SATIRE IN THE VICTORIAN NOVEL.*
THE world is always looking for definitions of humour. Perhaps we shall never know why the red nose, the mother-in-law, the
kipper, and the ripe cheese are irresistible. They represent the fantastic, the occult, the mysterious, the unexplainable in humour. But if we descend from the primaeval ecstasy, the dawn-joy of the string of sausages, and content ourselves with the matter-of-fact of satire and irony we may be able to justify some of our pleasures before the serious inquisitors of logic.
Miss Frances Theresa Russell, who is Assistant Professor of
English at Stanford University, U.S.A., has written an exceed- ingly amusing book on Satire in the Victorian Novel, In which
appear some admirable passages of analysis. We should remark, lest our readers misunderstand us, that this is not quite the ordinary American University "Research Monograph" with its elaborate index, bibliographies, foot-notes, and copious citation of authority. Though a little more assimilation would have improved it, Miss Russell's book is full of humour and pleasure in her work. All American books of this sort begin
with a series of definitions. Really very amusing is Miss Russell's analysis of the Victorian :— "contemplating him from the vantage ground of a higher rung in the ladder of civilization, the Victorian looks as Wordsworth did to Lady Blandish, like 'a very superior donkey,' protected by the side-blinders of conventionality, saddled and bridled by authority, and ridden around in a circle by sentiment (most tyrannical of drivers), with much cracking of whip and raising of dust, but no real change of intellectual or spiritual locality.
* Satire in the Viatorian Novel. BF Frames Theresa Russell. Ph.D. London : Maaallisa and Co. [Ida. net.j Nor can all the cavorting fun of Dickens, all the pungent playful- ness of Thackeray, all the sardonic gibes of Carlyle, all the grotesque gesturing of Browning, all the winged irony of George Eliot and Matthew Arnold, not even all the quips and crank* In Punch itself, avail to quash the indictment."
We need hardly add that she proceeds to take back most of this. What is satire ? "Satire," she says, "is humorous criticism of human foibles and faults, directed especially against deception, and expressed with sufficient art to be accounted as literature." It is "antagonism plus amusement," for criticism without humour "is really invective, denunciation, any sort of repre- hension; and uncritical humour is mere facetiousness and jocularity" :— " Satire is a compound, but it does not follow that its fractions stand in a constant uniform ratio. On the contrary, the pro- portion ranges all the way from a minimum of humour en a Juvenal or a Johnson to a minimum of criticism in a Horace, a Gay, or a Lamb. Either quality may reach the vanishing pomt, but when it passes it, the remaining one cannot alone create satire, any more than oxygen or hydrogen can be trans- formed into water. . . . The inadequacy of most defi- nitions of the ludicrous, from Aristotle's 'innocuous, unexpected incongruity,' to Bergson's 'mechanical inelasticity,' lies in the concentration on the objective side of it—the stimulus to mirth— whereas the subjective . . . the mirthful person • • . deserves the emphasis. . . . Satire is woven from double strands, the blue of rebuke and the red of wit, becoming thereby the purple patch of literature. . . . On the extreme left sits banter, entirely amiable and even affectionate. 'Philo- sophic irony,' says Anatole France, 'is indulgent and gentle.'"
She does not deal with the Greek conception of irony—the Olympian double entendre, for this lies outside her province. Naturally, with such a subject her plentiful quotations make extremely amusing reading, but in the main the experienced reader will thank Miss Russell for this. The snippets from Butler, Beads, Meredith, Jane Austen, Kingsley, Thaokeray and Trollope are strung together upon a thread of exposition and comment. At haphazard they would be intolerable. A propos of Peacock, she reminds us of the motto of Crotchet Castle :—
"Le monde eat plain de fous, et qui n'en vent pas voir, Doit se tenir tout seal, at °wiser son miroir."
Her quotations from Dickens are extremely well chosen :— "Oh, Baal, Baal! Oh, my friend, Mrs. Todgers ! To barter away that precious jewel, self-esteem, and cringe to any mortal creature—for eighteen shillings a week ! " And she shows a proper appreciation of the epic of the cooks in the first chapter of Tancred : "He is too young. I took him to Hellingsley, and he lost his head on the third day. I entrusted the souges to him, and, but for the most desperate personal exertions, all would have been lost. It was an affair of the bridge of Arcola.
. . Ah ! Mon Dieu ! those are moments ! " She is interest- ing though, in the present writer's opinion, too severe on the subject of Thackeray:—
"One somehow acquires the impression that ironic sayings will be plentiful as blackberries ; but when one actually goes berrying, he finds the crop strangely vanished. Lacking the grave, dry, imperturbable manner and the consistently pre- served attitude, he cannot avoid the temptation of relapsing into the literal and giving self-conscious explanations, as in Barry Lrulon, and Catherine. This produces something of the effect of Lydgate's ironic titles—So as the Crabbe goeth forward, and As Straight as a Bastes Horn—followed by perfectly serious moralizing. Probably nothing would astonish or distress Thackeray more than to have his humor rated as the humor of Lytton, Reads, or Kingsley ; nor would this indeed be quite fair to him. Yet his lack of real spontaneity classifies him with them rather than with Dickens or Trollope, and his lack of finish and subtlety prevents him from being ranked with Peacock, Eliot, Meredith or Butler."
Of Meredith she remarks that his ironic solution is more saturated and subtle, and that he produced a certain uniformity of effect. But he does not therefore become monotonous. "He has one ironic mould, but into it he pours contents of the greatest variety."
The reader will also enjoy the opportunity the book offers or relearning the origins of familiar phrases. For instance, we are all familiar with the label on a certain section of history, "Criminal Queens," but do we all remember Trollope's Lady Carbury ? In spite of its size and weight—grave draw- backs when the time for packing comes—we can thoroughly recommend Miss Russell's book to those who have begun to put aside a holiday library. It is full of sustaining, gently amusing reading, and—most important—the reader will want to read it all. There is no waste.
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