Part 2

Too frequently the young writer is not content to set down what is to be said with the straightforward simplicity that would be used if this story had to be told _vivâ voce_. There is a desire to explain, to digress, to elaborate. It is thought necessary to tell the reader that this person is very clever and witty, that that one is stupid and odious, much in the same way that a child draws some strange creature, under which it writes, “this is a cow—this is a horse.” We smile at its being necessary to inform us of what we ought to see for ourselves. Yet it is the same in fiction—the _dramatis personæ_ of your tale should themselves discover to us their idiosyncrasies, and by their actions and conversation reveal to the reader their dispositions and characters. Young authors often write very good dialogue, there is a freshness, a crispness about it which more practised hands may seem to have lost. In this form the new ideas of the rising generation come pleasantly to us, which is seldom the case when they give way to digression, explanation, and the dissection of motives and propensities. The novel of character—the able study of an inner life—is almost always the outcome of deep thought added to the gift of acute observation. This is not to be expected of a young beginner. Indeed, for my own part, were I to learn that one of these clever analytical studies was the work of an author young in years, I should be filled with regret. If you possess the capacity, the fitness of age will come all too soon, and, believe me, when it does come, you will not regret that you have not forestalled the proper time.

[Sidenote: How to write]

Thus you will see that my theory is that the young should write _young_. We all know the pleasure we derive from the fresh, natural, unaffected conversation of an unspoilt girl. Well, then, I want you to write as you talk, and remember this does not mean that you are to have no ambition; on the contrary, aim at the topmost point, or you will never rise. Neither do I mean the slipshod scribbling of ungrammatical nonsense which would offend the eye as much as it would the ear; but, starting with the supposition that you have well thought out your plot, have conceived your characters, and some of the situations in which they are to be placed, my advice is that you endeavour to give a graphic relation of your story in words to a friend, so that you may hear how the arrangement of the incidents and events stand, and bear in mind while doing this that it is not done so much for your friend’s criticism as it is for your own. And while dealing with this part of the subject, let me say in parenthesis that I know of few exercises more useful to the would-be novel-writer than the telling of stories. Many writers of romance have been distinguished in the nursery and in the schoolroom as delightful story-tellers, and most of us can recall some dear long-lost magician who kept us spell-bound with romances for which we had petitioned. “Make it up as you go.” We need not tax your imagination to this extent, it will answer every purpose if you repeat a story that you have read, and you may gauge your success by the interest which your hearers show. But to return to our embryo novel; suppose that from circumstances connected with your surroundings or your temperament you are not able to carry out this suggestion, then I would say, write out your plot as a short story, and so have clearly before you what you mean to tell. This done, try to divide it into chapters, and arrange your incidents and your dialogue; always bearing in mind the different dispositions and natures with which you invested your characters at starting, and endeavouring, as much as you possibly can, to let all they say and do push the story on to its climax.

[Sidenote: The story completed]

About the length of a novel it is best that you should not trouble. When you feel that you have told all you have to tell, the book should come to an end. New pens should know nothing of padding, which is distasteful to every good writer and reader. Later in your career the demands of a magazine or a circulating library may compel you to give a greater amount of copy than your story has strength to bear, but at starting you are not bound by any of these trammels, and, as a rule, young brains are very fertile and brimming over with incidents and plots, therefore you can afford to be generous. And now we may suppose that your story completed lies before you in manuscript, clearly and carefully written with the pains we bestow on a thing we value and feel is our very own. If you are a true author your creation will have become very dear to you, and in launching it into the world you will suffer a hundred hopes and fears, and, perhaps, disappointments. Your friends may have judged your efforts with their hearts rather than their heads. Few beginners are good critics of their own work, and true talent and modesty generally go hand in hand. The clouds of distrust are certain to cast their shadows over you, but if you have the assurance that you have spared no pains, that you have given your best, do not fear that they will overwhelm you; there is a moral satisfaction in having done good work which no one can rob us of. A dozen other reasons than want of merit lead to a MS. being rejected. Have patience and courage, and some day, when perhaps it is least expected, the success I heartily wish for all earnest young authors will most surely come to you.

