a hundred pounds have suddenly and unexpectedly appeared on the horizon. people who are very rich have not the slightest idea what that means to us. people who are very poor have not the slightest idea either, because they would probably buy a public-house, or goodwill, or something of that nature, and never have any fun out of it at all. but to people who ‘jog along’ a hundred pounds is a treat which neither rich people nor poor can form any conception of. to those who just pay their way, as we do, it means several weeks somewhere. the only question is ‘where?’ at this point in our argument it was impossible to proceed. helen and i were both being so unselfish that we couldn’t go on. she said she longed to have two or three weeks in switzerland; i said that what i really wanted was to go to the riviera for a fortnight. then, as{216} always happens, these subterfuges broke down, and we both confessed that we neither of us really wanted to go where we said we did. she wanted to go to nice; i wanted to go to the high altitudes. so, with the understanding that we were to go where the coin said we should, and not otherwise, we tossed up. it was high altitudes.
his country put in a claim for legs at the foreign office, unfortunately, and he should not come with us; but we felt, when we observed the urbanity of the french customs-house officials, who obligingly shut their eyes to the presence of large quantities of tobacco, and the politeness of the railway officials, that legs had probably made himself felt in our foreign relations already, and that he was responsible for all this very civil behaviour. at bale, however, where we had to change at the awful hour in the morning which is neither night nor day, we found that legs’ diplomacy had not yet had time to make itself felt, for we were subjected to a searching scrutiny. luckily i had had experience of the manners and customs-house officials of bale before, and had trans{217}ferred my tobacco into my coat pockets, thus frustrating the baffled teuton. but i am afraid it gave certain secret glee to observe that my travelling companion of the night before—a stout white man, with a name on his labels so long that i could not read it, who had snored all the time—was caught, and his rich stores of cigarettes taken from him, to be sent, i suppose, to berne, for the delectation of the president of the republic.
switzerland is a land that always arouses curiosity as to how it came about that a country in which the people are so small, so ‘toy,’ should in itself be on so gigantic and marvellous a scale. is it that the living among these stupendous surroundings has somehow dwarfed the people, or has nature, by one of her inimitable contrasts, made the human part of switzerland so insignificant in order to set off the vastness of peak and snowfield? certainly the glib commonplace that national character is influenced and formed by national surroundings is here gloriously contradicted, since, as far as i am aware, no swiss has ever attained to eminence in anything. they are a little toy people, who{218} live in little toy towns, and make excellent chocolate, and run innumerable hotels on the most economical principles. but even then they do not (as one would expect) get very rich. they are never ‘very’ anything. ‘but the chocolate is excellent,’ said helen to these speculations.
it requires faith this morning to believe that in a few hours we shall be crunching the dry, powdery snow beneath our feet, and before sunset be skating or gliding down the white frozen road, with puffs of snow coming from the bows of the toboggan, for here all down the shore of the lake of thun the country is brown and grey, with scarce a streak of white to show that it is winter. low overhead are fat masses of dirty-looking cloud, but between them (and this is the door where faith enters) are glimpses of the perfect azure which we expect up above. now and then the sun strikes some distant hillside, or, like a flashlight, is turned on to the waters of the lake, making of them a sudden aquamarine of luminous green. but the weather is undoubtedly mild; the eaves of the wooden toy-stations drip with discouraging{219} moisture, and interlaken, when we reach it, wears a dreadful spring-like aspect, and people are sitting out of doors at the cafés, and appear to find it relaxing.
then the first of these wonderful winter miracles happened. there was the flat alluvial land at the end of the lake, across which ran the fussy little light railway which should take us above (so we hoped) the region of cloudland. grey and puddle-strewn was it, with here and there a patch of dirty snow stained through with the earthy moistness beneath. a low-lying mist was spread over the nearer distance, which melted into the thicker clouds of the sky itself. it was just such a view as you shall see anywhere in the english fen-land during february.
