Studies in Literature and History
Sir Miles and Lady Warrington are scandalised by their nephew's
extravagance, and refuse all help to the spendthrift.
'How much of this behaviour goes on daily in respectable society,
think you? You can fancy Lord and Lady Macbeth concocting a murder,
and coming together with some little awkwardness, perhaps, when the
transaction was done and over; but my Lord and Lady Skinflint, when
they consult in their bedroom about giving their luckless nephew a
helping hand, and determine to refuse, and go down to family
prayers and meet their children and domestics, and discourse
virtuously before them...?'
And so on, for a page or two, in a tone that some may think almost as
sophistical as the reasoning by which the Skinflints might excuse to
themselves their pharisaical behaviour. Such interpolations are
artistically incorrect, and out of harmony with the proper conception
of a well-wrought work of fiction, in which the moral should be
conveyed through the action and the dialogue, and the meditations
should be left to be done by the reader himself.
We must, therefore, place _The Virginians_ below _Esmond_ in the order
of merit. Nevertheless, these two novels, with _Barry Lyndon_, are
most important and valuable contributions to the English historical
series. Nothing like them had been written before, and nothing equal
has been written after them, with the single exception of _John
Inglesant_. They possess one essential quality that ought to
distinguish all fiction founded on the history of bygone times--they
are, so far as posterity can judge at all, faithful and effective
representations of manners. Now, the inferior practitioner in this
particular school, being prevented by indolence or incapacity from
mastering his period and acquiring insight into its ways of thought
and living, is too often content to cover up his deficiencies by
indenting freely on the theatrical wardrobe and armoury. He deals
largely in the costumes of the day; he supplies himself plentifully
with old-fashioned phrases; he is fond of old furniture; he is
strongest, in fact, upon the external and decorative aspect of the
society to which he introduces us. Most of the romances written in
imitation of Scott had this tendency; and this same feebleness
underlies the superfluous minuteness of detail that may be observed in
the decadent realists of the present day. Nothing of this sort can be
alleged against Thackeray, who works from inward outwardly in his
creations of character, and whose personages are truly historical in
the sense that they move and speak naturally according to the ideas
and circumstances of their age, the dialect and dress being merely
added as appropriate colouring. It is, indeed, a peculiarity of
Thackeray's novels, which distinguishes him alike from the romancer
and the modern naturalist that they contain hardly any description,
that he is never professedly picturesque, that he relies entirely on
passing strokes and effective details given by the way. In Scott we
have superb descriptive pieces of scenery, of storms, of the interiors
of a castle or a Gothic cathedral; and some of the best living
novelists are much given to elaborate landscape painting. But we doubt
whether half a page of deliberately picturesque description can be
found in any of Thackeray's first-class works. He will sometimes
sketch off the inside of a house or the look of a town, but with
natural scenery he does not concern himself; he is, for the most part,
entirely occupied with the analysis of character, or with the
emotional side of life; and he seems constantly to bear in mind the
Aristotelian maxim that life consists in action. His principal
instrument for the exhibition of motive, for the evolution of his
story, for bringing out qualities, is dialogue, which he manages with
great dexterity and effect, giving it point and raciness, and
avoiding the snare--into which recent social novelists have been
falling--of insignificance and prolixity. The method of easy,
sparkling, natural dialogue for developing the plot and distinguishing
the personages is said to have been first transferred from the theatre
to the novel by Walter Scott. At any rate, the use of it on a large
scale, which has since been carried to the verge of abuse, began with
the Waverley novels; where we find abundance of that humorous
vernacular talk in which Shakespeare excelled, though for the romance
Cervantes may be registered as its inventor. In Thackeray's hands
dramatic conversation, as of actors on the stage, becomes of very
prominent importance, not only for the illustration of manners in
society, but also for dressing up the subordinate figures of his
company. He is now no longer the caricaturist of earlier days; he
employs the popular dialect and comic touches with effective
moderation. And he avails himself very freely, in _The Virginians_, of
the privilege which belongs to the historical novelist, who is allowed
to make the reader acquainted with the notabilities of the period not
only for the movement of his drama, but also for a passing glance or
casual introduction, as might happen in any place of public resort or
in a crowded _salon_. Franklin, Johnson, and Richardson, George Selwyn
and Lord Chesterfield, cross the stage and disappear, after a few
remarks of their own or the author's. For military officers, who
figure in all his novels, he has ever a kindly word; and also for
sailors, although it is only in his last (unfinished) novel that he
takes up the navy. For English clergymen, especially for bishops, he
has no indulgence at all; and he seems to be possessed by the
commonplace error of believing that the prevailing types of the
Anglican Church in the eighteenth century were the courtier-bishop
and the humble obsequious chaplain. The typical Irishman of fiction,
with his mixture of recklessness and cunning, warm-hearted and
unveracious, is to be found, we think, in every one of Thackeray's
larger novels, except in _The Virginians_; the Scotsman is rare,
having been considerably used up by Walter Scott and his assiduous
imitators. We may notice (parenthetically) that our own day is
witnessing a marvellous revival of Highlanders and Lowlanders in
fiction, from Jacobite adventures to the pawky wit and humble
incidents of the kailyard.
