fetch nothing; we are not moved. We are only glad.)
They gavel me, these stale and overworked stage directions,
these carbon films that got burnt out long ago and cannot now
carry any faintest thread of light. It would be well if they
could be relieved from duty and flung out in the literary back
yard to rot and disappear along with the discarded and forgotten
“steeds” and “halidomes” and similar stage-properties once so
dear to our grandfathers. But I am friendly to Mr. Howells’s
stage directions; more friendly to them than to any one else’s, I
think. They are done with a competent and discriminating art,
and are faithful to the requirements of a state direction’s
proper and lawful office, which is to inform. Sometimes they
convey a scene and its conditions so well that I believe I could
see the scene and get the spirit and meaning of the accompanying
dialogue if some one would read merely the stage directions to me
and leave out the talk. For instance, a scene like this, from
THE UNDISCOVERED COUNTRY:
“. . . and she laid her arms with a beseeching gesture on
her father’s shoulder.”
“. . . she answered, following his gesture with a glance.”
“. . . she said, laughing nervously.”
“. . . she asked, turning swiftly upon him that strange, searching glance.”
“. . . she answered, vaguely.”
“. . . she reluctantly admitted.”
“. . . but her voice died wearily away, and she stood looking
into his face with puzzled entreaty.”
Mr. Howells does not repeat his forms, and does not need to;
he can invent fresh ones without limit. It is mainly the
repetition over and over again, by the third-rates, of worn and
commonplace and juiceless forms that makes their novels such a
weariness and vexation to us, I think. We do not mind one or two
deliveries of their wares, but as we turn the pages over and keep
on meeting them we presently get tired of them and wish they
would do other things for a change.
“. . . replied Alfred, flipping the ash from his cigar.”
“. . . responded Richard, with a laugh.”
“. . . murmured Gladys, blushing.”
“. . . repeated Evelyn, bursting into tears.”
“. . . replied the Earl, flipping the ash from his cigar.”
“. . . responded the undertaker, with a laugh.”
“. . . murmured the chambermaid, blushing.”
“. . . repeated the burglar, bursting into tears.”
“. . . replied the conductor, flipping the ash from his cigar.”
“. . . responded Arkwright, with a laugh.”
“. . . murmured the chief of police, blushing.”
“. . . repeated the house-cat, bursting into tears.”
And so on and so on; till at last it ceases to excite. I
always notice stage directions, because they fret me and keep me
trying to get out of their way, just as the automobiles do. At
first; then by and by they become monotonous and I get run over.
Mr. Howells has done much work, and the spirit of it is as
beautiful as the make of it. I have held him in admiration and
affection so many years that I know by the number of those years
that he is old now; but his heart isn’t, nor his pen; and years
do not count. Let him have plenty of them; there is profit in
them for us.
——————————————————————-
ENGLISH AS SHE IS TAUGHT
In the appendix to Croker’s Boswell’s Johnson one finds this anecdote:
CATO’S SOLILOQUY.–One day Mrs. Gastrel set a little girl to
repeat to him [Dr. Samuel Johnson] Cato’s Soliloquy, which she
went through very correctly. The Doctor, after a pause, asked
the child:
“What was to bring Cato to an end?”
She said it was a knife.
“No, my dear, it was not so.”
“My aunt Polly said it was a knife.”
“Why, Aunt Polly’s knife MAY DO, but it was a DAGGER, my dear.”
He then asked her the meaning of “bane and antidote,” which
she was unable to give. Mrs. Gastrel said:
“You cannot expect so young a child to know the meaning of such words.”
He then said: