Anthony Trollope - Autobiography of Anthony Trollope

it is for him to show, as he carries on his tale, that his Lydia,

or his Leicester, or his Beatrix, will be dishonoured in the estimation

of all readers by his or her vices. Let a woman be drawn clever,

beautiful, attractive,--so as to make men love her, and women

almost envy her,--and let her be made also heartless, unfeminine,

and ambitious of evil grandeur, as was Beatrix, what a danger is

there not in such a character! To the novelist who shall handle it,

what peril of doing harm! But if at last it have been so handled

that every girl who reads of Beatrix shall say: "Oh! not like

that;--let me not be like that!" and that every youth shall say:

"Let me not have such a one as that to press my bosom, anything

rather than that!"--then will not the novelist have preached his

sermon as perhaps no clergyman can preach it?

Very much of a novelist's work must appertain to the intercourse

between young men and young women. It is admitted that a novel

can hardly be made interesting or successful without love. Some few

might be named, but even in those the attempt breaks down, and the

softness of love is found to be necessary to complete the story.

Pickwick has been named as an exception to the rule, but even

in Pickwick there are three or four sets of lovers, whose little

amatory longings give a softness to the work. I tried it once with

Miss Mackenzie, but I had to make her fall in love at last. In this

frequent allusion to the passion which most stirs the imagination

of the young, there must be danger. Of that the writer of fiction

is probably well aware. Then the question has to be asked, whether

the danger may not be so averted that good may be the result,--and

to be answered.

respect the necessity of dealing with love is advantageous,--advantageous

from the very circumstance which has made love necessary to

all novelists. It is necessary because the passion is one which

interests or has interested all. Every one feels it, has felt it,

or expects to feel it,--or else rejects it with an eagerness which

still perpetuates the interest. If the novelist, therefore, can

so handle the subject as to do good by his handling, as to teach

wholesome lessons in regard to love, the good which he does will

be very wide. If I can teach politicians that they can do their

business better by truth than by falsehood, I do a great service;

but it is done to a limited number of persons. But if I can make

young men and women believe that truth in love will make them

happy, then, if my writings be popular, I shall have a very large

class of pupils. No doubt the cause for that fear which did exist

as to novels arose from an idea that the matter of love would be

treated in an inflammatory and generally unwholesome manner. "Madam,"

says Sir Anthony in the play, "a circulating library in a town is

an evergreen tree of diabolical knowledge. It blossoms through the

year; and depend on it, Mrs. Malaprop, that they who are so fond of

handling the leaves will long for the fruit at last." Sir Anthony

was no doubt right. But he takes it for granted that the longing

for the fruit is an evil. The novelist who writes of love thinks

differently, and thinks that the honest love of an honest man is

a treasure which a good girl may fairly hope to win,--and that if

she can be taught to wish only for that, she will have been taught

to entertain only wholesome wishes.

I can easily believe that a girl should be taught to wish to love

by reading how Laura Bell loved Pendennis. Pendennis was not in

truth a very worthy man, nor did he make a very good husband; but

the girl's love was so beautiful, and the wife's love when she became

a wife so womanlike, and at the same time so sweet, so unselfish,

so wifely, so worshipful,--in the sense in which wives are told

that they ought to worship their husband,--that I cannot believe

that any girl can be injured, or even not benefited, by reading of

Laura's love.

There once used to be many who thought, and probably there still

are some, even here in England, who think that a girl should hear

nothing of love till the time come in which she is to be married.

That, no doubt, was the opinion of Sir Anthony Absolute and of Mrs.

Malaprop. But I am hardly disposed to believe that the old system

was more favourable than ours to the purity of manners. Lydia

Languish, though she was constrained by fear of her aunt to hide

the book, yet had Peregrine Pickle in her collection. While human

nature talks of love so forcibly it can hardly serve our turn

to be silent on the subject. "Naturam expellas furca, tamen usque

recurret." There are countries in which it has been in accordance

with the manners of the upper classes that the girl should be brought

to marry the man almost out of the nursery--or rather perhaps out

of the convent--without having enjoyed that freedom of thought

which the reading of novels and of poetry will certainly produce;

but I do not know that the marriages so made have been thought to

be happier than our own.

Among English novels of the present day, and among English

novelists, a great division is made. There are sensational novels

and anti-sensational, sensational novelists and anti-sensational,

sensational readers and anti-sensational. The novelists who are

considered to be anti-sensational are generally called realistic.

I am realistic. My friend Wilkie Collins is generally supposed

to be sensational. The readers who prefer the one are supposed to

take delight in the elucidation of character. Those who hold by

the other are charmed by the continuation and gradual development

of a plot. All this is, I think, a mistake,--which mistake arises

from the inability of the imperfect artist to be at the same time

realistic and sensational. A good novel should be both, and both in

the highest degree. If a novel fail in either, there is a failure

in art. Let those readers who believe that they do not like

sensational scenes in novels think of some of those passages from

our great novelists which have charmed them most:--of Rebecca in

the castle with Ivanhoe; of Burley in the cave with Morton; of the

mad lady tearing the veil of the expectant bride, in Jane Eyre; of

Lady Castlewood as, in her indignation, she explains to the Duke

of Hamilton Henry Esmond's right to be present at the marriage of

his Grace with Beatrix;--may I add of Lady Mason, as she makes her

confession at the feet of Sir Peregrine Orme? Will any one say that

the authors of these passages have sinned in being over-sensational? No

doubt, a string of horrible incidents, bound together without truth

in detail, and told as affecting personages without character,--wooden

blocks, who cannot make themselves known to the reader as men

and women, does not instruct or amuse, or even fill the mind with

awe. Horrors heaped upon horrors, and which are horrors only in

themselves, and not as touching any recognised and known person,

are not tragic, and soon cease even to horrify. And such would-be

tragic elements of a story may be increased without end, and

without difficulty. I may tell you of a woman murdered,--murdered

in the same street with you, in the next house,--that she was a

wife murdered by her husband,--a bride not yet a week a wife. I may

add to it for ever. I may say that the murderer roasted her alive.

There is no end to it. I may declare that a former wife was treated

with equal barbarity; and may assert that, as the murderer was led

away to execution, he declared his only sorrow, his only regret

to be, that he could not live to treat a third wife after the same

fashion. There is nothing so easy as the creation and the cumulation

of fearful incidents after this fashion. If such creation and cumulation

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,