EVERY fancy which dwells much with the unborn and immortal characters of
Fiction must ask itself, Did the persons in contemporary novels never
meet? In so little a world their paths must often have crossed, their
orbits must have intersected, though we hear nothing about the adventure
from the accredited narrators. In historical fiction authors make their
people meet real men and women of history—Louis XI., Lazarus, Mary Queen
of Scots, General Webbe, Moses, the Man in the Iron Mask, Marie
Antoinette; the list is endless. But novelists, in spite of Mr.
Thackeray’s advice to Alexandre Dumas, and of his own example in “Rebecca
and Rowena,” have not introduced each other’s characters. Dumas never
pursued the fortunes of the Master of Ravenswood after he was picked up
by that coasting vessel in the Kelpie’s Flow. Sometimes a meeting
between characters in novels by different hands looked all but
unavoidable. “Pendennis” and “David Copperfield” came out simultaneously
in numbers, yet Pen never encountered Steerforth at the University, nor
did Warrington, in his life of journalism, jostle against a reporter
named David Copperfield. One fears that the Major would have called
Steerforth a tiger, that Pen would have been very loftily condescending
to the nephew of Betsy Trotwood. But Captain Costigan would scarcely
have refused to take a sip of Mr. Micawber’s punch, and I doubt, not that
Litimer would have conspired darkly with Morgan, the Major’s sinister
man. Most of those delightful sets of old friends, the Dickens and
Thackeray people, might well have met, though they belonged to very
different worlds. In older novels, too, it might easily have chanced
that Mr. Edward Waverley of Waverley Honour, came into contact with
Lieutenant Booth, or, after the Forty-five, with Thomas Jones, or, in
Scotland, Balmawhapple might have foregathered with Lieutenant
Lismahagow. Might not even Jeanie Deans have crossed the path of Major
Lambert of the “Virginians,” and been helped on her way by that good man?
Assuredly Dugald Dalgetty in his wanderings in search of fights and
fortune may have crushed a cup or rattled a dicebox with four gallant
gentlemen of the King’s Mousquetaires. It is agreeable to wonder what
all these very real people would have thought of their companions in the
region of Romance, and to guess how their natures would have acted and
reacted on each other.
This was the idea which suggested the following little essays in parody.
In making them the writer, though an assiduous and veteran novel reader,
had to recognise that after all he knew, on really intimate and friendly
terms, comparatively few people in the Paradise of Fiction. Setting
aside the dramatic poets and their creations, the children of Molière and
Shakspeare, the reader of novels will find, may be, that his airy friends
are scarce so many as he deemed. We all know Sancho and the Don, by
repute at least; we have all our memories of Gil Blas; Manon Lescaut does
not fade from the heart, nor her lover, the Chevalier des Grieux, from
the remembrance. Our mental picture of Anna Karénine is fresh enough and
fair enough, but how few can most of us recall out of the myriad progeny
of George Sand! Indiana, Valentine, Lélia, do you quite believe in them,
would you know them if you met them in the Paradise of Fiction? Noun one
might recognise, but there is a haziness about La Petite Fadette.
Consuelo, let it be admitted, is not evanescent, oblivion scatters no
poppy over her; but Madame Sand’s later ladies, still more her men, are
easily lost in the forests of fancy. Even their names with difficulty
return to us, and if we read the roll-call, would Horace and Jacques cry
_Adsum_ like the good Colonel? There are living critics who have all Mr.
