by Unknown
BOYS’ BOOKS: THEIR GLORIFICATION.
THOSE of us who were boys not so very long ago rather resent the knowledge that our favorite authors are now writing for another generation. We used to conceive them very old fellows, who would die off as we grew up; yet here is Ballantyne with another book for boys this winter, and as for Hope, I met him lately, hardly middle-aged yet. I used to think that Hope (or else Ballantyne or Marryat) ought to be made King of England, and after over a dozen years I found I remember his “My Schoolboy Friends” better than he did himself. He couldn’t remember the two tutors, Paddy Williamson and Vials, and when I said there were two boys called Abbing and Lessing at Whiteminster, which is the school he writes about, he said, rather indifferently, “very likely.” I would let no other man talk slightingly of that book, which is in some ways more delightful than “Tom Brown’s Schooldays.” When the boys at the school at which I looked in now and then should have been following Balbus building his eternal walls, or with Caius flying from the city, they were sitting on a wall frequently, arguing the question whether Mr. Hope did right in killing off Harry Kennedy. I always thought that young-ladyish, and I am glad to know now that the author thinks so too. “My Schoolboy Friends” was one of his earliest efforts, and he feared breaking away altogether from tradition, so he introduced this little bit of sentiment. The success of Farrar’s “Eric” and “St. Winifred’s” made him take his one false step. To speak disrespectfully of “Eric” is to be bold; for are there not thousands of ladies, and girls who will be ladies shortly, that “love” the book? Hundreds of boys’ books have been written for girls, and Farrar wrote the best of them. His boys are girls in knickerbockers. Mention them not in the same breath with “My Schoolboy Friends.” If there are any boys to-day who have not read that book, let them see to it that it is put into their hands at Christmas. They need not be so particular about having the continuation of it, called “George’s Enemies.” Hope writes at his fireside with his paper on his knees, which must be almost as pleasant as the method of a distinguished lady-novelist who finds that she writes best in bed.
About fifteen years ago I heard that R. M. Ballantyne lived in Edinburgh. Then I wanted to see Edinburgh. Though a dozen years at least have passed since I read any of his books, I could sit down to-day and write out the story of nearly every one of them that had been written up to that time. No boobs take such a hold upon one as the stories he reads in his boyhood, and the more reason, therefore, have we to be proud that there are such manly boys’ books in the land. Ballantyne was always delightful. “Shifting Winds,” with the stout gentleman under whom the boudoir chairs came to grief; “Gascoigne, the Sandal-Wood Trader,” with its glorious race; “Ungava,” with its never-to-be-forgotten end of Brave Dick Prince — how they all come back to one when he recalls his school days! Best of all (how solemnly we discussed which was best of all! ) was “The Coral Island.” Many writers of romances have had romantic notions, but you can’t do better than wreck your hero on an island. To this day I could not pass a book by in which there was a desert island. The Spectator said that Mr. Stevenson’s “Black Arrow” (his only poor book) stands as a tale for boys next to “Ivanhoe.” I scorn this. What about “Robinson Crusoe?” Yes, and what about “The Coral Island,” and Jules Yerne’s masterpiece, “The Mysterious Island?” Ballantyne’s is the most fascinating idea. Three boys are wrecked on an island. One of them, I remember, is called Ralph, and another Peterkin. Who that has read the story will ever forget how they emptied their pockets to count their worldly possessions, or the cave which was reached by diving? “The Swiss Family Robinson,” though I remember Fritz and Ernest, does not compare with “The Coral Island,” which is worth a thousand of “King Solomon’s Mines.” No boy could be expected to respect another boy who had not read Ballantyne’s bewitching book.
Even “Ivanhoe” I could only put second to “Robinson Crusoe.” It is to rob a boy of his birthright to keep him from either of them. Thinking it over now, there can be no doubt that Rebecca was very superior to Rowena, but in the old days when we really lived, that was not an important point. Ivanhoe licked the Templar, and Rowena was the girl he wanted, therefore Scott had to see to it that Ivanhoe got Rowena. “We thought Bois-Gilbert a villain from beginning to end, though we admired the way he ran off with Rebecca in his arms, without noticing that she was heavy. Really we had not time to devote much attention to the girls. Who could think of them when Robin Hood was waiting round the corner? The Black Knight, too, what a superb creation he is! From the boy’s point of view, “Ivanhoe” has only one blot! That is when Ivanhoe goes out to fight Bois-Gilbert over the affair of Rebecca, and the Templar is getting the best of it when he has a stroke. Ivanhoe was unwell at the time, but we resented the manner of his victory. Well or ill, it was a duty as a hero to go in and lick Bois-Gilbert in a fair, legitimate manner.