THE NOVEL OF MANNERS

L. B. WALFORD

[Sidenote: The fault of the age]

Hurry and scamper, the result of a feverish desire to reap the fruits of every undertaking before the seed is well-nigh sown, is one of the characteristics of the times in which we live. Few can endure to bestow upon their work a moment more of time, or a hair’s-breadth more of pains than will carry it through to the goal on which their ambition—often a very poor and low one—is set; while, as for the greater proportion of our present day aspirants to fame, if they ever pause to reflect upon the infinitude of loving care and anxiety lavished upon the products of bygone days, it is with a sensation of contempt and a pluming of themselves upon their superior smartness and activity.

[Sidenote: A mischievous mistake]

Now there is of course a great deal to be said in favour of energetic composition, and it cannot be denied that many of the best things ever done, or written, or painted, have been flashed off, as it were, red-hot from the brain. We cannot believe, for instance, that Mr. Rudyard Kipling is ever long over his burning sketches of human life, wherein every word tells; and we know that Lord Byron penned canto after canto of _Childe Harold_ with scarce a correction or a hesitation; but it is a mistake so mischievous for beginners in the fields of literature to fall into (and it is, moreover, one that so many do fall into), that of imagining that they too can dash down straightway their own crude thoughts—even when the thoughts themselves are good and original—and send them to the press, all unrevised and _un-thought-out_, that I am going to begin this brief paper addressed to young readers and would-be writers by the single word “Hold!” Pause. Consider what you want to do, and whether you have indeed strength and patience to do it.

[Sidenote: An author’s experience]

This is the sort of thing that often happens; that has happened in my experience scores of times. A boy, or girl—usually a girl—comes up with shy diffidence and much assumed modesty of demeanour to beg for just one word of encouragement—or discouragement—anent a roll of manuscript she holds in her timid hand. Is it _any_ good _at all_? She knows it is _very_ badly written; she is afraid she will only be laughed at; but still it would be so kind, so very kind, if I would just glance over it when I have a spare moment—oh, _any_ moment will do; she is only ashamed of taking up my valuable time with her foolish attempts. All the time I can see she is on the tenterhooks of impatience, and that while half-alarmed by her own boldness, there is an underlying sense of having rushed into the battle-field in which laurels are to be won, and wherein a special wreath awaits her own fair brow.

[Sidenote: The vanity of young writers]

Perhaps the manuscript is really full of promise. With some alterations and amendments, with an idea worked out here, and a digression omitted there, with, in short, a general revision and re-casting of the whole, it would be worth while offering to the public through the medium of an editor or publisher. But when I proceed to point out all that is to be done, and when, thinking to please and encourage, I suggest, “Now, after you have gone carefully through the whole, and written it out afresh, bring it back, and we will see what can be done to get it into print,” I am amazed to find my young _littérateur_ on the verge of tears! She doesn’t want to go all through “the horrid thing” again. She is “sick of the sight of it.” She is sure I don’t think she will ever write, or I “would never have said what I did!” It is impossible to describe the disgust with which she eyes the poor MS. her hands have reluctantly received from mine. I can scarcely believe those orbs which regarded me so beseechingly a few hours before, can be the same which now brim with sullen moisture. Possibly I am informed at this juncture that my young friend would never have thought of writing, and would never have supposed she could write, but for seeing what “rubbish” is accepted and put into print at the present time. She felt she could do at least as well as _that_, or _that_; and she is evidently surprised that I do not at once declare she could do a great deal better. Now, the awkward part of the business is, perchance, that I _have_ seen—have fully recognised the fact that, could the ideal be raised, the effort would rise in proportion; but perceiving no desire on the part of my young writer to do better and worthier things than those she herself condemns, only to rival them and to attain their infinitesimal measure of success, I hardly know how to proceed. The case is hopeless. A hundred to one I never hear of any further literary aspirations from that quarter.

My young readers must of course understand that the above refers solely to a certain class of would-be writers, namely, to those who write in order _to have written_, in order to gratify secret vanity, and make contemporaries stare; neither from love of the thing for itself, nor because of the pressure of poverty—the two main causes of earnest literary effort.

