Chapter L: B. Walford (1)

[Sidenote: The fault of the age]

Hurry and scamper, the result of a feverish desire to reap the fruits of every undertaking before the seed is well-nigh sown, is one of the characteristics of the times in which we live. Few can endure to bestow upon their work a moment more of time, or a hair’s-breadth more of pains than will carry it through to the goal on which their ambition—often a very poor and low one—is set; while, as for the greater proportion of our present day aspirants to fame, if they ever pause to reflect upon the infinitude of loving care and anxiety lavished upon the products of bygone days, it is with a sensation of contempt and a pluming of themselves upon their superior smartness and activity.

[Sidenote: A mischievous mistake]

Now there is of course a great deal to be said in favour of energetic composition, and it cannot be denied that many of the best things ever done, or written, or painted, have been flashed off, as it were, red-hot from the brain. We cannot believe, for instance, that Mr. Rudyard Kipling is ever long over his burning sketches of human life, wherein every word tells; and we know that Lord Byron penned canto after canto of _Childe Harold_ with scarce a correction or a hesitation; but it is a mistake so mischievous for beginners in the fields of literature to fall into (and it is, moreover, one that so many do fall into), that of imagining that they too can dash down straightway their own crude thoughts—even when the thoughts themselves are good and original—and send them to the press, all unrevised and _un-thought-out_, that I am going to begin this brief paper addressed to young readers and would-be writers by the single word “Hold!” Pause. Consider what you want to do, and whether you have indeed strength and patience to do it.

[Sidenote: An author’s experience]

This is the sort of thing that often happens; that has happened in my experience scores of times. A boy, or girl—usually a girl—comes up with shy diffidence and much assumed modesty of demeanour to beg for just one word of encouragement—or discouragement—anent a roll of manuscript she holds in her timid hand. Is it _any_ good _at all_? She knows it is _very_ badly written; she is afraid she will only be laughed at; but still it would be so kind, so very kind, if I would just glance over it when I have a spare moment—oh, _any_ moment will do; she is only ashamed of taking up my valuable time with her foolish attempts. All the time I can see she is on the tenterhooks of impatience, and that while half-alarmed by her own boldness, there is an underlying sense of having rushed into the battle-field in which laurels are to be won, and wherein a special wreath awaits her own fair brow.

[Sidenote: The vanity of young writers]

Perhaps the manuscript is really full of promise. With some alterations and amendments, with an idea worked out here, and a digression omitted there, with, in short, a general revision and re-casting of the whole, it would be worth while offering to the public through the medium of an editor or publisher. But when I proceed to point out all that is to be done, and when, thinking to please and encourage, I suggest, “Now, after you have gone carefully through the whole, and written it out afresh, bring it back, and we will see what can be done to get it into print,” I am amazed to find my young _littérateur_ on the verge of tears! She doesn’t want to go all through “the horrid thing” again. She is “sick of the sight of it.” She is sure I don’t think she will ever write, or I “would never have said what I did!” It is impossible to describe the disgust with which she eyes the poor MS. her hands have reluctantly received from mine. I can scarcely believe those orbs which regarded me so beseechingly a few hours before, can be the same which now brim with sullen moisture. Possibly I am informed at this juncture that my young friend would never have thought of writing, and would never have supposed she could write, but for seeing what “rubbish” is accepted and put into print at the present time. She felt she could do at least as well as _that_, or _that_; and she is evidently surprised that I do not at once declare she could do a great deal better. Now, the awkward part of the business is, perchance, that I _have_ seen—have fully recognised the fact that, could the ideal be raised, the effort would rise in proportion; but perceiving no desire on the part of my young writer to do better and worthier things than those she herself condemns, only to rival them and to attain their infinitesimal measure of success, I hardly know how to proceed. The case is hopeless. A hundred to one I never hear of any further literary aspirations from that quarter.

My young readers must of course understand that the above refers solely to a certain class of would-be writers, namely, to those who write in order _to have written_, in order to gratify secret vanity, and make contemporaries stare; neither from love of the thing for itself, nor because of the pressure of poverty—the two main causes of earnest literary effort.

[Sidenote: The secret of success]

Let me now, however, suppose that I have to deal with a young author in embryo of another sort, one who has real talent, combined with patience, perseverance, and modesty. George Eliot’s saying, that distinction in authorship is not to be won without “a patient renunciation of small desires”—(I quote from memory, but fancy those are the exact words)—has an acute meaning for those who have struggled in the contest. It is not enough to be possessed of the true yearning to give vent to the pent-up stores of imagination and observation within the breast; there must be a resolute turning aside from every hindrance, and a steadfast purpose to grudge neither time nor thought, nor strength nor opportunity, in _perfecting_ the work which desire or necessity begot. This holds good of every species of authorship, but the warning is especially needed in the realms of fiction, because fiction (of a sort) is so easy to write; and it is most of all needed with the novel of “manners”—the novel which aims to depict our present generation, with all its habits, customs, whims, and foibles—because the novel of “manners” is the one apparently most within the reach of every ordinary writer.

