But the superiority of women is perpetually menaced; they do not sit
throned on infirmities like the old; they are suitors as well as
sovereigns; their vanity is engaged, their affections are too apt to
follow; and hence much of the talk between the sexes degenerates into
something unworthy of the name. The desire to please, to shine with a
certain softness of lustre and to draw a fascinating picture of
oneself, banishes from conversation all that is sterling and most of
what is humorous. As soon as a strong current of mutual admiration
begins to flow, the human interest triumphs entirely over the
intellectual, and the commerce of words, consciously or not, becomes
secondary to the commercing of eyes. But even where this ridiculous
danger is avoided, and a man and woman converse equally and honestly,
something in their nature or their education falsifies the strain. An
instinct prompts them to agree; and where that is impossible, to agree
to differ. Should they neglect the warning, at the first suspicion of
an argument, they find themselves in different hemispheres. About any
point of business or conduct, any actual affair demanding settlement,
a woman will speak and listen, hear and answer arguments, not only
with natural wisdom, but with candour and logical honesty. But if the
subject of debate be something in the air, an abstraction, an excuse
for talk, a logical Aunt Sally, then may the male debater instantly
abandon hope; he may employ reason, adduce facts, be supple, be
smiling, be angry, all shall avail him nothing; what the woman said
first, that (unless she has forgotten it) she will repeat at the end.
Hence, at the very junctures when a talk between men grows brighter
and quicker and begins to promise to bear fruit, talk between the
sexes is menaced with dissolution. The point of difference, the point
of interest, is evaded by the brilliant woman, under a shower of
irrelevant conversational rockets; it is bridged by the discreet woman
with a rustle of silk, as she passes smoothly forward to the nearest
point of safety. And this sort of prestidigitation, juggling the
dangerous topic out of sight until it can be reintroduced with safety
in an altered shape, is a piece of tactics among the true drawing-room
queens.

The drawing-room is, indeed, an artificial place; it is so by our
choice and for our sins. The subjection of women; the ideal imposed
upon them from the cradle; and worn, like a hair-shirt, with so much
constancy; their motherly, superior tenderness to man's vanity and
self-importance; their managing arts--the arts of a civilised slave
among good-natured barbarians--are all painful ingredients and all
help to falsify relations. It is not till we get clear of that amusing
artificial scene that genuine relations are founded, or ideas honestly
compared. In the garden, on the road or the hillside, or _tГЄte-Г -tГЄte_
and apart from interruptions, occasions arise when we may learn much
from any single woman; and nowhere more often than in, married life.
Marriage is one long conversation, chequered by disputes. The disputes
are valueless; they but ingrain the difference; the heroic heart of
woman prompting her at once to nail her colours to the mast. But in
the intervals, almost unconsciously and with no desire to shine, the
whole material of life is turned over and over, ideas are struck out
and shared, the two persons more and more adapt their notions one to
suit the other, and in process of time, without sound of trumpet, they
conduct each, other into new worlds of thought.


NOTES

The two papers on _Talk and Talkers_ first appeared in the _Cornhill
Magazine_, for April and for August, 1882, Vol. XLV, pp. 410-418, Vol.
XLVI, pp. 151-158. The second paper had the title, _Talk and Talkers_.
(_A Sequel_.) For Stevenson's relations with the Editor, see our note
to _An Apology for Idlers_. With the publication of the second part,
Stevenson's connection with the _Cornhill_ ceased, as the magazine in
1883 passed from the hands of Leslie Stephen into those of James Payn.
The two papers next appeared in the volume _Memories and Portraits_
(1887). The first was composed during the winter of 1881-2 at Davos in
the Alps, whither he had gone for his health, the second a few months
later. Writing to Charles Baxter, 22 Feb. 1882, he said, "In an
article which will appear sometime in the Cornhill, 'Talk and
Talkers,' and where I have full-lengthened the conversation of Bob,
Henley, Jenkin, Simpson, Symonds, and Gosse, I have at the end one
single word about yourself. It may amuse you to see it." (_Letters_,
I, 268.) Writing from Bournemouth, England, in February 1885 to Sidney
Colvin, he said, "See how my 'Talk and Talkers' went; every one liked
his own portrait, and shrieked about other people's; so it will be
with yours. If you are the least true to the essential, the sitter
will be pleased; very likely not his friends, and that from various
motives." (_Letters_, I, 413.) In a letter to his mother from Davos,
dated 9 April 1882, he gives the real names opposite each character in
the first paper, and adds, "But pray regard these as secrets."

The art of conversation, like the art of letter-writing, reached its
highest point in the eighteenth century; cheap postage destroyed the
latter, and the hurly-burly of modern life has been almost too strong
for the former. In the French Salons of the eighteenth century, and in
the coffeehouses and drawing-rooms of England, good conversation was
regarded as a most desirable accomplishment, and was practised by many
with extraordinary wit and skill. Swift's satire on _Polite
Conversation_ (1738) as well as the number of times he discusses the
art of conversation in other places, shows how seriously he actually
regarded it. Stevenson, like many persons who are forced away from
active life, loved a good talk. Good writers are perhaps now more
common than good talkers.


FIRST PAPER

[Note 1: _Sir, we had a good talk_. This remark was made by the Doctor
in 1768, the morning after a memorable meeting at the Crown and Anchor
tavern, where he had been engaged in conversation with seven or eight
notable literary men. "When I called upon Dr. Johnson next morning,"
says Boswell, "I found him highly satisfied with his colloquial
prowess the preceding evening. 'Well,' said he, 'we had good talk.'
BOSWELL: 'Yes, sir, you tossed and gored several persons.'"]

[Note 2: _As we must account_. This remark of Franklin's occurs in
_Poor Richard's Almanac_ for 1738.]

