Part 7 (2/2)
Clark Russell. The whole business of the brig _Morning Star_ is very rightly felt and spiritedly written; but the clothes, the books and the money satisfy the reader's mind like things to eat. We are dealing here with the old cut-and-dry legitimate interest of treasure trove.
But even treasure trove can be made dull. There are few people who have not groaned under the plethora of goods that fell to the lot of the _Swiss Family Robinson_,[26] that dreary family. They found article after article, creature after creature, from milk kine to pieces of ordnance, a whole consignment; but no informing taste had presided over the selection, there was no smack or relish in the invoice; and these riches left the fancy cold. The box of goods in Verne's _Mysterious Island_[27] is another case in point: there was no gusto and no glamour about that; it might have come from a shop. But the two hundred and seventy-eight Australian sovereigns on board the _Morning Star_ fell upon me like a surprise that I had expected; whole vistas of secondary stories, besides the one in hand, radiated forth from that discovery, as they radiate from a striking particular in life; and I was made for the moment as happy as a reader has the right to be.
To come at all at the nature of this quality of romance, we must bear in mind the peculiarity of our att.i.tude to any art. No art produces illusion; in the theatre we never forget that we are in the theatre; and while we read a story, we sit wavering between two minds, now merely clapping our hands at the merit of the performance, now condescending to take an active part in fancy with the characters.
This last is the triumph of romantic story-telling: when the reader consciously plays at being the hero, the scene is a good scene. Now in character-studies the pleasure that we take is critical; we watch, we approve, we smile at incongruities, we are moved to sudden heats of sympathy with courage, suffering or virtue. But the characters are still themselves, they are not us; the more clearly they are depicted, the more widely do they stand away from us, the more imperiously do they thrust us back into our place as a spectator. I cannot identify myself with Rawdon Crawley or with Eugene de Rastignac,[28] for I have scarce a hope or fear in common with them. It is not character but incident that woos us out of our reserve. Something happens as we desire to have it happen to ourselves; some situation, that we have long dallied with in fancy, is realised in the story with enticing and appropriate details. Then we forget the characters; then we push the hero aside; then we plunge into the tale in our own person and bathe in fresh experience; and then, and then only, do we say we have been reading a romance. It is not only pleasurable things that we imagine in our day-dreams; there are lights in which we are willing to contemplate even the idea of our own death; ways in which it seems as if it would amuse us to be cheated, wounded or calumniated. It is thus possible to construct a story, even of tragic import, in which every incident, detail and trick of circ.u.mstance shall be welcome to the reader's thoughts. Fiction is to the grown man what play is to the child; it is there that he changes the atmosphere and tenor of his life; and when the game so chimes with his fancy that he can join in it with all his heart, when it pleases him with every turn, when he loves to recall it and dwells upon its recollection with entire delight, fiction is called romance.
Walter Scott is out and away the king of the romantics. _The Lady of the Lake_ has no indisputable claim to be a poem beyond the inherent fitness and desirability of the tale. It is just such a story as a man would make up for himself, walking, in the best health and temper, through just such scenes as it is laid in. Hence it is that a charm dwells undefinable among these slovenly verses, as the unseen cuckoo fills the mountains with his note; hence, even after we have flung the book aside, the scenery and adventures remain present to the mind, a new and green possession, not unworthy of that beautiful name, _The Lady of the Lake_,[29] or that direct, romantic opening,--one of the most spirited and poetical in literature,--”The stag at eve had drunk his fill.” The same strength and the same weaknesses adorn and disfigure the novels. In that ill-written, ragged book, _The Pirate_,[30] the figure of Cleveland--cast up by the sea on the resounding foreland of Dunrossness--moving, with the blood on his hands and the Spanish words on his tongue, among the simple islanders--singing a serenade under the window of his Shetland mistress--is conceived in the very highest manner of romantic invention. The words of his song, ”Through groves of palm,” sung in such a scene and by such a lover, clench, as in a nutsh.e.l.l, the emphatic contrast upon which the tale is built. In _Guy Mannering_,[31] again, every incident is delightful to the imagination; and the scene when Harry Bertram lands at Ellangowan is a model instance of romantic method.
”'I remember the tune well,' he says, 'though I cannot guess what should at present so strongly recall it to my memory.' He took his flageolet from his pocket and played a simple melody. Apparently the tune awoke the corresponding a.s.sociations of a damsel.... She immediately took up the song--
”'Are these the links of Forth, she said; Or are they the crooks of Dee, Or the bonny woods of Warroch Head That I so fain would see?'
”'By heaven!' said Bertram, 'it is the very ballad.'”
On this quotation two remarks fall to be made. First, as an instance of modern feeling for romance, this famous touch of the flageolet and the old song is selected by Miss Braddon for omission. Miss Braddon's idea[32] of a story, like Mrs. Todgers's idea of a wooden leg,[33]
were something strange to have expounded. As a matter of personal experience, Meg's appearance to old Mr. Bertram on the road, the ruins of Derncleugh, the scene of the flageolet, and the Dominie's recognition of Harry, are the four strong notes that continue to ring in the mind after the book is laid aside. The second point is still more curious. The reader will observe a mark of excision in the pa.s.sage as quoted by me. Well, here is how it runs in the original: ”a damsel, who, close behind a fine spring about half-way down the descent, and which had once supplied the castle with water, was engaged in bleaching linen.” A man who gave in such copy would be discharged from the staff of a daily paper. Scott has forgotten to prepare the reader for the presence of the ”damsel”; he has forgotten to mention the spring and its relation to the ruin; and now, face to face with his omission, instead of trying back and starting fair, crams all this matter, tail foremost, into a single shambling sentence. It is not merely bad English, or bad style; it is abominably bad narrative besides.
