a picture of the thing described. Nothing is easier than to make a
catalogue of things which one has seen; to schedule the details of a
landscape, the particulars of a building, a room or a person. To convey
a clear and accurate idea of the whole is most difficult. The untrained
writer is apt to make of his attempts at description a mere running
memorandum of points which he remembers in a scene. He sets down a
list of matters more or less important, not because he can thus make
the whole vivid and real to the reader, but because they are true. The
result is that he has forced the truth to convey a falsehood--if indeed
it be made to convey anything intelligible.
No student can go far in the examination of any of the arts without
discovering that the object of expression is not so much to tell the
truth as to produce an impression of truth. The literal truth may
easily give a false impression, and becomes in that case the most
vicious of falsehoods of which art is capable, just as the telling
of facts with intent to deceive is the most dangerous form of lying.
The thing to be sought is not accuracy of statement, but accuracy of
perception, and the means must be subordinated to the effect.
It follows that even more vitally important than that all details be
true, is that they be significant; that they not only appeal to the
memory or the reason of the writer, but that they have a creative
effect upon the mind of the reader. The author may remember that all
the things which he sets down are true, yet it may be that all which
he writes is false in its result. In morals it is fitting that we give
credit for good intentions, no matter what the result of them may be;
in authorship the intention is of no consequence whatever. The result
is the only thing to be taken into account. Here to fail is to fail,
whether one meant well or ill; and from this there is no escape.
I am of course keeping strictly to the definition of Description which
has been given. In that form of Exposition which is frequently called
Description, the giving a scientific or practical account of a thing,
accuracy of detail is of the first importance. If one is called upon
to “describe” a machine, it is not usually meant that he shall try to
present to the mind a picture of it, but that he shall expound it.
This is not Description in a literary sense, and with this we have
nothing now to do. In the sense in which the term is used as naming
a department of composition, Description is not scientific, but
emotional; not categorical, but literary; not intellectual, so much as
visual. The description of a landscape falls short of its intent just
so far as it fails to call up before the inner eye the image which was
before the mind of the writer,--save in so far as from the nature of
language any word-picture must fall short. If a passage designed to
paint a scene does not make the reader seem actually to see that scene
it cannot be held that the author has fulfilled his intention.
It must be recognized once and for all that words cannot really paint.
No artificer can labor intelligently until he has learned not only the
possibilities but also the limitations of the means at his disposal.
In writing it is important to remember what words cannot do as well as
what they can effect. The most that the writer can hope to do is to
revive in the mind of the reader images which the latter has seen. In
speaking of the limitations of language in the first of these talks,
I reminded you that when we read the description of a landscape we
construct an image out of material already in the mind. Words cannot
paint; that is the province of another art. The painter is able to
present fresh forms, colors, combinations, new landscapes, strange
and unknown figures, and all varieties of visual novelty. The writer
must content himself with a reawakening and a rearrangement of forms,
figures, colors, images, already in the reader’s mind. His effect
of novelty must come from fresh and untried combinations; from the
vividness with which he is able to arouse these remembered images until
they appear so real as to seem new.
It easily follows that the writer who understands his art will
cunningly avail himself of images which are likely to be stored in the
minds of his readers. It is the same principle which directs us to
appeal to common emotions, to the general experiences of mankind.[5]
Let us examine a little this extract from an account of a walk in the
woods in England:--
“Looking between the trees, I saw a little circular glade, two or
three score feet across. It was covered with soft, thin grass,
speckled with palely blue scabiosas, and set round with tall,
slender trees. On one side was a strange imitation of the great
trilith at Stonehenge, formed by two tall boulders across which
had fallen the trunk of a large beech tree.”
