Talks on Writing English

XIV
DESCRIPTION

Description is at once the most common and the most difficult of the varieties of composition. It is apparently a thing which nobody fears to undertake, while it is certainly one which only a master is able to do really well. Everybody attempts it, yet there are probably in literature fewer fully successful descriptions than there are examples of any other sort of writing whatever.

A description is an endeavor to call up before the mind of the reader a picture of the thing described. Nothing is easier than to make a catalogue of things which one has seen; to schedule the details of a landscape, the particulars of a building, a room or a person. To convey a clear and accurate idea of the whole is most difficult. The untrained writer is apt to make of his attempts at description a mere running memorandum of points which he remembers in a scene. He sets down a list of matters more or less important, not because he can thus make the whole vivid and real to the reader, but because they are true. The result is that he has forced the truth to convey a falsehood – if indeed it be made to convey anything intelligible.

No student can go far in the examination of any of the arts without discovering that the object of expression is not so much to tell the truth as to produce an impression of truth. The literal truth may easily give a false impression, and becomes in that case the most vicious of falsehoods of which art is capable, just as the telling of facts with intent to deceive is the most dangerous form of lying. The thing to be sought is not accuracy of statement, but accuracy of perception, and the means must be subordinated to the effect.

It follows that even more vitally important than that all details be true, is that they be significant; that they not only appeal to the memory or the reason of the writer, but that they have a creative effect upon the mind of the reader. The author may remember that all the things which he sets down are true, yet it may be that all which he writes is false in its result. In morals it is fitting that we give credit for good intentions, no matter what the result of them may be; in authorship the intention is of no consequence whatever. The result is the only thing to be taken into account. Here to fail is to fail, whether one meant well or ill; and from this there is no escape.

I am of course keeping strictly to the definition of Description which has been given. In that form of Exposition which is frequently called Description, the giving a scientific or practical account of a thing, accuracy of detail is of the first importance. If one is called upon to “describe” a machine, it is not usually meant that he shall try to present to the mind a picture of it, but that he shall expound it. This is not Description in a literary sense, and with this we have nothing now to do. In the sense in which the term is used as naming a department of composition, Description is not scientific, but emotional; not categorical, but literary; not intellectual, so much as visual. The description of a landscape falls short of its intent just so far as it fails to call up before the inner eye the image which was before the mind of the writer, – save in so far as from the nature of language any word-picture must fall short. If a passage designed to paint a scene does not make the reader seem actually to see that scene it cannot be held that the author has fulfilled his intention.

It must be recognized once and for all that words cannot really paint. No artificer can labor intelligently until he has learned not only the possibilities but also the limitations of the means at his disposal. In writing it is important to remember what words cannot do as well as what they can effect. The most that the writer can hope to do is to revive in the mind of the reader images which the latter has seen. In speaking of the limitations of language in the first of these talks, I reminded you that when we read the description of a landscape we construct an image out of material already in the mind. Words cannot paint; that is the province of another art. The painter is able to present fresh forms, colors, combinations, new landscapes, strange and unknown figures, and all varieties of visual novelty. The writer must content himself with a reawakening and a rearrangement of forms, figures, colors, images, already in the reader’s mind. His effect of novelty must come from fresh and untried combinations; from the vividness with which he is able to arouse these remembered images until they appear so real as to seem new.

It easily follows that the writer who understands his art will cunningly avail himself of images which are likely to be stored in the minds of his readers. It is the same principle which directs us to appeal to common emotions, to the general experiences of mankind.⁵ Let us examine a little this extract from an account of a walk in the woods in England: —

“Looking between the trees, I saw a little circular glade, two or three score feet across. It was covered with soft, thin grass, speckled with palely blue scabiosas, and set round with tall, slender trees. On one side was a strange imitation of the great trilith at Stonehenge, formed by two tall boulders across which had fallen the trunk of a large beech tree.”

