One morning you opened your paper and found that Mr Simon St Clair had gone into Wales in search of local colour. What does local colour mean? The appearance of the country, the dress and language of the people, all that distinguishes the particular locality from others near and remote—is local colour. Take Kipling's "Mandalay" as an illustration. He speaks of the ringing temple bell, of the garlic smells, and the dawn that comes up like thunder; there are elephants piling teak, and all the special details of the particular locality find a characteristic expression. For what reason? Well, local colour renders two services to literature; it makes very often a pleasing or a striking picture in itself; and it is used by the author to bring out special features in his story. Kipling's underlying idea comes to the surface when he says that a man who has lived in the East always hears the East "a-callin'" him back again. There is deep pathos in the idea alone; but when it is set in the external characteristics of Eastern life, one locality chosen to set forth the rest, and stated in language that few can equal, the entire effect is very striking.
Whenever local colour is of picturesque quality there is a temptation to substitute "word-painting" for the story. The desire for novelty is at the bottom of a good deal of modern extravagance in this direction, but the truth still remains that local colour has an important function to discharge—namely, to increase the artistic value of good narrative by suggesting the environment of the dramatis personæ. You must have noticed the opening chapters of "The Scarlet Letter." Why all this careful detailing of the Customs House, the manners and the talk of the people? For no other reason than that just given.
But there is another use of colour in literary composition. Perhaps I can best illustrate my purpose by quoting from an interview with James Lane Allen, who certainly ought to know what he is talking about. The author of "The Choir Invisible," and "Summer in Arcady," occupies a position in Fiction which makes his words worth considering.
Said Mr Allen to the interviewer:[81:A] "A friend of mine—a painter—had just finished reading some little thing that I had succeeded in having published in the Century. 'What do you think of it?' I asked him. 'Tell me frankly what you like and what you don't like.'
"'It's interestingly told, dramatic, polished, and all that, Allen,' was his reply, 'but why in the world did you neglect such an opportunity to drop in some colour here, and at this point, and there?'
"It came over me like that," said the Kentuckian, snapping his fingers, "that words indicating colours can be manipulated by the writer just as pigments are by the painter. I never forgot the lesson. And now when I describe a landscape, or a house, or a costume, I try to put it into such words that an artist can paint the scene from my words."
Evidently Mr Allen learned his lesson long ago, but it is one every writer should study carefully. Mr Baring Gould also gives his experience. "In one of my stories I sketched a girl in a white frock leaning against a sunny garden wall, tossing guelder-roses. I had some burnished gold-green flies on the old wall, preening in the sun; so, to complete the scene, I put her on gold-green leather shoes, and made the girl's eyes of much the same hue. Thus we had a picture where the colour was carried through, and, if painted, would have been artistic and satisfying. A red sash would have spoiled all, so I gave her one that was green. So we had the white dress, the guelder-rose-balls greeny-white, and through the ranges of green-gold were led up to her hair, which was red-gold. I lay some stress on this formation of picture in tones of colour, because it pleases myself when writing—it satisfies my artistic sense. A thousand readers may not observe it; but those who have any art in them will at once receive therefrom a pleasing impression."[83:A]
These two testimonies make the matter very plain. If anything is needed it is a more practical illustration taken direct from a book. For this purpose I have chosen a choice piece from George Du Maurier's "Peter Ibbetson," a book that was half-killed by the Trilby boom.
"Before us lies a sea of fern, gone a russet-brown from decay, in which are isles of dark green gorse, and little trees with scarlet and orange and lemon-coloured leaflets fluttering down, and running after each other on the bright grass, under the brisk west wind which makes the willows rustle, and turn up the whites of their leaves in pious resignation to the coming change.
"Harrow-on-the-Hill, with its pointed spire, rises blue in the distance; and distant ridges, like the receding waves, rise into blueness, one after the other, out of the low-lying mist; the last ridge bluely melting into space. In the midst of it all, gleams the Welsh Harp Lake, like a piece of sky that has become unstuck and tumbled into the landscape with its shiny side up."