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Title: The Novel; what it is
Author: F. Marion Crawford
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Language: English
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THE NOVEL
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THE NOVEL
WHAT IT IS
BY
F. MARION CRAWFORD
Author of "Mr. Isaacs," "Dr. Claudius," "A Roman
Singer," etc.
New York
MACMILLAN AND COMPANY
AND LONDON
1893
_All rights reserved_
COPYRIGHT, 1893,
BY MACMILLAN AND CO.
Norwood Press:
J. S. Cushing & Co.--Berwick & Smith.
Boston, Mass., U.S.A.
WHAT IS A NOVEL?
My answer can only be a statement of opinion, which I make with much
deference to the prejudices of my brethren. Whether it will be of
interest to general readers I do not know; but the question I propose is
in itself more or less vital as regards novel-writing. No one will deny
that truism. Before going to work it is important to know what one means
to do. I pretend, however, to no special gift for solving problems in
general or this one in particular. To give "the result of one's
experience," as the common phrase puts it, is by no means so easy as it
sounds. An intelligent man mostly knows what he means by his own words,
but it does not follow that he can convey that meaning to others. Almost
all discussion and much misunderstanding may fairly be said to be based
upon the difference between the definitions of common terms as
understood by the two parties. In the exact sciences there is no such
thing as discussion; there is the theorem and its demonstration, there
is the problem and its solution, from which solution and demonstration
there is no appeal. That is because, in mathematics, every word is
defined before it is used and is almost meaningless until it has been
defined.
It has been remarked by a very great authority concerning the affairs of
men that "of making many books there is no end," and to judge from
appearances the statement is even more true to-day than when it was
first made. Especially of making novels there is no end, in these times
of latter-day literature. No doubt many wise and good persons and many
excellent critics devoutly wish that there might be; but they are not at
present strong enough to stand against us, the army of fiction-makers,
because we are many, and most of us do not know how to do anything else,
and have grown grey in doing this particular kind of work, and are
dependent upon it for bread as well as butter; and lastly and chiefly,
because we are heavily backed, as a body, by the capital of the
publisher, of which we desire to obtain for ourselves as much as
possible. Therefore novels will continue to be written, perhaps for a
long time to come. There is a demand for them and there is profit in
producing them. Who shall prevent us, authors and publishers, from
continuing the production and supplying the demand?
This brings with it a first answer to the question, "What is a novel?" A
novel is a marketable commodity, of the class collectively termed
"luxuries," as not contributing directly to the support of life or the
maintenance of health. It is of the class "artistic luxuries" because it
does not appeal to any of the three material senses--touch, taste,
smell; and it is of the class "intellectual artistic luxuries," because
it is not judged by the superior senses--sight and hearing. The novel,
therefore, is an intellectual artistic luxury--a definition which can be
made to include a good deal, but which is, in reality, a closer one than
it appears to be at first sight. No one, I think, will deny that it
covers the three principal essentials of the novel as it should be, of a
story or romance, which in itself and in the manner of telling it shall
appeal to the intellect, shall satisfy the requirements of art, and
shall be a luxury, in that it can be of no use to a man when he is at
work, but may conduce to peace of mind and delectation during his hours
of idleness. The point upon which people differ is the artistic one, and
the fact that such differences of opinion exist makes it possible that
two writers as widely separated as Mr. Henry James and Mr. Rider
Haggard, for instance, find appreciative readers in the same year of the
same century--a fact which the literary history of the future will find
it hard to explain.
Probably no one denies that the first object of the novel is to amuse
and interest the reader. But it is often said that the novel should
instruct as well as afford amusement, and the "novel-with-a-purpose" is
the realisation of this idea. We might invent a better expression than
that clumsy translation of the neat German "_Tendenz-Roman_." Why not
compound the words and call the odious thing a "purpose-novel"? The
purpose-novel, then, proposes to serve two masters, besides procuring a
reasonable amount of bread and butter for its writer and publisher. It
proposes to escape from my definition of the novel in general and make
itself an "intellectual moral lesson" instead of an "intellectual
artistic luxury." It constitutes a violation of the unwritten contract
tacitly existing between writer and reader. So far as supply and demand
are concerned, books in general and works of fiction in particular are
commodities and subject to the same laws, statutory and traditional, as
other articles of manufacture. A toy-dealer would not venture to sell
real pistols to little boys as pop-guns, and a gun-maker who should try
to sell the latter for army revolvers would get into trouble, even
though he were able to prove that the toy was as expensive to
manufacture as the real article, or more so, silver-mounted, chiselled,
and lying in a Russia-leather case. I am not sure that the law might not
support the purchaser in an action for damages if he discovered at a
critical moment that his revolver was a plaything. It seems to me that
there is a similar case in the matter of novels. A man buys what
purports to be a work of fiction, a romance, a novel, a story of
adventure, pays his money, takes his book home, prepares to enjoy it at
his ease, and discovers that he has paid a dollar for somebody's views
on socialism, religion, or the divorce laws.
Such books are generally carefully suited with an attractive title. The
binding is as frivolous as can be desired. The bookseller says it is "a
work of great power," and there is probably a sentimental dedication on
the fly-leaf to a number of initials to which a romantic appearance is
given by the introduction of a stray "St." and a few hyphens. The buyer
is possibly a conservative person, of lukewarm religious convictions,
whose life is made "barren by marriage, or death, or division"--and who
takes no sort of interest in the laws relating to divorce, in the
invention of a new religion, or the position of the labour question. He
has simply paid money, on the ordinary tacit contract between furnisher
and purchaser, and he has been swindled, to use a very plain term for
which a substitute does not occur to me. Or say that a man buys a seat
in one of the regular theatres. He enters, takes his place, preparing to
be amused, and the curtain goes up. The stage is set as a church, there
is a pulpit before the prompter's box, and the Right Reverend the Bishop
of the Diocese is on the point of delivering a sermon. The man would be
legally justified in demanding his money at the door, I fancy, and would
probably do so, though he might admit that the Bishop was the most
learned and edifying of preachers. There are indeed certain names and
prefixes to names which suggest serious reading, independently of the
words printed on the title-page of the book. If the Archbishop of
Canterbury, or General Booth, or the Emperor William published a novel,
for instance, the work might reasonably be expected to contain an
exposition of personal views on some question of the day. But in
ordinary cases the purpose-novel is a simple fraud, besides being a
failure in nine hundred and ninety-nine cases out of a thousand.
What we call a novel may educate the taste and cultivate the
intelligence; under the hand of genius it may purify the heart and
fortify the mind; it should never under any circumstances be suffered to
deprave the one nor to weaken the other; it may stand for scores of
years--and a score of years is a long time in our day--as the exposition
of all that is noble, heroic, honest, and true in the life of woman or
man; but it has no right to tell us what its writer thinks about the
relations of labour and capital, nor to set up what the author conceives
to be a nice, original, easy scheme of salvation, any more than it has a
right to take for its theme the relative merits of the "broomstick-car"
and the "storage system," temperance, vivisection, or the "Ideal Man" of
Confucius. Lessons, lectures, discussions, sermons, and didactics
generally belong to institutions set apart for especial purposes and
carefully avoided, after a certain age, by the majority of those who
wish to be amused. The purpose-novel is an odious attempt to lecture
people who hate lectures, to preach at people who prefer their own
church, and to teach people who think they know enough already. It is
an ambush, a lying-in-wait for the unsuspecting public, a violation of
the social contract--and as such it ought to be either mercilessly
crushed or forced by law to bind itself in black and label itself
"Purpose" in very big letters.
