Essays of Robert Louis Stevenson - Robert Louis Stevenson
"How, now, young fellow, what dost thou here?"
"Truly, sir, I take mine ease."
"Is not this the hour of the class? and should'st thou not be plying
thy Book with diligence, to the end thou mayest obtain knowledge?"
"Nay, but thus also I follow after Learning, by your leave."
"Learning, quotha! After what fashion, I pray thee? Is it
mathematics?"
"No, to be sure."
"Is it metaphysics?"
"Nor that."
"Is it some language?"
"Nay, it is no language."
"Is it a trade?"
"Nor a trade neither."
"Why, then, what is't?"
"Indeed, sir, as a time may soon come for me to go upon Pilgrimage, I
am desirous to note what is commonly done by persons in my case, and
where are the ugliest Sloughs and Thickets on the Road; as also, what
manner of Staff is of the best service. Moreover, I lie here, by this
water, to learn by root-of-heart a lesson which my master teaches me
to call Peace, or Contentment."
Hereupon, Mr. Worldly Wiseman was much commoved with passion, and
shaking his cane with a very threatful countenance, broke forth upon
this wise: "Learning, quotha!" said he; "I would have all such rogues
scourged by the Hangman!"
And so he would go his way, ruffling out his cravat with a crackle of
starch, like a turkey when it spread its feathers.
Now this, of Mr. Wiseman, is the common opinion. A fact is not called
a fact, but a piece of gossip, if it does not fall into one of your
scholastic categories. An inquiry must be in some acknowledged
direction, with a name to go by; or else you are not inquiring at all,
only lounging; and the workhouse is too good for you. It is supposed
that all knowledge is at the bottom of a well, or the far end of a
telescope. Sainte-Beuve,[15] as he grew older, came to regard all
experience as a single great book, in which to study for a few years
ere we go hence; and it seemed all one to him whether you should read
in Chapter xx., which is the differential calculus, or in Chapter
xxxix., which is hearing the band play in the gardens. As a matter of
fact, an intelligent person, looking out of his eyes and hearkening in
his ears, with a smile on his face all the time, will get more true
education than many another in a life of heroic vigils. There is
certainly some chill and arid knowledge to be found upon the summits
of formal and laborious science; but it is all round about you, and
for the trouble of looking, that you will acquire the warm and
palpitating facts of life. While others are filling their memory with
a lumber of words, one-half of which they will forget before the week
be out, your truant may learn some really useful art: to play the
fiddle, to know a good cigar, or to speak with ease and opportunity to
all varieties of men. Many who have "plied their book diligently," and
know all about some one branch or another of accepted lore, come out
of the study with an ancient and owl-like demeanour, and prove dry,
stockish, and dyspeptic in all the better and brighter parts of life.
Many make a large fortune, who remain underbred and pathetically
stupid to the last. And meantime there goes the idler, who began life
along with them--by your leave, a different picture. He has had time
to take care of his health and his spirits; he has been a great deal
in the open air, which is the most salutary of all things for both
body and mind; and if he has never read the great Book in very
recondite places, he has dipped into it and skimmed it over to
excellent purpose. Might not the student afford some Hebrew roots, and
the business man some of his half-crowns, for a share of the idler's
knowledge of life at large, and Art of Living? Nay, and the idler has
another and more important quality than these. I mean his wisdom. He
who has much looked on at the childish satisfaction of other people in
their hobbies, will regard his own with only a very ironical
indulgence. He will not be heard among the dogmatists. He will have a
great and cool allowance for all sorts of people and opinions. If he
finds no out-of-the-way truths, he will identify himself with no very
burning falsehood. His way took him along a by-road, not much
frequented, but very even and pleasant, which is called Commonplace
Lane, and leads to the Belvedere of Commonsense.[16] Thence he shall
command an agreeable, if no very noble prospect; and while others
behold the East and West, the Devil and the Sunrise, he will be
contentedly aware of a sort of morning hour upon all sublunary things,
with an army of shadows running speedily and in many different
directions into the great daylight of Eternity. The shadows and the
generations, the shrill doctors and the plangent wars,[17] go by into
ultimate silence and emptiness; but underneath all this, a man may
see, out of the Belvedere windows, much green and peaceful landscape;
many firelit parlours; good people laughing, drinking, and making love
as they did before the Flood or the French Revolution; and the old
shepherd[18] telling his tale under the hawthorn.
Extreme _busyness_, whether at school or college, kirk or market, is a
symptom of deficient vitality; and a faculty for idleness implies a
catholic appetite and a strong sense of personal identity. There is a
sort of dead-alive, hackneyed people about, who are scarcely conscious
of living except in the exercise of some conventional occupation.