we were looking at this with, i am bound to say, a certain despondency. it seemed almost certain that we should find dull weather (which means thaw) up above, when a sudden draught from some funnel of the hills came down, making agitation and disturbance both among the low-lying mist and the higher clouds. the former was vanquished first, and, torn to ribbons by the wind, and scorched up by a sudden divine{220} gleam of sun that smote downwards, disclosed in its vanishing the long, piney sides of an upward-leading gorge. the higher clouds, being thicker, took longer to disperse, i suppose, for at its farther end the gorge was still full of scudding vapours. then suddenly they cleared, and high, high above, a vignette of fairyland—the jungfrau herself, queen of the snows—stood out in glacier, and snowfield, and peak, against a sky of incredible blue. there she stood in full blaze of sunshine, the silver-crystal maiden, donned in blue, enough to open the eyes of the blind and make the dumb mouth sing.
then afterwards, as the little turkish bath of a train went heavenwards, how magical and divine a change happened! inside the steamy carriages, smelling of railway-bags, and rugs, and forgotten sandwiches, it was not possible to see through the condensation on the window-panes, but the blood that trots through the body knew the change, and took a more staccato note. then—i suppose that travelling stupidity had seized us both—it suddenly occurred to helen that we might, without fear of prosecution, put the windows down, though by a{221} printed notice of by-laws of the railway it was still defended that we should not agitate ourselves out of it. once a ticket-puncher, exactly like a figure out of noah’s ark, put them scowlingly up again; but with the boldness that this whiff of mountain-air supplied, we again lowered them, after a further consultation of the by-laws.
the ineffable change had begun. soon for the moistness of the lowland there was exchanged a hint of frost—something that made outlines a little more determinate, a little crisper. then, as we mounted higher, there was further change. for dripping twigs of the trees there were trees that showed a hard, white outline of frost; for the sullen muddy stream there was clearer water, that went on its way beneath half-formed lids of ice; and thinner and thinner above our heads grew the grey blanket of cloud.
then that, too, was folded away, and above is was the sun and the sparkling of the unending firmament. below it had been like a london fog, when you cannot see the tops of the shrouded houses; now we saw the roofs of the{222} world, the queen anne’s mansion of europe, all clean, all clear, just as they were when i saw this land three years ago. no tile had slipped, no chimney-pot required repairs. the top of the world was good. oh, how good!
the clear dry air, the sunset lights on the peaks, the liquid twilight (keen as snuff to the nostril), from which the sun had gone! there was the rose-tinted wetterhorn, black eiger, flaming finger of finster-aarhorn; or, on more human plane, the hiss of skates over the perfect ice, the passage of a toboggan, with a little swiss girl holding in front of her a baby sister, and steering with her heels, and shrilly shouting ‘achtung!’ there was ‘madame’ who keeps a restaurant (i do not know her name), standing to see the train-passengers come in, and shaking hands, and saying, ‘you shall have wings to-morrow, no legs’ (alluding to an amiable altercation of three years ago, when i drew a kind but firm sort of line about eating chickens’ legs for lunch on four consecutive days); and there was the beerman, whose admirable beverage i always drank at 11.30 a.m., being thirsty with skating; and there was a skater i knew, who{223} attempted a rather swift back-bracket for the admiration of the new arrivals by the train to see, and fell down in a particularly complicated manner in the middle of it; and there was the barrack of an hotel which always smells of roasting leather, because people put their skates and boots on the hot-water pipes, and right above it was the mettelhorn; and to the left was the lady wetterhorn; and to the right the smooth, steely-looking toboggan-run down into the valley. ‘oh, world——’ i beg your pardon.
i have omitted to mention the magic word on our luggage-labels, ‘grindelwald.’
