THACKERAY'S STYLE AND MANNER OF WORK.
A novel in style should be easy, lucid, and of course grammatical. The
same may be said of any book; but that which is intended to recreate
should be easily understood,--for which purpose lucid narration is an
essential. In matter it should be moral and amusing. In manner it may be
realistic, or sublime, or ludicrous;--or it may be all these if the
author can combine them. As to Thackeray's performance in style and
matter I will say something further on. His manner was mainly realistic,
and I will therefore speak first of that mode of expression which was
peculiarly his own.
Realism in style has not all the ease which seems to belong to it. It is
the object of the author who affects it so to communicate with his
reader that all his words shall seem to be natural to the occasion. We
do not think the language of Dogberry natural, when he tells neighbour
Seacole that "to write and read comes by nature." That is ludicrous. Nor
is the language of Hamlet natural when he shows to his mother the
portrait of his father;
See what a grace was seated on this brow;
Hyperion's curls; the front of Jove himself;
An eye like Mars, to threaten and command.
That is sublime. Constance is natural when she turns away from the
Cardinal, declaring that
He talks to me that never had a son.
In one respect both the sublime and ludicrous are easier than the
realistic. They are not required to be true. A man with an imagination
and culture may feign either of them without knowing the ways of men. To
be realistic you must know accurately that which you describe. How often
do we find in novels that the author makes an attempt at realism and
falls into a bathos of absurdity, because he cannot use appropriate
language? "No human being ever spoke like that," we say to
ourselves,--while we should not question the naturalness of the
production, either in the grand or the ridiculous.
And yet in very truth the realistic must not be true,--but just so far
removed from truth as to suit the erroneous idea of truth which the
reader may be supposed to entertain. For were a novelist to narrate a
conversation between two persons of fair but not high education, and to
use the ill-arranged words and fragments of speech which are really
common in such conversations, he would seem to have sunk to the
ludicrous, and to be attributing to the interlocutors a mode of language
much beneath them. Though in fact true, it would seem to be far from
natural. But on the other hand, were he to put words grammatically
correct into the mouths of his personages, and to round off and to
complete the spoken sentences, the ordinary reader would instantly feel
such a style to be stilted and unreal. This reader would not analyse it,
but would in some dim but sufficiently critical manner be aware that his
author was not providing him with a naturally spoken dialogue. To
produce the desired effect the narrator must go between the two. He must
mount somewhat above the ordinary conversational powers of such persons
as are to be represented,--lest he disgust. But he must by no means soar
into correct phraseology,--lest he offend. The realistic,--by which we
mean that which shall seem to be real,--lies between the two, and in
reaching it the writer has not only to keep his proper distance on both
sides, but has to maintain varying distances in accordance with the
position, mode of life, and education of the speakers. Lady Castlewood
in _Esmond_ would not have been properly made to speak with absolute
precision; but she goes nearer to the mark than her more ignorant lord,
the viscount; less near, however, than her better-educated kinsman,
Henry Esmond. He, however, is not made to speak altogether by the card,
or he would be unnatural. Nor would each of them speak always in the
same strain, but they would alter their language according to their
companion,--according even to the hour of the day. All this the reader
unconsciously perceives, and will not think the language to be natural
unless the proper variations be there.
In simple narrative the rule is the same as in dialogue, though it does
not admit of the same palpable deviation from correct construction. The
story of any incident, to be realistic, will admit neither of
sesquipedalian grandeur nor of grotesque images. The one gives an idea
of romance and the other of burlesque, to neither of which is truth
supposed to appertain. We desire to soar frequently, and then we try
romance. We desire to recreate ourselves with the easy and droll. Dulce
est desipere in loco. Then we have recourse to burlesque. But in neither
do we expect human nature.
I cannot but think that in the hands of the novelist the middle course
is the most powerful. Much as we may delight in burlesque, we cannot
claim for it the power of achieving great results. So much I think will
be granted. For the sublime we look rather to poetry than to prose, and
though I will give one or two instances just now in which it has been
used with great effect in prose fiction, it does not come home to the
heart, teaching a lesson, as does the realistic. The girl who reads is
touched by Lucy Ashton, but she feels herself to be convinced of the
facts as to Jeanie Deans, and asks herself whether she might not emulate
them.
Now as to the realism of Thackeray, I must rather appeal to my readers
than attempt to prove it by quotation. Whoever it is that speaks in his
pages, does it not seem that such a person would certainly have used
such words on such an occasion? If there be need of examination to learn
whether it be so or not, let the reader study all that falls from the
mouth of Lady Castlewood through the novel called _Esmond_, or all that
falls from the mouth of Beatrix. They are persons peculiarly
situated,--noble women, but who have still lived much out of the world.
The former is always conscious of a sorrow; the latter is always
striving after an effect;--and both on this account are difficult of
management. A period for the story has been chosen which is strange and
unknown to us, and which has required a peculiar language. One would
have said beforehand that whatever might be the charms of the book, it
would not be natural. And yet the ear is never wounded by a tone that is
false. It is not always the case that in novel reading the ear should be
wounded because the words spoken are unnatural. Bulwer does not wound,
though he never puts into the mouth of any of his persons words such as
would have been spoken. They are not expected from him. It is something
else that he provides. From Thackeray they are expected,--and from many
others. But Thackeray never disappoints. Whether it be a great duke,
such as he who was to have married Beatrix, or a mean chaplain, such as
Tusher, or Captain Steele the humorist, they talk,--not as they would
have talked probably, of which I am no judge,--but as we feel that they
might have talked. We find ourselves willing to take it as proved
because it is there, which is the strongest possible evidence of the
realistic capacity of the writer.