Bring these fellows into the country, or set them aboard ship, and you
will see how they pine for their desk or their study. They have no
curiosity; they cannot give themselves over to random provocations;
they do not take pleasure in the exercise of their faculties for its
own sake; and unless Necessity lays about them with a stick, they will
even stand still. It is no good speaking to such folk: they _cannot_
be idle, their nature is not generous enough; and they pass those
hours in a sort of coma, which are not dedicated to furious moiling in
the gold-mill. When they do not require to go to the office, when they
are not hungry and have no mind to drink, the whole breathing world is
a blank to them. If they have to wait an hour or so for a train, they
fall into a stupid trance with their eyes open. To see them, you would
suppose there was nothing to look at and no one to speak with; you
would imagine they were paralysed or alienated; and yet very possibly
they are hard workers in their own way, and have good eyesight for a
flaw in a deed or a turn of the market. They have been to school and
college, but all the time they had their eye on the medal; they have
gone about in the world and mixed with clever people, but all the time
they were thinking of their own affairs. As if a man's soul were not
too small to begin with, they have dwarfed and narrowed theirs by a
life of all work and no play; until here they are at forty, with a
listless attention, a mind vacant of all material of amusement, and
not one thought to rub against another, while they wait for the train.
Before he was breeched, he might have clambered on the boxes; when he
was twenty, he would have stared at the girls; but now the pipe is
smoked out, the snuffbox empty, and my gentleman sits bolt upright
upon a bench, with lamentable eyes. This does not appeal to me as
being Success in Life.
But it is not only the person himself who suffers from his busy
habits, but his wife and children, his friends and relations, and down
to the very people he sits with in a railway carriage or an omnibus.
Perpetual devotion to what a man calls his business, is only to be
sustained by perpetual neglect of many other things. And it is not by
any means certain that a man's business is the most important thing he
has to do. To an impartial estimate it will seem clear that many of
the wisest, most virtuous, and most beneficent parts that are to be
played upon the Theatre of Life are filled by gratuitous performers,
and pass, among the world at large, as phases of idleness. For in that
Theatre not only the walking gentlemen, singing chambermaids, and
diligent fiddlers in the orchestra, but those who look on and clap
their hands from the benches, do really play a part and fulfil
important offices towards the general result. You are no doubt very
dependent on the care of your lawyer and stockbroker, of the guards
and signalmen who convey you rapidly from place to place, and the
policemen who walk the streets for your protection; but is there not a
thought of gratitude in your heart for certain other benefactors who
set you smiling when they fall in your way, or season your dinner with
good company? Colonel Newcome helped to lose his friend's money; Fred
Bayham had an ugly trick of borrowing shirts; and yet they were better
people to fall among than Mr. Barnes. And though Falstaff was neither
sober nor very honest, I think I could name one or two long-faced
Barabbases whom the world could better have done without. Hazlitt
mentions that he was more sensible of obligation to Northcote,[19] who
had never done him anything he could call a service, than to his whole
circle of ostentatious friends; for he thought a good companion
emphatically the greatest benefactor. I know there are people in the
world who cannot feel grateful unless the favour has been done them at
the cost of pain and difficulty. But this is a churlish disposition. A
man may send you six sheets of letter-paper covered with the most
entertaining gossip, or you may pass half an hour pleasantly, perhaps
profitably, over an article of his; do you think the service would be
greater, if he had made the manuscript in his heart's blood, like a
compact with the devil? Do you really fancy you should be more
beholden to your correspondent, if he had been damning you all the
while for your importunity? Pleasures are more beneficial than duties
because, like the quality of mercy,[20] they are not strained, and
they are twice blest. There must always be two to a kiss, and there
may be a score in a jest; but wherever there is an element of
sacrifice, the favour is conferred with pain, and, among generous
people, received with confusion. There is no duty we so much underrate
as the duty of being happy. By being happy, we sow anonymous benefits
upon the world, which remain unknown even to ourselves, or when they
are disclosed, surprise nobody so much as the benefactor. The other
day, a ragged, barefoot boy ran down the street after a marble, with
so jolly an air that he set every one he passed into a good humour;
one of these persons, who had been delivered from more than usually
black thoughts, stopped the little fellow and gave him some money with
this remark: "You see what sometimes comes of looking pleased." If he
had looked pleased before, he had now to look both pleased and
mystified. For my part, I justify this encouragement of smiling rather
than tearful children; I do not wish to pay for tears anywhere but
upon the stage; but I am prepared to deal largely in the opposite
commodity. A happy man or woman is a better thing to find than a
five-pound note. He or she is a radiating focus of good-will; and
their entrance into a room is as though another candle had been
lighted. We need not care whether they could prove the forty-seventh
proposition; they do a better thing than that, they practically
demonstrate the great Theorum of the liveableness of Life.
