ' make him- 
 self cheerful,' and his imagination transformed the sick- 
 bed into Hhe pleasant land of counterpane.' The same 
 exuberance of animal spirits is to be seen in children even 
 more handicapped than he, as we perceive from the won- 
 derfully fine picture he has drawn of two ragged little 
 girls dancing barefoot on the Edinburgh pavement in the 
 teeth of an east wind. But the secret of his childlike 
 gladness was more than animal spirits. It was a sense of 
 the opulence of the world in interesting and delightful 
 objects. Some of his happiest verses are inspired by this 
 thought, especially those entitled A Thought and Happy 
 Thought : 
 246 
 
THE * GREAT TASK OF HAPPINESS' 
 
 * It is very nice to tiiink 
 The world is full of meat and drink, 
 With liitle children saying grace 
 In every Ciirisiian kind of place' ; 
 
 and 
 
 * The world is so full of a number of things, 
 I'm sure we should all be as happy as kings.* 
 
 Besides his sense of the opulence of the world, the child's 
 joy kindles at the thought of anything which makes him 
 feel his own importance and significance in it. The 
 gladdest thing for a boy, is to be made to feel that he is some- 
 body and counts for something. This conviction is the same 
 as that interest in himself, that sense of his own personality, 
 which we have already found so strong in Stevenson. The 
 essay in which it finds its most perfect expression is ' The 
 Lantern-bearers,' in Across the Plains. Of that essay Pro- 
 fessor James has said, in one of his Talks to Students, that it 
 deserves to become immortal. He quotes it at great length, 
 but for our present purpose the following extracts will be 
 enough : — 
 
 ' Toward the end of September, when school-time was draw- 
 ing near and the nights w^re already black, we would begin to 
 sally from our respective villas, each equipped with a tin bull's- 
 eye lantern. The thing was so well known that it had worn a 
 rut in the commerce of Great Britain ; and the grocers, about 
 the due time, began to garnish their windows with our par- 
 ticular brand of luminary. We wore them buckled to the waist 
 upon a cricket-belt, and over them, such was the rigour of the 
 game, a buttoned top-coat. They smelled noisomely of 
 blistered tin; they never burned aright, though they would 
 always burn our fingers ; their use was naught ; the pleasure of 
 them merely fanciful ; and yet a boy with a bull's-eye under his 
 top-coat asked for nothing more. . . . 
 
 'When two of these asses met, there would be an anxious 
 • Have you got your lantern 1 ' and a gratified ' Yes ! ' That was 
 the shibboleth, and very needful too ; for, as it was the rule to 
 keep our glory contained, none could recognise a lantern- 
 
 247 
 
THE FAITH OF R. L. STEVENSON 
 
 bearer, unless (like the polecat) by the smell. Four or five 
 would sometimes climb into the belly of a ten-man lugger, with 
 nothing but the thwarts above them — for the cabin was usually 
 locked — or choose out some hollow of the links where the wind 
 might whistle overhead. There the coats would be unbuttoned 
 and the bull's-eyes discovered ; and in the chequering glimmer, 
 under the huge windy hall of the night, and cheered by a rich 
 steam of toasting tinware, these fortunate young gentlemen 
 would crouch together in the cold sand of the links or on the 
 scaly bilges of the fishing-boat, and delight themselves with 
 inappropriate talk. Woe is me, that I may not give some 
 specimens — some of their foresights of life, or deep inquiries 
 into the rudiments of man and nature, these were so fiery and 
 so innocent, they were so richly silly, so romantically young. 
 But the talk, at any rate, was but a condiment ; and these 
 gatherings themselves only accidents in the career of the 
 lantern-bearer. The essence of this bliss was to walk by your- 
 self in the black night ; the slide shut, the top-coat buttoned ; 
 not a ray escaping, whether to conduct your footsteps or to 
 make your glory public ; a mere pillar of darkness in the dark ; 
 and all the while, deep down in the privacy of your fool's heart, 
 to know you had a bull's-eye at your belt, and to exult and sing 
 over the knowledge. . . . For to miss the joy is to miss all. 
 In the joy of the actors lies the sense of any action. That is 
 the explanation, that the excuse. To one who has not the 
 secret of the lanterns, the scene upon the links is meaningless.' 
 
 When he became a man, there were some childish things 
 which, happily for himself, he did not put away The 
 glee of childhood remained with him as a constitutional 
 optimism, a natural tendency, like that of his mother, to 
 look upon the bright side of things. He highly appreciates 
 the sentiment of D'Artagnan's old servant, ' Monsieur, fitais 
 une de ces homines pdtes d'hommes que Dieu a faits pour 
 s'animer pendant un certain temps et pour trouver bonnes 
 toutes choses qui accompagnent leur s^jour sur la terre* In 
 this full-grown optimism we perceive the development of that 
 sense of opulence in the world which the child had already 
 248 
 
THE *GREAT TASK OF HAPPINESS' 
 
 felt. His world is full of pleasures for him, 'so that to 
 see the day break or the moon rise, or to meet a friend, or 
 to hear the dinner-call when he is hungry, fills him with 
 surprising joys.' His prayers are full of such catalogues of 
 blessings, thanking God for work and friends, for food and 
 laughter. He tells us he used to sit at night on the plat- 
 form of his house in Silverado, and listen to the song of 
 the crickets, 'and wonder why these creatures were so 
 happy ; and what was wrong with man that he also did not 
 wind up his days with an hour or two of shouting.' 
 
 The keenness of his senses made all the physical world 
 minister to his pleasure. He was not one of those who 
 profess to despise the pleasures in which they nevertheless 
 continue to indulge. We have all met the man who says 
 he smokes because he cannot give up the practice, but 
 speaks senteutiously about its evils. If such had been his 
 sentiments, Stevenson would, like any other man of sense or 
 principle, have given it up at once. He smoked because he 
 enjoyed smoking, and he smoked hard. On the wider field 
 of Nature, his susceptibility to joy remained keen and 
 strong throughout. * my beautiful forest,' he exclaims at 
 Vailima, ' my beautiful, shining, windy house, what a 
 joy it was to behold them again ! No chance to take 
 myself too seriously here ! ' * Some very violent squalls 
 came as we sat there, and every one rejoiced; it was 
 impossible to help it; a soul of putty had to sing.' In 
 Silverado ' A rough smell of resin was in the air, and a 
 crystal mountain purity. It came pouring over these green 
 ocean slopes by the oceanful. The woods sang aloud and 
 gave largely of their healthful breath. Gladness seemed to 
 inhabit these upper zones, and we had left indifference 
 behind us in the valley. "I to the hills will lift mine 
 eyes." There are days in a life when thus to climb out of 
 the lowlands seems like v<?caling heaven.' 
 
 349 
 
THE FAITH OF R. L. STEVENSON 
 
 While his disposition made happiness natural to him, the 
 circumstances of his life were such that the inclination had 
 often to be reinforced by a sense of duty. It is a mixed 
 world, and even the lightest-hearted will find at times that he 
 has to make a deliberate choice of the brighter things, and 
 to ignore the darker, if his heart is to remain light. It is 
 for lack of any sense of duty in the matter of good spirits 
 that many naturally happy persons either end in alternating 
 between high spirits and hopeless gloom, or sink into a 
 deepening distrust of life and cease to be their former 
 selves. Their mistake is to trust to nature for everything, 
 something being always left for will to do. Many a man, on 
 the other hand, gets little credit for his indomitable good 
 cheer, because it is supposed that this is but his natural 
 inclination. But a virtue is still a virtue, even though it 
 be congenial ; and those who have diligently kept their lamp 
 of joy alight are not the least worthy of God's faithful ones. 
 As for Stevenson, he deliberately drew upon and encouraged 
 all the available sources of gladness. He carried with him 
 into manhood, not only the glee that comes from physical 
 vitality, and the sense of the world's opulence, but also 
 the spirit of the Lantern-bearer, who carefully kept alive 
 his inner light. His natural optimism is unquestionable, 
 but it should be remembered that he needed it all, and that, 
 if his strenuous choice of it had flagged, pessimism would 
 not have been far to seek. It is a great and potent secret, 
 that of fostering our own peculiar enthusiasm as a sacred 
 flame. Eegard yourself, as you face the simplest duty of 
 to-morrow, as tending within your soul's temple the fires 
 of God, and you shall find the bright parable true. Both 
 these sources, the outward and the inward, were largely 
 drawn upon by Stevenson. 
 
 This involves, first of all, a deliberate selection of the 
 brighter things for attention. Nothing could be blither 
 250 
 
THE 'great task OF HAPPINESS' 
 
 than those sudden glances across the world which, in the 
 Child's Garden and elsewhere, show its inhabitants rejoicing 
 far and near : 
 
 * Of speckled eggs the birdie singa 
 And nests among the trees ; 
 The, sailor sings of ropes and things 
 In ships upon the seas. 
 
 The children sing in far Japan, 
 
 The children sing in Spain ; 
 The organ with the organ man 
 
 Is singing in the rain.' 
 
 In the character of the French especially he is delighted 
 with the ' clear unflinching recognition by everybody of his 
 own luck. They all know on which side their bread is 
 buttered, and take a pleasure in showing it to others, which 
 is surely the better part of religion.' He compares the 
 French Camisards with the Scottish Covenanters, and pre- 
 fers the spirit of the former, because they had only bright 
 and supporting visions, while the latter were much in conflict 
 with the devil, and ' though they might be certain of the 
 cause, could never rest confident of the person.' 
 
 In every situation there are pleasant things for a man to 
 attend to if he will. ' I saw the sea,' he says, ' to be great 
 and calm ; and the earth, in that little corner, was all alive 
 and friendly to me. So, wherever a man is, he will find some- 
 thing to please and pacify him : in the town he will meet 
 pleasant faces of men and women, and see beautiful flowers 
 at a window, or hear a cage-bird singing at the corner of 
 the gloomiest street ; and for the country, there is no country 
 without some amenity — let him only look for it in the right 
 spirit, and he will surely find it.' So it is in judging the 
 characters of our fellow men ; there is always something 
 that is lovely and of good report in them. So it is in judg- 
 ing of one's own experience. If much have gone from life, 
 
 251 
 
THE FAITH OF R. L. STEVENSON 
 
 there is still something left. Even if the worst come to the 
 worst, there is some compensating element in the very fact 
 that one has now at last touched bottom. ' This is life at 
 last,' he may tell himself; 'this is the real thing. The 
 bladders on which I was set swimming are now empty ; my 
 own weight depends upon the ocean ; by my own exertions 
 I must perish or succeed.' But the worst does not, as a 
 matter of fact, come to the worst nearly so often as we fear, 
 either in our fortunes or in our character. * It is a common- 
 place that we cannot answer for ourselves before we have 
 been tried. But it is not so common a reflection, and 
 surely more consoling, that we usually find ourselves a 
 great deal braver and better than we thought.' 
 
 But Stevenson's deliberate optimism, in which happiness 
 is a great task as well as a natural disposition, involved 
 more than selection of the brighter elements in life. There 
 are for every man seasons when no element seems bright, and 
 in such dark times the brightness has to be created by the 
 would-be optimist. Professor James, who has many things 
 in common with Stevenson, has brought into prominence 
 of late a startling and most suggestive theory of the 
 emotions. It is usually supposed that immediately after 
 perceiving the exciting fact, the emotion follows, and 
 then, third in the order of time, the bodily expression. 
 Thus, to use the great psychologist's own illustrations, 
 ' we lose our fortune, are sorry and weep ; we meet a 
 bear, are frightened and run.' His theory reverses the 
 order of the latter two statements, and makes the bodily 
 effect follow directly on the perception, to be followed 
 in its turn finally by the emotion. Under this view it 
 is our weeping that causes sorrow, our trembling and 
 running that induce the emotion of fear. This is no 
 place to discuss the theory upon its merits, or to judge for 
 or against its psychological value and sufficiency. Its claim 
 252 
 
THE 'great task OF HAPPINESS' 
 
 upon our attention here is that it has given the key to a 
 large number of actual problems in practical life, in which 
 by forcing the body into certain expressions we may lead 
 the mind to follow suit, and so may, by the help of the 
 flesh, produce certain spiritual conditions which are other- 
 wise wholly beyond our reach. It is this that lies at the 
 root of much that we have already said of acting.^ In the 
 present connection it means that a darkened life may often 
 be recalled to a sense of the brightness of the world by a 
 determined effort. By resolute smiling, so to speak, we 
 may become glad ; and our world will eventually respond to 
 our determined policy of taking it as if it were brighter 
 than for the time it appears. By a deliberate pretence that 
 the world is fairer than it looks, we can see the miracle of 
 a world actually becoming fair under our eyes. This is 
 another phase of that victory of faith which overcomes the 
 world ; it overcomes the world by forcing it to assume the 
 aspect it desires. The secret was well known to Stevenson. 
 Not only did he diligently seek out the encouraging and 
 bright aspects of experience as he actually found them. 
 Jesus Christ once said to a doubting apostle, * Blessed are 
 they that have not seen and yet have believed.' Stevenson 
 believed through many an hour when he had not seen, and 
 so was blessed. When all was dark, he pointed his tele- 
 scope right into the blackness, and found a star. It is 
 thus that faith may imitate the Master's work, calling 
 things whicli are not as though they are, and find that the 
 dark world has no power to resist faith's command when it 
 boldly says, Let there be light. Many a happy fact, 
 insignificant and easily forgotten amidst prevailing diffi- 
 culties and trials, he emphasised and isolated, and let his 
 thought play round it until it had assumed such proportions 
 as to dominate his view of life, and command the spirit 
 
 » Cp. p. 43. 
 
