Part 179 (1/2)
”But you have not done?” said Augustine Caxton.
PISISTRATUS.--”What remains to do?”
MR. CAXTON.--”What! why, the Final Chapter!--the last news you can give us of those whom you have introduced to our liking or dislike.”
PISISTRATUS.--”Surely it is more dramatic to close the work with a scene that completes the main design of the plot, and leave it to the prophetic imagination of all whose flattering curiosity is still not wholly satisfied, to trace the streams of each several existence, when they branch off again from the lake in which their waters converge, and by which the sibyl has confirmed and made clear the decree that 'Conduct is Fate.'”
MR. CAXTON.--”More dramatic, I grant; but you have not written a drama.
A novelist should be a comfortable, garrulous, communicative, gossiping fortune-teller; not a grim, laconical, oracular sibyl. I like a novel that adopts all the old-fas.h.i.+oned customs prescribed to its art by the rules of the Masters,--more especially a novel which you style 'My Novel' par emphasis.”
CAPTAIN ROLAND.--”A most vague and impracticable t.i.tle 'My Novel'! It must really be changed before the work goes in due form to the public.”
MR. SQUILLS.--”Certainly the present t.i.tle cannot be even p.r.o.nounced by many without inflicting a shock upon their nervous system. Do you think, for instance, that my friend, Lady Priscilla Graves--who is a great novel-reader indeed, but holds all female writers unfeminine deserters to the standard of Man--could ever come out with, 'Pray, sir, have you had time to look at--MY Novel?'--She would rather die first. And yet to be silent altogether on the latest acquisition to the circulating libraries would bring on a functional derangement of her ladys.h.i.+p's organs of speech. Or how could pretty Miss Dulcet--all sentiment, it is true, but all bashful timidity--appall Captain Smirke from proposing with, 'Did not you think the parson's sermon a little too dry in--MY Novel'? It will require a face of bra.s.s, or at least a long course of citrate of iron, before a respectable lady or una.s.suming young gentleman, with a proper dread of being taken for scribblers, could electrify a social circle with 'The reviewers don't do justice to the excellent things in--My Novel.'”
CAPTAIN ROLAND.--”Awful consequences, indeed, may arise from the mistakes such a t.i.tle gives rise to. Counsellor Digwell, for instance, a lawyer of literary tastes, but whose career at the Bar was long delayed by an unjust suspicion amongst the attorneys that he had written a 'Philosophical Essay'--imagine such a man excusing himself for being late at a dinner of bigwigs, with 'I could not get away from--My Novel!'
It would be his professional ruin! I am not fond of lawyers in general, but still I would not be a party to taking the bread out of the mouth of those with a family; and Digwell has children,--the tenth an innocent baby in arms.”
MR. CAXTON.--”As to Digwell in particular, and lawyers in general, they are too accustomed to circ.u.mlocution to expose themselves to the danger your kind heart apprehends; but I allow that a shy scholar like myself, or a grave college tutor, might be a little put to the blush, if he were to blurt forth inadvertently with, 'Don't waste your time over trash like--MY Novel.' And that thought presents to us another and more pleasing view of this critical question. The t.i.tle you condemn places the work under universal protection. Lives there a man or a woman so dead to self-love as to say, 'What contemptible stuff is--MY Novel'?
Would he or she not rather be impelled by that strong impulse of an honourable and virtuous heart, which moves us to stand as well as we can with our friends, to say, 'Allow that there is really a good thing now and then in--My Novel.' Moreover, as a novel aspires to embrace most of the interests or the pa.s.sions that agitate mankind,--to generalize, as it were, the details of life that come home to us all,--so, in reality, the t.i.tle denotes that if it be such as the author may not unworthily call his Novel, it must also be such as the reader, whoever he be, may appropriate in part to himself, representing his own ideas, expressing his own experience, reflecting, if not in full, at least in profile, his own personal ident.i.ty. Thus, when we glance at the looking-gla.s.s in another man's room, our likeness for the moment appropriates the mirror; and according to the humour in which we are, or the state of our spirits and health, we say to ourselves, 'Bilious and yellow!--I might as well take care of my diet!' Or, 'Well, I 've half a mind to propose to dear Jane; I'm not such an ill-looking dog as I thought for!' Still, whatever result from that glance at the mirror, we never doubt that 't is our likeness we see; and each says to the phantom reflection, 'Thou art myself,' though the mere article of furniture that gives the reflection belongs to another. It is my likeness if it be his gla.s.s. And a narrative that is true to the Varieties of Life is every Man's Novel, no matter from what sh.o.r.es, by what rivers, by what bays, in what pits, were extracted the sands and the silex, the pearlash, the nitre, and quicksilver which form its materials; no matter who the craftsman who fas.h.i.+oned its form; no matter who the vendor that sold, or the customer who bought: still, if I but recognize some trait of myself, 't is my likeness that makes it 'My Novel.'”
MR. SQUILLS (puzzled, and therefore admiring).--”Subtle, sir,--very subtle. Fine organ of Comparison in Mr. Caxton's head, and much called into play this evening!”
MR. CAXTON (benignly).--”Finally, the author by this most admirable and much signifying t.i.tle dispenses with all necessity of preface. He need insinuate no merits, he need extenuate no faults; for, by calling his work thus curtly 'MY Novel,' he doth delicately imply that it is no use wasting talk about faults or merits.”
PISISTRATUS (amazed).--”How is that, sir?”
