++GK Chesterton - The Victorian Age Of Literature by Anonymous

Author:Anonymous [Anonymous]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2013-10-07T00:00:00+00:00

There gathers round these two great novelists a considerable group of

good novelists, who more or less mirror their mid-Victorian mood. Wilkie

Collins may be said to be in this way a lesser Dickens and Anthony

Trollope a lesser Thackeray. Wilkie Collins is chiefly typical of his

time in this respect: that while his moral and religious conceptions

were as mechanical as his carefully constructed fictitious conspiracies,

he nevertheless informed the latter with a sort of involuntary mysticism

which dealt wholly with the darker side of the soul. For this was one

of the most peculiar of the problems of the Victorian mind. The idea of

the supernatural was perhaps at as low an ebb as it had ever

been, certainly much lower than it is now. But in spite of this, and in

spite of a certain ethical cheeriness that was almost de rigueur the

strange fact remains that the only sort of supernaturalism the

Victorians allowed to their imaginations was a sad supernaturalism. They

might have ghost stories, but not saints' stories. They could trifle

with the curse or unpardoning prophecy of a witch, but not with the

pardon of a priest. They seem to have held (I believe erroneously) that

the supernatural was safest when it came from below. When we think (for

example) of the uncountable riches of religious art, imagery, ritual and

popular legend that has clustered round Christmas through all the

Christian ages, it is a truly extraordinary thing to reflect that

Dickens (wishing to have in The Christmas Carol a little happy

supernaturalism by way of a change) actually had to make up a mythology

for himself. Here was one of the rare cases where Dickens, in a real and

human sense, did suffer from the lack of culture. For the rest, Wilkie

Collins is these two elements: the mechanical and the mystical; both

very good of their kind. He is one of the few novelists in whose case it

is proper and literal to speak of his "plots." He was a plotter; he went

about to slay Godfrey Ablewhite as coldly and craftily as the Indians

did. But he also had a sound though sinister note of true magic; as in

the repetition of the two white dresses in The Woman in White; or of

the dreams with their double explanations in Armadale. His ghosts do

walk. They are alive; and walk as softly as Count Fosco, but as solidly.

Finally, The Moonstone is probably the best detective tale in the

world.

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