Sincerity: the Publisher and the Policeman
There is always much talk of sincerity in literature. It is a favouritetopic in literary circles, but often the argument sounds vain, forEnglish literature seldom attains sincerity; it may never do so untilEnglishmen become Russians or Frenchmen, which, in spite of alltemptations, they are not likely to do.
Once upon a time we had a scapegoat ready, the circulating libraries,for they made themselves ridiculous when they banned _Black Sheep_ and_The Uncounted Cost_, while every now and then they have banned a bookof artistic value, likely to lead astray the mothers rather than thedaughters. Like the others, I foamed and fumed against the libraries,who after all were only conducting their business according to theircommercial interests; like many others, I set up the idea that thecirculating library was a sort of trustee for literature, and after thiscoronation I abused the library as one unworthy of a crown. It wasrather unfair, for the conditions which militate against the freeembodiment of brute facts into fiction form prevailed before the LibraryCensorship was thought of; the libraries have not made public opinionbut followed it; nowadays they slightly influence it. For public opinionis not the opinion of the public, it is the opinion of a minority. Theopinion of a minority makes the opinion of the majority, because thelatter has, as a rule, no opinion at all.
Who the censorious minority is I do not quite know. I have a vision of ahorrid conclave made up of the National Council of Public Morals, someshopkeepers addicted to their chapel in default of other vices, ofanti-suffragists who think _Ann Veronica_ dangerous; it must number someelderly ladies too, tired of converting the stubborn heathen, and Ithink some bishops, quite elderly and still more ladylike; there arecelibates with whom celibacy has not agreed and who naturally want toserve out the world; there is everybody who in the name of duty,decency, self-control, purity, and such like catch-words, has stuffedhis ears against the pipes of Pan with the cotton wool of aggressiverespectability. A pretty congress, and like all congresses it talks asabundantly and as virulently as any young novelist. The vocal opinion ofthese people is well described in a recent successful revue: 'To thepure all things are impure.' Often of late years it has run amuck. Notlong ago it caused the Municipal Libraries of Doncaster and Dewsbury tobanish _Tom Jones_ and to pronounce _Westward Ho!_ unfit for devoutRoman Catholics; it still spreads into the drama and holds such plays as_Waste_, _Mrs Warren's Profession_, _Monna Vanna_ well hidden under thecalico and red flannel of British rectitude; it has had its outbursts inpicture palaces and music halls, where it happened to overlook theSalome dance and living pictures; often it unchains merriment, as on theperfect days when it cropped titles that seemed suggestive and causedplays to appear under more stimulating titles of 'The Girl Who Went' ...and 'The Girl Who Lost' ... (I do not remember what she lost, but Ipassionately want to know; such are the successes of Puritanism).
It is true that in some directions Puritanism has recently weakened.Plays long outcast, such as 'Damaged Goods,' 'Ghosts,' and 'The ThreeDaughters of Monsieur Dupont' have unashamedly taken the boards, but Ifear that this does not exhibit the redemption of virtue by sin: if thenewspapers had not conducted a campaign for the protection of thenotoriously guileless New Zealand soldiers against the flapper with thehundred heads (every one of them filled with evil), if contagiousdiseases had not suddenly become fashionable, these plays would still belying with the other unborn in the limbo of the Lord Chamberlain. ButPuritanism has long teeth; it can still drive out of politics our nextCharles Dilke, our next Parnell, however generous or gifted; it stillhangs over the Law Courts, where women may be ordered out, or wherecases may be heard _in camera_; it still holds some sway over everythingbut private life, where humanity recoups its public losses.
Puritan opinion has therefore a broader face of attack on the novel thanis afforded by the Library Censorship. For the latter can injure a bookbut it cannot suppress it; on the whole banned books have suffered, butthey have also benefited because many people buy what they cannotborrow, and because many buy the books which the Puritans advertise asunfit to read. (They are much disappointed, as a rule, unless they arethemselves Puritans.) That buying class is not very large, but itcounts, and I suppose we must charitably assume that the people who postto the bookseller to purchase the works which the library has rejectedare supporters of literary sincerity; we must form our private opinionas to that. But whether the people who buy the banned book are or arenot eager to obtain four-and-six penn'orth of truth, the fact remainsthat they do buy, that the deplorable authors do live, and that they dopersist in writing their regrettable novels. The libraries have notkilled sincerity; they have done no more than trammel it. For instance,in the well-known cases of _The Devil's Garden_, _Sinister Street_, and_The Woman Thou Gavest Me_, the faltering hesitation of the circulatinglibraries resulted in a colossal advertisement, of which Mr Maxwell andMr Compton Mackenzie made the best, and Mr Hall Caine of course a littlemore. The libraries did not deprive of sustenance the authors of_Limehouse Nights_ and _Capel Sion_, and in their new spirit did notinterfere when Mr Galsworthy's heroine, in _Beyond_, made the best ofone world and of two men.
