The Bibliotaph, and Other People Part 4

He said of a highly critical person that if that man were to become a minister he would probably announce as the subject of his first sermon: 'The conditions that G.o.d must meet in order to be acceptable to me.' He said of a poor orator who had copyrighted one of his most indifferent speeches, that the man 'positively suffered from an excess of caution.' He remarked once that the great trouble with a certain lady was 'she labored under the delusion that she enjoyed occasional seasons of sanity.'

The _nil admirari_ att.i.tude was one which he never affected, and he had a contempt for men who denied to the great in literature and art that praise which was their due. This led him to say apropos of an obscure critic who had a.s.sailed one of the poetical masters: 'When the Lord makes a man a fool he injures him; but when He so const.i.tutes him that the man is never happy unless he is making that fact public, He insults him.'

He enjoyed speculating on the subject of marriage, especially in the presence of those friends who unlike himself knew something about it empirically. He delighted to tell his lady acquaintances that their husbands would undoubtedly marry a second time if they had the chance.

It was inevitable. A man whose experience has been fortunate is bound to marry again, because he is like the man who broke the bank at Monte Carlo. A man who has been unhappily married marries again because like an unfortunate gamester he has reached the time when his luck has got to change. The Bibliotaph then added with a smile: 'I have the idea that many men who marry a second time do in effect what is often done by unsuccessful gamblers at Monte Carlo; they go out and commit suicide.'

The Bibliotaph played but few games. There was one, however, in which he was skillful. I blush to speak of it in these days of much muscular activity. What have golfers, and tennis-players, and makers of century runs to do with croquet? Yet there was a time when croquet was spoken of as 'the coming game;' and had not Clintock's friend Jennings written an epic poem upon it in twelve books, which poem he offered to lend to a certain brilliant young lady? But Gwendolen despised boys and cared even less for their poetry than for themselves.

At the house of the Country Squire the Bibliotaph was able to gratify his pa.s.sion for croquet, and verily he was a master. He made a grotesque figure upon the court, with his big frame which must stoop mightily to take account of b.a.l.l.s and short-handled mallets, with his agile manner, his uncovered head s.h.a.ggy with its barbaric profusion of hair (whereby some one was led to nickname him Bibliotaph Indetonsus), with the scanty black alpaca coat in which he invariably played--a coat so short in the sleeves and so brief in the skirt that the figure cut by the wearer might almost have pa.s.sed for that of Mynheer Ten Broek of many-trowsered memory. But it was vastly more amusing to watch him than to play with him. He had a devil 'most undoubted.' Only with the help of black art and by mortgaging one's soul would it have been possible to accomplish some of the things which he accomplished.

For the materials of croquet are so imperfect at best that chance is an influential element. I've seen tennis-players in the intervals of _their_ game watch the Bibliotaph with that superior smile suggestive of contempt for the puerility of his favorite sport. They might even condescend to take a mallet for a while to amuse _him_; but presently discomfited they would retire to a game less capricious than croquet and one in which there was reasonable hope that a given cause would produce its wonted effect.

The Bibliotaph played strictly for the purpose of winning, and took savage joy in his conquests. In playing with him one had to do two men's work; one must play, and then one must summon such philosophy as one might to suffer continuous defeat, and such wit as one possessed to beat back a steady onslaught of daring and witty criticisms. 'I play like a fool,' said a despairing opponent after fruitless effort to win a just share of the games. 'We all have our moments of unconsciousness,' purred the Bibliotaph blandly in response. This same despairing opponent, who was an expert in everything he played, said that there was but one solace after croquet with the Bibliotaph; he would go home and read Hazlitt's essay on the Indian Jugglers.

Here ends the account of the Bibliotaph. From these inadequate notes it is possible to get some little idea of his habits and conversation.

The library is said to be still growing. Packages of books come mysteriously from the corners of the earth and make their way to that remote and almost inaccessible village where the great collector hides his treasures. No one has ever penetrated that region, and no one, so far as I am aware, has ever seen the treasures. The books lie entombed, as it were, awaiting such day of resurrection as their owner shall appoint them. The day is likely to be long delayed. Of the collector's whereabouts now no one of his friends dares to speak positively; for at the time when knowledge of him was most exact THE BIBLIOTAPH was like a newly-discovered comet,--his course was problematical.

