Aspects of the novel
towards the north-east of Scotland, provided himself with a ticket in
one of those public carriages which travel between Edinburgh and the
Queensferry, at which place, as the name implies, and as is well known
to all my northern readers, there is a passage-boat for crossing the
Frith of Forth.
That is the first sentence in _The Antiquary_--not an exciting sentence,
but it gives us the time, the place, and a young man,--it sets the
story-teller's scene. We feel a moderate interest in what the young man
will do next. His name is Lovel, and there is a mystery about him. He is
the hero or Scott would not call him genteel, and he is sure to make the
heroine happy. He meets the Antiquary, Jonathan Oldbuck. They get into
the coach, not too quickly, become acquainted, Lovel visits Oldbuck at
his house. Near it they meet a new character, Edie Ochiltree. Scott is
good at introducing fresh characters. He slides them very naturally, and
with a promising air. Edie Ochiltree promises a good deal. He is a
beggar--no ordinary beggar, a romantic and reliable rogue, and will he
not help to solve the mystery of which we saw the tip in Lovel? More
introductions: to Sir Arthur Wardour (old family, bad manager); to his
daughter Isabella (haughty), whom the hero loves unrequited; and to
Oldbuck's sister Miss Grizzle. Miss Grizzle is introduced with the same
air of promise. As a matter of fact she is just a comic turn--she leads
nowhere, and your story-teller is full of these turns. He need not
hammer away all the time at cause and effect. He keeps just as well
within the simple boundaries of his art if he says things that have no
bearing on the development. The audience thinks they will develop, but
the audience is shock-headed and tired and easily forgets. Unlike the
weaver of plots, the story-teller profits by ragged ends. Miss Grizzle
is a small example of a ragged end; for a big one I would refer to a
novel that professes to be lean and tragic: _The Bride of Lammermoor_.
Scott presents the Lord High Keeper in this book with great emphasis and
with endless suggestions that the defects of his character will lead to
the tragedy, while as a matter of fact the tragedy would occur in almost
the same form if he did not exist--the only necessary ingredients in it
being Edgar, Lucy, Lady Ashton and Bucklaw. Well, to return to _The
Antiquary_, then there is a dinner, Oldbuck and Sir Arthur quarrel, Sir
Arthur is offended and leaves early with his daughter, and they try to
walk back to their own house across the sands. Tides rise over sands.
The tide rises. Sir Arthur and Isabel are cut off, and are confronted in
their peril by Edie Ochiltree. This is the first serious moment in the
story and this is how the story-teller who is a story-teller handles it:
While they exchanged these words, they paused upon the highest ledge of
rock to which they could attain; for it seemed that any farther attempt
to move forward could only serve to anticipate their fate. Here then
they were to await the sure, though slow progress of the raging element,
something in the situation of the martyrs of the Early Church, who,
exposed by heathen tyrants to be slain by wild beasts, were compelled
for a time to witness the impatience and rage by which the animals were
agitated, while awaiting the signal for undoing their grates and letting
them loose upon the victims.
Yet even this fearful pause gave Isabella time to collect the powers of
a mind naturally strong and courageous, and which rallied itself at this
terrible juncture. "Must we yield life," she said, "without a struggle?
Is there no path, however dreadful, by which we could climb the crag, or
at least attain some height above the tide, where we could remain till
morning, or till help comes? They must be aware of our situation, and
will raise the country to relieve us."
Thus speaks the heroine, in accents which certainly chill the reader.
Yet we want to know what happens next. The rocks are of cardboard, like
those in my dear Swiss Family; the tempest is turned on with one hand
while Scott scribbles away about Early Christians with the other; there
is no sincerity, no sense of danger in the whole affair; it is all
passionless, perfunctory, yet we do just want to know what happens next.
Why--Lovel rescues them. Yes; we ought to have thought of that; and what
then?
Another ragged end. Lovel is put by the Antiquary to sleep in a haunted
room, where he has a dream or vision of his host's ancestor, who says to
him, "Kunst macht Gunst," words which he does not understand at the
time, owing to his ignorance of German, and learns afterwards that they
mean "Skill wins Favour": he must pursue the siege of Isabella's heart.
That is to say the supernatural contributes nothing to the story. It is
introduced with tapestries and storms, but only a copy-book maxim
results. The reader does not know this though. When he hears "Kunst
macht Gunst," his attention reawakens ... then his attention is diverted
to something else, and the time-sequence goes on.
Picnic in the ruins of St. Ruth. Introduction of Dousterswivel, a wicked
foreigner, who has involved Sir Arthur in mining schemes and whose
superstitions are ridiculed because not of the genuine Border brand.
Arrival of Hector McIntyre, the Antiquary's nephew, who suspects Lovel
of being an impostor. The two fight a duel; Lovel, thinking he has
killed his opponent, flies with Edie Ochiltree, who has turned up as
usual. They hide in the ruins of St. Ruth, where they watch
Dousterswivel gulling Sir Arthur in a treasure-hunt. Lovel gets away on
a boat and--out of sight out of mind; we do not worry about him until he
turns up again. Second treasure-hunt at St. Ruth. Sir Arthur finds a
hoard of silver. Third treasure-hunt. Dousterswivel is soundly
cudgelled, and when he comes to himself sees the funeral rites of the
old Countess of Glenallan, who is being buried there at midnight and
with secrecy, that family being of the Romish persuasion.
