FICTION, EARLY AND LATE.
There lies before me a roll containing certain newspaper extracts pasted
on paper and sewed together. They are cuttings from the _North Wilts
Herald_, and contain a romance, entitled "A Strange Story," written
"expressly" for that paper, and signed "Geoffrey." That Geoffrey--let us
reveal a long-buried secret--was none other than Richard Jefferies
himself. The "Strange Story" was published on June 30, 1866. It is
blood-curdling; it is, in fact, the work of a boy. Between July 21 and
August 4 of the same year, a second tale appeared by the same author; it
is called "Henrique Beaumont." There is a murder in it, and, of course,
a murderer. Lightning--sign of Heaven's wrath--reveals that the
murderer's face, after the deed, is as pale as death. A third tale is
called "Who Will Win? or, American Adventure." There is fighting in it,
with negroes, hairbreadth escapes, and such things, in breathless
succession. A fourth and last tale is called "Masked." These boyish
efforts are only mentioned here to show in what direction the lad's
thoughts were running. Considered as a lad's productions, they require
no comment. At the outset, Jefferies proposed fiction to himself as the
most desirable form of literature, and the most likely form with which
to court success. Almost to the end he continued to keep this ambition
before himself. The list of his serious attempts at fiction is
respectable as regards number. It includes the following:
"The Scarlet Shawl," one vol., 1874.
"Restless Human Hearts," three vols., 1875.
"World's End," three vols., 1877.
"Green Fern Farm," three vols., 1880.
"The Dewy Morn," two vols., 1884.
"Amaryllis at the Fair," one vol., 1887.
To these may be added--but they must be treated separately--"Wood
Magic," a fable, 1881, and "Bevis," three vols., 1882. Perhaps "After
London" may also be accounted a work of fiction.
* * * * *
"The Scarlet Shawl" was published in July, 1874, in one volume. As the
work is stated on the title-page to have advanced to a second edition,
one of two things is certain--namely, either the book appealed to a
large number of readers, or the editions were very small indeed. I
incline, myself, to the latter opinion.
Great as is the admiration of Jefferies' readers for his best and
noblest work, it must be frankly confessed that, regarded as a
story-teller, he is not successful. Why this is so we will presently
inquire. As regards this, his earliest serious work of fiction, there is
one remarkable fact, quite without precedent in the history of
literature--it is that the book affords not the slightest indication of
genius, insight, descriptive or dramatic power, or, indeed, of any
power, especially of that kind with which he was destined to make his
name. It is a book which any publisher's reader, after glancing at the
pages, would order to be returned instantly, without opinion given or
explanation offered; it is a book which a young man of such real
promise, with such a splendid career before him, ought somehow to have
been prevented from publishing. Two reviews of it are preserved in a
certain book of extracts--one from the _Athenaeum_, and one from the
_Graphic_. The story was also made a peg by a writer in the _Globe_ for
some unkind remarks about modern fiction generally. It is only mentioned
here because we would not be accused of suppressing facts, and because
there is no author who has not made similar false starts, mistakes, and
attempts in lines unsuited to his genius. It is not much blame to
Jefferies that his first novel was poor; it was his misfortune that no
one told him at the outset that a book of which the author has to pay
the expense of production is probably worthless. It is, perhaps,
wonderful that the author could possibly think it good. There are, one
imagines, limits even to an author's illusions as regards his own work.
But it is not so wonderful that Jefferies should at this time, when he
was still quite young and ignorant of the world, write a worthless book,
as that he should at any time at all write a book which had not the
least touch of promise or of power.
Consider, however. What is the reason why a young author so often shows
a complete inability to discover how bad his early work really is? It is
that he is wholly unable to understand--no young writer can
understand--the enormous difference between his powers of conception and
imagination--which are often enormous--and those of execution. If it
were worth while, I think it would be possible to extricate from the
crude pages of "The Scarlet Shawl" the real novel which the writer
actually had in his mind, and fondly thought to have transferred to the
printed page. That novel would, I dare say, have been sweet and
wholesome, pure and poetical. The thing which he submitted to the public
was a work in which all these qualities were conspicuously wanting. The
young poet reads his own verses, his mind full of splendid images,
half-formed characters, clouds of bewildering colours, and imagines that
he has fixed these floating splendours in immortal verse. When he has
forgotten what was in his mind while he was writing that verse, he will
be able to understand how feeble are his rhymes, but not till then. I
offer this as some explanation of these early novels.
Consider, again. He never was a novelist; he never could be one. To
begin with, he knew nothing of society, nothing of men and women, except
the people of a small country town. There are, truly, materials for
dramatic fiction in plenty upon a farm and in a village; but Jefferies
was not the man to perceive them and to use them. His strength lay
elsewhere, and as yet he had not found his strength.
Another reason why he could never be a novelist was that he wholly
lacked the dramatic faculty. He could draw splendid landscapes, but he
could not connect them together by the thread of human interest. Nature
in his books is always first, and humanity always second. Two figures
are in the foreground, but one hardly cares to look at them in
contemplating the wonderful picture which surrounds them.