three years ago, i must tell you, among other foolish and futile deeds, i made a cache underneath a particular tree on the path leading to the scheidegg, consisting, as far as i remember, of chocolate, coins, and matches. these insignificant facts i published in another place, and since then i have received every winter mysterious letters from grindelwald, showing that other people are as absurd as myself. my cache, in fact, has been found (i gave directions which i hoped would be sufficient), and it has{224} been, so these letters tell me, enriched by other secret and beautiful things. there has been placed there, on separate occasions, by separate passionate pilgrims, all manner of store, and the very next morning, instead of going to skate, helen and i skulked off with a toboggan to see what we should find. a poem on the wetterhorn, so i had been informed, was there, to form the nucleus of a library; there were a tin of potted meat and some caramels for the larder; and furniture had been added by a third person in the shape of a lead soldier and an ink-bottle; while the exchequer, i knew, also had been enriched by at least half a franc in nickel pieces. we had debated earnestly last night as to what to add to the establishment, if we found it, and eventually decided on a handkerchief, which is to be regarded by passionate pilgrims as a tablecloth, a reel of cotton, and a copy of ‘shirley’ in the sixpenny edition, to swell the library shelves. this latter was in a small linen bag, to keep it from the wet.
of course, we did not expect to find all the objects that i had been informed had been{225} placed there from time to time, for the rule of the cache is that you may use what you find there, provided only you replace it with something else. the potted meat, for instance, one could not expect to go undiscussed, and i cannot personally conceive leaving caramels uneaten. but in place of those, if only passionate pilgrims had played the game, we should find other objects. thus the cache becomes a sort of exchange and mart—a reciprocal table laid in the wilderness, where you take one dish and replace it with another.
how it all savours of romance to the childish mind! with agitated fingers you scoop away the earth and moss which form the entrance to the cache, under a pine tree on the empty, frozen hillside, and you know you will find treasure of some kind, but what it is you cannot possibly tell. and inviolable secrecy must surround and embellish your man?uvres; the cache should not be mentioned at all except discreetly to the elect, for it partakes of freemasonry, the masons of which are those who delight in idiotic proceedings. but just as three years ago i gave the inventory of the{226} cache as it was then, so in the minds of the idiotic there may be felt some interest as to its inventory when the founder again revisited it. caches, of course, are socialistic in spirit, and anybody may appropriate whatever he chooses; but i should be glad if the copy of ‘shirley’ is left there. it is such a pleasant book to read after lunch, if you are tobogganing alone. a book, at any rate, is rather a good thing to have in a cache, and the wishes of the founder will be satisfied if another book is put there instead. but let us have a book. i should prefer that it should not be the ‘encyclop?dia britannica.’
the morning, i think, must have been ordered on purpose, for i can imagine nothing so exquisite being served up in the ordinary way, à la carte; such weather must have been specially chosen. not a single ripple of air stirred; an unflecked sky was overhead, and the sun, as we set off, just topped the hills to the south-east, and sat like a huge golden bandbox on the rim of them. the frost had been severe in the night, but in this windlessness and entire absence of moisture no feeling of cold reached one.{227} there was in the air a briskness of quality more than magical; it was as if made of ice and fire and wine, and in a sort of intoxication we slid down into the valley. then, crossing the stream, since there was water about, it suddenly seemed desperately chill; but no sooner had we mounted a dozen yards of ascent again than the same dry kindling of the blood reasserted itself. toboggans will not run of their own accord uphill, so i put ours under my arm, and for a hundred yards we danced a pas de quatre up the trodden snow. we both sang all the time, different tunes, when suddenly we saw a clergyman observing us from a few yards ahead. he had a wildish and severe eye, and we stopped. david before the ark would have stopped if he had unexpectedly come on that man. he was sitting in the snow, and wore a black hat, black coat, and black trousers, but he had yellow boots. he kept his eye on us all the time that we were within sight, and seemed to have no other occupation. we neither of us dared to look round till we had left him some way behind, neither did we dare to dance again. eventually i turned my head to look at him{228} from behind a tree. he was still sitting in the snow, not on a rug, you understand, nor on a toboggan, nor on any of the things upon which you usually sit in the snow. he was not breakfasting or lunching or looking at the view. he was sitting in the snow, and that was all. i have no explanation of any kind to offer about this unusual incident. helen thinks he was mad. that very likely is the case, but it is an interesting form of mania. perhaps by-and-by we shall have an asylum for snow-sitters. or is it a new kind of rest-cure?
