Externals

________________________________________________
Title:     Externals
Author: Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch [More Titles by Quiller-Couch]

Nov. 18, 1893. Story and Anecdote.

I suppose I am no more favored than most people who write stories in receiving from unknown correspondents a variety of suggestions, outlines of plots, sketches of situations, characters, and so forth. One cannot but feel grateful for all this spontaneous beneficence. The mischief is that in ninety-nine cases out of a hundred (the fraction is really much smaller) these suggestions are of no possible use.

Why should this be? Put briefly, the reason is that a story differs from an anecdote. I take the first two instances that come into my head: but they happen to be striking ones, and, as they occur in a book of Mr. Kipling's, are safe to be well known to all my correspondents. In Mr. Kipling's fascinating book, _Life's Handicap, On Greenhow Hill_ is a story; _The Lang Men o' Larut_ is an anecdote. _On Greenhow Hill_ is founded on a study of the human heart, and it is upon the human heart that the tale constrains one's interest. _The Lang Men o' Larut_ is just a yarn spun for the yarn's sake: it informs us of nothing, and is closely related (if I may use some of Mr. Howells' expressive language for the occasion) to "the lies swapped between men after the ladies have left the table." And the reason why the story-teller, when (as will happen at times) his invention runs dry, can take no comfort in the generous outpourings of his unknown friends, is just this--that the plots are merely plots, and the anecdotes merely anecdotes, and the difference between these and a story that shall reveal something concerning men and women is just the difference between bad and good art.

Let us go a step further. At first sight it seems a superfluous contention that a novelist's rank depends upon what he can see and what he can tell us of the human heart. But, as a matter of fact, you will find that four-fifths at least of contemporary criticism is devoted to matters quite different--to what I will call Externals, or the Accidents of Story-telling: and that, as a consequence, our novelists are spending a quite unreasonable proportion of their labor upon Externals. I wrote "as a consequence" hastily, because it is always easier to blame the critics. If the truth were known, I dare say the novelists began it with their talk about "documents," "the scientific method," "observation and experiment," and the like.

The Fallacy of "Documents."

Now you may observe a man until you are tired, and then you may begin and observe him over again: you may photograph him and his surroundings: you may spend years in studying what he eats and drinks: you may search out what his uncles died of, and the price he pays for his hats, and--know nothing at all about him. At least, you may know enough to insure his life or assess him for Income Tax: but you are not even half-way towards writing a novel about him. You are still groping among externals. His unspoken ambitions; the stories he tells himself silently, at midnight, in his bed; the pain he masks with a dull face and the ridiculous fancies he hugs in secret--these are the Essentials, and you cannot get them by Observation. If you can discover these, you are a Novelist born: if not, you may as well shut up your note-book and turn to some more remunerative trade. You will never surprise the secret of a soul by accumulating notes upon Externals.

Local Color.

Then, again, we have Local Color, an article inordinately bepraised just now; and yet an External. For human nature, when every possible allowance has been made for geographical conditions, undergoes surprisingly little change as we pass from one degree of latitude or longitude to another. The Story of Ruth is as intelligible to an Englishman as though Ruth had gleaned in the stubble behind Tess Durbeyfield. Levine toiling with the mowers, Achilles sulking in his tent, Iphigeneia at the altar, Gil Blas before the Archbishop of Granada have as close a claim on our sympathy as if they lived but a few doors from us. Let me be understood. I hold it best that a novelist should be intimately acquainted with the country in which he lays his scene. But, none the less, the study of local color is not of the first importance. And the critic who lavishes praise upon a writer for "introducing us to an entirely new atmosphere," for "breaking new ground," and "wafting us to scenes with which the jaded novel-reader is scarcely acquainted," and for "giving us work which bears every trace of minute local research," is praising that which is of secondary importance. The works of Richard Jefferies form a considerable museum of externals of one particular kind; and this is possibly the reason why the Cockney novelist waxes eloquent over Richard Jefferies. He can now import the breath of the hay-field into his works at no greater expense of time and trouble than taking down the _Gamekeeper at Home_ from his club bookshelf and perusing a chapter or so before settling down to work. There is not the slightest harm in his doing this: the mistake lies in thinking local color (however acquired) of the first importance.

