What About Dialect?
Dialect is local colour individualised. Ian Maclaren, in "The Bonnie Brier Bush," following in the wake of Crockett and Barrie, has given us the dialect of Scotland: Baring Gould and a host of others have provided us with dialect stories of English counties; Jane Barlow and several Irish writers deal with the sister island; Wales has not been forgotten; and the American novelists have their big territory mapped out into convenient sections. Soon the acreage of locality literature will have been completely "written up"; I do not say its yielding powers will have been exhausted, for, as with other species of local colour, dialect has had to suffer at the hands of the imitator who dragged dialect into his paltry narrative for its own sake, and to give him the opportunity of providing the reader with a glossary.
The reason why dialect-stories were so popular some time ago is twofold. First, dialect imparts a flavour to a narrative, especially when it is in contrast to educated utterances on the part of other characters. But the chief reason is that dialect people have more character than other people—as a rule. They afford greater scope for literary artistry than can be found in life a stage or two higher, with its correctness and artificiality. St Beuve said, "All peasants have style." Yes; that is the truth exactly. There is an individuality about the peasant that is absent from the town-dweller, and this fact explains the piquancy of many novels that owe their popularity to the representations of the rustic population. The dialect story, or novel, cannot hope for permanency unless it contains elements of universal interest. The emphasis laid on a certain type of speech stamps such a literary production with the brand of narrowness. I understand that Ian Maclaren has been translated into French. Can you imagine Drumsheugh in Gallic? or Jamie Soutar? Never. Only that which is literature in the highest sense can be translated into another language; hence the life of corners in Scotland, or elsewhere, has no special interest for the world in general.
The rule as to dealing with dialect is quite simple. Never use the letters of the alphabet to reproduce the sound of such language in a literal manner. Suggest dialect; that is all. Have nothing to do with glossaries. People hate dictionaries, however brief, when they read fiction. George Eliot and Thomas Hardy are good models of the wise use of county speech.
On Dialogue
In making your characters talk, it should be your aim not to reproduce their conversation, but to indicate it. Here, as elsewhere, the first principle of all art is selection, and from the many words which you have heard your characters use, you must choose those that are typical in view of the purpose you have in hand. I once had a letter from a youthful novelist, in which he said: "It's splendid to write a story. I make my characters say what I like—swear, if necessary—and all that." Now you can't make your characters say what you like; you are obliged to make them say what is in keeping with their known dispositions, and with the circumstances in which they are placed at the time of speaking. If you know your characters intimately, you will not put wise words into the mouth of a clown, unless you have suitably provided for such a surprise; neither will you write long speeches for the sullen villain who is to be the human devil of the narrative. Remember, therefore, that the key to propriety and effectiveness in writing is the knowledge of those ideal people whom you are going to use in your pages.
"Windiness" and irrelevancy are the twin evils of conversations in fiction. Trollope says, "It is so easy to make two persons talk on any casual subject with which the writer presumes himself to be conversant! Literature, philosophy, politics, or sport may be handled in a loosely discursive style; and the writer, while indulging himself, is apt to think he is pleasing the reader. I think he can make no greater mistake. The dialogue is generally the most agreeable part of a novel; but it is only so as long as it tends in some way to the telling of the main story. It need not be confined to this, but it should always have a tendency in that direction. The unconscious critical acumen of a reader is both just and severe. When a long dialogue on extraneous matter reaches his mind, he at once feels that he is being cheated into taking something that he did not bargain to accept when he took up the novel. He does not at that moment require politics or philosophy, but he wants a story. He will not, perhaps, be able to say in so many words that at some point the dialogue has deviated from the story; but when it does, he will feel it."[88:A]
A word or two as to what kind of dialogue assists in telling the main story may not be amiss. Return to the suggested plot of the Jewess and the Roman Catholic. What are they to talk about? Anything that will assist their growing intimacy, that will bring out the peculiar personalities of both, and contribute to the development of the narrative. In a previous section I said that the dénouement decided the selection of your characters; in some respects it will also decide the topics of their conversation. Certain events have to be provided for, in order that they may be both natural and inevitable, and it becomes your duty to create incidents and introduce dialogue which will lead up to these events.
With reference to models for study, advice is difficult to give. Quite a gallery of masters would be needed for the purpose, as there are so many points in one which are lacking in another. Besides, a great novelist may have eccentricities in dialogue, and be quite normal in other respects. George Meredith is as artificial in dialogue as he is in the use of phrases pure and simple, and yet he succeeds, in spite of defects, not by them. Here is a sample from "The Egoist":
"Have you walked far to-day?"