[Note 3: _Flies ... in the amber_. Bartlett gives Martial.]

  "The bee enclosed and through the amber shown,
  Seems buried in the juice which was his own."

Bacon, Donne, Herrick, Pope and many other authors speak of flies in
amber.]

[Note 4: _Fancy free_. See _Midsummer Night's Dream_, Act II, Sc. 2.

  "And the imperial votaress passed on,
  In maiden meditation, fancy-free."

This has been called the most graceful among all the countless
compliments received by Queen Elizabeth. The word "fancy" in the
Shaksperian quotation means simply "love."]

[Note 5: _A spade a spade_. The phrase really comes from Aristophanes,
and is quoted by Plutarch, as Philip's description of the rudeness of
the Macedonians. _Kudos_. Greek word for "pride", used as slang by
school-boys in England.]

[Note 6: _Trailing clouds of glory_. _Trailing with him clouds of
glory._ This passage, from Wordsworth's _Ode on the Intimations of
Immortality_ (1807), was a favorite one with Stevenson, and he quotes
it several times in various essays.]

[Note 7: _The Flying Dutchman_. Wagner's _Der Fliegende Holländer_
(1843), one of his earliest, shortest, and most beautiful operas. Many
German performances are given in the afternoon, and many German
theatres have pretty gardens attached, where, during the long
intervals (_grosse Pause_) between the acts, one may refresh himself
with food, drink, tobacco, and the open air. Germany and German art,
however, did not have anything like the influence on Stevenson exerted
by the French country, language, and literature.]

[Note 8: _Theophrastus_. A Greek philosopher who died 287-B.C. His
most influential work was his _Characters_, which, subsequently
translated into many modern languages, produced a whole school of
literature known as the "Character Books," of which the best are
perhaps Sir Thomas Overbury's _Characters_ (1614), John Earle's
_Microcosmographie_ (1628), and the _CaractГЁres_ (1688) of the great
French writer, La BruyГЁre.]

[Note 9: _Consuelo, Clarissa Harlowe, Vautrin, Steenie Steenson_.
_Consuelo_ is the title of one of the most notable novels by the
famous French authoress, George Sand, (1804-1876), whose real name was
Aurore Dupin. _Consuelo_ appeared in 1842.... _Clarissa_ (1747-8) was
the masterpiece of the novelist Samuel Richardson (1689-1761). This
great novel, in seven fat volumes, was a warm favorite with Stevenson,
as it has been with most English writers from Dr. Johnson to Macaulay.
Writing to a friend in December 1877, Stevenson said, "Please, if you
have not, and I don't suppose you have, already read it, institute a
search in all Melbourne for one of the rarest and certainly one of the
best of books--_Clarissa Harlowe._ For any man who takes an interest
in the problems of the two sexes, that book is a perfect mine of
documents. And it is written, sir, with the pen of an angel."
(_Letters_, I, 141.) Editions of _Clarissa_ are not so scarce now as
they were thirty years ago; several have appeared within the last few
years.... _Vautrin_ is one of the most remarkable characters in
several novels of Balzac; see especially _Pere Goriot_ (1834) ...
_Steenie Steenson_ in Scott's novel _Redgauntlet_ (1824).]

[Note 10: _No human being, etc_. Stevenson loved action in novels, and
was impatient, as many readers are, when long-drawn descriptions of
scenery were introduced. Furthermore, the love for wild scenery has
become as fashionable as the love for music; the result being a very
general hypocrisy in assumed ecstatic raptures.]

[Note 11: _You can keep no men long, nor Scotchmen at all_. Every
Scotchman is a born theologian. Franklin says in his _Autobiography_,
"I had caught this by reading my father's books of dispute on
Religion. Persons of good sense, I have since observed seldom fall
into it, except lawyers, university men, and generally men of all
sorts who have been bred at Edinburgh." (Chap. I.)]

[Note 12: _A court of love_. A mediaeval institution of chivalry,
where questions of knight-errantry, constancy in love, etc., were
discussed and for the time being, decided.]

[Note 13: _Spring-Heel'd Jack_. This is Stevenson's cousin "Bob,"
Robert Alan Mowbray Stevenson (1847-1900), an artist and later
Professor of Fine Arts at University College, Liverpool. He was one of
the best conversationalists in England. Stevenson said of him,

  "My cousin Bob, ... is the man likest and most unlike to me that I
  have ever met.... What was specially his, and genuine, was his
  faculty for turning over a subject in conversation. There was an
  insane lucidity in his conclusions; a singular, humorous eloquence
  in his language, and a power of method, bringing the whole of life
  into the focus of the subject under hand; none of which I have ever
  heard equalled or even approached by any other talker." (Balfour's
  _Life of Stevenson_, I, 103. For further remarks on the cousin, see
  note to page 104 of the _Life_.)]

[Note 14: _From Shakespeare to Kant, from Kant to Major Dyngwell_.
Immanuel Kant, the foremost philosopher of the eighteenth century,
born at Königsberg in 1724, died 1804. His greatest work, the
_Critique of Pure Reason_ (_Kritick der reinen Vernunft_, 1781),
produced about the same revolutionary effect on metaphysics as that
produced by Copernicus in astronomy, or by Darwin in natural
science.... _Major Dyngwell I know not_.]

[Note 15: _Burly_. Burly is Stevenson's friend, the poet William
Ernest Henley, who died in 1903. His sonnet on our author may be found
in the introduction to this book. Leslie Stephen introduced the two
men on 13 Feb. 1875, when Henley was in the hospital, and a very close
and intimate friendship began. Henley's personality was exceedingly
robust, in contrast with his health, and in his writings and talk he
delighted in shocking people. His philosophy of life is seen clearly
in his most characteristic poem:

  "Out of the night that covers me,
    Black as the Pit from pole to pole,
  I thank whatever Gods may be
    For my unconquerable soul.

