Litany of the Novelist
There are times when one wearies of literature; when one reads overone's first book, reflects how good it was, and how greatly one wasmisunderstood; when one considers the perils and misadventures of soaccidental a life and likens oneself to those dogs described by Plinywho run fast as they drink from the Nile for fear they should be seizedby the crocodiles; when one tires of following Mr Ford Madox Hueffer'sadvice, 'to sit down in the back garden with pen, ink, and paper, to putvine leaves in one's hair and to write'; when one remembers that inFlaubert's view the literary man's was a dog's life (metaphors aboutauthors lead you back to the dog) but that none other was worth living.In those moods, one does not agree with Flaubert; rather, one agreeswith Butler:--
'... those that write in rhyme still make The one verse for the other's sake; For one for sense and one for rhyme, I think's sufficient at one time.'
One sees life like Mr Polly, as 'a rotten, beastly thing.' One sighs foradventure, to become a tramp or an expert witness. One knows that onewill never be so popular as Beecham's pills; thence is but a step topicture oneself as less worthy.
We novelists are the showmen of life. We hold up its mirror, and, if itlook at us at all, it mostly makes faces at us. Indeed a writer mighthave with impunity sliced Medusa's head: she would never have noticedhim. The truth is that the novelist is a despised creature. At moments,when, say, a learned professor has devoted five columns to showing thata particular novelist is one of the pests of society, the writer feelsexalted. But as society shows no signs of wanting to be rid of the pest,the novelist begins to doubt his own pestilency. He is wrong. In a way,society knows of our existence, but does not worry; it shows this in acuriously large number of ways, more than can be enumerated here. Itsees the novelist as a man apart; as a creature fraught with venom, and,paradoxically, a creature of singularly lamb-like and unpracticaltemperament.
Consider, indeed, the painful position of a respectable family whosesons make for Threadneedle Street every day, its daughters for BondStreet and fashion, or for the East End, good works, and socialadvancement. Imagine that family, who enjoys a steady income, shall wesay in the neighbourhood of L5000 a year, enough to keep it in modestcomfort, confronted with the sudden infatuation of one of its daughtersfor an unnamed person, met presumably in the East End where he wascollecting copy. You can imagine the conversation after dinner:--
Angeline: 'What does he do, father? Oh, well! he's a novelist.'
Father: .... What! a novelist! One of those long-haired, sloppy-collaredragamuffins without any soles to their boots! Do you think that becauseI've given you a motor-car I'm going to treat you to a husband? A barloafer ... (we are always intemperate) ... A man whom your mother andsisters ... (our morals are atrocious) ... I should not wonder if thepolice ... (we are all dishonest, and yet we never have any money) ... Iwas talking to the Bishop ... (we practise no religion, except thatoccasionally we are Mormons)....
And so on, and so on. Father won't have it, and if in the end Fatherdoes have it he finds that Angeline's eyes are _not_ blacked, but thatAngeline's husband's boots _are_ blacked, that the wretched fellow keepsa balance at the bank, can ride a horse, push a perambulator, drive anail; but he does not believe it for a long time. For it is, if notagainst all experience, at any rate against all theory that a novelistshould be eligible. The bank clerk is eligible, the novelist is not; weare not 'safe,' we are adventurers, we have theories, and sometimes theaudacity to live up to them. We are often poor, which happens to othermen, and this is always our own fault, while it is often theirmisfortune. Of late years, we have grown still more respectable than ourforefathers, who were painfully such: Dickens lived comfortably inMarylebone; Thackeray reigned in a luxurious house near KensingtonSquare and in several first-class clubs; Walter Scott reached a terribleextreme of respectability; he went bankrupt, but later on paid his debtsin full. Yet we never seem quite respectable, perhaps becauserespectability is so thin a varnish. Even the unfortunate girls whom we'entice away from good homes' into the squalor of the arts, do not thinkus respectable. For them half the thrill of marrying a novelist consistsin the horror of the family which must receive him; it is like marryinga quicksand, and the idea is so bitter that a novelist who wears hishair long might do well to marry a girl who wears hers short. He willnot find her in the bourgeoisie.
