both the living and the dead,
Whose "legal pillory" shall have no end.
And I believe in one _Pall Mall Gazette_, Pure Giver of frequently
mistaken information, which proceedeth from pens feminine,
And which with the soporific _St. James's_, together, exerteth the
lungs of the newsboys.
I acknowledge one holy and absolute _Court Circular_.
I confess one "_Saturday_" for the flaying of new authors,
And I look for the death of the _Nineteenth Century_
And the life of a less dull magazine to come Amen.
With this, my journalistic fledgling gave way to Homeric laughter, and
helped himself anew to wine. And since that day, since that witching
hour, I have watched his wild career. I track him in the magazines;
I recognise the ebullitions of his wit in "society" paragraphs; I
discover his withering, blistering sarcasm in his reviews of the books
he never reads; in fact, I find him everywhere. As the air permeates
space, he permeates literature. He is the all-sure, the all-wise, the
all-conquering one. With such a faith as his, so firmly held, so nobly
uttered, he is born to authority. I only wish some one would make him
Prime Minister. Everything that is wrong would be righted, and with
a Journalist (and such a journalist!) at the head of affairs, all
questions of government would be as easy to settle as child's play. He
himself--the Journalist--implies as much, and with all the fibres of my
soul I believe him!
IX.
OF WRITERS IN GROOVES.
There are a certain class of authors who remind me of a certain class
of gamblers--men who believe in a special "lucky number," and are
always staking their largest amounts upon it. To speak more plainly,
I should say that I mean the "groovy" men, who, as soon as they find
one particular sort of "style" that chances to hit the taste of the
public, keep on grinding away at it with the remorselessness of an
Italian street-organ player. I see lots of such fellows in the crowd
around me, and I know most of them personally. For instance, there
is William Black, a distinctly "groovy" man if ever there was one.
All his books are like brothers and sisters, bearing a strong family
resemblance one to another. If you have read "A Princess of Thule" and
"A Daughter of Heth" you have got the _crême de la crême_ of all that
was or is in him. The rest of his work is evolved from precisely the
same substance as is found in these two books, only it is drawn out
into various criss-cross threads of deft weaving; and, deft as it is,
it makes uncommonly thin material. In his latter novels, indeed, there
is so much of what may be justly termed "feminine twaddle," that one
has to look back to the title-page in order to convince one's self that
it is really one of the "virile" sex who is telling a story. Excellent
Willie! With his small head and inoffensive physiognomy, he suggests
an intellectual sort of pint-pot, out of which it would be absurd to
expect a quart of brain. Inasmuch as a pint-pot can only hold a pint;
so let us be grateful for small mercies. And let us admire, not for
the first time either, the persistent kindly confidence of the British
Public, who steadily take up Willie's novels, one after the other, in
the sanguine faith of finding something new therein. "Some day," says
the patient B.P. in its trot to and from Mudie's Library--"some day
Willie will give us a book without a sunset in it. Some day, by happy
chance, he will forget there exists such a thing as a yacht. And some
day--who knows?--he may even awaken to the fact that there are other
places on earth besides Scotland, and other men who are as interesting
as Scotchmen."
Good B.P.! Excellent B.P.! What a heart you have! You deserve the
very best that can be given you for the sake of your tolerance
and cheerfulness of temper, which qualities in you seem truly
inexhaustible. Here followeth an anecdote: A certain flimsy scribbler
I wot of, who had just got himself into a loosely-fitting suit of
literary armour, and was handling his sword a bit awkwardly, as
beginners at warfare are apt to do, said to me one day, with a sort of
schoolboy vaunt, "The Public want _trash_!--and trash is what I'll give
them!" O wise judge! O learned judge! Out he went with his "trash,"
his sword poking into everybody's eye, and his armour waggling
uncomfortably round him, and lo! the Public "took" his trash and threw
it into the gutter, broke his sword for him, gave him back the pieces,
and civilly recommended him to look after the loose places in his
armour. He went home, did that proud warrior, and sat thinking about
what had chanced--it may be he is thinking still.
