Chapter 11

TROLLOPE AND OTHERS

Five or six writers of fiction, none of whom has attained a position like that of the three great Victorians already considered, yet all of whom loomed large in their day, have met with unequal treatment at the hands of time: Bulwer Lytton, Disraeli, Reade, Trollope, Kingsley. And the Brontes might well be added to the list. The men are mentioned in the order of their birth; yet it seems more natural to place Trollope last, not at all because he lived to 1882, while Kingsley died seven years earlier. Reade lived two years after Trollope, but seems chronologically far before him as a novelist. In the same way, Disraeli and Bulwer Lytton, as we now look back upon them, appear to be figures of another age; though the former lived to within a few years of Trollope, and the latter died but two years before Kingsley. Of course, the reason that Disraeli impresses us as antiquated where Trollope looks thoroughly modern, is because the latter is nearest our own day in method, temper and aim. And this is the main reason why he has best survived the shocks of time and is seen to be the most significant figure of an able and interesting group. Before he is examined, something may be said of the others.

In a measure, the great reputation enjoyed by the remaining writers was secured in divisions of literature other than fiction; or derived from activities not literary at all. Thus Beaconsfield was Premier, Bulwer was noted as poet and dramatist, and eminent in diplomacy; Kingsley a leader in Church and State. They were men with many irons in the fire: naturally, it took some years to separate their literary importance pure and simple from the other accomplishments that swelled their fame. Reade stood somewhat more definitely for literature; and Trollope, although his living was gained for years as a public servant, set his all of reputation on the single throw of letters. He is Anthony Trollope, Novelist, or he is nothing.

I

Thinking of Disraeli as a maker of stories, one reads of his immense vogue about the middle of the last century and reflects sagely upon the change of literary fashions. The magic is gone for the reader now. Such claim as he can still make is most favorably estimated by "Coningsby," "Sybil" and "Tancred," all published within four years, and constituting a trilogy of books in which the follies of polite society and the intimacies of politics are portrayed with fertility and facility. The earlier "Henrietta Temple" and "Venetia," however fervid in feeling and valuable for the delineation of contemporary character, are not so characteristic. Nor are the novels of his last years, "Lothair" and "Endymion," in any way better than those of his younger days. That the political trilogy have still a certain value as studies of the time is beyond argument. Also, they have wit, invention and a richly pictorial sense for setting, together with flamboyant attraction of style and a solid substratum of thought. One recognizes often that an athletic mind is at play in them. But they do not now take hold, whatever they once did; an air of the false-literary is over them, it is not easy to read them as true transcripts from life. To get a full sense of this, turn to literally contemporaneous books like Dickens' "David Copperfield" and "Hard Times"; compared with such, Disraeli and all his world seem clever pastiche. Personal taste may modify this statement: it can hardly reverse it. It would be futile to explain the difference by saying that Disraeli was some eight years before Dickens or that he dealt with another and higher class of society. The difference goes deeper: it is due to the fact that one writer was writing in the spirit of the age with his face to the future and so giving a creative representation of its life; whereas the other was painting its manners and only half in earnest: playing with literature, in sooth. A man like Dickens is married to his art; Disraeli indulges in a temporary liaison with letters. There is, too, in the Lothair-Endymion kind of literature a fatal resemblance to the older sentimental and grandiose fiction of the eighteenth century: an effect of plush and padding, an atmosphere of patchouli and sachet powder. It has the limitation that fashion ever sets; it is boudoir novel-writing: cabinet literature in both the social and political sense. As Agnes Repplier has it: "Lothair is beloved by the female aristocracy of Great Britain; and mysterious ladies, whose lofty souls stoop to no conventionalities, die happy with his kisses on their lips." It would be going too far perhaps to say that this type never existed in life, for Richardson seems to have had a model in mind in drawing Grandison; but it hardly survives in letters, unless we include "St. Elmo" and "Under Two Flags" in that denomination.

To sum it all up: For most of us Disraeli has become hard reading. This is not to say that he cannot still be read with profit as one who gives us insight concerning his day; but his gorgeous pictures and personages have faded woefully, where Trollope's are as bright as ever; and the latter is right when he said that Lord Beaconsfield's creatures "have a flavor of paint and unreality."

