PAPERS FROM LILLIPUT
[Illustration: PUBLISHERS.
CAMBRIDGE.]
LONDON: MACMILLAN & CO., LIMITED
GLASGOW: MACLEHOSE, JACKSON & CO.
COPYRIGHT
PAPERS
FROM LILLIPUT
BY
J. B. PRIESTLEY
AUTHOR OF ‘BRIEF DIVERSIONS’
CAMBRIDGE
BOWES & BOWES
1922
PRINTED IN GREAT BRITAIN
TO
MY FATHER
_Some of these essays have appeared in THE LONDON MERCURY, THE
NINETEENTH CENTURY, THE OUTLOOK, and THE CAMBRIDGE REVIEW. Others
have been selected from a large number I contributed (week by week,
under the pseudonym of ‘Peter of Pomfret’) to the YORKSHIRE
OBSERVER. Others again are the first-fruits of a current series of
such things I am contributing to THE CHALLENGE under the general
title of ‘New Papers from Lilliput.’ I take this opportunity of
thanking all the editors concerned for their hospitality to these
not, I trust, too ill-favoured bantlings of mine, and hope that
they will not regret it if they should now chance to renew the
acquaintance._
_J. B. P._
CONTENTS
PAGE
ON A CERTAIN PROVINCIAL PLAYER 1
A NEW KIND OF FICTION 17
A MAD SHEPHERD 25
AUDACITY IN AUTHORSHIP 32
IN PRAISE OF THE HYPERBOLE 42
ON CARTOMANCY 50
ON BEING KIND TO THE OLD 58
THE DREAM 66
ON FILLING IN FORMS 72
THREE MEN 79
THE BOGEY OF SPACE 86
A ROAD TO ONESELF 93
THE EDITOR 99
ON AN OLD BOOK OF NATURAL HISTORY 106
ON NOT MEETING AUTHORS 112
THE ETERNAL CHEAP JACK 120
HOLIDAY NOTES FROM THE COAST OF BOHEMIA 126
ON A MOUTH-ORGAN 133
AN APOLOGY FOR BAD PIANISTS 140
A FATHER’S TRAGEDY 146
ON GETTING OFF TO SLEEP 153
ON TRAVEL BY TRAIN 159
THE PEEP 165
ON VULGAR ERRORS 172
ON GOSSIP 178
A ROAD AND SOME MOODS 184
ON A CERTAIN CONTEMPORARY ESSAYIST 190
ON LIFE AND LUCKY BAGS 197
GRIGSBY: A RECORD AND AN APPRECIATION 202
A PARAGON OF HOSTS 216
ON A CERTAIN PROVINCIAL PLAYER
It has been said that literature must use its gift of praise or it will
come to nothing. Those of us who keep up a little dribble of ink, though
we aspire to be very Swifts, must ultimately bestow our commendation
somewhere: our praise is the last, greatest and kindliest weapon in our
poor armoury. If we can applaud where most men have kept silent, so much
the better: we are fine fellows, using our little tricks to sweeten the
world. So much preamble is necessary because I wish to bring forward, in
this season of burning questions, the figure of a poor player who died
over one hundred and fifty years ago and whose very name is now only
known to a few. True, it can be found in many places, but who goes to
them? For my part, I have rescued him from the pages of _The Eccentric
Mirror_, a quaint production of four volumes, ‘reflecting (I quote the
title-page) a faithful and interesting delineation of Male and Female
Characters, Ancient and Modern, Who have been particularly distinguished
by extraordinary Qualifications, Talents, and Propensities, natural or
acquired.’ There, among fat men, giants, freaks and eccentrics, I found
our hero, Bridge Frodsham, a country actor, once known as the ‘York
Garrick.’ He comes rather late in the series of characters, and is only
there at all because the compiler was probably running short of better
material, such as fat men, murderers, misers, and the like. Even then,
Frodsham is scurvily treated; he is set down simply as a very good
specimen of the conceited, self-opinionated young fool; the greatness
that was in him is entirely missed; and it has been left for us, at this
late hour, to give him his meed of praise. But let us turn to the
details of his story, which I shall filch for the most part from _The
Eccentric Mirror_, and thereby get myself some return for the four
shillings and sixpence I paid for it.
Bridge Frodsham was born at the town of Frodsham, in Cheshire, in the
year 1734. As you may guess, he belonged, like a true hero, to an
ancient family. His education was begun at Westminster, but owing to
some youthful imprudence he ran away and joined a company of strolling
players. It was not long before he had drifted to York, where he became
the leading actor at the little make-shift theatre. He was not, it
appears, without talent, for he soon became the darling of the
theatre-going crowd, such as it was, of that city. York knew no better
actor than Frodsham, who was acclaimed in all the local pot-houses,
where he was something of a boon companion. Hear the author of _The
Eccentric Mirror_ on this very theme:
‘Such was the infatuation of the public at York, and indeed so superior
were Frodsham’s talents to those of all his coadjutors that he cast them
all into the shade. This superiority was by no means a fortunate
circumstance for Frodsham. It filled him with vanity and shut up every
avenue to improvement; nor had he any opportunity for observation, as no
actors of any high repute were ever known to tread the York stage, and
he was never more than ten days in London.’
