CHAPTER XIV: STORIES AND STORY-TELLING(From STRATH NAVER)
We have had a drought for three weeks. During a whole week this northernstrath has been as sunny as the Riviera is expected to be. The streamscan be crossed dry-shod, kelts are plunging in the pools, but even keltswill not look at a fly. Now, by way of a pleasant change, an icy northwind is blowing, with gusts of snow, not snow enough to swell the lochthat feeds the river, but just enough snow (as the tourist said of thewater in the River Styx) "to swear by," or at! _The Field_ announcesthat a duke, who rents three rods on a neighbouring river, has not yetcaught one salmon. The acrimoniously democratic mind may take comfort inthat intelligence, but, if the weather will not improve for a duke, it isnot likely to change for a mere person of letters. Thus the devotee ofthe Muses is driven back, by stress of climate, upon literature, and asthere is nothing in the lodge to read he is compelled to write.
Now certainly one would not lack material, if only one were capable ofthe art of fiction. The genesis of novels and stories is a topic littlestudied, but I am inclined to believe that, like the pearls in themussels of the river, fiction is a beautiful disease of the brain.Something, an incident or an experience, or a reflection, gets imbedded,incrusted, in the properly constituted mind, and becomes the nucleus of apearl of romance. Mr. Marion Crawford, in a recent work, describes hishero, who is a novelist, at work. This young gentleman, by a series offaults or misfortunes, has himself become a centre of harrowing emotion.Two young ladies, to each of whom he has been betrothed, are weeping outtheir eyes for him, or are kneeling to heaven with despairing cries, orare hardening their hearts to marry men for whom they "do not care abawbee." The hero's aunt has committed a crime; everybody, in fact, isin despair, when an idea occurs to the hero. Indifferent to the sorrowsof his nearest and dearest, he sits down with his notion and writes anovel--writes like a person possessed.
He has the proper kind of brain, the nucleus has been dropped into it,the pearl begins to grow, and to assume prismatic hues. So he is happy,and even the frozen-out angler might be happy if he could write a novelin the absence of salmon. Unluckily, my brain is not capable of thisaesthetic malady, and to save my life, or to "milk a fine warm cow rain,"as the Zulus say, I could not write a novel, or even a short story. AboutThe Short Story, as they call it, with capital letters, our criticalAmerican cousins have much to say. Its germ, one fancies, is usually anincident, or a mere anecdote, according to the nature of the author'sbrain; this germ becomes either the pearl of a brief _conte_, or the seedof a stately tree, in three volumes. An author of experience soon findsout how he should treat his material. One writer informs me that, giventhe idea, the germinal idea, it is as easy for him to make a novel out ofit as a tale--as easy, and much more satisfactory and remunerative.Others, like M. Guy de Maupassant, for example, seem to find theirstrength in brevity, in cutting down, not in amplifying; in selecting andreducing, not in allowing other ideas to group themselves round thefirst, other characters to assemble about those who are essential. Thatseems to be really the whole philosophy of this matter, concerning whichso many words are expended. The growth of the germinal idea depends onthe nature of an author's talent--he may excel in expansion, or inreduction; he may be economical, and out of an anecdote may spin thewhole cocoon of a romance; or he may be extravagant, and give a capableidea away in the briefest form possible.
These ideas may come to a man in many ways, as we said, from a dream,from a fragmentary experience (as most experiences in life arefragmentary), from a hint in a newspaper, from a tale told inconversation. Not long ago, for example, I heard an anecdote out ofwhich M. Guy de Maupassant could have made the most ghastly, the mostsqualid, and the most supernaturally moving of all his _contes_. Indeed,that is not saying much, as he did not excel in the supernatural. Wereit written in French, it might lie in my lady's chamber, and, as timesgo, nobody would be shocked. But, by our curious British conventions,this tale cannot be told in an English book or magazine. It was not, inits tendency, immoral; those terrible tales never are. The events wererather calculated to frighten the hearer into the paths of virtue. WhenMr. Richard Cameron, the founder of the Cameronians, and the godfather ofthe Cameronian Regiment, was sent to his parish, he was bidden by Mr.Peden to "put hell-fire to the tails" of his congregation. This vigorousexpression was well fitted to describe the _conte_ which I have in mymind (I rather wish I had it not), and which is not to be narrated here,nor in English.
