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QUESTIONS AT ISSUE
* * * * * *
_Other Works by Mr. EDMUND GOSSE_
_IN VERSE_
_On Viol and Flute. New edition. 1890_
_Firdausi in Exile, and other Poems. Second edition. 1887_
_IN PROSE_
_Northern Studies. 1879. Popular edition. 1890_
_Life of Gray. 1882. Revised edition. 1889_
_Seventeenth Century Studies. 1883. Second edition. 1885_
_Life of Congreve. 1888_
_A History of Eighteenth Century Literature.
1889. Second edition. 1891_
_Life of Philip Henry Gosse, F.R.S. 1890_
_Gossip in a Library. 1891. Second edition. 1892_
_The Secret of Narcisse. A Romance. 1892_
* * * * * *
QUESTIONS AT ISSUE
by
EDMUND GOSSE
[Illustration: Logo]
London
William Heinemann
1893
[All rights reserved]
_TO_
_JOSEPH HENRY SHORTHOUSE_
This Volume is Dedicated
_BY_
_HIS AFFECTIONATE FRIEND_
_THE AUTHOR_
Preface
To the essays which are here collected I have given a name which at
once, I hope, describes them accurately and distinguishes them from
criticism of a more positive order. When a writer speaks to us of the
works of the dead masters, of the literary life of the past, we demand
from him the authoritative attitude. That Homer is a great poet, and
that the verse of Milton is exquisite, are not Questions at Issue. In
dealing with such subjects the critic must persuade himself that he
is capable of forming an opinion, and must then give us his opinion
definitely. But in the continent of literary criticism, where all else
is imperial, there is a province which is still republican, and that is
the analysis of contemporary literature, the frank examination of the
literary life of to-day.
In speaking of what is proceeding around us no one can be trusted to be
authoritative. The wisest, clearest, and most experienced of critics
have notoriously been wrong about the phenomena of their own day.
Ben Jonson selected the moment when _Hamlet_ and _Othello_ had just
been performed to talk of raising "the despised head of poetry again,
and stripping her of those rotten and base rags wherewith the times
have adulterated her form." Neither Hazlitt nor Sainte Beuve could be
trusted to give as valuable a judgment on the work of a man younger
than themselves as they could of any past production, be it what it
might. To map the ground around his feet is a task that the most
skilful geographer is not certain to carry out with success.
The insecurity of contemporary criticism is no reason, however, why
it should not be seriously and sincerely attempted. On the contrary,
the critic who has been accustomed to follow paths where the laws
and criteria of literature are paramount, may be glad to slip away
sometimes to a freer country, where the art he tries to practise is
more instinctive, more emotional, and more controversial. In the
schools of antiquity, when the set discourse was over, the lecturer
mingled with his audience under the portico of the Museum, and then, I
suppose, it was not any longer of the ancients that they talked, but of
the poet of last night, and of the rhetorician of to-morrow.
The critic may enjoy the sense of having abandoned the lecturing desk
or the tribune, and of mingling in easy conversation with men who are
not bound to preserve any decorum in listening to his opinions. In
the criticism of the floating literature of the day an opportunity is
offered for sensibility, for the personal note, even for a certain
indulgence in levity or irony. The questions of our own age are not yet
settled by tradition, nor hedged about with logical deductions; they
are still open to discussion; they are still Questions at Issue. Such
are all the aspects of the literary life which I endeavour to discuss
in this volume of essays.
There can, nevertheless, be no reason why, although the dress and
attitude be different, the critic should not be as true to his radical
conceptions of right and wrong in literature, when he discusses the
shifts and movements about him, as when he "bears in memory what has
tamed great nations." The attention of a literary man of character may
be diverted to a hundred dissimilar branches of his subject, but in
dealing with them all he should be the servant of the same ideas, the
defender of the same principles, the protector of the same interests.
The battle rages hither and thither, but none of the issues of it
are immaterial to him, and his attitude towards what he regards as
the enemies of his cause should never radically alter. His functions
should rather become more active and more militant when he feels that
his temporary position deprives him of accidental authority; and even
when he admits that the questions he discusses are matters of open
controversy, he should, in bringing his ideas to bear upon them, be
peculiarly careful to obey the orders of fundamental principles.
All this is quite compatible, I hope, with the sauntering step, the
conversational tone, the absence of all pedagogic assertion, which seem
to me indispensable in the treatment of contemporary themes.
Of the essays here reprinted, nearly half are practically new to
English readers, having been written for an American review, and having
been quoted only in fragments on this side of the Atlantic. At the
close of the volume I have added a Lucianic sketch, which, when it
appeared anonymously in the _Fortnightly Review_, enjoyed the singular
and embarrassing distinction of being attributed, in succession, to
four amusing writers, each of whom is deservedly a greater favourite
of the public than I am. I have seen this little extravaganza ticketed
with such eminent names that I almost hesitate to have to claim it at
last as my own. I hope there was none but very innocent fooling in it,
and that not a word in it can give anybody pain. I think it was not
an unfair representation of what literature in England, from a social
point of view, consisted two years ago. Already death has been busy
with my ideal Academy, and no dreamer of 1893 could summon together
quite so admirable a company as was still citable in 1891.