  In the fell clutch of circumstance
    I have not winced nor cried aloud.
  Under the bludgeonings of chance
    My head is bloody, but unbowed.

  Beyond this place of wrath and tears
    Looms but the Horror of the shade,
  And yet the menace of the years
    Finds, and shall find, me unafraid.

  It matters not how strait the gate,
    How charged with punishments the scroll,
  I am the master of my fate:
    I am the Captain of my soul."

After the publication of Balfour's _Life of Stevenson_ (1901), Mr.
Henley contributed to the _Pall Mall Magazine_ in December of that
year an article called _R.L.S._, which made a tremendous sensation. It
was regarded by many of Stevenson's friends as a wanton assault on his
private character. Whether justified or not, it certainly damaged
Henley more than the dead author. For further accounts of the
relations between the two men, see index to Balfour's _Life_, under
the title _Henley_.]

[Note 16: _Pistol has been out-Pistol'd_. The burlesque character in
Shakspere's _King Henry IV_ and _V_.]

[Note 17: _Cockshot_. (The Late Fleeming Jenkin.) As the note says,
this was Professor Fleeming Jenkin, who died 12 June 1885. He
exercised a great influence over the younger man. Stevenson paid the
debt of gratitude he owed him by writing the _Memoir of Fleeming
Jenkin_, published first in America by Charles Scribner's Sons, in
1887.]

[Note 18: _Synthetic gusto; something of a Herbert Spencer_. The
English philosopher, Herbert Spencer (1820-1903), whose many volumes
in various fields of science and metaphysics were called by their
author the _Synthetic Philosophy_. His most popular book is _First
Principles_ (1862), which has exercised an enormous influence in the
direction of agnosticism. His _Autobiography_, two big volumes, was
published in 1904, and fell rather flat.]

[Note 19: _Like a thorough "glutton."_ This is still the slang of the
prize-ring. When a man is able to stand a great deal of punching
without losing consciousness or courage, he is called a "glutton for
punishment."]

[Note 20: _Athelred_. Sir Walter Simpson, who was Stevenson's
companion on the _Inland Voyage_. For a good account of him, see
Balfour's _Life of Stevenson_, I, 106.]

[Note 21: "_Dry light_." "The more perfect soul," says Heraclitus, "is
a dry light, which flies out of the body as lightning breaks from a
cloud." Plutarch, _Life of Romulus_.]

[Note 22: _Opalstein_. This was the writer and art critic, John
Addington Symonds (1840-1893). Like Stevenson, he was afflicted with
lung trouble, and spent much of his time at Davos, Switzerland, where
a good part of his literary work was done. "The great feature of the
place for Stevenson was the presence of John Addington Symonds, who,
having come there three years before on his way to Egypt, had taken up
his abode in Davos, and was now building himself a house. To him the
newcomer bore a letter of introduction from Mr. Gosse. On November 5th
(1880) Louis wrote to his mother: 'We got to Davos last evening; and I
feel sure we shall like it greatly. I saw Symonds this morning, and
already like him; it is such sport to have a literary man around....
Symonds is like a Tait to me; eternal interest in the same topics,
eternal cross-causewaying of special knowledge. That makes hours to
fly.' And a little later he wrote: 'Beyond its splendid climate, Davos
has but one advantage--the neighbourhood of J.A. Symonds. I dare say
you know his work, but the man is far more interesting.'" (Balfour's
_Life of Stevenson_, I, 214.) When Symonds first read the essay _Talk
and Talkers_, he pretended to be angry, and said, "Louis Stevenson,
what do you mean by describing me as a moonlight serenader?" (_Life_,
I, 233.)]

[Note 23: _Proxime accessit_. "He comes very near to it."]

[Note 24: _Sirens ... Sphinx Byronic ... Horatian ... Don Giovanni ...
Beethoven_. The Sirens were the famous women of Greek mythology, who
lured mariners to destruction by the overpowering sweetness of their
songs. How Ulysses outwitted them is well-known to all readers of the
_Odyssey_. One of Tennyson's earlier poems, _The Sea-Fairies_, deals
with the same theme, and indeed it has appeared constantly in the
literature of the world.... The _Sphinx_, a familiar subject in
Egyptian art, had a lion's body, the head of some other animal
(sometimes man) and wings. It was a symbolical figure. The most famous
example is of course the gigantic Sphinx near the Pyramids in Egypt,
which has proved to be an inexhaustible theme for speculation and for
poetry.... The theatrically tragic mood of _Byron_ is contrasted with
the easy-going, somewhat cynical epicureanism of Horace.... _Don
Giovanni_ (1787) the greatest opera of the great composer Mozart
(1756-1791), tells the same story told by MoliГЁre and so many others.
The French composer, Gounod, said that Mozart's _Don Giovanni_ was the
greatest musical composition that the world has ever seen....
_Beethoven_ (1770-1827) occupies in general estimation about the same
place in the history of music that Shakspere fills in the history of
literature.]

[Note 25: _Purcel_. This stands for Mr. Edmund Gosse (born 1849), a
poet and critic of some note, who writes pleasantly on many topics.
Many of Stevenson's letters were addressed to him. The two friends
first met in London in 1877, and the impression made by the novelist
on the critic may be seen in Mr. Gosse's book of essays, _Critical
Kitcats_ (1896).]

