dictatorship in matters which he cannot be made to believe are of
very urgent importance. When Mr. Hamlin Garland says that American
literature _must_ be distinctly and unmistakably American, that it
_must_ be faithful to American conditions, it is difficult not to reply
that there is no “must” for us of Mr. Garland’s devising. Let him write
his stories as he thinks best, and his many admirers will read them
with satisfaction; but his authority is necessarily limited to his own
literary offspring. He cannot expect to whip other people’s children.
When Mr. Hall Caine tells the good people of Edinburgh that the
novelist is his brother’s keeper, that it is “evasive cowardice” for
him to deny his responsibility, and that the mere fact of his having
written a book proves that he feels himself something stronger than
his neighbor who hasn’t, we only protest, as readers, against assuming
any share in this spirit of acute conscientiousness. Personally, I do
not believe that it is the duty of any man or woman to write a novel.
In nine cases out of ten, there would be greater merit in leaving it
unwritten. But even granting that the author goes to work, like Mr.
Caine, from the strictest sense of moral liability, there can be no
corresponding obligation on our part to read the tale. We hear too much
of our failure to accept and appreciate the gifts which the liberal
gods are now providing for us, and it would be more modest, as well as
more dignified, if those who set the feast would forbear to extol its
merits.
As for the rival schools of fiction, they may as well consent to live
in amity side by side. If they don’t “fill one home with glee,” they
fill many homes with that moderate gratification which lightens a
weary hour. Each has its adherents; each gives its allotted share of
pleasure to people who know very well what they like, and who will
never be converted by arguments into reading what they don’t. It is
useless to tell a man who is halfway through “The House of the Wolf,”
and oblivious for one blessed hour to everything in the world save
the fate and fortunes of three French lads, that “the romantic novel
represents a juvenile and, intellectually considered, lower stage of
development than the realistic novel.” He doesn’t care the value of
a ha’penny for stages of development. He is not reading “The House
of the Wolf” by way of mental or moral discipline. He is not to be
persuaded into exchanging it unfinished for “The Apprenticeship of
Lemuel Barker,” because more “creative intelligence” is required to
tell a story without incident--when there is, so to speak, no story
to tell. What is it to him, if the book were hard or easy to write?
Why should he be reminded perpetually by realists and veritists of the
arduous nature of their task? He did not put them to work. The one and
only thing which is of vital interest to him is the tale itself. The
author’s point of view, his sense of personal responsibility, the
artistic limits which he sets himself, the difficulties which he piles
in his own way and heroically overcomes, the particular platform from
which he addresses the universe, his stern adherence to actualities,
his truthful treatment of material,--all these things about which
we hear so much, mean nothing, and less than nothing to the reader.
Give him the book, and he asks to know no more. He judges it by some
standard of his own, which may not bear the test of critical analysis,
but which is more convincing to him than the recorded opinion of
the writer. The wife of his bosom and his college-bred daughter are
powerless to persuade him that Tourguéneff is a better novelist than
Dickens. And when he stoutly resists this pressure from within, this
subtle and penetrating influence of feminine culture, it is worse than
useless to attack him from without with supercilious remarks anent
juvenility, and the immature stage of his development.
It must be admitted that the realistic story-writers are more prone
to tell us about themselves and their methods than are the heroic
narrators of improbable, but none the less interesting, romances.
Mr. Rider Haggard, indeed, from time to time insinuates that he, too,
is trammeled by the obstinate nature of facts, and that there is a
restraining and troublesome ingredient of truth mingled with his
fiction. But this is surely a pleasant jest on Mr. Haggard’s part. We
cannot believe that he ever denied himself an incident in the entire
course of his literary life. Mr. Stevenson defended with characteristic
spirit those keenly imaginative and adventurous tales which have
made the whole world kin, and to whose splendid inspiration we owe
perhaps the added heritage of “Kidnapped” and “Treasure Island.” Mr.
Lang throws down his gauntlet unhesitatingly in behalf of romance,
and fights her battles with joyous and animating zeal. But Mr. Lang
is not pre-eminently a novelist. He only drops into fiction now and
then, as Mr. Wegg dropped into poetry, in the intervals of more urgent
avocations. Moreover, it is seldom from these authors that we gather
our minute information concerning the duties and difficulties of
novel-writing. They have been too wary to betray the secrets of the
craft. It is Mr. Garland, for instance, and not Mr. Stanley Weyman,
who confides to us what we had never even suspected,--the veritist’s
lack of control over the characters he has created. “He cannot shove
them about,” we are told, and are amazed to hear it, “nor marry
them, nor kill them. What they do, they do by their own will, or
through nature’s arrangement. Their very names come by some singular
attraction. The veritist cannot name his characters arbitrarily.”
