第32章 PREACHER AND MYSTIC FABULIST(3)

dialogue and everything being only worked rightly when it bears on, aids, and finally secures this in happy completeness.

In a word, you always, in view of true dramatic effect, see Stevenson himself too clearly behind his characters.The "fine speeches" Mr Pinero referred to trace to the intrusion behind the glass of a part-quicksilvered portion, which cunningly shows, when the glass is moved about, Stevenson himself behind the character, as we have said already.For long he shied dealing with women, as though by a true instinct.Unfortunately for him his image was as clear behind CATRIONA, with the discerning, as anywhere else; and this, alas! too far undid her as an independent, individual character, though traits like those in her author were attractive.

The constant effort to relieve the sense of this affords him the most admirable openings for the display of his exquisite style, of which he seldom or never fails to make the very most in this regard; but the necessity laid upon him to aim at securing a sense of relief by this is precisely the same as led him to write the overfine speeches in the plays, as Mr Pinero found and pointed out at Edinburgh: both defeat the true end, but in the written book mere art of style and a naivete and a certain sweetness of temper conceal the lack of nature and creative spontaneity; while on the stage the descriptions, saving reflections and fine asides, are ruthlessly cut away under sheer stage necessities, or, if left, but hinder the action; and art of this kind does not there suffice to conceal the lack of nature.

More clearly to bring out my meaning here and draw aid from comparative illustration, let me take my old friend of many years, Charles Gibbon.Gibbon was poor, very poor, in intellectual subtlety compared with Stevenson; he had none of his sweet, quaint, original fancy; he was no casuist; he was utterly void of power in the subdued humorous twinkle or genial by-play in which Stevenson excelled.But he has more of dramatic power, pure and simple, than Stevenson had - his novels - the best of them - would far more easily yield themselves to the ordinary purposes of the ordinary playwright.Along with conscientiousness, perception, penetration, with the dramatist must go a certain indescribable common-sense commonplaceness - if I may name it so - protection against vagary and that over-refined egotism and self-confession which is inimical to the drama and in which the Stevensonian type all too largely abounds for successful dramatic production.Mr Henley perhaps put it too strongly when he said that what was supremely of interest to R.L.Stevenson was Stevenson himself; but he indicates the tendency, and that tendency is inimical to strong, broad, effective and varied dramatic presentation.Water cannot rise above its own level; nor can minds of this type go freely out of themselves in a grandly healthy, unconscious, and unaffected way, and this is the secret of the dramatic spirit, if it be not, as Shelley said, the secret of morals, which Stevenson, when he passed away, was but on the way to attain.As we shall see, he had risen so far above it, subdued it, triumphed over it, that we really cannot guess what he might have attained had but more years been given him.For the last attainment of the loftiest and truest genius is precisely this - to gain such insight of the real that all else becomes subsidiary.True simplicity and the abiding relief and enduring power of true art with all classes lies here and not elsewhere.

Cleverness, refinement, fancy, and invention, even sublety of intellect, are practically nowhere in this sphere without this.