In America the reader might not know what scabiosas are, but as this was written in England, where, in some parts at least, the pale blue blossoms of the flower are common in every field, the audience addressed would probably not be puzzled by this word. It is to be supposed that even there, however, there would be many who would fail to feel any force in the phrase “the great trilith at Stonehenge.” A few might have seen it, and others might be familiar with pictures representing it; but the chance of finding this image in the mind of the reader was so small as to render its use at least ill-advised; and especially so as the comparison is that of a trifling thing to a great one. The reader who recalled Stonehenge would be likely to feel that there was small excuse for likening a tree trunk tumbled across a couple of boulders to the magnificent and mysterious monuments of Salisbury Plain.

An example of the fact that even in dealing with the supernatural a writer has no resource save images already known may be found in any story dealing with the weird. Take this from Rudyard Kipling’s tale, “The Return of Imray,” where the spirit of a murdered man is haunting the house: —

We were alone in the house, but none the less it was too fully occupied by a tenant with whom I did not wish to interfere. I never saw him, but I could see the curtain between the rooms quivering where he had just passed through; I could hear the chairs creaking as the bamboos sprung under a weight that had just quitted them; and I could feel when I went to get a book from the dining-room that somebody was waiting in the shadows of the front veranda till I should have gone away.

This is perhaps not one of Mr. Kipling’s happiest passages, since it insists somewhat too strongly upon the corporeal bulk of the phantom, but it illustrates the point which we are considering.

Of the greatest importance in Description is the point of view. First there is the question of the physical point of view. The writer must know certainly and clearly at what point he has placed the reader to look at the landscape, the person, or the scene which is described. In the first lecture I quoted the description which opens Kingsley’s “Westward Ho!” There the point of view is that of one approaching the “little white town of Bideford,” but there is at the very outset a violation of propriety which injures the force of the whole. “The little white town of Bideford,” the author says, “which slopes upward from its broad tide-river paved with yellow sands, and many-arched old bridge where salmon wait for Autumn floods.” The “yellow sands” and the salmon are details which are known to one familiar with the town, but they are not apparent to the stranger, they are not evident from the point of view chosen, and their introduction at once confuses the impression.

Goethe, who was keenly alive to all the details of literary workmanship, commented upon a passage in Scott which violates the point of view. In talking with Eckermann he said: —

It is a peculiarity of Walter Scott’s that his great talent in representing details often leads him into faults. Thus in “Ivanhoe,” there is a scene where they are seated at a table in a castle-hall, at night, and a stranger enters. Now, he is quite right in describing the stranger’s appearance and dress, but it is a fault that he goes to the length of describing his feet, shoes, and stockings. When we sit down in the evening and some one comes in, we notice only the upper part of his body. If I describe the feet, daylight enters at once, and the scene loses its nocturnal character. – March 11, 1831.

 

The point of view may of course be progressive. The reader may be led on through a landscape or through the rooms of a house, for instance. In this it is necessary to keep clearly in mind and to make evident to the reader every alteration in the point of sight. Properly used, this method may be very effective; but the least vagueness inevitably leads to confusion. No description can be successful if there is any uncertainty in regard to the station of observation. The reader must know where he is looking from as well as what he is at. He may not, it is true, realize this, but the writer must realize it for him.

What has been said of the physical point of view may be applied to the emotional. The feeling of the spectator influences the impression made upon him by that at which he looks. Do not forget the mood in which you expect your reader to see the mental picture which you are endeavoring to present. If you introduce into the midst of a highly wrought and exciting tale a description of a scene so closely connected with the narrative that it is important for the reader to see it clearly, you have to consider that if you have the hold you should have upon him he is aroused by the story, and will look with quickened eyes upon the view your words present. You may therefore give him, quickly and sharply, details such as imprint themselves on the brain in moments of excitement. The principle is one so obvious as hardly to need further illustration; but it is not to be looked upon as of small importance because small space is here given to it.

