The historical novel: An essay

“_Of old, unhappy, far-off things, And battles long ago._”

These words call us to the window that opens out upon the past, and they set the mind thinking in pictures; for the mind of every one of us holds a jumble of pictures and stories, shot through, perhaps with sentiment, that constitute what we have built up for ourselves of the Past, and are always ready to be called into play by a glimpse of some old ruin that awakens fine associations, or by a hint of the romantic, such as Wordsworth gives in those lines. A cathedral bell, or the mention of Agincourt, or the very spelling of the word “ycleped” may be enough to send the mind wandering into its own picture-galleries of history, just as the words “Once upon a time--” waft us into the realms of fairy-story; these things are symbols, keys that unlock a world in our minds. Let a Pre-Raphaelite picture remind us of lost fashions or a schoolboy sing “John Peel” and we are bridging the centuries; and only a few key-words are needed to give the mind a clue, and we are with the Elizabethans on the Spanish Main, or with King Harold, defending the gate of England.

A hundred things have helped to build up this picture-gallery of history--not merely history-books, but Bible-stories, and local traditions and stories from opera; not merely biographies but the border-ballads that the old gipsies would sing amid grim surroundings, and the rant of politicians who talk of Magna Carta or Nelson, and the picturesque advertisements of magazines and street-posters; out of all these there has grown up a world in our minds and that world is what we make for ourselves of the past. We may try to modify and correct it by our conscious studies, but we cannot escape it. And not the least of the sources of it is the Historical Novel.

Sir Walter Scott did not write historical novels because he wished to teach history in an easy way or to get at a moral indirectly, but because his mind was full of the past, just as the mind of a musician is full of tunes; he made for himself a world out of the past, and lived in it much; and he painted that world for his readers, and turned it into a tale. Whatever connection the historical novel may have with the history that men write and build up out of their conscious studies, or with History, the past as it really happened, the thing that is the object of study and research, it certainly has something to do with that world, that mental picture which each of us makes of the past; it helps our imagination to build up its idea of the past. After all the history we have ever learned our first thought of Mediaeval England is quite likely to be a picture of England as the setting for Ivanhoe and Robin Hood, even if our second thought is that this is all wrong; and though we may not seek to gather our historical facts from the novel, there are more subtle things, unconscious prejudices and unformulated sentiments that we take in unawares, there are pictures that haunt us, there is an atmosphere that compels us, and if we find nothing else we find the sentiment of history, the feeling for the past, in the historical novel. On one side, therefore, the historical novel is a “form” of history. It is a way of treating the past.

In this it is linked up with legend, and the traditions of localities, and popular ballads; like these it goes beyond the authenticated data of history-books, the definitely recoverable things of the past, in order to paint its picture and tell its story; and like these it often subordinates fidelity to the recovered facts of history, and strict accuracy of detail, to some other kind of effectiveness. And these legends and popular stories are related to the historical novel in a way similar to that in which a snatch of folk-song is related to the music of a cultured genius, or an anecdote or a piece of gossip is related to some work of structure as well as of fiction, like the novel. The one is a work of apparently popular, or at least anonymous origin, the other is a deliberately artistic and organised production. When we hear those legends we feel that it is Earth itself that throws them out; it is this old World of ours telling a tale that she seems to remember. These things ask to be believed; a local tradition claims to be true, or it has no currency; but the historical novel is conscious in its purpose and in its inventions. We do not say that we enjoy it “although” it is not quite true to facts; the element of fiction in it is avowed, and is part of the intention of the work; for the historical novel is a “form” of fiction as well as of history. It is a tale, a piece of invention; only, it claims to be true to the life of the past.

And so there is a double set of relations to be considered in any study of the subject, arising out of the double character of the subject. On one side the historical novel may be regarded simply as a novel with a particular kind of background; a story set, say, in the Middle Ages, just as a novel of modern times might find its setting in some far country. But if this were the whole truth of the matter there would be no point in giving it a special study. A fairy-tale is not merely an ordinary kind of story set in fairy-land, but becomes a different kind of story by being placed there; in the same way, although in a sense every novel tends to become in time a historical novel, and there will come a day when “Sonia” will be useful to the historian for a certain kind of information, yet a true “historical novel” is one that is historical in its intention and not simply by accident, one that comes from a mind steeped in the past. Such a novel will have a special kind of appeal.

When a composer picks up a piece of poetry and puts it to music he weaves a web of invention around the words and amplifies them with something that belongs to an art different from their own; in doing so he will probably alter the swing of the poem and create rhythms of his own, and in the music that he makes the original music of the words themselves will almost certainly be destroyed; even when he is trying to interpret the poem he may be changing its very character, making a breezy thing desolate, or converting a majestic hymn into a joyful anthem, and, unawares, he may be doing everything that would send the poet crazy, and make men of letters indignant. The final result may not be good as poetry, may indeed be a good piece of poetry spoilt in the very things that make it good, the character of the original words having been altered in a hundred subtle ways. Standing alone it may not even be a good piece of music exactly. But it may be what it sets out to be--a good piece of work in a form neither poetry nor music, but a combination of the two, a new creation, something with an appeal of its own. That is to say, it may be a good piece of song, that justifies itself when it comes from the voice of the singer.

Like an opera, in which music and poetry and drama melt into one another to produce what amounts to a new kind of art, with a purpose and an idiom of its own; like a song, in which music and poetry are interlocked, and become one harmony, the historical novel is a fusion. It is one of the arts that are born of the marriage of different arts. A historical event is “put to fiction” as a poem is put to music; it is turned into story as words are turned into song; it is put into a context of narrative which is like the result that is obtained when words are printed between the staves of a vocal score. And just as a composer in choosing a poem to set to music, accepts certain limitations, volunteers a certain allegiance, and must in some way be loyal to the poetry he has selected, so the historical novelist owes a certain loyalty to the history of which he treats. But because this is a marriage of the arts it is not a complete loyalty, and just as poets complain because musicians modify the original rhythms of their poems and the lilt of the words, so historians cry out because a Scott tampers with history. For all arts that combine different forms of art are beset with divided loyalties like these, and with causes of disagreement and annoyance. The very appeal that they should make is a thing to be discovered, a matter of controversy. And in the study of them, every issue is a complicated one.

And, lastly, it may be said that a given song may be good poetry if read in an armchair; the music of a song may be good in itself if played over on some instrument; and yet the song may be a poor thing when sung by anybody, if the two do not hang together, if the marriage is not a harmony. In the same way, a historical novel may be a good book but not a good historical novel. It may be a just piece of history; or it may be a good story; but it may not be good with the special goodness of a historical novel, it may not combine its two elements in just the way that is needed. It is not exactly that history and fiction should dovetail into one another to produce a coherent whole; it is not simply that the story of the Popish Plot can be rounded off by a piece of invention, or the tragedy of Mary Queen of Scots depicted more fully and with more connectedness by the interspersion of imaginary episodes; but it is rather that in the historical novel history and fiction can enrich and amplify one another, and interpenetrate. They can grow into one another, each making the other more powerful. And they can make a special kind of appeal to the reader.