DESCRIPTION OF PERSON AND PLACE

To personal description reference has already been made in the chapter upon characterization, for appearance is intimately associated with personality, and play of feature is one of the keys to the interpretation of emotion. If only for these reasons, then, the writer must be able to set forth, more or less fully as may suit his purpose, the form, features, dress, and surroundings of his creations, and the emotions which these arouse in the beholder. All this is not easy. Let us first consider some of the limitations of descriptive method, and then some of its possibiltiies. 
The chief difficulty in descriptive writing lies in the lack of correspondence between writing and seeing. We see a man as a whole, a group of related parts to be sure, but a unit which produces a single and instantaneous effect upon the observer. Yet, when we endeavor to enumerate the facts of his appearance, our list is scarcely more than a list. The reader by the time he
has grasped the last item has forgotten the first, and if the parts be many, by no exercise of the imagination can he so piece them together that they will form the original. The whole is indeed greater than the sum of its parts, and should, if possible, be presented in a word. Yet, if we employ so many as two, and say the man is a "handsome man" or an "ugly man" we have given but a faint conception of the person described. We have, indeed, drawn only upon the reader's experience of good looks in men, and this may be at variance with our own experience. 
We may note at the outset of our discussion that the clever writer nowadays makes no attempt to picture his character in full detail within the limits of a paragraph. The futility of such an endeavor should be obvious, though unskilled writers not infrequently essay it. The crafty artist, to delineate his characters swiftly and clearly, resorts, instead, to various devices, some of which we shall consider. 
The first is to renounce altogether any attempt at personal description. This is to avoid the difficulty with a vengeance, and the writer is justified in so doing only as he is certain that the reader's visualization of characters is unimportant in the story. Sometimes this is the case. If the story concerns people of no marked physical peculiarities, if they are typical, common-
place persons such as we all know, we may feel no need of visualizing them sharply. The story may be vivid without such description; our concern may be with the action, or with the psychology of the actors. Externally, anyone person—whom we may visualize of our own effort without hint from the author—may serve as well as another for the role assigned. Or we may make no attempt to visualize the character at all, whether individual or typical, though we usually supply involuntarily some dim conception of appearance. 
Between the total avoidance of personal description and complete portraiture lie all degrees of descriptive fulness. I said a moment ago that to characterize a man by a single epithet left much to be desired in the way of accuracy and dearness. Yet this is more specific and individual than to call him merely a man. And for the story's purpose the single epithet may often suffice. Kipling sometimes employs this succinct method. Thus he says of one of his characters: "He was the ugliest man in Asia with two exceptions. " This compelling exaggeration assures us that the man was ugly indeed. We may fill in the details as we please. 
It is possible in a phrase to be far more definite than this, and to draw a truly individual picture. 
Thus Conrad: "a little man, dry like a chip and agile like a monkey. " Again, the following from Balzac, which though wrenched from its context, shows how vivid a picture may be drawn in short space: " . . a retreating forehead, a small pointed head, and a pale face not unlike a glass of dirty water. " Here we have a vivid and concise picture, the details so few that we may readily assemble them and form a distinct and individual portrait. The method is highly selective; Balzac has merely touched upon the individualizing details. The rest we may fill in for ourselves. We collaborate with the author, and draw the picture from his suggestions. 
To enlist the reader's assistance is the aim of the good descriptive writer, who proceeds on the assumption that we have, each of us, a great fund of observation memories upon which he may discreetly draw. His effort, therefore, is to enumerate only the striking features of his characters, relying upon us to supply what he does not give. It is surprising how rapid and vivid may be the pictures born of this method in the hands of a skilled writer. Conrad possesses this power to a marked degree. I quote a few of his rapid sketches:
"He had a Roman nose, a snow-white, long
beard, and his name was Mahon. "
"Mrs. Beard was an old woman, with a face
all wrinkled and ruddy like a winter apple, and the figure of a young girl. "
One a bit longer:
"He had a nutcracker face—chin and nose coming together over a sunken mouth—and it was framed in iron-gray fluffy hair that looked like a chin-strap of cotton wool sprinkled with coal-dust. And he had blue eyes in that old face of his, which were amazingly like a boy's. . . . "
In Carlyle's letters are similar bits of vivid portraiture. The method is an admirable one, but calls for a seeing eye, a trained sense of selection, and a power of telling diction. 
