Chapter XX
IMAGINATIVE AND DIDACTIC PROSE
But the interesting subjects touched upon in the last four chapters have led me far from the subject of ‘The Renascence of Wonder.’ In its biographical sketch of Mr. Watts-Dunton the ‘Encyclopædia Britannica’ says: “Imaginative glamour and mysticism are prominent characteristics both of ‘The Coming of Love’ and ‘Aylwin,’ and the novel in particular has had its share in restoring the charms of pure romance to the favour of the general public.” This is high praise, but I hope to show that it is deserved. When it was announced that a work of prose fiction was about to be published by the critic of the ‘Athenæum,’ what did Mr. Watts-Dunton’s readers expect? I think they expected something as unlike what the story turned out to be as it is possible to imagine. They expected a story built up of a discursive sequence of new and profound generalizations upon life and literature expressed in brilliant picturesque prose such as had been the delight of my boyhood in Ireland; they expected to be fascinated more than ever by that ‘easy authoritative greatness and comprehensiveness of style’ with which they had been familiar for long; they expected also that subtle irony after the fashion of Fielding, which suggests so much between the lines, that humour which had been an especial joy to me in scores of articles signed by the writer’s style as indubitably as if they had been signed by his name. I think everybody cherished this expectation: everybody took it for granted that heaps of those ‘intellectual nuggets’ about which Minto talked would smother the writer as a story-teller, that the book as literature would be admirable—but as a novel a failure. Great as was Mr. Watts-Dunton’s esoteric reputation, I believe that many of the booksellers declined (as the author had prophesied that they would decline) to subscribe for the book. They expected it to fail as a marketable novel—to fail in that ‘artistic convincement’ of which Mr. Watts-Dunton has himself so often written. What neither I nor any one else save those who, like Mr. Swinburne, had read the story in manuscript, did expect, was a story so poetic, so unworldly, and so romantic that it might have been written by a young Celt—a love story of intense passion, which yet by some magic art was as convincingly realistic as any one of those ‘flat-footed’ sermon-stories which the late W. E. Henley was wont to deride.
In fact, from this point of view ‘Aylwin’ is a curiosity of literature. The truth seems to be, however, that, as one of Mr. Watts-Dunton’s most intimate friends has said, its style represents one facet only of Watts-Dunton’s character. Like most of us, he has a dual existence—one half of him is the romantic youth, Henry Aylwin, the other half is the world-wise philosopher of the ‘Athenæum.’ This other half of him lives in the style of another story altogether, where the creator of Henry Aylwin takes up the very different role of a man of the world. Now I have views of my own upon this duality. I think that if the brilliant worldly writing of the mass of his work be examined, it will be found to be a ‘shot’ texture scintillating with various hues where sometimes repressed passion and sometimes mysticism and dreams are constantly shining through the glossy silk of the style. Sometimes from the smooth, even flow of the criticisms gleams of a passion far more intense than anything in ‘Aylwin’ will flash out. I will cite a passage in his critical writings wherein he discusses the inadequacy of language to express the deepest passion:—
“As compared with sculpture and painting the great infirmity of poetry, as an ‘imitation’ of nature, is of course that the medium is always and of necessity words—even when no words could, in the dramatic situation, have been spoken. It is not only Homer who is obliged sometimes to forget that passion when at white heat is never voluble, is scarcely even articulate; the dramatists also are obliged to forget that in love and in hate, at their tensest, words seem weak and foolish when compared with the silent and satisfying triumph and glory of deeds, such as the plastic arts can render. This becomes manifest enough when we compare the Niobe group or the Laocoon group, or the great dramatic paintings of the modern world, with even the finest efforts of dramatic poetry, such as the speech of Andromache to Hector, or the speech of Priam to Achilles; nay, such as even the cries of Cassandra in the ‘Agamemnon,’ or the wailings of Lear over the dead Cordelia. Even when writing the words uttered by Œdipus, as the terrible truth breaks in upon his soul, Sophocles must have felt that, in the holiest chambers of sorrow and in the highest agonies of suffering reigns that awful silence which not poetry, but painting sometimes, and sculpture always, can render. What human sounds could render the agony of Niobe, or the agony of Laocoon, as we see them in the sculptor’s rendering? Not articulate speech at all; not words, but wails. It is the same with hate; it is the same with love. We are not speaking merely of the unpacking of the heart in which the angry warriors of the ‘Ilaid’ indulge. Even such subtle writing as that of Æschylus and Sophocles falls below the work of the painter. Hate, though voluble perhaps as Clytæmnestra’s when hate is at that red-heat glow which the poet can render, changes in a moment whenever that redness has been fanned into hatred’s own last complexion—whiteness as of iron at the melting-point—when the heart has grown far too big to be ‘unpacked’ at all, and even the bitter epigrams of hate’s own rhetoric, though brief as the terrier’s snap before he fleshes his teeth, or as the short snarl of the tigress as she springs before her cubs in danger, are all too slow and sluggish for a soul to which language at its tensest has become idle play. But this is just what cannot be rendered by an art whose medium consists solely of words.”
Could any one reading this passage doubt that the real work of the writer was to write poetry and not criticism?