In America the reader might not know what scabiosas are, but as this
was written in England, where, in some parts at least, the pale
blue blossoms of the flower are common in every field, the audience
addressed would probably not be puzzled by this word. It is to be
supposed that even there, however, there would be many who would fail
to feel any force in the phrase “the great trilith at Stonehenge.” A
few might have seen it, and others might be familiar with pictures
representing it; but the chance of finding this image in the mind of
the reader was so small as to render its use at least ill-advised;
and especially so as the comparison is that of a trifling thing to a
great one. The reader who recalled Stonehenge would be likely to feel
that there was small excuse for likening a tree trunk tumbled across
a couple of boulders to the magnificent and mysterious monuments of
Salisbury Plain.
An example of the fact that even in dealing with the supernatural a
writer has no resource save images already known may be found in any
story dealing with the weird. Take this from Rudyard Kipling’s tale,
“The Return of Imray,” where the spirit of a murdered man is haunting
the house:--
We were alone in the house, but none the less it was too fully
occupied by a tenant with whom I did not wish to interfere. I
never saw him, but I could see the curtain between the rooms
quivering where he had just passed through; I could hear the
chairs creaking as the bamboos sprung under a weight that had just
quitted them; and I could feel when I went to get a book from the
dining-room that somebody was waiting in the shadows of the front
veranda till I should have gone away.
This is perhaps not one of Mr. Kipling’s happiest passages, since it
insists somewhat too strongly upon the corporeal bulk of the phantom,
but it illustrates the point which we are considering.
* * * * *
Of the greatest importance in Description is the point of view. First
there is the question of the physical point of view. The writer must
know certainly and clearly at what point he has placed the reader to
look at the landscape, the person, or the scene which is described.
In the first lecture I quoted the description which opens Kingsley’s
“Westward Ho!” There the point of view is that of one approaching
the “little white town of Bideford,” but there is at the very outset
a violation of propriety which injures the force of the whole. “The
little white town of Bideford,” the author says, “which slopes upward
from its broad tide-river paved with yellow sands, and many-arched old
bridge where salmon wait for Autumn floods.” The “yellow sands” and
the salmon are details which are known to one familiar with the town,
but they are not apparent to the stranger, they are not evident from
the point of view chosen, and their introduction at once confuses the
impression.
Goethe, who was keenly alive to all the details of literary
workmanship, commented upon a passage in Scott which violates the point
of view. In talking with Eckermann he said:--
It is a peculiarity of Walter Scott’s that his great talent
in representing details often leads him into faults. Thus in
“Ivanhoe,” there is a scene where they are seated at a table in
a castle-hall, at night, and a stranger enters. Now, he is quite
right in describing the stranger’s appearance and dress, but it is
a fault that he goes to the length of describing his feet, shoes,
and stockings. When we sit down in the evening and some one comes
in, we notice only the upper part of his body. If I describe the
feet, daylight enters at once, and the scene loses its nocturnal
character.--March 11, 1831.
The point of view may of course be progressive. The reader may be led
on through a landscape or through the rooms of a house, for instance.
In this it is necessary to keep clearly in mind and to make evident
to the reader every alteration in the point of sight. Properly used,
this method may be very effective; but the least vagueness inevitably
leads to confusion. No description can be successful if there is any
uncertainty in regard to the station of observation. The reader must
know where he is looking from as well as what he is at. He may not, it
is true, realize this, but the writer must realize it for him.
What has been said of the physical point of view may be applied to the
emotional. The feeling of the spectator influences the impression made
upon him by that at which he looks. Do not forget the mood in which you
expect your reader to see the mental picture which you are endeavoring
to present. If you introduce into the midst of a highly wrought and
exciting tale a description of a scene so closely connected with the
narrative that it is important for the reader to see it clearly, you
have to consider that if you have the hold you should have upon him
he is aroused by the story, and will look with quickened eyes upon
the view your words present. You may therefore give him, quickly and
sharply, details such as imprint themselves on the brain in moments of
excitement. The principle is one so obvious as hardly to need further
illustration; but it is not to be looked upon as of small importance
because small space is here given to it.