And yet, if you will believe me, dear young girl, who might write and write well, if you would only take the pains, and not set your standard so terribly low, and not be thirsting to see your name in print, and hear what your companions have to say about it—if you will believe me, scamped work is absolutely fatal to the novel of “manners.”

Listen, and I will tell you why. When a messenger who has witnessed with his own eyes some terrible scene, dashes into the midst of an awe-struck circle, and pours forth the tale of woe with sobbing breath and bursting bombshells of words, who cares what those words are? Their meaning is enough. But at another time, when in cheerful, social intercourse, the same voice is raised to tell a quiet tale, or recount a simple reminiscence, the tone, the look by which the narration is accompanied, the phrases in which it is presented to the listening audience, are _everything_ to its success. Thus, although a great scene in romance may be enormously heightened and accentuated by well-chosen language (as all famous romancists know), a novel which relies mainly for its interest on a well-constructed plot, or on a thrilling life of adventure, or on passionate inward contests (we have all of these and many more varieties at the present day), will be better able to dispense with the careful finish and polished style than the novel of “manners,” to which they are absolutely indispensable.

[Sidenote: The perfection of art]

The novel of “manners” reaches its highest perfection in the products of Thackeray and Jane Austen. I may be laughed at for naming these two together, but I know who would not have laughed—Lord Macaulay would not have laughed, neither would Sir Walter Scott, nor some more of the greatest of our literary critics. What I mean is that neither Thackeray nor Miss Austen have plots—in the accepted sense of the word—at all. They alike take a page of human life and place it beneath the microscope. We perceive all the creatures, large and small, wriggling about. We have no breathless interest to learn whither they will ultimately wriggle: we are simply content to study their movements and requirements—yet it is a study of the most absorbing kind.

And although of course it was the marvellous knowledge of human nature displayed by these two writers which placed them on the summit of their sphere, the beauty of _Esmond_, and the charm of _Mansfield Park_, are so heightened by the exquisitely picked phraseology in which even the most trifling episodes are conveyed, that after long lapses of time memory will often supply the very words, finding them incapable of alteration or of improvement. I doubt if any reader could supply half a dozen sentences on end from, we will say, Wilkie Collins, or Charles Reade, or R. D. Blackmore. Their admirable novels, full of spirit-stirring scenes, are not novels of “manners”; a precise and formal arrangement of words would be almost out of place in them, and would try the reader’s patience still more perhaps than the writer’s.

[Sidenote: Distinguished Novelists]

In penning the above do not let me be mistaken. Thackeray was not by any means a master of style—his style was often faulty; he often repeated himself; he seldom rounded off his sentences as Miss Austen did. But he was careful with a most minute and elaborate care to present every movement of his characters beneath the microscope so as to fasten upon them the attention of the “great, stupid public,” who, he averred, needed “catching by the ears to make it look!”

Of the present day no writer has more happily combined the delineation of “manners” with the narration of beautiful and pathetic stories than Mr. Thomas Hardy. One reads _Far from the Madding Crowd_ first with hurried eagerness to learn its incidents and close, and again with delighted lingering over its homely by-waters, when rustics sit and chat. Mr. Barrie essays to follow in the same line, but in Mr. Barrie the gift of depicting rural “manners” far surpasses the gift of manipulating incident. Even _The Little Minister_ is nothing but a string of characteristic scenes illustrative of the “manners” of the Scottish parish.

Americans succeed wonderfully with novels of “manners,” as witness Mr. Henry James and Mr. W. D. Howells. These distinguished novelists may almost be said to dispense altogether with incident, and to rest their claim on our sympathies entirely on the interest all thinking men and women take in the emotions, agitations, ambitions, and distractions of each other’s daily life.

[Sidenote: One drawback to contend with]

And at this point let me note one drawback which every delineator of “manners,” pure and simple, has to contend with. He, or she, is absolutely sure to be accused of drawing scenes and characters from personal experience. The fidelity with which such a writer seeks to depict life as it presents itself in its homely, every-day aspect, raises the inevitable outcry, which, when once set a-going, can never be silenced; until such of us as labour in this special field are literally tripped up at every turn; and people we have never seen, and whose very names are unknown to us, are asserted with the most positive authority to be our prototypes for heroes and heroines!

To such an extent has this craze for fitting on caps been carried, that before the publication of some of my own novels in “Maga” I have been reasoned with by Mr. Blackwood, the courteous and thoughtful editor, on the question of satirising certain people whom he did not for a moment doubt were the originals of my leading characters. To his almost incredulous amazement I was unaware of the very existence of those so-called “originals”!

An idea may be caught or a long train of thought may be fired by the idiosyncrasy of some one present in person before the writer; but to say that the whole character when completely developed is drawn from life because of the hint, as it were, which began it, is like saying that an animal is copied from life because a single bone has been placed in the hands of the artist, from which he has been enabled—as anatomists know can be done—to piece together the entire creature, and in his mind’s eye behold it.