Small wonder he finds his task a hard one! Small wonder he says so
much about the difficulties which beset him! He does his duty by Mary
Jane, provides her with a lover, and laboriously strives to strew with
novelistic thorns the devious paths of courtship. What must be his
sentiments, when the ungrateful hussy refuses, after all his trouble,
to marry the young man. Or perhaps she declines to be called Mary
Ann, and insists that her name is Arabella, to his great annoyance
and discomfiture. Lurid possibilities of revolt suggest themselves
on every side, until the unhappy novel-writer, notwithstanding his
detestation of the “feudal ideal,” as illustrated by Sir Walter Scott,
must sigh occasionally for “_les Droits Seigneuriaux_,” which would
enable him to hang a few of his rebellious puppets, “_pour encourager
les autres_.” It may be worth while, in this connection, to remind
him of the absolutely arbitrary manner in which Mr. Anthony Trollope,
that true master of realism, disposed of Mrs. Proudie. If ever there
was a character in fiction whom we should have trusted to hold her own
against her author, Mrs. Proudie was that character. No reasonable
creature will for a moment pretend that an amiable, easy-going,
middle-aged gentleman like Mr. Trollope was a match for the Bishop’s
wife, who had, in her day, routed many a stronger man. She had lived
so long, too. In novel after novel she had played her vigorous part,
until the right to go on living was hers by force of established usage
and custom. Yet this is what happened. One morning Mr. Trollope, while
writing at the Athenæum Club, enjoyed the salutary experience of
hearing himself criticised, and very unfavorably criticised, by two
of the club members. Among other things, they said they were tired of
reading about the same people over and over again; they thought if a
man had not wit enough to evolve new characters, he had better give
up composing novels; and they objected especially to the perpetual
domination of a woman so odious as Mrs. Proudie. At this juncture, Mr.
Trollope could be silent no longer. He arose, confessed his identity,
admitted his sin, and promised, by way of amendment, to kill Mrs.
Proudie “before the week was out;” for were not the unfinished chapters
of the “Last Chronicles of Barset” lying at that moment on his table?
And what is more, he kept his word. He slew Mrs. Proudie, apparently
quite oblivious to the fact that he was interfering unwarrantably with
“nature’s arrangement.” I mention this incident to show that it is
possible for a really determined author, who knows his rights and will
have them, to overcome the resistance of the most obstinate character
in his book.
For the rest, it does not appear to the peace-loving reader that either
the realist or the romancist has any very convincing arguments to offer
in defense of his own exclusive orthodoxy. When the romancist affirms
that his books lift men out of the sordid, painful realities of life
into a healthier atmosphere, and make them temporarily forgetful of
sadness and discontent, the realist very sensibly replies that he
prefers facts, however sordid, to literary anodynes, and that it is his
peculiar pleasure to grapple with things as they are. When the realist
remarks in turn that nothing is easier than to write of love and war,
but that it “lacks distinction,” and shows a puerile and childish mind,
the romancist merely chuckles, and clasps “Les Trois Mousquetaires”
closer to his heart. Neither of the combatants is likely to be much
affected by anything the other has to say, and we, outside the ring,
can but echo Marianne Dashwood’s sentiment, “This is admiration of a
very particular kind.” Mr. Stevenson and Mr. Lang have both distinctly
recorded their debt of gratitude to Dumas. They cannot and do not claim
that he is at all times an edifying writer; but many a weary hour has
been brightened for them by the magic of his art, many a fretful doubt
laid to rest by contact with his virile gayety and courage. On the
other hand, Mr. Boyesen has just as distinctly and just as sincerely
assured us that Dumas had no charm nor spell for him, and he has
added his impression that it is only those who, intellectually, never
out-grow their boyhood who continue to delight in such “sensational
chronicles of impossible deeds.”