THOMAS HARDY

I

'The reason why so few good books are written is that so few people that can write know anything.' So said a man who, during a busy career, found time to add several fine volumes to the scanty number of good books. And in a vivacious paragraph which follows this initial sentence he humorously anathematizes the literary life. He shows convincingly that 'secluded habits do not tend to eloquence.' He says that the 'indifferent apathy' so common among studious persons is by no means favorable to liveliness of narration. He proves that men who will not live cannot write; that people who shut themselves up in libraries have dry brains. He avows his confidence in the 'original way of writing books,' the way of the first author, who must have looked at things for himself, 'since there were no books for him to copy from;' and he challenges the reader to prove that this original way is not the best way. 'Where,' he asks, 'are the amusing books from voracious students and habitual writers?'

This startling arraignment of authors has been made by other men than Walter Bagehot. Hazlitt in his essay on the 'Ignorance of the Learned'

teaches much the same doctrine. Its general truth is indisputable, though Bagehot himself makes exception in favor of Sir Walter Scott.

But the two famous critics are united in their conviction that learned people are generally dull, and that books which are the work of habitual writers are not amusing.

There are as a matter of course more exceptions than one. Thomas Hardy is a distinguished exception. Thomas Hardy is an 'habitual writer,'

but he is always amusing. The following paragraphs are intended to emphasize certain causes of this quality in his work, the quality by virtue of which he chains the attention and proves himself the most readable novelist now living. That he does attract and hold is clear to any one who has tried no more than a half-dozen pages from one of his best stories. He has the fatal habit of being interesting,--fatal because it robs you who read him of time which you might else have devoted to 'improving' literature, such as history, political economy, or light science. He destroys your peace of mind by compelling your sympathies in behalf of people who never existed. He undermines your will power and makes you his slave. You declare that you will read but one more chapter and you weakly consent to make it two chapters. As a special indulgence you spoil a working day in order to learn about the _Return of the Native_, perhaps agreeing with a supposit.i.tious 'better self' that you will waste no more time on novels for the next six months. But you are of ascetic fibre indeed if you do not follow up the book with a reading of _The Woodlanders_ and _The Mayor of Casterbridge_.

There is a reason for this. If the practiced writer often fails to make a good book because he knows nothing, Mr. Hardy must succeed in large part because he knows so much. The more one reads him the more is one impressed with the extent of his knowledge. He has an intimate acquaintance with an immense number of interesting things.

He knows men and women--if not all sorts and all conditions, at least a great many varieties of the human animal. Moreover, his men are men and his women are women. He does not use them as figures to accentuate a landscape, or as ventriloquist's puppets to draw away attention from the fact that he himself is doing all the talking. His people have individuality, power of speech, power of motion. He does not tell you that such a one is clever or witty; the character which he has created does that for himself by doing clever things and making witty remarks.

In an excellent story by a celebrated modern master there is a young lady who is declared to be clever and brilliant. Out of forty or fifty observations which she makes, the most extraordinary concerns her father; she says, 'Isn't dear papa delightful?' At another time she inquires whether another gentleman is not also delightful. Hardy's resources are not so meagre as this. When his people talk we listen,--we do not endure.

He knows other things besides men and women. He knows the soil, the trees, the sky, the sunsets, the infinite variations of the landscape under cloud and sunshine. He knows horses, sheep, cows, dogs, cats. He understands the interpretation of sounds,--a detail which few novelists comprehend or treat with accuracy; the pages of his books ring with the noises of house, street, and country. Moreover there is nothing conventional in his transcript of facts. There is no evidence that he has been in the least degree influenced by other men's minds.

He takes the raw stuff of which novels are made and moulds it as he will. He has an absolutely fresh eye, as painters sometimes say. He looks on life as if he were the first literary man, 'and none had ever lived before him.' Paraphrasing Ruskin, one may say of Hardy that in place of studying the old masters he has studied what the old masters studied. But his point of view is his own. His pages are not reminiscent of other pages. He never makes you think of something you have read, but invariably of something you have seen or would like to see. He is an original writer, which means that he takes his material at first hand and eschews doc.u.ments. There is considerable evidence that he has read books, but there is no reason for supposing that books have damaged him.

