CHAPTER II

THE CONFLUENCE

Our present study is concerned with the union of two ancient streams of literature as they come together on the fertile plain of the nineteenth century. This marriage of a satiric Medway and a fictional Thames is a happy English event, though by no means the first alliance between these historic families. In their long careers they are found sometimes entirely separate, but very often united. The latter course works for a decided mutual advantage, with a preponderance of gain accruing to satire, as fiction can live without satire far better than satire without fiction.

A narrative of entire gravity may be a gracious and splendid thing; indeed, pure tragedy is perhaps the highest form of art. But when satire is divorced from fiction it must dispense with fiction’s great contribution, the garment of warm imagination and colorful concreteness; and be content with the severe raiment of bald didacticism and chill abstraction. In truth, satire has always been not only the greater beneficiary but the more dependent partner, though what it has in turn supplied is of unquestionable value. It is like an entertaining but unequipaged traveler, always asking for a ride. Even when it apparently had an establishment of its own and was recognized as a literary _genre_, it was not independent with the independence of the lyric, the drama, or the treatise, but was constantly borrowing furniture from them all.

Hence when satire invaded Victorian fiction,--or was adopted by it,--the conjunction brought its benefits to both. The former profited qualitatively from the antidote furnished by creative construction to destructive censure, and quantitatively by the improvement resulting from diminution,--that subordination which is the secret of success with all seasoning, trimming, and such accessories. The latter gained, not so much by the mere infusion of pleasantry, for that refreshing element has a deplorable tendency to degenerate into ill bred pertness, as by the toning up of the criticism inseparable from the realistic novel, and by the pungent and dramatic turn given to its didacticism. “Som mirthe or som doctryne” has ever been the demand of the Englishman, and he has relished them best in that happy unison supplied by satire.

Hence also the combination was but a new and more consequential celebration of an old, traditional connection. From the Greek Menippean mixture and the Milesian tale the line extends, with innumerable ramifications into fabliaux, burlesques, allegories, letters, and characters, in prose and verse, to the perfected eighteenth-century product, whence the increasingly perfected product of the nineteenth century immediately is derived.

Like all such associations, this one is neither accidental on the one hand nor consciously intentional on the other, but is the result of many forces and influences set in operation by circumstances, and available for great effectiveness if rightly comprehended and wisely used. In this Victorian situation we are confronted with the dual factors: a literary form raised to tremendous prestige by a rich inheritance and an especial _rapprochement_ with its own times; and a prevailing temper of humorous criticism which could not fail to thrive under the double stimulus of a fermenting environment about which there were endless things to be said, and a general liberation from external control which allowed these seething utterances free and full play of expression.

Thus have all things worked together for the good of the Victorian novel. It was fortunate alike in its endowment, its alliances, and its surroundings. A period of such upheaval, such introspection, such anxious responsibility, and withal such zest of life, all diffused through a democratic atmosphere, could best be interpreted by a form of literature which, besides being in itself thoroughly democratic, gives large scope for the author’s comments and conclusions.

The drama is an excellent reflector, but necessarily impersonal; a dilemma that is dodged rather than solved by the Shavian device of Prefaces. The lyric, on the contrary, is too personal to be representative. And concentrated exposition is admittedly strong meat for the intellectual babes who constitute the vast majority, or even, as a steady diet, for children of a larger growth. This does not mean, of course, that the novel is a childish product or plaything; but that its union of the dramatic and didactic, the emotional and rational, the picturesque and significant, the merry and sad, together with its absolutely unrestricted range in material, makes it ideal as a popular type in the best sense of the word.

A critic of the time half ironically remarks,--[71]

“The future historians of literature * * * will no doubt analyze the spirit of the age and explain how the novelists, more or less unconsciously, reflected the dominant ideas which were agitating the social organism. * * * The novelists were occupied in constructing a most elaborate panorama of the manners and customs of their own times with a minuteness and psychological analysis not known to their predecessors. Their work is, of course, an implicit criticism of life.”

With all the encouragement bestowed upon them the Victorian novelists could indeed do no less than live up to their opportunities. Not _ad astra per aspera_ lay their destiny. Nothing more was asked of them than to refrain from burying their talents, and to this admonition they were zealously obedient.