MR. CAXTON.--”What so clear? You imply that, though a better novel may be written by others, you do not expect to write a novel to which, taken as a novel, you would more decisively and unblus.h.i.+ngly prefix that voucher of personal authors.h.i.+p and ident.i.ty conveyed in the monosyllable 'My.' And if you have written your best, let it be ever so bad, what can any man of candour and integrity require more from you? Perhaps you will say that, if you had lived two thousand years ago, you might have called it 'The Novel,' or the 'Golden Novel,' as Lucius called his story 'The a.s.s;' and Apuleius, to distinguish his own more elaborate a.s.s from all a.s.ses preceding it, called his tale 'The Golden a.s.s.' But living in the present day, such a designation--implying a merit in general, not the partial and limited merit corresponding only with your individual abilities--would be presumptuous and offensive. True, I here antic.i.p.ate the observation I see Squills is about to make--”
SQUILLS.--”I, Sir?”
MR. CAXTON.--”You would say that, as Scarron called his work of fiction 'The Comic Novel,' so Pisistratus might have called his 'The Serious Novel,' or 'The Tragic Novel.' But, Squills, that t.i.tle would not have been inviting nor appropriate, and would have been exposed to comparison with Scarron, who being dead is inimitable. Wherefore--to put the question on the irrefragable basis of mathematics--wherefore as A B 'My Novel' is not equal to B C 'The Golden Novel,' nor to D E 'The Serious or Tragic Novel,' it follows that A B 'My Novel' is equal to P C 'Pisistratus Caxton,' and P C 'Pisistratus Caxton' must therefore be just equal, neither more nor less, to A B 'My Novel,'--which was to be demonstrated.” My father looked round triumphantly, and observing that Squills was dumfounded, and the rest of his audience posed, he added mildly,
”And so now, 'non quieta movere,' proceed with the Final Chapter, and tell us first what became of that youthful Giles Overreach, who was himself his own Marrall?”
”Ay,” said the captain, ”what became of Randal Leslie? Did he repent and reform?”
”Nay,” quoth my father, with a mournful shake of the head, ”you can regulate the warm tide of wild pa.s.sion, you can light into virtue the dark errors of ignorance; but where the force of the brain does but clog the free action of the heart, where you have to deal, not with ignorance misled, but intelligence corrupted, small hope of reform; for reform here will need re-organization. I have somewhere read (perhaps in Hebrew tradition) that of the two orders of fallen spirits,--the Angels of Love and the Angels of Knowledge,--the first missed the stars they had lost, and wandered back through the darkness, one by one, into heaven; but the last, lighted on by their own lurid splendours, said, 'Wherever we go, there is heaven!' And deeper and lower descending, lost their shape and their nature, till, deformed and obscene, the bottomless pit closed around them.”
MR. SQUILLS.--”I should not have thought, Mr. Caxton, that a book-man like you would be thus severe upon Knowledge.”
MR. CAXTON (in wrath).--”Severe upon knowledge! Oh, Squills, Squills, Squills! Knowledge perverted is knowledge no longer. Vinegar, which, exposed to the sun, breeds small serpents, or at best slimy eels, not comestible, once was wine. If I say to my grandchildren, 'Don't drink that sour stuff, which the sun itself fills with reptiles,' does that prove me a foe to sound sherry? Squills, if you had but received a scholastic education, you would know the wise maxim that saith, 'All things the worst are corruptions from things originally designed as the best.' Has not freedom bred anarchy, and religion fanaticism? And if I blame Marat calling for blood, or Dominic racking a heretic, am I severe on the religion that canonized Francis de Sales, or the freedom that immortalized Thrasybulus?”
Mr. Squills, dreading a catalogue of all the saints in the calendar, and an epitome of Ancient History, exclaimed eagerly, ”Enough, sir; I am convinced!”
MR. CAXTON.--”Moreover, I have thought it a natural stroke of art in Pisistratus to keep Randal Leslie, in his progress towards the rot of the intellect unwholesomely refined, free from all the salutary influences that deter ambition from settling into egotism. Neither in his slovenly home, nor from his cla.s.sic tutor at his preparatory school, does he seem to have learned any truths, religious or moral, that might give sap to fresh shoots, when the first rank growth was cut down by the knife; and I especially noted, as ill.u.s.trative of Egerton, no less than of Randal, that though the statesman's occasional hints of advice to his protege are worldly wise in their way, and suggestive of honour as befitting the creed of a gentleman, they are not such as much influence a shrewd reasoner like Randal, whom the example of the playground at Eton had not served to correct of the arid self-seeking, which looked to knowledge for no object but power. A man tempted by pa.s.sions like Audley, or seduced into fraud by a cold, subtle spirit like Leslie, will find poor defence in the elegant precept, 'Remember to act as a gentleman.' Such moral embroidery adds a beautiful scarf to one's armour; but it is not the armour itself! Ten o'clock, as I live! Push on, Pisistratus! and finish the chapter.”
MRS. CAXTON (benevolently).--”Don't hurry. Begin with that odious Randal Leslie, to oblige your father; but there are others whom Blanche and I care much more to hear about.”
Pisistratus, since there is no help for it, produces a supplementary ma.n.u.script, which proves that, whatever his doubt as to the artistic effect of a Final Chapter, he had foreseen that his audience would not be contented without one.
Randal Leslie, late at noon the day after he quitted Lansmere Park, arrived on foot at his father's house. He had walked all the way, and through the solitudes of the winter night; but he was not sensible of fatigue till the dismal home closed round him, with its air of hopeless ign.o.ble poverty; and then he sunk upon the floor feeling himself a ruin amidst the ruins. He made no disclosure of what had pa.s.sed to his relations. Miserable man, there was not one to whom he could confide, or from whom he might hear the truths that connect repentance with consolation! After some weeks pa.s.sed in sullen and almost unbroken silence, be left as abruptly as he had appeared, and returned to London.