tastes, he will get book-advertising only in negligible quantities no
matter how much he may praise the volumes sent him. Of what use are
puffs which fall not under the right eyes?
If, again, his periodical seems an exception to this reasoning, and his
puffery appears to bring him profit, let him consider the parts of it
unrelated to literature; he will find there matter which pleases readers
of intelligence, and he may be sure that this, quite as much as his
praise, is what brings the publishers’ advertisements; he may be sure
that, should he substitute sincere criticism, the advertisements would
increase.
III
The third complaint of the author—from whom I have wandered—is that
critics do not agree. To argue that whenever two critics hold different
opinions, the criticism of one of them must be valueless, is absurd. The
immediate question is, valueless to whom—to the public or to the author?
If the author is meant, the argument assumes that criticism is written
for the instruction of the author, which is not true. Grammar and facts
a critic can indeed correct; but he never expects to change an author’s
style or make his talent other than it is. Though he may lash the man,
he does not hope to reform him. However slightly acquainted with
psychology, the critic knows that a mature writer does not change and
cannot change; his character is made, his gifts, such as they are, are
what they are. On the contrary, the critic writes to influence the
public—to inform the old, to train the young. He knows that his chief
chance is with plastic youth; he hopes to form the future writer; still
more he hopes to form the future reader. He knows that the effect of
good reviewing stops not with the books reviewed, but influences the
reader’s choice among thousands of volumes as yet undreamed of by any
publisher.
If, on the other hand, the public is meant, the argument assumes that
one man’s meat is not another man’s poison. The bird prefers seed, and
the dog a bone, and there is no standard animal food. Nor, likewise, is
there any standard intellectual food: both critics, however they
disagree, may be right.
No author, no publisher, should think that variety invalidates
criticism. If there is any certainty about critics, it is that they will
not think alike. The sum of _x_ (a certain book) plus _y_ (a certain
critic) can never be the same as _x_ (the same book) plus _z_ (a
different critic). A given book cannot affect a man of a particular
ability, temperament, training, as it affects one of a different
ability, temperament, and training. A book is never complete without a
reader, and the value of the combination is all that can be found out.
For the value of a book is varying: it varies with the period, with the
nationality, with the character of the reader. Shakespeare had one value
for the Elizabethans; he has a different value for us, and still another
for the Frenchman; he has a special value for the playgoer, and a
special value for the student in his closet. In respect of literary art,
pragmatism is right: there is no truth, there are truths. About all
vital writing there is a new truth born with each new reader. Therein
lies the unending fascination of books, the temptation to infinite
discussion. To awaken an immortal curiosity is the glory of genius.
From all this it follows that critics are representative; each one
stands for a group of people whose spokesman he has become, because he
has, on the whole, their training, birth from their class, the
prejudices of their community and of their special group in that
community, and therefore expresses their ideals. Once let publisher and
author grasp this idea, and criticism, however divergent, will come to
have a vital meaning for them. The publisher can learn from the judgment
of the critic what the judgment of his group in the community is likely
to be, and from a succession of such judgments through a term of years,
he can gain valuable information as to the needs, the tastes, the ideals
of the public, or of the group of publics, which he may wish to serve.
Accurate information straight from writers serving the public—that, I
cannot too often repeat, is worth more to him than any amount of
obsequious praise. That precisely is what he cannot get until all
critics are what they should be—lawyers whose only clients are their own
convictions.
The author also gains. Although he is always liable to the
disappointment of finding that his book has failed to accomplish his
aim, he nevertheless can draw the sting from much adverse criticism if
he will regard, not its face value, but its representative value. He is
writing for a certain audience; the criticism of that audience only,
then, need count. If he has his own public with him, he is as safe as a
man on an island viewing a storm at sea, no matter how critics
representing other publics may rage. Not all the adverse comment in this
country on E. P. Roe, in England on Ouida, in France on Georges Ohnet
ever cost them a single reader. Their audience heard it not; it did not
count. There is, of course, a difference of value in publics, and if
these writers had a tragedy, it lay in their not winning the audience of
their choice. But this does not disturb the statement as to the vanity
of adverse criticism for an author who hears objurgations from people
whom he did not seek to please. Sometimes, indeed, such objurgations
flatter. If, for example, the author has written a novel which is in
effect an attempt to batter down ancient prejudice, nothing should
please him more than to hear the angry protests of the conservative—they
may be the shrieks of the dying, as was the case, for instance, when Dr.
Holmes wrote the _Autocrat_; they show, at any rate, that the book has
hit.