LONDON, _April 1893_.
Contents
PAGE
THE TYRANNY OF THE NOVEL 1
THE INFLUENCE OF DEMOCRACY ON LITERATURE 33
HAS AMERICA PRODUCED A POET? 69
WHAT IS A GREAT POET? 91
MAKING A NAME IN LITERATURE 113
THE LIMITS OF REALISM IN FICTION 135
IS VERSE IN DANGER? 155
TENNYSON--AND AFTER 175
SHELLEY IN 1892 199
SYMBOLISM AND M. STÉPHANE MALLARMÉ 217
TWO PASTELS:--
I. MR. ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON AS A POET 237
II. MR. RUDYARD KIPLING'S SHORT STORIES 255
AN ELECTION AT THE ENGLISH ACADEMY 295
APPENDICES 323
_The following Essays originally appeared in 'The Contemporary
Review,' 'The Fortnightly Review,' 'The National Review,' 'The New
Review,' 'The Forum,' 'The Century Magazine,' 'Longman's Magazine,' and
'The Academy.'_
THE TYRANNY OF THE NOVEL
The Tyranny of the Novel
A Parisian Hebraist has been attracting a moment's attention to his
paradoxical and learned self by announcing that strong-hearted and
strong-brained nations do not produce novels. This gentleman's soul
goes back, no doubt in longing and despair, to the heart of Babylon and
the brain of Gath. But if he looks for a modern nation that does not
cultivate the novel, he must, I am afraid, go far afield. Finland and
Roumania are certainly tainted; Bohemia lies in the bond of naturalism.
Probably Montenegro is the one European nation which this criterion
would leave strong in heart and brain. The amusing absurdity of this
whim of a pedant may serve to remind us how universal is now the
reign of prose fiction. In Scandinavia the drama may demand an equal
prominence, but no more. In all other countries the novel takes the
largest place, claims and obtains the widest popular attention, is the
admitted tyrant of the whole family of literature.
This is so universally acknowledged now-a-days that we scarcely stop
to ask ourselves whether it is a heaven-appointed condition of things,
existing from the earliest times, or whether it is an innovation.
As a matter of fact, the predominance of the novel is a very recent
affair. Most other classes of literature are as old as the art of
verbal expression: lyrical and narrative poetry, drama, history,
philosophy--all these have flourished since the sunrise of the world's
intelligence. But the novel is a creation of the late afternoon of
civilisation. In the true sense, though not in the pedantic one, the
novel began in France with _La Princesse de Clèves_, and in England
with _Pamela_--that is to say, in 1677 and in 1740 respectively.
Compared with the dates of the beginning of philosophy and of poetry,
these are as yesterday and the day before yesterday. Once started,
however, the sapling of prose fiction grew and spread mightily. It took
but a few generations to overshadow all the ancient oaks and cedars
around it, and with its monstrous foliage to dominate the forest.
It would not be uninteresting, if we had space to do so here, to
mark in detail the progress of this astonishing growth. It would
be found that, in England at least, it has not been by any means
regularly sustained. The original magnificent outburst of the English
novel lasted for exactly a quarter of a century, and closed with the
publication of _Humphrey Clinker_. During this period of excessive
fertility in a field hitherto unworked, the novel produced one
masterpiece after another, positively pushing itself to the front and
securing the best attention of the public at a moment when such men
as Gray, Butler, Hume, and Warburton were putting forth contributions
to the old and long-established sections of literature. Nay: such was
the force of the new kind of writing that the gravity of Johnson and
the grace of Goldsmith were seduced into participating in its facile
triumphs.
But, at the very moment when the novel seemed about to sweep everything
before it, the wave subsided and almost disappeared. For nearly forty
years, only one novel of the very highest class was produced in
England; and it might well seem as though prose fiction, after its
brief victory, had exhausted its resources, and had sunken for ever
into obscurity. During the close of the eighteenth century and the
first decade of the nineteenth, no novel, except _Evelina_, could
pretend to disturb the laurels of Burke, of Gibbon, of Cowper, of
Crabbe. The publication of _Caleb Williams_ is a poor event to set
against that of the _Lyrical Ballads_; even _Thalaba the Destroyer_
seemed a more impressive phenomenon than the _Monk_. But the second
great burgeoning of the novel was at hand. Like the tender ash, it
delayed to clothe itself when all the woods of romanticism were green.
But in 1811 came _Sense and Sensibility_, in 1814 _Waverley_; and the
novel was once more at the head of the literary movement of the time.
It cannot be said to have stayed there very long. Miss Austen's brief
and brilliant career closed in 1817. Sir Walter Scott continued to be
not far below his best until about ten years later. But a period of two
decades included not only the work of these two great novelists, but
the best books also of Galt, of Mary Ferrier, of Maturin, of Lockhart,
of Banim. It saw the publication of _Hajji Baba_, of _Frankenstein_,
of _Anastatius_. Then, for the second time, prose fiction ceased for
a while to hold a position of high predominance. But Bulwer Lytton
was already at hand; and five or six years of comparative obscurity
prepared the way for Dickens, Lever, and Lover. Since the memorable
year 1837 the novel has reigned in English literature; and its tyranny
was never more irresistible than it is to-day. The Victorian has been
peculiarly the age of the triumph of fiction.
