FICTION: THE INTERMEDIATE PERIOD.
Where dates so overlap it is impossible to find, and therefore misleading
to seek for, absolute divisions. Some of the writers to be treated in this
chapter began to publish only a few years after those dealt with in the
last, and great part of their career was strictly contemporaneous. The
division only means that, on the whole, we can recognise in the earlier
writers a closer relationship with the preceding period, a more direct
debt to Scott and Byron. In the fourth decade of the century we begin to
see the romance of the Middle Ages and of the East giving place to the
humours of low life in Dickens, to satire on society in Thackeray, and to
the novel of passion in the Brontes. These writers may be said to form
ideals of their own, and though they do not constitute a school they are
each distinguished by characteristics which we recognise as the growth of
the present period.
[Sidenote: Charles Dickens (1812-1870).]
The difference between good work and excellent work is seen when we turn
from even the best of the earlier writers to Charles Dickens. The
novelist's father, John Dickens, was a clerk in the navy pay-office; and
the circumstances of the lad's early life are universally known from
_David Copperfield_, a novel largely autobiographical. Forster's biography
proves that the picture of the miserable little drudge, David, is even
painfully accurate. The sordid life, both of his home, with its mysterious
'deeds' leading up to his father's imprisonment in the Marshalsea, and of
the London streets and the blacking warehouse, was the best possible for
the development of his talents; but the bitterness of it never faded from
his memory. Neither can it be denied that certain of the faults of Dickens
may with probability be explained by his early life. His many fine
qualities were marred by a slight strain of vulgarity, visible both in his
works and in his life, from which the surroundings of a happier home would
almost certainly have preserved a nature so sensitive.
The family circumstances improved, and in 1824 Dickens was sent to a
school at once poor and pretentious, where he remained for two years. He
afterwards spent some time in a lawyer's office, but left it to become a
reporter. After much toil he became, in his own words, which are confirmed
by the estimate of others, 'the best and most rapid reporter ever known.'
Journalism is akin to literature, and Dickens gradually drifted into
authorship. His first article, _A Dinner at Poplar Walk_, now entitled
_Mr. Minns and his Cousin_, appeared in the old _Monthly Magazine_ for
December, 1833; and the collected papers were published in 1836, under the
title of _Sketches by Boz_. They were in some respects crude, but they
contained the promise of genius. The first drafts of some of Dickens's
best characters are to be found in them, and the sketches are eminently
fresh and independent. Few books owe less to other books than the early
works of Dickens. His book was the streets of London; and even what he
read was best assimilated if it had some connexion with them. George
Colman's description of Covent Garden captivated him. 'He remembered,'
says Forster, 'snuffing up the flavour of the faded cabbage-leaves as if
it were the very breath of comic fiction;' and Forster adds, with
justice, 'it was reserved for himself to give a sweeter and fresher breath
to it.' For to the honour of Dickens it may be said that, despite certain
lapses of taste, he seldom forgot that 'there is as much reality in the
scent of a rose as in the smell of a sewer.'
The extraordinary rapidity with which Dickens rose to popularity is
indicated by the advance in the value of his copyrights. He sold the
copyright of _Sketches by Boz_ for L150, and before _Pickwick_ was
finished in the following year, he found reason to buy it back for no less
than L2,000. _Pickwick_, scarcely equalled for broad humour in the English
language, was published in monthly parts, and finished in November, 1837.
It was _Pickwick_ that led to the first meeting between Dickens and
Thackeray; for on the suicide of Seymour, the original illustrator,
Thackeray was one of those who offered to execute the sketches. _Oliver
Twist_ was begun before _Pickwick_ was finished; and in the same way
_Nicholas Nickleby_ overlapped _Oliver_. Thus the stream flowed on for
many years; and though towards the close of his life the rate of
production was slower, Dickens, like Thackeray, was writing to the last.
The life of Dickens was purely literary, and was diversified by few
incidents. But he was liable to overstrain, as men of great nervous energy
are apt to be, and was consequently forced to allow himself occasional
holidays. During one of these, in 1842, he visited America, and wrote, in
consequence, the not very wise or generous _American Notes_. This journey
bore fruit in _Martin Chuzzlewit_. Two years later he made a journey to
Italy, and subsequently he was several times on the continent and once
again in America. The influence of the continental journeys can be traced
in _A Tale of Two Cities_, though the story is rather due to Carlyle's
_French Revolution_ than to the personal observation of Dickens. A more
serious interruption than any holiday he ever allowed himself was his
indulgence, for so it may be described, in public readings. They increased
his wealth, and they gratified the vanity which, in spite of his
biographer, was one of the weaknesses of Dickens; but they impaired his
literary work, and in all probability they hastened his death. Besides
these readings, the nervous strain of which was very great, Dickens
encumbered himself with editorial work. He conducted _Household Words_
from its start in 1850; and when it stopped in 1859 he started _All the
Year Round_, with which he was connected till his death. Through these
various distractions both the quantity and the quality of his original
work declined. Probably after _David Copperfield_ he never wrote anything
altogether first-rate. His health too gave way under the strain, and he
died at the age of 58, on June 9th, 1870.
