"For she stood at the head of a deep green valley, carved from out the mountains in a perfect oval, with a fence of sheer rock standing round it, eighty feet or a hundred high, from whose brink black wooded hills swept up to the skyline. By her side a little river glided out from underground with a soft, dark babble, unawares of daylight; then growing brighter, lapsed away, and fell into the valley. Then, as it ran down the meadow, alders stood on either marge, and grass was blading out of it, and yellow tufts of rushes gathered, looking at the hurry. But further down, on either bank, were covered houses built of stone, square, and roughly covered, set as if the brook were meant to be the street between them. Only one room high they were, and not placed opposite each other, but in and out as skittles are; only that the first of all, which proved to be the captain's was a sort of double house, or rather two houses joined together by a plank-bridge over the river."[69:A]
SELECTING THE MAIN FEATURES
The fundamental principle of all art is selection, and nowhere is it seen to better advantage than in description. A battle, a landscape, or a mental agony, can only be described artistically, in so far as the writer chooses the most characteristic features for presentation. In the following passage George Eliot states the law and keeps it. "She had time to remark that he was a peculiar-looking person, but not insignificant, which was the quality that most hopelessly consigned a man to perdition. He was massively built. The striking points in his face were large, clear, grey eyes, and full lips." Suppose for a moment that the reader were told about the pattern and "hang" of the hero's trousers, his waistcoat and his coat, and that information was given respecting the number of links in his watch-chain, and the exact depth of his double chin—what would have been the effect from an artistic point of view? Failure—for instead of getting a description alive with interest, we should get a catalogue wearisome in its multiplicity of detail. A certain author once thought Homer was niggardly in describing Helen's charms, so he endeavoured to atone for the great poet's shortcomings in the following manner:—"She was a woman right beautiful, with fine eyebrows, of clearest complexion, beautiful cheeks; comely, with large, full eyes, with snow-white skin, quick glancing, graceful; a grove filled with graces, fair-armed, voluptuous, breathing beauty undisguised. The complexion fair, the cheek rosy, the countenance pleasing, the eye blooming, a beauty unartificial, untinted, of its natural colour, adding brightness to the brightest cherry, as if one should dye ivory with resplendent purple. Her neck long, of dazzling whiteness, whence she was called the swan-born, beautiful Helen."
After reading this can you form a distinct idea of Helen's beauty? We think not. The details are too many, the language too exuberant, and the whole too much in the form of a catalogue. It would have been better to select a few of what George Eliot calls the "striking points," and present them with taste and skill. As it is, the attempt to improve on Homer has resulted in a description which, for detail and minuteness, is like the enumeration of the parts of a new motor-car—indeed, that is the true sphere of description by detail, where, as in all matters mechanical, fulness and accuracy are demanded. In "Mariana," Tennyson refers to no more facts than are necessary to emphasise her great loneliness:
"With blackest moss the flower-pots
Were thickly crusted, one and all;
The rusted nails fell from the knots
That held the pear to the gable wall.
The broken sheds looked sad and strange:
Unlifted was the clinking latch;
Weeded and worn the ancient thatch
Upon the lonely moated grange."
In ordering such details as may be chosen to represent an event, idea, or person, it is the rule to proceed from "the near to the remote, and from the obvious to the obscure." Homer thus describes a shield as smooth, beautiful, brazen, and well-hammered—that is, he gives the particulars in the order in which they would naturally be observed. Homer's method is also one of epithet: "the far-darting Apollo," "swift-footed Achilles," "wide-ruling Agamemnon," "white-armed Hera," and "bright-eyed Athene." Now it is but a step from this giving of epithets to what is called
DESCRIPTION BY SUGGESTION
When Hawthorne speaks of the "black, moody brow of Septimus Felton," it is really suggestion by the use of epithet. Dickens took the trouble to enumerate the characteristics of Mrs Gamp one by one; but he succeeded in presenting Mrs Fezziwig by simply saying, "In came Mrs Fezziwig, one vast substantial smile." This latter method differs from the former in almost every possible way. The enumeration of details becomes wearisome unless very cleverly handled, whereas the suggestive method unifies the writer's impressions, thereby saving the reader's mental exertions and heightening his pleasures. He tells us how things and persons impress him, and prefers to indicate rather than describe. Thus Dickens refers to "a full-sized, sleek, well-conditioned gentleman in a blue coat with bright buttons, and a white cravat. This gentleman had a very red face, as if an undue proportion of the blood in his body had been squeezed into his head; which perhaps accounted for his having also the appearance of being rather cold about the heart." Lowell says of Chaucer, "Sometimes he describes amply by the merest hint, as where the Friar, before sitting himself down, drives away the cat. We know without need of more words that he has chosen the snuggest corner."
Notice how succinctly Blackmore delineates a natural fact, "And so in a sorry plight I came to an opening in the bushes where a great black pool lay in front of me, whitened with snow (as I thought) at the sides, till I saw it was only foam-froth, . . . and the look of this black pit was enough to stop one from diving into it, even on a hot summer's day, with sunshine on the water; I mean if the sun ever shone there. As it was, I shuddered and drew back; not alone at the pool itself, and the black air there was about it, but also at the whirling manner, and wisping of white threads upon it in stripy circles round and round; and the centre still as jet."[75:A]