The people that inhabit novels are like other peoples of the earth--if
they are peaceful, they have no history. So that, therefore, in novels,
as in nations, it is the great restless heights of society that are to
be approached with greatest awe and that engage admiration and regard.
Everybody is interested in Nero, but not one person in ten thousand can
tell you anything definite about Constantine or even Marcus Aurelius. If
you should speak off-handedly about Amelia Sedley in the presence of a
thousand average readers you would probably miss 85 per cent. of effect;
if you said Becky Sharp the whole thousand would understand.
There is this to be said of disreputable folk, that they are clever and
picturesque and interesting, at least.
An elderly jeweler in New York City was arrested several years ago
upon the charge of receiving stolen gold and silver plate, watches and
jewelry from well-known thieves. For forty years he had been a
respected merchant, a church officer, a husband, father, and citizen, of
irreproachable reputation, with enduring friendships. He was charitable,
liberal and kindly. For decade after decade he was the experienced, wise
and fatherly “fence” of professional burglars and thieves. Why, it would
be an education in itself to know that man, to shake his honest hand,
fresh from charity or concealment, and smoke a pipe with him and
hear him talk about things frankly. When he gave to the missionary
collection, rest assured he gave sincerely; when he “covered swag,”
into the melting pot for an industrious burglar, he did so only in the
regular course of business.
Strange as it may seem, even criminals have human feelings in common
with all of us. The old Thug who stepped aside into the bushes and
prayed earnestly while his son was throwing his first strangling
cloth around the throat of the English traveler--prayed for that son's
honorable, successful beginning in his life devotion--was a good father.
And when he was told that the son had acted with unusual skill, who
can doubt that his tears of joy were sincere and humble tears of
thankfulness? At least Bowanee knew. Can you not imagine a kind-hearted
Chinese matron saying to her neighbor over the bamboo fence, “Yes,
we sent the baby down to the beach (or the river bank or the forest)
yesterday. We couldn't afford to keep it. I hope the gods have taken its
little soul. At any rate it is sure of salvation hereafter.”
* * * * *
Some twenty years ago I took the night train from Pineville to
Barbourville, in the Kentucky mountains, reaching the latter place
about 11 o'clock of a cold, rainy, dark November night. Only one other
passenger alighted. There was an express wagon to take us to the town,
a mile or so distant, and the wagon was already heavy with freight
packages. The road was through a narrow lane, hub-deep with mud, and
what, with stalling and resting, we were more than half an hour getting
to the hotel. My fellow passenger was about my age, and was a shrewd,
well-informed native of the vicinity. He knew the mineral, timber and
agricultural resources, was evidently an enterprising business man and
an intelligent but not voluble talker. He accepted a cigar, and advised
me to see the house in Barbourville where the late Justice Samuel Miller
was born. At the hotel he registered first, and, as he was going to
leave next day and I was to remain several days, he told the clerk to
give me the better of the two rooms vacant. It was a very pleasant act
of thoughtfulness. The name on the register was “A. Johnson.” The next
day I asked the clerk about Mr. Johnson. My fellow passenger was Andy
Johnson, whose fame as a feud-fighter and slayer of men has never been
exceeded in the history of mountain feuds. He then had three or four men
to his credit, definitely, and several doubtful ascriptions. He added a
few more, I believe, before he met the inevitable.
Now, while Mr. Johnson, in all matters where killing seemed to him to be
appropriate, was a most prompt and accurate man in accomplishing it, yet
he was not the murderer that ignorant and isolated folks conceive such
persons to be. The cigar I had given him was a very bad, cheap cigar,
and, if he had merely wanted murder, he had every reason to kill me for
giving it to him, and he had a perfect night for the deed. But he smoked
it to the stub without a complaint or remark and saw that I got the best
room in the hotel. Johnson was a cautious and considerate fellow-man,
whose murders were doubtless private hobbies and exercises growing out
of his environment and heredity.