The novelist is despised because he produces a commodity not recognisedas 'useful.' There is no definition of usefulness, yet everybody isclear that the butcher, the railway porter, the stock jobber are useful;that they fulfil a function necessary for the maintenance of the State.The pugilist, the dancer, the music hall actor, the novelist, producenothing material, while the butcher does. To live, one wants meat, butnot novels. We need not pursue this too far and ask the solid classes toimagine a world without arts, presumably they could not. It is enough topoint the difference, and to suggest that we are deeply enthralled bythe Puritan tradition which calls pleasure, if not noxious, at any rateunimportant; the maintenance of life is looked upon as more essentialthan the enjoyment thereof, so that many people picture an ideal worldas a spreading cornfield dotted with cities that pay good rents,connected by railways which pay good dividends. They resemble therevolutionary, who on the steps of the guillotine said to Lavoisier:'_La Republique n'a pas besoin de savants._' This is obvious when theaverage man (which includes many women) alludes to the personality ofsome well-known writer. One he has come to respect: Mr Hall Caine,because popular report says that his latest novel brought him in about ahundred thousand pounds, but those such as Mr Arnold Bennett and Mr H.G. Wells leave strange shadows upon his memory. Of Mr Bennett he says:'Oh, yes, he writes about the North Country, doesn't he? Or is it theWest Country? Tried one of his books once. I forget its name, and now Icome to think of it, it may have been by somebody else. He must be adreary sort of chap, anyhow, sort of methodist.'
Mr H. G. Wells is more clearly pictured: 'Wells? the fellow who writesabout flying machines and men in the moon. Jules Verne sort of stuff,isn't it? He's a Socialist.'
And so out with Mr Bennett, one of our best modern stylists, who inspite of an occasional crowding of the canvas has somehow fixed for usthe singular and ferocious tribe from which he springs; so out with MrWells, with his restless, impulsive, combative, infinitely audaciousmind. The average man says: 'Flying machines,' and the passion of MrWells for a beautiful, if somewhat over-hygienic world is swept away.Those are leading instances. Others, such as Mr Conrad, Miss EdithWharton, O. Henry, Mr Galsworthy, are not mentioned at all; if the nameof Mr Henry James is spoken, it leads up to a gibe at long sentences.
The attitude is simple; we are not taken seriously. Novelists have totake mankind seriously because they want to understand it; mankind isexempt from the obligation because it does not conceive the desire. Weare not people who take degrees, who can be scheduled and classified. Weare not Doctors of Science, Licentiates of Music Schools. We are justmen and women of some slight independence, therefore criminals, men whowant to observe and not men who want to do, therefore incredible. Andso, because we cannot fall into the classes made for those who can beclassified, we are outside class, below class. We are the mistletoe onthe social oak.
It is perhaps in search of dignity and status that the modern novelisthas taken to journalism. Journalism raises a novelist's status, for aview expressed by a fictitious character is not taken seriously, whilethe same view fastened to an event of the day acquires importance,satisfies the specific function of the press, which is more and morethat of a champion of found causes. The newspaper is a betterjumping-off ground than the pulpit or the professorial chair; it enjoysa vast circulation, which the novel does not; it conveys an idea tomillions of people who would never think of buying a newspaper for thesake of an idea, but who buy it for news, murder cases or corn marketreports; it is a place where a writer may be serious, _because thenewspaper is labelled as serious, while the novel is labelled asfrivolous_.
This is vital to the p
roposition, and explains why so many novelistshave sought refuge in the press. It is not exactly a question of money.Journalism rewards a successful novelist better than does the novel,though successful novelists make very good incomes; they often earn asmuch as the red-nosed comedian with the baggy trousers and the batteredbowler. Thackeray, Washington Irving, Kingsley, and notably Dickens,knew the value of journalism. Dickens was the most peculiar case, for itis fairly clear that _Nicholas Nickleby_ helped to suppress the raggedschools and that _Oliver Twist_ was instrumental in reforming workhouselaw; both works were immensely successful, but Dickens felt that hewanted a platform where he could be always wholly serious: for this the_Daily News_ was born in 1846. Likewise Mr Wells has written enormouslyupon the war and economics; Mr Arnold Bennett has printed many politicalarticles; Mr Galsworthy has become more direct than a novelist can beand written largely on cruelty to animals, prison reform, etc. It is theonly way in which we can be taken seriously. We must be solemn, a littledull, patriotic or unpatriotic, socialistic or conservative; there isonly one thing we may not be, and that is creative and emotional.
It should be said in passing that even the press does not think much ofus. Articles on solid subjects by novelists are printed, well paid for,sought after; it does a paper good to have an article on ImperialFederation by Mr Kipling, or on Feminism by Mr Zangwill. The novelistamounts to a poster; he is a blatant advertisement; he is a curiosity,the man who makes the public say: 'I wonder what the _Daily_ ---- is upto now.' Be assured that Mr Zangwill's views on Feminism do not commandthe respectful treatment that is accorded a column leader in the_Times_; he is too human; he sparkles too much; he has not the matchlessquality of those leaders which compels you to put on an extra stamp ifyou have to send the paper through the post.
