“THE STEVENSON MYTH.”

Otago Daily Times, Issue 18787, 14 February 1923, Page 4

“THE STEVENSON MYTH.”

AMERICAN CRITIC’S ALLEGATIONS. SIR SIDNEY COLVIN’S STATEMENT. AN UNRECORDED ROMANCE. (From Our Own Correspondent.) LONDON, December 23. For those who delight in prying into •'R author’s private life Mr Oeoige S. Heilman, the American critic, has provided in the December number of the Century Magazine a now" sensation regarding the youth of R. L. Stovonson. His chiof allocation is that Stevenson vns in sotno way responsible foi suppressing poems which seem to show that the writer’s youth was illuminated with certain earlv love affairs. Moreover, ho alleges that Mrs Stevenson throw into the fire the manuscript of a novel by Iter husband on ■’The Life of a Street Walker.’’ In short, ne maintains (hat Mrs Stevenson did all that was possible to create a. myth by suppressing important facts as to the character of her husband. Mr Heilman was one of tho editors of the volumes of Stevenson’s poem brought forth by the Boston Bibliophile Society in 1016. Those manuscripts, it seems, were in the custody of Mrs Stevenson until the time of tier death in 1913, but were sold later at the order of Stevenson’s step-daughter, laobcl Strong, later Mrs Salisbury Field. That Mrs Stevenson had not divulged the contents of these documents to persons directly interested and well cmaliticd to consider the importance of this lyric output Boomed to prove to Mr Heilman that the myth-making, which he had vaguely suspected, "was more than a matter of literary rumour, and that Mrs Stevenson was disingenuously ingenuous when, in the preface to a posthumous edition to her husband’s poetry, she stated that verse had with Stevenson always been preeminently a pastime. It had, she surely must have known, been the channel for the expression of many of his most violent emotions, his deepest thoughts and feelings.

But the good lady was morn interested in tho gentle and genteel art of myth-making. THE OFFICIAL BIOGRAPHY. " The Stevenson myth is far and away the most remarkable thing of its kind in modern literature. Hero was a writer whose, works were avidly read by a world-wido contemporary public, and whoso character and personality were familiar, through long acquaintance, to various men of letters among his friends; hut after Stevenson died, it was not Sir Sydney Colvin by, whom was completed' the official biography', despite the fact that Stevenson himself had expressed + lie hope that this dearest of his friends would be his editor and' biographer. Sir Sidney Colvin, Edmund Oosse, Andrew Lang—how thoroughly well could any of these three have done this labour of love! Hut it was a member of the Stevenson family—Hr Graham Balfour' —who proved at the last to bo Mrs Stevenson's choice.”

Briefly, the alleged myth was that Stevenson was tho typo of man possessing all those virtues which are generally held up for tho emulation of youth. Tho writer of the article maintains that the 120 poems were suppressed because so many of them have to do with (he amatory experiences of Stevenson in his young unmarried days. “Is there not in all this,” he asks, “tho conscious motive to minimise public recognition of that streak of aensuousnesa in Stevenson which was as much a part of his character as were his virtues, and which in these writings is artistically revealed? Only the motive of prudery, which we do not inscribe, or of practical or sentimental motives of myth-making, might, it seems, offer the explanation.” AN EARLY ROMANCE.

Mr Balfour's only reference to Stevenson’s problems or experiences in the field of sex is contained in tho following lines; “Ho was young in youth; and travelling at the fiery pace of his ago and temperament; his senses were importunate, his intellect enquiring, and he must either find his own way. or, ns ho well might have done, Jose it altogether.” Mr Heilman affirms that the biographer virtually dismisses a subject of intense importance in understanding the true. Stevenson “Stevenson, became of ago in 1871, he says, “but before he had reached manhood be had entered upon one of the greatest experiences of his life; he had met his first love, and to her. and for her, beginning with the year 1879, he wrote some of his aincorest lyrics Wo shall probably never know who this girl was. A marginal, annotation by Stevenson, made many years later on the copy of one, of his early lyrics to her, shows her name to have been Claire. She was of the lower class in life, and presumably ono of tho girls that Stevenson met when owing to the small allowance made to him by his father in his student days; ho frequented cheap taverns and went about with socially questionable people. He had a liaison with Claire, which reached its climax probably in 1870, and Ins devotion for her was so genuine and so nianlv that in- his poem entitled “God Gave to Me a Child in Part” his regret that their child was never to be bom is expressed in the poem whereof these arc tho first and last stanzas:

God gave to me a child in part, Vet wholly gave the father’s heart: Child of my soul, O whither now-, Unborn, un mothered, goest thou? Alas, alone he sits, who then Immortal among mortal men, Sat hand in hand with love, and ell day through With your dear mother, wondered over you.

