﻿Hale: William De Morgan 



25 



in connection with reminiscences out of a distant past, he recol- 

 lects some antecedent circumstance of insignificant character that 

 gives the tone of reality to the more important circumstance, as 

 Joseph Vance's remembering on the night after his father's fight 

 with Peter Gunn, "I lay still and sucked my nightgown, of which 

 I can distinctly recollect the flavor to this day." 125 



But the most original source of this novelist's verisimilitude is 

 the unusual, unconventional diction that he frequently employs. 

 In this way he secures a remarkable degree of reality. For ex- 

 ample, he employs colloquial words and forms of expression, as 

 we have already seen — the actual speech of his characters — for 

 which he never apologizes with either quotation marks or italics: 



The rostrum happened to be a hassock on the hearthrug, before the 

 little bit of fire that wasn't at all unwelcome; because September had set in 

 quite cold already, and there was certain to be a warm Christmas if it went 

 on like this, and it would be unhealthy. 126 



Not only does he use the colloquial words of polite society, but 

 he utilizes even the vocabulary and idiom of the illiterate. In 

 referring to Mr. Salter's oath to twist off his wife's nose, he thus 

 expresses himself: 



The result seemed likely to turn on whether the victim's back hair 

 would endure the tension as a fulcrum, or would come rippin' out like so 

 much grorse. 12 ' 



He employs these uncouth expressions particularly when he 

 represents talk indirectly; for example: 



Tallock Street would have replied, forcibly as Ave think, that it warn't 

 messin' about with any blooming reasonings — only turning of it over 



like Her mourning gownd was that respectable to look at 



you couldn't 'ardly tell her for Mrs. Steptoe, goin' along the street, or in at 

 the butcher's. 128 



When he needs a word that is not found in the dictionary, he 

 manufactures it on the analogy of a word that is; for example, 

 Sundane, 129 Squirophant, 1 ™ Genteelolo gist, 131 ungrundied™ 2 sobri- 

 ometer, 1 ™ I-told-you-soing , 134 and others. He constructs his sen- 

 tences, also, whenever he pleases, just as people talk: 



125 Joseph Vance, p. 11. 

 ^Somehow Good, pp. 203-204. 

 l °- 7 Ibid., p. 4. 



wit Never Can Happen Again, p. 231. E. Temple Thurston, in Iris Cttijoj 

 Beautiful Nonsense, seems to be imitating this method of De Morgan's. 

 ^Somehow Good. p. 181. 

 ™°Ibid., p. 312. 

 ™Ibid„ p. 230. 



132 7£ Never Can Happen Again, p. 282. 

 »*A Likely Story, p. 258. 

 ^The Old Madhouse, p. 435. 



