On a newspaper placard,the other day,I saw announced a new novel by a celebrated author.I bought a copy of the paper,and turned eagerly to the last page.I was disappointed to find that I had missed the first six chapters.The story had commenced the previous Saturday;this was Friday.I say I was disappointed and so I was,at first.But my disappointment did not last long.The bright and intelligent sub-editor,according to the custom now in vogue,had provided me with a short synopsis of those first six chapters,so that without the trouble of reading them I knew what they were all about.
"The first instalment,"I learned,"introduces the reader to a brilliant and distinguished company,assembled in the drawing-room of Lady Mary's maisonette in Park Street.Much smart talk is indulged in."I know that "smart talk"so well.Had I not been lucky enough to miss that first chapter I should have had to listen to it once again.
Possibly,here and there,it might have been new to me,but it would have read,I know,so very like the old.A dear,sweet white-haired lady of my acquaintance is never surprised at anything that happens.
"Something very much of the same kind occurred,"she will remember,"one winter when we were staying in Brighton.Only on that occasion the man's name,I think,was Robinson."We do not live new stories--nor write them either.The man's name in the old story was Robinson,we alter it to Jones.It happened,in the old forgotten tale,at Brighton,in the winter time;we change it to Eastbourne,in the spring.It is new and original--to those who have not heard "something very like it"once before.
"Much smart talk is indulged in,"so the sub-editor has explained.
There is absolutely no need to ask for more than that.There is a Duchess who says improper things.Once she used to shock me.But Iknow her now.She is really a nice woman;she doesn't mean them.
And when the heroine is in trouble,towards the middle of the book,she is just as amusing on the side of virtue.Then there is a younger lady whose speciality is proverbs.Apparently whenever she hears a proverb she writes it down and studies it with the idea of seeing into how many different forms it can be twisted.It looks clever;as a matter of fact,it is extremely easy.
Be virtuous and you will be happy.
She jots down all the possible variations:Be virtuous and you will be unhappy.
"Too ****** that one,"she tells herself.Be virtuous and your friends will be happy if you are not.
"Better,but not wicked enough.Let us think again.Be happy and people will jump to the conclusion that you are virtuous.
"That's good,I'll try that one at to-morrow's party."She is a painstaking lady.One feels that,better advised,she might have been of use in the world.
There is likewise a disgraceful old Peer who tells naughty stories,but who is good at heart;and one person so very rude that the wonder is who invited him.
Occasionally a slangy girl is included,and a clergyman,who takes the heroine aside and talks sense to her,flavoured with epigram.
All these people chatter a mixture of Lord Chesterfield and Oliver Wendell Holmes,of Heine,Voltaire,Madame de Stael,and the late lamented H.J.Byron."How they do it beats me,"as I once overheard at a music hall a stout lady confess to her friend while witnessing the performance of a clever troup,styling themselves "The Boneless Wonders of the Universe."The synopsis added that:"Ursula Bart,a charming and unsophisticated young American girl possessed of an elusive expression makes her first acquaintance with London society."Here you have a week's unnecessary work on the part of the author boiled down to its essentials.She was young.One hardly expects an elderly heroine.The "young"might have been dispensed with,especially seeing it is told us that she was a girl.But maybe this is carping.There are young girls and old girls.Perhaps it is as well to have it in black and white;she was young.She was an American young girl.There is but one American young girl in English fiction.We know by heart the unconventional things that she will do,the startlingly original things that she will say,the fresh illuminating thoughts that will come to her as,clad in a loose robe of some soft clinging stuff,she sits before the fire,in the solitude of her own room.
To complete her she had an "elusive expression."The days when we used to catalogue the heroine's "points"are past.Formerly it was possible.A man wrote perhaps some half-a-dozen novels during the whole course of his career.He could have a dark girl for the first,a light girl for the second,sketch a merry little wench for the third,and draw you something stately for the fourth.For the remaining two he could go abroad.Nowadays,when a man turns out a novel and six short stories once a year,deion has to be dispensed with.It is not the writer's fault.There is not sufficient variety in the ***.We used to introduce her thus:
"Imagine to yourself,dear reader,an exquisite and gracious creature of five feet three.Her golden hair of that peculiar shade"--here would follow directions enabling the reader to work it out for himself.He was to pour some particular wine into some particular sort of glass,and wave it about before some particular sort of a light.Or he was to get up at five o'clock on a March morning and go into a wood.In this way he could satisfy himself as to the particular shade of gold the heroine's hair might happen to be.If he were a careless or lazy reader he could save himself time and trouble by taking the author's word for it.Many of them did.
"Her eyes!"They were invariably deep and liquid.They had to be pretty deep to hold all the odds and ends that were hidden in them;sunlight and shadow,mischief,unsuspected possibilities,assorted emotions,strange wild yearnings.Anything we didn't know where else to put we said was hidden in her eyes.
"Her nose!"You could have made it for yourself out of a pen'orth of putty after reading our deion of it.