Humanly Speaking Part 9

Yet there are limits to the historical imagination. It must have something to work on, even though that something may be very vague. We must draw the line somewhere in our pursuit of antiquity. A relic may be too old to be effective. Instead of gently stimulating the imagination it may paralyze it. What we desire is not merely the ancient but the familiar. The relic must bring with it the sense of auld lang-syne. The Tory squire likes to preserve what has been a long time in his family.

The traveler has the same feeling for the possessions of the family of humanity.

The family-feeling does not go back of a certain point. I draw the line at the legendary period when the heroes have names, and more or less coherent stories are told of their exploits, People who had a local habitation, but not a name, seem to belong to Geology only. For all their flint arrow-heads, or bronze instruments, I cannot think of them as fellow men.

It was with this feeling that I visited one of the most ancient places of worship in Ireland, the tumulus at Newgrange. It was on a day filled with historic sight-seeing. We started from Drogheda, the great stronghold of the Pale in the Middle Ages, and the scene of Cromwell's terrible vengeance in 1649. Three miles up the river is the site of the Battle of the Boyne. It was one of the great indecisive battles of the world, it being necessary to fight it over again every year. The Boyne had overflowed its banks, and in the fields forlorn hay-c.o.c.ks stood like so many little islands. We stopped at the battle monument and read its Whiggish inscription, which was scorned by our honest driver. We could form some idea of how the field appeared on the eventful day when King William and King James confronted each other across the narrow stream.

Then the scene changed and we found ourselves in Mellefont Abbey, the first Cistercian monastery in Ireland, founded by St. Malachy, the friend of St. Bernard of Clairvaux. King William and King James were at once relegated to their proper places among the moderns, while we went back to the ages of faith.

Four miles farther we came to Monasterboice, where stood two great Celtic crosses. There are two ruined churches and a round tower. Here was an early religious establishment which existed before the times of St. Columba.

This would be enough for one day's reminiscence, but my heart leaped up at the sight of a long green ridge. "There is the hill of Tara!"

Having traversed the period from King William to the dwellers in the Halls of Tara, what more natural than to take a further plunge into the past?

We drive into an open field and alight near a rock-strewn hill. Candles are given us and we grope our way through narrow pa.s.sages till we come to the centre of the hill. Here is a chamber some twenty feet in height.

On the great stones which support the roof are mystic emblems. On the floor is a large stone hollowed out in the shape of a bowl. It suggests human sacrifices. My guide did not encourage this suggestion. There was, he thought, no historical evidence for it. But it seemed to me that if these people ever practised such sacrifices this was the place for them.

A gloomier chamber for weird rites could not be imagined.

Who were the worshipers? Druids or pre-Druids? The archaeologists tell us that they belonged to the Early Bronze period. Now Early Bronze is a good enough term for articles in a museum, but it does not suggest a human being. We cannot get on terms of spiritual intimacy with the Early Bronze people. We may know what they did, but there is no intimation of "the moving why they did it." What spurred them on to their feats of prodigious industry? Was it fear or love? First they built their chapel of great stones and then piled a huge hill on top of it. Were they still under the influence of the glacial period and attempting to imitate the wild doings of Nature? The pa.s.sage of the ages does not make these men seem venerable, because their deeds are no longer intelligible.

Mellefont Abbey is in ruins, but we can easily restore it in imagination. We can picture the great buildings as they were before the iconoclasts destroyed them. The prehistoric place of worship in the middle of the hill is practically unchanged. But the clue to its meaning is lost.

I could not make the ancient builders and worshipers seem real. It was a relief to come up into the sunshine where people of our own kind had walked, the Kings of Tara and their harpers, and St. Patrick and St.

Malachy and Oliver Cromwell and William III. After the unintelligible symbols on the rocks, how familiar and homelike seemed the sculptures on the Celtic crosses. They were mostly about people, and people whom we had known from earliest childhood. There were Adam and Eve, and Cain slaying Abel, and the Magi. They were members of our family.

