Part 6 (1/2)
”And the imperial votaress pa.s.sed on, In maiden meditation, fancy-free.”
This has been called the most graceful among all the countless compliments received by Queen Elizabeth. The word ”fancy” in the Shaksperian quotation means simply ”love.”]
[Note 5: _A spade a spade_. The phrase really comes from Aristophanes, and is quoted by Plutarch, as Philip's description of the rudeness of the Macedonians. _Kudos_. Greek word for ”pride”, used as slang by school-boys in England.]
[Note 6: _Trailing clouds of glory_. _Trailing with him clouds of glory._ This pa.s.sage, from Wordsworth's _Ode on the Intimations of Immortality_ (1807), was a favorite one with Stevenson, and he quotes it several times in various essays.]
[Note 7: _The Flying Dutchman_. Wagner's _Der Fliegende Hollander_ (1843), one of his earliest, shortest, and most beautiful operas. Many German performances are given in the afternoon, and many German theatres have pretty gardens attached, where, during the long intervals (_grosse Pause_) between the acts, one may refresh himself with food, drink, tobacco, and the open air. Germany and German art, however, did not have anything like the influence on Stevenson exerted by the French country, language, and literature.]
[Note 8: _Theophrastus_. A Greek philosopher who died 287-B.C. His most influential work was his _Characters_, which, subsequently translated into many modern languages, produced a whole school of literature known as the ”Character Books,” of which the best are perhaps Sir Thomas Overbury's _Characters_ (1614), John Earle's _Microcosmographie_ (1628), and the _Caracteres_ (1688) of the great French writer, La Bruyere.]
[Note 9: _Consuelo, Clarissa Harlowe, Vautrin, Steenie Steenson_.
_Consuelo_ is the t.i.tle of one of the most notable novels by the famous French auth.o.r.ess, George Sand, (1804-1876), whose real name was Aurore Dupin. _Consuelo_ appeared in 1842.... _Clarissa_ (1747-8) was the masterpiece of the novelist Samuel Richardson (1689-1761). This great novel, in seven fat volumes, was a warm favorite with Stevenson, as it has been with most English writers from Dr. Johnson to Macaulay.
Writing to a friend in December 1877, Stevenson said, ”Please, if you have not, and I don't suppose you have, already read it, inst.i.tute a search in all Melbourne for one of the rarest and certainly one of the best of books--_Clarissa Harlowe._ For any man who takes an interest in the problems of the two s.e.xes, that book is a perfect mine of doc.u.ments. And it is written, sir, with the pen of an angel.”
(_Letters_, I, 141.) Editions of _Clarissa_ are not so scarce now as they were thirty years ago; several have appeared within the last few years.... _Vautrin_ is one of the most remarkable characters in several novels of Balzac; see especially _Pere Goriot_ (1834) ...
_Steenie Steenson_ in Scott's novel _Redgauntlet_ (1824).]
[Note 10: _No human being, etc_. Stevenson loved action in novels, and was impatient, as many readers are, when long-drawn descriptions of scenery were introduced. Furthermore, the love for wild scenery has become as fas.h.i.+onable as the love for music; the result being a very general hypocrisy in a.s.sumed ecstatic raptures.]
[Note 11: _You can keep no men long, nor Scotchmen at all_. Every Scotchman is a born theologian. Franklin says in his _Autobiography_, ”I had caught this by reading my father's books of dispute on Religion. Persons of good sense, I have since observed seldom fall into it, except lawyers, university men, and generally men of all sorts who have been bred at Edinburgh.” (Chap. I.)]
[Note 12: _A court of love_. A mediaeval inst.i.tution of chivalry, where questions of knight-errantry, constancy in love, etc., were discussed and for the time being, decided.]
[Note 13: _Spring-Heel'd Jack_. This is Stevenson's cousin ”Bob,”
Robert Alan Mowbray Stevenson (1847-1900), an artist and later Professor of Fine Arts at University College, Liverpool. He was one of the best conversationalists in England. Stevenson said of him,
”My cousin Bob, ... is the man likest and most unlike to me that I have ever met.... What was specially his, and genuine, was his faculty for turning over a subject in conversation. There was an insane lucidity in his conclusions; a singular, humorous eloquence in his language, and a power of method, bringing the whole of life into the focus of the subject under hand; none of which I have ever heard equalled or even approached by any other talker.” (Balfour's _Life of Stevenson_, I, 103. For further remarks on the cousin, see note to page 104 of the _Life_.)]
[Note 14: _From Shakespeare to Kant, from Kant to Major Dyngwell_.
Immanuel Kant, the foremost philosopher of the eighteenth century, born at Konigsberg in 1724, died 1804. His greatest work, the _Critique of Pure Reason_ (_Kritick der reinen Vernunft_, 1781), produced about the same revolutionary effect on metaphysics as that produced by Copernicus in astronomy, or by Darwin in natural science.... _Major Dyngwell I know not_.]
[Note 15: _Burly_. Burly is Stevenson's friend, the poet William Ernest Henley, who died in 1903. His sonnet on our author may be found in the introduction to this book. Leslie Stephen introduced the two men on 13 Feb. 1875, when Henley was in the hospital, and a very close and intimate friends.h.i.+p began. Henley's personality was exceedingly robust, in contrast with his health, and in his writings and talk he delighted in shocking people. His philosophy of life is seen clearly in his most characteristic poem:
”Out of the night that covers me, Black as the Pit from pole to pole, I thank whatever G.o.ds may be For my unconquerable soul.
In the fell clutch of circ.u.mstance I have not winced nor cried aloud.
Under the bludgeonings of chance My head is b.l.o.o.d.y, but unbowed.
Beyond this place of wrath and tears Looms but the Horror of the shade, And yet the menace of the years Finds, and shall find, me unafraid.
It matters not how strait the gate, How charged with punishments the scroll, I am the master of my fate: I am the Captain of my soul.”
After the publication of Balfour's _Life of Stevenson_ (1901), Mr.
Henley contributed to the _Pall Mall Magazine_ in December of that year an article called _R.L.S._, which made a tremendous sensation. It was regarded by many of Stevenson's friends as a wanton a.s.sault on his private character. Whether justified or not, it certainly damaged Henley more than the dead author. For further accounts of the relations between the two men, see index to Balfour's _Life_, under the t.i.tle _Henley_.]
[Note 16: _Pistol has been out-Pistol'd_. The burlesque character in Shakspere's _King Henry IV_ and _V_.]
[Note 17: _c.o.c.kshot_. (The Late Fleeming Jenkin.) As the note says, this was Professor Fleeming Jenkin, who died 12 June 1885. He exercised a great influence over the younger man. Stevenson paid the debt of grat.i.tude he owed him by writing the _Memoir of Fleeming Jenkin_, published first in America by Charles Scribner's Sons, in 1887.]