In _The Newcomes_ we return regretfully to the novel of contemporary
society; wherewith disappears all the light haze of enchantment that
hangs over the revival of distant times, even though they lie no
further behind us than the eighteenth century. Such a change of scene
necessitates and completes the transition from the romantic to the
realistic; for how can a picture of our own environment, which any one
can verify, avoid being more or less photographic? In one sense
it is a continuation of the historic novel, which has only to put
off its archaic or literary costume to appear as a presentation of
social history brought up to date; the method of minute description,
the portrayal of manners, are the same, with the drawback that
the celebrities of the day must be kept off the stage. Any
eighteenth-century personage might figure, with effect, in _The
Virginians_, while Macaulay and Palmerston could hardly have been
sketched off, however briefly and good-naturedly, in _The Newcomes_.
In all essential respects the tone and treatment are unaltered in the
two stories; although the ironical spirit, restrained in the
historical novels by a sense of dramatic consistency, is again among
us having great wrath, as Thackeray surveys the aspect of the London
world around him. The character of Colonel Newcome, his distinguished
gallantry, his spotless honour, his simplicity and credulity, is
drawn with truth and tenderness; and some of the lesser folk are
admirable for their kindliness and unselfishness. But what a society
is this in which the Colonel is landed upon his return from India! He
calls, with his son, at his brother's house in Bryanston Square:
'"It's my father," said Clive to the "menial" who opened the door;
"my aunt will see Colonel Newcome."
'"Missis not at home," said the man. "Missis is gone in the
carriage. Not at this door. Take them things down the area steps,
young man," bawls out the domestic to a pastry-cook's boy ... and
John struggles back, closing the door on the astonished Colonel.'
An astonishment that most Londoners of his time would have assuredly
shared; unless, indeed, the West-end doorstep has gained wonderfully
by the scrubbing of sixty years. On the relations between masters and
servants Thackeray was never more severe than in this book; he is
irritated by the marching in of the household brigade to family
prayers, and he declares that we 'know no more of that race which
inhabits the basement floor, than of the men and brethren of
Timbuctoo, to whom some among us send missionaries'--a monstrous
imputation. He constantly resumes the moralising attitude; and his
pungent persiflage is poured out, as if from an apocalyptic vial, upon
worldliness and fashionable insolence. Sir Barnes Newcome's divorce
from the unhappy Lady Clara furnishes a text for sad and solemn
anathema upon the mercenary marriages in Hanover Square, where 'St.
George of England may behold virgin after virgin offered up to the
devouring monster, Mammon, may see virgin after virgin given away,
just as in the Soldan of Babylon's time, but with never a champion to
come to the rescue.' We would by no means withhold from the modern
satirist of manners the privilege of using forcibly figurative
language or of putting a lash to his whip. Yet if his novels are, as
we have suggested, to be regarded as historical, in the sense of
recording impressions drawn from life for the benefit of posterity,
such passages as those just quoted from Thackeray raise the general
question whether documentary evidence of this kind as to the state of
society at a given period is as valuable and trustworthy as it has
usually been reckoned to be. He has himself declared that 'upon the
morals and national manners, works of satire afford a world of light
that one would in vain look for in regular books of history'--that
_Pickwick_, _Roderick Random_, and _Tom Jones_, 'give us a better idea
of the state and ways of the people than one could gather from any
pompous or authentic histories.' Whether Fielding and Smollett's
contemporaries would have endorsed this opinion is the real question;
for on such a point the judgment of Thackeray, who lived a century
after them, cannot be conclusive. It is probable that to an Englishman
of that day the novels of these two authors appeared to be
extraordinary caricatures of actual society, in town or country.
On the other hand, the story is excellently conducted, and each actor
performs with consummate skill his part or hers; for in none of his
works has Thackeray given higher proof of that dramatic power which
brings out situations, leads on to the _denouement_, and points the
moral of the story, by a skilful manipulation of various incidents and
a remarkably numerous variety of characters. There, is one chapter
(ix. of vol. II.), headed 'Two or Three Acts of a Little Comedy,'
where he carries on the plot entirely by a light and sparkling
dialogue which may be compared to some of A. de Musset's wittiest
_Proverbes_. It is a book that could only have been composed by a
first-class artist in the maturity of his powers; and for that very
reason we must regret that it is steeped in bitterness; while
Thackeray's rooted hostility to mothers-in-law misguides him into the
aesthetic error of admitting a virago to scold frantically almost over
the colonel's death-bed. The unvarying meanness and selfishness of