But between us and the builders of the under-ground chapel there was a great gulf. There was no means of spiritual communication across the abyss. A sc.r.a.p of writing, a bit of poetry, a name handed down by tradition, would have been worth all the relics discovered by archaeologists.

There is justification for the traveler's preference for the things he has read about, for these are the things which resist the changes of time. Only he must remember that they are better preserved in the book than in the places where they happened. The impression which any generation makes on the surface of the earth is very slight. It cannot give the true story of the brief occupancy. That requires some more direct interpretation.

The magic carpet which carries us into any age not our own is woven by the poets and historians. Without their aid we may travel through s.p.a.ce, but not through Time.

THE OBVIOUSNESS OF d.i.c.kENS

In the college world it is a point of honor for the successive cla.s.ses to treat each other with contumely. The feud between freshman and soph.o.m.ore goes on automatically. Only when one has become a senior may he, without losing caste, recognize a freshman as a youth of promise, and admit that a soph.o.m.ore is not half bad. Such disinterested criticism is tolerated because it is evidently the result of the mellowing influence of time.

The same tendency is seen in literary and artistic judgments. It is never good taste to admit the good taste of the generation that immediately precedes us. Its innocent admirations are flouted and its standards are condemned as provincial. For we are always emerging from the dark ages and contrasting their obscurity with our marvelous light.

The sixteenth century scorned the fifteenth century for its manifold superst.i.tions. Thomas Fuller tells us that his enlightened contempories in the seventeenth century treated the enthusiasms of the sixteenth century with scant respect. The price of martyrs' ashes rises and falls in Smithfield market. At a later period Pope writes,--

"We think our fathers fools, so wise we grow: Our wiser sons, perhaps, will think us so."

He need not have put in the "perhaps."

The nineteenth century had its fling at the artificiality of the eighteenth century, and treated it with contempt as the age of doctrinaires. And now that the twentieth century is coming to the age of discretion, we hear a new term of reproach, Mid-Victorian. It expresses the sum of all villainies in taste. For some fifty years in the nineteenth century the English-speaking race, as it now appears, was under the sway of Mrs. Grundy. It was living in a state of most reprehensible respectability, and Art was tied to the ap.r.o.n-strings of Morality. Everybody admired what ought not to be admired. We are only now beginning to pa.s.s judgment on the manifold mediocrity of this era.

All this must, for the time, count against d.i.c.kens; for of all the Victorians he was the midmost. He flourished in that most absurd period of time--the time just before most of us were born. And how he did flourish! Grave lord chancellors confessed to weeping over Little Nell.

A Mid-Victorian bishop relates that after administering consolation to a man in his last illness he heard him saying, "At any rate, a new 'Pickwick Paper' will be out in ten days."

Everywhere there was a wave of hysterical appreciation. Describing his reading in Glasgow, d.i.c.kens writes: "Such pouring of hundreds into a place already full to the throat, such indescribable confusion, such rending and tearing of dresses, and yet such a scene of good humor, I never saw the slightest approach to.... Fifty frantic men got up in all parts of the hall and addressed me all at once. Other frantic men made speeches to the wall. The whole B family were borne on the top of a wave and landed with their faces against the front of the platform. I read with the platform crammed with people. I got them to lie down upon it, and it was like some impossible tableau, or gigantic picnic,--one pretty girl lying on her side all night, holding on to the legs of my table."

In New York eager seekers after fiction would "lie down on the pavement the whole of the night before the tickets were sold, generally taking up their position about ten." There would be free fights, and the police would be called to quell the riot.

Such astonishing actions on the part of people who were unfortunate enough to live in the middle of the nineteenth century put us on our guard. It could not have been a serious interest in English literature that evoked the mob spirit. d.i.c.kens must have been writing the kind of books which these people liked to hear read. We remember with some misgivings that in the days of our youth we wept over Little Nell, just as the lord chancellor did. The question which disturbs us is, Ought we to have done so?