Not always, however, is a writer content with portraits so brief. He may wish to give his creations at full length and in considerable detail. Inasmuch as he can scarcely hope to do this in one elaborate study, for, as we have seen, the reader cannot be counted on to fit all the details together, he must then introduce his description piecemeal, giving here a touch and there a touch. From the first, the reader contrives some sort of likeness true to the original in a single detail—the eyes, or manner of walking perhaps. This dim likeness becomes, with a second detail, more distinct, and at the end we have a full and vivid picture. If the process is sufficiently slow, the reader can contrive a pic
Lure ultimately complete and exact, whereas if he were overwhelmed with details at the outset only confusion would result. 
Other methods to this end may, however, sometimes be employed. Thus Stevenson meets the difficulty when The Master, inThe Master of Batentree, first appears upon the scene:
Captain Crail himself was steering, a thing not usual; by his side there sat a passenger; and the men gave way with difficulty, being hampered with near upon half a dozen portmanteaus, great and small. But the business of landing was briskly carried through; and presently the baggage was all tumbled on shore, the boat on its return voyage to the lugger, and the passenger standing alone upon the point of rock, a tall, slender figure of a gentleman, habited in black, with a sword by his side and a walkingcane upon his wrist. . . . 
The stranger turned, spied me through the mists, which were beginning to fall, and waved and cried on me to draw near. I did so with a heart like lead. 
"Here, my good man, " said he, in the English accent, "here are some things for Durrisdeer. "
I was now near enough to see him, a very handsome figure and countenance, swarthy, lean, long, with a quick, alert, black look, as of one who was a fighter and accustomed to command; upon one cheek he had a mole, not unbecoming; a large diamond sparkled on his hand; his clothes, although of the one hue, were of a Frencl?
and foppish design; his ruffles, which he wore longer than common, of exquisite lace; and I wondered the more to see him in such a guise, when he was but newly landed from a dirty smuggling lugger. 
This is true to observation. In the distance we get but a general impression—form, height, and the like. As we near the figure we are able to observe with more minuteness. Variants on this device are easily possible. If the person move toward us or we toward him, or if we see him once in passing, again near at hand, and a third time face to face, we may employ a like method, and without confusion draw a complete picture; a complete picture, however, only in a manner of speaking, for the method must always be selective, and unessential details be ignored. In description it is the details by which the thing differs from others of its class that are sought. Men are more like one another than unlike It is the individual unlikeness we strive to catch; or again, if they are hopelessly commonplace, the essentials of their very likeness to others. 
The shorter the narrative the less space, of course, may the writer devote to personal description. The more leisurely methods of the novelist permit longer descriptions than theshort-story writer may imitate. Dickens had a
great power of elaborate and vivid description. Turgenieff, who, even in his shorter work pursues a leisurely method, was likewise highly skilled He was, indeed, a master of description. The following is a quotation from his The Singers:
Behind the counter, as was proper, almost to the full extent of the aperture, Nikolki Ivinitch was standing in a gay-colored cotton shirt and with a languid smile on his plump cheeks, and pouring out with his fat, white hands two glasses of liquor for the friends who had just entered, Blinker and the Ninny; and behind him, in the corner, near the window, his briskeyed wife was to be seen. In the middle of the room stood Yishka-the-Turk, a spare and well-built man of three-and-twenty years, clad in a long-tailed nankeen kaftan, blue in color. He looked like a dashing factory hand, and, apparently, could not boast of very robust health. His sunken cheeks, his large, uneasy grey eyes, his straight nose with thin, mobile nostrils, his white receding brow, with light chestnut curls tossed back, his large but handsome and expressive lips—his whole countenance denoted an impressionable and passionate man. He was in a state of great excitement: his eyes were winking hard, he was breathing irregularly, his hands were trembling as though with fever, —and he really had a fever, that palpitating, sudden fever which is so familiar to all people who speak or sing before an audience. Before him stood a man about forty years of age, broad-shouldered, with broad cheek-bones, and a low brow, narrowTatar eyes, a short, thick
nose, a square chin, and shining black hair as stiff as bristles. The expression of his swarthy and leaden-hued face, especially of his pallid lips, might have been designated as almost fierce, had it not been so composedly-meditative. He hardly stirred, and only slowly glanced around him, like an ox from beneath his yoke. He was dressed in some sort of a threadbare coat with smooth, brass buttons; an old, black silk kerchief encircled his huge neck. He was called the Wild Gentleman. . . . 