Dr. Farmer proved that Shakespeare had no 'learning.' One might perhaps demonstrate that Thomas Hardy is equally fortunate. In that case he and Shakespeare may felicitate one another. Though when we remember that in our day it is hardly possible to avoid a tincture of scholarship, we may be doing the fairer thing by these two men if we say that the one had small Greek and the other has adroitly concealed the measure of Greek, whether great or small, which is in his possession. To put the matter in another form, though Hardy may have drunk in large quant.i.ty 'the spirit breathed from dead men to their kind,' he has not allowed his potations to intoxicate him.

This paragraph is not likely to be misinterpreted unless by some honest soul who has yet to learn that 'literature is not sworn testimony.' Therefore it may be well to add that Mr. Hardy undoubtedly owns a collection of books, and has upon his shelves dictionaries and encyclopedias, together with a decent representation of those works which people call 'standard.' But it is of importance to remember this: That while he may be a well-read man, as the phrase goes, he is not and never has been of that cla.s.s which Emerson describes with pale sarcasm as 'meek young men in libraries.' It is clear that Hardy has not 'weakened his eyesight over books,' and it is equally clear that he has 'sharpened his eyesight on men and women.' Let us consider a few of his virtues.

II

In the first place he tells a good story. No extravagant praise is due him for this; it is his business, his trade. He ought to do it, and therefore he does it. The 'first morality' of a novelist is to be able to tell a story, as the first morality of a painter is to be able to handle his brush skillfully and make it do his brain's intending.

After all, telling stories in an admirable fashion is rather a familiar accomplishment nowadays. Many men, many women are able to make stories of considerable ingenuity as to plot, and of thrilling interest in the unrolling of a scheme of events. Numberless writers are shrewd and clever in constructing their 'fable,' but they are unable to do much beyond this. Walter Besant writes good stories; Robert Buchanan writes good stories; Grant Allen and David Christie Murray are acceptable to many readers. But unless I mistake greatly and do these men an injustice I should be sorry to do them, their ability ceases just at this point. They tell good stories and do nothing else. They write books and do not make literature. They are authors by their own will and not by grace of G.o.d. It may be said of them as Augustine Birrell said of Professor Freeman and the Bishop of Chester, that they are h.o.r.n.y-handed sons of toil and worthy of their wage. But one would like to say a little more. Granting that this is praise, it is so faint as to be almost inaudible. If Hardy only wrote good stories he would be merely doing his duty, and therefore accounted an unprofitable servant. But he does much besides.

He fulfills one great function of the literary artist, which is to mediate between nature and the reading public. Such a man is an eye specialist. Through his amiable offices people who have hitherto been blind are put into condition to see. Near-sighted persons have spectacles fitted to them--which they generally refuse to wear, not caring for literature which clears the mental vision.

Hardy opens the eyes of the reader to the charm, the beauty, the mystery to be found in common life and in every-day objects. So alert and forceful an intelligence rarely applies its energy to fiction. The result is that he makes an almost hopelessly high standard. The exceptional man who comes after him may be a rival, but the majority of writing gentlemen can do little more than enviously admire. He seems to have established for himself such a rule as this, that he will write no page which shall not be interesting. He pours out the treasures of his observation in every chapter. He sees everything, feels everything, sympathizes with everything. To be sure he has an unusually rich field for work. In _The Mayor of Casterbridge_ is an account of the discovery of the remains of an old Roman soldier. One would expect Hardy to make something graphic of the episode. And so he does. You can almost see the warrior as he lies there 'in an oval scoop in the chalk, like a chicken in its sh.e.l.l; his knees drawn up to his chest; his spear against his arm; an urn at his knees, a jar at his throat, a bottle at his mouth; and mystified conjecture pouring down upon him from the eyes of Casterbridge street-boys and men.'

The real virtue in this bit of description lies in the few words expressive of the mental att.i.tude of the onlookers. And it is a nice distinction which Hardy makes when he says that 'imaginative inhabitants who would have felt an unpleasantness at the discovery of a comparatively modern skeleton in their gardens were quite unmoved by these h.o.a.ry shapes. They had lived so long ago, their hopes and motives were so widely removed from ours, that between them and the living there seemed to stretch a gulf too wide for even a spirit to pa.s.s.'

