Robert Louis Stevenson and Sidney Colvin

30:2, Reviews ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON AND SIDNEY COLVIN Barry Menikoff. Robert Louis Stevenson and 'The Beach of Falesá' : A Study in Victorian Publishing with the Original Text. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1984. $24.50 Barry Memkoff's Robert Louis Stevenson and 'The Beach of Falesá' attempts to do three things: two it does extremely well, one it does less well. Half of it is a critical and textual analysis; the other half is a faithful transcription of Falesá from Stevenson's original manuscript. Menikoff is to be applauded for finally providing Stevenson scholars with an accurate text of the popular tale. He also earns favorable notice for laboriously cataloging all the textual changes—right down to commas, hyphens, dashes, semi-colons, and capitalization—in the original manuscript, changes unapproved by Stevenson that were made for him by editors, compositors, and proofreaders who thought they were cleansing the diction, improving the grammar, and generally making the work more wholesomely palatable to the late Victorian reading audience. Profanity and colloquialisms used by many of the tale's characters, peculiarities of dialect endemic to the south seas world depicted in the tale, were ruthlessly bowdlerized and normalized, as Menikoff points out, without much regard for the integrity of the original or for the accuracy with which Stevenson wanted to portray that rugged world. AU of the editions to date, Menikoff claims, even Jenni Calder's recent "unexpurgated" Penguin edition, include alterations that were never wholly approved by Stevenson. Menikoff s study brings once again to the forefront of literary history the alerting message that morality often becomes an expediently deadly luxury in the grip of self-righteous and benevolently superior authority. Stevenson initially intended his tale to be, as he put it, "the first realistic South Seas story . . . with real South Sea characters and details of life." He wrote of wanting to capture "the smell and the look of the experience," which was, of course, an accounting of his own Pacific experience. But his realism appears to have offended notions of correctness and respectability. He also seems to have subverted some widely held prejudices (e.g., the superiority of white European civilization) that appear to have been indiscriminately commingled with the technocratic acumen of the editors, proofreaders and compositors who worked on the early editions (Falesá first appeared in print in July and August of 1892 in Illustrated London News; the first book publication was in 1893 in Island Nights Entertainment). Menikoff s claims are convincing in the part of the book that examines the language changes. He explains how Stevenson's keen ear for language was ignored by the editors. At one point in the original manuscript of the narrative, Wiltshire asks the French priest, Father Galuchet, if he speaks English; to which the priest responds simply with the word, "Franch." The spelling is indicative of Stevenson's attempt to approximate the sound of a native Frenchman speaking English. His editors, however, corrected the 219 30:2, Reviews spelling, flattening the voice and, as Menikoff aptly points out, obliterating the realism initially intended by Stevenson. Less satisfying, because less convincing than the accounting of the editorial changes, is Menikoff s attempt to lay the blame for much of the editorial corruption on Sidney Colvin, Stevenson's long-time friend and advisor. Menikoff accuses Colvin of overseeing the changes in the text and blatantly ignoring Stevenson's wishes. There is the suggestion of something pernicious in Colvin's motives: Menikoff notes how Colvin read the copy, corrected the proofs, and served as Stevenson's literary executor, service Menikoff thinks the calculating and manipulative Colvin could always be counted on to perform—"for a price." In his determination to lay the blame on Colvin for the mutilation of Falesá, Menikoff oversimplifies. As we shall see, there were other, more serious considerations at the time that may have concerned Colvin more than the matter of how faithful to the original manuscript Falesá would be once in print. There is no convincing reason to believe that Colvin saw himself from first to last as anything other than Stevenson's friend and literary mentor. Stevenson first met him in 1873 at the rectory at Cockfield, near...