Anthony Trollope - Autobiography of Anthony Trollope
be the beginning and the end of the novelist's work,--and novels have
been written which seem to be without other attractions,--nothing
can be more dull or more useless. But not on that account are we
averse to tragedy in prose fiction. As in poetry, so in prose, he
who can deal adequately with tragic elements is a greater artist
and reaches a higher aim than the writer whose efforts never carry
him above the mild walks of everyday life. The Bride of Lammermoor
is a tragedy throughout, in spite of its comic elements. The life
of Lady Castlewood, of whom I have spoken, is a tragedy. Rochester's
wretched thraldom to his mad wife, in Jane Eyre, is a tragedy.
But these stories charm us not simply because they are tragic, but
because we feel that men and women with flesh and blood, creatures
with whom we can sympathise, are struggling amidst their woes. It
all lies in that. No novel is anything, for the purposes either
of comedy or tragedy, unless the reader can sympathise with the
characters whose names he finds upon the pages. Let an author so
tell his tale as to touch his reader's heart and draw his tears,
and he has, so far, done his work well. Truth let there be,--truth
of description, truth of character, human truth as to men and
women. If there be such truth, I do not know that a novel can be
too sensational.
I did intend when I meditated that history of English fiction to
include within its pages some rules for the writing of novels;--or
I might perhaps say, with more modesty, to offer some advice on
the art to such tyros in it as might be willing to take advantage
of the experience of an old hand. But the matter would, I fear,
be too long for this episode, and I am not sure that I have as yet
got the rules quite settled in my own mind. I will, however, say
a few words on one or two points which my own practice has pointed
out to me.
I have from the first felt sure that the writer, when he sits down
to commence his novel, should do so, not because he has to tell
a story, but because he has a story to tell. The novelist's first
novel will generally have sprung from the right cause. Some series
of events, or some development of character, will have presented
itself to his imagination,--and this he feels so strongly that he
thinks he can present his picture in strong and agreeable language
to others. He sits down and tells his story because he has a story
to tell; as you, my friend, when you have heard something which
has at once tickled your fancy or moved your pathos, will hurry
to tell it to the first person you meet. But when that first novel
has been received graciously by the public and has made for itself
a success, then the writer naturally feeling that the writing of
novels is within his grasp, looks about for something to tell in
another. He cudgels his brains, not always successfully, and sits
down to write, not because he has something which he burns to
tell, but because be feels it to be incumbent on him to be telling
something. As you, my friend, if you are very successful in
the telling of that first story, will become ambitious of further
storytelling, and will look out for anecdotes,--in the narration
of which you will not improbably sometimes distress your audience.
So it has been with many novelists, who, after some good work,
perhaps after very much good work, have distressed their audience
because they have gone on with their work till their work has become
simply a trade with them. Need I make a list of such, seeing that
it would contain the names of those who have been greatest in the
art of British novel-writing? They have at last become weary of
that portion of a novelist's work which is of all the most essential
to success. That a man as he grows old should feel the labour of
writing to be a fatigue is natural enough. But a man to whom writing
has become a habit may write well though he be fatigued. But the
weary novelist refuses any longer to give his mind to that work of
observation and reception from which has come his power, without
which work his power cannot be continued,--which work should
be going on not only when he is at his desk, but in all his walks
abroad, in all his movements through the world, in all his intercourse
with his fellow-creatures. He has become a novelist, as another has
become a poet, because he has in those walks abroad, unconsciously
for the most part, been drawing in matter from all that he has seen
and heard. But this has not been done without labour, even when
the labour has been unconscious. Then there comes a time when he
shuts his eyes and shuts his ears. When we talk of memory fading
as age comes on, it is such shutting of eyes and ears that we mean.
