Amid the too extreme deliverances of detractors and especially of erewhile friends, become detractors or panegyrists, who disturb judgment by overzeal, which is often but half-blindness, it is pleasant to come on one who bears the balances in his hand, and will report faithfully as he has seen and felt, neither more nor less than what he holds is true.Mr Andrew Lang wrote an article in the MORNING POST of 16th December 1901, under the title "Literary Quarrels," in which, as I think, he fulfilled his part in midst of the talk about Mr Henley's regrettable attack on Stevenson.
"Without defending the character of a friend whom even now I almost daily miss, as that character was displayed in circumstances unknown to me, I think that I ought to speak of him as I found him.
Perhaps our sympathy was mainly intellectual.Constantly do those who knew him desire to turn to him, to communicate with him, to share with him the pleasure of some idea, some little discovery about men or things in which he would have taken pleasure, increasing our own by the gaiety of his enjoyment, the brilliance of his appreciation.We may say, as Scott said at the grave of John Ballantyne, that he has taken with him half the sunlight out of our lives.That he was sympathetic and interested in the work of others (which I understand has been denied) I have reason to know.His work and mine lay far apart: mine, I think, we never discussed, I did not expect it to interest him.But in a fragmentary manuscript of his after his death I found the unlooked for and touching evidence of his kindness.Again, he once wrote to me from Samoa about the work of a friend of mine whom he had never met.His remarks were ideally judicious, a model of serviceable criticism.I found him chivalrous as an honest boy; brave, with an indomitable gaiety of courage; on the point of honour, a Sydney or a Bayard (so he seemed to me); that he was open-handed I have reason to believe; he took life 'with a frolic welcome.' That he was self-conscious, and saw himself as it were, from without; that he was fond of attitude (like his own brave admirals) he himself knew well, and I doubt not that he would laugh at himself and his habit of 'playing at' things after the fashion of childhood.
Genius is the survival into maturity of the inspiration of childhood, and Stevenson is not the only genius who has retained from childhood something more than its inspiration.Other examples readily occur to the memory - in one way Byron, in another Tennyson.None of us is perfect: I do not want to erect an immaculate clay-cold image of a man, in marble or in sugar-candy.
But I will say that I do not remember ever to have heard Mr Stevenson utter a word against any mortal, friend or foe.Even in a case where he had, or believed himself to have, received some wrong, his comment was merely humorous.Especially when very young, his dislike of respectability and of the BOURGEOIS (a literary tradition) led him to show a kind of contempt for virtues which, though certainly respectable, are no less certainly virtuous.He was then more or less seduced by the Bohemian legend, but he was intolerant of the fudge about the rights and privileges of genius.A man's first business, he thought, was 'keep his end up' by his work.If, what he reckoned his inspired work would not serve, then by something else.Of many virtues he was an ensample and an inspiring force.One foible I admit: the tendency to inopportune benevolence.Mr Graham Balfour says that if he fell into ill terms with a man he would try to do him good by stealth.
Though he had seen much of the world and of men, this practice showed an invincible ignorance of mankind.It is improbable, on the doctrine of chances, that he was always in the wrong; and it is probable, as he was human, that he always thought himself in the right.But as the other party to the misunderstanding, being also human, would necessarily think himself in the right, such secret benefits would be, as Sophocles says, 'the gifts of foeman and unprofitable.' The secret would leak out, the benefits would be rejected, the misunderstanding would be embittered.This reminds me of an anecdote which is not given in Mr Graham Balfour's biography.As a little delicate, lonely boy in Edinburgh, Mr Stevenson read a book called MINISTERING CHILDREN.I have a faint recollection of this work concerning a small Lord and Lady Bountiful.Children, we know, like to 'play at' the events and characters they have read about, and the boy wanted to play at being a ministering child.He 'scanned his whole horizon' for somebody to play with, and thought he had found his playmate.From the window he observed street boys (in Scots 'keelies') enjoying themselves.But one child was out of the sports, a little lame fellow, the son of a baker.Here was a chance! After some misgivings Louis hardened his heart, put on his cap, walked out - a refined little figure - approached the object of his sympathy, and said, 'Will you let me play with you?' 'Go to hell!' said the democratic offspring of the baker.This lesson against doing good by stealth to persons of unknown or hostile disposition was, it seems, thrown away.Such endeavours are apt to be misconstrued."
