[Sidenote: The fault of the age]
Hurry and scamper, the result of a feverish desire to reap the fruits
of every undertaking before the seed is well-nigh sown, is one of
the characteristics of the times in which we live. Few can endure to
bestow upon their work a moment more of time, or a hair’s-breadth
more of pains than will carry it through to the goal on which their
ambition—often a very poor and low one—is set; while, as for the
greater proportion of our present day aspirants to fame, if they
ever pause to reflect upon the infinitude of loving care and anxiety
lavished upon the products of bygone days, it is with a sensation of
contempt and a pluming of themselves upon their superior smartness and
activity.
[Sidenote: A mischievous mistake]
Now there is of course a great deal to be said in favour of energetic
composition, and it cannot be denied that many of the best things
ever done, or written, or painted, have been flashed off, as it
were, red-hot from the brain. We cannot believe, for instance, that
Mr. Rudyard Kipling is ever long over his burning sketches of human
life, wherein every word tells; and we know that Lord Byron penned
canto after canto of _Childe Harold_ with scarce a correction or a
hesitation; but it is a mistake so mischievous for beginners in the
fields of literature to fall into (and it is, moreover, one that so
many do fall into), that of imagining that they too can dash down
straightway their own crude thoughts—even when the thoughts themselves
are good and original—and send them to the press, all unrevised and
_un-thought-out_, that I am going to begin this brief paper addressed
to young readers and would-be writers by the single word “Hold!” Pause.
Consider what you want to do, and whether you have indeed strength and
patience to do it.
[Sidenote: An author’s experience]
This is the sort of thing that often happens; that has happened in my
experience scores of times. A boy, or girl—usually a girl—comes up with
shy diffidence and much assumed modesty of demeanour to beg for just
one word of encouragement—or discouragement—anent a roll of manuscript
she holds in her timid hand. Is it _any_ good _at all_? She knows it is
_very_ badly written; she is afraid she will only be laughed at; but
still it would be so kind, so very kind, if I would just glance over
it when I have a spare moment—oh, _any_ moment will do; she is only
ashamed of taking up my valuable time with her foolish attempts. All
the time I can see she is on the tenterhooks of impatience, and that
while half-alarmed by her own boldness, there is an underlying sense
of having rushed into the battle-field in which laurels are to be won,
and wherein a special wreath awaits her own fair brow.
[Sidenote: The vanity of young writers]
Perhaps the manuscript is really full of promise. With some alterations
and amendments, with an idea worked out here, and a digression omitted
there, with, in short, a general revision and re-casting of the whole,
it would be worth while offering to the public through the medium of
an editor or publisher. But when I proceed to point out all that is
to be done, and when, thinking to please and encourage, I suggest,
“Now, after you have gone carefully through the whole, and written it
out afresh, bring it back, and we will see what can be done to get it
into print,” I am amazed to find my young _littérateur_ on the verge
of tears! She doesn’t want to go all through “the horrid thing” again.
She is “sick of the sight of it.” She is sure I don’t think she will
ever write, or I “would never have said what I did!” It is impossible
to describe the disgust with which she eyes the poor MS. her hands have
reluctantly received from mine. I can scarcely believe those orbs which
regarded me so beseechingly a few hours before, can be the same which
now brim with sullen moisture. Possibly I am informed at this juncture
that my young friend would never have thought of writing, and would
never have supposed she could write, but for seeing what “rubbish” is
accepted and put into print at the present time. She felt she could do
at least as well as _that_, or _that_; and she is evidently surprised
that I do not at once declare she could do a great deal better. Now,
the awkward part of the business is, perchance, that I _have_ seen—have
fully recognised the fact that, could the ideal be raised, the effort
would rise in proportion; but perceiving no desire on the part of my
young writer to do better and worthier things than those she herself
condemns, only to rival them and to attain their infinitesimal measure
of success, I hardly know how to proceed. The case is hopeless. A
hundred to one I never hear of any further literary aspirations from
that quarter.
