The novel of “manners” rarely meets with sudden appreciation. Miss Burney’s Evelina, to be sure, was an exception; but then Evelina was so broadly humorous, so farcical, and, moreover, came out at a time when so few competitors were in the field, that it can hardly be reckoned with. Miss Ferrier, that delightful Scotchwoman, whose novels are all “manners” together, had only, and still has only, a limited if an enthusiastic clientèle; whereas Miss Austen was ridiculously overlooked until she was dead. Her quiet, keen, unerring insight into the hearts of men and women had to work itself by slow degrees into the abiding recognition wherewith it is at last crowned.
But if slowly won, such laurels never fade. Human nature being the same in every age, the student of human nature can never be really out of date; his or her production must always appeal to something within the thoughtful reader’s breast, and awaken a response. The habits and customs of every generation may vary, but these are only like to the faces of the different timepieces made in different periods; the mainsprings are the same, the object of the timepiece is the same; wherefore, recognising our own passions, pursuits, and aims beneath the different exterior of our forefathers, we can never regard them with indifference.
Thus, the novel of “manners,” which caught the essence of its own times, must as a natural sequence amuse and instruct ours. Other kinds of fiction may catch people’s fancy more quickly at the outset; other and more brilliant varieties may outshine the sober tints and slender texture of its woof; but the tapestry pictures in the novel of “manners,” with every stitch complete, and every thread in its right place, will be found giving delight to new generations of readers, when many of the showy and striking works of fiction which now meet the eye at every turn are mouldering on the shelf, their very names forgotten.
COLOUR IN COMPOSITION
S. Baring-Gould
Novels and novels
There are novels and novels. A society novel has its special type: there are the conventionalities of social life, the routine, the courtesies, the absence of startling events, a general smoothness. It requires no local colour. Society is the same throughout England. One town-house is much like another, one country-house may differ from another, in that one is Elizabethan and another Georgian, but social life is the same, eminently nineteenth century in all, and in all alike. It really matters nothing where the scene is laid, whether in Cumberland or in Cornwall, in Yorkshire or in Kent. The dramatis personæ talk the same conventionalities, dress alike, behave in a similar manner everywhere. Social life rubs down eccentricities, almost abolishes individuality. In an American social novel there is a certain American flavour, and in an English social novel a certain English flavour, that is all. A social novel does not need local colour, and local colour least of all enters into the composition of the characters.
The social novel
There are certain conventionalities in the social novel: the purse-proud new man, who drops his H’s: the haughty lady of rank, and so on; just as there is the conventional lawyer on the stage, who is a rogue. If we want to be bold and original, we vary or change our pieces, and make the nouveau riche all that is desirable, and the lady of rank all that is humble; but the range of alteration in this respect is not great, and the range of varieties in character is not great, and of local colours influencing the characters there can be none at all.
The novel of country life