II

Bulwer Lytton has likewise lost ground greatly: but read to-day he has much more to offer. In him, too, may be seen an imperfectly blent mixture of by-gone sentimentality and modern truth: yet whether in the romance of historic setting, "The Last Days of Pompeii," or in the satiric study of realism, like "My Novel," Bulwer is much nearer to us, and holds out vital literature for our appreciation. It is easy to name faults both in romance and realism of his making: but the important thing to acknowledge is that he still appeals, can be read with a certain pleasure. His most mature work, moreover, bears testimony to the coming creed of fiction, as Disraeli's never does. There are moments with Bulwer when he almost seems a fellow of Meredith's. I recall with amusement the classroom remark of a college professor to the effect that "My Novel" was the greatest fiction in English literature. While the freshmen to whom this was addressed did not appreciate the generous erraticism of the judgment, even now one of them sees that, coming as it did from a clergyman of genial culture, a true lover of literature and one to inspire that love in others--even in freshmen!--it could hardly have been spoken concerning a mere man-milliner of letters. Bulwer produced too much and in too many kinds to do his best in all--or in any one. But most of us sooner or later have been in thrall to "Kenelm Chillingly" or thrilled to that masterly horror story, "The House and the Brain." There is pinchbeck with the gold, but the shining true metal is there.

III

To pass to Kingsley, is like turning from the world to the kingdom of God: all is religious fervor, humanitarian purpose. Here again the activity is multiple but the dominant spirit is that of militant Christianity. Outside of the Novel, Kingsley has left in "Water Babies" a book deserving the name of modern classic, unless the phrase be a contradiction in terms. "Alton Locke," read to-day, is felt to be too much the tract to bear favorable comparison with Eliot's "Felix Holt"; but it has literary power and noble sincerity. Kingsley is one of the first to feel the ground-swell of social democracy which was to sweep later fiction on its mighty tide. "Westward Ho!" is a sterling historical romance, one of the more successful books in a select list which embraces "The Cloister and the Hearth," "Lorna Doone," and "John Inglesant." "Hypatia," examined dispassionately, may be described as an historical romance with elements of greatness rather than a great historical romance. But it shed its glamour over our youth and there is affectionate dread in the thought of a more critical re-reading.

In truth, Kingsley, viewed in all his literary work, stands out as an athlete of the intellect and the emotions, doing much and doing it remarkably well--a power for righteousness in his day and generation, but for this very reason less a professional novelist of assured standing. His gifted, erratic brother Henry, in the striking series of stories dealing prevailingly with the Australian life he so well knew, makes a stronger impression of singleness of power and may last longer, one suspects, than the better-known, more successful Charles, whose significance for the later generation is, as we have hinted, in his sensitiveness to the new spirit of social revolt,--an isolated voice where there is now full chorus.

IV

An even more virile figure and one to whom the attribution of genius need not be grudged, is the strong, pugnacious, eminently picturesque Charles Reade. It is a temptation to say that but for his use of a method and a technique hopelessly old-fashioned, he might claim close fellowship for gift and influence with Dickens. But he lacked art as it is now understood: balance, restraint, the impersonal view were not his. He is a glorious but imperfect phenomenon, back there in the middle century. He worked in a way deserving of the descriptive phrase once applied to Macaulay--"a steam engine in breeches;" he put enough belief and heart into his fiction to float any literary vessel upon the treacherous waters of fame. He had, of the more specific qualities of a novelist, racy idiom, power in creating character and a remarkable gift for plot and dramatic scene. His frankly melodramatic novels like "A Terrible Temptation" are among the best of their kind, and in "The Cloister and the Hearth" he performed the major literary feat of reconstructing, with the large imagination and humanity which obliterate any effect of archeology and worked-up background, a period long past. And what reader of English fiction does not harbor more than kindly sentiments for those very different yet equally lovable women, Christie Johnstone and Peg Woffington? To run over his contributions thus is to feel the heart grow warm towards the sturdy story-teller. Reade also played a part, as did Kingsley, in the movement for recognition of the socially unfit and those unfairly treated. "Put Yourself in His Place," with its early word on the readjustment of labor troubles, is typical of much that he strove to do. Superb partisan that he was, it is probable that had he cared less for polemics and more for his art, he would have secured a safer position in the annals of fiction. He can always be taken up and enjoyed for his earnest conviction or his story for the story's sake, even if on more critical evaluations he comes out not so well as men of lesser caliber.

V

The writer of the group who has consistently gained ground and has come to be generally recognized as a great artist, a force in English fiction both for influence and pleasure-giving power, is Anthony Trollope. He is vital to-day and strengthening his hold upon the readers of fiction. The quiet, cultivated folk in whose good opinion lies the destiny of really worthy literature, are, as a rule, friendly to Trollope; not seldom they are devoted to him. Such people peruse him in an enjoyably ruminative way at their meals, or read him in the neglige of retirement. He is that cosy, enviable thing, a bedside author. He is above all a story-teller for the middle-aged and it is his good fortune to be able to sit and wait for us at that half-way house,--since we all arrive. Of course, to say this is to acknowledge his limitations. He does not appeal strongly to the young, though he never forgets to tell a love story; but he is too placid, matter-of-fact, unromantic for them. But if he do not shake us with lyric passion, he is always interesting and he wears uncommonly well. That his popularity is extending is testified to by new editions and publishers' hullabaloo over his work.