Let us by a soft answer turn away the wrath of the critic. Doubtless we ought not to have done so. Our excuse is that, at the time, we could not help it. We may make the further plea, common to all soft-hearted sinners, that if we hadn't wept, other people would, so that no great harm was done, after all.

But letting bygones be bygones, and not seeking to justify the enthusiasms of the nineteenth century, one may return to d.i.c.kens as to the home of one's childhood. How do the old scenes affect us? Does the charm remain? When thus we return to d.i.c.kens, we are compelled to confess the justice of the latter-day criticism. In all his writings he deals with characters and situations which are wholly obvious; at least they are obvious after he deals with them. Not only is he without the art which conceals art, but, unlike some novelists of more recent fame, he is without the art that conceals the lack of art He produces an impression by the crude method of "rubbing it in." There are no subtleties to pique our curiosity, no problems left us for discussion, no room for difference of opinion. There is no more opportunity for speculation than in a one-price clothing store where every article is marked in plain figures. To have heartily disliked Mr. Pecksniff and to have loved the Cheeryble Brothers indicates no sagacity on our part. The author has distinctly and repeatedly told us that the one is an odious hypocrite and that the others are benevolent to an unusual degree. Our appreciation of Sam Weller does not prove that we have any sense of humor save that which is common to man. For Mr. Weller's humor is a blessing that is not in disguise. It is a pump which needs no priming.

There is no denying that the humor, the pathos, and the sentiment of d.i.c.kens are obvious.

All this, according to certain critics, goes to prove that d.i.c.kens lacks distinction, and that the writing of his novels was a commonplace achievement. This judgment seems to me to arise from a confusion of thought. The _perception_ of the obvious is a commonplace achievement; the _creation_ of the obvious, and making it interesting, is the work of genius. There is no intellectual distinction in the enjoyment of "The Pickwick Papers"; to write "The Pickwick Papers" would be another matter.

It is only in the last quarter of a century that English literature has been accepted not as a recreation, but as a subject of serious study.

Now, the first necessity for a study is that it should be "hard." Some of the best brains in the educational world have been enlisted in the work of giving a disciplinary value to what was originally an innocent pleasure. It is evident that one cannot give marks for the number of smiles or tears evoked by a tale of true love. The novel or the play that is to hold its own in the curriculum in compet.i.tion with trigonometry must have some knotty problem which causes the hara.s.sed reader to knit his brows in anxious thought.

In answer to this demand, the literary craftsman has arisen who takes his art with a seriousness which makes the "painful preacher" of the Puritan time seem a mere pleasure-seeker. Equipped with instruments of precision drawn from the psychological laboratory, he is prepared to satisfy our craving for the difficult By the method of suggestion he tries to make us believe that we have never seen his characters before, and sometimes he succeeds. He deals in descriptions which leave us with the impression of an indescribable something which we should recognize if we were as clever as he is. As we are not nearly so clever, we are left with a chastened sense of our inferiority, which is doubtless good for us. And all this groping for the un-obvious is connected with an equally insistent demand for realism. The novel must not only be as real as life, but it must be more so. For life, as it appears in our ordinary consciousness, is full of illusions. When these are stripped off and the residuum is compressed into a book, we have that which is at once intensely real and painfully unfamiliar.

Now, there is a certain justification for this. A psychologist may show us aspects of character which we could not see by ourselves, as the X-rays will reveal what is not visible to the naked eye. But if the insides of things are real, so also are the outsides. Surfaces and forms are not without their importance.

It may be said in extenuation of d.i.c.kens that the blemish of obviousness is one which he shared with the world he lived in. It would be too much to say that all realities are obvious. There is a great deal that we do not see at the first glance; but there is a great deal that we do see.

To reproduce the freshness and wonder of the first view of the obvious world is one of the greatest achievements of the imagination.

The reason why the literary artist shuns the obvious is that there is too much of it. It is too big for the limited resources of his art. In the actual world, realities come in big chunks. Nature continually repeats herself. She hammers her facts into our heads with a persistency which is often more than a match for our stupidity. If we do not recognize a fact to-day, it will hit us in the same place to-morrow.