“Quentin Durward” is Scott’s second best book for boys, though it is not so very much better than “The Abbot.” The way Scott’s boys ran their swords into all impertinent persons is grand. Schoolmasters would have had to be careful with them.
Just as the boy has his desert island period, there comes a time when, in imagination, he must take to the backwoods. He wants scalps. Kingston was of some assistance to boys in this condition; but Kingston, though he wrote, perhaps, more books than any other man of his day, had little humor, and if he finished one story at eight o’clock, was ready to begin another at half-past. He produced all kinds of boys’ books of fair merit, but none that made one wonder why the Government did not name a star after him. Captain Mayne Reid was exciting, with his headless horseman, but he was lurid, dragged in horrors, had little of the true boyish spirit. They must both be waved aside to allow of the entrance of a quiet-looking backwoodsman, with an eagle eye, who chuckles to himself, but never laughs. Off with your hats, for you are in the presence of him who was called severally Deerslayer, Hawkeye, Pathfinder. This is one of the two or three really great figures in boys’ books. Some think Hawthorne, some Mrs. Beecher Stowe, some Mr. Howells, the greatest American writer of fiction. For my part, I declare for Fenimore Cooper. He alone has produced characters that will live. Scott never had a better than the Pathfinder. Have we not all lain in the long grass with the hawk-eyed man of the unerring rifle? We have sat round his fire, the Serpent in our company. We have been on a boat with him on queer moonlight nights, when he was the deerslayer; we have been with him at the burial of the last of the Mohicans; we have seen him old and done in “The Prairie.” To me he is one of the immortals.
Before or after he has been on the warpath with the Mohicans, the boy bethinks himself of a life on the ocean wave. Then it is time to ask at the library for “one of Marryat’s;” any one will do, so long as you can get all the others by and by. Mr. David Hannay, son of a brilliant father not soon to be forgotten in Edinburgh — the late James Hannay, of the Courant — was complaining the other day that Marryat has hardly the position in literature that he deserves. This is, perhaps, true. One hears more nowadays of smaller men; but among boys, it may be presumed, Marryat is as popular as ever. He is one of the happy authors who can be got at sixpence. I was lately told that Marryat was coarse, which so amazed me that I re-read some of his books. I found things in them that the boy sees not at all. The coarseness is of the rough-and-ready kind, put in hurriedly — for Marryat was a careless writer — but the books are essentially manly, and breed brave boys. Which is your favorite? I believe I have a special weakness for “Percival Keene,” whose practical jokes stick to the memory. But what of its kind could be better than “Jacob Faithful,” with old Stapleton and his daughter, and old Tom and young Tom? “Peter Simple” would always be a favorite, though it contained nothing but the escape from the French prison, and most of us have revelled in the three-cornered duel in “Midshipman Easy.”
“Tom Cringle’s Log” should be remembered with Marryat. The only sea-writer of to-day to mention with them is Mr. Clark Bussell, and
his delightful early books were much his best. He always has a sentimental mate and a beautiful girl on board.
THE LOST WORKS OF GEORGE MEREDITH.
“CHLOE, and Other Tales; with an Essay on the Comic Spirit,” by George Meredith, is a book publishers have owed the world for nearly ten years. Since the early summer of 1879 Mr. Meredith has written no short stories, and apparently he has permanently stayed his hand. The whole of the book, without which the new edition of his works is seriously incomplete, lies buried in a defunct magazine. The essay “On the Idea of Comedy, and of the Uses of the Comic Spirit,” is a lecture delivered by Mr. Meredith at the London Institution in 1877, and is so much the most brilliant and suggestive exposition of his idea of comedy that beside it the criticisms of other writers are of little account. There are three stories, one of them a pure comedy in Mr. Meredith’s best manner; the second he calls “a realistic tale;” while the third and greatest, an episode in the history of Beau Beamish, is a noble tragedy that ends the life of one of the most lovable women this author has ever drawn. Are a hundred thousand words of a master’s writings to perish of neglect? Although the magazine is dead, why should all its trophies be buried with it?