George Meredith’s heroines and heroes and oddities at their finger ends,
and yet forget that musical name, like the close of a rich hexameter,
Clare Doria Forey. But this is a digression; it is perhaps admitted that
George Sand, so great a novelist, gave the world few characters who live
in and are dear to memory. We can just fancy one of her dignified later
heroines, all self-renunciation and rural sentiment, preaching in vain to
that real woman, Emma Bovary. _Her_ we know, her we remember, as we
remember few, comparatively, of Balzac’s thronging faces, from La Cousine
Bette to Séraphitus Séraphita. Many of those are certain to live and
keep their hold, but it is by dint of long and elaborate preparation,
description, analysis. A stranger intermeddleth not with them, though we
can fancy Lucien de Rubempré let loose in a country neighbourhood of
George Sand’s, and making sonnets and love to some rural _châtelaine_,
while Vautrin might stray among the ruffians of Gaboriau, a giant of
crime. Among M. Zola’s people, however it may fare with others, I find
myself remembering few: the guilty Hippolytus of “La Curée,” the poor
girl in “La Fortune des Rougon,” the Abbé Mouret, the artist in
“L’Oeuvre,” and the half idiotic girl of the farm house, and Hélène in
“Un Page d’Amour.” They are not amongst M. Zola’s most prominent
creations, and it must be some accident that makes them most memorable
and recognisable to one of his readers.
Probably we all notice that the characters of fiction who remain our
intimates, whose words come to our lips often, whose conduct in this or
that situation we could easily forecast, are the characters whom we met
when we were young. We may be wrong in thinking them the best, the most
true and living of the unborn; perhaps they only seem so real because
they came fresh to fresh hearts and unworn memories. This at least we
must allow for, when we are tempted to say about novelists, “The old are
better.” It was we who, long ago, were young and better, better fitted
to enjoy and retain the pleasure of making new visionary acquaintances.
If this be so, what an argument it is in favour of reading the best books
first and earliest in youth! Do the ladies who now find Scott slow, and
Miss Austen dull, and Dickens vulgar, and Thackeray prosy, and Fielding
and Richardson impossible, come to this belief because they began early
with the volumes of the circulating library? Are their memories happily
stored with the words and deeds of modern fictitious romps, and
passionate governesses, and tremendous guardsmen with huge cigars? Are
the people of—well, why mention names of living authors?—of whom you
will—are those as much to the young readers of 1890 as Quentin Durward,
and Colonel Newcome, and Sam Weller, and Becky Sharp, and Anne Elliot,
and Elizabeth Bennett, and Jane Eyre were to young readers of 1860? It
may very well be so, and we seniors will not regret our choice, and the
young men and maids will be pleased enough with theirs. Yet it is not
impossible that the old really are better, and do not gain all their life
and permanent charm merely from the unjaded memories and affections with
which we came to them long ago.
We shall never be certain, for even if we tried the experiment of
comparing, we are no longer good judges, our hearts are with our old
friends, whom we think deathless; their birth is far enough off in time,
but they will serve us for ours.
These friends, it has been said, are not such a very numerous company
after all. Most of them are children of our own soil, their spirits were
made in England, or at least in Great Britain, or, perhaps, came of
English stock across the seas, like our dear old Leather Stocking and
Madam Hester Prynne. Probably most of us are insular enough to confess
this limitation; even if we be so unpatriotic to read far more new French
than new English novels. One may study M. Daudet, and not remember his
Sidonie as we remember Becky, nor his Petit Chose or his Jack as we
remember David Copperfield. In the Paradise of Fiction are folk of all
nations and tongues; but the English (as Swedenborg saw them doing in his
vision of Heaven) keep very much to themselves. The American visitors,
or some of them, disdain our old acquaintances, and associate with
Russian, Spanish, Lithuanian, Armenian heroes and heroines, conversing,
probably, in some sort of French. Few of us “poor islanders” are so
cosmopolitan; we read foreign novels, and yet among all the brilliant
persons met there we remember but a few. Most of my own foreign friends
in fiction wear love-locks and large boots, have rapiers at their side
which they are very ready to draw, are great trenchermen, mighty fine
drinkers, and somewhat gallant in their conduct to the sex. There is
also a citizen or two from Furetière’s “Roman Bourgeois,” there is Manon,
aforesaid, and a company of picaroons, and an archbishop, and a lady
styled Marianne, and a newly ennobled Count of mysterious wealth, and two
grisettes, named Mimi and Musette, with their student-lovers. M. Balzac
has introduced us to mystics, and murderers, and old maids, and doctors,
and adventurers, and poets, and a girl with golden eyes, and malefactors,
and bankrupts, and mad old collectors, peasants, _curés_, critics,
dreamers, debauchees; but all these are somewhat distant acquaintances,
many of them undesirable acquaintances. In the great “Comédie Humaine”
have you a single real friend? Some of Charles de Bernard’s folk are
more akin to us, such as “La Femme de Quarante Ans,” and the owner of the
hound Justinian, and that drunken artist in “Gerfaut.” But an Englishman
is rather friendless, rather an alien and an outcast, in the society of
French fiction. Monsieur de Camors is not of our _monde_, nor is the
Enfant du Siècle; indeed, perhaps good Monsieur Sylvestre Bonnard is as
sympathetic as anyone in that populous country of modern French romance.
