Aspects of Fiction and Other Ventures in Criticism

Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: II.?MR. ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON THE news of the death of Robert Louis Stevenson in that far-off Pacific isle, removed by half a continent from his native Scotland, gives a sudden shock to all who care for our later literature; and it has left us, I think, with a sense of personal loss, as though he had died...
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Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: II.?MR. ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON THE news of the death of Robert Louis Stevenson in that far-off Pacific isle, removed by half a continent from his native Scotland, gives a sudden shock to all who care for our later literature; and it has left us, I think, with a sense of personal loss, as though he had died with whom we had held delightful intercourse in the past, and with whom we could hope to have many another stimulating talk in the future. This feeling is doubled and far deeper in those of us who had the privilege of knowing Stevenson, even if our acquaintance with him were as slight as mine?and I can treasure the precious memory of but a single long afternoon on the same sofa with him, in the dingy back smoking-room of the Savile Club, one dismal day of a London summer nearly ten years ago. Chiefly we talked of our craft, of the art of story - telling, of the technic of play-making. I remember distinctly his hearty praise of Mark Twain's ' Huckle- berry Finn, ' and his cordial, belief that it was a great book, riper in art and ethically richer than the ' Tom Sawyer' of which it is the sequel. I recall the courtesy and the frankness with which he gave me his opinion of a tale of mine he happened to have read recently. Vankness indeed, was a constant quality of his qnver-satipn; and perhaps his spoken word was fresher and freer than his written lines?it could not but be less premeditated. (With a very strong individuality, there was no pose in his manner, no affectation, no airs and graces. He looked unlike other men, with his tall thin figure, his long thin face, his nervous thin hands. As one's eyes first fell on him one felt that he was somebody, and not anybody at random.') If one had dropped into talk with him by chance in a train or in a doctor's waiting-room, one co..