TROLLOPE AND OTHERS
Five or six writers of fiction, none of whom has attained a
position like that of the three great Victorians already
considered, yet all of whom loomed large in their day, have met
with unequal treatment at the hands of time: Bulwer Lytton,
Disraeli, Reade, Trollope, Kingsley. And the Brontes might well
be added to the list. The men are mentioned in the order of
their birth; yet it seems more natural to place Trollope last,
not at all because he lived to 1882, while Kingsley died seven
years earlier. Reade lived two years after Trollope, but seems
chronologically far before him as a novelist. In the same way,
Disraeli and Bulwer Lytton, as we now look back upon them,
appear to be figures of another age; though the former lived to
within a few years of Trollope, and the latter died but two
years before Kingsley. Of course, the reason that Disraeli
impresses us as antiquated where Trollope looks thoroughly
modern, is because the latter is nearest our own day in method,
temper and aim. And this is the main reason why he has best
survived the shocks of time and is seen to be the most
significant figure of an able and interesting group. Before he
is examined, something may be said of the others.
In a measure, the great reputation enjoyed by the remaining
writers was secured in divisions of literature other than
fiction; or derived from activities not literary at all. Thus
Beaconsfield was Premier, Bulwer was noted as poet and
dramatist, and eminent in diplomacy; Kingsley a leader in Church
and State. They were men with many irons in the fire: naturally,
it took some years to separate their literary importance pure
and simple from the other accomplishments that swelled their
fame. Reade stood somewhat more definitely for literature; and
Trollope, although his living was gained for years as a public
servant, set his all of reputation on the single throw of
letters. He is Anthony Trollope, Novelist, or he is nothing.
I
Thinking of Disraeli as a maker of stories, one reads of his
immense vogue about the middle of the last century and reflects
sagely upon the change of literary fashions. The magic is gone
for the reader now. Such claim as he can still make is most
favorably estimated by "Coningsby," "Sybil" and "Tancred," all
published within four years, and constituting a trilogy of books
in which the follies of polite society and the intimacies of
politics are portrayed with fertility and facility. The earlier
"Henrietta Temple" and "Venetia," however fervid in feeling and
valuable for the delineation of contemporary character, are not
so characteristic. Nor are the novels of his last years,
"Lothair" and "Endymion," in any way better than those of his
younger days. That the political trilogy have still a certain
value as studies of the time is beyond argument. Also, they have
wit, invention and a richly pictorial sense for setting,
together with flamboyant attraction of style and a solid
substratum of thought. One recognizes often that an athletic
mind is at play in them. But they do not now take hold, whatever
they once did; an air of the false-literary is over them, it is
not easy to read them as true transcripts from life. To get a
full sense of this, turn to literally contemporaneous books like
Dickens' "David Copperfield" and "Hard Times"; compared with
such, Disraeli and all his world seem clever pastiche. Personal
taste may modify this statement: it can hardly reverse it. It
would be futile to explain the difference by saying that
Disraeli was some eight years before Dickens or that he dealt
with another and higher class of society. The difference goes
deeper: it is due to the fact that one writer was writing in the
spirit of the age with his face to the future and so giving a
creative representation of its life; whereas the other was
painting its manners and only half in earnest: playing with
literature, in sooth. A man like Dickens is married to his art;
Disraeli indulges in a temporary liaison with letters. There is,
too, in the Lothair-Endymion kind of literature a fatal
resemblance to the older sentimental and grandiose fiction of
the eighteenth century: an effect of plush and padding, an
atmosphere of patchouli and sachet powder. It has the limitation
that fashion ever sets; it is boudoir novel-writing: cabinet
literature in both the social and political sense. As Agnes
Repplier has it: "Lothair is beloved by the female aristocracy
of Great Britain; and mysterious ladies, whose lofty souls stoop
to no conventionalities, die happy with his kisses on their
lips." It would be going too far perhaps to say that this type
never existed in life, for Richardson seems to have had a model
in mind in drawing Grandison; but it hardly survives in letters,
unless we include "St. Elmo" and "Under Two Flags" in that
denomination.
