Delphi Complete Works of Stephen Leacock, page 811
Some critics, we say, have said that a real historical novel is once and for all an impossibility... What seems to one generation a vivid picture of the past seems to the next as unnatural as a stiff shirt.... The heroine turns to the comic... many people, and I am one, think Tennyson’s knights very funny people.... But perhaps we can create a dreamworld of the past if we cannot make a real one... make something which is better than reality... since actual life is poor stuff anyway.... Indeed it is only recently, in the larger sense, that the idea of portraying life-as-it-is became the ideal of literature. The earlier idea was of life better than it is....
It is into these perplexities and difficulties and contradictions that we wish to inquire, that anyone may well inquire who wishes to write stories of the past.
Historical fiction began in earnest for Britain and America with the novels of Sir Walter Scott.... The success and acclaim were immediate.... It is said that when Waverley appeared people stopped one another, book in hand, on the streets of Edinburgh, to ask ‘Have you read it?’ Yet Waverley was in a sense scarcely historic to the people who first read it. Its second title,’Tis Sixty Years Since, shows it merely in the retrospect of a vanishing horizon, that verge of the present retreating into the past, that is history to the young and yesterday to the old, yet near to both. Scott reached back to the Middle Ages and the Crusades — the real thing — with Ivanhoe and The Talisman, then for the most part confined himself to the romance of Scotland.
With Scott began the weaving of the unending web of historic fiction, which at times slackened, waxed or waned but has never stopped. Washington Irving followed with the picture past of Father Knickerbocker in New York and Rip Van Winkle in the hills of the Hudson, seen, as it were, through tobacco smoke. Fenimore Cooper in Indian feathers crawled through the underbush, not snapping a single twig, and all Europe crawled, breathless or breathing hard, behind him. Charles Dickens wrote of to-day. To him the past was as rotten as it was to Mark Twain. Once — it was after reading Carlyle’s French Revolution — he reached back towards the past in his Tale of Two Cities, and made a better French Revolution than the real one. But after all the Revolution was still a thing of yesterday. In Barnaby Rudge Dickens reached a little back to the Lord George Gordon Riots of 1781. But this is not historywriting, since in unchanging England Mr. Willett’s Maypole Inn and all that went with love and locksmiths was still there when Dickens wrote. Dickens, indeed, stuck to to-day (his day) and moved along with it. When the railway train came in he saw at once the ‘romance’ of it and used it to kill one of his villains under its headlights.
But other writers moved backwards. Thackeray revived colonial America. Harrison Ainsworth contrived a bloody mixture of towers and dungeons, blocks and axes which would be terrifying if it weren’t tedious. One of his sentences is four feet long. Then came Bulwer Lytton, most historical of all, and all the world walked the colonnaded portico and tasselated pavements of ancient Rome, groped their way with Lydia, the blind girl, and sought shelter in vain from the black destruction that overwhelmed Pompeii.
The current never stopped. Boys walked the Saxon forest and sailed the Spanish Main with Charles Kingsley.
.. Such a writer as the late Mr. Henty turned history stories to mass production, adapting every epoch of the world for reading under a school desk, during classes. In Ben Hur General Wallace, a Civil War veteran, whirled in furious chariots around the Roman arena, and in Quo Vadis? Henryk Sienkewicz asked the world again the agelong question, ‘Whither goest thou?’ and lifted the curtain on the inspired days of Christianity in Rome.... The turn of the century for a time witnessed feudalism in a flood. Then came the adjunct of the moving picture with its marvellous power of instantaneous presentation to the eye, of scenes hitherto produced word by word to the ear. Whether it obliterates or stimulates imagination no one yet knows....
The moving picture should have killed the historical novel. It didn’t. It only made it longer... and made success more rapid, wider and more evanescent.... The best seller withers like the grass on the prairies; the old books remain like the mountains on the horizon; not as being better but as made when the world was young. But the historical novel, influenced by the moving picture as induced currents flow in parallel wires, changed its scope. It has stepped out, so to speak; no longer wants to be decorous and ponderous and dignified but must have its characters up-to-date, so real, as we said above, that they are unreal, so much alive that they seemed galvanized rather than living, and with just enough nastiness in it to attract clean-minded people.