No, the B.P. don't want "trash"--they want the best of everything--but
they have an infinite kindness and patience in waiting for that
"best," and carefully looking out for it; and when it truly comes they
welcome it with honest enthusiasm. Thus did they welcome and applaud
the "Princess of Thule," because they found it good and charming and
unique, and ever since that time they have reposed quite a pathetic
trust in little Black, hoping against hope that he will give them
something else equally good again. Alas for the vanity of all such
human wishes! for William is a "groovy" man now, and in his groove
he evidently purposes to remain. I remember dining with, him on one
occasion, when, in the ordinary way of conversation, I asked him what
books he had been reading lately? Oh, what sublime amazement in his
rolling eye!
"Read?" he drawled. "I never read. Reading spoils an author's own
style."
Haw-haw! Weally! Good B.P., you see how matters stand? Willie's
"kail-yairdie," or little plot of garden-ground, is barren; its first
crop has been gathered, and no more seed sown by study, so don't expect
any other rich harvests, or look for wonders in such work as "Stand
fast, Craig Royston!" For even brain-soil wants cultivation, if it is
to produce something better than weeds.
Another "groovy" man is William Clark Russell. The waves rule Britannia
in his opinion: The sea occupies his inventive faculty to the exclusion
of everything else. A pigmy Neptune sits on his bald pate, touching
it up with a trident. Sailors' "yarns," sailors' marriages, sailors'
shipwrecks--tales of mariners in every sort of painful and pleasant
situation--influence his mind and bring it into that "One-idea"
condition which is considered by gravely spectacled specialists as a
form of cerebral disease. Moreover, his books bristle with sailors'
jargon, sailors' slang, sailors' "lingo," which people, who are not
sailors and who never intend to be sailors, do not understand and
do not want to understand. However, this monomania of his produced
one good result--"The Wreck of the Grosvenor." He exhausted his best
energies in that book, and having found it a success (as it deserved to
be), settled into the Jack Tar line of writing, and became once for all
and evermore "groovy." The "Wreck of the Grosvenor" is his "Princess of
Thule." He is all there, and there is no more of him anywhere.
At one time I feared, but it was only a passing shudder, that one of
the most brilliant novelists we have, Marion Crawford, was drifting
in the fatal direction of "groove." When the rather lengthy "Sant'
Ilario" came trailing along, after the equally lengthy "Saracinesca,"
I thought, "Alas! and woe is me! Are we never to hear the last of the
beautiful and lovable Astrardente? A noble character, but somewhat too
much of her is here." And I was on the verge of uncomfortable doubt for
some time, for I had always judged Crawford to be of the true Protean
type of genius, capable of touching every string on the literary harp
he holds. And I was not mistaken, for "A Cigarette-maker's Romance,"
that most delicate and delightful work, proves that he is anything
but "groovy"; and his "Witch of Prague" is a breaking of entirely new
soil. So that the more I read of him, the more I am confirmed in the
opinion I have previously ventured to express--namely, that he is our
best man-novelist. I use the term "man-novelist" because I know there
are women-novelists--ladies whom I should be very sorry to offend by
applying the adjective "best" to any member of the viler sex. For I
know also that those ladies, if affronted, have curious and unexpected
ways of revenging themselves, and though I am masked, my silver domino
is hardly proof against the green and glittering eye of a remorseless
literary female. So pray you be not wrathful, sweet ladies!--rather
join with me in gentle chorus, and say, as you know you must, that
the author of "Dr. Isaacs," "A Roman Singer," and "Marzio's Crucifix"
is indeed the least "groovy," and therefore the best "man-novelist"
living; be kind and condescending thus far, for of women-novelists you
shall have a word presently.
Somewhere, once upon a time, I called George Meredith an Eccentricity.
I meant him no harm by this phrase or term--I mean none now, when
I repeat it. He _is_ an Eccentricity--of Genius! Ha! where are you
now, all you commentators and would-be clearers-up of the Mighty
Obscure? An Eccentricity--a bit of genius gone mad--an Intellectual
Faculty broken loose from the moorings of Common Sense, and therefore
a hopelessly obstinate fixture in the "groove" of literary delirium.