As to the sublime in novels, it is not to be supposed that any very high
rank of sublimity is required to put such works within the pale of that
definition. I allude to those in which an attempt is made to soar above
the ordinary actions and ordinary language of life. We may take as an
instance _The Mysteries of Udolpho_. That is intended to be sublime
throughout. Even the writer never for a moment thought of descending to
real life. She must have been untrue to her own idea of her own business
had she done so. It is all stilted,--all of a certain altitude among the
clouds. It has been in its time a popular book, and has had its world of
readers. Those readers no doubt preferred the diluted romance of Mrs.
Radcliff to the condensed realism of Fielding. At any rate they did not
look for realism. _Pelham_ may be taken as another instance of the
sublime, though there is so much in it that is of the world worldly,
though an intentional fall to the ludicrous is often made in it. The
personages talk in glittering dialogues, throwing about philosophy,
science, and the classics, in a manner which is always suggestive and
often amusing. The book is brilliant with intellect. But no word is
ever spoken as it would have been spoken;--no detail is ever narrated as
it would have occurred. Bulwer no doubt regarded novels as romantic, and
would have looked with contempt on any junction of realism and romance,
though, in varying his work, he did not think it beneath him to vary his
sublimity with the ludicrous. The sublime in novels is no doubt most
effective when it breaks out, as though by some burst of nature, in the
midst of a story true to life. "If," said Evan Maccombich, "the Saxon
gentlemen are laughing because a poor man such as me thinks my life, or
the life of six of my degree, is worth that of Vich Ian Vohr, it's like
enough they may be very right; but if they laugh because they think I
would not keep my word and come back to redeem him, I can tell them they
ken neither the heart of a Hielandman nor the honour of a gentleman."
That is sublime. And, again, when Balfour of Burley slaughters Bothwell,
the death scene is sublime. "Die, bloodthirsty dog!" said Burley. "Die
as thou hast lived! Die like the beasts that perish--hoping nothing,
believing nothing!"----"And fearing nothing," said Bothwell. Horrible as
is the picture, it is sublime. As is also that speech of Meg Merrilies,
as she addresses Mr. Bertram, standing on the bank. "Ride your ways,"
said the gipsy; "ride your ways, Laird of Ellangowan; ride your ways,
Godfrey Bertram. This day have ye quenched seven smoking hearths; see if
the fire in your ain parlour burn the blyther for that. Ye have riven
the thack off seven cottar houses; look if your ain rooftree stand the
faster. Ye may stable your stirks in the shealings at Derncleugh; see
that the hare does not couch on the hearthstane at Ellangowan." That is
romance, and reaches the very height of the sublime. That does not
offend, impossible though it be that any old woman should have spoken
such words, because it does in truth lift the reader up among the bright
stars. It is thus that the sublime may be mingled with the realistic, if
the writer has the power. Thackeray also rises in that way to a high
pitch, though not in many instances. Romance does not often justify to
him an absence of truth. The scene between Lady Castlewood and the Duke
of Hamilton is one, when she explains to her child's suitor who Henry
Esmond is. "My daughter may receive presents from the head of our
house," says the lady, speaking up for her kinsman. "My daughter may
thankfully take kindness from her father's, her mother's, her brother's
dearest friend." The whole scene is of the same nature, and is evidence
of Thackeray's capacity for the sublime. And again, when the same lady
welcomes the same kinsman on his return from the wars, she rises as
high. But as I have already quoted a part of the passage in the chapter
on this novel, I will not repeat it here.
It may perhaps be said of the sublime in novels,--which I have
endeavoured to describe as not being generally of a high order,--that it
is apt to become cold, stilted, and unsatisfactory. What may be done by
impossible castles among impossible mountains, peopled by impossible
heroes and heroines, and fraught with impossible horrors, _The Mysteries
of Udolpho_ have shown us. But they require a patient reader, and one
who can content himself with a long protracted and most unemotional
excitement. The sublimity which is effected by sparkling speeches is
better, if the speeches really have something in them beneath the
sparkles. Those of Bulwer generally have. Those of his imitators are
often without anything, the sparkles even hardly sparkling. At the best
they fatigue; and a novel, if it fatigues, is unpardonable. Its only
excuse is to be found in the amusement it affords. It should instruct
also, no doubt, but it never will do so unless it hides its instruction
and amuses. Scott understood all this, when he allowed himself only such
sudden bursts as I have described. Even in _The Bride of Lammermoor_,
which I do not regard as among the best of his performances, as he soars
high into the sublime, so does he descend low into the ludicrous.
