Part 13 (1/2)

A bold writer would he be who in the present day should make Shakespeare figure among the Kenilworth festivities as a famous player (after the manner of Scott), or who should (after the manner of Kingsley) give Elizabeth credit for Winter's device of using the fire-s.h.i.+ps before Calais. Even the poet-he who, dealing as he does with essential and elemental qualities only, is not so hampered as the proseman in these matters-is beginning also to feel the tyranny of doc.u.ments, as we see notably in Swinburne's 'Bothwell,' which consists very largely of doc.u.ments transfigured into splendid verse. But more than even this: the mere literary form has now to be as true to the time depicted as circ.u.mstances will allow. If Scott's romances have a fault it is that, as he had no command over, and perhaps but little sympathy with, the beautiful old English of which Morris is such a master, his stories lack one important element of dramatic illusion. But it is in the literary form of his story that Morris is especially successful. Where time has dealt most cruelly with our beloved language is in robbing it of that beautiful cadence which fell from our forefathers' lips as sweetly and as unconsciously as melody falls from the throat of the mavis. One of the many advantages that Morris has reaped from his peculiar line of study is that he can write like this-he, and he alone among living men:-

”'Surely thou goest to thy death.' He smiled very sweetly, yet proudly, as he said: 'Yea, the road is long, but the end cometh at last. Friend, many a day have I been dying; for my sister, with whom I have played and been merry in the autumntide about the edges of the stubble-fields; and we gathered the nuts and bramble-berries there, and started thence the missel-thrush, and wondered at his voice and thought him big; and the sparrow-hawk wheeled and turned over the hedges, and the weasel ran across the path, and the sound of the sheep-bells came to us from the downs as we sat happy on the gra.s.s; and she is dead and gone from the earth, for she pined from famine after the years of the great sickness; and my brother was slain in the French wars, and none thanked him for dying save he that stripped him of his gear; and my unwedded wife with whom I dwelt in love after I had taken the tonsure, and all men said she was good and fair, and true she was and lovely; she also is dead and gone from the earth; and why should I abide save for the deeds of the flesh which must be done? Truly, friend, this is but an old tale that men must die; and I will tell thee another, to wit, that they live: and I live now and shall live. Tell me then what shall befall.”

Note the music of the cadence here-a music that plays about the heart more sweetly than any verse, save the very highest. And here we touch upon an extremely interesting subject.

Always in reading a prose story by a writer whose energies have been exercised in other departments of letters there is for the critic a special interest. If this exercise has been in fields outside imaginative literature-in those fields of philosophical speculation where a logical method and a scientific modulation of sentences are required-the novelist, instead of presenting us with those concrete pictures of human life demanded in all imaginative art, is apt to give us disquisitions ”about and about” human life. Forgetting that it is not the function of any art to prove, he is apt to concern himself deeply in showing why his actors did and said this or that-apt to busy himself about proving his story either by subtle a.n.a.lyses or else by purely scientific generalizations, instead of attending to the true method of convincement that belongs to his art-the convincement that is effected by actual pictorial and dramatic ill.u.s.tration of how his actors really did the things and said the things vouched for by his own imagination. That the quest of a scientific, or supposed scientific, basis for a novelist's imaginative structure is fatal to true art is seen not only in George Eliot and the accomplished author of 'Elsie Venner,' but also in writers of another kind-writers whose hands cannot possibly have been stiffened by their knowledge of science.

Among the many instances that occur to us we need point to only one, that of a story recently published by one of our most successful living novelists, in which the writer endeavours to prove that animal magnetism is the acting cause of spiritualistic manifestations so called. Setting out to show that a medium is nothing more than a powerful mesmerist, to whose manipulations all but two in a certain household are unconsciously succ.u.mbing, he soon ignores for plot purposes the nature of the dramatic situation by making those very two sceptics at a seance hear the same music, see the same spiritually conveyed newspaper, as the others hear and see. That the writer should mistake, as he seems to do, the merely directive force of magnetism for a motive force does not concern the literary critic. But when two sceptics, who are to expose a charlatan's tricks by watching how the believers are succ.u.mbing to mesmeric hallucinations, are found succ.u.mbing to the same hallucinations themselves-succ.u.mbing because the story-teller needs them as witnesses of the phenomena-then the literary critic grows pensive, for he sees what havoc the scientific method will work in the flower-garden of art.

On the other hand, should the story-teller be a poet-one who, like the writer of 'John Ball,' has been accustomed to write under the conditions of a form of literary art where the diction is always and necessarily concrete, figurative, and quintessential, and where the movement is metrical-his danger lies in a very different direction. The critic's interest then lies in watching how the poet will comport himself in another field of imaginative literature-a field where no such conditions as these exist-a field where quintessential and concrete diction, though meritorious, may yet be carried too far, and where those regular and expected bars of the metricist which are the first requisites of verse are not only without function, but are in the way-are fatal, indeed, to that kind of convincement which, and which alone, is the proper quest of prose art. No doubt it is true, as we have before said, that literature being nothing but the reflex of the life of man, or else of the life of nature, the final quest of every form of literature is that special kind of convincement which is inherently suitable to the special form. For the a.n.a.logy between nature and true art is not a fanciful one, and the relation of function to organism is the same in both. But what is the difference between the convincement achieved by poetic and the convincement achieved by prose art? Is it that the convincement of him who works in poetic forms is, though not necessarily, yet most perfectly achieved by a faithful record of the emotion aroused in his own soul by the impact upon his senses of the external world, while the convincement of the proseman is, though not necessarily, yet most perfectly achieved by a faithful record and picture of the external world itself?