One of the houses I most delight to enter in a certain town is one where
I am always sure to see a devoted and happy wife and beautiful,
playful children clustering around the armchair in which sits a man who
committed one of the most cold-blooded assassinations you can imagine.
He is an honored, esteemed and model citizen. His acquittal was a
miracle in a million chances. He has justified it. It is beautiful to
see those happy children clinging to the hand that--
Well, dear friends, the dentist is not a cruel man in his social
capacity, and you can get delicious viands instead of nauseous medicines
at the doctor's private table.
That is why beginning novel readers should take no advice. Strike out
alone through the highways and lanes of story, character and experience.
The best novelist is the one who fears not to tell you the truth, which
is more wonderful than fiction. It is always the best hearts that bend
to mistakes. Absolute virtue is as sterile as granite rock; absolute
vice is as poisonous as a stagnant pond. No healthy interest or
speculation can linger about either. Enter into the struggle and know
human nature; don't stay outside and try to appear superior.
For, which of us has not his crimes of thought to account for? Think
not, because Andy Johnson or William Sykes or Dr. Webster actually
killed his man, that you are guiltless, because you haven't. Have you
never wanted to? Answer that, in your conscience and in solitude--not to
me. Speak up to yourself and then say whether the difference between you
and the recorded criminal is not merely the difference between the overt
act and the faltering wish. It is a matter of courage or of custom.
Speaking for one gentleman, who knows himself and is not afraid to
confess, I can say that, while he could not kill a mouse with his own
hand, he has often murdered men in his heart. It may have been in fiery
youth over the wrong name on a dancing card, or, later, when a rival
got the better of him in discussion, or, when the dreary bore came and
wouldn't go, or, when misdirected goodness insisted on thrusting upon
him intended kindness that was wormwood and poison to the soul. Are
we not covetous (not confessedly, of course, but actually)? Is not
covetousness the thwarted desire of theft without courage? How many
of us, now--speaking man to man--can open up our veiled thoughts and
desires and then look the Ten Commandments in the eye without blushing?
* * * * *
The bravest, noblest, gentlest gentleman I have ever known was the Count
de la Fere, whom we at the Hotel de Troisville, in old Paris, called
“Athos.” He was not merely sans peur et sans reproche as Bayard, but was
positive in his virtues. He fought for his friends without even asking
the cause of the fray. Yet, what a prig he seemed to be at first, with
his eternal gentle melancholy, his irreproachable courtesy, unvarying
kindness and complete unselfishness. You cannot--quite--warm--to--a--man
--who--is--so--perfectly--right--that--he--embarrasses--everybody--but--the--angels.
But, when he ordered the gloomy and awful death of the treacherous
Miladi, woman though she was, and thus as a perfect gentleman took on
human frailty also, ah! how attractively noble and strong he became I In
that respect he was the antithetical corollary of William Sykes, who was
a purposeless, useless and uninterestingly regular scoundrel, thief and
brute, until he redeemed himself by becoming the instrument of social
justice and pounding that unendurable lady, Miss Nancy, of his name,
into absence from the world. Perhaps I have remarked before--and even if
I have it is pleasant to repeat it--that Bill Sykes had his faults, as
also have most of us, but it was given to him to earn forgiveness by the
aid of a cheap chair and the providential propinquity of Miss Nancy. I
never think of it without regretting that poor Bill Whally is dead. He
did it--so--much--to--my--taste!
Who shall we say is the most loved and respected criminal in fiction?
Not Monsignor Rodin, of “The Wandering Jew;” not Thenardier in “Les
Miserables.” These are really not criminals; they are allegorical
figures of perfect crime. They are solar centers, so far off and fixed
that one may regard them only with awe, reverence and fear. They are
types of fate, desire, temptation and chastisement. Let us turn to our
own flesh and blood and speak gratefully of them.
* * * * *
Who says Count Fosco? Now there is a criminal worthy of affection and
confidence. What an expansive nature, with kindness presented on every
side. Even the dogs fawned upon him and the birds came at his call.
