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Title: On the art of writing fiction

Contributor: W. E. Norris
        S. Baring-Gould
        Alfred John Church
        Sir Robert K. Douglas
        Lanoe Falconer
        Maxwell Gray
        Katharine S. Macquoid
        L. T. Meade
        Mrs. Molesworth
        Louisa Parr
        Lucy Bethia Walford

Release date: February 9, 2024 [eBook #72910]

Language: English

Original publication: London: Wells Gardner, Darton & co

Credits: Bob Taylor, Aaron Adrignola and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net (This book was produced from images made available by the HathiTrust Digital Library.)


*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK ON THE ART OF WRITING FICTION ***





  Transcriber’s Note
  Italic text displayed as: _italic_




  ON THE ART OF
  WRITING FICTION




[Illustration:

  ON THE ART
  OF
  WRITING
  FICTION


  WELLS GARDNER DARTON & C^o
  LONDON & WESTMINSTER
]

[Illustration: 1894]




CONTENTS


     I. W. E. NORRIS
        Style in Fiction                                     _Page_    1

    II. Mrs. PARR
        A Story to Tell                                               16

   III. L. B. WALFORD
        The Novel of Manners                                          22

    IV. S. BARING-GOULD
        Colour in Composition                                         35

     V. KATHARINE S. MACQUOID
        On Vision in Literature                                       46

    VI. MAXWELL GRAY
        On the Development of Character in Fiction                    60

   VII. THE AUTHOR OF “MADEMOISELLE IXE”
        The Short Story                                               75

  VIII. Mrs. MOLESWORTH
        On the Art of Writing Fiction for Children                    84

    IX. Professor A. J. CHURCH
        The Historical Novel                                          98

     X. Professor ROBERT K. DOUGLAS
        The Ethical Novel                                            109

    XI. L. T. MEADE
        From the Editor’s Standpoint                                 124




On the Art of Writing Fiction




STYLE IN FICTION

  W. E. NORRIS


[Sidenote: The main thing]

The art of writing fiction has of late years been made the subject
of innumerable articles by persons most, if not quite all, of whom
are doubtless competent and well-informed; and it seems to be pretty
generally agreed upon between them, as a nice, definite sort of dogma
to start with, that “the main thing is to have a story to tell.”
Possibly that may be the main thing: possibly also the main thing—if,
indeed, there be one where several things are indispensable—may be,
not that the writer should have a story to tell, but that he should
be able to tell it. To tell it, that is, after a fashion which shall
move, interest or amuse the great novel-reading public, which, patient
and tolerant though it may be—patient and tolerant as some of us must
needs acknowledge, with a due sense of contrite gratitude, though
it is—nevertheless demands something more than a bald narration of
supposed events.


[Sidenote: The beginner]

The beginner, therefore (for it is only to beginners that the present
dogmatiser has the effrontery to address himself), will do well to bear
in mind that it is not enough to be equipped with an admirable plot,
nor even to have clearly realised in his or her inner consciousness the
circumstances and personages involved therein: both have to be made
real to the reader; both, moreover, have to be so treated of as, in one
way or another, to tickle the reader’s mental palate. This is much the
same as saying that the beginner, in order to be a successful beginner,
has to acquire a style. Not necessarily, it must be owned, a correct
style; still at least a distinctive one. Otherwise he cannot hope to
make his audience see people and things as he sees them.


[Sidenote: Acquiring a style]

But why talk about “acquiring” a style? Does not every human being
already possess a style?—dormant, no doubt, yet plainly perceptible
in his accustomed turns of speech and methods of expressing himself.
And can he do better than utilise this when he sits down with pen and
paper to write his story? Perhaps he might do rather better; but there
is no need to raise the point at the outset, because the beginner who
essays, without preparation or apprenticeship, to tell his story in his
own way will very soon discover that that is precisely what he cannot
do. The words, somehow, will not come; or, if they do, they come in a
manner palpably and grotesquely inadequate; the sentences are clumsy,
tautological, badly rounded and jar upon the ear; the effect produced
is very far from being the effect contemplated. The tyro, in short,
finds out to his sorrow that writing is not in the least the same thing
as talking, and that even so modest an achievement as the production of
a novel is, after all, an art, the inexorable requirements of which do
not greatly differ from those claimed by other arts.


[Sidenote: Writing an Art to be learnt]

And, indeed, why should they? Nobody would ever dream that they did,
were it not that the literary art has no schools, colleges, paid
professors, no system of salutary checks to intervene between the
student and his public. To one who is conscious of ability it seems
so simple to seize a pen and go ahead! In a certain country-house
there was a Scotch cook whose scones were beyond all praise. Implored
by a Southern lady to reveal the secret of her unvarying success, she
replied, after long consideration, “Aweel, mem, ye just take your
girdle, ye see, and—and make a scone.” Quite so: you just take pen and
paper and—and write a novel. No directions could be more beautifully
succinct; but, unfortunately, it is almost as difficult for a writer
who has reached a point of moderate proficiency in his calling to say
how this is to be done as it was for the cook to explain how scones
ought to be made. He may, however, be bold enough to affirm that the
thing cannot be done off-hand—that the knack of manipulating language
has to be mastered, just as that of swimming, riding, shooting and
playing cricket has to be mastered, and that preliminary failures are
more or less a matter of course. Swimming is very easy; yet if you take
a boy by the scruff of his neck and fling him into deep water, nothing
can be more certain than that he will flounder, struggle desperately
for a few seconds and then sink like a stone. Probably there are but
a very few people who cannot learn to swim; there are many who cannot
learn to shoot or ride; it seems doubtful whether an equal number
cannot—if only they will condescend to take the necessary pains—learn
how to write.

But the trouble is that plenty of men and women who cannot really do
these things nevertheless do them after a fashion. Have not the lives
of most of us been placed in jeopardy through the erratic performances
of some worthy gentleman who is fond of shooting, but who is obviously
unfit to be trusted with a gun? Is there an M.F.H. in England whose
soul is not vexed every year by the hopeless, good-humoured, dangerous
incapacity of certain members of the hunt? Every now and again one sees
a steeplechase won by a horse who has carried off the victory in spite
of his well-meaning rider; and in like manner it would be an easy,
though an ungracious, task to name authors whose books have commanded a
prodigious sale without being, in the true sense of the word, books at
all.


[Sidenote: Pleasing the public]

Well, the neophyte may say, it does not particularly matter to me
whether you are pleased to call my book a book or not; so long as I
can please the public, and thereby make sure of receiving a handsome
cheque from the publishers, I shall be satisfied. To such a reply
no rejoinder can be made, save a warning that successes of the kind
alluded to have been achieved under heavy handicap penalties. They
prove no more than that, as a good horse will occasionally win a race,
although he be badly ridden, so a large section of the novel-reading
public will tolerate inartistic work and slipshod English for the sake
of a good story. And, since you are supposed to be beginning, why
should you wish to carry extra weight, or imagine that you are able to
do so? It is not given to everybody—alas! it is by no means given to
everybody—to conceive a really good and original plot; yet some among
us, whose pretensions to excel in that direction are as scanty as need
be, may contrive to give pleasure, may to a certain extent please
ourselves with our handling of the vocation for which we believe that
we are best fitted, may even pocket the cheques which we have earned
without feeling that we have robbed anybody.

[Sidenote: Infinite variety of the Novel]

In other words, novels do not give pleasure or meet with acceptance
simply and solely by virtue of their subject-matter. The novel, at
least so far as England, which is the great novel-producing country,
is concerned, may be regarded as a sort of literary omnibus—a vehicle
adapted for the carrying of all manner of incongruous freights, heavy
and light. Descriptions of every grade of contemporary society have
their places in it; descriptions of scenery and very little else have
a right of entry; history is not excluded: its springs are even strong
enough to bear the weight of amateur theology and psychical research.
Perhaps, strictly speaking, this ought not to be so; but it is so,
and if, after so many years of laxity, we were to go in for strict
rules and principles, we should be all the poorer for our pedantic
exactitude. According to Tennyson, England is a desirable land in which
to reside, because it is

    “The land where, girt by friends or foes,
     A man may speak the thing he will;”

and so the English novel affords a fine, broad field for a man to
stretch his limbs in, the sole condition of admittance into it being
that he should do so with some approach to grace and symmetry.


[Sidenote: The average Reader]

It shall not be asserted or pretended that the average reader
consciously exacts these things, that he is conscious of having them
when he has secured them, or of resenting their absence when he has
been defrauded of them. But when he tosses a book across the room, with
his accustomed cruelly concise criticism that it is “bosh” or “rot,”
the above-mentioned species of resentment is, in most cases, what
he unconsciously feels. We ourselves, from the moment that we cease
to be average writers, become average readers, and are no whit less
unmerciful than the rest of the would. We are not going to be bored
by anybody, if we can help it. Possibly, from being in the trade, we
may know a little better than those who are not in the trade why we
are bored; but that does not soften our hearts, nor are we likely to
purchase a second work by an author who has bored us once. Therefore it
is worth while to conciliate us, and to consider how this may best be
done.


[Sidenote: The value of Style]

Doubtless, as has been admitted all along, there are more methods than
one of capturing and retaining the public ear; but this brief paper
professes to deal only with one—that of style. The beginner, we will
take it for granted, wants to have a style of his own, wants to make
the most that he can of his mother-tongue, wants to clothe his thoughts
in readable language, wants above all to send them forth with the
stamp of his individuality upon them. And he is confronted at starting
by the annoying discovery that he is unable to do this. How is he to do
it?

“My dear,” said an experienced chaperon to a young _débutante_,
“study to be natural.” Whereupon everybody who heard her laughed.
Yet the old lady knew what she was talking about and had not really
been guilty of a contradiction in terms. Under artificial social
conditions it is not possible to be natural until the rules of the
game have been learnt. Situations are continually cropping up in which
Nature, unassisted by Art, will play you the shabby trick of turning
her back upon you and leaving you to demean yourself in a ludicrously
unnatural manner. No _débutante_, however great may be her inborn
grace and ease of deportment, would venture to be presented at Court
without having gone through some preliminary rehearsal; scarcely would
she face a first ball or a first dinner-party unless a few previous
hints and instructions had been conveyed to her. But, fortified by
an exact knowledge of what is the right thing to do, she sails forth
confidently, she dares to be herself, and she makes, let us hope, the
desired impression in quarters where it is desirable that an impression
should be made.


[Sidenote: Study how to please]

Not dissimilar is the case of the budding novelist; although there is
no denying that it is easier to show a young lady how to carry herself
than to show a would-be prose-writer how to please. His apprenticeship
must needs be a longer and a less definite one. Rules, indeed, there
are for him—cut and dried rules, relating to accuracy of grammar and
punctuation, avoidance of involved sentences, neologisms, catch phrases
and the like; but these will not take him quite the length that he
wishes to go. They will not take him quite that length; yet they will
help him on his way, and he must condescend to study them. Furthermore,
he should study slowly and carefully the works of those who have
attained renown chiefly by reason of their style. Addison, Gibbon,
Macaulay, Carlyle, Ruskin, Sterne—to select at random half a dozen
names out of the throng which at once presents itself—he ought not
only to be familiar with the writings of all these and other masters
of English prose, but to scrutinise closely their several methods, so
that he may come by degrees to understand what the capabilities of the
language are and what admirable, though widely divergent, results have
been arrived at by those who have vanquished its difficulties.

With that language it is true that some of the writers just cited have
taken liberties: one, in particular, has allowed himself enormous and
audacious liberties. But that is only because he had made the language
so completely his servant that he was in a certain sense entitled to
do as he pleased with it. The student is not recommended to imitate
Carlyle; for the matter of that, he is not recommended to imitate
anybody, direct, deliberate imitation being as surely foredoomed to
failure in literature as in all other arts. But he may be advised to
dissect, to analyse, to search patiently for the secrets of proportion,
of balance, of rhythmical, harmonious diction. Haply he will discover
these; in any event he will reap the benefit of having mixed with good
company, just as, in playing no matter what game, we all insensibly
improve when we are associated with or pitted against our superiors.
And the stricter the rules by which he determines to bind himself down
the better it will be for him in the long run. In musical composition
many things are said to be “forbidden”—so many that the bewildered
student of harmony and counterpoint, knowing how frequently great
composers have transgressed the limits within which he is cramped, is
apt to exclaim in despair, “But you won’t let me do anything! Why may
I not do what Bach has done?” The only answer that can be returned is,
“Because you are not Bach.” Ultimate ease and liberty are the outcome,
as dexterity is the outcome, of early discipline; it may be that they
are never truly or certainly acquired by any other means.


[Sidenote: The necessity of “infinite pains”]

It is, in short, the old story of “infinite pains.” Whether “the
capacity for taking infinite pains” is or is not satisfactory as a
definition of genius is another question; but we may at least be sure
that infinite pains are never wasted. Not that we have any right to
expect an immediate and abundant harvest. It is the slow, but sure,
education of the taste and the ear that has to be aimed at, and this
will only come to us by imperceptible degrees. Gustave Flaubert,
than whom no more painstaking writer ever lived, was so persuaded
of the artistic compulsion that lay upon him to use the right word
or the right phrase, so convinced that for every idea there is but
one absolutely fitting word or phrase, that he would spend hours in
tormenting himself over a single sentence. Often at the end of all he
remained dissatisfied—could not but be dissatisfied. In one of his
letters he draws a pathetic parallel between himself and a violinist
who plays false, being well aware that he is playing false, yet lacking
the power to correct his faulty execution. The tears roll down the
unhappy fiddler’s cheeks, the bow falls from his hand....

