The Novel; what it is

by F. Marion Crawford

I do not wish to be accused of what is called smart writing. It is much easier to attack than to defend and much more blessed to give hard knocks than to receive them. A professed novelist is perhaps not a competent judge of novels from the point of view which interests the reader, and which is of course the reader’s own. We know the technique of the trick better than the effect it produces, just as it is hard for a conjuror to realise the sensations of the old gentleman in the audience who finds a bowl of goldfish in his waistcoat pocket. We do not all know one another’s tricks, but we have a fair idea of the general principle on which they are done and a very definite opinion about our own business as compared with that of the parson or the professor. We know our books from the inside and we see the strings of the puppets, while the public only guesses at the mechanism as it sits before the stage, watching the marionettes and listening to the voice from behind the scenes. A novel is, after all, a play, and perhaps it is nothing but a substitute for the real play with live characters, scene-shifting, and footlights. But miracle-plays have gone out of fashion in modern times, except at Ober-Ammergau. The purpose-novel is a miracle-play—and if it be true that any really good novel can be dramatised, nothing short of a miracle could put a purpose-novel on the boards.

Most people have a very clear conception of what a good play ought to be, and of the precise extent to which realism can be effective without being offensive. But it is strange, and it is a bad sign of the times, that persons who would not tolerate a coarse play read novels little, if at all, short of indecent. An answer suggests itself which may be comprehensive as an explanation, but is insufficient as an excuse. In our Anglo-Saxon social system the young girl is everywhere, and, if the shade of Sterne will allow me to say so, we temper the wind of our realism to the sensitive innocence of the ubiquitous shorn lamb. Once admit that the young girl is to have the freedom of our theatre, and it follows, and ought to follow, and very generally does follow, that our plays must be suited to maiden ears and eyes. It is a good thing that this should be so, but the effect is rather strange. The men who hear plays in English are not, perhaps, more moral than their contemporaries of Paris, Vienna, and Berlin. We like to believe that our women are better than those of foreign nations. We owe it to them to put more faith in them because they are our own, our dear mothers and wives and sisters and daughters, for whom, if we be men, we mean to do all that men can do. But we are all men and women nevertheless, and human, and we have the thoughts and the understanding of men and women and not of school-girls. Yet the school-girl practically decides what we are to hear at the theatre and, so far as our own language is concerned, determines to a great extent what we are to read.

