the American Interviewer of Rider Haggard, when the weary author of
"She" landed in New York.
"India is a big place," was the simple answer, given with a patient
gentleness for which Haggard deserves great credit, seeing how he has
lately been despitefully used and persecuted by the very reviewers who
once flattered him.
Yes, India _is_ a big place; not too big for our Kip though. He
requires to take life in Gargantuan gulps in order to support the
giant forces of his mind. But Stratford-on-Avon! A mere English
country town--hardly more than a village--what do we care about
it now? Shakespeare, after all, was perhaps only Bacon--but Kip is
Kip--there's no doubt about him--he is his own noble _bonâ-fide_ self,
whose bootlaces we are not worthy to untie. There is "stern strength,"
there is "virility," there is a "strong strain of humour," there is
"masculine vigour" in everything he writes. Mark the following passage
from "Watches of the Night":--
"Platte, the subaltern, being poor, had a Waterbury watch and a plain
leather guard.
"The Colonel had a Waterbury watch also, and for guard the lip-strap of
a curb chain."
Now, note that carefully--"_The lip-strap of a curb chain._"
What a luscious flowing sound there is in those few exquisitively
chosen words! "_The lip-strap of a curb chain!_" It is positively
fascinating. One could dream of it all day and all night too, for that
matter, like Mark Twain's famous refrain of "Punch in the presence
of the passenjare." But going on from this delicious line, which is
almost poetry, one finds instant practical information.
"Lip-straps make the best watch-guards. They are strong and short.
Between a lip-strap and an ordinary leather guard there is no great
difference; between one Waterbury watch and another, none at all."
Now, there we have the "strain of humour." No difference between one
Waterbury watch and another, "none at all." Ha, ha, ha! No difference
between one--ha, ha, ha!--Waterbury, ha, ha!--watch--ha, ha, ha!--and
another--ha, ha, ha!--none at all. Ha, ha! That "none at all" is so
exquisitely facetious! It comes in so well! Was ever such a delightful
little bit of sly, dry, brilliant, sparkling Wit, with a big W, as this
peculiar manner of our Kip! Turning over the leaves of this glorious,
this immortal "Plain Tales," you cannot help coming upon humour,
spontaneous, rollicking humour everywhere. It bristles out of each
particular page "like quills upon the fretful porcupine." Take this,
for example--
"One of the Three men had a cut on his nose, caused by the kick of a
gun. _Twelve-bores kick rather curiously._"
So they do. The remarkable part of this is that twelve-bores _do_
kick--it is a positive fact--a fact that every one has been dying to
have made public, and "rather curiously" is the exact expression that
suits their mode of behaviour. So true, so quaint is Kip. And here
is another charming bit of expression--a descriptive picture, finely
painted. It is from "The Arrest of Lieutenant Golightly."
"His boots and breeches were plastered with mud and beer stains. He
wore a muddy-white, dunghill sort of thing on his head, and it hung
down in slips on his shoulders, which were a good deal scratched. He
was half in and half out of a shirt, as nearly in two pieces as it
could be, and he was begging the guard to look at the name on the tail
of it."
Now this requires thinking over, because it is so subtle.
The "muddy-white, dunghill sort of thing" is really a new
expression--quite new--and beautiful. It suggests so much! But you must
come to the humour--you must remember there was a shirt mentioned, and
that the hero was "begging the guard to look at the name on the tail of
it." I went off into positive convulsions of mirth when I first read
that passage. Falstaff's coarse witticisms seemed unbearable after
it. "To look at the name on the tail of it!" It is simply inimitable.
There is a jovial sound in the very swing of the sentence. And Private
Mulvaney! What a creation! Just listen to him--
"I'm a born scutt av the barrick-room! The Army's mate and dhrink to
me, bekase I'm wan av the few that can't quit ut. I've put in sivinteen
years an' the pipeclay's in the marrow av me. Av I wud have kept out
av wan big dhrink a month, I wud have been a Hon'ry Lift'nint by
this time--a nuisince to my betthers, a laughin' stock to my equils
an' a curse to meself. Bein 'fwhat I am, I'm Privit Mulvaney wid no
good-conduc' pay an' a devourin' thirst. Always barrin' me little
frind Bob Bahadur, I know as much about the Army as most men."
