Popular novelists were Major Whyte-Melville, best in tales of sport and the affections, but ranging all fields from ancient Assyria to "The Queen's Maries"; George Lawrence, the author of that joy of boyhood, "Guy Livingstone," "Sword and Gown," and other tales military and sporting. He was the intellectual father of "Ouida" (Miss de la Ramée) with her magnificent guardsmen, and innocent descriptions of racing and of field sports. She was for long very prolific and very popular, she lashed the vices of society, and was the constant friend of animals. Gorgeous is the epithet that may be applied to her style, and humour did not enter into her genius, which may be called "heroic" in the manner of the seventeenth century tragedies.
James Payn, on the other hand, had almost too much humour for the purposes of a novelist, accompanied by the most delightful high spirits. These would have interfered with the success of his novels, from "Lost Sir Massingberd" onwards, in which he provided the public with highly wrought melodramas,—the style of the serious characters being "heroic" in a high degree,—had the public perceived that he was laughing in his sleeve. But his domestic sentiment, and his spirited heroes and heroines, carried the serious reader on, while light-hearted readers were convulsed with laughter. His best novels proper are perhaps "By Proxy" and "Halves". He was one of the best and kindest of men, and most hospitable, as editor of "The Cornhill Magazine," to the work of younger authors, such as Mr. Stanley Weyman and R. L. Stevenson. The "John Inglesant" of Mr. Shorthouse, a dignified and thoughtful novel of the Great Rebellion, which had a resonant success, Mr. Payn declined when it came before him in manuscript; he also took no pleasure in the works of Æschylus.
George Meredith.
George Meredith, novelist and poet, was, in his literary fortunes, a somewhat mysterious power; a somewhat thwarted force. His early novels, the comic Oriental tale of "The Shaving of Shagpat," "The Ordeal of Richard Feverel," "Evan Harrington," "Rhoda Fleming," were full of humour, wit, pathos, the charm of Love's young dream; were peopled by delightful heroines, whose heroes were appropriate, brave, and not too staid. Rose Jocelyn, Lucy, the Countess, the dark Rhoda Fleming, the beautiful hapless Dahlia, certainly very young readers in those old days of the early' sixties were in love with them—thought the aphorisms of "The Pilgrim's Scrip" the acme of witty wisdom; rejoiced in Mrs. Berry as in the Nurse of Julia, delighted in the hypochondriac Hippy, and in Adrian, the Wise Young Man; nearly shed tears over Clare Doria Forey, who let concealment, like the worm i' the bud, feed on her damask cheek; admired the Glorious Mel; laughed sympathetically over Algernon, the Young Fool, and his Derby day, and generally were a most favourable public. But the general public was unfavourable. Meredith's "Evan Harrington" nearly ruined "Once a Week,"—even aided by Charles Keene's designs it was a failure; and the editor had to call in Shirley Brooks, with "The Silver Cord," which no man remembereth, perhaps, except him who writes. Those early novels were not obscure, even to the reading boy; the wit was net too subtle and alembicated, or too profuse; the humour was English—beer and cricket were provided—there was pathos, comedy, character in abundance, but the novels did not appeal to that happy reading public which had still Thackeray and Dickens; and George Eliot for the thoughtful, and Miss Braddon, in the full flush of her early genius, for all who liked a plain tale well told, a humorous melodrama (such as "The Doctor's Wife"); or while Mrs. Henry Wood poured forth romances that deans and princes and everybody could appreciate. It is said to be a fact that Her Majesty Queen Victoria took pleasure in Mrs. Wood's novels; and it is quite certain that another lady, believed by many to be the great granddaughter of Charles III. (better known as Prince Charlie) shared the royal taste.
Possibly this competition caused Meredith's grace to be hid; possibly, curious as it may seem, he was best appreciated by readers in extreme youth. This is probably the truth, for, in much later years, the writer has seen quite unaffected young girls absorbed in "The Egoist" or "Diana of the Crossways," while he, after gallant efforts, was defeated by both in a very early round, tripped up on every page by the Leg of Sir Wilfrid, the Egoist. Too much seemed to be made of that limb. But with "The Egoist," which is doubtless a triumph in wit and knowledge of human nature (as such it was rapturously hailed by R. L. Stevenson), Meredith's fortunes turned. The enthusiasm of young critics at last communicated itself to the more cultured public, and to the public which wished to seem cultured, a lucrative circle. It was like the success of Mr. Browning, which came so many years after "Men and Women". People then turned back on Meredith's early novels, and discovered the manifold virtues which had been overlooked by contemporaries. They who had been boys in the 'sixties might think that by the 'eighties an over-excessive straining after wit and epigram, and a subtlety which was too near neighbour to obscurity, with a mannerism of style too precious and too easily imitable, had overtaken the Master. The truth may be that age had dulled the wits of these critics; that they had lost wit and zest. To them the English prose of "One of Our Conquerors" seemed darkling and decadent, and in "The Amazing Marriage" the baby was the most astonishing element. Whether they were in the right or in the wrong, the admiration of Meredith, like the admiration of FitzGerald's "Omar Khayyám," had become, not only a "cult" (it had already, as in Omar's case, been a cult with the few), but a cult with mysteries open to what Coleridge did not love, "the reading public". Be it as it may, the Master came to his own, as a novelist who to wit, fancy, humour, and power of creating characters, added the still rarer qualities of a true though decidedly difficult poet.