[Note 26: _I know another person_. This is undoubtedly Stevenson's
friend Charles Baxter. See the quotation from a letter to him in our
introductory note to this essay. Compare what Stevenson elsewhere said
of him: "I cannot characterise a personality so unusual in the little
space that I can here afford. I have never known one of so mingled a
strain.... He is the only man I ever heard of who could give and take
in conversation with the wit and polish of style that we find in
Congreve's comedies." (Balfour's _Life of Stevenson_, I, 105.)]

[Note 27: _Restoration comedy ... Congreve_. Restoration comedy is a
general name applied to the plays acted in England between 1660, the
year of the restoration of Charles II to the throne, and 1700, the
year of the death of Dryden. This comedy is as remarkable for the
brilliant wit of its dialogue as for its gross licentiousness. Perhaps
the wittiest dramatist of the whole group was William Congreve
(1670-1729).]

[Note 28: _Falstaff ... Mercutio ... Sir Toby ... Cordelia ...
Protean_. Sir John Falstaff, who appears in Shakspere's _King Henry
IV_, and again in the _Merry Wives of Windsor_, is generally regarded
as the greatest comic character in literature.... _Mercutio_, the
friend of Romeo; one of the most marvellous of all Shakspere's
gentlemen. He is the Hotspur of comedy, and his taking off by Tybalt
"eclipsed the gaiety of nations."... _Sir Toby Belch_ is the genial
character in _Twelfth Night_, fond of singing and drinking, but no
fool withal. A conversation between Falstaff, Mercutio, and Sir Toby
would have taxed even the resources of a Shakspere, and would have
been intolerably excellent.... _Cordelia_, the daughter of King Lear,
whose sincerity and tenderness combined make her one of the greatest
women in the history of poetry.... _Protean_, something that
constantly assumes different forms. In mythology, Proteus was the son
of Oceanus and Tethys, whose special power was his faculty for
lightning changes.

  "Have sight of Proteus rising from the sea."--Wordsworth.]

[Note 29: This sequel was called forth by an excellent article in _The
Spectator_, for 1 April 1882, and bore the title, _The Restfulness of
Talk_. The opening words of this article were as follows:--"The fine
paper on 'Talk,' by 'R.L.S.,' in the _Cornhill_ for April, a paper
which a century since would, by itself, have made a literary
reputation, does not cover the whole field."]

[Note 30: _Valhalla_. In Scandinavian mythology, this was the heaven
for the brave who fell in battle. Here they had an eternity of
fighting and drinking.]

[Note 31: _Meticulous_. Timid. From the Latin, _meticulosus_.]

[Note 32: _Kindly_. Here used in the old sense of "natural." Compare
the Litany, "the kindly fruits of the earth."]

[Note 33: "_The real long-lived things_." For Whitman, see our Note 12
of Chapter III above.]

[Note 34: _Robert Hunter, Sheriff of Dumbarton_. Hunter recognised the
genius in Stevenson long before the latter became known to the world,
and gave him much friendly encouragement. Dumbarton is a town about 16
miles north-west of Glasgow, in Scotland. It contains a castle famous
in history and in literature.]

[Note 35: _A novel by Miss Mather_. The name should be "Mathers."
Helen Mathers (Mrs. Henry Reeves), born in 1853, has written a long
series of novels, of which _My Lady Greensleeves, The Sin of Hagar_
and _Venus Victrix_ are perhaps as well-known as they deserve to be.]

[Note 36: _Chelsea_. Formerly a suburb, now a part of London, to the
S.W. It is famous for its literary associations. Swift, Thomas
Carlyle, Leigh Hunt, George Eliot, Dante Gabriel Rossetti and many
other distinguished writers lived in Chelsea at various times. It
contains a great hospital, to which Stevenson seems to refer here.]

[Note 37: _Webster, Jeremy Taylor, Burke_. John Webster was one of the
Elizabethan dramatists, who, in felicity of diction, approached more
nearly to Shakspere than most of his contemporaries. His greatest play
was _The Duchess of Malfi_ (acted in 1616). Jeremy Taylor (1613-1667),
often called the "Shakspere of Divines," was one of the greatest
pulpit orators in English history. His most famous work, still a
classic, is _Holy Living and Holy Dying_ (1650-1). Edmund Burke
(1729-1797) the parliamentary orator and author of the _Sublime and
Beautiful_ (1756), whose speeches on America are only too familiar to
American schoolboys.]

[Note 38: _Junius_. No one knows yet who "Junius" was. In the _Public
Advertiser_ from 21 Jan. 1769 to 21 Jan. 1772, appeared letters signed
by this name, which made a sensation. The identity of the author was a
favorite matter for dispute during many years.]

[Note 39: _David Hume_. The great Scotch skeptic and philosopher
(1711-1776).]

[Note 40: _Shakespeare's fairy pieces with great scenic display._ So
far from this being a novelty to-day, it has become rather nauseating,
and there are evidences of a reaction in favour of _hearing_ Shakspere
on the stage rather than _seeing_ him.]

[Note 41: _Calvinism_. If this word does not need a note yet, it
certainly will before long. The founder of the theological system
Calvinism was John Calvin, born in France in 1509. The chief doctrines
are Predestination, the Atonement (by which the blood of Christ
appeased the wrath of God toward those persons only who had been
previously chosen for salvation--on all others the sacrifice was
ineffectual), Original Sin, and the Perseverance of the Saints (once
saved, one could not fall from grace). These doctrines remained intact
in the creed of Presbyterian churches in America until a year or two
ago.]

[Note 42: _Two bob_. A pun, for "bob" is slang for "shilling."]

[Note 43: _Never read Othello to an end_. In _A Gossip on a Novel of
Dumas's,_ Stevenson confessed that there were four plays of Shakspere
he had never been able to read through, though for a different reason:
they were _Richard III, Henry VI, Titus Andronicus_, and _All's Well
that Ends Well_. It is still an open question as to whether or not
Shakspere wrote _Titus_.]

