R L Stevenson as an Essayist

 Scottish essayist, poet, and author of fiction and travel books, known especially for his novels of adventure. Stevenson's characters often prefer unknown hazards to everyday life of the Victorian society. His most famous examination of the split personality is The Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde (1886). Many of Stevenson's stories are set in colorful locations, they have also horror and supernatural elements. Arguing against realism, Stevenson underlined the "nameless longings of the reader", the desire for experience.

"But we are so fond of life that we have no leisure to entertain the terror of death. It is a honeymoon with us all through, and none of the longest. Small blame to us if we give our whole hearts to this glowing bride of ours, to the appetities, to honour, to the hungry curiosity of the mind, to the pleasure of the eyes in nature, and the pride of our own nimble bodies." (from 'Aes Triplex')

Robert Lewis Balfour Stevenson was born in Edinburgh. He was the only son of Thomas Stevenson, a prosperous joint-engineer to the Board of Northern Lighthouses, and Margaret Balfour, daughter of a Scottish clergyman. Thomas Stevenson invented, among others, the marine dynamometer, which measures the force of waves. Thomas's grandfather was Britain's greatest builder of lighthouses.

Stevenson was largely raised by his nanny, Alison Cunningham, whom he devoted A Child's Garden of Verses (1885). Cunningham had strong Calvinist convictions and praying became part of Stevenson's early life, and later reflected in such pieces like the poem 'A Thought': "It is very nice to think / The world is full of meat and drink, / With little children saying grace / In every Christian kind of place."

Since his childhood, Stevenson suffered from tuberculosis. During his early years, he spent much of his time in bed, composing stories before he had learned to read. At the age of sixteen, he produced a short historical tale. As an adult, there were times when Stevenson could not wear a jacket for fear of bringing on a haemorrhage of the lung. In 1867, he entered Edinburgh University to study engineering. Due to his ill health, he had to abandon his plans to follow in his father's footsteps. Stevenson changed to law and in 1875 he was called to the Scottish bar. By then he had already started to write travel sketches, essays, and short stories for magazines. His first articles were published in The Edinburgh University Magazine (1871) and The Portofolio (1873).

In a attempt to improve his health, Stevenson travelled on the Continent and in the Scottish Highland. These trips provided him with many insights and inspiration for his writing, although sometimes could take a long time before Stevenson edited for publication his notes and sketches.

Stevenson's tone in his travelogues is often jovial or satirical, but he also had a sharp eye for social detail. However, constant voyaging due to his poor health was not always easy for him. In a letter, written on his journey across the Atlantic in 1879, he complained: "I have a strange, rather horrible, sense of the sea before me, and can see no further into future. I can say honestly I have at this moment neither a regret, a hope, a fear or an inclination; except a mild one for a bottle of good wine which I resist". The Amateur Emigrant, an account of this voyage, was not published until 1895. Stevenson bought a second class ticket, which  helped him to observe the distinction between first-class passengers and others on board. Much of his time Stevenson spent with the steerage passengers. He was surprised how the mere presence of first class persons could have a freezing effect below the decks. "They seemed to throw their clothes in our faces. Their eyes searched us all over for tatters and incongruities. A laugh was ready at their lips; but they were too well-mannered to indulge it in our hearing. Wait a bit, till they were all back in the saloon, and then hear how wittily they would depict the manners of the steerage."

Stevenson's own early favorite books, which influenced his imagination and thinking, included Shakespeare's Hamlet, Dumas's adventure tale of the elderly D'Artagan, Vicomte de Bragelone, and Walt Whitman's Leaves of Grass, "a book which tumbled the world upside down for me, blew into space a thousand cobwebs of genteel and ethical illusion, and having thus shaken my tabernacle of lies, set me back again upon a strong foundation of all the original and manly virtues." (from Reading in Bed, ed. by Steven Gilbar, 1995) Also Montaigne's Essais and the Gospel according to St. Matthew were very important for him.