[Sidenote: Writers too lenient with themselves]

Ah, well! we cannot all be artists like Flaubert. We are mediocrities
at best, most of us; we know that we are mediocrities, and we are not
going to cry about it. But let us acknowledge, with the humility which
beseems us, how immeasurably he was our superior, not in genius alone,
but in industry, in conscientiousness, in self-sacrifice. We mediocre
folks, who have acquired a certain facility of expression, are apt
to be only too lenient with ourselves. The exact word that we want,
the precise phrase suitable to our purpose, are not forthcoming; but
others are ready and will serve well enough. We take the others, hoping
that nobody will notice their ineptitude. The beginner also will, in
process of time, arrive at this fatal facility, and it is not in the
least likely that he will have strength to resist a temptation to which
ninety-nine authors out of a hundred succumb. All the more important,
therefore, is it that he should adopt and observe the strictest rules
at starting; so that he may form a style of which, once formed, he
will never be able to divest himself. We made a comparison just now
between the arts of literature and equitation. They have not a great
deal in common; but they are so far alike that early training has the
first and last word in each. There are men who are almost in the front
rank amongst riders, but who have never reached, and never will quite
reach, that rank, because of the errors of those who instructed them in
their youth. Heavy-handed they are, and heavy-handed they will remain
till the end of the chapter. So it is, not only with mediocre writers,
but even with some who belong to the first class. These have taken up
tricks and mannerisms, pretty enough and pleasing enough while the
charm of novelty still hung about them, but provoking and perilous
from the moment that they have lost that charm, that they have ceased
to be servants and have become masters. Macaulay, for example, had an
admirable style; yet after a time one grows irritated with it, knowing
so well in what manner he will deal with any given subject under the
sun. At the opening of some sonorous, well-balanced paragraph the
reader is prone to say to himself, with a sigh, “Ah, I see you coming
with your distressing antitheses!” And there, sure enough, they are,
neat, polished, brilliant, turned out to order—wearisome. But if,
during his lifetime, some reader of his had had the impudence to point
this out to him, and if, with the modesty which is a part of true
greatness, he had admitted that the criticism was not unjust, could he,
do you think, have written otherwise than as he did?


[Sidenote: Success attained]

Therefore, let the tyro put away from him all insidious temptations
to be brilliant or original; let him think chiefly, if not solely, of
being lucid; let him store up for himself a vocabulary from which all
ambiguous terms shall be rigorously excluded. So, having studied, he
will be able, like the _débutante_, to be natural, and will have gained
possession of a style which will, at any rate, be correct and his own.
So, too, he may perhaps be able to look back not discontentedly upon
a measure of good, solid work accomplished, when the time shall come
to hang up the fiddle and the bow, to lay aside the worn-out old pen
and make his final bow to a public by whom he may anticipate with some
confidence that he will be speedily and mercifully forgotten.




A STORY TO TELL

  LOUISA PARR


[Sidenote: The first essential]

To feel that you have a story to tell, seems to me a primary essential
for a novice in the art of novel-writing, especially with beginners
young in years and experience. I know that there are masters in
fiction, who tell us that their method is to create one or several
characters, and round them build up a story; but I doubt if this
applies to first efforts, unless those efforts are not made until the
writers have gained that insight into men and things, which only comes
with years of life and observation.

Now, to any beginning under conditions such as these, the few
suggestions and remarks I shall offer will not apply. My object is to
be of service to young beginners, and to try and give them some little
help and encouragement to surmount the difficulties which usually
appear when we first venture to commit our fancies and ideas to paper.
I feel somewhat timid in undertaking this task, because its success
seems to me doubtful, for the reason that no hard and fast rules can be
laid down for the fictionist, who, generally, leaves on each production
the impress of individuality. Frequently it is individuality, when
combined with originality, which is the charm of a new writer, and
gives to a story which we have had repeated a dozen times, and to
characters whom we have met again and again, the freshness of a new
setting.


[Sidenote: A story to tell]

To start, then, we will suppose that you are the possessor of a story
which for some time has dwelt in your mind, and has taken such a hold
of you, that you are engrossed with the plot and the actors in it.
These creatures of your brain become so familiar to you, that they
stand out in your imagination like real persons. You give them names,
you invest them with qualities, you decree that they shall be happy
or miserable, and, having sealed their fate, you are seized with the
desire to make others acquainted with them. Then comes the eventful
moment, when success is imperilled by over-anxiety and a distrust of
your own powers.

[Sidenote: Faults of beginners]

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]

It is quite another matter when we come to a lower phase of life, when
we step down out of the social sphere into genuine country life. Then
colour becomes an essential element in the composition. The ladies
and gentlemen in the hall at one end of England are like the ladies
and gentlemen in the hall at the other end of England; and it is the
same with the sweet girls and the honest, frank boys of the rectory
and vicarage—they are as fresh and delightful everywhere, in all parts
of England, and all very much the same. But it is not so with the
peasantry. They have their type in Northumberland, which is not the
type in Devon, and the type in Yorkshire is not the type of Sussex. The
peasantry represent racial differences much more than those in a class
above them. No racial differences are observable in the most cultured
class. Then, again, surroundings have much to do with the formation
of type; and so naturally has the occupation. Look, for instance, in
Yorkshire at the mill-hand and at the agricultural labourer. They are
different as different can be, and yet of the same stock. The manner
of life, the variety of occupation, have differentiated them. And in
appearance it is also true. The coal-miner, shuffling along with an
habitual stoop, is a different man, not in gait only but in face, and
different in habits as well, from the wool-picker or the foreman at the
mill. It is the same with the girls. The factory-girl is distinct, as
a specimen, from the farm-girl. They think differently, they comport
themselves differently, they look different. Their complexions are not
the same, their eyes have a different light in them, they move in a
different manner.

An observant eye is necessary to note all this, and to draw
distinctions.


[Sidenote: Dialect]

Then, again, in writing a story dealing with life in the working-class,
dialect has to be taken into consideration. In some parts of England
there is hardly any dialect at all, the voices have a certain
intonation in one county which is different from the intonation
elsewhere, but there are not many linguistic peculiarities. In the
Midlands, in Essex, in Middlesex, the dialect is vulgar; but it can
hardly be said that it is so in Northumberland, in Yorkshire, in
Cornwall, in Dorset. In Somerset it is unpleasant, but that is another
thing from the vulgarity of the Cockney twang. It does not do to
accentuate the brogue too much in a book that is for general readers.
It puzzles, irritates them. What is needed is to hint the dialect
rather than render it in full flavour. Such a hint is a necessary
element in giving local colour.

[Sidenote: Folk-sayings]

[Sidenote: Differences to be studied]

[Sidenote: Houses]

In addition to dialect, it is well to get at the folk wisdom as
revealed by common sayings, proverbs, and the like. This helps to
measure the character of the people, their sense of humour, their
appreciation of what is beautiful, their powers of observation, and
their imaginative faculties. We generally find that there is more
poetry among the peasantry—by this I mean a picturesqueness and
grace—a quality lending itself to fiction, where there is Celtic blood.
This wonderfully effervescent, unpractical element is very lovable,
very entertaining, where it is found. In my own county of Devon we
have on one side of Dartmoor a people in which this volatile sparkling
_ichor_ exists to a good extent—in fact, the people are more than
half Celts; on the other side of the moor the population is heavy,
unimaginative, and prosaic—the dreadfully dull Saxon prevails there. A
story of the people in the one district would be out of place if told
of those in the other district. Then there are peculiarities of custom,
all of which should be observed and noted; they help wonderfully to
give reality to a tale. The houses the people inhabit are different in
one county from another, differ in one district from those in another
ten miles away. Here, where I write, the cottages are of stone; often
in them may be found a granite carved doorway, sometimes with a date.
Five miles off, all is different. The farms and cottages are of clay,
kneaded with straw, and the windows and doors of oak. In Surrey, the
cottages are of red brick and tiled; on the Essex coast of timber from
broken-up ships.


[Sidenote: Costume]

It is not often now that we have a chance of coming on anything like
costume, but we do sometimes. In Yorkshire, what else is the scarlet or
pink kerchief round the mill-girl’s head, and the clean white pinafore
in which she goes to the factory? The bright tin she swings in her
hand that contains her dinner is not to be omitted. Every item helps
to give realism, and every one is picturesque. When I was in the Essex
marshes I saw women and boys in scarlet military coats. In fact, old
soldier-uniforms were sold cheap when soiled at Colchester; and these
were readily bought and worn. It was a characteristic feature. I seized
on it at once in my _Mehalah_, and put an old woman into a soldier’s
jacket. She gave me what I wanted—a bit of bright colour in the midst
of a sombre picture.


[Sidenote: Pictorial effect]

In story-writing it is always well, I may almost say essential, to
see your scenes in your mind’s eye, and to make of them pictures, so
that your figures group and pose, artistically but naturally, and
that there shall be colour introduced. The reader has thus a pleasant
picture presented to his imagination. In one of my stories I sketched
a girl in a white frock leaning against a sunny garden wall, tossing
guelder-roses. I had some burnished gold-green flies on the old wall,
preening in the sun; so, to complete the scene, I put her on gold-green
leather shoes, and made the girl’s eyes of much the same hue. Thus we
had a picture where the colour was carried through, and, if painted,
would have been artistic and satisfying. A red sash would have spoiled
all, so I gave her one that was green. So we had the white dress, the
guelder-rose balls greeny white, and through the ranges of green-gold
were led up to her hair, which was red-gold.

I lay some stress on this formation of picture in tones of colour,
because it pleases myself when writing, it satisfies my artistic sense.
A thousand readers may not observe it; but those who have any art in
them will at once receive therefrom a pleasant impression.


[Sidenote: Character of scenery and people determine character of tale]

With regard to the general tone of a story, my own feeling is that the
character of the scenery and character of the people determine the
character of the tale. A certain type is almost always found among
the people that harmonises with the scenery. Nature never makes harsh
contrasts. Where, in a stone and slate district, a London architect
builds a brick house and covers it with tiles, it looks incongruous. I
was at one time in Yorkshire, near Thirsk. In the village all the farms
and cottages were of brick and tiles; a London architect built a church
of white stone, and covered it with blue slate. That church never would
look as if it belonged to the people, it will never harmonise with
the surroundings. So some architects transport Norman buildings into
old English towns—the effect is hateful. In Nature everything tones
together. In the Fens of Ely the people are in character very suitable
to the fenland—silent, somewhat morose; on the moorland, wherever it
is, they are independent, wayward, fresh, and hearty. In my judgment,
then, the aspect of the country has much to do with determining the
character of the story told concerning it. In writing a novel you are
drawing a picture, and your background must harmonise with your figures
in the forefront, the colours must not be incongruous. You would not
paint a pirate under a maypole, nor put village dancers among rocks and
caverns.


[Sidenote: Illustrations]

I do not like to appear egotistical, but in writing for young
beginners, I think that nothing could more illustrate my meaning than
to tell them how I have worked myself.

One day in Essex, a friend, a captain in the Coastguard, invited me
to accompany him on a cruise among the creeks in the estuary of the
Maldon river—the Blackwater. I went out, and we spent the day running
among mud-flats and low holms, covered with coarse grass and wild
lavender, and startling wild-fowl. We stopped at a ruined farm built
on arches above this marsh to eat some lunch; no glass was in the
windows, and the raw wind howled in and swept round us. That night I
was laid up with a heavy cold. I tossed in bed, and was in the marshes
in imagination, listening to the wind and the lap of the tide; and
_Mehalah_ naturally rose out of it all, a tragic, gloomy tale. But what
else could it be in such desolation with nothing bright therein?

[Sidenote: Contrast and harmony]

Some little while ago I went to Cheshire, and visited the salt region.
It vividly impressed my imagination—the subsidences of land, the dull
monotony of brine-“wallers’” cottages, the barges on the Weaver,
the blasted trees. Well, then, in contrast, hard by was Delamere
forest, with its sea of pines, its sandy soil and heathery openings,
the Watling Street crossing it, the noble mansions and parks about
it. The whole aspect of the salt district on one hand, and the wild
forest on the other, seemed as if it could produce in my mind only one
kind of story; and with the story, the characters came; but they came
out of the salt factories on one side, out of the merry greenwood on
the other, artificiality and some squalor on one side, freshness and
simplicity on the other. It may not be with others as with myself, but
with me it is always the scenery and surroundings that develop the plot
and characters. Others may work from the opposite point, but then, it
seems to me, they must find it hard to fit their landscape to their
_dramatis personæ_ and to their _dénouement_.


[Sidenote: Imagination]

[Sidenote: Its limits]

Another point I may mention. Erckmann and Chatrien could never write a
novel of Alsace and the Jura on the spot. After a visit to the scenes
they were going to people with fictitious characters, they wrote, but
wrote in Paris. They found that imagination failed when on the spot.
I find very much the same, myself. I do not believe I could write a
novel of the valley in which I live, the house I occupy. I must lay
my scene somewhere that I have been, but have left. When in Rome one
winter, impatient at being confined within walls, weary of the basaltic
pavement, my heart went out to the wilds of Dartmoor, and I wrote
_Urith_. I breathed moor air, smelt the gorse, heard the rush of the
torrents, scrambled the granite rocks in imagination, and forgot the
surroundings of an Italian _pension_.

[Sidenote: Its strength]

[Sidenote: The secret of doing well]

I repeat, my experiences may not, and probably are not, those of
others. When engaged on a novel, I live in that world about which I
am writing. Whilst writing a Cheshire novel, I have tasted the salt
crystallising on my lips, smelt the smoke from the chimneys, walked
warily among the subsidences, and have had the factory before my eyes,
for a while, and then dashed away to smell the pines, and lie in the
heather and hear the bees hum. It has been so real to me, that if I
wake for a moment at night I have found myself in Cheshire, my mind
there. When I am at my meals, I am eating in Cheshire, though at the
other end of England; when in conversation with friends, directly there
is a pause, my mind reverts to Cheshire; and, alas! I am sorry to own
it, too often, in church, at my prayers—I find my mind drifting to
Cheshire. This I believe to be a secret of doing a thing well—that is
to say, as well as one’s poor abilities go—to lose oneself in one’s
subject, or at all events in the surroundings.




ON VISION IN LITERATURE

  KATHARINE S. MACQUOID


[Sidenote: Popular ideas concerning fiction]

A popular opinion seems to exist that the art of writing Fiction can
be acquired without any natural gift for the profession of Literature;
the wish to become a writer is thought a sufficient proof of vocation,
although such a wish, accompanied with fluency in pen and ink, is very
apt to mislead those who can express their thoughts easily in writing.
Diligent study and persevering labour will of course do much to further
progress in any art, but it is unlikely that the art of writing fiction
can be acquired in the same way that the mere mechanical knowledge of
Music, or of Painting, or of Sculpture can be learned by a beginner.

Some experienced writers own that they find it difficult to give a
definite account of the processes by which they themselves have
arrived at the production of their ideas; at the outset, I fancy, many
of them worked without settled method, or distinct consciousness of
their own processes, and this unconsciousness of the method followed,
and of the way in which images reveal themselves to the writer, seems
to indicate that a systematic plan, a set of rules to be implicitly
followed, would be useless to most learners, and would defeat the
desired end.