But Turgenieff is scarcely to be imitated by the beginner. He had, apparently, most remarkable powers of observation, a visual memory of the best, and was, as well, master of a style which could give adequate expression to these gifts. That this ;Avid description is one of the secrets of Turgenieff's power goes without saying. 
Description of persons and things need not, however, be purely visual. Stevenson was of the opinion that undue reliance is placed upon the eye. We have, as well, the senses of hearing, touch, smell, and taste. Two of these, at least, may be employed in personal description. The quality of the speaking voice and of laughter are often details worth noting. And we may judge of a man by his hand clasp, if it be strong and warm, or cold, feeble, and clammy. 
The passage from The Master of Ballantrae, previously quoted, reveals, also, another resource of personal description. Dress is significant of much. Not only is it important to the objective picture, but it tells much of character and social position. In personal description, therefore, the writer should take care to visualize the garb of his characters, and if this is of value to the story, to touch it off with whatever fulness of detail he sees fit. Neatness, foppishness, love of adornment—all these may be noted as occasion demands So, too, may attitude and bearing, grace or awkwardness, anything, in short, which serves to individualize the character and suggest social distinctions or degrees of culture. 
We should observe, too, that a room, or an entire house and its surroundings takes on to some degree the characteristics of its inmates. The heroine's bedroom and the family library may, if well described, serve not only to make scenes therein enacted distinct, but may also contribute side-lights on character. Books, pictures, furniture, and wall-paper, indicative of individual taste, are all important. The good writer may bring before us a whole class of society by a well-chosen picture of the appurtenances with which his creations surround themselves. If their surroundings are conventional, whether in good or bad taste, we may suppose them conventionally minded people; if individual, persons of some force of character. In
careful hands the possibilities here of suggestive description are endless. 
DESCRIPTION OF PLACE
Much that has already been brought out in personal description is applicable as well to description of place, though the latter is somewhat more complicated and difficult. Whereas the writer may, at times, avoid personal description or employ it but slightly, he may seldom evade the necessity of depicting the background for some scenes of his narrative, for if the story is to be vivid to us, we need to visualize the action with some distinctness and must, therefore, have the elements of the picture given us by the writer. 
Nevertheless, it is safe to say that young writers lean too heavily upon description. Background assumes too large a place in their eyes. Particularly are some given to descriptions of nature. But a moment's thought will reveal this practice to be a mistaken one. The intelligent reader usually skips, or at best skims, the nature description. Experience has taught him that it is more often than not superfluous. Therefore it is well to make this hard-and-fast rule: never describe anything that is not strictly pertinent to the story; and when description is necessary, make it as brief as possible. 
Yet though this precept be strictly observed there are difficulties enough in the path of the writer. The conciseness imposed upon him is a difficult thing It is far easier to write a tolerably clear long description than one equally clear in half the space. The selective process becomes increasingly exacting the fewer the words. It is more difficult to catch the quality of a place, unless it be unusually striking, in few words than in many. There are numerous details which may be told, and it is hard to determine which are the most truly significant. 
We should bear in mind, also, that senses other than that of sight play a much more important part here than in personal description. Sounds are often more significant than things seen, and touch the reader more intimately—the sound of wind in the trees, or of running water, the wooden cloop-sloop of horses' feet upon the pavement, the purring of a motor-car, or a singing trolley wire—these have individual qualities which require nice definition and epithet. Then there are the odors of clover fields and city streets, and odors rightly characterized often afford the writer his most vivid descriptive touches. There is the feel of the wind on the face, or the clingingwetness of snow and the sting of sleet; and on the sea one may even taste the salt breeze and the spray. The complexity of these sense appeals, to which
the writer must be ever alert, magnifies the difficulty of his problem at the outset, though affording him also a variety of materials from which to select. 
