ABSTRACT
AMONG the many remarkable passages in the late Sir Walter Raleigh’s Letters there was one on Henley and Stevenson which not only was remarkable in itself but almost inevitably attracted remark. It is rather long but can hardly be commented on without full quotation. It runs as follows:
Henley was a much richer, greater, more generous nature than R.L.S. And Henley violated all the proprieties, and spoke ill of his friend, and R.L.S. wrote nothing that was not seemly and edifying. So the public has its opinion and is wrong. You couldn’t quarrel with Henley—not to last—because the minute you showed a touch of magnanimity or affection, he ran at you, gave you everything and abased himself, like a child. But R.L.S. kept aloof for ten years and chose his ground with all a Pharisee’s skill in selecting sites. He had not a good heart. He said many beautiful and true things, but he was not humble. There is nothing falser than the shop-window work called literature. R.L.S.’s sermons and prayers stick in my throat. It is no good calling them insincere, the worst of it is they are as sincere as possible, and quite unreal. His history, even as you can read it in his published letters, is another chapter in Shelley’s “Triumph of Life”. He was offered a little godship by a doting public, and he took it and cut away all ties that might hamper him in his new profession. Henley didn’t understand it, he thought it was a bad joke, or the tongue of slanderers or something, aqd he was puzzled and (ultimately) angry.