The assassins of sincerity are the publisher and the policeman. Dismissthe illusion that banned books are bold and bad; for the most part theyare kindly and mild, silly beyond the conception of Miss Elinor Glyn,beyond the sentimental limits of Mrs Barclay; they are seldom vicious inintent, and too devoid of skill to be vicious in achievement. The realbold books are unwritten or unpublished; for nobody but a fool wouldexpect a publisher to be fool enough to publish them. There are, it istrue, three or four London publishers who are not afraid of thelibraries, but they are afraid of the police, and any one who wishes totest them can offer them, for instance, a translation of _Le Journald'une Femme de Chambre_. A publisher is to a certain extent a humanbeing; he knows that works of this type (and this one is masterly) areoften works of art; he knows that they are saleable, and that assuredprofits would follow on publication, were the books not suppressed bythe police. But he does not publish them, because he also knows thatthe police and its backers, purity societies and common informers, woulddemand seizure of the stock after the first review and hurry to BowStreet all those who had taken part in the printing and issue of theworks. As a result many of these books are driven underground into thevile atmosphere of the vilest shops; some are great works of art; oneis, in the words of Mr Anatole France, 'minded to weep over them withthe nine Muses for company.' Need I say more than that _Madame Bovary_,the greatest novel the world has seen, is now being sold in a shillingpaper edition under a cover which shows Madame Bovary in a sort ofprivate dining-room, dressed in a chemise, and preparing to drink off abumper of champagne. (Possibly the designer of this cover has in hismind sparkling burgundy.)
Several cases are fresh in my memory where purity, living in what Racinecalled 'the fear of God, sir, and of the police,' has intervened to stopthe circulation of a novel. One is that of _The Yoke_, a novel of noparticular merit, devoid of subversive teaching, but interesting becauseit was frank, because it did not portray love on the lines of musicalcomedy, because it faced the common sex problem of the middle agedspinster and the very young man, because it did not ignore the perilwhich everybody knows to be lurking within a mile of Charing Cross. _TheYoke_ enjoyed a large sale at 6s. and was not interfered with,presumably because those who can afford 6s. may be abandoned to thescarlet woman. It was then published at a shilling. Soon after, thesecret combination of common informer, purity group, and police forcedthe publisher into a police court, compelled him to express regret forthe publication, and to destroy all the remaining copies and moulds.That is a brief tragedy, and it in no wise involves the library system.Another tragedy may be added. In 1910 Sudermann's novel, _Das HoheLied_, was published under the title of _The Song of Songs_. It is not avery interesting novel; it is long, rather crude, but it relatesfaithfully enough the career of a woman who lived by the sale ofherself. The trouble was that she made rather a succe
ss of it, and itwas shown in a few scenes that she did not always detest the incidentsof this career, which is not unnatural. In December, 1910, twoinspectors from the Criminal Investigation Department called on thepublisher and informed his manager that a complaint had been madeagainst the book; it was described as obscene. The officers apparentlywent on to say that their director, Sir Melville Macnaghten, did notassociate himself with that opinion, but their object was to draw thepublisher's attention to the fact that a complaint had been made.Thereupon, without further combat, the publisher withdrew the book.Nobody can blame him; he was not in business to fight battles of thiskind, and I suppose that few British juries would have supported him.They would, more likely, have given the case against him first and triedto get hold of a private copy of the book after, presumably to read onSunday afternoons. The interesting part of the business is that theaccusation remained anonymous, that the police did not associate itselfwith it, but came humbly, helmet in hand, to convey the displeasure ofsome secret somebody with some secret something in the book. And thereyou are! That is all you need to snuff out the quite good work of anovelist with a quite good European reputation.
