There is a class of books that nobody apparently has ever thought of
grouping before. Yet they have a very definite place in the mind of
each one of us who is devoted to reading, and to know what they are is
to have information of great value. They are what I may term surrender
books. And presently I hope by example to explain them very definitely.
Of course, lists of books that one ought to read always vary according
to taste, and nothing indeed has involved so much controversy as what
these books should be. There cannot in the nature of things be any
uniform method of selection, this always depending upon individual
taste, previous education, heritage, environment, etc. But it seems
to me that it is possible to create a new standard which deals with
surrender books alone, and I should think that lovers of books
generally would be fairly well agreed as to what these are. We may
expect differences, but not the violent differences we have observed
among those who just make lists of the best books.
What then is a surrender book?
By “surrender” I mean that power a book has over you to make you
surrender yourself to it completely. There are plenty of good books
that do not have this power. It is also true that many of the books
that do have this power are not necessarily novels. The surrender books
indeed are in a class by themselves--as I have hinted, a unique class
quite apart from anything else in literature. I possess a few of them,
and I would not part from these books for anything in the world that I
can think of. I cannot, however, explain them definitely all at once. I
can do so only little by little. If I should attempt to make a complete
definition of a surrender book, you would immediately begin to qualify
it; yet it is quite definite, when you understand the conditions.
A surrender book is one that carries with it a complete atmosphere. It
is just as if the author had the power to invent a world of his own, in
which there is nothing superfluous, and from which, when you once get
into it, you do not want to part. Furthermore, all the outside world
has left you; nothing else matters. The power to do this is a distinct
power; it appears to me to be a peculiarity of some authors. It may not
be the highest power. But there it is--a quite definite thing.
A surrender book is one that we are quite content to be let alone
with. It is not necessarily an exciting book, which, so to speak,
acts upon us like a disease. It may have that quality, and yet it
may not. “The Count of Monte Cristo” is a surrender book; it has its
imperfections, but it qualifies. And also, in my experience, so does
James Ford Rhodes’s history of the United States. Mr. Rhodes first got
together the materials to make his world, then he assimilated them,
and after that, by the peculiar power I have referred to, he created
his illusion. When you step into the first volume, you are living over
again, with him, the history of your country. He has made an atmosphere
for you; you are carried along by it, it envelops you completely. You
don’t care much what happens outside. I suppose, indeed, that it may
be said of a surrender book that it has the power of hypnotizing you.
Now the same thing is true of Jane Austen as of Mr. Rhodes. I am aware
that there are people who don’t like Jane Austen. Mark Twain couldn’t
abide her. He ranted when he mentioned her name. He said that any
library would be a good one without the works of Jane Austen in it. But
Mark Twain’s literary judgment wasn’t worth a whoop. There is nothing
superfluous about Jane Austen. She has the power of making you feel
that you are there, moving about, guided by her fairy wand, and not
caring to be anywhere else.
I should say after all that the quality which enables an author
to produce this illusion is one in which he is able to inspire
our immediate confidence. If you are at the circus and you see a
trapeze performer hesitate over his act, you are at once filled with
nervousness about him. Every moment that you view him is an agony. But
if he shows that he is perfectly able to control himself, you view his
performance with pleasure and serenity. This surrender power is due to
the care with which the author has written his book; but this is by no
means all. Many an author who has taken infinite pains is deadly dull,
and irritatingly accurate. Neither is it due to a dramatic quality.
Some authors, who have this dramatic trick, are constantly leading
up to climaxes which absorb you at the time, and yet you have not
surrendered as a whole. You still retain your self-possession, you are
still looking and have one eye on the outside world.
I confess that I have often tried to define this surrender quality in
such a manner that I would cover it altogether and have not succeeded.
The best thing I can do is to give examples.
