Delphi Complete Works of William Dean Howells

by William Dean Howells

  III

  I feel a kind of defeat in my efforts to impart a conception of Mr. Hardy’s heroines by the quotation of this or that passage. They live so much more in what they think and feel and say than in what they do, that no scene or incident can do them justice, as a scene or incident might in the case of Charles Readers heroines, for instance. Many scenes, many incidents in which the Hardy heroines figure remain vivid in the mind, but if taken from the context they do not tell the story as one would think.

  This may happen because the psychological texture of the story is as close and strong as the sociological texture is loose and slight. I have already intimated my sense of the unimportance of this in Mr. Hardy’s fiction, as compared with the recognition of the deeper relations of human beings. We scarcely think of his people as of this calling or that station at all, after the first moment, and even in making their acquaintance we do not concern ourselves with the part attributed to them in society; we often wholly forget it, though we never lose the sense of their intense reality. If any one will contrast the sense of life imparted by a novel of Trollope’s, say, with that given by a novel of Mr. Hardy, I believe he will get my meaning. These masters are of the same sincerity and veracity; but Trollope reaches man through society, and Mr. Hardy finds him in nature.

  There is a great deal of society in “The Laodicean.” People do things in the forms and customs that constitute the history of every-day life; but through the stream of these little ordinary events pulses the current of poetry and passion, and bears the lovers along in a splendid isolation from the events pressing upon them from all sides. For instance — but like all the other instances this will be imperfect! — Paula has been giving a sort of garden-party at De Stancy Castle, which Somerset as her architect is restoring in parts, and they have been dancing in the marquee with Paula’s guests, just before a shower breaks upon it.

  “The dance was over, and he had retired with Paula to the back of the tent, when another faint flash of lightning was visible through an opening. She lifted the canvas, and looked out, Somerset looking out behind her. Another dance was begun, and, being on this account left out of notice, Somerset did not hasten to leave Paula’s side. ‘I think they begin to feel the heat, ‘she said. ‘A little ventilation would do no harm.’ He flung back the tent door where he stood, and the light shone out upon the grass. ‘I must go to the drawingroom soon,’ she added. ‘They will begin to leave shortly.’ ‘It is not late. The thunder-cloud has made it seem dark — see there; a line of pale yellow stretches along the horizon from west to north. That’s evening — not gone yet. Shall we go into the fresh air for a minute?’ She seemed to signify assent, and he stepped off the tent floor upon the ground. She stepped off also. The air out-of-doors had not cooled, and without definitely choosing a direction they found themselves approaching a little wooden tea-house that stood on the lawn a few yards off. Arrived here, they turned, and regarded the tent they had just left, and listened to the strains that came from within it. ‘I feel more at ease now,’ said Paula. ‘So do I,’ said Somerset. ‘I mean,’ she added, in an undeceiving tone, ‘because I saw Mrs. Goodman enter the tent again just as we came out here; so I have no further responsibility,’ ‘I meant something quite different. Try to guess what,’ She teasingly demurred, finally breaking the silence by saying, ‘The rain is come at last,’ as great drops began to fall upon the ground with a smack, like pellets of clay. In a moment the storm poured down with sudden violence, and they drew further back into the summer-house. The side of the tent from which they had emerged still remained open, the rain streaming down between their eyes and the lighted interior of the marquee like a tissue of glass threads, the brilliant forms of the dancers passing and repassing behind the watery screen, as if they were people in an enchanted submarine palace. ‘How happy they are!’ said Paula. ‘They don’t even know that it is raining. I am so glad that my aunt had the tent lined; otherwise such a downpour would have gone clean through it,’ The thunder-storm showed no symptoms of abatement, and the music and dancing went on more merrily than ever. ‘We cannot go in,’ said Somerset. ‘And we cannot shout for umbrellas. We will stay here till it is over, will we not?’ ‘Yes,’ she said, ‘if you care to. Oh!’ ‘What is it?’ ‘Only a big drop came upon my head.’ ‘Let us stand further, in.’ Her hand was hanging by her side, and Somerset’s was close by. He took it, and she did not draw it away. Thus they stood a long while, the rain hissing down upon the grass-plot, and not a soul being visible outside the dancing-tent save themselves. ‘May I call you Paula?’ asked he. ‘Yes, occasionally,’ she murmured. ‘Dear Paula! May I call you that?’ ‘Oh no — not yet.’ ‘But you know I love you?’ he insisted. ‘I can give a shrewd guess,’ she said, slyly. ‘And shall I love you always?’ ‘If you wish to,’ ‘And will you love me?’ Paula did not reply. ‘Will you, Paula V he repeated. ‘You may love me,’ ‘But don’t you love me in return?’ ‘I love you to love me.’ ‘Won’t you say anything more explicit?’ ‘Not a single word!’ Somerset emitted half a sigh: he wished she had been more demonstrative, yet felt that this passive way of assenting was as much as he could hope for. Had there been anything cold in her passivity he might have felt repressed; but her stillness suggested the stillness of motion imperceptible from its intensity. ‘We must go in,’ said she. ‘The rain is almost over, and there is no longer any excuse for this.’ Somerset bent his lips toward hers. ‘No,’ said the fair Puritan decisively.