An account of Stevenson's canoe tour of France and Belgium was published in 1878 as An Inland Voyage. It was followed by Travels with a Donkey in the Cévennes, based on his walking trip in France, during which he learned to control himself as well as his stubborn donkey. "I travel for travel's sake," Stevenson wrote. "The great affair is to move." With his friend William Ernest Henley he wrote several plays. While in France Stevenson met Fanny Vandegrift Osbourne, a married woman with two children, Belle and Lloyd. Fanny was 10 years older than Stevenson, who viewed her as an "exotic goddess". She returned to the United States to get a divorce. In 1879 Stevenson followed her to California, where they married in 1880. After a brief stay at Calistoga, which was recorded in The Silverado Squatters  (1883), they returned to Scotland, and then moved often in search of better climates.

Wealth I ask not, hope nor love,  

Nor a friend to know me;

 
All I ask, the heaven above

And the road below me.

(from Songs of Travel)

Stevenson gained first fame with the romantic adventure story Treasure Island, a combination of travel adventure and romance. This work appeared first serialized in Young Folks 1881-82. Before its publication in book form Stevenson revised the text. The central character is Jim Hawkins, whose mother keeps an inn near the coast in the West Country. Jim meets an old pirate, Billy Bones, who has in his possession a map showing the location of Captain Flint's treasure. Bones dies after a second visit of his enemies. Jim, his mother, and a blind man named Pew, open Bones's sea chest and finds an oilskin packet containing the map. Squire Trelawney, Dr. Livesey, Jim, and a small crew with Captain Smollett sail for Treasure Island. Jim discovers that the crew of the Hispaniola includes pirates, led by a personable one-legged man named Long John Silver, the cook of the ship. On a journey to the island interior, Jim encounters Ben Gunn, former shipmate of the pirates. After several adventures the pirates are defeated, Jim befriends with Long John, and the treasure is found. Jim and his friends sail back to England. Long John Silver manages to escape, taking as much gold as he can carry. The famous poem from the novel ("Fifteen men on the dead man's chest / Yo-ho-ho, and the bottle of rum!/ Drink and the devil had done for the rest – Yo-ho-ho, and a bottle of rum!) could have originally been "Fifteen men on the Dead Man's Chest... referring to a Caribbean Island Dead Chest. According to a tale, the notorious pirate Edward Teach left fifteen men on the island of Dead Man's Chest, with a bottle of rum and a sword.

A Child's Garden of Verses was a success – its poems have also become popular as songs. Stevenson's other major works from the 1880s are Kidnapped (1886), the story of David Balfour, his distant ancestor, The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, based on a dream and written and printed in 10 weeks, The Black Arrow (1888), set in the era of the War of the Roses, and Master of Ballantrae (1889). He also contributed to various periodicals, including The Cornhill Magazine and Longman's Magazine, where his best-known article 'A Humble Remonstrance' was published in 1884. This replay to Henry James's 'The Art of Fiction' launched a lifelong friendship between the two authors. Stevenson saw that the novel is a selection of and reorganization of certain aspects of life – "life is monstrous, infinite, illogical, abrupt and poignant; a work of art, in comparison, is neat, finite, self-contained, rational, flowing and emasculate."

The Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde, published in January of 1886, sold 40,000 copies in six months in Britain. Stevenson once said, that its plot was revealed to him in a dream. The mystery of Jekyll and Hyde is gradually revealed through the narratives of Mr Enfield, Mr Utterson, Dr Lanyon, and Jekyll's butler Poole. Utterson, Jekyll's lawyer, discovers that the nasty Mr. Edward Hyde is the heir of Dr. Jekyll's fortune. Hyde is suspected of a murder. Utterson and Poole break into Jekyll's laboratory and find the lifeless Hyde. Two documents explain the mystery: Jekyll's old friend, the late Dr. Lanyon, tells that Jekyll and Hyde are the same person. In his own account Jekyll tells that to separate the good and evil aspects of his nature, he invented a transforming drug. His evil self takes the form of the repulsive Mr Hyde. Jekyll's supplies of drugs run out and he finds himself slipping involuntarily into being Hyde. Jekyll kills himself, but the last words of the confession are written by his alter ego: "Here then, as I lay down the pen and proceed to seal up my confession, I bring the life of that unhappy Dr. Jekyll to an end."

