_THE ROMANTIC NOVELISTS--SCOTT, HUGO, DUMAS._
After the publication of the Vicar of Wakefield in 1766, for nearly
fifty years no great novel appeared. True, Frances Burney’s Evalina
appeared, but it is dry reading to-day. It is also true that some of
Jane Austen’s best novels were written, but they were not published.
The long silence was broken by the anonymous publication of Waverley in
1814.
Scott had got into the printing business with James Ballantyne, and
then into the publishing business. His Lay of the Last Minstrel,
Marmion, and Lady of the Lake--story poems as they were--were read like
novels, and had brought him thousands of pounds. But his popularity
was waning, and he needed some book to make good the losses of bad
business investments. Waverley had been begun several years before, but
as Ballantyne did not like what had been written, it was thrown into
a drawer and forgotten. Scott now pulled it out and finished it. It
was published, and made an instant success. The name of the author was
withheld at first, because Scott was somewhat ashamed of being known
as a novelist--he who was famous as a poet; and afterwards because of
Scott’s humour, as he called it. Perhaps the mystery of the “Great
Unknown” added some commercial value to the publications.
Waverley is not one of Scott’s best. The hero is rather a disagreeable
fellow, and the scenes are neither great nor memorable. But the book is
noteworthy because it is the first of one of the most successful series
of novels ever produced.
The best of the Waverley novels is usually considered to be Ivanhoe,
though many like Kenilworth, Old Mortality, or Quentin Durward better.
Ivanhoe is a tale of the time of Richard I, called the Lion-hearted.
Richard has been imprisoned on the continent of Europe, whither he had
gone to take part in the Crusades. His brother is on the throne in his
absence, and now is preparing to make himself king.
The story opens with preparations for a grand tournament. Ivanhoe, the
son of a Saxon lord, has secretly returned from the Holy Land, where
he has served with Richard, and takes part in the tourney, winning
the crown on the first day and choosing Rowena, his cousin, the Queen
of Love. But he has seen and been fascinated by Rebecca, a beautiful
Jewess, whose father had lent him armour. On the second day Ivanhoe is
overcome, but he is saved by the entrance of a strange black knight, in
reality Richard himself returned. The Black Knight wins the crown, but
instantly disappears and leaves Ivanhoe to be adjudged the victor of
the day.
One of the most amusing scenes is that in the woods when the king
feasts with Friar Tuck, the confessor of Robin Hood’s men, for Robin
Hood and his outlaws play an important part in this story. One of the
most dramatic scenes is the burning of the castle in which De Bracy has
imprisoned the beautiful Rowena, the Jewess Rebecca, and the wounded
Ivanhoe.
Scott’s novels are filled with splendid descriptions, his characters
are noble gentlemen and ladies, and he tells of historic events worth
chronicling. They are sometimes too long; but it is easy to skip the
less interesting passages. Scott can never be said to be tiresome.
Kenilworth is a story of Leicester, Queen Elizabeth’s lover. He has
married Amy Robsart; but that there may be no barrier to his marriage
with the Queen, he causes Amy to be made away with. In the course of
the story Queen Elizabeth visits the castle of Kenilworth, and we have
a splendid description of the historic shows and games, as we had of
the tournament in Ivanhoe. Our sympathies are with Amy Robsart, and the
story of her death is intensely dramatic.
Quite different is the story of Quentin Durward--a young Englishman
in France in the days of Louis XI. Quentin was sent to escort a
certain beautiful Isabelle and her aunt to the Bishop of Liege, on an
understanding that a certain outlaw was to capture the girl and marry
her. Quentin Durward succeeded in defending his charge, and after many
adventures and escapes, was given the girl in marriage.
To many the best of Scott’s novels are his Scottish stories. The
best of these is Old Mortality, a strictly historical tale of the
seventeenth century. But to many a more fascinating tale is the Bride
of Lammermoor, with its pathetic story of Effie and Jeanie Deans. Other
good Scotch novels of Scott’s are The Monastery, Redgauntlet and The
Antiquary. Guy Mannering is an English historical story, in which Scott
himself is said to figure as Alan Fairford. Other good novels are Robin
Hood, Woodstock, The Abbot, The Heart of Midlothian, and The Pirate.
The only poor stories he ever wrote are Count Robert of Paris and
Castle Dangerous, both written when he was declining to his death and
kept on writing merely in the hope that he might finish paying off his
debts before he died.