The newspapers court the novelist as the people of a small town courtthe local rich man, but neither newspaper nor little town likes verymuch the object of its courtship. Except when they pay us to expressthem, the newspapers resent our having any views at all; the thoughtbehind is always: 'Why can't the fellows mind their own business, and goon writing about love and all that sort of stuff?' During the war,references to novelists who express their views have invariably beensneering; it is assumed that because we are novelists we are unable tocomprehend tactics, politics, in fact any 'ics,' except perhaps theentirely unimportant aesthetics. But the peculiarity of the situation isthat not a voice has been raised against professors of philology, whowrite on finance, against Bishops dealing with land settlement, againstdoctors when they re-map Europe, against barristers, businessmen....These may say anything they like; they are plain, hard-headed men, whileour heads are soft enough to admit a new idea.
To define the attitude of the press is in modern times to define theattitude of the State. From our point of view this is frigid. InAmerica, there are no means of gauging a novelist's position, forAmerican classification rests upon celebrity and fortune. Ours restsupon breeding and reliability. America is more adventurous; Britanniarides in a chariot, while the American national emblem foreshadowed theaeroplane. And so, in the United States it may profit a man as well tobe a Jack London as an Elihu Root. America has no means of recognisingstatus, while in England we have honours. We distribute a great manyhonours, and indeed the time may come, as Mr Max Beerbohm says, wheneverybody will be sentenced to a knighthood without the option of afine. Honours are rather foolish things, monuments that create a needfor circumspection; they are often given for merits not easilyperceived, but still they are a _rough_ test of status. Setting asidemoney, which is the primary qualification, and justifies Racine insaying that without money honour is nothing but a disease, a title is afairly clear sign of distinction. Sir Edward Shackleton, Sir DouglasHaig, Sir Frederick Treves, Lord Reading, Sir William Crookes, LordLister, all those titles are obvious recognition of prominence in PolarExploration, the Army, the Law, Medicine, Research, as the case may be;there are scores of Medical Knights, many Law Lords, many Major Generalsand Admirals endowed with the Knight Commandership of the Bath. We donot complain. They deserve their honours, most of them. They deservethem more than the politicians who have received for long servicerewards that ability could not give them, than the Lord Mayors who aretitled because they sold, for instance, large quantities of kitchenfenders. When we consider the arts, we observe a discrepancy. The artsdo not ask for honours; they are too arrogant, and know that bornknights cannot be knighted. Only they claim that an attempt should bemade to honour them, to grant them Mr Gladstone's and Mr Chamberlain'sprivilege of refusing honours.
Consider, for instance, the Order of Merit, one of the highest honoursthat the British Crown can confer. At the end of last year it numberedtwenty-one members. Among them were some distinguished foreigners,Prince Oyama, Prince Yamagata and Admiral Togo; historians, pro-consuls,four Admirals ... and one novelist. Mr Thomas Hardy. We do not complainthat only Mr Thomas Hardy was chosen, for there is nobody else to set athis side ... only we do complain that in this high order four admiralsfind a place. Are we then so rich in admiralty, so poor in literature?The same is still truer when we come to the inferior orders, which arestill fairly high, such as the Commandership of the Bath. That ancientorder is almost entirely recruited from amongst soldiers, sailors,politicians, and civil servants; it does not hold the name of a singlenovelist. No novelist is a Privy Councillor, though the position ishonorific and demands no special knowledge. On the Privy Council youfind labour members of Parliament, barristers, coal owners, sellers ofchemicals and other commodities, but no novelists. In all the otherorders it is the same thing; for novelists there are neithercommanderships of the Bath, nor of the Victorian Order, nor of StMichael and St George, no honours great or minor; no man has ever inEngland been offered a peerage _because_ he wrote novels; and yet he hasbeen offered a peerage because he sold beer. George Meredith was notoffered a peerage, even though some think that his name will live whenthose of captains and kings have melted into dust. Our little band ofrecognised men, such as Sir James Barrie, Sir Anthony Hope Hawkins, SirRider Haggard, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, small is the toll they have takenof public recognition; perhaps they should not expect it; perhaps theyhave been recognised only because of certain political activities; butmust we really believe that so many lawyers and so few writers areworthy of an accolade? Is the novelist worthless until he is dead?