[Note 44: _A liberal and pious education_. It was Sir Richard Steele
who made the phrase, in _The Tatler_, No. 49: "to love her (Lady
Elizabeth Hastings) was a liberal education."]

[Note 45: _Trait d'union_. The French expression simply means
"hyphen": literally, "mark of connection."]

[Note 46: _Malvolio_. The conceited but not wholly contemptible
character in _Twelfth Night_.]

[Note 47: _The Egoist_. _The Egoist_ (1879) is one of the best-known
novels of Mr. George Meredith, born 1828. It had been published only a
very short time before Stevenson wrote this essay, so he is commenting
on one of the "newest" books. Stevenson's enthusiasm for Meredith knew
no bounds, and he regarded the _Egoist_ and _Richard Feverel_ (1859),
as among the masterpieces of English literature. _Daniel Deronda_, the
last and by no means the best novel of George Eliot (1820-1880), had
appeared in 1876.]


V

A GOSSIP ON ROMANCE

In anything fit to be called by the name of reading, the process
itself should be absorbing and voluptuous; we should gloat over a
book, be rapt clean out of ourselves, and rise from the perusal, our
mind filled with the busiest, kaleidoscopic dance of images, incapable
of sleep or of continuous thought. The words, if the book be eloquent,
should run thence-forward in our ears like the noise of breakers, and
the story, if it be a story, repeat itself in a thousand coloured
pictures to the eye. It was for this last pleasure that we read so
closely, and loved our books so dearly, in the bright, troubled period
of boyhood. Eloquence and thought, character and conversation, were
but obstacles to brush aside as we dug blithely after a certain sort
of incident, like a pig for truffles.[1] For my part, I liked a story
to begin with an old wayside inn where, "towards the close of the year
17--," several gentlemen in three-cocked hats were playing bowls. A
friend of mine preferred the Malabar coast[2] in a storm, with a ship
beating to windward, and a scowling fellow of Herculean proportions
striding along the beach; he, to be sure, was a pirate. This was
further afield than my home-keeping fancy loved to travel, and
designed altogether for a larger canvas than the tales that I
affected. Give me a highwayman and I was full to the brim; a
Jacobite[3] would do, but the highwayman was my favourite dish. I can
still hear that merry clatter of the hoofs along the moonlit lane;
night and the coming of day are still related in my mind with the
doings of John Rann or Jerry Abershaw;[4] and the words "postchaise,"
the "great North road,"[5] "ostler," and "nag" still sound in my ears
like poetry. One and all, at least, and each with his particular
fancy, we read story-books in childhood; not for eloquence or
character or thought, but for some quality of the brute incident. That
quality was not mere bloodshed or wonder. Although each of these was
welcome in its place, the charm for the sake of which we read depended
on something different from either. My elders used to read novels
aloud; and I can still remember four different passages which I heard,
before I was ten, with the same keen and lasting pleasure. One I
discovered long afterwards to be the admirable opening of _What will
he Do with It?_[6] It was no wonder I was pleased with that. The other
three still remain unidentified. One is a little vague; it was about a
dark, tall house at night, and people groping on the stairs by the
light that escaped from the open door of a sickroom. In another, a
lover left a ball, and went walking in a cool, dewy park, whence he
could watch the lighted windows and the figures of the dancers as they
moved. This was the most sentimental impression I think I had yet
received, for a child is somewhat deaf to the sentimental. In the
last, a poet, who had been tragically wrangling with his wife, walked
forth on the sea-beach on a tempestuous night and witnessed the
horrors of a wreck.[7] Different as they are, all these early
favourites have a common note--they have all a touch of the romantic.

Drama is the poetry of conduct, romance the poetry of circumstance.
The pleasure that we take in life is of two sorts--the active and the
passive. Now we are conscious of a great command over our destiny;
anon we are lifted up by circumstance, as by a breaking wave, and
dashed we know not how into the future. Now we are pleased by our
conduct, anon merely pleased by our surroundings. It would be hard to
say which of these modes of satisfaction is the more effective, but
the latter is surely the more constant. Conduct is three parts of
life,[8] they say; but I think they put it high. There is a vast deal
in life and letters both which is not immoral, but simply a-moral;
which either does not regard the human will at all, or deals with it
in obvious and healthy relations; where the interest turns, not upon
what a man shall choose to do, but on how he manages to do it; not on
the passionate slips and hesitations of the conscience, but on the
problems of the body and of the practical intelligence, in clean,
open-air adventure, the shock of arms or the diplomacy of life. With
such material as this it is impossible to build a play, for the
serious theatre exists solely on moral grounds, and is a standing
proof of the dissemination of the human conscience. But it is possible
to build, upon this ground, the most joyous of verses, and the most
lively, beautiful and buoyant tales.

