believe, the merit of containing all the most interesting anecdotes
about him, and I also wrote the Rossetti in the Men of Letters
Series, a painstaking book, rather rhetorical; though the truth
about Rossetti cannot be told, even if it could be known.
All this work was done in the middle of hard professional work,
with a boarding-house and many pupils. I will dare to say that I
was an active and diligent schoolmaster, and writing was only a
recreation. I could only get a few hours a week at it, and it never
interfered with my main work.
My father died in 1896, and I wrote his life in two big volumes, a
very solid piece of work; but it was after that, I think, that my
real writing began. I believe it was in 1899 that I slowly composed
The House of Quiet, but I could not satisfy myself about the
ending, and it was laid aside.
Then I was offered the task of editing Queen Victoria's letters. I
resigned my mastership with a mixture of sorrow and relief. The
work was interesting and absorbing, but I did not like our system
of education, nor did I believe in it. But I put my beliefs into a
little book called The Schoolmaster, which made its way.
I left my work as a teacher in 1903, when I was forty-one. The
House of Quiet appeared in that year anonymously, and began to
sell. I lived on at Eton with an old friend; went daily up to
Windsor Castle, and toiled through volumes of papers. But I found
that it was not possible to work more than a few hours a day at the
task of selection, because one's judgment got fatigued and blurred.
The sudden cessation of heavy professional work made itself felt in
an extreme zest and lightness of spirit. It was a very happy and
delightful time. I was living among friends who were all very hard
at work, and the very contrast of my freedom with their servitude
was enlivening. I was able, too, to think over my schoolmastering
experience; and the result was The Upton Letters, an inconsequent
but I think lively book, also published anonymously and rather
disregarded by reviewers. But the book was talked about and read;
and for the next year or two I worked with indefatigable zest at
writing. I brought out monographs on Edward FitzGerald and Walter
Pater; I wrote The Thread of Gold, which also succeeded; and in the
next year I settled at Cambridge, and wrote From a College Window
as a serial in the Cornhill, and The Gate of Death, both
anonymously; and in the following year Beside Still Waters and The
Altar Fire. All this time the Queen's letters were going quietly on
in the background.
I have written half-a-dozen books since then. But that is how I
began my work; and the one point which is worth noticing is that
the four books which have sold most widely, The House of Quiet, The
Upton Letters, The Thread of Gold, and the College Window, were all
of them issued anonymously, and the authorship was for a
considerable time undetected. So that it is fair to conclude that
the public is on the look-out for books which interest it, and will
find out what it wants; because none of those books owed anything
whatever to my parentage or my position or my friends--or indeed to
the reviewers either; and it proves the truth of what a publisher
said to me the other day, that neither reviews nor advertisements
will really do much for a book; but that if readers begin to talk
about a book and to recommend it, it is apt to go ahead. And,
further, I conclude from the fact that none of my subsequent books
have been as popular as these, though I have no cause to complain,
that a new voice and new ideas are what prove attractive--and
perhaps not so much new ideas as familiar ideas which have not been
clearly expressed and put into words. There was a little mystery
about the writer then, and there is no mystery now; everyone knows
exactly what to expect; and the new generation wants a fresh voice
and a different way of putting things.
3
As to the motive force, whatever it may be, that lies behind
writing, we may disengage from it all subsidiary motives, such as
the desire for money, philanthropy, professional occupation; but
the main force is, I think, threefold--the motive of art pure and
simple, the desire for communication with one's fellows, and the
motive of ambition, which may almost be called the desire for
applause.
