VIII
ALFRED OLLIVANT
In the month of September, 1898, there appeared in America a novel withthe attractive title, _Bob, Son of Battle_. Unheralded by author's fameor by the blare of advertisement, it was at first unnoticed; but inabout a twelvemonth everybody was talking about it. It became one of the"best sellers"; unlike its companions, it has not vanished with thesnows of yesteryear. At this moment it is being read and reread all overthe United States. I do not believe there is a single large town in ourcountry where the book is unknown, or where a reference to it fails tobring to the faces of intelligent people that glow of reminiscentdelight aroused by the memory of happy hours passed in the world ofimagination. It seemed so immensely superior to the ordinary run of newnovels, that we gazed with pardonable curiosity at the unfamiliarsignature on the title-page. Who was this writer who knew so much of thenature of dogs and men? Where had he found that extraordinarily vividstyle, and what experiences had he passed through that gave him hissubtle insight into character? But all that we could then discover wasthat Alfred Ollivant was an Englishman, and that _Bob_ was his firstnovel. We decided that he must have lived long, observed all kinds ofdogs, and a large variety of men, women, and children; and that for somereason best known to himself he had chosen to print nothing until he haddescended into the vale of years. For only the other day we were notsurprised to find that _Joseph Vance_ was the winter fruit of a mannearly seventy; that book at any rate was the expression of a man whohad had life, and had it abundantly.
Our astonishment was keen indeed when we learned that the author of_Bob_ was a boy just out of his teens, who had written his wonderfulbook in horizontal pain and weakness. He had entered the army, receivinghis commission as a cavalry officer in 1893, at the age of nineteen; afew weeks after this event, a fall from his horse injured his spine,previously affected by some mysterious malady; this accident abruptlychecked his chosen military career, and made him a man of letters.Literature owes a great deal to enforced idleness, whether the writer besick or in prison. The wind bloweth where it listeth; and we perceivedonce more that genius does not always accompany good health, ormaturity, or ambition; it seems to select with absolute caprice theindividuals through whom it speaks. And so this first-born child of thebrain was delivered, like human infants, on a bed of suffering; being,to complete the analogy, none the less healthy on that account. The bookwas begun in 1894, when the author was twenty years old; duringintervals of physical capacity in 1895 and 1896, it was continued, andwas submitted to the publishers in 1897.
It was to have been published in the autumn, but the London firm decidedto postpone its appearance one year. The author employed these months incompletely rewriting the story, which he had named _Owd Bob_. Meanwhile,the New York publishers, who had a copy of the original manuscript,fearing that the title _Owd Bob_ lacked magnetism, wisely rechristenedit _Bob, Son of Battle_. And so, in September, 1898, the novel in itsfirst form, but with a new name, was printed in America; simultaneouslyin England it appeared in a new form, but with the old name. In otherwords, the London first edition, _Owd Bob_, is a thoroughly revisedversion of the American first edition, _Bob, Son of Battle_, althoughthey were published at the same time. It does not seem as though theauthor could have improved a book that so completely satisfies us as itstands; and Americans, to whom _Owd Bob_ is unknown, may not believethat it can be superior to _Bob, Son of Battle_. Nevertheless it is. Thetwo versions are of course alike in general features of the plot and inoutline; but no one who has read both can hesitate an instant. One hasonly to compare the manner in which Red Wull made his _debut_ in Americawith the chapter where he first appears (in a totally different way) inthe English edition, to see how clearly second thoughts were best.
And yet, despite the enormous popularity of _Bob, Son of Battle_ in theUnited States, and despite the fact that Englishmen had the opportunityto read the story in a still finer form, it has not until very recentlymade any impression on British readers or on London critics. Is itpossible that a book, like a dog, may be killed by a bad name? The novelwas written by an Englishman, the scenes were laid in Britain, it dealtwith manners and customs peculiarly English, and it was aimed directlyat an English public. And yet, for nearly ten years after itspublication, _Owd Bob_ remained in obscurity.[12] But its day is coming,and the prophet will yet receive honour in his own country. In 1908 itwas reprinted in a seven-pence edition, of which fifty thousand copieshave already seen the light. This is nothing to the Americancirculation; but it is promising. Bearing in mind the futility ofliterary prophecy, I still believe that the day will come when _Owd Bob_will be generally recognised as belonging to English literature.
[12] A year or two ago I asked one of the foremost English dramatists,one of the foremost English novelists, and one of the foremost Englishcritics, men whose names are known everywhere in America, if they hadread _Bob_; not one of them had ever heard of the book.
The splendid fidelity and devotion of the dog to his master havecertainly been in part repaid by men of letters in all stages of theworld's history. A valuable essay might be written on the dog'scontributions to literature; in the poetry of the East, hundreds ofyears before Christ, the poor Indian insisted that his four-footedfriend should accompany him into eternity. We know that this bit ofOriental pathos impressed Pope:--
"But thinks, admitted to that equal sky, His faithful dog shall bear him company."
