Studies in Literature and History
separate species--the Novel of Adventure and the Novel of Manners. The
former class has a very long pedigree. The early romance writer drew
his incidents from the field of heroic action and marvellous
enterprise; he revelled in noble sentiments, astonishing feats, and
the exhibition of all the cardinal virtues in tragic situations; his
mission was to preserve and hand down to us magnified figures of
mighty men, or the pictures of great events, as they had impressed
themselves upon the popular imagination. For such material he was
obliged to travel abroad into remote countries, or backward to bygone
ages; but if his images of gallant knights and fair damsels were well
modelled, if the language was superb, and the deeds or sufferings
sufficiently astonishing, no one cared about anachronisms,
incongruities, or improbabilities.
But as the heroic romance dwindled and withered under the dry light of
precise knowledge and extending erudition, the purveyors of fiction,
accommodating themselves to a more exacting taste, applied themselves
seriously to the reproduction of famous scenes and portraits by the
aid and guidance of historic documents and antiquarian research. The
modern romantic school, of whom the master, if not the founder, is
Scott, represented a clear step forward to what is now called Realism,
and a proportionate abandonment of the classic convention, or the
method of drawing from traditional or imaginary models. To Scott may
be ascribed the authoritative introduction of descriptions of
landscape, of storms, sunsets, and picturesque effects; not the
artificial scene-painting of Mrs. Radcliffe, but artistic delineations
of the aspects of earth, sea, and sky which gave depth and atmosphere
to his dramatic situations. From this period, also, may be dated the
practice, so entirely contrary to the spirit of true romance, of
verifying by documentary evidence the details of a story. It was Scott
who, in the first years of this century, set prominently the example
of appending copious notes to his stories in verse or prose, wherein
he displayed his archaeologic lore and produced his authorities for any
striking illustration of manners or characteristic incident. This
practice, which was largely adopted by others, was at least an
improvement upon the old unregenerate system of seasoning the
conversation of warriors and peasants with uncouth phrases picked up
at random, or trusting to mere fancy or accepted formula for the
description of battles or of the ways of folk in mediaeval castles and
cottages. But the process savoured too much of the workshop. A novel
or poem that required an appendix of notes and glossaries must be of
high excellence to avoid suspicious resemblance to an elaborate
literary counterfeit, since open and avowed borrowing from
dictionaries of antiquities or volumes of travel must damage the
illusion which is the indispensable element of romance. In Moore's
fantastic metrical romance of _Lalla Rookh_ the system was carried to
an extent that now seems ridiculous, for certain passages are loaded
with outlandish phrases or metaphors that are unintelligible except by
reference to the notes. Nevertheless the English public, being then
quite ignorant of the true East, tolerated Moore's sham Orientalism,
even though Byron's fine poems were just then exposing the difference
between working up the subject in a library and wandering in Asiatic
countries. Byron's language seems in the present day turgid, and his
Greeks and Turks may have a theatrical air, but his splendid
descriptive passages were drawn by a master hand straight from nature,
while his colouring, landscape, and costume are usually excellent; so
that his work also is a distinct movement in the direction of realism.
Yet it is to be observed that after Byron and Scott the metrical
romance, that most ancient form of tale-telling, fell rapidly into
disuse. The fact that Byron's latest poem, _Don Juan_, belonged
essentially to the coming realistic school, is a significant
indication of transition; and Scott's abandonment of poetry for prose,
which was a necessary consequence of his advance toward realism, gave
its death-blow to the earlier fashion.
By this time, indeed, the conventional writer of adventures, though he
held his ground up to or even beyond the middle of the century, was in
a state of incurable decadence. He was losing the confidence of the
general reader, who had picked up some precise notions regarding
appropriate scenery, language, and costume in sundry periods and
divers places, from China to Peru; and he was persecuted by that
mortal foe of the old romancer, the well-informed critic, who trampled
even upon a commonplace book well filled with references to standard
authorities, insisting upon careful study of the whole environment,
the dexterous incorporation of details, and delicate blending of local
colours. Severe pedagogic handling of a historic novel, as if it were
a paper done at some competitive examination, was too much for the old
school, which finally subsided into cheap popular editions, making way
for a new class of writers that adapted the Novel of Adventure to the
requirements of latter-day taste, to the widening of knowledge, and
the diversified expansion of our national life. The prevailing
tendency was now to confine the range of scene and action more and
more approximately to the contemporary period, to insist on genuine
materials, and to observe a stricter canon of probabilities, wherein
the discriminating reader fancied himself to be a judge. The use of
notes was discarded as contrary to the high artistic principle that in
fiction everything must resemble reality while nothing must be
demonstrably matter of fact. The appearance of famous personages must
be occasional, after the manner of gods in an epic poem; they must not
be, as formerly, the leading characters and chief actors in the drama.
