“Maule’s Lane, or Pyncheon Street, as it were now more decorous to call it, was thronged, at the appointed hour, as with a congregation on its way to church. All, as they approached, looked upward at the imposing edifice, which was henceforth to assume its rank among the habitations of mankind.”
And in the same volume his description of “The Pyncheon of To-day” begins:—
“As the child went down the steps, a gentleman ascended them, and made his entrance into the shop. It was the portly, and, had it possessed the advantage of a little more height, would have been the stately figure of a man, considerably in the decline of life, dressed in a black suit of some thin stuff, resembling broadcloth as closely as possible.”
If the description be long, and the object will lend itself to such a treatment, a definite, tangible, easily understood shape or form should be suggested at once. Notice Newman’s first sentence describing Attica: “A confined triangle, perhaps fifty miles its greatest length, and thirty its greatest breadth.” Like this is the beginning of the description of the battle of Waterloo by Victor Hugo.
“Those who would get a clear idea of the battle of Waterloo have only to lay down upon the ground in their mind a capital letter A. The left stroke of the A is the road to Nivelles, the right stroke is the road from Genappe, the cross of the A is the sunken road from Ohain to Braine l’Alleud. The top of the A is Mont Saint Jean, Wellington is there; the left-hand lower point is Hougomont, Reille is there with Jerome Bonaparte; the right-hand lower point is La Belle Alliance, Napoleon is there. A little below the point where the cross of the A meets and cuts the right stroke, is La Haie Sainte. At the middle of this cross is the precise point where the final battle word was spoken. There the lion is placed, the involuntary symbol of the supreme heroism of the Imperial Guard. The triangle contained at the top of the A, between the two strokes and the cross, is the plateau of Mont Saint Jean. The struggle for this plateau was the whole of the battle.”11
In “The Vision of Sir Launfal” Lowell opens his beautiful description with the words, “And what is so rare as a day in June?” From this general and comprehensive sentence follow all the details which make a June day perfect.
Hawthorne, after telling how he happened to write of him, begins his long description of “The Old Apple Dealer” with the following paragraph:—
“He is a small man, with gray hair and gray stubble beard, and is invariably clad in a shabby surtout of snuff color, closely buttoned, and half concealing a pair of gray pantaloons; the whole dress, though clean and entire, being evidently flimsy with much wear. His face, thin, withered, furrowed, and with features which even age has failed to render impressive, has a frost-bitten aspect. It is a moral frost which no physical warmth or comfortableness could counteract. The summer sunshine may fling its white heat upon him, or the good fire of the depot room may make him the focus of its blaze on a winter’s day; but all in vain; for still the old man looks as if he were in a frosty atmosphere, with scarcely warmth enough to keep life in the region about his heart. It is a patient, long-suffering, quiet, hopeless, shivering aspect. He is not desperate,—that, though its etymology implies no more, would be too positive an expression,—but merely devoid of hope. As all his past life, probably, offers no spots of brightness to his memory, so he takes his present poverty and discomfort as entirely a matter of course; he thinks it the definition of existence, so far as himself is concerned, to be poor, cold, and uncomfortable. It may be added, that time has not thrown dignity as a mantle over the old man’s figure: there is nothing venerable about him: you pity him without a scruple.”
So this old apple dealer shivers all through this description of nine pages to the last sentences:—
“God be praised, were it only for your sake, that the present shapes of human existence are not cast in iron nor hewn in everlasting adamant, but moulded of the vapors that vanish away while the essence flits upward to the Infinite. There is a spiritual essence in this gray and lean old shape that shall flit upward too. Yes; doubtless there is a region where the lifelong shiver will pass away from his being, and that quiet sigh, which it has taken him so many years to breathe, will be brought to a close for good and all.”
The prominent characteristic may be the feeling aroused by the object. It may be horror, as in a description of a haunted house or a murderer; it may be love, as in the picture of an old home or a sainted mother. The emotion occasioned is often mentioned or suggested at once, and the details are afterward given which have called forth the feeling. Poe uses this in the first paragraph of “The House of Usher.”