Once upon a time, I thought I might myself have a taste of the puritymedicine. In 1910 I had ready for publication a novel called _A Bed ofRoses_. I placed it with Messrs Alston Rivers, Ltd., whose standard ofrespectability was beyond attachment. They read the book without, so faras I remember, any ill effects; at least I saw no signs of corruption inthe managing director and the secretary; the maidenly reserve of thelady shorthand-typist seemed unblemished. But some horrid internalconvulsion must have suddenly occurred in the firm; they must have losttheir nerve; or perhaps my corrupting influence was gradual andprogressive; at any rate, they suddenly sent the book to their legaladviser, who wired back that it would almost certainly be prosecuted. Sothe contract was not signed, and if I had not, in those days, been anenthusiastic young man who longed to be prosecuted, I might never havepublished the book at all; the moral pressure might have been enough tokeep it down. But I offered it to many publishers, all of whom rejectedit, at the same time asking whether some milder spring might not bestruck from the rock of my imagination, until I came across Mr FrankPalmer, who was a brave man. I offered him that book, cropped of aboutseventy pages, which I thought so true to life that I realised they mustcause offence. He accepted it. Those were beautiful times, and I knew anexquisite day when I decided to chance the prosecution. I remember thebang of the MS. as it dropped into the post box; garbling an old song, Ithought: 'Good-bye, good-bye, ye lovely young girls, we're off to BotanyBay.'
The police treated me very scurvily; they took no notice at all. Thebook was banned by all libraries owing to its alleged hectic qualities,and in due course achieved a moderate measure of scandalous success. Itell this story to show that had I been a sweet and shrinking soul, thatif Mr Palmer had not shared in my audacity, the book would not have beenpublished. We should not have been stopped, but we should have beenfrightened off, and this, I say, is the force that keeps down sincerenovels, deep down in the muddy depths of their authors' imagination.
Now and then a publisher dares, and dares too far. Such is the case of_The Rainbow_, by Mr D. H. Lawrence, where the usual methods of Puritanterrorism were applied, where the publisher was taken into court, andmade to eat humble pie, knowing that if he refused he must drinkhemlock. Certainly _The Rainbow_ was a bad book, for it was anill-written book, a book of hatred and desire ... but many of us arepeople of hatred and desire, and I submit that there is no freedom whena minority of one in a nation of fifty millions is hampered in theexpression of his feelings. More than one opinion has been held by oneman and is now the belief of all the world. The beliefs of to-morrowwill be slain if we suppress to-day the opinion of one. I wouldsurrender all the rupees and virgins of Bengal for the sake of the atomof truth which may, in another age, build up immortal understanding inthe heart of man.
All this has frightened publishers, so that they will now take no risks,and even the shy sincerity of English writers is turned away. The publicsubserve the Puritans, little mean people whom Mr Wells ideallynicknamed 'Key-hole,' or 'Snuffles,' little people who form 'watchcommittees' or 'vigilance societies'; who easily discover the obscenebecause it hangs like a film before their eyes, little people who keepthe window shut. The police must obey, or be called corrupt; the courtsare ready to apply the law severely rather than leniently, for who shallplay devil's advocate at the Old Bailey? No wonder the publishers arefrightened; the combination of their timidity, of truculent Puritanismand of a reluctantly vigilant police makes it almost impossible to_publish_ a sincere work.
One result is that we are deprived of translations of foreign novels,some of which are of the first rank. There is _Le Journal d'une Femme deChambre_; there is _Aphrodite_, the work of M. Pierre Louys, who is anartist in his way; there is Mr Boylesve's delicate, inwrought _La Lecond'Amour dans un Parc_; there is the Parisian mischief of M. Prevost's_Lettres de Femmes_, the elegance of M. Henri de Regnier. _Sanin_ gotthrough, how I do not know; I have not read the translation, and it mayvery well be that it escaped only after the translator had thicklycoated it with the soapsuds of English virtue.
