THE SUCCESSORS--TO THACKERAY
A person inexperienced in the ways of life and literature might expect
that such developments as those surveyed and discussed in the last
chapter must have immediate and unbroken development further. Scott had
thrown open, and made available, the whole vast range of history for the
romancer: Miss Austen had shown the infinite possibilities of ordinary
and present things for the novelist. And such a one might contend that,
even if the common idea of definite precursorship and teachership be a
mistake, the more subtle doctrine that such work as Scott's, and as Miss
Austen's, is really the result of generally working forces, as well as
of individual genius, would lead to the same conclusion. But the
expectation would show his inexperience, and his ignorance of the fact
that Art, unlike Science, declines to be bound by any calculable laws
whatsoever.
It was indeed impossible that Scott's towering fame should not draw the
nobler sort, and his immense gains the baser, to follow in his track:
and they promptly did so. But, as he himself quoted in the remarkable
comments (above alluded to) on his early imitators in the _Diary_, they
had "gotten his fiddle, but not his rosin"--an observation the truth of
which may be shown presently. Miss Austen's immediate influence in the
other direction was almost _nil_: and this was hardly to be regretted,
because a tolerably stationary state of manners, language, etc., such
as her kind of novel requires, had not quite, though it had nearly, been
reached. At any rate, the kind of ebb or half ebb, which so often,
though not so certainly, follows flood-tides in literature, came upon
the novel in the twenties and thirties. Even the striking appearance of
Dickens and _Pickwick_ in 1837 can hardly be said to have turned it
distinctly: for the Dickensian novel is a species by itself--neither
strictly novel nor strictly romance, but, as Polonius might say, a
picaresque-burlesque-sentimental-farcical-realist-fantastic nondescript.
Not till _Vanity Fair_ did the novel of pure real life advance its
standard once more: while the historical novel-romance of a new kind may
date its revival with--though it should scarcely trace that revival
to--_Esmond_, or _Westward Ho!_ or both.
Between Scott on the earlier side and Dickens and Thackeray on the
other, there was an immense production of novels, illustrated by not a
few names which should rank high in the second class, while some would
promote more than one of them to the first. The lines of development, as
well as the chief individual practitioners, may be best indicated by
short discussions of Hook, Bulwer, Disraeli, Ainsworth, James, Marryat,
and Peacock.
The most probable demur to this list is likely to be taken at the very
first name. Theodore Hook has had no return of the immense popularity
which his _Sayings and Doings_ (1826-1829) obtained for him; nor,
perhaps, is he ever likely to have any; nor yet, further, save in one
respect, can he be said to deserve it. Flimsily constructed, hastily
written, reflecting indeed the ways and speech of the time after a
fashion, but in a distorted mirror and with a thin and superficial
representation, nearer to bad drama than to good literature, full of
horseplay and forced high jinks--his stories have all the inseparable
faults of improvisation together with those of art that is out of
fashion and manners-painting (such as it is) of manners that are dead,
and when alive were those of a not very picturesque, pleasing, or
respectable transition. Yet, for all this, Hook has a claim on the
critical historian of literature, and especially of the novel, which has
been far too little acknowledged. And this claim does not even consist
in the undoubted fact that his influence both on Dickens and on
Thackeray was direct and very great. It lies in the larger and more
important, though connected, fact that, at a given moment, his were the
hands in which the torch of the novel-procession was deposited. He
stands to fiction almost exactly as Leigh Hunt stands to the
miscellaneous essay. He modernised and multiplied its subjects,
attractions, appeals: he "vulgarised" it in the partly good French
sense, as well as in the wholly bad English one; he was its journalist
and _colporteur_. He broke up the somewhat stock-and-type moulds of
eighteenth-century tale-telling; admitted a plurality, almost an
infinity, of interest and incident; gave a sort of universal franchise
to possible subjects of novel; and (perhaps most important of all)
banished from that novel the tendency to conventional "lingo" which,
though never so prevalent in it as in eighteenth-century drama, had
existed. It may seem to some readers that there is an exaggerated and
paradoxical opposition between this high praise and the severe censure
pronounced a little above--that both cannot be true. But both are true:
and it is a really natural and necessary cause and proof at once of
their truth that Hook never wrote a really good novel, hardly even a
really good tale ("Gervase Skinner" is probably the best), and yet that
he deserves the place here given to him.
Ainsworth and James perhaps deserve to be taken next, not so much in
point of merit as because both, though continuing (especially Ainsworth)
very late, began pretty early. Indeed, a book in which Ainsworth had a
hand, though it is said to be not wholly his, _Sir John Chiverton_, was
with Horace Smith's _Brambletye House_ (1826), the actual subject of
Scott's criticism above quoted. Both Ainsworth and James are unconcealed
followers of Scott himself: and they show the dangers to which the
historical romance is exposed when it gets out of the hands of genius.