[Sidenote: The principles of literature]

It seems to me that the principles of Literature, or, to speak simply,
the ways in which writing should be done, reveal themselves during its
practice, and probably much of the originality which, whatever may be
their shortcomings as novelists, distinguishes many English writers,
is due in a measure to this personal, unaided way of groping after
truth. Writers who possess a natural faculty often work for years with
an intuitive rather than a conscious adherence to distinct principles;
without these principles, whether possessed consciously or intuitively,
it is, I think, impossible to write that which can be called
Literature. It appears to me therefore that would-be writers, without
a certain innate faculty, may read and study and acquaint themselves
with all the literary canons laid down by critics, and yet fail in
producing literature, while others who have the true gift will be able
to produce good and spontaneous bits of writing. I do not, however,
think that mere natural faculty will enable persons to continue to
write well without constant, self-denying study, and they must work up
to their abilities, if they would attain success.

It would therefore seem wiser for beginners, instead of trying at the
outset to learn how to write, to apply some test to their own powers of
writing; let them, in fact, make sure that they have a real literary
gift.


[Sidenote: The power of vision]

The power of Vision, the subject of my paper, is necessary for all
Literature, but it is completely indispensable to a novelist. Many
novels are undoubtedly written without it, but it may be asked for what
purpose are they written? except it be to waste time; they pass into
the limbo of useless and forgotten things; there is even a tradition
that the Head of a great circulating library said he used these
ineffectual novels for garden manure!

There are, however, many young writers very much in earnest, with
too much reverence for Literature to attempt novel-writing for mere
pastime, and they are often tormented by doubts of their capacity for
success; it is better to tell them frankly, that although such doubts
may not be justly founded, they are very hard to lay, and they may
possibly abide with the writers till long after the public has begun to
listen to their utterances, may indeed remain till writers and their
hopes and fears have come to the last chapter of life.


[Sidenote: Certain tests]

But earnest literary students may greatly help themselves at the outset
by using certain tests in trying to make sure whether they have or have
not any portion of the gift, without which perseverance will only lead
to disappointment. It may not be possible to teach the art of writing
novels, but one may try, as well as one can, to help beginners to find
out for themselves whether they have or have not “natural faculty” for
this calling.

It is said that exactness of proportion can only be proved by
measurement, and it is perhaps only by the application of certain
principles that beginners in the art of Fiction can learn whether they
should persevere or whether they will not save themselves bitter
disappointment by wisely giving up a profession for which they have
proved themselves unfitted. The effort required by any attempt at
real Literature argues an absence of idle-mindedness in those who
make it, and encourages a hope that beginners may be willing to
apply test-principles to their methods and power of work. Of these
principles, the power of Vision seems to be the most useful as a test
of true vocation for the art of writing Fiction.


[Sidenote: Imagination and realism]

IT was said many years ago of a distinguished writer, who has since
passed away, that she lacked imaginative power, that she only described
that which she had seen and known. The accusation was refuted as an
ignorant one, it was proved that the writer had not seen with her
outward eyes all that she so vividly described; it is, however, evident
that in making such a statement, the critic forgot the existence of
the power of Vision, the power which enables a writer not only to
see vividly and distinctly characters, actions, and scenes, but also
enables him to see the especial features in these several images
which will help to reproduce them with the greatest vigour and with
perfect truth. The absence of this power in its truest form makes
some so-called realistic work wearisome, and even nauseous, because it
contains such a superabundance of detail that breadth of treatment and
truth of effect are lost, while tone is lowered by too much familiarity
with the objects presented.

[Sidenote: The art of selection]

True Vision sees vividly that which it describes, sees it in perfect
proportion and perspective, and with this clear eyesight has a power of
selecting from surrounding details the chief and most impressive points
of its picture; it thereby enables its possessor—according to his power
of utterance—to impress the picture he has called up with vigour and
distinctness on his reader.

The power of Vision may and does exist with lack of ability to sing
or to say, even faintly, that which it so plainly sees, but for all
that it is a real gift, not a mere effort of memory, when it calls up
a character or a scene. Memory of course helps it, for perhaps all
we write or try to write, even that which seems to us newly evolved
from our original consciousness, may only be a recreation of forgotten
experiences.

The practical working of the power of Vision is apt to vary; the object
or scene is sometimes not at once clearly discerned, a fragment is
perhaps first seen, but patient waiting is often rewarded by a distinct
and vivid sight of all the other parts which have been simmering in the
brain, at first but dimly apprehended, shapeless, lacking alike form
and colour.

It may be said that the power of Selection in a writer is a distinct
principle, and should of itself form the subject of a paper on creative
work, instead of being classed with Vision; but the power of Selection
appears to me to be inseparable from any one literary principle—it is
an essential part of true Vision.


[Sidenote: A natural not acquired gift]

There are some parts of the whole which constitutes the power of
novel-writing that seem as though they might be acquired by dint of
hard study, without the possession of a natural gift for them. Style
is one of these, another is the careful construction of a story; but
unless the power of Vision be intuitive in a beginner, it is, as I have
said, almost useless to attempt Fiction. For instance, it is useless to
try to describe, unless the person or thing in question is as clearly
seen by the mental eyes as the would-be writer’s face is seen by his
physical eyes when he looks in the glass; even when the image is
distinct, power to present it may not exist in sufficient vigour to
enable readers to see the picture as the writer does. This is, however,
almost a matter of course. I am inclined to think that probably few
writers, if any, have ever satisfied themselves in painting the
pictures they have mentally created. To take the highest example, we
cannot know how far keener the power of Vision was in the pictures
seen by Shakespeare than in those which he has revealed to the world.
It is this want of proportion between the power to see and the power
to execute that has made the despair of artists of all time, whether
painters or poets, sculptors or prose-writers, so dissatisfied must
they ever be with their own productions compared with the creations
they see so vividly.


[Sidenote: Observation not sufficient]

IT may be said that all this art-study is unnecessary, that it is
sufficient carefully to observe life and scenery, and then to write
down all that the eye has noted, woven into the form of a story. This
is not easy work, our very faculty of observation is qualified by our
power of true mental vision; without mental vision, and the selecting
power that belongs to it, the objects noted down, instead of forming a
coherent and lifelike picture in the mind of a reader or listener, will
produce a dry catalogue of persons and things, there will be a want
of proportion and perspective, of efficient light and shade. “No one
knows what he can do till he tries” is a very true saying which fits
our case. Let persons without the literary faculty try to write off a
description of the office or counting-house in which they work, of the
room, whether it be study or drawing-room, in which they dwell, of the
persons among whom they live, and they will see what the results of
such attempts are from a literary standpoint.


[Sidenote: Silas Marner]

Many passages might be quoted to illustrate the vigour and distinctness
with which this power of Vision manifests itself, and in a few words
creates a picture which remains impressed on the mind of the reader,
but I have not space for them. Here is one, however, which stands out
by itself in intensity of distinctness and direct presentation.

Silas Marner, standing at his cottage door, has had a fit of
unconsciousness, during which the child, little Eppie, has found her
way into his hut.

“Turning towards the hearth, where the two logs had fallen apart, and
sent forth only a red, uncertain glimmer, he seated himself in his
fireside chair, and was stooping to push his logs together, when,
to his blurred vision, it seemed as if there were gold on the floor
in front of the hearth. Gold!—his own gold brought back to him as
mysteriously as it had been taken away! He felt his heart begin to
beat violently, and for a few moments he was unable to stretch out his
hand and grasp the restored treasure. The heap of gold seemed to glow
and get larger beneath his agitated gaze. He leaned forward at last,
and stretched forth his hand; but instead of the hard coin with the
familiar resisting outline, his fingers encountered soft, warm curls.
In utter amazement, Silas fell on his knees, and bent his head low to
examine the marvel: it was a sleeping child—a round, fair thing, with
soft yellow rings all over its head.”

Let the reader try to picture this scene to himself, and then consider
the marvellous power with which it is here brought before him, the
intense power of Vision, and of Selection evinced not only by the
points chosen for representation, but in the omitted details which an
ungifted writer would have dragged into the foreground. The strange
agitation of the lonely man is seen as vividly as the head of the
little golden-haired intruder lying before the red, uncertain glimmer
of the burning logs; this picture is more than an incident in the
story, it is the key which lets us in and acquaints us with the unhappy
weaver who till then had seemed outside our sympathies.


[Sidenote: George Eliot]

As we read her work, we know that unless this writer’s power of Vision
had been of a high order, she could not have placed so many living
pictures in our memories, pictures not of mere scenes, but bits of
actual life, in which the rude passions, and also the gentler qualities
of men and women, are set before us.

[Sidenote: Mrs. Gaskell]

I will mention yet another illustration of truth of Vision, rendered,
because seen in a sudden flash, with so much vigour that it is
difficult to believe it is not a record of human experience. The
incident is too long to transcribe, but it occurs in the fourth chapter
of the third volume of _Sylvia’s Lovers_, the scene in which Charlie
Kinraid, Sylvia’s old lover, returns, and tells her that her husband
has deceived her. There is a desperate simplicity in the pathos of
the poor girl’s words, “I thought yo’ were dead”; and the vivid image
of the shuddering, conscience-stricken husband is more moving than any
elaborate description could have made it. It is truth; one seems to
know that it was all seen and heard distinctly by the writer before a
word of it was set down.


[Sidenote: Some masters of fiction]

In _Kidnapped_, the defence of the cabin on board the privateer
strongly evidences the power of Vision; still earlier in the book is a
more sudden effect in the ghastly discovery the hero makes at the top
of the steps up which his treacherous uncle had sent him. In _The Black
Arrow_, by the same master-hand, the scene of the apparition of the
supposed leper is a marvellous instance of this faculty.

I might quote many remarkable examples from _Oliver Twist_, from _The
Ordeal of Richard Feverel_, from _The Cloister and the Hearth_, and
other masterpieces, in illustration of my meaning. There is more than
one wonderful instance in _John Inglesant_, notably the passage in
which the reader is made to see Strafford almost without a description
of his apparition.

These illustrations are more or less evidences of direct Vision, the
pictures presented seem to have been at once photographed on the
mental sight; but many remarkable instances could be cited in which
the effects are produced by a series of touches so exquisitely blended
together, that the impression produced is that of a solid whole. In
_The Woodlanders_ there are examples of almost unrivalled truth of
Vision, presented by a series of richly coloured touches. In the
first chapter of _Pride and Prejudice_ we have another feature of
the power of Vision, the incisive presentation of character in the
dialogue between Mr. and Mrs. Bennet; this so completely impresses
both characters on the reader’s mind, that the concluding words of the
chapter seem superfluous.

In _A Foregone Conclusion_, by Mr. Howells, we recognise an extremely
subtle power of Vision; we can scarcely say how the persons have become
familiar to us, yet we seem to know that they are alive, and that
they were distinctly seen by the writer; there is the same power in
_Silas Lapham_. It may be said that I have only given examples from the
Masters of Fiction. I could have given many others from the books of
far less popular writers, but I believe in a high ideal, for one can
never reach one’s aim, and it is well always to be striving upwards.


[Sidenote: Essential qualities for writing fiction]

The outcome of the question, then, seems to be that beginners in the
art of novel-writing are able to test themselves as to their power of
Vision with regard to Fiction; they will soon discover whether they can
master the difficulty of creating a forcible and distinct picture in
their minds of the subject they propose to treat; they _must_ see it
distinctly, and it _must_ be lasting; they must see not only the outer
forms of characters, but their inner feelings; they must think their
thoughts, they must try to hear their words.

It is possible that the picture may not all be seen at once; the
earnest student may have to wait days before he sees anything, weeks
before he vividly and truthfully sees the whole. I can only say, let
him wait with patience and hope, and above all let him firmly believe
that novel-writing is not easy; possibly, in spite of earnestness and
diligence, the beginner has made a mistake, and has not the necessary
gifts for success in Fiction. Well then, if after many trials he
cannot call up a picture which is at the same time distinct and true
to Nature, he had better bring himself to believe that his attempt is
not a creation of the imagination, it is at best but a passing fancy,
not worth the trouble of writing down. One more counsel. There are
three qualities as essential to success in novel-writing as the power
of Vision: they are Patience, Perseverance, and an untiring habit of
taking pains.




ON THE DEVELOPMENT OF CHARACTER IN FICTION

  MAXWELL GRAY


[Sidenote: The climax of art]

This is the climax, the finest flowering of the fictive art. It is
the crux, whereby may be determined the vital reality of the beings
presented to the reader by the novelist. Growth is the first condition
of life; only the character that develops with the course of the
story is really alive; if it be stationary, then it is dead. Many
an interesting and amusing writer is without this power of creating
and developing character, the rarest and the highest given to mortal
man. It is the lack of this singular gift that fills the every-day
story-teller’s pages with puppets and labelled bundles of qualities
in place of human beings. It is possible to tell a very good story
without creating or developing character, but it is scarcely possible
to create and develop character without telling a good story. For it is
story—that is, linked incident, changing circumstance—that moulds the
plastic yet unchangeable character of man.

    “Es bildet ein Talent sich in der Stille,
     Ein Karacter sich in dem Sturm der Welt.”

There is nothing so constant, and in one sense so unchanging, as
human character: every baby born into the world receives certain
characteristics, due in part to heredity, in part to climate
and physical conditions, in part, possibly, to pre-natal mental
surroundings, which characteristics remain with him to the day of his
death. A rose-tree may be trained and developed in different ways,
it may become a bush, a tree or a creeper, but it can never become a
peach—St. Peter is always Peter, and St. Paul, Saul, though the fisher
has become a saint and martyr, and the strict and fierce Pharisee the
Apostle of the Gentiles.


[Sidenote: Incident affects character]

Though in fiction, as in life, character creates incident, still it
is incident, which is dramatic circumstance, or circumstance, which
may be called stationary incident, that chiefly carves and shapes
character, calls out latent and often unsuspected vice, and evokes
equally unlooked-for virtue. Incident, or dramatic situation, may be
called the touchstone of character. Many an excellently written and
clever novel fails to enchain because the people in it do exactly what
they could not possibly do in real life. They develop wrongly because
they are not alive, not living organisms, and some secret instinct in
the reader is revolted by a feeling of unreality, he has a secret anger
at being cheated into temporary belief in a made-up figure, in whose
nostrils the breath of life is not.