The ultimate instinct of art is the expression of the sense of
beauty. A scene, or a character, or an idea, or an emotion, strikes
the mind as being salient, beautiful, strange, wonderful, and the
mind desires to record it, to depict it, to isolate it, to
emphasize it. The process becomes gradually, as the life of the
world continues, more and more complex. It seemed enough at first
just to record; but then there follows the desire to contrast, to
heighten effects, to construct elaborate backgrounds; then the
process grows still more refined, and it becomes essential to lay
out materials in due proportion, and to clear away all that is
otiose or confusing, so that the central idea, whatever it is,
shall stand out in absolute clarity and distinctness. Gradually a
great deal of art becomes traditional and conventional; certain
forms stereotype themselves, and it becomes more and more difficult
to invent a new form of any kind. When art is very much bound by
tradition, it becomes what is called classical, and makes its
appeal to a cultured circle; and then there is a revolutionary
outburst of what is called a romantic type, which means on the one
hand a weariness of the old traditions and longing for freedom, and
on the other hand a corresponding desire, on the part of an
extended and less cultured circle, for art of a more elastic kind.
Literature has this cyclic ebb and flow; but what is romantic in
one age tends to become classical in the next, as the new departure
becomes in its turn traditional. These variations are no doubt the
result of definite, psychological laws, at present little
understood. The renaissance of a nation, when from some
unascertained cause there is a fresh outburst of interest in ideas,
is quite unaccounted for by logical or mathematical laws of
development. The French Revolution and the corresponding romantic
revival in England are instances of this. A writer like Rousseau
does not germinate interest in social and emotional ideas, but
merely puts into attractive form a number of ideas vaguely floating
in numberless minds. A writer like Scott indicates a sudden
repulsion in many minds against a classical tradition grown
sterile, and a widespread desire to extract romantic emotions from
a forgotten medieval life. Of course a romantic writer like Scott
read into the Middle Ages a number of emotions which were not
historically there; and the romantic writer, generally speaking,
tends to treat of life in its more sublime and glowing moments, and
to amass brilliant experience and absorbing emotion in an
unscientific way. Just now we are beginning to revolt against this
over-emotionalised treatment of life, and realism is a deliberate
attempt to present life as it is--not to improve upon it or to
select it, but to give an impression of its complexity as well as
of its bleakness. The romanticist typifies and stereotypes
character, the realist recognises the inconsistency and the
changeableness of personality. The romanticist presents qualities
and moods personified, the realist depicts the flux and
variableness of mood, and the effects exerted by characters upon
each other. But the motive is ultimately the same, only the
romanticist is interested in the passion and inspiration of life,
the realist more in the facts and actual stuff of life. But in both
cases the motive is the same: to depict and to record a personal
impression of what seems wonderful and strange.
The second motive in art is the desire to share and communicate
experience. Every one must know how intolerable to a perceptive
person loneliness is apt to be, and how instinctive is the need of
some companion with whom to participate in the beauty or
impressiveness or absurdity of a scene. The enjoyment of experience
is diminished or even obliterated if one has to taste it in
solitude. Of course there are people so constituted as to be able
to enjoy, let us say, a good dinner, or a concert of music, or a
play, in solitude; but if such a person has the instinct of
expression, he enjoys it all half-consciously as an amassing of
material for artistic use; and it is almost inconceivable that an
artist should exist who would be prepared to continue writing books
or painting pictures or making statues, quite content to put them
aside when completed, with no desire to submit them to the judgment
of the world. My own experience is that the thought of sharing
one's enjoyment with other people is not a very conscious feeling
while one is actually engaged in writing. At the moment the thought
of expression is paramount, and the delight lies simply in
depicting and recording. Yet the impulse to hand it all on is
subconsciously there, to such an extent that if I knew that what I
wrote could never pass under another human eye, I have little doubt
that I should very soon desist from writing altogether. The social
and gregarious instinct is really very dominant in all art; and all
writers who have a public at all must become aware of this fact, by
the number of manuscripts which are submitted to them by would-be
authors, who ask for advice and criticism and introductions to
publishers. It would be quite easy for me, if I complied fully with
all such requests, to spend the greater part of my time in the
labour of commenting on these manuscripts. It is indeed the nearest
that many amateurs can get to publication. As Ruskin, I think, once
said, it is a curious irony of authorship that if a writer once
makes a success the world does its best, by inundating him with
every sort of request, to prevent his ever repeating it. I suppose
that painters and sculptors do not suffer so much in this way,
because it is not easy to send about canvases or statues by parcels
post. But nothing is easier than to slip a manuscript into an
envelope and to require an opinion from an author. I will confess
that I very seldom refuse these requests. At the moment at which I
write I have three printed novels and a printed book of travel, a
poem, and two volumes of essays in manuscript upon my table, and I
shall make shift to say something in reply, though except for the
satisfaction of the authors in question, I believe that my pains
will be wholly thrown away, for the simple reason that it is a very
lengthy business to teach any one how to write, and also partly
because what these authors desire is not criticism but sympathy and
admiration.
