And this was a just pride: for there was no branch of literature in which he could not admirably acquit himself. So many years a struggler in obscurity, with small hopes, few successes, little encouragement--battling with continuous and crippling maladies,--this indomitable artist, by sheer dint of "dire industry," now suddenly stood forth in full blaze of public recognition. The author of _Virginibus Puerisque_, _Treasure Island_, _Prince Otto_, _The Child's Garden of Verse_, and _Dr. Jekyll_, was very much a man to be reckoned with.
Probably few modern books have met with such instantaneous and triumphant success as _Treasure Island_ and _Dr. Jekyll_. The first, after running its course, unannounced and comparatively unrecognized, the serial of an obscure author, in _Young Folks' Paper_, was published in book form,--and Stevenson, like Byron, "awoke to find himself famous." The honours which he had failed to obtain with all the dainty humour, all the valiant fatalism, of _Virginibus Puerisque_, had been accorded without stint to _Treasure Island_. It was a tense and stimulating piece of pure adventure. The authentic air of the eighteenth century breathed through every sentence of it: and its fine flavour of dare-devil romance kindled even sober statesmen, such as Mr. Gladstone, to a very furore of avidity in devouring its breathless pages.
As for _Dr. Jekyll_, that gruesome work--literally the product of a nightmare--had been quoted in pulpits, discussed in newspapers, read by everybody,--it had taken the world by storm. Yet Stevenson's head was not turned by his tardily-won success: with his customary _sang froid_, he took things as they came, failures and triumphs, and met each alike with smiling gallantry.
The motives which had led him into authorship--or rather forced him, despite all stress and hindrance of froward circumstances,--were as curiously varied as his own nature; and it was these motives which still drove him hard and incessantly. To fame he was perhaps not wholly indifferent. No author sits so austerely aloft as to disdain popular applause altogether. Yet a born stylist and a conscious artist, like Stevenson, knew that his most finished work was above and beyond the appreciation of the general public. For money,--though it was a necessity of life to him, and although, with all his recent triumphs, he was not at present earning more than £400 a year,--for money he did not care, except as a means to an end. "Wealth is only useful for two things," he said, "a yacht and a string quartet. Except for these, I hold that £700 a year is as much as a man can possibly want." Still, in declaring, "I do not write for the public," he added with engaging candour, "I do write for money, a nobler deity," and this, to a certain extent was true. It was for money only, no doubt, that he was now undertaking, against the grain, that "romance of tushery," _The Black Arrow_, a tale with a mediæval setting in which he felt himself ill at ease. But "most of all," he allowed, "I write for myself; not perhaps any more noble, but both more intelligent and nearer home."