it is astonishing how you can argue about things of which you know nothing. indeed, i think that all proper arguments are based on ignorance. if you know anything whatever on the subject of which you are talking, you produce a fact of some kind, which knocks argument flat. it is only possible to reason rightly on those subjects concerning which no fact, except the phenomenon itself, is ascertainable. had we asked the clergyman why he sat in the snow, he would probably have told us, and the subject would have ceased to interest us conversationally. as it was, we held heated debate{229} upon him, just as if he was the education bill, for a long time. but the unusualness of it merited attention and conjecture. and think how divine an opening for conversation at dinner-parties, if you know nothing of your neighbour, and have not caught her name.
‘did you ever see a clergyman sitting in the snow?’
that, in fact, was the outcome of our argument. no theory about him would really hold water. he was probably a conversational gambit, which might lead to much. for instance, in answer to your question, your interlocutor might reply in five obvious ways:
1. ‘i once saw a clergyman, but he was not sitting in the snow.’
2. ‘i have seen snow, but i never saw a clergyman sitting in it.’
3. ‘i once saw a clergyman being snowballed.’
4. ‘yes. what are your views about the best treatment for the insane?’
5. ‘such strange things happen at grindelwald. did you know——’
yes; he was probably a conversational opening made manifest to mortal eyes. anyhow,{230} when we returned he was not sitting there. if he had been real, he probably would have been—at least, if you once sit in the snow there is no reason why you should ever get up. obviously it is your métier.
now, everybody who lives in fogs and rainy places will fail to understand anything of these last deplorable pages. but if they go to the thin clear air of alps in winter, they will know that this sort of thing (given you have the luck to see a clergyman sitting in the snow) is invested with supreme importance. when the hot sun shines on ice, it produces some kindly confusion of the brain; there is no longer any point in trying to be clever or well-informed, or witty, or any of those things that are supposed to convey distinction down below to their fortunate possessors: you go back to mere existence and joy of life. it is a trouble to be consecutive or conduct a reasonable argument; instead, you open your mouth and say anything that happens to come out of it. most frequently what issues is laughter, but apart from that, the only conversation you can indulge in is preposterous and the only behaviour possible is childish. that is{231} why i love these roofs of the world. the intoxication of interstellar space is in the air. everything is so light—you, your body, your mind, your tongue, your aims and objects. the only things that you take seriously are the things that do not matter: the snow-sitter was one, the cache was another. but as we got nearer the cache, we became even more solemn than on the question of the snow-sitter. there was no telling what we should find there, even if we found the place at all. the tree might have been cut down since last year; the whole cache might have been rifled by some imperceptive hand. there was no end to the list of untoward circumstances that might have despoiled us.
and so we went through the wood: we came to the end of it, and there was a tree—‘of many one,’ as mr. wordsworth prophetically remarked. on its roots were cut my humble initials: it was certainly the tree.
‘oh, quick, quick!’ said helen; ‘let us know the worst!’
the root had arched a little since i saw it last. moss and snow were plastered on it in a{232} manner scarcely natural. i plucked the bandage away with hands that trembled. we found:
1. a pencil.
2. something sticky, which i believe to have been the caramels.
3. an empty potted-meat tin, with a wisp of paper inside it, on which was written: ‘i ate it. quite excellent.’
4. a candle-end.
5. the famous poem on the wetterhorn done up in canvas. (how laudable!)
6. a jock-scot, salmon-trout size.
7. a paper on which was written: ‘what’s the point?’
