ON NOVELS AND THE ART OF WRITING THEM.
It is nearly twenty years since I proposed to myself to write a
history of English prose fiction. I shall never do it now, but
the subject is so good a one that I recommend it heartily to some
man of letters, who shall at the same time be indefatigable and
light-handed. I acknowledge that I broke down in the task, because
I could not endure the labour in addition to the other labours of
my life. Though the book might be charming, the work was very much
the reverse. It came to have a terrible aspect to me, as did that
proposition that I should sit out all the May meetings of a season.
According to my plan of such a history it would be necessary to read
an infinity of novels, and not only to read them, but so to read them
as to point out the excellences of those which are most excellent,
and to explain the defects of those which, though defective, had
still reached sufficient reputation to make them worthy of notice.
I did read many after this fashion,--and here and there I have the
criticisms which I wrote. In regard to many, they were written on
some blank page within the book. I have not, however, even a list of
the books so criticised. I think that the _Arcadia_ was the first,
and _Ivanhoe_ the last. My plan, as I settled it at last, had been to
begin with _Robinson Crusoe_, which is the earliest really popular
novel which we have in our language, and to continue the review so as
to include the works of all English novelists of reputation, except
those who might still be living when my task should be completed. But
when Dickens and Bulwer died, my spirit flagged, and that which I had
already found to be very difficult had become almost impossible to me
at my then period of life.
I began my own studies on the subject with works much earlier than
_Robinson Crusoe_, and made my way through a variety of novels which
were necessary for my purpose, but which in the reading gave me no
pleasure whatever. I never worked harder than at the _Arcadia_, or
read more detestable trash than the stories written by Mrs. Aphra
Behn; but these two were necessary to my purpose, which was not only
to give an estimate of the novels as I found them, but to describe
how it had come to pass that the English novels of the present day
have become what they are, to point out the effects which they have
produced, and to inquire whether their great popularity has on the
whole done good or evil to the people who read them. I still think
that the book is one well worthy to be written.
I intended to write that book to vindicate my own profession as a
novelist, and also to vindicate that public taste in literature which
has created and nourished the profession which I follow. And I was
stirred up to make such an attempt by a conviction that there still
exists among us Englishmen a prejudice in respect to novels which
might, perhaps, be lessened by such a work. This prejudice is
not against the reading of novels, as is proved by their general
acceptance among us. But it exists strongly in reference to the
appreciation in which they are professed to be held; and it robs them
of much of that high character which they may claim to have earned by
their grace, their honesty, and good teaching.
No man can work long at any trade without being brought to consider
much whether that which he is daily doing tends to evil or to good. I
have written many novels, and have known many writers of novels, and
I can assert that such thoughts have been strong with them and with
myself. But in acknowledging that these writers have received from
the public a full measure of credit for such genius, ingenuity,
or perseverance as each may have displayed, I feel that there is
still wanting to them a just appreciation of the excellence of their
calling, and a general understanding of the high nature of the work
which they perform.
By the common consent of all mankind who have read, poetry takes the
highest place in literature. That nobility of expression, and all
but divine grace of words, which she is bound to attain before she
can make her footing good, is not compatible with prose. Indeed it
is that which turns prose into poetry. When that has been in truth
achieved, the reader knows that the writer has soared above the
earth, and can teach his lessons somewhat as a god might teach. He
who sits down to write his tale in prose makes no such attempt, nor
does he dream that the poet's honour is within his reach;--but his
teaching is of the same nature, and his lessons all tend to the same
end. By either, false sentiments may be fostered; false notions of
humanity may be engendered; false honour, false love, false worship
may be created; by either, vice instead of virtue may be taught. But
by each, equally, may true honour, true love, true worship, and true
humanity be inculcated; and that will be the greatest teacher who
will spread such truth the widest. But at present, much as novels, as
novels, are bought and read, there exists still an idea, a feeling
which is very prevalent, that novels at their best are but innocent.
Young men and women,--and old men and women too,--read more of them
than of poetry, because such reading is easier than the reading of
poetry; but they read them,--as men eat pastry after dinner,--not
without some inward conviction that the taste is vain if not vicious.
I take upon myself to say that it is neither vicious nor vain.