In judging fiction there is probably no safer rule than to ask one's self, How far does the pleasure excited in me by this book depend upon the transitory and trivial accidents that distinguish this time, this place, this character, from another time, another place, another character? And how far upon the abiding elements of human life, the constant temptations, the constant ambitions, and the constant nobility and weakness of the human heart? These are the essentials, and no amount of documents or local color can fill their room.

* * * * *

Sept. 30, 1893. The Country as "Copy".

The case of a certain small volume of verse in which I take some interest, and its treatment at the hands of the reviewers, seems to me to illustrate in a sufficiently amusing manner a trick that the British critic has been picking up of late. In a short account of Mr. Hosken, the postman poet, written by way of preface to his _Verses by the Way_ (Methuen & Co.), I took occasion to point out that he is not what is called in the jargon of these days a "nature-poet"; that his poetic bent inclines rather to meditation than to description; and that though his early struggles in London and elsewhere have made him acquainted with many strange people in abnormal conditions of life, his interest has always lain, not in these striking anomalies, but in the destiny of humanity as a whole and its position in the great scheme of things.

These are simple facts. I found them, easily enough, in Mr. Hosken's verse--where anybody else may find them. They also seem to me to be, for a critic's purpose, ultimate facts. It is an ultimate fact that Publius Virgilius Maro wore his buskins somewhat higher in the heel than did Quintus Horatius Flaccus: and no critic, to my knowledge, has been impertinent enough to point out that, since Horace had some experience of the tented field, while Virgil was a stay-at-home courtier, therefore Horace should have essayed to tell the martial exploits of Trojan and Rutulian while Virgil contented himself with the gossip of the Via Sacra. Yet--to compare small things with great--this is the mistake into which our critics have fallen in Mr. Hosken's case; and I mention it because the case is typical. They try to get behind the ultimate facts and busy themselves with questions they have no proper concern with. Some ask petulantly why Mr. Hosken is not a "nature-poet." Some are gravely concerned that "local talent" (_i.e._ the talent of a man who happens to dwell in some locality other than the critic's) should not concern itself with local affairs; and remind him--

"To thine orchard edge belong
All the brass and plume of song."]

As if a man may not concern himself with the broader problems of life and attack them with all the apparatus of recorded experience, unless he happen to live on one bank or other of the Fleet Ditch! If a man have the gift, he can find all the "brass and plume of song" in his orchard edge. If he have not, he may (provided he be a _bonâ fide_ traveller) find it elsewhere. What, for instance, were the use of telling Keats: "To thy surgery belong all the brass and plume of song"? He couldn't find it there, so he betook himself to Chapman and Lempriere. If you ask, "What right has a country postman to be handling questions that vexed the brain of Plato?"--I ask in return, "What right had John Keats, who knew no Greek, to busy himself with Greek mythology?" And the answer is that each has a perfect right to follow his own bent.

The assumption of many critics that only within the metropolitan cab radius can a comprehensive system of philosophy be constructed, and that only through the plate-glass windows of two or three clubs is it possible to see life steadily, and see it whole, is one that I have before now had occasion to dispute. It is joined in this case to another yet more preposterous--that from a brief survey of an author's circumstances we can dictate to him what he ought to write about, and how he ought to write it. And I have observed particularly that if a writer be a countryman, or at all well acquainted with country life, all kinds of odd entertainment is expected of him in the way of notes on the habits of birds, beasts, and fishes, on the growth of all kinds of common plants, on the proper way to make hay, to milk a cow, and so forth.

Richard Jefferies.

Now it is just the true countryman who would no more think of noting these things down in a book than a Londoner would think of stating in a novel that Bond Street joins Oxford Street and Piccadilly: simply because they have been familiar to him from boyhood. And to my mind it is a small but significant sign of a rather lamentable movement--of none other, indeed, than the "Rural Exodus," as Political Economists call it--that each and every novelist of my acquaintance, while assuming as a matter of course that his readers are tolerably familiar with the London Directory, should, equally as a matter of course, assume them to be ignorant of the commonest features of open-air life. I protest there are few things more pitiable than the transports of your Cockney critic over Richard Jefferies. Listen, for instance, to this kind of thing:--

"Here and there upon the bank wild gooseberry and currant bushes may be found, planted by birds carrying off ripe fruit from the garden. A wild gooseberry may sometimes be seen growing out of the decayed 'touchwood' on the top of a hollow withy-pollard. Wild apple trees, too, are not uncommon in the hedges.