In the history of France something of the same fluctuation might be
perceived, although the production of novels of a certain literary
pretension has been a feature of French much longer and more steadily
than of English life. As Mr. Saintsbury has pointed out, "it is
particularly noteworthy that every one of the eight names which have
been set at the head" of the nineteenth-century literature of France
"is the name of a novelist." Since the days of Flaubert--for the last
thirty years, that is to say--the novel has assumed a still higher
literary function than it held even in the hands of George Sand and
Balzac. It has cast aside the pretence of merely amusing, and has
affected the airs of guide, philosopher, and friend. M. Zola, justified
to some extent by the amazing vogue of his own writings, and the vast
area covered by their prestige, has said that the various classes of
literary production are being merged in the novel, and are ultimately
to disappear within it:
_Apollo, Pan, and Love,_
_And even Olympian Jove_
_Grow faint, for killing Truth hath glared on them;_
_Our hills, and seas, and streams,_
_Dispeopled of their dreams,_
become the mere primary material for an endless series of naturalistic
stories. And even to-day, when the young David of symbolism rises to
smite the Goliath Zola, the smooth stones he takes out of his scrip are
works of fiction by Maurice Barrès and Edouard Rod. The schools pass
and nicknames alter; but the novel rules in France as it does elsewhere.
We have but to look around us at this very moment to see how complete
the tyranny of the novel is. If one hundred educated and grown
men--not, of course, themselves the authors of other books--were to
be asked which are the three most notable works published in London
during the season of 1892, would not ninety-and-nine be constrained to
answer, with a parrot uniformity, _Tess of the D'Urbervilles_, _David
Grieve_, _The Little Minister_? These are the books which have been
most widely discussed, most largely bought, most vehemently praised,
most venomously attacked. These are the books in which the "trade"
has taken most interest, the vitality of which is most obvious and
indubitable. It may be said that the conditions of the winter of 1892
were exceptional--that no books of the first class in other branches
were produced. This may be true; and yet Mr. Jebb issued a volume of
his Sophocles, Mr. William Morris a collection of the lyric poems of
years, Mr. Froude his _Divorce of Catherine of Aragon_, and Mr. Tyndall
his _New Fragments_. If the poets in chorus had blown their silver
trumpets and the philosophers their bold bassoons, the result would
have been the same: they would have won some respect and a little
notice for their performances; but the novelists would have carried
away the money and the real human curiosity. Who shall say that Mr.
Freeman was not a better historian than Robertson was? yet did he make
£4,500 by his _History of Sicily_? I wish I could believe it. To-day
Mr. Swinburne may publish a new epic, Mr. Gardiner discover to us the
head of Charles I. on the scaffold, Mr. Herbert Spencer explore a fresh
province of sociology, or Mr. Pater analyse devils in the accents
of an angel--none of these important occurrences will successfully
compete, for more than a few moments, among educated people, with the
publication of what is called, in publishers' advertisements, "the
new popular and original novel of the hour." We are accustomed to
this state of things, and we bow to it. But we may, perhaps, remind
ourselves that it is a comparatively recent condition. It was not so in
1730, nor in 1800, nor even in 1835.
Momentary aberrations of fashion must not deceive us as to the general
tendency of taste. Mr. Hall Caine would have us believe that the public
has suddenly gone crazy for stage-plays. "Novels of great strength and
originality," says the author of _The Scapegoat_, "occasionally appear
without creating more than a flutter of interest, and, meanwhile,
plays of one-tenth their power and novelty are making something like
a profound impression." What plays are these? Not the Ollendorfian
attitudinisings of M. Maeterlinck, surely! The fact is that two years
ago it would have been impossible for any one to pen that sentence of
Mr. Caine's, and it is now possible merely because a passion for the
literary drama has been flogged into existence by certain able critics.
With a limited class, the same class which appreciates poetry, the
literary drama may find a welcome; but to suppose that it competes, or
can, in this country, even pretend to compete, with the novel is a
delusion, and Mr. Caine may safely abandon his locusts and wild honey.
That we see around us a great interest in the drama is, of course, a
commonplace. But how much of that is literary? When the delights of
the eye are removed from the sum of pleasure, what is left? Our public
is interested in the actors and their art, in the scenery and the
furniture, in the notion of large sums of money expended, lost, or won.
When all these incidental interests are extracted from the curiosity
excited by a play, not very much is left for the purely literary
portion of it--not nearly so much, at all events, as is awakened by
a great novel. After all that has been said about the publication of
plays, I expect that the sale of dramatic contemporary literature
remains small and uncertain. Mr. Pinero is read; but one swallow does
not make a summer. Where are the dramatic works of Mr. Sydney Grundy,
which ought--if Mr. Caine be correct--to be seen on every book-shelf
beside the stories of Mr. Hawley Smart?
