ON PEOPLE IN BOOKS

It is a matter for the curious to examine (but not the wisest will determine it) why people in books are so extraordinarily¹ different from real people. You might imagine that the people in biographies at least would be more or less like human beings—but they never are. A man may say that the reason of this is that biography to-day is always a sort of modern, pale, conventional, and hypocritical affair—that the biographer dare not print nine-tenths of his material under our modern tyranny of suppression, and that he has necessarily to make a puppet of his man. But there are others besides modern biographies, and it is true of them all that the people inside are not human. You have biographies of politicians acting² upon principle; biographies of men who have accumulated vast fortunes without a hint of their main passion; biographies of men of lineage in which you are given to understand that their distinction was due to some individual worth and force. Biographies of the frankest and most brutal³ periods, biographies of men long dead, biographies written by enemies, all have this in common, that the person inside the book does not go on like a human being.[Pg 38] Autobiographies⁴ give one a better chance, but even there, though you get something much more vivid, you never get a real man. It seems as though the writing of an autobiography⁵ or confession⁶ always went with a twist, either morbid⁷ or megalomaniac. Take the very best one of all, Rousseau's; it can be proved, and research has proved it, that he is perpetually maligning⁸ himself. As for St. Augustine's (oh, how dull!) he tells us so little, and his purpose is so far from being autobiographical that it does not come under the same criticism; and as for Borrow, those who have read him assure me that he is perpetually performing marvellous feats⁹ of intelligence and courage to which there is no witness at all but himself. Hagiographers are appalling¹⁰. They do not attempt to present a living figure, though I will make an exception for one account of the death of St. Thomas of Canterbury; I forget which, but it is full of realities. Your stock hagiographer, as, for instance, he of the Carolingian period, postulates¹¹ three things: the noble birth of his hero, his boldly standing¹² up to somebody else (usually a layman), and his performing a number of actions precisely¹³ similar to those which others of the type have performed; it is almost mechanical; it is like the leader in a party newspaper describing a party speech by a party man.

People in histories also are not human beings. The moment you try to make them human in writing your history a demon¹⁴ enters and makes you make a[Pg 39] great quantity of little mistakes. For instance, you are writing about a man with one eye, and you are determined¹⁵ to make him human; you find out all you can about that eye, whether the other one was of glass, or was just left screwed up in the old-fashioned style. You get right about the date of the time when he lost his eye, the effect which his one eye had on other people, and all the rest of it. You make the man live again before you, and the moment you begin writing about him you will make his left eye his right eye. It is the knowledge of this, and the fear of the powerful Demon who works it, that makes historians shun¹⁶ the human being and stuff their books full of ghosts paler than any that wander by Acheron.

This is especially true of historians of war. The people they write about occupy "strategic" points (a phrase which is blankly meaningless to the writer as to the reader), they "grasp" the situation at a glance, they "master detail," they are (when the author is against them), "in spite of all their faults, not devoid¹⁷ of physical courage," or (if the author is in favour of them) "acting with that quiet decision which is characteristic of them" (and of bad actors in problem plays, too, by the way), but they never live.

Now and then you get flashes; the eyes glance, the tones take on reality, there is a human voice and gesture, but it dies again. Perhaps the most vivid and most fascinating of such histories in our tongue[Pg 40] is Napier's. You will continually find such flashes in it—but they are not permanently¹⁸ connected. It is odd that the most living of histories are the exceedingly simple and bald relations set down under primitive¹⁹ conditions of society when a man merely desired to chronicle dates and facts. How it is so no one can tell, but a plain statement of some not very interesting thing with just a verb and a substantive²⁰ will do the trick. For instance, where Eginhard says of Charlemagne that everything about him was virile²¹ "except his voice, which was high," or again, where Fulcher of Chartres (I think it is) says of a spy on the crusading march that he was "short in the nose and in every virtue²²." But even the early historians build up no continuously living figure.