In this latter division of pure fiction,--the burlesque, as it is
commonly called, or the ludicrous,--Thackeray is quite as much at home
as in the realistic, though, the vehicle being less powerful, he has
achieved smaller results by it. Manifest as are the objects in his view
when he wrote _The Hoggarty Diamond_ or _The Legend of the Rhine_, they
were less important and less evidently effected than those attempted by
_Vanity Fair_ and _Pendennis_. Captain Shindy, the Snob, does not tell
us so plainly what is not a gentleman as does Colonel Newcome what is.
Nevertheless the ludicrous has, with Thackeray, been very powerful, and
very delightful.
In trying to describe what is done by literature of this class, it is
especially necessary to remember that different readers are affected in
a different way. That which is one man's meat is another man's poison.
In the sublime, when the really grand has been reached, it is the
reader's own fault if he be not touched. We know that many are
indifferent to the soliloquies of Hamlet, but we do not hesitate to
declare to ourselves that they are so because they lack the power of
appreciating grand language. We do not scruple to attribute to those who
are indifferent some inferiority of intelligence. And in regard to the
realistic, when the truth of a well-told story or life-like character
does not come home, we think that then, too, there is deficiency in the
critical ability. But there is nothing necessarily lacking to a man
because he does not enjoy _The Heathen Chinee_ or _The Biglow Papers_;
and the man to whom these delights of American humour are leather and
prunello may be of all the most enraptured by the wit of Sam Weller or
the mock piety of Pecksniff. It is a matter of taste and not of
intellect, as one man likes caviare after his dinner, while another
prefers apple-pie; and the man himself cannot, or, as far as we can see,
does not direct his own taste in the one matter more than in the other.
Therefore I cannot ask others to share with me the delight which I have
in the various and peculiar expressions of the ludicrous which are
common to Thackeray. Some considerable portion of it consists in bad
spelling. We may say that Charles James Harrington Fitzroy Yellowplush,
or C. FitzJeames De La Pluche, as he is afterwards called, would be
nothing but for his "orthogwaphy so carefully inaccuwate." As I have
before said, Mrs. Malaprop had seemed to have reached the height of this
humour, and in having done so to have made any repetition unpalatable.
But Thackeray's studied blundering is altogether different from that of
Sheridan. Mrs. Malaprop uses her words in a delightfully wrong sense.
Yellowplush would be a very intelligible, if not quite an accurate
writer, had he not made for himself special forms of English words
altogether new to the eye.
"My ma wrapped up my buth in a mistry. I may be illygitmit; I may have
been changed at nus; but I've always had gen'l'm'nly tastes through
life, and have no doubt that I come of a gen'l'm'nly origum." We cannot
admit that there is wit, or even humour, in bad spelling alone. Were it
not that Yellowplush, with his bad spelling, had so much to say for
himself, there would be nothing in it; but there is always a sting of
satire directed against some real vice, or some growing vulgarity, which
is made sharper by the absurdity of the language. In _The Diary of
George IV._ there are the following reflections on a certain
correspondence; "Wooden you phansy, now, that the author of such a
letter, instead of writun about pipple of tip-top quality, was
describin' Vinegar Yard? Would you beleave that the lady he was a-ritin'
to was a chased modist lady of honour and mother of a family? _O
trumpery! o morris!_ as Homer says. This is a higeous pictur of manners,
such as I weap to think of, as every morl man must weap." We do not
wonder that when he makes his "ajew" he should have been called
up to be congratulated on the score of his literary performances by
his master, before the Duke, and Lord Bagwig, and Dr. Larner, and
"Sawedwadgeorgeearllittnbulwig." All that Yellowplush says or writes are
among the pearls which Thackeray was continually scattering abroad.
But this of the distinguished footman was only one of the forms of the
ludicrous which he was accustomed to use in the furtherance of some
purpose which he had at heart. It was his practice to clothe things most
revolting with an assumed grace and dignity, and to add to the weight of
his condemnation by the astounding mendacity of the parody thus drawn.
There was a grim humour in this which has been displeasing to some, as
seeming to hold out to vice a hand which has appeared for too long a
time to be friendly. As we are disposed to be not altogether sympathetic
with a detective policeman who shall have spent a jolly night with a
delinquent, for the sake of tracing home the suspected guilt to his
late comrade, so are some disposed to be almost angry with our author,
who seems to be too much at home with his rascals, and to live with them
on familiar terms till we doubt whether he does not forget their
rascality. _Barry Lyndon_ is the strongest example we have of this style
of the ludicrous, and the critics of whom I speak have thought that our
friendly relations with Barry have been too genial, too apparently
genuine, so that it might almost be doubtful whether during the
narrative we might not, at this or the other crisis, be rather with him
than against him. "After all," the reader might say, on coming to that
passage in which Barry defends his trade as a gambler,--a passage which
I have quoted in speaking of the novel,--"after all, this man is more
hero than scoundrel;" so well is the burlesque humour maintained, so
well does the scoundrel hide his own villany. I can easily understand
that to some it should seem too long drawn out. To me it seems to be the
perfection of humour,--and of philosophy. If such a one as Barry Lyndon,
a man full of intellect, can be made thus to love and cherish his vice,
and to believe in its beauty, how much more necessary is it to avoid the
footsteps which lead to it? But, as I have said above, there is no
standard by which to judge of the excellence of the ludicrous as there
is of the sublime, and even the realistic.