If, however, I venture to emphasise the fact of the tyranny of the
novel in our current literature, it is without a murmur that I do so.
Like the harmless bard in _Lady Geraldine's Courtship_, I "write no
satire," and, what is more, I mean none. It appears to me natural and
rational that this particular form of writing should attract more
readers than any other. It is so broad and flexible, includes so vast
a variety of appeals to the emotions, makes so few painful demands
upon an overstrained attention, that it obviously lays itself out to
please the greatest number. For the appreciation of a fine poem, of
a learned critical treatise, of a contribution to exact knowledge,
peculiar aptitudes are required: the novel is within everybody's range.
Experience, moreover, proves that the gentle stimulus of reading about
the cares, passions, and adventures of imaginary personages, and their
relations to one another--a mild and irresponsible mirroring of real
life on a surface undisturbed by responsibility, or memory, or personal
feeling of any kind--is the most restful, the most refreshing, of all
excitements which literature produces.
It is commonly said, in all countries, that women are the chief readers
of novels. It may well be that they are the most numerous, and that
they read more exhaustively than men, and with less selection. They
have, as a rule, more time. The general notion seems to be that girls
of from sixteen to twenty form the main audience of the novelist. But
I am inclined to think that the real audience consists of young married
women, sitting at home in the first year of their marriage. They find
themselves without any constraint upon their reading: they choose what
they will, and they read incessantly. The advent of the first-born
baby is awaited in silent drawing-rooms, where through long hours the
novelists supply the sole distraction. These young matrons form a much
better audience than those timorous circles of flaxen-haired girls,
watched by an Argus-eyed mamma, which the English novelist seems to
consider himself doomed to cater for. I cannot believe that it is
anything but a fallacy that young girls do read. They are far too busy
with parties and shopping, chatting and walking, the eternal music and
the eternal tennis. Middle-aged people in the country, who are cut
off from much society, and elderly ladies, whose activities are past,
and who like to resume the illusions of youth, are far more assiduous
novel-readers than girls.
But, if we take these and all other married and unmarried women into
consideration, there is still apparently an exaggeration in saying
that it is they who make the novelist's reputation. Men read novels
a great deal more than is supposed, and it is probably from men that
the first-class novel receives its _imprimatur_. Men have made Mr.
Thomas Hardy, who owes nothing to the fair sex; if women read him now,
it is because the men have told them that they must. Occasionally we
see a very original writer who decidedly owes his fame to the plaudits
of the ladies. M. Paul Bourget is the most illustrious example that
occurs to the memory. But such instances are rare, and it is usually to
the approval of male readers that eminent novelists owe that prestige
which ultimately makes them the favourites of the women. Not all men
are pressed by the excessive agitations of business life which are
habitually attributed to their sex. Even those who are most busy
find time to read, and we were lately informed that among the most
constant and assiduous students of new novels were Lord Tennyson and
Mr. Gladstone. Every story-teller, I think, ought to write as though he
believed himself addressing such conspicuous veterans.
As I say, I do not revolt against the supremacy of the novel. I
acknowledge too heavy a debt of gratitude to my great contemporaries
to assume any but a thankful attitude towards them. In my dull and
weary hours each has come like the angel Israfel, and has invited me
to listen to the beating of his heart, be it lyre or guitar, a solemn
instrument or a gay one. I should be instantly bankrupt if I sought
to repay to Mr. Meredith or Mr. Besant, Mr. Hardy or Mr. Norris, Mr.
Stevenson or Mr. Kipling--to name no others--one-tenth part of the
pleasure which, in varied quantity and quality, the stories of each
have given me. I admit (for which I shall be torn in pieces) that the
ladies please me less, with some exceptions; but that is because, since
the days of the divine Mrs. Gaskell, they have been so apt to be either
too serious or not serious enough. I suppose that the composition of
_The Daisy Chain_ and of _Donovan_ serves some excellent purpose;
doubtless these books are useful to great growing girls. But it is not
to such stories as these that I owe any gratitude, and it is not to
their authors that I address the presumptuous remarks which follow.
A question which constantly recurs to my mind is this: Having secured
the practical monopoly of literature, having concentrated public
attention on their wares, what do the novelists propose to do next? To
what use will they put the unprecedented opportunity thrown in their
way? It is quite plain that to a certain extent the material out of
which the English novel has been constructed is in danger of becoming
exhausted. Why do the American novelists inveigh against plots? Not,
we may be sure, through any inherent tenderness of conscience, as
they would have us believe; but because their eminently sane and
somewhat timid natures revolt against the effort of inventing what is
extravagant. But all the obvious plots, all the stories which are not
in some degree extravagant, seem to have been told already, and for a
writer with the temperament of Mr. Howells there is nothing left but
the careful portraiture of a small portion of the limitless field of
ordinary humdrum existence. So long as this is fresh, this also may
amuse and please; to the practitioners of this kind of work it seems
as though the infinite prairie of life might be surveyed thus for
centuries, acre by acre. But that is not possible. A very little while
suffices to show that in this direction also the material is promptly
exhausted. Novelty, freshness, and excitement are to be sought for at
all hazards, and where can they be found?
