But those novelists belong to the past—the dead and buried past. We want the present time described—the living, breathing, busy present. There never was an age, there never was a country, that afforded such scope for the novelist as this age and country. Our cities are swarming with an eager, reckless, enterprising population, presenting an infinite variety of characters, each occupied with his own particular pursuits of ambition, pleasure, or wealth. Take New York as the representative city of America. There are to be found the best and the worst features of our civilization; the most unbounded wealth and the most squalid poverty; the most exquisite culture and refinement and the most degraded and abandoned of the human race. Is not our society as vain, frivolous, false as that English society which Thackeray satirized so unmercifully? Have we no Vanity Fair, no heartless Becky Sharps, no selfish George Osbornes, no wicked old Steynes, no disreputable Rawdon Crawleys?
Our country is the last of nations in point of time, but the first in all material prosperity. Like Minerva, it sprang into existence fully equipped for a career unparalleled in the annals of the world. Other nations have taken a thousand years to reach the position which the United States took at one bound. We have more than realized the dream of Plato. But let us not imitate the philosopher of Greece, and banish poetry and pure fiction from our republic. Let us not hang the sword of Damocles over the imagination, but let it be purified. Let us not employ the scissors of Atropos to cut the threads of fictitious narrative, but let it be purged of its present loose and dangerous tendency. Sir Walter Scott declared novels to be “a luxury contrived for the amusement of polished life, and the gratification of that half-love of literature which pervades all ranks in an advanced stage of society, and are read much more for amusement than with the least hope of deriving instruction from them”; yet Ivanhoe throws more light upon the personal character of Richard Cœur de Lion, Kenilworth informs us more particularly about the court of Elizabeth, the Fortunes of Nigel gives us a better insight into the private life of King James, than we derive from Hume. By his poems and novels Scott threw a perpetual charm over the bleak hills of Scotland; he made its ruined abbeys as interesting as the ruined castles of Germany; he made its lakes the favorite resort of thousands of summer tourists. Author of the most celebrated novels that were ever written, Scott was unjust to the children of his mind when he spoke slightingly of novels. It should be remembered that he also spoke unfavorably of the literary profession—a profession by which he made a million dollars and an immortal name.
When the author of Waverley spoke disparagingly of novels that kind of literary composition was almost in its infancy, certainly in its childhood. Richardson, Fielding, Smollett, and Goldsmith were the only great names in that department of English literature. It was almost an uncultivated field, but the reaper was at hand, whose harvest should be abundant, whose reward great. The lordly halls of Abbotsford still stand, the magnificent result of novel-writing. For every novel written during the time of Scott there are at least one hundred written now. The novels published during the last fifty years are far more numerous than all the novels that had previously existed in the world. A hundred years since pamphlets were written to promote the success of a political measure, to show that “taxation” was “no tyranny,” to overthrow a minister, etc. Now, when Disraeli wants to convince the country of his political sagacity, he writes a novel; when Dickens wanted to show up a crying injustice to the poor he wrote a novel; when Thackeray wanted to expose the shams of English society he wrote a novel. The age of pamphlets is gone, the age of novels has succeeded. Statesmen write novels, soldiers write novels, clergymen, lawyers, doctors—all professions, all classes and both sexes, write novels, and still the novel-reading Olivers “ask for more.” Any person who visits a fashionable circulating library upon a Saturday afternoon will see how great is the demand for new novels.
Books which were, in the last century, read in mixed assemblages of young ladies and gentlemen could not now be read by old ladies in the privacy of their closets. Apropos of which is a story out of Lockhart’s Scott: “A grand-aunt of mine,” said Sir Walter, “was very fond of reading, and enjoyed it to the last of her long life. One day she asked me, when we happened to be alone together, whether I had ever seen Mrs. Behn’s novels. I confessed the charge. Whether I could get her a sight of them? I said, with some hesitation, I believed I could; but that I did not think she would like either the manners or the language, which approached too near that of Charles II.’s time to be quite proper reading. ‘Nevertheless,’ said the good old lady, ‘I remember them being so much admired, and being so much interested in them myself, that I wish to look at them again.’ To hear was to obey. So I sent Mrs. Aphra Behn, curiously sealed up, with ‘private and confidential’ on the packet, to my gay old grand-aunt. The next time I saw her afterwards she gave me back Aphra, properly wrapped up, with nearly these words: ‘Take back your bonny Mrs. Behn; and, if you will take my advice, put her in the fire, for I found it impossible to get through the very first novel. But is it not,’ said she, ‘a very odd thing that I, an old woman of eighty and upwards, sitting alone, feel myself ashamed to read a book which, sixty years ago, I have heard read aloud for the amusement of large circles, consisting of the first and most creditable society of London?’”