A Meredithian description of Meredith is found in his story of "One
of our Conquerors"--a description there applied to the character of
Dudley Sowerby, but fitting Meredith himself exactly. Here it is; "His
disordered deeper sentiments were a diver's wreck where an armoured
subtermarine, a monstrous puff-ball of man, wandered seriously light
in heaviness, trebling his hundred-weights to keep him from dancing
like a bladder-block of elastic lumber; thinking occasionally amid
the mournful spectacle, of the atmospheric pipe of communication
with the world above, whereby he was deafened yet sustained." Of
course it is difficult to grasp all this at once--but I seize upon
the words, "_a bladder-block of elastic lumber_"--I know, I feel
that "_bladder-block_" is Meredith, though I cannot precisely inform
myself or others what a "_bladder-block_" in its original sense may
mean. But meanings are not expected to be vulgarly apparent on the
surface of this "diver's wreck" or new school of prose--you have to
search for them; and you must hold fast to whatever "_atmospheric
pipe of communication_" you can find, in order to keep up with this
"_Monstrous puff-ball of man wandering seriously light in heaviness_."
It has been left to George Meredith to tell us about "the internal
state of a gentleman who detested intangible metaphor as heartily as
the vulgarest of our gobble-gobbets hate it"--and if we would not be
considered "_gobble-gobbets_" ourselves, we must strive to be grateful
for the light he throws on our intellectual darkness. He is supposed
to understand women in and out and all round, so we must take it for
granted that a woman can "breathe thunder." It sounds alarming--it is
alarming--but if Meredith says it, it must be true. And he does say
it. With the calm conviction of one who knows, he assures us that "the
lady breathed low thunder." She is a very remarkable person altogether,
this "lady," called Mrs. Marsett, and her modes of action are carried
on in positive defiance of all natural and physical law. For at one
time we are told "her eye-_lids_ (not her eyes) mildly sermonised,"
and on another occasion she actually "caught at her slippery tongue
and carolled," quite a feat of _leger de langue_. Again, "her woman's
red mouth was shut fast on a fighting underlip." Till I read this, I
was fool enough to think that the underlip was part of the mouth, but
now I know that the underlip is quite a separate and distinct thing,
as it is able to go on "fighting" while the mouth is "shut fast" on
it. She does all sorts of curious things with this mouth of hers, does
Mrs. Marsett; in one scene of her career it is said that "she blushed,
blinked, frowned, _sweetened her lip-lines, bit at the under one_, and
passed in a discomposure." Moreover, this strange mouth was given to
the utterance of bad language, for with it and her "slippery tongue"
Mrs. Marsett said her own name was "Damnable!" and what was still
worse, "had the passion to repeat the epithet in shrieks and scratch
up male speech for a hatefuller," whatever that may mean. Of course,
it is all very grand and mixed and magnificent, if any one chooses to
think so; people can work themselves up into an epilepsy of enthusiasm
over prose run mad _à la_ Meredith, as over poetry gone a-woolgathering
_à la_ Browning. It is a harmless mania which is confined to the
few, and is of a distinctly non-spreading tendency; while those who
are not partakers in the craze can look on thereat and be amused
thereby--for Meredith is at all times and all seasons both personally
and in literature a real entertainment. Whether he be haranguing to
the verge of deafness some stray acquaintance in the Garrick Club;
whether he be met, a greybeard solitary, stalking up the slopes of
Box Hill, at the foot of which he resides; whether he be inveighing
against the "porkers," _i.e._, the Public, within the precincts of a
certain small and extortionate but rigidly pious bookseller's shop in
the town of Dorking; or whether he be visited in his own small literary
"châlet," which he built for himself in his own garden, away from his
house, what time he had a wife, (a very charming, kindly lady, whose
appreciative sense of humour enabled her to understand her husband's
gifts better than any of his wildest worshippers), in order to escape
from "domesticity" and the ways of the "women" he is supposed to
understand--in each and all of these positions he is distinctly
amusing--and never more so than when he thinks he is impressive. Yet
there can be no doubt whatever as to his natural cleverness, and the
original turn of mind which might have made him a distinctly great
writer, if he had not forced himself into the strained style of the
artificial "groove" he has adopted. Even now, if he would only leave
the first spontaneous output of his thought alone, instead of altering
it when it is on paper, and weighing it down with all the big words he
can find in the dictionary, he would probably write something above
the average of interest. However, it's no use being hard upon him, as
he has quite recently been Lynched.[1] I cannot endure his novels, it
is true--but still, I never wished him to meet such a frightful fate.