When it comes to novelists the matter is notorious. The people in novels not only do not go on like real people, but they do things sometimes physically²³, always morally, impossible to real people. I have often wished to know a professional novelist in order to ask him why his people went on like that. To take quite small points. A lover and his lady in a novel will often hunt the fox. So far so good. There is nothing impossible about that. When they have done running after the animal they go home together, and their horses walk side by side. How is that done? Except horses in cavalry²⁴ regiments²⁵ or in circuses, or horses constrained²⁶ and tied by leather thongs²⁷ in front of wheeled vehicles, when were two horses ever seen that walked the same[Pg 41] pace side by side? The novelist may say that it is necessary to the convention of his novel. It would spoil a love scene if he showed one of the two horses dragging further and further behind the other (as one of them always does), and then having to canter or trot²⁸ every three minutes to catch up his neighbour, and it would also spoil his love scene if he made one of the horses walking slowly and the other dancing, which in real life is one of the ways in which people attempt to keep two horses abreast²⁹. But there are many things in your novel which have no such excuse, and which are equally out of Nature. For instance, people sit down suddenly and write enormous cheques at a moment's notice. Now even the richest man cannot do that. He has his money invested, he does not waste it by letting it lie idle in gigantic balances of a current account. Then again, the things they do with their mouths. "'No,' she laughed." How on earth could that be done? If you try to laugh and say "No" at the same time it sounds like neighing—yet people are perpetually doing it in novels. If they did it in real life they would be locked up. Another thing that people do in novels on all sides is to make immensely long speeches. Sometimes the whole of the author's views upon some big matter, like the fate of the soul for instance, comes pouring out in a solid page and a half of spoken stuff. In real life the only people who do this are politicians, and even they only do it on stated and ritual occasions; they do not do it[Pg 42] in private houses. Sometimes they try, but they are interrupted.

Yet again, consider the vast number of titles which people have in novels. I cannot call to mind one single novel without a title—I mean no novel of the modern kind. Of course there must be such, but they are certainly rare. Now in real life things are not thus. All the ordinary people of this country go about day after day without meeting lords and ladies, but in novels something like half the characters come in quite casually³⁰ with titles, and I have been told that it is a matter of professional pride with some novelists to be able to get the complicated system of English titles exactly right, and that they will even fabricate difficult problems for the pleasure of solving them, as do men who play chess. They will take the younger son of an earl, make him a Colonial Cabinet Minister, and then triumphantly³¹ settle for you which of the two "honourables" he is; or again, they will marry the heiress of a marquisate inheritable in the female line to the eldest³² son of a man who comes into a barony later on in the book—and get it absolute. But people in real life do not care much about these things.

Conversely, a very large number of things that do happen in real life and are interesting never seem to get into novels. For instance, repetitions. Your hero will fall off a horse and break something, but he does not do it twenty times as he would if he were a[Pg 43] living being. A man comes late to dinner, but he is not always coming late to dinner as he would if he were human: and, what is worse, a score of highly interesting real types never get between covers at all.

Take, for instance, that immoderately common type, among the most common of God's creatures, which I will call "the Silent Fool," the man who hardly ever talks, and when he does says something so overwhelmingly silly that one remembers it all one's life. I can recollect³³ but one Silent Fool in modern letters, but he comes in a book which is one of the half-dozen immortal³⁴ achievements of our time, a book like a decisive battle, or like the statue of John the Baptist at South Kensington, a glory for us all. I mean The Diary of a Nobody. In that you will find the silent Mr. Padge, who says "That's right"—and nothing more.

One might go on for ever piling up instances of this divorce between the supposed pictures of our modern life and the truths of it. I will end with what is to me, perhaps, the most glaring of all: the attitude of fiction towards what is called "success." No matter who the author is, no matter what his knowledge of the world, he simply cannot draw "successful men" as they are, that is, in a diversity as great as any to be discovered in the human race. Men who have "got on," that is, who are at once well to do and well known, are as different as men with the toothache or as men with warts³⁵ on their chins.[Pg 44] Some are kind, some brutal, some clever, some stupid, some got their money by luck, some by inheritance, some by theft, some few by being able to make or do something better than their fellows, but at any rate in real life, when you are about to meet someone who is known to you as "successful," you never have the slightest idea what you are going to meet, your last experience of the sort is no guide to the next, and the "successful" chap may turn out to be anything at all. But in novels your wealthy and well-known man is invariably powerful in character. It never fails. He may be good or bad, English or foreign, young or old, but he always has in him something of what you see in a very good sergeant-major at a few shillings a week, an experienced head master at a few hundreds a year, or a capable engineer on a passenger ship. He displays qualities which have no more to do with what is called "success" now-a-days than red hair or brown boots have. In a word, your successful man is a type in the novel. In real life he is not a type at all—he is any one. And another thing you never get in a novel is a well-mannered man or a bad-mannered man. I cannot recollect one character who interrupts at the top of his voice, nor one who joins the conversation of others in an easy way.... But suppose one filled a novel with real people, what escape would there be from daily life?