This picture may seem too black, but it is that of Great Britain, wherecontempt for literature has risen to a peculiar degree. Make animaginative effort; see yourself in the drawing-room of some socialleader, where a 'crush' of celebrities is taking place. A flunkey at thehead of the stairs announces the guests. He announces: 'Lord Curzon! ...Mr Joseph Conrad! ... The Bishop of London!' Who caused a swirl in the'gilded throng?' The cleric? The politician? Or the novelist? Be honestin your reply, and you will know who, at that hypothetical reception,created a stir. The stir, according to place or period, greeted thepolitician or the bishop, and only in purely literary circles would MrConrad have been preferred.... For the worship of crowds goes to powerrather than to distinction, to the recognised functionary of the State,to him whose power can give power, to all the evanescent things, andseldom to those stockish things, the milestones on the road to eternity.The attitude of the crowd is the attitude of the State, for the Stateis only the crowd, and often just the mob; it is the chamberlain ofochlocracy, the leader who follows. In all times, the State has shownits indifference, its contempt, for the arts, and particularly forliterature. Now and then a prince, such as Louis of Bavaria, Philip ofSpain, Lorenzo the Magnificent, has given to literature more thanrespect. He has given love, but that only because he was a man before aprince. The prince must prefer the lawyer, the politician, the general,and indeed, of late years what prince was found to patron GeorgeMeredith or Henry James?
The attitude of the State to the novelist defines itself most clearlywhen a royal commission is appointed. In England, royal commissions are_ad hoc_ bodies appointed by the government from among men of political
influence and special knowledge, to investigate a special question.
As a rule they are well composed. For instance, a royal commission onwater supply would probably comprise two or three members of Parliamentof some standing, the President of the Institute of Civil Engineers, aprofessor of sanitation, a canal expert, one or two trade unionists, oneor two manufacturers, and a representative of the Home Office or theBoard of Trade. Any man of position who has shown interest in publicaffairs may be asked to sit on a royal commission ... provided he is nota novelist. Only one novelist has attained so giddy a height: Sir RiderHaggard; how it happened is not known: it must have been a mistake. Weare not weighty enough, serious enough to be called on, even if ournovels are so weighty and so serious that hardly anybody can read them.We are a gay tribe of Ariels, too light to discuss even our own trade.For royal commissions concern themselves with our trade, with copyrightlaw, with the restrictions of the paper supply. You might think that,for instance, paper supply concerned us, for we use cruel quantities,yet no recognised author sat on the commission; a publisher was thenearest approach. Apparently there were two great consumers of paper,authors and grocers, but alone the grocers were consulted. What is thematter with us? Is our crime that we put down in indecent ink what wethink and feel, while other people think and feel the same, butprudently keep it down? Possibly our crimes are our imagination and ourtendency to carry this imagination into action. Bismarck said that aState conducted on the lines of the Sermon on the Mount would not lasttwenty-four hours; perhaps it is thought that a State in the conduct ofwhich a novelist had a share would immediately resolve itself into aproblem play. Something like that, though in fact it is unlikely thatAriel come to judgment would be much more fanciful in his decrees thanthe historic Solomon.
All this because we lack solidity ... and yet the public calls uscommercial, self-advertisers, money-grubbers. It is thought base that weshould want three meals a day, though nobody suggests that we can hopeto find manna in the street, or drink in our parks from the fountainHippocrene. We are told that we make our contracts too keenly, that weare grasping, that we are not straight ... and yet we are told that weare not business men. What are we to do? Shall we form a trade union andestablish a piece rate? Shall we sell our novels by the yard? May we notbe as commercial and respected as the doctor who heals with words andthe lawyer who strangles with tape? Now and then the defences ofsociety and state are breached, and a novelist enters Parliament. MrHilaire Belloc, Mr A. E. W. Mason, followed Disraeli into the House ofCommons, but it is very extraordinary. No one knows how these gentlemenmanaged to convince the electors that with their eye 'in fine frenzyrolling' they would not scandalise their party by voting against it.(Those writing chaps, you know, they aren't _safe_!)
It must be said that in Parliament the novelists did not have a verygood time; they were lucky in having been preferred to a landowner or apawnbroker, but once in they had not the slightest chance of beingpreferred to those estimable members of society. It was not a questionof straight votes; it never came to that, for Mr Belloc soon disagreedwith both sides and became a party of one, while Mr A. E. W. Mason as arushlight flickered his little flicker and went out. It is as well; theywould never have been taken seriously. It is almost a tradition thatthey should not be taken seriously, and it is on record in most of theworldly memoirs of the nineteenth century that the two main objectionsto Disraeli were his waistcoats and his authorship of _ContariniFleming_. Nero liked to see people burnt alive; Disraeli wrote novels.Weaknesses are found in all great men.