Of the two, James had the greater scholarship, the better command of
English, and perhaps a nearer approach to command also of character:
Ainsworth more "fire in his interior," more variety, somewhat more
humour (though neither was strong in this respect), and a certain not
useless or despicable faculty of splashy scene-painting and rough but
not ineffective stage-management. But of Scott's combination of poetry,
humour, knowledge of life, reading, grasp of character, and command of
effective dialogue and description, both were utterly destitute: and
both fell into the mistake (which even Dumas did not wholly avoid) of
attempting to give the historical effect by thrusting in lardings of
pure history, by overloading descriptions of dress, etc., and, in short,
by plastering the historic colour on, instead of suffusing it, as Scott
had managed to do. Popular as they were, not merely with youthful
readers, they undoubtedly brought the historical novel into some
discredit a little before the middle of the century.[20]
[20] Here and in a good many cases to come it is impossible to
particularise criticism. It matters the less that, from
Ainsworth's _Rookwood_ (1834) and James' _Richelieu_ (1829)
onwards, the work of both was very much _par sibi_ in merit and
defect alike.
With Bulwer and Disraeli we get into a different sphere of
literature--whether into the same in both cases, and whether, if so,
into one of the highest, are questions on which no general agreement has
yet been reached--on which, perhaps, no general agreement is even
possible.
With regard to the second, it must be remembered that to him, whether as
Mr. Disraeli or as Lord Beaconsfield, novel-writing was always a
"by-work"--partly a means to his real end of politics, partly a
relaxation from the work necessary to that end. He called himself a
"gentleman of the press"--with that mixture of sincerity, purpose, and
ironical simulation which brought on him, from unintelligent or not very
honest opponents, and even from others, the charge of affectation, if
not of hypocrisy. And, undoubtedly, he did a good deal of work for the
press, and very remarkable work too--almost wholly in the kind of
novel-writing, from _Vivian Grey_ (1826) to _Endymion_ (1880). Yet it
may be permitted--in the face of some more than respectable opinion on
the other side--to doubt whether, except in some curious sports and
by-products, he ever produced real novel-work of the highest class. In
the satiric-fantastic tale--in a kind of following of Voltaire--such as
_Ixion_, he has hardly a superior, unless it be Anthony Hamilton, who is
the superior of Voltaire himself and the master of everybody. For a pure
love-novel of a certain kind, _Henrietta Temple_ (1837) is bad to
beat--and in a curious cross between the historical, biographical, and
the romantic, _Venetia_ (same year) also stands pretty much alone. But
all the rest, more or less political, more or less "of society," more or
less fantastic--_Coningsby_ (1844) as well as _Alroy_ (1833), _Tancred_
(1847) as well as _Vivian Grey, Sybil_ (1845), as well as _The Young
Duke_ (1831), "leave to desire" in a strange way. Like the three which
have been excepted for praise, each is in a manner _sui generis_, while
the whole group stands, in a manner also, apart from others and by
itself. There is astonishing cleverness everywhere, in regard to almost
every point of novel-composition, though with special regard to
epigrammatic phrase. But the whole is _inorganic_ somehow, and more than
somehow unreal; without (save in the cases mentioned) attaining that
obviously unreal but persuasive phantasmagoria which some great writers
of fiction have managed to put in existence and motion. How far this is
due to the fact that most of the novels are political is a question
rather to be hinted than to be discussed. But the present writer has
never read a political novel, whether on his own side or on others, that
seemed to him to be wholly satisfactory.
Bulwer--for it is perhaps here not impolite or improper still to call
the first Lord Lytton by the name under which he wrote for forty years,
and solidly niched himself in the novel-front of the minster of English
Literature--had not a few points of resemblance to his rival and future
chief. But their relations to politics and letters were reversed.
Disraeli was a born politician who was also a very considerable man of
letters: Bulwer was a born man of letters who was a by no means
inconsiderable politician. His literary ability was extraordinarily
diversified: but, once more, he was (here also) a born novelist, who was
also a not inconsiderable dramatist; a critic who might not impossibly
have been great, a miscellanist of ability, and a verse-writer than whom
many a worse has somehow or other obtained the name of poet. He began
novel-writing very early (_Falkland_ is of 1827), he continued it all
his life, and he was the very Proteus-chameleon of the novel in changing
his styles to suit the tastes of the day. He never exactly copied
anybody: and in all his various attempts he went extremely near to the
construction of masterpieces. In the novel of society with _Pelham_
(1828); the novel of crime with _Eugene Aram_ (1832) and _Zanoni_
(1842); the novel of passion and a sort of mystery with _Ernest
Maltravers_ and _Alice_; the historic romance with _The Last Days of
Pompeii_ (1834), _The Last of the Barons_ (1843), and _Harold_ (1848),
he made marks deep and early. When the purely domestic kind came in he
made them, earlier and deeper still, with _The Caxtons_ (1850), _My
Novel_ (1853), etc. He caught the "sensation" ball at nearly its first
service with his old "mystery" racket, and played the most brilliant
game of the whole tournament in _A Strange Story_ (1862). At the last he
tried later kinds still in books like _The Coming Race_ (1871), _The
Parisians_ (1873), and _Kenelm Chillingly_. And once, Pallas being kind,
he did an almost perfect thing (there is not a speck or a flaw in it
except, perhaps, the mechanical death of the bulldog) and produced one
of the best examples of one of the best and oldest classes of fiction
known to the world, in the ghost-story of _The Haunted and the Haunters_
(1859).
