Autobiography of Anthony Trollope by Anthony Trollope

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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,
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
to the end? How shall he cover his space? Many great artists have
by their practice opposed the doctrine which I now propose to
preach;--but they have succeeded I think in spite of their fault
and by dint of their greatness. There should be no episodes in a
novel. Every sentence, every word, through all those pages, should
tend to the telling of the story. Such episodes distract the
attention of the reader, and always do so disagreeably. Who has not
felt this to be the case even with The Curious Impertinent and with
the History of the Man of the Hill. And if it be so with Cervantes
and Fielding, who can hope to succeed? Though the novel which you
have to write must be long, let it be all one. And this exclusion
of episodes should be carried down into the smallest details.
Every sentence and every word used should tend to the telling of
the story. "But," the young novelist will say, "with so many pages
before me to be filled, how shall I succeed if I thus confine
myself;--how am I to know beforehand what space this story of mine
will require? There must be the three volumes, or the certain number
of magazine pages which I have contracted to supply. If I may not
be discursive should occasion require, how shall I complete my task?
The painter suits the size of his canvas to his subject, and must
I in my art stretch my subject to my canas?" This undoubtedly must
be done by the novelist; and if he will learn his business, may
be done without injury to his effect. He may not paint different
pictures on the same canvas, which he will do if he allow himself
to wander away to matters outside his own story; but by studying
proportion in his work, he may teach himself so to tell his story
that it shall naturally fall into the required length. Though his
story should be all one, yet it may have many parts. Though the
plot itself may require but few characters, it may be so enlarged
as to find its full development in many. There may be subsidiary
plots, which shall all tend to the elucidation of the main story,
and which will take their places as part of one and the same
work,--as there may be many figures on a canvas which shall not to
the spectator seem to form themselves into separate pictures.

There is no portion of a novelist's work in which this fault of
episodes is so common as in the dialogue. It is so easy to make
any two persons talk on any casual subject with which the writer
presumes himself to be conversant! Literature, philosophy, politics,
or sport, may thus be handled in a loosely discursive style; and
the writer, while indulging himself and filling his pages, is apt
to think that he is pleasing his reader. I think he can make no
greater mistake. The dialogue is generally the most agreeable part
of a novel; but it is only so as long as it tends in some way to
the telling of the main story. It need not seem to be confined to
that, but it should always have a tendency in that direction. The
unconscious critical acumen of a reader is both just and severe.
When a long dialogue on extraneous matter reaches his mind, he at
once feels that he is being cheated into taking something which he
did not bargain to accept when he took up that novel. He does not
at that moment require politics or philosophy, but he wants his
story. He will not perhaps be able to say in so many words that at
some certain point the dialogue has deviated from the story; but
when it does so he will feel it, and the feeling will be unpleasant.
Let the intending novel-writer, if he doubt this, read one of
Bulwer's novels,--in which there is very much to charm,--and then
ask himself whether he has not been offended by devious conversations.

And the dialogue, on which the modern novelist in consulting the
taste of his probable readers must depend most, has to be constrained
also by other rules. The writer may tell much of his story in
conversations, but he may only do so by putting such words into
the mouths of his personages as persons so situated would probably
use. He is not allowed for the sake of his tale to make his characters
give utterance to long speeches, such as are not customarily heard
from men and women. The ordinary talk of ordinary people is carried
on in short, sharp, expressive sentences, which very frequently are
never completed,--the language of which even among educated people
is often incorrect. The novel-writer in constructing his dialogue
must so steer between absolute accuracy of language--which would
give to his conversation an air of pedantry, and the slovenly
inaccuracy of ordinary talkers, which if closely followed would
offend by an appearance of grimace--as to produce upon the ear of
his readers a sense of reality. If he be quite real he will seem
to attempt to be funny. If he be quite correct he will seem to
be unreal. And above all, let the speeches be short. No character
should utter much above a dozen words at a breath,--unless the writer
can justify to himself a longer flood of speech by the specialty
of the occasion.

In all this human nature must be the novel-writer's guide. No doubt
effective novels have been written in which human nature has been
set at defiance. I might name Caleb Williams as one and Adam Blair
as another. But the exceptions are not more than enough to prove
the rule. But in following human nature he must remember that he does
so with a pen in his hand, and that the reader who will appreciate
human nature will also demand artistic ability and literary aptitude.

The young novelist will probably ask, or more probably bethink
himself how he is to acquire that knowledge of human nature which
will tell him with accuracy what men and women would say in this
or that position. He must acquire it as the compositor, who is to
print his words, has learned the art of distributing his type--by
constant and intelligent practice. Unless it be given to him to
listen and to observe,--so to carry away, as it were, the manners
of people in his memory as to be able to say to himself with assurance
that these words might have been said in a given position, and that
those other words could not have been said,--I do not think that
in these days he can succeed as a novelist.

And then let him beware of creating tedium! Who has not felt the
charm of a spoken story up to a certain point, and then suddenly
become aware that it has become too long and is the reverse of
charming. It is not only that the entire book may have this fault,
but that this fault may occur in chapters, in passages, in pages,
in paragraphs. I know no guard against this so likely to be effective
as the feeling of the writer himself. When once the sense that the
thing is becoming long has grown upon him, he may be sure that it
will grow upon his readers. I see the smile of some who will declare
to themselves that the words of a writer will never be tedious to
himself. Of the writer of whom this may be truly said, it may be
said with equal truth that he will always be tedious to his reader.

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