The novelists hope many things from that happy system of nature which
supplies them, year by year, with fresh generations of the ingenuous
young. The procession of adolescence moves on and on, and the front
rank of it, for a month or a year, is duped by the novelist's report
of that astonishing phenomenon, the passion of love. In a certain
sense, we might expect to be tired of love-stories as soon as, and
not before, we grow tired of the ever-recurring March mystery of
primroses and daffodils. Each generation takes its tale of love under
the hawthorn-tree as something quite new, peculiar to itself, not to be
comprehended by its elders; and the novelist pipes as he will to this
idyllic audience, sure of pleasing, if he adapt himself never so little
to their habits and the idiosyncrasies of their time.
That theory would work well enough if the novelist held the chair of
Erotics at the University of Life, and might blamelessly repeat the
same (or very slightly modified) lectures to none but the students
of each successive year. But, unfortunately, we who long ago took
our degree, who took it, perhaps, when the Professor was himself in
pinafores, also continue to attend his classes. We are hardly to be
put off with the old, old commonplaces about hearts and darts. Yet our
adult acquiescence is necessary for the support of the Professor. How
is he to freshen up his oft-repeated course of lectures to suit our
jaded appetites?
It would be curious to calculate how many tales of love must have been
told since the vogue of the modern story began. Three hundred novels a
year is, I believe, the average product of the English press. In each
of these there has been at least one pair of lovers, and generally
there have been several pairs. It would be a good question to set
in a mathematical examination: What is the probable number of young
persons who have conducted one another to the altar in English fiction
during the last hundred years? It is almost terrible to think of this
multitude of fictitious love-makings:
_For the lovers of years meet and gather;_
_The sound of them all grows like thunder:_
_O into what bosom, I wonder,_
_Is poured the whole passion of years!_
One would be very sorry to have the three hundred of one year poured
into one's own mature bosom. But how curious is the absolute unanimity
of it all! Thousands and thousands of books, every one of them, without
exception, turning upon the attraction of Edwin to Angelina, exactly
as though no other subject on earth interested a single human being!
The novels in which love has not formed a central feature are so few
that I suspect that they could be counted on the fingers of one hand.
At this moment, I can but recall a single famous novel in which love
has no place. This is, of course, _L'Abbé Tigrane_, that delightful
story in which all the interest revolves around the intrigues of two
priestly factions in a provincial cathedral. But, although M. Ferdinand
Fabre achieved so great a success in this book, and produced an
acknowledged masterpiece, he never ventured to repeat the experiment.
Eros revels in the pages of all his other stories.
This would be the opportunity to fight the battle of the novelists
against Mrs. Grundy. But I am not inclined to waste ink on that
conceded cause. After the reception of books like _Tess of the
D'Urbervilles_ and even _David Grieve_, it is plain that the English
novelist, who cares and dares, may say almost anything he or she likes
without calling flame out of heaven upon his head. There has been a
great reform in this respect since the days when our family friend Mr.
Punch hazarded his very existence by referring, in grimmest irony,
to the sufferings of "the gay." We do not want to claim the right,
which the French have so recklessly abused, of describing at will, and
secure against all censure, the brutal, the abnormal and the horrible.
No doubt a silly prudishness yet exists. There are still clergymen's
wives who write up indignantly from The Vicarage, Little Pedlington. I
have just received an epistle from such an one, telling me that certain
poor productions I am editing "make young hearts acquainted with vice,
and put hell-fire in their hearts." "Woe unto you in your evil work,"
says this lady, doubtless a most sincere and conscientious creature,
but a little behind the times. Of her and her race individually, I wish
to say nothing but what is kind; but I confess I am glad to know that
the unreflecting spirit they represent is passing away. It is passing
away so rapidly that there is really no need to hearten the novelists
against it. I am weary to death of the gentleman who is always telling
us what a splendid novel he would write, if the publishers would only
allow him to be naughty. Let him be bold and naughty, and we will see.
If he is so poor-spirited as to be afraid to say what he feels he
ought to say because of this kind of criticism, his exposition of the
verities is not likely to be of very high value.
But I should like to ask our friends the leading novelists whether
they do not see their way to enlarging a little the sphere of their
labours. What is the use of this tyranny which they wield, if it
does not enable them to treat life broadly and to treat it whole?
The varieties of amatory intrigue form a fascinating subject, which
is not even yet exhausted. But, surely, all life is not love-making.
Even the youngest have to deal with other interests, although this may
be the dominant one; while, as we advance in years, Venus ceases to
be even the ruling divinity. Why should there not be novels written
for middle-aged persons? Has the struggle for existence a charm only
in its reproductive aspects? If every one of us regards his or her
life seriously, with an absolute and unflinching frankness, it will
be admitted that love, extended so as to include all its forms--its
sympathetic, its imaginative, its repressed, as well as its fulfilled
and acknowledged, forms--takes a place far more restricted than the
formulæ of the novelist would lead the inhabitant of some other planet
to conjecture.