1 extraordinarily   

adv.格外地；极端地

参考例句：

• She is an extraordinarily beautiful girl.她是个美丽非凡的姑娘。
• The sea was extraordinarily calm that morning.那天清晨，大海出奇地宁静。

2 acting   

n.演戏，行为，假装；adj.代理的，临时的，演出用的

参考例句：

• Ignore her,she's just acting.别理她，她只是假装的。
• During the seventies,her acting career was in eclipse.在七十年代，她的表演生涯黯然失色。

3 brutal   

adj.残忍的，野蛮的，不讲理的

参考例句：

• She has to face the brutal reality.她不得不去面对冷酷的现实。
• They're brutal people behind their civilised veneer.他们表面上温文有礼，骨子里却是野蛮残忍。

4 autobiographies   

n.自传( autobiography的名词复数 )；自传文学

参考例句：

• The series was based on the autobiographies of the author. 这部连续剧是根据那位作家的自传拍摄的。 来自《简明英汉词典》
• There are some songs and, recently, a few autobiographies about peasant experience. 有些歌曲描述了农民的经验，最近还出了几本自传。 来自互联网

5 autobiography   

n.自传

参考例句：

• He published his autobiography last autumn.他去年秋天出版了自己的自传。
• His life story is recounted in two fascinating volumes of autobiography.这两卷引人入胜的自传小说详述了他的生平。

6 confession   

n.自白，供认，承认

参考例句：

• Her confession was simply tantamount to a casual explanation.她的自白简直等于一篇即席说明。
• The police used torture to extort a confession from him.警察对他用刑逼供。

7 morbid   

adj.病的；致病的；病态的；可怕的

参考例句：

• Some people have a morbid fascination with crime.一些人对犯罪有一种病态的痴迷。
• It's morbid to dwell on cemeteries and such like.不厌其烦地谈论墓地以及诸如此类的事是一种病态。

8 maligning   

vt.污蔑，诽谤（malign的现在分词形式）

参考例句：

• She was criticized for maligning innocent people. 她由于中伤好人而受到批评。 来自互联网

9 feats   

功绩，伟业，技艺( feat的名词复数 )

参考例句：

• He used to astound his friends with feats of physical endurance. 过去，他表现出来的惊人耐力常让朋友们大吃一惊。
• His heroic feats made him a legend in his own time. 他的英雄业绩使他成了他那个时代的传奇人物。

10 appalling   

adj.骇人听闻的，令人震惊的，可怕的

参考例句：

• The search was hampered by appalling weather conditions.恶劣的天气妨碍了搜寻工作。
• Nothing can extenuate such appalling behaviour.这种骇人听闻的行径罪无可恕。

11 postulates   

v.假定，假设( postulate的第三人称单数 )

参考例句：

• They proclaimed to be eternal postulates of reason and justice. 他们宣称这些原则是理性和正义的永恒的要求。 来自辞典例句
• The school building programme postulates an increase in educational investment. 修建校舍的计画是在增加教育经费的前提下拟定的。 来自辞典例句

12 standing   

n.持续，地位；adj.永久的，不动的，直立的，不流动的

参考例句：

• After the earthquake only a few houses were left standing.地震过后只有几幢房屋还立着。
• They're standing out against any change in the law.他们坚决反对对法律做任何修改。

13 precisely   

adv.恰好，正好，精确地，细致地

参考例句：

• It's precisely that sort of slick sales-talk that I mistrust.我不相信的正是那种油腔滑调的推销宣传。
• The man adjusted very precisely.那个人调得很准。

14 demon   

n.魔鬼，恶魔

参考例句：

• The demon of greed ruined the miser's happiness.贪得无厌的恶习毁掉了那个守财奴的幸福。
• He has been possessed by the demon of disease for years.他多年来病魔缠身。

15 determined   

adj.坚定的；有决心的

参考例句：

• I have determined on going to Tibet after graduation.我已决定毕业后去西藏。
• He determined to view the rooms behind the office.他决定查看一下办公室后面的房间。

16 shun   

vt.避开，回避，避免

参考例句：

• Materialists face truth,whereas idealists shun it.唯物主义者面向真理，唯心主义者则逃避真理。
• This extremist organization has shunned conventional politics.这个极端主义组织有意避开了传统政治。

17 devoid   

adj.全无的，缺乏的

参考例句：

• He is completely devoid of humour.他十分缺乏幽默。
• The house is totally devoid of furniture.这所房子里什么家具都没有。

18 permanently   

adv.永恒地，永久地，固定不变地

参考例句：

• The accident left him permanently scarred.那次事故给他留下了永久的伤疤。
• The ship is now permanently moored on the Thames in London.该船现在永久地停泊在伦敦泰晤士河边。

