Now you may observe a man until you are tired, and then you may begin
and observe him over again: you may photograph him and his
surroundings: you may spend years in studying what he eats and drinks:
you may search out what his uncles died of, and the price he pays for
his hats, and--know nothing at all about him. At least, you may know
enough to insure his life or assess him for Income Tax: but you are
not even half-way towards writing a novel about him. You are still
groping among externals. His unspoken ambitions; the stories he tells
himself silently, at midnight, in his bed; the pain he masks with a
dull face and the ridiculous fancies he hugs in secret--these are the
Essentials, and you cannot get them by Observation. If you can
discover these, you are a Novelist born: if not, you may as well shut
up your note-book and turn to some more remunerative trade. You will
never surprise the secret of a soul by accumulating notes upon
Externals.
Local Color.
Then, again, we have Local Color, an article inordinately bepraised
just now; and yet an External. For human nature, when every possible
allowance has been made for geographical conditions, undergoes
surprisingly little change as we pass from one degree of latitude or
longitude to another. The Story of Ruth is as intelligible to an
Englishman as though Ruth had gleaned in the stubble behind Tess
Durbeyfield. Levine toiling with the mowers, Achilles sulking in his
tent, Iphigeneia at the altar, Gil Blas before the Archbishop of
Granada have as close a claim on our sympathy as if they lived but a
few doors from us. Let me be understood. I hold it best that a
novelist should be intimately acquainted with the country in which he
lays his scene. But, none the less, the study of local color is not of
the first importance. And the critic who lavishes praise upon a writer
for "introducing us to an entirely new atmosphere," for "breaking new
ground," and "wafting us to scenes with which the jaded novel-reader
is scarcely acquainted," and for "giving us work which bears every
trace of minute local research," is praising that which is of
secondary importance. The works of Richard Jefferies form a
considerable museum of externals of one particular kind; and this is
possibly the reason why the Cockney novelist waxes eloquent over
Richard Jefferies. He can now import the breath of the hay-field into
his works at no greater expense of time and trouble than taking down
the _Gamekeeper at Home_ from his club bookshelf and perusing a
chapter or so before settling down to work. There is not the slightest
harm in his doing this: the mistake lies in thinking local color
(however acquired) of the first importance.
In judging fiction there is probably no safer rule than to ask one's
self, How far does the pleasure excited in me by this book depend upon
the transitory and trivial accidents that distinguish this time, this
place, this character, from another time, another place, another
character? And how far upon the abiding elements of human life, the
constant temptations, the constant ambitions, and the constant
nobility and weakness of the human heart? These are the essentials,
and no amount of documents or local color can fill their room.
* * * * *
Sept. 30, 1893. The Country as "Copy".
The case of a certain small volume of verse in which I take some
interest, and its treatment at the hands of the reviewers, seems to me
to illustrate in a sufficiently amusing manner a trick that the
British critic has been picking up of late. In a short account of Mr.
Hosken, the postman poet, written by way of preface to his _Verses by
the Way_ (Methuen & Co.), I took occasion to point out that he is not
what is called in the jargon of these days a "nature-poet"; that his
poetic bent inclines rather to meditation than to description; and
that though his early struggles in London and elsewhere have made him
acquainted with many strange people in abnormal conditions of life,
his interest has always lain, not in these striking anomalies, but in
the destiny of humanity as a whole and its position in the great
scheme of things.
These are simple facts. I found them, easily enough, in Mr. Hosken's
verse--where anybody else may find them. They also seem to me to be,
for a critic's purpose, ultimate facts. It is an ultimate fact that
Publius Virgilius Maro wore his buskins somewhat higher in the heel
than did Quintus Horatius Flaccus: and no critic, to my knowledge,
has been impertinent enough to point out that, since Horace had some
experience of the tented field, while Virgil was a stay-at-home
courtier, therefore Horace should have essayed to tell the martial
exploits of Trojan and Rutulian while Virgil contented himself with
the gossip of the Via Sacra. Yet--to compare small things with
great--this is the mistake into which our critics have fallen in Mr.
Hosken's case; and I mention it because the case is typical. They try
to get behind the ultimate facts and busy themselves with questions
they have no proper concern with. Some ask petulantly why Mr. Hosken
is not a "nature-poet." Some are gravely concerned that "local talent"
(_i.e._ the talent of a man who happens to dwell in some locality
other than the critic's) should not concern itself with local affairs;
and remind him--
"To thine orchard edge belong
All the brass and plume of song."
As if a man may not concern himself with the broader problems of life
and attack them with all the apparatus of recorded experience, unless
he happen to live on one bank or other of the Fleet Ditch! If a man
have the gift, he can find all the "brass and plume of song" in his
orchard edge. If he have not, he may (provided he be a _bonâ fide_
traveller) find it elsewhere. What, for instance, were the use of
telling Keats: "To thy surgery belong all the brass and plume of
song"? He couldn't find it there, so he betook himself to Chapman and
Lempriere. If you ask, "What right has a country postman to be
handling questions that vexed the brain of Plato?"--I ask in return,
"What right had John Keats, who knew no Greek, to busy himself with
Greek mythology?" And the answer is that each has a perfect right to
follow his own bent.