Again, he did not understand, so to speak, stage management. When he had
got a lot of puppets in his hands, he could not make them act. And he
was too self-contained to be a novelist; he could never get rid of his
own personality. When he succeeds in making his reader realize a
character, it is when that character is either himself, as in "Bevis,"
or a part of himself, as Farmer Iden in "Amaryllis." The story in his
earlier attempts is always imitative, awkward, and conventional; it is
never natural and never spontaneous. In his later books he lays aside
all but the mere pretence of a story. The individual pictures which he
presents are delightful and wonderful; they are like his short essays
and articles--they may be read with enormous pleasure--but the story,
what is the story? Where is it? There is none. There is only the promise
of a story not worked out--left, not half untold, but hardly begun, as
in "After London" and in "Amaryllis at the Fair." You may put down any
of his so-called novels at any time with no more regret than that this
scene or that picture was not longer. As the writer never took any
interest in his own characters--one understands that as clearly as if it
was proclaimed upon the house-tops--so none of his readers can be
expected to feel any interest. It is the old, old story. In any kind of
art--it matters not what--if you wish your readers to weep, you must
first be constrained to weep yourself. Many other reasons might be
produced for showing that Jefferies could never have been a successful
novelist; but these may suffice.
Meantime, the wonder remains. How could the same hand write the coarse
and clumsy "Scarlet Shawl" which was shortly to give the world such
sweet and delicate work, so truthful, so artistic, so full of fine
feeling? How could that be possible? Indeed, one cannot altogether
explain it. Collectors of Jefferies' books--unless they are mere
collectors who want to have a complete set--will do well to omit the
early novels. They belong to that class of book which quickly becomes
scarce, but never becomes rare.
There are limitations in the work of every man. With such a man as
Jefferies, the limitations were narrower than with most of those who
make a mark in the history of literature. He was to succeed in one
way--only in one way. Outside that way, failure, check, disappointment,
even derision, awaited him. In the "Eulogy of Richard Jefferies" one can
afford to confess these limitations. He is so richly endowed that one
can well afford to confess them. It no more detracts from his worth and
the quality of his work to own that he was no novelist than it would be
to confess that he was no sculptor.
But the wonder of it! How _could_ such a man write these works, being
already five or six and twenty years of age, without revealing himself?
It is as if one who was to become a great singer should make his first
attempt and break down without even revealing the fact that he had a
noble voice, as yet untrained. Or as if one destined to be a great
painter should send in a picture for exhibition in which there was no
drawing, or sense of colour, or grouping, or management of lights, or
any promise at all. The thing cannot be wholly explained. It is a
phenomenon in literature.
It is best, I say, to acknowledge these limitations fully and frankly,
so that we may go on with nothing, so to speak, to conceal. Let us grant
all the objections to Jefferies as a story-teller that anyone may choose
to make. In the ordinary sense of the word, Jefferies was not a
novelist; in the artistic sense of the word, he was not a novelist. This
fully understood and conceded, we can afterwards consider his later
so-called novels as so many storehouses filled with priceless treasure.
I have in my hands certain letters which Jefferies addressed to Messrs.
Tinsley Brothers on the subject of his MSS. They are curious, and rather
saddening to read. They begin in the year 1872 with proposals that the
firm should publish a work called "Only a Girl," "the leading idea of
which is the delineation of a girl entirely unconventional, entirely
unfettered by precedent, and in sentiment always true to herself." He
writes a first letter on the subject in May. In September he reopens the
subject.
"The scenery is a description of that found in this county, with every
portion of which I have been familiar for many years. The characters are
drawn from life, though so far disguised as to render too easy
identification impossible. I have worked in many of the traditions of
Wilts, endeavouring, in fact, in a humble manner to do for that county
what Whyte Melville has done for Northampton and Miss Braddon for
Yorkshire."
As nothing more is written on the subject of "Only a Girl," I suppose
she was suppressed altogether, or worked up into another book.
In 1874 he attacks the same publishers with a new MS. This time it is
"The Scarlet Shawl." It will be easily understood, from what has gone
before, that he was asked to pay a sum of money in advance in order to
cover the risk--in this case, to pay beforehand the certain loss. He
objected to the amount proposed, and says with charming simplicity:
"I mean to become a name sooner or later. I shall stick to the first
publisher who takes me up; and, unless I am very much mistaken, we
shall make money. To write a tale is to me as easy as to write a letter,
and I do not see why I should not issue two a year for the next twelve
or fifteen years. I can hardly see the possible loss from a novel."
This is really wonderful. This young man knows so little about the
writing of novels as to suppose that, because it is easy for him to
write two "Scarlet Shawls" a year, there can be no possible loss in
them! You see that he had everything to learn. You may also observe that
from the beginning he has never faltered in his one ambition. He will
succeed; and he will succeed in literature.
Terms are finally agreed upon, and "The Scarlet Shawl" is produced. Some
time afterwards he writes for a cheque, and receives an account, whether
accompanied by a cheque or not does not appear. But he submits the
account to a friend, who assures him that it is correct. Thus satisfied,
he finishes a second story, this time in three volumes. It was called
"Restless Human Hearts."
