Materials and Methods of Fiction Part 5

"'I always told you she was--a little; but you will soon overcome all that part of her reserve which ought to be overcome, all that has its foundation in diffidence. What arises from discretion must be honoured.'

"'You think her diffident. I do not see it.'"

These pa.s.sages not only serve to portray, more or less directly, the personality of Jane Fairfax, but serve also at the same time to portray indirectly the personalities of the people who are talking about her. Mrs. Elton, in particular, is very clearly exhibited. And this point leads us to an examination of one of the most effective means of indirect delineation.

If the mere speech of a fict.i.tious figure be reported with sufficient fidelity to truth, it is possible to convey through this expedient alone a very vivid sense of character. Consider the following bits of talk:--

"'You're not a gun-sharp? I am sorry. I could have surprised you.

Apart from my gun, my tale don't amount to much of anything. I thank you, but I don't use any tobacco you'd be likely to carry ... Bull Durham? _Bull Durham!_ I take it all back--every last word. Bull Durham--here! If ever you strike Akron, Ohio, when this fool-war's over, remember you've Laughton O. Zigler in your vest pocket.

Including the city of Akron. We've a little club there.... h.e.l.l!

What's the sense of talking Akron with no pants?'"

"'Did I talk? I despise exaggeration--'tain't American or scientific--but as true as I'm sitting here like a blue-ended baboon in a kloof, Teddy Roosevelt's Western tour was a maiden's sigh compared to my advertising work.'"

"'But the general was the peach. I presume you're acquainted with the average run of British generals, but this was my first. I sat on his left hand, and he talked like--like the _Ladies' Home Journal_.

J'ever read that paper? It's refined, Sir--and innocuous, and full of nickel-plated sentiments guaranteed to improve the mind. He was it.

He began by a Lydia Pinkham heart-to-heart talk about my health, and hoped the boys had done me well, and that I was enjoying my stay in their midst.'"

These pa.s.sages are taken from Mr. Kipling's story called "The Captive." The action is laid during the South-African war. Is it necessary to add that the speaker is an American gun-inventor who has fought upon the Boer side and has been captured by the British?

One point must be considered carefully. The art of these pa.s.sages lies mainly in the fact that we learn more about Zigler indirectly, from his manner of talking, than directly, from the things which he tells us of himself. His statement that he comes from Akron, Ohio, is less suggestive than his fondness for Bull Durham. Any direct statement made by a character concerning himself is of no more artistic value than if it were made about him by the author, unless his manner of making it gives at the same time an indirect evidence of his nature.

The subtlest phase of indirect delineation through speech is a conveyance to the reader, through a character's remarks about himself, of a sense of him different from that which his statement literally expresses. Sir Willoughby Patterne, in "The Egoist," talks about himself frequently and in detail; but the reader soon learns from the tone and manner of his utterance to discount the high esteem in which he holds himself. By saying one thing directly, the egoist conveys another and a different thing indirectly to the reader.

But in fiction, as in life, actions speak louder than words: and the most convincing way of delineating character indirectly is by exhibiting a person in the performance of a characteristic action. If the action be visualized with sufficient clearness and if its dominant details be presented to the reader with adequate emphasis, a more vivid impression of character will be conveyed than through any sort of direct statement by the author. As an instance of characterization through action only, without comment or direct portrayal, let us consider the following pa.s.sage from the duel scene of "The Master of Ballantrae." Two brothers, Mr. Henry and the Master, hate each other; they fall to altercation over a game of cards; and the scene is narrated by Mackellar, a servant of Mr. Henry's.--

"Mr. Henry laid down his cards. He rose to his feet very softly, and seemed all the while like a person in deep thought. 'You coward!' he said gently, as if to himself. And then, with neither hurry nor any particular violence, he struck the Master in the mouth.

"The Master sprang to his feet like one transfigured; I had never seen the man so beautiful. 'A blow!' he cried. 'I would not take a blow from G.o.d Almighty.'

"'Lower your voice,' said Mr. Henry. 'Do you wish my father to interfere for you again?'

"'Gentlemen, gentlemen,' I cried, and sought to come between them.

"The Master caught me by the shoulder, held me at arm's length, and still addressing his brother: 'Do you know what this means?' said he.

"'It was the most deliberate act of my life,' says Mr. Henry.

"'I must have blood, I must have blood for this,' says the Master.

"'Please G.o.d it shall be yours,' said Mr. Henry; and he went to the wall and took down a pair of swords that hung there with others, naked. These he presented to the Master by the points. 'Mackellar shall see us play fair,' said Mr. Henry. 'I think it very needful.'

"'You need insult me no more,' said the Master, taking one of the swords at random. 'I have hated you all my life.'

"'My father is but newly gone to bed,' said Mr. Henry. 'We must go somewhere forth of the house.'

"'There is an excellent place in the long shrubbery,' said the Master.

"'Gentlemen,' said I, 'shame upon you both! Sons of the same mother, would you turn against the life she gave you?'

"'Even so, Mackellar,' said Mr. Henry, with the same perfect quietude of manner he had shown throughout."

It is not necessary for Mackellar to tell us that, whereas Mr. Henry is phlegmatic and deliberate, the Master is impulsive and mercurial.