 253 
 
THE FAITH OF R. L. STEVENSON 
 
 to rejoice. It is in the light of all this that we must 
 remember his advocacy of boastfulness, which is one way 
 of making the most of what good a man finds in his 
 situation : ' If people knew what an inspiriting thing it is 
 to hear a man boasting, so long as he boasts of what he 
 really has, I believe they would do it more fully and with a 
 better grace.' 
 
 It is the element of duty in it that saves optimism from 
 being one of the worst of things and makes it one of the 
 best. There is a cheap and impertinent optimism, which 
 consists in not looking at the facts of life, but nursing a 
 pleasant mood without reference to them. From this 
 Stevenson was singularly free. He prayed to be delivered 
 from all cheap pleasures, and refused to cheat himself into 
 any blindfold light-heartedness. He found some good things 
 actually there, and concentrated on them — a very different 
 matter from the brainless optimism of the blindfolded. His 
 action, when no good could be seen, was founded upon a 
 faith that in the depths 
 
 * This world 's no blot for us, 
 Nor blank ; it means intensely and means good' 
 
 — a faith which he found experience abundantly to confirm. 
 It is one thing to live in a fool's paradise of our own 
 imagining ; it is a very different thing to trust life and to 
 find it reveal its trustworthiness in return for the venture 
 of faith. Whether optimism shall be mere vanity, or 
 whether it shall be the discovery of God, depends almost 
 wholly upon how much it is cherished on the one hand as 
 a form of selfishness, or on the other as a matter of duty. 
 He believed in life because he found that only in that 
 belief could a man be true to himself and serviceable to 
 others. And life justified his faith, for to the strenuous 
 and the unselfish it is always true that * experience worketh 
 hope, and hope maketh not ashamed.' 
 254 
 
THE 'GREAT TASK OF HAPPINESS' 
 
 Such were his principles, and if the question be asked, 
 how far he realised them in actual life, there need be no 
 fear as to the answer. He was, indeed, a man of many 
 moods, and it would be vain to attempt to hold him down 
 to any one of them. He was also a man whose physical 
 health must have rendered it absolutely impossible for him 
 to maintain an unbroken cheerfulness. In the latter years, 
 when health seemed in an unhoped-for degree to have been 
 restored, the complications and responsibilities of his life 
 must often have rendered peace an impossibility and gladness 
 a triumph. From these years, and from times of specially 
 bad health before them, when he was ' far through/ there 
 come confessions of gloom and even protests against circum- 
 stances such as any reasonable onlooker would expect. It 
 would be quite possible, and yet it would be entirely mis- 
 leading, to gather from such passages the impression of a 
 deepening pessimism. They certainly forbid us to think of 
 him as a thoughtless or feather-brained optimist, but their 
 presence beside the courageous belief in life, and the cheer- 
 fulness and enjoyment which alternate with them even at 
 the worst, only serve to give the impression of a sober 
 and chastened joy, and to keep his happiness from frivolity. 
 
 Under the burden of ill-health or overwork, his cheerful- 
 ness does occasionally give way. He speaks of having known 
 what it was to be happy once, long ago, at Hyeres, while 
 now he knows only pleasures, plentiful, indeed, but none 
 of them perfect. Again he tells us that he is gay no longer. 
 His literary work becomes painful and burdensome. He is 
 not strong enough to do his best, and work tires him, so 
 that when it is done he does not know whether it is good 
 or not, or is positively disappointed with it. In such hours 
 of depression a constitutional distrust of the future possesses 
 him, in spite of the hopefulness he had inherited from his 
 mother. He will never write well again, he fears. He 
 
 K 255 
 
THE FAITH OF R. L. STEVENSON 
 
 views the future as a heavy task from which all zest and 
 interest have departed. He thinks he has lost his chance 
 by not dying sooner. Within a few months of the end he 
 fears that there is no hope of his dying soon and cleanly, 
 and 'winning off the stage.' He will 'have to see this 
 business out, after all.' This sense that he had outlived his 
 life was the saddest point he reached. The quality of the 
 work he was doing at the time entirely belied it ; but some- 
 times his life ran too low to allow him to appreciate the joy 
 of that labour which had reached as near perfection as it is 
 almost ever given to man to reach. Weir of Hcrmiston was 
 written after he had penned these lines : 
 
 * I have trod the upward and the downward slope ; 
 I have endured and done in days before ; 
 I have longftd for all, and bid farewell to hope ; 
 And I have lived, and loved, and closed the door.' 
 
 It is but just to record these depressions and misgivings, 
 for we desire to know the man as he was, and it may be 
 that they bring him nearer to some of us than any unbroken 
 record of good spirits could have brought him. Without 
 them, the victory might have seemed so complete as to be 
 unhelpful to those — and they are the most of men — who 
 cannot be always shouting for joy. 
 
 Yet, even in the darkest times, the victory was wonder- 
 fully near completeness. He had many varieties of glad- 
 some moods with which to confront the forms of darkness 
 in his Valley of the Shadow. There is no need for us to 
 labour at the distinction between what is called happiness 
 and what may be better designated as joy, or at any other 
 definitions of a similar kind. Such distinctions are never 
 exact, and then he knew all the phases without analysing 
 them, so that we may be pretty safe in assigning to him 
 whatever phase of gladness appeals to us. Koughly speak- 
 ing, it may be said that in him we see (1) natural gaiety 
 256 
 
THE 'great task OF HAPPINESS' 
 
 affording much happiness, and (2) that happiness settling 
 down upon the life in an optimism which may be called 
 contentment, and (3) finally passing over into a deep and 
 strong joyfulness of soul. 
 
 1. The gaiety is bright and daring. It is what we naturally 
 expect in strong and well-developed spirits, as a natural 
 reaction from the gloom. The twinkle of humour that 
 plays about all his work, even the most serious, must have 
 been apparent to every reader of the extracts we have 
 quoted. The fun and banter of his letters are kept up to 
 the last, and there are passages in many of them whose 
 comicality is irresistible. Kemembering how hard pressed 
 he was by many troubles, our heart is glad for him when 
 we find Professor Colvin writing: *To those about him, 
 whether visitors or inmates, he renjained the impersonation 
 of life and spirit, maintaining to the last the same charming 
 gaiety as ever, the same happy eagerness in all pursuits 
 and interests; and fulfilling without failure the words of 
 his own prayer, " Give us to awake with smiles, give us to 
 labour smiling; as the sun lightens the world, so let our 
 loving-kindness make bright this house of our habitation." ' 
 In the thick of the political fight which brought with it so 
 many vexations, he still writes that 'it's capital fun.' One 
 of his last letters ends : * Literally, no man has more wholly 
 outlived life than I. And still it's good fun.' In such 
 utterances there is doubtless a certain element of defiance, 
 and their gaiety is a little forced, reminding us of that hero 
 of our younger days who 
 
 'Played a spring and danced it round 
 Beneath the gallows-tree.' 
 
 In one morning prayer there are two petitions for laughter 
 that may help in the performance of 'the petty round of 
 irritating concerns and duties.' Yet the buoyant gaiety did 
 not need much forcing. It was part of his nature ; and if 
 
 267 
 
THE FAITH OF R. L. STEVENSON 
 
 the old pathetic words might well have been applied to him, 
 'Werena my heart licht I wad dee/ it is consoling to 
 remember that his heart was indeed light enough to carry 
 him through the trials of his life. When all else died down 
 within him and his life ran low ; when hope had lost its 
 glamour and even courage itself seemed to be shaken ; the 
 strained and doubtful situation is relieved by a burst of 
 ringing laughter, and when that subsides we find the air 
 clear again. * " Be sure we '11 have some pleisand weather, 
 When a' the clouds has blawn awa'." Verses that have a 
 quite inexplicable attraction for me, and I believe had for 
 Burns. They have no merit, but are somehow good. I am 
 now in a most excellent humour.' 
 
 2. Mr. Chesterton has said that ' the supreme and splendid 
 characteristic of Stevenson was his levity; and his levity 
 was the flower of a hundred grave philosophies. The strong 
 man is always light : the weak man is always heavy. . . . 
 His triumph was, not that he went through his misfortunes 
 without becoming a cynic or a poltroon, but that he went 
 through his misfortunes and emerged quite exceptionally 
 cheerful and reasonable and courteous, quite exceptionally 
 light-hearted and liberal-minded. . . . Stevenson was char- 
 acterised by a certain airy wisdom, a certain light and cool 
 rationality, which is very rare and very difficult indeed to 
 those who are greatly thwarted or tormented in life. ... It 
 may not be impossible or even unusual for a man to lie on 
 his back on a sick-bed in a dark room and be an optimist. 
 But it is very unusual indeed for a man to lie on his back 
 on a sick-bed in a dark room and be a reasonable optimist: 
 and that is what Stevenson, almost alone of modern opti- 
 mists, succeeded in being.' 
 
 These are words of rare insight and analysis, perhaps 
 as near the mark as anything that has been said about hira. 
 Nothing could be more exact than that * levity of the strong 
 258 
 
THE 'great task OF HAPPINESS' 
 
 man/ that ' light and cool rationality of the much thwarted 
 and tormented.' This leads us down from the sparkling 
 peaks of gaiety to the far more difficult optimism of the 
 valley and the foot-hills. To defy life's worst with loud 
 laughter is often a wise and good thing to do : it is always 
 heartening to those who hear the shouts. Yet its exhilara- 
 tion is not assured victory over life, and its excitements are 
 apt to be followed by reaction. It is good to mount up 
 with wings as eagles, but there remains the harder task of 
 learning to walk and not faint. This task also he achieved. 
 With all the inequalities of Providence, with all the 
 iniquitous and savage cruelty of Nature, with all the 
 incomprehensible obstacles thrown across his own path, he 
 still accepted the universe, not so much in resignation as in 
 acquiescence. In a sense, every .sane person accepts the 
 universe — there is nothing else to do, and those who rail 
 against the universe make the preposterous assumption that 
 they have understood it, and found it out. But there are 
 some who accept it only in the sense of taking what comes, 
 with silent tongue and hard-set teeth. Stevenson not only 
 did not grumble ; he also appreciated to its full the intel- 
 ligible and kindly elements in the mystery of things. * Sick 
 or well,' he writes, * I have had a splendid time of it, grudge 
 nothing, regret very little.' It will probably be a long 
 while before a parallel passage can be written to the follow- 
 ing, in which Mr. Graham Balfour tells the story of an 
 illness in the Eiviera in 1884 : — 
 
 'Becovery was very slow and attended by numerous com- 
 plications, less dangerous, but even more painful than the 
 original malady. The dust of street refuse gave him Egyptian 
 ophthalmia, and sciatica descending upon him caused him the 
 more pain, as he was suffering already from restlessness. The 
 hemorrhage was not yet healed, and we now hear for the first 
 time of the injunctions to absolute silence, orders patiently 
 obeyed, distasteful as they were. In silence and the dark, and 
 
 259 
 
THE FAITH OF R. L. STEVENSON 
 
 in acute suffering, he was still cheery and undaunted. When 
 the ophthalmia began and the doctor first announced his 
 diagnosis, Mrs. Stevenson felt that it was more than any one 
 could be expected to bear, and went into another room, and 
 there, in her own phrase, "sat and gloomed." Louis rang his 
 bell and she went to him, saying, in the bitterness of her spirit, 
 as she entered the room : " Well, I suppose that this is the 
 very best thing that could have happened!" "Why, how 
 odd ! " wrote Louis on a piece of paper, " I was just going to 
 say those very words."' 
 
 3. It is one thing to announce, in loud and oft-repeated 
 assertions, that one's experience of life is all very good ; it 
 is another thing actually to rejoice in life. Without involv- 
 ing ourselves in any intricate analysis, it may be asserted 
 that while happiness is possible upon less exacting terms, 
 true joyful ness is possible only to those who have accepted 
 it as a duty. The joyfulness of Stevenson was no surface 
 optimism ; it lay rich and deep beneath the gaiety and the 
 contentment alike. He was not content either to laugh 
 through his life, or merely to tolerate it; he enjoyed it. 
 This is obvious in the feelings with which he regarded his 
 art. Like all art, it had to be learned painfully; yet he 
 found that ' No other business ofiers a man his daily bread 
 upon such joyful terms.' He frankly asserts the highest 
 function of Art to be the diffusion of joy. * In my view, 
 one dank, dispirited word is harmful, a crime of Ihe 
 humanitS, a piece of acquired evil ; every gay, every bright 
 word or picture, like every pleasant air of music, is a piece 
 of pleasure set afloat ; the reader catches it, and if he be 
 healthy, goes on his way rejoicing ; and it is the business of 
 Art so to send him, as often as possible.' Yet that can 
 only be true of An if it be in the first place true of Life 
 itself. If Life, at the heart of it, is joy lew, the joy of Art is 
 but a pleasant lie. Stevenson, like all wise artiata, had gone 
 deeper than Art for the foundations of his joy. He was 
 260 
 
THE 'great task OF HAPPINESS' 
 
 one that delighted in life/ and who was able to sing from 
 an honest heart : 
 
 ' I know not how it is with you — 
 
 I lore the first and last, 
 The whole field of the present view, 
 The whole flow of the past.' 
 