Such a mass, such a length, such a variety of production, with so many
merits in it, would be difficult to meet elsewhere in our department.
And yet very few critics of unquestionable competence, if any, have
accorded the absolute First Class to Lord Lytton as a novelist. That
this is partly (and rather unjustly) due to the singular and sometimes
positively ridiculous grandiloquence and to the half-mawkish,
half-rancid, sentimentality which too often mar his earlier novels is
probably true. But it is not all the truth: if it were, it would be
almost sufficient to point out that he outgrew the first of these faults
completely, the second almost completely; and that from _The Caxtons_
(1850) onward there is hardly any stain on his literary character in
any such respect. But other faults--or at least defects--remain. They
may be almost summed up in the charge of want of _consummateness_.
Bulwer could be romantic--but his romance had the touch of bad taste and
insincerity referred to above. He could, as in _The Caxtons_, be fairly
true to ordinary life--but even then he seemed to feel a necessity of
setting off and as it were apologising for the simplicity and veracity
by touches--in fact by _douches_--of Sternian fantastry, and by other
touches of what was a little later to be called sensationalism. Even his
handling of the supernatural, which was undoubtedly a strong point of
his, was not wholly _de ban aloi_. To pronounce him, as was once done by
an acute and amiable judge, "the _hum_miest of _bugs_" was excessive in
life, and would be preposterous in literature. But there undoubtedly
was, with rare exceptions, a suspicion of what is called in slang
"faking" about his work. The wine is not "neat" but doctored; the
composition is _pastiche_; a dozen other metaphors--of stucco, veneer,
glueing-up--suggest themselves. And then there suggests itself, in turn,
a sort of shame at such imputations on the author of such a mass of
work, so various, so interesting, so important as accomplishment,
symptom, and pattern at once. And perhaps one may end by pronouncing
Bulwer one of the very greatest of English novelists who are not of the
very greatest.
It is difficult to say whether the usual attitude of criticism to
Captain Marryat (1792-1848) is more uncritical than ungrateful or more
ungrateful than uncritical. Because he has amused the boy, it seems to
be taken for granted that he ought not to amuse the man: because he does
not write with the artificial and often extremely arbitrary graces of
the composition books, that he is "not literature." If it be so, why in
the first case so much the worse for "the man," and in the second so
much the worse for literature. As a matter of fact, he has many of the
qualities of the novelist in a high degree: and if he were in the
fortunate position of an ancient classic, whose best works only survive,
these qualities could not fail of recognition. Much of his later work
simply ought not to count; for it was mere hack-labour, rendered, if not
necessary, very nearly so by the sailor's habit (which Marryat possessed
in the highest degree) of getting rid of money. Even among this,
_Masterman Ready_ and _The Children of the New Forest_, "children's
books," as they may be called, rank very high in their kind. But he
counts here, of course, for his sea-novels mainly: and in them there are
several things for us to notice. One is that Marryat had the true
quality of the craftsman, as distinguished from the amateur or the
chance-medley man who has a lucky inspiration. If it were the case that
his books derived their whole attraction from the novelty and (within
its limits) the variety of their sea-matter, then the first ought to be
the best, as in nearly all such cases is the fact. But _Frank Mildmay_
(1829), so far from being the best, is not far from being the worst of
Marryat's novels. Much--dangerously much--as he put of his own
experiences in the book, he did not know in the least how to manage
them. And if Frank is something of a bravo, more of a blackguard, and
nearly a complete ruffian, it is not merely because there was a good
deal of brutality in the old navy; not merely because Marryat's own
standard of chivalry was not quite that of Chaucer's Knight:--but
partly, also, because he was aiming blunderingly at what he supposed to
be part of the novelist's business--irregular as well as regular
gallantry, and highly seasoned adventure. But, like all good artists
(and like hardly anybody who has not the artistic quality in him), he
taught himself by his failure, even though he sometimes relapsed. Of
actual construction he was never a master. _The King's Own_, with its
overdose of history at the beginning and of melodrama at the end, is an
example. But his two masterpieces, _Peter Simple_ (1834) and _Mr.
Midshipman Easy_ (1836), are capital instances of what may be called
"particularist" fiction--the fiction that derives its special zest from
the "colours" of some form of life unfamiliar to those who have not
actually lived it. Even _Peter Simple_ is unduly weighted at the end by
the machinations of Peter's uncle against him and, at intervals during
the book, by the proceedings connected therewith. But _Mr. Midshipman
Easy_ is flawless--except for the amiable but surely excessive
sentimentalists who are shocked at the way in which Mr. Easy _père_
quits the greater stage by mounting the lesser. Than this book there is
not a better novel of special "humour" in literature; as much may be
said of the greater part of _Peter Simple_, of not a little in _Jacob
Faithful_ (a great favourite with Thackeray, who always did justice to
Marryat), and _Japhet in Search of a Father_, and of something in almost
all. Nor were high jinks and special naval matters by any means
Marryat's only province. Laymen may agree with experts in thinking the
clubhauling of the _Diomède_ in _Peter Simple_, and the two great fights
of the _Aurora_ with the elements and with the Russian frigate in _Mr.