[Sidenote: Fame slow but lasting]

The novel of “manners” rarely meets with sudden appreciation. Miss Burney’s _Evelina_, to be sure, was an exception; but then _Evelina_ was so broadly humorous, so farcical, and, moreover, came out at a time when so few competitors were in the field, that it can hardly be reckoned with. Miss Ferrier, that delightful Scotchwoman, whose novels are all “manners” together, had only, and still has only, a limited if an enthusiastic _clientèle_; whereas Miss Austen was ridiculously overlooked until she was dead. Her quiet, keen, unerring insight into the hearts of men and women had to work itself by slow degrees into the abiding recognition wherewith it is at last crowned.

But if slowly won, such laurels never fade. Human nature being the same in every age, the student of human nature can never be really out of date; his or her production must always appeal to something within the thoughtful reader’s breast, and awaken a response. The habits and customs of every generation may vary, but these are only like to the faces of the different timepieces made in different periods; the mainsprings are the same, the object of the timepiece is the same; wherefore, recognising our own passions, pursuits, and aims beneath the different exterior of our forefathers, we can never regard them with indifference.

Thus, the novel of “manners,” which caught the essence of its own times, must as a natural sequence amuse and instruct ours. Other kinds of fiction may catch people’s fancy more quickly at the outset; other and more brilliant varieties may outshine the sober tints and slender texture of its woof; but the tapestry pictures in the novel of “manners,” with every stitch complete, and every thread in its right place, will be found giving delight to new generations of readers, when many of the showy and striking works of fiction which now meet the eye at every turn are mouldering on the shelf, their very names forgotten.

COLOUR IN COMPOSITION

S. BARING-GOULD

[Sidenote: Novels and novels]

There are novels and novels. A society novel has its special type: there are the conventionalities of social life, the routine, the courtesies, the absence of startling events, a general smoothness. It requires no local colour. Society is the same throughout England. One town-house is much like another, one country-house may differ from another, in that one is Elizabethan and another Georgian, but social life is the same, eminently nineteenth century in all, and in all alike. It really matters nothing where the scene is laid, whether in Cumberland or in Cornwall, in Yorkshire or in Kent. The _dramatis personæ_ talk the same conventionalities, dress alike, behave in a similar manner everywhere. Social life rubs down eccentricities, almost abolishes individuality. In an American social novel there is a certain American flavour, and in an English social novel a certain English flavour, that is all. A social novel does not need local colour, and local colour least of all enters into the composition of the characters.

[Sidenote: The social novel]

There are certain conventionalities in the social novel: the purse-proud new man, who drops his H’s: the haughty lady of rank, and so on; just as there is the conventional lawyer on the stage, who is a rogue. If we want to be bold and original, we vary or change our pieces, and make the _nouveau riche_ all that is desirable, and the lady of rank all that is humble; but the range of alteration in this respect is not great, and the range of varieties in character is not great, and of local colours influencing the characters there can be none at all.

[Sidenote: The novel of country life]

It is quite another matter when we come to a lower phase of life, when we step down out of the social sphere into genuine country life. Then colour becomes an essential element in the composition. The ladies and gentlemen in the hall at one end of England are like the ladies and gentlemen in the hall at the other end of England; and it is the same with the sweet girls and the honest, frank boys of the rectory and vicarage—they are as fresh and delightful everywhere, in all parts of England, and all very much the same. But it is not so with the peasantry. They have their type in Northumberland, which is not the type in Devon, and the type in Yorkshire is not the type of Sussex. The peasantry represent racial differences much more than those in a class above them. No racial differences are observable in the most cultured class. Then, again, surroundings have much to do with the formation of type; and so naturally has the occupation. Look, for instance, in Yorkshire at the mill-hand and at the agricultural labourer. They are different as different can be, and yet of the same stock. The manner of life, the variety of occupation, have differentiated them. And in appearance it is also true. The coal-miner, shuffling along with an habitual stoop, is a different man, not in gait only but in face, and different in habits as well, from the wool-picker or the foreman at the mill. It is the same with the girls. The factory-girl is distinct, as a specimen, from the farm-girl. They think differently, they comport themselves differently, they look different. Their complexions are not the same, their eyes have a different light in them, they move in a different manner.

An observant eye is necessary to note all this, and to draw distinctions.

[Sidenote: Dialect]

Then, again, in writing a story dealing with life in the working-class, dialect has to be taken into consideration. In some parts of England there is hardly any dialect at all, the voices have a certain intonation in one county which is different from the intonation elsewhere, but there are not many linguistic peculiarities. In the Midlands, in Essex, in Middlesex, the dialect is vulgar; but it can hardly be said that it is so in Northumberland, in Yorkshire, in Cornwall, in Dorset. In Somerset it is unpleasant, but that is another thing from the vulgarity of the Cockney twang. It does not do to accentuate the brogue too much in a book that is for general readers. It puzzles, irritates them. What is needed is to hint the dialect rather than render it in full flavour. Such a hint is a necessary element in giving local colour.

