STEVENSON'S earlier determination was so distinctly to the symbolic, the parabolic, allegoric, dreamy and mystical - to treatment of the world as an array of weird or half-fanciful existences, witnessing only to certain dim spiritual facts or abstract moralities, occasionally inverted moralities - "tail foremost moralities" as later he himself named them - that a strong Celtic strain in him had been detected and dwelt on by acute critics long before any attention had been given to his genealogy on both sides of the house.The strong Celtic strain is now amply attested by many researches.Such phantasies as THE HOUSE OF ELD, THE TOUCHSTONE, THE POOR THING, and THE SONG OF THE MORROW, published along with some fables at the end of an edition of DR JEKYLL AND MR HYDE, by Longman's, I think, in 1896, tell to the initiated as forcibly as anything could tell of the presence of this element, as though moonshine, disguising and transfiguring, was laid over all real things and the secret of the world and life was in its glamour: the shimmering and soft shading rendering all outlines indeterminate, though a great idea is felt to be present in the mind of the author, for which he works.The man who would say there is no feeling for symbol - no phantasy or Celtic glamour in these weird, puzzling, and yet on all sides suggestive tales would thereby be declared inept, inefficient - blind to certain qualities that lie near to grandeur in fanciful literature, or the literature of phantasy, more properly.
This power in weird and playful phantasy is accompanied with the gift of impersonating or embodying mere abstract qualities or tendencies in characters.The little early sketch written in June 1875, titled GOOD CONTENT, well illustrates this:
"Pleasure goes by piping: Hope unfurls his purple flag; and meek Content follows them on a snow-white ass.Here, the broad sunlight falls on open ways and goodly countries; here, stage by stage, pleasant old towns and hamlets border the road, now with high sign-
poles, now with high minster spires; the lanes go burrowing under blossomed banks, green meadows, and deep woods encompass them about; from wood to wood flock the glad birds; the vane turns in the variable wind; and as I journey with Hope and Pleasure, and quite a company of jolly personifications, who but the lady I love is by my side, and walks with her slim hand upon my arm?
"Suddenly, at a corner, something beckons; a phantom finger-post, a will o' the wisp, a foolish challenge writ in big letters on a brand.And twisting his red moustaches, braggadocio Virtue takes the perilous way where dim rain falls ever, and sad winds sigh.
And after him, on his white ass, follows simpering Content.
"Ever since I walk behind these two in the rain.Virtue is all a-
cold; limp are his curling feather and fierce moustache.Sore besmirched, on his jackass, follows Content."
The record, entitled SUNDAY THOUGHTS, which is dated some five days earlier is naive and most characteristic, touched with the phantastic moralities and suggestions already indicated in every sentence; and rises to the fine climax in this respect at the close.
"A plague o' these Sundays! How the church bells ring up the sleeping past! I cannot go in to sermon: memories ache too hard;
and so I hide out under the blue heavens, beside the small kirk whelmed in leaves.Tittering country girls see me as I go past from where they sit in the pews, and through the open door comes the loud psalm and the fervent solitary voice of the preacher.To and fro I wander among the graves, and now look over one side of the platform and see the sunlit meadow where the grown lambs go bleating and the ewes lie in the shadow under their heaped fleeces;
and now over the other, where the rhododendrons flower fair among the chestnut boles, and far overhead the chestnut lifts its thick leaves and spiry blossom into the dark-blue air.Oh, the height and depth and thickness of the chestnut foliage! Oh, to have wings like a dove, and dwell in the tree's green heart!
........
"A plague o' these Sundays! How the Church bells ring up the sleeping past! Here has a maddening memory broken into my brain.
To the door, to the door, with the naked lunatic thought! Once it is forth we may talk of what we dare not entertain; once the intriguing thought has been put to the door I can watch it out of the loophole where, with its fellows, it raves and threatens in dumb show.Years ago when that thought was young, it was dearer to me than all others, and I would speak with it always when I had an hour alone.These rags that so dismally trick forth its madness were once the splendid livery my favour wrought for it on my bed at night.Can you see the device on the badge? I dare not read it there myself, yet have a guess - 'BAD WARE NICHT' - is not that the humour of it?
.........
"A plague o' these Sundays! How the Church bells ring up the sleeping past! If I were a dove and dwelt in the monstrous chestnuts, where the bees murmur all day about the flowers; if I were a sheep and lay on the field there under my comely fleece; if I were one of the quiet dead in the kirkyard - some homespun farmer dead for a long age, some dull hind who followed the plough and handled the sickle for threescore years and ten in the distant past; if I were anything but what I am out here, under the sultry noon, between the deep chestnuts, among the graves, where the fervent voice of the preacher comes to me, thin and solitary, through the open windows; IF I WERE WHAT I WAS YESTERDAY, AND WHAT, BEFORE GOD, I SHALL BE AGAIN TO-MORROW, HOW SHOULD I OUTFACE THESE BRAZEN MEMORIES, HOW LIVE DOWN THIS UNCLEAN RESURRECTION OF DEAD HOPES!"