Such a fate is deserved by him, for Trollope is one of the most consummate masters of that commonplace which has become the modern fashion--and fascination. He has a wonderful power in the realism which means getting close to the fact and the average without making them uninteresting. So, naturally, as realism has gained he has gained. No one except Jane Austen has surpassed him in this power of truthful portrayal, and he has the advantage of being practically of our own day. He insisted that fiction should be objective, and refused to intrude himself into the story, showing himself in this respect a better artist than Thackeray, whom he much admired but frankly criticized. He was unwilling to pause and harangue his audience in rotund voice after the manner of Dickens, First among modern novelists, Trollope stands invisible behind his characters, and this, as we have seen, was to become one of the articles of the modern creed of fiction. He affords us that peculiar pleasure which is derived from seeing in a book what we instantly recognize as familiar to us in life. Just why the pleasure, may be left to the psychologists; but it is of indisputable charm, and Trollope possesses it. We may talk wisely and at length of his commonplaceness, lack of spice, philistinism; he can be counted on to amuse us. He lived valiantly up to his own injunction: "Of all the needs a book has, the chief need is that it is readable." A simple test, this, but a terrible one that has slain its thousands. No nineteenth century maker of stories is safer in the matter of keeping the attention. If the book can be easily laid down, it is always agreeable to take it up again.

Trollope set out in the most systematic way to produce a series of novels illustrating certain sections of England, certain types of English society; steadily, for a life-time, with the artisan's skilful hand, he labored at the craft. He is the very antithesis of the erraticisms and irregularities of genius. He went to his daily stint of work, by night and day, on sea or land, exactly as the merchant goes to his office, the mechanic to his shop. He wrote with a watch before him, two hundred and fifty words to fifteen minutes. But he had the most unusual faculty of direct, unprejudiced, clear observation; he trained himself to set down what he saw and to remember it. And he also had the constructive ability to shape and carry on his story so as to create the effect of growth, along with an equally valuable power of sympathetic characterization, so that you know and understand his folk. Add to this a style perfectly accordant with the unobtrusive harmony of the picture, and the main elements of Trollope's appeal have been enumerated. Yet has he not been entirely explained. His art--meaning the skilled handling of his material--can hardly be praised too much; it is so easy to underestimate because it is so unshowy. Few had a nicer sense of scale and tone; he gets his effects often because of this harmony of adjustment. For one example, "The Warden" is a relatively short piece of fiction which opens the famous Chronicles of Barset series. Its interest culminates in the going of the Reverend Septimus Harding to London from his quiet country home, in order to prevent a young couple from marrying. The whole situation is tiny, a mere corner flurry. But so admirably has the climax been prepared, so organic is it to all that went before in the way of preparation, that the result is positively thrilling: a wonderful example of the principle of key and relation.

Or again, in that scene which is a favorite with all Trollope's readers, where the arrogant Mrs. Proudie is rebuked by the gaunt Mr. Crawley, the effect of his famous "Peace, woman!" is tremendous only because it is a dash of vivid red in a composition where the general color scheme is low and subdued.

In view of this faculty, it will not do to regard Trollope as a kind of mechanic who began one novel the day he finished another and often carried on two or three at the same time, like a juggler with his balls, with no conception of them as artistic wholes. He says himself that he began a piece of fiction with no full plan. But, with his very obvious skill prodigally proved from his work, we may beg leave to take all such statements in a qualified sense: for the kind of fiction he aimed at he surely developed a technique not only adequate but of very unusual excellence.

Trollope was a voluminous writer: he gives in his delightful autobiography the list of his own works and it numbers upwards of sixty titles, of which over forty are fiction. His capacity for writing, judged by mere bulk, appears to have been inherited; for his mother, turning authoress at fifty years of age, produced no less than one hundred and fourteen volumes! There is inferior work, and plenty of it, among the sum-total of his activity, but two series, amounting to about twenty books, include the fiction upon which his fame so solidly rests: the Cathedral series and the Parliamentary series. In the former, choosing the southern-western counties of Wiltshire and Hants as Hardy chose Wessex for his peculiar venue, he described the clerical life of his land as it had never been described before, showing the type as made up of men like unto other men, unromantic, often this-worldly and smug, yet varying the type, making room for such an idealist as Crawley as well as for sleek bishops and ecclesiastical wire-pullers. Neither his young women nor his holy men are overdrawn a jot: they have the continence of Nature. But they are not cynically presented. You like them and take pleasure in their society; they are so beautifully true! The inspiration of these studies came to him as he walked under the shadow of Salisbury Cathedral; and one is never far away from the influence of the cathedral class. The life is the worldy-godly life of that microcosm, a small, genteel, conventional urban society; in sharp contrast with the life depicted by Hardy in the same part of the land,--but like another world, because his portraiture finds its subjects among peasant-folk and yeoman--the true primitive types whose speech is slow and their roots deep down in the soil.