Now, each in its degree, every work of art is controversial and cannot
help being so until men are turned out, like lead soldiers, from a
common mould. Every novel, for example, even when not written “with a
purpose,” has many theories behind it—a theory as to its proper
construction, a theory as to its proper content, a theory of life. Every
one is a legitimate object of attack, and in public or private is
certain to be attacked. Does the author prefer to be fought in the open
or stabbed in the dark?—that is really his only choice. The author of a
novel, a poem, an essay, or a play should think of it as a new idea, or
a new embodiment of an idea, which is bound to hurtle against others
dear to their possessors. He should remember that a book that arouses no
discussion is a poor, dead thing. Let him cultivate the power of
analysis, and seek from his critics, not praise, but knowledge of what,
precisely, he has done. If he has sought to please, he can learn what
social groups he has charmed, what groups he has failed to interest, and
why, and may make a new effort with a better chance of success. If he
has sought to prevail, he can learn whether his blows have told, and,
what is more important, upon whom. In either case, to know the nature of
his general task, he must learn three things: whom his book has
affected, how much it has affected them, and in what way it has affected
them. Only through honest, widespread, really representative criticism,
can the author know these things.
Whatever their individual hurts, the publisher of books, the publisher
of book-reviews, and the author should recognize that the entire
sincerity of criticism, which is the condition of its value to the
public, is also the condition of its value to them. It is a friend whose
wounds are faithful. The lesson that they must learn is this: an honest
man giving an honest opinion is a respectable person, and if he has any
literary gift at all, a forcible writer. What he says is read, and, what
is more, it is trusted. If he has cultivation enough to maintain himself
as a critic,—as many of those now writing have not, once servility
ceases to be a merit,—he acquires a following upon whom his influence is
deep and real, and upon whom, in the measure of his capacity, he exerts
an educational force. If to honesty he adds real scholarship, sound
taste, and vivacity as a writer, he becomes a leading critic, and his
influence for good is proportionally enlarged. If there were honest
critics with ability enough to satisfy the particular readers they
served in every periodical now printing literary criticism, public
interest in reviews, and consequently in books, would greatly increase.
And public interest and confidence once won, the standing, and with it
the profit, of the four groups commercially interested in literature
would infallibly rise. This is the condition which all four should work
to create.
Would it arrive if the publisher of books should repudiate the Silent
Bargain? If he should send with the book for review, not the usual
ready-made puff, but a card requesting only the favor of a sincere
opinion; if, furthermore, he showed his good faith by placing his
advertisements where the quality of the reviewing was best, would the
critical millennium come? It would not. I have made the convenient
assumption that the critic needs only permission to be sincere.
Inevitable victim of the Silent Bargain he may be, but he is human and
will not be good simply because he has the chance. But he would be
better than he is—if for no other reason than because many of his
temptations would be removed. The new conditions would at once and
automatically change the direction of his personal interests. He and his
publisher would need to interest the public. Public service would be the
condition of his continuing critic at all. He would become the agent,
not of the publisher to the public, but of the public to the publisher.
And although then, as now in criticism of political affairs, insincere
men would sacrifice their standards to their popularity, they would
still reflect public opinion. To know what really is popular opinion is
the first step toward making it better. Accurately to know it is of the
first commercial importance for publisher and author, of the first
public importance for the effective leaders of public opinion.
This new goal of criticism—the desire to attract the public—would have
other advantages. It would diminish the amount of criticism. One of the
worst effects of the Silent Bargain is the obligation of the reviewer to
notice every book that is sent him—not because it interests him, not
because it will interest his public, but to satisfy the publisher. Thus
it happens that many a newspaper spreads before its readers scores upon
scores of perfunctory reviews in which are hopelessly concealed those
few written with pleasure, those few which would be welcome to its
public. Tired by the mere sight, readers turn hopelessly away. Now, many
books lack interest for any one; of those that remain, many lack
interest for readers of a particular publication. Suppose a reviewer,
preoccupied, not with the publisher, but with his own public, confronted
by the annual mass of books: ask yourself what he would naturally do. He
would notice, would he not, those books only in which he thought that he
could interest his readers? He would warn his public against books which
would disappoint them; he would take pleasure in praising books which
would please them. The glow of personal interest would be in what he
wrote, and, partly for this reason, partly because the reviews would be
few, his public would read them. Herein, again, the publisher would
gain; conspicuous notices of the right books would go to the right
people. An automatic sifting and sorting of his publications, like that
done by the machines which grade fruit, sending each size into its
appropriate pocket, would take place.
But the greatest gain to criticism remains to be pointed out. The
critics who have chosen silence, rather than submission to the Silent
Bargain, would have a chance to write. They are the best critics, and
when they resume the pen, the whole industry of writing will gain.