In art of all kinds the moral lesson is a mistake. It is one thing to
exhibit an ideal worthy to be imitated, though inimitable in all its
perfection, but so clearly noble as to appeal directly to the
sympathetic string that hangs untuned in the dullest human heart; to
make man brave without arrogance, woman pure without prudishness, love
enduring yet earthly, not angelic, friendship sincere but not
ridiculous. It is quite another matter to write a "guide to morality" or
a "hand-book for practical sinners" and call either one a novel, no
matter how much fiction it may contain. Wordsworth tried the moral
lesson and spoiled some of his best work with botany and the Bible. A
good many smaller men than he have tried the same thing since, and have
failed. Perhaps "Cain" and "Manfred" have taught the human heart more
wisdom than "Matthew" or the unfortunate "idiot boy" over whom Byron was
so mercilessly merry. And yet Byron probably never meant to teach any
one anything in particular, and Wordsworth meant to teach everybody,
including and beginning with himself.
There are, I believe, two recognised ways of looking at art: art for the
public or "art for art," to adopt the current French phrase. Might we
not say, Art for the buyer and art for the seller? Or is that too
practical a view to take of what is supposed to be so eminently
unpractical as art itself? Has it not been said similarly, and with
truth, that religion is for man, and not man for religion? Is it our
province to please those who read our works, or to force them to please
us by buying them? Do not these questions lie at the root of the
conflict between realism and romance? Are we to take Talleyrand's speech
as our guide?--"I have furnished you with an argument; I am not bound to
furnish you with an understanding." The story is old, but the position
it defines is as old as humanity. When a novelist turns prophet, it will
be time enough for him to convert his readers at the point of the pen.
Are we writers so vain as a class, and so proud of ourselves as men, as
to be above affording amusement to our readers without attempting to
comfort them, to teach or to preach to them? We are not poets, because
we cannot be. We are not genuine playwriters for many reasons; chiefly,
perhaps, because we are not clever enough, since a successful play is
incomparably more lucrative than a successful novel. We are not
preachers, and few of us would be admitted to the pulpit. We are not, as
a class, teachers or professors, nor lawyers, nor men of business. We
are nothing more than public amusers. Unless we choose we need not be
anything less. Let us, then, accept our position cheerfully, and do the
best we can to fulfil our mission, without attempting to dignify it with
titles too imposing for it to bear, and without degrading it by bringing
its productions down even a little way, from the lowest level of high
comedy to the highest level of buffoonery. It is good to make people
laugh; it is sometimes salutary to make them shed tears; it is best of
all to make our readers think--not too serious thoughts, nor such as
require an intimate knowledge of science and philosophy to be called
thoughts at all--but to think, and, thinking, to see before them
characters whom they might really like to resemble, acting in scenes in
which they themselves would like to take a part. In trying to amuse, let
us be consistent each in his own way, never giving our public a pretext
of appealing from Philip drunk to Philip sober. If we have poetry within
us, let us put such of it as is worth anything into our books, for
almost all poetry which deserves the name is good. But let us keep out
of our novels all that savours of preaching and teaching, for our
readers' sakes; and for our own, all such matter as is limited by modern
science, present fashion, and actual taste, and which consequently
imposes too wilful a limitation upon the permanence of our own work.
But I perceive that although this little essay is not a work of fiction,
I myself am falling into one of the errors which I have wished to point
out, for I am beginning to preach where I have no right to inculcate a
lesson, and mean only to express a purely personal opinion in the only
matter upon which a novelist is justified in expressing one at all.
Moreover, I hereby disclaim all intention of setting an example, since
in many points upon which I have touched I admit that I myself am the
last of literary sinners; and with this admission of fallibility and
confession of weakness I cry _peccavi_, and ask absolution of the
public.
I do not wish to be accused of what is called smart writing. It is much
easier to attack than to defend and much more blessed to give hard
knocks than to receive them. A professed novelist is perhaps not a
competent judge of novels from the point of view which interests the
reader, and which is of course the reader's own. We know the _technique_
of the trick better than the effect it produces, just as it is hard for
a conjuror to realise the sensations of the old gentleman in the
audience who finds a bowl of goldfish in his waistcoat pocket. We do not
all know one another's tricks, but we have a fair idea of the general
principle on which they are done and a very definite opinion about our
own business as compared with that of the parson or the professor. We
know our books from the inside and we see the strings of the puppets,
while the public only guesses at the mechanism as it sits before the
stage, watching the marionettes and listening to the voice from behind
the scenes. A novel is, after all, a play, and perhaps it is nothing but
a substitute for the real play with live characters, scene-shifting, and
footlights. But miracle-plays have gone out of fashion in modern times,
except at Ober-Ammergau. The purpose-novel is a miracle-play--and if it
be true that any really good novel can be dramatised, nothing short of
a miracle could put a purpose-novel on the boards.
Most people have a very clear conception of what a good play ought to
be, and of the precise extent to which realism can be effective without
being offensive. But it is strange, and it is a bad sign of the times,
that persons who would not tolerate a coarse play read novels little, if
at all, short of indecent. An answer suggests itself which may be
comprehensive as an explanation, but is insufficient as an excuse. In
our Anglo-Saxon social system the young girl is everywhere, and, if the
shade of Sterne will allow me to say so, we temper the wind of our
realism to the sensitive innocence of the ubiquitous shorn lamb. Once
admit that the young girl is to have the freedom of our theatre, and it
follows, and ought to follow, and very generally does follow, that our
plays must be suited to maiden ears and eyes. It is a good thing that
this should be so, but the effect is rather strange. The men who hear
plays in English are not, perhaps, more moral than their contemporaries
of Paris, Vienna, and Berlin. We like to believe that our women are
better than those of foreign nations. We owe it to them to put more
faith in them because they are our own, our dear mothers and wives and
sisters and daughters, for whom, if we be men, we mean to do all that
men can do. But we are all men and women nevertheless, and human, and
we have the thoughts and the understanding of men and women and not of
school-girls. Yet the school-girl practically decides what we are to
hear at the theatre and, so far as our own language is concerned,
determines to a great extent what we are to read.
But if we do not write for the young girl, who will? We have not the
advantage possessed by the French of satisfying the demands of young
people by translations from works in other languages. The young girl in
France, as a matter of fact, reads Walter Scott, Bulwer, and Dickens,
while her mother diverts her leisure with the more lively productions of
Paul Bourget, Guy de Maupassant, or possibly Balzac, whom all educated
Frenchmen and French-women are at least supposed to have read. The
advocate of a broader license in the English fiction of the future may
answer that the whole body of novels already in existence should be more
than sufficient for the delectation of "the young." Should the
development of the new school, however, lead to the creation of a
literature in our language, resembling, as a whole, that of the French,
our novel, in its present form, would soon cease to be written, and
those of the type which are already in existence would in a short time
be regarded as antiquated, dull, and savouring of the Sunday-school.
Youth, too, dislikes to be treated as youth. The old, who regretfully
long to be young again, may find some consolation in the ardent desire
of youth for mature years. Moreover, it is easier to lower the reader's
moral tone than to raise it ever so little. The ambition of all boys,
and probably of very many young girls, is to read such novels as their
parents do not habitually leave on the drawing-room table. Every boy
wants to read "Guy Livingstone," and most boys do, with or without their
mamma's permission, at a very early age. If we advanced so far as the
French realistic point of view, that book would become a common property
of boys and girls, and perhaps "Nana," or "Les Mensonges," would take
its place in the estimation of our children,--a consummation devoutly to
be prayed against. Our "books for the young" are not, on the whole, a
success, unless we are willing to modify the expression, and call them
books for the very young. There are not in existence, I believe, enough
really interesting, and yet perfectly harmless, novels to occupy the
vast amount of spare time which the young seem ready to devote to
literature, and which we, the workers, seek in vain. It is not always
easy to see--it is certainly not easy for us to explain--why we
novelists occasionally introduce a thought, a page, or a chapter in a
novel otherwise fit for a child's ears, which may have the effect, so to
say, of turning weak tea into bad whiskey. Yet most of us have done it,
contemplate doing it, or at least go so far as to wish that we might
allow ourselves the liberty. Perhaps, if that liberty were universally
granted, we should desire it less. Perhaps a number of my colleagues
will not admit that they desire it at all. I believe that in most cases
it is only a desire to escape from limitations not unlike those
overstepped when an author writes much in dialect. It looks as though it
might be easier to write interesting books with the help of the
knowledge of evil, as well as with the help of the knowledge of good;
and after a certain number of years of hard work a novelist
instinctively leans towards any method of lightening his labours which
presents itself to his tired imagination. If he yields once, he will
probably yield again and fall into the slipshod, careless ways for
which the overworked man is often cruelly, if not altogether unjustly,
blamed. For the public, which most of us acknowledge to be a perfectly
just body in the long run, is as thoroughly unforgiving as Justice
herself. "He has written himself out." How carelessly that little phrase
is often uttered! How terrible it is for any author to hear! It is
indeed a solemn _memento mori_, the phrase of all others of which we
dread the application to ourselves. For the romance of romancing soon
disappears. After the production of one, two, three, or half-a-dozen
novels, if the writer is really what we call "a professional," and must
go on writing as a business, he discovers how serious is the occupation
in which he is engaged. Half-a-dozen books, or less, will make a
reputation; ten will sustain one; twenty are in ordinary cases a career.