But all writers of fiction who have desired to think well of their
own work, will probably have had doubts on their minds before they
have arrived at this conclusion. Thinking much of my own daily labour
and of its nature, I felt myself at first to be much afflicted and
then to be deeply grieved by the opinion expressed by wise and
thinking men as to the work done by novelists. But when, by degrees,
I dared to examine and sift the sayings of such men, I found them to
be sometimes silly and often arrogant. I began to inquire what had
been the nature of English novels since they first became common in
our own language, and to be desirous of ascertaining whether they had
done harm or good. I could well remember that, in my own young days,
they had not taken that undisputed possession of drawing-rooms which
they now hold. Fifty years ago, when George IV. was king, they were
not indeed treated as Lydia had been forced to treat them in the
preceding reign, when, on the approach of elders, _Peregrine Pickle_
was hidden beneath the bolster, and _Lord Ainsworth_ put away under
the sofa. But the families in which an unrestricted permission was
given for the reading of novels were very few, and from many they
were altogether banished. The high poetic genius and correct morality
of Walter Scott had not altogether succeeded in making men and women
understand that lessons which were good in poetry could not be bad
in prose. I remember that in those days an embargo was laid upon
novel-reading as a pursuit, which was to the novelist a much heavier
tax than that want of full appreciation of which I now complain.
There is, we all know, no such embargo now. May we not say that
people of an age to read have got too much power into their own hands
to endure any very complete embargo? Novels are read right and left,
above stairs and below, in town houses and in country parsonages, by
young countesses and by farmers' daughters, by old lawyers and by
young students. It has not only come to pass that a special provision
of them has to be made for the godly, but that the provision so made
must now include books which a few years since the godly would have
thought to be profane. It was this necessity which, a few years
since, induced the editor of _Good Words_ to apply to me for a
novel,--which, indeed, when supplied was rejected, but which now,
probably, owing to further change in the same direction, would have
been accepted.
If such be the case--if the extension of novel-reading be so wide
as I have described it--then very much good or harm must be done
by novels. The amusement of the time can hardly be the only result
of any book that is read, and certainly not so with a novel, which
appeals especially to the imagination, and solicits the sympathy of
the young. A vast proportion of the teaching of the day,--greater
probably than many of us have acknowledged to ourselves,--comes
from these books, which are in the hands of all readers. It is from
them that girls learn what is expected from them, and what they
are to expect when lovers come; and also from them that young men
unconsciously learn what are, or should be, or may be, the charms
of love,--though I fancy that few young men will think so little of
their natural instincts and powers as to believe that I am right in
saying so. Many other lessons also are taught. In these times, when
the desire to be honest is pressed so hard, is so violently assaulted
by the ambition to be great; in which riches are the easiest road
to greatness; when the temptations to which men are subjected dulls
their eyes to the perfected iniquities of others; when it is so hard
for a man to decide vigorously that the pitch, which so many are
handling, will defile him if it be touched;--men's conduct will be
actuated much by that which is from day to day depicted to them as
leading to glorious or inglorious results. The woman who is described
as having obtained all that the world holds to be precious, by
lavishing her charms and her caresses unworthily and heartlessly,
will induce other women to do the same with theirs,--as will she who
is made interesting by exhibitions of bold passion teach others to
be spuriously passionate. The young man who in a novel becomes a
hero, perhaps a Member of Parliament, and almost a Prime Minister, by
trickery, falsehood, and flash cleverness, will have many followers,
whose attempts to rise in the world ought to lie heavily on the
conscience of the novelists who create fictitious Cagliostros. There
are Jack Sheppards other than those who break into houses and out of
prisons,--Macheaths, who deserve the gallows more than Gay's hero.
Thinking of all this, as a novelist surely must do,--as I certainly
have done through my whole career,--it becomes to him a matter of
deep conscience how he shall handle those characters by whose words
and doings he hopes to interest his readers. It will very frequently
be the case that he will be tempted to sacrifice something for
effect, to say a word or two here, or to draw a picture there, for
which he feels that he has the power, and which when spoken or drawn
would be alluring. The regions of absolute vice are foul and odious.
