He sayd, ‘You are the first that eir
I wisht alive again.’
“He turned hir owre and owre again,
O gin hir skin was whyte!
‘I might hae spared that bonnie face
To hae been sum man’s delyte.’”
It is pleasant to know that the ruthless butcher was promptly pursued and slain for his crime, but it is finer still to realize that brief moment of bitterness and shame. I have sometimes thought that Rossetti’s Sister Helen would have gained in artistic beauty if, after those three days of awful watching were over, after the glowing fragment of wax had melted in the flames, and her lover’s soul had passed her, sighing on the wind, there had come to the stricken girl a pang of supreme regret, an impulse of mad desire to undo the horror she had wrought. The conscience of a sinner, to use a striking phrase of Mr. Brownell’s, “is doubtless readjusted rather than repudiated altogether,” and there is an absolute truthfulness in these sudden relapses into grace.
For this reason, doubtless, I find Mr. Blackmore’s villains, with all their fascination and power, a shade too heavily, or at least too monotonously darkened. Parson Chowne is a veritable devil, and it is only his occasional humor—manifested grimly in deeds, not words—which enables us to bear the weight of his insupportable wickedness. The introduction of the naked savages as an outrage to village propriety; the summons to church, when he has a mind to fire the ricks of his parishioners,—these are the life-giving touches which mellow down this overwrought figure, this black and scowling thunderbolt of humanity. Perhaps, also, Mr. Blackmore, in his laudable desire for picturesqueness, lays too much stress on the malignant aspect, the appropriate physical condition of his sinners. From Parson Chowne’s “wondrous unfathomable face,” which chills every heart with terror, to the “red glare” in Donovan Bulrag’s eyes, there is always something exceptional about these worthies, to indicate to all beholders what manner of men they are. One is reminded of Charles II. protesting, not unnaturally, against the perpetual swarthiness of stage villains. “We never see a rogue in a play but we clap on him a black periwig,” complained the dark-skinned monarch, with a sense of personal grievance in this forced association between complexion and crime. It was the same subtle inspiration which prompted Kean to play Shylock in a red wig that suggested to Wilkie Collins Count Fosco’s admirable size. The passion for embroidered waistcoats and fruit tarts, the petted white mice, the sympathetic gift of pastry to the organ-grinder’s monkey, all the little touches which go to build up this colossal, tender-hearted, remorseless, irresistible scoundrel are of interest and value to the portrait, but his fat is as essential as his knavery. It is one of those master strokes of genius which breaks away from all accepted traditions to build up a new type, perfect and unapproachable. We can no more imagine a thin Fosco than a melancholy Dick Swiveller, or a light-hearted Ravenswood.
Mr. Andrew Lang, who enjoys upon all occasions the courage of his convictions, has, in one of those pleasant papers, “At the Sign of the Ship,” given utterance to a sentiment so shockingly at variance with the prevalent theory of fiction, that the reader is divided between admiration for his boldness and a vague surprise that a man should speak such words and live. There is a cheerfulness, too, about Mr. Lang’s heterodoxy, a smiling ignorance of his own transgression, that warms our hearts and weakens our upbraiding. “The old simple scheme,” he says, “in which you had a real unmitigated villain, a heroine as pure as snow or flame, and a crowd of good ordinary people, gave us more agreeable reading, and reading not, I think, more remote from truth, than is to be found in Dr. Ibsen’s Ghosts or in his Pillars of Society.” Now to support such a statement would be unscrupulous; to condemn it, dispiriting; but I wonder if the “real unmitigated villain” is quite so simple a product as Mr. Lang appears to imagine. May not his absence from literature be owing as much to the limitations as to the disregard of modern realists? Is he, in truth, so easily drawn as to be unworthy of their subtle and discriminating pens? Is Sir Giles Overreach a mere child’s toy in comparison with Consul Bernick, and is Brian de Bois-Guilbert unworthy to rank with Johann Tönnesen and Oswald Alving? A villain must be a thing of power, handled with delicacy and grace. He must be wicked enough to excite our aversion, strong enough to arouse our fear, human enough to awaken some transient gleam of sympathy. We must triumph in his downfall, yet not barbarously nor with contempt, and the close of his career must be in harmony with all its previous development. Mrs. Pennell has told us the story of some old Venetian witches, who were converted from their dark ways, and taught the