Unless the novelists do contrive to enlarge their borders, and take
in more of life, that misfortune awaits them which befell their
ancestors just before the death of Scott. About the year 1830 there
was a sudden crash of the novel. The public found itself abandoned
to Lady Blessington and Mr. Plumer Ward, and it abruptly closed its
account with the novelists. The large prices which had been, for twenty
years past, paid for novels were no longer offered. The book-clubs
throughout the kingdom collapsed, or else excluded novels. When fiction
re-appeared, after this singular epoch of eclipse, it had learned its
lesson, and the new writers were men who put into their work their best
observation and ripest experience.
It does not appear that in the thirties any one understood what was
happening. The stuff produced by the novelists was so ridiculous
and ignoble that "the nonsinse of that divil of a Bullwig" seemed
absolutely unrivalled in its comparative sublimity, although these were
the days of _Ernest Maltravers_. It never occurred to the authors when
the public suddenly declined to read their books (it read "Bullwig's,"
in the lack of anything else) that the fault was theirs. The same
excuses were made that are made now,--"necessary to write down to a
wide audience;" "obliged to supply the kind of article demanded;"
"women the only readers to be catered for;" "mammas so solicitous for
the purity of what is laid before their daughters." And the crash came.
The crash will come again, if the novelists do not take care.
The same silly piping of the loves of the drawing-room, the same
obsequious attitude towards a supposititious public clamouring for
the commonplace, inspire the majority of the novel-writers of to-day.
Happily, we have, what our fathers in 1835 had not, half a dozen
careful and vigorous men of letters who write, not what the foolish
publishers ask for, but what they themselves choose to give. The
future rests with these few recognised masters of fiction, and with
their successors, the vigorous younger men who are preparing to take
their place. What are these novelists going to do? They were set down
to farm the one hundred acres of an estate called Life, and because
one corner of it--the two or three acres hedged about, and called the
kitchen-garden of Love--offered peculiar attractions, and was very easy
to cultivate, they have neglected the other ninety-seven acres. The
result is that by over-pressing their garden, and forcing crop after
crop out of it, it is well-nigh exhausted, and will soon refuse to
respond to the incessant hoe and spade; while, all the time, the rest
of the estate, rich and almost virgin soil, is left to cover itself
with the weeds of newspaper police-reports.
It is supposed that to describe one of the positive employments of
life,--a business or a profession, for example,--would alienate the
tender reader, and check that circulation about which novelists talk
as nervously as if they were delicate invalids. But what evidence is
there to show that an attention to real things does frighten away the
novel reader? The experiments which have been made in this country to
widen the field of fiction in one direction, that of religious and
moral speculation, have not proved unfortunate. What was the source
of the great popular success of _John Inglesant_ and then of _Robert
Elsmere_, if not the intense delight of readers in being admitted,
in a story, to a wider analysis of the interior workings of the mind
than is compatible with the mere record of the billing and cooing of
the callow young? We are afraid of words and titles. We are afraid of
the word "psychology," and, indeed, we have seen follies committed in
its name. But the success of the books I have just mentioned was due
to their psychology, to their analysis of the effect of associations
and sentiments on a growing mind. To make such studies of the soul
even partially interesting, a great deal of knowledge, intuition,
and workmanlike care must be expended. The novelist must himself be
acquainted with something of the general life of man.
But the interior life of the soul is, after all, a very much less
interesting study to an ordinarily healthy person than the exterior.
It is surprising how little our recent novelists have taken this into
consideration. One reason, I cannot doubt, is that they write too
early and they write too fast. Fielding began with _Joseph Andrews_,
when he was thirty-five; seven years later he published _Tom Jones_;
during the remainder of his life, which closed when he was forty-seven,
he composed one more novel. The consequence is that into these three
books he was able to pour the ripe knowledge of an all-accomplished
student of human nature. But our successful novelist of to-day begins
when he is two- or three-and-twenty. He "catches on," as they say, and
he becomes a laborious professional writer. He toils at his novels as
if he were the manager of a bank or the captain of an ocean steamer.
In one narrow groove he slides up and down, up and down, growing
infinitely skilful at his task of making bricks out of straw. He
finishes the last page of "The Writhing Victim" in the morning, lunches
at his club, has a nap; and, after dinner, writes the first page of
"The Swart Sombrero." He cannot describe a trade or a profession, for
he knows none but his own. He has no time to look at life, and he goes
on weaving fancies out of the ever-dwindling stores of his childish and
boyish memories. As these grow exhausted, his works get more and more
shadowy, till at last even the long-suffering public that once loved
his merits, and then grew tolerant of his tricks, can endure him no
longer.
The one living novelist who has striven to give a large, competent,
and profound view of the movement of life is M. Zola. When we have
said the worst of the _Rougon-Macquart_ series, when we have admitted
the obvious faults of these books--their romantic fallacies on the one
hand, their cold brutalities on the other--it must be admitted that
they present the results of a most laudable attempt to cultivate the
estate outside the kitchen-garden. Hardly one of the main interests of
the modern man has been neglected by M. Zola, and there is no doubt
at all that to the future student of nineteenth-century manners his
books will have an interest outweighing that of all other contemporary
novels. An astonishing series of panoramas he has unrolled before us.
