Complete Works of F Marion Crawford

by F. Marion Crawford

  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 d
ull 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.