All such generalizations as this are, no doubt, to be taken with many and great qualifications; but, roughly speaking, would not this seem to be the fundamental difference between that kind of imaginative literature which expresses itself in metrical forms and that kind of imaginative literature in which metrical form is replaced by other qualities and other functions? Not but that these two methods may meet in the same work, not but that they may meet and strengthen each other, as we have before said when glancing at the interesting question, How much, or how little, of realism can poetry capture from the world of prose and weave into her magic woof, and how much of music can prose steal from poetry?

But in order to do all that can be done in the way of enriching poetry with prose material without missing the convincement of poetic art, the poet must be Homer himself; in order to do all that can be done in the way of vivifying prose fiction with poetic fire without missing the convincement of prose art, the story-teller must be Charlotte Bronte or Emily, her sister, in whose work we find for once the quintessential strength and the concrete and figurative diction of the poet-indeed, all the poetical requisites save metre alone. Had 'Jane Eyre,' 'Villette,'

and 'Wuthering Heights' existed in Coleridge's time he would, we may be sure, have taken these three prose poems as ill.u.s.trations of the truth of his axiom that the true ant.i.thesis of poetry is not prose, but science.

What the prose poet has to avoid is metrical movement on the one side and scientific modulation of sentences on the other. And perhaps in no case can it be achieved save in the autobiographic form of fiction, where and where alone the work is so subjective that it may bear even the poetic glow of 'Jane Eyre' and 'Villette.' What makes us think this to be so is the fact that in 's.h.i.+rley'-a story written in the epic method-the only pa.s.sages of the poetic kind which really convince are those uttered by the characters in their own persons. And as to 'Wuthering Heights,' a story which could not, of course, be told in one autobiography, the method of telling it by means of a group of autobiographies, though clumsy enough from the constructor's point, was yet just as effective as a more artistic method. And it was true instinct of genius that led Emily Bronte to adopt the autobiographic method even under these heavy conditions.

Still the general truth remains that the primary function of the poet is to tell his story steeped in his own emotion, while the primary function of the prose fictionist is to tell his story in an objective way. Hence it is that in a general way the difficulty of the poet who turns to prose fiction lies, like that of philosophical or scientific writers, in suppressing certain intellectual functions which he has been in the habit of exercising. And the case of Scott, which at first sight might seem to show against this theory, may be adduced in support of it. For Scott's versified diction, though concrete, is never more quintessential than that of prose; and his method being always objective rather than subjective, when he turned to prose fiction he seemed at once to be writing with his right hand where formerly he had been writing with his left.

VIII. FRANCIS HINDES GROOME.

(THE TARNO RYE.) 18511902.

I.

I have been invited to write about my late friend and colleague Francis Hindes Groome, who died on the 24th ult., and was buried among his forefathers at Monk Soham in Suffolk. I find the task extremely difficult. Though he died at fifty, he, with the single exception of Borrow, had lived more than any other friend of mine, and perhaps suffered more. Indeed, his was one of the most remarkable and romantic literary lives that, since Borrow's, have been lived in my time.

The son of an Archdeacon of Suffolk, he was born in 1851 at Monk Soham Rectory, where, I believe, his father and his grandfather were born, and where they certainly lived; for-as has been recorded in one of the invaluable registry books of my friend Mr. F. A. Crisp-he belonged to one of the oldest and most distinguished families in Suffolk. He was sent early to Ipswich School, where he was a very popular boy, but never strong and never fond of athletic exercises. His early taste for literature is shown by the fact that with his boy friend Henry Elliot Maiden he originated a school magazine called the _Elizabethan_. Like many an organ originated in the outer world, the _Elizabethan_ failed because it would not, or could not, bring itself into harmony with the public taste. The boys wanted news of cricket and other games: Groome and his a.s.sistant editor gave them literature as far as it was in their power to do so.

[Picture: Francis Hindes Groome]

The Ipswich School was a very good one for those who got into the sixth, as Groome did. The head master, Dr. Holden, was a very fine scholar; and it is no wonder that Groome throughout his life showed a considerable knowledge of and interest in cla.s.sical literature. That he had a real insight into the structure of Latin verse is seen by a rendering of Tennyson's 't.i.thonus,' which Mr. Maiden has been so very good as to show me-a rendering for which he got a prize. In 1869 he got prizes for cla.s.sical literature, Latin prose, Latin elegiacs, and Latin hexameters.

But if Dr. Holden exercised much influence over Groome's taste, the a.s.sistant master, Mr. Sanderson, certainly exercised more, for Mr.

