Autobiography of Anthony Trollope

by Anthony Trollope

I have from the first felt sure that the writer, when he sits down

  to commence his novel, should do so, not because he has to tell

  a story, but because he has a story to tell. The novelist's first

  novel will generally have sprung from the right cause. Some series

  of events, or some development of character, will have presented

  itself to his imagination,--and this he feels so strongly that he

  thinks he can present his picture in strong and agreeable language

  to others. He sits down and tells his story because he has a story

  to tell; as you, my friend, when you have heard something which

  has at once tickled your fancy or moved your pathos, will hurry

  to tell it to the first person you meet. But when that first novel

  has been received graciously by the public and has made for itself

  a success, then the writer naturally feeling that the writing of

  novels is within his grasp, looks about for something to tell in

  another. He cudgels his brains, not always successfully, and sits

  down to write, not because he has something which he burns to

  tell, but because be feels it to be incumbent on him to be telling

  something. As you, my friend, if you are very successful in

  the telling of that first story, will become ambitious of further

  storytelling, and will look out for anecdotes,--in the narration

  of which you will not improbably sometimes distress your audience.

  So it has been with many novelists, who, after some good work,

  perhaps after very much good work, have distressed their audience

  because they have gone on with their work till their work has become

  simply a trade with them. Need I make a list of such, seeing that

  it would contain the names of those who have been greatest in the

  art of British novel-writing? They have at last become weary of

  that portion of a novelist's work which is of all the most essential

  to success. That a man as he grows old should feel the labour of

  writing to be a fatigue is natural enough. But a man to whom writing

  has become a habit may write well though he be fatigued. But the

  weary novelist refuses any longer to give his mind to that work of

  observation and reception from which has come his power, without

  which work his power cannot be continued,--which work should

  be going on not only when he is at his desk, but in all his walks

  abroad, in all his movements through the world, in all his intercourse

  with his fellow-creatures. He has become a novelist, as another has

  become a poet, because he has in those walks abroad, unconsciously

  for the most part, been drawing in matter from all that he has seen

  and heard. But this has not been done without labour, even when

  the labour has been unconscious. Then there comes a time when he

  shuts his eyes and shuts his ears. When we talk of memory fading

  as age comes on, it is such shutting of eyes and ears that we mean.

  The things around cease to interest us, and we cannot exercise

  our minds upon them. To the novelist thus wearied there comes the

  demand for further novels. He does not know his own defect, and

  even if he did he does not wish to abandon his own profession. He

  still writes; but he writes because he has to tell a story, not

  because he has a story to tell. What reader of novels has not felt

  the "woodenness" of this mode of telling? The characters do not

  live and move, but are cut out of blocks and are propped against the

  wall. The incidents are arranged in certain lines--the arrangement

  being as palpable to the reader as it has been to the writer--but

  do not follow each other as results naturally demanded by previous

  action. The reader can never feel--as he ought to feel--that only

  for that flame of the eye, only for that angry word, only for that

  moment of weakness, all might have been different. The course of

  the tale is one piece of stiff mechanism, in which there is no room

  for a doubt.

  These, it may be said, are reflections which I, being an old

  novelist, might make useful to myself for discontinuing my work,

  but can hardly be needed by those tyros of whom I have spoken. That

  they are applicable to myself I readily admit, but I also find that

  they apply to many beginners. Some of us who are old fail at last

  because we are old. It would be well that each of us should say to

  himself,

  "Solve senescentem mature sanus equum, ne

  Peccet ad extremum ridendus."

  But many young fail also, because they endeavour to tell stories

  when they have none to tell. And this comes from idleness rather

  than from innate incapacity. The mind has not been sufficiently at

  work when the tale has been commenced, nor is it kept sufficiently

  at work as the tale is continued. I have never troubled myself much

  about the construction of plots, and am not now insisting specially

  on thoroughness in a branch of work in which I myself have not been

  very thorough. I am not sure that the construction of a perfected

  plot has been at any period within my power. But the novelist has

  other aims than the elucidation of his plot. He desires to make

  his readers so intimately acquainted with his characters that the

  creatures of his brain should be to them speaking, moving, living,

  human creatures. This he can never do unless he know those fictitious

  personages himself, and he can never know them unless he can live

  with them in the full reality of established intimacy. They must

  be with him as he lies down to sleep, and as he wakes from his

  dreams. He must learn to hate them and to love them. He must argue

  with them, quarrel with them, forgive them, and even submit to them.

