THE INFLUENCE OF FICTION.

New Zealand Mail, Issue 1290, 19 November 1896, Page 8

THE INFLUENCE OF FICTION.

UNDER THE NOVELIST’S SPELL.

The urchin in knickerbockers who devours in secret the contents of the dime novel imbibes a thirst for daring adventures of a sanguinary hue. His idea of the heroic is the long-haired, blackbearded scout, who, single-handed, slays Indians by the score, or the dashing road agent who yells to the trembling driver at the muzzle of the pistol to “ Throw out that box or take the consequences.'' A continuous course of this sort of reading ultimately changes the innocent spinner of tops and barterer of marbles into a bloodthirsty manikin. He saves his nickels to purchase a second-hand pistol. He straps a big knife to his waist, he robs his father’s till or his mother’s money box for the expenses of the trip, and then he is off for stage stopping, bear shooting or Indian scalping. When the youth is captured, taken home and spanked, the glory of his exploit departs like a summer mist. He seldom repeats the offence. He has tasted the glowing cup of adventure and found the lees gall and bitterness. The useless pistol finds its way to the junk shop, and the deadly cut-and-thrust knife does ignoble duty in the kitchen. The retired bandit resumes his interest in tops and marbles again, still, however, holding a certain prestige among his companions as one who has had a dark chapter in his life, and whose hands, perchance, have been stained with human gore. He has slept in the woods and fired a real pistol, not a Fourth of July affair, and the sheriffs were at his heels. And so he remains up to a certain period a boy with a history. Reading of these escapades, which are the direct effect of dime novel reading, that is, the dime novel of the shoot and stab order, the lovers of a healthier order of fiction moralize on the receptive character of the juvenile mind. They seldom reflect on the truth of the old adage that men are children of an older growth. The constant novel reader may not, perhaps, be conscious of the effect of fiction upon his mentality. He may assume that the delineations of character which so strongly interest and amuse him pass away as the writing on the slate when the sponge touches it, and leave no trace behind. With some it is thus. With the majority the soil retains those delicate seeds of impression which, though they may escape his introspective examination, are apparent to his associates. At that age when the mind is peculiarly susceptible to the passion of love, the transports and woes of the hero and heroine of some moving tale assume a most realistic form. The good old authors had a knack, indeed, of “piling on the agony" to an extent the writers of the present day never attempt. Their heroines were continually bursting into tears, and their heroes addicted to the pernicious habit of throwing themselves violently upon horseback or rushing from the apartments. Girls in their teens put themselves unconsciously in the place of those forlorn damsels, and young men of the hobbledehoy age fumed and had their dark hours. When Byron wrote The Corsair and Lara how many thousands of the readers of those grand but gloomy poems scowled and raged with the delightful, if tragic, sensation of being themselves the victims .of a mighty passion, and having their young lives blighted in the bud. This socalled Byronic period was most prolific in melancholy romance. The bard was idolized as the creator of those men of mystery who never smiled and were invariably crossed in love. The wretched females who caused them all this unhappiness were imitated by rosy school girls. They formed themselves upon those lugubrious models and construed into a Lara or Conrad the boy who carried their satchel to school and shared his apple with them. But the heroines of those days were not of the most seductive character. With the exception of those created by the poets there were few to admire, few that appealed to the sentimental J part of the female mind. While there was an abundance of masculine magnifi ! coes, the dames were, with odd exceptions, unworthy of imitation. Sir Walter Scott must bo credited with the launching of a heroine who remained for many years the fashion, and who has many imitators even at this late period. Diana Vernon, the dashing, unselfish and unconventional, had a long reign, and her imitators were thick as leaves in Vallombrosa’s vales. Diana was a sort of female Centaur, piquant, audacious and tender in successive moods. She was ever taking the most desperate chances, but, of course, being in the hands ef such a master of fiction as Scott, invariably came out in safety. The fierce outlaw, Rob Roy ; the scheming and treacherous Rashleigh Osbaldisstone; the jolly old foxhunting Squire, all succumbed to Jihe charms of the dictatorial Diana. But withal she was difficult to imitate. She was not a hoyden, arid here was the rock upon which many of her imitators split. Tliev caught the brusque side of the character without the tempering of gentleness and tenderness. Still it must be considered, in extenuation, that to meet the requirements of such a character requires more off-the-stage ability than is possessed by the ordinary off-the-stage young woman. Charles Lever’s Charles O’Malley and Harry Lorriquer were the favourites of their time. They were of the dashing and military type, and recruited largely

from the youth of their time. To drink copiously of punch, fling a decanter at the head of an insulting Saxon, be put to bed by his servant after he had fallen under the table, fight a duel next morning and wing his antagonist, were the admirable qualifications of the heroes of the Irish novelist. All these things make a difficult, and in some portions an impossible, combination, but a lively imagination filled in where the genuine situations could not be achieved. But of all novelists who have most impressed the imagination of their readers Captain Marryat must claim precedence. His fascinating tales of the sea recruited in their time the navy and merchant marine. It is no exaggeration to say that thousands of the young men who devoured thbse engrossing stories felt that the only life for them was a life on the ocean wave, of srartling adventure, yarns and rum on the gun deck and flirtations ashore with the dark-eyed damsels of Spain. Peter Simple and Midshipman Easy, dauntless young sailors who bore charmed lives, whom salt water could not drown, and whose ribs the keen knives of jealous lovers could not penetrate, were the idols of their day and generation. All the glamour of the sea was set before the youth athirst for the freedom and license of the rolling deep. On the other hand, the Swiss Famffy Robinson sent the boys to the woods, building camps in the trees and keeping a keen lookout for imaginary wild and ferocious beasts and copying all the devices of those most ingenious castaways. The power of the fiction writer of our time is not as extensi% T e as that of his predecessors. Possibly this is a more practical age and the realities of life are less easily overcome. San Francisco Chronicle.