Hardy's description of Egdon Heath is too well known to need remark; it is a classic of its kind.
Robert Louis Stevenson possessed the power of suggestion to a high degree. "An ivory-faced and silver-haired old woman opened the door. She had an evil face, smoothed with hypocrisy, but her manners were excellent." To advise a young writer to imitate Stevenson would be absurd, but perhaps I may be permitted to say: study Stevenson's method, from the blind man in "Treasure Island," to Kirstie in "The Weir of Hermiston."
FACTS TO REMEMBER
"It is a peculiarity of Walter Scott," says Goethe, "that his great talent in representing details often leads him into faults. Thus in 'Ivanhoe' there is a scene where they are seated at a table in a castle-hall, at night, and a stranger enters. Now he is quite right in describing the stranger's appearance and dress, but it is a fault that he goes to the length of describing his feet, shoes and stockings. When we sit down in the evening and someone comes in, we notice only the upper part of his body. If I describe the feet, daylight enters at once and the scene loses its nocturnal character." And yet Scott in some respects was a master of description—witness his picture of Norham Castle and of the ravine of Greeta between Rokeby and Mortham. But Goethe's criticism is justified notwithstanding. Never write more than can be said of a man or a scene when regarded from the surrounding circumstances of light and being. Ruskin is never tired of saying, "Draw what you see." In the "Fighting Téméraire," Turner paints the old warship as if it had no rigging. It was there in its proper place, but the artist could not see it, and he refused to put it in his picture if, at the distance, it was not visible. "When you see birds fly, you do not see any feathers," says Mr W. M. Hunt. "You are not to draw reality, but reality as it appears to you."
Avoid the pathetic fallacy. Kingsley, in "Alton Locke," says:
"They rowed her in across the rolling foam—
The cruel crawling foam,"
on which Ruskin remarks, "The foam is not cruel, neither does it crawl. The state of mind which attributes to it these characteristics of a living creature is one in which the reason is unhinged by grief. All violent feelings have the same effect. They produce in us a falseness in all our impressions of external things."
Perhaps the secret of all accurate description is a trained eye. Do you know how a cab-driver mounts on to the box, or the shape of a coal-heaver's mouth when he cries "Coal!"? Do you know how a wood looks in early spring as distinct from its precise appearance in summer, or how a man uses his eyes when concealing feelings of jealousy? or a woman when hiding feelings of love? Observation with insight, and Imagination with sympathy; these are the great necessities in every department of novel-writing.