Or do you know Fifi Vollard?
Something must be allowed for strange manners, for exotic ideas, and ways
not our own. More perhaps is due to what, as Englishmen think, is the
lack of _humour_ in the most brilliant and witty of races. We have
friends many in Molière, in Dumas, in Rabelais; but it is far more
difficult to be familiar, at ease, and happy in the circles to which
Madame Sand, M. Daudet, M. Flaubert, or M. Paul Bourget introduce us. M.
Bourget’s old professor, in “Le Disciple,” we understand, but he does not
interest himself much in us, and to us he is rather a curiosity, a
“character,” than an intimate. We are driven to the belief that humour,
with its loving and smiling observation, is necessary to the author who
would make his persons real and congenial, and, above all, friendly. Now
humour is the quality which Dumas, Molière, and Rabelais possess
conspicuously among Frenchmen. Montaigne has it too, and makes himself
dear to us, as the humorous novelists make their fancied people dear.
Without humour an author may draw characters distinct and clear, and
entertaining, and even real; but they want atmosphere, and with them we
are never intimate. Mr. Alfred Austin says that “we know the hero or the
heroine in prose romance far more familiarly than we know the hero or
heroine in the poem or the drama.” “Which of the serious characters in
Shakspeare’s plays are not indefinite and shadowy compared with Harry
Esmond or Maggie Tulliver?” The _serious_ characters—they are seldom
very familiar or definite to us in any kind of literature. One might
say, to be sure, that he knows Hotspur a good deal more intimately than
he knows Mr. Henry Esmond, and that he has a pretty definite idea of
Iago, Othello, Macbeth, King Lear, as definite as he has (to follow Mr.
Austin) of Tito Melema. But we cannot reckon Othello, or Macbeth, or
King Lear as _friends_; nay, we would rather drink with the honest
ancient. All heroes and the heroines are usually too august, and also
too young, to be friendly with us; to be handled humorously by their
creators. We know Cuddie Headrigg a great deal better than Henry Morton,
and Le Balafré better than Quentin Durward, and Dugald Dalgetty better
than anybody. Humour it is that gives flesh and blood to the persons of
romance; makes Mr. Lenville real, while Nicholas Nickleby is only a
“walking gentleman.” You cannot know Oliver Twist as you know the Dodger
and Charlie Bates. If you met Edward Waverley you could scarce tell him
from another young officer of his time; but there would be no chance of
mistake about the Dugald creature, or Bailie Nicol Jarvie, or the Baron
Bradwardine, or Balmawhapple.
These ideas might be pushed too far; it might be said that only the
persons in “character parts”—more or less caricatures—are really vivid in
the recollection. But Colonel Newcome is as real as Captain Costigan,
and George Warrington as the Chevalier Strong. The hero is commonly too
much of a _beau ténébreux_ to be actual; Scott knew it well, and in one
of his unpublished letters frankly admits that his heroes are wooden, and
no favourites of his own. He had to make them, as most authors make
their heroes, romantic, amorous, and serious; few of them have the life
of Roland Graeme, or even of Quentin Durward. Ivanhoe might put on the
cloak of the Master of Ravenswood, the Master might wear the armour of
the Disinherited Knight, and the disguise would deceive the keenest.