The savour of them, till custom has hardened the palate and the nose,
is disgusting. In these he will hardly tread. But there are outskirts
on these regions, on which sweet-smelling flowers seem to grow, and
grass to be green. It is in these border-lands that the danger lies.
The novelist may not be dull. If he commit that fault he can do
neither harm nor good. He must please, and the flowers and the grass
in these neutral territories sometimes seem to give him so easy an
opportunity of pleasing!
The writer of stories must please, or he will be nothing. And he must
teach whether he wish to teach or no. How shall he teach lessons of
virtue and at the same time make himself a delight to his readers?
That sermons are not in themselves often thought to be agreeable we
all know. Nor are disquisitions on moral philosophy supposed to be
pleasant reading for our idle hours. But the novelist, if he have
a conscience, must preach his sermons with the same purpose as the
clergyman, and must have his own system of ethics. If he can do this
efficiently, if he can make virtue alluring and vice ugly, while he
charms his readers instead of wearying them, then I think Mr. Carlyle
need not call him distressed, nor talk of that long ear of fiction,
nor question whether he be or not the most foolish of existing
mortals.
I think that many have done so; so many that we English novelists may
boast as a class that such has been the general result of our own
work. Looking back to the past generation, I may say with certainty
that such was the operation of the novels of Miss Edgeworth, Miss
Austen, and Walter Scott. Coming down to my own times, I find such to
have been the teaching of Thackeray, of Dickens, and of George Eliot.
Speaking, as I shall speak to any who may read these words, with that
absence of self-personality which the dead may claim, I will boast
that such has been the result of my own writing. Can any one by
search through the works of the six great English novelists I have
named, find a scene, a passage, or a word that would teach a girl to
be immodest, or a man to be dishonest? When men in their pages have
been described as dishonest and women as immodest, have they not ever
been punished? It is not for the novelist to say, baldly and simply:
"Because you lied here, or were heartless there, because you Lydia
Bennet forgot the lessons of your honest home, or you Earl Leicester
were false through your ambition, or you Beatrix loved too well the
glitter of the world, therefore you shall be scourged with scourges
either in this world or in the next;" but it is for him to show, as
he carries on his tale, that his Lydia, or his Leicester, or his
Beatrix, will be dishonoured in the estimation of all readers by his
or her vices. Let a woman be drawn clever, beautiful, attractive,--so
as to make men love her, and women almost envy her,--and let her be
made also heartless, unfeminine, and ambitious of evil grandeur, as
was Beatrix, what a danger is there not in such a character! To the
novelist who shall handle it, what peril of doing harm! But if at
last it have been so handled that every girl who reads of Beatrix
shall say: "Oh! not like that;--let me not be like that!" and that
every youth shall say: "Let me not have such a one as that to press
my bosom, anything rather than that!"--then will not the novelist
have preached his sermon as perhaps no clergyman can preach it?
Very much of a novelist's work must appertain to the intercourse
between young men and young women. It is admitted that a novel can
hardly be made interesting or successful without love. Some few might
be named, but even in those the attempt breaks down, and the softness
of love is found to be necessary to complete the story. _Pickwick_
has been named as an exception to the rule, but even in _Pickwick_
there are three or four sets of lovers, whose little amatory longings
give a softness to the work. I tried it once with _Miss Mackenzie_,
but I had to make her fall in love at last. In this frequent allusion
to the passion which most stirs the imagination of the young, there
must be danger. Of that the writer of fiction is probably well aware.
Then the question has to be asked, whether the danger may not be so
averted that good may be the result,--and to be answered.
