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Updated: May 13, 2025
But from the book which Messrs Chatto & Windus have issued, in the same binding as Stevenson's works, 'Robert Louis Stevenson, by Mr H. Bellyse Baildon, we learn that he has the other essential qualification, that of being misunderstood by his admirers. Mr Baildon has many interesting things to tell us about Stevenson himself, whom he knew at college.
Criticism: Essays, by Harrison, in Early Victorian Literature; by L. Stephen, in Hours in a Library. Stevenson. Life: by Balfour; by Baildon; by Black; by Cornford. See also Simpson's Edinburgh Days; Eraser's In Stevenson's Samoa; Osborne and Strong's Memories of Vailima. Criticism: Raleigh's Stevenson; Alice Brown's Stevenson.
See John Hawarde, Les Reportes del Cases in Camera Stellata. 1593-1609 ed. W.P. Baildon , passim. Ibid. Framingham, of Norfolk, fined £40 to use of poor for same offence. Some examples taken from many are North, St. St. Edmund and St. Thomas, Sarum, Acc'ts, Introd., p. xi, and St. Edmund's Acc'ts, 121, 129. St. Clifton Antiq. Stephen's, Bristol, vestry, 1524. Clifton Antiq. St.
But Mr. Baildon is scarcely alone in this error: few people have understood properly the goriness of Stevenson. Stevenson was essentially the robust schoolboy who draws skeletons and gibbets in his Latin grammar. It was not that he took pleasure in death, but that he took pleasure in life, in every muscular and emphatic action of life, even if it were an action that took the life of another.
It is a dream within a dream, and to accuse it of improbability is like accusing the sky of being blue. But Mr Baildon, whether from hasty reading or natural difference of taste, cannot in the least comprehend the rich and romantic irony of Stevenson's London stories.
It is strange that men should see sublime inspiration in the ruins of an old church and see none in the ruins of a man. Mr. Baildon might as well say that Dr. Conan Doyle delights in committing inexplicable crimes, that Mr. Clark Russell is a notorious pirate, and that Mr. Wilkie Collins thought that one could hardly be better employed than in stealing moonstones and falsifying marriage registers.
But the influence of the pamphlet did not end here. At the Horton Synod arrangements were made for the establishment of a teaching profession, and at Baildon for the inspection of the Boarding Schools; and thus nearly all the suggestions of the pamphlet have now been carried out. Finally, the various changes mentioned have all contributed, more or less, to alter the tone of the Moravian pulpit.
The story of Henry Durie is dark enough, but could anyone stand beside the grave of that sodden monomaniac and not respect him? It is strange that men should see sublime inspiration in the ruins of an old church and see none in the ruins of a man. But Mr Baildon is scarcely alone in this error: few people have understood properly the goriness of Stevenson.
Baildon, whether from hasty reading or natural difference of taste, cannot in the least comprehend that rich and romantic irony of Stevenson's London stories. He actually says of that portentous monument of humour, Prince Florizel of Bohemia, that, "though evidently admired by his creator, he is to me on the whole rather an irritating presence."
Baildon thinks that Prince Florizel is to be taken seriously, as if he were a man in real life. For ourselves. Prince Florizel is almost our favourite character in fiction; but we willingly add the proviso that if we met him in real life we should kill him.
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