The Birmingham age-herald., 1924-11-23
TRUTH IN BIOGRAPHY.

Ever since Robert Louis Stevenson died, in 1894, his biographers have en- deavored to cast a halo about the man. This adulation has been carried to an extreme in the case of Stevenson and of many other celebrities, whose admir-, CTS shut their eyes to all faults and choose to see only virtues. Hero wor- ship is all very well, when kept within reasonable bounds, but not when 1t un- dertakes to make a human being akln to the angels, and notwithstanding that the person to whom this perfection IS attributed was himself of the earth earthly and might, were he alive, be the first to protest at such treatment
 Stevenson had his faults and his vlr- tues, like the rest of us. Where he differed from the common run of hu- manity was in genius and certain scorn which he affected, or actually felt, all his life for convention. This impatience with the formulas by which civilized man guides himself, or IS guided, was shown by Stevenson in his earlier life more than in his latter years, particularly after he had married Mrs. Osborne and had settled down at Vailimi to end his days there.
 But something new in Stevenson biographies has made its appearance, work by J. A. Steuart, entitled Rob ert Louis Stevenson, Critical Biog- raphy," published by Little-Brown. In this book MT. Steuart discusses quite candidly some episodes Of Stevenson's youth in Edinburg, based on informa- tion obtained from unpublished docu- ments and other original sources. Stew 'enson is shown by this biographer as ,lot to6 in youth, but not more so than his con- temporaries of that day. We need no evidence, documentary or otherwise, to show us that his fine mind was too much concerned with better things, to con- tinue for long in vulgar company, or to find in drinking bouts the inspira- tion required to bring forth his best works. After all, man should be | judged as he is-or was.
 Speak of me as I am; nothing ex-
 tenuate,
 Nor set down aught in malice"
 It is a moot question if it is not better plan to let the private lives of the great be forgotten, and to concern ourselves only with the work they did It is disappointing for most of us to discover that our beloved writers, mu-
 
 sessed of unlovely traits, which are not reflected in their masterpieces. Some of them, alas, were quite capable of playing the cad and had a liberal share of petty faults that contrast strangely with the fire of their genius and the sort of persons they must have been in moments of spiritual exaltation. Beeth- oven was constantly figuring values in Venetian ducats, and was expert in get ting profit from exchange variations Still, it is just as bad, or worse, to write biographies that carefully ignore all the bad and present only the good. The picture thus presented, to immature minds especially, is misleading. When we learn, perhaps late in life, if we ever do, that the busy biographers and the idol worshipers have misled us, we are likely to feel no little resentment at finding ourselves thus disillusioned. By all means let the great men and women of the past-whether they wrote books, or sang songs, painted pictures, or composed the melodies that live stand on their own feet. Show them to us, if this side of their lives is to be shown at all, as they actually were, and not as stained-glass saints, floating for ever in a cloudy incense waited up to them from the altars of idolatry.
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