In one respect the necessity of dealing with love is
advantageous,--advantageous from the very circumstance which has made
love necessary to all novelists. It is necessary because the passion
is one which interests or has interested all. Every one feels it, has
felt it, or expects to feel it,--or else rejects it with an eagerness
which still perpetuates the interest. If the novelist, therefore,
can so handle the subject as to do good by his handling, as to teach
wholesome lessons in regard to love, the good which he does will be
very wide. If I can teach politicians that they can do their business
better by truth than by falsehood, I do a great service; but it is
done to a limited number of persons. But if I can make young men and
women believe that truth in love will make them happy, then, if my
writings be popular, I shall have a very large class of pupils. No
doubt the cause for that fear which did exist as to novels arose from
an idea that the matter of love would be treated in an inflammatory
and generally unwholesome manner. "Madam," says Sir Anthony in the
play, "a circulating library in a town is an evergreen tree of
diabolical knowledge. It blossoms through the year; and depend on it,
Mrs. Malaprop, that they who are so fond of handling the leaves will
long for the fruit at last." Sir Anthony was no doubt right. But he
takes it for granted that the longing for the fruit is an evil. The
novelist who writes of love thinks differently, and thinks that the
honest love of an honest man is a treasure which a good girl may
fairly hope to win,--and that if she can be taught to wish only for
that, she will have been taught to entertain only wholesome wishes.
I can easily believe that a girl should be taught to wish to love by
reading how Laura Bell loved Pendennis. Pendennis was not in truth a
very worthy man, nor did he make a very good husband; but the girl's
love was so beautiful, and the wife's love when she became a wife so
womanlike, and at the same time so sweet, so unselfish, so wifely, so
worshipful,--in the sense in which wives are told that they ought to
worship their husbands,--that I cannot believe that any girl can be
injured, or even not benefited, by reading of Laura's love.
There once used to be many who thought, and probably there still are
some, even here in England, who think that a girl should hear nothing
of love till the time come in which she is to be married. That, no
doubt, was the opinion of Sir Anthony Absolute and of Mrs. Malaprop.
But I am hardly disposed to believe that the old system was more
favourable than ours to the purity of manners. Lydia Languish, though
she was constrained by fear of her aunt to hide the book, yet had
_Peregrine Pickle_ in her collection. While human nature talks of
love so forcibly it can hardly serve our turn to be silent on the
subject. "Naturam expellas furcâ, tamen usque recurret." There are
countries in which it has been in accordance with the manners of the
upper classes that the girl should be brought to marry the man almost
out of the nursery--or rather perhaps out of the convent--without
having enjoyed that freedom of thought which the reading of novels
and of poetry will certainly produce; but I do not know that the
marriages so made have been thought to be happier than our own.
Among English novels of the present day, and among English novelists,
a great division is made. There are sensational novels and
anti-sensational, sensational novelists and anti-sensational,
sensational readers and anti-sensational. The novelists who are
considered to be anti-sensational are generally called realistic.
I am realistic. My friend Wilkie Collins is generally supposed to
be sensational. The readers who prefer the one are supposed to take
delight in the elucidation of character. Those who hold by the other
are charmed by the continuation and gradual development of a plot.
All this is, I think, a mistake,--which mistake arises from the
inability of the imperfect artist to be at the same time realistic
and sensational. A good novel should be both, and both in the highest
degree. If a novel fail in either, there is a failure in art. Let
those readers who believe that they do not like sensational scenes in
novels think of some of those passages from our great novelists which
have charmed them most:--of Rebecca in the castle with Ivanhoe; of
Burley in the cave with Morton; of the mad lady tearing the veil of
the expectant bride, in _Jane Eyre_; of Lady Castlewood as, in her
indignation, she explains to the Duke of Hamilton Henry Esmond's
right to be present at the marriage of his Grace with Beatrix;--may
I add, of Lady Mason, as she makes her confession at the feet of Sir
Peregrine Orme? Will any one say that the authors of these passages
have sinned in being over-sensational? No doubt, a string of horrible
incidents, bound together without truth in detail, and told as
affecting personages without character,--wooden blocks, who cannot
make themselves known to the reader as men and women,--does not
instruct or amuse, or even fill the mind with awe. Horrors heaped
upon horrors, and which are horrors only in themselves, and not as
touching any recognised and known person, are not tragic, and soon
cease even to horrify. And such would-be tragic elements of a story
may be increased without end, and without difficulty. I may tell you
of a woman murdered,--murdered in the same street with you, in the
next house,--that she was a wife murdered by her husband,--a bride
not yet a week a wife. I may add to it for ever. I may say that the
murderer roasted her alive. There is no end to it. I may declare that
a former wife was treated with equal barbarity; and may assert that,
as the murderer was led away to execution, he declared his only
sorrow, his only regret to be, that he could not live to treat a
third wife after the same fashion. There is nothing so easy as the
creation and the cumulation of fearful incidents after this fashion.
