WILLIAM BLACK
(1841-)
n view of Mr. Black's accurate and picturesque descriptions of natural phenomena, it is interesting to know that of his varied youthful studies, botany most attracted him, and that he followed it up as an art pupil in the government schools. But his bent was rather for journalism than for art or science. Before he was twenty-one he had written critical essays for a local newspaper on Ruskin, Carlyle, and Kingsley; and shortly afterward he wrote a series of sketches, after Christopher North, that at this early age gave evidence of his peculiar talent, the artistic use of natural effects in the development of character, the pathos of the gray morning or the melancholy of the evening mist when woven in with tender episode or tragic occurrence.
William Black
William Black was born in Glasgow, Scotland, November 6th, 1841, and received his early education there. He settled in London in 1864, and was a special correspondent of the Morning Star in the Franco-Prussian war, but after about ten years of the life of a newspaper man, during which he was an editor of the London News, he abandoned journalism for novel-writing in 1875. In the intervals of his work he traveled much, and devoted himself with enthusiasm to out-door sports, of which he writes with a knowledge that inspires a certain confidence in the reader. A Scotch skipper once told him he need never starve, because he could make a living as pilot in the western Highlands; and the fidelity of his descriptions of northern Scotland have met with the questionable reward of converting a poet's haunt into a tourist's camp. Not that Mr. Black's is a game-keeper's catalogue of the phenomena of forest or stream, or the poetic way of depicting nature by similes. The fascination of his writing lies in our conviction that it is the result of minute observation, with a certain atmospheric quality that makes the picture alive. More, one is conscious of a sensitive, pathetic thrill in his writing; these sights and sounds, when they are unobtrusively chronicled, are penetrated by a subtle human sympathy, as if the writer bent close to the earth and heard the whispers of the flowers and stones, as well as the murmur of the forest and the roar of the sea.
He is eminently a popular writer, a vivacious delineator of life and manners, even when he exhibits his versatility at the cost of some of his most attractive characteristics. In 'Sunrise' we have a combination of romance and politics, its motive supplied by the intrigues of a wide-spread communistic society. 'Kilmeny' is the story of a painter, 'Shandon Bells' of a literary man, 'The Monarch of Mincing Lane' tells of the London streets, the heroine of 'The Handsome Humes' is an actress, the scenes in 'Briseis' are played in Athens, Scotland, and England. All these novels have tragic and exceptional episodes, the humor is broad, as the humor of a pessimist always is, and the reader finds himself laughing at a practical joke on the heels of a catastrophe. Mr. Black knows his London, especially the drawing-room aspect of it, and his latest novel is sure to have the latest touch of fad and fashion, although white heather does not cease to grow nor deer to be stalked, nor flies to be cast in Highland waters. We cannot admit that he is exceptionally fortunate in the heroines of these novels, however, for they are perfectly beautiful and perfectly good, and nature protests against perfection as a hurt to vanity. Our real favorites are the dark-eyed Queen Titania, the small imperious person who drives in state in 'Strange Adventures of a Phaeton,' and sails with such high courage in 'White Wings,' and the half-sentimental, half-practical, wholly self-seeking siren Bonny Leslie in 'Kilmeny' who develops into something a little more than coquettish in the Kitty of 'Shandon Bells.'
These and half a dozen other novels by Mr. Black entitle him to his place as a popular novelist; they are alternately gay and sad, they are spirited and entertaining; certain characters, like the heroine of 'Sunrise,' cast a bright effulgence over the dark plots of intrigue. But Mr. Black is at his best as the creator of the special school of fiction that has Highland scenery and Highland character for its field. He has many followers and many imitators, but he remains master on his own ground. The scenes of his most successful stories, 'The Princess of Thule,' 'A Daughter of Heth,' 'In Far Lochaber,' 'Macleod of Dare,' and 'Madcap Violet,' are laid for the most part in remote rural districts, amid lake and moorland and mountain wilds of northern Scotland, whose unsophisticated atmosphere is invaded by airs from the outer world only during the brief season of hunting and fishing.
But the visit of the worldling is long enough to furnish incident both poetic and tragic; and when he enters the innocent and primitive life of the native, as Lavender entered that of the proud and beautiful Princess of Thule sailing her boat in the far-off waters of Skye, or the cruel Gertrude in the grim castle of Dare, he finds all the potencies of passion and emotion.