But if we do not write for the young girl, who will? We have not the advantage possessed by the French of satisfying the demands of young people by translations from works in other languages. The young girl in France, as a matter of fact, reads Walter Scott, Bulwer, and Dickens, while her mother diverts her leisure with the more lively productions of Paul Bourget, Guy de Maupassant, or possibly Balzac, whom all educated Frenchmen and Frenchwomen are at least supposed to have read. The advocate of a broader license in the English fiction of the future may answer that the whole body of novels already in existence should be more than sufficient for the delectation of “the young.” Should the development of the new school, however, lead to the creation of a literature in our language, resembling, as a whole, that of the French, our novel, in its present form, would soon cease to be written, and those of the type which are already in existence would in a short time be regarded as antiquated, dull, and savouring of the Sunday-school. Youth, too, dislikes to be treated as youth. The old, who regretfully long to be young again, may find some consolation in the ardent desire of youth for mature years. Moreover, it is easier to lower the reader’s moral tone than to raise it ever so little. The ambition of all boys, and probably of very many young girls, is to read such novels as their parents do not habitually leave on the drawing-room table. Every boy wants to read “Guy Livingstone,” and most boys do, with or without their mamma’s permission, at a very early age. If we advanced so far as the French realistic point of view, that book would become a common property of boys and girls, and perhaps “Nana,” or “Les Mensonges,” would take its place in the estimation of our children,—a consummation devoutly to be prayed against. Our “books for the young” are not, on the whole, a success, unless we are willing to modify the expression, and call them books for the very young. There are not in existence, I believe, enough really interesting, and yet perfectly harmless, novels to occupy the vast amount of spare time which the young seem ready to devote to literature, and which we, the workers, seek in vain. It is not always easy to see—it is certainly not easy for us to explain—why we novelists occasionally introduce a thought, a page, or a chapter in a novel otherwise fit for a child’s ears, which may have the effect, so to say, of turning weak tea into bad whiskey. Yet most of us have done it, contemplate doing it, or at least go so far as to wish that we might allow ourselves the liberty. Perhaps, if that liberty were universally granted, we should desire it less. Perhaps a number of my colleagues will not admit that they desire it at all. I believe that in most cases it is only a desire to escape from limitations not unlike those overstepped when an author writes much in dialect. It looks as though it might be easier to write interesting books with the help of the knowledge of evil, as well as with the help of the knowledge of good; and after a certain number of years of hard work a novelist instinctively leans towards any method of lightening his labours which presents itself to his tired imagination. If he yields once, he will probably yield again and fall into the slipshod, careless ways for which the overworked man is often cruelly, if not altogether unjustly, blamed. For the public, which most of us acknowledge to be a perfectly just body in the long run, is as thoroughly unforgiving as Justice herself. “He has written himself out.” How carelessly that little phrase is often uttered! How terrible it is for any author to hear! It is indeed a solemn memento mori, the phrase of all others of which we dread the application to ourselves. For the romance of romancing soon disappears. After the production of one, two, three, or half-a-dozen novels, if the writer is really what we call “a professional,” and must go on writing as a business, he discovers how serious is the occupation in which he is engaged. Half-a-dozen books, or less, will make a reputation; ten will sustain one; twenty are in ordinary cases a career. Does any one, not an author, who reads these lines guess at the labour, the imagination, the industry, the set purpose, the courage, which are necessary to produce a score of novels of an average good quality? And if not, how can he understand the intense longing for a removal of restraint, for a little more liberty that tempts the overwrought intelligence into error? Far be it from me to appeal in any way to the public pity, for my own sake or in behalf of others. We are no more to be pitied when we break down than an old shoemaker who can no longer see the point of his bristles, and not so much as a broken-winded cab-horse that has never had any option in the choice of a career. Let this be taken as an explanation, not as an apology. To judge from the standards of some people, however, the worn-out novelist, whose works have filled the shelves of the young girl of the period, might find profitable employment if he would adopt the tenets of realism and write for the jaded taste of those who, whether already old or what is called still young, have exhausted their capacity for bread and milk and crave red pepper and stimulants.

The taste for “realism” is abroad, and in opposition to all this. Out of the conflict arises that very curious production, the realistic novel in English—than which no effort of human genius has sailed nearer to the wind, so to say, since Goethe wrote his “Elective Affinities,” which an Anglo-Saxon young girl pronounced to be “a dull book all about gardening.” That our prevailing moral literary purity is to some extent assumed—not fictitious—is shown by the undeniable fact that women who blush scarlet, and men who feel an odd sensation of repulsion in reading some pages of “Tom Jones” or “Peregrine Pickle,” are not conscious of any particular shock when their sensibilities are attacked in French. Some of them call Zola a “pig” with great directness, but read all his books industriously, and very often admit the fact. When they call him names they forget that he writes for a great public of men and women, not for young girls—and when they read him he makes them remember that he is a great man—mistaken perhaps, possibly bad, mightily coarse to no purpose, but great nevertheless—a Nero of fiction. But Zola’s shadow, seen through the veil of the English realistic novel, is a monstrosity not to be tolerated. We see the apparent contradiction in our own taste between our theory and our practice in reading, but we feel instinctively that there is a foundation of justice to account for the seeming discrepancy. Both are coarse, but the one is great and bold, and the other is damned by its own smallness and meanness. The result of the desire for realism in men who try to write realistic novels for the clean-minded American and English girl is unsatisfactory. It is generally a photograph, not a picture—a catalogue, not a description.

A community of vices is a closer and more direct bond between human beings than a community of virtues. This may be because vice needs solidarity among those who yield to it in order to be tolerated at all, whereas virtue is its own reward, as the proverb says, and is happily very often its own protection—far more often than not, in our day. This seems to be the reason why the realistic method is better suited to the exposition of what is bad than of what is good. Wordsworth and Swinburne are two realistic poets. Most people do not hesitate to call Wordsworth the greater man. I need not express an opinion which few would care to hear, but so far as the relative effect of their work is concerned it can hardly be denied that, of the two, Swinburne appeals far more strongly and directly to sinful humanity as it is. Wordsworth speaks to the higher and more spiritual part of us, indeed, but too often in language which rouses no response in the more human side of man’s nature which is most generally uppermost. These are but illustrations of my meaning, not examples, which latter should be taken among novelists—a task, however, which may be left to the discriminating reader.