[Sidenote: The secret of success]

Let me now, however, suppose that I have to deal with a young author in embryo of another sort, one who has real talent, combined with patience, perseverance, and modesty. George Eliot’s saying, that distinction in authorship is not to be won without “a patient renunciation of small desires”—(I quote from memory, but fancy those are the exact words)—has an acute meaning for those who have struggled in the contest. It is not enough to be possessed of the true yearning to give vent to the pent-up stores of imagination and observation within the breast; there must be a resolute turning aside from every hindrance, and a steadfast purpose to grudge neither time nor thought, nor strength nor opportunity, in _perfecting_ the work which desire or necessity begot. This holds good of every species of authorship, but the warning is especially needed in the realms of fiction, because fiction (of a sort) is so easy to write; and it is most of all needed with the novel of “manners”—the novel which aims to depict our present generation, with all its habits, customs, whims, and foibles—because the novel of “manners” is the one apparently most within the reach of every ordinary writer.

And yet, if you will believe me, dear young girl, who might write and write well, if you would only take the pains, and not set your standard so terribly low, and not be thirsting to see your name in print, and hear what your companions have to say about it—if you will believe me, scamped work is absolutely fatal to the novel of “manners.”

Listen, and I will tell you why. When a messenger who has witnessed with his own eyes some terrible scene, dashes into the midst of an awe-struck circle, and pours forth the tale of woe with sobbing breath and bursting bombshells of words, who cares what those words are? Their meaning is enough. But at another time, when in cheerful, social intercourse, the same voice is raised to tell a quiet tale, or recount a simple reminiscence, the tone, the look by which the narration is accompanied, the phrases in which it is presented to the listening audience, are _everything_ to its success. Thus, although a great scene in romance may be enormously heightened and accentuated by well-chosen language (as all famous romancists know), a novel which relies mainly for its interest on a well-constructed plot, or on a thrilling life of adventure, or on passionate inward contests (we have all of these and many more varieties at the present day), will be better able to dispense with the careful finish and polished style than the novel of “manners,” to which they are absolutely indispensable.

[Sidenote: The perfection of art]

The novel of “manners” reaches its highest perfection in the products of Thackeray and Jane Austen. I may be laughed at for naming these two together, but I know who would not have laughed—Lord Macaulay would not have laughed, neither would Sir Walter Scott, nor some more of the greatest of our literary critics. What I mean is that neither Thackeray nor Miss Austen have plots—in the accepted sense of the word—at all. They alike take a page of human life and place it beneath the microscope. We perceive all the creatures, large and small, wriggling about. We have no breathless interest to learn whither they will ultimately wriggle: we are simply content to study their movements and requirements—yet it is a study of the most absorbing kind.

And although of course it was the marvellous knowledge of human nature displayed by these two writers which placed them on the summit of their sphere, the beauty of _Esmond_, and the charm of _Mansfield Park_, are so heightened by the exquisitely picked phraseology in which even the most trifling episodes are conveyed, that after long lapses of time memory will often supply the very words, finding them incapable of alteration or of improvement. I doubt if any reader could supply half a dozen sentences on end from, we will say, Wilkie Collins, or Charles Reade, or R. D. Blackmore. Their admirable novels, full of spirit-stirring scenes, are not novels of “manners”; a precise and formal arrangement of words would be almost out of place in them, and would try the reader’s patience still more perhaps than the writer’s.

[Sidenote: Distinguished Novelists]

In penning the above do not let me be mistaken. Thackeray was not by any means a master of style—his style was often faulty; he often repeated himself; he seldom rounded off his sentences as Miss Austen did. But he was careful with a most minute and elaborate care to present every movement of his characters beneath the microscope so as to fasten upon them the attention of the “great, stupid public,” who, he averred, needed “catching by the ears to make it look!”

Of the present day no writer has more happily combined the delineation of “manners” with the narration of beautiful and pathetic stories than Mr. Thomas Hardy. One reads _Far from the Madding Crowd_ first with hurried eagerness to learn its incidents and close, and again with delighted lingering over its homely by-waters, when rustics sit and chat. Mr. Barrie essays to follow in the same line, but in Mr. Barrie the gift of depicting rural “manners” far surpasses the gift of manipulating incident. Even _The Little Minister_ is nothing but a string of characteristic scenes illustrative of the “manners” of the Scottish parish.

Americans succeed wonderfully with novels of “manners,” as witness Mr. Henry James and Mr. W. D. Howells. These distinguished novelists may almost be said to dispense altogether with incident, and to rest their claim on our sympathies entirely on the interest all thinking men and women take in the emotions, agitations, ambitions, and distractions of each other’s daily life.