 We have now arrived at a point from which it is but a 
 step to religious faith. In a letter which we have already 
 quoted, Stevenson expressly rejects Optimism in favour of 
 Faith. His words are : ' There are only three possible 
 attitudes — Optimism, which has gone to smash ; Pessimism, 
 which is on the rising hand, and very popular with many 
 clergymen who seem to think they are Christians ; and 
 this Faith, which is the Gospel.' This distinction between 
 optimism and faith he insists upon at greater length in 
 Virginihus Puerisque, optimism appearing under the name 
 of Hope. * Hope, they say, deserts us at no period of our 
 existence. From first to last, and in the face of smarting 
 disillusions, we continue to expect good fortune, better 
 health, and better conduct ; and that so confidently, that we 
 judge it needless to deserve them.' Later on, however, we 
 read that 'Hope is the boy, a blind, headlong, pleasant 
 fellow, good to chase swallows with the salt ; Faith is the 
 grave, experienced, yet smiling man. Hope lives on 
 ignorance; open-eyed Faith is built upon a knowledge of 
 our life, of the tyranny of circumstance, and the frailty of 
 human resolution. Hope looks for unqualified success ; but 
 Faith counts certainly on failure, and takes honourable 
 defeat to be a form of victory. Hope is a kind old pagan ; 
 but Faith grew up in Christian days, and early learnt 
 humility. In the one temper, a man is indignant that he 
 cannot spring up in a clap to heiglits of elegance and 
 virtue ; in the other, out of a sense of his infirmities, he is 
 
 261 
 
THE FAITH OF R. L. STEVENSON 
 
 filled with confidence because a year has come and gone, 
 and he has still preserved some rags of honour.' 
 
 With his description of faith we have no quarrel, nor yet 
 with the high place he assigns it. In his own words, 
 'whether on the first of January or the thirty -first of 
 December, faith is a good word to end on.' But his concep- 
 tion of hope, and his consequent depreciation of optimism, 
 do not appear to be equally warranted. When he speaks 
 of hope, is he not thinking of Prometheus, and really mean- 
 ing blind hopes ? There is a kind of hope which is founded 
 on faith, or, to be more accurate, which is but a higher and 
 bolder exercise of faith, so that optimism itself is in a sense 
 identical with faith, and is but a fully developed belief in 
 life. It must be this, indeed, if it is to be held worthy of 
 any serious consideration ; for no sane man, judging by the 
 present appearance of things apart from faith, would say 
 that the world is even passable. Tlie only possible optimism 
 which is without faith is that which shuts its eyes to the 
 suffering and failure that it may selfishly enjoy the rest — 
 a course which must in all cases be immoral. 
 
 In a word, what Stevenson called faith is the only 
 worthy optimism, and we are justified, in spite of his own 
 disclaimer, in applying the word optimist to him after all. 
 Let us look for a moment at that faith of his, as it is 
 expressed, let us say, in Pulvis et Umbra. Unfortun- 
 ately quotation is almost useless, for the exposition must 
 be taken as a whole, and indeed, it must be taken in 
 connection with other essays, so that no fragment could 
 justly convey his view. It is a description of the world, of 
 physical life in brute and man, and of man himself with his 
 moral and spiritual strivings. The writer stands off from 
 the ' rotatory island * of earth, and sees it, humid and fertile, 
 groaning and travailing through all its substance with the 
 myriad birth of life. The realism is crude and, in parts, 
 262 
 
THE * GREAT TASK OF HAPPINESS' 
 
 intentionally disgusting : the unrestrained imagination is 
 put forth with a power and a daring at which we stand 
 aghast as we read. Yet, as it turns out, all this is but the 
 terrific background against which man's courage, the in- 
 alienable remnant of his honour, the unquenchable ardour 
 of his struggle after nobleness, stand out in desperate relief. 
 Nothing could be more tragic than such a picture, and from 
 one point of view nothing could be more exact. If this 
 writer be an optimist, certainly he has faced facts which 
 might make men pessimists on a far less candid and un- 
 flinching view of them. Yet the practical outcome of the 
 essay is not courage only but joy fulness; not a forced accept- 
 ance of the inevitable, but a whole-hearted acquiescence in 
 the situation, and a glad belief in life. * In the harsh face 
 of life,' he tells us, * faith can read a bracing gospel.' 
 
 In such a case the real question is one as to the ultimate 
 facts. Do these facts, hidden in so tragic a darkness, cor- 
 respond with the man's faithfulness, or with the pitiless and 
 conscienceless play of natural forces ? In a word, Does 
 the universe back him, or does it not ? Now it is quite 
 true that Stevenson is not given to concerning himself much 
 with theories about the ultimate facts. Faith, with him, 
 is a practical affair, concerned with the immediate demands 
 that life makes upon a man. Yet let us be plain here. 
 Without the conviction that the universe backs his faith, 
 that his attitude corresponds with the ultimate facts, such 
 faith as his, and the joy fulness it produces, are mere folly 
 and dishonesty. Various courses are open to a man who 
 holds no such conviction, but this course is not open to 
 him. He may reasonably adopt the darker view, and settle 
 down in an embittered pessimism ; or he may be agnostic, 
 and take what comes, with courage but without enthusiasm ; 
 but joyfulness or faith in life are not for him. He 
 who retains even a joyless belief in life, can do so only 
 
 263 
 
THE FAITH OF R. L. STEVENSON 
 
 in the manner of Ixion, appealing against that Jove 
 whom men call Providence (who is the ultimate fact to 
 most men) to some unknown higher power. He who 
 believes and rejoices can do so only in the strength of a 
 conviction that he positively knows the universe to mean 
 well by him, no matter how unintelligible his actual ex- 
 perience may be. 
 
 Such was Dante's conviction, when he penned the inscrip- 
 tion for the Gate of the Inferno. Such was Francis 
 Thompson's when he wrote the lines : 
 
 ' Yea, and God's mercy, I do think it well, 
 Is Hashed back from the brazen gates of hell.' 
 
 Such, beyond all possibility of question, was Stevenson's 
 conviction. In a playful mood he writes to Austin Strong 
 a long account of the exorcism of an evil spirit by an old 
 woman who had frightened the natives of Vailima by her 
 ventriloquism. ' All the old women in the world might 
 talk with their mouths shut, and not frighten you or me, 
 but there are plenty of other things that frighten us badly. 
 And if we only knew about them, perhaps we should find 
 them no more worthy to be feared than an old woman 
 talking with her mouth shut. And the names of some of 
 these things are Death, and Pain, and Sorrow.' So much 
 for his estimate of those haggard aspects of life which he 
 has so uncompromisingly depicted at their most formidable. 
 But there is clearer evidence that his optimism was founded 
 on a faith that the ultimate facts were with him. From 
 the thick of the figlit in Samoa, little more than a year 
 before his death, he writes to Professor Colvin : * The in- 
 herent tragedy of things works itself out from white to 
 black and blacker ; and the poor things of a day look rue- 
 fully on. Does it shake my cast-iron faith ? I cannot say 
 that it does. I believe in an ultimate decency of things ; 
 264 
 
THE * GREAT TASK OF HAPPINESS 
 
 ay, and if I woke in hell, should still believe it!* That 
 
 evidence may be accepted as final. It is the faith of one 
 
 who has found himself able 
 
 * To feel, in the ink of the slough, 
 And the sink of the mire, 
 Veins of glory and fire 
 Run through and transpierce and transpire, 
 And a secret purpose of glory in every part. 
 And the answering glory of battle fiU my heart.* 
 
 There is no need, however, for one who writes of Steven- 
 son to confine himself to such vague and general formulae 
 as those with which we have just been working. He him- 
 self relates his optimism most frankly to the belief in God, 
 leading back his life to Him in thankfulness and prayer. 
 When a man prays for cheerfulness and laughter, we may 
 take it that he regards his brightness to be in accordance with 
 the mind of God for men. In the height of his good spirits 
 he shouts aloud, ' Thank God for the grass, and the fir-trees, 
 and the crows, and the sheep, and the sunshine, and the 
 shadows of the fir-trees '; or he writes that * all the way along 
 I was thanking God that He had made me and the birds and 
 everything just as they are and not otherwise.' A recent 
 preacher has asserted that the fundamental thing in life is 
 not to do good, not even to be good, but to believe that God 
 is good. There are indeed some, for whom in the meantime 
 the goodness of God is obscured by sorrows or by doubts, 
 and with them the order is reversed. Their stress must lie 
 on being and doing, and the power to believe will ultimately 
 reward them. But Stevenson's faith is of the kind which 
 the preacher's words describe. His belief in God was so far 
 removed from any reasoned metaphysical conclusion, that 
 we have described it as the highest form of a spirituality 
 which belongs rather to the Keligion of Sentiment than 
 to the Keligion of Dogma. Yet that instinctive belief was 
 none the less a part of real knowledge. It is because, in the 
 
 266 
 
THE FAITH OF R. L. STEVENSON 
 
 depths, he is sure that God is good, that he is able to face 
 the life of action and of character strenuously. Indeed, the 
 thought of God is for him so identified with hope and 
 brightness, that when he hears the Miserere performed in 
 Noyon Cathedral, he is constrained to say that he takes it to 
 be the work of an atheist. ' I could bear a Miserere myself,' 
 he goes on, ' having had a good deal of open-air exercise of 
 late ; but I wished the old people somewhere else. It was 
 neither the right sort of music nor the right sort of divinity 
 for men and women who had come through most kind of 
 accidents by this time, and probably have an opinion of 
 their own upon the tragic element in life. A person up in 
 years can generally do his own Miserere for himself; 
 although I notice that such an one often prefers Jubilate 
 Deo for his ordinary singing.' In several places he refers 
 to the answer which the Scottish Catechism gives to its first 
 question, ' What is the chief end of man ? ' The answer 
 is, * Man's chief end is to glorify God and to enjoy Him for 
 ever.' It was an answer which went to the heart of 
 Stevenson's philosophy of life, for it linked on the rejoicing 
 man with the Eternal God. It is only those whose faith 
 finds its chief end in Gcd who may know the secret of joy 
 as he knew it. 
 
 One of the finest incidents recorded in that ' tall quarto of 
 633 pages' in which Kobert Stevenson told the story of his 
 operations at the Bell Kock Lighthouse, may here be narrated 
 as it is given in A Family of Engineers. A great storm had 
 broken upon the rock and the ship Pharos riding at her 
 anchor beside it, on September 5, 1807. All the following 
 day it raged with unabated violence, now threatening to tear 
 her from her moorings, now to overwhelm and break her to 
 pieces as she rode. After twenty-seven hours of what 
 to the landsman seemed imminent peril, he made the best of 
 his way aft and saw the tremendous spectacle of the waves. 
 266 
 
THE * GREAT TASK OF HAPPINESS* 
 
 ' On deck there was only one solitary individual looking out, 
 to give the alarm in the event of the ship breaking from her 
 moorings . . . and he stood aft the foremast, to which he 
 had lashed himself with a gasket or small rope round his 
 waist, to prevent his falling upon deck or being washed over- 
 board. When the writer looked up, he appeared to smile.' 
 The writer goes on to record that he had been much relieved 
 by that ' smile of the watch on deck, though literally lashed 
 to the foremast. From this time he felt himself almost 
 perfectly at ease; at any rate he was entirely resigned to 
 the ultimate result.' We offer no apology for telling the 
 story as a very perfect allegory of the grandson's faith. 
 His storm also was long and affrighting, and he was not 
 only ' entirely resigned to the ultimate result,' but indeed 
 ' almost perfectly at his ease.' The reason was that he too, 
 looking out, had seen a smile upon a certain Face. 
 
 * Well roars the storm to those that hear 
 A deeper voice across the storm.' 
 