If such creation and cumulation be the beginning and the end of the
novelist's work,--and novels have been written which seem to be
without other attractions,--nothing can be more dull or more useless.
But not on that account are we averse to tragedy in prose fiction.
As in poetry, so in prose, he who can deal adequately with tragic
elements is a greater artist and reaches a higher aim than the writer
whose efforts never carry him above the mild walks of everyday life.
The _Bride of Lammermoor_ is a tragedy throughout, in spite of its
comic elements. The life of Lady Castlewood, of whom I have spoken,
is a tragedy. Rochester's wretched thraldom to his mad wife, in _Jane
Eyre_, is a tragedy. But these stories charm us not simply because
they are tragic, but because we feel that men and women with flesh
and blood, creatures with whom we can sympathise, are struggling
amidst their woes. It all lies in that. No novel is anything, for
the purposes either of comedy or tragedy, unless the reader can
sympathise with the characters whose names he finds upon the pages.
Let an author so tell his tale as to touch his reader's heart and
draw his tears, and he has, so far, done his work well. Truth let
there be,--truth of description, truth of character, human truth as
to men and women. If there be such truth, I do not know that a novel
can be too sensational.
I did intend when I meditated that history of English fiction to
include within its pages some rules for the writing of novels;--or
I might perhaps say, with more modesty, to offer some advice on the
art to such tyros in it as might be willing to take advantage of the
experience of an old hand. But the matter would, I fear, be too long
for this episode, and I am not sure that I have as yet got the rules
quite settled in my own mind. I will, however, say a few words on one
or two points which my own practice has pointed out to me.
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 he 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 story-telling, 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 canvas?" 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
also by other rules. The writer may tell much of his story in
conversations, but he may only do so by putting such words into the
mouths of his personages as persons so situated would probably use.
He is not allowed for the sake of his tale to make his characters
give utterance to long speeches, such as are not customarily heard
from men and women. The ordinary talk of ordinary people is carried
on in short sharp expressive sentences, which very frequently are
never completed,--the language of which even among educated people is
often incorrect. The novel-writer in constructing his dialogue must
so steer between absolute accuracy of language--which would give to
his conversation an air of pedantry, and the slovenly inaccuracy
of ordinary talkers, which if closely followed would offend by an
appearance of grimace--as to produce upon the ear of his readers a
sense of reality. If he be quite real he will seem to attempt to be
funny. If he be quite correct he will seem to be unreal. And above
all, let the speeches be short. No character should utter much above
a dozen words at a breath,--unless the writer can justify to himself
a longer flood of speech by the speciality of the occasion.
In all this human nature must be the novel-writer's guide. No doubt
effective novels have been written in which human nature has been set
at defiance. I might name _Caleb Williams_ as one and _Adam Blair_
as another. But the exceptions are not more than enough to prove the
rule. But in following human nature he must remember that he does so
with a pen in his hand, and that the reader who will appreciate human
nature will also demand artistic ability and literary aptitude.
The young novelist will probably ask, or more probably bethink
himself how he is to acquire that knowledge of human nature which
will tell him with accuracy what men and women would say in this or
that position. He must acquire it as the compositor, who is to print
his words, has learned the art of distributing his type--by constant
and intelligent practice. Unless it be given to him to listen and to
observe,--so to carry away, as it were, the manners of people in his
memory, as to be able to say to himself with assurance that these
words might have been said in a given position, and that those other
words could not have been said,--I do not think that in these days he
can succeed as a novelist.
And then let him beware of creating tedium! Who has not felt the
charm of a spoken story up to a certain point, and then suddenly
become aware that it has become too long and is the reverse of
charming. It is not only that the entire book may have this fault,
but that this fault may occur in chapters, in passages, in pages, in
paragraphs. I know no guard against this so likely to be effective
as the feeling of the writer himself. When once the sense that the
thing is becoming long has grown upon him, he may be sure that it
will grow upon his readers. I see the smile of some who will declare
to themselves that the words of a writer will never be tedious to
himself. Of the writer of whom this may be truly said, it may be said
with equal truth that he will always be tedious to his readers.