[Sidenote: Maggie Tulliver]

Many critics, but I fancy chiefly males, and therefore incapable of
weighing female character, think this the weak point in _The Mill on
the Floss_. Maggie Tulliver, they say, high-minded Maggie, would never
have wasted her treasure of noble passion on such a barber’s block
as Stephen Guest. Yet that to my mind is one of the finest points
in that very fine novel. It is artistically as well as naturally
inevitable that the impulsive, imaginative, warm-hearted Maggie, who
ran away to live with the gipsies, so greatly admired little Lucy’s
doll-face and trim curls, who idealised everything she saw and lived in
a constant transition from heaven to hell, never abiding in one stay
on the firm level earth in her stormy childhood, should see an Apollo
in the first comely and well-conducted youth she met, and that her
imagination should invest him with a blinding glamour, which in turn
kindled so strong a passion as swept her off her feet. Her passionate
and exaggerated repentance, too, though as exasperating to the reader
as it would be in real life, is equally true, the natural sequence of
all that went before. Still, Maggie ought not to have been drowned,
she was but beginning to develop; Stephen Guest should have been but
an incident in the Sturm-und-Drang-Periode inevitable to a nature so
turbulent and so complex as hers. Maggie’s death, which is an accident
and a climax to nothing, must be regarded as an artistic murder, for
the wanton slaying of a personage whose death is not artistically
necessary in a fiction, is more than a blunder, it is a capital crime.
But the charm and interest of _The Mill on the Floss_ are not in the
development of Maggie so much as in that of her father and mother and
those matchless aunts and uncles of hers.


[Sidenote: Power to create character]

If the power to create and develop character is great, it is also
rare, and discoverable only in fiction of the highest order. It is
this that makes Hawthorne so incomparably grand; this that gives his
chief, though not his whole, magic to that master of English fiction,
Thackeray, and his peer, George Eliot; that impresses in Manzoni’s
splendid romance, _I Promessi Sposi_; that enchains in Jane Austen,
though she does but brush the surface of character, leaving the depths
unplumbed; that fascinates in Charlotte Brontë and in Mrs. Gaskell,
that powerful, wholesome, and but half-appreciated writer; and the
lack of which sends so marvellous a genius as Dickens, in spite of all
his witchery of fancy and fun and youthful mastery of language, lost
later in affectation, to the second rank. It was Dickens’ inability to
recognise his own limitation in this respect which chiefly contributed,
with his outrageous vanity, to wreck his later works; for he always
aimed at developing character, probably because it was the only thing
he could not do. Because the gods, as a sort of make-weight, with their
gifts of genius and talent, always throw in a perverse blindness to the
nature and limits of those endowments.


[Sidenote: Characters should develop]

Michael Angelo, at first sight of it, said to Donatello’s statue of St.
George, “March!” and the young figure always seems, in its breathing
vitality, to be on the point of obeying the order. So it is with the
finest creations in fiction: they march, they develop, they achieve an
immortal existence, like the lovers in Keats’ _Grecian Urn_—

    “For ever shalt thou love, and she be fair.”

We expect them to go on living; we look out for Colonel Newcome’s
noble and pathetic face among the pensioners in the chapel, and expect
to see that delightful old sinner, Major Pendennis, ogle us from his
club-window as we pass. How sadly do the characters of Amelia Sedley’s
kind and easy-going parents develop under the stress of ill-fortune,
and yet how truly! The indulgent and affectionate merchant, and his
comfortable, commonplace spouse, who caress and fondle Amelia’s
girlhood, pass with saddest ease into the selfish and querulous tyrants
of her widowed maturity; the harshness of their soured and unlovely old
age is but the other side of natures to which ease and material comfort
are the first conditions of existence. And poor dear Amelia, how
naturally she glides through the bitter trials and keen sorrows of her
womanhood, losing the self-complacency and regardlessness of others,
fostered by her caressed and guarded girlhood, and emerging mellowed
and sweetened from the flame! People run Amelia down. I love her; I
should like to have known her. Don’t we all know and love, and feel the
better for knowing and loving, some Amelia? My heart aches now as if
from a fresh stab whenever I read the immortal sentence which describes
the falling of night on battle-field and city, on the town without, and
Emmy’s desolate chamber within, where she “was praying for George, who
was lying on his face dead, with a bullet through his heart.” Of course
we all adore that good-for-nothing Becky Sharpe, whose complex and
subtle nature is so terribly warped and contorted by the wrongs of her
youth. How delightful is the unexpected tenderness developed in that
great, clumsy, big-hearted blackguard, Rawdon Crawley, by his dainty,
clever little witch of a wife and his neglected child. This Rawdon is
essentially virile all the way through. It was not only a fine brain,
but a great and generous and very tender heart that conceived and
developed all these intensely human creatures in Thackeray’s great
romance.


[Sidenote: Living examples in fiction]

What fine development there is in Lucia and Renzo, those very
commonplace and unromantic young country-folk in the first chapters of
_I Promessi Sposi_. Yet Lucia does not surprise us when, under stress
of the terrible events which tear their tranquil lives apart, she
comports herself with such signal heroism, and overawes and disarms
the lawless brigands who have carried her off, by the dignity of her
gentle yet strong rectitude. Nor are we astonished when the honest
and simple-minded Renzo, by his single-hearted loyalty and devotion
to plain duty, becomes a hero in his turn. It is a matchless stroke
of Manzoni’s genius thus from such every-day and unromantic material
to evolve stuff so heroic and full of romantic interest as in the
characters of these _Promessi Sposi_, who were not even romantically in
love, but were merely going to marry because they were at marrying age
and thought each other suitable.

This subtle and inevitable development which follows from the creation
of a living character in fiction, as from the birth of a living
organism in nature, gives a distinct charm to Malory’s version of
Arthurian legend, the one centre of interest around which the whole
body of the romance _Morte d’Arthur_ plays, being the development of
Sir Lancelot, that very live and captivating man, whom once to know is
always to love. Chaucer, fettered and cramped though he was, yet in the
narrow limits his art imposed gives subtle suggestions of spiritual
growth, while the immortal people painted in the Prologue, though of
necessity debarred from movement, are like Donatello’s St. George, we
involuntarily tell them to march, they are so alert and so much alive.
And even in the _Nibelungen Lied_, which would at first seem but a
poetic welding together of myth, tradition and romance, the main point
of the story and the hinge upon which the whole tragedy plays, is the
terrible direction taken by Chriemhild’s naturally sweet and noble
nature under the warping influence of deadly wrong.

[Sidenote: A bad tendency]

Macbeth, aweary of the sun, is another man than the gallant Scottish
chief who consults the witches; and what a change passes over the
warm-hearted and devoted wife, who is so eager for her husband’s
advancement. Hamlet and Faust (especially Hamlet), being not so much
a Danish prince and a German philosopher as representatives of the
human race, are the first and finest instances of character-development
in fiction. Yet the same Goethe, who, by the spontaneous play of his
great genius, created the living Faust, also composed that nauseous
study of morbid anatomy, _Wahlverwandtschaften_, in which there is
no true development upwards or downwards, but a sort of stagnant and
hopeless decay, and by the composition of which he became the father
of a great and gruesome school of fiction, the noxious influence of
which is spreading everywhere like a leprous growth over the fair face
of fictive art, especially in France, where the novel has been reduced
to a study of the gutter and the city sewer, and poetry to the open
worship of decay, and where a great artist like Zola devotes marvellous
powers of observation and description and analysis of character through
the whole of the celebrated _Assommoir_ to impressing upon the reader
that dirty linen is dirty, which Falstaff knew by sad experience,
but did not dwell upon, long ago. There is much morbid anatomy of
stagnant character in _L’Assommoir_ but no development; the characters
do not even degenerate, they simply rot as if from some mysterious,
irresistible corruption.

[Sidenote: _Tess_]

A great, perhaps the greatest, living English novelist is, like his
lesser brothers, touched by this mysterious blight. Hence _Tess_ has an
artistically impossible climax. Mr. Hardy’s fine genius created a noble
character in Tess, but his Paganism (for the blight has its origin in
Paganism) blinded him to the full grandeur of his own creation. He sees
clearly how the tragedy of Tess’s girlhood, the horrible cruelty of
which she is the innocent victim, moulds her nature, first stunning her
to a degradation from which she quickly revolts, and ultimately leading
her through suffering and knowledge of good and evil to a higher purity
than that of ignorant innocence, but he cannot see, perhaps because he
does not believe in, the impossibility of the final actions he imputes
to her, in a nature that had grown to such a height. Vainly is the
ivory parasol flourished in the face of the reader, who rejects it as
an unreality. But I speak under correction.

[Sidenote: Paganism]

Whatever Paganism may be to art—and the late Mr. J. A. Symonds thinks
it is very good for it—there is no doubt that it is absolutely fatal
to creative literature. The pure Pagan, the denying spirit, can have
no ideal; it is not that he asserts there is no God, but that he says
there is no good; he knows no inward vivifying spirit to produce
moral progress; therefore for him character cannot grow, it can only
decay, like geraniums touched by frost. This denying spirit, this
Paganism, which acknowledges matter because itself is material, and
which denies soul and the supernatural, sees in man a mere organism,
bound in an eternal ring of sense, a being whose deepest emotions are
but animal instincts, variously developed, and whose subtlest thoughts
are but emanations from an organ resembling curds; therefore it has
only the human animal for its subject in art and literature, and can
depict nothing in moral life but its decay. It has no clue to the
growth of the living organism, acknowledging not life but only death.
Human character is to this Paganism as the rapidly decomposing corpse
under the knife and microscope. It is this which in politics produces
Nihilism, Socialism, Anarchy, in literature what is known as Zolaism,
though Zola is but one of its products, and in France the poetry of
the decadence, the acknowledged idolatry of corruption; and it is this
which fills European fiction with unsavoury studies in morbid anatomy
in place of wholesome, vivifying pictures of living and growing
character. One can trace this sterilising influence in Goethe’s life
as well as in his works; one sees it beginning in George Eliot, and
continuing in the most ambitious English writers of the day; but not
in Mr. Hall Caine, whose work, with all its shortcomings, is a protest
against it, and who resolutely proclaims the soul of man and his power
to rise above his passions and make a stepping-stone of his dead self
to something nobler.


[Sidenote: The art of developing character]

But how acquire the art of developing character in fiction? We may as
well try to acquire blue eyes and straight noses, nature having endowed
us with aquiline features and black orbs. It is, like the gifts of
poetry and cookery, born with us or unattainable, though, like those
sources of so much solace to mankind, it may and must be cultivated
when present. The means whereto are study and observation of life, and
of great literary masterpieces.

That pleasant and light-hearted writer, Mr. James Payn, probably
beguiled by the whisper of some tricksy demon, once, to his subsequent
acknowledged sorrow, sat down and airily indited an essay in a
leading periodical on fiction as a profession, in which he asserted
in that gentle and joyous fashion of his that, like any other craft,
that of novel-writing can be acquired by study and practice. With a
thoughtlessness that Christian charity would fain assume to be devoid
of guile, he even expressed an innocent wonder that a profession so
easy and inexpensive to acquire, and so delightful as well as lucrative
to exercise, was not more sought after by the parents of British
youth, who, worthy folk, to do them strict justice, have never been
backward in repressing the vice of scribbling in their offspring. It
would be unkind to dwell upon the error of Mr. Payn’s ways. Nemesis,
in the shape of letters during the next few days from half the
parents in the three kingdoms, demanding instant instruction for sons
(especially those who had failed in most other things) in the elements
of novel-writing, overtook that poor man, and he did fit penance in
a subsequent number of the periodical, appearing there in all the
humiliation of white sheet, ashes, and taper, and duly confessing, if
not his sins, at least his sorrow for their results.


[Sidenote: Those who should write]

The art of novel-writing is not to be picked up along the primrose
path, even when the gift is present; nor is literature, especially in
its higher walks, a lucrative profession; it is, as of old, a crutch,
but not a staff. It is doubtless comparatively easy, a certain knack
being inborn and skill having been acquired, to reel off story after
story at the same dead level of mediocrity, but no writer has produced
many good novels, or ever will. The world is flooded with fiction,
chiefly worthless, but able by sheer volume to swamp the few good
novels that appear from time to time. People should never write a novel
or indite a poem of malice prepense. The only justification for doing
either is being unable to help it. Those novel-writers who can create
characters will develop them and thank heaven; those who cannot will
not, and let us hope they will thank heaven too.




THE SHORT STORY

  LANOE FALCONER


[Sidenote: The art of writing a short story]

The art of writing a short story is like the art of managing a small
allowance. It requires the same care, self-restraint, and ingenuity,
and, like the small allowance, it affords excellent practice for the
beginner, as by the very limitations it imposes on her ambition, it
preserves her from errors of judgment and tastes into which she might
be hurried by fancy or fashion.


[Sidenote: What to avoid]

There are many things lawful, if not expedient, in the three-volume
novel that in the short story are forbidden—moralising, for instance,
or comments of any kind, personal confidences or confessions. These can
indeed be made so entrancing that the narrative itself may be willingly
foregone. The wit of a Thackeray, the wisdom of a George Eliot, has
done as much: but these gifts are rare, so rare that the beginner will
do well to assume that she has them not, and to stick fast to her
story, especially if it be a short one; since on that tiny stage where
there is hardly room for the puppets and their manœuvres, there is
plainly no space for the wire-puller.

[Sidenote: Explanations]

Even more cheerfully may be renounced those dreary addenda called
explanations. Nowhere in a story can they possibly be welcome. At the
end they would be preposterous; at the beginning they scare away the
reader; in the middle they exasperate him. Who does not know the chill
of disappointment with which, having finished one lively and promising
chapter, one reads at the beginning of the next, “And now we must
retrace our steps a little to explain,” or words to the same depressing
effect? Explain what?—the situation? That should have explained itself.
Or the relation of the actors? A word or two in the dialogue might
do as much. More I, as the reader, do not wish to learn. I am fully
interested, I am caught in the current of the tale, I am burning to
know if the hero recovered, if the heroine forgave, if the parents at
last consented: I am in no mood to listen to a _précis_—for it is never
more—of the past events that prepared this dilemma, or of the legal,
financial, or genealogical complications by which it is prolonged. With
these dry details the author may do well to be acquainted, for the due
direction and confirmation of his plot; but the reader has nothing
to do with them, and in a work of art they are as needless and as
unsightly as the scaffolding round a completed building, or the tacking
threads in a piece of finished needlework.

