Beach of Falesà" to introduce an illicit relation under a fictitious marriage. You may read in the introduction and in the letters how he strove against editors and publishers in order to present to English and American readers of thirty-five years ago that mild overture to modern realism. After this attempt he concluded that he knew "nothing—except that men are fools and hypocrites."
As all observant readers know, Stevenson did deliberately shun the treatment of "modern love." Was that because he really desired to suppress that side of life? No, it was because he was unwilling to write falsely about it. It was because, as he said, "You can't tell any of the facts; the only chance is to paint in the atmosphere." He shunned it because he knew that he could not treat "modern love" in English in accordance with his increasing bent toward a biting realism and the sharp noting of physical sensation. He could not treat it in accordance with his own experience, and therefore he preferred not to treat it at all; for, as he said, "I can't mean one thing and write another."
But, Messieurs et Mesdames, if you believe that Stevenson's opinions in this matter reposed upon an orthodox, conventional or clerical conception of human passions, if you think that he looked timorously into the abysses of nature and shrank from the full implications of his vision—or even really concealed his vision from readers, then, I pray you, open again that "courtly collect," as Mr. Llewelyn Powys calls it, "Virginibus Puerisque," and read again with unsealed eyes, weighing phrase by phrase, those two bits of stark realism regarding life and death, which you passed lightly over twenty-five years ago, because they were