My young readers must of course understand that the above refers solely
to a certain class of would-be writers, namely, to those who write in
order _to have written_, in order to gratify secret vanity, and make
contemporaries stare; neither from love of the thing for itself, nor
because of the pressure of poverty—the two main causes of earnest
literary effort.
[Sidenote: The secret of success]
Let me now, however, suppose that I have to deal with a young
author in embryo of another sort, one who has real talent, combined
with patience, perseverance, and modesty. George Eliot’s saying,
that distinction in authorship is not to be won without “a patient
renunciation of small desires”—(I quote from memory, but fancy those
are the exact words)—has an acute meaning for those who have struggled
in the contest. It is not enough to be possessed of the true yearning
to give vent to the pent-up stores of imagination and observation
within the breast; there must be a resolute turning aside from every
hindrance, and a steadfast purpose to grudge neither time nor thought,
nor strength nor opportunity, in _perfecting_ the work which desire
or necessity begot. This holds good of every species of authorship,
but the warning is especially needed in the realms of fiction, because
fiction (of a sort) is so easy to write; and it is most of all needed
with the novel of “manners”—the novel which aims to depict our present
generation, with all its habits, customs, whims, and foibles—because
the novel of “manners” is the one apparently most within the reach of
every ordinary writer.
And yet, if you will believe me, dear young girl, who might write and
write well, if you would only take the pains, and not set your standard
so terribly low, and not be thirsting to see your name in print, and
hear what your companions have to say about it—if you will believe me,
scamped work is absolutely fatal to the novel of “manners.”
Listen, and I will tell you why. When a messenger who has witnessed
with his own eyes some terrible scene, dashes into the midst of an
awe-struck circle, and pours forth the tale of woe with sobbing breath
and bursting bombshells of words, who cares what those words are?
Their meaning is enough. But at another time, when in cheerful, social
intercourse, the same voice is raised to tell a quiet tale, or recount
a simple reminiscence, the tone, the look by which the narration is
accompanied, the phrases in which it is presented to the listening
audience, are _everything_ to its success. Thus, although a great scene
in romance may be enormously heightened and accentuated by well-chosen
language (as all famous romancists know), a novel which relies mainly
for its interest on a well-constructed plot, or on a thrilling life
of adventure, or on passionate inward contests (we have all of these
and many more varieties at the present day), will be better able to
dispense with the careful finish and polished style than the novel of
“manners,” to which they are absolutely indispensable.
[Sidenote: The perfection of art]
The novel of “manners” reaches its highest perfection in the products
of Thackeray and Jane Austen. I may be laughed at for naming these two
together, but I know who would not have laughed—Lord Macaulay would
not have laughed, neither would Sir Walter Scott, nor some more of the
greatest of our literary critics. What I mean is that neither Thackeray
nor Miss Austen have plots—in the accepted sense of the word—at
all. They alike take a page of human life and place it beneath the
microscope. We perceive all the creatures, large and small, wriggling
about. We have no breathless interest to learn whither they will
ultimately wriggle: we are simply content to study their movements and
requirements—yet it is a study of the most absorbing kind.
And although of course it was the marvellous knowledge of human nature
displayed by these two writers which placed them on the summit of their
sphere, the beauty of _Esmond_, and the charm of _Mansfield Park_,
are so heightened by the exquisitely picked phraseology in which even
the most trifling episodes are conveyed, that after long lapses of
time memory will often supply the very words, finding them incapable
of alteration or of improvement. I doubt if any reader could supply
half a dozen sentences on end from, we will say, Wilkie Collins, or
Charles Reade, or R. D. Blackmore. Their admirable novels, full of
spirit-stirring scenes, are not novels of “manners”; a precise and
formal arrangement of words would be almost out of place in them, and
would try the reader’s patience still more perhaps than the writer’s.
[Sidenote: Distinguished Novelists]
In penning the above do not let me be mistaken. Thackeray was not
by any means a master of style—his style was often faulty; he often
repeated himself; he seldom rounded off his sentences as Miss Austen
did. But he was careful with a most minute and elaborate care to
present every movement of his characters beneath the microscope so as
to fasten upon them the attention of the “great, stupid public,” who,
he averred, needed “catching by the ears to make it look!”
