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Robert Louis Stevenson-Part5_Alexander H.Japp(1839-1905)_English Literature(文学名著)-第2页

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drew the strain of Celtic melancholy with all its perils and

possibilities, and its kinship, to the mood of day-dreaming, which



has flung over so many of his pages now the vivid light wherein

figures imagined grew as real as flesh and blood, and yet, again,



the ghostly, strange, lonesome, and stinging mist under whose spell

we see the world bewitched, and every object quickens with a throb



of infectious terror."

Here, as in many other cases, we see how the traits of ancestry



reappear and transform other strains, strangely the more remote

often being the strongest and most persistent and wonderful.



"It is through his father, strange as it may seem," says Mr

Baildon, "that Stevenson gets the Celtic elements so marked in his



person, character, and genius; for his father's pedigree runs back

to the Highland clan Macgregor, the kin of Rob Roy. Stevenson thus



drew in Celtic strains from both sides - from the Balfours and the

Stevensons alike - and in his strange, dreamy, beautiful, and often



far-removed fancies we have the finest and most effective witness

of it."



Mr William Archer, in his own characteristic way, has brought the

inheritances from the two sides of the house into more direct



contact and contrast in an article he wrote in THE DAILY CHRONICLE

on the appearance of the LETTERS TO FAMILY AND FRIENDS.



"These letters show," he says, "that Stevenson's was not one of

those sunflower temperaments which turn by instinct, not effort,



towards the light, and are, as Mr Francis Thompson puts it,

'heartless and happy, lackeying their god.' The strains of his



heredity were very curiously, but very clearly, mingled. It may

surprise some readers to find him speaking of 'the family evil,



despondency,' but he spoke with knowledge. He inherited from his

father not only a stern Scottish intentness on the moral aspect of



life ('I would rise from the dead to preach'), but a marked

disposition to melancholy and hypochondria. From his mother, on



the other hand, he derived, along with his physicalfrailty, a

resolute and cheery stoicism. These two elements in his nature



fought many a hard fight, and the besieging forces from without -

ill-health, poverty, and at one time family dissensions - were by



no means without allies in the inner citadel of his soul. His

spirit was courageous in the truest sense of the word: by effort



and conviction, not by temperamental insensibility to fear. It is

clear that there was a period in his life (and that before the



worst of his bodily ills came upon him) when he was often within

measurable distance of Carlylean gloom. He was twenty-four when he



wrote thus, from Swanston, to Mrs Sitwell:

"'It is warmer a bit; but my body is most decrepit, and I can just



manage to be cheery and tread down hypochondria under foot by work.

I lead such a funny life, utterly without interest or pleasure



outside of my work: nothing, indeed, but work all day long, except

a short walk alone on the cold hills, and meals, and a couple of



pipes with my father in the evening. It is surprising how it suits

me, and how happy I keep.'



"This is the serenity which arises, not from the absence of

fuliginous elements in the character, but from a potent smoke-



consuming faculty, and an inflexible will to use it. Nine years

later he thus admonishes his backsliding parent:



"'MY DEAR MOTHER, - I give my father up. I give him a parable:

that the Waverley novels are better reading for every day than the



tragic LIFE. And he takes it back-side foremost, and shakes his

head, and is gloomier than ever. Tell him that I give him up. I



don't want no such a parent. This is not the man for my money. I

do not call that by the name of religion which fills a man with



bile. I write him a whole letter, bidding him beware of extremes,

and telling him that his gloom is gallows-worthy; and I get back an






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