The Dial (Third Series)/Volume 75/An Historical Novel
AN HISTORICAL NOVEL
The Conquered. By Naomi Mitchison. 12mo. 317 pages. Harcourt, Brace and Company. $2.
THE writing of a first-rate historical novel demands not only a thorough knowledge of the selected period, but also considerable imaginative power, and, most important of all, a high order of literary tact. It is extremely doubtful whether Mrs Mitchison is sufficiently endowed with the two latter qualifications.
Her book, The Conquered, is concerned with the subjection of Gaul by Julius Caesar and the plot of her story has to do with the friendship that springs up between the Roman officer, Titus, and his servant the enslaved Gaul, Meromic—a friendship pregnant with the kind of drama which inevitably rises out of a conflict between patriotism and a personal relationship.
In spite of the book's historic accuracy one's illusion of reality is continually being unsettled by the obtrusion of this or that word of modern association. So much is this the case that, for the first time, one comes to appreciate how invaluable can be, on occasions, the old-fashioned device of using archaic language in this sort of writing. For example, when Mrs Mitchison causes Meromic and Fiommar to indulge in the following dialogue one feels one's sense of the appropriate thoroughly outraged. In historic fiction the mere suspicion of jocosity is dangerous and when it is suggestive of any modern variety of facetiousness all but fatal. The two barbarians have been enjoying a swim near their favourite Crabland.
"'I shan't be able to do this when I'm married!' sighed Fiommar, putting on her clothes.
"'Oh, do stop about being married!' the brother answered. 'It's not that a bit, it's getting old. Uncle's not married, but he never goes swimming about—I wish he did!"
"It conjured up, for both of them the infinitely ludicrous picture of the Druid uncle swimming very solemnly and completely in long white robes, with his mistletoe wreath just the tiniest bit on one side. 'Singing hymns' suggested Fiommar; 'and excommunicating the sharks,' added her brother."
But it would be unfair to leave the impression that the average level of Mrs Mitchison's writing is as vulgar and silly as this. On occasions she can do far better, as for instance when she so happily puts us in touch with the rude hilarity of the Gallic rabble who have treacherously taken Titus prisoner while he is buying grain.
"One of them rode up with a sack of corn across his horse’s back behind, a bag of gold in front; he shouted, 'I've been marketing with the Romans!'"
That is excellent. As we read it we know it is just what might have happened. Indeed this art of plausibly reconstructing the mood and atmosphere of the dead past is a most subtle one. Strangely enough any attempt at exact realism almost inevitably destroys the sense of reality, the best effects being won, it would seem, by vagueness and omission. The simple allusion to Fiommar "putting on her clothes" reveals an injudicious use of words; still
more, perhaps, is this so when we are told that the "blood was sticky on her dress." In both cases more uncertain words should surely have been selected, words that would have left the imagination free from too familiar associations.
However, in those backgrounds of her story which reflect certain aspects of nature, where infallibility is as a rule assumed, her work is often marred by inaccuracy of observation. Lerrys, the Gaul, is led to a Druidical Grove in Britain to take a false oath, but one's conviction as to the reality of the scene is in no way increased by being told that the "foxgloves rocked in the breeze" when any one who is familiar with the woods of England in the late summer knows that these particular flowers have long passed their time of blooming by the latter end of August. In the same way our sense of the reality of Meromic's journey from France to Italy is decidedly diminished by the information that "Overhead the new, bright stars crowded the sky." In so short a migration southward it would require an extremely punctilious astronomical observer to note any difference in the constellations at all.
After the manner of Salammbô much of the book consists in descriptions of the sanguinary brutalities of the age; so much so, in fact, that one comes to feel at last that the obvious bias of the author towards sentimentality is mitigated by more interesting proclivities.
Walter Pater in his portrayal of Cornelius has shown us how wearisome imaginary young Romans can be when they are distinguished for goodness and nice feeling and in her concluding chapter Mrs Mitchison fairly lets herself go in describing the felicitous domesticity of the Titus ménage. For certain readers the value of The Conquered may be fairly gauged by the following quotation:
"He had come in late one day, after being out since daybreak, and found his wife cutting long branches of oleander from the tall bushes where the evening sun still rested. Under an arbutus tree by the edge of the stream his two children were playing with their nurse and maid: he heard their high little voices across the lawn and smiled. Aemilia came to him with her arms full of branches. 'Where have you been today?' . . . 'I went over and had dinner with Lerrys. . . . I found Coisha in the kitchen making some of those delicious little cakes of hers; you never give me anything half so good!'
"She laughed 'You know you only like them because they're Gallic; if I made them and said they were Greek you'd think nothing of them! I suppose the baby's beginning to walk now?'"