Small as their chances may be it is a pity that the publishers do notadventure. It is true that Mr Vizetelly went to jail for publishingtranslations of Zola's novels, but when we are told by Mr George Moorethat Mr W. T. Stead confided to him that the Vigilance Societyconsidered the prosecution of _Madame Bovary_, it seems necessary againto test the law. For you will observe that in all the cases quoted thepublisher has not allowed himself to be committed for trial; he haschosen the prudent and humble course of apologising and withdrawing thebook, and one wonders what would happen if just once, supported by acommon fund, a publisher were to face the Puritans, let the case go fortrial, test the law. One wonders what the result might not be in thehands of, for instance, Sir John Simon. He might win a glorious victoryfor English letters; he might do away with much of the muckraking whichis keeping English letters in subjection because nobody dares drag itout for public exposure and combat. Until that happens Puritan influenceis more potent than a score of convictions, for no publisher knows whathe may do and what he may not; prosecution is as effective in threat asin action, and I hope that if ever this struggle comes it will be oversome book of mine.
Let it be clear that no blame attaches to the publisher; he does nottrade under the name 'Galahad & Co.'; he knows that even defeatedPuritans would attempt to avenge their downfall, and malignantly pursueall the works he issued in every municipal library. But still it is apity that no publisher will face them; half a dozen of our best knownpublishers are knights: perhaps one day one of them will put on hisarmour.
This secret terrorism is a national calamity, for it procures thesterilisation of the English novel. It was always so, for there is notcomplete sincerity in _Tom Jones_, or in _A Mummer's Wife_, even as theword sincerity is understood in England, and there is little nowadays.We have to-day a certain number of fairly courageous novelists whoseworks are alluded to in other chapters, but they are not completelysincere. If they were they would not be concerned with censorships; theywould not be published at all. I do not suggest that they wish to beinsincere, but they cannot help it. Their insincerity, I suspect, asexemplified by the avoidance of certain details, arises from thenecessity of that avoidance; it arises also from the habit ofconcealment and evasion which a stupefied public, led by a neuroticfaction, has imposed upon them.
Our novelists openly discuss every feature of social life, politics,religion, but they cast over sex a thick veil of ellipse and metaphor.Thus Mr Onions suggests, but dares not name, the disease a charactercontracts; Mr Lawrence leaves in some doubt the actual deeds of his_Trespasser_, while 'H. H. Richardson' leaves to our conjectures thehabits of Schilsky. (So do I, you see; if I were to say exactly what Imean it would never do.)
It may be said that all this is not insincerity, and that there is noneed to dwell upon what t
he respectable call the unwholesome, theunhealthy, the unnecessary, but I think we must accept that thebowdlerising to which a novelist subjects his own work results inlopsidedness. If a novelist were to develop his characters evenly thethree hundred page novel might extend to five hundred; the additionaltwo hundred pages would be made up entirely of the sex preoccupationsof the characters, their adventures and attempts at satisfaction. Therewould be as many scenes in the bedroom as in the drawing-room, probablymore, given that human beings spend more time in the former than in thelatter apartment. There would be abundant detail, detail that wouldbring out an intimacy of contact, a completeness of mutual understandingwhich does not generally come about when characters meet at breakfast oron the golf course. The additional pages would offer pictures of the sexside of the characters, and thus would compel them to come alive; atpresent they often fail to come alive because they develop only on, say,five sides out of six.
No character in a modern English novel has been fully developed.Sometimes, as in the case of Mendel, of Jude the Obscure, of MarkLennan, of Gyp Fioersen, one has the impression that they are fullydeveloped because the book mainly describes their sex adventures, butone could write a thousand pages about sex adventures and have donenothing but produce sentimental atmosphere. A hundred kisses do not makeone kiss, and there is more truth in one page of _Madame Bovary_, thanin the shackled works of Mr Hardy. It is not his fault, it is a case of... if England but knew ... and, therefore, if Hardy but could. Ourliterary characters are lopsided because their ordinary traits are fullyportrayed, analysed with extraordinary minuteness, while their sex lifeis cloaked, minimised, or left out. Therefore, as the ordinary man doesindulge his sexual proclivities, as a large proportion of his thoughtsrun on sex, if he is a live man, the characters in modern novels arefalse. They are megacephalous and emasculate. If their religious views,their political opinions, their sporting tastes were whittled down ascruelly as their sexual tendencies, then the characters would becomebalanced; they would be dwarfs, but they would be true; if all thecharacteristics of men were as faintly suggested in them as their sexualtraits, the persons that figure in novels would simulate reality.