The order of the presentment of these impressions may not be laid down absolutely. If the scene described is an elaborate one it is sometimes well to sketch its outlines broadly and then to fill in with subordinate details. Sometimes it is best to begin with the more immediate impressions and lead the eye outward. Again it is more effective to begin with remoter details and then lead the eye to things near at hand. It is safest usually to trust the order in which the details come upon a good observer of the scene described. Those which he grasps first are usually the most important; then, slowly, he perceives those of less significance. As he enters a room from without he first notes, perhaps, the change in temperature. Then he conceivesa general impression of the room. It is large and bare, or comfortable and homely, light or dark. He perceives at once if there be a fire on the hearth. Then he notices the character of the furnishings, the neatness or lack of neatness of the room, the pictures on the walls, the carpets and rugs on the floor. This descriptive order, that of impression, demands that the writer visualize dearly as he writes. 
Often, however, the writer may not describe the scene as he sees it, but as it appears to his characters. Herein lies a great difference, for the identical scene is not the same to different persons. Some are more observant than others; some are trained to observe certain things; again, all are struck by those characteristics which are most foreign to their experience, but which to those familiar with the scene pass unnoted by dint of constant repetition. And, most of all, the scene varies with the mood of the observer. If I am happy, joyous, my mood selects those impressions of the scene about me which chime with my mood. If I am sad I shall find food for sadness. The things themselves are the same in either case, but they will not seem alike to me. This is a difficulty the story writer must dearly recognize. He must see truly through another's eyes, and to do this he must identify his mood with that of the other, if the description is to be true. 
Inasmuch as the chief danger in the description of place is that it may not be truly vital and significant, it is well at this point to determine a test for relevancy. Our consideration has been hitherto the reader's opportunity to visualize and enter into the scene. But often the action is not vitally related to its background. It might occur in anyone of a dozen places with
equal effect. Action and character suffice of themselves. In such a case, too vivid and elaborate a description of scene is not helpful, but rather distracting. If, on the other hand, the characters are truly influenced by their surroundings, then the descriptive setting is essential to the reader's appreciation of the emotions aroused in the persons of the story. This is the surest test of pertinence. If the hero is a starving castaway on a desert island, a vivid picture of his surroundings may be essential to our appreciation of his emotions. The description then is an integral part of the story. But if the hero, dominated by an emotion which blinds him to his surroundings, hastens to his friend's aid, a description of the journey as it would appeal to an observant traveller would be distinctly out of place. We must see through the hero's eyes, and in this instance he sees little or nothing. Security lies in a clear grasp of the character whose experiences are told. If he is a prosaic person, little moved by the world about him, the description should seek only those sensations of which he is conscious—food and physical comfort it may be. The world as it seems to him is the thing sought. It must be admitted as a qualification, however, that at times, we, the readers, with our larger point of view may wish
to contrast him with his surroundings, to appreciate what is lost upon him If contrast is the aim, descriptive setting, otherwise superfluous and irrelevant, may be desirable. 
Emotion we found to be a legitimate part of description, selecting, coloring, and changing the sense-impressions. Psychologically, sensation and emotion are, it is said, but two aspects of the same thing. The sense impression produces in me an emotion; my emotion in turn colors the next sense impression which comes to me. If I describe my sense-impressions in words sufficiently apt you will perceive the emotion which I feel, and experience an echo of it. If I reinforce my record of impressions by emphasizing in abstract terms their effect upon me and say that I am sad or happy, or if I transfer these terms to the scene perceived, declaring it to be sad or gloomy, cheerful or domestic, then I have strengthened the emotional effect and still have been true to the facts, s. e. , the record of my sense-impressions and their effect upon my emotions. The writer in his description should seek to discover the dominant emotion which the scene produces, either upon him or upon the character through whose eyes we look. If he does this he will be guided in his selection of details, for he will seek such as harmonize with the effect which he wishes to achieve. Other details, not in harmony, he
will ignore, and in so doing he will gain both in conciseness and in unity of impression. Here as everywhere in story writing, the writer must select, and his selection has always, as its objective, simplicity and harmony—qualities which lie embedded in experience, but which exist always amid distracting and incongruous things
It is necessary here to reconsider in part the question of the point of view which was discussed in a previous chapter. In telling a story it is essential that in every case the point of view from which a scene is described be clearly indicated and, once determined, be carefully maintained. The reason for this will be apparent upon a little consideration. 
