(1841-)
In view of Mr. Black's accurate and picturesque descriptions of natural
phenomena, it is interesting to know that of his varied youthful
studies, botany most attracted him, and that he followed it up as an art
pupil in the government schools. But his bent was rather for journalism
than for art or science. Before he was twenty-one he had written
critical essays for a local newspaper on Ruskin, Carlyle, and Kingsley;
and shortly afterward he wrote a series of sketches, after Christopher
North, that at this early age gave evidence of his peculiar talent, the
artistic use of natural effects in the development of character, the
pathos of the gray morning or the melancholy of the evening mist when
woven in with tender episode or tragic occurrence.
[Illustration: William Black]
William Black was born in Glasgow, Scotland, November 6th, 1841, and
received his early education there. He settled in London in 1864, and
was a special correspondent of the Morning Star in the Franco-Prussian
war, but after about ten years of the life of a newspaper man, during
which he was an editor of the London News, he abandoned journalism for
novel-writing in 1875. In the intervals of his work he traveled much,
and devoted himself with enthusiasm to out-door sports, of which he
writes with a knowledge that inspires a certain confidence in the
reader. A Scotch skipper once told him he need never starve, because he
could make a living as pilot in the western Highlands; and the fidelity
of his descriptions of northern Scotland have met with the questionable
reward of converting a poet's haunt into a tourist's camp. Not that Mr.
Black's is a game-keeper's catalogue of the phenomena of forest or
stream, or the poetic way of depicting nature by similes. The
fascination of his writing lies in our conviction that it is the result
of minute observation, with a certain atmospheric quality that makes the
picture alive. More, one is conscious of a sensitive, pathetic thrill in
his writing; these sights and sounds, when they are unobtrusively
chronicled, are penetrated by a subtle human sympathy, as if the writer
bent close to the earth and heard the whispers of the flowers and
stones, as well as the murmur of the forest and the roar of the sea.
He is eminently a popular writer, a vivacious delineator of life and
manners, even when he exhibits his versatility at the cost of some of
his most attractive characteristics. In 'Sunrise' we have a combination
of romance and politics, its motive supplied by the intrigues of a
wide-spread communistic society. 'Kilmeny' is the story of a painter,
'Shandon Bells' of a literary man, 'The Monarch of Mincing Lane' tells
of the London streets, the heroine of 'The Handsome Humes' is an
actress, the scenes in 'Briseis' are played in Athens, Scotland, and
England. All these novels have tragic and exceptional episodes, the
humor is broad, as the humor of a pessimist always is, and the reader
finds himself laughing at a practical joke on the heels of a
catastrophe. Mr. Black knows his London, especially the drawing-room
aspect of it, and his latest novel is sure to have the latest touch of
fad and fashion, although white heather does not cease to grow nor deer
to be stalked, nor flies to be cast in Highland waters. We cannot admit
that he is exceptionally fortunate in the heroines of these novels,
however, for they are perfectly beautiful and perfectly good, and nature
protests against perfection as a hurt to vanity. Our real favorites are
the dark-eyed Queen Titania, the small imperious person who drives in
state in 'Strange Adventures of a Phaeton,' and sails with such high
courage in 'White Wings,' and the half-sentimental, half-practical,
wholly self-seeking siren Bonny Leslie in 'Kilmeny' who develops into
something a little more than coquettish in the Kitty of 'Shandon Bells.'
These and half a dozen other novels by Mr. Black entitle him to his
place as a popular novelist; they are alternately gay and sad, they are
spirited and entertaining; certain characters, like the heroine of
'Sunrise,' cast a bright effulgence over the dark plots of intrigue. But
Mr. Black is at his best as the creator of the special school of fiction
that has Highland scenery and Highland character for its field. He has
many followers and many imitators, but he remains master on his own
ground. The scenes of his most successful stories, 'The Princess of
Thule,' 'A Daughter of Heth,' 'In Far Lochaber,' 'Macleod of Dare,' and
'Madcap Violet,' are laid for the most part in remote rural districts,
amid lake and moorland and mountain wilds of northern Scotland, whose
unsophisticated atmosphere is invaded by airs from the outer world only
during the brief season of hunting and fishing.