The story has been considered an criticism of Victorian double morality, but it can be read as a comment on Charles Darwin's book The Origin of Species – Dr. Jekyll turns in his experiment the evolution backwards and reveals the primitive background of a cultured human being. Henry James admired Stevenson's "genuine feeling for the perpetual moral question, a fresh sense of the difficulty of being good and the brutishness of being bad". ('Robert Louis Stevenson' by Henry James in Century Magazine 35, April 1888) Modern readers have set the story against Freudian sexual theories and the split in man's psyche between ego and instinct, although the "split" takes the form of a physical change, rather than inner dissociation. And it has been argued, that the conflict between Jekyll and Hyde reveals era's class phobias. Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde has taken a place as an icon of popular culture and adapted among others into screen over 20 times. The tale of double personality and metamorphosis appealed strongly to Victorian readers. The novel was partly based on Stevenson's and W.E. Henley's play Deacon Brodia (1880), where an Edinburgh councilor is publicly respectable person, but privately a thief and rakehell. The basic theme of true identity has inspired such writers as Mary Shelley (Frankenstein, 1818), Hans Christian Andersen ('The Ugly Duckling', 1845), Fyodor Dostoyevsky (Crime and Punishment, 1866), Bram Stoker (Dracula, 1897), Franz Kafka ('Metamorphosis', 1915).

Stevenson's father died in 1887. From the late 1880s, Stevenson lived with his family in the South Seas, where he had purchased an estate in Vailima, Samoa. During this period of his life, Stevenson enjoyed a comparative good health. With his stepson Lloyd Osbourne he wrote The Wrong Box (1889) and other works. He had nearly 20 servants and was known as 'Tusitala' or 'Teller of the Tales'. The writer himself translated it 'Chief White Information.' Fanny was called 'Flying Cloud' – perhaps referring to her restlessness. She had also suffered a mental breakdown in 1893.

In his short story 'The Bottle Imp', set on the island of Hawaii, Stevenson asked the question, does a sudden luck of fortune wipe out one's problems. Keawe, a poor man, buy's a bottle, tempered in the flames of hell. An imp lives inside it and is at the buyer's command fulfilling all desires. "'Here am I now upon my high place,' he said to himself. 'Life may be no better; this is the mountain top; and all shelves about me toward the worse. For the first time I will light up the chambers, and bathe in my fine bath with the hot water and the cold, and sleep above in the bed of my bridal chamber.'" Fascinated by the Polynesian culture, Stevenson wrote several letters to The Times on the islanders' behalf and published novels Island Nights' Entertainments  (1893), which contains his famous story 'The Beach of Falesá', and The Ebb-Tide (1894), which condemned the European colonial exploitation.

Stevenson died of a brain haemorrhage on December 3, 1894, in Vailima. Fanny Stevenson died in 1914 in California. Her ashes were taken to Samoa and buried alonside her husband, on the summit of Mount Vaea. Stevenson's last work, Weir of Hermiston (1896), was left unfinished, but is considered his masterpiece. His best-known work of horror, The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, has since his death prompted several sequels by other hands, including Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Holmes by Loren D. Estelman (1979), Jekyll, Alias Hyde: A Variation by Donald Thomas (1988), The Jekyll Legacy by Robert Bloch and Andre Norton (1990) and Mary Reilly by Valrie Matin (1990)

Joseph Addison as an Essayist

 Most of Joseph Addison’s essays are the social documents of the eighteenth century English life of middle-class people. He wrote elaborately on religion, politics, death, woman and other contemporary issues. Myres, in this connection, says- “It is necessary to study the work of Joseph Addison in close relation to the time in which he lived, for he was a true child of his century…..” Addison adopted the ‘middle style’. It was associated with the graceful rhythm. Once Sr. Johnson praised the style of Addison- ;Give nights and days, sir, to the study of Addison if you mean to be a good writer, or , what is more worth, an honest man.” Dr. Johnson again said-“His(Addison’s)prose is the model of the middle style; on grave subjects not formal, on light occasions not grovelling; pure without  scrupulosity, and extra without apparent elaboration; always equable, and always tempter, he performed; he is never feebler, and he did not wish to be energetic; he is never rapid, and he never stagnates. His sentences have nether not diligently rounded, are voluble and easy.”

