FACT AND FICTION.
THE world hears a great deal, from the critics of fiction, about wild imaginings, impossible situations, stories that are spoiled by beings far removed from the plane of human experience, and of plots so far-fetched and extrava- gant as to be utterly absurd. Yet, strange as it sounds, we believe that these complaints are usually ill-founded. There are plenty of bad plots and foolish situations, but their badness and foolishness consist far less often in their im- possibility than is popularly imagined. A man may, of course, sit down and concoct a monster, but as a rule the human imagination is singularly limited and confined. In the region of the human comedy, it seldom or never travels outside the region of actual experience, while even in the romance of marvel and adventure, the novelist as often as not is only "a little previous,"—that is, he merely invents and discovers quicker than the legitimate discoverer. For example, it often happens that the analytical novelist pro- duces what he imagines to be a perfectly new psychological situation ; but a week or two after publication, some one sends him a cutting from a weekly local newspaper, headed " Remarkable Suicide in Great Snaleby," or " Strange Law Case in Hogton Magna," in which his situation is parodied to the life. The weaver of romance finds it equally hard to beat real life in the way of imagination. His villain's contrivance for getting the hero to dive off a spring- board in the dark into a marble swimming-bath which has been previously emptied, turns out to have happened in real life except for the villain, while the plan of catching a hundred cobras and collecting their poison is shown to be as old as Caesar Borgia. In fact, the novelists try to take a new path which will lead to an undiscovered country where no one has ever penetrated before, but find in the end that they are only making a circle, and that in reality there is nothing new under the sun.
During the last week or two, there have been published a number of striking instances of the limitations of the imagina- tion. To begin with, there was the strange story told at the trial of the probate action connected with the estate of the late Mr. Theobald. It appeared from the evidence that a very unlikely and far-fetched incident, introduced by Mr. Hardy into his novel, "The Hand of Ethelberta," had actually taken place in the house of a Member of Parliament. Reality had
followed fiction, and a lady who had bettered herself by marriage had actually taken her father and mother into her house as servants, and apparently in the same spirit of strictly regulated affection which was portrayed in the novel So much for the psychological plagiarism of real life. A still more remarkable instance of imagination being unable to over- step the bounds of the possible, or of reality being obliged to
follow fiction, is afforded by the discovery of helium. One might have imagined that when Professor Ramsay discovered a new element in the air, he was out of reach of the novelist. Not a bit of it. Edgar Allan Poe had been there before him.
Or if we put it the other way, when Edgar Allan Poe thought he was inventing an impossible new gas which should enable Hans Pfaall to float his balloon, he was merely roughly sketching out in advance the work to be done in a London laboratory. The Lancet of last Saturday quotes the passage from Edgar Allan Poe, in which Hans Pfaall describes how
he produced his new gas, lighter than hydrogen. Here is the extract :-
" I then took opportunities of conveying by night, to a retired situation east of Rotterdam, five ironbound casks, to contain about fifty gallons each, and one of a larger size ; six tin tubes, 3 in. in diameter, properly shaped, and 10 ft. in length ; a quantity of a particular metallic substance, or semi-metal, which I shall not name, and a dozen demijohns of a very common acid. The gas to be formed from these latter materials is a gas never yet generated by any other person than myself,—or at least never applied to any similar purpose. I can only venture to say here that it is a constituent of azote, so long considered irreducible, and that its density is about 37'4 times less than that of hydrogen. It is taste- less, but not odourless ; burns, when pure, with a greenish flame; and is instantaneously fatal to animal life. Its full secret I would make no difficulty in disclosing but that it of right belongs (as I have before hinted) to a citizen of Nantz, in France, by whom it was conditionally communicated to myself. The same individual submitted to me, without being at all aware of my intentions, a method of constructing balloons from the membrane of a certain animal, through which substance any escape of gas was nearly an impossibility. I found it, however, altogether too expensive, and was not sure, upon the whole, whether cambric muslin with a coating of gum caoutchouc was not equally as good. I mention this circumstance because I think it probable that hereafter the individual in question may attempt a balloon ascension with the novel gas and material I have spoken of, and I do not wish to deprive him of the honour of a very singular invention."
It is curious to note that the italics are Poe's own. Yet, as the Lancet remarks, they might very well have been theirs. " at the present juncture." We hope our readers will remark how very closely the manufacture of helium follows Poe's receipt. To begin with, helium is prepared by pouring aw. very common acid—i.e., sulphuric acid—on "a particular metallic substance or semi-metal "—i.e., cleveite. Next, its density is probably very much less than that of hydrogen. Azote is another name for nitrogen—a za, without life. Hence, if Hans Pfaall's gas was not helium it was some- thing very like it. Curiously enough, the writer in the Lancet suggests that helium will be used for the exact
purpose for which its fictional inventor destined it. " If helium could be obtained in tolerable quantity, what an im- portant bearing it might have in aeronautics. Thus, if it be
much lighter than hydrogen its lifting power would be muck greater, and the cumbersome and clumsy dimensions of our present balloon, it is easy to see, could be reduced with very great advantage." Clearly Edgar Allan Poe invented helium as much as Jules Verne invented the submarine boat. After this one wonders how long it will be before a projectile is shot on to the moon, or the centre of the earth reached by way
of an extinct crater. A less exciting, but none the less re- markable, instance of the inter-penetration of fiction and fact is to be found in the circumstances recorded by Messrs. Cassell in a recent circular. It appears that in his recent novel, "The Sea Wolves," Mr. Max Pemberton dealt with the transport of bullion on the Continent. After a careful study of the modes.