The reader of a story endeavors to put himself either in the place of the observant author or of one of the characters, and so to visualize the scene described. For initial clearness, therefore, the descriptive point of view must be early declared. Preferably, the descriptive point of view should coincide with that of the character who is the centre of the reader's interest, for in this way the reader may follow the changes in the action most intimately. It is then imperative that the writer describe only those impressions which could plausibly affect the character who is the centre of interest. He cannot see around a corner, nor over a high wall, and to
describe what is going on thus hidden is to distract the reader, who in imagination has placed himself in the centre of the scene, and who, though he may follow the author beyond the range of human vision, can do so only at the risk of confusion and imaginative loss. The imagination is ductile truly, but it cannot regain the original point of view without effort and loss of conviction. 
If we employ the term description in its full meaning of sensation and resultant emotion, we shall find that it plays a large part in modern fiction. Many a writer nowadays is more concerned with the portrayal of emotion than of action. Robinson Crusoe is a bald novel of incident. We get little idea of Robinson's emotions at any time, and then but crudely. But in the modern sea stories of Conrad our interest is largely in the description. The incidents serve chiefly to afford opportunity for analysis of the hero's sensations and emotions. We experience, in his person, storms and the calm of tropic seas, the gloom of African forests and the languorous charm of the East. But there is here no "set description "—description, that is, aside from the experience of the characters. It is all a part of the story, indeed constitutes the story. This is a very different thing from the naturewriting of the older school, in which the heroine paused
toadmire the sunset for two pages from a sense of duty. 
That writing should be specific and concrete rather than abstract and general is a commonplace of criticism. The reason is not far to seek. Appeals to the senses and to the emotions are more powerful than those to the intelligence; Shakespeare's plays are more vital contributions to the philosophy of the average reader than are the metaphysical speculations of Kant. We move in a world of sense appeals; our emotions are aroused ten times where our intellects are stirred but once. Therefore literature is devoted to the portrayal of individual actions, to specific scenes, and its content is concrete for the most part, designed to arouse the emotions through definite appeals to the senses of sight, hearing, touch, taste, and smell. We ask that description vitalize the details of a scene to the point that we may definitely apprehend them in imagination. This is the general law, but it is subject to exceptions. 
Anumber of years ago, about fifteen at this writing, Stephen Crane developed the impressionistic manner of writing in the short story. In The Red Badge of Courageand other stories he practised a method of descriptive vividness which may best be likened to the old style posters of startling and contrasting colors. Details
of background or of personal appearance are given an exaggerated emphasis. Intrinsically important or no, they are, by selection, made to stand out by vivid epithet and particularizing word and phrase. An abrupt sentence structure serves to emphasize this effect. The following passages from The Bride Comes to Yellow Sky are characteristic:
Across the sandy street were some vivid green grass plots, so wonderful in appearance amid the sands that burned near them in a blazing sun that they caused a doubt in the mind. They exactly resembled the grass mats used to represent lawns on the stage. At the cooler end of the railway station a man without a coat sat in a tilted chair and smoked his pipe. The fresh cut banks of the Rio Grande circled near the town, and there could be seen beyond it a great plum-colored plain of mesquite. 
A man in a maroon colored flannel shirt, which had been purchased for purposes of decoration, and made, principally, by some Jewish women on the east side of New York, rounded a corner and walked into the main street of Yellow Sky. In either hand the man held a long, heavy, blueblack revolver. Often he yelled, and these cries rang through the semblance of a deserted village, shrilly flying over the roofs in a volume that seemed to have no relation to the ordinary vocal strength of a man It was as if the surrounding
stillness formed the arch of a tomb over him. These cries of ferocious challenge rang against walls of silence. And his boots had red tops with gilded imprints, of the kind beloved in winter by little sledding boys on the hillsides of New England. 
