Two Views of Stevenson
"Iii Stevenson could have lived his life over again," writes Mr. Elwin in his preface, "and could have returned once mbre from that inland voyage for that first glimpse of Fanny Osbourne in the lamplight through the open window at Grez, surely, instead of entering by the window, he would have slipped away, silently and unseen, under cover of the night." This rash speculation is the real theme of The Strange Case of Robert Louis Stevenson, for Mr. Elwin's purpose is to belabbur Fanny Stevenson, against whom he feels a fanatical hatred even stronger than the emotion which another Fanny has sometimes aroused in lovers of Keats. Accord- ing to him, Fanny was the cause of her husband's continued ill- health and the reason why he did not write better than he did. When she won the affection of Colvin and of his parents, it was by flattery. When she enjoyed the society of his friends, it was social climbing. When she was unwell, it was hypochondria. She had, in fact, no charm and no merit, and Stevenson, falling in love with her at first sight, crossing a continent to marry her, and living with her in apparent harmony to the end of his life, was simply showing a perversity of which Mr. Elwin would. like to cure him by reincarnation.
What was the truth ? It wad' a strange marriage between the man of twenty-nine and the woman of forty, but Stevenson had been a particularly isolated only child whose early love had all gone to people older than himself. Marriage with Fanny, and perhaps still more than that, tuberculosis, put an end to the old foot-loose bachelor life—a desertion which Henley in particular never forgave. He was jealous of Fanny, and she, not unnaturally, requited his jealousy with dislike. She dominated her husband ? Yes, in some ways ; in others he dominated her. It was' he who usually decided where they should live. It was not to please herself that Fanny, who hated the sea, chartered' a yacht and made it their home for eighteen months while they cruised among the South Sea Islands. ?)f course, as in all close relationships, there was double feeling. The unpublished letters to Henley in the National Library of Scotland, some of which are here quoted for the first time, show that Stevenson sometimes tebelled, not only against the "life of a weevil in a biscuit" which he led- at Bournemouth, but against the wife and nurse who regulated it.
Most important of all, did Fanny damage his work ? She was against his writing The Black Arrow—perhaps his worst book— to make money. We cannot know whether she was right in object- ing to the first version of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. But she was certainly right in her comments on his book on the South Sea Islands. It seems probable that the real mentor in Stevenson's mind was always his father. How far Fanny represented or strengthened that mentor we can only conjecture, but Mr. Elwin weakens his case by presenting it with so much bias and by basi it often on assumptions that he cannot prove.
The purpose-of Miss G. B. Stern's omnibus is to introduce t reader to the less popular works of Stevenson. It is doubt( whether those who buy omnibuses want to read the less popul
- works of anybody, but a volume which includes Prince Ott The Wrong Box, The Ebb Tide, Weir of Hermiston. well as several ,okthe best short stories; essays . and seleetio from the letterVIEertainly gives "good value for the. mone Miss Stern contributes a biographical note and an affectiona rambling introduction. Stevenson, she claims, „" held t
- fort for sanity" -against "the neurotic postutes of t advancing enemy." -But those "neurotic postures" were in hi self, and the man who builds a fort shuts himself into a t onfin space, excluding a good deal of life. Should we, with Mr. Elwi blame Fanny for the exclusion ? Should we not rather recogni her as one of the factors, both good and bad, in the' complicat pattern of a human life, and admire the writer who, ih spite so many limitations, internal and external, achieved, after all,
Previous page