Dickens has enjoyed a popularity probably unparalleled among English
writers. Forster has calculated that during the twelve years succeeding
his death no fewer than 4,239,000 volumes of his works were sold in
Britain. The secret was in the first place originality. Dickens had lived
the life he depicted. With a strong memory and keen powers of observation
he had been storing up from early boyhood information which in his maturer
years served him well. 'Sam's knowledge of London was extensive and
peculiar,' he writes of Weller, when Mr. Pickwick addresses him with a
sudden query about the nearest public house; and he illustrates Sam's
knowledge by making him answer without a moment's hesitation. Dickens
himself, if put down suddenly in any quarter of London, could probably
have answered the question with equal readiness. He was emphatically a man
of cities, was restless when he was long away from streets, and loved
above all things the streets of London.
But he was still more an observer of persons than an observer of places.
Even in boyhood he judged men with great accuracy; and after he had won
fame he asserted that he had never seen cause to change the secret
impression of his boyhood with regard to anyone whom he had known then.
Moreover, he never forgot. In his troubled and wretched boyhood,
therefore, he was 'making himself,' though involuntarily and in an
unpleasant fashion, as much as Scott was by his Liddesdale raids.
It is however the something added to observation that gives literary
value; and had Dickens added nothing he would have been far on the way to
oblivion now. Shakespeare may have based Falstaff on observation; but
probably no man, except Shakespeare himself, was ever quite as humorous as
the fat knight. Similarly, it is safe to assert that Dickens never met a
Londoner with all the wit and resource of Sam Weller. 'The little more,
and how much it is.' What the artist adds creates the character. Incidents
he has seen, phrases he has heard, are only the raw material for his
imagination. Humour is practically non-existent unless it is understood;
and, as a more recent humourist has whimsically insisted, there may be
here a kind of division of labour, the humour being lodged in one mind and
the comprehension of it in another. It is so with Dickens. He sympathises,
appreciates, interprets, and thus in part creates. He frequently makes the
fun by his own keen sense of it.
But while Dickens was excellent within his own sphere, that sphere was
comparatively small. He was good only as a painter of his own generation
and of what had come under his own experience. Living in the days of the
historical novel, Dickens nevertheless felt that his talent lay in the
delineation of contemporary manners. Neither his education nor the bent of
his mind fitted him to excel in the historical romance. Twice he tried
the experiment--in _Barnaby Rudge_, and in _A Tale of Two Cities_; but on
both occasions he wisely kept pretty close to his own time. _Barnaby
Rudge_ is, by general consent, second-rate, and whatever may be the true
value of _A Tale of Two Cities_, its merit is not essentially of the
historical kind. It is Scott who has written the history of the Porteous
riot and of the rebellion of '45; and our most vivid impression of society
in Queen Anne's time comes from _Esmond_. But there is no danger of
Carlyle's _French Revolution_ being superseded by _A Tale of Two Cities_.
Neither has Dickens command over a wide range of character. He is
completely at home only in one grade of society, and, as a rule, the
farther he moves from the lower ranks of Londoners the more he falls short
of excellence. Coachmen, showmen, servants of all kinds, beadles,
self-made men of imperfect education, he could depict with wonderful force
and vivacity; but his triumphs in the higher ranks are few. The reason
lies partly in the character of the experience he had acquired, partly in
his manner of conception. Dickens was theatrical and had a tendency to
farce; above all, he was by nature a caricaturist. If anyone, man or
woman, presented some conspicuous peculiarity, whether of disposition, or
of physical appearance, or of dress, Dickens was happy and made the most
of it. But education and social convention tend to smooth away
angularities and prominences, and hence among the classes influenced by
them he rarely found the material he needed.
The characters of Dickens, then, are personified humours, his method is
the method not of Shakespeare, but of Ben Jonson. Pecksniff is just
another name for hypocrisy, Jonas Chuzzlewit for avarice, Quilp for
cruelty. The result is excellent of its kind. The repetitions and
catch-words are, within limits, highly effective. Sometimes they are
genuinely illuminative; but sometimes, on the other hand, they reveal
nothing and are used to weariness. The 'waiting for something to turn up'
of the Micawber family goes to the root of their character. But 'ain't I
volatile?' 'Donkeys, Janet,' the sleepiness of the Fat Boy, Pecksniff and
Salisbury Cathedral, even the jollity of Mark Tapley, are worn threadbare.
Mrs. Harris herself is heard of rather too often. Exaggeration has no law,
it is rather the abrogation of law; and the writer who adopts the method
of exaggeration pays the price in losing all check upon himself.
In exaggeration too we find the defect of Dickens's highest quality. His
humour, like the humour of the country he at first satirised so bitterly,
rests too much on exaggeration. It is ready, copious, irresistible; but,
while it wins and deserves admiration, it rarely provokes the exclamation,
'how natural,' or 'how true.' Micawber is one of the most comical
characters in fiction, but we are not struck by his fidelity to nature.
Though he is drawn from the life he is not representative, but rather
belongs to the class of curiosities whose natural resting-place is a
museum.
The mannerism of which this is one form runs through the whole of the work
of Dickens, affecting style as well as substance, the description of
nature as well as the delineation of character. The English is nervous and
vivid, but little regard is paid to proportion. The minutest detail, if it
happens to strike the writer's fancy, is elaborated as if it were vital to
the story. The moaning of the sea, the freaks of the wind, the fluttering
of a leaf, are dilated upon in paragraph after paragraph. It is the
romantic method liberated from all restraint. There is no poetry more
heavily charged with the 'pathetic fallacy' than the prose of Dickens;
and in prose it is more dangerous because of the absence of the trammels
of verse.
