Oct. 27, 1894. "The God in the Car" and "The Indiscretion
of the Duchess."
As I set down the titles of these two new stories by Mr. Anthony Hope,
it occurs to me that combined they would make an excellent title for a
third story yet to be written. For Mr. Hope's duchess, if by any
chance she found herself travelling with a god in a car, would
infallibly seize the occasion for a _tour de force_ in charming
indiscretion. That the car would travel for some part of the distance
in that position of unstable equilibrium known to skaters as the
"outside edge" may, I think, be taken for granted. But far be it from
me to imagine bungling developments of the situation I here suggest to
Mr. Hope's singular and agreeable talents. Like Mr. Stevenson's
smatterer, who was asked, "What would be the result of putting a pound
of potassium in a pot of porter?" I content myself with anticipating
"that there would probably be a number of interesting bye-products."
Be it understood that I suggest only a combination of the titles--not
of the two stories as Mr. Hope has written them: for these move on
levels altogether different. The constant reader of _The Speaker's_
"Causeries" will be familiar with the two propositions--not in the
least contradictory--that a novel should be true to life, and that it
is quite impossible for a novel to be true to life. He will also know
how they are reconciled. A story, of whatever kind, must follow life
at a certain remove. It is a good and consistent story if it keep at
that remove from first till last. Let us have the old tag once more:
"Servetur ad inum
Qualis ab incepto processerit, et sibi constet."
A good story and real life are such that, being produced in either
direction and to any extent, they never meet. The distance between the
parallels does not count: or rather, it is just a matter for the
author to choose. It is here that Mr. Howells makes his mistake, who
speaks contemptuously of Romance as _Puss in Boots_. _Puss in Boots_
is a masterpiece in its way, and in its way just as true to
life--_i.e._, to its distance from life--as that very different
masterpiece _Silas Lapham_. When Mr. Howells objects to the figure of
Vautrin in _Le Père Goriot_, he criticizes well: Vautrin in that tale
is out of drawing and therefore monstrous. But to bring a similar
objection against Porthos in _Le Vicomte de Bragelonne_ would be very
bad criticism; for it would ignore all the postulates of the story. In
real life Vautrin and Porthos would be equally monstrous: in the
stories Vautrin is monstrous and Porthos is not.
But though the distance from real life at which an author conducts his
tale is just a matter for his own choice, it usually happens to him
after a while, either from taste or habit, to choose a particular
distance and stick to it, or near it, henceforth in all his writings.
Thus Scott has his own distance, and Jane Austen hers. Balzac, Hugo,
Charlotte Brontë, Dickens, Tolstoi, Mr. Howells himself--all these
have their favorite distances, and all are different and cannot be
confused. But a young writer usually starts in some uncertainty on
this point. He has to find his range, and will quite likely lead off
with a miss or a ricochet, as Mr. Hardy led off with _Desperate
Remedies_ before finding the target with _Under the Greenwood Tree_.
Now Mr. Hope--the application of these profound remarks is coming at
last--being a young writer, hovers in choice between two ranges. He
has found the target with both, and cannot make up his mind between
them: and I for one hope he will keep up his practice at both: for his
experiments are most interesting, and in the course of them he is
giving us capital books. Of the two before me, _The God in the Car_
belongs to the same class as his earliest work--his _Father Stafford_,
for instance, a novel that did not win one-tenth of the notice it
deserved. It is practice at short range. It moves very close to real
life. Real people, of course, do not converse as briskly and wittily
as do Mr. Hope's characters: but these have nothing of the impossible
in them, and even in the whole business of Omofaga there is nothing
more fantastic than its delightful name. The book is genuinely tragic;
but the tragedy lies rather in what the reader is left to imagine than
in what actually occurs upon the stage. That it never comes to a more
explicit and vulgar issue stands not so much to the credit of the
heroine (as I suppose we must call Mrs. Dennison) as to the force of
circumstances as manipulated in the tactful grasp of Mr. Hope. Nor is
it to be imputed to him for a fault that the critical chapter xvii.
reminds us in half a dozen oddly indirect ways of a certain chapter in
_Richard Feverel_. The place, the situation, the reader's suspense,
are similar; but the actors, their emotions, their purposes are vastly
different. It is a fine chapter, and the page with which it opens is
the worst in the book--a solitary purple patch of "fine writing." I
observe without surprise that the reviewers--whose admiring attention
is seldom caught but by something out of proportion--have been
fastening upon it and quoting it ecstatically.