[Sidenote: Folk-sayings]

[Sidenote: Differences to be studied]

[Sidenote: Houses]

In addition to dialect, it is well to get at the folk wisdom as revealed by common sayings, proverbs, and the like. This helps to measure the character of the people, their sense of humour, their appreciation of what is beautiful, their powers of observation, and their imaginative faculties. We generally find that there is more poetry among the peasantry—by this I mean a picturesqueness and grace—a quality lending itself to fiction, where there is Celtic blood. This wonderfully effervescent, unpractical element is very lovable, very entertaining, where it is found. In my own county of Devon we have on one side of Dartmoor a people in which this volatile sparkling _ichor_ exists to a good extent—in fact, the people are more than half Celts; on the other side of the moor the population is heavy, unimaginative, and prosaic—the dreadfully dull Saxon prevails there. A story of the people in the one district would be out of place if told of those in the other district. Then there are peculiarities of custom, all of which should be observed and noted; they help wonderfully to give reality to a tale. The houses the people inhabit are different in one county from another, differ in one district from those in another ten miles away. Here, where I write, the cottages are of stone; often in them may be found a granite carved doorway, sometimes with a date. Five miles off, all is different. The farms and cottages are of clay, kneaded with straw, and the windows and doors of oak. In Surrey, the cottages are of red brick and tiled; on the Essex coast of timber from broken-up ships.

[Sidenote: Costume]

It is not often now that we have a chance of coming on anything like costume, but we do sometimes. In Yorkshire, what else is the scarlet or pink kerchief round the mill-girl’s head, and the clean white pinafore in which she goes to the factory? The bright tin she swings in her hand that contains her dinner is not to be omitted. Every item helps to give realism, and every one is picturesque. When I was in the Essex marshes I saw women and boys in scarlet military coats. In fact, old soldier-uniforms were sold cheap when soiled at Colchester; and these were readily bought and worn. It was a characteristic feature. I seized on it at once in my _Mehalah_, and put an old woman into a soldier’s jacket. She gave me what I wanted—a bit of bright colour in the midst of a sombre picture.

[Sidenote: Pictorial effect]

In story-writing it is always well, I may almost say essential, to see your scenes in your mind’s eye, and to make of them pictures, so that your figures group and pose, artistically but naturally, and that there shall be colour introduced. The reader has thus a pleasant picture presented to his imagination. In one of my stories I sketched a girl in a white frock leaning against a sunny garden wall, tossing guelder-roses. I had some burnished gold-green flies on the old wall, preening in the sun; so, to complete the scene, I put her on gold-green leather shoes, and made the girl’s eyes of much the same hue. Thus we had a picture where the colour was carried through, and, if painted, would have been artistic and satisfying. A red sash would have spoiled all, so I gave her one that was green. So we had the white dress, the guelder-rose balls greeny white, and through the ranges of green-gold were led up to her hair, which was red-gold.

I lay some stress on this formation of picture in tones of colour, because it pleases myself when writing, it satisfies my artistic sense. A thousand readers may not observe it; but those who have any art in them will at once receive therefrom a pleasant impression.

[Sidenote: Character of scenery and people determine character of tale]

With regard to the general tone of a story, my own feeling is that the character of the scenery and character of the people determine the character of the tale. A certain type is almost always found among the people that harmonises with the scenery. Nature never makes harsh contrasts. Where, in a stone and slate district, a London architect builds a brick house and covers it with tiles, it looks incongruous. I was at one time in Yorkshire, near Thirsk. In the village all the farms and cottages were of brick and tiles; a London architect built a church of white stone, and covered it with blue slate. That church never would look as if it belonged to the people, it will never harmonise with the surroundings. So some architects transport Norman buildings into old English towns—the effect is hateful. In Nature everything tones together. In the Fens of Ely the people are in character very suitable to the fenland—silent, somewhat morose; on the moorland, wherever it is, they are independent, wayward, fresh, and hearty. In my judgment, then, the aspect of the country has much to do with determining the character of the story told concerning it. In writing a novel you are drawing a picture, and your background must harmonise with your figures in the forefront, the colours must not be incongruous. You would not paint a pirate under a maypole, nor put village dancers among rocks and caverns.

[Sidenote: Illustrations]

I do not like to appear egotistical, but in writing for young beginners, I think that nothing could more illustrate my meaning than to tell them how I have worked myself.

One day in Essex, a friend, a captain in the Coastguard, invited me to accompany him on a cruise among the creeks in the estuary of the Maldon river—the Blackwater. I went out, and we spent the day running among mud-flats and low holms, covered with coarse grass and wild lavender, and startling wild-fowl. We stopped at a ruined farm built on arches above this marsh to eat some lunch; no glass was in the windows, and the raw wind howled in and swept round us. That night I was laid up with a heavy cold. I tossed in bed, and was in the marshes in imagination, listening to the wind and the lap of the tide; and _Mehalah_ naturally rose out of it all, a tragic, gloomy tale. But what else could it be in such desolation with nothing bright therein?