No writer ever had a stronger proclivity towards parody than Thackeray;
and we may, I think, confess that there is no form of literary drollery
more dangerous. The parody will often mar the gem of which it coarsely
reproduces the outward semblance. The word "damaged," used instead of
"damask," has destroyed to my ear for ever the music of one of the
sweetest passages in Shakespeare. But it must be acknowledged of
Thackeray that, fond as he is of this branch of humour, he has done
little or no injury by his parodies. They run over with fun, but are so
contrived that they do not lessen the flavour of the original. I have
given in one of the preceding chapters a little set of verses of his
own, called _The Willow Tree_, and his own parody on his own work. There
the reader may see how effective a parody may be in destroying the
sentiment of the piece parodied. But in dealing with other authors he
has been grotesque without being severely critical, and has been very
like, without making ugly or distasteful that which he has imitated. No
one who has admired _Coningsby_ will admire it the less because of
_Codlingsby_. Nor will the undoubted romance of _Eugene Aram_ be
lessened in the estimation of any reader of novels by the well-told
career of _George de Barnwell_. One may say that to laugh _Ivanhoe_ out
of face, or to lessen the glory of that immortal story, would be beyond
the power of any farcical effect. Thackeray in his _Rowena and Rebecca_
certainly had no such purpose. Nothing of _Ivanhoe_ is injured, nothing
made less valuable than it was before, yet, of all prose parodies in the
language, it is perhaps the most perfect. Every character is maintained,
every incident has a taste of Scott. It has the twang of _Ivanhoe_ from
beginning to end, and yet there is not a word in it by which the author
of _Ivanhoe_ could have been offended. But then there is the purpose
beyond that of the mere parody. Prudish women have to be laughed at, and
despotic kings, and parasite lords and bishops. The ludicrous alone is
but poor fun; but when the ludicrous has a meaning, it can be very
effective in the hands of such a master as this.
"He to die!" resumed the bishop. "He a mortal like to us!
Death was not for him intended, though _communis omnibus_.
Keeper, you are irreligious, for to talk and cavil thus!"
So much I have said of the manner in which Thackeray did his work,
endeavouring to represent human nature as he saw it, so that his readers
should learn to love what is good, and to hate what is evil. As to the
merits of his style, it will be necessary to insist on them the less,
because it has been generally admitted to be easy, lucid, and
grammatical. I call that style easy by which the writer has succeeded in
conveying to the reader that which the reader is intended to receive
with the least possible amount of trouble to him. I call that style
lucid which conveys to the reader most accurately all that the writer
wishes to convey on any subject. The two virtues will, I think, be seen
to be very different. An author may wish to give an idea that a certain
flavour is bitter. He shall leave a conviction that it is simply
disagreeable. Then he is not lucid. But he shall convey so much as that,
in such a manner as to give the reader no trouble in arriving at the
conclusion. Therefore he is easy. The subject here suggested is as
little complicated as possible; but in the intercourse which is going on
continually between writers and readers, affairs of all degrees of
complication are continually being discussed, of a nature so complicated
that the inexperienced writer is puzzled at every turn to express
himself, and the altogether inartistic writer fails to do so. Who among
writers has not to acknowledge that he is often unable to tell all that
he has to tell? Words refuse to do it for him. He struggles and stumbles
and alters and adds, but finds at last that he has gone either too far
or not quite far enough. Then there comes upon him the necessity of
choosing between two evils. He must either give up the fulness of his
thought, and content himself with presenting some fragment of it in that
lucid arrangement of words which he affects; or he must bring out his
thought with ambages; he must mass his sentences inconsequentially; he
must struggle up hill almost hopelessly with his phrases,--so that at
the end the reader will have to labour as he himself has laboured, or
else to leave behind much of the fruit which it has been intended that
he should garner. It is the ill-fortune of some to be neither easy or
lucid; and there is nothing more wonderful in the history of letters
than the patience of readers when called upon to suffer under the double
calamity. It is as though a man were reading a dialogue of Plato,
understanding neither the subject nor the language. But it is often the
case that one has to be sacrificed to the other. The pregnant writer
will sometimes solace himself by declaring that it is not his business
to supply intelligence to the reader; and then, in throwing out the
entirety of his thought, will not stop to remember that he cannot hope
to scatter his ideas far and wide unless he can make them easily
intelligible. Then the writer who is determined that his book shall not
be put down because it is troublesome, is too apt to avoid the knotty
bits and shirk the rocky turns, because he cannot with ease to himself
make them easy to others. If this be acknowledged, I shall be held to be
right in saying not only that ease and lucidity in style are different
virtues, but that they are often opposed to each other. They may,
however, be combined, and then the writer will have really learned the
art of writing. Omne tulit punctum qui miscuit utile dulci. It is to be
done, I believe, in all languages. A man by art and practice shall at
least obtain such a masterhood over words as to express all that he
thinks, in phrases that shall be easily understood.
In such a small space as can here be allowed, I cannot give instances to
prove that this has been achieved by Thackeray. Nor would instances
prove the existence of the virtue, though instances might the absence.
The proof lies in the work of the man's life, and can only become plain
to those who have read his writings. I must refer readers to their own
experiences, and ask them whether they have found themselves compelled
to study passages in Thackeray in order that they might find a recondite
meaning, or whether they have not been sure that they and the author
have together understood all that there was to understand in the matter.