For a combination of pity and terror, it seemed to me unmatched in theworks of the modern fancy, or in the horrors of modern experience;whether in experience or in imagination it had its original source. Buteven the English authors, who plume themselves on their audacity, ortheir realism, or their contempt for "the young person," would notventure this little romance, much less, then, is a timidly uncorrect pen-man likely to tempt Mr. Mudie with the _conte_. It is one of two tales,both told as true, which one would like to be able to narrate in thelanguage of Moliere. The other is also very good, and has a wonderfulscene with a corpse and a _chapelle ardente_, and a young lady; it ishistorical, and of the last generation but one.
Even our frozen strath here has its modern legend, which may be told inEnglish, and out of which, I am sure, a novelist could make a good shortstory, or a pleasant opening chapter of a romance. What is themysterious art by which these things are done? What makes the well-toldstory seem real, rich with life, actual, engrossing? It is the secret ofgenius, of the novelist's art, and the writer who cannot practise the artmight as well try to discover the Philosopher's Stone, or to "harp fishout of the water." However, let me tell the legend as simply as may be,and as it was told to me.
The strath runs due north, the river flowing from a great loch to theNorthern sea. All around are low, undulating hills, brown with heather,and as lonely almost as the Sahara. On the horizon to the south rise themountains, Ben this and Ben that, real mountains of beautiful outline,though no higher than some three thousand feet. Before the country wasdivided into moors and forests, tenanted by makers of patent corkscrews,and boilers of patent soap, before the rivers were distributed intobeats, marked off by white and red posts, there lived over to the south,under the mountains, a sportsman of athletic frame and adventurousdisposition. His name I have forgotten, but we may call him DickLindsay. It is told of him that he once found a poacher in the forest,and, being unable to catch the intruder, fired his rifle, not at him, butin his neighbourhood, whereon the poacher, deliberately kneeling down,took a long shot at Dick. How the duel ended, and whether either partyflew a flag of truce, history does not record.
At all events, one stormy day in late September, Dick had stalked andwounded a stag on the hills to the south-east of the strath. Here, ifonly one were a novelist, one could weave several pages of valuable copyout of the stalk. The stag made for the strath here, and Dick, who hadno gillie, but was an independent sportsman of the old school, pursued onfoot. Plunging down the low, birch-clad hills, the stag found theflooded river before him, black and swollen with rain. He took thewater, crossing by the big pool, which looked almost like a little loch,tempestuous under a north wind blowing up stream, and covered with smallwhite, vicious crests. The stag crossed and staggered up the bank, wherehe stood panting. It is not a humane thing to leave a deer to die slowlyof a rifle bullet, and Dick, reaching the pool, hesitated not, but threwoff his clothes, took his skene between his teeth, plunged in, and swamthe river.
All naked as he was he cut the stag's throat in the usual manner, andgralloched him with all the skill of Bucklaw. This was very well, andvery well it would be to add a description of the stag at bay; but as Inever happened to see a stag at bay, I omit all that. Dick had achievedsuccess, but his clothes were on one side of a roaring river in spate,and he and the dead stag were on the other. There was no chance offording the stream, and there was then no bridge. He did not care toswim back, for the excitement was out of him. He was trembling withcold, and afraid of cram
p. "A mother-naked man," in a wilderness, with aflood between him and his raiment, was in a pitiable position. It didnot occur to him to flay the stag, and dress in the hide, and, indeed, hewould have been frozen before he could have accomplished that task. Sohe reconnoitred.
There was nobody within sight but one girl, who was herding cows. Nowfor a naked man, with a knife, and bedabbled with blood, to address ayoung woman on a lonely moor is a delicate business. The chances werethat the girl would flee like a startled fawn, and leave Dick to walk,just as he was, to the nearest farmhouse, about a mile away. However,Dick had to risk it; he lay down so that only his face appeared above thebank, and he shouted to the maiden. When he had caught her attention hebriefly explained the unusual situation. Then the young woman behavedlike a trump, or like a Highland Nausicaa, for students of the "Odyssey"will remember how Odysseus, simply clad in a leafy bough of a tree, madesupplication to the sea-king's daughter, and how she befriended him. Evenif Dick had been a reader of Homer, which is not probable, there were notrees within convenient reach, and he could not adopt the leafy coveringof Odysseus.
"You sit still; if you move an inch before I give you the word, I'llleave you where you are!" said Miss Mary. She then cast her plaid overher face, marched up to the bank where Dick was crouching and shivering,dropped her ample plaid over him, and sped away towards the farmhouse.When she had reached its shelter, and was giving an account of theadventure, Dick set forth, like a primeval Highlander, the covering doingduty both for plaid and kilt. Clothes of some kind were provided for himat the cottage, a rickety old boat was fetched, and he and his stag wererowed across the river to the place where his clothes lay.