Does any one, not an author, who reads these lines guess at the labour,
the imagination, the industry, the set purpose, the courage, which are
necessary to produce a score of novels of an average good quality? And
if not, how can he understand the intense longing for a removal of
restraint, for a little more liberty that tempts the overwrought
intelligence into error? Far be it from me to appeal in any way to the
public pity, for my own sake or in behalf of others. We are no more to
be pitied when we break down than an old shoemaker who can no longer
see the point of his bristles, and not so much as a broken-winded
cab-horse that has never had any option in the choice of a career. Let
this be taken as an explanation, not as an apology. To judge from the
standards of some people, however, the worn-out novelist, whose works
have filled the shelves of the young girl of the period, might find
profitable employment if he would adopt the tenets of realism and write
for the jaded taste of those who, whether already old or what is called
still young, have exhausted their capacity for bread and milk and crave
red pepper and stimulants.
The taste for "realism" is abroad, and in opposition to all this. Out
of the conflict arises that very curious production, the realistic novel
in English--than which no effort of human genius has sailed nearer to
the wind, so to say, since Goethe wrote his "Elective Affinities," which
an Anglo-Saxon young girl pronounced to be "a dull book all about
gardening." That our prevailing moral literary purity is to some extent
assumed--not fictitious--is shown by the undeniable fact that women who
blush scarlet, and men who feel an odd sensation of repulsion in reading
some pages of "Tom Jones" or "Peregrine Pickle," are not conscious of
any particular shock when their sensibilities are attacked in French.
Some of them call Zola a "pig" with great directness, but read all his
books industriously, and very often admit the fact. When they call him
names they forget that he writes for a great public of men and women,
not for young girls--and when they read him he makes them remember that
he is a great man--mistaken perhaps, possibly bad, mightily coarse to no
purpose, but great nevertheless--a Nero of fiction. But Zola's shadow,
seen through the veil of the English realistic novel, is a monstrosity
not to be tolerated. We see the apparent contradiction in our own taste
between our theory and our practice in reading, but we feel
instinctively that there is a foundation of justice to account for the
seeming discrepancy. Both are coarse, but the one is great and bold,
and the other is damned by its own smallness and meanness. The result of
the desire for realism in men who try to write realistic novels for the
clean-minded American and English girl is unsatisfactory. It is
generally a photograph, not a picture--a catalogue, not a description.
A community of vices is a closer and more direct bond between human
beings than a community of virtues. This may be because vice needs
solidarity among those who yield to it in order to be tolerated at all,
whereas virtue is its own reward, as the proverb says, and is happily
very often its own protection--far more often than not, in our day. This
seems to be the reason why the realistic method is better suited to the
exposition of what is bad than of what is good. Wordsworth and Swinburne
are two realistic poets. Most people do not hesitate to call Wordsworth
the greater man. I need not express an opinion which few would care to
hear, but so far as the relative effect of their work is concerned it
can hardly be denied that, of the two, Swinburne appeals far more
strongly and directly to sinful humanity as it is. Wordsworth speaks to
the higher and more spiritual part of us, indeed, but too often in
language which rouses no response in the more human side of man's nature
which is most generally uppermost. These are but illustrations of my
meaning, not examples, which latter should be taken among novelists--a
task, however, which may be left to the discriminating reader.
It has always seemed to me that the perfect novel, as it ought to be,
exists somewhere in the state of the Platonic idea, waiting to be set
down on paper by the first man of genius who receives a direct literary
inspiration. It must deal chiefly with love; for in that passion all men
and women are most generally interested, either for its present reality,
or for the memories that soften the coldly vivid recollection of an
active past, and shed a tender light in the dark places of bygone
struggles, or because the hope of it brightens and gladdens the path of
future dreams. The perfect novel must be clean and sweet, for it must
tell its tale to all mankind, to saint and sinner, pure and defiled,
just and unjust. It must have the magic to fascinate and the power to
hold its reader from first to last. Its realism must be real, of three
dimensions, not flat and photographic; its romance must be of the human
heart and truly human, that is, of the earth as we all have found it;
its idealism must be transcendent, not measured to man's mind, but
proportioned to man's soul. Its religion must be of such grand and
universal span as to hold all worthy religions in itself. Conceive, if
possible, such a story, told in language that can be now simple, now
keen, now passionate, and now sublime--or rather, pray, do not conceive
it, for the modern novelist's occupation would suddenly be gone, and
that one book would stand alone of its kind, making all others worse
than useless--ridiculous, if not sacrilegious, by comparison.
Why must a novel-writer be either a "realist" or a "romantist"? And, if
the latter, why "romanticist" any more than "realisticist"? Why should a
good novel not combine romance and reality in just proportions? Is there
any reason to suppose that the one element must necessarily shut out the
other? Both are included in every-day life, which would be a very dull
affair without something of the one, and would be decidedly incoherent
without the other. Art, if it is "to create and foster agreeable
illusions," as Napoleon is believed to have said of it, should
represent the real, but in such a way as to make it seem more agreeable
and interesting than it actually is. That is the only way to create "an
agreeable illusion," and by no other means can a novel do good while
remaining a legitimate novel and not becoming a sermon, a treatise, or a
polemic.
It may reasonably be inquired whether the prevailing and still growing
taste for fiction expresses a new and enduring want of educated men and
women. The novel, as we understand the word, is after all a very recent
invention. Considering that we do not find it in existence until late in
the last century, its appearance must be admitted to have been very
sudden, its growth fabulously rapid, and its development enormous. The
ancients had nothing more like it than a few collections of humorous and
pathetic stories. The Orientals, who might be supposed to feel the need
of it even more than we do, had nothing but their series of fantastic
tales strung rather loosely together without general plan. Men and women
seem to have survived the dulness of the dark age with the help of the
itinerant story-teller. The novel is a distinctly modern invention,
satisfying a modern want. In the ideal state described with so much
accuracy by Mr. Bellamy, I believe the novel would not sell. It would be
incomprehensible, or it would not be a novel at all, according to our
understanding. Do away practically with the struggle for life, eliminate
all the unfit and make the surviving fittest perfectly comfortable--men
and women might still take a curious interest in our present
civilisation, but it would be of a purely historical nature. To
gratuitously invent a tale of a poor man fighting for success would seem
to them a piece of monstrously bad taste and ridiculously useless. Are
we tending to such a state as that? There are those who believe that we
are--but a faith able to remove mountains at "cut rates" will not be
more than enough to realise their hopes.
