Essays on Modern Novelists

by William Lyon Phelps

To those of us who delight in getting some enjoyment even out of the most depressing facts, the growth of Mrs. Ward's reputation has its humorous aspect. The same individuals (mostly feminine) who in 1888 read Robert Elsmere with dismay, who thought the sale of the work should be prohibited, and the copies already purchased removed from circulating libraries, are the very same ones who now worship what they once denounced. She was then regarded as a destroyer of Christian faith. Well, if she was Satan then, she is Satan still (one Western clergyman, in advocating at that time the suppression of the work, said he believed in hitting the devil right between the eyes). She has given no sign of recantation, or even of penitence. I remember one fond mother, who, fearful of the effect of the book on her daughter's growing mind, marked all the worst passages, and then told Alice she might read it, provided she skipped all the blazed places! That indicated not only a fine literary sense, but a remarkable knowledge of human nature. I wonder what the poor girl did when she came to the danger signals! And, as a matter of fact, how valuable or vital would a Christian faith be that could be destroyed by the perusal of Robert Elsmere? It is almost difficult now to bring to distinct recollection the tremendous excitement caused by Mrs. Ward's first successful novel, for it is a long time since I heard its name mentioned. The last public notice of it that I can recall was a large sign which appeared some fifteen years ago in a New Haven apothecary's window to the effect that one copy of Robert Elsmere would be presented free to each purchaser of a cake of soap!

Although Robert Elsmere was an immediate and prodigious success, and made it certain that whatever its author chose to write next would be eagerly bought, it is wholly untrue to say that her subsequent novels have depended in any way on Elsmere for their reputation. There are many instances in professional literary careers where one immensely successful book—Lorna Doone, for example—has floated a long succession of works that could not of themselves stay above water; many an author has succeeded in attaching a life-preserver to literary children who cannot swim. Far otherwise is the case with Mrs. Ward. It is probable that over half the readers of Diana Mallory have never seen a copy of Robert Elsmere, for which, incidentally, they are to be congratulated. But many of us can easily recollect with what intense eagerness the novel that followed that sensation was awaited. Every one wondered if it would be equally good; and many confidently predicted that she had shot her bolt. As a matter of fact, not only was David Grieve a better novel than Robert Elsmere, but, in my judgement, it is the best book its author has ever written. Oscar Wilde said that Robert Elsmere was Literature and Dogma with the literature left out. Now, David Grieve has no dogma at all, but in a certain sense it does belong to literature. It has some actual dynamic quality. The character of David, and its development in a strange environment, are well analysed; and altogether the best thing in the work, taken as a whole, is the perspective. It is a difficult thing to follow a character from childhood up, within the pages of one volume, and have anything like the proper perspective. It requires for one thing, hard, painstaking industry; but Mrs. Ward has never been afraid of work. She cannot be accused of laziness or carelessness. The ending of this book is, of course, weak, like the conclusion of all her books, for she has never learned the fine art of saying farewell, either to her characters or to the reader.

It was in the year 1894—a year made memorable by the appearance of Trilby, the Prisoner of Zenda, The Jungle Book, Lord Ormont and his Aminta, Esther Waters, and other notable novels—that Mrs. Ward greatly increased her reputation and widened her circle of readers by the publication of Marcella. Here she gave us a political-didactic-realistic novel, which she has continued to publish steadily ever since under different titles. It was gravely announced that this new book would deal with socialism and the labour question. Many readers, who felt that she had said the last word on agnosticism in Elsmere, now looked forward with reverent anticipation not only to the final solution of socialistic problems, but to some coherent arrangement of their own vague and confused ideas. Naturally, they got just what they deserved—a voluminous statement of various aspects of the problem, with no solution at all. It is curious how many persons suppose that their favourite author or orator has done something toward settling questions, when, as a matter of fact, all he has done is to state them, and then state them again. This is especially true of philosophical and metaphysical difficulties. Think how eagerly readers took up Professor James's exceedingly clever book on Pragmatism, hoping at last to find rest in some definite principle. And if there ever was a blind alley in philosophy, it is Pragmatism—the very essence of agnosticism.

Now, Marcella, as a document, is both radical and reactionary. There is an immense amount of radical talk; but the heroine's schemes fail, the Labour party is torn by dissension, Wharton proves to be a scoundrel, and the rebel Marcella marries a respectable nobleman. There is not a single page in the book, with all its wilderness of words, that can be said to be in any sense a serious contribution to the greatest of all purely political problems. And, as a work of art, it is painfully limited; but since it has the same virtues and defects of all her subsequent literary output, we may consider what these virtues and defects are.