“Vanity Fair” for instance is not a surrender book; there are parts
of it altogether too detached. This does not detract from its glory;
only, it doesn’t happen to be that kind. For surrender value I should
much prefer “The Newcomes”, but Thackeray is not a perfect type of a
surrender author. Neither, on the whole, is Dickens. He carries you
off your feet; he bangs you up against the wall; he certainly absorbs
you; he is like a contagion. But think of Parkman and his stories of
conquest and Indians. Here, by that subtle alchemy of which I have
spoken, you are immediately carried into another world, with swift and
sure touches. After you have once read, as an instance, “Conspiracy of
Pontiac”, how different is everything. To me the supreme pleasure of
reading, after you have gotten through a surrender book, and it has
become a possession, is to want to live it all over again. Nothing but
high genius in writing has the power to enable you to do this.
Perhaps the biggest books in the world are not the surrender books.
Neither Shakespeare nor Plato nor the Bible could qualify. There is a
sense in which they are too big. There are, of course, stories in the
Bible that have great surrender value. A reading of Shakespeare may
easily be an absorbing occupation. I remember when, as a boy, I read
his plays for the first time, their story value fascinated me, held me.
But to meet these three works and come finally to enter into them and
understand them requires a long experience with life. Indeed, it is not
until we approach the end of life that, as we ponder over them, their
great beauty and their profundity almost overawe us.
If you are a natural born reader, however, you can begin at almost
any time to collect surrender books. “Les Miserables” is one of them.
This is what Walter Scott might call a big bowwow surrender book. You
must lead up to it almost with fasting and prayer; especially in these
days, when a snatching of newspaper headings, and a fitful flitting
from magazine page to magazine page, weakens one’s sense so of true
literary values. I read “Les Miserables” when I was convalescing from
a long illness, when my mind had been swept clean. It was a wonderful
experience. But I suppose the most wonderful surrender experience in
the world would be to have nothing to do but to read Balzac through.
And think of some of our modern authors in comparison with these
surrender books I have mentioned! They make one shudder with their
mosaic qualities, with their utter inability to transport you anywhere
without your sinking on the ground and resting every few moments. I
have in mind some of our more recent books where I felt as if I were
obliged to hold up the author’s words all the time, as I went along.
You say of some books: “It takes him so long to say anything.”
But that isn’t quite it.
It took Victor Hugo long to say some things, but how well he said them!
And while he was saying them you forgot that he was saying anything.
You were moving along with him, almost without being aware of it. Think
of the flight of Jean Valjean! Has the surrender value of that part
ever been equaled?
_Hugh Walpole_
The egotism of most authors stalks in front of them as they enter the
room. I have yet to discover such a thing round about the person of
Hugh Walpole. He is the most modest author I know; yet, somehow, the
most confident. He believes in his books; but he does not expect you
to believe in them. If you do, he is glad. If you do not--well, then,
there will always be another book, another chance for you to believe.
Walpole is tall, broad-shouldered, practically always smiling. He has
a wide forehead. He wears glasses. His platform manner is excellent,
and he speaks, as he writes, with care and distinction. Walpole’s work
is rich in background, as well as in a rare understanding of humanity
without an overlarding of the sentimental. He is wise, tolerant, and
youthful in his freshness of interest in life. He was born in Auckland,
New Zealand. He is a son of the Bishop of Edinburgh. As a boy, he lived
in America and attended a private school on Washington Square. While
an undergraduate at Cambridge, he wrote two novels. One of them, “The
Wooden Horse”, was his first published story. Before this, however, at
the age of twelve, he is said to have written a novel concerning Guy
Fawkes for the delectation of the family cook. For a time he worked as
a journalist on “The London Standard”. Now, both in England and in the
United States, he is the greatly popular young novelist of recognized
worth. His attitude toward America is far more cordial than that of
most English writers. Any differences of opinion he regrets and, as can
be seen by his little tiff with Mr. Mencken, he is anxious to act as
mediator. Socially popular, invited everywhere in London and New York,
the real Walpole, I imagine, is the one who secludes himself in the
little Cornish village of Polperro, walks among the fishermen, works
long and diligently on his novels.