“Stevenson's attitude as here shown is decided! v high-minded. It would strongly seem to imply his desire to marry the girl, and other verses of the some period suggest that marriage was promised. “Were the full story of Stevenson a youth to be written, his amorous experiences, especially those wherein Claire was involved, would assuredly seem to explain least some part of the disturbance in the Stevenson household; mid we are strongly inclined to surmise Ihut liis departure from the Continont was not wholly due to religious altercations with his father, or solely to questions of health ”

A NOVEL DESTROYED. Mrs Stevenson is also credited with disturbing soma of Stevenson’s earlier friendships, and especially did her regime do much to alienate the affection of Henley. Wo shall probably never be able to know whether this .strong-willed. self-confident woman did not push her prerogatives too far along the most regrettable channels that an author's wife can follow in a spirit of kindly meant autocracy. For the story goes that, during a period of special physical distress, when Stevenson was so weakened by hemorrhages that his conversations were conducted by means of a note hook and pencil Mrs Stevenson, over-riding the objections of R. L, S., took it upon herself to throw into tile fire the manuscript of a novel by her husband. The early eighties has been given as the date, Hyorcs the place, and the subject of the manuscript the life of a street walker. We need not accept the statement that Stevenson considered this his masterpiece, although it well might have been, for his early experiences and his wide sympathies qualified him to approach the subject with rare humanity, while his studios in French literature, a phase of his literary development tiiat has not been sufficiently studied, contributed to make him the one British writer of Ids time who might have handled the subject in f aii un-English way. Stevenson’s treatment of the enforced victim of an elemental fact could easily have been, a fine masterpiece of his stylo, and the even linor masterpiece of his philosophy toward life.”

Tho writer gives several possible solutions for the acts lie attributes to Mrs Stevenson, the most generous of these being that she saw her husband on a pedestal, and she n;ado it her bnsir. xis to keep him there, PHUHIKNT CUHIOSITV.

Sir Sydney Colvin, writing in flic Sunday Times, deals very conclusively with tho points raised in the Century article. “ I find the article misinformed and misleading,” ho says. “For one tiling, I cannot admit that the alleged •myth’ has any existence outside the writer’s imagination. 170 friend of H. L. S. has represented him as a saint, only as u very brilliant and loveable human being. Both in my introduction to tlie early letters and in the essay in my hook cf ' Memories and Notes,’ it is quite plainly stated Unit in youth ho was a man • beset with fleshly frailties i'-rd. despite his infirm health, of strong appetites and unchecked curiosities’; and again that ’in youth was only too hot in his month, and the chimes at. midnight only 100 familiar a music,’ The writer himself quotes a phrase to tho like effect from Graham Balfour's ‘liife.’ That is tho substance of all that tho reader has the rigid, or should have the desire, apart from mere prurient curiosity, to know concerning these matters of mere youth and hot blood. "With Mr Heilman seems to have fished out from tho papers which Stevenson’s re-

piescntulives have let come into tho market evidence of something more like a serious romance in regard to a girl called Claire. Without seeing this evidence, I cannot judge whether this was more than what lie somewhere calls a ‘frail, sickly amourette,' or whether it had any real effect upon his life and character. What is quite certain is that it had nothing whatever to do—as Mr Heilman suggests it had —with his going abroad at Dr Andrew Clark's orders in the autumn ot .1873. Bv that time both Mrs Sitwell (now my wife) and 1 had his intimate and absolute confidence, and could not possibly have failed to know had there been any

such motive for Ids departure. VERSES NOT FOR PUBLICATION. “Tho false inferences drawn from gratuitous assumptions in the article would take mo more time to refute than I can well spare. It is merely untrue to say or suggest that 1 pave up writing the life because tho widow would not have given mo a free hand—l gave it tip simply because I lacked health and leisure to complete the task in any reasonable time. The denial in tho article of the widow's statement, that verse was his pastime (as contrasted with his saiious art and craft of prose), is equally un for tun a to. Bo expressed l himself In himself in verse with little or none of the scrupulous art and finish that ho used in prose; to the last lie sent me those of his verses which ho wished to be printed, and I am convinced that he did not intend for publication most of tho verses printed by the Boston Bibliophile Society, and now published l in a separate volume. HENLEY’S’ RACKETY WAY’S.

“As to Honley, Iris later views were poisoned by indignation at the barriers which Mrs Stevenson found herself compelled, in the interests of her husband's health, to put in tho way of their intercourse. Henley’s inconsiderate and rackety ways, cripple though lie was, had made him no ifit (companion for such an invalid as Stevenson had become during his last years in England.’’ With regard to the alleged burning of tho novel mentioned in tho Century, Mr Lloyd Osbourne, the stepson of R. L. Stevenson, who is now in London, has declared that lie had never heard such a thing mentioned befoie, and that he thought it quite untrue.