  He must know of them whether they be cold-blooded or passionate,

  whether true or false, and how far true, and how far false. The

  depth and the breadth, and the narrowness and the shallowness of

  each should be clear to him. And, as here, in our outer world, we

  know that men and women change,--become worse or better as temptation

  or conscience may guide them,--so should these creations of his

  change, and every change should be noted by him. On the last day

  of each month recorded, every person in his novel should be a month

  older than on the first. If the would-be novelist have aptitudes

  that way, all this will come to him without much struggling;--but

  if it do not come, I think he can only make novels of wood.

  It is so that I have lived with my characters, and thence has come

  whatever success I have obtained. There is a gallery of them, and

  of all in that gallery I may say that I know the tone of the voice,

  and the colour of the hair, every flame of the eye, and the very

  clothes they wear. Of each man I could assert whether he would have

  said these or the other words; of every woman, whether she would

  then have smiled or so have frowned. When I shall feel that this

  intimacy ceases, then I shall know that the old horse should be

  turned out to grass. That I shall feel it when I ought to feel it,

  I will by no means say. I do not know that I am at all wiser than

  Gil Blas' canon; but I do know that the power indicated is one without


  which the teller of tales cannot tell them to any good effect.

  The language in which the novelist is to put forth his story, the

  colours with which he is to paint his picture, must of course be to

  him matter of much consideration. Let him have all other possible

  gifts,--imagination, observation, erudition, and industry,--they

  will avail him nothing for his purpose, unless he can put forth

  his work in pleasant words. If he be confused, tedious, harsh, or

  unharmonious, readers will certainly reject him. The reading of

  a volume of history or on science may represent itself as a duty;

  and though the duty may by a bad style be made very disagreeable,

  the conscientious reader will perhaps perform it. But the novelist

  will be assisted by no such feeling. Any reader may reject his

  work without the burden of a sin. It is the first necessity of his

  position that he make himself pleasant. To do this, much more is

  necessary than to write correctly. He may indeed be pleasant without

  being correct,--as I think can be proved by the works of more than

  one distinguished novelist. But he must be intelligible,--intelligible

  without trouble; and he must be harmonious.

  Any writer who has read even a little will know what is meant by

  the word intelligible. It is not sufficient that there be a meaning

  that may be hammered out of the sentence, but that the language

  should be so pellucid that the meaning should be rendered without

  an effort of the reader;--and not only some proposition of meaning,

  but the very sense, no more and no less, which the writer has intended

  to put into his words. What Macaulay says should be remembered by

  all writers: "How little the all-important art of making meaning

  pellucid is studied now! Hardly any popular author except myself

  thinks of it." The language used should be as ready and as efficient

  a conductor of the mind of the writer to the mind of the reader

  as is the electric spark which passes from one battery to another

  battery. In all written matter the spark should carry everything;

  but in matters recondite the recipient will search to see that

  he misses nothing, and that he takes nothing away too much. The

  novelist cannot expect that any such search will be made. A young

  writer, who will acknowledge the truth of what I am saying, will

  often feel himself tempted by the difficulties of language to

  tell himself that some one little doubtful passage, some single

  collocation of words, which is not quite what it ought to be, will

  not matter. I know well what a stumbling-block such a passage may

  be. But he should leave none such behind him as he goes on. The

  habit of writing clearly soon comes to the writer who is a severe

  critic to himself.

  As to that harmonious expression which I think is required, I shall

  find it more difficult to express my meaning. It will be granted, I

  think, by readers that a style may be rough, and yet both forcible

  and intelligible; but it will seldom come to pass that a novel written

  in a rough style will be popular,--and less often that a novelist

  who habitually uses such a style will become so. The harmony which

  is required must come from the practice of the ear. There are few

  ears naturally so dull that they cannot, if time be allowed to them,

  decide whether a sentence, when read, be or be not harmonious. And

  the sense of such harmony grows on the ear, when the intelligence

  has once informed itself as to what is, and what is not harmonious.