The writers themselves supply striking inductive data as to the general diffusion both of fiction and satire. A list of the dozen most prominent Victorian novelists shows that no one of them was wholly devoid of interest in public affairs, and none was entirely lacking in the satiric touch. On the other hand, every one of them saw more on his horizon than current events, and all were something more than mere critics or humorists or even both.

They were themselves of the Victorian Age. Each one might say _Pars fui_, if not _magna_. None therefore had a detached point of view, nor a long perspective. But though their vision was microscopic rather than telescopic, it was searching and enthusiastic, and the report it made was honest if not always dispassionate. It could hardly be otherwise for those who were alive and awake at a time when new information was creating new ideas, and these in turn were becoming dynamic in new movements, political, religious, educational, social. All these things were too tremendous and important to be taken otherwise than seriously. The dominant feeling was grave and earnest, as one of its interpreters has said:[72]

“In the Victorian era, which we have found so neglectful of literary standards, Literature has been of greater social and ethical stimulus than ever before. * * * It throbs with a new sympathy for those who toil unceasingly in poverty, and a new bewilderment upon the realization that the world which is changing so rapidly is still so full of misery and hopelessness. * * * But, as the world went, the main impulse and the main characteristic of Victorian Literature became this great sense of pity for things as they are and of an imperious duty to make them better.”

But the sense of pity was sometimes voiced with wit, and one of the sharpest weapons at the service of duty was the shaft of ridicule. With nothing to satirize, society would be a paradise. With no satirists, it would be rather a dull inferno. But it is our human world that is purgatorial.

Since the purpose of our present study is to discover the proportion and nature of the satiric element in Victorian fiction, to note its relation to the rest of the work, and to reach some conclusion as to the total effect of its presence and use, it might aid in clearness to subjoin a table of names and dates of the novelists with whom we are concerned.

_Name_ _Birth_ _Period of Publication_[73] _Death_

Peacock 1785 1816–1861 1866 Lytton 1803 1827–1873 1873 Disraeli 1804 1826–1880 1881 Gaskell 1810 1848–1865 1865 Thackeray 1811 1844–1862 1863 Dickens 1812 1837–1870 1870 Reade 1814 1853–1884 1884 Trollope 1815 1855–1880 1882 Brontë 1816 1847–1853 1855 Kingsley 1819 1848–1871 1875 Eliot 1819 1859–1876 1880 Meredith 1828 1859–1895 1909 Butler 1835 1872–1901 1902

This list, reaching from Scott to Hardy, not inclusive, has been reckoned as a round dozen, but it actually numbers a baker’s dozen.[74] The noteworthy thing about it is that it would probably be agreed upon as the preëminent list on any count; so that those who are excluded on the score of being too consistently serious or romantic, as Yonge, Collins, Blackmore, Henry Kingsley, MacDonald, would hardly be included on the score of quality, although some of them might rival some of the least among those chosen as members of the satirico-realistic group.

A glance at the preceding table reveals an obvious chronological division into five parts; although the first and the two last consist of one man each. The second contains only two names; and their separation from the main group occurs at the beginning rather than at the end, for Lytton’s race ran beyond five of those who started later, and Disraeli’s beyond seven. Of those, only Reade published novels after 1880.

This main group is one of those remarkable concentrations in which destiny seems to delight. When the second decade of the century gave to the world eight great names in this field alone, and some equally distinguished ones in others, it surely filled its quota toward the advance of civilization.

Meredith comes enough later than this outpouring of God’s plenty to be classed by himself chronologically, especially as he must be by the character of his work also, in spite of the fact that his first novel belongs to the same prolific year as the first of George Eliot’s.

The middle of the century is thus also the center of a circle of

## activity whose radius extends for about two decades on either side,

passing thence into thinner aired intermediate zones,--transition periods from the eighteenth and to the twentieth centuries, seasons whose energies are potential, or spent, rather than vigorously kinetic.

But this central period, something more than a generation, and less than a half century, is dynamic enough. It has frequently been described, and its activities--Chartism, the Oxford Movement, Utilitarianism, Positivism, the Industrial Revolution, Christian Socialism, Darwinism, Pre-Raphaeliteism--are an oft-told tale. It is only to be remembered that this was the atmosphere breathed by the majority of our novelists, and these the vital interests which would concern them in so far as they were concerned with the public affairs of their time.