One thing in life calls for another; there is a fitness in events and
places. The sight of a pleasant arbour[9] puts it in our minds to sit
there. One place suggests work, another idleness, a third early rising
and long rambles in the dew. The effect of night, of any flowing
water, of lighted cities, of the peep of day, of ships, of the open
ocean, calls up in the mind an army of anonymous desires and
pleasures. Something, we feel, should happen; we know not what, yet we
proceed in quest of it. And many of the happiest hours of life fleet
by us in this vain attendance on the genius of the place and moment.
It is thus that tracts of young fir, and low rocks that reach into
deep soundings, particularly torture and delight me. Something must
have happened in such places, and perhaps ages back, to members of my
race; when I was a child I tried in vain to invent appropriate games
for them, as I still try, just as vainly, to fit them with the proper
story. Some places speak distinctly. Certain dank gardens cry aloud
for a murder; certain old houses demand to be haunted; certain coasts
are set apart for ship-wreck. Other spots again seem to abide their
destiny, suggestive and impenetrable, "miching mallecho."[10] The inn
at Burford Bridge,[11] with its arbours and green garden and silent,
eddying river--though it is known already as the place where Keats
wrote some of his _Endymion_ and Nelson parted from his Emma--still
seems to wait the coming of the appropriate legend. Within these ivied
walls, behind these old green shutters, some further business
smoulders, waiting for its hour. The old Hawes Inn at the Queen's
Ferry makes a similar call upon my fancy. There it stands, apart from
the town, beside the pier, in a climate of its own, half inland, half
marine--in front, the ferry bubbling with the tide and the guard-ship
swinging to her anchor; behind, the old garden with the trees.
Americans seek it already for the sake of Lovel and Oldbuck, who dined
there at the beginning of the _Antiquary_. But you need not tell
me--that is not all; there is some story, unrecorded or not yet
complete, which must express the meaning of that inn more fully. So it
is with names and faces; so it is with incidents that are idle and
inconclusive in themselves, and yet seem like the beginning of some
quaint romance, which the all-careless author leaves untold. How many
of these romances have we not seen determine at their birth; how many
people have met us with a look of meaning in their eye, and sunk at
once into trivial acquaintances; to how many places have we not drawn
near, with express intimations--"here my destiny awaits me"--and we
have but dined there and passed on! I have lived both at the Hawes and
Burford in a perpetual flutter, on the heels, as it seemed, of some
adventure that should justify the place; but though the feeling had me
to bed at night and called me again at morning in one unbroken round
of pleasure and suspense, nothing befell me in either worth remark.
The man or the hour had not yet come; but some day, I think, a boat
shall put off from the Queen's Ferry, fraught with a dear cargo, and
some frosty night a horseman, on a tragic errand, rattle with his whip
upon the green shutters of the inn at Burford.[12]

Now, this is one of the natural appetites with which any lively
literature has to count. The desire for knowledge, I had almost added
the desire for meat, is not more deeply seated than this demand for
fit and striking incident. The dullest of clowns tells, or tries to
tell, himself a story, as the feeblest of children uses invention in
his play; and even as the imaginative grown person, joining in the
game, at once enriches it with many delightful circumstances, the
great creative writer shows us the realisation and the apotheosis of
the day-dreams of common men. His stories may be nourished with the
realities of life, but their true mark is to satisfy the nameless
longings of the reader, and to obey the ideal laws of the day-dream.
The right kind of thing should fall out in the right kind of place;
the right kind of thing should follow; and not only the characters
talk aptly and think naturally, but all the circumstances in a tale
answer one to another like notes in music. The threads of a story come
from time to time together and make a picture in the web; the
characters fall from time to time into some attitude to each other or
to nature, which stamps the story home like an illustration.
Crusoe[13] recoiling from the footprint, Achilles shouting over
against the Trojans, Ulysses bending the great bow, Christian running
with his fingers in his ears, these are each culminating moments in
the legend, and each has been printed on the mind's eye forever. Other
things we may forget; we may forget the words, although they are
beautiful; we may forget the author's comment, although perhaps it was
ingenious and true; but these epoch-making scenes, which put the last
mark of truth upon a story and fill up, at one blow, our capacity for
sympathetic pleasure, we so adopt into the very bosom of our mind that
neither time nor tide can efface or weaken the impression. This, then,
is the plastic part of literature: to embody character, thought, or
emotion in some act or attitude that shall be remarkably striking to
the mind's eye. This is the highest and hardest thing to do in words;
the thing which, once accomplished, equally delights the schoolboy and
the sage, and makes, in its own right, the quality of epics. Compared
with this, all other purposes in literature, except the purely lyrical
or the purely philosophic, are bastard in nature, facile of execution,
and feeble in result. It is one thing to write about the inn at
Burford, or to describe scenery with the word-painters; it is quite
another to seize on the heart of the suggestion and make a country
famous with a legend. It is one thing to remark and to dissect, with
the most cutting logic, the complications of life, and of the human
spirit; it is quite another to give them body and blood in the story
of Ajax[14] or of Hamlet. The first is literature, but the second is
something besides, for it is likewise art.