The first advice always given to people who wish to write historical stories is that they must read history. This is obviously true in a sense. But they must be careful. They are told that they must saturate themselves, soak themselves, so to speak, in the period. This is all right as long as they retain the power to distinguish between what is interesting in itself and what is interesting only to an antiquarian. Now writers who make studies for historical novels, studies of ancient manners, customs, armour, etc etc., are apt to become affected by what is called an antiquarian interest. This is quite harmless within a moderate degree though always tiresome at a dinner party. Take the question of armour. The people of the Middle Ages used lots of it and each piece of it had a different name — only a few such as helmet and breastplate have any meaning now. But some knights wore a light ‘salade’ in place of a helmet. Think what a temptation for a historical writer to say: with these final words Ugo Negroli closed down his salade and strode away.
A writer of the old style of the days of Scott, would have been allowed a foot-note to say, ‘The salade, or salade, a light flexible helmet, was first worn in the fifteenth century and is said to have been invented by the Negroli family.... A knight in full armour in that century, after having put on the clothes which we call his shirt and his trousers and socks, put on twenty-three pieces of what Mark Twain’s Yankee called hardware. They included Such things as a ventail and rondel, a gorget, a rerebrace (one can imagine its use), a facet, a pair of greaves and finally a pair of sollerets laced round his feet — by someone else, as the knight was now completely immobilized. What a temptation then for a writer who has soaked himself in the fascinating study of armour to write, Sir Tancred the Two Spot stood before the steel mirror adjusting his ventail, having already fastened his vambrace and his loin guard, screwed down his knee-caps andpassed the bolts through his rerebrace.... Historical fiction is much disfigured with this stuff, written by writers who either know too much or too little.... Any writer of to-day should be warned against this temptation. Don’t use queer words just because you know them. After all, this list of queer bits of costume is nothing more in itself than any other list, let us say than a laundry list of to-day — pyjamas, combinations, dickies, etc. Let the knight put on those.
As with armour so with arms. There is no sense in giving to things familiar to us as swords and shields, javelins and battle-axes, the foreign names used by the foreign people engaged in the fight. Very often it obscures rather than illuminates the combat. Under this pedantic treatment the description of a single combat in Roman times appears as follows — more or less:
The legionary stood his ground fearlessly against the huge figure of the advancing Gaul, who had leaped from arch to arch of the broken bridge and now stood beside him on the hither bank of the river. Marcus gave way not an inch, but drawing his straight fiat ensis from its poculum he directed a furious thrust straight at the hardened leather pabulum of his gigantic adversary. The Gaul caught the blow deftly on his wooden cerebellum and with a shout of defiance hurled his native cuspidor full at the sternum of the Roman; the legionary deftly stepped aside to avoid the flying cuspidor while in return his own azalea reached home between the joints of the Gaul.... The Gaul, maddened by pain, now swung aloft his double-head axis, a weapon resembling a doubled- head axe, and was about to rush in to close quarters. But at this moment loud cries arose from the wood. A furious auriga came hurtling from out the trees followed by the glittering hastae of a cohors. The Gaul hesitated, lowered his weapon, turned and with a shout of defiance cleared the flumen at a single bound and disappeared into the silva.
This is a fine description, but more appreciated if it is understood that an auriga is not a dragon-fly and that hastae are not insects.
But the difficulty of finding ways and means of description — suitable words — in historical novels is as nothing as compared with the difficulty that arises when the characters open their mouths to speak. These historical people belong to all ages and countries from the ancient Egypt of four thousand years back, down the centuries and in and out among the Empires. How then are they to speak? Obviously they have got to talk English since nothing else would be understood. But it can’t be the actual English of to-day, the colloquial talk of the hour, for that would sound hopelessly artificial. Some writers try it, but it simply won’t work. The result is like this:
‘How are you to-day, old bean?’ said the Roman praetor.