The dangers of this style and this manner of conception become more
conspicuous when we turn to other manifestations of them. Dickens was in
his own time thought to be a master of the pathetic equally with the
mirthful strain. It was correct taste to weep over little Nell; and
Jeffrey, no very indulgent critic of contemporaries, declared that there
had been nothing so good since Cordelia. Dickens has been dead only a
quarter of a century, but few critics would pronounce such a judgment now.
His humour so far retains its power; but the veneer has already worn off
his pathos. Little Nell and little Emily may still draw tears, more tears
perhaps than were ever shed for the fate of Cordelia. But this is not the
best test of the quality of pathos. That which, from Homer to Shakespeare,
has conquered the suffrages of the world, is solemnising and saddening,
rather than tear-compelling. Tears are within the range of a very ordinary
writer, but to produce a tragic Cordelia or Antigone is only possible to a
Shakespeare or a Sophocles. The truth is that the faults of Dickens,
apparent in his humour but pardonable there, become offensive in his
pathos. His touch is not sufficiently delicate, he does not know when to
leave off, he unduly prolongs the agony. The death-scene of Cordelia and
Lear, perhaps the most tragically pathetic in all literature, occupies
some sixty or seventy lines. How different from this are the scenes
relating to the death of Little Nell! Their very diffuseness has
contributed to their popularity, but it damages them as literature.
Many of the other faults of Dickens are cognate to this. He sacrifices
everything for effect, and hence his proneness to horrors. The pictures
are often wonderfully done, but they are unwholesome. The murder by Jonas
Chuzzlewit, and still more the murder of Nancy, are examples. Sometimes
Dickens goes wholly beyond the reach of pardon, as in the purely horrible
and sickening description of spontaneous combustion in _Bleak House_. More
frequently the sin is rather against proportion. We hear too much of the
dragging of the river for dead bodies in _Our Mutual Friend_. Dickens
never could learn where to stop. His highly pictorial imagination
presented to him every detail of the scene; and, like a Pre-Raphaelite, he
forgot that to the reader a general impression conveyed more truth than
minute accuracy in every detail.
The faults of Dickens grew with time, his merits tended to decline; but
even to the end the characteristic merits are to be found. It was not
unjustly said that his death had once more eclipsed the gaiety of nations.
[Sidenote: William Makepeace Thackeray (1811-1863).]
While Dickens, as has been seen, leaped into fame, his only contemporary
rival, William Makepeace Thackeray, slowly and with difficulty forced his
way to it. He was the senior of Dickens by rather more than half a year,
having been born at Calcutta on July 18th, 1811. He was educated at the
Charterhouse; and if his feelings may be inferred from his works they must
have changed considerably. In his earlier writings it is Slaughter House;
in _The Newcomes_ it is the celebrated Grey Friars. After leaving school
Thackeray went in 1829 to Cambridge, but he left the University in 1830
without taking his degree. While he was there he contributed to _The
Snob_, the name of which suggested to him a title in after years. One of
his papers was an amusing burlesque on _Timbuctoo_, the subject for the
prize poem, won by Tennyson, for 1829. In 1830 Thackeray went to Weimar,
and he spent a considerable time there and in Paris training himself as an
artist. The inaccuracy of his drawing was a fatal bar to his success in
art; but he turned his studies to account afterwards in illustrating his
own books; and there are probably no works in English in which the
illustrations throw more light upon the text. In 1832 he became master of
his little fortune of about L500 per annum, all of which was lost within a
year or two. Most of it was sunk in an unprofitable newspaper adventure,
reference to which is made in _Lovel the Widower_, and, with less accuracy
of circumstance, in _Pendennis_. But if he lost his money by a newspaper,
it was by journalism that he first gained his livelihood. He wrote for
_The Times_, for _Fraser's Magazine_, and for the _New Monthly Magazine_,
contributing to the second some of the most important of his early works;
and for about eight years (1842-1850) he was one of the principal literary
contributors to _Punch_. In these periodicals there appeared during the
ten years, 1837-1847, _The Yellowplush Papers_, _The Great Hoggarty
Diamond_, _Barry Lyndon_, _The Book of Snobs_ and _The Ballads of
Policeman X_. Thackeray had also published independently _The Paris
Sketch-Book_ and _The Irish Sketch-Book_.
_Vanity Fair_ (1847-1848) was Thackeray's first novel on the great scale.
_Barry Lyndon_ was indeed an exhibition of the highest intellectual power;
but it was not of the orthodox length, and it failed to bring the writer
wide fame. _Vanity Fair_ did bring him fame among the more thoughtful
readers, though not a popularity rivalling that of Dickens. It was
followed by _Pendennis_ (1849-1850), _Esmond_ (1852) and _The Newcomes_
(1854-1855). _Esmond_ was the only one that was published as a whole, and
it is significant that it is by far the best constructed of the four
usually accepted as Thackeray's greatest novels. The periodical method of
publication had peculiar dangers for him. He was constitutionally
indolent, almost always left his work to the last moment, and sometimes
had to patch up his part anyhow.
