The reason of this is, of course, very simple. If an artist is to
have full power over his characters, to know their hearts, to govern
their emotions and sway them at his will, they must be his own
creatures and the life in them derived from him. He must have an
entirely free hand with them. But the personages of history have an
independent life of their own, and with them his hand is tied.
Thackeray has a freehold on the soul of Beatrix Esmond, but he takes
the soul of Marlborough furnished, on a short lease, and has to render
an account to the Muse of History. He is lord of one and mere occupier
of the other. Nor will it do to say that an artist by sympathetic and
intelligent study can master the motives of any group of historical
characters sufficiently for his purpose. For, since they have
anticipated him and lived their lives without his help, they leave him
but a choice between two poor courses. If he narrate their lives and
adventures as they really befel, he is writing history. If, on the
other hand, he disregard historical accuracy, he might just as well
have used another set of characters or have given his characters other
names. Indeed, it would be much better. For if Alcibiades went as a
matter of fact to Sparta and as a matter of fiction you make him stay
at home, you merely advertise to the world that there was something in
Alcibiades you don't understand. And if you are writing about an
Alcibiades whom you don't quite understand, you will save your readers
some risk of confusion by calling him Charicles.
Now Jonathan Swift and Esther Johnson and Esther Vanhomrigh really
lived; and by living, became historical. But Mrs. Woods sets forth to
translate them back into fiction, not as subordinate characters, but
as protagonists. She has chosen to work within the difficult limits I
have indicated. But there are others which might easily have cramped
her hand even more closely.
A Tale of Passion to be told in Terms of Reason.
The story of Swift and Esther Vanhomrigh is a story of passion, and
runs on the confines of madness. But it happened in the Age of Reason.
Doubtless men and women felt madness and passion in that age:
doubtless, too, they spoke of madness and passion, but not in their
literature. And now that the lips are dust and the fiery conversations
lost, Mrs. Woods has only their written prose to turn to for help. To
satisfy the pedant she must tell her story of passion in terms of
reason. In one respect Thackeray had a more difficult task in
_Esmond_; for he aimed to make his book a reflection, in every page
and line, of the days of Queen Anne. Not only had he, like Mrs. Woods,
to make his characters and their talk consistent with that age; but
every word of the story is supposed to be told by a gentleman of that
age, whereas Mrs. Woods in her narrative prose may use the language of
her own century. On the other hand, the story of _Esmond_ deals with
comparatively temperate emotions. There is nothing in Thackeray's
masterpiece to strain the prose of the Age of Reason. It is pitched in
the key of those times, and the prose of those times is sufficient and
exactly sufficient for it. That it should be so is all the more to
Thackeray's honor, for the artist is to be praised in the conception
as duly as in the execution of his work. But, the conception being
granted, I think _Esther Vanhomrigh_ must have been a harder book than
_Esmond_ to write.
For even the prose of Swift himself is inadequate to Swift. He was a
great and glaring anomaly who never fell into perspective with his age
while he lived, and can hardly be pulled into perspective now with the
drawing materials which are left to us. Men of like abundant genius
are rarely measurable in language used by their contemporaries; and
this is perhaps the reason why they disquiet their contemporaries so
confoundedly. Where in the books written by tye-bewigged gentlemen, or
in the letters written by Swift himself, can you find words to explain
that turbulent and potent man? He bursts the capacity of Addison's
phrase and Pope's couplet. He was too big for a bishop's chair, and
now, if a novelist attempt to clothe him in the garments of his time,
he splits them down the back.
It is in meeting this difficulty that Mrs. Woods seems to me to
display the courage and intelligence of a true artist. She is bound to
be praised by many for her erudition; but perhaps she will let me
thank her for having trodden upon her erudition. In the first volume
it threatened to overload and sink her. But no sooner does she begin
to catch the wind of her subject than she tosses all this superfluous
cargo overboard. From the point where passion creeps into the story
this learning is carried lightly and seems to be worn unconsciously.
Instead of cataloguing the age, she comprehends it.
To me the warmth and pathos she packs into her eighteenth-century
conversation, without modernizing it thereby, is something amazing.
For this alone the book would be notable; and it can be proved to come
of divination, simply because nothing exists from which she could have
copied it. More obvious, though not more wonderful, is her feminine
gift of rendering a scene vivid for us by describing it, not as it is,
but as it excites her own intelligence or feelings. Let me explain
myself: for it is the sorry fate of a book so interesting and
suggestive as _Esther Vanhomrigh_ to divert the critic from praise of
the writer to consider a dozen problems which the writer raises.