The historical novel

by Herbert Butterfield

This is a history-lesson. A conflict of forces, a set of tendencies is described in what might be a chapter straight from a history-book. Scott is showing the position that the English language occupied at a given period, and is making the sort of generalisation that it is the historian’s business to make. We are not being treated to an essay by Dryasdust; there is imagination in the depiction that is given; but this is the historian’s way of treating historical facts; it is essentially the past being described to later ages, it is not the past telling its own tale, giving itself away; and it is a chart to the age rather than a picture. Even in a further sense than this the historian speaks in his peculiar idiom; for he not only describes the world as it was at some time past, but he hauls this world into relationship with the whole of subsequent development and puts it in its place in the whole cinematograph-film that is History. In the concluding sentence he gives the significance of that conflict of languages which he has been describing, and sees it as a link in the whole story of our language. And because of this the reader does not lose himself in the past; he stands aside to compare it with the present. This part of the chapter gives in reality the stage-directions of the novel, and it reminds the reader that he is not in the past, and so breaks the spell.

In the ensuing dialogue, however, where Wamba and Gurth have to contemplate “the swine being turned Normans,” this same historical material is translated into terms of fiction. It is not stretched, or varnished, or distorted. The novelist does not try to outdo history by invention, or to round off the true historical position by a kind of idealisation; at least the significance of the chapter does not lie in any of these things. What is important is the fact that here the same historical material is given to the reader in a different way, and is treated with a different aim. Instead of the general there is now the particular. Tendencies that were broadly described before are given precision, we see what they mean when they are pinned down to individual cases. Before, we were given the formula for the age; now we see the forces that were described manifesting themselves at a definite place, at a particular moment. Here the past speaks for itself. We see it and are in it, we do not simply hear a man describing it. And instead of that conflict of languages being put into its context in the history of language, the novelist puts it into its context in the whole life of the time, and hunts out a different set of implications in it. All this comes with greater vividness to the reader. History is reinforced by being written in the story-teller’s way.

This is one example taken from a chapter in which the historian and the historical novelist chance to rub shoulders with each other, but the idea is capable of being projected on to a larger canvas. In the Introduction to Ivanhoe Scott shows how all this can be extended when, in terms of the historian, he again describes the set of facts, which he has turned into fiction, the chart which he has changed into a picture; this time on a bigger scale, covering the whole range of the novel.

It seemed to the author that the existence of two races in the same country, the vanquished distinguished by their plain, homely, blunt manner, and the free spirit infused by their ancient institutions and laws; the victors, by the high spirit of military fame, personal adventure and whatever could distinguish them as the Flower of Chivalry might, intermixed with other characters belonging to the same time and country, interest the reader by the contrast, if the author should not fail on his part.

This is a description of a mere relationship between classes of a society. Scott sees in it a story. He divines in it just the situations and issues out of which a story can be made. He sees its implications in individual lives. Instead of contemplating its effects on future generations he lays bare its workings in the scheme of life of people who lived under it. Just as a prism catches the light and turns it into colours he stands between the historical generalisation and his readers and he breaks up the general into the particular and projects it as a picture. The result is like the condensing of a cloud into raindrops. Fiction is like the dust which creates a sunbeam and helps the sunlight to show that it is there. And in this way Scott does something for history that the historian by himself cannot do, or can seldom do; he recaptures the life of an age, and resurrects a picture of the past.

