The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition, Vol. 03 — Text and Context

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Authors: Stevenson, Robert Louis, 1850-1894 Digital Source: Project Gutenberg Gutenberg Release Year: 2009 First Publication Year: Not confirmed

Key Word: Literature -- History and criticism; Horror tales; English literature -- 19th century Target Reader: Readers of public-domain and historical texts

Book Edition: Project Gutenberg digital edition Book Language: en

Edition facts

Words 107,959

Reading time 470 min

Text sections 12

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Source: Project Gutenberg record #30729

This volume collects Stevenson's Familiar Studies of Men and Books, critical essays on figures from Villon to Whitman, plus the short story 'The Body-Snatcher.' The preface frames the essays as personal, not definitive, and the Villon study includes a detailed account of a 1456 burglary.

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Thoreau were content to dwell by Walden Pond, it was not merely with designs of self-improvement, but to serve mankind in the highest sense. Hither came the fleeing slave; thence was he despatched along the road to freedom. That shanty in the woods was a station in the great Underground Railroad; that adroit and philosophic solitary was an ardent worker, soul and body, in that so much more than honourable movement, which, if atonement were possible for nations, should have gone far to wipe away the guilt of slavery. But in history sin always meets with condign punishment; the generation passes, the offence remains, and the innocent must suffer. No underground railroad could atone for slavery, even as no bills in Parliament can redeem the ancient wrongs of Ireland. But here at least is a new light shed on the Walden episode.

Second, it appears, and the point is capital, that Thoreau was once fairly and manfully in love, and, with perhaps too much aping of the angel, relinquished the woman to his brother. Even though the brother were like to die of it, we have not yet heard the last opinion of the woman. But be that as it may, we have here the explanation of the "rarefied and freezing air" in which I complained that he had taught himself to breathe. Reading the man through the books, I took his professions in good faith. He made a dupe of me, even as he was seeking to make a dupe of himself, wresting philosophy to the needs of his own sorrow. But in the light of this new fact, those pages, seemingly so cold, are seen to be alive with feeling. What appeared to be a lack of interest in the philosopher turns out to have been a touching insincerity of the man to his own heart; and that fine-spun airy theory of friendship, so devoid, as I complained, of any quality of flesh and blood, a mere anodyne to lull his pains. The most temperate of living critics once marked a passage of my own with a cross and the words, "This seems nonsense." It not only seemed; it was so. It was a private bravado of my own, which I had so often repeated to keep up my spirits that I had grown at last wholly to believe it, and had ended by setting it down as a contribution to the theory of life. So with the more icy parts of this philosophy of Thoreau's. He was affecting the Spartanism he had not; and the old sentimental wound still bled afresh, while he deceived himself with reasons.

Thoreau's theory, in short, was one thing and himself another: of the first, the reader will find what I believe to be a pretty faithful statement and a fairly just criticism in the study; of the second he will find but a contorted shadow. So much of the man as fitted nicely with his doctrines, in the photographer's phrase, came out. But that large part which lay outside and beyond, for which he had found or sought no formula, on which perhaps his philosophy even looked askance, is wanting in my study, as it was wanting in the guide I followed. In some ways a less serious writer, in all ways a nobler man, the true Thoreau still remains to be depicted.

VILLON. I am tempted to regret that I ever wrote on this subject, not merely because the paper strikes me as too picturesque by half, but because I regarded Villon as a bad fellow. Others still think well of him, and can find beautiful and human traits where I saw nothing but artistic evil; and by the principle of the art, those should have written of the man, and not I. Where you see no good, silence is the best. Though this penitence comes too late, it may be well, at least, to give it expression.

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Stevenson opens his preface with a frank admission: these studies, gathered from the monthly press, were written for different audiences and under different editors. He does not claim omniscience, noting that to judge Knox and Burns requires 'a grasp upon the very deepest strain of thought in Scotland,' while treating Hugo and Villon demands knowledge of French art and history. The tone is conversational, even self-deprecating, as he acknowledges the limits of his own preparation.