Much modern description may be said to be entirely emotional, in the sense that it aims rather to produce the emotions aroused by a scene than to picture the scene in its physical aspect. A recognition of the difficulty of presenting a visual image has brought this about, just as it has brought about the discarding of the old-time fashion of cataloguing details. The modern heroine, for instance, is seldom described by the best novelists. Two or three characteristic particulars are generally considered sufficient to suggest the whole, or one touch is cunningly added to another in the body of the narrative, so that the image is formed almost imperceptibly.

It is convenient to consider Description as being of two sorts, although no sharp line can be drawn between them. One method may be called Direct Description, and the other Suggestive Description.

The names indicate the distinction, – an attempt to call up a picture by the enumeration directly of the characteristics of an object or a scene, or to suggest it by an imaginative figure. The former is the simpler, the more common, the less subtle. The difference between these sorts of description may perhaps be appreciated by contrasting two passages, the first from Shelley’s “Mont Blanc,” and the second from Coleridge’s “Hymn before Sunrise in the Vale of Chamouni.” Shelley, dealing directly with his subject, and enumerating actual features of the scene, writes: —

 
Thus thou, Ravine of Arve – dark, deep Ravine —
Thou many-colored, many-voicèd vale,
Over whose pines and crags and caverns sail
Fast cloud-shadows and sunbeams.
 

Coleridge, on the other hand, suggests a picture rather than gives one directly: —

 
Hast thou a charm to stay the morning star
In his steep course? So long he seems to pause
On thy bald, awful head, O sovran Blanc!
 

In the one case there is a statement of particulars, and from these separate features the reader is expected to build up the scene before his mental vision. In the other there is merely a suggestion of the morning star hovering lingeringly over the snowy, awe-inspiring crest of the mighty mountain. It seems to me that in this especial instance Coleridge, for once at least, has the better of Shelley, and that the implied picture is more vivid and effective than the picture more carefully elaborated.

To take an illustration from prose, let us contrast the description which Dickens gives of Sairey Gamp with that of Mrs. Fezziwig. Of the former he says: —

She was a fat old woman, this Mrs. Gamp, with a husky voice and a moist eye, which she had a remarkable power of turning up and only showing the white of it.⁶ Having very little neck, it cost her some trouble to look over herself, if one may say so, at those to whom she talked. She wore a very rusty gown, rather the worse for snuff, and a shawl and bonnet to correspond… The face of Mrs. Gamp – the nose in particular – was red and swollen; and it was difficult to enjoy her society without becoming conscious of a smell of spirits.

Of the other lady Dickens merely remarks: —

In came Mrs. Fezziwig, one vast substantial smile.

Good as the former of these descriptions is of its kind, it seems to me that if this were all that we were told about these two characters, we should have in the mind a more distinct picture of Mrs. Fezziwig than of Mrs. Gamp. One is not obliged to share this opinion, however, to appreciate the difference between the two methods.

In Direct Description, the first thing to be considered, after the point of view is selected, is what is the central idea of the picture which is to be produced. It is apt to be the fact that from a description the reader gets one clear and vivid impression to which all else is subordinate, and beside which all else is comparatively vague. It is therefore often wise to put all the real stress upon the points to be accented, leaving the reader to imagine the rest.

The matter of selecting the central thought is of the more weight, since it is important that this be given clearly to the reader at its first presentation. Whoever has tried to alter a mental image knows how difficult it is to change a picture which is already defined in the imagination. If the mind in constructing a picture has conceived of a mountain as standing on the right, and afterward finds that the author intended it to be on the left, it is on the right that that mountain is likely to remain in the ideal landscape. I have always been a little troubled by the fact that in his description at the commencement of “The Merry Men,” Stevenson, careful and exquisite artist though he was, speaks of the “great granite rocks that … go down together in troops into the sea, like cattle on a summer’s day;” and then, a little later, declares that “on calm days you can go wandering between them in a boat for hours, echoes following you about the labyrinth.” From the comparison to cattle, I always get the idea of boulders much smaller than the second sentence shows to have been intended. The readjustment is an unpleasant break which jars upon the reality of the whole.