“During the whole of a dull, dark, and soundless day in the autumn of the year, when the clouds hung oppressively low in the heavens, I had been passing alone, on horseback, through a singularly dreary tract of country, and at length found myself, as the shades of evening drew on, within view of the melancholy House of Usher. I know not how it was—but, with the first glimpse of the building, a sense of insufferable gloom pervaded my spirit. I say insufferable; for the feeling was unrelieved by any of that half-pleasurable, because poetic, sentiment with which the mind usually receives even the sternest natural images of the desolate or terrible. I looked upon the scene before me—upon the mere house, and the simple landscape features of the domain—upon the bleak walls—upon the vacant, eye-like windows—upon a few rank sedges—and upon a few white trunks of decayed trees—with an utter depression of soul which I can compare to no earthly sensation more properly than to the after-dream of a reveler upon opium—the bitter lapse into every-day life—the hideous dropping off of the veil. There was an iciness, a sinking, a sickening of the heart—an unredeemed dreariness of thought which no goading of the imagination could torture into aught of the sublime.... It was, possible, I reflected, that a mere different arrangement of the particulars of the scene, of the details of the picture, would be sufficient to modify, or perhaps to annihilate, its capacity for sorrowful impression; and, acting upon this idea, I reined my horse to the precipitous brink of a black and lurid tarn that lay in unruffled lustre by the dwelling, and gazed down—but with a shudder even more thrilling than before—upon the remodeled and inverted images of the gray sedge, and the ghastly tree-stems, and the vacant and eye-like windows.”
And one may see from looking back at the illustrations given that the dominant impression which gives the character to the whole description, this leading quality which is the essence of the whole, usually stands at the very beginning, and to it all the succeeding details cling.
The End of a Description. The end of a description is equally as important as the opening. In most descriptions, whether short or long, the most important detail, the detail that emphasizes most the general feeling of the whole, stands at the end. If the description be short, the necessity of a comprehensive opening statement is not imperative,—indeed, it may be made so formal and ostentatious when compared with the rest of the description as to be ridiculous; yet even in the short description some important detail should close it. In a long description the repetition of the opening statement in a new form sometimes stands at the end. If the description be of movement or change, the end will be the climax of the movement, the result of the change.
In the examples already given there are illustrations of the methods of closing. In each case, there is an important detail or an artistic repetition of the general impression. Many examples of short characterization can be found in all narratives. In Irving’s description of Ichabod Crane, the next to the last sentence gives the significant detail, and the last gives another general impression. It reads:—
“The cognomen of Crane was not inapplicable to his person. He was tall, but exceedingly lank, with narrow shoulders, long arms and legs, hands that dangled a mile out of his sleeves, feet that might have served for shovels, and his whole frame most loosely hung together. His head was small, and flat at top, with huge ears, large green glassy eyes, and a long snipe nose, so that it looked like a weather-cock perched upon his spindle neck to tell which way the wind blew.” (“The Legend of Sleepy Hollow.”)
So far this is but an amplification of his likeness to a crane; certainly “a long snipe nose” “upon his spindle neck” is the most important detail. Next the author gives another general impression:—
“To see him striding along the profile of a hill on a windy day, with his clothes bagging and fluttering about him, one might have mistaken him for the genius of famine descending upon the earth, or some scarecrow eloped from a cornfield.”
The following is from “The House of Usher:”—
“Shaking off from my spirit what must have been a dream, I scanned more narrowly the real aspect of the building. Its principal feature seemed to be that of an excessive antiquity. The discoloration of ages had been great. Minute fungi overspread the whole exterior, hanging in a fine tangled web-work from the eaves. Yet all this was apart from any extraordinary dilapidation. No portion of the masonry had fallen, and there appeared to be a wild inconsistency between its still perfect adaptation of parts and the crumbling condition of the individual stones. In this there was much that reminded me of the specious totality of old woodwork which has rotted for long years in some neglected vault with no disturbance from the breath of the external air. Beyond this indication of extensive decay, however, the fabric gave little token of instability. Perhaps the eye of a scrutinizing observer might have discovered a barely perceptible fissure, which, extending from the roof of the building in front, made its way down the wall in a zigzag direction, until it became lost in the sullen waters of the tarn.”