‘What a darned nuisance!’ said the Queen of Sheba.
‘Include me out!’ laughed Mary, Queen of Scots.
‘Hurry up, boys, finish your booze!’ called King Arthur across the Round Table.
No, they didn’t, they couldn’t have said that. At least, that’s exactly what they did say, but it doesn’t sound right. King Arthur must be made to say, ‘Drain me your goblets, Sir Knights, and to horse!’
That last touch is exactly the kind of queer conventional English that has grown up as the special jargon of the historical novel. It is made up partly of old spelling — like ’tis for it’s, which really sound the same. Compare it is a long way with ’tis a long way and it’s a long way, and you will find they all amount to s’long way. But the historical novel people all say ’tis, just as they all say will ye, though it sounds exactly the same as our ordinary will you. With this goes a set of half-old, half-new words and a special set of swearing. It is really one of the forms of broken English like the pigeon English of business China, and the lingo of the West African Coast.
All these forms of broken English, created out of necessity, are based on one and the same plan of taking a few words and phrases and working them overtime to fit all sorts of meaning. Pigeon English — it means business English — uses constantly A.i and top-side and the word pigeon (business) itself. In pigeon English a professor emeritus is called an A.i top-side word-pigeon man. The West African lingo used a few phrases like lib’ (live for), belong him one piece, etc., where we use adjectives. Thus in West Africa a’venerable statesman’ becomes big fellow lib’ for talk no hair belong him.
The conventional language of historical novels has similarly gathered up as its stock-in-trade a lot of conventional phrases and half-obsolete words worn with use — such words as sore and fain and right, etc.... In sooth I was right weary with walking and would fain have slept but was sore afraid to do so, etc.... These phrases, coupled with ’tis’s and ye’s, old bad spelling and manufactured profanity, serve as English for historical purposes.
It is hard to see how to remedy it. Let us turn back again to Walter Scott, who first opened the road and gave the succeeding generations what was either a lead or a misleading turn. Here is Scott about to write Ivanhoe and The Talisman, stories of the days of Richard Cœur de Lion (1189-1199) and his regent brother, Prince John. Now the people chiefly concerned are Norman knights and ladies. How are they to talk? What they really spoke was the Norman French of the day, very much like modern French, but not enough so to be understood by a Frenchman of to-day, any more than we could understand the English of a peasant in East Anglia of 1189. No people of class spoke English in England for a hundred years after King John. How, we repeat, shall they be made to talk? Not in Norman French, for the reader wouldn’t understand it and Scott couldn’t write it. They must talk in English, but yet not too much like the English of to-day or it would sound unnatural. Hence they talk in a sort of older English with plenty of half-lost words, a pure convention, without an atom of logic to it.
‘If I have offended,’ said Sir Brian, ‘I crave your pardon.’
It is not possible for Sir Brian to say, I’m sorry, boys,’ which is the real equivalent of his Norman French.
‘A truce with your railing, Sir Knights,’ said FitzUrse.
What FitzUrse really said in Norman French was equal to Quit fooling fellers, but again that is impossible.
Such is the pace that was set and the pattern that was traced. The tissue of language was shot with various oaths and exclamations, which are correct in a sense that no doubt somebody used them sometimes, but incorrect in that they leave out other ones that many people used much of the time. They are selected as foul language, because they have dried out so long that there was no offence in them. Those that still kept their meaning, like the much-used ‘bloody,’ are ruled out as foul language because still foul. If FitzUrse had exclaimed What the bloody hell! Scott’s readers would have fallen off their stools.
This point of how to use bad language in literature however, I have dealt with in an earlier chapter. Here we can only indicate some of the oaths, abjurations and exclamations which Scott and his successors fished out of the backwaters of Norman and Mediaeval England.
For the use of lords, knights and military men generally: morbleu, parsambleu, pounds (God’s wounds), odsbodekins, etc. For the use of noble ladies: odspitikins (for the sake of God’s pity). For kings themselves: by the splendour of God (King Richard), by God’s teeth (King John).
