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Essays & Poems
This volume comprehensively collects essays, poems, and observations from the pen of one of the world's best-loved authors. His essays "Ordered South" and "A Chapter on Dreams" are well known; less familiar are his writings on Pepys, Burns, the philosophy of umbrellas, and the genesis of Treasure Island.
288 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1993
22 people want to read
About the author
Robert Louis Stevenson
6,921 books6,974 followersRobert Louis Balfour Stevenson was a Scottish novelist, poet, and travel writer, and a leading representative of English literature. He was greatly admired by many authors, including Jorge Luis Borges, Ernest Hemingway, Rudyard Kipling and Vladimir Nabokov.
Most modernist writers dismissed him, however, because he was popular and did not write within their narrow definition of literature. It is only recently that critics have begun to look beyond Stevenson's popularity and allow him a place in the Western canon.
Most modernist writers dismissed him, however, because he was popular and did not write within their narrow definition of literature. It is only recently that critics have begun to look beyond Stevenson's popularity and allow him a place in the Western canon.
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Displaying 1 of 1 review
July 17, 2020
Scots and English
One of RLS’ biographers says that he hated the English. No evidence was advanced for this view; very likely it is mostly projection. If true, it would have made RLS pretty emotionally unstable (as the English had given him no good reason to hate them) and also a consummate hypocrite, since he spent most of his career and had his success doing a pretty good literary impersonation of an Englishman. Certainly the essays here are very much in the English tradition of Lamb, Hazlitt etc. Reading Foreigners at Home, though – which after some beating about the bush comes to what he really wants to talk about, the Scots and the English – the attitude you find is not hatred; in fact he admits to admiration of and excitement about England. Nevertheless, like a typical Scot, the English do bother him; what he really finds hard to take – and unlike a typical Scot he admits it – is that his interest in them is not requited.
Where he does have a point is that the English do not like to give of themselves, socially; except with close intimates and on rare occasions, they stick to ‘conversational counters and small jests’. It has to be said that now, whatever was the case then, the Scots and English are in this respect similar. Abstract thought is not part of the national life, but confined to academic cliques; though both countries have produced great philosophers, neither has produced even a single great ‘novel of ideas’. Yet if it’s true that there is a degree of both shallowness and arrogant self-sufficiency about this attitude, there’s more to be said for it than that. Anyone who has taken tourist trains around Europe, and has found on every one of them an American or Australian retailing their entire life story to some hapless neighbour who hardly understands English, can appreciate that at its root is the courteous feeling that one should not impose oneself on others; whilst the aversion to abstractions (particularly the theological sort) is founded on a common-sense attitude that speculation about the unknowable benefits no-one, and it’s the here and now that matters.
The corollary of RLS’ sense of difference from the English is his claim, in the same essay, that Highland and Lowland Scot are essentially countrymen despite, in his day, the ‘difference of race and language’. The true Highlander is an endangered species these days, but I have lived in the Hebrides and I think this claim is unfounded even now. To the true Highlander, someone from Edinburgh is as much (and as little) a foreigner as someone from England. Lowlanders like to think themselves akin to the Gaels because it would add some colour to their own determinedly drab culture, which is the price they have paid for their very democratic – not to say demotic – social mores. It’s an unfortunate fact of life that neither art nor adventure go very well with such attitudes; instead they produce the Proclaimers (who I like, don’t get me wrong). And the feeling isn’t reciprocated; Highlanders accept their defeat but not the Gall’s equality or equivalence with themselves.
In most of these pieces, though, you would never know that RLS was Scottish. He assumes the standard English literary tone of the time, as most Scots and Irish writers did. His is energetic cheer-up writing; like Montaigne, paradoxically, he uses literature to extol a life of action and adventure; but he’s thoughtful and preceptive, with an unusual ability to draw interest out of everyday situations which I think was seized upon by Jerome K Jerome. Despite Orwell’s (envious?) dismissal of him as ‘old false-penny’, he deserves to be seen as the last great figure in – what with his inclusion becomes – the British essay tradition.