A review of the satiric strain in literature gives an interesting clew both to the fact and the significance of the relation of satire to the total literary product.

Nor can one be estimated independently of the other. There is, of course, no such thing as a pure, or mere, satirist. Even a saturated solution involves two elements. The dissolved substance must have a medium to be dissolved in. Starting from this point, we may classify the most conspicuous names according to this relationship.

There are first the completely surcharged. But the important matter is whether the container is itself large,--Aristophanes, Juvenal, Swift, Voltaire,--or of smaller mold and less capacity,--Dunbar, Skelton, Smollett, Churchill, Gifford. To this class come no recruits from the nineteenth century. _Sæva indignatio_, no longer makes verses, even when witticized, having been put out of fashion by the autonomic humor which informs the sophisticated critic that of all incongruous things the most incongruous and absurd is the satirist who takes himself seriously.

Next come those whose absolute amount of satire may be equal to that of the preceding, but whose versatile interests make it relatively smaller. It is neither of their life a thing apart, nor yet their whole existence. Such are Horace, Cervantes, Jonson, Dryden, Boileau, Pope, Fielding, Burns, Byron. This class on a smaller scale is represented by Gascoigne, Wyatt, Hall, Donne, Lodge, Addison, Goldsmith, Hood, Moore, Mark Twain. Among these we find about half of our novelists,--Peacock and Butler, Dickens and Trollope, Thackeray and Meredith.

In the third division satire is measured still more by the law of diminishing returns. It is composed of those who are never thought of as satirists, not even as satirical, and yet are very far from being innocent. Such are the Hebrew Prophets and the author of _Job_, Euripides, Spenser, Shakespeare, Milton (in his prose), Johnson, Scott, Shelley, Browning. Similar but of lesser magnitude are Erasmus, More, Defoe, Young, Cowper, Blake, De Quincey. Here are found the other half of the novelists,--Lytton, Disraeli, Gaskell, Reade, Brontë, Kingsley. The impression given by these is not so much a solution at all as of separate and distinguishable particles: of elements native and yet not integral,--like fish in water. They might be taken away, and though the total effect would be very much changed, the real character of the liquid would not.

Quite the opposite of this is the condition of the fourth estate. Here the process of amalgamation is carried to an extreme, one might say, paradoxically, to the vanishing point. It resembles the first class in that the satire is pervasive, and the third in that it is of relatively small quantity; so small that it hardly seems worth taking into account, yet it could not be abstracted. If it could, it would leave a scarcely diminished but almost unrecognizable remainder. It is not revealed so much as betrayed. It seldom indulges in anything so bald as overt satire, or so conscious even as covert innuendo. It is the tone of a personality. It is not Aristotle nor Virgil nor Wyclif nor Wordsworth nor Tennyson. It is Homer, Plato, Lucretius, Dante, Langland, Burton, Gibbon, Sterne, Austen, Arnold, Carlyle, Hardy, Anatole France. Among the Victorian novelists it is George Eliot.

To this matter of quantity there is a fairly definite relation of quality. The fact that the largest quantity is now a discarded type indicates that relation to be one of inverse proportion. The second and third divisions evince hilarity, sarcasm, shoddy flippancy, or profound wit, according to the temperaments of the writers. Therein lies the greatest variety. The fourth occupies the great field of irony. It is the _siccum lumen_, occasionally flashing, usually lambent, smouldering, gravely glowing.

Amid these differences in kind and degree, the Victorian novelists had a sort of unity in possessing a certain sense of satire, more or less consciously realized, and of themselves as satirists. This is not only discernible in the general air they have of intending to do it, but is made visible by remarks in the nature of Confessions of a Satirist voiced by about half their number.

“Let those who cannot nicely and with certainty discern,” says Charlotte Brontë in _Shirley_, “the difference between the tones of hypocrisy and those of sincerity, never presume to laugh at all, lest they have the miserable misfortune to laugh in the wrong place, and commit impiety when they think they are achieving wit.”