It is not necessary for him to attempt a.n.a.lysis of the emotions and thoughts of the leading characters, since these are sufficiently evident from what they do and say. The action happens to the eye and ear, without the interpretation of an a.n.a.lytic intellect; but the reader is made actually present at the scene, and can see and judge it for himself. The method is absolutely narrative and not at all expository,--entirely objective and concrete. Surely this is the most artistic means of portraying those elements of character which contribute to external, or objective, events: and even what happens inside the mind of a character may often be more poignantly suggested by a concrete account of how he looks and what he does than by an abstract a.n.a.lytic statement of the movements of his mind. When Hepzibah Pyncheon opens her shop in the House of the Seven Gables, her state of feeling is indicated indirectly, by what she does and how she does it.

Perhaps the most delicate means of indirect delineation is to suggest the personality of one character by exhibiting his effect upon certain other people in the story. In the third book of the "Iliad," there is a temporary truce upon the plains of Troy; and certain elders of the city look forth from the tower of the Scaean gates and meditate upon the ten long years of conflict and of carnage during which so many of their sons have died. Toward them walks the white-armed Helen, robed and veiled in white; and when they mark her approach, they say to each other (old and wise and weary with sorrows though they be):--

"'Small blame is theirs, if both the Trojan knights And brazen-mailed Achaians have endured So long so many evils for the sake Of that one woman.'"

--(Bryant's Version.)

Perhaps the most remarkable instance in modern literature of the use of this expedient is Mr. Kipling's tale of "Mrs. Bathurst." The story is all about the woman from whom it takes its t.i.tle; but she never for a moment appears upon the scene of action, and is portrayed entirely through her effect upon several different men. Here is a bit of conversation concerning her. Note her effect upon the humorous and not especially sensitive Pyecroft.--

"Said Pyecroft suddenly:--

"'How many women have you been intimate with all over the world, Pritch?'

"Pritchard blushed plum color to the short hairs of his seventeen-inch neck.

"''Undreds,' said Pyecroft. 'So've I. How many of 'em can you remember in your own mind, settin' aside the first--an' per'aps the last--_and one more_?'

"'Few, wonderful few, now I tax myself,' said Sergeant Pritchard, relievedly.

"'An' how many times might you 'ave been at Aukland?'

"'One--two,' he began. 'Why, I can't make it more than three times in ten years. But I can remember every time that I ever saw Mrs. B.'

"'So can I--an' I've only been to Aukland twice--how she stood an'

what she was sayin' an' what she looked like. That's the secret.

'Tisn't beauty, so to speak, nor good talk necessarily. It's just It. Some women'll stay in a man's memory if they once walked down a street, but most of 'em you can live with a month on end, an' next commission you'd be put to it to certify whether they talked in their sleep or not, as one might say.'"

Another very delicate expedient is to suggest a character through a careful presentation of his habitual environment. We learn a great deal about Roderick Usher from the melancholy aspect of his House.

It is possible to describe a living-room in such a way as to convey a very definite sense of its occupant before he enters it. Notice, for example, how much we learn about Mr. and Mrs. Boffin (especially the latter) from this descriptive pa.s.sage in Chapter V of "Our Mutual Friend." Silas Wegg has come to fulfil his engagement to read aloud to them the "Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire."--

"It was the queerest of rooms, fitted and furnished more like a luxurious amateur tap-room than anything else within the ken of Silas Wegg. There were two wooden settles by the fire, one on either side of it, with a corresponding table before each. On one of these tables the eight volumes were ranged flat, in a row like a galvanic battery; on the other, certain squat case-bottles of inviting appearance seemed to stand on tiptoe to exchange glances with Mr. Wegg over a front row of tumblers and a basin of white sugar. On the hob, a kettle steamed; on the hearth, a cat reposed. Facing the fire between the settles, a sofa, a footstool, and a little table formed a centerpiece devoted to Mrs. Boffin. They were garish in taste and color, but were expensive articles of drawing-room furniture that had a very odd look beside the settles and the flaring gaslight pendant from the ceiling. There was a flowery carpet on the floor; but, instead of reaching to the fireside, its glowing vegetation stopped short at Mrs. Boffin's footstool, and gave place to a region of sand and sawdust. Mr. Wegg also noticed, with admiring eyes, that, while the flowery land displayed such hollow ornamentation as stuffed birds, and waxen fruits under gla.s.s shades, there were, in the territory where vegetation ceased, compensatory shelves on which the best part of a large pie and likewise of a cold joint were plainly discernible among other solids. The room itself was large, though low; and the heavy frames of its old-fashioned windows, and the heavy beams in its crooked ceiling, seemed to indicate that it had once been a house of some mark standing alone in the country."

Neither Boffin nor Mrs. Boffin appears in this descriptive paragraph; yet many of the idiosyncrasies of each are suggested by the conglomeration of queer belongings that they have gathered round them.

The student of the art of fiction may find profitable exercise in practising separately the various means of portraying character which have been ill.u.s.trated in this chapter; but, as was stated at the outset, he should always remember that these means are seldom used by the great artists singly, but are generally employed to complement each other in contributing to a central impression. The character of Becky Sharp, for instance, is delineated indirectly through her speech, her actions, her environment, and her effect on other people, and at the same time is delineated directly through comments made upon her by the author and by other figures in the story, through a.n.a.lysis of her thoughts and her emotions, through expository statements of her traits, and through occasional descriptions of her. In all of these ways does Thackeray exert himself to give the world a.s.surance of a woman.

It would, however, be extremely difficult to imagine Becky Sharp divorced from her environment of London high society. She is a part of her setting, and her setting is a part of her. We have just noticed, in the case of that queer room of the Boffins', how the mere representation of setting may contribute to the delineation of character. But setting is important in many other ways; and it is to a special consideration of that element of narrative that we must next turn our attention.

CHAPTER VI

SETTING