In all there are thirty-two of these books. No other English novelist
has written so many that continue popular. Dumas is said to have
written or attached his name to twelve hundred; but only three or four
are considered very well worth reading to-day. Victor Hugo wrote one
great novel, Les Miserables, but his next greatest, The Toilers of the
Sea, is far below the first one. Balzac and Dickens alone have lists to
compare with Scott’s.
Scott’s novels are romantic and interesting. They are on the whole
excellent history,--indeed their history is as good as that of
Shakspere. Scott was a noble, generous, lovable man, and his books are
as pure and great as he is. There is no fine character-drawing, no
sentimental studies of women, no philosophy, no moralizing. But we
see a splendid and varied company of gentlemen and ladies of historic
Britain, dressed in all the picturesqueness, of their age, and passing
through a series of scenes as romantic and exciting as gentlemen and
ladies could ever participate in. There is nothing to be ashamed of,
nothing to be wary of in Scott, and there is nothing that suggests
vulgarity. No one can help loving, admiring, and respecting the man, or
enjoying his novels.
Scott’s own life is almost as romantic in a way as his novels. His
father was a lawyer, and he entered that profession, but did little
more than hold a number of salaried positions. His first book was a
volume of old ballads which he had collected and partly rewritten. Then
came the wonderfully successful poem, The Lay of the Last Minstrel,
and after that Marmion and The Lady of the Lake. He was only less
popular as a narrative poet than Byron. But he became entangled in
business investments with the brothers Ballentyne, old school friends
of his, and saved himself and them from bankruptcy only by the lucky
venture of Waverley, which immediately carried him to world-wide and
lasting fame, and put him in the way of earning a million dollars by
his writings. “Novelist, critic, historian, poet, the favorite of his
age, read over the whole of Europe,” says Taine, “he was compared and
almost equalled to Shakspere, had more popularity than Voltaire, made
dressmakers and duchesses weep, and earned about £200,000.” It was
his ambition to found a sort of feudal family, and on land which he
purchased at Abbotsford he built a castle in imitation of the ancient
knights, “with a tall tower at either end ... sundry zig-zag gables
... a myriad of indentations and parapets and machiolated eaves; most
fantistic waterspouts; labelled windows, not a few of them painted
glass ... stones carved with innumerable heraldries.” Here he kept open
house. But in 1825 his publisher, Constable, failed, carrying down the
printing firm of James Ballantyne & Co., and Scott, because of his
partnership interest, found himself liable for debts amounting to over
half a million dollars. He immediately set about paying these off by
his pen. For a Life of Napoleon he got $90,000, and for the novel of
Woodstock he got $40,000. He exhausted himself in the effort, and died
seven years later, owing only £30,000, which a publisher advanced on
all his copyrights.
He did not begin to write novels until he was forty-two, and then he
turned them out with incredible speed. Waverley was written in three
weeks, and another was written in “six weeks at Christmas.” He wrote
thirty-two novels in sixteen years, besides doing various other work
such as his Life of Napoleon.
Taine summarizes his style as a novelist thus: “In history as in
architecture he was bent on arranging points of view and Gothic
halls. He had neither talent nor leisure to reach the depths of his
characters.” And again, “After all, his characters, to whatever age he
transfers them, are his neighbours, cannie farmers, vain lords, gloved
gentlemen, young marriageable ladies, all more or less commonplace.”
But the romantic novel was carried to its greatest heights of interest
and excitement by Alexandre Dumas and Victor Hugo--especially Dumas.
These two young Frenchmen had heard of Scott’s fame, and had read his
novels, and they made up their minds that this was the popular line
to follow. So each brought out a romantic play in Paris, which was
successful. Thus the romantic movement was started in France; and it
was not long before the novels began to appear, and were so popular
that Dumas set up a sort of novel factory, where he had many people
working for him writing novels for which he had orders. In all he
turned out over twelve hundred.
Next to Scott, Dumas is the great original historic novelist. His
books are not such good history as Scott’s, but they are much more
interesting. Yet there are comparatively few of the twelve hundred
bearing the name of Dumas that one cares to read to-day.
Of these the most characteristic is The Three Musketeers and its two
sequels, Twenty Years After, and The Vicomte de Bragelonne.
