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OLD FRIENDS - ESSAYS IN EPISTOLARY PARODY
OLD FRIENDS - ESSAYS IN EPISTOLARY PARODY ANDREW LANG OLD FRIENDS
PREFACE
The studies in this volume originally appeared in the "St. James's
Gazette." Two from a friendly hand have been omitted here by the
author of the rest as non sua poma. One was by Mr. RICHARD
SWIVELLER to a boon companion and brother in the lyric Apollo; the
other though purporting to have been addressed by Messrs. DOMBEY &
SON to Mr. TOOTS is believed on internal evidence to have been
composed by the patron of the CHICKEN himself. A few prefatory
notes an introductory essay and two letters have been added.
The portrait in the frontispiece copied by Mr. T. Hodge from an
old painting in the Club at St. Andrews is believed to represent
the Baron Bradwardine addressing himself to his ball.
A. L.
FRIENDS IN FICTION
Every fancy which dwells much with the unborn and immortal
characters of Fiction must ask itself Did the persons in
contemporary novels never meet? In so little a world their paths
must often have crossed their orbits must have intersected though
we hear nothing about the adventure from the accredited narrators.
In historical fiction authors make their people meet real men and
women of history--Louis XI. Lazarus Mary Queen of Scots General
Webbe Moses the Man in the Iron Mask Marie Antoinette; the list
is endless. But novelists in spite of Mr. Thackeray's advice to
Alexandre Dumas and of his own example in "Rebecca and Rowena"
have not introduced each other's characters. Dumas never pursued
the fortunes of the Master of Ravenswood after he was picked up by
that coasting vessel in the Kelpie's Flow. Sometimes a meeting
between characters in novels by different hands looked all but
unavoidable. "Pendennis" and "David Copperfield" came out
simultaneously in numbers yet Pen never encountered Steerforth at
the University nor did Warrington in his life of journalism
jostle against a reporter named David Copperfield. One fears that
the Major would have called Steerforth a tiger that Pen would have
been very loftily condescending to the nephew of Betsy Trotwood.
But Captain Costigan would scarcely have refused to take a sip of
Mr. Micawber's punch and I doubt not that Litimer would have
conspired darkly with Morgan the Major's sinister man. Most of
those delightful sets of old friends the Dickens and Thackeray
people might well have met though they belonged to very different
worlds. In older novels too it might easily have chanced that
Mr. Edward Waverley of Waverley Honour came into contact with
Lieutenant Booth or after the Forty-five with Thomas Jones or
in Scotland Balmawhapple might have foregathered with Lieutenant
Lismahagow. Might not even Jeanie Deans have crossed the path of
Major Lambert of the "Virginians" and been helped on her way by
that good man? Assuredly Dugald Dalgetty in his wanderings in
search of fights and fortune may have crushed a cup or rattled a
dicebox with four gallant gentlemen of the King's Mousquetaires.
It is agreeable to wonder what all these very real people would
have thought of their companions in the region of Romance and to
guess how their natures would have acted and reacted on each other.
This was the idea which suggested the following little essays in
parody. In making them the writer though an assiduous and veteran
novel reader had to recognise that after all he knew on really
intimate and friendly terms comparatively few people in the
Paradise of Fiction. Setting aside the dramatic poets and their
creations the children of Moliere and Shakspeare the reader of
novels will find may be that his airy friends are scarce so many
as he deemed. We all know Sancho and the Don by repute at least;
we have all our memories of Gil Blas; Manon Lescaut does not fade
from the heart nor her lover the Chevalier des Grieux from the
remembrance. Our mental picture of Anna Karenine is fresh enough
and fair enough but how few can most of us recall out of the
myriad progeny of George Sand! Indiana Valentine Lelia do you
quite believe in them would you know them if you met them in the
Paradise of Fiction? Noun one might recognise but there is a
haziness about La Petite Fadette. Consuelo let it be admitted is
not evanescent oblivion scatters no poppy over her; but Madame
Sand's later ladies still more her men are easily lost in the
forests of fancy. Even their names with difficulty return to us
and if we read the roll-call would Horace and Jacques cry Adsum
like the good Colonel? There are living critics who have all Mr.
George Meredith's heroines and heroes and oddities at their finger
ends and yet forget that musical name like the close of a rich
hexameter Clare Doria Forey. But this is a digression; it is
perhaps admitted that George Sand so great a novelist gave the
world few characters who live in and are dear to memory. We can
just fancy one of her dignified later heroines all self-
renunciation and rural sentiment preaching in vain to that real
woman Emma Bovary. HER we know her we remember as we remember
few comparatively of Balzac's thronging faces from La Cousine
Bette to Seraphitus Seraphita. Many of those are certain to live
and keep their hold but it is by dint of long and elaborate
preparation description analysis. A stranger intermeddleth not
with them though we can fancy Lucien de Rubempre let loose in a
country neighbourhood of George Sand's and making sonnets and love
to some rural chatelaine while Vautrin might stray among the
ruffians of Gaboriau a giant of crime. Among M. Zola's people
however it may fare with others I find myself remembering few:
the guilty Hippolytus of "La Curee" the poor girl in "La Fortune
des Rougon" the Abbe Mouret the artist in "L'Oeuvre" and the
half idiotic girl of the farm house and Helene in "Un Page
d'Amour." They are not amongst M. Zola's most prominent creations
and it must be some accident that makes them most memorable and
recognisable to one of his readers.