  ‘Why not?’ he asked. ‘Nobody ever has.’ ‘But!—’ expostulated Somerset. ‘To everything there is a season, and the season for this is not just now,’ she answered, walking away.”

  IV

  Yes, this instance, like all the others, is imperfect and inadequate to the message it is meant to bear in my criticism, and I have to blame myself for letting a subordinate book so largely represent the very great and singular artist I have attempted to deal with. He has reached the height of his power, I think, in his tremendous novel, “Jude the Obscure,” where Fate, so humorous and at the worst ironical, in so many of his stories, turns luridly tragical. No greater and truer book has been written in our time or any; and yet “ Jude,” if it were to be quoted from significantly, is not to be quoted from in this company at all, without risk to the critic of sharing the misunderstanding which befell the author. It may be safely said, however — or at any rate it shall be ventured — that in “Jude,” and in the morbid, half-crazed endeavor of the heroine to atone by her own sacrifice for the cursed spite of conditions, the novelist makes an offering at the shrine of the womanly which ought to appease that deity, if ever it has been offended — by a sense of slight or mocking in his adoration. It is not a book which could harm innocence — evil itself cannot harm innocence, but certainly it is not a book for inexperience. For experience, however, it is full of wisdom, and for the heart and mind open to the fearful implications of such a history and temperament as Sue Brodhead’s it has problems of tremendous appeal. It would be worthy the study of experience if for nothing else than as the work of a talent there eventuating in its ultimate seriousness.

  WILLIAM BLACK’S GERTRUDE WHITE

  IN my sense of at least partial defeat by the heroines of Mr. Hardy, who have suffered me to represent them mainly in some of their lighter moments, I am sufficiently humiliated to make a confession that I would rather not have made. I confess that I never read a novel of Blackmore’s, or a novel of Stevenson’s, or more than one novel of Mr. George Meredith’s; and though I might qualify myself to speak of their heroines by taking a course of their fiction, I am afraid that my appreciation would have a perfunctory look out of keeping with the prevailing complexion of these studies. I might learn what those ladies were like, but I should have no associations with them from the past, no remembered passion; and if it is not now too late with me to form a passion for a new heroine, it would not be, perhaps, becoming.

