Part 2

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.