That is all, but if one were a dealer in romance, much play might be madewith the future fortunes of the sportsman and the maiden, happy fortunesor unhappy. In real life, the lassie "drew up with" a shepherd lad, asMiss Jenny Denison has it, married him, and helped to populate thestrath. As for Dick, history tells no more of his adventures, nor is italleged that he ever again visited the distant valley, or beheld the faceof his Highland Nausicaa.
Now, if one were a romancer, this mere anecdote probably would "rest,lovely pearl, in the brain, and slowly mature in the oyster," till itbecame a novel. Properly handled, the incident would make a veryagreeable first chapter, with the aid of scenery, botany, climate, andremarks on the manners and customs of the red deer stolen from St. John,or the Stuarts d'Albanie. Then, probably, one would reflect on thecharacters of Mary and of Richard; Mary must have parents, of course, andone would make them talk in Scottish. Probably she already had a lover;how should she behave to that lover? There is plenty of room forspeculation in that problem. As to Dick, is he to be a Lothario, or alover _pour le bon motif_? What are his distinguished family to think ofthe love affair, which would certainly ensue in fiction, though in reallife nobody thought of it at all? Are we to end happily, with a marriageor marriages, or are we to wind all up in the pleasant, pessimistic,realistic, fashionable modern way? Is Mary to drown the baby in theMuckle Pool? Is she to suffer the penalty of her crime at Inverness? Or,happy thought, shall we not make her discarded rival lover meet Dick inthe hills on a sunny day and then--are they not (taking a hint fromfacts) to fight a duel with rifles? I see Dick lying, with a bullet inhis brow, on the side of a corrie; his blood crimsons the snow, an eaglestoops from the sky. That makes a pretty picturesque conclusion to theunwritten romance of the strath.
Another anecdote occurs to me; good, I think, for a short story, butcapable, also, of being dumped down in the middle of a long novel. Itwas in the old coaching days. A Border squire was going north, in thecoach, alone. At a village he was joined by a man and a young lady:their purpose was manifest, they were a runaway couple, bound for GretnaGreen. They had not travelled long together before the young lady,turning to the squire, said, "_Vous parlez francais, Monsieur_?" He didspeak French--it was plain that the bridegroom did not--and, to the endof the journey, that remarkable lady conducted a lively and affectionateconversation with the squire in French! Manifestly, he had only to askand receive, but, alas! he was an unadventurous, plain gentleman; healighted at his own village; he drove home in his own dogcart; thefugitive pair went forward, and the Gretna blacksmith united them in holymatrimony. The rest is silence.
I would give much to know what that young person's previous history andadventures had been, to learn what befell her after her wedding, tounderstand, in brief, her conduct and her motives. Were I a novelist, aMaupassant, or a Meredith, the Muse, "from whatsoever quarter she chose,"would enlighten me about all, and I would enlighten you. But I can onlymarvel, only throw out the hint, only deposit the grain of sand, thenucleus of romance, in some more fertile brain. Indeed the topic is muchmore puzzling than the right conclusion for my Highland romance. In thatcase fancy could find certain obvious channels, into one or other ofwhich it must flow. But I see no channels for the lives of these threequeerly met people in the coach.
As a rule, fancies are capable of being arranged in but a few familiarpatterns, so that it seems hardly worth while to make the arrangement.But he who looks at things thus will never be a writer of stories. Nay,even of the slowly unfolding tale of his own existence he may weary, forthe combinations therein have all occurred before; it is in a hackneyedold story that he is living, and you, and I. Yet to act on thisknowledge is to make a bad affair of our little life: we must try ourbest to take it seriously. And so of story-writing. As Mr. Stevensonsays, a man must view "his very trifling enterprise with a gravity thatwould befit the cares of empire, and think the smallest improvement worthaccomplishing at any expense of time and industry. The book, the statue,the sonata, must be gone upon with the unreasoning good faith and theunflagging spirit of children at their play."
That is true, that is the worst of it. The man, the writer, over whomthe irresistible desire to mock at himself, his work, his puppets andtheir fortunes has power, will never be a novelist. The novelist must"make believe very much"; he must be in earnest with his characters. Buthow to be in earnest, how to keep the note of disbelief and derision "outof the memorial"? Ah, there is the difficulty, but it is a difficulty ofwhich many authors appear to be insensible. Perhaps they suffer from nosuch temptations.