  I

  In the case of Stevenson I am hardly a great loser, I fancy, unles
s I am wrong in supposing his romances are mostly stories of adventure, such as the heroine does not best develop in. As I have before intimated she cannot make her peculiar powers felt in the highest degree by the hero who is saving her life or defending her honor; she requires the safety and quiet of normal conditions for the last effect of her charm, which is the translation of every-day life into a supernal ecstasy. I dare say I could not make so good my defence in the case of Blackmore, for Loma Doone is a heroine whose adorers simply troop at her heels. I can only regret that I have not her acquaintance, and sigh that it seems too late to make it. As for Mr. George Meredith’s heroines, my experience is confined to such of them as may be met in “Beauchamp’s Career,” and from that I have no recollection of them by name; I was barely fifty when I read the book, but one begins to forget names so early. I do, however, have the impression that they talked a great deal as Mr. Meredith writes, though they shared this foible with all the other characters; and I could not greatly blame them since his writing gave me the sense of a singularly powerful mind and generous spirit. I thought “Beauchamp’s Career” a magnificent piece of intellectuation, fused through and through by electrical emotion. But I could not get farther with the author, though I tried one novel of his after another, as one votary of his after another solemnly promised me conversion in the interest of my soul’s salvation. I remained and I still remain unable to reconcile my aesthetics with his, though I uncover to his ethics as I know them in “Beauchamp’s Career.”

  He appears to me a powerful, wilful talent, who could have flourished into critical acceptance as a novelist only in an atmosphere of such aesthetic anarchy as wraps the British Isles; but he may some day appear differently to me through my greater knowledge of him. This has happened to me with Mr. George Moore, whom I long shied off from because I fancied him doing over again, from the realistic formula, the work of M. Zola. M. Zola seemed doing it so fully that I thought myself in no need of Mr. George Moore; but his “ Esther Waters” showed me how mistaken I was. That is a great book, and if it had not appeared in an age which has been spoiled by great fictions, it would have been prized as one of the greatest. I know that it won celebrity of even the popular sort, and that it received critical recognition; but it has not achieved the lasting credit which is its due. Its very merits forbid me to study it here, for the sad, plain, naked truth about life is apt to shock, or to make people think they are shocked, and in its facts it is sometimes outside of those decorums of Anglo-Saxon fiction which I have been treating as the decencies. So is the very powerful group of studies which the author calls “The Celibates,” and which the mere name of brings back my strong emotion in reading them. The three differing types of the womanly presented there are of that novelty and reality in which life abounds, but which we suppose exhausted because fiction, like history, so commonly repeats itself. Mr. Moore’s fiction is not like history in this, and it is probably more like memoires pour servir than like history in its way of dealing with the unupholstered human soul. But I am aware that the upholstered soul is more presentable to mixed companies, especially when there are young people present; and so I leave this author’s, heroines out of my series, though I cannot leave them out of my mind, and I wish to make my manners to what I think their prodigious veracity.

  II

  There is no such embarrassment as I have here hastened to escape in dealing with the heroines of William Black, who are quite of the Anglo-Saxon tradition. They are nice girls even when they are naughty, as some of them are; or at least they do not misbehave beyond the bounds of convention. They flirt, but unless flirtation is a sin, they do not sin, and they are not sinned against very direly. They began rather simply and naturally in the course of a journey in a phaeton, whose “ Strange Adventures “ once pleased so greatly, and they almost ended, and rather insipidly, in the voyage of a house-boat. The two novels indicated will occur to most readers whose novel reading extended from 1870 to 1890; but in the interval there were other novels of Black’s which signalized his deeper knowledge of human and of woman nature, and his growing dramatic power. This power was apt at times to disperse itself in the sobs and tears of hysterical emotion, but there is no doubt that short of such climaxes it was a power. It relaxed rather too often in the description of natural scenery, and killed too many salmon, and quoted too much Gaelic; but still it was power. In such a story as “Madcap Violet” it triumphed in character then new to fiction and of interesting actuality in life; and in “Macleod of Dare” it went deeper, and came up with stronger contrasts to truly tragical purpose.

