Masters of the English Novel: A Study of Principles and Personalities. Richard Burton

the novels of Richardson and Fielding, pioneers, founders of the English Novel, offered Europe a type. If one reads the French fictionists before Richardson—Madame de La Fayette, Le Sage, Prevost and Rousseau—one speedily discovers that they did not write novels in the modern sense; the last named took a cue from Richardson, to be sure, in his handling of sentiment, but remained an essayist, nevertheless. And the greater Goethe also felt and acknowledged the Englishman's example. Testimonies from the story-makers of other lands are frequent to the effect upon them of these English pioneers of fiction. It will be seen from this brief statement of the kind of fiction essayed by the founders of the Novel, that their tendency was towards what has come to be called "realism" in modern fiction literature. One uses this sadly overworked term with a certain sinking of the heart, yet it seems unavoidable. The very fact that the words "realism" and "romance" have become so hackneyed in critical parlance, makes it sure that they indicate a genuine distinction. As the Novel has developed, ramified and taken on a hundred guises of manifestation, and as criticism has striven to keep pace with such a growth, it is not strange that a confusion of nomenclature should have arisen. But underneath whatever misunderstandings, the original distinction is clear enough and useful to make: the modern Novel in its beginning did introduce a more truthful representation of human life than had obtained in the romantic fiction deriving from the medieval stories. The term "realism" as first applied was suitably descriptive; it is only with the subsequent evolution that so simple a word has taken on subtler shades and esoteric implications.

      It may be roundly asserted that from the first the English Novel has stood for truth; that it has grown on the whole more truthful with each generation, as our conception of truth in literature has been widened and become a nobler one. The obligation of literature to report life has been felt with increasing sensitiveness. In the particulars of appearance, speech, setting and action the characters of English fiction to-day produce a semblance of life which adds tenfold to its power. To compare the dialogue of modern masters like Hardy, Stevenson, Kipling and Howells with the best of the earlier writers serves to bring the assertion home; the difference is immense; it is the difference between the idiom of life and the false-literary tone of imitations of life which, with all their merits, are still self-conscious and inapt And as the earlier idiom was imperfect, so was the psychology; the study of motives in relation to action has grown steadily broader, more penetrating; the rich complexity of human beings has been recognized more and more, where of old the simple assumption that all mankind falls into the two great contrasted groups of the good and the bad, was quite sufficient. And, as a natural outcome of such an easy-going philosophy, the study of life was rudimentary and partial; you could always tell how the villain would jump and were comfortable in the assurance that the curtain should ring down upon "and so they were married and lived happily ever afterwards."

      In contrast, to-day human nature is depicted in the Novel as a curious compound of contradictory impulses and passions, and instead of the clear-cut separation of the sheep and the goats, we look forth upon a vast, indiscriminate horde of humanity whose color, broadly surveyed, seems a very neutral gray—neither deep black nor shining white. The white-robed saint is banished along with the devil incarnate; those who respect their art would relegate such crudities to Bowery melodrama. And while we may allow an excess of zeal in this matter, even a confusion of values, there can be no question that an added dignity has come to the Novel in these latter days, because it has striven with so much seriousness of purpose to depict life in a more interpretative way. It has seized for a motto the Veritas nos liberavit of the ancient philosopher. The elementary psychology of the past has been transferred to the stage drama, justifying Mr. Shaw's description of it as "the last sanctuary of unreality." And even in the theater, the truth demanded in fiction for more than a century, is fast finding a place, and play-making, sensitive to the new desire, is changing in this respect before our eyes.

      However, with the good has come evil too. In the modern seeking for so-called truth, the nuda veritas has in some hands become shameless as well—a fact amply illustrated in the following treatment of principles and personalities.

      The Novel in the hands of these eighteenth century writers also struck a note of the democratic—a note that has sounded ever louder until the present day, when fiction is by far the most democratic of the literary forms (unless we now must include the drama in such a designation). The democratic ideal has become at once an instinct, a principle and a fashion. Richardson in his "Pamela" did a revolutionary thing in making a kitchen wench his heroine; English fiction had previously assumed that for its polite audience only the fortunes of Algernon and Angelina could be followed decorously and give fit pleasure. His innovation, symptomatic of the time, by no means pleased an aristocratic on-looker like Lady Mary Wortley Montagu, who wrote to a friend: "The confounding of all ranks and making a jest of order has long been growing in England; and I perceive by the books you sent me, has made a very considerable progress. The heroes and heroines of the age are cobblers and kitchen wenches. Perhaps you will say, I should not take my ideas of the manners of the times from such trifling authors; but it is more truly to be found among them, than from any historian; as they write merely to get money, they always fall into the notions that are most acceptable to the present taste. It has long been the endeavor of our English writers to represent people of quality as the vilest and silliest part of the nation, being (generally) very low-born themselves"—a quotation deliciously commingled of prejudice and worldly wisdom.

      But Richardson, who began his career by writing amatory epistles for serving maids, realized (and showed his genius thereby), that if the hard fortunes and eventful triumph of the humble Pamela could but be sympathetically portrayed, the interest on the part of his aristocratic audience was certain to follow—as the sequel proved.

      He knew that because Pamela was a human being she might therefore be made interesting; he adopted, albeit unconsciously, the Terentian motto that nothing human should be alien from the interests of his readers. And as the Novel developed, this interest not only increased in intensity, but ever spread until it depicted with truth and sympathy all sorts and conditions of men. The typical novelist to-day prefers to leave the beaten highway and go into the by-ways for his characters; his interest is with the humble of the earth, the outcast and alien, the under dog in the social struggle. It has become well-nigh a fashion, a fad, to deal with these picturesque and once unexploited elements of the human passion-play.

      This interest does not stop even at man; influenced by modern conceptions of life, it overleaps the line of old supposed to be impassable, and now includes the lower order of living things: animals have come into their own and a Kipling or a London gives us the psychology of brutekind as it has never been drawn before—from the view-point of the animal himself. Our little brothers of the air, the forest and the field are depicted in such wise that the world returns to a feeling which swelled the heart of St. Francis centuries ago, as he looked upon the birds he loved and thus addressed them:

      "And he entered the field and began to preach to the birds which were on the ground; and suddenly those which were in the trees came to him and as many as there were they all stood quietly until Saint Francis had done preaching; and even then they did not depart until such time as he had given them his blessing; and St. Francis, moving among them, touched them with his cape, but not one moved."

      It is because this modern form of fiction upon which we fix the name Novel to indicate its new features has seized the idea of personality, has stood for truth and grown ever more democratic, that it has attained to the immense power which marks it at the present time. It is justified by historical facts; it has become that literary form most closely revealing the contours of life, most expressive of its average experience, most sympathetic to its heart-throb. The thought should prevent us from regarding it as merely the syllabub of the literary feast, a kind of after-dinner condiment. It is not necessary to assume the total depravity of current taste, in order to account for the tyranny of this latest-born child of fiction. In the study of individual writers and developing schools and tendencies, it will be well to keep in mind these underlying principles of growth: personality, truth and democracy; a conception sure to provide the story-maker with a new function, a new ideal. The distinguished French critic Brunetiere has said: "The novelist in reality is nothing more than a witness whose evidence should rival that of the historian in precision and trustworthiness. We look to him to teach us literally to see. We read his novels merely with a view to finding