An accomplished gentleman, considerately mannered--queer, as becomes a
foreigner, yet possessing the touchstone of universal sympathy. Another
man with crime to commit almost certainly would have dispatched it with
ruthless coldness; but how kindly and gently Count Fosco administered
the cord of necessity. With what delicacy he concealed the bowstring
and spoke of the Bosphorus only as a place for moonlight excursions. He
could have presented prussic acid and sherry to a lady in such a manner
as to render the results a grateful sacrifice to his courtesy. It was
all due to his corpulence; a “lean and hungry” villain lacks repose,
patience and the tact of good humor. In almost every small social and
individual attitude Count Fosco was human. He was exceedingly attentive
to his wife in society and bullied her only in private and when
necessary. He struck no dramatic attitudes. “The world is mine oyster!”
is not said by real men bent on terrible deeds. Count Fosco is the
perfect villain, and also the perfect criminal, inasmuch as he not only
acts naturally, but deliberately determines the action instead of being
drawn into it or having it forced upon him.
He was a highly cultivated type of Andy Johnson, inasmuch as crime
with him was not a life purpose, but what is called in business a
“side-line.” All of us have our hobbies; the closely confined clerk
goes home and roots up his yard to plant flower bulbs or cabbage plants;
another fancies fowls; another man collects pewter pots and old brass
and the millionaire takes to priceless horses; others of us turn from
useful statistics and go broke on novels or poetry or music. Count Fosco
was an educated gentleman and the pleasure of life was his purpose;
crime and intrigue were his recreations. Andy Johnson was a good
business man and wealth producer; murder was the direction in which
his private understanding of personal disagreements was exercised and
vented. Some men turn to poker playing, which is as wasteful as murder
and not half as dignified. Count Fosco is the villain par excellence of
novels. I do not remember what he did, because “The Woman in White” is
the best novel in the world to read gluttonously at a sitting and then
forget absolutely. It is nearly always a new book if you use it that
way. When the world is dark, the fates bilious, the appetite dead
and the infernal twinges of pain or sickness seem beyond reach of the
doctor, “The Woman in White” is a friend indeed.
* * * * *
But the man of men for villains, not necessarily criminals; but the
ordinary, every-day, picturesque worthies of good, honest scoundrelism
and disreputableness is Sir Robert Louis Stevenson. You can afford
conscientiously to stuff ballot boxes in order that his election may be
secured as Poet Laureate of Rascals. Leaving out John Silver and Billy
Bones and Alan Breck, whom every privately shriven rascal of us simply
must honor and revere as giants of courage, cunning and controlled,
conscience, Stevenson turned from singles and pairs, and in “The Ebb
Tide,” drove, by turns, tandem and abreast, a four-in-hand of scoundrels
so buoyant, natural, strong, and yet each so totally unlike the others,
that every honest novel reader may well be excused for shedding tears
when he reflects that the marvelous hand and heart that created them are
gone forever from the haunts of the interestingly wicked. No novelist
ever exposed the human nature of rascals as Stevenson did.
Now, lago was not a villain; he was a venomous toad, a scorpion, a
mad-dog, a poisonous plant in a fair meadow. There was nobody lago
loved, no weakness he concealed, no point of contact with any human
being. His sister was Pandora, his brother made the shirt of Nessus,
himself dealt in Black Plagues and the Leprosy. The old Serpent was
permitted to rise from his belly and walk upright on the tip of his tail
when he met Iago, as a demonstration of moral superiority. But think
of those three Babes-in-the-Wood villains, skipper Davis, the Yankee
swashbuckler and ship scuttler; Herrick, the dreamy poet, ruined by
commerce and early love, with his days of remorse and his days of
compensatary liquor; and Huish, the great-hearted Scotch ruffian, who
chafed at the conventional concealments of trade among pals and never
could--as a true Scotchman--understand why you should wait to use a
knife upon a victim when promptness lay in the club right at hand--think
of them sailing out of Honolulu harbor on the Farallone.