  “Macleod of Dare” seems to have been the highest as well as deepest reach of the author’s art; for after it he continued to repeat himself with varying effect, and returned ultimately to that earlier method and manner which won him his public. It was never the best public, never the most critical, and yet his work had friends of the most critical instincts, and the most fastidious tastes, who accepted him with reservation, but without patronage. A sense of his innate manliness forbade that; and upon the whole he enjoyed while he lived a dignified popularity which, since his death, has not quite become fame. Yet his work is so very much better than that of novelists who in a time of inferior fiction did achieve remembrance that one resents for him the sort of unjust neglect which it has fallen into. It was his fate or his accident to begin writing naturalistic fiction of the old-fashioned English kind, and to establish himself as a lover of real life just before the violent campaign for naturalism began on the Continent, where almost nothing that was nice and almost everything that was nasty was accounted natural. He continued writing in his own way amidst the impassioned struggle against romanticism in France, Spain, and Italy, and remained no more affected by the polemics of M. Zola than by the perfection of Flaubert or Maupassant. The great, the matchless fiction of Russia did not move him from his course, and his constant English public stood by him, while the more fitful favor of his American friends did not always fail him. He saw the fall of the Dickens worship and the rise of the Thackeray doubt. Trollope outlived himself, and George Eliot died after the distinct decline of her too deeply ethicised art; and there was a moment when William Black might have been recognized as the leading writer of English fiction, unless we are to count some novelists of finer skill and greater force in the American condition of English fiction. But unhappily for his supremacy the vaster and deeper and fresher naturalism of Mr. Thomas Hardy began to make itself known, and William Black’s chance was gone. There was no later chance, and he was left to end his career to the strains of the muted second violin, which form the saddest music in the world to the performer’s ear.

  III

  No writers could be more opposite in their realism than the novelist whom I have just named, and Black. Both are poets, and both are apt to seek in nature the charm they make us feel, but the final sense of the mystery and loveliness imparted by Mr. Hardy is of something which his heroine confers upon her circumstance, and in Black’s fiction it seems something which she derives from it. I am now thinking chiefly of such a girl as Gertrude White in “Macleod of Dare,” who is as dependent upon society for means of self-expression as any heroine I know, and yet is as genuine a personality as may be met in fiction. She was recognized with an art which was perhaps at its best in her portrayal, and she had a freshness which is now gone from her type. She belongs to that social moment, since satirized beyond recall, when aesthetics began to be so generally received into society that society seemed to have become æsthetical. In that instant of fine confusion the stage especially went into society so much that it might well appear that society had gone upon the stage; and a brilliant and beautiful young actress like Gertrude White, meeting Sir Keith Macleod at a fashionable house, would never have suggested the theatre to the young Highlander dropped down in London from his native isles.

  “‘But you have seen our elm — our own elm,’ said Mrs. Ross, who was arranging some azaleas that had just been sent her. ‘We are very proud of our elm. G
ertrude, will you take Sir Keith to see our noble elm?’ He had almost forgotten who Gertrude was; but the next second he recognized the low and almost timid voice that said: ‘Will you come this way, then, Sir Keith?’ He turned, and found that it was Miss White who spoke. How was it that this girl, who was only a girl, seemed to do things so easily, and gently, and naturally, without any trace of embarrassment or self-consciousness? He followed her, and knew not which to admire the more, the careless simplicity of her manner or the singular symmetry of her tall and slender figure. He had never seen any statue or any picture in any book to be compared with this woman, who was so fine and rare and delicate that she seemed only a beautiful tall flower in this garden of flowers. There was a strange simplicity, too, about her dress — a plain, tight-fitting, tight-sleeved dress of unrelieved black, her only adornment being some bands of big blue beads worn loosely round the neck. The black figure, in this shimmer of rose pink and gold and flowers, was effective enough; but even the finest of pictures or the finest of statues has not the subtle attraction of a graceful carriage. Macleod had never seen any woman walk as this woman walked, in so stately and yet so simple a way. From Mrs. Ross’s chief drawing-room they passed into an ante-drawing-room, which was partly a passage and partly a conservatory. On the window side were some rows of Cape heaths....