[Sidenote: The main thing]
The art of writing fiction has of late years been made the subject
of innumerable articles by persons most, if not quite all, of whom
are doubtless competent and well-informed; and it seems to be pretty
generally agreed upon between them, as a nice, definite sort of dogma
to start with, that “the main thing is to have a story to tell.”
Possibly that may be the main thing: possibly also the main thing—if,
indeed, there be one where several things are indispensable—may be,
not that the writer should have a story to tell, but that he should
be able to tell it. To tell it, that is, after a fashion which shall
move, interest or amuse the great novel-reading public, which, patient
and tolerant though it may be—patient and tolerant as some of us must
needs acknowledge, with a due sense of contrite gratitude, though
it is—nevertheless demands something more than a bald narration of
supposed events.
[Sidenote: The beginner]
The beginner, therefore (for it is only to beginners that the present
dogmatiser has the effrontery to address himself), will do well to bear
in mind that it is not enough to be equipped with an admirable plot,
nor even to have clearly realised in his or her inner consciousness the
circumstances and personages involved therein: both have to be made
real to the reader; both, moreover, have to be so treated of as, in one
way or another, to tickle the reader’s mental palate. This is much the
same as saying that the beginner, in order to be a successful beginner,
has to acquire a style. Not necessarily, it must be owned, a correct
style; still at least a distinctive one. Otherwise he cannot hope to
make his audience see people and things as he sees them.
[Sidenote: Acquiring a style]
But why talk about “acquiring” a style? Does not every human being
already possess a style?—dormant, no doubt, yet plainly perceptible
in his accustomed turns of speech and methods of expressing himself.
And can he do better than utilise this when he sits down with pen and
paper to write his story? Perhaps he might do rather better; but there
is no need to raise the point at the outset, because the beginner who
essays, without preparation or apprenticeship, to tell his story in his
own way will very soon discover that that is precisely what he cannot
do. The words, somehow, will not come; or, if they do, they come in a
manner palpably and grotesquely inadequate; the sentences are clumsy,
tautological, badly rounded and jar upon the ear; the effect produced
is very far from being the effect contemplated. The tyro, in short,
finds out to his sorrow that writing is not in the least the same thing
as talking, and that even so modest an achievement as the production of
a novel is, after all, an art, the inexorable requirements of which do
not greatly differ from those claimed by other arts.
[Sidenote: Writing an Art to be learnt]
And, indeed, why should they? Nobody would ever dream that they did,
were it not that the literary art has no schools, colleges, paid
professors, no system of salutary checks to intervene between the
student and his public. To one who is conscious of ability it seems
so simple to seize a pen and go ahead! In a certain country-house
there was a Scotch cook whose scones were beyond all praise. Implored
by a Southern lady to reveal the secret of her unvarying success, she
replied, after long consideration, “Aweel, mem, ye just take your
girdle, ye see, and—and make a scone.” Quite so: you just take pen and
paper and—and write a novel. No directions could be more beautifully
succinct; but, unfortunately, it is almost as difficult for a writer
who has reached a point of moderate proficiency in his calling to say
how this is to be done as it was for the cook to explain how scones
ought to be made. He may, however, be bold enough to affirm that the
thing cannot be done off-hand—that the knack of manipulating language
has to be mastered, just as that of swimming, riding, shooting and
playing cricket has to be mastered, and that preliminary failures are
more or less a matter of course. Swimming is very easy; yet if you take
a boy by the scruff of his neck and fling him into deep water, nothing
can be more certain than that he will flounder, struggle desperately
for a few seconds and then sink like a stone. Probably there are but
a very few people who cannot learn to swim; there are many who cannot
learn to shoot or ride; it seems doubtful whether an equal number
cannot—if only they will condescend to take the necessary pains—learn
how to write.
But the trouble is that plenty of men and women who cannot really do
these things nevertheless do them after a fashion. Have not the lives
of most of us been placed in jeopardy through the erratic performances
of some worthy gentleman who is fond of shooting, but who is obviously
unfit to be trusted with a gun? Is there an M.F.H. in England whose
soul is not vexed every year by the hopeless, good-humoured, dangerous
incapacity of certain members of the hunt? Every now and again one sees
a steeplechase won by a horse who has carried off the victory in spite
of his well-meaning rider; and in like manner it would be an easy,
though an ungracious, task to name authors whose books have commanded a
prodigious sale without being, in the true sense of the word, books at
all.
[Sidenote: Pleasing the public]
Well, the neophyte may say, it does not particularly matter to me
whether you are pleased to call my book a book or not; so long as I
can please the public, and thereby make sure of receiving a handsome
cheque from the publishers, I shall be satisfied. To such a reply
no rejoinder can be made, save a warning that successes of the kind
alluded to have been achieved under heavy handicap penalties. They
prove no more than that, as a good horse will occasionally win a race,
although he be badly ridden, so a large section of the novel-reading
public will tolerate inartistic work and slipshod English for the sake
of a good story. And, since you are supposed to be beginning, why
should you wish to carry extra weight, or imagine that you are able to
do so? It is not given to everybody—alas! it is by no means given to
everybody—to conceive a really good and original plot; yet some among
us, whose pretensions to excel in that direction are as scanty as need
be, may contrive to give pleasure, may to a certain extent please
ourselves with our handling of the vocation for which we believe that
we are best fitted, may even pocket the cheques which we have earned
without feeling that we have robbed anybody.