Addison used the language of the clubs and the coffee-houses. He too wished to refine the English language and to write with well-bred ease. But at the same time he saw a danger in common speech- “Since it often happens that the most obvious phrases, and those which are used in ordinary conversation, become too familiar to the ear , and contract a kind of meanness by passing through the mouths of the vulgar, a poet should take particular care to guard himself against idiomatic ways of speaking………The great masters in composition know very well that many an elegant phrase becomes improper for a poet or an orator, when it has been debased by common use.”  (The Spectator, No.285.)

Mr. Addison wanted to avoid vulgarity. As a consequence, according to his sentiment, he created Sir Roger. He felt ease at the home of Sir Roger –“I am the more at ease in Sir Roger’s family, because it consists of sober and staid persons: for as the knight is the best master in the world, he seldom changes his servants; and as he is beloved by all about him, his servants never care for leaving him; by this means his domestics are all  in years, and grown old with their master.” (SirRoger at home).

Mr. Addison was religious-minded. Naturally his essay was reflected with that ideology –“I am always very well pleased with a country. Sunday, and think, if keeping holy the seventh day were only a human institution, it would be the best method that could have been thought of for  the polishing and civilizing of mankind.” (Sir Roger at Church). In this essay he upholded the observance of Sunday on account of its social in influences rather than for its religious meaning-“Sunday clears away the rust of the whole week.”

‘The Drama-an allegory’ is an excellent essay of Addison’s style. Though this essay Addison tried to organize his humour-“Her name was Fancy. She led up every mortal to the appointed place, after having very officiously assisted him in making up his pack, and laying it upon his shoulders. My heart melted within me to see my fellow- creatures groaning under their respective burdens, and to consider that prodigious bulk of human calamities which lay before me.”

Again in his Mischiefs of Party Spirit, he says Party spirit is harmful to man’s morals and understanding. It may even lead to civil war and blood-shed –“A furious party –spirit, when it rages in its violence, exerts itself in civil war and blood-shed; and when it its under its greatest restraints, naturally breaks out in falsehood, detraction, calumny, and a partial administration of justice. In a world, it fills a nation with spleen, rancour, and exercise an exit of all the seeds of good-nature, compassion, and humanity”.

Addison’s style is marked for fantastic blending of humour and satire. There is no mannerism in his prose-style. He wrote without any effort. He also used irony and wit to mark his essay didactic. His essays were not ‘art for the sake of art’. Critical investigation observes a mind approach of puritanical propaganda in his essays. Addison’s aim and endeavour was “to enliven morality with wit, and to temper wit with morality.”

Addison, regarded as one of the greatest prose stylists in English literary history, and the ‘founder of modern English essay and modern English prose, was the pioneer of a style that was very simple, lucid, natural, moderate, free from extravagant expression, and called ‘middle style’. It is a style of straightness, without any obscurities, ambiguities, complexities, or superfluities. “He perfected English prose as an instrument for the expression of social thought.’’ Moreover, Addison, as an essayist, is often seen as a moralist, a preacher, a philosopher and critic, and also a humorist. In this writing we will discuss with reference from Addison’s The Spectator essays.

Dr. Johnson for the first time mentioned Addison’s style to be ‘middle style’. He says well-

“His prose is the model of the middle style; familiar but not coarse, elegant but not ostentatious: on grave subjects not formal; on light occasions not groveling, but without scrupulosity, and exact without apparent elaborations; and always equable, and always easy, without glowing words or painted words or pointed sentences.’’

Actually, he is clear, fluent and understandable in what he wants to say.