[Sidenote: Redundancy]

Equally incompatible with the short story is that fertile source of
tedium, redundancy. “The secret of being wearisome,” says the French
proverb, “is to tell everything.” What then is the end of those who
tell not merely everything, but—if an Irish turn of expression may
be permitted—a great deal more? It is to encourage the practice of
skipping in the general reader, and—much to the detriment of more
parsimonious writers—in the reviewers as well. A large number of novels
picturesquely described as weak and washy, might be converted into very
readable stories by the simple process of leaving out about two volumes
and a half of entirely superfluous and unentertaining matter.

[Sidenote: “Phillup Bosch.”]

On the staff of an amateur magazine to which in early youth the writer
contributed, there was one most obliging and useful member whose
business it was to provide “copy” for the odd corners and inevitable
spaces between the more important papers. He wrote, you will observe,
not because he had anything in the world to say or tell, but because a
certain amount of space must at all costs be covered; and the effusions
thus inspired he signed with the modest and appropriate pseudonym of
“Phillup Bosch.” How often in fiction of a certain class may even
now be recognised the handiwork of this industrious writer, always
unsigned, indeed, at least by the old familiar name. The sparkle of
his early touch is gone, but his unmistakable purpose is the same.
The glamour of “auld lang syne” may to his old friends endear these
interpolations, but from a literary point of view it is much to be
desired that he would lay aside his pen for ever. And yet it must
be acknowledged that without his aid there are three-volume novels
that could never have been written. Fortunately, the short story is
independent of him.


[Sidenote: Disadvantages]

The disadvantages of the short story become more distinct when we
consider its possible theme. The crowded stage and wide perspective of
the novel proper; all transformations of character and circumstance in
which length of time is an essential element; even the intricately
tangled plot, deliberately and knot by knot unfolded—these are beyond
its reach. The design of the short story must itself be short—and
simple. A single, not too complicated, incident is best; in short, the
one entire and perfect action, that Aristotle—I quote from Buckley’s
translation—considered the best subject of fable or poem. To the
writer might well be repeated the stage-manager’s advice to aspiring
dramatists, quoted by Coppée in his _Contes en Prose_:

“If they come to me with their plays when I am at breakfast, I
say—‘Look here, can you tell me the plot in the time it takes me to eat
this boiled egg? If not—away with it—it is useless.’” The author of a
short story submitted to the same kind of test would have to be even
more expeditious.


[Sidenote: The art of omission]

It may be observed that all these suggestions are of a negative order,
and concerned with “the tact of omission.” It is indeed of the first
importance in the composition of the short story. As a famous etcher
once said to the writer while she stood entranced before a study of
river, trees, and cattle, that his magic touch had converted into a
very poem, an exquisite picture of pastoral repose—“The great thing
is to know what to leave out.” It is part of that economy already
insisted upon, “to express only the characteristic traits of succeeding
actions,” and, as Mr. Besant exhorts us, to suppress “all descriptions
which hinder instead of helping the action, all episodes of whatever
kind, all conversation which does not either advance the story or
illustrate the characters.”

[Sidenote: Grasp of point]

[Sidenote: Dramatic instinct]

How this “essential and characteristic” is to be distinguished from
all around it is another matter. It is a work that a great French
master of the art described as a _travail acharné_. But it is also very
often made easy by native instinct, like that which directs these born
story-tellers—their name is legion—of both sexes and all conditions,
who never put pen to paper, but who in hall or cottage, drawing-room
or kitchen, nursery or smoking-room, whenever they unfold a tale, hold
all their audience attentive and engrossed. Their method when analysed
appears to chiefly depend, first on their firm grasp of the main point
and purport of their story, next on their liberal use of dialogue in
the telling of it. At least thus do the listeners to one enchanting
story-teller endeavour to explain the dramatic flavour she imparted to
the commonest incidents of domestic life. For instance, this is what
she would have made of a theme so ungrateful as the fact that, the
butcher having sent too large a joint, she had returned it to him. For
the benefit of inexperienced housekeepers, it is perhaps as well to
explain that a fair average weight for a leg of mutton is declared by
experts to be nine pounds.

“Directly I went into the larder, I said, ‘Jane, what on earth is that?’

“‘Why, ma’am,’ she said, ‘it is the leg of mutton you ordered.’

“‘What!’ I said, ‘the _small_ leg of mutton? Where is the ticket?’

“‘Please, ma’am, the butcher’s boy has not brought it.’

“I said, ‘Tell him to come into the kitchen.’

“When he came I made her weigh that leg of mutton before him. It
weighed eleven pounds four ounces!

“I said, ‘Take that back to your master, and ask him from me if he
calls that a _small_ leg of mutton?’”

The expression, the intonation, and the, at times, almost tragic
emphasis, it is, unfortunately, impossible to reproduce; but even
in this colourless record we may admire the terseness and vigour,
the masterly beginning that at once arouses curiosity, and the truly
artistic reserve that does not by outcry or comment detract from the
force of the climax! Consider, too, how in some hands this simple tale
might have been embroidered and interrupted: by description of the
scenery outside the kitchen-window; by a minute account of the lady’s
family and connections, or of the previous history of the cook; by a
dissertation on joints in general and the story-teller’s favourite
dishes in particular, with other digressions too numerous to mention;
and by comparison you may divine what constitutes “the characteristic”
of a story.


[Sidenote: Points to aim at]

If now, seriously speaking, you review the tablets of your memory
and mark the scenes imprinted there, you will see that whereas some
figures, incidents, speeches, and even details of the background
are vivid as ever, others have vanished away. Again, you will find
that a conversation may be often best reported, in fidelity to the
spirit rather than the word, by suppressing all the repetitions and
superfluous phrases that encumbered the actual dialogue. Lastly, if
you attentively consider the character of some one you know and
understand, you may discover that it is revealed and epitomised in
certain particular words and actions, and that by repeating these you
might present a much more striking portrait of the original than by
a lengthy memoir of all that he, or she, did and said in common with
other people. Thus from your own experience you may gather useful hints
as to the kind of condensation desirable for the short story. Others
may, and ought to, be acquired by the study of the best literature;
but in this, as in every form of creative work, the artist, in the
beginning as at the end, must draw his chief inspiration from life
itself.


[Sidenote: Literary capabilities]

There is one thing that the shortest story does not exclude, and that
is the highest artistic ambition. That the length of any work can be
no measure of its importance or effect is best illustrated by such
masterpieces as the minor poems of Milton, Wordsworth, Shelley, or
Tennyson. The literary capabilities of the short story, still in its
infancy, have yet to be discovered, probably by the very generation of
those to whom this paper is especially addressed. Therefore one must
the more earnestly entreat them to cherish the highest aims in their
writing, to lavish on it the greatest care. Nowhere can “signs of
weariness, of haste, in fact of scamping,” be so inexcusable as on the
miniature canvas, or ivory, of the short story. Rather it deserves the
finish of the finest cameo, of the most highly polished gem.

Finally, with that uncomfortable feeling that is apt to overtake one
after preaching, the writer is obliged to confess that all this advice
is easier to give than to follow, and concludes with the wish that her
young readers may

    “Better reck the rede
     Than ever did the adviser.”




ON THE ART OF WRITING FICTION FOR CHILDREN

  MRS. MOLESWORTH


[Sidenote: No royal road]

There is, we are told, no royal road to learning. Is there a royal
road to any good thing? Are not hard work, more or less drudgery,
perseverance, self-control, and self-restraint the unavoidable
travelling companions, the only trustworthy couriers through the
journey to the country of success? I think so.

But the way is not always the same. None of the paths are “royal,”
in the sense of being smooth and flower-bestrewn; but beyond this,
similarity no longer necessarily holds good. To literary success, even
in its humbler departments, there are many and varying roads. Were it
not so indeed, the thing itself would be infinitely less worthy of
achievement. For if literary work is to be in any sense admirable,
it must be individual and characteristic; it is not of the nature of
manufactured goods; its essence must be of the author’s personality.


[Sidenote: Writing for the young]

I wish thus to preface the little I have to say of possible service to
others on that branch of writing as to which I am credited with some
experience—fiction for the young, more especially for children—because,
underlying any information or advice I can give, is the very strongest
belief in every writer taking his or her own path, trusting to his
or her own intuitions. Yet these intuitions, if I may be forgiven an
apparent paradox, must be those of a cultivated taste, a thoughtful
intellect, an imagination all the more luxuriant from having been
well pruned. Therefore before beginning to write, even for childish
minds, I would urge upon young authors to see well to their own mental
possessions. You cannot “give” out of nothing, and if you would give
of the best, with the best must you be furnished. Read the best
books, study the best models, till in a sense they become your own.
“Originality,” if originality you have, will never be crushed by real
study; and if the result of your self-training should be to prove to
you, by comparison with its undoubted owners, that this incommunicable
gift is _not_ yours, the sooner, for yourself and for others, that you
make the discovery the better, though you will have been far from a
loser in the process of making it.

There is nothing “original” in this advice, I well know. But it seems
to be not uncalled for in the present instance, because so many young
writers, too modest to aspire very high, think they can “write for
children.” And often this is a mistake. Writing for children calls for
a peculiar gift. It is not so much a question of taking up one’s stand
on the lower rungs of the literary ladder, as of standing on another
ladder altogether—one which has its own steps, its higher and lower
positions of excellence.


[Sidenote: Special gifts demanded]

It is very difficult to define this gift. It is more than the love of
children. Many people love children dearly who could not write for, or
about them even, at all. It is to some extent the power of clothing
your own personality with theirs, of seeing as they see, feeling as
they feel, realising the intensity of their hopes and fears, their
unutterably pathetic sorrows, their sometimes even _more_ pathetic
joys, and yet—_not_ becoming one of them: remaining yourself, in full
possession of your matured judgment, your wider and deeper views. Never
for one instant forgetting the exquisite delicacy of the instruments
you are playing upon, the marvellous impressionableness of the little
hearts and minds; never, in commonplace words, losing sight of what
is in the best sense _good_ for them. Yet all this so skilfully, so
unobtrusively, that the presence of the teacher is never suspected. Not
perhaps till your readers are parents and guardians themselves—possibly
writers!—need they, nor should they, suspect how in every line, far
more than their passing entertainment or amusement was considered,
how scrupulous was the loving care with which, like a fairy gardener,
you banished from the playground which you were preparing for their
enjoyment, all things unsightly, or terrifying, or in any sense
hurtful—all false or exaggerated sentiment in any form.

And yet you must be true to nature. Save in an occasional flight to
fairyland (and is true fairyland _un_real after all?) children’s
stories should be _real_—true, that is to say, to what may be or are
actual experiences in this always chequered, often sorrowful, world of
ours. It would be very false love for children—it would be repellent to
their own true instincts—to represent life to them as a garden of roses
without thorns, a song with no jarring notes. But underlying the sad
things, and the wrong things, and the perplexing things which must be
touched upon in the little dramas, however simple, there must be belief
in the brighter side—in goodness, happiness, and beauty—as the real
background after all. And any one who does not feel down in the bottom
of their hearts that this “optimism” is well-founded, had better leave
writing for children alone.


[Sidenote: Childhood and youth]

It is not always those who are nearest childhood who are the best
fitted to deal with it. There is a phase of melancholy and hopelessness
which youth often has to pass through, and though much mingled with
false sentimentality, it is a real enough thing while it lasts. It is
those who have outgrown this, who while not closing their eyes to the
dark and sad side of things, yet have faith in the sunlight behind and
beyond, who, to my mind, are the best story-tellers for the little
ones, whose own experience of life is all to come.

[Sidenote: A point to consider]

Before passing on to a few questions of practical detail, I should
like to dwell a little on a point which it seems to me is too often
disregarded or confused. It is this—writing _about_ children is by no
means the same thing as writing _for_ them. So much the contrary is it
indeed, that I could instance several storybooks almost entirely about
children which are far less advisable reading for them than others
of which the characters are not children at all. This distinction is
constantly overlooked and forgotten, and yet it is surely based on
common sense? The very last thing a wise mother would allow would be
the children’s presence at any necessary consultation with doctor or
teacher about their health, physical or mental. And the interest of
many of the charming and delightful stories _about_ children, which in
our days have almost come to constitute a new department in literature,
depends very greatly on the depicting and description of childish
peculiarities and idiosyncrasies which it would not be wholesome for
their compeers to discuss or realise. The questions too of judicious or
injudicious management of little people on the part of their elders,
of over-care or more culpable neglect, of misunderstanding of their
complex and often strangely reserved and perplexing characters, must
come much to the fore in this class of fiction. And though it would not
be right, because it would not be sincere, to make of our stories for
children a fool’s paradise, where all the big people are perfect, and
only the boys and girls in fault, still the _obtruding_ or emphasising
parental mistakes and failings should surely be avoided when writing
_for_ the tender little ones, whose lovely belief in “mother” is the
very breath and sunshine of their lives—and the greatest possible
incentive to mother herself to be in some faint degree worthy of this
exquisite trust.

[Sidenote: Unsuitable subjects]

Nor is this faith a false one. It is God-given, as a shelter and
support to the infant character till the day comes when the man or
woman must stand alone and see things with full-grown vision. And
when that day comes, and the gradual discovery is realised that
neither father nor mother, best of teachers or dearest of friends,
is infallible, something else comes too; a still deeper faith, which
draws the bonds of the old childish love and trust yet closer, by the
addition of that of understanding _sympathy_.


[Sidenote: Style]

As to questions of “style” in writing for children, general rules hold
good, with the addition of a few special ones. Your language should of
course be the very best you can use. Good English, terse and clear,
with perhaps a little more repetition, a little more _making sure you
are understood_ than is allowable in ordinary fiction. Keep to the rule
of never using a long word where a short one will express your meaning
as well; but do not be too slavishly afraid of using a long word—a
word even which, _but for the context_, your young readers would fail
to take in the meaning of. In such a case you can often skilfully lead
up to the meaning, and children must learn new words. It does them no
harm now and then to have to exercise their minds as to what the long
or strange word can mean, and at worst they can always apply to some
older friend for an explanation, and the effort will impress the new
acquisition on their memory.