_The Indiscretion of the Duchess_ is the tale in Mr. Hope's second
manner--the manner of _The Prisoner of Zenda_. Story for story, it
falls a trifle sort of _The Prisoner of Zenda_. As a set-off, the
telling is firmer, surer, more accomplished. In each an aimless,
superficially cynical, but naturally amiable English gentleman finds
himself casually involved in circumstances which appeal first to his
sportsmanlike love of adventure, and so by degrees to his chivalry,
his sense of honor, and his passions. At first amused, then perplexed,
then nettled, then involved heart and soul, he is left to fight his
way through with the native weapons of his order--courage, tact,
honesty, wit, strength of self-sacrifice, aptitude for affairs. The
_donnée_ of these tales, their spirit, their postulates, are nakedly
romantic. In them the author deliberately lends enchantment to his
view by withdrawing to a convenient distance from real life. But, once
more, the enchantment is everything and the distance nothing. If I
must find fault with the later of the stories, it will not be with its
general extravagance--for extravagance is part of the secret of
Romance--but with the sordid and very nasty Madame Delhasse. She would
be repulsive enough in any case: but as Marie's mother she is
peculiarly repulsive and, let me add, improbable. Nobody looks for
heredity in a tale of this sort: but even in the fairy tales it is
always the heroine's _step_-mother who ends very fitly with a roll
downhill in a barrel full of spikes.
But great as are the differences between _The God in the Car_ and _The
Indiscretion of the Duchess_--and I ought to say that the former
carries (as it ought) more weight of metal--they have their points of
similarity. Both illustrate conspicuously Mr. Hope's gift of
advancing the action of his story by the sprightly conversation of his
characters. There is a touch of Dumas in their talk, and more than a
touch of Sterne--the Sterne of the _Sentimental Journey_.
"I beg your pardon, madame," said I, with a whirl of my hat.
"I beg your pardon, sir," said the lady, with an inclination of
her head.
"One is so careless in entering rooms hurriedly," I observed.
"Oh, but it is stupid to stand just by the door!" insisted the
lady.
To sum up, these are two most entertaining books by one of the writers
for whose next book one searches eagerly in the publishers' lists. If,
however, he will not resent one small word of caution, it is that he
should not let us find his name there too often. As far as we can see,
he cannot write too much for us. But he may very easily write too much
for his own health.
"TRILBY"
Sept. 14, 1895. Hypnotic Fiction.
A number of people--and I am one--cannot "abide" hypnotism in fiction.
In my own case the dislike has been merely instinctive, and I have
never yet found time to examine the instinct and discover whether or
not it is just and reasonable. The appearance of a one-volume edition
of _Trilby_--undoubtedly the most successful tale that has ever dealt
with hypnotism--and the success of the dramatic version of _Trilby_
presented a few days ago by Mr. Tree, invite one to apply the test.
Clearly there are large numbers of people who enjoy hypnotic fiction,
or whose prejudices have been effectively subdued by Mr. du Maurier's
tact and talent. Must we then confess that our instinct has been
unjust and unreasonable, and give it up? Or--since we _must_ like
_Trilby_, and there is no help for it--shall we enjoy the tale under
protest and in spite of its hypnotism?
Analysis of an Aversion.
I think my first objection to these hypnotic tales is the terror they
inspire. I am not talking of ordinary human terror, which, of course,
is the basis of much of the best tragedy. We are terrified by the
story of Macbeth; but it is with a rational and a salutary terror. We
are aware all the while that the moral laws are at work. We see a
hideous calamity looming, approaching, imminent: but we can see that
it is the effect of causes which have been duly exhibited to us. We
can reason it out: we know where we stand: our conscience approves the
punishment even while our pity calls out against it. And when the blow
falls, it shakes away none of our belief in the advantages of virtuous
conduct. It leaves the good old impregnable position, "Be virtuous and
you will be happy," stronger than ever. But the terror of these
hypnotic stories resembles that of a child in a dark room. For
artistic reasons too obvious to need pointing out, the hypnotizer in
these stories is always the villain of the piece. For the same or
similar reasons, the "subject" is always a person worthy of our
sympathy, and is usually a woman. Let us suppose it to be a good and
beautiful woman--for that is the commonest case. The gives us to
understand that by hypnotism this good and beautiful woman is for a
while completely in the power of a man who is _ex hypothesi_ a beast,
and who _ex hypothesi_ can make her commit any excesses that his
beastliness may suggest. Obviously we are removed outside the moral
order altogether; and in its place we are presented with a state of
things in which innocence, honesty, love, and the rest are entirely at
the disposal and under the rule of malevolent brutality; the result,
as presented to us, being qualified only by such tact as the author
may choose to display. That Mr. du Maurier has displayed great tact is
extremely creditable to Mr. du Maurier, and might have been predicted
of him. But it does not alter the fact that a form of fiction which
leaves us at the mercy of an author's tact is a very dangerous form in
a world which contains so few Du Mauriers. It is lamentable enough to
have to exclaim--as we must over so much of human history--
"Ah! what avails the sceptred race
And what the form divine?..."
