WHERE FICTION LEADS LIFE.

Timaru Herald, Volume LXXXIII, Issue 12902, 13 February 1906, Page 2

WHERE FICTION LEADS LIFE.

2v.0 novel—no English novel, at asi events —is considered complete without a certain amount oi love-making and at !ea*t two-or three proposals: she English novelreader has learnt, to «sxpec*, this, and fewnovelists have sufficient audacity to disappoint him. But how does the novelist, whose business it is above all things to be true to life, acquire his extensive knowledge of the ways of a man with a maid? That lie relies entirely on his own personal experience is an improbable hypothesis, Ine average industrious novels turns out,. ill the course of his life, about forty novels; the late James Payn produced nearly three times that number, but ho was a prodigy of industry. Forty novels, with an average of three proposals in each; tiie total is formidable; it is obvious that no man's personal experience, except in polvgaaious countries, could furnish forth the 'required amount of material. It Ls not a subject, that can be worked ? p, as Charles Rcade worked up his prisons and his mad-hou*®*. out of documents; on the matter of proposals there are no authentic document*. Autobiographies ought to be valuable, but they are not; the great man who writes nis own life invariably slurs over this* momentous incident. There are volumes of love letters, it is true; but the mood which produces a lover letter is deliberate n0.3 cold-blooded compared with the sudden jrenzy out of which the proposal springs, -the maker of fiction, however alert and watchful, cannot expect to overhear many proposals, even if he could bring himself to play the on these sacred moments; for the lover as a rule Jakes elaborate precautions -hat Lk carefullvrehfcarsed dnimi may be played wiihoiit spectators ; nor does he afterwards narrate his experience in the ciub smoking-rwm. In their own boddoirs women mnv. for aught we know, "be accustomed to discuss the advisability ->f blushing, or So deter mine the most- effective moment for burvmg ones face in the proposer's manlv chest*: but they certainly do not, converse "on these; topics in the novelist's presence. j Every novelist has bap mvn nichrxl of treating the situation. ?*"ilj. we c-in trace I general tendency towards greater simplicity. directness, matter of factnes? : tendency well represented by ihe gulf between Scott's hero, with his prolix dec!r,mr.t«>j v manner, and flic late Mr Morrini.m's ht-io. wbo simply gathers the heroine into hiv arms without a -word of explanation. If this represents a real tendency, how have the novelists become aware of it? The answer is obvious. In this matter, at- least, it is not true to say that fiction tefie?li? life; it is far tmer"U. :;v.

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