I
Over and above the attraction of his pervading personality, I think the most obvious charm of Stevenson’s books lies in the clear, vivid, accurate
[370]
and strong English in which they are written. Reading them is like watching a good golfer drive or putt the ball with clean strokes in which energy is never wanting and never wasted. He does not foozle, or lose his temper in a hazard, or brandish his brassy like a war-club. There is a grace of freedom in his play which comes from practice and self-control.
Stevenson describes (as far as such a thing is possible) the way in which he got his style. “All through my boyhood and youth,” says he, “I was known and pointed out for the pattern of an idler, and yet I was always busy on my own private end, which was to learn to write.” He traces with gusto, and doubtless with as much accuracy as can be expected in a map drawn from memory, the trails of early admiration which he followed towards this goal. His list of “authors whom I have imitated” is most entertaining: Hazlitt, Lamb, Wordsworth, Sir Thomas Browne, Defoe, Hawthorne, Montaigne, Baudelaire, Obermann. In another essay, on “Books Which Have Influenced Me,” he names The Bible, Hamlet, As You Like It, King Lear, Le Vicomte de Bragelonne, The Pilgrim’s Progress, Leaves
[371]
of Grass, Herbert Spencer’s books, Lewes’s Life of Goethe, the Meditations of Marcus Aurelius, the poems of Wordsworth, George Meredith’s The Egoist, the essays of Thoreau and Hazlitt, Mitford’s Tales of Old Japan,—a strange catalogue, but not incoherent if you remember that he is speaking now more of their effect upon his way of thinking than of their guidance in his manner of writing,—though in this also I reckon he learned something from them, especially from the English Bible.
Besides the books which he read, he carried about with him little blank-books in which he jotted down the noteworthy in what he saw, heard, or imagined. He learned also from penless authors, composers without a manuscript, masters of the viva-voce style, like Robert, the Scotch gardener, and John Todd, the shepherd. When he saw a beggar on horseback, he cared not where the horse came from, he watched the rascal ride. If an expression struck him “for some conspicuous force, some happy distinction,” he promptly annexed it;—because he understood it, it was his.
In two separate essays, each of which he calls
[372]
“A Gossip,” he pays tribute to “the bracing influence of old Dumas,” and to the sweeping power and broad charm of Walter Scott, “a great romantic—an idle child,” the type of easy writers. But Stevenson is of a totally different type, though of a kindred spirit. He is the best example in modern English of a careful writer. He modelled and remodelled, touched and retouched his work, toiled tremendously. The chapter on Honolulu in The Wrecker, was rewritten ten times. His essays for Scribner’s Magazine passed through half a dozen revisions.
His end in view was to bring his language closer to life, not to use the common language of life. That, he maintained, was too diffuse, too indiscriminate. He wished to condense, to distil, to bring out the real vitality of language. He was like Sentimental Tommy in Barrie’s book, willing to cogitate three hours to find the solitary word which would make the thing he had in mind stand out distinct and unmistakable. What matter if his delay to finish his paper lost him the prize in the competition? Tommy’s prize was the word; when he had that his work was crowned.
[373]
A willingness to be content with the wrong colour, to put up with the word which does not fit, is the mark of inferior work. For example, the author of Trilby, wishing to describe a certain quick, retentive look, speaks of the painter’s “prehensile eye.” The adjective startles, but does not illuminate. The prehensile quality belongs to tails rather than to eyes.
There is a modern school of writers fondly given to the cross-breeding of adjectives and nouns. Their idea of a vivid style is satisfied by taking a subject which belongs to one region of life and describing it in terms drawn from another. Thus if they write of music, they use the language of painting; if of painting, they employ the terminology of music. They give us pink songs of love, purple roars of anger, and gray dirges of despair. Or they describe the andante passages of a landscape, and the minor key of a heroine’s face.
Join or Log In!
You need to log in to continue reading