LONDON STEVENSON CLUB

Otago Daily Times, Issue 21530, 30 December 1931, Page 5

LONDON STEVENSON CLUB

MR J. B. PRIESTLEY AND DETRACTORS R.L.S. AS A REVITALISE!!. (From Our Own Correspondent.) LONDON, November IS. Members of the London R. L. Stevenson Club had a particularly enjoyable evening at their eighth annual commemorative dinner. Mr Alfred Noyes presided, and in reply to the toast of “ The Chairman ” he recited many gems of poetry not only from' Stevenson’s works but from several other masters of verse. Ho was defending the Victorian poets from some of the cheap modern criticism. Mr Noyes is not really an elocutionist, but he knows how to produce music from beautiful language, and his enthusiasm is contagions. “That is writing,” he would remark after an extract, and ho would point out where lay the particular merits of the lines. “That is not writing” was his comment after quoting some free verse of modern times. Mr J. B. Priestley proposed the principal toast—“ The Immortal Memory of Robert Louis Stevenson.” There were those who considered Stevenson to be an over-rated and out-moded writer, said Mr Priestley, yet people went on reading his works and buying new editions. It was difficult to justify the place Stevenson held in one’s affections when cue was actually faced by this hostile criticism. There were some authors who did not depend on the sum total of the value of their works. Charles Lamb was a very good example of a man who in himself was greater than the sum total of his works. People did not specialise in his works. It was enough that they were reading Lamb. Stevenson belonged to that small and unique group of writers. You did not appraise Stevenson by adding together his works. His character, his figure was imprinted on all the things he wrote. Those of ns who really loved the man did not care which particular hook we dipped into. That was the secret of Ins extraordinary survival. When one thought of him as a figure his secret was his charm—the rarest quality in literature. There were critics who accused him of being a false romantic, of delighting in shedding blood, of play-acting. It was high time these gentlemen examined Stevenson’s life objectively and considered the story of his life. “ Speaking as a normal, healthy man,” said Mr Priestley, “ who weighs a little too much, but who is generally approved of by his doctor, I think that Stevenson was extraordinarily brave to live at all.

His was a life of extraordinary courage, and he belongs to the heroic school of literary men. THE SOUTH SEAS. “ I was in the South Seas this year,” continued Mr Priestley. “A great many authors have written about thel South Seas, but having seen those regions for myself I have come to the conclusion that from Stevenson you still get the most vivid impression of those particularly difficult landscapes and curiously childish people. «Speaking entirely personally, the best tribute I can pay to Stevenson is to say that there are times when a hardworking professional writer becomes tired of his job. The whole thing becomes stale and you arc sick of the wav in which your sentences come out. I have found that if at such times I open a volume of Stevenson and ro<ul a page or two I suddenly recover my interest in the craft of writing. The whole thing becomes again what, it always ought to be—an exciting game and the best pastime in the world.” A MODERN CRITIC. In regard to the subject of modern critics of Stevenson it is interesting to read a paragraph from the Edinburgh correspondent of The Sunday Times. Ho writes: Stevensonians in Scotland and elsewhere will have been much perturbed by the assertion of so able and lespousible a Scots critic as Mr Edwin ]\Xuir —in an article in the Modern Scot —that the literary “stock” of R.L.S. has definitely depreciated. In most of his books, Mr Muir declares, Stevenson merely played, though brilliantly, with the romantic surface of life; only in his last, unfinished masterpiece, “ Weir of Herniistoii, did ho boldly rise from the ‘ penny plain, twopence coloured” view of things to a supremely vital and organic conception. 111-health and Victorian inhibitions were the main reasons for his delay in coming to close arips with life. Lovers of Kidnapped ” and “ The Master of Ballautrac” will have difficulty in accepting Mr Muir’s conclusions, but ho lias pointed useful morals for Scots novclists Avoid .Tacobitisin, and don’t write about Highlanders unless you arc a Gael.