Much modern description may be said to be entirely emotional, in
the sense that it aims rather to produce the emotions aroused by a
scene than to picture the scene in its physical aspect. A recognition
of the difficulty of presenting a visual image has brought this
about, just as it has brought about the discarding of the old-time
fashion of cataloguing details. The modern heroine, for instance, is
seldom described by the best novelists. Two or three characteristic
particulars are generally considered sufficient to suggest the
whole, or one touch is cunningly added to another in the body of the
narrative, so that the image is formed almost imperceptibly.
It is convenient to consider Description as being of two sorts,
although no sharp line can be drawn between them. One method may be
called Direct Description, and the other Suggestive Description.
The names indicate the distinction,--an attempt to call up a picture
by the enumeration directly of the characteristics of an object or a
scene, or to suggest it by an imaginative figure. The former is the
simpler, the more common, the less subtle. The difference between these
sorts of description may perhaps be appreciated by contrasting two
passages, the first from Shelley’s “Mont Blanc,” and the second from
Coleridge’s “Hymn before Sunrise in the Vale of Chamouni.” Shelley,
dealing directly with his subject, and enumerating actual features of
the scene, writes:--
Thus thou, Ravine of Arve--dark, deep Ravine--
Thou many-colored, many-voicèd vale,
Over whose pines and crags and caverns sail
Fast cloud-shadows and sunbeams.
Coleridge, on the other hand, suggests a picture rather than gives one
directly:--
Hast thou a charm to stay the morning star
In his steep course? So long he seems to pause
On thy bald, awful head, O sovran Blanc!
In the one case there is a statement of particulars, and from these
separate features the reader is expected to build up the scene before
his mental vision. In the other there is merely a suggestion of the
morning star hovering lingeringly over the snowy, awe-inspiring crest
of the mighty mountain. It seems to me that in this especial instance
Coleridge, for once at least, has the better of Shelley, and that the
implied picture is more vivid and effective than the picture more
carefully elaborated.
To take an illustration from prose, let us contrast the description
which Dickens gives of Sairey Gamp with that of Mrs. Fezziwig. Of the
former he says:--
She was a fat old woman, this Mrs. Gamp, with a husky voice and
a moist eye, which she had a remarkable power of turning up and
only showing the white of it.[6] Having very little neck, it
cost her some trouble to look over herself, if one may say so, at
those to whom she talked. She wore a very rusty gown, rather the
worse for snuff, and a shawl and bonnet to correspond.... The face
of Mrs. Gamp--the nose in particular--was red and swollen; and it
was difficult to enjoy her society without becoming conscious of a
smell of spirits.
Of the other lady Dickens merely remarks:--
In came Mrs. Fezziwig, one vast substantial smile.
Good as the former of these descriptions is of its kind, it seems to me
that if this were all that we were told about these two characters, we
should have in the mind a more distinct picture of Mrs. Fezziwig than
of Mrs. Gamp. One is not obliged to share this opinion, however, to
appreciate the difference between the two methods.
In Direct Description, the first thing to be considered, after
the point of view is selected, is what is the central idea of the
picture which is to be produced. It is apt to be the fact that from a
description the reader gets one clear and vivid impression to which all
else is subordinate, and beside which all else is comparatively vague.
It is therefore often wise to put all the real stress upon the points
to be accented, leaving the reader to imagine the rest.
The matter of selecting the central thought is of the more weight,
since it is important that this be given clearly to the reader at its
first presentation. Whoever has tried to alter a mental image knows how
difficult it is to change a picture which is already defined in the
imagination. If the mind in constructing a picture has conceived of a
mountain as standing on the right, and afterward finds that the author
intended it to be on the left, it is on the right that that mountain is
likely to remain in the ideal landscape. I have always been a little
troubled by the fact that in his description at the commencement of
“The Merry Men,” Stevenson, careful and exquisite artist though he was,
speaks of the “great granite rocks that ... go down together in troops
into the sea, like cattle on a summer’s day;” and then, a little later,
declares that “on calm days you can go wandering between them in a
boat for hours, echoes following you about the labyrinth.” From the
comparison to cattle, I always get the idea of boulders much smaller
than the second sentence shows to have been intended. The readjustment
is an unpleasant break which jars upon the reality of the whole.