This volume offers a good selection of his pieces, though some of my favourites – like Walking Tours and An Apology For Idlers – are missing. I’m less impressed by his poetry – the English is unremarkable, the Scots too obviously in Burns’ debt. The prayers – perhaps a surprising inclusion – are rather too obviously editorial; but the poem If This Were Faith, coming from the atheist son of a Presbyterian minister, offers an intriguing hint that he had doubts about his doubts.
One of RLS’ biographers says that he hated the English. No evidence was advanced for this view; very likely it is mostly projection. If true, it would have made RLS pretty emotionally unstable (as the English had given him no good reason to hate them) and also a consummate hypocrite, since he spent most of his career and had his success doing a pretty good literary impersonation of an Englishman. Certainly the essays here are very much in the English tradition of Lamb, Hazlitt etc. Reading Foreigners at Home, though – which after some beating about the bush comes to what he really wants to talk about, the Scots and the English – the attitude you find is not hatred; in fact he admits to admiration of and excitement about England. Nevertheless, like a typical Scot, the English do bother him; what he really finds hard to take – and unlike a typical Scot he admits it – is that his interest in them is not requited.
Where he does have a point is that the English do not like to give of themselves, socially; except with close intimates and on rare occasions, they stick to ‘conversational counters and small jests’. It has to be said that now, whatever was the case then, the Scots and English are in this respect similar. Abstract thought is not part of the national life, but confined to academic cliques; though both countries have produced great philosophers, neither has produced even a single great ‘novel of ideas’. Yet if it’s true that there is a degree of both shallowness and arrogant self-sufficiency about this attitude, there’s more to be said for it than that. Anyone who has taken tourist trains around Europe, and has found on every one of them an American or Australian retailing their entire life story to some hapless neighbour who hardly understands English, can appreciate that at its root is the courteous feeling that one should not impose oneself on others; whilst the aversion to abstractions (particularly the theological sort) is founded on a common-sense attitude that speculation about the unknowable benefits no-one, and it’s the here and now that matters.
The corollary of RLS’ sense of difference from the English is his claim, in the same essay, that Highland and Lowland Scot are essentially countrymen despite, in his day, the ‘difference of race and language’. The true Highlander is an endangered species these days, but I have lived in the Hebrides and I think this claim is unfounded even now. To the true Highlander, someone from Edinburgh is as much (and as little) a foreigner as someone from England. Lowlanders like to think themselves akin to the Gaels because it would add some colour to their own determinedly drab culture, which is the price they have paid for their very democratic – not to say demotic – social mores. It’s an unfortunate fact of life that neither art nor adventure go very well with such attitudes; instead they produce the Proclaimers (who I like, don’t get me wrong). And the feeling isn’t reciprocated; Highlanders accept their defeat but not the Gall’s equality or equivalence with themselves.
In most of these pieces, though, you would never know that RLS was Scottish. He assumes the standard English literary tone of the time, as most Scots and Irish writers did. His is energetic cheer-up writing; like Montaigne, paradoxically, he uses literature to extol a life of action and adventure; but he’s thoughtful and preceptive, with an unusual ability to draw interest out of everyday situations which I think was seized upon by Jerome K Jerome. Despite Orwell’s (envious?) dismissal of him as ‘old false-penny’, he deserves to be seen as the last great figure in – what with his inclusion becomes – the British essay tradition.
This volume offers a good selection of his pieces, though some of my favourites – like Walking Tours and An Apology For Idlers – are missing. I’m less impressed by his poetry – the English is unremarkable, the Scots too obviously in Burns’ debt. The prayers – perhaps a surprising inclusion – are rather too obviously editorial; but the poem If This Were Faith, coming from the atheist son of a Presbyterian minister, offers an intriguing hint that he had doubts about his doubts.
Displaying 1 of 1 review