I should not speak of this mannerism were not the influence of Crane and his followers still strong in magazine fiction, and did it not bear intimately upon the problem of description. There is in the method a fatal weakness which we should note. It is this: the untiring effort to gain descriptive vividness, if unrelieved, fails of its purpose. When every detail is as sharp and individual as the next, there is no contrast possible. It is as though a pianist should play fortissimo throughout his sonata. Effects are got by contrast. A vivid detail is outstanding in a neutral context, like a red golfing coat on a snow-covered links. But if all epithets are violent, challenging the attention, in time the reader grows weary, and the writer fails of his effect. The skilful writer, therefore, seeks descriptive vividness only when his story demands it—that is, in vital scenes. He does not burden his narrative with details not strictly relevant, however much opportunity they afford for graphic description, for to emphasize them would be to distract us from other and more important
matters. Proportion, restraint, contrast, emphasis—all are terms relevant in this connection, and more than description is involved, though I
have attached my homily to it. 
A passage in Henry James's essay, "The Art of Fiction, " makes dear in better words than mine, the interdependence of action, dialogue, and description. No one is to be thought of as a thing apart. All are fused for the story's purpose. Description so conceived loses all merely decorative significance, and becomes a vital dement of the story structure:
. 
. . That his characters "must be dear in outline, " as Mr. Besant says—he feels that down to his boots; but how he shall make them so is a secret between his good angel and himself. It would be absurdly simple if he could be taught that a great deal of "description" would make them so, or that on the contrary, the absence of description and the cultivation of dialogue, or the absence of dialogue and the multiplication of "incident, " would rescue him from his difficulties. Nothing, for instance, is more possible than that he be of a turn of mind for which this odd, literal opposition of description and aogue, inddent and description, haslittle meaning and light. People often talk of these things as if
—" ° inc distinctness, in-
:her at every breath, 
dated parts of one
I cannot imagine
composition existing in a series of blocks, nor conceive, in any novel worth discussing at all, of a passage of description that is not in its intention narrative, a passage of dialogue that is not in its intention descriptive, a touch of truth of any sort that does not partake of the nature of incident, or an incident that derives its interest from any other source than the general and only source of the success of a work of art—that of being illustrative. A novel is a living thing, all one and continuous, like any other organism, and in proportion as it lives will it be found, I think, that in each of the parts there is something of each of the other parts. The critic who over the close texture of a finished work shall pretend to trace a geography of items will mark some frontiers as artificial, I fear, as any that have been known to history. 
A good illustration of description made vital to the story, given an important place, and yet subordinated to the story-action, is not to be found in every novelist. The passage which I quote from Rene Bazin's Redemption is, however, fairly illustrative of the point. The scene as described affects the characters somewhat, causing them to speak and act as they do. That it arouses different emotions in the two girls serves also to reveal personality:
. . . Henriette had already greeted several friends, escaped for the day from their work
rooms, hie herself. One of them walked arm-inarm with a young man. They laughed because they loved each other, and their love was quite new. They crossed the bridge, and Marie followed them for a long time with her sombre, ardent eye. 
As they reached the end of Bouffay quay, a gust of wind almost blew away their hats. 
"How lovely to feel the wind, " said Henriette. "I have to do without it all the week, in the workroom at least, for at home we are so high up that no feather could keep in curl. "
"Ithinkit is a nuisance, it makes one untidy, " said Marie, pinning up her heavy locks, which were always coming down. 
By this time the breath of the Loire, with its fragrance of poplar, had begun to blow around the two girls. It passed in fresh gusts, seeking the sails and mills, and wandering over the country like bees in search of clover. Between each gust the atmosphere seemed dead; it promised to be a very hot day. Henriette and Marie followed the Saint-Felix canal, and so gained the banks of the real Loire, no longer pressed upon by houses, or broken by islands, but flowing wide and slow in an unbroken stream, between meadows lightly set with trees. Toward the east, on the far horizon, the trees were grouped and drawn together, by the effect of distance, so that the river seemed to flow from a blue forest, then they showed more widely scattered, waving above the grass in lines of pale foliage through which the light filtered. The stream flowed in the middle, gradually widening
the yellow ripples of its waters. The rising water covered the sandbanks. The ripe grass bent over the banks and plunged into the current. A single pleasure boat, hidden beneath its sails, glided along the opposite bank
Henriette had waited to reach this point, meaning to say:
"See how pretty it is! The Loutrel's cottage is still a long way off—over there. " But when she glanced at Marie, she saw her looking so pale, that it changed the current of her thoughts, and she felt only an invincible desire to console this human suffering. 