The volume then moves into the essays themselves, each a blend of biography and literary criticism. The study of François Villon, for instance, shifts abruptly from general remarks about medieval Parisian crime to a minute-by-minute account of a burglary at the College of Navarre in 1456. Stevenson describes the thieves in shirt-sleeves, a ladder applied to a wall, and a walnut coffer yielding five hundred crowns—details that read like a police report rendered by a novelist.

A Critic Who Admits His Limits

Stevenson’s preface is remarkable for its honesty about the author’s own fallibility. He writes that 'not the most erudite of men could be perfectly prepared to deal with so many and such various sides of human life and manners.' This is not false modesty; it is a methodological statement. He treats his subjects as 'worthies' brought together from different ages and countries, and he makes no pretense of delivering final judgments. Instead, he offers what he calls 'familiar studies'—personal, provisional, and openly shaped by his own tastes and limitations.

The effect is to invite the reader into a conversation rather than a lecture. When he discusses Walt Whitman or Henry David Thoreau, he does so as a fellow writer trying to understand two 'types' of American character, not as a scholar pronouncing from on high. This approach gives the essays a freshness that more systematic criticism often lacks.

The Burglary at the College of Navarre

In the Villon essay, Stevenson pauses his biographical sketch to narrate a single criminal episode in extraordinary detail. The date is Christmas 1456; the place, the Mule Tavern and then an unoccupied house belonging to Robert de Saint-Simon. The gang includes Villon, Petit-Jehan, De Cayeux, Dom Nicolas the Picardy monk, and the hapless Tabary, who is left to guard the overcoats. Stevenson describes how they 'clambered over in a twinkling' a high wall, picked four locks on a chest, then three more on a walnut coffer, and emerged with five hundred crowns of gold.

The prose is brisk and almost journalistic, but it is also slyly humorous. Stevenson notes that Tabary, who had copied out 'a whole improper romance with his own right hand,' was awed by his companions' skill with picklocks. The passage reads like a heist story, complete with a ladder, shirt-sleeves, and a lantern. It is the most vivid set-piece in the volume, and it shows Stevenson’s ability to shift from critical analysis to narrative storytelling without missing a beat.

Voices Across the Essays

One of the pleasures of this collection is the variety of Stevenson’s voice as he moves from subject to subject. In the essay on Samuel Pepys, he is wry and intimate; in the study of John Knox, he is grave and respectful; in the piece on Charles of Orleans, he is almost tender. The Villon essay combines scholarly detachment with a novelist’s eye for character and setting. Stevenson refers to the 'muddy wits' of Tabary, the 'superb operators' Petit-Jehan and De Cayeux, and Villon himself as a man who 'could have made a new improper romance out of his own head.'

The short story 'The Body-Snatcher,' which closes the volume, offers yet another register: Gothic, tense, and grimly physical. The shift from the essays to this tale is abrupt, but it demonstrates Stevenson’s range. Readers moving through the volume will encounter a writer who is by turns a critic, a historian, a humorist, and a horror writer—sometimes within the same paragraph.

This volume rewards reading in two directions: forward, as Stevenson builds his portraits from scattered facts, and backward, as the essays illuminate each other. The Villon burglary, for instance, gains resonance when set beside the moral seriousness of the Knox essay. The reader is encouraged to treat the collection not as a unified argument but as a series of experiments in voice and method—each one a different key, but all unmistakably Stevenson’s.

There’s something tender about Stevenson calling his essays “personal, not definitive,” as if he’s whispering to us across the years. I kept thinking of that while re-reading the Villon burglary—not grand history, just a life mishandled. It felt oddly close to the quiet solemnity of Lincoln's Gettysburg Address Given November 19, 1863 on the battlefield near Gettysburg, Pennsylvania, USA — Context and Discussion, where grief, too, refuses to be anything but human.