Anthony Trollope.
"The pace is too good" in the world of novel-writing and of novel readers to inquire deeply into the characteristics of the genius of Anthony Trollope, who was born in the year of Waterloo, held a place in the Post Office, pursued the fox; knew much of many sides of life in London, and much of a cathedral town, but did not make a great impression on public taste till, in 1855, he began his series of tales of Barchester. The Bishop, Dr. Proudie, his termagant wife, his chaplain, his Archdeacon Grantley, with the loves and marriages of their children, and the ecclesiastical politics of the age, were the farrago libelli. Trollope had a good deal of humour, his heroines, Lily Dale and Lucy Robartes and the rest were, in various degrees, "nice girls," his political characters and Dukes were of their date; he was extremely fluent; and he stamped his own ideas of his art and of the true method of composition on his brief life of Thackeray.[1]
People who have read Trollope will probably bear witness that many of his characters live in memory, and are friendly inmates of her cell. This can scarcely be said of the characters of Lytton, for example, and in his power of creating characters Trollope comes before any novelist of his own rank, and of his now neglected age. It would be easy to write a long catalogue of Trollope's memorable people, mainly, but by no means solely, dwellers in Barchester. The Grantleys, the Proudies, Bertie Stanhope and his sister, "the last of the Neros," the Crawleys (not of Queen's Crawley) Adolphus Crosby, Johnny Eames, Amelia Roper, "Planty Pal" (so justly driven back to the path of virtue by Griselda), Mr. Slope, these are only a few of his creations. With this creative gift, Trollope, though not refined, or "daring," or emancipated, or passionate, has a claim to be remembered; and the right readers will still find in his works abundance of entertainment.
George Eliot.
In 1857 "Blackwood's Magazine," always notable for discovering good new hands, began to publish "Scenes from Clerical Life," which at once attracted notice by their humour, tenderness, and quiet accomplished style. Were they by a man or a woman? Dickens voted that "George Eliot" was a woman; he was right. She was Miss Mary Ann Evans, born in Warwickshire in 1819. Familiar from childhood with the rural characters whom she drew so admirably (perhaps this art was her true forte, in other fields her humour was inconspicuous or absent), she went to London, associated with advanced philosophers, such as Mr. Herbert Spencer, changed her theological views and made her home with George Henry Lewes, author of a "Life of Goethe," and of a surprising "History of Philosophy". He was a married man, separated from his wife with no chance of a divorce, and he was the constant mentor of the new novelist, though his own essays in the art of fiction were absolute failures. In 1859 George Eliot made a very great success with "Adam Bede," which, to the merits of her "Scenes from Clerical Life", added a plot and a story of a not heartless seducer who fights and is knocked out of time by a hardy carpenter, his rival, the hero. The little victim, Hetty, is like a more heartless Effie Deans, and her crime, not committed by poor Effie, caused many sympathetic tears. The Jeanie Deans of the story is a female preacher, with considerable strength of character. "The Mill on the Floss," which followed, is excellent in the humorous parts, and the heroine, Maggie Tulliver, is delightful as a child, less interesting when she falls in love with a distasteful admirer. "Silas Marner," a much shorter is perhaps a still better tale, and marks the central period of the author's genius. In "Romola" (1863), a story of the Florentine Renaissance, the author was out of the environment which she knew, and was thought to be too moral and didactic. In "Middlemarch" her heroes were, to men, distasteful, and they preferred her pretty to her noble heroine, while Mr. Casaubon, of the "Key to All Mythologies," was held to be too closely studied from the life. "Daniel Deronda" was very long, and a kind of scientific jargon had been taking the place of the old rustic humours. Moreover people felt that they were being preached at, and Mr. Swinburne, contrasting Charlotte Brontë with George Eliot, helped to turn the tide from worship of the living to adoration of the dead woman of genius. George Eliot (Mrs. Cross after Lewes's death, and her own marriage to Mr. Cross in 1880) wrote no more than a book of reflections, "The Opinions of Theophrastus Such". She died in 1880. "Culture," which had exaggerated her merits, began unjustly to disparage them. To understand the injustice it is only necessary to read her books written before "Romola". There has been no better novelist since the death of Dickens.