Victorian Literature — Chapter II: The Novelists. Part 1

The Novelists Any comparison of the novels of the Victorian Era, with the novels of the Georgian Period, must be very much to the disadvantage of the former.

The great epoch of English fiction began with Goldsmith and Richardson, and ended with Sir Walter Scott.

It was an epoch which gave us "The Vicar of Wakefield," "Clarissa," "Tom Jones," "Pride and Prejudice," "Humphrey Clinker," and "Tristram Shandy."

That fiction had a naturalness and spontaneity to which the novels of the Victorian Era can lay no claim.

The novels of the period with which we are concerned aspire to regenerate mankind.

Dickens, indeed, started off with but little literary equipment save sundry eighteenth century novels.

He had read Smollett, and Fielding, and Sterne, diligently.

But the influence of these humourists--so marked in "Pickwick"--became qualified in his succeeding books by the strenuous spirit of the times.

It is alike interesting in itself and convenient for my purpose that the most popular novelist of the Victorian era should have published his first great book in 1837. Dickens awoke then to abundant fame, and his popularity has never waned for an instant during the sixty succeeding years.

To-day he may be more or less decried by "literary" people, but his audience has multiplied twofold.

He has added to it the countless thousands whom the School Board has given to the reading world.

=Charles Dickens (1812-1870)= was born at Landport, Portsea, his father being an improvident clerk in the Navy Pay Office at Portsmouth.

Dickens senior has been immortalized for us by the not too pleasing portrait of "Micawber."

After infinite struggle and penury, Dickens became a reporter for the _Morning Chronicle_.

Under the signature of "Boz" he wrote "Sketches" for the _Monthly Magazine_ in 1834. "Pickwick" appeared from April 1836 to November 1837, and alike in parts and in book form took the world by storm.

It was succeeded by "Oliver Twist" (1838), "Nicholas Nickleby" (1839), "The Old Curiosity Shop" (1840), and "Barnaby Rudge" (1841).

From this time forth Dickens was the most popular writer that our literature has seen.

Within twelve years after his death some four millions of his books were sold in England, and there is no reason to believe that this popularity has in any way abated, although George Eliot foretold that much of Dickens's humour would be meaningless to the next generation, that is to say, to the generation which is now with us.

It is the fashion to call Dickens the novelist of the half-educated, to charge him with lack of reflectiveness, with incapacity for serious reasoning.

His humour has been described as insincere, his pathos as exaggerated.

Much of this indictment may with equal justice be made against Richardson and even against Jane Austen, who surely anticipated Dickens by the creation of the Rev. William Collins.

If Dickens had been a learned University Professor he would not have possessed the equipment most needful for the artist who was to portray to us in an imperishable manner the London which is now fast disappearing.

The people who censure Dickens are those for whom he has served a purpose and is of no further use.

They are a mere drop in the ocean of readers.

It is not easy to-day to gauge his precise position.

The exhaustion of many of his copyrights has given up his work to a host of rival publishers.

There are probably thousands of men and women now, as there were in the fifties and sixties, who have been stimulated by him, and who have found in his writings the aid to a cheery optimism which has made life more tolerable amid adverse conditions.

Mrs Richmond Ritchie, Thackeray's daughter, tells us how keenly Dickens's capacity for stirring the heart was felt even in the home of the rival novelist.

Thackeray's youngest daughter, then a child, looked up from the book she was reading to ask the question, "Papa, why do you not write books like 'Nicholas Nickleby'"?

Thackeray himself shared the general enthusiasm.

"David Copperfield!"

he writes to a correspondent, "By Jingo!

It is beautiful!

It is charming!

Bravo Dickens!

It has some of his very brightest touches--those inimitable Dickens touches which make such a great man of him.

And the reading of the book has done another author a great deal of good....

It has put me on my mettle and made me feel that I must do something; that I have fame and name and family to support."

If Dickens is still beloved by the multitude, the name of =William Makepeace Thackeray (1811-1863)= has entirely eclipsed his in the minds of a certain literary section of the community.

Thackeray stands to them for culture, Dickens for illiteracy.