In this every detail emphasizes the “excessive antiquity” of the house; and on reading the story there is no question of the importance of the “barely perceptible fissure.” Thereby hangs the tale.
The two following are descriptions of dawn, of change; they have marked climaxes. The first is by Edward Everett, the second by Stevenson. The similarity in choice of words and in the feelings of the men is remarkable.
“Such was the glorious spectacle as I entered the train. As we proceeded, the timid approach of twilight became more perceptible; the intense blue of the sky began to soften; the smaller stars, like little children, went first to rest; the sister-beams of the Pleiades soon melted together; but the bright constellations of the west and north remained unchanged. Steadily the wondrous transfiguration went on. Hands of angels, hidden from mortal eyes, shifted the scenery of the heavens; the glories of night dissolved into the glories of dawn. The blue sky now turned more softly gray; the great watch-stars shut up their holy eyes; the east began to kindle. Faint streaks of purple soon blushed along the sky; the whole celestial concave was filled with the inflowing tides of the morning light, which came pouring down from above in one great ocean of radiance, till at length, as we reached the Blue Hills, a flash of purple blazed out from above the horizon, and turned the dewy teardrops of flower and leaf into rubies and diamonds. In a few seconds, the everlasting gates of morning were thrown wide open, and the lord of day, arrayed in glories too severe for the gaze of man, began his state.” (“The Uses of Astronomy.”)
“At last she began to be aware of a wonderful revolution, compared to which the fire of Mittwalden Palace was but a crack and flash of a percussion cap. The countenance with which the pines regarded her began insensibly to change; the grass, too, short as it was, and the whole winding staircase of the brook’s course, began to wear a solemn freshness of appearance. And this slow transfiguration reached her heart, and played upon it, and transpierced it with a serious thrill. She looked all about; the whole face of nature looked back, brimful of meaning, finger on lip, leaking its glad secret. She looked up. Heaven was almost emptied of stars. Such as still lingered shone with a changed and waning brightness, and began to faint in their stations. And the color of the sky itself was most wonderful; for the rich blue of the night had now melted and softened and brightened; and there had succeeded a hue that has no name, and that is never seen but as the herald of the morning. ‘Oh!’ she cried, joy catching at her voice, ‘Oh! it is the dawn!’
“In a breath she passed over the brook, and looped up her skirts and fairly ran in the dim alleys. As she ran, her ears were aware of many pipings, more beautiful than music; in the small, dish-shaped houses in the fork of giant arms, where they had lain all night, lover by lover, warmly pressed, the bright-eyed, big-hearted singers began to awaken for the day. Her heart melted and flowed forth to them in kindness. And they, from their small and high perches in the clerestories of the wood cathedral, peered down sidelong at the ragged Princess as she flitted below them on the carpet of the moss and tassel.
“Soon she had struggled to a certain hilltop, and saw far before her the silent inflooding of the day. Out of the East it welled and whitened; the darkness trembled into light; and the stars were extinguished like the street-lamps of a human city. The whiteness brightened into silver; the silver warmed into gold, and the gold kindled into pure and living fire; and the face of the East was barred with elemental scarlet. The day drew its first long breath, steady and chill; and for leagues around the woods sighed and shivered. And then, at one bound the sun had floated up; and her startled eyes received day’s first arrow, and quailed under the buffet. On every side, the shadows leaped from their ambush and fell prone. The day was come, plain and garish; and up the steep and solitary eastern heaven, the sun, victorious over his competitors, continued slowly and royally to mount.” (“Prince Otto.”)
Proportion. One thing further should be said regarding Mass. Not everything can stand first or last; some important details must be placed in the midst of a description. These particulars will not be of equal importance. The more important details may be given their proportionate emphasis by relatively increasing the length of their treatment. If one detail is more important than another, it requires more to be said about it; unimportant matters should be passed over with a word. Proportion in the length of treatment is a guide to the relative importance of the matters introduced into a description.