Even in this passage, short as it is, you will have remarked a certain
air of patronage, a suspicion of asperity, and you will be on your
guard; for this London hack, this biographer of dwarfs and infant
prodigies, who dotes on filthy misers and becomes lyrical in praise of
Daniel Lambert, is trying to rob our sturdy provincial of his greatness.
For greatness he certainly achieved, and not at York, mark you, among
his pot-house followers, but in London, during a short visit of ten days
or so. He had been given a fortnight’s holiday, which he determined to
spend in London, to the great distress of the people of York, who
thought that once Garrick saw Frodsham, the Yorkshire stage was doomed
to lose its bright particular star. They did not know their man, as you
shall see. Fate had decided that for once Garrick should meet his match,
or more than his match, in a fellow actor; and it is Frodsham’s conduct
in this encounter that gives him some title to our applause. For my own
part, I applaud more readily because it happened to be the great Garrick
who was so disconcerted by the unknown player from the country. We have
all our little prejudices, and one of mine chances to be against the
swollen fame of Garrick. I am no great hater of mummer-worship, and am
always ready to believe what I read of Betterton, Mountford, Kemble,
Kean, Macready, and I know not how many more old actors; but somehow I
have always been suspicious of Garrick. No doubt I could invent, if
necessary, half-a-dozen respectable reasons, but suffice it to say that
I have always felt that he was over-rated, that things went too easily
with him, that for all his sense of humour he took himself too
seriously; I see him as a strutting, perky little figure. I may be
wrong, and it is quite possible that I do Garrick an injustice, but that
matters little, in no way detracting from the newly burnished fame of
our friend from York.
At the time when Frodsham determined to take a holiday in London,
Garrick was at Drury Lane, and at the very height of his fame. Adulation
was his daily food, and no flattery was too gross for him to swallow. A
chorus of praise from high and low followed him everywhere; he could do
nothing wrong; and, it goes without saying, he could make the fortune of
a fellow actor with a nod of his head.
Judge then of Garrick’s surprise when, one day, a card was left at his
house in Southampton Street, ‘Mr. Frodsham, of York,’ unaccompanied by
any humble request or letter of adulation. This cool conduct on the part
of one who turned out to be nothing but a country player so excited
Garrick’s curiosity that, on the day following, Frodsham was admitted
into the great man’s presence. Not unnaturally, he imagined that
Frodsham had come to solicit an engagement, but after some slight
conversation, during which the young stranger showed astonishing
coolness, Garrick, finding that no such request was made, determined to
cut short the interview by offering his visitor an order for the pit for
that evening, when he was to play Sir John Brute, one of his favourite
parts. At the same time, he asked Frodsham if he had seen a play since
his arrival in London.
‘O yes,’ replied Frodsham, ‘I saw you play Hamlet, two nights ago,’ and
remarked further that it was his own favourite part.
At this, Garrick, not without irony, said that he hoped Frodsham had
approved of the performance.
‘O yes,’ cried the provincial, unmoved, ‘certainly, my dear sir, vastly
clever in several passages; but I cannot so far subjoin mine to the
public opinion of London, as to say I was equally struck with your whole
performance in that part.’
Garrick was dumbfounded. The thing was unheard of. Here was monstrous
heresy, high treason, madness, we know not what.
‘Why,’ he stammered, ‘why now--to be sure now--why I suppose you in the
country....’ And then, bringing all his artillery to bear on this
fortress of impudence: ‘Pray now, Mr. Frodsham, what sort of a place do
you act in at York? Is it a room, or riding house, occasionally fitted
up?’
‘O no, sir, a theatre, upon my honour,’ returned Frodsham, as cool as
ever.
Garrick was nonplussed, and tried to carry it off lightly:
‘Why--er--will you breakfast to-morrow, and we shall have a trial of
skill, and Mrs. Garrick shall judge between us.’ The thing was beneath
his dignity, but he was piqued and determined to lower the fellow’s
colours. With this, he dismissed his strange visitor, crying: ‘Good day,
Mr. York, for I must be at the theatre, so now pray remember breakfast.’
If he expected his man to be daunted, he was mistaken, for Frodsham,
still composed and affable, promised to attend him at breakfast, and
retired. And I wish that our sturdy provincial could have had drums and
trumpets to escort him as he marched down Southampton Street, for he
certainly bore away the honours.
The next morning found him seated at Garrick’s table. To quote my
authority: ‘During breakfast, Mrs. Garrick waited with impatience, full
of various conjectures why the poor man from the country did not take
courage, prostrate himself at the foot of majesty, and humbly request a
trial and engagement.’ But the ‘poor man from the country’ did nothing
of the kind, though from no want of courage; and at last Garrick himself
was compelled to break the ice.
‘Why now, Mr. Frodsham,’ he said, sharply, ‘why now--I suppose you saw
my Brute last night? Now, no compliment, but tell Mrs. Garrick--well
now, was it right? Do you think it would have pleased at York? Now speak
what you think.’
‘O certainly,’ replied the other, ‘certainly; and upon my honour,
without compliment, I never was so highly delighted and entertained; it
was beyond my comprehension. But having seen your Hamlet first, your Sir
John Brute exceeded my belief; for I have been told, Mr. Garrick, that
Hamlet is one of your first characters; but I must say, I flatter myself
I play it almost as well; for comedy, my good sir, is your forte. But
your Brute, Mr. Garrick, was excellence itself! You stood on the stage
in the drunken scene flourishing your sword, you placed yourself in an
attitude--I am sure you saw me in the pit at the same time, and with
your eyes you seemed to say--‘D----n it, Frodsham, did you ever see
anything like that at York? Could you do that, Frodsham?’
