A SCRUTINY OF STEVENSON
Presbyterian Pirate. By Doris N. Dalglish. (Oxford. 8s. 6d.)
MISS DALGLISH'S study of Stevenson has no rhapsodies about the heroic invalid, and no giggling research into his early love-affairs. She can admire the man without gushing; and appreciate his writing without rejecting the critical standards she would apply to authors who fascinate her less. She is primarily concerned with Stevenson's work, and assumes that her readers will know the main facts of his life ; indeed, she gives us nearly as much biographical information about herself as about Stevenson. She tells us what she thinks of the Waverley Novels (fit reading for those who " believe they find literature in the novels of Mr. Priestley and Mr. Cronin "), of Dorothy Wordsworth (" that most tiresome of all women connected with great writers "), of Scottish nationalism, rearmament, the invasion of the Ruhr, Matthew Arnold's coldness and admirers of D. H. Lawrence.
There are no ambiguities about her final estimate of Stevenson's writings. She speaks of " that boring book Treasure Island and the repulsive Jekyll and Hyde" ; the dedications to Kidnapped and Catriona are " the only signs of real art about them " ; Prince Otto is " so much waste of Stevenson's time " ; and many of the short stories, including The Beach of Falesd, are not even mentioned. The works on which she takes her stand are the poems and es3ays (with_some exceptions), the letters, and, pre-eminently, Weir of Hermiston—" the half-written book before which all the apparatus of modern criticism is useless." She also admits, but without enthusiasm, The Master of Ballantrae, The Ebb-Tide, The Wrecker, Tke New Arabian Nights (though " a joyless work "), and five of the short stories : " most of these I read with little feeling of pleasure, but I could never deny that the artist had succeeded."
It is a restricted choice for one who so vehemently declares herself a Stevensonian ; and it seems likely that both Miss Dalglish's ruthless (and unexplained) rejections, and her breathless admiration for Weir (" there is no deficiency anywhere "), derive frcim her belief in the all-importance of character in the novel. The stories she praises are praised mainly for their characters—The Ebb-Tide for Herrick, Ballantrae for Mackellar and the Master, Weir for the whole gallery of figures. Admittedly there is little characterisation in, for instance, The Merry Men, which Miss Dalglish does not count among Stevenson's successes ; but then there was never meant to be, any more than in the Ballad of Sir Patrick Spens. In this story Stevenson was trying to express what he felt on the island of Earraid ; the plot and characters were chosen to illustrate this feeling, and what the. reader remembers most clearly are not the figures of the narrator or his Uncle Gordon, but the waters wheeling and boiling under the black cliffs, the mass of sea-tangle swaying in the green water over the wreck in Sandag Bay. Miss Dalglish ascribes Stevenson's " depreciation of the importance of character," his " avoidance of psychology," to a " sheer Calvinism " ; an equally likely explanation is that Stevenson was simply more interested in the creation of legend and fable than in portrait-painting. But that does not mean that he could not draw people in the round when he wished to, and to condemn Kidnapped, Catriona and the South Seas stories as " the chronicling of dead sinners (` dead ' from the point of view of characterisation as well as of chronology)," is surely to be blind, to half the ways in which character may be revealed. To judge by her quotations from War, Miss Dalglish considers that a character is best portrayed when directly described by the author. That is one way, a way Stevenson rarely used. But there are others. Miss Dalglish acknowledges the penetration of Henry James's criticism of Stevenson ; and James, who admired the novel of incident though he did not write it, chose the quarrel scene in Kidnapped as an example of the " rare transparency " possible to the novel : ". it can illustrate human affairs in cases so delicate and complicated that any other vehicle would be clumsy." It is by seeing Alan Breck and David wearily crossing Rannoch Moor that we can understand what kind of men they were.
Holding these views on the novel, it is not surprising that Miss Dalglish considers Stevenson's development disappoint- ing, and finds his most celebrated works, Treasure Island and Jekyll and Hyde, quite off the main line she would havc had him follow. But if you judge a writer by intentions that were not his own, you may easily miss what he has done in your search for what he never meant to do. Miss Dalglish's specula- tions on how Stevenson might have written—if he had not been an only child, if he had not married Fanny Osboume, if he had not died in the middle of Weir—should not blind us to the merits' of her detailed and understanding appreciation of what he actually did write. When she substantiates her opinions by reasoned exposition, when she passes beyond the emotions a book has roused in her to look at the actual words it contains, then she writes with originality and insight, and her remarks on the language of Stevenson's poems, on the rhythms of his prose, on the religiouS background of all his work, make a substantial addition to the intelligent criticism of Stevenson. But she seems to forget that lack and the Beanstalk is a story, a very good story, and the kind of story that Stevenson tried
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