[Sidenote: One drawback to contend with]

And at this point let me note one drawback which every delineator of “manners,” pure and simple, has to contend with. He, or she, is absolutely sure to be accused of drawing scenes and characters from personal experience. The fidelity with which such a writer seeks to depict life as it presents itself in its homely, every-day aspect, raises the inevitable outcry, which, when once set a-going, can never be silenced; until such of us as labour in this special field are literally tripped up at every turn; and people we have never seen, and whose very names are unknown to us, are asserted with the most positive authority to be our prototypes for heroes and heroines!

To such an extent has this craze for fitting on caps been carried, that before the publication of some of my own novels in “Maga” I have been reasoned with by Mr. Blackwood, the courteous and thoughtful editor, on the question of satirising certain people whom he did not for a moment doubt were the originals of my leading characters. To his almost incredulous amazement I was unaware of the very existence of those so-called “originals”!

An idea may be caught or a long train of thought may be fired by the idiosyncrasy of some one present in person before the writer; but to say that the whole character when completely developed is drawn from life because of the hint, as it were, which began it, is like saying that an animal is copied from life because a single bone has been placed in the hands of the artist, from which he has been enabled—as anatomists know can be done—to piece together the entire creature, and in his mind’s eye behold it.

[Sidenote: Fame slow but lasting]

The novel of “manners” rarely meets with sudden appreciation. Miss Burney’s _Evelina_, to be sure, was an exception; but then _Evelina_ was so broadly humorous, so farcical, and, moreover, came out at a time when so few competitors were in the field, that it can hardly be reckoned with. Miss Ferrier, that delightful Scotchwoman, whose novels are all “manners” together, had only, and still has only, a limited if an enthusiastic _clientèle_; whereas Miss Austen was ridiculously overlooked until she was dead. Her quiet, keen, unerring insight into the hearts of men and women had to work itself by slow degrees into the abiding recognition wherewith it is at last crowned.

But if slowly won, such laurels never fade. Human nature being the same in every age, the student of human nature can never be really out of date; his or her production must always appeal to something within the thoughtful reader’s breast, and awaken a response. The habits and customs of every generation may vary, but these are only like to the faces of the different timepieces made in different periods; the mainsprings are the same, the object of the timepiece is the same; wherefore, recognising our own passions, pursuits, and aims beneath the different exterior of our forefathers, we can never regard them with indifference.

Thus, the novel of “manners,” which caught the essence of its own times, must as a natural sequence amuse and instruct ours. Other kinds of fiction may catch people’s fancy more quickly at the outset; other and more brilliant varieties may outshine the sober tints and slender texture of its woof; but the tapestry pictures in the novel of “manners,” with every stitch complete, and every thread in its right place, will be found giving delight to new generations of readers, when many of the showy and striking works of fiction which now meet the eye at every turn are mouldering on the shelf, their very names forgotten.

COLOUR IN COMPOSITION

S. BARING-GOULD

[Sidenote: Novels and novels]

There are novels and novels. A society novel has its special type: there are the conventionalities of social life, the routine, the courtesies, the absence of startling events, a general smoothness. It requires no local colour. Society is the same throughout England. One town-house is much like another, one country-house may differ from another, in that one is Elizabethan and another Georgian, but social life is the same, eminently nineteenth century in all, and in all alike. It really matters nothing where the scene is laid, whether in Cumberland or in Cornwall, in Yorkshire or in Kent. The _dramatis personæ_ talk the same conventionalities, dress alike, behave in a similar manner everywhere. Social life rubs down eccentricities, almost abolishes individuality. In an American social novel there is a certain American flavour, and in an English social novel a certain English flavour, that is all. A social novel does not need local colour, and local colour least of all enters into the composition of the characters.

[Sidenote: The social novel]

There are certain conventionalities in the social novel: the purse-proud new man, who drops his H’s: the haughty lady of rank, and so on; just as there is the conventional lawyer on the stage, who is a rogue. If we want to be bold and original, we vary or change our pieces, and make the _nouveau riche_ all that is desirable, and the lady of rank all that is humble; but the range of alteration in this respect is not great, and the range of varieties in character is not great, and of local colours influencing the characters there can be none at all.

[Sidenote: The novel of country life]