Could anything have been more friendly? But it did not please Garrick,
who did not relish being treated by an unknown country player with such
ease and familiarity. Comedy his forte, indeed! He pretended to laugh
the thing off, but determined to put an end to the fellow’s impudence
and folly, and said: ‘Well now--hey--for a taste of your quality--Now a
speech, Mr. Frodsham, from Hamlet, and Mrs. Garrick bear a wary eye.’
Here was an awkward position indeed for a young bumpkin standing before
the greatest actor of the age. It had no effect, however, upon Frodsham,
who plunged into Hamlet’s first soliloquy without more ado. This he
followed up with ‘To be or not to be.’ Garrick, we are told, made use of
a favourite device of his when dealing with inferiors, ‘all the time
darting his fiery eyes into the very soul of Frodsham.’ I make no doubt
that as a rule it was a very effective trick, but on this occasion it
failed, for Frodsham was in no way embarrassed by it. His chronicler, in
a malicious vein, adds: ‘On Frodsham, his formidable looks had no such
effect, for had he noticed Garrick’s eyes and thought them penetrating,
he would have comforted himself with the idea that his own were equally
brilliant or even still more so.’ And why not?--we might ask. Is there a
monopoly of fiery eyes that dart into souls? At best, this darting of
eyes was simply a mean little trick, which deserved to be brought to
nothing by a youngster’s harmless conceit of himself.
When Frodsham had done, Garrick thought to finish him with a shrug and
said: ‘Well, hey now, hey!--you have a smattering, but you want a little
of my forming; and really in some passages you have acquired tones I do
not by any means approve.’
‘Tones! Mr. Garrick!’ returned Frodsham, tartly; ‘to be sure I have
tones, but you are not familiarised to them. I have seen you act twice,
and I thought you had odd tones, and Mrs. Cibber strange tones, and they
were not quite agreeable to me on the first hearing, but I dare say I
should soon be reconciled to them.’
This was unsupportable. Neither the presence of greatness (darting its
eyes) nor adverse criticism could crush this extraordinary young man
from nowhere. The astounded Garrick decided to come to business, which
would at least restore the proper relations between the two, the famous
actor and the impudent nobody, and put the latter in his only possible
place, that of a humble suppliant. ‘Why now,’ he cried, ‘really,
Frodsham, you are a damned queer fellow--but for a fair and full trial
of your genius my stage shall be open, and you shall act any part you
please, and if you succeed we will then talk of terms.’ Which was, I
think, a fair offer.
Then came the masterstroke. ‘O,’ said Frodsham, indifferently, ‘you are
mistaken, my dear Mr. Garrick, if you think I came here to solicit an
engagement. I am a Roscius at my own quarters. I came to London
purposely to see a few plays, and looking on myself as a man not
destitute of talents, I judged it a proper compliment to wait on a
brother genius: I thought it indispensable to see you and have half an
hour’s conversation with you. I neither want nor wish for an engagement;
for I would not abandon the happiness I enjoy in Yorkshire for the
first terms your great and grand city could afford.’ With that, he
withdrew with a careless bow, leaving Garrick speechless.
It is to Garrick’s credit that he often told the story of this strange
visit to members of his company. But as he probably thought that
Frodsham was merely a lunatic, for he always referred to him as ‘the mad
York actor,’ and so possibly did not realise that there was more than
one side to the story, and that he was telling it against himself, we
will not give him too much credit. Nor will I, for one, pass his
epithet, for if Frodsham was not a mere conceited young fool, as our
historian foolishly suggests he was, neither was he a plain madman. His
point of view was not Garrick’s, but it was a very reasonable point of
view. The remarks he made were certainly not without a good deal of
sound sense; they were critical, honest, and not, I think lacking in
courtesy. It is true that he had a very good opinion of himself, but
then so had Garrick, and so, by your leave, have you and I. The
difference between Frodsham and the dozens of other young actors who
sought out Garrick lies in the fact that one made no attempt to disguise
his opinions, whereas the others, in all probability, cringed and lied
unblushingly for an hour or two. But Frodsham, you may urge, had no
sense of proportion, no idea of relative values; he could not understand
the difference between the applause of York and that of London; he could
not see the gulf that stretched between the darling of a local fit-up
and the captain of Drury Lane. The charge is true, but is it very
damaging? Such a habit of mind has prevented many a man from getting on
in the world, but it never kept any man from greatness. I maintain that,
over and above all conceit, there was a certain simplicity in Frodsham
that came very near to greatness, if it did not achieve it, and that, in
its elemental frankness and disdain of worldly wisdom, was not without a
touch of real poetry.
Now that our hero has had his great moment, and has lounged, as it were,
into the wings, followed by our applause, I hesitate whether to bring
him back again upon the stage. Encores are rarely satisfactory to the
audience, and I fear an anti-climax. To speak of Frodsham’s visit to
Rich after describing his encounter with Garrick is to talk of
Quatre-Bras after Waterloo; and yet, seeing that our man is ready for
us and may not be heard of again for many a year, I will venture it.