The three novels cover the period in France from 1625 to 1665, and
every page is alive with duels, escapes, intrigues, and all sorts of
French adventures. A country lad from Gascony named D’Artagnan comes up
to Paris in search of adventure. He is riding a raw-boned yellow pony,
and has three crowns in his pocket. The first day he gets into three
duels, and in each case makes a friend of his antagonist. These three
friends, called Athos, Porthos, and Aramis, follow him through all his
adventures. All become great and powerful men in France. This is the
point in which the great novelists differ from the less. They give us
great men, while the little ones give us only common men.
Dumas’s success with The Three Musketeers has led to many modern books
of the same sort, the best of which are probably Stanley Weyman’s House
of the Wolf, Under the Red Robe, and Gentleman of France, and Anthony
Hope’s Prisoner of Zenda.
But Dumas wrote one modern, semi-historical novel which has not been
imitated so successfully, and if anything it is more famous than The
Three Musketeers. It is The Count of Monte Cristo. (It really appeared
before The Three Musketeers.)
The hero is a mate of a ship, of which he hopes soon to become captain,
and lover of a beautiful girl, whom he hopes soon to marry. The story
opens in 1815. The hero is accused by his two rivals (one of whom
wants the ship and the other the girl), of being engaged in carrying
dangerous information to Napoleon, who is in exile on the island of
Elba. He is thrown into prison, where he remains for twenty years.
Among the prisoners is a fellow thought to be mad, who tells of a
wonderful treasure hidden on the island of Monte Cristo, off the coast
of Italy.
Our hero escapes from prison, finds the treasure, and appears in the
fashionable world as the rich and mysterious Count of Monte Cristo.
His motive in life now is revenge upon those who had put him in prison.
One is a rich banker. Another is a distinguished general. A third is an
influential magistrate.
The story is exciting and romantic in the extreme, and ends in tragic
and dramatic pathos. Some think the gloomy ending spoils it; but if
it has any fault it is that of being, like most of Dumas’s novels, a
little too long.
The stories already mentioned will give most persons reading enough
of this kind; but if more is wanted, we might recommend The Queen’s
Necklace and the three connected novels, Queen Margot (or Marguerite of
Valois), The Lady of Monsoreau, and The Forty-five. Less interesting
is The Memoirs of a Physician, for which Dumas made a study of
hypnotism. Also Thackeray recommends a simple little story called The
Black Tulip--which is so innocent any schoolgirl might read it without
offense. The truth is, Dumas is seldom immoral, never indecent. To
these add his two accounts of himself, his Memoirs and the story of the
animals he loved, My Pets.
Dumas’s father was the son of a marquis, who had gone to Hayti and
married a negress. The novelist was therefore a quadroon. The young
fellow came to Paris with nothing, made his fortune as a playwright
(his income in one year was $200,000, it is said), became even more
successful as a novelist, built a theatre and a chateau which he called
Monte Cristo, contracted for forty novels in one year, ruined himself
by his recklessness and gaieties, was reduced to poverty, and died with
less than he began life with. Throughout his novels we find the same
reckless gaiety, and this is the element which makes them so popular.
At one extreme is Scott, the honest, the honourable, the faithful; at
the other is Dumas, an adventurer, reckless, irresponsible, but good at
heart and as much a genius as Scott.
Victor Hugo is undoubtedly a far greater figure in French literature
than Dumas. In France he is honoured as one of the greatest, if not the
greatest, of French poets. He was an accomplished artist, and a man of
strong and admirable character. Victor Hugo is a large figure in the
French history of the nineteenth century, and his one great novel is
a colossal monument to his fame that all may understand and read with
intense interest.
Born of a noble family in 1802, he went to Paris and at twenty
published a volume of poems that laid the foundation of his literary
and artistic reputation. In 1830 he, like Dumas, produced a successful
play, and found himself established in French literature. The next
year--long before Dumas thought of writing a story--he published Notre
Dame de Paris, his first great novel. It is a many-sided story of Fate,
centred about the famous old cathedral of Notre Dame, the “book” of
the middle ages.
Many years passed before Victor Hugo was again to appear as a novelist.
He wrote plays and poems, and took part in politics. As a result of
the revolution which brought Napoleon III. to the throne, Victor Hugo
was forced into exile, and lived for a number of years in the British
island of Guernsey. Here he wrote his one great, monumental novel, Les
Miserables, which is as fascinating and romantic as it is great as a
work of literary art and a portrayal of social conditions and a study
of universal human nature. When it appeared in 1862 Dumas had made his
fame and fortune and had fallen into poverty, Thackeray was dead, and
Dickens had but a few years to live. Balzac and Poe were already gone
some years, and Hawthorne had but two more years to live. In a way Les
Miserables is a summary of all these.