"The beautiful rich colour of the horse-chestnut, when quite ripe and fresh from its prickly green shell, can hardly be surpassed; underneath the tree the grass is strewn with shells where they have fallen and burst. Close to the trunk the grass is worn away by the restless trampling of horses, who love the shade its foliage gives in summer. The oak apples which appear on the oaks in spring--generally near the trunk--fall off in summer, and lie shrivelled on the ground, not unlike rotten cork, or black as if burned. But the oak-galls show thick on some of the trees, light green, and round as a ball; they will remain on the branches after the leaves have fallen, turning brown and hard, and hanging there till the spring comes again."--_Wild Life in a Southern County_, pp. 224-5.

I say it is pitiable that people should need to read these things in print. Let me apply this method to some district of south-west London--say the Old Brompton Road:--

"Here and there along the street Grocery Stores and shops of Italian Warehousemen may be observed, opened here as branches of bigger establishments in the City. Three gilt balls may occasionally be seen hanging out under the first-floor windows of a 'pawnbroker's' residence. House-agents, too, are not uncommon along the line of route.

"The appearance of a winkle, when extracted from its shell with the aid of a pin, is extremely curious. There is a winkle-stall by the South Kensington Station of the Underground Railway. Underneath the stall the pavement is strewn with shells, where they have fallen and continue to lie. Close to the stall is a cab-stand, paved with a few cobbles, lest the road be worn overmuch by the restless trampling of cab-horses, who stand here because it is a cab-stand. The thick woollen goods which appear in the haberdashers' windows through the winter--generally _inside_ the plate glass--give way to garments of a lighter texture as the summer advances, and are put away or exhibited at decreased prices. But collars continue to be shown, quite white and circular in form; they will probably remain, turning grey as the dust settles on them, until they are sold."

This is no travesty. It is a hasty, but I believe a pretty exact application of Jefferies' method. And I ask how it would look in a book. If the critics really enjoy, as they profess to, all this trivial country lore, why on earth don't they come into the fresh air and find it out for themselves? There is no imperative call for their presence in London. Ink will stain paper in the country as well as in town, and the Post will convey their articles to their editors. As it is, they do but overheat already overheated clubs. Mr. Henley has suggested concerning Jefferies' works that

"in years to be, when the whole island is one vast congeries of streets, and the fox has gone down to the bustard and the dodo, and outside museums of comparative anatomy the weasel is not, and the badger has ceased from the face of the earth, it is not doubtful that the _Gamekeeper_ and _Wild Life_ and the _Poacher_--epitomising, as they will, the rural England of certain centuries before--will be serving as material authority for historical descriptions, historical novels, historical epics, historical pictures, and will be honoured as the most useful stuff of their kind in being."

Let me add that the movement has begun. These books are already supplying the club-novelist with his open-air effects: and, therefore, the club-novelist worships them. From them he gathers that "wild apple-trees, too, are not uncommon in the hedges," and straightway he informs the public of this wonder. But it is hard on the poor countryman who, for the benefit of a street-bred reading public, must cram his books with solemn recitals of his A, B, C, and impressive announcements that two and two make four and a hedge-sparrow's egg is blue.

* * * * *

Aug. 18, 1894. A Defence of "Local Fiction."

Under the title "Three Years of American Copyright" the _Daily Chronicle_ last Tuesday published an account of an interview with Mr. Brander Matthews, who holds (among many titles to distinction) the Professorship of Literature in Columbia College, New York. Mr. Matthews is always worth listening to, and has the knack of speaking without offensiveness even when chastising us Britons for our national peculiarities. His conversation with the _Daily Chronicle's_ interviewer contained a number of good things; but for the moment I am occupied with his answer to the question "What form of literature should you say is at present in the ascendant in the United States?" "Undoubtedly," said Mr. Matthews, "what I may call local fiction."

"Every district of the country is finding its 'sacred poet.' Some of them have only a local reputation, but all possess the common characteristic of starting from fresh, original, and loving study of local character and manners. You know what Miss Mary E. Wilkins has done for New England, and you probably know, too, that she was preceded in the same path by Miss Sarah Orne Jewett and the late Mrs. Rose Terry Cooke. Mr. Harold Frederic is performing much the same service for rural New York, Miss Murfree (Charles Egbert Craddock) for the mountains of Tennessee, Mr. James Lane Allen for Kentucky, Mr. Joel Chandler Harris for Georgia, Mr. Cable for Louisiana, Miss French (Octave Thanet) for Iowa, Mr. Hamlin Garland for the western prairies, and so forth. Of course, one can trace the same tendency, more or less clearly, in English fiction...."