This quiet descriptive passage is in its place surely not ineffective. Yet many an author would subordinate the background yet more. George Meredith, in The Egoist, affords an extreme example. The story is confined to Sir Willoughby Patteme's estate. Throughout the book there is a fine outdoor atmosphere. Yet the descriptive hints from which we are enabled to contrive a picture are of the briefest, and these are always made an integral part of action or dialogue. I cite a number of the widely separated passages. Observe their extreme brevity, and their reliance upon suggestion rather than upon elaborate detail:
He led her about the flower-beds; too much as if he were giving a convalescent an airing. She chafed at it and pricked herself with re. 
morse. In contrition she expatiated on the beauty of the garden. 
"All is yours, my Clara. "
An oppressive load it seemed to her! She passively yielded to the man in his form of attentive courtier; his mansion, estate, and wealth overwhelmed her. They suggested the price to be paid. Yet she recollected that on her last departure through the park she had been proud of the rolling green and spreading trees. Poison of some sort must be operating in her. She had not come to him to-day with this feeling of sullen antagonism; she had caught it here. 
"Because, my dear boy, " she said, leaning on her elbow, "you are a very nice boy, but an ungrateful boy, and there is no telling whether you will not punish anyone who cares for you. Come along with me; pluck me some of these cowslips and the speedwells near them; I think we both love wild flowers. " She rose and took his arm. "You shall row me on the lake while I talk to you seriously. "
It was she, however, who took the sculls at the boat-house, for she had been §, playfellow with boys, and knew that one of them engaged in a manly exercise is not likely to listen to a woman
The opportunity was offered by Sir Willoughby. Every morning after breakfast Miss Dale walked across the park to see her father, and on this occasion Sir Willoughby and Miss Middleton went with her as far as the lake, all three dis
coursing of the beauty of various trees, birches, aspens, poplars, beeches, then in their new green. Miss Dale loved the aspen, Miss Middleton the beech, Sir Willoughby the birch, and pretty things were said by each in praise of the favored object, particularly by Miss Dale. So much so that when she had gone on he recalled one of her remarks, and said: "I believe, if the whole place were swept away to-morrow, Laetitia Dale could reconstruct it and put those aspens on the north of the lake in number and situation correctly where you have them now. I would guarantee her description of it in absence correct. "
Laetitia tried another neutral theme. 
"The weather to-day suits our country, " she said. 
"England, or Patteme Park? I am so devoted to mountains that I have no enthusiasm for flat land. "
"Do you call our country flat, Miss Middleton? We have undulations, hills, and we have sufficient diversity, meadows, rivers, copses, brooks, and good roads, and pretty bypaths. "
"The prettiness is overwhelming. It is very pretty to see; but to live with, I think I prefer ugliness. I can imagine learning to love ugliness. It's honest. However young you are, you can not be deceived by it. These parks of rich people are a part of the prettiness. I would rather have fields, commons. "
"The parks give us delightful green walks, paths through beautiful woods. "
"If there is a right-of-way for the public. "
"There should be, " said Miss Dale, wondering; and Clara cried:
"I chafe at restraint; hedges and palings everywhere! I should have to travel ten years to sit down contented among these fortifications. Of course I can read of this rich kind of English country with pleasure in poetry. But it seems to me to require poetry. What would you say of human beings requiring it?"
Clara gazed over rolling richness of foliage, wood and water, and a church-spire, a town, and horizon hills. There sung a sky-lark. 
"Not even the bird that does not fly away!" she said; meaning, she had no heart for the bird satisfied to rise and descend in this place. 
He crossed a stile into the wood above the lake, where, as he was in the humor to think himself signally lucky, espying her, he took it as a matter of course that the lady who taught his heart to leap should be posted by the Fates. And he wondered little at her power, for rarely had the world seen such union of princess and sylph as in that lady's figure. She stood holding by a beech branch, gazing down on the water. 