IT has always seemed to me that the perfect novel, as it ought to be, exists somewhere in the state of the Platonic idea, waiting to be set down on paper by the first man of genius who receives a direct literary inspiration. It must deal chiefly with love; for in that passion all men and women are most generally interested, either for its present reality, or for the memories that soften the coldly vivid recollection of an active past, and shed a tender light in the dark places of bygone struggles, or because the hope of it brightens and gladdens the path of future dreams. The perfect novel must be clean and sweet, for it must tell its tale to all mankind, to saint and sinner, pure and defiled, just and unjust. It must have the magic to fascinate and the power to hold its reader from first to last. Its realism must be real, of three dimensions, not flat and photographic; its romance must be of the human heart and truly human, that is, of the earth as we all have found it; its idealism must be transcendent, not measured to man’s mind, but proportioned to man’s soul. Its religion must be of such grand and universal span as to hold all worthy religions in itself. Conceive, if possible, such a story, told in language that can be now simple, now keen, now passionate, and now sublime—or rather, pray, do not conceive it, for the modern novelist’s occupation would suddenly be gone, and that one book would stand alone of its kind, making all others worse than useless—ridiculous, if not sacrilegious, by comparison.

Why must a novel-writer be either a “realist” or a “romantist”? And, if the latter, why “romanticist” any more than “realisticist”? Why should a good novel not combine romance and reality in just proportions? Is there any reason to suppose that the one element must necessarily shut out the other? Both are included in every-day life, which would be a very dull affair without something of the one, and would be decidedly incoherent without the other. Art, if it is “to create and foster agreeable illusions,” as Napoleon is believed to have said of it, should represent the real, but in such a way as to make it seem more agreeable and interesting than it actually is. That is the only way to create “an agreeable illusion,” and by no other means can a novel do good while remaining a legitimate novel and not becoming a sermon, a treatise, or a polemic.

It may reasonably be inquired whether the prevailing and still growing taste for fiction expresses a new and enduring want of educated men and women. The novel, as we understand the word, is after all a very recent invention. Considering that we do not find it in existence until late in the last century, its appearance must be admitted to have been very sudden, its growth fabulously rapid, and its development enormous. The ancients had nothing more like it than a few collections of humorous and pathetic stories. The Orientals, who might be supposed to feel the need of it even more than we do, had nothing but their series of fantastic tales strung rather loosely together without general plan. Men and women seem to have survived the dulness of the dark age with the help of the itinerant story-teller. The novel is a distinctly modern invention, satisfying a modern want. In the ideal state described with so much accuracy by Mr. Bellamy, I believe the novel would not sell. It would be incomprehensible, or it would not be a novel at all, according to our understanding. Do away practically with the struggle for life, eliminate all the unfit and make the surviving fittest perfectly comfortable—men and women might still take a curious interest in our present civilisation, but it would be of a purely historical nature. To gratuitously invent a tale of a poor man fighting for success would seem to them a piece of monstrously bad taste and ridiculously useless. Are we tending to such a state as that? There are those who believe that we are—but a faith able to remove mountains at “cut rates” will not be more than enough to realise their hopes.

IT may fairly be claimed that humanity has, within the past hundred years, found a way of carrying a theatre in its pocket; and so long as humanity remains what it is, it will delight in taking out its pocket-stage and watching the antics of the actors, who are so like itself and yet so much more interesting. Perhaps that is, after all, the best answer to the question, “What is a novel?” It is, or ought to be, a pocket-stage. Scenery, light, shade, the actors themselves, are made of words, and nothing but words, more or less cleverly put together. A play is good in proportion as it represents the more dramatic, passionate, romantic, or humorous sides of real life. A novel is excellent according to the degree in which it produces the illusions of a good play—but it must not be forgotten that the play is the thing, and that illusion is eminently necessary to success.

Every writer who has succeeded has his own methods of creating such illusion. Some of us are found out, and some of us are not; but we all do the same thing in one way or another, consciously or unconsciously. The tricks of the art are without number, simple or elaborate, easily learned or hard to imitate, and many of us consider that we have a monopoly of certain tricks we call our own, and are unreasonably angry when a competitor makes use of them.