[Sidenote: Training in style]

To help you to the acquirement of a good style in this branch of
writing, as in others, I would like to repeat the advice I have often
given privately. Drill yourself well by _translating_. It is capital
training. You know what you have to say, and there is not for the
moment the strain of inventing upon you. The facts and ideas are
there ready cut and dry; your business is to clothe them fittingly
and gracefully, and to this you can give your whole attention. Young
writers are usually so full of what they want to say, that they give
too little care to how they say it—ideas come tumbling over each other
till the way is blocked, and precision and elegance are thrown to the
winds. Translation is voted dull work by some—they want to see their
own creations in form—but do believe me, unless you are willing to
go through some dull work, some drudgery, the chances are small that
you will succeed. It may seem to you that some writers you know have
reached the position they occupy by sheer genius; but, not to repeat
the well-known definition of what genius really is, if you could
retrace the whole steps trodden by these apparently exceptional beings,
you would find, I think, that the “taking pains” has been there.
They have been perhaps peculiarly well-drilled, accustomed to much
brooding over the very best authors, but their present perfection of
style has not come all of itself, you may be sure, however dazzling the
brilliance that undoubted genius throws over the materials supplied by
long and careful cultivation.

It is a simple but valuable test of your writing to read it aloud when
finished, even if you have no audience but yourself! In writing for
children the criticism, which you may be pretty sure will not be too
flattering, of a group of intelligent boys and girls is _in_valuable.


[Sidenote: Method of composition]

And now as to the subject-matter itself. What is the best way of
composing a story for children? “Should we think it all out first, and
sketch it out, and jot down the heads, and the chapters, and—and—?” a
hundred more “ands.” “Should one wait till something strikes one, or
should one draw from one’s own experience, or—or—?” “or’s” to match the
“and’s.”

My dear young friends, I am afraid I cannot tell you. Everybody, it
seems to me, has his or her own way, and as I said at the beginning of
this little paper, I think it must be best so.

But if you care to listen I will tell you _my_ own way—or ways, though
by no means with any idea that you would do well to follow my example.

[Sidenote: A good rule]

To me it seems, as a rule, that in writing stories for either old or
young, the great thing is to make the acquaintance of your characters,
and get to know them as well and intimately as you possibly can. Some
of course take much more knowing than others; some are quickly read
through; some are interesting because they are meant apparently _not_
to be thoroughly known, and in this light you truthfully depict them,
though this last class is hardly the type of character to be introduced
into a story for children. I dare say you will think me very childish
myself, when I tell you that I generally begin by finding names for all
my personages. I marshal them before me and call the roll, to which
each answers in turn, and then I feel I have my “troupe” complete,
and I proceed to take them more in detail. I live with them as much
as I can, often for weeks, before I have done more than write down
their names. I listen to what they talk about to each other and in
their own homes, not with the intention of writing it down, but by
way of, as I said, getting to know them well. And by degrees I feel
them becoming very real. I can say to myself sometimes, when sitting
idly doing nothing in particular, “Now whom shall I go to see for a
little—the So-and-so’s, or little somebody?”—whatever the names may
be that I have given; and so day by day I seem to be more in their
lives, more able to tell how, in certain circumstances, my characters
would comport themselves. And by degrees these circumstances stretch
themselves out and take vague shape, which like the at first far-off
and dimly perceived heights above one in climbing a mountain, grow
distinct and defined as one approaches them more nearly. I seldom care
to look very far ahead, though at the same time a certain grasp of
the whole situation is, and has been, I think, there from the first.
It never seems to me that my characters come into existence, like
phantoms, merely for the time I want them. Rather do I feel that I am
selecting certain incidents out of real lives. And this, especially in
writing of children, seems to me to give substantiality and actuality
to the little actors in the drama. I always feel as if _somewhere_ the
children I have learnt to love are living, growing into men and women
like my own real sons and daughters. I always feel as if there were
ever so much more to hear about them and to tell about them if I liked
to tell, and my readers to hear.


[Sidenote: Unexpected suggestions]

This general rule, however, of first getting to know your characters
is not without exceptions. There are instances in which the most
trivial incident or impression suggests a whole story—a glance at a
picture, the words of a song, a picturesque name, the wind in an old
chimney—anything or nothing will sometimes “start” the whole, and then
the characters you need have to be sought for and thought about, and in
some sense chosen for their parts. And these often entirely unexpected
suggestions of a story are very valuable, and should decidedly, when
they occur, be “made a note of.”

Remembrances of one’s own childhood, not merely of surroundings and
events, but of one’s own inner childish life, one’s ways of looking at
things, one’s queer perplexities and little suspected intensities of
feeling, it is well to recall and dwell much upon. Not altogether or
principally for the sake of recording them directly, for a literal
autobiography of oneself even up to the age of twelve would be much
fitter reading for a child-loving adult than for children themselves
(the “best” and most amusing anecdotes about children are seldom such
as it would be wise to relate to their compeers); but because these
memories revive and quicken the sympathy, which as time goes on, and we
grow away from our childselves, cannot but to some extent be lost; such
reminiscences put us “in touch” again with child-world. And constant,
daily, unconstrained intercourse with children, even if the innocently
egotistical inquiry, “Are you going to make a story about _us_?” may
be honestly answered in the negative, is indirectly a great help and
source of “inspiration.”


But if you have any serious intention of making stories for children
a part of your life-work, beware of “_waiting_ for inspiration,” as
it is called. You must go at it steadily, nay, even plod at it, if
you want to do good and consistent work, always remembering that your
audience will be _of the most critical_, though all the better worth
satisfying on that account. And rarely, if ever, does work carefully
and lovingly done meet with a sweeter reward than comes to the writer
of children’s books when fresh young voices exclaim how interested they
have been in perhaps the very story which had often filled its author
with discouragement. For this “flattering unction” we may lay to our
souls—neither Nellie nor Tom—assuredly not _Tom_—will say so if he and
she do not really mean it!




ON THE HISTORICAL NOVEL

  PROF. A. J. CHURCH


[Sidenote: The historical novel]

I must confess to having experienced a certain feeling of astonishment,
not unmixed with alarm, when I was asked to write a paper on the
“Historical Novel,” for the series “On the Art of Writing Fiction.”
The phrase had an impressive sound. It reminded me of _Ivanhoe_ and
_Quentin Durward_, of _Hypatia_ and _Westward Ho!_ It seemed idle to
think of such humble ventures as I had launched upon the world, in
connection with the masterpieces of Scott and Kingsley. However, I
comforted myself by reflecting that the very humility and limitation
of my experiences might make them useful to beginners.

I will try to be practical, but I am afraid that I shall have to be, at
the same time, somewhat egotistic. If I can give any useful lessons,
these must be drawn from my own practice.


[Sidenote: Size]

[Sidenote: Some business considerations]

To begin at the beginning—what is the best size for the historical
novel?—or, as we had better perhaps call it, historical tale? All my
own have been of the one-volume kind, varying from fifty thousand to
eighty thousand words, to employ the prosaic but useful measurement now
in vogue among editors and publishers. And now, as my readers desire,
I suppose, to earn their bread, or at least their butter, by writing,
some business considerations may profitably come in. The demand for
books in this country comes either from the circulating libraries or
from private purchasers. It is the first of these only that, as a rule,
buy the three or two volumed novel. There are a few exceptions, as,
for example, Mrs. Humphry Ward’s _Robert Elsmere_. Hence novels are
commonly published at a fictitious price—a price, I mean, that bears
no practical relation to the cost of production, but is adapted to
the circumstances of a temporary and limited demand. Some two score of
writers, not of the first rank, have a public of readers sufficiently
large to make such a demand on the libraries, that, at the fictitious
price above described, a remunerative sale is obtained. A certain
number of novels just pay their way. Many cost their authors sums more
or less considerable. Now for the private purchaser. In the matter
of buying books, the average Englishman, and still more the average
Englishwoman, is parsimonious in the extreme. His or her purchases
in this direction are commonly limited to a Bible, a Prayer-book, a
book of devotion, possibly a volume of some popular author whom it is
fashionable to have on one’s drawing-room table. Still, the average
Englishman is not a stingy creature. He is generous in giving. Hence
the books which he would not think of buying for himself, he will
buy to give to others. Hence the institution of “Christmas Books.”
After all, there is no present so easy, so convenient, so harmless,
and so cheap as a book. Five shillings, and less, a sum for which one
could not buy the cheapest of cheap jewellery, will purchase a quite
respectable-looking volume. And as Christmas is the time for giving
presents, so Christmas is the time for selling books. It is a fact
which any publisher dealing in this kind of ware will confirm, that
books of precisely the same character and merit, published in May and
October (for the Christmas book has to be finished in July, or even
earlier, to be published in October), have a very different sale. And
a book, to be sold in any numbers, must be a single volume. Of course
publishers have overstocked the market. The supply of late years has
enormously increased, and now surpasses any possible demand. Still the
fact remains, that the most hopeful prospect for a young writer is to
produce a one-volumed tale that will take its chance among the crowd
of “Christmas books.” And here, I think, the “historical tale” has a
somewhat better chance of success than most of its competitors. The
father, the mother, the uncle, the aunt, who is choosing a present of
this kind, will often give a preference to a book that behind its first
and obvious purpose of amusing, has, or is supposed to have, another
more or less latent purpose of instructing. There is also a very
important demand for school prizes, and the “historical tale” has a
manifest fitness for supplying this.


[Sidenote: Choice of subject]

The dimensions of the book, then, being settled, the next question
is, what shall be the subject? Greek and Roman history supply a large
choice. And they have this advantage, that the authorities which have
to be consulted are limited in number and extent. If I am writing a
tale of the Athenian expedition against Syracuse, for instance, I
know that the contemporary writers are few, Thucydides, Xenophon,
Aristophanes, two or three early Orators, while Diodorus Siculus,
Plutarch, and Cornelius Nepos may also be consulted as secondary
authorities. Acquainted with these, one cannot be confronted with
any neglected authors. Similarly, for a tale of the days of Nero, we
have Seneca and the elder Pliny contemporary, and Tacitus nearly so,
Suetonius and Plutarch a generation further off, and Dio Cassius more
remote, but one who had access to good sources of information. Here
again the limits are narrow. Still I could not recommend any one not
well provided with classical scholarship to choose such a theme. There
are numberless pitfalls. Even authors of ability and repute are apt to
fall into some of them. I have seldom, for instance, read a story of
Roman life in which the names were not all confusion.

[Sidenote: Technical knowledge necessary]

Something of the same kind of technical knowledge would be wanted for
a tale of Egyptian or Assyrian life. In these cases the interest is
remote, and the preliminary knowledge required in the reader rare.
Where nine people know something about Miltiades, or Pericles, or
Alexander, Julius Cæsar, or Trajan, or Belisarius, scarcely one has
ever heard of Rameses II., or Amenophis III., or Queen Hatasu.

Jewish history has a fascination; but the risk of falling below the
standard of dignity required is vast.


[Sidenote: Modern history]

I suppose the general impulse will be to take some subject from modern,
preferably from English history; nor do I doubt that on the whole this
will be the best course for most of those for whom I am writing. The
authorities are accessible, and with proper industry can be mastered.
Besides industry, however, there must be facility of access. Private
libraries do not contain the necessary books. And I must warn my
readers that to make sure of adequate acquaintance with any period of
English history a very large amount of reading is needed. And if the
acquaintance is not adequate, there are plenty of experts—and experts
are commonly impatient of such frivolities as tales—ready to point out
the fact.

Epochs of special interest, as, _e.g._, the War of the Roses, the
struggle between Charles I. and his Parliament, the Revolution of 1688,
the Jacobite rebellion, the Napoleonic wars, offer special attractions.
As a rule, the more recent the time the easier it is to give an air of
reality to the story.


[Sidenote: Locality]

It will often be found a good plan to take some locality with which
the writer may happen to be well acquainted, to make this the scene
of the story, and to group the characters and incidents about some
distinguished person connected with the place. The story of Wyclif, for
instance, in his latter days, might have the scene laid at Lutterworth.

[Sidenote: Characters]

Here comes in the question, How far is the distinguished person to take
a part in the story? The answer will depend a good deal upon who he
is. A great soldier can be clearly introduced much more freely than a
great poet. The speech of the man of action need not have anything very
remarkable about it. It will suffice if it be concise and vigorous. A
poet, on the contrary, must not be allowed to talk commonplaces. As
a matter of fact, poets often do so talk—_non semper arcum_—but they
must not do so in a tale-writer’s pages. If I were to write a story of
Stratford-on-Avon, I should not venture to do more than let Shakespeare
be seen in his garden.


[Sidenote: Method of telling]

This suggests the question, Should the story be told in the first
person or the third? The first person is the more difficult to manage.
Heroines, for instance, who tell their own stories are often, I have
observed, sadly self-conscious and affected. They commonly begin
by depreciating their own good looks, and then go on to tell us of
the conquests which their plain faces make. Young heroes find it
equally difficult to speak of themselves without either bragging or
“’umbleness.” On the other hand, the first person, if tolerably well
managed, allows greater freedom. I may be permitted to illustrate this
by an experience of my own. I once wrote a tale of which the hero
is a young Royalist gentleman who fought for Charles I. This book
being sent for review to one of the critical journals, came by some
ill chance into the hands of an historical expert, who has a strong
leaning to the Parliamentary side. The expert was pleased to say that
I did not understand the nature of the struggle between Charles and
his Parliament. He may have been right, but there was nothing in the
book to show that I did not understand, for I had purposely made the
young Cavalier tell his own story. A serene omniscient person writing
in his study at Oxford doubtless knows all about it, about the _belli
causas et vitia et modos_; but a hot-headed young man, who is supposed
to give the impressions of the moment, fresh from exchanging blows
with some equally hot-headed young Roundhead, being neither serene nor
omniscient, is likely to know very little. The real mistake would have
been to make him far-seeing and philosophical. The author will not
escape the critics, at least if these are of the purblind expert sort,
but he will have a good answer to them. And he will be able also to
give a peculiar liveliness and a spirit to his narrative. I remember
a story, by the author of the _Schönberg Cotta Family_, unless my
memory deceives me, in which the tale is told in letters by two persons
alternately, these belonging to the factions opposing. But letters are
not a happy vehicle for fiction, though they have been employed by more
than one great master.


[Sidenote: Style]

From the matter it is an easy transition to the question of style. In
style it is impossible to be consistent or logical. If I write a tale
of the first Jacobite Rebellion, I naturally make my characters talk as
people talked in the early years of the eighteenth century. For this
there are models in abundance, a few of the best kind. The _Spectator_
papers, for instance, give a writer exactly what he wants in this
respect. And if he wishes to see how admirably they can be imitated,
let him study Thackeray’s _Esmond_, one of the very finest masterpieces
of style that is to be found in English literature. Go a century back,
and the task, if not quite so easy, is not difficult. The Authorised
Version of the Bible is at hand for serious writing, and there are
pamphlets and plays for what is lighter. A century more alters the
case. Sir Thomas More’s _Utopia_ is available, but to model your style
strictly on the _Utopia_ would be to make it too archaic. This is, of
course, even more true of time still earlier. The characters in a tale
of Wat Tyler’s rebellion would be half unintelligible if they talked in
the English of their day, supposing that English could be reproduced,
in itself no easy matter. One has to take a standard that is really
arbitrary, but still practically keeps the mean between the modern and
the archaic. For pure dignified English it is impossible to have a
better model than the Authorised Version, and it may be used even for
times earlier than the seventeenth century.