In the first example which I gave you, we are told that the writer saw
a glade, covered with soft, thin grass, speckled with flowers. It is
added that the glade was set round with trees, and then that on one
side were a couple of tall boulders, across which had fallen a large
beech tree. This does not seem the natural or the effective order. The
eye would first notice that the glade was set about with trees, next
that there was the large fallen tree, lying across the boulders, and
only after this see that the ground was covered with flower-spotted,
thin grass.
Here is another example which illustrates the same error:--
Vervain saw before him a rude mob, armed with all sorts of
improvised weapons. They had evidently caught up scythes,
bill-hooks, axes, or whatever came first to hand. In the midst of
them his eye distinguished Henley and Western, and they were all
led by a large, coarse man with a red cap, who seemed to have some
authority over them. They were marshaled into a rude order, the
lines being wavering and uneven, and all were evidently fiercely
excited.
The author speaks first of a “rude mob,” a phrase which calls up a
formless and confused mass of men. We are next told that in the midst
the spectator recognized two acquaintances, then that there was a
leader, and after that that the crowd was moving in rude order, with
uneven lines. This last statement forces the reader to alter, if he
can, his first impression, and instead of imagining a confused crowd,
to think of a company irregularly organized. If the writer had really
seen in his own mind the thing of which he wrote, he would in the first
place have spoken of the mob as a company led by a leader conspicuous
in his red cap, and marching in wavering lines. After this he would
have been conscious of the rough and improvised weapons, and only after
all these things had forced themselves upon his attention would there
have been any recognition of individuals.
To select the central idea it is generally safe to consider what one’s
own first or strongest impression was or would be at sight of the thing
pictured. The effective order is usually that which would be the actual
experience of the reader if he were standing in the flesh at the point
of view indicated by the author. This is the natural method, and while
it has its dangers, it is at once practical and logical. In any case,
there must be some reason for the order, so that the reader may be led
from one point to the next. Consecutiveness is the logic of Description
and Narration.
As an example of describing where the details are arranged as they
would be likely to catch the attention of the spectator, we may take
this picture from that classic of American literature, Sylvester
Judd’s “Margaret:”--
The pond covered several hundreds of acres, its greatest diameter
measuring about a mile and a half; its outline was irregular,
here divided by sharp rocks, there retreating into shaded coves;
and on its face appeared three or four small islands, bearing
trees and low bushes. Its banks, if not really steep, had a bluff
and precipitous aspect from the tall forest that girdled it
about.--Ch. i.
Or this exquisite bit from Stevenson:--
The river there is dammed back for the service of the flour-mill
just below, so that it lies deep and darkling, and the sand slopes
into brown obscurity with a glint of gold; and it has but newly
been recruited by the borrowings of the snuff-mill just above, and
these, tumbling merrily in, shake the pool to its black heart,
fill it with drowsy eddies, and set the curded froth of many other
mills solemnly steering to and fro upon the surface.--_The Manse._
Dickens observes this natural order in many of his detailed pictures of
persons. The portrait of Mr. Grimwig may serve as an example:--
At this moment there walked into the room, supporting himself by
a thick stick, a stout old gentleman, rather lame in one leg, who
was dressed in a blue coat, striped waistcoat, nankeen breeches
and gaiters, and a broad-brimmed white hat with the sides turned
up with green. A very small-plaited shirt-frill stuck out from his
waistcoat, and a very long steel watch-chain, with nothing but a
key at the end, dangled loosely below it. The ends of his white
neckerchief were twisted into a ball about the size of an orange;
the variety of shapes into which his countenance was twisted defy
description. He had a manner of screwing his head round on one
side when he spoke, and looking out of the corners of his eyes
at the same time, which irresistibly reminded the beholder of a
parrot.--_Oliver Twist._
This elaboration of particulars is somewhat out of fashion. Particulars
are grasped by the eye so quickly that the deliberation of words is
apt to destroy proportion, while it is also true that the reader is in
danger of forgetting the beginning before he reaches the end.
