ACCESSORIES OF NARRATION

The range of Narration is so wide that it is well to look a little more carefully at the means of producing effects in this especial department of composition. The subject is at once so fascinating and so complicated that it would not be difficult to make an entire course of lectures upon it, although in the end we might be brought to the humiliating consciousness that no amount of lecturing could make novelists of us. In the limits of these talks it is impossible to do more than to consider briefly the more important matters which occupy the attention of the story-teller; and those which first come to mind are the things which it is customary to name Local Color, Dialect, Dialogue, Character Drawing, and Moral Purpose.

Local color in the modern sense was invented in the present century. It is true that the writers of other times had employed the same device before, but it has been consciously sought and has been supplied with this name within recent times. It might be asked by a cynic why the quality is any better now that it is ticketed and talked about in reviews than it was in the days of Theocritus and Kalidasa and Boccaccio; but so many things have been used before modern generations were thought of that if we are not to have the privilege of regarding things as new when they have been newly named we are likely to be at a desperate loss for novelty.

By local color is now meant the bringing out of the peculiarities of the locality where the scene of a tale is laid. It is evident that there is no spot so poor as not to have characteristics which distinguish it from all others. It is the aim of many modern story-tellers to give this especial local flavor with the most faithful and often painful vividness. Indeed, there are not a few recent stories which seem to exist for no other reason than to exploit the accidental qualities of remote and hitherto undescribed places.

This is an age in which competition between periodicals has waxed warm, and to the desire of editors to procure novelties is largely due the increase of the already rather tiresomely abundant examples of local color and of dialect. An air of freshness may be imparted to a tale by laying the scene in places practically unknown in fiction. Accidents of custom and manners arrest the attention for the moment, and it is due to this fact that the great mass of stories marked by this peculiarity have succeeded. The principle is not unlike that of drawing a crowd to the theatre by new scenery. A tale which is really vital can do without local color, as a really strong play succeeds without elaborate setting.

This is not, however, the whole of the matter. A good play may be helped by novel effects of scenery and a tale good in itself may be improved by local color. Detailed description of local peculiarities may make more clear to the reader the character and the motives of the personages in a narrative. All men are influenced by their surroundings, and to be familiar with unusual social conditions is often essential to the understanding of acts or opinions which have been done or held under them. To make intelligible the story of Hester Prynne and Arthur Dimmesdale, Hawthorne was obliged to set forth something of the manners and morals of colonial days. Scott could not have made comprehendable the tale of Rob Roy without giving some idea of what life in the Highlands was like in the time of that redoubtable chieftain. The author must in any case impart to the reader whatever special information is necessary to the best effect of his fiction.

The comment which it seems fair to make in this connection is that here is to be applied the rule which should govern the management of all details in narration,—namely, that everything shall be kept subordinate to the central purpose of the work. So long as particular description aids in bringing out more clearly the main idea of the whole, so long as it is used as a means and not as an end, so long as the setting is kept subordinate to the story, so long it is good. The moment what is called local color is allowed to dominate a story, it must injure the permanent effect. The literary mechanic who is writing stories simply to sell them will usually find it easy to dispose of studies of local peculiarities which are piquant, whether they are true or not. There is nothing to object to in this, but this work is not to be confounded with legitimate Narration, and it is not to be looked upon as permanent literature. Local color is accidental rather than essential. It depends upon circumstances which belong to a place rather than to human nature. It follows that it is not in itself of permanent interest, and that work depending upon it for interest must go by as soon as the novelty is passed. The work of Miss Wilkins, Miss Jewett, Miss Brown, and the rest, has attracted attention through the fidelity with which it presented peculiarities of New England rural life. The claim to permanent value in each, however, rests on other and higher grounds. In so far as they are true to the fundamental and essential characteristics of humanity, in so far as they deal with the constant emotions of men and women as men and women, and not as eccentric types evolved by peculiarities and environment, they have permanent value—and no farther.

Closely allied with local color, and indeed in many cases hardly to be distinguished from it, is dialect. We are all familiar with a certain strange appearance which has of late years come over the pages of the magazines, a sort of epidemic of which the most prominent characteristics are the misspelling of words and a plentiful spattering of apostrophes, as if the secret of literary art lay in eccentric and intermittent orthography. We have been instructed that these startling productions were dialect stories, and whether we have professed to like them or not has depended largely upon our daring to say what we thought. There are, it is true, dialect stories which we must all admire and enjoy,—many of them in spite of their strange language rather than because of it,—but none the less is the multiplicity of tales in dialect a visitation not unlike the Egyptian plague of swarming flies or of sprawling frogs.

