Robert Louis Stevenson by Glenda Norquay review: 'full of sharp details'
Glenda Norquay’s new biography of Stevenson deals admirably with unpicking the author’s very self-conscious self-fashioning, writes Stuart Kelly
Do we need another biography of Robert Louis Stevenson? Scanning my shelves I have ones by Claire Harman (2005), William Gray (2004), Joseph Farrell (2017), Frank McLynn (1993), Ian Bell (1992) and a new one by Leo Damrosch from just last year. I suppose I even contributed very slightly with a chapter arguing for Stevenson as a peculiarly Scottish decadent writer for The Dedalus Book of Decadence. What counts in Glenda Norquay’s favour is that this is part of Reaktion Books’ “Critical Lives” series: although the lineaments of RLS’s life are here, more attention is paid to analysing the texts. As the volumes in this series come in just over 160 pages, it focuses the writers on pithy precision rather than voluminous detail, which again pays dividends, even if some readers may feel let down there isn’t more detail on – say – Prince Otto or The Black Arrow.
In the introduction Norquay sketches the famous personae of Stevenson: “the sickly child, the louche Edinburgh student in a velvet jacket, the emotional and aspirational writers, the unconventional lover, the international traveller, the South Seas patriarch”. Norquay deals admirably with unpicking and unpacking the very self-conscious self-fashioning. As she says, this multiplicity is reflected in the work – poetry, essays, travel writing, belles-lettres (that unfashionable but charming idiom) and the different novels; ranging across historical “tusherie”, gothic horror, adventure stories, supernatural fiction, children’s fiction and – particularly with The Master of Ballantrae – one of the finest interrogations of the “Caledonian antisyzygy”. The very polyphony makes it challenging to articulate the quintessential Stevenson style.
He himself advised young authors to “try your pen on little sharp details” (ironically he was giving out this advice when he was only 29). Norquay’s book is full of such sharp details. Take, for example, that although he appears in print as Robert Louis Stevenson, his baptismal name is Robert Lewis [sic] Balfour Stevenson. Although he would give the name Balfour to the protagonist of Kidnapped (and the American edition of the sequel, Catriona, is confusingly called David Balfour), the “Lewis Balfour” part commemorates his grandfather, the Rev. Lewis Balfour of Colinton. Was the name change to distance himself from a Calvinist forebear? RLS’s anxieties about that strain of religion, exacerbated by his beloved nurse, are well known. At the same time, in the minutes of the Speculative Society which he joined at Edinburgh University, it seems as if RLS quite frequently chose to debate religious matter. Also, what motivated the more Gallic orthography? Norquay mentions that one of his first reviews was prompted by the publication of Victor Hugo’s last novel – Ninety-Three about the French revolution. (Curious fact: it was a favourite of Stalin’s). On top of all that, we have a very early first example of Stevenson’s interest in doublings and alteration, that would of course find its culmination in Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde.
It is encouraging to see Stevenson’s theoretical work of the nature of fiction placed so centrally. In his debate with Henry James, Stevenson famously wrote that “life is monstrous, infinite, illogical, abrupt and poignant; a work of art, in comparison, is neat, finite, self-contained, rational, flowing and emasculate”. Although that can seem like the acme of the late 1880s aestheticism, it has its roots in the Scottish tradition. Walter Scott always referred to works being “inartificial” if they were insufficiently artistic. Scott’s importance is slightly downplayed here, but I admit to my own partiality in this.
In the “afterlife” section Norquay quotes Leonard Woolf saying, with his usual hauteur, that “there has never been a headlong fall in an author’s reputation that there was in Stevenson’s after his death”. Given how Stevenson’s work would be transformed by emerging new media, it seems short-sighted (and more might have been done of the explosion of works inspired by or based on Stevenson). Other writers, like Chesterton and Belloc, carried the flame. Was Stevenson’s critical reputation blighted by the sheer volume of work, and the stylistic profusion? I was extremely interested to see the throwaway lines here about projects he planned but never completed. One especially intriguing idea was to be a trilogy comprising “This Union Business”, “The Transformation of the Scottish Highlands” and “The Stuarts in Exile”. I do find it slightly hard imagine a counterfactual Stevenson placed on a par with Macaulay and Burckhardt and Michelet. He did try to be elected to chair of history and constitutional law in Edinburgh, writing the squib lines “He Louis the bold unfearing chap / Aims at a professorial cap / And now besieges, do and dare / The Edinburgh History chair”. Perhaps, despite his assiduous petitioning, his idea that he would only be in Edinburgh three months of the year may have hampered his attempt. It is easier to imagine the boy who loved his paper theatres committing fully to a drama – one prospect was a tragedy about Monmouth. But in the end, I suspect even the theatre was too businesslike.
So, there are new things to be said about Stevenson. As always reading criticism, it strikes up a yen to be reading the creative work instead.
Robert Louis Stevenson by Glenda Norquay, Reaktion Books, £12.99
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