The notion of a “whitewashing” some well-known historical character is
attractive to a writer, but it commonly makes a book somewhat tiresome.
Writing up this or that theological or ecclesiastical view is still
more to be avoided. This, however, will not prevent the employment of
dramatic presentation of partisan views.


[Sidenote: Accessories]

You cannot be too careful about accessories, even of the most trifling
character. I remember making the deplorable blunder of introducing
forks among the belongings of an Oxford student of the fifteenth
century. They were not used till long after that time. With this
eminently practical caution I will conclude my advice.




ETHICAL NOVELS

  PROF. ROBERT K. DOUGLAS


[Sidenote: Romance ancient and modern]

The ethical novel is a natural product of modern times. In the days
when the world was young, men gave vent to their fancies in poetical
romances, in which the deeds of gods, goddesses, and heroes formed
the staple themes. Homer’s inspired verses and Eastern romances, in
which gods in the intervals of their amours battle with demons for
the possession of mankind, exist to remind us of the kind of heroic
pageants which interested and entranced the warlike Greek and the
swarthy warriors of Asia. As civilisation advanced, doubts crept in as
to the very existence of the heroes in which earlier generations had
delighted, and minstrels and writers descended from the clouds, and
tuned their harps and guided their pens to record the doughty deeds of
their leaders on the hard-fought fields of their nations’ records. At
such a time men desired rather to be startled and thrilled than to be
taught to reflect and discriminate, and the old blood-and-thunder novel
exactly suited their taste.


[Sidenote: Painting]

The history of painting runs a nearly parallel course with that of
literature. Like fiction, the painter’s art received its first glowing
inspirations from the current legends of celestial beings, and passed
through successive stages until the comparatively modern phase was
reached in which striking effects and startling situations became
the principal stocks-in-trade. As in literature, this intermediate
condition gave way to the expression of ideas rather than of physical
force, and artists, like novelists, were led to aim at representing
carefully drawn characters and suggestive surroundings. In the novels
of the last century we see a gradual development of this stage of the
novelist’s art. Any one who takes the trouble to compare Richardson’s
_Pamela_ with Fielding’s _Joseph Andrews_ and Smollett’s _Peregrine
Pickle_, will recognise the advance which took its rise when Queen Anne
sat on the throne, and which has continued in obedience to the law of
progress unchecked to the present day.

[Sidenote: Early writers of ethical romance]

[Sidenote: Scott]

A wide gulf, however, separates these writers from the novelists of
the beginning of the nineteenth century. The whole method of Miss
Edgeworth and Jane Austen, for example, is different from that employed
by the earlier generation of authors. Instead of exciting interest
by indelicacies and maintaining it by ribaldry, they sought to win
attention by careful delineation of character and genuine humour.
It was this new development of romance which made the ethical novel
possible. Amid the hurly-burly of strife and the warlike deeds of
gods and men, there was no room for philosophical musings or ethical
teachings. But when the scenes were changed to ladies’ drawing-rooms,
the parsonage-house, and the course of daily life, it became easy to
point a moral while adorning a tale. Miss Edgeworth may claim to be
the first writer of ethical romance, and in her quiet and humorous
pages she succeeds in levelling many a home-thrust against the evils
which beset her time. In her _Castle Rackrent_ she lays bare the
mischief of Irish extravagance and absenteeism, while in her _Tales
from Fashionable Life_ she holds up to ridicule and scorn the empty
frivolities and the manifest absurdities which pervaded the higher
ranks of society. Jane Austen in a less obtrusive way succeeds in
adding equally effective morals to her delightful stories. The
bitter consequences which follow evil doings are plainly set out
in her pages, and the needless misery inflicted by the indulgence
of the mean passions is portrayed with singular felicity. It is,
however, impossible not to recognise that both Miss Austen’s and Miss
Edgeworth’s novels suffer, as works of art, by the prominent motives
which guided the pens of their authors. It is not every one who is able
so to subordinate the intended moral to the due working out of the
story as in no way to interfere with the plot. The greatest novelists
have unquestionably been those who set themselves directly to describe
men and women as nature has made them, without any undue regard to the
goal to which the instincts and actions of the characters may lead
them. Sir Walter Scott is an instance in point. No one will deny the
extent of the influence which he has exercised in all four continents
of the world, and yet it is difficult to point to a single passage
in his works in which he expressed any direct ethical teaching Only
once, so far as we recollect, he chose to tack a moral on to one of
his novels, and that was when at the end of _The Heart of Midlothian_
he addressed these words to the reader. “This tale will not be told
in vain, if it shall be found to illustrate the great truth, that
guilt, though it may attain temporal splendour can never confer real
happiness; that the evil consequences of our crimes long survive their
commission, and, like the ghosts of the murdered, forever haunt the
steps of the malefactor; and that the paths of virtue, though seldom
those of worldly greatness are always those of pleasantness and peace.”


[Sidenote: Dickens]

It perhaps may be advanced in opposition to what has been said that
Dickens, one of the greatest novelists of the century, wrote several
of his novels with an ethical intention. But he was one of a happy
few who wrote fiction, as Hogarth painted and drew moral lessons on
his canvas, with a skill which excites the admiration of all those
who rightly understand the difficulty of the task. Many artists have
attempted to follow in Hogarth’s steps, and have failed ignominiously,
just as writers without end have attempted to imitate the methods of
Dickens and have fallen lamentably short of their great exemplar. Who
but Dickens could have drawn the pathetic picture of Oliver Twist,
and the bumptious and ignorant tyranny of Bumble and the guardians
without losing the perspective of the story which is so well maintained
throughout. After all, however, his best novels are those which are
written without any distinctly ethical motive. _Pickwick Papers_ and
_Martin Chuzzlewit_ are unquestionably his masterpieces; and though
_Nicholas Nickleby_ dealt an effective blow at Yorkshire schools, and
_Bleak House_ pilloried the evils of the Court of Chancery, and _Hard
Times_ showed up the fallacies of the Manchester School, they all, as
literary works of art, pay the penalty of the good that is in them.


[Sidenote: Thackeray]

Like his great contemporary, though in a very different style,
Thackeray throughout his writings strove to enforce a sound ethical
teaching as Mr. Leslie Stephen writes of him:—“In short his writings
mean if they mean anything, that the love of a wife and child and
friend is the one sacred element in our nature, of infinitely higher
price than anything that can come into competition with it; and
that “Vanity Fair” is what it is precisely because it stimulates the
pursuit of objects frivolous and unsatisfying just so far as they imply
indifference to these emotions.

As every reader of Thackeray knows his pages are full of moralisings
on the failings and faults of mankind. But only in one passage does he
treat his subject in a directly ethical way. At the close of a long
conversation between Warrington and Arthur, the latter is convicted of
being an apostle of general scepticism and sneering acquiescence in the
world as it is. “And to what does this easy and sceptical life lead a
man?” adds the novelist. “Friend Arthur was a Sadducee, and the Baptist
might be in the wilderness shouting to the poor, who were listening
with all their might and faith to the preacher’s awful accents and
denunciation of wrath or woe or salvation; and our friend the Sadducee
would turn his sleek mule with a shrug and a smile from the crowd
and go home to the shade of his terrace, and muse over preacher and
audience, and turn to his roll of Plato or his pleasant Greek song-book
babbling of honey and Hybla, and nymphs and fountains and love. To
what we say does this scepticism lead? It leads a man to a shameful
loneliness and selfishness, so to speak—the more shameful because
it is so good-humoured and conscienceless and serene. Conscience!
What is Conscience? Why accept remorse? What is public or private
faith? Mythuses alike enveloped in enormous tradition. If seeing
and acknowledging the lives of the world, Arthur, as see them you
can, with only too fatal a clearness, you submit to them without any
protest farther than a laugh: if plunged yourself in easy sensuality,
you allow the wretched world to pass groaning by you unmoved: if the
fight for the truth is taking place, and all men of honour are on the
ground armed on the one side or the other, and you alone are to lie on
your balcony and smoke your pipe out of the noise and the danger, you
had better have died, or never have been at all, than such a sensual
coward.”

But for the most part Thackeray rather allows his ethical teachings
to be implied than directly enforced. For every kind of meanness
he has nothing but words of scathing scorn and all wrong doers and
wrong doings he castigates with merciless indignation. He exposes all
that is untrue with quiet and bitter sarcasm, and in the inimitable
pictures which he draws of life and character, indicates an honest and
wholesome moral for all of those who care to discover it.


[Sidenote: Charles Kingsley]

Of a very different temper and disposition was that great ethical
novelist Charles Kingsley. A devoted apostle of humanity he preached
and spoke and wrote incessantly on the wrongs which he saw being
inflicted on the weakest and least helpful of his fellow-men. The
sight of contractors and manufacturers sweating their employés, and
of starving their vital force by crowding them into unwholesome and
insufficient rooms; of farmers beating their labourers down to the
very lowest wages and of housing them in insanitary and in indecent
cottages, roused his indignation to the full. In burning eloquence
whether in the pulpit or on the platform or at his study table he
denounced the oppression of the weak and the wrongs which were being
inflicted on those who were least able to help themselves. His novels
were, as his sermons, mainly directed to this great object. In them he
tried to impress upon landlords and employers that their dependants
were men and brothers, and with exquisite tenderness and sympathy he
described over and over again the horrors of those slums of which we
hear so much now; of the evils of those door-posts which stand sentry
over those squalid alleys, the gin palace and the pawnbroker’s shop.

[Sidenote: Kingsley’s creed]

But he had another lesson to teach, and there he sympathised with
Thackeray. The sanctity of family life was to him a leading feature
in his religion. As he writes in his dedicatory preface in _Hypatia_
“family and national life are the two divine roots of the church,
severed from which she is sure to wither away into that most godless
and cruel of spectres, a religious world.” The neo-Platonism with which
he was so strongly imbued introduced many strange mystic ideas into his
religious and social creeds. That the human relations of husband and
wife, and parent and child were eternal implied to his mind that they
had existed from all time and would extend to the end of all things.
They were therefore in his faith spiritual, sacramental, divine,
eternal. The influence which his writings exercised on high and low,
on rich and poor was great and far-reaching. He achieved, therefore,
the one object he sought when he wrote _Alton Locke_ and his other
masterpieces. But it must be admitted that in the eagerness with which
he preached he forgot at times the novelist’s art, and though some of
the passages in which he points his morals read almost as though they
were inspired, there is not one of his novels which does not suffer
from his ecstatic moods.


[Sidenote: The novel of Reform]

To men and women of sympathetic temperaments and ready pens, the
temptation to sermonise on the evils and wrongs of the world around
them must be well nigh irresistible, and what more easy and telling way
can there possibly be than by haranguing their fellow-men in fiction!
To seriously minded novelists, the unbelief which they see spreading
like a flood about them, suggests at once an object-lesson romance,
in which the heretical young curate who has strayed into the paths of
Buddhism or wandered with the lost sheep into the by-ways of Deism
or Dissent shall be restored to the true fold by arguments which are
urged with the full energy of conviction and are combated with weak and
halting rejoinders. The unprejudiced reader may consider the method
faulty, and that art has been sacrificed to exposition, but the author
and his friends insist on the public swallowing the dose with all the
severity of Mrs. Squeers. The English public are not altogether averse
to the presence of a modicum of moral teaching, but they like to have
the powder well concealed or only half revealed in the preserve of plot
and interest, and have reason to complain if that which was meant to be
the less proves to be equal to the whole.

[Sidenote: The naturalistic school]

Drunkenness and vice are often common themes of the ethical novelist.
An older generation of writers devoted their energies to gibbeting
the inequalities and maladministration of the laws; and to picturing
the evils and cruelties of game preserving. Dickens, as we have seen,
denounced in his novels the administration of the workhouse and the
delays of the Courts of Chancery; and Charles Reade inveighed through
the mouths of his characters against the Prison system and the Lunacy
enactments. These motives are too abstract for the present-day
novelist. He, or more commonly she, delights to descend from the
general to the particular, and to follow the drunkard into the gin
palace, and the most abandoned profligates into the lowest haunts
of vice. These are unquestionable evils and should on all accounts
be rather indicated than described in detail. What good can it do
to analyse and dwell upon every disgusting feature in a drunken
debauch, and every prurient phase in the downward course of sin? The
naturalistic school has much to answer for in this regard. Zola and
his followers, especially his followers, have brought into fashion a
style of novel which has become a plague spot in our civilisation, and
through their instrumentality young girls and boys are, under the guise
of moral teaching, made acquainted with forms of vice of which, but
for their ethical teachers, they would be entirely ignorant. Subjects
are now discussed in ladies’ drawing-rooms and at dinner-tables, which
were never so much as hinted at a couple of decades ago. Blasphemous
views of religion, theories of creation and evolution, analyses of the
passions, and strange doctrines concerning the sexual instinct, are all
discussed with a freedom which leaves little to the imagination. It
is true that the authors bring the unholy subjects on the stage with
the professed purpose of annihilating them one after the other; but as
in the process sometimes followed by vivisectionists of introducing
poisons into the system of the animals experimented on, for the purpose
of proving the effects of antidotes, it sometimes happens that the
views of evil suggested in the sort of novel we are speaking of resist
the counterbalancing influences of the moral strictures of the authors.
In a recent number of the _Nineteenth Century_ Mr. Frederick Greenwood
describes a novel up to date which an authoress has been induced much
against her will to write, and in which she appears in the frontispiece
covering her face with her hands for very shame, and on the last page
is represented kneeling at her infant’s bed praying for forgiveness.
If all who wrote on the unsavoury subjects indicated by Mr. Greenwood
observed the attitude of his authoress we should see little of the
features of a good many ladies who are at present evidently quite
unconscious of any desire to veil their countenances. Such writers are
bad enough, but a lower level is reached by those who deliberately
write on more than risky matters because they pay. It is difficult to
exchange compliments with such mercenary providers of social garbage,
and they are best left to the rebukes of such consciences as they
possess.