It may fairly be claimed that humanity has, within the past hundred
years, found a way of carrying a theatre in its pocket; and so long as
humanity remains what it is, it will delight in taking out its
pocket-stage and watching the antics of the actors, who are so like
itself and yet so much more interesting. Perhaps that is, after all, the
best answer to the question, "What is a novel?" It is, or ought to be, a
pocket-stage. Scenery, light, shade, the actors themselves, are made of
words, and nothing but words, more or less cleverly put together. A play
is good in proportion as it represents the more dramatic, passionate,
romantic, or humorous sides of real life. A novel is excellent according
to the degree in which it produces the illusions of a good play--but it
must not be forgotten that the play is the thing, and that illusion is
eminently necessary to success.
Every writer who has succeeded has his own methods of creating such
illusion. Some of us are found out, and some of us are not; but we all
do the same thing in one way or another, consciously or unconsciously.
The tricks of the art are without number, simple or elaborate, easily
learned or hard to imitate, and many of us consider that we have a
monopoly of certain tricks we call our own, and are unreasonably angry
when a competitor makes use of them.
The means, all subservient to language, are many, but the object is
always one: to make the reader realise as far as possible the writer's
conception of his story.
That word "realise" has a greater value and a wider application upon the
question which I am endeavouring to treat so briefly than in ordinary
conversation. To realise means to make real from one's own standpoint,
to see as vividly through the imagination what is partially imaginary as
what is altogether imagined; in other words, to call up an image as
coincident with the representations of fact as truth itself. Of course,
in a printed book, the author has no means to attain this end excepting
language, and upon the terms of language employed must depend a very
large part of his success. Language is the tool with which he makes his
weapons, and these in their turn may vary in manufacture and temper
according to his requirements. The most powerful weapon of all is what
is most commonly called truth to nature. Goethe said of his "Wilhelm
Meister," "there is nothing in it which I have not lived and nothing
exactly as I lived it"; yet most people would call "Wilhelm Meister" a
fantastic book. Other means of producing an impression are local colour,
the use of dialects and foreign languages. Here I know I am touching
upon a very delicate point, and that I risk wounding the sensibilities
of many writers and attacking the individual tastes of many readers of
fiction. Nevertheless, the mention of the dialect-novel raises a
question which is before the literary grand jury of the world. Assuredly
every man has a prime right to make use of the material at his disposal;
and if some particular dialect forms a part of this stock in trade, he
is as free to employ it as an African traveller, for instance, is free
to introduce his own reminiscences into a novel, if he writes one.
Colour alone amuses some people, chiefly children. Small boys and girls
do not despise a kaleidoscope as a toy on a rainy day, and dialect
without dramatic interest is colour without form or outline, and some
novels in dialect are nothing more. But then, there are plenty of works
of fiction written in ordinary English which have not even that one
merit, and of these I do not wish to say anything. Take a really good
novel, however, in which more than half the pages are filled with
dialogues in a language not familiar to the English-speaking public as a
whole. Is not the writer wilfully limiting his audience, if not himself?
Is he not sacrificing his privilege of addressing all men, for the sake
of addressing a few in terms which they especially prefer? Is he not
preferring local popularity to broader and more enduring reputation?
Could he not, by the skilful use of description, by a clever handling
of grammar and a careful selection of words, produce an impression which
should be more widely felt, though less warmly received, perhaps, in
that one small public to which he appeals? Is he not, although he be a
first-rate man, often tempted to lapses of literary conscience by the
peculiar facilities he finds in the literary by-way he has chosen? How
much of what is screaming farce in the dialect of the few, would be
funny if translated into plain English for the many? Wit and humour are
intellectual, and when genuine are susceptible of being translated into
almost all languages; but dialect seems to me to rank with puns, and
with puns of a particular local character. A practical demonstration of
this is found in the fact that stories in dialect, when told and not
read, are duller than any other stories, unless the teller has the power
of imitating accents. Almost all limitations which a man willingly
assumes afford facilities for the sake of which he assumes them.
But this is not the place for a study of methods. So far as I have been
able, I have answered the question I asked, and which stands at the head
of this essay. But I have answered it in my own way. What am I, a
novel-writer, trying to do? I am trying, with such limited means as I
have at my disposal, to make little pocket-theatres out of words. I am
trying to be architect, scene-painter, upholsterer, dramatist and
stage-manager, all at once. Is it any wonder if we novelists do not
succeed as well as we could wish, when we try to be masters of so many
trades?
Nor is this all. The great development of the modern superficial
education in society has brought with it a thirst for knowledge which
adds considerably to the difficulties of the novelist's art. There are
few sciences, few of the arts, few of the branches of learning, in which
the reading public does not take some sort of interest. That interest is
not a profound one, but with its growth encyclopædias, primers, and
"cram-books" have multiplied exceedingly on the face of the earth. Upon
the slightest suspicion the reader accuses the author of inaccuracy,
goes to his own, or his friend's, or the Public Library's bookshelves,
takes down the "Encyclopædia Britannica," the "Century Dictionary," or
"Larousse," and with cruel directness sets the author right. We are
expected to be omniscient, to understand the construction of the
telephone, the latest theories concerning the cholera microbe, the
mysteries of hypnotism, the Russian language, and the nautical
dictionary. We are supposed to be intimately acquainted with the
writings of Macrobius, the music of Wagner, and the Impressionist school
of painting. In these days when there has been much discussion
concerning the authorship of Shakespeare's plays,--concerning which
"Punch" wisely said they were probably written by another man of the
same name,--the principal argument against Bacon's authorship of them
seems to me to be this: No one man of whom we have ever known anything
can be conceived capable of having produced such an enormous body of
thoughtful work as is contained in what is attributed to Shakespeare and
in what is known to have been written by Bacon. And yet, for the sake of
a little profit and the inducement of a modicum of glory, we authors are
sometimes expected to rival both. The absurdity of this is apparent to
the most ordinary mind and painfully so to the ordinary critic, who,
though he may never have written a book, may very possibly know more
than we do about some subjects upon which we are obliged to write. Dr.
Johnson, it will be remembered, said that a man need not be a
coach-builder in order to say that a carriage is well made. I am aware
that many persons will think my statement exaggerated, or, if they do
not, will say that they prefer an honest love story to a tale involving
the intricacies of the modern invention. And I believe there has been a
reaction in this respect. With regard to the play, it is the opinion of
some of the best actors and most successful managers now alive, that the
public, if it really knew what it wanted, instead of being forced to
feed upon what it gets, would demand real, old-fashioned love pieces
rather than comedies, dramas and melodramas, in which the leading actor
is the mechanician and the hero of the piece is little more than a
"walking gentleman." On my theory that the novel is, or should be, a
play, the same must be approximately true about fiction. An acquaintance
with the developments of modern science cannot do more than lend a
modern colour to the story, and so far as that goes the more closely
acquainted we are with such things, the better for us. But no one has a
right to demand that we should know everything, in order to find fault
with us if we lose our heads over the reversing gear of a locomotive or
the most approved fashion of rigging a top-gallant studding-sail boom.