Midshipman Easy_, to be extraordinarily fine things:--vivid, free from
extravagance, striking, stirring, clear, as descriptive and narrative
literature of the kind can be only at its best, and too seldom is at
all. An almost Defoe-like exactness of detail is one of Marryat's
methods and merits: while it is very remarkable that he rarely attempts
to produce the fun, in which Defoe is lacking and he himself so
fertile, by mere exaggeration or caricature of detail. There are
exceptions--the Dominie business in _Jacob Faithful_ is one--but they
are exceptions. Take Hook, his immediate predecessor, and no doubt in a
way his model, as (it has been said) Hook was to almost everybody at the
time; take even Dickens, his fellow-pupil with Hook and his own greater
successor; and you will find that Marryat resorts less than either to
the humour of simple _charge_ or exaggeration.
The last name on our present list belongs to the class of "eccentric"
novelists--the adjective being used, not in its transferred and partly
improper sense so much as in its true one. Peacock never plays the
Jack-pudding like Sterne: and his shrewd wit never permits him the
sincere aberrations of Amory. But his work is out of the ordinary
courses, and does not turn round the ordinary centres of novel writing.
It belongs to the tradition--if to any tradition at all--of Lucian and
the Lucianists--especially as that tradition was redirected by Anthony
Hamilton. It thus comes, in one way, near part of the work of Disraeli;
though, except in point of satiric temper, its spirit is totally
different. Peacock was essentially a scholar (though a non-academic one)
and essentially a humorist. In the progress of his books from _Headlong
Hall_ (1816) to _Gryll Grange_ (1860)--the last separated from the group
to which the first belongs by more than twice as many years as were
covered by that group itself--he mellowed his tone, but altered his
scheme very little. Except in _Maid Marian_ and _The Misfortunes of
Elphin_, where the Scott influence is evident, though Peacock was
himself a rebel to Scott, the plan is always the same. _Headlong Hall_
and _Nightmare Abbey, Melincourt_ and _Crotchet Castle_ (1831), as well
as _Gryll Grange_ itself, all have the uniform, though by no means
monotonous, canvas of a party of guests assembled at a country-house and
consisting of a number of "originals," with one or more common-sense but
by no means commonplace characters to serve as contrast. It is in the
selection and management of these foils that one of Peacock's principal
distinctions lies. In his earlier books, and in accordance with the
manners of the time, there is a good deal of "high jinks"--less later.
In all, there is also a good deal of personal and literary satire, which
tones and mellows as it proceeds. At first Peacock is extremely unjust
to the Lake poets--so unjust indeed as to be sometimes hardly
amusing--to the two universities (of which it so happened that he was
not a member), to the Tory party generally, to clergymen, to other
things and persons. In _Crotchet Castle_ the progress of Reform was
already beginning to produce a beneficent effect of reaction upon him,
and in _Gryll Grange_, though the manners and cast are surprisingly
modern, the whole tone is conservative--with a small if not even with a
large C--for the most prominent and well treated character is a
Churchman of the best academic Tory type.
It is not, however, in anything yet mentioned that Peacock's charm
consists, so much as in the intensely literary, but not in the least
pedantic, tone with which he suffuses his books, the piquant but not in
the least affected turn of the phrases that meet us throughout, the
peculiar quality of his irony (most quintessenced in _The Misfortunes of
Elphin_, which is different in scheme from the rest, but omnipresent),
and the crisp presentation of individual scene, incident, and character
of a kind. Story, in the general sense, there is none, or next to
none--the personages meet, go through a certain number of dinners
(Peacock is great at eating and drinking), diversions, and
difficulties, marry to a greater or less extent, but otherwise part. Yet
such things as the character of Scythrop in _Nightmare Abbey_ (a half
fantastic, half faithful portrait of Shelley, who was Peacock's intimate
friend), or of Dr. Folliott (a genial parson) in _Crotchet Castle_--as
the brilliant picture of the breaking of the dyke in _Elphin_, or the
comic one of the rotten-borough election in _Melincourt_--are among the
triumphs of the English novel. And they are present by dozens and
scores: while (though it is a little out of our way) there is no doubt
that the attraction of the books is greatly enhanced by the abundance of
inset verse--sometimes serious, more often light--of which Peacock,
again in an eccentric fashion, was hardly less a master than he was of
prose.
