 William Ernest Henley Image courtesy of Rare Books and Special Collections, Thomas Cooper Library, University of South CarolinaApparition
Thin-legged, thin-chested, slight unspeakably,
Neat-footed and weak-fingered: in his face
Lean, large-boned, curved of beak, and touched with race,
Bold-lipped, rich-tinted, mutable as the sea,
The brown eyes radiant with vivacity
There shines a brilliant and romantic grace,
A spirit intense and rare, with trace on trace
Of passion and impudence and energy.
Valiant in velvet, light in ragged luck,
Most vain, most generous, sternly critical,
Buffoon and poet, lover and sensualist:
A deal of Ariel, just a streak of Puck,
Much Antony, of Hamlet most of all,
And something of the Shorter-Catechist.
(W.E. Henley, "Apparition", in Poems [London: David Nutt, 1889], p. 39).
"For me there were two Stevensons: the Stevenson who went to America in '87; and the Stevenson who never came back. The first I knew and loved; the other I lost touch with, and, though I admired him, did not greatly esteem"
(W.E. Henley,"RLS", Pall Mall Gazette, xxv [December 1901], pp. 505-14)
W.E. Henley (1849-1903) was a poet, playwright, journalist, critic, editor and friend (though the relationship was turbulent) to RLS. From a young age he suffered from tuberculosis of the bone. The disease caused him great pain, and in 1868 his left leg was amputated. He was fitted with a wooden leg (Stevenson based his pirate with a wooden leg, Long John Silver in Treasure Island [1883] on Henley). When in 1873 his right leg began to be affected by the disease, he sought treatment at the Royal Infirmary in Edinburgh.
Joseph Lister, a pioneer in sterile surgery, treated Henley. He was able to save Henley’s right leg, but Henley had to spend almost two years in the hospital. It was here, on 12 February 1875, that RLS and Henley first met. Leslie Stephen, the editor of the Cornhill Magazine introduced them. Henley wrote about his time convalescing in In Hospital (1873-1875 – one of these poems was his description of RLS, “Apparition”, above).
Henley often struggled to make a living. In 1875 he worked for the Encyclopedia Britannica in Edinburgh. In London, he contributed to journals like the Atheneum, the Saturday Review and the Pall Mall Gazette. He was an editor for the London magazine. Later, he was editor for the Magazine of Art. He had some success with his poetry, in particular A Book of Verses (1888).
In 1889 he edited The Scots Observer (which later became The National Observer). He unfortunately lost the position, but in 1894 he became editor for The New Review. Here (as well as in the Observer) Henley introduced the public to authors like Joseph Conrad, Rudyard Kipling, H.G. Wells and W.B. Yeats.
Henley married Anna Boyle on 22 January 1878. The couple had only one child (after many miscarriages), Margaret Emma. She was born on 4 September 1888. She was also the inspiration for J.M. Barrie’s Wendy in Peter Pan (1904). Tragically, she died on 11 February 1894 – she was only five years old.
As young men, RLS and Henley were excellent friends. Henley helped RLS with his literary ambitions: he secured the deals for the publication of Treasure Island with Cassell and A Child’s Garden of Verses (1885) with Longmans.
By the late 1880s, however, their friendship had grown strained. The quotations above, give an indication of the change in Henley’s feelings for RLS. In the poem he refers to RLS as a young man, filled with “brilliant and romantic grace”. In the second quotation (written after RLS’s death), however, Henley talks about Stevenson as if he were his own double-natured creation in Jekyll and Hyde (1886). For Henley, the real Stevenson never re-emerged after he left for America in 1887.
The reasons for this change in the friendship were many. Henley disliked RLS’s wife, and felt that she interfered with their friendship. Furthermore, Henley was more convinced about the viability of the plays that the writers had been collaborating on than RLS. In 1879, he and RLS had written Deacon Brodie. In 1884, they wrote Beau Austin, and Admiral Guinea and in 1885 they wrote Macaire. Henley, who was often worried about money, thought the plays would be lucrative. RLS, however, was less excited about continuing the collaboration. He also felt that the plays were not a literary success. Henley was hurt, and then men quarreled.
Their biggest quarrel came in March 1888. Henley accused Fanny of plagiarism when she published the short story “The Nixie” in Scribner’s Magazine (March 1888). He argued that “The Nixie” had actually been taken from one of Katharine De Mattos’s own stories. Henley wrote to RLS on 9 March 1888:
“I read ‘The Nixie’ with considerable amazement. It’s Katharine’s; surely its Katharine’s? The situation, the environment, the principal figure - voyons! There are even reminiscences of phrase and imagery, parallel incident - que sais-je? It is all better focused, no doubt; but I think it has lost as much (at least) as it has gained; and why there wasn’t a double signature is what I’ve not been able to understand” (The Letters of Robert Louis Stevenson, ed. by Bradford A. Booth and Ernest Mehew, vol vi [New Haven: Yale University Press, 1995], p. 130).
Stevenson replied on around 22 March 1888: “I write with indescribable difficulty; and if not with perfect temper, you are to remember how very rarely a husband is expected to receive such accusations against his wife” (The Letters of Robert Louis Stevenson, ed. by Bradford A. Booth and Ernest Mehew, vol vi [New Haven: Yale University Press, 1995], p. 131).
It seems that while in England Fanny and Katharine had discussed the story. Fanny suggested that instead of it being about an escapee from a lunatic asylum, that it should be about a water sprite – a nixie. Fanny understood that if Katharine could not publish her version, Fanny would publish her own. Afterwards, Katharine said that she had not expected Fanny to go ahead with the publication, and was hurt by what had happened. Bob Stevenson took his sister’s and Henley’s view of the event, while RLS took Fanny’s side. The quarrel damaged his relationship not only with Henley, but also with both of his cousins.
Indeed, Henley and RLS never fully recovered their friendship. Towards the end of RLS’s life, though, they exchanged friendlier letters (although there was another falling out in 1890 – RLS learned that Henley had not visited RLS’s mother in Edinburgh when he was living there). The Stevensons wrote Henley a sympathy letter when his daughter died.
Still, even after RLS’s death, Henley could not resist one final attack on RLS and Fanny in the Pall Mall Gazette in 1901 (some of which is quoted above). He was probably angry because of Graham Balfour’s The Life of Robert Louis Stevenson (1901) – in it, Balfour published a letter from RLS to Charles Baxter in which RLS insulted Henley. RLS had been sending money to Henley, and the letter referenced this, both condescendingly and hurtfully.
Even after all of their difficulties, RLS still missed his friend. His description of Henley, before their greatest argument, gives an indication of what Henley was like: “Burly [Henley] is a man of great presence; he commands a larger atmosphere, gives the impression of a grosser mass of character than most men. It has been said of him that his presence could be felt in a room you entered blindfold [. . . ] There is something boisterous and piratic in Burly’s manner of talk” (“Talk and Talkers: I”, in Memories and Portraits, The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson, Swanston edn, vol xi [London: Chatto and Windus, 1911], p. 88).
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