It is in this latter statement, which has been repeated over and over
again with as many variations as a popular air, that the peculiar
temper of the realist stands revealed. He is not only sure that stories
of adventure are not to his liking, but he is equally sure that those
who do enjoy them are his intellectual inferiors, or at least that
they have not reached a mental maturity commensurate with his own. He
says so, with pleasing candor, whenever he has the opportunity. He is,
in general, what the Ettrick Shepherd neatly terms “a bigot to his
ain abeelities,” and it would be hard to convince him that Dumas is
none the less, in the words of Michelet, “a force of nature,” because
_he_ is not personally stirred by that force, or because he knows a
number of intelligent men who are no more affected than he is. For
myself, I can but say that, being constrained once to spend two days
in Marseilles, the only thing that reconciled me to my fate was the
sight of the gray Chateau d’If standing, stern and solitary, amid the
roughened waters. “Banks and tariffs, the newspaper and the caucus,”
may, as Emerson says, “rest on the same foundations of wonder as the
town of Troy and the Temple of Delphos;” but, personally, I am more
susceptible to Troy, or even to the Chateau d’If, than I am to banks,
of which useful institutions Marseilles contains a number, all very
handsome and imposing. This is, perhaps, a matter of temperament and
training, or it may be that mine is one of those “primitive natures”
for whose “weak and childish imaginations,” as Mr. Howells phrases it,
such unrealities are a necessary stimulant. It is true that I might, if
I chose, shelter myself under the generous mantle of Dr. Johnson, who
was known to say that “the books we read with most pleasure are light
compositions which contain a quick succession of events;” but, after
all, this was but the expression of the doctor’s personal preference,
and of no more weight than are the words of living critics who share,
or who do not share, in his opinion.
“A good cause,” says Sir Thomas Browne, “needs not to be patron’d by
passion, but can sustain itself upon a temperate dispute;” and if
scornful words be unneeded--and unheeded--in matters of moment, they
simply run to waste when poured out over trivialities. We are asked to
take everything so seriously in this unhumorous age, to talk about the
novel as a “powerful educational agent,” and to discuss the “profound
and complex logic of reality” in a short story of mild interest and
modest wit. This confuses our sense of proportion, and we grow restive
under a pressure too severe. Yet who shall say that the public, big,
amiable, and unconcerned, is not grateful for every readable book
that strays into its path? Romance and realism, the proven and the
impossible, wild stories of youthful passion and sedate studies of
middle-aged spinsters, tales of New England villages, tales of Western
towns, tales of Scotch hamlets, and tales of the mist-lands beyond
the mountains of Africa, are all welcomed and read with avidity. The
novelist, unless he be inhumanly dull, is sure of his audience, and
he grows didactic from sheer excess of prosperity. When the Rev. Mr.
John Watson (Ian Maclaren) wrote “Beside the Bonnie Briar Bush,” the
book went straight to many hearths and many hearts. It was not an
epoch-making work by any means, but its homely pathos and humor insured
for it an immediate hearing, and most comfortable returns. The critics
united in its praise, and the publishers gave us at once to understand
how many copies had been sold. Why, then, did Mr. Watson, to whom the
gods had been so kind, lift up his voice in a few short months to say
supercilious things anent all schools of fiction save his own? The
world is wider than Scotland, and local coloring is not humanity’s one
need. It will be long ere we believe that the art of story-telling
began with “A Window in Thrums,” or that “Beside the Bonnie Briar Bush”
marks its final development. Let us rather remember with gratitude that
Mr. Barrie, an artist too versatile to be intolerant, has recorded, in
place of delicate self-analysis and self-congratulation, his sincere
reverence for Scott, and Dickens, and Thackeray, and Fielding, and
Smollett, “old-fashioned novelists of some repute,” whose horizon is
wide as the sound of our English tongue, and whose sun is not yet set.
If we cannot have peace, let us then have a truce, as in the old
fighting days, a truce of six months or a year. It would freshen us
amazingly to hear nothing for a whole year about the “soul-searching
veracity of Tolstoï,” and a great many timid people might pluck up
heart to read that fine novelist, who has been rendered so alarming by
his admirers. For a year the romancist could write of young people who
marry, and the realist of middle-aged people who don’t; and, in the
renewed tranquillity of content, each workman might perhaps recognize
the strength of the other’s position. For youth, and age, and marriage,
and celibacy are alike familiar to us all. We have no crying need
to be enlightened on these subjects, though we cheerfully consent
to be entertained by them. “If the public do not know what books to
read,” says Mr. Lang very truthfully, “it is not for lack of cheap and
copious instruction.” We are sated sometimes with good advice, and
grow a little tired of education. There are days even when we recall
with mingled regret and gratitude the gray-haired, unknown author of
“Aucassin and Nicolette,” who wove his tale in the humble hope that it
might for a brief moment gladden the sad hearts of men.
The Riverside Press
CAMBRIDGE · MASSACHUSETTS
U · S · A
Transcriber’s Notes
Punctuation errors have been corrected.
Page 157: “In commonalties” changed to “In commonalities”