The Age of Tennyson

by Hugh Walker

Mrs. Henry Wood
(1814-1887).
Dinah Maria Craik
(1826-1887).

George Eliot was the last of the race of giants in fiction. Some good novelists remain to be noticed, but none who can without hesitation be called great. Those who did respectable work are so numerous that the task of selection becomes exceedingly difficult; and moreover, as we draw near the dividing-line, it proves sometimes doubtful whether a man should be included in the present period, or viewed as belonging to that still current. It is safe to say however that of all forms of literature, fiction is the one in which a rigorous law of selection is the most necessary. Many popular writers must be passed over in silence. Mrs. Henry Wood, notwithstanding the success of her East Lynne, can be barely mentioned; and little more is possible in the case of Dinah Maria Craik, best known as the author of John Halifax, Gentleman, a pleasing but somewhat namby-pamby story, ranked by some unaccountably high. Mrs. Craik never shocks, never startles, nor does she ever invigorate. She is one of those writers who appeal to the taste of the middle class, not perhaps as it is now, but as it was a generation ago.

Three detached novels, by men who cannot be classed as writers of fiction, may be named for the sake of their authors—Eustace Conway (1834), by F. D. Maurice, and Loss and Gain (1848) and Callista (1856), by J. H. Newman. Maurice’s story was written when, a young man, he was still groping his way; but Newman’s deliberately and when the bent of his mind had been long taken. His novels are among the symptoms of the passing of theological interest into general literature, but they have in themselves no value.

Charles Kingsley
(1819-1875).

Charles Kingsley was also by profession a theologian, and his disastrous controversy with Newman remains as a proof of the interest he took in the movement Newman sought to serve by Callista. But fortunately Kingsley did not allow this interest to dominate his books. Tractarianism is indeed one of the themes of his earliest novels, Alton Locke (1850) and Yeast (1848), but socialism, to which his attention had been turned by the personal influence of Maurice, is a far more prominent one. Yeast pictures the condition of agricultural labour, Alton Locke that of labour in crowded cities. Both books are immature, sometimes rash, and on the whole not well constructed; but they have the merits of vigour, earnestness and knowledge at first-hand; for Kingsley had personally taken part in the labour movements in London which resulted in Chartism. Hypatia (1853) is an ambitious novel, at once historical and philosophical, impressive in parts, but on the whole heavy. Kingsley, a man whose physical nature and instincts were quite as well developed as his intellect, is happiest where he can bring to play the experiences of his life, and where he can describe scenes familiar to him. About his best work there is always a breath of the moor, of the fen or of the sea; for he had lived by them all and had learnt to love them. This is shown by his verse as well as his prose. His Ode to the North-East Wind, his Sands of Dee, and the images scattered everywhere through his poems, prove how the features of the scenery and of the weather had sunk into his mind. So do such novels as Westward Ho! (1855) and Hereward the Wake (1866). The former, a historical romance, the scene of which is laid in the time of Elizabeth, is generally considered Kingsley’s best work; and it is only a small minority, to which the writer happens to belong, who find it dreary. The power of some of the descriptions must be acknowledged; but whether Westward Ho! will live is a question on which there may be difference of opinion. Hereward the Wake, generally ranked much lower, is certainly uneven and in parts dull. But it has two great merits: it reproduces in a marvellous way the impression of the fen country; and, by vivid flashes, though not constantly, the reader seems to see before his eyes the very life of the old vikings.

Kingsley’s work was most varied. Besides his novels, his professional work, such as sermons, and his lectures as Professor of History at Cambridge, we may mention his beautiful fairy-tale, The Water Babies (1863), with its exquisite snatches of verse, ‘Clear and Cool,’ and ‘When all the world is young.’ His poetry, if it were as copious as it is often high in quality, would place him among the great. But it was only occasional. Besides short pieces, he was the author of a drama, The Saint’s Tragedy (1848), somewhat immature, and of Andromeda (1858), one of the few specimens of English hexameters that are readable, and that seem to naturalise the metre in our language. It is however noticeable that Kingsley’s success is won at the cost of wholly altering the character of the measure. Andromeda is true and fine poetry, but its effect is not that of ‘the long roll of the hexameter.’ There is a very great preponderance of dactyls. This is the case with almost all English hexameters; and the fact goes far to prove that the hexameter, as understood by the ancients, a fairly balanced mixture of dactyls and spondees, is not suited to the genius of English.

Henry Kingsley
(1830-1876).

Henry Kingsley, the younger brother of Charles, was a novelist likewise, but one of considerably less merit. He passed some years in Australia, and his experiences there supplied materials for one of his best stories, Geoffrey Hamlyn. That by which he is best known is however Ravenshoe (1862). His novels are extremely loose in construction, and he is no rival to his brother in that exuberance of spirits which gives to the writings of the latter their most characteristic excellence.

Anthony Trollope
(1815-1882).

Senior to both the brothers, alike in years and as a writer, was Anthony Trollope. Coming of a literary family (both his mother and his elder brother wrote novels), he proved himself, from 1847, when he published The Macdermotts of Ballycloran, to his death, one of the most prolific of novelists. No recent writer illustrates better than he the function of the novel when it is something less than a work of genius. The demand for amusement is the explanation of the enormous growth of modern fiction. But pure amusement is inconsistent with either profound thought or tragic emotion, while, on the other hand, it requires competent literary workmanship. Anthony Trollope exactly satisfied this demand. He wrote fluently and fairly well. He drew characters which, if they were never very profound or subtle, were at any rate tolerably good representations of human nature. He had a pleasant humour, could tell a story well, and could, without becoming dull, continue it through any number of volumes that might be desired. Perhaps no one has ever equalled him at continuations. What are commonly known as the Barsetshire novels are his best group. There are some half-dozen stories in the group, yet four of them, Barchester Towers, Doctor Thorne, Framley Parsonage, and The Last Chronicle of Barset, extending over a period of ten years (1857-1867), must all be classed with his best work. Perhaps it was the touch of the commonplace that made it possible for him thus frequently to repeat his successes. Trollope’s description of his own methods of work in his Autobiography shows that he worked himself as a manufacturer works his steam-engine, and with the same result, so much of a given pattern produced per diem. His monograph on Thackeray proves him capable of comparing his methods with the methods of a man of genius, by no means to the advantage of the latter.