Have they run backward over the passages, and then gone on, not quite
sure what the author has meant? If not, then he has been easy and lucid.
We have not had it so easy with all modern writers, nor with all that
are old. I may best perhaps explain my meaning by taking something
written long ago; something very valuable, in order that I may not
damage my argument by comparing the easiness of Thackeray with the
harshness of some author who has in other respects failed of obtaining
approbation. If you take the play of _Cymbeline_ you will, I think, find
it to be anything but easy reading. Nor is Shakespeare always lucid. For
purposes of his own he will sometimes force his readers to doubt his
meaning, even after prolonged study. It has ever been so with _Hamlet_.
My readers will not, I think, be so crossgrained with me as to suppose
that I am putting Thackeray as a master of style above Shakespeare. I am
only endeavouring to explain by reference to the great master the
condition of literary production which he attained. Whatever Thackeray
says, the reader cannot fail to understand; and whatever Thackeray
attempts to communicate, he succeeds in conveying.
That he is grammatical I must leave to my readers' judgment, with a
simple assertion in his favour. There are some who say that grammar,--by
which I mean accuracy of composition, in accordance with certain
acknowledged rules,--is only a means to an end; and that, if a writer
can absolutely achieve the end by some other mode of his own, he need
not regard the prescribed means. If a man can so write as to be easily
understood, and to convey lucidly that which he has to convey without
accuracy of grammar, why should he subject himself to unnecessary
trammels? Why not make a path for himself, if the path so made will
certainly lead him whither he wishes to go? The answer is, that no other
path will lead others whither he wishes to carry them but that which is
common to him and to those others. It is necessary that there should be
a ground equally familiar to the writer and to his readers. If there be
no such common ground, they will certainly not come into full accord.
There have been recusants who, by a certain acuteness of their own, have
partly done so,--wilful recusants; but they have been recusants, not to
the extent of discarding grammar,--which no writer could do and not be
altogether in the dark,--but so far as to have created for themselves a
phraseology which has been picturesque by reason of its illicit
vagaries; as a woman will sometimes please ill-instructed eyes and ears
by little departures from feminine propriety. They have probably
laboured in their vocation as sedulously as though they had striven to
be correct, and have achieved at the best but a short-lived
success;--as is the case also with the unconventional female. The charm
of the disorderly soon loses itself in the ugliness of disorder. And
there are others rebellious from grammar, who are, however, hardly to be
called rebels, because the laws which they break have never been
altogether known to them. Among those very dear to me in English
literature, one or two might be named of either sort, whose works,
though they have that in them which will insure to them a long life,
will become from year to year less valuable and less venerable, because
their authors have either scorned or have not known that common ground
of language on which the author and his readers should stand together.
My purport here is only with Thackeray, and I say that he stands always
on that common ground. He quarrels with none of the laws. As the lady
who is most attentive to conventional propriety may still have her own
fashion of dress and her own mode of speech, so had Thackeray very
manifestly his own style; but it is one the correctness of which has
never been impugned.
I hold that gentleman to be the best dressed whose dress no one
observes. I am not sure but that the same may be said of an author's
written language. Only, where shall we find an example of such
perfection? Always easy, always lucid, always correct, we may find them;
but who is the writer, easy, lucid, and correct, who has not impregnated
his writing with something of that personal flavour which we call
mannerism? To speak of authors well known to all readers--Does not _The
Rambler_ taste of Johnson; _The Decline and Fall_, of Gibbon; _The
Middle Ages_, of Hallam; _The History of England_, of Macaulay; and _The
Invasion of the Crimea_, of Kinglake? Do we not know the elephantine
tread of _The Saturday_, and the precise toe of _The Spectator_? I have
sometimes thought that Swift has been nearest to the mark of
any,--writing English and not writing Swift. But I doubt whether an
accurate observer would not trace even here the "mark of the beast."
Thackeray, too, has a strong flavour of Thackeray. I am inclined to
think that his most besetting sin in style,--the little earmark by which
he is most conspicuous,--is a certain affected familiarity. He indulges
too frequently in little confidences with individual readers, in which
pretended allusions to himself are frequent. "What would you do? what
would you say now, if you were in such a position?" he asks. He
describes this practice of his in the preface to _Pendennis_. "It is a
sort of confidential talk between writer and reader.... In the course of
his volubility the perpetual speaker must of necessity lay bare his own
weaknesses, vanities, peculiarities." In the short contributions to
periodicals on which he tried his 'prentice hand, such addresses and
conversations were natural and efficacious; but in a larger work of
fiction they cause an absence of that dignity to which even a novel may
aspire. You feel that each morsel as you read it is a detached bit, and
that it has all been written in detachments. The book is robbed of its
integrity by a certain good-humoured geniality of language, which causes
the reader to be almost too much at home with his author. There is a
saying that familiarity breeds contempt, and I have been sometimes
inclined to think that our author has sometimes failed to stand up for
himself with sufficiency of "personal deportment."
In other respects Thackeray's style is excellent. As I have said before,
the reader always understands his words without an effort, and receives
all that the author has to give.