Thackeray had indeed a more polished intellect; he had also a more restrained style.

Thackeray was born at Calcutta.

His father, who was an Indian civil servant, died when the boy was only five years old.

He was educated at Charterhouse School and Trinity College, Cambridge.

In 1831 he went to Weimar.

He studied long at Paris with a view to becoming an artist, and when "Pickwick" wanted an illustrator to continue the work of Seymour who had committed suicide, Thackeray applied to Dickens, but Hablot Browne was chosen, and Thackeray was disappointed--happily for the world, which lost an indifferent artist to gain a great author.

Thackeray in 1837--the year which saw the publication of "Pickwick" as a volume--joined the staff of _Fraser's Magazine_.

In that journal appeared in succession "The History of Samuel Titmarsh and the Great Hoggarty Diamond," "The Yellowplush Papers," and "The Memoirs of Barry Lyndon."

In 1847 "Vanity Fair" was begun in numbers, and not till then did its author secure real renown.

"Pendennis" was published in 1850, and "Esmond" in 1852. "The Newcomes" (1854) is in some measure a sequel to "Pendennis," as "The Virginians" (1858) is in some measure a sequel to "Esmond."

These are the five works by Thackeray which everyone must read.

In 1857 Thackeray unsuccessfully contested Oxford.

In 1859 he undertook the editorship of the new _Cornhill Magazine_ which flourished in his hands.

These were the halcyon days of magazine editors.

On Macaulay's death in 1859, Thackeray talked of purchasing the historian's vacant house.

A friend remarked upon his prosperity.

"To make money one must edit a magazine," was the answer.

He did not buy Macaulay's house, but built himself one at Palace Green, and here he died the day before Christmas-day 1863. His daughter, Anne Thackeray, who became Mrs Richmond Ritchie, has written "Old Kensington" and other stories of singular charm.

The twenty-six volumes of Thackeray's works make a veritable nursery of style for the modern literary aspirant.

But it is, as has been said, upon his five great novels that his future fame must rest.

They are as permanent a picture of life among the well-to-do classes as those Dickens has given us of life among the poor.

=Charlotte Brontë (1816-1855)=, who gave to Thackeray the enthusiastic hero-worship of her early years, called him a Titan, and dedicated "Jane Eyre" to him, had little enough in common with the author of "Vanity Fair."

The daughter of a poor parson of Irish birth, she was born at Thornton in Yorkshire.

She and two sisters grew up in the cramped atmosphere of a vicarage at Haworth, in the centre of the moorlands.

They wrote stories and poems from childhood, and dreamed of literary fame.

Meanwhile it was necessary to add to the scanty stipend of their father; two of them went back as governesses to the school in which they had been educated; and all of them a little later attempted the uncongenial life of private governesses.

The desire to have a school of their own led Charlotte and her sister Emily to Brussels, where they studied French and German.

Returning to the Haworth parsonage, the three sisters, Charlotte, Emily, and Anne, with money left them by an aunt, published a volume of verse--"Poems by Currer, Ellis, and Acton Bell."

Then each sister produced from her drawer the manuscript of a novel, and Charlotte's "Professor," Emily's "Wuthering Heights," and Anne's "Agnes Grey" were sent round to the publishers and returned more than once to the parsonage.

Finally the "Professor" was read by Smith & Elder, who asked for a longer story by the writer.

"Jane Eyre" (1847) was the result, and that story became one of the most successful novels of the day.

It was followed by "Shirley" (1849) and "Villette" (1853).

In 1854 Charlotte Brontë became Mrs Arthur Bell Nicholls, and the wife of her father's curate.

In the following year she died.

"The Professor" was published two years after her death.

=Emily Brontë (1818-1848)= accomplished less than her elder sister, but her name will live as long.

She secured the admiration of Sydney Dobell, of Matthew Arnold, and of Mr Swinburne, and her best verse is perhaps the greatest ever written by a woman.

"Last Lines" and "The Old Stoic" will rank with the finest poetry in our literature.

Her one novel, "Wuthering Heights," has been most happily criticised by Mr Swinburne: "As was the author's life so is her book in all things;

troubled and taintless, with little of rest in it and nothing of reproach.