The realism of Trollope was not confined to the mere reproduction of externals; he gave the illusion of character, without departing from what can be verified by what men know. His photographs were largely imaginary, as all artistic work must be; he constructed his stories out of his own mind. But all is based on what may be called a splendidly reasoned and reasonable experience with Life. His especial service was thus to instruct us about English society, without tedium, within a domain which was voluntarily selected for his own. In this he was also a pioneer in that local fiction which is a geographical effect of realism. And to help him in this setting down of what he believed to be true of humanity, was a style so lucid and simple as perfectly to serve his purpose. For unobtrusive ease, idiomatic naturalness and that familiarity which escapes vulgarity and retains a quiet distinction, no one has excelled him. It is one reason why we feel an intimate knowledge of his characters. Mr. Howells declares it is Trollope who is most like Austen "in simple honesty and instinctive truth, as unphilosophized as the light of common day"--though he goes on to deplore that he too often preferred to be "like the caricaturist Thackeray"--a somewhat hard saying. It is a particular comfort to read such a writer when intensely personal psychology is the order of the day and neither style nor interpretation in fiction is simple.

If Trollope can be said to be derivative at all, it is Thackeray who most influenced him. He avows his admiration, wrote the other's life, and deemed him one who advanced truth-telling in the Novel. Yet, as was stated, he did not altogether approve of the Master, thinking his satire too steady a view instead of an occasional weapon. Indeed his strictures in the biography have at times a cool, almost hostile sound. He may or may not have taken a hint from Thackeray on the re-introduction of characters in other books--a pleasant device long antedating the nineteenth century, since one finds it in Lyly's "Euphues." Trollope also disliked Dickens' habit of exaggeration (as he thought it) even when it was used in the interests of reform, and satirized the tendency in the person of Mr. Popular Sentiment in "The Warden."

The more one studies Trollope and the farther he recedes into the past, the firmer grows the conviction that he is a very distinctive figure of Victorian fiction, a pioneer who led the way and was to be followed by a horde of secondary realistic novelists who could imitate his methods but not reproduce his pleasant effect.

VI

The Brontes, coming when they did, before 1850, are a curious study. Realism was growing daily and destined to be the fashion of the literary to-morrow. But "Jane Eyre" is the product of Charlotte Bronte's isolation, her morbidly introspective nature, her painful sense of personal duty, the inextinguishable romance that was hers as the leal descendant of a race of Irish story-tellers. She looked up to and worshipped Thackeray, but produced fiction that was like something from another world. She and her sisters, especially Emily, whose vivid "Wuthering Heights" has all the effect of a visitant from a remote planet, are strangely unrelated to the general course of the nineteenth century. They seem born out of time; they would have left a more lasting impress upon English fiction had they come before--or after. There are unquestionable qualities of realism in "Jane Eyre," but it is romantic to the core, sentimental, melodramatic. Rochester is an elder St. Elmo--hardly truer as a human being; Jane's sacrificial worship goes back to the eighteenth century; and that famous mad-woman's shriek in the night is a moment to be boasted of on the Bowery. And this was her most typical book, that which gave her fame. The others, "Villette" and the rest, are more truly representative of the realistic trend of the day, but withal though interesting, less characteristic, less liked. In proportion as she is romantic is she remembered. The streak of genius in these gifted women must not blind us to the isolation, the unrelated nature of their work to the main course of the Novel. They are exceptions to the rule.

VII

This group then of novelists, sinking all individual differences, marks the progress of the method of realism over the romance. Scarcely one is conspicuous for achievement in the latter, while almost all of them did yeoman service in the former. In some cases--those of Disraeli and Bulwer--the transition is seen where their earlier and later work is contrasted; with a writer like Trollope, the newer method completely triumphs. Even in so confirmed a romance-maker as Wilkie Collins, to whom plot was everything and whose cunning of hand in this is notorious, there is a concession to the new ideal of Truth. He was touched by his time in the matter of naturalness of dialogue, though not of event. Wildly improbable and wooden as his themes may now seem, their manner is realistic, realism of speech, in fact, being an element in his effectivism. Even the author of "The Moonstone" is scotched by the spirit of the age, and in the preface to "Armsdale" declares for a greater freedom of theme--one of the first announcements of that desire for an extension of the subject-matter which was in the next generation to bring such a change.

It seems just to represent all these secondary novelists as subsidiary to Dickens, Thackeray and Eliot. Fascinating isolated figures like Borrow, who will always be cherished by the few, are perforce passed by. We are trying to keep both quality and influence in mind, with the desire to show the writers not by themselves alone but as part of a stream of tendency which has made the English Novel the distinct form it is to-day. Even a resounding genius, in this view, may have less meaning than an apparent plodder like Trollope, who, as time goes by, is seen more clearly to be one of the shaping forces in the development of a literary form.