[Sidenote: Infinite variety of the Novel]
In other words, novels do not give pleasure or meet with acceptance
simply and solely by virtue of their subject-matter. The novel, at
least so far as England, which is the great novel-producing country,
is concerned, may be regarded as a sort of literary omnibus—a vehicle
adapted for the carrying of all manner of incongruous freights, heavy
and light. Descriptions of every grade of contemporary society have
their places in it; descriptions of scenery and very little else have
a right of entry; history is not excluded: its springs are even strong
enough to bear the weight of amateur theology and psychical research.
Perhaps, strictly speaking, this ought not to be so; but it is so,
and if, after so many years of laxity, we were to go in for strict
rules and principles, we should be all the poorer for our pedantic
exactitude. According to Tennyson, England is a desirable land in which
to reside, because it is
“The land where, girt by friends or foes,
A man may speak the thing he will;”
and so the English novel affords a fine, broad field for a man to
stretch his limbs in, the sole condition of admittance into it being
that he should do so with some approach to grace and symmetry.
[Sidenote: The average Reader]
It shall not be asserted or pretended that the average reader
consciously exacts these things, that he is conscious of having them
when he has secured them, or of resenting their absence when he has
been defrauded of them. But when he tosses a book across the room, with
his accustomed cruelly concise criticism that it is “bosh” or “rot,”
the above-mentioned species of resentment is, in most cases, what
he unconsciously feels. We ourselves, from the moment that we cease
to be average writers, become average readers, and are no whit less
unmerciful than the rest of the would. We are not going to be bored
by anybody, if we can help it. Possibly, from being in the trade, we
may know a little better than those who are not in the trade why we
are bored; but that does not soften our hearts, nor are we likely to
purchase a second work by an author who has bored us once. Therefore it
is worth while to conciliate us, and to consider how this may best be
done.
[Sidenote: The value of Style]
Doubtless, as has been admitted all along, there are more methods than
one of capturing and retaining the public ear; but this brief paper
professes to deal only with one—that of style. The beginner, we will
take it for granted, wants to have a style of his own, wants to make
the most that he can of his mother-tongue, wants to clothe his thoughts
in readable language, wants above all to send them forth with the
stamp of his individuality upon them. And he is confronted at starting
by the annoying discovery that he is unable to do this. How is he to do
it?
“My dear,” said an experienced chaperon to a young _débutante_,
“study to be natural.” Whereupon everybody who heard her laughed.
Yet the old lady knew what she was talking about and had not really
been guilty of a contradiction in terms. Under artificial social
conditions it is not possible to be natural until the rules of the
game have been learnt. Situations are continually cropping up in which
Nature, unassisted by Art, will play you the shabby trick of turning
her back upon you and leaving you to demean yourself in a ludicrously
unnatural manner. No _débutante_, however great may be her inborn
grace and ease of deportment, would venture to be presented at Court
without having gone through some preliminary rehearsal; scarcely would
she face a first ball or a first dinner-party unless a few previous
hints and instructions had been conveyed to her. But, fortified by
an exact knowledge of what is the right thing to do, she sails forth
confidently, she dares to be herself, and she makes, let us hope, the
desired impression in quarters where it is desirable that an impression
should be made.
[Sidenote: Study how to please]
Not dissimilar is the case of the budding novelist; although there is
no denying that it is easier to show a young lady how to carry herself
than to show a would-be prose-writer how to please. His apprenticeship
must needs be a longer and a less definite one. Rules, indeed, there
are for him—cut and dried rules, relating to accuracy of grammar and
punctuation, avoidance of involved sentences, neologisms, catch phrases
and the like; but these will not take him quite the length that he
wishes to go. They will not take him quite that length; yet they will
help him on his way, and he must condescend to study them. Furthermore,
he should study slowly and carefully the works of those who have
attained renown chiefly by reason of their style. Addison, Gibbon,
Macaulay, Carlyle, Ruskin, Sterne—to select at random half a dozen
names out of the throng which at once presents itself—he ought not
only to be familiar with the writings of all these and other masters
of English prose, but to scrutinise closely their several methods, so
that he may come by degrees to understand what the capabilities of the
language are and what admirable, though widely divergent, results have
been arrived at by those who have vanquished its difficulties.