One of the most profoundly affecting incidents in the _Odyssey_ is therecognition of the ragged Ulysses by the noble old dog, who dies of joy.During the last half-century, since the publication of Dr. John Brown's_Rab and his Friends_ (1858), the dog has approached an apotheosis.Among innumerable sketches and stories with canine heroes may bementioned Bret Harte's brilliant portrait of _Boonder_; Maeterlinck'sessay on dogs; Richard Harding Davis's _The Bar Sinister_; Stevenson'swhimsical comments on _The Character of Dogs_; Kipling's _Garm_; andJack London's initial success, _The Call of the Wild_.[13] But all theselatter-day pamphlets, good as they are, fail to reach the excellence of_Bob, Son of Battle_. It is the best dog story ever written, and itinspires regret that dogs cannot read.
[13] One may fairly class with this literature the remarkable speech ondogs delivered in his youth in a courtroom by the late Senator Vest. Thespeech won the case against the evidence.
No one who knows Mr. Ollivant's tale can by any possibility forget theGrey Dog of Kenmuir--the perfect, gentle knight--or the thrillingexcitement of his successful struggles for the cup. He is indeed a nobleand beautiful character, with the Christian combination of serpent anddove. But Owd Bob in a slight degree shares the fate of all beings whoapproach moral perfection. He reminds us at times of Tennyson's Arthurin the _Idylls of the King_, though he fortunately delivers no lectures.Lancelot was wicked, and Arthur was good; but Lancelot has the touch ofearth that makes him interesting, and Arthur has more than a touch ofboredom. In _Paradise Lost_ the spotless Raphael does not compare incharm with the picturesque Foe of God and Man. The real hero in Milton,as I suspect the poet very well knew, is the Devil; and if Mr. Ollivanthad ignored both English and American godfathers, and called his novel_The Tailless Tyke_, no reader could have objected. Red Wull is theSatan of this canine epic; he has for us a fascination at once horribleand irresistible. The author seems to have felt that the Grey Dog wasovershadowed; and he has saved our active sympathy for him by the cleverdevice of making him at one time dangerously ill, when we realise howmuch we love him; and finally by throwing him under awful suspicion,that we may experience--as we certainly do--the enormous relief ofbeholding him guiltless. But in spite of our best instincts, Red Wull isthe protagonist. Dog and master have never been matched in a moresinister manner than Adam McAdam and the Tailless Tyke. Bill Sikes andhis companion are nothing to it, and we cannot help remembering that tothe eternal disgrace of dogs, Bill Sikes's last friend forsook him.Compared with Red Wull, the Hound of the Baskervilles is a pet lapdog.When Adam and Wullie appear upon the scene, we look
alive, even as theirvirtuous enemies were forced to do, for we know something is bound tohappen. When the little man is greeted with a concert of hoots andjeers, we cannot repress some sympathy for him, akin to our feelingtoward the would-be murderer Shylock, silent and solitary under thenoisy taunts of the feather-headed Gratiano. This bitter and lonelywretch is a real character, and his strange personality is presentedwith extraordinary skill. There is not a single false touch from firstto last; and the little man with the big dog abides in our memory. RedWull is the hero of a hundred fights; his tremendous and terribleexploits are the very essence of piratical romance. After he has slainthe two huge beasts of the showman, McAdam exclaims with a sob ofpaternal pride, "Ye play so rough, Wullie!"
And the death of the Tailless Tyke is positively Homeric. The otherdogs, all his ruthless enemies, whisper to each other and silently stealfrom the room. They know that the hour has struck, and that this will bethe last fight. The whole pack set upon him, each one goaded by theremembrance of some murdered relative, or by some humiliating scar. RedWull asks nothing better than meeting them all; and the unequal combatbecomes a frightful carnage. At the very end, as much exhausted by thelabour of killing as by his own wounds, the great dog--now redindeed--hears his master's familiar cry, "Wullie, to me!" and with asuper-canine effort he raises his dying form from the bottom of thewrithing mass, shakes off the surviving foes, and slowly staggers toMcAdam's feet. Like Samson, the dead which he slew at his death weremore than they which he slew in his life.
Mr. Ollivant's next book, _Danny_, also a dog story, was not nearly soeffective. The human characters command the most attention, though theold man with the weeping eye becomes a bit wearisome. The passages ofpure nature description are often exquisitely written, and prove that atheart the author is a poet. But in the narrative portions there is anunfortunate attempt to conceal the slightness of the story by preciosityand affectation in the style. For the simple truth is that in _Danny_there is no story worth the telling. We recall distinctly the lovelyyoung wife and her grim ironclad of a husband, but just what happenedbetween the covers of the book escapes us. Although Mr. Ollivantbelieves in _Danny_, in spite of or because of its lack of popularity,he was so dissatisfied with the American edition that he suppressed it.Such an act is an indication of the high artistic standard that he hasset for himself; ambitious as he is, he would rather merit fame thanhave it.