When we reflect on the barbarity of the institution known as Lynch-law,
we cannot but wonder how his admirers have tamely stood by and seen
him delivered over to so awful a punishment. Yet it is a positive fact
that they have made no defence. And he has been torn limb from limb,
and broken into explained pieces by a pitiless executioner self-elected
to the performance of the abhorrent deed. A woman too--yclept Hannah
as well as Lynch; and eke a spinster--mind cannot picture a more
formidable foe--a more fearful fate! Heaven save you, poor Meredith!
for man cannot. Lynched you are, and Lynched you must be by every word,
sentence and chapter, until you be dead, and may God have mercy on your
soul!
Among other "groovy" men may be included Hall Caine (whose big
"bow-wow" style is utterly unchanged and unchangeable), W. E.
Norris, the pale, far-off, feeble imitator of Thackeray, and F.
C. Philips. This latter gentleman is evidently fast "set" in the
"groove" of naughty but interesting adventuresses. His tale of "As
in a Looking-glass" met with so much success, besides receiving the
extremely questionable honour of dramatisation, that he now indulges
in the error of imagining that all the world must for the future be
persistently eager to know the histories of a continuous succession
of conscienceless ladies like Lena Despard. One of his creations of
the kind, Margaret Byng, might be Lena's twin sister. (According to
the title-page, one P. Fendall would seem to have something to do
with Margaret Byng, but how and where it is impossible to discover.)
Adventuresses for breakfast, adventuresses for dinner, tea and
supper; adventuresses in all sorts of gowns, brand-new or shabby, and
adventuresses in all sorts of difficult situations at all sorts of
seasons--this is the "four-and-twenty blackbirds baked in a pie" kind
of dish, which is what we must expect from Mr. Philips in the future.
This and no more, since he considers it enough. And among "groovy" men,
alas! must be reckoned one of the most delightful of writers, Bret
Harte. The "groove" he chose was at first so new and fresh that we
all felt as if we could never have enough of it; but even in excess of
love there is satiety, and such satiety is our sad experience with the
gifted author of "The Luck of Roaring Camp" and the pathetic "Outcasts
of Poker Flat." We know exactly the sort of thing he will write for us
now--and the charm is broken.
I lay no claim to being possessed of any literary taste, so it will
matter to no one when I say I can see no beauty and no art in Mr.
Hardy's "Tess of the D'Urbervilles." It is an entirely hateful book
in my opinion. Neither can I endure Mrs. Ward's "David Grieve," and
as this lady has undoubted literary gifts, I hope she will for the
future avoid the religious "groove." It is extremely uninteresting,
and is enough to cramp any author's style. Mr. Gladstone, who "boomed"
"Robert Elsmere," apparently has nothing to say for "David Grieve,"
though it seems he can admire such crude performances as "Mdlle. Ixe"
and "Some Emotions and a Moral." But it would never do for us to go by
the taste of the Grand Old Man in these things. He is as variable as
a chameleon. He might call our attention to the splendours of Dante on
one occasion, and directly afterwards assure us that nothing could be
finer in literature than the nursery rhyme of "Pat-a-cake, pat-a-cake,
baker's man." Dear old Gladdy! He is the greatest "leader" ever born in
his quality of _mis_leading.