 267 
 
THE FAITH OF R. L. STEVENSON 
 
 CHAPTER XIV 
 
 STEVENSON AND HIS TIMES 
 
 In his great essay on Self-reliance Emerson has written, 
 ' Trust thyself ! Every heart vibrates to that iron string. 
 Accept the place the Divine Providence has found for you, 
 the society of your contemporaries, the connection of events. 
 Great men have always done so, and confided themselves 
 childlike to the genius of their age.* 
 
 The words are no less wise than they are exhilarating. 
 He does not, of course, counsel us to allow ourselves to be 
 tossed about with every new wind of doctrine ; nor to take 
 for permanent truth, or even for truth at all, the vagaries of 
 the Zeitgeist. Great men have very frequently shown their 
 greatness by resisting rather than by following such passing 
 fashions. But in a deeper sense there is in every time a 
 Spirit of the Age, the creation of its needs and its aspirations, 
 which sets the tone of its thought and points the direction 
 of its activities. Evidently such a spirit must also deter- 
 mine the lines along which the age may best be appealed to. 
 No man who lives by the light of yesterday, or who talks 
 the language of to-morrow, will influence his generation so 
 greatly as he who talks to the understanding of the present 
 day. The first secret for effectiveness is always that of living 
 in one's own time. It is along the lines of the present, feel- 
 ing its deepest needs and appreciating its most valuable 
 enthusiasms, that men generally find their best opportunities 
 of achieving manhood for themselves and rendering service 
 268 
 
STEVENSON AND HIS TIMES 
 
 to others. How does Robert Louis Stevenson stand in this 
 respect ? We have been studying his characteristics as 
 those of an individual thinker. It is fitting that we should 
 close our study with some attempt, however fragmentary, 
 at a more public and typical view of him, as he takes his 
 place among the teachers of his day. What does he stand 
 for? What are the leading characteristics of that spirit 
 which he represents, and what is its religious value for the 
 new time ? To answer that question it will be necessary to 
 glance rapidly at certain aspects of the past history of 
 intellectual and spiritual tendencies in our national 
 literature. 
 
 Among all the complex elements of human nature, whose 
 various combinations determine the spirit of each successive 
 age, there runs one central line of division, which marks the 
 main dualism both in times and in individuals. That 
 dualism has been differently conceived and named by 
 different writers and at different periods. Sometimes it has 
 been understood as the division between body and soul ; at 
 others, that between intellect and conscience. It has given 
 us the popular contrast of Puritan with pagan, and the 
 classical one of Hebraist with Hellenist. The latter 
 nomenclature, though in some ways far from satisfactory, 
 is yet that which, on the whole, best suits our subject, and 
 we shall borrow it from Matthew Arnold's Culture and 
 Anarchy for the present purpose. 
 
 In another of his books, Celtic Literature, Arnold has 
 insisted that in almost every living Briton there is some 
 admixture of the blood, or at least some very distinct heredi- 
 tary influence, from three separate races, viz. Celtic, Saxon, 
 and Norman. Of these three, the Saxon elements have pro- 
 duced a character plain, steadfast, and practical — a character 
 which always tends towards the Hebraic type. The Celtic, 
 with its fire and sensitiveness, and its capacity for delight, 
 
 269 
 
THE FAITH OF R. L. STEVENSON 
 
 tends in the main towards Hellenism. So does the Norman, 
 in virtue of a different set of qualities — its fastidious delicacy 
 and its clear and rational energy. Each of the latter two, 
 in its different way, boasts a vivid sense of colour and of 
 beauty, each has an exalted spirituality of its own — qualities 
 all of which tend towards Hellenism. If we could blend all 
 these elements, so as to produce a perfect balance of char- 
 acter and harmony of ideals, we should indeed have achieved 
 something very like perfect manhood, at once strong and 
 gracious, as earnest as it would be delicate. If we must 
 confess that the actual Briton falls in most cases far short 
 of so excellent a creature, it consoles us to reflect that this 
 is at least our true national ideal. Each nation follows its 
 own lights. The spirituality of France, the practical 
 doggedness of Germany, far excel anything that we can 
 boast. But all their lights are also ours in a measure by 
 inheritance, and we make up in breadth what we lack in 
 specialised intensity. 
 
 It is but too true, however, that the blend is in no case 
 complete. As individuals, we for ever find war in our 
 members, with two or more than two types of manhood 
 struggling within us for mastery. There is a pagan part of 
 human nature to which most men occasionally revert, 
 though they know all the while that that will never satisfy 
 their instinct for manhood; and a Puritan element upon 
 which they fling themselves in extreme reaction, though 
 they are equally well aware that it will prove to be but a 
 maimed and cheerless ideal. In some cases one or other of 
 these moods is adopted as the normal and desirable con- 
 dition. Other impulses are checked and mortified, until 
 the character becomes intentionally and on principle one- 
 sided. But even with the most successful discipline this 
 result is seldom completely effected. Most of us feel more 
 or less to the end the swinging of those spiritual tides which 
 270 
 
STEVENSON AND HIS TIMES 
 
 bear us backward and forward with their alternate ebb and 
 flow. 
 
 It is the same with the movement of History on the 
 larger scale. Balance is preserved on the whole, yet there 
 never has been an epoch of perfect balance. It is preserved 
 by the constant alternation of forces, the same tidal swing 
 as is felt in individual lives. There is no long duration of 
 either the Hellenistic or the Hebraistic tendencies. Celt 
 and Saxon act and react within the national character, at 
 longer or shorter intervals, but with unfailing alternation. 
 The dark severity of Mediaeval asceticism was followed by 
 the glad humanism of the Eenaissance ; that again led on 
 to the Puritan ascendency, which suddenly ended in the 
 Eestoration ; the worldly century which carried on the tradi- 
 tions of the Eestoration brought on at length the religious 
 revivals of Whitefield and Wesley ; these in their turn were 
 followed by that great outburst of secular interest in 
 literature and science which began the nineteenth century. 
 It was not long after that until Carlyle was solemnising his 
 times with a new Hebraism, to be followed at length by 
 the still more recent Hellenism of to-day. Let it not be 
 supposed that we desire exclusively to claim truth or the 
 message of God to man for either the brighter or the sterner 
 periods of the past. * There are, it may be, so many kinds of 
 voices in the world, and none of them is without significa- 
 tion.* God was in them all, and His Word was spoken by 
 none of them with greater clearness than by some of those 
 whose voices were most severe. Only we insist that the 
 Word of God is spoken not only in the sterner voices of the 
 generations but also in the kindlier ; and that, in the main, 
 each generation must hear that Word in its own languao-e 
 and find inspiration in its own spiritual ideals. 
 
 Nothing could be more pleasant than a study of those 
 glad voices of the past which have cheered the hearts and 
 
 S 271 
 
THE FAITH Ol^ R. L. STEVENSON 
 
 chased away the fears of successive generations. Form 
 after form rises before the imagination. The dim heroic 
 figure of the Herakles of ^schylus is there, him whom, in 
 Browning's poem, we have quoted twice already ; 
 
 ' The gay cheer of that great voice 
 Hope, joy, salvation ; Herakles was here 
 Himt^elf o' the threshold, sent his voice on first 
 To heralci aU that human and divine 
 r the weary, happy face of him. . . . 
 The irresistible, sound, wholesome heart 
 0' the hero . . . drove back, dried up sorrow at its source.* 
 
 There too is Dunbar, with his old sweet words : 
 
 * Be merry, man, and tak not sair in mind 
 
 The wavering of this wretchit warld of sorrow : 
 To God be humble and to thy friend be kind, 
 
 And with thy nichtbours gladly lend and borrow ; 
 His chance to-nicht, it may be thine to-morrow ; 
 
 Be blythe in heart for ony aventure, 
 For oft with wise men it has been said aforrow, 
 
 Without gladness availeth no treasure.' 
 
 Shakespeare knew them, and the value of them, these glad 
 encouragers of the world. It is his own King Henry V. who 
 goes forth in the dark and ominous night, and walking from 
 tent to tent, visits the host with such * cheerful semblance 
 and sweet majesty,' 
 
 •That every wretch, pining and pale before, 
 Beholding him plucks comfort from his lookg,' 
 
 under the spell of 
 
 * A little touch of Harry in the night.' 
 
 John Bunyan, Puritan though he be, is conspicuous for his 
 appreciation of this side of life. His Hopeful, Help, and a 
 long list of others, are prophets of the brighter truth. His 
 Greatheart is but a shadow, yet he lives in the town of 
 272 
 
STEVENSON AND HIS TIMES 
 
 Good Confidence, and the evil workers of the darkness flee 
 before him. 
 
 Dante is the most significant of them all. Austere and 
 solemn, burdened with lifelong sorrow, and bearing on his 
 heart his nation's and the world's iniquities, yet the sin he 
 most bitterly rebukes is that of perverse gloom. By far his 
 best work is the Purgatorio. The Inferno is subterranean, 
 the Paradiso is in the air, while the Purgatorio is on the 
 earth, with its breeze fresh off the sea or heavy with the 
 scent of flowers. This for ever claims him from untempered 
 Hebraism, which is essentially the doctrine of heaven and 
 hell, for Hellenism which has a religion of the green earth 
 as well. 
 
 These are but a few instances, found in this and other 
 lands, cited at random as they came to mind from the great 
 company of the world's heartiest and bravest spirits. 
 Listening to them, we seem to hear that laughter of the 
 cheerful soul of the world which the sorrows of all the 
 centuries have not quenched. These immortal dead, 
 smiling upon us and our perplexities from their happy 
 stations, still cheer us by their undying health and con- 
 fidence and gladness. It is to that band that the writers 
 most typical of the new spirit of to-day belong, and Steven- 
 son is in the front rank of them. 
 
 To return from this digression: the period immediately 
 preceding the present was one of sombre Hebraic tone. It 
 was indeed a time of many-sided literary activity, but the 
 voice that dominated it was the voice of Thomas Carlyle. 
 Born in the same year as Keats, and but three years after 
 Shelley, he had to wait till their voices, and others of their 
 time, were silenced. Then his solemn accents found hear- 
 ing in a world ready for a period of reaction. The year 
 after Sir Walter Scott died, when Byron had been dead 
 nine years, Shelley eleven, and Keats twelve, appeared Sartor 
 
 273 
 
THE FAITH OF R. L. STEVENSON 
 
 Resartus — certainly the most critical and epoch-making 
 book published in the nineteenth century. There followed 
 that literature of which Thackeray, the Brontes, and George 
 Eliot may be taken as representative types. Looking back, 
 at the distance of three-quarters of a century, it would seem 
 as if, after the age of Scott and his contemporaries, English 
 literature had grown conscience-stricken, feeling that the 
 earlier period had enjoyed life too well to be quite fitting in 
 so serious a world. The succeeding period is the age of 
 sterner prophets, whose message was a burden of the Lord. 
 Carlyle's earth is not green nor is his heaven golden. His 
 God is essentially a Taskmaster ; and accordingly for him 
 work is the one reality, happiness a negligible detail. 
 
 To think otherwise than reverently of that great time and 
 its solemn message, would be as ungrateful as it would be 
 ignorant. It seems likely that many a year will pass 
 before a new time matches it for greatness. Yet obviously 
 such a spirit must be but for a time. Imagine a succession 
 of unbroken periods of similar Hebraism, and it will not be 
 long until you shall have reduced human nature to a mere 
 skeleton, holding nothing within it but a conscience for a 
 soul. To the nineteenth century at least the burden grew 
 unbearable. In the swifter and more headlong race of life 
 many men were so wearied as to require something kindlier 
 than even the ' Everlasting Yea.' The increasing complica- 
 tion of social p: oblems, and the more enlightened sympathy 
 with social miseries, forced all who loved their fellow men 
 to recognise both an economic and a religious value in 
 happiness. Owing to a great variety of causes, not a few 
 thoughtful men and women have lost their hold upon the 
 religious beliefs which supported the courage of their 
 fathers ; and our leading pessimist has noted the result, as 
 a fact obvious enough to require no proof — ' the chronic 
 melancholy which is taking hold on the civilised races with 
 274 
 
STEVENSON AND HIS TIMES 
 
 the decline of belief in a beneficent power.' A shrewd 
 observer has noticed one instance in which the facial 
 expression is already changing. In the portraits of English 
 gentlemen of the eighteenth century, the eyebrows are 
 usually rounded, as in men placid and at their ease. The 
 living faces of the descendants of these gentlemen may 
 reproduce almost exactly the features of their ancestors, but 
 in one respect they will often be found to differ. The 
 eyebrows are lowered to a sharper and more straightened 
 curve. This curious detail of the falling eyebrow is surely 
 significant. Although, as we believe, the pessimistic 
 estimate of our time is grossly exaggerated, still there must 
 be a considerable body of facts which have seemed to justify 
 it. These indicate that the first necessity of the present day 
 is for an encouraging and heartening type of faith, lest we 
 sink to that fin de sikle dejection in which an age ' goes 
 dispiritedly, glad to finish.' 
 