During his momentous holiday in London, Frodsham conceived it to be his
duty, as a fellow-player and a gentleman, to pay a visit to Rich, of
Covent Garden, just as he had done to Garrick. It was simply a point of
good breeding, for having been told that Rich was a superficial person,
more given to pantomime than good drama, he thought very little of him.
So he called upon Rich and found him stroking his cats and teaching a
young lady to act. After keeping him waiting some time, Rich
condescended to look at his visitor, viewing him up and down through a
very large reading-glass, took a pinch of snuff, and drawled: ‘Well, Mr.
Frogsmire, I suppose you are come from York to be taught, and that I
should give you an engagement. Did you ever act Richard, Mr. Frogsmire?’
On hearing Frodsham answer that he had acted the part, Rich went on:
‘Why then you shall hear me act’; and proceeded to recite a speech in a
very absurd manner. When he had done, Frodsham told him very plainly
that he had come from York to visit him, neither to be taught nor to
hear him recite, but merely ‘for a little conversation and to visit his
Elysian fields.’ This reply must have astonished Rich, but he was of
different metal from Garrick, and it neither disturbed his indolent
self-satisfaction nor roused his curiosity. With a large gesture, he
said that unless Mr. Frogsmire would with humble attention listen to his
Richard, he would not hear Mr. Frogsmire at all; and was proceeding to
mouth--
’Twas an excuse to avoid me!
Alas, she keeps no bed!
when he was cut short by a curt ‘Good-morning’ from Frodsham, who
stalked out of the room.
Thus ended his second polite call upon a fellow-player, after which, his
short holiday being at end, he returned to York well content, with no
great opinion of London and its favourite performers. There he remained,
the idol of the York playgoers, until bad hours and the brandy-bottle
put an end to his life at the early age of thirty-five, in October 1768.
There is even a suggestion of heroic legend and strange destiny about
his end, for on the very last night that he ever spoke on the stage, he
announced to the audience that the next performance would include ‘What
We must All Come to.’ As an actor, he is said to have been not without
real genius, and to have suffered only from lack of proper training,
and, later, his dissipated way of living. As a man, or rather, young
man, he seems to me, at this distance, to have had some admirable
qualities. There was, as I have remarked, a touch of poetry in his
composition, and I can well believe that his Hamlet was worth seeing.
But of all his parts, there is no doubt that by far the best was that
which he played without limelight, make-up or properties during his ten
days’ holiday in London. And I suggest that all spirited provincials,
who are quick to recognise a kindred soul, should honour his memory.
ON A NEW KIND OF FICTION
The literary year books and reference books do not make very cheerful
reading these days, but there is a certain note in one of them that
should not be allowed to remain in obscurity. It is contributed by the
editor of an American journal, _Ambition_, who informs all writers and
would-be writers that he and his paper are prepared to accept:
Stories, 4,000-4,500 (words), in which the hero advances in
position and earnings through study of a trade or profession by
means of a correspondence course. (Preferred occupations indicated
by Editor on application.)
One can only hope that this passage has not met the eye of any reader of
_Ambition_, one who has urged himself along the steep, narrow way, and
found sustenance in such heartening tales, for he might become
disillusioned, lag in his course (if only a correspondence course), and
turn cynic or communist. Our editor, with true occidental ruthlessness,
takes us behind the scenes with a vengeance; he strips each wretched
player and spares us neither paint nor plaster-and-lath; had we any
illusions on the matter, any roseate dreams of ‘advancing in position
and earnings,’ which we have not, how rudely we should have been
awakened. But one would have thought that the readers of _Ambition_,
grimly practical fellows, every one of them essentially ‘a man of this
world,’ were above the mere trifling of the story-teller, that they were
ready, nay, eager, to face the stern facts, the naked issues of life,
without calling in the writer of fiction to beguile and comfort them
with his cunning old tricks. But no, even in this bleak and forbidding
region, the story-teller is welcomed; the ancient craft is not allowed
to perish even in these high altitudes. But while so much is conceded to
frail human nature, the earnest young people who read _Ambition_ cannot
have their minds stuffed with any glittering nonsense, love stories,
tales of piracy, and the like; if there is to be fiction, it must be of
one kind only. The hero must not be some absurd swashbuckler, the prey
of we know not what romantic whims and fancies; he must be a good, solid
young fellow ‘who advances in position and earnings through study of a
trade or profession by means of a correspondence course.’ Well told, the
story of such an enterprising youth must be worth any man’s reading.
But while we are thus to some extent restricted--and after all, does not
art imply restriction?--yet within these bounds there is ample freedom.
The writer is at liberty to choose the hero’s name, we take it, and may
even let his fancy wander somewhat in his description of the fellow,
making him tall or short, fat or thin, dark or fair, according to the
author’s taste in these matters. For example, he may relate how Joe
Brown, short, fat, and fair, advances in position and earnings by
taking a correspondence course of steeplejackery (or whatever it
is that makes a steeplejack); or, again, he may show how Marmaduke
Grubstock-Datterville not only advances in position, but retrieves the
family fortunes by applying himself to a course (entirely by
correspondence) of wholesale grocery. This, surely, is something.
Moreover, the rate of advance in the hero’s position and the extent of
his earnings are matters that are probably left to the author’s
discretion, and he is no true penman who cannot make something of humour
and pathos out of such material.