The third motive which underlies the practice of art is undoubtedly
the sense of performance and the desire for applause. It is easy
from a pose of dignity and high-mindedness to undervalue and
overlook this. But it may safely be said that when a man challenges
the attention of the public, he does not do it that he may give
pleasure, but that he may receive praise. As Elihu the Buzite said
with such exquisite frankness in the book of Job, "I will speak,
that I may be refreshed!" The amateurs who send their work for
inspection cannot as a rule bear to face this fact. They constantly
say that they wish to do good, or to communicate enjoyment and
pleasure. To be honest, I do not much believe that the motive of
the artist is altruistic. He writes for his own enjoyment, perhaps,
but he publishes that his skill and power of presentment may be
recognised and applauded. In FitzGerald's Letters there is a
delightful story of a parrot who had one accomplishment--that of
ruffling up his feathers and rolling his eyes so that he looked
like an owl. When the other domestic pets were doing their tricks,
the owner of the parrot, to prevent its feelings being hurt, used
carefully to request it "to do its little owl." And the truth is
that we most of us want to do our little owl. Stevenson said
candidly that applause was the breath of life to an artist. Many,
indeed, find the money they make by their work delightful as a
symbol of applause in the sense of Shelley's fine dictum, "Fame is
love disguised." It is not a wholly mean motive, because many of us
are beset by an idea that the shortest way to be loved is to be
admired. It is a great misapprehension, because admiration breeds
jealousy quite as often as it breeds affection--indeed oftener! But
from the child that plays its little piece, or the itinerant
musician that blows a flat cornet in the street, to the great
dramatist or musician, the same desire to produce a favourable
impression holds good.
I once dined alone with a celebrated critic, who indicated, as we
sat smoking in his study, a great pile of typewritten sheets upon
his table. "That is the next novel of So-and-so," he said,
mentioning a well-known novelist; "he asks me for a candid
criticism; but unfortunately the only language he now understands
is the language of adulation!"
That is a true if melancholy fact, plainly stated; that to many an
artist to be said to have done well is almost more important than
to know that the thing has been well done. It is not a wholesome
frame of mind, perhaps; but it cannot be overlooked or gainsaid.
Even the greatest of authors are susceptible to it. Robert
Browning, who, except for an occasional outburst of fury against
his critics, was far more tolerant of and patient under
misunderstanding than most poets, said in a moment of elated
frankness, when he received an ovation from the students of a
university, that he had been waiting for that all his life;
Tennyson managed to combine a hatred of publicity with a thirst for
fame. Wordsworth, as Carlyle pungently said, used to pay an annual
visit to London in later life "to collect his little bits of
tribute." And even though Keats could say that his own criticism of
his own works had given him far more pain than the opinions of any
outside critics, yet the possibility of recognition and applause
must inevitably continue to be one of the chief raisons d'etre of
art.