No wonder, after this, that the ever-watchful purveyors of "Literary
Gossip" rouse themselves up from lachrymose tenderness to positive
passion _in re_ this marvellous Rudyard, and speak of him as "the
stronger Dickens going forth conquering and to conquer."
The phrase, "the stronger Dickens," is coming it very strong indeed,
but--it's only the paragraph-men. These chroniclers of the time have
pathetically informed us how on one occasion Kip ran away from the
"clamour" (of the paragraph-men) to India to fetch his papa, and how
his papa came back with him, to look after him, I suppose, and protect
him from all the naughty, vicious people who wanted to blow his skin
out into the size of a bull when Nature meant him to keep to the
strict proportions of the other figure in the fable. Good Rudyard!
Already the bloom is off the rye, just slightly, for if we are to
believe the _Athenæum_, an Eden Phillpotts is "the new Kipling." "O
Eden Phillpotts! Phoebus! What a name! To fill the speaking-trump of
future Fame!" The "loose ungrammatical" Byron's lines fit Phillpotts as
excellent well as Kipling. Phillpotts is really a fine name in every
way--splendidly hideous, and available for all sorts of Savile Club and
_Saturday Review_ witticisms, such as--
"Phill the Pott and fill the can
Eden is our Coming Man!"
Or this, sung slowly with religious nasal intonation to the well-known
hymeneal melody--
"The voice that breathed o'er _Eden_,
From _Athenæum_ bowers,
Said 'Phillpotts' stories must be praised,
He is a friend of ours!'"
Think of it, Rudyard! think of it! Art ready to cope with Phill? Wilt
meet Potts on his own ground? Deem not thyself Eden's superior, for
he "understands," according to the _Athenæum_, "proportion, contrast,
balance, and the value of unhalting movement," things that inferior
persons like Scott, Thackeray, Balzac, and others had to study all
their lives long. Moreover, another journal dictatorially announces
that "novel-readers must prepare to welcome" Phillpotts. Mark that
"must"! That "must" would fain seize the Ass-public by the throat,
and make it eat Phillpotts like a turnip. But the Ass is a fastidious
ass sometimes--it likes to nose its food before devouring; it will
nose Phillpotts at its pleasure. Meantime, it is nosing thee, friend
Kipling, dubiously and with a faint touch of derision. Ridicule kills;
beware of it, my boy. And to avoid ridicule and secure dignity,
hist!--a side-whisper, meant kindly--_Put down your Boom business!_
Stamp it out. Hush it up. If you don't take my advice you'll regret it.
The thing has been over-done. You have had more friends than are good
for you; a few stanch foes would have brought you much more benefit
in the long run. When your ill-advised flatterers quote your jingly
"Barrack-Room Ballads" as though they were things immortal--when good
Frank Harris, of _Fortnightly_ prowess, imposes a growling recital of
scraps of your doggerel, "Fuzzy-wuz," on patiently-bored people sitting
at a social meal, with the air of one considering it a finer production
than "The Isles of Greece," or Shelley's "Cloud"--we say with Hamlet,
"Somewhat too much of this." In the year of grace 1900 "Barrack-Boom
Ballads" will have gone the way of all "occasional verse," and not a
line will remain in the memory of the public. The English people know
perfectly well what poetry is, and no critic will ever persuade them
that you can write it. At the same time no one wishes to deny your
surface cleverness or your literary ability. You are on the same rank
with Bret Harte, Frank Harris, Frank Stockton, Anstey, and a host of
others, and there is no objection taken to your standing along with
these; but there is objection, honest objection, made to your being
forced higher aloft than your compeers, by means of a ridiculously
exaggerated, aggressively ubiquitous "boom." When Walter of the
_Times_ rushed frantically into a court of law about his copyright in
a Kipling article (he having taken no such heed of any other author's
article till then), the outside public laughed and shrugged their
shoulders at the absurdity of the thing. From the fuss made, one would
have imagined that God Himself read the _Times_ every morning, and was
particularly interested in Kipling. This sort of nonsense never lasts.