He takes note of that language which, though not articulate, is in common use among yeomen, dairymen, farmers, and the townsfolk of his little world. It is a language superimposed upon the ordinary language. 'To express satisfaction the Casterbridge market-man added to his utterance a broadening of the cheeks, a crevicing of the eyes, a throwing back of the shoulders.' 'If he wondered ... you knew it from perceiving the inside of his crimson mouth and the target-like circling of his eyes.' The language of deliberation expressed itself in the form of 'sundry attacks on the moss of adjoining walls with the end of his stick' or a 'change of his hat from the horizontal to the less so.'

The novel called _The Woodlanders_ is filled with notable ill.u.s.trations of an interest in minute things. The facts are introduced un.o.btrusively and no great emphasis is laid upon them. But they cling to the memory. Giles Winterbourne, a chief character in this story, 'had a marvelous power in making trees grow. Although he would seem to shovel in the earth quite carelessly there was a sort of sympathy between himself and the fir, oak, or beech that he was operating on; so that the roots took hold of the soil in a few days.'

When any of the journeymen planted, one quarter of the trees died away. There is a graphic little scene where Winterbourne plants and Marty South holds the trees for him. 'Winterbourne's fingers were endowed with a gentle conjurer's touch in spreading the roots of each little tree, resulting in a sort of caress under which the delicate fibres all laid themselves out in their proper direction for growth.'

Marty declared that the trees began to 'sigh' as soon as they were put upright, 'though when they are lying down they don't sigh at all.'

Winterbourne had never noticed it. 'She erected one of the young pines into its hole, and held up her finger; the soft musical breathing instantly set in, which was not to cease night or day till the grown tree should be felled--probably long after the two planters had been felled themselves.'

Later on in the story there is a description of this same Giles Winterbourne returning with his horses and his cider apparatus from a neighboring village. 'He looked and smelt like autumn's very brother, his face being sunburnt to wheat color, his eyes blue as corn flowers, his sleeves and leggings dyed with fruit stains, his hands clammy with the sweet juice of apples, his hat sprinkled with pips, and everywhere about him that atmosphere of cider which at its first return each season has such an indescribable fascination for those who have been born and bred among the orchards.'

Hardy throws off little sketches of this sort with an air of unconsciousness which is fascinating.... It may be a sunset, or it may be only a flake of snow falling upon a young girl's hair, or the light from lanterns penetrating the shutters and flickering over the ceiling of a room in the early winter morning,--no matter what the circ.u.mstance or happening is, it is caught in the act, photographed in permanent colors, made indelible and beautiful.

Hardy's art is tyrannical. It compels one to be interested in that which delights him. It imposes its own standards. There is a rude strength about the man which readers endure because they are not unwilling to be slaves to genius. You may dislike sheep, and care but little for the poetical aspect of cows, if indeed you are not inclined to question the existence of poetry in cows; but if you read _Far from the Madding Crowd_ you can never again pa.s.s a flock of sheep without being conscious of a mult.i.tude of new thoughts, new images, new matters for comparison. All that dormant section of your soul which for years was in a comatose condition on the subject of sheep is suddenly and broadly awake. Read _Tess_ and at once cows and a dairy have a new meaning to you. They are a conspicuous part of the setting of that stage upon which poor Tess Durbeyfield's life drama was played.

But Hardy does not flaunt his knowledge in his reader's face. These things are distinctly means to an end, not ends in themselves. He has no theory to advance about keeping bees or making cider. He has taken no little journeys in the world. On the contrary, where he has traveled at all, he has traveled extensively. He is like a tourist who has been so many times abroad that his allusions are naturally and unaffectedly made. But the man just back from a first trip on the continent has astonishment stamped upon his face, and he speaks of Paris and of the Alps as if he had discovered both. Zola is one of those pract.i.tioners who, big with recently acquired knowledge, appear to labor under the idea that the chief end of a novel is to convey miscellaneous information. This is probably a mistake. Novels are not handbooks on floriculture, banking, railways, or the management of department stores. One may make a parade of minute details and endlessly wearisome learning and gain a certain credit thereby; but what if the details and the learning are chiefly of value in a dictionary of sciences and commerce? Wisdom of this sort is to be sparingly used in a work of art.