Apart from the choice of words, Scott had to face the problem, passed on to all his successors until to-day, as to how well-exalted characters are to talk and what is the kind of language a beautiful woman must use. His general decision was that the more exalted a character the more exalted his speech, and that for a noble and beautiful female no language could be too good, no rhetoric too elegant. The system reaches its climax when the Lady Rowena opens her mouth. She was, it will be remembered by readers of Ivanhoe, a heroine who had been abducted by Maurice de Bracy, a villain.
‘Alas! fair Rowena!’ returned de Bracy, ‘you are in the presence of your captive, not your jailer; and it is from your fair eyes that de Bracy must receive that doom which you fondly expect from him.’
‘I know you not, sir,’ said the lady, drawing herself up with all the pride of offended rank and beauty, ‘I know you not — and the insolent familiarity with which you apply to me the jargon of a troubadour, forms no apology for the violence of a robber.’
Pretty neat language to use off-hand! And Lady Rowena follows it up with sentence after sentence as knock-out blows against de Bracy. She meets him at every point. De Bracy — who can blame him — gets a little impatient.
‘Courtesy of tongue,’ Rowena comes back at him, ‘when it is used to veil churlishness of deed, is but a knight’s girdle around the breast of a base clown. I wonder not that the restraint appears to gall you — more it were for your honour to have retained the dress and the language of an outlaw than to veil the deeds of one under an affectation of gentle language and demeanour.’
This language of rhetoric and repartee comes with the utmost ease to Lady Rowena. She never has to fumble and put in, ‘I mean to say,’ or ‘do you see,’ or anything like that. Her mind moves too fast. We have some pretty nimble intelligences among us, especially the people who carry on the radio quizzes, but I doubt if even Professor Billy Phelps or Franklin P. Adams could keep up with the Lady Rowena. I don’t know of any living person who could take her on, except perhaps Charlie Macarthy.
The fact is that there never were in the world two such people as de Bracy and the Lady Rowena. They are not real life. They are meant, as we said, to be better than real.
The latest form and fashion of historical novel is based on the presentation of the great people. The conspicuous people of past history. They are all taken in turn. The professional writer reflects, ‘Let me see — Peter the Hermit, who was he? I wonder if he has been written up?’... And within a few months the reviewers are writing, Mr. Snide’s new Peter the Hermit (pp. 1030) is an arresting book, giving an entirely different view from that usually held of the personal character of the man who summoned Europe to the First Crusade. It appears that Peter was far from being the Hermit commonly supposed. Mr. Snide traces his various amours, some of a character scarcely to bear decent repetition (it is all Mr. Snide can do). Mr. Snide shows also that his true name was not Peter but Pewter or possibly Porter.
Now it should have been observed sooner that there is an obvious division of historical novels into those that present a picture of historical times without special refer- ence to the great people — kings, statesmen, etc. — or only incidental mention of them, or an incidental appearance on their part. Other novels present a great person, that is, a historic celebrity and his surroundings. Sir Walter Scott features the Young Pretender in Waver ley, Richard Cœur de Lion in The Talisman and Louis the Eleventh in Quentin Durward. But even in these books the times count for more than the men, and in the bulk of Scott’s work the main aim is the presentation of bygone days. There is no doubt that this has been the more successful type of historical novel, especially if the times are not too far away and in a place where they speak English or something like it. Conan Doyle’s Micah Clark, of the days of Monmouth’s rebellion, is a fine example. The language is still within reach, the scene (at the time of writing, fifty years ago) still there. So, too, with the best of the novels and tales of colonial America, as notably, of course, the work of Nathaniel Hawthorne. A good deal of harm was at first done in these American stories by following Walter Scott’s lead and putting in the Lady Rowena, reappearing in the form of a forest heroine, still talking as volubly as she did with de Bracy in 1189. Indeed she talked even better, since the field was more open. The Indians of the Cooper story only ‘grunted,’ or occasionally saved up a ration of talk for an Indian harangue. The military men were (fairly) curt in their speech. The heroine got the floor — under the pine trees.