In 1851 Thackeray delivered the lectures on the _Humourists of the
Eighteenth Century_, and repeated the course in America in 1852-1853. The
lectures on _The Four Georges_ were delivered first in America
(1855-1856). Of all Thackeray's writings these two courses have probably
had the most scanty justice meted out to them. Critics are frequently
apologetic, sometimes condescending. Nobody need apologise, and few can
afford to condescend with respect to what are really among the richest and
best criticisms of this century. Thackeray knew not only the literature
but the life of the eighteenth century as few have known it. In minute
acquaintance with facts he has doubtless been surpassed by many
professional historians; but there is no book to be compared to _Esmond_
as a picture of life in the age of Queen Anne; and the lectures on the
humourists are saturated, as _Esmond_ is, with the eighteenth century
spirit. The figures of the humourists live and move before our eyes. We
may not always agree with the critic's opinion, but we can hardly fail to
understand the subject better through his mode of treatment. Strong
objection has been taken, perhaps in some respects with justice, to his
handling of Swift. Yet, much as has been written about Swift, where does
there exist a picture of him so vivid, so suggestive and so memorable? Who
else has done such justice to Steele? Who has written better about
Hogarth? Thackeray succeeded because he not only knew the work of these
men but felt with them. He was at bottom of the eighteenth century type.
Much of Swift himself, softened and humanised, something of Fielding, whom
he justly regarded as a model, and a great deal of Hogarth may be detected
in Thackeray. The best criticism is always sympathetic; and it is because
sympathy is so easy to him here that Thackeray is so excellent. The
treatment even of Swift is far from being unsympathetic.
With the four Georges Thackeray was certainly not in sympathy. But they
afforded him an ample field for the exercise of his satiric gifts, and he
found occasion in his treatment of them for some passages of his most
eloquent writing. The objection taken to this course of lectures has been
as much political as literary. Thackeray is supposed to have treated the
throne with scanty reverence; but it is the throne itself that is lacking
in reverence when such lives are led; and the day for the concealment of
disagreeable truths has long gone by.
_The Virginians_, a continuation of _Esmond_, ran its periodical course
from 1857 to 1859. In the latter year Thackeray became editor of the
_Cornhill_, for which he wrote _Lovel the Widower_ (1860), _The Adventures
of Philip_ (1861-1862), and the delicious _Roundabout Papers_, which he
contributed occasionally from the beginning of his editorship to his
death. _Denis Duval_ had not even begun to appear in the magazine, and
only a small part had been written when the author was suddenly cut off at
the age of fifty-two.
It would not be easy to name two great contemporary writers, working in
the same field of letters, more radically unlike than Dickens and
Thackeray. Even the qualities they possess in common diverge as far as
qualities bearing the same name can do. Both are humourists; but the
humour of Thackeray is permeated through and through with satire; that of
Dickens has not infrequently a touch of satire, but its essential
principle is pure fun, and it is largely burlesque. We look for it in the
absurdities of the Micawber family, in the Jarley wax-works, in the
ridiculous adventures of the Pickwick Club, and in the solemn fatuity of
Silas Wegg. Thackeray was a master of burlesque too, as his imitations of
contemporary novels--_Phil Fogarty_, _Codlingsby_, _Rebecca and
Rowena_--and his _Ballads of Policeman X_ prove. But it is a totally
different burlesque. That of Dickens moves to laughter, and the laughter
is frequently uproarious; Thackeray only excites a smile and a chuckle of
intellectual enjoyment.
The two writers differ equally in their pathos. Dickens, as we have seen,
draws it out, paragraph after paragraph, chapter piled on chapter.
Thackeray concentrates, partly from the artist's knowledge that
concentration is necessary to permanent effect, in greater degree because
of a personal dignity, accompanied by reticence, in which Dickens was
certainly deficient. Just as there are substances which will not bear
light, so there are feelings which seem to be profaned if they are too
long exposed to view. All art involves exposure; but the difference
between perfect taste and defective taste lies in knowing just in what
manner and how long to make the exposure. In _The Four Georges_ two
paragraphs contain all we are told about the last tragic years of George
III.; and just a few lines of eloquence and pathos rarely equalled close
the story.
When we search back from symptom to cause we find the secret of these and
many other differences in the fact that the work of Dickens is primarily
sentimental, while Thackeray's is primarily intellectual. This is by no
means equivalent to saying that Dickens is deficient in intellect, or
Thackeray in sentiment. It means rather that the strong intellect of
Dickens is the servant of sentiment, the strong sentiment of Thackeray the
servant of intellect. It is another way of saying that Thackeray is
essentially of the eighteenth century, the century of predominant
understanding. It follows from his satirical way of viewing life; for the
satirist must not wholly lose himself even in his _saeva indignatio_. The
effect of his satire depends upon his keeping aloof, critical, superior.
The Romans were great satirists because they did so; the English are great
satirists in so far as they do so likewise. Something is lost in emotion,
as art, something is gained in comprehension, for practical application.
No one can doubt that Thackeray is thus reflective and satirical. Critic
after critic has called attention to his habit of staying the course of
his story for comment and exposition. Not only so, but there is subdued
and disguised comment all through. The artist makes each character
criticise itself; and the effect is as if we were walking constantly in
the light of those rays which pierce through the opaque and reveal what
lies beneath. Thackeray's satire plays continually over the characters he
creates for warning and example. Blanche Amory, Becky Sharp, Major
Pendennis, all have their inner motives exposed by this searching and
pitiless light. So much is this the case that Thackeray has been described
as not properly a novelist at all, but first of all a satirist. The
difference is that the novelist primarily exhibits life as it is, while
the satirist comments upon it. That Thackeray does the latter is obvious;
but it seems an exaggeration to say that he is not properly a novelist.