In the description of “The House of Usher,” position emphasizes the barely perceptible fissure. Proportion singles out the crumbling condition of the individual stones and makes this detail more emphatic than either the discoloration or the fungi. And in Newman’s description, the olive-tree, the brilliant atmosphere, the thyme, the bees, all add to the charms of bright and beautiful Athens; but most of all the Ægean, with its chain of islands, its dark violet billows, its jets of silver, the heaving and panting of its long waves,—the restless living element fascinates and enraptures “yon pilgrim student.” Position and proportion are the means of emphasis in a paragraph of description.
Arrangement must be natural. Having settled the massing of the description, the next matter for consideration is the arrangement. In order that the parts of a description may be coherent, hold together, they should be arranged in the order in which they would naturally be perceived. What strikes the eye of the beholder as most important, often the general characteristic of the whole, should be mentioned first; and the details should follow as they are seen. In a building, the usual way of observing and describing is from foundation to turret stone. A landscape may be described by beginning with what is near and extending the view; this is common. Sometimes the very opposite plan is pursued; or one may begin on either hand and advance toward the other. Of a person near by, the face is the first thing observed; for it is there that his character can be best discovered. Afterward details of clothing follow as they would naturally be noticed. If a person be at a distance his pose and carriage would be about all that could be seen; as he approaches, the other details would be mentioned as they came into view. To arrange details in the order in which they are naturally observed will result in an association in the description of the details that are contiguous in the objects. Jumping about in a description is a source of confusion. How entirely it may ruin a paragraph can be estimated by the effect upon this single sentence, “He was tall, with feet that might have served for shovels, narrow shoulders, hands that dangled a mile out of his sleeves, long arms and legs, and his whole frame most loosely hung together.” This rearrangement makes but a disjointed and feeble impression; and the reason is entirely that an order in which no person ever observed a man has been substituted for the commonest order,—from head to foot. Arrange details so that the parts which are contiguous shall be associated in the description, and proceed in the order in which the details are naturally observed.
The following is by Irving; he is describing the stage-coachman:—
“He has commonly a broad, full face, curiously mottled with red, as if the blood had been forced by hard feeding into every vessel of the skin; he is swelled into jolly dimensions by frequent potations of malt liquors, and his bulk is still further increased by a multiplicity of coats, in which he is buried like a cauliflower, the upper one reaching to his heels. He wears a broad-brimmed, low-crowned hat; a huge roll of colored handkerchief about his neck, knowingly knotted and tucked in at the bosom; and has in summer time a large bouquet of flowers in his buttonhole, the present, most probably, of some enamored country lass. His waistcoat is commonly of some bright color, striped, and his small-clothes extend far below the knees, to meet a pair of jockey boots which reach about half way up his legs.”12
Use Familiar Images. When the materials have been selected and arranged, the hardest part of the work has been done. It now remains to express in language the picture. A few suggestions regarding the kind of language will be helpful. The writer must always bear in mind the fact that in constructing a mental picture each reader does it from the images he already possesses. “Quaint arabesques” is without meaning to many persons; and until the word has been looked up in the dictionary, and the picture seen there, the beautiful line of “Sir Launfal” suggests no image whatever. So when Stevenson speaks of the birds in the “clerestories of the wood cathedral,” the image is not distinct in the mind of a young American. Supposing a pupil in California were asked to describe an orange to an Esquimau. He might say that it is a spheroid about the size of an apple, and the color of one of Lorraine’s sunsets. This would be absolutely worthless to a child of the frigid zone. Had he been told that an orange was about the size of a snowball, much the color of the flame of a candle, that the peeling came off like the skin from a seal, and that the inside was good to eat, he would have known more of this fruit. The images which lie in our minds and from which we construct new pictures are much like the blocks that a child-builder rearranges in many different forms; but the blocks do not change. From them he may build a castle or a mill; yet the only difference is a difference in arrangement. So it is with the pictures we build up in imagination: our castle in Spain we have never seen, but the individual elements which we associate to lift up this happy dwelling-place are the things we know and have seen. A reader creates nothing new; all he does is to rearrange in his own mind the images already familiar. Only so may he pass from the known to the unknown.