It is perhaps worth while to give an example of the abuse of this
method, since all inexperienced writers have a tendency to mistake
a catalogue for a description. It is manifestly idle to pile up
particulars, unless they are kept subordinate to some central thought.
Here is the description of the heroine of a modern English novel, “A
Chelsea Householder:”--
To begin, then, Muriel was tall, with a slight, erect figure, a
quick step, and an air of youth and vigor which did the beholder
good to look at.[7] Her face was oval, as nearly oval at least
as a face can be in which the chin is a good deal more pronounced
than is usual in classic beauties. The cheeks were pale, paler
than they had any business to be, judging by the rest of the
physique, the most noticeable fact in point of coloring being
that the eyes, hair, brows, and lashes were all of the same, or
pretty nearly the same, color--a deep, dark brown, inclining
to chestnut above the temples, from which the hair was brushed
courageously back, so as to form a small knot at the back of the
head. Her eyes--not, perhaps, by the way, a strikingly original
trait in a heroine--were large and bright; indeed, brighter or
pleasanter eyes have seldom looked out of a woman’s face, their
beauty consisting less in their size and color than in this very
vividness and brightness, which seemed to shine out of the irises
themselves. For all that, the face in repose was not exactly a
bright one, or rather the brightness came to it only by fits and
starts, its prevailing expression being a somewhat sober one, a
sobriety giving way, however, at a touch, and being replaced by a
peculiarly sunshiny smile and glance.
This is not the whole of the paragraph, but it is enough for our
purpose. There need not be a better example of how not to do it, or
of how much may be said about a thing without conveying any definite
idea of it. For my own part, I have no idea whatever how Muriel
looked, and long before I got half through her verbal portrait I had
ceased to care. Few faults are more common than this furnishing a
list of particulars in the expectation that the reader will construct
therefrom the picture which the author has not been clever enough to
make clear--a method, it might be added, not unlike the system of
punctuation adopted by the late so-called Lord Timothy Dexter, who
put all the points together at the end of his book, and directed his
readers to distribute them at their own pleasure.
It is hardly needful to remark upon the prime necessity of clearness in
description, but it is perhaps not amiss to remind beginners that it
is not possible to picture a thing which the writer does not himself
see. If he is writing of an imaginary landscape and speak of a tree,
he should be able if he choose to count the branches of that tree as
clearly as if it in reality stood before him. Unless he know whether
the heads of the flowers tip to the right or to the left, whether the
sheep on the hillside of which he writes are nearer the fence on the
one side or to the stone wall on the other, unless he can with inner
vision actually see the shape of the heroine’s head and the length of
her fingers, the slope of her neck and the folds of her gown as if she
were in bodily presence before him, he cannot describe any of these
things. He cannot tell what he does not know. More than that, he cannot
tell to others as much as he knows; so that unless he be able to see a
good deal more than he wishes to impart, he will fail to convey as much
as he desires.
It is of importance to cultivate the habit of visualizing things, if
one intends to describe them. The mind should be trained to conceive
of them as visibly before it. This is the only way of arriving at the
power of vivid portrayal. It is easy to go through the books of great
writers and select those which show that the authors have this power
of visualization. If a writer has it not, no skill of diction or of
construction can avail to supply its lack.
In Description we have again occasion to emphasize the rule which
was given in Exposition: proceed from the near to the remote; from
the physical to the mental; from the obvious to the obscure. Homer,
surpassed in happiness of epithet by Shakespeare only, affords
abundant illustrations of this point. He says, for instance: “Wheels
round, brazen, eight-spoked;” “shields smooth, beautiful, brazen,
well-hammered.” The particulars are given in the order in which they
would naturally be observed. That the wheel is round and that the
shield is smooth, the eye perceives at once. The second glance adds the
fact of material, and so on.
What is meant by taking up the physical before the mental is
illustrated by the following sentence from a theme picturing the
appearance of a harbor in the West Indies:--
In the distance I saw six or seven vessels in quarantine for
yellow fever, all flying yellow flags.