With that language it is true that some of the writers just cited have
taken liberties: one, in particular, has allowed himself enormous and
audacious liberties. But that is only because he had made the language
so completely his servant that he was in a certain sense entitled to
do as he pleased with it. The student is not recommended to imitate
Carlyle; for the matter of that, he is not recommended to imitate
anybody, direct, deliberate imitation being as surely foredoomed to
failure in literature as in all other arts. But he may be advised to
dissect, to analyse, to search patiently for the secrets of proportion,
of balance, of rhythmical, harmonious diction. Haply he will discover
these; in any event he will reap the benefit of having mixed with good
company, just as, in playing no matter what game, we all insensibly
improve when we are associated with or pitted against our superiors.
And the stricter the rules by which he determines to bind himself down
the better it will be for him in the long run. In musical composition
many things are said to be “forbidden”—so many that the bewildered
student of harmony and counterpoint, knowing how frequently great
composers have transgressed the limits within which he is cramped, is
apt to exclaim in despair, “But you won’t let me do anything! Why may
I not do what Bach has done?” The only answer that can be returned is,
“Because you are not Bach.” Ultimate ease and liberty are the outcome,
as dexterity is the outcome, of early discipline; it may be that they
are never truly or certainly acquired by any other means.
[Sidenote: The necessity of “infinite pains”]
It is, in short, the old story of “infinite pains.” Whether “the
capacity for taking infinite pains” is or is not satisfactory as a
definition of genius is another question; but we may at least be sure
that infinite pains are never wasted. Not that we have any right to
expect an immediate and abundant harvest. It is the slow, but sure,
education of the taste and the ear that has to be aimed at, and this
will only come to us by imperceptible degrees. Gustave Flaubert,
than whom no more painstaking writer ever lived, was so persuaded
of the artistic compulsion that lay upon him to use the right word
or the right phrase, so convinced that for every idea there is but
one absolutely fitting word or phrase, that he would spend hours in
tormenting himself over a single sentence. Often at the end of all he
remained dissatisfied—could not but be dissatisfied. In one of his
letters he draws a pathetic parallel between himself and a violinist
who plays false, being well aware that he is playing false, yet lacking
the power to correct his faulty execution. The tears roll down the
unhappy fiddler’s cheeks, the bow falls from his hand....
[Sidenote: Writers too lenient with themselves]
Ah, well! we cannot all be artists like Flaubert. We are mediocrities
at best, most of us; we know that we are mediocrities, and we are not
going to cry about it. But let us acknowledge, with the humility which
beseems us, how immeasurably he was our superior, not in genius alone,
but in industry, in conscientiousness, in self-sacrifice. We mediocre
folks, who have acquired a certain facility of expression, are apt
to be only too lenient with ourselves. The exact word that we want,
the precise phrase suitable to our purpose, are not forthcoming; but
others are ready and will serve well enough. We take the others, hoping
that nobody will notice their ineptitude. The beginner also will, in
process of time, arrive at this fatal facility, and it is not in the
least likely that he will have strength to resist a temptation to which
ninety-nine authors out of a hundred succumb. All the more important,
therefore, is it that he should adopt and observe the strictest rules
at starting; so that he may form a style of which, once formed, he
will never be able to divest himself. We made a comparison just now
between the arts of literature and equitation. They have not a great
deal in common; but they are so far alike that early training has the
first and last word in each. There are men who are almost in the front
rank amongst riders, but who have never reached, and never will quite
reach, that rank, because of the errors of those who instructed them in
their youth. Heavy-handed they are, and heavy-handed they will remain
till the end of the chapter. So it is, not only with mediocre writers,
but even with some who belong to the first class. These have taken up
tricks and mannerisms, pretty enough and pleasing enough while the
charm of novelty still hung about them, but provoking and perilous
from the moment that they have lost that charm, that they have ceased
to be servants and have become masters. Macaulay, for example, had an
admirable style; yet after a time one grows irritated with it, knowing
so well in what manner he will deal with any given subject under the
sun. At the opening of some sonorous, well-balanced paragraph the
reader is prone to say to himself, with a sigh, “Ah, I see you coming
with your distressing antitheses!” And there, sure enough, they are,
neat, polished, brilliant, turned out to order—wearisome. But if,
during his lifetime, some reader of his had had the impudence to point
this out to him, and if, with the modesty which is a part of true
greatness, he had admitted that the criticism was not unjust, could he,
do you think, have written otherwise than as he did?
[Sidenote: Success attained]
Therefore, let the tyro put away from him all insidious temptations
to be brilliant or original; let him think chiefly, if not solely, of
being lucid; let him store up for himself a vocabulary from which all
ambiguous terms shall be rigorously excluded. So, having studied, he
will be able, like the _débutante_, to be natural, and will have gained
possession of a style which will, at any rate, be correct and his own.
So, too, he may perhaps be able to look back not discontentedly upon
a measure of good, solid work accomplished, when the time shall come
to hang up the fiddle and the bow, to lay aside the worn-out old pen
and make his final bow to a public by whom he may anticipate with some
confidence that he will be speedily and mercifully forgotten.