[Sidenote: Evils of modern fiction]

Naturalism and irreverence are unquestionably the crying evils of
modern fiction. And it by no means follows that they are essential to
the construction of the ethical novel. Mr. Leslie Stephen has said
that to be a good writer a man must be a preacher; and surely there
are enough subjects to preach about without touching on unsavoury
topics. Are not men and women prone to faults of character, besides
those of unlawful passion and open rebellion against God; and are there
not social wrongs and inequalities to be inveighed against. It is not
every one who can hope to see a palace arise in response to a discourse
on the evils which beset all sorts and conditions of men, but every
novelist worthy of his fame can do something to warn his fellow-men
of the faults and failings which lead to the downward paths of sin
and misery, and to throw a light on the way of those who are fighting
manfully for all that is true, honest, and of good report.




FROM THE EDITOR’S STANDPOINT

  L. T. MEADE


[Sidenote: A practical point]

I feel a particular pleasure in writing this paper. In the articles
which have preceded mine, valuable hints have been given for the
guidance of the fictionist. Broad rules have been laid down, and some
of that personal experience, far more valuable than mere empty rules,
has been related for the benefit of the student. I have written stories
of all sorts, and can endorse the excellence of the suggestions given.
But in this paper I want to touch on a very practical point indeed,
namely, how best the fiction writer, when he has produced his work, can
dispose of it.

To effect this most desirable end, he has got to please either a
publisher or an editor. I have had a great deal to do with publishers,
and find them most kind and encouraging when they are approached in a
proper business spirit. But as I am not a publisher, and have been an
editor, I can perhaps best help my readers by telling them a few of my
own experiences during several years.


[Sidenote: Writing for magazines]

Articles of all sorts, written by all classes of people, are offered to
magazines. A comparatively small number are accepted, for the simple
reason that a magazine can only hold a certain amount of letter-press;
and not all the cramming and pushing and squeezing in the world will
allow an extra line to be printed, if the pages of the magazine are
already full.

This patent fact is quite forgotten by would-be contributors, who feel
themselves aggrieved when this most truthful reason is given for the
return of their articles. In exceptional cases of striking brilliancy
room of course is made for the article, but brilliant articles, like
brilliant people, interfere but seldom with the ordinary routine.
Magazines, however, are so numerous that the chances of average work
being accepted become greater day by day, and as there is no better
opening for a young writer than to become a contributor to a good
magazine, he ought to leave no stone unturned to effect this desirable
end. By so doing, he has the opportunity of having his work immediately
presented to an assured public. A book, however clever, has to find
its own public, and this—except in a few cases—is a slow and laborious
process. It is a mistaken idea that books are sold in thousands. This
is only the case with authors who have made a very wide reputation. The
magazine is, therefore, the best opening for the young writer, and the
sooner he knows the right way to set to work to get his articles taken,
the better.


[Sidenote: Pitfalls to avoid]

Primarily, of course, he _must_ have the necessary talent, or, at
least, the knack of gauging popular taste, but, granted that he
possesses this important gift, it is well for him to know certain
pitfalls into which he may stumble.

To quote from my own Editorial experience may be the best method of
showing some of these.

[Sidenote: Rejected contributions]

A contribution like the following was not accepted, although the author
had a great deal of learning, and other valuable qualifications to
recommend him. _An epic poem to run as a serial through six months
of the magazine—to occupy six pages monthly, printed double column;
the subject to be devoted to a description of Indian life._ For
quite different reasons the following proposal was also rejected—_a
series of six papers on “Rogues,” in which every type of wickedness
was elaborately discussed_. Neither of these subjects was in the
least suitable for the magazine to which they were offered, and the
writers who sent them made the grand mistake of knowing nothing of
the periodical to which they offered their contributions. Their work,
however excellent it may have been, was useless to us, and a glance at
our magazine would have told them this, for themselves.


[Sidenote: Different classes of contributors]

Another class of would-be contributor is the utterly silly person who
thinks that it would be great fun to have something in print, and
imagines that this desirable result can be attained with no labour
or previous study. On a certain summer’s afternoon, my co-editor and
I were startled by hearing violent giggles outside the office door.
Presently two blushing, rosy-faced girls entered. The spokeswoman said
she didn’t know our magazine at all—she had never written anything
before in her life, but she and her friend thought they would like
to make an attempt, if we would give them something to do. We were
to suggest a subject, they did not mind in the least what they wrote
about. I need scarcely say that the services of these accomplished
ladies were not secured.

[Sidenote: The obtuse]

The obtuse, though earnest-minded aspirant is also a hopeless example.
Her utter lack of perception as to what is necessary for periodical
literature makes it useless to argue with her, and hopeless to advise
her. I recall a case in point. I was asked to give advice on the
desirability of the applicant’s resigning a good post as resident
governess with a large salary, in favour of literature.

I inquired if she had had much experience as a writer, and if she had
been encouraged by the success of her books.

The lady in question stared at me with round eyes.

“I have never printed a word in my life,” she said; “but I am tired
of teaching, and should like to take up literature. I have brought a
little article with me, which you may care to see. The subject I am
sure ought to interest—it is on _Hamlet_.”

I gently begged my would-be contributor not to throw up the certainty
of earning a comfortable living as a governess until she had tested her
powers a little further. I promised to read her expositions on Hamlet,
and she withdrew. I need scarcely say what the result of my perusal was.

An amateur’s treatment of _Hamlet_ was scarcely likely to possess
anything fresh to recommend it. I was obliged to return the Paper with
the mildest of hints that this subject was rather used up. Why must
beginners in the great Art of Literature try to give their puny ideas
on those giant problems over which the greatest minds have thought
and puzzled, and thought and puzzled in vain? Nobody wants their poor
little ideas, which are after all only feeble reflections of the
thoughts of greater minds. Such papers are only suited for Amateur
Essay Societies.


[Sidenote: Three requisites]

Equally silly are the writers who choose _hackneyed topics_ that have
been discussed and worn threadbare years ago. Such is the writer who
offers a series of twelve Papers on the Higher Education of Women, or
Woman’s Suffrage, or the Poetry of Wordsworth. The Papers that find
favour with Editors must first be fresh as regards _Subject_, second,
be fresh as regards _Style_, third, fresh as regards _Idea_. The writer
who possesses this triple gift, requires no further hints to tell him
how and where to succeed. Success with him is a certainty.


[Sidenote: What _not_ to do]

Perhaps the best way to emphasise the above remarks is to tell my
readers what to do and what _not_ to do.

Do _not_ send an article to a magazine until you have first looked
through at least one of its numbers; carefully observe its tone, try
to gather for yourself what its motive is, and to what sort of public
it appeals. If after a short or a long perusal you discover that you
and it are not in touch—that its scope is too wide for you, or your
thoughts are too big for its limits, leave it alone, and try your luck
somewhere else.

When you write, _don’t_ fly too high. Get a subject into your head and
feel that, small as this subject may be, you have something either
useful or amusing to say about it.

Do _not_ write a poem on April, and send it for insertion in the April
number of a magazine on the day that number issues from the press. This
has been a constant experience in my Editorial life. Try to remember,
if you know it already, and try to learn the fact if you do not, that
magazines take a certain number of days to print, and that, as a rule,
the number is practically made up weeks, and sometimes _months_ before
publication.


[Sidenote: False humility]

When you offer a contribution to sin Editor, _do not_ have resource
to a sort of false humility, which some writers are fond of adopting.
For instance, I have received letters with offers of verses which the
writer deprecates as “unworthy of publication, and only fit for the
waste-paper basket,” nevertheless, I am expected to read them, and
give a critical opinion, because the friends of the writer in question
have urged him or her as the case may be, to forward them. This false
humility is always prejudicial to the would-be contributor.


[Sidenote: Be business-like]

In offering contributions be as _terse and business-like_ as possible.
Editors have hearts, and sometimes these hearts are made to ache pretty
considerably. But first and foremost an Editor, if he is a good one,
must be business-like. He has to place the interests of the magazine
before your private wants, however pressing and painful they may be to
yourself. I feel that I am saying cruel things when I write like this,
but they are true, and if I would really help you, you must know the
truth.

There would be no magazines worth reading if MSS. were accepted on such
pleas, and yet they are constantly being urged.

Try to think of yourself as a merchant who has something of value for
sale. The Editor represents the public, who want to buy. He will
quickly appreciate you if he sees that you can give him what his
readers want, and, believe me, he will _never_ care for you, _as a
writer_, on any other grounds, whatever.

“My dear,” an old lady and a very celebrated author said to me many
years ago, “please bear one fact in mind. Your Publisher or your Editor
may love you as well as himself, but he will never love you better.”

Now the Editor or Publisher who takes unsuitable work from a mere sense
of pity, inevitably courts financial disaster, and he can scarcely be
expected to love the would-be contributor to that extent.


[Sidenote: Introductions]

I should like to say a word here with regard to Introductions. Many
people who wish to write have an idea that an introduction from a
successful author is “Open Sesame!” to the world of literature. This
is a vast mistake. _You stand or fall on your own merits, and on those
only._ The utmost your influential friends can do for you is to get
your MS. looked at. If it is silly or unsuitable, back it goes just as
surely as if it had not been supported by any great name. This is a
fact which is worth knowing.


I am afraid I must mention one more _don’t_.

[Sidenote: One last _don’t_]

Don’t send a MS. to a very busy Editor, with the remark that you know
it is unsuitable, but you would be so much obliged if he would read
it carefully, and give you his candid opinion as to whether you have
got the literary faculty or not. Editors are usually kind-hearted, and
don’t like to refuse requests of this sort. But do the people who worry
them with ill-written, bulky and all but illegible MSS., realise what a
large demand they are making upon valuable time, and by what right they
demand a professional opinion from, in many cases, a total stranger?
The same people would be much shocked if they were told that they
expected advice from their doctor or lawyer for nothing, and yet the
Author or Editor who has amassed his knowledge through years of patient
toil, must give it away to any one who has the impertinence to ask for
it. I feel strongly on this point, for in very truth it is, as a rule,
casting pearls before swine, as those who could be really helped with
advantage are generally far too modest to ask for such assistance.


[Sidenote: The short story]

I should recommend all those fiction-writers who are anxious to obtain
magazine work, to turn their attention to the short complete story,
and to avoid for many a day all attempts at _Serial_ fiction. A Short
Story, if good, is likely to find a market somewhere—but then it
must be good—by this I mean terse and full of plot, without a single
unnecessary word, and with the whole range of subject clearly mapped
out in the author’s mind before a word is written. The short story can
be a character sketch, although this is very often intensely stupid,
and has a by-way of clever air about it, which quickly vanishes as
you approach it, or it can be a good exciting incident with plenty of
movement.


[Sidenote: The “pretty-pretty” school]

For Heaven’s sake don’t let your friends say of your short story, “How
pretty!” The “goody-goody” school has had its day, and is laughed
out of fashion, but the “pretty-pretty” still flourishes in full
vigour, though in its own way it is quite as objectionable. Avoid mere
prettiness as you do all those things which lead to destruction. The
merely pretty writer gets weaker and weaker the older he grows, until
at last he is sheer inanity. It is a good plan to be in a certain
sense a specialist, and to take up a line which has not already been
done to death. Whatever you are, _be true_; write about things you know
of; don’t sit in your drawing-room and invent an impossible scene in a
London garret. If you want to talk of hunger and cold and the depths of
sordid privation, go at least and see them, if you cannot feel them.
_Don’t write high-flown sentiments._ It would be far more interesting
to the world if you told quite simply what you really know. Tell of the
life that you have lived—let others see it from your point of view.
Each one who has the power to write has also a lesson to deliver.
However small that lesson may be tell it with simplicity. If it rings
true, you have done your part well.

It is a good plan to avoid _morbid_ writing. This is a failing often to
be seen in the works of the very young. Be as cheerful as you can; we
want all the sunshine we can get.


[Sidenote: Fiction as a profession]

If you want to take up fiction as a profession, write a little bit
every day, whether you are in the mood or not. Put your story into a
frame—by this I mean make up your mind in advance what length it shall
be, and stick to that length, whether you feel inclined to go farther
or not. This is very good practice.

[Sidenote: Methods of work]

Try, if possible, to see the end of your story before you begin to
write it. This is a good plan, for it keeps the motive clear and
unwavering. It is also the surest way of exciting a strong interest.
Avoid long descriptive bits, more particularly descriptions of scenery.
You need to be a Richard Jeffries to do your scenery descriptions so
that other people shall see them, shall feel the breezes blowing, and
hear the singing of the birds. To write in this style is a special
gift, given to very few.


[Sidenote: Character drawing]

I have always found in writing my own stories, that there came a
certain point when the characters ceased to be machines, and began to
live. They were flesh and blood, creations as real as those I lived
with. I hated some of them, and loved others. All those characters that
remained merely puppets I eliminated from the story; they were useless
to its progress, they took from its effect. When your characters become
alive to you, as they will to all those who have even the slightest
touch of inspiration in writing, you will find a strange thing happen.
They will begin to dominate you, not you them. They will grow in spite
of you, and take a certain direction and fulfil their destinies just
as surely as if they really lived. You may wish to make a villain of
a certain character, but in spite of you he may turn out a saint or
_vice-versâ_. This is a mystery which I cannot pretend to account for,
but I think all fiction writers have felt it more or less. And what
is more, the better and stronger the story grows, the more will the
characters dominate their author, and turn him whither they will.


[Sidenote: Daily practice]

Inspiration is the grandest of all gifts for the fiction writer, but
he must not suppose that it comes daily, and if he never writes except
when he thinks it has visited him, he will seldom or never write
at all. Again I repeat that daily practice in writing is the best
of all training. It is wonderful how this daily practice overcomes
difficulties, one by one. How supple the mind becomes, how easy is
the flow of language, how completely the writer masters the difficult
problem of concentration of thought.

But I could go on talking indefinitely and, after all, although a
few broad rules are necessary and useful, each man must be his own
teacher—each life must inculcate its own lessons, and bring forth its
own fruit.

[Sidenote: “The end crowns all”]

If to ability is added courage, and to courage perseverance, you will
succeed; and I hope to shake hands with you in spirit over the good
work you have accomplished.

[Illustration: Decoration]


  _Printed by_ BALLANTYNE, HANSON & CO.
  _London & Edinburgh_.




  Transcriber’s Notes

  pg 122 Changed: subjcts indicated by Mr. Greenwood
              to: subjects indicated by Mr. Greenwood





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