Here is _Le Ventre de Paris_, describing the whole system by which a
vast modern city is daily supplied with food; here is _Au Bonheur des
Dames_, the romance of a shop, which is pushed upwards and outwards by
the energy of a single ambitious tradesman, until it swamps all its
neighbours, and governs the trade of a district; here is _L'Argent_,
in which, with infinite pains and on a colossal scale, the passions
which move in _la haute finance_ are analysed, and a great battle
of the money-world chronicled; here, above all, is _Germinal_, that
unapproachable picture of the agony and stress of life in a great
mining community, with a description of the processes so minute and so
technical that this novel is quoted by experts as the best existing
record of conditions which are already obsolete.
In these books of M. Zola's, as everyone knows, successive members
of a certain family stand out against a background of human masses
in incessant movement. The peculiar characteristic of this novelist
is that he enables us to see why these masses are moved, and in what
direction. Other writers vaguely tell us that the hero "proceeded to
his daily occupation," if, indeed, they deign to allow that he had an
occupation. M. Zola tells us what that occupation was, and describes
the nature of it carefully and minutely. More than this: he shows us
how it affected the hero's character, how it brought him into contact
with others, in what way it represented his share of the universal
struggle for existence. So far from the employment being a thing
to be slurred over or dimly alluded to, M. Zola loves to make that
the very hero of his piece, a blind and vast commercial monster, a
huge all-embracing machine, in whose progress the human persons are
hurried helplessly along, in whose iron wheels their passions and
their hopes are crushed. He is enabled to do this by the exceptional
character of his genius, which is realistic to excess in its power of
retaining and repeating details, and romantic, also to an extreme,
in its power of massing these details on a huge scale, in vast and
harmoniously-balanced compositions.
I would not be misunderstood, even by the most hasty reader,
to recommend an imitation of M. Zola. What suits his
peculiarly-constituted genius might ill accord with the characteristics
of another. Nor do I mean to say that we are entirely without something
analogous in the writings of the more intelligent of our later
novelists. The study of the Dorsetshire dairy-farms in Mr. Hardy's
superb _Tess of the D'Urbervilles_ is of the highest value, and more
thorough and intelligible than what we enjoyed in _The Woodlanders_,
the details of the apple-culture in the same county. To turn to a
totally different school: Mr. Hall Caine's _Scapegoat_ is a very
interesting experiment in fresh fields of thought and experience, more
happily conceived, if I may be permitted to say so, than fortunately
executed, though even in execution far above the ruck of popular
novels. A new Cornish story, called _Inconsequent Lives_, by that very
promising young story-teller, Mr. Pearce, seemed, when it opened,
to be about to give us just the vivid information we want about the
Newlyn pilchard-fishery; but the novelist grew timid, and forebore to
fill in his sketch. The experiments of Mr. George Gissing and of Mr.
George Moore deserve sympathetic acknowledgment. These are instances
in which, occasionally, or fantastically, or imperfectly, the real
facts of life have been dwelt upon in recent fiction. But when we have
mentioned or thought of a few exceptions, to what inanities do we not
presently descend!
If we could suddenly arrive from another planet, and read a cluster
of novels from Mudie's, without any previous knowledge of the class,
we should be astonished at the conventionality, the narrowness, the
monotony. All I ask for is a larger study of life. Have the stress
and turmoil of a successful political career no charm? Why, if novels
of the shop and the counting-house be considered sordid, can our
novelists not describe the life of a sailor, of a gamekeeper, of a
railway-porter, of a civil engineer? What capital central figures
for a story would be the whip of a leading hunt, the foreman of a
colliery, the master of a fishing smack, or a speculator on the Stock
Exchange! It will be suggested that persons engaged in one or other
of these professions are commonly introduced into current fiction,
and that I am proposing as a novelty what is amply done already. My
reply is that our novelists may indeed present to us a personage who
is called a stoker or a groom, a secretary of state or a pin-maker,
but that, practically, they merely write these denominations clearly
on the breasts of lay-figures. For all the enlightenment we get into
the habits of action and habits of thought entailed by the occupation
of each, the fisherman might be the groom and the pin-maker the
stock-broker. It is more than this that I ask for. I want to see
the man in his life. I am tired of the novelist's portrait of a
gentleman, with gloves and hat, leaning against a pillar, upon a
vague landscape background. I want the gentleman as he appears in a
snap-shot photograph, with his every-day expression on his face, and
the localities in which he spends his days accurately visible around
him. I cannot think that the commercial and professional aspects of
life are unworthy of the careful attention of the novelist, or that he
would fail to be rewarded by a larger and more interested audience for
his courage in dealing closely with them. At all events, if it is too
late to ask our accepted tyrants of the novel to enlarge their borders,
may we not, at all events, entreat their heirs-apparent to do so?