[Sidenote: Contrast and harmony]

Some little while ago I went to Cheshire, and visited the salt region. It vividly impressed my imagination—the subsidences of land, the dull monotony of brine-“wallers’” cottages, the barges on the Weaver, the blasted trees. Well, then, in contrast, hard by was Delamere forest, with its sea of pines, its sandy soil and heathery openings, the Watling Street crossing it, the noble mansions and parks about it. The whole aspect of the salt district on one hand, and the wild forest on the other, seemed as if it could produce in my mind only one kind of story; and with the story, the characters came; but they came out of the salt factories on one side, out of the merry greenwood on the other, artificiality and some squalor on one side, freshness and simplicity on the other. It may not be with others as with myself, but with me it is always the scenery and surroundings that develop the plot and characters. Others may work from the opposite point, but then, it seems to me, they must find it hard to fit their landscape to their _dramatis personæ_ and to their _dénouement_.

[Sidenote: Imagination]

[Sidenote: Its limits]

Another point I may mention. Erckmann and Chatrien could never write a novel of Alsace and the Jura on the spot. After a visit to the scenes they were going to people with fictitious characters, they wrote, but wrote in Paris. They found that imagination failed when on the spot. I find very much the same, myself. I do not believe I could write a novel of the valley in which I live, the house I occupy. I must lay my scene somewhere that I have been, but have left. When in Rome one winter, impatient at being confined within walls, weary of the basaltic pavement, my heart went out to the wilds of Dartmoor, and I wrote _Urith_. I breathed moor air, smelt the gorse, heard the rush of the torrents, scrambled the granite rocks in imagination, and forgot the surroundings of an Italian _pension_.

[Sidenote: Its strength]

[Sidenote: The secret of doing well]

I repeat, my experiences may not, and probably are not, those of others. When engaged on a novel, I live in that world about which I am writing. Whilst writing a Cheshire novel, I have tasted the salt crystallising on my lips, smelt the smoke from the chimneys, walked warily among the subsidences, and have had the factory before my eyes, for a while, and then dashed away to smell the pines, and lie in the heather and hear the bees hum. It has been so real to me, that if I wake for a moment at night I have found myself in Cheshire, my mind there. When I am at my meals, I am eating in Cheshire, though at the other end of England; when in conversation with friends, directly there is a pause, my mind reverts to Cheshire; and, alas! I am sorry to own it, too often, in church, at my prayers—I find my mind drifting to Cheshire. This I believe to be a secret of doing a thing well—that is to say, as well as one’s poor abilities go—to lose oneself in one’s subject, or at all events in the surroundings.

ON VISION IN LITERATURE

KATHARINE S. MACQUOID

[Sidenote: Popular ideas concerning fiction]

A popular opinion seems to exist that the art of writing Fiction can be acquired without any natural gift for the profession of Literature; the wish to become a writer is thought a sufficient proof of vocation, although such a wish, accompanied with fluency in pen and ink, is very apt to mislead those who can express their thoughts easily in writing. Diligent study and persevering labour will of course do much to further progress in any art, but it is unlikely that the art of writing fiction can be acquired in the same way that the mere mechanical knowledge of Music, or of Painting, or of Sculpture can be learned by a beginner.

Some experienced writers own that they find it difficult to give a definite account of the processes by which they themselves have arrived at the production of their ideas; at the outset, I fancy, many of them worked without settled method, or distinct consciousness of their own processes, and this unconsciousness of the method followed, and of the way in which images reveal themselves to the writer, seems to indicate that a systematic plan, a set of rules to be implicitly followed, would be useless to most learners, and would defeat the desired end.

[Sidenote: The principles of literature]

It seems to me that the principles of Literature, or, to speak simply, the ways in which writing should be done, reveal themselves during its practice, and probably much of the originality which, whatever may be their shortcomings as novelists, distinguishes many English writers, is due in a measure to this personal, unaided way of groping after truth. Writers who possess a natural faculty often work for years with an intuitive rather than a conscious adherence to distinct principles; without these principles, whether possessed consciously or intuitively, it is, I think, impossible to write that which can be called Literature. It appears to me therefore that would-be writers, without a certain innate faculty, may read and study and acquaint themselves with all the literary canons laid down by critics, and yet fail in producing literature, while others who have the true gift will be able to produce good and spontaneous bits of writing. I do not, however, think that mere natural faculty will enable persons to continue to write well without constant, self-denying study, and they must work up to their abilities, if they would attain success.

It would therefore seem wiser for beginners, instead of trying at the outset to learn how to write, to apply some test to their own powers of writing; let them, in fact, make sure that they have a real literary gift.

[Sidenote: The power of vision]

The power of Vision, the subject of my paper, is necessary for all Literature, but it is completely indispensable to a novelist. Many novels are undoubtedly written without it, but it may be asked for what purpose are they written? except it be to waste time; they pass into the limbo of useless and forgotten things; there is even a tradition that the Head of a great circulating library said he used these ineffectual novels for garden manure!

There are, however, many young writers very much in earnest, with too much reverence for Literature to attempt novel-writing for mere pastime, and they are often tormented by doubts of their capacity for success; it is better to tell them frankly, that although such doubts may not be justly founded, they are very hard to lay, and they may possibly abide with the writers till long after the public has begun to listen to their utterances, may indeed remain till writers and their hopes and fears have come to the last chapter of life.