Though most of his stories are loosely constructed, though plot and
incident are of subordinate importance, yet without the story his books
would be vitally different. Moreover, the pure satirist commonly deals
with types rather than individuals. Juvenal does so, Horace does so, Swift
does so. So does Thackeray himself in _The Book of Snobs_. But Becky Sharp
and Major Pendennis and Beatrix Esmond all have individuality.
Further, in what may fairly be regarded as Thackeray's highest effort,
satire sinks to a secondary place. _Esmond_, though not the best known of
Thackeray's works, is his purest piece of art. It is so, partly at least,
because the conditions presupposed by the story put a curb upon the
satirical tendency, in which undeniably Thackeray was too prone to
indulge. In _Esmond_ the writer is restrained in two ways. First, as the
hero is himself the narrator, the sentiments have to be fitted to his
character. And Henry Esmond was not the familiar compound of weakness and
selfishness, crossed with some good nature and with occasional higher
impulses, but, on the contrary, Thackeray's ideal man. He is endowed with
a power of satire, but it is rarely exercised. The second restraint arose
from the need of unceasing watchfulness to use language consistent with
the time in which the story is laid. If Thackeray was tempted to be
careless, this necessity must have kept him constantly in check. And so
well did he satisfy the requirements that _Esmond_ is admitted on all
hands to be, of all books in English, that which most accurately
reproduces the style of a past age.
It is remarkable that the same book which contains the noblest figure
Thackeray ever drew contains also the most lovable of his good women, and
the most brilliant and fascinating of the class that cannot be called
good. All critics have been struck with Thackeray's tendency to make his
good women weak and colourless, or else sermons incarnate. Amelia and
Helen Pendennis are examples of the former class, Laura of the latter.
Lady Castlewood escapes the censure. She has greater strength of character
than Amelia or Helen; and her human weaknesses win a sympathy Laura does
not command. Moreover, there is no other woman of her type shown in the
light of passion as she is in that perfect chapter, _The 29th December_.
Beatrix, on the contrary, ranks among the reprobate. She is not so
wonderfully clever as Becky Sharp, but she has what Becky has not,
fascination. Becky has only her intellect. Beatrix, clever too, has,
besides her social position, splendid beauty, and above all the
indescribable magnetic power of attraction. She can win men against
themselves, and though they are alive to all the evil of her character.
Becky can only win those whom she has blinded.
The other novels, less perfect as pictures of life, are not inferior in
sheer intellect. _Vanity Fair_ and _Barry Lyndon_ are superlative examples
of force of mind. The latter is so faithfully written from the scoundrel's
point of view that only the excess of scoundrelism prevents Barry from
commanding sympathy. The former contains in Becky Sharp the cleverest and
most resourceful of all Thackeray's characters. It also contains,
especially in the chapters on the Waterloo campaign, some of the finest
English he ever wrote. _Pendennis_ has its special interest in the thread
of autobiography interwoven with it; while _The Newcomes_ has its crowning
glory in the old colonel, and in the famous scene in Grey Friars. After
_The Newcomes_ the quality of Thackeray's work, or at least of his novels
(for the lectures and the _Roundabout Papers_ stand apart) declined. He
did not live long enough to demonstrate whether the decline was permanent
or not; but certainly there is no lack of power in the _Roundabout
Papers_; and in spite of his own dictum that no man ought to write a novel
after fifty, Thackeray should have been just at his best when he died.
Thackeray was a poet and an artist as well as a novelist; and sometimes in
a copy of verses or in a sketch the inner spirit of the man may be seen
more compendiously, if not more truly and surely, than in longer and more
ambitious works. It is so here. The spirit that pervades _Vanity Fair_ is
the same that inspired the _Ballad of Bouillabaisse_, the concluding
stanzas of _The Chronicle of the Drum_, _The End of the Play_, _Vanitas
Vanitatum_, and others of his more serious verses. There is a touch of
satire in these verses, but there is far more of pity than scorn. Still
more vividly this spirit shines through a triplet of sketches labelled
respectively Ludovicus, Rex and Ludovicus Rex, the shivering little atom
of humanity, the imposing trappings of royalty, and then the poor little
mortal clothed in this magnificence. Here we have the quintessence of
Thackeray's sermon through all his books, the difference between the
humble reality and the vast pretensions, moral, intellectual and social,
too often based on it. There is frequently scorn in the sermon, the more
in proportion to the greatness of the pretensions. But there is almost
always pity behind the scorn. Ludovicus Rex is, after all, the sport of
fate. It is fate that decrees
'How very weak the very wise,
How very small the very great are!'
It is the neglect of this fact that has led to the common judgment that
Thackeray is a cynic. The gulf that divides him from cynicism is seen when
we compare him with Swift. There is always in Thackeray a sensitive
kindliness not to be found in the older writer. Thackeray's bitterest
satire is on individuals who are worse than their neighbours. There is
something amiss with society when Barry Lyndon and Becky Sharp are
possible; but we are not led to think that all men are Barry Lyndons, or
all women Becky Sharps. _Gulliver_, on the contrary, is a satire on the
human race.
[Sidenote: William Carleton (1794-1869).]