_1892_
THE INFLUENCE OF DEMOCRACY ON LITERATURE
The Influence of Democracy on Literature
It is not desirable to bring the element of party politics into the
world of books. But it is difficult to discuss the influence of
democracy on literature without borrowing from the Radicals one of the
wisest and truest of their watchwords. It is of no use, as they remind
us, to be afraid of the people. We have this huge mass of individuals
around us, each item in the coagulation struggling to retain and to
exercise its liberty; and, while we are perfectly free to like or
dislike the condition of things which has produced this phenomenon,
to be alarmed, to utter shrieks of fright at it, is to resign all
pretension to be listened to. We may believe that the whole concern is
going to the dogs, or we may be amusing ourselves by printing Cook's
tickets for a monster excursion to Boothia Felix or other provinces of
Utopia; to be frightened at it, or to think that we can do any good
by scolding it or binding it with chains of tow, is simply silly. It
moves, and it carries the Superior Person with it and in it, like a
mote of dust.
In considering, therefore, the influence of democracy on literature,
it seems worse than useless to exhort or persuade. All that can in any
degree be interesting must be to study, without prejudice, the signs of
the times, to compare notes about the weather, and cheerfully tap the
intellectual barometer. This form of inquiry is rarely attempted in a
perfectly open spirit, partly, no doubt, because it is unquestionably
one which it is difficult to carry through. It is wonderfully easy to
proclaim the advent of a literary Ragnarok, to say that poetry is dead,
the novel sunken into its dotage, all good writing obsolete, and the
reign of darkness begun. There are writers who do this, and who round
off their periods by attributing the whole condition to the democratic
spirit, like the sailor in that delightful old piece played at the
Strand Theatre, who used to sum up the misfortunes of a lifetime with
the recurrent refrain, "It's all on account of Eliza."
The "uncreating words" of these pessimists are dispiriting for the
moment, but they mean nothing. Those of the optimist do not mean much
either. A little more effort is required to produce his rose-coloured
picture, but we are not really persuaded that because the brown marries
the blonde all is for the best in the best of all possible worlds. Nor
is much gained by prophecy. We have been listening to a gentleman,
himself a biographer and an historian, who predicts, with babe-like
_naïveté_, that all literary persons will presently be sent by the
democracy to split wood and draw water, except, perhaps, "the historian
or biographer." In this universal splitting of wood, some heads, which
now think themselves mighty clever, may come to be rather disastrously
cracked. It was not Camille Desmoulins whom Fate selected to enter into
his own Promised Land of emancipated literature.
We gain little by a comparison of our modern situation with that of the
ancient commonwealths. The parallel between the state of literature in
our world and that in Athens or Florence is purely academic. Whatever
the form of government, literature has always been aristocratic, or at
least oligarchic. It has been encouraged or else tolerated; even when
it has been independent, its self-congratulations on its independence
have shown how temporary that liberty was, and how imminent the
relapse into bondage. The peculiar protection given to the arts by
enlightened commonwealths surrounded by barbaric tyrannies was often of
a most valuable character, but it resembled nothing which can recur in
the modern world. The stimulus it gave to the creative temperament was
due in great measure to its exclusiveness, to the fact that the world
was shut out, and the appeal for sympathy made within a restricted
circle. The Republic was a family of highly trained intelligences,
barred and bolted against the vast and stupid world outside. Never can
this condition be re-established. The essence of democracy is that it
knows no narrower bonds than those of the globe, and its success is
marked by the destruction of those very ramparts which protected and
inspirited the old intellectual free States.
The purest and most elevated form of literature, the rarest and, at
its best, the most valuable, is poetry. If it could be shown that the
influence of the popular advance in power has been favourable to the
growth of great verse, then all the rest might be taken for granted.
Unfortunately, there are many circumstances which interfere with our
vision, and make it exceedingly difficult to give an opinion on this
point. Victor Hugo never questioned that the poetical element was
needed, but he had occasional qualms about its being properly demanded.
_Peuples! écoutez, le poète,_
_Écoutez le rêveur sacré;_
_Dans votre nuit, sans lui complète,_
_Lui seul a le front éclairé!_
he shouted, but the very energy of the exclamation suggests a doubt
in his own mind as to its complete acceptability. In this country,
the democracy has certainly crowded around one poet. It has always
appeared to me to be one of the most singular, as it is one of the most
encouraging features of our recent literary history, that Tennyson
should have held the extraordinary place in the affections of our
people which has now been his for nearly half a century. That it
should be so delicate and so Æolian a music, so little affected by
contemporary passion, so disdainful of adventitious aids to popularity,
which above all others has attracted the universal ear, and held it
without producing weariness or satiety; this, I confess, appears to me
very marvellous. Some of the Laureate's best-loved lyrics have been
before the public for more than sixty years. Cowley is one of the few
English poets who have been, during their lifetime, praised as much as
Tennyson has been, yet where in 1720 was the fame of Cowley? Where in
the France of to-day are the _Méditations_ and _Harmonies_ of Lamartine?