In the following year "Restless Human Hearts," in three volumes, was
brought out by the same firm. In the book of extracts, from which I have
already drawn, there are four or five reviews preserved. They are all of
the same opinion, and it is not a flattering opinion. The _Graphic_
admitted that there was one scene drawn with considerable power. One
need not dwell longer upon this work. Jefferies, in fact, was describing
a society of which he knew absolutely nothing, and was drawing on his
imagination for a picture which he tendered as one of contemporary
manners. At this juncture--nay, at every point--of his literary career,
he wanted someone to stand at his elbow and make him tear up
everything--everything--that pretended to describe a society of which he
knew nothing. The hero appears to have been a wicked nobleman. Heavens!
what did this young provincial journalist know of wicked noblemen? But
he had read about them, when he was a boy. He had read the sensational
romances in which the nobleman was, at that time, always represented as
desperately wicked. In these later days the nobleman of the penny
novelette is generally pictured as virtuous. Why and how this change of
view has been brought about it is impossible in this place to inquire;
but Jefferies belonged to the generation of wicked dukes and vicious
earls.
The terms upon which "Restless Human Hearts" was published do not appear
from the letters extant. Jefferies writes, however, a most sensible
letter on the subject. He refuses absolutely to pay any more for
publishing his own books. He says:
"This is about the worst speculation into which I could possibly put the
money. Therefore I am resolved to spend no more upon the matter, whether
the novel gets published or not. The magazines pay well, and immediately
after publication the cheque is forwarded. It seems the height of
absurdity, after receiving a cheque for a magazine article, to go and
pay a sum of money just to get your tale in print. I was content to do
so the first time, because it is in accordance with the common rule of
all trades to pay your footing." The resemblance is not complete, let me
say, because the new author, on this theory, would not pay his footing
to other authors, but to a publisher, and, besides, such a proposal has
never been made to any author. "I might just as well," he concludes,
"put the cheque in the fire as print a tale at my own expense."
Quite so. Most sensibly put. Young authors will do well to lay this
discovery to heart. They may be perfectly certain that a manuscript
which respectable firms refuse to publish at their own risk and expense
is not worth publishing at all, and they may just as well put their
bank-notes upon the fire as pay them to a publisher for producing their
works. Nay, much better, because they will thus save themselves an
infinite amount of disappointment and humiliation.
Before "Restless Human Hearts" is well out of the binder's hands, he is
ready--this indefatigable spinner of cobwebs--with another story. It is
called "In Summer-Time." He is apparently oblivious of the brave words
quoted above, and is now ready to advance L20 towards the risk of the
new novel. Nothing came of the proposal, and "In Summer-Time" went to
join "Only a Girl."
In the same year--this is really a most wonderful record of absolutely
wasted energy--he has an allegory written in Bunyanesque English called
"The New Pilgrim's Progress; or, A Christian's Painful Passage from the
Town of Middle Class to the Golden City." This, too, sinks into
oblivion, and is heard of no more.
Undeterred by all this ill-success, Jefferies proceeds to write yet
another novel, called "World's End." He says that he has spent a whole
winter upon it.
"The story centres round the great property at Birmingham, considered to
be worth four millions, which is without an owner. A year or two ago
there was a family council at that city of a hundred claimants from
America, Australia, and other places, but it is still in Chancery. This
is the core, or kernel, round which the plot develops itself. I think,
upon perusal, you would find it a striking book, and full of original
ideas."
In consideration of the failure of "Restless Human Hearts," he offers
his publisher the whole of the first edition for nothing, which seems
fair, and one hopes that his publisher recouped by this first edition
his previous losses. The reviewers were kinder to "World's End." The
_Queen_, the _Graphic_, and the _Spectator_ spoke of it with measured
approbation, but no enthusiasm.
He writes again, offering a fourth novel, called "The Dewy Morn;" but as
no more letters follow, it is probable that the work was refused. This
looks as if the success of "World's End" was limited. "The Dewy Morn,"
in the later style, was published in 1884 by Messrs. Chapman and Hall.
The appearance of "World's End" marks the conclusion of one period of
his life. Henceforth Jefferies abandons his ill-starred attempts to
paint manners which he never saw, a society to which he never belonged,
and the life of people concerning whom he knew nothing. He has at last
made the discovery that this kind of work is absolutely futile. Yet he
does not actually realize the fact until he has made many failures, and
wasted a great deal of time, and is nearly thirty years of age.
Henceforth his tales, if we are to call them tales, his papers,
sketches, and finished pictures, will be wholly rural. He has written
"The Dewy Morn," and apparently the work has been refused; there was
little in his previous attempts to tempt a publisher any farther. He
will now write "Greene Ferne Farm," "Bevis," "After London," and
"Amaryllis at the Fair." They are not novels at all, though he chooses
to call them novels; they are a series of pictures, some of beauty and
finish incomparable, strung together by some sort of thread of human
interest which nobody cares to follow.