ADVICE FOR MR. STEVENSON
One day towards the close of spring I returned to Baker Street after a morning spent over the billiard table at my club to find Sherlock Holmes deep in conversation with a man whose features I could not see, seated as he was with his back to the door. Excusing myself, I was backing out to leave them in peace when Holmes hailed me and waved me back inside.
‘You might wish to meet our visitor, Watson,’ said he, rising. ‘As fellow writers, you have much in common. Mr. Robert Louis Stevenson, allow me to present Dr. Watson.’
I gazed with interest at the man who rose and turned to face me, extending his hand. I would have placed his age at forty, but in fact he was several years younger. Slight of build, he wore his black hair long and parted to one side and sported a drooping moustache which concealed the corners of pallid lips. His eyes were deep-set and melancholy, his face gaunt as that of my fellow-lodger and nearly as pale. He seemed sickly, and though his grip was firm I received the impression that he was not naturally robust. The black frockcoat he wore served only to heighten the funereal effect of his appearance.
‘You are familiar with the name of Stevenson,’ said Holmes with a mischievous twinkle in his eye. ‘He is the man who penned that story from which you enthusiastically read extracts for my benefit some months ago, the one about pirates and pieces of eight.’
‘Treasure Island!’ I cried, and fell to pumping our astonished visitor’s hand until his sallow cheeks flushed with embarrassment. ‘Robert Louis Stevenson, of course! My congratulations upon a fine example of storytelling. When Jim Hawkins encounters Ben Gunn —’
‘Enough, Watson, enough!’ chuckled Holmes. ‘It’s plain that you are causing our guest discomfort. He has come not to talk of past triumphs but to lay the groundwork for his next literary effort. I have been filling him in upon the details of our recent adventure with the late Henry Jekyll and his unlamented companion, Edward Hyde.’
‘That is correct,’ said our visitor, in whose cultured speech I thought that I detected a trace of an American accent. He indicated a notebook lying open upon the arm of the chair in which he had seen sitting, its pages filled with closely-written script. ‘After substantial argument I have persuaded Mr. Holmes to provide me with a fairly complete account of the affair. I hope to publish it in the form of a case history after I have spoken with one or two of the other principals involved.’
I looked at Holmes in reproach. He shrugged.
‘My dear fellow, do not be disheartened. I have betrayed no trust which has not already been betrayed. Too many at Whitehall were privy to the secret. It was bound to be leaked by someone sooner or later. I have been unable to convince Mr. Stevenson that he knew quite as much about the affair as I did when he arrived.’
‘Concerning the facts, yes.’ agreed the other. ‘But the personal slant was missing. Mr. Holmes has been gracious enough to supply that essential ingredient. I have nearly enough now to begin writing.’
‘A most bizarre episode,’ I commented, repressing a shudder at the memory of recent events. The newspapers had only just ceased carrying eulogies for the departed Henry Jekyll, who was interred late in March following a simple service over his closed casket. At the time, it was said, pallbearers had commented upon the surprising lightness of the receptacle as they were carrying it down the steps of the church.
‘I quite agree. Mr. Holmes’s version of the story proved most enlightening. He is a remarkable man. Do you know that he divined without my telling him that I had spent a great deal of time in the American West, particularly round San Francisco? Something about my speech. I think that I shall have no difficulty making him the hero of my account.’
Holmes held up a hand. ‘I am afraid that I cannot allow you to do that, Mr. Stevenson. No, no — hear me out. There is a serious possibility that the law, particularly a certain Scotland Yard Inspector of my acquaintance, will accuse me of withholding evidence if my name is allowed to appear in any active capacity. There is also the little matter of my having killed a man, and self-defence or no, I am far too busy at the moment to waste my time engaging in idle banter with some barrister at the Assizes. Newcomen was angry enough when I did not make good on my promise to provide him with a solution by the end of March; I would rather not rub salt into wounds which are still raw. I have your own reputation in mind as well, for any mention of Dr. Watson or myself would automatically establish yours as an account of an actual event, and I have already decided that no-one is going to believe you. You would spare yourself much pain if you published it as fiction and left us out of it. The tale is entertaining enough to assure you a permanent place in literature, but as a documentary it rings much too fancifully and could expose you to ridicule. I commend to you, sir, the writing of a thriller which will captivate the world, but to let what is past remain in the past. You would be doing both the world and yourself a very great favour.’
Throughout this monologue, Stevenson’s expression changed from one of bewilderment to protest, from protest to dismay, and finally as the validity of Sherlock Holmes’s argument became clear, to grudging acquiescence.
‘But how shall I go about it?’ he demanded. ‘I can alter the facts to say that Jekyll fulfilled his intention to poison himself, but that is only one problem among many. What shall I tell my readers when they ask me where I got my inspiration?’
The detective smiled, and again the mischievous light danced in his grey eyes. ‘You are the writer; use your imagination. Tell them you dreamt it.’
Robert Louis Stevenson forgot himself so far as to smile at this pleasantry, but it was evident by the thoughtful look upon his face that his imaginative brain was already at work. And when, some months later, his account swept the reading public by storm and it came time to explain to a curious world where he obtained such an intriguing idea, I was not very much surprised to learn that he had not forgotten the advice which Sherlock Holmes had given him.