Studies in Literature and History
new railroads, going in for fresh enterprises, and keeping things
humming.
'"They've got resources enough," he said. "It isn't as if they had
the excuse that the country's poor. It's a good country. Move the
population of a lively Colorado town to Rhatore, set up a good
local paper, organise a board of trade, and let the world know what
is here, and we'd have a boom in six months that would shake the
empire. But what's the use? They're dead. They're mummies. They're
wooden images. There isn't enough real, old-fashioned, downright
rustle and razzle-dazzle and 'git up and git' in Gokral Seetaram to
run a milk-cart."'
Such indeed might be the sentiments of an eager speculator who found
himself among primitive folk. But the discord of ideas puts the whole
piece so completely out of tune as to produce only a harsh and jarring
sensation; the rough Western man is thoroughly out of his element, and
flounders heavily, like a cockney among mediaeval crusaders. This must
be taken in fairness to be the result of collaboration, for in his own
short stories Mr. Kipling never commits solecisms of the kind; on the
contrary, he excels in the shading of strong local colours, and in
the rapid, unerring delineation of characters that stand out in clear
relief, yet blend with and act upon each other when they encounter.
But Mr. Kipling's volumes would require a separate article to
themselves, so that we will merely take this occasion of recording our
wish that he may some day turn his unique faculty of painting real
Indian pictures toward the composition of a novel which shall _not_ be
about Anglo-Indian society (for the thin soil of that field has
already been over-harrowed), but shall give a true and lively
rendering of the thoughts which strike an imaginative Englishman when
he surveys the whole moving landscape of our Indian empire, watches
the course of actual events, and tries to forecast its probable
destiny.
It has been manifestly impossible in this brief article to do more
than touch upon a few books that may illustrate the prominent
characteristics, and the general place in light literature, of Indian
novels. This must explain why we have omitted several other works, of
which _Transgression_[15] is the latest. In this tale we have a sketch
of life on the North-West Frontier at the present day, with some
well-known incidents of the Afridi War of 1897-98 introduced, and so
coloured from the writer's own point of view as to convey, under a
thin varnish of fiction, some sharp and sarcastic criticism on the
management of affairs, the politics of the Government, and the
personal behaviour of certain officials, who can be at once
identified. Although the book is not without interest as a true
account of hazardous and stirring frontier duties, we are bound to
repeat our warning that this abuse of the novel for controversial
purposes is not only unfair, but profoundly inartistic. No literary
success, but failure and the confusion of styles, lies that way.
What, then, are the conclusions which we may draw from this brief
survey of the more prominent and typical Indian novels? To the
repertory of English fiction, which is perhaps the largest and most
varied that any national literature contains, they have undoubtedly
made a not unworthy contribution; for we may agree that fiction has
some, if not the highest, value when it produces an animated
representation of life and manners, even upon a limited and distant
field. In the present instance the narrow range of plot and character
that may be observed in the pure Anglo-Indian novel reflects the
uniformity of a society which consists almost entirely, outside the
Presidency capitals on the sea-coast, of civil and military
officials--a society that is also upon one level of class and of age,
for among the English in India there are neither old men nor boys and
girls; the men and women are in the prime of life, with a number of
small children. This age-limit lops off from both ends of human
existence a certain proportion of the characters that are available
for filling up the canvas of the social novelist at home. And it is in
truth a peculiar feature, not only of Anglo-Indian society, but of the
Anglo-Indian administration, because the enforced retirement of almost
every officer after the age of fifty-five years greatly diminishes the
influence of weighty and mature experience exercised by the senior men
in the services and government of most countries. In regard to the
equality of class it may be observed that here also the lack of
variety produces a similar dearth of materials; we miss the
picturesque contrasts of rich and poor, of townsfolk and country folk,
of the diverse groups which make up a European population. The 'short
and simple annals of the poor' cannot be woven into the Indian
tapestry which records higher and broader scenes; the peasantry, for
example, whose quaint figures and idioms are so useful in English
novels, do not come into the Anglo-Indian tale. They cannot be blended
in fiction with the foreign element because they are wholly apart in
reality. In short, the whole company that play upon the exclusively
Anglo-Indian stage belong to one grade of society, and the hero is
invariably a military officer.
The most popular of Anglo-Indian novels are probably those which deal
in exact reproduction of ordinary incidents and conversation, related
in a sprightly and humorous style. This accords with the taste of
present-day readers, many of whom take up a book only for the
momentary amusement that it gives them, and are well content with
interminable dialogues that do little more than echo, with a certain
spice of epigram and smart repartee, the commonplaces interchanged
among clever people at a country house or in a London drawing-room.
