﻿Hale: William De Morgan 



17 



ever much we may admire the anatomizing of a biologist, he does not 

 show us a human being. De Morgan makes us acquainted with 

 people — so intimately that we could recognize them on the street, 

 just as we do Dickens' all the time. George Eliot exhibits people's 

 characters and souls most wonderfully; but there is more to men 

 and women than characters and souls. We admire her scientific 

 analyses, but we remember De Morgan's people. And, finally, 

 as was stated before, his characters seem the- more real and vivid 

 on account of the way he has presented them to us. He does not 

 give us a catalog of their virtues and vices and peculiarities the 

 first time we meet them. We come to know them just as we do 

 peop!e in real life. 



De Morgan is very successful with his conversations. At their 

 best, and they are seldom otherwise, they are almost flawless. 

 Admirable as Dickens' and Thackeray's are, they have more of 

 the flavor of the book about them. De Morgan has so developed 

 the art of representing speech that his invariably have the vivid- 

 ness and the naturalness of life itself. George Eliot's people, by 

 comparison, talk like wooden men. And they say so much at 

 one time that it is inconceivable that their hearers would listen to 

 them so long without saying a word. The secret of De Morgan's 

 success is that he records conversation just as people say it — 

 ambiguous, inconsequential, and disjointed, as it is in real life, 

 for, as he himself has said, "Very rarely indeed does a human 

 creature say what it means. Exhaustive definition, lucid state- 

 ments, concise terminology — even plain English — are foreign to 

 its nature." 75 This conversation between Sally and Laetitia 

 during their music practice illustrates the disjointed, inconse- 

 quential type: 



"I like him awfully, you know, Tishy. In fact, 1 love him. It's a 

 pleasure to hear him come into the house. Only — one's mother, you 

 know! It's the oddity of it!" 



"Yes, deai'. Now, are you ready? It is only clickets 



down because you will not screw in; it's no use turning and leaving the key 

 sloppy " 



"I knew, Tishy dear — teach your granny! There I think that's right 

 now. But it is funny when it's one's mother, isn't it?" 76 



The vocabulary, the emphasis, the lack of coherence, and the 

 individuality, all contribute to its naturalness. De Morgan shows 

 unusual skill in repeating conversation between persons in two 

 different rooms, or in the act of shaving, or in bed at night, or at 



^Somehow Good, p. 353. 

 ™Ibid., p. 83. 



