The Indianapolis journal. [volume] (Indianapolis [Ind.]) 1867-1904, 1903-01-18
IN THE LITERARY FIELD
DISSERTATION ON ETHICS OF NOVEL
WRITING, BY GOODWIN SMITH.
Features of the Poe s.Revival- Not i'm
the Best Taste-A Writer Who
Does Not Like Twain.


small print, says Prof. Goodwin Smith, in
| the Independent. There probably at this
time are few more profitable manufactures.
| But the gift OF fiction is rare, so rare that
| you might easily count upon your fingers
the British novelists who have possessed
it in a high degree. OF the writers in this
portentoUs list probably not a tenth have
any real power of creating characters or
constructing plots. The rest must go about
hunting for the materials of sensation,
which some Of them find in rather out-of-
the-way places. The fruits of such sensa-
] ton hunting present a striking contrast
to the glorious spontaneity of Walter
| Scott. But the sale runs sometimes to
100000 copies. An effect must be produced
| on character by this voracious novel read
| ing; and ii can hardly be other in general
| than that of intellectual dissipation. OF
the books taken out OF the circulating Ii
braries about 70 per cent. are generally
novels. The novel department of the cir
culating library might almost be called the
women's mental saloon. The fact that
| there is so large a reading public would Of
| itself be happy If only the matter read
/ were of a better kind.
| One mode of creating sensation is the in
PRODUCTION OF living characters under a
! thin disguise. To this source Marie Corelli
has had recourse in her last production.
| She has no malicious motive. On the con-
/ trary, she aims at lending sentimental
| interest to the unSentimental characters
whom she brings on her stage. But Ine
| characters, IL they see the picture, Will
| hardly like it, especially as Ii revives a
| scandal. No such thing, Marie Corelll
! should be aware as morganauc marriage
! is known to English law or custom. The
/ name is applied in Germany to a marriage
between prince and a woman OF INFERIOR
rank, IN which the bridegroom gives his
/ left instead OF his right hand to his bride,
| signifying thereby that she is not admitted
| to share in his rank or expectations. The
| marriage law of the British royal family
| prohibits the marriage of any one in the
| line of succession to the throne under the
| age of twenty-five without the consent OF
! the crown. After the age of twenty-five
marriage may be contracted on giving no
tce to the Privy Council. if Parliament
| does not protest. A marriage contracted
| in contravention of this law would be not
/ morganatic, but absolutely void though
morality would not smile upon a second
| union. The. law was iniquitously thrust
down the throat of reluctant Parliament
by George Ill, and ought long ago to have
| been repealed. Its consequence was
series of scandals in the royal family.
Personal libel under the mask of fiction
Is Of all kinds OF libel the most cowardly
| and disgraceful- 1t IS absolutely free from
the restraint of truth, and the person
| libeled has no means Of vindicating his
character. If he resents the calumny he
/
| head. 1t is painful 10 think that there is
| something like an instance in Thackeray,
| though Thackeray's motive was not per-
| sonal. Lord Steyne in Vanity Fair" was
| known at once to be Lord Hartford, the
1 high aristocrat and scandalous debauchee
| who had before furnished character to
| the writer of "Coningsby," though that
| writer cannot help betraying his innate
| reverence for the peer. Equally manifest
| was 1t that Wenham, cruelty depicted as
Lord Steyne's parasite was Wilson Croker.
4 We 0f the QadinO SnOkQSmpn
| of the Tory party in Parliament and in
| literature at the time of the reform bill.
| He was very hard. sometimes, no doubt,
| an extensively hard hitter. He was bitterly
| hated by Macaulay, who had found him an
/ awkward customer, and by all the literary
men Of the Wing circle. Macaulay loses
! his temper in speaking of him. But he
! was a perfectly honest and respectable
| party man. His original connection with
| Lord Hartford was political, as the readers
| OF PeePs letters may nave seen. LORD
| Hartford though one of the worst men in
| the circle of the Regency, was powerful
member of the Tory party, patron before
| the reform bill of a number of boroughs,
| and consulted by Peel Croker, when he
had gone out of Parliament in disgust at
the passing OF the reform bill. managed
| Lord Hertford's vast estates. When Lord
! Hertford's debaucherfes had reached such
| pitch as to give rise 10 reasonable sur
mise that he was insane. Croker had better
have broken off the connection But had
| Thackeray accused him of pandering to
Lord Hertford's lusts and lying to save
him from their consequences, the result
would have been libel suit in which the
| perusal of the article on Croker in the
National Biography" will show of what
injustice a man may be the victim if he
| arouses the hostility of a powerful literary
| circle.
Dickens is accused of having, in the char
| acter of Squeers, Hbeled and thereby ruined
| a schoolmaster who had been rude to him.
| But the charge never rested on anything
beyond mere rumor, and 1T would take a
good deal to make us entertain any charge
| of the kind against the writer OF 1.-THE
'CheveIey, or the Man of Honor" was
l libel on Bulwer by his estranSed and
the day of his election for the county and
denounced him to the crowd from the
hastings. AS their dutiful son wrote:
who came to Hartford in a chaise,
| And uttered anything but praise
About the author of my days?-
| My Mother
The poor lady. however. was hardly in
her right mind.
gallant gentleman like Walter Scott would
ever have abused his art for the purpose
of personal libel? Real characters may
have sat TO him for their portraits, but il
of their likerresses would not have cost any
one of them pang.
Far less Objectionable, yet not wholly
free from objection. is the use of fiction as
an instrument of controversial war Hawk
stone" the work of Sewell, high church
leader at Oxford, which had a run in its
| day. was complex attack on the three
objects OF high Anglican dislike, the Ro-
man Catholic, the evangelical and the
4 atheist. The evangelical is made to end
as broken-hearted penitent for having
differed in opinion from the writer's party
while the more offensive Jesuit is eaten
alive by rats; the atheist, most offensive
OF all, in escaping from a fire. falls into
a leaden cistern and is boiled TO death in
the molten lead. In Loss and GAIN" a
religious tale, anonymous but understood
to be the work of John Henry Newman
/ soon after his conversion, though Ii does
not appear among his works in the Ma
| at. disciples who had failed TO follow their
leader TO Rome. The sight of one of them
young clergyman, going with the lady
| to which he is engaged to buy ritualst
| books in book store, is made TO create
| in the convert a sensation of nausea such
| as would be created in seasick person
by the sight OF a pork chop.
| OF pamphleteering novels there have beer
| plenty. Warren's Ten Thousand a Year
| which had great run, bitter Tory
| pamphlet. "Oliver Twist is in some meas
| Charles Reade was thorough-goin
| pamphleteer He attacked model prisons
and private lunatic asylums. His attach
on the asylums. which, as they were care.
1 fully inspected. was. doubt. greatly ex-
| aggerated, IL not wholly unjust. was be-
lieved TO have produced mlschievous eff
| fects The exaggeration in the description
| OF a model prison Is monstrous. One oil
Wilkie Collins's novels is pamphlet
against excessive athletics, not certainly
inOpportune, but overdone, since he makes
1 ccIt at nnH NJ nr,1x- a.,