CHAPTER VII.
RESERVE:
Thackeray.
It has been hinted that the rhetorical, impassioned, and lofty styles are in a measure dangerous. The natural corrective of that danger is artistic reserve.
Reserve is a negative quality, and so it has not been emphasized by writers on composition as it ought to be. But if it is negative, it is none the less real and important, and fortunately we have in Thackeray a masterly example of its positive power.
Originally reserve is to be traced to a natural reticence and modesty in the character of the author who employs it. It may be studied, however, and cultivated as a characteristic of style. As an artistic quality it consists in saying exactly what the facts demand, no more, no less—and to say no more especially on those occasions when most people employ superlatives. Macaulay was not characterized by reserve. He speaks of the Puritans as “the most remarkable body of men the world ever produced.” “Most” is a common word in his vocabulary, since it served so well to round out the phrase and the idea. Thackeray, on the other hand, is almost too modest. He is so afraid of saying too much that sometimes he does not say enough, and that may possibly account for the fact that he was never as popular as the overflowing Dickens. The lack of reserve made Dickens “slop over” occasionally, as indelicate critics have put it; and the presence of reserve did more than any other one thing to give Thackeray the reputation for perfect style which all concede to him.
One of the most famous passages in all of Thackeray's works is the description of the battle of Waterloo in “Vanity Fair,” ch. XXXII:
All that day, from morning till past sunset, the cannon never ceased to roar. It was dark when the cannonading stopped all of a sudden.
All of us have read of what occurred during that interval. The tale is in every Englishman's mouth; and you and I, who were children when the great battle was won and lost, are never tired of hearing and recounting the history of that famous action. Its remembrance rankles still in the bosoms of millions of the countrymen of those brave men who lost the day. They pant for an opportunity of revenging that humiliation; and if a contest, ending in a victory on their part, should ensue, elating them in their turn, and leaving its cursed legacy of hatred and rage behind to us, there is no end to the so called glory and shame, and to the alternation of successful and unsuccessful murder, in which two high-spirited nations might engage. Centuries hence, we Frenchmen and Englishmen might be boasting and killing each other still, carrying out bravely the Devil's code of honor.
All our friends took their share, and fought like men in the great field. All day long, while the women were praying ten miles away, the lines of the dauntless English infantry were receiving and repelling the furious charges of the French horsemen. Guns which were heard in Brussels were ploughing up their ranks, and comrades falling, and the resolute survivors closing in. Towards evening, the attack of the French, repeated and resisted so bravely, slackened in its fury. They had other foes besides the British to engage, or were preparing for a final onset. It came at last; the columns of the Imperial Guard marched up the hill of Saint Jean, at length and at once to sweep the English from the height which they had maintained all day and spite of all; unscared by the thunder of the artillery, which hurled death from the English line,—the dark rolling column pressed on and up the hill. It seemed almost to crest the eminence, when it began to wave and falter. Then it stopped, still facing the shot. Then, at last, the English troops rushed from the post from which no enemy had been able to dislodge them, and the Guard turned and fled.
No more firing was heard at Brussels,—the pursuit rolled miles away.
Darkness came down on the field and city; and Amelia was praying for
George, who was lying on his face, dead, with a bullet through his heart.”
Who before ever began the description of a great victory by praising the enemy! And yet when we consider it, there is no more artistically powerful method than this, of showing how very great the enemy was, and then saying simply, “The English defeated them.”
But Thackeray wished to do more than this. He was preparing the reader for the awful presence of death in a private affliction, Amelia's loss of her husband George. To do this he lets his heart go out in sympathy for the French, and by that sympathy he seems to rise above all race, to a supreme height where exist the griefs of the human heart and God alone.
With all this careful preparation, the short, simple closing paragraph— the barest possible statement of the facts—produces an effect unsurpassed in literature. The whole situation seems to cry out for superlatives; yet Thackeray uses none, but remains dignified, calm, and therefore grand.
The following selection serves as a sort of preface to the novel “Vanity Fair.” It is quite as remarkable for the things it leaves unsaid as for the things it says. Of course its object is to whet the reader's appetite for the story that is to follow; but throughout the author seems to be laughing at himself. In the last paragraph we see one of the few superlatives to be found In Thackeray—he says the show has been “most favorably noticed” by the “conductors of the Public Press, and by the Nobility and Gentry.” Those capital letters prove the humorous intent of the superlative, which seems to be a burlesque on other authors who praise themselves. One of the criticisms had been that Amelia was no better than a doll; and Thackeray takes the critics at their word and refers to the “Amelia Doll,” merely hinting gently that even a doll may find friends.