But the visit of the worldling is long enough to furnish incident both
poetic and tragic; and when he enters the innocent and primitive life of
the native, as Lavender entered that of the proud and beautiful Princess
of Thule sailing her boat in the far-off waters of Skye, or the cruel
Gertrude in the grim castle of Dare, he finds all the potencies of
passion and emotion.
The temperament of the Highlander is a melancholy one. The narrow life,
with its isolation and its hardships, makes him pessimistic and
brooding, though endowed with the keen instinct and peculiar humor of
those who are far removed from the artificialities of life. But Mr.
Black ascribes this temperament, not to race or hardship or isolation,
but to the strange sights and sounds of the sea and land on which he
dwells, to the wild nights and fierce sunsets, to the dark ocean plains
that brood over the secrets that lie in their depths.
Under his treatment nature is subjective, and plays the part of fate.
Natural scenery is as the orchestra to a Wagnerian opera. The shifting
of the clouds, the voice of the sea, the scent of the woods, are made
the most important factors in the formation of character. He whose home
is in mountain fastnesses knows the solemn glory of sunrise and sunset,
and has for his heritage the high brave temper of the warrior, with the
melancholy of the poet. The dweller on tawny sands, where the waves beat
lazily on summer afternoons and where wild winds howl in storm, is of
like necessity capricious and melancholy. The minor key, in which Poe
thought all true poetry is written, is struck in these his earlier
novels. Let the day be ever so beautiful, the air ever so clear, the
shadows give back a sensitive, luminous darkness that reveals tragedies
within itself.
Not that the sentient background, as he has painted it, is to be
confounded with the "sympathy of nature with character" of the older
school, in which hysterical emotion is accentuated by wild wind storms,
and the happiness of lovers by a sunshiny day. But character, as
depicted by him in these early novels, is so far subordinate to nature
that nature assumes moral responsibility. When Macleod of Dare commits
murder and then suicide, we accept it as the result of climatic
influences; and the tranquil-conscienced Hamish, the would-be homicide,
but obeys the call of the winds. Especially in the delightful romances
of Skye, Mr. Black reproduces the actual speech and manners of
the people.
And as romance of motive clothes barren rocks in rich hues and waste
bogland in golden gorse, it does like loving service for homely
characters. The dialect these people talk, without editorial comment,
delights and amuses from its strangeness, and also from the conviction
that it is as real as the landscape. They tell wonderful tales of moor
and fen as they tramp the woods or sail on moonlit waters, and sitting
by a peat fire of a stormy night, discuss, between deep pulls of Scotch
whisky, the Erastianism that vitiates modern theology. We must look in
the pages of Scott for a more charming picture of the relation of
clansman to chief.
But Mr. Black is his own most formidable rival. He who painted the
sympathetic landscapes of northern Scotland has taught the reader the
subtle distinction between these delicate scenes and those in which
nature's moods are obtrusively chronicled. There are novels by Mr. Black
in reading which we exclaim, with the exhausted young lady at the end of
her week's sight-seeing, "What! another sunset!" And he set himself a
difficult task when he attempted to draw another character so human and
so lovable as the Princess of Thule, although the reader were ungracious
indeed did he not welcome the beautiful young lady with the kind heart
and the proud, hurt smile, whom he became familiar with through frequent
encounters in the author's other novels. And if Earlscope, who has a dim
sort of kinship with the more vigorous hero of 'Jane Eyre,' has been
succeeded by well-bred young gentlemen who never smoke in the presence
of their female relatives, though they are master hands at sailing a
boat and knocking down obtrusive foreigners, Mr. Black has not since 'A
Daughter of Heth' done so dramatic a piece of writing as the story of
the Earl's death and Coquette's flight. The "Daughter of Heth," with her
friendly simplicity and innocent wiles, and Madcap Violet, the
laughter-loving, deserve perhaps a kinder fate than a broken heart and
an early grave.
But what the novelist Gogol said of himself and his audience fifty years
ago is as true as ever: "Thankless is the task of whoever ventures to
show what passes every moment before his eyes." When he is
heart-breaking, and therefore exceptional, Mr. Black is most
interesting. A sad ending is not necessarily depressing to the reader.
"There is something," says La Rochefoucauld, "in the misfortunes of our
best friends that doth not displease us."
In Mr. Black's later novels, the burden of tradition has been too heavy
for him, and he has ended them all happily, as if they were fairy tales.
He chose a more artistic as well as a more faithful part when they were
in keeping with life.