8. a cigarette, very sloppy.
9. a five-franc piece, wrapped up in paper, on which was written: ‘i took 4.50 away.’
10. a little wooden pill-box containing a very small moonstone.
i think we were very moderate in our exchanges, which is right, since you must always leave the cache richer for your presence, and we merely took away the pencil and the poem on the wetterhorn, leaving our handkerchief, the reel of cotton, and the copy of ‘shirley.’ below{233} the question ‘what’s the point?’ we wrote, ‘none, if you can’t see it,’ and added, ‘the founder and his wife visited the cache on january 12, 1907. they saw a clergyman sitting in the snow. selah.’
then an awful thing happened. even while these treasures were openly and sumptuously spread round us, down the path there came a merry swiss peasant about a hundred years old. he looked at us and the treasures with curiosity and contempt, and then burst into a perfect flood of speech, of which neither of us understood one single word. when he stopped, i said politely, ‘ich weiss nicht,’ just like parsifal, and he began it, or something like it, all over again, with gesticulations added, and in a rather louder tone, as if he was talking to a deaf man. until this torrent of gibberish was let loose on me, i had no idea how much there was in the world that i did not know; so with the desire to reduce his opinion of himself also, i addressed him in english. i said ‘god save the king’ right through, as much as i could remember of ‘to be or not to be’ from the play called ‘hamlet,’ and had just begun on ‘when the{234} hounds of spring are on winter’s traces,’ when he suddenly turned pale, crossed himself (though it was a protestant canton), and fairly fled down the path. i make no doubt that he thought he had met the devil. anyhow, he had met his match at unintelligible conversation.
but it was clearly no use running risks, for more of the merry swiss might come down the path, who, it was conceivable, might not be so much impressed by unintelligible sounds, and we hurriedly reburied the treasure, ate our lunch, and turned the bow of the toboggan homewards, since we proposed to skate all afternoon. it was a year since i had been shod with steel. i burned for the frozen surface. but it was right to see to the cache first. there are some things you cannot wait for.
we spent three weeks in these divine futilities, if anything so utterly enjoyable can be considered futile. for my part, i do not believe it can, since, as i have already said, to enjoy a thing very much, supposing always that it does not injure anybody else, is a gilt-edged investment of your time; for enjoyment is not (as is falsely supposed) finished with when the thing{235} itself is done and over, for it is just then that the high interest of it (though gilt-edged) begins to be paid. until one forgets about it (and by a merciful dispensation one remembers what is pleasant far longer and far more keenly than what is painful), subsequent days and hours are all enriched, and therefore made more productive, by these pleasurable memories. it is here, i think, that a wonderfully fresh and vivid student of the human mind—namely, r. l. stevenson—goes all wrong when he says that the past is all of one texture. it seems to me—one is only responsible for one’s own experience—to be of two textures, one strong and the other weak; and the strong one is the memory of things you have enjoyed, of happy days; the other of times when, for some reason or other—pain, or anxiety, or fear—the lights have been low, and the sound of the grinding not low, but loud. the human mind, in fact, is more retentive of its pleasures than of its pain. in the moment of the happening either may seem the top note of acuteness, but the echoes of the one indisputably live longer than the echoes of the other; and though our consciousness, if you care to{236} look at it that way, is largely a haunted house of the dead hours, yet happy ghosts are in preponderance, and seem solider than the shadows of its dark places; also (and this, i think, too, is indubitable) the anticipation of happiness is more acute than the anticipation of a corresponding pain. in the future there are two textures also, as in the past.
