Thackeray was in
Paris during the most productive years of French fiction, the sublime
decade of Balzac, Stendhal, and Victor Hugo. And his "Paris Sketch-Book"
proves that his attitude towards the marvels by which he was surrounded
was the attitude of a clubman. These men wrote; they got through their
writing as quickly as they could; and during the rest of the day they were
clubmen, or hosts, or guests. Trollope, who dashed off his literary work
with a watch in front of him before 8.30 of a morning, who hunted three
days a week, dined out enormously, and gave his best hours to fighting
Rowland Hill in the Post Office--Trollope merely carried to its logical
conclusion the principle of his mightier rivals. What was the matter with
all of them, after a holy fear of their publics, was simple ignorance.
George Eliot was not ignorant. Her mind was more distinguished than the
minds of the great three. But she was too preoccupied by moral questions
to be a first-class creative artist. And she was a woman. A woman, at that
epoch, dared not write an entirely honest novel! Nor a man either! Between
Fielding and Meredith no entirely honest novel was written by anybody in
England. The fear of the public, the lust of popularity, feminine prudery,
sentimentalism, Victorian niceness--one or other of these things prevented
honesty.
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