[Sidenote: Samuel Lover (1797-1868).]
A group of Irish novelists, rather older than Thackeray and Dickens, may
be noticed together for the sake of certain features they have in common.
If fineness of literary quality alone were in question, the first place
must be assigned to William Carleton, whose _Traits and Stories of the
Irish Peasantry_ are the most carefully executed of their class. Carleton
however had neither the verve nor the copiousness of Lever, who has been
fixed upon by popular judgment as the leading Irish novelist of his time.
Still less can the versatile Samuel Lover, song-writer, dramatist and
painter as well as novelist, compete with Lever; for although the former
did many things with a certain dexterity he did nothing really well. His
_Handy Andy_ is a formless book, and the fun of it grows tedious.
[Sidenote: Charles James Lever (1806-1872).]
Charles James Lever came in direct literary descent from neither of these,
but from William Hamilton Maxwell (1792-1850), whose _Stories from
Waterloo_ turned Lever's attention to the literary possibilities of the
great war. This book begot _Harry Lorrequer_, begun in the _Dublin
University Magazine_ in 1837; and _Lorrequer_ was followed by _Charles
O'Malley_ (1840). The former derived its name from the 'rollicking'
quality generally recognised as characteristic of Lever. Both books have
whatever attraction high spirits and plenty of fun and fighting and
adventure can give; but in the literary sense they are rough and
unpolished to the last degree. _Tom Burke of Ours_ (1844) shows the same
qualities slightly chastened and reduced to a more literary shape. The
change went on, and Lever paid more and more attention to construction and
to literary law and rule. He himself considered _Sir Brook Fossbrooke_
(1866) his best book; but it may be questioned whether the gain in
smoothness and regularity is sufficient to compensate for the partial loss
of that rush of adventure and copiousness of anecdote which won for Lever
his reputation, and still preserves it.
[Sidenote: Charlotte Bronte (1816-1855),
Emily Jane Bronte (1818-1848),
Anne Bronte (1820-1849).]
It is singular that this typically Irish novelist was by blood more
English than Irish. But the debt which Ireland owed to England in Lever
was repaid with interest in that family of genius, the Brontes. Their
father, himself a minor poet, left behind him, when he left Ireland, the
name by which he was known, Brunty, from O'Prunty, and was afterwards
known as Bronte. He married a Cornish girl, and settled as a clergyman at
Haworth, on the wild moors of the West Riding of Yorkshire. All his
children who grew to maturity possessed talent, if not genius. His son,
Patrick Branwell Bronte, who was in boyhood considered the most promising
of all, squandered his own life and clouded the lives of his sisters by
his debauchery. The three sisters, Charlotte, Emily Jane and Anne, all won
a place in literature, and two of them a conspicuous one. Their lives were
uneventful, but gloomy and sometimes tragic. They were poor, they had a
dissipated brother, they were constitutionally liable to consumption, and
their story is a record of dauntless efforts frustrated by failing health.
Their works bear deep marks of the people and the place amidst which they
were conceived, but even more of their own family history. This was in
fact inevitable. The sisters had no wide culture; still less were they
accustomed to mingle in society and meet many types of men and women.
Besides their few books, greedily read until the favourites were so
tattered and worn that they had to be hidden away on private shelves, the
men dwelling near them, the scenes around them and the tales current in
their family were the only food for their imagination.
An outline of Charlotte's life can be easily traced in her writings. Her
first place of education, Cowan Bridge School, for the daughters of
clergymen, appears in _Jane Eyre_; and Helen Burns represents her hapless
eldest sister Maria, who died at eleven. A residence in Brussels to
improve their French and qualify them for higher teaching, furnished much
matter for _The Professor_ and _Villette_. They meant to receive pupils at
the parsonage; but their brother's intemperance made that impossible, even
if pupils had offered themselves, and, until his death in 1848, he was a
heavy burden and a bitter grief.
The sisters had long loved to write as well as to read; and Charlotte has
told how, in the autumn of 1845, the thought of publication was suggested
by a MS. volume of Emily's poetry. Her criticism of the verses is
generous, but by no means extravagant. 'I thought them,' she says,
'condensed and terse, vigorous and genuine. To my ear they had also a
peculiar music, wild, melancholy, and elevating.' The other sisters had
written poems also, and after various difficulties a small volume of
_Poems_ by Currer, Ellis and Acton Bell was published in 1846. It
attracted little attention, and Charlotte says with truth that only the
poems of Emily deserved much. Hers display a genuine poetic gift. Had she
lived to write much more verse she would certainly have been one of the
greatest of English poetesses, and might have been the first of all.
Strength, sincerity and directness are the characteristics of her verse;
and the individuality of the writer gives it distinction:
'I'll walk where my own nature would be leading:
It vexes me to choose another guide:
Where the grey flocks in ferny glens are feeding;
Where the wild wind blows on the mountain side.
'What have these lonely mountains worth revealing?
More glory and more grief than I can tell:
The earth that wakes _one_ human heart to feeling
Can centre both the worlds of heaven and hell.'
The volume of verse was followed by several volumes of prose. Each sister
had a story ready, and the three were offered simultaneously for
publication. Emily's novel, _Wuthering Heights_, and Anne's, _Agnes Grey_,
were accepted, though 'on terms somewhat impoverishing to the two
authors.' Charlotte's, _The Professor_, was rejected by one publisher
after another, and ten years passed before it appeared. Meanwhile the
dauntless author set to work and wrote _Jane Eyre_. This was accepted, and
was published, like the stories by the other sisters, in 1847. Unlike
theirs, it won a rapid and remarkable success and finally fixed the career
of Charlotte Bronte.