In the first example which I gave you, we are told that the writer saw a glade, covered with soft, thin grass, speckled with flowers. It is added that the glade was set round with trees, and then that on one side were a couple of tall boulders, across which had fallen a large beech tree. This does not seem the natural or the effective order. The eye would first notice that the glade was set about with trees, next that there was the large fallen tree, lying across the boulders, and only after this see that the ground was covered with flower-spotted, thin grass.

Here is another example which illustrates the same error: —

Vervain saw before him a rude mob, armed with all sorts of improvised weapons. They had evidently caught up scythes, bill-hooks, axes, or whatever came first to hand. In the midst of them his eye distinguished Henley and Western, and they were all led by a large, coarse man with a red cap, who seemed to have some authority over them. They were marshaled into a rude order, the lines being wavering and uneven, and all were evidently fiercely excited.

The author speaks first of a “rude mob,” a phrase which calls up a formless and confused mass of men. We are next told that in the midst the spectator recognized two acquaintances, then that there was a leader, and after that that the crowd was moving in rude order, with uneven lines. This last statement forces the reader to alter, if he can, his first impression, and instead of imagining a confused crowd, to think of a company irregularly organized. If the writer had really seen in his own mind the thing of which he wrote, he would in the first place have spoken of the mob as a company led by a leader conspicuous in his red cap, and marching in wavering lines. After this he would have been conscious of the rough and improvised weapons, and only after all these things had forced themselves upon his attention would there have been any recognition of individuals.

To select the central idea it is generally safe to consider what one’s own first or strongest impression was or would be at sight of the thing pictured. The effective order is usually that which would be the actual experience of the reader if he were standing in the flesh at the point of view indicated by the author. This is the natural method, and while it has its dangers, it is at once practical and logical. In any case, there must be some reason for the order, so that the reader may be led from one point to the next. Consecutiveness is the logic of Description and Narration.

As an example of describing where the details are arranged as they would be likely to catch the attention of the spectator, we may take this picture from that classic of American literature, Sylvester Judd’s “Margaret:” —

The pond covered several hundreds of acres, its greatest diameter measuring about a mile and a half; its outline was irregular, here divided by sharp rocks, there retreating into shaded coves; and on its face appeared three or four small islands, bearing trees and low bushes. Its banks, if not really steep, had a bluff and precipitous aspect from the tall forest that girdled it about. – Ch. i.

Or this exquisite bit from Stevenson: —

The river there is dammed back for the service of the flour-mill just below, so that it lies deep and darkling, and the sand slopes into brown obscurity with a glint of gold; and it has but newly been recruited by the borrowings of the snuff-mill just above, and these, tumbling merrily in, shake the pool to its black heart, fill it with drowsy eddies, and set the curded froth of many other mills solemnly steering to and fro upon the surface. —The Manse.

Dickens observes this natural order in many of his detailed pictures of persons. The portrait of Mr. Grimwig may serve as an example: —

At this moment there walked into the room, supporting himself by a thick stick, a stout old gentleman, rather lame in one leg, who was dressed in a blue coat, striped waistcoat, nankeen breeches and gaiters, and a broad-brimmed white hat with the sides turned up with green. A very small-plaited shirt-frill stuck out from his waistcoat, and a very long steel watch-chain, with nothing but a key at the end, dangled loosely below it. The ends of his white neckerchief were twisted into a ball about the size of an orange; the variety of shapes into which his countenance was twisted defy description. He had a manner of screwing his head round on one side when he spoke, and looking out of the corners of his eyes at the same time, which irresistibly reminded the beholder of a parrot. —Oliver Twist.

This elaboration of particulars is somewhat out of fashion. Particulars are grasped by the eye so quickly that the deliberation of words is apt to destroy proportion, while it is also true that the reader is in danger of forgetting the beginning before he reaches the end.

