The Craft of Fiction by Percy Lubbock (e novels to read online txt) 📕

her own, and gradually, it is hard to say where or how, we discover what they are. They are much too deeply buried in her mind to appear casually upon the surface at any time; but now and then, in the drama of her meditation, there is a strange look or a pause or a sudden hasty motion which is unexplained, which is portentous, which betrays everything. Presently her great hidden facts have passed into the possession of the reader whole, so to speak—not broken into detail, bit by bit, not pieced together descriptively, but so implied and suggested that at some moment or other they spring up complete and solid in the reader's attention. Exactly how and where did it happen? Turning back, looking over the pages again, I can mark the very point, perhaps, at which the thing was liberated and I became possessed of it; I can see the word that finally gave it to me. But at the time it may easily have passed unnoticed; the enlightening word did not seem peculiarly emphatic as it was uttered, it was not announced with any particular circumstance; and yet, presently—there was the piece of knowledge that I had not possessed before.

Not to walk straight up to the fact and put it into phrases, but to surround the fact, and so to detach it inviolate—such is Henry James's manner of dramatizing it. Soon after Milly's first appearance there are some pages that illustrate his procedure very clearly, or very clearly, I should say, when the clue has been picked up and retraced. There is an hour in which Milly gazes open-eyed upon her prospect, measuring its promises and threats, gathering herself for the effort they demand. She sits on a high Italian mountain-ledge, with a blue plain spread out beneath her like the kingdoms of the world; and there she looks at her future with rapt absorption, lost to all other thought. Her mind, if we saw it, would tell us everything then at least; she searches its deepest depth, it is evident. And that is the very reason why her mind should not be exposed in that hour; the troubling shapes that lurk in it are not to be described, they are to make their presence known of their own accord. Instead of intruding upon Milly's lonely rumination, therefore, the author elects to leave her, to join company with her friend in the background, and in that most crucial session to reveal nothing of Milly but the glimpse that her friend catches of her in passing.

The glimpse, so rendered, tells nothing. But in Milly's attitude, while she sits enthroned above the world, there is a certain expression, deep and strange, not to be missed, though who shall say exactly what it implies? Is it hope, is it despair? At any rate the clear picture of her remains, and a little later, when her mind is visible again, the memory of her up there on the mountain has quickened the eye of the onlooker. The images in her mind are not at all portentous now; she is among her friends, she is harvesting impressions; there is not a word of anything dark or distressing or ill-omened. But still, but still—we have seen Milly when she believed herself unseen, and it is certain that there is more in her mind than now appears, and though she seems so full of the new excitement of making friends with Kate Croy there must be some preoccupation beneath; and then, in a flash, these are the troubles that engage her in solitude, that have ached in her mind, and yet there has never been a single direct allusion to them. Skirting round and round them, giving one brief sight of her in eloquent circumstances, then displaying the all but untroubled surface of her thought on this side and that, the author has encompassed the struggle that is proceeding within her, and has lifted it bodily into the understanding of the reader.

The profit which the story gains from this treatment is easily recognized. Solidity, weight, a third dimension, is given to the impression of Milly's unhappy case. Mere emphasis, a simple underlining of plain words, could never produce the same effect. What is needed is some method which will enable an onlooker to see round the object, to left and right, as far as possible, just as with two eyes, stereoscopically, we shape and solidify the flat impression of a sphere. By such a method the image will be so raised out of its setting that the stream of vision will wash it on either side, leaving no doubt of its substantial form. And so, dealing with the case of Milly, Henry James proceeds to cut behind it, lavishing his care on any but its chief and most memorable aspect. That may wait; meanwhile the momentary flutter of her nerves and fancies is closely noted, wherever her life touches the lives about her, or the few of them that are part of her story. The play draws a steady curve around the subject in the midst; more and more of this outer rim of her consciousness moves into sight. She is seen in the company of the different people who affect her nearly, but in all their intercourse the real burden of her story is veiled under the trembling, wavering delicacy of her immediate thought. Her manner of living and thinking and feeling in the moment is thus revealed in a wide sweep, and at last the process is complete; her case is set free, stands out, and casts its shadow.