[Sidenote: Certain tests]

But earnest literary students may greatly help themselves at the outset by using certain tests in trying to make sure whether they have or have not any portion of the gift, without which perseverance will only lead to disappointment. It may not be possible to teach the art of writing novels, but one may try, as well as one can, to help beginners to find out for themselves whether they have or have not “natural faculty” for this calling.

It is said that exactness of proportion can only be proved by measurement, and it is perhaps only by the application of certain principles that beginners in the art of Fiction can learn whether they should persevere or whether they will not save themselves bitter disappointment by wisely giving up a profession for which they have proved themselves unfitted. The effort required by any attempt at real Literature argues an absence of idle-mindedness in those who make it, and encourages a hope that beginners may be willing to apply test-principles to their methods and power of work. Of these principles, the power of Vision seems to be the most useful as a test of true vocation for the art of writing Fiction.

[Sidenote: Imagination and realism]

IT was said many years ago of a distinguished writer, who has since passed away, that she lacked imaginative power, that she only described that which she had seen and known. The accusation was refuted as an ignorant one, it was proved that the writer had not seen with her outward eyes all that she so vividly described; it is, however, evident that in making such a statement, the critic forgot the existence of the power of Vision, the power which enables a writer not only to see vividly and distinctly characters, actions, and scenes, but also enables him to see the especial features in these several images which will help to reproduce them with the greatest vigour and with perfect truth. The absence of this power in its truest form makes some so-called realistic work wearisome, and even nauseous, because it contains such a superabundance of detail that breadth of treatment and truth of effect are lost, while tone is lowered by too much familiarity with the objects presented.

[Sidenote: The art of selection]

True Vision sees vividly that which it describes, sees it in perfect proportion and perspective, and with this clear eyesight has a power of selecting from surrounding details the chief and most impressive points of its picture; it thereby enables its possessor—according to his power of utterance—to impress the picture he has called up with vigour and distinctness on his reader.

The power of Vision may and does exist with lack of ability to sing or to say, even faintly, that which it so plainly sees, but for all that it is a real gift, not a mere effort of memory, when it calls up a character or a scene. Memory of course helps it, for perhaps all we write or try to write, even that which seems to us newly evolved from our original consciousness, may only be a recreation of forgotten experiences.

The practical working of the power of Vision is apt to vary; the object or scene is sometimes not at once clearly discerned, a fragment is perhaps first seen, but patient waiting is often rewarded by a distinct and vivid sight of all the other parts which have been simmering in the brain, at first but dimly apprehended, shapeless, lacking alike form and colour.

It may be said that the power of Selection in a writer is a distinct principle, and should of itself form the subject of a paper on creative work, instead of being classed with Vision; but the power of Selection appears to me to be inseparable from any one literary principle—it is an essential part of true Vision.

[Sidenote: A natural not acquired gift]

There are some parts of the whole which constitutes the power of novel-writing that seem as though they might be acquired by dint of hard study, without the possession of a natural gift for them. Style is one of these, another is the careful construction of a story; but unless the power of Vision be intuitive in a beginner, it is, as I have said, almost useless to attempt Fiction. For instance, it is useless to try to describe, unless the person or thing in question is as clearly seen by the mental eyes as the would-be writer’s face is seen by his physical eyes when he looks in the glass; even when the image is distinct, power to present it may not exist in sufficient vigour to enable readers to see the picture as the writer does. This is, however, almost a matter of course. I am inclined to think that probably few writers, if any, have ever satisfied themselves in painting the pictures they have mentally created. To take the highest example, we cannot know how far keener the power of Vision was in the pictures seen by Shakespeare than in those which he has revealed to the world. It is this want of proportion between the power to see and the power to execute that has made the despair of artists of all time, whether painters or poets, sculptors or prose-writers, so dissatisfied must they ever be with their own productions compared with the creations they see so vividly.

[Sidenote: Observation not sufficient]

IT may be said that all this art-study is unnecessary, that it is sufficient carefully to observe life and scenery, and then to write down all that the eye has noted, woven into the form of a story. This is not easy work, our very faculty of observation is qualified by our power of true mental vision; without mental vision, and the selecting power that belongs to it, the objects noted down, instead of forming a coherent and lifelike picture in the mind of a reader or listener, will produce a dry catalogue of persons and things, there will be a want of proportion and perspective, of efficient light and shade. “No one knows what he can do till he tries” is a very true saying which fits our case. Let persons without the literary faculty try to write off a description of the office or counting-house in which they work, of the room, whether it be study or drawing-room, in which they dwell, of the persons among whom they live, and they will see what the results of such attempts are from a literary standpoint.

[Sidenote: Silas Marner]

Many passages might be quoted to illustrate the vigour and distinctness with which this power of Vision manifests itself, and in a few words creates a picture which remains impressed on the mind of the reader, but I have not space for them. Here is one, however, which stands out by itself in intensity of distinctness and direct presentation.

Silas Marner, standing at his cottage door, has had a fit of unconsciousness, during which the child, little Eppie, has found her way into his hut.

