THAT SAD SECOND VOLUME.
THERE is perhaps no better illustration of the inherent conservatism of Englishmen, than the continued enforce- ment of the unwritten law which decrees that the only strictly orthodox form of a novel is that of a work in three volumes. We know that threatened men live long, but then the man who knows that he is threatened can take special care of himself, and threatened customs or institutions have a way of displaying
• similar longevity, because, however generally they may be abused, there are always a few people who are interested in maintaining them ; but the three-volume novel cannot take
are of itself, and every one who has anything to do with it has lifted up his hand against it. Not only readers and critics, but publishers and librarians, who are supposed to have some -vague interest in the maintenance of the three-volume form, appear to be unanimous in denunciation; and it would there- fore seem that, so far as weapons of argument or abuse are 'concerned, it bears a charmed life which will be prolonged -until some more potent force than mere public opinion is brought to bear against it.
Indeed, were mere intellectual and literary considerations not wholly unavailing to slay the Cerberus of the circulating libraries, the familiar feelings of weariness, annoyance, and actual exasperation generally produced by a struggle with that aid second volume would seal its fate. Of course, a few novels are good all through, and we hardly notice whether they fill one volume, like "Silas Marner," or seven, like "Clarissa Harlowe ;" while a greater number are so bad that it is certain that they could not be improved either by curtailment or amplification. In making a generalisation, however, which covers any one class of objects, we have to consider the nature not of excep- tional but of average specimens of that class; and so, when we speak mournfully of that sad second volume, we must be supposed to refer to the middle instalment of the average three- volume work of fiction. Who does not know the novel the -first volume of which is devoted to a bright and promising opening, and the third to a vigorously worked-out and satis- factory denouement, but which compels its reader to plod wearily from one to the other through a sandy desert or a spongy morass, where his feet grow weary and his heart faint? 'The sturdy traveller of ordinary courage will not grumble at the impediments placed in his way by Nature ; he cannot remove them, so he will surmount them with what cheerfulness he may ; but this desert, this morass, irritates him beyond endurance, because he knows it is not a work of Nature, not an obstacle which the wayfarer must needs expect and prepare for,—that, on the contrary, it has been prepared with malice aforethought, with the express purpose of hindering him from arriving at his journey's end with the celerity which, though pleasurable to him, would be inconvenient to the person who has tempted him to undertake the expedition.
The opening of a novel—to which, speaking generally, its first volume is devoted—is a statement of what may be 'described as its narrative problem. The reader is made to understand the nature of a mystery which has to be explained, of a misunderstanding which has to be cleared up, of a blunder
'or a crime which must bring upon the blunderer or the andTPI: a°137. °Plar.
criminal a fitting retribution; the course of true love is pre- vented from running smoothly by obstacles which must be removed, or the youthful lover, masculine or feminine, makes a mistake which has to be rectified. The problem may be one of event or of character; but whichever it be, it would seem that the natural division of the novel is not into three, but into two parts,—the statement and the solution; whereas the three-volume system, in all but the most skilful hands, compels the interpolation between these natural divisions of an arbitrary and unnatural division which does not help the story, which is, indeed, sometimes obviously lacking in vital organic relation to it, and which only fulfils the mechanical purpose of filling a number of pages which shall carry the solution well on into the third volume.