There seems in this to lie error as well as scandal; when a neworganisation is created, say for the control of lamp oil, obviously anovelist should not be made its chairman, but why should a blottingpaper merchant be preferred? Indeed, one might side with Mr Zangwill,who demands representation for authors in the Cabinet itself, on theplea that they would introduce the emotion which is necessary if theCabinet is to manage impulsive mankind. As he finely says, we areprofessors of human nature; if only some University would give us atitle and some initials to follow our name, say P.H.N., people mightbelieve that we knew something of it. But the attitude of the State inthese matters is steadfast enough. It recognises us as servants ratherthan as citizens; if in our later years we come upon hard times, we canbe given, through the Civil List, pensions which rescue us from theindignities of the poorhouse, but no more. Mostly these pensions benefitour heirs, but the offering is so small that it shocks; it is liketipping an archbishop. Thus Mr W. B. Yeats enjoys a pension of L150, MrJoseph Conrad, of L100. Why give us pensions at all if they must bealms? One cannot be dignified on L100 a year; one can be dignified onL5000 a year, because the world soon forgets that you ride a gift horseif that horse is a fine, fat beast. The evidence is to be found in theretiring pensions of our late Lord Chancellors, who receive L5000 ayear, of our Judges, L1000 to L3750, in the allowances made toimpoverished politicians, which attain L2000. Out of a total of L320,000met by our civil list, literature, painting, science, research, _divide_every year L1200. Nor do the immediate rewards show greater equality.Lord Roberts was voted L100,000 for his services in South Africa; MrThomas Hardy has not yet been voted anything for _The Dynasts_.
The shame of literature is carried on even into following generations.The present Lord Nelson, who is not a poor man, for he owns 7000 acresof land, is still drawing a pension of L5000 a year, earned by hisaugust ancestor, but the daughter of Leigh Hunt must be content withL50. We are unknown. We are nobody. Rouget de l'Isle, author of _LaMarseillaise_, gave wings to the revolutionary chariot, but tiny,bilious, tyrannic Robespierre rode in it, and rides in it to-day throughthe pages of history, while men go to their death singing the words ofRouget de l'Isle and know him not.
Even in our own profession of authorship the novelist is an object ofdisdain. We are less than the economists, the historians, the politicalwriters: we amuse while they teach; they bore, and as they bore it isassumed that they educate, dullness always having been the sorrycompanion of education. Evidence is easily found; there exists a useful,short encyclopaedia called _Books That Count_. It contains the names ofabout 4000 authors, out of whom only sixty-three are novelists. Divineswhose sermons do not fetch a penny at the second-hand bookseller's,promoters of economic theories long disproved, partisan historians,mendacious travellers ... they crowd out of the 'books that count' thepale sixty-three novelists, all that is left of the large assembly thatgave us _Tom Jones_ and _The Way of All Flesh_. This attitude we observein most reference books. We observe it, for instance, in the well-known_Who's Who Year Book_, which, amazing as it seems, contains no list ofauthors. The book contains a list of professors, including those ofdental surgery, a list of past Presidents of the Oxford Union, a list ofowners of Derby winners, but not a list of authors. The editors of thispopular reference book know what the public wants; apparently the publicwants to know that Mr Arthur H. King is General Manager of theCommercial Bank of London Ltd. ... but the public does not want to knowthat Mr Anatole France is a great man. The only evidence of notice is alist of our pseudonyms. It matters that Mr Richard Le Gallienne shouldwrite under the name of 'Logroller,' for that is odd. Mr Le Gallienne,being an author, is a curiosity; it matters to nobody that he is a man.
II
What is the area of a novelist's reputation? How far do the ripplesextend when he casts a novel into the whirlpool of life? It is difficultto say, but few novelists were ever so well known to the people as werein their time such minor figures as Bradlaugh and Dr Grace, nor is therea novelist to-day whose fame can vie with that of, say, Mr Roosevelt. Itis strange to think that Dickens himself could not in his own day createas much stir as, say, Lord Salisbury. He lacked political flavour; hewas merely one of the latter day prophets who lack the uniqueadvertisement of being stoned. It will be said that such an instance istaken from the masses of the world, most of whom do not read novels,while all are affected by the politician, but in those circles thatsupport literature the same phenomenon appears; the novel may b
e known;the novelist is not. The novel is not respected and, indeed, one oftenhears a woman, at a big lending library, ask for 'three of the latestnovels.' New novels! Why not new potatoes? She takes the books awaycalmly, without looking at the titles or the names. She is quitesatisfied; sometimes she does not care much whether or not she has readthose novels before, for she does not remember them. They go in at oneear and come out at the other presumably, as a judge said, because thereis nothing to stop them.