There now remains to be discussed the matter of our author's work. The
manner and the style are but the natural wrappings in which the goods
have been prepared for the market. Of these goods it is no doubt true
that unless the wrappings be in some degree meritorious the article will
not be accepted at all; but it is the kernel which we seek, which, if it
be not of itself sweet and digestible, cannot be made serviceable by any
shell however pretty or easy to be cracked. I have said previously that
it is the business of a novel to instruct in morals and to amuse. I will
go further, and will add, having been for many years a most prolific
writer of novels myself, that I regard him who can put himself into
close communication with young people year after year without making
some attempt to do them good, as a very sorry fellow indeed. However
poor your matter may be, however near you may come to that "foolishest
of existing mortals," as Carlyle presumes some unfortunate novelist to
be, still, if there be those who read your works, they will undoubtedly
be more or less influenced by what they find there. And it is because
the novelist amuses that he is thus influential. The sermon too often
has no such effect, because it is applied with the declared intention of
having it. The palpable and overt dose the child rejects; but that which
is cunningly insinuated by the aid of jam or honey is accepted
unconsciously, and goes on upon its curative mission. So it is with the
novel. It is taken because of its jam and honey. But, unlike the honest
simple jam and honey of the household cupboard, it is never unmixed with
physic. There will be the dose within it, either curative or poisonous.
The girl will be taught modesty or immodesty, truth or falsehood; the
lad will be taught honour or dishonour, simplicity or affectation.
Without the lesson the amusement will not be there. There are novels
which certainly can teach nothing; but then neither can they amuse any
one.
I should be said to insist absurdly on the power of my own confraternity
if I were to declare that the bulk of the young people in the upper and
middle classes receive their moral teaching chiefly from the novels they
read. Mothers would no doubt think of their own sweet teaching; fathers
of the examples which they set; and schoolmasters of the excellence of
their instructions. Happy is the country that has such mothers, fathers,
and schoolmasters! But the novelist creeps in closer than the
schoolmaster, closer than the father, closer almost than the mother. He
is the chosen guide, the tutor whom the young pupil chooses for herself.
She retires with him, suspecting no lesson, safe against rebuke,
throwing herself head and heart into the narration as she can hardly do
into her task-work; and there she is taught,--how she shall learn to
love; how she shall receive the lover when he comes; how far she should
advance to meet the joy; why she should be reticent, and not throw
herself at once into this new delight. It is the same with the young
man, though he would be more prone even than she to reject the suspicion
of such tutorship. But he too will there learn either to speak the
truth, or to lie; and will receive from his novel lessons either of real
manliness, or of that affected apishness and tailor-begotten demeanour
which too many professors of the craft give out as their dearest
precepts.
At any rate the close intercourse is admitted. Where is the house now
from which novels are tabooed? Is it not common to allow them almost
indiscriminately, so that young and old each chooses his own novel?
Shall he, then, to whom this close fellowship is allowed,--this inner
confidence,--shall he not be careful what words he uses, and what
thoughts he expresses, when he sits in council with his young friend?
This, which it will certainly be his duty to consider with so much care,
will be the matter of his work. We know what was thought of such matter,
when Lydia in the play was driven to the necessity of flinging
"_Peregrine Pickle_ under the toilet," and thrusting "_Lord Aimwell_
under the sofa." We have got beyond that now, and are tolerably sure
that our girls do not hide their novels. The more freely they are
allowed, the more necessary is it that he who supplies shall take care
that they are worthy of the trust that is given to them.
Now let the reader ask himself what are the lessons which Thackeray has
taught. Let him send his memory running back over all those characters
of whom we have just been speaking, and ask himself whether any girl has
been taught to be immodest, or any man unmanly, by what Thackeray has
written. A novelist has two modes of teaching,--by good example or bad.
It is not to be supposed that because the person treated of be evil,
therefore the precept will be evil. If so, some personages with whom we
have been made well acquainted from our youth upwards, would have been
omitted in our early lessons. It may be a question whether the teaching
is not more efficacious which comes from the evil example. What story
was ever more powerful in showing the beauty of feminine reticence, and
the horrors of feminine evil-doing, than the fate of Effie Deans? The
Templar would have betrayed a woman to his lust, but has not encouraged
others by the freedom of his life. Varney was utterly bad,--but though a
gay courtier, he has enticed no others to go the way that he went. So
it has been with Thackeray. His examples have been generally of that
kind,--but they have all been efficacious in their teaching on the side
of modesty and manliness, truth and simplicity. When some girl shall
have traced from first to last the character of Beatrix, what, let us
ask, will be the result on her mind? Beatrix was born noble, clever,
beautiful, with certain material advantages, which it was within her
compass to improve by her nobility, wit, and beauty. She was quite alive
to that fact, and thought of those material advantages, to the utter
exclusion, in our mind, of any idea of moral goodness. She realised it
all, and told herself that that was the game she would play.
"Twenty-five!" says she; "and in eight years no man has ever touched my
heart!" That is her boast when she is about to be married,--her only
boast of herself. "A most detestable young woman!" some will say. "An
awful example!" others will add. Not a doubt of it. She proves the
misery of her own career so fully that no one will follow it. The
example is so awful that it will surely deter. The girl will declare to
herself that not in that way will she look for the happiness which she
hopes to enjoy; and the young man will say as he reads it, that no
Beatrix shall touch his heart.