It is perhaps worth while to give an example of the abuse of this method, since all inexperienced writers have a tendency to mistake a catalogue for a description. It is manifestly idle to pile up particulars, unless they are kept subordinate to some central thought. Here is the description of the heroine of a modern English novel, “A Chelsea Householder:” —

To begin, then, Muriel was tall, with a slight, erect figure, a quick step, and an air of youth and vigor which did the beholder good to look at.⁷ Her face was oval, as nearly oval at least as a face can be in which the chin is a good deal more pronounced than is usual in classic beauties. The cheeks were pale, paler than they had any business to be, judging by the rest of the physique, the most noticeable fact in point of coloring being that the eyes, hair, brows, and lashes were all of the same, or pretty nearly the same, color – a deep, dark brown, inclining to chestnut above the temples, from which the hair was brushed courageously back, so as to form a small knot at the back of the head. Her eyes – not, perhaps, by the way, a strikingly original trait in a heroine – were large and bright; indeed, brighter or pleasanter eyes have seldom looked out of a woman’s face, their beauty consisting less in their size and color than in this very vividness and brightness, which seemed to shine out of the irises themselves. For all that, the face in repose was not exactly a bright one, or rather the brightness came to it only by fits and starts, its prevailing expression being a somewhat sober one, a sobriety giving way, however, at a touch, and being replaced by a peculiarly sunshiny smile and glance.

This is not the whole of the paragraph, but it is enough for our purpose. There need not be a better example of how not to do it, or of how much may be said about a thing without conveying any definite idea of it. For my own part, I have no idea whatever how Muriel looked, and long before I got half through her verbal portrait I had ceased to care. Few faults are more common than this furnishing a list of particulars in the expectation that the reader will construct therefrom the picture which the author has not been clever enough to make clear – a method, it might be added, not unlike the system of punctuation adopted by the late so-called Lord Timothy Dexter, who put all the points together at the end of his book, and directed his readers to distribute them at their own pleasure.

It is hardly needful to remark upon the prime necessity of clearness in description, but it is perhaps not amiss to remind beginners that it is not possible to picture a thing which the writer does not himself see. If he is writing of an imaginary landscape and speak of a tree, he should be able if he choose to count the branches of that tree as clearly as if it in reality stood before him. Unless he know whether the heads of the flowers tip to the right or to the left, whether the sheep on the hillside of which he writes are nearer the fence on the one side or to the stone wall on the other, unless he can with inner vision actually see the shape of the heroine’s head and the length of her fingers, the slope of her neck and the folds of her gown as if she were in bodily presence before him, he cannot describe any of these things. He cannot tell what he does not know. More than that, he cannot tell to others as much as he knows; so that unless he be able to see a good deal more than he wishes to impart, he will fail to convey as much as he desires.

It is of importance to cultivate the habit of visualizing things, if one intends to describe them. The mind should be trained to conceive of them as visibly before it. This is the only way of arriving at the power of vivid portrayal. It is easy to go through the books of great writers and select those which show that the authors have this power of visualization. If a writer has it not, no skill of diction or of construction can avail to supply its lack.

In Description we have again occasion to emphasize the rule which was given in Exposition: proceed from the near to the remote; from the physical to the mental; from the obvious to the obscure. Homer, surpassed in happiness of epithet by Shakespeare only, affords abundant illustrations of this point. He says, for instance: “Wheels round, brazen, eight-spoked;” “shields smooth, beautiful, brazen, well-hammered.” The particulars are given in the order in which they would naturally be observed. That the wheel is round and that the shield is smooth, the eye perceives at once. The second glance adds the fact of material, and so on.

What is meant by taking up the physical before the mental is illustrated by the following sentence from a theme picturing the appearance of a harbor in the West Indies: —

In the distance I saw six or seven vessels in quarantine for yellow fever, all flying yellow flags.