of transporting gold to Russia, he conceived the idea of an immense amount of bullion being stolen in the courso of transit from the tugs to the steamers, and worked out such a scheme in the course of his noveL According to the circular from which we quote, " Certain well-known firms of financiers have noted the story, and recently held searching inquiry with a view to ascertaining whether the methods described in
The Sea Wolves' were at all feasible of accomplishment. As .aeresult it appears to have been decided to make a fundamental change in the mode of sending gold abroad, and to dis- continue the use of tugs in its transport." In other words, a set of men of business came to the conclusion that unless they were careful, there might be another example of real life plagiarising fiction.
A common way of explaining the anticipation of reality by action, is the natural tendency of mankind to imitate what they see and hear. It is suggested that life follows fiction as trade the flag. For example, a lady who has married above her, reads in a novel of a heroine who, placed much as she is, takes her father and mother into her house as servants, and does the same. Again, a clergyman, who has a sceptical bat devoted wife, thinks he is bound to separate himself from her because he has read "John Ward, Preacher." Lastly, a band of train-robbers stop an express in the Far West exactly in the way suggested in a Christmas Annual, because one of them has read a notice of the Christmas Annual in the .Garfteldopolie Gazette. According to this theory we may also suppose that Professor Ramsay discovered helium by reading the tales of Edgar Allan Poe. Unfortunately, however, this easy explanation will not bear looking into. It is as often as not quite obvious from the facts that no sort of imitation was possible in the cases of coincidence between fact and fiction. We do not believe either that Mrs. Theobald had read "The Hand of Ethelberta," or that Professor Ramsay used Poe as his scientific director. The real explanation is to be found much nearer at hand. Fiction is hardly ever wild enough to be beyond the possibility of finding a counterpart in reality, because the human imagination is, as we have said, a very limited thing. Imagination in fiction, at any rate, is a matter of logical building up, not a flight in the blue. We start with a balloon, and then we want to find something which will enable our hero's balloon to be less erratic and more generally useful than the true balloon. This brings us at once to a gas lighter than the gas ordinarily used by aeronauts. But if we are to have a new gas, let it be the lightest conceivable,—something lighter than hydrogen. How are we to make it ? Why, of course, by pouring acid on a metal. But a new gas demands a new metal. Here, then, we have arrived by a perfectly logical process within measurable reach of helium. The man of romance can indeed hardly avoid prophecy if he works in a field so fruitful of new discoveries as chemistry. Suppose a novelist, quick at syllo- gisms and with a reasonable amount of judgment, and possessed of a smattering of natural science. Let him apply these to the invention of a new element, and in all probability he will be justified by a discovery twenty years hence. The ordinary man is indeed so bound by the syllogistic method of thinking that if he writes sense and grammar, he will hardly be able to set forth an utterly impossible suggestion. Of course if he deals in mysteries which are contradictions in terms, he may soon break away into impossibilities. But if he is unmystical in the strict sense of the word, he may be as extravagant as he likes, and yet be only heralding new discoveries or new arrangements in the kaleidoscope of life. It is the same with the analytical and psychological novelist. His business is to arrange human characteristics and human actions into patterns. But remember that there are some five or six hundred million people who are daily arranged in patterns by Providence. It is almost certain, then, that the novelist will fail to hit on a really new com- bination, and by no means unlikely that he will hit on one that has been, or will be, recorded. Sir Thomas Browne said it was too late to be ambitions. It is certainly too late to be original in fiction. It must not be supposed, however, that because we think it hardly possible for the novelist who writes sense to beat fact, we consider that every sort of ex- travagance is tolerable in fiction. It is the business of fiction to please, and though an "impossible" incident ten years after the date of composition may be justified by an occurrence reported from the Soudan, the author is not to be thereby excused. For example, if a novelist made his heroine in the Crimea write a love-letter, catch a crane on the point of migrating, and tie the letter under the bird's wing in the hope that it would be shot by her lover, a •captive in Khartoum ; and if the lover had the bird brought to him three months after, and " pressed the scroll to his• lips, dm," we should say "Fudge," and throw the book aside. Yet when Slatin Pasha was a prisoner to the Mandi, a crane was shot and a letter from South Russia found under its wing, and this letter was brought to Slatin,—the only man in the Soudan who could read it. This fact, however, would not have justified the novelist, or altered the verdict of "Fudge." We do not want mere possibilities in fiction, but possibilities that look like possibilities. The novelists, again, must not think that life is imitating them, or that they are prophets. They must instead remember with humility how circum- scribed a thing is the imagination, when it is not used by madmen and taken out of the regions of sense and reason. The novelist can think of what man might be, might do, and might say,—hardly of what he might not. At any rate, if he does, and imagines a man, who is really and truly impossible, acting in an impossible way amid impossible circumstances, be is pretty sure to be dull. Even the poets are dull when they become frankly impossible.
Previous page
