Studies in Literature and History
more practical than profound. The subjoined quotation is from a letter
to his daughter:
'What is right must always be right, before it was practised as
well as after. And if such and such a commandment delivered by
Moses was wrong, depend upon it, it was not delivered by God, and
the whole question of complete inspiration goes at once. And the
misfortune of dogmatic belief is that, the first principle granted
that the book called the Bible is written under the direct
dictation of God--for instance, that the Catholic Church is under
the direct dictation of God, and solely communicates with Him--that
Quashimaboo is the directly appointed priest of God, and so
forth--pain, cruelty, persecution, separation of dear relatives,
follow as a matter of course.... Smith's truth being established in
Smith's mind as the Divine one, persecution follows as a matter of
course--martyrs have roasted over all Europe, over all God's world,
upon this dogma. To my mind Scripture only means a writing, and
Bible means a book.... Every one of us in every part, book,
circumstance of life, sees a different meaning and moral, and so it
must be about religion. But we can all love each other and say "Our
Father."'
This is true, stout-hearted, individualistic liberty of believing--an
excellent thing and wholesome, though it by no means covers the whole
ground, or meets all difficulties. The logical consequence is a strong
distaste for theology, and no very high opinion of the priesthood,
wherein we may probably find the root of Thackeray's proclivity,
already mentioned, toward unmerited sarcasm upon the clergy. In the
Introduction to _Pendennis_ is a letter written from Spa, in which he
says, 'They have got a Sunday service here in an extinct
gambling-house, and a clerical professor to perform, whom you have to
pay just like any other showman who comes.' It does not seem to have
occurred to Thackeray that the turning of a gambling-house into a
place of prayer is no bad thing of itself, or that you have no more
right to expect your religious services to be done for you in a
foreign land without payment than your newspapers or novels.
But these are blemishes or eccentricities which are only worth notice
in a character of exceptional interest and a writer of great
originality. Thackeray's work had a distinct influence on the light
literature of his generation, and possibly also on its manners, for it
is quite conceivable that one reason why his descriptions of snobbery
and shams appear to us now overdrawn, may be that his trenchant blows
at social idols did materially discredit the worship of them. His
literary style had the usual following of imitators who caught his
superficial form and missed the substance, as, for example, in the
habit which arose of talking with warm-hearted familiarity of great
eighteenth-century men, and parodying their conversation. It was easy
enough to speak of Johnson as 'Grand Old Samuel,' and to hob-nob with
Swift or Sterne, seeing that, like the lion's part in _Pyramus and
Thisbe_, 'you can do it extempore, for it is nothing but roaring.'
Thackeray will always stand in the front rank of the very remarkable
array of novelists who have illustrated the Victorian era; and this
new edition is a fresh proof that his reputation is undiminished, and
will long endure.
FOOTNOTES:
[10] _The Works of William Makepeace Thackeray, with Biographical
Introductions by his daughter_, Anne Ritchie. In 13 volumes. London,
1898.--_Edinburgh Review_, October 1898.
[11] Now Lady Ritchie.
THE ANGLO-INDIAN NOVELIST[12]
For the last one hundred and fifty years India has been to Englishmen
an ever-widening field of incessant activity, military, commercial,
and administrative. They have been occupied, during a temporary
sojourn in that country, in acquiring and developing a great dominion.
No situation more unfavourable to the development of imaginative
literature could be found than that of a few thousand Europeans
isolated, far from home, among millions of Asiatics entirely different
from them in race, manners, and language. Their hands have been always
full of business, they have been absorbed in the affairs of war and
government, they have been cut off from the culture which is essential
to the growth of art and letters, they have had little time for
studying the antique and alien civilisation of the country. It seldom
happens that the men who play a part in historical events, or who
witness the sombre realities of war and serious politics, where
kingdoms and lives are at stake, have either leisure or inclination
for that picturesque side of things which lies at the source of most
poetry and romance. And thus it has naturally come to pass that while
Englishmen in India have produced histories full of matter, though
often deficient in composition, and have also written much upon
Oriental antiquities, laws, social institutions, and economy, they
have done little in the department of novels.
That a good novel should have been produced in India was, therefore,
until very recent times improbable; that it should have been
successful in England was still less to be expected. For the modern
reader will have nothing to do with a story full of outlandish scenes
and characters; he must be told what he thinks he knows; he must be
able to realise the points and the probabilities of a plot and of its
personages; he wants a tale that falls more or less within his
ordinary experience, or that tallies with his preconceived notions.