The type of story being thus fixed, it is clear that the most important
point left is the hero’s trade or profession. If the story-teller is
free to give his hero any trade or profession he pleases, he has no
right to complain of undue restriction. If, on the other hand, the trade
or profession used in each story is determined beforehand by the
authorities, then we may say that perhaps our editor is pressing a
little too heavily upon his contributors. The remark in parenthesis,
coming at the end of the editor’s note as if it were a sudden
inspiration or a kindly afterthought, settles the question: ‘Preferred
occupations indicated by Editor on application.’ It is a compromise,
and, we think, a very sensible one; neither author nor editor is
enthroned or fettered; there is a possibility of mutual help and, we
trust, sympathy. Note the advantages of such an arrangement. In the
first place, as the readers of _Ambition_ are men who have their eye on
the labour market, men who know what is what, it will not do to put
before them any sort of trade or profession and to talk wildly about it.
Writers of fiction may be very tricksy fellows, but it is quite clear
that it would not be wise to leave them entirely to themselves when they
are choosing trades for their 4,000-4,500 word heroes; without expert
guidance there is no telling into what gimcrack, monstrous jobs they
would thrust the creatures of their fancy. It is easy to see that one
would have to be circumspect in this matter of a trade; in this, as in
other things, there must be judgment; an apt choice is requisite. It
would, for example, be quite useless scribbling down four thousand words
about a young ambitious crossbowman or alchemist; we may be sure that
our editor would not have his confiding readers dealt with so
anachronously; he would not suffer them to be led by desires that are
several centuries beyond fruition.
Again, there are many trades that are not in the best of
taste--swindling, forgery, sandbagging, and so forth; an occasional
story using one of these might do little harm, and even some good,
inasmuch as it might enlarge the scope of one or two readers, but a
journal that began to show favour to such doubtful, and even unpopular,
industries would soon lose its hold. Other occupations, while free from
the objections urged above, must be regarded as useless for our purpose,
because they do not appear to offer sufficient room for a really
determined hero; they are cramped, confined, and show no tempting
horizons; the trade of ferryman, of programme-seller, of liftman, to
name only a few, must be passed over for this reason. Moreover, the
selected trade or profession must be the subject of a correspondence
course or the hero can make no headway; a correspondence course is
essential. Now, although our correspondence schools are daily quickened
by the spirit of enterprise, there are still many occupations that they
have left untouched; most of the trades we have already dismissed would
have to be rejected again on this count, while there are many others,
such as that of torturer, milkman, astrologer, or acrobat, that we
imagine to be still without correspondence courses. It is clear then
that the choice of a suitable trade has difficulties, and that a mere
writer of fiction should be glad to accept the proffered advice of the
expert, his editor.
There is, however, another reason that more than justifies the editor’s
wisdom in offering to indicate ‘preferred trades or professions.’ Some
authors, knowing more about such things than most of their fellows,
might very well choose entirely suitable trades even if they were left
to themselves; but there is more in the question than this mere choice,
for each story must not only be acceptable in itself, but it must also
be good when it is considered in its relation to the other stories that
it follows or precedes. As we have seen, the tales themselves have
unity, but within that unity there must be variety. The cunning
arrangement of literary matter so that one item contrasts with another,
the effect of both thus being heightened, is the very mark of good
editing. Are the readers of _Ambition_, any more than any other readers,
to be denied this variety, this beguiling blend of light and shadow,
this dazzling counterpoint of literature? By no means. Our editor very
wisely makes use of variety and contrast by apportioning out the trades
and professions himself. Otherwise, there is no telling what would
happen. Four consecutive numbers of the journal might each contain the
life story of a successful young gasfitter, and there would probably be
some grumbling and even a falling off in circulation. As it is, our
editor can make the most of his material; one number, we will say, gives
us the history of a young man who learns accountancy by correspondence,
a brainy occupation, but perhaps a trifle prosaic and needing an indoor
setting; in the very next number the balance is restored by a tale of a
smart young correspondence school pupil who turns bee-keeper, which
brings in a flavour of the open air and sunlit gardens, and is not
without a touch of poetry; while in the following number we return once
more to the city, with all its romantic bustle, and breathlessly follow
the swelling fortunes of a square-jawed young plumber; and so it goes
on.
By such means our editor has taken care to achieve both unity and
variety in the stories at his disposal. What we thought at first
restrictions pressing somewhat heavily upon the story-teller are now
seen to be hints for his guidance, aids without which he cannot expect
to be successful in this kind of fiction. If there are men of more than
ordinary talent, born story-tellers, among us waiting for an opening,
let them take leave of the stuff they have been writing, worn-out
romance and so forth, all tears and tatters or mere coloured foppery,
let them keep pace with the times, for here in the pages of _Ambition_
is opportunity indeed. While they are pushing hero after hero along the
road to success they can surely make shift to advance themselves ‘in
position and earnings.’