Although a vast improvement has taken place in the tone of novels generally, yet there are many still written which should not be read, and many are read which should not be written. It is a striking and lamentable fact that the worst novels of the day are written and read by women. The miss scarcely in her teens reads books which her grandmother would be ashamed to read. As the pampered palate of the epicure can only enjoy food highly seasoned, so the vitiated minds of modern readers can only enjoy highly seasoned novels; mysterious murders, mad marriages, runaway matches, terrible secrets, awful mysteries, hidden perils, etc., are required to stimulate their jaded taste. As a person who feeds only on dainties will soon have the dyspepsia, so a person who reads only highly-seasoned novels will have a sort of mental dyspepsia. Scenes are described, circumstances are mentioned, conversations retailed, vices introduced into modern novels which would cause any man to be banished from decent society who should so far forget himself as to allude to them. Yet such things are read without blushing by young ladies, such books are discussed by ladies and gentlemen without shame. If our young ladies are to read nothing but novels, in the name of modesty let not their literary food be corrupt and corrupting; let not their virgin minds be filled with foul images; let not their Christian souls be soiled with even a thought of vice.
Queen Anne could not enjoy her breakfast unless the Spectator was by her plate. Were Addison alive now and writing the Spectator, we doubt whether Queen Victoria would have it with her morning meal. Times change, and kings as well as commons must keep pace with their age. Gibbon’s vanity was gratified that his history was in every lady’s boudoir and discussed in every fashionable drawing-room in London. Were Gibbon writing in this present year of grace, we do not think the Decline and Fall would deprive the last novel of its “pride of place” in my lady’s boudoir. About twenty-two years ago Macaulay received that famous £20,000 check from the Messrs. Longman for a volume of his History of England, of which more than twenty-six thousand five hundred copies were sold in ten weeks. Macaulay’s History was even more popular than Gibbon’s. He said: “I shall not be satisfied unless I produce something which shall for a few days supersede the last fashionable novel on the tables of young ladies.” “For a few days” Macaulay’s history did “supersede the last fashionable novel,” but we think we are safe in saying that it will have fewer readers this year than a new novel by “Christian Reid” or Mrs. Alexander. Take the average girl of the period, question her about her reading, and what is the result? She averages six novels a week—three hundred a year. Certainly much in point of quantity, but how about the quality? Has she read the Spectator, the Vicar of Wakefield, Macaulay’s Essays? No. They would be as tiresome to her as the compliments of an old beau—as old-fashioned as last year’s bonnet.
Mme. Roland when a girl slept with a volume of Plutarch’s Lives under her pillow. Our girls, who are more interested in contemporary society than in the lives of illustrious Greeks and Romans, put the last novel under their pillow, that they may continue the first thing in the morning the entrancing story of Theo, which “tired nature” compelled them to relinquish at midnight. We trust they may never be called upon to display the lofty heroism of Mme. Roland—that their only tears may be those shed over the woes of imaginary heroines, their only sorrows as fictitious as those in the novels they love so well.
Being an unquestionable fact that the reading millions of this last quarter of the nineteenth century devote themselves to novels more than to any other class of literature, novels may be made the means of great and universal good. We all know how rapturously the third tier applauds lofty moral sentiments; how enthusiastically the “gods” of the gallery sympathize with virtue in distress; how the protector of innocence is cheered and the villain hooted. Let this natural feeling of the human heart be turned to account in novels. We have all laughed over that inimitable scene in The Rivals between Lydia Languish and Lucy, her maid, who has been sent to the circulating library for some late novels. Do not some of Lydia’s favorites suggest the names of popular novels that are in daily request at our fashionable circulating libraries?—the Reward of Constancy, the Fatal Connection, the Mysteries of a Heart, the Delicate Distress, the Tears of Sensibility. Have we not the Fatal Marriage, the Empty Heart, a Woman’s Heart, the Curse of Gold, the Mysterious Engagement, a Clandestine Marriage, etc.? Judging from the books they read, our girls must believe with Mrs. Malaprop that “thought does not become a young woman.”