It is undeniable that the great mass of readers forget either names ortitles; many forget both. Some of the more educated remember the authorand ask their library for 'something by E. M. Dell,' because she writessuch sweet, pretty books, a definition where slander subtly blends withveracity. But, in most cases, nothing remains of either author or titleexcept a hazy impression; the reader is not quite sure whether the bookshe liked so much is _Fraternity_ or the _Corsican Brothers_. She willknow that it had something to do with family, and that the author's namebegan with 'G' ... unless it was 'S'. It cannot be otherwise, so long asnovels are read in the way they are read, that is to say, if they aretaken as drugs. Generally, novels are read to dull the mind, and manysucceed, ruining the chances of those whose intent is not morphean,which fulfil the true function of art, viz., to inflame. The object of anovel is not to send the reader to sleep, not to make him oblivious oftime on a railway journey; it is meant to show character, to stimulateobservation, to make life vivid, and as life is most vivid when it ismost unpleasant, the novel that is worth reading is naturally setaside. For such novels stir the brain too much to let it go to sleep.Those novels are judged in the same way as the baser kind, and that is,perhaps, why the novel itself stands so low. It does stand low, at leastin England, for it is almost impossible to sell it. Inquiries made ofpublishers show that they expect to sell to the circulating librariesseventy to seventy-five per cent. of the copies printed. To sell to acirculating library is not selling; it is lending at one remove; itmeans that a single copy bought by a library is read by anything betweentwenty and a hundred people. Sometimes it is read by more, for a copybought by Mudie's is sold off when the subscribers no longer ask for it.It goes to a town of the size of, say Winchester. Discarded after a yearor so by the subscribers it may be sold off for a penny or twopence,with one thrown into the dozen for luck, and arrive with its coverhanging on in a way that is a testimonial to the binder, with its pagesmarked with thumbs, stained with tears, or, as the case may be, withsoup, at some small stationer's shop in a little market town, to go outon hire at a penny a week, until it no longer holds together, and goesto its eternal rest in the pulping machine. On the way, nobody hasbought it except to let it out, as the padrone sends out the prettyItalian boys with an organ and a monkey. The public have not bought thebook to read and to love. The twenty-five or thirty per cent. actuallysold have been disposed of as birthday or Christmas presents, becauseone has to give something, and because one makes more effect with awell-bound book costing six shillings than with six shillings' worth ofchocolates. Literature has been given its royalty on the bread of shame.Yet, impossible as the novel finds it to tear its shilling from thepublic, the theatre easily wheedles it into paying a guinea or more fortwo stalls. It seems strange that two people will pay a guinea to see_Three Weeks_ on the boards, yet would never dream of giving four andsixpence for Miss Elinor Glyn's book. That is because theatre seats mustbe paid for, while books can be borrowed. It goes so far that novelistsare continually asked 'where one can get their books,' meaning 'wherethey can be borrowed'; often they are asked to lend a copy, while no onebegs a ride from a cabman.
In England, the public of the novel is almost exclusively feminine. Fewmen read novels, and a great many nothing at all except the newspaper.They say that they are too busy, which is absurd when one reflects howbusy is the average woman. The truth is that they are slack andignorant. They have some historic reason to despise the novel, for it isquite true that in the nineteenth century, with a few exceptions, suchas Thackeray, Jane Austen, Charlotte Bronte, Nathaniel Hawthorne,Dickens, Scott, George Eliot, the three volume novel was trash. Itdealt, generally, with some rhetorical Polish hero, a high-born Englishmaiden, cruel parents, and Italian skies. Right up to 1885 that sort ofthing used to arrive every morning outside Mudie's in a truck, but if itstill arrives at Mudie's in a truck it should not be forgotten thatother novels arrive. That is what the men do not know. If they read atall you will find them solemnly taking in _The Reminiscences of MrJustice X. Y. Z._ or _Shooting Gazelle in Bulbulland_, _PoliticalEconomics_, or _Economic Politics_, (it means much the same either wayup). All that sort of thing, that frozen, dried-up, elderly waggishness,that shallow pomp, is mentally murderous. Sometimes men do read novels,mostly detective stories, sporting or very sentimental tales. Whenobserved, they apologise and say something about resting the brain. Thatmeans that they do not respect the books they read, which is base; it islike keeping low company, where one can yawn and put one's boots on thesofa. Now, no company is low unless you think it is. As soon as yourealise that and stay, you yourself grow naturalised to it. Likewise, ifyou read a book without fellowship and respect for its author, you areoutraging it. But mankind is stupid, and it would not matter very muchthat a few men should read novels in that shamefaced and patronising wayif they were not so open about it. If they do not apologise, they boastthat they never read a novel; they imply superiority. Their feminineequivalent is the serious-minded girl, who improves her mind with a booklike _Vicious Viscounts of Venice_; if she reads novels at all she holdsthat like good wine they improve with keeping, and must be at leastfifty years old. By that time the frivolous author may have redeemed hissins.