The fact that we construct pictures of what we read from those images already in our minds warns the writer against using materials which those for whom he writes could not understand. It compels him to select definite images, and it urges him to use the common and the concrete. It frequently drives him to use comparisons.
Use of Comparisons. To represent the extremely bare and unornamented appearance of a building, one might write, “It looked like a great barn,” or “It was a great barn.” In either case the image would be definite, common, and concrete. In both cases there is a comparison. In the first, where the comparison is expressed, there is a simile; in the second, where the comparison is only implied, there is a metaphor. These two figures of speech are very common in description, and it is because they are of great value. One other is sometimes used,—personification, which ascribes to inanimate things the attributes of life which are the property of animate nature. What could be happier than this by Stevenson: “All night long he can hear Nature breathing deeply and freely; even as she takes her rest she turns and smiles”? or this, “A faint sound, more like a moving coolness than a stream of air”? And at the end of the chapter which describes his “night under the pines,” he speaks of the “tapestries” and “the inimitable ceiling” and “the view which I command from the windows.” In this one chapter are personification, simile, metaphor,—all comparisons, and doing what could hardly be done without them. Common, distinct, concrete images are surest.
Choice of Words. Adjectives and Nouns. To body forth these common, distinct, concrete images calls for a discriminating choice of words; for in the choice of words lies a large part of the vividness of description. If the thing described be unknown to the reader, it requires the right word to place it before him; if it be common, still must the right word be found to set it apart from the thousand other objects of the same class. The words that may justly be called describing words are adjectives and nouns; and of these the adjective is the first descriptive word. The rule that a writer should never use two adjectives where one will do, and that he should not use one if a noun can be found that completely expresses the thought, is a good one to follow. One certain stroke of the crayon is worth a hundred lines, each approaching the right one. One word, the only one, will tell the truth more vividly than ten that approach its expression. For it must be remembered that a description must be done quickly; every word that is used and does nothing is not only a waste of time, but is actually in the way. In a description every word must count. It may be a comparison, an epithet, personification, or what not, but whatever method is adopted, the right word must do it quickly.
How much depends on the nice choice of words may be seen by a study of the selections already quoted; and especially by a careful reading of those by Stevenson and Everett. To show the use of adjectives and nouns in description, the following from Kipling is a good illustration. Toomai had just reached the elephants’ “ball-room” when he saw—
“white-tusked wild males, with fallen leaves and nuts and twigs lying in the wrinkles of their necks and the folds of their ears; fat, slow-footed she-elephants, with restless pinky-black calves only three or four feet high, running under their stomachs; young elephants with their tusks just beginning to show, and very proud of them; lanky, scraggy, old-maid elephants, with their hollow, anxious faces, and trunks like rough bark; savage old bull-elephants, scarred from shoulder to flank with great weals and cuts of by-gone fights, and the caked dirt of their solitary mud bath dropping from their shoulders; and there was one with a broken tusk and the marks of the full-stroke, the terrible drawing scrape of a tiger’s claw on his side.”13
One third of the words in this paragraph are descriptive nouns and adjectives, none of which the reader wishes to change.