A MAD SHEPHERD
The world is at once saner and yet more given to lunacy than it used to
be, for the people outside asylums are saner than their grandfathers
were, yet there are greater numbers under some sort of treatment, or at
least under lock and key, for madness. I do not know whether it is
because there is increasing harbourage for lunatics in our time, or
because it is merely becoming more difficult, every year, in the face of
specialists whose own sanity is never questioned, to prove that one is
not yet ready for the madhouse; but it is clear that the eccentrics and
half-wits who chuckled and grimaced in our older literature, through the
long tales of our grandparents, are fast disappearing. A host of notable
figures in Shakespeare, from Hamlet to Petruchio, would not be suffered
to walk abroad these days unless they piped in a lower key. It is a
great pity that all the crack-brained, whimsical fellows are leaving
us; we need a little variety in our experiments with existence, for
there is a danger that we are all crazed and have only decided for
unanimity, that we are Mad Hatters who will not suffer a March Hare; and
these others, extravagant but harmless, have their own visions of life
and we cannot prove them wrong, but can only point to the majority--a
trick unworthy of us.
These bold experimentalists, the crack-brained, are now so few and so
precious, that I travel with one eye open for them; for a man is as
well, if not better, occupied collecting eccentric essays in life, as he
is casting about for ancient coins or earthenware. Remote towns or
villages make the most promising hunting-grounds, and only a short time
ago, my search was well rewarded in a certain small market town. I had
been in the place several days, and had come to know most of its
prominent figures well by sight, when one fellow, whom I was always
seeing, here, there, and everywhere, began to excite my curiosity. He
was an oldish man, with a close-shaven, tanned face, and always dressed
in gaiters and what seemed to be a long smock, with a curiously-shaped
cap, of the same material as his smock, pressed down upon his head.
These and other particulars I noted with interest, but what intrigued
me most was a long pole, roughly shaped like a shepherd’s crook, which
he always carried in his hand, and which seemed to be some implement of
his trade. But what his trade was, I could not guess; I never saw him
employed in any way, never caught him piloting beasts towards the market
or making any kind of use of the mysterious pole. Yet whenever I ran
across him, which I did frequently, he always seemed to be fully
occupied, neither rushing heedlessly nor yet loitering, but resolutely
pressing forward to some important piece of business--a sober man of
affairs. Even in a little market town, there are many ways of earning
bread and beer that fall outside the scope of a stranger’s knowledge,
tiny trades that are commonplaces in one shire and unknown in the next,
and I might easily have contented myself with assuming that my man was
thus engaged. But the archaic costume and the quaintly fashioned pole,
now so familiar, were too provocative, and led me to question my
landlady, whose talk was fluent and full of good matter, though rather
obscure. I had scarcely begun my description of the man before she had
snatched the subject from me and panted forth the whole tale.
In spite of his quaint figure, I had set my man down as a sober busy
citizen, engaged in some obscure little trade of his own. He was nothing
of the kind. He was even more fantastic than his clothes, more
mysterious than his own strange implement. For it appeared that this
fellow was nothing more nor less than a crack-brained idler, one who
had--in my landlady’s words--‘gone soft in the head.’ Up to a few years
ago a lonely quiet man, expecting nothing from the world, he had
suddenly come into a fortune, and the surprise and joy that followed
this stroke of luck had turned his brain; thenceforward he blossomed
madly and ran to amazing whims and crotchets, harmless enough, but
strangely odd and diverting. His greatest and most delectable fantasy
was this, that he took upon himself, from time to time, the duty of
acting in a definite character, usually one of the ancient trades of the
world; he would dress himself for the part, and, so far as it was
possible, take over the habits, the interests, the mode of speech of the
particular type he copied. Thus, he would be a sailor for some time,
then a fisherman, and after that maybe a gamekeeper or forester; always
dressing himself accordingly and keeping strictly to the type, and not
declining to the actual indistinguishable characters of our own day, but
presenting in his attire, as it were, the ideal sailor or forester; and
so, tricked out in such homely yet symbolic vestments, perhaps thinking
to take a place with the poet, ‘in the calm and proud procession of
eternal things.’
When I saw him, he was a shepherd; indeed, a shepherd appeared to be his
favourite character, for he had maintained the part for some time, and,
according to report, showed no signs of changing. There are few
shepherds in that part of the country, and the few there are do not wear
smocks or carry a crook as he did. But he followed his usual practice,
looked back to a simpler, smaller and more clearly defined world, and
dressed the part to mark it off from all other trades. It was the least
he could do, seeing that he did no actual work and devoted all his
energies to the masquerade. His apparent busyness was all moonshine. The
sheep he herded could not be driven to any mart in this world, for they
were nothing but drifting phantoms. When he walked the sunlit streets,
his grotesque shadow pursued by laughter, he hurried to mythical
appointments, moved in shadowy markets, and trafficked in thin air. At
the end of the day, after being urged here and there by his lively
fancy, doubtless he returned home as tired and as well-content with his
day’s unsubstantial labour as any sober man of business; sometimes maybe
he would return elated, at others mortified, for there must be triumphs
and grievous losses even in this matter of pursuing phantoms. Then, in
the evening, his crook laid aside, perhaps he would make his plans for
the next day; but what such plans could be, no man can imagine, for they
must be dreams within a dream and shadows of a shadow. So he would pass
his time, hurting no man, his life, like that of all such quaint
fellows, only marred by loneliness. Nor would he lack a companion,
supposing his present whimsy holds, if I had my way; for somewhere in a
large and dirty city there is a sheepdog that I once knew, a dog that
had never known the life it was meant to lead, never seen the hills with
the sheep scattered upon them, and yet, in the yard of a warehouse, it
spent its days herding invisible sheep, running round bales and barking
furiously at barrels. Were that dog mine, the crazy shepherd should have
him, so that the two might walk the streets together, happily pursuing
their mythical flocks and otherwise busying themselves in their
dream-pastures.