An instance analogous to this of Meredith is that ofAs You Like It, in which the woodland setting is made vivid by means of but a few touches. For more conventional passages of swift and effective description, the student is referred to Stevenson and Kipling. For elaborate
descriptive stories in which description dominates action, he may consult Conrad, Turgenieff, and Thomas Hardy. I shall quote, in conclusion, a number of short passages to illustrate some of the points brought out in our discussion:
. . . The two sleek, white well-bullocks in the courtyard were steadily chewing the cud of their evening meal; old Pir Khan squatted at the head of Holden's horse, his police sabre across his knees, pulling drowsily at a big waterpipe that croaked like a bullfrog in a pond. Ameera's mother sat spinning in the lower veranda, and the wooden gate was shut and barred. The music of a marriage-procession came to the roof above the gentle hum of the city, and a string of flying-foxes crossed the face of the low moon. —(Kipling, Without Benefit of Clergy. )
Here the quality to be observed is the swiftness with which the scene is sketched. Kipling has selected only a few details, but these sufficient to give character to the scene. The effect is one of heat, and beauty, and strangeness; of domestic content shut in from the odd without:
And this is how I see the East. I have seen its secret places and have looked into its very soul; but now I see it always from a small boat, a high outline of mountains, blue and afar in the morning; like faint mist at noon; a jagged wall of purple at sunset. I have the feel of the oar in my hand, the vision of a scorching blue sea in
my eyes. And I see a bay, a wide bay, smooth as glass and polished like ice, shimmering in the dark. A red light burns far off upon the gloom of the land, and the night is soft and warm. We drag at the oars with aching arms, and suddenly a puff of wind, a puff faint and tepid and laden with strange odors of blossoms, of aromatic wood, comes out of the still night—the first sigh of the East on my face. That I can never forget. It was impalpable and enslaving, like a charm, like a whispered promise of mysterious delight. —(Joseph Conrad, Youth. )
In this there is variety of sense appeal; the whole weight of the description is not placed upon vision alone. Also, and most important, we catch the emotional resultant of the scene, which serves to unify the selected details:
The frowsy chamber-maid of the "Red Lion" had just finished washing the front door steps. She rose from her stooping posture, and, being of slovenly habit, flung the water from her pail, straight out, without moving from where she stood. The smooth round arch of the falling water glistened for a moment in mid-air. John Gourlay, standing in front of his new house at the head of the brae, could hear the swash of it when it fell. The morning was of perfect stillness. 
The hands of the clock across "the Square" were pointing to the hour of eight. They were yellow in the sun. 
Blowsalinda, of the Red Lion, picked up the big bass that usually lay within the porch and, carrying it clumsily against her breast, moved off round the corner of the public house, her petticoat gaping behind. Half-way she met the ostler with whom she stopped in amorous dalliance. He said something to her, and she laughed loudly and vacantly. The sillytee/lee echoed up the street. 
A moment later a cloud of dust drifting round the corner, and floating white in the still air, showed that she was pounding the bass against the end of the house. All over the little town the women of Barbie were equally busy with their steps and door-mats. There was scarce a man to be seen either in the square, at the top of which Gourlay stood, or in the long street descending from its near corner. The men were at work; the children had not yet appeared; the women were busy with their household cares. 
The freshness of the air, the smoke rising thin and far above the red chimneys, the sunshine glistering on the roofs and gables, the rosy clearness of everything beneath the dawn, above all the quietness and peace, made Barbie, usually so poor to see, a very pleasant place to look down at on a summer morning. At this hour there was an unfamiliar delicacy in the familiar scene, a freshness and purity of aspect—almost an unearthliness—as though you viewed it through a crystal dream. . . . 
Through the big gate behind him [Gourlay] came the sound of carts being loaded for the day. A horse weary of standing idle between the shafts, 
kicked ceaselessly and steadily against the ground with one impatient hinder foot, clink, clink, clink upon the paved yard. "Easy, damn ye; yell smash the bricks!" came a voice. Then there was the smart slap of an open hand on a sleek neck, a quick start, and the rattle of chains as the horse quivered to the blow. —(Douglas, The House with the Green Shutters. )
In the last description the descriptive point of view is chiefly notable. It is early and clearly indicated, and is strictly maintained throughout. Thus the scene of the carters is told by means of sound only, yet so clearly that we can visualize it. We hear the chambermaid's laughter, but not her words, for we are too far away. When she goes around the corner of the house, the cloud of dust indicates that she is cleaning the door-mat.
Category: Description