Let who will prefer to have sailed with Jason or Aeneas or Sinbad; but
the Farallone and its precious freight of rascality gets my money every
time. Think of the three incomparable reprobates afloat, with one case
of smallpox and a cargo of champagne, daring to make no port, with over
a hundred million square miles of ocean around them, every ten lookout
knots of it containing a possible peril! It was simply grand--not
pirates, shipwrecks or mutinies could beat that problem. And the pathos
of the sixth day, when, with every man Jack of them looking delirium
tremens in the face and suspecting each the other, Mr. Huish opened a
new case of champagne and--found clear spring water under the French
label! The honest scoundrels had been laid by the heels by a common wine
merchant in the regular way of business! Oh, gentlemen, there should be
honor in business; so that gallant villains can be free of betrayal.
The keynote of these gentlemen is struck in the second chapter, where
all three of them writing lies home--Davis and Herrick, sentimental
equivocations, Huish the strongest of brag with nobody to send it to.
In a burst of weakness Davis tells Herrick what a villain he has been,
through rum, and how he can not let his daughter, “little Adar,” know
it. “Yes, there was a woman on board,” he said, describing the ship
he had scuttled. “Guess I sent her to hell, if there's such a place.
I never dared go home again, and I don't know,” he added, bitterly,
“what's come to them.”
“Thank you, Captain,” said Herrick, “I never liked you better!”
Is it not in human nature to cuddle to a great sheepish murderer like
that, who groans in secret for his little girl--if even the girl was
truth? I think she turned out a myth, but he had the sentiment.
Was there ever a more melancholy, remorse-stricken wretch than Cap'n
Davis? Or a gentler and seedier poet than Herrick? Or a more finely
sodden and soaked old rum sport than Huish (not--Whish!) But it was not
until they fell in with Attwater that their weakness as scoundrels was
exposed. Attwater was so splendidly religious! He was determined to have
things right if he had to have them so by bloodshed; he saved souls by
bullets. Things were right when they were as he thought they should
be. And believing so, with Torquemada, Alexander Sixtus and other most
religious brethren, he was ready to set up the stake and fagot and
cauterize sin with fire. One thing you can say about the religious folks
that are big with cocksureness and a mission--they may make mistakes,
but the mistake doesn't talk and criticise.
* * * * *
The only rascal worthy to travel in company with Stevenson's rascals
is the Chevalier Balibari, of Castle Barry, in Ireland, whose admirable
memoirs have been so well told by Mr. Thackeray. The Baron de la Motte
in “Denis Duval,” was advantageously born to ornament the purple and
fine linen of picturesque unrighteousness--but his was a brief star that
fell unfinished from its place amidst the Pleiades. Thackeray's genius
ran more to disreputable men than to actual villains. But he drew two
scoundrels that will serve as beacon lights to any clean-souled youth
with the instinct to take warning. One was Lord Steyne, the other, Dr.
George Brand Firmin; one the aristocratic, class-bred, cynical brute,
the other the cold, tuft-hunting trained hypocrite. What encouragement
of self-respect Judas Iscariot might have received if he had met Dr.
Firmin!
Dr. Chadband, Mr. Pecksniff, Bill Sykes, Fagin, Mr. Murdstone, of
Dickens' family--they are all strong in impression, but wholly unreal;
mere stage villains and caricatures. A villain who has no good traits,
no hobbies of kindness and affection, is never born into the world; he
is always created by grotesque novel writers.
The villains of Dumas, Hugo, Balzac, Daudet are French. There may have
been, or may be now such prototypes alive in France--because the Dreyfus
case occurred in France, and no doubt much can happen in that fine,
fertile country which translators cannot fully convey over the
frontiers; but they have always seemed to me first cousins to my
friends, the ogres, the evil magicians and the werewolves, and, in that
much, not quite natural.
For heroes of the genuine cavalleria type, plumed, doubleted, pumpt and
magnificent, give me Dumas; for good folks and true, the great American
Fenimore Cooper; but for the blessed company of blooming, breathing
rascals, Stevenson and Thackeray all the time.