Quote of the Day (Robert Louis Stevenson, on the Need to ‘Know What You Prefer’)

“To know what you prefer instead of humbly saying Amen to what the world tells you you ought to prefer, is to have kept your soul alive.”—British man of letters Robert Louis Stevenson (1850-1894), An Inland Voyage (1878)

Few people have refused to say “Amen to what the world tells you you ought to prefer” so adamantly as Robert Louis Stevenson, who died 130 years ago today, in Samoa—half a world away from his birthplace in Scotland.

At crucial points in his twenties, Stevenson turned away from what “the world”—certainly his parents—wanted him to do: wear the conventional evening dress expected of one of his class, profess the Presbyterian faith, and pursue the family trade of engineering.

The last choice would prove most decisive, as Stevenson struck out determinedly on life as a writer.

In adolescence, I confess, I turned away from Stevenson. I associated him too closely with A Child’s Garden of Verses, and adventure books like Treasure Island and Kidnapped featuring vivid illustrations by N.C. Wyeth. All kids’ stuff, I thought.

I wasn’t’ the only one: For some decades in the 20^th century, despite the admiration of the likes of Proust, Hemingway, Borges, Nabokov, James, and London, Stevenson’s critical reputation tumbled.

The deeper I got into middle age, however, the more I learned to appreciate him. Like G.K. Chesterton, he wrote vividly wherever his interests took him—not just verse or genre fiction (as good as those could be), but also travelogues and other essays. He more than fulfilled his aim of presenting readers with works that were “absorbing and voluptuous.”

Sickly for most of his life, Stevenson’s body died young. But he heeded his advice about keeping the “soul alive,” as a glance at almost any of his works will show you. Like the portrait created by John Singer Sargent that accompanies this post, they invite you into a world he never ceased to find intriguing.

Another manuscript by the prolific author, Weir of Hermiston, was left unfinished at the time of his death. Gillian Hughes’ fascinating 2017 post on the Edinburgh University Press blog analyzes how its bowdlerized published version in the early 1890s “inevitably altered the form and spirit of what Stevenson had been writing.”