Nay, Mr. Henry Esmond might pass for either, if arrayed in appropriate
costume.
To treat a hero with humour is difficult in romance, all but impossible.
Hence the heroes are rarely our friends, except in Fielding, or, now and
then, in Thackeray. No book is so full of friends as the novel that has
no hero, but has Rawdon Crawley, Becky, Lady Jane, Mr. Jim Crawley,
MacMurdo, Mrs. Major O’Dowd, and the rest. Even Dobbin is too much the
hero to be admitted among our most kindly acquaintances. So unlucky are
heroes that we know Squire Western and the Philosopher Square and Parson
Adams far better than even that unheroic hero, Tom Jones, or Joseph
Andrews. The humour of Fielding and his tenderness make Amelia and
Sophia far more sure of our hearts than, let us say, Rowena, or the Fair
Maid of Perth, or Flora MacIvor, or Rose Bradwardine. It is humour that
makes Mr. Collins immortal, and Mrs. Bennett, and Emma; while a multitude
of nice girls in fiction, good girls too, are as dead as Queen Tiah.
Perhaps, after all, this theory explains why it is so very hard to recall
with vividness the persons of our later fiction. Humour is not the
strong point of novelists to-day. There may be amateurs who know Mr.
Howells’s characters as their elders know Sophia and Amelia and Catherine
Seyton—there may be. To the old reader of romance, however earnestly he
keeps up with modern fiction, the salt of life seems often lacking in its
puppets or its persons. Among the creations of living men and women I,
for one, feel that I have two friends at least across the sea, Master
Thomas Sawyer and his companion, Huckleberry Finn. If these are not real
boys, then Dr. Farrar’s Eric _is_ a real boy; I cannot put it stronger.
There is a lady on those distant shores (for she never died of Roman
fever) who I may venture to believe is not unfriendly—Miss Annie P.
Miller—and there is a daughter of Mr. Silas Lapham whom one cannot
readily forget, and there is a beery journalist in a “Modern Instance,”
an acquaintance, a distant professional acquaintance, not a friend. The
rest of the fictitious white population of the States are shadowy to
myself; I have often followed their fortunes with interest, but the
details slip my aging memory, which recalls Topsy and Uncle Remus.
To speak of new friends at home is a more delicate matter. A man may
have an undue partiality for the airy children of his friends’ fancy.
Mr. Meredith has introduced me to an amiable Countess, to a strange
country girl named Rhoda, to a wonderful old Æschylean nurse, to some
genuine boys, to a wise Youth,—but that society grows as numerous as
brilliant. Mr. Besant has made us friends with twins of literary and
artistic genius, with a very highly-cultured Fellow of Lothian, with a
Son of Vulcan, with a bevy of fair but rather indistinguishable damsels,
like a group of agreeable-looking girls at a dance. But they are too
busy with their partners to be friendly. We admire them, but they are
unconcerned with us. In Mr. Black’s large family the Whaup seems most
congenial to some strangers; the name of one of Mr. Payn’s friendly lads
is Legion, and Miss Broughton’s dogs, with _their_ friend Sara, and Mrs.
Moberley, welcome the casual visitor with hospitable care. Among the
kindly children of a later generation one may number a sailor man with a
wooden leg; a Highland gentleman, who, though landless, bears a king’s
name; an Irish chevalier who was out in the ’45; a Zulu chief who plied
the axe well; a private named Mulvaney in Her Majesty’s Indian army; an
elderly sportsman of agile imagination or unparalleled experience in
remote adventure. {20} All these a person who had once encountered them
would recognise, perhaps, when he was fortunate enough to find himself in
their company.
