"My Novel" — Volume 12

by Baron Edward Bulwer Lytton Lytton

PISISTRATUS.—"What remains to do?"

MR. CAXTON.—"What! why, the Final Chapter!—the last news you can give us of those whom you have introduced to our liking or dislike."

PISISTRATUS.—"Surely it is more dramatic to close the work with a scene that completes the main design of the plot, and leave it to the prophetic imagination of all whose flattering curiosity is still not wholly satisfied, to trace the streams of each several existence, when they branch off again from the lake in which their waters converge, and by which the sibyl has confirmed and made clear the decree that 'Conduct is Fate.'"

MR. CAXTON.—"More dramatic, I grant; but you have not written a drama. A novelist should be a comfortable, garrulous, communicative, gossiping fortune-teller; not a grim, laconical, oracular sibyl. I like a novel that adopts all the old-fashioned customs prescribed to its art by the rules of the Masters,—more especially a novel which you style 'My Novel' /par/ emphasis."

CAPTAIN ROLAND.—"A most vague and impracticable title 'My Novel'! It must really be changed before the work goes in due form to the public."

MR. SQUILLS.—"Certainly the present title cannot be even pronounced by many without inflicting a shock upon their nervous system. Do you think, for instance, that my friend, Lady Priscilla Graves—who is a great novel-reader indeed, but holds all female writers unfeminine deserters to the standard of Man—could ever come out with, 'Pray, sir, have you had time to look at—MY Novel?'—She would rather die first. And yet to be silent altogether on the latest acquisition to the circulating libraries would bring on a functional derangement of her ladyship's organs of speech. Or how could pretty Miss Dulcet—all sentiment, it is true, but all bashful timidity—appall Captain Smirke from proposing with, 'Did not you think the parson's sermon a little too dry in—MY Novel'? It will require a face of brass, or at least a long course of citrate of iron, before a respectable lady or unassuming young gentleman, with a proper dread of being taken for scribblers, could electrify a social circle with 'The reviewers don't do justice to the excellent things in—My Novel.'"

CAPTAIN ROLAND.—"Awful consequences, indeed, may arise from the mistakes such a title gives rise to. Counsellor Digwell, for instance, a lawyer of literary tastes, but whose career at the Bar was long delayed by an unjust suspicion amongst the attorneys that he had written a 'Philosophical Essay'—imagine such a man excusing himself for being late at a dinner of bigwigs, with 'I could not get away from—My Novel!' It would be his professional ruin! I am not fond of lawyers in general, but still I would not be a party to taking the bread out of the mouth of those with a family; and Digwell has children,—the tenth an innocent baby in arms."

MR. CAXTON.—"As to Digwell in particular, and lawyers in general, they are too accustomed to circumlocution to expose themselves to the danger your kind heart apprehends; but I allow that a shy scholar like myself, or a grave college tutor, might be a little put to the blush, if he were to blurt forth inadvertently with, 'Don't waste your time over trash like—MY Novel.' And that thought presents to us another and more pleasing view of this critical question. The title you condemn places the work under universal protection. Lives there a man or a woman so dead to self-love as to say, 'What contemptible stuff is—MY Novel'? Would he or she not rather be impelled by that strong impulse of an honourable and virtuous heart, which moves us to stand as well as we can with our friends, to say, 'Allow that there is really a good thing now and then in—My Novel.' Moreover, as a novel aspires to embrace most of the interests or the passions that agitate mankind,—to generalize, as it were, the details of life that come home to us all,—so, in reality, the title denotes that if it be such as the author may not unworthily call his Novel, it must also be such as the reader, whoever he be, may appropriate in part to himself, representing his own ideas, expressing his own experience, reflecting, if not in full, at least in profile, his own personal identity. Thus, when we glance at the looking-glass in another man's room, our likeness for the moment appropriates the mirror; and according to the humour in which we are, or the state of our spirits and health, we say to ourselves, 'Bilious and yellow!—I might as well take care of my diet!' Or, 'Well, I 've half a mind to propose to dear Jane; I'm not such an ill-looking dog as I thought for!' Still, whatever result from that glance at the mirror, we never doubt that 't is our likeness we see; and each says to the phantom reflection, 'Thou art myself,' though the mere article of furniture that gives the reflection belongs to another. It is my likeness if it be his glass. And a narrative that is true to the Varieties of Life is every Man's Novel, no matter from what shores, by what rivers, by what bays, in what pits, were extracted the sands and the silex, the pearlash, the nitre, and quicksilver which form its materials; no matter who the craftsman who fashioned its form; no matter who the vendor that sold, or the customer who bought: still, if I but recognize some trait of myself, 't is my likeness that makes it 'My Novel.'"

MR. SQUILLS (puzzled, and therefore admiring).—-"Subtle, sir,—very subtle. Fine organ of Comparison in Mr. Caxton's head, and much called into play this evening!"

MR. CAXTON (benignly).—"Finally, the author by this most admirable and much signifying title dispenses with all necessity of preface. He need insinuate no merits, he need extenuate no faults; for, by calling his work thus curtly 'MY Novel,' he doth delicately imply that it is no use wasting talk about faults or merits."