Sanderson was an enthusiastic student of Romany. The influence of the a.s.sistant master was soon seen after Groome went up to Oxford. He was ploughed for his ”Smalls,” and, remaining up for part of the ”Long,” he went one night to a fair at Oxford at which many gipsies were present-an incident which forms an important part of his gipsy story 'Kriegspiel.'

Groome at once struck up an acquaintance with the gipsies at the fair.

It occurred also that Mr. Sanderson, after Groome had left Ipswich School, used to go and stay at Monk Soham Rectory every summer for fis.h.i.+ng; and this tended to focus Groome's interest in Romany matters.

At Gottingen, where he afterwards went, he found himself in a kind of Romany atmosphere, for, owing perhaps to Benfey's having been a Gottingen man, Romany matters were still somewhat rife there in certain sets.

The period from his leaving Gottingen to his appearance in Edinburgh in 1876 as a working literary man of amazing activity, intelligence, and knowledge is the period that he spent among the gipsies. And it is this very period of wild adventure and romance that it is impossible for me to dwell upon here. But on some future occasion I hope to write something about his adventures as a Romany Rye. His first work was on the 'Globe Encyclopaedia,' edited by Dr. John Ross. Even at that time he was very delicate and subject to long wearisome periods of illness. During his work on the 'Globe' he fell seriously ill in the middle of the letter _S_. Things were going very badly with him; but they would have gone much worse had it not been for the affection and generosity of his friend and colleague Prof. H. A. Webster, who, in order to get the work out in time, sat up night after night in Groome's room, writing articles on Sterne, Voltaire, and other subjects.

Webster's kindness, and afterwards the kindness of Dr. Patrick, endeared Edinburgh and Scotland to the ”Tarno Rye.” As Webster was at that time on the staff of 'The Encyclopaedia Britannica,' I think, but I do not know, that it was through him that Groome got the commission to write his article 'Gypsies' in that stupendous work. I do not know whether it is the most important, but I do know that it is one of the most thorough and conscientious articles in the entire encyclopaedia. This was followed by his being engaged by Messrs. Jack to edit the 'Ordnance Gazetteer of Scotland,' a splendid work, which on its completion was made the subject of a long and elaborate article in _The Athenaeum_-an article which was a great means of directing attention to him, as he always declared.

Anyhow, people now began to inquire about Groome. In 1880 he brought out 'In Gypsy Tents,' which I shall describe further on. In 1885 he was chosen to join the staff of Messrs. W. & R. Chambers. It is curious to think of the ”Tarno Rye,” perhaps the most variously equipped literary man in Europe, after such adventures as his, sitting from 10 to 4 every day on the sub-editorial stool. He was perfectly content on that stool, however, owing to the genial kindness of his colleague. As sub-editor under Dr. Patrick, and also as a very copious contributor, he took part in the preparation of the new edition of 'Chambers's Encyclopaedia.' He took a large part also in preparing 'Chambers's Gazetteer' and 'Chambers's Biographical Dictionary.' Meanwhile he was writing articles in the 'Dictionary of National Biography,' articles in _Blackwood's Magazine_ and _The Bookman_, and also reviews upon special subjects in _The Athenaeum_.

This was followed in 1887 by a short Border history, crammed with knowledge. In 1895 his name became really familiar to the general reader by his delightful little volume 'Two Suffolk Friends'-sketches of his father and his father's friend Edward FitzGerald-full of humour and admirable character-drawing.

In 1896 he published his Romany novel 'Kriegspiel,' which did not meet with anything like the success it deserved, although I must say he was himself in some degree answerable for its comparative failure. The origin of the story was this. Shortly after our intimacy I told him that I had written a gipsy story dealing with the East Anglian gipsies and the Welsh gipsies, but that it had been so dinned into me by Borrow that in England there was no interest in the gipsies that I had never found heart to publish it. Groome urged me to let him read it, and he did read it, as far as it was then complete, and took an extremely kind view of it, and urged me to bring it out. But now came another and a new cause for delay in my bringing out 'Aylwin': Groome himself, who at that time knew more about Romany matters than all other Romany students of my acquaintance put together, showed a remarkable gift as a _raconteur_, and I felt quite sure that he could, if he set to work, write a Romany story-_the_ Romany story of the English language. He strongly resisted the idea for a long time-for two or three years at least-and he was only persuaded to undertake the task at last by my telling him that I would never bring out my story until he brought out one himself. At last he yielded, told me of a plot, a capital one, and set to work upon it. When it was finished he sent the ma.n.u.script to me, and I read it through with the greatest interest, and also the greatest care. I found, as I expected to find, that the gipsy chapters were simply perfect, and that it was altogether an extremely clever romance; but I felt also that Groome had given no attention whatever to the structure of a story.

Incidents of the most striking and original kind were introduced at the wrong places, and this made them interesting no longer. So persuaded was I that the story only needed recasting to prove a real success that I devoted days, and even weeks, to going through the novel, and indicating where the transpositions should take place. Groome, however, had got so entirely sick of his novel before he had completed it that he refused absolutely to put another hour's work into it; for, as he said, ”the writing of it had already been a loss to the pantry.”