Anthony Trollope - Autobiography of Anthony Trollope

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

an effort of the reader;--and not only some proposition of meaning,

but the very sense, no more and no less, which the writer has intended

to put into his words. What Macaulay says should be remembered by

all writers: "How little the all-important art of making meaning

pellucid is studied now! Hardly any popular author except myself

thinks of it." The language used should be as ready and as efficient

a conductor of the mind of the writer to the mind of the reader

as is the electric spark which passes from one battery to another

battery. In all written matter the spark should carry everything;

but in matters recondite the recipient will search to see that

he misses nothing, and that he takes nothing away too much. The

novelist cannot expect that any such search will be made. A young

writer, who will acknowledge the truth of what I am saying, will

often feel himself tempted by the difficulties of language to

tell himself that some one little doubtful passage, some single

collocation of words, which is not quite what it ought to be, will

not matter. I know well what a stumbling-block such a passage may

be. But he should leave none such behind him as he goes on. The

habit of writing clearly soon comes to the writer who is a severe

critic to himself.

As to that harmonious expression which I think is required, I shall

find it more difficult to express my meaning. It will be granted, I

think, by readers that a style may be rough, and yet both forcible

and intelligible; but it will seldom come to pass that a novel written

in a rough style will be popular,--and less often that a novelist

who habitually uses such a style will become so. The harmony which

is required must come from the practice of the ear. There are few

ears naturally so dull that they cannot, if time be allowed to them,

decide whether a sentence, when read, be or be not harmonious. And

the sense of such harmony grows on the ear, when the intelligence

has once informed itself as to what is, and what is not harmonious.

The boy, for instance, who learns with accuracy the prosody of a

Sapphic stanza, and has received through his intelligence a knowledge

of its parts, will soon tell by his ear whether a Sapphic stanza

be or be not correct. Take a girl, endowed with gifts of music,

well instructed in her art, with perfect ear, and read to her such

a stanza with two words transposed, as, for instance--

Mercuri, nam te docilis magistro

Movit Amphion CANENDO LAPIDES,

Tuque testudo resonare septem

Callida nervis--

and she will find no halt in the rhythm. But a schoolboy with

none of her musical acquirements or capacities, who has, however,

become familiar with the metres of the poet, will at once discover

the fault. And so will the writer become familiar with what is

harmonious in prose. But in order that familiarity may serve him

in his business, he must so train his ear that he shall be able

to weigh the rhythm of every word as it falls from his pen. This,

when it has been done for a time, even for a short time, will become

so habitual to him that he will have appreciated the metrical duration

of every syllable before it shall have dared to show itself upon

paper. The art of the orator is the same. He knows beforehand how

each sound which he is about to utter will affect the force of his

climax. If a writer will do so he will charm his readers, though

his readers will probably not know how they have been charmed.

In writing a novel the author soon becomes aware that a burden

of many pages is before him. Circumstances require that he should

cover a certain and generally not a very confined space. Short novels

are not popular with readers generally. Critics often complain of

the ordinary length of novels,--of the three volumes to which they

are subjected; but few novels which have attained great success in

England have been told in fewer pages. The novel-writer who sticks

to novel-writing as his profession will certainly find that this

burden of length is incumbent on him. How shall he carry his burden