‘In Media Res’
Perhaps the method of rushing at once ‘in media
res’ is, of all the ways of beginning a story,
or a separate branch of a story, the least objectionable.
The reader is made to think that the gold lies so
near the surface that he will be required to take very
little trouble in digging for it. And the writer
is enabled,—at any rate for a time, and
till his neck has become, as it were, warm to the
collar,—to throw off from him the difficulties
and dangers, the tedium and prolixity, of description.
This rushing ‘in media res’ has doubtless
the charm of ease. ’Certainly when I threw
her from the garret window to the stony pavement below,
I did not anticipate that she would fall so far without
injury to life or limb.’ When a story
has been begun after this fashion, without any prelude,
without description of the garret or of the pavement,
or of the lady thrown, or of the speaker, a great amount
of trouble seems to have been saved. The mind
of the reader fills up the blanks,—if erroneously,
still satisfactorily. He knows, at least, that
the heroine has encountered a terrible danger, and
has escaped from it with almost incredible good fortune,
that the demon of the piece is a bold demon, not ashamed
to speak of his own iniquity, and that the heroine
and the demon are so far united that they have been
in a garret together. But there is the drawback
on the system,—that it is almost impossible
to avoid the necessity of doing, sooner or later,
that which would naturally be done at first.
It answers, perhaps, for a half-a-dozen chapters;—
and to carry the reader pleasantly for half-a-dozen
chapters is a great matter!-but after that a certain
nebulous darkness gradually seems to envelope the
characters and the incidents. ’Is all this
going on in the country, or is it in town,—or
perhaps in the Colonies? How old was she?
Was she tall? Is she fair? Is she heroine-like
in her form and gait? And, after all, how high
was the garret window? I have always found that
the details would insist on being told at last, and
that by rushing ‘in media res’ I was simply
presenting the cart before the horse. But as readers
like the cart the best, I will do it once again,—trying
it only for a branch of my story,—and will
endeavour to let as little as possible of the horse
be seen afterwards.
‘And so poor Frank has been turned out of heaven?’
said Lady Mabel Grex to young Lord Silverbridge.
‘Who told you that? I have said nothing
to anybody.’
‘Of course he told me himself,’ said the
young beauty. I am aware that, in the word beauty,
and perhaps, also, the word young, a little bit of
the horse appearing; and I am already sure that I
shall have to show his head and neck, even if not his
very tail. ‘Poor Frank! Did you hear
it all?’
‘I heard nothing, Lady Mab, and know nothing.’
’You know that your awful governor won’t
let him stay any longer in Carlton Terrace?’