And Mr. Matthews went on to instance several living novelists, Scotch, Irish, and English to support this last remark.

The matter, however, is not in doubt. With Mr. Barrie in the North, and Mr. Hardy in the South; with Mr. Hall Caine in the Isle of Man, Mr. Crockett in Galloway, Miss Barlow in Lisconnell; with Mr. Gilbert Parker in the territory of the H.B.C., and Mr. Hornung in Australia; with Mr. Kipling scouring the wide world, but returning always to India when the time comes to him to score yet another big artistic success; it hardly needs elaborate proof to arrive at the conclusion that 'locality' is playing a strong part in current fiction.

The thing may possibly be overdone. Looking at it from the artistic point of view as dispassionately as I may, I think we are overdoing it. But that, for the moment, is not the point of view I wish to take. If for the moment we can detach ourselves from the prejudice of fashion and look at the matter from the historical point of view--if we put ourselves into the position of the conscientious gentleman who, fifty or a hundred years hence, will be surveying us and our works--I think we shall find this elaboration of "locality" in fiction to be but a swing-back of the pendulum, a natural revolt from the thin-spread work of the "carpet-bagging" novelist who takes the whole world for his province, and imagines he sees life steadily and sees it whole when he has seen a great deal of it superficially.

The "carpet-bagger" still lingers among us. We know him, with his "tourist's return" ticket, and the ready-made "plot" in his head, and his note-book and pencil for jotting down "local color." We still find him working up the scenery of Bolivia in the Reading Room of the British Museum. But he is going rapidly out of fashion; and it is as well to put his features on record and pigeon-hole them, if only that we may recognize him on that day when the pendulum shall swing him triumphantly back into our midst, and "locality" shall in its turn pass out of vogue.

I submit this simile of the pendulum with some diffidence to those eager theorists who had rather believe that their art is advancing steadily, but at a fair rate of speed, towards perfection. My own less cheerful--yet not altogether cheerless view--is that the various fashions in art swing to and fro upon intersecting curves. Some of the points of intersection are fortunate points--others are obviously the reverse; and generally the fortunate points lie near the middle of each arc, or the mean; while the less fortunate ones lie towards the ends, that is, towards excess upon one side or another. I have already said that, in the amount of attention they pay to locality just now, the novelists seem to be running into excess. If I must choose between one excess and the other--between the carpet-bagger and the writer of "dialect-stories," each at his worst--I unhesitatingly choose the latter. But that is probably because I happened to be born in the 'sixties.

Let us get back (I hear you implore) to the historical point of view, if possible: anywhere, anywhere, out of the _Poetics!_ And I admit that a portion of the preceding paragraph reads like a bad parody of that remarkable work. Well, then, I believe that our imaginary historian--I suppose he will be a German: but we need not let our imagination dwell upon _that_--will find a dozen reasons in contemporary life to account for the attention now paid by novelists to "locality." He will find one of them, no doubt, in the development of locomotion by steam. He will point out that any cause which makes communication easier between two given towns is certain to soften the difference in the characteristics of their inhabitants: that the railway made communication easier and quicker year by year; and its tendency was therefore to obliterate local peculiarities. He will describe how at first the carpet-bagger went forth in railway-train and steamboat, rejoicing in his ability to put a girdle round the world in a few weeks, and disposed to ignore those differences of race and region which he had no time to consider and which he was daily softening into uniformity. He will then relate that towards the close of the nineteenth century, when these differences were rapidly perishing, people began to feel the loss of them and recognize their scientific and romantic value; and that a number of writers entered into a struggle against time and the carpet-bagger, to study these differences and place them upon record, before all trace of them should disappear. And then I believe our historian, though he may find that in 1894 we paid too much attention to the _minutiæ_ of dialect, folk-lore and ethnic differences, and were inclined to overlay with these the more catholic principles of human conduct, will acknowledge that in our hour we did the work that was most urgent. Our hour, no doubt, is not the happiest; but, since this is the work it brings, there can be no harm in going about it zealously.

[The end]
Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch's essay: Externals

________________________________________________



GO TO TOP OF SCREEN