第58章 HERO-VILLAINS(3)

a kind of inversion in the field of morals, as De Quincey mixed it up with tail-foremost humour in MURDER AS A FINE ART, etc., etc., but for all such perversions as these the stage is a grand test and corrector, and such perversions, and not "remarks about morals,"

are most strictly prohibited there.Perverted subtleties of the sort Stevenson in earlier times especially much affected are not only amiss but ruinous on the stage; and what genius itself would maybe sanction, common-sense must reject and rigidly cut away.

Final success and triumph come largely by THIS kind of condensation and concentration, and the stern and severe lopping off of the indulgence of the EGOTISTICAL genius, which is human discipline, and the best exponent of the doctrine of unity also.This is the straight and the narrow way along which genius, if it walk but faithfully, sows as it goes in the dramatic pathway all the flowers of human passion, hope, love, terror, and triumph.

I find it advisable, if not needful, here to reinforce my own impressions, at some points, by another quotation from Mr Baildon, if he will allow me, in which Stevenson's dependence in certain respects on the dream-faculty is emphasised, and to it is traced a certain tendency to a moral callousness or indifference which is one of the things in which the waking Stevenson transparently suffered now and then invasions from the dream-Stevenson - the result, a kind of spot, as we may call it, on the eye of the moral sense; it is a small spot; but we know how a very small object held close before the eye will wholly shut out the most lovely natural prospects, interposing distressful phantasmagoria, due to the strained and, for the time, morbid condition of the organ itself.

So, it must be confessed, it is to a great extent here.

But listen to Mr Baildon:

"In A chapter ON DREAMS, Stevenson confesses his indebtedness to this still mysterious agency.From a child he had been a great and vivid dreamer, his dreams often taking such frightful shape that he used to awake 'clinging in terror to the bedpost.' Later in life his dreams continued to be frequent and vivid, but less terrifying in character and more continuous and systematic.'The Brownies,'

as he picturesquely names that 'sub-conscious imagination,' as the scientist would call it, that works with such surprising freedom and ingenuity in our dreams, became, as it were, COLLABORATEURS in his work of authorship.He declares that they invented plots and even elaborated whole novels, and that, not in a single night or single dream, but continuously, and from one night to another, like a story in serial parts.Long before this essay was written or published, I had been struck by this phantasmal dream-like quality in some of Stevenson's works, which I was puzzled to account for, until I read this extraordinary explanation, for explanation it undoubtedly affords.Anything imagined in a dream would have a tendency, when retold, to retain something of its dream-like character, and I have on doubt one could trace in many instances and distinguish the dreaming and the waking Stevenson, though in others they may be blended beyond recognition.The trouble with the Brownies or the dream-Stevenson WAS HIS OR THEIR WANT OF MORAL SENSE, so that they sometimes presented the waking author with plots which he could not make use of.Of this Stevenson gives an instance in which a complete story of marked ingenuity is vetoed through the moral impossibility of its presentment by a writer so scrupulous (and in some directions he is extremely scrupulous) as Stevenson was.But Stevenson admits that his most famous story, THE STRANGE CASE OF DR JEKYLL AND MR HYDE, was not only suggested by a dream, but that some of the most important and most criticised points, such as the matter of the powder, were taken direct from the dream.It had been extremely instructive and interesting had he gone more into detail and mentioned some of the other stories into which the dream-element entered largely and pointed out its influence, and would have given us a better clue than we have or now ever can have.

"Even in THE SUICIDE CLUB and the RAJAH'S DIAMOND, I seem to feel strongly the presence of the dream-Stevenson....AT CERTAIN POINTS ONE FEELS CONSCIOUS OF A CERTAIN MORAL CALLOUSNESS, SUCH AS MARKS THE DREAM STATE, AS IN THE MURDER OF COLONEL GERALDINE'S BROTHER, THE HORROR OF WHICH NEVER SEEMS TO COME FULLY HOME TO US.

But let no one suppose these stories are lacking in vividness and in strangely realistic detail; for this is of the very nature of dreaming at its height....While the DRAMATIS PERSONAE play their parts with the utmost spirit while the story proceeds, they do not, as the past creations do, seem to survive this first contact and live in our minds.This is particularly true of the women.They are well drawn, and play the assigned parts well enough, but they do not, as a rule, make a place for themselves either in our hearts or memories.If there is an exception it is Elvira, in PROVIDENCE AND THE GUITAR; but we remember her chiefly by the one picture of her falling asleep, after the misadventures of the night, at the supper-table, with her head on her husband's shoulder, and her hand locked in his with instinctive, almost unconscious tenderness."