One may be pardoned for asking sometimes whether the advance of science
does not almost mean the retreat of thought. Again I protest against
the accusation of smart writing, which is so easily brought, so hard to
bear, and so difficult to refute. I do not mean that science thinks less
as she progresses, but I do mean to say that there is much in favour of
the _homo unius libri_--the man of one book--the man who reads less and
thinks more than his fellows. The wonders of science are very
attractive, many of them are decidedly spectacular and may be used by
the author to amuse when he cannot interest, but I doubt whether books
which depend upon them for success will be much more popular fifty years
hence than "Sandford and Merton" or Paley's "Evidences of Christianity"
are in our time. At that not distant future date, our grandchildren
will probably look upon our quoted wonders and marvels with about as
much interest as we regard the experiment of asphyxiating a mouse under
the receiver of an air-pump, or making a piece of paper stick to a piece
of rubbed sealing-wax and explaining that it is electricity. Yet, to
take an instance, medicine and surgery play a considerable part in
modern light literature, and the fire-engine is a distinct feature on
the modern stage. Generally speaking, I venture to say that anything
which fixes the date of the novel not intended to be historical is a
mistake, from a literary point of view. It is not wise to describe the
cut of the hero's coat, nor the draping of the heroine's gown, the shape
of her hat, nor the colour of his tie. Ten years hence somebody may buy
the book and turn up his nose at "those times." Until a date which may
still be called recent, it was customary to play Shakespeare with the
dress of modern times. Garrick, I think, played Macbeth in a full
bottomed wig. I may be wrong, but I have the impression that what we
call stage costume first became common in his days and to some extent by
his individual efforts. In Shakespeare's times, Achilles in "Troilus and
Cressida" dressed like Sir Walter Raleigh, and Cymbeline perhaps like
Henry VIII., to give himself an air of antiquity. But there was nothing
absurd about the plays for all that, because they did not depend upon
such trifles as dresses, ruffles--or fire-engines for the emotions they
excited in the hearts of their listeners.
The danger of falling into absurdities lies not in anachronisms of
dress, but in speeches that contradict sentiments, and actions that
belie the character. We need not go far to find truth, but having begun
our search in one direction, we must not wander to another, or we shall
fall out of the natural sequence of events upon which we depend for the
effect of reality. For a man of superior gifts there is an easy but
dangerous way out of the difficulty. Instead of inventing his characters
he may take men and women who have really lived and played parts in the
world's story and have made love, so to say, in the face of all
humanity. In other words, he may write an historical novel.
The historical novel occupies a position apart and separate from others,
but it does not follow that it should not conform exactly to the
conditions required of an ordinary work of fiction, though it must
undoubtedly possess other qualities peculiar to itself. It is doubtful
whether any genuine historical novel has ever yet been written for the
sake of the history it contains. In nine cases out of ten the writer has
selected his subject because it interests him, because it has dramatic
elements, and possibly because he hopes to interest his readers more
readily by means of characters and events altogether beyond the reach of
the carping critic. If this is not the case, it is hard indeed to see
why the historical novel should be written at all, seeing that it is
neither fish, flesh, nor fowl, but salad. It is indeed a regrettable
fact, but also an indubitable one, that a good many people of our time
have derived their knowledge of French history from the novels of
Alexandre Dumas, and of some of the most important events in the story
of the British Empire from those of Walter Scott. But no one pretends
that such books are history deserving to be taught as such, and the
writers certainly made no such pretensions themselves. Where fact and
fiction are closely linked together, the elements may obviously be mixed
in an infinite variety, and in any possible degree of relative
intensity--all wine and no water, or almost all water and no wine to
speak of. Provided that no attempt is made to palm off the historical
novel as a school-book, there can be no real objection to it on other
grounds.
It seems quite certain that the oldest form of dramatic art dealt solely
with subjects considered at the time to be historical, or which
constituted articles of belief. The Greek dramatists founded all their
plays, without exception, so far as I know, upon history, myths, or
traditions, either religious or secular, and produced works of
unrivalled beauty and enduring strength. Some one once called the novel
the "modern epic." There is just enough truth in the saying to give it
social currency in conversation, but it is true, so far as we know,
that the ancient epic preceded the ancient drama, creating the taste and
the demand for emotions which the dramatists subsequently satisfied, and
it was perhaps because the epic was wholly historical in a measure, that
the drama was founded upon an historical basis. The average novelist
likes to make use of historical facts principally because he knows that
his critics cannot impugn the possibility of the situations he uses,
while the latter are so strong in themselves as to bear the burden of
the writer's faults with comparative ease, if his talents are not
remarkable. If he is a man of genius, he gets a certain amount of very
valuable liberty by doing his "sensation work" with tragic facts widely
known, which help to produce in the reader's mind an _a priori_
impression of interest, perfectly legitimate because perfectly well
grounded, but enormously in the writer's favour. Altogether there is
much to be said for the historical novel, if we take the view that the
novel itself is but a portable play; and there is no especial reason why
we should be so desperately true to the definitions of common parlance
as to say that the novel must be a work of fiction and nothing else. But
in the case of the historical novel there is a very important proviso
which must never be forgotten under any circumstances. It must be good.
The ordinary story may be bad from an artistic point of view, and may
nevertheless succeed as a literary speculation; but in treating of
history, where the personages are great and the events are of stupendous
import, the distance which separates the sublime from the ridiculous is
even less than the step to which Tom Payne limited it. No author can
make Julius Cæsar, Mary Stuart, or Louis XIV ridiculous; but no writer
should forget that they can make a laughing-stock of him in his book
almost as easily as they could have done in real life. On the whole,
therefore, the historical novel is always likely to prove more dangerous
to the writer than to the reader, since, when it fails to be a great
book, it will in all likelihood be an absurd one. For historical facts
are limitations, and he who subjects himself to them must be willing to
undertake all the responsibility they imply. Nothing is easier than to
write a fantastic tale against which no criticism can be brought beyond
a vague statement that it is dull or worthless, and not worth reading;
but so soon as a man deals with events which have actually taken place,
he is bounded on all sides by a multitude of details with which he must
be acquainted and from which he cannot escape. I have sometimes wondered
whether Walter Savage Landor did not really meditate writing an
historical novel at some time during the evolution of the "Imaginary
Conversations." More than one work of the kind, and assuredly of the
highest order, must have presented itself to his mind, since he
possessed in a supreme degree the power most necessary to the historical
novelist, that of seizing the dramatic points in the lives of historical
personages and of creating splendid dramatic dialogues without at any
time compromising undoubted facts. In other words, he knew how to
combine the romantic and the real in such true and just proportions as
to demonstrate clearly that they may and should go hand in hand. And
this brings us back to the great question of romance and realism, two
words which can hardly fail to drop from the modern writer's pen in
treating of such a subject.
There is much talk in our day of the realistic school of fiction, and
the romantic school, though not often mentioned, is understood to be
opposed to it. Of course, it is easy to enter into a long discussion
about the exact meanings of the two words; but, on the whole, it seems
to be true that if the people who talk about schools of fiction mean
anything or wish to mean anything, which sometimes seems doubtful, they
mean this: the realist proposes to show men what they are; the romantist
tries to show men what they should be. It is very unlikely that mankind
will ever agree as to the relative merits of these two, and the
discussion which was practically begun in Plato's time is not likely to
end so long as people care what they read or what they think. The most
any one can do is to give a personal opinion, and that means, of course,
that he who expresses it commits himself and publicly takes either the
one side or the other. For my part, I believe that more good can be done
by showing men what they may be, ought to be, or can be, than by
describing their greatest weaknesses with the highest art. We all know
how bad we are; but it needs much encouragement to persuade some of us
to believe that we can really be any better. To create genuine interest,
and afford rest and legitimate amusement, without losing sight of that
fact, and to do so in a more or less traditional way, seems to be the
profession of the novelist who belongs to the romantic persuasion.
That novel-writing is a business I am credibly informed by my
publishers. And since that is the case, it must be taken for granted
that it is a business which to some extent must be practised like any
other and which will succeed or fail in the hands of any particular man
according as he is more or less fitted to carry it on. The
qualifications for any business are three: native talent, education, and
industry. Where there is success of the right kind, the talent and power
of application must be taken for granted. The education is and always
must be a question of circumstance. With regard to novel-writing, when I
speak of education I am not referring to it in the ordinary sense. Some
people take a great deal of interest in concrete things, while others
care more for humanity. The education of a novelist is the experience of
men and women which he has got at first hand in the course of his own
life, for he is of that class to whom humanity offers a higher interest
than inanimate nature. He can use nature and art only as a scene and
background upon which and before which his personages move and have
their being. It is his business to present his readers with something
which I have called the pocket-theatre, something which every man may
carry in his pocket, believing that he has only to open it in order to
look in upon the theatre of the living world. To produce it, to prepare
it, to put it into a portable and serviceable shape, the writer must
know what that living world is, what the men in it do and what the women
think, why women shed tears and children laugh and young men make love
and old men repeat themselves. While he is writing his book, his human
beings must be with him, before him, moving before the eye of his mind
and talking into the ear of his heart. He must have lived himself; he
must have loved, fought, suffered, and struggled in the human battle. I
would almost say that to describe another's death he must himself have
died.