English people of the present day[15] are apt, I know not why, to look
somewhat down on incident, and reserve their admiration for the clink
of teaspoons and the accents of the curate. It is thought clever to
write a novel with no story at all, or at least with a very dull one.
Reduced even to the lowest terms, a certain interest can be
communicated by the art of narrative; a sense of human kinship
stirred; and a kind of monotonous fitness, comparable to the words and
air of _Sandy's Mull_, preserved among the infinitesimal occurrences
recorded. Some people work, in this manner, with even a strong touch.
Mr. Trollope's inimitable clergymen naturally arise to the mind in
this connection. But even Mr. Trollope[16] does not confine himself to
chronicling small beer. Mr. Crawley's collision with the Bishop's
wife, Mr. Melnette dallying in the deserted banquet-room, are typical
incidents, epically conceived, fitly embodying a crisis. Or again look
at Thackeray. If Rawdon Crawley's blow were not delivered, _Vanity
Fair_ would cease to be a work of art. That scene is the chief
ganglion of the tale; and the discharge of energy from Rawdon's fist
is the reward and consolation of the reader. The end of _Esmond_ is a
yet wider excursion from the author's customary fields; the scene at
Castlewood is pure Dumas;[17] the great and wily English borrower has
here borrowed from the great, unblushing French thief; as usual, he
has borrowed admirably well, and the breaking of the sword rounds off
the best of all his books with a manly, martial note. But perhaps
nothing can more strongly illustrate the necessity for marking
incident than to compare the living fame of _Robinson Crusoe_ with the
discredit of _Clarissa Harlowe_.[18] _Clarissa_ is a book of a far
more startling import, worked out, on a great canvas, with inimitable
courage and unflagging art. It contains wit, character, passion, plot,
conversations full of spirit and insight, letters sparkling with
unstrained humanity; and if the death of the heroine be somewhat
frigid and artificial, the last days of the hero strike the only note
of what we now call Byronism,[19] between the Elizabethans and Byron
himself. And yet a little story of a ship-wrecked sailor, with not a
tenth part of the style nor a thousandth part of the wisdom, exploring
none of the arcana of humanity and deprived of the perennial interest
of love, goes on from edition to edition, ever young, while _Clarissa_
lies upon the shelves unread. A friend of mine, a Welsh blacksmith,
was twenty-five years old and could neither read nor write, when he
heard a chapter of _Robinson_ read aloud in a farm kitchen. Up to that
moment he had sat content, huddled in his ignorance, but he left that
farm another man. There were day-dreams, it appeared, divine
day-dreams, written and printed and bound, and to be bought for money
and enjoyed at pleasure. Down he sat that day, painfully learned to
read Welsh, and returned to borrow the book. It had been lost, nor
could he find another copy but one that was in English. Down he sat
once more, learned English, and at length, and with entire delight,
read _Robinson_. It is like the story of a love-chase. If he had heard
a letter from _Clarissa_, would he have been fired with the same
chivalrous ardour? I wonder. Yet _Clarissa_ has every quality that can
be shown in prose, one alone excepted--pictorial or picture-making
romance. While _Robinson_ depends, for the most part and with the
overwhelming majority of its readers, on the charm of circumstance.

In the highest achievements of the art of words, the dramatic and the
pictorial, the moral and romantic interest, rise and fall together by
a common and organic law. Situation is animated with passion, passion
clothed upon with situation. Neither exists for itself, but each
inheres indissolubly with the other. This is high art; and not only
the highest art possible in words, but the highest art of all, since
it combines the greatest mass and diversity of the elements of truth
and pleasure. Such are epics, and the few prose tales that have the
epic weight. But as from a school of works, aping the creative,
incident and romance are ruthlessly discarded, so may character and
drama be omitted or subordinated to romance. There is one book, for
example, more generally loved than Shakespeare, that captivates in
childhood, and still delights in age--I mean the _Arabian
Nights_--where you shall look in vain for moral or for intellectual
interest. No human face or voice greets us among that wooden crowd of
kings and genies, sorcerers and beggarmen. Adventure, on the most
naked terms, furnishes forth the entertainment and is found enough.
Dumas approaches perhaps nearest of any modern to these Arabian
authors in the purely material charm of some of his romances. The
early part of _Monte Cristo_, down to the finding of the treasure, is
a piece of perfect story-telling; the man never breathed who shared
these moving incidents without a tremor; and yet Faria is a thing of
packthread and DantГЁs[20] little more than a name. The sequel is one
long-drawn error, gloomy, bloody, unnatural and dull; but as for these
early chapters, I do not believe there is another volume extant where
you can breathe the same unmingled atmosphere of romance. It is very
thin and light, to be sure, as on a high mountain; but it is brisk and
clear and sunny in proportion. I saw the other day, with envy, an old
and a very clever lady setting forth on a second or third voyage into
_Monte Cristo_. Here are stories which powerfully affect the reader,
which can be reperused at any age, and where the characters are no
more than puppets. The bony fist of the showman visibly propels them;
their springs are an open secret; their faces are of wood, their
bellies filled with bran; and yet we thrillingly partake of their
adventures. And the point may be illustrated still further. The last
interview between Lucy and Richard Feveril[21] is pure drama; more
than that, it is the strongest scene, since Shakespeare, in the
English tongue. Their first meeting by the river, on the other hand,
is pure romance; it has nothing to do with character; it might happen
to any other boy and maiden, and be none the less delightful for the
change. And yet I think he would be a bold man who should choose
between these passages. Thus, in the same book, we may have two
scenes, each capital in its order: in the one, human passion, deep
calling unto deep, shall utter its genuine voice; in the second,
according circumstances, like instruments in tune, shall build up a
trivial but desirable incident, such as we love to prefigure for
ourselves; and in the end, in spite of the critics, we may hesitate to
give the preference to either. The one may ask more genius--I do not
say it does; but at least the other dwells as clearly in the memory.

True romantic art, again, makes a romance of all things. It reaches
into the highest abstraction of the ideal; it does not refuse the most
pedestrian realism. _Robinson Crusoe_ is as realistic as it is
romantic:[22] both qualities are pushed to an extreme, and neither
suffers. Nor does romance depend upon the material importance of the
incidents. To deal with strong and deadly elements, banditti, pirates,
war and murder, is to conjure with great names, and, in the event of
failure, to double the disgrace. The arrival of Haydn[23] and Consuelo
at the Canon's villa is a very trifling incident; yet we may read a
dozen boisterous stories from beginning to end, and not receive so
fresh and stirring an impression of adventure. It was the scene of
Crusoe at the wreck, if I remember rightly, that so bewitched my
blacksmith. Nor is the fact surprising. Every single article the
castaway recovers from the hulk is "a joy for ever"[24] to the man who
reads of them. They are the things that should be found, and the bare
enumeration stirs the blood. I found a glimmer of the same interest
the other day in a new book, _The Sailor's Sweetheart_,[25] by Mr.
Clark Russell. The whole business of the brig _Morning Star_ is very
rightly felt and spiritedly written; but the clothes, the books and
the money satisfy the reader's mind like things to eat. We are dealing
here with the old cut-and-dry legitimate interest of treasure trove.
But even treasure trove can be made dull. There are few people who
have not groaned under the plethora of goods that fell to the lot of
the _Swiss Family Robinson_,[26] that dreary family. They found
article after article, creature after creature, from milk kine to
pieces of ordnance, a whole consignment; but no informing taste had
presided over the selection, there was no smack or relish in the
invoice; and these riches left the fancy cold. The box of goods in
Verne's _Mysterious Island_[27] is another case in point: there was no
gusto and no glamour about that; it might have come from a shop. But
the two hundred and seventy-eight Australian sovereigns on board the
_Morning Star_ fell upon me like a surprise that I had expected; whole
vistas of secondary stories, besides the one in hand, radiated forth
from that discovery, as they radiate from a striking particular in
life; and I was made for the moment as happy as a reader has the right
to be.