The reaction infallibly sets in. Never was a name sent up sky-high
like a rocket, but it did not fall plump down like a stick. And so,
excellent Rudyard, beware! You are not "the greatest English author" by
a long way. In weak moments I admit that the newspaper-gushers work me
into a delirium-tremens of ecstasy about you, and, like my friend Frank
Harris, my hand trembles and my voice takes on a rich growl as I quote
"Fuzzy-wuz" and the "immortal" (alas!) "Tomlinson"--but in these fits
I am not answerable for my words or actions. When I put away "Plain
Tales" and "Life's Handicap," and forget all your press notices, I
can think of you calmly and quite dispassionately, as one literary
labourer among hundreds of others, who are all striving to put their
little brick into the building of the Palace of Art, and I perceive
that yours is a very small brick indeed! I fear it will scarcely be
perceived in the wall twenty years hence. And my present opinion of you
is--would you care to know it? Of course not, but you shall have it all
the same. I consider you, then, to be a talented little fellow with a
good deal of newspaper-reporter "smartness" about you, and an immense
idea of your own cleverness, an idea fostered to a regrettable extent
by the overplus of "beans" which gentle Edmund Yates, among others, is
sorry to have given you. You have some literary skill, and you use a
rough brevity of language which passes for originality in these days
of decadence, but you are shallow, Rudyard; as shallow as the small
mountain brook that makes a great noise in the rapidity of its descent,
but can neither turn a mill-wheel or bear a boat on its surface. Your
men characters are mostly coarse bears--unmannerly ruffians in their
speech at least--your women are, on the average, either trifling or
despicable. Though unlovable, they are, however, interesting for the
moment, but only for the moment. Because a good many of us know fellows
who are brave and "virile" and all the rest of it, and yet who are not
obliged to use a slang word in every sentence; and we also know women
who are not solely occupied with the subjugation of the "masculine
persuasion"; and we prefer these decent folk as a rule. But, whatever
your literary failings or attainments, and however you may display
them _in futuro_, be wise in time and put down your "boom." No man can
live up to a "boom"; it is not humanly possible. As for your "strong
strain of humour," I am disposed to accept that as a fact. It _is_ a
strain--your humour. Your hydraulic pump is for ever going, and if the
result is not always witty, it is flippant enough. And flippancy passes
for wit nowadays. "Chaff" has replaced epigram, except when one finds
a _bon mot_ in an old forgotten French play or novel, and passes it off
in English as one's own "to set the table in a roar." As a matter of
fact though, human life is tragic; and the comedy part of it is only
invented hurriedly and inserted by the clowns of the piece.
And now Kip--though I perceive you are staring at me, wondering who
the d----l I am--I will e'en leave you to your own devices, and, as the
police say, "move on." Not even with the aid of your spectacles can you
peer through the folds of my domino--not till I choose. I am not going
about masked always--oh no! You shall see me face to face one day. And
if, when these attractive features of mine are unveiled to your ken,
you find yourself at all put out by the familiar manner of my speech
to you, why, we will cross the Channel to some convenient scene of
action, and you shall order (if you like) pistols for two and coffee
for one. I am really one of the best of your friends, because I do not
flatter you. The only place on which my observations may hurt you is a
soft spot in every man's composition called Conceit. It is a spot that
bruises easily and keeps sore for a long period. But the true artist
requires to have this spot taken out of him if possible. It is as bad
as a cancer, and needs instant cutting. Again I say, I do not flatter
you. And if I had more time, I think I should possibly warn you against
one of _your_ "boomers," and _my_ dear friends, Daddy _Lang_-legs. He
has the caprices of a fine lady, has Daddy--you can never be sure when
he is going to be pleased or displeased. He may discontinue a promising
young "boom" quite suddenly, or on the other hand he may go on with it
for an indefinite period. Of course he is an adorable creature, only it
is not prudent to judge the position of all Literature by the phases of
his humour.