Probably we all notice that the characters of fiction who remain
our intimates whose words come to our lips often whose conduct in
this or that situation we could easily forecast are the characters
whom we met when we were young. We may be wrong in thinking them
the best the most true and living of the unborn; perhaps they only
seem so real because they came fresh to fresh hearts and unworn
memories. This at least we must allow for when we are tempted to
say about novelists "The old are better." It was we who long
ago were young and better better fitted to enjoy and retain the
pleasure of making new visionary acquaintances. If this be so
what an argument it is in favour of reading the best books first
and earliest in youth! Do the ladies who now find Scott slow and
Miss Austen dull and Dickens vulgar and Thackeray prosy and
Fielding and Richardson impossible come to this belief because
they began early with the volumes of the circulating library? Are
their memories happily stored with the words and deeds of modern
fictitious romps and passionate governesses and tremendous
guardsmen with huge cigars? Are the people of--well why mention
names of living authors?--of whom you will--are those as much to
the young readers of 1890 as Quentin Durward and Colonel Newcome
and Sam Weller and Becky Sharp and Anne Elliot and Elizabeth
Bennett and Jane Eyre were to young readers of 1860? It may very
well be so and we seniors will not regret our choice and the
young men and maids will be pleased enough with theirs. Yet it is
not impossible that the old really are better and do not gain all
their life and permanent charm merely from the unjaded memories and
affections with which we came to them long ago.
We shall never be certain for even if we tried the experiment of
comparing we are no longer good judges our hearts are with our
old friends whom we think deathless; their birth is far enough off
in time but they will serve us for ours.
These friends it has been said are not such a very numerous
company after all. Most of them are children of our own soil
their spirits were made in England or at least in Great Britain
or perhaps came of English stock across the seas like our dear
old Leather Stocking and Madam Hester Prynne. Probably most of us
are insular enough to confess this limitation; even if we be so
unpatriotic to read far more new French than new English novels.
One may study M. Daudet and not remember his Sidonie as we
remember Becky nor his Petit Chose or his Jack as we remember
David Copperfield. In the Paradise of Fiction are folk of all
nations and tongues; but the English (as Swedenborg saw them doing
in his vision of Heaven) keep very much to themselves. The
American visitors or some of them disdain our old acquaintances
and associate with Russian Spanish Lithuanian Armenian heroes
and heroines conversing probably in some sort of French. Few of
us "poor islanders" are so cosmopolitan; we read foreign novels
and yet among all the brilliant persons met there we remember but a
few. Most of my own foreign friends in fiction wear love-locks and
large boots have rapiers at their side which they are very ready
to draw are great trenchermen mighty fine drinkers and somewhat
gallant in their conduct to the sex. There is also a citizen or
two from Furetiere's "Roman Bourgeois" there is Manon aforesaid
and a company of picaroons and an archbishop and a lady styled
Marianne and a newly ennobled Count of mysterious wealth and two
grisettes named Mimi and Musette with their student-lovers. M.
Balzac has introduced us to mystics and murderers and old maids
and doctors and adventurers and poets and a girl with golden
eyes and malefactors and bankrupts and mad old collectors
peasants cures critics dreamers debauchees; but all these are
somewhat distant acquaintances many of them undesirable
acquaintances. In the great "Comedie Humaine" have you a single
real friend? Some of Charles de Bernard's folk are more akin to
us such as "La Femme de Quarante Ans" and the owner of the hound
Justinian and that drunken artist in "Gerfaut." But an Englishman
is rather friendless rather an alien and an outcast in the
society of French fiction. Monsieur de Camors is not of our monde
nor is the Enfant du Siecle; indeed perhaps good Monsieur
Sylvestre Bonnard is as sympathetic as anyone in that populous
country of modern French romance. Or do you know Fifi Vollard?
Something must be allowed for strange manners for exotic ideas
and ways not our own. More perhaps is due to what as Englishmen
think is the lack of HUMOUR in the most brilliant and witty of
races. We have friends many in Moliere in Dumas in Rabelais; but
it is far more difficult to be familiar at ease and happy in the
circles to which Madame Sand M. Daudet M. Flaubert or M. Paul
Bourget introduce us. M. Bourget's old professor in "Le
Disciple" we understand but he does not interest himself much in
us and to us he is rather a curiosity a "character" than an
intimate. We are driven to the belief that humour with its loving
and smiling observation is necessary to the author who would make
his persons real and congenial and above all friendly. Now
humour is the quality which Dumas Moliere and Rabelais possess
conspicuously among Frenchmen. Montaigne has it too and makes
himself dear to us as the humorous novelists make their fancied
people dear. Without humour an author may draw characters distinct
and clear and entertaining and even real; but they want
atmosphere and with them we are never intimate. Mr. Alfred Austin
says that "we know the hero or the heroine in prose romance far
more familiarly than we know the hero or heroine in the poem or the
drama." "Which of the serious characters in Shakspeare's plays are
not indefinite and shadowy compared with Harry Esmond or Maggie
Tulliver?" The SERIOUS characters--they are seldom very familiar
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