To come at all at the nature of this quality of romance, we must bear
in mind the peculiarity of our attitude to any art. No art produces
illusion; in the theatre we never forget that we are in the theatre;
and while we read a story, we sit wavering between two minds, now
merely clapping our hands at the merit of the performance, now
condescending to take an active part in fancy with the characters.
This last is the triumph of romantic story-telling: when the reader
consciously plays at being the hero, the scene is a good scene. Now in
character-studies the pleasure that we take is critical; we watch, we
approve, we smile at incongruities, we are moved to sudden heats of
sympathy with courage, suffering or virtue. But the characters are
still themselves, they are not us; the more clearly they are depicted,
the more widely do they stand away from us, the more imperiously do
they thrust us back into our place as a spectator. I cannot identify
myself with Rawdon Crawley or with EugГЁne de Rastignac,[28] for I have
scarce a hope or fear in common with them. It is not character but
incident that woos us out of our reserve. Something happens as we
desire to have it happen to ourselves; some situation, that we have
long dallied with in fancy, is realised in the story with enticing and
appropriate details. Then we forget the characters; then we push the
hero aside; then we plunge into the tale in our own person and bathe
in fresh experience; and then, and then only, do we say we have been
reading a romance. It is not only pleasurable things that we imagine
in our day-dreams; there are lights in which we are willing to
contemplate even the idea of our own death; ways in which it seems as
if it would amuse us to be cheated, wounded or calumniated. It is thus
possible to construct a story, even of tragic import, in which every
incident, detail and trick of circumstance shall be welcome to the
reader's thoughts. Fiction is to the grown man what play is to the
child; it is there that he changes the atmosphere and tenor of his
life; and when the game so chimes with his fancy that he can join in
it with all his heart, when it pleases him with every turn, when he
loves to recall it and dwells upon its recollection with entire
delight, fiction is called romance.

Walter Scott is out and away the king of the romantics. _The Lady of
the Lake_ has no indisputable claim to be a poem beyond the inherent
fitness and desirability of the tale. It is just such a story as a man
would make up for himself, walking, in the best health and temper,
through just such scenes as it is laid in. Hence it is that a charm
dwells undefinable among these slovenly verses, as the unseen cuckoo
fills the mountains with his note; hence, even after we have flung the
book aside, the scenery and adventures remain present to the mind, a
new and green possession, not unworthy of that beautiful name, _The
Lady of the Lake_,[29] or that direct, romantic opening,--one of the
most spirited and poetical in literature,--"The stag at eve had drunk
his fill." The same strength and the same weaknesses adorn and
disfigure the novels. In that ill-written, ragged book, _The
Pirate_,[30] the figure of Cleveland--cast up by the sea on the
resounding foreland of Dunrossness--moving, with the blood on his
hands and the Spanish words on his tongue, among the simple
islanders--singing a serenade under the window of his Shetland
mistress--is conceived in the very highest manner of romantic
invention. The words of his song, "Through groves of palm," sung in
such a scene and by such a lover, clench, as in a nutshell, the
emphatic contrast upon which the tale is built. In _Guy
Mannering_,[31] again, every incident is delightful to the
imagination; and the scene when Harry Bertram lands at Ellangowan is a
model instance of romantic method.

"'I remember the tune well,' he says, 'though I cannot guess what
should at present so strongly recall it to my memory.' He took his
flageolet from his pocket and played a simple melody. Apparently the
tune awoke the corresponding associations of a damsel.... She
immediately took up the song--

  "'Are these the links of Forth, she said;
      Or are they the crooks of Dee,
  Or the bonny woods of Warroch Head
      That I so fain would see?'

"'By heaven!' said Bertram, 'it is the very ballad.'"

On this quotation two remarks fall to be made. First, as an instance
of modern feeling for romance, this famous touch of the flageolet and
the old song is selected by Miss Braddon for omission. Miss Braddon's
idea[32] of a story, like Mrs. Todgers's idea of a wooden leg,[33]
were something strange to have expounded. As a matter of personal
experience, Meg's appearance to old Mr. Bertram on the road, the ruins
of Derncleugh, the scene of the flageolet, and the Dominie's
recognition of Harry, are the four strong notes that continue to ring
in the mind after the book is laid aside. The second point is still
more curious. The reader will observe a mark of excision in the
passage as quoted by me. Well, here is how it runs in the original: "a
damsel, who, close behind a fine spring about half-way down the
descent, and which had once supplied the castle with water, was
engaged in bleaching linen." A man who gave in such copy would be
discharged from the staff of a daily paper. Scott has forgotten to
prepare the reader for the presence of the "damsel"; he has forgotten
to mention the spring and its relation to the ruin; and now, face to
face with his omission, instead of trying back and starting fair,
crams all this matter, tail foremost, into a single shambling
sentence. It is not merely bad English, or bad style; it is abominably
bad narrative besides.