ISTEVENSON NO SAINT
The True Stevenson : a Study in Classification. By c S. Hellman.. (Little, Brown and Co. $3.50 net.) WHEN Robert Louis Stevenson died there was a quite flats conspiracy among those who knew him best to paint him little larger than life. The early biographies were extend obituary notices. Everything was suppressed that cou possibly bring a blush to the most susceptible cheek.
But the trouble in painting larger than life is that t subject may so easily appear less than human. Stevenson' reputation has suffered. In the official portraits there was stained-glass look about him. Worse, there WAS a priggjs look about him. We felt that there was something flat the whole story. Mr. Sidney Colvin (who selected the Steven son letters with a careful disingenuity) gave us only half man. Mr. Graham Balfour (who constructed a- biograph to the entire satisfaction of Mrs. Stevenson) possessed little artistry to make his myth sound real. There we people, of course, to whom The Idyll of Samoa was perfectl pleasing. It was a romantic tale almost comparable The Blue Lagoon, and it won the same measure of credence.
Rumour was busy. A fact that is suppressed will ofte work subterraneanly and produce great ghosts of scandal whispered legends, secret revelations. Many people kn that there were odd mysteries in the life of Stevenson. Mis directed gossip made them Seem graver than they were.
And what are the disclosures that come now to the pub • ear ? They would never have been worth all this bother if such pains had not been taken to keep them hidden. To brief, we are informed that Stevenson in his youth w extremely dissipated ; that he passed through one very serio love affair, the tale of which has never been made public that he always remained unconventional in his views upo religion and sex. More important for consideration of h' character and fate, he was not as entirely happy in his ma riage as Mrs. Stevenson and her friends tried to make o It is a pity that these facts were concealed at first. The would have fallen into relation with the rest of Stevenson life, and we should not have suffered the discomfort of see' them all amassed and argued about and thrashed over. Fo the moment they loom disproportionately large before ou eyes.
Fanny van de Grift Stevenson was a woman of strange nature. She contrived to keep Stevenson's admiration and love to the end of his days : yet he seems to have been uneasy in the loss of his freedom and very much conscious of restraint. For Fanny both made him and narrowed him down. Without her he might well have wasted his talent. She was dark and pretty ; but she had a mannish figure and much of a inan' will. And in addition to this, she was egocentric ; there was a touch of the deliberate martyr in her character. It seems to be certain that she married Stevenson as much from her own determination as from his desire. Once they were married she set about reforming him. In many ways he needed reformation. She made him more orderly and more hard-working.
She tried to manage him too severely, and, since he was weak, he submitted. When Henley came to see them, she made no attempt to conceal her disapproval, and she kept a tight hand on the whisky bottle. In the 'end she caused a breach between the two friends which cost Stevenson very dear, both in his affections and in his self-esteem. For he brooded over her domination ; he counted himself in some degree a traitor to his own intuitions. There was an even more central concern ; he allowed her to dictate to him about his work.
Fanny, when she married, seems to have repented of her earlier unconventionalities. She turned prude. It is often the way with women—possibly, too, with men. Since she hit that she had something to reproach herself with (or so gather from Mr. Hellman), she became more than usuallY strict. In Stevenson's first draft of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. 110 the moral was not sufficiently obvious for her taste. Dr• Jekyll had been made rather a hypocrite ; Mr. Hyde la, evil enough, but, after all, that evil had been latent in Jeka and it was less insidious when it was brought out into the open. Mrs. Stevenson, however, did not like the story to he inconclusive. Stevenson, therefore, must rewrite the novel. vineed against his-own judgment, he burned the manuscript
began the story again.
There is evidence of a heavier interference. . Stevenson, is reported, once wrote a novel upon the vicissitudes of a n of the streets. The subject was so repulsive to his e that she used all her powers to persuade him to destroy it. was ill—weakened and worn out by haemorrhages. Her ence broke down his defences,- He.took the manuscript threw it on the fire ; and this time he allowed the whole
k to pass into oblivion...'. • ,
These are the charges against Mrs. Stevenson. It is probable t, if they had been admitted, her services to Stevenson d easily have outweighed them. Though it is true that vets' of Stevenson's friends were alienated from him on her tint, and though it seemed to him in his blackest moods t he sold his liberty, even :his genius, for domestic peace, ne the less he was very much in love with her and she ,e him the solidity and the energy he so much lacked. Mr. Hellman's .book is very poorly constructed. His gnation at the whitewashing of Stevenson often gets the tter of him, and he will write in an intemperate fashion, ieh may offend his readers. And where he sets himself expound Stevenson's ideas upon God, upon death, and n sex, his treatment is commonplace. But he makes his case sufficiently and shows a thorough knowledge of subject. There is much new material in the volume, (1 it will remain a source-book for future biographies.
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