To sum it all up: For most of us Disraeli has become hard
reading. This is not to say that he cannot still be read with
profit as one who gives us insight concerning his day; but his
gorgeous pictures and personages have faded woefully, where
Trollope's are as bright as ever; and the latter is right when
he said that Lord Beaconsfield's creatures "have a flavor of
paint and unreality."
II
Bulwer Lytton has likewise lost ground greatly: but read to-day
he has much more to offer. In him, too, may be seen an
imperfectly blent mixture of by-gone sentimentality and modern
truth: yet whether in the romance of historic setting, "The Last
Days of Pompeii," or in the satiric study of realism, like "My
Novel," Bulwer is much nearer to us, and holds out vital
literature for our appreciation. It is easy to name faults both
in romance and realism of his making: but the important thing to
acknowledge is that he still appeals, can be read with a certain
pleasure. His most mature work, moreover, bears testimony to the
coming creed of fiction, as Disraeli's never does. There are
moments with Bulwer when he almost seems a fellow of Meredith's.
I recall with amusement the classroom remark of a college
professor to the effect that "My Novel" was the greatest fiction
in English literature. While the freshmen to whom this was
addressed did not appreciate the generous erraticism of the
judgment, even now one of them sees that, coming as it did from
a clergyman of genial culture, a true lover of literature and
one to inspire that love in others--even in freshmen!--it could
hardly have been spoken concerning a mere man-milliner of
letters. Bulwer produced too much and in too many kinds to do
his best in all--or in any one. But most of us sooner or later
have been in thrall to "Kenelm Chillingly" or thrilled to that
masterly horror story, "The House and the Brain." There is
pinchbeck with the gold, but the shining true metal is there.
III
To pass to Kingsley, is like turning from the world to the
kingdom of God: all is religious fervor, humanitarian purpose.
Here again the activity is multiple but the dominant spirit is
that of militant Christianity. Outside of the Novel, Kingsley
has left in "Water Babies" a book deserving the name of modern
classic, unless the phrase be a contradiction in terms. "Alton
Locke," read to-day, is felt to be too much the tract to bear
favorable comparison with Eliot's "Felix Holt"; but it has
literary power and noble sincerity. Kingsley is one of the first
to feel the ground-swell of social democracy which was to sweep
later fiction on its mighty tide. "Westward Ho!" is a sterling
historical romance, one of the more successful books in a select
list which embraces "The Cloister and the Hearth," "Lorna
Doone," and "John Inglesant." "Hypatia," examined
dispassionately, may be described as an historical romance with
elements of greatness rather than a great historical romance.
But it shed its glamour over our youth and there is affectionate
dread in the thought of a more critical re-reading.
In truth, Kingsley, viewed in all his literary work, stands out
as an athlete of the intellect and the emotions, doing much and
doing it remarkably well--a power for righteousness in his day
and generation, but for this very reason less a professional
novelist of assured standing. His gifted, erratic brother Henry,
in the striking series of stories dealing prevailingly with the
Australian life he so well knew, makes a stronger impression of
singleness of power and may last longer, one suspects, than the
better-known, more successful Charles, whose significance for
the later generation is, as we have hinted, in his sensitiveness
to the new spirit of social revolt,--an isolated voice where
there is now full chorus.
IV
An even more virile figure and one to whom the attribution of
genius need not be grudged, is the strong, pugnacious, eminently
picturesque Charles Reade. It is a temptation to say that but
for his use of a method and a technique hopelessly old-fashioned,
he might claim close fellowship for gift and influence with
Dickens. But he lacked art as it is now understood: balance,
restraint, the impersonal view were not his. He is a glorious
but imperfect phenomenon, back there in the middle century.
He worked in a way deserving of the descriptive phrase once
applied to Macaulay--"a steam engine in breeches;" he put
enough belief and heart into his fiction to float any literary
vessel upon the treacherous waters of fame. He had, of the more
specific qualities of a novelist, racy idiom, power in creating
character and a remarkable gift for plot and dramatic scene.