The maggots of the brain are not to be enumerated and labelled: what led
this harmless fellow to such fantasies, no man can know. Perhaps after
the sudden stroke of fortune sent his wits wandering he had been
mastered by some old thought, some half-forgotten protest against the
drab formlessness of labour in our day, against the absence of any marks
of distinction between men of one trade and men of another; he had
reverted to a more ordered clear-cut time, when every man was stamped
with the sign of one or other of the ancient industries. Only in some
such way, can one attempt to explain this strange masquerade of his. He
has his own vision of life, his own idea of that poetry which
transfigures the mechanism of blood and bone; and I trust that he will
be left to himself to go his own way, for when he is weary of a
shepherd’s life, there are still many time-old tradesmen, from tinker to
tailor, that he can personate. Nor will it be long before I see him
again, caring little whether he is still a shepherd or metamorphosed
into a fisherman or cobbler, so long as he is still with us, going his
own fantastic gait.
AUDACITY IN AUTHORSHIP
There is one certain characteristic of contemporary literature which
everyone must have remarked, but to which it is very difficult to give a
name. It is straining language to call it this or that quality; yet a
name it must have, and Audacity will do as well as another. At the
worst, it is more than audacity, it is downright impudence; at the best,
it becomes engaging sauciness, youth pirouetting to the breakfast-table,
or rises to magnificent unwisdom and shows us, once again, the bright
fool darting before the van of the angels. It must not, however, be
confused with stark originality, which presents us with the strange
shape of some creature new to this world, and which is far above mere
audacity. There are many ways in which a writer may approach his
audience: he may seem to let us overhear him, may seem to meditate
aloud, in the manner of Pater; he may take us into a corner and pour
out a stream of confessions and confidences, in the manner of Hazlitt;
or thrust us into the darkness and belabour us back again into the
light, in the manner of Carlyle; there are these and a score of other
ways, but the most of them are going out of fashion. It is all ‘Boot,
Saddle and Away!’ with so many of our writers now, and we, as
unoffending readers, are continually harassed by the sallies of these
wild horsemen. No longer are we to be soothed, cajoled, fascinated or
awed; unless we are shocked or irritated, the trick fails. We must be
surprised by one or two great blows, or goaded into admiration by a
thousand pinpricks. We must all play the part of poor, elderly,
disapproving relatives, while our authors strut about as wild young
nephews, who expect nothing from us but unwilling admiration and envious
side-glances. Never was there such bravery at the end of a pen.
What then, one asks, are the signs and marks of audacity in literature
by which it can be recognised in this place or that. They are countless.
The ramifications of this fantastic growth cannot be traced; it blossoms
so wantonly, drops such strange fruit, that a man has already seen it
everywhere, or almost everywhere, or is by nature blind to it, having
perhaps been nourished upon it, and knowing nothing else. It comes out
in so many different ways that only a few can be noticed here. When a
writer shows undisguised contempt for his readers, as so many writers
do, then audacity is degenerating into sheer impudence. This sort of
contempt is usually shown in two ways: firstly, by supreme carelessness
in matter, as if to suggest that the very dregs of our author’s mind are
good enough for his particular audience, and perhaps better than the
best of his fellow authors’ brains; secondly, by supreme carelessness in
manner, as if one were to receive callers in a greasy dressing-gown.
Persistently to attack the cherished illusions of the reading public or
to run athwart the accepted morals of the time, are tricks that will
bring their own rewards while audacity is in the ascendant; but they are
not lasting. A modern dramatist who has made much capital out of these
tricks must be puzzling his brains now to know what to do with a
generation that has no illusions left. Again, one of our novelists who
has played the naughty young man from Paris for some thirty-odd years,
now finds himself regarded as a respectable elderly man-of-letters. To
many, Bernard Shaw’s _Life-Force_ seems a sentimental crotchet, and
George Moore’s earlier works seem more fatuous than disreputable. If,
however, there are enough of the disillusioned to make an audience, a
writer who knows the value of audacity will not hesitate to swing back
the pendulum by defending the old prejudices with all the force at his
command. This may be the clue to the audacity of G. K. Chesterton, who
has spent his time declaiming against the only people who can understand
and enjoy him. Again, the characteristic may take other unwelcome forms
that bring it near to impudence, as for example in the work of men who
gain the ear of the public in one capacity, and then insist upon acting
in another, as when a good teller of tales turns without warning into a
philosopher or prophet: it is as if M. Pachmann were to ignore the piano
before him and treat his audience to a few fumbling conjuring tricks.
Moreover, to pronounce judgment on matters about which one knows nothing
is to carry audacity to doubtful lengths. Criticism offers, and has
always offered, a good field for the audacious, but a great many of us
now tend to abuse our freedom. Without knowing a word of Italian and
Portuguese, a man will undertake to write twenty essays proving that
Camoens was a better poet than Tasso. And of late it seems that audacity
of the baser sort has invaded the realm of verse; every day, our poets
are more startling, though not so startling as their friends and
critics.