It may be true that not many will ever take it to their hearts; it is certain that those who do like it will like nothing very much better in the whole world of poetry or prose."

Emily Brontë's sole contributions to literature were the poems written in conjunction with her two sisters under the name of Ellis Bell, some further poems published by her sister Charlotte after her death, and the single novel "Wuthering Heights."

=Anne Brontë (1819-1849)= wrote more than her sister Emily, but with less of recognition.

She contributed verses to the little volume of poems under the name of Acton Bell, and additional verses were published after her death by Charlotte.

In addition to this she wrote two novels, the first of them "Agnes Grey," and the second "The Tenant of Wildfell Hall."

This last, curiously enough, went into a second edition during Anne's lifetime, and she contributed a preface to it defending herself against her critics.

Neither Anne's poetry nor her novels are of any account to-day.

They would not be read, were it not for the glory with which her two sisters have surrounded the name of Brontë.

Women novelists have abundantly flourished during the Victorian Era, but then the path was made easy for them by Jane Austen, Maria Edgeworth, and Fanny Burney.

By all those who delight in debatable comparisons the name of George Eliot is frequently brought into contrast with that of Charlotte Brontë.

=George Eliot (1819-1880)= was born at Griff in Warwickshire, her real name being Mary Ann Evans.

She was for a time at a school at Nuneaton, and afterwards at Coventry.

At first she was an evangelical churchwoman, but about 1842 she became acquainted with two or three cultivated women friends at whose houses she met Froude, Emerson, and Francis Newman, all of whom represented a reverent antagonism to supernatural Christianity.

In conjunction with Sarah Hennell, she undertook a translation of Strauss's "Life of Jesus."

On her father's death, in 1849, she came to London and became associated with Dr Chapman in the editorship of the _Westminster Review_.

It was her friendship with George Henry Lewes, whom she met in 1851, which gave her the first impulse towards fiction.

Lewes was an active critic, and a writer of two now forgotten novels.

Miss Evans's "Scenes of Clerical Life" were sent to Blackwood's Magazine in 1856. The stories were a great success.

Thackeray and Dickens were loud in expressions of admiration.

In 1859 "Adam Bede" was published and made George Eliot famous.

"It is the finest thing since Shakspere," said Charles Reade.

Her success, however, did not lead to hasty production.

She wrote only six novels during the remainder of her life.

"I can write no word that is not prompted from within," she said.

"The Mill on the Floss" was written in 1860; "Silas Marner" in 1861; "Romola" in 1863; "Felix Holt" in 1866; "Middlemarch" in 1871-1872; and "Daniel Deronda" in 1876. In 1880 Miss Mary Ann Evans became Mrs Walter Cross, but after a few months of wedded life she died of inflammation of the heart at 4 Cheyne Walk, Chelsea.

Her husband wrote her biography, not with much success.

So entirely was George Eliot's best mind concentrated upon her books that her letters, and indeed her personality, were a disappointment to all but a few hero-worshippers.

The novels, with two volumes of poems and two of essays, make up George Eliot's collected works.

The essays written before and after her novels give, like her letters, but few indications of her remarkable powers.

Nor, although "The Spanish Gipsy" is deeply interesting, can her poetry be counted for much.

"The Choir Invisible" is her best known poem.

It is by her novels that she must be judged, and these, for insight into character, analysis of the motives which guide men, and sympathy with the intellectual and moral struggles which make up so large a part of life, have a literary niche to themselves.

With singular catholicity she paints the simplest faith and the highest idealism.

Whether it be an Evangelical clergyman, a Dissenting minister, or a Methodist factory-girl, she enters into the spirit of their lives with fullest sympathy.

Carlyle could see in Methodism only "a religion fit for gross and vulgar-minded people, a religion so-called, and the essence of it _cowardice_ and _hunger_, terror of pain and appetite for pleasure both carried to the infinite."

George Eliot's sympathies were wider.