But the main motive of writing lies in the creative instinct, pure
and simple; and the success of all literary art must depend upon
the personality of the writer, his vitality and perception, his
combination of exuberance and control. The reason why there are
comparatively so few great writers is that authorship, to be wholly
successful, needs so rich an outfit of gifts, creative thought,
emotion, style, clearness, charm, emphasis, vocabulary,
perseverance. Many writers have some of these gifts; and the
essential difference of amateur writing from professional writing
is that the amateur has, as a rule, little power of rejection and
selection, or of producing a due proportion and an even surface;
amateur poetry is characterised by good lines strung together by
weak and patchy rigmaroles--like a block of unworked ore, in which
the precious particles glitter confusedly; while the artistic poem
is a piece of chased jewel-work. It is true that great poets have
often written hurriedly and swiftly; but probably there is an
intense selectiveness at work in the background all the time,
produced by instinctive taste as well as by careful practice.
Amateur prose, again, has an unevenness of texture and arrangement,
good ideas and salient thoughts floundering in a vapid and inferior
substance; it is often not appreciated by amateurs how much depends
on craftsmanship. I have known brilliant and accomplished
conversationalists who have been persuaded, perhaps in mature life,
to attempt a more definite piece of writing; when it is pathetic to
see suggestive and even brilliant thought hopelessly befogged by
unemphatic and disorderly statement. Still more difficult is it to
make people of fine emotions and swift perceptions understand that
such qualities are only the basis of authorship, and that the vital
necessity for self-expression is to have a knowledge, acquired or
instinctive, of the extremely symbolical and even traditional
methods and processes of representation. Vivid life is not the same
thing as vivid art; art is a sort of recondite and narrow
symbolism, by which the word, the phrase, the salient touch,
represents, suggests, hints the larger vision. It is in the
reducing of broad effects to minute effects that the mastery of art
lies.
Good work has often been done for the sake of money; I could name
some effective living writers who never willingly put pen to paper,
and would be quite content to express themselves in familiar talk,
or even to live in vivid reflection, if they were not compelled to
earn their living. Ambition will do something to mould an artist;
the philanthropic motive may put some wind into his sails, but by
itself it has little artistic value. Speaking for myself, in so far
as it is possible to disentangle complex motives, the originating
impulse has never been with me pecuniary, or ambitious, or
philanthropic, or even communicative. It has been simply and solely
the intense pleasure of putting as emphatically and beautifully and
appropriately as possible into words, an idea of a definite kind.
The creative impulse is not like any other that I know; some
thought, scene, picture, darts spontaneously into the mind. The
intelligence instantly sets to work arranging, subdividing,
foreseeing, extending, amplifying. Much is done by some unconscious
cerebration; for I have often planned the development of a thought
in a few minutes, and then dropped it; yet an hour or two later the
whole thing seems ready to be written.
Moreover, the actual start is a pleasure so keen and delightful as
to have an almost physical and sensuous joy about it. The very act
of writing has become so mechanical that there is nothing in the
least fatiguing about it, though I have heard some writers say
otherwise; while the process is actually going on, one loses all
count of time and place; the clock on the mantelpiece seems to leap
miraculously forward; while the mind knows exactly when to desist,
so that the leaving off is like the turning of a tap, the stream
being instantaneously cut off. I do not recollect having ever
forced myself to write, except under the stress of illness, nor do
I ever recollect its being anything but the purest pleasure from
beginning to end.
In saying this I know that I am confessing myself to be a frank
improvisatore, and where such art fails, as mine often fails, is in
a lack of the power of concentration and revision, which is the
last and greatest necessity of high art. But I owe to it the
happiest and brightest experiences of life, to which no other
pleasure is even dimly comparable. Easy writing, it is said, makes
hard reading; but is it true that hard writing ever makes easy
reading?
The end of the matter would seem to be that if the creative impulse
is very strong in a man, it will probably find its way out. If
ordinary routine-work destroys it, it is probably not very robust;
yet authorship is not to be recommended as a profession, because
the prizes are few, the way hard, the disappointments poignant and
numerous; and though there are perhaps few greater benefactors to
the human race than beautiful and noble writers, yet there are many
natures both noble and beautiful who would like to approach life
that way, but who, from lack of the complete artistic equipment,
from technical deficiencies, from failure in craftsmanship, must
find some other way of enriching the blood of the world.