Certainly the contrast is remarkable; and it is one that throws a strong light upon the subject of this paper. For here we have a man of the finest creative instinct touching with perfect certainty and charm the romantic junctures of his story; and we find him utterly careless, almost, it would seem, incapable, in the technical matter of style, and not only frequently weak, but frequently wrong in points of drama.
In character parts, indeed, and particularly in the Scotch, he was delicate, strong and truthful; but the trite, obliterated features of too many of his heroes have already wearied two generations of readers. At times his characters will speak with something far beyond propriety with a true heroic note; but on the next page they will be wading wearily forward with an ungrammatical and undramatic rigmarole of words. The man who could conceive and write the character of Elspeth of the Craigburnfoot,[34] as Scott has conceived and written it, had not only splendid romantic, but splendid tragic gifts. How comes it, then, that he could so often fob us off with languid, inarticulate twaddle?
It seems to me that the explanation is to be found in the very quality of his surprising merits. As his books are play to the reader, so were, they play to him. He conjured up the romantic with delight, but he had hardly patience to describe it. He was a great day-dreamer, a seer of fit and beautiful and humorous visions, but hardly a great artist; hardly, in the manful sense, an artist at all. He pleased himself, and so he pleases us. Of the pleasures of his art he tasted fully; but of its toils and vigils and distresses never man knew less.
A great romantic--an idle child.
NOTES
This essay first appeared in _Longman's Magazine_ for November 1882, Vol. I, pp. 69-79. Five years later it was published in the volume _Memories and Portraits_ (1887), followed by an article called _A Humble Remonstrance_, which should really be read in connection with this essay, as it is a continuation of the same line of thought. In the eternal conflict between Romanticism and Realism, Stevenson was heart and soul with the former, and fortunately he lived long enough to see the practical effects of his own precepts and influence. When he began to write, Realism in fiction seemed to have absolute control; when he died, a tremendous reaction in favor of the historical romance had already set in, that reached its climax with the death of the century. Stevenson's share in this Romantic revival was greater than that of any other English writer, and as an English review remarked, if it had not been for him most of the new authors would have been Howells and James young men.
This paper was written at Davos in the winter of 1881-2, and in February, writing to Henley, the author said, ”I have just finished a paper, 'A Gossip on Romance,' in which I have tried to do, very popularly, about one-half of the matter you wanted me to try. In a way, I have found an answer to the question. But the subject was hardly fit for so chatty a paper, and it is all loose ends. If ever I do my book on the Art of Literature, I shall gather them together and be clear.” (_Letters_, I, 269). On Dec. 8, 1884--the same month in which _A Humble Remonstrance_ was printed, Stevenson wrote an interesting letter to Henry James, whose views on the art of fiction were naturally contrary to those of his friend. See _Letters_, I, 402.
[Note 1: _Like a pig for truffles_. See the _Epilogue_ to Browning's _Pacchiarotto etc_., Stanza XVIII:--”Your product is--truffles, you hunt with a pig!”]
[Note 2: _The Malabar coast_. A part of India.]
[Note 3: _Jacobite_. After James II was driven from the throne in 1688, his supporters and those of his descendants were called Jacobites. Jacobus is the Latin for James.]
[Note 4: _John Rann or Jerry Abershaw_. John Rann I cannot find. Louis Jeremiah (or Jerry) Abershaw was a highway robber, who infested the roads near London; he was hung in 1795, when scarcely over twenty-one years old.]
[Note 5: ”_Great North road_.” The road that runs on the east of England up to Edinburgh. Stevenson yielded to the charm that these words had for him, for he began a romance with the t.i.tle, _The Great North Road_, which however, he never finished. It was published as a fragment in _The Ill.u.s.trated London News_, in 1895.]
[Note 6: _What will he Do with It_? One of Bulwer-Lytton's novels, published in 1858.]
[Note 7: Since traced by many obliging correspondents to the gallery of Charles Kingsley.]
[Note 8: _Conduct is three parts of life_. In _Literature and Dogma_ (1873) Matthew Arnold a.s.serted with great emphasis, that conduct was three-fourths of life.]
[Note 9: _The sight of a pleasant arbour_. Possibly a reminiscence of the arbour in _Pilgrim's Progress_, where Christian fell asleep, and lost his roll. ”Now about the midway to the top of the hill was a pleasant arbour.”]
[Note 10: ”_Miching mallecho.” Hamlet's_ description of the meaning of the Dumb Show in the play-scene, Act III, Sc. 2. ”Hidden treachery”--see any annotated edition of _Hamlet_.]
[Note 11: _Burford Bridge ... Keats ... Endymion ... Nelson ... Emma ... the old Hawes Inn at the Queen's Ferry_. Burford Bridge is close to Dorking in Surrey, England: in the old inn, Keats wrote a part of his poem _Endymion_ (published 1818). The room where he composed is still on exhibition. Two letters by Keats, which are exceedingly important to the student of his art as a poet, were written from Burford Bridge in November 1817. See Colvin's edition of Keats's Letters, pp. 40-46.... ”Emma” is Lady Hamilton, whom Admiral Nelson loved.... Queen's Ferry (properly _Queensferry_) is on the Firth of Forth, Scotland. See a few lines below in the text, where Stevenson gives the reference to the opening pages of Scott's novel the _Antiquary_, which begins in the old inn at this place. See also page 105 of the text, and Stevenson's foot note, where he declares that he did make use of Queensferry in his novel _Kidnapped_ (1886)(Chapter XXVI).]
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