And great battles, instead of marking the grand climacteric of a
story's development, were now merely traversed, so to speak, on their
outskirts, or were only approached near enough to throw a glowing
sidelight on certain groups and situations. The gradual adoption of
these limitations may be traced back to the naval and military novels
that reflect the traditions of the great French war. No one even then
thought of writing a romance with Nelson or Bonaparte as the hero, or
of finishing off in the full blaze of Trafalgar or in the rout of
Waterloo; although with Marryat and Lever the English reader revelled
in the dashing exploits or bacchanalian revels of sailors and
soldiers. Lever did indeed give glimpses of Wellington or Napoleon;
but his business was with Connaught Rangers and French guardsmen;
while Marryat and Michael Scott gave us daring sea-captains and
reckless sailors with inimitable vigour and animation.
But as the echo of thunderous battles by sea and land died away, this
particular offshoot of modern romance ceased to flourish, and has
never had any considerable revival. The tale-teller of adventure, like
his ancestor the epic poet, requires a certain haziness of atmosphere;
he must have elbow room for his inventive faculty; and he is liable to
be stifled in the flood of lucid narrative and inflexible facts let
loose upon recent events in our day by complete histories, personal
memoirs, public documents, war correspondence, and all-pervading
journalism. This is probably the main reason why the Crimean War and
the Indian Mutiny, which broke for brief intervals the long peace of
England, have furnished no fresh material contribution of importance
to the romance of war, either in prose or poetry, to stamp the memory
of a long weary siege, or of a short and bloody struggle, upon the
popular imagination. Another reason must be, of course, the
non-appearance in England of the _vates sacer_; for Tolstoi has shown
us that within and without Sebastopol there might be found material
for work of the highest order. However this may be, it is a remarkable
fact that just about that time the novel of adventure turned back for
a moment, in Kingsley's hands, to the spacious times of great
Elizabeth, to the Armada and the legends of filibustering on the
Spanish main; and at the present time we may observe that the leading
writer of this school goes back at least a hundred years for the field
of his best stories. The eighteenth century, whose politics,
philosophy, and literature seemed to Carlyle's somewhat bookish
conception to be flat, prosaic, and comparatively uninteresting, was
in truth for Englishmen pre-eminently the age of energetic activity,
which touched the high level of romantic enterprise at two points, the
Scottish rebellions and the exploits of famous buccaneers. Mr.
Stevenson has reopened, with great skill and success, these mines of
literary ore that had been discovered but only partially worked by
Walter Scott. His rare artistic instinct divined the rich veins which
they still contained; while in other stories his intimate acquaintance
with actual life and circumstance on the coasts and islands of the
Pacific Ocean has provided him with those elements of distance and
unfamiliarity which are essential, as we have suggested, to the
composition of the novel of adventure. Other less original writers
have travelled in search of these elements to the Australian bush or
the outlying half-explored regions of South Africa.
This very cursory survey of the main influences and circumstances that
have shaped the course and set the fashion of our modern novel of
adventure may be useful in explaining its actual position at the
present moment. Scepticism and research have effectually retrenched
the very liberal credit formerly assigned to romance writing; the art
now consists in spinning a long narrative out of authentic materials
which must be disguised or kept hidden; while its leading features are
a delight in elaborate accessories and that very modern sentiment, a
horror of anachronism. A few living artists, like Mr. Shorthouse and
Mr. Stevenson, can still excel under these difficult conditions,
which have driven a crowd of second-rate novelists into the extreme of
minute realism. Into this retreat, however, they have been followed by
a host of readers; for in these days of universal instruction and flat
uneventful existence nothing satisfies the average mind like
photographic detail, which is a commodity to be had of every
industrious or studious composer. As the range of accurate information
extends, as the dust heap of old records, private as well as public,
is sifted more narrowly, as the antique habit of taking things readily
for granted disappears, the novel becomes more and more an arrangement
of genuine facts and circumstances, interleaved by such fiction as the
skill and imagination of the author can produce. It may be worth
observing that this demand for exact verification has affected the use
of the early chronicles in two contrary ways; they are relied upon
implicitly or they are arbitrarily discredited, in proportion as the
facts stated appear credible or not credible to critics or professors
who are working upon them. All the particulars of a great battle or of
some famous event that can be gleaned out of some ancient monkish
annalist, who must always have collected his information by hearsay
and often after many years, are treated as authentic so long as they
do not sound improbable; but if they offend against the canon of
probability set up by a library-hunting student, they are liable to be
summarily rejected. We may venture upon the conjecture that the true
result of this process is to assimilate the work of the critical
historian much more nearly than he would for a moment allow to that of
a skilful historic novelist. A romancer of insight and imaginative