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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
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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
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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
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“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.
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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.
this is the extravagance of a would-be pointed style which mistakes the incongruous for the brilliant. stevenson may have had something to do with the effort to escape from the polished commonplace of an english which admitted no master earlier
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than addison or later than macaulay. he may have been a leader in the hunting of the unexpected, striking, pungent word. but for the excesses and absurdities of this school of writing in its decadence, he had no liking. he knew that if you are going to use striking words you must be all the more careful to make them hit the mark.
he sets forth his theory of style in the essay called a humble remonstrance. it amounts to this: first, you shall have an idea, a controlling thought; then you shall set your words and sentences marching after it as soldiers follow their captain; and if any turns back, looks the other way, fails to keep step, you shall put him out of the ranks as a malingerer, a deserter at heart. “the proper method of literature,” says he, “is by selection, which is a kind of negative exaggeration.” but the positive exaggeration,—the forced epithet, the violent phrase, the hysterical paragraph,—he does not allow. hence we feel at once a restraint and an intensity, a poignancy and a delicacy in his style, which make it vivid without ever becoming insane even when he describes insanity, as he does in the merry men,
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olalla, and dr. jekyll and mr. hyde. his words are focussed on the object as with a burning-glass. they light it up; they kindle it; but they do not distort it.
now a style like this may have its occasional fatigues: it may convey a sense of over-carefulness, of a choice somewhat too meticulous,—to use a word which in itself illustrates my meaning. but after all it has a certain charm, especially in these days of slipshod, straddling english. you like to see a man put his foot down in the right place, neither stumbling nor swaggering. the assurance with which he treads may be the result of forethought and concentration, but to you, reading, it gives a feeling of ease and confidence. you follow him with pleasure because he knows where he is going and has taken pains to study the best way of getting there.
take a couple of illustrations from the early sketches which stevenson wrote to accompany a book of etchings of edinburgh,—hack work, you may call them; but even hack work can be done with a nice conscience.
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here is the edinburgh climate: “the weather is raw and boisterous in winter, shifty and ungenial in summer, and a downright meteorological purgatory in spring. the delicate die early, and i, as a survivor among bleak winds and plumping rains, have been sometimes tempted to envy them their fate.”
here is the scottish love of home: (one of the tall “lands,” inhabited by a hundred families, has crumbled and gone down.) “how many people all over the world, in london, canada, new zealand, could say with truth, ‘the house i was born in fell last night’!”
now turn to a volume of short stories. here is a hebridean night, in the merry men: “outside was a wonderful clear night of stars, with here and there a cloud still hanging, last stragglers of the tempest. it was near the top of the flood, and the merry men were roaring in the windless quiet.”
here is a sirocco in spain: “it came out of malarious lowlands, and over several snowy sierras. the nerves of those on whom it blew were strung and jangled; their eyes smarted with the dust;
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their legs ached under the burden of their body; and the touch of one hand upon another grew to be odious.”
now take an illustration from one of his very early essays, notes on the movements of young children, printed in 1874. here are two very little girls learning to dance: “in these two, particularly, the rhythm was sometimes broken by an excess of energy, as though the pleasure of the music in their light bodies could endure no longer the restraint of the regulated dance.”
these examples are purposely chosen from tranquil pages; there is nothing far-fetched or extraordinary about them; yet i shall be sorry for you, reader, if you do not feel something rare and precious in a style like this, in which the object, however simple, is made alive with a touch, and stands before you as if you saw it for the first time.
