All should be plain, all straightforward to the end.
Hence it is that, in RHODA FLEMING, Mrs. Lovell raises such
resentment in the reader; her motives are too flimsy, her ways are
too equivocal, for the weight and strength of her surroundings.
Hence the hot indignation of the reader when Balzac, after having
begun the DUCHESSE DE LANGEAIS in terms of strong if somewhat
swollen passion, cuts the knot by the derangement of the hero's
clock. Such personages and incidents belong to the novel of
character; they are out of place in the high society of the
passions; when the passions are introduced in art at their full
height, we look to see them, not baffled and impotently striving,
as in life, but towering above circumstance and acting substitutes
for fate.
And here I can imagine Mr. James, with his lucid sense, to
intervene. To much of what I have said he would apparently demur;
in much he would, somewhat impatiently, acquiesce. It may be true;
but it is not what he desired to say or to hear said. He spoke of
the finished picture and its worth when done; I, of the brushes,
the palette, and the north light. He uttered his views in the tone
and for the ear of good society; I, with the emphasis and
technicalities of the obtrusive student. But the point, I may
reply, is not merely to amuse the public, but to offer helpful
advice to the young writer.
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