Here there is no intention to discuss Mr. Meredith’s position in letters, only an argument that these three stories have almost as much title to represent him as his longer novels. The comedy is “The Case of General Ople and Lady Camper.” Of these two delightfully contrasted characters it may be said, as Mr. Meredith has himself written of Miss Austen’s Emma and her lover, that they “might walk straight into a comedy, were the plot arranged for them;” indeed, there is scene after scene in the story which leaves the vivid impression of an acted play. Cut out the author’s comments, and a comedy for the stage remains, though not probably a comedy with sufficient guffaw in it to command success. The central idea is intensely comic. General Ople, having retired from the army, buys a riverside house, which he likes to call a “gentlemanly residence.” His daughter, eighteen years old, keeps his house for him, and by and by he has for a neighbor an eccentric person, Lady Camper. The general puts her age down at forty, Elizabeth says fifty, and soon Ople is so interested in her ladyship (and himself) that he has no eyes for the love-affair growing up between his daughter and Lady Camper’s nephew. He admires wealth, titles, and his own gallant way with ladies; soon his neighbor is his touchstone. Her attic is the only window that has a view of his garden, so she asks him to lop a branch off one of his trees that she may spy into his grounds without having to ascend. Her object is to watch the meetings of her nephew and Elizabeth, but the blind general thinks he has made another conquest. She fancies he has come to talk of the young people, when he is really dressed for a proposal. But Lady Camper is quick, and can be outspoken. He compliments her on her morning bloom. “It can hardly be visible,” she replies; “I have not painted yet.” The infatuated man asks her hand in marriage, whereupon she informs him that she is seventy, the effect of which announcement on the general is “to raise him from his chair in a sitting posture as if he had been blown up.” He is fifty-five. Being a fine gentleman, the general will not draw back, yet the young-looking old lady is not affected to sentiment. She will not suffer him to speak of his “gentlemanly residence,” nor to say it is a “Bijou” (as if he were swearing); she shudders at such a word as “lady-friend” or “female,” and is sarcastic when he clips “Thank you” down to “Thanks.” They quarrel over the loves of Elizabeth and her officer, and the engagement is ended. The general is free again. “Now,” he murmurs, with a sigh of relief, “I know the worst!” — but he does not. Her terrible ladyship goes abroad, and sends him from time to time a series of maddening sketches. They are satires on his self-contemplation and on certain of his mannerisms. One cartoon represents him in a sentry-box, and while the English flag is borne along by a troop of shadows he is saying, “I say I should be very happy to carry it, but I cannot quit this gentlemanly residence.” There are scenes between him and the moon, whom he tells of his amorous triumphs, asking her to say whether she is a “female,” that she may be triumphed over. While he courts the moon he says, “In spite of her paint, I could not have conceived her age to be so enormous.” He sends her his “thanks” for a piece of lunar green cheese, and points her out as “my lady-friend.” Even when she returns home Lady Camper draws pictures of her lover in church, and then he is so heartbroken that he, the best-dressed of men, goes to a garden-party without a collar or necktie. Tragedy is averted by their getting married, her ladyship now explaining that she is little over forty. To shame him of selfishness she has forced him to think of himself night and day — a homoeopathic cure. She is as complex as he is simple, but she accepts him because she is an artist and he is picturesque.
Want of space compels us to pass by “The House on the Beach,” which contains one striking figure, a former shopkeeper, who, like the immortal “old Mel,” wants to be a gentleman. But, unlike the tailor, he would be a gentleman on the cheap. The closing scene is great. This hero has been “presented.” He loves to don his court dress in private, and he has it on when he is rescued from a flood that ruins him. The contrast between the costume and the wearer’s condition haunts the memory; otherwise this is the least important story of the three.
“The Tale of Chloe” gives a picture of the wells as vivid as the pump-room scenes in “Harry Richmond.” Beau Beamish is king at the wells when a great and aged nobleman arrives to ask his aid. His Grace had married lately a beautiful dairymaid, who wants to see life. The duke is willing to leave her at the wells under Mr. Beamish’s protection, for of late she has yawned occasionally, and than that earthquake and saltpetre are less threatening. Mr. Beamish consents to put her in charge of one Chloe, who had loved a villain, named Caseldy, so well that she had impoverished herself to save him from prison. He has gone away, but she loves him still, and Beau Beamish speaks so enthusiastically of her virtue that the duke says, “She has, I see, preserved her comeliness.” One of the wittiest scenes in the story shows Mr. Beamish and the exquisite Chloe bringing the duchess to the wells. They have met her outside the town, and seen her parting with a gallant, who turns out to be the faithless Caseldy. This gentleman appears at the wells to further his love affair with the duchess from the milk-pails, and as Chloe realizes what is going on she dies slowly before our eyes, as it were, though the others understand nothing. The duchess agrees to elope with Caseldy. It is night, and Chloe is supposed to have retired to rest. Early morn finds the duchess ready, and, looking from her window, she can discern a coach in shadow in the street. In the dark room she feels her way toward the door. Her hand touches something that is not the handle. It hangs heavily like a gown. “Before any other alarm had struck her brain, the hand she felt with was in a palsy, her mouth gaped, her throat thickened, the dust-ball rose in her throat, and the effort to swallow it down and get breath kept her from acute speculation while she felt again, pinched, plucked at the thing, ready to laugh, ready to shriek. Above her head, all on one side, the thing had a round white top. Could it be a hand that her touch had slid across? An arm too! this was an arm! She clutched it, imagining that it clung to her. She pulled it to release herself from it, desperately she pulled, and a lump descended, and a flash of all the torn nerves of her body told her that a dead human body was upon her.” That is how Chloe died. The author strikes a real tragic note; Beau Beamish is a memorable comedy figure, but Mr. Meredith could not have created Chloe had he not dug down to the very roots of human nature. Is she to be lost to posterity because the story of her life would only fill a hundred pages?