Of the present day no writer has more happily combined the delineation
of “manners” with the narration of beautiful and pathetic stories
than Mr. Thomas Hardy. One reads _Far from the Madding Crowd_ first
with hurried eagerness to learn its incidents and close, and again
with delighted lingering over its homely by-waters, when rustics sit
and chat. Mr. Barrie essays to follow in the same line, but in Mr.
Barrie the gift of depicting rural “manners” far surpasses the gift
of manipulating incident. Even _The Little Minister_ is nothing but a
string of characteristic scenes illustrative of the “manners” of the
Scottish parish.
Americans succeed wonderfully with novels of “manners,” as witness Mr.
Henry James and Mr. W. D. Howells. These distinguished novelists may
almost be said to dispense altogether with incident, and to rest their
claim on our sympathies entirely on the interest all thinking men and
women take in the emotions, agitations, ambitions, and distractions of
each other’s daily life.
[Sidenote: One drawback to contend with]
And at this point let me note one drawback which every delineator
of “manners,” pure and simple, has to contend with. He, or she, is
absolutely sure to be accused of drawing scenes and characters from
personal experience. The fidelity with which such a writer seeks to
depict life as it presents itself in its homely, every-day aspect,
raises the inevitable outcry, which, when once set a-going, can never
be silenced; until such of us as labour in this special field are
literally tripped up at every turn; and people we have never seen, and
whose very names are unknown to us, are asserted with the most positive
authority to be our prototypes for heroes and heroines!
To such an extent has this craze for fitting on caps been carried, that
before the publication of some of my own novels in “Maga” I have been
reasoned with by Mr. Blackwood, the courteous and thoughtful editor,
on the question of satirising certain people whom he did not for a
moment doubt were the originals of my leading characters. To his almost
incredulous amazement I was unaware of the very existence of those
so-called “originals”!
An idea may be caught or a long train of thought may be fired by the
idiosyncrasy of some one present in person before the writer; but to
say that the whole character when completely developed is drawn from
life because of the hint, as it were, which began it, is like saying
that an animal is copied from life because a single bone has been
placed in the hands of the artist, from which he has been enabled—as
anatomists know can be done—to piece together the entire creature, and
in his mind’s eye behold it.
[Sidenote: Fame slow but lasting]
The novel of “manners” rarely meets with sudden appreciation. Miss
Burney’s _Evelina_, to be sure, was an exception; but then _Evelina_
was so broadly humorous, so farcical, and, moreover, came out at a
time when so few competitors were in the field, that it can hardly be
reckoned with. Miss Ferrier, that delightful Scotchwoman, whose novels
are all “manners” together, had only, and still has only, a limited
if an enthusiastic _clientèle_; whereas Miss Austen was ridiculously
overlooked until she was dead. Her quiet, keen, unerring insight into
the hearts of men and women had to work itself by slow degrees into the
abiding recognition wherewith it is at last crowned.
But if slowly won, such laurels never fade. Human nature being the same
in every age, the student of human nature can never be really out of
date; his or her production must always appeal to something within
the thoughtful reader’s breast, and awaken a response. The habits
and customs of every generation may vary, but these are only like to
the faces of the different timepieces made in different periods; the
mainsprings are the same, the object of the timepiece is the same;
wherefore, recognising our own passions, pursuits, and aims beneath the
different exterior of our forefathers, we can never regard them with
indifference.
Thus, the novel of “manners,” which caught the essence of its own
times, must as a natural sequence amuse and instruct ours. Other
kinds of fiction may catch people’s fancy more quickly at the outset;
other and more brilliant varieties may outshine the sober tints and
slender texture of its woof; but the tapestry pictures in the novel of
“manners,” with every stitch complete, and every thread in its right
place, will be found giving delight to new generations of readers, when
many of the showy and striking works of fiction which now meet the eye
at every turn are mouldering on the shelf, their very names forgotten.