charms of peace and godliness; but who would desire or credit the conversion of a witch? The potency of evil lies within her to the end; and when, by a few muttered words, she can raise a hell storm on the ocean; when her eye’s dim fire can wither the strength of her enemy; or when, with a lock of hair and a bit of wax, she can consume him with torturing pain, who will welcome her neighborly advances? The proper and artistic end of a witch is at the stake—blue flames curling up to heaven, and a handful of gray ashes scattered to the wind; or, by the working of a stronger spell, she may be stiffened into stone, and doomed to stand forever on some desolate moor, where, underneath starless skies, her evil feet have strayed; or perhaps that huge black cat, her sinister attendant, has completed his ninth year of servitude to nine successive witches, and, by virtue of the power granted him at their expiration, he may whisk her off bodily on St. John’s Eve, to offer her a living holocaust to Satan. These are possibilities in strict sympathy with her character and history, if not with her inclinations; the last is in especial accordance with sound Italian tradition, and all reveal what Heine calls “the melancholy pleasurable awe, the dark sweet horror, of Mediæval ghost fancies.” But a converted witch, walking demurely to vesper service, gossiping with good, garrulous old women on the doorstep, or holding an innocent child within her withered arms—the very thought repels us instinctively, and fires us with a sharp mistrust. Have a care, you foolish young mother, and snatch your baby to your breast; for even now he waxes paler and paler, as those cold, malignant heart-throbs chill his breath, and wear his little life away.
The final disposition of a mere earthly villain should likewise be a matter of artistic necessity, not a harsh trampling of arrogant virtue upon prostrate vice. There is no mistake so fatal as that of injustice to the evil element of a novel or a play. We all know how, when Portia pushes her triumphant casuistry a step too far, our sympathies veer obstinately around to Shylock’s side, and refuse to be readjusted before the curtain falls. Perhaps Shakespeare intended this,—who knows?—and threw in Gratiano’s last jeers to madden, not the usurer, but the audience. Or perhaps in Elizabeth’s day, as in King John’s, people had not grown so finical about the feelings of a Jew, and it is only the chilly tolerance of our enlightened age which prevents our enjoying as we should the devout prejudices of our ancestors. But when, in a modern novel, guiltless of all this picturesque superstition, we see the sinner treated with a narrow, nagging sort of severity, our unregenerate nature rebels stoutly against such a manifest lack of balance. Not long ago, I chanced to read a story which actually dared to have a villain for a hero, and I promised myself much pleasure from so original and venturesome a step. But how did the very popular authoress treat her own creation? In the first place, when rescued from a truly feminine haze of hints, and dark whispers, and unsubstantiated innuendoes, the hapless man is proven guilty of but three offences: he takes opium, he ejects his tenants, and he tries, not very successfully, to mesmerize his wife. Now, opium-eating is a vice, the punishment for which is borne by the offender, and which merits as much pity as contempt; rack-renting is an unpardonable, but not at all a thrilling misdemeanor; and, in these days of psychological research, there are many excellent men who would not shrink from making hypnotic experiments on their grandmothers. In consequence, however, of such feeble atrocities, the hero-villain is subjected to a species of outlawry at the hands of all the good people in the book. His virtuous cousin makes open and highly honorable love to his virtuous wife, who responds with hearty alacrity. His virtuous cousin’s still more virtuous brother comes within an ace of murdering him in cold blood, through motives of the purest philanthropy. Finally, one of these virtuous young men lets loose on him his family ghost, deliberately unsealing the spectral abiding-place; and, while the virtuous wife clings around the virtuous cousin’s neck, and forbids him tenderly to go to the rescue, the accommodating spirit—who seems to have no sort of loyalty to the connection—slays the villain at his own doorstep, and leaves the coast free for a second marriage service. Practically, the device is an admirable one, because, when the ghost retires once more to his seclusion, nobody can well be convicted of manslaughter, and a great deal of scandal is saved. But, artistically, there is something repellent in this open and shameless persecution; in three persons and a hobgoblin conspiring against one poor man. Our sentiment is diverted from its proper channel, our emotions are manifestly incorrect.