But this makes it necessary for me to say a word upon the question of the style of ‘Aylwin’—a question that has often been discussed. The fascination of the story is largely due to the magnetism of its style. And yet how undecorated, not to say how plain, the style in the more level passages often is! When the story was first written the style glittered with literary ornament. But the author deliberately struck out many of the poetic passages. Coleridge tells us that an imaginative work should be written in a simple style, and that the more imaginative the work the simpler the style should be. I often think of these words when I labour in the sweat of my brow to read the word-twisting of precious writers! It is then that I think of ‘Aylwin,’ for ‘Aylwin’ stands alone in its power of carrying the reader away to climes of new and rare beauty peopled by characters as new and as rare. It was clearly Mr. Watts-Dunton’s idea that what such a story needed was mastery over ‘artistic convincement.’ He has more than once commented on the acuteness of Edgar Poe’s remark that in the expression of true passion there is always something of the ‘homely.’ ‘Aylwin’ is one long unbroken cry of passion, mostly in a ‘homely key,’ but this ‘homely key’ is left for loftier keys whenever the proper time for the change comes. In beginning to write, the author seems to have felt that ‘The Renascence of Wonder’ and the quest of beauty, although adequately expressed in the poetry of the newest romantic school—that of Rossetti, Morris, and Swinburne—had only found its way into imaginative prose through the highly elaborate technique of his friend, George Meredith. He seems to have felt that the great imaginative prose writers of the time, Thackeray, Dickens, and Charles Reade, were in a certain sense Philistines of genius who had done but little to bring beauty, romance and culture into prose fiction. And as to Meredith, though a true child of romanticism who never did and never could breathe the air of Philistia, he had adopted a style too self-conscious and rich in literary qualities to touch that great English pulse that beats outside the walls of the Palace of Art.
Mrs. Craigie has lately declared that at the present moment all the most worthy English novelists, with the exception of Mr. Thomas Hardy, are distinguished disciples of Mr. George Meredith. But to belong to ‘the mock Meredithians’ is not a matter of very great glory. No one adores the work of Mr. Meredith more than I do, though my admiration is not without a certain leaven of distress at his literary self-consciousness. I say this with all reverence. Great as Meredith is, he would be greater still if, when he is delivering his priceless gifts to us, he would bear in mind that immortal injunction in ‘King Henry the Fourth’—‘I prithee now, deliver them like a man of this world.’ I can imagine how the great humourist must smile when the dolt, who once found ‘obscurity’ in his most lucid passages, praises him for the defects of his qualities, and calls upon all other writers to write Meredithese.
To be a classic—to be immortal—it is necessary for an imaginative writer to deliver his message like ‘a man of this world.’ Shakespeare himself, occasionally, will seem to forget this, but only occasionally, and we never think of it when falling down in worship before the shrine of the greatest imaginative writer that has ever lived. Dr. Johnson said that all work which lives is without eccentricity. Now, entranced as I have been, ever since I was a boy, by Meredith’s incomparable romances, I long to set my imagination free of Meredith and fly away with his characters, as I can fly away with the characters of the classic imaginative writers from Homer down to Sir Walter Scott. But I seldom succeed. Now and then I escape from the obsession of the picture of the great writer seated in his chalet with the summer sunshine gleaming round his picturesque head, but illuminating also all too vividly his inkstand, and his paper and his pens; but only now and then, and not for long. If it had pleased Nature to give him less intellectual activity, less humour and wit and literary brilliance, I feel sure that he would have lived more securely as an English classic. I adore him, I say, and although I do not know him personally, I love him. We all love him: and when I am in a very charitable mood, I can even forgive him for having begotten the ‘mock Meredithians.’ As to those who, without a spark of his humourous imagination and supple intellect can manage to mimic his style, if they only knew what a torture their word-twisting is to the galled reviewer who wants to get on, and to know what on earth they have got to tell him, I think they would display a little more mercy, and even for pity’s sake deliver their gifts like ‘men of this world.’
In ‘Aylwin’ Mr. Watts-Dunton seems to have determined to be as romantic and as beautiful as the romanticists in poetry had ever dared to be, and yet by aid of a simplicity and a naïveté of diction of which his critical writings had shown no sign, to carry his beautiful dreams into Philistia itself. Never was there a bolder enterprise, and never was there a greater success. That ‘Aylwin’ would appeal strongly to imaginative minds was certain, for it was written by ‘the most widely cultivated writer in the English belles lettres of our time.’ But the strange thing is that a story so full of romance, poetry, and beauty, should also appeal to other minds.
I am no believer in mere popularity, and I confess that when books come before me for review I cannot help casting a suspicious eye upon any story by any of the very popular novelists of the day. But it is necessary to explain why the most poetical romance written within the last century is also one of the most popular. It was in part owing to its simplicity of diction, its naïveté of utterance, and its freedom from superfluous literary ornamentation. I do not as a rule like using a foreign word when an English word will do the same work, but neither ‘artlessness,’ ‘candour’ nor ‘simplicity’ seem to express the unique charm of the style of ‘Aylwin,’ so completely as does the word ‘naïveté.’ It was by naïveté, I believe, that he carried the Renascence of Wonder into quarters which his great brothers in the Romantic movement could never reach.