The object of the use of dialect is of course to produce what might be called a personal local color. To personages who belong to nationalities other than his own a writer often gives phrases in their own tongue or conforming to the idiom of their own language in order to convey a lively impression of their being foreigners. To produce a vivid sense of the fact that his characters are Creoles of New Orleans and to suggest all the romantic flavor of life among them, George Cable used dialect in that delightful book, “Old Creole Days;” to make the reader realize the especial local and race peculiarities of one character or another Thomas Nelson Page used one negro dialect in “Marse Chan” and Joel Chandler Harris another in “Uncle Remus.” In these and similar cases the dialect used is really, as far as the general reader is concerned, an unknown tongue. Its correctness or incorrectness cannot be judged by the general public to which these tales are addressed, and its use must therefore be flavor rather than accuracy, impression rather than information, picturesqueness rather than literalness.

The proper use of dialect is often a great aid in characterization. Some figures it is all but impossible to individualize without this means. There are figures in Scott which would not be at all the same thing if stripped of their dialect; while in each of the stories mentioned above there are instances of the same thing. It is to be remembered, however, that this is a subsidiary purpose. In other words it is a detail of fiction. Dialect is written for the sake of the story, and woe to that author who produces a story for the sake of a dialect. The tales of the “Soldiers Three,” the “Window in Thrums,” “Old Creole Days,” succeed for other qualities than the dialect, and the dialect is good because it helps to make effective something better. It is even not improbable that with a large body of readers these and kindred books succeed only in spite of their dialect, since even at its best this perversion of language is apt to be in itself somewhat irritating even if not perplexing.

Actually to reproduce a dialect as it is spoken is a feat so difficult that it is worse than idle to attempt it outside of works on philology. Dialectic peculiarities are always largely matters of accent, of voice quality, and of inflection. The sounds of vowels and consonants may be indicated, but it is all but impossible to set down the rising and falling of the voice which is the most characteristic quality of these forms of speech. Printed words cannot reproduce that species of intoning which has so large a share in making unintelligible to foreigners the speech of London cabmen and porters. Indeed, it is to be doubted whether any written dialect is to be regarded as a very exact reproduction of the genuine thing,—a statement which would probably be regarded with contemptuous anger by the devotees of the dialect story, if any still survive. Certainly it is true that dialect does not have to be genuine to be successful. The dialect of the “Biglow Papers” was never spoken on the face of the earth. It is none the worse for that, so far as I can see. It has the effect for which it was intended, and nothing more could reasonably be asked. Mr. Lowell made it with the most careful patience, and apparently believed in it with beautiful faith. He set nothing down, or rather he tried to set nothing down, which he had not heard from the lips of Yankee rustics; but in the first place no one man ever used all those distorted words and phrases, belonging sometimes to different localities; and in the second, letters cannot reproduce the peculiar sounds and accents of rural New England. Yet this dialect has imposed for a quarter of a century upon no inconsiderable portion of the American reading public, and it will probably continue to impose upon English readers until the end of time.

The inability of readers to judge of the accuracy of dialect is inseparable from its use. How many are acquainted with the vernacular of “Thrums,” the patois of New Orleans Creoles, the dialect of Mexican mining camps, or the speech of the half-breeds of Canada or the West Indian islands? No danger that the general reader will measure work by reality obliges the writer of dialect to be accurate. The only restraining influence is the difficulty of making a manufactured dialect consistent and convincing. The story-teller studies dialect as it is spoken, not for the sake of being right, but because this is the surest way to obtain the appearance of being right. The only essential thing is to be convincing.

The danger in the use of dialect is not far to seek. Its literary value is that of flavor. As long as this fact is recognized it may properly be employed. The difficulty is that the great and inglorious company of imitators have written dialect for its own sake,—or perhaps for their own sake!—and thereby not only have produced things dreadful to contemplate, but have so wearied the soul of readers that it has become dangerous to use it legitimately. Dialect in literature is a condiment and not a viand; it is mustard and not beef; it is never to be employed for its own sake any more than are commas and capitals, paragraphs and periods. Almost every inexperienced writer who tries his hand at dialect—and most experienced ones—will overdo it. The French, with their instinctive literary sense, may well be studied in this connection. They understand that the value of patois is its suggestiveness, and they go in its use just so far as is necessary to impart the flavor required, and there they stop. This is the legitimate method. I have nothing to say of those disfigurements which appear in some of the periodicals, sketches which are written for the sake of exhibiting a special dialect. They do not come under the head of literature except in the sense in which the word includes the dictionary and thesaurus. They may be of interest to the student of philology, but they cannot concern the imaginative reader.

The best quality which dialect can give is an impression of individuality, of quaintness or remoteness from conventional and hackneyed experiences. It must be written with care and sobriety. The writer must remember that the day is definitely past when it was possible to produce effects simply by misspelling. It is well to keep in mind also that even the ability to write a dialect never so perfectly is not necessarily a reason for using it. The employment of local forms of language, like local color, must be subordinate to the purposes of the story. It is always a means and never legitimately an end. It is, moreover, a good deal discredited by over-use and abuse, so that it must be employed with double caution.