His frankly melodramatic novels like "A Terrible Temptation"
are among the best of their kind, and in "The Cloister and
the Hearth" he performed the major literary feat of
reconstructing, with the large imagination and humanity
which obliterate any effect of archeology and worked-up
background, a period long past. And what reader of English
fiction does not harbor more than kindly sentiments for those
very different yet equally lovable women, Christie Johnstone and
Peg Woffington? To run over his contributions thus is to feel
the heart grow warm towards the sturdy story-teller. Reade also
played a part, as did Kingsley, in the movement for recognition
of the socially unfit and those unfairly treated. "Put Yourself
in His Place," with its early word on the readjustment of labor
troubles, is typical of much that he strove to do. Superb
partisan that he was, it is probable that had he cared less for
polemics and more for his art, he would have secured a safer
position in the annals of fiction. He can always be taken up and
enjoyed for his earnest conviction or his story for the story's
sake, even if on more critical evaluations he comes out not so
well as men of lesser caliber.
V
The writer of the group who has consistently gained ground and
has come to be generally recognized as a great artist, a force
in English fiction both for influence and pleasure-giving power,
is Anthony Trollope. He is vital to-day and strengthening his
hold upon the readers of fiction. The quiet, cultivated folk in
whose good opinion lies the destiny of really worthy literature,
are, as a rule, friendly to Trollope; not seldom they are
devoted to him. Such people peruse him in an enjoyably
ruminative way at their meals, or read him in the neglige of
retirement. He is that cosy, enviable thing, a bedside author.
He is above all a story-teller for the middle-aged and it is his
good fortune to be able to sit and wait for us at that half-way
house,--since we all arrive. Of course, to say this is to
acknowledge his limitations. He does not appeal strongly to the
young, though he never forgets to tell a love story; but he is
too placid, matter-of-fact, unromantic for them. But if he do
not shake us with lyric passion, he is always interesting and he
wears uncommonly well. That his popularity is extending is
testified to by new editions and publishers' hullabaloo over his
work.
Such a fate is deserved by him, for Trollope is one of the most
consummate masters of that commonplace which has become the
modern fashion--and fascination. He has a wonderful power in the
realism which means getting close to the fact and the average
without making them uninteresting. So, naturally, as realism has
gained he has gained. No one except Jane Austen has surpassed
him in this power of truthful portrayal, and he has the
advantage of being practically of our own day. He insisted that
fiction should be objective, and refused to intrude himself into
the story, showing himself in this respect a better artist than
Thackeray, whom he much admired but frankly criticized. He was
unwilling to pause and harangue his audience in rotund voice
after the manner of Dickens, First among modern novelists,
Trollope stands invisible behind his characters, and this, as we
have seen, was to become one of the articles of the modern creed
of fiction. He affords us that peculiar pleasure which is
derived from seeing in a book what we instantly recognize as
familiar to us in life. Just why the pleasure, may be left to
the psychologists; but it is of indisputable charm, and Trollope
possesses it. We may talk wisely and at length of his
commonplaceness, lack of spice, philistinism; he can be counted
on to amuse us. He lived valiantly up to his own injunction: "Of
all the needs a book has, the chief need is that it is
readable." A simple test, this, but a terrible one that has
slain its thousands. No nineteenth century maker of stories is
safer in the matter of keeping the attention. If the book can be
easily laid down, it is always agreeable to take it up again.
Trollope set out in the most systematic way to produce a series
of novels illustrating certain sections of England, certain
types of English society; steadily, for a life-time, with the
artisan's skilful hand, he labored at the craft. He is the very
antithesis of the erraticisms and irregularities of genius. He
went to his daily stint of work, by night and day, on sea or
land, exactly as the merchant goes to his office, the mechanic
to his shop. He wrote with a watch before him, two hundred and
fifty words to fifteen minutes. But he had the most unusual
faculty of direct, unprejudiced, clear observation; he trained
himself to set down what he saw and to remember it. And he also
had the constructive ability to shape and carry on his story so
as to create the effect of growth, along with an equally
valuable power of sympathetic characterization, so that you know
and understand his folk. Add to this a style perfectly accordant
with the unobtrusive harmony of the picture, and the main
elements of Trollope's appeal have been enumerated. Yet has he
not been entirely explained. His art--meaning the skilled
handling of his material--can hardly be praised too much; it is
so easy to underestimate because it is so unshowy. Few had a
nicer sense of scale and tone; he gets his effects often because
of this harmony of adjustment. For one example, "The Warden" is
a relatively short piece of fiction which opens the famous
Chronicles of Barset series. Its interest culminates in the
going of the Reverend Septimus Harding to London from his quiet
country home, in order to prevent a young couple from marrying.