You may go through all his characters with the same effect. Pendennis
will be scorned because he is light; Warrington loved because he is
strong and merciful; Dobbin will be honoured because he is unselfish;
and the old colonel, though he be foolish, vain, and weak, almost
worshipped because he is so true a gentleman. It is in the handling of
questions such as these that we have to look for the matter of the
novelist,--those moral lessons which he mixes up with his jam and his
honey. I say that with Thackeray the physic is always curative and
never poisonous. He may he admitted safely into that close fellowship,
and be allowed to accompany the dear ones to their retreats. The girl
will never become bold under his preaching, or taught to throw herself
at men's heads. Nor will the lad receive a false flashy idea of what
becomes a youth, when he is first about to take his place among men.
As to that other question, whether Thackeray be amusing as well as
salutary, I must leave it to public opinion. There is now being brought
out of his works a more splendid edition than has ever been produced in
any age or any country of the writings of such an author. A certain
fixed number of copies only is being issued, and each copy will cost £33
12s. when completed. It is understood that a very large proportion of
the edition has been already bought or ordered. Cost, it will be said,
is a bad test of excellence. It will not prove the merit of a book any
more than it will of a horse. But it is proof of the popularity of the
book. Print and illustrate and bind up some novels how you will, no one
will buy them. Previous to these costly volumes, there have been two
entire editions of his works since the author's death, one comparatively
cheap and the other dear. Before his death his stories had been
scattered in all imaginable forms. I may therefore assert that their
charm has been proved by their popularity.
There remains for us only this question,--whether the nature of
Thackeray's works entitle him to be called a cynic. The word is one
which is always used in a bad sense. "Of a dog; currish," is the
definition which we get from Johnson,--quite correctly, and in
accordance with its etymology. And he gives us examples. "How vilely
does this cynic rhyme," he takes from Shakespeare; and Addison speaks of
a man degenerating into a cynic. That Thackeray's nature was soft and
kindly,--gentle almost to a fault,--has been shown elsewhere. But they
who have called him a cynic have spoken of him merely as a writer,--and
as writer he has certainly taken upon himself the special task of
barking at the vices and follies of the world around him. Any satirist
might in the same way be called a cynic in so far as his satire goes.
Swift was a cynic certainly. Pope was cynical when he was a satirist.
Juvenal was all cynical, because he was all satirist. If that be what is
meant, Thackeray was certainly a cynic. But that is not all that the
word implies. It intends to go back beyond the work of the man, and to
describe his heart. It says of any satirist so described that he has
given himself up to satire, not because things have been evil, but
because he himself has been evil. Hamlet is a satirist, whereas
Thersites is a cynic. If Thackeray be judged after this fashion, the
word is as inappropriate to the writer as to the man.
But it has to be confessed that Thackeray did allow his intellect to be
too thoroughly saturated with the aspect of the ill side of things. We
can trace the operation of his mind from his earliest days, when he
commenced his parodies at school; when he brought out _The Snob_ at
Cambridge, when he sent _Yellowplush_ out upon the world as a satirist
on the doings of gentlemen generally; when he wrote his _Catherine_, to
show the vileness of the taste for what he would have called Newgate
literature; and _The Hoggarty Diamond_, to attack bubble companies; and
_Barry Lyndon_, to expose the pride which a rascal may take in his
rascality. Becky Sharp, Major Pendennis, Beatrix, both as a young and
as an old woman, were written with the same purpose. There is a touch of
satire in every drawing that he made. A jeer is needed for something
that is ridiculous, scorn has to be thrown on something that is vile.
The same feeling is to be found in every line of every ballad.
VANITAS VANITATUM.
Methinks the text is never stale,
And life is every day renewing
Fresh comments on the old old tale,
Of Folly, Fortune, Glory, Ruin.
Hark to the preacher, preaching still!
He lifts his voice and cries his sermon,
Here at St. Peter's of Cornhill,
As yonder on the Mount of Hermon--
For you and me to heart to take
(O dear beloved brother readers),
To-day,--as when the good king spake
Beneath the solemn Syrian cedars.
It was just so with him always. He was "crying his sermon," hoping, if
it might be so, to do something towards lessening the evils he saw
around him. We all preach our sermon, but not always with the same
earnestness. He had become so urgent in the cause, so loud in his
denunciations, that he did not stop often to speak of the good things
around him. Now and again he paused and blessed amid the torrent of his
anathemas. There are Dobbin, and Esmond, and Colonel Newcome. But his
anathemas are the loudest. It has been so I think nearly always with the
eloquent preachers.
I will insert here,--especially here at the end of this chapter, in
which I have spoken of Thackeray's matter and manner of writing, because
of the justice of the criticism conveyed,--the lines which Lord Houghton
wrote on his death, and which are to be found in the February number of
_The Cornhill_ of 1864. It was the first number printed after his death.
I would add that, though no Dean applied for permission to bury
Thackeray in Westminster Abbey, his bust was placed there without delay.