Consequently, if a person cannot be happy without remaining idle, idle
he should remain. It is a revolutionary precept; but thanks to hunger
and the workhouse, one not easily to be abused; and within practical
limits, it is one of the most incontestable truths in the whole Body
of Morality. Look at one of your industrious fellows for a moment, I
beseech you. He sows hurry and reaps indigestion; he puts a vast deal
of activity out to interest, and receives a large measure of nervous
derangement in return. Either he absents himself entirely from all
fellowship, and lives a recluse in a garret, with carpet slippers and
a leaden inkpot; or he comes among people swiftly and bitterly, in a
contraction of his whole nervous system, to discharge some temper
before he returns to work. I do not care how much or how well he
works, this fellow is an evil feature in other people's lives. They
would be happier if he were dead. They could easier do without his
services in the Circumlocution Office, than they can tolerate his
fractious spirits. He poisons life at the well-head. It is better to
be beggared out of hand by a scapegrace nephew, than daily hag-ridden
by a peevish uncle.
And what, in God's name, is all this pother about? For what cause do
they embitter their own and other people's lives? That a man should
publish three or thirty articles a year, that he should finish or not
finish his great allegorical picture, are questions of little interest
to the world. The ranks of life are full; and although a thousand
fall, there are always some to go into the breach. When they told Joan
of Arc[21] she should be at home minding women's work, she answered
there were plenty to spin and wash. And so, even with your own rare
gifts! When nature is "so careless of the single life,"[22] why should
we coddle ourselves into the fancy that our own is of exceptional
importance? Suppose Shakespeare had been knocked on the head some dark
night in Sir Thomas Lucy's[23] preserves, the world would have wagged
on better or worse, the pitcher gone to the well, the scythe to the
corn, and the student to his book; and no one been any the wiser of
the loss. There are not many works extant, if you look the alternative
all over, which are worth the price of a pound of tobacco to a man of
limited means. This is a sobering reflection for the proudest of our
earthly vanities. Even a tobacconist may, upon consideration, find no
great cause for personal vainglory in the phrase; for although tobacco
is an admirable sedative, the qualities necessary for retailing it are
neither rare nor precious in themselves. Alas and alas! you may take
it how you will, but the services of no single individual are
indispensable. Atlas[24] was just a gentleman with a protracted
nightmare! And yet you see merchants who go and labour themselves into
a great fortune and thence into bankruptcy court; scribblers who keep
scribbling at little articles until their temper is a cross to all who
come about them, as though Pharaoh should set the Israelites to make a
pin instead of a pyramid;[25] and fine young men who work themselves
into a decline,[26] and are driven off in a hearse with white plumes
upon it. Would you not suppose these persons had been whispered, by
the Master of the Ceremonies, the promise of some momentous destiny?
and that this lukewarm bullet on which they play their farces was the
bull's-eye and centrepoint of all the universe? And yet it is not so.
The ends for which they give away their priceless youth, for all they
know, may be chimerical or hurtful; the glory and riches they expect
may never come, or may find them indifferent; and they and the world
they inhabit are so inconsiderable that the mind freezes at the
thought.
NOTES
This essay was first printed in the _Cornhill Magazine_, for July
1877, Vol. XXXVI, pp. 80-86. It was next published in the volume,
_Virginibus Puerisque_, in 1881. Although this book contains some of
the most admirable specimens of Stevenson's style, it did not have a
large sale, and it was not until 1887 that another edition Appeared.
The editor of the _Cornhill Magazine_ from 1871 to 1882 was Leslie
Stephen (1832-1904), whose kindness and encouragement to the new
writer were of the utmost importance at this critical time. That so
grave and serious a critic as Leslie Stephen should have taken such
delight in a _jeu d'esprit_ like _Idlers_, is proof, if any were
needed, for the breadth of his literary outlook. Stevenson had been at
work on this article a year before its appearance, which shows that
his _Apology for Idlers_ demanded from him anything but idling. As
Graham Balfour says, in his _Life of Stevenson_, I, 122, "Except
before his own conscience, there was hardly any time when the author
of the _Apology for Idlers_ ever really neglected the tasks of his
true vocation." In July 1876 he wrote to Mrs. Sitwell, "A paper called
'A Defence of Idlers' (which is really a defence of R.L.S.) is in a
good way." A year later, after the publication of the article, he
wrote (in August 1877) to Sidney Colvin, "Stephen has written to me
apropos of 'Idlers,' that something more in that vein would be
agreeable to his views. From Stephen I count that a devil of a lot."