19 primitive   

adj.原始的；简单的；n.原(始)人，原始事物

参考例句：

• It is a primitive instinct to flee a place of danger.逃离危险的地方是一种原始本能。
• His book describes the march of the civilization of a primitive society.他的著作描述了一个原始社会的开化过程。

20 substantive   

adj.表示实在的；本质的、实质性的；独立的；n.实词，实名词；独立存在的实体

参考例句：

• They plan to meet again in Rome very soon to begin substantive negotiations.他们计划不久在罗马再次会晤以开始实质性的谈判。
• A president needs substantive advice,but he also requires emotional succor. 一个总统需要实质性的建议，但也需要感情上的支持。

21 virile   

adj.男性的；有男性生殖力的；有男子气概的；强有力的

参考例句：

• She loved the virile young swimmer.她爱上了那个有男子气概的年轻游泳运动员。
• He wanted his sons to become strong,virile,and athletic like himself.他希望他的儿子们能长得像他一样强壮、阳刚而又健美。

22 virtue   

n.德行，美德；贞操；优点；功效，效力

参考例句：

• He was considered to be a paragon of virtue.他被认为是品德尽善尽美的典范。
• You need to decorate your mind with virtue.你应该用德行美化心灵。

23 physically   

adj.物质上，体格上，身体上，按自然规律

参考例句：

• He was out of sorts physically,as well as disordered mentally.他浑身不舒服，心绪也很乱。
• Every time I think about it I feel physically sick.一想起那件事我就感到极恶心。

24 cavalry   

n.骑兵；轻装甲部队

参考例句：

• We were taken in flank by a troop of cavalry. 我们翼侧受到一队骑兵的袭击。
• The enemy cavalry rode our men down. 敌人的骑兵撞倒了我们的人。

25 regiments   

（军队的）团( regiment的名词复数 )； 大量的人或物

参考例句：

• The three regiments are all under the command of you. 这三个团全归你节制。
• The town was garrisoned with two regiments. 该镇有两团士兵驻守。

26 constrained   

adj.束缚的,节制的

参考例句：

• The evidence was so compelling that he felt constrained to accept it. 证据是那样的令人折服，他觉得不得不接受。
• I feel constrained to write and ask for your forgiveness. 我不得不写信请你原谅。

27 thongs   

的东西

参考例句：

• Things ain't what they used to be. 现在情况不比从前了。
• Things have been going badly . 事情进展得不顺利。

28 trot   

n.疾走，慢跑；n.老太婆；现成译本；(复数）trots:腹泻（与the 连用）；v.小跑，快步走，赶紧

参考例句：

• They passed me at a trot.他们从我身边快步走过。
• The horse broke into a brisk trot.马突然快步小跑起来。

29 abreast   

adv.并排地；跟上(时代)的步伐，与…并进地

参考例句：

• She kept abreast with the flood of communications that had poured in.她及时回复如雪片般飞来的大批信件。
• We can't keep abreast of the developing situation unless we study harder.我们如果不加强学习，就会跟不上形势。

30 casually   

adv.漠不关心地，无动于衷地，不负责任地

参考例句：

• She remarked casually that she was changing her job.她当时漫不经心地说要换工作。
• I casually mentioned that I might be interested in working abroad.我不经意地提到我可能会对出国工作感兴趣。

31 triumphantly   

ad.得意洋洋地；得胜地；成功地

参考例句：

• The lion was roaring triumphantly. 狮子正在发出胜利的吼叫。
• Robert was looking at me triumphantly. 罗伯特正得意扬扬地看着我。

32 eldest   

adj.最年长的，最年老的

参考例句：

• The King's eldest son is the heir to the throne.国王的长子是王位的继承人。
• The castle and the land are entailed on the eldest son.城堡和土地限定由长子继承。

33 recollect   

v.回忆，想起，记起，忆起，记得

参考例句：

• He tried to recollect things and drown himself in them.他极力回想过去的事情而沉浸于回忆之中。
• She could not recollect being there.她回想不起曾经到过那儿。

34 immortal   

adj.不朽的；永生的，不死的；神的

参考例句：

• The wild cocoa tree is effectively immortal.野生可可树实际上是不会死的。
• The heroes of the people are immortal!人民英雄永垂不朽！

35 warts   

n.疣( wart的名词复数 )；肉赘；树瘤；缺点

参考例句：

• You agreed to marry me, warts and all! 是你同意和我结婚的，我又没掩饰缺陷。 来自辞典例句
• Talk about trying to cure warts with spunk-water such a blame fool way as that! 用那样糊涂蛋的方法还谈什么仙水治疣子！ 来自英汉文学 - 汤姆历险