Nevertheless, we believe that Anglo-Indian fiction is seen at its best
in the novel of action, since war and love-making must still, as
formerly, rule the whole kingdom of romance; since as emotional forces
they are the same in every climate and country. Each successive
campaign in India, from the first Afghan War to the latest expedition
across the Afridi frontier, has furnished the Anglo-Indian writer with
a new series of striking incidents that can be used for his heroic
deeds and dire catastrophes, for new landscapes and figures, all of
them bearing the very form and stamp of impressive reality. If he is
artist enough to avoid abusing these advantages, if he is neither an
extravagant colourist nor a mere copyist or compiler, he has this
fresh field to himself, he can give us a stirring narrative of
frontier adventures, he can sketch in the aspect of a country or the
distinctive qualities of a people that have preserved many of the
features which in Europe have now vanished into the dim realms of
early romance. His danger lies, as we have seen from some examples
already quoted, in the temptation to make too much use of the
attractive materials that are readily found to hand in military
records or in such a real tragedy as the Sepoy mutiny, so that the
novel is liable to become little more than authentic history related
in a glowing, exuberant style of writing and portraiture.
In short, the Indian novel belongs to the objective outdoor class; it
is full of open air and activity, and the introspective psychological
vein is almost entirely wanting. There are, indeed, passages which
indicate that peculiar sense of the correlation, so to speak, of the
environment with the moods and feelings of men, the influence upon the
human mind of nature--a sense which has inspired some of our finest
poetry, and which is so well rendered by the best Russian novelists,
by Tourgueneff and by Tolstoi. One work of Tolstoi's, _Les Cosaques_,
might be especially recommended for study to the Anglo-Indian novelist
of the future, as an example of the true impress that can be made upon
a reader's mind by the literary art, when it succeeds in giving vivid
interest to the picture of a solitary officer's life upon a dull and
distant frontier.
FOOTNOTES:
[12] (1) _Tara._ By Meadows Taylor. London, 1898. (2) _Oakfield._ By
William D. Arnold. London, 1853. (3) _The Wetherbys, Father and Son._
By John Lang. London, ?1850. (4) _Mr. Isaacs._ By F. Marion Crawford.
London, 1898. (5) _Helen Treveryan._ By John Roy. London, 1892. (6)
_On the Face of the Waters._ By Mrs. Steel. London, 1896. (7) _Bijli
the Dancer._ By James Blythe Patton. London, 1898. (8) _The Chronicles
of Dustypore._ By H. S. Cunningham. London, 1875. And other
Novels.--_Edinburgh Review_, October 1899.
[13] [Greek]
'alla chre ton katathaptein, hos ke thanesi,
nelea thumon echontas, ep hemati hoakrusants.'
(_Iliad_, xix. 228, 229.)
[14] _Naulakha_, by Rudyard Kipling and W. Balestier. London, 1892.
[15] _Transgression_, by S. S. Thorburn. London, 1899.
HEROIC POETRY[16]
I have taken the words 'Heroic Poetry' to signify the poetry of
strenuous action, the art of describing in vigorous animating verse
those scenes and emergent situations in which the energies of mankind
are strung up to the higher tones, and where the emotions are brought
into full play by the exhibition of valour, endurance, and suffering.
It seems to me remarkable that modern English poetry, with all its
splendid variety, should have produced very little in this particular
form; because no one can deny that the latter-day story of the English
has been full of enterprise and perilous adventure, providing ample
material to the artist who knows how to use it. Nor can it be said
that there is any lack of demand for this sort of poetry, and
consequently little inducement to supply it. On the contrary, any one
can see that hero worship is as strong as ever, that any striking
incident, or example of personal valour, or exploit of war, brings out
the verse-writer, and that his efforts, if only very moderately
successful, are sure to win him great popularity.
But it must be admitted that most of these efforts fail rather
lamentably, insomuch that at the present day we may seem to be losing
one of the finest forms of a noble art. From this point of view there
may be some advantage in looking back to the heroic poetry of earlier
ages, and in endeavouring to mark briefly and imperfectly its
distinctive qualities, to recall the conditions and circumstances in
which it flourished, and possibly to hazard some suggestions as to
the causes of its decline.
I do not know any recent book which throws more light upon this
subject than Professor Ker's book on _Epic and Romance_, published in
1897. It is, to my mind, most valuable as an exposition of the right
nature and methods of heroic narrative, in poetry and in prose. The
author has the rare gift of insight into the ways and feelings of
primitive folk, and the critical faculty of discerning the
characteristics of a style or a period, showing how men, who knew what
to say and the right manner of saying it, have shaped the true form of
heroic poetry. We can see that its elementary principles, the methods
of composition in verse and prose, are essentially the same in all
times and countries, in the _Iliad_, in the Icelandic Sagas, in the
old Teutonic and Anglo-Saxon poems, and to some extent in the French
Chansons de Geste; they might be used to-morrow for a heroic subject
by any one gifted with the requisite skill, imagination, and the eye
for impressive realities.
'Few nations have attained, at the close of their heroic age, to a
form of poetical art in which men are represented freely in action
and conversation. The labour and meditation of all the world has
not discovered, for the purposes of narrative, any essential