All this accounts perhaps for the fact that readers are many and writers
few. The reader knows one side of life, his own, better than the writer
possibly can, and he reads with the greatest interest those books which
treat of lives like his own. But the writer must have seen and known
many phases of existence, and this is what the education of the novelist
means: to know and understand, so far as he is able, men and women who
have been placed in unusual circumstances. And this need not and should
not lead him into creating altogether imaginary characters, nor men and
women whose circumstances are not only unusual, but altogether
impossible. We see grotesque pieces given at the theatre--too grotesque
and too often given--which make us laugh, but never make us think. They
would not make good novels. The novel must amuse, indeed, but should
amuse reasonably, from an intellectual point of view, rather than as a
piece of good fun. Its object is to make one see men and women who might
really live, talk, and act as they do in the book, and some of whom one
would perhaps like to imitate. Its intention is to amuse and please, and
certainly not to teach or preach; but in order to amuse well it must be
a finely-balanced creation, neither hysterical with tears nor convulsed
with perpetual laughter. The one is as tiring as the other and, in the
long run, as unnatural.
It is easy, comparatively speaking, to appeal to the emotions, but it is
hard to appeal to the heart. This may sound somewhat contradictory at
first, but there is truth in it, nevertheless. The outward emotions are
in real life much more the expressions of the temperament than of what
we call the heart. We all know that there are men and women who laugh
and cry more easily than others, and we are rather inclined to believe
that these are not they who feel most deeply. A very difficult question
here presents itself. Bacon says somewhere that we are apt to extol the
powers of the human intellect without invoking its aid as often as we
might. This extolling of humanity has been a fashion of late years, and
it has not yet disappeared, though its popularity is waning fast. In
England Sir Andrew Clarke, M.D., has recently talked learnedly of "the
religion of the body," and Lord Coleridge with eloquence of "the
religion of the mind." These things are good enough, no doubt, but what
of the religion of the heart, which is after all the only religion there
is--if the heart is the earthly representative of the soul? There are
some people--fewer than is generally supposed--who really do not believe
in the existence of the soul. Let me tell them that they are very near
to denying the existence of the heart. Perhaps some of them do, and
they may live to repent of their unbelief in this world, if not in the
next.
What is the heart, or, rather, what do we in common conversation and
writing understand by that word? It looks a great deal like attempting
to define belief, but belief has received an excellent definition, for
belief is knowledge and nothing else, so far as the individual who holds
it is concerned. What we call the heart in each man and woman seems to
mean the whole body of innate and inherited instincts, impulses, and
beliefs, taken together, and in that relation to one another in which
they stand after they have been acted upon throughout the individual's
life by the inward vicissitudes and the outward circumstances to which
he has been exposed. When all this is quiescent I think we call it Self.
When roused to emotional activity we call it the Heart. But whatever we
call it, it is to this Self or Heart that everything which is ethic and
therefore permanent must appeal.
The foundation of good fiction and good poetry seems to be ethic rather
than æsthetic. Everything in either which appeals to the taste, that is,
to the æsthetic side, may ultimately perish as a mere matter of fashion;
but that which speaks to man as man, independently of his fashions, his
habits, and his tastes, must live and find a hearing with humanity so
long as humanity is human. The right understanding of men and women
leads to the right relations of men and women, and in this way, if in
any, a novel may do good; when written to attain this end, it may live;
when addressed to the constant element in human nature, it has as good a
right and as good a chance of pleasing the men and women of the world in
our day, as it had to appeal to the intellect of Pericles or to thrill
the delicate sensibilities of Aspasia. Their novels were plays in
outward effect, as ours should be in inward substance, and we must needs
confess that the form in which their intellectual artistic luxuries were
presented to them was superior to that of the modern effort included in
four hundred pages at one dollar and twenty-five cents. Possibly, even
probably, it is unfair to us to compare ourselves with Sophocles,
Euripides, and Aristophanes; yet the comparison suggests itself if the
definition be true and if our novels really aspire to be plays.
We have indeed something in our favour which the genuine playwright has
not. We appeal entirely to the imagination, and, unless we use algebraic
_formulæ_ or scientific discussion, we give no standard measure in our
books by which to judge the whole. We can call up surroundings which
never were and never can be possible in the world, and if we are able to
do it well enough we can put impossible characters upon our stage and
make them do impossible things, and the whole, acting upon a
predisposed imagination, may create for the moment something almost like
belief in the mind of the reader. We can conceive a tale fantastic
beyond the bounds of probability, and if there be a touch of nature in
it, we may for a while transport our readers into Fairyland. We can
clothe all of this in poetic language if our command of the English
tongue be equal to the occasion, and we can lend pathos to a monster and
heroism to a burlesque man. But the writer of plays for the real theatre
cannot do this; if he does, he makes that which in theatrical language
is called a "burlesque" or a "spectacle"; or, if he be a follower of the
"decadent school," he may produce what he has decided to call by a new
name--a production not always conducive to a high belief in human
nature.
The writer of plays, if he write them for actual performance, has living
interpreters, and they and he are judged by the standards of real life.
He is to a great extent dependent upon his actors for the effect he
hopes to produce, and they are dependent not only upon him, upon their
individual education, depth of feeling, and power of expression, but
also upon the material conditions and surroundings in which they have to
do their work. The most dramatic scene of real life, if it actually took
place on the stage of a theatre, would seem a very dull and tame affair
to any one who chanced to find himself in the body of the house. The
fundamental lack of interest, until it has been artificially aroused, is
a gulf not to be bridged by such simple means as being really "natural."
The art of the actor lies in knowing the precise degree of exaggeration
necessary to produce the impression that he is not exaggerating at
all--but exaggeration there must be. Without it, neither the words nor
the actions can speak or appeal to the intelligence of the spectator.
But we novelists are in an easier position in our relation to our
audience. We are granted many privileges and have many advantages which
the playwright has not; for we can appeal to the heart almost directly
without the conscious intervention of practised eyes and ears, used to
realities and eager to judge by real standards. We speak of Edwin's
great height, broad shoulders, noble features and silken moustache, and
are not obliged to look out for an actor who shall fulfil these
conditions of manly beauty before we can be heard without being
ridiculous. Angelina's heavy hair is a fact on paper; on the stage it is
a wig, and must be a good one. Her liquid blue eyes are blue because we
say they are; but it would annoy a playwright to find that his leading
actress had light gray ones, when Edwin must compare them to the depths
of the blackest night.
All this is rather frivolous, perhaps; but a little frivolity is to the
point here, since there can be no amusement without a dash of it, and we
profess to provide diversion to meet the public demand. With most men
who have moulded, hacked, and chiselled the world into history, to think
has been to act. With us novelists, so far as the world need know us, to
think is to dream, and perhaps to dream only little dreams of merely
passing significance. Few novelists are poets; only one or two have been
statesmen; none have been conquerors. I suppose we are very
insignificant figures compared with the great ones of this earth; but
to our comfort we may dream, and if we need consolation we may console
ourselves, as Montaigne puts it, with the art which small souls have to
interest great ones, "_L'art qu'ont les petites âmes d'intéresser les
grandes._"
Frivolity is not weakness, though in excess it may be a weakness.
"_Carpe diem_" is a good motto for the morning, but in the evening
"_Dulce desipere in loco_" is not to be despised as a piece of advice.
