Stevenson followed the New Arabian Nights (1882) with More New Arabian Nights (1885), a set of intricately (and preposterously) interlinked stories, beginning with a man walking blandly home through London and then taking us to the American mid-West, to Paris, Glasgow and beyond with tales of murder, extortion, starvation and survival, grand deceit, escapes from the police, disguises and terrorism. I struggled with New Arabian Nights and have to confess I abandoned reading this book.
Conan Doyle and Stevenson
The Story of the Destroying Angel is set among trekking Mormons in the 1860s and 70s. The religion is portrayed as a sinister cult, with its members liable to extortion and even murder at the hands of its terrifying leaders whose revenge extends even overseas. This is exactly the same setting Conan Doyle uses for the first Sherlock Holmes novel, A Study In Scarlet, which he wrote the year after MNANs was published, 1886.
London-centric
For all that Stevenson is thought of as a historical novelist or a Scottish novelist, the core setting of all these stories is London, and they are based on a kind of core assumption that London –the largest city in the world with over 4 million inhabitants – the capital of the greatest empire the world has ever seen – offers endless opportunities for adventure and excitement. The word ‘London’ occurs 24 times, its roar and fogs as omnipresent as in Sherlock Holmes.
Structure
Three men down on their luck bump into each other near Leicester Square. One of them takes the others to the comfy cigar shop run by the down-on-his-luck hero of the New Arabian Nights, Prince Florizel. Over a puff they vow to each go out of their way to have an adventure; they leave the shop and – surprise – each then has an adventure. Not so subtly these adventures turn out all to be interlinked.
- Prologue of the Cigar Divan Three down-at-heel gentlemen meet and take a cigar and discuss having adventures.
- Challoner’s adventure: The Squire of Dames Challoner is walking through a quiet London street in Putney when he hears a bang and smoke escaping from a house quickly followed by two men and woman running out. He follows the woman and tries at tedious length to get her to tell her story…
- Story of the Destroying Angel The woman tells a long cock-and-bull story about how her father trekking West in America comes across a party of Mormons escaping persecution; rescuing them he becomes a respected member of the settlement they found. But Mormon tyranny eventually leads him to be persecuted and then assassinated. The young lady flees Utah to England, Liverpool and London helped by the loyal doctor who has always been a friend of the family. He promises his son will rendezvous with her in London. Instead she is amazed when the doctor himself arrives and announces he is working on an Elixir of Eternal Youth: once he has completed it and drunk it he will be as young as a son and a worthy suitor for her. He calls her to witness him adding the finishing touches to the potion but instead of becoming the Elixir it explodes in a cloud of smoke. This is the explosion she claims Challoner saw as he walked past the house in Putney…
- The Squire of Dames (Concluded) She says Challoner must immediately catch a train to Glasgow and meet the only man who can rescue her. With misgivings he goes, knocks on the door to find a terrified man who reads the letter he is bearing, runs round the house then exits with a slam of the door. Challoner finds the letter he’d been carrying which describes him, Challoner, as a foolish oaf whose sole purpose is to warn the inhabitant of the house that the police are on their track. At that moment the police knock on the door! and, terrified, Challoner flees into the garden where he finds a ladder, leans it against the wall, climbs up and over to find himself received by conspirators who whisk him off to a safe house. He is caught up in some kind of dastardly conspiracy!
- Somerset’s adventure: The Superfluous Mansion The narrative cuts to another of the loafers who had met in the cigar shop, Somerset who, walking home, encounters an old lady who takes him to her house. There she tells him the following story:
- Narrative of the Spirited Old Lady As a young lady she rebelled against her parents and arranged to elope with a family friend, so she fled to London but the friend bottled out and never appeared. Thus flung on the world she took rooms but quickly found herself in debt. She tries to sneak out of her rented rooms with a heavy case and luckily finds a dashing young man to help her. They take a cab to a house where he reveals himself as an immensely rich aristocrat who proposes to her on the spot. They are happily married for years and have a daughter who, however, gets involved with political causes and runs away. the husband passes on. The old lady inherits her husband’s wealth and the house where they are now talking…
- The Superfluous Mansion (Continued) She tells him a further long account of how she was once loitering near her house, which she had rented out to strangers, when she noticed some odd behaviour. A man approaching, then going away from, then again approaching her house. She sneaks in the back way and discovers an assassin with a bomb in the pantry (and locks him in) and then a young man in colloquy with Prince Florizel (for it is he!). the young man realises his plot (whatever it is) has been found out and promptly swallows poison but the old lady is swift and administers an emetic (lots of vinegar). there is a muffled explosion from below where the other young man, realising his plot has been foiled, shoots himself!…
- ‘Zero’s Tale of the Explosive Bomb’
- ‘The Superfluous Mansion (Continued)’
- ‘Desborough’s Adventure: The Brown Box’
- ‘Story of the Fair Cuban’
- ‘The Brown Box (Concluded)’
- ‘The Superfluous Mansion (Concluded)’
- ‘Epilogue of the Cigar Divan’
Silliness
There’s probably lots to say about how Stevenson’s use of interlinking narratives, of contrasting point of view and so on claim him as an early Modernist or post-Modernist. But from the reader’s point of view this elaborate structuring has a fatal flaw: I don’t care about the stories. They are so obviously made up, padded out, and badly written, they are such wretched examples of Victorian melodrama at its worst, that I gave up being interested in any of the characters or what happened to them, and eventually abandoned reading the book altogether.
Stage melodrama
The word ‘terror’ occurs 23 times, often with no justification. It is used to assert the thing, not to create it through narrative. And to create stagey moments of arch melodrama:
‘Thank you a thousand times! But at this hour, in this appalling silence, and among all these staring windows, I am lost in terrors – oh, lost in them!’ she cried, her face blanching at the words. ‘I beg you to lend me your arm,’ she added with the loveliest, suppliant inflection. ‘I dare not go alone; my nerve is gone – I had a shock, oh, what a shock! I beg of you to be my escort.’
Rubbish.
Books & Boots 