It will be convenient to take the work of the three sisters in the reverse
order. That of Anne Bronte may be speedily dismissed. She was a gentle,
delicate creature both in mind and body; and but for her greater sisters
her writings would now be forgotten. Her pleasing but commonplace tale of
_Agnes Grey_ was followed by _The Tenant of Wildfell Hall_, in which she
attempted, without success, to depict a profligate.
In sheer genius Emily Bronte probably surpassed Charlotte, though in art
she was certainly the inferior of her elder sister. All that she wrote
bears the stamp of her sombre imagination and of the gloomy strength of
her character. Despite the Celtic strain in her blood, she, like the rest
of her family, had more in common with the austere Yorkshire character
than with that of the typical Irishman. She had a perfect comprehension of
it. She was, as the northern character is by so many felt to be,
personally unattractive. She was almost savagely reserved. Even her
sisters, in her last illness, dared not notice 'the failing step, the
laboured breathing, the frequent pauses' with which she climbed the
staircase. But she had also the better qualities of the northern nature.
She never shrank from duty or evaded a burden; and her courage was
boundless. With her own hand she applied cautery to the bite of a dog she
believed to be mad; and she conquered a savage bull-dog by beating it with
the bare hands, though she had been warned that if struck it would fly at
her throat.
Such a character explains all that Emily Bronte is in literature.
_Wuthering Heights_ is her only novel, for she died the year after its
publication. It remains therefore uncertain whether she would have
mastered her errors, or whether, as in her sister's case, her first work
was to be her greatest. The probability is that she would have improved.
She was only thirty; and the defects of _Wuthering Heights_ are
artistic,--faulty construction, want of proportion, absence of restraint.
These are defects which experience might be expected to overcome;
especially as Emily Bronte's verse showed that she was by no means without
taste. There are flaws in the substance too; and it is less likely that
these would have disappeared. Even Mrs. Gaskell could not deny that there
is some foundation for the charge of coarseness brought against Charlotte;
and there is more in the case of Emily. It is not merely that her
characters are harsh and repulsive: there are not a few such characters in
life, and there were many of them within the experience of the Bronte
family. But besides, Emily Bronte appears to sympathise with, and
sometimes to admire, the harsher and less lovable features of the
characters she draws. Heathcliff is spoilt for most readers by the
seemingly loving minuteness with which the author elaborates the worst
characteristics of his nature, characteristics familiar to her from family
legend.
For several reasons Charlotte Bronte holds a higher place in literature
than her sister. She has not to be judged by one work only. _Jane Eyre_
was followed by _Shirley_ (1849), by _Villette_ (1853), by _The Professor_
(1857), published posthumously, and by the fragment, _Emma_ (1860). In
none of these did she equal her first novel, but she exhibited different
sides and aspects of her genius, she multiplied her creations, and she
proved, as long as life was given her, that she had what in the language
of sport is called 'staying power.' Moreover, Charlotte was decidedly more
of the artist than Emily. She understood better the importance of relief.
Her imagination too was prevailingly sombre; yet though _Jane Eyre_ is
sufficiently gloomy, it is less uniformly so than _Wuthering Heights_. The
shadow is flecked here and there with light. Again, Charlotte is more
versatile in her imagination and much more pictorial than Emily. All the
members of the Bronte family had a love and apparently some talent for
art; but it is in the works of Charlotte that this talent leaves the
clearest traces. There are few things in _Jane Eyre_ more impressive than
her description in words of the picture her imagination, if not her brush,
drew. More ample scope, greater variety, a more humane tone,--these then
are the points in which Charlotte surpasses Emily.
Notwithstanding the wonderful force and vividness of their imagination,
the Brontes were in several respects singularly limited, largely because
their experience was so limited. It was only genius that saved them from
the narrowest provinciality. Even genius did not enable them to reach
beyond a few well-marked types of character, nor did it save them from
errors in the drawing of these. Both Rochester and Heathcliff would have
been more endurable, as members of society, if their creators had
themselves known more of society. They are brutal because the Brontes had
seen and heard about much brutality, and had not learned that polish is by
no means synonymous with weakness, and that gentleness is quite consistent
with manliness and strength of will.
Partly however the narrowness was in the Brontes themselves. They show
little power of invention. Not only are their types few, but the
individual characters are nearly all reproductions from life. Probably no
English writer of equal rank has transcribed so much from experience as
Charlotte Bronte. Many of her characters were so like the originals as to
be immediately recognised by themselves or by their neighbours. Shirley
Keeldar was her sister Emily, Mr. Helstone was her father, the three
curates were real men, and some of Charlotte's school friends were
depicted, it is said, with the accuracy of daguerreotypes. This minute
fidelity to fact occasionally brought Miss Bronte into trouble; for she
was not particularly sagacious in estimating the effect of what she wrote.
We may argue from it, moreover, that if she had lived she would soon have
exhausted her material.
Charlotte Bronte was likewise deficient in humour. This might be safely
inferred from her works, where there are hardly any humorous characters or
situations; and the inference would be confirmed by her life. Her letters,
often excellent for their common sense and their high standard of duty,
and sometimes for their dignity, are almost destitute of playfulness.