 When we venture to assert that Carlyle and his contem- 
 poraries have served their generation, we imply not only 
 that, meanwhile at least, their time is past; but that in 
 that past time they did incalculable service, for which all 
 wise generations henceforth will call them blessed. But 
 their time is past, and a new spirit has taken command of 
 our literature. Nothing could prove this more convincingly 
 than the fate of those thinkers of to-day who have 
 remained aloof from its exhilarating and buoyant hopeful- 
 ness. Stephen Phillips is gifted with a wonderfully rich 
 and pure poetic quality, but Mr. Churton Collins utters the 
 exact truth when he speaks of the 'monotonous dreariness' 
 of his poems. William Watson is an unrivalled master of 
 poetic criticism, expressed with a severe and noble Doric 
 power, but his subjectivity tends to pass over into sheer 
 grumbling. Thomas Hardy's strength is Titanic, but he is 
 the master-pessimist of our time. Kobert Louis Stevenson 
 
 275 
 
THE FAITH OF R. L. STEVENSON 
 
 wrote : * Denunciatory preachers seem not to suspect that 
 they may be taken gravely and in evil part ; that young 
 men may come to think of life as of a moment, and with 
 the pride of Satan wave back the inadequate gift.' This is 
 exactly what has happened. For here comes Thomas 
 Hardy telling us that * The view of life as a thing to be put 
 up with, replacing that zest for existence which was so 
 intense in early civilisations, must ultimately enter so 
 thoroughly into the constitution of the advanced races that 
 its facial expression will become accepted as a new artistic 
 departure/ When we read further on, that * Human beings, 
 in their generous endeavour to construct a hypothesis that 
 shall not degrade a First Cause, have always hesitated to 
 conceive a dominant power of lower moral quality than 
 their own,' we recognise in the cynical words that Nemesis 
 which inevitably comes upon a belated Hebraism. 
 
 The note of the new spirit is health and gladness. It is 
 true that these have had their advocates in the preceding 
 time, and indeed in every time. All generalisations which 
 divide the progress of thought into periods are necessarily 
 very far from being either exhaustive or exclusive. It is 
 by subtle changes of emphasis, by the silent and often 
 unconscious disappearance of one set of conceptions, and the 
 equally unobtrusive introduction of other conceptions, that 
 each new Zeitgeist comes in place of an old. Yet in the 
 course of years these changes, unnoticeable at the moment, 
 grow obvious at last ; and we know that we are breathing 
 the air of a new day. 
 
 As for the present spirit, it has already asserted itself 
 along the whole line of contemporary literature. Eobert 
 Browning and Matthew Arnold were its pioneers in the 
 departments of Poetry and of Criticism. The robust and 
 uncompromising optimism of Browning is now happily so 
 familiar that any quotations in proof of it are unnecessary. 
 276 
 
STEVENSON AND HIS TIMES 
 
 The cultured Hellenism of Arnold has been leavening 
 English thought for many years. Both writers came before 
 their age, and had to be content with neglect and misunder- 
 standing ; but like others born out of due season, they did 
 much to mould the spirit of the coming time. Each of 
 them is deliberate in his reaction from the Carlylian spirit. 
 The very boisterousness of 
 
 * God 's in his heaven, 
 All 's right with the world,' 
 
 and a hundred other verses of Browning's, is of the nature 
 of a protest. Arnold tells us — and the words are charac- 
 teristic of his habit of serene overstatement of what is 
 nevertheless a truth — that, in his opinion, Carlyle is ' carry- 
 ing coals to Newcastle, . . . preaching earnestness to a 
 nation which had plenty of it by nature, but was less 
 abundantly supplied with several other uselul things.' 
 
 Sir John Lubbock (Lord Avebury) has given us, in his 
 Pleasures of Life, a remarkable example of the invasion of 
 Science by the same spirit. It is a collection of innumer- 
 able quotations from writers old and new, the gatherings 
 from many years of reading, and is the cheerfullest book 
 imaginable. All possible sources are ransacked, or rather, 
 as the author is careful to state, not nearly all, though 
 many, sources. The cumulative result would satisfy Mark 
 Tapley or the Cheeryble Tirothers. He rings the changes on 
 the Duty of Happiness and the Happiness of Duty. He is 
 prepared to make the best of everything life may have in 
 store for him ; and even death is to find him in utrumque 
 paratus, and yet full of hope. 
 
 Professor William James has brought the same spirit 
 into philosophy. He has done this not only in his well- 
 known and much-debated Gifford Lectures, but in all his 
 books. Some of his best work in this line is to be found in 
 
 277 
 
THE FAITH OF R. L. STEVENSON 
 
 those essays entitled Talks to Students, whose themes are 
 ' The Gospel of Kelaxation,' ' On a Certain Blindness in 
 People/ and ' What makes Life Significant."' The splendid 
 healthfulness of these essays, their width of sympathy and 
 depth of understanding, and their immense practical en- 
 couragement to many hard-pressed people, rank him high 
 among the helpers of mankind. His Gifford Lectures, apart 
 from all controversial points they may have raised, have 
 certainly achieved one end at least. They have constrained 
 Philosophy to take serious account of the spirit of Healthy- 
 mindedness, as a phenomenon of first importance in the life 
 and thought of to-day. In doing this they have effectually 
 served to fix it as a characteristic spirit of our time, and 
 to lead to its recognition as such. 
 
 The Church, too, has her representatives. Few writings 
 of late years are more significant than Bishop Paget's 
 brilliant essay * Concerning Accidie,' which forms the intro- 
 duction to his volume entitled The Spirit of Discipline. In 
 that essay he reviews the phases of melancholy as they 
 appeared in past ages ; and, for the benefit of the present 
 age, he sets Fortitude against Gloom once more, as a kind of 
 righteousness much needed to combat a deadly sin. It is 
 pathetic to remember, as he reminds us, that Chaucer and 
 Langland had to do the same thing so long ago. It is for 
 us peculiarly interesting to find that he puts The Celestial 
 Surgeon in a prominent position among works of con- 
 temporary authors to the same purpose, and gives to 
 Stevenson the place of honour among them. All through 
 his work there runs the same strain of brightness and 
 vivacity, the same call to courageous health and gladness. 
 
 Finally, there is Robert Louis Stevenson, who, for many 
 
 reasons, may be taken as the chief representative of the 
 
 healthful and bright spirit of the new Hellenism. The 
 
 popularity of a book or doctrine does not indeed afford any 
 
 37a 
 
STEVENSON AND HIS TIMES 
 
 evidence of their ultimate truth, but it may be fairly said to 
 show that they have met a felt want of their time. In this 
 connection it is worthy of remark that The Pleasures of Life 
 has, since its publication in 1887, already all but reached 
 its two hundredth thousand. The popularity of Stevenson 
 has long been assured, and it is still rising. To a very large 
 number of readers he is the unrivalled favourite among the 
 writers of his time. Many reasons may be assigned for this. 
 We have seen how many-sided his interests were, how 
 sensitive to every sort of influence. That in itself rendered 
 it probable that he would call out a wide and various 
 response. His genius is as commanding as his personality 
 is attractive, and such a light as his could not have been 
 hid. Yet after the fullest allowance has been made for all 
 that, it still remains true that the deepest secret of his 
 popularity is the need that men and women have felt for 
 the message he has brought, and the powerful effect of it 
 in quickening their lives. That message we have found to be 
 the * great task of happiness,' backed by moral earnestness 
 on the one hand and sympathy on the other. We have 
 sought to trace it from its sources in the gift of vision and 
 the instinct of travel. We have seen how it, like all gospels, 
 has passed through bitterness. From the conventionalities 
 of his early surroundings he broke away in a revolt that for 
 the time being was painful and dangerous in the last 
 degree. In after-life, the physical conditions through which 
 he had to fight his way to health of mind were such as to 
 have silenced any preacher less resolute and less convinced. 
 From all this he emerged on us, original and clear-sighted 
 in thought, swift and energetic in action, and radiantly 
 healthy iu both. Finally we have seen the whole of his life 
 and work culminate in the Gospel of health and gladness, 
 his own especial word to his brethren of mankind. To be 
 happy is every man's immediate task and duty — to be 
 
 279 
 
THE FAITH OF R. L. STEVENSON 
 
 happy and to spread happiness around him. Stevenson 
 meets all such lamentable prophecies as that one above 
 quoted regarding * the facial expression of the future,' with 
 his often-repeated challenge that we shall present to the 
 world a ' glorious morning face.' A princely figure, he takes 
 his station in the front rank of those whose faith is that of 
 the healthy mind. 
 
 It must be remembered, too, that Stevenson — and he is 
 by no means the only one of whom this fact is true — had to 
 fight against terrible odds his battle for the gladder faith. 
 His victory proves that the thing can be done. All who 
 will may make a stand against the gloom which they have 
 seen closing in upon themselves and their time. To many 
 who have suffered far less than he, his faith is a challenge 
 to fling off their neurotic miseries, and to quit themselves 
 like men. To others, strong and capable, but bewildered 
 and discouraged, the thought of such a man may be an 
 inspiration of priceless value. 
 
 Obviously all manifestations of Hellenism are liable to 
 the two great dangers of moral laxity and pleasure-loving 
 selfishness, evils which undoubtedlv are a serious menace 
 to the younger life of the present day. Against both of 
 these dangers Stevenson has safeguarded his message. 
 
 In respect of the former, the question at once presents 
 itself. Is it safe, this kindlier and brighter view ? To which 
 history answers promptly that that depends upon its safe- 
 guards. An indolent and selfish Hellenism is supremely 
 dangerous, inevitably degrading and ruinous. If we were 
 condemned to a choice between Hellenism unstrengthened 
 by any Hebraism, and Hebraism untempered by any 
 Hellenism, every wise man would choose the latter. Pro- 
 fessor Butcher has found it necessary to defend Hellenism 
 against the charge of being ' eccentricity tinged with vice.' 
 For Hellenism, when it has appeared as a revolt from 
 280 
 
STEVENSON AND HIS TIMES 
 
 Hebraic austerity, has sometimes rushed into that infatua- 
 tion of moral laxity which prides itself on its freedom 
 
 ' To say of vice, What is it ? 
 Of virtue, We can miss it, 
 Of sin, We can but kiss it, 
 And 'tis no longer sin.' 
 
 Even Walt Whitman, with all the exhilarating opulence of 
 his thought, is marred by one great defect. He often seems 
 to be incapable of realising the meaning of the word ' sin ' at 
 all. Needless to say, any so-called Hellenism such as this is 
 neither a healthy nor a helpful thing. Stevenson owed much 
 to Whitman, and has not been wanting in acknowledgment. 
 Yet any one who knows Whitman's writings and Stevenson's 
 essay on them, must feel that with all the apppreciation and 
 gratitude, there is still a reserve, and that his catholicity 
 has not abrogated any of his own convictions. In Steven- 
 son's opinion, as in Professor James's,^ Whitman's optimism 
 * o'erleaps itself, and falls on t' other side.' Without a consid- 
 erable weight of Hebraism for ballast, the vessel of Hellen- 
 ism is at the mercy of all the winds of evil. When light- 
 heartedness means indifference to moral facts, it is no more 
 to be called health than are the comfort and painlessness 
 which sometimes smooth the downward course of disease. 
 
 For Stevenson, as we have seen him, there were many 
 safeguards. His sense of the terror of the world, and his 
 view of heredity, were themselves sufficient to sober the 
 most fantastic ' reveller in the situation.* There were also 
 his vitality and his human sympathy to guard against laxity. 
 When courage and vivacity are the watchwords of the 
 personal life, when the heart is open to a world of the 
 disinherited who everywhere around us claim their share 
 of gladness, it is safe to follow the bright ideal. ' Let us 
 Leach the people,' says Stevenson, ' as much as we can, to 
 * C£. Tht Varieties of Religious Experience^ p. 87. 
 
 281 
 
THE FAITH OF R. L. STEVENSON 
 
 enjoy, and they will learn for themselves to sympathise ; 
 but let us see to it above all that we give these lessons in a 
 brave, vivacious note, and build the man up in courage 
 while we demolish its substitute, indifference,' He retained 
 throughout, a strong conscience of sin and a vivid sense of 
 its disastrous and repulsive sinfulness. Aware of the 
 reality of evil, associating beauty with goodness ; sobered 
 by an almost Calvinistic sense of the seriousness of life, 
 assured that good and not evil lay at the heart of the uni- 
 verse — there was little fear of the result. He was essenti- 
 ally a Hellenist ; but he had appropriated so considerable 
 an amount of Hebraism of the Scottish type, as to insure 
 his optimistic faith against the risk of licence. 
 
 The second danger of such a message as his is that it 
 should be confounded with pleasure-loving and worldliness. 
 This is especially the danger of a society whose increased 
 wealth is tempting it by a thousand new opportunities of 
 self-indulgence. It cannot be too strongly asserted that 
 selfish pleasure-loving is not a phase of health but a disease. 
 The belief in life is the extreme opposite of a cheap satis- 
 faction with the world. The low ideals of worldliness 
 are but the travesty of God's glad word for to-day, the 
 caricature of His ideal as Stevenson beheld it. Only 
 those, as we have already stated, who look beyond the 
 world can really appreciate even the world itself, and world- 
 liness is the most pathetic of follies, foredoomed to failure 
 by the very constitution of things. It has been well said that 
 'earth is in darkness if it lives not in the light of heaven.' 
 