THE HUMOR OF DICKENS.
WE have still with us in this country two novelists who may be called great a hundred years hence, and a few months ago one of them explained oddly why there is no Dickens nowadays. Even though I could write a “Martin Chuzzlewit,” he said in effect, no magazine would print it. The editor would write to me saying that Mrs. Gamp, for instance, was vulgar, or worse, and must be s
truck out. If he was a good-natured editor, he would add that he did not object to her himself, but had to consider his public.
Another reason why there is no second Dickens is that immortals are always scarce. Despite those careful editors, many writers have attempted to be Dickens over again, and only very lately have they realized that if they are to be great they must find out a way for themselves. Imitation of Dickens lasted long, but it seemed to have gone out, which is well, for the trick was easy to writers and exasperating to readers. It did Dickens harm. Who has not read a capital imitation of Dickens’s humor that nevertheless did not make him laugh? Who has not read a beautiful imitation of Dickens’s pathos that nevertheless did not make him cry? Yet the man or woman who has neither laughed nor cried with Dickens has missed a birthright. By all means imitate Dickens, one might say to young novelists, if you can. This, be it noted, however, is only another way of saying, “I have no objection, sir, to your being a genius.” Imitation would be an admirable thing if it took you all the way. So far it has only helped small writers to repeat the mannerisms of great writers. You are not really another Stevenson, though you wear a velvet coat. It is more difficult than this.
Of all the novelists that ever lived Dickens was the keenest observer. If he and Scott and Thackeray and George Meredith had gone out for a stroll together, he would have seen more that was worth taking note of than any of them, though he could not always have used it to more effect. Scott would have seen its picturesque side best. Thackeray would have sighed to observe that it would not have happened had not some lady pretended to have three servants when she had only one, and Mr. Meredith would have had it inside out. But Dickens would have felt it most, and would have missed nothing in it that was on the surface. Its comic aspect would have been more to him than to the others, and its pathetic side, too. Probably if you had been a witness of the incident which all four writers subsequently introduced into a story, you would decide that Dickens’s picture was the truest, and hence the best. Probably, too, you would be quite wrong. There is a general notion that we meet Dickens’s characters more frequently in real life than the characters of any other novelist. Few of us have not had occasion to say at some period of our life that we knew a Pecksniff. The leader-writers are constantly calling certain politicians Micawbers, and at general elections the candidates who win only moral victories are all Mark Tapleys. Silas Marners are uncommon. “We seldom call our friends (even behind their backs) Joseph Sedley, and we could call them Sir Willoughby Patterne to their face, for they would not understand the inference. Yet are there many Marners, Sedleys, and Patternes in the world, and not one Micawber. With very few exceptions, Dickens’s best characters are caricatures. They are not nearly so human as the Marners, and therefore to the hasty reader they are much more real. This seems curious reasoning, but it is true. Of Dickens it has been said that his characters are only characteristics. He introduces to us a man who shows his teeth, and henceforth the teeth are the man. When we see a man showing his teeth, we remember Carker. Dickens was also fond of ticketing his characters with a catch-phrase, often repeated with quaint effect, often merely an irritation. It is Micawber’s favorite remark that we recall him by, and the same can be said of Mr. Toots. Take away many of the Dickens catch-phrases, and you kill the man who uses them. This is because he never was a man, but only the thousandth part of one. Micawber is no more a complete human being than a button is a suit of clothes. Fielding gives us the whole man, and for that very reason his characters do not take such grip of the memory. It is only to the superficial observer that we can be distinguished from each other by hard and fast lines. The one of us is not black and the other white, and a third and fourth red and blue, as Dickens paints us. For every point of difference we have a dozen in common, and thus the novelist who draws a complete man never creates a figure that stands out from all other figures. He aims not at producing beings theatrically effective, less at representing a man indeed than at representing man. This is the difference in object between Dickens and Mr. Meredith.
