The manner in which a good story grows under the hand is so remarkable, that no tropic vegetation can show the like of it. For, consider, when you have got your germ—the mere idea, not half a dozen lines perhaps—which is to form your plot, how small a thing it is compared with, say, the thousand pages which it has to occupy in the three-volume novel! Yet to the story-teller the germ is everything. When I was a very young man—a quarter of a century ago, alas!—and had very little experience in these matters, I was reading on a coachbox (for I read everywhere in those days) an account of some gigantic trees; one of them was described as sound outside, but within, for many feet, a mass of rottenness and decay. If a boy should climb up birdsnesting into the fork of it, thought I, he might go down feet first and hands overhead, and never be heard of again. How inexplicable too, as well as melancholy, such a disappearance would be! Then, 'as when a great thought strikes along the brain and flushes all the cheek,' it struck me what an appropriate end it would be—with fear (lest he should turn up again) instead of hope for the fulcrum to move the reader—for a bad character of a novel. Before I had left the coachbox I had thought out 'Lost Sir Massingberd.'
The character was drawn from life, but unfortunately from hearsay; he had flourished—to the great terror of his neighbours—two generations before me, so that I had to be indebted to others for his portraiture, which was a great disadvantage. It was necessary that the lost man should be an immense scoundrel to prevent pity being excited by the catastrophe, and at that time I did not know any very wicked people. The book was a successful one, but it needs no critic to point out how much better the story might have been told. The interest in the gentleman, buried upright in his oak coffin, is inartistically weakened by other sources of excitement; like an extravagant cook, the young author is apt to be too lavish with his materials, and in after days, when the larder is more difficult to fill, he bitterly regrets it. The representation of a past time I also found it very difficult to compass, and I am convinced that for any writer to attempt such a thing, when he can avoid it, is an error in judgment. The author who undertakes to resuscitate and clothe with flesh and blood the dry bones of his ancestors, has indeed this advantage, that, however unlifelike his characters may be, there is no one in a position to prove it; it is not 'a difference of opinion between himself and twelve of his fellow-countrymen,' or a matter on which he can be condemned by overwhelming evidence; but, on the other hand, he creates for himself unnecessary difficulties. I will add, for the benefit of those literary aspirants to whom these remarks are especially addressed—a circumstance which, I hope, will be taken as an excuse for the writing of my own affairs at all, which would otherwise be an unpardonable presumption—that these difficulties are not the worst of it; for when the novel founded on the Past has been written, it will not be read by a tenth of those who would read it if it were a novel of the Present.
Even at the date I speak of, however, I was not so young as to attempt to create the characters of a story out of my own imagination, and I believe that the whole of its dramatis personæ (except the chief personage) were taken from the circle of my own acquaintance. This is a matter, by-the-bye, on which considerable judgment and good taste have to be exercised; for if the likeness of the person depicted is recognisable by his friends (he never recognises it by any chance himself), or still more by his enemies, it is no longer a sketch from life, but a lampoon. It will naturally be asked by some: 'But if you draw the man to the life, how can he fail to be known?' For this there is the simplest remedy. You describe his character, but under another skin; if he is tall you make him short, if dark, fair; or you make such alterations in his circumstances as shall prevent identification, while retaining them to a sufficient extent to influence his behaviour. In the framework which most (though not all) skilled workmen draw of their stories before they begin to furnish them with so much even as a door-mat, the real name of each individual to be described should be placed (as a mere aid to memory) by the side of that under which he appears in the drama; and I would strongly recommend the builder to write his real names in cipher; for I have known at least one instance in which the entire list of the dramatis personæ of a novel was carried off by a person more curious than conscientious, and afterwards revealed to those concerned—a circumstance which, though it increased the circulation of the story, did not add to the personal popularity of the author.
If a story-teller is prolific, the danger of his characters coinciding with those of people in real life who are unknown to him is much greater than would be imagined; the mere similarity of name may of course be disregarded; but when in addition to that there is also a resemblance of circumstance, it is difficult to persuade the man of flesh and blood that his portrait is an undesigned one. The author of 'Vanity Fair' fell, in at least one instance, into a most unfortunate mistake of this kind; while a not less popular author even gave his hero the same name and place in the Ministry which were (subsequently) possessed by a living politician.
It is better, however, for his own reputation that the story-teller should risk a few actions for libel on account of these unfortunate coincidences than that he should adopt the melancholy device of using blanks or asterisks. With the minor novelists of a quarter of a century ago it was quite common to introduce their characters as Mr. A and Mr. B, and very difficult their readers found it to interest themselves in the fortunes and misfortunes of an initial:
It was in the summer of the year 18—, and the sun was setting behind the low western hills beneath which stands the town of C; its dying gleams glistened on the weather-cock of the little church, beneath whose tower two figures were standing, so deep in shadow that little more could be made out concerning them save that they were young persons of the opposite sex. The elder and taller, however, was the fascinating Lord B; the younger (presenting a strong contrast to her companion in social position, but yet belonging to the true nobility of nature) was no other than the beautiful Patty G, the cobbler's daughter.
This style of narrative should be avoided.
Another difficulty of the story-teller, and one unhappily in which no advice can be of much service to him, is how to describe the lapse of time and of locomotion. To the dramatist nothing is easier than to print in the middle of his playbill, 'Forty years are here supposed to have elapsed;' or 'Scene I.: A drawing-room in Mayfair; Scene II.: Greenland.' But the story-teller has to describe how these little changes are effected, without being able to take his readers into his confidence.[[7]] He can't say, 'Gentle reader, please to imagine that the winter is over, and the summer has come round since the conclusion of our last chapter.' Curiously enough, however, the lapse of years is far easier to suggest than that of hours; and locomotion from Islington to India than the act, for instance, of leaving the room. If passion enters into the scene, and your heroine can be represented as banging the door behind her, and bringing down the plaster from the ceiling, the thing is easy enough, and may be even made a dramatic incident; but to describe, without baldness, Jones rising from the tea-table and taking his departure in cold blood, is a much more difficult business than you may imagine. When John the footman has to enter and interrupt a conversation on the stage, the audience see him come and go, and think nothing of it; but to inform the reader of your novel of a similar incident—and especially of John's going—without spoiling the whole scene by the introduction of the commonplace, requires (let me tell you) the touch of a master.
[7] That last, indeed, is a thing which, with all deference to some great names in fiction, should in my judgment never be done. It is hard enough for him as it is to simulate real life, without the poor showman's reaching out from behind the curtain to shake hands with his audience.
When you have got the outline of your plot, and the characters that seem appropriate to play in it, you turn to that so-called 'commonplace book,' in which, if you know your trade, you will have set down anything noteworthy and illustrative of human nature that has come under your notice, and single out such instances as are most fitting; and finally you will select your scene (or the opening one) in which your drama is to be played. And here I may say, that while it is indispensable that the persons represented should be familiar to you, it is not necessary that the places should be; you should have visited them, of course, in person, but it is my experience that for a description of the salient features of any locality the less you stay there the better. The man who has lived in Switzerland all his life can never describe it (to the outsider) so graphically as the (intelligent) tourist; just as the man who has science at his fingers' ends does not succeed so well as the man with whom science has not yet become second nature, in making an abstruse subject popular.