Now the Glenallans are very important in the story, yet how casually
they are introduced! They are hooked on to Dousterswivel in the most
artless way. His pair of eyes happened to be handy, so Scott had a peep
through them. And the reader by now is getting so docile under the
succession of episodes that he just gapes, like a primitive cave man.
Now the Glenallan interest gets to work, the ruins of St. Ruth are
switched off, and we enter what may be called the "pre-story," where two
new characters intervene, and talk wildly and darkly about a sinful
past. Their names are: Elspeth Mucklebackit, a Sibyl of a fisherwoman,
and Lord Glenallan, son of the dead countess. Their dialogue is
interrupted by other events--by the arrest, trial and release of Edie
Ochiltree, by the death by drowning of another new character, and by the
humours of Hector McIntyre's convalescence at his uncle's house. But the
gist is that Lord Glenallan many years ago had married a lady called
Evelina Nevile, against his mother's wish, and had then been given to
understand that she was his half-sister. Maddened with horror, he had
left her before she gave birth to a child. Elspeth, formerly his
mother's servant, now explains to him that Evelina was no relation to
him, that she died in childbirth--Elspeth and another woman
attending--and that the child disappeared. Lord Glenallan then goes to
consult the Antiquary, who, as a Justice of the Peace, knew something of
the events of the time, and who had also loved Evelina. And what happens
next? Sir Arthur Wardour's goods are sold up, for Dousterswivel has
ruined him. And then? The French are reported to be landing. And then?
Lovel rides into the district leading the British troops. He calls
himself "Major Nevile" now. But even "Major Nevile" is not his right
name, for he is who but the lost child of Lord Glenallan, he is none
other than the legitimate heir to an earldom. Partly through Elspeth
Mucklebackit, partly through her fellow servant whom he meets as a nun
abroad, partly through an uncle who has died, partly through Edie
Ochiltree, the truth has come out. There are indeed plenty of reasons
for the dénouement, but Scott is not interested in reasons; he dumps
them down without bothering to elucidate them; to make one thing happen
after another is his only serious aim. And then? Isabella Wardour
relents and marries the hero. And then? That is the end of the story. We
must not ask "And then?" too often. If the time-sequence is pursued one
second too far it leads us into quite another country.
_The Antiquary_ is a book in which the life in time is celebrated
instinctively by the novelist, and this must lead to slackening of
emotion and shallowness of judgment, and in particular to that idiotic
use of marriage as a finale. Time can be celebrated consciously also,
and we shall find an example of this in a very different sort of book, a
memorable book: Arnold Bennett's _The Old Wives' Tale_. Time is the real
hero of _The Old Wives' Tale_. He is installed as the lord of
creation--excepting indeed of Mr. Critchlow, whose bizarre exemption
only gives added force. Sophia and Constance are the children of Time
from the instant we see them romping with their mother's dresses; they
are doomed to decay with a completeness that is very rare in literature.
They are girls, Sophia runs away and marries, the mother dies, Constance
marries, her husband dies, Sophia's husband dies, Sophia dies, Constance
dies, their old rheumatic dog lumbers up to see whether anything remains
in the saucer. Our daily life in time is exactly this business of
getting old which clogs the arteries of Sophia and Constance, and the
story that is a story and sounded so healthy and stood no nonsense
cannot sincerely lead to any conclusion but the grave. It is an
unsatisfactory conclusion. Of course we grow old. But a great book must
rest on something more than an "of course," and _The Old Wives' Tale_ is
very strong, sincere and sad,--it misses greatness.
What about _War and Peace_? that is certainly great, that likewise
emphasizes the effects of time and the waxing and waning of a
generation. Tolstoy, like Bennett, has the courage to show us people
getting old--the partial decay of Nicolay and Natasha is really more
sinister than the complete decay of Constance and Sophia: more of our
own youth seems to have perished in it. Then why is _War and Peace_ not
depressing? Probably because it has extended over space as well as over
time, and the sense of space until it terrifies us is exhilarating, and
leaves behind it an effect like music. After one has read _War and
Peace_ for a bit, great chords begin to sound, and we cannot say exactly
what struck them. They do not arise from the story, though Tolstoy is
quite as interested in what comes next as Scott, and quite as sincere as
Bennett. They do not come from the episodes nor yet from the characters.
They come from the immense area of Russia, over which episodes and
characters have been scattered, from the sum-total of bridges and frozen
rivers, forests, roads, gardens, fields, which accumulate grandeur and
sonority after we have passed them. Many novelists have the feeling for
place--Five Towns, Auld Reekie, and so on. Very few have the sense of
space, and the possession of it ranks high in Tolstoy's divine
equipment. Space is the lord of _War and Peace_, not time.
A word in conclusion about the story as the repository of a voice. It is
the aspect of the novelist's work which asks to be read out loud, which
appeals not to the eye, like most prose, but to the ear; having indeed
this much in common with oratory. It does not offer melody or cadence.
For these, strange as it may seem, the eye is sufficient; the eye,
backed by a mind that transmutes, can easily gather up the sounds of a