The frivolities of great men and famous women have filled volumes of
memoirs, and are not without interest to the little, as our little
interests do not always seem dull to the great. The greater men are, the
more heart they have, good or bad, and the easier it is to affect them
through it, through the multiform feelings which their varied lives have
created within them, or through the few strong sentiments by which most
of them are ruled, guided, or impelled according as they are
conscientious, calculating, or impulsive, and to some extent according
to their nationality, a matter which has almost as much to do with the
author's dream as with the reader's subjective interpretation of it, and
which largely determines the balance between sentiment and
sentimentality.
Sentiment heightens the value of works of fiction as sentimentality
lowers it. Sentimentality is to sentiment as sensuality to passion. The
distinction is not a fine one and has grown common enough in our day to
be universally understood. We owe it, I think, to the international
balance of sentiment and sentimentality that the novelists of the
present day are the French, Anglo-Saxons, and Russians. With all due
respect to the great German intelligence, it does not seem capable of
producing what we call a novel though it turns out most excellent plays.
The German mind, measured by our standard, is sentimental, not romantic.
Perhaps there is as much romance to be found in the history and
traditions of Germany up to a date which I should place at about forty
years ago as there is anywhere in the civilised world. Yet for some
reason or other, the modern German, as I have said, seems to be more
sentimental than romantic in his habits of thought and feeling.
It is not possible in a paper of this length to inquire into the
foundations of sentimentality and romance. Practically, however, what we
call a romantic life is one full of romantic incidents which come
unsought, as the natural consequence and result of a man's or a woman's
character. It is therefore necessarily an exceptional life, and as such
should have exceptional interest for the majority. When our lives are
not filled with emotions, they are too often crammed with insignificant
details too insignificant to bear recording in a novel, but yet making
up for each of us all the significance life has. The great emotions are
not every-day phenomena, and it is the desire to experience them
vicariously which creates the demand for fiction and thereby and at the
same time a demand for emotion. This is felt more particularly nowadays
than formerly.
There was a great deal of artificiality in the last century, and I
believe very little real emotion or true sentiment. The evidences of the
truth of this statement appear sufficiently, I think, in the current
literature, the music, and the social manners of that time. Of the three
the music alone has survived. Musicians constitute, in a certain sense,
a caste, not unlike the Christian priesthood or the Buddhist
brotherhood. Their art is more distinctly handed down from teacher to
scholar, from master to pupil, than any other, and this may perhaps
account for their unwillingness to break through their traditions and
accepted rules. Few persons, however, can listen to an average symphony
for orchestra, or sonata for piano, especially to the _allegro_
movements, without being struck by the utter conventionality and
artificiality of many parts of the production. This, it seems to me, is
not due to the instinct of the musician, nor to the taste of the musical
public, but is a distinct survival of a former existence, as much as the
caudal appendage or the buttons on the backs of our coats. This is
probably rank heresy from the musical point of view, and, like all I say
here, is a mere personal opinion; but to judge by analogy from the
remains of other arts cultivated a hundred years ago, there seems to be
some foundation for it. Can any one see such plays acted, for instance,
as Sheridan's, without being forcibly struck by the total absence of
spontaneity and the absolute submission to social routine of the average
society man and woman of those days. Sheridan's comedies are undoubtedly
as true to their times on the one hand as they are to human nature on
the other, but the humanity of them is thrown into vivid and strong
relief by the artificiality of the elements in the midst of which the
chief actors have their being. As for the literature, it is hardly
necessary for me to defend the statement that it was conventional.
There was an intellectual dress, as it were, put on by the man of genius
of those times. It hung loosely upon Goldsmith's irregular frame. It sat
close, well-fitting and fashionable upon Addison, but Samuel Johnson's
mighty limbs almost burst its seams and betrayed at every movement the
giant who wore it. On a sudden the fashion changed, and it has not done
changing yet.
The French Revolution seems to have introduced an emotional phase into
social history, and to it we must attribute directly or indirectly many
of our present tastes and fashions. With it began the novel in France.
With it the novel in the English language made a fresh start and assumed
a new form. To take a very simple view of the question, I should like
to hazard, as a guess, the theory that when the world had lived at a
very high pressure during the French Revolution, the wars of Napoleon,
and what has been called the "awakening of the peoples," it had acquired
permanently "the emotional habit," just as a man who takes opium or
morphia cannot do without the one or the other. There was a general
desire felt to go on experiencing without dangerous consequences those
varying conditions of hope, fear, disappointment and triumph in which
the whole world's nervous system had thrilled daily during so many years
and at such fearful cost. The children of the women who had gone to the
scaffold with Marie Antoinette, the sons of the men who had charged
with Murat, who had stood by La Tour d'Auvergne, or who had fired their
parting shot with Ney, were not satisfied to dwell in returning peace
and reviving prosperity with nothing but insipid tales of shepherds and
shepherdesses to amuse them. They wanted sterner, rougher stuff. They
created a demand, and it was forthwith supplied, and their children and
children's children have followed their progenitors' footsteps in war
and have adopted their tastes in peace.
Modern civilisation, too, has done what it could to stir the hearts of
men. Evil communications corrupt good manners, and it is not a play upon
words to say that the increased facility of actual communications has
widened and deepened those channels of communication which are evil, and
increased at the same time the demand for all sorts of emotion, bad or
good. Not that emotion of itself is bad. It is often the contrary. Even
the momentary reflection of true love is a good thing in itself. It is
good that men and women should realise that a great affection is, or can
be, a reality to many as well as a convenient amusement or a
heart-rending drama to a few.
Modern civilisation has created modern vices, modern crimes, modern
virtues, austerities, and generosities. The crimes of to-day were not
dreamed of a hundred years ago, any more than the sublimity of the good
deeds done in our time to remedy our time's mistakes. And between the
angel and the beast of this ending century lie great multitudes of
ever-shifting, ever-changing lives, neither very bad nor very good, but
in all cases very different from what lives used to be in the good old
days when time meant time and not money. There, too, in that vast land
of mediocrities, emotions play a part of which our grandfathers never
heard, and being real, of the living, and of superior interest to those
who feel them, reflect themselves in the novel of to-day, diverting the
course of true love into very tortuous channels and varying the tale
that is ever young with features that are often new. Within a short few
months I myself have lived in a land where modern means of communication
are not, and I have come to live here, where applied science is doing
her best to eliminate distance as a factor from the equation of
exchanges, financial and intellectual. The difference between the
manifestations of human feeling in Southern Italy and North America is
greater and wider than can be explained in intelligible terms. Yet it
is but skin-deep. Sentiment, sentimentality, taste, fashion, daily
speech, acquired science, and transmitted tradition cleanse, soil,
model, or deface the changing shell of mutable mortality, and nothing
which appeals to that shell alone can have permanent life; but the prime
impulses of the heart are, broadly speaking, the same in all ages and
almost in all races. The brave man's beats as strongly in battle to-day,
the coward's stands as suddenly still in the face of danger, boys and
girls still play with love, men and women still suffer for love, and the
old still warn youth and manhood against love's snares--all that and
much more comes from depths not reached by civilisations nor changed by
fashions. Those deep waters the real novel must fathom, sounding the
tide-stream of passion and bringing up such treasures as lie far below
and out of sight--out of reach of the individual in most cases--until
the art of the story-teller makes him feel that they are or might be
his. Cæsar commanded his legionaries to strike at the face. Humanity,
the novelist's master, bids him strike only at the heart.
THE END
* * * * *
LIST OF WORKS
BY
MR. F. MARION CRAWFORD.
Uniformly bound in Cloth. =12mo.=
=Price=, $1.00 each.
_Just Published._
CHILDREN OF THE KING.
A Tale of Southern Italy.
MACMILLAN & CO. take pleasure in announcing that they have made
arrangements to add the following volumes (with the author's latest
revisions) to their uniform edition of the works of Mr. F. Marion
Crawford, thereby enabling them to issue a complete edition of all his
novels.