It is noteworthy that this charming essay had been refused by
_Macmillan's Magazine_ before Stephen accepted it for the _Cornhill._
(_Life,_ I, 180).
[Note 1: The conversation between Boswell and Johnson, quoted at the
beginning of the essay, occurred on the 26 October 1769, at the famous
Mitre Tavern. In Stevenson's quotation, the word "all" should be
inserted after the word "were" to correspond with the original text,
and to make sense. Johnson, though constitutionally lazy, was no
defender of Idlers, and there is a sly humour in Stevenson's appealing
to him as authority. Boswell says in his _Life_, under date of 1780,
"He would allow no settled indulgence of idleness upon principle, and
always repelled every attempt to urge excuses for it. A friend one day
suggested, that it was not wholesome to study soon after dinner.
JOHNSON: 'Ah, sir, don't give way to such a fancy. At one time of my
life I had taken it into my head that it was not wholesome to study
between breakfast and dinner.'"]
[Note 2: _Lese-respectability._ From the French verb _leser_, to hurt,
to injure. The most common employment of this verb is in the phrase
"_lese-majeste,"_ high treason. Stevenson's mood here is like that of
Lowell, when he said regretfully, speaking of the eighteenth century,
"Responsibility for the universe had not then been invented." (_Essay
on Gray_.)]
[Note 3: _Gasconade_. Boasting. The inhabitants of Gascony
(_Gascogne)_ a province in the south-west of France, are proverbial
not only for their impetuosity and courage, but for their willingness
to brag of the possession of these qualities. Excellent examples of
the typical Gascon in literature are D'Artagnan in Dumas's _Trois
Mousquetaires_ (1844) and Cyrano in Rostand's splendid drama, _Cyrano
de Bergerac_ (1897).]
[Note 4: _In the emphatic Americanism, "goes for" them._ When
Stevenson wrote this (1876-77), he had not yet been in America. Two
years later, in 1879, when he made the journey across the plains, he
had many opportunities to record Americanisms far more emphatic than
the harmless phrase quoted here, which can hardly be called an
Americanism. Murray's _New English Dictionary_ gives excellent English
examples of this particular sense of "go for" in the years 1641, 1790,
1864, and 1882!]
[Note 5: _Alexander is touched in a very delicate place_. Alluding to
the famous interview between the young Alexander and the old Diogenes,
which took place at Corinth about 330 B.C. Alexander asked Diogenes in
what way he could be of service to him, and the philosopher replied
gruffly, "By standing out of my sunshine." As a young man Diogenes had
been given to all excesses of dissipation; but he later went to the
opposite extreme of asceticism, being one of the earliest and most
striking illustrations of "plain living and high thinking." The
debauchery of his youth and the privation and exposure of his old age
did not deeply affect his hardy constitution, for he is said to have
lived to the age of ninety. In the charming play by the Elizabethan,
John Lyly, _A moste excellente Comedie of Alexander, Campaspe, and
Diogenes_ (1584), the conversations between the man who has conquered
the world and the man who has overcome the world are highly
entertaining.]
[Note 6: _Where was the glory of having taken Rome_. This refers to
the invasion by the Gauls about the year 389 B. C. A good account is
given in T. Arnold's _History of Rome_ I, pp. 534 et seq.]
[Note 7: _Sent to Coventry_. The origin of this proverb, which means
of course, "to ostracise," probably dates back to 1647, when,
according to Clarendon's _History of the Great Rebellion_, VI, par.
83, Royalist prisoners were sent to the parliamentary stronghold of
Coventry, in Warwickshire.]
[Note 8: _Montenegro ... Richmond_. Montenegro is one of the smallest
principalities in the world, about 3,550 square miles. It is in the
Balkan peninsula, to the east of the lower Adriatic, between
Austro-Hungary and Turkey. When Stevenson was writing this essay,
1876-77, Montenegro was the subject of much discussion, owing to the
part she took in the Russo-Turkish war. The year after this article
was published (1878) Montenegro reached the coast of the Adriatic for
the first time, and now has two tiny seaports. Tennyson celebrated the
hardy virtues of the inhabitants in his sonnet _Montenegro_, written
in 1877.
"O smallest among peoples! rough rock-throne
Of Freedom! warriors beating back the swarm
Of Turkish Islam for five hundred years."