 We have had abundant opportunity of observing the 
 exalted spirituality of Stevenson's view of earth. He was 
 aware of a spiritual world, not so much above this world 
 as within it, by reference to which he was constantly in- 
 terpreting the daily life. Thus he was spiritual, but not with 
 the hectic spirituality of those who have become alienated 
 382 
 
STEVENSON AND HIS TIMES 
 
 from the earthly life with its physical conditions and 
 human interests. His spirituality was that true health of 
 mind, in which life is seen as it is, under earthly conditions 
 indeed, but with a secret inspiration impossible without the 
 vision of spiritual things. 
 
 With these safeguards, Hellenism is safe, and it offers us 
 a view of life whose conspicuous quality is that of glad 
 health. The Religion of Healthy-mindedness is being much 
 discussed in our time. As Stevenson advocated it, health 
 must be understood in its etymological sense of wholeness, 
 for it is a happy and suggestive fact that the two words 
 are the same. The healthy eye is not that which sees all 
 things under a rosy light, any more than that which sees all 
 things yellow. The first condition, and indeed the essential 
 meaning of health, is truth to the whole facts of the case. 
 Accordingly the war of the new Hellenism is only against 
 one-sided views of things. It is not destructive or silencing 
 towards any set of truths, but rather reconciling and com- 
 prehensive. It looks fearlessly around the whole horizon of 
 the world and notes all there is to see ; and its verdict is that 
 when you have seen all, you cease to be afraid of life, for 
 you have found that the victory lies with good and not with 
 evil. It is only in virtue of this heartening persuasion, that 
 Stevenson's message can be understood. Assured of this, 
 he directs us to dwell on the pleasantness rather than on 
 the miseries of our lot ; he presses on our conscience the 
 positive instead of the negative virtues ; he lays stress on 
 hope instead of on remorse, and trains our eyes rather on 
 the beauty of goodness than on the ugliness of sin. In a 
 word, he counsels us to live in the light and not the 
 darkness, and to believe in life as an unfailing opportunity 
 of seeing God's glory in common joys and sorrows, and 
 doing God's work in simple duties. 
 
 It remains for us to estimate in a few last words the 
 
 283 
 
THE FAITH OF R. L. STEVENSON 
 
 value of this spirit which found in Stevenson so brilliant an 
 exponent, in terms of Psychology and of Eeligion. 
 
 1. The spirit of which we speak is vitally and closely 
 allied with Psychology. The ultimate grounds of faith are 
 not psychological but always theological. Even the atheist 
 is a theologian : it certainly was not the study of his own 
 soul and its facts which gave him his conviction that there 
 is no God. We have found that Stevenson himself rests his 
 optimism upon a conviction of ultimate facts which are 
 beyond the reach of unaided psychology. God's Eevelation 
 of Himself to man is manifold, and may be found both in 
 outward facts and in inward experience ; but each believer 
 falls back on his assurance that God has somehow broken 
 the silence and has spoken words of eternal life to him who 
 will hear them. Granted the revelation, in which, however 
 conceived, we get out beyond the psychological region and 
 are in touch with the ultimate reality of things, the next 
 question is how we are to relate to actual life, as our guide 
 in thought and conduct, that ultimate truth which we have 
 found. There has sometimes been a tendency to keep the 
 revelation apart from life, to explain the whole phenomena 
 of the religious experience in terms kept exclusively for 
 themselves, or not to attempt to explain them at all. It 
 is here that the modern spirit makes a new departure. Mr. 
 Fotheringham, in his book of studies on Eobert Browning, 
 has said that ' the great modern view of religion * is that it is 
 ' part of the vital study of man.' In other words, the whole 
 play of man's mind in its various religious exercises is studied 
 as the same in kind with its play upon the common facts of 
 life, and its experiences are analysed by the same methods. 
 It is characteristic of the new spirit, that its principal advo- 
 cates are psychologists. Professor James is the most influen- 
 tial psychologist alive. Eobert Browning was the greatest 
 exponent of psychological drama in the nineteenth century, 
 281 
 
STEVENSON AND HIS TIMES 
 
 The interpretation of religious experiences in terms of the 
 general laws of psychology has given alarm needlessly, 
 though not unnaturally, to some believers. These have 
 fallen into the same fallacy as that to which Darwin's 
 critics have often succumbed : they have forgotten that to 
 explain the process of a phenomenon is not to explain its 
 ultimate causes, or to deny to it the operation of those hidden 
 spiritual forces with which Christianity has familiarised us. 
 Spiritual experience would be no less divine though we 
 were able to trace it point by point along a sequence of 
 psychological processes to the point at which the soul of 
 man receives from God His authentic revelation. Divine- 
 ness does not consist in unintelligibility, nor is it the sole 
 attribute of God that he hideth Himself from sight. So far 
 from being in any way a menace to religion, psychology 
 may be and has been among the most valuable of its allies. 
 The worst feature about religion as it has often been under- 
 stood is its aloofness from the ordinary facts of life, and its 
 severance of the sacred from the secular. The inevitable 
 result for the majority of men must be a deadening of the 
 religious interest, and a more or less gloomy sense of 
 remoteness in sacred things. The temptation to pessimism, 
 or at least discouragement, comes to all men from the dis- 
 heartening experience of their daily conflicts and defeats. 
 But those whose religion is held apart have no defence 
 against it, the God whom their theory has isolated from 
 life being ' far off from helping them.* To such men 
 the new spirit offers a God who is near at hand, a 
 Word which is nigh them, in their mouth and in their 
 heart. The result is immediate in the spring of quickened 
 vital interest and enthusiasm, in an optimistic view of life 
 and a gospel of health and gladness. 
 
 Such was Stevenson's way of dealing with the phenomena 
 of the religious life. As we have seen, he recognised that 
 
 285 
 
THE FAITH OF R. L. STEVENSON 
 
 he was essentially a psychologist. His fundamental con- 
 viction was that of personal identity and the inestimable 
 value of the individual human soul. His doctrines of life 
 and morals were drawn from a far-seeing and clear insight 
 into the facts of human nature. He insisted on finding 
 these for himself, and in various respects they differ from 
 the commonly accepted views. One quality they all have, 
 and that unfailingly : they are vital and not conventional. 
 It is easy to see how this vital and direct way of dealing 
 with the facts of human life should lead on to his great 
 message of gladness. All worthy Hellenism is character- 
 ised by a profound belief in life and a conviction that it is 
 worth living. True, that conviction rests ultimately among 
 facts that are beyond life, as we have seen. Yet it can 
 remain and grow stronger in a more and more assured 
 optimism, only on the condition that a man's continued 
 experience and study of life shall confirm it. And 
 Stevenson found it confirmed. 
 
 2. The more important question, as to the religious value 
 of Stevenson's message, remains. Is this gospel of glad 
 healthfulness, which he and others are proclaiming, a 
 religion at all ? Can it even be said to possess any serious 
 religious value ? No doubt some of those who find it very 
 precious as a stimulus and source of encouragement will 
 answer that this does not concern them. So long as it 
 quickens vitality and brightens the aspect of life for them, 
 they will ask no more from it. To these it must be replied 
 that they would be wiser if they did ask more. A faith in 
 life such as Stevenson's requires foundations and it requires 
 sanctions. We have seen how for him the foundations were 
 laid upon the ultimate facts. To all honest thinkers there 
 must come an hour when they have to face the investigation 
 of the grounds on which their faith is resting. Psychology 
 can do nothing for them then. If they have no assured 
 286 
 
STEVENSON AND HIS TIMES 
 
 foundations beyond the region it explores, they will have 
 to confess to themselves definitely at last that their faith is 
 groundless, and having stated that in plain terms they will 
 never again be able to trust life except by forgetting. It 
 requires sanctions also, for life is sure to put the breaking 
 strain of sorrow upon the faith of most men. A view of 
 things at once so attractive in itself and so full of interesting 
 associations as this of Stevenson's is a fine thing to keep 
 about one as an ornamental part of one's mental furniture. 
 But when it comes to fighting, it is not the chasing of the 
 design upon the sword-blade, but the temper of its cutting 
 edge, that concerns us. An unsanctioned faith, though it 
 were the most charming in the world, will fail us in the evil 
 day. Life is too difficult to be able to do without religion. 
 To be a man, a right healthy and glad man, is a noble 
 thought ; but without the sanctions of religion none but a 
 very few have ever persisted in even trying to be it. Mr. 
 Kidd may be taken as a sufficiently unbiassed judge, and 
 he tells us unhesitatingly that the race is growing and must 
 continue to grow steadily more and more religious. 
 
 Eeturning to the main question, it is necessary here to 
 remember the distinction between religion and theology. 
 Theology is the science of which religion is the correspond- 
 ing art. Stevenson's faith, if it be a religious faith, appears 
 to wear the aspect of an art without a science. He offers us 
 no system of new doctrines that can be set up in contrast 
 with the old : his faith will fit into almost any theological 
 system. In this sense it is really not a new faith at all, 
 but only a fresh way of using the old; bringing but a 
 change of emphasis among the various parts, and a new 
 naturalness and nearness to the human facts. 
 
 Yet while this is true, it is true also that a faith like his 
 is bound to react upon the theological position of those who 
 hold it. If a man has thought either harshly or frivolously 
 
 T 287 
 
THE FAITH OF R. L. STEVENSON 
 
 of God, this will secure for him an estimate both finer and 
 more exalted. The character of God has suffered grievously 
 at the hands of morbid piety ; those whose ideal is health 
 may find a truer conception of Him upon less dreary terms. 
 Further, there is nothing more likely to lead men back to a 
 reasonable faith, and to strengthen faith where it is weak, 
 than such a message, in an age of loosened creeds and 
 vague, unfocussed doubt. One cause of the present decline 
 from old beliefs is a spiritual debility, a lack of the power 
 to take energetic hold on beliefs, even when the reason has 
 no fault to find with them. Nothing could be imagined more 
 likely to counteract that nerveless condition than an 
 energetic attitude to human life. Those who gladly and 
 enthusiastically lay hold on life are the likeliest to attain to 
 a faith which deals robustly with that which lies beyond 
 life. 
 
 But, when we come to the task of finding for the faith 
 of Stevenson a place among the various forms of religious 
 belief, a new question arises. This spirit which we are 
 discussing may be called the Gospel of Health. But that 
 is a claim which every phase and sect of religion makes. 
 To revert again to etymology, the watchword of all 
 religions is holiness. But holiness, heiligJceit, is the same 
 word as wholeness, health, heil. Even the most austere 
 asceticism believes itself to be healthy, and declares that it 
 is compelled to dwell in its frozen climate because there 
 alone can it find air bracing enough. The chief question 
 between rival systems of religion lies in the difference 
 between their views of what health or holiness means. 
 What, then, shall we say about Stevenson's conception of 
 health ? How far, in particular, can it be called a Christian 
 conception ? 
 
 Christianity has been claimed by many thinkers with 
 widely different points of view; and the only error that many 
 288 
 
STEVENSON AND HIS TIMES 
 
 of these claimants have made is to insist that they alone can 
 claim it. Christianity is a larger and more comprehensive 
 religion than any of our little systems ; it is the mono- 
 poly of none of them. Like the human spirit itself, it is 
 'wider than the most priceless of the forces which bear 
 it onward.' It would be absurd, for instance, to identify it 
 either with Hebraism or with Hellenism. It is neither 
 because it is both. It is just Christianity, the interpreta- 
 tion of all the various moods and factors in human life. 
 
 As an exhaustive, or even an adequate account of 
 Christianity, the faith of Eobert Louis Stevenson is very 
 far from complete ; but that is not to say that it may not 
 have an immense value as the exposition of a true aspect of 
 Christianity to its generation. For each particular age there 
 is one set of Christian thoughts and principles which is 
 more valuable than any other. It is by successive changes 
 of emphasis that Christianity has proved itself a religion 
 adequate for the needs of the world, because capable of inter- 
 preting life and revealing God to man in all ages. The need 
 of many in the present time is for a gospel of health and glad 
 encouragement, expressed in terms rather of human life 
 than of metaphysical discussion ; and once more Christianity 
 is found adequate to the demand. Christ said long ago all 
 that is valuable in the most recent thought. The guiding 
 principles of His life were strenuousness and compassion. 
 Many of His most familiar sayings were words of courageous 
 hope and cheerful encouragement. The great task of 
 happiness was never preached so forcibly as when He 
 summed up His beatitudes in words spoken in express 
 defiance of slander and persecution, 'Eejoice and be ex- 
 ceeding glad.' The most characteristic word of Christ was 
 'My joy' — a word spoken in the midst of overwhelming 
 calamities. So far, then, Stevenson's gospel amounts simply 
 to this: that he took seriously, what so few of us take 
 
 289 
 
THE FAITH OF R. L. STEVENSON 
 
 seriously, Jesus Christ's command that His disciples should 
 rejoice. 
 