The principal character is Jean Valjean, a criminal who again and
again builds up his little social position, only to see it crumble in
an hour when his prison record is revealed. He wanders through Paris,
and into the provinces of France, and stops on the battlefield of
Waterloo. Everywhere he finds tragedy, human joy and suffering, and
incidents that hold the attention breathless. Nothing seems forced or
strange or unusual, yet everything is as dramatic as the most fanciful
imaginations of Scott or Dumas. And like Dickens, he gave us a long
role of notable characters.
Les Miserables is an immense book, extending into six large volumes,
and would require two or three months to read through carefully. It
is a sort of library of fiction, to be compared to Balzac’s Comedie
Humaine, or Zola’s Rougon-Macquart series of novels. Few will read it
from preface to finis, but it does not need to be read as a whole, for
every book, nearly every chapter, is fairly complete in itself.
Hugo wrote only three other novels, Toilers of the Sea, which has some
fine descriptions of life at the bottom of the ocean, Ninety-three, his
last, and the Man Who Laughs, an inferior work.
Though Eugene Sue is not reckoned a great novelist, two of his books
which appeared when the fame of Dumas was at its height have continued
to be read. They are the Wandering Jew and the Mysteries of Paris.
The story of the Wandering Jew is based on the legend of the man at
whose door the Saviour asked to rest His cross only to receive the
reply “Go on!” “Thou shalt go on forever!” answered the Saviour, and
the Jew became an eternal wanderer. One of his descendants turned
Catholic to save his fortune, but his secret was discovered and his
estate confiscated, all but a hundred and fifty thousand francs, which
was left to accumulate for a hundred and fifty years, when it might be
claimed by certain of his heirs. The story is largely concerned with
the various ways in which the Jesuits hunt down all the heirs but a
young priest who has made over to the society all his fortune. But
they are defeated in the end. The book is written from the extreme
Protestant point of view, and is a series of episodes and exciting
adventures.
In the romantic and historical school of Scott an important writer is
the American James Fenimore Cooper. He first tried an English domestic
novel, which he published at his own expense; but Scott, whose novels
were then at the height of their popularity (1820) inspired him with
different ambitions, and he wrote The Pilot to correct the nautical
errors of Scott’s Pirate.
Cooper wrote a large number of novels, but the only ones read to-day
are those which describe American pioneer life. His characters are less
real and individual than Scott’s even; but his fine pictures of the
woods, the Indians, and the adventures of the early pioneers have never
been surpassed.
His first readable novel is The Spy, in which appears his one good
character, Harvey Birch. The others of special interest are in the
so-called Leatherstocking series, and are--
The Pioneer, 1823.
The Pilot, 1823.
The Last of the Mohicans, 1826 (called his best).
The Prairie, 1827.
The Pathfinder, 1840.
The Deerslayer, 1841.
Wyandotte, 1843.
The Redskins, 1846 (the least notable).
Bulwer-Lytton was a prolific novelist, but only one of his stories
remains to us as indisputably great. That is The Last Days of Pompeii,
which we read for its history quite as much as for its fascinating
story.
Charles Kingsley a little later produced two good novels, Hypatia and
Westward, Ho. Hypatia is an historical account of Egypt in the days
when Alexandria was the flourishing city, and Hypatia is truly and
learnedly drawn. The narrative is by no means so exciting as most other
famous historical novels.
Captain Frederick Marryat was popular in his day, but he seems to
be little read in the present age. His most popular novel was Mr.
Midshipman Easy, and The Phantom Ship is said to be the best sea novel
ever written. The Pacha of Many Tales is a collection of most romantic
and exciting short stories, told by one man, and probably the best
worth reading of anything Marryat has left.
The last of the great historical novelists was Charles Reade, whose
Cloister and the Hearth is considered by many one of the greatest
novels of this kind ever written. But the fame of this is shared by his
Dickenesque stories Never Too Late to Mend, Hard Cash, and Put Yourself
in His Place.
Among modern historical novelists Gen. Lew Wallace with his Ben-Hur, a
Tale of the Christ, and the Polish writer Henryk Sienkiewicz with his
Quo Vadis and other novels, are most likely to become classic.