since our return this contrast has been rather markedly brought before me. there are many things i much look forward to; at the same time, there is something ahead which i am dreading. what it is i do not know. i think i should dread it less if i did. but it is, though quite certain, quite vague. i connect it, however, with that evening in september when i heard my name called, and when legs saw something which has since been expunged from his memory. and here is the contrast: the happiness that lies stored for me in the hive of the future is more potent than the bitterness that is there. both are coming—of that i am sure—and among the many very happy things which i know and expect, i feel there is something i do not yet know which is happier than{237} any. it is futile to guess at it. one might make a hundred guesses, and each would seem feasible of accomplishment. but there, at the back of my mind, are these two transparencies, so to speak—one sunlit, the other stormy—and it is through them that the events of the day are seen by me. they colour—both of them—all i do; but the happy one is the predominant one. they do not neutralize each other; they are both there to their full. but i despair at giving coherently so elusive a picture as they make in my own mind. but, though elusive, it is intensely real, and for the first time i neither can, nor do i desire to, speak to helen about this thing which is so often in my mind. it is incommunicable.
but after these swiss weeks there was not much time for me to think about this, as it was imperatively demanded, by reasons over which i have no control, that i should exercise my mind on the extremely difficult art of the composition of english prose, which incidentally implies doing two things at once; for not only have you to invent your lively and inspiring tale, but you have to tell it in a certain way. you may{238} choose at the beginning any way of the hundreds that there are of telling it; but in the key in which it is originally pitched, in that key it has to remain all the time. as a matter of fact, it probably does not, and goes wandering about in other modes and scales; but every book ought to be in the one key in which it opens, just as a picture ought to be in one key. it is within the writer’s liberties, of course, to write other books in other keys, and i think he is perfectly justified in largely contradicting in one work what he has unhesitatingly affirmed in another, but in each his point of view has to be consistent throughout.
the thing is not quite so easy as it sounds, and it is further complicated by a very real difficulty. every story that is worth reading at all is bound to record change in the characters and general attitude of the people with whom it deals. the jaded author has to keep his eye on each, and see that he behaves after some atrocious battering with which fate has visited him in a different manner than before this visitation took place. if he is living in any sense of the word, the event will have altered{239} him. he will view things differently, and therefore behave differently. yet all the time he is the same personality. it were better for him that he should be as adamant to the blows of circumstance than that the inner essence which is individuality should be uncertainly rendered; and, like the dexterous mr. maskelyne with his spinning-plates, the scribe has to keep his eye on all his puppets to see that none lapse into stagnation, and to poke them up with his industrious pen.
it is here that the complicated question of consistency comes in which just now is worrying me to bewilderment. dreadful and stinging events are happening to a most favourite puppet of mine. providence is dealing with her in a cruelly ironical manner, in a way that makes the poor distracted lady take quite fresh views of a world she thought so warm and kindly. yet it must be the same personality which has to be shown sitting behind these changed feelings and directing them all. that is the consistency that has to be observed. otherwise it ceases to be one story, but becomes a series of really unconnected short stories, with the tech{240}nical absurdity that the heroine in each has the same name.
yet there is this also: it takes all sorts to make a world (at least, a world otherwise constructed would be an extremely dull one), but it, it itself, life, lies somewhere in the middle of us all, and is the centre to which we approach. we, the all sorts which make the world, view it very differently, though we are all looking at the same object. and here a simile, a thing usually unconvincing, may assist. what if in the centre there is something like a great diamond, blazing in the rays of the sun? i, from the south, see soft blue lights in it; you, from the west, see a great ruby ray coming out of the heart of it; another on the north says, ‘this diamond is emerald green’; while from the east it seems of transcendent orange. so far, it is quite certain that we are all right, for the world, so to speak, refracts god, making him many-hued, even as white light is refracted by the triangle of a prism. and then let us suppose circumstances enter and shift me, who have been on the south, where i saw blue, to the west, where i see red. the whole colour of the world{241} is changed to me, and yet there is no inconsistency. the same ego honestly sees a changed colour. there would, on the other hand, when my place was shifted by circumstance, be grave inconsistency if i continued to declare that i still saw blue. i do not. my eyes tell me it is red. just now my eyes told me it was blue. but i have not changed, nor has the great diamond changed; it is merely that the refracted light has taken another colour.