 It is true that Christ also preached self-denial, and laid 
 vehement emphasis on the necessity for cross -bearing. 
 It is true also that behind all Christianity there stands the 
 Cross of Christ — variously understood, always mysterious, 
 and yet always commanding. Those are happy who have 
 understood the meaning of the Cross of Christ sufficiently to 
 formulate to themselves its doctrine. But the healing and 
 life-giving shadow of that Cross falls on others who cannot 
 do this. As to the cross-bearing of the disciples. He never 
 spoke of that as an end in itself, but only as a means 
 towards the real ends of human life — a means rendered 
 necessary by the perverse conditions of man's present state. 
 Self-denial comes as a duty upon all men. But beyond it 
 lies the region of positive virtue, and health and gladness, 
 for the sake of which it comes. 
 
 All this Stevenson's faith implies, and indeed he has 
 stated much of it in explicit terms. 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. Health and gladness, arising out of 
 energetic and compassionate life, are essentially Christian 
 virtues. The late Professor Seeley, in a brilliant and 
 famous passage, has contrasted the New Athens with the 
 New Jerusalem. He has confessed, as we all must do, that 
 it is better to be a citizen in the latter than in the former. 
 But the question presses for answer. Are these two separate 
 cities after all ? Are they not but two different names for 
 the ultimate City of God, that lieth foursquare, with gates 
 on the west as well as on the east ? So long as the glory of 
 God doth lighten it, and there entereth into it nothing that 
 defileth, it matters not much for the name whereby it is 
 called. 
 290 
 
STEVENSON AND HIS TIMES 
 
 Meanwhile, as to the ideals we have been considering as 
 characteristic not only of Stevenson's faith, but of that of 
 many other thinking men and women, they are the ideals 
 which the wheel of life has brought uppermost for the hour 
 in which we are appointed to live. Doubtless their time 
 also will one day be past, and some new Hebraism — who 
 can tell ? — will have come instead of them. So much at 
 least may be said for them, that they have achieved a more 
 harmonious balance of the various elements of life than 
 most of the Hellenisms of the past, and so, perhaps, have 
 advanced a few steps nearer to the final truth. But, in the 
 meantime, they are here — to some men and women the 
 clearest light of God that they can see. The task of life for 
 each of us is to walk faithfully through the hours of our 
 day by that day's light. And it is thus that we must 
 estimate the Faith of Kobert Louis Stevenson — to whom 
 was given a most brilliant vision of a certain stretch of 
 sunlit earth, and who travelled in that light joyously to 
 the end. 
 
 391 
 
GENEliAL INDEX 
 
GENERAL INDEX 
 
 AcTmo, 35, 42, 43, 44, 211, 253. 
 
 Addison, Joseph, 67. 
 
 Agnosticism, 263. 
 
 America, 65, Q6. 
 
 Ancestors, 23, 88, 51 ff., 70, 121, 192, 
 
 271. 
 Angelico, Fra, 146. 
 Angelo, Michael, 170. 
 Antinomies, 2. 
 Antithesis, 47. 
 Appreciation, 185 ff. 
 Arnold, Matthew, 4, 19, 64, 112, 113, 
 
 269, 276, 289. 
 Art, 17, 49, 170, 174, 260. 
 Atheism, 1, 284. 
 
 Badness, 145 f. 
 
 Baildon, Professor H. Bellyse, 56. 
 
 Balfour, Graham [Life of R. L.Stevenson, 
 references and quotations], 6, 15, 30, 
 33, 52, 53, 54, 61, 62, 93, 95, 100, 104, 
 113, 126, 167, 168, 169, 170, 171, 178, 
 202, 209, 219, 246, 259. 
 
 Barrie, J. M., 26, 30, 56, 80 f. 
 
 Beauty, 137 f., 147 f. 
 
 Beauty and Terror, 3, 6, 139, 150. 
 
 Bible, the, 16, 70, 76, 87 ff., 102, 154, 
 176, 180 f., 204, 212, 237. 
 
 Billings, Antiquities of Scotland, 67. 
 
 Body, 82 f. 
 
 Bohemia, 98. 
 
 Books, 64 ff. 
 
 British character, 270. 
 
 Brontes, the, 274. 
 
 Browning, Robert, 66 f., 90, 166, 205, 
 212, 254, 272, 276, 284. 
 
 Bunyan, John, 81 ff., 133, 272. 
 
 Burns, Robert, 84, 144, 147, 236, 238. 
 
 Butcher, Professor, 280. 
 
 Byron, Lord, 273. 
 
 Calvinism, 69, 102, 151, 215, 282. 
 
 Candles, 120 f., 244. 
 
 Carlyle, Thomas, 4, 51, 66, 179, 226, 
 
 242, 243, 271, 273, 274, 275, 277. 
 Catechism, 70, 266. 
 Catholicity, 188 f. 
 Change, 107 f. 
 Character, 5, 8. 
 Chaucer, Geoffrey, 278. 
 Chesterton, G, K., 258. 
 Childhood, 15, 26, 38, 41, 47, 51 ff., 81 f., 
 
 129, 131, 164. 168, 210, 247 ff. 
 Christ, Jesus, 10, 88 ff., 110, 178 f., 181, 
 
 187, 209, 211 f., 224, 239 f,, 253, 239 f. 
 Christianity, 62, 167, 228 ff. 
 Church, 1, 12, 14, 102. 
 Collins, Churton, 275. 
 Colour, 112, 118 ff. 
 Colvin, Professor Sidney, 20, SO, 142, 
 
 202, 257, 264. 
 Commerce, 97 f. 
 Compassion, 206. 
 Complex character, 1 f., 196. 
 Contentment, 258 f. 
 Conventionality, 96 ff. 
 Cooper, Fenimore, 132. 
 Comford, L. Cope, 125. 
 Courage, 177, 218 ff. 
 Covenanters, 69 ff. 
 Creed, 4. 
 Crisis, 14. 
 
 Crockett, S. R., 5, 73, 78. 
 Cross, the, 290. 
 
 Cunningham, Alison, 61, 70, 81 f., 87. 
 Cynicism, 31, 232 f. 
 
 Dantb, 82, 117, 264, 273. 
 Darkness, 121 f. 
 Darwinianiam, 285. 
 Death, 134 f. 
 
 295 
 
INDEX 
 
 Definition, 2. 
 
 Destiny, 132, 177, 214 flF. 
 
 Detail, 116 f. 
 
 Devil-pictures, 146. 
 
 Difficulties, 222 f. 
 
 Disraeli, 38. 
 
 Dogma, 3 f., 265. 
 
 Double life (cf. Dr. Jekyll and Mr. 
 
 Hyde), 43, 151, 220 flf. 
 Drawing, 112. 
 Dreamers, 82. 
 Dreams, 132 ff. 
 Dumas, A., 12, m, 187, 238. 
 Dunbar, W., 272. 
 
 Earnestness, 226 ff. 
 
 Edinburgh, 22, 24 f, 31, 45, 67, 75, 95, 
 99, 112, 126, 154. 
 
 Edinburgh Days [Robert Louis Steven- 
 son's), by Miss E. Blantyre Simpson 
 (references and quotations), 25, 88, 
 142, 197, 203, 208. 
 
 Egoism, 25 ff., 49. 
 
 Eighteenth century, 67, 271, 275. 
 
 Eliot, George, 274. 
 
 Emerson, K. W., 65, 268. 
 
 Emotions, James' theory of, 252. 
 
 Expression, 174. 
 
 Eye-mindedness, 64. 
 
 Facial expression, 245, 275, 276, 280. 
 
 Failure, 162 f., 220, 237. 
 
 Fairness, 191 f. 
 
 Faith, 8, 14, 148 ff., 154, 180, 281 f., 265, 
 
 286 ff. 
 Fatalism, cf. Destiny. 
 Fathers, 94 f. 
 Fault-finding, 197. 
 Fergusson, Robert, 3. 
 Fleeming Jenkin, 14, 25, 37, 145, 202, 
 
 241, 245. 
 Fotheringham, James, 284. 
 Freethinkers, 1. 
 French, character, etc., 10, ^, 161, 226, 
 
 230, 270. 
 Friends, 13, 15, 202 ff. 
 Future, 234 t. 
 
 Gaiety, 257. 
 Garden, 138. 
 
 Geographical instinct, 155. 
 Germany, 270. 
 Ghastly, the, 134 ff: 
 
 296 
 
 God, 1, 6 ff., 16, 149 f., 181, 226, 235, 
 
 265 ff., 271, 284, 285, 288. 
 Goethe, 146. 
 GoBse, Edmund, 22, 80, 246. 
 
 Happiness, 214, 241 ff. 
 
 duty of, 241, 250. 
 
 Hardy, Thomas, 274, 276. 
 
 Health, 29, 213 ff., 232, 255, 276 ff., 
 
 283 ff., 288. 
 Hearing, 112 f. 
 Hebraism, 188, 230, 232, 269 ff., 274, 
 
 276. 
 Hellenism, 188, 230, 232, 269 ff., 274. 
 Henley, W.E., 17,37, 69. 
 Herakles, 205, 212, 272. 
 Heredity, 33, 52, 281. 
 History, 271. 
 Holiness, 225, 288. 
 Home, 182 f. 
 Honesty, 222 f. 
 Hope. 261 f. 
 Hugo, Victor, 20, 66. 
 Humour, 226, 257. 
 Hypocrisy, 10, 
 
 Ibsen, 33. 
 Ideals, 232 f. 
 Idleness, 171 f. 
 
 lUness, 6, 93, 168, 175 f., 214, 219. 
 Illustrations, 84 f., 139. 
 Imagination, 128 f., 203. 
 Immediacy, 164 ff. 
 Immortality, 163 f. 
 Inhuman element, 5, 33, 
 Interest in self, 18, 26 f. 
 Irresponsibility, 83. 
 Ixion, 264. 
 
 James, Professor W., 247, 252, 277 I 
 
 281, 284. 
 James, St., 180. 
 John, St., 204. 
 Joubert, 7. 
 Joyousness, 260, 289. 
 Judgments of others, 188. 
 
 Kant, 100. 
 Keats, 273. 
 Kidd, B., 287. 
 Kindness, 208. 
 Kinglake, 105. 
 
INDEX 
 
 Kipling, Rudyard, 6, 47. 
 Knox, John, 79. 
 
 Lamps, 22, 121 f. 
 
 Langland, W., 278. 
 
 Law, study of, 94. 
 
 Lepers, 7. 
 
 Levity, 258 f. 
 
 Light, 120 f. 
 
 Lighthouse, 123, 209. 
 
 Literary work, 40, 174 f., 255. 
 
 'Live while you live,' 171. 
 
 Living in one's own times, 268 ff. 
 
 Love, 202 S. 
 
 Lubbock, Sir John (Lord Avebury), 277. 
 
 M'Cheyne, R M., 70, 87, 102. 
 
 MacDonald, George, 155. 
 
 Maeterlinck, Maurice, (J. 
 
 Man, study of, 26, 284 ff. 
 
 Manliness, 213 f. 
 
 Maps, 85, 155. 
 
 Masson, Professor David, 141, 224. 
 
 Memory, 128 f. 
 
 Meredith, George, 37. QQ, 168, 217. 
 
 Milton, John, 146, 224. 
 
 Missions and Missionaries, 1, 195, 197 ff. 
 
 Molokai, 7. 
 
 Montaigne, Michel de, 18, 66, 161, 191. 
 
 Moonlight, 124. 
 
 Moral earnestness, 226 If. 
 
 laxity, 280 f. 
 
 tragedy, 145. 
 
 Morality, 100, 104, 110, 187. 
 Morbidness, 23 f. 
 Music, 59, 111. 
 Mystery, 3. 
 
 Nambs, 194. 
 
 Nature, 6, 65, 82, 125 ff., 139 f., 215. 
 
 Negative virtues, 178, 228. 
 
 Nicoll, W. R., 219. 
 
 Nineteenth century, 273 U 
 
 Novelist, 22. 
 
 Nurses, 194. 
 
 Old age, 17. 
 
 Optimism, 3, 248, 250 ff. 
 Opulence of the world, 247. 
 Originality, 64, 106 ff. 
 
 Paget, Bishop, 278. 
 Parents, 102, 213. 
 Past, the, 234 f. 
 
 Pater, Walter, 22, 48. 
 
 Paul, St., 23, 163, 177, 220 f. 
 
 Peun, William, 80 f. 
 
 Personality, 4, 9. 
 
 Personification, 131. 
 
 Pessimism, 3, 162 f., 250, 255, 261, 263, 
 
 275, 285. 
 Phillips, Stephen, 276. 
 Philosophy, 278. 
 Pilgrim's Progress, 81 f,, 133. 
 Pleasure, love of, 280, 282 f. 
 Politics, 107, 210. 
 Popularity, 30, 279. 
 Positive virtue, 178, 228. 
 Practical, the, 152. 
 Preaching, 43 ff. 
 Pretending, 38. 
 Profession, 94, 
 Progress, 182. 
 Providence, 264. 
 Psychology, 26, 284 2. 
 Purity, 233 f. 
 
 Racine, 19. 
 
 Realism, 140. 
 
 Recurrences, 19 f. 
 
 Religion, 1 f., 9, 42, 49, 102, 285 ff. 
 
