Old Friends [1]
do you quite believe in them, would you know them if you met them in the Paradise of Fiction? Noun one might recognise, but there is a haziness about La Petite Fadette. Consuelo, let it be admitted, is not evanescent, oblivion scatters no poppy over her; but Madame Sand's later ladies, still more her men, are easily lost in the forests of fancy. Even their names with difficulty return to us, and if we read the roll-call, would Horace and Jacques cry Adsum like the good Colonel? There are living critics who have all Mr. George Meredith's heroines and heroes and oddities at their finger ends, and yet forget that musical name, like the close of a rich hexameter, Clare Doria Forey. But this is a digression; it is perhaps admitted that George Sand, so great a novelist, gave the world few characters who live in and are dear to memory. We can just fancy one of her dignified later heroines, all self- renunciation and rural sentiment, preaching in vain to that real woman, Emma Bovary. HER we know, her we remember, as we remember few, comparatively, of Balzac's thronging faces, from La Cousine Bette to Seraphitus Seraphita. Many of those are certain to live and keep their hold, but it is by dint of long and elaborate preparation, description, analysis. A stranger intermeddleth not with them, though we can fancy Lucien de Rubempre let loose in a country neighbourhood of George Sand's, and making sonnets and love to some rural chatelaine, while Vautrin might stray among the ruffians of Gaboriau, a giant of crime. Among M. Zola's people, however it may fare with others, I find myself remembering few: the guilty Hippolytus of "La Curee," the poor girl in "La Fortune des Rougon," the Abbe Mouret, the artist in "L'Oeuvre," and the half idiotic girl of the farm house, and Helene in "Un Page d'Amour." They are not amongst M. Zola's most prominent creations, and it must be some accident that makes them most memorable and recognisable to one of his readers.
Probably we all notice that the characters of fiction who remain our intimates, whose words come to our lips often, whose conduct in this or that situation we could easily forecast, are the characters whom we met when we were young. We may be wrong in thinking them the best, the most true and living of the unborn; perhaps they only seem so real because they came fresh to fresh hearts and unworn memories. This at least we must allow for, when we are tempted to say about novelists, "The old are better." It was we who, long ago, were young and better, better fitted to enjoy and retain the pleasure of making new visionary acquaintances. If this be so, what an argument it is in favour of reading the best books first and earliest in youth! Do the ladies who now find Scott slow, and Miss Austen dull, and Dickens vulgar, and Thackeray prosy, and Fielding and Richardson impossible, come to this belief because they began early with the volumes of the circulating library? Are their memories happily stored with the words and deeds of modern fictitious romps, and passionate governesses, and tremendous guardsmen with huge cigars? Are the people of--well, why mention names of living authors?--of whom you will--are those as much to the young readers of 1890 as Quentin Durward, and Colonel Newcome, and Sam Weller, and Becky Sharp, and Anne Elliot, and Elizabeth Bennett, and Jane Eyre were to young readers of 1860? It may very well be so, and we seniors will not regret our choice, and the young men and maids will be pleased enough with theirs. Yet it is not impossible that the old really are better, and do not gain all their life and permanent charm merely from the unjaded memories and affections with which we came to them long ago.
We shall never be certain, for even if we tried the experiment of comparing, we are no longer good judges, our hearts are with our old friends, whom we think deathless; their birth is far enough off in time, but they will serve us for ours.
These friends, it has been said, are not such a very numerous company after all. Most of them are children of
Probably we all notice that the characters of fiction who remain our intimates, whose words come to our lips often, whose conduct in this or that situation we could easily forecast, are the characters whom we met when we were young. We may be wrong in thinking them the best, the most true and living of the unborn; perhaps they only seem so real because they came fresh to fresh hearts and unworn memories. This at least we must allow for, when we are tempted to say about novelists, "The old are better." It was we who, long ago, were young and better, better fitted to enjoy and retain the pleasure of making new visionary acquaintances. If this be so, what an argument it is in favour of reading the best books first and earliest in youth! Do the ladies who now find Scott slow, and Miss Austen dull, and Dickens vulgar, and Thackeray prosy, and Fielding and Richardson impossible, come to this belief because they began early with the volumes of the circulating library? Are their memories happily stored with the words and deeds of modern fictitious romps, and passionate governesses, and tremendous guardsmen with huge cigars? Are the people of--well, why mention names of living authors?--of whom you will--are those as much to the young readers of 1890 as Quentin Durward, and Colonel Newcome, and Sam Weller, and Becky Sharp, and Anne Elliot, and Elizabeth Bennett, and Jane Eyre were to young readers of 1860? It may very well be so, and we seniors will not regret our choice, and the young men and maids will be pleased enough with theirs. Yet it is not impossible that the old really are better, and do not gain all their life and permanent charm merely from the unjaded memories and affections with which we came to them long ago.
We shall never be certain, for even if we tried the experiment of comparing, we are no longer good judges, our hearts are with our old friends, whom we think deathless; their birth is far enough off in time, but they will serve us for ours.
These friends, it has been said, are not such a very numerous company after all. Most of them are children of