Here also it has seemed fit to dwell on a single writer, not perhaps
generally held to be of the absolutely first class, because these
"eccentrics" are of very great importance in the history of the English
novel. The danger of the kind--even more than of other literary
kinds--lies in the direction of mould and mechanism--of the production,
by the thousand, of things of no individual quality and character. This
danger has been and is being amply exemplified. But the Peacocks (would
the plural were more justified!) save us from it by their own
unconquerable individuality in the first place and, in the second, by
the fact that even the best in this kind is "caviare to the general,"
while anything that is not the best has no attraction either for the
general or the elect. They are, as it were, the salt of the novel-feast,
in more senses than one: and it is cause for thankfulness that, in this
respect as in the physical, England has been well off for salt-pits.
Besides these individual names--which in most literatures would be
great, and even in English literature are not small--the second quarter
of the century added to the history of the novel an infinity of others
who can hardly appear here even on the representative or selective
system. All the suns of the novel hitherto mentioned had moons and stars
around them; all the _cadres_ of the various kinds were filled with
privates and non-commissioned officers to follow the leaders. Gait and
Moir carried out the "Scotch novel" with something of Scott, but more of
Smollett (Gait at least certainly, in part of his work, preceded Scott).
Lady Morgan, who has been mentioned already, Banim, Crofton Croker, and
others played a similar part to Miss Edgeworth. Glascock, Chamier, and
Howard were, as it were, lieutenants (the last directly so) to Marryat.
The didactic side of Miss Edgeworth was taken up by Harriet Martineau.
Mrs. Shelley's _Frankenstein_ (1818) is among the latest good examples
of the "Terror" class, to which her husband had contributed two of its
worst, and two of the feeblest books ever written by a man of the
greatest genius, in _Zastrozzi_ and _St. Irvyne_, some seven years
earlier. Many women, not unnaturally, encouraged by the great examples
of Miss Burney, Miss Edgeworth, Miss Austen, and Miss Ferrier, attempted
novels of the most various kinds, sometimes almost achieving the purely
domestic variety, sometimes branching to other sorts. The novels of Mrs.
Gore, chiefly in the "fashionable" kind, are said to have attained the
three-score and ten in number; Mrs. Crowe dealt with the supernatural
outside of her novels if not also in them; the luckless poetess "L.E.L."
was a novelist in _Ethel Churchill_ (1837) and other books; Mrs.
Trollope, prolific mother of a more prolific son, showed not a little
power, if not quite so much taste, in _The Vicar of Wrexhill_ (1837) and
_The Widow Barnaby_. Single books, like Morier's _Hajji Baba_ (1824),
Hope's _Anastasius_ (1819), Croly's _Salathiel_ (1829), gained fame
which they have not quite lost: and the little known Michael Scott
(1789-1835) left in _Tom Cringle's Log_ and _The Cruise of the Midge_ a
pair of stories of West Indian scenery and adventure which are nearly
first rate. In 1839, not long after _Pickwick_, Samuel Warren's _Ten
Thousand a Year_ blended Bulwer and Dickens in a manner which to this
day is a puzzle in its near approach to success. Yet he never repeated
this approach, though he had earlier done striking things in the _Diary
of a Late Physician_ (1830). But in the latest thirties and early
forties there arose two writers who were to eclipse every one of their
contemporaries in this kind.
The remarkable originality and idiosyncrasy of Dickens have perhaps, to
some extent and from not a few persons, concealed the fact that he was
not, any more than other people, an earth-born wonder. Scanted of
education as he was, he has in several places frankly and eagerly
confessed his early acquaintance with the great older novelists, and his
special fancy for Smollett--whose influence indeed is traceable on him
from first to last, and not least in the famous "interiors" of which he
made far more than his example had done. Even in _Pickwick_ the expert
will trace suggestions from others. But if the work is read in its
proper order, and the _Sketches by Boz_ are taken first, nobody who
knows both Leigh Hunt and Theodore Hook will fail to see that Dickens
owed a great deal to both. The fact is in no sense discreditable to him:
on the contrary, it adds, in the estimation of all reasonable and
critical judges, a very great deal of interest, and takes away none. The
earth-born prodigy is seldom good for much and never for very much. The
genius who fastens on the points in preceding literature most congenial
to him, develops them, builds on them with his own matter and form, and
turns out something far greater than his originals is the really
satisfactory person. Had Leigh Hunt lent to Hook his literature, his
fund of trivial but agreeable observation and illustration, and his
attractive style; had Hook communicated to Hunt his narrative faculty
and his fecundity in character and manners:--neither could have written
_Pickwick_ or even the worst of its successors. Had there been no Hunt
and no Hook, Dickens would no doubt have managed, in some fashion, to
"do for himself." But it would have given him more trouble, he would
have done it more slowly, and he would hardly have earned that generous
and admirable phrase of his greatest contemporary in fiction which will
be quoted shortly.
Neither from Smollett, however, nor from Hook, nor from Hunt, nor from
anybody else did Dickens take what makes him Dickens. His idiosyncrasy,
already mentioned, is so marked that everybody acknowledges its
presence: but its exact character and nature are matter not so much of
debate (though they are that also in the highest degree) as matter of
more or less _questing_, often of a rather blind-man's-buff kind. There
is probably no author of whom really critical estimates are so rare. He
has given so much pleasure to so many people--perhaps there are none to
whom he has given more pleasure than to some of those who have
criticised him most closely--that to mention any faults in him is
upbraided as a sort of personal and detestable ingratitude and
treachery. If you say that he cannot draw a gentleman, you are told that
you are a parrot and a snob, who repeats what other snobs have told you;
that gentlemen are not worth drawing; that he _can_ draw them; and so
forth. If you suggest that he is fantastic, it is reproachfully asked if
poetry is not fantastic, and if you do not like poetry? If you intimate
small affection for Little Nell and Little Paul, you are a brute; if you
hint that his social crusades were often quite irrational, and sometimes
at least as mischievous as they were beneficial, you are a parasite of
aristocracy and a foe of "the people." If you take exception to his
repetitions, his mannerisms, his tedious catch-processes of various
kinds, you are a "stop-watch critic" and worthy of all the generous
wrath of the exemplary and Reverend Mr. Yorick. And yet all these
assertions, objections, descriptions, are arch-true: and they can be
made by persons who know Dickens and enjoy Dickens a thousand times
better--who admire him in a manner a thousand times more really
complimentary--than the folk who simply cry "Great is Dickens" and will
listen to nothing but their own sweet voices.
The real, the great, the unique merit of Dickens is that he brought to
the service of the novel an imagination which, though it was never
poetic, was plastic in almost the highest degree: and that he
communicated to the results of it a kind of existence which, though
distinctly different from that of actual life, has a reality of its own,
and possesses the distinguishing mark of genius, so that if it does not
exactly force belief in itself, it forces suspension of disbelief. To
have done this is not only to have accomplished a wonderful artistic
triumph, but to confer an immense benefit on the human race. But in
doing it Dickens exhibits various foibles, prejudices, and disabilities:
though it is quite open to any one to maintain that these rather
assisted the flow of his imagination than hindered it. He began very
young; he had curiously little literature; his knowledge of life,
extraordinarily alert and acute, was very one-sided, and the organs by
which he attained it seem absolutely to shut themselves and refuse
communion with certain orders of society and classes of human creatures.
The wealth of fantastic imagery which he used to such purpose not
infrequently stimulated him to a disorderly profusion of grotesque; he
was congenitally melodramatic; and before very long his habit of
attributing special catch-words, gestures, and the like to his
characters, exaggerated, degenerated, and stereotyped itself in a
fashion which it is difficult to think satisfactory to anybody. He was,
moreover, a "novelist of purpose" in the highest degree; he had very
strong, but very crude--not to say absurd--political ideas; and he was
apt to let the great powers of pathos, of humour, of vivid description,
which he possessed to "get out of hand" and to land him in the maudlin,
the extravagant, and the bombastic.
But--to put ourselves in connection with the main thread of our story
once more--he not only himself provided a great amount of the novel
pleasure for his readers, but he infused into the novel generally
something of a new spirit. It has been more than once pointed out that
there is almost more danger with the novel of "getting into ruts" than
with any kind of literature. Nobody could charge the Dickens novel with
doing this, except as regards mannerisms of style, and though it might
inspire many, it was very unlikely to create a rut for any one else. He
liked to call himself "the inimitable," and so, in a way, he was.
Imitations of him were, of course, tried: but they were all bad and
obvious failures. Against the possible tameness of the domestic novel;
against the too commonly actual want of actuality of the historic
romance; he set this new fantastic activity of his, which was at once
real and unreal, but where the reality had a magical touch of the
unfamiliar and the very unreality was stimulating. He might have a
hundred faults--he was in fact never faultless, except in _Pickwick_,
which is so absolutely unique that there is nothing to compare with it
and show up faults (if it has any) by the comparison. But you can read
him again and again with unceasing delight, and with delight of a kind
given by no other novelist.[21]
[21] It has not been thought necessary to insert criticism of
Dickens's individual novels. They are almost all well known to
almost everybody: and special discussion of them would be
superfluous, while their general characteristics and positions
in novel-history are singularly uniform and can be described
together.
The position of Thackeray in the history of the novel is as different
from that of Dickens as the fortunes of the two were in their own
progress and development. In fact, though a sort of pseudo-Plutarchian
parallel between them is nearly as inevitable as it is common, it is a
parallel almost entirely composed of differences, carried out in matter
almost incommensurable. In the first place, Dickens, as we have seen,
and as Thackeray said (with the generous and characteristic addition "at
the head of the whole tribe"), "came and took his place calmly" and
practically at once (or with the preliminary only of "Boz") in
_Pickwick_. Whether he ever went further may at least be questioned. But
Thackeray did not take his place at once--in fact he conspicuously
failed to take it for some sixteen years: although he produced, for at
least the last ten of these, work containing indications of
extraordinary power, in a variety of directions almost as extraordinary.