“Turning towards the hearth, where the two logs had fallen apart, and sent forth only a red, uncertain glimmer, he seated himself in his fireside chair, and was stooping to push his logs together, when, to his blurred vision, it seemed as if there were gold on the floor in front of the hearth. Gold!—his own gold brought back to him as mysteriously as it had been taken away! He felt his heart begin to beat violently, and for a few moments he was unable to stretch out his hand and grasp the restored treasure. The heap of gold seemed to glow and get larger beneath his agitated gaze. He leaned forward at last, and stretched forth his hand; but instead of the hard coin with the familiar resisting outline, his fingers encountered soft, warm curls. In utter amazement, Silas fell on his knees, and bent his head low to examine the marvel: it was a sleeping child—a round, fair thing, with soft yellow rings all over its head.”

Let the reader try to picture this scene to himself, and then consider the marvellous power with which it is here brought before him, the intense power of Vision, and of Selection evinced not only by the points chosen for representation, but in the omitted details which an ungifted writer would have dragged into the foreground. The strange agitation of the lonely man is seen as vividly as the head of the little golden-haired intruder lying before the red, uncertain glimmer of the burning logs; this picture is more than an incident in the story, it is the key which lets us in and acquaints us with the unhappy weaver who till then had seemed outside our sympathies.

[Sidenote: George Eliot]

As we read her work, we know that unless this writer’s power of Vision had been of a high order, she could not have placed so many living pictures in our memories, pictures not of mere scenes, but bits of actual life, in which the rude passions, and also the gentler qualities of men and women, are set before us.

[Sidenote: Mrs. Gaskell]

I will mention yet another illustration of truth of Vision, rendered, because seen in a sudden flash, with so much vigour that it is difficult to believe it is not a record of human experience. The incident is too long to transcribe, but it occurs in the fourth chapter of the third volume of _Sylvia’s Lovers_, the scene in which Charlie Kinraid, Sylvia’s old lover, returns, and tells her that her husband has deceived her. There is a desperate simplicity in the pathos of the poor girl’s words, “I thought yo’ were dead”; and the vivid image of the shuddering, conscience-stricken husband is more moving than any elaborate description could have made it. It is truth; one seems to know that it was all seen and heard distinctly by the writer before a word of it was set down.

[Sidenote: Some masters of fiction]

In _Kidnapped_, the defence of the cabin on board the privateer strongly evidences the power of Vision; still earlier in the book is a more sudden effect in the ghastly discovery the hero makes at the top of the steps up which his treacherous uncle had sent him. In _The Black Arrow_, by the same master-hand, the scene of the apparition of the supposed leper is a marvellous instance of this faculty.

I might quote many remarkable examples from _Oliver Twist_, from _The Ordeal of Richard Feverel_, from _The Cloister and the Hearth_, and other masterpieces, in illustration of my meaning. There is more than one wonderful instance in _John Inglesant_, notably the passage in which the reader is made to see Strafford almost without a description of his apparition.

These illustrations are more or less evidences of direct Vision, the pictures presented seem to have been at once photographed on the mental sight; but many remarkable instances could be cited in which the effects are produced by a series of touches so exquisitely blended together, that the impression produced is that of a solid whole. In _The Woodlanders_ there are examples of almost unrivalled truth of Vision, presented by a series of richly coloured touches. In the first chapter of _Pride and Prejudice_ we have another feature of the power of Vision, the incisive presentation of character in the dialogue between Mr. and Mrs. Bennet; this so completely impresses both characters on the reader’s mind, that the concluding words of the chapter seem superfluous.

In _A Foregone Conclusion_, by Mr. Howells, we recognise an extremely subtle power of Vision; we can scarcely say how the persons have become familiar to us, yet we seem to know that they are alive, and that they were distinctly seen by the writer; there is the same power in _Silas Lapham_. It may be said that I have only given examples from the Masters of Fiction. I could have given many others from the books of far less popular writers, but I believe in a high ideal, for one can never reach one’s aim, and it is well always to be striving upwards.

[Sidenote: Essential qualities for writing fiction]

The outcome of the question, then, seems to be that beginners in the art of novel-writing are able to test themselves as to their power of Vision with regard to Fiction; they will soon discover whether they can master the difficulty of creating a forcible and distinct picture in their minds of the subject they propose to treat; they _must_ see it distinctly, and it _must_ be lasting; they must see not only the outer forms of characters, but their inner feelings; they must think their thoughts, they must try to hear their words.

It is possible that the picture may not all be seen at once; the earnest student may have to wait days before he sees anything, weeks before he vividly and truthfully sees the whole. I can only say, let him wait with patience and hope, and above all let him firmly believe that novel-writing is not easy; possibly, in spite of earnestness and diligence, the beginner has made a mistake, and has not the necessary gifts for success in Fiction. Well then, if after many trials he cannot call up a picture which is at the same time distinct and true to Nature, he had better bring himself to believe that his attempt is not a creation of the imagination, it is at best but a passing fancy, not worth the trouble of writing down. One more counsel. There are three qualities as essential to success in novel-writing as the power of Vision: they are Patience, Perseverance, and an untiring habit of taking pains.