A popular modern novel, one which nine out of every ten readers pronounce “so nice,” “so interesting,” “perfectly lovely,” is “made up” something after this manner: A young girl, one half of whose character entirely contradicts the other half, engages herself to some worthy but commonplace young man, who is more familiar with figures in his ledger than with figures of rhetoric, who is more apt at writing business letters than love letters, who is better acquainted with market quotations than poetical quotations, who knows more about the Corn Exchange than about Lucille—in short, a man who takes a practical, common-sense view of life. The love of this romantic girl and this practical young man is not very ardent. In the meantime there appears upon the scene a dark, mysterious, gloomy, blasé man of the world, believing in nothing, hoping for nothing, and who looks upon existence as a curse. He is as handsome as an angel, cynical as a fiend, sceptical as a modern philosopher. His “noble” brow is often disfigured by a scowl, his “chiselled” mouth is often marred by a sneer. In a word, he is a sort of fashionable Lara. This scowling, sneering, cynical gentleman has had an interesting history: he was the hero of an unfortunate love-affair. His heart is a burnt-out volcano. In his early youth he had loved—madly, wildly loved—a woman who was married to a brute. He tells this woman his love. She listens to his story, laments that she is not free, and bursts into tears. He takes her in his arms, swearing that she is the one idolized love of his heart. At length she says they must part, but bids him await her summons. He leaves her, goes abroad, and tries to forget his sorrows in the sparkling Lethe of dissipation. In vain. The sad form of his loved one is the skeleton at every feast, and changes every ball into a funeral. At last his long-expected summons comes: the being he loves more than ten thousand lives writes him to come to her at once; that her husband has struck her, she is sick, perhaps dying. He flies to revenge her wrongs. He finds her dead. Thus was his love lost, his hopes crushed, his life wrecked. Lara tells his story to our romantic girl one lovely June evening. They are seated on a moonlit piazza. The perfume of many flowers fills the air. The sound of a distant river is heard. It is a night and a scene meet for love. In tones, tender, sad, but sweet, he tells her his heart has long been ashes; that he never thought the fires of love could again be kindled there, but she has taught him that there is peace, happiness, love for even him. Will she raise this dead heart to life? She murmurs, softly but passionately, “I love you, Arthur.” This is a rather mild and innocent specimen of the food that modern novel-readers feed on. The object of fiction should be to represent life as it is—to “hold the mirror up to nature.”
Just one hundred years since all London went wild over a new novel by a nameless writer. The new novel was Evelina, the nameless writer was Miss Burney. The characters in the book were commonplace, the scenes uninteresting, the story unexciting, but it showed, what no other novel of the time showed, that a book could be lively without being licentious, readable without being immoral. Nothing more clearly proves the poverty of the fictitious literature of the last quarter of the eighteenth century than that such a statesman as Burke should sit up all night to read such a book as Evelina. Nothing better proves how prejudice can sway a strong mind than that Dr. Johnson should pronounce Miss Burney superior to Fielding. But it was extraordinary for a young lady to write a book one hundred years ago. It was still more extraordinary for a young lady to write a novel that could be read with pleasure. Hence the furore that it created and the interest that its author excited. Miss Burney did not (as too many of our lady writers do), upon the strength of one successful book, rush a half-dozen inferior novels upon the world. She waited more than four years before she published her next work, Cecilia. For Evelina she received £20, for Cecilia £2,000. We have mentioned Miss Burney, because we consider her as an excellent example for the imitation of modern novelists. She was willing to wait four years after publishing an unprecedentedly successful book before giving another to the world. But, when that other work did appear, it was placed by general consent among the few classical novels in the English language. Nowadays it is the fashion for a popular writer to deluge circulating libraries with rubbish which, in a few weeks, finds its way to the junk-shop. Those who write for posterity write slowly, correct carefully, and publish seldom.