The historical novelist receives his hint from history, but such examples as these from Ivanhoe are enough to make it apparent that this hint need not necessarily be a story ready-made, a sequence of events to be followed. Many historical novels are stories straight from a history-book—the adventures of Guy Fawkes, the sorrows of Mary Queen of Scots—amplified and rounded off by fiction perhaps, and re-told with some variations. History may provide plot and adventure, and fiction may just fill in the lines where history is inadequate or idealise incidents and careers where history is incomplete or disappointing. It is claimed of some of Jokai’s novels that, staged as they are in lands where passion and action are intense and full of colour, and drawn as they are from a history that is crowded with romantic and thrilling episodes, they do not need an invention of incident or a perversion of history to make them complete, but are just a vivid re-telling of things that actually happened. The books of Dumas are filled with incidents and situations that are picked straight from history and are marvellously connected into an organised story. And many writers have assimilated into the body of their novels incidents that are true to fact or anecdotes from legend, and so have made history and fiction fit into each other in dovetail fashion. All this represents one way in which history can be incorporated into a novel, but it is not the only way; and the particular fact that is brought to light by the Introduction to Ivanhoe, as well as by other things, is the fact that history does not merely inspire fiction by providing a tale, a thread of incident, a network of action, to be re-told in story-book fashion; it may only provoke a tale, it may just provide situations and relationships and problems which give the right kind of issue that is needed in story-making. Scott saw implicit in the conditions of the age of Richard I a set of human relationships which were materials for a novel. He had the power of divining the implied story that was hidden beneath a description of Anglo-Norman relations a few generations after the Conquest.

Everything in life is full of implied story. Every piece of coal stores up history and a tale of marvel. Parish accounts that tell of a leap in the amount of money spent upon “faggots” in the sixteenth century hold a hidden story of persecution and martyrdom. There is a tragedy that can be read into many a newspaper advertisement, and there are people in the world who can see the adventure and the wandering and the panorama that are locked up in a railway-guide. The geography of Africa that might be a dull recapitulation of facts and figures might be turned into narrative, into a story of travels across an unknown continent. And if a politician wishes to bring home to people the consequences of an unwelcome measure he has only to work out a particular instance of hardship that may result from the measure, giving it preciseness and turning it into a story, and he will catch the imagination of electors far sooner than any logic could convince their intellects. It is in this way that the novelist recasts historical material into story-form, and it is in this way that history is made more effectual than the history-book.

Here, then, are the two ways by which history passes into a novel. In the one case it merely gives material that can be woven into story in the same way as a geography-book can be translated into a book of travel; in the other case it provides a story which a writer has to work into his own fictions. The former method is, in a way, organic, since what it prescribes is that a writer shall be true to the life of the past in his inventions; it gives the key in which he must set his tune. According to this, history supplies the metal and the novelist creates the mould. He may invent the characters, the dialogues, the whole range of incident through which it is his aim to make History speak for herself; and he need not distort the characters of actual historical people to fit them into his story, or do violence to the chronological table in order to draw together the threads of his plot. But the second method implies a further fidelity to the facts of the history-book and to the sequence of public events, and it may be called a comparatively “mechanical” method in that it means that a story taken from history has to be dovetailed into the fictions of the novelist; the business is one of adjustment, and sometimes a wrench has to be given to history in order to subdue it to the demands of the novel. And although seldom or never can a historical novel be found in which either of these methods is completely isolated, yet they are two separate things, representing a double set of demands that History makes upon the writer of novels, and they yield some fruitful results if they are regarded separately. Wamba and Gurth are representatives of the one method; and in the same novel Richard I and Robin Hood stand for the other method, since their existence implies stories from history and legend that are required to be adjusted to the inventions of the novelist.

To say therefore that Scott, in Ivanhoe, translated into terms of fiction the piece of historical material, the set of human relationships which in his Introduction he described as being the basis of the novel, is only true in a general way. But this was the principal thing that Scott did; and in it he showed his greatest power, and the historical novel displayed its finest virtue. In the Introduction to The Monastery he makes a similar confession of the key-idea of his novel.

The general plan of the story was, to conjoin two characters in that bustling and contentious age, who, thrown into situations which gave them different views on the subject of the reformation, should, with the same sincerity and purity of intention, dedicate themselves, the one to the support of the sinking fabric of the Catholic Church, the other to the establishment of the reformed doctrines. It was supposed that some interesting subjects for narrative might be derived from opposing two such enthusiasts to each other in the path of life, and contrasting the real worth of both with their passions and prejudices.