Accordingly, any close description of native Indian manners or people
is apt to lose interest in proportion as it is exact; its value as a
painting of life is usually discernible only by those who know the
country. The popular traditional East was long, and indeed still is,
that which has been for generations fixed in the imagination of
Western folk by the _Arabian Nights_, by the legends of Crusaders, and
by pictorial editions of the Old Testament. It is seen in the Oriental
landscape and figures presented by Walter Scott in _The Talisman_,
which every one, at least in youth, has read; whereas _The Surgeon's
Daughter_, where the scene is laid in India, is hardly read at all. Of
course there are other reasons why the former book is much more liked
than the latter; yet it was certainly not bad local colouring or
unreality of detail that damaged _The Surgeon's Daughter_, for Scott
knew quite as much about Mysore and Haidar Ali as he did about Syria
in the thirteenth century and Saladin. But in _The Talisman_ he was on
the well-trodden ground of mediaeval English history and legend;
whereas the readers of his Indian tale found themselves wandering in
the fresh but then almost unknown field of India in the eighteenth
century.
These are the serious obstacles which have discouraged Anglo-Indians
from attempting the pure historical romance. They knew the country too
well for concocting stories after the fashion of Thomas Moore's _Lalla
Rookh_, with gallant chieftains and beauteous maidens who have nothing
Oriental about them except a few set Eastern phrases, turbans,
daggers, and jewellery. They could not use the true local colour, the
real temper and talk of the Indian East, without great risk of
becoming neither intelligible nor interesting to the English public at
large. It may be said that before our own day there has been only one
author who has successfully overcome these difficulties--Meadows
Taylor, who wrote a romantic novel, now almost forgotten, founded upon
the history of Western India in the seventeenth century. The period
was skilfully chosen, for it is the time of the Moghul emperor
Aurungzeb's long war against the Mohammedan kingdoms in the Dekhan,
and of the Maratha insurrection under Sivaji, which eventually ruined
the Moghul empire. The daring murder of a Mohammedan governor by
Sivaji, the Maratha hero who freed his countrymen from an alien yoke,
is still kept in patriotic remembrance throughout Western India. Nor
is there anything in such a natural sentiment that need give umbrage
to Englishmen; although the liberality of a recent English governor of
Bombay who headed a list of subscriptions for public commemoration of
the deed, betrayed a somewhat simple-minded unreadiness to appreciate
the significance of historical analogies.
Meadows Taylor has treated this subject with very creditable success.
He had lived long in that part of the country; he knew the localities;
he was unusually conversant with the manners and feelings of the
people, and he had the luck to be among them before the old and rough
state of society, with its lawless and turbulent elements, had
disappeared. He had himself been in the service of a native prince
whose governing methods were no better, in some respects worse, than
those of the seventeenth century; and his possession of good natural
literary faculty made up in him a rare combination of qualifications
for venturing upon an Indian romance. The result has been that _Tara_
has not fallen into complete oblivion, though one may doubt whether it
would now be thought generally readable. Although written so late as
1863, the influence of Walter Scott's mediaeval romanticism shows
itself in the chivalrous language of the nobles, and in a somewhat
formal drawing of the leading figures, as if they were taken from a
model. But all the details are truly executed. There are sketches of
scenery, of interiors, of dress, arms, and manners, which are clearly
the outcome of direct observation; and the incidents have a genuine
flavour. The misfortune is that these are just the sterling qualities
which require special knowledge and insight for their appreciation,
and are therefore missed by the great majority of readers. The
following picture of a party of Maratha horsemen returning from a raid
may be taken as an example:
'There might have been twenty-five to thirty men, from the youth
unbearded to the grizzled trooper, whose swarthy, sunburnt face,
large whiskers and moustaches touched with grey, wiry frame, and
easy lounging seat in saddle, as he balanced his heavy Maratha
spear across his shoulder, showed the years of service he had done.
There was no richness of costume among the party; the dresses were
worn and weather stained, and of motley character. Some wore
thickly quilted white doublets, strong enough to turn a sword-cut,
or light shirts of chain-mail, with a piece of the mail or of
twisted wire folded into their turbans; and a few wore steel
morions with turbans tied round them, and steel gauntlets inlaid
with gold and silver in delicate arabesque patterns. All were now
soiled by the wet and mud of the day. It was clear that this party
had ridden far; and the horses, from their drooping crests and
sluggish action, were evidently weary. Four of the men had been
wounded in some skirmish, for they sat their horses with
difficulty, and the bandages about them were covered with blood.'
No Indian novel, indeed, has been written which displays greater power
of picturesque description, or better acquaintance with the
distinctive varieties of castes, race, and habits, that make up the
composite population of India. It was for a long time the only Indian
novel in which the _dramatis personae_ are entirely native.
Although _Tara_ is unique as an Indian romance, there is another story
which renders Indian life and manners with equal fidelity. _Pandurang
Hari_ was written by a member of the Indian Civil Service, and first
published in 1826, though it reappeared in 1874, with a preface by Sir
Bartle Frere. Here again the scene is in Western India, among the