There are children, too, of a dead author, an author seldom lauded by
critics, who, possibly, have as many living friends as any modern
characters can claim. A very large company of Christian people are fond
of Lord Welter, Charles Ravenshoe, Flora and Gus, Lady Ascot, the boy who
played fives with a brass button, and a dozen others of Henry Kingsley’s
men, women, and children, whom we have laughed with often, and very
nearly cried with. For Henry Kingsley had humour, and his children are
dear to us; while which of Charles Kingsley’s far more famous offspring
would be welcome—unless it were Salvation Yeo—if we met them all in the
Paradise of Fiction?
It is not very safe, in literature as in life, to speak well of our
friends or of their families. Other readers, other people, have theirs,
whom we may not care much for, whom we may even chance never to have met.
In the following Letters from Old Friends (mainly reprinted from the “St.
James’s Gazette”), a few of the writers may, to some who glance at the
sketches, be unfamiliar. When Dugald Dalgetty’s epistle on his duel with
Aramis was written, a man of letters proposed to write a reply from
Aramis in a certain journal. But his Editor had never heard of any of
the gentlemen concerned in that affair of honour; had never heard of
Dugald, of Athos, Porthos, Aramis, nor D’Artagnan. He had not been
introduced to them. This little book will be fortunate far beyond its
deserts if it tempts a few readers to extend the circle of their
visionary acquaintances, of friends who, like Brahma, know not birth, nor
decay, “sleep, waking, nor trance.”
A theme more delicate and intimate than that of our Friends in fiction
awaits a more passionate writer than the present parodist. Our _Loves_
in fiction are probably numerous, and our choice depends on age and
temperament. In romance, if not in life, we can be in love with a number
of ladies at once. It is probable that Beatrix Esmond has not fewer
knights than Marie Antoinette or Mary Stuart. These ladies have been the
marks of scandal. Unkind things are said of all three, but our hearts do
not believe the evil reports. Sir Walter Scott refused to write a life
of Mary Stuart because his opinion was not on the popular side, nor on
the side of his feelings. The reasoning and judicial faculties may be
convinced that Beatrix was “other than a guid ane,” but reason does not
touch the affections; we see her with the eyes of Harry Esmond, and, like
him, “remember a paragon.” With similar lack of logic we believe that
Mrs. Wenham really had one of her headaches, and that Becky was guiltless
on a notorious occasion. Bad or not so bad, what lady would we so gladly
meet as Mrs. Rawdon Crawley, whose kindness was so great that she even
condescended to be amusing to her own husband? For a more serious and
life-long affection there are few heroines so satisfactory as Sophia
Western and Amelia Booth (_née_ Harris). Never before nor since did a
man’s ideal put on flesh and blood—out of poetry, that is,—and apart from
the ladies of Shakspeare. Fielding’s women have a manly honour,
tolerance, greatness, in addition to their tenderness and kindness.
Literature has not their peers, and life has never had many to compare
with them. They are not “superior” like Romola, nor flighty and
destitute of taste like Maggie Tulliver; among Fielding’s crowd of
fribbles and sots and oafs they carry that pure moly of the Lady in
“Comus.” It is curious, indeed, that men have drawn women more true and
charming than women themselves have invented, and the heroines of George
Eliot, of George Sand (except Consuelo), and even of Miss Austen, do not
subdue us like Di Vernon, nor win our sympathies like Rebecca of York.
They may please and charm for their hour, but they have not the
immortality of the first heroines of all—of Helen, or of that Alcmena who
makes even comedy grave when she enters, and even Plautus chivalrous.
Poetry, rather than prose fiction, is the proper home of our spiritual
mistresses; they dwell where Rosalind and Imogen are, with women perhaps
as unreal or as ideal as themselves, men’s lost loves and unforgotten, in
a Paradise apart.