My Contemporaries In Fiction

by David Christie Murray

  IV.--LIVING MASTERS--MEREDITH AND HALL CAINE

  There is a very old story to the effect that a party of gentlemen whowere compiling a dictionary described a crab as 'a small red animalwhich walks backwards.' Apart from the facts that the crab is notred, is not an animal, and does not walk backwards, the definition waspronounced to be wholly admirable. I was reminded of this bit of ancienthistory when, some time ago, I read a criticism on George Meredith fromthe pen of Mr. George Moore. Mr. Moore represented his subject as ashouting, gesticulating man in a crowd, who, in spite of great effortsto be heard, remained unintelligible. As a description of a curiouslycalm sage who soliloquises for his own amusement in a study this isperfect. The enormous growth in the number of unthinking readers, andthe corresponding increase in our printed output, have brought aboutsome singular conditions, and, amongst them, this: that it is possibleto sustain a reputation by the mere act of being absurd.

  In attempting anything like a just review of the influence of thecritical press in recent years, one has to admit that in its treatmentof George Meredith it has performed a very considerable and praiseworthypublic service. For many years Meredith worked in obscurity so far asthe general public were concerned. Here and there he won an impassionedadmirer, and from his beginning it may be said that he found audiencefit though few; but he owes much of the present extent of his reputationto the efforts of generous and enlightened critics, who would not letthe public rest until they had at least given his genius a hearing. Heis now, and has for some time been, a fashionable cult. It is not likelythat in the broad sense he will ever be a popular writer, for the massof novel-readers are an idle and pleasure-loving folk, and no mere idlerand pleasure-seeker will read Meredith often or read him long at a time.The little book which the angel gave to John of Patmos, commanding thathe should eat it, was like honey in the mouth, but in the belly it wasbitter. To the reader who first approaches him, a book of Meredith'soffers an accurate contrast to the roll presented by the angel. It istough chewing, but in digestion most suave and fortifying. The peoplewho instantly enjoy him, who relish him at first bite, are rare. Fineintelligences are always rare. Personally, I am not one of the happyfew. I am at my third reading of any one of Meredith's later booksbefore I am wholly at my ease with it. I can find a most satisfyingsimile (to myself). A new book of Meredith's comes to me like a hamperof noble wines. I know the vintages, and I rejoice. I set to work toopen the hamper. It is corded and wired in the most exasperating way,but at last I get it open. That is my first reading. Then I range mybottles in the cellar--port, burgundy, hock, champagne, imperial tokay;subtle and inspiring beverages, not grown in common vineyards, anddemanding to be labelled. That is my second reading. Then I sit down tomy wine, and that is my third; and in any book of Meredith's I have acellarful for a lifetime.

  In view of a benefaction like this it becomes a man to be grateful,but for all that it is a pity that a great writer and a willing readershould be held apart by any avoidable hindrances. It is quite true thatan immediate popularity is no test of high merit. But the real man ofgenius is, after all, he who permanently appeals to the widest public.

  To the middle-aged and the elderly fiction is a luxury. A story-bookis like a pipe. It soothes and gratifies, and it helps an idle hour topass. But younger people find actual food or actual poison where theirelders find mere amusement. There are hundreds of thousands of youngmen and women who feel that they would like to have a clear outlookon things, who are searching more or less in earnest for a mentalstanding-place and point of view. If I had my way they should all bemade to read Meredith, and the book at which I would start them shouldbe 'The Shaving of Shagpat.' It is in the nature of a handbook or guideto a young person of genius, it is true, and we can't all be persons ofgenius; but there is enough human nature in it to make it serviceable toall but the stupid. In the midst of its fantastic phantasmagoriathere is a view of life so sane, so lofty, so feminine-tender, somasculine-strong, so piercing, keen and clear, that it is not easy tofind an expression for admiration which shall be at once adequate andsober. On the mere surface it is almost as good as the 'Arabian Nights,'and at the first flush of it you think that fancy is running riot. Butwhen once the intention is grasped you find beneath that playful foam ofseeming fun and frolic a very astonishing and deep philosophy, andthe whole wild masquerade is filled with meaning. Read 'The Shavingof Shagpat,' earnest young men and maidens. There is not much that isbetter for mere amusement in all the libraries, and if you care for theripe conclusions of a scholar and a gentleman who knows the whole gameof life better than any other man now living, you may find them there.

  I learn, on very good authority, that Meredith has but a poorcomparative opinion of his earlier work, and that he would dissentrather strongly from the critic who pronounced 'The Ordeal of RichardFeverel' his masterpiece. Yet it seems to me to be so, and in oneparticular it takes high rank indeed. It is remarkable that whilstlove-making is so essential a part of the general human business, andwhilst no novel or play which ignores it stands much chance of success,there are only two or three really virile presentations in fiction of'the way of a man with a maid.' Shakspere gave us one in 'Romeo andJuliet,' but then Shakspere gave us everything. Charles Reade, in 'HardCash,' has shown us a pure girl growing into pure passion--a bit oftruth and beauty which alone might make a sterling and enduring name forhim. And Meredith in 'Feverel' has given us scenes of young courtshipwhich are beyond the praises of a writer like myself. The two youngpeople on their magic island are amongst the real-ideal figures whichhaunt my mind with sweetness. Nature on either side is virginal. Itflames and trembles with natural passion both in boy and girl, andthey are as pure as a pair of daisies. Any workman in the schoolof Namby-Pamby could have kept their purity. Any writer of theRoman-candle-volcanic tribe could have heaped up their fires, aftera fashion. But for this special piece of work God had first to make agentleman, and then to give him genius.

