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 e
verything, 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.
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br /> 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.
Complete Works of F Marion Crawford Page 1351