Now, this postponement is not in itself necessarily inartistic; on the contrary, it may conduce to artistic effects otherwise unattainable. Goethe and Schiller, in their literary corre- spondence, laid great emphasis upon the value in pure drama of a "retarding element ;" and there is a sufficient analogy between the laws of dramatic fiction and those of narrative fiction to justify the assumption that this retarding element may be as effective in the latter as in the former. But, as has been already said, the accepted form of the novel ought to be determined by the capabilities of the average novelist, not of the great novelist who will show his greatness in any form; and it is in the management of the retarding element that the average novelist shows his weakness. In that sad second volume, as a rule, we do not find a retardation of narrative movement, but an absolute cessation of it ; the novelist does not simply drop into a slow march,—he stands still and "marks time." A recently published novel, "The Gold of Ophir," by Elizabeth J. Lysaght,* provides an admirable illustration of this common weakness of treatment, and the illustration is made all the more serviceable by the fact that the novel as a whole cannot be called poor, being, on the contrary, a work of considerable constructive and literary ability. The theme of the story is a fraudulent impersonation, and its opening is specially striking. The curtain rises upon a remarkable room in the little Swiss town of St. Johann, a room known to every man, woman, and child in the place as "the Chamber." Centuries ago, there had been in St. Johann a narrow escape from the horrors of a premature interment, and it had been decreed that the corpse of every person dying within the boundaries of the little township should be carried to "the Chamber," to remain there for forty-eight hours, wider the constant watching of officials appointed to search narrowly every hour for signs of lingering life, and should they find them, to ring the great town's bell, by pulling a rope which had been introduced into the room of death. Among the four silent forms there reposing is that of a young Englishman, who has been apparently killed instantaneously by the sudden breaking down of a bridge over which he and his comrade, another Englishman, have been passing. We soon discover that the two men are cousins, who have met accidentally and for the first time while travelling on the Continent; and the reader of the most elementary discernment knows that the supposed corpse is that of a young man who has been summoned to England to take the position of heir to an uncle whom he had never seen, and who has sud- denly been made rich by an unexpected " find " of gold in a mine which has been thought worked out and worthless. The survivor, who has escaped with a trifling injury to his arm, knows his cousin's story, and immediately starts for England with the intention—which it seems easy to pat into execution —of personating the poor fellow whom he has left behind in "the Chamber," and paving the way for entering upon his inheritance. The record of his success in the first steps of this rascally scheme brings the reader to the close of the first volume, and the stage is clear for the dramatic working-out of the solution of the narrative problem which has thus been set; so that at this point the true "retarding element" of Goethe and Schiller might appropriately make its appearance. But if we understand the nature of this retarding element, it should act as a break acts upon a carriage going down-hill,—that is, the continuity of movement towards a given goal should be preserved, the only change being a slackening of the pace pro- duced by expedients invented to prolong, and by prolonging to intensify, the interest aroused by curiosity. This element
By Elizabeth J. Lysaght. In 3 vols. London: Ward
is very skilfully introduced by Miss Braddon in one of her earliest novels, "Henry Dunbar," which may all the more appro- priately be mentioned in this connection as its plot scheme bears a general resemblance to that of "The Gold of Ophir." Henry Dunbar, the rich middk-aged banker, is returning to England after an absence in India of many years, during which those in his immediate circle who have per- 13onally known him have passed away, and he is met at Southampton by the one surviving associate of his youth, who decoys him into a lonely place, murders him, and appears in London as Henry Dunbar. We know that the solution of the iiarrative problem will be the discovery of the true identity of the pretender, and we feel that every step in the narrative demonstration is somehow leading us on to the solution; but the movement is, in the true sense of the word, retarded by -the introduction of a series of tentative solutions, each full of promise, but all breaking down at the testing moment, and leaving the murderous impostor still master of the situation. The consequence is, that there is no breach of continuity in the narrative, no flagging of interest in the mind of the reader; indeed, the second volume, where the retarding element is supreme, is perhaps the volume which is most effective in arousing the special kind of interest which the book as a whole aims at inspiring. In "The Gold of Ophir," on the contrary, we know from the first the manner in which the denouement must be brought about, and it is delayed, not by the true retarding element which prolongs the interest, but by a spurious re- tardation which simply interrupts it. The man who comes back to life after having been laid out in "the Chamber" is found to have so entirely lost his memory that he can give no account of himself, and the period of his recovery is utilised by the introduction of persons and incidents whose connection -with the main theme is altogether mechanical,—an expedient -which serves no other purpose than the due filling out of that sad second volume. For a time the true narrative scheme is so entirely abandoned that it is almost forgotten ; and when -we come upon it again, we have the feeling of returning to a story which we have left for a while in order to read something else. We have simply been kept waiting, and while the author has paused in the telling of her tale, she has supplied us with -narrative fragments which have just served to keep our im- patience within bounds.
The arbitrary law which decrees that every novel shall be made to fill its nine hundred pages or thereabouts, can hardly fail to find their result in these lapses from compactness and -symmetry of structure, and experience teaches us that the breakdown will, roughly speaking, coincide with the chapters which compose the middle instalment of the novel. The weak -portion of the book—that irrelevant portion which causes the interest to flag—may not be exactly bounded by the covers of the second volume, but somewhere between them is the place where we naturally expect to find it, and where, as a matter of fact, we do find it in nine cases out of ten. The -invention which can construct a narrative problem and work out its solution in a simple and direct manner, does not seem to be uncommon : what is rare is the power of patient calcu- lation and delicate adaptation of means to ends which can -provide the expedients that go to the production of the re- tarding element in the evolution of the story. Until novelists -either set themselves to acquire this power, or decide to bring their work into such compass as will enable them to dispense with it, there will always be a pitfall awaiting them in that sad second volume.
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