Use of Verbs. Verbs also have a great value in description. In the paragraph picturing the dawn, Stevenson has not neglected the verbs. “Welled,” “whitened,” “trembled,” “brightened,” “warmed,” “kindled,” and so on through the paragraph. Try to change them, and it is apparent that something is lost by any substitution. Kaa, the python, “pours himself along the ground.” If he is angry, “Baloo and Bagheera could see the big swallowing-muscles on either side of Kaa’s throat ripple and bulge.“
Yet in the choice of words, one may search for the bizarre and unusual rather than for the truly picturesque. Stevenson at times seems to have lapsed. When he says that Modestine would feel a switch “more tenderly than my cane;” that he “must instantly maltreat this uncomplaining animal,” meaning constantly; and at another place that he “had to labor so consistently with” his stick that the sweat ran into his eyes, there is a suspicion of a desire for the sensational rather than the direct truth. On the other hand, the beginner finds himself using words that have lost, their meaning through indiscriminate usage. “Awful good,” “awful pretty,” and “awful sweet” mean something less than good, pretty, and sweet. “Lovely,” “dear,” “splendid,” “unique,” and a large number of good words have been much dulled by the ignorant use of babblers. Superlatives and all words denoting comparison should be used with stinginess. One cannot afford to part with this kind of coin frequently; the cheaper coins should be used, else he will find an empty purse when need arises. Thackeray has this: “Her voice was the sweetest, low song.” How much better this, Her voice was a sweet, low song. All the world is shut out from this, while in the former he challenges the world by the comparison. Shakespeare was wiser when he made Lear say,—
“Her voice was ever soft,
Gentle, and low,—an excellent thing in woman.”
Avoid words which have lost their meaning by indiscriminate use; shun the sensational and the bizarre; use superlatives with economy; but in all you do, whether in unadorned or figurative language, choose the word that is quick and sure and vivid—the one word that exactly suggests the picture.
SUGGESTIVE QUESTIONS AND EXERCISES
QUESTIONS
THE OLD MANSE
(Riverside Literature Series, No. 69.)
Are there narrative portions in “The Old Manse”? paragraphs of exposition?
Do you term the whole narration, description, or exposition? Why?
Frame a sentence which you think would be an adequate topic sentence for the whole piece.
What phrase in the first paragraph allows the author to begin the second with the words, “Nor, in truth, had the Old Manse,” etc.? Where in the second paragraph is found the words which are the source of “my design,” mentioned in the third? How does the author pass from the fourth paragraph to the fifth? In the same way note the connections between the succeeding paragraphs. They are most skillfully dovetailed together. Now make a list of the phrases in the first fifteen pages which introduce paragraphs, telling from what in the preceding paragraph each new paragraph springs. Do you think that such a felicitous result just happened? or did Hawthorne plan it?
Does Hawthorne generally introduce his descriptions by giving the feeling aroused by the object described, a method very common with Poe?
In the paragraph beginning at the bottom of p. 18, what do you think of the selection of material? What have guided in the inclusion and exclusion of details?
Write a paragraph upon this topic: There could not be a more joyous aspect of external nature than as seen from the windows of my study just after the passing of a cooling shower. Be careful to select things that have been made happy, and to use adjectives and nouns that are full of joy.
Make a list of the words used to describe “The Old Apple Dealer.”
Has this description Unity?
What relation to the whole has the first sentence of paragraph three? the last?
Do you think there is a grammatical error in the third sentence of this paragraph?
By contrasts to what has Hawthorne brought out better the character of the Apple Dealer? When can contrasts help?
AN INDIAN-SUMMER REVERIE, AND OTHER POEMS
(Riverside Literature Series, No. 30.)
In this poem what purpose is served by the first two stanzas?
Where in the landscape does the author begin? Which way does he progress?
Quote stanzas in which other senses than sight are called upon.
Make a list of the figures of speech. How many similes? metaphors? examples of personification? Which seems most effective? Which instance of its use do you prefer? Has Lowell used too many figures?
Read “The Oak,” “The Dandelion,” and “Al Fresco.”
Are they description or exposition? Do they bear out Lowell’s estimate of himself?
THE SKETCH-BOOK
(Riverside Literature Series, Nos. 51, 52.)
Why has Irving given four pages to the description of Sleepy Hollow before he introduces Ichabod Crane?
Why, then, seven pages to Ichabod before the story begins?
What gives the peculiar interest to this tale?
In the “Legend of Sleepy Hollow” how many paragraphs of description close with an important detail?
In how many with a general characterization?
In all the descriptions of buildings by Irving that you have read, what are the first things mentioned,—size, shape, color, or what? Make a list, so as to be sure.
Does Irving use many comparisons? Are the likenesses to common things? Select the ten you think best. Are there more in narrative or descriptive passages? What do you gather from this fact?