  One peculiarity in Meredith is worthy of notice. He makes known to usthe interior personality of his characters; he does this so completelythat we are persuaded that we could predict their line of conduct ingiven circumstances; and then a set of circumstances occur in whichthey do something we should never have believed of them, and we haveto confess that their maker is just and right, and that there is nodisputing him.

  There are inconsistencies in his pages more glaring than anything wecan imagine outside real life. The average artist, dealing with thesemanifestations, is a spectacle for pity, as the average man would beon Blondin's tight rope. The faintest deviation, the most momentaryuncertainty of footing, a doubt, even, and it is all over. But Meredithnever falters. He proves the impossible true by the mere fact ofrecording it.

  He has no cranks or crazes or 'isms. He sees human nature with an eyewhich is at once broad and microscopic. What seem the very faults ofstyle are virtues pushed to an extreme. He says more in a page thanmost men can say in a chapter. Modern science can put the nutritiveproperties of a whole ox into a very modest canister. Meredith's bestsentences have gone through just such a digestive process. He is notfor everybody's table, but he is a pride and a delight to the pick ofEnglish epicures.

  From Meredith to Hall Caine is from the study of the analyst to thefoundry of the statuary; from art in cold calm to art in stormy fire.Here, too, is a force at work but it is strength at stress, and notat ease. Meredith is not very greatly moved. He sympathises, but hesympathises from the brain. His heart is right towards the world, but itis cool. The man we are now dealing with has a passionate sympathy. Heis hot at heart, and he does not look on at the movement of mankind asmerely understanding it, and analysing it, and liking it,--and makingallowances for it. He is tumultuous and urgent, daring and impetuous,eager to say a great word. His conceptions shake him. They are allgrandiose and huge. The great passions are awake in them--avarice, lust,hate, love, god-like pity, supreme courage, base fear. The whole trendof his mind is towards the heroic. He struggles to be in touch with theactual, an
d he makes many incursions upon it, but Romance snatches himaway again, and claims him for her own. His native and ineradicableconcept of a work of art in fiction is a story that shall shake thesoul. This inborn passion for the vast and splendid in spiritual thingsis always in strict subordination to a moral purpose. Here is the reasonfor his hold upon the English-speaking people, which is probably, atthis moment, deeper and wider than that of any other living writer.

  I do not deal in what I am now about to say with the critical adjustmentof relative powers, but simply with a question of temperament You maydraw a triangle, and at one of its extremes you may place Meredith, atanother Stevenson, and at another Hall Caine. At one extremity you havean artist whose methods are almost purely intellectual, at the next youhave an embodiment of sympathetic receptivity, and at the third a manwhose forces are almost wholly emotional and dynamic. Stevenson's mainliterary prompting was to say a thing as well as it could possibly besaid. Hall Caine's chief spur is a fiery impulse to a moral warning.

  From the earliest stages of Hall Caine's literary career until nowhis impulse has not changed, but he has made such a steady advance incraftsmanship as could not be made by any man who did not take his workin serious earnest. The faults of his first style still linger, but theyare chastened. He has the defect of his quality. In each of his bookshe strives for an increasing stress of passion, a sustained crescendo; afull and steady breeze for the beginning, and then a gale, a tempest,a tornado. The story is always constructed with this view towardsemotional growth and culmination. Sometimes he lets us see the effortthis prodigious task imposes upon him, but in his later work more andmore rarely. The natural temptation is towards a resonant and insistenteloquence, and he occasionally still forgets that he might, with ease tohimself, profitably leave the catastrophe he has created to make itsown impression. The artistic demand in the form of work to which hisinstinct draws him is heavier than in any other. It is simply to bewhite-hot in purpose and stone-cold in self-criticism at the sameinstant of time.

  Bar Meredith, who is quite _sui generis_, and Rudyard Kipling, whosecharacteristics will be dealt with later on, Hall Caine has less of themark of his predecessors upon him than any of his contemporaries. Hiswork has grown out of himself. He has had a word to speak, and he hasspoken it So far he has increased in strength with every book, has grownmore master of his own conceptions and himself. In 'A Son of Hagar' heforced his story upon his reader in defiance of possibility; but no suchblot on construction as the continued presence of a London cad in theperson of a Cumberland man in the latter's native village has been seenin his more recent work. It is worth notice that even in this portion ofhis story the narrator shows no remotest sign of a disposition to craneat any of the numerous fences which lie before him. He takes them allin his stride, and the reader goes with him, willy-nilly, protestingperhaps, but helplessly whirled along in the author's grip. This facultyof daring is sometimes an essential to the story-teller's art, andHall Caine has it in abundance, not merely in the occasional facing ofimprobabilities, but in that much loftier and more admirable form whereit enables him to confront the cataclysmic emotions of the mind, and tocarry to a legitimate conclusion scenes of tremendous conception andof no less tremendous difficulty. In the minds of vulgar and carelessreaders the defects which are hardest to separate from this form of artare so many added beauties, just as the over-emphasis of a tragic actoris the very thing which best appeals to the gallery. But Hall Caine doesnot address himself to the vulgar and the careless. He is eager toleave his reputation to his peers and to posterity. With every year ofripening power his capacity for self-restraint has grown. When it hascome of age in him, there will be nothing but fair and well. There hasbeen no man in his time who has shown a deeper reverence for his work,or a more consistent increase in his command of it. His method is largeand noble, in accord with his design. He has given us the right to lookto him for better and better and always better, and it is only in thedirection indicated that he can mend.