And so, ta-ta Rudyard! See you again by and by! Don't inflate that
little literary personality of yours too much, lest it should burst.
Don't you believe you are a "stronger Dickens"; it won't do. It's bad
for you. A little modesty will not hurt you; it is an old-fashioned
manner, but is still considered good form. Read and compare the greater
authors who never were "boomed"; who starved and died, some of them,
to win greatness; they who are the positive "Immortals," and whom
neither you nor any of us will ever distance; mistrust your own powers
and "go slow." If there is anything very exceptional in you, time will
prove it; if not, why, Time will sweep you away, my good fellow, as
remorselessly as it has swept away many another pampered and petted
"Press" baby out of the very shadow of remembrance. Don't swallow _all_
the "beans" my boy! Leave a few. Better die of starvation than surfeit!
XVII.
CONCERNING A GREAT FRATERNITY.
Ha! I spy a Critic. Hail fellow, well met! Whether you have a
strawberry mark on your left arm or not, you are my own, my long, my
never-lost brother. I love you as the very apple of mine eye! And to
speak truly, I love all critics, from the loftiest oracle to the lowest
half-crown paragraphist; they are dear to me as the fibres of my heart,
and I am never so happy as in their company. And why? Why, because I
am a critic myself; one of the mystic band; and, moreover, one of the
joyous throng wearing (for the present moment) the safety-badge marked
"Anonymous"; one of the pleasant personal friend-detectives who watch
the unsuspicious author playing his game of literary "baccarat,"
and, on the merest hint, decide that he is cheating. I shake the
unsuspicious author's hand, I break his bread, I drink his wine, I
smoke his best havanas; I tell him verbally that he is a first-rate
fellow, almost a genius, in fact, and then?--well, then I sneak
cautiously behind the sheltering sidewall of a leading journal with the
rest of my jolly compeers, and at the first convenient opportunity I
stab him in the back!--"dead for a ducat." And how we all laugh when
he falls, his foolish face turned up in dumb appeal to the callous
stars; he was a star-gazer from the first, we say, chucklingly--these
ambitious dunderheads always are!
By Heaven! there is nothing in all the length and breadth of literature
so thoroughly enjoyable as the life of a critic, if one were only
better paid. One is member of a sort of "_Vehmgericht_," or secret
inquisition, where great intellects are broken on the wheel, and small
ones escape scot free, not being dangerous. The only unfortunate thing
about it is that we are losing power a little. The public read too many
books, and begin to know too much about us and our ways, which is very
regrettable. We like to toss together our own style of literary forage
and force it down the gaping throat of the public, because somehow
we have always considered the public an Ass, whose best food was hay
and thistles. But our Ass has lately turned restive and frequently
refuses to accept our proferred nourishment. It snorts dubiously at our
George Meredith Eccentricity, it kicks at the phonographic utterances
of Browning, and it positively bolts at Ibsen. A disgusting Ass, this
public! It actually devours volumes we have decided to ignore--it
relishes poems which We pretend never to have heard of--it tosses its
head at novels which We recommend, and hangs fondly over those We
abuse; and it even goes and fawns at the feet of certain authors who
show unrestrained passion and idealism in their writings, and whom,
on account of that very passion and idealism, we have determined to
send to Coventry. My heart sank to zero on a recent occasion when the
editor of the _Academy_ said to me, despondently, "The time is past, my
friend, when criticism can either make or mar an author's reputation."
Good God! I mentally ejaculated; then what am _I_--what are _we_--to
do? What becomes of our occupation? If we may neither stuff nor flay
authors, where is our fun? And how are we to get our bread-and-butter?
The selling of three-volume novels alone will not keep us, though we
always add a little to our incomes by that business.