The whole situation is tiny, a mere corner flurry. But so
admirably has the climax been prepared, so organic is it to all
that went before in the way of preparation, that the result is
positively thrilling: a wonderful example of the principle of
key and relation.
Or again, in that scene which is a favorite with all Trollope's
readers, where the arrogant Mrs. Proudie is rebuked by the gaunt
Mr. Crawley, the effect of his famous "Peace, woman!" is
tremendous only because it is a dash of vivid red in a
composition where the general color scheme is low and subdued.
In view of this faculty, it will not do to regard Trollope as a
kind of mechanic who began one novel the day he finished another
and often carried on two or three at the same time, like a
juggler with his balls, with no conception of them as artistic
wholes. He says himself that he began a piece of fiction with no
full plan. But, with his very obvious skill prodigally proved
from his work, we may beg leave to take all such statements in a
qualified sense: for the kind of fiction he aimed at he surely
developed a technique not only adequate but of very unusual
excellence.
Trollope was a voluminous writer: he gives in his delightful
autobiography the list of his own works and it numbers upwards
of sixty titles, of which over forty are fiction. His capacity
for writing, judged by mere bulk, appears to have been
inherited; for his mother, turning authoress at fifty years of
age, produced no less than one hundred and fourteen volumes!
There is inferior work, and plenty of it, among the sum-total of
his activity, but two series, amounting to about twenty books,
include the fiction upon which his fame so solidly rests: the
Cathedral series and the Parliamentary series. In the former,
choosing the southern-western counties of Wiltshire and Hants as
Hardy chose Wessex for his peculiar venue, he described the
clerical life of his land as it had never been described before,
showing the type as made up of men like unto other men,
unromantic, often this-worldly and smug, yet varying the type,
making room for such an idealist as Crawley as well as for sleek
bishops and ecclesiastical wire-pullers. Neither his young women
nor his holy men are overdrawn a jot: they have the continence
of Nature. But they are not cynically presented. You like them
and take pleasure in their society; they are so beautifully
true! The inspiration of these studies came to him as he walked
under the shadow of Salisbury Cathedral; and one is never far
away from the influence of the cathedral class. The life is the
worldy-godly life of that microcosm, a small, genteel,
conventional urban society; in sharp contrast with the life
depicted by Hardy in the same part of the land,--but like
another world, because his portraiture finds its subjects among
peasant-folk and yeoman--the true primitive types whose speech
is slow and their roots deep down in the soil.
The realism of Trollope was not confined to the mere
reproduction of externals; he gave the illusion of character,
without departing from what can be verified by what men know.
His photographs were largely imaginary, as all artistic work
must be; he constructed his stories out of his own mind. But all
is based on what may be called a splendidly reasoned and
reasonable experience with Life. His especial service was thus
to instruct us about English society, without tedium, within a
domain which was voluntarily selected for his own. In this he
was also a pioneer in that local fiction which is a geographical
effect of realism. And to help him in this setting down of what
he believed to be true of humanity, was a style so lucid and
simple as perfectly to serve his purpose. For unobtrusive ease,
idiomatic naturalness and that familiarity which escapes
vulgarity and retains a quiet distinction, no one has excelled
him. It is one reason why we feel an intimate knowledge of his
characters. Mr. Howells declares it is Trollope who is most like
Austen "in simple honesty and instinctive truth, as
unphilosophized as the light of common day"--though he goes on
to deplore that he too often preferred to be "like the
caricaturist Thackeray"--a somewhat hard saying. It is a
particular comfort to read such a writer when intensely personal
psychology is the order of the day and neither style nor
interpretation in fiction is simple.