We are so used to this educational method of reiteration that we make it a test of reality. An impression made upon us must be repeated before it has validity to our reason. If a thing really happened, we argue that it will happen again under the same conditions. That is what we mean by saying that we are under the reign of law. There is a great family resemblance between happenings.

We make acquaintance with people by the same method. The recognition of ident.i.ty depends upon the ability which most persons have of appearing to be remarkably like themselves. The reason why we think that the person whom we met to-day is the same person we met yesterday is that he _seems_ the same. There are obvious resemblances that strike us at once.

He looks the same, he acts the same, he has the same mannerisms, the same kind of voice, and he answers to the same name. If Proteus, with the best intention in the world, but with an unlimited variety of self-manifestations, were to call every day, we should greet him always as a stranger. We should never feel at home with so versatile a person.

A character must have a certain degree of monotony about it before we can trust it. Unexpectedness is an agreeable element in wit, but not in friendship. Our friend must be one who can say with honest Joe Gargery, "It were understood, and it are understood, and it ever will be similar, according."

But in the use of this effective method of reiteration there is a difference between nature and a book. Nature does not care whether she bores us or not: she has us by the b.u.t.tonhole, and we cannot get away.

Not so with a book. When we are bored, we lay it down, and that brings the interview to an end. It is from the fear of our impatience that most writers abstain from the natural method of producing an impression.

And they are quite right. It is only now and then that an audience will grant an extension of time to a speaker in order that he may make his point more clear. They would rather miss the point. And it is still more rare for the reader to grant a similar extension in order that the author may tell again what he has told before. It is much easier to shut up a book than to shut up a speaker.

The criticism of d.i.c.kens that his characters repeat themselves quite misses the mark. As well object to an actor that he frequently responds to an encore. If indicted for the offense, he could at least insist that the audience be indicted with him as accessory before the fact.

d.i.c.kens tells us that when he read at Harrogate, "There was a remarkably good fellow of thirty or so who found something so very ludicrous in Toots that he could not compose himself at all, but laughed until he sat wiping his eyes with his handkerchief, and whenever he felt Toots coming again he began to laugh and wipe his eyes afresh."

"Whenever he felt Toots coming again"--there you have the whole philosophy of the matter. The young fellow found Toots amusing when he first laid eyes on him. He wanted to see him again, and it must always be the same Toots.

It is useless to cavil at an author because of the means by which he produces his effects. The important thing is that he does produce an effect. That the end justifies the means may be a dangerous doctrine in ethics, but much may be said for it in literature. The situation is like that of a middle-aged gentleman beset by a small boy on a morning just right for s...o...b..lling. "Give me leave, mister?" cries the youthful sharpshooter. The good-natured citizen gives leave by pulling up his coat-collar and quickening his pace. If the small boy can hit him, he is forgiven, if he cannot hit him, he is scorned. The fact is that d.i.c.kens with a method as broad and repet.i.tious as that of Nature herself does succeed in hitting our fancy. That is, he succeeds nine times out of ten.

It is the minor characters of d.i.c.kens that are remembered. And we remember them for the same reason that we remember certain faces which we have seen in a crowd. There is some salient feature or trick of manner which first attracts and then holds our attention. A person must have some tag by which he is identified, or, so far as we are concerned, he becomes one of the innumerable lost articles. There are persons who are like umbrellas, very useful, but always liable to be forgotten. The memory is an infirm faculty, and must be humored. It often clings to mere trifles. The man with the flamboyant necktie whom you saw on the 8.40 train may also be the author of a volume of exquisite lyrics; but you never saw the lyrics, and you did see the necktie. In the scale of being, the necktie may be the least important parcel of this good man's life, but it is the only thing about him which attracts your attention.

When you see it day after day at the same hour you feel that you have a real, though perhaps not a deep, acquaintance with the man behind it. It is thus we habitually perceive the human world. We see things, and infer persons to correspond. One peculiarity attracts us. It is not the whole man, but it is all of him that is for us. In all this we are very d.i.c.kensy.