This is how we generally manage. A Three-volumer comes in "for review,"
nicely bound, well got up; we look at the title-page, and if it is
by some individual whom we know to be a power in one or other of
the cliques, we pay strict attention to it, cover its faults, and
quote platitudes as epigrams. But if it is by some one we personally
dislike, or if it is by a woman, we never read it. We simply glance
through it in search of a stray ungrammatical sentence, a misprint,
or a hasty slip of the pen. (The misprints we invariably set down
to the author, as though he had personally worked the printing-press
and muddled the type out of sheer malice.) We obtain a vague idea of
the story by this means, and if we find the ungrammatical sentence
or the slip of the pen we are happy--we have quite enough to go
upon. We tuck our Three-volumer under our arm and make straight for
a secondhand book-store (where we are known), and there we sell it,
after somewhat undignified bargaining, for three or five shillings,
perhaps more, if its author has any reputation with the public. Then
we go home and write half a column of "smart" abuse about it, or what
is worse, luke-warm praise, for which we are paid from about five
shillings to half a guinea, which, added to what we have wrested
out of our secondhand bookseller, makes a respectable little sum,
particularly when we get many Three-volumers, and effect many sales.
(Poverty-stricken editors who write all their "reviews" themselves,
or get their young sons and daughters at home to do it to save their
pockets, and who sell for their own advantage all the "books received,"
naturally make quite a decent thing out of it.) And we can take our
money always with the holy consciousness of having done more than our
duty.
Yet, considering the earnestness with which we go to work, we are
really very miserably rewarded. We do not make half such big incomes
as the authors we judge and condemn. I say this advisedly, because,
as a positive fact, the men and women writers whom we most hold up to
opprobrium are the wretches who make the most money. The very devil
is in it! The poets we go out of our way to praise, our Oxford and
Cambridge pets and our heavy men, don't "sell"; not as they ought
to (in our opinion), by any manner of means. And then they come to
us--these children of the Muse--and complain bitterly that certain
Press-ignored fellows, who never had a "boom" in their lives, _do_
sell. And it is all the fault of the Ass-public, and we are supposed to
be responsible for the humours of the Ass. It is too bad. We cannot
help it if the Ass persists in remaining idiotically ignorant of the
astounding wisdom contained behind the thick skull and solemn brow of
a certain dear and choice morsel of mannerism we know, who dwelleth at
Oxford, and who is called by some of his disciples "A Marvel." Aye,
a marvel so marvellous that he hath grown weighty with the burden of
his own wonder. And the phrase "I wonder!" is a frequent and favourite
murmur of this impassive phenomenon; this "leader" of an excessively
narrow literary "set"--this true "heavy father" of the little low
comedy of Clique. For the rest, his voice is mild and dreamy, his
eyes reserved and bilious, his step as of one in doubt, who deems the
morning come when it is yet but night. Of a truth he is a good and
simple goose, well stuffed with savoury learning; but whether the
world will ever benefit by the dish is a matter which only the world
itself can decide. Personally, I like the "Marvel"; I know him for a
harmless soul, a gentlemanly dull _poseur_, whose posing vexes no one
and amuses many. Only I have ceased to try and "write him up," because
I have read his classic novel, and having accomplished that daring and
difficult feat I consider I have done enough.
Among the minor entertaining experiences in the life of a critic are
the appeals made to one's "quality of mercy" by the tender green
goslings in authorship, who fondly imagine that by a coaxing word, or
a flattery delicately turned, they can persuade Us to praise them. I
saw a young woman striving to beguile my friend Lang in this way on
one occasion, using sundry bewitchments of eye and gesture for the
accomplishment of her fell purpose, and I caught a fragment of her soft
yet desperate petition. "I am sure you will say a good word for my
poems, Mr. Lang!" Her poems! ye gods and goddesses! A woman's poems,
and--Andrew Lang! Surely a Mephistophelian "ha, ha, ha!" rang out in
the infernal regions of log-rolling at such a ridiculous combination,
for when ever did the "Sign of the Ship" wave hopeful encouragement
to a female rhymester? No, no; Lang, like myself, must know better
than to give any foothold to the "vapid" feminine climber who wantonly
attempts to scale Parnassus (a mountain exclusively set apart for the
masculine gender), and threatens to overcome our "intensely moving,
intensely virile stern strength;" _vide_ publisher's advertisements of
our ever-glorious Kipling.