Neither does she seem to have readily recognised humour in others. She
admired Thackeray above almost all men of her time, but she was completely
puzzled by him when they met. She lectured him on his faults, and quaintly
adds that his excuses made them worse. The humourist was playing with the
too serious mind. Had Miss Bronte been as Irish in nature as she was by
blood she would not have made this mistake.
In the case of the Brontes it would be peculiarly ungenerous to insist on
defects. All life long they fought against odds. With inadequate means and
imperfect training, without friends and without advice, they won by their
own force and genius alone a position in literature which is higher now
than it was forty years ago. Charlotte is one of the half-dozen or so of
great English novelists of the present century; and in all probability it
is only her early death that has made Emily's place somewhat lower.
[Sidenote: Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell (1810-1865).]
Senior in years to the Brontes was the biographer of Charlotte, Elizabeth
Cleghorn Gaskell. Mrs. Gaskell's fame was won chiefly as a novelist, but,
both for its intrinsic merits and as a memorial of a most interesting
literary friendship, her _Life of Charlotte Bronte_ deserves mention. If
not equal to the best biographies in the language, it is worthy of a place
in the class nearest to that small group. It gives a delightful impression
both of the subject of the memoir and of her biographer. There was
sufficient difference between the two to make Mrs. Gaskell's generous
appreciation peculiarly creditable to her. Two contemporaries of the same
sex, reared amidst men closely akin in character, and confronted, as _Mary
Barton_ and _Shirley_ prove, by similar social problems, could hardly
present a greater contrast than there is between Charlotte Bronte and Mrs.
Gaskell; the former austere, intense, prone to exaggeration and deficient
in humour; the latter genial, balanced, and among the most successful of
female humourists. The contrast extended to the personal appearance of the
two women. Charlotte Bronte was plain and diminutive, while in her youth
Mrs. Gaskell was strikingly beautiful.
The events of Mrs. Gaskell's life were almost wholly literary. Her first
novel, _Mary Barton_, published in 1848, remains to this day probably her
best known, though not her most perfect book. It deals with the industrial
state of Lancashire during the crisis of 1842, and it won, by its vivid
and touching picture of the life of the poor, the admiration of some of
the most distinguished literary men of the time. The subject was
gradually drawing more attention. The evils which begot the socialism of
Robert Owen and drew the protests of Carlyle and of Ebenezer Elliott had
been brought into prominence by the Luddite riots and by Chartism. Most of
the novelists were awakening to a sense of them. Disraeli had anticipated
Mrs. Gaskell; and Kingsley as well as Charlotte Bronte followed her. The
treatment varies greatly. Mrs. Gaskell, like Kingsley, has much more
sympathy with socialism than Charlotte Bronte has. The social aspects of
_Mary Barton_ caused it to be admired and praised on the one hand, and to
be censured on the other, for reasons outside the domain of art; but on
the whole they certainly increased its popularity.
The success of _Mary Barton_ won for Mrs. Gaskell an invitation from
Dickens to contribute to _Household Words_, and some of her best work,
including _Cranford_ (1851-1853) and _North and South_ (1854-1855), first
appeared there. She was also a contributor to the _Cornhill_, where her
last story, _Wives and Daughters_, was running when she died, with
startling suddenness, in 1865.
'George Sand, only a few months before Mrs. Gaskell's death, observed to
Lord Houghton: "Mrs. Gaskell has done what neither I nor other female
writers in France can accomplish; she has written novels which excite the
deepest interest in men of the world, and yet which every girl will be the
better for reading."' This is high praise; and it is deserved. It must not
indeed be pressed to mean that Mrs. Gaskell is the equal in genius, far
less the superior, of writers like George Sand or George Eliot. Neither is
she the equal of her friend, Charlotte Bronte. There is a sweep of
imagination and a touch of poetry in _Jane Eyre_ quite beyond the reach of
Mrs. Gaskell. But her work is at once free from weakness and wholly
innocent. She is of all the more remarkable female novelists of this
period the most feminine. The traits of sex are numerous in her books, but
they never appear unpleasantly. Her women are generally better than her
men; yet her men are not such monsters as the Brontes loved to depict. On
the contrary, she is fond of painting men of quiet worth, such as the
country doctor whose 'virtues walk their narrow round,' who lives unknown,
but who is sadly missed when he dies. Her best stories are quiet tales of
the life of villages and small towns, and they show the shrewd, kindly,
genial observation with which all her life she regarded those around her.
She was happy in her own domestic life, and she believed that life in
general, though chequered, was happy too. In her picture of human nature
the virtues on the whole prevail over the vices.
Mrs. Gaskell saw everything in the light of a sympathetic humour. It is
this quality that has served hitherto as salt to her books and has
preserved their flavour while that of a great deal of more ambitious
literature has been lost. If her humour is not equal to the best specimens
of that of George Eliot, it is more diffused; if less powerful, it is
gentler and quite as subtle. In style she is easy and flowing; and her
later books show more freedom than her first attempt. At the same time,
her writing rarely rises to eloquence. She had more talent than genius.
She has created many good, but no great characters; and she stands midway
between Thackeray and Dickens, who are emphatically men of genius, and
writers like Trollope who, with abundant talent and exhaustless industry,
have no genius whatever.