To attempt to assign reasons for this comparative failure would be
idle--the fact is the only reasonable reason. But some phenomena and
symptoms can be diagnosed. It is at least noteworthy that Thackeray--in
this approaching Dickens perhaps nearer than in any other point--began
with extravaganza--to adopt perhaps the most convenient general name
for a thing which cannot be quite satisfactorily designated by any. In
both cases the adoption was probably due to the example and popularity
of Theodore Hook. But it was also due, in a higher and more metaphysical
sense, to the fact that the romance, which had had so mighty a success
in Scott's hands, was for the time overblown, and that the domestic
novel, despite the almost equally wonderful, though much quieter and
less popular achievement of Miss Austen, was not thoroughly and
genuinely ready. From extravaganza in a certain sense Dickens, as has
been said, never really departed: and he achieved most of his best work
in his own peculiar varieties of it. Thackeray was, if not to leave it
entirely aside, to use it in his later days merely as an occasional
variation and seasoning. But at first he could not, apparently, get free
from it: and he might have seemed unable to dispense with its almost
mechanical externalities of mis-spelling and the like. It must also be
remembered that circumstances were at first curiously unfavourable to
him: and that loss of fortune, domestic affliction, and other things
almost compelled him to write from hand to mouth--to take whatever
commission offered itself: whereas the, if not immediate, speedy and
tremendous success of _Pickwick_ put the booksellers entirely at
Dickens's feet. Still, a certain vacillation--an uncertainty of design
not often accompanying genius like his--must be acknowledged in
Thackeray. For a time he hesitated between pen and pencil, the latter of
which implements he fortunately never abandoned, though the former was
his predestined wand. Then he could not, or would not, for years, get
out of the "miscellaneous" style, or patchwork of styles--reviews, short
stories, burlesques, what not. His more important attempts seemed to
have an attendant _guignon_.[22] _Catherine_ (1839-1840), a very powerful
thing in parts, was ill-planned and could not be popular. _A Shabby
Genteel Story_ (1841), containing almost the Thackerayan _quiddity_, was
interrupted partly by his wife's illness, partly, it would seem, by
editorial disfavour, and moreover still failed to shake off the
appearance of a want of seriousness. Even _The Great Hoggarty Diamond_
(1841-1842) was apparently cut short by request, and still lay open to
an unjust, but not quite inexcusable, question on this same point of
"seriousness." In all there was, or might seem to be, a queer and to
some readers an unsatisfactory blend of what they had not learnt to call
"realism" with what they were quite likely to think fooling. During
these years Thackeray was emphatically of the class of writers of whom
people "do not know what to make." And it is a true saying of English
people--though perhaps not so pre-eminently true of them as some would
have it--that "not to know what to make" of a thing or a person is
sufficient reason for them to distrust, dislike, and "wash their hands
of" it or him.
[22] For this reason, and for the variety of kind of his later
novels a little more individual notice must be given to them
than in the case of Dickens, but still only a little, and
nothing like detailed criticism.
Some would have it that _Barry Lyndon_ (1843) marks the close of this
period of indecision and the beginning of that of maturity. The commoner
and perhaps the juster opinion is that this position belongs to _Vanity
Fair_ (1846-1848). At any rate, _after_ that book there could be no
doubt about the fact of the greatness of its writer, though it may be
doubted whether even now the quality of this greatness is correctly and
generally recognised. It is this--that at last the novel of real life on
the great scale has been discovered. Even yet a remnant of shyness hangs
on the artist. He puts his scene a little though not very far back; he
borrows a little, though not much, historical and romantic interest in
the Waterloo part; the catastrophe of the Becky-Steyne business, though
by no means outside of the probable contents of any day's newspaper, is
slightly exceptional. But on the whole the problem of "reality, the
whole reality, and nothing but reality" is faced and grasped and
solved--with, of course, the addition to the "nothing but" of "except
art."
He had struck his path and he kept to it: even when, as in _Esmond_
(1852) and _The Virginians_ (1858-1859) actually, and in _Denis Duval_
prospectively, he blended the historical with the domestic variety.
_Pendennis_ (1849-1850) imports nothing out of the most ordinary
experience; _The Newcomes_ (1854-1855) very little; _Philip_ (1861-1862)
only its pantomime conclusion; while the two completely historical tales
are in nothing more remarkable than in the way in which their remoter
and more unfamiliar main subject, and their occasional excursions from
everyday life, are subdued to the scheme of the realist novel in the
best sense of the term--the novel rebuilt and refashioned on the lines
of Fielding, but with modern manners, relying on variety and life, and
relying on these only.