While the readers of _Bob_ and of _Danny_ were guessing what kind of adog the young author would select for his next novel, he surprised usall by writing an uncaninical work. This story, adorned with happyillustrations, and printed in big type, as though for the eyes ofchildren, was called _Red-Coat Captain_, and was enigmatically locatedin "That Country." Every American publisher to whom the manuscript wasoffered, rejected it, saying emphatically that it was nonsense; and ifthere had not been a strain of idealism in the Head of the firm thatreconsidered and finally printed it, the book would probably never havefelt the press. Mr. Ollivant was sure that the story would appeal atfirst only to a very few, and he requested the publisher not only torefrain from issuing any advertisement, but to make the entire firstedition consist of only three copies--one for the archives of the House,one for the author, and one for a believing friend. The children of thisworld are wiser in their generation than the children of light; and theshrewd man of business did not take the petition very seriously. Theverdict Nonsense has been loudly ratified by many reviewers and readers;to the few it has been wisdom, to the many foolishness. For, as was saidyears ago of a certain poem, "The capacity to understand such a workmust be spiritual." It matters not how clever one may be, how well read,how sensitive to artistic beauties and defects; qualities of a totallydifferent nature must be present, and even then the time and place mustbe right, if one is to seize the inner meaning of _Red-Coat Captain_. Iwas about to say, the inner meaning of a story _like_ _Red-CoatCaptain_, but I was stopped by the thought that no story like it hasever been published, and perhaps never will be. Both conception andexpression are profoundly original, and, in spite of some failure ofarticulation, the work is strongly marked with genius. It is an allegorybased on the eleventh and twelfth commandments, which we have goodauthority for believing are worth all the ten put together. From onepoint of view it is a book for children; the mysterious setting of thetale is sure to appeal to certain imaginative boys and girls. But theearly chapters, dealing with the pretty courtship and the honeymoon,will be fully appreciated only by those who have some years to theircredit or otherwise. There is in this story the ineffable charm andfragrance of purity. It is the lily in its author's garden.
Mr. Ollivant's latest novel is the most conventional of the four, andwholly unlike any of its predecessors. It is a rattling, riotousromance, placed in the troublous times of the Napoleonic wars. Themighty shadow of Nelson falls darkly across the narrative, but theauthor has not committed the sin--so common in historical romances--ofmaking a historical character the chief of the _dramatis personae_. Thetitle role is played by _The Gentleman_, and he is a hero worthy ofCooper or of Stevenson. Marked by reckless audacity, brilliant inswordplay and in horsemanship, clever in turn of speech, gifted with themanner of a pre-Revolution Duke--what more in the heroic line can areader desire? The architecture of the novel and the staccato paragraphsinfallibly remind one of Victor Hugo, whom, however, Mr. Ollivant doesnot know. Nor, outside of the works of Stevenson, have we ever seen astory minus love so steadily interesting. It is an amphibious book, andthose who like fighting on land and sea may have their fill. Thepercentage of mortality is high; soldiers and sailors die numerously,and the hideous details of death are worthy of _La Debacle_; there is awelter of gore. If this were all that could be said, if the fascinationof this romance depended wholly on the crowded action, it would simplybe one more exciting tale added to the hundreds published every year;good to read on train and turbine, but not worth serious attention orcriticism. But the incidents, while frequent and thrilling, are not, atleast to the discriminating reader, the main thing, as the Germans say.Nor is the construction, clever enough, nor the characters, real as theyare; the main thing is the style, which, quite different from that inhis former books, is yet all his own. The style, in the best sense ofthe word, is pictorial; it transforms the past into the present. Thesuccession of events rolls off like a glowing panorama. It is perhapsnatural that many reviewers should have praised _The Gentleman_ morehighly than all the rest of Mr. Ollivant's work put together; but,notwithstanding its wider appeal, it lacks the permanent qualities of_Bob_, and (I believe) of _Red-Coat Captain_, for they are original.
That Mr. Ollivant is now on the road to physical health will be goodnews. He has already done work that no one else can do, and we cannotspare him. His four novels indicate versatility as well as much greatergifts; and he should be watched by all who take an interest incontemporary literature and who believe that the future is as rich asthe past. _Bob_ looks like the best English novel that has appearedbetween _Tess of the D'Urbervilles_ in 1891, and _Joseph Vance_ in 1906.Nothing but bodily obstacles can prevent its author from going far.