Highways of Canadian Literature

by J. D. Logan; Donald G. French

But there is one matter in which Haliburton has not been properly appreciated, and which demands fresh treatment. He has been charged with a lack of prose style. The truth is that Haliburton not only wrote with a positive Theory of Style in mind, but also anticipated Matthew Arnold and Herbert Spencer by actually publishing his theory or philosophy of prose style. Those who criticized Haliburton as a stylist did so without knowing that he had actually applied a definite theory of style to his structure and color. From that point of view, the critics of Haliburton as a stylist were irrelevant. But they also missed or ignored the fact that he was, if infrequently, a master of descriptive prose style.

Haliburton formulates his theory of prose style in two works—in The Attaché, and in Wise Saws (chapter 19). The first work contains his ‘Apologia’ for his utilitarian style; the second briefly explains the psychology of his style. The ‘Apologia’ justifies, as Matthew Arnold would have justified, a certain promiscuity and rise and fall in his style; the second work anticipates Spencer’s philosophy of the conservation of mental energies as applied to particular styles. Haliburton himself distinguishes between his conversational, colloquial, humoristic—his consciously utilitarian—style, and his artificial or literary—his aesthetic—style as in his descriptive prose.

In The Attaché he points out, in what we have called his ‘Apologia,’ that his aims, which were utilitarian, did not call for either architectonic skill or verbal artistry, but that his colloquial, loose, prolix, promiscuous, repetitious, diffuse, and digressive style in The Clockmaker and The Attaché was inevitable and was consciously adopted as best fitted to the heterogeneous themes or matter of these works. ‘Prolixity,’ he adds, ‘was unavoidable from another cause. In order to attain my [practical] objects, I found it expedient so to intermingle humor with the several topics as to render subjects attractive that in themselves are generally considered too deep and dry for general reading.’

In particular, Haliburton justifies his sentential structure on psychological grounds. In Wise Saws he says that he purposely designed the structure and rhythms of his sentences so that their length and abrupt translations would spur the mind to attention, and that he employed a conversational style and dialogue to create interest and keep the attention alive. He wished his works, since they had a utilitarian end, to be read by all classes. He resolved to adapt the style of his works to assuring their popularity—‘in the parlor and the kitchen.’ His themes were discursive and therefore he resolved that the stylistic treatment should be discursive. So Haliburton consciously employed a style which, by novelty of dress, by being written in natural language and illustrated with droll humor, and which by colloquial sentential structure would, like ‘oral chat,’ sustain interest or excite attention, and inevitably be read in the parlor and the kitchen. ‘Why is it,’ asks Sam Slick in the Wise Saws, ‘if you read a book to a man you set him asleep? Just because it is a book and the language ain’t common. Why is it if you talk to him he will sit up all night with you? Just because it’s talk, the language of natur’.’

Haliburton’s humoristic or utilitarian prose style is justified, as he himself justified it, by its successful adaption of means to end. In his ‘Apologia’ he noted the ‘unprecedented circulation’ of his works on ‘both sides of the Atlantic.’ He wrote The Clockmaker in a people’s style for people’s ends, and the style, in his own view, admirably succeeded. We must therefore hold that academic criticism which scores Haliburton’s humoristic style on the ground that it is loose, prolix, repetitious, digressive, vulgar, colloquial, that it is not ‘fine style,’ commits the fallacy of irrelevant conclusion. In the writing of humoristic, utilitarian, conversational style, precisely adapted to its end, Haliburton was a master. But he was also, at least on occasion or whenever he essayed fine style, as in his descriptive prose, especially of Nature, an artist of first rank, worthy of a place beside Ruskin, Stevenson, and Hardy.

As regards Haliburton’s aesthetic style we may instance as example of graphic realism in ‘local color’ his description of the dress and characteristics of an Acadian people (Nature and Human Nature) and of a Low German people (The Old Judge). An example of his fine artistry in painting social life is his idyllic picture of the home of Captain Collingwood’s sister, Aunt Thankful (Wise Saws). As a picture of the sweet and gracious social life in old colonial days, it is a masterpiece. But for sheer pathos of ‘thoughts that lie too deep for tears,’ Haliburton’s description of the Duke of Kent’s Lodge, against a background of Nature (The Clockmaker, third series), is worthy of Ruskin or Hardy.