There is thus something of similarity (though with attendant
differences, of the most important kind) between the joint position of
Dickens and Thackeray towards the world of the novel, and the joint
position of Scott and Miss Austen. They _overlap_ more than their great
forerunners of the preceding generation. Both wrote historical novels:
it is indeed Thackeray's unique distinction that he was equally master
of the historical novel and of the novel of pure modern society, almost
uneventful. In parts of some of his later books, especially _Little
Dorrit_, _Great Expectations_, and _Our Mutual Friend_, Dickens at
least tried to exchange his picaresque-fantastic cloudland for actual
ordinary modern life. But on the whole the method of Thackeray was the
method of the novel, though shot with a strong romantic spirit, and the
method of Dickens the method of the romance applied, for the most part,
to material which could hardly be called romantic. Both, therefore, in a
manner, recalled the forces of fiction from the rather straggling and
particularist courses which it had been pursuing for the last quarter of
a century.
In fact, even in the two mighty men of genius whom we have just been
discussing, there may be seen--at their beginnings at least--something
of that irresolution, uncertainty, and want of reliance on the powers of
the novel, it-by-itself-it, which we have noticed before: and which the
unerring craftsmanship of Scott had already pointed out in the
"Conversation of the Author of _Waverley_ with Captain Clutterbuck" more
than once referred to. They want excuses and pretexts, bladders and
spring-boards. Even Dickens, despite his irrepressible self-reliance,
burdens himself, at the beginning of _Pickwick_, with the clumsy old
machinery of a club which he practically drops: and, still later, with
the still more clumsy framework of "Master Humphrey's Clock" which he
has not quietly to drop, but openly to strip off and cast away, before
he has gone very far. Thackeray takes sixteen years of experiment before
he trusts his genius, boldly and on the great scale, to reveal itself in
its own way, and in the straight way of the novel.
Yet in this time also a great advance was made, as is shown not only by
the fact that Dickens and Thackeray themselves became possible, but by
the various achievements of the principal writers mentioned in this
chapter, of one or two who might have been, but are perhaps, on the
whole, best postponed to the next, such as Lever, and of the great army
of minorities who have been of necessity omitted. In every direction and
from every point of view novel is _growing_. Although it was abused by
precisians, the _gran conquesta_ of Scott had forced it into general
recognition and requisition. Even the still severe discipline of family
life in the first half of the nineteenth century, instead of excluding
it altogether, contented itself with prescribing that "novels should not
be read in the morning." A test which may be thought vulgar by the
super-fine or the superficial, but a pretty good one, is the altered
status and position of the writers of novels. In the eighteenth,
especially the earlier eighteenth, century the novelist had not merely
been looked down upon _as_ a novelist, but had, as a rule, resorted to
novel-writing under some stress of circumstance. Even when he was by
birth a "gentleman of coat armour" as Fielding and Smollett were, he was
usually a gentleman very much out at elbows: the stories, true or false,
of _Rasselas_ and Johnson's mother's funeral expenses, of the _Vicar of
Wakefield_ and Goldsmith's dunning landlady, have something more than
mere anecdote in them. Mackenzie, though the paternity of his _famille
déplorable_ of novels was no secret, preserved a strict nominal
incognito. Women, as having no regular professions and plenty of time at
their disposal, were allowed more latitude: and this really perhaps had
something to do with their early prominence in the novel; but it is
certain that Scott's rigid, and for a long time successful, maintenance
of the mask was by no means mere prudery, and still less merely prudent
commercial speculation. Yet he, who altered so much in the novel,
altered this also. Of the novelists noticed in the early part of this
chapter, one became Prime Minister of England, another rose to cabinet
rank, a baronetcy, and a peerage; a third was H.M. consul in important
posts abroad; a fourth held a great position, if not in the service
directly of the crown, in what was of hardly less importance, that of
the East India Company; a fifth was a post-captain in the navy and
Companion of the Bath.
And all this had been rendered possible partly by the genius of
novel-writers, partly by the appetite of the novel-reader. This latter
was to continue unabated: whether the former was to increase, to
maintain itself, or slacken must be, to some extent of course, matter of
opinion. But we have still two quarter-centuries to survey, in the first
of which there may perhaps be some reason for thinking that the novel
rose to its actual zenith. Nearly all the writers mentioned in this
chapter continued to write--the greater part, in genius, of Thackeray's
accomplished work, and the greater part, in bulk, of Dickens's, had
still to appear. But these elders were reinforced by fresh recruits,
some of them of a prowess only inferior to the very greatest: and a
distinct development of the novel itself, in the direction of
self-reliance and craftsmanlike working on its own lines, was to be
seen. In particular, the deferred influence of Miss Austen was at last
to be brought to bear with astonishing results: while, partly owing to
the example of Thackeray, the historical variety (which had for the most
part been a pale and rather vulgarised imitation of Scott), was to be
revived and varied in a manner equally astonishing. More than ever we
shall have to let styles and kinds "speak by their foremen"--in fact to
some extent to let them speak for themselves with very little detailed
notice even of these foremen. But we shall still endeavour to keep the
general threads in hand and to exhibit their direction, their crossing,
and their other phenomena, as clearly as possible to the reader. For
only so can we complete the picture of the course of fiction throughout
English literature--with the sole exclusion of living writers, whose
work can never be satisfactorily treated in such a book as this--first,
because they are living and, secondly, because it is not done.