  The boy, for instance, who learns with accuracy the prosody of a

  Sapphic stanza, and has received through his intelligence a knowledge

  of its parts, will soon tell by his ear whether a Sapphic stanza

  be or be not correct. Take a girl, endowed with gifts of music,

  well instructed in her art, with perfect ear, and read to her such

  a stanza with two words transposed, as, for instance--

  Mercuri, nam te docilis magistro

  Movit Amphion CANENDO LAPIDES,

  Tuque testudo resonare septem

  Callida nervis--

  and she will find no halt in the rhythm. But a schoolboy with

  none of her musical acquirements or capacities, who has, however,

  become familiar with the metres of the poet, will at once discover

  the fault. And so will the writer become familiar with what is

  harmonious in prose. But in order that familiarity may serve him

  in his business, he must so train his ear that he shall be able

  to weigh the rhythm of every word as it falls from his pen. This,

  when it has been done for a time, even for a short time, will become

  so habitual to him that he will have appreciated the metrical duration

  of every syllable before it shall have dared to show itself upon

  paper. The art of the orator is the same. He knows beforehand how

  each sound which he is about to utter will affect the force of his

  climax. If a writer will do so he will charm his readers, though

  his readers will probably not know how they have been charmed.

  In writing a novel the author soon becomes aware that a burden

  of many pages is before him. Circumstances require that he should

  cover a certain and generally not a very confined space. Short novels

  are not popular with readers generally. Critics often complain of

  the ordinary length of novels,--of the three volumes to which they

  are subjected; but few novels which have attained great success in

  England have been told in fewer pages. The novel-writer who sticks

  to novel-writing as his profession will certainly find that this

  burden of length is incumbent on him. How shall he carry his burden

  to the end? How shall he cover his space? Many great artists have

  by their practice opposed the doctrine which I now propose to

  preach;--but they have succeeded I think in spite of their fault

  and by dint of their greatness. There should be no episodes in a

  novel. Every sentence, every word, through all those pages, should

  tend to the telling of the story. Such episodes distract the

  attention of the reader, and always do so disagreeably. Who has not

  felt this to be the case even with The Curious Impertinent and with

  the History of the Man of the Hill. And if it be so with Cervantes

  and Fielding, who can hope to succeed? Though the novel which you

  have to write must be long, let it be all one. And this exclusion

  of episodes should be carried down into the smallest details.

  Every sentence and every word used should tend to the telling of

  the story. "But," the young novelist will say, "with so many pages

  before me to be filled, how shall I succeed if I thus confine

  myself;--how am I to know beforehand what space this story of mine

  will require? There must be the three volumes, or the certain number

  of magazine pages which I have contracted to supply. If I may not

  be discursive should occasion require, how shall I complete my task?

  The painter suits the size of his canvas to his subject, and must

  I in my art stretch my subject to my canas?" This undoubtedly must

  be done by the novelist; and if he will learn his business, may

  be done without injury to his effect. He
may not paint different

  pictures on the same canvas, which he will do if he allow himself

  to wander away to matters outside his own story; but by studying

  proportion in his work, he may teach himself so to tell his story

  that it shall naturally fall into the required length. Though his

  story should be all one, yet it may have many parts. Though the

  plot itself may require but few characters, it may be so enlarged

  as to find its full development in many. There may be subsidiary

  plots, which shall all tend to the elucidation of the main story,

  and which will take their places as part of one and the same

  work,--as there may be many figures on a canvas which shall not to

  the spectator seem to form themselves into separate pictures.

  There is no portion of a novelist's work in which this fault of

  episodes is so common as in the dialogue. It is so easy to make

  any two persons talk on any casual subject with which the writer

  presumes himself to be conversant! Literature, philosophy, politics,

  or sport, may thus be handled in a loosely discursive style; and

  the writer, while indulging himself and filling his pages, is apt

  to think that he is pleasing his reader. I think he can make no

  greater mistake. The dialogue is generally the most agreeable part

  of a novel; but it is only so as long as it tends in some way to

  the telling of the main story. It need not seem to be confined to

  that, but it should always have a tendency in that direction. The

  unconscious critical acumen of a reader is both just and severe.

  When a long dialogue on extraneous matter reaches his mind, he at

  once feels that he is being cheated into taking something which he

  did not bargain to accept when he took up that novel. He does not

  at that moment require politics or philosophy, but he wants his

  story. He will not perhaps be able to say in so many words that at

  some certain point the dialogue has deviated from the story; but

  when it does so he will feel it, and the feeling will be unpleasant.

  Let the intending novel-writer, if he doubt this, read one of

  Bulwer's novels,--in which there is very much to charm,--and then

  ask himself whether he has not been offended by devious conversations.

  And the dialogue, on which the modern novelist in consulting the

  taste of his probable readers must depend most, has to be constrained