Looking about then, with no unfriendly eye, we shall discover that
audacity, not of the worst kind, is to be found in much of the best
known work of to-day. It is not everywhere: there is little or no trace
of it in the work of Hardy, Bridges, Henry James, Conrad, W. H. Hudson,
Galsworthy, Maurice Hewlett, to name only a few. But elsewhere, though
mingled with other finer qualities, there is no lack of it. It takes
many strange shapes, and can be discovered lurking under many disguises.
It has proved itself no small part of Bernard Shaw’s stock-in-trade. It
roars lustily through the essays and ‘histories’ of Messrs. Belloc and
Chesterton, peeps slyly from Max Beerbohm’s essays, screams in the
devastating contributions of H. G. Wells, leers through George Moore’s
endless reminiscences. It drove Arnold Bennett to write essays, and is
now urging John Drinkwater to create dramas. After being long the
servant, it is now the master of Barrie. There is no end to it.
Fortunately, these are not gentlemen of one characteristic alone; they
do not content themselves with crying ‘ducdame,’ for they have still
something to say when the circle is formed. But there are others,
novelists, verse-writers, critics, and what editors call ‘publicists,’
who think to run their course with nothing to speed them but audacity
alone, which makes them doubly audacious, but nothing more. The drums
beat, the trumpets sound, the crowd is hushed, and then follows a cough
and a splutter--and then silence.
When did it begin? In its primary form, no doubt it is a characteristic
as old as literature itself. It is there, full-fledged, in Aristophanes.
The Hebrew chroniclers and prophets had audacity of a sublime kind.
Perhaps there were once wild young literary men in China, and no doubt
many an impudent papyrus in Babylon and Ancient Egypt. But in the more
questionable shape we know, audacity in literature is a thing only of
yesterday and to-day. Going back, we come first to Wilde, who was
nothing if not audacious, an impudent confidence-trick man-of-letters.
Then, Stevenson and Henley, not without a touch, surely, though more
audacious in the flesh perhaps than on paper. Again, Butler, a very
clever man, perhaps a great man, but still a shockingly bad precedent
for young men inclined to flippancy and petulance. There is Bagehot,
whose genuine originality is not unspeckled; and further back, we see
the young Disraeli, busy upon _Contarini Fleming_, and compounded of
velveteen, macassar oil and impudence. And now we come to Blackwood’s
young men, Christopher North and Company, beginning a career of literary
swashbuckling with the _Chaldee MS._, and culprits one and all,
triple-dyed in the fearful purple. And if a poetic criminal is wanted,
there is Byron, who, from the sheer impertinence of _English Bards and
Scotch Reviewers_ to the magnificent audacity of _Don Juan_, gives us
every form of impudence rhymed and rhythmed; who began the game of
making the bourgeois pay for being shocked, and continuously boiled his
pot with the heat of their disapproval. But can we stop here? The graves
stir, and a crowd of thin ghosts press forward, waving innumerable
ragged volumes. There is the lean spectre of Yorick, and, close by, the
author of _Jonathan Wild_, while a little way behind, one catches a
glimpse of Swift, and Defoe, and Buckingham, and a hundred more. But
their claims must be denied, for we must not fall into the error of
using our make-shift term ‘audacity’ in its widest sense, and thereby
running back to the Ptolemies in search of origins; we must save
something for ourselves in literature, and we have already confessed
that a certain audacious trick of writing belongs to our own age; so we
will take our stand upon Byron and Blackwood’s merry men, and go no
further.
There is one plain reason for the existence, or rather the success, of
the audacious in our letters. It is not so much that writers have
changed as that the audience has changed. When all that is written goes
the round of one small circle of readers, is pondered over by the same
leisurely few; when a writer’s style and manner are discussed by those
about him, and are matters of some moment, an ordinary man of letters
will imitate what seems to him the best manner of the time, and a
greater man will be simply himself, bringing something new into the
world; but among greater or less there will be little mere posturing. A
man addresses his equals jovially, carelessly, angrily, as the mood
takes him; it is only for pennies in the market-place or at the fair
ground that he continually makes faces and stands on his head. With a
small, critical audience, some fashions of writing are not in place,
being entirely unwelcome: we have not yet allowed the trombone and big
drum into our chamber music. But when the little circle of readers
begins to swell until it is enlarged beyond recognition by rush after
rush of newcomers; when journals and newspapers begin to thrive, and the
old groves and porticos take on the appearance of an auction mart, then
it is time to change the manner. The audience is huge, with half its
wits gone wandering, a great Saurian blinking at the mud, a thing to be
tickled with a ten-foot spike; it plays the part of a vast, drowsy
auctioneer lolling above a clamouring crowd of buyers, men-of-letters
trying to catch its eye; and what avail now are the level tones and the
sober argument when only a squeak or a roar or an insane gesture is
likely to attract attention. And now that over a century has passed
since the times began to change, since the literary man left his
armchair and took to eating fire and swallowing the sword, if we choose
to write we shall do well if we escape audacity, for it is woven madly
into the texture of our letters, the note of it is louder than the loud
bassoon. At the best, with a good will, we may abjure the more impudent
tricks, but unless we are towering geniuses we cannot escape the
characteristic itself: it is--alas!--the very marrow of this essay.
IN PRAISE OF THE HYPERBOLE