They would not be reality, but they would be less untrue than they areto-day. This, however, is merely theory, for it is impossible to applyto the novel the paradox that insincerity in everything being betterthan insincerity in one thing it is desirable to be insincerethroughout. The paradox cannot be applied, because then a novel of ideascould not be written; shrouded religious doubt, shy socialism, suggestedanarchism, would reduce the length by nine tenths, make of the novel ashort story. It would be perfectly balanced and perfectly insincere;aesthetically sound, it would satisfy nobody. We should be compelled topad it out with murder, theft, and arson, which, as everybody knows, areperfectly moral things to write about.
It is a cruel position for the English novel. The novelist may discussanything but the main pre-occupation of life. If he describes the Cityclerk he may dilate upon City swindles, but he must select warily fromamong the City clerk's loves. The novelist knows these loves, recordsthem in his mind, speaks of them freely, but he does not write themdown. If he did, his publisher would go to jail. For this reason thereis no completely sincere writing. The novelist is put into the witnessbox, but he is not sworn to tell the truth, the whole truth and nothingbut the truth; he is sworn to tell the truth, but not the whole truth.He is not perjured, but he is muzzled.
Obviously this is an unhealthy state, for the spirit of a people is inits books, and I suspect that it does a people no good if itspreoccupation find no outlet; it develops inhibitions, while its Puritanmasters develop phobias. The cloaking of the truth makes neither modestynor mock modesty; it makes impurity. There is no market for pornography,for pornography makes no converts who were not already converted. Ibelieve that the purity propaganda creates much of the evil that lives;I charge advertising reformers with minds full of hate, bishops full ofwind, and bourgeois full of fear, with having exercised through thepulpit and the platform a more stimulating effect upon youth, and withhaving given it more unhealthy information about white slavery, secretcinemas, and disorderly houses than it could ever have gained from allthe books that were ever printed in Amsterdam. I once went to a meetingfor men only, and came out with two entirely new brands of vice; abishop held up to me the luridities of secret cinemas, and dideverything for me except to give me the address. But he filled my mindwith cinemas. One could multiply these instances indefinitely. I do notthink that we should cover things up; we had enough of that during themid-Victorian period, when respectability was at its height, and whenwomen, in bodice and bustle, did their best to make respectabilitydifficult; no, we do not want things covered up, but we do want themadvertised. I believe that as good coin drives out bad the Puritanswould find a greater safety and the world a greater freedom in allowinggood literature to vie with evil; the good would inevitably win; noimmoral literature is good; all bad literature dies. The seventeenth andeighteenth centuries in England and France produced the vilestpornography we know. Those centuries also produced Moliere and Fielding.Well, to-day, you can buy Moliere and Fielding everywhere, but thepornography of those centuries is dead, and you can find it nowhereexcept in a really good West End club.
It may be argued that the English are not, as a nation, interested insex, that they do not discuss it and that they do not think about it. Ifthis were true, then a novelist would be sincere if he devoted ninetenths of his novel to business and play and no more than a tenth tosex. But it is not true. The English, particularly English women, speaka great deal about sex and, as they are certainly shy of the subject,they must devote to it a great deal of thought which they never put intowords. If anybody doubts this, let him play eavesdropper in a club, apublic house, or an office, listen to men, their views, their stories;let him especially discover how many 'humorous' tales are based on sex.And let him discreetly ascertain the topics young women discuss when nomen are present; some, like Elsie Lindtner, are frank enough to tell.
In their private lives the English do not talk of sex as they would liketo, but they do talk, and more openly every day. Yet their sexpreoccupations are not reflected in the novels which purport to reflecttheir lives; conversation is over-sexed, the novel is under-sexed,therefore untrue, therefore insincere. For this there is no immediateremedy. Neither the Society of Authors, nor a combine of publishers, nora 'Liberty Library' can shake the combination of fears which actuatespersecution. The law should certainly be tested, just as it was testedin France by the prosecution of Flaubert in 1857, but we know perfectlywell that even a victory for sincerity would do no more than carry us alittle nearer to our goal. The law is a trifle compared with publicfeeling, and public feeling is a trifle beside the emotions the publicis told it ought to feel. We had best reconcile ourselves to theinevitable, admit that we cannot be sincere because the police dare notallow it, and acquit the libraries of this one sin, that they killed inEnglish literature a sincerity which was not there.