The process of the mind is here reversed. The spectator sees the flags and reflects that they indicate quarantine for yellow fever. It is not, as a general thing, well to intersperse these mental comments. It may properly be done in a case like this, because in reading, as in seeing, the mind is likely to inquire what is the signification of the yellow flags; and it is well to answer this question in order that the reader’s attention do not wander in search of an answer. If this is to be done, however, the physical appearance which gives rise to the interrogation should be given first. To reverse the order is something like giving first an answer and then the conundrum to which it belongs.

It is as bad as mixing metaphors to mingle physical and mental characteristics. In a description of the volcano of Kilauea I found this sentence: —

The combination of vivid red and green contrasted with the deathlike quiet and grandeur of the crater.

It is not possible to contrast physical qualities like color with emotional ones such as quiet and grandeur. It is like multiplying pictures by potatoes.

Of effects used in Description the appeal to the sight is manifestly by far the most effective. Indeed, it is to be questioned whether any other is of use save in very rare instances. Of course the individual temperament of the reader has much to do with this matter, and I am perhaps influenced by the fact that while it is very easy for me to see things in imagination it is rather difficult for me to hear them. There is no question, however, that an appeal to the sense of hearing is with the average reader less likely to be convincing than that to sight. It seems to me also that the use of smell is less often successful than either of the others, and yet Kipling has shown how effective this may be if employed by a master. The mention of odors is more likely, perhaps, to belong to description by suggestion than to description simple and direct.

An important element in Description is movement. This consists in showing the details of a picture as if the mind of the reader were moving from one to another. It is secured by naming them as they would be observed; by presenting them as they would successively become apparent to some other person; or by exhibiting them in connection with their effects. Perhaps I may be able to show this by three brief pictures of a peasant girl.

1. She was a beautiful peasant girl, tall and slender, dressed in the fashion of the country, and carrying in her hand a bunch of scarlet poppies. Her snowy coif was pushed back, showing brown cheeks, a mass of black hair, and bright, startled eyes.

2. Paul watched the tall, slender peasant come up the flowery lane, twirling in her hand as she walked a handful of flaming red poppies. He was sure that she had not noticed him, and he smiled at the unconscious beauty of her brown face, clear eyes, and black, wavy hair.

3. The artist’s gaze was suddenly arrested by a tall peasant girl, who walked slowly up the lane. He stopped to watch her, attracted by the grace of her slender figure, and noting appreciatively the effect against her gray gown of the scarlet poppies which she was twirling in her brown hands. As she drew nearer, and unconsciously pushed back the snowy coif, an involuntary exclamation escaped his lips at the brilliancy of the eyes which flashed out at him from beneath her black, tumbled hair.

Such movement as there is in the first of these depends upon the arrangement of the particulars in the order in which they would naturally be perceived by the reader; in the second this order is shown to be natural by presentation of the details as if they were seen by a spectator; while in the third the effect is heightened by the introduction of the emotions aroused in the mind of the artist by the sight of the girl. Whether these examples make the fact clear or not, there is no question that the last form is the most effective. It is not always available, nor is it always appropriate; but when it is possible it is more vivid and persuasive than any other method. There is in it more suggestiveness, and hence there is more force.

As a practical example of the use of this method, this from Thomas Hardy may serve: —

How very lovable her face was to him! There was nothing ethereal about it; all was real vitality, real warmth, real incarnation. Yet when all was thought and felt that could be thought and felt about her features in general, it was her mouth which turned out to be the magnetic pole thereof. Eyes almost as deep and speaking he had seen before, and cheeks perhaps as fair; brows as arched, a chin and throat almost as shapely; her mouth he had seen nothing at all to equal on the face of the earth. To a young man with the least fire in him, that little upward lift in the middle of her top lip was distracting, infatuating, maddening. He had never before seen a woman’s lips and teeth which forced upon his mind, with such persistent iteration, the old Elizabethan simile of roses filled with snow. —Tess of the D’Urbervilles, xxiv.