If Trollope can be said to be derivative at all, it is Thackeray
who most influenced him. He avows his admiration, wrote the
other's life, and deemed him one who advanced truth-telling in
the Novel. Yet, as was stated, he did not altogether approve of
the Master, thinking his satire too steady a view instead of an
occasional weapon. Indeed his strictures in the biography have
at times a cool, almost hostile sound. He may or may not have
taken a hint from Thackeray on the re-introduction of characters
in other books--a pleasant device long antedating the nineteenth
century, since one finds it in Lyly's "Euphues." Trollope also
disliked Dickens' habit of exaggeration (as he thought it) even
when it was used in the interests of reform, and satirized the
tendency in the person of Mr. Popular Sentiment in "The Warden."
The more one studies Trollope and the farther he recedes into
the past, the firmer grows the conviction that he is a very
distinctive figure of Victorian fiction, a pioneer who led the
way and was to be followed by a horde of secondary realistic
novelists who could imitate his methods but not reproduce his
pleasant effect.
VI
The Brontes, coming when they did, before 1850, are a curious
study. Realism was growing daily and destined to be the fashion
of the literary to-morrow. But "Jane Eyre" is the product of
Charlotte Bronte's isolation, her morbidly introspective nature,
her painful sense of personal duty, the inextinguishable romance
that was hers as the leal descendant of a race of Irish story-tellers.
She looked up to and worshipped Thackeray, but produced
fiction that was like something from another world. She and her
sisters, especially Emily, whose vivid "Wuthering Heights" has
all the effect of a visitant from a remote planet, are strangely
unrelated to the general course of the nineteenth century. They
seem born out of time; they would have left a more lasting
impress upon English fiction had they come before--or after.
There are unquestionable qualities of realism in "Jane Eyre,"
but it is romantic to the core, sentimental, melodramatic.
Rochester is an elder St. Elmo--hardly truer as a human being;
Jane's sacrificial worship goes back to the eighteenth century;
and that famous mad-woman's shriek in the night is a moment to
be boasted of on the Bowery. And this was her most typical book,
that which gave her fame. The others, "Villette" and the rest,
are more truly representative of the realistic trend of the day,
but withal though interesting, less characteristic, less liked.
In proportion as she is romantic is she remembered. The streak
of genius in these gifted women must not blind us to the
isolation, the unrelated nature of their work to the main course
of the Novel. They are exceptions to the rule.
VII
This group then of novelists, sinking all individual
differences, marks the progress of the method of realism over
the romance. Scarcely one is conspicuous for achievement in the
latter, while almost all of them did yeoman service in the
former. In some cases--those of Disraeli and Bulwer--the
transition is seen where their earlier and later work is
contrasted; with a writer like Trollope, the newer method
completely triumphs. Even in so confirmed a romance-maker as
Wilkie Collins, to whom plot was everything and whose cunning of
hand in this is notorious, there is a concession to the new
ideal of Truth. He was touched by his time in the matter of
naturalness of dialogue, though not of event. Wildly improbable
and wooden as his themes may now seem, their manner is
realistic, realism of speech, in fact, being an element in his
effectivism. Even the author of "The Moonstone" is scotched by
the spirit of the age, and in the preface to "Armsdale" declares
for a greater freedom of theme--one of the first announcements
of that desire for an extension of the subject-matter which was
in the next generation to bring such a change.
It seems just to represent all these secondary novelists as
subsidiary to Dickens, Thackeray and Eliot. Fascinating isolated
figures like Borrow, who will always be cherished by the few,
are perforce passed by. We are trying to keep both quality and
influence in mind, with the desire to show the writers not by
themselves alone but as part of a stream of tendency which has
made the English Novel the distinct form it is to-day. Even a
resounding genius, in this view, may have less meaning than an
apparent plodder like Trollope, who, as time goes by, is seen
more clearly to be one of the shaping forces in the development
of a literary form.