XIV
HERB MOLY AND HEARTSEASE
1
When Odysseus was walking swiftly, with rage in his heart, through
the island of Circe, to find out what had befallen his companions,
he would have assuredly gone to his doom in the great stone house
of the witch, the smoke of which went up among the thickets, if
Hermes had not met him.
The God came in the likeness of a beautiful youth with the first
down of manhood upon his lips. He chid the much-enduring one for
his rash haste, and gave him what we should call not very good
advice; but he also gave him something which was worth more than
any good advice, a charm which should prevail against the spells of
the Nymph, which he might carry in his bosom and be unscathed.
It was an ugly enough herb, a prickly plant which sprawled low in
the shadow of the trees. Its root was black, and it had a milk-
white flower; the Gods called it Moly, and no mortal strength could
avail to pull it from the soil; but as Odysseus says, telling the
story, "There is nothing which the Gods cannot do"; and it came up
easily enough at the touch of the beardless youth. We know how the
spell worked, how Odysseus rescued his companions, and how Circe
told him the way to the regions of the dead; but even so he did not
wholly escape from her evil enchantment!
2
No one knows what the herb Moly really was; some say it was the
mandrake, that plant of darkness, which was thought to bear a
dreadful resemblance, in its pale swollen stalk and outstretched
arms, to a tortured human form, and to utter moans as it was
dragged from the soil; but later on it was used as the name for a
kind of garlic, employed as a flavouring for highly-spiced salads.
The Greeks were not, it seems, very scientific botanists, so far as
nomenclature went, and applied any name that was handy to any plant
that struck their fancy. They believed, no doubt, that things had
secret and intimate names of their own, which were known perhaps to
the Gods, but that men must just call them what they could.
It would be best perhaps to leave the old allegory to speak for
itself, because poetical thoughts are often mishandled, and suffer
base transformation at the hands of interpreters; but for all that,
it is a pretty trade to expound things seen in dreams and visions,
or obscurely detected out of the corner of the eye in magical
places; while the best of really poetical things is that they have
a hundred mystical interpretations, none of which is perhaps the
right one; because the poet sees things in a flash, and describes
his visions, without knowing what they mean, or indeed if they have
any meaning at all.
A place like a university, where one alights for an adventure, in
the course of a long voyage, is in many ways like the island of
Circe. There is the great stone mansion with its shining doors and
guarded cloisters. It is a place of many enchantments and various
delights. There are mysterious people going to and fro, whose
business it is hard to discern: there are plenty of bowls and
dishes, and water pleasantly warmed for the bath. Circe herself had
a private life of her own, and much curious information: she was
not for ever turning people into pigs; and indeed why she did it at
all is not easy to discover! It amused her, and she felt more
secure, perhaps, when her visitors were safely housed, grunting and
splashing about together. One must not press an allegory too
closely, but in any place where human beings consort, there is
always some turning of men into pigs, even if they afterwards
resume their shape again, and shed tears of relief at the change.
3
My purpose here is to speculate a little upon what the herb Moly
can be, how it can be found and used. Hermes, the messenger of the
Gods, is always ready to pull it up for anyone who really requires
it. And just because "the isle," as Shakespeare says, "is full of
noises--sounds and sweet airs," it is a matter of concern to know
which of them "give delight and hurt not," and which of them lead
only to manger and sty. My discourse is not planned in a spirit of
heavy rectitude, or from any desire to shower good advice about, as
from a pepper-pot. Indeed, I believe that there are many things in
the correct conventional code which are very futile and grotesque;
some which are directly hurtful; and further, that there are many
things quite outside the code which are both fine and beautiful;
because the danger of all civilised societies is that the members
of it take the prevailing code for granted; do not trouble to think
what it means, accept it as the way of life, and walk contentedly
enough, like the beetle in the bone, which, as we know, can neither
turn nor miss its way.