_Richmond_ is on the river Thames, close to the city of London.]
[Note 9: _Lord Macaulay may escape from school honours._ Stevenson
here alludes to the oft-heard statement that the men who succeed in
after life have generally been near the foot of their classes at
school and college. It is impossible to prove either the falsity or
truth of so general a remark, but it is easier to point out men who
have been successful both at school and in life, than to find
sufficient evidence that school and college prizes prevent further
triumphs. Macaulay, who is noted by Stevenson as an exception, was
precocious enough to arouse the fears rather than the hopes of his
friends. When he was four years old, he hurt his finger, and a lady
inquiring politely as to whether the injured member was better, the
infant replied gravely, "Thank you, Madam, the agony is abated."]
[Note 10: _The Lady of Shalott_. See Tennyson's beautiful poem (1833).
"And moving thro' a mirror clear
That hangs before her all the year,
Shadows of the world appear."]
[Note 11: _Some lack-lustre periods between sleep and waking._ Cf.
_King Lear_, Act I, Sc. 2, vs. 15. "Got 'tween asleep and wake."]
[Note 12: _Kinetic Stability ... _Emphyteusis ... Stillicide_ For
Kinetic Stability, see any modern textbook on Physics. _Emphyteusis_
is the legal renting of ground; _Stillicide_, a continual dropping of
water, as from the eaves of a house. These words, _Emphyteusis_ and
_Stillicide_, are terms in Roman Law. Stevenson is of course making
fun of the required studies of Physics and Roman Law, and of their
lack of practical value to him in his chosen career.]
[Note 13: _The favourite school of Dickens and of Balzac_. The great
English novelist Dickens (1812-1870) and his greater French
contemporary Balzac (1799-1850), show in their works that their chief
school was Life.]
[Note 14: _Mr. Worldly Wiseman_. The character in Bunyan's _Pilgrim's
Progress_ (1678), who meets Christian soon after his setting out from
the City of Destruction. _Pilgrim's Progress_ was a favorite book of
Stevenson's; he alludes to it frequently in his essays. See also his
own article _Bagster's Pilgrim's Progress_, first published in the
_Magazine of Art_ in February 1882. This essay is well worth reading,
and the copies of the pictures which he includes are extremely
diverting.]
[Note 15: _Sainte-Beuve._ The French writer Sainte-Beuve (1804-1869)
is usually regarded today as the greatest literary critic who ever
lived. His constant change of convictions enabled him to see life from
all sides.]
[Note 16: _Belvedere of Commonsense_. Belvedere is an Italian word,
which referred originally to a place of observation on the top of a
house, from which one might enjoy an extensive prospect. A portion of
the Vatican in Rome is called the Belvedere, thus lending this name to
the famous statue of Apollo, which stands there. On the continent,
anything like a summer-house is often called a Belvedere. One of the
most interesting localities which bears this name is the Belvedere
just outside of Weimar, in Germany, where Goethe used to act in his
own dramas in the open air theatre.]
[Note 17: _The plangent wars_. Plangent is from the Latin _plango_, to
strike, to beat. Stevenson's use of the word is rather unusual in
English.]
[Note 18: _The old shepherd telling his tale_.. See Milton,
_L'Allegro:_--
"And every shepherd tells his tale
Under the hawthorn in the dale."
"Tells his tale" means of course "counts his sheep," not "tells a
story." The old use of the word "tell" for "count" survives to-day in
the word "teller" in a parliamentary assemblage, or in a bank.]
[Note 19: _Colonel Newcome ... Fred Bayham ... Mr. Barnes ... Falstaff
... Barabbases ... Hazlitt ... Northcote._ Colonel Newcome, the great
character in Thackeray's _The Newcomes_ (1854). _Fred Bayham_ and
_Barnes Newcome_ are persons in the same story. One of the best essays
on Falstaff is the one printed in the first series of Mr. Augustine
Birrell's _Obiter Dicta_ (1884). This essay would have pleased
Thackeray. One of the finest epitaphs in literature is that pronounced
over the supposedly dead body of Falstaff by Prince Hal--"I could have
better spared a better man." (_King Henry IV_, Part I, Act V, Sc. 4.)
_Barabbas_ was the robber who was released at the time of the trial of
Christ.... _William Hazlitt_ (1778-1830), the well-known essayist,
published in 1830 the _Conversations_ of _James Northcote_
(1746-1831). Northcote was an artist and writer, who had been an
assistant in the studio of Sir Joshua Reynolds. Stevenson projected a
_Life of Hazlitt_, but later abandoned the undertaking. (_Life,_ I,
230.)]