A little history of the picture hint

A little history of the picture hint

IN striving to picture his characters an author may make use either of brief descriptions made up of a few individ¬ualizing details, or of long descriptions composed of many details. The latter method was commonly used by the first English novelists.

'''Scott, in the first chapter of "Ivanhoe," in the description of Gurth, which contains about four hundred fifty words. Get this and link'''

In harmony with the principle that an author must be suggestive, must make known more than he says, the gen¬eral tendency today is toward the brief description. This tendency, however, has been present in our literature from its earliest years, to a greater or less degree. For example, we find a number of excellent illustrations of it in Chaucer, one of the best being the few lines in the Prologue to the "Canterbury Tales" (about 1385) that make us see the Monk:

His heed was balled, that shoon as any glas, And eek his face as he had been anoint.

He was a lord ful fat and in good point.

In Sir Thomas More ’ s "Utopia," which was written about 1525, we find this:

I chanced to espy this aforesaid Peter talking with a certain stranger, a man well-stricken in age, with a black, sun-burned face, a long beard, and a coat cast homely about his shoulders, whom by his favor and apparel forthwith I judged to be a mariner.

It is not, however, until the nineteenth century that we begin to find the brief description regularly used, and we find it in even greater perfection in the latter part of the century than in the earlier.

In "Thoughts about Art" Mr. Philip Gilbert Hamerton says that Lord Tennyson is the most perfect word painter that English poetry has produced. As Mr. Hamerton was a painter as well as an accomplished writer, and as his essays show that he thoroughly appreciated the value of suggestion in art, we may expect to find that Tennyson in the portrayal of his characters relied upon hints rather than upon extended descriptions. And this is just what we find, his individualizing details being expressed in most beautiful poetic language, each word being weighted with suggestive associations.

In "The Princess" (published in 1847) he thus pictures his hero:

A prince I was, blue-eyed, and fair in face, With length of yellow ringlet, like a girl.

Here the reader is not satisfied with the blue eyes, the light complexion, and the long yellow hair; he immediately and almost unconsciously fills in the features, the figure, the clothing, and in an instant sees a full-length portrait, life size. The especially suggestive hint is, of course, "length of yellow ringlet." This at once enchains the imagination, which surrenders instantly to the striking and unusual, and

the details that are always present, the boots, trousers, silver buckles, waistcoat, frills, slip into place without ap¬preciable jar and almost without mental effort. Of course we all do not see the same picture, but each of us sees a picture that is clear and satisfactory for his own purposes, and that is exactly what the author wishes.

It should be noted that it is the unusual, either in respect to its surroundings or in respect to our ideas, that makes a picture hint especially powerful. The person with a strik¬ing peculiarity of dress or feature can most easily be por¬trayed in a phrase.

Further on in "The Princess" Lady Psyche ’ s babe is thus presented to the imagination:

At her left, a child

In shining draperies, headed like a star.

Here the effective hint is "headed like a star," its power being due as much to the way the fact is expressed as to the fact itself. At first its meaning is elusive; then the radiance of a star flashes before one and the golden-haired tot in snow-white silk stands forth as though painted with a brush dipped in sunshine.

In the fourth canto of the same poem is a stern-lined portrait in black and white of the soured and jealous Lady Blanche:

Thereat the Lady stretch ’ d a vulture throat, And shot from crooked lips a haggard smile.

The second line is bad enough; but " stretch ’ d a vulture throat "! To transfer to a woman the wrinkled, discolored neck of this carrion bird, and even to stretch it forth,—the picture is too horrible to look at, it is so clear in its hideous¬ness. With it, too, comes not a little of the woman ’ s char¬acter, so powerful is the hint.