She won the heart of Methodists, who have stood in imagination listening to Dinah Morris addressing the Hayslope peasantry, as she gained the devotion of Roman Catholics like Lord Acton, who have seen in her portrait of Savonarola a wise expression of their faith.

And it is not only in religious matters that her sympathies are so broad.

The sententious dulness of Mr Macey is as much within the range of her feelings as the manliness of Adam Bede or the scholastic pride of old Bardo.

She feels equally for the weak and frivolous Hetty and the lofty, self-sustained Romola.

"At least eighty out of a hundred," she says, "of your adult male fellow-Britons returned in the last census are neither extraordinarily silly nor extraordinarily wicked, nor extraordinarily wise; their eyes are neither deep and liquid with sentiment, nor sparkling with suppressed witticisms; they have probably had no hairbreadth escapes or thrilling adventures; their brains are certainly not pregnant with genius, and their passions have not manifested themselves at all after the fashion of a volcano.

They are simply men of complexions more or less muddy, whose conversation is more or less bald and disjointed.

Yet these commonplace people--many of them--bear a conscience, and have felt the sublime promptings to do the painful right; they have their unspoken sorrows and their sacred joys; their hearts have perhaps gone out towards their first-born, and they have mourned over the irreclaimable dead.

Nay, is there not a pathos in their very insignificance, in our comparison of their dim and narrow existence with the glorious possibilities of that human nature which they share?

Depend upon it you would gain unspeakably if you would learn with me to see some of the poetry and the pathos, the tragedy and the comedy, lying in the experience of a human soul that looks out through dull gray eyes, and that speaks in a voice of quite ordinary tones."

The creations of George Eliot,--Tito and Baldassare, Mrs Poyser and Silas Marner, Dorothy Brooke and Gwendolen,--are not as familiar to the reading public of to-day as they were to that of ten or fifteen years ago.

Of the idolatry which almost made her a prophetess of a new cult we hear nothing now.

She has not maintained her position as Dickens, Thackeray, and Charlotte Brontë have maintained theirs.

But if there be little of partisanship and much detraction, it is idle to deny that George Eliot's many gifts, her humour, her pathos, her remarkable intellectual endowments, give her an assured place among the writers of Victorian literature.

The next in order of prominence among the novelists of the period is =Charles Kingsley (1819-1875)=.

He was born at Holne Vicarage, on the borders of Dartmoor, and was educated at King's College, London, and Magdalen College, Cambridge.

After this he received the curacy of Eversley, in Hampshire, of which parish he finally became rector.

In 1848 he published a drama entitled "The Saint's Tragedy," with St Elizabeth of Hungary as heroine.

A year later his novel of "Alton Locke" gained him the title of "The Chartist Parson."

This tale, in which Carlyle is introduced in the person of an old Scotch bookseller, was a crude and yet vigorous expression of sympathy with the Chartist movement, and its influence was tremendous.

For its sympathy with the working classes, and in its reflection of the broad and tolerant Christianity of which Kingsley was always the eloquent preacher, "Alton Locke," in common with "Yeast" and "Two Years Ago," is a valuable contribution to literature.

Kingsley, however, became a truer artist when, as in "Hypatia" and "Westward Ho!"

he had not social and religious ends in view.

"Hypatia," in spite of many historical errors, is a brilliant sketch of the early Church at Alexandria.

Gibbon, from whom Kingsley obtained the hint for this book, would have revelled in the apparent endorsement by a latter-day clergyman of his estimate of the early Christianity of the East.

"Westward Ho!"

is a picturesque narrative of English rivalry with Spain in the reign of Elizabeth.

The contrasts of character in Frank and Amyas Leigh perhaps give this novel a claim to be considered Kingsley's best effort.

He wrote many other works, including children's stories, scientific lectures, and poems, among which last the beautiful ballads, "The Three Fishers" and "The Sands of Dee," are the most popular.

For nine years he held the office of Professor of Modern History at Cambridge University, but his unphilosophical views of history made his presence there a misfortune.

A

model country clergyman, a man essentially healthy-minded and interested in all phases of life and thought, Kingsley's influence, especially on young men, during the past five-and-thirty years, has been very great and very beneficial.