Clearness and lucidity of expression is the most striking feature of Addison’s style. There is no complexity or obscurity or difficulty in his expression. Even, a very long sentence can express clear ideas at the very first sight or reading. For example,

“sometimes he will be lengthening out a verse in the singing psalms, half a minute after the rest of the congregation have done with it; sometimes when he is pleased with the matter of his devotion, he pronounces amen three or more times to the same prayer, and sometimes stands up when everybody else is upon their knees, to count the congregation, or see if any of his tenants are missing.’’ (Sir Roger at Church)

Here, more than one idea regarding Sir Roger’s humorous activities is expressed with the help of many comas and semicolons. But each of the ideas is expressed clearly without any haziness.

However, Addison is also very expert, when situation demands, in using short sentences-

“As soon as the sermon is finished, no body presumes to stir till Sir Roger is gone out of the Church.”

            (Sir Roger at Church)

Again, Addison also writes many compact and succinct sentences having quotable quality like those of Bacon. For example –

“In this case, therefore, it is not religion that sours a man’s temper, But it is his temper that sours his religion.”

            (Uncharitable Judgment)

                       

Humour is one of the most notable qualities of Addison’s style. Addison’s humour is mainly ironical and satirical and sometimes funny. It is not harsh or bitter but gentle, genial and civilized with a view to correcting the society out of its follies and foibles. We can mention an example from the essay, “Sir Roger at Church”-

“As Sir Roger is landlord to the whole congregation, he keeps them in very good order, and will suffer nobody to sleep in it besides himself; for it by chance he has been surprised into a short nap at sermon, upon recovering out of it he stands up and looks about him, and if he sees anybody  else nodding, either wakes them himself, or sends his servants to them.”

Here, the humorous irony towards Sir Roger’s eccentricities is notable.

Addison’s style is not highly figurative. Fanciful similes and metaphors are not found in his writings. Rather, when he thinks that his use of figurative language would be more useful and effective, only then he uses them. Such as:

                        “and his coachman has the looks of a privy –councillor”

                                                            (Sir Roger at Home)

Here, by ‘the looks of a privy councilor’, Addison wants to reveal the coachman’s serious and wise looks with a touch of humour. Again –

“A sermon repeated after this manner, is like the composition of a poet in the mouth of a graceful actor.”

                        (Sir Roger at Home)

Addison uses many allusions, anecdotes, references. Additionally, most of his essays are headed by quotations from classical or modern authors and these quotations are very apt to the subjects of the essays. For example, ‘Sir Roger at Church’ begins with the motto from Pythagoras –

                        “First, in obedience to thy country’s rites,

                          Worship ‘th’ immortal God”

Apparently, it seems that Addison is not laborious in his expression and word selection as the reader is not to pay any labour to read and understand his writings. But, actually “Addison was extremely fastidious in his choice of words and laborious by polished and balanced hphrases.” Here lies his difference from other prose writers. In fact, most of the prose of Milton, Bacon and Lamb demands simplified version and explanation. On the other hand, Addison himself is a simplified version.

Addison’s style is near to the language of conversation, but not to the informal conversational style of Montaige. Sometimes, it seems that Addison is talking with the reader. Such as the speaker, the Spectator, that is, Addison is telling that –

“As I was walking with him [Sir Roger] last night, he asked me how I liked the good man [the Chaplain] whom I have just now mentioned, and without saying for an answer, told me, that he was afraid of being insulted with Latin and Greek at his own table.”  (Sir Roger at Home)

That is in the midst of the description of talking about the chaplain between the speaker and Sir Roger, the writer as well as speaker tells us whom he has just mentioned in previous paragraph.

In fine, we cannot but admit Addison’s great service to English prose as well as English literature. He showed a perfect English prose style to a large extent, and freed it from extravagances and excesses of eighteenth century writers, and brought in it clearness, lucidity and exactness. Indeed, we can end the discussion with Dr. Johnson’s tribute, regarded as classic, to it –

“Whoever wishes to attain an English style, familiar but not coarse, and elegant but not ostentations, must give his days and nights to the volumes of Addison.”