But it must be quite intolerable when a story leaves us demanding,
"What avail native innocence, truthfulness, chastity, when all these
can be changed into guile and uncleanliness at the mere suggestion of
a dirty mesmerist?"
The answer to this, I suppose, will be, "But hypnotism is a scientific
fact. People can be hypnotized, and are hypnotized. Are you one of
those who would exclude the novelist from this and that field of human
experience?" And then I am quite prepared to hear the old tag, "_Homo
sum_," etc., once more misapplied.
Limitation of Hypnotic Fiction.
Let us distinguish. Hypnotism is a proved fact: people are hypnotized.
Hypnotism is not a delimited fact: nobody yet knows precisely its
conditions or its effects; or, if the discovery has been made, it has
certainly not yet found its way to the novelists. For them it is as
yet chiefly a field of fancy. They invent vagaries for it as they
invent ghosts. And as for the "_humananum nihil a me alienum_"
defence, my strongest objection to hypnotic fiction is its inhumanity.
An experience is not human in the proper artistic sense (with which
alone we are concerned) merely because it has befallen a man or a
woman. There was an Irishman, the other day, who through mere
inadvertence cut off his own head with a scythe. But the story is
rather inhuman than not. Still less right have we to call everything
human which can be supposed by the most liberal stretch of the
imagination to have happened to a man or a woman. A story is only
human in so far as it is governed by the laws which are recognized as
determining human action. Now according as we regard human action, its
two great determinants will be free will or necessity. But hypnotism
entirely does away with free will: and for necessity, fatal or
circumstantial, it substitutes the lawless and irresponsible
imperative of a casual individual man, who (in fiction) usually
happens to be a scoundrel.
A story may be human even though it discard one or more of the
recognized conditions of human life. Thus in the confessedly
supernatural story of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, the conflict between
the two Jekylls is human enough and morally significant, because it
answers to a conflict which is waged day by day--though as a rule less
tremendously--in the soul of every human being. But the double Trilby
signifies nothing. She is naturally in love with Little Billee: she is
also in love with Svengali, but quite unnaturally and irresponsibly.
There is no real conflict. As Gecko says of Svengali--
"He had but to say '_Dors!_' and she suddenly became an
unconscious Trilby of marble, who could produce wonderful
sounds--just the sounds he wanted and nothing else--and think his
thoughts and wish his wishes--and love him at his bidding with a
strange, unreal, factitious love ... just his own love for
himself turned inside out--à l'envers--and reflected back on him
as from a mirror ... un écho, un simulacre, quoi? pas autre
chose!... It was not worth having! I was not even jealous!"
This last passage, I think, suggests that Mr. du Maurier would have
produced a much less charming story, indeed, but a vastly more
artistic one, had he directed his readers' attention rather upon the
tragedy of Svengali than upon the tragedy of Trilby. For Svengali's
position as complete master of a woman's will and yet unable to call
forth more than a factitious love--"just his own love for himself
turned inside out and reflected back on him as from a mirror"--is a
really tragic one, and a fine variation on the old Frankenstein
_motif_. The tragedy of Frankenstein resides in Frankenstein himself,
not in his creature.
An Incongruous Story.
In short, _Trilby_ seems--as _Peter Ibbetson_ seemed--to fall into two
parts, the natural and supernatural, which will not join. They might
possibly join if Mr. du Maurier had not made the natural so
exceedingly domestic, had he been less successful with the Trilby, and
Little Billee, and Taffy, and the Laird, for all of whom he has taught
us so extravagant a liking. But his very success with these domestic
(if oddly domestic) figures, and with the very domestic tale of Little
Billee's affair of the heart, proves our greatest stumbling-block when
we are invited to follow the machinations of the superlative Svengali.
That the story of Svengali and of Trilby's voice is a good story only
a duffer would deny. So is Gautier's _La Morte Amoureuse_; perhaps the
best story of its kind ever written. But suppose Thackeray had taken
_La Morte Amoureuse_ and tried to write it into _Pendennis!_