It is because of all these people, the people who borrow and do notcherish, the people who skim, the people who indulge and cringe, and thepeople who do not indulge at all, that we have come to a corruption ofliterary taste, where the idea is abashed before the easy emotion, wherereligiosity expels religion, and the love passion turns to heroics or tomaundering, that the success of the second-rate, of Mrs Barclay, of MissGene Stratton Porter, of Mr Hall Caine, has come about. It is a killingatmosphere. It is almost incomprehensible, for when the talk is of apolitical proposal, say, of land settlement in South Africa, or of a newtype of oil engine, hardly a man will say: 'I am not interested.' Hewould be ashamed to say that. It would brand him as a retrograde person.Sometimes he will say: 'I do not like music,' but he will avoid that ifhe can, for music is an evidence of culture; he will very seldom confessthat he does not care for pictures; he will confess without anyhesitation that he does not care for any kind of book. He will be ratherproud to think that he prefers a horse or a golf-stick. It will seldomoccur to him that this literature of which some people talk so much canhold anything for him. It will not even occur to him to try, forliterature is judged at Jedburgh. It hardly ever occurs to any one thatliterature has its technique, that introductions to it are necessary; aman will think it worth while to join a class if he wants to acquirescientific knowledge, but seldom that anything in the novel justifieshis taking preliminary steps. It is not that literature repels him byits occasional aridity; it is not that he has stumbled upon classics,which, as Mr Arnold Bennett delightfully says, 'are not light women whoturn to all men, but gracious ladies whom one must long woo.' Men do notthink the lady worth wooing. This brings us back to an early conclusionin this chapter; novelists are not useful; we are pleasant, thereforedespicable. Our novels do not instruct; all they can do is to delight orinflame. We can give a man a heart, but we cannot raise his bankinterest. So our novels are not worthy of his respect because they donot come clad in the staid and reassuring gray of the text-book; theyare not dull enough to gain the respect of men who can appreciate onlythe books that bore them, who shrink away from the women who charm themand turn to those who scrag their hair off their forehead, and bringtheir noses, possibly with a cloth, to a disarming state of brilliancy.
Sometimes, when the novelist thinks of all these things, he is overcomeby a d
esperate mood, decides to give up literature and grow respectable.He thinks of becoming a grocer, or an attorney, and sometimes he wantsto be the owner of a popular magazine, where he will exercise, not thedisreputable function of writing, but the estimable one of castingpleasant balance sheets. Then the mood passes, and he is driven back toFlaubert's view that it is a dog's life, but the only one. He decides tolive down the extraordinary trash that novelists produce. Incredible astruth may be, fiction is stranger still, and there is no limit to theintoxications of the popular novelist. Consider, indeed, the followingaccount of six novels, taken from the reviews in the literary supplementof the _Times_, of 27th July, 1916. In the first, _Seventeen_, Mr BoothTarkington depicts characters of an age indicated by the title,apparently concerned with life as understood at seventeen, who conductbaby talk with dogs. In the second, _Blow the Man Down_, by Mr HolmanDay, an American financier causes his ship to run ashore, while thecaptain is amorously pursued by the daughter of the villainousfinancier, and cuts his way out through the bottom of a schooner. _ThePlunderers_, by Mr Edwin Lefevre, is concerned with robbers in New York,whose intentions are philanthropic; we observe also _Wingate's Wife_, byMiss Violet Tweedale, where the heroine suffers 'an agony ofapprehension,' and sees a man murdered; but all is well, as the victimhappens to be the husband whom she had deserted twenty years before.There is also _The Woman Who Lived Again_, by Mr Lindsey Russell, wherea cabinet, in office when the war breaks out, concerns itself withGerman spies and an ancient Eurasian, who with Eastern secrets revives adead girl and sends her back to England to confound the spies. There isalso _Because It Was Written_, by Princess Radziwill, where Russian andBelgian horrors are framed in between a prologue and epilogue entirelydevoted to archangels. There is nothing extraordinary in these novels;they merely happen to be reviewed on the same day. The collectioncompares perfectly with another, in the _Daily News_ of the 19thSeptember, 1916, where are reviewed a novel by Miss C. M. Matheson, oneby Mr Ranger Gull, and one by 'Richard Dehan.' They are the usual sortof thing. The first is characterised by Mr Garnett as 'a hash of triteimages and sentimental meanderings.' Miss Matheson goes so far as tointroduce a shadowy, gleaming figure, which, with hand high upraisedover the characters' heads, describes the Sign of the Cross. Mr RangerGull introduces as a manservant one of the most celebrated burglars ofthe day, a peer poisoned with carbon disulphide, wireless apparatus, andthe lost heir to a peerage. As for 'Richard Dehan,' it is enough toquote one of her character's remarks: 'I had drained my cup of shame tothe dregs.'