Thackeray,[75] the “cynic”, is the one to reiterate most strongly the Pauline creed that love of mankind is the root of all good. He remarks that humor means more than laughter, and adds:

“The humorous writer professes to awaken your love, your pity, your kindness--your scorn for untruth, pretension, imposture--your tenderness for the weak, the oppressed, the unhappy. To the best of his means and ability he comments on all the ordinary actions and passions of life almost. He takes upon himself to be the week-day preacher, so to speak. Accordingly, as he finds, and speaks, and feels the truth best, we regard him, esteem him--sometimes love him.”

Trollope[76] agrees as to the lay-clerical office:

“I have always thought of myself as a preacher of sermons, and my pulpit as one which I could make both salutary and agreeable to my audience.”

Dickens[77] also claims the intent of speaking the truth in love:

“Cervantes laughed Spain’s chivalry away, by showing Spain its impossible and wild absurdity. It was my attempt, in my humble and far-distant sphere, to dim the false glitter surrounding something which really did exist, by showing it in its unattractive and repulsive truth.”

The greatest unanimity is as to objects. Peacock[78] and Trollope[79] in conventional imitation of the old school speak of castigating vice, but they also in other places join the universal chorus against folly, and folly as an impostor.

Disraeli[80] comes in on this:

“Teach us that pretension is a bore. * * * Catch the fleeting colors of that sly chameleon, Cant, and show what excessive trouble we are ever taking to make ourselves miserable and silly.”

Reade[81] adds a word:

“Self-deception will probably cease with the first blast of the archangel’s trumpet; but what human heart will part with it till then?”

Thackeray[82] emphasizes it in his description of that little world in which he had an almost unholy interest:

“Vanity Fair is a very vain, wicked, foolish place, full of all sorts of humbugs and falsenesses and pretensions. And while the moralist * * * professes to wear neither gown nor bands, but only the very same long-eared livery in which his congregation is arrayed; yet, look you, one is bound to speak the truth as far as one knows it, whether one mounts a cap and bells or a shovel hat; and a deal of disagreeable matter must come out in the course of such an undertaking.”

Later[83] he takes it out on Becky and her kind:

“Such people there are living and flourishing in the world--Faithless, Hopeless, Charityless; let us have at them, dear friends, with might and main. Some there are, and very successful, too, mere quacks and fools; and it was to combat and expose such as these, no doubt, that laughter was made.”

Dickens[84] puts it more abstractly:

“Lest there should be any well-intentioned persons who do not perceive the difference between religion and the cant of religion, piety and the pretense of piety, a humble reverence for the great truths of Scripture and an audacious and offensive obtrusion of its letter and not its spirit in the commonest dissensions and meanest affairs of life, to the extraordinary confusion of ignorant minds, let them understand that it is always the latter, and never the former, which is satirized here. Further, that the latter is here satirized as being, according to all experience, inconsistent with the former, impossible of union with it, and one of the most evil and mischievous falsehoods existent in society.”

The theme of _The Tragic Comedians_ is that “The laughter of the gods is the lightning of death’s irony over mortals. Can they have,” adds Meredith, “a finer subject than a giant gone fool?” But it is in the _Ode to the Comic Spirit_ rather than in stray observations in the novels or even in the _Essay on Comedy_ that the Meredithian satiric philosophy is most pithily set forth. For in the myth of Momus and the Olympians, the mirthful satirist and the self-satisfied divinities who paid a heavy price for their resentment of his incandescent frankness, we have a symbol of what satire might do if permitted, and if not permitted, what penalties may descend. The Comic Spirit is apostrophized as the “Sword of Common Sense,” whose service and sport it is

“This shifty heart of ours to hunt.”

Since man is a deceiver and a self-deceiver,

“Naming his appetites his needs, Behind a decorative cloak,”

it is obvious that the only cure for his ailment is the simple but drastic one of removing the cloak. So long indeed as there are masks, there will be fingers that itch to pluck them off. The time may come,--we can scarcely affirm that it now is,--when masks shall have vanished from the faces of a seraphic race. But in the nineteenth century they were very much in evidence; and quite as palpably in evidence were the spying eyes and the encroaching fingers of the nineteenth-century satirists.

## PART II

METHODS

##