A ROMAN SINGER.
_Now Ready._
New Edition, revised and corrected.
TO LEEWARD.
_February._
PAUL PATOFF.
_March._
AN AMERICAN POLITICIAN._April._
New Edition, revised and partly rewritten.
* * * * *
The Saracinesca Series.
"His greatest achievement is the group of three novels on Modern Italy.
The three books present a wonderfully vivid picture of Italian social
life."--_N. Y. Life._
SARACINESCA.
"His highest achievement, as yet, in the realms of fiction. The work has
two distinct merits, either of which would serve to make it great,--that
of telling a perfect story in a perfect way, and of giving a graphic
picture of Roman society in the last days of the Pope's temporal
power.... The story is exquisitely told."--_Boston Traveller._
"One of the most engrossing novels we have ever read."--_Boston Times._
SANT' ILARIO.
A Sequel to "Saracinesca."
"A singularly powerful and beautiful story.... Admirably developed, with
a naturalness beyond praise.... It brings out what is most impressive in
human action, without owing any of its effectiveness to sensationalism
or artifice."--_New York Tribune._
DON ORSINO.
A Continuation of "Saracinesca" and
"Sant' Ilario."
"The third in a remarkable series of novels dealing with three
generations of the Saracinesca family, entitled respectively
'Saracinesca,' 'Sant' Ilario,' and 'Don Orsino,' and these novels
present an important study of Italian life, customs, and conditions
during the present century. The 'new Italy' is strikingly revealed in
'Don Orsino.'"--_Boston Budget._
"We are inclined to regard the book as the most ingenious of all Mr.
Crawford's fictions. Certainly it is the best novel of the
season."--_Evening Bulletin._
"The plot of the story ('Don Orsino') is one of the best that the author
has constructed. The mystery of Maria Consuelo's birth and her relation
to Spicca is most ingenious, continually suggesting a false trail to the
reader, and its end surprising and satisfying him with its adequateness.
When you combine all these things with a wonderful beauty of diction and
facility of expression, you have that very difficult achievement--a
thoroughly good modern romance."--_Life._
The three volumes in a box, $3.00.
Half morocco, $8.00. Half calf, $7.50.
THE THREE FATES.
"Mr. Crawford has manifestly brought his best qualities as a student of
human nature and his finest resources as a master of an original and
picturesque style to bear upon this story. Taken for all in all it is
one of the most pleasing of all his productions in fiction, and it
affords a view of certain phases of American, or perhaps we should say
of New York, life that have not hitherto been treated with anything like
the same adequacy and felicity."--_Boston Beacon._
THE WITCH OF PRAGUE.
A Fantastic Tale.
ILLUSTRATED BY W. J. HENNESSY.
"Mr. Crawford has written in many keys, but never in so strange a one as
that which dominates 'The Witch of Prague.'... The artistic skill with
which this extraordinary story is constructed and carried out is
admirable and delightful.... Mr. Crawford has scored a decided triumph,
for the interest of the tale is sustained throughout.... A very
remarkable, powerful, and interesting story."--_New York Tribune._
"Mr. Crawford has not lost his oft-proved skill in holding his readers'
attention, and there are single scenes and passages in this book that
rival in intensity anything he has ever written."--_Christian Union._
MR. ISAACS.
A Tale of Modern India.
"The characters are original, and one does not recognize any of the
hackneyed personages who are so apt to be considered indispensable to
novelists, and which, dressed in one guise or another, are but the
marionettes, which are all dominated by the same mind, moved by the same
motive force. The men are all endowed with individualism and independent
life and thought.... There is a strong tinge of mysticism about the book
which is one of its greatest charms."--_Boston Transcript._
"This is a fine and noble story. It has freshness like a new and
striking scene on which one has never looked before. It has character
and individuality. It has meaning. It is lofty and uplifting. It is
strongly, sweetly, tenderly written. It is in all respects an uncommon
novel.... In fine, 'Mr. Isaacs' is an acquaintance to be made."--_The
Literary World._
DR. CLAUDIUS.
A True Story.
"'Dr. Claudius' is surprisingly good, coming after a story of so much
merit as 'Mr. Isaacs.' The hero is a magnificent specimen of humanity,
and sympathetic readers will be fascinated by his chivalrous wooing of
the beautiful American countess."--_Boston Traveller._
"The characters are strongly marked without any suspicion of caricature,
and the author's ideas on social and political subjects are often
brilliant and always striking. It is no exaggeration to say that there
is not a dull page in the book, which is peculiarly adapted for the
recreation of student or thinker."--_Living Church._
WITH THE IMMORTALS.
"Altogether an admirable piece of art worked in the spirit of a thorough
artist. Every reader of cultivated tastes will find it a book prolific
in entertainment of the most refined description, and to all such we
commend it heartily."--_Boston Saturday Evening Gazette._
"The book will be found to have a fascination entirely new for the
habitual reader of novels. Indeed, Mr. Crawford has succeeded in taking
his readers quite above the ordinary plane of novel interest."--_Boston
Advertiser._
MARZIO'S CRUCIFIX.
"We take the liberty of saying that this work belongs to the highest
department of character-painting in words."--_Churchman._
"'Marzio's Crucifix' is another of those tales of modern Rome which show
the author so much at his ease. A subtle compound of artistic feeling,
avarice, malice, and criminal frenzy is this carver of silver chalices
and crucifixes."--_The Times._
"It is as if it could not have been written otherwise, so naturally does
the story unfold itself, and so logical and consistent is the sequence
of incident after incident. As a story, 'Marzio's Crucifix' is perfectly
constructed."--_New York Commercial Advertiser._
KHALED.
A Story of Arabia.
"That it is beautifully written and holds the interest of the reader,
fanciful as it all is, to the very end, none who know the depth and
artistic finish of Mr. Crawford's work need be told."--_The Chicago
Times._
"It abounds in stirring incidents and barbaric picturesqueness; and the
love struggle of the unloved Khaled is manly in its simplicity and noble
in its ending. Mr. Crawford has done nothing better than, if he has done
anything as good as, 'Khaled.'"--_The Mail and Express._
A TALE OF A LONELY PARISH.
"It is a pleasure to have anything so perfect of its kind as this brief
and vivid story.... It is doubly a success, being full of human
sympathy, as well as thoroughly artistic in its nice balancing of the
unusual with the commonplace, the clever juxtaposition of innocence and
guilt, comedy and tragedy, simplicity and intrigue."--_Critic._
"It has no defects. It is neither trifling nor trivial. It is a work of
art. It is perfect."--_Boston Beacon._
ZOROASTER.
"The field of Mr. Crawford's imagination appears to be unbounded.... In
'Zoroaster' Mr. Crawford's winged fancy ventures a daring flight.... Yet
'Zoroaster' is a novel rather than a drama. It is a drama in the force
of its situations and in the poetry and dignity of its language; but its
men and women are not men and women of a play. By the naturalness of
their conversation and behavior they seem to live and lay hold of our
human sympathy more than the same characters on a stage could possibly
do."--_The Times._
A CIGARETTE MAKER'S ROMANCE.
"It is a touching romance, filled with scenes of great dramatic
power."--_Boston Commercial Bulletin._
"It is full of life and movement, and is one of the best of Mr.
Crawford's books."--_Boston Saturday Evening Gazette._
GREIFENSTEIN.
"Another notable contribution to the literature of the day. It possesses
originality in its conception and is a work of unusual ability. Its
interest is sustained to the close, and it is an advance even on the
previous work of this talented author. Like all Mr. Crawford's work,
this novel is crisp, clear, and vigorous, and will be read with a great
deal of interest."--_New York Evening Telegram._
MACMILLAN & CO., NEW YORK.
* * * * *
Typographical errors corrected by the etext transcriber:
of very valuaable=> of very valuable {pg 71}
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