The things around cease to interest us, and we cannot exercise
our minds upon them. To the novelist thus wearied there comes the
demand for further novels. He does not know his own defect, and
even if he did he does not wish to abandon his own profession. He
still writes; but he writes because he has to tell a story, not
because he has a story to tell. What reader of novels has not felt
the "woodenness" of this mode of telling? The characters do not
live and move, but are cut out of blocks and are propped against the
wall. The incidents are arranged in certain lines--the arrangement
being as palpable to the reader as it has been to the writer--but
do not follow each other as results naturally demanded by previous
action. The reader can never feel--as he ought to feel--that only
for that flame of the eye, only for that angry word, only for that
moment of weakness, all might have been different. The course of
the tale is one piece of stiff mechanism, in which there is no room
for a doubt.
These, it may be said, are reflections which I, being an old
novelist, might make useful to myself for discontinuing my work,
but can hardly be needed by those tyros of whom I have spoken. That
they are applicable to myself I readily admit, but I also find that
they apply to many beginners. Some of us who are old fail at last
because we are old. It would be well that each of us should say to
himself,
"Solve senescentem mature sanus equum, ne
Peccet ad extremum ridendus."
But many young fail also, because they endeavour to tell stories
when they have none to tell. And this comes from idleness rather
than from innate incapacity. The mind has not been sufficiently at
work when the tale has been commenced, nor is it kept sufficiently
at work as the tale is continued. I have never troubled myself much
about the construction of plots, and am not now insisting specially
on thoroughness in a branch of work in which I myself have not been
very thorough. I am not sure that the construction of a perfected
plot has been at any period within my power. But the novelist has
other aims than the elucidation of his plot. He desires to make
his readers so intimately acquainted with his characters that the
creatures of his brain should be to them speaking, moving, living,
human creatures. This he can never do unless he know those fictitious
personages himself, and he can never know them unless he can live
with them in the full reality of established intimacy. They must
be with him as he lies down to sleep, and as he wakes from his
dreams. He must learn to hate them and to love them. He must argue
with them, quarrel with them, forgive them, and even submit to them.
He must know of them whether they be cold-blooded or passionate,
whether true or false, and how far true, and how far false. The
depth and the breadth, and the narrowness and the shallowness of
each should be clear to him. And, as here, in our outer world, we
know that men and women change,--become worse or better as temptation
or conscience may guide them,--so should these creations of his
change, and every change should be noted by him. On the last day
of each month recorded, every person in his novel should be a month
older than on the first. If the would-be novelist have aptitudes
that way, all this will come to him without much struggling;--but
if it do not come, I think he can only make novels of wood.
It is so that I have lived with my characters, and thence has come
whatever success I have obtained. There is a gallery of them, and
of all in that gallery I may say that I know the tone of the voice,
and the colour of the hair, every flame of the eye, and the very
clothes they wear. Of each man I could assert whether he would have
said these or the other words; of every woman, whether she would
then have smiled or so have frowned. When I shall feel that this
intimacy ceases, then I shall know that the old horse should be
turned out to grass. That I shall feel it when I ought to feel it,
I will by no means say. I do not know that I am at all wiser than
Gil Blas' canon; but I do know that the power indicated is one without
which the teller of tales cannot tell them to any good effect.
The language in which the novelist is to put forth his story, the
colours with which he is to paint his picture, must of course be to
him matter of much consideration. Let him have all other possible
gifts,--imagination, observation, erudition, and industry,--they
will avail him nothing for his purpose, unless he can put forth
his work in pleasant words. If he be confused, tedious, harsh, or
unharmonious, readers will certainly reject him. The reading of
a volume of history or on science may represent itself as a duty;
and though the duty may by a bad style be made very disagreeable,
the conscientious reader will perhaps perform it. But the novelist
will be assisted by no such feeling. Any reader may reject his
work without the burden of a sin. It is the first necessity of his
position that he make himself pleasant. To do this, much more is
necessary than to write correctly. He may indeed be pleasant without
being correct,--as I think can be proved by the works of more than
one distinguished novelist. But he must be intelligible,--intelligible
without trouble; and he must be harmonious.
Any writer who has read even a little will know what is meant by
the word intelligible. It is not sufficient that there be a meaning
that may be hammered out of the sentence, but that the language
should be so pellucid that the meaning should be rendered without