IV
But the critic, though liberated, has many hard questions to decide,
many subtle temptations to resist. There is the question of his motives,
which I said are of no consequence to the author or to the public so
long as what he speaks is truth; but which, I must now add, are of great
consequence to him. If he feels envy and malice, he must not cherish
them as passions to be gratified, but use them, if at all, as dangerous
tools. He must be sure that his ruling passion is love of good work—a
love strong enough to make him proclaim it, though done by his worst
enemy. There is the question again of his own limitations; he must be on
his guard lest they lead him into injustice, and yet never so timid that
he fails to say what he thinks, for fear it may be wrong.
I speak of these things from the point of view of the critic’s duty to
himself; but they are a part also of his duty towards his neighbor, the
author. What that duty may precisely be, is his most difficult problem.
A few things only are plain. He ought to say as much against a friend as
against an enemy, as much against a publisher whom he knows as against a
publisher of England or France. He must dare to give pain. He must make
his own the ideals of Sarcey. “I love the theatre,” he wrote to Zola,
“with so absolute a devotion that I sacrifice everything, even my
particular friends, even, what is much more difficult, my particular
enemies, to the pleasure of pushing the public towards the play which I
consider good, and of keeping it away from the play which I consider
bad.”
That perhaps was comparatively easy for Sarcey with his clear ideal of
the well-made piece; it is perhaps easy in the simple, straightforward
appraisal of the ordinary book; but the critic may be excused if he
feels compunctions and timidities when the task grows more complex,
when, arming himself more and more with the weapons of psychology, he
seeks his explanations of a given work where undoubtedly they lie, in
the circumstances, the passions, the brains, the very disorders of the
author. How far in this path may he go? Unquestionably, he may go far,
very far with the not too recent dead; but with the living how far may
he go, how daring may he make his guess? For guess it will be, since his
knowledge, if not his competence, will be incomplete until memoirs,
letters, diaries, reminiscences bring him their enlightenment. One
thinks first what the author may suffer when violent hands are laid upon
his soul, and one recoils; but what of the public? Must the public,
then, not know its contemporaries just as far as it can—these
contemporaries whose strong influence for good or evil it is bound to
undergo? These have full license to play upon the public; shall not the
public, in its turn, be free to scrutinize to any, the most intimate
extent, the human stuff from which emanates the strong influence which
it feels? If the public good justifies dissection, does it not also
justify vivisection? Is literature an amusement only, or is it a living
force which on public grounds the critic has every right in all ways to
measure? Doubtless his right in the particular case may be tested by the
importance of the answer to the people, yet the grave delicacy of this
test—which the critic must apply himself—is equaled only by the
ticklishness of the task. Yet there lies the path of truth, serviceable,
ever honorable truth.
The critic is, in fact, confronted by two standards. Now and again he
must make the choice between admirable conduct and admirable criticism.
They are not the same. It is obvious that what is outrageous conduct may
be admirable criticism, that what is admirable conduct may be inferior,
shuffling criticism. Which should he choose? If we make duty to the
public the test, logic seems to require that he should abate no jot of
his critical message. It certainly seems hard that he should be held to
a double (and contradictory) standard when others set in face of a like
dilemma are held excused. The priest is upheld in not revealing the
secrets of the confessional, the lawyer in not betraying the secret
guilt of his client, although as a citizen each should prefer the public
to the individual; whereas the critic who, reversing the case,
sacrifices the individual to the public, is condemned. The public should
recognize, I think, his right to a special code like that accorded the
priest, the lawyer, the soldier, the physician. He should be relieved of
certain social penalties, fear of which may cramp his freedom and so
lessen his value. Who cannot easily see that a critic may write from the
highest sense of duty words which would make him the “no gentleman” that
Cousin said Sainte-Beuve was?
But the whole question is thorny; that writer will do an excellent
service to letters who shall speak an authoritative word upon the ethics
of criticism. At present, there is nothing—except the law of libel. The
question is raised here merely to the end of asking these further
questions: Would not the greatest freedom help rather than hurt the
cause of literature? Is not the double standard too dangerous a weapon
to be allowed to remain in the hands of the upholders of the Silent
Bargain?
Meanwhile —until the problem is solved —the critic must be an explorer
of untraveled ethical paths. Let him be bold whether he is a critic of
the deeds of the man of action, or of those subtler but no less real
deeds, the words of an author! For, the necessary qualifications made,
all that has been said of literary criticism applies to all
criticism—everywhere there is a Silent Bargain to be fought, everywhere
honest opinion has powerful foes.
The thing to do for each author of words or of deeds, each critic of one
or the other, is to bring his own pebble of conviction however rough and
sharp-cornered and throw it into that stream of discussion which will
roll and grind it against others, and finally make of it and of them
that powder of soil in which, let us hope, future men will raise the
crop called truth.