 Renan, E., 89. 
 
 Repentance, 40, 236. 
 
 Respectability, 1, 96. 
 
 Revelation, 284. 
 
 Revolt, 15, 93 f. 
 
 Reward, 163 f. , 227. 
 
 Richter, J. P., 51. 
 
 Robertson, F. W., 12. 
 
 Romance, 19. 
 
 Rossetti, D. G., 61. 
 
 Sainte-Beuve, 66. 
 
 Salvini, 25, 37. 
 
 Samoa, 7, 9, 11, 12, 39, 46, 58, 192, 193 
 
 206, 208, 210 f., 218, 264. 
 Sanity, 231. 
 
 Scenery, 82, 125 ff., 129. 
 Scotland, 1, 66 f., 129, 136, 156, 192, 220. 
 Scott, Sir W., 29, 65, 67 ff., 177, 219, 
 
 234, 273. 
 Scottish character, etc., 44, 62, 151, 
 
 227, 230, 282. 
 Sea, tAie, 127, 261. 
 Sects, 1, 3. 
 
 Seeley, Professor, 290. 
 Self-denial, 290. 
 
 297 
 
INDEX 
 
 Self-made men, 134, 
 
 Self-sacrifice, 211. 
 
 Sense and the sensuous, 31 f. 
 
 Sentiment, 5 f . , 265. 
 
 Sentimentalism, 5. 
 
 Service, 209. 
 
 Shakespeare, W., 37, 42, 164, 272. 
 
 SheUey, P. B., 273. 
 
 Sin, 236 f. 
 
 Sincerity, 10, 36. 
 
 Soul, value of, 31, 227. 
 
 South Seas, 1, 8, 17, 20, 22, 37, 83, 90, 
 
 99, 116, 120, 136, 156, 166, 178, 192, 
 
 199 f., 204, 206. 
 Specialism, 186. 
 
 Spectacular, 30, 114 f., 152 ff., 185. 
 Spectral, 135. 
 
 Spirit of the Age, 268 ff., 276. 
 Spirituality, 5 f., 282 f. 
 Stage, the, 25, 36 f., 78. 
 Stars, 124. 
 Stevenson, Mrs. R. L., 16, 259. 
 
 Mrs, T. , 38, 53, 81 f. , 248, 255. 
 
 Robert, 38, 53 f., 266. 
 
 Thomas, 88, 65, 93 ff., 104. 
 
 Storms, 127, 266 f. 
 
 Strength, 213. 
 
 Strenuousneas, 214. 
 
 Student life, 96. 
 
 Style, 40, 46 f., 74, 112. 120, 175, 231. 
 
 Subjectivity, 18 ff., 126. 
 
 Sunday, 1, 13, 101, 110. 
 
 Sunday-school, 12. 
 
 Sunlight, 124. 
 
 Sympathy, 185 ff. 
 
 Tbnnyson, a., 267. 
 
 Terror (c/. Beauty and Terror), 281. 
 Thackeray, W. M., 59, 274. 
 Theatre, theatrical (c/". Stage, the). 
 Theology, 284, 287. 
 Thompson, F.,264. 
 Thoreau, 65. 109, 197, 220. 
 Toys, 58 ff. 
 Travel, 82, 151 ff. 
 Treasure, 130 f. 
 Truth, 42. 
 
 Ultimate facts, 263 f., 286 f. 
 Umbrellas, 98, 100, 156. 
 Utilitarianism, 241. 
 
 Vailima, 7, 12, 38, 122, 126, 129. 173. 
 
 190, 208. 
 Villon, 134. 
 Virgil, 117. 
 Virtues, 178, 228. 
 Vision, 112 ff. 
 Vitality, 171 ff. 
 
 Walker, P., 69 ff. 
 
 Walking, 157 f. 
 
 Wandering Willie, 21. 
 
 War, 60, 155, 167 f. 
 
 Watson, W., 275. 
 
 Weak brother, the, 213. 
 
 Whitman, Walt, 65, 88, 137, 166, 281. 
 
 Words, 46 ff., 120. 
 
 Wordsworth, W., 82. 
 
 Work, 40, 171 ff., 174. 
 
 Youth, 171. 
 
 ZsiTOsisT (c/. Spirit of the Aj^e) 
 
 298 
 
INDEX TO REFERENCES AND QUOTATIONS 
 FROJNI STEVENSON'S WRITINGS 
 
INDEX TO REFERENCES AND QUOTATIONS 
 FROM STEVENSON'S WRITINGS 
 
 Admiral Guinea, 87, 102, 121. 
 Admirals, The English, 4, 168, 198. 
 Aes Triplex, 165, 171. 
 
 Ballads, 32, 33, 53, 117, 124, 135, 150, 
 
 261. 
 Beau Austin, 40, 113. 
 Black Arrow, The, 19, 124, 134, 226, 
 
 229, 245. 
 
 Catriona, 5, 16, 26, 28, 136. 
 
 Child's Garden of Verses, A, 23, 26, 27, 
 
 54, 56, 57, 155, 156, 177, 226, 246, 251. 
 Child's Play, 41, 42, 52, 54, 131. 
 Christmas Sermon, A, 44, 45, 120, 162, 
 
 163, 178, 187, 188, 233, 236, 237, 238, 
 
 242, 244, 246, 249. 
 Crabbed Age and Youth, 98, 105, 171, 
 
 213, 2^5. 
 
 Damien, Father, An Open Letter, 193, 
 
 197. 
 Deacon Brodie, 68, 69, 87, 121, 145, 166, 
 
 169, 221. 
 Dreams, A Chapter on, 132, 133, 135. 
 
 Ebb Tide, The, 145, 17b, 
 
 Edinburgh, Picturesque Notes on, 5, 45, 
 
 68, 70, 79, 84, 95, 96. 135, 246. 
 El Dorado, 161, 176. 
 Essays, 19, 22, 26, 28, 83. 
 
 Fables, 1, 8, 44, 46, 84, 108, 162, 165, 
 
 215. 
 Family of Engineers, A, 23, 26, 52, 53, 
 
 70, 125, 135, 179, 192, 223, 266, 
 
 Fleeming Jenkin, Memoir of, 14, 25, 145, 
 
 197, 225, 241, 245. 
 Fontainebleau, 32, 83, 244. 
 Footnote to History, A, 7, 127, 193. 
 
 Great North Road, The, 122, 123, 159, 
 216, 229, 239. 
 
 Heathercat, 71, 72, 73, 74, 113. 
 
 Idlers, An Apology for, 84, 114, 115, 
 
 172, 244. 
 Inland Voyage, An, 3, 45, 99, 131, 139, 
 
 176, 183, 232, 233, 238, 252, 254, 266. 
 Inland Voyage, An (Epilogue to), 158. 
 Island Nights' Entertainments, 58, 117, 
 
 132, 145, 195, 200, 211, 229. 
 
 Jektll and Hyde (Strange Case of Dr. 
 
 Jekyll and Mr. Hyde), 17, 69, 132, 136, 
 
 145, 151, 176, 220, 221, 222. 
 John Nicolson, The Misadventures of, 22, 
 
 32, 95, 100, 102, 113, 117, 123, 125. 
 Juvenilia, 37, 54, 72, 98, 102, 108, 112, 
 
 119, 135, 144, 146, 155, 186, 194, 195, 
 
 197 
 
 Lantern-Bearers, The, 123, 169, 247, 
 
 248, 250. 
 Lay Morals, 26, 27, 31, 46, 89, 90, 97, 
 
 100, 109, 118, 143, 169, 178, 179, 188, 
 
 222, 223, 227, 243. 
 Letter to a Young Gentleman, etc., 198, 
 
 260. 
 Letters from Samoa, 60, 122, 129, 130, 
 
 132, 264. 
 
 301 
 
INDEX 
 
 Letters to Family and Friends, 7, 10, 16, 
 17, 19, 22, 26, 29, 30, 39, 44, 53, 62, 
 65, 95, 98, 99, 100. 107. 114, 120, 122, 
 124, 140, 142, 146, 149, 150, 154, 155, 
 157, 163, 170, 171, 175, 178, 179, 198, 
 201, 204, 207, 216, 222, 227, 231, 241, 
 242, 257, 258, 259, 260, 262, 165. 
 
 Macaire, 37, 48. 
 
 Markheim, 37, 216, 228. 
 
 Master of Ballantrae, The, 22, 28, 36. 49, 
 65, 74, 121, 130, 136, 143, 145, 160, 
 170, 194, 198, 206, 221, 225, 236. 
 
 Memories and Portraits, 24, 25, 28, 64, 65, 
 96, 103, 119, 133, 134, 141, 142, 164, 
 187, 199, 204, 205, 207, 220, 228, 230, 
 238, 239, 248, 276. 
 
 Men and Books, Familiar Studies of, 36, 
 79, 84, 88. 97, 98, 137, 144, 147, 166, 
 173, 175, 191, 197, 198, 202. 220, 232, 
 236, 231. 
 
 Merry Men, The, 32, 33, 47, 74, 120, 130, 
 145 150, 237. 
 
 New Arabian Nights, 28. 37, 38, 147, 
 113, 162, 233. 
 
 Olalla, 33. 55, 123, 125, 132, 215. 
 Ordered South, 6, 55, 138, 209. 
 
 Pan's Pipes, 139. 
 
 Plays, 37, 40, 87, 164. 
 
 Poei^is, 19, 22. 26, 28, 95. 
 
 Prayers, 12, 13, 39, 40, 41, 42, 92, 146, 
 
 173, 186, 236, 249, 257, 265. 
 Presentation Volume (Edinburgh Edi- 
 
 tioD), 14, 95, 101, 124, 128, 138, 155, 
 
 157, 196, 218, 226. 
 Prince Otto, 19, 125, 187. 
 Pulvis et Umbra, 173, 262, 263. 
 
 Road, Essays of the, 32, 83, 85, 86, 
 
 114, 115, 128, 130, 152, 153, 157, 168, 
 159, 175, 203, 213, 251. 
 Rosa quo Locorum, 47, 55, 82, 154. 
 
 St. Ives, 39, 49, 107, 165, 218. 
 Silverado Squatters, The, 28, 121, 125, 
 
 249. 
 Songs of Travel, 8, 9, 16, 21, 126, 129, 
 
 149, 159, 160, 170, 183, 235, 256, 261, 
 
 265. 
 South Seas, In the, 20, 21, 36, 116, 117, 
 
 134, 135, 156. 176, 186, 201, 249. 
 Story of a Lie, The, 95. 
 
 Technical Elements op Style, 177. 
 
 ThraAvn Janet, 73, 136. 
 
 Travels with a Donkey, 10, 39, 45, 46, 
 
 84, 85, 107, 109, 121, 138, 161, 183, 
 
 189, 190, 205, 251. 
 Treasure Island, 21, 55, 120, 121, 130, 
 
 155, 215. 
 Treasure of Franchard, The, 37, 59, 130, 
 
 131, 143, 221. 
 
 Underwoods, 3, 66, 78, 82, 118, 123. 
 
 126, 137, 138, 148, 162, 169, 175, 180, 
 
 181, 183, 189, 197, 204, 209, 216, 235, 
 244, 278. 
 
 Vailima Letters, 5, 58, 60, 89, 92, 97, 
 
 135, 136, 142, 169, 174, 175, 183, 193, 
 194, 199, 201, 218, 233, 249, 264. 
 
 Virginibus Puerisque, 42, 46, 58, 163, 
 227, 228, 233, 261. 
 
 WALKiNa Tours, 114, 158. 
 
 Weir of Hermiston, 23, 69, 94, 114, 117, 
 
 118, 129, 139, 142, 143, 170, 179, 187, 
 
 191, 194, 230, 256. 
 Will 0' the Mill, 155, 157, 161, 164. 
 Wrecker, The, 22, 32, 54, 59, 127, 130, 
 
 134, 143, 155, 160, 166, 167, 209, 252. 
 Wrong Box, The, 48, 49, 140, 175. 
 
HOME USE 
 
 CIRCULATION DEPARTMENT 
 
 MAIN LIBRARY 
 
 This book is due on the last date stamped below. 
 1-month loans may be renewed by calling 642-3405. 
 6-month loans may be recharged by bringing books 
 
 to Circulation Desk. 
 
 Renewals and recharges may be made 4 days prior 
 
 to due date. 
 
 ALL BOOKS ARE SUBJECT TO RECALL 7 DAYS 
 AFTER DATE CHECKED OUT. 
 
 ARY 
 
 below. 
 
 1 51376 3 9 
 
 KECCia. f££22'?6 
 
 /*:.- 1 
 
 'D LD 
 
 -1 8 ::52 
 
 ft- 
 
 LD 21-] 
 
 LD2 1 — A-40m-8,' 75 
 (S7737L) 
 
 General Library 
 
 University of California 
 
 Berkeley 
 
 1971 8 3 
 
/ 
 
 UC_ BERKELEY LIBRARIES 
 
 CDSSaS71Sl 
 
 msm^f'"