But Haliburton’s forte in descriptive prose was naturalistic impressionism. In the technique of nature-painting Haliburton employed the whole palette of pigmentation, but especially the color-tones of carmines, yellows, greens, citrons, indigos, with white and black. His description of a Silver Thaw in February in Nova Scotia (The Old Judge) is unsurpassed in literature, and, if the authorship were unknown, might be mistaken for a bit of aesthetic prose by Ruskin:—

This morning I accompanied the Judge and Miss Sandford in their sleigh on an excursion into the country. The scene, though rather painful to the eyes, was indescribably brilliant and beautiful. There had been, during last night and part of yesterday, a slight thaw, accompanied by a cold fine rain that froze, the moment it fell, into ice of the purest crystal. Every deciduous tree was covered with this glittering coating and looked in the distance like an enormous though graceful bunch of feathers; while, on nearer approach, it resembled, with its limbs now bending under the heavy weight of the transparent incrustation, a dazzling chandelier. The open fields, covered with a rough but hardened surface of snow, glistened in the sun as if thickly strewed with the largest diamonds; and every rail of the wooden fences in this general profusion of ornaments was decorated with a delicate fringe of pendent ice that radiated like burnished silver. The heavy and sombre spruce, loaded with snow, rejoiced in a green old age. Having its massy shape relieved by strong and numerous lights, it gained in grace, what it lost in strength, and stood erect among its drooping neighbors, venerable but vigorous, the hoary forefather of the wood. The tall and slender poplar and white birch . . . bent their heads gracefully to the ground under the unusual burden, and formed fanciful arches which the frost encircled with numerous wreaths of pearls. . . . The boles of the different trees and their limbs appeared through the transparent ice; and the rays of the sun, as they fell on them, invested them with all the hues of the prism. . . .

In that passage, besides realistic impressionism or color-writing, we find first rate style in composition—artistic sentential structure and rhythmical periods, along with pure and dignified diction. In all Haliburton’s works we can find passages which show his firm grip on the technique of prose style, and a special power of vivifying his description and color-impressionism with psychological suggestion that enhances the effect on the sensibilities and imagination. In all literature the allurement of sylvan summer in Nova Scotia or Canada is not more winningly or colorfully presented than in Haliburton’s impressionistic idyll ‘A Day on the Lake’ (Nature and Human Nature). In psychological suggestion the acme has been attained by Haliburton in his descriptive sketches, ‘A Hot Day’ (Wise Saws) and ‘Inky Dell’ (The Old Judge).

Whoever charges that Haliburton lacks style errs either by irrelevancy or by making the wrong accusation. It is not style that Haliburton lacks; for he has two styles, each of which is right in the right place—a conversational style for conveying unpopular practical ideas in a popular way, and an aesthetic style for conveying ideas which are delightful in themselves as beautiful pictures of Social Life and of Nature. What Haliburton really lacked was architectonic skill—the power of designing artistic structural unity and plot. This is best illustrated by his character-delineation. His major characters have not character-unity but characteristics or character-promiscuity. Sam Slick, for instance, is never one character as Micawber or Swiveller in Dickens’ gallery is one character, unmistakably and always. Sam Slick is a ‘mass of contradictions.’ Neither is the Rev. Joshua Hopewell a unity—speaking and acting, that is, consistently with one character. Yet they have a unity. How do they get it? It is not a moral but the functional unity of Spokesmen of Haliburton’s ideas. The reason that Slick and Hopewell have so much promiscuity of character is that Haliburton, as he pleased and without any regard to consistency, made Slick and Hopewell and any other of his major dramatis personae the Spokesmen of his various thoughts or ideas. He ‘picked on’ Slick for the mouthpiece of this idea, and Hopewell for the mouthpiece of another idea, without ever asking if the speech he put into the mouth of Slick was consistent with Slick’s mental and moral character, or if the speech he put into the mouth of Hopewell was consistent with Hopewell’s intellectual and moral character. The result is that Slick, as we read Haliburton, has ideas, makes speeches, and relates experiences that are impossible in one of his culture and knowledge; and so with Hopewell and others. In short, Haliburton’s major characters are puppets, marionettes. Back of them is the Showman, Haliburton; and the speeches we hear are not theirs but ‘their master’s voice.’