DRAMATIC CRITICISM IN THE AMERICAN PRESS
BY JAMES S. METCALFE
A little insight into the practical conditions which surround newspaper
criticism to-day is needed before we can estimate its value or
importance as an institution. Venial and grossly incompetent critics
there have always been, but these have eventually been limited in their
influence through the inevitable discovery of their defects. They were
and are individual cases, which may be disregarded in a general view.
The question to be considered is, whether our newspapers have any
dramatic criticism worthy of the name, and, if there is none, what are
the causes of its nonexistence.
When the late William Winter lost his position as dramatic critic of the
_New York Tribune_, the event marked not alone the virtual disappearance
from the American press of dramatic criticism as our fathers knew and
appreciated it: the circumstances of the severance of his half-century’s
connection with that publication also illustrate vividly a principal
reason for the extinction of criticism as it used to be.
At the time mentioned the _Tribune_ had not fallen entirely from its
early estate. It was still a journal for readers who thought. Its strong
political partisanship limited its circulation, which had been for some
time declining. It had been hurt by the fierce competition of its
sensational and more enterprising contemporaries. The _Tribune_ could
not afford to lose any of the advertising revenue which was essential to
its very existence.
Mr. Winter would not write to orders. He had certain prejudices, but
they were honest ones, and those who knew his work were able to discount
them in sifting his opinions. For instance, he had a sturdy hatred for
the Ibsen kind of dissectional drama, and it was practically impossible
for him to do justice even to good acting in plays of this school.
In a broader way he was the enemy of uncleanness on the stage. For this
reason he had frequently denounced a powerful firm of managers whom he
held to be principally responsible for the, at first insidious and then
rapid, growth of indecency in our theatre. These managers controlled a
large amount of the theatrical advertising. The _Tribune_ frequently
printed on one page large advertisements of the enterprises these men
represented, and on another page they would find themselves described,
in Mr. Winter’s most vigorous English, as panders who were polluting the
theatre and its patrons. They knew the _Tribune’s_ weak financial
condition and demanded that Mr. Winter’s pen be curbed, the alternative
being a withdrawal of their advertising patronage. What happened then
was a scandal, and is history in the newspaper and theatrical world.
Mr. Winter refused to be muzzled. In spite of a half-century’s faithful
service, he was practically dismissed from the staff of the _Tribune_.
If it had not been for a notable benefit performance given for him by
artists who honored him, and generously patronized by his friends and
the public who knew his work, his last days would have been devoid of
comfort.
Mr. Winter’s experience, although he is not the only critic who has lost
his means of livelihood through the influence of the advertising
theatrical manager, is in some form present to the mind of every
newspaper writer in the province of the theatre. No matter how strong
the assurance of his editor that he may go as far as he pleases in
telling the truth, he knows that even the editor himself is in fear of
the dread summons from the business office. If the critic has had any
experience in the newspaper business,—no longer a profession,—he writes
what he pleases, but with his subconscious mind tempering justice with
mercy for the enterprises of the theatrical advertiser. This, of course,
does not preclude his giving a critical tone to what he writes by
finding minor defects and even flaying unimportant artists. But woe be
unto him if he launches into any general denunciation of theatrical
methods, or attacks the enterprise of the advertising manager in a way
that imperils profits.
There are exceptions to these general statements, especially outside of
New York. There are a few newspapers left where the editorial conscience
outweighs the influence of the counting-room. Even in these cases the
reviewer, if he is wise, steers clear of telling too much truth about
enterprises whose belligerent managers are only too glad to worry his
employers with complaints of persecution or injustice. In other places
the theatrical advertising is not of great value, particularly where the
moving-picture has almost supplanted the legitimate theatre. Here we
occasionally find criticism of the old sort, particularly if, in the
local reviewer’s mind, the entertainment offered is not up to what he
considers the Broadway standard of production. Here the publisher’s
regard for local pride will sometimes excuse the reviewer’s affront to
the infrequently visiting manager and the wares he offers.
Another exception is the purely technical critic who has no broader
concern with the theatre than recording the impressions which come to
him through his eyes, ears, and memory. He is safe, because he rarely
offends. He is scarce, because he is little read and newspapers cannot
give him the space he requires for analysis and recollection. The
high-pressure life of the newspaper reader calls for a newspaper made
under high pressure and for to-day. In this process there is little
opportunity for the display of the scholarship, leisurely thinking, and
carefully evolved judgments which gave their fame to critics of an
earlier period. In the few remaining survivals of the strictly technical
critic their failure to interest many readers, or exercise much
influence, may argue less a lack of ability on their part than a change
from a thinking to a non-thinking public. Even in the big Sunday
editions of the city dailies, where the pages are generously padded with
text to carry the displayed theatrical advertising, the attempts to rise
to a higher critical plane than is possible in the hurried weekday
review are in themselves frequent evidence that technical criticism is a
thing of the past so far as the newspapers are concerned.