ON THE DEVELOPMENT OF CHARACTER IN FICTION

MAXWELL GRAY

[Sidenote: The climax of art]

This is the climax, the finest flowering of the fictive art. It is the crux, whereby may be determined the vital reality of the beings presented to the reader by the novelist. Growth is the first condition of life; only the character that develops with the course of the story is really alive; if it be stationary, then it is dead. Many an interesting and amusing writer is without this power of creating and developing character, the rarest and the highest given to mortal man. It is the lack of this singular gift that fills the every-day story-teller’s pages with puppets and labelled bundles of qualities in place of human beings. It is possible to tell a very good story without creating or developing character, but it is scarcely possible to create and develop character without telling a good story. For it is story—that is, linked incident, changing circumstance—that moulds the plastic yet unchangeable character of man.

“Es bildet ein Talent sich in der Stille,
Ein Karacter sich in dem Sturm der Welt.”

There is nothing so constant, and in one sense so unchanging, as human character: every baby born into the world receives certain characteristics, due in part to heredity, in part to climate and physical conditions, in part, possibly, to pre-natal mental surroundings, which characteristics remain with him to the day of his death. A rose-tree may be trained and developed in different ways, it may become a bush, a tree or a creeper, but it can never become a peach—St. Peter is always Peter, and St. Paul, Saul, though the fisher has become a saint and martyr, and the strict and fierce Pharisee the Apostle of the Gentiles.

[Sidenote: Incident affects character]

Though in fiction, as in life, character creates incident, still it is incident, which is dramatic circumstance, or circumstance, which may be called stationary incident, that chiefly carves and shapes character, calls out latent and often unsuspected vice, and evokes equally unlooked-for virtue. Incident, or dramatic situation, may be called the touchstone of character. Many an excellently written and clever novel fails to enchain because the people in it do exactly what they could not possibly do in real life. They develop wrongly because they are not alive, not living organisms, and some secret instinct in the reader is revolted by a feeling of unreality, he has a secret anger at being cheated into temporary belief in a made-up figure, in whose nostrils the breath of life is not.

[Sidenote: Maggie Tulliver]

Many critics, but I fancy chiefly males, and therefore incapable of weighing female character, think this the weak point in _The Mill on the Floss_. Maggie Tulliver, they say, high-minded Maggie, would never have wasted her treasure of noble passion on such a barber’s block as Stephen Guest. Yet that to my mind is one of the finest points in that very fine novel. It is artistically as well as naturally inevitable that the impulsive, imaginative, warm-hearted Maggie, who ran away to live with the gipsies, so greatly admired little Lucy’s doll-face and trim curls, who idealised everything she saw and lived in a constant transition from heaven to hell, never abiding in one stay on the firm level earth in her stormy childhood, should see an Apollo in the first comely and well-conducted youth she met, and that her imagination should invest him with a blinding glamour, which in turn kindled so strong a passion as swept her off her feet. Her passionate and exaggerated repentance, too, though as exasperating to the reader as it would be in real life, is equally true, the natural sequence of all that went before. Still, Maggie ought not to have been drowned, she was but beginning to develop; Stephen Guest should have been but an incident in the Sturm-und-Drang-Periode inevitable to a nature so turbulent and so complex as hers. Maggie’s death, which is an accident and a climax to nothing, must be regarded as an artistic murder, for the wanton slaying of a personage whose death is not artistically necessary in a fiction, is more than a blunder, it is a capital crime. But the charm and interest of _The Mill on the Floss_ are not in the development of Maggie so much as in that of her father and mother and those matchless aunts and uncles of hers.

[Sidenote: Power to create character]

If the power to create and develop character is great, it is also rare, and discoverable only in fiction of the highest order. It is this that makes Hawthorne so incomparably grand; this that gives his chief, though not his whole, magic to that master of English fiction, Thackeray, and his peer, George Eliot; that impresses in Manzoni’s splendid romance, _I Promessi Sposi_; that enchains in Jane Austen, though she does but brush the surface of character, leaving the depths unplumbed; that fascinates in Charlotte Brontë and in Mrs. Gaskell, that powerful, wholesome, and but half-appreciated writer; and the lack of which sends so marvellous a genius as Dickens, in spite of all his witchery of fancy and fun and youthful mastery of language, lost later in affectation, to the second rank. It was Dickens’ inability to recognise his own limitation in this respect which chiefly contributed, with his outrageous vanity, to wreck his later works; for he always aimed at developing character, probably because it was the only thing he could not do. Because the gods, as a sort of make-weight, with their gifts of genius and talent, always throw in a perverse blindness to the nature and limits of those endowments.

[Sidenote: Characters should develop]

Michael Angelo, at first sight of it, said to Donatello’s statue of St. George, “March!” and the young figure always seems, in its breathing vitality, to be on the point of obeying the order. So it is with the finest creations in fiction: they march, they develop, they achieve an immortal existence, like the lovers in Keats’ _Grecian Urn_—

“For ever shalt thou love, and she be fair.”