One more word of warning it seems well to add. The employment of dialect and of local color as a means of producing literary effect is apt to impart to work a transient character. Their effect is less likely to be permanently pleasing than that of almost any other thing legitimately among the resources of the story-teller. The principle that it is well to appeal to ordinary experiences and to ordinary tastes comes in here. The general reader soon tires of dialect unless it be very simple and is supported by all other devices within the range of art. To write dialect is likely to be at best to sacrifice permanent to temporary success. The greatest writers have usually employed it sparingly. Shakespeare almost never resorted to it; Fielding scarcely used it at all; Scott tried it much more largely, but the Scotch speech was all but universal among his people, and it has certainly been oftener a hindrance than a help to his continued success; Thackeray put little of it into his best work; Hawthorne passed it by; and even Dickens depended upon it very little, despite the temptations which his characters constantly offered. Thomas Hardy has given us the best rustics since Shakespeare with not much more than an indication of dialect. I do not wish to insist upon the point too strongly, but the principle seems to me a sound one, and it is certainly worth the consideration of any student of the art of writing fiction.

The art of writing dialogue is by no means the least difficult thing which the story-teller has to learn, and there are very many who are not able to acquire it to the end of their days. If a rule could be devised by which good and pleasing dialogue could be written, it would go far toward making it possible for every man to be his own novelist. To give to the talk of a tale the air of naturalness and ease, to make it take its place in the story and be attractive without being too clever or too formal, to give it character and consistency, to impart to it movement and vivacity, to be sure that it helps forward the narrative in which it is set,—all these difficulties must be overcome before an author can be said to write good dialogue.

The first essential in dialogue is naturalness. Some authors get on without this, but they get on in spite of lacking it and are constantly hampered by the lack. The most striking instance of this in modern fiction is probably George Meredith, a novelist who makes his way with more encumbrances than any other living man of genius. Take, for instance, this bit, chosen almost at random:—

This does as a matter of fact somewhat help forward the story from which it is taken, but could anybody get from it the idea that two living beings were talking together?

The great principle of the impression of truth instead of a servile imitation of truth is the secret of good talk in fiction. It is necessary to keep clear on the one hand of formality and stiffness, and on the other of stupid closeness in mere imitation. In actual talk there are inaccuracies, broken sentences, phrases of which the meaning is evident from some glance or gesture, repetitions and careless constructions, all of which would lose their force or gain undue importance if set down in print. To preserve or too closely to imitate these characteristics of genuine conversation is to give an impression of unreality, or commonplaceness and even of vulgarity. The rambling speech is often pleasantly and appropriately imitated. The inimitable Nurse in “Romeo and Juliet” stands at the head of talkers of this sort, but there are excellent specimens in the fiction of our own century. Miss Austen possessed the secret of this futile volubility to perfection, and Mrs. Stowe’s best literary work is her management of the discursive talk of Sam Lawson.

That conversation should be in keeping with the characters speaking is one of those things so obvious that it is unsafe to leave them unsaid. It is another application of the principle of the point of view. The natural tendency of the beginner is to put into the mouths of his personages not what they would say but what he would have them say. If he sufficiently realize them in his own mind there will be little danger of this. The remedy is to know his characters. The people in any book will talk consistently if they are real to the author. They will say what they wish to say and not what he wishes them to say, and that is the whole secret.

Most young writers compose pages of dialogue which seems to them clever, which, when it is written, they read over with tender admiration, generally not without a little amazement that they have done so well and a conviction that this at least imparts distinction to their book,—when as a matter of fact the whole thing is simply an amateurish mistake. It is one of the many pitfalls which egotism and inexperience dig for the unwary writer, who forgets that success can be achieved only when the end of a work is the work and not the worker. The elaborator of his own opinions into the form of talk is not writing dialogue; he is but making a weak concession to his individual vanity. His punishment is that he cannot deceive the public. Readers may not know their right hands from their left, but they know when they are bored, and they are always bored when the progress of the tale is interrupted to afford an author opportunity to display himself.

Anthony Trollope puts this matter well in his “Autobiography:”—

Of course the matter is made more complicated by the fact that it is often the office of dialogue to indicate character rather than action. How far the writer may introduce talk simply to illustrate mental characteristics or moods is a thing to be decided by each writer for himself and learned by observation. It is not amiss for a young writer to consider carefully how far he is himself able to enjoy this in the work of others; and in any case he must learn to distinguish between what is written genuinely to illustrate mental traits and that which is really put in simply to show his own cleverness.