The assumption of many critics that only within the metropolitan cab
radius can a comprehensive system of philosophy be constructed, and
that only through the plate-glass windows of two or three clubs is it
possible to see life steadily, and see it whole, is one that I have
before now had occasion to dispute. It is joined in this case to
another yet more preposterous--that from a brief survey of an author's
circumstances we can dictate to him what he ought to write about, and
how he ought to write it. And I have observed particularly that if a
writer be a countryman, or at all well acquainted with country life,
all kinds of odd entertainment is expected of him in the way of notes
on the habits of birds, beasts, and fishes, on the growth of all kinds
of common plants, on the proper way to make hay, to milk a cow, and so
forth.
Richard Jefferies.
Now it is just the true countryman who would no more think of noting
these things down in a book than a Londoner would think of stating in
a novel that Bond Street joins Oxford Street and Piccadilly: simply
because they have been familiar to him from boyhood. And to my mind it
is a small but significant sign of a rather lamentable movement--of
none other, indeed, than the "Rural Exodus," as Political Economists
call it--that each and every novelist of my acquaintance, while
assuming as a matter of course that his readers are tolerably familiar
with the London Directory, should, equally as a matter of course,
assume them to be ignorant of the commonest features of open-air life.
I protest there are few things more pitiable than the transports of
your Cockney critic over Richard Jefferies. Listen, for instance, to
this kind of thing:--
"Here and there upon the bank wild gooseberry and currant bushes
may be found, planted by birds carrying off ripe fruit from the
garden. A wild gooseberry may sometimes be seen growing out of
the decayed 'touchwood' on the top of a hollow withy-pollard.
Wild apple trees, too, are not uncommon in the hedges.
"The beautiful rich colour of the horse-chestnut, when quite ripe
and fresh from its prickly green shell, can hardly be surpassed;
underneath the tree the grass is strewn with shells where they
have fallen and burst. Close to the trunk the grass is worn away
by the restless trampling of horses, who love the shade its
foliage gives in summer. The oak apples which appear on the oaks
in spring--generally near the trunk--fall off in summer, and lie
shrivelled on the ground, not unlike rotten cork, or black as if
burned. But the oak-galls show thick on some of the trees, light
green, and round as a ball; they will remain on the branches
after the leaves have fallen, turning brown and hard, and hanging
there till the spring comes again."--_Wild Life in a Southern
County_, pp. 224-5.
I say it is pitiable that people should need to read these things in
print. Let me apply this method to some district of south-west
London--say the Old Brompton Road:--
"Here and there along the street Grocery Stores and shops of
Italian Warehousemen may be observed, opened here as branches of
bigger establishments in the City. Three gilt balls may
occasionally be seen hanging out under the first-floor windows of
a 'pawnbroker's' residence. House-agents, too, are not uncommon
along the line of route.
"The appearance of a winkle, when extracted from its shell with
the aid of a pin, is extremely curious. There is a winkle-stall
by the South Kensington Station of the Underground Railway.
Underneath the stall the pavement is strewn with shells, where
they have fallen and continue to lie. Close to the stall is a
cab-stand, paved with a few cobbles, lest the road be worn
overmuch by the restless trampling of cab-horses, who stand here
because it is a cab-stand. The thick woollen goods which appear
in the haberdashers' windows through the winter--generally
_inside_ the plate glass--give way to garments of a lighter
texture as the summer advances, and are put away or exhibited at
decreased prices. But collars continue to be shown, quite white
and circular in form; they will probably remain, turning grey as
the dust settles on them, until they are sold."
This is no travesty. It is a hasty, but I believe a pretty exact
application of Jefferies' method. And I ask how it would look in a
book. If the critics really enjoy, as they profess to, all this
trivial country lore, why on earth don't they come into the fresh air
and find it out for themselves? There is no imperative call for their
presence in London. Ink will stain paper in the country as well as in
town, and the Post will convey their articles to their editors. As it
is, they do but overheat already overheated clubs. Mr. Henley has
suggested concerning Jefferies' works that
"in years to be, when the whole island is one vast congeries of
streets, and the fox has gone down to the bustard and the dodo,
and outside museums of comparative anatomy the weasel is not, and
the badger has ceased from the face of the earth, it is not
doubtful that the _Gamekeeper_ and _Wild Life_ and the
_Poacher_--epitomising, as they will, the rural England of
certain centuries before--will be serving as material authority
for historical descriptions, historical novels, historical epics,
historical pictures, and will be honoured as the most useful
stuff of their kind in being."
Let me add that the movement has begun. These books are already
supplying the club-novelist with his open-air effects: and, therefore,
the club-novelist worships them. From them he gathers that "wild
apple-trees, too, are not uncommon in the hedges," and straightway he
informs the public of this wonder. But it is hard on the poor
countryman who, for the benefit of a street-bred reading public, must
cram his books with solemn recitals of his A, B, C, and impressive
announcements that two and two make four and a hedge-sparrow's egg is
blue.
* * * * *