It is difficult indeed to find a writer who is not more or less
"groovy"--that is, one who will not only give us different stories, but
different "styles." And as a rule the men writers are more "groovy"
than the women, though the women are bad enough in their own particular
way. Miss Braddon, for example, is, as every one knows, the "grooviest"
of novelists going--her canvas is always prepared in the same manner,
and the same familiar figures stand out upon it in only slightly
altered attitudes. Her books always remind me of a child's marionette
theatre, having the same set of puppets, who can be placed in position
to enact over and over again the same sort of play. And it is a play
that always amuses one for an hour, when one has nothing better to do.
"Ouida," though she tells all sorts of different stories (of which her
short ones are by far the best), has no difference of style--she is
always the same old "Ouida"--and so will be to the end of her life's
chapter. There are always the same wicked, but exquisitely lovely,
ladies, to whom the marriage tie is frailer and less to be considered
than a hair, and always the same good, pure, and _therefore_ (according
to "Ouida") stupid girls who are just sixteen. There are always the
bold, bad men with "mighty chests" and "Herculean limbs," who covet
their neighbour's wives, or play havoc with the hearts of trusting
maidens--and all these things are told with a gorgeousness of colour
and picturesqueness of description that is not only brilliant, but very
marvellously poetical. "Ouida" holds a pen such as many a man has good
secret reason to envy. There are rich suggestions for both poets and
painters in many of her books--but there is no convincing portrait
of life, except in "Friendship," which was a satirical _exposé_ of
the actual lives of some very questionable and unpleasant people. Yet
"Ouida's" gift was one which might have been turned to rare account had
she studied more arduously in her earlier years; but now, across her
little garden of genius, in which all the flowers have run wild, are
written the fatal words "Too Late."
Another very "groovy" lady novelist is Rhoda Broughton. The
not-particularly-good-looking and "loose-jointed" young man (all Miss
Broughton's heroes are "loose-jointed"--I don't know why) puts in his
appearance in all her books without fail--and there is always the same
sort of distressing hitch in the love-business. The liberties she takes
with the English language are frequently vulgar and unpardonable.
Familiarity with "slang" is no doubt delightful, but some people would
prefer a familiarity with grammar.
A very promising creature was the fair American, Amelie Rives. I say
"was" because she is married now, and I'm afraid she will not write so
well with a "worser half" looking over her "copy." Her story, "Virginia
of Virginia," was a delicious study--quite a little work of genius in
its way--though I must own her novel, "The Quick or the Dead," was a
mere boggle of wild sentiment and scarcely-repressed sensualism. Some
critics were very hard down upon her, because she threatened to be
"original" all the time, and critics hate that sort of thing. That
is why they invariably "go" for one of our newest inflictions, Marie
Corelli, of whom it may be truly said that she has written no two
books alike, either in plot or style; and the grave _Spectator_ on
one occasion forgot itself so far as to say that her romance entitled
"Ardath" had actually beaten Beckford's renowned "Vathek" out of the
field. But all the same, with every respect for the _Spectator's_
opinion, I, personally speaking, find her a distinctly exasperating
writer, who is neither here, there, nor anywhere--a "will-o'-the-wisp"
sort of being, of whom it is devoutly to be wished that she would
settle into a "groove," as she would be less of a trial to the (in her
case) always savage reviewer.
Nothing is more irritating to a critic than to have to chronicle
the reckless flights of this young woman's unbridled and fantastic
imagination. She tells us about heaven and hell as if she had been to
them both, and had rather enjoyed her experiences. Valiant attempts
to "quash" her have been made, but apparently in vain, and most of my
brethren in the critical faculty consider her a positive infliction.
Why does she not take the advice tendered her by the _World_, and other
sensible journals, and retire altogether from literature? I am sure she
would be much happier "picking geranium leaves" _à la_ Becky Sharp,
with a husband and two thousand a-year. As it is, her very name is, to
the men of the press, what a red rag is to a bull. They are down upon
it instantly with a fury that is almost laughable in its violence. But
I suppose she is like the rest of her sex--obstinate, and that she
will hold on her wild career, regardless of censure. Only, as I say, I
wish she would elect a "groove" to run in, for I, among many others,
shall be relieved as well as delighted when we are all quite certain
beyond a doubt as to what sort of book we are to expect from her. At
present she is a mere vexation to any well-ordered mind.