These difficulties, these hopes and fears that have been buried in silence, are all included in the sphere of experience which the author has rounded; and by leaving them where they lie he has given us a sense of their substance, of the space they occupy, which we could not have acquired from a straight, square account of them. Milly desired to live, she had every reason in the world for so desiring, and she knew, vaguely at first, then with certainty, that she had no life to hope for; it is a deep agitation which is never at rest. It is far out of sight; but its influence spreads in every direction, and here and there it must touch the surface, even one upon which appearances are maintained so valiantly. And if the surface (which is all we know) is thus high above the depths, and yet there are instants when it is just perceptibly disturbed by things unseen, is it not proved, as it could be proved in no other way, how active and forcible they must be? By no picture of them but by an enactment of their remotest manifestations—that is how their strength, their bulk, their range in a harassed existence is represented. Such is the object gained by the method of dramatization, applied in this way (as with Strether) to the story of a mind. Milly's case, which seemed to be as pictorial, as little dramatic, as could be—since it is all a condition and a situation to be portrayed, not an action—has been turned into drama, the advantages of drama have been annexed on its behalf. There is no action, properly speaking, and yet the story of her troubles has acted itself before our eyes, as we followed the transient expression of her mood.

And now look at a single scene, later on, when the issue of Milly's situation has at last been precipitated. Look, for example, at the scene in which good Susan Stringham, her faithful companion, visits Densher in his Venetian lodging, on an evening of wild autumn rain, to make a last and great appeal to him. An appeal for what? Milly, in her palace hard by, lies stricken, she has "turned her face to the wall." The vision of hope which had supported her is at an end, not by reason of her mere mortal illness, but because of some other blow which has fallen. Susan knows what it is, and Densher is to learn. Till lately Milly was living in ignorance of the plot woven about her, the masterly design to make use of her in order that Densher and Kate Croy may come together in the end. The design was Kate's from the first; Densher has been much less resolute, but Kate was prepared to see it through. Conceal from Milly that an old engagement holds between her two friends, persuade her that neither has any interest in the other, and all will go well. Milly, believing in Densher's candour, will fall into the plot and enjoy her brief happiness. It cannot be more than brief, for Milly is certainly doomed. But when she dies, and Densher is free for Kate again, who will be the worse for the fraud? Milly will have had what she wants, her two friends will have helped themselves in helping her. So Kate argues plausibly; but it all depends on keeping poor exquisite Milly safely in the dark. If she should discover that Kate and Densher are in league to profit by her, it would be a sharper stroke than the discovery of her malady. And by this autumn evening, when Susan Stringham appears before Densher, Milly has discovered—has learned that she has been tricked, has lost her desire of life, has turned her face to the wall.

Susan appears, big with the motive that has brought her. This visit of hers is an appeal to Densher, so much is clear in all her looks and tones. There is only one way to save Milly, to restore to Milly, not indeed her life, but her desire of it. Densher has it in his power to make her wish to live again, and that is all that he or any one else could achieve for her. The thought is between him and the good woman as they talk; the dialogue, with its allusions and broken phrases, slowly shapes itself to the form of the suppressed appeal. It hangs in the air, almost visibly, before it is uttered at all; and by that time a word is enough, one stroke, and the nature of the appeal and all its implications are in view. The scene has embodied it; the cheerless little room and the falling light and Densher's uneasy movements and Susan's flushed, rain-splashed earnestness have all contributed; the broken phrases, without touching it, have travelled about it and revealed its contour. Densher might tell Milly that she is wrong, might convince her that he and Kate have not beguiled and misled her as she supposes; Densher, in other words, might mislead her again, and Mrs. Stringham entreats him to do so. That is why she has come, and such is the image which has been gradually created, and which at last is actual and palpable in the scene. It has not appeared as a statement or an announcement; Susan's appeal and Densher's tormented response to it are felt, establishing their presence as matters which the reader has lived with for the time. They have emerged out of the surface of the scene into form and relief.

And finally the subject of the whole book is rendered in the same way. The subject is not in Milly herself, but in her effect upon the relation existing between Densher and Kate. At the beginning of the book these two are closely allied, and by the end their understanding has been crossed by something that has changed it for ever. Milly has come and gone, nothing is afterwards the same. Their scheme has been successful, for Milly in dying has bequeathed a fortune to Densher. But also she has bequeathed the memory of her last signal to them, which was one that neither could foresee and which the man at any rate