In these matters I cannot but feel that Hardy has a reticence so commendable that praise of it is superfluous and impertinent. After all, men and women are better than sheep and cows, and had he been more explicit, he would have tempted one to inquire whether he proposed making a story or a volume which might bear the t.i.tle _The Wess.e.x Farmer's Own Hand-Book_, and containing wise advice as to pigs, poultry, and the useful art of making two heads of cabbage grow where only one had grown before.

III

Among the most engaging qualities of this writer is humor. Hardy is a humorous man himself and entirely appreciative of the humor that is in others. According to a distinguished philosopher, wit and humor produce love. Hardy must then be in daily receipt of large measures of this 'improving pa.s.sion' from his innumerable readers on both sides of the Atlantic.

His humor manifests itself in a variety of ways; by the use of witty epithet; by ingenious description of a thing which is not strikingly laughable in itself, but which becomes so from the closeness of his rendering; by a leisurely and ample account of a character with humorous traits,--traits which are brought artistically into prominence as an actor heightens the complexion in stage make-up; and finally by his lively reproductions of the talk of village and country people,--a cla.s.s of society whose everyday speech has only to be heard to be enjoyed. I do not pretend that the sources of Hardy's humor are exhausted in this a.n.a.lysis, but the majority of ill.u.s.trations can be a.s.signed to some one of these divisions.

He is usually thought to be at his best in descriptions of farmers, village mechanics, laborers, dairymen, men who kill pigs, tend sheep, furze-cutters, masons, hostlers, loafers who do nothing in particular, and while thus occupied rail on Lady Fortune in good set terms.

Certainly he paints these people with affectionate fidelity. Their virile, racy talk delights him. His reproductions of that talk are often intensely realistic. Nearly every book has its chorus of human grotesques whose mere names are a source of mirth. William Worm, Grandfer Cantle, 'Corp'el' Tullidge, Christopher Coney, John Upjohn, Robert Creedle, Martin Cannister, Haymoss Fry, Robert Lickpan, and Sammy Blore,--men so denominated should stand for comic things, and these men do. William Worm, for example, was deaf. His deafness took an unusual form; he heard fish frying in his head, and he was not reticent upon the subject of his infirmity. He usually described himself by the epithet 'wambling,' and protested that he would never pay the Lord for his making,--a degree of self-knowledge which many have arrived at but few have the courage to confess. He was once observed in the act of making himself 'pa.s.sing civil and friendly by overspreading his face with a large smile that seemed to have no connection with the humor he was in.' Sympathy because of his deafness elicited this response: 'Ay, I a.s.sure you that frying o' fish is going on for nights and days. And, you know, sometimes 'tisn't only fish, but rashers o' bacon and inions. Ay, I can hear the fat pop and fizz as nateral as life.'

He was questioned as to what means of cure he had tried.

'Oh, ay bless ye, I've tried everything. Ay, Providence is a merciful man, and I have hoped he'd have found it out by this time, living so many years in a parson's family, too, as I have; but 'a don't seem to relieve me. Ay, I be a poor wambling man, and life's a mint o'

trouble.'

One knows not which to admire the more, the appetizing realism in William Worm's account of his infirmity, or the primitive state of his theological views which allowed him to look for special divine favor by virtue of the ecclesiastical conspicuousness of his late residence.

Hardy must have heard, with comfort in the thought of its literary possibilities, the following dialogue on the cleverness of women. It occurs in the last chapter of _The Woodlanders_. A man who is always spoken of as the 'hollow-turner,' a phrase obviously descriptive of his line of business, which related to wooden bowls, spigots, cheese-vats, and funnels, talks with John Upjohn.

'What women do know nowadays!' he says. 'You can't deceive 'em as you could in my time.'

'What they knowed then was not small,' said John Upjohn. 'Always a good deal more than the men! Why, when I went courting my wife that is now, the skillfulness that she would show in keeping me on her pretty side as she walked was beyond all belief. Perhaps you've noticed that she's got a pretty side to her face as well as a plain one?'