it is just that which one must perceive in the telling of a story. a person who sees blue all his life probably sees nothing at all, nothing, anyhow, in the least worth recording. he is bound as the wheel of circumstances goes round to see things in other lights. but that is not inconsistency; it is the truly consistent. who wants, after all, for ever to draw the same conclusion from the same premises? only fossils, and possibly molluscs.
but pity the sorrows of the story-teller! the quality of the red has to be of the same quality as the blue. the same fire which strikes to the south will indubitably strike to all other points of the compass, and when x is wheeled north,{242} he will not see the same green as y sees there. he saw it through the alchemy of his own mind; it will be green, but nobody else’s green. or if it is, he has no individuality to speak of. at least he belongs to a type that sees everything through the eyes of others. that is generally labelled conventional, and there seems no reason to change the name.
how i laboured during those last ten days of january, and how little result there seems to be! only—i console myself with this—the real labour of writing does not chiefly consist in the effort of putting things down, but in the moral effort of rejecting them. there is nothing easier than to fill pages and pages with improving reflections or inspiring events. but having done that, it is necessary to sound the tuning-fork and see if, as i said at first, the story is in tune, if the key is kept. usually it is not. on which the fire ought to make to itself a momentary beacon, or the waste-paper basket be replete. but the pile of numbered pages should in any case be starving. that, as a matter of fact, is my sole argument that i have justified my existence during these ten days. i have really{243} worked a great deal, and the waste-paper basket could say how generous has been its diet. i have really left out a very great deal, and i hasten to forestall the critic who will say that i should, in order to act up to this excellent standard, have left out the rest. i do not agree with him.
the key of which i have spoken has to be preserved, not only in matters of consistency in character-drawing, but in style as well. if you lead off with verbiage from the orient, the east must continue, i submit, to dye your paragraphs till the last page is turned. though you may have also at your command pure wells of the most limpid simplicity, you will have to reserve them for some other immortal work; they will not mix with the incense and heady draughts from the east. or should you fancy a mysterious delphic mode of diction, delphic you must be to the end. but—as if all this was not so difficult, that, like dr. johnson, we almost wish it was frankly impossible—interwoven in your delphic or oriental narrative there must be a totally different woof—namely, the thread of the spoken word, the speeches that you put into{244} the mouths of your various characters. and the written word, be it remembered, is never like the spoken word: the two vocabularies, to begin with, are totally distinct, and though i would not go so far as to affirm that the spoken word ought to be ungrammatical, it should, if it is to recall human speech, be colloquial, conversational. in interchange of ideas by means of the mouth real people do not use fine language, especially when their emotions are strongly aroused. then, instead of becoming high-flown and ornate in their speech, real people go to the opposite extreme, and instinctively use only the very simplest words. when this is stated, it seems natural enough, but you will find it very seldom practised. novelists have a tendency to let their puppets employ magnificent high-sounding words to express the intensity and splendour of great emotion; in fact, you may gauge the strength of their emotions, as a rule, by the sonorous quality of their adjectives. i believe the very opposite to be the truth of the matter: people in the grip of passion do not use beautiful or highly-coloured words; above all, they do not, like mr. wegg, ‘drop into poetry.’ yet{245} nothing is commoner than to find prose degenerating into blank verse in the spoken records of emotional crises, as if blank verse was a sublime form of prose. little nell is continually half-way between prose and poetry, so also is nicholas nickleby when his indignation is roused. in fact, in some of his scenes with ralph they both forget themselves so much in their passion that torrents of decasyllabic lines flow from their lips. but, on the other hand, the language of narrative should undoubtedly grow more coloured, more vivid in such descriptions as are the setting of some very emotional scene. yet it should not depart from its original key.... well, as mr. tulliver said, ‘it’s puzzling work talking.’
but though the days have been so full, i have seen everything, everything through the two transparencies that seem drawn between external happenings and me.