In the first place, Mrs. Ward is totally lacking in one almost fundamental quality of the great novelist—a keen sense of humour. Who are the English novelists of the first class? They are Defoe, Richardson, Fielding, Scott, Jane Austen, Dickens, Thackeray, George Eliot, Stevenson, and perhaps Hardy. Every one of these shows humour enough and to spare, with the single exception of Richardson, and he atoned for the deficiency by a terrible intensity that has seldom, if ever, been equalled in English fiction. Now, the absence of humour in a book is not only a positive loss to the reader, in that it robs him of the fun which is an essential part of the true history of any human life, and thereby makes the history to that extent inaccurate and unreal, but the writer who has no humour seldom gets the right point of view. There is infinitely more in the temperament of the humorist than mere laughter. Just as the poet sees life through the medium of a splendid imagination, so the humorist has the almost infallible guide of sympathy. The humorist sees life in a large, tolerant, kindly way; he knows that life is a tragi-comedy, and he makes the reader feel it in that fashion.

Again, the lack of humour in a writer destroys the sense of proportion. The humorist sees the salient points—the merely serious writer gives us a mass of details. In looking back over the thousands of pages of fiction that Mrs. Ward has published, how few great scenes stand out bright in the memory! The principle of selection—so important a part of all true art—is conspicuous only by its absence. This is one reason for the sameness of her books. All that we can remember is an immense number of social functions and an immense amount of political gossip—a long, sad level of mediocrity. This perhaps helps to explain why German fiction is so markedly inferior to the French. The German, in his scientific endeavour to get in the whole of life, gives us a mass of unrelated detail. A French writer by a few phrases makes us see a character more clearly than a German presents him after many painful pages of wearisome description.

Mrs. Ward is not too much in earnest in following her ideals of art; no one can be. But she is too sadly serious. There is a mental tension in her books, like the tension of overwork and mental exhaustion, like the tension of overwrought nerves; her books are, in fact, filled with tired and overworked men and women, jaded and gone stale. How many of her characters seem to need a change—what they want is rest and sleep! Many of them ought to be in a sanatorium.

Her books are devoid of charm. One does not have to compare her with the great masters to feel this deficiency; it would not be fair to compare her with Thackeray. But if we select among all the novelists of real distinction the one whom, perhaps, she most closely approaches,—Anthony Trollope,—the enormous distance between Diana Mallory and Framley Parsonage is instantly manifest. We think of Trollope with a glow of reminiscent delight; but although Trollope and Mrs. Ward talk endlessly on much the same range of subject-matter, how far apart they really are! Mrs. Ward's books are crammed with politicians and clergymen, who keep the patient reader informed on modern aspects of political and religious thought; but the difficulty is that they substitute phrases for ideas. Mrs. Ward knows all the political and religious cant of the day; she is familiar with the catch-words that divide men into hostile camps; but in all these dreary pages of serious conversation there is no real illumination. She completely lacks the art that Trollope possessed, of making ordinary people attractive. But to find out the real distance that separates her productions from literature, one should read, let us say, The Marriage of William Ashe and then take up Pride and Prejudice. The novels of Mrs. Ward bear about the same relation to first-class fiction that maps and atlases bear to great paintings.

This lack of charm that I always feel in reading Mrs. Ward's books (and I have read them all) is owing not merely to the lack of humour. It is partly due to what seems to be an almost total absence of freshness, spontaneity, and originality. Mrs. Ward works like a well-trained and high-class graduate student, who is engaged in the preparation of a doctor's thesis. Her discussions of socialism, her scenes in the House of Commons and on the Terrace, her excursions to Italy, her references to political history, her remarks on the army, her disquisitions on theology, her pictures of campaign riots, her studies of defective drainage, her representations of the labouring classes,—all these are "worked up" in a scholarly and scientific manner; there is the modern passion for accuracy, there is the German completeness of detail,—there is, in fact, everything except the breath of life. She works in the descriptive manner, from the outside in—not in the inspired manner which goes with imagination, sympathy, and genius. She is not only a student, she is a journalist; she is a special correspondent on politics and theology; but she is not a creative writer. For she has the critical, not the creative, temperament.

The monotonous sameness of her books, which has been mentioned above, is largely owing to the sameness of her characters. She changes the frames, but not the portraits. First of all, in almost any of her books we are sure to meet the studious, intellectual young man. He always has a special library on some particular subject, with the books all annotated. One wearies of this perpetual character's perpetual library, crowded, as it always is, with the latest French and German monographs. Her heroes smell of books and dusty dissertations, and the conversations of these heroes are plentifully lacking in native wit and originality—they are the mere echoes of their reading. Let us pass in review a few of these serious students—Robert Elsmere, Langham, Aldous Reyburn (who changes into Lord Maxwell, but who remains a prig), the melancholy Helbeck, the insufferable Manisty, Jacob Delafield, William Ashe, Oliver Marsham—all, all essentially the same, tiresome, dull, heavy men—what a pity they were not intended as satires! Second, as a foil to this man, we have the Byronic, clever, romantic, sentimental, insincere man—who always degenerates or dies in a manner that exalts the dull and superior virtues of his antagonist. Such a man is Wharton, or Sir George Tressady, or Captain Warkworth, or Cliffe—they have different names in different novels, but they are the same character. Curiously enough, the only convincing men that appear in her pages are old men—men like Lord Maxwell or Sir James Chide. In portraying this type she achieves success.