This sort of thing is produced in great abundance, and has helped tobring the novel down. Unreality, extravagance, stage tears, offensivepiety, ridiculous abductions and machinery, because of those we have'lost face,' like outraged Chinamen. No wonder that people of commonintelligence, who find at their friend's house drivel such as this,should look upon the novel as unworthy. It is natural, though it isunjust. The novel is a commodity, and if it seeks a wide public it mustmake for a low one: the speed of a fleet is that of its slowest ship;the sale of a novel is the capacity of the basest mind. Only it might beremembered that all histories are not accurate, all biographies nottruthful, all economic text-books not readable. Likewise, it should beremembered, and we need quote only Mr Conrad, that novels are notdefined by the worst of their kind.... It is men's business to find outthe best books; they search for the best wives, why not for the bestnovels? There are novels that one can love all one's life, and thiscannot be said of every woman.
There are to-day in England about twenty men and women who write novelsof a certain quality, and about as many who fail, but whose appeal is tothe most intelligent. These people are trying to picture man, todescribe their period, to pluck a feather from the wing of the fleetingtime. They do not write about radium murders, or heroines clad inorchids and tiger skins. They strive to seize a little of the raw lifein which they live. The claim is simple; even though we may produce twothousand novels a year which act upon the brain in the evening ascigarettes do after lunch, we do put forth a small number of novelswhich are the mirror of the day. Very few are good novels, and perhapsnot one will live, but many a novel concerned with labour problems,money, freedom in love, will have danced its little dance to somepurpose, will have created unrest, always better than stagnation, willhave aroused controversy, anger, impelled some people, if not to changetheir life, at least to tolerate that others should do so. _The NewMachiavelli_, _Lord Jim_, _The White Peacock_, _The Rise of SilasLapham_, _Ethan Frome_, none of those are supreme books, but every oneof them is a hand grenade flung at the bourgeoisie; we do not want tokill it, but we do want to wake it up.
It is the bourgeoisie's business to find out the novels that will wakeit up; it should take as much pains to do this as to find out the bestcigar. The bourgeoisie has congestion of the brain; the works ofscholars will stupefy it still more; only in the novelists of the day,who are rough, unpleasant, rebellious, restless, will they find aremedy.
Whether the reading public can discern that undying flame in the chokingsmoke of books written for money and not for love, is another question.Every year more novels are published; but when one considers thenovelists of the past, Thackeray's continual flow of sugary claptrap,the incapacity of Dickens to conceive beauty, the almost unrelieved,stagey solemnity of Walter Scott, the novelist of to-day is inclined tothank God that he is not as other men. Those old writers trod our pathsfor us, but they walked blindfold; let us recognise their splendidqualities, their feeling for atmosphere, their knowledge of men, but wefind more that is honest and hopeful in a single page of _Tono Bungay_than in all the great Victorians put together. Yes, we are arrogant; whynot? Why should it be natural to us to see our faults and not ourtalents? We are held in contempt, but such was the fate of everyprophet; they make us into mummers and we learn mummery, but Balzac andTurgenev rise from their own dust. We are not safe people, or quietpeople; not tame rabbits in a hutch, nor even romantic rogues: most ofus are no more romantic than jockeys.
It is, perhaps, because we are not safe (and are we any less safe thancompany promoters?) that we are disliked. We are disliked, as Stendhalsays, because all differences create hatred; because by showing it itsface in the glass we tend to disrupt society, to exhibit to its shockedeyes what is inane in its political constitution, barbarous in its moralcode. We are queer people, nasty people, but we are neither nastier norqueerer than our fellows. We are merely more shameless and exhibit whatthey hide. We have got outside, and we hate being outside; we should somuch like to enlist under the modern standard, the silk hat, and yet weare arrogant. Doctors, judges, bishops, merchants, think little of us;we regret it and rejoice in it. We are unhappy and exalted adventurersin the frozen fields of human thought. We are the people who make the'footprints on the sands of time.' Later on, the bourgeoisie will treadin them.