What is needed by the nation in such a case is simply a lasting memorial
there, where such memorials are most often seen and most highly
honoured. But we can all of us sympathise with the feeling of the poet,
writing immediately on the loss of such a friend:
When one, whose nervous English verse
Public and party hates defied,
Who bore and bandied many a curse
Of angry times,--when Dryden died,
Our royal abbey's Bishop-Dean
Waited for no suggestive prayer,
But, ere one day closed o'er the scene,
Craved, as a boon, to lay him there.
The wayward faith, the faulty life,
Vanished before a nation's pain.
Panther and Hind forgot their strife,
And rival statesmen thronged the fane.
O gentle censor of our age!
Prime master of our ampler tongue!
Whose word of wit and generous page
Were never wrath, except with wrong,--
Fielding--without the manner's dross,
Scott--with a spirit's larger room,
What Prelate deems thy grave his loss?
What Halifax erects thy tomb?
But, may be, he,--who so could draw
The hidden great,--the humble wise,
Yielding with them to God's good law,
Makes the Pantheon where he lies.
THE END.
* * * * *
CHARLES DICKENS AND EVANS, CRYSTAL PALACE PRESS.
ENGLISH MEN OF LETTERS.
EDITED BY JOHN MORLEY.
These Short Books are addressed to the general public with a view both
to stirring and satisfying an interest in literature and its great
topics in the minds of those who have to run as they read. An immense
class is growing up, and must every year increase, whose education will
have made them alive to the importance of the masters of our literature,
and capable of intelligent curiosity as to their performances. The
Series is intended to give the means of nourishing this curiosity, to an
extent that shall be copious enough to be profitable for knowledge and
life, and yet be brief enough to serve those whose leisure is scanty.
The following are arranged for:
SPENSER The Dean of St. Paul's. [In the Press.
HUME Professor Huxley. [Ready.
BUNYAN James Anthony Froude.
JOHNSON Leslie Stephen. [Ready.
GOLDSMITH William Black. [Ready.
MILTON Mark Pattison.
COWPER Goldwin Smith.
SWIFT John Morley.
BURNS Principal Shairp. [Ready.
SCOTT Richard H. Hutton. [Ready.
SHELLEY J. A. Symonds. [Ready.
GIBBON J. C. Morison. [Ready.
BYRON Professor Nichol.
DEFOE W. Minto. [Ready.
BURKE John Morley.
HAWTHORNE Henry James, Jnr.
CHAUCER A. W. Ward.
THACKERAY Anthony Trollope. [Ready.
ADAM SMITH Leonard H. Courtney, M.P.
BENTLEY Professor R. C. Jebb.
LANDOR Professor Sidney Colvin.
POPE Leslie Stephen.
WORDSWORTH F. W. H. Myers.
SOUTHEY Professor E. Dowden.
[OTHERS WILL BE ANNOUNCED.]
OPINIONS OF THE PRESS.
"The new series opens well with Mr. Leslie Stephen's sketch of Dr.
Johnson. It could hardly have been done better; and it will convey to
the readers for whom it is intended a juster estimate of Johnson than
either of the two essays of Lord Macaulay."--_Pall Mall Gazette._
"We have come across few writers who have had a clearer insight into
Johnson's character, or who have brought to the study of it a better
knowledge of the time in which Johnson lived and the men whom he
knew."--_Saturday Review._
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poems and novels."--_Examiner._
"The tone of the volume is excellent throughout."--_Athenæum_ Review of
"Scott."
"As a clear, thoughtful, and attractive record of the life and works of
the greatest among the world's historians, it deserves the highest
praise."--_Examiner_ Review of "Gibbon."
"The lovers of this great poet (Shelley) are to be congratulated at
having at their command so fresh, clear, and intelligent a presentment
of the subject, written by a man of adequate and wide
culture."--_Athenæum._
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with more sympathy or with equal perspicuity."--_Athenæum._
"The story of Defoe's adventurous life may be followed with keen
interest in Mr. Minto's attractive book."--_Academy._
* * * * *
TRANSCRIBER'S NOTES:
The poems WILLOW TREE No. I and WILLOW TREE No. II were side by
side in the original.
There are variant spellings of the following name:
Jeames Yellowplush
Mr. C. James Yellowplush
Spellings were left as in the original.
The following changes were made to the text:
page 5--Thackeray's version was 'Cabbages, bright green
cabbages,'{added missing ending quotation mark} and we
thought it very witty.
page 78--Then there are "Jeames on Time Bargings," "Jeames on
the Gauge{original had Guage} Question," "Mr. Jeames again."
page 131--"I knew you would come back," she said; "and to-day,
Harry{original has Henry}, in the anthem when they sang
page 143--The wife won't{original has wo'n't} come.
page 143--On his way he{original has be} shoots a raven
marvellously
page 158--As Thackeray explains clearly what he means by a
humorist, I may as well here repeat the passage:{punctuation
missing in original} "If humour only meant laughter
page 166--I will then let my reader go to the volume and study
the lectures for himself.{no punctuation in original} "The
poor fellow was never
page 212--[Ready.{original is missing period--this occurred in
the line referencing DEFOE and the line referencing THACKERAY}
The following words used an "oe" ligature in the original:
Boeuf
chef-d'oevre
Coeur
manoeuvres