“Ainsi va le monde!”
Havelaar was about to recommence the narrative, which his guests expected from him, and wherein he was to explain in what and why he had so opposed General van Damme at Natal, when Madam Slotering appeared in her fore-gallery, beckoning to the policeman who sat on a bench near Havelaar’s house. The policeman went over to her, and then said something to a man who had just entered the grounds, probably intending to go to the kitchen that was behind the house. Our company would probably have paid no attention to this, if Madam Havelaar had not said that afternoon at dinner that Madam [[225]]Slotering was so shy, and appeared to exercise a sort of control over every one that came into the grounds. We saw the man, who had been called by the policeman, go to her, and she questioned him, apparently much to his dissatisfaction. At least he retraced his steps, and was soon outside. “I am very sorry for that,” said Tine; “perhaps it was a man selling fowls, or vegetables; I have nothing yet in the house.”
“Then send some one after him,” replied Havelaar; “you know that native ladies like to exercise power. Her husband was formerly the first man in the place, and however small an Assistant Resident may be as an individual, he is in his own district a petty king: she is not yet accustomed to dethronement. We must not grudge this small pleasure to the poor woman; act as if you did not perceive it.”
This was not difficult for Tine; she had no desire for power.
A digression is necessary here, and I even intend to digress about digressions. It is not easy for an author to sail exactly between the two rocks of the too much or too little, and this difficulty is enhanced if one describes situations that have to remove the reader to unknown countries. There exists too nice a connexion between the places and the events for us to be able to abstain entirely from describing the former; and to avoid the two rocks, already mentioned, becomes doubly difficult for him who [[226]]has chosen the Indies for the scene of his narrative. For whereas the author who deals with European situations may suppose many affairs to be known, on the other hand he whose story refers to the Indies has continually to ask himself whether the non-Indian will rightly understand this or that. If the European reader thinks of Madam Slotering as lodging with the Havelaars, as would be the case in Europe, it must appear incomprehensible that she was not present with the company that took coffee in the fore-gallery. I have certainly already observed that she lived in a separate house; but to understand this aright, and also events to be described, it is indeed necessary to make you acquainted with Havelaar’s house and grounds. The accusation often made against the great artist who wrote Waverley, that he often abuses the patience of his readers by devoting too many pages to topography, seems to me to be unfounded, and I believe that in order to judge of the appropriateness of such descriptions, one has only to consider—Was this topography required exactly to convey the impression which the author wanted to communicate to you? If so, do not be offended because he expects you to take the trouble to read what he had taken the trouble to write. But, if it was not required, then throw the book aside; for the author who is empty-headed enough unnecessarily to give topography for ideas, will be very seldom worth reading, even when at last his topography is at an end. But the judgment of [[227]]the reader about the necessity of a deviation is often false, because he cannot know before the catastrophe what is necessary, and what not, to the systematic development of the situation; and when after the catastrophe he reads the book again—of books which one reads but once I do not speak—and even then thinks that this or that digression could have been omitted without marring the impression of the whole, the question remains whether he would have had the same impression of the whole if the author had not conducted him thither in a more or less artificial manner, just by means of the digressions which seem to him to be superfluous.
Do you think that the death of Amy Robsart would have touched you, if you had been a stranger in the halls of Kenilworth? And do you think that there is no connexion—connexion through contrast—between the rich dress wherein the unworthy Leicester showed himself to her, and the blackness of his soul? Do you not understand that Leicester—every one knows this who is acquainted with him from other sources than the novel only—was infinitely worse than he was painted in Kenilworth? But the great novelist, who liked better to charm by an artistic arrangement of colours than by coarseness of colour, thought it beneath him to dip his brush in all the mud and all the blood that clung to the unworthy favourite of Elizabeth. He wished to point out only one spot in the mud-pool; but he knew [[228]]how to present such spots vividly to the eye, by means of what he put in juxtaposition, in his immortal writings. He who thinks that all this juxtaposition may be rejected as superfluous, quite forgets that in so doing in order to bring about effects, one would be obliged to go over to the school which, since 1830, has flourished so long in France; though I must say to the honour of that country, that the authors who in this respect have offended the most against good taste have been valued most in foreign countries, and not in France itself. The authors,—I believe that this school is now no more,—thought it easy to dip their hands in pools of blood and throw it in great spots on the picture, in order to be able to see them from a distance. To be sure they are easier to paint, those rough lines of red and black, than the beautiful lines in the calyx of a lily. Therefore that school generally chose kings for the heroes of narratives by preference, from the time when the nations were still in their infancy. You see, the affliction of the king is represented on paper by cries of the people: his anger gives the author an opportunity to kill thousands on the field of battle: his errors give room to paint famine and plague—suchlike things give work to rough pencils. If you are not touched at the sight of the corpse that lies there, there is room in my narrative for another man, convulsed with pain, and still shrieking. Did you not weep for the mother, who sought in vain for her child?—Well, I will [[229]]show you another mother, who sees the quartering of her child. Did you remain unmoved at the martyrdom of that man?—I increase the number a hundredfold by torturing ninety-nine at his side. Are you hardened enough not to shudder when seeing this soldier, who, in the besieged fortification, devours his left arm because of hunger …?—
Epicure! I propose you give order, “Right and left wheel, form circle, left files eat left arms of right files … march!”
Yes, in this manner, artificial horrors become folly … which en passant I would fain prove.
And yet we would be reduced to this if we condemned too soon an author who wished to prepare you for his catastrophe without having recourse to these screaming[2] colours. But the danger of the other extreme is still greater. You despise the efforts of coarse literature, which thinks it must take your feelings by storm with such rough weapons; but if the author falls into the other extreme, if he sins by too much deviation from the principal matter, by too much pencilling, then your anger is still greater, and quite right; for then he has bored you, and that is unpardonable.
If we walk together and you stray every moment from the road, and call me into the underwood only with the intention to prolong the walk, I think this disagreeable, [[230]]and intend to walk alone for the future. But if you can show me there a plant which I did not know before, or in which I may see something that I overlooked, if you show me from time to time a flower, which I like to pluck and carry in my button-hole, then I forgive your deviation from the road; yes, I am grateful for it.