To put it mildly, my knowledge of turn of the twentieth century literature is limited. When I came across “A Lodging For the Night” it was the first time reading this collection I recognized the author’s name. Robert Louis Stevenson, best known for Treasure Island and The Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde, is the first non-American author and his story is the least interested in the codependent logics of colonialism and “the frontier.”
 |
| Cover page for a very limited run in 1900 |
Where Davis plotted an anti colonial tale about communication as a form of imperialism, and where White focused on the limits and spaces beyond “the frontier,” Stevenson’s “A Lodging for the Night” hones in on time and place. We begin at the beginning: “It was late in November, 1456. The snow fell over Paris with rigorous, relentless persistency…” What follows is a speculative account of what happened to the modern French poet François Villon, who disappeared sometime in 1463. Stevenson’s account is filled with grim details about the forbidding landscape of a snowed-out, almost apocalyptic Paris. But this isn’t a “man against the elements of nature” narrative. Snow offers a way to cover up past tracks just as much as it quietly but violently smothers those who might venture out and unprepared.
Opening in a small home near the “cemetery of St. John,” Stevenson follows Villon as he leaves the house after the rogue Montigny murders a man in the midst of a game. Pilfering the money that remains on his body, Montigny gives some to everyone present. Each man accepts it and thus accepts the murder. All are accountable. No one can say a word.
As the men plan to disperse, Villon is pick-pocketed. Unaware, he continues to search Paris for shelter during this wretchedly cold evening. Shelter is difficult to come by—especially for a poet-thief with no money.
The night is harsh. Villon stumbles through the city, walking into a dead woman in between being turned away by townsfolk uninterested in housing him. Eventually he is welcomed into the home of a lord. Like a buddy-cop movie of the 1980s or Billy Wilder’s The Apartment, difference becomes the basis for philosophical exchange.
 |
| Villon as a stamp |
While the two first trade niceties, over time Villon refuses to hide his sociological views of the world and insults the man by embracing his own status as a ruffian. For Villon, his desire to steal is driven by the poor conditions he grew up around. With an interrogative explanation he chides the older man: “do you really fancy that I steal for pleasure? I hate stealing, like any other piece of work or of danger. My teeth chatter when I see a gallows. But I must eat, I must drink, I must mix in society of some sort. What the devil! Man is not a solitary animal…” Stealing is equated with labor as the poet threads together an act of theft, an act of danger and an act of work. He relates to all three the same way.
“The thief and the lord” sounds like a title to one of those popular social psychology books and Stevenson plays out some of the questions that Malcolm Gladwell might be interested in. This central conversation orbits around Villon’s refusal to denigrate his identity. The old man, the Lord of Brisetout, is confounded by such views and the moral relativism that follows. Though the two never come to blows, Villon is ultimately cast out, and the tale ends as the next dawn breaks. With this new day the historical bard heads out and continues his life, having never given an argumentative inch.
Stevenson’s tale is fundamentally concerned with the multiple valences of social and economic class. It is also about identity. Villon could have hidden his opinions, he could have subsumed his identity for the sake of sanctuary. I take Stevenson here to be making a point about the importance of living out one’s beliefs. As folks say now, live your truth. Come with the same energy, no matter the circumstance.
 |
| Robert Louis Stevenson |
Rather than castigating his characters Stevenson explores the logic of their ideological positions. He unwinds the chains of thought that inform how individuals move through life, explaining “There is only one limit to [a thief’s] fortune—that of time; and a spendthrift with only a few crowns is the Emperor of Rome until they are spent.” Observational detail serves a sort dialectic purpose that gestures at class analysis. In these details Stevenson shapes the plot’s ambiguous conclusion.
Of all the stories read so far this is perhaps the most philosophical. Stevenson appears interested in the relationship between metaphysical questions of being and sociological questions of caste. This brief speculative experiment succeeds because of his emphasis on quotidian description. Early in the story Stevenson describes Villon’s visage writing, “the wolf and pig struggled together in his face.” This is not some generalizing moral cover. Rather than a turn to physiognomy-as-indicator-of-criminality, Stevenson includes this analogy as one element in the fabric of this depiction of France. This face is as much a part of the city as the architecture of the cemetery.
And though this story recounts a night in the haze of murder, Stevenson’s tale raises more questions than it ever deigns to answer.
You can read “A Lodging for the Night,” part of Stevenson’s New Arabian Nights collection, at Project Gutenberg: http://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/839
You can listen to “A Lodging for The Night” at Librivox: https://librivox.org/short-story-collection-vol-055-by-various/
Comments
Post a Comment